Avatar of Moonlight

by KendrixTermina

"In the beginning, there was the Light. And the light was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld her glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Mother,) full of grace and truth. She was in the world, and the world was made by her, and the world knew her not. She came unto her own, and her own received her not." Rei-centric

23. Shame

(Shame)

One might have thought that the loss of EVA 02's left leg to the volcanic depths would have been a significant setback, but in these earlier days of the war, NERV still had access to much of its once-ample stockpiles of spare parts, many of which were store away in deep underground vats.

The production model was a weapon especially designed for combat – every part of it was replaceable, extending, ultimately, even to us pilots.

The core unit was the difficult part to grow, and, if destroyed, would render an EVA the world's most expensive pile of dead meat, but there were mechanisms to clip in a replacement limb, just as there had been one to jettison it when its armor was nicked during the battle.

Hence it was expected that EVA 00's recently concluded upgrade to full production model specs would significantly cut down on future repair times.

EVA 01, too, had suffered a few molten armor plates during her unplanned plunge into the caldera, so the technicians had had their hands full over the last few days -

Yet now, their work was concluded, which means that the EVAs would need testing to ensure that their operational readiness had been sufficiently restored.

Thus, the currently active pilots – all three of us – were to seek out NERV headquarters so that we might do our part in this.

We met up in the afternoon at a tram station near one of the access points in the inner city.

We didn't know it yet, but, at this point, a city-wide blackout had already swept the entire metropolitan area of Neo Tokyo-3.

A later investigation would rule it sabotage, intended, perhaps, to reveal something about the architecture of NERV headquarters in the process of watching the lights be turned back on – from the government to the military to a warning shot from SEELE's allies on account of them beginning to get wise to Commander Ikari's disloyalty, the number of possible suspects was long, and in the wake of the incident, we would see much tightening of the security protocols.

But as of then, we knew naught of this.

We were simply walking down the sidewalk, making our way to the access point as we had many times before. As of recently, it had become a fixture of the proceedings for Ikari-kun and myself to find the Second Child strutting proudly in front of us, for she could not bear to let us be her equals even in something as simple as the order in which we were walking – though granted, she also simply had more energy than us and may have grown impatient of our quiet and somber marches.

Proud as though she was of her role as a pilot, she was not fond of the routine tests at all, and often bemoaned their necessity:

"When there's no angels coming, all we do are these stupid experiments – what a shame!"

"I dunno…" mumbled Ikari-kun, "I think I'd be glad if we could have just a few more peaceful days..." – I had not taken a closer look at his face before, but when he spoke, I could not help but note that his tone was aimless and sullen. "If it's just a test, that means we won't have to fight and kill living things. "

He was often given to melancholy of course, but as of late it had become more frequent to find him in at least a moderately good mood when we all set out together.

His current state was a marked departure from the tendency of the last few days…

And I was not the only mode who noticed.

The second made halt, straight in his path, again arranging affairs so that others were forced to acknowledge her first. Again seeking out the purported source of her irritation rather than simply letting him be.

"Argh, you piss me off! Don't you have any pride, or spirit of adventure? A real fight is a chance to prove ourselves, you know! It's what we're here for. We're elite pilots chosen to defend humanity, not lab rats!"

Actually, lab rats is exactly what we were.

The war we were fighting was a lost cause from the first.

"And what's with the long face, anyway? You're even gloomier than usual today, it's really throwing off my vibe!"

How again is his mood, which he cannot help, a personal offense to her?

Stricken as he already seemed, he easily crumbled under her glare.

"-Sorry! I'm really sorry. I'm just a little out of it."

"You later not muck up the test later 'cause you stayed up to late or something!"

"No, no, it's nothing like that, it's just… you know how we got these papers, about that parent teacher conference thing? The one that's supposed to be important for our futures?"

The class representative had handed it to me, and I had stuffed it with right with the scattered advertisement letters right after I came home that day.

There would be no future.

We would need no jobs.

But Ikari-kun did not know this.

Bitterly, I noted that I could already see where this was going.

Everything that I knew allowed me no other conclusion.

"Just earlier, I tried to call my father, to ask if he would come this time. I know he left all of the school stuff to Misato-san, cause he doesn't have the time, but this is supposed to be, like, really important career stuff, so I thought-

...well. That's what I get for thinking. All I did was make him annoyed with me…"

There wasn't much sympathy to be had from the Second – she just shrugged it off: "Maybe Commander Ikari was just really busy today?"

Not that I was any better. I could not tell him the real reason.

So he was left to guess.

"I dunno… I don't even think he really hung up, it seemed more like a malfunction or something…"

"Geez! Grow a pair! Aren't you a man?! You've got to stop worrying about every little thing…"

I'm not sure what his gender or his reproductive parts have to do with any of this.

Though I could not fail to mark this.

Not that there was anything else to be expected.

I knew how the Commander is. Unwavering in his single-minded focus. I was grateful to get some of his attention when I could. I would never ask it or expect it.

All this, I had accepted long ago.

But even still, though I knew that it wasn't in his nature, I wish that he had at least been a little bit more diplomatic, for Ikari-kun's sake.

I wish he had at least done what he might to prevent Ikari-kun from coming to the wrong conclusion.

...

We arrived at the accessway.

It was then that we first began to realize that something had gone wrong.

Ikari-kun went to swipe his card at the terminal in his routine, habitual manner, but unlike every other day in the last few weeks on which we had been called here, the lights in the little indicator screen did not flicker on, the confirmation noise did not sound, and the gates did not begin opening.

The expectation that it would was so ingrained by now that the lack of a response did not immediately give him pause. Even when he failed to get a response a second time, his first course of action was to look at his card to inspect it for some scratch or blemish – but of course he found none.

This would not even have explained this, in any case, because it seems the card reader had not activated at all – there wasn't even the usual message that would display if your card had been rejected… at least, I don't think I heard the noise.

I would have to confirm something.

Realizing thin, I stepped closer – when he saw this, Ikari-kun hurried out of the way. I wonder now if he'd believed that I'd gotten impatient. To be honest, I was too focused on clarifying the situation to even bother with impatience.

I swiped my card, and, just as I expected, the recognition tone didn't sound, and the small screen that would display whether your card had been accepted or not remained perfectly dark.

Just to rule out one last possibility, I took one look at my card, but just as I expected, there was nothing wrong with it – I had not picked up my old, expired one by accident of anything like that.

Which meant that there was something very wrong going on here.

But before I could do anything else about it, I found myself quite brusquely shoved aside – Again, the Second had seen it fit to touch me without warning.

"Come on! What the hell are you doing? Just let me through already!"

I was still cringing from that sudden disruption when she stomped past me to the Terminal.

I saw no reason to tell her what I suspected, for it was unlikely that she should listen, and besides, she was about find out for herself.

Though she slid the card across the machine with demonstrative swagger, the result did not differ one bit from any of our previous attempt.

At once, she grew enraged, groaning in frustration and pulling her card up and down the slit, as if this would have been likely to get it recognized correctly.

Only then, when she had vented her displeasure at some tax-payer funded machines, did she at least acknowledge what was, by all means, not a shred less obvious after myself and Ikari-kun had attempted to open the gate:

"This stupid thing is broken!"

Naturally, we walked around the access point, looking for other doors that we might put to our use use – side paths intended for maintenance purposes, anything that would at least allow us to negotiate our way downward.

But soon it became apparent that our technical difficulties extended much further than the gazes.

The Second rubbed, coaxed and poked the scanners and passcode keys on every single door with increasing impatience, but not a single one would yield to her will.

"This one isn't working either!"

"None of the equipment is working", I observed. "This is an anomaly."

By then, Ikari-kun had been beginning to grow mildly anxious:

"Do you think something's happened underground?"

I was forced to conclude that this would be a logical assumption.

He rather failed to stifle his alarm.

I was still turned toward the door I had been trying in vain to activate, but I could hear it in his voice: "Then we should call them, right?"

Under most circumstances, this would have been a reasonable suggestion.

But unbeknownst to us, there was not a single phone cable, radio tower or wifi modem left operational within the periphery of the city.

None of our cellphones could get a hold of our signal – even the emergency landline at the accesspoint proved unresponsive, much to the Second Child's chagrin:

"There's not even one of those stupid automatic messages from the phone company!"

This was highly anomalous indeed.

If there had been a blackout, the auxiliary power system should have come online by now – or at the very least, the backup system. NERV headquarters had been designed in such a way as to be capable of functioning as a completely autonomous colony, even if the surface should be razed.

There were even provisions to make do without most of the staff, to run the most essential systems for the launching of the EVAs wholly on automatic – the odds that all these safeguards would fail at once due to a mere malfunction were looking exceedingly slim.

