Four Beasts
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Disclaimer: Neon Genesis Evangelion belongs to Studio Gainax & Hideaki Anno. I'm just working on an expansion set.
Warnings: Major character death in story; Discussions of suicide
Credit to girls_are_weird on LJ for the cover image
"Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional." - Haruki Murakami, in What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
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Misato has everything for a reunion with Asuka on a chilly winter day: water pouch, cigarettes, sausage-like packets of instant field rations and loaded pistol.
She doesn't want to take any chances. This is, after all, Asuka.
She climbs out of the metro station, frees herself from the crowd. There, she locates the nearest road and finds the route to the meeting point at the trailhead.
She hasn't been to this part of Taipei before. But she spots the 101 tower, an ever-present landmark rising above the rooftops, and she knows she's just several kilometres from downtown. Even then, the army makes its presence felt: soldiers loiter at traffic junctions, and an armoured vehicle sits like a fat cat at the side of the road.
High above her, dark clouds brood behind the hills. Wind ruffles the trees. Misato thinks – knows – that it will rain later. Not a good day for a hike.
The road narrows and turns, eventually revealing the start of the trailhead up into the hills. As she rounds the last bend, Misato prepares herself. Deep breath. Stand tall. Look straight. Don't be afraid.
She sees her: Asuka leans at the bottom of a winding thread of stairs cut into the rock. One of her legs jerks to an invisible rhythm. She's staring out, absorbed in something far away, so that she doesn't turn until Misato's right beside her.
"Hello Asuka," Misato says.
"You're early. For once."
Asuka stands. The first thing Misato sees is her height. She's grown taller since they last met.
She takes in her former charge in a single glance: the teased-out corona of hair, touched up with bolts of cereal blonde at the tips; the faint crop of freckles splashed across Asuka's cheek, like burnt confetti; and down to the long, lean legs sheathed in branded synthetic fabric that's hard to come by with all the rationing in the past few years.
But when Misato looks up to Asuka's eyes, they dart away. First down, then back up at the trail.
"You ready?" she asks, and without waiting for an answer says, "let's go."
That's it. No hello. No small talk. Asuka hefts her shoulders and starts up the trailhead.
Misato falls into place behind Asuka as they climb. At that moment she notices something else. It's a faint, syrupy odour, wafting like a spectral cloud behind Asuka. It's a familiar smell, and Misato takes a while before she understands what it is: LCL.
She's winded just after the halfway mark.
The moss-splattered stairs go on forever, flanked by the arms of young trees. At every interval, Misato has to pause for a few seconds and take a deep breath. She's heard that Xiangshan wasn't a walk in the park, but how did she get so unfit?
Asuka clambers on. She takes two steps at a time, doesn't break her pace except to glance back. Her eyes downcast, lips parted. Misato can't place the look on the younger girl's face.
She continues the climb. At one point it's so slippery she has to find purchase with her hands, nearly crawling. Misato wills the summit to come down to her, pressing on, her breath tusking from her nostrils. The last steps strain her calves, and she breaks onto even ground, vision dizzy.
"Over here."
She steadies herself, stumbles over to Asuka. The younger girl has already claimed a place under a rest-stop shelter at a ledge of the summit, straddling the concrete bench.
Misato isn't sure if it's the view or the exertion that causes her breath to catch. Beyond Asuka, she can see the entirety of downtown Taipei, with the 101 tower as its centrepiece, its top dipped in fog. Smaller buildings sprout around its base. Windows wink sunlight. Eddies of traffic swirl along roads. Far beyond, in the haze, lies the faint LCL-red sea.
"I prefer the view at night," Asuka says.
It's the first thing Asuka has said that's not an order or veiled slight at her character. So Misato plays along.
"What's so special about Elephant Mountain at night?"
"The lights."
"Really?"
"They remind me of Tokyo-3 sometimes."
"You must come here often."
"When I need to."
"It's a long way from HQ."
"The place helps me think about stuff."
"You have a lot to think about recently, huh?"
Asuka turns to her, face clenched in a frown. Misato knows she's hit something. But she doesn't pursue it – not yet. There'll be plenty of time. Instead, she reaches into her pack, fishes out a cigarette and lights it.
