by windtear raye_
DISCLAIMER: 'Magic Kaito' belongs to Gosho Aoyama and Shogakukan, not me.
Scenario III: Tears of the Jewel
I don't know when I fell in love with humans.
My first birth was from fire - ejaculate from the heart of a shattered star. Had that wandering sun not crashed into my own parent, my fate would have taken a far different path. I had been intended to be the seed of a planet, spun off in the expected manner and birthing in my own turn... I don't know what, now. What species would have arisen on my surface, what civilizations would have trod upon me, what races would have worshipped me, what would they have called me? They would have been tall, I think. Blue-skinned - I like blue. And I think I would have given them a way to talk to me. I've discovered I like people talking to me.
(Everyone has 'what if's. Mine are slightly different to most.)
While I flew through space, lonely and alone, I slowly grew an awareness of myself. Not time, nor distance, nor any finer perception - that all came later - but a knowledge, that *this* was Me and *that* was Not Me.
(That which was Me would turn out to be a volcanic diamond. Apparently, astronomers have spotted several such jewels, of apparently similar origin, speeding through space both on their own and in the trails of comets. I wonder how many others are ensouled, as I was?)
My flight was arrested when I was drawn into Sol's gravitational well and I collided with one of Sol's offspring, Terra. She's a very patient and forbearing soul. Some of the things her children have done to her... well, I can *say* I would have found a way to fight back if it had been me, but the whole point is, it isn't me. It won't be me.
(I don't know if the ability to cry is a good or bad thing.)
When I crashed onto Terra, a human hand - at that stage barely more than a paw - picked me up. The first human sound I heard was a particular grunt I would later learn was one of the first versions of "Ooh, pretty".
(Nobody has ever called me, in any of my forms, 'beautiful'. I don't know why that hurts. But it does.)
I was taken up, polished, and a leather thong bound about one end, so I could be hung around a neck. I was then presented, with great ceremony, to a young female. The female accepted me and I was pridefully worn for a few days, before another female came up behind my wearer and, with equally great care, bashed her head in with a rock. I was left with the body, so I assume it was over a mate or offspring or some such.
(For the longest time I didn't understand about human mates and I think I still don't. My mother in this life died and my father didn't take another mate; when I finally understood I had the opportunity for one myself, he had left off offering his attentions; and the only other potential mate I've found myself considering is both of interest to other females and probably has no interest in me, anyway. It should not be a matter of worry for me, because I've never before considered a mate or had a prospect of one. But it is.)
This began the pattern that my life became. I would be presented as an adornment, I would be worn for a short time, and then a death would follow after.
(If I have a curse, it is this: the sort of people who take pride in owning a jewel as famous as the Pandora have a lot of enemies; sometime the odds have to catch up with them. And sadly, enough of the times have been after they came to possess me.)
During this time I gradually learned human language, the finer feelings, and compassion. And to be fond of these silly, beautiful creatures. Enough to hate it, each and every time, as another bearer fell. Enough to loathe the blood and death that surrounded me. Enough to, one day, try to reach for my thwarted original destiny, to access the seed of life that still lay deep within me and share that precious gift with someone slowly losing theirs.
(Stupidity and foolishness are sadly not reserved to any one species.)
A part of me insists that saving my bearer that day was not wrong, but still - I was never owned by nice people, and this one was no different. A gangster, a thief, a monster, say whichever crime you like and I'm sure he was guilty of it. Maybe his life would have been no loss.
(Maybe I'm closer to Terra than either of us would like to think.)
It was seen and it became known. My bearer didn't live long - after his escape, he threw himself into vice even more fervently, now carrying me at all times, and when one of his victims rose up against him, I forbore to weep. He died demanding my bounty. And the legend became that only once in a hundred years, under the full moon, would I weep the tears of life.
(Is it not written, 'Ask and ye shall receive, demand and ye shall lose all'?)
