"If their purpose is of human origin, they shall fail."
***
A Neon Genesis Evangelion Fanfiction epic...
By Lactamaeon
& Anterrabae
of the Yri Gods
Omega Genesis Evangelion
The End of Eva
Chapter One: The New Genesis
***
I MET a seer,
Passing the hues and objects of the world,
The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense,
To glean eidolons.
-Walt Whitman, "Eidolons"
The red orb that was the sun sank slowly under surface of the translucent amber-colored
liquid. When the light touched the vast ocean of the liquid that man called LCL, it
shattered and flew in all directions. Refracting endlessly, it made it seem as if the
surface of the ocean danced with flames. The play of light on the surface lasted a long
moment of eternity, before the sun finally sank completely below the surface. Slow
waves moved forward in a seemingly endless progression, each one cresting a little
further down on the sloping shore as the liquid receded. They each broke with a
near-silent roar, the only sound in the silence of existence. The two figures lying on the
untouched beach slept, unaware of the ebb of the ocean or the swiftly-fading light that
played abut them.
Awareness came slowly to the young man who lay on the beach. He awoke by
increments, each giving slightly more clarity to the feeling of the sand against his bare
skin. The rough grains were irritating, but he couldn't summon the strength of mind to
move.
After long moments of slow waking, he realized that he had sand in his mouth, and tried
to spit it out. The gritty taste filled his mouth, and his tongue was dry. His fingers
clenched the sand reflexively as he remembered something - a little bit, only a fraction
of the whole. But the sand passed through his fingers, unwilling to be contained.
He turned his head, feeling the friction of sand against his cheek. She lay next to him,
as nude as he, her long auburn hair spreading out over her back like a veil of purity. He
thought he remembered her, but he wasn't yet sure of his own existence, and so
doubted his memory.
He lay in the sand watching her soft, steady breathing for a long time, before his own
eyes closed and he again found the solace of sleep.
***
He looked out into the semi-darkness before him, his gloved hands upon the opening
into the passageway. Some furious terrestrial upheaval had struck the man-made cave
of steel, cracking the walls and twisting the passageway, so that it ran at odd angles.
The floor was cluttered with the refuse of disaster.
He could not remember everything; only the beginning, and a little towards the end. He
could not even remember what it is he was after - only that it had been left down here,
hidden safely where few could find it. He continued onwards into the darkened
passageways, his hands and the flickering light of ceiling bulbs his only guide. The
passages twisted and turned, but his feet knew the way well.
To say he remembered the beginning was misleading. It had begun long before his own
time. He had merely done his own part to push things along.
He came to a set of doors finally and forced them open, grunting with the effort. He
remembered them opening without the touch of a human hand; but that had been before.
Bittersweet memories flooded him now, looking into the dark room, as if a flood gate had
been torn open. Memories of goals, betrayals, plots, and love. His mask, long in-place
and grown strong with use, allowed nothing to show on his face.
He stepped over the threshold, as he remembered doing before. Always they had
waited for him, red eyes glittering in the darkness, illuminating the depths of the amber
fluid in which they sat. The glow of their eyes was rarely enough to make out the
vaguest image of their bodies.
This time the sight which greeted his eyes was quite different. They waited for him as
always, but in a different manner. They lay strewn across the floor amidst jagged
shards of broken glass from the tanks lining the walls. Their red blood mixed with the
puddles of LCL spreading across the floor, making a dark, cloudy red-orange liquid that
made him feel sick when he looked at it. A sense of loss filled him, but he forced
himself deeper into the room, and it seemed as though he walked through a thick
gelatinous wall of emotion.
His mask would have prevented anyone from seeing the turmoil in his mind, had there
been anyone to see. He had hoped, and still did, that they were not all destroyed.
He walked down the rows of shattered tanks, clouded puddles, and broken bodies.
Some tanks were still intact, but the life-support had failed in various ways, and the
ones inside of them were as dead as the broken ones tossed about the room like some
god's once-living dolls.
He reached the end of the long double row and looked in the last tank on his left. There
was no external damage that he could see. The lights of the room flickered fitfully and
went out, plunging him into deep blackness.
He stared into the depths of the tank, trying to see the vaguest outline of one of them.
He had stepped back and started to turn away when her eyes opened.
In a mental frenzy, although outwardly as calm as when he had entered the room, he
tried to open the tank using the control pad, but it refused his commands. Giving up on
that, he moved to the tank itself. He tore at the latches, and a vague memory of
something like this having happened before came to him. He remembered a feeling of
intense heat, and the hiss of burning flesh.
He finished undoing the top of the tank and began to pull her out of it. He placed her
gently on the floor in front of the tank as her eyes fluttered closed again. The amber
fluid began to run off of her, leaving her skin sticky and her blue hair matted and wet.
He turned, looking at the devastation that made up the room, his mind in frantic disarray.
*Even with all that happened, I still have one of them* The thought echoing in his mind
had a desperate, mad edge to it. *All is not lost after all...*
A flicker of movement occurred at the edge of his vision, and he turned to look at another
nearby tank.
Twin points of red light looked out at him from the dark recesses of the tank, shining in
the blackness. The man allowed himself a smile as he stood up and went to the tank.
The beginnings of a plan had already sprouted in his mind by the time he had the
second one out.
***
The ruined city stood before them, stretching across the landscape like the giant
skeletal remains of some vast beast. Blackened shells of buildings crouched like
brooding hulks where once they had stretched toward the sky, the triumph of man and
science over all else. But victory had been an illusion, and short-lived as well.
The young boy and girl picked their way through the rubble, toward the city. They were
dressed in what rags they had been able to find along the way. Although the girl was
normally outspoken and precocious, she had remained silent at the other seeing her
nudity. The enormous weight of reality lay heavily on both of them.
The uneven gravel of the newly-made wasteland crunched beneath Shinji Ikari's feet as
he turned to look at his companion. Asuka Sohryu Langley was looking up at the city, an
uncharacteristic look of foreboding drawing her face down in a frown.
