Subject: [FFML] Re: [SM/xover][silly] "Stop F***ing with the Future!" 1
From: "Benjamin A. Oliver" <boliver@email.arizona.edu>
Date: 12/8/2003, 10:57 PM
To: ffml@anifics.com
CC: The Eternal Lost Lurker <lurkerdrome@sbcglobal.net>


Quoting "The Eternal Lost Lurker" <lurkerdrome@sbcglobal.net>:

You know, I don't generally comment publicly, since that usually implies a long,
drawn-out, detailed line-by-liner... but the topic rather caught my attention.

From: "The Eternal Lost Lurker" <lurkerdrome@sbcglobal.net>
Subject: [FFML] [SM/xover][silly] "Stop F***ing with the Future!" 1
Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2003 11:10:19 -0600

There's nothing more fun than messing with time around such an unyielding
character as good 'ol Fanfic Convention Sailor Pluto!

I love the gal, really.  She's so fun to mess around with. ^_^

>From the SM anime, there's little evidence that she ever did anything more than
guard the Gate of Time--and what a boring job it must have been--and she
occasionally stepped in to save lives and help out; she's a far cry from what
authors like us make her out to be.  I understand that in the manga, she
(gasp!) even got frazzled now and again!


Anyway, now that the public service message is done (which you almost certainly
know about--and I love fanfic-style S.Pluto probably as much as anyone else),
let's get this here story reviewed!

Meiou Setsuna. Also known as Sailor Pluto, also known as the Guardian of
Time.

Yup!  Guardian of the Gate of Time, Puu, Guardian of Time, and Last of the
Red-Hot Chronographers!

Setsuna is regarded by those who know her as a calm, collected, icy-cool
woman with a professional demeanor and a rather severe devotion toward her
duties.

It's quite nice to have a contrast now and again with the Title Character.  A
professional, collected demeanor is probably as opposite to Usagi as you'll
find in a main character.

Which, given the nature of said duties, is understandable. It's not exactly
good policy to skive off when your job is to protect the flow of time
itself.

Indeed.  Can't have those pesky time travelers mucking things up.  It just
wouldn't be proper, y'see.

I mean, if we switched things around and had Usagi... or better yet, Minako as
Guardian of Time (fully empowered by all the intricacies of convention), we'd
have all kinds of nifty, funky stuff going on.

Taking all that into consideration, one can therefore excuse the erratic
behaviour exhibited by Meiou Setsuna on October 27, 1985.

And November 5, 1955.

And November 12, 1955.

And September 2, 1885.

And September 7, 1885.

And October 21, 2015.

And a seemingly infinite number of points between and beyond...

Gotta admit:  Time is bumpy.  You need a fine ship to sail it.

======================================

"STOP FUCKING WITH THE FUTURE!!"

by The Eternal Lost Lurker

Based on:

"Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon" by Takeuchi Naoko

and:

"Back to the Future" (c. 1985, 1989, 1990 Universal Studios)

and other copyrighted intellectual properties

used without permission

not for profit

Disclaimers!  I haven't used them in such a long time...  Fortunately, Larry F
adds them in when stuff's posted to the Florestica site.

Reflecting on it all, aside from any theoretical legal issues, I suppose it's
rather a proper courtesy to have them...

===================1===================

The whole thing began one hundred years, one month, and just shy of three
weeks in the past.

Or it began thirty years ago minus a few weeks.

Or it began thirty years in the future minus six days.

Except it didn't begin at any of those times. It began two seconds ago. But
it didn't necessarily begin then, either.

That's just the way things go when any millisecond in the infinite span of
time can count as your present.

Did it begin in the future which arrived in the present by way of the past and
over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house we go?

Time is fun when you compress it to wild and crazy standards.  Most of the
better (or, at least well-known) authors have a way to address it.  I rather
liked Pratchett's handling of it in Thief of Time.  But, that's another
temporal theory.

The best way to avoid a massive clusterfuck would be to say that, to at
least one part of the world, it was 1:20am on October 27, 1985, when one of
the biggest headaches Sailor Pluto had ever experienced began. As was
typical of a being whose existence reaches all points in time
simultaneously, her headache reached in both directions along the timeline,
and only grew worse the further into the past it went.

Wooooo!

I wonder where the Temporal Headaches(TM) for Sailor Pluto originated from in
fan fiction.  I mean, when we have her viewing Time, it's only logical that she
should have them... but when did they become Convention?

And it all started with a shaggy mutt and a heavily modified sports car.