And that's how it was for nearly two hundred years, until the Kaitou Kid found me. I speak not of Kuroba Kaito, but Kuroba Toichi, of course. He didn't know what he held; I had been one of a number of stolen jewels sitting in his target's lockbox, snatched up to disguise his true objective, and this was years before the Black Organisation approached him. Toichi was a true gentleman thief, with the emphasis on 'thief'; *he* never returned what he stole, selling it on instead. So when a particularly jagged and roughly-shaped volcanic diamond fell off the table and onto one of his diamond-cutters, breaking into several pieces, he saw it merely as a piece of good fortune and gathered up the pieces to reshape and reset, so that they would sell on more easily. While I, freed from my crystalline form, sought... less obvious housing.
(Sometimes I wish I hadn't taken advantage of that opportunity. If I had been there when he took those injuries, I might have helped and saved his life. But I know the truth is that if I had been in his possession still, he would have handed me over to the Black Organisation as soon as he realised I was the Pandora they were asking for, and very likely would have been killed anyway. Toichi always honoured his contracts and he didn't realise what the Black Organisation really was for *months*.)
Being born a human was both interesting and frustrating. Interesting in that the learning and growing process was completely different. Frustrating in that it took so *long*!
(I think that's where so many of my temper issues come from. I was never very patient at the best of times, and the full bloom of puberty combined with failing Modern History was a most uncomfortable and memorable period. Kaito, himself in the raging throes of hormones, was less than no help.)
I shut off most of my memories and, well, *enjoyed* childhood. A jewel has no latency period; the maturation process held a kind of wry and gentle pleasure. There was, of course, pain; the loss of my mother and Uncle Toichi, as well as the pain of injuries. But there was much joy too and much to learn. I wallowed in my childhood and I knew I was deemed 'childish' by many of my peers. I now know it was the more-than-human consciousness of myself, that I didn't let my human self retain, that drove me to that. Childhood is precious.
(That is something the human writers do get right, though, as typical for humans, for entirely the wrong reasons.)
And that, I think, is why, when the time came, the end of my childhood was so devastating to me.
It was a cool autumnal evening, with a sharp enough chill that it was pleasant to wear my windcheater. It was a full moon and the Kaitou Kid was dancing across the sky, even though the only music was the voice of the crowd.
(Given the way so many of her species mob up together, sometimes I think Terra must be terribly lonely. And then I remember how pack behaviour works, and I think that Terra must be terribly amused by schadenfreude.)
I had begun to turn away and made my way out of the main crowd and along the street towards the train station and home when the shots rang out. The Kaitou Kid paused mid-pirouette and then dropped like the proverbial brick. Without thought, I immediately raced for the spot I was almost certain he'd be. Oddly enough, it was in the same direction that I'd been moving, and away from the crowd.
(Prescience is not one of my powers, but I do get lucky every so often, just like everyone else. It helps to be able to read air currents and have a rudimentary knowledge of how physics works. Ironically, this is knowledge I wouldn't have if not for my human schooling.)
I found him, desperately trying to stagger to a sheltered corner. His phone was open in his hand and the light of an open call blinked on it obviously he'd tried to call his allies for help, but I had no idea how successful the call had been. That the enterprise (saving his life) had not been successful was made painfully obvious by the fact that the damasked silk of his tuxedo was now a bright arterial crimson and he was hunched over a pool of it. He collapsed as I touched his shoulder lightly, and we both tumbled to the ground he without any control, I as gracefully as I could, maneouvring myself so he fell on top of me. As his head hit the cloth that covered my upper thighs, the top hat and monocle went flying, and I could see his face in the light of the streetlamp.
It was Kaito.
And my world shattered.
The human child I'd been screamed and gibbered inside my head as my older self opened her eyes within my mind and took in everything in a split second, and I knew the truth that I was Pandora, the Jewel of Immortality that a thousand men had died for, that I was Nakamori Aoko, seventeen year old human girl with a best friend dying in her lap, that the jewel the Kaitou Kid was clutching held an uncanny resemblance to my original form, that the Pandora's body count was about to rise again...
No.
