Attestation III:

Syntax Incompatibility

January 1, 2022

"I haven't seen you in a while. I was beginning to think we weren't friends anymore."

The park bench was sitting under a tree but even that did little to quell the heat. Even in January, southern Japan was still hotter than blazes. I'd accepted the invitation to attend the victory celebration, against my better judgement, because he might be there and-

"I did not know that we had ever been friends, Soryu. You've never said that we are, before."

I leaned back on the bench and turned towards Rei. She'd grown into a stunning woman, but she'd never been bad looking, and maybe that was part of my jealousy, but anymore it wasn't like I had anything to compete with her about.

"There are two living people in the world that I trust, Rei. You're one of them. I would have thought it went without saying that we're friends."

She turned to stare at me in a way that used as little facial movement as possible to tell me exactly how stupid she thought that statement was. I should have known better and I would have if I'd been Shinji, but I hadn't given a damn about Rei until long after the first one I'd met had died.

I rolled my shoulders back and stared up at the tree, "I guess you're right. But I've said it now. You know they tried to get me to tell them where Unit-02 is again? As if digging that up is going to solve any of the world's problems."

"There are still potential threats that could require the deployment of Evangelion. You know this, don't you?" She asked me with that same expression. There was sadness in her voice, but it was hard to spot. I must have been spending too much time with her after all, if I was learning to speak Rei.

"That's why I didn't self destruct. Well... That's one reason." Mother...

"I see. As for our other arrangement, that which has been entrusted to me is still safe," Rei explained and put a hand on my shoulder. She must have picked that up from someone else, it didn't seem like a social gesture she'd normally have made. Or maybe she was still growing?

"You can talk to Shinji about that. Forgetting is the only way I get to sleep at night."

"Do you sleep at night?"

"Sometimes."

January 5, 2032

The smell of machine oil and LCL was still faint on the air even after all the time that had passed. The cages were almost completely untouched, aside from the bakelite that seemed to cake half the surfaces in the cavernous chamber.

Once it was obvious that the Evangelions were either deployed or immobilized there was no reason to stick around, and so most of the fighting never made it down this far. That which had, hadn't lasted long.

It was... different, seeing it from ground level. I'd had never had any reason to be down here and so looking up towards the gantries that I had walked on made them look terrifyingly high. The one reserved for Unit-02 was empty. The one reserved for Unit-01 was not.

Locked in place and encased in bakelite up to the neck, it stood as silent defender to all that used to be, and all that had been lost. If we'd had warning, if Unit One could have deployed alongside me... well, I couldn't say it would have gone any different.

It might have been the less cruel fate that things ended the way they did instead of letting him climb aboard Evangelion one last time. In all the ways Evangelion gave me worth, Evangelion made him feel worthless and I understood why, far too late.

January 5, 2016

It had been two days since we'd done that and he was still avoiding me, at least as much as he could. The one surviving Evangelion Air Carrier was spacious, but not so much that we didn't see each other, he just ran every time we did.

There'd been no time to wash the blood off of Unit-02. I'd broken us out of head quarters and we'd hijacked the carrier and ran like the devil himself was after us, and he probably was. Enough weapons and ammo to equip an army and enough rations to feed it.

But there hadn't been time to wash off the blood, and even days later, flying seemingly without and with nowhere to go, blood would still drip off of the armor. It was a bizarre thing to see, like a red fuel leak dripping behind us as we cut through the air.

She'd saved me when I couldn't save myself. She'd saved me but it felt like all of that blood was on me instead.

Three adults, three children. Others might have survived, but we were the only ones who made it out. Maya Ibuki, Shigeru Aoba, Makoto Hyuga, Asuka Soryu, Shinji Ikari, Rei Ayanmi. The six survivors of Nerv, on the run with an Evangelion in a nuclear powered airplane.

A motley crew were we.

Maya tapped me on the shoulder while I was staring out the window at Unit-02 for what felt like the hundredth hour in a row. "Asuka? We're getting a call over the radio. They say they know you, and they said they have a safe place for us to land."

I turned towards her with a confused look on my face. "Everyone's dead. Who could possibly have a safe place for us?"

"She said her name was Kirishima."

January 5, 2032

"So this is where they were made?" Carolina asked with that saccharine wonder in her voice that drove me just so far out of my mind. Behind her, the stripped spinal columns of failed Evangelion units hung from armored skulls into a pool of LCL.

The electric cart we were riding on was still in working condition, having escaped the horrors of the invasion and having been left plugged in in a base that was somehow still powered. It was better when things still worked.

I shook my head, "no, these are failed attempts. This is a dumping ground. Nothing ever came of these."

