A's N's - This was originally posted as part of Chapter 8. The two were split into more manageable chunks, Chapters 8 and 9, after discussions with my beta.
Chapter 9
Rei 01, Something Black / The other upon Saturn's bended neck she laid
EVANGELION
~'/|\'~
"Trust no friend without faults, and love a maiden, but no angel."
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
~'/|\'~
27th September, 2091
Without exception, everyone who passed the entrance examination to get into an Ashcroft Academy was a high achiever. The schools prided themselves on it; there was a reason that the global academic league tables were utterly dominated by these schools. They cherrypicked the brightest from mainstream education with generous scholarships, and were rumoured to conduct pre-admission genetic screening which was then taken into account in the acceptance process. The children there were disproportionately xenomixed and genofixed.
And despite this academic brilliance concentrated in one place, not one person had been able to deduce the logic behind how the Physical Education sessions migrated around the week. This week, they were Monday afternoon. Last week, they had been Tuesday morning. The week before that, Thursday morning. The general consensus was that the timetabling LAI was mad, with a minority report that the PE teachers were all a bunch of bloody-minded sadists who took too much pleasure in detentions issued for lack of the proper kit.
Up and down the pitches in front of the main buildings, a mass of boys thundered. Tight white T-shirts were covered by red or blue bibs, as they fought for primacy, and short shorts were splattered with mud as the studded boots tore up the natural turf. With a flick, a blue-bibbed player passed it to a tall, brown-haired boy who, pale legs flashing in the lightstrips in the dome ceiling, tore off up the field, outpacing or outwitting those reds who might have tried to obstruct him.
"Damn it, Dathan, pass the ball!" a boy, in a perfect position for a cross into the penalty box, yelled.
The taller boy ignored them, and, with a flick, sent it straight at the goal with a quite scary velocity, to barely be brushed aside by the fingers of the goalkeeper; fingers which were now in considerable pain. In the chaos around the goalmouth, the ball went out of play, and, luckily for the red-bibbed players, it was their goal kick.
Of course, the people on the pitch were predominantly the first team players from the six classes with PE scheduled at this time. The rest were sitting around at the sidelines, where they were meant to doing exercises. However, the teacher who had been covering them was currently escorting two boys, who'd managed to run head-first into each other, to the nurse's office, and so they were currently being simultaneously apathetic, indolent, salacious and libidinous.
Whoever had decided to give the school swimming pool a glass front which was visible from the playing fields was worshiped as a minor god by much of the male population of the school, or at least the ones old enough, and inclined to find girls interesting. For one, they had single-handedly, in their pursuit of architectural aesthetics, managed to negate the work done in dividing the sexes when there was swimming, to avoid any possible problems with body issues imposed by social pressures.
With a synchronised splash, the five girls standing at the end of the pool dived in. At the other end, the previous set climbed out, dripping down onto the clean white tiles. One wrapped her arm around another, mouth moving in unheard laughter, and there were sighs from the male onlookers.
"I like the view," Kensuke said, in a voice which was approaching sexual harassment merely in intonation, as he nudged Shinji in the ribs.
"I-I don't know what you mean."
"You cannot fool me!" declared Kensuke, with deliberate pomposity. "You, too, are looking for an answer to that eternal..."
"... well, since the 2060s..." Toja interjected, sitting on the other side of the boy.
"... eternal since the 2060s problem too, my friend. It has puzzled generations of men, driven them to madness... and stuff. But what is that problem, I hear you ask?"
Shinji squinted. "I feel you're going to tell me."
"Nazzadi or human! Which is hotter!"
"It's a hard one," a Nazzadi boy, his hair dyed white, said, as he leant back. "And if you say, 'That's what she said', Ken, I will thump you."
"Come on, Ala. Would I do..."
"Yes. And have."
Shinji nodded. "It is true."
"I hate you guys."
"Don't worry," Enitan, the dark-skinned boy on the other side of Toja, said with a smirk. "We hate you too. But, back to the topic at hand," he stroked his chin. "Difficult indeed. Humans are shorter, which is cuter..."
Toja snorted. "You only say that 'cause you're short and don't want a girlfriend who's taller than you. You know how much I'd have to bend down to kiss some of those people?" He paused. "Not that I'd mind, if they were hot, because that's a sacrifice worth making, but still..."
"Ah, but we're forgetting the big divide," Ala pointed out. "More fat; yes or no? Nazzadi are thinner, but humans have bigger boobs, and are more curvy... which I just find..." he shook his head. "Well, look at Panary." Gazes were indeed directed at the girl, her wet black hair tied back into a ponytail, as she stood at the end of the pool, waiting for her signal. "Sure, she might be tall and thin, but look! I mean, if I wanted someone tall, thin, muscled, and with no boobs, I'd go ask Dathan out."
Enitan snorted. "Get ready to fight both Jony and Ferdina for him, then."
"That wasn't serioooous."
"Even if he asked you out?"
"Yes! God, were you not listening to me? She's gotta actually," he made gestures in front of his chest, "be shaped like a girl, you know? That was the whole point of the comparison. Plus, you know, I'm a nazzada. So I know what my teeth are like. Like chisels, that's what. And... well, that's a real downside on a girl."
There was collective male wincing from all but Shinji, who had tuned out the conversation a while ago. He couldn't help but feel that the whole conversation was more than a little sordid. It was already a little dubious to stare; did they have to make commentary too? It made the whole thing rather uncomfortable. They really didn't spend enough time around women... no, that didn't make sense. It wasn't as if all the other lessons were gender-segregated.
Shinji was of the rather smug opinion (which he would, of course, never mention to anyone) that he just had a healthier, which was to say, less objectifying, attitude to the fairer sex. Because when one is raised by two women, one of whom works for the FSB, one discovers that objectification is not strictly viable, unless one wants to have why it is wrong explained in detail.
Of course, that didn't stop him staring over at the pool, too. Over at the pale figure, dark blue swimming costume a stark contrast to her chalk-coloured skin, who sat at the end of the pool, legs clutched up against her chest.
Rei Ayanami. Who was she, really? He didn't know. Oh, they called the First Child, and sometimes, when they were talking to military people they referred to her as Invidia, but he didn't know anything about her. He didn't know where she lived, what she did in her free time, how she felt about having to pilot, what she was like as a person... in a purely professional sense, he hastened to reassure himself. Although, of course, she was very attractive, in a sort of special way; there was something about the way that snow-white skin just looked good on a girl, and from this viewpoint, he could see that she had an excellent figure. The thought had occurred that he would get to see her in a plug suit at some point in the very near future. It was a nice thought.