As they watched, the sun went down behind the city in a spectacular array of reds and
oranges, silhouetting the shattered buildings like broken teeth. The sun went, and left
the darkness as its legacy.
Looking at the city, a darker patch of black against the night sky, Asuka whispered
something so soft that Shinji barely caught it.
"Man fears the darkness; and so he scrapes away at the edges of it with fire..."
It was something a companion of theirs had said once, as the three of them sat on a
grassy ledge overlooking this very city, back when it had been the bastion of mankind
against the frequent invasions of the beings called Angels.
"There's no light here. Does that mean... there's no one left?" Asuka finished softly.
Shinji wished he could think of something comforting to say. Unfortunately, he had
never been very good at that sort of thing. "Well... I'm sure there must be someone..."
He trailed off.
Asuka started resolutely off towards the city, her long red hair trailing behind her. She
called back to Shinji without looking.
"Are you coming or not, Third Child?"
"Uh..." Shinji sighed, and hurried after her.
The two of them entered the ruins of Tokyo-3.
***
The slight blue-haired girl made her way over the uneven pile of slag metal and rock
quietly, careful not to dislodge any of the refuse. She crept over the miniature mountain
and stopped outside a window.
It was more of a hole now, lacking glass and shutters and curtains. It gaped in the side
of a fire-blackened house, here in what had been one of the residential sections of the
mighty Tokyo-3, the last fortress of mankind.
She peered inside, absently brushing a strand of hair away from her eyes. She saw
what she had been looking for; a young boy and girl. They were asleep, each on their
own small pile of rags in separate corners of the small room. Their faces and clothes
were streaked with ash and dirt. Neither of them seemed to be sleeping peacefully; they
both tossed and turned, disturbed by dreams.
The blue-haired girl settled back to watch, as she had been told.
***
Shinji Ikari woke with a start from a vague dream of dark oppressive figures crowding
around him, drowning him with the weight of their presence. Sweat ran down his face,
streaking the ash and dirt which stained it. He blinked the stinging perspiration out of
his eyes and glanced around the room.
Asuka lay sleeping fitfully in her corner. He had been surprised when she insisted they
sleep in the same room. She had said that as possibly the last two human beings on
Earth, they had to stick together. He didn't want to think about that possibility. There
had to be other people.
He stood up slowly, stretching the sleep out of his extremities. He did not see the
blue-maned head which ducked below the windowsill outside just as he stood.
He looked at the small, ruined room and sighed, running a hand through his grimy hair.
They had spent the last three days searching desperately for signs of other humans, but
had found nothing. They also had not found any running water. The stagnant water they
had been forced to drink left an acrid taste in the mouth even hours after drinking. They
had not been able to bring themselves to eat what food they had found.
Asuka had suggested that next they try to gain entrance to the Geofront; NERV had had
stores of food to last lifetimes, and reservoirs of water. If only they could get down
there.
Shinji shivered at the memory of what had happened there just before the end. Human
troops invading headquarters. Misato... He had found her necklace. She had given it to
him somehow just as she pushed him into the elevator. He only took it out when Asuka
wasn't looking. She would call him weak if she caught him crying over it.
He turned at the sound of yawning. Asuka stretched, the skin of her arms stained by
their searching through the devastation. She sat up, tossing aside the rags that she had
used as a blanket.
"Hey, Shinji. How are you feeling?"
The events of the Third Impact - at least that's what Shinji thought it had been - seemed
to have softened her cynicism and sense of superiority. They were both drifting, without
anything to cling to but each other.
"Um, alright I guess."
"As indecisive as ever, I see."
Well, he hadn't expected her to be a totally different person.
"Well." She stood up, knuckling her back. "We should get going soon. If we don't find
food and real water soon, we'll be as dead as everyone else seems to be."
Her blunt statement made Shinji flinch. Inside, she flinched too, and berated herself for
it. *Get used to the thought, dammit! We're the last ones, the only ones! So deal with
it.* She didn't allow her internal conflict to show, of course.
"I... guess so." Shinji couldn't summon much enthusiasm for crawling through the
shattered passageways of the underground Geofront. He didn't understand how Asuka
could force herself to keep going. He knew that if he had been on his own, he would
have given up and died a long time ago. Her fiery resolve drove them both through the
shattered remains of what had been. In Asuka he saw someone who never hesitated, a
fire that never wavered. She let no one see the secret weaknesses of her heart.
Asuka started off through the hole where the building's door had once been. For some
reason, when she didn't look back, Shinji felt a tremor of envy. He hurried out after her.
The sun was about midway through its ascent of the sky, shining down with a bright,
antiseptic heat that was not normal for that area of Japan. Or at least, it hadn't been
normal. Almost immediately, sweat stood out on Shinji's brow as he watched Asuka
begin to pick her way through the devastation.
His feet felt sticky in his shoes, and he found himself wishing desperately for enough
water to bathe. The refuse slid under him like loose shale, and he nearly lost his footing
as he and Asuka made their way down a miniature mountain of rubble.
"Do you have any idea where we should start looking?" he called to the girl, who was a
few yards ahead of him.
"Of course I do, dumkopf. Where the entrances were. We'll see if any of them are still
working."
"Oh." Shinji grimaced. Leave it to Asuka to remain in control in a situation like this.
And to see the obvious where he had missed it.
After a little over an hour, they finally found a set of doors which was broken open and
led into a section of passageway which looked safe to traverse. Shinji and Asuka were
both glad to get out of the glare of the sunlight, and into the cool shade of the Geofront.
They soon discovered an unforeseen problem, however.
"Uh... there's no lights in here..." Shinji trailed off, expecting his companion to yell at
him for being negative.
"Hmm. We should have expected this. Shinji, do you know where a maintenance
station is?"
He blinked. "Um, there should be one right around the bend. Why, do you know how to
turn the lights on?"
"No stupid, that's where they keep flashlights."
"Oh..."
Asuka wondered if it was her, or if her companion was getting dumber as the minutes
passed. Of course, when they got to the maintenance station, her suspicions were
verified.
