------
Conspiracies
----
The guards dragged the prisoner into the cold, dimly-lit interrogation
room. He was garbed in dirty-gray prison uniform, his wrists bound by
handcuffs behind his back, his eyes blindfolded, his face smudged and
unshaven. The guards brusquely threw him down on his knees in front
of the prim young Captain.
"Leave us," she ordered, in an angry bark. The guards left quickly, efficiently,
in a rhythmic shuffle of boots, and closed the metal door behind them with a
heavy echoing clang.
The Captain approached her prisoner with deliberate slowness, then in one violent
motion she roughly yanked the blindfold away from him, forcing him to yelp in pain,
as he fell, cursing, to the floor.
"Well, I hope you're happy," she said softly, menacingly. "Have you
no idea in your empty cranium what trouble you've caused?"
Through the blurred vision of his beaten-up eyes, the captured spy stared up at
his captor. He regarded blue eyes ablaze with anger, pointed like steel daggers at
him. Blue eyes on a pretty face that still looked young, a red beret crowning her long
auburn-red hair. The insolent mouth. The old familiar scowl, the menacing growl.
Ikari's gaijin bitch still looks as pretty as ever, he thought to himself, feeling a
sudden pang of sorrow for his long lost friend.
"Have you nothing to say for yourself?" she continued, her voice growing louder.
The tired spy could still imagine, despite the pain wracking his head and his body, what
the tall silhouette of the Captain's body looked like, under the skirt of that red US
Air Force dress uniform. He suppressed a grim grin starting to form on his lips,
remembering how they, the cocky young Stooges and the insolent girl, had first met
years earlier.
His reverie was prompty rewarded with a slap to the face, hurling him
backwards to the floor.
Oh, that hurt.
"What the hell have you done to yourself now, Suzuhara!?" she screamed. The rising
anger in her voice sent a strange shiver down his spine. "When is it going to stop!?"
Touji struggled to lift himself up despite the handcuffs. He sighed,
glaring sullenly back at her. He wondered, within the ball of rage in his
heart, how a certain other mean girl he once knew would have looked like
had, she not...
"This was personal, Soryu," he finally whispered, bowing his head to close his
eyes. "Hikari was your friend, once. You... you of all people should understand!"
"Oh, damn you to hell!"
"I've been in hell for fourteen years, Captain," he replied icily, glaring back
at her. "No thanks to the Ikaris."
He closed his eyes then, to wait for the blow he knew was coming.
Only it didn't.
He opened his eyes, after what seemed to him to be a long time, and glanced
up at his interrogator. But her back was turned to him now.
"Take him away," she ordered, matter-of-factly.
The prison door opened, and the guards came back, and roughly dragged him
away.
The Captain, the former Asuka Langley Soryu, stood alone for a long while afterwards.
And eventually, in the dark, she raised a hand to her left cheek, to wipe away her tears.
***
"It's a message from the Euro-American task force in Kadena, sir.
From Captain Langley."
"Yes?" The young officer continued to stare out the window of his
office, his back to his subordinate.
"It says: 'As agreed upon among the civilian authorities in Denver,
Geneva, and Beijing, the assassination of General Waseda of the UN
Transitional Authority for Japan is to be treated as an
internal matter for the United Nations Command to settle on its own.
Hence, the suspect will be turned over to you at the Tokyo-3 DMZ, Checkpoint
Alpha, at 1400 hours tomorrow. Standard DMZ procedures apply, and as
such I have requested General Zhao to send a representative of the
Russo-China Brigade to witness the prisoner turnover.
Regards,
Captain Asuka Langley Soryu, USAF
Oberstleutnant, Luftwaffe von Bundesrepublik Deutschland
CO, 2nd Special Operations Wing, II Fallschirmjäger Geschwader,
Euro-American Brigade, UN Command' "
"I see. You know what this means, Lieutenant."
"Sir, Langley's unit is the only one authorized to use S2-powered aircraft
and AT-powered infantry armorsuits. That the UN would deploy its most precious
commandos to do this so-called minor operation can only mean one thing."
"Tell the Captain we will be ready for her prisoner as she requests,
Lieutenant. I'll leave the details up to you; make it look good, for
old Zhao's benefit."
"Yes, sir."
"And kindly send a message to Dr. Ibuki and General Hyuuga over in
Seoul that their missing KGB agent will be back soon. Send it over
the MAGI link."
"Yes, sir."
"One more thing... Inform the hospital that the patient in Ward 14
will be having a visitor tonight. After visiting hours. He has my
authority."
