"Porcupine Embrace"
Movement 10
"Wannabe"
1
The LCL was starting to get just a bit thicker. It had turned into freezing what felt like hours ago, prompting him to curl up in order to preserve his body heat. After that, the lights had dimmed to the point of near-darkness, the dance of claustrophobia and agoraphobia nauseating him. Then, he had begun to actually taste LCL. Coppery, heavy and bitter, it had grown thicker in substance until...
Shinji choked. He tried to draw in breath, every attempt reminding him that he couldn't.
Purification filter is shot. I'm inhaling blood. I'm swallowing blood. I'm drinking blood.
They all said I'd get myself killed. I'll drown in blood, that's my end.
Shinji felt a strange calm overtake him, despite the strain of trying to breathe through contaminated LCL. He felt his muscles relax, and he opened up, spreading his limbs and settling into the drift. He could feel his body gently floating down to the pilot's seat, his own weight pulling him, millimeter by millimeter.
Shinji closed his eyes.
If I could just sleep, maybe when I wake up, they'll have found me... just for a few minutes... I'd much prefer to die in my sleep.
Who am I kidding...
2
EVANGELION UNIT 02: SECOND CHILDREN
SYNCHRONIZATION RATE: 64.09%
3
Asuka felt the LCL irritate her slightly. She found that she was, despite everything else, still uneasy with the fact that it was essentially a liquid. It wasn't just that. The EVA felt downright heavy. Reluctant. Sluggish.
"Come on." Asuka said, wearily, "Come on. You are my EVA. You are my doll. Don't disagree with me. Do what I tell you to do. I'm telling you to wake up."
Unit 02, propped up against the umbilical bridge with its umbilical cable attached as per Asuka's commands, didn't shift by much. Asuka herself didn't feel at all up to par – it felt like weights were tied to her limbs, and someone had made sure she didn't sleep for a week straight. Nevertheless, she tried. She opened up a comm channel to the war room. It took a while, but Misato's face finally appeared.
"Asuka, why are you in Unit 02?"
"It's my EVA. I'll live in it if I want to."
Misato sighed.
"I'm not letting you topside if you intend to go wild again. Not now."
"Try and stop me." Asuka spat, "Anyway, I'm not going to jump into something I can't see the depths of. I'm going up there a bit early to see for myself what's happening. I'm a genius, I'm sure you've heard, and I might see something you missed. So clear my launch."
"Asuka, it's... we don't... it's almost to the operation. Shinji's life support will shut down soon. There might not be much you can..."
"All the more reason, then."
Silence on the other end. Asuka saw Misato bite her lip, and knew that she had won.
4
The empty train was moving. Going nowhere. The rhythmic clacking was almost a lullaby, or maybe the beating of two hearts, one after the other. The sun was too bright to see anything out the window. The passenger sat there, in his lap the broken pieces of an SDAT player. He felt a sense of loss at the destruction of the machine, strangely detached from actual meaning, but still there. The gleam reflecting off of the plastic surface reminded him of the dying of the light.
The object is meaningless.
Shinji blinked and suddenly, sitting opposite from him, was a boy. He looked like him, Shinji saw, almost exactly like him. He was sitting with his arms crossed, and the sunset light didn't let Shinji see his face. Shinji looked around to see if there was anyone else. There was one, a woman in the next compartment, whose silhouette was the only thing he could see.
"Excuse me?" he asked, "Who are you?"
Shinji Ikari.
"That's me."
I am you. One has a self within oneself, just as one has a self within others.
"Others?"
The self that watches itself and the self that is watched by others. Each of them are true.
"And the object is meaningless."
It does not have a self, only the imbued self, put there by another self, one that watches others.
"Who are these other selves?"
The Shinji Ikari that exists in your mind. The Shinji Ikari that exists in Misato Katsuragi's mind. The Shinji Ikari that exists in Gendo Ikari's mind...
"I don't exist in his mind..."
The Shinji Ikari that exists in Rei Ayanami's mind. The Shinji Ikari in Asuka Langley Soryuu's mind... you are afraid of them all, yet you fear that one the most.
"She doesn't care for me at all."
You looked to her for help.
"I'm not afraid to."
You fear the Shinji Ikari in her mind, because you feel like that self is the only one you can change, but don't know how to.
"What does it matter anymore? I'm..."
5
Unit 02 lurched forward, its movements even, calculated, but also robotic and lacking in grace. Asuka gradually pushed the EVA further, forcing it to move down. She pulled out her Prog Knife just in case, as she hadn't managed to coax more weapons out of Misato. Still, the Prog Knife in and of itself was an impressive piece of hardware, so she had that on her side.
"Why are you so slow..? This is my chance, do what I tell you to do. Go faster."