I don't think that Ikari-kun was explicitly aware of this, but his intuitive grasp of our precarious situation hit the mark near enough:

"What do we do?!"

A poignant question – this scenario had been considered so unlikely that it had not been covered in any drills. However, I did not believe that there would not be a procedure for it.

For 14 years, humanity had been preparing for the return of the angels, building up this city, and doing its best to take account for any imaginable scenario – a tall order, when one knew so precious little of what the enemy was going to be like.

A power failure, however, was a fairly straightforward scenario, a known quantity, something that humans of the 21st century would very much naturally think of.

I reached into by bag to look for the emergency manual, and began leafing through it, scanning the index for what may be the closest approximation to our current situation.

Off in the background I could hear the pilot of Unit Two rummaging through her bag and once again snapping at Ikari-kun for one thing or another, but I tried as best as I could to focus on sampling the instructions. Whatever was going on, it was serious.

"...in cases like this, the instructions say that we are to proceed down to headquarters."

"Agreed! But first, we've got to decide on who's going to be the leader!"

...we are three people. How does this require a chain of command?

I supposed this was yet another ploy to put us beneath us.

"Naturally, I'm the best choice for leader! No objections, right?"

I doubt she would listen much to it even if we did raise an objection.

Besides, it's not like I wanted to be 'leader' or particularly cared who it is.

I figured things would proceed faster if we humored her.

"So then! Let's go team!"

She declared, confidently facing the wrong way.

In this case, I would have no choice but to bring it to her attention:

"We should be able to get through using route Number Seven."

I tried as much as possible to simply state it as a fact, with no intent of confrontation,

but I had little hope that she would fail to take that as yet another offense.

Fine.

Better have to have her focused on me rather than Ikari-kun.

I care less than he would.

This was just another thing to be endured.

I would have marched toward the door to the access route whether she had told me to or not, so why not let her do it?

It seems that Ikari-kun, too, thought it best not to anger her, so that he quietly trudged along with us. Even so, the way things were proceeding had done little to put him at ease:

"How are we going to get through, though? All the doors aren't working..."

But he noticed before she could answer:

"Ah, there's an emergency manual dial!"

Naturally. After the Second Impact, mankind had fourteen years to plan for any possible eventuality.

Right away, the Second Child turned to her roommate with a smirk:

"Shinji! That falls under your duties!"

Strange. One would have thought that out of the three of us, she was the athletic one.

But of course she was more concerned with the thrill of ordering us around than anything resembling reason.

Though he'd spent the last time of us training as a soldier, he obediently trudged on, doing as he was bit. He had not been at this for as long as I, however, so he still grumbled.

The futility of such gestures had not quite sunk into his bones yet.

In a sense, it was very human. "How come... you only... ever rely on me... in situations like this?" he bemoaned, interrupting himself in places when the labor of turning the large round mental dial grew too taxing. Even still, his steady efforts pried the gate apart until the doors were parted far enough for us to squeeze through.

…

We did not make much progress.

For the most part, we wandered in the dark.

I could hear the Third and Second Children in front of me, shuffling along the wall.

Without power, the modern underground complex had become little more than a massive labyrinth for us to wander in as sacrifices offered to the minotaur.

Though I suppose that if there were any half-human creature here, it would have been me.

I was not hanging onto the wall.

I'd read in books that it was not uncommon for people to find their ways in familiar surroundings even in the dark.

So to me, this whole dark maze was basically the habitat I had always known like the back of my hand, though I don't think a term such as 'home' is applicable to these utilitarian corridors.

Besides, I had made a point of studying the maps of headquarters, including these outlying corridors, down to even the air vents.

The location layout plans were one of the first things I'd studied in depth once I was done familiarizing myself with the basic biological and technological features of the EVAs, as their applicability to our purposes was obvious: None of my training and none of the bio-engineering that had gone into creating both myself and the EVAs would bear any fruit if the two of us were to be prevented from making contact.

For the same reason, I was familiar with how the power systems worked, which made the increasingly apparent length of this power outage increasingly worrisome.

"The power has been gone for 8 minutes and 52 seconds now. Still the reserve generators have not come online..."

My intention was to merely make an observation, not to startle the Second Child.

"Hey! First! Don't just start mumbling in the dark out of nowhere! You're going to give me a heart attack! For crying out loud!"

I suppose it was natural that she would be tense, trained soldier or not.

For most of our time here, we had been so reliant on the many elevators, escalators, conveyors and bullet trains that made up the geofront's infrastructure.

And though she had insisted on leading the way, the Second Child had spent the least time here out of any of us, seeing as she had arrived in Japan only a few weeks ago.

She would still have been getting used to the layout of this installation.

Though looking in hindsight, I cannot deny that the conducts of myself and the Third Child left something to be desired as well. For a long time, neither of us spoke up though we were well aware that the Second was leading us in circles.

Looking back, we should have taken the initiative – but that was not something that either of us had much experience with, plus, I would expect that none of us saw great chances of success in trying to convince her otherwise or getting the others to agree with them.

But there were two of us – had we both objected, we could have overruled her. She could shout all she wants about being a leader but it would mean nothing if the two of us didn't follow.

Yet neither of us considered the presence of anyone other than ourselves – that is, I didn't.

In Ikari-kun's case, he was probably pessimistic about being listened to.

Thus we were each trapped in our own kind of prisoner's dilemma.

The Second chased us about the place because she was assertive and imperious, but also, no less fundamentally, because the two of us weren't.

It even occurred to me that somebody should probably intervene, but the idea that this could be me just simply did not pop into my mind, though I was perfectly present there in that corridor with a voice and a body.

It is perhaps a testament to how much I had been used to simply regarding my life as something to be endured, something to get through, to grit my teeth against as it was visited upon me.

Something I merely witnessed as an observer, but had little means of influencing, for the path was decided long ago.

I was merely a performer, following a script that had long been planned out. And so were the others, it's simply that they did not know, so their expectations of what was to come were tinged by their hopes and desires (in the case of the Second) or their fears and preoccupations (in the case of Ikari-kun).

Back then I considered them both sadly mistaken, ignorant of a truth that they could not possibly understand even if I were at liberty to explain it.

Now, I wonder if I wasn't just as blinded as them. Seeing what is desired blinds you to harsh reality; Seeing what you fear blinds you to what is certain. I aimed to expect only what would actually happen, and only in so far as I could truly predict it, taking care not to hang any expectation on anything that I did not know to be assured. There was no point in having hopes or fears around something that may not ever happen.

Though, much later, I would wonder if this insistence of unclouded sight did not have a blind spot of its own – picturing bountiful victories motivates you to grasp them; Picturing fearful nightmare visions urges you to prevent them. But regarding the future as a done deal, a fait accompli, doesn't stir you to act at all when all conclusions seem foregone and all endeavors futile.

It is effectively a corollary of the observer effect: The more you know of the position of something, the less you can say of it's momentum. The more you interact with something, the less you can predict how the system will continue to evolve. Hence, to see perfectly clear, you must remove yourself from the equation. To perfectly see the world, you must see it as if you do not exist, thereby losing the ability to account for your own influence on the system.

But of course, you do exist. You can influence things. Removing yourself out of everything contained in the vastness of the universe might be the smallest possible error, but it is an error nonetheless. It is wholly impossible to observe something without influencing it in some way – if you hit something with a beam of light to see it, you knock it ever so slightly off-course.

A heuristic rather than an exact solution. My importance may seem small, my influence infinitesimal, easily rounded down or abstracted away from – but it was certainly not zero.

This, however, was something I was yet to realize then, resigned as I was to follow after the Second's whims.

It was, in fact, Ikari-kun who first questioned this wild goose chase, likely not out of any great resolve, but simply because his doubts had kept nagging him: "Uh… Asuka… No offense, but are you sure this is the right way? Usually it only takes two minutes…"

Nonetheless, the Second Child's enthusiasm was undimmed: "See that light up there? That's got to be the entrance to the Geofront."

"That's the fourth time you've said that…" he muttered, half under his breath.

One cannot fault him for his timidity, as the Second predictably took offense, as she always did with regards to anything that was not pleasing to her:

"You're such a Negative Nancy, you know that?! You get hung up on every little detail! You never have anything good to say, it's only pointless nitpicking! If you're complaining without coming up with any solutions, you're just part of the problem – has anyone ever told you that?!"

She had probably plundered half of that cavalcade from one of those articles about what sayings famous business people are fond of using. For some reason, those are considered respectable, though it is their underpaid employees that do the actual work. But I suppose that the question of their actual merit didn't matter, she only had need of commonly accepted values that made convenient bludgeons with which to praise herself to put others down. It was only the appearance of something admirable that mattered, the public perception of such, the commonly shared associations of the people.

