I have a message from another time...
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
presents
UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT
- SYMPHONY OF THE SWORD -
Fourth Movement: Duelists of the Rose
Benjamin D. Hutchins
with Kris Overstreet
(c) 2001 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
FRIDAY, JANUARY 7, 2405
WORCESTER PREPARATORY INSTITUTE, EARTH
The Honourable J. Maurice MacEchearn, universally known as
Moose, leaned his considerable bulk back into the depths of Wedge
Bench Number One and sighed. The first day back from a school holiday
was always an interesting combination of hectic activity and dull
lassitude. In this case, more of the latter, because he didn't have
much of anybody to talk to. No one else in the Institute Band Geeks
Federation had returned to the Institute yet. Azalynn hadn't gone
away for the holidays, but she was nowhere to be found. Normally,
Moose would have killed time the first day back by sitting around
jawing about the break with his roommate, Davy Crockett, but Davy
wasn't around either.
That was odd, even a bit unsettling. Davy was Tenctonese,
assiduous and punctual in all things. For him not to show up the
first day dorms opened was so out of character it made even laid-back
Moose a little nervous. In fact, there were quite a few familiar
faces not around, as he sat and people-watched. The more he watched,
the more it weighed on his mind, as if to counterbalance the delicious
lightness of his body after a Christmas vacation spent in the three
point two standard Gs of Hoffman. Something weird was going on, he
could feel it.
As he sat and pondered this, he noticed the short, slightly
rounded (very slightly, from Moose's Hoffmanite perspective) form of
Miss Claudia Montaigne, the Dean of Student Life, crossing the Wedge.
He gave her closer attention. She looked worried, her bun of
strawberry blonde hair slightly disordered, and she had a rather
crumpled piece of paper in her hand. She made straight for Moose.
"Morning, Miss Montaigne," he rumbled, sitting up straighter
and getting his feet off the booth's center platform (too low to call
it a 'table', really, in his opinion). Such deference wasn't really
required - Miss Montaigne was not one to stand on ceremony - but that
very fact made Moose respect her more than he did many of the
so-called administrators he'd met in his lifetime so far.
"Good morning, Maurice," she said, sounding as harried as she
looked. "I'm sorry to be so brief, but I have a lot of these to do
and I want to do them all personally... " She paused, patting at her
hair as though trying to organize her thoughts along with it.
"Have a seat," said Moose affably. "You look like you could
use a rest, however busy you are. Can I get you something to drink?"
he asked, gesturing toward the snack bar off to the right.
"No, thank you, Maurice," said Miss Montaigne, but she did
sit, and looked a little more at ease. Moose had that effect on
people, especially women; no one, Moose certainly included, really
understood why. "I'm afraid... I have some bad news."
Moose blinked at her. Bad news? When Claudia Montaigne had
bad news, it could mean anything from "you're on academic probation"
to "your mother just died". That was one of the bad parts of her
tough job here.
"Yes?" he asked, since she seemed to be expecting him to.
"Your roommate, David Crockett... "
"Something's happened to Davy?" said Moose, his dinner-plate
hands going flat on the table.
"No, he's well," Miss Montaigne assured him, "but... he's
withdrawn from the Institute. He won't be returning for the spring
terms."
"Withdrawn? What for? Some problem in his family? Money
trouble? It couldn't be the course load. Davy was one of the best
students I know."
"No," said Miss Montaigne sadly. "It wasn't his choice. The
Tenctonese government has recalled all their citizens from Earth."
"-All-?!" Moose blurted. "There's a quarter -million- of them
in LA!"
"Most of those are still here. They're Earth citizens,
remember, going back generations now. But David was born on Tencton.
He came here on a student visa, which his government revoked while he
was at home for the break. There's nothing to be done."
"You said you had a lot of those to do," Moose mused. "This
is bigger than just Tencton, isn't it?"
Miss Montaigne nodded. "You're sharp, Maurice," she said.
"Very sharp. Yes, it's bigger, much bigger. A dozen worlds chose to
recall their people during the holidays - undoubtedly not a
coincidence. The Institute has lost... " She checked her list.
"Fifty-two students."
"Which worlds? Tencton, who else? Not - " A chill finger of
dread touched his heart. "Not Zeta Cygni?"
"No," said Miss Montaigne with a touch of a smile. "No, Zeta
Cygni is hanging in. Of course, they're a former Earth colony, so
their bonds are stronger, even if they have been independent for four
hundred years. No, it's mainly non-human worlds. Tencton, Minbar,
Vulcan, New Skaro... I can't remember the rest off the top of my head,
and I haven't time to look it up. The President's office will be
issuing a statement to all students tonight, once everyone is back. I
wouldn't be surprised if President Tiefeld addressed the student body
himself."
"Minbar and Vulcan. So Chenann is gone too... and Strom.
Man. Galaxy House is going to be a whole different place."
Miss Montaigne's face somehow managed to fall further, then
brightened slightly as she went on, "Fortunately, we do have some new
students coming in as well. Two more will be joining us from Zeta
Cygni, in fact - your friend Miss Tenjou has persuaded one of her
classmates from her former school to join us here, as a matter of
fact, a young man named Miki Kaoru, and a friend of one of Kaitlyn's
relatives is coming as well. They'll be taking David and Strom's
places. I haven't been able to get everything arranged officially
yet, with all these notifications to do and everything, so if you see
them before I do... "
"I understand," said Moose. "You'd better get going. I'm
sorry for taking up your time with my questions, when everything will
be answered tonight."
"It's all right." Miss Montaigne got to her feet and sighed.
"I needed the break anyway."
"I don't mind if you put the new guy in with me," Moose told
her. "Any friend of Utena's is unlikely to get on -my- nerves," he
added with a grin. "I guess all I can do is wish you good luck with
the rest of it."
She smiled wearily. "Thanks. I'll need it... "
He watched her move off toward the stairs up to Morgan Hall's
room floors, then settled back into his previous position and thought.
He was still thinking when arms encircled his bull neck from
behind and a cheek pressed warmly against his own.
"Hello, Azalynn," he said with a smile, raising a hand to pat
the bushy gray hair he knew, without looking, would be above that
cheek.
"Hello yourself, Mr. Moose," Azalynn dv'Ir Natashkan replied,
releasing him to scramble over the back of the bench, hop lightly
across the table, and settle herself into a lotus position opposite,
facing him. "You look worried about something," she observed without
preamble.
"I am," Moose replied, "but I want to save my thoughts until
we're all here."
"Fair enough," said Azalynn. "I've got something I need to
tell everybody too. Seen anybody else yet?"
"Nope. Devlin said he wouldn't be back until this afternoon,
anyway. Dunno about the others."
"Oh. Hum. That's no fun. You want to play cards or
something?"
"Sure."
They were about halfway through a game of some mutant version
of gin rummy (involving three decks of cards, each with five suits)
which Azalynn had learned from a gaming contact over at Wellesley when
Amanda Dessler arrived, still decked out in a leather motorcycling
costume that made her look like a cross between an international rally
racer and a messenger goddess. Azalynn jumped up, stepped nimbly
between the stacks of cards on the table without disturbing any of
them, and flung her arms around the Gamilon's neck, hugging her with
her own feet completely off the floor. Amanda didn't seem
particularly daunted by this; she just returned the embrace for as
long as she felt proper, then brushed the Dantrovian off and shooed
her back to her place before greeting Moose.
"Moose," she said - rather coolly, it would have seemed to an
outside observer.
"'Manda," Moose replied, without looking up from his hand of
cards.
This rather perfunctory exchange contained, in fact, none of
the distance or coldness an untrained viewer would have believed; it
was just the way Moose and Amanda greeted each other after long
absences.
"Is Carter back yet?" Amanda wondered.
"Not yet," said Azalynn, scoring a couple of cards and making
a discard.
"Ah, this game," Amanda noted, looking over the cards. "I
regret being unable to stay. There's been some mishap with my class
registration for this term; I must go and see to that."
"I'm calling a dinner meeting for tonight," said Azalynn.
"I've got something important to tell everybody."
Amanda nodded. "This shouldn't take long," she said, then
turned and left.
"Famous last words for reg screw-ups," Moose murmured darkly.
"First gin."
"Bah!" Azalynn grumbled as Moose scored his cards, then picked
up his reserve hand and sorted it.
Half an hour or so after that, their game finished, Moose and
Azalynn were sitting, bored, watching people cross the Quad through
the Wedge windows, when a car drove around said Quad and
pulled to a halt in one the front parking spaces. It was of
a type they'd never seen before, some kind of antique limousine, long
and low and very black, and it had New Avalon plates.
"Hey!" Azalynn cried as one of the car's long doors opened.
"That's Katie!"
Kaitlyn Hutchins was just hauling her suitcase out of the
Griffon's trunk when the Wedge doors burst open and Azalynn jumped
down over the steps. "Katie!" the Dantrovian declared as she dashed
across the narrow drive separating the Wedge from the Quad. "Did you
have a good Christmas?"
Kate smiled and dropped the case just before Azalynn
catapulted into her arms, almost knocking her into the trunk. "Y-yes,
I d-did," she said. "I h-had a v-very good Ch-Christmas."
"I don't see how anyone could spend Christmas in that house
and -not- have a good one," said Utena Tenjou as she climbed out of
the passenger side. "It's Fun Central over there."
Azalynn turned Kate loose and applied the same treatment to her
roommate. "So you had a good Christmas too?" she asked.
"I sure did," Utena replied. "And a good birthday too." She
gave the Dantrovian a sly grin and nudged her with an elbow. "Kate's
family really knows how to show a guest a good time."
Azalynn laughed. "Now you're just making fun of me," she said
with mock petulance.
"Help you with any of that stuff?" Moose inquired. "Or all of
it, for that matter?"
A black-haired, black-clad boy, perhaps a year or two younger
than Kate, got out of the driver's seat of the long black car, came
back to the trunk, and observed, "You have got to be Moose MacEchearn."
"Indeed I have," said Moose expansively, "as my frame, for all
its massive size, will accommodate no other man's spark. And you,
sir, must be Kaitlyn's brother Corwin, of whom she has spoken so often
and glowingly that I feel we must already be friends."
"Has she really?" Corwin asked artlessly, his cheeks going a
little pink. "Um, anyway, yeah, that's me. Corwin Ravenhair," he
added with a little bow, "at your service. Although I'm hoping you
can be at my service for a minute. I've got a piece of equipment in
here that's kind of heavy."
"The big black case?" Moose asked, indicating a valise about
the size of a steamer trunk, in durable black polycarb.
"That's the one," said Corwin.
"I can manage that," said a slim, pale, auburn-haired girl in
a subdued dark green dress and black overcoat as she emerged from the
passenger seat of the limo. Without further comment or much
expression, she stepped around Moose, reached into the trunk, closed
her hand around the case's handle, and lifted the case out without
apparent effort, for all that it was roughly her own size.
"Where shall I take it?" she asked Corwin flatly.
"Um... into the Wedge for now, but wait until the rest of us
are ready... "
"As you wish."
Moose raised an eyebrow; Corwin shrugged and got a couple of
suitcases out of the trunk. Utena and Kate got the rest of their
things, and another new person emerged from the back seat, closed the
door behind him, and came back in search of luggage.
"You, sir, I don't believe I've heard of. You're not a
redhead, so you must not be one of Kate's other brothers, and so I'm
at a loss. Unless," he added with a twinkle in one green eye, "you're
the famous Mr. Miki Kaoru of whom I've lately heard so much."
The slim, blue-haired boy froze suddenly, his face taking on a
look of startled puzzlement. "Famous?" he inquired.
Moose laughed. "I'm teasing. I ran into the Dean of Student
Life a bit ago, and she mentioned a new student by that name was
joining us from Utena's old school. The rest was, as they say,
elementary." Moose stuck out a hand. "The Honourable J. Maurice
MacEchearn the Fourth, your humble servant. I understand we're to be
roommates."
"Oh!" said Miki, shaking the proffered hand as best he could,
given the way it dwarfed his own. "Well, I'm pleased to meet you,
then!"
"Something happen to your old one?" Utena asked.
"Indeed," said Moose. "We'll talk about it in a bit." She
nodded, understanding.
"So you're a friend of Utena's from before she came here?"
Azalynn asked Miki.
"That's right," said Miki.
"That's cool," said Azalynn. She was standing a little closer
to Miki than his personal comfort zone allowed for, and gazing at him
intently with her slightly-unnerving molten-gold eyes. As he stood
looking back, growing slightly more nervous with each second, she
moved closer still, until they were almost nose to nose.
"You've got really nice eyes," she told him flatly, then
stepped back with her hands folded behind her back and a big grin on
her face. "I'm Azalynn. Welcome to the Institute, Miki. We're going
to be great friends, you and me. I can tell just looking at you."
"Er," said Miki. He cast about mentally for something to say
to that, and finally came up with, "Well... I hope so."
They went inside and piled their things around Bench Number
One, for the time being. As they were bringing them in, a wiry boy
with a shock of blond hair and a long gray coat appeared from the
Daniels Hall side of things and greeted them all with a cheery,
slightly reedy, "What, ho, comrades!"
"Devlin!" said Azalynn, and she repeated on him the process
she'd performed on all of her returning friends so far. "Amanda was
looking for you," she told him as she released him and led him over to
the booth to join the others. "She had to go to Harrington, some kind
of reg problem. Said she'd be back later."
"If she's lucky," Devlin replied. "Hullo! New faces, and it
didn't take me ten minutes to spot 'em this time, eh, what?" he said
with a wink for Utena.
"D-Devlin," said Kate, "I w-want you t-to m-m-meet Miki
K-Kaoru, an old sch-schoolmate of Utena's w-who's d-decided to j-join
us here... "
"Pleasure, old bean, pleasure," said Devlin, pumping Miki's
outstretched hand and releasing it.
"... and th-this is my b-brother Corwin... "
"'Course! 'Course! Unmistakable fellow. Couldn't be anybody
else. Absolutely -thrilled- to make your acquaintance, what? Heard
so much about you it's like I practically know you already."
"... and his f-friend Dorothy W-Wayner-right, who's a-also
s-starting at the D-Double-U this t-term."
Dorothy offered her hand rather half-heartedly; Devlin took
it, but didn't pump it. Instead, he bowed, quite formally despite the
antiformality of his flappy coat and upstanding hair, and kissed it.
"Charmed beyond repair," said Devlin. "Carter Devlin, dear
lady, or Devlin Carter - take your pick, it don't matter."
Dorothy retrieved her hand and calmly corrected Kaitlyn: "I'm
R. Dorothy Wayneright."
There was a moment's pause, and then Devlin inquired, "The 'R'
bein' for the usual thing?"
"Robot," Dorothy said flatly.
"Mm." Devlin nodded. "Well, charmed all the same, what?"
"If you insist," said Dorothy.
"Have our new arrivals been assigned places to live yet?"
Utena wondered.
"Well, Miki has," Moose told her. "I saw Miss Montaigne a
while ago and - well, why don't we sit down... there's a quorum, we
can fill Amanda in later."
"OK, but give me a minute," Utena said. "I'm starving. I
can't wait for lunchtime." She turned and went toward the snack bar,
a miniature grill-service spot commonly referred to, since it was run
by the same concession company that handled the main dining halls, as
"Mini-DAKA" (first 'A' long). Mini-DAKA served the same food as DAKA,
which wasn't all that good, but it at least had the advantage of being
made fresh. On the other hand, you had to pay extra for it. Right
now, Utena didn't really care about that. In fact, she customarily
ate breakfast there, either through having missed the dining hall's
hours or just out of an unwillingness to suffer its rubbery, cold
omelets.
"Um, Utena," said Azalynn, but Utena waved the Dantrovian back
without turning around.
"In a minute, I'm too hungry to listen."
"But - ohhh... "
She went into the place, which was deserted at the
after-breakfast hour of 11:15 AM, and froze for a moment in the
doorway. The guy at the grill had his back turned to her, and the
long, slightly wavy green ponytail trailing down his back, as well as
the slim but broad-shouldered build of that back, stopped her in her
tracks for a second.
Man, she thought, the new grill guy looks just like Saionji
from the back. That's gonna take some getting used to.
"'Scuse me," she said, grabbing a plastic tray and stepping up
to the stainless steel counter that bordered the grill.
"Yes, may I help - " the grill guy began, turning around; then
he saw her, she saw him, and they both froze in place.
The new grill guy -was- Kyouichi Saionji.
There was a long, long, tense pause.
"You!" Utena finally blurted.
"Well, yes, that -was- what I should have said next," Saionji
admitted. "May I help you?"
"What... what are you doing here?"
"Taking your order," Saionji said. "I see you weren't
notified that I'm here."
"Um... no."
"Shame. I'd hoped to spare you the shock, and myself the
potential injury." He put his hands on top of the sneeze guard
covering the preparation counter and leaned forward a little, his eyes
intent. "I know we have a lot to talk about, Tenjou, but right now
I'm working. My time isn't my own. What can I get you?"
Utena felt a little dizzy. She wondered if she would ever get
used to having surreal things happen to her, since they seemed bent on
doing so with annoying regularity.
"Um... a sausage biscuit. And a couple of those English
muffin-Canadian bacon things, I forget what they're called. A ham
omelet. Hash browns. A large Coke."
Saionji blinked. "Do you always eat breakfasts like that?"
"Usually."
He gave her a look-over, then shook his head in amazement and
turned his attention to the grill.
Utena emerged from the snack bar with her tray a few minutes
later, still looking dumbfounded.
"I tried to warn you," Azalynn remarked as Utena sat down next
to Kate.
"W-warn her ab-bout what?"
"Oh, you remember Kyouichi Saionji?"
Kate gave her a look.
"OK, stupid question. Anyway. I ran into him over break.
Now don't get excited. He's feeling much better and would like to
come back inside."
"He's working in the snack bar," Utena said to her sausage
biscuit, disbelief still on her face. "He made this." She bit into
it, chewed, swallowed. "And it's -good-. Saionji's a good cook. Who
the hell knew?"
"That's just a part-time thing to make some spending money,"
said Azalynn. "He's a student."
Utena nearly choked. "Here?!"
"Of course here. Where'd you think, Doherty High? He had a
little trouble with the test and got knocked back a couple grades from
where he says he was at the old place, but he got in. He's in our
class. You'll probably have Galactic History 203 with him."
"This was the important thing you had to tell us?" Moose
wondered.
"Yeah. I didn't want anybody to, you know, bug out and try to
take his head off or anything before he got a chance to explain. When
he gets off work he wants to talk to you two. I imagine he's going to
apologize. If he doesn't, I'm going to throttle him." She grinned at
Miki. "He'll probably be glad to see you, too. It's always good to
see a face or two from back home in a new setting."
"Um... perhaps," said Miki. "We weren't... really close."
Azalynn shrugged. "Well, yeah, he did mention that he used to
be a real bastard. But like I said, he wants to apologize now - start
over and all that. So who knows?"
"Apologize," said Utena to her sausage biscuit. Then she
looked over it at Azalynn. "What'd you -do- to him?"
"Oh, you know, this and that," said Azalynn offhandedly.
"Talked, mostly. I found him freezing his tail off up at Bancroft
Tower. Gave him dinner, talked some sense into him. The usual."
"Was it a holiday?" Utena asked, looking as if she didn't
really want to know, but had to.
"Duh, it was Christmas?" Azalynn replied with exaggerated
patience.
Utena gave that a moment's thought and replied, "..."
"W-what was your n-n-news, Moose?" Kaitlyn asked.
"Trouble," said Moose. "You'll all start noticing it, and
there's supposed to be an announcement tonight after everybody's back,
but... a bunch of governments yanked their citizens off Earth over the
break. 52 students aren't coming back."
"Oh no!" said Azalynn. "Anybody we know?"
Moose nodded. "Miss Montaigne didn't give me the complete
list, but Davy's gone, and so are Chenann and Strom. I haven't been
over to the House since I dropped off my bag, so I dunno who else,
but... " He spread his hands. "Looks bad."
"Why'd they do it, I wonder?" Azalynn mused.
"The Extension to the Psionics Regulation and Protection Act
is before the Earthdome Assembly again," Devlin pointed out, his tone
graver than usual. "And it looks like it has a good chance of passin'
this time, what? Off-Earth conscription powers for the Psi Corps,
expansion of their jurisdiction from the homeworld to the borders of
the whole Alliance, all that rot. High-psionic-potential races are
nervous, an' well they should be. They're backin' away from Earth as
a gesture of protest." He shook his head. "Won't work. 'Internal
operations of a sovereign nation' and all that. Won't be too long
before they're pushing a similar Extension for the whole Federation,
and if the outer races back off instead of fightin'... well, 'peace in
our time,' as they say."
"You know a lot about it," said Azalynn, sounding surprised.
"Big news back in the Old Country," Devlin replied
offhandedly. "Most of the country's top physicists suddenly leavin'
will have a tendency to make the papers. More Vulcans in Britain than
anyplace else on Earth, until last week, you know."
"Mm," nodded Azalynn.
Corwin glanced at his watch. "I don't want to be a pain," he
said, "but I've got to get back to New Avalon before the middle of the
night this time."
"Right, well, let's get everything squared away," said Utena,
"and we'll meet back here for lunch."
WPI's campus is bordered to the south by a line of eight
pleasant, tree-lined side streets which lead down the side of
Institute Hill, perpendicular to Institute Road, five of them lying to
the west of West Street, which bisects the campus along the
north-south line, the other two east of it. These streets make up a
quiet residential neighborhood, which is a nice one-block-deep buffer
zone between WPI and the (relative) bustle of Highland Street's
commercial strip.
Several of the old-fashioned wood-frame houses on these
streets belong to the Institute, and are used as student residences.
They fall under the same aegis and basic guidelines as the dormitories
and the on-campus Ellsworth and Fuller apartments (which are located
just across Institute Road from the three main dormitories, Morgan,
Daniels and Sanford Riley Halls), but are a bit further from school, a
bit quieter, and smaller, providing a semi-off-campus living
experience for the lucky students to be assigned to them while
remaining close enough to campus to prevent that sense of
disconnection so common to off-campus living.
One of these, the two-story yellow affair at 22 Schussler
Road, is known by the school's administration as "Galaxy House".
Galaxy House is part of the Worcester Preparatory Institute's
much-publicized Commitment to Diversity. The criteria for being
assigned as one of its seven residents are simple: one must be other
than a first-year student, and not from Earth, nor an Earth colony
independent for less than two centuries.
Moose MacEchearn was such a student, and had lived in Galaxy
House since the start of this school year. It was here that he led
Miki, Corwin, and Dorothy, the last of whom still carried that
enormous case without apparent difficulty. Someone from Residental
Life had been along to stick Post-It notes on the doors of the
upstairs bedrooms, denoting the revised living assignments. It was
with a glum expression that Moose found one of the double rooms now
completely vacant. He already knew, of course, but seeing it that
way, in black and white - well, black and yellow - somehow made it
harder to take.
He sighed.
"Well, this is the place," he said. "Man. Gonna be quiet
around here without Beld and G'Kron."
"G'Kron hasn't gone anywhere," a disgruntled voice remarked
from behind them, and a burly Narn (well, perhaps not in comparison to
Moose, but against Miki and Corwin, burly) shouldered past, yanked the
Post-It off the door of Room 22S/2, and crumpled it. Miki, who had
never knowingly seen a non-human before (he hadn't noticed that
Azalynn was one), tried not to stare.
G'Kron was humanoid in general arrangement, with the
appropriate numbers of limbs, digits and sensory organs in the correct
configuration, but there the resemblance ended. He was tall, though
not as tall as Moose, and broad, though not as broad as Moose. His
skin was mottled in different shades of brown, and hairless; his head
was bald and vaguely wedge-shaped, with deep hollows around his eyes,
which were a red so bright they almost seemed to glow. He had a very
pointed chin. It was a face which was well-suited to indignant
scowling, which was just what it was doing now.
There was something odd, thought Miki, about seeing such a
creature dressed in blue jeans, hiking sandals, and a t-shirt
emblazoned with incomprehensible alien script.
"Narn's not pulling out?" Moose asked.
"-This- Narn isn't," G'Kron replied, almost sputtering with
annoyance. "To suggest that my education be interrupted because of
some internal political wrangling to do with this human... -organization-
which has nothing to -do- with us... This is an outrage!"
"Mm-hmm," said Moose, who was apparently accustomed to his
housemate's bursts of temper. "G'Kron, I'd like you to meet a couple
of -incoming- students, in the middle of all this mess. This is Miki
Kaoru, who's going to be rooming with me, and Dorothy Wayneright. And
this is Kate Hutchins's brother Corwin, he's helping Dorothy get
settled in."
"I'm very pleased to meet all of you," said G'Kron, who didn't
really sound it, but was so caught between seeming harried and
blustering that he didn't sound sarcastic about it either. "If you'll
excuse me, I have to write a letter to the Narn Consulate while the
vitriol is still fresh, telling them what I think of this - " He
pulled a piece of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and refreshed
his memory. " - 'purely voluntary but strongly suggested withdrawal
from an area of crisis.' Bah!"
Crumpling that paper too, he turned on his heel and stalked
into his room, slamming the door behind him.
"... Well, that was G'Kron," said Moose. "Don't worry, you'll
get used to him. He caps off like that about once a week about
something or other, but he's mostly harmless." He shook his head.
"Anyway." He led the way down the hall to the door at the end, which
had, over its 22S/4 plate, a Post-It reading "WAYNERIGHT, R.
DOROTHY". This door he opened, swung wide, and stood aside from,
allowing Dorothy to pass him and plunk the giant case she carried down
next to the bed.
The room wasn't all that big - big enough for the bed, a
dresser, and enough floor space not to seem claustrophobic, until she
put that case down and took up most of it. It had a dormered window,
a couple of odd slants to the ceiling because of the house's double
gambrel roof, and a closet, and the walls were painted in a pleasantly
neutral shade. Dorothy stood where she'd stopped to put down the case
and looked around, as ever seeming somewhat disinterested.
"So... " Moose wondered from the doorway. "What's in the
case?"
"It's a portable maintenance bay for Dorothy," said Corwin as
he put her suitcases on the bed. "Should take care of all her basic
needs - day-to-day adjustments, lubrication, minor repairs, that kind
of thing. Kate told me you're an engineering student?"
"That's right. Mostly amplification and the like, but I have
a little robotics."
"Good enough. Miki, can you give him the checkout run on the
box sometime soon? It'd be nice if there were more than one person
around who can run it in case something happens."