/Pandora/ shoved /Aoko/ out of the way and took control.
I blinked hard. It's a fallacy that blinking stops crying - it just pushes the tears out of the way faster. As I blinked, I focused on the potency I hid within myself, bringing it up into my tear ducts and impregnating that one tear. My eyes were probably glowing red in the diffused glow of the streetlight as the nerves and the blood vessels feeding them engorged as they bore the power up and I imbued it into the drop. I watched it glimmer on my eyelash for that instant before it rolled down my cheek, freefalling through the air before hitting Kaito's lip and sliding into his mouth. The potency of life itself, that would have caused the birth of a hundred million species, entered his system.
(Yes, most of them would probably have been beetles of some description.)
The change - the sudden healing and the way his sapphire blue eyes slammed open - was sudden enough to make me jump. He stared at me and I could see him processing it all - my red eyes, my tearstained cheek, the salt on his lip, his sudden healing. He leapt to his feet - a fluid, graceful movement that made my hormones jump up and remind me that my body is that of a healthy young female, at just the right age to mate successfully, and standing in front of me was a strong and *very* attractive young male.
(Sometimes I wonder at myself in this life, so focussed on mates and breeding and offspring. And sometimes I tell myself not to ask questions and just watch the boys walk by.)
"Pandora."
"Yes?" I replied politely. There was no point in concealing anything now.
His posture was menacing, the cold in his eyes matched by his voice. "What have you done with Aoko?"
"I'm right here."
His posture didn't change, nor his manner warm, and his eyes actually grew narrower. "You are not Aoko."
I sighed. "I am the seventeen year old female known to you and others as Nakamori Aoko. I have been Aoko for all of my life in this body, I will be Aoko until this my body dies, and I will probably continue to consider myself to be Aoko for quite some time thereafter. I just happen to also be the entity that was the jewel that men called the Pandora."
He didn't move, and I felt the urge to explain further. "I always hated the way men would fight over me. Did they *really* think I could give immortality? Did they really think it was worth it?"
"You healed me," he shrugged, without dropping the menacing posture.
"Yes. For some unknown reason I like you and I didn't want you to die," I returned, snarkily. "Don't count on it ever happening again."
"If you are the Pandora and also Aoko, why did you become Aoko?" he demanded.
"Chance," I told him flatly. "When the original gemstone I was in was shattered, there were two human females nearby. One was three months pregnant and the child had already quickened; your mother and you, I think. The other was not but about to be; I ensured conception took place and ensouled the child as soon as it did."
He stepped back and away from me, and was gone. I breathed out, once, and then the crowd and the Task Force were upon me. I claimed that I had no idea where the Kaitou Kid was, and explained the bloodstains on my hands and skirt away by showing them the pool of blood I'd 'discovered' in the street. That led to me being given a quick but thorough physical examination by a policewoman attached to the Task Force, and after I got the all-clear, I went home.
(One of the best things about being human: chocolate chip cookies and warm milk when you're stressed. Believe me on this one. If there were any equivalent for diamonds, I might still be crystalline today.)
The next morning, I didn't go to school. Instead I pled a cold (my father was too preoccupied with worrying about the Kid to realise I didn't actually *look* sick sometimes I feel he cares more about the thief than me), and lay in bed, sorting through the newly awakened memories and outlook of the older part of my personality. That was what allowed me to recognise and acknowledge his 'betrayal' for the painfully young action that it was, and to forgive him for it. Kaito had never intended to hurt me, and probably hadn't realised what he'd gotten into before he was in over his head.
(Another of the frailties of the flesh: thought processes are now somewhat less speedy and somewhat more painful. I never thought, before I incarnated as a human, that thinking could give me a headache.)
The next day, I went to school, but I walked alone Kaito didn't meet me at the corner, and I was almost late, waiting for him. When I did arrive (and he showed up five minutes later) he didn't speak a word to me. He didn't flip my skirt or play a trick or fiddle with my stuff. Before lunch, it was all over school that Nakamori and Kuroba were on the outs.
