----------------------------------------------------------------------
Before:

10 years ago, two Ootori schoolgirls made a promise. They would meet
again, and have tea, exactly like they were at that moment, gazing into
each other's eyes. And then the Revolution came...

10 years later. A mysterious figure begins to awaken the pawns of the
Revolution, bringing Touga, Juri, and Miki back to Ootori Gakuen. A new
semester begins; Akio introduces a 'trial' Student Council member- a
young man by the name of Ten'jou Utena. Utena quickly begins to work
his own plans for the campus..

Meanwhile, the former Victor of the Duel, half-dream and half-ghost,
returns to Anshi's seafront home. Anshi realizes that Utena has not yet
forgiven herself for leaving the others behind in Revolution...

(previous chapters: http://www.duellists.tj/~utena/fanfic)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

	Hours passed; a day blurred away, creeping and crawling by in
the measured ticks of clocks watched by anxious Ootori student eyes.
Beyond, visible through dormitory windows and the high arches of the
inter-building hallways, the sun was setting- spreading dark orange
slash-clouds bright against a darkening indigo background: two-toned sky
surreal and unworldly, beautiful and disturbing. The stars had not yet
revealed themselves; the final curfew bells tolling song dying under the
sky.

	Two black silhouettes made their way across the lawn, one
tugging at the other; nervous giggling and ssh's as their feet crunched
over the short-cut grass, heading for a particular spot on the hill
just inside the campus's main gate. Of course, sneaking off campus was
strictly forbidden, and everyone knew that. But they hadn't any plans
to go that terribly far, really. They just wanted out of the dorms...

	The two silhouettes sat down, side by side, in the hissing high
grass, stirred by the anxious wind.

	"Isn't the sky pretty?" the smaller of the two said, in a reedy,
nervous giggle. In the dim but eerie light thrown down by the reddening
clouds, she could vaguely be seen. Her features weren't attractive or
refined like those of the Student Council or the 'popular' girls, but
they could be called 'cute'; she had a little hint of pudginess to her,
a rounder face than many of the girls, a plain set of brown eyes and
shoulder-length amber hair. She looked up wistfully, a sigh escaping her
breast; her blush was more a thing to be felt than seen, but it was
clearly there.

	"It's beautiful," replied her companion in a soft voice, leaning
back on his arms. Where he wasn't shadowed, lines of his face were
visible; devastatingly handsome, with perfectly sculpted features, a
strong nose, pointed chin and slender face. Large, almost round blue
eyes turned purple by the ambient orange-red glow above, and short,
neatly cropped, vaguely feathered pink hair, the red in it coming out
stronger now in the surreal lighting. He looked to the girl beside him.
"But you're prettier, like this." A hand reached out, brushing the
girl's cheek.

	She giggled again, tilting her face on her neck, to lean into
his hand, but he it pulled away before she could; she stifled a moue of
disappointment, lips shaped into a pout.

	The boy chuckled in response, and then gestured up to the sky.
"The stars haven't come out yet." He unfolded from the ground, long
slender legs sticklike shapes in the dark, then moved to sit behind her,
pressing his chest against her back, legs in a 'v' around her, arms
enfolding her. It was a claiming gesture, but not a threatening one;
this close to him, the masculine rose scent he wore was almost
overpowering, but not oppressive. Rather, it was sweet, compelling,
something you wanted to breathe in over and over, until it drowned
you... "They say, if you wish on the first star that appears at night,
your wish will come true. What would you wish for?"

	The girl blushed. But held warmly in his arms like that, she
felt so secure, so safe, like there was no safer place in the whole
world to be... her head spinning as she felt him about her, his breath
on her neck and playing down her collarbone, a gentle sneaking into
her, rather than a forceful invasion, warm exhalations slipping under
her clothing... She gulped quietly. "... but if I say, then it won't
come true."

	The boy chuckled, "I already know your wish anyway." He smiled;
a smile she could feel in her spine and in her veins.

	She felt a dim, momentary rush of fear, but being held like
this, by the most handsome boy...  No one in the school would even LOOK
at her, choosing to favor the prettier, more vibrant girls... she
wasn't special. She was just a boring wallflower, ignored and
unnoticed, watching in jealousy as the pretty ones went by hand in
hand... Passed over, always, for them... for the beautiful ones.  But
he made her feel beautiful; her heart filled with that dark pride, with
that satisfaction. He could have had the pretty ones, but he picked -
her-. She didn't want to question why.

