"What is the status of Unit-01?"
As soon as she made it into the massive office, Ritsuko Akagi was not surprised to be assaulted by the question that had become something of a mantra for Commander Ikari in recent hours. The man was outwardly composed, attempting to radiate the same aura of intimidation and control that was feared all throughout HQ, but Doctor Akagi could clearly see it for what it was: a mask attempting to hide his true feelings.
A result of her less savoury compulsions. Through those, Ritsuko had become intimately familiar with Gendo Ikari's tics and tells, for no single person on Earth was free of those, not even those styling themselves chessmasters of the most dangerous game of all.
And the ones that she could spot on the Commander told her that he was nervous behind the facade. Afraid, even. And being completely aware of the reason behind that response made Ritsuko want to tear her hair out. So much so that she could not stop herself from a little barb.
"Should I begin with the Evangelion or its Pilot?"
"I asked you a very specific question, Doctor."
But Gendo Ikari was not up for games, it would seem.
'So you did, you cold hearted bastard.'
Refraining from voicing her thoughts, Ritsuko did her best to detach herself from the conversation, falling back onto her cold and clinical professional persona to report her findings.
"Unit-01 appears to be perfectly intact. No contamination from the Angel's attack remains and all systems are completely functional, from what we can tell. It would still be recommended that a battery of field tests meant to test the full functionality of the Unit be carried out, however, regardless of the added difficulty due to the-"
"What about the core?"
Ritsuko succeeded at showing no more than a twitch of her eye at the Commander's impatient interruption.
"There's no superficial damage to it, but we don't know anything in regards to its inner workings yet. Analysing the deepest parts of Unit-01 will take more than the two hours we've had so far, I'm afraid."
'Much longer, if I had a say in it.'
"Finish your investigation as soon as possible, then," Gendo spoke without any room for argument. "That's to be your first priority above all else, Doctor. Dismissed."
The Commander then promptly turned towards Fuyutsuki, his eternally present aide, with the clear intention of resuming their prior scheming and eliminating any thoughts involving the Head of Project-E from his mind at the earliest opportunity. It was clear where Gendo's priorities lay.
So clear that Ritsuko felt a wave of loathing pass through her at the sight, at the blatant disregard she was being subjected to and, despite her best efforts, she felt her maw clench and a fist form at her side.
Did she mean anything at all to this man? Was she nothing but a simple way to rid himself of his biological needs? The mere thought of the possibility made Ritsuko feel sick to her stomach.
'And even while knowing that, you'd still swiftly crawl on his bed at the smallest hint of an opportunity. You pathetic excuse for a woman.'
Yet with a deep breath, Ritsuko forced herself to ignore and push aside the ever present and ever accurate voice of her subconscious as she often did, turning to her seasoned professionalism to sate her curiosity on a second matter.
"One more thing, if I may, Commander."
"Yes?" Gendo interrupted his muttering to regard her with a sideways glance. "What is it, Doctor?"
"What's to become of Major Katsuragi?"
The Doctor posed her question without feeling that she owed anything to her estranged friend. After all, Misato had made her choice of her own free will, fully aware of the consequences it would bring. Nevertheless, a lost friend was still worthy of a measure of worry.
Ritsuko had enough with a single fool running headlong to his death, as far as she was concerned. She'd prefer it if Misato didn't share his fate.
"She'll remain in the brig at half rations until I have the opportunity to question her myself."
"Is she to be reinstated?"
With a small shake of his head, the Commander turned to regard his second with his full attention once again. His tone made it clear that his patience was at an end.
"You have your orders, Doctor. Dismissed."
"...Understood."
Deciding not to push her luck any further, Ritsuko turned around and promptly began her trek out of the room, the heels of her shoes echoing into the distance as she replayed the first part of the conversation in her mind over and over again. Finally, at the fifth repetition, an unforeseen query made its way to the forefront of her mind, causing the blonde to linger at the entrance of the spacious office. Then, feeling as if a will not her own had taken hold of her body, Ritsuko turned halfway through to stare at the two males behind her, and heard more than saw their quiet conversation come to a stop.
"What is it now, Doctor?"
"Are you really not going to ask?"
The question burst forth before she had any chance of stopping it. And at the same time, Ritsuko wondered to herself about her own reasons for questioning the Commander. The physical or mental well-being of the Third Child had never been one of her priorities, after all, past the minimum requirements for him to be a useful asset to NERV. Where did this sudden... need to know stem from, then?
