Particle 04: The Chaotic State of Normal Causality

"I love her!"

Van clenched Hitomi's hand fast to his side and threaded his fingers through hers to the point that he felt almost tearing tension in the shallow webs of skin between his fingers. Hitomi squeezed his hand in response, once again with her usual firmness that returned after her initial shock at recent developments.

Jet and Allen stared at Van, still draped over one another's shoulders and leaning into one another in an attempt to balance their weight into a single center of gravity. Allen was at the moment moving from the scandalized stage to the pitying and longing stage. Jet was moving from the shocked stage to the dominative rage stage.

Van swallowed and tilted his head up to stare into Jet's eyes. Looking straight into his heaving chest was not having a very persuasive effect.

"I love her—" he yanked Hitomi even closer, as it were "—and we're going to get married. With or without your permission. Even if we have to run away. Even if…… if… er…"

Van focused on a point on the snow beyond Jet's hook. It was a nice point. It wasn't providing any inspiration, nor did it look in the least bit threatening or as if it was about to snap his head off in one yank.

"…even if we have to fight you," he finished lamely.

"What? Speak up!"

"I said even if we have to fight you!"

Van jerked away from Hitomi and crouched into a fighting stance, reaching for his hip. There was nothing there. He thought for a moment with eyebrows furrowed – why that reaction? He had never carried a weapon – and closed his hands into fists.

"Let's go!"

"VAN!—" Hitomi stopped inches away from grabbing Van's shoulder and blinked. Her pupils dilated for a moment before contracting once again.

The atmosphere caught its breath and closed itself to the relative dimension of reality once again. Time ended its relative suspension. Strands of hair and blowing snow that had been moving in slow motion fell sharply and unceremoniously back into their officially sanctioned relative time states.

"…Motel," she finished vaguely.

A state of mutual breath-catching settled over the clearing next to Tevye's house.

"REB TEVYE! LAZAR WOLF!"

The collective of breath decided through some quantum link to abandon post and join its brethren in the ice-shattered outside air.

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

Utena stopped next to Jet and grasped her knees, gasping. Jet took a deep breath of air moments ago deprived to his lungs and placed his hands on his hips, effectively detaching Allen. The latter staggered a few grapevine steps into a snowdrift against the barn.

"Don't—"

Utena looked up. Her breath, surprised as it was as well, caught itself in her throat.

The scenery had changed. The entire scene that lay before her had changed.

Hitomi stood beneath a tent sagging under the weight of accumulated ice and snow, head down in customary coy fashion, holding a huge bouquet of lilies that entirely shielded her hands from view. The lilies had a faint green glow that cast Hitomi's face into uplight.

Utena's breath regained its momentum and unleashed itself, prompting the lungs to begin a sharp series of gasps. She snapped her attention to Van. Yes, Van, Allen, both of them standing on either side of Hitomi in tuxedos, shoulders, wrists, and necks slack, appearing as corpse puppets in the green uplighting from Hitomi's bouquet and their own corsets.

Hitomi looked up slowly, eyes following behind the progress of her face. Her face was utterly white. Dark swashes of black makeup blazed down her cheeks from her eyes.

Hitomi was crying. Slowly, eyes leveling with Utena's through her lashes… a whisper…

Mouthed words… moving black lips… a silent plea…

Awareness, which had been flying somewhere above the town for some time and which had been increasingly swooping down to tickle people behind the ears with its breath, took a crash landing into the clearing.

Utena gasped and looked around, then down at herself.

Fiddler on the Roof.

…I see…

"MANAAAAAAAA!!"

Utena spun around in a circle, arms following the progress of her body and snapping into place after the latter. She looked in several directions, half-expecting the smug bastard to walk out of the gloom, smirking, hair frosted into his eyebrows dramatically. It was his style to show up at the climax and take claim for the ensuing torture, taunt his victims, and then disappear as soon as the situation began to look unfavorable for his neck or his other vital organs, proverbial though the need for actual life constraints for him was.

