Just For Fun, An Utena Fragment

[Bob Schroeck]

After tucking her in, I stepped into the bathroom and used the
complimentary coffee-maker to brew myself some tea. A few
minutes later, with cup in hand, I sat down on the empty bed next
to the nightstand onto which I had emptied her pockets. I went
over the few things I found on her, and tried to make sense of it
all: a handful of the local Japanese currency (about five bucks'
worth, if the exchange rate was about the same as home in this
timeline), a few white rose petals, and a student ID card for a
private school in Japan. In her right hand she'd been holding
several pieces of white marble that looked like they'd been
freshly broken off of something architectural. And stuck in her
sleeves had been several long, very sharp thorns. That was it --
no passport, no other paperwork, no indication how she'd ended up
laying on top of me in Central Park. For all I knew, she'd
arrived from another universe just like I had.

I took the time to study the ID. Assuming it wasn't a fake, her
name was Tenjou Utena, and she was a student at an "Ohtori
Academy". She wasn't quite 14 yet, provided there was no
funkiness with calendars or time travel for either of us. I
looked up and glanced over at her sleeping form. With her height
and figure, she looked somewhat older than 13, but I supposed it
was possible. Far more odd was that, judging by her eyebrows and
lashes, her pink hair was apparently natural, a fact with which
the ID had concurred.

I sat and sipped my tea and considered this information for a
while. Curiosity warred with prudence, but in the end curiosity
won out, and I picked up the telephone handset.

In a Manhattan almost at the same point in time as my native
here-and-now, even without metahumans, it wasn't hard to find a
company with a WATS line that I already knew I could tap into
with a modicum of effort. In ten minutes, I had set up a nice,
untraceable long-distance connection, and was speaking to a very
helpful Nippon Telephone operator. She was able to connect me to
the Ohtori main switchboard, for which I thanked her.

When I got the Ohtori switchboard operator, I asked directly for
Utena Tenjou. The operator apologized and informed me that there
were no private phones in the academy's dorms, but she could
transfer me to a pay phone in Higashi-kan, the dorm where Ms.
Tenjou lived. I gave her my most profuse thanks, and waited
through several seconds of clicks for the ring tone.

The phone on the other end rang four or five times before someone
picked up. "Hello, East Hall, Shinohara Wakaba speaking," said a
young, bubbly-sounding girl's voice in Japanese.

"Yes, may I speak to Tenjou Utena please?" I asked in low tones,
so as not to disturb the occupant of the other bed.

"Sorry, she's out."

"Do you know when she might be back?"

"I'm not sure." Shinohara Wakaba's voice took on a contemplative,
musing tone. "Nobody's seen her around for at least a day, which
is really odd, because you can't really miss her, you know what I
mean?"

Thinking of her hair color and the rather... unique... ensemble
Utena had been wearing when I found her, I chuckled. "Yes, I
believe I do."

"Anyway, can I take a message? I don't live here, but Utena's my
best friend in the world, and I usually see her a couple times a
day."

For a moment, I almost gave in to the urge to do the
compassionate thing and let the girl know that her friend was...
what? Eleven thousand kilometers away and recovering from the
combined effects of an avalanche and getting impaled on a sword?
But my common sense -- which usually spends its time napping or
reading comic books -- chose that moment to stand up and kick me
in the brain. "No," I said softly, "that's okay. I'll call back
tomorrow. Thank you very much."

"Oh, no problem!" she chirped. "Bye now!"

"Good-bye," I echoed with a smile, and terminated the call. Then
I spent a few minutes undoing my phone phreakery and thinking
about what I'd learned. Utena looked to be from this universe,
all right. But how the hell had she ended up in Central Park,
battered, scratched, fingernails broken, and run through from
behind by a sword?

My usual response to weirdness in unusual -- which is to say,
"normal" -- circumstances is to look for magic. So after hanging
up again, I turned around on the bed, settled my eyes on the
sleeping girl, and lowered myself into magesight. I hissed as
soon as I did.

God-touched.

That was the only thing I could call it.

The girl had the strangest aura I had ever seen -- a human aura,
no doubt, but blended with it, or more precisely, grafted onto
its golden glow, was the tricolored helix that until that day had
for me always marked a Celestial of some sort. It was not at all
like Ayanami Rei's aura, which had manifested its Celestial
component normally; instead, this was... attached. Almost glued
on, for lack of a better description. Weird.

What was she? Had someone, some being, tried to *make* a demigod
or a godling, using a spare human and a handful of the cosmic
Forces that comprised a divine aura? She sure as hell couldn't
have been born that way.

Did she know what she was?

Did she even want to know?

I sat there in the darkness and nursed my tea, her deep, sleeping
breaths the only sound in the room -- the only sound save for a
single word she muttered in her slumber: "Anthy..."

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.