A Duel for All the World: Chapter Six – The Sun you See is Me
Nanami followed the sound of Tsuwabuki's screaming across campus. The screams grew fainter as she got closer to the theater, and when she reached what remained of that place, they faded to silence. She looked inside and began to understand.
The theater lay broken, a ragged hole in its center criss-crossed with boards from the shattered ceiling. Below the hole, nothing but star-specked darkness, matching the void that ate away at the edges of campus.
Nanami gripped the door's frame and steadied herself, then called out, "Tsuwabuki?" She felt her hand move into position to snap, then stopped herself. He wasn't her servant. She hadn't thought of him that way for quite some time.
Then what was he?
He was . . . unlike anyone else. Keiko and the other girls had only wanted to be around her because of her brother, because of the status it would give them and because they thought they might have a chance with him. Nanami shook her head, not sure who she was upset with. There was once a time when she would have chastised them severely for even daring to think anything romantic about her brother. Now, it hardly seemed to matter.
But Tsuwabuki had only wanted to be with her, for the sake of doing so. He had a big-brother complex, but . . . it wasn't as though any of them were free of problems. She knew that well.
Old memories threatened to intrude, and Nanami shook them away. She was here to rescue Tsuwabuki and find the rose.
She looked into the theater again, to the ragged tear in the screen, and raised her eyebrows. The rose lay behind the screen, slowly spinning in midair, in blackness. He'd come so close, only to fall.
And why had he fallen? He'd come here with Keiko, from what she'd heard from Kara. Could Keiko have been working for Desire? Could she have been the reason? Nanami frowned, then paused. No. That didn't make sense. Keiko had hardly been able to unclench herself from Touga since they'd all gathered here. Her brother, Nanami thought, hadn't done a thing to discourage the girl. So the only way Keiko would have come here with Tsuwabuki would have been. . . .
Either Touga had been with them, or he'd told Keiko to go with Tsuwabuki.
Nanami dismissed the notion. Touga might not be all that she'd once thought he was, but he wouldn't get someone killed just for Desire's game. And she didn't even have any proof that Tsuwabuki was dead. She would get the rose, then see if she could find any sign of him.
She stepped into the ruined theater, slowly made her way down the stairs, and put one foot upon the boards that crossed the gaping hole. They seemed stable, somehow, and she started across, ready to turn and run at any moment if something shifted wrong or creaked too much underfoot.
When she reached the other side, Nanami lifted herself onto the stage. She moved to take the rose, then stopped. This was probably what Tsuwabuki had done right before he fell. Nanami looked around, wary. Seeing no threats, she took a firm hold of the torn screen with one hand, then put her other hand into the darkness on the other side.
The rose fell into her hand as soon as she touched it, and when she wrapped her hand around the stem, no thorns cut her. Nanami looked down at the white rose, wondering what would happen now. Shouldn't there be something more? From what she'd seen of Desire, she could guess it wouldn't just let her have the rose without some kind of fight, or some kind of game–
Nanami felt something change behind her, unsure of how, and turned.
She now stood in the doorway of her own bedroom, just as she'd left it, before she'd joined the others at the tower. Except. . . . Nanami began to walk toward her bed, hoping the things she saw scattered across it weren't what she thought they were.
She was wrong. Dozens of pictures of her and Touga, from all their years growing up, lay upon the bed, tossed about haphazardly, as though she'd been looking through them and had just left a moment ago. She bent to pick one up, realized she still held the rose, and tucked it into a pocket.
Years of memories nearly overcame her as she looked through the pictures. With every image, she recalled something new, some time they had shared, a moment that belonged only to the two of them. The pictures lay out the passage of time so clearly, and she put them in order, flipping through from when she was little more than a toddler until the days when she entered her current grade in Ohtori.
Touga appeared in the pictures less and less as she went through them, and stood farther and farther away from her. All of this seemed so long ago . . . so much had changed since then. They'd both grown up and, she admitted, they'd grown apart.