It also usually meant that his idea had hit a brick wall at about a hundred kilometers per hour and that he was about to call the resulting wreck his initial plan and brilliant intention.

Hitomi's tears traced tracks down her chalked skin. She mouthed something more.

Mako.

The blossoms glowed a more virulent green. Utena backed away from the blossoms slowly, focusing on them to the point that she tripped over something spheroid that had wandered under her foot. She crashed onto her behind. Pain shot up her lower spine from the tip of her tailbone.

The materia rolled over to Hitomi's white slipper and tapped it gently against the instep. Utena noticed—vaguely—that Hitomi was dressed very scantily for the middle of the night in Russia. The idea quickly blurred and was pushed back in lieu of its more pressing peers.

"What in the HELL...?"

"LOOK OUT NO DA!!"

Utena looked over her shoulder and immediately ducked under her arms.

A huge batlike figure dove across the top of Utena's head, skimming her scalp with a cold, wet underside. It crashed nose-first into the snowdrift against the barn, trapping a now sobering and very unhappy Allen at the juncture of its neck and its shoulder.

Utena uncovered her head and straightened. The figure was translucent and appeared to have a bluish, ribbed texture from the inside and the patterns of its freezing. She touched the top of her head, remembering the glide of ice against the skin between a forest of hairs.

An ice glider.

Allen pushed against the bottom of the glider next to his neck momentarily, gave up, and slid beneath it. He scrambled out from under it and emerged from a gap under the side, then stood back and observed the wreck.

The barn now had a brand new system of ventilation that could rival any internal air conditioner advertised as producing a "fresh air atmosphere".

Utena blinked and looked over her shoulder at the tent. She could have sworn that Allen was just…

--------

"Allen! Jet!" Chichiri motioned toward himself. He was standing on the glider's back and holding his hat to his head against the wind, balancing his weight on a bent leg. It was a wonder that he did not slide off. "Get on no da!"

Allen looked over his shoulder at Jet, who was running toward him and making good use of Tevye's fur cap by holding it to his head. He had regained his direct and subdued manner of moving that was far more powerful in gestalt than Tevye's bravado.

"What about the others?" Allen yelled.

"Get them too no da! Hurry! The mako is going to explode no da!"

"Explode?"

Allen looked over his shoulder at the green materia that was rolling in circles around Hitomi's feet. The materia would intermittently make little jumping motions when it rolled around to Hitomi's frontside.

Hitomi still stood with her head down in the odd dress, puppet-corpse Van standing by her side.

"What the—?" Allen made a small step toward Hitomi, thought for a moment, came to no logical conclusion, ran two steps toward the tent, stopped, and backtracked back to the glider.

"What in the hell is going on? What the hell is THAT?"

"No time to explain no da!" Chichiri grabbed Allen under the shoulder and hauled the taller man onto the glider. Allen fell onto his rear on the ice wing and scrambled backwards onto its spine with Chichiri's pulling aid.

"I'm not even going to ask where this came from," Jet muttered, settling on the ice.

"Yuuto. Helped no da. Froze water. I mean, water master, made this, it froze no da," Chichiri said vaguely. "Utena!" he yelled with more direction and force. "Get Hitomi and Van no da! NOW!"

The materia began to glow even more violently and circle more quickly. The lilies responded.

"NOW NO DA!"

Utena stopped running toward the glider, hesitated, and then turned tail and pulled Hitomi and Van out from under the tent. She ran toward the glider dragging them by the wrists. Van's head still hung limply; his free arm stuck out at stiffly behind him with a limp wrist. Hitomi dropped the blossoms and stared at the ground submissively as she was dragged along, tripping.

The materia gleefully rolled toward the blossoms.

"NOW!"

Utena threw the couple into the glider and scrambled onto its back while Jet and Allen hauled them onto its back. Chichiri turned around to yell something—

And the world exploded.

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

"That… was your brilliant adaptation."

"Oh, shut up. This was merely a creative springboard to launch into the true chaos."

