It was a quiet autumn day in the little viennese Café-Konditorei. While not big and prestiguous, not even as big as the nearby Café Prückel, it was nonetheless famous in certain social circles as a secluded spot for unobserved meetings.
Usagi Tsukino, youngest senior diplomat of Japan, absent-mindedly chewed on her last bit of Sacher-Masoch-Torte while skimming through her third set of newspapers. The headlines screamed ARF GOING WAY OF COE? and they still used that photo.
The muffled sounds of steps made her sit up and lay the newspaper aside.
"Setsuna, thank you for meeting me here."
"Always, Princess."
Usagi smiled. "Don't be so formal, not today. Do you know what I had to do to ditch my secretaries and get a few days of free time?"
"I can just imagine." Setsuna sat down opposite Usagi and eyed the newspapers headlines. "Let me tell you about my grand tour of Die Angewandte." "Sure!"
They exchanged stories until their coffees and waters were ordered and delivered and the waiter had retreated again.
"So..." Usagi began stirring her cappucino. "I asked you here for a reason. I can't get away to meet the you at the Door with all the people around me all the time, see." Setsuna nodded.
"I have been thinking..." Setsuna couldn't quite shake the sense of dread these words evoked, but kept silent. "It's about the enemies we have faced in the past. I know most of them were attracted to a place where so many Senshi were, but that makes me question why there were so many."
Setsuna took a sip of her Wiener Melange. "Earth has always been a planet wrapped in chaos."
"Do you think it had something to do with Metallia?"
That gave her pause. "I never thought about it, to be honest. Why would you think so?"
"Because she was in the sun and spread her rays of evilness with all the sunlight, and the planets created Senshi to protect themselves." Usagi nodded wisely. "Anyway, Setsuna, when I went over the fights we had with these Chaos spawn, I noticed something. Why did the Silver Millenium just seal them away instead of confronting them? At least Nehellenia could have been destroyed ages ago. And why did my future self do the same with the Dark Moon Clan?"
Setsuna sighed. "That is a complicated question, demanding a complicated answer. You see-" Usagi held up her hand. "I'm not done yet. Please, listen to me first.
"I know I'm too busy sometimes, and Mamoru is playing father and mother for Chibi-Usa. But a week ago, before I went on my European travels, I looked at my daughter. I mean, really looked at her. She's older, Setsuna, older than Chibi-Usa was when she came back in time. That shouldn't happen. Did something go wrong with the timeline, did I go wrong somewhere, when fighting? Should we have just sealed them, like Pharao90? Or did I choose poorly at the Cauldron?"
Setsuna slowly emptied her coffee, using the time to collect her thoughts. This would need a really long answer.
"I am the watcher of the Space-Time Door, the guardian of the Underworld, and my duties have been the same and will be the same as long as time exists. But that wasn't always the case.. the Space-Time Door did not exist before the Silver Millenium."
Usagi froze. "How is that possible?"
"You would need a degree in Metaphysics as taught during the Silver Millenium and a degree in Quantum Mechanics to truly understand it, but I can try to explain it in simple, somewhat incorrect terms."
"I would like that very much."
"Time is much more malleable than you think. With the right ways, it can be changed to your liking, or you can travel it as if you would a river. But by doing that you force to change the flow of time so that you could change or travel in the first place. You create transfixed events."
"Oooh, I think know what you mean," Usagi wrinkled her nose, memories of half-napping, half-listening to one of the roleplaying sessions several of the Europeans loved to much. "You are talking about a... karmatic causality knot, right? Something that simply has to happen, no matter how much the circumstances change?"
Setsuna nodded, a bit surprised. "There are simple tricks to open doorways through time, if you have help. You need to manipulate gravity to such an extent that you manipulate time as well, but you create a... causality knot that way."
Usagi looked surprised. "Is that what Chibi-Usa did? Shouldn't that prevent her from aging like a human?"
"No, that's not how it works. The event that has become transfixed is the daughter of you and Mamoru fleeing through time with the Silver Crystal and a stolen Time Key because her home was attacked, and the Inner Senshi and you travelling forward to solve it. Do you understand what this means?"
Usagi nodded slowly. "It doesn't matter if this home was Crystal Tokyo or an apartment in Kyoto, or if she was fleeing the Dark Moon Kingdom or a masked robber... or..."
"Yes, it does not have to be Chibi-Usa, it has to be your daughter. But the travel itself and some of the events surrounding it will happen, no matter how much the timeline had changed. Even if Metallia had scoured the Earth of life or Chaos had triumphed over you, it would still have happened, no matter what."
Usagi frowned at the last one. An image of Black Lady travelling back in time wormed itself into her mind, fleeing from a band of plucky rebels, who were probably trying to cleanse Opal Tokyo and the reborn and corrupted Senshi.
She shuddered. "Is... is that how destiny works?"
Setsuna shook her head. "No, it is far worse. And this trick, this shortcut was very easy to use on Earth, much more so than on other planets. And it was extensively used, for conquest, scientific interest, or just for fun. When the Silver Millenium was born on the moon, Earth had degraded to the point where its time was barely linear anymore and a full third of the planet had been shunted off into countless other dimensions, where it was changed into the realms you have seen."
"And even if they attacked, they couldn't be defeated by the Moon Kingdom... because they were already defeated in the future, in our time?"
"No, but they existed in later times. They could have been defeated, but something would have replaced them here, and there was no telling what exactly that would have been. It was deemed too dangerous. I know that some of these realms were brought back to Earth when they were safe again."
"And then Queen Serenity closed the loophole by setting up the Space-Time Door and installing you as its guardian, right?" Setsuna nodded.
"But there are still other, less dangerous ways to travel through time, or some of the things we've seen wouldn't have been possible... that means... that means my daughter will have a chance to actually grow up.. and Crystal Tokyo might never exist?"
Setsuna lowered her head. "The future Chibi-Usa came from, the future you went to, it was just a possible one, but one in a limited, not an endless number of possibilities. The future you will experience is up to you and your friends. And me, in this life at least."
Usagi broke into a smile, one of the really bright ones you usually needed sunglasses for. "I think I like this. I like this very much."
A/N: Striclty manga metaphysics, no real scientists were harmed in creating this ficlet. Both ARF (ASEAN Regional Forum) and COE (Council of Europe) are real organisations, although much less prominent than shown here. More information to coffeehouse culture can be found on Wikipedia.