Was it a test to find out whether there was room for a scrap of empathy on Gendo Ikari´s single-minded obsession? Space for anything other than longing for the ghost of a long dead woman?
"There's no point. So long as Unit-01 remains intact, the Third Child's condition changes nothing."
If it was, the Commander's cold words were very clear as to the answer.
-O]|[O-
"What do you mean there's no brain activity?!"
Doctor Tezuka took an involuntary step backwards and felt his back hit the wall, his hands reaching for the smooth surface and trying to provide an impossible grip that would allow him to escape the irate redhead that stood before him.
"P-Please calm down, I'm trying to-"
"That doesn't make any sense!" Asuka interrupted him for the umpteenth time in less than a minute, stepping further forward until the Doctor's efforts proved for naught. "Even most coma cases have a small measure of brain activity! Are you telling me that he's a three in the Glasgow scale?!"
"L-Like I said, we don't know yet!" Doctor Tezuka quickly elaborated, realising that his attempts to do as a spider would do little to save him from the infamous Second Child. "His brain didn't receive any sort of damage known to result in a coma, a-at most he could have been in a state of shock from the nature of the attack! But there should be brain activity in such a case and-"
"...and he's not having any of that."
The Doctor's explanation was finished by the Second Child, his body instinctively tensing at the girl's voice. Quickly enough, however, Doctor Tezuka realised that the interruption had carried a dejected undertone, rather than an angry one. The shift was further reflected by the Second Child's suddenly apprehensive body language. A change that served to remind Doctor Tezuka that, ultimately, and despite intimidating fronts, he was dealing with a child that was probably very worried about a close friend.
A measure of tact would be very important for his next words.
"...No, he's not. And like I said, we don't even know if we should be treating this as a comatose state or... something else entirely. We'll need to make certain, but I'm afraid that we're entering uncharted territory for medicine as far as this patient is concerned."
"But he will wake up, right?"
"...I wish I could give a more definitive answer but... we don't know. I'm sorry."
If there was one thing Doctor Tezuka didn't like about his job, it was the necessary delivery of bad news. And while this development was probably not as disastrous as it could have been considering the odds the EVA Pilots faced every time they sortied, that knowledge did very little in the way of bolstering his spirits.
He only had to look at the way the Second Child's expression fell even further, after all.
Doctor Tezuka didn't have anything in the way of encouraging words for the girl, though. Furthermore, he suspected that trying to say anything at that point, no matter how well intentioned, would only serve to make matters worse. No, only an improvement of his patient's condition would do, and that, he hoped, he would be able to accomplish. With that in mind, the doctor beat a hasty retreat once his piece was said, quietly offering something about having other patients to check on before making for the door.
But Asuka wasn't listening to him anymore.
Instead, her eyes were inevitably drawn to the body that lay on the room's single bed. The rise and fall of the boy's chest and the sound of peaceful breathing that filled every corner of NERV's Cranial Ward room 303 could have been mistaken for those of someone in a well-deserved sleep, but the reality of the situation was much different...
"Goddammit, Third..."
...and far more tragic.
'...You moron. Why did you have to go and do something stupid again? Did you need to show off that much?'
Asuka felt her nails begin to bite into the skin of her hands, but she paid that no heed. Her mind went back to the battle against the Angel, to the awful and still fresh experience that it'd made her go through, that it had made her relive. The memories were muddled, her own forced recollections intermingling into a confusing mess with the events of the actual fight but, even then, one major fact was clear in the redhead's mind:
'...No. He needed to save your sorry ass again, that's what. If you weren't so useless, Invincible Shinji wouldn't be stuck to an IV drip right now.'
Asuka wasn't sure if the sensation that ran through her body at that moment was due to a sense of responsibility or because the Third Child had demonstrated once again for the entire world to see that she could do nothing without him. Maybe it was a mix of both, but whatever it was it made her seethe and overflow with conflicting emotions she had no way of distinguishing. It made her insides feel like a raging tornado that she couldn't hope to keep within, a wave of emotion that she had to let out. Thankfully, Asuka had a convenient outlet just for that:
"And you! Aren't you going to say anything?!"
On the other side of the room, Rei Ayanami continued with her quiet examination of the Third Child, a slight shift of her head being the only sign that she had even registered Asuka's brazen words.
"What should I say?"
"I don't know! Something! Anything!" The redhead shot back, stomping her way towards her teammate. "He could be dead! Don't you get it?! Can that concept even make it through your thick skull?!"