"Well, I do not deny that it was chaos."

"You think you're really clever, don't you?"

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

Hitomi uncovered her head and blinked several times. She looked down at her rather elaborate wedding dress and arranged her skirts into something more decent, sitting up and looking around. She was on the back of what appeared to be a big ice bird flying over leaden-purple clouds.

The cold was unbearable.

Well, at least things were beginning to feel more normal, not factoring the amnesia that was setting in. Chaos and utter random occurrence were normal. Scripted plots were not. They were an artificial atmosphere.

Van draped his jacket over Hitomi's bare shoulders.

"No, Van, you'll get sick—"

"MATERIA EXPLODING?" Utena yelled.

The moment of bittersweet sacrifice shattered instantly. Hitomi and Van turned around and settled in a position to watch the row that had been hanging in the balance for a long time.

"Materia does not explode when it encounters mako! It IS mako! That's like saying that water explodes when you add ice!"

"Those were mako blossoms no da. The lilies infused with pure mako, flowers descended from a strain grown in a church in the slums of Midgar, a beacon of light and proverbial survival of the natural in an industrial wasteland—"

"Over the river of fire and through the Gorge of Eternal Peril, we know, but it still—"

"Actually, no, no da. Did you ever actually visit the Road of Final Fantasy VII?"

"I have," Allen said, sitting cross legged and brooding with his elbows on his knees. With a regained personality, he was starting to look foolish in a bloodstained apron and furs. "And Miss Utena is right."

"I still think this is bullshit."

"Well, think of adding ice to water, like you said. When you add a lot of ice to a small amount of water, doesn't the water splash no da?"

"Um… yeah…"

"In the same way, you were adding a huge amount of concentrated mako – that was a seeker materia, synthetically produced to have a greater density of mako than it can conceivably hold without exploding no da – that found another addition to its core. It was supersaturated. Just one little trigger, hence… kaboom no da."

"All right, all right. But I never thought of mako as particularly violent."

"You would be surprised no da. Life can be pretty violent no da."

"Maybe it was the violent side of nature or something."

"Maybe no da."

"Where did the materia come from, where did the blossoms come from, why are Hitomi and Van dressed like that, and why did they go zombie all of a sudden?"

"Um…." Chichiri shrugged.

"You know better than to even question a lack of logic anymore," said Jet, arms crossed. "The entire universe is writing its own rules for the sake of plots. If it's convenient for the creator and would make things conveniently inconvenient for the players in such a way that they have to do something…"

"We know," Utena growled. "And on that note, I'm willing to bet anything that this is Mana's work."

"It's not chaotic or surreal enough no da."

"He's probably having a slow day. That or he's finally on medication." Allen made a face and untied his apron behind his neck, removed the knife stuck into the pocket, balled the material, and threw it into the gray, boiling clouds below. He removed his outer coat and draped it over Hitomi's shoulders.

"…um… thank you…"

Van stared at Allen for a moment, and then nodded. "Thank you."

Hitomi hugged the inside of the coat to herself as Allen sat back down. "…you said Yuuto did this," he said. "Kigai Yuuto, the Dragon of Heaven? Why was he in Anatevka, and why did he help you? He's mercenary now. If possible, I trust him even less than I did when the Dragons of Heaven were intact."

"I don't know no da. He just conjured a bird out of water, made it freeze, and warned me in vague terms about the mako reactor. He was 'lending his services' to Shinra."

"Wonderful. How is it flying?"

"Oh, that's my power no da. There are too many of you to transport in my cloak, so this will have to do for now no da."

"If it works, it works." Jet flexed the fingers of his seamlessly returned prosthetic arm. The ice that had collected inside the joints cracked. "We need to find a place to stay. Need rest before we can continue."

"I have another question to ask no da. Did any of you, perchance, see Alucard anywhere? I am sure that you have met him at one time or another no da. He was with me when I first arrived in Russia, and he disappeared when we were on Allen's roof. Or Lazar Wolf's. Whatever no da. Have you seen him no da?"

