Pink and Silver
Act 4
"Come on, Apocalypse, we'll get there," Kozue said through huffs and puffs. The rain was beating down on her and the little girl she was with mercilessly. A sniff came from the little pink-haired girl. Kozue started to feel pangs of annoyance. All Apocalypse had done for the past few hours was sniffle and whimper. The blue-haired young woman's hands were itching for a slap.
"K-Kozue, I'm cold and tired," Apocalypse whispered while uttering a racking cough. "I don't feel so well."
"Apocalypse, be quiet and let me find the way! We'll get to Touga's house really soon; just wait!" Kozue replied absentmindedly, not realizing that her voice had an extremely angry tone. "Shush!"
"O-Okay."
After much searching, interrogating, and getting lost in dead ends, the pair of them finally reached a large manor. Even through the dark heavy rain, it was extremely beautiful and exquisite. Kozue walked right up to it as if she owned it, and turned a brass key in the lock of the front gate. Then, dragging a whining Apocalypse along, she opened the entrance with a gold key. As soon as she stepped in, she was pulled inside.
"Kozue, did you invite them?" Touga's voice was urgent and hushed. It was even angry, as if Kozue had a part in it.
"What? Who?"
"Akio and Anthy."
"T-they... no, it can't be!" Her face gone pale, Kozue panicked. They had found her. She was trapped. Shrieking and flailing to get out of Touga's grasp, she yelled, "No! They won't get her!!" And, to Touga's surprise, she grabbed Apocalypse's arm and ran out the door. As soon as she ran out onto the main street, Touga sighed with mingled skepticism and amazement, "She actually cares about someone besides Miki."
However, before Kozue could get far, she bumped into someone.
"Ouch! Watch it!" Kozue snapped, trying to wipe mud from the street off her skirt and attempting to cease Apocalypse's crying at the same time. Oddly she was acting like a mother to the little girl.
"Why don't you watch it?" The person she bumped into retorted. It turned out to be a girl Kozue's age, a brunette girl with thick girlish pigtails and two slicked curls of hair on her forehead.
"Do I know you?" Narrowing her eyes, Kozue inquired.
"I don't know. I certainly don't know you."
"Well, what're you called?"
"Keiko."
"Keiko? From Ohtori?" She was speechless. What a coincidence.
"I don't know. Stop asking questions!! I don't know anything anymore!"
"What the hell?" Kozue didn't care if little Apocalypse heard her speak harshly.
"I'm unwell. Get away from me!!!!" Getting up from her fallen position, Keiko ran off for Touga's manor. "Stay away!!!" However, she did not get to it before she had a coughing fit and fell down on her knees, wheezing.
"Hey, in your condition, you shouldn't be running." As Kozue advanced closer, with Apocalypse clinging, frightened, on her arm, she noticed that Keiko was all white skin and bones. Kozue reached out to help Keiko up, when the skinny brunette girl slapped it away vehemently. She screamed out hoarsely, "No! What are you doing? Don't try to hurt me! Stay away!!" Immediately Kozue did as she was told, with a scowl mussing up her face.
"What's your problem?"
"Y-you'll hurt me," Keiko answered before another line of coughs caused her frail body to shake uncontrollably. "You'll hit my head, like Nanami-sama."
"Well, you know what? I'm not Nanami, and I have no damn reason to hit you, okay? So stop being paranoid and cooperate!" Kozue was at the end of her patience. She could not stand Keiko's fearful attitude anymore. It was irrational and stupid.
"I-I..."
"Okay? Look, why don't we get you over to Touga's house?" Even though she knew that she was taking a risk going there, Kozue decided to help the unfortunate soul out. She had been like that herself a year ago, before her brother pitied her and took her in. But she, stupidly, had gone off wandering again, and eventually got lost in a completely different city after taking a wrong train. So, she spent most of her time in a bar before getting fired.
"That's exactly where I'm headed."
"Oh well then! It's up the hill? Do you think you can make it?"
"I dunno."
"Well, try!" With a clap on the girl's back, Kozue sent her sprawling and sprinting towards the Touga residence. Once she saw Keiko being admitted inside, she removed Apocalypse's tight grip on her arm and placed the girl's hand in her own. Promptly she made her way towards the train station again.
"Where are we going? What about Sir Touga's house?"