Shinji walked up to the door and stood there staring at it.
He stepped back, and moved forward again.
Staring at the door, he did the same thing once more.
"It's not opening...isn't it supposed to?"
"Only when there's power. As there are no lights, I'd assume the power is out."
Somehow Asuka couldn't bring herself to call him stupid again.
Shinji smiled sheepishly. "Oh yeah, I forgot. Sorry."
"Come on," growled Asuka, impatience entering her voice. She moved up beside him
and began to strain at the door, trying to push it into its recess within the wall.
Her sweaty hands slid over the smooth surface of the metal door, finding no purchase.
She worked fruitlessly at opening the door with her bare hands before she realized that
Wonder Boy was simply staring at her. "Aren't you going to help me, Third Child?"
"Erp!" Shinji hurried forward to help the red-haired girl.
Beneath the hands of both of them the door moved a little, but the metal shrieked in
protest. They stopped long enough to give their ears a rest.
"Hmmm..." Shinji muttered to himself as he looked at the wall beside the door. He had
just noticed the cover that was labeled Manual Door Release. Grinning he lifted the
cover from the wall.
He put his hand into the recess and began to turn the crank inside, putting his back into
the effort. There was a clicking of gears, and slowly the door closed back on the little
part of it they had opened. Asuka stared.
"Oops, wrong way..." Shinji began to turn the crank the other way. The door slid open
slowly, the clicking of the gears quickening as it built up momentum. Asuka turned to
face him.
"How long have you known about that and not told me? You let me make a fool of myself
while you knew that thing was there?" The Second Child stood with her hands on her
hips, glaring at Shinji.
***
The girl with blue hair watched unseen as the boy and girl argued, the boy cringing away
as the girl swung her arms, shouting at him about... something. She wasn't close
enough to make out their words. She reflected inwardly that he might be upset about
that, but she couldn't risk being seen. He himself had told her that; there was still too
much to be done.
***
Shinji cringed as Asuka's anger broke over him like a tsunami. "Sorry, sorry, I didn't
mean to... I just noticed a second ago, that's all!"
Asuka stopped short, her eyes narrowing. "Has anyone ever told you that you whimper
like a beaten dog?" Shinji just looked at her, and she snorted and shook her head.
"You know, you'd almost be an alright guy if you weren't so pathetic - so why don't you
stop?" Suddenly, as though afraid of what she had just said, she turned around and
walked into the maintenance station, looking for flashlights.
She returned in a few minutes with a pair of them. "Here," She threw one to him, "let's
hold off on using that one for as long as possible."
As she switched hers on, a bright column of artificial light spread from its single eye,
and the two of them moved off into the darkened corridors. The blue haired shadow
followed unseen.
None of them noticed the camera that tracked their movements from up above.
***
The darkened tunnels of the Geofront were eerie in their emptiness. Not even bodies
were left after the massacre at NERV Headquarters. Shinji couldn't keep from shivering
as he recalled everyone - all the people he had known and worked with... and perhaps
come to love, in his own peculiar fashion - dying, or turning into the formless goo that
was LCL. Or both.
Their steps rang hollow on the metal floors, twisted or rent in places by an explosion or
some terrestrial upheaval. It was easy to believe that there was no one else in the
world when you were alone the way Shinji was.
*But Asuka's here...* Shinji recalled something he had once said to Misato. 'I don't
mind living alone. I'm alone anyway...' Somehow he had gone back to believing he was
alone even when he was with someone else.
He glanced over at his companion. Asuka walked resolutely onward, her long red hair,
appearing a dark mahogany in the gloom, trailing behind her. Quickly, before she could
catch him looking at her, he turned forward once again. *But Asuka is here. I'm not
alone.*
He didn't see why the thought would bring him any comfort - after all, they were probably
the last humans alive on earth - but it did.
He walked through the hallways a little more confidently, drawing strength from the fact
that he was not alone.
***
Asuka fought back her own uneasiness and self-doubt with a tremendous effort of will.
*I am Asuka Langley Sohryu, and I am not going to give up. Not now, not ever. Even if
we are the last ones left...*
She screamed defiantly at her fear within her own mind. Always it had been there, and
always she had fought it this way. Nagging ideas of her own lack of worth had always
eaten at her, but she had always been stronger. Only now, it was harder to turn the
fears aside. The weight of her responsibility pulled down at her like hands from the
grave, and left her little energy with which to fight her own anxiety.
*What are you worth, when your mother abandoned you? You're just a doll, after all.*
It was harder to fight when you were alone.
***
Dust and destruction all around her, ruin spreading in every direction. Crumbling towers
of steel stretched upwards like skeletal hands, clutching at the sky. The hot breeze blew
gusts of fine, gray dust against her skin, stinging.
It was an area mostly free of the ubiquitous destruction, near the center of what had
been Tokyo-3. The last fortress of mankind. The gray dust was everywhere, though,
seeming to absorb the light of the sun, so that despite the desert-like heat it was
gloomy.
It had been a park. Rebuilt every time it was damaged by the battles with the Angels, it
had been a retreat for those living in this city which was perpetually on the edge of
annihilation. Now it was an empty wasteland of dust.
She sat in the center of it, the dust all around her, and her fingers trailed slowly along
the ground in a never-ending pattern.
***
"Um, so where do you think we should go to find water?" Shinji asked softly, his voice
breaking the silence as well as Asuka's inner conflict.
Asuka turned to him, frowning. "Where do you think? Terminal Dogma's got the most
shielding, so I doubt much debris got down that far. That's where we'll check first."
Mentally Shinji shuddered at the memory of Terminal Dogma and what it housed. As the
Third Impact had been unsuccessful he wondered...
"Do you think Adam will still be down there? I mean, the Third Impact didn't happen, so
shouldn't he still be there to fulfill his purpose?" His voice gave quavering tangibility
to his thoughts.
Asuka grimaced at the thought. "Let's hope not." Her face was grim as she spoke.