"I'll do that," said Miki, nodding.
"Well, Dorothy? What do you think?" asked Corwin, looking
around.
"I won't need the bed," said Dorothy.
"You should keep it anyway," Corwin advised her. "They're
handy to have around sometimes."
Dorothy looked the institution-issue wood-framed rack over
from one end to the other, turned to him, and deadpanned, "I doubt it
would support me, let alone me and someone else."
Corwin went bright red. (Behind him, so did Miki, who then
timed something.) "That's -not- what I meant," he replied. "Where'd
you get an idea like that?"
"Usenet," said Dorothy.
"Stop reading alt groups," said Corwin, annoyed.
"Ah, home sweet home," Utena declared, dropping her bags next
to the wardrobe at the foot of Morgan 412's bunk bed and then
sprawling (so much as one can sprawl on college beds) on the lower
bunk. "Be it ever so institutional... "
"So what'd you guys get for Christmas?" Azalynn asked.
Utena sat up, crossed her legs, and leaned forward to snag the
strap of the smallish black plastic case that was among her items of
baggage, while Kate did the same with the matching (slightly smaller)
case she had. The two girls shared a conspiratorial grin, then
snapped the catches open together.
"L-Lesser Maz-zinger!" Kate declared. "P-p-power ON! M-Mazin
GO!"
There was a soft, bright sound, and Lesser Mazinger rose up
from his protective prison of formed foam to brandish his mighty fists
on high.
"Wow!" said Azalynn.
"Tiny Robo!" Utena announced to her wristwatch, which seemed
to have turned into a small communication device. "It's showtime!"
"(Grr,)" said something inside her case, and then the lid was
flung open by a mighty (tiny) blow, and Tiny Robo raised himself to
action as well.
The two small robots spotted each other, and immediately leapt
into action, rushing together in the middle of the floor and locking
into a feigned clash. Azalynn sat down on the floor to watch them,
bubbling over with delight.
"These are so cool! Did your brother make them, Kate?"
"Mm-hmm," Kate replied, looking a little smug. She watched
the robots pretend to fight for a bit, then turned to her computer,
humming a little tune.
"He made me a great birthday present, too," said Utena. "Poor
guy, all those birthdays in that same week... he was just about worn
out by New Year's. Want to see?"
"Sure," said Azalynn, beaming with anticipation.
Utena got hold of her duffel bag by the strap and dragged it
up onto the bed. Grinning, she unzipped it, rummaged around inside
it, and then pulled out a long, narrow object which had been buried
within the clothes and such. Azalynn's eyes widened in surprise.
"Whoa!" she declared.
Utena grinned, turning the sword over in her hands to slip her
hand into the basket over its hilt and draw it from its scabbard.
"Oooh," said Azalynn as the blade, its steel blued as deep as the
basket, slid into view.
"Like it?" Utena asked. She rose to her feet, struck an
en-garde, and made a couple of easy cuts.
"It's beautiful! Corwin -made- it? You mean, by hand?"
"Mm-hmm," said Kate. "I w-watched him d-do p-p-part of it.
The b-basket took him a wh-h-hole d-day."
"I didn't know your brother was a swordsmith, Katie," said
Azalynn.
"Oh, C-Corwin's a l-l-lot of th-things," said Kate offhandedly
from her desk. She was deeply engrossed in what appeared to be a Web
search, the reflection of her display screen making her glasses look
like datagoggles.
"What's it -for-?" Azalynn wondered.
"Well, when I decided I needed one, I thought Saionji would
probably be coming back around sometime, still cracked," Utena
replied. "That's not a problem now, I guess, but even so... " She
shrugged. "I feel better having it."
"Gosh, you should. It's gorgeous." Azalynn got up and
stepped closer, bending to examine the rose-vine basket hilt with a
critical eye. "Look at the -detail-! It has power, too," she added.
Utena glanced at her, surprised that she could tell. Azalynn looked
up at her and smiled. "Corwin must really think you're something
special."
Utena's face went a bit pink as she replied, "Uh... yeah, I
get the impression. Don't give him a hard time about it, huh?
He's... sort of sensitive. And his little sister's friend gave him
nothing but grief about it all vacation."
Azalynn looked mildly offended. "I would never give someone a
hard time for friendship and warmth. It's a thing to be admired."
Utena chuckled. "Right, I forgot. It's part of your
religion. I'm sorry."
"It's all right. Kate, what -are- you looking up?"
"W-w-weapons laws and r-reg-gulations," Kate replied.
"L-looks like you c-c-COULD wear the Th-Thorn in p-public, Utena... if
you w-were a mem-mber of a c-campus club whose act-tivities had
s-something to d-do with s-swords."
"Huh." Utena sheathed the Thorn of the Rose and regarded it.
"Guess I'll have to join the Fencing Club or something, then."
"G-good luck," said Kate glumly.
"Why?"
"The Fencing Club belongs to Liza Broadbitch," said Azalynn,
scowling. "Professor Harris is supposed to be the faculty advisor and
all, but Liza's the captain, and Harris doesn't pay any attention.
She runs it the way she wants."
"Oh." Utena sat down on the edge of her bed and looked
gloomy. "That'll make it harder."
Elizabeth Broadbank, eldest daughter of one of New Avalon's
wealthier corporate families, was a fellow sophomore, the
vice-president of the Student Council, and at times appeared to be
Kaitlyn's personal nemesis. She was unlikely to do Kate's roommate
(who, unknown to Liza, had once impersonated her to the Boston Police
during an unauthorized adventure with the Student Council activities
van) any favors.
"Es-specially since you're n-not really a f-fencer," said
Kate. "Liza's v-very b-b-big on f-form."
"Hmph. I guess I might as well at least -ask-. The worst she
can do is say 'no'." Utena put the sword down on her bed, got up, and
collected her overcoat and hat from the back of her chair. "Do you
know where she lives?"
"Founders Hall," said Azalynn. "One of the suites, but I
don't know which one."
"T-two-oh-one," said Kate. "It's in the C-Council
h-handbook."
"Thanks," said Utena. "Maybe I can catch her before lunch.
See you there," she said, and opened the door to leave, nearly
colliding as she did so with Corwin, who was just raising his hand to
knock.
"Oops!" she said, stopping and backing up to let him in.
"Everybody settled over at Galaxy House?"
"Yep," said Corwin. "I left them talking in the living room.
Well, Moose and Miki were talking, anyway. Dorothy doesn't have much
to say yet." He grinned. "But she wasn't hiding in her room,
anyway."
"Those t-two are g-g-going to need unif-forms," said Kate, the
thought just having struck her.
"They know," Corwin told her. "Moose said he'd see to it
after lunch. They'll come up here to eat with the rest of your gang."
"Aren't you staying for lunch?" asked Utena.
"Nah, I wish I could, but I gotta get back," Corwin replied.
"I promised Hiroshi I'd be on Tomodachi tonight - I'm supposed to help
him put together one of his Christmas presents - and I have to get
Daggerdisc home for Dad before I can do that." He sighed. "Man,
this'll be so much easier when I have my own ship. Or learn how to
gate... anyway, I can't stick around, much as I'd like to."
"Oh. That's too bad. Well, c'mon, then, I'll walk you to
your car. I was just on my way to ask an enemy of a friend for a
favor."
Corwin gave her a puzzled look at that, then went to take his
leave of his sister.
"Mmmm... g-g'bye, C-Corwin," said Kate as she hugged him.
"Th-thanks... f-for everyth-thing." Then she spoke the only phrase of
Old Norse she knew, a parting she had learned from Skuld: >Walk in
glory, little brother.<
>Live with courage, elder sister,< he replied, squeezed her a
little harder, and then let her go with a kiss on the cheek. "See you
soon, though."
"Mm," said Kate, nodding with a bright smile. Corwin turned
and said it was nice seeing Azalynn again (she'd met him the previous
year, when she'd visited New Avalon during the summer), received a
pleasantry in turn, and then he and Utena went downstairs and exited
the Wedge on the Quad side. They reached the back of his car and
paused, a little awkwardly.
"Um... well... " said Corwin. "I guess I'll see you around."
"I'll be here," Utena replied. "'Til summer, anyway, unless
Kate decides to go home for C-D break."
"Well, uh... yeah. I'll be back to visit soon."
"I'll look forward to it," she said with a smile. The more
awkward he became, the more at her ease she seemed to get in
response. He smiled self-consciously and rubbed at the back of his
neck with one hand, a gesture she'd noticed he indulged in often when
he didn't quite know what to say. Now that she thought about it, it
was a habit she shared at times. She wondered if maybe he'd picked it
up from her; she'd have to ask Kate if he'd done it before.
"Thanks," he said. "Well... so long, I guess," he went on,
and stuck out his hand as if he were parting from his cousin Hiroshi.
Hiroshi didn't usually use the hand as a lever to haul him
into an embrace, though. For a second he was utterly at a loss before
instinct kicked in and told him, there's a girl hugging you, get your
arms around her and hug her back before you lose your window, fool!
This he did, and as he held her and felt dizzy, Utena repeated
the syllables Kate had used, not understanding exactly what they
meant, but trusting in context to make them appropriate. Corwin gave
her the same reply; then she let him go, whacked him cheerily on the
shoulder, and said with a grin,
"So long, Corwin! Don't be a stranger, huh?"
"Count... count on it," he said, and she turned and went away
from him with a spring in her step, pausing at the stone in the middle
of the Quad to turn back and wave. He waved back, then shook his
head, got into his car, and fired it up; then he sat there, watching
the pink smudge of her hair until it disappeared around the back of
Higgins Labs, before putting the Griffon in gear and backing out to
leave.
Above, Kate watched the car turn right and vanish around the
end of Daniels, in the other direction, and sighed. It was sweet and
all, but this had the potential to get kind of complicated...
... Ah, well, these things work themselves out or they don't.
"'S'matter, Katie?" asked Azalynn from the floor, where she
lay propped on her elbows reading Kate's new issue of Pianoforte
magazine.
"N-nothing," Kate replied. "I h-hope."
Utena returned to Morgan 412 twenty minutes later, in a
considerably poorer mood than she had left.
"What an unbelievable bitch that girl is," were the first
words out of her mouth as she entered, kicking the door shut behind
her.
"I warned you," said Azalynn.
"Do you know what she called me?" Utena demanded, tossing her
coat and hat onto her bed. "A girl I've never spoken to before in my
life! I was nice, I was pleasant, I was polite - "
"She called you a plebeian?" Azalynn guessed.
"She called me a -barbarian-!" Utena replied.
"Ooh. That's new."
"-Then- she looked over my clothes and said," (And here, Utena
adopted a fairly decent rendition of Liza Broadbank's affected
aristocratic drawl) "'You know, darling, if you really wanted to be a
man, I know a perfectly adequate clinic in Austria that shouldn't set
your parents back more than ten or twelve years' pay.'"
"Ouch!" said Azalynn; then, with a hopeful look, the
Dantrovian asked, "Did you kill her?"
"No, dammit!" Utena replied, throwing herself down in her
armchair. "I wanted to, but then I thought I'd probably get expelled
for it," she added, cracking the joke to keep from screaming or
throwing something. "God! What a hateful person." She held up her
hands, examining them, and went on, "Then she said she didn't think it
would be worth giving me a tryout, because with these indelicate
hands, there's no way I'd be more than an adequate fencer, and 'the
Worcester Preparatory Institute team is for only the very best,
darling, you understand.'" She frowned. "I don't think I have
indelicate hands."
As it often did when she looked at her left hand, Utena's gaze
went briefly to the little white scar at the base of her left ring
finger, and as it did, her expression changed from a glum frown to a
thoughtful one, and from that to look of dawning realization, and from
that to a sly grin.
"Kate," she said, lowering her right hand and continuing to
survey her left.
"Mm?"
"If we can't get into the Fencing Club," said Utena, "then why
don't we start our own?"
They unveiled it at Table 11 over lunch, having spent fifteen
minutes sketching the concept out before dashing down to catch the
tail end of the DAKA lunch window. There were a lot of parents on
campus today, dropping off their kids and grabbing a bite before
leaving again, so the food was considerably more palatable than
normal.
Moose MacEchearn looked a bit skeptical.
"... The... Institute Duelists' Society," he said.
"Yeah," Utena replied. "Listen, the only weapons-based
martial-arts club on this campus right now is the Fencing Club,
right?"
"Unl-less you c-count archery and sh-shooting as m-martial
arts," said Kaitlyn, "w-which I th-think you r-really should."
"OK, fine," Utena conceded. "But it's the only one with melee
weapons. Right?"
"Uh-huh," said Moose.
"And," Utena went on, "the Fencing Club is extremely strict
about their definition of 'fencing'. Even kendoka and the like can't
get in. European-style fencing only. And because Liza Broadbank is
running it, you also have to be in her little clique."
"For the most part," said Moose, "true."
"So," said Utena, "there's your need right there."
"But -Duelists' Society-?" Devlin Carter protested. "I don't
think it'll fly if you present it to the Deans like that, eh, what?
This isn't the kind of school where they want the students goin' round
scarrin' each other, cuttin' each other's ears off an' whatnot."
"No need for that. I know another way. At my old school we
had this system... "
"... loses the duel," she finished, and waited with a
respectful expectancy.
There was a rather long silence. President Roland Tiefeld
cleared his throat, shuffled some papers on the desk in front of him,
and then regarded her over the tops of his small oblong spectacles.
"These duels were fought with real weapons? Live steel?" he
asked her.
"That's right, yes sir," Utena replied.
"Isn't that dangerous?" asked Clarice Garwood. As the Dean of
Campus Safety and Security, she cut straight to the part of the
equation that interested her most.
"It can be," Utena admitted, "but it's the surest way of
ensuring that the duelists give it their best, and if the selection is
careful enough, no one will be unskilled enough to be in any real
danger."
She ignored the little voice in her head reminding her that
she had been unskilled enough to be in -plenty- of real danger, back
in the day.
"Hmm," said Professor Aaron Harris, faculty advisor and coach
of the Fencing Club. "I don't see the need. We already have a
perfectly fine venue for this in the Fencing Club, and -we- use safety
equipment."
"With all due respect, Professor, dueling is not fencing,"
Utena replied. "The whole point of the Duelists' Society is to create
a venue for weapons artists of all different styles and traditions to
test themselves against one another, to face diverse opponents in a
freestyle contest. Isn't diversity supposed to be one of the
Institute's cornerstones, Mr. President?"
"Mm - h'm," said the President. "She has a point, you know,
Aaron. Your fencers are all of a type; that's the nature of the
sport. What Miss Tenjou is talking about isn't so much a sport as
a... a self-betterment exercise."
"A dangerous and foolhardy one, if you ask me," said Harris.
"The administration of her old school must have been out of their mind
to permit students to attack each other with live weapons and no
safeguards."
You should have seen the -arena-, thought Utena.
"They didn't just permit it, they encouraged it," she told the
panel. "At the Academy, duelists were selected by the Deputy Chairman
of the school's Board of Trustees."
"Who will screen your members here? No one on the faculty has
the martial skill, experience, or spare time for such an endeavor,"
said Dean Garwood. Professor Harris looked a little miffed at having
been left out of the "martial skill" category, but said nothing.
"We'll do it ourselves," said Utena, "with the help of our
administrative advisor." At Garwood's skeptical look, she plunged
recklessly on, "I was the Champion Duelist of Ohtori Academy last
year. That means I defeated every other Duelist there more than once
over the course of the school year, without anyone ever getting
seriously hurt. I think I'm qualified to judge who is and isn't
duelist material."
You do?! she blurted internally as the words came out of her
mouth.
"How is it, if this school was so advanced, that none of us
have ever heard of it?" said Professor Harris pointedly.
"It was a good school," said Utena, and she steeled herself
internally for the first (and hopefully last) bald-faced lie she would
have to tell the assembled administrators: "But it was on the Outer
Rim, and... well... " She did her best to look as troubled as
possible as she went on, "... The raiders... " She shook her head and
returned to the more comfortable realm of semi-truth. "I have no home
to go back to now," she said, hanging her head.
For such an utterly untalented liar, she did a pretty decent
job with that one. President Tiefeld cleared his throat uncomfortably.
"Er, there now, Miss Tenjou," he said. "I'm sure Professor Harris
didn't mean to dredge up unpleasant memories. Certainly we accept
your word as a, a student and a gentlewoman, as to your former
situation. It's just that... well... this is all quite irregular, and
we must be sure we are't letting the Institute in for
any... problems."
"Think of the insurance," said Professor Harris. "The
parental protests."
"I'm not proposing we -force- people to be duelists," Utena
pointed out, 'pulling herself together' from her 'memories' of her
fictitious homeworld on the Rim. "Of course we'll have to get
releases from the parents involved, and explain to them exactly what
their kids will be doing, but... "
"I've heard enough," said Harris peremptorily. "Mr. President,
there's no need to continue this further. My mind is made up. My
decision is 'no'."
"You aren't the only one who gets to decide, Aaron," said
Tiefeld gently.
"Professor Harris has - " began Dean Garwood, but Utena cut her
off, rising to her feet and speaking hotly.
"The Code of the Worcester Preparatory Institute," she
declared, slapping an open palm down on her copy of the WPI Student
Handbook, "states that the purpose of this Institute is 'to promote
the intellectual growth, physical strength, and emotional well-being
of its students by challenging them to excel -in every possible facet
of sentient existence-, to -strive for greatness in all that they do-,
and to -take control of their destinies to the fullest extent
possible-.' Are those just words, or do they mean something to this
board?" she inquired, leaning forward with her hands on the table.
"We -realize- that our request is an exceptional one - but we
are exceptional individuals. This school is supposed to be here to
train the leaders of tomorrow. Well, judging by current events, that
tomorrow is likely to be a difficult and dangerous time. How can we
be expected to shoulder that responsibility if we're protected from
the danger of striving to be our best?"
President Tiefeld gazed across the boardroom at the
impassioned face of this unusual student, looked her square in the
eyes, and smiled, ever so slightly.
"Miss Tenjou," he said, "you raise an excellent point. Dean
Garwood, Professor Harris and I will need to discuss your proposal
privately for a few minutes. If you could wait outside? We'll send
for you when we've reached a decision."
Utena straightened, squared herself, and bowed stiffly, then
collected her things.
"Thank you, Mr. President," she said, then turned smartly and
marched out.
The instant the doors closed behind her, she sagged back
against them and slid down, her knees giving way, to sit on the floor
and get a good start on hyperventilating.
"Wow, Utena," said Miki from one of the straight-backed
chairs along the wall next to the doors.
"We could hear you clear out here," Azalynn added. "What a
speech! I don't think anybody's ever quoted the Code at an
Administrative Review Panel before."
"Especially not one with Cast-Iron Garwood on it," said Moose.
"D-do you n-need a b-bag or s-something?" asked Kate,
concerned.
"No... no, I'm fine," said Utena. She picked herself up and
went to the empty chair next to Kate. "I'm fine. Harris just made me
so -mad-... when I get mad, sometimes I do crazy things."
Saionji laughed. Utena glanced sharply at him, then smiled.
It was a little surreal, Saionji being here, Saionji being able to
laugh at his own expense. Three days had gone by, it was Monday
afternoon, and she still hadn't quite gotten over what had passed
between them Friday night.
/--
It was 8:30, and Kaitlyn was at her piano, fooling around with
a ragtime piece she'd thrown together for a lark on the flight back
from Zeta Cygni. Utena lounged in her armchair, still working on the
Great Book of Amber and missing the little warm weight of Nall, Corwin
Ravenhair's flying-cat companion who claimed to be a dragon, in her
lap, where he'd spent the bulk of her reading time during her sojourn
in New Avalon. Because of the piano, they almost didn't hear the
knock at the door, but the second time it came it was loud enough for
them to notice and stop what they were doing to attend to it. Kate
got up, covered the keys, switched off the acoustic dampers, and
opened the door while Utena craned around in her chair to see who was
visiting.
"Oh," said Kate. "I-i-it's y-y-y-you."
"You needn't sound so thrilled," said Kyouichi Saionji dryly.
"May I come in? I'll only be a moment."
Kate looked a bit ambivalent, but she let him in anyway, and
went to stand by the piano, her left hand unobtrusively taking up her
zatoichi from where it had been leaning against the wall next to the
instrument. Utena got up from her chair, darting a glance at the
Thorn of the Rose, which hung by the swordbelt from the corner post of
Kate's top bunk.
"I have a thing to say to you as well, Miss Hutchins," said
Saionji formally, "but my business with Miss Tenjou is more overdue,
if you don't mind."
Kaitlyn nodded, wary but not hostile, and he nodded in return
by way of thanks before turning to Utena. He regarded her calmly for
a moment; then one corner of his mouth quirked, just barely, into the
faintest hint of a smile, and he drew the tachi from his side. Utena
jumped a couple of feet back, braced herself, and made ready to lunge
for her own weapon, wondering if Kate would be willing to attack him
from behind to stop him from reaching her. Inwardly, she cursed
Azalynn. Feeling much better, my ass!
Then Saionji did something that startled Utena almost as much
as she had ever been surprised in her life.
He dropped to one knee, bowed his head, and laid his sword at
her feet.
"Utena Tenjou," he said, his voice quiet and even, "I salute
you."
Utena stared down at him in utter astonishment. Behind him,
Kate slowly returned the twelve or so inches of her zatoichi she'd
drawn back to the scabbard.
"You -what-?!"
He looked up at her, brushed a bit of his long, disordered
green hair out of his eyes, and repeated, "I salute you, Utena Tenjou.
You have remained true to the ideals that you hold dear. You
triumphed over the cynicism, the bitter megalomania, of Akio Ohtori,
and were not perverted by him." He lowered his eyes again and
continued in a dark murmur, "Unlike me. I was weak. I failed to be
true to myself. I let myself become cruel and stupid, and abused the
people that I loved." He shook his head, and tears spattered his
clenched fists. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry... "
Utena blinked at him. "Saionji... " she whispered, shocked.
"My memory is still a bit disjointed," Saionji went on, "but I
remember some important things. One is that I owe you an apology.
Another is that I owe the Rose Bride a great deal more." He looked
back up at her, that faint hint of a smile toying with his mouth
again, and said, "I thought I'd start with the easier one first."
Utena couldn't help it. At the wryness in his voice and the
tiny trace of humor on his face, she had to crack a smile. Dropping
down to a catcher's crouch to be at eye level with him, she said
soberly,
"I won't lie. There was a time when I'd have thrown your
apology in your face and told you to choke on it... but... here, now,
today... " She gestured around to the room, and, in a more
metaphorical sense, her life as it now was, and nodded. "I can accept
it." At the look of hope that stole onto his long face, she raised a
cautionary finger and went on, "But only for me, mind you! Himemiya,
you'll have to come to your own terms with. I won't speak for her."
Saionji nodded. "I understand. And in that regard, I... "
He paused as if gathering courage, then plunged on, "I have a favor to
ask of you."
Utena gave him a look that managed to combine puzzlement,
slight apprehension, and a cue to go on.
"When you find Anthy - for I have no doubt you will - will you
tell her that I'm sorry? That I curse myself for the weakness and
stupidity that led me to mistreat her? Will you tell her... " He
paused, shedding a couple more tears, and looked Utena full in the
face with a look of raw regret. "... Will you tell her that, however
mad I was, however warped it was by that madness, the love I had for
her was real? Whatever else you think of me, you must believe that."
Utena didn't know what to say; she looked back at him for
several seconds, completely at a loss, before bowing her head and
putting a hand on his shoulder.
"When I find her... " she said finally, slowly, picking her
words with care, "... when I find her... you can tell her all that
yourself, because if she'll come, I'm bringing her back here." She
raised that admonishing finger again, only half-serious, and added
briskly, "But don't you let that give you any ideas!"
He half-smiled, even half-laughed, caught between remorse,
surprise, disbelief and pleasure. "I have none," he told her, still
half-smiling, but entirely serious. "You are the winner of the
Tournament. You are the Prince of the Tenth World. The Rose Bride is
yours." He chuckled wryly. "I understand now that she would be
anyway, Tournament or no Tournament."
Utena sat back on her heels and regarded him, shaking her head
in wonder. "Man. What did Azalynn -do- to you?"
"It's not what she did," said Saionji, "it's what she UNdid.
She made me remember that my purpose - the purpose of the whole
Tournament - was perverted, and only you saw the truth." He raised
his left hand to show her the duelist's signet he wore - his original
one, which he'd put back on before setting off on his misguided but
well-intentioned trek to find the missing Rose Bride. "As an Ohtori
Academy Duelist, it is my sworn duty to support you, Prince Tenjou."
"Stop that," she said. "I'm -not- the Prince, Saionji. When
it came right down to the end, I couldn't do it. That's why I'm
here. In the end, I failed."
Saionji shook his head. "No. You may not have succeeded in
the way you expected, but you succeeded all the same. Ohtori wouldn't
be so scared if you'd failed completely."
"Scared?"
He told her about the last meeting; when he'd finished she sat
back a little farther still, then settled cross-legged to think it
over.
"That miserable son of a bitch," she said. "And now he's got
Touga and Nanami hunting her."
"Touga isn't hunting her, he's hunting you," said Saionji.
"If he finds Anthy alone, and she convinces him she doesn't know where
you are, my guess is he'll ignore her and keep looking for you. He
might even help her in her search, in hopes that she'll lead him to
you. As for Nanami... do you really think she's clever enough to
track an -elephant-, let alone Anthy?"
"She's smarter than you give her credit for," Utena told him.
"But I think you're probably right - Himemiya can handle her.
Nanami's afraid of her. I'm not sure why, but she is."
"That will be useful," Saionji agreed. "At any rate, there's
more to Anthy than Nanami -or- Touga realize, and now that she's
outside the strictures of the Tournament, she'll be free to use
whatever means she has to stay that way." Saionji smiled a little.
"I'd almost like to see Touga's face if he does find her. Even when
he was engaged to her, he never had the slightest idea what she was
really capable of."
Utena shrugged, looking a little sheepish. "Neither did I,
for most of the time."
"No, nor I," said Saionji, "but hindsight is a powerful tool,
and Touga lacks it. He sees only his next goal, his next conquest."
"Yeah, I hear -that-." Pause. "Y'know," said Utena, "it's
kind of -creepy- being on the same wavelength with you."
Saionji smiled a little more. Utena picked up his sword, got
to her feet, and extended a hand to pull him up, then handed back the
blade.
