Disclaimer / Intro:
All characters etc. property of Gainax .......rob a man of his fish, and he'll starve for a day, teach him how to steal and he'll eat forever.



Ah well

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Borderline Ego 2.00 (or "Follow the yellow brick road")
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After having been forcibly separated my four very surprised techs out on the catwalk. Asuka and Misato had not spoken a word to eachother. Not as the techs dragged them away from each other, not when they passed each other in the hallway, pacing outside the eva cages, despite instructions by a very mussed Ritsuko to sit still and away from each other for the time being until she could get away from the bridge to deal with them herself. The two of them had not opened their mouths to each other except at the very onset of their brawl, and then only to scream the other's name, seemingly as the primal issuance of a challenge.

Since then, what was exchanged between the two was much more feral and dangerous in it's simple mindedness.

Hate. Resentment. Contempt. Jealousy.

Blame.

With assassin's accuracy, they aimed and twisted the daggers that they stared at each other, neither one yielding, not to the other's aggression nor to any mercy of their own .

Eventually they were persuaded into occupying separate sections of the facility while they waited for whatever it was that would happen next. Regardless of it's outcome, success or failure, they were still conducting an operation. There was clean up to be done and procedure to follow and as such and being who they were, they could not leave until dismissed. Neither of them argued or resisted, each of them caught up in much the same sentiment: 'Why bother.' and so they let themselves be led through the motions.

After some listening and some nodding on both their parts, more-so on the part of the Major, Asuka was being held largely as a matter of what to do with her for her insubordination, they were each given their leave of duty. Misato had finished her duties, while in Asuka's case, it had simply been decided that it was better to let someone else deal with it at a later time. Care had been taken to ensure that they would not have cause or opportunity to be in each other's presence and that they would each have access to ports of exit far away from each other.

Nevermind that they lived in the same home, where they were supposedly being discharged to.

Released from their roles as Pilot and Major, the women found themselves alight on the casual breeze of ambivalence. Their rice paper thin psyche's caught the drafts of air displaced by the opening and closing of doors and people moving down long halls, the sighs and whispers that permeated the rooms and ventilation system.

They settled, finally, in recessed corners, far removed from any of the trafficked alleyways of Nerv.

The events of the day crept back into their consciousness slowly, like the headlight of an oncoming train. In the face of it, they made no sounds, they shed no tears, their emotions too strong and too conflicted to manifest any other way but through silence.

They both spent the night at Nerv that way, far away from each other and anyone else who might intrude on this; their time of need. They lay there in the dark with their thoughts cycling through the spectrum of human emotions. The kaleidoscope turning at an ever increasing rate until the colors bled and overlapped, crystallizing into a glaring white noise.

***************************************


the 32nd day
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In the undefinable space that is the utter depths of despair, the encroachment of another human presence was palpable to her like the crawl of sweat on skin.

Misato heard the footsteps coming down on the stairs above her head, the clang of initial contact as hard sole contacted each metal grating platform followed by the creak of shifting weight, and then replayed again.
Closer and closer.
She watched through the gaps between each step to see who it might be, having a strong notion already but still somewhat bitterly surprised to see that the woman had, in fact, come out from the sterilizing light of her lab.

Ritsuko's telltale white lab coat passed in front of Misato's view, as the major peered out into the shadows in front of her, and over the crossed arms that she used to hug her body to itself. Upon reaching the bottom of the stairs, Ritsuko stopped still for a moment, without turning, she sat back on the stairs behind her and directly ahead of Misato.

They sat like that for a minute. Front to back

"You've been given the day off, otherwise I'd be here to tell you to get to your office."

Misato made no reply to this.

"You could go home. Section 2 reports that Asuka hasn't been there either." She paused after saying this, turning her head slightly to look behind her, looking for any kind of reaction. "But I'd figured you wouldn't really want to go back there quite yet."

Still nothing from the Major.

Standing up, Ritsuko rounded the corner of the stairway over to the side, looking at Misato, wrapped up in herself on the floor beneath the stairway.

"I have a minute, would you like to go get some coffee.... maybe a drink?"

"Don't tempt me." Finally a response, a deathly cold one, but a response none-the-less.

Ritsuko smiled at this wanly, a small smile for a small victory. She stepped forward, ducking her head beneath the stairway, and reached out her hand to Misato in order to help her from the floor. Ritsuko doubted the woman had moved at all through the night and her muscles and skeleton would be most ungracious in moving from their tightly bound position.

Before moving to take the offered hand, Misato levelled her eyes at her friend.

"What are we going to do now?" Her voice came out evenly, the anger still evident in it though, her brow still cross.

Ritsuko sighed and closed her eyes slowly. "I don't know, nobody really seems to know, not even the Commander." She should not have mentioned that particular person.

"The Commander?!!!" Misato became quite agitated at that. Uncrossing her arms, she made to get up from the floor, but her body was noncompliant, being much too stiff to stand so quickly. She had to stop midway, still steeply hunched over, but at least on her feet.

With her head bowed, she took Ritsuko's hand and let her friend lead her out from under the stair well and out into the tight maintenance hallway she'd been hiding out in. The extra space let her stretch out the length of her frame slowly. Her back was worst of all, her spine issuing a loud crack for every degree of vertical orientation she gained. Her limbs also had taken on the maddening tingle of feeling and circulation returning to appendages long since fallen asleep, even when their host had not. She leaned back against the near wall to stay upright while motor control returned to her.

It took her some moments to regain her composure and prepare herself to walk comfortably. Ritsuko granted her this time without interruption, just standing back against the other wall and watching the unkinking of the springs. While Misato steadied herself, Ritsuko was thinking back on the name that had finally gotten Misato up and active.
'The Commander. Nobody has seen him since yesterday. He's holed himself up in on of his offices and Vice Vommander Fuyutsuki refuses to disturb him.'

With no small amount of distaste her thoughts turned to a parallel subject, 'Rei seems to have made herself scarce as well.'
Though it was not really as if anybody had really expended a great deal of energy looking for her. Ritsuko did not doubt that the girl was somewhere within the Commander's immediate reach.

Ritsuko looked over to Misato who was standing away from the wall now and had her heard turned to the side, staring at nothing in particular but the mass of wires, pipes and valves that ran along the walls exposed throughout these parts of Nerv.

