In which Maya does a lot of thinking
"I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth-men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air-for I am grieved that I have made them." - The LORD, Book of Genesis, Author Disputed
Deep in the bowels of Nerv, a collection of rooms stood, each housing or ready to house one of Nerv's top secret weapons. The expense in building the facility paled in comparison to the construction of even one of the humanoid robots they kept, not merely in money but in manhours, and typically lives. Building a single Evangelion (as they were called) was a dangerous job and the machines used in the process were in a constant state of disrepair. Accidents happened. They were expected.
With a dangerous threat approaching the city, accidents were risked again as a group of men had been called in to bring one into full working order. A simple room, metallic with a bit of rust, usually empty save for the storage container for the robot in question (a giant basin filled with a pink liquid), was now covered in wires running in every direction, and filled with workmen in orange jumpsuits. They were running out of time.
Keita Asari, one such worked, turned when the doors opened and a girl walked in, her mouth open in shock. He chuckled to himself, well aware that the Evangelion models surprised everyone the first time around. He almost turned back to the open hatch in Eva-01's armor (Eva-01 being the designation of this particular model), but two more people walked out of the elevator. One; his boss Dr. Ayanami, didn't surprise him at all. The other did.
"Asuka?" he said softly. "I haven't seen you since school."
He very nearly waved to her, but changed his mind at the last minute. She probably would barely recognize him in the uniform, and he was standing on the shoulder of a giant robot… This time his attention did return to the beast. Copper-plated wires (and a few other things that were shaped like wires, but didn't seem metallic at all) ran up and down the arm, and a few had been broken.
He remembered Dr. Ayanami's exact words for how quickly they needed fixing. "An hour ago."
Grumbling, he pulled the replacement wires out of his toolkit and began running them through. Why the hell hadn't the regular status reports picked this glitch up until now? They'd just run a diagnostic yesterday, and the equipment had worked fine on Eva-00.
"You are the one who will be piloting it," he heard Dr. Ayanami say, and once he'd finished threading in the last wire, he turned his attention to the three women. Most everyone else already had.
"What?" Asuka was shouting. "That's insane! She just got here!"
"No," Dr. Ayanami responded. "It is merely unlucky. We had no idea that an would be arriving today. Our initial plans were nothing more than a few simple start-up tests; perfectly normal in every way."
The captain scoffed in response. "Well since combat's arrived plans have changed, wouldn't you say? Don't you have a back-up pilot?" She moved in between the pilot and Rei, protectively.
Maya opened her mouth to speak.
4156:26:44
"This is why you wanted me?" Maya couldn't believe it. Why would they want a fourteen-year old girl to pilot a giant robot? It didn't make any sense! "You... you didn't even ask!"
The captain looked down. "They wouldn't have needed to," Asuka explained. She began to recite something one of their teachers had told them about long ago. "The Diet of Japan voted unanimously in December of 2003 to give Nerv the power to take all necessary measures to repel any Angelic attack against the forces of Earth."
Neither of them noticed, but Keita was mouthing the words along with her. Their teacher had not been happy at all with that particular resolution. He'd drawn a few historic parallels, but few students had paid him any attention, arguing that to stop attacks Nerv - or rather Gehirn, as it was known in those days - would need all the power it could get.
The future pilot said nothing. She just looked away.
"Please get in," Dr. Ayanami said, stepping forward and pushing Asuka out of the way. "Believe me, it's for the best."
Maya shook her head. "I don't know how to pilot any kind of robots," she said. "You can't just put me in the cockpit and expect me to figure out how to make the thing work." She laughed nervously. "There's probably dozens of switches and buttons, aren't there?"
Rei opened her mouth to respond to this, but stopped, hearing footsteps echoing above them. She turned upwards, as did everyone else. Above the Cage that held the Evangelion was a small room for observation purposes, and someone had entered. The man's face appeared in the window; the face of the commander of Nerv, Shinji Ikari.
Everyone stared up at him, and he scanned the room silently. The commander looked down at Asuka for a moment, who smiled slightly, and then Rei, who smiled quite broadly, but finally his eyes settled on the teenage girl. She looked back, frightened but refusing to look away.
Shinji gulped, but he spoke calmly and firmly. "Welcome to Nerv," he said, almost brightly. Maya said nothing in response, preferring to glare instead. Commander Ikari sighed. "I'm not going to lie to you, Ibuki-san. We are asking a lot of you, asking for you to pilot," he said. "And for that I do apologize. But we're not going to force you."
"So I can go then?" the girl asked, her eyes widening happily. This whole day had been so strange that it was a relief to hear that the weirdness might end momentarily. It wasn't so simple, of course.
"Yes, you could. But," Ikari-sensei said quickly, for Maya had already turned to leave, "That won't do you any good... We only have one other. Because of circumstances unrelated to today, he's heavily injured. My best doctors say he'd die in about five minutes without the intensive care he's currently hooked up to."
Maya hesitated, but didn't say anything. Asuka looked at Rei, mouthing the words "He'd die?" in shock.
Shinji kept going. She hadn't left so far, so perhaps this was going to work. "Ibuki-san, if the Angel gets into the Geofront, we've lost. He'll kill everyone here, and shortly thereafter everyone on planet Earth. You're the only chance we have."
The girl turned to Asuka, who tried to smile but failed. She just looked guilty, or perhaps regretful. "It's true," Asuka said sadly. "He isn't lying. If you don't do this, we're all going to die." She looked back to the commander, uncertain, but Maya had already turned her head up as well.
"Fine. I'll do it," Maya replied.
