Part 2: Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust
------
In the silent, gravelike confines of an empty room, a door suddenly slid open, admitting
a shaft of light. A woman's silhouette passed through the light, before the door closed
once again.
Small footsteps echoed through the dark cavernous room. The straight, solitary figure walked
into the center of a shadowy arena, and stopped several meters in front of an obelisk.
"I know you're in here," whispered the figure, her voice cold, firm.
Slowly, slowly... a dozen obelisks surrounding the woman lit up, like awakening ghosts,
murmuring with the irritation and glee of beasts awakened from a long sleep.
"Welcome back, Ayanami," answered a grim, ancient voice. "We knew all along, that you'd
come back to us."
"Kihl... give it up," answered Rei, almost dispassionately. "You can finance a hundred
more wars and atrocities and we still won't return NERV's secrets to you. Stop
slaughtering the innocent. Give it up. Just give it up. I grow weary of this."
The voice from the front obelisk answered her with a bark, and with derisive laughter
that was immediately echoed by his peers, in a growing symphony of scorn.
"The young traitor blames us for the evils she chose to perpetuate!" hissed a voice
from an obelisk to her right. "Ikari-spawn, open your eyes to the consequences of your
choices."
"You grow weary of your guilt, Commander Ayanami," accused a female voice from an obelisk
to her left. "The late Commander Ikari would have been pleased to know of your guilt
for betraying him. A pity, that he's dead. No thanks to you."
"I have never doubted that I did the right thing," she calmly retorted. While she
furtively clenched her suddenly shaking fists at her sides.
"Really? Was it right for Yui to betray the man who dedicated his entire, pathetic
existence to her?"
"You cannot fault Yui for choosing their son's happiness."
"Your son's happiness! Is he really happy now, Ayanami? Is his estranged wife Soryu happy?
Is his former best friend Suzuhara happy?" growled Kihl, in a voice dripping now with
bitter sympathy. "The wounds left by the elder Ikaris and Soryus are too deep to excise.
You can still save the Eva Pilots, Ayanami! You can save the world from its pain."
"And, most importantly..." whispered the female voice of SEELE, "Yui can still have
her Gendo back."
And, amidst their fading laughter, the lights from the obelisks faded, leaving the
young Commander alone, once again, in the dark.
She had not been standing there, alone with her troubled thoughts, for too long when
she felt felt the gun on her back.
***
He had spent hours poking around these abandoned tunnels and corridors, foraging for
trouble like a sewer rat looking for food, he thought irritably to himself.
He finally found the secure door, as he peered through its grime at the serial number
etched into its metal surface. Carefully, he reached under his jacket for a card,
then swiped it through the door's security slot. As the door slid open, he paused,
his gun ready and aimed, and he went inside.
As he walked forward, deeper into the cavernous room, he was surprised to see a solitary
black-clad figure, surrounded by a dozen illuminated obelisks. He recognized the voice
as she talked, apparently to the obelisk to her front.
"I have never doubted that I did the right thing," she stated.
He forced his ears to listen for a reply from whoever she was speaking with, but he
heard nothing.
"You cannot fault Yui for choosing their son's happiness."
Has the Commander gone mad, he wondered, as silence answered Ayanami's words. Cautiously,
he approached her from behind, his gun raised upward.
Suddenly, the lights of the obelisks dimmed, and in the darkness he silently lunged
forward, his gun aimed at the Commander's back.
"Suzuhara," she whispered in response.
"Commander. Good to see you."
"It is not good for one such as yourself to be threatening someone like me in that
manner."
"My apologies, Commander. You seemed... unstable."
"Unstable... I am well aware that some of your superiors remain suspicious of my loyalties,
Suzuhara. But this is not the reason you came here."
"Feel free to enlighten me, Commander."
"You've done well, hunting down and eliminating the war criminals who slaughtered your...
friends and family fourteen years ago. Now, you think you're finally on the trail of
their masters, but what will you be when you finally face them?"
"With all due respect, cut the angst babble, Commander. What's your point, Rei?"
"There are memories that haunt us, Fourth Child. In your case, it is the face of a girl
who was lost, horribly murdered, trying to save you. Fourth Child... this wish of yours
to be... reunited with Hikari, to what distances will it take you?"
Click.
Rei's face remained impassive, eyes cold, as Touji released the safety of his pistol.
"Don't mess with me, Commander."
***
As he woke up, he touched a bruise on his forefead, dark thoughts swimming through
his groggy mind. He hated this job.
This was the second time in two weeks that a former Eva pilot had knocked him down, he
noted, very sorely. He didn't think it could be possible for the frail-looking
Ayanami to strike him harder than the athletic Soryu had done, but the Commander had
moved like lightning and had managed, however briefly, to knock him out cold.
His head was throbbing. Damn Eva pilots. At this rate he was looking forward even less to a
reunion with Shinji. There was, for one, the matter of a punch from fourteen years earlier
that had not yet been avenged.
As he looked up to glare at the Commander, he did a double take. The figure standing
in front of him was not wearing the black jacket and uniform skirt of NERV Command. The
Rei Ayanami looking down on him at that moment was the schoolgirl he had first met fourteen
years earlier.
This can't possibly be real, he thought to himself.
"The past is more real than the conscious mind acknowledges, Fourth Child," replied
Rei, as if reading his mind. "Memories make up who we are."