"Uhm, yes sir."
The young captain turned to face his exec. "Dismissed."
He returned the younger officer's salute, waited for his subordinate to
leave and close the door, before he turned to look back out the
window, at the dead artificial lake of the Geofront and the ruins of
its pyramid. No man's land, off limits to the Great Powers for the
past decade, by order of the United Nations Security Council. It was
his unit's job to enforce the quarantine on its deadly secrets.
He stood there, pensive, for a long while. Pondering the reawakening ghosts of
his past.
"Damn it. You have to stay alive, Touji old buddy, we have work to
do, here and now," he whispers. "Revenge isn't going to bring her
back."
Army Captain Kensuke Aida, intelligence officer in the United Nations
Transitional Authority for Japan (UNTA-J), took his blue
officer's cap and turned to leave his office, still agonizing over the
decisions he must soon make.
"And Asuka. What are you planning? Is NERV working for SEELE, or for the UN, or
for both? Does the Commander have... I don't know..."
***
The Captain stood at attention, squinting her eyes against the solitary
light behind the black-uniformed figure standing high over her on the Command
platform.
"Reporting as ordered, Commander."
Irony of ironies, she thought silently to herself, that she would expend
her lost youth rebelling against authority, and waste her childhood nightmares
running away from puppetmasters, only to become a soldier in her adulthood.
Existing simply to obey orders without question. Even orders coming from the person
that duty obligated her to report to at this troubling, very awkward, moment.
"It has been a while, Second Child."
It was the same cold voice that she remembered from her youth, still the same
mysterious, inscrutable calm. The Commander's eyes were still hidden behind the
black glasses, mouth hidden by hands clasped together in almost prayerful thought.
So like the elder Ikari, thought Asuka. She shivered at the realization, and shoved aside
her thoughts, willing her professional demeanour not to break.
"Our reactivation of the NERV Military Section is proceeding on schedule, Commander. There
were no unexpected incidents during our takeover of UNTA Japan, since Captain Aida has been
so cooperative. Also, as instructed by UN Command, my 2nd Special Operations Wing is
detached from the Euro-American Brigade and officially transferred to NERV, as of today.
We await your orders, Commander."
"Very good, Captain. I trust that you know what I expect you to do next?"
"I will make arrangements to retrieve the Third Child, Commander. I am certain he
will not resist."
"Very good, Captain. Please send my thanks to your government for their cooperation-"
"I will pick him up myself. That will reassure him."
"You?"
"Yes, Commander... with your permission, of course."
"Very well, Captain. Subcommander Shigeru will meet with you this afternoon to
arrange the details. You are dismissed."
"Commander."
The Captain saluted smartly, then turned around on her heels to head out the door, but the
Commander's voice suddenly stopped her.
"Asuka."
She halted in her tracks, and turned around, uncertainly. "Commander?"
The Commander brought up a hand to her glasses, as if to slide them up her nose, but
instead she removed them. The Commander's bare, scarlet eyes regarded Asuka,
as the redhaired Captain secretly wrestled down an urge to flinch under the Commander's
intense stare.
"It... is good to see you again, Asuka."
"I... well..."
"I must say this before duty forces me to put us all in danger once again. I am...
glad you are well. You and Shinji."
"Rei, you do know that we... I mean..." Asuka sighed, and continued. "Thank you for
you concern, Commander."
The Captain turns around, and leaves in a rush, closing the door behind her.
Leaving Commander Ayanami staring, her face expressionless, at the spot that
Captain Langley had stood on.
***
He's getting too old for this, the morose young man muttered to himself.
The shaking, dilapidated old Boeing 737 had been flying for too long. The
thought kept turning the young man's knuckles white. A strange thing, to be
back in civilization, he mumbled silently to himself, as he gazed down out
the window at the sprawling urban capital of the ASEAN Protectorate, his
mind blocking out the flight attendant's bored droning instructions
for the small handful of mostly UN passengers. He scanned the
now-clear skies. The Indian Air Force fighter escorts that had been
tailing the old airliner had veered away as the plane made its final
approach for the airport runway.
He had been asleep during most of this flight from Lhasa to Kuala
Lumpur. He had been plagued by nightmares throughout the flight, but
at least the sleeping pills had kept him from thinking about the
rackety old plane.
To think he used to be a pilot. A long time ago.
Fighter escorts had not been part of the plan for today. His
security demanded some anonymity, hence he was flying in this
civilian rustbucket and not in one of the UN's deluxe military
transports. Someone very high up had apparently changed his mind in
a hurry.