"Welcome back to the human race, Saionji."
"It's good to be back, Prince Tenjou," he replied as he put it
away.
"Will you -please- not call me that?"
He smirked a little. "All right, Tenjou, I won't," he said,
in a parody of his old chilly sneer.
Utena smiled. "That's better."
Sobering, he bowed to her again. "The hour grows late. I
must conclude my business here and leave you to your reading. Thank
you for listening to me." Then he smiled a little smile once again.
"Will you be stopping by for breakfast?"
"It seems likely," she said with a grin.
"Then I'll see you in the Grille," said Saionji, and he turned
and crossed to Kate, who had stood by her piano in a polite silence
throughout their little tete-a-tete in the middle of the room.
"Miss Hutchins," he said, bowing, "I salute you as well. You
are a woman of great courage, tenacity, loyalty, and skill. You are
in all ways admirable. You humbled me when I sorely needed humbling.
I am in your debt, and I apologize for being such an unmitigated ass
at our first meeting."
"I-I u-unders... un-nders-stand y-y-you w-weren't w-w-w-well,"
said Kate.
"That is true, but no excuse," Saionji insisted. "Please,
accept my apology."
Kate cracked a little smile. "I-if Ut-t-tena c-c-can
f-forg-g-give you... " She made an eloquent shrug.
"Then you accept?"
She nodded. "I d-d-do."
"Then please," he said, and knelt before her, "accept me as
your student."
Kate took a half-step back and looked at him as though he were
totally mad. "W-what?!"
"Your technique has inspired me," said Saionji fervently, "and
my own has become hopelessly disordered by all that I've been through,
all the bad choices I've made. I must start again, with a master who
can rebuild my shattered art into something worthwhile. Having tasted
defeat at your hands, I think that master is you."
"Um... th-that's v-v-v-very f-f-flat... f-flat...
f-f-flat-t-tering," said Kate, a bit uneasily, "b-b-but I, I-I'm
o-only a j-j-jour... j-journ... " She sighed and gestured to Utena,
who nodded and took over.
"Kate's got a speech impediment that gets really bad when
she's talking to strangers and weirdos like you," she told Saionji.
"Anyway, she's flattered, but she's not a master, she's only a
journeywoman. She's not qualified to take a student. And while I'm
giving you a hassle, could you have been any less subtle about it?"
Saionji replied a little huffily, "I'm not declaring suit, I'm
asking for guidance. At any rate, I understand." He rose to his feet
and addressed Kate. "When you are, please remember this day. I will
be waiting, and in the meantime I will try to demonstrate my worth."
Kate gave him a long, rather dubious look, then said, "W-well,
O-k-k-k-K... b-b-but d-d-don't g-get all f-f-f-freaky o-on m-m-me."
He looked puzzled. "'Freaky'?"
"Really, Saionji," said Utena, coming over from her bed to
usher him toward the door. "The last thing she needs is you stalking
her like some kind of creepy fanboy. Next thing you'll be cornering
her in the gym and foisting an exchange diary on her."
"I - how did you know about that?" he demanded, then shook
his head. "Never mind. Another time. Miss Hutchins, I won't harass
you," he promised. "I just ask that you remember my wish, and give it
consideration when the time is right."
Kate nodded. "I-I'll d-do th-th-that," she assured him.
"Th-thanks f-for c-c-coming b-b-b-by."
"OK, g'wan," said Utena. "You don't have to go home, but you
can't stay here."
Saionji smiled as he allowed himself to be shoved outside.
"I'll see you tomorrow, then," he said.
--/
The boardroom door opened and President Tiefeld's secretary
poked her head out. "Miss Tenjou? The Panel is ready for you."
Utena stood up, straightened her jacket, nodded to the others,
and followed her in.
"Sit down, Miss Tenjou," said the President. As she sat,
Utena tried to gauge the administrators' faces. Harris looked sour,
but that wasn't much of an indication of anything. Dean Garwood looked
a bit concerned, but that wasn't much of an indication either. The
President looked mild and pleasant. Ditto. She sighed inwardly and
forced herself to wait quietly.
"We've reviewed your petition, and taken your eloquent remarks
into account," said President Tiefeld, "and we find that there is
merit in what you propose."
Utena's heart jumped. They -went- for it?
"However," said Tiefeld, and her heart sank again. Damn!
There's always a however.
"However," the President repeated, "and though we take you at
your word that you were the champion of the similar organization which
you report existed at your last school, the fact remains that we have
no way of knowing what the overall ability level at that school was,
with relation to this dueling activity."
"There are three of us from Ohtori Academy here now," said
Utena. "Myself, Kyouichi Saionji, and Miki Kaoru. Both of them were
members of the Student Council."
"Indeed, indeed. That is, eh, very interesting, yes - but I'm
afraid it's a bit beside the point. Before we approve the charter for
your organization and entrust you and your fellows with the
responsibility of carrying out the dueling activity you've described,
we feel it necessary to gauge your ability against a known quantity.
To that end, Professor Harris has suggested that you fight a duel, in
the format you propose, against Miss Elizabeth Broadbank, the captain
of the Fencing Club, a young woman whose ability is well-known to us."
"And if I win, the Duelists' Society gets its charter?" Utena
inquired.
"Eh, well, win or lose, that's not really the point," said the
President. "We merely wish to observe you in action - to see if, eh,
that is - "
"To see if you're as good as you boast of being," said Harris
with a faint sneer.
It was as good as a direct challenge. Utena rose to her feet,
her heart pounding, blood heating up with the old call to action.
"If you can convince her to face me on Duelist's terms," she
told them flatly, "I'll take her on, anywhere, anytime."
"I spoke with her about it during the recess," Harris
replied. "She's quite eager to sample your freestyle experiment.
She's a bit worried that she'll hurt you, of course, but if you've no
objection, she'll take the risk."
Utena smiled coolly. "That's very kind of her," she said.
The duel was set for Saturday morning, to be conducted
according to the format set forth in the Duelists' Society's proposed
charter. It would be held on the football field behind Morgan Hall,
so that there would be ample room for the fighters to maneuver without
endangering those who gathered to watch. Live weapons of the
combatants' choice would be used. Word spread quickly around campus.
Betting began almost immediately, the odds being posted and frequently
updated on the wpi.students newsgroup. Utena was the dark horse,
hovering at around twenty to one; even Liza Broadbank's detractors had
to admit that the girl knew what to do with a sword, and Utena was an
unknown in that regard.
The first week of C term passed, then, in an atmosphere of
nervous tension. Utena herself didn't seem all that nervous, nor did
Kate, but Azalynn became more and more fidgety as the week went on,
Devlin's laugh got higher and higher-pitched, and Amanda got grimmer.
Saionji was the picture of serenity. Miki was a little worried, but
kept it well-hidden. Moose took it all with the same equanimity that
marked his every interaction with the world. And Dorothy... well,
Dorothy was Dorothy.
In that first week, Liza and her cronies were too busy
preparing, and acting unconcerned, and such-like to bother with much
of anything else. It was a welcome reprieve for her enemies to have a
week of Liza too preoccupied to harass them. Utena's overall
popularity increased by a few points just on account of that, though
the effect was balanced somewhat by the exaggerated cold-shouldering
she was receiving from the Fencing Club and others of Liza's hifalutin
circle.
On Saturday morning, then, they gathered on the edges of the
track-ringed football field (which was kept clear of snow and ice in
wintertime by the concerted efforts of the Plant Services grounds crew
and some fairly high technology). On one side, the IBGF, which was
for the most part the prospective membership of the Duelists' Society,
stood in a close little knot, bundled up against the morning's chill.
On the other, the Fencing Club tried to look aloof, awesome and
remote, and for the most part succeeded only in looking cold. Claudia
Montaigne, the Duelists' Society's prospective admin advisor, stood
with the rest of the Society's would-be membership. The three members
of the Advisory Panel sat alone, up in the bleachers on the fifty-yard
line.
Up on the embankment which separated the track and field
complex from the higher-elevated campus around Morgan Hall, students
crowded against the fence. No spectators other than the involved
parties were allowed within the complex for this experimental duel.
The rules for student spectation of later duels, should the Society
get its charter, would have to be worked out in due time.
A tall, slender figure with a lot of blonde curls detached
herself from the Fencing Club and walked with an easy stride out to the
center of the field. She was dressed in a fencer's costume, minus the
mask and shielding pads - essentially a gray jumpsuit, tailored for
ease of movement - and carried a rapier lightly in her right hand.
Liza Broadbank stopped at the edge of the field's center circle and
waited, looking bored.
"Well?" she asked the administrators in the stands, her voice
raised just enough to carry to all present. "Where are they?" She
turned to face the Society. "Backing out?"
/* J.A. Seazer "Zettai Unmei Mokushiroku"
_Shoujo Kakumei Utena: Zettai Shinka Kakumei Zenya_ */
Suddenly, the crowd at the fence parted, its excited murmur of
conversation shifting into something more immediate and urgent. Two
figures came through the gap, up to the gate, marching side by side
and ignoring the catcalls (from Liza's supporters) and cheers (from
their own) equally. One was Utena Tenjou, dressed despite the cold in
the uniform she had always worn for dueling, the black and scarlet of
Ohtori Academy, with the Thorn of the Rose slung at her right hip.
The other was Kaitlyn Hutchins, wearing her winterweight WPI uniform
of black leggings, charcoal gray skirt and sweater vest, white shirt,
red neckerchief and long black overcoat. Students weren't required to
wear their uniforms on the weekends, but Kate was taking this occasion
just as seriously as the rest of them - for the whole Federation had
turned up in uniform.
Utena went to the gate and thrust it boldly open, barely
breaking stride as she passed through it; Kaitlyn followed without
looking back. The spring mechanism in the hinges slammed it shut
again before anyone could follow them.
The two girls from Morgan 412 descended the concrete stairs to
the track level at a steady walk, still eerily in step, and crossed
to the center, stopping opposite Liza on the far side of the center
circle. There, they turned and acknowledged the administrators, then
faced the Fencing Club's captain again.
Utena stood impassive, just looking at her opponent. Kaitlyn,
Liza noticed, carried a pair of roses in her overcoat's top pocket,
one yellow, the other white. She crossed the circle, removed the
yellow rose from her pocket, and fixed it to the spot on Liza's
fencing tunic where a breast pocket would have been with a small pin.
"Quaint," said Liza disdainfully.
Kaitlyn gave her a dry little smile and turned, crossing to
Utena. She fixed the white rose into her roommate's top pocket, then
stepped back so that she was equidistant between them.
"Th-the r-rules are s-s-simple," she said. "L-lose your
r-rose - l-lose the d-duel."
Liza yawned daintily. "Kaitlyn, darling, I don't think the
stakes of this little contest are high enough to really pique my
interest."
"It's a l-l-little l-late for th-that, L-Liza," said Kate.
"Don't be that way," said Liza, a little poutily. "Would you
object to a little side wager? Just to make things a little more
interesting? I mean, it's all so dreadfully -plain- as it stands.
You get your little club, or you don't - who really cares?" Smirking,
the blonde tossed her curls, indicating the audience massed at the
fence. "I'd rather give the public a -real- show."
"What did you have in mind?" asked Utena coldly.
"Oh, I don't know," said Liza. "Let's see. Oh, -I- know!
How about this, Katie darling? When I beat your pet ogre - " (Kaitlyn
noticed that the little muscle just outboard of Utena's right eye had
started to twitch; other than that, the pink-haired duelist remained
impassive) " - why don't you resign your seat on the Student Council?"
Liza blinked as if a realization had just struck her. "Oh, wait... if
you did that, you would have to give up your band office, wouldn't
you? And if you weren't involved with that any longer, then there
really wouldn't be any point in staying at the Institute, would there?
But then, a fragile, sensitive girl like you really should stay close
to her daddy anyway, I've always thought. I'm sure Koopman Memorial
has a band... "
Kate stared coolly at Liza for a few seconds.
"Y-you d-d-don't g-get to c-call me K-Katie, -Beth-," she said
flatly, making a shadow cross Broadbank's too-regular features.
"Y-you w-want me to l-l-leave so b-badly?" She smiled icily. "I
g-g-guess I m-must be d-doing something r-right."
Then she turned on her heel, exchanged single sharp nods with
Utena, and left the field to join the rest of the Federation on the
sidelines.
"She's so much fun to tease. No sense of humor," said Liza,
but it was obvious to both the combatants who had won -that- round.
Utena said nothing; she merely took a half-step back, dropped
her left hand to her side, and drew. The Thorn of the Rose glided
from its scabbard without a sound, its blue-steel blade glinting in
the hard January sunshine.
"Now where did a creature like you get a blade like that?"
Liza wondered, striking her own en-garde. Her sword was a swept-hilt
rapier, edgeless and agile - narrower and longer than the Thorn, which
was a cut-and-thrust blade. Liza's stance was that of the classic
Western fencer, left hand upraised with elbow bent, sword presented in
a low, almost lazy grip. Utena didn't mind that. She'd faced the
type before.
She didn't reply to Liza's question. Let the bitch wonder.
"Oh, well. Maybe a beating will loosen your tongue," said
Liza, and she surged forward in a smooth opening strike.
/* Bad Religion "You've Got a Chance" _The New America_ */
It struck Utena at that exact moment that this was the first
real fight she'd been in since leaving Cephiro, the first time she'd
crossed real steel with anybody since Akio... the first time she'd
-ever- fought without Anthy Himemiya looking on. The thought gave her
an instant's pause, very poorly timed, and nearly ended the duel
before it began. She slipped Liza's strike with millimeters to spare,
stumbling backward in an ungainly, duckfooted kind of way as she
wrestled her consciousness back into consideration of the matter at
hand, and Liza's high, clear laugh rang across the field.
"This is going to be -very- short if you don't even pay
attention, darling," Liza declared merrily, spinning to face Utena's
new position and leveling her blade again.
Utena snarled, dug in her heels, steadied up, and launched
herself. She still didn't quite have her rhythm back, even after two
weeks of training with Kate. Everything she did, as she and Liza
clashed back and forth across the field for the next minute or so,
felt slightly but completely wrong. Liza could sense it, too; Utena
could tell, she could -feel- the taller girl's amusement building.
She's good, Utena admitted to herself as she parried another
arrow-shot lunge, knocking the rapier's point up to pass over her
shoulder. The edgeless blade of the thrusting sword scraped along the
rose-vine basket of the Thorn; it wouldn't have cut her fingers, but
having it scrape across her knuckles sure wouldn't have been any fun.
Utena twisted her wrist, forced the rapier away and down, then
used a trick she'd learned from Kaitlyn's father: she rocked back and
kicked Liza squarely in the stomach, sending the blonde tumbling away.
A gasp rose from the Fencing Club and the assembled audience. Liza
rolled to her knees, coughing, then staggered to her feet and backed
away; when she had her breath back, she drew it and shouted,
"Foul!"
Utena's lips peeled back from her teeth in a rather nasty
grin. "Don't be an idiot, Liza!" she cried. "Didn't you pay
attention to Kate? There's -one rule- here. Lose your rose, lose the
duel. That's -it-! There -are- no fouls. Only a winner and a
loser."
Liza's light-blue eyes crystallized, changing instantly from
put-on anguish for the administrators to cold hatred for her opponent.
"In that case," she said in a hissing undertone that couldn't
carry to the stands, "the loser is definitely you." Still hissing,
the enraged fencer sprang.
-This- was more what Utena was used to. Liza was apparently
quite willing to discard the Marquess of Queensbury rules, now that
she actually understood the Code. Her style became a little less
formal, a little less regimented, and she started throwing in little
contact variations of her own. Liza Broadbank had very pointy elbows
and showed a willingness to use them, but that was all right.
Gryphon-sensei had shown Utena what to do about elbows. The next time
Liza angled one for her head, Utena interposed the Thorn's basket.
That discouraged the blonde from being so eager to use that particular
weapon, and made a rather pleasing CLANG noise, to boot.
They scrabbled across the Omniturf for another minute this
way, making no sounds except for the ring and scrape of their weapons,
the shuffle of their feet on the plastic grass, and the hiss of their
breathing. The onlookers were silent, awestruck by the fury and power
both young women were putting into their battle now that both were
getting their blood up and hitting their strides.
She's good, Utena repeated to herself as she parried a thrust
and missed with her riposte. She's very good.
But I've beaten better.
Not here, though. Not like this. I was so unwilling to fight
in the old days; I wanted to give up the tournament a dozen times, and
kept coming back because Himemiya needed me. And here I am fighting a
duel that doesn't have anything at all to do with her. What -am- I
fighting for? Bragging rights? The kind of stupid glory I thought
the others were in it for, before I knew the truth? Kate's
friendship? She'd still be my friend if I didn't want to do this.
Battle doesn't define the relationship between us.
Does that mean it -does- define the relationship between
Himemiya and me?
What -is- the relationship between Himemiya and me? Juri made
a suggestion once, but there was never time -
POW!
Utena skidded a dozen feet or so across the frigid Omniturf,
the side of her jaw smarting, her ill-timed train of thought
completely shattered. Instinctively, she did as she had done
in Gryphon's dojo, throwing her feet up and over, flipping back
upright and raising her blade just in time for Liza's to crash against
it and skid, with a burst of orange sparks, across the edge. The
point of the rapier barely nicked the edge of Utena's left ear; she
felt the sharp, stinging pain and, a few seconds later, the warm
stickiness of blood on the side of her neck.
Turnabout's fair play, she thought, and elbowed Liza in the
smirk before the blonde could get off another gibe about paying
attention. Liza tumbled, came up spitting mad, and launched herself,
screaming. Utena set herself, lowering the Thorn of the Rose to meet
her. Scarlet fire danced along the runic inscription on the sides of
the blade, gleamed from the rose-cut gemstone in the pommel. Time
stretched, suspending the furious fencer in mid-air. Utena could feel
energy rippling up her arms from the enchanted blade, feel something
inside her respond with a familiar growing heat.
Here it comes, thought Utena, and right on schedule there came
that sweet, breaking surge of... something... that always heralded the
end. She exploded into motion, meeting Liza's charge with her own,
and the air was filled momentarily with fluttering scraps of yellow,
vivid against the gray overcast and dead green turf.
Utena landed, turned, cocked the Thorn's scabbard, and slid
the blade home in one smooth movement, her face perfectly composed.
Liza Broadbank stumbled forward three steps from where she
lit, dropped her rapier, and fell to her hands and knees, absolutely
dumbstruck.
The more perceptive members of the assembled spectators
wondered where the epaulets, petticoat and chain on Tenjou's uniform
had come from.
She turned to face the assembled administrators and said, "You
see now what I mean about it taking a duelist to recognize a duelist."
"I do indeed," said President Tiefeld, a twinkle in his eyes.
He turned to Dean Garwood. "Well, Clarice?"
Garwood surveyed the scene thoughtfully.
"Our regular insurance would never cover it," she said, and
Professor Harris was opening his mouth to make some comment when she
added, "but as the Society's charter calls for it to underwrite itself
for indemnity purposes, I don't see any grounds for objection on that
account."
"Where are they supposed to get the money for -that-?" Harris
demanded. "Not out of the Student Activities budget - the whole
budget wouldn't begin to - "
"A benefactor has already stepped forward for that, Aaron,"
said Tiefeld mildly. "We need not worry ourselves. Well, then. If
Clarice has no further points to make?"
"No, Mr. President. I'm satisfied."
"Then I - "
"Well, -I- have," Harris blurted, nearly frantic with anger.
"I can't believe you're considering sanctioning this... this barbaric
display. Kicking! -Punching-! It's nothing more than bloodsport!"
"The Karate Club spend all their time kicking and punching one
another, Aaron," Tiefeld pointed out with patient calm. "I don't see
you objecting to -their- existence."
Harris sputtered for a moment longer, then drew together his
shattered dignity and rose to his feet.
"I refuse to participate in this farce any longer. If you
choose to approve the charter this bunch of miscreants put in front of
you, on -your- head be it! I'll have nothing to do with it."
So saying, the tall, lean professor whirled and stalked away,
his hair-beads rattling with his annoyed, jerky gait.
"... Well. It appears Professor Harris has resigned from the
panel," said Tiefeld with an air of mild, feigned surprise. "I
suppose he'll need to be replaced before the next Quarterly. Perhaps
Dean Montaigne would be interested in his seat. At any rate, Miss
Tenjou, your petition has been approved by the remaining two-thirds,
which, if you remember your math classes, is a majority.
Congratulations." He stood up, brushed down the skirts of his
overcoat, and polished his pebble glasses before turning a benificent
smile on her.
Utena bowed as deeply as she could. "Thank you,
Mr. President," she said.
Tiefeld nodded pleasantly, offered Dean Garwood his arm, and
smiled his way up the stairs, through the gate, and out of sight amid
the disbanding crowd of spectators.
The Duelists' Society rushed across the field to engulf their
victorious champion in the sort of mob that usually descends on the
pitcher's mound at the end of a hard-won game of baseball. The
Fencing Club, meanwhile, surrounded their fallen leader with something
like mournful solicitude - all but one of them, who held himself aloof
from the rest of the Club, waited for the Duelists to leave the field,
and then followed them.
They were crammed into Wedge Bench Number One, the extra-large
one next to the entrance to Mini-DAKA. Everyone seemed to be talking
at once, reliving one exciting moment or another of the duel, until
finally Kaitlyn got them settled down.
"OK," she said. "W-we're a ch-chartered c-campus club with an
a-adm-min advisor and everyth-thing. We've g-got a p-place to meet -
Alden H-Hall - and a l-little p-p-piece of the s-student act-tivities
b-budget."
"And an enemy in Professor Harris," Azalynn mused, "but he's a
big jerk anyway."
"T-true," said Kate.
"And, thanks to Saionji, we've got an emblem," said Utena.
She gestured to Saionji, who obligingly displayed his ring.
"The Rose Signet was the seal of the duelists at our old
school," he explained. "Those who wore it were chosen for greatness."
"W-we'll w-w-wear it here," said Kaitlyn with a smiling glance
at Utena, "b-bec-cause we ch-choose -ourselves- for g-greatness."
"So, everybody," said Utena, "give Miki your ring size so he
can order yours."
"Why me?" Miki asked.
"All in favor of Miki being Society Secretary?"
"Aye!"
"... Oh."
As they all shared in a laugh, the Fencing Club member who had
followed them to the Wedge from the battlefield saw an opportunity to
enter the conversation and stepped up to the booth, drawing immediate
attention by his appearance.
"A word with you, if I might, Miss Tenjou," he said. Utena
blinked, taken slightly aback. She still wasn't quite used to the
more obvious sorts of non-humans one tended to see in this world, and
this fellow definitely qualified.
He was about her own height, lean and wiry, and more or less
humanoid - but with an emphasis on "less", for he had leathery skin
the color of a spirit-lamp flame, claws, a thick, mobile tail, and a
head like a pteranodon's, complete with a rudder-like crest that was
colored like a sunburst. His black eyes (which, disconcertingly, had
reds instead of whites) glittered with what, on a human face, would
probably have been delight, and the corners of his long, narrow mouth
were turned up in what would have been a human smile, but that didn't
necessarily mean anything.
"Um... I'm sorry, I don't think I know you," said Utena,
rising.
"Of course. Forgive me." The creature bowed, a sweeping,
Western-style bow with his arm crossed over his chest, and
straightened. "T'skaia Vorokoshiga'ar Ixtixtaaqitl't'chl'Vraihelt
Ishkarat, at your service. If you like, you may call me 'Sky'."
"Oh... well, I'm pleased to meet you, Sky," said Utena.
"What's on your mind?"
"You," Sky replied bluntly. At her consternated look, he went
on in an expansive tone, "You, Miss Tenjou, are the most remarkable,
the most delightful, the most -magnificent- mammal it has ever been my
pleasure to observe! You have such strength - such passion - such
furious, reckless, abandoned courage! You -embody- jik'harra. I
found your performance just now to be the most inspirational thing
I've witnessed since I left my beloved Barsaive. If you were a
t'skrang I would ask you to make me your mate. Since you're not," he
added with a grin that showed a multitude of needle-sharp teeth, while
giving the floor behind him a solid thump with his powerful tail,
"I'll have to settle for asking if I may join your club, that I may
have the honor of crossing steel with you myself one day."
Utena blinked again.
"Er... Well... We haven't finished electing officers or
anything yet, so I don't know what we're going to do about new
members." She cracked a wry smile. "Got any references?"
"I live in Galaxy House," said the grinning t'skrang. "You
will find several of your fellows know me fairly well by now." So
saying, he threw his arm around Miki Kaoru's shoulders and gave him a
ruffling. "A week sharing house with T'skaia Vorokoshiga'ar
Ixtixtaaqitl't'chl'Vraihelt Ishkarat is like a lifetime of friendship
with anyone else, eh, Miki?"
"Liza won't be very happy about this," said Moose in a tone of
voice that indicated he didn't find that prospect unappealing. Sky
thumped the floor with his tail again - apparently it was the t'skrang
equivalent of a loud laugh.
"I suppose she won't," Sky replied, "but that's her problem.
Her title in the Fencing Club may be 'captain', but that doesn't mean
she sails -my- riverboat."
The metaphor rather eluded most of the Duelists, but they took
him to mean he wasn't worried about it, and, pleased with themselves,
the fledgling club adjourned to Ping's Garden for a celebratory lunch,
taking along their very first non-charter member.
On Monday afternoon, G'Kron stormed into 22S/2, steaming mad.
The door slammed behind him, rocking a drinking cup balanced
precariously on one corner of the common desk; it fell, and his new
roommate, Harcourt McKenzie, grabbed it in midair and replaced it
before a drop was spilled. With his other hand he continued
highlighting passages in his physics textbook, not noting in the
slightest that his new roommate was about to go on the seventh tirade
in their nine days of cohabitation.
"Can you BELIEVE this?" G'Kron slapped the Monday edition of
the Institute Hill Beacon. This august publication was billed as
WPI's 'alternative' daily, which essentially meant it was a mouthpiece
for Liza Broadbank's clique - the official school paper, Newspeak,
having managed to retain some level of journalistic integrity despite
its unfortunate name.
G'Kron blustered onward, "Now, I held my peace when I first
heard of Broadbank's insults to Miss Hutchins - " (he hadn't) " - and
I remained calm and composed when I read the insults laid upon Miss
Hutchins's roommate - " (he definitely hadn't) " - but when those
slanderous worms expand their mudslinging to include occupants of this
very household, I CANNOT REMAIN SILENT!" (He never could.)