There was a palpable sadness in her barren eyes as she said these words.
The pain in his head became unbearable, and he buckled over in pain, but before he
opened his eyes again, he caught another question she directed at him.
"Do you remember the night you found me? The night after SEELE discovered my hiding
place and captured me, along with one my students?"
***
"Yes, I remember. I remember you were briefed by Maya that night, while I stood
guard outside your room. Commander Ibuki seemed in shock afterward; for a long-lost
runaway, you were awfully sharp and well-informed, she said..."
"Do you know why you're here, Rei?" asked the woman in the black command uniform and white
lab coat, as she seated herself on the stool in front of the heavily bandaged patient.
Rei stared at the woman in front of her. The older woman's eyes behind the eyeglasses
looked sympathetic, even apologetic. Rei was tempted to smile, even a little, to try
to reassure her, but her thoughts kept returning to what she was about to say.
"Yes..."
"Yes? You do?"
"You need the secrets of Terminal Dogma, Doctor Ibuki. SEELE has spent years waging an
underground campaign against the UN to wrest control of NERV, and to find the lost MP
Evas. They want to resume the Human Instrumentality Project, and you want to stop
them, but you're not sure how. You're not even sure what it is that you hope to stop.
You think I possess Commander Ikari's secrets."
"So you do know. Can you help us? Or rather, will you help us?"
"Where are they?"
"Who?"
"The pilots Ikari and Soryu. I would like to know how they fare, in this troubled new
world. I need to know they are well."
"They are. They were married, a few years ago. You should have come to their wedding."
"Yet Soryu still fights. I saw her in combat uniform, briefly, among the party that
raided the safehouse and rescued me and my friend."
"She's a commando now... we retrofitted some of NERV's machines to make portable AT fields,
and S2 energy cells to power them, but very few are able to operate them and use them
well. Asuka is among the few who can. She's the best at it."
"And they both agreed to this?"
"Only she did. No war machine without an AT field can bring down a reactivated MP Eva,
and you could say she had... a vendetta. Shinji, on the other hand, is... unable to use
the AT generators."
"I see. What of the reserve pilots?"
"Most of them are with Asuka's forces, or with related units and organizations. You
met Touji already, he was the one who identified you and carried you out of the safehouse."
"And what of Hikari?"
"She's gone... when the JSSDF raided NERV so many years ago, a team was sent to
intercept and dispose of the Fourth Child. He escaped, but they captured her instead.
When the Impact wiped out JSSDF command, that battalion joined one of the new daimyos'
militias, and they kept her for their pleasure, and for SEELE's... experiments. We found
her much, much later, but her mind by then was blank... and..."
"I see... that explains some things."
"What do you mean?"
"The general who captured us, he came to our ward, and tried to molest the girl who
was captured with me, while she lay comatose in her bed. He laid his hand on her... he
was reaching down... and I stopped him."
"You generated an AT field. There was nothing much left of him when our troops got
there."
"Yes. Before he was gone, his memories were revealed to me. Memories of his victims
through the years. He had... a particularly strong memory of Hikari. He was a young
officer when they took her."
"Well. He got what he deserved. But your friend is fine now, and we might even be
able to save her arm from being amputated. She was one of your students at the school
you stayed in, right? It's a good thing your AT field had no effect on her."
"Perhaps. She might not remember anything. Or everything. Thoughts and memories
have unpredictable lives inside an AT field. Please see to it that she is well."
***
Outside the room where Maya and Rei were meeting, two sentries stood guard. They wore
blue-and-green paratroop uniforms, red berets and headsets, and what looked like strange
metal vests emblazoned with the NERV logo. Each of the two commandos clutched
a submachine gun, and stood several feet apart from the other, though they occasionally
whispered to each other through their headsets. One, a sergeant, leaned casually against
a wall, and maintained a bored expression on his face. The other, a redheaded lieutenant,
looked close to getting agitated, and occasionally tapped her foot nervously on the
floor, and occasionally paced around, her long hair flowing behind her.
"Lieutenant Ikari," finally exclaimed the sergeant. "Stop that. You're making me jumpy."
"Shut up, Suzuhara," muttered Asuka with a sigh. "I still don't see why Ibuki won't
let us see her. We're just one door away, for pity's sake!"
"You're really that eager to talk to her again? I really thought you hated her back
when we were kids."
"It's not that... never mind, you wouldn't understand anyway."
"So when do you intend to tell him that she's here?"
"If you want to ask a question, Suzuhara, go ahead and ask it."
"Okay. So are the rumors true? That she's a clone of Commander Ikari's wife?"
"Yes, mostly. That's supposed to be classified, but now that she's here it'll come out
in the open anyway, if Commander Ibuki convinces her to take the job. She's practically
my sister-in-law, I guess. A very... strange... sister-in-law."
"Well, that's one mystery down," he sighed. "Just one more missing person to go."
"I'm sorry we didn't find her," she replied, leaning sadly against the wall. "We will
someday, don't worry."
"She's a scrappy girl," he said, his eyes lost in dark memories. "Yeah, for someone
who'd never touched a gun in her life, she was a great shooter. I'll never forgive
myself for leaving her to save my own skin."
"Look, Touji," started the Lieutenant, but she suddenly stopped to stare, mouth agape,
at the girl behind the sergeant. "Hey, what are you doing here? You're supposed to be
an invalid, where's your doctor?"
