"What did you think you were DOING???" Tashi yelled.
I only stared at him, my eyes wide with shock. Tashi had never yelled at me. He bent over the girl again, forcing open her eyelid and peering into her eye.
"Well?" he demanded, glancing back over his shoulder at me.
"What I was supposed to do," I replied.
"Oh," he said, sarcastically, "so what you're supposed to do is put EVA pilots into states of shock, hmm?"
I was quiet for a few moments. "I don't understand why you're yelling at me," I whispered.
Tashi turned to me then. "Because you don't think, Mei. You never think before doing anything. Didn't it even occur to you what may happen when the pilot of a Unit is torn out of the EVA that way before they have a chance to disengage properly? The psychological shock -- it could kill them!" He turned his back to me again, checking the other pilot again. "Damnit," he swore, under his breath, though at what I couldn't tell.
"Mei -- " I heard him start.
But I didn't respond. I had turned and walked out of the room. I even started running down the hallway when he called after me. Whatever he wanted me for, it could wait, I decided, ignoring the tears that burned my eyes. The image I had built of Tashi in my mind -- the kind, caring Tashi who was always there for me -- had been shattered.
I had sought refuge in Unit-01, sitting in the entry plug and sliding into the Unit, but not activating it. I sat in the seat, the crossbar pulled up across my lap, my arms drawn tightly across my chest, my head bent. I wanted to cry, but I couldn't. I felt like I was just an shell, wanting all these needs, and being unable to express them.
What is bothering you?
I was used to the Unit's conciousness popping in and out at random by now. "Tashi," I said shortly.
Ah. I never liked him. His thought patterns are too organized. Rei's were, but she put them out better.
I ignored it.
Why do you even put up with him? I could never understand that. I don't know why you would even --
"Would you shut up?!" I all but shouted. "If you must know," I continued, quietly, "I stay with him because he is the only person who ever cared enough about me to make sure that I never got hurt."
Yet you hurt now.
I was long in answering. "Yes," I said finally. "He... Why am I explaining this to you?"
Because you want to...and because you need to.
It was sometime later that I was able to return into the main complex of rooms we had cleared out. I had explained what was wrong to the Unit, wondering the whole time about explaining anything to a being I couldn't even be sure was real. But I felt better after getting the story out of my system, and I sat there in the entry plug for a while longer before feeling brave enough to dare Tashi's temper again.
My luck: he wasn't around, and I wasn't about to go look for him. I just got myself something to eat for dinner, picked up a very worn book that we had found sealed in a airtight box, so it wasn't in too bad a shape, and still readable, and went to my room. I lay there on my bed, reading (or trying to at least; I still couldn't read that well) and just waiting to feel tired enough to attempt sleep. Only once did I hear footsteps in the hallway outside. I stayed absolutely still as the footsteps paused, and then they moved on. I let out a sigh of relief. I could at least make it through this one night...
The next day, Tashi burst into my room, demanding loudly that I get up now, thank you very much, and that we had an emergency, so I'd better get going and blahblahblah. I ignored him, or tried to, as I hadn't slept very well or long, because sleep evaded me for some time and then I was troubled by dreams.
When he started to shake me, I just mumbled for him to leave me alone, but then he grabbed my arm roughly and hauled me out of bed, ignoring my state of undress.
"MEI!!!!" he shouted in my ear. "GET UP!!!!!"
Awake now, no small part of me indifferent to the freezing floor, I stared up at him, wondering what I had done now to deserve such rough treatment. Then I saw the look in his eyes.
He was afraid. Very afraid. And I was scared and confused all in one moment.
"What's wrong?" I asked, trying to control my wavering voice and being largely unsuccessful.
"Everything," he moaned, waving his hands nervously, a gesture I had never seen him use. "The entry plug for Unit-00 is badly damaged -- " and here he glared at me briefly " -- but the pilot is the main reason. She's in some kind of neural shock and I don't know what to do!!"
My Tashi didn't know what to do. This was a surprise in itself, but I covered it well. Instead of staring at him, dumbstruck as I felt, I got up from the floor and pulled my plug suit on, thinking brifely that I desperately needed to take a bath. "Let me see her," I said dispassionately. I couldn't say why I felt no emotion to this strange girl.
That quickly changed when I saw her. She had been stripped down (which was to the better, as she hadn't been wearing the proper suit anyway) and covered with a thin blanket. Her eyes stared blankly up at the ceiling, her skin a pasty, unhealthy white. Her eyes were dark green, I could see, and a very pretty shade, too. I knew my eyes were blue -- we did have a single, tiny mirror -- and I thought absently that mine were too dark to be pretty.
I bent over her, holding my hair back with one hand, and pressed my ear to her chest, listening to her heartbeat, which was wildly erractic. I peered into her eyes, much as Tashi had done the day before, and the pupils didn't do a thing when my head blocked the light. Her hand felt cool to the touch, as did the rest of her skin.
