A Crown of Stars
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Part 52
Just Like Him
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Shinji was good at running. Except for the last few years in Boston, where he'd been held in place on pain of being shot, he'd been running away his whole life. From the pain of losing his mother, of being abandoned by his father, from his sensei, from the weight of being needed as a Pilot, from the harm he caused others by being a Pilot at all, from facing his feelings for Asuka… He was good at running. It took a lot to make him turn at bay and go roaring back at what he was afraid of, unleashing his seldom roused anger. An anger so violent and unrestrained that he let it loose even less often than his meager pride.
But now that anger was what was fueling this run. Anger, and the realization filling him with such self-disgust that he'd nearly vomited all over his feet.
'I'm just like him. Just like him.'
He'd been hesitant. He didn't like causing pain in anyone. That Don Barceló apparently richly deserved it made it more complicated, but it was still hard to watch. He'd been torn on how to treat him…until Asuka spoke. ''Raped hundreds of times for years on end… I am just fine with hurting people like the ones who hurt me'…And so am I. Asuka just wants to hang him? I want him to bleed. I want everyone who hurt her to burn!' There hadn't even been any thought process to it. As soon as she'd said that, the fierce, burning desire to just get in Eva Unit-01, power it up, and use it to crush every person who'd ever hurt Asuka had flashed through him like lightning.
'Crush…destroy…kill…all of them. They hurt her. Make them PAY.'
It was really hard to run away when it was your innermost heart that was the cause. He had fallen for her beauty from the moment he'd seen her on the Over The Rainbow's flight deck, and been captured by her vulnerability when he watched her in the moonlight, crying in her sleep for her mother. He loved Asuka. And now she knew it. Confessing at her question had only made the feeling stronger than ever. But he'd failed her so deeply and so badly before that now he'd sworn his life and soul to making that up. All his banked rage and furious anger had finally found a cause that his entire soul could wholeheartedly and joyfully endorse. He'd do anything to protect her and keep her from harm. Anything. There could be no sin in that cause. He'd destroy anyone or anything he had to, to keep the one he loved beyond all others safe.
Just like his father.
'I don't want to be like him! No no no no no no no!' Gendo Ikari was a monster. No one but his mother had even pretended he was, could be, or had ever been anything but. And apparently no one besides her had ever loved him, either. 'And now I've got inarguable evidence that I'm exactly like him. I'd call down the Third Impact again if it meant saving her. How the Hell could I ever hope for her to love someone like that? How can I pretend to be worthy of her when I could turn into a red-handed berserker at any moment?' He was having a very hard time keeping the thought from his head of asking Daniel and Rayana if he could somehow get his hands personally on Winthrop and Jinnai and make them go through the same thing Don Barceló was suffering right now, or more. He was having an even harder time not savoring the idea.
He stumbled his way out of the stands and down onto the field. 'I think I might even be starting to understand my father now. Oh Gods. The last thing Asuka needs is yet another evil bastard in her life. She'd be better off without me. Everyone would. All I do is hurt people. Touji and his sister, Kaworu, Asuka, everyone in the world….I should just end it all, and leave forever.' It had been a while since the cold kiss of a gun barrel against his head had felt attractive. There had been some dark points of despair at times in Boston, especially early on, right after Asuka…left. It couldn't be that hard to find one here, amongst so many soldiers…
His headlong run was finally slowing from exhaustion and nerves, leaving him midfield between the looming masses of Rote Wirbelsturm and Eva Unit-01. 'Just…like…HIM. Oh Gods, I don't want to be him!' His stomach finally rebelled. He doubled over and began to vomit up the meager shipboard breakfast.
"I know how you feel, sir. If I wasn't keeping my stomach in line by will, I'd be right there next to you. I have never had a headache this bad," Lieutenant O'Brien said from his seat on a box just to Shinji's left.
