From: mew3point14@doramail.com (Daniel Snyder)

"Once upon a time, there was a beautiful bride. She knew love, and she 
knew what it was to be loved. But she was proud, too, and resolved not 
to give herself to anyone.

"On day of her wedding, she was dressed in her most beautiful gown and 
surrounded by everyone she loved. But she frowned, because she was proud 
and she had only half-chosen her husband-to-be. Although she knew him by 
the word of others, she had never seen his face.

"'Smile and love your husband,' they all shouted, 'smile and love your 
husband.' And the longer she did not smile, the louder they shouted, and 
the more impatient everyone became.

"Finally, she swallowed her pride and smiled weakly. In that moment, her 
bridegroom came to her. She saw him for the first time.

"He was beautiful to look upon, and charming in his bearing. Willingly, 
she smiled then. Willingly, she married him.

"What was the name of the bride?"
--
Ikari Shinji woke to the feeling of a comfortable tickling in his right 
ear. He stretched as he arose, leaning up to see Ayanami Rei's figure 
sprawled across his right side. She was dressed in a button-down shirt 
and panties. Her right hand was in a loose fist over Shinji's chest, and 
her right leg lay against the inside of Shinji's nude thigh.

Unintended, blood rushed into Shinji's penis. The erection lasted less 
than a minute, though, when Shinji saw what had happened to his manhood. 
Like many Japanese males, he had undergone circumcision as a young boy. 
But now,  there was quite clearly a foreskin surrounding the head of his 
phallus.

Shinji glanced at his hands. The skin was soft and clean, and his 
fingerprints stood out even in the dim interior light. His fingernails 
were tiny, barely extending down his fingers. A glance around his body 
showed him that what little hair had grown on him in the course of 
puberty was present, but his skin and nails had undergone a 
metamorphosis.

On top of his chest, Rei stirred in her sleep. When at length she opened 
her cinnabar eyes, Shinji saw a kind of thankfulness in their depths 
that he could not remember seeing before. "Shinji," she said as she 
raised her chin to speak, "you're awake. I'm glad to see that you are 
all right."

"Rei?"

"Yes."

"Um, could you tell me what happened? What time is it? What day is it?"

"It's 15:08 on Friday afternoon. You have been asleep for between six 
and seven hours."

"Friday? The last thing I remember it was Thursday night." Shinji eased 
himself out from under the girl and covered himself with the pillow--
Rei's pillow, he realized as he saw that they occupied the lower bunk. 
"What happened after the end of the Duel?"

Rei explained to Shinji everything that had happened the night before. 
She even told him how she felt at different stages, because she knew her 
husband enjoyed hearing her perspective, even though it made her anxious 
to do so. "The man gave you to me and said that you would sleep it off. 
He left immediately. Ibuki and I followed his words, and we put you in 
the bed. I dressed for bed. I got into bed and fell asleep with you."

"This rose," Shinji said, "is it still there? Did you check?"

"Ibuki went back to look at it," Rei explained. "She said that by the 
time she returned to the room, the plant was dead and desiccating. We 
were gone for five minutes. She guessed that by this afternoon it would 
be dust. I see no reason to doubt her."

Shinji was silent, looking at his hands, the pillow they lay atop, and 
what lay beneath. Rei scooted across the bed and put her hands on 
Shinji's arm. "Shinji...you do not mind if I touch you? I...it feels 
good to know that you are close."

"No, no," he said distantly. "I don't mind."

"Shinji...then, please tell me, what happened? What do you remember? Do 
you remember anything?"

When he raised his head, there was a look in his eyes of innocence lost, 
of mutilated songbirds and burst balloons, that would have made Rei gasp 
if she could read the language. But her own innocence spared her the 
pain. Shinji said nothing for five heartbeats' time. Then he looked 
askance and said "No," to himself before looking back down again. 
Finally, he took a deep breath and asked, "Rei, can you keep a secret?"

"A secret?"

"Yes. I mean..."