"Do you want me to pass you the –"
"Later," says Asuka.
Asuka doesn't flinch as the cloud of smoke engulfs them. Before Misato can finish, she stands and begins walking down the trail without a word.
Misato knows, and she knows Asuka knows she knows, that they'll eventually talk about Shinji. So she'll wait to see who brings it up first.
Misato first heard about Shinji while she was in the field. A text came through her emergency phone, and she didn't see it until she returned to her rendezvous in Changsha. The news was deliberately vague.
In those short moments, she remembered a certain out-of-body numbness: her phone like dead weight, her body exhausted to the point of blankness. She remembered wishing everything were different – from the pale interior of that safe house she was staying in, to the pointless technicalities of why she was in the field. She remembered the bright halo of light coming in from her window warping – then sharpening – and then blurring again, then tears pooling in her eyes.
She remembered going through the motions of what she know understands as grief: returning to HQ, debriefing her troops, writing reviews, applying for leave – the ritual cycle of an officer with her company. Only to return to a pristine, empty house in the secure silence of the city's diplomatic quarter.
She remembered the dark silence post-mission, shadows crowding her room, memories flooding her head. The stench of LCL, suffocating, blinding even. Until, Rei, of all people, called her emergency phone and asked, "Are you all right, Colonel Katsuargi?"
Misato's phone buzzes along the trail to Tiger Mountain. Asuka pauses like an animal on alert, and Misato nearly walks into her back. When Misato makes no effort to answer it, they continue on wordlessly.
They move at Asuka's pace along a plateau of sorts. Forests rise from hills on their right, decorated with beards of mist. On their left, Misato thinks the view here is even better: Taipei languishing below in a massive urban sprawl set against the pink sea.
Clouds race towards them from the city. Occasionally, the entire trail is wrapped in white, leaving the red of Asuka's ponytail the only thing visible. The strong winds stab through the opening in Misato's windbreaker.
"We're heading to Jiuwufeng," Asuka says.
"What?"
"9-5 peak."
"Why are we going there?"
"It's the highest point. And it's along the way."
The plateau begins to rise. The well-worn path gives way to a gentle gradient of cobblestone steps, overgrowth with hairy spikes of grass. Then, they reach a flight of stairs, overlaid with a soggy red carpet. It curls up and narrows into a rusting metal scaffolding squeezed to the side of a boulder. Here, they meet the first person on the trail.
"Good morning, auntie," Asuka says in Mandarin.
The grandmother nods serenely. She's carrying an umbrella in one hand and a handbag in the other. Remarkably, she balances and navigates the steps like a mountain goat, sure and certain. Then, the grandmother takes Asuka's hands and presses her knobbly little fingers on them. She says something in the local dialect, Asuka replies, punctuating it with a short trill of a laugh.
Misato realises it's been decades since she's seen Asuka come to anything closer than a smile.
Misato gives the grandmother room to pass. But she doesn't need to. Instead the grandmother says to her, "Man man lai."
"What?"
"She says walk carefully," Asuka translates.
"Could you tell her the same?"
"Nah. She's up here every day."
Misato huffs, realises she can see her breath. She puts one foot before the other as she follows the turns up the spiralling staircase. Another auntie descending the stairs says hello to Asuka.
"Quite the local celebrity, aren't you?" Misato says.
"You get used to the people here," comes the voice from ahead. "That's what exile is for isn't it?"
Misato doesn't know what to say. She's starting to pant again when the heavens open up with a grumble of thunder. Rain pings on the metal, moistens her grip on the metal bar curling with the stairs. Asuka forging ahead, undaunted. She takes the stairs without a need for the handlebars.
Rain blurring her vision, she steps on an uncarpeted side of the metal step and nearly slips. She takes a moment to stabilise herself before continuing. Of all the times it has to rain –
At the top of stairs is a magnificent lookout point overshadowing 101 tower. But Asuka has moved on up the trail. So Misato has just moment to take in the view: clouds blockading the skies above the city, alternating shadows of rain and fog making patterns in the distance.
The trail arcs upwards slightly. She can feel the uptick in gradient over the crunch of battered concrete and dried leaves. Ahead she watches Asuka into a low-floating cloud, as if passing through into another dimension.
