weeksdo1@pilot.msu.edu Presented herein for your consumption is the second 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 tries to make light with it will have Bif (the obligatory rabid security wombat) set on them. Revolution no Mokushiroku Part 2 by Douglass Weeks She was walking along the road that bordered the end of forever. Two lanes ran to infinity before her; she assumed that they stretched just as far behind her but once again she found that she was only a passenger within her own head and could only look straight ahead as her legs moved of their own accord. Lamps lined the side of the road, creating small pools of light against the black pavement, but they did nothing to illuminate the inky darkness that reached to eternity in all directions beyond the road's edge. Eimi didn't know how long she walked and the road before her never changed, always two lanes and an endless column of lamps dwindling into the distance. It wasn't until the noise had been rising for several minutes that she even realized it was there at all. It started as a low, distant hum, but with agonizing slowness it grew, and finally she recognized it as the growl of a car's engine. Light began to spill over her shoulders, her shadow reaching for the end of the road, then slowly shortening, as the headlights grew closer. The engine slowed and grew soft as the car pulled up beside her but Eimi's gaze remained fixed straight ahead and she could only see it from the very corner of her eye. It appeared to be a sports car, painted a sensuous shade of red. The passenger door swung open and without turning Eimi slid into the seat. The door closed on its own behind her. The car leapt forward, pressing Eimi deep into her seat. She would've sworn that the light from the lamps actually _bent_ away from car as it raced by, leaving the driver's side dark, although Eimi sensed that there was someone there. The car leapt forward again as the driver mashed the accelerator to the floor and the engine began to whine and grind noises, as if each revolution aged the pistons by years. The red paint began to darken and peel and between the passage of one light and the next the car's entire surface disappeared beneath an ugly patina of rust. Eimi sank further into her seat, the springs digging into her thighs as the material rotted and tore beneath her weight. The car began to swerve uncontrollably across the road, coming unspeakably close to flying over the edge and into the darkness beyond. The driver began to laugh, a wrenching, horrible, triumphant sound that made Eimi's stomach shrivel into a ball of ice. She sensed more the saw the driver reach out and grab the windshield, the frame twisting beneath terrible strength and the laughter reached crescendo as the driver vaulted over it and onto the hood. The move threw him forward into the light of a lamp before it could shy away and his face was illuminated for a fraction of a second, too quick to make out his features, but Eimi still tried to scream, terrified by the awful sense of familiarity he exuded. Then the wheels flew out from beneath the car as the axles disintegrated completely and the car leapt into the air as its bumper dug into the pavement, beginning a slow pinwheel. Eimi tried to scream and throw her arms up into the air, but she was still held immobile and could only watch as the roadway rushed up towards her. Eimi stumbled, catching herself on the edge of the fountain as her body tried to account for motion that wasn't there. The highway was gone and there was no sign of either the car or its driver and as Eimi slowly regained her feet, she looked around. Her knuckles whitened as she squeezed the marble with all of her might, but her arms began to tremble none the less. She knew this place, this courtyard, this fountain; this was the palace from her dreams. Her hands shook uncontrollably as Eimi held them up to her face. The rose signet fit snugly over her finger, its band bright and polished. Eimi stared at it, wondering what had suddenly possessed her to put it on, why she had ignored Souji's uncharacteristic burst of emotion and thrust it onto her finger. She had acted on impulse, but she _never_ acted on impulse. Impulse was what her crazy mother did. Eimi began to walk, hating how real the loose grit and stone felt beneath her feet. She wanted to convince herself that somehow she'd manage to induce a _gran mal_ hallucination and in actuality was still at school, standing in the teacher's room with Mikage. She kicked a wall, hating the sudden resistance of the stone and the small pain in her foot. This couldn't be real. She lived in a world that made sense, where the roads ended and putting on a ring did not take you to where you dreamed. She looked down at the ring again. Putting it on had brought her here, so logically taking it off should take her home. Eimi tried to swallow back near hysterical laughter as she reached for the ring. Her recent life seemed to be almost completely bereft of logic. As soon as her finger touched the band, the rose sprouted thorns that dug straight into the flesh of her finger. Eimi screamed as the thorns writhed beneath her skin, not stopping until she'd let go of the ring and dropped to the ground, clutching her hand to her stomach. She lay there, breathing shallowly for several minutes, light headed from the pain. It finally receded enough for her to think again, although blood still coursed freely from beneath the band. This was no hallucination; Eimi couldn't believe it possible to imagine pain so intense. She leaned against the courtyard's wall, staring up at the buildings rising up around her. Why this place, what was it's meaning? As she looked around she remembered that this wasn't a