( video. )

[cattish]

[Shijima is in a lovely school uniform today, leaning forward in a chair with her arms stretched out over a desk, fingers curled.]

School isn't so bad, as it turns out. It's interesting enough. The people are more interesting than anything else about it, though. [she yawns widely, her back arching for a moment.] The principal is dying, and there's going to be a ninja conference here very soon, so maybe that will keep things from becoming boring. Everyone is hurried. I've never understood rushing when there's always plenty of time.

There's something else, though.

If you had an opportunity for immortality, would you take it?

Comments

[timey_wimey]

The people are always more interesting than the lessons, at least in my experience.

... and no, I wouldn't. I've seen what happens to the people who try.

[cattish]

They have strange motivations. Everyone here is sacrificing something for another thing. But I suppose I'm also doing that.

Ah? What happens to those people?

[timey_wimey]

Oh, I dunno. Think about it too hard and you could say that's what everyone does in the end.

Broadly speaking, they all become something they would've never wanted to be at the start. Or they just get tired.

[cattish]

I'm not aware of having done it before now. Even with this, what I'm giving up is time and effort to be here.

It seems like they would, huh? Being alive would start to become unappealing after a long time of it, and then there's no way for them to die. It's an unfortunate situation, don't you think?

[shijima you're supposed to be like ten years old stop that.]

[timey_wimey]

Well yeah, with most people it's just small things, or things that just seem small. It's not the sort of thing you notice unless you think a lot about that kind of thing.

Unfortunate, yeah... I mean, don't get me wrong, I made a life out of saving lives when it wasn't their time. But something's always come around to remind me that everything has an end. Even the universe when it comes down to it.

[ NO KEEP TALKING HE NEEDS DEETS ON YOU AND BIRD-BOY... ] Why that question, by the way? Seems a bit of an odd one to ask out of the blue like that.

[createswithink]

[ welp, he's already really old so. ] Heeh, what kind of immortality?

[cattish]

Absolute. No injury will kill you, and age has no effect on you.

[createswithink]

Not worth it, unless you're a god and can actually handle the world ending and being recreated.

[cattish]

Ending and being recreated? What exactly does that entail?

[createswithink]

No one's sure because no immortal besides the gods survived past the last time. And the gods won't tell what happens. It's just that the ending and beginning are a natural part of a cycle. I'm guessing that the world as we know it wouldn't be around by then, anyways.

[ cycles measured on scales of trillions of years. kind of like...why be immortal if the sun's doomed to expand and consume the earth billions of years from now? not that he knows this. that the world goes in cycles is all part of mythology. ]

[deadlydoctor]

Depends. What's the catch?

[cattish]

Does there have to be one? There isn't. Only that you can't get rid of it once you have it.

[deadlydoctor]

Ye,s there's always one. No one gives anything for free. Not being able to go bad seems suspicious enough to me, Shijima.

[If you are wondering how he knows your name, is because he was that little cat you chatted with the other day.]

[cattish]

Do you think there would be a problem with not being able to die, Knock Out?

[deadlydoctor]

More than one. Specially if you are trapped or under torture.

There's worse things than death.

[whitechocolate]

Probably not... Living forever whilst watching your friends and family grow old and die around you whilst you keep living? I'd rather not go through that.

[cattish]

You might get used to it after a while. That kind of pain would probably wear off within a few hundred years.

[whitechocolate]

A few hundred years is a long time... So is forever.

[cattish]

Mm. Well, I imagine you would become very tired eventually. Unfortunately, if you were stuck with immortality, there wouldn't ever be any "final" rest, right?

[elloran]

An interesting question.

I think, had I been given the opportunity again, knowing what I do now, I would reject immortality.

[cattish]

Oh? And what do you know now?

[elloran]

Immortality distances one from the common man. One loses friends and family, and it is difficult to find anything that can fill that hole.

[cattish]

Wouldn't you stop caring after a time?

[philoxidizes]

I suppose that would depend on whether you consider mortality an essential component of being human.

[cattish]

I personally don't. Humans have a "heart" and a "mind" that make them human. The state of their mortality has nothing to do with it. But it might be that immortality forces them to become something monstrously inhuman.