He moved around on the bed so that they were facing each other, and he 
clasped her hands so tightly they almost hurt.

"I mean, you cannot, cannot tell anyone what I'm going to tell you, OK?"

"Why not?"

"Well...they'd think I'm crazy. And even if you did tell them, I'm not 
sure about what would happen to...both of us. Just don't ever, ever tell 
anyone. Promise?"

"I promise," she said, "but what do you remember?"

"You promise? You mean it?"

"Yes, because you have asked it of me."

Shinji took a deep breath and said in a loud whisper, "My mother is 
alive. Here. In Feuervogel...in Akumafune, maybe."

"Why do you want me to keep that a secret?" Rei asked in all 
seriousness.

It took Shinji a moment to understand what she wanted to know. "It's 
because...everyone thought she was dead. If you and I go around saying 
she's alive, I'm worried that they'll think we're nuts and lock us up, 
or something."

The mind of Ayanami Rei was still too undeveloped to infer why being 
"locked up" was a bad thing. She asked only, "How do you know that she 
is alive?"

"Last night...I spoke with her. Not in words, in feelings. Images, kind 
of. She told me about you, and about how she got here...but not why. She 
didn't tell me why."

"I don't understand," Rei said, almost crossly. "You were captured all 
night inside of what looked like an enormous rose. You couldn't have 
been getting enough oxygen. I read that if you do not get enough oxygen 
you begin to hallucinate. How do you know that it was not a 
hallucination?"

"Because I know...because...I remembered something last night that I'd 
forgotten about. I remembered the day she disappeared." Shinji closed 
his eyes and leaned back against the bed's headboard, sieving his 
memories. He let go of Rei's hands, and she moved to his side. The 
pillow remained in place. "It was May 5th, Children's Day. I was five. 
Okaa-san had brought me home from daycare early, and I was drawing a 
picture of a carp, a big blue carp, but kaasan was sad. I could tell. 
She was having trouble driving, and when we got home she just sat in the 
kitchen and drank tea. I finished the carp, and I was drawing it like a 
windsock, hanging from the roof of a house, when she came out to talk to 
me.

"'Shin-chan,' she said, 'Momma needs a cup of water to water the rose 
plant in the kitchen. Will you go to the pond and get me some water?'

"I was really happy to do it, because I'd never been to the pond by 
myself, only with kaasan. The pond was a 20-minute walk away. I took a 
gourd with me, filled it halfway so I could still carry it, and lugged 
it back to the house.

"When I got home, kaasan wasn't there. I called out and looked around 
for her, but she was nowhere to be seen. I remembered that she said 
something 'bout a rose plant in the kitchen, so I went and I looked. 
Sure enough, there was a purple rose, with big green petals, in a pot in 
the middle of the kitchen table. I poured in a cup of water, put the 
gourd in the sink, and went back into the other room to wait for my 
mother.

"By then it was late afternoon. I hadn't been waiting long when my 
father got home. He didn't even say 'tadaima', he took off his shoes and 
walked straight into the kitchen.

"I went out there to greet him, and...the rose was gone. Pot and 
everything. My father...I was afraid of him for the first time. He 
looked at me, I can't even describe it, he looked at me and said, 
'Shinji, where have you been all afternoon?' I told him. He said, 'You 
went to the pond all by yourself? Then you're too old for Children's 
Day.'

"The next day, he sent me off to start learning kendo."

Shinji fell silent. Rei asked, "And you think that it was your mother 
who reminded you of all of this?"

"Yes. Yes, I'm sure of it."

"I do not understand. But you are my husband, and so I will believe 
you."

Shinji said nothing for a little while, wrestling with his feelings, 
until he excused himself to bathe and dress. At 1600, Shinji and Rei 
were eating a meal of rice and soup when there was a ring at the front 
door. Shinji opened the door to find Aida Kensuke standing outside.

