weeksdo1@pilot.msu.edu

Presented herein for your consumption is the first installment of
the Shoujo Kakumei Utena continuation fic, 'Revolution no
Mokushiroku (Revolution's Apocalypse)' The rest of my writing,
and this story, when finished, are available on my website:
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Gulf/4127/Writing/Mywriting.html

C&C is of course welcome.  In fact, please, write all the C&C you
want, because I'm just a little unsure about doing a story this
unremittingly dark.

Disclaimer: Shoujo Kakumei (or Revolutionary Girl, whichever you
prefer) Utena is owned by B-Papas, TV Tokyo, Software Sculptors,
and whatever other parties I might have failed to mention. All
rights are reserved to them. This story however is mine, and
anyone who trie to make light with it will have Bif (the
obligatory rabid security wombat) set on them.




Revolution no Mokushiroku
Part 1
by
Douglass Weeks




Moonlight poured down from above, throwing the columns into high
relief and the surrounding buildings into impenetrable shadow.

Her will was not her own as she moved; she was merely an observer
behind her eyes, watching her feet as they slowly stepped
forward.  She knew this place, although she wasn't sure how.  She
passed a fountain, the water long since stopped flowing, a few
inches lying green and stagnant at the bottom.  Yet at the same
time she saw the marble gleaming white, water flying upward in a
sparkling arc.  From just behind her ear she heard the smug purr
of a well-tuned engine.

Her feet kept moving and she left the fountain behind, an
arboretum sliding into her field of view.  If she'd had control
of her body she would've shivered.  It was shaped like a
birdcage, but the metalwork was rusted and falling to pieces, the
glass opaque with age and dirt.  Several panels were broken,
pushed out by gnarled, clutching rose vines.  They were thick,
twisted, brown and dead, the few blossom that still clung to them
shriveled and ugly.  Despite the bright moon and broken panels
the inside of the arboretum was completely dark, and a draft blew
out through the missing glass that stank of something forever
dead.

Yet on top of that, almost as though she were seeing a separate
image through each eye, she saw the greenhouse how it might have
once been, masses of vibrant roses filling it, the vines that
climbed the glass weighed down with lusciously red flowers.  But
then the grave stench filled her nostrils and all that she saw
was a thing of death that promised even worse.  Merely passing
within sight of the decayed arboretum was almost enough to make
her want to scream, but that wasn't the worst.  That was still to
come.

She actively began to fight, to try and regain control of
herself, because she knew if she didn't, she'd go there.  Her
feet pulled her across another crumbling courtyard, towards a
dead forest whose skeletal branches strained impotently at the
sky.  A high gate would've barred access to the forest, except
that it had been torn away and lay wrapped around the battered
and rusting hulk of a car.

There was another gate beyond the first, at the end of a walkway
flanked on both sides by pools filled with black and scummy
water.  It too lay open and beyond it a spiral stairway clawed
upwards through the top of the forest.  The same ancient death
fetor that clung to the arboretum poured down from the stairs
with enough strength to stir her hair.

She would have fallen to the ground gibbering in terror if she'd
been able to.  The stench was almost a physical thing, wrapping
around her with clutching fingers that pulled her towards the
gate.  Every time she dreamed of this place it pulled her a
little closer and somehow she knew that once it pulled her
through the gate and set her foot upon the stairs she would be
gone.

She fought for control with everything she had and finally her
body began to become her own again.  Small, strangled sounds of
fear began to slip from her lips and her steps started to slow.
Still, it took her even longer to regain control than it had
before, and she was almost through the gate before she could
force her legs to still.

This was the closest she'd ever been to the gate and a few fitful
beams of moonlight penetrated the canopy of branches, casting
just enough light for her to see the stairs until they curved and
disappeared above her head.  She heard a noise; something was
coming down the stairs and she knew it was coming for her.  The
stink became so intense that she couldn't breathe and she fell to
her knees, gagging.

The thing reached the base of the stairs and began slithering
towards her and she could hear a low bubbling hiss as it
breathed.  The branches above her shifted, even though there was
no wind, throwing more moonlight down from above, illuminating
the thing as it crawled towards her.




