The Graduates

Leather and Neon

This chapter devoted to Iris of Empty Movement/In the Rose Garden Forums, also known as Irisbeloved on YouTube. You are really Queen of the AMV.

What was it that drew her here? She wondered. The zoo was an interesting place and she caught a glance of the Pallas Cat. It was furry and looked like any other neighborhood cat except for the tufts on the ears. That and the way it howled. She watched it and walked away when it hid in the greenery in its cage. There were other big cats. They were all beautiful to her. She left the zoo. "Kaoru-domo, where would you like to go next?" The limo driver asked her.

"Take me to Club Yue." She shrugged.

The ride there was boring and she pulled out some cash and an ID. Club Yue had a cover charge and it was a 16 plus club. Many still carded her when she got cigarettes. She had grown out her hair. It was still bushy as hell, but at least she could pull it up in a pony tail. Maybe she would paint herself up as one of the black faces. She frowned at her reflection and then smiled. Miki would have a fit.

She waved off the limo driver and showed her ID to the bouncer. "I'm a musician." She explained. "I'm scheduled to open for the live band tonight."

The man looked through the list. "You're late, Kaoru."

"It's Kozue. Kaoru is my mother and father, not me." She smiled, putting on the sex. It was still easy after all those years.

"Soo, soo." He waved. Yeah, yeah. The owner was cheap. If she wanted to dance, she had to pay.

She got in and the club was flowing with sound. Some of the people had glow bracelets. One girl was playing at poi and doing a merely okay job at it. Kozue snorted and dropped her own poi rope with glow bracelets on it. She bent the bracelets and flexed them to get the chemicals active. She started twirling them in simple circles. The glow danced to the beat and the patterns got more and more complicated. She was the center of attention when the next song began and she allowed herself to enjoy it.

She loved poi. She loved the whole techno scene, in fact, yet she shied away from some of it's excesses, like acid and ecstacy. She had seen some bodies after the shows and railed inside at their stupidity. It wasn't the LSD that killed them, it was dehydration. By the time the roadies were ready for her band, she was sweating with effort. Everyone cheered at her when she let the poi ropes drop and put them back in her pockets. She would have to replace the bracelet weights.

She felt a vague feeling of guilt at her fun but put it past her. She went back stage. The time was 6:44. She got to her station. She checked that her records were in the right order, that her Kong keyboard was programmed correctly and that the recorded loops were the right ones. Her band mates came and made sure that their instruments were tuned correctly. "Fukaku, motto fukaku!" She heard. The voice for a moment was overlaid with a calmer, colder voice.

She turned around and saw that the band member who had said that was relating a rather dirty story. The words had sent terror running through her like nothing else, though she couldn't place where she had heard it. She changed into her costume and painted herself up with glow paint. The rest of her band were painted up, except for the singer, who was consistent with his song and in that he was forever running late. Which was why they had told him a half hour earlier than they would go on.

Some people wondered that he was going to be the star, though they knew that almost as many would be paying attention to the sister of famous pianist Miki Kaoru, who when asked about his sister replied every time: "My sister and I love each other very much. We went to school together until we got into high school. Any thing else you can ask her, because after that, no comment." She had appreciated that. She always grinned at the reporters herself and said almost the exact same thing. "Did you talk to my brother? Yes? My brother and I love each other very much. We went to school together until we got into high school. Any thing else you can ask him, because after that, no comment." If asked if she was a tease, she would laugh. "Come to me about my music, not my brother."

Music. It was the tie that bound her to her band. It was the blade that nearly severed her and her brother. She smiled at the singer. "Eh? I'm early. Wow." He spoke in an exaggerated manner. If she didn't know any better she would either say he was gay or a badly played villain.

She had tried not to laugh when she had met him. When he sang, she intended only a good natured laugh for him. They went on stage to a roar of cheering. Kozue stood behind a synthesizer and she pressed a few keys and it took a few seconds. She had the harder part, she had to play a beat ahead of everyone. She smiled as the loop took effect. Now she could play normally. The band played their set and started their encore when she finally noticed that one person in the middle of the floor who wasn't dancing. She wasn't sure of the gender, the person looked androgynous.

When the encore was done, she came to the dressing room. The person was there. He was slim and wore glasses which were tinged either pink or light lavender. "Dare da?" She demanded rudely.

"I am Nemuro." He stated.