"Why," Nanami whispered. Why were these still out? She remembered so much now, so many things that didn't fit with these old memories. She knew different lives, going through the same thing many times with tiny differences. . . . In some of those memories, she and her brother scarcely spoke, in others, they were close, some might say too close. But no matter what, he was still her brother, one way or another.
She remembered . . . there had been a time when she'd thought otherwise. When Touga said that they weren't truly related. In another memory, he told her when they were very young that their parents had adopted them both, because their birth parents had both died. She'd been happier then, with parents who wanted her and a true brother who loved her.
How much of it was true, she couldn't be sure now.
Something caught Nanami's eye, and she glanced back toward the doors. They now stood closed, and in front of them, her yellow and black uniform stood by itself as though occupied. Nanami had the strange feeling that it was looking at her. She shuffled the pictures back together, lay them on the bed in a pile, and stood to face it.
"This is your idea of the game?" Nanami scoffed, doing her best to sound completely unimpressed. Never show your enemies your true face; that was something her time at Ohtori had taught her.
The uniform began to walk toward her, empty sleeves held out, blank footprints appearing on the carpet as it approached. Nanami blinked, then held up her hands to hold it back as it neared her.
"Nanami."
That voice. She knew that voice. Nanami looked over from the near-fight with her uniform to see Touga standing in her bedroom's corner, his uniform shirt half-open, giving her the smile she knew he used on all the girls on campus but her.
"Big brother?" she asked, then shoved back when her uniform tried to knock her over. "What are you doing here?"
"Watching you struggle," Touga said, perfectly casual and professionally posed at the same time. "I don't know why you put yourself through this."
"Put myself. . . ." Nanami's yellow uniform whipped its sleeves at her, the buttons at their ends smacking her across the face. The quick flash of pain surprised her, and she reeled back, only to take the uniform's shoulder in her chest as she dropped her guard.
"You don't have do to this, you know," Touga said as he walked toward her.
Nanami wrapped her arms around her uniform's top and squeezed. It deformed like any cloth would in her grip, though the legs continued to kick at her and the sleeves still tried to whip their buttons at her. "Do what?" she demanded.
"Fight with yourself."
"This isn't me, it's just a--" Nanami looked down to see that she had herself in a chokehold, another her who wore the other uniform and looked to be running out of breath. She felt a sudden pressure on her own throat, and began to gasp.
"Are you sure you want to do that?" Touga asked, his voice changing as he spoke.
As stars began to spin in her vision, Nanami looked over at him, and saw that his hair had turned black, his skin incredibly white. Yellow cat-eyes flashed at her as the thing that wasn't quite Touga smiled at her.
"Your choice."
Nanami let go of the other her, and the empty uniform collapsed in a heap. She bent over and coughed, clutching at her sore throat, blackness flickering all around her. The blackness grew stronger and deeper, and a low, muffled rumble came from somewhere behind her.
"You really shouldn't taunt me," the not-Touga said, and put a hand on Nanami's shoulder.
A feeling somehow familiar and deep and powerful and wrong swept through Nanami, and her face began to burn. Before she had a chance to say anything, the not-Touga shoved her shoulder, and sent her tumbling back onto her bed–
A bed that became the back seat of a glossy red convertible. Nanami struggled to catch her breath, felt the soft leather seat beneath her cheek, the cold wind sweeping through her hair. Once she recovered, she looked around.
She'd been on this road once before, with her brother and Akio, the dark-skinned man who'd been Ends of the World and also the chairman. She shuddered at the memory. She'd dueled again after that ride. But she remembered. . . .
Nanami saw Desire sitting on the car's hood, still wearing Touga's uniform, the top still open. As it caught her eye, Desire turned and pressed its chest against the windshield, a thin strip of pale flesh visible.
"I don't want you," Nanami snapped.
