“Psst. Hey. Instead of that, how about helping me NOT DIE.”
Jerk.
“Hey, you know it’s hard to just jump into something like that…”
Hence why he commented on the more peaceful interaction. Sigh.
“And I still can’t do much, but one problem is you don’t have your own arsenal right now, right? I wouldn’t mind letting you borrow my stuff, you know. You probably would need to use things more than me in general, after all.”
“My, my. A chatterbox, aren’t you?” he/she/it/they teased lightly, though the coiled hiss of a snake was in those words. “Chaos is the game, and destroying pieces of my heart strengthens the remaining bits as a whole. Some bits go against the grain, of course, and those are pieces I can write off.”
Pandora-in-Kid shrugged. “So maybe you’re right. Ding ding ding! Not the first of this plane to get it right, and you won’t be the last. You certainly won’t be the last, because you won’t be the one to stop me, I’m afraid… am I afraid? It’s been so long since I’ve experienced your plane’s emotions. Everything you’ve said is just about right. I don’t truly care for their human minds, no, but the pieces that have accepted me? Those are my little boys. And one day they’ll leave my nest, of course. I have to accept that.”
A winding, twisting being with no true clue as to how humans worked, and with no real reason to believe all this information Kid’s feeding him/her/it/them.
“They’re in the middle of metamorphosis. A chrysalis right now. One’s already developing quicker. A prodigy, I suppose!”
The thief hummed and turned a bit to the side to start walking around the other, a slow pacing.
“Wanting to be whole, but pieces aren’t needed, only testing the minds of those with the gem in what you can make them do, but not entirely get rid of them when you don’t even want them… You have absolutely zero interest or care in anything other than what happens. Not even in the pieces themselves entirely. At all. If you did, none of what’s going on now would be happening, and you wouldn’t have as many problems. But either it was out of your hands, or you just don’t care all too much.”
Well, that shorter at least. Too bad he won’t just stop there, even if just to throw some questions.
“Why were you split in the first place? Because it seems like you don’t really care about actually getting pieces, what happens to either the people who find them or the personalities they have from possessing someone in the end, just the power. What happens if it’s collected into one again? And before that, what do you mean by chrysalis? What will happen to them?”
“Oh, I would mourn you, I would!” he exclaimed. “Maybe even try to bring you back to life. Or your body at least. That way there wouldn’t be any pesky conscience to get in the way. … Actually, that’s a thought! I hope you don’t get cremated or anything if you DO bite it!”
How nice. Knowing that your body might be used for horrible things after you’re dead. What a reassuring feeling.
“I want… this to last as… I want…” A twitch. “How about we speak about this in a more direct fashion?” A feminine voice working through Pandora Kid’s throat. “I take it you’ve been trying to address me this whole time? Arch Pandara, the spokesmonster at your service.”
He/she/it/they bowed deeply with highly fluid movements, rather smooth for a human actually.
“Chaos, of course, is the name of the game. The legend of Pandora’s box. Every sin in this world is a sin of mine and I aim to do no good to mortals. They’re only useful to me as a means to gather myself, but oh, my boys, who have found my pieces… I treasure them as well. They’ve transcended their mortal shells. Now if they could BEHAVE-!”
…Yeeaaah, not liking the idea of his body being played with either. Very nice to know that’d be all that matters. Jeez…
The thief blinked and tilted his head at the sudden change, though he soon smiled politely at the other and took a small bow himself. Act of a gentleman at it’s finest, since he wanted nothing more than to make the other leave his other self… But nothing hurts from being courteous first.
“As a matter of fact, yes, I suppose it is you I’ve been trying to get through to. Thank you for taking the time to make this more direct.”
That out of the way, Kid righted himself and wagged a finger.
“If you’ll permit my saying so, you seem to be failing to understand something. Chaos is one thing, but which task gets higher priority? Causing that, or collecting yourself? You can’t do one without causing detriment to the other.
The more chaos you cause by influencing my other selves – and as you might be aiming to do, me – the harder it is and more resistance comes up to try and find any other pieces. Such as others like myself seeing what the stones cause and more actively wanting to harm them. Even if you say they’ll fall to the influence, it’d be rather difficult to account for every precaution that might be taken to try and be rid of them.
On the other hand, the more useful way of collecting would require cooperation. You do have more than one ‘child’, and may gain more, but again, that process will be slower than the alternative. Still have them work together, but with more people to gain help from. But chaos and destruction kills opportunities in that.