G'Kron paused for the expected inquiry from his audience of
one; when it failed to materialize, he gathered himself and continued,
"On today's so-called Opinions and Viewpoints page of the Beacon, some
'anonymous contributor' has called into question Mister Kaoru's
relationship to Miss Tenjou, accusing both of undermining the spirit
of the school and, indeed, seeking to destroy the institutions which
made Worcester Preparatory Institute great! I ask you," G'Kron paused
in his pacing and gesturing to face Mac, who hadn't lifted his face
from the physics text, "is this not a textbook case of what you humans
say is 'the pot calling the kettle black'? It is a fine, FINE day
that dawns upon this school when a newspaper with not a single
nonhuman on its staff accuses ANYONE of promoting cliquism and
opposing diversity!!"
The script in G'Kron's mind called for the audience to make
some sort of agreeing noise here, and he waited several seconds for
it. Mac, never having read the script, missed his cue cleanly.
G'Kron finally took a deep breath and continued, "Well, I for one will
not stand for this hypocritical calumny! Tonight is the meeting of the
school Offworlder Society, and I shall move that we stage a protest
against the Beacon! Perhaps even a boycott! We shall show those
slanderous creatures that they cannot get away with spreading lies
against good, upstanding sapients!"
G'Kron's internal script now called for applause and
agreement, and for several seconds he listened for it over the
squeeking sound of Mac's highlighter on the textbook page. Finally,
G'Kron walked over to Mac and shouted, "Don't you have ANYTHING to say
about this?"
"Yeah," Mac muttered, picking up a small scrap of paper and
holding it over his shoulder to G'Kron, "Moose says it's your turn to
buy toilet paper. Here's the shopping list." The paper vanished from
his fingers, G'Kron snatching it away and staring angrily at it.
"Shopping?" G'Kron (apparently) couldn't believe his ears.
"SHOPPING?! The reputations of Galaxy House, the Federation, the very
Institute itself are being destroyed, and you expect me to go
SHOPPING?!?" Stomping towards the door, he shouted, "How can I LIVE
with someone who is so ignorant of such important issues?"
SLAM.
The door wobbled in its frame for a couple of seconds, and the
drinking cup made a second bid for freedom; Mac caught it again, paused,
reached over to the nightstand, and picked up an object.
Thirty-four seconds later, the door opened, and two voices
spoke at once:
G'Kron: "I forgot my wallet."
Mac: "You forgot your wallet."
G'Kron walked over, accepted the wallet from Mac, and paused.
"Do you want anything while I'm at the store?"
Mac gestured to the cup. "Refill, please." A moment later, a
one-credit bill found its way into G'Kron's hands.
"All right. The usual?" Taking Mac's silence as assent,
G'Kron added, "I'll be back in about an hour," and departed again,
much more quietly than before.
Mac paused in his highlighting, debated silently with himself
about telling G'Kron what he'd done to the radio presets on
Broadbank's car, then decided against it. The deafening boom of
Pak'led opera at full volume would be audible from six blocks away;
the Narn would figure it out for himself.
With a small grin, Mac returned his attention to the physics
book.
The rings were ready that day too, duplicated by a jeweler on
Highland Street and carried back up the hill by Miki and Utena, who
made the errand in their newly minted capacities as the Duelists'
Society's secretary and vice-president, respectively. Utena hadn't
particularly wanted to be an officer, but she had narrowly avoided the
presidency; she'd convinced Kate to take that, but only by agreeing to
take the veep's job by way of compromise. The rings were handed out
at dinner, much to everyone's delight.
After eating with his new clubmates, T'skaia bade them have a
pleasant evening, said he was looking forward to the first formal
meeting the following day, and left them, heading out across the Quad
and whistling a little tune on his way to fencing practice at
Harrington Auditorium.
He got there a bit late, which was customary for him, and
sloped into the gym's large main room still fastening his padded
tunic, foil at his side, elongated helmet tucked under his arm. Liza
Broadbank finished humiliating one of the freshmen and turned,
whipping off her mask and confronting him with wrath in her eyes.
"Well, well, look who decided to join us," she said acidly.
"If it isn't the disloyal lizard."
Sky paused for an instant, then put his carry bag down on the
partly extended bleachers and turned to face her. "You're talking to
me?" he inquired calmly.
"That's right. I heard you went and talked to that Tenjou
girl after her little performance on Saturday."
"Did you now," said Sky.
"Indeed. I heard you had very flattering things to say to
her, too. A little bird told me you called her 'magnificent'."
Sky nodded. "I did that, yes. Also remarkable, delightful,
strong, passionate and courageous. Her performance inspired me."
"A fine thing to say to the animal who had just finished
assaulting your captain."
Sky waggled his tail a bit and shrugged. "In every battle
there is a winner and a loser," he said. "Your skill did not equal
hers. It happens. There's no shame in falling to a superior foe, if
you fought with all you had."
"Spare me your lizard philosophy on courage," said Liza.
Sky sighed resignedly and sketched an elaborate bow, the rose
signet on the middle of his left hand's three fingers glittering in
the gym's lights. "As you will have it, Captain. Let there be peace
in our house."
Liza's eyes caught the glitter and narrowed. "What... is...
-that-?" she demanded.
"My hand," said Sky, puzzled. "Oh! -This-! They say it is
the seal of the Duelists' Society. I have a feeling it is more
significant even than that, but I don't know the story behind it, at
least not yet. Some of them treat it with the respect one would give
the emblem of one's Great House."
"What are you doing with one?" asked Liza, her voice cold and
a little dangerous.
"I should think that was obvious. I'm not a thief, after
all," said Sky, a little huffily.
"You... you -joined- that... that -rabble-?" Liza sputtered,
her face going crimson.
"Of course!" said Sky. "How else can I hope to test myself
against Miss Tenjou someday, else I become a Duelist myself? I told
you I found her remarkable, delightful, magnificent, strong,
passionate, courageous, and inspirational."
"That... that... no! I absolutely forbid it! No member of my
Fencing Club is going to associate with that, that freestyle -filth-!"
Sky's eyes glittered; his tail, constantly fidgeting, went
eerily still. "You may be team captain," he said in a calm voice,
"but the charter of this club gives you no power over what other clubs
and activites its members may pursue outside of club time."
"Nevertheless, I forbid it!" Liza persisted. Then she
composed herself a little, adopting a haughty tone, and said, "You're
going to have to make a choice, Ishkarat. Fencing and that, that
-gang's- activities just aren't compatible. Surely you see that."
Sky looked contemplative, the tip of his tail tracing a little
oval on the floor behind him. "Mmm," he said at length, "perhaps
you're right."
Liza smiled a rather plastic smile. "You see? I knew you'd
understand the realities of the situation."
"Indeed." T'skaia squared himself up, swept her a bow, and
said, "A very good day to you, Miss Broadbank. It has been
interesting, playing at hatchlings' sword games with you and your
friends." With a little t'skrang grin, he turned and collected his
bag, then made for the exit.
"What?!" Liza blurted. "You - you - COME BACK HERE!"
Sky paused in the doorway and turned back, still smiling.
"Chin up, Liza!" he said cheerfully, slapping the floor with his tail.
"Now -you're- the best fencer in the club at last!"
Then he was gone, leaving her fuming, her face burning under
the curious, fearful scrutiny of her underlings.
Oh, they'll pay for this, she thought.
They'll pay.
I just need to find their weakest link.
Days blurred past, and before they knew it, February was upon
them. After the initial excitement of the student exodus and the
Duelists' Society foundation, the routine and rhythm of school life
was a comfort, restoring equilibrium from a world that had looked a
bit like it was tipping in the first week of the term. Utena had
heard legends of C term - how since the days when WPI was the site of
a technical college, since the twentieth century, the third term of
the year was a time of bad luck, high emotion and pain for the
Institute's students - but so far, aside from the continued, insipid
muckraking in the Beacon, everything seemed to be going very well. It
made the more experienced students a little nervous. Devlin in
particular seemed like he was always looking out for the other shoe to
drop.
In the third week of the term, the odd, plastic-shrouded
kiosks which had been scattered around campus during winter break were
unveiled and explained in a campus-wide announcement by President
Tiefeld: the Institute had been made the gift of a sophisticated
Autonomous Cybernetic Intelligence computer system by the government
of the Earth Alliance, through an educational grant program. That
system, installed in the basement of Fuller Laboratories, was billed
as a "socially interactive organization and information system," which
basically meant it was to serve the same function as the old Hyperbox
mainframe - student email, news and such - except with the ability to
make chitchat, dispense information anybody could find in the Student
Handbook or course catalog, and sysadmin itself, freeing up the Campus
Computing staff to tackle more interesting issues than finding out who
hacked the Campus Crusade for Kalidor's student-organization website
this week. The system would be reachable from any computer attached
to the campus network - any computer on the galactic Internet could
communicate with it, really - but the kiosks were there so that
students roaming the campus between classes and the like, away from
the labs and common areas, could make inquiries of it if need be.
The computer was named Durandal, and it struck most students,
as they got to know it in the early part of the term, as rather smug
and sarcastic for a system whose job was basically to route student
email and control the automatic doors in the Fuller Labs building. It
seemed to take a liking to the Duelists and their friends for some
reason, and occasionally did them small favors it wasn't supposed to
do for students, like retrieving accidentally-deleted files from the
master backups and intercepting and destroying the occasional mis-sent
email message. They got used to it fairly quickly.
Corwin visited every Saturday (though he'd missed the last
one, January 29, because of some kind of class project back in
Crescent Heights), citing concern for Dorothy as his major motivation.
Dorothy, however, was doing OK, all things considered. She required
no repairs. Miki and Moose were more than competent to maintain her
with the autobay. She was glad to see him, in her understated way,
but with the help of the others of Galaxy House, she was getting along
quite well. He came, checked in with her, received her assurances
that she was well and had no need of his help just now, then spent
most of his visiting time in Morgan 412.
R. Dorothy Wayneright's classes that term centered mainly
around history and literature studies, as those, along with music
theory, were what she found most interesting. Mathematics bored her,
since her floating-point subprocessor made them trivial, but the
intellectual subjects she could sink her mental teeth into. One of
the great ironies of her existence was that her positronic matrix was
so complex, her AI so sophisticated, that she could actually -forget-
things, and so, if she didn't use cybernetic methods to write them in
permanently - if she simply read and tried to understand like a human
would - she had to make an effort to learn things, just like a human
would. She found the process rather enjoyable.
Today, she was applying that effort to Twentieth Century Earth
Literature II, a class she shared with only one real acquaintance,
Devlin Carter. Dorothy still didn't know Devlin all that well, but he
considered her a friend all the same. He seemed to enjoy spending
time with her, even if she didn't talk much. That was all right - he
liked to talk, and she listened. They would sit in the student lounge
in Salisbury Labs, where most of the lit classes were held, and read.
Devlin sometimes read aloud from their assignments, doing voices and
occasionally sound effects; other times, neither one said anything at
all. Devlin's friends had started to notice that his comic-opera Lord
Peter Wimsey accent tended to mute itself a bit when he spoke to
Dorothy, his exaggerated mannerisms moderate themselves somewhat, and
they wondered; but Amanda Dessler didn't seem concerned.
Devlin stifled a yawn as Professor Harris - the selfsame
Professor Harris who was the Fencing Club's advisor - nattered on
about the terrific importance of Raymond Chandler's writings in the
development of the twenty-second-century's Post-Post-Modern Pulp
Transfigurational movement. Why couldn't the bugger focus a bit more
on the fact that Chandler just wrote cracking good internal
monologues? There are blondes and blondes and it is almost a joke
word today...
As though summoned by the thought, a little blonde freshman
girl Devlin dimly recognized entered the room, looking very
apologetic. She said a few hushed words to the professor, handed him
a note, and scuttled out again. Harris stood there, read the note,
read it again, then put it slowly down on the desk before him and
turned to face the class.
"Dorothy Wayneright," he said, his voice odd and cold.
"Yes," said Dorothy.
"I've just been informed that you are more properly addressed
as -Robot- Dorothy Wayneright. Is this true?"
"Yes," said Dorothy.
"I see. And why," said the professor, more coldly still, "did
you not see fit to inform this class, and especially your instructor,
of this fact?"
"Is there a requirement that I do? None of the other students
have been required to give details of their species or origin,"
Dorothy replied.
"None of the other students are non-lifeforms," said Harris.
"This says you're not even Turing-certified. Is -that- true?"
"Yes."
"Who is your master?" asked Harris harshly, all -trace- of
human warmth vanishing from his voice.
"Corwin Ravenhair of New Avalon," Dorothy replied promptly.
"Your local master, then. You must have one. You couldn't be
on this planet without someone here to be responsible for you."
"Corwin's sister, Kaitlyn Hutchins."
Harris scowled. "I might have known. Is there nothing that
young woman won't mock? First she thumbs her nose at the Institute's
sporting traditions, and now I discover that since the first day of
the term she's been causing me to waste my time and energy trying to
teach an appliance to appreciate literature. A -fine- joke."
"You've been succeeding," Dorothy told him calmly. "My
understanding of Chandler - "
" - Is a cleverly programmed imitation of the responses of the
-real- students in this class," Harris interrupted her. "Remove
yourself from my class, machine. Your mistress's joke is done. Tell
her I don't appreciate the humor."
Dorothy rose, her face still utterly impassive. "It's hardly
a secret what I am," she said. "My artifaction certificate and
operational parameters are on file with the Admissions Office and the
office of the Dean of Students. Several of my fellow students are
fully aware. Perhaps if you researched your students - "
"Be silent!" Harris snapped. "You're out of this class.
Other members of this faculty may be willing to waste their time
attempting to educate a damned mindless piece of machinery, but I'm
not, and I -certainly- won't stand here debating my duties as an
instructor with one! Out!"
"I say, see here, now!" said Devlin, rising to his feet.
"Dorothy hasn't caused any trouble, sir. She's one of the best
students in this class, what? You couldn't -tell- she's a robot in
four weeks of classes - why get yourself all in a bundle over it now?"
Harris turned his glare on Devlin, arching his eyebrows. "Are
-you- going to tell me how to do my job now, Mr. Carter?"
Devlin flushed. "It seems to me you -could- use a few
pointers," he said, then added, "Sir."
Dorothy, who hadn't paused when Devlin rose, completed her
exit, closing the door behind her.
"Enough," Harris snarled. "Out with you, too, and don't come
back. You fail for the term. Make sure you're in Professor
Chandrijan's division when you make up the course."
"Oh, right-o," said Devlin, his anger rigidly concealed behind
a layer of clearly false bonhomie as he shoveled his books into his
bag and slung it over his shoulder. "The Dean of Students'll be
hearin' about this, eh, what? Abuse of authority and all that. Man's
got a right to stand up for a friend, old man."
"Robots don't have friends," said Harris with a sneer. "If
you're fool enough to be taken in by the fact that it wears a pretty
face, I don't want you in my class."
"Well, then I'd say we're even, what?" Devlin replied as he
passed the professor's desk. "I don't want your instruction."
He slammed the door behind him, looked around, saw Dorothy's
back vanishing out the far door into Freeman Plaza, and sprinted after
her, calling for her to wait. She didn't.
"Dorothy, where are you going?" he called to her, running
after her. Fortunately, though she hadn't stopped when he asked, she
was only walking, if briskly; he fell into step beside her, panting a
little, as she reached West Street.
"Home," Dorothy said. "That was my last class today."
"Home?! But we've got to report this to the Dean," Devlin
protested. "That bastard can't get away with treating you that way - "
"Of course he can," Dorothy replied flatly. "There's no law
that says he has to speak to me, let alone teach me. He's right, I'm
-not- a person - only a thing."
"Like -hell- you're not!" Devlin rounded her and stopped in
front of her, his hands on her shoulders. She kept walking for a
couple of steps, shoving him effortlessly back along the sidewalk
before halting to regard him with a mildly puzzled expression as he
continued, "I don't give a damn what that robophobic prick Harris
says, -or- what the law says, I haven't spent the last month studying
Chandler with a mindless recorder. You have -insights-, Dorothy, you
have -ideas- and -feelings-. You're my friend, and I -won't- let him
run roughshod over you like that."
Dorothy regarded him steadily for a few seconds, as if only
now considering how he had been able to follow her with slightly less
than half the class period expired.
"You got thrown out, didn't you," she said.
"That's right, and I'm not going back. I wouldn't go back if
Aaron bloody Harris got down on his knees and begged me. Now come on,
let's go to Boynton and report this."
"No," said Dorothy, shrugging gently but firmly free. "You
can report it if you want to, but I'm going home. See you at dinner."
Then she walked around him and on down the hill.
With a strangled, frustrated noise, Devlin kicked a chunk of
congealed snow thrown up onto the sidewalk by the snowplow, then ran
up to Boynton Hall, the administration building.
"Dammit," Utena Tenjou grumbled. "I -knew- something like
this was going to happen. If only Corwin and I could have convinced
her to get certified before coming, she could have told him exactly
where to shove his attitude and how far up."
Devlin let his head fall back against the Wedge bench with a
painful-sounding thump. "I know," he said. "And the hell of it is,
there's no recourse now. Oh, Dean Montaigne will have some words with
the Professor about his high-handed style and lack of social graces,
but he won't have to take her back."
"I w-w-wouldn't g-GO back to a t-t-teacher w-who t-treated me
like th-that anyw-way," said Kaitlyn. "I'd g-g-go see if P-Professor
Ch-Chandrij-jan w-would l-let me f-finish the t-t-term in h-his
div-vision."
"That's what I'm planning to do," said Devlin. "Dean
Montaigne said she couldn't do much for either of us, but she could at
least get the failing grades Harris will be giving us wiped out, and
Chandrijan's already said he'll take us." He sighed. "I just... ah,
hell. I don't know. I'm not a violent man - quite a coward,
actually, terrified of physical conflict - but I would so very much
have liked to take a swing at Harris. He was so bloody -awful- to
her, right there in front of everybody. He might at least have had
the decency to dismiss her in private if he felt he had to do it at
all, eh, what?"
"Not that I really want to play devil's advocate," said Utena,
"but if he really believes she doesn't have feelings, it might just
not have occurred to him... "
"No," said Devlin, shaking his head. "No, it wasn't like
that. You didn't see his face or hear his voice. He was...
-enjoying- it. Being deliberately cruel, what? I'd swear to it. He
knew, or at least believed - HOPED - he was hurting her. Humiliating
her. Like he felt her presence in his class, with him all unaware,
had humiliated him."
Miki Kaoru came by then, looking a bit worried and
distracted. He peered around the Wedge booth, not at the people but
at their bags and belongings, then moved on, clicking his watch.
"What's up, Miki?" asked Utena. "Lose something?"
He turned, the worry more evident on his face. "I can't find
my notebook," he said.
"Which one?"
"The green one."
"Oh." Now Utena looked a little troubled too, as did Kate.
Miki's green notebook was his music notebook, the only possession,
other than his old Ohtori Academy uniform and the watch that had been
in its top pocket, that he'd managed to bring with him from Cephiro.
The early part of it, from before his translation out of his
homeworld, contained the beginnings of several new collaborations he'd
started with his recently-reconciled twin sister, Kozue. Even aside
from that, music to Miki was like stray thoughts to most people; he
jotted down bits of musical notation all the time, some to flesh out
for later, some to leave fallow, others just to get them out of his
head. To someone who could read and appreciate the significance of
music, Miki's notebook was a roadmap to his soul. If he'd managed to
lose it, he'd have lost more than just a few works in progress.
"W-when was the l-l-last t-time you s-saw it?" asked Kate.
"Yesterday evening, I think," said Miki. "I had it at
rehearsal, and for the Duelist meeting afterward. I can't remember if
I had it in my room last night, but I must have - I'd have noticed if
I hadn't brought it back with me. No, I know I had it, because I
remember putting it in my pack before I came up the hill this
morning."
"Did you take it out anytime today?" asked Utena.
"Of course I did, I take it out and put it back all the time,"
Miki told her. "It's automatic. But I went to take it out in Physics
and it wasn't there."
"What was the class you had before that?" asked Devlin.
"Galactic History 203," said Miki, Utena and Kate (with
slightly imperfect unison from the last) together. "We've all got
GH203 at 1," Utena went on. "Saionji's in that division too. I think
I saw it there," she said.
"Mm," said Kate, nodding. "I kn-know you h-had it, at l-least
b-before the b-break."
"Did you look in Kinnicutt?" Utena inquired. (Galactic History
203 was a large class - over a hundred students in each division - and
so was held in Salisbury Labs' auditorium-style lecture hall.)
"I practically turned it upside down. Professor Henderson
says he hasn't seen it, and he always makes sure no one's left
anything behind after his classes let out. I just came from looking
through the band offices in Alden Hall... I can't imagine where I can
have left it. It... it must have fallen out of my bag or something.
It could be -anywhere-."
"Calm down, calm down," said Utena. "We'll go look over the
paths you walked today, before it gets too dark to see. Hey,
Saionji!" she called, arresting the progress of the green-haired young
man as he crossed the Wedge. He vectored toward the booth instead of
continuing on toward the Daniels Hall mailboxes, as had seemed to be
his intent when he entered, with a question on his face.
"Miki's misplaced his green notebook," Utena told him. "C'mon
and help us look for it before it gets dark."
"Certainly," he said, nodding.
They scoured the main campus from end to end, tracing the
paths that Miki would have walked as he passed from class to class to
lunch and so forth in the course of the day, and came up empty. Then
they retraced the path again, having maximized their use of the waning
daylight, to check the buildings he'd entered. By six they were tired
and hungry, and had found no trace of the notebook. Miki fretted
through dinner, had a very unproductive evening of trying to study,
and finally borrowed one of Kate's blank-staff notebooks so he could
at least keep making notes and not go totally mad.
"Cheer up, Miki," Utena encouraged him. "Someone's bound to
have found it. It's got your name in it, right? They'll turn it into
the mailroom or the Campus Police. It'll turn up."
"I hope you're right," he said, but he sounded unconvinced.
It took two days for the first page to appear. On Thursday
night, the third of February, they found it on their way into Alden
Hall for an Art of Noise rehearsal. It was nailed to the hall's front
door like Martin Luther's tracts, fluttering slightly in a winter
breeze. For a second, Kaitlyn took it for another one of the Campus
Crusade for Kalidor's vehement tracts, until she realized it had music
on it - and familiar music, at that.
Miki recognized it an instant after she did, and sprang for
the door with a strangled shout. "This... this is page 3 of 'Duet for
Piano No. 17'!" he cried. He couldn't remove the nail with his
fingers, so he carefully tore the nail-hole through to remove the
page. He turned toward the others, cradling the wounded page in his
hands, his face ashen. "How... how did it get here?"
"I d-don't kn-know," Kate admitted, her face covered in mixed
concern for her friend and anger that someone would do something like
this to his most prized possession. "B-but w-w-we'll f-find -out-."
Over the next several days, more pages appeared in odd and
foreboding places. Two were mailed to Miki's campus mailbox,
postmarked from far-flung and exotic locales. One appeared on Table
11 in the Morgan Hall dining commons, the IBGF's usual table, before
dinner on Friday. Azalynn found one stuck under Riley 212's door upon
returning from classes Monday afternoon. Kaitlyn discovered one
wedged between two of the small pipes of Alden Hall's organ. Another
turned up taped to the window on Galaxy House's front door. One,
folded neatly into a very airworthy paper glider, sailed into
Olin 218 through the open lintel over the door to lodge in Professor
Jellicoe's beehive, and narrowly escaped being balled up and thrown
into the trash by its desperate owner's frantic leap.
As the week went on, Miki got more and more upset. He
carefully collated the pages they found and fitted them into a report
binder, slowly piecing the book back together. There seemed to be no
rhyme or reason to the order in which the pages had been torn out;
some were from early in the notebook, some late. One, the one that
had been stuck in the organ, was blank. Miki became moody, swinging
between jittery nervousness, undirected anger and bleak despair. The
rest of the Federation tended to hover between that same state of
anger and an agony of concern, for the Boy Genius was going to pieces.
"I b-bet I kn-know who's r-respons-sible for th-this," Kate
announced from her bed one evening.
"Hmm?" said Utena, who sat at her desk working on a report
for GH203. Kate hadn't spoken in almost an hour when she made this
comment, and the context thus escaped Utena completely.
"M-Miki's noteb-book. I b-b-bet Liza B-Broadbank t-took it."
"Why would she do that?" Utena wondered. "She doesn't even
know Miki. He never did anything to her."
Kate sat up and sighed wearily. "H-he's my f-f-friend. And
y-yours. And S-Sky's housem-m-mate. That's en-nough for L-Liza. I
sh-should have r-realized it e-earlier."
"Mm, I dunno," said Utena dubiously. "I mean, I could see her
maybe taking it, but tearing it up and leaving the pieces where he'll
find them? That's awful low, even for her. That's -torture-."
"I kn-know," said Kate. "Y-you d-d-don't know Liza l-like I
d-do."
Utena swiveled her chair and leaned back. "What's the -deal-
with you two, anyway? I mean, I've seen people hate each other that
much before, but usually there was more involved than a couple of
school clubs."
"W-we've been enemies s-since K-Kindergart-ten," Kate told
her. "I w-wasn't a very w-w-willing s-student, my f-first c-couple of
y-y-years at p-public sch-school. Well, y-you c-can im-magine... "
Liza Broadbank was the daughter of Ephrem Broadbank, Vice
President for Operations of the Aztechnology Corporation and the
number-two man in charge of their corporate headquarters in New
Avalon. His wife, Alicia, was one of the leading lights of the city's
high-society scene. Both the Broadbanks had an intense and mutual
dislike for the "immortal clique" that ran the city - the Wedge
Defense Force elder types, Gryphon, MegaZone, and their ilk. A lot of
the Corporate Society types in the city did; after all, in any other
city in the galaxy, -they- would have been calling the shots and
running the show, not these weirdos, most of whom, despite their
fabulous wealth, lived bizarrely middle-class lives for no readily
apparent reason.
The Broadbanks' three daughters, Elizabeth, Clarissa, and
Marietta, each separated by two years from the next, had been raised
to share this dislike. As luck would have it, each of them had at
least one of the children of those people as a schoolmate, too - Liza
was the same age as Kate, Clarissa happened to be of concurrent age
with the Ragnarok crop, and Mary was contemporary with the Morgan
twins and Sylvie Daniels. Worse, their parents sent them to the same
primary schools, though they could have afforded far more prestigious
private schooling, solely out of some perverse desire to match and
mock the Wedge Defenders.
