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?" -- When Ibuki Maya had been a small girl, only five years old, her family had taken a trip to the mountains. Although her mother had never even seen Fujisama up close, her father had been a mountaineer in college, and a yearning for fresh air and early mornings had seized him over the winter. He had been granted a week's leave from his job as a computer salesman over the last days of April and the first days of May. He read up on camping with children while Mrs. Ibuki walked herself into good shape. Maya herself was unsure about the expedition, even through the very morning of their departure. She had heard on the TV that there would be rain all across the south that day. Wouldn't the rain spoil their camping, she asked her parents. But they kept a firm answer from her. For the first few hours of their trip, moving north along the coastline, Maya slept and stared out the window, looking at the towns and cities that they passed; but she was always mindful of the gloomy rain clouds up above. When they turned inland towards the mountains, Maya's heart sank. The clouds were still there, and still as rainy. They pressed on. Soon their car was following the mountain road, taking switchbacks and slowing only for tiny hillside towns. The rain drops were getting bigger. The trees loomed high up over the car, so high that they were lost into the clouds. In the back seat of the car, Maya frowned, resigned to her fate. Though they kept talking, her parents watched her from the front seat... Then all at once, they burst through the cloud layer to see the bright afternoon sun! Maya stared in awe-struck wonder at the fleecy white cloud layer that stretched from the mountainside off to the horizon. The trees, no longer scary in the sunshine, stood nobly by the roadside, as if they had all turned out in splendor to wish the Ibukis well. So breathtaking. The somber rain was left behind. Maya put aside all of the misgivings she had felt earlier, awash with joy and anticipation. When they arrived at the campsite twenty minutes later, all three Ibukis were pleasantly surprised to see that they were not alone. In fact, seven other couples and families were staying for the night. All the "children" were over 15, and the young girl had no one near her age to play with. Maya was disappointed, and not a little lonesome for the loss. "Okaa-san, may I go and look at the clouds again?" she asked as her parents started to set up the campsite. "Yes you may," her mother replied, "but I don't want you crossing the road here. Go up to where you can see the cars coming and cross there. And don't be gone for too long, we'll be eating soon." The campground was set back from the highway in a grove of evergreen trees, located just off of a sharp curve. A man at the next campsite had said that there was an overlook about a hundred meters up the road, and that was where Maya intended to go. She hadn't covered half of the distance before, walking along the edge of the forest in a bright orange jacket, Maya noticed a fair-sized brown _thing_ lying in the middle of the road. It was the remains of a tanuki. The little girl knew nothing yet of the anathema Shinto had for dead things, had never even SEEN a cadaver in her life. But she knew, intuitively, the unnaturalness of the flattened body sopping in the ocher pool it lay within. And for the first time--in the depths of the tanuki's black lifeless eyes, in the middle of a day of faith and surprise and beauty and bliss--she found horror and meaninglessness in life. Ibuki Maya remembered that day twice before she left Feuervogel. The first time was when, in a book of otherwise unremarkable poems, she came across the saying "The eyes are the seat of the soul." The second time... Akagi Ritsuko's room was once again in disarray, with clothes, books, cigarette butts and crumbs scattered all about. Akagi Ritsuko was once again staring out the window at the world around her. Without turning around, she waved Maya to a chair. And in response to her kohai's inquiry, she said dully, "We're all alone." "What do you mean, sempai?" Ritsuko half-turned from the window and spoke to her elbow. "I heard about it from the people at the infirmary. After Makoto-kun shot up last night he got a mild aneurysm. He didn't check his needle for air bubbles. They don't think there was blood loss into the surrounding tissue. He'll probably live, they're just waiting to find out how much he damaged his brain." "That's awful...and Kaji-kaishou?" "Stormed out of his dorm room last night sometime. Hasn't been seen since." Ritsuko swiveled around in her chair, eyes downcast, and continued. "I made a phone call to Miki earlier. The disappearances have freaked him out as much as anyone. He's decided he doesn't want to risk his life for the sake of the office, so he's withdrawn his candidacy for president." Maya swallowed. "So what does this mean?" Ritsuko raised her head. The shadows in her eyes showed that she had forsaken her own soul to escape the pain. Maya thought of the tanuki, long dead. "It means, Maya...that we have no government of any kind. The elections are three weeks away, but since nobody is running, there's no prospect of a Student Council. And since there are no faculty advisors to replace the one that Kaji killed back at the start of the term, this school...has no student infrastructure. Only inertia is keeping someone from just standing up and taking over this whole campus." "So the stage is set...for the revolution." "Yes." The two women fell into each others' arms, crying