For a brief moment, everything turns milky white. Icy pricks of water batter her face, the wind slicing at her side. She keeps her eye on the trail, on step in front of the other on the incline. Misato thinks, this must be what it's like up there, in Asuka's mind. Still, she pushes ahead, going forward –
Until the cloud clears, pushed away by wind. Misato walks along a ridge, both sides sheer drop-offs smothered in trees. Ahead, Asuka's standing atop a huge boulder, on which the words in Chinese are painted in pagoda red.
"We're here," she says.
When Misato attempts to get up on the boulder, Asuka scoots aside. Misato thinks that it's the most kindness she's shown today.
There isn't much of a view. Even if she were taller, there's still too much vegetation to properly see the city. What Misato realises, though, is that they're above the clouds. Below them, the shuffling of rain on leaves is mixed with the clouds descending the ridge.
Asuka surveys the city. Her hair's streaked across her face in slick wet tendrils. A crucifix of sweat has bloomed from her back to where her shirt ends at the tailbone, giving Misato some reassurance that she's not that unfit.
"This place is impressive," Misato says. "Thanks for taking me here."
"You're welcome."
"Who knew a place like this even exists?"
"Well, you're the second person I've brought here."
"Eh? Who's the –"
Without any instigation, Asuka says, "That baka, Shinji."
She'd spoken to Rei at the funeral when she returned. It was held in a bleached-white, sterile space at NERV's new Osaka headquarters, with windows flushed wide to the bay. A man presided over the service in a vague, non-denominational manner, leaving after saying some pseudo-spiritual catchphrases. Misato didn't blame him. What would you say about the soul of man who shaped and rejected the afterlife?
Alone there with Rei and Shinji, Misato felt something open inside of her. Her heart, perhaps. Or her conscience. Or her sense of justice. That possibly the most important man in the world since Third Impact had just two people seeing him off.
It wasn't supposed to end like this, she remembered thinking. Didn't she throw her body into a storm of bullets so he could pilot Unit 1 back in Tokyo-3? Didn't she – in one of those moments deep in her memory – watch her own blood flood the floor as he descended into the cage?
Yet there she was. On the edge of her own self. Watching Rei, forever youthful, stroke Shinji's serene face. Watching Rei, whose expression was a disturbing masterpiece in emotionlessness, trying to figure out how to mourn.
She was only holding it together because she'd cried and cried already.
"He wouldn't have felt anything," Rei told her, when she asked. Just two additional pills and a long sleep. "Maybe that's why he looks so peaceful."
"Did he leave a note?"
"Yes. It was addressed to just three people."
Misato already knew what Shinji had said even before she tore open the envelope and began reading. But she still had to control herself, turn away so no one saw her shaking.
"He didn't say why, didn't he?" asked Rei.
"No."
"Sometimes there is no reason."
"Yeah."
"What about the last note?"
Rei gave her the one addressed to Asuka. For the first time, Misato saw discomfort on her face.
"I don't think she would want to see me – after – after this," Rei said.
"I'll do it then," Misato said, before she could help herself.
They waited there in the room, not facing each other, both of them too lost to speak. There was a moment when Misato thought she was crying. Then she realised it was Rei. Not openly crying, but blinking rapidly, her lashes flooding with tears.
"Sometimes there is no reason," Rei repeated, as if to reassure herself.
As they descend from 9-5 peak, they pass through the clouds and the rain returns in earnest. Misato zips her windbreaker to her throat, settles into the hood. The rain's so heavy that droplets of water still worm their way down her neck. Asuka, unfazed, walks on, drenched.
They traverse the ridge, down rain-washed stone steps. Then, they pass through a temple built by the hillside, mercifully out of the rain for several minutes. Asuka pauses to see the stone-faced statues, their bodies dusted with dirt and fenced in by joss sticks. She stops there for a moment, gives a near imperceptible nod and moves on.
Back into the rain, back along the edge of some massive boulders – and Misato is trudging through ankle-deep mud on the trail in pursuit of her friend.
"You think we should turn back?" Misato asks.
"I know what I'm doing."
"I never said you didn't. I'm asking if it's safe to hit two more peaks in this weather."