Shinji's head was killing him, but how the Hell would Lieutenant O'Brien know about why and feel the same? A few more bile-filled heaves and his head came up. He stared at the Lieutenant with a puzzled look as the heaves subsided. "What?" he hesitantly mumbled, wiping at his mouth with his sleeve.
"I've got the world's worst killer super-migraine headache from that separation effect Miss Ayanami slammed us with. Isn't that's what's hitting you?" The young princeling eyed him sympathetically. "I wish I had some painkillers to offer, but I wasn't expecting company." He pinched his eyes shut and massaged his temples. "Man, I have never had a headache like this before. But then, I've never been cut off from home like this before either."
Shinji was shakily grateful for the chance to pull his mind onto a different topic. "This doesn't happen often?"
"Nope. I think I can count the number of actual Code Dragonflies I've heard of on my fingers. We tend to take a lot of measures to prevent this sort of thing from happening. We instituted a lot of them after the first one."
"What was the 'first one'? Was that the CGS Ibthan's Dragonfly Daniel, I mean, your great grandfather mentioned?" Shinji asked, wanting his mind diverted by something, anything else. But Lieutenant O'Brien shook his head.
"Sergeant Bir said he wanted to tell all of you NERV folks that story at once, later today. Said it might give you some hope."
"So there was a happy ending at least?"
The Imperial tilted his head and twisted his mouth a bit. "Weeeelll….mostly? They kept that Earth from getting completely destroyed, and a bit more than half of the crews were still alive when the rescue fleet arrived. Took some casualties doing it, though. It still doesn't happen a lot, fortunately." He snorted. "Figures. First time I'm on an assignment out of the Empire, and I get caught in an 'interesting adventure'."
Shinji looked at him oddly. "First time? You've never done this before? How old are you?"
"Um, I'm nineteen, sir. Why?"
"Because the last time I asked how old one of you people were, I got told it was something above 400,000 years. It's kind of thrown my scale off."
"Sorry to throw it back on, I guess? I'm just nineteen standard years old, sir. I've only been a Lieutenant for four months. You're older than I am, I think."
He shook his head and looked more carefully at Shinji. "But you didn't come running down here because of a headache, did you, sir? You've got something much more painful written all over your face. Anything I can do to help?"
"….Did you know you father well?"
"Um, yeah, he raised me, right there with mom. I talked to him yesterday. Why?"
"Did you ever worry about turning into him?"
"Worry? No, my father's a really decent guy. He taught me a lot about how to face the world. And it's a pretty common saying in the Empire that 'a lot of men grow up to become their fathers'. I'm guessing your dad wasn't the sort of man you'd want to end up like?"
Shinji managed a single, bitter laugh. "No. He's not. He's one of the greatest murderers and deceitful bastards this planet has ever seen. But I just realized I'm much more like him than I ever wanted to contemplate." He waved his hand towards Unit-01. "When I was not yet four years old, I watched my mother be absorbed, body and soul, into that mecha. She knew it was going to happen and did it anyhow. My father went crazy, dumped me off without any explanation to live with a tutor, and spent the next ten years away from me plotting to end the world and erase humanity as individuals so he could have the chance to get back to her side. He lied to, plotted against, blackmailed, and murdered anyone he had to, to make that happen." Shinji took a deep breath. "And I just realized I wouldn't hesitate one second to do all that and more to protect Asuka. I already nearly ended life on this world as we know it when I thought she rejected me after I begged her for help when I really needed her, and was going to leave me alone for the rest of our lives."
"….ok, I missed the mission brief on the situation here, so you're going to explain just whiskey tango foxtrot you're talking about, sir."
Shinji took another deep breath and started to explain the Second Impact and subsequent events to the first person he'd ever met who didn't know what that was. His abysmal mood lifted a little, albeit with black amusement, as he watched Lieutenant O'Brien's expression go from shock at the Second Impact's three billion dead, to sick fascination as he described the endless parade of horrors that was the Angel War, to pained sadness at the brutal, anarchy-and-warlords mess of the last few years after the Third Impact, and then to sympathy and admiration for his description of the week of the coup against Winthrop. Finally, when Shinji tried to describe the kaleidoscopic strangeness that was his experience at the heart of Instrumentality, Lieutenant O'Brien's expression was a study in confusion and sympathy.