like newborns. -- "EXTRA! EXTRA! Read all about it!" "Today, Doctor Love answers all your relationship questions!" "Kaoru Miki writes in to ask, 'Dear Doctor Love--what is an aneurysm, and why don't I want one?'" "Dear Miki--well, you've given the good Doctor quite a tricky one, but I'm happy to oblige. An aneurysm is a dilation of a blood vessel in the brain." "Oftentimes, aneurysm is followed by apoplexy, in which the blood vessel bursts. This is also known as a stroke." "Both can be caused by particulate matter, such as the remains of a blood clot, blocking normal blood flow." "Very rarely, a bubble of gas can get into the blood stream. This is particularly damaging, because as the Doctor knows, gas is less dense than blood. So a bubble will have a tendency to rise towards the brain no matter where in the body it forms." "Do you know? Do you know? Do you know how a bubble can form in the bloodstream?" "Some deep-sea divers develop nitrogen buildup in their bloodstream when they're experiencing the bends, but that only rarely produces gas bubbles. It's mostly pH imbalance that kills the diver." "In fact, intravenous drug use is the most likely way it can happen. If a drug user doesn't check to make sure all of the bubbles are out of his fix, he stands a pretty good chance of getting an aneurysm. That's why Doctor Love says, don't date a junkie!" "As for why it's a bad thing, apart from the blurred vision, dizziness, memory loss, confusion, splitting headache and such you'd expect from building up pressure within the brain, tissue damage and death can result from the cells downstream not getting enough oxygen." "If your IQ is suddenly shot from a healthy 102 to 7, you're going to miss out on a lot of hot dates. Chicks don't dig on vegetables." "This is Doctor Love, signing off for this week's column." "Thank you, Doctor Love!" -- The computer screen showed an extreme close up of Ayanami Rei's hands. One hand held a metal bowl, the other the sponge that was cleaning it. Aida Kensuke's voice came out over the speakers. "Now Rei shows us her Amazing Astounding Wonderful Superlative TWO-HANDED BOWL-WASHING TECHNIQUE!" In response to an off-screen prod, Rei spoke. "I use the water, soap suds and friction of the sponge to remove the food particles. Then I rinse the soap off the bowl. Shinji will dry it." "And let's watch him DRY!" The camera's view swept counterclockwise to focus on Shinji's hands, holding a terry-cloth towel. He piped up, "That's right, Kensuke. It is my noble duty to fearlessly dry off every piece of glassware and crockery placed under my care." "But will you miss a drop?" "Never." "Not a speck?" "Impossible!" "Ikari Shinji and the Wonder Terry-cloth!" Suzuhara Touji smiled and paused the video. He shut down the laptop computer, closed the monitor up against the keyboard and set it aside. "I wish I didn't have so damn much work to catch up on. Woulda been fun to go there last night. Oh, well, there'll be other chances." "What if something stands in your way?" asked Michimoto Wakamugi. "There's always other chances to have fun. Life's like that, I've found." "That is a shallow view of existence." Touji shrugged and settled back on his bed to a more comfortable position. "It doesn't entirely matter that I can't see Mariko anymore. Yeah, I would like to have her here. But I can't bring her, or anyone else back to life. I can't run off with Ritsuko-san, and I wouldn't even if I had the chance. And I won't stab Shinji in the back. Not intentionally." "Begin with your sister," Michimoto said, "and go from there." "Those first few days with Mariko sure were pretty hard," Touji sighed. "I remember when I started goin' around to the ladies in the neighborhood, askin' for help...it hit me all a sudden, they wanted to pity me. They wanted to feel sorry for me, or me to let them feel sorry for me. An' it wasn't until I'd started here that it hit me how selfish they'd been. They all wanted to be, 'Oh, poor boy, left all alone in the world, such a terrible time you're havin' of it all', and then they could feel like they all were better'n me. "And when it turned out I wasn't, they kind of didn't know what to do. I'd ask them for advice, and they'd try to come over an' do everything, you know, cook a whole meal and stuff. I'd tell 'em to go if they weren't willing to just help. But eventually, I learned myself 'bout how to take care of a baby, and keep the house clean, and cook. An' it all worked out pretty good." "Then you came to Feuervogel." Touji nodded. "It was weird. I didn't know what to do. 'Cause I knew that I wasn't like the other guys, they didn't know how to get stains out of carpets. So I stuck to what I knew, and that was sports. You know. I could do JV like anybody else. Got pretty good, and I got some respect." "And the person that you trusted the most could keep your history secret." Touji shrugged again. "Kensuke's been a great friend. He never told nobody, 'far as I know, about me an' Ritsuko. But I guess that that was bound to come out sooner or later. "I liked Ritsuko-sempai for the same reason I liked Hikari, and Asuka, too. It's 'cause they all have a vision for who they'd like to be, and they're strong enough to change the world to suit them. You know? I like that." Touji paused to collect his thoughts and then went on, "I talked with Ritsuko 'bout this once. It was right after the school science fair, last year. She'd won it 'cause she built some machine that simulated how a tornado worked, there was all this pump sending warm vapor into a chamber where it met cool vapor, and a turbine, or