Something's up, he realized with a shudder. Something really big this
time. But he would have come even if they hadn't asked. He's had
vivid nightmares the past several weeks. She's in trouble. She
needs him.
I wonder how much they've told her, he wondered to himself again. But
then again she had always had a way of knowing things.
He was still holding her letter clutched in his hand.
The letter had arrived, hand-delivered and sealed, by special British SAS
courier a few days before. There were no net or radio links to the
old hilltop monastery that was his refuge in Bhutan, at least to no
one except the UN secret agents that discreetly haunted the place, and
the commanders of his unobstrusive Gurkha security detail.
Still, it had felt good to see her handwriting again. He traced his
fingers over the words, as if by doing so he could touch her hands
again.
He sighed wearily, and closed his eyes.
"Shinji-kun," she had written. "I know we had agreed not to see each
other or to contact each other again until... well, until the time
felt right. But my unit has received orders to prepare for your
arrival, and I volunteered to personally make the arrangements for
you. In fact, I'll meet you in KL for the shuttle hop to Clark Air Base. I hope
you don't mind. I don't know what our scheming politicians, or your sister, have in
mind for us this time, but... you know how I feel about your straying
into danger again. God only knows what you'd do without me holding
your hand. I hope you will at least talk to me, for old time's sake,
baka. With love, Asuka."
He'd be seeing her again in a few minutes. For the first time in
three years. All that time in the monastery, with the old
monks, had given him a sort of peace. But with her...
There was something.
They had come to a secret, mutual understanding fourteen years before.
The intervening years had shoved it aside, in favor of common reality.
Life had blurred his understanding.
Yet it was still there. Like a whisper he was afraid of voicing out,
lest it slip past him again.
He'd be seeing her again in a few more minutes.
He fidgeted uncertainly with the ring on his finger. Come to think of
it, he had never gotten rid of it; he had secretly continued wearing
it.
Even after the separation.
With a sudden lurch, he felt the noisy thud of the airliner's tires
touching down on the runway, the rolling motion of the wheels against
solid unyielding ground, the reassuring force of the wind roaring in
a decrescendo against the old plane's grounded wings.
He would not allow SEELE to take them again, he promised to himself. He would
see the reason for his promise in a few more minutes.
***
To be continued.
Conspiracies
----
The guards dragged the prisoner into the cold, dimly-lit interrogation
room. He was garbed in dirty-gray prison uniform, his wrists bound by
handcuffs behind his back, his eyes blindfolded, his face smudged and
unshaven. The guards brusquely threw him down on his knees in front
of the prim young Captain.
"Leave us," she ordered, in an angry bark. The guards left quickly, efficiently,
in a rhythmic shuffle of boots, and closed the metal door behind them with a
heavy echoing clang.
The Captain approached her prisoner with deliberate slowness, then in one violent
motion she roughly yanked the blindfold away from him, forcing him to yelp in pain,
as he fell, cursing, to the floor.
"Well, I hope you're happy," she said softly, menacingly. "Have you
no idea in your empty cranium what trouble you've caused?"
Through the blurred vision of his beaten-up eyes, the captured spy stared up at
his captor. He regarded blue eyes ablaze with anger, pointed like steel daggers at
him. Blue eyes on a pretty face that still looked young, a red beret crowning her long
auburn-red hair. The insolent mouth. The old familiar scowl, the menacing growl.
Ikari's gaijin bitch still looks as pretty as ever, he thought to himself, feeling a
sudden pang of sorrow for his long lost friend.
"Have you nothing to say for yourself?" she continued, her voice growing louder.
The tired spy could still imagine, despite the pain wracking his head and his body, what
the tall silhouette of the Captain's body looked like, under the skirt of that red US
Air Force dress uniform. He suppressed a grim grin starting to form on his lips,
remembering how they, the cocky young Stooges and the insolent girl, had first met
years earlier.
His reverie was prompty rewarded with a slap to the face, hurling him
backwards to the floor.
Oh, that hurt.
"What the hell have you done to yourself now, Suzuhara!?" she screamed. The rising
anger in her voice sent a strange shiver down his spine. "When is it going to stop!?"
Touji struggled to lift himself up despite the handcuffs. He sighed,
glaring sullenly back at her. He wondered, within the ball of rage in his
heart, how a certain other mean girl he once knew would have looked like
had, she not...
"This was personal, Soryu," he finally whispered, bowing his head to close his
eyes. "Hikari was your friend, once. You... you of all people should understand!"
"Oh, damn you to hell!"