I'm sure some would claim that I simply did not understand it, but I don't see what is so complicated about it.

Still I did not think of anything to do. I just looked on as my fellow pilots quarreled, already used to their many fruitless, unnecessary arguments…

But it was perhaps because I had let my attention drift from the confrontation that it was ready to pick up something else, a faint, distant something that did not belong in this dark, cavernous space, void as it was of the old familiar hums and drones of machinery.

To this, I knew respond at once: "Be quiet."

Predictably, the Second responded with hostility, simply because the one to speak had been me: "What's the big idea, First?"

But that would be of no concern, for I expected the evidence to speak for itself:

"Just listen. There is a human voice."

And indeed, there was no retort, because by then, both the Second and Ikari-kun were noticing it themselves. A call, no, an announcement. A blinking light.

Later I would learn that one of the technicians from headquarters had taken over one of the vans that were advertising for the city board elections – a farce, in truth, every bit as much as my attendance at the Neo Tokyo-3 municipal high school.

My fellow pilots reacted like any pair of inexperienced youths might respond to catching a glimpse of a familiar adult in an uncertain situation – with much enthusiastic waving and excited calls:

"It's Mr. Hyuuga!"

"Oi, Mr. Hyuuga! We're down here! Mr. Hyuuga! Oi!"

I don't think he ever heard us or took note of us – rather than responding to us specifically, he just kept repeating the same message again and again as he sped down toward the control facilities, for reasons that were self-evident from the content:

"An Angel is coming! I repeat, an Angel is coming!"

To their credit, Ikari-kun and the Second stood at attention at once.

I could barely see them in the dim glow of what few battery-powered lights had automatically sprung online with the power outage, but I heard them shifting their weights, their stances alert, their voices serious.

"An angel?!"

I, too, realized then at last that proactive action was called for – it was clear what must be done, and that it would not come to pass, unless I took the matter in my hands:

"We do not have time to waste. Let us take a short-cut."

Predictably, the Second once again roared at me just for opening my mouth, but this too would pass.

In the face of the looming threat, it had ceased to matter even a little bit.

"Hey! Stop giving orders! I though we all agreed that I am the leader here!"

I don't recall anyone agreeing.

I steeled myself for discussion, but to my surprise, her entire demeanor soon did a confounding turn – She smiled, almost obsequiously. I was reminded again of that insincere offer of friendship of hers:

"Soo, where is that shortcut?"

I didn't think I would ever make heads or tails of her, but it mattered not, not in general, not in the larger picture, and especially not under these circumstances.

…

As before, the pleasant act did not take long to come apart.

"I should have known that this 'shortcut' of yours would be something like this! Only you would consider something this degrading!

Oh dear, we look so uncool right now!"

I had long since stopped trying to understand the Second's frequent changes of tune, nor her concern with, of all things, appearance, no matter what manner of mortal danger we might presently be in.

Certainly I could not deny that this method of thoroughfare was unpleasant – As a large underground complex, NERV Headquarters had need of a sophisticated need of air ducts and maintenance tunnels.

These, too, I had studied as I memorized the layouts.

I could not say that I was fond of dragging my bare knees across the cold, hard wall plates as I crawled forward in the silent dark – the air had gone stale, which despite the shaft's small size, was not at all expected – Life support systems must have gone offline as well, not that it would matter much in the short term, so long as there was still a sizable volume to exhaust.

I had never thought about whether or not one might apply the word 'degrading', but certainly, there was not a single part of this that was pleasant – but of course it wasn't.

Why would I expect it to be? The thought of expecting the functions required of me to be 'cool-looking', glamorous or dignified had never once occurred to me.

Of course not.

I was an artificial creation. Humans typically build machines, robots or AIs to deal with unpleasant tasks that none of them want to do.

In that sense, perhaps the Second's expectation of dignity could be chalked up to the fact that she was human. Though, if she viewed all humans as worthy of dignity, her treatment of Ikari-kun certainly did not show it.

Nor were the realities of war likely to be amenable to her sense of entitlement.

If I thought of this like that, it was sad, really. The just and ideal world where she might be treated with due dignity simply did not exist, though she had not realized it yet.

That world had ceased to exist with the Second Impact, if it had ever been at all – as a brief and fleeting denizen of this age only I could not say, nor was it within the scope of my concerns.

Then, however, as we shuffled along, Ikari-kun, who had thus far kept silent, suddenly spoke up to voice such a thought that I could not help glancing at him in surprise, though I had been keeping my grim, resigned countenance staring straight ahead.

It seems that the uncertain, night-like gloom of the blackout had brought to the forefront what must have been marinating in his thought for quite a while, much as the edge of sleep might:

"...say, what do you think the Angels really are?"

The Second, as usual, was not too patient with either of us speaking, ever willing to demand our silence and then mock us for it: "Why'd you bring that up of all sudden?"

"I was just thinking-" he conceded, half-mumbling. Looking back, I think he must have started to wonder about this since we had seen and discussed that snapshot of the fetal angel inside the volcano, if not longer still.

"I mean, they are called 'Angels'. A name that means holy beings – even messengers of God. So, why are we fighting each other? And if they're our enemies, what does that make us?"

"What are you, stupid? They're freaky monsters who are attacking us, no matter what they're called. If someone's attacking you, you've "

There was nothing I could say to this without revealing something confidential, but I wasn't surprised that she saw it like this. Seeing as she could not even bring herself to care much for her fellow humans if they were even slightly different from her, one could not expect her to lose any sleep about cutting down beings that did not even have human shapes.

No, even if the enemy was human, she would probably prioritize her survival most of all.

Objectively speaking, I was forced to concede that this trait alone made her much more suited to wartime than either of us, all her vanity nonwithstading

I wondered then if she would not outlive us all, standing tall till the day of doom when Ikari-kun and I had long since been spent and wasted

– though I supposed that even then, there would be at least some entity called 'Rei Ayanami' by her side, a pale, scrambled copy-of-a-copy-of-a-copy, who knows how many iterations removed from me.

We had gotten lucky thus far, but we had won many of our battles by a hair's breath.

Who knows how many ways there would be to die, and what might be left over at the end.

On paper, the time left seemed so dreadfully short, like it could pass me by in a gust of wind, but the trials left to come had the potential to stretch it thin like cobweb silk.

…

Inevitably, we soon cave to another fork in the road.

It was long after we had left the maintenance shaft behind, and while I knew where this should leave us in theory, this part of the complex, though closer though our goal, was not one I was quite as familiar with.

With her hands on her hips, eminent in her usual bull-headed confidence, the Second took one look at the branching door arches, and declared a baseless decision that clearly wasn't based on anything other than whatever rough intuitive impression had first popped into her head: "Mh… let's go right."

Dead-set as she seemed, I wondered if there was even a point in presenting any other point of view, but I found myself duty-bound to at least make the attempt to correct inaccurate information:

"I think the right path is the correct one."

Predictably, it availed little: "Shut up! Who cares what you think!"

She promptly turned away from the offending doors to look back over her shoulder:

"Hey Shinji! Why don't you say something for once?"

"Huh?"

Suddenly put on the spot, Ikari-kun looked rather uncomfortable.

He was not much for decisions at the best of days, when we were not stubling around in the dark knowing there was an urgent, time-sensitive threat about.

Inexperienced as I was in the subtleties of human interaction, even I could tell that she was demanding for him to agree with her, to show that his allegiance was with her and not with me -

And to be honest, at this point, I thought he might comply. His presence had often been a relief and a comfort to me, but that did not blind me from seeing that he was not too strong-willed, easily intimidated and concerned with the opinions of others -

I knew to be realistic with my expectations…

Timid and daunted, the Third Child kept moving his glance between the Second and myself.

I never expected him to agree with me of course. If he had contradicted me, but told the correct path, I would have been grateful.

Still, I think now that his inconclusive muttering might have been an attempt not to hurt either of our feelings, as much as it was also a failure to assert himself or trust his own judgment.

It mattered not, in the grand scheme of things, and yet I do recall his feeble attempt to keep the peace, even when it would put him in the path of her wrath, just as when he had defended me earlier on that walkway.

Denied the noises of agreement that she had felt entitled to, the Second Child has not shy of groaning in displeasure. "I'm the leader, so I decide, and I say we go right!"

That is not a reason or an argument.

But though I vaguely recalled seeing a blueprint sheet of what might be this passage, I was not certain enough to justify my opinion in a debate.

I did not think I had any chance of convincing her.

So I too kept silent.

As it was soon to be seen, this would turn out to be an error that cost us further precious time -

I do not deny my contribution to it.

The right corridor did not end up leading us toward the geofront.