(Yet another part of being human gossip. It's interesting from an anthropological and biological perspective, I'll give it that. It's truly amazing how simple words can hurt so much.)
Hakuba-kun showed up at my desk at lunch, and asked to sit with me. I said yes, because Kaito clearly wasn't going to. He gave me the usual pleasantries about the day and my health, which I replied to in the proper fashion, and then he asked me, Are you wearing contact lenses?
No, I replied. Why do you ask?
Your eyes they're purple. Weren't they blue before?
A trick of the light, I responded flippantly, after a breath to think. Sometimes they look blue and sometimes purple. It is a little weird, I guess.
I suppose, Hakuba-kun echoed, and we continued to chat quietly the rest of lunchtime.
Before the day was over I had fifteen people stare me in the eyes to determine if they had always been purple. I pretended that it didn't get to me, but it was still annoying. And Kaito wasn't one of them.
That afternoon, Kaito wordlessly joined me on the walk home, and I could practically hear the whispers spreading out Nakamori and Kuroba were together again. We walked our usual route in silence till Kaito grabbed my hand and led me off to the local canal, down the hill to its banks. There, in peace and quiet, where we could see everyone so nobody could sneak up on us, he told me the story of a gentleman thief who was also a magician, of an organisation dedicated to finding immortality, of the contracting of the former by the latter till the thief wanted to quit and the organisation killed him rather than let him go. Of the way he had found out about it all, and his quest to find and destroy the jewel at the centre of it all, the Pandora.
(I always knew I was causing destruction and pain with my existence, but it wasn't until I learned about Kuroba Toichi that I realised that some of those ripples impacted on people who actually weren't deserving of the pain.)
So now what do we do? I asked finally.
What? Kaito asked. I told you that so you'd know why I'm so freaked out!
Yes, and I thank you, I replied. But now things have changed. You've found me, and I'm kind of glad about that because now I'm awake, really awake, and that's really what's best even though it hurts-
Wait, it hurts?
Of course it hurts, but I'll cope. It's the revenge you want to take against me that's really worrying me.
His face closed up. What makes you think that?
It's all over that story, I said flatly. Uncle Toichi was killed because of the Pandora, you want to destroy the Pandora, and I know you said it's so the Black Organisation can't use the Pandora, but you've been my best friend for ten years. I know you. You want someone to pay, and I understand that, because I'm human and I loved him too and I want someone to pay too. You can't reach the Black Organisation but you can reach the Pandora, so that's who you were going after. And here I am. I'm a human and you're bigger and stronger than me. You could kill me very easily.
He did his I-am-a-living-statue imitation again.
I'm sorry, I said sincerely. But I'm not going to commit suicide and I'm not going to just let you kill me. I'm not going to go tamely to the Black Organisation either, I became a human so people couldn't use me anymore! There has to be something we can think of to do, to get Uncle Toichi's killers.
For the first time that day, Kaito looked me in the eyes. He reached out his hand and cupped my face gently. You mean it, he said, wonderingly.
I leaned the side on my face into his large, strong, gentle hand and looked down the length of my nose at his face. Of course I mean it, I told him, my tone withering but lips smiling. Any ideas yet?
He shook his head and pulled his hand away. No. He turned and began leading me back home. On my doorstep, he turned to face me, said mysteriously, You know, lavender suits you, and walked away.
Three days later, there was another Kaitou Kid heist.
When Kaito made his appearance, it was with a number of changes in his costume. He'd refused to let me see before he left (I had turned up on his doorstep after school, telling Kuroba-obaasan I wanted help with homework, and then tried to get him to let me help, but he'd stuck to the Biology quiz and gently tossed me out at five o'clock) so I was as surprised as everyone else to see that under his white tuxedo tails he was wearing a lavender dinner shirt and a white tie. Under that I spotted a slight bulkiness I was familiar with from my father he was wearing a Kevlar vest, and I let out a breath I'd been holding. Beside me, a girl in the crowd openly mourned, Oh no, Kaitou Kid is gay! and I couldn't help grinning. Well, if he was, and I doubted it, it wouldn't matter much.