But of course, that wasn't why he was interested in her. Honestly. This was a more professional (and the word felt strange to him) interest. Sure, it was possible that something more might be achievable, but that was only a distant prospect. This was just getting to know someone who, after all, also piloted a forty-metre giant robot; someone else who would understand the stress and the punishing training schedule they inflicted on him. He was... he was taking the initiative.
There were things, though, that he had picked up from the others in the class; they said she was asocial, cold, that she never chose to interact with people unless it was necessary and that she had been like this ever since she joined the class, back in first year. Some of the girls had apparently tried multiple times to get her more involved; he had heard mention of attempts by Hikary, Taly, that brown-haired bookish one who sat at the back... no success. Although it was admirable of them to try. She did look... isolated, sitting there, her legs raised up like a barrier to the world around her. Lonely, and yet there was something about her that left him ill at ease, a darker voice added. Maybe it was because she seemed to be able to make his father smile, when he couldn't.
He really hoped it wasn't some kind of unconscious bias against sidoci. He didn't want to think of himself as the sort of person who had a problem with them.
Someone said his name. He switched his attention back to the conversation.
"Huh?"
There were mutual smirks all around. "I said," Toja said, "I think Shinji agrees that xenomixed is best."
He stared at them in confusion.
"You were staring," the boy said.
"At Rei Ayanami," Kensuke added, unnecessarily.
"N-n-no," Shinji stammered.
Enitan rolled his eyes. "We're not blind, you know. The world doesn't shut down when you're not paying attention." He paused. "Well, if it does, it creates memories that make it the same as if it didn't..."
"But what part were you staring at, hmm?" Toja interrupted, as he leant in. "Her breasts, perhaps?"
"I think you can definitely say she takes after her human side, if you know what I mean," Kensuke said, waggling his eyebrows. "Or maybe her calves?"
"Or her thighs?"
"Like I said," Shinji stammered, pushed off balance by both the interrogation, and the fact that they were leaning in from both sides, "that's not it. Really."
"... in that case," someone muttered, "we should take away your man card. Because not staring at something like that..."
"Then what were you looking at, huh?" Toja said, drawing even closer.
"After all, we know you're bad at lying," the bespectacled boy added
"Your faces are too close," muttered Shinji, through clenched teeth. "And... I was wondering why she's always alone. Why she never does anything with anyone."
"Because she's... like that."
"All sidoci are a bit like that. You can't really get in their heads."
"Always been like that."
"Kinda creepy."
"Don't know why some of the girls keep on trying to get her to do stuff. She's made it clear she's not interested."
"She's Rei. That means she... she acts like Rei."
The chorus of advice and answers was as useless as everything else had been.
"Plus, you know, by the way?" Toja nodded, face serious. "The whole 'Why are you so lonely', and wanting to be the one who does stuff with her? Doesn't work. At all."
"Which is a shame," Kensuke added, "'cause she's a solid AA+ on my list of girls."
"Well, yeah, you know there's a study, right," Enitan said, "and... I read it, and it turns out, that xenomixes all have that sex factor... don't look at me like that, that's what they called it, and the study found that, whether they're amlati or sidoci, they're like ten percent hotter than other people."
"Yeah, because anything which uses the word 'sex factor' is totally a reliable study," Ala said, rolling his eyes. "Mind you," he said, eyes searching for a certain amlaty, and not finding her, "it's true. They do just get the balance right, you know."
Shinji tuned out again, only for the teacher to get back and start shouting that they should be on their feet, that this was 'physical education', not 'sitting around education', and other such witticisms beloved of the PE teacher. Who was wearing a lab coat, for some reason.
The boy blinked. Oh yeah, he thought, as he pulled himself to his feet. We were sitting around because he had to take people to the nurse's office. Shinji had sort of forgotten that.
He also had a feeling he was forgetting something else. Oh well. It probably wasn't that important.
~'/|\'~
"The time is 18:04. Shinji has mail. There is one new voice message from Dr Ritsuko Akagi. Begin voice message. 'Shinji, did you remember to give Rei her card? It's important. If you have already, thanks.' End message. There is an attached file. Do you wish to add this to your reminders?"
Shinji groaned. That was it. Flicking through the attachment, he noted that, yes, Dr Akagi had sent him the girl's address. He looked up at the wall, looking for a clock which wasn't there; a pointless endeavour, since he did already know the time. Idly, he highlighted the physical address.
"Ari," he instructed the muse, "get directions."
The instructions flowed up onto the screen. Shinji frowned. She lived pretty high up, in one of the shallow domes feeding off from one of the older clusters. Maybe forty-five minutes in rush hour, as the estimate stated. He didn't really want to do this.
But he probably had to. He had been asked, yesterday, and Rei would probably have problems without a valid card. And... well, he had wondered where she lived. This was an excuse, right? Well, not an excuse, it was a duty. In fact, he was helping her out by sacrificing his time, which made it acceptable.
Confirmed in his self-righteousness, which was still failing to drown out his nerves, Shinji headed off. Then he stepped back in, and left a note for Misato on the table, telling her where he had gone. And then decided that she'd probably knock it off when she dumped stuff on the table, or just not see it, and sent an email as well. Then he left, only to return to grab something to eat on the way; it wasn't as if there was a paucity of junk food in the apartment. Places where she lived seemed to generate it in the same way that dishes left in the sink generated mould. In fact, there were some dishes in the sink, left to soak from the abortive cooking attempt the night before. Maybe if he just cleaned them first...
No. He wasn't delaying, but he should just go and do it.
If only he could convince himself that the squirming in his stomach was a completely irrational response to an errand which would take him to a pretty girl's house.
~'/|\'~
In retrospect, Shinji felt, as he stared around the dome, he probably should have started to get, if not suspicious, a little wary when the warning signs started to pop up, his muse alerting him that the entire dome was private property and that he would not be admitted unless he had a valid reason. Still, that had been within the bounds of possibility. The Geocity had similar warnings, although he hadn't suspected them from a place like this, so high up. Likewise, if it was like that, then it would make sense that there wouldn't be much traffic heading in from the larger domes in the cluster. Even the enhanced security at the dome access point was logical; it made sense that the place would be protected, if it was a private dome, although he hadn't expected to see quite so many powered armours, or the slight nooks in the wall which, by his reckoning, concealed turrets. Still, he had passed the brain scans, the blood checks, and the phone-call down to the Geocity to check that he had a legitimate reason to be here, and he was into the dome where Rei Ayanami lived.
