The Weaver

Six

"You can just smile."

Rei Ayanami opens her eyes. Pilot Ikari stands in front of her, in his school uniform. The Commander's ruined glasses are perched on the bridge of his nose. Rei strides towards him and removes the glasses, causing an exaggerated response by Pilot Ikari she would later understand was a part of the male libido. He backs away from her, then pitches forward, falling on her, one hand closing around her breast.

-

Now she and Pilot Ikari are descending into the Geo-Front. The Commander's son has just asked her if she is afraid to take part in the reactivation test with Unit Zero.

"Don't you have faith in your own father's work?" she asks him.

Of course not, he says. How could I trust him?

Rei turns and slaps him.

-

Pilot Ikari is inside a medical device after being attacked by the Fifth Angel. She sits in the room, holding the Commander's glasses.

He is in a bed now, leaning over a new plugsuit. The covers fall away from his body, revealing his chest and stomach and pubic hair.

"Don't show up looking like that, Ikari," she says.

He immediately covers himself and apologizes, and asks her if he really has to pilot again.

"Of course," she says.

But what if I don't want to? he asks.

"Then I will pilot Unit One."

-

It is now thirty minutes later, Ikari is dressed in his school uniform and ready to depart the hospital.

-

Doctor Akagi and Captain Katsuragi are briefing Pilot Ikari on the use of the JSSDF's positron rifle. She is not directly addressed, standing to one side in the harsh light.

"I am to just defend Unit One, correct?" she asks.

That's correct, Doctor Akagi says.

-

She is in the changing room, putting on her plugsuit. A narrow, translucent blind separates her from Pilot Ikari.

Maybe this will be our last day alive, he says.

"Why would you say something like that?" she says, sealing her plugsuit. "You won't die, I will be protecting you."

-

Now she is now sitting on the Evangelion scaffolding next to Pilot Ikari. He has just asked her why she pilots.

"Because I'm bonded to it," she replies.

To my father? he asks.

"To all people," she replies. "I have nothing else."

"It is time," she says, rising. "Goodbye."

-

She is inside the entry plug. Her skin is burned and not burned, the neural feedback not bad as it might have been, because she is not yet well synchronized with Unit Zero. The external hatch groans, and then opens. She looks up and sees Pilot Ikari.

He tells her to never say that she has nothing else, and to never say goodbye before going on a mission.

"I am sorry," she says. "I don't know what to do or say at a time like this."

You can just smile, he says, tears in his eyes.

That moment, that image. Rei could not escape it.

-

In her bedroom. She is on the floor, naked. Shinji has just clumsily fallen onto her. She feels his hand on her breast. Their eyes meet, something Rei had failed to notice until now.

"Why do you act the way you do?" she asks him, breaking the script.

The image of Shinji Ikari says nothing. It cannot. The memory of Shinji Ikari is incomplete - she cannot begin to guess what his response might have been.

But then, the image warps:

Back in the hospital.

Do I really have to pilot again?
"Of course."

What if I don't want to?

"Then I will pilot Unit One."

He decides to pilot.

The vision comes quickly, and after it washes over Rei, she is still under Shinji. This disturbs her - she has never lost control inside her own mind before. She concentrates, and wakes up.

-

Rei Ayanami opened her eyes in the here and now. Her apartment was dark, nothing save the moonlight illuminating it. She curled into a ball beneath the sheets of her bed, the pain in her stomach compelling her to do nothing but remember.

"They would have told us, don't you think?" Kensuke asked. "I mean, we're their classmates. If someone got killed or something, they'd tell us, right?"

It was lunch period. Touji was eating some fancy bento while Kensuke wondered at the prolonged absence of Shinji, Asuka, and Rei Ayanami.

"Stop talkin' about it," Touji mumbled as he chewed his sashimi. "They'll come back eventually, they always do."

As they talked, Kensuke noticed Touji glancing over to Hikari Horaki, the Class Representative. Hikari seemed to be glancing at Touji as well, though the two never looked at one another at exactly the same time.

"Hey Touji. Where'd you get that bento, huh?" Kensuke asked, sure he knew the answer.

"What does that matter, huh? You want one?" came the guarded reply.

"So, Horaki?" Kensuke smirked as he said this, edging away.

"Yeah, Horaki. What?"

"Man, you are eating the Class Rep's food. This isn't news?"

"So what? She made me a bento. Said it was her responsibility to keep the class fit. Said I couldn't go buying lunch from the school store anymore."

Kensuke was about to reply to this when the teacher entered along with...

"Oh dammit," Kensuke muttered, gesturing to the front. Touji turned and saw the teacher with two other people, some chick in red with a beret and a man wearing a black three-piece, his hair back in a ponytail. It took him a moment to recognize Misato Katsuragi as the woman wearing red, her normally happy or reflective features were now merely somber.

"You dumbass," Touji hissed. "You just had to fucking say something!"

Hikari had left her group of friends and approached the teacher. They briefly conferred while Misato's eyes roamed across the room, lingering briefly on Touji and Kensuke.

The Class Rep had finished talking with the teacher, and now turned to address the class.

"Attention!" Hikari commanded. "Everyone please pay attention. Miss Katsuragi of Nerv has come to make an announcement."

They let them out of class afterwards. Hikari had latched on to Touji right after the announcement, and he had taken her home. She had been crying, and Touji had sort of shrugged and gone along with it because, well...

Kensuke did not have much problem accepting the announcement. He had gone straight from school to the arcade. It was the nature of being a soldier, after all. Death and all that were expected on the battlefield, he thought as he poured credit after credit into the arcade machines.