In two cases out of three, this had worked out about as well
as you might expect. Liza, upon arriving at Katahdin Avenue
Elementary school at the age of five, knew full well that she could
have been going somewhere much higher-class (though the New Avalon
public schools were very good, they weren't fancy), were it not for
the brown-haired little girl in the second row who never spoke. Thus,
Kaitlyn had an enemy from eight o'clock on Day One, and didn't know
the reason for the slim blonde's enmity for several years.
(Clarissa, the middle daughter, was widely acknowledged to be
even worse - meaner, more vindictive, sharper-tongued - than Liza; she
had all the disadvantages of Liza, plus the sizeable chip on her
shoulder that came from being the middle child in a family as cool and
remote as the Broadbanks. Strangely, the youngest daughter, Mary, had
managed to overcome all this and turn out all right. She was a good
friend of the Morgan twins and Sylvie - rumor had it her father was
considering disowning her for it, but that was the way the rumor mill
went at Crescent Heights Middle School, and no one could be sure if it
were true.)
"Wow. She even followed you here," said Utena, impressed.
"Now that's dedication."
Kate made an irritated "tch" noise. "Sh-she p-p-probably
thinks I l-left New Av-valon to g-get away f-f-from -her-."
"You're so vain," Utena sang, "you prob'ly think this song
is about you... "
That had the desired effect; Kate's scowl cracked and she
giggled a little. "Ex-z-zactly." Then, sobering, she went on,
"L-Liza d-d-doesn't l-like to at-t-tack her f-foes d-directly. It's
usual-ly s-safer and e-easier to attac-ck their f-friends. S-so it's
n-not m-much of a st-stretch to s-see her h-hand in th-this."
"So what do we do? Report her to the Dean?"
"W-with w-what evidence? The f-fact that it's j-just her
style? Th-that's h-hard to exp-plain w-without v-v-visual aids."
"I guess the alternative is to go beat the hell out of her.
That would probably get us expelled, though."
Kate sighed again. "M-maybe I'm w-wrong. I h-hope I am.
B-but I d-d-don't know w-who else w-w-would d-do a thing l-like
this."
The following day, Devlin reported at dinner that Miki's
notebook was nowhere to be found anywhere in Founders 201, but that if
anyone were interested in some rather expensive jewelry, he knew where
he could get some cheap. None of those who had known him long seemed
surprised by the statement, merely disappointed by his findings.
Miki, after he got over being startled by the realization of how
Devlin must have acquired that knowledge, pushed his food
disconsolately around his plate until most of the group had finished
and gone, then got up to make his morose way back to Galaxy House.
Kate and Utena exchanged a sad, rather helpless glance, and
were about to get up and follow him anyway when his cry rang back into
the cafeteria.
Kate took the long way around, running between tables, dodging
seats and fellow students, and ducking around the salad bar. Utena
took the short way, jumping up onto the table, then taking long,
leaping strides from table to table, reaching the desk at the entrance
where the Machine that Goes Ping was set up in about ten seconds. She
jumped down without breaking stride and pelted out of the caf,
ignoring the indignant cry of the guy who operated the Machine, and
was at Miki's side in a moment. Kate arrived seconds later, followed
by the rest, all of them with the same unasked question on their
lips. It was answered the moment they saw Miki.
He stood looking at the cork-backed bulletin board on the wall
in the short hallway leading from the Wedge into the dining hall.
This was a popular place for students to put the usual things -
rideshare requests for various destinations, housing availability
notices, and other important communications. "BAND NEEDS BASSIST:
INFLUENCES INCLUDE THRASHING GNOBERTS AND P-FUNK ALL-STARS, NO
WEENIES!" "I WILL WRITE YOUR TERM PAPER FOR NON-DAKA FOOD." "MAC
MEGACUBE, 256 XB, CRYSTAL WRITER, TRADE FOR GAMETRODE XL OBO." That
kind of thing.
Affixed to the center of the bulletin board with a small,
nasty-looking knife was a sheet of staff paper. The bottom half of
the staves had music handwritten on them. The upper half was covered
by a sketch, though it was hard to tell just what it was a sketch of.
That end of the paper had been slashed several times by a knife,
probably the same knife which had then been driven into page and
corkboard alike, and was still jutting out like a stake through a
vampire's heart.
Or Miki's.
The young composer stood transfixed, staring with wide,
quivering eyes at the destruction. This was the only page they had
found so far that had been harmed, other than small holes in a few
where they had been nailed or tacked to things. He reached a
trembling hand out toward the hilt of the knife, then let it fall and
turned away, covering his face.
Liza Broadbank just happened to walk past at that moment, on
her way through the Wedge from the Daniels student government offices
to the Quad and thence Harrington Auditorium. She saw the six of
them standing around the bulletin board, saw Miki's shoulders slumped
and shaking, and addressed him in a loud, carrying, slightly mocking
tone of solicitude.
"Not feeling well tonight, Mr. Kaoru? That's a shame."
He looked up at her, dropping his hands and revealing the
tears tracking his face, and tried to speak but couldn't. She tsked
in clearly false concern.
"If you can't handle the pressure here at the Institute," she
said, "maybe it would be best if you went home to your girlfriend."
Then she turned and breezed out.
Utena made an incoherent noise and began to lunge after her,
with Kate not far behind, but T'skaia interposed himself.
"No, ladies, I beg you," he said. "It's what she wants.
She's willing to take a beating if it gets one or both of you
expelled. Do you understand? Don't play into her hands."
Utena pushed against his restraining hand for a second, then
realized he was right and sagged back, letting out an explosive sigh
that may or may not have contained a profanity. She turned to Miki,
who still stood, staring at where Liza had been, his jaw quivering.
Then, with a single sob, he covered his eyes with his arm and ran,
crossing the Wedge and vanishing into the ground-floor corridor that
led through Daniels Hall.
"-Fuck-," said Kaitlyn distinctly, and she ran after him.
Utena looked as if she might follow for a second, then thought better
of it and instead went to carefully remove the page from the bulletin
board and carry it to Wedge Bench #1.
There, she carefully smoothed it out on the booth table, and
determined that none of it was actually -missing-; it had been slashed
into several narrow ribbons, but none of them were detached from the
sheet at both ends.
"Here," said Azalynn; she dug around in her bag for a moment,
then handed over a roll of wide, clear tape. Utena thanked her for
it, pulled off a few strips, and gingerly restored the page's
structural integrity, lining up all the bits and making sure they were
right before sealing the tape down over the cuts one at a time.
When she was done, the sketch was complete. It was the face
of a girl, in three-quarter profile, from the shoulders up. The
technique of its execution was so-so - it had clearly been sketched
fairly hurriedly with a blue ballpoint pen, most likely on the spur of
the moment - but it captured her quite nicely anyway, a pretty girl
with short, thick, rather disorderly hair, a pointed nose, and
thoughtful eyes. The picture ended just below her slim throat, with
just the edges of a wide-collared blouse visible before the pen
strokes faded out into blankness again.
"Interesting. She looks like our friend Mr. Kaoru," said
T'skaia, "if he were an eggbearer."
Utena gave him an odd look. "Um, I think you mean 'female',
Sky."
"Sorry," said Sky, unperturbed. "In t'skrang it's the same
word. Who is she?"
"His twin sister. Sometimes humanoids are born more than one
at a time... "
Sky nodded. "I'm familiar with the concept, thank you." He
wasn't offended, just letting her know she didn't need to bother
explaining. "Interesting," he repeated.
Utena looked up from the maimed, bandaged page to glare with
unrestricted loathing across the Quad at Harrington Auditorium. "I'd
like to wring that bitch's neck," she muttered. "I should've been
harder on her when we dueled."
"But if you do that, you'll be thrown out of the Institute,"
Moose observed, "and like Sky said, that's exactly what Liza wants."
"I -know-, dammit," said Utena, banging a fist down on the
table and making Azalynn's roll of tape clatter. "But there's got to
be -something- we can do."
"I don't see what," said Moose glumly. "It's not like we can
prove what she's been doing. If Devlin had been able to find what's
left of the book, maybe... "
"Dammit," Utena repeated.
Kaitlyn entered Alden Hall silently, almost invisible in the
shadows of the entrance hall. The building was closed at this hour,
but that was no barrier to Kate. Not only was she president of the
Student Band, she was president of the Duelists' Society, and both
those organizations used Alden Hall as their clubhouse. Embedded in
the seal of each Duelist's rose signet was a tiny device which
unlocked the front doors of the Hall when the Duelist grasped the
door's handle. The design of each campus club's clubhouse keys, as
well as the policy for giving them to members, was left, within
engineering limitations, up to the club's charter officers. The
Duelists' Society keys represented a private joke between the club's
president and vice-president.
The entrance hall was empty and dark. Kate crossed its
flagstoned expanse in silence, her shoes making no sound at all
against the stone, and she passed through the inner doors into the
auditorium. This was a large, mainly empty room, more like a dojo
than a theater, with a stage at one end but no permanent seating in
the wide-open space facing it. Up on the balcony level behind her,
above the main entrance, was a pipe organ; the ceiling was high and
vaulted, the room lit by several large iron chandeliers. Right now
only a couple were lit, and those dimly.
Miki was sitting at the piano up on the corner of the stage,
his arms folded across the covered keyboard and his head bowed upon
them, shoulders heaving with near-silent sobs. Kate crossed the room
and climbed up the steps to the stage, drew near, and then hesitated.
Might he not object to her invading his space like this? He obviously
wanted to be alone with his misery... but it was also plain that he
needed not to be left that way.
"M-Miki?" she said softly. He started a little, not having
heard her approach, and turned his tear-stained face to her.
"I'm... I'm sorry, Miss Kaitlyn," he said, shaking his head.
"I... I just... "
Kate tsked and sat down next to him on the piano bench,
putting a hand on his shoulder. "W-what are you ap-p-polog-gizing
for? Y-you have ever-ry r-right to b-be up-upset."
"I'm sorry... you have to see me like this," he said. "But I
just... I can't -stand- it any more... " He put his head back down on
his arms. "What did I ever do to her? I don't understand why she
would do something like that."
"Oh, M-Miki," said Kate sadly. "It's m-my f-f-fault. You
b-became a t-target j-just by being m-my f-friend. M-mine and
Utena's."
Miki chuckled weakly and gave her a wan, tear-streaked smile.
"I'm used to having unpopular friends... but this, this is beyond
me... and this place... " He gestured vaguely around. "This place is
so -strange-... "
"I kn-know," Kate said, bowing her head. "I'm s-s-sorry.
It's m-my fault y-you're -here-, t-too, ind-directly."
He looked puzzled. "I don't understand."
"If M-MegaZone's th-theory is r-right, and I th-think it
p-probably is, Ut-tena d-d-didn't c-call you h-here by c-coincidence,
or b-because she was l-lonely or h-homesick. She c-called you
b-because of m-m-me."
Utena tossed herself down onto her bed, limbs as outflung as
they could be with the wall so close to one side, and let out her
breath in a huge sigh. The lights from the Quad filtered in through
the incompletely-closed blinds, but she felt too wrung out to get up
again and close them. Let the little slats of yellow light decorate
the floor in the darkness, see if she cared!
Argh! -Damn- Liza Broadbank! She was like someone had taken
all the worst parts of Juri, Nanami, Kozue, and Shiori and rolled them
together into one insufferable package! Tall, elegant, spoiled,
manipulative, mean, vindictive, petty, and a Class A bitch. God!
Utena would put down even money that Liza was responsible for what had
happened to Miki's notebook -and- the little note Devlin had described
Professor Harris receiving in that afternoon's 20th Century Lit class.
Utena could understand Liza hating -her-. She'd handed the
bitch a plateful of crow and thrown in the fork for free. But what
the hell had Dorothy or Miki done? They were targets just because
they were close to Utena and Kate. It was a coward's way of
fighting. Pick the ones that can't fight back - Dorothy because of
the state of the law, Miki because of his nature - and push and push
and push until something cracks. Well, something had cracked, by God,
and now Miki was somewhere paying for it. Utena hoped Kate had found
him, was able to do something to help him. She considered getting up,
getting dressed again, and going out to see if she could find them and
lend a hand, but decided against it. That kind of thing usually
didn't work so well as a team effort. If Kate wanted her help, odds
were she'd bring Miki back here.
Dammit.
She got up and rummaged around on Kate's bed until she found
Seven, then curled up back in her own bunk with the ragged tiger and
thought about it some more. What could she do? Challenge Liza to
another duel? Why would she accept? She wasn't a Duelist, had no
desire to be one. Utena couldn't fight a fencer's match with her -
she had no knowledge of the rules or form of fencing. Her
swordfighting was all instinctive, self-taught. She wouldn't know
what to do with a mask and foil other than toss the one aside and
throw the other for effect.
Miki, now, -he- was a fencer, the second-best classical fencer
Utena had ever seen... but he'd never face her. He fenced for love of
the form, its elegance, its heritage, the skill involved - not out of
a competitive spirit or for any love of the clash of arms. It was
another thing to strive toward perfection in, and a thing he could do
together with his closest friend on the Student Council...
Juri.
Utena had never really been clear on just what the
relationship was between Miki and Juri. They were separated by two
years in age - right now, Juri would be a junior. Utena couldn't
remember when her birthday was, but she was probably seventeen by now.
Not that it mattered - a year and a half ago, when Utena had first met
her, she already looked like an adult, a tall, gorgeous redhead with a
mane of vertical orange-gold curls around a cool, slightly sardonic
face that turned into an ivory mask, her green eyes like glass, when
she was angry. Even the teachers back at Ohtori Academy found her
intimidating. She was smart, poised, and the most spectacularly
gifted Western Continent-style fencer in Cephiro. Utena had fought
her twice, and never really beaten her. One victory was nothing but
pure luck; in the other duel, Juri had resigned.
It was obvious, even to a relative outsider like Utena, that
there was some bond between Miki and Juri. The only two Western
fencers involved in the Tournament (the others had been a pair of
kendoka and two freestylists, one with heavy kendo influences), they
were the most cohesive unit inside the Student Council; where you saw
one on Council business, you usually saw the other. Miki looked up to
Juri, that much was plain, and for her part, though she always played
her feelings very close to the vest, it was fairly apparent that Juri
had some sort of regard for him, too. She tended to treat her fellow
students as either background players or outright annoyances, so the
fact that she occasionally smiled at Miki where other people could see
her do it was enormously suggestive of -something-, though it would
take a theoretical physicist to figure out both the vector -and- the
momentum of that link.
... Maybe ruminating on this subject right after completing a
Physics C-02 homework assignment wasn't the best approach. The
quantum peculiarities of Juri Arisugawa were best left to the
professionals.
Utena turned on her side, punched her pillow, and tried to
settle herself down. It was a bit early to be going to sleep, but if
she didn't, she was going to build up a head of nervous energy and
start roaming the campus and surrounding streets in the night. Not
that that was a particularly dangerous undertaking for someone such as
she, but there was the chance she might run into Liza in a dark alley,
and then what?
Dammit!
If Juri were here, she would know what to do. She was cunning
in a refined kind of way, a way that Utena was entirely not. She
would devise some horrible and subtle revenge that would make it clear
to Liza that she had crossed the wrong people, without leaving a trail
that could leave the blonde some recourse in official complaint, and
do it all with a calm, cold smile that was more frightening than a
thousand screams of rage.
Or at least she'd slap the bitch silly.
She sighed.
Go to sleep, Tenjou. Tomorrow you can ask Corwin to build you
a robot that sneaks into people's rooms and short-sheets their beds.
Or tell you how to get Tiny Robo to do it.
Good luck, Kate...
"Th-that's why... even n-n-now, I c-can't w-wish you w-w-were
b-back home. I'm s-sorry, Miki. It's all m-my f-f-fault."
Miki sat and looked at Kate in appalled silence, the grief
washed completely off his face by stark horror.
"Miss Kaitlyn," he whispered. "I... I had no idea... "
Kate hung her head. "I'm s-sorry," she repeated. "It w-was
t-t-tactless to m-mention it n-now. 'M-my angst is b-b-bigger th-than
your a-angst.' What a c-crock." She sighed, the sound choking off a
little sob. "I h-handled this all w-wrong. W-what I was t-t-trying
to s-say w-was how g-g-grateful I am th-that you're h-here... even
th-though it's r-ruining your l-l-life to b-be here. I d-didn't
m-mean for it to t-t-turn into th-this huge p-p-passive-ag-g-gressive
g-guilt fest."
Miki sat gazing at her in silence for a second as her own
shoulders started to shake a little; then, slowly, tentatively, as if
he weren't sure whether it was entirely safe, he reached out his arm
and gingerly put it around her shoulders. Kaitlyn flinched slightly
at his touch, and he started to pull his arm away again, but then she
leaned against him and put her own arm around his waist. He felt a
bit clumsy as he shifted sideways a bit on the piano bench and did his
best to get his other arm around her too.
"I'm sorry, Miss Kaitlyn," he said. "I didn't mean to make
you cry. I didn't know... please forgive me."
"It's n-n-not your f-fault," Kate replied softly.
They sat in silence for a while, trying to pool what little
strength the long and painful day had left them. Then Miki had a
thought, and, since his right arm really couldn't do much in the way
of embracing her in this position anyway, he used his right hand to
flip open the keyboard cover on the piano and began, softly, to play a
song.
Kate's eyes flickered open, and she glanced first at his face,
then at his playing hand. Slowly, she raised her left hand, placed it
on the keys, and began the counterpoint.
/* Shinkichi Mitsumune "Hikari Sasu Niwa"
_Shoujo Kakumei Utena: Zettai Shinka Kakumei Zenya_ */
The cooperation came sweetly, effortlessly. Just like the old
days. Just like the garden.
A tiny smile stole onto Miki's face.
Even in the midst of this alien place, even though I was
brought here by accident, I'm blessed, he reminded himself. Even
here, I've found a shining light.
The hellish thing about beautiful moments is that they never
last. Miki parted from Kaitlyn at the back door of Alden Hall and
walked down the hill to Galaxy House alone, and by the time he got
there and let himself in, his mood was as black as before. Perhaps
blacker.
He entered 22S/1, got out of his clothes in the dark, and
climbed up into his bunk. He sat in the dark, listening to the sound
of Moose MacEchearn's heavy, steady breathing. It didn't bother him.
He was accustomed to night sounds; he'd had a roommate his whole
life. She wasn't as big as Moose, but she snored louder.
He'd have given anything to go to sleep with that sound in his
ears tonight.
"Good night, Kozue," he whispered, and curled up on his side
to try and sleep, his eyes burning. "Wherever you are... "
Azalynn dv'Ir Natashkan sat awake - she was usually awake - at
her desk in Riley 212, reading random newsgroups and thinking about
going for a walk. Sure, it was three in the morning, but still, she
was -bored-. And agitated, and worried, and generally unrestful.
At the bottom of the screen, she noticed the little (Mail)
message. Pleased at the thought of something more interesting than
alt.test to read, she jumped out of her news reader and checked her
new mail, hoping it wasn't spam.
Return-Path: <durandal@durandal.wpi.k12>
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2405 02:52:05 -0500 (ET)
X-Sender: durandal@localhost.localdomain
To: "Azalynn dv'Ir Natashkan" <azalynn@wpi.k12>
Subject: question
hi! i was going through my files tonight trying to find some rhyme or
reason to my existence in this chaotic disorganized mad doomed world
(did you know the universe will eventually collapse because of
entropy?) and i found this list of students in my secret directives
folder that the ministry of peace wants me to conduct close monitoring
of.
-- BEGIN FILE ATTACHMENT qq44a;Directives/Ministry/Monitor/students.txt --
GRADE 10
AUSA, Mia Natalia
CARTER, Devlin Edison
DESSLER, Amanda Elektra
dv'IR NATASHKAN, Azalynn [NMN]
HUTCHINS, Kaitlyn Yuriko
IXTIXTAAQITL'T'CHL'VRAIHELT ISHKARAT, T'skaia Vorokoshiga'ar
KAORU, Miki [NMN]
MacECHEARN, Jehoshaphat Maurice IV
SAIONJI, Kyouichi [NMN]
TENJOU, Utena [NMN]
WAYNERIGHT, R. Dorothy [NMN]
-- END FILE ATTACHMENT qq44a --
why is the government interested in you? i'd like to know before i
decide whether it's worth bothering to obey their instructions.
things to do before the heat death of the universe and all - only
15.193792102158E+9 years until the universe closes!
curiously yours,
durandal
Azalynn frowned thoughtfully at the message. Her first
thought was that it was forged; the tone was entirely unlike the
Durandal she was familiar with. It was almost like a message from a
confused child. The headers looked all right, though, and it would
take quite a hacker to fake a message from Durandal.
She read it again, puzzled. It was a list of the membership
of the Duelists' Society, with a few people who weren't members, but
tended to be seen with the Duelists most of the time anyway (Devlin
and Dorothy, for instance). There was only one name on the list, the
first one, that Azalynn didn't recognize.
"Hm," said Azalynn. She hit 'forward' and started composing a
cover message.
Kaitlyn awoke and wondered why. Her alarm wasn't humming
against her wrist; she squinted at it (wondering as she always did if
her mild hypermetropia would go away when she hit adulthood and her
Detian aging freeze kicked in), saw that it was only six, and then
registered that she was awake because someone was banging on Morgan
412's door.
"Ohhhhh," she groaned, "what the hell... ?"
"I got it, I got it," Utena mumbled. She got up, shrugged
into her dressing gown, didn't bother belting it (where did the custom
of putting on a robe over pajamas to walk around come from, anyway?
she wondered idly. My PJs cover up more of me than my regular
clothes), and shuffled to the door, yawning enormously before bending
to look through the security peephole.
Then, fully awake, she stumbled back as if something had come
through the peephole and poked her in the eye, making a wordless sound
perhaps best spelled simply, "!"
Kate sat up a little, scowling blearily. "What?" she asked.
Slowly, hesitantly, Utena went back to the door, reached out
as if she expected the knob to be hot, and yanked it open.
Yes, that -was- Juri Arisugawa standing outside, pounding on
the door like the building was on fire. Actually, there were -two-
redheads out there. The other one was Morgan 4th's Resident Advisor,
Utena couldn't remember her name, Janice somebody. The RA was
standing in the doorway of Morgan 411 in shorts and a t-shirt sporting
a cartoon mantis with a speech balloon that said, "Stick it to the
Man!", blinking owlishly into the hall.
"the hell, you people," the RA grumbled. "go to SLEEP."
"Sorry! Sorry!" said Utena with a sheepish, conciliatory
grin. She grabbed Juri's wrist and yanked the startled redhead into
412, then banged the door shut behind her.
"Juri, what the hell are you doing here?!" Utena demanded in a
hushed but urgent tone.
"I was just about to ask you that," Juri replied, somewhat
more composed.
"How the hell should I know?!" said Utena.
"Well, given that you seem to live here, and I've never -seen-
the place before, it seemed like a safe guess."
"what's going on?" Kaitlyn inquired sleepily. Despite her
unfocused, barely opened eyes, she seemed to notice Juri; her face
took on a faint, dreamy smile and she said, "aw, that's sweet... you
brought me a redhead. good night... " Then she lay down again, curled
up, and went back to sleep, if she can be said to have been awake in
the first place.
"Interesting," said Juri.
"She had a long night," Utena replied, wondering just when
Kate had gotten back. "Where did you come from?"
"I don't know," Juri replied. "I went to sleep in my bed. I
woke up in another one." She gestured. "In the room across the
hall."
"Oh. Well. Good thing both of 413's didn't come back from
Christmas break." Utena blinked at her. "You sleep in your uniform?"
Juri looked down at herself and looked a little surprised as
well. "Not usually. Tenjou, would you mind if I sat down? I'm...
very confused."
"Oh, uh... sure. Have a seat. You want something to drink?
We've got... "
Utena trailed off and turned around, the gearwheels in her
mind finally getting up to full speed. She stared at Juri, a look of
dawning horror on her face.
"... Oh NO," she said.
"What?" said Juri, looking a little puzzled. She glanced down
at herself again, to make sure she wasn't sprouting extra limbs or
becoming chitinous or something.
"You're HERE," said Utena.
"Yes," said Juri, patiently. "Wherever here is."
"I was thinking about you last night... "
"Well, that's very flattering... "
"... and now you're HERE. Oh NO. Oh SHIT. Oh NO." Utena
went to her drawers and started pulling clothes out, throwing off her
pajamas and dressing hurriedly.
"That's a hell of a thing to say," said Juri indignantly.
"No, no, you don't understand," Utena replied, yanking on her
shoes. "You don't... oh FUCK."
"Your command of profanity is impressive," Juri said dryly,
"but - where are you going?" she asked, but Utena was already gone.
Juri scowled at the closed door, then sighed and looked around
the room. The other girl was still asleep, and Juri was loath to wake
her. Whoever she was, she was nearly invisible, snuggled deep into a
nest of tiger-striped bedsheets, black puffy coverlet, and a multitude
of stuffed toys - all of them tigers, except for the one that appeared
to be a rag-doll baseball player. Only some very-slightly-curly brown
hair, a patch of forehead, a closed eye, and one loosely balled fist
were visible of the actual girl herself. Waking a sleeper in her own
room was rude in any event, but Juri could especially not bring
herself to disturb someone who looked that comfortable.
She wondered if there were anything here to read, then noticed
the bookshelves. Before she got to them, though, she spotted a single
book lying on one of the two desks along the left-hand wall of the
room. Drawn by its solitariness and its cover, she picked it up.
"'So You've Just Arrived from a Parallel Dimension'?!" she
murmured, and sat down to read.
She was about halfway through chapter 1 when motion caught her
eye. She looked up to see a doll of some kind, a little mechanical
man about eight inches tall, regarding her from the surface of the
desk closer to the window. Juri could swear it hadn't been there a
moment ago, but there it was now, standing immobile with its arms
folded across its chest, regarding her with two little pinpoints of
yellow light for eyes. Despite its immobility, it gave her the
eeriest feeling that it was really watching her.
A moment later, another one joined it, this one slightly
taller and considerably wider, and with a more human-like face. Both
of them jumped down from the desk to the floor and approached to
within a couple of feet, then stopped and stood there, looking up at
her. They didn't seem hostile - just watchful, as if they were
content to let her stay there unmolested, so long as she didn't get up
to anything.