But it was so quiet in here. The only noise was the faint buzz of power cables, and the near silent movement of air from the life support units. Above, the top of the dome was sky-blue, the light strips imperfectly imitating natural sunlight, despite the fact that, outside, it was probably already notably evening. Shinji didn't really know; he had never lived outside the regular twelve hour day-night cycle of an underground arcology, had not ever even been a surface resident, or one of the inhabitants of the very shallow domes, lit by transmitted sunlight from the surface. The place seemed hollow, empty, even more so than the Geocity, which was at least alive in its vastness. This dome was not; stark white buildings forming a circular canyon around the edges, looking down onto the smaller buildings in the centre, and the recreational area. If one could call this a recreational area, Shinji thought. It was maybe ten metres by ten metres, a small square of grass, with a single tree planted (or, from the looks of it, transplanted, given its age) in the centre.
Someone had hung a swing on the tree; a crude construct of two lengths of rope, and a plastic pseudowood plank. The brown-haired boy gave the swing a push, and watched as the pendular motion exhausted itself. He shivered, a motion which flowed into a retrieval of his PCPU from his pocket, to check the address on the map he had generated.
Where was everyone? He almost snorted, at the realisation of another horror film cliché. Where were the cats, too? If films taught you anything, it's that when the cats, colonies of which were kept in every dome for their innate sensitivity to extra-normal entities as well as for more mundane, anti-pest issues, disappeared, something odd was happening. Maybe this whole thing was a trap, maybe it hadn't been Dr Akagi at the dinner, but instead some sinister, evil shapeshifter, which stole the forms of its victims, and was merely luring him here to consume him too...
Shinji shook his head. He was being silly. Obviously, this was an Ashcroft owned-dome, which they leased out to younger employees, who'd still be at work at this time. He was being silly, and letting his imagination creep him out. He should be rational about this.
The problem was that his imagination was both very productive, and somewhat disobedient. And his rationality would have been pleased if it could have just seen someone else. Just for reassurance. No, he was being silly. This was just nerves from going around to an unfamiliar girl's apartment. So what if it was quiet? That was a good thing in a residential dome, especially considering how lively the areas he had been through to get here had been. It was the change which was putting him off, not anything rational.
Rei's apartment was one of the ones on the outer loop, the vertical wall of buildings that encircled the inner space, and which the access tunnel had led through. Naturally, things being as they were, she lived on the opposite side to the one which he had taken. Stepping up to the entrance to her block, the door sliding open as it detected the visitor ID they had given him at the checkpoint, Shinji glanced at the occupancy list, just to check that he was really at the right place.
Yes, there it was. 'Flat 402: Ayanami, Rei'.
And that was it. All the other name spaces, blank. There were ten or so flats per floor on the list; the last one listed was 609. And of that, the only one occupied was 402.
Fortunately, the inside of the apartment building was clean, well lit, and in good condition. It was just as well. Shinji was beginning to get jumpy, and, to name a completely arbitrary example, if there had been a mysterious leaking stain on the ceiling, just above the entrance, he would probably have decided that enough was enough, and just given Rei the card tomorrow at school. Still, despite that, as he got into the lift, his finger hovered over the '400' button for a few seconds, before he pressed it. And, it had to be said, the slight flicker in the light in the lift really did not help matters. Still, he arrived at his destination entirely safe.
"401... 403... huh?" Shinji was getting a little disturbed by now. There didn't actually appear to be a room 402. This was... oh, wait. Yes, there it was. All the odd numbers ran along one side, all the even along another. That... that made a lot more sense. A short burst of nervous laughter escaped his lips, and echoed along the white-painted corridor. He really had to get his imagination under control. Stepping forwards, he swallowed, and knocked on the door.
"Hello?" he called out. Maybe there was a hidden microphone or something, because I can't see a panel next to the door.
The door swung inwards silently. Through the gap, he could see a stark white hallway, a door at the other end, which suddenly seemed a lot longer than it... Shinji put one hand to his forehead, suddenly feeling lightheaded. He shook his head, eyes screwed shut, and looked up again, leaning into the door, which opened fully, a slight 'clunk' marking when the handle hit the wall. No, it was just a hallway. His stomach growled; most days, he would have eaten by now. It would probably make sense to grab something on the way back, he thought, before looking closer at the scene before him. There was a pair of shoes sitting just inside the door, next to an empty bin, and a pair of socks. That was somewhat reassuring.
"Hello? Rei? It's... um, it's me. Shinji Ikari." He blinked, heavily. "The Third Child," he ventured, in case she didn't remember the name. She might not. It wasn't as if they'd talked.
No response. Well, in that case he should probably find somewhere to leave it for her, and then leave. Should he shut the door properly behind him? She might be around at someone else's house, and forgotten her key, but on the other hand, it wasn't safe to leave the door open. Slipping off his shoes, he stepped inside, walking on tiptoes. He was just going to find a place to leave the card, and... well, maybe he was a little curious.
To his left, he poked his head into what turned out to be the kitchen. It was approaching Misatoan levels of untidiness. What it lacked in empty cans of beer, it made up for in discarded pizza boxes and food wrappings. Shinji frowned, the cook in him subtly disappointed that she appeared to live off fast-food and nanofactory meals, rather than actually cooking. It wasn't that hard, despite the fact that everybody else seemed to find it too much effort. And this wasn't a place to leave the card, certainly, not with all the junk around. He stepped back into the hallway, and pushed the door to the main room open.
His first thought was What's with the colour scheme?
His second thought was Yuck, it's messy in here. Are those... bloodstained bandages? And blood on the pillow, too?
His third thought was largely incoherent, because he realised that three of the four walls were not painted with a sort of black pattern. They were painted white, just like the fourth wall, to his left, which looked fresh. No, the patterning was writing.
It wasn't scrawled, scribbled writing. No, it was the precise and methodical writing of someone who had taken a great deal of care over what they did. He couldn't recognise all of the characters; there were the phonetic and phonemic symbols of Reformed English, though even then the words were not all familiar, there were kanji, hiragana and katakana, and there were sections in what looked like Greek; at the very least, he recognised the symbols from science lessons.
Uneasily, he was pretty sure that some of it was like the sorcery-related stuff in his father's office. Those bits were typically labelling the diagrams and sketches, interruptions in the flow where turbulence rained, and characters wrapped and swirled around the new shapes, warped from their neat lines.
