"You had to run away because of a volcano, you say?"
"Y-Yeah."
"One which spat a lot of white-hot boulders, many of which came dangerously close to hurting you?"
"...Hm-mm."
"...And one of those rocks reduced my beautiful farm to cinders?"
"...I'm sorry."
"Don't be. How's any of that your fault?" Asuka reassured the morose young man with a sigh, grumbling as she continued to inspect the gaping hole that stretched from one end of the farmhouse to the other. "Still, first she sends me away and forces me to walk all the way back and now this? ...It's as if I've become the butt-monkey of some greater power, I tell you.
"Oh, well. Let's positive thinking!" the redhead ultimately decided, her usual cheer slowly creeping back into her voice. "At least the crops are alright and I can fix the structure itself after she stops blocking me. Hopefully it won't collapse before then."
Asuka then turned back towards Shinji again. In spite of nothing threatening being in sight, the Third Child had been running for his life when she had come across him a short while ago, and convincing Shinji to accompany her back to the farmstead had been a monumental struggle. Admittedly, Asuka had found the young man's volcano story a bit silly at first (or some sort of prank by either of her sisters), but her disbelief had been cut short the moment Asuka had seen the sorry state of her work first-hand. The fact that she had been none the wiser about such a drastic change in the real Asuka's psyche did nothing to boost her optimism about her steadily diminishing powers, though.
But that was a worry for another time. At that moment, Asuka decided to instead focus her attention on the now sitting young man, who had taken to contemplating some deep question or another. He had been doing so for quite some time already, eyes locked on a piece of ex-farm that would have appeared to be of extreme interest to him, if only he were actually looking at it.
"Are those whirring noises I hear coming from your head, Shinji?" Asuka asked him in her usual upbeat. "What'cha thinking about?"
"Huh?" Shinji mumbled, breaking out of his daze and looking at Asuka. The Third Child kept his eyes on her for a few moments, before sighing and going back to fixating on the ground. "...It's nothing. I'm just thinking about what Maisie said."
"'Maisie'?" Asuka echoed, eyes narrowing at the unfamiliar name. "...Is that who I think it is?"
"Umm... I guess? If you're talking about one of you who looks straight out of a horror film, at least," Shinji's shoulders sagged a bit further. "Anyway, I told her that I wanted to help Asuka, but she just..."
"She just what?"
The Third Child's reply was not a quick one, the breeze that streaked throughout the open fields filling the void for a few, extended moments, instead. And somehow, in that silence, the young man managed to look even glummer.
"...She made me see how much of an idiot I am." Shinji finally spoke, burying his head behind his knees.
"What?!" Asuka exclaimed. "Why did she-?!"
But then she fell silent with a quiet gasp, the reason why becoming clearer when Shinji heard steps coming closer to his position. He paid them no heed, though, because despite her sudden silence Asuka had not reacted badly. Chances were that whatever was approaching wasn't dangerous, probably some minor Aspect or another that Shinji didn't feel like dealing with at that moment in time, anyway, like that Asuka that had looked like a fairytale knight.
...
...Or so the he thought. Shinji's intentions were quickly defied when the new arrival stepped right in front of him and ruffled his hair, making him recoil back in surprise and emerge from his hastily erected fort.
The one who had touched him was a young woman, but not one that Shinji recognized. She sported striking red glasses before blue eyes that danced with mirth and mischief and her hair, a middle-ground between dark brown and red, was done in twin-tails and framed an affable expression.
She was certainly very pretty to the Third Child's eyes, a thought that rose to even greater heights when the girl offered him a bright smile and a flirtatious wink. She then happily continued on her way, her steps taking the giggles of the strange girl farther and farther away until she got lost in the fog.
"...W-Who was that?" Shinji asked when he managed to find his voice, staring at where the newcomer had left from. "Is she a friend of Asuka's? From before she came to Japan?"
"...Doesn't ring a bell," his companion replied, bewildered eyes stuck to the same spot.
"I'd be shocked if it did," a grouchy voice suddenly cut in. "You haven't actually met her."
Asuka and Shinji stared at each other for an instant, before turning in sync towards the ruined farm. On the roof, and leaning against the chimney, now stood a familiar plugsuit-wearing redhead.