From this profile, the bruise on Misato's cheek and around her eye, courtesy of the Pilot's initial strike, was plainly visible. Ritsuko's eyes softened and she stepped away from the wall.

The Major seemed about as ready as she was likely to get.

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Asuka would have no such company come looking for her, permitting her a considerably much longer time to herself. Ample time to damage herself even further.

Asuka would eventually have to rouse herself up and away from her hiding place among the little known corners and corridors below when she began to hear the sounds of footsteps, indicating that the area was about to become populated again with the returning day shift.

The ants would come crawling through these spaces soon. She had to hide now, before they betrayed her to their queen

She had no intention of letting anyone find her as yet. She would return to them when she felt good and ready; satisfied that they had been duly punished for their mistreatment and neglect of her through these barely sufferable last few weeks. Misato was the worst of all, going all to pieces over that wimp, Baka-Shinji. That jellyfish's incompetence was astounding, getting absorbed into his eva like that. She was three times the pilot that boy ever had the hopes of being.

Shinji
Misato

There was no doubt in her mind the two of them were fools of the highest order, but still, that was no excuse.

Bah, the wimp was gone. No need to squander her valuable time on him now. She could feel her brain cells atrophying from the sheer boredom of remembering the loser. Now she could finally look forward to letting her natural and hard earned abilities shine. He wouldn't be around to distract her anymore with his pitiful dramatics and she would finally be able to do what she was meant to do unhindered.

With a little discreet wandering, she was now was making her way up through one of the many not oft used passageways in this massive complex. The final destination of which, an unknown to her.

The passageway was long and only barely lit with the minimum lighting. It had a high ceiling allowing the low light projected from the ceiling do diffuse even further. It was wide enough to permit two lanes of traffic so she guessed that it might be some sort of transport route for equipment and supplies. The whole passage was on a notable incline, so she reasoned that she was at least heading towards the surface and would perhaps emerge somewhere in Tokyo 3.

For a good while, the physical exertion played as natural buoy for her thoughts. She embraced it with her being fully, seizing upon its every aspect and facet, not wanting to leave room for any errant thought to enter her mind. From now until she saw daylight, she determined that she would know walking, she would know this tunnel, and know nothing else.

Being thus determined, her attention settled inwards, moving down through layers of fabric and skin, and on deeper into the muscle beneath. She felt the muscles in her thighs and calves tense and relax in their alternating rhythms. Beneath the sheer fabric of her plugsuit, her trim muscles bulged and undulated up and down the length of her limbs. She couldn't help but admire the fine craftsmanship in the construction of her frame.
With her college level knowledge of human anatomy, she was able to perceive and identify the individual muscles and muscle groups, and for a while she entertained herself with that. This one contracting while this one relaxed and this other one pulling in conjunction with another.

She felt her breathing adjust. Her diaphragm pressing down against her stomach and liver, pushing those things aside to make more space for her lungs to fill. The air rushing in to fill the vacuum that opened up in her chest and then expelled with forceful conviction. Her torso swelling to accommodate the billowing engines of her respiratory system and continuing to supply oxygen to her ever demanding body. The complex system of tissue and physics regulating the exchange of gases through microscopic capillaries.
She was acutely aware of the warming of the air as it passed through her mouth and nasal cavity with each breath. The way it dried her mucus and saliva and forced her to work her tongue around in the dry hollow well at the back of her throat.

She reveled to feel the rush of all these things, these millions of processes that affirmed her strength and vitality. Her body sustaining itself. Standing and propelling itself forward, under no one's vision, under no one's direction but her own. It gave her an uplifting sense of unbound freedom to go on like this. Walking uphill in an underground fortress.

Her heartbeat.
Her footsteps.
Her breath
The sheer power and determination that was she, Souryu Asuka Langley.

She could feel the taxing of her energy from one step to the next, knowing that she would only have that much less energy for the step after that. But she gave this little concern, confident that she would be free of this place long before her reserves wore out.

To her considerable credit, she went on like this for quite some time, but eventually, she could delve no further into the microcosmos of ribosomes and mitochondrion. She had pared herself down as superficially as she dared and found herself recycling information. This tunnel was considerably longer than she would have thought. The repetition dulling her intellect, her mind numbing from the automation and thus, slackening in it's vigilance.

She didn't even really notice when her thoughts first strayed, as they were just little deviances from the path. Little harmless, idle thoughts without consequence or substance. Something funny Hikari had said once. A nice outfit she saw in a magazine. Simple things that didn't mean much and passed through her mind leaving it no better and no worse. But these were simply the vanguards laying the groundwork to permit passage for their more malevolent brethren. With stalker's craftiness, these thoughts and doubts stole deeper into her mind, gradually shedding their airy guises as snake skins and trespassing further onto lands held taboo.

In time the serpents had her, snapping at her heels, injecting their venom through brittle fangs, the poison spreading quickly.

Misato
Shinji

She set her teeth against the sound of their names ringing between her ears.

The tunnel turned, rounding a corner sharply and reversing back onto itself while continuing its vertical ascent. Her mind followed suit, snaking back and forth as she ascended one level, then another. Her mind reversing direction evasively, trying to shake the ever increasing weight that trailed her.

She ran for a while, the change in routine giving her some solace from her thoughts, some new thing to be excited by and again her breathing, her heartbeat was all she knew and felt. The power she felt generated within herself was, in itself, invigorating. She ran probably longer and harder than she felt she ever had, again letting the but the fatigue outpaced her, the cramping in her abdomen doubled her over, and she stumbled back into the mire.

Like some perverse game played against a petulant child who refused to lose and so was constantly changing the rules, her emotions continued to flip flop, mocking her as she tried to ascend this jacob's ladder.