"What have you tried?" I asked Tashi.
"Everything we have," he replied nervously.
I looked up at him sharply. "Everything?" I repeated, incredulous.
"Yes, everything," he assured me, too worried to be annoyed with me.
I stared at the girl a moment or two longer. She was my age, maybe a little older, but certainly no older than Tashi. And she was far prettier than me. Her hair was a bright green, several shades lighter than her eyes, and her skin would be pale, but healthily so, especially living underground as we were. I don't know why I cared so much about my appearance just then, with only the vaguest inkling that it had something to do with Tashi.
"What happened to her thought sensors?" I aske then. "She did have some, ne?"
"Of course," Tashi said, confusion written all over his face. "They're right over here..." He moved to where they lay on a nearby counter top, got them and brought them to me.
I took them and mumbled a thanks, judging the best place to put them on her head. I pushed her hair away from her face, attaching one sensor and then the other in a fair approximation of where mine sat.
For a moment, nothing happened. She continued to stare blankly at the ceiling, looking nothing more like one of the corpses Tashi and I had come across once before we rebelled, the only sign that she was alive the spasmodic jerking of her chest as she breathed.
Then, she came alive all at once. She started shrieking and thrashing on her bed, to the point where both Tashi and I had to use our entire bodies to hold her in place while she calmed down. Neither of us had much body mass, so she almost fell off the bed twice before we found the best way to pin her down.
"Nice going," Tashi breathed heavily once she stopped moving.
"It worked, didn't it?" I hissed at him.
"Oh, Mama," the girl wailed then and started to cry like her heart was breaking.
Risa accepted the mug Tashi handed to her with a tiny, almost imperceptible smile. She was now dressed as an EVA pilot should, in the original suit we had found with the plug (I would have worn it, but I didn't have the figure for it; she did), the thought sensors on her head and her hair bound up in two identical buns on the top and on either side of her head. Two faded ribbons hung down from the buns, holding them in place.
She had introduced herself as Risa once she had fully woken up from the shock, a scant hour ago. She had explained to us -- briefly -- that her mother had been killed years ago and she had watched it happen before several large men had carried her off in a white van and brought her to work in the tunnels to find NERV.
I was angry; more at the men who had done this than at her or myself. I knew what it was like to be carried off to be put to hard labour, but I had never had a mother, so I couldn't relate to that part. Tashi's mother had never really liked me, and he had told me one night that he felt no paticular loss at his leaving her. That had enraged me too. At least you HAD a mother, I had thought darkly, as I did now.
I apologized -- again -- for the huge mistake I had made in tearing her and the plug from the Unit.I felt terrible about it now, wishing I could go back in time and correct that mistake, but Risa assured me that she would be alright and that if I hadn't done it, she might have done the same to me.
She told us how she had lost all hope of ever being free from the men who had held thousands of children for labour, until a man with dark hair and a small beard has approached her and asked her if she would be willing to help him out. It would mean getting out of the dark and dangerous tunnels for her, and she was glad for the chance.
"That was, oh, I don't know how long ago that was," she said softly, staring down into her mug and it's contents. "Too long. It was ages before I could sit in the plug -- is that what it's called? -- and not have to worry about being the victim of such internal anguish..." Here she broke off, though I knew there was more to the story.
"And then," Risa continued briskly, "Adam -- he's the one who asked me if I would volunteer -- approached me and told me of some renegades he had lost several months back, and that if I felt up to it, I was to track them down and bring them back, and report whatever it was they held. That's you two, right?"
I nodded solemnly, the gesture repeated by Tashi.
Risa sighed heavily, leaning backwards and closing her eyes. "I thought so," she whispered, more to herself than either of us. "Some of the other kids talked about how two lucky kids found NERV and had gotten away, and that Adam wouldn't dare touch them now. They wished most heartily that they could get away too, but none of them had the first inkling of where to go or how to find you. You are quite an inspiration model to them, you know. They go through each day, hoping to find where you'd gone through to NERV and join you here. And when they don't have any luck, they hope to have more the next day." She shrugged carefully.
Tashi and I exchanged glances. More was known about us than we had first supposed.
"Risa," Tashi began gently, "you are more than welcome to stay with us. Gladly, would we have your company."
She looked up at him and smiled ever-so-charmingly. "Thank you, Tashi," she said softly, with no hint of deception, only true gratitude. "And you too, Mei," she added, flicking her glance in my direction.
I only nodded my head absently in response. "Tashi, how bad did you say the entry plug was?" I asked, wanting to immerse myself in work.
"Pretty bad," he replied, his manner curious about why I was suddenly so interested in working on something so tedious.
"I should go see to it then," I said, rising from my seat and striding from the room.
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Characters & concept: © 1997-2002 Katsura /\ Evangelion © Gainax