"Lord's balls, sir! This world is seriously frakked up. I'm amazed you're all as well as you are after all that. No wonder we were about to drop an entire light division on this place. You guys really need the help!"
'And my father and I were right in the middle of the mess, helping it end up this way. Have I ever made anything better?' Shinji's mood darkened again. He studied his still shaking hands. "She's had enough of evil men wrecking her life. She doesn't need another one. Maybe she'd be better off without me."
"That's a pretty harsh and final way to try and avoid the problem, sir. How long have you been together?"
"Um… We've known each other for over five years, lived together for a bit, fought together, but we were separated shortly after the Third Impact for years. We only really got together, I mean I told her I love her just… two days ago? Avalon days, so nearly three or four Earth days, I think." Shinji shook his head in disbelief. Had his life really turned upside down in just that little time?
"Seriously? You two sure don't look like three T-days. Or even five years. You looked like you've been linked for a lifetime. You two frakking glow when you look at each other, sir. It's a pretty cool thing to see from our point of view. A beauty beyond the visible." He gave Shinji a cockeyed look. "And I got to say, thinking about telling her 'you'd be better off without me' three days after telling her you love her is kind of a dumb move. So now you're feeling tons of self-loathing because you're worried you might be more like your dad than you ever thought, and you're feeling guilty over how you nearly destroyed the world when you got handed the powers of a god at the worst moment of your life?"
Shinji just nodded. Asuka was right. This world hated them. He'd been so happy this morning…
"Honestly, I'm… actually pretty impressed , sir."
Shinji raised his head to see if he was being mocked. 'He can't be serious.'
"You'd just lost everything, failed to save the girl you love, watched the enemy chewing on her, then got your heart smashed flat when you tried once last time to reach out to her….and you still chose to reach for hope? And then you were ready even after four years of life in the most brutal world I've ever run into to try again and risk it all for her? Sir, I'm a Prince Of The Blood of Avalon. I know I could do something like that, because I've got the whole Empire at my back and the power of gods in my blood. But I'd still have to steel myself. You did it despite emotional and spiritual terrors that should have crippled most men! I'm damn near in awe, sir."
Shinji blinked at him. 'He can't be serious.' "Didn't you hear me? I said the whole world could just go die when Rei asked me what I wanted! I nearly sent the whole world to oblivion because I couldn't stand the pain!"
"But you didn't. You pulled back and chose hope instead, even in the depths of all that should have broken you. You had every reason to just fold up and consign everything to nothingness…but you didn't. I can do something like that because I know at the ultimate end, the Lord and Lady are watching, and 'no sparrow shall fall, that they do not save it.' You did it with nothing but hope that the world could get better and your own heart. That's frankly amazing, sir."
'Asuka was right again. These people arenuts.'
"And being ready to do anything you must to protect the one you love? That doesn't make you a bad person, sir, it makes you a man in love. You asked if I know my dad? He's a Ranger First Class, but he's the quiet, subtle, diplomacy and talk-things-out sort, not the fire-and-storm kind. But he's very devoted to mom. He told me once he'd leave the Empire behind and smash open the gates of Hell alone to rescue her if he had to. Though he admitted in the next breath in such a case he'd probably meet her coming out the gates after she finished kicking her way out, since mom was also a Ranger on top of being a Princess Of The Blood and perfectly capable of taking care of herself." He laughed to himself for a second. "Then there's what mom had to say on the topic: 'Let man fear woman when she loves for when she loves she makes every sacrifice and all else becomes meaningless. Let man fear woman when she hates because man in his innermost soul is merely evil, woman, however, is mean.'"
"Nietzsche," Shinji recognized. His survey of the German philosopher's material may have been less deep than it could have been, but he remembered running across that line.