I should think getting all pieces safely and swiftly would be the preferred, though your methods speak otherwise. Even the ones under your control aren’t cooperative, if I take it you wanting them to ‘behave’ is not have them fight and scream under your gem’s power. Well, of course when you force them to do what they don’t want, they’ll protest. Everyone does.”
His eyes narrowed slightly, though the same smile never budged.
“So, if you just want them to do as told all the time, and go against themselves to prove that you control them, then no, you don’t treasure them at all. Even if chaos driven, they’ll break. You only care about their bodies, not their minds. They can’t behave if they keep them, you’re a rather poor liar if they don’t. Because if they don’t, they’re just complete puppets. Dolls in your box? Guess that can be treasured as well, though…”
His head tilted the other way, before he clapped his hands together lightly, as though he just remembered something.
“But you don’t care about the ones who actually found the pieces, do you? Or perhaps just some gratitude, if anything. Or maybe you do and that’s why you keep any part of their minds to begin with… But really all you care about is the jewel pieces’ influence on them. You could care less if we get crushed, your ‘boys’ are the gems, really. …But that makes no real sense either. Then you’d have no ‘boys’ if you became whole again…” Smile.
“Do you like chaos so much that you’ll let it affect you as well, to have so much that makes absolutely no sense? Or have I missed something? Really, I’m perfectly willing to listen, so long as you don’t try to do anything to me right now.”
“Pitting everyone against me just makes things more interesting. More ways that people can think up to play with me. More people who come after me. … More people who can stop me.“ A twitch of the mouth, but that same grin. “That magic certainly took to you, didn’t it?” How good does it feel~?”
A sigh. “If YOU were in pieces, wouldn’t you want to be brought back together? How its poor heart must be broken! Nobody so powerful, so benevolent, deserves that! Pandora will not stay heartbroken, no, not with us carrying out its orders… and then, maybe… and then it’ll LET ME GO–”
A buzz of pink through his body. That alternate was certainly fighting the influence as best he could. As much as he could. But it wasn’t enough – it was never enough.
“Yes, a keibu has a piece! But… it doesn’t want ANYTHING to do with us. It’s a bad shard and has to be destroyed! The keibu acts like a man possessed when he sees me, or any Kaitou Kid, and we don’t understand why or what his intentions are, or even if he knows what’s going on. But he wants ALL OF US dead.” A soft whine escaped him. “I don’t WANT you to die. Not all hosts are perfect!”
“The magic? Is that what the touch from earlier was?” Kid looked up, then off to the side, as though considering something, before just shrugging. “It’s… different. I could live without more of it though.”
Damned if he’d admit to it feeling good in any sense. Not going to let the other hear anything like that.
…And this thief’s turn to sigh now. Well, he hadn’t expected talking with the one trying to control to be easy either way…
“Also, I didn’t say you wanted me to die, I said you wouldn’t care if I did end up dying. Even if you don’t now, it’d just be a shame to have lost me if I did, in the end. After all, you don’t seem to be the most consistent anyway. Fitting, since you tend to be chaotic, though it doesn’t help you in the slightest.
And by that, I mean you want to be whole, but you’re choosing to go against host wishes and society to do it. Which slows down any progress you want to make considerably. If you had any good intentions, or planned to make any progress, you’d have worked with us thieves and most other people to collect other pieces. Instead, you force them against morals and gain next to zero.
Creating enemies only makes things marginally more interesting. …And less likely to be able to act as much when you get to the point of just scaring people off. The more you incapacitate the ones who do, the less likely more will come back to fight as your little game wears on. Average, law-abiding, or just overall on the good side, people don’t hold out in confrontation. Those who are stubborn, or those used to actual danger, would. Which would be more of what you go up against as someone who’s on the more helpful side. Heck, make it a goal to challenge all criminals. That’d be more exciting than scaring and messing with police in horrific ways.
…But if I’m not convincing you, then fine. We’ll just continue to disagree. And that being the case, I’d really not want to fall under control of whatever piece of Pandora is in my world, so maybe death by evil Nakamori-keibu wouldn’t be as bad as it sounds. Not that I’d just roll over and not try to survive, no, I’d much rather live on the whole. But not as bad a fate, all said.”