The heist went smoothly, and he showed off a bit before blithely handing Father the jewel (after all, he knew exactly where the Pandora was) before springing up onto the top of the lamp-post. Yet again, the shots rang out, but this time, although he staggered, Kaito didn't fall. Instead, he flipped open his cape into a small hang-glider and caught an updraft, heading straight for where the shots had come from. The Task Force followed him (of course) and charged up the building he landed on, to find a sniper parked on the roof, wrapped in a net, with the remains of a cyanide-tooth ripped out of his jaw and crushed beside him.
The sniper sang like a canary to the Task Force, fortunately; the next morning he was found dead in his cell at the watch-house.
The next day, I quizzed Kaito on his new heist outfit. Lavender shirt and white tie? I asked.
Samurai wear their allegiances, so too do I, he replied, and refused to be drawn further.
Of course I couldn't help thinking for just a moment that maybe his changing of his shirt from blue to purple, the way my eyes had changed, was his way of saying something about the way he felt about me without saying anything; but just as quickly I dismissed it.
Nobody ever wanted me solely for myself.
Meanwhile, the sniper's story was making headlines around the nation and creating a frenzy of support for the Kaitou Kid. An organisation of criminals targeting famous treasures around the country? The Kaitou Kid stopping their thefts by stealing the things first and then returning them when they were safe? It was a miracle people weren't trying to pin medals on his chest.
Well, except for my father, of course. Hearing that the first Kaitou Kid had in fact been murdered by this organisation and that they were doing their level best to take his successor out fired him up like you wouldn't believe. He also took it as a personal affront that the man had been murdered in police custody, and many times would sit listening to the tapes of the initial interrogation, trying to extract any more clues that he could. The Task Force now had standing orders to capture and interrogate the Kid, and if they had to choose one or the other, go for the questions.
Me? I raided the police station equipment locker and, using Father's name, gave Kaito a full set of Kevlar body armour.
(There is no need to look at me like that.)
It is strange how quickly one settles into routines, even when the routines are about things that are utterly crazy.
Kaito, of course, had nothing to change, but I did. Now that I knew the why, I had made my choice and I genuinely wanted to help, I had to totally rearrange my thinking. It really was very hard to step away from the childish, 'Thieves are bad and stealing is bad, no matter what' to a more nuanced stance, and being Pandora didn't help much; for all my gemstone patience and strength, I had never had to see the world in shades of grey, and shades of grey was now where I lived. I focused on 'Kaito is a good guy doing this for good reasons' instead. I still made him swear an oath on Toichi-ojisan's grave that he'd give up being Kaitou Kid when the Black Organisation was brought down.
I said I wanted to help. Kaito wouldn't let me. He never shared where the place he did his preparations was. Although I did meet Jii-ojisan, Kaito told the old man he 'didn't want me getting hurt' and got him to agree not to tell me anything. If I showed up at his place the afternoon of a heist, Kaito would shoo me out.
I know I sound clingy, but I didn't do anything more than ask. It was Kaito who overreacted. And I'm not exaggerating; showing up on my bedroom windowsill as I'm getting my coat to go to stand in the crowd at a heist and cracking a sleeping-gas pill in my face, and then locking and barring the door and window both, can only be defined as overkill. As can the Kaitou Kid's late night visit to Father's office, where he explained that civilian relatives were often the Black Organisation's favourite targets, and so got Father completely on-side for all the 'Keep Aoko away from the heist' schemes he cooked up.
(I would later find out that he'd met up with and started working with Kudo Shinichi during this time, and Kudo-san told him all about the narrow escapes from the Black Organisation that Kudo-san's girlfriend Mouri Ran had. Which explains Kaito's paranoia to some extent, but really doesn't excuse cuffing me to the inside door handle of Father's squad car.)