	The boy continued, quietly stroking her upper arms with his
delicate hands, ".. you want to be a princess. Every girl wants to be a
princess, in her heart of hearts. To find the prince that will protect
them, always and forever... Isn't that what you wish for, too? When
you're scared, when you're uncertain, you want your Prince on his white
stallion, in his shining armor, to come and save you. You wanted to
leave this world and be part of that world forever."

	She gasped. "..." How did he know? It was true... she remembered
playing princess when she was a little girl. Always yearning for the
prince, to be taken away to the magic castle with her unicorn... The
memory came back to her, bright and brilliant under the dark sky, her
small hands playing with her doll and putting on her rhinestone crown,
playing dress-up in the mirror... hoping, praying the mirror would open
into a better world where her plainness and dullness could be
transformed...

	He smiled, and whispered in her ear. She was ripe now. Ready.
"Let me fulfill your dearest wish." In order to be saved, the Princess
had to first suffer...

	The sky turned black, black as night and starless. The light
retreated from the face of the world, cloudless, moonless darkness all
about, and even the wind fell silent, the whispering warning in the
grass stilled and subdued. In all the world, there were only two
sounds, and they were the soft, breathless pleas of a girl being
broken... and of the satisfied purrs of the one who was 'saving' her.

	When the light returned, hesitantly touching the school grounds
in the morning with nervous fingers of early yellow light, there was no
sign that anything had happened... except for a new clump of poppies,
the color of fresh blood, on an otherwise unremarkable patch of rounded
green ground just inside the main gates of Ootori Academy. The light
moved on, as if relieved, and the first bells for morning classes rang
out clearly in the crisp morning air.


				     *


Shoujo Kakumei Utena
Alternity 4: The Battle of Evermore
by utena@duellists.tj


	Utena walked through the campus, drifting on air, his feet not
touching the ground. His hands were in his pockets, and the sun felt
pleasantly hot; heat building within his flesh, under the silken jacket
and slacks. Flushed, feeling a conqueror, he grinned to himself, blue
eyes twinkling with humor and menace; he glanced beside him.

	Akio stalked at his side, crimson and silent. Not as good at
playing the meekly submissive Bride as his sister once upon a time, the
once-Prince's emerald eyes burned with bitterness, with resentment and
scheming. His dark lips were pressed into a tight line. He was bound to
the earth now, wings torn off, his feet crunching over the grass, shadow
curling to the ground, like any man's.

	He had created this thing, yes, when Utena's body went into the
ground, when he smothered and buried her. But this -thing- had sprouted
in her place. Weed, he thought, eyes sliding under thick lashes to
looked at the feathery-haired boy. Usurping weed. Akio slipped his
hands into his pockets, found the comforting weight there, delicately
moved his fingers to find a smooth plastic key, and pressed it once,
twice.

	If Utena was aware of that thought or action, he merely smiled,
and tugged Akio along with him by the force of his cruelly beautiful
smile to the base of the hill just outside the campus. He stood on the
grass in the center of a clump of poppies and violet narcissus blossoms.
	There was something he wanted Akio to see.

         			    *

	Miles away, Utena groaned, stirring heavy and restlessly in her
sleep, throwing her body onto her side and quivering, hand digging hard
into the crisp, clean white sheets around her, over her. Pink hair
coiled and twisted, she cried out silently against the darkness, mouth
parting without voice. She pushed her blankets away in a frantic shove;
too hot, too hot, she couldn't bear the heat consuming her body. She
moaned and writhed in agony, unable to escape her own boiling flesh.

	In the bed next to her, Himemiya Anshi in her pale blue ruffled
hair-cap and flannel-cotton gown stared awake helplessly, shivered in
the cold, her clasped hands over her heart, and worried. The sun rising
over the sea peeked over her shoulder, fingers smoothing down her back,
but she couldn't feel the warmth of the light.

				    *

	In Ootori, the bells rang out. A thousand students folded and
sat as one great body, faced the chalkboards and lecturing podiums, eyes
turning forward, waiting for the lesson to begin. Two thousand eyes,
about to burn.
				    *

	Touga moved hurriedly through the halls, cell phone hot,
knocking on a door here, beckoning with a hand there. His blood-crimson
hair shifted lightly behind him as he walked with calm but desperate
grace, violetblue eyes like jewels searching the sky minutely every few
moments, watching the position of the sun, the clouds. Juri, then Miki,
demanding answers, questioning, why were they pulled from their
classes, what's the MATTER, what's GOING ON, and he didn't answer
because he didn't KNOW what was the matter but he could FEEL it, the
unbearable heat.
	He drew them into his office, locked and barred the door, closed
every shutter tight, yanking the curtains closed and flinging the room
into darkness. And then he waited, speaking a single word of command for
silence against the barrage of questions, straightening and frowning
into the shadows, clutching his phone, his only lifeline.

