02: [ASUKA STRIKES!]
Boku-tachi wa hirake au
Suiteki no you ni, wakusei no you ni
Boku-tachi wa hanpatsu shiau
Jishaku no you ni, hada no iro no you ni
-Tite Kubo
(:)
We attract each other
Like drops of water, like planets
We repell each other
Like magnets, like the colors of our skin
Gaghiel, the Angel of fish, was on his way.
As soon as he'd emerged from his chrysalis, he'd listened for steely voices like his own, and departed to follow the loudest one he could hear, ready and eager to claim this world for himself and his brothers, to complete what neither his predecessors nor his honored father could finish.
Now, Gaghiel was – as one might express it in Lillim-terms – not the brightest bulb in the box, and this was reflected in the form he'd chosen: A gigantic, massive body that boasted of raw strength in place of sophisticated trickery with a shape more fit to his father's ocean than to braving the shores occupied by the Lillim, perhaps a sign of a childish personality or a misguided attempt to flatter or impress his origin; Though he would have described this more as "glorifying his name" rather than anything that would imply communication or need on either side, in some ways the angel was not as different from the children he would soon meet in battle than the vast disparities of their outer forms would suggest.
But there was yet another bizarrely-ironic parallel between them, or in this case, between Gaghiel and Shinji in particular: He just got lucky.
The messenger had been following the loud and faraway calls that seemed to be coming from beyond the shore, but thanks to a whim of fate, he crossed paths with a cluster of Lillim vessels on his way there. Originally, he'd meant to remain far beneath them in the protection of the crimson deeps, but as he neared their position, he perceived a small, familiar cry, a voice that seemed to shine in, of, and for itself rather than being directed anywhere – The indistinguishable mark of a being blessed with the fruit of life, much like Gaghiel himself.
As of now, he lacked the knowledge needed to recognize that sign for what it was, but it felt unprecedentedly... familiar and it was there.
Driven by some kind of childish curiosity, Gaghiel surfaced, and following the obstinacy born from that same childishness, he tore apart one Lillim vessel after another – For the call he'd heard was too weak, too diffused, to easily pinpoint its exact location – whatever its source was lacked the energy to produce more than localized background static, its presence felt closer to drops of a viscous fluid randomly leaking more than it did to wave patterns being broadcast. The signal was scrambled and scattered, and yet, Gaghiel zealously continued his search – That strange quality he could only describe as a sense of familiarity kept pulling at his instinct like a horseshoe magnet would attract a tiny bit of iron turnings.
…...WHERE...ARE...YOU...
Meanwhile, the humans inside the "vessels" were completely at the angel's mercy. Most likely, the only reason that they kept in motion was their pride demanding that they should at least look like they were doing something to get this situation under control – but not many were fooled.
"Damnit...!" the old admiral cursed, looking through his spying-glass in disbelief. "What is going on out there?!"
And if an uncontrollable situation wasn't the worst a person who earned his living through establishing order could hope for, the bridge was then visited by the last person the admiral wanted to see right now.
Just minutes before, he would have been outright grateful for any chance of a proper battle that would give the rockets in his ships' vaults some proper use before they were inevitably decommissioned as a consequence of budget cuts, but now, he and his troops were being humiliated.
"Greetings! NERV delivery service!" she declared cheerfully, not boasting, but neither hiding that she saw this incident as a confirmation of her earlier points. "Would you like to order information about the enemy, or perhaps some effective countermeasures?"
"We are in the middle of combat! There is no place for civilians on the bridge!"
Misato's smile was replaced by a more serious, somewhat aggravated expression just as one of those kids showed up behind her, and much to the officers' chagrin, it had to be the one with the camera.
"You know, it's just my personal opinion but I think you might be dealing with an angel here."
The admiral tried his hardest to ignore her. "All ships, fire!"
Misato already knew that this man was only wasting time and ammunition – and most likely, he knew that as well. One might think that there was some kind of official meeting of big mouths on this ship.
Speaking of big mouths – or someone Misato might have termed that way – There was another person observing the angel's lengthening trail of destruction with visible signs of alarm: Back in his cabin, Kaji was peering through the shutters with a small spying glass, thoughts racing behind somber dark eyes as the angel mowed down one ship after another – this turn of events was very, very inconvenient right now...
In the meantime, Misato had personally invited herself onto the bridge, and observed the confrontation unfold alongside Touji and Kensuke. What was taking place out there was too one-sided to be considered a battle.
"Why is the angel even here?" Misato asked herself, sensing a vague unease in her gut. So far, they had all gone directly for Neo Tokyo Three, as far as she knew, because Lillith was buried underneath it. So what could this creature possibly want here, with these old ships in the middle of the ocean? What led it here?
"Could it be... Unit Two?"
Elsewhere, Asuka had grabbed Shinji by the wrist, and pulled him back into the corridors of the ships as she pleased, without giving him even the slightest indication of where they were going – He was well aware that they had no time for any whimsical drivel now that the angel could tear this ship apart at any given moment, but he couldn't make himself talk back to that crazy girl, who seemed very unlikely to pay him any mind either way.
That she had taken a bag in her favorite color from a crate in her Eva's storage room would suggest that she had at least something resembling an actual plan which Shinji was currently unable to follow for lack of explanations – And since he himself did not have one and probably lacked the ability to concoct one even if he tried, it shouldn't surprise anyone that he kept his quiet, allowed himself to be dragged along and left all the thinking to the so-called 'full-fledged' pilot, but after a while, what little sense of duty and self-respect he'd acquired over the last seven weeks nagged him enough to prompt some resistance: After all, he knew very well that the fate of humanity could depend on their next actions, and this girl, a complete greenhorn at that, did not seem to take this very seriously. All along, she had been talking like EVA battles were some kind of sport for her to excel at.
But since Shinji was as much subject to his personal limitations as all of us, which included being more than a little scared of said "complete greenhorn" (especially considering that his faith in his own capabilities was still rather shaky), his "protests" for the benefit of the actual task at hand turned out fairly unimpressive, if not mostly confused and shorttaken:
"Ehm, uh, where are we going?"
When the Second Child's next move actually resembled stopping to think for a moment, Shinji opened himself up to the hope that he might still receive a sensible explanation of the Second Child's course of action today – but no such luck.
Instead, for unfathomable reasons, she decided to spin around rapidly and drag him in the opposite direction, until they had reached the access point to a stairwell that she'd paid absolutely no heed when they'd ran past it earlier.
Only now did Asuka release his poor, mistreated wrist from her merciless stranglehold.
"Stay here for a bit, yeah?" she commanded, in a tone that made it impossible for the shy boy to reply anything before she could whirl around again and run off with her mysterious bag in hand.
He could only send a half-hearted "...but what are we gonna do here?" after her, which lacked the demanding tone that would have been necessary to make her listen, and thus, Shinji was left standing there with half-outstretched arms.
Resignedly, he let his hands sink and slumped down on the stairs, given that he didn't have any other real choices. He felt vaguely like some little kid whose parents had promised them a surprise, but decided to make them wait in uncertainty beforehand, and Shinji had never handled uncertainty or surprises very well.
What in the world was so hard about letting him know how exactly her current endeavor would keep the angel closing in on them from blasting them all to the bottom of the sea?
The sounds that could be heard from the stairwell were befuddling at best.
What was she doing down there? Had she perhaps forgotten that this ship could be sunk at any moment? Shinji considered calling out to her, but feared that he might make a fool of himself once again by interrupting some useful activity of hers.
One way or another, he would end up insulted and humiliated again...
Nonetheless, the prospect of impending watery death made sure to keep the tension in his nerves rising, and before long, he couldn't stand to just sit tight anymore.
Since it seemed vaguely more useful that pacing around or repeatedly shifting positions, he chose to walk over to the stairwell's handrails and take a look at whatever the Second Child was doing.
Big Mistake.
Because as Shinji's treacherous luck would have it, he found the dress and sinfully sparse underwear he'd previously seen her in hastily scrunched up and thrown over her now open bag, which seemed to have contained a plug suit that was, of course, inescapably bright red – And its owner was just about to stick her arms into the corresponding portions of the suit, which was still wide, loose, and hanging off her dainty little body in a few strategic places.
As if that ill-fated gust of wind hadn't revealed enough, he was now treated to her hair falling past her bare shoulders and a good portion of those hill-shaped mounds of flesh and their incidentally titillating little motions.
The nipples were just barely covered by the plug suit's crimson rubber, but that wasn't fixed in place, and together with the unexpected suddenness of this kind of sight, his inevitable awareness that it could slip aside at any moment made Shinji struggle to keep his... biological functions in check.
With any other lady-person he'd come to know, such as Ayanami or Misato, he would have averted his head in shame just about now, but this time, he just kept staring, frozen in place. At the time, he thought it was mostly because the processes he was trying to stave off were diverting blood from his central thinking organ.
Or perhaps it was a matter of respect, or lack thereof – at the time, he was impressed by Asuka's assertiveness, but not exactly charmed by her as a person. Maybe some part of him has subconsciously decided that a retreat wasn't worth his effort given that her opinion of him could hardly sink any lower than it already way, or maybe, as he would consider in a few dark, dark moments, it might have been some sense of carrying out an act of justified revenge that kept his eyes transfixed on the alluring German girl – whatever it was, it got completely replaced by shame soon enough once she spotted him and immediately began her obligatory cursing: "Stop peeping at me immediately, you disgusting pervert!"
Her order was quite unnecessary as Shinji had already turned to flee and hid behind the upwards reaching flight of stairs.
"Why do all boys have to be braindead peeping toms and butt gropers!" he heard her complain.
With a sigh, Shinji sat back down on the stairs.
Great.
If she didn't hate him before, she definitely did now.
Why did he always end up in such embarrassing situations?
And why was she always yelling at him, anyways?
He just wanted to see what she was up to, she really could have warned him, or really, given him any explanation at all.
That she was putting on a plug suit at least suggested that she hadn't completely forgotten about the angel out there.
The next thing Shinji heard was the characteristic hiss as her suit adapted itself to her thin frame.
What he didn't hear, however, was the quiet sentence she mumbled to herself with an atypically serious expression, or even a hint of real tension:
"...Let's go... Asuka."
This was the moment of truth.
The day she had been working towards for nearly all of her life.
The instant that was meant to justify all of her attitudes and choices, if not her very existence.
In more ways than one, this was the beginning of her battle for the right to remain on this world, and if this Third Child brat was going to get in her way, she was going to crush him so hard that it would squeeze all the juice out of him, without a shred of mercy.
On the outside, the remaining war ships continued their bombardment of the angel, not that it did any good – they kept firing endless salvos of torpedoes and rockets, but the enemy wasn't even slowed down.
The angel didn't even seem to care about them, didn't adjust its course and kept destroying ships according to some seemingly whimsical pattern that none of the humans could make sense of.
If it was following some kind of priority list, it certainly didn't have anything to do with the weaponry of the ships, which made the obvious all that much harder to overlook despite the officers' best efforts.
"Why hasn't it sunk yet?!" the admiral shouted in disbelief.
"I knew it! That thing can only be defeated by an EVA!"
The fact that it was Touji, the relatively normal one among the boys who'd previously looked at the Evangelion-program with some degree of skepticism, and not, say, his battle-crazy, camcorder-swinging buddy who's finally revealed the emperor's figurative new cloak to be nonexistent, got him quite a few disgruntled looks from the admiral and his first officer – especially because his relative neutrality underlined the fact that he was undeniably right.
The officers weren't the only ones who had to face an unpleasant reality – Shinji, for instance, was currently forced to confront a situation where Asuka had dragged him all the way back to her Evangelion's storage room, and then thrown her spare plug suit at him.
Looking anything other than happy, Shinji glanced at the importunately red article of clothing in his arms.
This was a girl suit.
Sure, he was aware that those things were made out of flexible rubber which adapted to the wearer's body shape and as such, technically unisex.
But he knew that they were still somehow tailored to the intended user's measurements, and the measurements that had been used to make this one were bound to have been rather... feminine perhaps?