"Hi, I--Shinji! Shinji, you're all right!" Kensuke jumped up and threw 
his arms tightly around Shinji, slamming his camera into the other boy's 
shoulder. "Man, Shinji, we haven't seen you for, like, three days now, 
we were wondering what had happened to you. Are you all right? You look 
kind of funny, have you been sick?"

"Come inside, Kensuke," Shinji said, and led the boy to where Rei and 
Pen-pen were eating. Kensuke happily helped himself to a large bowl of 
soup, dropped a load of homework off, and listened to a bowdlerized 
version of Shinji's tale. He peppered his friend with all kinds of 
questions, most of which Shinji was able to deflect.

"It's just dust?" he said at the end. "That beats all, Shinji. I've 
never heard of anything like it before. I mean, you know, in sci-fi 
movies, the plant people are supposed to start their invasion in caves 
as mushrooms, or if they're real plants they're supposed to be outdoors. 
How on Earth would a plant person get inside a dorm room?"

"How is Kaji-kaishou?" Shinji inquired, changing the subject.

"Dunno, haven't seen him. The big news is that Mitsuru--do you know him? 
He's Shigeru's roommate. Anyway, he's completely disappeared. He just 
went poof this morning."

"Really?" Shinji asked without much interest.

"Yeah. Kinda freaky. Shigeru'd left for class early, but he got halfway 
to class and realized he'd brought an entire box of guitar picks with 
him, so he went into his room to put 'em back, and in that time Mitsuru 
had gone. His bookbag was still there, his light was still on. It was 
like he'd just evaporated."

Puzzled, Rei asked, "Why would a person go away from their room and 
leave the light on, when all the signs around the campus tell us to 
conserve energy?"

"Good point, Rei," Kensuke said, jabbing emphatically with his spoon. 
"Nobody knows why, or where he's gone to. Shigeru told me that he was 
going to ask the newspaper to run an article on it."

It struck Shinji as odd that Aoba Shigeru would do such a thing. He had 
found Shigeru to be a more self-centered person than to be worried about 
his roommate's disappearance only hours after it had happened, but 
perhaps he had misjudged the boy. Before he could speak, Rei asked her 
second question of the afternoon. "What newspaper is this? I did not 
know that there was a newspaper."

"Oh, it's the new campus newspaper that just got started."
--
"Do you know? Do you know? Do you know an adjective?"

"Overpopulated!"

"Cable-riffic!"

"Uh-huh. How about a number?"

"Pi!"

"1848!"

"A time of day? A club executive?"

"Nautical twilight!"

"Er, the grand poobah?"

"A verb?"

"To mangle!"

"Good...I'd say, to expunge!"

"Aaaand, an article of clothing?"

"A really tight body suit!"

"With lots of skin showing!"

"And a kind of a reward?"

"Quaffing an everlasting draught of mead and munching on eternal lamb in 
the great halls of Valhallah, awaiting the final confrontation with the 
Giants at Ragnarok."

"A large dog."

"Let's go with that one...'Yesterday, overpopulated student Tsuwabuki 
Mitsuru disappeared from Room 1848 in Nagamara Dormitory. He is 
3.14159265836 years of age. He was last seen at nautical twilight, 
wearing a really tight body suit with lots of skin showing, mangling a 
book with his cable-riffic friend Jean-Jacques Rousseau. If anyone 
expunges Mitsuru-kun, please tell the grand poobah of the Snowboard 
Team. There is a reward of a very large dog for his return.' What do you 
think?"

"Who's Jean-Jacques Rousseau?"

"I love it!"

"Wow, our first article has a 50% reader approval. This will sell a lot 
of papers."

"Ka-ching!"

"Great! And, what about Mitsuru-kun?"

"Don't worry about him. The important thing right now is to build up our 
reader base."

"Yeah! Once we're making profit, then we can run serious news stories."
--
Rei looked happy to be among her roses that morning. Shinji knew it, 
even though he hadn't asked her. Rei's usual precision care was taken in 
light steps, and there was something almost like a twirl when she moved 
her hips just so. Her face wore a smile, an Ayanami Rei smile, one that 
hid behind the lips and peeped out like a hermit crab peeps out of its 
shell. Shinji couldn't take his eyes off of her for a moment during her 
hour in the greenhouse. She wasn't gorgeous, and she certainly wasn't 
cute. She was Ayanami Rei, who had made a new life for herself and was 
trying it on.