He stayed at the arcade for eight hours. When it closed, he bought some junk food and a soda from a vending machine down the street, and ate sitting on a bench nearby. Then he carefully deposited the wrappers from his meal into the proper trash receptacle, and threw the glass soda bottle through the display window of one of the vending machines.

Gendo Ikari was not simply the Commander of Nerv, he was also a scientist. Units Zero and One had been created using his techniques, his technology. It had been the Ikaris who had first perfected the Evangelion's genetic structure, and the methods to manufacture one. Though he now occupied an administrative position, Gendo still spent a great deal of his time in Sector 32, an area several hundred feet beneath Central Dogma, where his laboratory was.

Ikari had no use for morality. Mankind was facing extinction, the very idea that someone would try to restrict his research because they found it "objectionable" offended Ikari. He did understand discretion, however. Secrecy was something with which he was well acquainted. So Section 32, Ikari's Lab, was inaccessible to everyone save himself, Doctor Akagi, Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki, and Rei Ayanami.

The lab was run down, but completely functional. In many places tarps had been hung over equipment, walls and ceilings torn out and repaired in amateurish fashion - he could hardly trust a maintenance crew to fix things, so Ikari had Ritsuko do it. The sector was six hundred feet long, a narrow hallway that branched out into many rooms, each of which had a unique function. In one of these rooms, the thing called Ayanami had been born.

Ikari sat in one of the many rooms, in front of three computer monitors. The monitor to Gendo's left displayed a complete genetic profile, the middle one displayed six possible permutations of the sourced genetic code. The monitor on the right was, for the moment, displaying a black screen. He considered each of the six DNA sequences he had spent the last three hours tailoring, made sure the primary physiology was intact. He was trying to encode very specific data into the genetic structure - a hack he had learned while developing the Ayanami series. At that thought, he glanced at the dark monitor, noting Rei's profile at the entrance to the room. She had been there for almost thirty minutes now.

At last deciding that each line of genetic code was structurally intact - no stop or go sequences inserted improperly - he sent the data to the MAGI, where it would be processed in a discrete cache and then returned to local computer assets. When he was sure the transfer had gone through, he at last turned to face Rei.

"You may enter," he said.

The girl crossed the threshold into the room. "May I speak with you please?" she asked, simply standing just inside the doorway.

Gendo appraised her carefully. This particular unit had been operating for long enough that her features were unique. There were certain tells in her body language that Gendo had learned to read over the last two years she had been active. Her legs were spaced slightly further apart then normal, and she was staring at him intensely. Her hands were loosely cupped. He had never seen her act in this way, and it was fascinating... and possibly dangerous.

"Speak," Gendo ordered, glancing to check the progress of the MAGI report, then back to the girl.

"How do humans deal with this thing 'loss'?" the girl asked.

Ikari stood and walked over to Rei, taking in every detail, watching her eyes follow his own. Her expression was blank, but her stance belied a certain energy - a frustration. Gendo glanced back at his computer equipment, then at the First Children.

"You miss the Third Child?" he asked.

Rei opened her mouth, then simply nodded.

This was unfortunate. The Ayanami series was supposed to function as a translation mechanism, but it seemed that some latent human psychology was bleeding through. Ikari was unaware of data retention between Ayanamis, he did not have enough data to be sure of anything... yet. This Ayanami had suddenly become very dangerous - Ikari was worried that these traces of humanity would pervert the thing that lived in the host body. It would be prudent to terminate this one and activate another before her personality developed any further. But... it also might be useful to allow humanity to develop in this body. If the soul which inhabited the Ayanami series was indeed aware of being reincarnated, then the damage was already done, and destroying this Ayanami would only exacerbate things.

Ikari stood before one of his creations, and carefully considered his options.

Behind him, the computer chimed. The Commander returned to his chair and started a program to compare the results to the ideal parameters. Rei came up behind him and watched, that strange energy still apparent in her movements. When the program began to run, Ikari spun around in his chair to face Rei again, steepling his hands together. Should he kill this unit, or not? Would this unit even...

"First Child, kill yourself," he ordered.

"Why?" the girl's expression didn't change, he could not tell what she was thinking, but it seemed certain that her previous unconditional resolve had disintegrated. Half a year ago she would have stuck a finger through her own eye at such a request. The question was...

"If you kill yourself, I will bring the Third Child back to life," the Commander stated, observing the way the Ayanami unit actually twitched at his request. Then she started looking for something sharp.

"Stop. Disregard what I said," he ordered.

She missed the Third Child, she felt 'loss'. She was willing to kill herself to bring him back. If Ayanami were a real person, Ikari would have suspected the Third and First had been in some sort of intimate relationship that had escaped the notice of Section 2. As things were now, he saw her behavior as a defect in his own design, an irrational factor that defied control.

"Rei, do you know who Naoko Akagi is?" Ikari asked.

"Doctor Akagi's mother, sir," the girl replied.

"Have you ever interacted with this person?" he continued.

"She did terminate me."

There it was. Naoko, Gendo's first lover after Yui's disappearance, had killed the first in the Ayanami series, then herself. Why she had done it, no one knew.

"Rei, why did Naoko kill you?" the Commander asked. It was still possible that the daughter Akagi had mentioned her mother and how she died to Rei. Ikari knew full well Ritsuko hated Rei for a variety of reasons, most imaginary.

"I called her something you called her. 'Old woman', or 'hag'. I did not know this was inappropriate. When Doctor Akagi learned you were the one who called her this, she killed me."

There was the great unknown. No doubt any longer, the thing that lived in the Ayanami foils was remembering each incarnation. The damage had already been done. Best to try and co-opt the new psychology.

"When our scenario is born out, I will be able to see Yui. If you wish, you may see the Third Child again."