"Sleep? What do you want, sleeper?" She leaned against the wall. "Why do you look familiar?"

"We met fifteen long years ago." He stated awkwardly. "I've... been avoiding going to meet the Forgotten."

"Forgotten? What are you talking about?" How could he know? She wondered. Her middle school years were a blur to her. She knew that once she had dated and made second base at least with a lot of boys then for... well, she didn't remember.

"You know, blue roses were thought impossible once. They used science to make a purple rose with blue pigment in it. A black rose however, is possible indeed."

"What do roses have to do with anything at all?" She yelled, angrily, putting her worst manners forward.

"You have no choice, the path before you has been prepared. You must revolutionize the world." He seemed to grow taller, more menacing. The room grew darker and she backed up, terrified. He brought out a black rose. "This rose is your new heart."

She crouched and screamed. A rose dyed blue was dropped in her sight. "Na-what?"

She picked it up and looked at it, remembering a confession in an elevator. "Alright, let's begin." He spoke in almost a whisper, as if whispering to a lover.

"I stole... something... from my brother. It wasn't something I should have ever touched. It... wasn't even something I wanted. I didn't want to... but I did and I... I think I tried to do something bad..."

"Fukaku, motto fukaku." Came the dispassionate, dry admonishment so familiar to her.

"I tried to... I tried to... kill someone. I was stopped... stopped by... by..."

"Remember. It's more important than you know." He insisted.

"I..." images came to her, of longing for a possibility that couldn't be for a short time... the rage, the self-righteous delusions that everything was nothing next to her and Miki... she was trying to kill... and ... stopped her... who stopped her? "...can't!"

The rose began to darken. "You must cut the ties that lead to where you stole a soul." He insisted. The black crept over it like it had once crept over her heart.

"She..." the veils of mist over her memory began to lift, like before the morning sun. "Utena defeated me!" The rose was purely blue again.

"You are free now, free to have your own heart. I will go and trouble you no more."

"Mikage!" She called.

He kept going.

"Nemuro!" He stopped and turned.

"Mikage was just a name that was hung upon me for a time when I was in a trap called Ohtori. I must seek the others, so that they may remember." He turned on his heels.

She watched him leave and the lights brightened and she heard a ticking clock. She suddenly realized that she hadn't heard it while he'd been there. She looked at it and it read that it had only been three minutes since she finished the encore. It was almost midnight. She looked at the rose in her hand. It was almost double; she sniffed it critically. Heady, musky. Unusually strong for just a rose. It was like someone dumped rose oil over it. The lead singer came in.

"Kozue-saaan, you look like you saw a ghost. Did an admirer scare you? Ahh, I see the rose. You're usually the scary one." He drawled. "Kowaii..."

She put her arms around him, and he looked surprised for a moment when she locked her hands behind his head. "We would scare off anyone together. Let's go out for milkshakes tomorrow." She grinned. "One from a stand. I'll want to be out in the daylight tomorrow."

"Nani da? What's that rose if it's making you act scarier than usual?" He looked nervous.

"My heart." She put it his shirt pocket. She walked forward, making him take steps backward until he hit a chair and sat down. "Let's have some fun!"

Nemuro got out of the club and stumbled, weak. "I don't think I'll survive this, Himemiya." He muttered.

"It'll just cut your last ties to Ohtori." She told him. "I don't think you want Mamiya looking on from the spirit world disappointed, do you?"

He laughed bitterly. "You know how to manipulate people still, Himemiya."

She sighed. "I didn't forget the long years I spent at Ohtori. The situation was just as much my making as Akio's at that point. It was just a way to spend the years. Having no goal breaks you if you're immortal." She told him. "You, Utena and myself are the only ones who can bring Akio down; he must not be allowed to accumulate another legion of shades to do his bidding."

"...I've graduated from there twice, Himemiya. What makes you think I can do anything but scare the old Black Roses?"

She smiled. "Because only you and Utena were cast out. Because you were a graduate. Tokiko could help, but she wouldn't want to. She has her own life to attend to, but unless we get the Black Roses released, Akio still has ties to the real world." She shook her head. "We must not allow him to come here. He would bring this world to stagnation as well."

He laughed. "We are stagnation, Himemiya."

The music pulsed as Kozue walked out of the club, a blue rose in the shirt of her band's lead singer. She didn't see them, but they knew the outcome. It was satisfactory.

Such was their journey.