"It isn't safe there. What we need is my brother. Try to find a phone book. I think I still have some money to make a call."
* * * * *
"La-la-la-lee-lee-li-li-lo-lo-loo!" A blonde young lady chortled as she ran from room to room, checking on all the guests. "A brilliant day to be outside, peoples! Out, out, out!!!" With a holler she ushered them all out into hallway while smiling brilliantly at the cloudy, dreary spring day from the ceiling-height French glass window. "Look at that sun! Whoo-hoo!" Behind her back, an old coot muttered, "Looks like somebody had an overdose of coffee." Hearing those words, the blonde swirled around and narrowed her eyes, snapping, "Who said that?" When nobody answered, she just issued a dissatisfied grunt and continued dragging half-asleep people out for breakfast.
"Lookee here, MAID, you've got no right dragging us poor folks out like that! Why don't you do your cleaning when we feel like getting out?" The old codger who had complained earlier piped up with his hoarse voice yet again. This time the blonde saw who it was and rounded on him, screeching, "What'd you call me, BOY?! I am NOT a maid, you hear?!! How DARE you call me that? FOR YOUR INFORMATION, I am the great manager of this hotel!!! I am KIRYUU NANAMI-SAN!!! You hear me?! I'm Kiryuu Nanami!! The manager of this five-star hotel! That's me!!!" Howling now, Nanami's hair was basically flying around her head as she continued hollering. "So don't ever call me a maid again, BOY!!!"
"S-Sorry, Kiryuu-san," the old man shrunk backwards, stumbling. All of a sudden, Nanami smiled sweetly and went on her way as if the loud exchange had never ever taken place. As she continued down the stairs, humming an odd tune that was a mixture of "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider" and "I'm a Little Teapot, Short and Stout" (that's right, an overdose of coffee! She thought to herself) when she fell head over heels over something. After she pushed herself back up from her odd mangled position on the ground, she realized with a start that she had tripped over a package carelessly dropped in the middle of the stairs.
"Oh?" She asked herself suspiciously as she crawled over to inspect it. Coming closer now, she could see that it was a tidy little crisp white box addressed to a "Ruka Tsuchiya, Room 264, Nagano Plaza". Suddenly, Nanami grabbed the box and walked briskly into her private hotel office with it behind her back. Once she locked the glossy glass sliding door and pulled the golden satin curtains across, she threw herself into her leather swivel chair.
"This is impossible... Ruka's been dead for a couple of years now... he died under mysterious circumstances..." Puzzled, Nanami flipped the box this way and that, trying to figure out what was inside. There was no opening nor closing; just a rectangular prism made of cardboard, or so it seemed. Angry, and tossing aside the tiny angelic voice that was condemning her of being nosy, Nanami grabbed a pair of scissors and stabbed at it. It was to no avail though, for not even a dent was created. Six failed attempts with six different sharp objects later, the eye-catching blonde gave a very-un-hotel-manager-like frustrated scream and threw the package at a group pastel portrait of the Ohtori Student Council.
"WHAT THE HELL!!!!!!!!" She screamed at the top of her lungs. "AARGH!!!"
Completely furious, she banged her diminutive fists on her costly glass-paneled desk with such force that it slightly cracked. Then she kicked at her file cabinet, bruising her toes. Her tantrum continued for exactly six and a half whole minutes while anxious employees listened outside, quivering. Their boss could be terribly frightening.
Unknown to Nanami as she raved and cursed, in room 264 sat a half-translucent blue-haired man, wondering where his package was. Finally realizing that it was in the hands of a person who was not supposed to have it, he closed his eyes and furrowed his brow.
A few seconds later, a white cardboard box disappeared from Nanami's office and reappeared in his hands. Smiling smugly to nobody in particular, he laughed, "Being dead does come in handy sometimes," and opened the box with a slice of his fingernail on the top-right crease.
Once he dumped the contents of the box out onto the pale linen sheets of the canopy bed in his guest room, the expression on his face showed that he was pleased. All of a sudden, he gave a gasp of shock and dropped the object he was holding. Quickly he went out the door among a group of chattering people. His translucent body was seen by no one. As he made his way out of the front door, not even pausing to notice the throng of stricken employees pressing their ears against a glass door, there was something else going on in his room.
A sharp shriek pierced the air.
But nobody heard.
That was because it was coming from the object that the blue-haired man had dropped.