“There’s so many ways to kill! But there’s even more ways to cripple. Once I turned a gunman to stone and broke off his dominant hand before returning him to normal. He screamed! It was amazing! Then I gave his stone hand to an aggressive cop. New hand!” Pandora Kid cackled wildly. “Being a superhero is boring unless I get to change things. Maybe a superhero who doesn’t quite help? Who cares about those without Pandora’s blessing, anyway?”
A cruel sneer crossed his face. “Well, a certain keibu also has a piece… but he’s ever-so-reluctant to let it rejoin with us. You could say that there’s a devil in him, the way he acts is so fiendish towards us white-clad fools. You certainly don’t KNOW how hard it is to work with that man! He’d probably just kill you.”
“I still fail to see the appeal of harming others… And as for why you should care? Why, I would think you want your goal accomplished sooner, rather than later. Even if Pandora gives longevity, pitting everyone against you, even for just a test, doesn’t help accomplish anything. Being nice and friendly and helpful is only as boring as you make it, and consider the benefits of not keeping isolated.
Those like me, like the detectives, like the police. We don’t get too happy with your current methods, and you make enemies. Maybe if you kept like normal, you would get more help. So why you should care is the same as why a gem has to keep the person it’s affecting under its control. To easier get what it wants. Though I have to wonder why the gem does want all its pieces together, and what it’d do if that ever did happen…”
The thief shrugged. If the sudden barrage didn’t say enough, some part of him had been affected by that magic. Or at least made him try harder now to appeal to Pandora itself this time. Or even just pushed the persona of Kid to be further in action, rather than his normal attitude he liked to keep around his other selves. Still had his own mentality towards why he doesn’t want to hurt others or kill, and still wanted nothing to do with being possessed like the other two by the jewel… But something definitely clicked another way when it came to negotiating and chatting to get what he wanted.
Which right now was for the other to stop causing wanton violence and death. Chaos and fun were fine, but not those.
“Not that I need to know. Being in pieces must be bad enough to want to be whole again. And Nakamori-keibu has a piece? Yeah, with his less than calm personality already, I can’t imagine any good would come from whatever influence the stone has on him. If he still has his temper and thinks anywhere near the same as you, then I suppose it is likely I’ll die, yes. But there have been other situations before, where the odds were stacked against me, that I’ve managed to get out of alive. So I guess we’ll just have to see. Since I’m just a ‘white-clad’ fool who’s still against falling to Pandora, I take it you wouldn’t care either way whether I died or not. The gems can affect others, so it’s not as though you need me, after all.”
“You don’t know. I don’t think you’ll know until…” A hand caressed the other’s face, the glove still damp from his tears. Pure arcane energy that had a chance of seeping through the skin into the body. Maybe a taste of that would make him understand, just for a little bit. Or it could just be ignored – which seemed so likely.
This other Kaitou seemed so much stronger… He, too, will break in the end, Pandora murmured in his ear. It was a notion that the normal boy under the gem violently rejected, screaming at the top of his lungs in an internal struggle until gems crystallized over him again. Through all this Pandora Kid was silent.
“I can save anyone I want. I choose when to. I care. Whatever makes things more fun, I’ll do that.”
Kid was half wary when the other reached up, though he hadn’t expected the jolt of strange energy that came with the touch, immediately pulling away when he felt it.
The… heck…?
He could still think, though whatever that had been made his head feel a little like static… Interference? …Definitely didn’t like that, though it did kill the more serious note he’d been on, as he grinned at the other. He’s not going to give into something that easily, no…
“Whatever is fun… Then why not take that challenge? People die too easily, I don’t see why you’d think that’s fun, even if they get scared. It might be too late to change people’s minds, but wouldn’t going against their expectations now and playing a hero be more exciting? A superhero, even, if Pandora gives you powers. Hard to use them to their full extent if it’s just for yourself, isn’t it?”
“Exactly! The rules can’t be changed back after what I’ve done. See, you’re starting to get it now. Cops never really forget things like ‘this guy killed one of our own’.” A pat on the back, a gentle one. A smile in his voice. A cry for help in his tears.
“… I choose to kill because…” And this was hard to say. Pandora didn’t want him to say it. “…it’s a test. To see how much I can be changed. How far it can push me. T-to abandon my old morals.” A sharp inhale, exhale, then grinning. “It sure worked, don’t you think? See how powerful Pandora is?”
…It’s hurting him.
It shouldn’t be a surprise, he’s been saying the actions and words have been influence and control, but… It hurt to hear.