Thinking of the crucified Angel brought back memories that she would rather were left
buried. *Let's hope to God not.*
Shinji noticed that ahead of them the tunnel, which had been sloping slightly upwards for
a little bit now, shown slightly brighter, almost as if it had a light at its far end. But that
wasn't possible; after all, the power was out.
Asuka and Shinji, woman and man, the last humans and the first, stumbled out into the
broken sunlight of the Geofront.
It rose around them in a giant hemisphere, enclosing the world like a shattered sky.
Shinji's amazement at this monument to mankind's ingenuity and engineering ability
remained, and he was reminded of the first time he ever saw it. In an awed kind of
nostalgia, he leaned his head back and looked over the walls, his eyes traveling to the
apex where, like man-made imitations of the stalactites found in a natural cavern, hung
the buildings that had once housed the multitudes who lived and worked in Tokyo-3.
All over the dome, the cracks and holes left by the invading UN forces allowed sunlight
to pour in, lighting the interior of the dome as motes of dust danced eerily down the long
promenades of brightness, and showing the only undamaged building. The sunlight
broke apart on the hard, imposing edges of the towering pyramid that had once housed
the Headquarters of his father's organization, the world's savior and destroyer. NERV.
The forests that had once covered the floors of the Geofront were destroyed, trees
flattened and torn up, as though some giant child had become upset while sitting alone,
throwing and stomping on the trees in anger.
The lakes, once colored the clearest sparkling blue, were now devoid of life, and held
water the same color as the LCL that he had so often been submerged in when piloting
his Eva.
***
As Asuka Langley Sohryu watched her companion gaze slowly around the Geofront, she
wondered if he saw it as it had once been, or as it was now. She had to admit that it had
looked much better back before the UN came. The eerie columns of light and vast,
pregnant silence made her shiver in trepidation.
"Come on, Shinji. Let's go visit Terminal Dogma. Time enough to enjoy the sights later,
after we've had some food and water." Turning she walked slowly towards the black
maw that was a door leading into the pyramid that had once been NERV Headquarters.
She didn't glance back over her shoulder to see if he was following her, and Shinji
hurried after her, afraid of being left alone in the cavernous Geofront.
It didn't take them too long to make their way down to the level which housed Terminal
Dogma. The elevators weren't working, so Asuka decided that they would use the
ventilation ducts, and then proceed on foot the rest of the way. The cramped area of the
air shafts made her remember the last time they had been without power in NERV.
She could hardly believe she had been such an idiot; baiting Shinji into look up her skirt.
*Being the last surviving humans sure puts things in perspective,* she thought wryly.
The air inside the ducts was hot and stifling, and crawling through the uncomfortable
space was tiring. By the time they reached the bottom level, they were both winded,
sweaty, and dirty.
The Command Center was dark and empty. The only light came from two glowing
consoles for the MAGI; apparently one of them was no longer functioning. Asuka thought
it was Melchior, but she wasn't sure.
Shinji looked around the darkened room. "Uh, Asuka..."
She frowned. He had broken her concentration. "What? I was trying to remember
where the entrance was, dumkopf!"
"Oh... I was just going to say that I don't know how to get down there without an Eva."
Asuka sighed. He was at least trying to help; she couldn't really get angry at him.
"Doesn't your father's stupid little elevator thing go down there?"
Shinji frowned slightly. "I don't know... I guess it probably does. I never really thought
about it."
Asuka smiled determinedly. "Well then, let's check it out. Come on, Shin-chan."
***
*Shin-chan... I haven't been called that in a while.* It seemed almost like Asuka was
back to her old self. The thought comforted him a little. He wasn't used to seeing the
headstrong girl doubting herself.
The elevator wasn't too hard to find, and luckily the elevator itself was stopped on the
floor they were looking for. After struggling to open the safety door with a metal bar they
had found amongst the debris, the two were carefully shimmying their way down the
cramped shaft.
The strain of holding himself up in the vertical passage ensured that by the time Shinji
gratefully let himself drop to the ground, he was weak with the effort. Asuka appeared
only mildly better off.
Before them loomed the gigantic opening whose threshold Shinji had crossed only twice
before; the Gates of Heaven. The doors themselves were tossed onto the floor of the
gigantic chamber, rent as though by claws.
Shinji was again overwhelmed by the supernatural awe which hung about the gates, as
though fashioned by hands older than time. Beyond the threshold stretched the
chamber known as Terminal Dogma. The sea of LCL which had once filled the room was
gone now, leaving only the forlorn column of land in the center from which thrust the
titanic cross.
The cross too was empty, save for a small, insignificant-looking piece of twisted metal
standing out from it like a nail.
Asuka gasped.
"The Lance of Longinus...?"
***
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
Anterrabae (aka feithecontact): Well, this is our little project... what do you think of it so
far? It sure did take longer than I expected to finish this first chapter. If anyone's
worried by my working on this project; yes, I am still writing Landscape of the Soul. In
fact, over the next who knows how many months I'm going to be working on more
projects than I can count. Hopefully I'll manage to keep my sanity! ^_^
Upcoming works:
Short Eva story, A Tokyo-3 April Fool's Day (moments from when this is posted)
Original short story The Stream (sometime reasonably soon).
Lactamaeon (aka Fury's Forge): Or that's what I hope to call myself soon enough. I
think Anterrabae said everything that needed to be said already. I just want to brag and
point out that currently I'm working on some seven projects at once where he is only
working on four. We plan to continue working on this together, but have recently come
up with an idea that involves all the Yri Gods mentioned in our bio and then some. So,
in the immediate future we'll be concentrating on that one.
Upcoming works:
Original work, Destiny of Blades. (To be released sometime this century *fingers
crossed*)
Untitled Eva (Who knows? *shrugs*)
Anterrabae: Don't listen to him about the 7:4; he's just an old fuddy-duddy. -_^
General: Coming soon, to a fanfiction.net near you!! Yri Gods collaborative work:
Chronicles of Tantaskwa! Massive anime crossover comedy. If you miss it, Shampoo
will find out where you live and smack you with a bonbouri! ^_^
***
A Neon Genesis Evangelion Fanfiction epic...
