Authors notes:
- Go and get fags from shop.
- Post that MinamiCon cheque.
- Feed cat.
- Stop using ancient gags.
I think I might've said it before, but I can't write fanfiction.
Taking on someone else's characters just never seems to work out. So
this is the result of an idea I had on the train back from London
last weekend. An original set of characters with a _lot_ of cameos.
The title comes from a fanzine I write & draw, as does the girl. In
fact, most of the setting comes from there. The characters are about
twenty years older in RoD the manga, though. There don't appear to be
any spoilers.
And if you're mentioned here, it is only because I hold your works in
deep awe and high regard. _Please_ don't get cheesed off. None of you
die, I promise. C&C is always welcome, and flames are attention of a
sort at least... ;)
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Republic of Desire
Part one: As good a place as any to begin
Subi [19/01/00]
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The teacher's name was Mr Maeda.
Toshio "Tentacle" Maeda to be exact, as it would later come out at the
coroner's enquiry. Not to us, of course. To us he was "Sir", or
"Maeda-sensei", or even "old dribble face" to Kaneda and Tetsuo. Worst
of all, to us he was an ADULT. Exactly _how_ ADULT the world would
find out later, but for now he was simply one of the many looming
presences that blighted and cursed our young lives.
His classes were somewhat strict. He kept a wide variety of bamboo
canes in a special cabinet behind his desk. Long ones, short ones, fat
ones, thin ones, varnished ones, polished ones, painted ones, spiked
ones, serrated ones, bladed ones, automatic ones, battery-powered ones,
pneumatic ones and ones which took 9mm ammunition. The slightest
misdemeanour would get you six of the best with whichever was the
current favourite. Kekko Kamen tended to suffer the most, as she
breached the uniform regulations on an almost daily basis.
Kaneda and Tetsuo told me that the more esoteric canes were ordered
from a special catalogue that was secretly circulated to teachers by
the Government. They also told me that the beatings served a special
purpose. Mr Maeda, they both claimed, was using the glow generated by
our rosy red behinds to signal to the vast alien invasion fleet that
was orbiting the Earth beyond the moon. The position of each of our
houses apparently corresponded to a letter in the alien alphabet. That
there were twenty-three of us in the class, the exact number of letters
in the alien alphabet, served to confirm their theory. Mr Maeda was
negotiating to be abducted and taken away to his perfect world where he
could beat schoolchildren like ourselves all day long for the rest of
his life.
I knew at the time there was something slightly wrong with this theory,
but for the life of me I couldn't think what. But I do know that my
mother was not pleased when she caught me standing on the roof of our
house one evening with my trousers round my ankles attempting to
confuse Mr Maeda's transmissions.
I didn't speak to Kaneda and Tetsuo too much after that.
It was in one of Mr Maeda's classes that the story I am to tell begins.
It was summer, as it always is when you are a child, we were eight
years old and he was inviting us to compare and contrast Lolita and
the works of HP Lovecraft. As usual I was finding the lesson rather
hard to follow, as I couldn't actually speak any Japanese at this time.
I was sneakily smoking a cigarette under my desk lid and trying to work
out what "yodelling up the canyon" meant, and how the Great Old Ones
could perform such an act with only seven tentacles each, when the door
burst open and in walked a truly remarkable girl.
"Out" cried Mr Maeda at such volume that that crybaby Usagi burst into
tears. The girl duly retreated behind the door and knocked. "Come!"
said Mr Maeda, "Come and explain yourself".
"I truly apologise for my dilatory arrival sir," said the girl,
maintaining eye contact and standing just as tall as she knew how.
"I got a little lost."
"Your repentance is noble and good," replied Mr Maeda, "Yet I prefer to
ensure a child's redemption in the world hereafter with a more physical
manifestation of sorrow. Kindly bend over."
"I think not," said the girl, grinning hugely.
"And why is that?" said Mr Maeda as he selected a particularly vicious
specimen from the dreaded cabinet and cocked it with a sinister
KA-CHIK. "You perhaps have a special dispensation on account of your
religion? Zarathustrian are you?"
"No sir."
"Cabalian?"
"No sir."
"Scientologist?"
"No sir. Nor am I Buddhist, Shinto, Wiccan, Satanist or Seventh-Day
Adventist sir."
"C of E?"
"No sir."
