Within Pandora's Box;
Wind-Up God

"This is all your damn fault, this catastrophe!"

August 16th, 2013; 11:42 PM

Let me begin by introducing myself. Hello, my 'name' is (currently) Ikasama. This is my first story on this account. Many of you may recognize my main account if I told you its name- which is why I won't. ^^ oh well, you'll probably be able to guess it eventually anyway.

Alright, how about we start by saying that I'm a HUGE kemu fan. I freaking love that genius of a guy.

I've wanted to write a fanfiction (or multiple fanfictions) based on his work for a long time now, specifically for the song Life-Reset Button, my personal favorite song of his- hell, my favorite song out of everything! My problem, though, was that I wanted to make everything as pin-pointedly accurate as possible, and as you probably all know, that is almost impossible. His lyrics are too vague and can be perceived in many different ways. Does the Life-Reset Button represent suicide? Drug abuse? Or is it really just a button that restarts life, without any metaphoric value? And Kaiba-sensei, who is he/she? Is Kaiba a family member, a teacher, or could he/she be part of Gumi herself? After all, Kaiba is apparently a nickname for some part of your brain... It's just impossible to be completely correct when there are so many variables within the equation!

And so, in the end, I've decided to start from the very 'beginning' of the story- or at least, that's how I like to see it.

In the Evil Chronicles, the sins were created when Eve kidnapped those children. As her body burned in that fire, the sins were distributed across time and space, and so the story began.
Here, within Pandora's Box, the story will be created by a person who had a wish. As his wish begins to take form, it shall divide itself into pieces similar to the sins, yet different. The ability to predict tomorrow, the condition of unfortunate transparency, the strong will to disappear, an attempt to try and reset; they all stem from the wish of a single boy.

[The boy wished to be a god.]

I
The First Wish

What if someday you were to die young? What if, in just a single instance, your life was completely over, without a single warning or an once of care? What would it be like, I wonder, to die without having accomplished anything at all?

The boy didn't want to die. The boy wanted to dream, to wish, to fulfill. It was because of this wish of his that death never took him; he thought to himself, 'I want to live', and so death was never allowed near him. No one could touch him. He was a boy of the gods, a boy from the nonexistent come within the living.

And yet he was just another human being. His blood was the same as theirs, his skin the same color, his background, nothing unusual. He'd been born into this world as he would someday die out of it. He was completely normal, yet beyond special at the same time.

The boy, as a child, wished for a friend to replace his loneliness. And so, another him met a young girl, while the original remained solitary. As he grew, he felt overwhelmed and wished to be invisible, to hide from the world. As a result, another him grew transparent, while the original began to cower. When it became too much, he wished for a way to be reborn. And so, another him found the ability to reset. Nearing the end of his high-school life, he wished to disappear. Another him was wiped from existence. The original continued to exist.

Without even knowing, he controlled his other existences with as simple a thing as a wish, interfering and disrupting their lives. He was a cursed child, though nobody knew it. Nobody in the world, in the land of the living, in the land of the dead, paid this child any special attention, for he was just another human being. Nobody paid attention to his multiple existences, despite it being an abnormality. He was just... there.

The boy suffered on his own without knowing. Someday, he would die without knowing. That is, unless he wished to learn. Fate would bend rules for him; it hadn't a choice.

The boy went to school and came back, as he always did. He studied on his desk in his room, went down for dinner, and ate yakisoba. His grandmother asked him to bring a friend over sometime. He simply nodded, knowing all too well he'd never be able to; he hadn't any friends. He bid his mother and father goodnight and kissed his grandmother's cheek, changed into his pajamas, and went to bed. Such a typical day for such a typical child. And yet, that was the day itself that changed my life- or rather, that gave me life.

You see, the boy hadn't fallen asleep. He'd lain in his bed, staring out his open window, and watched the bright stars in the sky.

"Some people like to wish on stars," he'd mumbled, as if such a thing were beyond stupid. "Stars don't grant wishes. Nothing can."

And then he thought to himself, the idea that wrote the prologue to history: 'I wonder if there's something out there that really can grant wishes?'

With that thought reality began to shift, and for the briefest moment, the impossible became its opposite.

'... Mm, that's stupid. There isn't.'

And things returned to the way they were. Or... almost.

The power of a wish is extremely powerful, especially that of this special boy's. Even a second spent pondering can transform a life or two and create the supernatural. When the boy wondered if there was such an amazing tool that could grant even wishes, a small part of him created such an object.

This object itself changed the past, the present, the future, and rewrote history. It was taught to the boy as a lesson the next morning in his Mythology class, under the name of 'Pandora's Box'.

It is from this 'box' of wonders and illusions that I am born. I am not exaggerating in the slightest when I say I owe my existence to this boy of wonder. And yet, I am not completely grateful for it either, despite what one may assume. You see, in creating me, us, the boy was able to rid himself from part of his curse, a curse he'd never known he had. This pattern of misfortune divided itself into two and found its home in my non-mortal body. And so, despite us being different 'people' entirely, we are one and the same, connected, for I would be literally nothing without and him and a part of his soul is housed within me.