It wasn't as if he had anything against the female sex, per se. Some of his best friends were girls, if Misato and Ayanami counted as such. But that didn't mean that he wanted to wear their clothes – and he most certainly didn't want to wear Asuka's.
It was only her spare suit, but there was still a remote chance that it had been in contact with the more... private bits of her anatomy.
Besides, while wearing something like Ayanami's suit might've been just barely feasible, this model has to plastic caps on its front which Shinji, for all his politeness, could only describe as 'boobie protectors'.
The Third Child really didn't want to put on that plugsuit, but Drill Seargeant... er, Captain Shikinami knew no mercy: All she did when he gave her a pleading look was to put her hands on her hips in a superior manner that clarified once and for all just how little she cared about her fellow pilot's concerns. The gesture accentuated her ample behind which was one of the few places on her body that could've been classified as 'opulent'. She had the sort of perky, round, surprisingly mature-looking butt cheeks that could be seen in magazines. Her unpleasant personality aside, she was almost on par with Misato in the A department and probably won out against Ayanami there, but that was of very little help to Shinji as he was dealing with her front side right now and the parts of her that were meant for talking had yet to produce any sort of explanation.
Instead, he was once again met with her index finger, which she copiously swung around to compound her imperious orders. Her chest, somewhat supplemented in size by the "boob protectors", also subtly jiggled while she did this.
"YOU are coming with ME!"
And as son as she stopped speaking, she turned on her heels and stormed off, leaving the hapless boy standing there all by himself.
Anything but pleased, he realized that he'd have no choice but to make his peace with the boob protectors.
The result looked just as dreadful as he'd expected – Since Shinji had never possessed anything that could have been considered a particularly masculine physique, the suit's design, distribution of padding and boob protectors (after using that word a few times, in started sounding more like a technical term and less like a reason for massive embarrassment, at least in his head) all worked together to create the impression that he'd spontaneously decided to throw his Y-Chromosome in the thrash, but some things couldn't be hidden, especially not in a skin tight suit designed for a rather thin young girl.
It wasn't tight enough to be uncomfortable, but left very little to the imagination – the last thing he needed right now was for Asuka to start making jokes about that.
Keeping his legs in relative proximity to each other and making an attempt to cover the offending bits with his hands, and – once he'd folded his clothes – tried moving into the direction Asuka had disappeared into, with a pathetic waddle that would have made PenPen proud.
By the time he found Asuka at the end of the catwalk leading to Unit Two, the color of his face had begun to rival that of his borrowed suit. She was casually leaning on EVA 02's power socket, standing on its back near the entry hatch and not showing the slightest quantum of remorse for the humiliation she'd brought upon her male co-pilot.
"Uhm, why exactly are we wearing plug suits again?" he asked, hoping that all of this would be over soon. The Second Child didn't wait a second to continue mocking him, closely followed by further testaments of her recklessness: "Are you an idiot?"
Those were the same words she'd 'welcomed' him with, and something told him that he would be hearing them very often in the near future.
"We're going to beat up that thing with my EVA 02!" she declared, confident and pugnacious. She was barely done speaking when EVA 02's entry hatch opened automatically, and its plug slid outside, ready to be boarded.
Shinji couldn't quite believe what he was hearing.
Apparently, she wanted to jump inside her EVA just like that, and... fight with it?
Right now?
Just like that?
So far, doing this had always required the participation of all those technicians at NERV headquarters and... lots of technical stuff, and this was the first time he heard of anything like two pilots controlling the same EVA – would that even work?
In any case, it seemed unlikely that this girl had ever tried it before.
Once again, he got the feeling that she was seriously underestimating this whole situation – there was no way the two of them could just spontaneously defeat an angel all by themselves, that went against all his experiences from his previous sorties, particularly his first.
"...wait a second... Shouldn't we ask Misato-san for permission or something?"
Granted, his attempts at being the voice of reason turned out rather puny so far.
Try as he might, he would never be a cool, decisive person – much unlike Asuka, who casually dismissed his shaky objections out of hand. "Don't worry!" she grinned, as if she were already feeling her triumph dissolving on her tongue like some expensive chocolate. "We'll ask her right after we've defeated that thing!"
Even when the main hatch opened and revealed the interior of Unit 02's plug, whose cockpit unit looked somewhat different than what he was used from EVA 01 (larger, more spacious, all around shinier, with extra buttons on the levers and no trace of that bridge-like extension he always had to stick his feet into), the Third Child was still far from convinced. Captain Shikinami, by contrast, already seemed to consider the angel as good as exploded:
"So. Now I'm gonna show you what a trained pilot can do. Don't get in my way!"
In the meantime, the angel had been busy playing "Battleships", while Touji and Misato observed it perplexedly.
It goes without saying that Kensuke was watching it alongside them, of course, filming it as well, but his expression was ore akin to that of a small child on Christmas day.
"Strange..." Misato mumbled, more to herself than anyone else.
"It's almost like it's searching for something."
But Misato and the boys weren't the only ones watching the spectacle with worry – Kaji's spyglass was still peering through the segments of the blinds that he'd pushed aside, looking not at all pleased, in part because he was privy to the exact reason why this particular angel had struck so far from where its brother had struck –
Next to a few bags with his personal belongings, a few more of his things and the hard-top case he'd purloined from Bethany Base was another such case, varnished in deep red.
The bright color seemed at odds with the ship's rusty cabin walls and Kaji couldn't help but observe that it was the exact color of blood – not at all unfitting when he considered just how much of the ruby life essence had been spilled for or by what was contained within.
"Well, being assaulted by an angel on the high seas was not was I expected!" he spoke into the phone he'd pinned between his ear and his shoulder, hiding his concern behind the flawless poker face he earned his bread with.
The man at the other end of the line – Ikari – was completely calm. "That's why Unit Two is on board. I've even provided you with a spare pilot. If worst comes to worst, escape by yourself."
"I understand."
Beneath its canvas cover, the afore-mentioned Eva's entry plug had already been inserted and filled with LCL.
Shinji, who was holding onto Asuka's seat from behind, still didn't feel confident about any of this, and it wasn't solely because of his less than dignified outfit.
The prospect of fighting without Misato and everyone else in the command bunkers... he couldn't even imagine how that was supposed to work, and as for the "glorious Captain Shikinami", well, she had pretty much dragged him along for the sole purpose of showing off her 1337 p1lt sk!lz to him, which didn't make her look all that professional.
At least, her ego had assured that he'd be in the plug with her and thus have a chance to intervene if the battle should become too much for her to handle – after all, the fate of humanity was at stake, and so on.
Also, Shinji wasn't enough of a complete savage to let this inexperienced young girl who probably expected EVA battles to be much the way Touji and Kensuke imagined them walk to her doom if he had such a chance to prevent it... even though he had to admit that he wouldn't have insisted to come if she hadn't dragged him along.
Perhaps he should be ashamed of that – On the other hand, it was also true that he might have been more involved about this if she weren't treating him like a cleaning mop.
This would be the first time he'd sat inside an EVA other than his own – ultimately, it felt fairly similar, but there was more of a difference than he would have expected.
He felt as if the inside of EVA 02 felt a great deal cooler and darker, more in the figurative than the literal sense but with the latter of course influencing his perception of the former. There was simply a dismissive, inclement atmosphere dominating both the metaphorical and physical dimensions of the plug, which made him all the more aware of just how strong this half-conscious, inviting feeling of safety and comfort had been inside of EVA 01.
EVA 02 passively allowed him to connect to it, but unlike unit one, it didn't... accommodate for him, or meet him halfway, and his feeling of the EVA's limbs remained much more numbed, sluggish and imprecise. Presumably, all this synch rate and harmonix stuff must have been significantly lower in here.
As much as Shinji could perceive EVA 02's mental expanse, it was an unpleasant, unwelcoming, lifeless sort of place.
He briefly wondered what it might feel like to Asuka.
She had since closed her eyes in concentration and began to give system input commands in a strange, foreign language Shinji could not understand. He presumed that it must be German – was that where she was supposed to be from, Germany?
In any case, her words were followed by the typical flimmering lights of the activation sequence, only for a wall of repetitive red text to appear in place of the interface. Shinji was unfamiliar with the combination of western letters that kept flashing on the walls in bold red capitals, but the beeps that accompanied them confirmed his guess that it had to be the German equivalent of "ERROR".
"An error message... what happened?" Shinji asked with mild concern.
"Thought noise!" she spat back without anything resembling an explanation. "I told you not to get in my way!"
Apparently, she expected him to have memorized all those terms the technical division occasionally threw around, just because he'd been able to move an EVA well enough to land it flat on its face though some unlikely whim of fate.
He wondered if she was aware of how paradoxical this was, given that she'd spent far more time in the service of project E and had, so far, expended nontrivial amounts of time and energy to assure that he wouldn't forget that for as much as a minute.
Thankfully, her highness seemed to be feeling generous for a change, or maybe she was finally sufficiently focused on the battle to be ever mindful of her intentions to pick him on – One way or another, the heavens opened, a beam of light descended, and granted him the unspeakable miracle of actually receiving some sort of answer as to what he had supposedly screwed up: "You've been thinking in Japanese! If you have to think, do it in German!"
While it might have been very considerate of her (by Asuka standards) to offer him some sort of actual solution instead of simply calling him an idiot, this time she might have had legitimate reason to doubt his abilities. What made her think that some average Japanese boy who had been living in a little mountain village until very recently would be able to converse in all of Europe's languages? English might have been halfway feasible, but German?
No choice but to fly the white flag.
That is, if he weren't dealing with no one, but two monsters at the time: The one outside that could send them to the bottom of the sea at any given moment, and the one in the entry plug who was unlikely to accept any lazy excuses, or anything she might liberally term as such.
Despite the fact that he hadn't produced a single German sentence in his life, Shinji made a shaky attempt to oblige her, even though he understandably didn't rate his probability of success very high: "Ah, okay..."
Panicked, he searched his 'memory banks' for anything to do with Germany – His first association were cars, but he didn't have the slightest clue what the German word for "car" might be, and then, there! A spark of hope: "B-Ba... Baumkuuuu-hen..."
"Idiot!" she snapped, forcefully enough to make him recoil.
It was probably superfluous to note that he didn't look particularly pleased.
"Alright! Change systems language to japanese!" she ordered sourly.
While the walls of the entry plug thus began to shine in a variery of colors all over again, Shinji took the time to wonder what else he might have to endure now that this person was to be deployed as an EVA pilot on a regular basis, but then tried to quiet these thoughts to mentally prepare for the battle ahead, given that he bore a certain responsibility as the more battle-experienced pilot.
In the meantime, the interface had appeared around them, with the 'scaffolding' between the screen panels bearing a different color scheme than those of Unit One.
In an instant, both realized what this meant: They were ready to go.
Captain Shikinami didn't hesitate for a second: "Evangelion Unit Two, Launch!"
Meanwhile, the Children's activities had not remained unnoticed – when the First Officer of the 'Over the Rainbow' reported that EVA 02 had been activated, all eyes immediately turned to the large white covering on the deck of the large flagship 'Othello', under which something seemed to be stirring – both the boys and the First Officer who had just delivered the message immediately turned their heads, during which the latter pulled out some binoculars whereas Kensuke swung around with his camera still in hand, presumably making good use of its zooming capabilities.
Misato seemed to excited about the news that she inelegantly pressed her face to the window pane and immediately sprouted a few words of praise – the Admiral, alas, only reacted with a rather apalled 'What?!' and grabbed the local speaker microphone as soon as he regained his bearings, with all intentions to put an end to what he saw as an useless, childish waste of time: "Abort activation sequence immediately! I said abort!"
He had barely finished speaking when Misato suceeded at squeezing herself past him and wresting the microphone from his hands. "Ignore that!" she shouted right into it without much of a care about the elderly Admiral squirming beside her. "Permission to launch!"
"WHAT?!"