Lieutenant O'Brien nodded. "And mom always said if anything ever happened to dad she'd go full 'wrath of grandma' mode and unload as much holy wrath as her bloodline allowed on the cause. And being a 'Bloody Princess', as she always put it, meant she really could bring down Armageddon if she felt it needful. My parents aren't bad people because they're willing to go to extremes for each other. They're just really in love. I mean, look at it this way, sir; you wouldn't just unload violence on some random innocent, would you? Or for personal gain, or just because you felt like it?"
Shinji searched inside himself for a moment to be sure, before saying with relief, "No, no I wouldn't. But…for her…" 'I'd do anything.'
"So you still know the difference, and your moral compass hasn't been thrown out. It just has a new pole."
"That's still just like my father," Shinji replied listlessly. "He only cared about getting my mother back. Nothing else mattered, not even me."
"Well, I can think of a couple of things that will ease your worries, sir."
Shinji shrugged his shoulders a bit. "Go ahead, maybe it will help. And could you stop calling me 'sir'? I'm only a year older than you, and I've been a Lieutenant about a day and a half."
The young Imperial grinned. "Well, the rules are specifically loosened under a Code Dragonfly, si….er, Shinji?" Shinji nodded his permission. "I mean, we have no idea how long we'll be isolated, so the degree of military spit and polish discipline required in the unit is really up to the commander, which happily is you and Lieutenant Sohryu. So if you want to be more informal, you can just order such. In which case…" He stuck out his hand to Shinji. "Hi, I'm Thaddeus Jayne Ramius O'Brien, Prince Of The Blood. My friends call me TJ."
Shinji took his hand and gently shook it. "'Let's be good friends'?" he said, wistfully remembering another meeting.
TJ looked puzzled. "Um, sure?"
Shinji gave him a weak smile. "Something Asuka said a long time ago when she first met Rei. It didn't go as well as it might."
"Eh, I'm sure we can get along. Anyway, one of the things that I bet will help is her. I mean, you trust her, right?"
Shinji nodded. "Yes. More than anyone, I think. We know each other too well and have already done our worst to each other. And I feel-" 'Alive. Happy. Buzzing. Like I'm on fire in a good way.' "…so much better with her."
"So trust her. If you think you're about to do something truly nasty, run it past her. Is she likely to approve something too evil?"
"Er…."
"Um… ok. Well, there's also us. We won't let you go too evil. If it's something bad, we'll stop you. If it's something righteous, we'll probably help you. You can count on us to keep you from going Darkside, don't worry. And you trust your friends, the other NERV folks, right? I bet they won't let you go bad if you talk to them."
"If I can. I've never been the best guy for communicating. And there's things about the last four years I don't want to ever lay on anyone else." Shinji suppressed a shiver at some of the memories that tried to rise up.
"Fair enough. Just remember you're never alone, dude. That's not just the Army motto. We mean it. We all watch out for each other. We'll keep you from turning too much into your dad, I promise. At the least, we'll give you an outside set of eyes and tell you when you're running off course. And I feel safe in betting Lieutenant Sohryu will do the same even more so."
Shinji snorted softly. "Yeah, Asuka's never exactly been restrained in telling me what she thinks of me. I'm hoping it will be a little different from now on, though. It used to be mostly questioning my intelligence or manhood."
"Really? You must have had a really good last few days. You two look amazing together. Oh yeah, almost forgot the biggest thing that will stop you from being your dad; awareness. Do you want to be your dad?"
"No!" Shinji hunched his shoulders in horror. 'I'd rather be back to lonely exile in Boston, Asuka lost to me again, than turn into my father. I'd hurt her less.'
"Well, there you go. You're aware of yourself, aware of who your father was, and you know you don't want to be him. So don't. We are who we decide we want to be, after all…So if you've already decided you don't want to be him, just decide who you do want to be."