"Ace!" Shinji exclaimed. "You know who that was?"
"That's the Fifth Child," the Pilot explained, before jumping off the ruined roof and throwing a cocky smirk Shinji's way. "Your replacement, Third."
"My... replacement?" Shinji echoed, a strange feeling forming in the pit of his stomach, although he could not exactly pinpoint the reason why.
Was he feeling a pang of disappointment at being succeeded as an EVA Pilot? For failing in his duties, knowing that this person would need to pick up and suffer where he had slipped?
...Or was it due to the other reason why a replacement would be necessary? That the Doctors might have made too small an advance in understanding his ailment, or, even worse...
...that they might think his condition completely unrecoverable?
"Yup! Can't say I like her that much, though. Her so-called humour is as terrible as Misato's," Ace's grumbling brought Shinji out of his musings. "Besides, she's a greenhorn with no combat experience..."
The Pilot then crossed her arms and looked away, adding in a low voice that she must have thought inaudible.
"...Not to mention she can't keep her damn hands to herself."
"Huh?" Shinji caught on, curious. "What was that about her hands, Ace?"
"Nothing! Anyway, let's stop talking about her, alright?!" Ace quickly deflected, before pointing an accusing finger back at Shinji. "So, why are you brooding this time, Third?"
"I'm not brooding," the Third Child grumbled back, earning only one of Ace's usual scoffs for his trouble.
"Right. And I'm as terrible a Pilot as you are."
"Peace, you two," Asuka quickly cut in between the two warring sides before an argument could erupt, elaborating on Shinji''s behalf. "He said something about a 'Maisie' making him feel like an idiot."
"Really?" Ace prodded, breaking down into loud laughter. "And here I thought he could do that all by himself!"
When she failed to hear extra laughter around her, though, the Pilot raised her eyes to notice that where there had previously been a single pair of narrowed eyes glaring at her, now, there were two.
"Oh, come on! Don't look at me like that!" Ace threw her hands in the air, rolling her eyes at the same time. "Jeez! One little joke and they crucify you!
"Besides, isn't it about time that you got off your lazy ass, Third? You're not gonna prove her wrong just by sitting around!" the Pilot continued, hands on her hips and mirroring a pose that the Third Child had seen his Asuka do plenty of times, before. "Thinking is fine, but sometimes you just gotta do, you know?"
"And how am I supposed to do?" Shinji shot back to his feet, irritated. "I know what I said before, but she is right! I've never managed to figure Asuka out! Every time I thought I learned something about her, she would just prove me wrong five minutes later! It's always been like that! How am I going to help someone I don't understand?!"
"Then it's clear what we've got to do, right?"
Shinji blinked in confusion, the reply he had received not conforming to his assumptions. Shinji had expected Ace to argue back and call him a wimp or something similar, but that had not been the answer that had reached his ears. That mystery was quickly resolved when Shinji looked at Ace and noticed that she wasn't looking back at him, but that she was staring at her other, clearly as taken aback as Shinji was.
Slowly, the Third Child turned to look at Asuka, succinctly posing his answer to what the girl had just asked:
"...Huh?"
"You want to 'understand Asuka', don't you?" Asuka elaborated with a cool smile. She then threw a fist up in the air. "That's got a simple solution then! We'll help you do just that!"
"Wait, 'we'?" Ace quickly protested. "When did I sign up for anything?"
"You thought that your penalty for losing our little fight was pretty insignificant, didn't you?" Asuka countered, grinning shamelessly. "Then you can consider this a part of that, too. Besides, I'm going to need your help, anyway."
"...You dirty little-" the Pilot muttered, glaring at Asuka. It wasn't long before she relented, however. "...Fine, fine. But we're clear after this, you hear? So, what did you have in mind?"
Her grin quickly going from shameless to scheming, Asuka stepped next to Ace and began to whisper words in her ear. The two of them remained like that for quite some time, and it was during those tense seconds when Shinji saw Ace's expression morph from her characteristic frown, to a more neutral look and finally, into a small smile.
The Third Child's mood, in turn, took a dive in the opposite direction.
"Oh, so you want to start with that," Ace finally spoke when her accomplice finished her explanation. The Pilot threw a faux-pleasant look Shinji's way, her charming smile quickly turning into a wide smirk that bordered on sadistic. "...I like it."
