Episode 4: The Walking Devastation
Part V: Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?

Uenohara.

There was fire and heat and light. A massive wave of hot air burst through the valley. The buildings shook like leaves.

Then - just as quickly as it had started - it was over.

Nobuhide Suzuki raised his head from behind the piece of broken highway he'd used as cover. "Well, I'll be damned," he said.

The video feeds came back on. Misato sat down and let out the deep breath that had stuck in her throat. Both Evas stood intact over Uenohara. A few twisted fragments of scorched armor jutting from out of the ground were all that remained of Jet Alone. The body of the Fifth Angel, though it had held together through the explosion, had been burnt to a crisp. As she watched, the withered crystal dissolved into blood-red fluid, gently flooding through what remained of the town.

"What's our status?" she asked.

"All hardwired systems check out green." Lieutenant Hyuga looked over the readouts. "Communications seem to be down, though."

"Send out runners, then," Misato said. Damn, her eyes felt heavy. "Check in on the work crews and the tanks. Get help to whoever needs it. And for God's sake, someone get Shinji out of that cockpit before he does something else."

Shinji watched through the Eva's cameras as the crystal dissolved, his brain struggling to grasp what had just happened. It just wasn't fair. Around him, the entry plug began to blur and turn red. There was a high-pitched ringing sound in his ears...

Wait. That was his cell phone.

Shinji snatched the phone back up and pressed the receive button. "Right," the Doctor's voice said. "Big fir tree behind you and to the left? Call it maybe, oh, two hundred meters or so to the west? Big hole in the top? Can't miss it. If you could... err... bring the big fella around... I'm sort of a bit stuck."

"Slowly, now... slowly..." the Doctor said.

Unit One carefully bent the top of the fir tree down with one hand while holding out the other below. Shinji glanced at the battery readout. Twenty seconds of power left.

"Slowly... just a bit slower..."

Fifteen seconds. Out of time. Shinji twisted the Eva's wrist.

"SLOWER I SAID SLOWER! SLOW -"

The Doctor tumbled out from the tree and into the Eva's palm. He groaned. Shinji lowered him to the ground as the power finally gave out. A familiar warning came up on the entry plug's screen: EXTERIOR RADIATION ABOVE SAFE LEVEL. ENTRY PLUG EJECT DISAB-

Shinji kicked the controls in frustration. The message disappeared. The eject sequence started.

He rushed around the other side of the Eva. The Doctor, still lying in the Eva's hand, had pulled the spacesuit's helmet off, its faceplate cracked. He shot Shinji a look as he turned the corner. "Armor's a bit thick on this thing, don't you think?" he asked. "You lot ever think about padding for situations like this? Maybe an airbag or two?"

Shinji reached down and poked the Doctor in the shoulder. It was solid. He sat down and stared at the figure in front of him.

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"You - that - how -" Shinji's brain finally settled on a single phrase. "That - that was an explosion. An actual nuclear bomb explosion."

"Felt like one, yeah."

"How - how are you not dead? How are you still here?"

"Oh, right. That. Thought something like this might happen, so I brought this along..." The Doctor reached behind him and pulled something off of the back of the spacesuit, free of what sounded suspiciously like duct tape. He held up an object that looked to Shinji like a large, very thick circuit board, its edges glowing with a strange purple energy. "Tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator. Picked it up the last time I ran into a problem like this. Your basic pan-dimensional surfboard. Shields you from an explosion, absorbs the energy, and uses it to propel you along the course of the blast wave. Mind you, little boom like that last one doesn't get you much. Barely even made the stratosphere before I - oh, don't do that. Don't -" The lights on the board flickered and died. The Doctor laid his head back down and sighed. "Wonderful. More things to fix."

Shinji sat back. He stared up at the blue sky, at the sun shining, at the fir tree missing its needles, at the armor on the Eva's head, only slightly scorched...

He started to laugh. Really, actually laugh. For the first time since - well, he couldn't remember when.

"What? What'd I say?" The Doctor, confused, glanced at his boots. "Are my toes sticking out or something?"

Shinji paused for breath, his chest heaving. "You're can't possibly exist," he gasped out. "You're impossible. You're completely impossible, you know that?"

"'s not impossible," the Doctor objected. "Just a little unlikely."

Far overhead, a helicopter roared across the valley. The Doctor sighed again. "Guess that's my cue." Groaning, he reluctantly got to his feet, pine needles scattering out of the folds of the spacesuit. "Best be moving on, before the cleanup really gets started."

