Rhapsody Theorem
Disclaimers: Revolutionary Girl Utena belongs to Be-papas and Chiho Saitoh.
Warnings: Everybody will be OOC, drug-addicts, and raving lunatics. Lots of rambling and surrealness, half of the fanfic might not make any sense. Rated NC-17 for the themes mentioned above, language, as well as... implied sex? I guess so.
Rants: This takes place after Utena 'escapes' from the TV-series Ohtori. What exactly happened after the million-sword-stabbing-her-body incident that Kunihiko Ikuhara effectively blacks out upon? Well... this is one take, and highly unlikely. By the way, this has no relation to my previous RGU fanfic, "Ugh... Men." You might be able to catch the deja-vu similar-names of the 'Real World' characters to the 'Ohtori World' characters...
Summary: Utena attends the Nemuro Mikage lecture with some interesting consequences.
Radishface
Who are you?
A shadow.
"Utena," her professor said, "I'd like you to meet Nemuro Mikage."
The light-haired man turned to her and gave her a smile. "Pleased to meet you."
"Pleased to meet you." Utena automatically replied, and shook hands with him. Somehow his hands were cold and hard, like marble. Shaking off the thought, she turned to her professor and gave him a sarcastic smile and a raised eyebrow. "Am I in trouble again?"
"You're a full grown woman an capable of taking care of yourself." Her professor nodded, and turned to Mikage. "I'll leave you to her," he said, and left. Utena stared after his retreating form, before she felt a hand on her shoulder.
"Can you come with me?" The soft voice, slightly nasally, pleasant, low, and mellow, beckoned to her. Utena tried not to ask questions. Something was going on, something was strange. He led her to the door, and she followed obediently, like a little black lamb following the herder. She watched him take his left hand out of his pocket, she noticed the ring on his fourth finger.
Utena grinned to herself. The man was so young, and already married! But what a strange ring...
It was like blackened silver, and on top of the ring was an inset design of some sort, pinkish, a rose.
Rose
Honor
Pride
Nobility
The images, the words associated with them, flashed through her head, and then they were gone, like seagulls on the beach, scared by sudden movement, how they flew away, yet the tide kept coming in, the water kept approaching closer to her motionless form, and that fish, that fish made of the diamonds and the clock ticking in its head...
A dark-skinned man stood by the exit, with bright green eyes and light wavy hair, wearing a maroon shirt and black pants. He nodded his greeting to Mikage, and then to her. Uncertainly, she nodded back.
"This is Mamiya," Mikage introduced, and they shook hands. Utena flinched at the touch-- it was like cold electricity, hard diamonds, and icy water, like her dream, like her vision.
She smiled uncertainly, her heart was beating erratically, she didn't know why. They were just people, after all.
Like her.
They led her out the door, to the black Mercedes that was waiting for them, and Utena climbed in, only knowing that she was being helped into the car by Mikage, only knowing that as she did, she looked into Mamiya's green eyes and thought of Anthy, and how, in some obscure way, Mikage reminded Utena of herself.
They were in the car, she was sitting in the back, in the leather, upholstered seats. She recalled that in her dream, her eyes had glazed over, her mind was still working but she couldn't move or speak if she wanted to. She felt trapped now, and wondered why she had let Mikage lead her, let Mikage tell her something, communicate something into her head, without her knowing it.
"You're Utena." Mikage said from the driver's seat, Mamiya beside him. "I remember you."
You remember me? Utena thought, suddenly paralyzed. From where? I've never seen you before. She looked out the window, and the sky turned an unbecoming shade of grey, as clouds suddenly appeared. So the weather man was right, it was going to rain.
It was as if Mikage could hear her. "The same thing happened to me when I was there, too."
What same thing? And where were you?
"I was there a few years back, before you ever arrived there. I was the first, the last in the experiment. After my departure, they continued on, but in a different way. So the original method was lost."
Eternity is not what it is?
No!
No!
NO!
"It wouldn't be fair if the ideal you fought for didn't exist at all." Mikage said. "The world is fair enough."
"The world is fair?" Utena heard herself voice, her throat feeling like it would burn, it would crack. "The world isn't fair."
"You only think this life isn't fair because you aren't enjoying it." Mikage said, turning right at an intersection. "Well, think of it this way. For every something that you enjoy, Fate and Fortune have to experience the opposite-- they have to feel the opposite of what you are feeling. Eventually happiness and sadness will balance themselves out. After all, Fate and Fortune have to feel pleasure, too."