The young girl, heavily bandaged but walking erect in her loose hospital gown, stared
up at a startled Suzuhara as he turned to face her.
"Touji..." she whispered, before fainting, and he caught her in his arms as she fell.
"How did she get here undetected?" grumbled Asuka, as she went to check the girl's
pulse, and fingered her headset to call for help.
"How does she know my name?" he muttered.
***
Back in the present, in the darkness of Terminal Dogma, an older Touji Suzuhara slumped
down on the floor, exhausted, as the black-clad figure of the Commander stood over
him.
"That... that girl who was assaulted in the raid so many years ago, I remember
her... she joined the Joint Forces some years ago. She's helped me on occassion
track down those beasts... secretly of course, but you know that already, don't
you?"
"You speak of Karima. Asuka's protege in Special Operations. Captain Karima Khan.
Find her, Suzuhara. She has the answers you need. There are... things she remembers
from the AT field that I used to save her."
"But you want something from her too, don't you? What's your agenda, Commander?"
The Commander's eyes regarded him, as if seeing through him and nothing of him.
As if he didn't exist.
"That is all, Agent Suzuhara. You are dismissed."
He heard a rumbling behind him, approaching like an oncoming locomotive. He turned
around to face the noise, and saw a huge fireball bearing down on him.
Before he lost consiousness for the second time that day, he managed to articulate
one last thought. "Crap," he exclaimed to himself, "I really hate this-"
***
"-this job. I really hate it," muttered the angry officer as she pressed the wristbutton
on her combat uniform. She had just gotten out of bed, she had dressed quickly and
instinctively as she had countless times before in response to the insistent high-security
alarm, and under the present circumstances, she was very upset at the timing. Her hair
still disheveled, she hit the response console on her wall with more force than she
intended, to silence the alarm, and a familiar face on the video screen appeared.
"What is it, Karima?"
"Sorry to disturb you, Major, but we have positive identification of an MP Eva
near our base, hidden inside a dead volcano. Request permission to form a recon team."
"Fine then. I'll be right there. Relay the news to Tokyo-3."
"Asuka," Karima ventured, hesitation in her voice. "If you want, I can handle it here
and lead the team myself while, uhm, while you're with..."
"Are you giving me orders, Khan?"
"No, of course not. Whatever," replied the redfaced younger officer, sarcasm creeping
into her words. "As you command... Major Ikari."
"Karima!" she growled, but her deputy's transmission had already terminated. And behind
her, a weary sigh punctured the still morning calm.
"I thought you had changed your name back to Langley," muttered the man behind her, as
he entered the room, while putting on a robe.
"I did... I'm sorry," she whispered as she turned, worry and wistfullness etched in her
eyes, to meet his empty gaze. "I have to go..."
"I know," said Shinji, coldly. "Your duty. Yes, I know the drill. I've known the drill from
the moment I first met the world's best pilot."
"Shinji... don't start that again," she said. Pleading. Angry.
"I'm not," he snapped, very wearily, as if repeating an old, tired line. "Just go."
Shinji barely heard his wife's frustrated retort. He had his face in his hands.
He had a sudden flashback of one of his dreams.
It was a dream of Yui's parting words to Gendo as she fingered the wrist button of
her plugsuit, the morning before the Eva consumed her.
"But I have to go. It's my duty... Relax, dear, everything will turn out just fine..."
And it was a dream of a younger Lieutenant Khan speaking, from the past.
"Mr. Ikari, I'm afraid something happened to the Captain... our battalion was
ambushed this morning..."
Asuka had slammed the door shut as she left, by the time Shinji looked up, and felt
his knees collapse.
"But I don't want you to go... I'm ending up just like him... just like him..."
***
"But I wanted some part of your father to live on in you, Shinji," whispered a voice from
a shadow inhabiting his dreams. "The part of him I want to remember, not this... not
this..."
The searing hot wind blew all around Rei, as she walked through the heart of a ball
of flame that extended above, below, and around her in all directions, as far as her
eyes could see. The rumbling blaze turned even the blackness of the Commander's uniform
into a shade of glowing crimson, matching her silent, grim eyes.
Everything in this dream was red, enraged...
In front of her, a solitary metal folding chair burst into flames, became incinerated
in a frenzied shower of sparks.
The wall of flame in front of her formed suddenly into a swirling resemblance of Kihl's
smiling, mocking face.
"It all comes down to nothing, Commander!" snarled Kihl. "You were destined to lose
everything dear to you. Get out! Out! Out, brief candle!" He continued, cruel laughter
in his knowing voice. "Didn't you know? Life's but a walking shadow, a pathetic doll
that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale
told by an an idiot, full of sound and fire and fury, signifying nothing!"
Rei unholstered her sidearm as he spoke. She aimed, and fired. And fired. And fired.
The gunfire sounds masked the quivering in her voice as she mumbled incoherently.
The flames shattered like broken glass all around, in a million resounding crashes.
And she found herself stranded on a peaceful, white sand beach, overlooking the ruins
of Tokyo-3, and the remains of an MP Eva stranded in the clear blue water.
A young girl, barely out of her teens, stood up to face Rei. The girl still had
bandages covering one eye and one arm, and the remnants of a flimsy blue dress
barely covered her body, but she was smiling, and her long red hair blew in the gentle
sea breeze.
