“I am always sore.” Streeeeetch. “These days I make a pillow out of my shirt and lie on that. It’s nice to be outside, though the sun just might bleach my hair at this rate. Can you imagine me with light hair?” A laugh.
“I’ll just go back to the park.”
The image of a fair haired magician did manage to make Kid chuckle lightly, then he tilted his head.
“We need to set up a day for you to relax at some point…Maybe get you another massage, even. Though… an idea for a bed right now. It shouldn’t be too hard to get a sheet or such, so I think a bed along the lines of a hammock would work better than just a shirt pillow… Get you off hard ground, in any case.”
“…… Mmm, so you’re now saying, in some really weird way, that if one of us dies then things just sorta keep going and nobody realizes that a Kaito sorta… vanished? Dropped dead? Bit the dust, all that? And that ‘cause I found my Pandora, I made all of us harder to kill?
“I don’t follow that last bit. I’m the only one who has immortality. Aaaaand even then it isn’t absolute. I have at least one death condition that I’m aware of. It’s not like I’m sharing my lifeforce or whatever with all the other Kaitos.
“Also, I don’t know why I did what I did. It just sort of happened. I didn’t mean it.”
“… Not really. People would notice if, say one of us died in front of them. And if no other Kaito is sharing the universe at the time, then it’d still be noticed in world as a whole. Just the crossing over makes it more likely for there to be more than one in the same dimension.
And you attaching Pandora to yourself didn’t change anything about the rest of us. When I say ‘collective Kaitos’, I mean if we think in terms of all Kaitos as a whole. Umm… a being made up of smaller versions of itself, if you will. Killing one of its parts would make it smaller, until you completely get rid of it.
The individual versions are us without dimension crossing. The larger being is all of us together with the crossing, in terms of existence. With us together, we’re harder to be destroyed.
You using Pandora strengthened a part of the being. Not all of it, just one unit. If we all did that, the being would be impossible to kill. Never said it’d be impossible to kill the ones who use Pandora, just makes it a lot harder. It’d still be best if none of us died normally, though, immortality stone or not…
The last part… If Pandora was gone from all the worlds, there wouldn’t be any dimension crossing. Period. And no chance for ‘immortality’. You choose not to destroy it, so people still can even if all the others might be destroyed. If we all do what we set out to, you’re the one that’d still be letting people talk to alternate selves, because Pandora would still exist. It’s not entirely a good or bad thing…”
“Maybe breathe once in awhile so you don’t pass out in front of me. Handler wants to ask if you can break up those walls so she can follow better! Her brain has trouble reading biiiig paragraphs.”
(Hush, you.)
“So… you’re saying there’s more than one Pandora, and it’s ripping up the universes?”
“Ah… sorry.” Tends to get out of hand with rambling when a train of though catches hold.
“That’s basically it, yeah. Though, not ripping in any ‘end of the world’ type of way, just enough for some interactions to keep the chain of potential immortals going.
Think of it like how you have infinite lives in some video games, but where you have to reset to a certain point because of it. Except, instead of one person having all those lives, it’s spread infinitely though the universes. Doesn’t do much for them separately, but if they can interact with each other, the collective ‘Kaitos’ could, say, have two or three ‘lives’ in one universe.
It wouldn’t care about the individuals though, so it’d be the death of one, but if there’s more than one Kaito in the universe that happened in, then to the world, he never died. One is dead, but there’s still an existence.
Finding and using Pandora increases the resistance to death for each individual Kaito, making it even harder to get rid of all of them, and thus, granting a sort of ‘immortality’ to us.
…But that might also mean that if we all destroyed the Pandoras, then the holes would close and we wouldn’t be able to see our other selves again. …So while what you did might not have been the best of plans, situations like that might at least let us continue talking like this. It just also makes it harder to entirely get rid of the problem of people looking for it.”
Pandora-Kid blinks. “But I already found it. Is there just one?”
Aahh… The magician had been half-hoping this version of himself wouldn’t speak up… Does make it harder to defend his theory. But this is fine, he’ll keep building as needed.
“…No, or else the story around it wouldn’t be known in all of the universes. If were only kept in one, it’d be unfair and would give no benefit to disrupting the universe. Why have all the ones looking for it able to cross to meet other selves when what we’re looking for wouldn’t exist in other worlds? Then everyone would converge on one and royally screw up any reality that does exist as is.
And aside from that, it’s not as though you’re entirely immortal in all senses of the word. More likely the jewel containing Pandora is different for each of the universes, and possibly the effects as well, but all of them make it harder to be killed. So the more of us that find the gem in out universes, and if we chose to use it like you did, wouldn’t it be that much harder to get rid of us entirely? Basically, it adds another level of longevity to all of us as a person collectively if we find it ourselves. On our own in universes, even with parallel selves, it could be easy to kill us, but with both the interacting between universes and the possible added benefit of magical help in surviving from the gem itself, whoever searches and successfully manages to use Pandora for each of their selves really would be nigh unkillable.”
(One gust of wind and you’re exposed. Be careful, Kid.)
“…Considering how many times I’ve fallen from the glider, and hung upside down… And that door open on the plane, though granted, I was holding onto the hat at that moment… I think it’s take more than just a gust of wind. More than that, it’s take getting the hat off and pinching my face to be certain. Assuming you can even keep me in one place for that to work.
Which I guess means the monocle would be more symbolic in that sort of thing. Because with the hat it actually helps, but without, it really is just a piece of glass over my eye and I might get a lucky glare coming off of it to hide that part… But if that were to happen, they would have as good as caught me by then anyway, so I think the wind taking it is the least of my concerns.”
i would hurt you or use you. | you unsettle me. | i dislike you or you annoy me. | i would like to get to know you better. | i pity you. | you confuse me. | i feel indifferent towards you. | i would be friends with you. | i would fight by your side. | i would hug you or hold your hand. | i would kiss you. | i would sleep with you. | i would lie for you. | i would protect you. | i would fall in love with you. | i would kill for you | i respect you. | you are my family. | i don’t know you.
A bit of pouting before he smiled again and put an arm around his other self in return. “Of course I do. It’d be weirder if I didn’t.” (Never said it’d even be a real ribbon… And the talk of pets just made me look at Kai’s ears and laugh. )
He reached up and scratched behind the ears of the other. “I’ll say. How’s that feel? I finally got that anti-cat hex removed so I’m not afraid anymore.”
Kaito blinked, slightly surprised by the action. Really, he’d almost forgotten the change in phobia that had made it so he couldn’t be near his double without hiding them, but it did feel strange to have him actually touch them now, after that. Just because the other had been avoiding them before.
It didn’t take long for him to smile gently and close his eyes, though.
“That’s good… Probably best that hex didn’t last too long, with how things had been going for you. And this feels nice.” It always did, when he got like this. Relieving and comforting…
(*hugs* I feel like I should put the hours I’m normally awake/at my computer, because I run on an almost set clockwork. Still kind of sucks to be going to bed when most people start getting active, though. I miss out on a lot that way, even if I can read later. And then work cuts into most of the time, even if I take the opportunities when it isn’t as busy to be on Spider’s account anyway. (Too much trouble to log out and in back and forth between the two accounts from the phone.))
Moonlight Archive 