It was coming from a miniature, hand-held glass mirror with an elaborate frame of melded pink and silver with rose motifs twining all around it.
The scream got worse.
But still nobody heard.
* * * * *
Sobbing, the ghost of the fourteen-year old girl screamed again. Tears of silver flowed smoothly down her cheeks as she convulsed and twitched. Covered in ghostly blood, the beautifully elegant pink-haired girl gasped and choked. She didn't even know how it happened; all she knew was she had somehow found herself traveling out of her human body, which was also blood-spattered. Then, the little girl standing in horror in front of her had seen the spectacle, yet the adult with her did not. Staring with wide eyes and mouth opened in revulsion at the scene of a semi-transparent girl crawling out of her own body, the child screamed and ran away. Following that, the ghostly young lady had wandered around, pondering over why she was not in Heaven or Hell. Eventually she figured out that she was not in her own world, and she was stuck in a bizarre world of pink. As soon as she met the silver-haired, crimson-eyed girl which appeared to be exactly her age and size, problems started.
The red and silver girl with hair exactly in style to the pink-haired female's had then placed a cold, wintry hand on the bloody lady's throat and started to strangle her. At the same time she was strangling herself, too, with a wicked, smug grin.
Finally the pain had filled so much of the pink-haired girl's head that she did not even notice the other one starting to melt, like a silver liquid or gas, into her. All of a sudden, the pink-haired female noticed, stunned, that her skin was becoming glacial and streaks of silver had appeared in her once-pure pink mane.
Gasping with realization, she sobbed.
What is Anthy going to say? She thought miserably. Simultaneously, other thoughts crept into her mind: Revolution... Apocalypse... Blood... End... Kill...
"NOOO! This is not me!!! Anthy, Touga, Miki!!! Nanami, Saionji! Wakaba!!!!" She moaned, more silver tears flooding her face. "Noooooo....."
She was cut off short by an internal squeezing of her windpipe. A voice hissed evilly, "Darling Utena, Dear Utena... don't cry. Anthy will be right there... in the swords, right next to you..." It paused momentarily for emphasis. "Yes, that's right... because..."
"You'll be in the thorns."
Act 4
"Come on, Apocalypse, we'll get there," Kozue said through huffs and puffs. The rain was beating down on her and the little girl she was with mercilessly. A sniff came from the little pink-haired girl. Kozue started to feel pangs of annoyance. All Apocalypse had done for the past few hours was sniffle and whimper. The blue-haired young woman's hands were itching for a slap.
"K-Kozue, I'm cold and tired," Apocalypse whispered while uttering a racking cough. "I don't feel so well."
"Apocalypse, be quiet and let me find the way! We'll get to Touga's house really soon; just wait!" Kozue replied absentmindedly, not realizing that her voice had an extremely angry tone. "Shush!"
"O-Okay."
After much searching, interrogating, and getting lost in dead ends, the pair of them finally reached a large manor. Even through the dark heavy rain, it was extremely beautiful and exquisite. Kozue walked right up to it as if she owned it, and turned a brass key in the lock of the front gate. Then, dragging a whining Apocalypse along, she opened the entrance with a gold key. As soon as she stepped in, she was pulled inside.
"Kozue, did you invite them?" Touga's voice was urgent and hushed. It was even angry, as if Kozue had a part in it.
"What? Who?"
"Akio and Anthy."
"T-they... no, it can't be!" Her face gone pale, Kozue panicked. They had found her. She was trapped. Shrieking and flailing to get out of Touga's grasp, she yelled, "No! They won't get her!!" And, to Touga's surprise, she grabbed Apocalypse's arm and ran out the door. As soon as she ran out onto the main street, Touga sighed with mingled skepticism and amazement, "She actually cares about someone besides Miki."
However, before Kozue could get far, she bumped into someone.
"Ouch! Watch it!" Kozue snapped, trying to wipe mud from the street off her skirt and attempting to cease Apocalypse's crying at the same time. Oddly she was acting like a mother to the little girl.
"Why don't you watch it?" The person she bumped into retorted. It turned out to be a girl Kozue's age, a brunette girl with thick girlish pigtails and two slicked curls of hair on her forehead.
"Do I know you?" Narrowing her eyes, Kozue inquired.
"I don't know. I certainly don't know you."
