Observers: A study of the beings known as Children

Chapter Two: What woes will unknown variables bring?

***

23:52:02 Subject stirs approximately every thirty three minutes. Audible discomfort is recorded.

Even though it is early in the morning the Children cries out in his sleep. It is not a loud cry, but it seems that he is suffering from night terrors. Of what nightmares he is having only he can discern, but I am willing to assume that it has something to do with his involvement with Nerv and Evangelion.

***

Shinji sat bolt upright, a light sheen of sweat covering his forehead. It had happened again, the dream had come again. It wasn't his normal anguished nightmares of his battles inside Eva, but a more mysterious hazy dream world were he identified scents and aromas of people and things long past.

It started with him in a field of nothing, of sheer oblivion, a darkness so complete and absolute that one would have to close his eyes just to make sure if they were in fact open. Shinji knew this place well, it had been the place he resided while inside his Eva as the life support died, while he was stuck inside the Sea of Dirac. And then he was surrounded, impaled, and assaulted with color. The color streaked past him as if he was flying fast as a super sonic aircraft. Then the scents came. Soft gentle smells of warmth, sweet scents of summer, even odd cool rustic aromas he could not place. It was here that all pleasantness ended. The tunnel of color ending as quick as it had come, and Shinji was face to face with the evil, grinning mask of Unit 01, and it spoke to him.

"What do you want Shinji?" It asked, the voice a metallic mockery of a human female's. "What do you want?"

Hard as he tried, Shinji could not utter a single word in the presence of the beast.

"Do you want...peace? Do you wish for solitude? For justice?"

Yes. Yes, Shinji wanted all these things. He wanted peace at mind to know that the world's fate did not rest on him and his two friends. He wanted the solitude of heart that would lend him strength in times of need. He wanted justice for all that needed it.

"Do you want...love? Do you yearn for acceptance?" It laughed, a deep throated guttural, phlegm coated cackle. "Then you are foolish. You can never have these things, Shinji Ikari."

Shinji wanted for all he was worth to be able to ask why. To ask why life had weeded him out and chosen him to be the martyr.

With a rearing motion the jackal mask snapped its jaws at Shinji, crunching off his lower torso as the Third hung suspended, screaming as his abdomen was stripped away, and blood, yellow blood, streamed from the wound. A snapping sound followed the Eva chewing and swallowing his parts and the unholy beast came back up and consumed the rest of him.

That is were Shinji would wake up, sweating and scared beyond belief. No normal person had that kind of dream, Shinji had decided. He looked around his still bright cell; at the drawings scribbled over it, all except the ceiling.

***

32:46:56 Subject is staring at the opposing wall. Not much activity.

It would seem that the Third Child is deep in thought. He seemed disoriented after he awoke from his nightmare and did not fall back asleep. Perhaps it is time to introduce another unknown element.

***

Shinji was getting hungry. It had been roughly forty or so hours since he last ate, that being diner from the night before last. So he sat, preserving every bit of energy he had, but for what reason he wasn't sure. Nothing had happened past a pen dropping in from nowhere. Though his vision was not focused, Shinji was inattentively watched the wall opposite from him. It took him a few seconds to realize that there was a black spot dead center on the drawing of his apartment building that he couldn't remember putting there. He focused his eyes on it, and could have sworn it got bigger. Perplexed he crawled to it on his knees, bringing his face close to the perfectly round black dot. It was the oddest thing Shinji had seen since coming into this place. He tried to scratch it off, but to no effect. It didn't seem to be ink, or even paint. Just a part of the wall.

"Shinji?" The said Child froze. He did hear a voice call his name didn't he? Slowly he turned, his mouth gaping open all the while. There, in her school uniform, was Asuka. Just standing there. No door to be found, just standing there looking at Shinji like he was wearing his underwear on his head. A split second later he pulled the garment off his head as inconspicuously and quickly as possible.

"A-Asuka? What are you- what are you d-doing here?" He stuttered his words, not used to having girls pop up when he was locked in a small place and with certain unmentionables decorating his head..

"What are you, stupid? I'm....." She hesitated. "What am I doing here?" She looked around. "And where is here?" Shinji shrugged, not knowing himself.

"I just woke up and I was here..." He noticed her peering at all of his little masterpieces. "I found a pen and got bored so...uh..."

"Is this supposed to be me?" She was standing over the Unit 02 with the picture Shinji had drawn of her and looking at it disdainfully.

"Well, yeah...kinda." He stood behind her. "I think the Eva looks okay...."

She huffed a little over the images and turned to face him. "So you just woke up and you were here."

"Yes."

"And you have no idea how you got here?"

"No."

"And you had your underwear on your head, why?"

"Um..."

She sighed and sat against the wall. "Well.." She turned towards Shinji, who was still standing.

"Well what?"

"Well...nothing. Forget it." Shinji shrugged and sat across from here, twiddling with the empty pen.

***

33:20:12 Subjects are partaking in conversation.