Using his very loud voice and the occasional spray of spit, the Admiral gave Misato a 'friendly' reminder of his continued presence. Making use of the timespan in which she'd reacted to the booming volume in her ears with an involuntary shutting of her eyes, the old officer pushed the Nerv employee out of his field of vision and laid claim to the microphone: "Both the EVA and the pilot are under our command! You can't just do as you like out here!"
"Who cares about the formalities at a time like this?!" protested Misato, who had since slipped out of the naval commander's grasp and continued the embittered war over the microphone.
Although both of them seemed very occupied with their struggle, the First Officer, who unlike the other supposed 'adults', had not forgotten that a battle for the fate of humanity was happening under their noses, decided to inform them that the Evangelion about whose deployment or non-deployment they were currently squabbling was currently fitted with merely B-type equipment – it was ready for activation, but not for much more – and that information was enough to make them overlook their differences for a brief moment and followed the First Officer's example in turning their heads in the same direction that his binoculars had been facing for a while now: Directly toward the transport ship carrying the Evangelion.
Its pilot had since realized their precarious equipment status themselves, and Shinji, who, as the more experienced passenger, felt obliged to act as a voice of reason in the presence of a naïve young girl who was evidently overestimating herself, assumed the thankless task of bringing it to her attention:
"...if we fall into the sea, we're done for..."
Ooops. That did not really sound very much like an authoritative veteran... rather more like a henpecked scaredy-cat. Shinji was beginning to feel like he was the newbie here – which wasn't completely without merit, given that Captain Shikinami had been trained for years, unlike himself, who couldn't even muster a tone of voice firm enough to make the daredevil Second Child spare him a glance.
Her determined, far more combat-ready expressions stayed the same and betrayed no sign that his warning had deterred her in any way.
"Well, if we don't fall, we'll be fine." was her laconic, almost outright annoyed answer.
While Asuka did not pay her co-pilot any heed, at least mission control took some note of him over the intercom, including Misato, whose general excitement indicated that she considered this very fortunate: "Shinji-kun! Are you in there as well?"
Both the tone of her voice and her confidently relieved smile indicated a significant decrease in whatever worries she had not outwardly shown, but very much felt regarding the unexpected surprise battle – she had absolute faith in that 14-year old boy.
The most recent events had left her to choice but to conclude that she once reluctant and not all that stable boy had long since proven his worth.
And with Asuka there to back him up, their odds weren't looking all that bad – She had awaited her first proper combat for years and was far too ambitious to allow for a defeat – though it was probably a good thing to have Shinji mitigating her daring.
Having long since forgotten all about the microphone that both his and Misato's hands still happened to be grasping, the Admiral did not believe his eyes: His poor opinion of Project E went without saying, but unlike Misato, he had only encountered the pilots as a loud, spoiled brat and a rather inconsequential-seeming boy none of which he found particularly trustworthy: "But they're just two kids!", he lamented.
But Misato had many reasons to think otherwise: "They can do it."
The seriousness of her voice left no room to doubt that she had no doubts, either.
Thus, she finally took complete control of the microphone and shouted the final launch order at the top of her lungs: "ASUKA, GO!"
And that was indeed a wise suggestion, for during the time she and the admiral had spent arguing about the chain of command, the lethal game of 'battleship' that had been going on on the crimson waves outside had ground to a halt, for the simple reason that its perpetrator could no longer sense its target's presence, try as he might.
Just as Gaghiel thought to have picked up the definite presence of his origin, his surroundings were inundated by a second, far stronger source of energy that confounded his senses.
Was that his father? The goal of his journey?
No, it was different. It was similar, but it was different.
Something empty. An empty, warped image of his father, enthroned on one of those Lillim-made structures whose purpose eluded him – Was it too the work of the Lillim? Frightening. It was almost as if they had the ability to influence the matter around them however they pleased. Despite their tiny, laughable forms, they were formidable enemies: They could move freely through the red flood that had been created in their father's incomplete attempt to remake this world into something fit for the likes of the messengers, a paradise from which the Lillim should have been barred – But that they would be capable of creating such a perversion... but ach! It wasn't even the Perversion's nature that bothered Gaghiel the most, it was its strong presence, which masked the tiny signature it had been seeking in the first place.
The angel did not need long to decide on a pragmatic solution to its distress: The Perversion had to go!
Disquieting the red waters with the stirring of its mighty fins, the angel of the fish went straight for EVA 02, marking its path with a wild spray of water, advancing faster than any ship mankind had yet managed to build.
"I-It's coming!" Shinji warned, mildly startled from the battle's swift beginnings yet clearly in the process of mentally shifting into 'combat mode'.
Against all logic, the Second Child was wholly unperturbed.
"And go!"
Without wasting another second, EVA 02 departed from the metal it had been resting on, escaping with a powrful yet gracile leap before the ship beneath it was torn to pieces, with the long , white covering it had been hidden under trailing behind it like a giant overcoat.
Far from quartered, the Evangelion elegantly landed on another ship, greatly straining its upper components, without showing the slightest sign that its pilot had spent any extraordinary effort in keeping its balance – She hadn't even needed to use its hands, which were still holding the tarpaulin under which it had been shipped, giving it the appearance of a dignified roman toga.
Her movements had been graceful, almost dainty, as well as very smooth and natural-looking, almost as if she could command the EVA better than her own body (which was saying something) – Shinji doubted that he could produce such fast, fluid movements with Unit One, and even if he could, his lousy reaction time would have thwarted any attempts at such a bold escape maneuver.
"Where'd it go?!" the redhead asked.
In any other situation, he might have complained about having toserve as a human satnav the after she'd spent so much time bragging about how awesome she was and how he mustn't get in her way, but there was a time and a place and this was not it. This was a battle for the survival of humanity; At least one of them had to take this seriously: "Over there!" he answered swiftly, glancing over at the battery gauge which had drawn his attention through a familiar noise that Asuka did not seem very interested in. "Just 58 seconds!" he warned, briefly stumbling over the thought that it was probably 56 by the time he'd finished speaking – Asuka's acrobatics might look very impressive, but they lost all admiration Shinji might have initially conceded to them as he realized that they probably required the EVA to switch to full power– This was very not good.
But once Asuka had spotted her target, she seemed to have relegated him back into the category of unnecessary, annoying things barely worthy of her attention, and chided him with a caustic "I know!" as if he'd tried to explain to her that things drop to the ground when you let go of them.
Now that she had degraded him to being pure decoration, Captain Shikinami was free to pursue her true passions: Fighting and ordering people around.
"Misato, ready the power cable on the flight deck!" she commanded, not taking her eyes off the angel which was speeding toward her current position.
"Will do!" came the answer from the command bridge, despite the admiral's ineffectual wailing in the background.
Asuka fixed her target with an icy glare, like a consummate hitman who'd just spotted his target. "So," she began, curt and condescending. "Do you like hopscotch?"
Shinji barely had the time to produce a somewhat dumbstruck "What?" before she once again took the initiative without even thinking of gracing him with an explanation.
In a swift, sudden movement, the EVA crouched down, only to shoot into the air with a force that Shinji couldn't have produced is he were struggling to save his own life, soaring through the air like an arrow to land rather precisely on the one bit of free flight deck located on the next ship, which was subjected to some consequential damaged from both her landing and the consecutive jump, during which she finally let go of the tarpaulin altogether like a butterfly discarding its chrysalis.
She did not stop moving for evem an instant: Barely wasting a thought on the ships' crewmen who often only barely escaped the brunt of the impact, she demolished one flight deck after the other, often jumping out of the same fluid movement with which she had landed. Despite the colossal mass she was moving around, she kept her balance as effortlessly as if the EVA were as light as a feather.
She was not merely pulling off a batshit-insane feat in a masterful manner, no, she appeared to be having the time of her life doing it, much unlike Shinji, who clung to the back of the crazy girl's seat while she emphatically announced her success: "EEVA 02 INCOMIIIIIING!"
The red colossus landed on the Over-the-Rainbow's flight deck with hardly a problem and easily caught its balance despite the humongous waves towering around the aircraft carrier.
Even so, some of the aircraft unavoidably ended up tumbling into the sea, which, oddly enough, seemed to bother Kensuke more than the angel currently speeding toward the ship he was standing on.
Shinji however was perfectly aware of the implications concerning his friends' current locations which ensured that he was swift to play his part in avoiding the worst: "It's coming from Nine o' clock!"
Asuka, to her credit, had busied herself the power cable in the meantime: "Switching to external power now!" She plugged the Umbilical Cable into its designated slot, and immediately, the battery gauge stopped its dreadful beeping.
"Successfully switched to external power!"
Once the power supply problem was taken care of, EVA 02 and both its pilots turned their attention to the nearing angel – In Shinji's case with a stern, determined expression, whereas Asuka bore a haughty, bloodthirsty grin which swiftly and efficiently expressed her great anticipation to shoot some holes in the enemy – speaking of shooting: "We don't have any weapons!"
But despite Shinji's atempts to remind her of the facts at hand, it seemed like the german pilot had a brief, prideful answer for everything: "Is the prog knife not a weapon?"
Self-assuredly, she motioned for the knife to be released from its storage compartment in the EVA's shoulder and readied the blade – and not a moment to soon, for the angel had risen from the sea as if to answer her challenge, presenting them with its massive, yellowish body and the mask-like face typical for its kind.
The messenger aimed its charge straight at them, like a predator who had chosen its next victim.
"...it's huge..." Shinji commented, worriedly.
As expected of the 'Ace of the European Forces', 'worry' did not seem to be part of the Second Child's vocabulary, instead, the enemy's dimensions seemed to delight her: "This is just like I imagined!"
"What are they going to do now?" the admiral asked, still feeling like he'd stumbled into a bad action movie. But Misato explained confidently: "According to our experiences, the most efficient way to neutralize an angel is melee combat."
Ready for the afore-mentioned melee, EVA 02 held out its prog-knife before it, but the angel was ready, too, and jumped out of the water like a kind of flying fish, shooting all of its massive, slippery body through the surface with a powerful movement of its fins, to then continue to shoot toward the Evangelion though the air, making it look like a tiny insignificant human that had been foolish enough to pick a fight with a ginormous whale.
The collosal, fish-like being arrived with a thundering sound, with its arrival spelling doom for a couple more military planes, surely much to the chagrin of their owners (and to Kensuke's lament. )
But the angel had overestimated itself: Outside of its element, its massive form wasn't able to move nearly as nimbly as before.
Sluggish and limited by its own weight, the being had been more adapted to the red waters and barely managed to flop about, with any and all of its attempt to get back into the sea being frustrated by EVA 02's tight grip, which held the beast's head firmly in its unrelenting chokehold.
"Well done, Asuka, you stopped it!" Misato praised, her enthusiasm not quite infecting the admiral given that the Prog Knife, which Asuka had let go of to grasp the angel's slippery hide with both hands, had since bifurcated another aircraft.
"Is this supposed to be a joke?" he exclaimed in displeasure. "You wrecked the entire flight deck!"
That complaint might not have been wholly unfounded, but from a pragmatic standpoint, the true problem was that the flight deck hadn't been demolished enough. If a particular plane-ferrying elevator at the corner of the ship had only been stuck or jammed, it would have saved everyone involved many grievances. As it was, it gave way once EVA 02's foot slipped onto it as it was wrestling the angel, causing the EVA to lose balance and creating an opening for the creature to launch itself back into the dead ocean, which it immediately used and plunged downwards followed by both its long tail and the red evangelion.
Interestingly enough, the screams blaring through the intercom were Asuka's, not Shinji's.
The tremors shattered the command bridge's windows, leaving them open for Touji and Kensuke to lean past their frames in worry for their friend (the latter still holding his camera), and stare unbelieving at the sea that had swallowed the two Children and seemed in the process of returning to a calmer state without a care in the world.
"They fell into the ocean!" the admiral curtly summarized the rather unfavorable situation – even Misato lost her cool for a moment, but quickly regained her bearings in a matter of split-seconds and immediately began shouting orders into the microphone: "Asuka, retreat immediately! An underwater battle with B equipment is completely impossible!"