Eiminoujo clapped her hands over her mouth to choke back the
scream that tried to pour out of her throat.  Her heart was
beating so hard that it felt like each beat forced her spine to
arch.  She bit down on her fingers until the scream was nothing
more than a whimper, and then took her hand away with a
shuddering breath as the dream and the terror drained away.
She'd been having that dream frequently.  For as long as she
could remember she'd dreamt of a grandiose, yet decrepit palace,
but they'd neither been particularly frequent nor vivid until
she'd turned fourteen.  That was when in her dreams she'd no
longer wandered aimlessly though crumbling hallways and rotting
classrooms.  It was when she'd turned fourteen that she first
felt the inexorable pull towards the arboretum, and then the
forest.

As she tried to lull herself back to sleep, Eiminoujo heard her
mother moaning in the next room.  She seemed to have been having
bad dreams more frequently than usual as well.

She rolled onto her side and curled up, clutching a stuffed
monkey to her chest.  She closed her eyes, trying to ignore the
cries coming from the next room.  At one point she was sure that
she heard her mother call someone's name, but after that she was
silent.

Eiminoujo held the stuffed animal a little tighter and clenched
her eyes, but sleep was long in coming.




She awoke shortly after dawn, stray sunbeams sneaking in through
chinks in the blinds and prodding at her eyelids.  Her eyes felt
grainy and strained as she slowly opened them, and the inside of
her head had that stuffed with cotton feel that came from getting
too little sleep.

She stumbled into the bathroom, cursing as only a small trickle
of tepid water issued from the tap.  She cupped her hands and let
it collect for several seconds, then splashed it against her
face.  She didn't even bother trying the toilet.  If they were
lucky they might be able to hassle the landlord into repairing
the pipes within a couple of days.

She went into the kitchen and began preparing breakfast, dipping
into one of the pitchers of water in the refrigerator that was
reserved for just such a circumstance.  She heard her mother
rise, and put a kettle on stove for her.

By the time Utena entered the kitchen, breakfast was already on
the table and a cup of tea was steeped and ready.  "Morning,
Eimi," Utena mumbled.  No one called Eimi by her full name, not
even her mother.  It was difficult to pronounce and sounded
awkward as well, but by the occasional, fragmented explanation,
she'd had deliberate intentions when she'd given her daughter a
name that could be read as 'the princess of eternal sleep.'

Utena didn't look like she'd slept well either.  Her eyes seemed
exceptionally large and her hair was mussed.  Her mother's hair
fascinated Eimi.  It was a shade of blond so pale as to be almost
white.  Some days, like this one, it caught the light in such a
way as to appear a pale shade of pink.  Her own hair was a more
normal shade of near black, although from time to time it seemed
to have odd purple and even silver highlights.  She supposed that
that came from her father, not that she knew much about him.
Although she barely knew anything about her mother either.  Utena
almost always refused steadfastly to talk about her past,
especially prior to when Eimi was born.  Eimi had tried to do
some searching on her own, but always failed to find anything
predated her own birth record.  About all that she knew about her
mother was that Utena was close to thirty, which meant that she
couldn't have been more than fifteen when Eimi had been born.
She'd never finished school and managed to provided for herself
and Eimi through a series of menial jobs that barely provided
enough to get by on.

That was why the two of them lived in a rat hole of an apartment
where the plumbing didn't work more often than not.  Why Eimi
worked after school as a stock girl in the run down local
conbini, instead of being in the theater club.  Her mother
forbade her to do it, but like most things, her mother forgot
that particular edict, maybe even that Eimi had a job, before to
long.  Her mother rarely seemed to remember anything for too long
because her mother really wasn't all there.

Utena had quickly finished her first cup of tea and was already
almost done with the second.  With a sigh Eimi put another kettle
on the stove.  Her mother was having one of her moods again.
"Drinking all that tea isn't good for you," she said, more out of
habit than anything else.

"We promised each other," Utena began, starting on another cup,
"that we would drink tea together."  She seemed to be talking to
herself, and Eimi momentarily considered asking about her father
again.  Utena occasionally seemed to be more tractable when she
was in one of her moods, but sometimes her answers were more
frightening than her silence.

According to Utena, Eimi had been a virgin birth.  Her father had
been a beautiful but cold man with scarlet hair and a well hidden
but tender heart.  Her father was the darkness given body.  Her
father was a prince on a white horse who wanted to save all the
girls of the world. Her father was a woman, a princess forever
held captive that her mother had failed to save.