With a sick fascination, Shinji leant in. It really was very pretty, in an aesthetic sense, each linguistic transition seemingly chosen for some sense of elegance. He traced his finger along one line; the writing felt smooth, and slightly oily on the white paint. Some kind of pen, he suspected; a suspicion which was confirmed as his fingertip smudged the elegance. Hastily he withdrew it, leaving a grey streak on the sharply delineated divide.
Watching the sun rise he read, the Queen of Μάτια and the Blinded Prince wait for us at the end of everything. There was then an section he couldn't understand, in an alphabet he couldn't even recognise, before it resumed in kanji. It has always been an inevitability that unity and oblivion will conflict, for they are the same thing, and they are both born of the soul. Our ties and it switched back to RE, connect us all to one another. Our ties make us σκλάβοι and that is how it must be, for who would chose to be wild and free, beyond καλό και το κακό? It is the final decision we all must take. If we chose to be so, we cease to be us.
Shinji shivered, and with an act of will, looked away. Three of the four walls were like that. The last was freshly white. No, no it wasn't, he realised. There were the first creeping signs of a new diagram snaking around onto the blank canvas, over by the bed.
The bed. Yes. The bed. Stop looking at the walls. Compared to them, the rest of the room was as messy as the kitchen. There were bloodstains on the bed, and the covers were yellowed. And these defects were made worse by how bare, and how bright the rest of the room was. If it had been ill-lit, these sins could have been concealed. Shinji sniffed. And there was a scent to the air, a scent of metal and blood and... something else.
The room stunk of LCL.
Gritting his teeth, that familiar smell rolling off his nostrils and onto his tongue, he stepped further into the room, walking on tiptoes. He swallowed his mouthful of saliva, which tasted as everything did, of LCL, and looked around for somewhere to leave the card. There. There was a chest of drawers over by the bed, which seemed to have a few personal possessions on it. That would be a good place. And then he could get out of here.
He reached into his bag, and took out the card, still sealed in the protective, anti-tamper wrapping that Dr Akagi had given it to him in, and, hand hovering, looked for the most obvious place. There were books, actual, physical books, not readers, stacked neatly. The dust-jackets were dull, pictureless; the font on the spines was that sharp golden writing that Shinji had always thought of as an academic typeface. There was a medicinal box with a scrapelock on it, merely labelled MEDICATION TYPE-4A. Peering through the transparent front, he could see layer after layer of syringe. Some of them had been used; he could tell from the red safety cap covering the tip, compared to the unused whites.
That was a good place, he decided, before frowning. He should probably leave a note, too, to explain it showing up. It would be rather odd for it to suddenly just appear. Leaning on the surface, he took a piece of paper from his bag, and wrote;
Rei,
I was told by Dr Akagi to bring you this. It's a new Ashcroft Ident card; she said your old one had expired. I did knock, and call, but you didn't answer, and the door was open. You might want to keep it closed.
I'm sorry if this is rude.
He paused, then continued, rather than signing it off immediately.
Good luck on the upcoming Synchronisation Test. I hope it goes well, and look forwards to training with you
Shinji Ikari
He reread the note. Yes, the 'I'm sorry if this is rude bit' was certainly in the wrong place. It looked like he was apologising for wishing her luck. He amended it to read, 'I'm sorry if this is rude. to let myself in like this,' and then put his pen back in his bag, which left the final thing on the chest of drawers. A pair of deactivated arglasses rested on their side. One of the sides hung uselessly, the hinge obviously broken; a weakpoint, compared to the composite-diamond display.
"Are these Ayanami's?" Shinji said to himself, staring at his own brightly lit reflection in the surface. He couldn't really see her wearing a model like this; something small and oval-shaped, maybe, or one of the circular full-eye ones, but not this older, and expensive model, which looked exactly like a pair of corrective lenses.
Actually, they looked like a very good quality model. They'd certainly still work, despite the broken frame...
Shinji fought with temptation for a moment, and lost.
The arglasses, despite the broken hinge, still fit as well as they would have normally, which was to say that they were perhaps a size or two too large. Reaching up, he felt around the frame until he found the activation button, and they turned opaque, the lens whiting out, the three rotated triangles of the Ashcroft Foundation showing exactly who had made them, and programmed their OS. Blinking, he noted the small black test in the bottom right of both lens.
Property of Gendo Ikari. Invalid Retina.
Frowning, he turned around, noting that the lenses had whited out again. What was Rei Ayanami doing with a pair of his father's arglasses?
Oh, wait, no. They weren't opaque anymore; he could see the way they highlighted objects in the room in red and green. No, the white opacity directly in front of him, almost toe to toe, was a dripping wet, naked Rei Ayanami, a white towel draped over her shoulders. She was staring at him
The next few seconds were... confused.
There was certainly a bit when Rei reached out and tried to take the glasses back.
There was certainly a bit when Shinji instinctively recoiled, and screamed in a manner not dissimilar to a little girl, before bouncing off the furniture and straight back into Rei.
There was most certainly a bit where her knee ended up going into his crotch as they fell together. Because that bit hurt.
But no matter what happened, it ended with the drenched Rei on her back on the ground, her hair spread around her like a bridal veil, Shinji leaning on top of her, one hand on something rather warm and one on the cold floor, and one pair of blue eyes locked on one grey pair.
The two stared at each other, unmoving.
Shinji mental processes were largely incoherent with terror at this point, because he'd just been caught in someone's house and they're her glasses andohGodshe's naked and I'montopof her... Oh, and he was in pain, which was not helping with matters,
Motion still failed to occur.
"Why are you not moving?" Rei asked, her tone no different than she might use if someone were blocking her way at school.
With a yelp, Shinji recoiled up, as he realised that the wet warmness beneath his left hand was her breast. His motion carried him back into the wall, both hands raised in an instinctive protective gesture. What had just happened? What did he think he had been doing? Oh, why hadn't he moved earlier?
Rei lay there, arms still spread, her only movement to tilt her head towards him. With a horribly guilty feeling, the boy could see the pink creep over her right breast, in a rough hand-shape; paler than it would be in a human, because her skin was actually pigmented white, but still there. And still those black pupils stared at him, the only real contrast on a body of whites and greys, with only hints of pink around her eyes, lips, and... down below.
"Do not smudge the wall," she said. With a second yelp, Shinji sprung away from the wall, the black markings on the back of his white shirt and the smudges on the wall proof that the instruction had come too late, only to knock back into the chest of drawers.
