"We're the Band"
Chapter 27: Who Do You Love?
Asuka was dog tired. She quietly massaged her aching feet as she shot reproachful glances at a certain boy who was pretending to be engrossed in music conservatory literature. Deciding that guilt wasn't working fast enough, she plopped her feet in Shinji's lap and said, "If you massage my feet after having dragged me all over creation in heels, I will translate the literature for you."
They had spent the better part of the day going to different conservatories where Shinji was researching what a classical cello education could be in the heart of Europe. Because these were impromptu interviews, Shinji had dressed for the occasion but had neglected to tell Asuka about all of the walking.
Asuka sighed with a mixture of relief and pleasure as Shinji's strong fingers began to soothe the aches in her feet. With a refreshed attitude, she began to provide Shinji with a more complete picture of the various places they had been.
It was in this mode that the rest of the family found Shinji and Asuka nearly an hour later as the foursome burst through the door. Four excited voices finally coalesced into a single voice owned, surprisingly, by one Rei Ikari.
" . . . what they're all trying to say is that we passed the coolest restaurant on the way home. It's this retro place that plays a bunch of music from the 1970's and 1980's. They have retro furniture and depending on where you sit, they have sections where the waiters and waitresses talk like the period. I saw a disco section and a 'valley girl' section. Here's the best part. They have a stage where they have live music, too! Asuka's mom and dad said we can go tonight! You're getting ready, right?"
With the high speed monologue at a close with the emphatic command housed within a question, Shinji just smiled at his over-energized sister. Asuka looked at her parents and Misato with a more questioning look that finally erupted into an accusation.
"You're supposed to be the adult supervision! How did you let her get this sugared-up?"
"Well, we were shopping and before we knew it, Rei had spent a significant amount of time in a candy store," came the suitably chastened reply from Misato. "Really, your parents didn't know we had to watch for this."
Asuka merely glared at the three adults. As she refocused her gaze on Rei, she had found that Rei had come over to the couch and was busy showing Shinji the pounds of German candy that she had bought. Her gleeful look was stilled for a moment as Shinji tried to keep her from spreading the candy out across the entire living room floor.
"Rei, why don't we just put this on your bed? That way, we can get ready to go to the restaurant."
Fueled by refined sugar, Rei was off like a shot to her room to stockpile her booty. Shinji just shook his head as he recalled the various, sugar episodes of recent memory from the strawberries and cream movie night to a strange, soda induced bass solo at a recent band practice.
It wasn't very long before the entire family was seated near the stage in the 80's new wave section. With drinks orders given to their Madonna look-a-like waitress and appetizers arriving from a waiter with Flock of Seagulls hair, everyone seemed to have settled in to a having a fun time.
Out of the corner of her eye, Rei caught the band whispering and glancing at their table. With a small movement, she passed the mini-alert to Shinji, Asuka, and Misato. While outwardly calm and relaxed, Misato especially became much more alert to the flow of people around the table and the band. Her hand surreptitiously slipped into her purse as one of the band members made a nervous approach to the table.
It was Asuka who fixed him with a stare that caused the young man to halt and fidget.
"I . . . um . . . that is . . . ", the young man swallowed convulsively and the words then just blurted out, "Are you 'Makes Purple'?"
Asuka's parents sat mostly confused. They had heard the band name once or twice, but not enough for it to truly register. Misato just eased her hand out of her purse with an almost imperceptible relaxation in the tension around her eyes. As expected, Asuka answered for the band.
"We're in the band, yes. Did you want an autograph?"
"That's so cool!" announced the young man who began waving excitedly to his fellow band mates. Soon, each of them had produced some sort of piece of memorabilia for the teens to sign. Rei and Shinji fielded most of the questions as Asuka began to make some notes on Rei's ever-present little pad of paper. She was writing furiously and as Shinji glanced over, he caught the words "global presence and influence" in a long stream of what he assumed to be business jargon.
"So, Ikari-san, what did you think of the last set? Please be honest with us as another musician," begged the lead singer.
"Well, I was focused on the menu and didn't really pay much attention."
"Please, it would mean a lot to us."
Rei immediately saw why her brother was hesitating. He didn't want to hurt their feelings. She had noticed that the band was, at best, average and couldn't even come close to the musical ability that 'Makes Purple' had accomplished in a short couple of months. Shinji obviously didn't want to crush their passion just because they didn't happen to be good.
"Shinji, why don't you just play a tune with them and let them hear the difference?" suggested Rei.
Shinji was suddenly bombarded with requests to take the stage including random people at tables near them that had heard the exchange, and the most enthusiastic were Asuka's parents. They had heard from Misato about Shinji's stage presence, and they wanted to feel it for themselves. With only some additional prodding from Asuka, Shinji trudged to the stage.