"I've been in hell for fourteen years, Captain," he replied icily, glaring back
at her. "No thanks to the Ikaris."
He closed his eyes then, to wait for the blow he knew was coming.
Only it didn't.
He opened his eyes, after what seemed to him to be a long time, and glanced
up at his interrogator. But her back was turned to him now.
"Take him away," she ordered, matter-of-factly.
The prison door opened, and the guards came back, and roughly dragged him
away.
The Captain, the former Asuka Langley Soryu, stood alone for a long while afterwards.
And eventually, in the dark, she raised a hand to her left cheek, to wipe away her tears.
***
"It's a message from the Euro-American task force in Kadena, sir.
From Captain Langley."
"Yes?" The young officer continued to stare out the window of his
office, his back to his subordinate.
"It says: 'As agreed upon among the civilian authorities in Denver,
Geneva, and Beijing, the assassination of General Waseda of the UN
Transitional Authority for Japan is to be treated as an
internal matter for the United Nations Command to settle on its own.
Hence, the suspect will be turned over to you at the Tokyo-3 DMZ, Checkpoint
Alpha, at 1400 hours tomorrow. Standard DMZ procedures apply, and as
such I have requested General Zhao to send a representative of the
Russo-China Brigade to witness the prisoner turnover.
Regards,
Captain Asuka Langley Soryu, USAF
Oberstleutnant, Luftwaffe von Bundesrepublik Deutschland
CO, 2nd Special Operations Wing, II Fallschirmjäger Geschwader,
Euro-American Brigade, UN Command' "
"I see. You know what this means, Lieutenant."
"Sir, Langley's unit is the only one authorized to use S2-powered aircraft
and AT-powered infantry armorsuits. That the UN would deploy its most precious
commandos to do this so-called minor operation can only mean one thing."
"Tell the Captain we will be ready for her prisoner as she requests,
Lieutenant. I'll leave the details up to you; make it look good, for
old Zhao's benefit."
"Yes, sir."
"And kindly send a message to Dr. Ibuki and General Hyuuga over in
Seoul that their missing KGB agent will be back soon. Send it over
the MAGI link."
"Yes, sir."
"One more thing... Inform the hospital that the patient in Ward 14
will be having a visitor tonight. After visiting hours. He has my
authority."
"Uhm, yes sir."
The young captain turned to face his exec. "Dismissed."
He returned the younger officer's salute, waited for his subordinate to
leave and close the door, before he turned to look back out the
window, at the dead artificial lake of the Geofront and the ruins of
its pyramid. No man's land, off limits to the Great Powers for the
past decade, by order of the United Nations Security Council. It was
his unit's job to enforce the quarantine on its deadly secrets.
He stood there, pensive, for a long while. Pondering the reawakening ghosts of
his past.
"Damn it. You have to stay alive, Touji old buddy, we have work to
do, here and now," he whispers. "Revenge isn't going to bring her
back."
Army Captain Kensuke Aida, intelligence officer in the United Nations
Transitional Authority for Japan (UNTA-J), took his blue
officer's cap and turned to leave his office, still agonizing over the
decisions he must soon make.
"And Asuka. What are you planning? Is NERV working for SEELE, or for the UN, or
for both? Does the Commander have... I don't know..."
***
The Captain stood at attention, squinting her eyes against the solitary
light behind the black-uniformed figure standing high over her on the Command
platform.
"Reporting as ordered, Commander."
Irony of ironies, she thought silently to herself, that she would expend
her lost youth rebelling against authority, and waste her childhood nightmares
running away from puppetmasters, only to become a soldier in her adulthood.
Existing simply to obey orders without question. Even orders coming from the person
that duty obligated her to report to at this troubling, very awkward, moment.
"It has been a while, Second Child."
It was the same cold voice that she remembered from her youth, still the same
mysterious, inscrutable calm. The Commander's eyes were still hidden behind the
black glasses, mouth hidden by hands clasped together in almost prayerful thought.
So like the elder Ikari, thought Asuka. She shivered at the realization, and shoved aside
her thoughts, willing her professional demeanour not to break.
"Our reactivation of the NERV Military Section is proceeding on schedule, Commander. There
were no unexpected incidents during our takeover of UNTA Japan, since Captain Aida has been
so cooperative. Also, as instructed by UN Command, my 2nd Special Operations Wing is
detached from the Euro-American Brigade and officially transferred to NERV, as of today.
We await your orders, Commander."
"Very good, Captain. I trust that you know what I expect you to do next?"