				     *

	In a million voices, Ootori spoke.
	You are our only son, they said.
	Touch us. Mold us. Claim us as your own.

	He smiled, the beautiful boy with the feathery pink hair.
	Utena reached out his hand, nearly skeletal hand pale and
gleaming in the bright dawn sun. Signet flashing; a bleak silver star.

	Strip away your layers, mother mine. Peel away the veneer, that
tired marble skin. Show me your teeth and sinews. Show me the glitter of
the blood that flows in your foundations, how it gleams from your
crevasses and hidden places. Renew yourself in sacrifice and splendor.

				     *

	The screaming began.

				     *

	There was an old radio in the corner of the room, an antique
with knobs, a walnut case, and soft brown cloth speaker coverings, gilt
in faded gold. A contraption, some trifle that had struck Anshi's eye
at a point when she stood at the peak of her loneliness, looking to
fill her home with things to fill the empty spaces around her. To
maintain connection to the world, she'd thought, and she'd loved it
dearly until it had broken down. Now, the radio sat in a thin layer of
dust, and the set had never lit properly again. Old technology was like
bones now, like archaeology, and no one could unearth the missing link
to repair it.

	But the set blasted into life now, suddenly, a howl and a
screech of vibrating tubes, a hum and a roar, and two desperate voices
screaming out - - "Invasion! Invasion! Ootori Academy is under attack,
Someone help us, someone, our Prince, someone come, please come, please
we're BURNING PLEASE..."

				     *

	The campus began to shudder and scream, ecstatic as it changed.
Heaving and shaking, a great organic flow of metal girders burst through
white marble skin with accusing fingers and savage edged spires.  Half
stadium, half skeleton, the school's entire structure gave a deep groan,
flame washing it from head to toe, sending a massive funereal column of
black stench and fumes into the sky. It strained, and stretched, a
living, twisting animal thing.

	Utena smiled. It was good. No more of Akio's pretentious beauty
bullshit, no more serene masks of hand-spun illusion lace like spider
webs over the eyes. This, this naked, gasping, bloody form, was
Ootori's true self. And if there was still beauty in it, it was the
beauty of singular and unmistakable purpose, the beauty of a freshly
honed bloodstained knife thrust toward heaven to rend the sky.

				    *

	The walls of the room, creaking and shuddering, bowed and caught
on fire all at once, going up in sudden starburst explosions of orange.
Juri and Miki screamed, but Touga pulled them close against him, his
arms folding around them, and whispered that they should bow their
heads and pray, as the heat enfolded their bodies and tugged at their
fine silk uniforms...

				    *

	Anshi sobbed hysterically, straddling Utena's chest, slapping
the sleeping girl in the face, left and right, over and over, tears
flying, "WAKE UP, UTENA, WAKE UP, WAKE UP... *UTENA*!!"

				    *

	Oh, comforting weight in his pocket, heavy as lead and death and
Akio watched the world twist, and all that he'd made being shredded
away, and he reached his hand into that pocket, and there was the nail,
right where he wanted it. Rusty and brown-blood slick, and he drove it
into his own wrist with a sudden irresistable movement; the pain, oh so
sweet and sharp, and the smell thick and pure, a real smell. He
relished it, for he knew (better than anyone) that pain is always the
origin of the Prince...

				    *

	Utena's eyes snapped open, her cheeks stinging red from Anshi's
slaps and the girl above her kneeling and shaking and sobbing. The
former Duellist, stunned, moaned softly and her lips formed an o of
horrified understanding at the look in the green eyes hovering over
her...

