Utena, Revolutionary Girl Fan Fiction ❯ Utena: A New Life At The Academy ❯ Chapter Two ( Chapter 2 )

CHAPTER TWO

This new outfit felt like I was wearing nothing at all. It had a little jacket that fit over a black shirt. Everything seemed right. Using the card provided by Mikage I was able to create a message for the girl that had stolen that evil witch away from my brother. Utena Tenjou was going to suffer along with Himemiya.

I strode down to the locker area not even considering where all these new thoughts were coming from. I didn't care about what a rose bride was. All I knew that it was something to do with Anthy I could hear my brothers thoughts inside my head. He was telling me about how to fight using his katana and several other things. Utena was a different level from me in school, yet somehow I managed to find her locker. I lifted up the latch without trying to figure out it's combination. The locker swung open.

I pulled the card out of my shirt and proof read it.

TO THE ENGAGED. I WILL BE WAITING IN THE DUELING ARENA

I didn't know anything about any dueling arena. Everything just seemed right at the time. The same elements that were nonsensical to me ended up making perfect sense in a twisted way.

I left the school grounds and followed a stone path that led to the off limit areas. One such off limit region was a strange looking forest. I had no idea that this same forest would be hiding some kind of arena. Suddenly I remembered that this path was the same place that I had witnessed my brothers abusive side for the first time. This was the same place that he had hit Himemiya and possibly injured his best friend.

I entered the forest and came across the same stone passageway that Anthy had run through to escape from Saionji. The stone door was open. It seemed strange that this door had remained open all these weeks and never closed. Maybe I was fooling myself. Undaunted, I walked through the corridor. There were sculptures of roses everywhere.

"This is all inside of the forest?" I asked aloud. Something that was also hidden by the forest was a large white spiraling staircase.

"Well, Uwe," I thought to myself, "Time to see if you did a good job at keeping in shape."

I kept my eyes ahead and never even looked down once. I was on a mission. I will admit that I am afraid of heights. My brother's thoughts comforted me and gave me the power to keep my focus.

It seemed to take forever to get up those stairs. I was unsure whether it was just minutes that passed or hours…or maybe even days. I wondered if the forest roof stretched this far or if it was just some kind of illusion to hide everything contained in it.

I just happened to glance into the sky and noticed the strangest thing. I felt my body freeze. In the air above me, hanging upside down, was a castle. It was a castle out of a storybook. It was enormous. There were so many turrets and windows…It had so many attachments to it. I couldn't have possibly been able to name all it's features.

I moved along the floor with my eyes trained upwards. I wondered if anyone lived in it. So many other questions flowed through me too. Was it real? Whose castle was it? How long had it been here? Did my brother know anything about it? I was almost certain that he did. When he decided to wake up I was going to question him about it.

I kept walking. It was a marvelous thing to see. Suddenly I felt something bump into my thighs.

"Wha?!" There was a desk in front of me. It was just a normal schoolroom desk. Suddenly I noticed that there were several of them. There had to be at least a hundred of them. On top of each desk was a wooden hand. It looked like a hand from a department store mannequin. All the hands were holding two pictures.

I stared down at the hand in front of me and noticed that one picture was a smaller copy of my brother's portrait with him and Himemiya…the one above the fireplace. The second picture was a copy of the one I had kept with me. What was the meaning of all this?

I wandered through the rows of desks, making sure they were all set up the same.

I don't know what possessed me to do it, but I did. I looked down at the floor beneath my feet. Like the sterile feeling of the living room that my brother and I had shared, everything was white…with one very big exception. There were outlines of fallen bodies. Red tape lines made up these strange patterns. It looked like someone had marked the places where a hundred corpses had fallen. Why was everything adding up to one hundred?

"Hello?!" I heard someone behind me. I didn't turn to face them. I already knew who it was.

"It's Uwe!!" said a startled Utena.

"Prepare yourself, Lady Utena!" shouted Anthy. I became unconcerned about what occurred next. In some kind of weird ceremony, Anthy had recited some kind of poem. A sword popped out of her chest. It reminded me of the act that had put my brothers soul in my possession.

"Tenjou, Utena and Himemiya, Anthy," I unsheathed my brothers sword and grasped it tightly. I slowly turned and positioned the sword in front of my face. "Upon the Black Rose I swear I will win this duel," I glared in Anthy's direction and sneered, "and kill the Rose Bride."

I let out a large shout and raised the blade above my head as I ran at Utena. Our swords clanged together several times as I tried to find a way to swipe at her. At one point my face ended up just a couple inches from hers. I bared my teeth at her as I tried to muster up the strength to force her own blade into her skull. She looked so frightened.

"Uwe, what's wrong with you?! You're fighting like Saionji!!" Everything seemed to come together for her. It was like watching a first grader figure out that one plus one equaled two.

I didn't want to plant my brother's sword in her skull anymore. I sighed and swung the sword in a slow arch. I followed it's beautiful shiny movement with my eyes. I had learned this move so many years ago at the Omashi Academy. It was kind of sloppy…I'll admit it. This technique had two outcomes. One of the outcomes would be positive. The changing of your focus would draw the curiosity of you attacker and cause them to get caught up in your strange behavior. The other possible outcome was negative. Your attacker might not want to get caught up in the movements of your weapon and just go ahead with his attack. Lucky for me, Utena was eyeing the sword too. I returned my gaze to her. It was a silly thing for me to try but I had wanted to try it out for so long. I laughed and kicked her in the stomach with my right foot.

She went down like a ton of bricks. Utena was holding herself and coughing. Now was my chance. "Himemiya, your time has come!" I began to stalk the rose bride like a lion stalking it's prey. There was something quite beautiful about her. She had her hands folded in front of her chest. Her eyes seemed to shimmer with fright. The strange gown that she was wearing made me think of blood. I laughed to myself as I drew closer to her. Maybe the blood from her body wouldn't show up on the dress.

"Uwe!" Utena started to shout. "Anthy get away from here!"

I realized that it would probably be better if I got rid of Utena first. She was the stronger of the two. There was no way Anthy could save herself with Tenjou's help. I redirected my stalking to the pink haired girl.

She was probably about six feet away from me. I knew I had kicked her hard. She looked like she was barely able to stay off the ground. Suddenly there was a strange flashing light. It seemed to be coming from the castle. I looked up and saw a figure fall from one of the towers. Was it some kind of angel? The figure seemed so ghostly looking. I couldn't make out too much detail. I did take note that it was set on a crash course with Utena. All I could do was stand there and watch to see what would happen.

As the strange shadow merged with her, she began to take on a new strength. It was like she had been reborn completely. The next thing I knew she was flying right at me. I couldn't move. I was frozen in shock. The point of her sword flashed through the black rose on my chest and blew it apart into several rose petals.

The desks with their mannequin hands on them all compacted into a huge square in the center of the room. Each of the photos along with the wooden hands combusted into bright red orange flames and than quickly vanished. All the evil thoughts that had been flowing through, me coupled with the thoughts of my brother, were trying to escape from me. It was too much for me stand.

One loud scream was pulled out of me. It seemed to take all my strength along with it. My knees buckled beneath me and I collapsed into one of the red homicide outlines on the ground. The last thought that flashed through my mind was of the faces of one hundred boys in uniforms glaring at me. All went black.