When I read this sentence, I instantly thought Scooby Doo, for some wild, crazy
reason. It took me a second to realize the Back to the Future angle.

Pluto was minding her own business in the nonlinear, infinite ether where
the Gates of Time resided, contemplating the past, present, and future as
only she can. She knew that in what was nominally the "present", it would be
another seven years before she'd be required to slip back into the
timestream. She knew that it could also very easily happen tomorrow, or
yesterday. She knew...

...that something felt very, very wrong just now.

It's the lack of proper facilities in the Infinite Ether between the Gates of
Time.  All at once, it's been a nanosecond as well as a dozen millenia since
she's had a chance to visit one.  Having one of those spread-time continuums
rather complicates things in that matter.

And then, with a triple sonic boom that nearly blew her off her feet, a
silver shape flashed past her.

"What the HELL?!"

There was another series of booms, and the object vanished.

What with all the time travelers in fiction in general, one would think it's a
very common occurrence... but not so much when we're dealing with a limited
number of series.  Say, Back to the Future and Johnny Quest.

Frowning, Setsuna invoked the power of the Garnet Orb atop her staff.
Infinity rewound itself, and she was able to get a closer look at the
intruder. She stared.

A Time Guardian caught in the headlights. ^_^

"Oh, if you shine the light in her eyes, she can't move!"

It was a DeLorean sports car, the low-chassis kind with the gullwing doors,
and had some massive modification to the rear--something that looked
disturbingly like a small nuclear reactor. Inside the car, there was a large
dog.

To even look upon it was to go mad...

"They're DOGS, and they're DRIVING DELORIANS!  UWEHEHEHEHEHEEE!"

The flow of non-time snapped back into motion, and Pluto was forced to dodge
once again as the DeLorean zipped past.

Kind of like an Alfred Hitchcock scenario: everyone's after her.

<Snip!>
over in the void between and beyond time. She could swear that a few of
those cars had been *flying*, and the barrage abated with one particularly
percussive flash of light, high above her head, which heralded a final,
airborne DeLorean, crackling with electricity, disappearing with a rather
disconcerting crack that was different from the sound made by the rest.

You described this one well.  It made me instantly think of the BttF2 lightning
strike.

Once the sudden storm of sports cars subsided, Pluto blinked her eyes,
coughed, and peered hesitantly into the mists around her. She then strode
over to the Gates and leaned against them absently, rubbing the bridge of
her nose.

"What the hell was THAT all about?"

She's a little slow on the uptake now.  Nearly being run over several dozen
times has the tendancy to do that to one.

======================================

Irritating though it was, it actually took Pluto a few minutes to figure out
just what was going on.

"Grr, pesky time travelers!  Always when I'm trying to watch Springer!"

Once she did, though, she was not a happy camper.

Let's examine that statement...  What kind of a camper would S.Pluto actually
be?  Does she like to go out into the wilderness with a tent and a backpack, or
does she like to bring a lot of tech with her?

The Anime and Manga Plutos might be the sort to try and rough it, even if it was
just with a knife and the clothes on her back... if she had very good reason to
do so, of course.

Fanfic Convention Pluto, on the other hand... She likes to bring along the
trailer, the satellite dish, the portable shower, the lawn chair, and lots of
sunscreen.  And bug spray.  Lots and lots of bug spray.

As Pluto, it was her duty to prevent unauthorised temporal transit--in other
words, she was supposed to keep ignorant people from going back and forth
through time and mucking things up.

Which is precisely what the idiots with the DeLorean had done, repeatedly.

It's a Perfectly Proper Impropriety, y'see.  Gotta go around mucking up the
timeline.  What'd she do otherwise, to break the monotony?  Read a book?  Write
her memoirs?

And yet, just as she was about to step into the timestream and take control
of things--by force if necessary--somehow, *somehow* the two idiots managed
to fix the mess they made of time, and in some places, left it just a bit
better than they found it.

It's Hollywood!  Gotta fix the timeline once you've broken it.  It's how you
relieve the tension at the end.

"Well, at least they're being somewhat responsible about it," Pluto
muttered, sighing as she watched the car vanish again in another time, and
the counterpart of its occupant rush up to the counterpart of its inventor,
setting off another chain of temporal violation.

Time Travel Responsibly.  Remember to bring along your Designated Time Guardian.

But, since they're being responsible about it, I guess that's a good reason to
not excessively harm the naive travelers.