"I am perfectly familiar with the concept of death."
"Then say something! Do something, you-! You stupid doll!" Asuka spat, the appellative coming to her mind with unnerving ease. "Aren't you sad that your boyfriend is gone?! Or do you need orders for that, too?!"
Much to Asuka's satisfaction, her outburst finally got a flinch out of the First Child, but then Ayanami's features hardened and the Second Child prepared herself for a confrontation. Shortly after, tranquil red clashed with livid blue...
...and Rei visibly cut herself off from whatever it was that she was going to say, an expression that Asuka couldn't place flying over the bluenette's face for all of an instant.
"...I should leave."
With those parting words, Rei Ayanami threw one last glance towards the sleeping boy and slowly stood up, beginning to make for the door. Asuka, for her part, thought for a second about barring the bluenette's path but ultimately decided against it, a sizable part of her instincts telling her that doing so wouldn't be a good idea.
Instead, the redhead settled for taunting her counterpart as she calmly strode past her.
"What's that? Running away, First?!"
A provocation that, much to Asuka's surprise, seemed to actually have an effect on Rei Ayanami, for a change. Having already opened the door to room 303 the bluenette paused at the threshold, without concerning herself with turning around before she next spoke.
"No. But I believe that you'd prefer to be alone at this time, Second Child."
"...W-What?" Asuka recoiled, caught off-guard by the remark. "Why would I-?!"
"Because you're crying."
Rei's quiet words shocked the redhead into silence, hard enough that the soft click of the door locking into place seemed to her as a massive boom sounding throughout the room.
In time with the tip-tap of the First Child's retreating steps, Asuka shakily and tentatively raised a hand to her face, feeling, for the first time, wetness on her cheeks. The sensation was further amplified when a single, tiny drop of liquid brushed past her finger, promptly freefalling to the floor below.
"When did I...?" Asuka felt her eyes widen, a single sob escaping without her control. "W-Why am I...?"
And then, as if conscious acknowledgment was all that was needed for their free passing, a waterfall of tears quickly joined the vanguard. At the same time, one sob after another began to escape the redhead in spite of her best efforts, forcing her to sit down on a chair by the Third Child's bedside if she wanted to maintain her balance.
And on that night, for the first time in almost a decade and for reasons she couldn't explain, Asuka Langley-Sohryu wept until exhaustion claimed her.
-O]|[O-
Shinji Ikari was no stranger to awakening under unfamiliar ceilings, but this; this was something else entirely. On the one hand, because there was no actual ceiling somewhere above his head when he came to; and on the other, because there wasn't anything around him, period.
Excluding the fog, of course. And the more than annoying rain. Rain that had begun to pick up even further during the short while that Shinji had been conscious, causing his shirt to stick to his body and his pants to amass a fairly thick layer of mud, to speak nothing of his shoes.
'Wait a minute... Shirt? Trousers?' the young man paused, looking down at himself. 'But I remember having my plugsuit on...?'
Yet no matter how Shinji looked at it, he was clearly in his school uniform. One more item to add to the growing pile of things that didn't make much sense, a pile that had been getting disturbingly big in the last two months alone.
"This must be some sort of weird dream," he assumed wryly, his mind going back to other instances he distantly recalled from previous experience. "Like the freaky train ride... and the ones with Asuka and Ayanami..."
Shinji broke his musings off with a blink, the images of his two female teammates showing up in his mind's eye almost as soon as the names were conjured. Smooth skin glistened under some hidden light as red and blue both posed the question that had appeared many a time in Shinji's dreams since.
'No! Focus!' the young man shook his head fiercely. 'This is not the time for that!'
Hard enough that he ended up tripping over his own feet. Clearly, the feeling of drowsiness wasn't just limited to his head, and that sudden insight would have also allowed Shinji to experience the sensation of mud all over his face had it not been for the convenient appearance of a surface he could grab a hold of.
A surface that hadn't been there a second ago. Of that, Shinji was completely certain.
"Wha...?"
The Third Child stared at the table that had broken his fall, quickly noting its considerable size and metallic sheen, but what really caught his attention was how cold the surface felt on his fingers. After all, and for how strange he remembered the errant bits of his dreams being, none had been nearly as vivid on his senses as the last few minutes alone had been.
"What's... going on?" the Third Child frowned, his mind working hard to try and come up with something that would explain the situation. "Is this one of those... lucid dreams?"