"But there's no Fate, there's no Fortune." Utena bit her lip, thinking quickly, trying to find an answer to this unexplainable situation. Why was she talking about Fate, why was she talking to Mikage? She hadn't listened to his lecture, she hadn't paid attention. Why had he noticed her?
"I noticed you because you're like me." He said, turning left at an intersection. "I went through the same thing you did. I crossed Fate, I double-crossed Fortune, and I escaped. It's really that easy."
Utena ground her teeth, not understanding. "It's not easy. I've tried to shirk them before. It's hard enough to pass my college classes, it's hard enough to get through life. How can I escape what destiny there is? Because there is no destiny, it's all free will!"
She had no idea what she was saying. The words just poured from her mouth, making her sound like an idiot, a clown, dancing on the streets for pennies.
"Ah, but that's what constricts you, Utena." Mikage said, turning right at an intersection. "You think there's free will. There's no free will. Everything has been planned, like the duels, do you remember? There was a calendar, and your date with the End of the World had been planned for the longest time already. There's nothing you can do once it's decided. You just have to follow it."
"So you're telling me everything's already there, that I don't have to do anything?" Utena laughed, a tinge of hysteria in her voice. Just play along with the game. "You're telling me what?"
"What you do now influences what you do in the future." Mikage said simply. "That's all that I mean when I say Fate, Fortune, and Destiny."
Utena wasn't going to be taken in again. "I don't fucking give a shit! WHERE ARE WE GOING?"
"To the answers." Mikage replied.
Mamiya's green eyes widened in the rearview mirror, shock reflected in them, surprise, and hope. "Mikage--" he whispered, suddenly. "Look in front of you."
They turned a corner, and the car exploded into flames.
"Utena, I'd like you to meet professor Nemuro Mikage."
The professor smiled at her, his eyes radiant and his manner pleasant. "It's my pleasure."
Utena blinked, shook her head, trying to clear the black spots of light from her vision, and then assumed a smile herself. "No problem." She grinned. "Your lecture was fascinating, even if I didn't understand all of it."
Professor Mikage laughed, and the dark-skinned man standing beside him gave an amused smile. "I am a bit obscure at times, aren't I?"
"No, but it's interesting." Utena shook her head, trying to clear the fuzz. "I mean, you impress people with all those technological terms."
He turned around, motioning for Utena to follow him. "Did you listen to the part where I talked about my Mobius Strip theory?" He laughed. "I practically made that up just while I was there."
"You ad-libbed the whole thing?" Utena's eyes widened in surprise. "That's very impressive, professor."
"I'd like you to meet Mamiya." The light-haired professor took his dark-skinned companion by the arm, and he and Utena shook hands. Mamiya's green eyes were demurely cast down, try as Utena might to make eye contact with him. "He's really helped me in my research."
"I'm glad to meet you." She said, a blithe smile on her face, and Mamiya's face flushed with embarrassment.
"It wasn't anything, really." He said in a soft voice.
"You mean the world to me." The professor said, and with his finger, traced a line down the side of Mamiya's face. Utena's eyes widened again, this time at this... public display of affection. But it didn't really matter. Touga and Saionji were partners, after all.
Doug and Syle were partners, after all.
"Yes, he was a bit of a guinea pig." The professor laughed, and Mamiya looked away. "That's why he's one of the greatest contributors."
"I see." Utena said, not really seeing how a person could be a guinea pig in an experiment that was purely speculation and theory. She decided to voice her question. "But how would he be a guinea pig?"
"Oh," The professor answered, opening his car door for Utena, and then hopping in the driver's compartment himself. Mamiya demurely sat in the back, hands folded in his lap. "He provides me with ideas. He inspires me, and then I feed my speculations back to him. He offers me his opinions, and I, in return, owe him something."
The professor was speaking like he had known Utena forever, maybe he had.
He drove the black Mercedes out of the parking lot, and made a right at the intersection.
"The Mobius Strip Theory is actually quite simple, in context." The professor went on. "There's not much to say about it. You know what a Mobius Strip is?"
"Yes," Utena replied, "it's like a band, only there's a twist in it."
"Life is somewhat like a Mobius strip, don't you think?" The professor gave an enigmatic smile. "Well, life for some people. There was a group of people whose lives were exactly like Mobius strips. You see, for some people, for these people, they wanted eternity, and that itself is like a Mobius-- it goes around and around, all sides, inside and out, and it can keep going, but you'll come back to the beginning, anyway."