"I'm off to school now, I'll see you this evening," Eimi said,
pausing at the door.

Utena didn't seem to hear her and as Eimi closed the door behind
her, she saw her mother reach out, as if to someone sitting on
the other side of the table.  "Someday, shine with me."




Eimi walked alone to school.  She had no real friends and
although the other students didn't outright avoid her, then never
got too close either.  She didn't mind, too much.

"Good morning Tenjou-san," a voice said behind Eimi, stopping her
in the hall.

"Good morning Souji-sensei," she replied, turning with a bow.

"How is your mother this morning?" he asked mildly.

"The same," Eimi replied.  The teacher might be the one link that
Eimi had to finding out her mother's past, although for the most
part he was just as closemouthed about the past as she was. He
inquired after Utena each morning and at first Eimi had thought
that he'd had a romantic interest in her; he seemed to be only a
few years older than her mother, but then one day he'd let slip
that he'd once know Utena, from before.

The day after, he'd shone up at the apartment and had a long
conversation with her mother in private.  Eimi hadn't been able
to hear what they'd said, and his visit had ended with her mother
in hysterics, screaming 'that she should've driven the sword
through his heart!'  After that, he'd never tried to talk to
Utena in person again, or said anything further about how they'd
known each other from before, but he did inquire after her health
each morning,

"That is something, I suppose.  I'll see you in class then," he
said with a nod then turned back down the hall.  Eimi watched him
for a few moments.  He had hair very much like her mother's and
as the thought suddenly struck her, she wondered if maybe the two
of them might be related.

She chewed the idea for several moments and then discarded it.
The only similarity between Souji and her mother was their hair,
and for some reason, the thought just felt like it was wrong.
Although, she realized, they both did have a certain manner about
them, a sense of being somewhere else even as they stood right in
front of you.  However, the sensation was never as strong with
Souji as it was with her mother, although there had been a couple
of times when he'd thought that he was alone and she'd heard him
muttering about 'preparing the way before them.'

She sighed and tried to dismiss the whole thing.  None of it
really mattered, not in a world as messed up and unfair as this
one.  She knew that better than most.  In a fair world she
wouldn't have to put in eight hours at a convenience store every
day in order to make sure that the rent was paid on time and
there was food in the fridge.  In a fair world, she wouldn't have
to be mother to her own mother, making sure that she got up and
off to work most days.

During class she gave her teacher only half an ear.  The woman
was enjoining them all to work hard if they wanted to pass the
entrance exams for a good high school.  Eimi had neither the time
nor the money to take cram classes to ensure she got into a
decent high school, and no college worth the effort would want
anything to do with her.  She was beginning to have trouble
seeing the point of even staying in school at all.  If she
dropped out then she at least could get another job and could
afford to move to an apartment that at least had reliable
plumbing.

Eimi sighed.  The only way in which she didn't see her life
turning out exactly like her mother's was that she wasn't
pregnant at fourteen.  She let her eyes drift out the window and
her breath caught in her throat.  The school courtyard was gone.
The arboretum from her dreams was there instead, two people
standing in front of it; a girl in a delicate, frilly dress with
her hair drawn back in a bun, and a young man in an ornate white
uniform whose long hair spilled down his back.  He pushed the
girl back against the glass door, and his hand rose, the fingers
rigid.  Eimi slapped her hands down on her desk, rising to her
feet.  "Saionji, don-!"

"Is there some problem?" the teacher demanded, and Eimi blinked,
realizing that she'd half risen from her seat.  The vista out the
window was gone, and all that Eimi saw were the few scraggly
trees and ill kept grass that were always there.  "I-I'm sorry,"
she stammered, sitting back down.  "I had a ... back spasm.  It
won't happen again."  The other students were staring at her, and
Eimi felt a blush creeping up her cheeks.

She glanced back out the window, but there was nothing to
indicate that anything unusual had ever been out there.  Who had
those people been?  She was sure that she hadn't ever seen either
of them before, but as she was leaping to her feet she knew that
it'd been the boy's name about to cross her lips.

A few girls in the back of the room were whispering and shooting
smirking glances her way, but after a few seconds the rest of the
students again treated her as if she wasn't actually there.
Maybe she wasn't.  Maybe, like her mother, she wasn't all there,
except that in her case, it was physically.