They walked side by side to class and sat in chairs next to one another. 
They were not especially early, but the other students were late. 
Kensuke explained as he sat down, "While you were away, Fuyutsuki-sensei 
had a mild heart attack. He's giving himself a couple of weeks' rest, so 
we've got a new homeroom teacher...a new lady who just started this 
term. My guess is some people are going to cut today."

"Is Fuyutsuki-sensei all right?"

"Oh, yeah, yeah. I heard somebody put a frog in his underwear drawer or 
something, it jumped out and scared him. Or something. Anyway, we all 
made him cards. He is one of the best teachers here. You could too. You 
too, Rei."

"Very well."

Shinji said nothing. He was staring slack-jawed at the hallway door. A 
woman had just walked into the room. The word "handsome" is not often 
used with women, but there is a kind of beauty, a radiant strength of 
character that can transcend physical appearance. People touched by this 
Junoesque personality may call such a woman "handsome". And so she was. 
She was tall for a woman, over one and four-fifths meters tall, with 
broad shoulders surmounting a straight back. He hair was brown, with 
bangs in the front and a short back. Her eyes were a gray-green, and she 
seemed to observe everything like a water-strider. She wore a green Polo 
shirt and khaki slacks that hinted at small breasts and narrow hips. 
Under her right arm she carried a yellow sports jacket. When she set it 
on the desk before her, Shinji caught sight of a ring on the fourth 
finger of her left hand. It was a man's ring, silver with a large black 
stone set in the center.

>From the front row, Horaki Hikari called the class to stand, bow and 
sit. As she did, the teacher's eyes swept across the room, gleaning a 
fine layer of detail, enough that when the class was seated she was 
asking pointed questions of Hikari. "There's over a dozen students 
missing today. Do you know what the problem is?"

"Ah...no, sensei."

"Please find out as soon as possible, and let me know. All these 
students are going to be responsible for making up the work they missed, 
and I'd like to know if it's anything important. Can someone tell me 
about Sohryu and Suzuhara? Young man?"

"Heeee..." said most of Kensuke's mouth, "heeee...heee...he may 
be...er...uh...I think I...er...maybe Monday."

The boy returned his full energies to gawking as the new teacher nodded 
smartly. "And what about Sohryu? Horaki-inchou, do you happen to know?"

"No, sensei," Hikari said softly. Overwhelmed by guilt and a sudden 
sense of inferiority, she was staring glumly down at the dirty floor.

"Please find that out, too." The teacher stepped around to the front of 
the desk and said, in perfect, unaccented English, "Good morning, 
students." She received a token few, mostly male, replies of "Guudo 
mouningu," and continued in Japanese. "My name is Kirishima Mana. I am 
the new homeroom teacher, filling in for Fuyutsuki-sensei while he rests 
and recovers. I will also be your English teacher for the remainder of 
the term."

"Yatta!" gasped Kensuke, still unaware that his video camera was lying 
on the floor by his feet.

Kirishima swept on. "Kazami-sensei will be in later this morning. He'll 
be taking over for Fuyutsuki-sensei in history. Now, I know that 
Okazaki-sensei isn't the most popular teacher here on campus, but please 
don't treat him any differently than you would Kozou-san. I'm sure that 
that's how he would like it."

Still with his eyes fastened on the woman at the front of the classroom, 
Shinji whispered to Kensuke, "Who's Kazami?"

"I dunno," the boy replied, not really listening.