Anger
Grief
Relief
Regret
Pride
Shame
Hope
Doubt

As the dualities persisted, becoming more and more pitched in slope and amplified in vehemence, she rallied against one as much as the other, not fully willing to accept or embrace any side of the emotions caterwauling within her. She shoed them from her head like flies and attempted to stamp them out like small insects invading her bedroom. These things failing, her frustration just continued to mount like dung in a pigsty, attracting more flies in turn

In this solitude, she permitted herself the basest of expressions and behavior. Starting small at first, as if testing her control. Then, finding her peace just continuing to erode, she rushed on into it. Her hands clenched and unclenched at her sides. Her teeth grinding out slurs of German and Japanese in hushed tones that periodically exploded as shouts and bright flashes of disciplinary pain at the back of her dry throat.
She was becoming dehydrated, at the back of her mind, she knew this.
Eventually she learned to refrain from such outbursts, but that just made her eyes twitch all the more.

Her frustration bled in and out of the realm panic and drove her to run again in short bursts of adrenaline, only to be curbed again and again by the ever deepening cramps and the weariness in her bones. She was beginning to feel feverish, sweating and flushed as she was. An imaginary tumor in her brain, giving her a headache to the point of nausea. Her bones and joints had a ringing ache in them, like they were made of some tarnished old metal and had been struck to all resonate at some wailing high pitched chord.

Her mind's path began to resemble less the zig zag of the passageway, and more a double helix, as her thoughts multiplied to run parallel as well as in reverse, the points never quite meeting up at either end.

Her perspective and emotional orientation held to no constants, except to find new ways to contradict one another. Driving her one way, then another.

She felt she was suffocating, rolling over and over as she drifted up from the sea floor. It seemed to be just be a matter of which way she would be turned when she eventually reached the surface.

Almost out of exhaustion then, her thoughts seemed to quiet themselves. No longer was she rocking back and forth in a rapidly deflating life raft through some mad storm. A tired quiet just fell all over her, too tired was she then to really even appreciate the peace. She still had a lot of walking to do and her feet hurt, her legs hurt, her muscles all over ached and she had a vicious headache. Her abdomen cramped, she must be hungry.

She kept walking.
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..

She mensed.

"!"
"WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUCK!!!!!!!!!"

She wasn't due for her period for another week, but stress can do things to a body.

Hunched over and screaming to herself, clutching, practically clawing at her abdomen, Asuka hated the woman that she was, hated the body that failed her, that made her weak, that defiled and defied her. Spitefully following a design not her own. She wanted to tear the offending organs from her body, cast them off and the phantom baggage that they entailed, taunting and threatening her with their gory testament every month.

She bit down on her lip, daring her eyes to cry. So help her God, if they cried, if they shed one fucking tear, she swore she would tear them out from their sockets herself, flinging them sightlessly against the walls around her. Her body would not defy her in this, she would not dirty herself with tears.

She shut her eyes against the burning, shutting them so tight she thought they might pop. The burning just stayed there, spreading further back in her head.

Sucking her lip, she tasted the blood there and waited until she could hear her breathing turn slow and even. Concentrating on nothing else but the hiss of air flowing purposefully in and out of her, she stood, raised her head, opened her eyes,

and kept walking.

After a few steps, and a few steps more, and a few steps after that, the warmth that had spread down her legs cooled, becoming nothing more that just so much sweat and moisture trapped beneath her airtight suit. The accumulated moisture, sweat and such, from all over her body had all been draining, at gravity's beckoning, down into the shoes of her suit and now squished between her toes. But soon, that too faded into numbness.

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"Do you think we'll have to reinstate the Fourth Children?"

Through the steam wafting over the rim of her cup, Ritsuko regarded Misato appraisingly for a moment. Seeing where this was going, she sipped from her cup once more before she set the cup down and spoke.

"It's not practical right now."

"Because we don't have an eva for him to pilot?"

The question came out rushed, the prior question put forth only so she could ask this one, and this one so that she could ask the next. All of which she already knew the answers to but Misato had not yet shaken the anger and vulnerability from her system and so felt the need to take control of something, anything. This conversation would have to do for the time being.
Though she was the head of tactical operations, and a genius at devising innovative methods of attack and defense, she was currently employing one of the oldest and most tried and true forms in the arts of war. It simply involved giving the opponent enough rope to hang themselves.

To her credit, Ritsuko was playing her part well to the bitter end. Anything, well, almost anything for a friend.

"He is not capable of piloting adequately in his present condition."

"Oh, you mean, the condition where we abandoned him then nearly killed him."

Ritsuko sighed resignedly,"From a limited point of view, yes, I suppose you could describe it as that."

"So once he's all healed up and ready to go we'll suit him up and throw him right back in the saddle. Just keep throwing kids at these things (the evas) to chew up and spit out, or not spit out as they seem to have taken to recently?"

Ritsuko opened her her mouth to speak but Misato cut her off.

"And don't give me that 'we must in order to survive' crap. I can take that from someone like the Commander but not you Ritsuko. I want to know why we're still depending on these things if we don't even understand them."

It was an old argument between these two. One that was asked more out of frustration than any expectation of an answer. One that generally ended as this one did now. In silence.

Until the next question.

"Where the hell is Asuka," then as an afterthought "and Rei?"

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Ayanami was, contrary to what doctor Akagi had previously thought, not with the commander.

She did not know where the Commander was. She had not been contacted by the commander and had not sought him out herself. Deciding that he most likely had other more pressing issues to attend to, she had taken it upon herself to think through this by her own devices.

She too, had felt a need to reflect on the ramifications of this day's events. So, choosing to forego asking the commander to assist her in that endeavor, she had set out to do it, as she did most everything else in her existence not dictated by the commander: in her own way.

Ayanami's path, following the failure of the operation and the spectacle of the Major and Second Children, had diverged from most everyone else's in direction and substance.

She had not ejected from her entry plug until finally ordered to by Doctor Akagi, amidst a flurry of other orders the woman was antiseptically spraying the bridge staff with. Rei had stayed in the plug that long simply as a matter of having no idea as to anything better to do. Until she was ordered otherwise, she had to assume that there might still be some purpose to her presence in eva. When that purpose was dissolved she didn't know what to do.

So much had just changed.

By now, the techs and staff who had originally been stunned to near immobility, were quite active with the urgency of just needing to do something, anything. Most of the personel out on the floor had no clue what the true nature of the operation had been to begin with. Knowing what one was really doing was not in the job descriptions for the majority of Nerv employees. They knew whatever it was, it was important though. The tension and the overtime surrounding the project for these many weeks had made that much clear. Still, for the most part, their understanding of the operation consisted only of making these preparations this day, moving this over there another day and then today, finally, everything coming to a head with a series of orders concerning making connections from this to that and raising the level on this other thing. After some time, they had simply heard that whatever it is they had set out to do had been a less than successful, and that was enough to warrant uncertainty about their chances of seeing tomorrow.