In the distance, she could see the sphere that was Leliel, still floating. Asuka was more mindful of the shadow on the ground, which, she saw, had already submerged all that, until recently, had been above it. It was beyond jumping range, and Asuka knew that the "Angel" wouldn't be harmed... nobody had said anything about the shadow.
All you need to do is to not die on me, Shinji. Just don't die and I'll show you what I can do. You'll see. I'll figure this out before they go ape and level the place.
Asuka reached for the nearest building and tore off a chunk from its side. As masonry and dust ran through the Evangelion's fingertips, she angled it, and chucked it straight into the shadow. All that accomplished was to feed the Dirac Sea another meaningless piece of wreckage.
Asuka glanced at the countdown display, counting down Shinji's life support.
00:00:17
"Seventeen seconds..."
She tried to think. Her mind was in a strange state, scattering her thoughts to trivial things, going on tangents when it was supposed to work on the problem.
"Inverted A.T. Field... if two EVAs could cancel that, maybe I could only shift it? Find myself a way in?"
00:00:08
"Damn it! God damn you!" Unit 02 shuffled its feet, stepping forward, stopping just short of the shadow's reach, "I'll... I'll...
There's nothing I can do. Oh, God, there's nothing.
00:00:06
00:00:03
"Nothing, nothing, nothing! Nothing! There's nothing!"
00:00:00
There's nothing. I failed. I failed.
7
EVANGELION UNIT 02: SECOND CHILDREN
SYNCHRONIZATION RATE: 48.73%
8
"I'm a failure. Even my father didn't want me. And no wonder, I screwed up again." He chuckled, "Maybe he'll be glad I'm dead."
Your father praised you, once. That is a pleasant memory.
Shinji's face lit up, only for a second.
"Once." He said, "I remember... I'll never forget."
Do you live off of the recollection of whatever pleasures you find?
"I have nothing else."
I can't live this way. Not for long.
"If I could trust them, I could live... only to lie."
You think this is deceiving yourself.
"Isn't it? People do that all the time. They lie to themselves. She does it, too."
She is important to you. Yet you're afraid to reach out to her.
"Why should I? She thinks I'm worthless. I thought she didn't, once..."
You cling to the memory of more pleasurable times, to ignore the pain in between. That's why the object is meaningless.
Shinji stared at the pieces of the SDAT player.
"Mother's..." he said.
To keep her with you, to never be alone, to feel wanted by an inanimate object... this is what the object is. It is you, running away.
"I'm not running..." Shinji said.
From the object to something else, again, from one escape to the next. No-one can live as the sum of their hideouts, strung up in a rosary.
"But I finally found something. Something I could do, something others will thank me for doing. Something to make me more than just the kid who sleeps in the shed, the idiot... it's painful, it's hard, it hurts more than I can stand and I don't know how many times I wished I had died... but it's mine. It's mine and I want it. Is it so wrong to want it..? To want it like this..? To not be expandable, to not be replaceable, to be more than what I am to them..?"
Then, without it, you would not have an image of self. You would not exist.
"Oh, fuck you!" Shinji snapped, "What do you know about it!? I'm-"
Distant sensation of his body lurching, limbs spasming in unconscious desire to execute a series of futile moves that would do nothing to shield him from what was coming. He knew that the life support had just shut down completely.
"It doesn't matter. I'm dead anyway."
You are not dead.
"I will be, soon. I'll die in this one thing that I liked."
If it has died, you must have died, yet you are not dead. Why are you not dead? Why do you exist?
"I'm..."
9
Misato balefully beheld the digital countdown. In damning, red numbers, it displayed, -00:05:45. She grabbed the nearest seat and sat down. She faced away from Ritsuko and her ilk – knowing what they were about to do, hating the inevitability of it all, loathing the mission that came attached to it. It was one of the rare moments when the reality of what she was doing refused to relent, refused to leave room for hope.
"We'll wait for the timer to reach 8 minutes minus." Ritsuko said, "The plugsuit may give him a small boost, and make up for lost time. After that, we'll proceed. Is that okay, Misato?"
Misato didn't respond.
"Misato..?"
"Yes." Misato said, "Yes, damn you. I'll ring Asuka and tell her to be ready."
10
Awareness of the entry plug, now completely dim, save for the nocturnal glow of his plugsuit. No air to breathe, no LCL to nurture him, the smell of blood and isolation filling his lungs, spreading throughout his body.
Track 25 in his ears and a familiar face... drawing closer...
I can't breathe... I can't...
The woman in the next compartment of the train, entering theirs through the sliding door...
They left me here... they abandoned me... nobody's coming... nobody's coming for me...
Her face obscured by the sunlight... familiar...
They left me here to die... it's over. It's over.
Bending over his, the face... unseen, never seen before and not seen now, but somehow letting him know it was full of... love.
Shinji heard his own voice, far and wee.
"Mother..?"