Out from underneath her jacket, Kirishima brought a small notebook 
computer. "I have a few quick announcements before we conclude this 
morning. Please stay off the lawns around the library while weed killer 
is being applied today and tomorrow. The fencing club will resume 
regular practice this afternoon. A petition is being passed around for a 
vote of no confidence in the Student Council, and students are 
encouraged to make their positions known. Yesterday, overpopulated 
student--" She broke off abruptly, staring at her notebook for a few 
awkward moments before hurrying on. "That can't be right. Lastly, the 
school trip that was on the calendar for next weekend has been 
cancelled, and instead we will be having a campus-wide picnic Saturday 
afternoon. Food will be provided, but the faculty are looking for 
students to organize games. That concludes the morning announcements."

She set down the notebook and looked directly at Shinji with her insect 
gaze. "Ikari Shinji?"

"Yes, ma'am?" he said. Then, remembering his manners, he scrambled to 
stand and bow. When he looked at her again, he was blushing and his feet 
were pigeon-toed.

A smile of amusement, innocent and not malicious, crept across the 
woman's face. "You and Ayanami Rei are assigned cleanup duty today after 
class. Sohryu Asuka was assigned to be with you. Do you mind working 
short?"

"Uh, no, sensei, I don't mind." He glanced at Rei, who made no move to 
even look at him.

"Thank you for your cooperation," she said. There was a pleasant, 
compassionate lilt to the sentence, and Shinji wondered if there was 
something more going on in her mind. Answering his unspoken question, 
she asked, "Can you say, 'Today I will clean up the classroom' in 
English?"

The boy cleared his throat and, in a high-strung voice, said, "Todei ai 
kuriin aru obu zha kurassurumu."

"Very well done," Kirishima remarked. "You speak very clearly. But you 
should say 'I will clean' for an action that will take place in the 
future."

"Yes, sensei."

"And you would probably say, 'I will clean up the classroom' rather than 
'I will clean all of the classroom', simply because that's the idiom. 
You didn't know that, of course, so remember it for the future."

"Yes, sensei."

"Good, well done. You may sit down now." Shinji seated himself, panicked 
and slightly embarrassed, unaware that he had become the envy of almost 
every person in the class.
--
The science of cleaning a classroom had not kept pace with the 
relentless march of technology. Desks that were hooked up to an 
Intranet, wireless or not, could not be moved without problems. So while 
the chairs were all pushed to one corner of the room, the desks remained 
in place. Rei swept between the legs, hunched over, using a hand broom 
and dustpan.

Shinji was with her in spirit. He was standing at the classroom door, 
broom in hand, talking with Aoba Shigeru. "Still no word?"

"Huh-uh." The boy was slouched disconsolately across the doorway, with 
his feet in one corner and his back against the other. "I don't get it. 
The whole thing just doesn't make sense. Where could he have gone to? 
WHY could he have just disappeared? It doesn't make any sense, no matter 
how I look at it."

"Hey, uh...if you don't mind my asking...why are you so worried about 
it?" Shigeru glared at Shinji, who stepped back defensively. "No, I 
didn't mean you shouldn't be worried about your own roommate, I didn't 
mean that at all. It's just, Kensuke told me this morning that you'd 
been on edge all day, like right from the moment you thought he was 
gone. I'm glad you're worried about him, it's just...that's awful 
quick."

"Yeah, I guess," Shigeru admitted. "Hell if I know, really. It just 
seemed so weird, and so unlike Mitsuru-kun, that...I guess I couldn't 
help myself. You know?"

"No."

"He doesn't ever do shit like this. He's quiet, he doesn't leave the 
room, he does his own weird things like pile three blankets on the bed, 
but he doesn't go off. I know him. This is so totally unlike him--oh, 
hi, sensei!"

Caught, both boys stood at attention and bowed. Kirishima, now wearing 
her yellow jacket despite the heat of the afternoon, was walking down 
the corridor in Shigeru's line of sight. "Good afternoon, Shinji-kun," 
she said in a pleasant, if dignified, voice. As if the other boy didn't 
exist at all, she walked up to Shinji and explained, "I couldn't in good 
conscience leave you and Rei to work alone. I'd like to help you, if I 
may."