Whatever was going to happen to him next, it became clear to Shinji that he wouldn't be able to run away from it. Not when one of the girls before him could sweet-talk him into compliance and the other could effortlessly drag him wherever he was required.
Shinji Ikari hung his head, sensing encroaching doom in his future.
"...This is the part where I regret all my decisions, isn't it?"
-O]|[O-
"This is... a mountain?"
"Got it in one!" Ace smirked mockingly. "Your observational skills never fail to amaze me, Third. What gave it away?"
Shinji threw a dirty look in the Pilot's direction, but resisted the urge to actually answer her taunt. Instead, the Third Child decided to pose the most pressing question in his head at his other guide.
"Why are we here?"
"It's part of our help!" Asuka cheerfully, but not very helpfully, responded.
"How is a... mountain going to help?" Shinji argued back, motioning towards the fairly steep incline before him. The fog around that area seemed to be less dense than it had been in other places, offering enough vision to let the young man know that the peak in particular went for quite some distance in the vertical axis. Chances were that the bits he could see were just the very bottom part of it, too.
"It's not the mountain itself that's going to help, silly! It's what you're going to do!" Asuka elaborated. "You're going to be climbing to the top!"
Shinji had to fight an urge to wince. He had already figured that something along those lines was afoot, but Asuka's concise explanation failed to elaborate on the reason as to...
"...Why?"
"We're full of questions today, aren't we, Third?" Ace interrupted and began to impatiently push the young man forward, despite his objections. "But why don't you just save them and get to climbing, already?!"
"Wait!" Shinji struggled valiantly but to very little avail. "At least tell me how tall we are talking here!"
"Oh, you don't want to know."
"I do want to know!"
"Well then, that's too bad for you: because I'm not telling!" Ace grinned evilly and gave the Third Child one final push, before jumping back to stand right beside Asuka. She then raised her hand and snapped her fingers... "And voilà!"
...and a reddish barrier suddenly manifested between Shinji and the two Asukas.
"W-What is this...?" the young man muttered, pressing his hands against the wall. It was warm to the touch and obviously solid, but there was very little else he could infer from it. At least it didn't hurt him.
'I guess Ace is feeling generous today.'
"I've sealed you alone with the mountain," Ace elaborated, smirking widely. "Don't worry, it won't bite."
"...And why did you do that?" Shinji questioned, his nervousness starting to give way to annoyance. Not that Ace allowed such a thing to affect her.
"Why this, why that..." the Pilot grumbled back with a roll of her eyes. "Gott in Himmel, don't you ever get tired of asking the same things?"
"Not when I'm dealing with your ideas. Must be an acquired trait."
"...Cheeky," Ace replied, narrowing her gaze at the young man. But slowly, a commending smile began to appear on her face. "Oh well, if you must know, the barrier's purpose is twofold: to have nothing interrupt your climb and to make sure that you don't try to take any easy way out.
"And with that said, the explanations are done! Get to work, Third! The sooner you start..."
"...the sooner you will be done!" Asuka finished, pumping a fist in the air. "Do your best, Shinji!"
Ace then put a hand on Asuka's shoulder and, just like that, the both of them vanished without a trace as quickly as the group had arrived.
Shinji, for his part, let out a resigned sigh as he turned towards the mountain once again. Ace's precautions and Asuka's encouragements aside, it's not like he had much of a choice in the matter, anyway; he really couldn't go anywhere on his own, what with not having a clue as to where he was in relation to the now ruined farmstead. He would have to depend on Ace to get him back, just as they had relied on her to come here in the first place.
Which meant that he had an indeterminately tall mountain to climb, no matter what. The more Shinji thought about his task, however, the more he found himself objecting less and less to having to carry it out.
"If this is really going to help me understand Asuka..." the Third Child whispered to himself, slightly more determined eyes turning skyward.
And it was so, that Shinji took his first few steps on his way to the top.
-O]|[O-
The first few hundred metres of incline were simple enough. The surface was grassy, and the clearly marked pathways and gentle slopes made the trek easily manageable even for someone as athletically inexperienced as the Third Child. It was something more akin to a scenic hiking route, rather than the gruelling test of fitness that Ace had made it out to be, and Shinji had been more than happy for that.