palace. Before, when she could wander freely through her dreams instead of being inexorably drawn to the dead forest and its stairwell, she would come across rooms filled with cobwebbed desks and dusty chalkboards. Her dream world wasn't a palace, it was a school. _Utena and I attended school together._ Mikage's words suddenly came back to her. Was this... place the school that he'd been talking about. Eimi had the sudden feeling that there were a thousand eyes on her, and she shivered, sliding along the wall and stepping back into one of the halls leading into the courtyard. The school was even worse now than it had been in her dreams. The air stank of dryness and death and aged things long abandoned. She shrank farther back into the corridor, leaving the courtyard behind, feeling relief as the sensation of watching eyes faded. The hall was nearly dark and she could make out formless shapes lining the walls around her. She quickly turned into a slightly brighter corridor but stopped after only a few steps, nearly overwhelmed by the sensation that something was watching her. A broken window far down the hall thinned the shadows and she began towards it, her steps quickening. She regretted leaving the courtyard, where at least there was steady light to quell the shadows. She could imagine thousands of hungry eyes staring out of the shadows behind her, and wondered what kind of beasts might prowl corridors so long abandoned by human presence. She thought she heard a noise behind her and broke into a full run, stumbling over things barely seen in the half-light. Her eyes remained fixed on the broken window, praying that it offered her escape from the oppressive walls. She was almost to the break when something caught her foot and sent her sprawling to the ground, her head bouncing off the floor hard enough to see stars. She sat up and looked back to see what she'd tripped over and screamed. Three corpses sat against the wall, resting shoulder to shoulder. They each wore glasses and a plain blue uniform and had been sitting there so long that their skin had dried and pulled tight across their skulls. Brown hair still clung in brittle clumps to their scalps and even in death they looked so much alike that they might have been brothers. They each also bore a near identical black stain of ancient blood down the front of their jackets. Eimi began to hyperventilate as she saw more nebulous forms against the walls, realizing that they must all be bodies. A whimper died in her throat as she scrambled towards the window, using her elbow to finish breaking out a pane big enough to crawl through. She didn't care that she cut her hand as she cleared the glass away and broke another pane, _knowing_ that something was creeping up behind her. The hole was almost big enough to crawl through when Eimi heard a soft scuffling directly behind her. She froze, not even daring to breathe, praying that the noise had only been in her mind. The scuffling sound came from behind her again, and Eimi closed her hand around a shard of glass as she slowly turned around. A shape moved hesitantly through the shadows towards her, pausing at the edge of the light. Eimi held the shard threateningly in front of her, but her hand shook so hard that it slipped through her bloody fingers and smashed against the floor. The shape flinched back at the sound of shattering glass, but when Eimi didn't move it crept into the light. It was a girl of almost doll-like beauty. She had dirty, blond hair that had been halfheartedly pinned up on her head, and she wore a badly stained and torn yellow uniform. Eimi felt a small bit of relief when she saw that the girl seemed even more terrified than she was. The girl opened her mouth and made a soft mewling noise. When Eimi didn't react the girl moved closer and repeated the sound and Emi realized that the girl didn't have a tongue. Eimi tried to sidle away but the girl moved to block her. Eimi glanced in the other direction, but the three corpses barred that path. The girl moved even closer, staring intently up at her face. "W-what do you want?" Eimi asked tremulously, pressing her back to the wall. At the sound of her voice, the girl's eyes went wide and she threw herself at Eimi, wrapping her arms around Eimi's back and hugging her tightly. The girl pressed her face against Eimi's chest and she could feel hot tears soaking into her shirt. Finally the tears stopped and the girl stepped back. Her face was illuminated with a kind of tragic radiance, and her eyes contained a mix of emotion that Eimi couldn't decipher. She reached for Eimi's hand and gestured back into the shadow of the hall. Eimi tried to resist but the girl pulled with surprising strength, dragging her on. "Who are you, what do you want?" Eimi asked, trying to dig her heels in. The girl glanced back at her with an expression tinged by arrogance, then made of series of soft but unintelligible sounds. She stopped suddenly, holding up a finger and tracing symbols in the air. It took Eimi several tries to follow but she finally saw what the girl was trying to write. "Nanami?" she repeated. That had been one of the names she'd hear her mother say in her sleep. The girl again began tugging at her hand and Eimi had no choice but to follow. Several times the girl stopped, gesturing for silence, and she seemed to listen for something before moving on. Eimi tried to keep her fear under control, but many corridors had vaguely human shapes against their walls and several times the death fetor suddenly grew stronger. Finally they stopped, and Eimi was horrified to see the girl stop and bow to three bodies seated primly against the wall. It was only when dragged closer that Eimi realized they were merely dummies dressed in uniforms. Nanami noticed her glance and pointed at each dummy, signing in the air. 