"'Who am I?'" Shinji said, half to himself. "Seems to be the question everyone wants me to answer lately. I'm still half-afraid to even check to closely if I'm still the same person I think I remember being from before the Third Impact put all of our souls in one big mixing pot. I really wish I knew who I am."
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Part 53
Family Matters
"Heh. Me too."
Shinji raised his head again to give TJ a funny look. "You didn't have to go through anything like Instrumentality, did you? And I thought you got along with your parents?"
"Eh… my problem's kind of the opposite extreme of yours. Yeah, I got on fine with my folks. And my extended family. But they're also the problem; Mom and Dad are both Rangers First Class, Mom's a Princess Of The Blood, a granddaughter of the Lord and Lady, my aunts, uncles, sibs, et cetera are all major heroes, warriors, scientists, healers… frakking legends, some of them. Me? I'm the nineteen year old with no direction and a titanic family legacy to live up to. I've got the entire omniverse open to me, incredible powers at my command… and I have no idea what I want. The paralysis of total freedom…"
TJ sighed and sat back against the stack of crates behind the one he was sitting on. "We're totally cut off from home and support, so I suppose I should be scared or worried or something, but I've been trained so much that I'm not. I just don't know where I want to go. I've got all these powers, but no certainty of my heading. And because of those powers I'm probably going to have a Hell of a lot of responsibilities fall on my head because I'm the only one who can do them. So I kind of know what you mean about having all that power in your hands and not being sure about handling it. And like you, I'm not at all sure I'm who I need to be to be ready for that."
Shinji tried to figure out what he meant, but gave up after a minute. "What are you talking about? What responsibilities? I thought Asuka and I are the ones who are stuck with being the judges for these," he waved at the crowd of militiamen in the upper stands, "these men, prisoners, thugs, whatever."
TJ shook his head. "No, that's still your burden to carry, man. I'm talking about later on, if we start running into things that cause casualties, or such. We've got no chaplain or other clerics with us. Thanks to my bloodline, I'm the only one here who can even try to do any soul work. But I've had no training, I just know that I have that ability. I really, really hope that when the time comes, I don't screw it up."
"'Soul work'?" Shinji turned that over in his head for a bit. He knew thanks to the Third Impact that souls were very real, and not necessarily tied to a physical form. But the only entity he'd ever seen manipulating souls directly had been Rei at the height of that strange period, and he hadn't been in the best shape mentally to really watch what she'd been doing. He supposed that his father and NERV had to have been doing something with souls to do what they'd done with the Evangelions and the souls they'd placed in their Cores to make them work, but what did that mean here? "You mean… you can… do something with souls? Like if we have to try getting Eva Unit-01 active again?"
TJ nodded. "Yeah, that kind of thing. If anyone gets a lethal hit, I'm the only one who might be able to catch them and hold them before they fall into the Ring," he pointed skyward, "if we're lucky, or truly dissipate if we're not. Putting a soul into Unit-01's core? I think I could do that, maybe. I don't know who would be crazy enough to be the subject for that. I mean, that requires the complete absorption of the physical form, right?"
Shinji nodded with a grimace, uncomfortable memories of his month spent absorbed into Unit-01's core himself surfacing. "Um, yeah, I think so. And then the Pilot has to have enough of a connection with the soul in the Core to synch with it. How did you know that?"
TJ shrugged. "Lieutenant Leibshott assigned me command of the Support platoon, which means hooking it up to the city grid for power generation is my job. So I've been looking at its systems all day since you brought it in and I've gotten to know a little about it. Lieutenant Katsuragi helped out where she could, telling me what she knew, and there's this one new Private in my platoon who really seems to grasp how the thing works, so we've been getting it done faster than I thought we might. I'm stunned it has as much soul technology as it does considering the pretty low conventional tech base and practically non-existent spiritual tech base you guys had here. But if you made it work before, we might be able to do something with it. We'd really have to be in deep shit before we'd try it, though. We'd practically have to do a human sacrifice to make it move, and boy do I not want to ask for volunteers for that."