Heists led to assassination attempts, assassassination attempts led to captures, and the Task Force learned to interrogate suspects on the spot, as each would 'mysteriously' die in custody. Jigsaw pieces came together and slowly, slowly, the goal came into sight.
I knew nothing. The men in my life, Father and Kaito both, conspired to keep it that way, to my utter frustration. I knew it was building, and as I quietly and privately raged to Kaito, I was *what they wanted* - if anyone deserved to know how close we were to shutting it down, it was *me* - but they both told me nothing, kept me ignorant, and merely told me things were 'progressing'.
Sometimes I think they were doing it just to see me angry.
And then Kaito disappeared.
I did everything I could think of to find him. I filed a missing persons report, I followed his trails and I tore apart his room looking for clues.
(It was very artfully designed to look like the typical teenage boy's room, too, right down to the porn magazine not-very-well-hidden under his mattress. It looked like it had never even been opened. The photograph of me in my sundress on the beach, tacked up on his corkboard, looked far more worn than the masturbatory aid.)
Two days ticked by. Three. Four. Five.
On the sixth day, I was sitting on my bed, depressed and despondent. As Pandora, I was meant to be the heart of a planet and its ecosystem; the ability to give Life my one and only talent. I couldn't cast a spell to find Kaito, I couldn't touch his lifeforce and track it, I couldn't even put clues together. All I could do was wait.
My bedroom curtains fluttered, and then a figure perched there for a second, before tipping into the room. I stared for a second before racing over to him, exclaiming "Kaito!"
He looked drained, worn and battered, his face bruised and streaks of blood on his shirt. I gently reached up and cupped his cheek, as I began my barrage of questions.
"Where have you been? Are you all right? What have you been doing? Are they gone? Is everybody else all right? I was so worri-MPH!"
He cut me off with a kiss, and I promptly forgot eveything except the feel of his lips on mine, the feel of his lean body pressed against my own and the need that suddenly flared within me. I scrabbled at the cloth over his shoulders and felt him pulling at my dress as we backed over to my bed. There was no coherent thought to any of it; all I knew was that I had almost lost him, and even bare skin to bare skin wasn't close enough.
After, I almost held my breath. His body still covered mine, his arm holding me so tight against him that I couldn't even wiggle and his head snuggled so deeply into the fold between my shoulder and my neck. I really hadn't expected this; although I knew my own heart, I wasn't expecting this from him. Finally, into the silence, Kaito began speaking.
"It'll be all over the newspapers tomorrow, but they'll only have half the story. We had established it, Hakuba-kun, Hattori-san, Kudo-san and me, that the head of the Black Organisation would be there, at a certain place and a certain time. Take him out, cut off the head of the snake, we thought. Of course, it didn't work out that way..."
He didn't move or loosen his grip during the whole sorry tale, of the battle and the enemy's final run and the desperate final struggle when they had cornered the rat.
"Everyone's alive, although I think Kudo-san will probably walk with a cane the rest of his life, and I don't know if Hattori-san will ever be able to do kendo again, the break was so bad, and how Hakuba-kun didn't get hit with anything I don't know."
"You didn't get hit with anything either," I pointed out.
"I had you to come back to," he smiled. "But after the capture, I didn't need anything, so after I could see that they were being taken care of, I came home. Came here."
I let that slide, but felt a small shiver of delight that he thought of me as home. "So, tomorrow..." I prompted.
"Tomorrow the world will know you're Kaitou Kid's girl," was the sleepy reply. "Right now, can I just sleep?" ~*~*~*
I don't know what the future holds, and I never did. I don't know if Kaito will live forever now. I don't know how long I will live. I don't know even if we will age.
But I do know that I love Kaito, and strangely, oddly, inexplicably, he loves me back. I do know that I want to stay beside him as long as I can, and if that's a hundred thousand years, that's fine by me. If it's less, don't tell me; I'd rather hope for a thousand centuries.
And I'll always have hidden, in the bottom of my jewellery case, a cracked silver monocle with a hanging charm engraved with a four-leaf clover.