But Asuka saw things differently – Even though the worst case scenario she had been trying to prevent from the very beginning had just come to pass, the Second Child had not lost her resolve, forcing the Evangelion's arms to hold on to the one solid thing there was to hold on to down there: The body of the angel.
How did that old saying go? If you've got a tiger by the tail, never let go – and as a Defender of the Earth, the redhead thought herself a high enough authority to decree that the same was true for fish jaws.
Nothing in this world could make her retreat and let go of her prey – a true elite pilot like herself didn't need no special equipment to beat some overgrown manatee, and she'd make sure that the cheap excuse for an EVA pilot she had sitting behind her knew it, too!
According to her own ideals and standards, she did not permit her answer to betray anything other than a boundless, superior bravado, brazen enough to worry even Misato and making her doubt whether she had sufficiently prepared this young girl for the serious trials awaiting her, or whether she had not cultivated a dangerous hubris in her attempts to motivate her: "We won't know that until we try it!"
The continuous lowering of the cable that served as the only lifeline between the EVA and the surface was certainly not very encouraging, moving sometimes left, sometimes right as the unsuccessful angel-rodeo continued and less and less of it remained, destroying yet more of Kensuke's beloved airplanes as it moved across the flight deck.
Apparently, the angels seemed delight the wanton destruction of buildings even if they showed up on the high seas – the unfortunate structures whose silhouettes were only barely discernible in the turbid red waters had presumably belonged to a city which had been eradicated in Second Impact and subsequently joined the likes of Atlantis and Vineta on the bottom of the sea.
That the Children's desperate attempts to hang onto the angel got them shaken rather badly probably needed no further explanations – and just as Shinji had feared, the battle had revealed Asuka as the inexperienced rookie she truly was the moment it had turned dead serious – She just sat there with her eyes shut tightly in exertion, needing all of her strenght and attention just to keep her hands on her control levers and those of EVA 02 clinging to the angel's hide – Here was a young girl no older than himself, and she appeared to be reaching her limit, and so, it fell to Shinji to think of further plans and actions – only that he was not exactly a great planner. He'd reached forward to grip the controls and support the Second Child at her harrowing task, but beyond that, he couldn't really think of anything to do – He could barely constrain his own panic behind his grit teeth and and stoic, serious facade, so that it was more to himself than Asuka that he mumbled to about the need to absolutely do something.
But this cruel, mean-spirited world did not leave him any real chance to think of such a plan – any half-formulated plans Shinji might have managed to scrape up dissolved back into diffuse mist when Misato's voice interrupted them over the intercom: "The cable is running out! Brace for recoil!"
She had not shut her mouth when said recoil made itself felt, shaking the ship and perpetuating itself through the dephts for miles along the cable, until it ripped EVA 02 off the angel's body despite Asuka's best efforts.
"Damnit!" she cursed.
Back in the command bridge, the large setback was summarized with a curt sentence that barely did all of its implications justice: "The EVA has lost its target!"
Kensuke, as usual, had different worries: "Why does the blasted memory card have to be full now of all times?" But even the camera, whose offending component he was currently holding with the corners of hiw mouth while he went about replacing it, could not hold his attention when he heard the sound of engines. "Holy Canoli! It's a genuine Yak Ninety-Eight!"
Indeed, one of the very same ramps that had become EVA 02's undoing had just propelled a shiny blue plane to its flight deck, and right on cue, one of its occupants announced himself over the intercom: "Hi, Katsuragi!"
Misato herself did not know why she reacted with a bright smile and a matching exclamation of his name that would have rivaled that of Lois Lane in the exact moment tht some supervillain's actions were interrupted by the whole 'Is it a bird, is it a plane-?' shtick, but she was forced back to her senses when he sprouted some nonchalant comment about how he had something left to deliver and a few words of parting and ordered the plane's pilot to take off, the latter crossing the line completely and evaporating any of the questionable joy she might have connected with the sight of him.
By the time Kensuke had suceeded in exchanging the memory disc, there was nothing to film but Touji's and Misato's expressions of flabbergasted indignation and their remarkable similarity to rain-soaked poodles.
The former finally summarized the ludicrous event that had just taken place before his eyes:
"He just... ran away..."
In the meantime, the angel had not been able to locate its true target – No matter where it swam, it could no longer sense the faintest hint of its presence, even without the Evangelion closeby – which left the aimlessly drifting cyborg as its only remaining target and thus, the aim of its latest charge.
"It's coming back!" Shinji warned, but before he could do or suggest anything, the control levers had been reclaimed by a pissed-off and frustrated Second Child. "This time, I'll finish that thing!" she announced in defiance of her current helpless situation without this ever sounding fully convincing to Shinji after all he had already witnessed.
Asuka pulled on the levers – but nothing happened.
EVA 02 remained a static piece of driftwood that refused to move much – it is said that pride comes before a fall, and Captain Shikinami did fall, into an undignified panic, that is.
"W-WHAT? Why isn't it working?"
"Must be because of the B equipment..." Shinji mused in resignation.
"What are we going to do?!"
Shinji could hardly believe that she would seriously ask him this about all her bragging about how she was supposedly trained and all that, but he was far too bummed out about the imminent prospect of becoming fish fodder to bother with any serious umbrage.
"How would I know?"
"Beats me! You're supposed to be the famous Third Child, aren't you?"
"It's coming!" Shinji remarked, at this point far past caring about her childish provocations.
Asuka barely managed to raise the EVAs head before the angel opened its long, gaping maw to devour them.
"T-Teeth!" Asuka remarked, recoiling from the screen in visible fear, leaving bits of perspiration to dissolve into the plug.
Shinji, by contrast, remained somewhat calm and collected but not exactly hopeful.
"It really is an angel..." he remarked upon spotting the angel's glowing red core somewhere further down its throat.
As the angel pushed its countless, curved teeth past the EVA's armor plates into its tender flesh, a further tremor shook the screaming girl and her silent companion who'd grit his teeth and stoically endured the ordeal.
Shinji could easily imagine that it was not merely fear that was bringing forth her screams – the high synch ratio that allowed for her earlier acrobatics must come at a price – As for himself, the sensation of being pierced by the angel's teeth was more strange than anything else. Sure, the pain was there, except not really – the corresponding parts of his stomach felt more like a limb would after having it 'fall asleep' and then having both circulation and feeling return to it, that precise sensation of discomfort when you tried moving it again – it was very far from the real, stinging pain he would have experienced in EVA 01, which seemed only natural when one considered that this was mostly Asuka's EVA that he'd never sat in before – Even with Unit One, he'd needed some time to properly get the hang of it.
But even EVA 02's designated pilot was not of any use – despite her military rank and braggart attitude, Asuka had evidently never seen real combat, suffered the result of violence on her own body or been forced to power through an injury, leaving Shinji with the obligation to take matters into his own hands.
In the meantime, the angel had not been able to locate its true target – No matter where it swam, it could no longer sense the faintest hint of its presence, even without the Evangelion closeby – which left the aimlessly drifting cyborg as its only remaining target and thus, the aim of its latest charge.
"It's coming back!" Shinji warned, but before he could do or suggest anything, the control levers had been reclaimed by a pissed-off and frustrated Second Child. "This time, I'll finish that thing!" she announced in defiance of her current helpless situation without this ever sounding fully convincing to Shinji after all he had already witnessed.
Asuka pulled on the levers – but nothing happened.
EVA 02 remained a static piece of driftwood that refused to move much – it is said that pride comes before a fall, and Captain Shikinami did fall, into an undignified panic, that is.
"W-WHAT? Why isn't it working?"
"Must be because of the B equipment..." Shinji mused in resignation.
"What are we going to do?!"
Shinji could hardly believe that she would seriously ask him this about all her bragging about how she was supposedly trained and all that, but he was far too bummed out about the imminent prospect of becoming fish fodder to bother with any serious umbrage.
"How would I know?"
"Beats me! You're supposed to be the famous Third Child, aren't you?"
"It's coming!" Shinji remarked, at this point far past caring about her childish provocations.
Asuka barely managed to raise the EVAs head before the angel opened its long, gaping maw to devour them.
"T-Teeth!" Asuka remarked, recoiling from the screen in visible fear, leaving bits of perspiration to dissolve into the plug.
Shinji, by contrast, remained somewhat calm and collected but not exactly hopeful.
"It really is an angel..." he remarked upon spotting the angel's glowing red core somewhere further down its throat.
As the angel pushed its countless, curved teeth past the EVA's armor plates into its tender flesh, a further tremor shook the screaming girl and her silent companion who'd grit his teeth and stoically endured the ordeal.
Shinji could easily imagine that it was not merely fear that was bringing forth her screams – the high synch ratio that allowed for her earlier acrobatics must come at a price – As for himself, the sensation of being pierced by the angel's teeth was more strange than anything else. Sure, the pain was there, except not really – the corresponding parts of his stomach felt more like a limb would after having it 'fall asleep' and then having both circulation and feeling return to it, that precise sensation of discomfort when you tried moving it again – it was very far from the real, stinging pain he would have experienced in EVA 01, which seemed only natural when one considered that this was mostly Asuka's EVA that he'd never sat in before – Even with Unit One, he'd needed some time to properly get the hang of it.
But even EVA 02's designated pilot was not of any use – despite her military rank and braggart attitude, Asuka had evidently never seen real combat, suffered the result of violence on her own body or been forced to power through an injury, leaving Shinji with the obligation to take matters into his own hands.
On the bridge of the over the rainbow, a look at the instruments had since allowed its occupants to guess at the Children's predicament: "The EVA has entered the target!"
"Entered?" Touji repeated incredulously. "Does that mean it got swallowed? Like a worm on a fishing line?"
"Like a fishing line?... EXACTLY, like fishing line! Suzuhara-kun, you're a genius!" Misato called out with the same familiar glint in her eyes that tended to accompany the hatching of another of her wacky, reckless plans.
Almost immediately, she seemed to shift back into 'serious mode' and turned toward the officers with a serious, determined expression.
"Admiral?"
"Yes?"
"I am dependent on your cooperation."
Unaware that a remedy to their unfortunate situation was already in the works several hundred meters above him, Shinji was directing all effort he could muster to stave off their doom.
The entry plug was being jerked around again and again, and each time challenged his endurance anew – Most of the time, he managed to keep himself in a stable position by clinging to the control yokes with all of his strength and leaning against them with his body weight, but still, he could not help the impression that the EVA could break apart all around him at any given moment.
Right now, it was still lodged in the jaws of the angel, its legs hanging out of its jaws like something it forgot to clean away from its teeth, limp save for the occasional weak twitch.
When he wasn't being shaken too badly, his efforts were diverted to the attempt to force the sea monster's enormous jaws apart, but no matter how much Shinji strained his arms at the controls, they did not move as much as a millimeter, like he might as well be pushing against a solid brick wall.
The only consequence his great exertions left behind was the thin layer of sweat that had begun to spring up between his skin and the rubber of his plugsuit.
Shinji knew all too well that this EVA must have been home to an unending wellspring titanic, violent strength, but wherever that power was, he wasn't reaching it. No matter how much wide tried to open himself, it only worked up to a certain limit that even concentration and willpower could only push so far – and the cool, turbid dephts of EVA 02 were not exactly sending anything resembling a directed reply – His synch rate was probably far too low to match the angel's herculean strength, and simply wasn't making any progress.
But Shinji could not afford to stop trying – He wasn't fighting because he thought he could win, but because he had to win.
The EVAs designated pilot might have been capable of getting to to move, but she could not be counted on, and with tons of water above their heads, there was no help coming.
"We're in a big pinch..." he concluded, parting his teeth for a moment – The Second Child, who had been emphatic ignoring him so far seemed to take somethin about that sentence as a personal insult and barked for him to show up – but once she'd acknowledged his existence beyond that of background noise, she could no longer overlook that Shinji had 'dared' to grab her controls, which necessitated that he lean over her thighs and at times even graze her breasts, a factoid that left her rather genuinely bothered, complete with a shimmer of pink showing up on her face – Not that Shinji had been able to concentrate on anything other than saving both their lives, but since when did the 'glorious Captain Shikinami' ever stop to consider such insignificant details?