"I know you've been wanting to meet him... Mother." said Asuka.
A little boy, in a yellow-sleeved white shirt and tan shorts, ran up to the girl's
side, to hug her leg. Asuka reached down to take the boy's hand, and he shyly looked
up as the young mother guided her son closer to Rei.
"Meet Ichiro Ikari... your grandson," said Asuka proudly, a soft smugness appearing in her
smile. "He's really something, isn't he?"
Rei bent down, and as she kneeled in front of the boy she reached out her hand to
caress his cheek. The boy smiled, and she caught him in a sudden tight hug.
Rei closed her eyes. "He looks like his father," she said, smiling.
"Yes," whispered Asuka, her breaking voice suddenly choking back tears, as her entire
body shook frantically, violently, hugging herself. "He would have looked like his
father if only... I'm sorry I lost him..."
Deep within the confines of NERV, in the Commander's quarters, Commander Ayanami
dreamed. As she slept, a stream of tears flowed down her cheeks, and disappeared
into her pillow.
"Ichiro... how wonderful it would have been, if only you had been born..."
As Rei's dream disappeared into the depths of her sleep, she could hear Karima's voice...
"... the Captain was wounded in battle, but she's fine now! Her condition is stable...
but... Mr. Ikari, the doctors found out she was with child, almost a month old... she's
had a miscarriage due to her injuries... I'm so sorry... Mr. Ikari? Mr. Ikari? Are you
still there?"
Outside Rei's quarters, Agent Suzuhara stood guard. He exchanged no words with the regular
sentries, until eventually sleep threatened to overtake him, and he returned to his
quarters hours later.
***
The morning after was not much better.
"You seem distraught, buddy. The Commander didn't dress you down, did she?"
"It's nothing, Kensuke," answered Touji, as he leaned down to move a bishop forward
on their chessboard, to threaten his friend's queen. "My face is just betraying my
enthusiasm at playing this game."
"You never were one to enjoy games like this. You've always preferred straight
action."
"I just play this out of consideration for my friends," muttered Touji, smiling
as he crossed his arms and leaned back in his seat. He regarded his old friend,
who had now removed his glasses to rub his tired eyes. They were getting old, and
time was taking their toll on both of them, turning their youth into a dying dream,
he mused, as a strange melancholy overtook him. "What's on your mind?" he managed
to say, to his grim old friend.
"Do you remember the mole we sent to SEELE, the one who disappeared in Berlin?"
"You heard back from him?"
"For the last time too, I'm afraid. He was... terminated before he finished his last
coded transmission."
"He reported something interesting, I gather?"
"Yes, as a matter of fact. He found out who one of them is. The identity of one of our
SEELE friends. Our mole was trying to transmit the information when we lost him."
"From the look on your face, I'd say you weren't happy to find out who."
"You can't imagine."
"Try me."
"The SEELE member is one of us. We have a traitor in our midst. The name our unfortunate
agent transmitted was... 'Soryu.'"
And with a tired sigh, Aida moved a pawn forward, sacrificing it to protect his queen.
***
Love.
Duty.
Pride.
Loss.
Revenge.
Emptiness.
She willed herself to shake off the emotions swirling inside her. Not now, she thought
to herself. Not now.
"Guten Morgen, Herr Kanzler," she said. Crisp and professional.
"At ease, Major. Congratulations on your promotion."
Asuka continued to stand ramrod straight, staring straight up at the video projection
of the EU Chancellor dominating the empty, darkened room.
"I have a lot of work to do, Herr Kanzler. What is it you want?"
"Once your unit succeeds in destroying the last surviving MP Eva, we expect SEELE and
their proxy armies to launch a last-ditch attack on NERV or the UN, somewhere, somehow.
However, the American President has informed me that you have lately been...
resisting... some of the more... sensitive orders we gave you."
"I report to NERV and Commander Ayanami now, Herr Kanzler. You should take this up
with her, through the proper chain of command of the UN Joint Forces."
"You know as well as I do that her loyalties are suspect, Major. She is Gendo's creation,
after all. I... think I know the real reason for your insubordination. I know this is
difficult for you, Asuka, but you're the only one who can do all the things we ask
for, and we must act for the greater good. Forget the past. This is not the time to
be emotional. You should never have gone off and let your youthful impulses-"
"Again, that is none of your business, Kanzler," she icily interrupted. "I don't want
your words of wisdom, or your sympathy. You're not even qualified to lecture me on this!
About marriage, of all things!"
"That..." sternly mumbled the old man, whose video image wavered in the air above the
angry Major. "That is no way to talk to your father, young lady."
"You never wanted to be a father anyway. So leave us alone. You will keep your hands
off him, Herr Kanzler Soryu."
"He didn't want to become a father, or a husband, either. Not in his heart."
"What will you try to tell me next? That I remind you of my mother? Is that it?"
The Chancellor's face fell. Through the fog of her anger, Asuka wondered if the
glint she saw in her father's eyes was one of regret.
"What must happen will happen. I am... truly sorry. I truly don't want to see you
hurt, in any way... believe me. Farewell, my daughter."
The video image flickered out, leaving the Major alone, in the dark, with her thoughts.
Love.
Duty.
Pride.
Loss.
"Is this why you left her then? You're all the same... you're all the bloody same..."
Loss.
"But I still..."
Revenge.
"I still..."
Emptiness.