I'd never been here before, but Shinji had. He'd spoken to me of it, now and then. In the times between our self imposed exiles from one another. He'd always had a far off look in his eyes when he'd spoken of it and I felt guilty for letting him continue, but I couldn't ever bring myself to stop him.

"We should turn back," Shinji said suddenly as we approached a half-open blast door at the end of the causeway. The LCL plant, at least according to the portions of the paint that hadn't faded.

I'd never been quite this deep into the facility. I'd never needed to be. I'd never wanted to be.

Shinji was shaking in his seat but Carolina either didn't notice or didn't care. "Continue on, we're getting good footage here." She commanded her assistant, who was driving.

I wanted to knock her on her ass but the implicit threat she'd made hung over my head and I bit my tongue and kept my hands in my pockets. This expedition deep into the base had only taken a token effort at anything else so far, so why was she so willing to push on this?

Shinji grabbed my hand and squeezed hard enough I thought my fingers might break. He knew what was behind that door and he was terrified. He'd held me like this only once before and-

I wouldn't be as heartless as I'd been then.

My hand squeezed onto his to let him know I was there, that he wasn't going to be alone. I looked up to meet his eyes and he shook his head at me. It was... different than I'd expected.

I started to wonder if it was himself that he was truly worried about.

The gap in the door ahead was wide enough for us to fit through and so Carolina's assistant didn't slow down as he took us through into the other room. The lights came on after we'd passed through and took a moment to warm up, and as the darkness was pushed back by the light, my body froze in place.

In the center of the absolutely gigantic chamber was a massive steel cross and nailed to it... We'd killed them all hadn't we? Was it all for nothing? The Angels were not all gone and we didn't have anything to kill it with!

I'd have screamed if terror hadn't frozen me in place. This is what he never told me, what I'd never knew. If he'd told me about this I would have taken Unit-02 and come down here and-

"Oh my god!" Carolina screamed as the cart screeched to a stop. "There's still one left!? You've got to kill it! G-get your Eva and kill it!"

Yes I'd get-

She was screaming, but her body language felt off, and I wasn't the only one to notice it. Shinji was staring at her with confusion and mistrust on his face. This didn't feel right. She'd been completely calm when I was about to choke her to death and she turned directly into a scared little girl at the sight of an Angel that wasn't moving?

Sure, I'd been scared stiff but I knew what these monsters could do, she'd never seen it, she couldn't have been older than five or six when it had all happened. The way she'd been acting about the husks of the Evangelions on the surface was like it was all a game.

Her assistant hadn't made a sound, either. He was sitting calmly in the driver's seat, holding the wheel.

"I can't do that. I don't know where Unit-02 is." I lied to her.

"W-well, you know someone who knows where it is, right!? Right!?" She faux panicked at me.

This was all wrong. So very wrong. The power was on, the light bulbs were lit, the reveal was perfect, wasn't it? The whole base wasn't exactly cleaned up but there were no bodies, no guns. The whole place had been sealed after we'd left, nobody was allowed in here, even to recover bodies! There'd been protests and riots about it.

The power was on.

The cart worked flawlessly, it didn't even look all that old-

"I'm sorry, I can't." I told her as calmly as I could manage as I eased myself off the seat and onto the ground. I'd been too caught up in what it used to be like I didn't think of what I should be. There were no tracks in the dust where we'd driven. There was no dust.

The door was cracked open just wide enough for us, and the assistant knew that. The blood stains were still everywhere but the lights worked and there was no dirt. The air wasn't stale, not down here.

Shinji's feet clicked onto the steel flooring next to me and Carolina's assistant started to move.

"Well, I had to give it a shot. We only really needed Shinji but if I could have had Unit-02 as well? That was worth the effort." Carolina had dropped the act, but she wasn't as clever as she thought she was, I'd figured it out before she'd given it away and that gave me the element of surprise. I'd had assholes lying to me for years, I'd gotten adept at spotting bullshit, I'd only let my emotions cloud me this time.

I spun on my right heel and jammed my closed fist into the assistant's windpipe as hard as I could and felt the crack against my knuckles. He fell forward holding his throat and I kicked him over into Carolina's legs, knocking them both down.

Shinji grabbed me by the wrist and just about pulled me off my feet as he took off running deeper into the chamber. He'd been here before, I followed after him as fast as my legs could carry me.

"It was a trap!?"

"She know which levers to pull, I should have been smarter." Shinji answered back as he lead me forward. "There's an elevator that leads directly to the commander's office. They probably don't know about it."

I shook my head at him, "I should have been smarter. What the hell are they trying to do here?"

I heard the gunshots before I heard the bullets skip off the floor. A half meter to our side was a cutout in the rock wall of the chamber and Shinji dragged me into it. The elevator door was already open for us.

Shinji punched the button and the door slid closed on us, and then we started to ascend. "Nothing good."