She made up her mind about the situation right away: "Get off me right now, you pervert!"
Her ensuing attempt to brusquely shove him aside did not make his task any easier. Tightly shutting one eye to avert it's destruction by Asuka's fingers, he protested: "But we have to free ourselves!"
He did not expect that reasoning would have much of an effect on the stubborn braggart, and he might well have been right, but at that exact moment, the wrestling match inside the entry plug was interrupted by something completely different: The sound of Misato's voice which filled the entry plug over the intercom and, to Shinji's ears, sounded like the first sunbeam breaking through a storm: "Asuka, can you hear me? Don't let go of the target at any cost!"
The plan was to conclude the operation in the following manner: Two evacuated battleships were to be sunk along the umbilical cable, which would be reeled in like a fishing line to keep the angel from evading them. Once sunk, all their remaining munition including the self-destruction charges were to be emptied into the angel's mouth, thus blowing it apart. EVA 02's role in this consisted of ensuring that the ships would reach their destination – In one sense, by neutralizing the angel's AT-field, but in another – and this was the tricky part – by physically forcing its mouth open with its own two hands.
"That's insane!" the Admiral retorted once the plan had been fully explained to him. But Misato had already made her decision: "It might be insane, but it's not impossible."
"I... understand. But what about the Evangelion?"
"Don't you worry, those two will be fine."
Misato had always been an optimist, though there was a legitimate concern that she might not have taken such a rosy view of the situation if she had been able to monitor the debacle currently unfolding within the entry plug.
Once her pushing strategy had proven ineffective, Asuka had unleashed the time-tested tactics of 'punching' and 'hair-pulling' on the Third Child, both skills she had presumably mastered during her days as a mean kindergarten bully.
"No one operates EVA 02 without my permission!"
Since no one else seemed to remember that they were currently engaged in a battle for the future of mankind, Shinji tried his best to endure the assault and responded with an affirmation and assurance that he'd try his best when Misato inquired whether they'd understood the plan – or, as he privately added, he'd do the best he could manage with Asuka's deducting from his ability to concentrate.
He'd just have to deal with it – after all, Misato was counting on him.
There was, however, not much time for him to pull that off; Right after Misatos warning, a further, much stronger shaking had went through the plug – they'd begun to reel in the cable, from which one could deduce that the two battleships were already speeding toward the angel at this precise moment, when it's jaws were still tightly shut.
Shinji gave it everything he had, but his efforts seemed in vain – With his best efforts, he did manage to somewhat pry apart its jaws so that a section of its long, sharp teeth were clearly exposed instead of being covered beneath the flesh of its mouth, but that could barely be called a success: Though the ships were speedily approaching, the rows of teeth were not even fully separated from each other and the jawbones themselves weren't budging a millimeter, and just to make things worse, Asuka was still vigorously complained, even if she had mostly ceased her physical assaults for lack of effectiveness: "Get off I said! Get away from my thighs immediately!"
"Don't we have other things to worry about?" Shinji retorted, his voice peppered with real, clearly discernable anger "If this thing doesn't open its mouth any time soon, we're done for!"
Bundling all the physical strength he had left and gathering allthe willpower he could muster from every last nook and cranny of his being, Shinji made one last attempt to force the beasts jaws apart, laboring under the bright radiance of the core in its throat, but the muscles that must have been necessary for the task of opening or closing such a titanic maw would have hard to overcome even if he'd had his own EVA at his disposal, not to speak of this foreign one.
The hellish strains he was putting himself under were barely reaching the Evangelion's hands, and what little was getting through was far from enough to elicit a sufficient effect.
At last, the Third Child was forced to admit that he was getting nowhere.
"It's no use!" he called out, turning to Asuka in a bid for help.
But she was even further from having a solution to this problem: "We're out of time!"
Of course, he should have thought better than to expect something other than this; But he was beginning to realize that there was something entirely different he should have thought of: This girl before him was this stubborn Evangelion's designated pilot.
She'd made quite sure that he didn't forget her bragging about how she'd been training with this thing since forever, far longer even than he'd working with Unit One: If anyone could bid this thing to move under these circumstances, it had to be her. As little as he could stand that stuck-up shrew, in order for them both to survive this and save humanity, he needed Asuka – Right now, he had the battle experience and the nerve to pull this off, but she had a higher synch rate with this Evangelion, and of course all that training she'd been speaking off – If there was any chance that the angel's mouth could be forced open in time, it would require them both to fight it together and put aside their mutual antipathy toward each other's opposite personalities for the good of humanity, in order to command the EVA in perfect unison.
In actuality, he had witnessed it many town now, how an unbearable load or insurmountable odds could somehow still be overcome if people came together to unify their strength.
It wasn't that Shinji thought of himself as that great an additional asset, but if that Captain Shikinami was even occasionally half as awesome as she claimed to be, they should be able to pull it off between the two of them. Sure, she was liable to let that supposed skill get to her head, but that's what the 'legendary Third Child' would be here for.
If even people as different as them could balance and complement each other to make the impossible happen... yes, then, there might actually be some genuine hope for this world.
For once, Shinji did not hesitate any longer.
Determined, he swiftly turned to the control and tried to remember one particular functionality that he'd heard of sometime during his many training sessions – Meek and fearful as he'd been, he'd tried his best to obediently memorize everything that had been asked of him, even though he had not thought that he'd ever truly need it, but it was still incredible luck that he manged to retrieve a seemingly insignificant detail that he'd attempted to squeeze into his head in a very stressful and turbulent time – but how had Kaji put it?
Luck was part of his destiny.
Another yet more fortunate fact was that the mechanism was exactly the same in EVA 02, even though the design of the control yokes had been fitted with several additional buttons – He pulled the complete device out of its usual place and folded its upper portion apart, so that the rail now offered enough space for two pairs of hands – and against his expectations, he directly felt another set of warm hands on his own, without having to apply any further persuasion first.
Her hands rested on his as indiscriminately as on the metal below, and since their plugsuits both had the same, bright red color, the contours of their fingers seemed to blur, almost as if the two children had indeed joined as one, interwoven in their forms and unified by their joint will to part the angel's jaws.
"Alright, but don't think anything weird!" she still warned once more.
"Like what for example?" he retorted, not breaking his serious look ahead.
"Just concentrate!"
"Like you need to tell me!"
Hand in hand, they both pulled on the levers, which still offered them a lot of resistance, but finally showed signs of actually budging.
Not just Shinji, but Asuka as well showed her exertion plain on their faces, but nonetheless, at very least Shinji felt much lighter than before, like he had been crawling and had only just started to walk.
It was still very far from what he could have archived with Unit One, but at long last, he finally got the feeling that there was a continuous flow of information between himself and the Evangelion... and not just his own.
He guessed that the stream of his thoughts was now wide enough to become aware of Asuka's, a wide, boundless torrent that seemed to fill the expanse, much stronger and regular than anything he'd ever managed – not even with Unit 01.
He could only surmise that her claims about all of her training hadn't been just for show – he could not even get a feel on the magnitude by which her synch rate must have outclassed his own.
If the frenzied torrent of her thoughts and feelings had a color, even it would have been that same, saturated rose-red, but at the same time, her essence was nothing like he imagined it – Rather like EVA 02 itself, it did not really have any sort of pleasant warmth to it, but it wasn't repulsive, either; There was mostly a sweet, fruity and vital quality to it, like fresh strawberries, mixed with tiny, minuscule sparks of something that wasn't all that different from his own being...
Both streams seemed to come together in a double helix, as the contents of their minds came closer and closer to each other, their unified will kept pushing into the same direction and even their hearts seemed to beat in unison with both each other, and the thoughts that filled the Evangelion's inner mental expanse as a chorus:
"OPEN, OPEN, OPEN, OPEN!"
What happened next could have been described in a multitude of ways. One could have said that the streams of thoughts merged as one, technically speaking, a resonance of their ego boundaries had taken place, with the effect, that instead of forming an interference pattern, their synch ratios had been added onto each other, like they had come from a single person if you were feeling poetical, you could even have said that their souls had touched.
One way or another, the event had one unambigous consequence: The angel's fate had been sealed.
Godlike and effortlessly, the Evangelion raised its head like an executioner's scythe, and its head plating folded open to reveal the eyes beneath, shining brightly like the stars of the southern cross, while the red titan's arms parted the angel's jaws with ease, just seconds, before the warships sped past the evangelion to its light and its left, shattering the angel's once awe-inspiring teeth like cheap little toothpicks.
What followed, was Misato's order to fire, followed by a flood of rockets and explosions, which distended the angel's body to a multiple of its size, until it could hold no more and burst like an air balloon, followed by a tremendous explosion that erased every last trace of the angel.
One the surface, the spectacle manifested as a column of water that explosively blew into dizzying heights, but was by far dwarfed by the cross-shaped light beam emerging from its middle, which penetrated far into the atmosphere and made it look tiny, no matter how insignificant and insect-line it made the humans and their ships look.
The water eventually came crashing back down and whipped the human creations with waves, while parts of it rained down on them as red rain, the sea water indistinguishable from the remains of the angel.
The falling drops refracted the midday sun, causing it to crown the victory with the usual double rainbow.
And somewhere in this entanglement of light and water, EVA 02 had been shot from the dephts, which actually managed to pull off an elegant landing onto a flight deck – only to slump down seconds later because the explosion had torn up the power cable in its entirety.
The next thing Shinji recalled was an unpleasant feeling pulling at his body, not quite pain, but more like its afterimage, like the sickness left behind by a burn or even an irradiation, a sort of damage that could still have a disintegrating effect long after you were separated from its source. Those were an uncomfortable couple of seconds, but soon, the feeling dissipated without a trace by the time he'd managed to lift his head and open his eyes – what had happened?
Oh right. He'd defeated the angel... and had come into contact with the contents of Asuka's head. No wonder he'd been feeling a bit queasy.
But the worst might well be yet to come, as Asuka herself was still lying in the plug, every bit as unconscious as he'd been moments ago, but in a precarious position that was bound to earn him another Shikinami-brand roundhouse kick the moment she woke up – After his own first battle, he'd been out for a day, but he had been unaccustumed to linking with Evangelions and what had just transpired did not compare to a full-blown Berserk incident in terms of intensity. A day? No, she'd probably wake in a minute, at most.
And then, things might get painful for him – Because they had ended up on what used to be 'roof' of the plug when the EVA was still in an upright position, and she was lying on top on him, uncomfortably pressing the plastic of the 'boob protectors' he wasn't exactly filling out onto his chest – Not that she was particularly heavy, she really did have the measurements of a model, and even if he'd probably never get used to her abrasive personality, as long as she was asleep, she simply looked like a regular, cute girl that almost had something dainty and endearing about her, with that very light European skin tone of hers – though she wasn't exactly pale or waxy, either; Her skin was rosy, well-cared for and brimming with vitality, and even her hair still bore the faint scent of strawberries after being submerged in the LCL and its bloody stench, doubtlessly the result of whatever expensive shampoo she used and and all the business secrets of the German chemistry industry.
(Shinji had to admit that there was something pleasing about the way her long hair whirled around her, and it's bright, eye-catching color he could hardly believe was real. )
Actually, this situation didn't seem that bad... an opinion which he immediately cancelled once Captain Shikinami began to stir and look at him with her demanding, ice-blue eyes, reminding him again of the entire 'terrible personality' part.
"Uh... is... is everything alright, Shikinami-san?" he asked nervously.
Of course, he got slapped, onto that same cheek that had barely recovered from the last assault.
The Second Child immediately began calling him an idiot and a pervert, to ask him just how stupid he was and if he could possibly have been less useful during the battle.
Then, she got off him, located the entry plug's escape hatch and climbed outside, where Shinji already heard what he believed to be Misato's voice.
Yeah.
Miss Shikinami was definitely alright.
Shinji exhaled a sigh of relief before he got up to leave, in part because Misato was calling for him outside.
"Hey, Shinji-kun! Come out already! You can get all the rest you want once you're outside!"