The thought stayed with Eimi throughout the day.  There was
something inexplicably attractive about the idea that maybe she
wasn't really there at all.  Maybe she was just someone's
daydream, and that was why she kept seeing the ancient palace,
the nonexistent people, because she only existed inside someone
else's mind and sometimes they dreamed of other things.

Souji-sensei noticed her distraction and pulled her aside at the
end of his class.  "Is there something bothering you, Tenjou-
san?" he asked.  Even when trying to show concern his voice
retained a cool and distant quality.  The only time she that
could remember hearing anything that even approached genuine
emotion enter his voice had been the night that he'd confronted
her mother.

"Mom had a difficult night last night.  She was having tea when I
left this morning."  Souji understood the reference.  Eimi had
explained to him before about her mother's tendency to spend the
entire day staring over a cup of tea at someone who wasn't there.
"Souji-sensei, do you know what she meant by, 'someday, shine
with me?'"

He got a distant look in his eyes, as if some far distant vista
had appeared at the edge of his sight.  "You may call me Mikage,
when we're alone.  No, I don't know what your mother meant, but I
think that I understand the sentiment.  Once, there was someone
who I thought shone, but in the end..." he trailed off and the
look in his eyes became even more far off.  "Utena and I attended
school together."

Eimi blinked, never having expected Mikage to venture such
information so freely.  "Really, where?"

Mikage was completely oblivious to everything around him now, and
Eimi couldn't fight the unsettling feeling that he was fading
away before her eyes.  "Someplace... somewhere where the dead may
be alive again..."

Eimi felt the air stir across the back of her neck and an
unspeakable odor curled in her nostrils.  "They think that you
may be capable of obtaining eternity," a soft voice said directly
behind her.  Eimi whirled and for a second, out of the corner of
her eye, she thought she saw a young boy with his nose buried in
the petals of a black rose.  However, when she'd fully turned,
there was no one there.  Even the smell was gone.

"Was there anything else?" Mikage asked and Eimi was sure that
she heard the barest tremor in his tone. She turned back around
and saw by his eyes that whatever it been he'd seen, it was gone
again.

"No," Eimi said, a trifle unsteadily.  The look on his face
forbade her from voicing the questions she'd hoped he'd answer.
"I'll see you tomorrow."  The hairs along the back of her neck
didn't settle until she was far away from the school.




Eimi massaged her aching hand as she walked home, the bag
containing dinner clutched tightly beneath her arm.  She'd
dropped a beverage case on her hand while stocking a cooler and a
dark bruise extended from her knuckles to her wrist.  Her ears
still blistered from the manager's tirade about not being more
careful, because she might've broken a bottle, not because she
hurt herself.

A block from the apartment, Eimi paused, cocking her head to
listen.  "No, oh no," she moaned, then broke into a run.  Her
mother was out on the balcony, shaking her fist at the sky.

"I know you're out there, I can feel you!" Utena shouted. "You
can't have her, I'll never let you have her!"

There was a small crowd of gawkers on the street below and Eimi
had to elbow her way through them to get through to the door.
She ran into the landlord halfway up the stairs.  "Get her off of
there," the old man crabbed.  "She's been shouting at nothing
since this afternoon."

"Fix the pipes," Eimi snapped back, pushing past.  She turned on
the lights as she walked into the apartment and put the bag down
on the kitchen table.  Tea was scattered across the counter and
water from a spilled kettle pooled on the floor.  Eimi yanked
open the balcony door and stormed out. "Mother, get back in.
You're making a scene."

Utena didn't seem to hear her and continued to scream obscenities
at the stars.  At patience end Eimi grabbed her mother by the arm
and dragged her back inside.  Utena seemed surprise to see her
and threw her arms around Eimi and began sobbing.  "You didn't
come home.  I was so afraid that he might've found you."

"Who?" Eimi demanded crossly.

Utena's eyes darted towards the sky. "Him, the morning star."

Eimi ground her teeth in frustration.  She should've known better
than to expect her mother to make any sense.  "I was at work, the
same place I am every evening.  I don't suppose you went to work
today, did you?"

Utena looked taken aback.  "I was having tea with... with..." her
expression seemed to deflate.  "I was having tea..."