With a series of thuds, the pile of books and the box of syringes cascaded off, onto the bare floor.
"Sorry!" gasped Shinji through clenched teeth, face screwed up into a mask of contrition. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry sorry sorry," he sucked in a breath, "really really sorry."
Slowly, her unclad state apparently unimportant to her, Rei pulled herself to her feet. Stepping up to Shinji, still trailing water in a path he could now see led back through another door in the room, she bent over, to pick up the sealed medical box, and place it back on the chest of drawers. Next to it, she placed the arglasses, fingers reaching around the edge to turn them back off.
"Pick up the books," she instructed him. "My hands are wet."
Shinji nodded frantically, realised that the act of looking down might be misinterpreted, and tried to find a safe place in the room to look. This was remarkably hard. Eventually, he settled his gaze on the white wall, over by the head of the bed. "Okay, right away," he babbled. "I'm really sorry, by the way. Sorry. Um. Sorry."
The girl ignored him, as, out of the corner of his eye, he saw her bend down again, to pick up the towel phew, and wrap it around her hair, which hung down to her shoulders when wet, suddenly a lot longer, and making her look peculiarly un-Rei like to him.
The boy crouched, and started picking up the books; thick, heavy tomes. German Poetry 1910-1925, Volume II, he read. The Pnakotic Manuscripts: Vol. IV. The Pnakotic Manuscripts: Vol. V. Die Verborgenen Geheimnisse: Die Grundlagen der arkanen Technologie. Shinji frowned. He only knew a little bit of German, a necessity when living with a sorceress, because the Lorenzian School made use of it, and so he had been expected to know enough to know what not to touch, but he was pretty sure that this was one of the foundational books of modern arcane physics. Straightening out its dust jacket, he glanced at the pages it had landed open at.
There was a diagram taking up one page, with that certain quality which suggested it had originally been hand-drawn. It was... odd; he squinted, trying to understand exactly what he was looking at. It looked vaguely like a mesh of cogs, but some of the cogs were sharing teeth with other cogs, intermeshing and yet discrete and unconnected, depending on how he looked at it. The mass of text on the other page, printed in a very small font... well, he could maybe understand one word in every ten. He suspected that even if it had been in English, Japanese or Nazzadi, he wouldn't have got much more than one in three.
And then there were the annotations. In the same hand as the writing on the walls. Some entire sections had been crossed out in red, and replacement text crammed into the margins.
Shinji didn't dare look any further, because this looked like something extra-normal related, or at the very least sorcerous, and when living with a sorceress, he had had it drummed into his head that you do not read books lying around which look like that. Instead, he put it back on the pile, and glanced over to see a Rei Ayanami, now, mercifully, at least in a bra and wearing underwear, staring at him, hair still wrapped up in the towel. It would probably have helped more if the undergarments hadn't been white, skin-coloured for her, and she hadn't still been wet, which was already inducing translucency.
"What is it?" she asked.
Shinji stared over at the safe wall again. "Um... uh." He swallowed, tasting the scent of the LCL in the air. "I... uh, that is, yesterday Dr Akagi asked me... that is, told me... um, asked me to give you this new Ident Card but I forgot at school. So I came around. And..." he trailed off.
Rei moved in front of his safe line of vision, to sit down on the bed. He shifted his gaze to the floor, noting the trails of wet footprints that crisscrossed the room. That, and the large damp patch where she had fallen. He could feel the dampness... the warm dampness on his clothing.
"I had an examination with Dr Akagi yesterday," Rei said, from somewhere outside his line of vision. "Why did she not give it to me then?"
"I-I-I guess she forgot," Shinji hazarded.
"Forgot?" Rei asked, her tone dead.
"Probably." Shinji swallowed. "And then... um, I knocked, and the door was open, and I called but you didn't answer so I came in and I thought you might be out or having dinner with neighbours and I left you a note and it was with the card which I put on top of the white box thing," he sucked in a much-needed breath, "um... and I'm sorry." He swept his eyes onto the floor around his feet. Where was it? It had been there, and then the box had fallen off... had been knocked off.
"I have no neighbours." She paused. "I was in the bath," she said, the words somehow utterly disconnected from the previous sentence.
"Oh... um." Yes, that made sense. He'd have heard a shower, after all, but... yes, head under water, it made sense. Oh, there it was. He stooped down, and picked up the card, still sealed in its packaging, and the slightly damp note. Then, eyes squinting, biting his lip, he walked over to Rei, staring at the towel wrapped around her hair, which seemed the safest place, and thrust both in front of him. "So here they are!" he said, in a voice which seemed far too loud in this quiet place.
Silently, Rei took them from him, and then stood up, stepping around him, to put them back on the chest of drawers, on top of the pile of books.
"So...I'll be off then," he added, rapidly. "Silently... I mean, I'm sorry for everything."
There was the sound of a lid being removed from a pen. "Why?" Rei asked.
"I didn't ask before I came in. I should have... just put it through the door or something," Shinji said, backing away towards the door, arms briefly pinwheeling as he almost slipped on a discarded shirt, leaving a footprint in the middle of it. "And... um, I just... never mind."
There was no response. The pale girl was hunched up against the wall, black pen in hand, correcting the damage done to the markings on the wall by his clumsiness. Slowly, the towel slithered down off her head, letting her damp hair hang loose over her face. She didn't seem to care.
"Sorry again," Shinji said, by means of farewell, as he closed the door slowly. His steps out of the flat were careful, measured.
Then he slumped down against the wall in the corridor, fist in mouth, and started whimpering, as all the suppressed nervous tension unleashed itself.
What the hell just happened?
~'/|\'~
The process of rationalisation had already begun by the time that Shinji got home.
Well... she might have the Nazzadi attitude to nudity, he thought. Yeah, that makes sense. I'm just being insensitive by objecting to it. I should try to be more open-minded. And I was distracted and didn't hear her... no wonder I freaked out, just a little bit well, more than a little bit, he had to admit, when I saw her behind me like that.
Now... how to deal with the writing on the walls and the fact that she's reading arcane texts?
It was fighting an uphill battle.
Misato was seated at the table, still in her uniform, poring over printed out documents and dataslates alike. Her Eyes were twitching at unseen images, scanning from left to right. An empty plate, the remains of one of the meals that Shinji had prepared and left in the fridge, was on her left, a pair of grease-covered chopsticks resting on top.