It was their general understanding that with the position Nerv was in, failure at anything was not a good thing for the human race.

Ayanami stood motionless outside her entry plug after she had finally received the order to eject. She stood by, watching the people's motions off in the far section of the cages allotted to Unit 01 though she knew their actions really ought not to be any of her concern. Feeling the weight of the LCL accumulate, surpass the threshold of it's surface tension, fall away, and then build up once again as drops of the stuff fell from her eyelashes down to the pool bleeding out beneath her, she stepped down from the pilot's docking platform and began walking.

She approached the techs, who busily pressed by her, carrying equipment and relaying instructions here and there. They were removing some of the lines and attachments surrounding Unit 01 and it's entry plug, as if dressing it down, though they left some parts alone. She began making her way over towards the eva, oddly concerned with having a closer look at the thing.

Standing before its gargantuan form, directly in front of the exposed core, she stared up at it, feeling suitably small and insignificant against the eva's size and level of activity surrounding her.

She kept her eyes raised up towards its shielded face, though it held it's gaze determinedly fixed forward, over her head, and avoiding eye contact. Ayanami knew roughly what the Eva's looked like stripped of their armor and bindings. She could imagine, in her own mind's eye, peering beneath the mask, at the face beneath. The thing's eyes, the thing's teeth. But her imagination could pierce no further, her vision falling short of that which she was seeking to discover.

'What is it, inside the eva, beneath the skin, beneath the tissue?'

She had felt the eva's mind, she had always felt it's presence there, with eyes trained on the back of her head, waiting for her there in the entry plug. Ever since she had first begun her training in the prototype model, she had known that she was not the sole presence in that space, but that she was, without question, alone in that seat.

That phantom presence there inside the eva, it would allow her to come into it's space, granting her permission to guide that enormous body under her direction, but it would share nothing of itself with her. Instead, it would only reflect herself back at her, and that reflection redoubled again, through an unending chain of mirrors . The images of her other selves always a moment ahead of her in time, always acting out some scenario she might choose to persue, and showing her beforehand, the futility of it, whatever it was.

Having felt that same sense of a presence, though with an entirely different identity, inside the plug of Unit 01, she knew that Shinji was not alone in whatever space he resided in.

Still, she wondered at that location. If it was someplace corporeal, with dimension and consequence, or someplace else, like the place from which her young imagination sprung.

'Where is Ikari-kun in this?'

Her eyes fell level in front of her, appraising her warped reflection in the silent core. Her image in red, with her head swollen, the surrounding environment wrapping around her in the almost all-seeing, 180 degree, fish-eye reflection. If the image there were to be taken as a literall representation, and not for what it was, it appeared her neck would be be snapped under the weight of her own cranium. Her body would then probably tumble headlong from the catwalk onto the cage floor, so far below.

She looked down at her own body, her real body, outside of the unbelievably distorted reflection on the surface of this cloned Angel's heart.

The cages were well lit and the light from the room was reflected from the core back onto Ayanami. The reflected light taking on the hue of the core's smooth mirror surface. Her white suit was cast in the red glow. She brought her hands up looking at them carefully. They were there, her hands, slick with LCL, and gloved in white, yet appearing stained red in this abominable red light.

While she considered this, the LCL, smelling of blood, continued to dry on her face, a few fresh trails of it still seeping down from her hair and over her passive features.

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Finally, she saw that light at the end of the tunnel, not a very bright light, but a light all the same. As she continued to make her way towards it, she was able to make out that it was a lone spotlight, directed against the closed gate at the end of the tunnel. The gate had stencilled on it, in big, bold, unimaginative type, GATE 52. To the left side of the gate, there was a much smaller light.
It blinked, slowly transitioning from non-existent to red

The light to the side its slow pulse, fading in and out like the waxing and waning of the moon played in accelerated time lapse, ticking off the ebb and flow of some red sea, eroding the shoreline of the small island she dwelt hibernating upon. Distantly, it reminded her of her heartbe- no, of breathing, of her own tired breathing.

Inhale
......
Exhale
......

In synch to the light's pulse, breath by breath, the her mind engaged. Her awareness tentatively expanding beyond the borders of the cold, tight egg she had been slumbering in. The transparent membrane, both confining and protecting her through this gestation, gave way and she reached out to again touch the thresholds of her identity.

Her breath, her footsteps, her heartbeat, her pulse, her.......

Her senses again began to register those certain elements of her condition and environment. Only certain elements though. Some things were kept mercifully submerged at the bottom of a deep rift in her unconsciousness. It was a small blessing.

She realized she had never washed since emerging from her entry plug after the test the day before. How odd for her. Her hair was crusted and pressed to her forehead and cheeks. Her skin feeling tight and sticky all over where it was not already covered by her plug suit. Even the suit's normally sleek and comfortably body hugging enclosure was beginning to chafe with the salt from her sweat building up in deposits around her joints. Her legs and feet were abused with fatigue and ripe blisters. She smelled pungently of sweat and blood. Her abdomen felt hollow, barely there, forgotten.

Blinking, she noticed how sticky her eyelashes were as well as the thick encrustation that surrounded her eyes.
Her lips were chewed on and sore and very, very dry.

As she approached the exit, she parted those lips just a moment , as if testing their usability, before gingerly speaking to herself,

"You.....baka."

Almost upon the gate, Asuka guessed that the red light was the LED on the gate's keypass, indicating it's locked status. A Nerv security card would be needed to gain passage through here. Fortunately, as sleek as the plugsuits were, they had been designed with a few inserts that served as pocket space, allowing the Children to carry their ID cards around Nerv while suited up, but precious little else.

Then, the last step taken, she found herself there, at the end. She continued to breathe, letting the slight excitement at finally reaching the end fade. She held out her Nerv card, pressed between clammy fingertips gloved in the clinging embrace of her red plug suit. The keypass just inches from her. All it would take was a simple downward slashing motion, and she would be free.

