As a priestess of some renown, Sakura had certain responsibilities to the people in the neighborhood. Malevolent spirits? Check. Curses? She's got your back. A cocky all-you-can-eat restaurant owner going out of his way to cause stomach aches? She's on that.
Her least favourite thing to deal with was -
"Sakura! You sense that, do you not?" her uncle asked, popping up into her direct line of vision. "Why are you lazing around here when there's work to be done."
"Clear off! I'm on it!" Sakura yelled.
Okay, so that was her least favourite thing to deal with. Her uncle. Her <i>second</i> least favourite thing to deal with was timey wimey bullshit. A phrase that she'd picked up from some British jerk in a tweed suit who had been lounging around this weird blue box, but it fit <i>so well</i> with how she felt about it. Predestination paradoxes can fuck right off. The Grandfather paradox can take a flying leap up its own arse. And don't get her started on Bootstrap Paradoxes and their bullshit or you'd be there all night.
Given the choice she tended to stay far far away from the fate agency. Not just because dealing with them meant putting on a stupid bunnygirl outfit - which she'd only ever wear for Tsubame on special occasions - but because of all the headaches it involved. Alternative timelines, questions about free will, the temporal variation of the Fermi Paradox - she hated every last thing to do with time travel, including fictional stories that made use of it.
"I don't gamble," Sakura grumbled under her breath. "But if I did, I'd put all the money I had on Moroboshi being involved in this."
"Nobody would take that bet, Sakura," her uncle sagely said. The smartest thing he'd said in her lifetime. She still gave him the stink eye for the crime of reminding her that he existed, and more to the point, that <i>face</i> existed, packed up her stuff and stormed out of the house.
"Stupid headache being caused by stupid temporal anomolies," Sakura grumbled. She rubbed at the side of her head. "I swear to all the spirits in the sound of my voice, if I am right and Moroboshi is behind this, I will find a way to make his luck <i>worse</i> than it already is."
"Wouldn't that cause a buffer underflow?" a passing woman asked with a mark on her forehead.
"Hey! Wrong thread!" Sakura yelled. "And you! Fix that fourth wall!
Killjoy. Ignoring that last bit, Sakura continued down the road, thinking up various ways to get out of dealing with this nonsense and finding them all unworkable. Ignoring it would make the problem get worse, by which she meant her headache. And also the number of people that got their lives mixed up in this mess. She could always leave the country - if she had the money to do that, which she absolutely did not.
Her uncle was banned from getting involved. Nobody else she knew was really capable of dealing with this kind of thing - except the aliens, which would invariably draw Moroboshi into the mix anyway.
"Blast it, why do I have to be the responsible one in this setting?" Sakura moaned, rubbing at her head. It was almost like back in the old days where she got sick all the time. "It sucks being the straight woman in the comedy setting."
"You know, if you're having trouble being a straight woman, I can -"
Sakura's fist flew out and smacked Ataru Moroboshi hard in the face, simultaneously slapping an ofuda to his forehead. "I meant straight woman in the comedic context, you dithering idiot!"
"Daddy! I mean - big cousin! Are you alright? It serves you right for hitting on Aunti- I mean, on Miss Sakura!"
Sakura turned to the source of that voice. Turned slowly. A vein throbbing on her forehead, threatening to pop. She looked very much like Ataru, and had called him “Daddy” before switching to a a transparent deflection. “Is that your fucking daughter from the future? Why in heaven’s name will you be allowed to breed?”
Ataru actually looked offended. Whatever.
"What's your name?" Sakura asked, then put her finger to the girl's lips. "Never mind. I don't actually care. We're getting you back to your own time before you inflict more damage."
"To the space-time continuum?" the girl asked.
"My psyche," Sakura corrected.
“But Auntie Sakura! If you don’t help me preserve the timeline your daughter’s fiance will never be born!” The girl pleaded desperately.
"My daughter's fiance...?" Sakura asked, then immediately felt like kicking her own ass.
“Wait fiance? They went beyond dating!? Nice!” Ataru again gave a thumbs up to his possible future son.
"Well yes, my big brother Kokeru and Sakura's daughter have been going steady for a while now. One time I accidentally walked in on them kissing on the couch and -"
"Stop," Sakura said. "Never mind about my psyche. I don't think it's possible for you to damage it any more than that. You came back in time to ensure your own birth?" Shit. That sounded like a bootstrap paradox. Or maybe a predestination paradox?