By Lactamaeon
& Anterrabae
of the Yri Gods
Omega Genesis Evangelion
The End of Eva
Chapter One: The New Genesis
***
I MET a seer,
Passing the hues and objects of the world,
The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense,
To glean eidolons.
-Walt Whitman, "Eidolons"
The red orb that was the sun sank slowly under surface of the translucent amber-colored
liquid. When the light touched the vast ocean of the liquid that man called LCL, it
shattered and flew in all directions. Refracting endlessly, it made it seem as if the
surface of the ocean danced with flames. The play of light on the surface lasted a long
moment of eternity, before the sun finally sank completely below the surface. Slow
waves moved forward in a seemingly endless progression, each one cresting a little
further down on the sloping shore as the liquid receded. They each broke with a
near-silent roar, the only sound in the silence of existence. The two figures lying on the
untouched beach slept, unaware of the ebb of the ocean or the swiftly-fading light that
played abut them.
Awareness came slowly to the young man who lay on the beach. He awoke by
increments, each giving slightly more clarity to the feeling of the sand against his bare
skin. The rough grains were irritating, but he couldn't summon the strength of mind to
move.
After long moments of slow waking, he realized that he had sand in his mouth, and tried
to spit it out. The gritty taste filled his mouth, and his tongue was dry. His fingers
clenched the sand reflexively as he remembered something - a little bit, only a fraction
of the whole. But the sand passed through his fingers, unwilling to be contained.
He turned his head, feeling the friction of sand against his cheek. She lay next to him,
as nude as he, her long auburn hair spreading out over her back like a veil of purity. He
thought he remembered her, but he wasn't yet sure of his own existence, and so
doubted his memory.
He lay in the sand watching her soft, steady breathing for a long time, before his own
eyes closed and he again found the solace of sleep.
***
He looked out into the semi-darkness before him, his gloved hands upon the opening
into the passageway. Some furious terrestrial upheaval had struck the man-made cave
of steel, cracking the walls and twisting the passageway, so that it ran at odd angles.
The floor was cluttered with the refuse of disaster.
He could not remember everything; only the beginning, and a little towards the end. He
could not even remember what it is he was after - only that it had been left down here,
hidden safely where few could find it. He continued onwards into the darkened
passageways, his hands and the flickering light of ceiling bulbs his only guide. The
passages twisted and turned, but his feet knew the way well.
To say he remembered the beginning was misleading. It had begun long before his own
time. He had merely done his own part to push things along.
He came to a set of doors finally and forced them open, grunting with the effort. He
remembered them opening without the touch of a human hand; but that had been before.
Bittersweet memories flooded him now, looking into the dark room, as if a flood gate had
been torn open. Memories of goals, betrayals, plots, and love. His mask, long in-place
and grown strong with use, allowed nothing to show on his face.
He stepped over the threshold, as he remembered doing before. Always they had
waited for him, red eyes glittering in the darkness, illuminating the depths of the amber
fluid in which they sat. The glow of their eyes was rarely enough to make out the
vaguest image of their bodies.
This time the sight which greeted his eyes was quite different. They waited for him as
always, but in a different manner. They lay strewn across the floor amidst jagged
shards of broken glass from the tanks lining the walls. Their red blood mixed with the
puddles of LCL spreading across the floor, making a dark, cloudy red-orange liquid that
made him feel sick when he looked at it. A sense of loss filled him, but he forced
himself deeper into the room, and it seemed as though he walked through a thick
gelatinous wall of emotion.
His mask would have prevented anyone from seeing the turmoil in his mind, had there
been anyone to see. He had hoped, and still did, that they were not all destroyed.
He walked down the rows of shattered tanks, clouded puddles, and broken bodies.
Some tanks were still intact, but the life-support had failed in various ways, and the
ones inside of them were as dead as the broken ones tossed about the room like some
god's once-living dolls.
He reached the end of the long double row and looked in the last tank on his left. There
was no external damage that he could see. The lights of the room flickered fitfully and
went out, plunging him into deep blackness.
He stared into the depths of the tank, trying to see the vaguest outline of one of them.
He had stepped back and started to turn away when her eyes opened.
In a mental frenzy, although outwardly as calm as when he had entered the room, he
tried to open the tank using the control pad, but it refused his commands. Giving up on
that, he moved to the tank itself. He tore at the latches, and a vague memory of
something like this having happened before came to him. He remembered a feeling of
intense heat, and the hiss of burning flesh.
He finished undoing the top of the tank and began to pull her out of it. He placed her
gently on the floor in front of the tank as her eyes fluttered closed again. The amber
fluid began to run off of her, leaving her skin sticky and her blue hair matted and wet.
He turned, looking at the devastation that made up the room, his mind in frantic disarray.
*Even with all that happened, I still have one of them* The thought echoing in his mind
had a desperate, mad edge to it. *All is not lost after all...*
A flicker of movement occurred at the edge of his vision, and he turned to look at another
nearby tank.
Twin points of red light looked out at him from the dark recesses of the tank, shining in
the blackness. The man allowed himself a smile as he stood up and went to the tank.
The beginnings of a plan had already sprouted in his mind by the time he had the
second one out.
***
The ruined city stood before them, stretching across the landscape like the giant
skeletal remains of some vast beast. Blackened shells of buildings crouched like
brooding hulks where once they had stretched toward the sky, the triumph of man and
science over all else. But victory had been an illusion, and short-lived as well.
The young boy and girl picked their way through the rubble, toward the city. They were
dressed in what rags they had been able to find along the way. Although the girl was
normally outspoken and precocious, she had remained silent at the other seeing her
nudity. The enormous weight of reality lay heavily on both of them.
The uneven gravel of the newly-made wasteland crunched beneath Shinji Ikari's feet as
he turned to look at his companion. Asuka Sohryu Langley was looking up at the city, an
uncharacteristic look of foreboding drawing her face down in a frown.