"I noticed.  You left it scattered across the kitchen.  I'll get
started on dinner."  Eimi turned on the television and then
tossed the remote at her mother.  "Why don't you watch your
programs until it's ready?"

Utena's expression turned to indignation and she looked up,
meeting Eimi's eyes.  For a moment her eyes were windows to the
depths of eternity and in them Eimi saw sorrow and despair more
than any human could bear.  Then the moment passed and all she
saw in her mother's blurry blue eyes were tears.

Shaken, Eimi turned and went to the kitchen.  As she set the
table, she wondered if maybe her mother's madness was genetic.
She was already seeing and hearing things that weren't really
there, maybe she was going mad too.  But Souji-sensei had seen
something too that afternoon.

So maybe he was losing it too.  There was definitely something
strange about Mikage, although he wasn't as far gone as her
mother was.  Eimi glanced towards the balcony, wondering what had
prompted her mother to go out there in the first place.  Utena
hated going outside under the open sky, almost to the point of
agoraphobia, especially at night when the stars were out.  For
some reason Utena seemed to both hate and be terrified by them.
On more than one occasion she'd seen her mother staring up
towards the sky while muttering about 'having touched the heavens
and found them false.'

Dinner proceeded as usual, with almost no conversation, although
Utena seemed to be more in touch than usual, helping clean up
afterwards.  "Please remember to go to work tomorrow," Eimi
enjoined her.  "I can't support the both of us if you lose your
job, again."

Utena seemed to be on the point of crying.  "You are the only
good thing to have come from that place.  Please, be careful.
You're all that is keeping me from going back."

"Back where?" Eimi asked but Utena didn't reply and the look in
her eyes hinted at hidden depths of pain and suffering.  Eimi
shivered and let the matter drop.

Utena was in her robe, sitting at the kitchen table with another
cup of tea when Eimi went to bed.  "Please don't stay up too
late, okay mom?"

Utena smiled wanly and set her cup down as Eimi closed her door
and shut off the lights.  Faint starlight spilled in through the
window and for some reason it made Eimi's skin crawl.  She shared
a small fraction of her mother's fear and nebulous resentment of
the heavens, although she didn't understand why.    She still
felt a vague uneasiness as she closed the blinds and burrowed
beneath the covers, and pulled her stuffed monkey in with her.
"Maybe I really am going crazy if I still have to sleep with you,
Chuchu," Eimi told the monkey, using the nonsensical name that
her mother had bequeathed the doll with.  She pressed her face
against the back of its head and slowly drifted off to sleep.

The dream started almost instantly.  This time she began right in
front of the forest, almost through the first gate.  She barely
had time for thought before the invisible hand squeezed her
almost too tightly to breathe and yanked her forward.  Something
lurking by the base of the curving staircase chuckled as it
pulled her in and the death stench that poured from the gates was
tinged with anticipation.

There was a flash of steel and a sword cut the stones at her
feet, the invisible hand vanishing.  An almost fleshless hand
grasped the sword's hilt, the arm it was attached to disappearing
back into shadow, although Eimi saw a hint of tattered white
sleeve, which for some reason reminded her of the uniform that
the boy she'd seen this morning wore.

"Always the chivalrous one," muttered a dead, wounded voice from
the thing waiting by the stairs.

"You can't be allowed to have her," replied the figure in the
shadows, in a voice that sounded like pride eternally broken.

"You risk my wrath Kiryuu, be wary."

"What can you do to me, that I have not already suffered?  You
are powerless without her, and I will see that you remain that
way.  No matter the cost."

"I haven't even started with you, Kiryuu.  Interfere with me
again and you shall know how terrible my wrath can be."

A hand suddenly closed around Eimi's shoulders from behind.  "You
can't have her!" a familiar voice proclaimed and the black
clothed arm hugged Eimi tightly.  Another arm slid around her
side, this one holding an ornate sword with a rose worked hilt.

The thing by the stairs hissed and threw itself forward and the
sword flashed down, cutting through the fabric of the dream.

Eimi's eyes shot open and she sat up, knocking Chuchu to the
floor.  There was someone in the room with her and as her eyes
adjusted, Eimi found herself staring at her mother, only as she
must have appeared fifteen years ago.  Her hair reached midway
down her back and her eyes were wide, blue and without guile.
She wore a black jacket and red pants and in her hand she gripped
the rose worked sword from Eimi's dream.  "M-mother," Eimi
stammered, and the image was gone.  She got up, moving carefully
into the hall.  She heard a noise from her mother's room and slid
open the door.