"Fifty yen she gets away with it," whispered John Biles, who was
sitting at the desk beside me hiding a can of lemonade behind a history
book.
"You're on," I told him.
Mr Maeda's eyes boggled, and the third one that lived on the end of his
tongue popped out for a moment or two to get a really good look at the
insolent specimen standing before him. "So, you are bereft of
spiritual exclusion, and yet you still claim I should not teach you the
error of your ways. Is this, in essence, correct?"
"Yes sir," said the girl, "It's just that such an action on your part
would be pointless. Pointless and potentially lethal to your esteemed
self sir. My body naturally generates a massive Absolute Terror field
that renders me impervious to corporeal harm."
"An original line, yet some punishment is necessary to impress upon you
that two twenty-three PM is an unacceptable hour at which to present
yourself for education. Come hither girl, and touch your toes."
"Thus setting in motion a course of events that will only result in
injury and despair for yourself sir."
"I shall be the judge of that."
"Very well."
"That's fifty yen well made I think," I whispered to Biles.
"Wait," he sotto-voced back.
The girl assumed the position, Mr Maeda spat on his palms and assumed
his own. He waggled his bum in the manner of WG Grace stepping up to
bat. Kaneda and Tetsuo stopped punching each other. Jim Lazer gritted
his teeth and winced in sympathy. Usagi fainted. Akane Tendo raised a
hand to her mouth in horror. Ranma Saotome broke into a cold sweat and
turned into a girl. Rally Vincent looked up from her copy of Soldier
of Fortune. Andrew Huang choked as some Dr Pepper went down the wrong
way. Rei Ayanami just stared. Biles continued to look on calmly and I
thought "fifty yen" and felt smug.
SWISH! Down came the cane.
FAZDT! A hexagonal network of orange lines surrounded the girl and a
similarly coloured light blinded every single one of us. Mr Maeda
screamed, a real tonsil-ripper that shattered windows into a million
tiny pieces and rattled the chalk off the blackboard. It was loud, it
was bright, it was smoky, it was scary.
It was brown trousers time.
When the smoke cleared, the girl hadn't moved. Mr Maeda, however, was
lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood, fingering the slump of
his right arm and whimpering faintly. His cane had been atomised and a
light film of sawdust and cordite covered the entire front row. Usagi,
who had been woken by the noise, beheld the carnage and threw up over
Ryoko's head. But fortunately the vomit was the same colour as her
hair. This happy fact didn't stop Ryoko punching Usagi's lights out
though.
We stared in a simultaneous stunned stony silence as the girl
straightened up. And then we applauded. She bowed. We ducked. She
laughed and told us that we were safe.
"That's fifty yen well made by _me_ I think," said Biles. I sniffed,
and gagged at the smell from my pants. "I think you might have
disgraced yourself there," he continued.
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The paramedics deemed Mr Maeda unfit to continue teaching for the rest
of the day and carted him off in an ambulance, which WEEWOOed off
across the flowerbeds in a manner finely calculated to cause the school
gardener to bite through the handle of his rake in fury. We were told
to spend the rest of the day in "silent study" and so, naturally, we
absconded through the windows at the earliest available opportunity.
Biles and myself found ourselves in the company of the mysterious girl
as we shared a cigarette and a packet of wine gums behind the old gym.
I took the time to study the girl further.
She was slightly taller than the colour red, slightly thinner than the
smell of autumn, slightly paler than the sound of a swallow calling to
its mate, and her eyes were the same colour as the taste of rosemary at
three o'clock in the morning. There was also something quite strange
about her that I couldn't immediately put my finger on. She was still
grinning.
She had dark red hair that shimmered in the sunlight, with the
exception of her fringe, which was coloured blonde and seemed to glow.
She was dressed in a facsimile of a sailor suit, in the manner of every
girl at the school. And of me, as it happens, as my name had caused
some confusion and led to me being registered as female. My mother had
protested, but the school authorities had simply shrugged and said
rules were rules, and I had better turn up in the correct uniform
designated to my official sex or there would be trouble. I didn't mind
too much as I quite liked dressing up. She also had a dark pointed
mark on each cheek, and two large rabbit ears coming out of the top of
her head. These last caused some inevitable questions.
"Maybe it's not _me_ that's unusual," she said, "but everyone else?"
We conceded that she might have a point. "Why are you dressed as a
girl?" she continued.
"Bureaucracy," I replied. I'd had a lot of practice at this argument.
