Quote:Actually, ifyou take it a little more seriously, it could be pretty cool. After all, Urd is the Goddess of the Past - so each of the Urds would be representing an alternate past. Make it an inversion of the "a whole bunch of time travelers from different futures come back" schtick. Keiichi, Belldandy, and possibly Skuld all wind up in a strange new place with at least partial amnesia - and a huge pack of Urds all fighting to be the past that they came from.
Okay, so you'd need a *lot* more (at first) hidden explanation to make it make sense from a causality standpoint, but it's an interesting start, no?
Okay, I've been off-net for the past couple weeks, but after reading this far, this hit me right between the eyes....
"Wait, wait, WAIT! Okay, Urd, run that past me again: WHY are there so many of you here?"
She heaved a sigh (and what that did to her chest was only a small part of why I was being obtuse, really) and tried again. "Like I already told you, it's an infinite number of me -- all of me. All of the Urds that existed in all of the pasts which ever were or might have been, intersecting here in the Eternal Now."
I had that sudden free-falling feeling of undergoing a paradigm shift without benefit of a clutch. "Hold up -- intersecting here? I can see how multiple futures can diverge from a single present, but how the heck do multiple pasts intersect at the same present?"
Urd gave me a pitying look. "Your view of time is really just too linear. It all makes perfect sense."
I pressed my fists against my temples -- that pain had to be psychosomatic. Or just plain psycho -- I certainly felt like I was undergoing a break with reality. "Dammit, Urd," I groaned, "somehow this is all your fault."
She blinked at me. "Well, of course it is."
The sheet non-sequiterness of that reply jarred me out of my mental positive feedback loop. "Say what?"
She rolled her eyes and sighed again, this time adding a flounce for good measure. "Silly boy. There are infinite mes, and infinite Skulds... but there's only ever one Belldandy."
The gear-stripping sensation in the center of my brain stopped suddenly -- not because the paradigm shift was over, but just because all the teeth were gone. I was down to just bare smooth shiny metal now, yeah baby. "Well. Now I know that I've gone totally around the bend. Because that just made complete, perfect sense. I'm gonna go grab K-1 and see if he wants to get drunk with me."