Other Worlds: V 2.0

[initiates]

Date & Time: May 21st, beginning at 0900.
Location: The Initiative Hold and all throughout Elmer's world
Characters: Anyone participating in the fighting, anyone staying behind.
Summary: Elmer's world is fought for and lost.
Warnings: Violence, death.

They reopen the portal at 0900, May 21st. The first scientist who stepped through was killed within thirty seconds; the rest who followed made it back through to Exsilium, albeit not unscathed. The portal was shut again by a panicked operator, although a second operator knew to keep the coordinates locked.

Within ten minutes, the alert had been sent out. There's no time to wait for the Transports to gather en masse; as soon as they have a sizable enough force to stand a chance at fighting through and clearing their gateway's location, the door is opened again.

Immediately inside the door is a desolate, grim scene. What had previously been the coast of Japan is now scorched earth, blasted sand, and little else. As the first point of contact for this world, it has undoubtedly suffered the worst. Here, the UE didn't stop at governments, financial centers, and capitols — the UE destroyed everything in sight. There are enough UE soldiers remaining in the broken country to give the Transports a difficult battle, although by now the bulk of their forces have moved on.

The Initiative will soon realize the necessity of opening more gateways, just as the UE had done. Transports will be deployed to London, Berlin, Paris, DC Washington, Moscow, Beijing, New York City, Hong Kong, Madrid. Through each of these windows, the destruction is staggering. Buildings are more husks than structures, everything that can burn is alight, and the death toll is off the charts. Blackened bodies seem to line every street, while pieces litter the ground among the rubble. There's no doubt that the UE has no need of the people of this world. They're after resources only, and anything and anyone already here is to be removed.

You can find UE soldiers everywhere. They move in coordinated squadrons of 20, and each of them carries a small arsenal. Even without their incredibly advanced and destructive weaponry, they're fearfully formidable. Each soldier, while still only human, is a genetically perfect clone, further enhanced by technological implants. They're all highly trained in physical combat. Even if you can disarm one of them, don't count on close-range attacks being any easier to handle. They've brought along cannons, small flying craft, and lightweight tanks. Each of these is the top of the line in terms of technology, geared toward destroying as much as it can, as quickly as it can. The United Earth is here to destroy, and they won't stop to wonder why their targets go from being civilians and scrambling, off-guard, comparatively primitive militaries, to trained and powered Transports.

For anyone staying at home, they'll find that any Initiative presence has withdrawn fully to the Hold. All Initiative employees are needed, and most of them in the med bays. The majority of the Initiative focus is on recalling and resurrecting fallen Transports, but attention is still needed for the living-but-wounded. Any Transports who stay in Exsilium and offer their help will have it immediately accepted; they'll be put to work in the medical wings, runnings supplies, or simply set at a machine and told to keep an eye on the numbers: Transport vitals, UE movements, and maps upon maps of changing statistics and colors.

At 1500, the Initiative will recall all Transport soldiers back to Exsilium and seal shut the gateway. The UE numbers are too great, their soldiers too powerful, and Elmer's world is lost.

Comments

[revolutionized]

[She jumps a little at the outburst, which jostles unhealed injuries. Utena winces — the room tilts, then adjusts.] I know it's not a game! I — just because you think that's what the duels are, it doesn't mean I do!

[Her voice has gained a strained, serrated edge. I care about Himemiya, she wants to say, I'm not like all of you! She doesn't know why she's so angry at it, the insinuation. It isn't Nanami's fault that any of this was happening, but the idea she would treat the duels as a game...maybe in the beginning, but —

(—Who is that? she had asked a long time ago, at the end of a crumbling road, and someone had answered —)

— but it wasn't that way now. None of this was just some stupid game. Those people that had died, they were gone, forever and always. There was nothing eternal, nothing at all...]

I didn't die. [She says at last. She sounds very tired.] I know it was stupid, so I...I won't do it again. I'm sorry for yelling at you like that.

[tragicomedienne]

It's not the same! There's a huge difference between what's at stake!

[She stands a little taller - with Utena on the cot, it's like it gives her some authority. Neither of them really understand the duels, and neither of them can ever really understand this, what's happening now. They are each on the wrong side of it.

Then she deflates.]

You are?

... Well, you should be. But I guess you got lucky again.

[revolutionized]

[Utena stares up at Nanami — she's tired, and shaken, perhaps contrite — but she doesn't agree with that at all, that there was a difference. There was something important, something she wasn't sure about. But what had it been?

Had it been something Anthy said, when they were younger? It was hard to grasp the thoughts, harder to articulate them, and so after a long pause, she glances away, at a loss.]

Yeah, I guess so. I don't know. I feel really strange. It's been this way since... [She sits up and rubs her forehead.] Himemiya. Since she left.

[Stranger than usual, is the implication.] Something odd happened, before she went away. I keep thinking about it, but I can't understand it.

[tragicomedienne]

So? Something weird was always happening around her.

[Anthy drew in weirdness like honey draws flies. Nanami isn't sure she wants to talk about this again. Utena becomes so unmanageable and sad, and Nanami's disgusted just dealing with it.

She sits down in the precious small empty space by the bed, and upon moving to cross her legs finds herself too lacking in the eergy to even do that. Putting her elbows on her knees, she rests her chin in her hands instead.]

What did she do this time? [Always her fault, always someone else's.]

[revolutionized]

[She allows the first dig on Anthy's character to go by without argument. It's Nanami's way, she knows, and she doesn't seem as outwardly vindictive as usual, anyway. Utena's too tired to argue.]

She didn't do anything. [That wasn't quite right, not this time. Utena swallows, tries again.] Well, she left for a while, before that parade, remember? Y'know, when the people around here kept giving everyone candy. She left because...