Pluto continued to watch events for a while, frowning, then nodded
satisfactorily as the long, drawn-out nightmare of temporal violation seemed
to come to a conclusion. One man displaced temporally was acceptable, if he
was careful and avoided damaging the timeline. The boy was back where he
belonged, only minor damage had been done to the timeline as a whole, and
most importantly, the blasted car was destroyed.

And Pluto hadn't even had to lift a finger.

"Well, Doc... I destroyed the time machine."

That's another nifty thing about some varieties of timelines and Destiny:
they're sometimes very adaptable and tend to correct themselves after a little
time.

<Controversial Statement>Like the Ranma series, there's a certain
counter-entropy to the characters and things which requires constant attacks by
random elements to keep things fun and interesting.</Controversial Statement>

She was so busy being relieved that the crisis had been averted that she
didn't notice the flying steam engine until it knocked her ass over
teakettle.

...You know, I hadn't heard that expression before.  Though, I admit, after some
analysis, it is quite descriptive. ^_^

Her last thought before she blacked out to the sound of triple sonic booms
was, *Why me?*

It was in the job description, really.  It's a dirty job, but somebody's gotta
be there to take the lumps.  Sometimes, I wonder if she volunteered for the
job, or if it was forced upon her because she had no other choice.

I vote for Fanfic Convention Pluto having been trapped by Destiny into the job.
^_^

======================================

Pluto stood resolute, waiting. It would come any minute. She had to be
ready.

And then, there it was. Three sonic booms, a loud whistle, and...

"Target... MAXIMUM FIREPOWER!"

"Dead Scream."

Ah, good, she's whispering here.  Not like the English Dub (Hey, Trista sounds
like Setsuna, doesn't it?). ^_^  Nice bit o' targeting and such.

A flash of crimson and violet, an explosion, and a mighty crash.

With lots of flaming shrapnel and a huge, cinematic fireball as a time-traveling
tanker-truck driven by a partially-damaged T-800 crashes into the side of the
train?!  YEAAH! ^___^

A heavily modified steam locomotive ploughed cowcatcher-first into the mists
of infinity, skidding on its belly along the ether, sliding to a stop mere
millimetres from the booted toes of the Guardian of Time.

Well, yeah, I guess if she's going for non-lethal, she'd kind of have to do it
like that.

...

Darn. ^_^;;

The train's doors opened, and a man with wild silver-white hair dressed in
nineteenth-century finery stepped out, glancing around nervously. "Clara?"
he called. "What's it say on the control circuits?"

"It says 'please deposit ten cents.' ...Ah, I mean... It's busted."

"It's spinning like crazy, Emmett!" a woman's voice called from inside. "I
think the crash broke it!"

You know, that's one thing three movies never damaged: the flux capacitor.  The
time circuits got kind of finnicky at times, but overall, fuel and energy was
more of a problem.

"Your time control circuits aren't broken," Pluto said crisply, drawing the
man's attention.

He blinked, stepping out of the train onto the mists below, surprised to
find them solid enough to stand on. "Who are you?"

"Your worst nightmare.  A staff-wielding time guardian in a miniskirt."

"NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

"Time to pay the piper, Doc Brown."

A woman in a purple dress and hat leaned out of the train, and blinked.
"Emmett? What's going on out here?"

"...Oh my, lovely outfit!  Where can I get one like that?"

Pluto stepped closer to the train, staff held in a moderately threatening
manner. When she spoke, it was with cold precision, a sharp, inflexible
glint in her scarlet eyes. "Emmett Lathrop Brown. I've been waiting to speak
with you for one hundred years, although I had no knowledge of you until
about fifteen minutes ago."

Time's still rather bumpy.  No wonder she's got headaches if she's remembering
things that didn't happen fifteen minutes ago.

Kind of reminds me of a common thing from Pratchett:

"Oh, that old door?  It's always been there."

"Yes, but had it always been there ten minutes ago?"

The wild-haired man blinked. "I'm afraid you've lost me, miss--"

"I am the Guardian of Time, the sworn protector of all points between the
beginning and end of eternity, Sailor Pluto." Here, she levelled his staff
at him, the Garnet Orb flaring brilliantly crimson. "Order your family to
gather all possessions and vacate the time vehicle. Now."

What a way to deal with those dangerous time traveler types!

"Step away from the time machine and get down on the ground!!!"

Very... police-ey. ^_^

"Now wait just a minute, miss!" The purple-clad woman--Clara--stepped down
from the train, a haughty expression on her face. "Who do you think you are
to tell us what--"

"I believe I already explained that," Pluto cut across her.