To the contrary, it soon became apparent that it definitely would not.

Again, it was Ikari-kun who first remarked upon it – I do not think that he intended for the statement to be more than a thoughtless mumbling to himself: "This can't be right. This corridor is going up… I knew we should've taken the left one…"

"Oh really? If you 'knew', then why didn't you say so?!" barked the Second, whose unforgiving harshness in response to any disagreement was obviously the cause for his reluctance.

"You just wanna contradict me! I bet you're just glad for every excuse to nitpick and complain!" she clamored, as if she had not been the one shooting down every suggestion voiced regardless of the content.

In a sense, her abrasiveness may have been a symptom of how she was affected by the unpleasant situation – some idea that she should remain in control, perhaps.

Either may, one could mark her relief when she conveniently caught sign of the glowing outline of an armored entryway, flanked by battery-driven emergency lights.

"See? We've found the door to the geofront!"

Certainly, no one would have been more relieved to find this true than the Second Child herself; But we, too, had nothing at all to gain from her being wrong.

I'd gladly let her have the 'win' or whatever, if that would have brought us any closer to engaging in efficient countermeasures against the angel, for that was all that truly mattered

Unfortunately for all of us, including the Second herself I suppose, none of our personal sentiments were in any way relevant to whether this door was the correct one or not.

Motivated to prove herself, the Second rushed ahead of us and undid the bold in the blink of an eye. Had she chosen to rush out right ahead rather than to kick the door open, perhaps she may have been remembered as having died on account of her own recklessness, though I would not have been among the number of those who would have accounted it so;

Realistically speaking, there is no way she could have known what exactly would be beyond that door, even if it wasn't the geofront.

Her leg still outstretched from propelling the heavy door out into the daylight of the surface, it just so happen that her center of gravity was still on this side of the threshold, so that she was flung back into the corridor rather than out into the curb when the ground around us shook with a majestic tremor.

Had the Second fallen forward, she would have been crushed by that which touched down right in front of the gaze just mere moments after she had flung it open.

It was hard to describe – or perhaps, all too easily, if one were willing to file it away as simply something that defies reality.

It looked by every measure like a limb that a stick person would have, an abstract, thick black streak, somehow transported into our three-dimensional reality, utterly absurd to look at and yet massive enough to leave cracks upon the pavement before us, and once it moved on at its own mercy only, we could discern the sort of entity that this limb belonged to:

Though, of course, it could only be the angel.

The one code-named Matriel: Xir had three more of those pitch black, unreal limbs, and a compact, pill-like body that, though absurdly small in comparison to xier legs, was still the size of an autobus with respect to our bare little bodies.

Xir altogether resembled a children's drawing of a spider, lacking half its legs and all the complicated segments and compound out that the real animals would have, abstracted away to a single, simple oval – but up close, the angel's torso was not so simplistic after all, showing a surface composed of geometric facets and a multitude of glassy blue eyes.

I had never seen one of them so close without the towering armor of unit zero packed around me.

Compared to xier size, we were little more minuscule toys, paper cutouts in a diorama, perhaps...

We were helpless to resist.

The only reason we were not erased right then and there was probably because Matriel was not aware that the three of us were any different from any other arbitrary stray humans, mere cells of a whole of which xir sought to pierce a vital point.

If the angels had somewhat understood or adapted to the EVAs yet, they were probably not aware of the pilots inside as discrete, separable entities – at least not as of yet.

Matriel was simply not aware that we were in any way important – no, most likely, xir lacked the means to derive or deduce it. Xir had not the Fruit of knowledge, any more than humanity had eternal life.

Thus, xir kept on stomping forward undeterred, as if we were no different from any rats or squirrels nesting by the roadside.

It was as if we were not even reflected in xier eyes.

I was so rapt, so frozen by its appearance that I barely took note of the Second Child hastily shutting the door.

I just realized that it was closed at some point, but once it did, one couldn't miss the second hanging against it in relief after frantically pulling it shut.

And she was aware of us.

It did not occur to me that she might account this near encounter with out physical annihilation as an 'awkward moment' of all things until she spoke – I had all but forgotten her claims that we were surely at headquarters' doorstep, but it seems her thoughts were filled with nothing other, her chief concern simply to cover for her error.

But of course. She knew not what the angels were.

So far as she was concerned, they were simply 'monsters who were attacking us', as we had just heard.

"Uh….-" practiced as she was in the art of pretend, she did not take long to find her footing and break into a grin, lecturing us with her raised index finder: "See! We've visually confirmed the angel! Now we know that we haven't been running around here for no good reason. Let's hurry up and get to the cages!"

There would have been absolutely nothing to gain by pointing out her insincerity;

We had already lost so much time.

As we had been stumbling to the corridors, the angel had reached the metropolitan area.

It was to be assumed that xir would soon position xemself above NERV headquarters and employ whatever means it had to break to the armor plates, much as xier siblings had done.

It was required that we get to the cages posthaste.

However, this alone did not prevent us from inevitably running into another fork in the road.

The branching corridors extended into the uncertain blackness before us.

"Not again…" muttered Ikari-kun, doubtlessly anticipating yet another tense exchange.

He need not worry.

By then, I had realized the error in my earlier inaction and I was not going to repeat it when matters were so urgent.

This time, I made sure to step forward toward what I knew to be the correct direction before the Second had the opportunity to begin a discussion about it:

"This way."

Even so, she was clearly displeased, no less so than if I had explicitly contradicted her, though I had hoped to avoid precisely that:
"Oi!" she called, "Who made you the leader? You can barely talk!"

Yes. I know.

I know it very well.

Did she think that I would not be aware of my interpersonal shortcomings?

How could she think this was possible?

It is obvious that I am not good at it. Or any other aspect of existing in approximately human shape.

I did not need to be reminded or to have it rubbed and smeared around in my face.

Nor did I have the slightest interest to usurp any made up position she may feel entitled to.

"We need to get to the cages." was all I said, because this was all that mattered:

"We can't do anything here."

I would just have to bear her outburst to avoid provoking her into spending any more with futile discourse… or so I thought.

Though timid and reluctant, Ikari-kun made an attempt to intervene: "Now come on, there's no point in fighting. Ayanami is right. We should head downstairs and ask for help."

I had no accounted for this.

At first, I did not realize the implications in full, but I believe now that Ikari-kun's agreement, though by all accounts perfectly reasonable, must have irritated the Second more than anything else I had done today… but it irked her so much that she bit her lip at first and stuffed it down for the sake of expedience: "Fine then! ...Hey, slow down!"

Didn't she just say it was fine to go ahead?

"Geez, blind, deaf and mute!"

I'm not sure why she was referring to those born with disabilities by random chance as if it was to imply some kind of insult. It was like calling someone a lottery-loser for an insult, or chiding someone as left-handed.

Nonetheless, she snapped right back to griping about me.

It was clear that her patience about my existence had been running out more and more with every moment that she was forced to endure the two of us in confined quarters.

"It's pitch black! How do you even know where you're going?! Don't just run ahead without saying anything!"

I suppose that clarifying this once and for all would allow us to proceed without further arguments:

"I'm sorry", I said, referring to whatever unwritten rule I had apparently broken by moving forward as soon as it made sense to. "It's just that I've memorized the layout of headquarters."

"Way to rub it in to the new girl…" she grumbled, probably holding in worse.

As of now, she seemed much more concerned with quickening her step to keep up with us -

From that point onward, I kept ahead of the others, making as straight a path for the cages as I knew how.

I did this because there was currently a hostile life form active above the city who might attempt to penetrate the city's largely inactive defenses at any moment now, and because not doing so before had allowed for precious time to elapse.

The path was clear, the only course forward.

Yet by now, I was no longer surprised to see the Second Child taking every turn as some kind of personal slight. My attention was concentrated on finding our way, but she made quite sure that I would hear her pointed grumbles.

Eventually, there came a point where she could not stand to swallow her words any longer and refused to rein in her displeasure, the angel above us be damned.

I don't know that I did anything to set her off.

I was simply walking, eyes fixed forward, moving down my long preordained path, my mind and heart unneeded appendages to this mechanical process.

"Ahh, look at the First~ Calm and composed as always, even in an emergency~"

I wondered if she thought that I wouldn't recognize that high, histrionic voice as mockery,

or if she was precisely banking on that.

I was surprised that she'd think that, honestly. I don't know where she got that idea from.

It wasn't that I was composed, it was that none of our actions mattered either way.

If it was preordained that we live, we would live, and if we were meant to die, we would die we would die, and that couldn't be changed, not would my death be marked by more than those who would boot up the next clone.