"I am a victim of the pencil-pushing paper-proffering pedants that rule
the world of the ADULTS that we know nothing of."
"And he's a trannie," added Biles, fanning his nose. "At least he's
changed into his buruma, that smell was really getting on my wick."
"I am _not_ a trannie."
"Yes you are. A trannie who owes me fifty yen." I paid up from my
girly purse. "See?" said Biles to the girl, "he's even got a girly
purse."
"What _is_ a trannie anyway?" I asked, putting my girly purse back into
my girlier schoolbag.
"Search me. I'm only eight, how would I know?"
"Fair enough."
"I think it's a kind of radio," said the girl. "My name's Tuzi by the
way. Do you always hog the cigarette?"
"Sorry," I said, and passed it over. "Do you always eviscerate any
teacher who tries to give you the cane? And how did you know that
would happen, Biles?"
"I know many things." said Biles, leaning back and looking at the sky.
And would this trannie-that-is-a-kind-of-radio be of the sort that
could contact an alien invasion fleet?" he asked. "After you with that
ciggy."
"Here. Mostly, yes. My body doesn't like being hurt, as you'd expect,
so it manifests a field that executes the three-fold law of return on
the perpetrator of the violence. I am sworn to warn anyone trying
something of the danger in which they were placing themselves."
"So, instead of coming over all enigmatic, why didn't you just tell old
dribble face that?"
"Because I really _did_ want to hurt that pervy old bastard." Her grin
grew momentarily wider.
"This one's dead," said Biles, staring mournfully at the now exhausted
dog-end. "Anyone got another fag?"
"Isn't a fag a type of trannie?" I asked.
"Only in America."
"But you're only eight, how should you know?" said Tuzi. "Have one of
mine,"
Tuzi's cigarettes proved to be an exotic blend that neither Biles nor I
had ever experienced anything like before. We sat and smoked and
finished the wine gums and watched the birds and listened to the sounds
and screams of Kei and Yuri playing tennis on the other side of the
gym.
"Where did you get these?" I asked, exhaling sky-blue pink smoke. "And
what _are_ they? I can't read the writing on this packet. And I can't
feel my legs any more either"
"Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm," went Biles.
"They're made from a rare species of tobacco plant that's grown by an
almost extinct race of orange-haired felines in the deserts of Mars,"
she answered. "I got them from this big green Zentraedi who said he
was from a vast alien invasion fleet that was orbiting the Earth beyond
the moon. Just before I made him eat his flying saucer."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The sun set in the most amazing display of light I had ever seen. It
complimented the soup dragon and set off the herd of purple giraffes
perfectly. Very Jackson Pollock. We tried to wake Biles up, but he
just mumbled and blew bubbles that floated up, up and up and burst with
a high ringing note and a shower of stars. So we left him to sleep it
off. It was time for tea.
Tea for two, cha cha,
And two for tea, cha cha.
"You're pretty good at that singing," she told me. "And that skirt
really makes those pirouettes work."
"Toast!" I sang. "Just... toast!"
"Right." A flight of heliotrope and azure striped deckchairs flew past
and alighted on the telephone wires.
"Your name is somewhat unusual," I said, coming back to Earth for a
second. "What does it mean?"
She stopped before the hopscotch squares. "Why does everybody think
that an unusual-sounding name has to mean something? I mean, what does
yours mean?"
"I am given to understand that it means 'peace' in some parts of
Tibet," I sat down heavily, as the world was beginning to wobble. "And
some people think it's a little-known Japanese swear word."
"Kaneda and Tetsuo, am I right?" She threw a stone to the farthest
square. "Okay. Then in that case 'Tuzi' means 'rabbit' in Chinese."
"That would explain the ears."
"No, the ears explain the name." Hop, jump, hop, jump, she went.
"Salt, pepper, mustard."
"There's a girl called 'rabbit' in our class," I said. "She's
something of a crybaby though."
"I'm not." She stood with one leg on the nine, one on the eight, one
on the zero and the other on the twenty-three. There was definitely
something strange about this girl.
"No, I don't suppose you are." I shook my head. "I was certain that
this hopscotch court only had ten squares on it," I continued. "You
weren't trying to signal to an alien invasion fleet just then were
you?"
She was suddenly there, inches from the end of my nose. Still grinning
though. "No. Now come on," she hauled me up and we made our move to
the train station.