Although it's true that they've never met any time guardians quite as unusual as
her.

"I'm afraid I don't quite understand what's going on here," the man
sometimes known as "Doc" Brown admitted.

"Let me clarify," Pluto began. "On October 27, 1985, at 1:20 am Pacific

For some strange reason, I imagine her whipping out a pair of black shades here
and writing them a ticket on a clipboard...

time, you conducted a time travel experiment which propelled a DeLorean and
your dog one minute into the future. Later that same morning, your
assistant, Martin McFly, used the same vehicle to travel to November 5,
1955. His trip was an accident, and would have done significant damage to
the continuity of time, but by some miracle, you were able to patch the
holes your machine created without my intervention.

"Tsk, tsk.... Exceeding the time-dialation limit by fifty years a second. 
You're gonna do time, pal."

"However, you then proceeded to use the vehicle again, this time to travel
into the future. You then returned to the past to bring your assistant with
you to a time he should not have witnessed, to alter an event which was
destined to occur. This was no accident, but rather, deliberate tampering
with time.

Hey, I can understand the past, but the future's open to change. ^_^

"It was my error for not stepping in to prevent that incident, but I assumed
that you would return to your own time, in which the future was still
unwritten, and the flow of time would resume uninterrupted. I had hoped
there would be no further incursions of this nature.

"I was wrong."

Doc was gaping openly at Pluto now, while Clara was frowning. Their two
sons, Jules and Verne, had come out of the train to see what the commotion
was, their dog Einstein in tow.

"Yes, hang your heads in shame, time-travelers!"

"Your vehicle was stolen, and the thief used it to cause extensive damage to
history. You and your assistant again took matters into your own hands,
again just as I was about to return to the flow of time to correct matters
personally. By some miracle, you succeeded in restoring the proper timeline,
and then..." She trailed off meaningfully.

Wow, she's really thumbing through the file here.

"I got struck by lightning," Doc said.

"You got struck by lightning," Pluto repeated calmly. "Your past self and
your well-meaning assistant contrived to extract you from your temporal
misplacement--commendable, though they need not have bothered, for I would
have personally removed you from the nineteenth century myself--and,
amazingly, only managed to cause minor damage to the timestream--" Here, she
glanced meaningfully at Clara, "--in their efforts to rescue you.
Ultimately, your assistant was returned home, but you remained in the past,
and the time vehicle was destroyed.

Though, you have to admit, she sure took long enough to notice.  Doc Brown was
there for long enough to set up a blacksmith shop and hide the time machine in
an empty mine and all that.

"I would have been content to allow you to remain in the past, as your
presence there was not harming the timeline in any significant manner, and
you had expressed a desire to remain. However, I was most...displeased to
discover that you had constructed *another time vehicle*." She glared at the
flying steam locomotive. "I believe that you can appreciate my position as
Guardian of Time, Doctor Brown. I simply cannot allow unauthorised temporal
incursions of this nature to continue. I was caught off-guard by the initial
incursions, and was unable to intercede directly. However, now that I have
your attention..."

Oooh, judge, jury, AND executioner. ^_^

"What, you're planning to kill us or something?" Clara asked derisively.

"Yes.  But first... here are my vacation slides from the last camping trip I had
with the King and Queen..."

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

"Here I am with my portable DVD player on the lawn chair.  And here is Usagi
wishing she had bugspray."

...

"Here's my satellite dish I had to unfold to get my Iridium phone to have
high-speed Internet.  And here's Mamoru, wishing Usagi had bugspray."

"No," Pluto replied with a shake of her head. "I simply intend to destroy
your time vehicle. I will then personally transport you to an era of your
choosing, where you will remain for the rest of your lives. You," she said
with a cold look at Doc, "are to refrain from constructing a time machine
EVER. AGAIN. If I ever catch you building another one, the next time I won't
be so lenient." The Orb pulsed blood-red at this pronouncement. "Do you
understand me?"

That's a reasonable deal.  Can they construct a time-guardian-zapping lantern
before they build the next time machine?

"Y-yes...yes, ma'am," Doc said, swallowing nervously.

Pluto nodded. "Now, remove your things from the train, please."

Here... I imagine Pluto aiming her staff like a Howitzer at the train, motioning
for the others to back away.

The two boys hurried into the train and came out with two large bags and a
cardboard box suspended on a device Pluto knew should never have existed in
the time from whence the family came. "I'll also be confiscating THAT," she
replied, pointing at the hoverboard.