I said nothing, so as not to provoke her further, but it seems that she wouldn't be satisfied until she had extracted her pound of flesh – or at least, some sort of reaction.

"...I bet it's because you're the Commander's favorite.

Isn't that right, Miss Honor Student? You think you're sooo~ above it all just because you're getting special treatment!"

...special?

Me?!

To Commander Ikari, of all people?

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry at that.

Thinking of the many, many clones down in the tanks far beneath us, I couldn't think of anything that could be less true than this.

Should I laugh at the absurdity, or cry at such cruel mockery?

In the end, I did neither.

It wouldn't have changed anything.

However, as it would turn out, the Second did end up getting the reaction she was looking for:

Just not from me, but from Ikari-kun, who had watched the exchange with increasing trepidation, unnerved by what to a sensitive person such as him must have seemed a bitter escalation:

"Hey, this really isn't the time-"

This, without any interference of my own, proved to be the last straw.

I was intent on continuing to walk forward without even looking back, but this proved impossible.

The Second had moved to block my path, as swiftly as all her athletic and military prowess would suggest.

She got well up close in my face, near enough that I was uncomfortably aware of the hotness of her breath, and the nearness of her body to mine, the hands that had attempted to strike me before balled into tight fists.

Something inside me contracted.

Alarm washed over me like a wave, freezing me in place.

I considered this all as a situation, a scenario to deal with, something that was happening.

Something just slightly less real that made he unwanted closeness just slightly more bearable.

I didn't do more than to slightly turn my eyes to view her just off from the side, keeping her copper hair in view but not quite meeting her eyes in full.

I wondered, distantly, yet quite lucidly, what she was going to do.

What was going to happen in this corridor, with the fleshbags that were our bodies.

For now, she seemed content with yelling.

Objectively speaking, I don't think there was ever a risk of her doing much of anything else, the main purpose of this display was probably to air her accumulated grievances.

And even if she did strike me, what would it matter?

Many floors below us, the clone tank, too, must have been left in complete darkness.

So why not hear what the Second had to say? It might be useful.

Maybe she would make some complain that was within my power to fix.

It's not like I could stop her from talking:

"I can't stand it when anyone acts like they're better than others! Don't think you can look down on me just because you're the favorite!"

Me? Look down on her?

I'm supposed to be the one acting like I'm better than others?

The idea was so far off the beaten path reality that I could not even have a response to it other than perhaps a faint trace of shock or bafflement.

It did not merit a reaction, really, any more than any other far-out unlikely scenario.

There was not even a point in my bitterness.

"I do not think that I'm better than anyone," I said, simply, feeling the statement's self-evidence upon me like a heavy shroud.

"Nor am I anyone's favorite."

I directed my eyes away from the second's face, facing forward toward in order to proceed toward the inevitable:

"I know this very well."

I stepped past the Second and proceeded.

She came after me soon enough once she saw that I would not respond to her fuming, and after some hesitation and a few rounds of glancing worriedly from one of us to the other, Ikari-kun followed suit.

I quickened my stride, determined to get us to our goal.

But the maps I had seen accounted only for the layout of the rooms and corridors, not for their contents.

Our path was blocked again. Before us was one of the mid-corridor shutters that were installed in case headquarters was partially invaded, half covered in some manner of old building materials.

Perhaps the tunnel had been under repairs, or these materials had simply been stored here against regulations because this route saw so little use under normal circumstances – most of the time, the bullet trains and elevators were the preferred means to access the geofront.

In any case, it was blocked, as Ikari-kun rightly observed: "I don't think we can clear this away with just our hands…"

He said this with a sinking, discouraged tone, but as things stood, we could not afford to stop here under any circumstances. The angel could be invading as we speak.

"We have no choice. We'll have to break open another maintenance duct."

I reached for the nearest reasonably solid rod of metal among the building materials that had been stacked in front of the gate.

No sooner than I had bent forward to set to work, I heard the second shifting her weight, turning probably, to address Ikari-kun in a conspiratorial whisper:

"The First is scary. I bet she's the sort who thinks the ends justify the means. She'd do anything to get what she wants – I don't know about you, but I get the creeps when I think that we might be sent out to battle with someone like that. You get the sense that she'd abandon us without a second thought if they told her to. She might even shoot us in cold blood, if they ordered her. A real zealot – with a heart of ice. I don't think she particularly cares what happens to either of us, as long as the mission gets done…"

So, first she says I am trying to be better than her, and now, I supposedly don't concern myself with her at all? How does that fit together?

It's not like her speculations are relevant to anything, but if she could at least be logically founded or consistent in what she accuses me of, at least I could have some idea of how to placate her…

Well. Not that she would be receptive that, even if my paltry skill in interpersonal relations were other than it is.

Even if I had the means to make myself understood to her, she probably would still not understand, nor even want to listen – it would be a futile endeavor.

But I got it alright. I had read about this in books. The behavior of targeted harassment is often a kind of bonding activity.

According to some books, it's supposed to be normal and 'build character', and it would be proof of my inability to bond that I have ended up as the one being singled out.

The main thing is not that I am being slandered, but that the Second is attempting to bond with Ikari-kun.

I realized my error now, or at least, a factor that I hadn't previously considered: That the Second Child's ire had been especially wont to spark whenever Ikari-kun had expressed any degree of agreement with me. In her mind, he was probably supposed to agree with her, because she wanted the attention, or, perhaps because she thought he should agree with her since he was her roomate, in a sense a member of her 'pack'.

It might be some human thing that I don't understand, either way, the specifics matter not.

Though I did not think that I wanted to understand any kind of 'bonding' that could cause that sort of cruel treatment make perfect sense...

Even so, there was reason to believe that she was now trying to signalize through this conversation about me that he was supposed to be on her side, or to get him to agree with her as a way to let me know whose 'side' he was supposed to be on.

As if there could be such a thing as 'sides'.

I had no illusions here. I hardly thought that Ikari-kun had agreed with me or tried to diffuse the discord mostly to do me a personal favor – he had simply given his opinion on the task before us, correctly, I might add. The most one might accuse him of was that he had not insisted further when we went down the incorrect paths.

This wasn't about me. This wasn't about any of us.

We were just small dots on a very large map on which even Matriel the angel was little more than a pawn sacrifice.

It would have been easy to fixate on her myopic attitude, the animal-like in her narrow concerns, the sheer, pointless arbitrary absurdity and grotesque ugliness that so many things can take on when one looks at them from the outside, uninvolved in the assumptive acceptance that this is just what is normal or simply 'how things are'.

Yet, I knew to put that aside as well, to zoom out even further, until none of this mattered enough to be irked over.

I think I rather believe the thesis posited in another book, that peer harassment is not so much normal bonding or a character building inevitability, but rather, a result of unrelated individuals being forced into regimented environments – lashing out being a response to a situation where there is little choice or control, such as, for example, this one.

Whatever her reasons to dislike us, true or not, justified or not, she too was forced to endure individuals that she disliked. Forced in. Boxed in. Stuck with us.

In this we were not so different.

Her response to this pressure was not the most constructive, but was ours?

Hers just tended to be pointed outward.

Besides, she was young and inexperienced, so one could not even fully expect her to have learned how to handle her frustrations productively – how much experience had she even really had in interacting with peers before coming here, when she had done her education on an accelerated schedule, presumably by herself with textbooks or online resources, and dedicated most her early life to training.

None of what she did was even about us.

It was all grounded in her own preconceptions, whatever past hurts she carried.

The unhelpfulness of her actions was probably not despite, but because of our serious circumstances.

Once you looked at it like this, she was really as sad and worthy of pity as Ikari-kun, as different as my personal sentiments toward them might have been.

It was strange, really. In her speech against me, the Second had implied that being focussed on the mission or the bigger picture implied callousness.

It seemed a bad joke, really. If only I in fact were insensitive – then I wouldn't have to suffer pain, or feel shamed when she scorned me.

But not even the basic premise added up to me: From what I've seen, it is myopic thinking and the inability to look beyond one's own immediate concerns that tends to create immediate suffering.

If you had asked me, it's putting things in perspective and trying to look from an objective point of view that allows you to be compassionate.

When you inhabit your narrow subjective perspective, you see only what others might cost you, what you stand to lose, what they might want from you, the pain you might suffer.

But if you regard those around you as just another person, rather as what they are in relation to you – an object of hope that might disappoint you, or a cause of hurt that you fear – then you come to see their smallness and their limitation, and it is hard to blame them much, and you can wish peace upon them without considering the cost for yourself.

I don't know if that makes sense, though, especially not if it makes sense to a human.

Not being one myself, I wasn't really qualified to speak on the matter of their hearts.

They might work differently than mine – its not like we could ever compare.