The simple red light droning on.

Her cracked lips curled into a tight smile, knowing that on the other side was the welcome end to this, and swiped her card through. The blinking red light flashed green and with the pitched whine of mechanics, the gate began ascending up along its runners, folding up and out of the way. On the floor, Asuka could see a line of amber light, it's front expanding further back along the floor into the half lit tunnel and up her body, as the gate made way for the light of the setting sun to come through.

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"I can't believe this, I don't believe this is happening."

Following the failed salvage operation, Makoto Hyuuga had spoken these words into his lap as he held his head bowed, his forehead resting on his hands clutched together. It was a redundant statement, but it might have somehow given him and many of the others on the bridge staff some measure of comfort to say such things aloud. Perhaps just speaking, and hearing one's voice in doing so, gave some level of grounding, an assurance that as bad as whatever the situation happened to be, at least they still had themselves.

At least they were still alive.

But Makoto wouldn't want to think of it that way: that he said these things just to make himself feel better, not consciously, of course, and he wouldn't want any of his fellows to think of it that way so he said nothing of that odd notion to anyone else. He had just continued to keep his head down and give voice to the irrelevant.

"I can't believe we lost him."

'Him' the Third Children, Pilot Ikari, and if he were off duty, Ikari Shinji, or even Shinji-kun, Makoto didn't really know the boy any other way but in name only. It was not a direct personal loss for him. Indirectly, it had plucked dissonantly at his heartstrings, watching the breakdown of Major Katsuragi while he sat ineffectually in the background at his station.

And it was there that he sat again, his head again held in his hands. This time his concern encompassing all the Children, the remaining Children that is.

Earlier that day, after reporting to work early after minimal rest at home, he had received orders from Major Katsuragi to locate the two remaining pilots. Since then, neither of them had turned up in a days worth of searching. No reports from Section 2 had been forthcoming to that end and searching the security videos from the previous day had been a nightmare. There was plenty at Nerv to be secure about and they had the surveillance cams to prove it.

Currently he had no Children found for his efforts. Though he was tired, he was far from given up on the task. he just needed a moment to collect himself and rest his eyes.

A beeping beneath his right elbow alerted him that something was afoot, and when he checked it, then checked it again after bolting from his seat to give her the news in person, he was greatly relieved.

At last he'd have something good to report to her, and he wanted to at least see the smile personally. It would ease his mind.

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Hikari , Kensuke, and Touji were out for a stroll. Touji still confined to the wheel chair, Hikari, keeping pace by his side with her arms held behind her back, Kensuke some distance ahead of them, walking with his hands in his pockets and his eyes focused on the horizon off to his side. They had done this once before, a few days after Touji had been back to school. Today they took the opportunity to do it again, after having had another lengthy discussion after the final bell had rung.

Having already talked about much of what weighed heaviest on their minds - their friends, the pilots - all of whom had been absent from school today, they were taking this time now outdoors to enjoy some solace in the quiet and tranquility that still persisted, if one knew when and where to look, here in the city.

Kensuke had shown them this place, it had been one of his old favorites. He'd shared this place with Shinji once as well. It had been before they were really even friends. His only contact with Shinji up to then was as the slightly apologetic sidekick to the violence prone jock. And then as the stupid kid he'd had to save whilst fending off an Angel.
To himself, he smiled at that a bit wanly. His fascination with all things military, and eva in particular, not really having been discarded, he did feel he had a tragically more realistic and personal mentality towards it now. It was still just a matter of how one used the tools, he'd always at least had the sense to know that. It was just that he'd been in a position now to see them used to protect to great effect, but also to attack, to terrible detriment, his friends.

He had been glad for the ruggedness and versatility of Touji's state of the art wheel chair. The technology there showing it's utility for the benefit of others. Otherwise Touji would not have been able to navigate the uneven terrain of the hills.

Their discussion at school had been lengthy. And at times, heated, leaving them not for want of talk and mentally exhausted. Still, idly, they found some things to talk about.

"My sister's s'posed to get fitted for some new prototype model of prosthetics next week. They said alot of the new grafts are takin hold real well, a lot better than what they were tryin to do at the other place."

Hikari nodded, still just looking straight ahead, as was Touji. She offered an economical but polite "Hm." to let him know she heard. A calm smile on her lips.

Touji smiled wide, continuing his story, "Yeah, the new therapist she got says she oughta be able to adjust real easy, bein so young an all." That last bit made his smile fall a bit, and Hikari noticed, glancing down at him, but he rebounded, saying: "The Suzuharas ain't no quitters, that's for sure. She'll do fine."

Hikari smiled and closed her eyes, relieved that he seemed genuinely hopeful.
"She's had a good role model for that." She'd surprised herself, saying that out loud. When she opened her eyes again somewhat embarrassed, Touji was looking up at her, a hitherto unimaginable look of quiet gratitude on his face.
It was an unusual, but not totally uncomfortable gesture.

Touji had meant to make some remark to the effect of, 'Yeah, well don't let it get out, you know.' but had decided against it, choosing instead, the expression he wore.

Hikari couldn't yet defy the blush lighting her cheeks slightly at the look from the boy, and turned her head down and away, but she went on, saying: "Yeah, you've done a good job too, Suzuhara-kun.".

The words of praise were meant to encompass more than just his perseverance since the incident, but everything that had led up to it as well, though much of that she did not personally know in detail. It was a generalization based on what she did know of her classmate of many years' behavior.

She raised her head and again set her eyes ahead, trying to be casual about it. Her smile, though, was vivid, celebratory.

It was enough to keep walking like that for a while.

With as good a mood as they were in now, Touji ventured a question that, while not melancholy, had the potential to turn out that way. But his thoughts had turned to the subject, and he felt he owed his friend as much to voice his thanks now, and to share that particular little story with the class rep.

"Did I ever tell you about when Shinji came to see my sister?"

Hikari couldn't hide her surprise. Her eyebrows raised and her smile turned lopsided, questioning. Turning her head, she looked to Touji to elaborate.

"Really, Shinji? When did he do that?"