As they watched, the sun went down behind the city in a spectacular array of reds and
oranges, silhouetting the shattered buildings like broken teeth. The sun went, and left
the darkness as its legacy.
Looking at the city, a darker patch of black against the night sky, Asuka whispered
something so soft that Shinji barely caught it.
"Man fears the darkness; and so he scrapes away at the edges of it with fire..."
It was something a companion of theirs had said once, as the three of them sat on a
grassy ledge overlooking this very city, back when it had been the bastion of mankind
against the frequent invasions of the beings called Angels.
"There's no light here. Does that mean... there's no one left?" Asuka finished softly.
Shinji wished he could think of something comforting to say. Unfortunately, he had
never been very good at that sort of thing. "Well... I'm sure there must be someone..."
He trailed off.
Asuka started resolutely off towards the city, her long red hair trailing behind her. She
called back to Shinji without looking.
"Are you coming or not, Third Child?"
"Uh..." Shinji sighed, and hurried after her.
The two of them entered the ruins of Tokyo-3.
***
The slight blue-haired girl made her way over the uneven pile of slag metal and rock
quietly, careful not to dislodge any of the refuse. She crept over the miniature mountain
and stopped outside a window.
It was more of a hole now, lacking glass and shutters and curtains. It gaped in the side
of a fire-blackened house, here in what had been one of the residential sections of the
mighty Tokyo-3, the last fortress of mankind.
She peered inside, absently brushing a strand of hair away from her eyes. She saw
what she had been looking for; a young boy and girl. They were asleep, each on their
own small pile of rags in separate corners of the small room. Their faces and clothes
were streaked with ash and dirt. Neither of them seemed to be sleeping peacefully; they
both tossed and turned, disturbed by dreams.
The blue-haired girl settled back to watch, as she had been told.
***
Shinji Ikari woke with a start from a vague dream of dark oppressive figures crowding
around him, drowning him with the weight of their presence. Sweat ran down his face,
streaking the ash and dirt which stained it. He blinked the stinging perspiration out of
his eyes and glanced around the room.
Asuka lay sleeping fitfully in her corner. He had been surprised when she insisted they
sleep in the same room. She had said that as possibly the last two human beings on
Earth, they had to stick together. He didn't want to think about that possibility. There
had to be other people.
He stood up slowly, stretching the sleep out of his extremities. He did not see the
blue-maned head which ducked below the windowsill outside just as he stood.
He looked at the small, ruined room and sighed, running a hand through his grimy hair.
They had spent the last three days searching desperately for signs of other humans, but
had found nothing. They also had not found any running water. The stagnant water they
had been forced to drink left an acrid taste in the mouth even hours after drinking. They
had not been able to bring themselves to eat what food they had found.
Asuka had suggested that next they try to gain entrance to the Geofront; NERV had had
stores of food to last lifetimes, and reservoirs of water. If only they could get down
there.
Shinji shivered at the memory of what had happened there just before the end. Human
troops invading headquarters. Misato... He had found her necklace. She had given it to
him somehow just as she pushed him into the elevator. He only took it out when Asuka
wasn't looking. She would call him weak if she caught him crying over it.
He turned at the sound of yawning. Asuka stretched, the skin of her arms stained by
their searching through the devastation. She sat up, tossing aside the rags that she had
used as a blanket.
"Hey, Shinji. How are you feeling?"
The events of the Third Impact - at least that's what Shinji thought it had been - seemed
to have softened her cynicism and sense of superiority. They were both drifting, without
anything to cling to but each other.
"Um, alright I guess."
"As indecisive as ever, I see."
Well, he hadn't expected her to be a totally different person.
"Well." She stood up, knuckling her back. "We should get going soon. If we don't find
food and real water soon, we'll be as dead as everyone else seems to be."
Her blunt statement made Shinji flinch. Inside, she flinched too, and berated herself for
it. *Get used to the thought, dammit! We're the last ones, the only ones! So deal with
it.* She didn't allow her internal conflict to show, of course.
"I... guess so." Shinji couldn't summon much enthusiasm for crawling through the
shattered passageways of the underground Geofront. He didn't understand how Asuka
could force herself to keep going. He knew that if he had been on his own, he would
have given up and died a long time ago. Her fiery resolve drove them both through the
shattered remains of what had been. In Asuka he saw someone who never hesitated, a
fire that never wavered. She let no one see the secret weaknesses of her heart.
Asuka started off through the hole where the building's door had once been. For some
reason, when she didn't look back, Shinji felt a tremor of envy. He hurried out after her.
The sun was about midway through its ascent of the sky, shining down with a bright,
antiseptic heat that was not normal for that area of Japan. Or at least, it hadn't been
normal. Almost immediately, sweat stood out on Shinji's brow as he watched Asuka
begin to pick her way through the devastation.
His feet felt sticky in his shoes, and he found himself wishing desperately for enough
water to bathe. The refuse slid under him like loose shale, and he nearly lost his footing
as he and Asuka made their way down a miniature mountain of rubble.
"Do you have any idea where we should start looking?" he called to the girl, who was a
few yards ahead of him.
"Of course I do, dumkopf. Where the entrances were. We'll see if any of them are still
working."
"Oh." Shinji grimaced. Leave it to Asuka to remain in control in a situation like this.
And to see the obvious where he had missed it.
After a little over an hour, they finally found a set of doors which was broken open and
led into a section of passageway which looked safe to traverse. Shinji and Asuka were
both glad to get out of the glare of the sunlight, and into the cool shade of the Geofront.
They soon discovered an unforeseen problem, however.
"Uh... there's no lights in here..." Shinji trailed off, expecting his companion to yell at
him for being negative.
"Hmm. We should have expected this. Shinji, do you know where a maintenance
station is?"
He blinked. "Um, there should be one right around the bend. Why, do you know how to
turn the lights on?"
"No stupid, that's where they keep flashlights."
"Oh..."
Asuka wondered if it was her, or if her companion was getting dumber as the minutes
passed. Of course, when they got to the maintenance station, her suspicions were
verified.