With a small noise, the Major made a few small notes in the margin of one dataslate, and then returned to work, her eyes flicking across nothingness. She blinked once, and then her eyes focussed on the boy in front of her. She seemed tired as she rubbed her eyes.
"Heya, Shinji," Misato said, with a weak smile. "I got the note, by the way, and the email."
"Good."
"Did you give her the card?"
Shinji swallowed, and nodded. "Uh huh."
Misato grinned wider. "You know, it was pretty silly of you to forget to do it at school, huh? Guess you wanted to have an excuse to go around to her house early?"
The boy shook his head mutely. Misato began to respond, but then focussed, properly focussed on his expression.
"What's wrong?" she asked, more gently.
"Did you know she reads arcane books?" he blurted out.
Misato frowned, looking for one of the documents in front of her. "Yes... here it is... yes. It's been tagged to her file; she's been allowed access to the censored versions of... well, there's a long list here." She glanced back up at Shinji, her face warm. "It probably was quite disturbing to find it out that way."
"And that she writes on the walls?" The boy's tone was almost pleading, although he didn't know which way he preferred it. That they did not know about it, and Rei was secretly disturbed, or they did, and they had deemed it acceptable.
Misato nodded once, her face stony. "I've seen the pictures. That... that must have been a shock. If it helps, the psychiatrists say that it's harmless, and she's never shown any other harmful tendencies, violent or otherwise. And, of course... I was a little disturbed when I first saw the pictures, but Ritsuko pointed out that she can't, physically, do sorcery. She's a White. They're parapsychics so they can't be sorcerers. It's safe." Standing up, she put one arm around Shinji's shoulders, slightly awkwardly. "We probably should have thought it through better, or at least got you to interact before now, huh?"
"I'm... I'm sorry. It's... I should have given it to her at school," Shinji explained, not moving closer to the one-armed hug, but not recoiling, either.
"We're all flawed, Shinji," Misato said, staring at him. "We all forget stuff." She paused. "And how did you get all the black stuff on your back?" she asked, as glanced around his shoulder.
He looked back. "Oh... um, I backed into a wall, and it was dirty."
"You might want to get changed, then... probably should, anyway. I think the bathroom's free, if you want a shower... I cleaned it up." At Shinji's confused expression, she wrinkled her nose. "Pen-Pen was sick. And you smell of sweat... did you have sports today?"
The boy frowned. "Can birds even be sick?" he asked, ignoring the comment at his personal odour.
"Evidently, this one can," the woman said drily.
And, indeed, the bathroom smelt slightly of sick, and even more of the... concoction that Misato had brewed up yesterday, even when the rest of the apartment had largely been ventilated. Shinji could make some educated reasons for exactly why the albino penguin had been sick, but he was not going to, after the revelations at the meal.
Although it seemed that Pen-Pen was not as smart as some people would have had him believe, if he had willingly consumed that substance; Shinji hesitated to call it food.
Being very careful to lock the door behind him, after ensuring that the room was penguin-less, Shinji stripped off, running the shower to let it warm up as he folded up his trousers, and saw the full state of the shirt. Yes, the white back was completely covered in the smudged black pen markings. If he'd been wearing the coat from the uniform, the markings wouldn't have been noticeable, but he'd have to have been an idiot to wear his uniform like that, out of school hours, up to such a high elevation. Academy students had a certain reputation which worked against them in poorer areas, as a bunch of rich, stuck-up, genofixed children of Ashcroft technocrats. Shinji would like to try to argue that wasn't the case, but as he objectively filled three of the four criteria by any standards, he was not the best representative for their case.
He suddenly realised why Toja must be so insistent at not following the school uniform policy. Hadn't he said that he lived in one of the surface arcologies? It must be unpleasant for him, having to make that commute every day.
Checking the temperature with his hand, he withdrew it instantly, and added more cold to the blend, until it wasn't actively painful. Stepping under the shower, he let the warm water roll down his head, darkening his hair which hung limp over his face, running in rivulets down his shoulders and over the small of his back, the warm feel of her breast under his hand.
Shinji looked down. "Damn it," he muttered. He shouldn't be turned on by that; he should be disturbed. And yet he had most physical evidence that he was.
That went horrifically, horribly, inutterably wrong, was Shinji's foremost conclusion from that little escapade.
~'/|\'~
29th September, 2091
Rei was not at school on Tuesday. Shinji considered this a blessing; it might be better to get the explanations and more apologies out, before things could fester, but he didn't want to confront her at all. If he could never see her again, it would have been perfectly acceptable to him in his current mindset. Neither was she there on Wednesday morning, which was a relief for Shinji, and he spent the classes feeling rather more cheerful than he might otherwise have been. This state of affairs was only aided by Toja's sense of impending doom, and wailed protests of 'What did I do to deserve a bunch of nine-year girls crushing on me?' He and Kensuke did do their best to 'reassure' him by pointing out that he could apply for a different Social Work Programme for the Spring Term, which only bought further groans.
However, such a thing could never last, for the Unit 00 Synchronisation Test was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, when he had to be down in the Geocity. And when Rei Ayanami stepped into his otherwise-empty lift, both of them on their way down to the areas assigned to the Evangelion Group, his luck ran out.
The trip down was filled with awkward silence, the two figures in the black overcoats of the Academy standing at opposite corners of the box. Perhaps foolishly, the boy tried to break the quiet.
"I'm... I'm really sorry for Monday," he said. "I-I-I just want you to know, it was all an accident, especially the... the touching." He blushed bright red, as he realised just how that comment sounded.
She did not turn to look at him. "You have already expressed such sentiments."
"Yes... well, I want you to know that I'm sorry."
"Why are you sorry?"
Shinji screwed up his eyes. "Because it was all my fault... and..." he trailed off.
"Will your sorrow change anything?"
"... no, but..."
"Then why be sorry?"
"Because I'd be a bad person if I didn't!" he snapped, before instinctively recoiling. "Oh... I'm sorry."
"You have already expressed that sentiment. Today."
Shinji fell paused, and tried to change the subject. "I know you're going to be trying the reactivation experiment today," he said.
Rei said nothing, still not making eye contact with him.
"I hope it's successful this time," he added.
The silence at her end of the conversation continued.
"Aren't you... scared of getting into Unit 00 again?" he asked. "I would be. Terrified. I'm scared of Unit 01 as it is, and nothing that bad... as bad as what happened to you, has happened to me in it."
"Why?" The word was soft.
"Excuse me?"