She's just saying that because she always wanted one when she was a little girl,
and her stepmom never let her have one.

"But maaaa!"

"No buts, now get back to your poise and mysteriousness lessons!"

She wanted to be a holy-terror HOVERBOARD chick, but noooooooooo, she had to go
off and become the high-and-mighty Guardian of Time. ^_^

"Awww," Jules and Verne whined in unison.

"Now, boys...the lady's right," Doc said with a resigned sigh. "It doesn't
belong in our time, after all."

It depends on what time period they choose, really.

Pluto quirked an eyebrow at that, but let it slide. "Is that everything?" At
the family's nods, Pluto raised her staff again. "Dead Scream."

Pretty standard, all-purpose attack.  Guaranteed to remove stumps, gophers,
youma, and vaporize errant time machines.

The Browns flinched as a whirling orb of energy smashed into the time
locomotive, obliterating it in a heartbeat. "Now," Pluto said with a small,
cold smile, "Where can I drop you nice folks?"

Why am I suddenly getting Animaniacs flashbacks with the Warner Brothers (and
sister) deciding they don't want to be dropped in any particular time
period--they want to stay forever and ever and ever with Auntie Pluto?

...

I haven't seen animaniacs for, like, nearly a decade or something. o_O;;

======================================

Pluto slipped back through the Gate into the ether of infinity, satisfied
that once again, she had prevented the destruction of history. Her job could
be incredibly boring at times, but the periods of excitement more than made
up for it.

^_^ Ah hah!  I knew it.  Having something to blow up now and again certainly
breaks the monotony.

She glanced at the pink Mattel hoverboard tucked under her arm, quirked a
smile, and had just started to place one booted foot into the pink nylon
strap when...

Hah-hah!  Yeah, she DID want to be a skater.

*SHOOM*

A telephone booth slammed into the mists, crackling with electricity. Two
grungy-looking teenage boys stepped out. "Whoa, this place is like,
acid-trip city," the dark-haired of the two said.

...

YES!  Keanu's BEST JOB EVER.  Apologies to the Matrix fans, but... nothing beats
the classic Bill and Ted stuff.  Watched that stuff till the tapes wore out.
^_^

His companion nodded. "Way weird." He then noticed Pluto. "Dude! Check the
BABE!"

"Excellent!"

The Guardian of Time's left eye twitched.

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!

"Hey, baaaabe, is this, like, England? We wanna find some place called
Stonehang or something..."

Pluto felt her headache returning. "Please explain how two imbeciles like
you managed to travel to the Gates of Time. Before I throw you back wherever
you came from."

No, in this circumstance, she has to go with them to talk with the futuristic
types that sent them.  Neo-Queen Serenity NOTHING!  She's talking with the ones
whose music becomes the basis of a totally peaceful utopian society! 
Excellent! *Guitar noises*

The two boys looked at one another for a long moment.

"Gates of Time?" the blonde asked.

"Excellent!" the other teen replied, and wiggled his fingers as if playing a
musical instrument.  *Guitar noises*

"Dude, did you EVER dial the wrong number," the other replied.

And Pluto longed for a bottle of Tylenol...

^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^  Ah, the joys of playing with Pluto's mind!  Elsa Bibat's
"Pissing Off Pluto" is a personal favorite, short-lived though it was.

===================tbc?===================

By all means!  But it can't be a simple throw-'em-back-where-they-came-from sort
of deals.  She has to play detective, trying to figure out where the problem
is, cramming into that rickety time booth and following them along to make sure
they don't damage things too badly!

...but then again, who am I to tell you how to write your stories?  You've been
around the fanfic scene for probably half a decade or more longer than I have. 
AND you've actually finished some series, which I can't honestly say yet.

I can't say, either, that this was the most ludicrous SM crossover I've ever
seen... That honor goes to Sailor Python's Flying Dead Moon Circus, but that's
for quite other reasons. o_O;;;

Nevertheless, I found this quite entertaining and definitely worth commenting
on!  Thanks for writing it!  It was jolly good fun.

--
Benjamin A Oliver
boliver@email.arizona.edu

Management Information Systems Senior Undergraduate
University of Arizona

Writings: Fan Fiction
http://rakhal.com/florestica/ben-oliver/index.html

Webcomic: Nuke 'Em 'Till They Glow!! The Early Years
http://nettg.simud.org

"It's a lot easier if you remember... there IS no mallet."


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