On the way we walked past Mr Maeda's house. The police were taking
cover behind their cars whilst the Phantom Quest Corp. charged in and
did mighty battle with something green and scaly with seven tentacles.
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At that time I lived in a small village just outside Tokyo that the
Government had built to house all the western workers that came over to
Japan when the vast deposits of silicon chips were discovered
underneath Mount Fuji and the surrounding area. Silicon _chips_, not
just silicon. It is a little-known secret that the reason that Japan
ruled the world in electronics before the Third Impact and the arrival
of the Macross is that all of the chips controlling all that technology
were naturally occurring.
All of them.
For instance, the reason that the Next Generation PlayStation was so
delayed was that the Emotion Engine chip-bearing rock was found to be
directly underneath the Tokyo Tower, and the mine that was dug
underneath could only be dug at night under conditions of the utmost
security.
The village, called Igirisu-on-the-Hill, was a real English village
that had been purchased, demolished, transported brick by brick to
Japan and rebuilt exactly as before. This initially caused some
disgruntlment amongst the Americans that made up a large proportion of
the expatriates, but only until that they realised that what they
really wanted to do was to live in England anyway. They took to
wearing Bermuda shorts and unspeakable Hawaiian shirts and suspended
large cameras on straps around their necks, and went around at weekends
taking pictures of each other's houses.
To anybody who claims this is a rather stereotypical view of Americans
I merely state that you have probably never lived in a small English
village during the summer. We don't mind too much, and we always laugh
when one of those huge cars gets stuck halfway round the really sharp
corner just before the vicarage.
My father was responsible for the deceiving of visiting academics and
engineers who came in their thousands each year to see how the canny
Japanese came up with all this high-powered technology so quickly. He
maintained a complex of fake laboratories where "resting" actors wore
white coats and went around with clipboards poking circuit boards with
their pencils.
As the village had, in fact, been the place where I was born before it
and I came to Japan, I felt very at home here. There was the post
office and there was the church. There was the village hall, the
cricket ground and the war memorial. There was, of course, the pub,
but of that, more and later.
Our house was opposite the Co-Op, a quaint white-painted thatched
affair. Quite why I asked Tuzi to tea, particularly as it was now
almost eleven twenty-three in the evening, escapes me now. I don't
think I even knew then. I just felt I... had to.
I... had... to...
Still feeling slightly dizzy, which I attributed to the Martian
cigarette (I really should have wondered more about that), I entered
the kitchen, where my mother was gutting a freshly killed lamb. We do
this sort of thing in the country. Did, anyway.
"Mum," I said, gaining some control over my voice for a few moments.
"This is Tuzi, a new girl. Can she stay for tea?"
"Of course she can dear," replied my mother. "Why shouldn't she? She
lives here."
"That's right," grinned Tuzi. "I live here. I'm your sister."
"That's right, she's your sister," scolded my mother. "How could you
forget?"
"That's right," I said. "How could I forget? Hang on a minute."
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I was a little surprised by this revelation, but had long ago learnt
that the parents were always correct in matters where I thought
otherwise, so I didn't kick up too much of a fuss. I _was_ a little
miffed when my mother said that Tuzi would be sleeping in my bedroom,
the BIG bedroom, and I would have to take my rest on the sofa until the
garage had been converted.
At least I could watch late-night television after the parents had gone
to bed. There was an interesting item on the news about a local
teacher who had been arrested in hospital after the police had found
numerous chest freezers filled with human body parts and a gateway to a
dark dimension in his cellar. There was talk of sentencing him to work
in the anime industry, which, as all westerners know is a haven for
vice and depravity, and shouldn't be allowed.
The next day brought some glad tiding with it in the form of a letter
from the school governors, which stated that they had at last resolved
their administration problems and I could now wear trousers to school.
They blamed the error on the year two thousand bug, but as there were
nearly twenty years to go before the advent of the new millennium at
this point, we viewed this excuse with some scepticism.
Still, I togged up in my dark jacket and trousers, and I must say I
felt I looked pretty spiffy, even if the collar was a bit tight, and
the buttons somewhat awkward.
"You've got your jacket on back to front," Tuzi told me as we walked to
school.
"Ah, my thanks. I knew something was wrong."
"Shame mother had to cut your ponytail off, it rather suited you."
"Well, the dress code at school is very clear on hair length. You can
get six months locked in the old boiler room on only bread and water
for breaking it."