But was lucid dreaming supposed to work like that? Shinji didn't know, but wondering about the cold sensation against his hands suddenly made the Third Child realise that he couldn't feel the rain on his body anymore, nor did he hear the constant drumming of the raindrops crashing against the grass.
Something wasn't adding up. And when Shinji next turned his head to find what that 'something' was, he found himself in a dark room that clearly had very little to do with wherever he had been last.
"W-Wha...?"
The boy's mouth dangled open before his eyes jumped left and right throughout the darkened chamber in search of anything that would explain the abrupt change, efforts that quickly proved fruitless. The only new information Shinji eventually gleaned came in the form of many different crystal containers of different shapes and forms, some of which he recognized as test tubes and Erlenmeyers, the type of tools scientists used to do... science-y stuff. A few boxes he managed to find after flicking on the lights further reinforced that theory.
"...So is this a laboratory, or something like that? Why am I dreaming of this...?" the young man pondered. After all, and unlike the previous... instance with his two teammates, Shinji had never had much of an interest in the sciences before outside of schoolwork. Certainly not enough for them to pop up in his dreams. "...Unless this isn't a dream?"
Shinji's last theory sounded somewhat silly to him, because what else could this possibly be if it wasn't a product of his sleep? But nevertheless, and weird as it might have appeared, it actually made sense in a bizarre way considering everything that he had learnt so far. Felt like his instincts were telling him that he was on the right track towards something big.
"But then, where am I? What am I doing here...?
Shinji wracked his brain trying to explain his situation for the third time, amounting to as much success as he'd had the previous two and resulting in a growing sense of frustration.
At least, before an idea struck him: if he couldn't explain the 'now', he'd try to figure out the 'before'.
And so, Shinji tried to remember. About what he had been doing and where he had been before waking up here. Maybe even find out where 'here' was or why he thought the idea of not wearing his plugsuit weird, at the time of his awakening; things that were much easier said than done, considering that Shinji's head still felt like mush and that trying to recall the past was making him dizzy.
But suddenly, it clicked. Memories of light and song and pain flooding his mind as if they'd been just waiting for the command to do so.
"The Angel! We were fighting!" Shinji exclaimed, before the joy of remembering left way for a sudden realisation. "I-Is this something the Angel did?!"
The voice of a friend screaming her lungs out suddenly filled Shinji's awareness, and the Third Child quickly remembered where the hurting redhead had been at the end point of his recollections: right behind him, which meant that she could very well be 'here' as well...
...and that if she was, the Angel could still be tormenting her even now.
"ASUKA!"
No sooner had Shinji's panicked scream left his mouth that he felt a revolting sensation grab a hold of his body, potent enough to make him double over and grab hold of the nearby table to keep his balance. He saw the edge of his vision blur, the scenery mixing together into a mess of jumbled colours and shapes, and spinning around fast enough that the Third Child was forced to shut his eyes in order to keep the nausea to a minimum that was still far too intense.
But then Shinji was forced to plug his ears in a vain attempt at holding off the screeching sounds that followed, a mix between grinding gears and sharp nails scratching at a blackboard that set his teeth on edge and made him scream in pain, although he could barely even hear his own voice.
Thankfully for the Third Child's continued sanity, however, both experiences proved as brief as they were jarring, and the nauseating stimuli to both sight and hearing vanished in but a few short seconds.
"W-What just happened...?"
The Third Child moaned, inwardly wondering whether he actually wanted to find out or not. The young man knew that he couldn't keep his eyes and ears forever closed, however. For that reason, and after taking a second to steel himself, Shinji carefully peeked through one eye...
...only for both of them to snap wide open without instruction.
To his shock, Shinji was no longer in the storage room, but rather found himself in a long, long hallway, with plain wooden doors extending along each side and a pungent, clinical smell assaulting his senses. Shinji's current location appeared to be a hospital wing, although the sporadically blinking fluorescent lights turned the antiseptic white of what should have been a comforting sight into something completely opposite. The silence, deep enough to hear a current of air swoosh by, didn't help matters, either.
The Third Child felt a chill go down his spine, and not at all due to the cool wind.
"M-Misato-san!" he shouted into the distance, hoping for something. "Asuka! A-Ayanami!"
And while his anxious calls did eerily echo down the hallway, the sound of his own voice repeating time and time again was the only answer Shinji received.
The chill down his backbone promptly turned into a cylinder of ice.