Shinji looked up at the purple and green titan he'd once Piloted. He suppressed a shiver. "And I'm the only person who's ever driven it. So if it comes to it, I'll probably be the one everyone asks to do it again." 'And I really don't want to do that again, especially after the last time. I'd rather make my father suffer through it. Let him see what it was like for once.'
"You sound like you'd rather chew your own leg off than do that. I'll see if we can find someone else to volunteer for that slot if it comes to it," TJ said.
"Thank you."
"Besides, wouldn't the Pilot have to be someone who had a bond with the soul I put in the core? We probably won't be using anyone on your list, so you're out of the running anyway."
Shinji shrugged wary acceptance. "I guess so." He looked back up at TJ. "'The soul you put in it', huh? Where do you learn how to do 'soul work' anyway?"
"That's just the problem. I didn't learn it anywhere. I just know I can do it because I'm a Prince Of The Blood. Spiritual powers come with the territory."
"How do you mean? How does being a Prince Of The Blood mean you have powers like that?"
TJ looked at him strangely. "Um, I'm a direct descendant of the Lord and Lady? The whole divine heritage thing? It's part of my genome, built in."
Shinji blinked. That couldn't be what it sounded like. Well, it did sound a bit like the official legend of the Emperor of Japan's family origin; descended from the goddess Amaterasu and such. Avalon must have a similar legend. But wait… TJ was saying he had actual powers to work with people's souls from it. That's a lot of faith to put in just a story. So ask the question, Ikari. "The Lord and Lady are the gods of Avalon?" he asked hesitantly. TJ nodded. "Does… I mean, is it like the Amaterasu legend from my country? Does your great grandfather, the Emperor, claim descent from the Lord and Lady like the Emperor of Japan does from the Sun Goddess?"
TJ looked even more puzzled. "No, how could they claim descent from themselves?"
"What?"
"My mother's maternal grandparents are the Lord and Lady."
"I thought you said those were the gods of Avalon?"
TJ paused and held his finger up. "Are you messing with me or is one of us missing something?"
Shinji shook his head. "I'm not messing with you. But it's sounding like you're saying your great-grandparents don't claim descent from gods, but that they aregods."
TJ nodded again. "Right."
The two young men stared at each other for a long moment. Shinji's thoughts boggled as he tried to fit TJ's apparent confirmation into what he thought he knew. "I'd heard them addressed as 'Lord and Lady' a few times over the last few days, but I'd assumed it was a title or something. It's not just a title, is it? They really are gods, spiritual entities, and you have spiritual powers because you're descended from them," he ventured carefully.
TJ nodded once more. "Ah… yeah. No one told you? I would have thought their auras made it rather obvious. It's pretty distinctive. You talked to the Lord yesterday morning, face to face."
"I… can't see auras or anything like that."
"You can't? Oh, yeah, I guess that makes sense. You wouldn't have grown up with it since the spiritual background on this world is pretty low level, right? No gods or such around, except for that weird background presence that I guess is Miss Ayanami. Wait, if she's your sister, how is talking to a god a surprise for you? For that matter, why aren't you more spiritually aware yourself? You've got some really strange traces of something in your aura that are sort of like her flavor." He peered at the air around Shinji's head more closely.
Shinji shrugged. This was a very strange conversation. "Rei is my… half-sister. Her power comes from her being Lilith, not from the blood we share. And she wasn't… obviously powerful when I knew her before the Third Impact. I guess what you're seeing on me is leftovers from Instrumentality. I was… sort of a god for a few minutes, I think. I didn't handle it very well." He waved a hand at the world in general. "This is what came of it."
TJ shrugged back at him. "Eh, I've heard of worse. You sounded like you weren't in the best mental place to handle that sort of power at the time. You didn't destroy the world, we're here now to fix what's wrong, and if we can make it all right in the end, it's far better than it could have ended up if your father or SEELE had gotten that power instead, right?" He gave Shinji a wry smile. "For a dude who grew up on a world without gods, you're sure taking this calmly. Does having one for a half-sister help?"
