savetheearth | [Text / Video]

Mmmm... rather different... [[Bakura frowns a little as he looks the card over]] This one looks more like a playing or tarot card... since it has a suit and number. This part here is almost like a bar code... for where you scan it in the belt, right? None of mine have anything like that... Means they likely wouldn't work in yours, would they...

Probably not. I think they'd allhave to look the same...

[He's looking towards Bakura's hologram thing. He is not at all sure he'd want to know what this card might contain in this case, and he hates letting the card out of his grasp, anyway. Hard not to, since he has trouble maintaining a human form without it.]

I'd assume this one wouldn't work in yours, either.

One way to find out~

[[He holds out his arm with the disc with a grin. Gonna slap it down, Hajime?

[There's a moment of hesitation, and Hajime doesn't exactly slap the card down, but carefully places it on the reader.

The hologram that comes up is fuzzy and prone to flickering out, like there are some compatibility issues, but it's recognizable enough. The hologram is of Hajime himself...or his human form, anyway. Hajime, missing a shirt and wearing a completely different sort of weird belt.

Hajime himself is visibly freaked out by this.]

[[Bakura just... stares.

He hadn't... actually expected that to work. And that it did...]]

...holy shit, Hajime, that's you...

[[a blink]] The guy with your face....! [[realizing suddenly]]

[Before Hajime can really respond to that, he feels that all-too-familiar pulse and a memory returns to him, of this being surrendering peacefully to Joker's thirst for venegance, of sealing him into a card and taking his form...]

I...I...

[He's just going to get that thing off the reader right now, because he's more than a little freaked out.]

I did to him what he'd done to me...

[[Bakura can only blink a moment at the sudden reaction before Hajime speaks]]

Eh? You mean... you sealed him? That's... he's in there?

[There's a shaky nod.]

I'd taken another form...I remember it from a few other memories, but I'm not sure what it looks like...

[This is a thing that Hajime is not a fan of talking about.]

I went after him. Wanted to fight. But he...he...just lay down and let me seal him into that card.

[Hajime's got a very odd look on his face now.]

And when I did, I used the card. Took his form. I became human, and then I didn't want to be what I really was anymore.

[[Bakura's eyes widened even further]] You mean he wanted to be---

[[His hand went to his heart as the more and more familiar sensation started to flood him.

The terrified realization overlayed with the fatalistic determination of one who knows he's sealed his own fate.

'He sent his soul as well...'/ 'Even if my soul should shatter....!'

Bakura doubled over, clutching at his head as the doubled memories ended-- one with a horrified scream, the other with the feeling of being shattered into uncountable fragments.]]

Yeah...he wanted to be hu--

[Hajime cuts off in concern there. He'll go to check on Bakura.]

...you okay?

[He's got the sinking feeling that he has some idea of what might have happened there, given the similarities in what they've been experiencing.]

[[a small nod]] --wanted to be sealed... that other guy... [[he corrected, breath still a bit rushed.]] That bastard... when he-- I-- fuck! Goddamned doubled flashbacks!

[[runs a frustrated hand through his hair, exhaling loudly, trying to unscramble his thoughts.]] It was a die... no, no 2d10. Asshole sealed part of himself in them to control them and Creampuff... [[shakes his head]] Creampuff made it so his soul was sealed.... all of it. He defeated Asshole by sacrificing himself.

[There's a grimace at the mention of the doubled flashbacks...and the sealing.]

Can't be an easy thing to remember all parts of at once. Being sealed is...unpleasant.

Yeah. Self-sacrifice and sealing...that's kind of what I think happened there, too. The guy sacrificed himself so I wouldn't rampage. He probably didn't think he could contain me again...

Winning by losing... [[he looks up]] Only I think that guy, if he had that reasoning... Sounds like a much better person. [[A deep sigh]]

Why does it feel like so much that we remember is just so damned similar... yet just different enough...! [[another frustrated hand through his bangs, leaving them sticking up almost batwinged.]] Cards and sealing and other selves and battles in the past bring brought to the future... Yet this -- [[raises up his arm]] and that [[points to Hajime's belt]] aren't the same at all.

[Hajime's running a hand through his hair and shaking his head.]

Maybe there's something we're missing. Something we haven't gotten back yet.

There has to be... some connection we're missing. [[another deep sigh]] Some bridge between your tarot type and my Magic type... [[He pulls out a card again, frowning at it before sticking it back in his deck and pulling the whole thing out, releasing the disc.]]

Ne... when you sealed that guy... do you know when it was?

I've got to wonder what it is. There are only so many ways you can mess around with cards...

[He shakes his head.]

Not really. It was...I think it was a long time after we'd last seen each other. A very long time.

...Three thousand years long time?

...maybe longer.

...if it's longer, it might be that you came first... then everything in Egypt came after. Sort of as if the black magic of the Items woke something.

It's possible. It's kind of hard for me to pinpoint the timing of some of my memories...some are definitely what I would call present day, but others could have been any time.

[He pauses, considering this.]

And I just get the sense that they're covering some crazy span of time. Like some of those big monster battles were pretty ancient.

Ancient is a pretty relative thing, though. The time of the Pharaoh is normally considered that. How much longer before are you thinking they were?

...or were they from that time?

[He shakes his head.]

Older. Very old...I'd been waiting ten thousand years to get back at him...

[Nothing quite like realizing you weren't just a bug monster, you were an ancient bug monster...]

[[Blink blink. Blink]]

Shiiiit....

[[and he looks down at the disc in his hands]]

...maybe thats why these are different... the first kaa were different than these...

I'd be willing to bet nothing like that existed ten thousand years ago...

[He shakes his head.]

I've got to wonder when some of those other memories took place. I...don't really have any sense of time for some of them.

This part is only in the modern part. Everything was the stone slabs in Egypt.

[[and the disc is going back into his bag now.]]

Any context clues, maybe? What people were wearing, stuff around you, things like that?

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