"Well, what're you called?"
"Keiko."
"Keiko? From Ohtori?" She was speechless. What a coincidence.
"I don't know. Stop asking questions!! I don't know anything anymore!"
"What the hell?" Kozue didn't care if little Apocalypse heard her speak harshly.
"I'm unwell. Get away from me!!!!" Getting up from her fallen position, Keiko ran off for Touga's manor. "Stay away!!!" However, she did not get to it before she had a coughing fit and fell down on her knees, wheezing.
"Hey, in your condition, you shouldn't be running." As Kozue advanced closer, with Apocalypse clinging, frightened, on her arm, she noticed that Keiko was all white skin and bones. Kozue reached out to help Keiko up, when the skinny brunette girl slapped it away vehemently. She screamed out hoarsely, "No! What are you doing? Don't try to hurt me! Stay away!!" Immediately Kozue did as she was told, with a scowl mussing up her face.
"What's your problem?"
"Y-you'll hurt me," Keiko answered before another line of coughs caused her frail body to shake uncontrollably. "You'll hit my head, like Nanami-sama."
"Well, you know what? I'm not Nanami, and I have no damn reason to hit you, okay? So stop being paranoid and cooperate!" Kozue was at the end of her patience. She could not stand Keiko's fearful attitude anymore. It was irrational and stupid.
"I-I..."
"Okay? Look, why don't we get you over to Touga's house?" Even though she knew that she was taking a risk going there, Kozue decided to help the unfortunate soul out. She had been like that herself a year ago, before her brother pitied her and took her in. But she, stupidly, had gone off wandering again, and eventually got lost in a completely different city after taking a wrong train. So, she spent most of her time in a bar before getting fired.
"That's exactly where I'm headed."
"Oh well then! It's up the hill? Do you think you can make it?"
"I dunno."
"Well, try!" With a clap on the girl's back, Kozue sent her sprawling and sprinting towards the Touga residence. Once she saw Keiko being admitted inside, she removed Apocalypse's tight grip on her arm and placed the girl's hand in her own. Promptly she made her way towards the train station again.
"Where are we going? What about Sir Touga's house?"
"It isn't safe there. What we need is my brother. Try to find a phone book. I think I still have some money to make a call."
* * * * *
"La-la-la-lee-lee-li-li-lo-lo-loo!" A blonde young lady chortled as she ran from room to room, checking on all the guests. "A brilliant day to be outside, peoples! Out, out, out!!!" With a holler she ushered them all out into hallway while smiling brilliantly at the cloudy, dreary spring day from the ceiling-height French glass window. "Look at that sun! Whoo-hoo!" Behind her back, an old coot muttered, "Looks like somebody had an overdose of coffee." Hearing those words, the blonde swirled around and narrowed her eyes, snapping, "Who said that?" When nobody answered, she just issued a dissatisfied grunt and continued dragging half-asleep people out for breakfast.
"Lookee here, MAID, you've got no right dragging us poor folks out like that! Why don't you do your cleaning when we feel like getting out?" The old codger who had complained earlier piped up with his hoarse voice yet again. This time the blonde saw who it was and rounded on him, screeching, "What'd you call me, BOY?! I am NOT a maid, you hear?!! How DARE you call me that? FOR YOUR INFORMATION, I am the great manager of this hotel!!! I am KIRYUU NANAMI-SAN!!! You hear me?! I'm Kiryuu Nanami!! The manager of this five-star hotel! That's me!!!" Howling now, Nanami's hair was basically flying around her head as she continued hollering. "So don't ever call me a maid again, BOY!!!"
"S-Sorry, Kiryuu-san," the old man shrunk backwards, stumbling. All of a sudden, Nanami smiled sweetly and went on her way as if the loud exchange had never ever taken place. As she continued down the stairs, humming an odd tune that was a mixture of "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider" and "I'm a Little Teapot, Short and Stout" (that's right, an overdose of coffee! She thought to herself) when she fell head over heels over something. After she pushed herself back up from her odd mangled position on the ground, she realized with a start that she had tripped over a package carelessly dropped in the middle of the stairs.
"Oh?" She asked herself suspiciously as she crawled over to inspect it. Coming closer now, she could see that it was a tidy little crisp white box addressed to a "Ruka Tsuchiya, Room 264, Nagano Plaza". Suddenly, Nanami grabbed the box and walked briskly into her private hotel office with it behind her back. Once she locked the glossy glass sliding door and pulled the golden satin curtains across, she threw herself into her leather swivel chair.