11
Unit 02 chucked the Progressive Knife at the sphere – Asuka knew that it wouldn't do anything, only serve to further her frustration. She was shaking, her hands gripping the control bars so tight that she was hearing it groan under the pressure. Overhead, the first sorties of the JSSDF aircraft were visible, drawing lines on the sky. Getting ready to level the Angel. Moving into position to kill Shinji, to put the final nail in the coffin of her.
You are not going to die, you stupid asshole... you are not going to die. I'll show you. I'll show you all!
Unit 02 was stationary. Asuka willed it to move. There was static in her head, static lacing the inside of the entry plug. Interference from something she couldn't see, couldn't dig deep enough to dig out.
12
EVANGELION UNIT 02: SECOND CHILDREN
SYNCHRONIZATION RATE: 39.3%
13
"Fucking move!" Asuka said, "They can't bomb it if it's the two of us in there, move forward! Come on! You are my EVA, you will do what I say! Move, damn it, move! Move! MOVE!"
The EVA was moving, after a fashion, but it seemed reluctant. All Asuka needed was two steps, but it wasn't complying with her command.
Asuka, pulling frantically on the controls, didn't notice Rei come and take her position on the next avenue over. The operation and her part in it had completely disappeared, dissolved into the raging storm inside her. A comm-window opened and Rei's voice, cold and emotionless, broke through.
"Are you ready?"
12
Rei saw, somewhere near the epicenter of the Angel, movement that looked like something was taking a picket axe to the ceiling of the Dirac Sea. The single-point rupture rapidly blossomed with spidering cracks, reaching out both from this point and beginning to appear on their own all over. The surface cracked, rapidly painted with criss-crossing fault lines, exposing a thin surface. 3 nanometers thick, and it was now bared for all to see.
The Angel's spherical form shuddered, drawing the attention of Asuka and Rei towards it. It shuddered again. Without warning, a hand, contorted into a claw-like shape, burst out of the sphere, reaching out to the elbow, inviting spurts of blood with it. Asuka saw the liquid cake the hand, drip lazily from the fingers, dripping down...
The hand withdrew. Before their eyes, two sets of hands emerged from the top of the sphere and curled to grip it. A gash began to run down the side, cutting through the circular shapes as the sphere's top parted. A sound, reverberating, howling, began to echo, increasing as the hands pushed the sphere further and further, shaking with the strain.
With a disgusting sound of bone and flesh bending the wrong way, of ligaments snapping, both sides of the gash, near-perfect half-spheres, were parted, pushed aside as, before Asuka and Rei's watchful eyes and to the utter shock of those assembled in the war room, Unit 01 emerged.
Covered from nose to sternum in blood, the Evangelion rose its head to the skies and howled, thick geysers of blood spurting out all across the gash from which it had emerged – that terrible, shaking sound, dripping with anger, lament and despair, vibrating in the throat of the hulking giant, shaking its abnormally large teeth as its mouth hung open, a piece of the jaw-lock hanging from its side, scattered into the air.
The Evangelion screamed and screamed and screamed...
13
Misato felt her stomach churn at the sight, and from Maya, standing right next to her, turning white as a ghost, she saw that her response was something similar. Ritsuko, one hand still on the microphone's button, looked absolutely disturbed. The sound of the EVA's screaming had filled the room, and it kept on screaming, kept on screaming as if it was unleashing everything it was holding inside of itself for a long time.
"That's... Unit 01?" Misato managed, "That's the EVA?"
"Can we measure..." Ritsuko said, "Synchronization rate..?"
Maya forced herself to look away from the screen just as Unit 01, growling this time, ducked back into the Angel's "body", hands tearing chunks off of the gash. Maya's fingers clumsily danced across the pad, sending a remote signal to acquire the measurement Ritsuko had asked for. The calibration went underway quickly enough, just then, a gut-wrenching ripping sound, of flesh separating from flesh echoed through the war room. Maya looked out of the corner of her eye to see Unit 01 descending through the torn shreds of the Angel's sphere-shadow.
The screen bleeped. Maya's eyes widened.
14
Asuka watched as Unit 01 landed straight onto the spot it had landed on before, during the attack. Pieces torn out of the Angel's sphere-shadow graced it both with a thick shower of blood and with themselves – one black piece hung onto the shoulder of the Evangelion, much like an animal pelt.
Asuka's stomach lurched, but she had nothing to throw up.
"Am I... inside something... am I inside..."
Unit 01's head snapped up and looked straight at her then. Through clenched teeth, it growled.
15
"What did you say?" Ritsuko asked, not taking her eyes off of the screen.
"It's..." Maya swallowed, "The synchronization rate is 360%."
Misato snatched the microphone out of Ritsuko's hand and pressed the button so hard, she felt the button's slot scrape her finger.
"Shinji! Shinji, can you hear me? Shinji, please respond! Shinji!"