She proffered the cigarette packet from yesterday. "Fag?"
"Not any more."
She clouted me about the head, which I rather deserved for such a
remark. "Coffin nail? Gasper? Roll up? Smoke? A snout? A
cigarette?"
"No thanks, I'm trying to cut down," I waved my hands in the gesture
that says "you must be joking". "Besides, that Martian one you gave me
yesterday made me feel odd."
"Martian indeed," she grinned, "They're perfectly ordinary." I
examined the packet, it was a perfectly ordinary brand, which I am not
going to mention by name unless they pay me. I blinked. Something was
not quite right here. "Besides," she continued, "Eight years old is
far too early in life to be giving up smoking."
"Kaneda and Tetsuo have," I said.
"That's only because they're on crack."
I conceded the point and lit up. The world failed to start wobbling.
Maybe I'd just had something dodgy for lunch yesterday. But of one
thing I was certain, and I stated it. "I know you are not my sister."
"Ah," her grin flickered briefly. "Are you so sure?"
"Ab-so-lute-ly," I flicked ash in the manner that I had spent hours
practising in front of the mirror. My mother had got quite annoyed at
all the ash over the carpet, she threatened to confiscate the Zippo
lighter I had received for my seventh birthday if I did it again. "I
have no memories of you before yesterday. And whilst I appreciate your
part in the mutilation of Mr Maeda, I cannot accept this whole Midwich
Cookoo thing."
"I suppose I could concoct a story involving your parents adopting me
without telling you after you left for school yesterday morning."
"But you're not going to." We were getting near the school now, and I
waved to Nuku-Nuku as she flew past on her bike.
"No. I shall merely let you be convinced by your classmates."
"You will not fool them," I was triumphant. If that was the best she
could come up with, this would soon be over. "Biles and the others saw
you and your actions as clearly as I did. And whilst the ADULTS are
easily fooled, we children are made of stronger stuff. No wool-pulling
will work there."
"We'll see."
"We will."
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I marched up to my desk and accosted Biles. "Biles," I said, "who is
this girl?"
"Who are you?" asked Biles.
"See," I said, smugly turning to Tuzi, "He doesn't know you."
"No," said Biles, "Who are _you_? Oh, it's you, I didn't recognise you
in trousers. Given up the cross-dressing have you? Hi Tuzi."
"Is cross-dressing the same as angry dressing?" asked Usagi. "I do
that when I can't find my other sock."
"Who is _she_?" I insisted, jabbing a finger at Tuzi. "And why have
you got an ice pack on your head?"
"She's your sister, you twat," said the Bilester. "Don't you recognise
her? Damn, but this migraine hurts. Had it since yesterday
afternoon."
"Aha! Yes!" I exclaimed. "And what did we do yesterday afternoon?"
Biles looked at me in bemusement. "Can't you remember? After old
Maeda sliced his own right arm off with that blackboard ruler they gave
us the afternoon off. You and I went for a smoke behind the old gym."
"You and I and _her_ you mean."
"No, it was definitely just us. Then I got this migraine and had forty
winks to try and make it go away. Didn't work though, and when I woke
up you'd gone."
"Enough!" I cried, "Enough of this deceit! Everybody! Who is this
girl?!"
"She's your sister," the entire class chorused back. "You twat," they
added.
"No," I said, staring at Tuzi. To give the girl her due, she wasn't
smug at all. She was _still_ grinning. I wondered why the top of her
head hadn't fallen off. "This is wrong, that is _not_ how it happened.
This is _not_ how it should be." I started to shake.
"Calm down," she said, and I was calm, just like that. "It's all going
to be all right. After all, I fixed it so you didn't have to dress up
as a girl anymore, didn't I?"
"Actually, I quite enjoyed that. What do you mean _you_ fixed it?"
"I can always change that back again if you really want."
"No. No, it's all right." I took to shaking my head once more. "But
this _is_ wrong."
"It'll be fine," she soothed. "Trust me on this."
At this point our replacement teacher, Mr Anno, came in and handed
round some volumes of Jungian psychology. There was very little I
didn't already know about Hellenic archetypes even then, so I was able
to spend the lesson in quiet consideration of the last twenty-four
hours.
Trust her.
I did.
I have no idea why, but I did.
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Subi [19/01/00]
subi@mono211.com
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Orchard/4834/
[end]