Desire threw its head back and laughed, the sound like Touga and Ends of the World and its own voice all at once. Nanami shivered. "So quick to deny," Desire said. "Did you even take a moment to consider what you'd be missing?"
Images flickered in the darkness at either side of the road. Nanami saw herself from the pictures, as she'd lived then, starting with herself as a child and then moving forward. She watched herself grow up over the space of a few minutes, all the dozens of lives she'd lived here at Ohtori.
All that time . . . and only once had she truly learned something, and only once had she wanted to move on. All that time, and she only now remembered it. A pink-haired girl had been involved then too.
"So what will it be?" Desire asked. It turned to fully face her, spreading its long legs to straddle the car's hood. The leer it gave her sent a drop of sweat down Nanami's neck, trailing down beneath her shirt's collar.
Nanami looked to the flashing images again, saw her embracing Touga, saw him embracing her as well. She looked away quickly. "That's not what I want. I . . . I remember it. But he's not who I thought he was. He's not . . . who I wanted him to be."
Nanami felt a great weight lift from her shoulders. A tear formed at the corner of one eye, and she wiped it away. How long had it taken for her to see that, to admit that to herself? And now. . . .
Desire gave her a curious look, as though its cat-eyes could peer into her thoughts. "Not everyone can do that," it said, somehow subdued despite its lascivious pose. "It's not easy to change what you want so easily."
"It wasn't easy," Nanami said, shaking her head. "I had to learn how to see him differently. And I don't think I was allowed to for a long time."
"Why," Desire said with a patronizing smile, "that's almost impressive."
"That was it," Nanami said, more to herself than Desire. "I had to surpass him. I had to surpass everything. That's why I wanted to fight again. And after Utena was gone, after that last duel, I forgot it all."
She raised her gaze to Desire, and gave it the look she'd practiced in the mirror, a cutting glare made to make its victim feel no larger than a bug. "I don't need to be like I used to be," she proclaimed. "I don't have to. I will surpass my brother. I don't even know where he is, or if you've got him already, or – or anything like that. But I'll do better than he ever did."
Nanami stood up on the back seat, and took hold of the headrests of both the front seats, then carefully moved forward. She pulled herself into the driver's seat, looked up at Desire, and pushed the gas pedal to the floor.
Desire leaned down toward her, putting the top of its body down over the windshield, and put its face close to her own. It licked its lips. "When this is over," Desire whispered, the scent of its breath intoxicating, "you'll be mine."
Then it disappeared, and Nanami sat on her bed in her bedroom, holding her yellow uniform before herself. The white rose was pinned to the uniform's pocket.
Nanami blinked in surprise, then lowered the uniform to her lap. She hadn't thought it would be so easy, and yet. . . .
She knew what she'd said. Now she had to live up to it. Some people would doubt her. She scoffed at them, even if they weren't here to see it. She would show them, all of them. Her life in her brother's shadow was over.
Nanami changed into her yellow uniform, then left the house behind her and returned to the tower.
Kara and Marie walked across campus, close together, without anyone paying them any attention. Kara couldn't help but look at people as they walked. She watched their expressions, checking their eyes for any sign that they realized that she and Marie were there.
Nothing.
From what she'd heard from the others, Kara guessed that they were all used to it; they'd been living here the whole time since Akio died, and things had gotten worse over the past year. After a while, things had started to repeat themselves, Ohtori started to fall apart around the edges . . . Miki had filled her in on a lot of it.
Before he got caught by Desire.
At least, Kara thought, Kozue had found the rose that had doomed Miki, or something like that, and she was willing to fight. Kara wouldn't have expected Kozue to be part of this, but it made sense. Kozue didn't want anyone messing with her brother, so Desire was now officially on her hit-list.
Kara chuckled to herself at the thought. She'd gotten past thinking of everyone here as anime characters; a day or so of knowing them again as people made all the difference in the world. Some part of her mind still wanted to say 'wow, you're real' at any given time, but she kept that quiet.