"I'm not surprised that that Daddy's boy is such a slowpoke. The real question should be how someone like him ever got to be EVA pilot! I know that he's only assigned to the test model, but still! This 'Legendary Third Child' has been such a disappointment!"
"I think you're putting him in a box a bit too quick there. Just wait until you properly get to know him, you might change your mind!"
"Are you joking?"
A brief while later, our protagonists had reached the port of Neo Yokosuka, where they were received by Ritsuko and a security detachment, among others – at the first opportunity, Misato had sunk down on the seat of a vehicle intended to bring her straight to headquarters, incidentally right next to her friend and co-worker.
Though no one could have blamed her for the exhaustion brought on by the more than eventful voyage, especially when one looked at the few remaining but still rather demolished ships that bore witness to its trials.
"You've really done it again..." the Leader of Project E commented in her usual cynical manner.
But Misato was far too exhausted to come up with a snappy comeback.
"It was my fault, I should have prepared for an underwater battle..."
"That's rare! You're admitting a mistake?" Ritsuko questioned teasingly.
"Not necessarily. After all, the situation allowed us to connect much precious research data, for example, about what happens if you put two pilots into the same Evangelion..."
"Perhaps..." the blonde confirmed as the thumbed through the stack of papers given to her by her co-worker, until something inside them suddenly made her stop in her tracks. "Misato?"
"Yeah...?"
"This data really IS precious. Those two reached the highest synch rate ever recorded!"
"But only for seven Seconds. Must've been the adrenaline."
While the two women proceeded to discuss the recorded measurements, the routine examination of the pilots had been concluded elsewhere – Shinji didn't have a scratch apart from the temporary soreness in his arms, though Asuka had incurred mild skin irritation in the places corresponding to where the Angel had bitten into EVA 02's body, though she was given a supposedly modern salve that was supposed to cure it by tomorrow or at most the day after, in short, they were let go without much ado, after which they were made to exit the makeshift sickbay tent through a small escalator, at whose lower end they were already being awaited by Touji and Kensuke, whereby the later was using the opportunity to film EVA 02 being transported – it seemed that he, too, would conclude the day with a lot of 'precious research data'.
The first to descend was Asuka, who looked around her as if she were searching for something and was wholly ignored by Kensuke, who was otherwise busy and not really the belligerent type anyways, whereas Touji merely graced her with a disdainful glare.
Their reaction to Shinji, however, could not have been more different, as Touji pointed at him with wide eyes and exclaimed, 'P-PAIR LOOK!', causing Kensuke to turn around and capture the moment for eternity with his omnipresent electronic companion.
By the time the Third Child had reached the bottom of the escalator, his complexion had come to rival the color of the offending article of clothing.
He began seriously pondering, if it wouldn't have been preferable to get rid of it at the first opportunity and suffer the humiliation of showing up in his birthday suit instead.
In the end, he ended up choosing the path of least resistance and the fewest required answers, until a lady from the security department showed up and instructed them all to get into a nearby car. It was only at the second glance that Shinji recognize the woman who was now set to drive them all back to Neo Tokyo 3 as someone he'd met once before.
She had been the one who had saved his life back when he'd... ran away.
He tried his hardest not to think of that.
He realized that she probably had work to do and might want to get over with it without further delay, but he'd be damned if he saw her again and didn't seize the chance to thank her for what she'd done.
Because he was embarrassed to bring up the subject in front of his friends, (He was worried about what they might think of him if they heard that), he waited until they had gone ahead and boarded the vehicle, and only turned in her direction when she was about to leave herself, but did not manage to speak to her until he'd spent long enough awkwardly standing there and staring at her for her to ask him what the matter was.
"Uh... Well Miss..." He spent quite a while uncertainly twiddling his own fingers while hardly looking at her, but then, he rose up his eyes to meet hers and spoke swiftly:
"Thank you!"
"...what for?" the Woman in black asked curtly.
The clothes and her dark sunglasses gave her an unfathomable, intimidating aura, which was probably their explicit purpose.
"For what you did... earlier... by that river..."
"There is nothing to thank me for." she replied in a businesslike fashion. "I was merely doing my duty."
Shinji thought that this sounded rather similar to what Ayanami had told him not too long ago. "But I still... wanted to thank you, anyways. U, I- I'm Ikari Shinji."
"I am quite aware of that."
"And you? Y-You don't have to tell me if, if you're not allowed to, but I thought I s-should know after-... afer you..." Since he could not produce any more words, he endeavored to muster a timid smile.
"Asahina Najiko."
"Uh...?"
"That is my name. You did ask for it, did you not?"
"Y-Yes I did. So, uh, thanks again, A-Asahina-san."
And then he turned around, following his friends to the car.
Asahina's gaze followed the boy. For a moment, her otherwise cool and professional expression was tinged with a bitter, sadonic note that extended to the thin, warped smile blossoming on her lips.
"Ikari Shinji..." she repeated, as if she couldn't decided if she found the name ridiculous, unspeakably sad, or to be something that made anger rise up through her being.
But it was only a brief moment, before the tides of her face ebbed away and left her to follow the boy in order to do her job.
Asuka, meanwhile, had reached the cordoned-off portion of the harbor's parking lot before the boys and rather than to wait for an escort, looked around briskly until she spotted Ritsuko and Misato, and immediately ran off to towards them to further her own ambitions.
"Hey!" she spoke excitedly as soon as she caught up to the two women. "Have you seen Kaji-san anywhere?"
Misato, in whose vicinity that name should probably not have been mentioned, immediately seemed like her mood had dropped by an octave. "You're not gonna find him anywhere around here; He made off long ago! Actually, I'd bet you anything that he's already returned to headquarters, that bastard!"
Though one might have disagreed about Misato's colorful assessments of her ex-boyfriend's personality, at very least her guess regarding his current location turned out to be dead-on target:
The long-haired NERV employee had indeed arrived at headquarters, to be exact, he was currently in the commander's office.
The room was composed of a single, spacious expanse that did not provide the eye much to hang onto apart from the three men situated within (its owner, his second-in-command, and Kaji himself), the desk situated in its center and the horizon lines formed by the intersection of its floor and ceiling with the featureless panorama window. Both below and about three meters above them was what appeared like a single, shiny plate much unlike the usual materials that ceilings and floors tended to be composed of – you could have turned the whole room on its head and not expected anyone to notice, the only distinction between floor and ceiling being the distinct symbols covering the width of both surfaces.
The windows, which substituted for three out of the rooms four walls, let in plenty of the bright but diffuse light from the geofront's many lighting devices.
Despite the light's intensity, its cold coloration kept it from eliciting the same positive associations as proper daylight.
Lamps that produced this intense, pure white light might have been more efficient and power-saving, but did not succeed in removing the cave-like character from the geofront or the buildings it contained.
Three men of different age groups cast long shadows in that fallow glow, Fuyutsuki from right by the window, and Kaji and Ikari from the latter's desk, at whose sides they were standing across from each other, whereby the younger man was carrying two solid plastic cases one of which was slightly larger than the other.
"That was no easy task!" he narrated in an easygoing manner, to which the commander listened with a serious, unfathomable expression, for once standing in front of his chair rather than sitting in it.
"Well, concerning the Third Angel and Unit Five, that's probably it. The incident has been classified as an accident and it spelled the end for Bethania Base's Marduk project. Everything went according to your scenario. In my most recent dossier about SEELE, you'll find-"
"We've already read it. The data on the construction of Mark Six has proven very useful." Fuyutsuki confirmed without turning around to face the younger man.
"I'm glad to hear that. Oh, and here are the 'presents' I've promised you. This one is from Bethany."
After placing the smaller one at his feet, Kaji heaved the slightly larger suitcase onto the desk and released its locks, after which it opened automatically, tinging the men's faces with a cool, blue clue uncomfortably reminiscent of the Cerenkov- radiation, which could occasionally be observed in nuclear reactors, bathing their faces in contrasts of light and shadow that gave them an almost demonic tinge.
"This is it. The lost number that should have served as a replacement. The key to the unification of the human spirit with the divine."
"Yes." Ikari confirmed, looking into his subordinate's eyes with a thin, willful grin. "If everything else fails, this will open the doors to the instrumentality of mankind... the Key of Nebukadnezzar."
The case's lid had revealed an oblong, rectangular block of a transparent, orange material which was much smaller than the case itself and had been fixed in its relative center. What resided inside it bore only a very distant resemblance to an actual key.
There was actually a sort of 'base' for it to be gripped by, with a 'hilt' parts of which flared out like an infinity symbol, but where a key's 'teeth' should have been, there was something that rather resembled a human nervous system with all of its twists and branches, the small tiny area that a human could influence through their will alone.
Gently, almost lovingly, Ikari moved his large, glowing hand to the case's lid and carefully pressed it down until the components of its locks connected with a click.
His hand still rested possesively upon the box.
"And what about the one you were supposed to pick up in Germany?" the commander asked, his expectant smile not leaving his face.
Kaji placed the second, slightly smaller but just as black box upon the first one, where Ikari immediately accepted it and even opened it personally this time.
This lid revealed another labeled block, its contents no less bizarre but rather different: Inside the amber preservative was a disgusting, mishappen being that bore a distant resemblance to a human embryo in a late stage of development, only that it was several orders of magnitude too large for one of those despite its insect-like size.
One did not even want to ponder what this creature's adult form might look like, considering that unlike an unborn human, it already possessed a single red eye the size of a grape, that made you wonder how it didn't fall out of its skull, or if it was pure coincidence that it appeared to be pointing in the direction from which the two men gazed at it, or if it was somehow following them – and Ikari in particular.
"It had regenerated itself op to this point until it was frozen Bakelite, " Kaji explained "...but it is without any doubt, alive. This is another of the puzzle pieces that you need for your project, isn't it?"
"Yes." Ikari confirmed, about as delighted as his personality seemed to allow. "This is ADAM. The first human."
"Alright, that would be it!" Kaji concluded. "If you don't mind, I'd like to take a while off to take care of some personal business. If you need me to make any more deliveries, just let me know.
With an informal wave, to which he did not really expect an answer from any of the stiff older men, Kaji departed the room without another look behind him.
"Kaji Ryoji, Leader of the Investigations Department..." Fuyutsuki summarized, finally turning to let his gaze trail after the younger man with a hint of worry. "Can we really trust him?"
Ikari did not supply his subordinate with the answer he deserved.
The orange liquid sprayed into the air and twisted into a spiral-like tower, floating in the air like the inverted form of a maelstrom detached from the ocean, its neck twisting and narrowing further until its point began to solidify. A thin liquid turned into a viscous one, then into a gel, which then further hardened into a kind of crystalline structure, which, even further upward, began to lose its shine and resemble living, pulsating human flesh, first vaguely, and then increasingly turning from a conical spiral into a cylinder of a limb, on whose very top the likeness of finger buds could be seen... only for the whole flesh-tower to burst apart from the very inside, before these had reached a significant length, splattering the walls of a warehouse, with the orange liquid it had been composed of.
Splattered from head to toe along its nude form, just like the stage of its unholy ceremony, and still standing there with its hand outstretched like it had been all along, the escaped experiment that had been recently classified as 'Leatha' dully stared ahead with wide, ostensibly shocked eyes.
{{He is here.}}
Excerpts from SEELEs Seventh Battle Report and the ensuing comitee meeting from the inner circle:
The Seventh Angel, Gaghiel, has been encountered.
The Second Child, Asuka Langley-Shikinami, the exclusive Pilot of Eva 02, deployed EVA 02 for the first time.
A close range battle at Sea ensued, and the first underwater battle occurred.
The confrontation took place around the former Ito area.
"This incident was a deviation from our scenario!"
"But the result was within the expected parameters. The divergences should be easy to correct."
"I beg to differ. The UN forces lost a their of their fleet!"
"You're saying this because they were ships of your nation; The losses were negligible."
"Indeed. It was fortunate that the damage was so light."
