Interlude: Non-Identical Twins
Keiko's birthday party was drawing to a close. The gifts had been delivered, Pandā had been emphatically dismissed, the mysterious pet had been taken away in its armoured container, and most importantly, they were running out of cake. But there was one surprise still in store, and this one wasn't for Keiko.
"If I may have your attention, please," Keiko said. "I honestly would rather be doing this under different circumstances, if at all, but there is a case to be made that this is her celebration as well, and so..."
She put her hands together reluctantly. "Shadow Clone Technique!"
The hall fell completely silent.
The last time Keiko had used this technique, it had resulted in a brutal verbal beatdown that had left her practically catatonic, and it had taken triumph in the face of horrifying certain death to give Keiko the courage to face her loved ones again. For her to use it of her own free will
on her birthday…
"Long time no see, people! Did you miss me?" came the completely un-Keiko-like greeting in Keiko's voice.
"Snowflake," Hazō said quietly.
The shadow clone stepped forward. Keiko watched her alertly.
"So I've got an apology to make," Snowflake said after a few seconds with a much more familiar awkwardness. "I may have overdone it a little when we first met. I guess that must have been pretty awful to see, and I didn't mean to catch any of you in the crossfire. Or rather, I didn't care, which is probably worse."
Hazō opened his mouth. Snowflake quickly raised a finger.
"Sorry, bro, but let me get this out. Kei's been neglecting Shadow Clone Technique training in favour of our girlfriend, which I guess I can't completely blame her for, but it does mean I haven't got long."
Snowflake took a deep breath.
"Thing is, being me—Snowflake me, not Kei me—isn't all it's cracked up to be."
She looked directly at him, as if taking him as a representative of the gathering.
"Imagine if your personality stayed the way it is now, but your memories magically got replaced with those of a Hazō who grew up in the Kurosawa Clan and bullied civilians every chance he got because that was the natural thing to do. You'd feel sick, right? Well, imagine what it's like to wake up as a healthy, normal person with proper agency, but every memory you have is telling you that you're a passive, helpless, useless little girl. Is it any wonder I wanted to hurt the person who made me feel that way?
"I can't accept those memories. I couldn't if I wanted to, because they're all tainted with the Frozen Skein, running through Kei's every thought and action like gleaming steel thread through a tapestry. I can't look at that and pretend those are the things
I would have thought or said or done. And that… doesn't leave me with very much."
"We have an accord of sorts," Keiko said as Snowflake fell silent. "Snowflake requires additional personal experiences for the purposes of self-differentiation and development of identity. I have been providing these. She, in turn, has been cooperating with my daily activities rather than attempting to rebel against her creator."
"How does that work, exactly?" Hazō asked diplomatically, in lieu of explaining to all present exactly why what Snowflake was saying made no sense. "I mean, shadow clones don't have their own identities. Every time you use the technique, you create a new copy of who you are right now."
Snowflake shrugged. "Simple. Kei can't understand my thoughts, not all the way, because the Frozen Skein stops her from thinking the way I do. Recalling a memory means recreating it in your mind, and she can't recreate having initiative. That means there will always be parts of
my memories that I can access but she can't. Memories that are special to
me. Every time she uses the Shadow Clone Technique, she creates a person with the same unique memories, and they don't change just because she's had more experiences on her own since."
"It's still a new person," Hazō objected. "One Snowflake gets dispelled, and then later another one gets created."
Snowflake smirked. "And how does that make me different from you?"
"What?"
"Every night, someone with Hazō's memories goes to sleep. Every morning, someone with Hazō's memories wakes up. Sometimes, the Hazō who wakes up has new ideas the old one didn't. Sometimes he's come up with a solution to a problem the old one couldn't. Sometimes something that was really stressful for the old Hazō doesn't seem like a big deal to the new one. Who's to say that the body doesn't just hold on to the memories and generate a new Hazō from them whenever it wakes up?"
Hazō felt a fascinating philosophical debate coming on, but it was interrupted by a completely unexpected thought. Something about the rhythm of Snowflake's words was familiar in a way it shouldn't have been, given this was only their second meeting.
"Snowflake, is you not identifying with Keiko's memories the reason you're trying to talk like Ami?"
Snowflake froze. "What? I'm not—"
She stopped. After a few seconds, she looked down at the floor.
"Oh. Well. That sure explains a few things."
"Don't worry," Ami said sympathetically. "You get used to it."
Snowflake sighed. "Well, it beats talking like my dictionary-swallowing original there. Has Kei ever told you how unnerving your sudden bursts of insight can be sometimes?"
"Mostly she expresses disbelief at how dense I am," Hazō admitted. "I take it as her way of showing affection."
"Speaking of which," Snowflake turned away from him, "Big Sis, a personal thanks from me for the gloves. I already know how the three of—"
Snowflake disappeared in a puff of smoke.
"I believe all the salient points have been covered," Keiko said with finality. "Would anyone like Snowflake's share of the birthday cake?"