[Of a memory. Two little girls, walking along the wide empty hallways of Exsilium's Hold. Every door looked the same. Utena's steps were solid and careful, even tired and frightened as she was, but not Anthy's. Anthy moved in a stumbling, mincing sort of way. Like there were pins and needles in her feet. She had been in a lot of pain, hadn't she?

In the present, Utena's hands clench the rough fabric of the hospital blanket draped over her. The Rose Crest glitters weakly.] I told you before, for a little while, when it was just me and Himemiya, something happened to everyone here. Time was all messed up, and we, we were little kids for a while. I couldn't remember anything about Ohtori, or this place, nothing at all. But I...

I remembered Himemiya. I remember other stuff too. [A vague, fuzzy memory of two boys. Had she known them? She shakes her head.] But that's not right. I only met her after...when the Duels started, you know? But it was like we'd met before. She knew me too.

[That was what bothered her. More than Anthy's strangeness afterward, the running away. Telling her to forget Ohtori. It was the remembering, that was the worst part. It would be different, if she could recall why she had the memory. But it was there, she had known that face.

From where?

(She followed her Prince down a long road, and at the end there was a glowing red light. An altar, and the sound of metal grinding. The sound of swords. And her Prince had said—)

She doesn't want to talk about this, or think about it, but she keeps going anyway.] I think something's wrong. With my memories, or...

[With me, she thinks, but she would not say this to Nanami. Not to anyone.]

[tragicomedienne]

[Nanami was almost too little when it happened to remember how her brother changed, after he found that girl. Had he been normal, before that? He'd always loved her, yet...

Maybe there's something wrong with all of them.

For the majority of Utena's speech, Nanami looks like she isn't listening at all, her gaze fixed on a poorly-defined spot on the wall, her fingers drumming against her chin as though impatient.

It occurs to her that she can't really imagine Anthy Himemiya as a child, or anything beyond what she already sees her has, as though she has and always will be fourteen and annoying and a danger.

She's never heard Utena talk about her childhood, either.]

Maybe you just forgot about it, you think? Maybe it wasn't something you wanted to remember.

[She wouldn't like it either, feeling like someone had gone into her head and stripped out something she had once known. Very suddenly, she feels a shudder go through her.]

Was it a bad memory? What if someone was just playing a trick on you? Gullible people are easy to fool. [Children are gullible.]

[revolutionized]

I think it was a bad memory.

[This she admits very quietly. It had been a bad memory; she knows that much just from the way she feels about it. Every time she thinks about it, her stomach drops, but she can't get a hold on what the memory is. It's like trying to look at something through a heavy curtain of gauze, and all it does is leave her unsettled and frightened.

It would be easier to forget it, but she can't, not anymore. She keeps thinking of how Anthy introduced herself. The Rose Bride, even at that age. What was that supposed to be, anyway? No matter how much anyone explained it to her, she could never make any sense of it.]

Himemiya, I think she was trying to explain, but I—

[She was angry, and hadn't wanted to hear it, and Anthy told her to forget.] It doesn't matter anymore. She's gone now, so I couldn't ask, even if I wanted to. [Muttered:] Maybe it isn't important.

[That didn't feel right to say, but she didn't know what else to do about it. Maybe it was better not to remember.]

[tragicomedienne]

But you didn't listen, right?

[Well, well, everyone does it. Utena isn't so above everyone else, at least in that regard.

It's hard to imagine Anthy explaining anything, being forthcoming about anything. Surely she was just about to lead Utena down another path, convince her, somehow, of some other kind of innocence.]

You're lying. [At least about that last part. Her voice is very small.]

... But it's not any reason to go charging into a fight and get yourself killed!

[revolutionized]

It's not like that. [She's trying not to sound defensive, or snappish, but it's a lost cause by now. She's tired and frustrated, too rattled from the events of today (and all the days before it) to stay calm.

She closes her eyes instead.] I was just trying to help. [...And reluctantly, she adds:] I didn't know what else to do.

[She's so tired, and it doesn't feel like she's getting anywhere, or that she's figured out anything. So it's quiet on her end, for a good long while, until she speaks up again.] What do you mean, anyway? Lying about what?

[tragicomedienne]

You're lying when you say it doesn't matter!

It matters to you, so get over yourself. She's all you can talk about. [An exaggeration, but Nanami doesn't think so. Sometimes it's like an obsession, Utena's undying fixation on Anthy.

Nanami stands.]

But whatever it is, you probably won't know until you see her again. [And that's probably what Anthy would want, anyway, as long as she could keep another person wound around her finger.]

Are you going to put that ring back on?

[revolutionized]

[She opens her mouth to protest, but she knows Nanami is right (which is annoying), and any further attempt at arguing wouldn't end in her favor. Instead, she frowns, seemingly irritated. It's the first expression she's had so far that isn't resigned sadness or tired blankness. A good start.

It takes a lot of swallowing her pride to do so, but eventually she says:] ...You're right.

[She doesn't really have it in her to thank Nanami for it. The ring, though...

She stares at it for a while, nervous for a reason she can't quite place, and then she reaches for it.]

There's no dueling here. [She points out, but she still puts the ring back on her finger anyway. There was no prince, either...but she would have to make the best of it.] Um...

Thanks for checking on me.

[tragicomedienne]

[Nanami looks down at her own fingers, almost out of habit, when Utena reclaims her ring. How such a little thing can give Utena that kind of comfort, anyway?]

Don't mention it. [Really, don't ever talk about this again...]

I'm tired. I'm going to sleep somewhere that isn't a hospital bed.

[revolutionized]

...Alright.

[She's turned to look up at the ceiling again. Some part of her realizes that this impromptu heart-to-heart has taken a lot of effort on Nanami's part. Effort on her behalf.

It was strange to think about.] I'm tired too.

I'll see you later.