Shinji walked up to the door and stood there staring at it.
He stepped back, and moved forward again.
Staring at the door, he did the same thing once more.
"It's not opening...isn't it supposed to?"
"Only when there's power. As there are no lights, I'd assume the power is out."
Somehow Asuka couldn't bring herself to call him stupid again.
Shinji smiled sheepishly. "Oh yeah, I forgot. Sorry."
"Come on," growled Asuka, impatience entering her voice. She moved up beside him
and began to strain at the door, trying to push it into its recess within the wall.
Her sweaty hands slid over the smooth surface of the metal door, finding no purchase.
She worked fruitlessly at opening the door with her bare hands before she realized that
Wonder Boy was simply staring at her. "Aren't you going to help me, Third Child?"
"Erp!" Shinji hurried forward to help the red-haired girl.
Beneath the hands of both of them the door moved a little, but the metal shrieked in
protest. They stopped long enough to give their ears a rest.
"Hmmm..." Shinji muttered to himself as he looked at the wall beside the door. He had
just noticed the cover that was labeled Manual Door Release. Grinning he lifted the
cover from the wall.
He put his hand into the recess and began to turn the crank inside, putting his back into
the effort. There was a clicking of gears, and slowly the door closed back on the little
part of it they had opened. Asuka stared.
"Oops, wrong way..." Shinji began to turn the crank the other way. The door slid open
slowly, the clicking of the gears quickening as it built up momentum. Asuka turned to
face him.
"How long have you known about that and not told me? You let me make a fool of myself
while you knew that thing was there?" The Second Child stood with her hands on her
hips, glaring at Shinji.
***
The girl with blue hair watched unseen as the boy and girl argued, the boy cringing away
as the girl swung her arms, shouting at him about... something. She wasn't close
enough to make out their words. She reflected inwardly that he might be upset about
that, but she couldn't risk being seen. He himself had told her that; there was still too
much to be done.
***
Shinji cringed as Asuka's anger broke over him like a tsunami. "Sorry, sorry, I didn't
mean to... I just noticed a second ago, that's all!"
Asuka stopped short, her eyes narrowing. "Has anyone ever told you that you whimper
like a beaten dog?" Shinji just looked at her, and she snorted and shook her head.
"You know, you'd almost be an alright guy if you weren't so pathetic - so why don't you
stop?" Suddenly, as though afraid of what she had just said, she turned around and
walked into the maintenance station, looking for flashlights.
She returned in a few minutes with a pair of them. "Here," She threw one to him, "let's
hold off on using that one for as long as possible."
As she switched hers on, a bright column of artificial light spread from its single eye,
and the two of them moved off into the darkened corridors. The blue haired shadow
followed unseen.
None of them noticed the camera that tracked their movements from up above.
***
The darkened tunnels of the Geofront were eerie in their emptiness. Not even bodies
were left after the massacre at NERV Headquarters. Shinji couldn't keep from shivering
as he recalled everyone - all the people he had known and worked with... and perhaps
come to love, in his own peculiar fashion - dying, or turning into the formless goo that
was LCL. Or both.
Their steps rang hollow on the metal floors, twisted or rent in places by an explosion or
some terrestrial upheaval. It was easy to believe that there was no one else in the
world when you were alone the way Shinji was.
*But Asuka's here...* Shinji recalled something he had once said to Misato. 'I don't
mind living alone. I'm alone anyway...' Somehow he had gone back to believing he was
alone even when he was with someone else.
He glanced over at his companion. Asuka walked resolutely onward, her long red hair,
appearing a dark mahogany in the gloom, trailing behind her. Quickly, before she could
catch him looking at her, he turned forward once again. *But Asuka is here. I'm not
alone.*
He didn't see why the thought would bring him any comfort - after all, they were probably
the last humans alive on earth - but it did.
He walked through the hallways a little more confidently, drawing strength from the fact
that he was not alone.
***
Asuka fought back her own uneasiness and self-doubt with a tremendous effort of will.
*I am Asuka Langley Sohryu, and I am not going to give up. Not now, not ever. Even if
we are the last ones left...*
She screamed defiantly at her fear within her own mind. Always it had been there, and
always she had fought it this way. Nagging ideas of her own lack of worth had always
eaten at her, but she had always been stronger. Only now, it was harder to turn the
fears aside. The weight of her responsibility pulled down at her like hands from the
grave, and left her little energy with which to fight her own anxiety.
*What are you worth, when your mother abandoned you? You're just a doll, after all.*
It was harder to fight when you were alone.
***
Dust and destruction all around her, ruin spreading in every direction. Crumbling towers
of steel stretched upwards like skeletal hands, clutching at the sky. The hot breeze blew
gusts of fine, gray dust against her skin, stinging.
It was an area mostly free of the ubiquitous destruction, near the center of what had
been Tokyo-3. The last fortress of mankind. The gray dust was everywhere, though,
seeming to absorb the light of the sun, so that despite the desert-like heat it was
gloomy.
It had been a park. Rebuilt every time it was damaged by the battles with the Angels, it
had been a retreat for those living in this city which was perpetually on the edge of
annihilation. Now it was an empty wasteland of dust.
She sat in the center of it, the dust all around her, and her fingers trailed slowly along
the ground in a never-ending pattern.
***
"Um, so where do you think we should go to find water?" Shinji asked softly, his voice
breaking the silence as well as Asuka's inner conflict.
Asuka turned to him, frowning. "Where do you think? Terminal Dogma's got the most
shielding, so I doubt much debris got down that far. That's where we'll check first."
Mentally Shinji shuddered at the memory of Terminal Dogma and what it housed. As the
Third Impact had been unsuccessful he wondered...
"Do you think Adam will still be down there? I mean, the Third Impact didn't happen, so
shouldn't he still be there to fulfill his purpose?" His voice gave quavering tangibility
to his thoughts.
Asuka grimaced at the thought. "Let's hope not." Her face was grim as she spoke.
