Neon Genesis Evangelion: Renewal
By: Barton Christ
She had floated on the precipice of awareness for an indeterminate amount of time. It felt as though she was under the influence of some strong drug, but it was simple fatigue which kept her down. The fog which clouded her mind hadn't lifted, but she was no longer trapped in a semi-conscious stupor. She half-dreamt through memories of the long-gone past. Scenes of a sun filled field under a blooming tree before a dazzling ocean. The sea of LCL. Labs bursting to the brim with cables and screens. A white void. Blood. The Lance. A crying baby wrapped in cloth held to her breast. Eva reaching up to devour her.
Even with her eyes closed she sensed that wherever she was, it was lit with high illumination. She tried opening her eyes a crack. As she had expected she was painfully blinded by the exposure to the bright light. She allowed her eyelids to flutter slowly open to adapt to the brightness. When she was finally able to see she was greeted with a ceiling of crystal lattice, possessed of vibrant colours. An unfamiliar ceiling. She had a half-hearted chuckle at her situation only to regret so instantly when pain coursed through her chest.
The place in which she lay felt as though she was floating. In fact she was sure she was actually floating. She was not flat on a surface; her back curved up so her feet were at a lower elevation than her head. It was not uncomfortable, but it was unnatural; more like floating in LCL, without the liquid. She tried with frustration to look to either side but her head felt clamped, though she felts no bonds. As fatigued as she was she knew her inability to move was a result of her environment, not her lack of strength.
All she was able to do was think, so she made the best of it. Mulling over her recent memories and piecing together her past became the focus of her energies. She was onboard an alien vessel, one capable of taking out the Evangelion without destroying her. As far as she could tell she was human once more. But how was she outside the Eva? She had long since left behind her physical form to become the core of Eva Unit 01. She had not even been aware if she was able to return, given how she had become the essence of the Evangelion for so long. That was never an option if her plan was to succeed. But here she was now, human again. With two eyes, ears, a nose, mouth, legs, hands and all the attached appendages. At least she hoped so. Still, she felt as though something was missing; she was incomplete somehow.
What disturbed her greatly were the last moments within the Eva before she was… 'freed'. When breaking the bonds of its prison slumber, Eva had tried to end her as it had ended so many enemies before. That the soul of Unit 01 had turned against her after all she had been through with it was more than a little disconcerting. The Evanglion was not a soulless cyber-enhanced organism like she had once believed. She never imagined the Eva would develop a soul of its own. While joined with 01 however she became aware of another presence. A soul which formed and grew within the core of the Eva.
As a human being she possessed an A.T. Field which separated her physically from others. Unlike the Angels, a human had nowhere near the capacity to manipulate their Absolute Territory Fields. The Angels could form defensive barriers capable of arresting all but the most powerful human weaponry and manipulate the reality around them. Only a human soul inside an Eva gained the ego powerful enough to generate a field capable of breaching such a defense. A human soul could be used for control.
Yui had become one with Unit 01 with a two-fold purpose. The first was to protect Shinji. As much she knew it would hurt her family, becoming the soul of the Eva was the only way she could ensure her son's safety against the Angels. She had released the Eva's might on several occasions, including manipulating control of the Dummy Plug system, to save Shinji. Secondly she did so to counter Seele's plans for the Human Instrumentality Project. The hubris of those old men would mean the end of humanity. As a person she was a pawn in their game, but as a part of Unit One, the key necessary to a human initiated Third Impact, she had hoped to control the outcome. As developer of the only successful Lilith-based Evangelion, Yui had planned to in the case of an artificial Evangelion-based Instrumentality, defeat Seele's ambitions. In what really happened she played nearly no part in Third-Impact other than to wish her son farewell.
Suddenly a curious sensation crossed her busy mind. Yui felt a strange awareness of something in the air, like the atmospheric change before an approaching storm. But the feeling was not coming from her skin; she only initially interpreted it that way. She was aware she was not alone in the room. She was able to detect the presence of others, not with her physical senses but some extraordinary mode of perception. This was how she had detected the aliens in the first place. Yui was sensing the A.T. Field's of those in the room. There were five in total; two were close to her left, with two further behind them, and one on the right of them.
The sound of their footfalls and sharp breaths confirmed to Yui her hearing was in order and was not being suppressed. The room was just otherwise deafly silent before the arrival of her hosts. Still they made no verbal remark. Were they using sign language? Or perhaps personal communication devices she could not hear. Maybe they communicated in a sound range outside her physical capacity to detect. The possibilities were endless.
She could not move her head but the ability to follow their presence was perhaps more reassuring. Still, seeing their faces would be more… reassuring was the wrong word. It would satisfy her curiosity now that she was no longer in danger. No, she thought. She could still very well be in danger. She did not know the intentions of these beings. They had attacked the Evangelion and brought her on board their ship. She had been rendered motionless.
Music interrupted her thoughts. The sounds of woodwind instruments accompanied a score of song birds, with the din of crashing waves, perhaps even the faint echo of whale sounds and a wondrous variety of string instruments, from piano to acoustic guitar. The tune rose and fell in musical concert like a symphonic composition. For Yui, who had been locked in the silence of eternal solitude for eons unknown, it was the most beautiful, harmonious euphony imaginable. For these aliens, it was simply the form in which their machine interfaces communicated with their operator.
Tears began forming slowly at first, and then a torrent cascaded down the sides of her face, unimpeded by any thought to cover herself; not that she could wipe the tears anyway, given her current state. They were tears of joy for exposure to such a moving melody, of sadness and grief for the decisions she had made and the existence she had been locked in, anger at her restraint and relief for her current state. A myriad of emotions swelled in her breast. She was free now. She was Yui Ikari once more.
