Setsuna: The Restaurant Off to the Side of the Universe written by Mike Koos The Gate of Time suddenly blurred into existence with little fanfare, just as it had far too many times before this. Ornate and meticulously carved doors parted, opening wide to allow a young red-haired woman through. Ranma stared at the unassuming building some distance from her Gate with a notable weariness, although she was by no means physically tired. She shook her head. "One of these millenia," Ranma muttered to herself, "we're gonna figure out exactly whose stupid idea this was, and stick her in a Moebius loop. With a few dozen paradoxes thrown in, too. And some alternate realities. Can't forget those." She sighed. Well, in theory, she *could* avoid this forever, but... Her fingers searched blindly for her henshin rod, and found it. "Pluto Crystal Power... make up!" A multi-colored stream of light enveloped her, changing the girl who had established herself as a woman named 'Meiou Setsuna' from her street clothes to the uniform she wore as the bishoujo senshi, Sailor Pluto - Guardian of Time. Or something like that. Sailor Pluto continued to grumble as she began her walk toward the building, this time swiping irritably at the occasional rock with a Garnet Rod that looked for all Time and Space like a huge, oblong key. For fun, Ranma theorized every once in a while that the Garnet Rod was - in fact - molded from the molten remains of keys other people had lost throughout Time. The Rod could serve as a nifty universal garage door opener, too, but not in the traditional way one would expect. Another wonderful Time-waster was wondering why, if the Guardian of Time tended to prefer subtle ways of approaching everything, did she always insist on using surnames as blatantly obvious as 'Meiou?' She wished she could... *avoid* this 'ceremony,' but she had ordered herself not to. Or rather, a version of herself from some other random point along her own personal timeline had promised dire consequences if she even felt like playing hooky. One of those other instances of her had even pushed her through that door that lay only a handful of yards ahead of her now, with a swift high-heeled boot placed just below that bow at her backside. Pluto grumbled once more, and continued to trudge along the planetoid's surface. Leading more than one life was always a lot of fun. In one role, she was Saotome Ranma, a Jhusenkyou-cursed boy struggling against a remarkable stream of lunacy to become one of the Earth's best martial artists. Another role placed her as Setsuna, the cold, aloof Guardian - and the Senshi most likely to inspire each of her teammates to want to throttle her at one point in Time or another. Even the cats, at that. A third role defined her as a clerk in an obscure California video rental shop, with a handy lecture as to exactly *how* not bothering to rewind tapes before you returned them could cause the unavoidably devastating collapse of Time and Space. Pluto thought with a snort, recalling a conversation she'd had with one of the others during last year's meeting here. <'These aren't meetings,'> one of the others had cheerfully pointed out. <'They're *reunions*!'> She'd been to reunions. These meetings were somewhat like class reunions, true, but they didn't require hopping back across Time like her class reunions did. It could be a lot easier worrying about what you would tell people you were doing after ten years if you let a few centuries pass before you did just that. No, these little get-togethers were meetings... just an excuse to get every last one of them together in a meeting hall, once a year. Mostly to listen to everyone else talk shop and NOT talk about events which had yet to occur, or their reasons for letting things happen the way they had. Okay, so a few did make themselves look like complete drunken idiots when they finished off whatever the bar had in stock, but... She muttered a curse only a Guardian of Time would understand, and reached out to grab the handle to one of the doors leading into the hall. The instant she yanked the door open, the expected cry rang out. "Hello, Sailor Pluto!" Pluto groaned, letting her gaze sweep across the other women already present in the hall... each of them her counterpart Sailor Pluto from other dimensional realities and times. None of them looked similar to one another, save for the standard uniform of the Sailor Senshi Guardian of Time, and the Garnet Rod all carried. Except for those putting their Garnet Rods to other uses, such as that limbo contest over there in the far corner. She was willing to bet the number of those who had called out to her would say they *knew* she was coming, and when. Bloody perverse, the whole lot of them. Herself included. She fell into a chair at a table across from a Pluto whose hair was quite long and more of a dark jade color. "So, what have you been up to, Pluto?" the other grinned. "As if I didn't already know." Ranma took a deep breath. "That," she replied in the best example of an enigmatic voice she felt like mustering at the moment, "is a secret." ------------ Notes: This is a ridiculous little spamfic that I wrote one morning after reading a comment Andrew Norris posted to the RanMoon list... a reference to an idea of Jeffery Hosmer's, I think. Special thanks to the RanMoon discussion list for comments and prereading. This story is a part of the RanMoon project. Visit the project's homepage at: ********** * Mike ('Kino Makoto') Koos: makoto@cal.net * http://www.fanfic.net/~makoto * * "I can do nothing to stop you. Your background music is too strong * for me." - Sam Johnson, Whose Line is it Anyway?