"Instrumentality set a high bar of 'strange' for me. I saw whole other worlds in there. I don't think anything else in my life is going to match that. And I've had a strange last few days anyhow. Four days ago, a me from six months in my future convinced me to follow a guy who appeared out of thin air through a portal to a whole new world, and it's all been through the looking glass since then. That he's apparently a god seems like par for the course right now…" TJ barked a laugh, but Shinji sighed. "I suppose in six months I'll understand why I didn't just tell myself that up front."
"Would you have done anything differently if you'd known?" TJ asked.
Shinji thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. "I don't know. I don't think so. It's just really weird to think about it. It seems like the kind of thing that would be one of the first things you'd tell somebody when you meet them."
"What, like 'Hi there! I'm a god! Derp derp!'" TJ laughed. "I can't imagine why he doesn't just announce that every time he enters a room. Seriously, it's not like anyone on Avalon doesn't know, so he really doesn't have to. And in your case, I can only guess here, but maybe it's so it wouldn't blow your mind too much. Or maybe why you didn't tell 'yourself' at the beginning; it doesn't matter, since you wouldn't have done anything differently."
"I guess so." Shinji sank his head into his hands. 'A couple of gods have been having us as guests for the last few days. Just one more thing Asuka was right about: these people are really strange. Oh gods, Asuka… what am I going to say to her? I just freaked out and ran off. She must be incredibly angry at me for doing that. Now I'll have to explain to her why, tell her 'I'm sorry' yet again, and ask her to help me avoid turning into my damn father.' He wrapped his arms around himself and rubbed his shoulders. He really wanted to feel her arms around him right now. The whole world felt better when she was touching him, like it could all work out somehow. Having the redheaded beauty in his arms had been an impossible dream for so long, now that he'd actually tasted it, when he held her he could imagine he could do anything. He hoped fervently he hadn't somehow screwed things up with this. 'She's going to want an answer as to what to do with Don Barceló, too.' He grimaced at the reminder of the ethical question that had sparked his uncomfortable realization about his similarity to his father. 'I suppose I'll just have to try to consider it as dispassionately as I can… and agree with whatever Asuka wants. I sure as Hell trust her judgment on this more than my own. She can't possibly want to do worse to him than I do.'
The press of a cold can against the back of his hand brought him out of his reverie. He lifted his head to stare at the can of soda. TJ was holding out to him. "I don't know if you're a drinking man, so I'll hold off on the flask of whiskey, but you look like you could use a drink, dude," he said.
Shinji blinked as he reached up to take the can. He was sure TJ hadn't moved from where he'd been sitting across from him. He was just as sure TJ hadn't been holding drinks either, and there was nowhere right around them where he could have grabbed them from. "Where did you get this?" His hands automatically opened it and he took a drink.
TJ reached under his arm like he was pulling something out from a jacket pocket and pulled a second can out of thin air. He popped the top with a hiss of carbonation and smiled. "Holdout Pocket technique. A little spatial fold tied to your personal space, good for keeping an emergency backup weapon or something handy. I also keep cold drinks in mine. It's not a hard trick to learn. First year Weapon Theory stuff. I could probably teach you pretty quickly if you've got a gun or a knife you'd like to try it on."
"I don't really like guns."
"Neither did my father, but he always had one on him. He always said 'better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.' We're going to be in hostile country for the foreseeable future, so you might want to be ready for unhappy natives."
"Um, thanks, but I'll pass for tonight. I need to find Asuka and apologize for running off like I did. I need her to… I need her to…"
"You need her." TJ grinned. "So go to her, dude. We can talk later. She's in the command pit with Top and Lieutenant Leibshott."
Shinji drained the rest of his can and put it down where he'd been sitting as he rose. The cold drink had calmed his still-roiling stomach a little. "Thank you, TJ." He took off running towards the command pit, with a little less headlong speed than he'd arrived on the field and a steadier look on his face.