Utena nodded. "That's the interesting thing about them. If you draw a line down the middle and continue to go, the line will extend between the inside of the band and the outside of the band."
"But there's really no inside or outside in context, is there?" The professor made a left turn. "It's all just one big strip, one big life."
"That's the interesting thing." Utena said. She turned to look out the window.
"And you do know that when you cut a Mobius strip down the center, all the way around, it doesn't form two separate loops."
"No." Utena said, absent-mindedly. "It forms two interlocking loops."
"The focal point is also always changing." The professor went on, and looked in the rear view mirror and smiled at Mamiya. "I'm not leaving you out, am I?"
"No." Mamiya replied, soft. "I'm your guinea pig, after all."
Utena laughed, although she wasn't sure why.
"The focal point of the two interlocking Mobius strips is always changing." The professor continued. "There's always an outside force acting on them, moving them, spinning them, and they're always turning, making revolutions." He pushed his glasses up his nose and made another left turn at an intersection. "The focal point I'm talking about is the part where the two strips are touching."
"The focal point-- I see. But that's always changing too, isn't it? If the strips are moving..."
"They're not moving in the same direction, once they're split. One can move backwards, one can move forwards. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that our lives are like these loops. They continue, they can go on forever, but they always come back to the same place. However, what is one life on one of the loops is quite different from the life on the other one, but they're essentially the same. They represent the same thing."
Utena nodded. "I follow you."
"Have you heard of anti-matter?" The professor continued, and made a right turn at another intersection. "They tried for years to produce anti-matter."
"Anti-matter...?" Utena asked, hesitantly.
"For everything that exists in this world, there is the exact same thing existing in the other world."
"I see."
"Scientists have produced it. They've managed to make electrons and their opposites-- but the anti-electrons disappear after a short time."
"So there's another me somewhere else." Utena laughed. "That's great. It's like Alice through the looking-glass, all over again."
"It's a speculation, of course." The professor continued. "But do you see how anti-matter and my Mobius Strip Theory are connected?" He looked at Utena, and Utena nodded. There was almost something desperate about the question.
"Did you know--" The professor pursed his lips. "You know that, if the anti-matter comes into contact with the original matter, then they'll eliminate each other, don't you?"
"I didn't know that." Utena tilted her head to one side. "But it hasn't happened before, has it?"
"Well, let's just say that the Mobius strips represent different worlds. The focal point between them can either act as a bridge, a sort of portal, for one being from one loop to pass to the next. But if the being from that one world comes into contact with the mirror-image of the other loop, then they'll disappear. It's like adding positive one to negative one and you end up with zero."
Utena nodded, and looked out the window again. The clouds had started moving away from the sun, and the first few rays of light shone through.
"However, the focal point can also represent the person's life-- their life connecting with the life from the other loop. And the instant those two worlds of that person's mind touch, at that specific point, they cancel each other out, they destroy each other. The person is dead, that person is nothing. They don't even exist."
"That's an interesting prospect, professor." Utena said respectfully. The theory sounded insane, but the professor made it sound believable, almost. He said it with conviction, he said it with desperation. "But has it happened?"
The professor gave her a wry smile. "Do you think one who has disappeared will come back to tell the tale?"
"Professor, if positive one and negative one equals zero, zero equals positive one and negative one." Utena suddenly felt proud of herself. "That's a proven theory. Commutative property of mathematics. The 'deceased' being can come back as two separate forms."
"Ah, but would they remember?" The professor sighed. "Would they remember any of it at all?"
Utena felt her head spinning giddily. This conversation was taking a strange turn. "Why wouldn't they?"
"Because once you go into that zero, that nothingness, what can you forget? What can't you forget?"
"But there must be somebody who remembers." Utena shrugged, trying to ignore the uneasy, hysterical feeling rising up her throat, coming out of her skin. "There should be somebody who remembers."
"Not many people are as lucky to have gone through the process," the professor's voice dropped. "Not so many people have gone through it before." He emphasized each word, looked at Utena with fiery eyes. "Some people will remember. Others don't. I wonder why."
Utena's head was spinning now, the white spots darkened her vision, and she tried to wave them away, tried to get them away. The desperate feeling in her heart clenched and unclenched, and she tried to channel it through her emotions, tried to make it become anger. "If you wonder, professor, do you really--"
Mamiya's eyes widened in the rearview mirror, green, luminous orbs of light, and Utena felt the words suddenly drop dead in her throat, rats falling dead to the ground from the plague. "Mikage, Mikage, look in front of you."