Because of the creation of Pandora, we were forced to forever live in a circle. Actually, now that I think about it, that is a lie. Pandora gave us one lifetime of pain and suffering. Hewas the one who extended his own sentence. The boy himself created his own vicious cycle.

But it isn't about him, is it?

Despite having declared a wish-granting 'machine' could never exist, he grew curious. He researched anything that sounded similar to his ideals, looked up anything that matched even a few characteristics of what he had in mind. With every minute, every second, his beliefs grew stronger. Those beliefs were what filled Pandora's Box with its contents, but it was his wish itself to find what he seeked that gave the mysterious 'box' its power.

One day, he grew frustrated with his searches.

He'd returned home only two days ago from a week-long trip to Hong Kong, visiting a shrine that was said to 'bring good luck' to its visitors. It was just another dead end, a long time myth preached by elders years ago. Yet again, he was back where he'd begun.

'Maybe it's not an object or place,' he'd thought to himself curiously. 'Maybe, what I'm really looking for... is a person.'

Within Pandora's Box, his creation took the form of a human girl: Me. His wish was nearly fulfilled.

"I hope I'll find it soon... Whether it be an object, a place, or a person, I really wish I could find this something that grants wishes very soon!" He was only eighteen years old, yet so brilliant already. A shame he wasn't aiming very high.

Pandora heard his wish and repaid it with inspiration. For the following two months, he thought of nothing but his impending creation. He thought of the person he'd meet, his wish-granting machine, and wondered what she'd look like.

Through his visions, my eyes opened and my irises became a teal-blue. My hair grew green and choppy, my skin became fairly pale. My body took on the appearance of a healthy female human's and I developed the looks of a teenage girl.

He even pictured my personality. 'She'll be mysterious... She won't be very open either. She'll probably be as lonely as I've been my whole life. I'll bet she'll be a pushover, though, like if someone bothered her enough, she'd give in to whatever... no matter how bad the request. I don't think she'll be a criminal, though. No, of course not! But... she'll probably act like one. She'll just be lost in this big world, not really knowing who she is and why she has her powers... but she'll know she has them. I can see her now, a bit of a tsundere, straight-faced, never wanting to show her emotions.
'I'll know it's her the moment I see her, though. She'll just have this aura about her... I'll know she's the one I've been looking for. Maybe she'll know I've been looking for her, too.'

Finally, one day, he paused in his sketching. He glanced upwards with a sigh and closed his eyes. "I wish I could find this person... I wish I could wake up tomorrow morning and know for sure I'd meet her that day. Please... I want this more than anything in the world."

He'd become obsessed with his fantasies and overly demanding. To create something so intricate took time; I could not be properly finished by that deadline. Even for Pandora, it was impossible, though more time was put into me. My development progressed at a faster pace.

A week and a half after his wish was spoken, his creation was finished.

On his way home from school, he found a girl in the rain.

Oddly enough, she was nude, yet she didn't shiver in the cold winds. She lay completely still, like an abandoned life-sized doll.

His first thought was that this girl had been a victim of some killer-rapist. He was reaching for his cell-phone, about to dial the police's emergency number, when he felt it- that bond he'd wished for between creator and created.

Hesitantly, the boy approached. He recognized that aura surrounding her as the one he'd pictured in his fantasies. He saw her jade green hair and held his breath. It... It couldn't be! Very slowly, he reached out his trembling hand and lifted the girl's right arm. It was awkward, especially considering her nudeness, but he saw the evidence he'd been looking for.

On her side, below her armpit was a small patch of darker skin in the shape of a star. A birthmark, just like the one he'c playfully imagined.

"You're... her," he mumbled in awe. "Wow, I... I never expected...!"

Yes. This creature he'd found lying around was me, the nameless 'machine' he'd been searching for for years.

He struggled to lift me to my feet, a girl of one hundred and eleven pounds (exactly as he'd designed me to be), and awkwardly hobbled away with me by his side, walking in direction of his apartment.

'This probably looks weird, me, walking around with a naked - not to mention unconscious - girl in my arms,' he thought. 'I hope nobody finds me on my way home.' And so not a single creature appeared on our path.

Pandora smiled as it watched us. We would surely provide an amusing spectacle. "There you have it, boy. You wished for powers of a god, and now, here she is; your very own mechanical fortune cookie, your very own Wind-Up God... Enjoy."

August 21st, 2013; 10:51 PM

I... really like how this came out.

Actually, I was so into this that I finished the entire chapter in one night. Of course, it helps when you consider its length; normally my chapters (on my main account, that is) are about 8k words in length- my current record being a 17k oneshot. This seems about 2000 words only to me. Maybe even less. While I'm not used to writing such short chapters (the last time I've written a chapter this short was probably about two years ago), it feels pretty good. I mean... I'm done. That's pretty cool. I even had the patience to read it over and change/correct things. That's... really cool.

The reason I've waited so long before writing this ending A/N is because I wasn't sure whether or not I'd really be posting it. Now, all I can think is, hell, why not? If I don't finish it, I don't finish it. If I don't get many reviews, oh well. It was only 2k anyway.

I really hope you do like it, though. I mean... I could think of so many ways to use this idea. I'm actually kind of excited about it too. ^^

Please review...