Thinking of the crucified Angel brought back memories that she would rather were left
buried. *Let's hope to God not.*
Shinji noticed that ahead of them the tunnel, which had been sloping slightly upwards for
a little bit now, shown slightly brighter, almost as if it had a light at its far end. But that
wasn't possible; after all, the power was out.
Asuka and Shinji, woman and man, the last humans and the first, stumbled out into the
broken sunlight of the Geofront.
It rose around them in a giant hemisphere, enclosing the world like a shattered sky.
Shinji's amazement at this monument to mankind's ingenuity and engineering ability
remained, and he was reminded of the first time he ever saw it. In an awed kind of
nostalgia, he leaned his head back and looked over the walls, his eyes traveling to the
apex where, like man-made imitations of the stalactites found in a natural cavern, hung
the buildings that had once housed the multitudes who lived and worked in Tokyo-3.
All over the dome, the cracks and holes left by the invading UN forces allowed sunlight
to pour in, lighting the interior of the dome as motes of dust danced eerily down the long
promenades of brightness, and showing the only undamaged building. The sunlight
broke apart on the hard, imposing edges of the towering pyramid that had once housed
the Headquarters of his father's organization, the world's savior and destroyer. NERV.
The forests that had once covered the floors of the Geofront were destroyed, trees
flattened and torn up, as though some giant child had become upset while sitting alone,
throwing and stomping on the trees in anger.
The lakes, once colored the clearest sparkling blue, were now devoid of life, and held
water the same color as the LCL that he had so often been submerged in when piloting
his Eva.
***
As Asuka Langley Sohryu watched her companion gaze slowly around the Geofront, she
wondered if he saw it as it had once been, or as it was now. She had to admit that it had
looked much better back before the UN came. The eerie columns of light and vast,
pregnant silence made her shiver in trepidation.
"Come on, Shinji. Let's go visit Terminal Dogma. Time enough to enjoy the sights later,
after we've had some food and water." Turning she walked slowly towards the black
maw that was a door leading into the pyramid that had once been NERV Headquarters.
She didn't glance back over her shoulder to see if he was following her, and Shinji
hurried after her, afraid of being left alone in the cavernous Geofront.
It didn't take them too long to make their way down to the level which housed Terminal
Dogma. The elevators weren't working, so Asuka decided that they would use the
ventilation ducts, and then proceed on foot the rest of the way. The cramped area of the
air shafts made her remember the last time they had been without power in NERV.
She could hardly believe she had been such an idiot; baiting Shinji into look up her skirt.
*Being the last surviving humans sure puts things in perspective,* she thought wryly.
The air inside the ducts was hot and stifling, and crawling through the uncomfortable
space was tiring. By the time they reached the bottom level, they were both winded,
sweaty, and dirty.
The Command Center was dark and empty. The only light came from two glowing
consoles for the MAGI; apparently one of them was no longer functioning. Asuka thought
it was Melchior, but she wasn't sure.
Shinji looked around the darkened room. "Uh, Asuka..."
She frowned. He had broken her concentration. "What? I was trying to remember
where the entrance was, dumkopf!"
"Oh... I was just going to say that I don't know how to get down there without an Eva."
Asuka sighed. He was at least trying to help; she couldn't really get angry at him.
"Doesn't your father's stupid little elevator thing go down there?"
Shinji frowned slightly. "I don't know... I guess it probably does. I never really thought
about it."
Asuka smiled determinedly. "Well then, let's check it out. Come on, Shin-chan."
***
*Shin-chan... I haven't been called that in a while.* It seemed almost like Asuka was
back to her old self. The thought comforted him a little. He wasn't used to seeing the
headstrong girl doubting herself.
The elevator wasn't too hard to find, and luckily the elevator itself was stopped on the
floor they were looking for. After struggling to open the safety door with a metal bar they
had found amongst the debris, the two were carefully shimmying their way down the
cramped shaft.
The strain of holding himself up in the vertical passage ensured that by the time Shinji
gratefully let himself drop to the ground, he was weak with the effort. Asuka appeared
only mildly better off.
Before them loomed the gigantic opening whose threshold Shinji had crossed only twice
before; the Gates of Heaven. The doors themselves were tossed onto the floor of the
gigantic chamber, rent as though by claws.
Shinji was again overwhelmed by the supernatural awe which hung about the gates, as
though fashioned by hands older than time. Beyond the threshold stretched the
chamber known as Terminal Dogma. The sea of LCL which had once filled the room was
gone now, leaving only the forlorn column of land in the center from which thrust the
titanic cross.
The cross too was empty, save for a small, insignificant-looking piece of twisted metal
standing out from it like a nail.
Asuka gasped.
"The Lance of Longinus...?"
***
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
Anterrabae (aka feithecontact): Well, this is our little project... what do you think of it so
far? It sure did take longer than I expected to finish this first chapter. If anyone's
worried by my working on this project; yes, I am still writing Landscape of the Soul. In
fact, over the next who knows how many months I'm going to be working on more
projects than I can count. Hopefully I'll manage to keep my sanity! ^_^
Upcoming works:
Short Eva story, A Tokyo-3 April Fool's Day (moments from when this is posted)
Original short story The Stream (sometime reasonably soon).
Lactamaeon (aka Fury's Forge): Or that's what I hope to call myself soon enough. I
think Anterrabae said everything that needed to be said already. I just want to brag and
point out that currently I'm working on some seven projects at once where he is only
working on four. We plan to continue working on this together, but have recently come
up with an idea that involves all the Yri Gods mentioned in our bio and then some. So,
in the immediate future we'll be concentrating on that one.
Upcoming works:
Original work, Destiny of Blades. (To be released sometime this century *fingers
crossed*)
Untitled Eva (Who knows? *shrugs*)
Anterrabae: Don't listen to him about the 7:4; he's just an old fuddy-duddy. -_^
General: Coming soon, to a fanfiction.net near you!! Yri Gods collaborative work:
Chronicles of Tantaskwa! Massive anime crossover comedy. If you miss it, Shampoo
will find out where you live and smack you with a bonbouri! ^_^