"This is impossible... Ruka's been dead for a couple of years now... he died under mysterious circumstances..." Puzzled, Nanami flipped the box this way and that, trying to figure out what was inside. There was no opening nor closing; just a rectangular prism made of cardboard, or so it seemed. Angry, and tossing aside the tiny angelic voice that was condemning her of being nosy, Nanami grabbed a pair of scissors and stabbed at it. It was to no avail though, for not even a dent was created. Six failed attempts with six different sharp objects later, the eye-catching blonde gave a very-un-hotel-manager-like frustrated scream and threw the package at a group pastel portrait of the Ohtori Student Council.
"WHAT THE HELL!!!!!!!!" She screamed at the top of her lungs. "AARGH!!!"
Completely furious, she banged her diminutive fists on her costly glass-paneled desk with such force that it slightly cracked. Then she kicked at her file cabinet, bruising her toes. Her tantrum continued for exactly six and a half whole minutes while anxious employees listened outside, quivering. Their boss could be terribly frightening.
Unknown to Nanami as she raved and cursed, in room 264 sat a half-translucent blue-haired man, wondering where his package was. Finally realizing that it was in the hands of a person who was not supposed to have it, he closed his eyes and furrowed his brow.
A few seconds later, a white cardboard box disappeared from Nanami's office and reappeared in his hands. Smiling smugly to nobody in particular, he laughed, "Being dead does come in handy sometimes," and opened the box with a slice of his fingernail on the top-right crease.
Once he dumped the contents of the box out onto the pale linen sheets of the canopy bed in his guest room, the expression on his face showed that he was pleased. All of a sudden, he gave a gasp of shock and dropped the object he was holding. Quickly he went out the door among a group of chattering people. His translucent body was seen by no one. As he made his way out of the front door, not even pausing to notice the throng of stricken employees pressing their ears against a glass door, there was something else going on in his room.
A sharp shriek pierced the air.
But nobody heard.
That was because it was coming from the object that the blue-haired man had dropped.
It was coming from a miniature, hand-held glass mirror with an elaborate frame of melded pink and silver with rose motifs twining all around it.
The scream got worse.
But still nobody heard.
* * * * *
Sobbing, the ghost of the fourteen-year old girl screamed again. Tears of silver flowed smoothly down her cheeks as she convulsed and twitched. Covered in ghostly blood, the beautifully elegant pink-haired girl gasped and choked. She didn't even know how it happened; all she knew was she had somehow found herself traveling out of her human body, which was also blood-spattered. Then, the little girl standing in horror in front of her had seen the spectacle, yet the adult with her did not. Staring with wide eyes and mouth opened in revulsion at the scene of a semi-transparent girl crawling out of her own body, the child screamed and ran away. Following that, the ghostly young lady had wandered around, pondering over why she was not in Heaven or Hell. Eventually she figured out that she was not in her own world, and she was stuck in a bizarre world of pink. As soon as she met the silver-haired, crimson-eyed girl which appeared to be exactly her age and size, problems started.
The red and silver girl with hair exactly in style to the pink-haired female's had then placed a cold, wintry hand on the bloody lady's throat and started to strangle her. At the same time she was strangling herself, too, with a wicked, smug grin.
Finally the pain had filled so much of the pink-haired girl's head that she did not even notice the other one starting to melt, like a silver liquid or gas, into her. All of a sudden, the pink-haired female noticed, stunned, that her skin was becoming glacial and streaks of silver had appeared in her once-pure pink mane.
Gasping with realization, she sobbed.
What is Anthy going to say? She thought miserably. Simultaneously, other thoughts crept into her mind: Revolution... Apocalypse... Blood... End... Kill...
"NOOO! This is not me!!! Anthy, Touga, Miki!!! Nanami, Saionji! Wakaba!!!!" She moaned, more silver tears flooding her face. "Noooooo....."
She was cut off short by an internal squeezing of her windpipe. A voice hissed evilly, "Darling Utena, Dear Utena... don't cry. Anthy will be right there... in the swords, right next to you..." It paused momentarily for emphasis. "Yes, that's right... because..."
"You'll be in the thorns."