KAGACHI;

[crashout]

Comments

[preceptive]

Not exactly. I didn't know I was incomplete until shortly before that fight.

All in all, it never affected me. It was a different story for the Night Devil, though.

[crashout]

The Night Devil. [Like. Just repeating because that title is. Hm.]

...kind of puts you in a shitty situation either way.

[preceptive]

My duty was to protect the people and to ensure that souls pass on. Two birds in one stone.

[crashout]

Even at the expense of yourself. [...first of all, yikes, but second of all there's...kind of a quiet sort of respect there.]

I don't remember if I've asked, but did you ever really get a choice?

[preceptive]

A choice for what?

[crashout]

Taking on that responsibility. I know you said it was, like, inherited from the guy who raised you but was it still your choice to make or did someone just decide you were bound to do it?

[preceptive]

... Well, in a way, you could say it might've been my fate from the beginning.

But to me, it was a decision I chose to make.

[crashout]

[Fate is something that's a pain in the ass, but his face seems to relax upon hearing Kagachi made a choice.]

Not that it doesn't suck still, but that's better than being forced into it the whole way.

[preceptive]

Mm. I don't have any regrets about what I did.

[crashout]

Then you're better than others I can think of. [But he's looking at the knife again.] So what exactly is happening for you as soon as we get out of this place and go back?

[preceptive]

[...

well, that's complicated.]

The thing is that I changed the future—but I did it from far into the past. As in, I hadn't been born yet. My soul was transported into the body of my past life, since he'd been about to die, as it was.

[crashout]

So does that mean then, technically, you as you are now doesn't fully exist and won't because you're in that other body?

[preceptive]

Probably. Because of me, he didn't die when he originally did, so I wouldn't be surprised if that means "Kagachi" is never born.

[which he sounds remarkably neutral over.]

[crashout]

Except without Kagachi being born, keeping the other guy alive wouldn't have happened at all because there would then be no one to change that future. [...] Pretty sure they call that a bootstrap paradox. You can't really determine what the starting point of a chain of cause and effect was.

Let me guess. There's no other way to do it?

[preceptive]

What is there to do? I achieved what I needed to and fulfilled my purpose. How it works no longer matters to me.

[crashout]

I get that. I guess it's just...I dunno, never mind. It's your purpose so...yeah. What is there to do?

[It just sounds kind of unfair.]

[preceptive]

[...]

By all means, I died the day my timeline was destroyed. Anything after that point is already a miracle.

So, there's nothing to resent.

[crashout]

I guess I didn't expect to find that many people who dealt with different histories, too. So maybe that's why I'm trying to understand everything I can, and even if you're okay with it it's kinda depressing. You get that, don't you?

[preceptive]

There's a lot of depressing things in the world. I'd prefer the energy spent over my situation be directed elsewhere.

[crashout]

[He rolls his eyes. Alright, alright.]

I can multitask. But I get it. [A half-grin and he turns the knife in his hand.] Ready to continue?

[preceptive]

If you are.

[crashout]

Yeah, I think so. [And so he prepares to try and stab Kagachi again ig. Thanks my dude.]