"Yeah..." The cleanup. At this point, Misato would probably be... Shinji froze. Oh. Oh, crap. Misato. "Um - could I - could you give me a ride back to the city, actually? I don't want to see Misato right away. I kind of like my skull where it is."

The Doctor shrugged. "Eh. Suit yourself. Now, where'd I leave that car?..."

NERV Headquarters - Central Dogma

"All in all, the Committee is less than pleased." Vice-Commander Fuyutsuki brushed a bit of lint off the end of his sleeve. Travel was hard on these old uniforms. "While the incident has cost Japan Heavy Chemicals dearly, the actions of their employees has given the company the opportunity to save more face than the old men would have liked. I was left with the impression that they were rather more prepared to take advantage of a small-scale embarrassment, as was originally planned."

"Mmh."

"Forgive the pun, but we're going to be dealing with the fallout from this for quite some time," Fuyutsuki said. "There are too many questions still unresolved. What's going to happen to Japan Heavy Chemicals. How the Angel managed to overcome Akagi's safeguards. Not to mention - what is it that you want to do about this Doctor fellow?"

"Nothing, yet." Gendo Ikari folded his hands. "I want to see what he does next."

Tokyo-3

"Only five minutes?" the Doctor asked. "Are you serious? The battery life is that short?"

They walked through the winding alleyways and side streets of the old section of the city, having left Misato's car in a parking lot several blocks behind. The Doctor had donned his long brown coat again. He carried the spacesuit over one shoulder and the extrapolator thing under his arm, while Shinji carried his helmet.

"It's ten to fifteen minutes with the extended battery packs," Shinji said. "But they're pretty awkward to move around with."

"So you can only operate for fifteen minutes at a time?"

"Well, that's what the umbilical cords are for. Inside the city, there's a station every few blocks."

"Superadvanced giant battle cyborgs... that have to be plugged in?" The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "Well, that's a bit rubbish. Don't you think?"

Shinji shrugged, a bit defensively. "Wasn't my idea."

"Never said it was." They came to an alleyway that looked the same as all the others they'd been through. Except for an odd-looking wooden box set against a wall next to a dumpster. "Welp, this is me." The Doctor scratched the back of his head. "Long as you're here, suppose you might as well come in for a spell. I'll put the kettle on."

He snapped his fingers. The door to the box clicked open.

Shinji stared at him. "You... live inside of a box?"

"Yep."

"Isn't it sort of... cramped?"

"Is it? Eh, maybe a bit." The Doctor shrugged. "You get used to it."

He walked into the box, leaving the door ajar behind him.

Shinji eyed the box. It looked barely large enough to hold the Doctor, let alone him. Well... it wasn't like this was the weirdest thing he'd seen today. He supposed he could just hand the helmet to the Doctor through the doorway or something...

"You coming?" the Doctor called from inside.

"Yeah." Shinji went to the door...

... and stopped short. He stood in the threshold, looking inside, his entire world turning upside-down all over again.

"What," he said.

AUTHOR'S NOTES

First off - Eva fans? I'd like you to meet the Doctor. This is who he is. This is what he does.

Speaking of awesome, you know who else is? Misato. I kind of stole one of her crowning moments from the series from her here. I'm hoping to make up the difference fairly soon.

Regarding the waveform extractor: before anyone accuses me of just pulling it out of nowhere - well, okay, I more or less did that, so rather before anyone accuses me of just making it up - it actually appeared in the "Who" episode I mentioned in the first chapter of the episode. Wikipedia it, if you like.

Lastly, and on a more serious note - the characters of Akira Tamura and Nobuhide Suzuki are named after two workers at Fukushima. If you don't know why that's important, look up "Fukushima 50." Right now. I'm serious. This is something people should know about. (Source is the Telegraph: telegraph dot co dot uk / news / worldnews / asia / japan / 8408863 / Japan-tsunami-Fukushima-Fifty-the-first-interview dot html. Convert dots to periods and remove whitespace as necessary.)

If they or their loved ones should ever happen to come across this - I hope that you don't take these scribblings as an insult. I apologize for putting my own words into their mouths. As someone who honestly doesn't know if I'd be capable of taking the actions that they did, I could only try to guess their reasons and motivations. I also know that Japanese culture traditionally emphasizes the role of the community or the group over that of the individual, which is why the names of the Fifty have generally remained unlisted in the media. American that I am, though, I suppose I can't help but see that every individual attached to that particular group chose to be there and to take part. I tend to think that the name of anyone capable of making that sort of decision is a name worth remembering.