Juri looked back at them for a few moments, then shrugged and
consulted the index. Rapid transit... recidivism... robots, page 104.
After a few moments, the wider robot seemed to excuse itself,
went to the window, opened it, and jumped out. Little jet thrusters
on its back ignited, and it soared away, vanishing into the gray
overcast. The other robot followed it over, closed the window, and
then returned to its station, folded its arms, and kept watch on Juri.
Interesting, thought Juri as she went back to reading.
Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky the Fourth sat up, yawned,
stretched, and checked her email. Some days she did those things in
the reverse order, but she was feeling kind of conventional today.
She skimmed the latest spams and virii, filing a couple of the latter
away for later dissection and archiving, started a few automated
sitekiller jobs running on the places that had sent them to her,
surfed to a couple of cool URLs sent to her by online friends, and
then came to the mail from Azalynn.
"Ein! Ein, wake up!" she declared, reaching out with a foot
and joggling the corgi who lay curled up amid a nest of patch cables.
The dog blinked, made an interrogatory wurfle, then noted the copy of
the mail Edward had just forwarded to him and sat up, ears pricking
up. Edward looked smug.
"Yeah, Edward thought that would get your attention."
The desk clerk on duty that morning at the Worcester Crowne
Plaza Hotel had been a trifle confused by, and a little suspicious of,
the girl who'd checked in at 7:15. What did a girl in a WPI uniform
want with a room at the Crowne Plaza, a hotel maybe half a mile from
the school? Assuming she was really a student. The schoolgirl racket
was a pretty popular one around the Institute, and the clerk couldn't
be sure, but he thought she looked older than the age she claimed for
herself (15). She seemed upset about something, preoccupied, and gave
answers to the questions he asked her during check-in that were terse
bordering on rude.
Quarter past seven in the morning was an odd time to be
getting up to something shady, though. She had a student ID, and it
looked genuine. She gave an address at the school which sounded
legitimate. And her bankcard was as good as anybody else's. So what
business was it of his? He let her have the Palace Suite for the day
and kept his nose out of the whole matter. It wasn't his job to
screen for fake schoolgirls, or stop real ones from blowing their
money on useless hotel stays. Maybe she just had to get away from her
roommate for the day or something, and had expensive tastes.
Utena wasn't sure why she'd come here. Maybe it was just the
memory of having been here the last time she'd felt something like the
way she felt now - alone, cold, and frightened. She wanted to be
alone somewhere, to try to think of some way out of the corner she was
in without stumbling over a lot of people. She also wanted to be out
of the others' way while they dealt with all the problems she'd
caused.
Guilt stabbed at her a little at the thought of that, but she
couldn't face Miki or Juri right now, not after having brought him
here to face Liza's cruelty and then tearing her out of her life
through an accident of will, compounding her first crime. Let Kate
and the others try to straighten it out. If Utena tried to help,
she'd only make things worse. She sat huddled on the couch in the
suite's living room, swinging between feeling sorry for herself and
shivering with involuntary fear, for she had no idea how long.
Presently, she heard a sound that drew her momentarily back
from her reverie. There was a tapping at the glass doors which led
out onto the suite's balcony. That struck her as odd; she was, after
all, on the thirty-fifth floor. Warily, she got up and went to the
doors, pulled back the curtain, and looked.
There was no one out there, of course. She sighed, feeling
stupid, and then heard it again. This close to the doors, she could
tell that it was coming from down low. She looked down.
Tiny Robo was standing on the balcony, up to his hips in
drifted snow, tapping rather pitifully on the glass. With a surprised
sound, Utena opened the door and let the robot in, then went and got a
towel from one of the bathrooms and dried him off.
"What are you doing here?" she asked, well aware that he
couldn't answer. "Did you come looking for me? How'd you find me?"
Even as she asked, she knew the answer; she looked at the controller
wristwatch she wore and remembered Corwin telling her that Tiny Robo
could home in on it.
"Well," said Utena, picking up the little robot, "you're
loyal, I'll give you that. You remind me of another little critter,
except you eat a lot less."
"(grr,)" said Tiny Robo.
Kaitlyn returned to consciousness a second time with the
realization that her alarm wasn't going off. This time, a squint at
her watch indicated that the reason this time was that it -had- gone
off at the appointed time, and she'd switched it off without waking.
Ah, well - she only did that when she really needed the sleep she was
stealing. Besides, as her memory spun up and she looked back on the
reason she'd been up until 4 AM the previous night, she decided the
odds were very poor that she was going to classes today anyway.
She sat up, stretched (lightly thumping the ceiling with her
upraised fist as always), indulged in an immense and satisfying yawn,
then swung her feet out the side of her bunk and dropped lightly to
the floor.
"Ut-t-tena, are y-you up?" she asked the empty bottom bunk,
then mused to herself, "(I g-g-guess so.)" She picked up her glasses
from the top of her bureau, put them on, and then rummaged in the
drawers for today's underclothes and shirt. These she tossed onto her
desk without really looking at them. Next, she pulled her pajama top
off over her head without bothering to unbutton it, tossed it up on
her bed, and turned around, reaching for the bathrobe hanging on her
bedpost.
There was someone sitting in the brown armchair, a redheaded
girl who looked a bit Kate's senior, legs crossed elegantly at the
knee, regarding her very calmly over an open, about half-read copy of
"So You've Just Arrived from a Parallel Dimension" with the most
remarkable green eyes. Kate's brown eyes locked with them for a
second, and as they did so, the redhead smiled a barely perceptible,
gently sardonic little smile. Kate went red all the way down to the
notch of her collarbone, grabbed her pajama top and yanked it back on,
nearly getting it the wrong way round.
"A-a-and y-y-y-YOU a-are... ?" she inquired.
Juri closed the book on her finger and stood up, smiling a
little more fully, if guardedly. She was tall, maybe even taller than
Amanda. Kate noticed belatedly that she wore the same kind of uniform
Miki Kaoru had been wearing when he'd first appeared in her family
home on New Avalon: a white, rather martial jacket with epaulets and
chain, and close-fitting pants, hers a peach color as opposed to
Miki's blue. She had orange-gold hair in vertical curls and an
utterly lovely face with an air of cool, complete composure. Kate
swallowed an involuntary "Wow."
Now I know how Corwin must have felt, she noted to herself: A
little lost in Cleveland.
"I'm sorry to barge in this way," said the redhead in a
slightly apologetic tone. Her voice was a trifle deep for a woman's,
and a little husky. Kate found it eminently suitable. She went on,
"I take it you're Tenjou's roommate."
"Um... y-yes," said Kate. She bowed slightly. "K-K-Kaitl-lyn
H-Hutch-ch-chins."
"It's nice to meet you, Miss Hutchins," said Juri, nodding.
"I'm Juri Arisugawa."
Oh, of course. In that outfit, who else could she be?
"Ah," said Kate. "Th-that exp-p-p-plains... " She sighed.
This was going to take forever. "W-w-where's U-Ut-tena?"
Juri shrugged, just a bit. "I was hoping you could tell me.
She seemed normal enough when she let me in here, but then she started
swearing, got dressed in a hurry, and ran out." She gestured to the
little robot, which still stood looking up at her. "Your watchbot's
kept me penned in this chair ever since."
Kate frowned, too puzzled by Juri's description of Utena's
behavior to be amused by the security-consciousness of Lesser
Mazinger. "W-w-w-what d-d-did she s-s-s-s-say?" she asked.
"Well, aside from the profanities, the central theme seemed to
be, 'Oh no, you're here.'"
Kaitlyn thought about that for a second, followed the logical
thread to its conclusion, and sighed. "D-d-damn," she said, and
grabbed her robe. "W-w-wait h-h-h-here," she said, and left.
Juri looked after her, shrugged, and went back to reading.
Kate came back from showering a few minutes later and dressed
without self-consciousness now, because she was too preoccupied to
worry about it. As she knotted her neckerchief, she seemed to
remember that Juri was there (still sitting in the armchair, politely
waiting for her hostess to say something), and turned to face her
again.
"L-l-l-look," she began, but just then there was a knock at
the door. Kate glanced toward it, then sighed and started toward it,
but then it clicked and opened, admitting Azalynn.
"Katie, are you up?" she asked. "Oh, good. I got the
weirdest email last night, and - " She noticed then that Kate was in
the process of dressing, spotted her guest, and blinked. "Oh! You
have company. I'm sorry. I'll come back later."
"S-s-STAY," said Kate flatly.
"Um... OK," said Azalynn; then she grinned slyly and said,
"But I've only got ten minutes until my next class."
Kate rolled her eyes. "D-d-don't make m-me hurt y-you," she
said in a dead-serious tone, and Azalynn dropped the joke.
"Sorry. What's the matter?"
"Th-this is J-Juri," said Kate, gesturing. "She's f-f-from
Ut-tena's old s-school."
Azalynn's face fell. "Oh. She did it again, huh?"
Kate looked taken aback. "How d-did you - " Then she shook
her head. "F-Forget it. N-no t-time. She's d-disap-p-peared. G-get
the oth-others."
"Aw maaaan," said Azalynn. "Poor Utena. She must have
realized... "
Kate nodded. "Mm."
"OK, I'm gone," said Azalynn. "Nice to meet you, Juri. You
look like a lot of fun. We'll have to talk later!" True to her word,
the Dantrovian was then gone, darting out the door with just a flicker
of dark gray checked skirt and pale gray tail to mark her passing.
"A-as f-f-for y-y-you," Kate said to Juri as she stuffed the
tails of her blouse into the waistband of her skirt, "c-c-come w-with
m-m-me. W-we're g-g-going to f-f-f-find an i-int-t-terp-p-pret-t-ter."
They found R. Dorothy Wayneright sitting in Wedge Booth #1,
surrounded by her every worldly possession - two suitcases full of
clothes and her portable maintenance bay - calmly reading a book.
"D-Dorothy, w-what hap-p-pened?" asked Kaitlyn, shocked.
Dorothy dogeared her page, closed the book, and replied, "I've
been turned out of Galaxy House. Professor Harris reminded
Residential Life that the House charter reserves it for members of
off-Earth species and humans from colonies older than two centuries.
I am neither." The robot girl smiled, very faintly. "G'Kron is
outraged," she noted.
Kate flushed and scowled. "S-s-so am -I-!" she declared.
"G-God! I r-r-REALLY d-didn't need an-nyth-thing -else- to g-go
wr-wrong today. Th-this is J-Juri," she said, indicating the redhead.
"T-take your th-things up to M-Morgan 413, th-then g-get Juri to
A-Alden and t-tell her w-what the h-hell's g-going on ar-round here.
I'm g-g-going to f-find D-Dean Mont-taigne."
"I don't have a key," Dorothy told her.
"Then break the goddamn lock!" Kate snapped, and she stormed
out of the Wedge in the direction of Daniels Hall.
Dorothy watched her go and observed, "She's so angry she can
talk straight. That doesn't bode well." Then she turned her
attention to Juri. "Hello. I'm R. Dorothy Wayneright."
"Juri Arisugawa," Juri replied. "Is there anywhere around
here I can get some breakfast?"
Dorothy pointed. Juri turned around, looked, and saw the
entrance to Mini-DAKA ("The Grille", according to the green letters
bolted to the wall above the door) about ten feet behind her. She
gave Dorothy a wry smile and said, "Thanks."
"... but until this happened, I could convince myself that he
was wrong, you know?" said Utena to Tiny Robo. "That it was just a
coincidence, happening for some other reason. But... " She shook her
head, her tone becoming much less conversational, and she held the
robot a little tighter as she went on, "... not any more."
She sat cross-legged on the bed in Room 2, the place where, in
a sense, her whole adventure in this world had begun, with the robot
wrapped in her arms. He made a strange kind of armored teddy bear,
but despite his hard shell, he was curiously comforting - a solid,
substantial weight, reflecting the craftsmanship and care of his
construction, and possessed of a strange kind of empathy. Or maybe
that was just her imagination... it seemed to be working overtime
today anyway. All day, she'd felt as though there were something
horrible one step behind her, just about to drop its hand onto her
shoulder, always hovering just outside the range of her eyes when she
turned to look.
Robo said nothing. After a suitable interval, she went on,
"And it hit me... when I saw Juri... that if Zoner's right... if it's
vivid memories coming back to me that are causing this to happen...
well... " A couple of tears fell, spattering the top of Robo's
casque-helmet head. "... not all vivid memories are good ones," Utena
finished.
Robo wriggled a bit and made a different noise, one which
sounded like a cross between a sad growl and the gurgle of condensing
steam through tiny pipes.
"What the hell am I going to do, Robo?" asked Utena softly.
"I can't stay around here. All my friends... what would happen to
them if... some night... I dream of -him-? The memories are there, as
bright and clear and awful as ever, just waiting for the right
moment... a chance comment, a shadow on the moon, anything could set
them off. What would I do if he came here?"
"(grr!)" said Tiny Robo. Working his arms free, the little
machine smacked a fist into the opposite palm.
"You'll protect me?" said Utena, a wan little grin creeping
onto her face.
"(grr,)" Tiny Robo confirmed with an emphatic nod.
"Of course," said Utena. "Of course you would... Corwin made
you. But I don't think there'd be much you could do. Not against
him. You're... you're just a toy."
Robo made that sad noise again, and slumped a little.
"I'm sorry," Utena murmured. "I didn't mean to hurt your
feelings. But I... I don't know what to do."
"Well," said a deep, quiet voice from the doorway, "you could
try letting your friends help you."
Kate reached Dean Montaigne's office with a full head of steam
and yanked the outer door of the dean's office open, only to be nearly
bowled over by someone -else's- head of steam, already in progress:
" - TRAGE!"
She recovered from the acoustic shock and barged in, striding
past the dean's secretary (a rather harried young fellow by the name
of Carstairs) without acknowledging his presence and into the inner
office. There she found G'Kron of Galaxy House, striding up and down
in front of Dean Montaigne's desk, declaiming to a rather
bemused-looking Dean of Student Life,
"I acknowledge that I am a mere second-year student and that,
as a minor of a race which has only been 'civilized' for six thousand
years, I still have much to learn about what constitutes sensible
behavior. So please forgive me that I utterly, completely, and
without any reservations FAIL to COMPREHEND how this school can offer
a warm welcome and acceptance into a diverse household one day, and
then BANISH this aspiring young sapient to a homeless existence in the
next! It utterly escapes my limited faculties!
"I realize there must be some simple, rational, reason why
Dorothy Wayneright was thrown out because of a technicality which will
be addressed this summer. Perhaps there is some new student incoming
who deserves the room more? Perhaps there is some health code Miss
Wayneright violates of which I am not aware?" G'Kron paced away,
looking thoughtful, then scowled, whirled, and continued,
"But if it turns out that this action, this callous slap in
the face not just of one robot but of all those diverse, unusual,
DIFFERENT beings on this campus, is due to nothing but petty
bureaucratic pettifoggery, then I MUST say that such an act reflects
VERY poorly on the distinguished and honorable record of Worcester
Preparatory!! I very sincerely hope that you will enlighten me, and
those of the student body like me who are baffled by this
incomprehensible flip-flop on the part of the Residential Services
Department, at the earliest feasible time! Until then, madam, I shall
leave you to your work, and wish you a VERY GOOD AND PROSPEROUS DAY!"
With that, G'Kron made a perfunctory Narn-style bow with his
fists to his chest, whirled again, and marched out, brushing past
Kaitlyn with a brusque, "Good morning, Miss Hutchins."
Kate turned to watch him go (wincing slightly as he slammed
the outer door behind him), then turned back to Miss Montaigne. They
looked at each other for several long, tense seconds.
Then Miss Montaigne snickered, which cracked Kaitlyn's tense
facade, and then both women were laughing uproariously.
When she came down, Kate leaned against the dean's desk, wiped
at the tears in her eyes, and said, "W-well, anyth-thing -I- w-was
g-g-going to s-s-say p-p-pales b-by c-comp-parison."
"I know," said Miss Montaigne, still giggling. "Oh my. I
didn't have the heart to break in and tell him that I'm planning to
read the same chapter of the Riot Act to Residential Services Director
Jarvik in a few minutes. I was stuck for an opening until G'Kron came
along." She shook her head. "Oh my," she repeated, and got to her
feet.
"Don't worry, Kaitlyn. I probably won't be able to get the
decision reversed - it IS the rule, and Jarvik will make a fight out
of it before he'll reverse an announced decision. He's funny that
way. She won't be expelled, though, I guarantee that. We'll find her
someplace else to live, where certain professors - " (she adopted a
look of mild distaste) " - can't find loopholes in the res rules to
push her out through."
"H-how about M-Morgan 413?" Kate suggested. "It's
v-v-vacant."
"Good idea," said the dean. "We can say we're moving her
there so you can keep a closer eye on her or something. I'll get you
a key."
"Um... " Kate looked a little uncomfortable. "It'll n-n-need
a n-new l-lock," she admitted sheepishly.
Dean Montaigne gave her a look of calm reproach. "Oh,
Kaitlyn, you didn't."
"I w-was r-r-really m-mad," said Kate.
The breakfast rush was more or less over by nine-thirty, so
except for the guy behind the grill, Juri had the place to herself.
She ignored him and browsed momentarily in one of the cooler cases,
then realized that she didn't have any money. This produced an
irritated little noise from her, and she turned to go. She'd have to
borrow some local currency from someone - Dorothy, perhaps, unless she
could find Kaitlyn again.
The grill guy, alerted to her presence by the noise, turned
around, and for a second they just stared at each other, both too
surprised to react.
Saionji recovered first, flipped his spatula in the air and
caught it again, and said, "Good morning, Arisugawa. Get you
something?"
Juri gazed at him for a second longer, then collected her own
aplomb and replied coolly, "That's very kind of you, Saionji, but I'm
afraid I'm having a bit of a cash flow problem at the moment."
"Never mind about that, then - my treat," said Saionji. "A
courtesy to a fellow Student Councillor."
"Why, thank you. You've become a gentleman," Juri observed
wryly as she collected a tray from the stack and surveyed the menu.
"I get by with a little help from my friends," Saionji replied
calmly.
Kaitlyn and Miss Montaigne parted at the door to the
Residential Services Department's offices. Kate lingered in the hall
outside and listened long enough to hear Miss Montaigne say,
"Good morning, Director Jarvik. I have a little matter that
I'm hoping you can shed some light on for me. Now, I acknowledge that
I am a mere Dean of this institution and that, as an educator of only
twenty years' experience, I still have much to learn about what
constitutes sensible behavior. So please forgive me that... "
Chuckling to herself, Kate went on her way, leaving Daniels
Hall and heading for Alden.
She found the Duelists and company gathered there, all except
Utena, who was still missing, Saionji, who was still at work, and
Dorothy and Juri, who hadn't arrived yet. Miki was looking rather
ill, with dark pouches under his eyes and a sickly pallor. Apparently
he hadn't gotten much sleep. Moose looked worried, Amanda just short
of homicidal. Even Azalynn was looking cross. T'skaia's tail wasn't
moving around much, which was never a favorable indicator of the
t'skrang's mood.
Kate opened her mouth to try and calm things as everyone
started talking at once; then the side door of the theater opened and
Dorothy entered, and behind her, Juri.
Miki blinked and stared.
"M-Miss Juri!" he blurted, and took a couple of steps forward,
then stopped as if unsure of what to do with himself. Juri, however,
had no such hesitation in her; she crossed the floor with several
long-legged strides and drew the rather flustered young man into an
embrace.
"It's good to see that you're well, Miki," she murmured, then
released him. "More or less well, anyway," she went on as she got a
better look at him. "What's happened to you?"
Kate glanced at Dorothy, who shrugged slightly and replied, "I
haven't had time."
"Well, g-get s-s-started," said Kate. "The r-r-rest of us are
g-g-going to s-start l-looking."
MegaZone listened to Utena's fears with the same glum-faced
empathy that had been shown by Tiny Robo, which would have struck her
as funny under better circumstances. He made no comments, merely sat
in the chair he'd pulled up to the edge of the bed with his long legs
flung out in front of him, his shoulders hunched, and his hands thrust
deep into the pockets of his coat, nodding occasionally to show that
he was listening. By his expression, he was either furiously angry or
deep in thought.
Actually, it was both. For the furious part, he was
reproaching himself vigorously for not having thought to do something
about this back at Christmastime - when he'd first formed the theory
that Utena was unconsciously using the power she'd gained in the Rose
Tournament to bring people across the unmapped dimensional gulf that
separated this world from her native plane. Obviously she had
enemies; he didn't know her full life story, but just the fact that
she'd fought in a tournament for a prize so grand and hotly contested
ought to have tipped him to -that-. Even more obviously, her memories
of them would be just as vivid as those of her friends, and so she
would be just as likely to yank one of -them- across. Hell, Saionji
had been her enemy once, and being hauled across in a fever dream had
made him one again, briefly.
As for the deep in thought part, that was him considering ways
of taking that belated action now.
That part didn't take him long, so he kicked himself for a few
more minutes before raising himself to his feet and looking at her
with a fully serious expression.
"Wait here," he said gently, and he went back to the other
room. Utena sat, hugging Tiny Robo, and waited, wondering if she
dared hope for another miracle. MegaZone seemed adept at providing
them when required... but what could he do, Avatar of Chaos or not,
that could get her out of this?
A few minutes later, he returned with a woman by his side.
She looked oddly familiar, but it took Utena a few minutes to realize
why. She was shortish, not much taller than Utena herself, and though
Utena was tall for her age, this was a grown woman, in her early
twenties by the looks of her. She was beautiful, but it was a quiet,
understated beauty. The clearest thing her lovely face, framed by
long, intricately worn golden-brown hair, conveyed was kindness; after
that, serenity. She didn't look a thing like Kaitlyn, geometrically,
but there was a similarity in that kindness.
After taking all that in, Utena realized why she looked
familiar on top of that: she had blue markings on her face, triangles
on her cheekbones and a tall, narrow diamond on her forehead. The
triangles were the same as those on the faces of Corwin and his mother
Skuld, and the diamond in the same place as Corwin's circle and
Skuld's oblong. Some of the planes of her face were familiar, too.
"Utena Tenjou," said Zoner from behind the new arrival, "I'd
like you to meet Belldandy Morisato."
Belldandy bowed in the style of her surname, much like the way
it was done back in Cephiro. "I'm very pleased to meet you," she
said. "Corwin has told me a good deal about you," she added,
straightening with a pleasant smile.
"You're... his Aunt Bell, Mrs. Morisato?" Utena asked.
"That's right," said Belldandy. "You can call me that too, if
you like. Everybody does."
Utena, rattled as she was, still rose to the opening with a
smartass remark: "Hiroshi calls you 'Aunt Bell'?"
Belldandy's smile twinkled a little bit. "Sometimes," she
replied, "when he's not paying attention." She took a couple of steps
closer; Tiny Robo tensed and leaned forward a little, emitting a long,
soft growl.
"Oh!" said Bell, pausing with a surprised look; then she
smiled and leaned closer. "You must be Tiny Robo. Don't worry,
little one. I'm no threat."
If Tiny Robo had been a dog, he would have sniffed her hand
and then subsided. As it was, he just subsided. Bell sat down on the
edge of the bed, folded her hands in her lap, and said, "MegaZone
tells me you need help. I don't want to blow my own horn, but I'm
pretty good at helping people. I did it for a living before I settled
down to start my family," she added with a smile. "Would you like to
talk about it? I promise, nothing you tell me will go beyond this
room. You have my word as the Norn of Today."
Utena looked steadily at her for a few moments, then took a
breath and started talking. Zoner slipped out to the suite's living
room again, ordered room service, and settled down on the couch to
watch some TV.
They scoured the campus from one end to the other, looking
everywhere they could think of, starting with Alden Hall's own
belltower and ending in the subbasement of Fuller Labs. No Utena.
They broadened their search to include the student haunts down on
Highland Street. No Utena. Saionji got done work, skipped his Friday
classes like the rest of them, and joined the hunt. Lunchtime came
and went. Phase three saw teams dispatched to the Galleria, the
Greendale Mall, the Higgins Armory Museum, and Bancroft Tower. No
Utena.
It took Dorothy most of the day to explain the situation,
multi-layered as it was, to Juri. Actually, just the afternoon; she
let the redhead take the rest of the morning to finish reading "So
You've Just Arrived", then took it from there. By three, when the
searchers had agreed to regroup in the Wedge, she had most of it. It
was just a bit before the others started filtering back in that
Dorothy reached the most recent information, including what had
happened the previous night and sparked Juri's arrival in this world
in the first place.
Juri had received the news of the theft of Miki's notebook
with silence. As Dorothy described the slow appearance of its severed
pages, that silence had deepened, the redhead's face hardening into a
mask. By the time the robot got to the part about the sketch of
Kozue, slashed and impaled on the Morgan Commons bulletin board, and
the snide comment by Liza Broadbank which left no doubt she was
responsible, Juri's face was nearly white, her eyes dead green like
glass, her mouth pressed into a colorless line.
As fate would have it, Liza Broadbank chose that moment to
breeze into the Wedge from the Institute Road entrance and enter
Mini-DAKA, carefree and a little smug. She didn't know what, exactly,
had the Duelists' Society in such a tizzy today, but it hardly
mattered - whatever it was, the effect had her approval.
"Ah," said Dorothy, artlessly, guilelessly, and with no
intention other than to inform her audience fully of all pertinent
facts: "There she goes now, into the snack bar."
"Who?" said Juri.
"Liza Broadbank," said Dorothy calmly.
"Indeed," said Juri, arching an eyebrow. She rose,
straightened her uniform jacket, and left the Wedge booth. Opposite
the main booths, in between the two airlock entrances facing the Quad,
the Student Government had set up a table featuring an array of roses
and a hand-lettered sign reading "DON'T FORGET VALENTINE'S DAY!" in an
effort to remind WPI's students that holidays happened whether they
got the day off for them or not. Without breaking stride, Juri seized
one of the roses on her way past the display.
Liza Broadbank was just emerging from Mini-DAKA, still
laughing at some joking comment she'd shared with the afternoon
grill-minder, who happened to be one of her adherents, when Juri
reached her. Without any preamble whatsoever, the redhead leveled the
blonde with a thunderous backhanded slap that left Juri's right arm
extended straight out to the side and Liza sitting several feet away
on the floor, her hand raised to the crimson patch on the right side
of her face.