***
(To be continued)
------
In the silent, gravelike confines of an empty room, a door suddenly slid open, admitting
a shaft of light. A woman's silhouette passed through the light, before the door closed
once again.
Small footsteps echoed through the dark cavernous room. The straight, solitary figure walked
into the center of a shadowy arena, and stopped several meters in front of an obelisk.
"I know you're in here," whispered the figure, her voice cold, firm.
Slowly, slowly... a dozen obelisks surrounding the woman lit up, like awakening ghosts,
murmuring with the irritation and glee of beasts awakened from a long sleep.
"Welcome back, Ayanami," answered a grim, ancient voice. "We knew all along, that you'd
come back to us."
"Kihl... give it up," answered Rei, almost dispassionately. "You can finance a hundred
more wars and atrocities and we still won't return NERV's secrets to you. Stop
slaughtering the innocent. Give it up. Just give it up. I grow weary of this."
The voice from the front obelisk answered her with a bark, and with derisive laughter
that was immediately echoed by his peers, in a growing symphony of scorn.
"The young traitor blames us for the evils she chose to perpetuate!" hissed a voice
from an obelisk to her right. "Ikari-spawn, open your eyes to the consequences of your
choices."
"You grow weary of your guilt, Commander Ayanami," accused a female voice from an obelisk
to her left. "The late Commander Ikari would have been pleased to know of your guilt
for betraying him. A pity, that he's dead. No thanks to you."
"I have never doubted that I did the right thing," she calmly retorted. While she
furtively clenched her suddenly shaking fists at her sides.
"Really? Was it right for Yui to betray the man who dedicated his entire, pathetic
existence to her?"
"You cannot fault Yui for choosing their son's happiness."
"Your son's happiness! Is he really happy now, Ayanami? Is his estranged wife Soryu happy?
Is his former best friend Suzuhara happy?" growled Kihl, in a voice dripping now with
bitter sympathy. "The wounds left by the elder Ikaris and Soryus are too deep to excise.
You can still save the Eva Pilots, Ayanami! You can save the world from its pain."
"And, most importantly..." whispered the female voice of SEELE, "Yui can still have
her Gendo back."
And, amidst their fading laughter, the lights from the obelisks faded, leaving the
young Commander alone, once again, in the dark.
She had not been standing there, alone with her troubled thoughts, for too long when
she felt felt the gun on her back.
***
He had spent hours poking around these abandoned tunnels and corridors, foraging for
trouble like a sewer rat looking for food, he thought irritably to himself.
He finally found the secure door, as he peered through its grime at the serial number
etched into its metal surface. Carefully, he reached under his jacket for a card,
then swiped it through the door's security slot. As the door slid open, he paused,
his gun ready and aimed, and he went inside.
As he walked forward, deeper into the cavernous room, he was surprised to see a solitary
black-clad figure, surrounded by a dozen illuminated obelisks. He recognized the voice
as she talked, apparently to the obelisk to her front.
"I have never doubted that I did the right thing," she stated.
He forced his ears to listen for a reply from whoever she was speaking with, but he
heard nothing.
"You cannot fault Yui for choosing their son's happiness."
Has the Commander gone mad, he wondered, as silence answered Ayanami's words. Cautiously,
he approached her from behind, his gun raised upward.
Suddenly, the lights of the obelisks dimmed, and in the darkness he silently lunged
forward, his gun aimed at the Commander's back.
"Suzuhara," she whispered in response.
"Commander. Good to see you."
"It is not good for one such as yourself to be threatening someone like me in that
manner."
"My apologies, Commander. You seemed... unstable."
"Unstable... I am well aware that some of your superiors remain suspicious of my loyalties,
Suzuhara. But this is not the reason you came here."
"Feel free to enlighten me, Commander."
"You've done well, hunting down and eliminating the war criminals who slaughtered your...
friends and family fourteen years ago. Now, you think you're finally on the trail of
their masters, but what will you be when you finally face them?"
"With all due respect, cut the angst babble, Commander. What's your point, Rei?"
"There are memories that haunt us, Fourth Child. In your case, it is the face of a girl
who was lost, horribly murdered, trying to save you. Fourth Child... this wish of yours
to be... reunited with Hikari, to what distances will it take you?"
Click.
Rei's face remained impassive, eyes cold, as Touji released the safety of his pistol.
"Don't mess with me, Commander."
***
As he woke up, he touched a bruise on his forefead, dark thoughts swimming through
his groggy mind. He hated this job.
This was the second time in two weeks that a former Eva pilot had knocked him down, he
noted, very sorely. He didn't think it could be possible for the frail-looking
Ayanami to strike him harder than the athletic Soryu had done, but the Commander had
moved like lightning and had managed, however briefly, to knock him out cold.
His head was throbbing. Damn Eva pilots. At this rate he was looking forward even less to a
reunion with Shinji. There was, for one, the matter of a punch from fourteen years earlier
that had not yet been avenged.
As he looked up to glare at the Commander, he did a double take. The figure standing
in front of him was not wearing the black jacket and uniform skirt of NERV Command. The
Rei Ayanami looking down on him at that moment was the schoolgirl he had first met fourteen
years earlier.
This can't possibly be real, he thought to himself.
"The past is more real than the conscious mind acknowledges, Fourth Child," replied
Rei, as if reading his mind. "Memories make up who we are."