Van grimaced. "….no."

"The nosferatu?" muttered Allen.

"Not exactly. I think nosferatu are supposed to be a rather animalesque subspecies of the vampire no da. He's a No-Life-King no da."

"Nosferatu is an Eastern term for the vampire," said Jet.

"Are you sure about that no da?"

"Pretty sure."

"Well, in any case, he's gone, and I know that he's still in this Road somewhere. The Hellsing family locks prevent him from traveling no da."

"I have every confidence that he will be just fine," Allen said, watching Chichiri out of the corner of narrowed eyes.

"I'm not worried about him no da. He's dead useful—no pun indicated—and I'm worried about the people on the other side of any trouble he gets himself into no da."

"Right." Allen tested the balance of the butcher knife and came to the conclusion that it was slapped together in less than thirty seconds by somebody in Taiwan with super glue and a pocket knife. "Are you able to return our usual attire and weapons to us?"

"It'll be cold no da."

"I meant when the time comes. I would like my sword, though."

"And mine as well," said Van.

"I would appreciate the return of my Walther," said Jet.

"…I've never carried a real weapon, but can I have a rapier?" said Utena.

Chichiri grudgingly removed his ice-encrusted mantle and spread a patch of it on the glider's back, keeping the rest pooled in his lap. He tapped the butt of his staff against the ice, balanced the top-heavy instrument so that it stood vertically, and chanted something arcane. The weapons submerged from the blue lake of fabric.

"Here no da…"

Everybody retrieved his or her weapon from the patch, meeting in a center that consisted of the only warmth for miles, shivering, crusted with ice, and breathing milky patches of heated water into the air. By all rights, they should have already frozen to death. By all rights, the flowers never would have appeared in the first place and they would at least be sixty-thousand feet lower and close to some conceivable source of heat.

Logical rights had retired long ago and now resided somewhere considerably warmer than the ice glider above the sub arctic clouds. Some people claimed to find them lounging on beaches and making beginning surfers crash spectacularly.

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

It was too calm to last.

Several hours passed in relative silence and without event except for the re-growing of Utena's hair to its normal length, stretched over the aforementioned period. Then the ice glider melted.

Chichiri was the first one to notice that the freezing magic was unraveling and leaving the fabric of the water, but he was too tired and too numb in the mind to try any action until he was hovering for a split second in midair while the water beneath him fell into the clouds.

The second one to notice was Utena.

"AAAAAAAAAAAH!"

Several more voices seconded the notion as everybody began to plummet. Allen, Jet, and Utena fell through the veil of clouds with no way of helping themselves otherwise. Chichiri fell back-first for a few meters before regaining his grasp on his staff and performing a silent incantation that allowed him to levitate.

Chichiri frowned at the swirling pools in the clouds through which three unfortunate bodies had fallen and turned his head to watch Van do one of the things that he did best: force his wings out painfully and manage to tear off any clothing still on his upper body. The boy's wings performed in the manner of parachutes for a moment, yanking him sharply back by the torso and making it appear that he had been hit square in the chest with a canon. His limbs caught up with his body seconds later.

"HITOMI!"

Van dove into the clouds after Hitomi, leaving behind a rather beautiful rain of falling white feathers, as Chichiri half-thought that he heard another version of himself calling out to the people he had more or less allowed to plummet to their certain and uncomfortable deaths because he wasn't paying close attention.

Well, yes, there is the Seiyuu Complex to consider no da. Oh dear…

Chichiri crossed his limbs and hovered in a sitting position, brow furrowed. He knew that they were still, theoretically, in the 'Road' that could have been anything from Russian history to musicals to torture devices for unruly children in an elementary school music class. Guilt would be of little use. The people he was shepherding were all significant, lively, well-loved as characters, and protagonists. Quite simply, they would not die for good from such a cause as falling. It was not dramatic enough. They might die and return to life.

Besides, certain death is always defeated. It is the death that is accidental or foolish, a result of hubris or calculatory error, that is harder to dodge.