She could only imagine what anyone from the anime club would have thought about this. Not that she could tell them. They still didn't remember what had happened, when they'd all received letters from Ends of the World; they just thought she met Marie somewhere and they'd started dating. None of them seemed to understand how she and Marie had gotten so close so quickly.
Kara reached over and took Marie's hand, gave it a squeeze. Some things were worth keeping secret.
"So," Marie began, giving her a small smile, "are you ready for this?"
Kara thought for a moment. "I think I have to be," she said. "It's like you said, it's the only place that makes sense for you. Desire said we'd know where the roses were, they'd be where we thought they'd be, so . . . this has to be it."
"Then the next question is, will you take the rose?"
Kara looked over at Marie, suddenly frowning, and opened her mouth to say something. She stopped when Marie continued.
"Or will you let me take it?"
Kara let her breath out as she thought. That was unexpected. Of course, she'd assumed that she'd be the one dueling; Marie taking up a rose and a sword hadn't really occurred to her. Then again, it made sense, and it wasn't like she'd keep Marie from doing something she wanted to.
But at the same time . . . being here, seeing all of this and knowing what it would lead to, and with Dream's request that she play the prince again, it wasn't an easy question to answer.
Kara looked over at Marie, and gave her half a grin. "Tell you what. If we find a rose that's yours, you take it. We find mine, I take it. Maybe we'll get lucky and find both."
"That does make me wonder," Marie said. "How will we know whose rose it is?" She paused. "I can't quite see you wearing a pink rose, despite the obvious."
"Obvious?" Kara let go of Marie's hand, and tugged on a lock of the other girl's purple hair. "Says you. Whatever color your rose is, you better hope it doesn't clash." She grinned at Marie's expression.
Marie smiled a moment later. "Interesting. I've known you for over a year, or something like that, and this is the first time I've heard you worry about whether or not what someone was wearing would match."
Kara sighed. "It had to happen eventually. . . ."
The area they soon reached seemed as populous as any other, but as they drew close, they saw their final destination showed clear signs of neglect. The rose garden, once a well-maintained greenhouse filled with roses of all kinds and colors, now stood abandoned. The bushes inside stood dry and brittle, their leaves rattling in a slight breeze blowing in through several broken windows.
They stood and looked at it for a moment. Kara broke the silence. "I guess no one took care of it after you left." She glanced at Marie out of the corner of her eye, and wondered what the place meant to her.
In the series, it had always seemed like the rose garden truly was Anthy's cage, as Touga had said it was; as much as she'd claimed to like tending to the roses, Kara had always wondered if there was some kind of compulsion that made her go there. Maybe she'd only needed to be there when Akio made her go.
"You all right?" Kara asked after a quiet moment.
"I thought it'd call to me again," Marie said, just shy of a whisper. "It's . . . it was always like that. Even when I lived with you in the dorms, even when we lived in the tower. The roses . . . called to me." She sighed, and looked up at Kara. "They're quiet now."
"I'd hope so," Kara said, "they're dead." But she smiled. "Come on. Let's get this over with."
They walked toward the rose garden, hands clasped together.
The hinges had long since rusted over, and let out a harsh metallic shriek when Kara pulled open the door. They both winced, then walked inside. A cloying scent of decomposing roses swept over them like a fog, and Kara coughed, then held her free hand over her nose. Marie didn't seem bothered.
They circled around the small brick path, peering into the roses. Nothing lived among the dry and aphid-eaten plants. A rusted watering can lay at the edge of the path, fallen partway into the dirt and half-covered with old leaves and petals.
"Maybe I was wrong," Marie said once they'd circled most of the garden.
Kara nodded. "Maybe – there!"
Kara pulled Marie over, and pointed deep into one of the dead plants. Hidden among twisted, thorny branches, a single yellow rosebud stood, pointing toward the sky. The two girls looked at each other and nodded.
"It's yellow," Kara said. "So whose is it?"