There was a palpable sadness in her barren eyes as she said these words.
The pain in his head became unbearable, and he buckled over in pain, but before he
opened his eyes again, he caught another question she directed at him.
"Do you remember the night you found me? The night after SEELE discovered my hiding
place and captured me, along with one my students?"
***
"Yes, I remember. I remember you were briefed by Maya that night, while I stood
guard outside your room. Commander Ibuki seemed in shock afterward; for a long-lost
runaway, you were awfully sharp and well-informed, she said..."
"Do you know why you're here, Rei?" asked the woman in the black command uniform and white
lab coat, as she seated herself on the stool in front of the heavily bandaged patient.
Rei stared at the woman in front of her. The older woman's eyes behind the eyeglasses
looked sympathetic, even apologetic. Rei was tempted to smile, even a little, to try
to reassure her, but her thoughts kept returning to what she was about to say.
"Yes..."
"Yes? You do?"
"You need the secrets of Terminal Dogma, Doctor Ibuki. SEELE has spent years waging an
underground campaign against the UN to wrest control of NERV, and to find the lost MP
Evas. They want to resume the Human Instrumentality Project, and you want to stop
them, but you're not sure how. You're not even sure what it is that you hope to stop.
You think I possess Commander Ikari's secrets."
"So you do know. Can you help us? Or rather, will you help us?"
"Where are they?"
"Who?"
"The pilots Ikari and Soryu. I would like to know how they fare, in this troubled new
world. I need to know they are well."
"They are. They were married, a few years ago. You should have come to their wedding."
"Yet Soryu still fights. I saw her in combat uniform, briefly, among the party that
raided the safehouse and rescued me and my friend."
"She's a commando now... we retrofitted some of NERV's machines to make portable AT fields,
and S2 energy cells to power them, but very few are able to operate them and use them
well. Asuka is among the few who can. She's the best at it."
"And they both agreed to this?"
"Only she did. No war machine without an AT field can bring down a reactivated MP Eva,
and you could say she had... a vendetta. Shinji, on the other hand, is... unable to use
the AT generators."
"I see. What of the reserve pilots?"
"Most of them are with Asuka's forces, or with related units and organizations. You
met Touji already, he was the one who identified you and carried you out of the safehouse."
"And what of Hikari?"
"She's gone... when the JSSDF raided NERV so many years ago, a team was sent to
intercept and dispose of the Fourth Child. He escaped, but they captured her instead.
When the Impact wiped out JSSDF command, that battalion joined one of the new daimyos'
militias, and they kept her for their pleasure, and for SEELE's... experiments. We found
her much, much later, but her mind by then was blank... and..."
"I see... that explains some things."
"What do you mean?"
"The general who captured us, he came to our ward, and tried to molest the girl who
was captured with me, while she lay comatose in her bed. He laid his hand on her... he
was reaching down... and I stopped him."
"You generated an AT field. There was nothing much left of him when our troops got
there."
"Yes. Before he was gone, his memories were revealed to me. Memories of his victims
through the years. He had... a particularly strong memory of Hikari. He was a young
officer when they took her."
"Well. He got what he deserved. But your friend is fine now, and we might even be
able to save her arm from being amputated. She was one of your students at the school
you stayed in, right? It's a good thing your AT field had no effect on her."
"Perhaps. She might not remember anything. Or everything. Thoughts and memories
have unpredictable lives inside an AT field. Please see to it that she is well."
***
Outside the room where Maya and Rei were meeting, two sentries stood guard. They wore
blue-and-green paratroop uniforms, red berets and headsets, and what looked like strange
metal vests emblazoned with the NERV logo. Each of the two commandos clutched
a submachine gun, and stood several feet apart from the other, though they occasionally
whispered to each other through their headsets. One, a sergeant, leaned casually against
a wall, and maintained a bored expression on his face. The other, a redheaded lieutenant,
looked close to getting agitated, and occasionally tapped her foot nervously on the
floor, and occasionally paced around, her long hair flowing behind her.
"Lieutenant Ikari," finally exclaimed the sergeant. "Stop that. You're making me jumpy."
"Shut up, Suzuhara," muttered Asuka with a sigh. "I still don't see why Ibuki won't
let us see her. We're just one door away, for pity's sake!"
"You're really that eager to talk to her again? I really thought you hated her back
when we were kids."
"It's not that... never mind, you wouldn't understand anyway."
"So when do you intend to tell him that she's here?"
"If you want to ask a question, Suzuhara, go ahead and ask it."
"Okay. So are the rumors true? That she's a clone of Commander Ikari's wife?"
"Yes, mostly. That's supposed to be classified, but now that she's here it'll come out
in the open anyway, if Commander Ibuki convinces her to take the job. She's practically
my sister-in-law, I guess. A very... strange... sister-in-law."
"Well, that's one mystery down," he sighed. "Just one more missing person to go."
"I'm sorry we didn't find her," she replied, leaning sadly against the wall. "We will
someday, don't worry."
"She's a scrappy girl," he said, his eyes lost in dark memories. "Yeah, for someone
who'd never touched a gun in her life, she was a great shooter. I'll never forgive
myself for leaving her to save my own skin."
"Look, Touji," started the Lieutenant, but she suddenly stopped to stare, mouth agape,
at the girl behind the sergeant. "Hey, what are you doing here? You're supposed to be
an invalid, where's your doctor?"