"Ah...we don't mind the help, no. Thank you. See you later, Shigeru-
kun," Shinji said as the other boy rolled his eyes and shuffled off to 
parts unknown. Shinji and Kirishima entered the classroom and Shinji 
announced, "Rei, Kirishima-sensei's going to help us with our cleanup 
duties."

>From where she was emptying her dustpan into the garbage, Rei bowed. 
"Thank you for your help, sensei," she said. The girl then put down her 
dustpan and broom, picked up a bucket of water and a towel, and went 
across the room to the far corner. She sat down on the floor, half in 
sun and half in shade, and began to scrub meticulously.

Shinji walked across the classroom to the adjoining corner, and 
Kirishima followed. "You did quite well in class today, Shinji," she 
said. The tone of her voice let on that she was smiling, even though he 
had his back to her. "Your strongest point in English is your accent. 
You speak very clearly, and that's something not a lot of boys your age 
and older can do."

She paused while Shinji set down his bucket, drew out a washrag and 
began to clean. Still quite close behind him, Kirishima continued, "Do 
you plan on studying English later in your life?"

Shinji shook his head. "I'm probably going to be a kendo instructor. 
That's what my father wants me to be, anyway."

"Are you serious?" Kirishima asked. "You don't sound so excited about 
it. Don't you want to do what you want to do?"

The boy froze in position, arm extended, as he continued the 
conversation. "It's what I'm best at, sensei. I've been training in 
kendo since I was young. I can't imagine doing anything else."

"You should do what you want to do."

"I wouldn't know about that." He resumed his washing.

"It's what I've always believed," Kirishima declared, "and it's gotten 
me everything I have today." Turning around and looking to the front of 
the classroom, she said, "For instance, I notice that the front of the 
classroom is dirty. I want to have a clean classroom more than enough to 
motivate me to do the work. Shinji, you should think about what you do 
and why you do it. The answers are all around you."

Her lecture concluded, Kirishima Mana joined her students in cleaning 
the floor to their classroom.
--
At the same time, in the co-educational gymnasium, two young women were 
talking in the girls' locker room. Arisugawa Juri was taller and 
stronger than her age of seventeen years. She had orange hair that came 
down to the level of her shoulder in thick curls. She fancied that she 
possessed a great deal of self-possession.

As the acting president of the Feuervogel fencing club dressed herself 
after practice, her friend Ibuki Maya talked. "She's so cool. It's like 
she has a sixth sense or something. She plays favorites, only backwards. 
If she feels that someone isn't performing up to par, she'll come after 
them, and force them to read or answer questions, or whatever, just to 
get them to tackle their problems."

"What's she look like?" Juri asked.

"She's kind of tall, and her eyes are kind of far apart. She's really 
good looking, actually. But it isn't like you'd only go out with her 
because of her looks. I mean, I'd go out with her in a minute, but it's 
fine with me that we're going to be just teacher and student."

Juri smiled with empathy as she closed her locker. "You seem pretty 
smitten with her," she remarked. Before Maya could continue, Juri swept 
on. "I meant to tell you. That young man who's organizing the vote of no 
confidence was here during practice. I'd remembered that you wanted the 
vote to go through, so I signed the petition."

"Petition?" Maya said. "No, sempai and I decided to scuttle that idea a 
day or two ago, after Kaji-san won the Duel. We're not trying to get 
ourselves thrown out of office now."

"Oh." Juri thoughtfully shouldered her duffel bag and said, "Well, 
what's the worst that can happen? You lose your jobs--for what, a 
month?--until new elections can take place. And I'm sure you'll get 
reelected."

"Thanks, Juri-sama!" Maya said with a big smile. At the same time that 
Ikari had secured his control of Shekhinah, they had lost their 
opportunity to try and get him elected into office. Shekhinah was beyond 
their control for the foreseeable future. If what Juri had said was 
true, and there was a petition being circulated for their removal from 
office, it was a minor inconvenience, but nothing more. A month's 
vacation might even give them a bevy of new ideas on how to achieve the 
revolution.