“Well, yes. But it’s not a paradox because I didn’t have to travel back in time until something else changed history and made my timeline… err, wobbly? Like, according to Mr. Inaba something will, and has, and always will now thanks to the nature of the Doors of Fate, smashed them up and made the future murky again for the first time in 1000 years.”
Sakura let out a breath, and her soul escaped through her mouth. Too much exposition.
But no! Right at the moment of blessed relief an anchor by the name of responsibility dragged her soul back into her body, making her stay against her own will. Dammit. Not getting out of it that easily, eh?
"Someone was stupid enough to smash doors of fate?" Sakura asked. Then she turned her attention to Ataru Moroboshi. Or at least, where Ataru Moroboshi <i>had</i> been up until a moment ago. He was already hitting on another girl.
"Hey, hey! What's your name? Your phone number? Your - Ah! My arm!"
Turned out Ataru's daughter was pretty strong, as well as pretty. She had him lifted off the ground in a pretty solid double arm armlock.
"You have a date with Shinobu Miyake," the girl said, dark clouds beginning to billow around her. "You will have a nice night out. And then you will get married. And then you will settle down and be a good husband. Who. Doesn't. Perv. On. Anything. In. A. Skirt."
"Yes, Ramu! I understand, Ramu!" Ataru cried, and then suddenly Ramu let go, to skip off towards... an attractive young man.
"Hey there, not seen you around," Ramu shyly said, biting on her index finger and cutely kicking her foot off the ground. "Wanna hang out sometime? Here, let me give you my name, my address, my phone number..."
Sakura whapped the young girl on the top of her head with a rolled up newspaper.
"The apple doesn't fall far from the tree," Sakura said. Oh spirits save her, whatever could her daughter see in Moroboshi's son? If he was anything like his father then... Ugh! Her genes would get polluted by his... His... Moroboshiness! "Well, young lady. If you're going to behave like this, then I'll just have to send you back to your own timeline. I'll make sure your mother marries this idiot to prevent a paradox, and then -"
"Oh, does that mean you'll get me to marry Ran as well?" Ataru asked.
Sakura's eye twitched so hard that the moon's orbit changed by a half inch. No, that doesn't make sense, but it still happened.
"Why would you have to marry Ran as well?" Sakura said, knowing full well that she was asking a question that she would hate the answer to.
“Because my daughter with Ran from a different alternate timeline also traveled back to this period to make <b>her</b> version of the future reality.” Ataru explained, “Well, technically I think it could just be a one night stand but my mother didn’t raise a quitter.”
"Your mother raised the most perverted and unlucky boy in the galaxy!"
“But he’s not a quitter.” Ramu said. Hold on a moment, did they say her name was Ramu. As in...
"Why did you name your daughter with Shinobu after your alien fiance?" Sakura asked before she even knew what she was doing. Following asking this question she bitchslapped herself so hard that, in the potential future, Kokeru was knocked on his ass.
"I feel like I'm missing important context for that question, and knowing it will make me shock darling like he's never been shocked before."
Oh dear. It seemed as though Lum herself had arrived to make things even more complicated. Whoopadeefucking do.Sakura had thought she'd been done with this when she first noticed the temporal anomolies, but now she had uncovered whole new levels of fucking done that had, until now, gone undetected by even the most ardent and studious of researchers. There was no electron microscope powerful enough to capture a glimpse of how much of a fuck she now gave. And yet, the headache persisted.
“Ohmigod is that a flying alien!? Like Superman!? That’s so cool!” Ramu said, jumping up and down excitedly.
"Uuuuugh!" Sakura grunted, rubbing at her forehead yet again. "There's another level of Done discovered for historical purposes. Peace bitches, I'm out. Lum, sort out these temporal shenanigans, and I'll teach you how to make earth cookies."
- Lum gets caught up on this mess. Declares Ramu her mortal enemy.
- Lum has already met her own daughter from the future, who has come to fix things.
- Actually, this isn't Lum. This <i>is</i> Lum and Ataru's daughter from the future.
- Ran gets to know her daughter. Assumes it's her daughter with Rei. Shenanigans ensue.
- Something else
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