Both Children seem to have problems communicating as openly as they wish to. This is interesting because the Third illustrated his concern for the Second Child. More on this later.

***

"What's there to eat here?" The question made Shinji's stomach ache with sympathy. He'd been wondering this himself and thus far had come up with no conclusions.

"I don't know." He gave a small shrug and tried to cover the noise his food digestion muscle was making.

"You think this has something to do with Nerv?" He could tell Asuka was getting antsy, shifting around and playing with the hem of her dress. "I mean, they would have told us they had an experiment scheduled."

"Maybe they didn't want us to know?" Asuka gave him a hard stare as she thought that one over. Her stare turned into an unfocused gaze as her stomach let loose a mighty verbal complaint about the lack of food that it had.

"There has to be something around here." She began searching the part of the room were that wall met floor. Her hunt took her from one side of the room to right next to Shinji.

"Find anything?" Shinji asked once Asuka had stopped and seemed to be looking closely at something.

"Yeah, a big five star meal in this crack here." The sarcasm made Shinji retreat back to his wall and cross his arms. The wall was different, though. There was a steaming bowl of something right where he was previously sitting. Upon closer inspection the bowl was filled with ramen noodles.

"Hey! Hey Asuka!" Shinji was nearly delirious as he carefully picked the meal up.

"You don't have to yell, stupid- is that food?" She bolted across the room and sniffed the contents of the bowl suspiciously.

"Yeah, some noodles." In a moment the bowl was gone and Asuka was staring with eye into the food.

"Could poisoned, or have truth serum, or an aphrodisiac..." She handed the bowl back to the Third.

"A what? Aphrodisiac?" Shinji looked into the meal himself. "Why would they do that?"

Asuka sat back down. "I don't know. I just don't trust it. You know there are people out there who want us dead. Section Two is enough reason to believe that."

"Well, yeah. But if they wanted us dead wouldn't they have just shot us?" He smelled the delicious odor of the cooked ramen.

"People are weird Shinji. I'll pass, you can go ahead and eat it if you want to. I'm not going to poison myself."

"Whatever you say, Asuka." And Shinji picked a single noodle from the bowl with his fingers and slurped it down. Not feeling immediately like he was ill, or like he wanted to have endless rounds of sex, Shinji took some more into his fingers and lowered them into his mouth.

Asuka was watching him the whole time, of course, and hugged her knees to her chest as her internal organs squeezed the life out of emptiness. From the corner of his eye Shinji saw the grimace cross Asuka's face and he stopped slurping down the noodle he had just put into his mouth.

"Are you sure?" He looked at the bowl, still half full. "There's still plenty left."

"What part of poisoning didn't you understand? I'm not going to willingly subject myself to being poisoned so some interrogators will have an easier job."

"Don't be paranoid, Asuka. Just have some. You'll feel better."

"I said no. Now leave me alone." She turned from him and frowned.

A few moments later she heard a muffled gurgle and the a falling body make a thump on the floor.

"Shinji? Shinji?!"

***

35:52:59 Subject has fallen unconscious.

What is so interesting about these two is how one reacts when another one is either in trouble or unwilling to do something. One will try and work out a plan and have an organized course of action, and the other will make a lot of verbal noise and use fear to get wanted results. Very interesting indeed.

***

"Shinji!?" Asuka was kneeling over him now, screaming for him to open his eyes. She felt that he had a pulse, and was still alive - thank God - but he seemed out of it completely. She tried to slap him awake, but it proved to be of no use.

"You yell a lot." She sat straight up, trying to hide the fact that she was on the verge of tears.

"What the hell?!" The Second watched as Shinji pushed himself to a sitting position and smiled. "You aren't poisoned?"

Shinji's smile grew a bit. "No, but-"

"You tricked me! Little brat!"

"But I was just-"

"Dumkoph!"

"I only wanted to show-"

"Anta Baka!"

"The ramen wasn't poisoned-"

"You scared me!"

Shinji stopped trying explain his little charade. "I'm sorry, Asuka. I didn't mean to... I just wanted to show that you should eat something."

She was sitting with her back to him, furiously trying to blink back the tears threatening to overwhelm her.

"So you faked getting poisoned. How responsible."

Shinji picked up the bowl from where he set it and crawled to face her. "Come on, just eat a little. It can't hurt you just to eat a little." Asuka considered his proposition and reluctantly took the bowl from his outstretched hand.

"Just a little." He nodded and she grabbed a finger full of noodles. With a hard stare at the Third Child she cautiously lowered the warm food into her mouth. The second they hit her stomach it craved more, and more she gave it, emptying the rest of the bowl's contents.

"There, better?"

She set the bowl on the ground. "Yeah, I guess. But remember, you ate some first, so you die first." Shinji offered a little shrug. "Or if its an aphrodisiac you get horny first." The boy turned red and stuttered a response.

"I won't...I mean, I'll...-" And Asuka began to giggle.

Continued...