It would still be rather painful and inconvenient no da. Chichiri plucked a feather out of the air and twisted it between his fingers thoughtfully. He looked into the clouds below. I wonder where exactly we are right now.

And, for the second time that day, the world exploded.

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

Those caught in the air while the world melted and twisted around them, momentarily shocking their neurotransmitters into awe, found themselves in various states of confusion and general cognitive abuse. The fabric of the world changed and intermingled with that of another Road – a collision in imaginary fabrics, the weaving of a new Crossroads.

The world eventually solidified and came into clear ocular focus. The falling commenced in its preceding fashion, though the falling in question were now plummeting toward new landing points.

Allen Schezar and Jet Black awoke in various locations—face-down in a drainage ditch in the desert and face-up in a snowdrift against an insurance office, respectively—and went their separate ways.

Van Fanel caught Kanzaki Hitomi in a spectacular and dramatic fashion and somehow managed to land in a small mountain town with a rustic ski lodge, a casino, and a '2015 retro / NERV themed' McDonald's on every street corner. They rented a small room in the lodge and found rather creative and mutually enjoyable ways to warm themselves.

For once, it was the Gaeans and a Cowboy—essentially, the Studio Sunrise collective--who had received the favoring graces of the deus ex machina.

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

Tenjou Utena, on the other hand, was touched by a scion of Murphy's Laws and surrealism.

The first thing that she noticed was that her nerves still operated as if she were alive. There had been no crash or spectacular rescue by another flying object (or running into another flying object), merely the displacement of her body to another location. It was either this, or the location was displaced to meet her body.

There was a cold, slick, synthetic-feeling floor beneath her cheek. Utena's pre-visual guess was that she was in a hospital or a school, which ended up being only approximately two-fifths correct.

Utena pushed herself up and shook her head vigorously. The painful screws that seemed to have implanted themselves into her brain responded in annoyance.

She winced and blinked, allowing her eyes to adjust to the glare. The room was a dormitory with two thin-mattressed cots, white sheets and walls, and dingy but clean white shifts hanging on hooks. There was an absolute lack of decor and natural light. Everything glared in halogen tones.

The door was also fortress-grade metal and closed.

"Hello? Anyone there?"

"…we have hit a rather unpleasant rut in this continuum."

The voice was a cool and smooth alto. Utena forced her eyes open wider in hope that the movement would encourage her pupils to perform the inverse.

"No shit." She was finally able to make out the dark shape lounging on one of the cots as a black-haired girl with reddish bangs watching her with a look of arid, intellectual detachment that looked as if it would not change for any sort of shock or insult.

Utena sat on the bed opposite of the girl and dimly noticed that she was already dressed in one of the shifts and eyeglasses. She looked down at her own body and was relieved to see her own black jacket and red shorts.

"I am Yahtouji Satsuki."

"Tenjou Utena. Where are we; do you know?"

Satsuki blinked. It was not an involuntary wink to clear her eyes, but a slow, deliberate blink that signified the processing of a statement to summarize her various mental functions and an annoyance with ignorance in general. "I have reason to believe that we are being held within the confines of a concentration camp, of sorts."

"…WHAT?"

"You are familiar with the concept of totalitarianism, are you not? The Nazis? Stalin? Racial cleansing, the eradication of the intellectuals and the deviants?"

"I know, I know…" Utena sighed. "Let me guess. I'm in here because I am a deviant, am I not? It is the only thing that would make sense. I mean, I'm not very bright or a Jew or something."

"But you do have a relationship with another woman. And you did revolutionize the world and attempt to disestablish all forms of social norm and convention."

"That's really not the story. And I'm bisexual, I discovered. Hey…" Utena looked up and pointed. "How do you know that?"

"I have access to every databank of information in the Nex. You are well known, Rose Prince."

"Yeah. Um, listen…" Utena lowered her finger, then placed her hands on her hips and leaned forward. "Do you know how to get out of here if you know everything?"