No one can truly know another's thoughts or feelings. We may triangulate them through their actions, but there are so many variables. What is there may not be acted upon. What is not there may be performed. The same stimulus could be responded in different ways.

No one could know… at least, not yet.

Instrumentality would change all this. This is why Commander Ikari has yearned for it for so long.

So, in a sense, our generation was privileged enough to get the answers to many age-old conundrums within our lifetimes.

Only that we would then no longer have 'selves' for the answers to matter to.

Perhaps a mercy.

In any case, an inevitability.

No matter my idle, drifting faraway thoughts, the main point of my presence here were was breaking open the duct.

Purposeful, deliberate and systematic, just as it was described in the emergency procedures.

One the grid-like covering was out of the way, I proceeded straight to crawling inside, and the Second followed straight away.

"If I catch you looking at my butt, I'll kill you!"

"...but how am I supposed to know where I'm going if I can't look?

If you're really worried about that, I can go first."

"So you can look at the First's butt or what? I don't get the whole… submission fetish, though. Bet she'd just flop there like a dead fish and get back dressed immediately afterward, even if you did the deed. She wouldn't even say anything afterward. Bet she' let you do whatever you wanted and wouldn't even protest. Is that what you're into? Does it make you feel like a big strong man to dominate someone who won't resist, or are you just too scared of a real girl?"

So that's what she thinks about us, huh?

Can't say I was surprised.

I didn't need her to state outright that she does not think of me as 'Real', it's fairly evident in how she treats me.

I know what she thinks of me, after all, she never shuts up.

She seemed to have completely forgotten that I was hearing everything she was saying, too.

Or perhaps not.

After all, if she truly believed me to be as she said, there would be no reason not to degrade me so to my face.

She was mocking me and then taking it as evidence that I deserved this when I chose to be reasonable about it.

How very convenient for her.

How fascinating, though, to be hearing something like this from someone so obsessed with conventionally attractive appearances, academic performance and extraordinary achievements.

Some might well decry her as being nothing like 'a real girl', and they would be making the same error of assuming that only those who are like themselves and value what they value can be 'real', of making her into a symbol for something over which she as a small individual had rather limited power.

Books, websites and magazines are full of it: 'Real people don't do this', 'real people don't do that', and I am more often than not left on the unreal side.

Sometimes I'm not sure if I'm real.

But it mattered not. It was completely irrelevant what either of us thought.

We needed only to to reach the cages.

Besides, her mind had been made up from the beginning. Her opinion, fully formed.

Once she had put us in her neat little boxes, everything we said would just be interpreted in accordance to that, so we might as well not be there.

We might as well be completely inaudible and invisible to her.

Most people probably just saw some role or preconceived notion when they looked at me, so it wasn't even anything new.

Ikari-kun, however, was beyond flustered: "It's not like that! She's not like that. She might not be too good with people, but she's got a good heart. You'd see that too, if you would only give her a chance and just try to get to know her - Look, can we stop this and focus on getting to Misato-san and the others for now?"

His pleas went unheard. To the Second, everything he said was just further fuel for mockery: "Soo, soo, that's what you like to call it? So then, how far have you gone? Have you two kissed yet?"

"What the hell are you talking about?!"

"Come oon. You two are totally going out, aren't you. Then again, I guess there's no way that two antisocial weirdos like you two could've got to second base when I even haven't… - oi? You aren't looking up my skirt aren't you?"

"No I- I just thought I heard something-"

"Quit your excuses!"

I had tried to pay their exchange as little heed as I could, trying to focus on the path.

I was hoping they would eventually just stop.

But before I knew it, the confrontation seemed to have got physical just as they were standing above an access plate, and before I knew it, the plate had come loose, dropping them down to the room below.

Wherever we were now, I figured that we couldn't be too far from our goal, and I would be more use in getting us all to the cages if I followed them down, so I leapt down in pursuit of them.

I wasn't proven wrong.

We found ourselves right amid the technicians in the cages, not quite all the way up to the boarding platforms, but nonetheless in the right halls, face to face with Doctor Akagi, who, considering the extremity of our situation, was rather visibly relieved to see us:

"There you are!"

After a few split-seconds of rubbing her possibly somewhat bruised behind, the Second Child was quick to leap to her feet, taking at once the initiative with demanding the answers she must have been wanting all along:

"Dr. Akagi! What's going on?"

"I wish we knew," the scientist conceded, thoughtfully rubbing her chin. Some measure of embarrassment and urgency were detectable in her voice: "Primary, Auxiliary and reserve power went down not just concurrently, but simultaneously. We're forced to consider the likelihood of sabotage…. By the eway, did you HAPPEN pass Misato on your way here? She was supposed to be heading this way."

"Oh… really?" Ikari-kun supplied worriedly.

I did not doubt that the answer was plain on his face.

"Did we happen to miss her?" I speculated.

"This is troublesome," concluded the Doctor, findong one more minor annoyance dropped onto her plate. "She was supposed to be in command."

Indeed, not the best time to be missing our strategist. She might have gotten stuck or lost in the corridors much like we did…

The Second Child, however, was much more concerned with another detail that soon caught her attention: "Where is Kaji-san?! He's not here either!"

That was a significant question indeed, but probably not for the reasons that she was thinking of. Considering what I'd overheard the Commander discussing, and that Dr. Akagi was now talking of sabotage, thus confirming my own persistent inklings...

"I saw him walking down the hall with Captain Katsuragi before the power failed." supplied one of the technicians.

...then he might have an alibi. Or was that precisely what he wanted us to think?

He could have used so delayed action timer…

The Second was dismayed for rather different reasons: "What... are they doing... together... with the lights out?!"

"I think you're reading too much into it…" said Lt. Ibuki, though it didn't do much to dissuade whatever the Second might have been imagining.

"...what about the EVAs?" asked Ikari-kun then, cautiously braced for news he wouldn't like.

Yet Dr. Akagi's news proved to be rather more of a positive surprise to him: "They're almost ready."

"Huh? But how? Nothing's working…"

"We did it all by hand", explained the Doctor, a slight tinge of fond pride slipping into her tone. "It was the Commander's idea."

She looked up, and once we followed her gaze, indeed, there he was:

Pulling a rope to get one of our entry plugs in position, right amid the technicians, just like another worker, his sleek black uniform conspicuous among their orange jumpsuits.

Maybe that's why I still admired him, though I knew that I likely didn't hold any kind of special significance to him: Because I saw him then as someone who is able to think about an organization as a whole, who sees the big picture and the broad strokes in the great flow of time.

Someone who is not a hypocrite.

He was, by every metric, 'the leader', yet he did not think himself above working up a sweat along with the ordinary workers. He did not work others while he sat idle, and he applied the same pragmatic logic to himself as he did to everybody else, measuring everything with the same stick – spending even his own flesh and blood rather than just commandeering the children of others.

If I could not escape being subjected to the will of others, I would rather be used by someone like him than such capricious people as Dr. Akagi or the Second Child, even if it was just a question of picking the least worse of the available set of poisons.

Back then, I might have told you that I had no illusions.

That I could have listed his shortcomings,

Perhaps I was just in denial about my own clinging to protect myself from the pain of disappointment, telling me that I wanted and expected nothing from him but what little he would spare.

Perhaps I was still confusing love with need.

...

The EVAs were activated using a reserve Diesel generator.

The lock bolts were released by technicians manually hacking the hydraulics open.

The umbilical bridges and restraints, we had to push back ourselves.

What little reserve battery power we had proved enough to charge the EVAs and send us up the initial vertical portion of the launch tube, but from them onward, we had to choice but to climb through the shafts and tunnels ourselves, in effect leading to an EVA-sized recreation of our misadventures through the air shafts and service ducts, an irony that was not lost on the Second Child: "This is so degrading! Why is it that we keep having to crawl through places today?!"

I pointed out that we were coming up to the main shaft, so that she promptly proceeded to vent her irritations upon the shutter, sending it hurtling down many levels until the next closer shutter.

Then, we began climbing up the shaft itself, our feet pressed to the walls and our hands clawed into them – much like the hacked up hydraulics, the dents we were leaving would be troublesome to repair, but this would be the least of our troubles if we did not stop the angel in its tracks.

I was at first concerned that Ikari-kun would struggle with such complicated motions, but to my mild surprise, he followed after us without any special delay. I wondered just when he had gotten to the point of moving the EVA with a greater accuracy and dexterity than he did his own.

It might have been a good while back, when I considered the complex choreography that had been required to destroy the twin cores of Israphael.

But though her skill in athletics was the greatest of us all, even the Second Child was not quite comfortable with this arragement: "This looks even more uncool!"

Even so, we ascended.

But we had not come far when we first saw something like a glowing streak passing before us.