Steam rises from her mouth as Misato speaks. Asuka doesn't even bother to turn. She just pauses, rain-soaked ponytail stuck to the back of her neck in a delta of splayed hair. Misato keeps her distance. Even after all these years – even now – she wouldn't want to be near an angry Asuka.
"We're going," Asuka says.
"You're not afraid of landslides? Or rockfalls?"
"We have to go."
"Why?"
"Because of –" she begins.
As Misato watches Asuka's lips form the words, she already knows why. Or at least now, here in the rain, she thinks she understands.
She knows people mourn in different ways. Some weep. Some drink. Maybe pills, porn or knifes get involved. Others, like her, prefer the distraction of commitment. And then there are those who lose themselves in something else. Like Asuka.
"Shinji wouldn't have wanted us to get lost on this mountain in a storm."
Half-turned, Asuka finally pulls a hand out from her defensive stance to knuckle rain from her eyes.
"Maybe he would," is all she says.
She didn't know why Asuka had not attended the funeral. She let it go. They were all adults now.
What she didn't let go was her duty to pass Shinji's last words – that envelope – to her. In the days after meeting Rei, it had become a kind of sacred duty to Misato, to close the loop, possibly see Asuka for the very last time now that the link holding them together was gone.
While Shinji preferred a quiet life as a civilian, Asuka's post-Third Impact trajectory eclipsed them all. Misato knew, from afar, the highs of her military career. Asuka had cultivated an image of herself as a tragic, talented figure, accomplishing the work of her adopted country.
Asuka's achievement list was downright intimidating. It was list unbound by the constraints of NERV and the coming apocalypse. And, perhaps not lost on Misato, by Shinji.
Misato had taken the overnight shuttle flight to Taipei on the assumption that Asuka had heard, and she would want to be given the letter in person. Truth be told, they had not talked for a long time, and all messages were diverted to the press secretaries of the various units Asuka worked for.
Misato had expected a short, curt meeting. A conversation across a desk, in uniform, at Taipei HQ in Shilin, surrounded by implicit reminders that life would go on.
She didn't expect to be up to her ankles in mud, cowering at lightning, soaking wet.
Asuka goes off trail. Now the route has degraded into a muddy worm of dirt, hemmed in on both sides by spilling ferns and scrub. Lightning blinks through the canopy of sloped trees. The rain's getting heavier.
Misato isn't sure what to do. She grasps at theories and questions. She wonders: is this a test? Should she do something before someone gets hurt?
Then, Asuka stops. The trail ends. There's nothing but overgrow bushes and the thick, regimental crush of trees. Misato can see through the mist that there might've been a trail once: crushed branches, tags flagging in the wind, more boulders ahead. But for now, there's no way through.
"We'll have to go back," she says.
Asuka surveys the trail. From behind, Misato can see steam rising from her quiet, but deep breaths.
"Why are we doing this?" Misato asks.
"To get to Leopard Mountain."
"Why?"
"Because we couldn't go there the last time."
"We?"
"Me and that baka Shinji."
He's always in somewhere in the background, Misato imagines, a true ghost. Then Asuka tries to scale the first boulder, and Misato thinks they will all be ghosts too if this goes on.
For a very brief moment, Misato thinks of the gun in her bag that she could use.
Instead, she makes a move to take Asuka's hand. She palms a rain-slicked island of flesh, the forward momentum pushing her towards Asuka. Distracted by the touch, Asuka misses the next step, her body teeters sideways, she slips, one knee grazing rock –
But Misato catches her before she falls.
The forest briefly illuminates in strobe of lightning, and thunder crashes through the trees. For the first time in years, Misato think Asuka looks smaller, uncertain, back to the days in Tokyo-3, under siege by Angels.
Then, Asuka gently removes Misato's stabilising hand. She tends to the scraped knee. When Asuka's hands come away, Misato sees it's sticky and viscous, but not with rain. Sweet, like overripe fruit – LCL.
"That smell."
"I know."
"How –"
"I don't know," Asuka says. LCL mixed with rain carves a single channel down the knob of her knee. "But only one other person understood."
"I don't think he did."
"What?"
"If he did, he wouldn't have done what he did."
"What makes you –"
"Sometimes there's no reason, Asuka," Misato says. And then she adds, "It wasn't your fault."