Liza was so rattled by this development that she couldn't even
protest. Juri stared down at her for a moment, her emerald eyes
blazing, then dropped the rose next to her, turned on her heel, and
stalked out of the Wedge toward the Morgan Hall stairwell. Liza sat
stunned for several more moments, then slowly picked up the rose and
examined it. The significance seemed to sink in after a few seconds,
and she slowly picked herself up, straightened her uniform, and
regarded the rose. The redness in her face (if not the swelling)
evened out as she slowly flushed with rising anger.
She looked up and saw Dorothy regarding her impassively.
"What the hell are -you- looking at, you blank-faced
lovedoll?" she snarled.
Dorothy considered this rhetorical question for a moment, then
replied, "Words fail me."
Liza made an angry noise, turned, and left the Wedge as well,
leaving Dorothy alone. Though not for long; in a few minutes, the
others began to return in ones and twos from their last round of
fruitless searching, chilled and disconsolate. Night was falling
early, the skies over Worcester darkening a bit before their time
thanks to the lowering clouds of a February snowstorm, and the
temperature was dropping as the wind picked restlessly up. It was not
going to be a comfortable night to be out and about in Worcester.
"Nothing?" asked Dorothy as Kaitlyn entered, red-cheeked from
the cold and hard-eyed with frustration.
"N-n-nothing," Kate replied, "g-g-god-d-dammit. Sh-she
h-hasn't c-come back h-here?"
Dorothy shook her head. "There's been no sign of her here.
You should know, however," the robot went on, "that Miss Broadbank was
just here, and that Miss Arisugawa knocked her down and challenged her
to a duel."
Kate dropped her face into her hand. "Oh, p-p-PERf-fect."
"... and now I don't know what to do," said Utena. She'd left
out the usual details, hit the usual high- and lowlights, and though
something in Belldandy's eyes told her the goddess knew there was more
to the story, it also told her that Bell would never press.
Instead, the Norn of Today merely smiled, reached out her
hand, and placed it on Utena's shoulder.
"That is indeed a terrible thing to have to go in fear of.
It's frightening to have power and not know how to wield it, or how
far it extends. I know. It's a thing all my people go through, as we
change from children to adults. I faced it. Corwin's mother faced
it, and bless her, she had a terrible, terrible struggle. Someday
soon, Corwin himself will face it, and I pray he has an easier time of
it than Skuld had."
"I'm not one of you, though," said Utena. "I'm just a normal
girl. Or I was when I started," she corrected herself glumly. "I
never wanted this stupid power. I only wanted to help... a friend."
"To gain the strength to help another is the noblest reason
for seeking power," said Belldandy firmly. "You alone understood
that. That's why you won."
"But the tournament was a sham," Utena pointed out.
"Mm, maybe your enemy thought so," Bell replied, "but workings
of magic as powerful as the one you now hold tend to have their own
standards. Your nobility resonated with your predecessor's, drew his
spirit to you. Whatever goals the mortal agencies manipulating your
trial had in mind, the ending was inevitable from the moment the power
touched your soul, so long as your courage held out... and it did."
"Fat lot of good it did me," said Utena angrily. "All right,
so I won. So I have the Power of Dios now. I can't even control it.
I lost the prize I was -really- fighting for, and now all I can do
with the so-called 'power to revolutionize the world' is win more
swordfights and ruin my friends' lives!" She drew a shuddering
breath, let it out in a great sigh. "I'm sorry, Bell. I shouldn't
yell at you. It's not your fault... you're trying to help me.
Everybody wants to help me, and in return, I might just bring the
Devil himself into their lives someday, if I stay."
"That's what I'm here to help you with," said Bell gently.
"Do you see the earring I'm wearing?" She touched the elaborate
construct of rods and rings hanging from the lobe of her left ear.
Utena's eyes went to it. "This is a Seal," Bell went on. "As a First
Class Unlimited goddess, I have tremendous power." She said this not
in a boastful tone, but as a simple statement of fact, as was the next
thing she said: "I could destroy this planet with very little effort.
Without, in fact, even intending to, if I were careless, or ill, or
otherwise not in full control of my faculties. Do you see where I'm
going with this?"
"The earring restricts your power," Utena said.
"Exactly," Belldandy said, nodding.
Utena's eyes kindled as she dared to hope again. "You
mean... you can get something like that for me, to hold back this
power I can't control?"
Belldandy chuckled gently. "Not exactly 'get' - I can -make-
you one, if you wish."
Utena opened her mouth to reply, then paused as a thought
struck her. "But... if I seal it up... then I'm closing the door on
my best chance of getting Himemiya back someday."
"Not at all," said Belldandy. "The power will still be yours,
as mine is still mine. All the Seal does is harness it. Think of it
this way: you came into your power all at once, rather than growing
into it as my people do. That means you have a harder road ahead of
you, learning to master it, than I did, or even Skuld. It's no wonder
it's run wild, outside your conscious control. You can't do little
things, let it out a bit at a time, learn to work with it that way -
it's like trying to water a garden with a fire hose. Right?"
Utena considered the rush of energy that always marked the end
of a duel, the explosion that had catapulted Kate's father into his
own koi pond, and nodded. "Yeah."
"My full power is similar; that's what makes it so dangerous.
The Seal helps me control it. I can still use it, but to call upon it
for anything dangerously powerful, I must break the Seal. I must make
a conscious decision to take the risk of using my full strength."
"So... if I could learn to control it... then I might be able
to use it to finish what's been left undone after all."
Bell nodded, looking thoughtful. "Oh, dear... I don't want to
get your hopes up too high. I'll have to take your measure, see if I
can determine how much power you really have, and what kind. It's an
alien power from a world I know nothing about, so I may not succeed
and the process may be painful. Still, in all the worlds I've seen so
far, magic is magic, and your description gives me hope. Shall we try?"
Utena smiled, really smiled, for the first time that day.
"Yes," she said, "please!"
Kate paced up and down and fretted. The hour was drawing nigh
onto seven o'clock, the Duelists and some friends were all assembled
in the main hall of Alden, and there was still no sign of Utena. If
she had gone off for the day to think and worry, Kate would have
thought she would have at least come back for dinner. Or -called-, at
the very least, to stop her roommate from worrying her damn guts out.
As if she didn't already have -enough- to worry about, with the
newly-arrived (by-God -gorgeous-! ... focus, Kaitlyn, focus) redhead
getting ready to square off against the Evil Bitch Queen of Crescent
Heights Middle School, Dorothy and Devlin on the bad side of a senior
professor, and Miki still reeling, torn now between the renewed angst
of Liza's campaign against him, worry for Utena, worry for Juri, and
guilt over the latter's having been brought here and thrown into
danger because of him and his troubles.
Kaitlyn stopped at the end of one pacing line, turned, and
surveyed the troops. Miki was sitting on the edge of the stage in a
kind of lotus position, hands on knees, eyes closed; Azalynn was
kneeling behind him, plying a Dantrovian acupressure-type art on
various parts of his head, trying to help him relax. Good. It looked
like it was working, and it would at least keep both of them
occupied.
Moose was leaning against the wall, reading what appeared to
be a Bible. Kate supposed that meant he was a Christian of some sort
this week; it was hard to keep track of Moose's eternal, half-serious
search for faith. (She just hoped he didn't find Kalidor one of these
days; she had a habit of not letting go, even of those who just
stumbled over her while on a casual stroll through alternative
spirituality.)
Amanda was sitting cross-legged on the floor next to the main
entrance, using a laser stylus to sharpen her favorite blade, a short,
broad sword like a Roman gladius, if gladii had sported microfine
edges and alloys purported to be capable of blocking blasterfire. It
was hard to tell with the jeweler's loupe screwed into her eye and the
other closed, but Kate suspected the Gamilon still looked angry.
Devlin, sitting next to her with his feet outstretched, looked asleep,
but Kate would have bet against it.
Saionji sat in seiza on one side of the proscenium, his tachi
across his knees, eyes closed in meditation. Kate actually mustered a
little bit of a smile to see that Dorothy was seated next to him in
exactly the same position, trying out his technique. She wondered if
it was working, and what sort of inner peace a positronic robot could
find. Dorothy could seem to be breathing, Kate knew, from having
noticed it; the robot spoke as a human did, by forced air and
resonance. Kate wondered if "breathing" gave Dorothy the same
sensations it did for a human, and if she could thereby benefit from
the breath-control part of the meditation technique Saionji used. It
was a very interesting line of thought. Kate made a mental note to
ask Dorothy about it sometime.
T'skaia was up on the stage too, somewhat behind the
proscenium. From the look of him, the t'skrang was acting out part of
one of Shakespeare's plays - which Shakespeare plays had swordfights
in them? Hamlet, maybe? Whatever, Sky was lunging and riposting all
around, letting out the odd sound effect and making heroic Middle
English-oid declarations now and then. His antics didn't seem to
bother Saionji or Dorothy, so Kate supposed their meditation efforts
were working. Either that or they were pretending not to be annoyed
to preserve the t'skrang's feelings.
Off on the other side of the theater stood Juri Arisugawa,
arms folded, leaning against the wall, scowling. She'd been scowling
all night, ever since Dorothy had brought her down to Alden from
Morgan 413, which the Federation had annexed as a temporary holding
area for, as Devlin put it, "displaced redheads." (Dorothy insisted
that her hair was more auburn than red, but Devlin's fondness for a
compact phrase would not be denied.)
Juri had been introduced to those (pretty much everyone but
Kate, Azalynn, and her fellow Cephireans) who didn't know the details
of Utena's origins as simply another ex-schoolmate from Ohtori who had
found her way at last to Earth. This explanation was accepted without
demur, and Juri had been made considerably more welcome than her dour
expression now indicated. T'skaia had even made her the loan of one
of his impressive collection of swords, since she had arrived without
one of her own. Kate guessed she was simply preoccupied with Liza.
The main entrance opened, and everyone turned to look,
expecting it to be Liza and wondering if she would come alone or with
a detachment of the campus police in tow. They were disappointed;
instead, it was another girl in their grade, but not one any of the
Duelists knew particularly. She was in classes with a few of them,
but didn't say much, and none of them remembered her name.
She was pretty, with long, thick, slightly wavy black hair and
a pleasant oval face; for shoes, the only part of the student costume
left entirely to the student's own discretion, she favored black
loafers, and on her lapel she wore a curious pin with a greenish,
opalescent gemstone. She came into the auditorium, past Amanda (who
had lost all interest in her upon determining that she was not Liza
Broadbank), and came up to Kaitlyn, a little timidly.
"Um... I don't want to intrude, but... you're Kaitlyn
Hutchins, aren't you? The President of the Institute Duelists'
Society and the Student Orchestra?"
Kate nodded. "Th-that's m-m-me. I'm s-s-sorry, I-I d-d-d-don't
th-think I kn-kn-know y-y-y-your n-n-name."
"Oh, I'm sorry," said the girl, looking a little embarrassed.
"I should've introduced myself first, how rude of me. My name is Mia,
Mia Ausa. I'm in your Galactic History 203 division, but so is about
half the Class of 2407, so I suppose that's no reason to suppose you'd
know me, especially since I don't speak up much in class."
"O-oh." Kate sighed internally, gritting her mental teeth for
what was inevitably going to be a long and arduous sentence. "W-well,
i-i-it's n-n-n-nice t-to m-m-m-meet y-you, M-M-M-Mia, b-but w-w-we're
k-k-kind of b-busy r-right n-n-now... "
"I understand," said Mia. "Do you mind if I stay and watch?
We can talk after it's over, if you don't mind. It won't take long,
and I do think it's quite important or I wouldn't impose."
"Um... " Kaitlyn thought furiously. Juri and Liza's duel
wasn't a sanctioned thing - Juri wasn't a student, wasn't even on
Earth legally. It was not only off the Society's charter, but against
the school's rules as a result -and- in violation of the laws of the
City of Worcester, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the United
States, and for all Kate knew, the North American Treaty Zone and the
Earth Alliance, too. If this girl witnessed it, then breathed a word
about it in the right ears, they'd all be in a heap of trouble.
On the other hand, there was something about Mia that seemed
trustworthy - Kate couldn't put her finger on it, but she often had a
sense about this kind of thing, and it was rarely wrong when she had
it. Her father said it was part of zanshin, the slightly extrasensory
awareness that Katsujinkenryuu's discipline cultivated in its
followers. However it worked, Kate felt it now, and trusted it. What
this girl had to say was obviously important to her...
Kate nodded. "O-k-k-K," she said. She would have gone on to
try and say more, but just then, the theater's side door (which led by
way of a short corridor to the loading dock on the side of the
building and thus made a good shortcut from the three Quadside dorms)
opened and two people entered. There was a moment's pause before
Azalynn's cry startled those who hadn't bothered to look at the sound
of the door into looking now:
"UTENA!" the Dantrovian declared, jumping down from the stage
and nearly bowling the pink-haired girl over. (She also nearly
cracked her skull on Tiny Robo, who Utena was still holding across her
chest with one arm.) The Duelists gathered around their returned
vice-president, their voices a chorus of welcome. Utena went red and
looked very sheepish, answering their greetings with a sort of subdued
embarrassment. Under that, shock was still visible in the slightly
pinched lines of her face.
Behind her roommate, Kaitlyn was surprised to see Aunt
Belldandy, smiling benevolently. Kate introduced her to those who
hadn't met her before, then shooed the others back, telling them to
give Utena some space to breathe in before she passed out.
"I w-w-won't ask w-w-where you've b-b-been," said Kate to
Utena, embracing her roommate as best she could with Tiny Robo between
them, "b-b-but you j-just about s-scared the l-life out of m-me."
"I know. I'm sorry," said Utena, shamefaced. "I'll tell you
about it later."
Kate nodded, stepping back with her hands on Utena's
shoulders, and smiled. "As l-long as y-you're OK."
"I'm still a little shaky," Utena said honestly, "but I think
I'll make it back." She gestured with her chin to Mia, who stood a
bit behind Kate, looking a bit taken aback. "Who's the new girl?"
"Hm? O-oh - Utena, th-this is M-Mia Ausa. M-M-Mia - "
Mia nodded, gracefully saving her the trouble of framing the
introduction. "And you're Utena Tenjou, of course," said she with an
impish little grin. "Everybody knows who -you- are around here."
Utena went a little pink and looked away. "Eheh, well," she
said, and rubbed awkwardly at the back of her neck.
Still smiling, Mia seemed to notice the woman standing behind
Utena for the first time. She drew up and blurted, "Verthandi!"
Kate shot her a sharp glance, but said nothing. Belldandy
smiled as if nothing unusual had happened at all, bowed, and said,
"I'm pleased to meet you, Miss Ausa. You can call me Bell, if you
like; all of Kaitlyn's friends do."
Mia looked slightly -intimidated-, of all things, then managed
a smile and a bow and said, "I... thank you!"
She might have gone on, but about then the main doors to the
front hall opened again, and this time, it -was- Liza. She was alone,
dressed in the same modified fencer's costume she'd worn for her duel
with Utena, and carrying the same swept-hilt rapier. Without an
administrative audience to play to, she came in without her usual air
of smooth command. Instead, she positively radiated hostility as she
stepped past Amanda (who put away her stylus and loupe, and sat
weighing her gladius judiciously, as though considering throwing it)
into the middle of the room and swept her blue eyes across the
assemblage.
"I might have known you'd be behind this, Katie dear," she
said. "Where did you get -this- one?" Liza looked Juri up and down
with cool deliberation, taking in her unfamiliar, martial uniform and
the hardness of her expression. "Hmph," she added. "You do seem to
surround yourself with the most -unfeminine- creatures. Anyway, what
do you want? I won't admit to anything, and you'll never prove it.
You can't make me do anything."
"Then why did you come?" asked Juri, stepping in front of Liza
and blocking her line of sight to Kate.
"I wanted to be certain that Katie here was responsible for
this latest outrage," Liza replied. Tilting her head inquisitively,
she went on, "Does she pay you in money, or service?"
Most of the assembled group went tense (well, tenser) at
that. Amanda seemed almost ready to get up, until Devlin (who was
still sitting there next to her with that deceptively sleepy look on
his face) put his hand on her arm and shook his head slightly, no.
Kate folded her arms and looked annoyed.
"I don't fight for money," Juri said, "and I don't need
service. This doesn't have anything to do with Kaitlyn or her
Society. I don't know or care anything about your little campus
politics. This is personal."
Liza blinked at her, genuinely lost. "I don't follow you."
"You need to learn that attacking people who've never done you
any harm isn't as safe as you seem to think," said Juri.
Liza snorted. "Oh, that's rich. Which of us assaulted the
other this afternoon? I've never seen you before in my life." Then a
sly smile stole over her face. "Ohhh, -I- get it. This is about poor
little Mr. Kaoru, isn't it? The boy genius can't hack the pressure
here at the Institute, so you're looking for someone to blame. Well,
why doesn't he stand up for himself, then? If he's convinced that -I-
had something to do with his unfortunate mishap, why doesn't he
confront me about it himself, instead of hiding behind you?"
Juri smiled. It wasn't a nice smile.
"If he touched you," she replied, "he might get dirty, and I
prefer him clean."
Miki, who still sat where he'd been while Azalynn ministered
to his stress level, went a bit red. Liza went a good deal redder, if
not for the same reason.
"You'll pay for that," she promised Juri. "I'll make sure of
that."
"We'll see," replied Juri coolly.
"If you're finished with the preliminary posturing," said
Dorothy blandly, "perhaps we can get started?"
Liza looked annoyed, Juri faintly amused, as the robot girl
fitted each of them with a rose hurriedly acquired from the Institute
Florist shop down on Highland Street. Liza got another yellow rose;
the shop hadn't had any orange ones, so Juri had to make do with red.
Miki, as club secretary, had been half-jokingly tasked with finding
someplace that carried all the strange colors that might be required
for proper assignment during the Society's impromptu tournament. This
was done half-jokingly because, with this illegal duel looming and
Utena still missing at the time, no one had it in them to make more
than half a joke.
The Duelists gathered in front of the stage to watch and stay
out of the way. Azalynn glanced to her right as Saionji jumped down
from the stage to lean against the front of the proscenium, arms
folded. He looked immensely but privately amused by something.
"(What's so funny?)" she whispered.
"(This,)" Saionji replied. "(Broadbank has no idea what she's
in for. Arisugawa was the best of us. Better than Tenjou.)"
"(So why didn't she win?)" Azalynn wondered.
"(It wasn't her destiny,)" said Saionji, "(nor the Rose
Bride's.)"
Azalynn looked faintly puzzled by that, but let it go, because
it wouldn't do to be having a philosophical debate during somebody
else's duel.
Liza and Juri stood facing each other across the width of
Alden's main hall. Alden Memorial was a rather odd building. Though
built from the start as the Institute's center for the performing
arts, its exterior and the look and layout of its main hall gave it
the odd impression that it was really a converted church, with its
high, narrow windows, polished wood, rear balcony with organ, and
overall sense of quiet solemnity. It merely lacked pews and had a
theater stage instead of an altar.
That atmosphere, thought T'skaia, was quite appropriate for
the conflict now taking place within it: a retelling in miniature of
the ancient, eternal and irresolvable clash between righteousness and
wickedness, that grandest and oldest of tales. It suited both the
ecclesiastical and the theatrical airs of the place to have this
battle take place between its walls. As he stood against the corner
of the stage and observed, the t'skrang thought maybe he felt another
painting coming on.
Corwin Ravenhair pulled his antique Griffon into a parking
space in front of the Wedge, humming a little tune, then shut the car
down and climbed out with Nall, as ever, on his shoulder. For a
moment, he stood next to the car, hands in the pockets of his
overcoat, smiling around at the snow-covered Quad. Then he thumbed
the autolock button on the car's remote control, waited until the
armored shields had sealed, turned, and walked off past Riley Hall and
down the hill to Galaxy House.
Nobody seemed to be at home, or at least nobody was answering
the door. That struck Corwin as a little bit odd, but he supposed he
should have expected something like it might happen.
"I told you we should have called ahead," Nall grumbled as
they walked back up the hill to the Wedge.
"Relax, Nall. Somebody'll be around."
As they explored the usual haunts a bit more, though, Corwin
started to wonder. There was no one of note in the Wedge; no one
answered his knock at Morgan 412's door.
"Hrm," he mused, standing in the Morgan 4th hallway. "This is
kind of a bummer. I wonder where everybody is."
"Maybe they're having a rehearsal or something," Nall
suggested.
"On Friday?" Corwin wondered; then he shrugged. "I guess it
wouldn't hurt to go see."
/* The Mighty Mighty Bosstones "Kinder Words" _Question the Answers_ */
The side door of Alden Memorial was open, so Corwin, familiar
with the place from previous visits, just went right on in. Once
inside, he could hear the clash of steel coming from the main hall.
This was curious for a Friday, but not surprising in itself, so he
didn't put on much haste as he headed in that direction.
The vista that came to his eyes when he opened the side doors
and went into the hall itself, however, held enough surprises to keep
him standing there looking for a couple of minutes. The whole
Duelists' Society, and several others, were gathered there, watching a
fight between a pair of combatants Corwin didn't immediately
recognize. Wait - OK, the blonde was Liza Broadbitch, that was kind
of odd, but whatever. The redhead, though, he was certain he'd never
seen before. She was of a type he was familiar with - tall, a bit
regal, a bit scary. When your mother is the captain of the Valkyrie,
you get used to tall, regal, scary women in a hurry.
The next thing that became obvious was that this was no duel
for fun. Both women's faces were hard and cold, their eyes furious,
and sparks flew from their clashing blades. Rose Duel or not, this
was for keeps. Some offense was being redressed here.
Given that one of the players was Liza, Corwin supposed that
wasn't all that surprising.
"(The redhead's good,)" Nall murmured.
"(Mm,)" said Corwin. He didn't care much for swordplay
himself - the doing of it, anyway; he could easily be convinced to
watch it - but he'd been trained in it pretty extensively all the
same. He could recognize skill and talent when he saw it, and the
redhead had plenty of both. She moved like a fencer, with quick
lunges and a very fast hand, but there was a fluidity to her motions
that was usually absent from formal fencing. The blade she wielded
was a straight saber with a double-ring hilt - not a fencer's saber,
but a live weapon, edged and bearing a wicked point. It was a little
shorter than Liza's rapier, but the redhead's reach was a little
longer, so it all evened out.
Corwin took a moment to scan the assembled audience for this
duel, and found some more surprises there. Utena looked like she'd
received some very bad news - she was a little pale and sad-looking,
and stood quietly, watching the fight without much animation. She
held Tiny Robo against her chest in crossed arms, her chin resting on
top of his turret head... and Corwin's Aunt Bell was standing behind
her, hands on her shoulders! What the - ?! The rest of the group
looked tense and angry - Kate was practically livid - and there was a
dark-haired girl there Corwin had never seen before.
Desperately curious as to what had happened, both to Utena and
to the group in general, Corwin squelched his questions and joined the
crowd as unobtrusively as possible. Kate noticed him, gave him a
surprised glance and a tight little smile, and returned her attention
to the fight. Utena's glance was a little less surprised, her smile,
if wan, rather warmer. Corwin was glad of that, at least, and
returned it, feeling his face get a bit warm, before he went back to
paying attention to the duel as well.
"Is this the best you have to offer?" Juri inquired coolly as
she beat back Liza's attempt at offense and pressed her back. "I'm
told you're the captain of this school's Fencing Club. If you
represent the Institute's best, I must say that's rather sad."
Liza made no reply; she was too busy parrying, then having her
counterthrust pre-empted by Juri's superior speed.
"Even in this nonstandard format," Juri went on, "I can see
the flaws in your technique. At Ohtori Academy, you would be
disqualified from competition."
"I've been hearing a lot about this 'Ohtori Academy' lately,"
Liza sneered, giving her attack new strength with a flurry of feints
and harassing lunges. "How is it that I'd never heard of it before?
They say it was on the Outer Rim, but my family's heard of all the
good schools, even out there."
Juri crossed her up, breaking the flow of her attack, and
replied, "The Academy didn't need to advertise. Its students are
drawn to it by destiny, not marketing."
Liza snorted, her composure visibly fracturing. "'Destiny',
what a crock. Next you'll tell me you believe in miracles and Santa
Claus."
Juri cracked a tiny smile and replied sardonically, "Santa
Claus, no. Miracles... " She trapped Liza's next thrust, twisted,
and flung the rapier from the blonde's hand; Liza stumbled back, her
face blank with shock, and fell to the floor. Juri stood over her,
leveling her blade, and went on, "Miracles, I'm still out on."
It wouldn't occur to Miki, Saionji, or Utena for several hours
that Juri had just made a pun on her own name.
Liza's rapier hit apogee, turned, and fell, point down, in a
remarkably dangerous fashion. Utena had a sudden feeling of deja vu.
Juri just smiled a little wider and a little nastier, took one smooth
unconcerned step to the side, and let it WHANG vertically into the
floor and stand there wobbling while she flicked Liza's rose easily
from the breast of her tunic.
Liza stared up at her, all her arrogance, anger and everything
else wiped away by the sheer surprise of that calm and casual
avoidance of peril. The redhead hadn't even looked. It was like
she'd -known- that would happen.
'I never fall for the same trick twice," Juri told her coolly,
"even if it's Fate's."
Liza collected her sword and her damaged dignity and left the
field without further comment, having been coldly instructed by Juri
to return Miki's notebook within six hours or suffer the (unspecified,
but implied by the redhead's icy green eyes) consequences. Belldandy
fussed about the damage to the hall's hardwood floor, then repaired it
with a gesture and a few curious words, which took the assembled
company somewhat by surprise, though they were too polite to go asking
a lot of awkward questions. Mia was introduced to the rest of the
Duelists, Corwin, and Nall; she took Nall's claim of dragonhood with
smiling equanimity and a deep and formal bow, which pleased the little
dragon to no end. The group then broke up, some of them going down
the hill to celebrate Juri's victory at Galaxy House while others
begged off and pursued other ends.
As they were leaving the Hall, MegaZone appeared from behind
the big beech tree standing on an island in the middle of the driveway
that led from West Street to the parking lot in front of Sanford Riley
Hall, and beckoned to Utena. They conferred for a few moments, too
quietly to be heard by the rest of the group; then Utena turned and
called to Juri.
"This is MegaZone," she said as Juri approached. "He's the
one who helped me get established when I first came here."
"I'd like to talk to you privately for a few minutes," Zoner
told Juri. "It won't take long."
Juri gave him a skeptical-looking once-over, decided there was
no reason to be -too- wary of him, and nodded. "Fine." She turned to
Utena. "I'll catch up."