A pause. Then, "Why should I be scared of Unit 00?"
"Because... um... well, I saw how injured you were on that first day. Aren't you scared that it will happen again?"
"No." He saw her eyelashes flicker up and down, as she blinked slowly. "Fear would increase the chance of a synchronicity accident. So I am not scared."
The boy couldn't help but marvel at the self-control shown there. And be a little scared at the fact that she had just said that fear could cause synchronisation accidents, of course. Because if that was true, and considering his first time... Shinji suddenly got the feeling that there was a universe's worth of razor blades just a hair's breadth from his skin, which were just waiting to fall.
With a feeling of deceleration, and a ping, the lift came to a halt, far down in the guts of the Geocity. The area here was one of the vast hallways, the ones which an Evangelion could probably crawl through. Shinji mentally paused. In fact, that was almost certainly their purpose; transporting the things around. Stepping out of the lift, he followed Rei, the sounds of their footsteps utterly lost in the immensity of the space, having to job every few steps to keep up. She walked quickly.
And for once, Rei initiated the conversation.
"You are Representative Ikari's son," she said, her tone not a question.
Shinji nodded. "Yes."
"You must trust your father's work."
The boy blinked heavily. "Why?" he retorted. "He never gives me any reason to trust him! He never cares; only uses me! I certainly won't trust him because he happens to be related to me!"
Rei Ayanami's footsteps ceased, and she turned, no, flowed around, suddenly facing him. "Do not speak about Representative Ikari that way," she said, the corners of her eyes narrowing fractionally.
"Why not? He's my fath..."
The blow was not so much a slap as a full-on punch, her knuckles impacting with the soft tissue of his cheek. Blinking hard, mouth hanging open, Shinji slowly raised his hand to his face. He hadn't even seen her move. And that really hurt. Fall on her when she was naked; no response. Make negative comments about his own, useless, child-soldier-using father, and...
"Mnghui," he managed, to the figure that was already striding off. "Oww. Um... I'm sorry?"
There was no response from the pale girl.
~'/|\'~
Compared to the first activation test, the air in the control centre was buzzing with nervous tension. Only Gendo Ikari, alone, seemed proof against the concern, his gloved hands folded behind his back.
"Inform me when the Operators are prepared," he ordered Dr Akagi, not looking her way.
"Yes," she nodded. Inwardly, she winced. The Operators... well, they had done their best to reassure the heavily cyberised computer technicians, but, to be honest, they were scared. Two of them had died in the last test; three more were in a vegetative state. Only one of the ones who had not disconnected before the Evangelion had broken through their defence barriers was back on duty, and, for obvious reasons, he was not permitted to assist today. Running one hand down her spine, she shook her head slightly. The Operators all seemed so young to her. Not as young as the girl in the Evangelion, though.
Ritsuko resumed her preparatory work. The conditions for this test were quite unlike the ones which had prevailed last time. While before it may have been merely been secured to the wall, this time it was sunk to its waist in a variant of the dark RCL fluid used in the Evangelion bays. This time, if it tried to break free, it would be treated as Dante's Satan, its legs immobilised in flash-frozen memomorph. Its arms were spread out wide, to minimise the leverage it could gain, but they were under no illusions that it would stop the beast. Not now. No, they would begin with the restraint fluid, and move up to, should it prove insufficient, detonating the shaped charges placed on the Units limbs, to sever key muscles.
The Representative opened a communications channel to the white Evangelion.
"Rei."
A quiet response. "Yes, Representative Ikari."
"We will begin by inserting the LCL. Are you prepared?"
"Yes. There will be no synchronicity accident this time. It is necessary that I successfully synchronise with Unit 00, therefore I will."
"Good." He closed the connection. "Flood the plug," he ordered. "Monitor her mental state at all times, even before the experiment begins. If there are any signs of recurrence, abort immediately."
"Yes sir."
Shinji was standing away from the workfloor, on the raised observer's platform. Beside him, Misato stood, her face pensive, a cup of coffee clutched in her hand. She took a long, slow sip, staring intently at the screen. Although this was being carried out in one of the test chambers, it wasn't being carried out in the same test chamber as the one which the room overlooked. What if the Evangelion had gone for the exposed window, it had been asked? What if it had turned on its surroundings, rather than itself?
The consequences would have been catastrophic.
"We should never think of the Evangelion as just another war machine," Misato said to herself, softly, almost unheard of over the babble. "It's not. I've seen Engels out of control. But last time... this was a wholly different thing." She snorted. "Or maybe an unholy different thing."
Shinji narrowed his eyes at her. "Thanks a lot for your reassurance," he said, his tone bitter. "Given that, you know, we're watching someone who's already lost control once before..." he paused, "... and come to think of it, so have I!"
"No, that's what I mean," Misato said, raising her voice. "The rampant Engels... they acted like Unit 01 did. They attacked things... anything that wasn't from their Species... that's a base-organism, by the way, in the same way that all the Evangelions use the same base. But Unit 00... it hurt itself. It was really trying to get the Entry Plug out."
"Yes, my father really did a wonderful job when he... did whatever he does with them, I'm not quite sure," said Shinji, his rousing condemnation somewhat ruined by the uncertainty at the end. "Why should I trust his work, when I don't even know what they are or what he did?" he added to himself, staring down at the man. A thought struck him.
"What?" asked Misato, who had missed the last part.
"When did my father start wearing gloves?" he asked.
Misato leant against the railing, and took another drink. "The Unit 00 start-up test," she explained. "The Evangelion... it tried to crush its own entry plug. Partially succeeded, too."
"But... the Entry Plug is covered in armour," Shinji protested.
"Yes." The word was said with a dreadful finality.
"You mean..."
"It slammed into the wall until it managed to crack the plating enough to get a finger under it, and then it started ripping its own back apart," Misato said, a distant look in her eyes. "It just managed to expose the plug, and crush the end, when it finally deactivated. And then it fell over backwards, because its knees didn't lock up." She shook her head, staring at the boy. "Your father was the first one down, with the rescue team. He managed to get up onto the Evangelion, crawled out onto the plug and levered it open, around one of the tears. His hands... they got horribly cut up on the edges, and his back too, when he crawled through. And the Evangelion was bleeding too, so the blood got into the wounds, and... well, they managed to save his hands. Or I heard he did, managed to pull out some sorcery to cleanse the wounds." Misato took a sip. "There's a lot of tales about him. I'm sure he has people spread some of them, because I can't believe that they're all true."