His presence got some strange looks from customers farther out from the epicenter of the disturbance and management alike, but some quick words to the manager from the lead singer soon got that under control. Meanwhile, Shinji began tinkering with the lead singer's guitar. It was a little out of tune and while he was tuning it, Shinji also toyed with the effects pedals until he got the sound he was looking for.
Shinji spent a few minutes talking to the rest of the band to find out if the tune that he had in mind was doable for them. Standing in front of the drummer's riser, Shinji had his back to the audience as he was showing the drummer the tempo and the rhythm guitar and bass players the chord progressions that he wanted. Satisfied that they could keep up, Shinji reached into a pants pocket and retrieved his sunglasses. With a little flick of the wrist, he opened them and put them on generating a few whistles and catcalls from Rei, Asuka, Misato, and some of the other teens in the restaurant. Some of the wait staff had taken the opportunity to gather for the novelty of having a customer willing to perform with the band. Asuka's parents were a little apprehensive. Shinji's stage presence was starting to ramp up and the obvious effects were more than they were used to.
"Here's a little tune I came across on the net," mumbled Shinji into the microphone. "It's 'Who do you Love?' by George Thorogood and the Destroyers."
Shinji hit the opening blues chords with the steel guitar feel and rough distortion. It was almost like he had a piece of pipe over the middle finger of his chord hand and had slipped back into the hey-day of the blues guitar heroes. When his voice came out, it had that characteristic rasp and iconic drawl.
I walked forty-seven miles of barbed wire, I got a cobra snake for a necktie
A brand new house on the road side, and it's a-made out of rattlesnake hide
Got a band new chimney put on top, and it's a-made out of human skull
Come on take a little walk with me baby, and tell me who do you love?
Who do you love?
Who do you love?
Asuka had finally relaxed. It had taken months, but she finally felt comfortable. She felt like a teenage girl. Smart, beautiful, successful, and, now, free from the expectations that had always inhibited the fun parts of her considerable intellect that were now applied full time to the problem of living life to the fullest. It was this part of her that suddenly hauled Rei to her feet and dragged her to the front of the stage in time to scream, "I love you!" in answer to the questions in the lyrics and get the patented rock-star smile from Shinji.
Around the town I use a rattlesnake whip, take it easy baby don't you give me no lip
Who do you love?
Who do you love?
Asuka's outburst triggered the expected response. Soon, the stage, Asuka, and Rei were surrounded by other screaming teens as the simple tune turned into a full blown performance. The rest of the novice band members were dumbstruck and playing on automatic pilot. They had never been a part of anything like this where they were at the epicenter of such an Event. It was like being in the eye of Hurricane Shinji.
I've got a tombstone hand and a graveyard mind, I'm just twenty-two and I don't mind dying
Who do you love?
Who do you love?
Who do you love?
In response to Asuka's enthusiastic and heartfelt "I love you's" from front and center, Shinji, ever the showman, gave her a glance over the top of his sunglasses and blew her a kiss. Of course, every girl in the vicinity of Asuka thought it was directed at them, and it triggered another screaming crush towards the stage. All of this was completely ignored as Shinji slid into a short riff including a long glissando.
Now Asuka took a-me by my hand, she said "Lonesome Shinji you don't understand,
who do you love?"
Asuka and Rei grabbed each other with one arm and thrust the other into the air and screamed their approval as Shinji slid Asuka's name into the tune. All of the girls around them now knew for certain who that kiss had been meant for.
The night were dark and the sky were blue, down the alleyway a house wagon flew
Hit a bump and somebody screamed, you should've heard what I'd seen
Who do you love?
Who do you love?
Who do you love?
Who do you love?
As Shinji slid into an extended solo surrounded by screaming teens, Asuka's parents sat next to a smiling Misato utterly flabbergasted. They had been to concerts together and had cut loose in their day, but they were just not prepared for the amount of energy being generated. The knockout punch in this combination were the actions of Asuka and Shinji. Seeing their daughter finally be a teen with friends and a boyfriend, having fun, and letting go the weight of the expectations heaped upon her sent them reeling especially with Shinji suddenly transformed into a stage icon blowing kisses at their daughter.
Asuka's father in particular was surprised at the difference in presence between Shinji at the table and Shinji on the stage. He'd never seen anything so dramatic before. His brows furrowed in concentration as he tried to come to grips with the new information.
Yeah, I've got a tombstone hand in a graveyard mine, just twenty-two baby I don't mind dying
Snake skin shoes baby put them on your feet, got the goodtime music and the Bo Diddley beat
Who do you love?
Who do you love?
I walked forty-seven miles of barbed wire, I got a cobra snake for a necktie
A brand new house on the road side, and it's made out of rattlesnake hide
Got a band new chimney put on top, and it's made out of human skull
Come on take a little walk with me child, tell me who do you love?
Who do you love?
Who do you love?
