The last thing Shinji remembered was fighting off NERV personnel as they tried to escort him to the hospital ward. He was vomitting his guts out, emptying his body of the LCL he had been forced to ingest without a single warning. He dropped to a knee, heaving, and blacked out.
He woke a few hours later, lying in a white gown, in a white bed, in a white room. He felt so stiff. Shinji had never experienced so much adrenaline in a fight – nor so much pain. He may not have broken anything, but he sure felt battered and bruised. That LCL stuff didn't do much for the actual shock of battle.
He laid there, staring at a ceiling he didn't recognize, imagining the night sky and the brightest stars. He closed his eyes and imagined himself outside in the middle of the desert, surrounded by nothing but sand as far as the eye could see. Nobody for miles except for himself and his sensei.
They were sparring, and their speed made their movements nearly invisible to the naked eye. The average fighter had nothing on these warriors. Shinji and his teacher traded blows back and forth, alternating between feet and elbows, fists and knees. Shinji found an opening and advanced, but his teacher saw it coming.
His open palm strike missed by a hair's breadth, and Shinji felt a pair of hands on his shoulders. His center of gravity was dragged over backwards, and then he felt the air pressure around him drop as his body was lobbed into the air. He tumbled through the air, doing his best to right himself against the turbulence.
He righted himself at the last moment and turned to face his opponent from the air. He was met by a small volley of ki blasts, each arching from one central point on the landscape below. They began exploding around him, and soon he was lost in the smoke of their discharge.
As the dust cleared, Shinji's form was nowhere to be seen. His sensei scratched his head looking around for the student he was supposed to be training. Finding nobody in the immediate area, he spun on his heels to walk away.
He was met with a face-full of ki energy, produced by Shinji's own hand. The blast slammed into the teacher's face, sending the man backwards and sliding through the dirt on his back. Shinji immediately took a defensive pose, ready to react to anything his teacher might throw at him. Nothing came from the crater his sensei had created except for laughter.
"That was good, Shinji. Always keep your opponent guessing," his teacher called, while his silhouette finally rose from the dust."Beware, though, that you don't spend too much time thinking about your riddles. Intellectuals have no-"
"-place on the battlefield. I know, sensei. I am well awake and aware," Shinji interrupted.
"Make sure you're awake off the battlefield too, Shinji. There is more to your new story than meets the eye. Now, again."
The night sky once again lit up with the bright flashes of ki and the cries of two warriors in battle. Shinji continued his frenzied screams until long into the night, long after he had lost his voice. A new hunger was awake within his heart, one he could not hope to fill with battle alone.