The next one hit the shoulder pylon of EVA 00, rapidly dissolving some of its surface up in smoke before my very eyes – where the mechanical parts met the flesh, it burned like searing fire.

I realized then that the angel must have been directly above us.

"Careful! Watch out!"

But I was hardly done speaking when the Second lost its footing, leaving some of EVA 02's rubber coating smeared all across the walls where the dripping substance had touched its limbs.

She fell, and knocked us all back down with her, struck with the momentum of EVA 02's great weight.

We all went tumbling down – our EVAs, our rifles, everything.

There was not even time to think.

I just blanked out completely, limp and frozen in shock.

There was nothing I could do but bear witness as we tumbled to our doom.

When we didn't, it took me a while to even piece together what had happened – there was a brightness of sparks, and terrible screeching sound, and before I knew it, we weren't falling anymore.

Only with some split-seconds of delay did we piece it together:

It was Ikari-kun, who, in some quick, instinctual actions, had clawed the armored hands of EVA 01 deep into the walls, bringing us all to all halt.

It was only thanks to him that we were able to take shelter in the very side shaft we had arrived from, for the most part whole and alive, confined to this square cutout as salvos of corrosive orange liquid rained down in sheets before us every now and again.

It was just as I had thought: While we'd been straying around in the dark, the angel had set to work.

It struck me as alarming that xir had known to melt a hole in the main shaft – had xir somehow realized or intuited what it was? Where it led do?

I recalled Vice-Commander Fuyutsuki worriedly remarking on how the angels seemed to be getting more intelligent, how they increasingly seemed to be building upon the tactics of their predecessor. Dr. Akagi had theorized that they might possess some kind of collective memory, or great adaptive ability.

As of recently, we'd been having a streak of fairly easy wins, but if this was true, the solid victories might not last us forever.

In any case, the angel Matriel's tactics strongly suggested planful action:

"I don't think this attack was really aimed at us – The target must be trying to break into NERV HQ using a powerful corrosive agent."

"So what do we do?" questioned Ikari-kun, much to the Second's irritation:

"Well, obviously, we take it out!"

"But how are we supposed to do that? We've lost our rifles, and we'll be out of power in something like three minutes…"

I expected the Second to chastise him for complaining again, but she didn't. When I looked at her intercom panel to take a look at her face, she had her eyes closed in deliberation, opening them purposefully not long after Ikari-kun was done speaking:

"I have an idea. Listen up everyone, so: One of us stays here as Defense, to neutralize the angel's AT field and shield the others from the acid. Support heads down, retrieves a rifle, and throws it to Offense. Offense then fires a volley into the target and blows it to hell.

Everybody got that?" she asked, wearing the beginnings of a confident smirk.

I had nothing to add.

It seems Doctor Akagi had not been mistaken in her assessment of the Second Child's tactical abilities. This was some rather agile, quick thinking on her part.

Though it is impossible to know what might have been, I suspect that Ikari-kun and I would have been hard-pressed to come up with a plan on such short notice, if it had only been the two of us – especially without Captain Katsuragi around to command us.

The Second Child was, without a doubt, a valuable asset to our operations.

I could acknowledge that, at the very least, on an intellectual level –

Whatever my personal sentiments, they were irrelevant in this matter.

"Understood," I simply confirmed then, "I'll be the defender then."

This seemed to me to be the most logical course of action, but of course, my fellow pilots would have been unaware of the greater part of the reasons:

"Sorry, but no." quipped the Second, "That's my job."

"But that's dangerous…!" Ikari-kun objected.

The Second remained unfazed, smirking undaunted: "That's why I'm doing it. It's the duty of the elite to protect the ignorant masses. Besides, I still owe you something for the last battle, and I'd like to even out the score….

Shinji, you'll be Offense, and Miss Honor Student? You'll be the Support."

I nodded in assent.

"Everything clear? Alright then. Let's move out!"

For once, everything went precisely as planned:

Right away, the Second headed up above, flinging herself in harm's way, making sure, this time, to claw EVA 02's fingers deep into the walls of the shaft.

It's wasn't long before the next wave of acid followed.

The once solid constituents of EVA 02's back plating began to come off in acrid smoke and molten drops, but for now, she bore the brunt of it bravely, shutting up her moans of pain behind gritted teeth.

There was no time to waste. Ikari-kun and I moved out at once as soon as the path was clear of acid.

I got good use out of the new shock absorbing rockets that EVA 00 had been fitted with as part of her upgrade to production model specifications.

By the time I'd reached the next shutter and acquired the rifle, Ikari-kun was in position as well, looking over his shoulder as he reached down an arm: "Ayanami, now".

Our eyes lined up, or rather, our EVA's did, and mere instants later, the rifle I had thrown landed precisely within EVA 01's palm, where is was swiftly grasped, as if both our arms were entangled in one single, fluid motion.

Say what you will about the Second's exaggerated competitiveness, as this point in time it did not outweigh her understanding of the need to win to such an extent that she would not have known to leave the part requiring precise coordination to us.

And no sooner than he had grasped the weapon, he hesitated not in relieving her from her painful predicament: "Asuka, get out of the way!"

The moment she had dodged, he unloaded every single bullet in the magazine straight up into the heavens, and then rammed the hand he'd used to shoot straight up into the wall to catch the EVA 02's fall when its slippery, molten armor could not cling onto the walls any longer.

Braced in place, EVA 01 was hit by the weight of the Second's unit, and moments later, a shower of crimson that must once have been the angel.

Covered in its remains as well as the partially melted plates of her own armor, the Second was nonetheless smirking undimmed as she looked down at the pair of us:

"Now we're even."

As soon as they could get a proper hold on the walls, the two of them jumped down to land before me, using the remaining battery time to set themselves out on the floor so that their units wouldn't fall over the moment the power went out.

We eventually met up on the surface of the great shutter beneath us –

The shaft that we could reach the walls of with all four of our limbs while piloting our EVAs was now the size of a football field, the rifles we'd just held enormous, the steaming sludge pits left by the angels' previous attacks and its desintegrated body nothing short of large impassable death traps – though we had made sure to place down our Units in such a way that we would be able to access the small, people-sized service doors at the sides of the shaft.

The Second Child was already waiting there when the other two of us showed up, presumably because she'd just jumped straight down from her EVA while the two of us had used the emergency rope ladder from our plugs.

She was so eager to be gone from the stinking air that she'd even deigned to turn the manual door handle herself. It was probably a good thing that she had hurried, for I did not think that the angel's liquefied corpse would be safe for pure-blooded humans to breathe around long-term.

Even the Second was visibly relieved when the door was closed behind us…

though it seems that even our prior brush with death and the doubtlessly unpleasant encounter with the angel's acid had not drained her of all her energy:

"Shinji! You're coming with me! We've got to find Kaji-san and Misato before anything happens!"

...like what?

At this point I was just altogether ready to accept that I would never understand her priorities.

"You too!" she exclaimed, pointing at me. "You're useful in the dark."

Needless to say, I had absolutely no desire to spend even one more second wandering through the corridors in her presence, nor did I long to find out what other colorful insults she might fling at my head if given the chance.

My duty had been served to completion already.

I was under no obligation to stick with her any longer, so I told her as much:

"No. This is no concern of mine."

"I just knew you'd say that! Once a spoilsport, always a spoilsport. Fine! Let's go on our own, Shinji!"

Before I could point out anything about how inadvisable it was to go running off into the dark, she had already turned the corner, dragging Ikari-kun behind her.

Well. Dr. Akagi and the others must be focusing their attention on restoring the power now that the angel was defeated, so I doubted that they would manage to get all too lost before the power came back on.

In all honestly, all I wanted now was to take a nice long break in a reasonably quiet place, without bickering co-pilots or chattering technicians.

I sat down right next to the door we had come through and curled myself into a ball, allowing myself one long, deep exhale, leaning against the still, cool metal wall that now lay stiller and quieter than it ever could when the machinery surrounding us was stll active.

For once, it was still, and it was quiet, and it was dark,

and nothing and no one demanded my attention.

…

I never found out the specifics or what else might have befallen in the corridors, but both Captain Katsuragi and Inspector Kaji were eventually retrieved, and I myself, eventually gathered up by some technician they had send to find me.

I think it must have been one of them who suggested that we all make out way to the surface – many employees of NERV were glad to be out of the underground complex which had grown remarkably stuffy and hot in the few hours that life support had been offline.

This included us pilots, still in our plug-suits, so that we came to be looking down on the city from the foothills by the time that its lights were being turned back on.

"The stars look so pretty with the power off…" remarked Ikari-kun, who was laying flat on the cool grass, looking straight up at the sky. "It's kind of ironic."