Asuka crumbles to the ground. Misato sees her taking deep, long breaths.
"I was the last one to talk to him," Asuka says. "And he never asked me for help."
"He never asked anyone."
"He – left –"
"Don't be like him," Misato holds out a hand. "I can help."
Asuka looks up. Raindrops dot her cheeks. It's impossible for Misato to tell if she's actually tearing.
"I don't –"
"Then why did you drag me up the mountain?"
"Because you were the only one who could possibly understand."
"I do," Misato says. "So let me help."
More lightning. The drumroll of thunder echoes deep within the forest, so powerful it hurts Misato's chest. Asuka stares at her – no, staring beyond her – something on her lips the verge of being spoken. She looks up at the rocks leading to Leopard peak, then at her leg, and then to her muddied arms.
Asuka takes her hand.
Once Misato saw Shinji at the NERV HQ in Osaka. He was there for a routine check. She had a post-mission debriefing to attend. They met in the corridors.
"You didn't tell me you were coming to NERV," she said.
"Oh. I just didn't want to trouble anyone."
Now as she walks down from the hillside in the rain, Asuka in front of her, this memory of Shinji is what comes to her. This quiet man in the corridor of NERV HQ trying not to make things inconvenient for her – or anyone else.
She has another brief moment when she thinks of the peaceful man in casket, being wept over by Rei.
This when Asuka turns.
"We're not going back up," Misato says, putting a firm edge to her voice.
"No, look," she points.
The driving rain streaming down her eyes, she turns and sees the forested hills. Above the mist are multiple humps, rises hardly discernible amidst the greenery, lurking over them.
"Which mountain is that?" she asks Asuka.
"I'm not sure myself," she says. "Shinji and I never made it up there."
These thoughts fill her mind as she marches Asuka down the mountain: Shinji and Asuka going through the exact same motions as she did just minutes earlier. That some things repeat themselves. That you never really know someone, despite weathering the apocalypse with them.
"Shinji left you this."
They're at a hole-in-the-wall eatery somewhere near the trailhead when Misato decides she should give Asuka the letter. As Asuka orders food and returns with tea, she digs through her waterlogged backpack for Shinji's last words.
She lays it on the table between them like a peace offering: a wet, almost-see-through slab of paper.
Asuka places her fingers on the letter, closes her eyes like she's drawing power from it. Under the damp curtains of her hair, eyes shrouded, Misato wonders if she's actually praying.
Then Asuka takes a deep breath, runs her hands over her face, tucks her wet hair behind her ears. Her face returns to the sharp, quiet stare of hours ago, when they first began their ill-fated hike.
"Thank you," Asuka says.
"Thank you for bringing me here," Misato replies.
Asuka motions to her to eat first. Misato obliges. Steam from her tea wafts into the cool air.
Her coat's still sticky with all the rain, and the unopened letter waits on the table between them. There's so much more to do, and Misato doesn't know where it will lead.
But for now she eases into the moment – just her and Asuka eating in silence while the rain begins to clear.
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END
NOTES:
I've been absent from posting fanfiction for almost 2 years because of some personal issues. So I'm committed to putting out all the pieces I've written in between now & then.
This story came from an idea that began in 2016, and is based of a personal experience that happened while I was hiking. The 'Four Beasts' is, if you've already guessed, an actual hiking trail in the hills surrounding Taipei (and a very nice one at that). I have no answer as to why I decided to make that the setting, except that once the idea came into my head, I knew it wouldn't go away until I wrote it down. 'Four beasts' is also a very uncreative reference to the four characters that make EVA sing: Shinji, Asuka, Misato & Rei.
Ever since Cosmonaut, I've been partial to a nuanced, understated version of Asuka that's not neither an adult child nor a firebrand. And because so many stories of Asuka & Misato centre around competition, I wanted to write something with slow-building tension, focusing on their concern for the one person that unites them: Shinji.
Questions (to help me improve my writing):
1. Is Asuka's character in this story too mellow? (What can be added or taken away from my portrayal of her?)
2. What aspects of any of the four characters in the story - Shinji, Asuka, Misato & Rei - would you improve?
Thank you for reading! Comments & critique welcome.