It knocked me over at first -- not very far, of course, but it did place it's hands on my shoulders and shifted it's weight to overbalance me. I started to go down, but I had been in hand-to-hand fights for years, and my instincts kicked in.
I grabbed the other Unit by it's forearms, near the elbows, and as I went down, I shifted my own weight further into my legs. I twisted, folding one leg up beneath me and landing on my hip, Using the other leg as a kind of lever, I jammed it up against the Unit-00's body and threw it over my head. Neither of us had let go of the other, and I pushed myself up and over in a gravity-defying movement, landing squarely on Unit-00 beneath me.
The other Unit was still for a moment, then it tried to throw me off. I had expected that and prepared for it, so it didn't have a chance. I held it down until it finally stopped trying to fight me.
Tashi's speakers came back on. "It's over," he said wearily.
"What the hell hapened?" I asked flatly.
"It's volatile. The personality is very strong, and I get the feeling that it doesn't really like anyone." There was a pause, and then he sighed. "You said this was easy," he said, making it not quite an accusation.
"It was. For me," I said. "I never once said it would be the same for you, if the Unit would even accept you. Are you up to trying again?"
Another pause, then he sighed. "Alright," he said resignedly. "If you would kindly get off of me?"
I got up, bending over to haul Unit-00 to it's feet. When it was upright, I got around in behind it to hold it there. "You have to relax, open yourself up to the Unit," I instructed softly. "That's all that should be the same. Now turn off your speakers and try again." There was a click as he did so.
I sighed and waited, holding Unit-00 upright with both arms. I wondered if it would work...
It didn't. Unit-00 went beserk again.
It didn't try to attack me again, which was a relief. It did try to break free of the grip I held on it, which I refused to loose. It took a shorter time to stop, but it also came more suddenly. I nearly fell under the dead weight of the Unit, managing to stop our fall only by kneeling awfully fast, leaving a nice big divot in the cage floor. Even then, Unit-00's forehead cracked against the ground.
"Mei?" Tashi asked softly. He sounded tired or scared; I wasn't sure which.
"Yes?"
"I want out. I don't like this."
"Does your entry plug release work?"
Silence in which I could hear him hitting buttons in the background. "Nope. It's dead."
That was the moment Unit-00 came to life again. I was really off-guard this time, though in hindsight I really shouldn't have been. Because I was surprised, it managed to throw me off and ran to the far corner, clawing at the walls, leaving gouges deeply into the cement as though it was trying to climb out...but it was completely ignoring the half-repaired hole in the outside wall and the EVA-sized hole leading back to the rest of NERV.
I sat back and watched it, wondering what kind of personality would make anything reak out like that.
I knew them, Unit-01 cut into my thoughts. It's voice sounded very sad. They weren't very stable. The voice faded away.
"I can tell," I said, my eyes glued to the viewscreen. "Wait a minute! What do you mean, 'they'?"
On the screen, Unit-00 started punching the wall. I decided that it had run amok long enough, and I got up to stop it.
Not that it was doing itself much damage. Huge chunks of the wall were coming off, but I knew that the wall was several meters thick before reaching any other open space. Maybe the hands and fingers would be scratched up bad and need some repairs, but nothing hugely serious.
It took quite a bit muscle to get Unit-00 pinned again. I managed to get it faced down and forced open the entry plug access, pulling the plug out. The Unit went still with the plug removed, so I got off of it and set the plug down, upright. Then I waited tensely, heaving a sigh of relief when the door popped open and Tashi half-stumbled, half-fell out of the plug. i put my hand down for him, which he climbed up into, and I raised it until it was behind my head. Then I released my own entry plug.
The plug twisted out until it was mostly out of the hole for it, but not enough that it would fall over or out, or slip back in, yet I could get in and out of the plug as I pleased.
I waited for the LCL to drain before opening the door and crawling over the back of Unit-01's neck until I could join Tashi in the palm of the huge hand.
He was laying down, curled up tightly on his side with his back to me, and he was shuddering. I approached him as carefully and quietly as I could, kneeling next to him and placing a hand on his shoulder. The muscle beneath my hand twitched -- the only indication that he had felt it.
"Tashi?" I asked softly. "Are you alright?"
He made a sound like a whimper.
"I guess not. Okay, that's enough for today. I'm going to put you in the plug with me, then I'm going to straighten this up, and then we're going back. Sounds good? I thought so." I didn't wait for him to reply before bending down to pick him up. I managed to pry one of his arms out from around his legs and hooked it over my shoulders, hauling him to his feet.
By no small feat, I managed to get him over the back of the Unit's neck and into the entry plug, behind my seat. Then I reactivated the controls, and the plug twisted back down inside.
I could sense that the Unit didn't like having Tashi inside with me, but it didn't say anything. As an afterthought, I climbed up into my chair, leaned around it and plucked the thought sensors off of Tashi's head. I turned back around and dropped them in my lap as I settled into my seat. Then I got to work.