"He... did all that?" Shinji asked, feeling slightly numb. "But wasn't that only a few days..."
"Before Asherah showed up, yes. Everything that first day, he was doing it on just enough painkillers to allow him to think clearly."
Shinji leant his chin on his arms, resting on the balcony, and stared again at his father.
The bearded man spoke. "We're going to try reactivating Unit 00," he ordered. "Start the first connection."
"Connect the external power supply."
"Voltage has passed the critical point."
"Understood," reported Penny Epouvantable, the red-haired civilian Operator who was heading up this dive. "Subject has passed Phase II. We're getting a stable EFCS Type-1 Attunement. Animaneural waveform is... stable."
"Start Phase III," ordered Dr Akagi, her stomach a tight little ball of acid and fear.
"Plug is set to level 2. Beginning test sequence."
"LITAN feed is clear... reports from in-Unit correlate with external feeds. Maintaining monitoring."
"The series of pulses and harmonics are normal."
"Feeding external power to non-vital systems. Right arm... left arm... all limbs are powered."
"Releasing limited motor controls. D-Brakes are operating at full capacity."
There was a terrible moment of silence, as everyone's eyes were locked on the bar. Rising, rising, falling, rising, nearing the point of absolute borderline.
With an almost cheerful bleep, the bar passed the given value.
"Stable connection formed!" the message came from the Operators.
There was a pause, a moment of silence.
And then everyone relaxed, as the bar did not retreat.
"Unit 00 has activated."
A window opened from in Unit, to display Rei's face, an even paler heart shape within the cowl. "Activation is successful," she announced. "I am waiting for your permission to begin the interlocking test."
"Roger. Go ahead, Test Pilot Ayanami."
Shaking her head slightly, an adrenaline-smile in her exhausted face, Ritsuko made her way up to the observation balcony.
"Congratulations," the Major said, with a professional nod, and then Misato smiled. "Well, you did it, Rits."
"Well... we'll see, but it looks hopeful. The tests are probably going to go on for..." Ritsuko tapped a button on her PCPU, to bring up the schedule, "... well, let's put it this way, I'm not getting any sleep tonight, and Shinji, you won't be seeing Rei at school tomorrow." The blond sighed. "You can go home... and you too, Misato. It's just, as you'd put it, 'boring technical stuff', and as I'd put it, 'vital test work to ensure that pilot synchronisation is calibrated correctly'."
"I thought you just dumped people in the Eva and hoped for the best," said Shinji, a slightly bitter note in his voice. He couldn't have stopped himself for free access to every IP database on the pla... okay, he could have stopped himself for that. But he couldn't have stopped himself for some very large, but not too large, prize.
Ritsuko did not snap back. It would have been easier had she done so. "It's okay, Shinji," she said, in a quiet, almost dead voice. "We can just delete all your pilot data we spent weeks building up, and let you go in a default, guessed setting every time, because we got lucky with you on the first time. And then you'll be lucky if you only get hurt as badly as Pilot Ayanami did on the activation test on the sixteenth of August. We can do that, if you like."
Shinji winced. "Sorry," he said, already cringing inside. "I didn't think..."
"No," the scientist said. "You didn't. Off you go. Some of us have work to do."
"Lay off him, Rits." Misato's words were calm, controlled, and quiet. "That's not needed."
The scientist blinked. "I'm sorry," she said, shaking her head. "I'm just... I'm just relieved that this didn't go wrong like last time. And still might go wrong." She sighed. "I sometimes forget that you're not like Rei," she explained. "You're not used to it. This. Everything. And you have the right to object."
Shinji nodded silently.
"But... yes, you should both get some rest," she said in a quieter voice. "Someone might as well, and this place is going to be humming with stressed-out scientists, engineers and technicians for the next... God knows how long. Aeon, probably. So... like usual, but even more stress."
~'/|\'~
30th September, 2091
Shinji was shaken awake, by a Misato with a jacket thrown on over her nightclothes. "Shinji, wake up!" she shouted at him, her face deadly serious. "Get out of bed now!"
The boy squinted in the light. "Gah." He shook his head. "What's happening?" he asked, sitting up, as Misato yanked off his covers, dumping an armful of clothes onto his lap. "What time is it?"
"Get up, get dressed. We're needed down in the Geocity now. Emergency call. And it's about half-three in the morning."
With a groan he swung his legs out of bed. "Why?" He blinked, as something struck him. "Did something go wrong with Rei's test?"
Misato shook her tousled hair. "No. But they've found Harbinger-5. Or rather, it's shown up. In Eastern Europe."
Shinji was suddenly wide awake, and fumbling at his top. "Is it... coming this way?" he asked. "And... um, can you look away, please?"
"Yes and yes," Misato said, turning around to leave the room, to get dressed properly herself. "There's security in the living room, and they've put some coffee on. We can drink it in the IFV, right?" she added, a slight lilt in her voice.
Shinji couldn't help but smile slightly. It was a weak, trembling and rather tired expression, true, but a smile nonetheless.
~'/|\'~
Above, the night sky was filled with stars. They did not twinkle, and they did not shine; they were cold, distant points of light. If there were children's tales told of these stars, they were the kind which were censored and bowdlerised, all to keep from infant minds from the terrible truths of the cosmos. The darkness of the void reached from horizon to horizon with no hint of dawn; terrible, unreachable, anathematical to light, which died in its Stygian majesty.
And the land below was the same. Black, glassy crystal covered every surface, was every surface. The stars below reflected the stars above, distorted and warped them until not one familiar constellation could be seen, and an onlooker could not tell what was up, and what was down.
But, slowly, the eyes adjusted to the darkness, to the lack of contrast, to the dead beauty of this place. And that was when the true horror crept in. Because in among the monoliths of black crystal, resplendent in their five-fold symmetry, the other shapes could be seen. Buildings of opaque black crystal. Trees of black crystal which blossomed into leaves of black crystal. The scattered chess-pieces of the army of the gods, all without White to oppose them. The eye adjusted, and then it did not believe, for to believe that this alien landscape was one which had so recently been just another battlefield in the Aeon War was too much to accept.
And in the precise centre of this darkness, something hung. It was only visible through omission, for it did not reflect, and it did not glisten and gleam and shimmer in the cold light of the stars. Slowly it span, as if observing what it had wrought here. There were ten faces to this being; ten vast conguent kites that interlocked to form one pentagonal trapezohedron.
Slowly it span. All too slowly.
It was here.
It was time.
~'/|\'~