"Yellow usually means friendship." Marie looked through the dirty glass, out across campus. "So maybe it's everyone's rose."
"Hmm. I don't think we can get everyone to wear one rose," Kara mused. She started to reach for the bud, then stopped. She reached with her other hand, the one still holding Marie's.
They both leaned in toward the rose bush, but the bud was too far away. Kara leaned farther, trying to pull Marie closer, awkward as it was. They couldn't reach the rose. After a few tries that left their hands scraped with thorns, they both pulled back and looked at each other.
"Now what?" Kara asked.
"I think I can get it." Marie knelt, and leaned down toward the bush. "I just need to reach--"
As Marie leaned, her foot slipped off of the brick path, and scraped through the covering of dead leaves and petals. As soon as her foot touched the dry dirt beneath, the ground collapsed, and Marie stumbled.
"Kara!" she cried.
The dirt opened wide around Marie, revealing a mess of worm-eaten roots. Kara grabbed Marie's hands and started to pull. Marie fell farther, as though the dirt pulled her down. Her hands started to slip from Kara's. With one last cry, Marie disappeared into the ground, and something flew up from where she had disappeared.
"Marie!" Kara yelled. "Dammit! Marie!"
There, in the cleared dirt where Marie's foot had scraped, lay a small silver ring. Kara picked it up, careful not to touch the dirt herself. The ring matched her own, with a rose seal made of translucent purple crystal.
Kara gasped as she remembered. Back in the Dreaming, as Dream had returned her own ring, Kara had seen Marie hold her hands behind her back. Marie must have been creating her own ring, one to match. Kara blinked away sudden, hot tears. No. This wasn't going to happen. No.
She clenched her fist around the ring, then threw back her head and yelled. "Desire! Get out here and give me back my girlfriend!"
A sudden rumble, and all the rose plants shivered, sending their dead leaves and petals flying into the air. The rumble came again, louder this time, and Kara braced herself. She knew that sound.
The infamous car burst through the cloud, heading straight for Kara. She tried to leap aside, but the car smacked into her, sending her flying. She tumbled through the air, landed on her ass in the back seat, and suddenly the car was driving down an endless road through purple-tinged blackness.
Kara got herself straightened out, brushed dead rose parts from her clothes, and looked to the front seat with a scowl. "You are such a drama queen."
Desire sat in the reclined driver's seat, its hands nowhere near the wheel. "The way you called me, I couldn't help but answer in kind."
"Whatever," Kara said with a snort. She folded her arms over her chest and, as subtly as she could, slipped Marie's ring onto her own pinky finger. "Give me back Marie and let me out. We got the rose, so--"
"Not quite." Desire's smirk was infuriating. "You found the rose. But neither of you managed to take it. It's still there, so you're no closer to winning this game . . . or even getting to play in the next round."
"Details," Kara muttered. "And next round? How long do you expect this to go on? I know I'm not the only one who found a rose."
"True enough, but the others managed to get a hold of theirs." Desire laughed, no small hint of mockery to it. "Some of them."
Kara leaned back and thought, but kept scowling at Desire just in case. Nanami had come back all panicked about Tsuwabuki, so he was probably gone. And Kozue said that Miki was gone too. And she hadn't seen Saionji, Keiko, or Kanae for a while. How many of them had fallen? How many of them were even left?
"So," Kara said awkwardly, "who's good so far?"
Desire's tongue flicked across its upper lip. "Who's good," it asked, "or who hasn't lost?" It leered at the look Kara gave it. "One of you will never learn, another will never change. And two of you who are, as you say, good, were recently locked in a passionate embrace."
Kara tried to picture the various combinations of the people she knew hadn't fallen yet, and started to laugh. It seemed ridiculous. "Sounds like fanfic," she said, and laughed again.
"But enough about them." Desire reclined the seat all the way and turned over, folded its arms beneath its chin, and looked Kara in the eye. "Tell me what you want. I want to hear you say it."