But the lenient introduction soon gave way to harder trials: solid and dry well-trodden paths steadily became coated in mud, making movement difficult for someone without proper footwear. The severity of the inclines quickly turned harsher and more erratic, as well, sapping the energy out of Shinji's legs with every conquered hill and giving the young man little time to recover before he hit the next one.
Nevertheless, he made progress. And while the fog made it so that he had no way of knowing how close or far from his goal he actually was, Shinji was fully aware of that fact.
'...Maybe it's better this way,' the young Ikari contemplated, having decided to stop and rest for a few minutes on a nearby stone. 'If I don't know how much is left, I can just focus on putting one foot in front of the other. Eventually, I'll reach the top.
'...I hope.'
Allowing his mind to wander during his short break, Shinji couldn't help but wonder that maybe he should have taken Kensuke up on some of his past offers to go camping. After all, his friend had let him know time and time again that he had the habit of doing some light trekking whenever he wasn't busy with single-handedly re-enacting some famous battle or another. Having some more stamina and overall tolerance for physical exertion would have surely made Shinji's current predicament far more manageable.
'Then again, how was I supposed to know that I'd need to climb the Himalayas?' Shinji inwardly groaned, massaging his thighs to try and relieve some of the stiffness in them. Clearly, if there was one single certainty in the Third Child's future, it was that he was going to be feeling sore all over before long. '...With some luck, Asuka's farm will be fixed by the time I finish. I'm going to take a nice, long sleep after-'
"It hasn't been long since you started your trial and exhaustion already claims you?" a familiar voice suddenly broke into his thoughts from the side. "Is this how far your will takes you, Ikari?"
And, sure enough, Shinji turned his head towards the source and found Maisie sitting on a nearby rocky outcropping. She was dangling her feet from the side and staring down at him, like a judge mulling a verdict. A look similar to the ones his Asuka had often thrown his way before the last Angel battle, whenever she wasn't mad at him for some reason or another.
"I'm just... catching my breath," Shinji grumbled back, withering slightly under the scrutiny despite his best efforts. "Go away."
"How courteous of you, Ikari. But no, I believe I shall stay," the half-girl answered, smiling wickedly. "I would so hate to miss the moment when you give up and run away, after all."
Shinji didn't know if it was due to the words themselves or the mocking tone that they had been framed with, perhaps it was even due to the merciless manner in which Maisie had put him down during their first meeting, but Shinji felt a roaring need to prove the hideous girl wrong. He quickly stood and kept on climbing, fully intending to leave Maisie behind despite the protests of his leg muscles.
Much to his chagrin, however, Shinji soon heard rustles and the sound of footsteps behind him. Maisie was clearly following.
"Deserting a lady without even a proper farewell, Ikari?" the taunts didn't take long, and the Third Child clenched his jaw and focused on the path, trying his best to ignore them. "Forget unchivalrous. You truly are as useless a man as they come, are you not?"
"What are you even doing here?"
"I can go where I please," the half-girl replied, and Shinji heard a rustle of clothes behind him. He correctly figured that Maisie had crossed her arms haughtily, in lieu of the mannerisms she had previously shown. "I see no need to justify myself to you."
"That's not what I meant," Shinji grumbled back, forming a dome shape with his hands. "Ace made... a barrier thingy. Said no one could enter it without her knowing."
"…Oh, that," Maisie briefly coughed into her hand, her usual tone quickly returning after her faux-pas. "I'm afraid that she is nowhere near as powerful or influential as she believes herself to be. Our liege's mindset may have marginally shifted in the opposite direction, but such a change is but a drop in an ocean of despair."
"...Right," the Third Child grumbled, tensing as the Doll advanced to his side. "A-And your opinion is more important than theirs because...?"
"Because I am she, and she is me. I am the greatest and most important part of her psyche," Maisie grinned superiorly, cloth hand hovering over the spot where her heart would have been in an almost Napoleonic way. "Compared to me, those two others are but leaves in the wind, transient and inconsequential. I was here from the beginning, and I shall be here at the end."
Shinji couldn't help but roll his eyes. Truthful or not, Maisie certainly had the arrogant part down to a tee.