"I do not have every piece of information stored in my brain, nor have I even viewed every piece of information for every single theoretical building that could be created in every single theoretical merger. The possibilities are infinite."

"Oh."

"But I am devising a plan to escape."

"Oh. Good." Utena stared at Satsuki. Satsuki stared back. "So… what did you have in mind?"

"First, we have to get out of this confine, obviously."

"There is probably a ceiling vent that runs through here or something. Or a loose floorboard that leads to a basement."

"No, already analyzed. Nor is there a window, if that was your other hope. We are underground."

"Underground?!"

"I have already checked every possibility from this point. Before you even ask, I cannot summon the aid of technology from this location. I was carefully placed into this cell, isolated the furthest from its influence. There isn't a wire around for meters."

"I wasn't planning on asking. And what do you mean by that anyway?" Satsuki stared at her silently. "Why am I in here?"

"They ran out of room."

"Oh." Utena thought for a moment. "But if you know that, why can't you find your way out? Do you know what's going on outside? Why we're being held in the first place and what the hell is going on? Is there a war or something?"

Satsuki did not reply.

"…you do, don't you."

"I never said that."

"But you implied it. Intellectuals always play mind games like this, you see. They have an aversion to outright lies because they see it as some sort of a game to tell half-truths and to never be pinned for lying."

"You seem well educated in the theoretical ways of 'intellectuals'."

"I have had my dealings with them," said Utena, thinking in particular of the less savory examples she had met, most of whom were antagonists. Come to think of it, she had yet to meet an eccentric, mind-gaming genius who was not a villain. Miki and his new 'friend', a girl named Mizuno Ami, never did anything of the sort. She preferred them far over the examples such as the one whose name started in an "M" and ended in a "-kage". Ironically, in their own ways they were also the most bloody brilliant. Therefore, they were the most dangerous.

The crazy ones are always evil. She eyed Satsuki. This one is pretty far down that path already, and we have been talking all of three minutes. I don't trust her any further than I can throw her.

"I believe that there is a harvest of those who are deviant, most of whom will therefore be intelligent," said Satsuki.

You don't know what you're talking about, you elitist little bitch…

"Right." Utena's expression of irritation grew. "Listen, I really need to get out of here."

"Don't we all."

"Do people ever… I don't know, visit? Take you out of here? Feed you? Showers? March you around in the snow in your knickers and socks?"

"We attend meals and classes."

"They don't work you to death or stick you in gas chambers?"

"Not as far as I have seen."

"No patches sewn onto clothes or tattooing of serial numbers?"

"Just the patches for some special cases. If you would observe…" Satsuki rotated her shoulders and showed Utena a triangle duct taped hastily onto her sleeve. "The number is an indicator of one's 'danger level' to standard society. One is the lowest, nine the highest. Only those rare ones above a level four must wear one of these. They constitute approximately ten percent of the population."

Satsuki was a seven. She twisted her shoulders back into alignment. Utena sighed.

"Oh. That's a relief. Love this place already. So we just sit in our rooms, eat three square meals a day, and parade around in patches. I bet we even have indoor plumbing."

"Yes, though showers last five minutes and are tepid."

"Bullshit. What's the catch?"

"I assure you that we do have—"

"You know that's not what I mean."

Satsuki's stare did not waver. "The intention of this place is reeducation."

"…reeducation, huh. Sounds like school already." Utena linked her arms behind her head and stretched.

"You do know that I mean rigorous indoctrination with propaganda, don't you?"

"Um, yeah. Learned about it in history. When I wasn't sleeping. Desk was sometimes too damn cold to really tune out."

"You will be well familiar with the idea when you see it, Prince of Roses, though on a more highly symbolic level."

"Right." Utena dropped her arms. "When to we get out of this room?"

"I would advise you to, under normal circumstances elsewhere, watch everything that you say and do. We are being carefully watched. Here, it is through a mirror spell located in the left door-side corner of the room. I can detect it, but I can't do anything about it. Most other rooms have cameras and bugs, you see. The mages don't all have time to waste watching us. I am a special circumstance."