Kara felt the shivers of old memories ripple through her mind. She remembered suddenly being brought to the chamber with Morpheus and Desire, and the overwhelming sense of need that the being before her made her feel. There was so little of that now. Was it because she'd resisted Desire once? Or was it that she didn't want anything Desire could offer? There was no way to know, but one way to find out.
She narrowed her eyes. "Kill Ohtori. Make it so Marie and I don't have to worry about this place ever again. Give me back Marie and let us both go home. We're done here." She paused. Desire's expression didn't change. "That's what I want. Your deal."
"You seem so fixated on her," Desire said. Kara wondered if it cared about anything else she'd said. "Why?"
"Shouldn't you know?" Kara snorted. "You're Desire, you should understand why I want to be with her." She grinned despite herself. "We've kind of been through a lot together."
"But she's so. . . ." Desire seemed to be searching for a word, but Kara had a feeling it knew exactly what it wanted to say. "Limited. I could propose an alternative." A long, slow blink.
Kara realized what Desire was suggesting. "What? You?" She laughed out loud, letting her head fall back. How long had it been since she'd had that good of a laugh? "You're joking. You've got to be. You think I'd take you over her?" Kara cackled. "You can't even figure out if you're a girl or a boy."
"What I am is up to me." Desire smiled, razor-edged. When it spoke again, though, its voice held no mirth at all. "I'm growing tired of this game, Kara; it's time to end it. What's your answer?"
Kara held up her hand, showing Desire her ring finger and the rose there. "My answer's right here. All I need to duel is a ring."
Desire scowled, and disappeared, and suddenly the car was tearing across Ohtori campus, heading at full speed right for a group of students who didn't even notice it was there.
Kara screamed and leaped for the steering wheel. Too late. The car plowed into dozens of students and kept going, sending bodies flying in its wake, leaving behind screams of agony. The car continued toward the center of campus with Kara frantically trying to stop it. When the tower was in full view, the car accelerated again, and Kara dove under the seat.
This would not be a good way to die.
The impact crushed the car all around her, sending Kara bouncing around within the plush leather wreckage. When everything settled, she crawled out, then slowly got to her feet. She was covered with bruises, but otherwise unhurt.
"Damn immortal drama queen whatever-the-hell-you-are," Kara muttered, then shook herself, trying to pull herself together.
Another look at the car, and Kara saw that the engine lay exposed. There among the grey steel and dripping fluids lay a tiny spot of yellow. She jammed her hand into the engine and yanked the rose free.
Her hand and arm bled freely from the wounds from dozens of thorns. But the yellow rose was hers.
Kara took the elevator up to the room at the top of the tower, and walked quickly over to the couches. She saw Juri standing there, as well as the back of Nanami's head. Juri wore a black rose pinned to her uniform top, and she frowned at Kara as the other woman hurried over.
"Marie's gone," Juri said, unshakable as always.
"Desire got her," Kara said quickly, then caught her breath. "It stole her. But I got the rose." She gestured to her shirt. "We have to go. I don't care where the last rose is, we're taking this to Desire. Now."
Kara looked down at the couches. Nanami sat on one, back in her yellow uniform, a white rose pinned to her chest. There was a determination in her eyes Kara hadn't seen before – not since the second time Nanami dueled. Somehow, it was good to see it back. Nanami looked up at her, then stood.
"Good," Nanami said. "Let's go."
Juri nodded, then looked at the other couch. "Kozue?"
Kara blinked. She hadn't seen Kozue there, but considering the look on Kozue's face, that was probably for the better. Kozue looked like she was ready to tear down the entire campus, brick by brick, with her bare hands if she had to.
Kozue stood, then walked over to stand between Juri and Nanami. "You'll do this, even with only the four of us?"
"It has Marie," Kara said. Did she really need to explain anything else?
"Then we go," Kozue said.
Kara nodded. "Damn right. Let's go revolutionize a world."