"Besides, the distinction is evident in just how little they know: Glory? Adulation? Companionship?" Maisie continued, spitting the last word. "Trivial, all of them. As I myself prove, the only thing Asuka wishes for is the cold, comforting embrace of oblivion."
The Third Child slowed to a stop at those words, eyes narrowing at his companion.
"…No way."
"Averting your eyes from the truth, Ikari?" Maisie leered over her shoulder, continuing forward. "How very... you."
"I'm not averting my eyes from anything," the Third Child loudly shot back. "I'm just calling bullshit on that."
This time, it was Maisie who stopped, slowly turning around until she was facing Shinji once again. And then, in a flash, she had moved to stand right before the Third Child's face.
"Excuse me?" the Doll's lips pressed into a thin line, a cool fury beginning to pool in her eyes. "Did you just presume to tell me I am wrong?"
"...Yes. I don't know anything about what happened to Asuka. I'm pretty sure I never got a good look at who Asuka really is, just like you said," Shinji evenly responded, trying his best not to show just how creeped out he actually was. "But from what little I know, if there's a thing I'm sure of, it's that the girl I spent a week training with, and many more living with, doesn't just want to be forgotten.
"And I'll prove it to you. I'll find a way to talk to Asuka and I will help her," Shinji kept his momentum, snarling at Maisie and pushing past her. "I'll help her until you have no reasons left to say such awful things again!"
Now scowling, the Third Child stomped his way forward and continued his climb at a rate previously unseen. And he did so alone for some time, too, although it wasn't too long until he could feel Maisie's presence hovering right behind him.
Floating quite literally, in fact.
"Such strong convictions…" Maisie whispered to herself, in what the young man thought to be an appraising tone. "You truly are different from all those other Shinjis, aren't you?"
But whatever Shinji believed he had briefly heard was gone just as quickly: as his unwanted companion glided past his side and effortlessly kept pace with him just a pair of steps ahead, Shinji was quick to notice that a superior smile had found its way back onto Maisie's face.
"Very well, then, I shall accept your challenge. Struggle on, Ikari. Try your hardest to prove me wrong," she confidently confronted, her grin becoming wider. "But know that I shall be watching you cling to your misguided views, and that I shall be there when it all comes crashing down around you."
"Sure," Shinji replied just as boldly, hoping to end the argument right then and there and prompt the half-girl to finally leave him in peace. "Knock yourself out."
Shinji half-succeeded in his intentions: his unwanted companion had shockingly allowed him to have the last word, and he could now go back to focusing on the task at hand, if not for the fact that Maisie was still by his side. She was keeping to herself for a change, sure, but she was still there and every little bit as daunting as ever. Coupled with what measure of bravado Shinji had managed to conjure proving as fleeting as it had been effective, the Third Child soon found himself throwing nervous glances at the floating Doll beside him.
"Umm..." Shinji spoke when he finally reached his wit's end. "Why are you still here?"
"Did you forget, already?" Maisie scoffed in response, quickly breaking herself out of whatever thoughts she had been contemplating. "I have no need to justify-"
"That's not what I meant! It's just-" Shinji groaned in exasperation, randomly motioning with his hands in ways that not even he himself could actually decipher. "You... finished your big speech! I thought you were just... going to go away after that."
"And why, pray tell, would I do that?" the Doll raised an artificial eyebrow, staring at Shinji as if he were an alien. "Didn't you hear me say that I would watch you cling to your misguided views? Or is your hearing just as impaired as your logic?"
"No... I just... didn't think you were being quite so literal about it."
A scalding glare was all the answer the Third Child received for what felt like hours, making him feel like he had said the most stupid thing ever. Which, if Maisie's expression was to be any indication, he probably had.
"...What a foolish fool you are."
A/N: This one took a lot of work. Many parts of the narration in the original draft were honestly pretty poor and hard to follow, and I've given it a major facelift at certain parts, specially the Maisie section. I had initially intended to make this update a bit longer before beginning to adapt the document, but with all the work that it took and after noticing that the next sections also need a severe rework in places, I decided to fix and push those parts to this weekend, instead.
In any case, to the guest reviewers that have taken the time to share their thoughts, thank you very much! And to everyone else, I'll see you next time. :D