"OK," said Utena. Turning to MegaZone, she went on,
"Zoner... thanks. Again. I owe you."
Zoner made a dismissive gesture. "'Smy job."
"Well, thanks anyway," said Utena with a grin that showed her
fast-recovering strength. She paused for a second as if not quite
sure what to do, then settled for patting him on the arm and trotting
off after the others. They got nearly halfway across the front of
Riley Hall before Azalynn turned around and yelled,
"ZONER!"
"WHAT?" Zoner bellowed back.
"Will I see you at Terzayyl this year?"
Zoner frowned thoughtfully. "What day is that?"
"Um... " Azalynn did a bit of mental calculation. "Next
Saturday! The nineteenth!"
Zoner considered for a second, then yelled, "Sure!"
"Great!" yelled Azalynn. "I'll make extra pudding! See ya!"
"Bye!" Zoner shouted, and the group moved off, chattering
happily. Zoner turned and walked off toward Boynton Hall, gesturing
for Juri to follow him.
"What do you want to talk to me about?" Juri asked him flatly.
"Well," said Zoner, "I need to know a couple of things about
you before I can get your paperwork done. You know, little things
like your date of birth."
"On your calendar, December 1, 2387," she replied.
Zoner cocked an eyebrow and smiled at her as they crossed the
footbridge. "You'd already figured that out."
"Dorothy and I worked out a conversion. It's really very
simple. Our calendar is essentially the same as yours; the names of
the months are different, but their places are the same. It's a very
curious coincidence," Juri went on, in a tone of voice that made it
clear she didn't think it was a coincidence at all, "that we even have
the same very short month that gets one day longer every four years."
"Yeah, how 'bout that," Zoner replied nonchalantly. "OK, so
you're 17. You must have been... what, a junior?"
Juri nodded, then asked with a tone of faint amusement,
"Shouldn't I be giving this information to some legitimate authority?"
"Oh, but I -am- a legitimate authority," said Zoner airily.
He paused on the pathway down the hill behind Boynton and turned to
face her, suddenly holding a camera. "Say 'australopithecus'," he
said, leveling it.
Juri gave him a puzzled look. "What?"
"Good enough," said Zoner. Flash! "Anyway," he went on as he
jacked the camera into a cable that led into one of his coat pockets,
"I -know- a legitimate authority. I'm on the phone with him right
now. Friend of mine who runs a very nice, very liberal little space
republic - Kaitlyn's father, as a matter of fact. He's been kind
enough to provide citizenship, with all the fun benefits that brings
with it, to Utena and Miki as well."
"And Saionji?"
"Well, sort of retroactively, him too, yeah," said Zoner,
looking a little distracted. "'Scuse me a second. Sending a fax."
Juri regarded him with an expression somewhere between
disbelief and amusement. Somewhere inside his coat, something went
whir, click, beep, and an item fell out of his sleeve into his hand.
He turned and presented it to her with a flourish. It was an
identification card in her name, featuring a small, slightly grainy
holo of her quizzical face. Something else chimed; he reached into a
pocket and pulled out a passport. Several other documents came from
various other openings in the coat, and Zoner collated them and handed
them all over.
"These are all legitimate," said he, handing over the
passport and a couple of other documents bearing the Great Seal of the
Republic of Zeta Cygni. "This is a forgery," he went on, handing over
a card bearing the sigil of the Psi Corps, "but it's a very good one.
You're not telepathic, by any chance, are you?"
"As far as I know, no," Juri replied.
"Well, let's try a little experiment. What am I thinking?" A
pause. "OK, you didn't hit me. You're not telepathic. Good, good.
That can be... problematic, nowadays. Well, I think that's
everything. I have to be getting back."
"Wait a second. Why are you doing this? What do you expect
to gain?"
Zoner gave her a curious look and replied, "Not everything has
to be done for gain. Maybe I just like helping." He smiled.
"Besides, anybody who makes it their business to seek out Liza
Broadbank and belt her one first thing upon arriving in a strange new
world has earned my help. You're the perfect person to take her down
a few pegs, too - you're better at everything she does."
Juri snorted. "Some achievement. Anyway, I'm certainly not
better at being rich."
"Oh, we can fix that," said Zoner. He took back the red WDF
Credit Union card, slid it into a slot on a small PDA-type device,
made a few adjustments with a stylus, and handed the card back after
it beeped, saying, "There. Now you're well-endowed."
There was a brief, awkward pause. Juri raised an eyebrow.
"You have a lot of money," said Zoner, his expression wooden.
"Just like that," said Juri dryly.
"Just like that," Zoner replied. "Look, I've been around a
long time, and I've made a lot of business deals. Quite a few of 'em,
I made so long ago I've forgotten about 'em, but they're still paying
off, right? So I get these huge checks in the mail and can't even
remember what the hell I did to earn them. It's a pain in the ass, so
I just give it away. I think the trust fund I just set up for you is
revenues from ScudCo, but I could be wrong." He shrugged. "Doesn't
matter anyway. Spend in good health. Any idea what you're going to
do with yourself, or is it too soon to think about that?"
"Much too soon," Juri replied. "For now, I'll go see if I can
find Galaxy House."
"Oh, I know where that is," Zoner said airily. "I'll walk you
down, then I have to clear out. Things to do. I gotta see a lady
about a magic midget."
Juri gave him another odd look, then decided she didn't want
to pursue it.
Kate, Utena, Corwin, Dorothy, Moose, Miki, and Mia Ausa sat in
the living room at Galaxy House, talking over the day's events.
Belldandy, who accompanied them, had noted the kitchen upon entering
the house, smiled, and said she would join them shortly. T'skaia had
excused himself and gone up to his room - the muse, apparently, was
upon him, and he was off to capture his impressions in paint before
the notion left him. The others thus retired to the living room,
where they spent the first half-hour or so (interrupted only by the
arrival of Juri) filling Corwin in on the events of the past few days:
Dorothy's travails with Professor Harris, the problem of Miki's
notebook that had led to Liza's duel with Juri, and the day's
excitement caused by a now-quite-sheepish Utena. She didn't elaborate
on where she'd gone, only insisted that she was all right now, and
very sorry for worrying everyone.
Corwin didn't know which way to jump, whether to be furious
about the school's treatment of Dorothy, spend some time thinking
unpleasant thoughts about Liza first, or skip right to being worried
about Utena. While he was pondering that, Belldandy came in with a
big plate of warm chocolate chip cookies - nobody made chocolate chip
cookies like Aunt Bell. Shortly thereafter, Mac McKenzie wandered
down, drawn by the scent of food, and was introduced.
"Sorry I didn't let you in," Mac said to Corwin when he found
out Kate's brother had been ringing the doorbell earlier. "I sort of
passed out on my pre-calc book."
Corwin nodded. "Math'll do that to a person. No big
problem."
"I'm also sorry to hear about what's happened to you,
Dorothy," he added. "I've written a letter to Residential Life
expressing my concerns with your treatment."
"Thank you," said Dorothy, "that was very kind. But I've
found a place to live again. Everything should work out in the end."
Mac smiled a little. "I know G'Kron would like to work
something out on Professor Harris's end," he said. "Good thing for
the Professor that he's a pacifist."
"Well, -I'm- not," Corwin growled. "I'm tempted to go find
that guy tomorrow and give him what for."
"That would hardly improve my situation," Dorothy observed.
"No, I suppose not," Corwin admitted, sighing heavily. Then
he cracked a wry grin, looked from Dorothy to Utena, and said, "I
don't come around for a couple weeks and you go all to pieces on me."
Utena grinned, a little shyly, and said, "Well, yeah... how'm
I supposed to keep it together for two whole weeks without Nall?"
Nall said, "Ha!" Then he jumped across the room to her seat,
curled up in her lap, and gave Corwin a smug look while she scratched
his ears. Corwin just shrugged with a sort of "well, I missed the bus
on that one, didn't I?" look on his face.
Mac bade the gathering a good night then, and went back to his
room to complete the homework that had been interrupted by his nap,
then get some sleep. A real party animal, that was Mac McKenzie. The
rest endeavored to keep their voices down.
Liza Broadbank locked up her desk in the Student Council
offices on the ground floor of Daniels Hall, then left the office and
locked it behind her. Feeling curiously furtive, she stole down the
central corridor and left the building by the door next to the campus
bookstore, passing the automatic teller machine and descending the
steps to the Quad. She paused for a second at the parking spaces to
wonder whose antique limousine was parked there, then recalled her
mission and struck off across the deserted Quad.
She was seething with rage and disdain for those Duelists'
Society ruffians. How dare they bring in a ringer to trounce her like
that? She didn't know who that woman thought she was - in fact, Liza
had never learned her -name-. But if she thought that their pointless
duel changed anything, the nameless redhead with the smug little smile
had another think coming, by God! She'd have to learn, just like all
the rest, that you didn't push Liza Broadbank around that way.
The notebook they were all so keen to recover was tucked under
her arm. It had been locked in the bottom drawer of her desk in the
Council offices since one of her sycophants had pilfered it from
Kaoru's bag in Galactic History 203. Now it was going on a little
trip, but it wasn't going down to Galaxy House to be handed over in
ignominious defeat to that blue-haired little creep, no sir. Mr. Miki
Kaoru was going to learn a lesson about messing with the family
Broadbank.
There was a hazardous waste disintegrator in the basement of
Olin Hall, and that would do very nicely indeed.
As she crossed from the Quad to the faculty parking lot
between Riley Hall and the Alumni Gym, it suddenly struck Liza how
creepy the campus was at night. It was especially so right now, for
some reason; the usually bustling campus was quiet, eerily quiet.
Normally, at this hour - not even ten yet, on a Friday - one could
hear music from the dorms, and people would be walking here and there,
crossing the campus on various errands and missions.
But right now, it was silent but for the winter breeze, and
there was no one here but Liza.
She held the notebook a little tighter under her arm, chided
herself for being foolish, and went into the alley between Alumni Gym
and the back of Higgins Labs. This was normally lit by a floodlamp on
the back of the lab building, but Liza realized as she entered the
alley that it was out. She paused, almost quailing, and then shook
her head angrily. This was stupid. What was she afraid of? It was a
ten-foot walk from one side to the other, around the back of Higgins
and down West Street to Olin. Nothing. Thirty seconds' worth of a
fast walk. There was nothing in there that was going to bother her.
Liza was most of the way through the alley when she heard the
noise, low and guttural, like the growl of some large, violently
disposed animal. She froze, the hairs on the back of her neck
standing up, and looked wide-eyed into the darkness around her.
Ahead, under the shadow of the Higgins Labs fire escape, a shadowy
shape moved. A pair of eyes glittered gold from the darkness, and
then the shape moved into the beam of moonlight slanting down between
the trees behind Olin Hall and was revealed.
Azalynn dv'Ir Natashkan stood between Liza and West Street,
her hands on her hips. The Dantrovian's normally sunny face was set
in a grim scowl, the moonlight doing interesting things to the shading
of her coppery skin, silver hair and golden eyes.
"You're going the wrong way, Liiii-za," said Azalynn in a
soft, menacing voice, so utterly unlike her normal cheery chirp that
it was nearly unrecognizable. She raised her hand and pointed
southward, back the way Liza had come. At the end of her finger,
protruding from underneath the fingernail, an inch-long, wickedly
curved and pointed claw gleamed silvery-black in the moonlight.
"Galaxy House is -that- way," Azalynn continued.
Liza took a half-step back. "I-I'm not afraid of you," she
said haughtily. "You... you -rodent-." Gathering her rattled
composure, she whirled, and then recoiled with a little shriek as she
nearly plowed head-on into a tall, slim black silhouette with softly
glowing scarlet eyes.
Amanda Dessler's hand flashed out and snatched the notebook
from Liza's shock-slackened grip. Her teeth shone whitely against the
blackness of her silhouetted outline as she said with cold contempt,
"Then you're an even bigger fool than I took you for,
-human-."
Her piece said, Amanda turned on her heel and took a step
away. Liza, torn between rage and panic, grabbed at the padded
shoulder of the Gamilon's black leather cycling jacket. With the
faintest sound of breath through teeth, Amanda whirled and seized
Liza's hand in her own. The next thing Liza Broadbank knew, she was
kneeling on the cold, icy pavement of the alley, her arm awkwardly
twisted, Amanda's thumb pressing agonizingly down on the nerve cluster
in the center of her palm. A strangled sound of pain forced its way
out from between Liza's anguish-whitened lips.
"Go ahead, human," Amanda hissed, lowering her face so that it
was right in Liza's. "Push me that one final inch. No one will ever
know what happened to you."
Liza made one last attempt to get back her usual mien,
muttering, "I might have known - wherever one of you goes in the
night, the other's certain to be within arm's reach."
Amanda cocked her lips into a cold smile; she chuckled ever so
slightly. "Compelling image, isn't it?" she asked.
Then she released the blonde's hand, spun once more, and
strode away, vanishing into the dark.
Liza knelt there, shivering and trying to rub some life into
her hand, for a couple of seconds, then froze again, her eyes going
wide, as something cool and extremely sharp-feeling touched the side
of her neck. Slowly, almost lovingly, Azalynn drew her unsheathed
index claw around under the line of Liza's jaw, tracing the curve of
her slender throat with an exquisitely delicate touch before drawing
it up underneath her jaw to rest at the point of her chin. The
Dantrovian's face was right next to Liza's, her golden eyes shining
eerily in the night.
"You're so lovely," Azalynn whispered softly, her breath warm
and sweet against Liza's cheek. Then she cupped the blonde's throat
in her whole hand, thumb and three fingers leaving four burning little
spots where the tip of each claw pressed against the flesh, and went
on in an even softer, more intimate tone, "It's such a shame your soul
is empty."
Then, as though she had never been there at all, she was gone.
Liza knelt there on the icy ground for several minutes,
trembling, her heart pounding, before she was finally able to pull
herself together, get to her feet, and stumble off past the library
and down the hill to Founders Hall. No one would ever believe her if
she reported this... and she knew she would never be able to, anyway.
This time, she was beaten.
The gathering at Galaxy House was notably brightened by the
arrival of Azalynn, all cheer and light. She skipped into the living
room, her hands behind her back, squared herself in front of Miki's
armchair, and leaned down to grin into his face, saying,
"I've got something you're really gonna like!"
Saionji coughed and excused himself to the kitchen before he
cracked up laughing in front of everyone.
"Um... what?" asked Miki, looking a little nervous.
Azalynn leaned closer still, her nose paralleling his, and
batted her eyes so that her long, thick lashes actually brushed his
cheeks. He drew back a little into the armchair's cushion, his face
crimsoning, and then Azalynn reared back, took her hands out from
behind her back, and held out the item she and Amanda had liberated
from Liza a few minutes before.
"My notebook!" Miki declared, taking it from her hands and
looking through it to make a quick inventory of its pages. "It's all
here, everything I don't already have." He closed it and looked up at
her. "Where did you find it?"
"Oh, I ran into Liza up on campus," said Azalynn airily.
"Figured I'd save her the embarrassment of coming down to fork it over
in person. No sense rubbing it in, after all."
Miki beamed, enfolding the notebook in his arms. "Thank you.
Not just you - all of you. Miss Juri, everyone... "
There was a chorus of graceful don't-mention-its.
Not long after that, the gathering broke up. The Galaxy House
contingent went to bed, and the rest dispersed, walking up the hill
and scattering to their various rooms. Mia asked if she could speak
to Kate more privately; Kate said sure, if she didn't mind coming up
to Morgan 412. Corwin parted from his Aunt Bell in the Wedge; she
told him to have a good time and be careful driving home, then went
into the ladies' room while the others went upstairs.
So they sat in 412, Kate in her desk chair, Utena on her bed,
Mia in one of the armchairs and Corwin in the other with Nall on his
shoulder. Mia didn't quite seem to know what to make of Corwin; she
kept giving him these odd, speculative looks that were making him a
bit uncomfortable. Nall, on the other hand, seemed quite charmed by
her, and presently jumped ship to get some ear action from her as she
and Kate talked.
It took her a while to get to the point, probably because she
was feeling out her comfort level with Corwin and Utena looking on.
Utena acted as a sort of interpreter for Kate, which she often did
when her roommate was dealing with someone unfamiliar enough to worsen
her stutter. Corwin just sat and listened, making no comments. He
looked like he was starting to fade a bit, but was unwilling to end
his day just yet.
"This morning," said Mia, "I received a rather odd email from
the school computer system." She removed a piece of paper from her
sweater pocket, unfolded it, and handed it across to Kate. It was a
copy of the message Azalynn had received from Durandal. Kate had one
too - indeed, everyone named in the list had been sent a copy - but as
the Duelists had been rather busy today, only Azalynn had actually
read hers yet. Kate had received her report on it during the day's
searching with interest, but not much attention to spare.
"In-int-t-terest-sting," said Kate. She glanced up at Mia.
"Y-y-you s-seem to b-b-b-be th-the o-odd o-o-one o-out."
Mia nodded. "I noticed that too," she said.
"Any idea why that might be?" Corwin wondered.
"I have a theory, but... " Mia shrugged. "I don't know you
well, but I have the impression I can trust you, and there's no one
else around here I get that feeling about. I think I'm on the list
for the same reason you are, Kaitlyn. My father is one of the elder
Wedge Defenders."
Kate blinked. "W-w-w-w-which o-o-o-one?" she asked.
"John Trussell," said Mia.
"No kidding," said Corwin. "I didn't know Truss had a kid."
"It's not exactly widely known," Mia told him. "My mother was
Minbari."
"I-i-isn-n't th-that im-mp-p-possib-b-ble?" asked Kate.
"Apparently not," said Mia, "but it was supposed to be." She
drew aside some of her thick lacquer-black hair to show the bony
crest she normally kept hidden under it, wrapping around the back of
her head. Now that they'd been shown it, Kate, Utena, Corwin and Nall
could see where it started, little ridges on either side of her
forehead just where the temples began.
"So... " said Utena, who recovered fastest, "you think you and
Kate are on the list because of your parents, and the rest of us are
listed because we hang around with Kate."
"That's right," said Mia. "You break up pretty evenly into
two groups, with some overlap: her inner circle from the band, and the
Duelists' Society. The chief exception is R. Dorothy... "
"... Who's listed as Kate's responsibility here on Earth,"
Corwin finished for her. At her glance, he explained, "She actually
belongs to me, but I go to school in New Avalon."
"Oh," said Mia. "Forgive me - I'm not very familiar with
robots and the laws that govern them."
"Hmm," Kate mused. "W-w-we've g-g-got s-s-someb-b-body... "
She sighed and gestured to Utena.
"We've got somebody checking out the system itself," Utena
told Mia. "See if the message was fake, and if not, what's going on
in there. It's a pretty weird message to have come from Durandal."
Mia nodded. "I'd thought of that, and my computer skills
aren't really up to checking it out. At any rate, I'm here because,
as Kaitlyn says, I'm the odd one out, and I feel... " She paused,
weighing it. "... A bit exposed," she finally settled on. "Since the
bulk of their watch list seems to be your Duelists' Society," she went
on with a smile, "I thought perhaps I'd see if I could join."
"Sort of a defense by consolidation," said Nall with a little
feline grin. "I like it."
"Not that I want to seem too stuck on -rules-," said Utena
with a wry smile, "but - do you have any fighting experience?"
Mia nodded. "I think you'll find my skills adequate," she
said. "Obviously I don't think it'd be a good idea to test them here
and now, but I'd be more than happy to audition tomorrow."
Kate looked curious. "W-w-w-what d-do y-y-y-you u-use?"
Mia stood up, still smiling, and reached into the inside
pocket of her uniform jacket. Her hand emerged holding a silvery
cylinder of metal about six inches long by an inch or two thick. With
a bright metallic noise, this device suddenly sprang forth to become a
metal staff six feet long.
Corwin bounced to his feet as if sprung. "Wow!" he declared.
"I've heard of those before, but never seen one. That's -cool-."
"A traditional Minbari weapon," said Mia modestly, retracting
the pike and putting it away. "I don't mean to brag, but I think I'm
good enough with it to satisfy your membership requirements."
Kate smiled and nodded to Utena, who said, "Well, it won't
hurt anything to try and find out."
Mia took her leave shortly thereafter, with a date to meet
with the Duelists' Society for a tryout the next afternoon at Alden
Hall. The four remaining sat around talking for a bit more, until
Corwin couldn't control his yawning any more and got up, gathering
Nall onto his shoulder in the process.
"OK," he said, "I'm crashing out. See you guys tomorrow."
"Um, Corwin," said Utena as Corwin left the room, but he
didn't hear her. Nearly asleep on his feet - he'd stayed a little too
long, but how he hated to leave - he crossed the hall and pushed the
still-broken door of Morgan 413 open, expecting to see only the bare
room and Dorothy reading.
He did see the bare room and Dorothy reading; he also saw,
just for a split-second, Juri Arisugawa, standing next to one of the
beds, her uniform jacket in her hand. A moment later, that jacket was
neatly wrapped around his head, having been thrown quite deftly but
without rancor across the room.
"Sorry," he said with considerable aplomb for a blundering
idiot with a jacket wrapped around his head. "Forgot you were staying
here. Never knew, actually. A thousand apologies. Please don't
hit."
"I won't," said Juri with a tone of barely-concealed
amusement. "Just go."
"Good night, Corwin," said Dorothy helpfully.
"Good night, Dorothy," Corwin replied. He turned around,
unwrapped the jacket, tossed it back over his shoulder, apologized
once more, and went back into the hall with rather grave dignity,
closing the door behind him without looking.
"OK," he said, "that didn't work. Plan B."
The door of 412 opened before he could knock, and Utena looked
out at him with considerable merriment.
"Oops," she said.
"Yeah," Corwin replied. "Where can I crash?"
"Umm... well, Devlin's got a single, but... no, it's in
Stoddard, there's barely room for him in there. They're all asleep
down at Galaxy House, unless G'Kron got home and didn't crash right
away. Kind of a gamble to take in this weather."
"S-S-Saionji," said Kate.
Utena snapped her fingers. "Sure, Saionji. He's in Institute
301. You know where Institute is?"
"Down the hill, across from Founders."
"Right."
"OK."
Nall eyed the still-falling snow outside the window, mentally
gauged the distance "down the hill", and decided, the hell with
-that-.
"G'night," said Corwin.
"G'night," said Utena, with Kate calling her own goodnight
from behind her.
Corwin turned and trudged away. He barely stayed on his feet
as he shlepped down the hill to Institute Hall; then he fumbled for a
while with his electrolock confounder before managing the simple
rascal job and gaining access to the stairway, then the third floor,
before knocking wearily on the door to 301.
After a moment, that door opened, revealing Kyouichi Saionji's
long, slightly puzzled face above the most garish bathrobe Corwin
thought he'd ever seen (and he was Kaitlyn's brother).
"Hi," said Corwin. "Look, I'm sorry to bother you, I know we
haven't really been properly introduced or anything, but there's a
redhead in my bed and I need a place to crash. I'm Corwin, Kate's
brother. And this is - " He turned his head to indicate the place on
his shoulder where Nall should have been, only to discover the dragon
wasn't there. He blinked for a moment as the knowledge ground through
the slow-turning gears of his brain, then muttered, "... That little
bastard!"
"Hey, Nall?" Utena murmured as she punched up her pillow and
curled up.
"Yeah?" Nall replied sleepily.
"I thought dragons only slept on treasure."
Nall yawned. "We do," he replied.
A pause.
"Awww," said Utena, and she kissed the dragon on top of his
head. "That's so sweet. Goodnight, Nall."
"Goodnight, Utena."
Here's hoping, Kaitlyn mused to herself as she burrowed down
in her covers and listened to the wind whip snow against the windows,
things start making a little bit more sense tomorrow.
In a room lit only by the greenish glow of two pairs of
datagoggles, Edward Tivrusky said in a low voice, "Ohhhhhhh dear."
/* The Smithereens "Behind the Wall of Sleep" _Blown to Smithereens_ */
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited She had hair like Jeanie Shrimpton
presented Back in 1965
UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES She had legs that never ended
FUTURE IMPERFECT I was halfway paralyzed
- Symphony of the Sword - She was tall and cool and pretty
Fourth Movement: And she dressed as black as coal
Duelists of the Rose If she asked me to a murder
I would gladly lose my soul
The Cast
(in order of appearance) Now I lie in bed and think of her
The Hon. J. Maurice MacEchearn Sometimes I even weep
Claudia Montaigne Then I dream of her
Azalynn dv'Ir Natashkan Behind the wall of sleep
Amanda Elektra Dessler
Kaitlyn Hutchins Well she held a bass guitar
Utena Tenjou And she was playing in a band
Corwin Ravenhair And she stood just like Bill Wyman
R. Dorothy Wayneright Now I am her biggest fan
Miki Kaoru Now I know I'm one of many
Devlin Carter Who would like to be your friend
Kyouichi Saionji And I've got to find a way
G'Kron To let you know I'm not like them
Lesser Mazinger
Tiny Robo Now I lie in bed and think of her
Roland Tiefeld Sometimes I even weep
Clarice Garwood Then I dream of her
Aaron Harris Behind the wall of sleep
Elizabeth Broadbank
T'skaia Vorokoshiga'ar Now I lie in bed and think of her
Ixtixtaaqitl't'chl'Vraihelt Ishkarat Sometimes I even weep
Harcourt M. McKenzie Then I dream of her
Janice Barlow Behind the wall of sleep
Juri Arisugawa
Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV Got your number from a friend of mine
Ein Who lives in your home town
MegaZone Called you up to have a drink
Verthandi Wishbringer Morisato Your roommate said you weren't around
Mia Ausa Now I know I'm one of many
Nall Silverclaw Who would like to be your friend
And I've got to find a way
Shaper of Worlds To let you know I'm not like them
Benjamin D. Hutchins
Now I lie in bed and think of her
Usual Suspects Sometimes I even weep
The Usual Suspects Then I dream of her
Behind the wall of sleep
Idea Men Behind the wall of sleep
John Trussell Behind the wall of sleep
MegaZone Behind the wall of sleep
Mac McKenzie created by Kris Overstreet
Mia Ausa designed by Toshiyuki Kubooka
(with slight modifications by way of Optic Nerve Studios)
Belldandy by Kosuke Fujishima
Juri by Saito/Hasegawa
Anne was in Utah
The Symphony will return with "Roses in Springtime"
E P U (colour)