				    *

	The flame was about to touch them. They couldn't press any
closer together in the center of the room, desk burning, curtains,
walls, everything closing in. Touga looked into their eyes and
whispered his truth, and that he loved them, and they loved him, and
they waited helplessly together for the end as one... but the flames
snuffed out, as fast as they'd begun, leaving charred ground to within
inches of their bodies..
				    *

	Utena twisted, eyes shaking, and stared at Akio in bewilderment
that swiftly gave way to rage. Beyond his shoulder, the campus groaned
with the cry of a wounded beast, and collapsed back into the emerald
ground, in a thunder that seemed to shake the world. Part of the Tower
still remained intact, at the center of the transformation. The rest,
unfinished; one could still see traces of the original campus in the new
mean spires and shadowed curves that now made the bulk of the school.
Half-finished stairwells ran to nowhere alongside windows of gilt glass
lined with inconsistent trim; angles dripping with splashes of red,
walkways and arches designed by a madman in the depths of a fever dream.
But deep inside, nestled and buried, were traces; distorted edgy
rose-carved panels; the emblem of the rose signet etched in glass, a
thin ringed garden of roses bursting from the stone. Not everything had
been burned away.

	Akio's blood poured from his punctured wrist, puddling dark
around his feet and killing the narcissus in the ground, killing the
grass. The nail gleamed, he a crow-man standing legs set wide,
clutching his arm, hair unbound and spiraling around his shoulders in a
flow of soft lilac. He looked up, quivering, and gave Utena a
triumphant devil's smile, pleased at the rage he saw there in the
folded pupilless blue spheres.

	It was Utena though who had the last word, fuming, and pushing
his hand along the back of his head in a gesture of thinly veiled
frustration.. he stared at the campus a moment. And then he smiled, and
looked back over his shoulder at the shaking, breathless dark man.
"What a good idea you had. Let me complete it for you." He turned then,
and as the new Ootori lay smoking and bloody behind him, his shadow
fell over Akio, and the sun turned red...

				*

	Anshi sobbed inconsolably within Utena's gently folded arms. The
eternal duellist closed her eyes softly, as she held the former Bride,
and her jaw and neck were tense with anger, with a million sword-points
piercing her heart. "I'm going back, Himemiya." she whispered finally.
"I'm going back to Ootori. Tonight. I won't let this go." She slid her
hands gently down Anshi's wet cheeks, and rested her fingers under the
dusky girl's chin, to lift her face. "You're not coming with me." It
wasn't a question. It was a command, a regal command that could not be
disobeyed.

	Anshi clasped her hands, green eyes moist and miserable. She
squeezed her fingers around Utena's, so fiercely they were nearly
crushing.

	Utena leaned forward, and kissed Anshi, once under each eye,
tenderly. "Release me, Himemiya. Kill me, so I can go back where I
belong. I came back because of our promise, from back then. But ... "
She hesitated, her eyes closing. " ... I can't be your Prince any more.
You don't need me. And, maybe, I'm making it worse, just being here.
Your revolution's over."

	"... And you haven't finished yours." Himemiya Anshi whispered
slowly, miserably. She knew where this conversation was going; she
thought, maybe, maybe if she denied understanding, maybe if she tried to
pretend...  but that way.. that way laid the path of the Rose Bride.
And as she realized that, the icy sound of a blade sliding from a
sheath ... then, it was touching her hands, an exquisite hilt, but all
she could see were Utena's eyes, vast and blue, begging her... then she
couldn't see at all, her vision rippling and becoming unclear.

        "I don't care what you say. Revolutions never end... " Her
voice nearly cracked. "Utena..." She reached her arm up, curling it
about the other girl's waist, bringing the Prince close against her.

	The blade slid easily through Utena's ribs, soft and soundless,
and the girl made no protest, only pressing her body urgently closer,
further onto the blade. Her arms slid up around Anshi's neck, and
something like a kiss, faint and fleeting for a moment, mouth brushing
gently over mouth, both able to taste the other's tears. So many tears.
Utena sagged then, her legs trembling and giving out, and she collapsed
against Anshi heavily, body going slack and useless.

	And then she was gone.


*end chapter four*

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Author's notes:

Okay, it's overdue. WAY overdue. I know! ;_; The problems I was having
with this chapter were -fairly- extensive because for a little while
I had NO IDEA how to get Utena back to Ootori, and I wasn't happy with
any of my previous attempts. Some were really horrible. So the project
went into the back bin in my head for a good few months until, all of a
sudden, everything fell into place in one session. I'm not sure this is
the best ending- probably still too 'talky', though I tried my best to
trim it back.

Thanks to all my alpha-test readers for their encouragement,
feedback and corrections; special thanks to Silver Rain Shine, Erica
Friedman and Tom Mitchell.
This is the gamma/final version. :)

------------------------------------------------------------------------