"I dunno, the city looks totally deserted without the lights." said the Second, sinting leisurely between us. "Its kinda creepy."

Just then, another city block was being reconnected to the power grid beneath us.

"See? It's much more comfortable this way."

I suppose most humans thought as she did. That's probably why the city had power lines and lights to begin with. Come to think of it, it might be why we have power lines at all, or all this complicated technology without which we werethus thrown into chaos:

"Man fears the darkness, and so, he uses fire to scrape away at its edges."

"Oooh, how profound~"

I couldn't tell if she meant this in a mocking or a genuine way.

Ikari-kun, however, was, as it would turn out, still contemplating on my words at this point, connecting them to his earlier ponderings:

"I wonder if that is what makes mankind so special. If it might be the reason why the angels are attacking us."

"What are you, stupid? Who cares what sort of reasons they have."

No, it wasn't stupid at all.

He had, in fact, guessed all too near.

How strange that he should take an interest in understanding even beings that are as different from us as the angels… though perhaps, this may have been in part because he was not so certain about his own reason for fighting. Because he wondered what kept the angels coming, or if it was really so necessary to fight them…

Still I wondered what he might have felt, if he had known for a fact how they are sentient beings like us – our brethren, of a sort.

Though he is to troubled already, by all he's been made to endure – for his own sake, I must hope that he would never find out… until he cannot not find out, when all souls shall merge into one in the end, but then it will no longer matter – I suppose his fragile heart would no longer have to know pain. It would disappear in the ocean of souls – something like the river styx, where the bloodless shadows wander without flesh or bones.

He would have release, but he would also disappear – even that gentle, tender disposition that left him to wonder even about his enemies. That led him to look out even for the likes of me.

I beheld him there, quietly, looking up at the starry dark with a pensive, contemplative look in his eyes, a shorter distance away than either of our legs were long, and yet as distant as could be, in an entirely different understanding of our situation, a different world of experience, one that, no doubt, must be colored by the heat and immediacy of his tender human heart.

It struck me then that there was something quite beautiful, in a way, about the human heart.

I had never thought so before.

I suppose I had never known much of it.

I suppose that, what little I knew of it, had been restricted to its uglier sides.

I wondered then, what he must be seeing. Even if I saw it too, I couldn't see it through his eyes – his particular knowledge, his subjectivity. Not any more than he could see what I saw.

It's possible that this moment which was, for me, sure to be a memory, slowed with the heaviness of thought, would for him not even stick much, quickly passing by in a blur of fondness or distracted attention.

Even right here next to me, he was so far, far away.

There was nothing we could really do for each other. No way to change each other's fates, each other's trajectories. Words would do nothing, even if I were skilled at words, which I was certainly not.

There was no point in saying anything anyway – and as I realized that, I found myself afflicted with this uncomfortable swell of a heaviness in my chest and a hot burning beneath by cheeks.

A great leaden heaviness came upon me, and a lightness that was not the lightness of a lifted burden, but that of something flimsy that would be all too easily blown away in the wind.

I think I should have stood still and waited for it to pass, just – handled it myself, as my issue, which I couldn't explain anyway, which others wouldn't get and could not help me with, if they would even be inclined to – my life was my business.

But there was desperate madness somewhere, stirring, awakening… something ugly, uncomfortable, out of control, almost welling up, almost being too much…

And almost stumbling on all fours, it led me instead to draw closer to where he was sitting.

Just a little. Just barely noticeable.

I could allow it myself precisely cause I didn't think it would matter at all -

I can't say why. It's just something that spilled over. It's just something that came out.

But I followed his gaze, up to the cold white burning dots above, and I asked him,

"What are you looking at?"

And he responded at once, so much, a thousand flutters of his eyes, little shifts on his face, drawing his hand near no his mouth, his cheeks coloring just the faintest bit -

embarrassment, sincerity, surprise and apprehension at finding his idle looking so suddenly made the focus of even the faintest attention, and then, a genuine smile, forged for my benefit yet telling of real gladness to be dealing with me, as he attempted to speak:

"Ah, uh… nothing much, just the stars."

"The Stars?"

I knew not what else to ask.

He seemed to think it over, abashed to speak, and yet somehow letting his speech keep flowing, even as his glance kept flitting away, any semblance of a clear through-line disintegrating.

"I don't know why, but ever since I was small, I've loved to look at them. It's hard to explain. I guess it calms me down somehow."

"Does it?"

"Yeah – I's like… so much has happened… it hasn't even been two months since I came to this town, but already, it's like the days before this feel like an entirely different lifetime already – it's all one big blur of lights and noise and brightness, just one thing after another, so many, many thing that I'd never even known before - and I've been thinking so much, about who I am, and why I'm here. I'm not sure I'm even the same person anymore – and I can say even less if that's a good thing or a bad one… but at least the stars haven't changed.

They're still exactly the same. As they've always been. Even when I was a little boy.

I guess even if we failed in our mission and everything got destroyed, the stars would still be there.

That's a comfort somehow – it reminds me how small I am, that what I do doesn't really matter that much, even when I feel choked by all those obligations..."

He turned his eyes away then for good, as if he could no longer fight down the urge to hide his face, yet still urgent in some need to be heard, he did not cease, even as he was more or less mumbling into his collar.

"I bet you must be thinking that I'm a really messed up person, that I would pick this empty void over a living, breathing city filled with people – no wonder that Asuka thinks I'm a gloomy, disagreeable person…"

No matter what the topic is, he somehow always seems to shift it to putting himself down.

I could not say why that is – I could think of many more disagreeable qualities than the ones that he possessed.

"But that is not true. " I reminded him,

"It's hardly an empty void. What we see out there is most of what exists. We can't experience it directly, and only know it through abstract knowledge, but yet it exists. A thousand worlds like ours, maybe. Or even if they're not like ours, they are worlds. They are real. As surely as the one beneath our feet. People simply do not tend to take this into account. They do not tend to consider the whole picture, independent of their own position."

"Huh… I guess that's right… when you think about it…"

We sat there a good while.

Not far from here, the technicians of NERV had started a bit of a bonfire. Captain Katsuragi got them grilling snacks and handing out various beverages. One of the usual central dogma operators was playing guitar.

I spotted the second child sticking close to inspector Kaji, vying for his attention throughout much of the evening.

Ikari-kun and I remained here.

It turned out he had much to say, about the stars, and even about Mr. Aoba's guitar playing.

He sheepishly confessed at some point that he in fact played an instrument as well, though he at once appended that it wasn't 'anything cool like that', and that he wasn't very good.

I wonder why he'd never mentioned having such interests before.

He seemed so convinced that he wasn't very interesting, that he had nothing to tell.

An old familiar sadness flickered in his clear eyes as he said so, his words interrupted again and again with scattered apologies, as if he were regretful about even his very existence -

He even apologized for apologizing, remarking that the Second had often chided him for it.

He talked more here than I could ever recall him doing, and yet he still interrupted himself, asking me again and again to make sure that he wasn't somehow annoying me.

But I told him to proceed.

Who knows, maybe I was just listening to him because I held this futile hope and wish that maybe one day someone would listen to me. Something I'd never expect, never ask for, never hope for… but when it happens, I am grateful. Even if I don't really have the means to be grateful with.

It probably doesn't mean much, my gratitude – what could I do for anyone, powerless and limited as I am?

But on that day, it meant that I listened closely as he kept pointing out constellations.

I almost asked him, then – I contemplated dressing it up as some idle speculation.

What if I told you that I had, after a fashion, come from the other side of this black ocean, from one of these twinkling stars?

If he could wonder after and want to understand and have sympathy even for the angels, which were our enemies, would he still think of me the same way if he knew that I was, in a sense, the same as them?

But I didn't do it.

I thought of it, but as I was about to speak, the words caught in my throat, and I remained frozen there, a starry ocean away, observing him in silence as his own gaze was turned to the glittering stars above us, world of silent stone, indifferent to our plights and our sufferings.

I could not face him for shame of all that I was not.

I knew my place.

I did not need the Second's scorn to remind me of it all - of the gaping, shameful emptiness of my flimsy barely-existence.

I know what's coming.

There was never any hope.

I might as well have been all alone on that hill, all alone under that sky - alone with these foreign beings that could not understand me, surrounded by the dead already consigned to their end, and in that alone, I was one of them.

There was absolutely no one to whom I could possibly tell what was inside my heart… if what I possessed could even be referred to as such.

---

In hindsight, I probably should have split this one up, but it seemed too much like a logical unit that 'belongs' in one chapter.

I wish to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to OoglaIglaLeega and Wicked.A for their regular comments. Thanks to you and all other commenters for sponsoring my will to live in these trying times.