"I will make arrangements to retrieve the Third Child, Commander. I am certain he
will not resist."
"Very good, Captain. Please send my thanks to your government for their cooperation-"
"I will pick him up myself. That will reassure him."
"You?"
"Yes, Commander... with your permission, of course."
"Very well, Captain. Subcommander Shigeru will meet with you this afternoon to
arrange the details. You are dismissed."
"Commander."
The Captain saluted smartly, then turned around on her heels to head out the door, but the
Commander's voice suddenly stopped her.
"Asuka."
She halted in her tracks, and turned around, uncertainly. "Commander?"
The Commander brought up a hand to her glasses, as if to slide them up her nose, but
instead she removed them. The Commander's bare, scarlet eyes regarded Asuka,
as the redhaired Captain secretly wrestled down an urge to flinch under the Commander's
intense stare.
"It... is good to see you again, Asuka."
"I... well..."
"I must say this before duty forces me to put us all in danger once again. I am...
glad you are well. You and Shinji."
"Rei, you do know that we... I mean..." Asuka sighed, and continued. "Thank you for
you concern, Commander."
The Captain turns around, and leaves in a rush, closing the door behind her.
Leaving Commander Ayanami staring, her face expressionless, at the spot that
Captain Langley had stood on.
***
He's getting too old for this, the morose young man muttered to himself.
The shaking, dilapidated old Boeing 737 had been flying for too long. The
thought kept turning the young man's knuckles white. A strange thing, to be
back in civilization, he mumbled silently to himself, as he gazed down out
the window at the sprawling urban capital of the ASEAN Protectorate, his
mind blocking out the flight attendant's bored droning instructions
for the small handful of mostly UN passengers. He scanned the
now-clear skies. The Indian Air Force fighter escorts that had been
tailing the old airliner had veered away as the plane made its final
approach for the airport runway.
He had been asleep during most of this flight from Lhasa to Kuala
Lumpur. He had been plagued by nightmares throughout the flight, but
at least the sleeping pills had kept him from thinking about the
rackety old plane.
To think he used to be a pilot. A long time ago.
Fighter escorts had not been part of the plan for today. His
security demanded some anonymity, hence he was flying in this
civilian rustbucket and not in one of the UN's deluxe military
transports. Someone very high up had apparently changed his mind in
a hurry.
Something's up, he realized with a shudder. Something really big this
time. But he would have come even if they hadn't asked. He's had
vivid nightmares the past several weeks. She's in trouble. She
needs him.
I wonder how much they've told her, he wondered to himself again. But
then again she had always had a way of knowing things.
He was still holding her letter clutched in his hand.
The letter had arrived, hand-delivered and sealed, by special British SAS
courier a few days before. There were no net or radio links to the
old hilltop monastery that was his refuge in Bhutan, at least to no
one except the UN secret agents that discreetly haunted the place, and
the commanders of his unobstrusive Gurkha security detail.
Still, it had felt good to see her handwriting again. He traced his
fingers over the words, as if by doing so he could touch her hands
again.
He sighed wearily, and closed his eyes.
"Shinji-kun," she had written. "I know we had agreed not to see each
other or to contact each other again until... well, until the time
felt right. But my unit has received orders to prepare for your
arrival, and I volunteered to personally make the arrangements for
you. In fact, I'll meet you in KL for the shuttle hop to Clark Air Base. I hope
you don't mind. I don't know what our scheming politicians, or your sister, have in
mind for us this time, but... you know how I feel about your straying
into danger again. God only knows what you'd do without me holding
your hand. I hope you will at least talk to me, for old time's sake,
baka. With love, Asuka."
He'd be seeing her again in a few minutes. For the first time in
three years. All that time in the monastery, with the old
monks, had given him a sort of peace. But with her...
There was something.
They had come to a secret, mutual understanding fourteen years before.
The intervening years had shoved it aside, in favor of common reality.
Life had blurred his understanding.
Yet it was still there. Like a whisper he was afraid of voicing out,
lest it slip past him again.
He'd be seeing her again in a few more minutes.
He fidgeted uncertainly with the ring on his finger. Come to think of
it, he had never gotten rid of it; he had secretly continued wearing
it.
Even after the separation.
With a sudden lurch, he felt the noisy thud of the airliner's tires
touching down on the runway, the rolling motion of the wheels against
solid unyielding ground, the reassuring force of the wind roaring in
a decrescendo against the old plane's grounded wings.
He would not allow SEELE to take them again, he promised to himself. He would
see the reason for his promise in a few more minutes.
***
To be continued.