'Keiko, ' 'Eiko,' 'Yuuko,' she gestured, the concluded with 'friends.' Eimi wondered if the girl was completely mad. "They're not real," she said, trying to edge back. The look that Nanami gave her was filled with childish irritation, but then it abruptly hardened. She mimed drawing a sword, then drove it into each of the dummies' chests in turn, then slamming the imaginary sword back into it's sheath. She stared Eimi in the eye, tears sparkling in her own, daring her to say anything more. Eimi dropped her eyes and Nanami's face took something of a triumphant tilt as she pulled Eimi past the dummies and into the room beyond. A grand piano occupied the room's center, a tangle of wire and splintered wood spilling from it's interior. Nanami glanced around uncertainly and then made a soft mewling noise. A shape dislodged itself from the wall and rose, resolving itself into the form of a boy, a stopwatch clutched tightly in one hand, a crumbling nest holding the dried body of a dead bird cradled in the crook of his arm. He stared at Eimi, although no expression crossed his face. "Who are you?" he asked tonelessly. Eimi stared at him and Nanami, pulling back now that the girl had let go of her hand. "Where are we?" Nanami burst into a series of garbled noises, accompanied by an occasional hand gesture. The boy frowned, a spark of life finally appearing in his eyes, and he stepped closer, grabbing Eimi's chin and staring up at her face. "Don't be foolish," he said, letting go of her face, "she's not Utena." Nanami stamped her foot and launched into another set of sounds and gestures. This time the boy nodded slowly, giving Eimi a thoughtful glance. "Perhaps you're right." Regaining a measure of her composure, Eimi pounced on the boy's mention of her mother. "Utena? Utena Tenjou? Do you know my mother?" "So Nanami was right-." The boy began, and Nanami snorted derisively. "Please, " Eimi said carefully, "tell me, how do you know my mother? Where is this place? Why am I here?" The boy's eyes drifted away from her face, falling onto the piano and his expression grew vacant. Nanami stamped her foot again and gave a short, sharp cry. The boy's eyes snapped back into focus, his fingers clenching convulsively on the stopwatch's button, although nothing happened. "We went to school together," he blurted out. Eimi was no longer sure of what it was safe to believe anymore, but she still found it difficult to take the boy seriously. "You couldn't have. You wouldn't even have been born when my mother was in school." The boy's eyes clouded again. "I was twelve when I knew Utena Tenjou. I am twelve, I will be twelve, I have been twelve for more times than I know how to remember." There was a tone to his voice that made a shiver run up Eimi's spine. "This place, was this terrible place where my mother went to school?" "It wasn't always like this. Once it was a sunlit garden, a beautiful prison garden with walls so high that we couldn't imagine that our garden was not the whole world. Then Tenjou- senpai was sent beyond its walls and our gardener abandoned us." He was about to say more when the air itself seemed to shake, and great bells began to toll. Eimi covered her ears but the sound was so loud, so terrible, like a hammer pounding against a brass sepulchre, that her hands did nothing to dampen the clamor. Both Nanami's and the boy's face went dead white at the sound and their heads both turned to look towards, and Eimi somehow instinctively knew, the arena. "What was that?" Eimi asked, slowly taking her hands away from her ears. "A duel has been called," the boy said and simultaneously both he and Nanami turned and began to walk stiffly towards the door. Nanami threw herself at the piano, grabbing its side with a white-knuckled grip, but her feet pulled her inexorably away and her fingers began to slip. With a sudden burst of strength she thrust an arm into the piano's interior. It came out bloody, but clutching several lengths of wire. As her feet carried her away, she tried to turn and stared imploringly at Eimi. "Kuuh muh," she forced the sounds out, thrusting the piano wire at Eimi. "Huhees, kuh muh." "She wants you to kill her,' the boy explained. He was stopped in the doorway, his face pale from the strain of standing still, his gaze nearly sharp enough to cut.. Eimi shrank back, trying to hide herself from the despair in Nanami's eyes. "Why?" "Because after the first few escaped, He decreed that that only a Duel can end our lives. This is His coffin, where His will Is. If you are Utena's child... The rules of this place seemed to bind her less tightly than the rest of us. Nanami's hope, however futile, is that you have the power to take her from our garden." Anything else he meant to say was cut off as his legs lurched suddenly forward and his head struck the doorframe with enough force to splinter the wood. Nanami continued to stare pleadingly at Eimi, thrusting the wires towards her. "I'm sorry," Eimi said, clenching her eyes tightly shut. "I-I can't." She heard Nanami whimper and then to her horror felt her own feet stumble into motion, propelling her after the other two. As she staggered into the hallway behind the other two Miki rolled his head back on his shoulders, giving her a vacant smile as he stared back through the tops of his eyes. "Welcome to Ohtori Academy." Eimi's feet carried her through the school, but always inexorably up no matter how hard she tried to fight against them. Several times she thought she saw other people walking stiffly through the halls, but it was always out of the corner of her eye and they were always gone when she tried to look directly. When