The professor wrenched his view away from Utena, and tried to stop the car.
A fire blazed before them, the red and orange and yellow flames licking up the side of a car, a black Mercedes, and the smoke was black as well, grey-tinged, as it rose up into the air, lighter than the sky and heavier than paper, and Utena's own eyes widened as she saw the blood pouring down her own face in the mirror, as the headlights went out, and her mouth opened to release a scream as she recognized one of the passenger's faces in the other car as her own.
How many times could a Mobius strip be cut?
She didn't have the time to think, to react, and the professor tried to stop, to turn, but it was as if a magnetic force was pulling them to the wreckage of themselves, the wreckage of the mirrors, and Utena lifted her hands up to her face mechanically, to shield herself, and wondered why her hands were suddenly the professor's hands, Mikage's hands, and why she wore a ring on her left hand, on her fourth finger, and why there was a rose on it, cold, hard marble.
She didn't feel the impact when they crashed, she didn't feel the pain. She saw herself, she saw them all, she saw everybody, and she saw nobody. Her vision whitened and the sound of pounding blood filled her ears.
"Utena, meet professor Nemuro Mikage."
The pink-haired girl struggled to clear the white specks from her vision, and nodded coolly to conceal her underlying nervousness, her underlying fright. The professor nodded back at her.
"I hope to see you again."
Utena didn't reply, and he walked out the doors, a dark-skinned man following close by.
She stared after his form, and then ran up the stairs to the other exit, pushing open the doors, struggling not to cry, struggling not to let the tears fall down and start an earthquake, make the buildings fall, and trap her underneath. She didn't know what had happened, why she had seen so many things and seen nothing at all, she didn't care about the lecture, what the professor had said about time and space and non-existence and the soul, she wanted to go back home and die in security, die in the wealth of her emotions.
Utena scrubbed at her eyes furiously, trying to regain her composure as she gasped for breath, leaning against the wall. She saw a little better now, and ignored the confused glances of the students walking around her.
"Utena, why don't you go meet professor Nemuro Mikage?"
Blue eyes quivered, her hands shook, as they gripped the armrest. "What?"
Doug gave her a confused look, and Syle cast her an indifferent one. "Just a minute ago you were dying to meet him, you know." He pointed down towards the center of the lecture hall, where the light-haired professor was speaking with her own psychology teacher. "You were telling me about how interesting his theories were."
"I wasn't listening."
Syle made a face. "We shouldn't have brought you here, then." He scoffed. "A waste of your morning."
"Honestly, Utena." Doug smiled half-heartedly. "You can't just blow off your life. I mean, I think you're just overdoing the whole party scene a bit too much. We bring you here to meet the cutest professor in a lifetime-- oof."
Syle had grabbed Doug's chin between his fingers. "Run that by me again."
"I'd rather not." Doug laughed, and Syle released him. "But honestly, Utena. Next time, pay more attention." They started for the exit, and Utena rose from her seat, unsteadily, shaking like it was winter, it was cold, when it wasn't. She looked down towards the stage, where professor Mikage had given his lecture, where he had talked about time and space and wormholes and how there were portals from this world to the next one.
He wasn't there anymore, just her psychology teacher. Her psychology teacher was rummaging around the desk behind him, bringing out papers, stacks of papers, putting them on the desk. Utena looked towards the other exit, down by the stage. The door was swinging-- professor Mikage had just left, then.
Utena felt the urge to go, to run after him, to ask him, wring the answers that she needed out of him. He seemed to know everything. They said the man on the moon knew all there was to know, they said that gods knew everything there was to know. They say that if you lived forever, you could know all there was to know. Clenching her fists so hard her nails drew blood, Utena stared at the exit until the doors stopped swinging, until she was completely sure that whatever car that damned professor had came in was gone, had driven far, far away.
Turning around, she half-ran to the exit, not caring if she received the confused looks of the other students around her, not caring if she ignored Doug's concerned questions, Syle's indifference. She had to get home, back to the apartment, the dormitory, where a certain dark-skinned girl would be waiting for her, the place cleaned, smelling fresh and pure and white, unlike the oily colors she had seen and was trying to forget, the oily colors and the pictures of so many things that didn't make sense and wouldn't make sense--
She wanted to go back and see Himemiya, even though it was Himemiya who had started it all in the first place.