"Mages?"

"Some of the employees here are such."

"Oh. That's not good."

"Some of the prisoners here are as such."

"Oh. Then we can fight them off!"

"There are lock spells all over the place, chains and mental breaks. I have heard rumor of a new invention under works right now that will reinforce the effectiveness of those spells many times fold."

"Oh. That's not good."

Utena sighed and drew her knees up to her chest, hugging them for warmth. "What time is it?"

"Almost time for supper, if my intuition speaks correctly. You will be able to converse with some of us. Perhaps you are familiar with people kept here."

"Probably. I've met quite a few people during my travels."

"You are not allowed to wear those clothes outside the room."

"Yeah, well the wardens or whatever they call themselves can kiss my ass."

Satsuki allowed a glimmer of a smile to tickle the corners of her mouth. It was not a fond or a happy smile. "I can see that you are going to be an amusing one to observe. How long until you break?"

"I've been in worse situations before. Don't worry about me."

"Oh, yes, there was one thing I wanted to mention to you."

Utena looked up from her view of the floor with chin on knees. Satsuki straightened from reaching over to a bedside table and offered Utena an envelope. The broken sealing wax visible between her fingers was rose-red.

"I was asked to entrust this to you. I already took the liberty of observing its contents."

Utena snatched the letter with shaking hands and ripped out a folded note without daring to look at the imprint of the seal. Something small and ivory flew onto the bed with the force of the yank.

The Outside World has dissolved from its true shape.

The handwriting was glaringly familiar. Utena yanked the letter taut and read the message over again, hands shaking to the point of ripping the letter along the seams. There was no signature this time.

Akio.

Utena growled and ripped the letter to shreds.

Satsuki observed with the same mild expression.

"There was something else in the envelope."

Utena reached behind her and felt the ivory ring now lying on the sheets. Upon closer observation, it was a rose signet identical to her old one, right down to the nicks and scratches she memorized with her obsessive observation and subconscious stroking when she believed in its false meaning. The only change was that the once milky ivory had turned black.

Utena stared at the ring in her palm for a long time, angry to the point of no expression.

Fiery threads began to Utena dropped the ring in shock.

"What the hell… what the…"

"Oh, Lord of the Rings, I assume."

"Lord of the Rings my ass." Utena picked up the ring and slammed it into the empty bedside trashcan so harshly that it bounced back out against the side of the can and tipped it over.

"I wouldn't throw it away if I were you."

"You don't know what this ring symbolizes. It was mine once. Akio's just fucked with it." She hissed. "Bastard. I thought I had severed all ties with him for good."

"Apparently, he hasn't mutually severed his side of the ties. And how are you sure that it was indeed Ohtori Akio who altered the nature of this ring?"

"Because it's the sort of thing that he does."

"Are you sure about this?"

snake around the side of the ring and form cursive words.

 "Well… not really, no." Utena sat down on the bed again and leaned forward on folded arms across her legs. Her wrists went slack. "Akio… well, part of his weakness is that he has no power of his own. He relies on illusions. So I assume that this whole thing is just an illusion. Hell, you might be an illusion along with this whole damned place. I have no way of knowing for sure. And on that note…" Utena looked at Satsuki suspiciously. "Who gave you this?"

"It was merely on the table when I arrived with instructions on a Post-It note that it be entrusted to you."

"Oh."

Utena sighed heavily and dropped her head in thought once again. "…how long do you think until dinner?"

"I think all the time, so it is matter of how long it is until dinner occurs."

"I mean… how long until dinner occurs?"

"Unknown."

"Oh. Great. What happens after dinner?"

"Since today is Thursday, we are encouraged to read assigned books and join for a heavily-moderated book discussion."

Oh. Fun. "What is the book this week?"

"I didn't bother to read it. But the conversations and remarks alone make it worth going."

"But what is the book?"

"The Bible."

"Oh." Utena thought about this for a moment. "…OH… man…"