Unit-01 didn't function as well with Tashi in the plug, I discovered. I figured that the thoughts running through his head at the moment were so "loud" that the Unit could pick them up without the help from the sensors, and they were disrupting the workings of the Unit.
I stood up and promptly fell over, because of the thought disruption from Tashi. I had to readjust my own thoughts and got up again, this time only overbalancing myself, and nearly falling over. I wasn't sure if I should attempt to pick Unit-00 up and "put it away," as it were, when I could hardly stand up straight. But the other Unit was far too important to just leave lying there, like it had drowned or something....
It was another great feat to get Unit-00 upright and back into it's "holder." Then I picked up Unit-00's entry plug and stumbled my way back to Central Control.
Once there, I set the plug down as close to CC as I could get, locked Unit-01 back into it's own "holder" and ejected the entry plug. Then I got me and Tashi out, still having to all but carry him back to our living space.
I set him down in the sleeping area, laying him down carefully on our blankets. He stared up at the high ceiling blankly, his breath coming a little faster than it normally did. I wasn't a medic, but it worried me, I waved my hand in front of his face; he didn't even blink. I frowned, got up and went to get a cup of water from our supply. When I came back, I dribbled a bit on his face; he still didn't react. I got him into a sitting position and made him drink the water, which he did, but I could tell it was an automatic reaction. I sighed and laid him back down, hitting the button on his cuff to release his suit from his body. He sighed a little and closed his eyes. His breathing evened out a bit, and I relaxed. Even so, I pulled the closing of his suit apart and started to get it off of him. He was difficult to undress when he was unconscious; his limbs moved like they were made of rubber, but he was heavy.
I was glad I decided to take his suit off for him when I pulled one of his arms out of its sleeve and my hand brushed his. It was freezing. That worried me too. I got the rest of his suit off and pulled the blankets up over his chilled body. Then I brushed his hair back from his forehead before going back to CC.
It felt wierd, doing something in CC without having Tashi nearby doing something else. Yet I turned the computer on and sat down, my eyes locked to the screen...
I pulled up all the information I could find on Unit-00 and it's original pilot, Rei Ayanami, complete with pictures, graphs, charts and any number of things that made little or no sense.
I must have spent at least three hours there, there was so much information. Tashi and Rei were very much alike, whch came as a bit of a surprise, though I suppose it shouldn't have. They were both quiet, introspective and highly independant individuals. Maybe that was why Unit-00 reacted to him that way...I sat back in my chair when I finished, a chart of Rei's synchronization rates with Unit-00 on the screen. I stared at it without seeing it. It was a few moments before I sat up again and pulled up all the info on Unit-01 and Shinji Ikari, as well as the tiny bit Tashi had entred on me. Mostly, I wanted to compare my synchronization chart with the original pilot's.
It was amazing; the rates were very similar, though Shinji's chart had much more information on it that mine, for the simple reason that he'd been in Unit-01 longer than I had so far. And I didn't have a bunch of executives hanging over my shoulder making all sorts of notes and doing all sorts of tests.
I sat there looking at the two charts overlapping each other for a long moment, and then I started to pull up all the information on how the Units and their pilots had been tested.
I was halfway into that, waiting for the system to finish opening a paticularily large file when Tashi put in an appearnce. He came up behind me, laying a hand on my shoulder before pullingup another chair. I spun mine around to face him, worried a little by the faint circles under his eyes, the clouded look of them and the vague expression on his face. I noticed that he hadn't put his suit back on, or even bothered to get dressed again, though he had wrapped a blanket around his body tightly.
"How do you feel?" I asked, leaning forward to lightly touch his arm.
He flinched. "I don't know," he replied, avoiding my eyes. He sounded tired and confused. "That was...like nothing else. I'm not sure I want to go through that again."
"I'm sorry," I said. "I should have done all those tests that you did on me when we found Unit-01's entry plug."
He looked at me briefly. His eyes were tortured for a moment; then they clouded over again and he looked away. "Just...let me recover a bit first."
I smiled. "Of course." I turned back to the computer just as it finished pulling up the file I wanted.
It was another hour before I was finished with the computer. By that time, my eyes were hurting and my leg muscles had begun to cramp. I sat way back in my chair, stretching my arms above my head and stretching my legs out beneath the desk. Then I pushed the chair back and stood up, stretching again. Tashi stood up as well, although more slowly. He still had that haunted look, and he pulled the blanket a little bit tighter around himself.
I looked at him for a moment. Then I stepped towards him and pulled him into a hug. His entire body stiffened like a board for a brief moment, but then he relaxed and opened the blanket up, pulling me inside of it as he returned the hug.
I rested my head on his shoulder, knowing somehow that he needed this at the moment. Afterwards, in a minute, or an hour, or maybe even the next day, he'd be his usual, remote self.
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Characters & concept: © 1997-2002 Katsura /\ Evangelion © Gainax