#and yeah I'd probably have to inflict at least ONE set of Fucked Up Utena Siblings in Full Dysfunctional Sibling Mode on Beat and Rhyme

[regallibellbright]

I’m doing this in parts just for ease of length. Part Two:

They get here and Josh’s cousin is apparently turning into a cow because she was given a magic cowbell. Everyone rapidly adjusts their standards. Even for Joshua, who’s used to this bullshit, it’s kind of weird.

Nanami: Oh, Yoshiya! So good of you to visit us. Joshua: Nanami. That's a very... unique neck piece you have there. Nanami: I kno-o-o-ow! Isn’t this cowbell just divine? It’s a real Sebastian Dior! Obviously you're hopelessly unfashionable, but they're the moo-o-ost luxurious brand in the world, worn by the British Royal Family, and - *Joshua tries not to giggle as this continues. Nanami is of course oblivious.* Shiki: Sebastian Dior, huh? I wasn't aware they made cowbells.

Obligatory stock shot of a farm full of silhouetted cows, complete with yodeling. Once again, the Ohtori newbies readjust their standards of weird fucked-uppedness, because they actually saw that.

Nanami: Well, obviously that's because it's an original piece! But I wouldn't expect someone of such plebeian tastes to understand someone as fashionable as I have. Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho! Beat: *Ready to FIGHT on Shiki’s behalf. Neku and Rhyme also look pretty damn furious but will probably try to destroy her verbally first.* Shiki, stopping him: She's clearly brought this *gestures to Nanami in her cowbell and matching cow-print gym uniform and her mooing* on herself. Let's just leave her.

Joshua: Well, Nanami, you’ve been entertaining as always. Is your brother around? Nanami: No, for weeks now he's been holed up in his room. But I guess you can try. You always amuse him so-o-o. Joshua: Right. You still live in the same house?... Great. Time to go.

Beat: Yo, ain't that cowbell for –

Second obligatory stock shot showing a silhouetted cow with an identical cowbell around its neck. This is only marginally less weird the second time it happens.

Rhyme: Yes.

Meeting Touga goes well, which is to say: He doesn't leave his room, he is sullen and pathetic the entire time, and if he doesn't call Joshua a slur, he certainly implies one. Joshua asks Touga to give Saionji his regards in a tone that says "I have imagined your death MANY times and am doing so right now to get through this conversation." Touga does not react to this.

Touga says Saionji is expelled, and Joshua's actually mildly surprised Touga remembers him, before realizing this just means "he's living in the forest being pathetic."

They've finished things with the other Kiryuus in about fifteen minutes each.

Neku: Why did you even bother checking in on these people? Joshua: Because if they get themselves erased, I don't have to do this again. Neku: Or if they win and get to leave. Joshua: Oh, Neku. NO ONE wins the Game in Ohtori except maybe the Composers.

And even then, really only one of them.

This obligation completed, Joshua's heading to see said Composers.

Beat decides that whatever's about to happen will probably be eight layers of mind games and will give him a headache. He's out. Rhyme follows him. This is the smartest decision anyone will make all day.

Unfortunately for them, they run into Miki and Kozue, fresh off the Black Rose duel last episode.

Rhyme, in the face of Incredibly Dysfunctional, Vaguely Incestuous Sibling Relationships Courtesy of Ohtori: I'm starting to see why Joshua invited us. Misery loves company.

All right, the initial draft was too long to be postable, but here we go

TWEWY/Utena crossover, taking place circa Cowbell of Happiness on Utena’s end and sometime post-OG on TWEWY's, not necessarily Neo-compliant. (Don’t question the timeline too hard, it won’t hold up at all even with Ohtori Time Weirdness, but half the reason this exists is to put Neku Sakuraba in the Bad Therapy Elevator.)

The thing about Ohtori is that it simultaneously is and is not part of the existing UG structure. It functions, in many ways, like a UG under the control of an extremely powerful Composer who's exerting a LOT of control over the environment. (Which extends beyond the school proper into the nearby town and forest. The city from Episode 33 may have been another illusion or may have been Akio getting permission to enter someone else's territory, but the highway he drives down during the radio segments is still part of Ohtori's sphere of influence.) There is no RG in Ohtori, but somehow time has not frozen the way it would in an Inversion. It seems, on the surface, like a pleasant place. Imagination is refined and Soul is (eventually) recycled through the Duel structure. It has a relatively low erasure rate, an oddly high intake rate, and functionally ZERO people who leave except through erasure (the last graduate was a decade ago,) but Imagination rates are stable and sustainable, somehow. No one's entirely sure how exactly its Game operates - the line between "Player" and "Reaper" doesn't meaningfully exist, the closest thing to Officers are the duelists of the Student Council who are allegedly Players, the time frame per cycle is inconsistent, it's not actually clear if everyone taking part in the Game is actually dead or if everyone in the Ohtori UG is actually part of the Game and either way they're all interacting with each other, and the results are, again, completely inexplicable. The records are terrible, too. But at the same time, no one wants to know what's going on there.