Though she was surprised to hear that Shinji had visited Touji's sister in the hospital, and probably sounded incredulous, she was really quite happy to hear it. It spoke of no small change in the boy to know he'd gone to see the girl he had inadvertently injured on his first sortie. She knew Shinji to be one who carried his guilt with him. She saw his shoulders sagging with the weight of it more and more every day that he entered the classroom. In all this time, he still seemed only marginally able to accept Touji's forgiveness and subsequent friendship, though she knew it meant a lot to him.

Touji continued after a moment, amused at Hikari's reaction, though he couldn't blame her, and also needing a moment to collect his own thoughts. He'd have to go back a ways in order to show her why the Shinji he knew would do that.

"It was just before my test." It was a small victory that he did not stumble over that last word. That small accomplishment raising his confidence in regards to his choice to tell her the story.

"Back when I had to deliver those papers to Ayanami's."
Hikari flushed briefly with the memory wherein she had all but begged Touji to let her accompany him to the absentee pilot's place, only to have him offhandedly ask Shinji to come along instead.
Touji seemed to pause a little bit in his recounting as well, before starting up again, somewhat awkwardly after having such a good start.

"Well, yeah, when we had to go by there to drop off her papers for her, she wasn't even there when we arrived. So Shinji, he just went ahead and went on in." Hikari let a small gasp escape, shocked at the forwardness of such a move. "Then, when we got inside, I noticed just how filthy everything was. Have you ever been there?" Hikari shook her head no. "Well it was fuckin filthy. Dirt, and trash, and bandages, all these old bloody bandages just layin 'round on the floor. It was sick. She doesn't even have anythin in her whole apartment but, like, a bed and a desk. No T.V. or nothin, and she lives in just the shittiest part of town. All run down and noisy. Like a prison almost."

Touji trailed off, after having become agitated and a little withdrawn throughout his description of Ayanami's living space. The beginnings of anger lining his eyes, but then dissolving a bit as he came back to himself.

Ahead of them, Kensuke had stopped walking and was turned towards the sunset, hands still in his pockets, his glasses reflecting the sun's glare. Touji and Hikari were coming up on him shortly.

"Anyways," Touji continued, much calmer now and sidling up beside Kensuke with Hikari still beside him. "I was gonna just drop off the papers an leave, cause well, that's all we were s'posed to do. But Shinji went and got a trash bag and started cleaning the place up." Touij smiled to himself a bit, reflecting. "I teased him about it, cleaning up a woman's place an' all but...."

and again he trailed off, this being the turning point of his story up to now, and the part he needed to make sure that he expressed just as best he could. The part he'd sat and mulled over in the school yard when he thought his life as a normal kid was over.
He stared at the horizon, his thoughts spreading themselves out on that expansive plane for him to be able to sort through and organize and finally give substance to.

"Well, I told him I thought he'd changed. How I used to think he was a jerk and just self centered. But seein him try to do somethin good for someone like Ayanami, who probably wouldn't even notice, I just figured he'd changed. Like, maybe he could try to, and maybe he even that he wanted to be able to take care of somebody b'sides just himself."

The sun continued to descend towards the horizon and out of sight, the palette of the sky continuing to shift through the spectrum.

"Then Ayanami came in. Shinji explained and we left. On the way home, he was real quiet. So I asked him what's up, an he asked me 'Do you think someone like her has reason to say arigatou to someone much in her life?'

The sun stopped to ponder that one a moment as well.

"I hadn't heard her say anythin but I guess she did. Shinji was closer to her an she talks soft most the time anyway, but I didn't feel like teasin him about it an so I told him, 'no, she probly didn't', an he just sort of smiled about it then."

The three of them smiled then, sharing that image.

"Then the next day, when I found out they wanted me to pilot.... I don't know, I was just really messed up. I figured I could get them to take care of my sister in exchange for me agreein to pilot, an I was happy for that much I guess...." He stopped again, looking for the right words again, somewhat surprised at himself for carrying on the story this long.

"It's not like I knew any of this was gonna happen to me, but I guess I did kind of get the feeling that, you know, this might be it. Maybe not that I was gonna die pilotin eva, but that I wasn't gonna be just a kid anymore, I wasn't gonna be able to be just my little sister's big brother anymore. I was a pilot now. I was gonna be just like Shinji."

Kensuke lowered his eyes, careful not to move his head, over to look down at his friend confined to the wheel chair. Some guilt still in him that he had ever felt spitefully envious of his friend to have been selected to be an eva pilot, to be 'just like Shinji', and more guilt still, that he had felt relief when it had not been him at the end of the day.

Touji looked down to his arm, bandaged and braced to his body. His hand exposed beyond the cast but bound with his fingers splayed out with tiny pins inserted through his skin on into the bone fragments below, holding them in place until they mended. That hand he'd used to attack Shinji with not once, but twice.

"I was thinkin bout Shinji alot 'cause of that, not so much the first day after they told me, but that second day, I was thinkin about him alot an why he pilots. He's my friend, so I'm not sayin this to be mean or nothin, but he's a pretty weak little guy. It's obvious he hates fightin an pilotin is just harder. Kensuke an me were with him when he fought that second Angel."
He looked over in an attempt to meet Aida's eyes with that, feeling a need to make some contact with him, but he couldn't be sure he'd made it through the glare that almost seemed ever present on the spectacled boy's glasses.

"Ken an me saw him, he was practically bein tortured, ridin in that thing. Then I thought about seein him at Ayanami's. Tryin to do somethin for her when he didn't really have to, and nobody really seemed to care. She always seems so weird and out of it, I didn't think she was really even gonna care. But I guess, I mean, she said 'thank you'. Comin from Ayanami, that means somethin. I don't know if that's why he pilots really, to have people thank him, but I thought at least he does really seem to care about people. Like, if he could help them that he'd probly try to do what he could.

So eventually, I told him about it, about me bein an eva pilot."

He took a deep breath at that, his recount coming to a bit a lul. It seemed Touji needed a moment and was giving dramatic enough pause to let it sink in, just how hard it had been to tell Shinji, to let himself tell Shinji. That moment had been like the last moment of quiet stillness atop the first hill on a roller coaster before gravity took hold and sent them careening through the course of events that followed.