her feet finally stopped she was standing on a balcony high above the rest of school, allowing her to see over the tops of the buildings to the forest. Except now something rose from the top of the trees. Extending high above the clutching branches was a spiraling staircase the color of bleached bone. It stretched high above the rest of the school, ending in an impossibly balanced and delicate platform. A young boy, blonde and pale, stood on one side; opposite him was the boy that Eimi had seen in her vision in the school courtyard. Both clutched swords in their hands, although the young boy fingered the hilt of his nervously, while the older one stood perfectly still, his eyes closed, barely even seeming to breathe. There was a third figure on the platform as well, but Eimi's eyes refused to look at him and her mind refused to recognize his presence. Even at the distance she was at she could feel the darkness emanating from him like a physical essence, and the smell of death was thick in her nose. Worst of all, like the driver from before, he exuded a terrifying sense of familiarity. She could just barely glance in his direction out of the corner of her eye and all that she could make out was a dead rose he held in one hand. Besides Nanami and the boy, there was one other on the balcony with her, although he didn't react to their presence. _A beautiful man with scarlet hair._ Her mother's words came unbidden as Eimi stared at the man's back. He didn't turn around until Nanami finally lifted her eyes and looked out at the arena, crying out. As he turned, the first thought that came to Eimi's mind was how thin he was. Barely any flesh lay beneath his tightly drawn skin and even standing still his limbs trembled violently. His expression was that of a man who had been completely broken again and again and again. Scars covered almost every inch of exposed skin, a particularly ugly set closing his left eye and running the length of his face. It took Eimi a moment to realize that the scars across his eye were actually characters. _The prince of defiance._ "Miki," he said, acknowledging the boy with a nod, in a voice that was only a hair away from tremulous. "Touga," the other replied, then turned back to look out at the arena. Touga spared Nanami no more than a glance but when his eyes fell on Eimi for a moment she saw him how he must have been before, arrogant, brash, near indomitable in his own self-confidence, but then the hopelessness came crashing back even stronger than ever. "It's over then," he said simply. "If he has you then there is no hope left. We are lost." Eimi felt the thing on the platform turn its attention towards her. "At last," it whispered sibilantly, although Eimi heard it as if it were right next to her ear, "you have arrived. At last, you've come to me. I knew you wouldn't be able to deny me forever. With you, the way is open before me. With you, I no longer need the duels to obtain my key, child of mine." The older boy's eyes snapped open and the younger one began to sob with relief, his sword falling from his hand. The dark thing's voice grew as cold as the void as he raised his hand in front of him. "That does not mean I'll allow the duels to cease," he said, then crushed the rose. The older boy moved almost faster than the eye could follow. The younger didn't even have a chance to look up as the other's boy's sword flashed out. The blond child remained upright for a moment longer then slumped forward, his head rolling free of his body. Nanami gave a soul-wrenching scream and ran towards the edge of the balcony. She got within five steps of the low rail before she began to slow, and by the time her leading foot was almost to the edge she wasn't moving at all, frozen in mid leap, tears rolling down her face as she sobbed hysterically. "Not until I say you can, silly girl," the thing in the arena laughed disjointedly then turned his attention back to Eimi. "Now Daughter," it spoke the word with obscene relish, "we have much to do." He faded back from the arena and Eimi could feel him the stain of his presence moving down the stairway, through the forest, towards her. Touga's knuckles where white around the hilt of the sword he wore at his side. "If he gets you," he began slowly, "then it is truly over." Miki turned to look at her, his finger clamping the stopwatch timer so rapidly that it seemed like one long sound. "Despite the pain, the despair, the misery we have here, he is bound even more tightly to this garden than we are. But now you're here and he can bring the walls tumbling down." "It cannot be allowed," Touga said and wrenched his sword from its sheath as he strode towards Eimi. Almost immediately his steps began to slow as if he were wading through molasses. His face was white with exertion and sweat poured from his brow as he sluggishly lifted the sword above his head. "Tenjou," he gasped and Eimi couldn't tell if he was trying to speak to her or her mother, "forgive me. There is no other way!" The scar was livid against Touga's face as mustered the strength to bring the sword down and Eimi felt the darkness surge with fury, and fear. Touga must have felt it too because he suddenly faltered, staggering back half a step. Then he dipped down into some unseen reserve and again Eimi saw him as he once had been, and with a desperate cry he wrenched his blade downwards. Eimi saw her reflection in Touga's blade as it fell. Her hair was a rich shade of royal purple and a brilliant streak of silver ran through her bangs. Eimi cried out as fire ran up the length of her arm and even as she watched her reflection grow in Touga's blade the world began to fly apart around her and she plunged headlong into the void. --To be continued