“Stop that. It can’t be that powerful, if you’re… that aware of what it’s doing. You’re not happy about it, and things can be changed back. It’d take time… but…”
…But he probably wasn’t going to listen. Or, at least, Pandora wouldn’t let anything less than a more solid argument get through, if anything. …And he didn’t have one. He really didn’t know how the police might take things if the other did try to change back. He’d like to say they knew the old Kid, if this one could try to go back to actively stopping others from being harmed, then maybe they’d not act quite so harshly…
But he didn’t know. And if even a few do hold strong grudges, it wouldn’t help… Just…
The thief actually put an arm around his other self in return.
“Stop giving up. If you keep talking about how strong it is, if you keep admitting it beat you, then it really has won. …Could you try and save at least one person? There’s so much you can still do to try and defy it… You’re not completely taken yet. You still care, outside of that stone. …And I’m sure you can still try.”
“I can. I can choose…” But his words trailed off before a sick grin slithered onto his face, the light pink under his suit even brighter now.
He isn’t much fun, is he, Kuroba? That rush you get when you hold their lives can’t be compared to playing a silly game of hide and seek.
“I can choose, but it’s a little late to change the rules now, hm? Just because I stop killing won’t make them stop trying to use deadly force on me. What’s the point of trying to go back to something that can’t revert, anyway? And that isn’t just about the situation with the cops, either…” More justification. More logic. Hiding behind intelligence.
He wrapped his arm around the other, pulling him close. “You’ll never understand until you’re ready,” Pandora Kid purred into his double’s ear.
Kid would be lying if he said the sudden change didn’t startle him, and the thief tensed at being brought closer. His eyes narrowed when he noticed the glowing, though.
Pandora…
Didn’t like what he’d been saying, now?
“…Perhaps not. Though, I still hope never to. You brought their actions on you yourself, by changing the rules already. I don’t see why that can’t happen again. If you want to me try understanding anything without having my mind changed by force, then how about more questions? Why can’t it be reverted? What’s keeping you from being able to write the rules again? And what is the situation, then? Why do you choose to kill when it isn’t needed? Not by fun, or by will, I can’t see any reason behind it.”
He’d go into morals, but nope, not even going to try that argument with this one. That part’s more than off kilter at the moment, clearly…
“… Pandora. Said it was okay.” But the other’s right, and somewhere within the human is a thought that is taking shape, trying to agree and cry out, but it collapses under the weight of the stone jutting out of his chest. “It said I could give in… hurt them, make them stop chasing me? No, that wasn’t it. Hurt them. Make them pay… No, that wasn’t right either.”
In truth Pandora only wanted to test the extent of its manipulative capabilities. It could have picked any action it wanted, but it chose to make them kill. Which was proof just how potent its orders were – making them disobey something so deepy etched into their hearts.
“… We don’t know, Maju-Kai.” A hand wipes at his face, tears on his glove.
The thief paused a moment before sighing and moving to lean against the other’s side a bit. Something really did seem off, and he couldn’t bring himself to blame the other much for this…
“Then why not stop? Just because it’s saying it’s okay doesn’t mean you have to do it. Just means it really is influencing you, not controlling you entirely.” Though for all he knows, it could… “You can choose not to. If it makes you want to ‘play’ more, change the rules. You can hurt people, kill them even. So could I. Death is easy, and can come quickly. So, make the game to try and keep people alive. …That’s far harder. Especially with how Pandora makes you two act…”
“I don’t understand.” A phrase he commonly used with other Kaitous, usually disapproving ones. “We’re just having fun… they knew what they signed up for when they joined the police force…” A sort of forced justification.
Pandora rested in his heart both physically and emotionally. Tonight was when it was its most vulnerable. And its most powerful. It hummed quietly under his suit with its arcane power, whispering to them both, hush boys, don’t fight.
“I can have fun, too, and it doesn’t have to involve death. Even if being an officer comes with danger, that doesn’t mean it gives you the excuse to be the one that brings it. It’s one thing just causing harmless trouble, giving a show and a chase, but hurting people shouldn’t be fun. Why did that suddenly change?”
More scolding than any actual fire behind the words. Knew what they signed up for… That’s more an excuse to the ones suffering than a reason to cause death. Like a thief should be prepared to be caught if he chose that line of work. Yes, he’s prepared, that doesn’t mean he wants it to happen. People who do try and catch him don’t care about that, they do it for their own reasons, just him and people who care about him that should use that kind of thinking…
Else you just try to shift blame to something never meant to be taken that way.
Moonlight Archive 