Hikari, not wanting to seem like she was standing over him, waiting for him to finish the story, adjusted her skirt to allow her to crouch down, careful to keep her knees together. Browsing the selection of tall, unkept blades of grass at her feet, she plucked one up, turning it over between her fingers in the tinted sunlight.

"Actually, I probly only decided to tell him cause of Ayanami again. I wasn't gonna tell him at first 'cause I knew it would probly freak him out. I was already pretty weirded out and I didn't want him being all scared an uptight about it too, Souryu was already being a.."

A swift, disciplinary glance from the class rep put that particular line of thought to rest, though in a shallow grave, to be sure.

"Uh, yeah," Moving right along, "anyways, when I was out on the roof at lunch, that one day, Ayanami came up too. I don't know if she was looking for me or for Shinji really, but I talked to her for a sec, an then Shinji showed up on the roof on the next building over. He just sort of stood there, looking at me an Ayanami for a while. I think he was looking for me too."

He looked to Kensuke for any kind of confirmation since he was sure that Shinji and Kensuke would have been eating lunch together at least, even if he weren't there with them. Getting none, he frowned a little, and went on.

"He knew somethin was up, I mean Ayanami wouldn't normally have any reason to talk to me, let alone come up to the roof lookin for me. He knew about the new eva comin in, an that they musta got a pilot for it. If we were gonna be teammates fightin angels now, I just figured I oughta go ahead and tell him and get it over with."

The trio let that sit for a while, the edge of the sun just barely visible over the horizon line anymore.

"How'd he take it?" Kensuke asked, still looking off at what remained of today's view of the earth's nearest star, now just a quivering sliver of red, losing ground at both ends.

Silently, Touji was relieved that Kensuke had said something at last, and took a deep breath, anxious now to continue so he could get to the part with his sister.

The chance, of course, was denied him.

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"ASUKAAAAAAAA!"

Misato's voice emerged as a high pitched irregularity amid the methodical thumping sounds of air whipping around the blades of the Nerv emergency rescue helicopter. The woman, anxious that she be at the girl's side as soon as possible, dropped from a considerable height to the ground below before the copter had even set down, nearly doubling the workload of the medical team still aboard.

Asuka, herself, was laying on her back in the grass, feeling the draft from the landing helicopter increase in strength to a strong wind throwing a chill across her body and tearing at the shirt and sports jacket that lay over her torso and thighs, reflexively her hands clutched weakly at them to hold them to her, it was about as reflexive and and firm a grip as that of an infant.

The shirt was Kensuke's school shirt, the jacket, Touji's. She was laying beneath them in order to keep whatever measure of body heat she could preserve against the night's chill and her own deepening shock.

Extreme muscle fatigue, dehydration, mental stress, and sleep deprivation. (She hadn't been sleeping well for weeks now, but she wasn't about to let anybody on to that.) The combination of these had made for a miserable experience for Asuka since she had emerged from the underground tunnel.

Almost as soon as she stepped foot out of the gate, which had opened out onto a large grassy field looking down to the downtown area, with the sun warming her body once again, the shaking had begun. Minor at first, enough to garner her attention and annoyance, but it was nothing debilitating. The debilitating part happened later. After about ten minutes more of walking, she simply fell over when her legs ceased to move. She was venomously annoyed at this, looking back at her own legs. They were still there, still connected to her. There was no numbness to them. She swore at them, invoking them to action and obedience. Then the cramps had begun.

Beginning in her legs, the spasms began twisting and pulling at the fibers of her muscle tissue. When she cried out from the pain, her empty stomach revolted, issuing a stream of bile from it's depths that effectively silenced her while only adding to the affliction.

For a while it was all she could do to just lay out flat and let the tiny pockets of combustible gas that seemed to have built up within her body explode, hurtling shrapnel deep into organs and bone. Her lungs burned, unable to draw breath, and only filling with the noxious burning gases cast off in the explosions of all the internal land mines that were all somehow set top go off now.

When that agony had expired, and left her only with the mild inconvenience of a sharp pain every time she drew too deep a breath, as well as the wretched tang of gastric juices in her mouth and stinging her chapped lips, she tried again to move. To her abysmally bitter amusement, she found that if she wished to move, she would have to drag herself by her hands, as her legs were still unresponsive, merely twitching uselessly. And so she did that, arm over arm, the earth digging beneath her fingernails, only vaguely aware that she had been heading in the direction of the city, and so continuing on that impulse.

After some time, as the sky grew more deeply colored, and the low breeze that swept low, bending the tips of each blade of grass around her picked up, she had heard Hikari. She chittered from the back of her throat and surrendered her consciousness for a time.

She felt almost no cohesion to herself now, no definite boundaries where this pain began or this ache ended, or even what was pain and what was just feeling. She felt amorphous, throbbing, bleeding out in several directions, then drawn back like the tide, towards some common center. She knew someone, Misato, had called her name, but she didn't know if she'd heard it, or if someone was telling her that misato had called her, or if she'd read it in a book somewhere a long time ago. Everything was growing thinner and further out of reach.

A part of her couldn't stand it.
A part of her couldn't care less.

She suddenly felt pressure on her shoulder, moving underneath to her shoulderblade and then to her back. The pressure increased, it might push through her back and out her chest, she thought. Then she felt her neck stretch - tight in the front, pinched in the back - as her head lolled backwards while her torso was pulled up from the ground. She felt pressure, softer now, and a little bit of warmth around her chest and on either side of her body around her arms. She felt her head cradled now, softly supported with more warmth now seeping onto her cheek.

"Mi...Misa....to."

"Shhhhhhh Asuka, I'm right here. Just rest. We're going to get you to a hospital soon, just.."

"I.." The delirious girl interrupted,

"....I hate.... you..."








"...........I know, Asuka.... I know."


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After Ayanami had turned away from Unit 01and made her way to the locker rooms, she found herself again transfixed on the curtain that divided the locker rooms. Formerly the line had been drawn at Ikari-kun on one side and the girls on the other, now the line existed to separate just pilot Souryu from herself.

Just them two, the only two existing pilots on active status.

Outside, staring up at Unit 01, she had been pondering the whereabouts of Pilot Ikari's presence, or 'soul'. The continued existence of which, somehow, she had not even questioned. Now, though, the existence and the whereabouts of that 'soul' or whatever it is that remained of him seemed irrelevant, in the face of the fact that they had no way of retrieving that element or making use of it.