Utena was crying in her sleep, tear tracks glimmering along her
cheeks in the faint starlight.  "Oh, Touga," she cried softly,
"what has he done to you?"  She had one hand clenched tightly in
a fist and as she cried her fingers slipped open and something
fell from her palm, making a metallic ching as it struck the
floor.  The object rolled across the room, bumping into Eimi's
toe.  She bent down to examine it and realized that it was a
ring.

It lay cold and heavy in her palm, a thick, silver band capped by
an ornately worked enamel rose.  She closed her fingers around it
in a tight fist, a gesture which she found strangely reassuring.
She returned to her room and climbed back into bed, staring at
the ring until she fell back asleep.




Eimi left for school early the next morning.  She wanted to talk
with Mikage about the ring, and possibly her dream as well.  For
some reason she felt that having the ring would make him more
forthcoming.  She arrived at school even before the sports clubs
started their morning practices and went straight to the
teachers' room.  Mikage wasn't there, but a still steaming cup of
coffee indicated that he he'd probably return soon.  She clutched
the ring tightly but as she approached Mikage's desk it almost
seemed to jump and slipped from her grasp.  Eimi dropped to her
knees and tried to grab it, but it rolled underneath Mikage's
desk and she had to stretch to reach it.  As she pulled it out
her hand brushed something tucked away into the space where the
bottom drawer should've been.

She pulled the object from its hiding place and discovered that
it was a thick, well worn binder.  She flipped through it,
discovering that it held a hundred or so pages, each one
containing a hand drawing, and one or more photos, and was filled
with cramped handwriting that she recognized as being Mikage's.
There was a pocket in the back, and in it she discovered a ring,
cracked through the center and in two pieces, almost a mirror of
the one she held, save for that this one was done in black iron
and onyx.  She quickly put the ring back, holding it, for some
reason, made the nape of her neck crawl like someone was running
their nails across a blackboard.

She went back through the binder examining the pictures.  Each
one seemed to be of a young man and the photograph was always a
close, but not perfect, resemblance to the hand drawing, as if
each were of two closely related boys.  Above each drawing was
the word 'dead,' although from the rest of the notes seemed to
indicate that the boy was still very much alive.  However, as she
flipped through, she noticed that nearly a third included a
second 'dead' heading above the photograph, this one including a
subheading of 'suicide' along with a date and brief description.
An unsettling number seemed to have willingly burned themselves
to death.

Then Eimi came across an entry that made her pause.  'Mikage
Souji, Graduated.'  Again there was a hand drawing, and Eimi
imagined that the cold, arrogant visage was how he had appeared
as a young man.  The 'graduated' was written with such force that
the thick paper was actually torn in a place, and Eimi, curious,
began to read the notes that went along with it.

She understood very little of it.  The writing mostly seemed to
be existential musings about eternity, but as she read on it also
described a place, a school, and with a start Eimi realized that
it sounded exactly like the palace in her dreams.

"What are you doing?"

Eimi looked up and saw Mikage looming over her, and for a second
his eyes were open and in them she saw bottomless hatred, and
total, all consuming arrogance, then he blinked and when he
opened his eyes again they were back to normal.

"How did you find this?" he demanded, snatching the binder from
her hands.

"I dropped my ring and it rolled under your desk.  When I picked
it up, I found that."

"What ring?"

Reluctantly, Eimi opened her hand and showed him the rose crest.
His face went pale and the binder slipped from his grasp, a few
loose pictures fluttering free.  "Where did you get that?"

"My mother had it.  I had a dream last night, and so did she,
about that place you described in that notebook.  What is it?"

"Give me the ring," Mikage demanded.

"Why?"

"Because it's his sign, how he marks you," Mikage said, baring
his teeth and hissing.  "Give it to me!"

"No."

"It has to be destroyed.  I told her she had to destroy it, that
as long as she held it he could reach through."

Eimi shook her head and began to back up.  "No, you can't, this
is, this is..." She had a sudden flash of understanding and
extended her finger.

"NO!" Mikage shouted, lunging forward as Eimi slipped the rose
crest over her finger.

--To be continued