'Thanks' to his unexpected encounter with a ghastly aquatic angel and a land-dwelling, but no less ghastly EVA pilot, that turbulent Sunday ended as fast as it had arrived, and before he knew it, Shinji found himself on monday morning, walking to school in the red of dusk.
So much for his plans of recovering from the recent strains on a nice relaxing weekend.
This morning, he'd once again had one of those dreams, again the version where everyone who knew him stood around him congratulating him for something diffuse and abstract that he'd always have forgotten by the time he woke up. But the strangest thing was, last time he'd had the dream, he'd distinctly remembered seeing a few people that he hadn't seen before, and this time had been no different, except... the red-haired girl in the yellow dress and the man with stubble and ponytail... those had been Kaji and Asuka, hadn't they?
If it was just last day's events mixing themselves into his dreams, that would not have been that extraordinary, but... he could not shake the impression that they had been part of the dream last time, too, that he's seen their faces there before he could attribute names to them in his waking days. Asuka had been wearing the exact same yellow sundress as yesterday, when he'd first met her; How could he possibly recognize her likeness in memories that could not have contained her?
He had heard the usual tales of dreams foretelling the future, but... this was far too crazy. Even the missing voice from the deja vus in the morning appeared to have been Asuka's... Perhaps his mind was playing a trick on him, and retroactively plastering her face into those vague, senseless visions.
But even without those dreams, Shikinami suceeded in occupying his attention. Sure, she'd driven him up the wall yesterday, and he'd never met a person with a higher ratio of ego to body weight, but even though he could not describe her personality with a word other than despicable, he could not help but admire her a little. If she wanted to say something, then the greatest effort involved in it seemed to be the opening of her big mouth; There was never the slightest delay. If she wanted something, she'd assert herself without regards for mercy... both things Shinji knew he would never be capable of. Not to mention that yesterday had been her first battle.
Her very first – Shinji still found himself shuddering at the thought of his own first battle.
Even if she had not lived up to the heights of her own bragging and displayed the occasional moment of brief panic, the difference between the two of them could not have been more apparent.
She was a go-getter, a fighter, an image of ambition... and even so, he found it hard to believe that she'd shrugged off an experience in actual armed combat just like that.
"Shikinami... Asuka..." he mumbled to himself, pensively. "Having to be an EVA-pilot doesn't seem to bother her at all... she even seemed happy to be a pilot..."
He could not even begin to understand her.
Shinji's broodings were briefly interrupted, when be believed, for a moment, to have seen a flickering of light in an alleyway he'd just passed, one that he used to pass almost every day on the way to school without ever noticing anything out of the ordinary.
Shinji stood still and uncertainly peered into the narrow alley's shadows.
He couldn't really make out much but the usual trashcans; Must've been a mistake. Normally he'd just continue walking, but... between this, the dreams and the deja vus and everything else, he was honestly beginning to doubt his sanity. He should probably hurry up and get to school, where there were people and sounds, back into full rooms, where everything he saw or heard would be seen by at least 20 other people.
He was about to turn away and leave at a brisk pace without risking another glance backward, when he found his wrist seized by a slender feminine hand that seeed to be wrapped in a cool, rubber-like material.
"Wait!" he heard from a voice that somehow seemed familiar – he turned around to find someone before him, a girl slightly younger than himself.
He did not know have the slightest clue what to make of her.
Her appearance seemed vaguely familiar as well, but he could not have said why.
The girl was a bit shorter than him and had thick dark hair the exact length of her chin, which framed her round, soft-seeming face including her deep blue eyes.
Her strange clothing resembled a plugsuit, but the material seemed much thicker and the gadgets integrated onto it less technically advanced.
The suit was mostly white, but showed the occasional blue or yellow plastic elements, including two yellow, button-like structures at the base of her ribs, or a triangular yellow plaque right above her right breast with the Name 'I. Yui' engraved onto it.
Shinji couldn't help but stare at it, and not just because the strange girl wearing it had shown up out of thin air – but because she happened to have the exact same name as his mother.
But he wasn't given much time to gape, for the girl wasted no time in adressing him – He only saw the moving of her lips and the stirring of her hairtips as she moved, because he did not dare to take his eyes from that plaque, as if he feared that the name on it would dissapear if he looked away.
He expected everything to disintegrate at any moment, only for Misato to wake him from a dream, but the truth remained that the girl was truly and corporeally standing before him, and that the hand holding his wrist never lost its undoubtedly real, physical firmness.
"Ikari Shinji?!" she asked, as if she'd spent days wandering the desert on death's door, and were requesting the permission to begin to hope that the oasis she'd spotted wasn't just a fata morgana. "Is this really you?"
Far too confused to do anything else, Shinji answered the question with a hesitant nod.
The girl smiled.
Since he had spent so long staring at her plaque, he only noticed that she had her eyes lowered when she raised him again – She seemed to have been exhausted and out of breath, but had since caught it again and finally looked up into his face.
"Yes... yes... I can tell it's you..."
Her smile widened and shone with an unwarranted sincerity;
Shinji even thought he saw her eyes water – and could not explain her reaction or its intensity by any means.
He had never seen her before in his life.
Ignorant of what was happening before him, he watched as the girl stood up to her full height and regained her bearings, gathering her lapsed features into a stony, stoic expression.
Her demeanor now resembled a soldier's in a way that reminded him of Rei and brought to his attention that the girls bore more than a passing resemblance to each other.
The color of her eyes, however, bizarrely resembled his own.
"Please listen to me, I don't have a lot of time." she requested. "Please excuse my reaction just now, it was probably uneccesary to ask your name... it's just that the Ikari Shinji I'm most familiar with has, for example, slightly longer hair..."
"The one... you know?"
"I'm sorry. Explaining everything to you would take too long, and besides... my experience has shown that the wrong word in the wrong place can have serious consequences. Let's make it short. I'm Yui. For now, that is all you need to know.
She pulled at the plaque on her suit to present it to him.
"You must be wondering... why I have the same name as your mother, right?"
Shinji froze where he stood.
"Yes, that's right... how can I know your mother's name, or even yours, if you've never met me? Not at all. We have met before. Though one might argue how far that's the same as having met you as you're standing before me now... this is just one of many endless possibilities. But let me explain. My name is 'Yui' because I was named after your mother, though it's not exactly the same... my name is Ichijou Yui. Of course, I cannot prove this to you, but I can surely convince you that you and I are not strangers. How else could I know all this: Your name is Ikari Shinji, and you were born on the sixth of June in 2001. You like to play the Cello but also spend much of your time listening to music. The reason that you use an outdated device is that it used to be your father's – where I came from, it was a gift, but that's not the version I found in most other variants... Your best friend is Nagisa K- no. He should not be here yet. Suzuhara Touji. Your best friend is Suzuhara Touji, but it was not a friendship at first sight. He punched you in the face when you first met. I suppose you could ask me for your mother's maiden name, except there is no maiden name. Your father took your mother's name, not the other way around."
She'd just cited a torrent of personal data about him without even taking a breath, but there was one thing in that list he could not confirm or deny.
"He... did?"
"Shoot!"
The girl covered her mouth with both hands.
The calm attitude of her previous speech appeared to have evaporated. "Forget it. Just forget it. It could be, or it could not be... as I already said, the wrong word at the wrong moment could be disastrous. The point is that we know each other, and that you can trust me. Tell me... where are you right now? What's the last thing that happened? The last angel you defeated... what was it like?"
"It looked... like a fish of sorts. We defeated it in Unit Two... me and Shikinami-san that is. She's-"
"I know who Asuka is. So this time, it's Shikinami again?" the strange girl scratched her chin, as if she were thinking. "I wish I'd landed somewhere, where my advice could be more useful. I considered many situations and what to say in them, but I don't have anything for this one... You usually handle this one just fine on your own...
But listen to me."
Her earlier bashfulness vanished from her voice, and she sounded dead-serious again.
"For the next few months... there is one thing above all others that you should keep in mind... no, you surely must already have thought of it yourself: In order to defeat the enemy, you must become one, unified in heart and soul."
"W-What? Me and... Shikinami-san?"
"You, Asuka, Major Katsuragi, your father, whoever else there is. All of you. And Shinji... even if there are some very, very happy days waiting ahead of you, I lament to tell you, but... it will not last. The home you built for yourself, your friends, the people you love... none of it will last. Indeed... there might come a day on which you feel like your world is coming apart all around you, without you being able to do anything about it. I know this must sound very harsh to you, but for me... it has already happened."
"Already... happened? Do you mean to tell me that you're from the future, or something like that?"
After everything else that had happened to him since his arrival in this town, he could easily believe her.
But Yui did not confirm his suspicion – instead of an answer, she gave him a loud, bitter laugh that seemed out of place on her.
"From the future? There IS no future anymore. And by that, I do not mean that I no longer have hope, else I would not be here... I mean to tell you that every single moment after that fateful day has physically disappeared from this world."
"What day would that be?"
"The day of Third Impact."
"Does this mean... we fail?"
"That depends on how one defines failure... but I don't have the time to explain to you. So I want to focus on the one thing you will need to know in order to take back the future that you worked for so hard... even harder and much longer, than you even know. .."
Yui grabbed him by both shoulders and stared straight into his eyes.
"The world is wrong."
"...wrong? What... what is that supposed to mean?"
"Wrong means wrong. Not right. Not as it should be. You must have noticed by now, haven't you? You must have had those dreams... or at least, an inexplicable sense of deja vu, right?"
She was truly frightening him out of his mind now. The information about his person, she could have come by somehow, but he had not told a single person about his dreams, so how could she know?
He felt like he was seeing the pieces of a puzzle coming together, not sure if the whole they were forming was something he ever wanted to know.
He did not understand anything about this anymore.
"You did have them, did you? It is practically written on your face. And Asuka! Remember Asuka. You just told me, that you just met her for the very first time, right? That is not true, and I'm certain that you must feel that. Asuka is surely no stranger to you. You lived through more hardship together than most people do in their entire lives. You've known each other for a very long time. You must know that. Yu must feel that she is, among other things, one of your very closest friends!"
He wanted to retort, that he would not think of befriending that madwomen in a hundred years, but that would have contradicted the presence of her image in his dreams, and that sense that the sound of her voice was missing in the mornings.
"You know, don't you?" Yui insisted.
For the love of god, he did not know what to answer.
"...why? Why are you telling something like this to me of all people?"
"Isn't that obvious? You are perhaps the most significant individual in all of human history."
Shinji stood frozen as the chills raced through his spine.
That was exactly what that... mass murderer had said.
"What makes you think that I-"
She was gone. Disappeared. As if she'd never been there... and maybe she hadn't been. Perhaps he was indeed beginning to lose it.
The Third Child glanced around at the buildings surrounding him... Tokyo-3, a place he had since come to think of as his home.
Touji, Kensuke, Misato, everyone.
None of this... none of it would last?
No future? Third Impact?
The world is wrong?
That was all far too much.
He plain and simply could not take it anymore – he was nothing but a boringly normal boy with no extraordinary features about him, a mere bystander who had been pulled into all of this madness.
Slinging his arms around his upper body, he ran off without ever looking back, away from this place, away from this silence and this twilight.
With every step, he tried to convince himself that none of this ever happened. Exactly! All of this was completely impossible, and even if it were true, what could he possibly do about it? Who could he talk to about it? What could he do?
How was he to react to such nonsense as 'The world is wrong'?
All of it was nonsense! How could something like that possibly have happened? Of course it couldn't have happened. No, no, no, no, just no!
Forced to stop to catch his breath, Shinji forced himself to focus on the pattern of bricks on the sidewalk instead of his nonsensical dreams. That's all they were, right? Just dreams. And there was no way anyone could know of dreams he'd never spoken of, right? Except in a dream.
Anything else was impossible, and surely, anyone he could have asked about this would have told him the same – or think him mad.
A thing like that could not possibly happen...
Shinji was immensely grateful, when the sound of a starting car engine distracted him from his thoughts – There, a little further along the street that led him to school every day, a man had fired up his car and left the boy standing next to it on the sidewalk with a few casual parting words before driving away – Shinji soon recognized the pair as Mitsurugi and his father.