The young girl, heavily bandaged but walking erect in her loose hospital gown, stared
up at a startled Suzuhara as he turned to face her.
"Touji..." she whispered, before fainting, and he caught her in his arms as she fell.
"How did she get here undetected?" grumbled Asuka, as she went to check the girl's
pulse, and fingered her headset to call for help.
"How does she know my name?" he muttered.
***
Back in the present, in the darkness of Terminal Dogma, an older Touji Suzuhara slumped
down on the floor, exhausted, as the black-clad figure of the Commander stood over
him.
"That... that girl who was assaulted in the raid so many years ago, I remember
her... she joined the Joint Forces some years ago. She's helped me on occassion
track down those beasts... secretly of course, but you know that already, don't
you?"
"You speak of Karima. Asuka's protege in Special Operations. Captain Karima Khan.
Find her, Suzuhara. She has the answers you need. There are... things she remembers
from the AT field that I used to save her."
"But you want something from her too, don't you? What's your agenda, Commander?"
The Commander's eyes regarded him, as if seeing through him and nothing of him.
As if he didn't exist.
"That is all, Agent Suzuhara. You are dismissed."
He heard a rumbling behind him, approaching like an oncoming locomotive. He turned
around to face the noise, and saw a huge fireball bearing down on him.
Before he lost consiousness for the second time that day, he managed to articulate
one last thought. "Crap," he exclaimed to himself, "I really hate this-"
***
"-this job. I really hate it," muttered the angry officer as she pressed the wristbutton
on her combat uniform. She had just gotten out of bed, she had dressed quickly and
instinctively as she had countless times before in response to the insistent high-security
alarm, and under the present circumstances, she was very upset at the timing. Her hair
still disheveled, she hit the response console on her wall with more force than she
intended, to silence the alarm, and a familiar face on the video screen appeared.
"What is it, Karima?"
"Sorry to disturb you, Major, but we have positive identification of an MP Eva
near our base, hidden inside a dead volcano. Request permission to form a recon team."
"Fine then. I'll be right there. Relay the news to Tokyo-3."
"Asuka," Karima ventured, hesitation in her voice. "If you want, I can handle it here
and lead the team myself while, uhm, while you're with..."
"Are you giving me orders, Khan?"
"No, of course not. Whatever," replied the redfaced younger officer, sarcasm creeping
into her words. "As you command... Major Ikari."
"Karima!" she growled, but her deputy's transmission had already terminated. And behind
her, a weary sigh punctured the still morning calm.
"I thought you had changed your name back to Langley," muttered the man behind her, as
he entered the room, while putting on a robe.
"I did... I'm sorry," she whispered as she turned, worry and wistfullness etched in her
eyes, to meet his empty gaze. "I have to go..."
"I know," said Shinji, coldly. "Your duty. Yes, I know the drill. I've known the drill from
the moment I first met the world's best pilot."
"Shinji... don't start that again," she said. Pleading. Angry.
"I'm not," he snapped, very wearily, as if repeating an old, tired line. "Just go."
Shinji barely heard his wife's frustrated retort. He had his face in his hands.
He had a sudden flashback of one of his dreams.
It was a dream of Yui's parting words to Gendo as she fingered the wrist button of
her plugsuit, the morning before the Eva consumed her.
"But I have to go. It's my duty... Relax, dear, everything will turn out just fine..."
And it was a dream of a younger Lieutenant Khan speaking, from the past.
"Mr. Ikari, I'm afraid something happened to the Captain... our battalion was
ambushed this morning..."
Asuka had slammed the door shut as she left, by the time Shinji looked up, and felt
his knees collapse.
"But I don't want you to go... I'm ending up just like him... just like him..."
***
"But I wanted some part of your father to live on in you, Shinji," whispered a voice from
a shadow inhabiting his dreams. "The part of him I want to remember, not this... not
this..."
The searing hot wind blew all around Rei, as she walked through the heart of a ball
of flame that extended above, below, and around her in all directions, as far as her
eyes could see. The rumbling blaze turned even the blackness of the Commander's uniform
into a shade of glowing crimson, matching her silent, grim eyes.
Everything in this dream was red, enraged...
In front of her, a solitary metal folding chair burst into flames, became incinerated
in a frenzied shower of sparks.
The wall of flame in front of her formed suddenly into a swirling resemblance of Kihl's
smiling, mocking face.
"It all comes down to nothing, Commander!" snarled Kihl. "You were destined to lose
everything dear to you. Get out! Out! Out, brief candle!" He continued, cruel laughter
in his knowing voice. "Didn't you know? Life's but a walking shadow, a pathetic doll
that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale
told by an an idiot, full of sound and fire and fury, signifying nothing!"
Rei unholstered her sidearm as he spoke. She aimed, and fired. And fired. And fired.
The gunfire sounds masked the quivering in her voice as she mumbled incoherently.
The flames shattered like broken glass all around, in a million resounding crashes.
And she found herself stranded on a peaceful, white sand beach, overlooking the ruins
of Tokyo-3, and the remains of an MP Eva stranded in the clear blue water.
A young girl, barely out of her teens, stood up to face Rei. The girl still had
bandages covering one eye and one arm, and the remnants of a flimsy blue dress
barely covered her body, but she was smiling, and her long red hair blew in the gentle
sea breeze.