Because then there's the part where its governors are arguably a step beyond 'deity' and more like loose personifications of narrative concepts. No one's sure exactly how old they are, or if they were human in origin once or have always been what they are. No one's sure which one is actually the Composer - siblings Anthy Himemiya and Akio Ohtori have shared, stolen, counter-stolen, freely ceded, “freely ceded,” and combined abilities so thoroughly over the eons that even THEY probably no longer remember how things started, or know who holds the power now. If you separated them, odds are they’d both lose their powers entirely. Policy is to treat them both as Composers of the same UG. Akio is definitely the one who exerts stronger control over the Duelists, but Anthy's the one responsible for Ohtori being a surreal timeless bubble of symbolism, dreamlike architecture, and bizarre animal-related shenanigans.

(The rest of the Higher Planes probably know, or at least suspect, how dysfunctional THAT relationship is. The abuse, the incest, the ways Anthy gets mistreated in her role as the Rose Bride, the million swords of hate. Using Duelists as sacrificial pawns as part of their whole game isn't strictly speaking a problem. The fact that any given Proxy only really belongs to one of them, but they work together with each other to manipulate those Proxies is much more questionable. But anyone who's interested in helping realized a long time ago that doing that would require either of them to accept help. That's not happening any time soon. It's easier and less frustrating to just keep your distance.)

No one likes Ohtori. It's allowed to keep existing mainly because the alternative means dealing with Akio and Anthy way more often, firsthand, and also because no one is entirely sure they COULD get rid of it. Doing that would probably mean somehow managing to erase one or both of the Composers, and again, they're more concepts than anything else. The Prince, however much he's fallen (or claims to have fallen,) and the Witch and Rose Bride and Eternal Bearer of the Swords of Hate and whatever much she might have been, once. But they all have a vested interest in making sure that it isn't, like. Expanding or anything. So occasionally you have to send someone in there to check on it, because the outer barriers are so strong you CAN'T keep tabs on it without going in there. For an Angel, it's safe to go in and come out.

Somewhere in the realm of twentyish years ago, Touga and Nanami Kiryuu got sucked into the hell nexus that is Ohtori Academy. Some time after that, their cousin Yoshiya Kiryuu became Composer of Shibuya. (Their names are written with the same kanji but officially localized differently, at 2-1 Joshua was outnumbered so I'm using the Utena romanization here.)

They're probably still in there! Time isn't real inside Ohtori! They won't remember how long they've been there or how old he's supposed to be in relationship to them! They may not actually remember he exists when he's not there in front of him!

... No, this wasn't something you get to refuse, Kiryuu. Someone has to check in on the hell school every few years. Go visit your cousins. Consider how lucky you are that you can still see some of your nominally-human family.

At no point in this did anyone ask Joshua what his cousins are like, or if he actually liked them. He's been on Ohtori Duty every 3-5 years since he took over and has been hoping for their erasure ever since.

And so eventually, some time after the events of the original game, Joshua shows up at Hachiko with a PARTICULARLY insincere smile asking if anyone wants to come meet his cousins who are studying at a school they've never heard of, because it's actually inside its own exclusive little nightmare dimension!

The Gang, understandably, Has Some Questions about this. Starting with "Why would ANYONE agree to that?"

On the other hand, they're also kind of morbidly curious how terrible something has to be for JOSHUA to call it a nightmare dimension. And the fact that he apparently has cousins who he's in something resembling contact with.

... Once Neku and Rhyme were curious enough to say yes, Shiki and Beat pretty much had to agree too, just to make sure the others get back safely (or everyone gets stuck in the hell dimension together.)

And so, armed with no information whatsoever and the Angelic equivalent of "Property Of Joshua Kiryuu, Do Not Put In Duels" tags, it's time for a semi-metaphorical interdimensional bus ride to Ohtori!

This will be a terrible time for all involved.