His new classmate, whose cast did not seem to have gotten any thinner over the weekend, remained there for a few moments, lost in though as his glance followed after his father's vehicle.
Then, however, he pulled his school bag, which he'd been gripping with his hand so far (likely because he'd just removed it from the trunk of his father's car.), onto his back and journeyed on towards the school.
Shinji had only spoken to him a few times before, but at this moment, his fear of being alone with his own thoughts was stronger than the one associated with initiating contact.
He just needed some sort of... input to wash what had just happened out of his consciousness and conveniently squeeze it into some dark corner in the back of his head.
The Third Child considered to break into a brisk pace to chase after him, but could not quite find the necessary confidence and ultimately stopped himself after the second step.
The other boy did not seem to have noticed yet, which was to be expected; The distance between spanned about six meters, with a tendency toward increasing.
He had no choice but to do something that he'd done so rarely in his life so far that he could count the occasions with his fingers: Call out loudly to draw someone's attention on a public street. Strangely, he found this little easier than yesterday's fight against a surreal giant monster.
Though he expected that his words must have gotten stuck somewhere inside his throat, he could not find them there, and his lips seemed about as hard to part as the angel's jaws – but he had managed to overcome them, after all, even if it required a little help from a crazy European.
"M-Mitsurugi-kun...!"
Shinji did actually seem to have managed to shout loud enough for his classmate to hear.
Slightly surprised, the slightly older boy turned his head, around which he still wore that same heavy cast.
"...Ikari-san? ...Good morning."
"S-Same to you." Shinji answered quickly. He still wasn't very good at suck situations, so that he had a hard time thinking of something to say, and the usual easy road of waiting for his conversation partner to come up with something seemed unavailable, as Mitsurugi was himself on the reserved side. By the looks of it, he was waiting for Shinji to say something, which he could not be faulted for if one considered who had begun the conversation in the first place.
Nonetheless, Mitsurugi junior did easily find his voice once he'd stepped a little closer to the other boy and got around to getting a good look at him.
"...is everything alright? You seem somewhat... upset."
"Oh..."
That must be because of... earlier.
Shinji began to doubt if getting himself near other people at this moment had truly been the wisest choice.
But he couldn't just turn around and run away, either? What would Mitsurugi think?
So, there was no way out but through.
"It's nothing, I just... didn't sleep very well, because f yesterday's battle."
Shinji hoped that he could be forgiven this one little lie.
"What? Another battle? But they did not issue a state of emergency..."
"That's because it didn't take place here, but on the high seas. Misato-san – that's my superior at NERV – She brought me to... pick up ...a new EVA that was being ….transported here from Germany..."
"And you were attacked on the way back?"
"Yes, exactly." Shinji attempted a smile. "But I, I can cope with that, I think..." He failed to stifle a half-suppressed, nervous laugh. "I should probably have gotten used to it by now, but..."
Surprisingly, Mitsurugi contradicted him: "No you shouldn't." He spoke in the same formal, sober and substantially reserved manner as usual, but with an audible, deliberate firmness to it. "If you ever got used to this, it would be a terrible thing. It would mean that this world had finally gone mad for good. Don't get me wrong, but sometimes when I see our classmates talking about your task, I wonder how they can be so excited about it. I think those battles are terrifying, and I can't even imagine what it must be like to fight them yourself... That we as a people are forced to resort to using child soldiers is an extraordinary sad thing. It should not ever be considered okay, or be something we can get used to. I must admit, I felt rather awed myself when I saw your robots last week, but the more I think about it, the more and more I realize how mad this world and especially this city has become...and I wonder why it is that this doesn't seem to bother anyone... Or I don't know, it may be that no one wants to show it, so that everything can keep functioning...
I... I don't want to sound spiteful, and I admit that I should probably be ashamed of myself for this, but, somehow, I find comfort in knowing that even you still feel fear..."
Shinji was a bit overwhelmed – This was his first time meeting someone who had such a view of the events. "It's alright. I... To be honest, I'd rather know you thought this way than be confused with some sort of hero... It's not like I wouldn't like to be... popular, or something like this, but, I don't think I could live up to the expectations that people would have of a 'defender of earth'... believe me, I'm anything but hero, and I know that very well..."
He had to think of Asuka, and the way she'd teased him about being the 'Legendary Third Child'. Though it was still preferable to 'Daddy's boy'. Of course, the Second Child could not have known his circumstances, but... it just hurt too much.
"I see that a little differently."
"Heh?" surprised, Shinji turned to Mitsurugi, who actually wore a thin smile on his pale face.
"It's true that I am averse to all these mad things, and I'm glad that you're... not mad, but I also understand that these battles are necessary for us to defend ourselves. Even before Second Impact, this country has often been hit by catastrophe, and always, this meant that we had to find people who were ready to give up themselves, their own hapiness and their own dreams in order for everyone else to go on living as normally as possible...
That you've lost a lot, and might well go on to lose a lot more, perhaps even your or life... cannot be changed. It needs to be done, and the rest of us can't do it, nor can we ever give you back what has been taken from you. But the least we can do, is to keep the noble deeds of you and others like you in our memories. Yes, I'm aware that you work is not anything like an exciting action movie, if you pardon that comparison, but in my eyes, that's exactly what makes you a hero."
"I... I'm afraid you're thinking too highly of me there... I'm not even sure if I'm... really doing it because it's a noble thing, or-..."
"Does that in any way lessen the price that you've had to pay? Excuse me, but I think you're the one who is thinking too lowly of yourself."
"No, no, that's... different..."
"Well, I'm not privy to your innermost thoughts, but-"
Whatever Mitsurugi was going to say next remained unsaid, as his thoughts were then occupied by something else entirely: "Oh...we... we really ought to get going. I can't possibly be late to class after my father went through the trouble of driving me all the way here..."
Shinji believed to have spotted a hint of urgent embarrassment in his new classmate's face.
"M-Mitsurugi-kun? Would you mind if we walk to school together?"
"I thought you always walk with Suzuhara-san and that friend of his... Aida-san, was it?"
"Yes, but I usually meet them further ahead by the bridge when they don't come to pick me up – but I'm sure that Touji and Kensuke wouldn't mind if you came along! If they haven't already left without me, that is..."
"Then we should better get going, I guess..."
"Oh, and Mitsurugi-kun?"
"...?"
"I want to thank you for the message you left me last week. It really helped."
"You don't need to thank me for that. I see it as my duty."
"...I admire you."
"...excuse me, but, for what reason?"
"It's just that it seems lately that just about everyone except for me can just go and do what they think is right without hesitating.:You, Misato-san, Ayanami, the Pilot of Unit Two. Except for me. I have to force myself at every step of the way, just to do what everyone says is the right thing to do..."
"But you're still doing it, aren't you? ...wait, did you say 'Unit Two?'?"
The remainder of their walk to school was occupied by conversation about sunday's events, in which Touji and Kensuke eagerly participated once Shinji and Nagato met up with them along their way.
Kensuke excitedly educated Mitsurugi about all the military vehicles, whereas Touji spent more time talking about Misato's cool attitude, her creative planning, and in particular her exeptionally attractive rear end, whereas Shinji filled the other three in on the parts that had taken place inside the entry plug or underwater, where it had been concealed from their eyes – though Shinji was not the most enthused of narrators, Touji and especially Kensuke did not mind as long as he was talking about cool battles and meekly answered their questions, though he kept some of the more embarrassing details to himself.
Kensuke and Touji had not particularly fussed over the happenstance that Mitsurugi was now somehow walking along with them, and despite Shinji's initial fears to the contrary, Nagato did not seem intimidated or off-put, though he never showed the same degree of eagerness.
But as differently as the three boys had chosen the focus of their narration, there was one point on which they call agreed: Asuka was despicable.
Alright, Shinji's choice of words might have been a little more subdued, but it was enough – Even Nagato's requests that they not use such foul language when referring to a girl ceased once he heard a detailed account of how she had 'greeted' the trio, even though he still hesitated to form a definite opinion on her.
"She's irascible, psychotic, stuck-up, fearsome, arrogant, cruel, self-absorbed, cold-hearted, childish, egocentric, violent, self-important, narcissistic, insane, hot-headed and all total bitch!" Touji and Kensuke reported convincingly, taking turns at coming up with unfriendly adjectives until they formed a chorus for the last one.
Mitsurugi didn't know whether to listen to his good upbringing or the sympathy he felt for Shinji and his friends.
"And I always thought our class rep was stuck-up!" Touji continued to rant. "It's a real waste since she was really cute, but she was probably the bitchiest bitch under the sun!"
"Can she really be that bad?" Mitsurugi wondered, still in disbelief that such a dainty, lovely creature of a girl could inspire this amount of aversion.
"Yep!" Kensuke insisted. "Though it IS kinda cool that she's already a Captain even though she's no older than us!" Though he quickly corrected the slightly awed tone of his voice back downward. "But still, it's a relief that we'll never have to see her again."
"Indeed!" Touji agreed pointedly. "But our poor, unfortunate friend here is gonna have to deal with her at work! That deserves our sympathy, doesn't it?"
But Touji had celebrated too early – It might have been his comeuppance for all the bad karma he had amassed through his frequent violations of the school's dress code, but what his horror-stricken eyes gazed upon when he turned towards the sound of the door opened in case it was a teacher or the class representative was so abominable, that he tumbled off his chair from the shock, just to get back up a point both a trembling finger and a hearty "AAHHH!" at the person on the threshold.
But Touji probably wasn't the only one who'd have preferred to see just about anything else over there – The expressions of him, Kensuke and Shinji could each be rather fittingly described with the words 'Holy shit!', 'No, No, please no!' and 'Aww shoot!', whereas Mitsurugi, who had no missed the acute resemblance between his new aquaintances and Edvard Munch's 'The Scream' eyed the new arrival with a certain worry.
The frightening creature proceeded to ensure that no one (except perhaps a deaf-mute, but there were none of those present anyways) could have had the audacity to ignore her arrival by means of the chilling chalk screeches she produced as she wrote her name onto the blackboard in pretty, immaculate feminine handwriting.
Before she even turned around, her long, shining, copper-colored hair had caused the first few boys to gape at her rather impressively.
But the sugary-sweet voice with which she introduced herself revealed nothing of what lay behind her charming smile:
"Hallo! My name is Shikinami Asuka Langley! Nice to meet you!"
(1) The chapter quote? From the same Bleach Volume the last chapter was named after. Yeah, I sort of really really like Mr. Kubo's poetry. Expect to see most of them at some point or another. For anyone who doesn't know who he is, Mr. Kubo is the author of the popular Shonen Manga Bleach, which is basically your basic sword fighty shonen manga with some little artistic accents here and there. It's a guilty pleasure of mine. Ulquiorra! *squee* This one seemed particularly suitable for this chapter because the attraction & repulsion between people, in short, 'coexistence', is basically a huge part of Asuka-chans 'Thematic Stuffing', also, it marked the introduction of the 'aloof rival character' to the manga, and Asuka pretty much is your typical rival character. Initially hates teamwork? Check. Child prodigy? Check! Parallels with the MC's backstory? Check. Designed as contrast to MC ? Check! Outward arrogance with hidden inferiority complex? Check. Initially much more skilled, then takes it very badly when MC overtakes her? Check. More methodical, pragmatic thinker to contrast the hero's impulsive and naive ones? Check. 'Lancer'-like dynamics, ie, calls BS on what the hero does and presents an alternate set of values? Check. Extremely competitive and obsessed with 'winning'´? Double-check!... The only abnormality of sorts is that in any other anime, Shinji would be the one with the red mecha.
(2) "Yui Ichijo", complete with name and outfit, is borrowed from this character sketch from the proposal: . which probably used to be some alternative character-design for Rei. This will eventually make perfect sense. Or so I hope.
(3) Nooo, Shin-chan, you mustn't run away~ But of course he's gone into full denial mode, because, he would, wouldn't he?
(4) The story will soon be continued in Chapter 03: [Das Modell]