Up to that point, Ayanami was not sure whether she had held any expectations of the recovery operation.
Failure?
Success?
What had really been the objectives here?
She knew The Commander's penchant of veiling motives within motives, and so it was not unreasonable, she thought, to suppose that the Third Children was not, in fact, intended to be salvaged. The Commander had not given any indication to her that the recovery of the Third Children was not the intended result of today's operation. All that she had observed seemed to suggest that reinstating the Third Children, or at least Unit 01, to active operational status was a priority. Her own duties and functions had been relegated to second class on that account.

Her thumb hovering above the button to decompress her plug suit, she attempted to decipher how she felt about the prospect that the Third Children was not intended to be recovered.

There was no reason for her to know one way or the other. The status of Pilot Ikari had no bearing on her own purpose as outlined by The Commander. Pilot Ikari was unnecessary to her ability to function, she would be able to fulfill her role independent of his presence or not. The Third Children had been a necessity at a certain point, and he had certainly proven his usefulness since then, but had his usefulness ended?

With the advent of the functional Dummy Plug System, perhaps the necessity of Pilot Ikari had been negated. Ayanami was uncertain of this. The Dummy Plug had been employed with successful results once. This did not, in her understanding, constitute a basis for reliability. Pilot Ikari had been reliable in his performance thus far, and in that respect, seemed preferable, at least for now, to the Dummy Plug.

Yes, it was preferable to have Pilot Ikari available. Even if he confounded her personally, he was an asset to them professionally.

So, she reasoned, it was perfectly logical to regard Pilot Ikari's continued absence as a bad thing.

She then paused, in the process of slipping the plug suit from her shoulder as another thought came to her.

'Continued absence?' By all indications, shouldn't she begin regarding the situation as his permanent absence?

At this prospect, her displeasure increased. Her brow furrowed.

Ayanami was beginning to feel that her displeasure was bordering on becoming as personal as it was simply professional. She had already established that it was reasonable to prefer Pilot Ikari's presence to his absence - professionally - and that his absence was a bad thing - professionally - but her growing unease with the idea of perhaps not being able to resolve any of the question in her mind concerning The Third without his renewed presence was something she could only point out as a personal issue.
Her own personal loss.

Again she thought back to a statement she'd made to Pilot Ikari, that she had nothing else, nothing but eva. Recently, her thoughts had begun to make her question that notion. She had lost nothing in regards to her own ability to pilot, her bond to eva still well intact. But she knew that what she felt was not comfortable, and that it seemed to stem from Pilot Ikari's absence. She knew that other people, sometimes felt discomfort when separated from another, and that sometimes separation from one specific person caused this discomfort to manifest quite strongly. It's name she knew but she knew not it's details.

Other people called it 'lonliness'.

She didn't know what to call it, because 'lonliness' ,as she'd been told, was not something that she should experience. Not out of impropriety necessarily, but because she was 'different'.

She'd been told this as long as she could remember.

There had been many things that had been explained as things that she should not experience, or have to experience, for that reason. And thus far it had been sufficient reason enough. She may experience some feelings in her life, but, she had been told, they would not be what other's felt, and those others, in turn would not understand what she felt. She had seen this kind of mutual inability to understand another's feelings exhibited among people who ought to share many similarities. Pilot Ikari and Commander Ikari, first and foremost to her thinking. These two, who ought not to be so different, being of the same family, seemed to share no understanding between themselves. If people without so much 'difference' between them could not have an understanding of feelings, what chance was there that anyone might understand or relate to her own.

She had no kindred. No one who shared her unique position.

She was different.

Replaceable.

If it had been she that disappeared in the cockpit of Unit 01, she wondered would they have needed to attempt to salvage her soul in order to transfer it to a new body, or could they have gone from a previous back up.

For a time she mulled over this, while she stepped into the shower compartment and rinsed her body of the LCL. Under the running water, as she moved her hands about over the surface of her skin to coax the drier remnants of the substance from herself, she took notice of her body and was rewarded with an unexpected notion.

The clones.

***************************************



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After the helicopter had pulled away from the hill, heading back towards the city. The two friends stood by for a while, watching it recede into the evening sky.

Hikari had gone back along with Asuka in the helicopter. She would be permitted to stay with Asuka up until the point where, if deemed necessary, she would be transferred to a special Nerv Hospital, but it looked as though Asuka would remain stable so long as she got proper treatment shortly. By going back and having to say goodbye to her previous companions early, it allowed her some time to be close to her desperate looking friend and also served to get the young lady home at a reasonable hour.

Touji and Kensuke would have probably gone back with them as well, but with the bulk of the medical equipment and the extra passengers already riding along, Touji's wheel chair would not fit. So he and Kensuke had stayed behind, assuring Misato that they would be catching the rail train shortly to get back home.

When the sound of the Helicopter was distant in their ears, Kensuke spoke up, saying:

"So what was his reaction?"

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Standing before the doors to the clone tanks, Ayanami, hesitated for just a moment. in her hand she held her Nerv card, ready to slide it through the reader to gain access. She had never been forbidden from coming here on her own, it had never been a question of that before. Her card, by itself, would grant her access without the addition of The Commander or Vice Commander's cards or Doctor Akagi's access codes, so she reasoned that their presence was not completely necessary to grant permission to enter the room. As exclusive as the area was, if she had access, she thought it not preposterous to suppose she had the right to enter there unaccompanied. The door here was nigh invisible to any routine Magi scan. Her accessing it would not show up on the register unless specifically looked for via special authorization that only the key players possessed. Unless she was being searched for by those certain few, she was effectively off the radar.

She'd come here seeking, she knew not really what, but she thought that perhaps if she spent some time she might find something. She had no kin or kindred, but these clones were identical to her in all but substance, she wondered then what it might be like to see if there was anything to be understood between them.

And so she slid her card on through, entered through the open doorway before it sealed shut again on it's timer, and looked on, the lights in the room gradually rising to a muted intensity, activated by the opening of the door.

For the first time in her experience she found herself alone in the room; alone with the many faces of Ayanami Rei, and hers, the only one not looking deliriously ecstatic.



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to be continued




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