"I know you've been wanting to meet him... Mother." said Asuka.
A little boy, in a yellow-sleeved white shirt and tan shorts, ran up to the girl's
side, to hug her leg. Asuka reached down to take the boy's hand, and he shyly looked
up as the young mother guided her son closer to Rei.
"Meet Ichiro Ikari... your grandson," said Asuka proudly, a soft smugness appearing in her
smile. "He's really something, isn't he?"
Rei bent down, and as she kneeled in front of the boy she reached out her hand to
caress his cheek. The boy smiled, and she caught him in a sudden tight hug.
Rei closed her eyes. "He looks like his father," she said, smiling.
"Yes," whispered Asuka, her breaking voice suddenly choking back tears, as her entire
body shook frantically, violently, hugging herself. "He would have looked like his
father if only... I'm sorry I lost him..."
Deep within the confines of NERV, in the Commander's quarters, Commander Ayanami
dreamed. As she slept, a stream of tears flowed down her cheeks, and disappeared
into her pillow.
"Ichiro... how wonderful it would have been, if only you had been born..."
As Rei's dream disappeared into the depths of her sleep, she could hear Karima's voice...
"... the Captain was wounded in battle, but she's fine now! Her condition is stable...
but... Mr. Ikari, the doctors found out she was with child, almost a month old... she's
had a miscarriage due to her injuries... I'm so sorry... Mr. Ikari? Mr. Ikari? Are you
still there?"
Outside Rei's quarters, Agent Suzuhara stood guard. He exchanged no words with the regular
sentries, until eventually sleep threatened to overtake him, and he returned to his
quarters hours later.
***
The morning after was not much better.
"You seem distraught, buddy. The Commander didn't dress you down, did she?"
"It's nothing, Kensuke," answered Touji, as he leaned down to move a bishop forward
on their chessboard, to threaten his friend's queen. "My face is just betraying my
enthusiasm at playing this game."
"You never were one to enjoy games like this. You've always preferred straight
action."
"I just play this out of consideration for my friends," muttered Touji, smiling
as he crossed his arms and leaned back in his seat. He regarded his old friend,
who had now removed his glasses to rub his tired eyes. They were getting old, and
time was taking their toll on both of them, turning their youth into a dying dream,
he mused, as a strange melancholy overtook him. "What's on your mind?" he managed
to say, to his grim old friend.
"Do you remember the mole we sent to SEELE, the one who disappeared in Berlin?"
"You heard back from him?"
"For the last time too, I'm afraid. He was... terminated before he finished his last
coded transmission."
"He reported something interesting, I gather?"
"Yes, as a matter of fact. He found out who one of them is. The identity of one of our
SEELE friends. Our mole was trying to transmit the information when we lost him."
"From the look on your face, I'd say you weren't happy to find out who."
"You can't imagine."
"Try me."
"The SEELE member is one of us. We have a traitor in our midst. The name our unfortunate
agent transmitted was... 'Soryu.'"
And with a tired sigh, Aida moved a pawn forward, sacrificing it to protect his queen.
***
Love.
Duty.
Pride.
Loss.
Revenge.
Emptiness.
She willed herself to shake off the emotions swirling inside her. Not now, she thought
to herself. Not now.
"Guten Morgen, Herr Kanzler," she said. Crisp and professional.
"At ease, Major. Congratulations on your promotion."
Asuka continued to stand ramrod straight, staring straight up at the video projection
of the EU Chancellor dominating the empty, darkened room.
"I have a lot of work to do, Herr Kanzler. What is it you want?"
"Once your unit succeeds in destroying the last surviving MP Eva, we expect SEELE and
their proxy armies to launch a last-ditch attack on NERV or the UN, somewhere, somehow.
However, the American President has informed me that you have lately been...
resisting... some of the more... sensitive orders we gave you."
"I report to NERV and Commander Ayanami now, Herr Kanzler. You should take this up
with her, through the proper chain of command of the UN Joint Forces."
"You know as well as I do that her loyalties are suspect, Major. She is Gendo's creation,
after all. I... think I know the real reason for your insubordination. I know this is
difficult for you, Asuka, but you're the only one who can do all the things we ask
for, and we must act for the greater good. Forget the past. This is not the time to
be emotional. You should never have gone off and let your youthful impulses-"
"Again, that is none of your business, Kanzler," she icily interrupted. "I don't want
your words of wisdom, or your sympathy. You're not even qualified to lecture me on this!
About marriage, of all things!"
"That..." sternly mumbled the old man, whose video image wavered in the air above the
angry Major. "That is no way to talk to your father, young lady."
"You never wanted to be a father anyway. So leave us alone. You will keep your hands
off him, Herr Kanzler Soryu."
"He didn't want to become a father, or a husband, either. Not in his heart."
"What will you try to tell me next? That I remind you of my mother? Is that it?"
The Chancellor's face fell. Through the fog of her anger, Asuka wondered if the
glint she saw in her father's eyes was one of regret.
"What must happen will happen. I am... truly sorry. I truly don't want to see you
hurt, in any way... believe me. Farewell, my daughter."
The video image flickered out, leaving the Major alone, in the dark, with her thoughts.
Love.
Duty.
Pride.
Loss.
"Is this why you left her then? You're all the same... you're all the bloody same..."
Loss.
"But I still..."
Revenge.
"I still..."
Emptiness.
***
(To be continued)