(From what I understand, this kind of paradox situation is exactly what 
it was Pluto's job to prevent from occuring in the first place. Which
leaves the interesting question: Why did her future counterpart go ahead
and do it anyway?)


Shad.

To answer this question, let's turn to the pages of Dragonball Z.

No, seriously.

Mysterious Saiyan Future Warrior Trunks comes back to the past, lays the 
almighty smack down on Freeza _and_ Kold, drops off heart medicine for 
Goku, and blips back to the future. He comes back at a later date to 
find the past doesn't happen quite the way he remembered it - that 
things have changed - and during his conversation with the other 
fighters reveals some things, among them this notable bombshell:

The future is just as inviolate as the past.

Nothing anybody does in this past timeline will prevent any of the 
tragedies that struck Trunks's future world from occurring. He can go 
back to the shared past of his world, but can only go forward again to 
his already-determined future.

Similarly, when Krillin and Trunks raid Gero's lab and destroy the 
gestating Cell, the Cell from the future remains absolutely unharmed, 
because in his timeline he's already survived to grow up.

This is the truth of Sailor Moon R. The senshi weren't fighting for 
_their_ future, necessarily - they were cavalry from the past, called up 
to defend a _possible_ future. The reason Chibi-Usa needed to come back, 
as opposed to Pluto just opening a gate in modern-times, is that the 
gate present-Pluto opened might not even lead to the future Chibi-Usa 
came from at all - but the little sprout's gate key would take her back 
to her own time.

Yes, yes, crystal points blah blah blah, corruption of Crystal Tokyo 
yadda yadda yadda. Wiseman was a manipulative bastard of the first water 
- nothing says he can't have been working to heighten the influence of 
some of his brethren in alternate timelines. Heck, if his orb was 
actually resonating among various timelines, corruption in the past 
would increase its power by pooling dark energy in completely different 
times.

Unless I vastly misremember my Sailor Moon, Pluto guarded the present 
from the future. If Wiseman's crystal worked the way I propose it does, 
and there were other artifacts out there with similar properties (or 
even if his was the only one), then that position would still be a good 
thing to have, because future agents could come into and overpower the 
past to indirectly benefit themselves. And nothing's further outside the 
solar system than something that, technically, shouldn't even exist.

--GF



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