The first thing Maya Ibuki could do was hear.
beep. beep. beep. beep. beep...
There was a void. It was nothing but darkness and, from some place outside (beyond?) that darkness, beeping.
It was honestly pretty annoying.
beep. beep. beep. beep. beep...
She realized it sounded a lot like an alarm.
She subsequently realized it probably was an alarm.
beep. beep. beep. beep. beep...
Actually, it sounded like it was an alarm clock. In fact, it was her alarm clock. She groped for it blindly.
beep. beep. beep. beep. beep...
The fact that she was able to do so indicated to her that she also had a sense of touch (check!). Once she was reasonably sure her hand was on the alarm clock, she started feeling for the snooze button.
beep. beep. beep. beep. beep...
Come on... snooze... snooze... please... where is iiiiiiit...
"G'ddamm't..."
WHAM.
Ah. Much better.
She decided she was going to continue sleeping - which is what she realized she had been doing - despite the fact that her mouth tasted (check!) funny. She was really much too tired. She found, however, that it was difficult to go back to sleep because she kept on remembering her dream.
It had been a pretty bad dream. There had been a couple good parts, like a bit with sempai that had been very nice. But the vast majority of the parts had been bad, with guns and fighting and dying.
And then there had been the part where Maya had turned into a puddle of orange liquid. But the weird part was that even though she had been a puddle of orange liquid, she had still been able to think. And everyone else had been a puddle of thinking orange liquid as well. That had been pretty fucked up. She was glad it was a dream.
...
Yes. She was very glad. That it was a dream. And that it didn't happen.
...
It better not have happened. No... it didn't. The fact that she felt her body lying on her own smelly (check!) mattress meant it couldn't have happened. It was just a dream. Maybe a very realistic dream, but a dream nonethele-
...
All right. She wasn't fooling anyone. There was no way in Hell that she could have imagined that. It had happened, all right. After all, why else would she be making a checklist?
She opened her eyes (check!) and saw the familiar ceiling of her apartment. A dim, natural light shone in through the tiny window.
She was glad (or more accurately, relieved) that Instrumentality had ended. At least, that her personal Instrumentality had ended; she wasn't sure how many more pitiable souls were still orange puddles. She remembered, fuzzily, escaping from it. She didn't remember the details, but the basic shape was there. Of course, the details tended to be the important things, when it came down to it. The devil was in them, or so she had been told.
She wasn't sure the religious reference was all that appropriate, considering. She had fought devilish Angels, not actual devils. (She hoped.)
She turned over to look at her alarm clock.
5:47 AM
...
Sigh.
Maya made instant ramen for breakfast. Usually she actually bothered to make something, but occasionally she came home too tired to do anything but microwave. And after the end of Project E as she knew it, the events of which could kindly be described as a very large muddle, she felt she deserved a moment of laziness. She thought that maybe she even might not clean up after herself this morning...
Nah. That would be a little too wild. Besides, she didn't want to get her apartment dirty.
She slurped her noodles contemplatively as she felt a sense of relief come over her. Instrumentality had been OK, she supposed, but it was comforting to have some sort of normalcy again. True, she didn't quite know how things would be different post-Third Impact, but simply the ability to get up in the morning and have breakfast was... nice. Even if it was just instant stuff.
That said, she was still pretty tired. Maybe she should've stayed in bed for a bit longer. She usually got up around 5:45, but now that she didn't have any more work to do it didn't seem necessary. It was strange, though. She'd never been this tired waking up before. Not that she was a morning person, but she'd gotten used to the time to some extent.
She was jolted out of her reverie by the ringing of her phone. She minced across the kitchen floor (cold! cold! oh, why hadn't she put on socks?) to answer it.
"Hello?"
"We've got a situation," said a very familiar voice.
"A situation, sempai?" A plethora of confusing emotions rained down on her at hearing her sempai's voice again; she shoved them into the back of her mind.
She had to be professional.
"The Third Angel. It's here."
...
Gotta be professional. Gotta be professional. Gotta be professional. Gotta be profe-
"WHAT?"
ONE LITTLE STEP:
a Neon Genesis Evangelion fan fiction
by einootspork.
"You only live once." - A popular lie.
(Happy new year! But some new years are not so new.)