The screaming teens drowned out the fading chords from the amplifier, so Shinji gave a little wave to the crowd and then turned to hand the guitar back to the stunned boy who had first come to their table. As he exited the stage a blur of red and blue lanced through the crowd.
The red streak flung herself into Shinji's arms and tightened her own about his neck laughing with an unbridled joy. The blue streak wrapped the all of them in an inclusive hug as their combined laughter and smiles radiated out from the swarming mass of teens.
As Asuka and Shinji extracted themselves from the crush of teens, Rei was immediately surrounded by hordes of girls wanting everything from autographs to beauty and dating tips. Rei politely tried to give everyone a little something – a smile, a signature, or a brief chat. When she began to make her way back to the table, she had a stuffed rabbit shoved into her hands from a young girl who nervously stammered something along the lines of "you're just the greatest" causing Rei to kneel down and give the girl a hug and thank you for which she was rewarded with a near strangling hug in return.
Late That Night – Langley Soryu Household
Three adults were gathered in a small kitchen lit by a small fluorescent tube. Condensation caressed tall bottles of German beer. Empties lay like fallen soldiers on the table. It had been an hour since the last teen had wandered off to bed and thirty minutes since the first beer reached the table. The edge was gone, but the buzz hadn't quite settled in.
"Misato, I must say that I've never seen Asuka act so . . . normal," ventured Asuka's mother.
"All three of them have started to fit back into normal patterns. But, I think Asuka's transformation has been the biggest."
"Really? Even bigger than Rei's?"
"Well, Rei was more . . . stifled than anything. With all of the pressure off, she's just a very young girl, emotionally. Asuka's personality was very entrenched. She'd had years in very familiar and fixed patterns."
"But, they haven't really been back that long. Was it something in Instrumentality that triggered this?"
Misato paused and considered the concerned faces of Asuka's parents. She had gotten the entire story from Rei regarding Shinji and Asuka's head start on the rest of the world, but it seemed like such a private thing that she wasn't sure she could really break that confidence. The bond between parents slowly asserted itself in Misato's mind, and with a small shake of her head, she decided that Asuka's parents deserved to know the truth.
"What Rei told me was that it wasn't Instrumentality, per se. It seems that while the rest of Humanity was kind of suspended in time in Instrumentality, Asuka and Shinji came back to the real world. As near as Rei and I can figure out, they had what was, subjectively, weeks to 'sort themselves out' as my British friends would say."
"Subjective weeks?"
"Well, this is where Ritsuko would be better at explaining it, but it's like they were in a joint Instrumentality or a mini-Instrumentality just for them, but away from the rest of us. Nobody really knows why they were there, but it was obvious that they had to do something for the rest of us to have the chance to leave Instrumentality. It was in that little, personal bubble reality that they had all of those hard conversations that couples have when they've had a fight. From what little Shinji has let out, some of the fights were really big, and the conversations were really hard."
"Hmm. No wonder."
"Shinji did say that they did make up, but before you start jumping to conclusions, there wasn't anything age inappropriate. However, it did provide for some really good teasing moment for Shinji, but for Asuka, it's been like the chains on her true personality have finally come off."
"That's a good way of putting it. She's open, now. Her emotions aren't so . . . bottled up, waiting to explode. From a personal benefit, I don't feel like I have to be walking on egg shells all of the time wondering if she's going to explode. I also see her putting more of herself into friends. Does she have a lot of friends in Tokyo-3?"
"Well, that's my main concern. She still has the friends you already know about – Hikari, Kensuke, and Touji, but I don't really see her expanding her circle of friends. The only candidate I know about is one of the girls in the orchestra. I think she'd be open to more new friends, but she hasn't built up the social skills to actively obtain them. The people who do come up to her are still passed through the very fine Asuka-filter for sycophants."
Their conversation continued well into the early morning hours.
Airport
"Shinji-nii san? Can I have my bunny?"
Shinji didn't even turn around. He merely handed down the stuffed rabbit out of Rei's bag in the overhead bin. It was quickly snatched and tucked under the thin blanket already wrapped about Rei as the group prepared for their long flight back to Japan. Closing the bin, Shinji returned to his seat next to Asuka, music player in hand.
It had been a hectic morning trying to pack their last minute items and ship home the multitude of souvenirs and supplies. It seemed to Shinji that there just wasn't an open office supply store anywhere in the city where one could buy boxes and packing tape suitable for international shipments.
Asuka had her book bag open on the floor in front of her. On the tray table, the latest printouts of the documents Michida had emailed over about the pops concert promotions. It contained proposed schedules, preliminary promotional opportunities, and sample promotional items.
As the flight took off, Shinji and Asuka spent the majority of the flight pouring over the documents, making notes, and sorting through the possibilities.
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Author's Parting Shots: Next chapter, we're back in Tokyo-3