somethin'. And it was the first time I'd talked with her, you know...talked to a girl. I went up to her, and I congratulated her, and we got to talking about how she got the idea. And she completely went all off on this tangent, about how people were made in God's image, but it was our duty to make this world in His image, and that the way to do that was through rationality and scientific analysis." "Is that when you fell in love with her?" Michimoto asked. "I guess. I sure thought the world of her, 'cause she was willin' to talk with me." "You joined the Student Council. Why?" "To be with her," Touji replied. "Be close to her. I liked the idea of revolutionizing the world, but I don't feel like I contributed that much. I'd've been happy to do something else if I could've got close to her. But now I'm not part of the Student Council, and I'm not in love with Ritsuko-san anymore. I have my friends. I have Asuka. I got ever'thing I need." "I see." Michimoto stood and said gruffly, "In that case, the revolution of the world should be no further concern of yours." Touji stared at him in confusion for a moment, then glanced down at his left hand. The ring had disappeared from his finger. When he raised his head again, Michimoto Wakamugi was gone. -- Moments later, Michimoto was in the infirmary. The door to Asuka's room was wide open, and Michimoto entered in dignified silence. He took a bedside seat between Asuka's pillow and the nearby table. Sohryu Asuka Langley was dressed for the day in a frilly white slip. Her bare arms lay above the bedclothes, hands clasped. The fiery hair that marked her out so much from the other students lay free across her pillow, surrounding her head like an auburn halo. Her mouth was limply ajar, and her breath coursed in and out without a sound. The one eye she still had in her head was open, unfocused and idle. Color and light. The young girl was a rabbit stretching across the moon, crying to the silent heavens. "Why did it have to be him?" she asked weakly, a few minutes after Michimoto had taken his seat. "Why did he have to be the one? It's not like I was intending to fall in love with anyone. Feel affection. Reach out to anyone. "You know what he did to me? He humiliated me. He toyed with me until I was just jabbering the first things that came into my head--completely, totally irrational thoughts--and then he made his move. He's a snide, sniveling kind of a fellow, that's what he is." "You anticipate him, even as we speak," Michimoto observed. "You are looking forward to his arrival at this instant." There was no tangible evidence to substantiate the claim, but the shake of Asuka's head came with a different sort of reply. "It's not him I want, it's what he represents. An interruption of the monotony. A novelty, or a drug, or whatever you want to call it. I hate sitting here, blind and bored, with my body halfway healed. I don't want to learn how to read Braille, or learn to navigate by listening and by touch. It's...shoot, it's not useless. That's wrong." "You admit, then, that your training--the reason you are here--is for a reason. Just like you admit the boy himself has a reason to be." Asuka thought, and Michimoto made no sign of impatience. She said, after careful consideration, "I think that...the boy and the training...have something in common." "..." "I hate them both. I hate them because they're fetishes for the person I've become. I've been turned into a blind, disfigured bitch with no friends, no family, no nothing. I don't want to keep growing. I don't want to become some new Sohryu Asuka Langley. I want the old one back." Michimoto nodded slowly. Then took his turn talking, choosing his words carefully. "You are an intelligent young woman. Please--don't interrupt. You are an intelligent young woman, who has enough discipline to see the nature of her situation. You know your strengths and weaknesses. What do you choose to do about the state of the world as a whole, given your own unique situation?" Asuka swallowed hard, lifting her head off of her pillow for a moment, before she answered. "I've finally reached the conclusion...that only I exist, and the world around me is nothing but an illusion. If I believe that the world around me will change, then it will. And that's the end. I don't care about this so-called love, or this so-called therapy. It's all only me, and it's only ever been about me." "'And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. And they straightway left their nets, and followed him.' Like the fish in the sea, you have been free to enjoy your world, until the nets of others have trapped you. When they submit to their own nature--when you submit to your own will--you will be free once again. Submit to your own nature, and you will walk with God. Come with me." Michimoto wrapped one of his hands around Asuka's. A moment later, the tightness of a ring could be felt around her finger, pushed firmly by the grip of his hand. The girl, awkwardly at first but with growing enthusiasm, sat up and swung her legs out of bed. "I've no more want of any faith," she said, not indicating the ring. "Don't turn your back on my disgrace...I can't spit the memory from my mind, can't cry anymore." "Don't offer me faith." There was a slight tremble, almost a snarl, to Michimoto's voice when he said the last word. But his bearing never changed. As they reached the door, walking a gentle, shuffled walk, the man stepped behind Asuka, putting a hand on her back to steer her. "There's a revolution calling you," he said, and then she stepped out through the doorway.