Several people grinned. A huge problem with the Evangelion was fixed. Eva-01 finally had a pilot.
4156:21:29
Asuka walked into the Command Center. "Is she really our only chance?" she asked Rei. "I know I told her that but is that really true?"
"You did the right thing," Rei assured her. "That's all that matters."
Asuka looked around. The room was immense, multi-leveled, and shaped like a battleship. Most of it was clearly dedicated to computers; the lowest level was a morass of immense wires and fans. Only a few levels were even occupied.
Strangely, she knew everyone in the room. Former classmates Aida, Suzuhara, and Horaki sat on the top level where she and Rei stood, typing away at computers. Kotonoha sat on a lower level, speaking into a headset. Matsuda and Idane sat by an open hatch, fixing something. Even Nakada worked for Nerv HQ, though all Asuka got of her was her voice over the intercom.
"LCL now cooled to human optimal temperature. Pumps 1, 2, and 4 operating at normal capacity."
Asuka stared in silence.
"Impressive, isn't it?" Rei asked. "He's managed to assemble nearly all of us into Nerv HQ."
"Not everyone," Asuka said, thinking back to the class list.
"Someone else is arriving in a couple of months, and not everyone works up here." Rei chuckled awkwardly, trying to deflect Asuka's train of thought.
"We'll still be one person short," Asuka said sadly. "You know who I mean."
Rei shrugged. "Anyways, this is Tactical. Your desk is over there." She nodded to one side of the room. "Everything you requested."
"How long until the Angel arrives?" Asuka asked, her voice trembling. This was it, she realized. The greatest threat to humanity was slowly approacing them. Everything depended upon destroying it as quickly as possible. No amount of training could have prepared her for this, and she would do nothing but give orders.
"Ten minutes. We'll have her launched before then."
Asuka walked to the edge of her level. She was vaguely aware of Suzuhara and Horaki waving, but she didn't wave back. Instead, she stared at the immense displays. There were topographical, infrared, radar…. But most impressive of all was the television screen that was alternating between at least seventeen camera views, all of which featured the Angel.
"This is much better than what we have at Nerv-03," she said.
"Hamburg doesn't need this equipment," Rei responded. "The Angels will attack here, and only here. Germany is safe."
"They attacked Antarctica," Asuka whispered.
"It's gone now," Rei responded coolly. She stepped forward to one of the displays and examined it for a moment. "This is the last line of defense for all mankind. If we fail, everyone dies."
Asuka couldn't think of anything to say in response to that.
4156:08:55
Maya entered the cockpit (called the Entry Plug by the Nerv officials) and looked around. She felt cramped by all the machinery around her, but managed to get into the seat towards the bottom. Here things were much more open. She took a deep breath and buckled herself in. "This is it…" she whispered.
She looked around the "Entry Plug". The vast majority was simply the seat, but in front of her sat several holographic displays. One suddenly flickered on, revealing the face of a simple-looking woman about Soryu and Rei's age.
"Hi. I'm Horaki Hikari!" she announced brightly. "I'll help you get everything set up."
"Th- thanks." Maya stared blankly, feeling overwhelmed by everything that had just happened.
"So, you should know that each Entry Plug is filled with LCL. It oxygenates your blood stream, which is important in an emergency, and also acts as a cushion for high speed stuff. It should start filling in now. Don't panic, you'll be fine."
Maya watched as two pipes in the bottom of plug opened up and began spewing an orange liquid. It made her want to throw up, but she couldn't get away; the top of the cockpit had been sealed above her.
"Good," Horaki said when the entire plug filled up. "Now we'll be moving you onto the lift." Maya felt the Evangelion shake beneath her feet as it was conveyed somewhere. "And now you'll be going up."
When Maya felt capable of conscious thought after she "went up", she came to the conclusion that if there hadn't been any LCL in the plug, she would have been smushed like an insect against the windshield. Now she very nearly threw up again, out of sheer disorientation.
"Sorry about that," she heard Captain Soryu say. "Okay, it's time for the real challenge."
"Think about taking a step forward. Do everything except actually move," Rei offered.
'Oh, those are wonderful instructions,' Maya thought bitterly, looking ahead of her. Instead of the rusting cage, she was now looking out at the city streets of Tokyo-3, which had been darkened by the passing of sunset. No lights were on in the city. 'Do everything except actually move. That's what I'm doing right now…' She focused as hard as she could, and still this "Eva-01" wasn't moving.
"Come on," she whispered. "There has to be a way to make this work…"
Unbidden, an image of Eva-01 lifting its right leg and stepping forward appeared in her mind. She focused on it as hard as she could, and felt the sudden shift as Eva-01's leg really lifted and moved forward.
'It would be really bad if I thought about this thing tripp-'
The problem with unbidden images, Maya felt, was that they came and went as they pleased. Lifting her head up, she saw the holographic image of the captain and the doctor sighing in disbelief. And then they looked scared.
"The Angel is approaching!" she heard Horaki shout. "Get that Evangelion up, and get it up now!"
Maya imagined the Evangelion pushing itself up, and practically felt the resistance of the concrete roads below her in her own arms. Slowly, the Evangelion followed her mental picture into a standing position.
That left the problem of the Angel. Carefully, Maya swung the Evangelion around, holding tightly to the two handles that controlled… Maya wasn't sure what they controlled. It wasn't as if they exactly made the arms move. She did that without their help.
Down the street a little ways was the Angel.
The first thing Maya thought when she thought it was, 'That shouldn't exist.'
4156:00:00