"O-Okay, let's go, Shinji." Shinji eventually spoke to himself, trying to summon as much will to move forward as he could. "There- There must be an exit to this place somewhere..."
And so, Shinji walked over to the nearest door, silently opening it in the hopes that he could find an open window or something similarly useful within, but Lady Luck was regrettably not at his side. The room was empty and the windows tightly shut, the beds and medical apparatus that had once been used in it lying in a very clear state of long-term disuse. The chamber was also quite dirty (and Shinji could swear to there being mould in some places), which was interesting to the Third Child because, while creepy in its own right, the main hallway didn't appear to be in nearly as terrible a condition as the room did.
The young man briefly wondered why that could be although, to be completely honest, most of his attention was stuck on the fact that he had just found confirmation about being in some sort of crumbling and abandoned hospital, which did very little to soothe his nerves.
'Why did you have to listen to Kensuke's ghost stories, you idiot!?'
Swallowing the lump that had formed in his throat and banishing the words of his Otaku friend to the farthest reaches of his mind, Shinji quickly turned around and exited back to the hallway before continuing on his way. The young man quickly found out that each door had a room number next to it, as well as a name plate for what Shinji supposed would have been the patients inside, had there been any. Or maybe the plaques were meant to have the name of a doctor in them, instead? In any case, the whole thing had no parallels with any hospitals that Shinji had been to before, and the existence of the plates was pretty pointless to begin with; whatever names had been written there in the past were much too worn to be recognizable, at this point.
The young man continued with his investigation, and he carried it out for what felt like hours without any tangible results or change in his surroundings. The hospital floor was massive and clearly unnatural, because Shinji had walked several kilometres by that point and there was simply no way that any hospital in the world could be that big. He found no stairs going up or down, either, the monotony of the different hallways making Shinji believe at one point that he must have been going in circles.
But if there was one blessing to be found in the repetitive task, it was that the Third Child eventually found most of his anxiety leaving him and making way for the same mechanical repetition:
...Open, Check, Close...
...Open, Check, Close...
...Open, Check, Close...
...Open, Greet, Close...
...
...Greet?
Shinji paused all of a second to review his actions before he jumped back to the door he had just passed, throwing it wide open with a joyous exclamation. But no further words followed, though, because where he could have sworn to have seen someone before there was only yet another empty room, now.
"Huh? Where...?" the boy checked the room side to side and up and down, wondering if his mind was playing tricks on him. "Where did they go...?"
But then the sudden sound of hurried steps coming from his left caught Shinji's attention at once, and the young man turned just in time to catch a glimpse of a figure turning the next corner. It wasn't much, barely enough to make out that someone had truly been there, but the Third Child felt his spirits suddenly soar sky high, nonetheless.
After all, he would have recognized the mane of red hair anywhere.
"Asuka!" he called out, breaking out into a run. "Asuka! Wait up!"
But the continued staccato of speedy footsteps told Shinji that his teammate had not heard, or not cared about his request. What's more, by the time the Third Child reached the corner Asuka had disappeared around, he was barely able to catch another glimpse of red entering a distant room.
Without stopping, Shinji rushed towards the open door, willing his legs to carry him as quickly as they possibly could, fast enough that the young man covered the distance to the halfway point in record time.
And it was then he heard a girl's scream.
"ASUKA!"
With renewed vigour, the Third Child pushed himself even harder for the second half, a moment later finding himself a scant few metres from his destination...
...only to be nearly blown off his feet when the door exploded off its hinges with a deafening bang.
Shinji slid to a stop, his instincts taking hold of his actions as his mind tried to scramble for a proper response to the latest development. At the same time, the dust settled and slowly allowed line of sight of whatever it was that had come out of the room.
Soon enough, Shinji felt his jaw drop.
The... thing that had broken through the door looked like a twisted suit of medieval armour that menaced with spikes of hardened metal on several places, but it appeared to be old and rusty, the joints creaking and screeching with the smallest of movements. That final detail did nothing if not increase its intimidation factor, however.
But in spite of the darkened armour's aggressive appearance, what really caught Shinji's undivided attention was further behind it: an oversized blade, every bit as ancient and corroded as the armour was, but looking like it belonged in the grip of a body thrice its size.
Shinji also suspected that anything struck by it wouldn't find the likely lack of an edge to be of much comfort.
"W-What... the... hell...?" the boy breathed out, wide eyes fixated on the terrifying appeareance of the sudden arrival.
And it was then that the armour's helm turned towards him.