The Dream came to me again. It's different this time, but I remembered more of it. It started out in the EVA bay, only it looked much different. It was cleaner, the walls an off-white. Or at least, the part of the wall I actually noticed.
In front of me is a head; a gigantic head. It is purple, the eye sockets dark, the eyes a bright yellow-white, the teeth huge. A long, thin, flat pole rises off the front of the nose.
"What..What is that thing?" I demand, my voice rising.
"It is called Evangelion Unit-01," the blonde woman to my left informs me in a professional tone. "It's man's last, best hope for survival."
I can only stare at the giant head. "Is...is this my father's work?" I ask.
"Correct," comes the cold voice above me. My head snaps up. In the window above the head is my father. He looks the same as the pictures in the magazines about him. "We're moving out," he says then.
"What? But Unit-00's still in cryostasis!" the brunette on my right says. "No..You're going to use Unit-01?! But we have no pilot!"
"One has just arrived," the blonde says calmly.
"WHAT??" the brunette protests. "You can't be serious! He hasn't been trained! Even Ayanami Rei took seven months to synchronize with her EVA!"
"We don't have a choice," the blonde replies.
"Is that why you brought me here?!" I yell at my father, who stands absolutely still. "Is that why you wanted to see me?"
"Correct," he answers. I bow my head.
"I won't do it," I say.
The brunette bends over so that she looks more or less into my face. "Shinji, we have no one else," she says. "You would be helping all of mankind."
"I said I won't do it!" I yell. I clench my fists at my sides.
"Shinji..." she says sadly, rising.
Moments later, white robed people wheel a stretcher in from a side door. They stop and leave the stretcher in front of me. On it is a girl, my age, with blue hair. She is wrapped in bandages; a bag of plasma hangs from a pole attached to one corner of the bed. She stares at me for a moment before rising slowly into a sitting position. She obviously has to fight for each breath she takes.
Just then an explosion rocks the building. The girl's stretcher rolls away from me, and she falls off. I fall to the walkway, landing hard on my rear end.
"LOOK OUT!!" the brunette's voice calls out.
I look up; several beams from the ceiling are falling towards me. I raise my arms futilely to protect my head. I hear a splash of the liquid surrounding the giant head. I hear the sound of one hard material striking another.
For several moments I just sit there, waiting for the final blow I know isn't coming. When I realize it, I slowly lower my arms and look up. The Evangelion's hand -- that's what I assume it to be -- is above me. The beams from the ceiling have fallen away from me. It has protected me.
Startled, I look around. I see the blue-haired girl lying on the walkway outside of the beams. The stretcher lies on it's side in front of her.
I get up and run to her, pushing the stretcher aside. I drop to my knees beside her, lifting her up into my arms. She whimpers in pain; I can only stare at her. Lifting one hand from where it rests on her back, it is covered in blood.
They were going to make her pilot it, I realize. In the condition she's in...I musn't run away, I musn't run away, I musn't run away!! I tell myself.
"I'll do it!" I call to whoever's listening. "I'll pilot it."
I woke up as suddenly as I did the first time. On the other side of the room, Risa stirred. "What is it?" she mumbled. She couldn't possibly be fully awake.
"Nothing," I replied. "Just a bad dream."
Tashi had us working on dismantling one of the white Units, the one with it's head smashed in. Risa and I were hanging down at about it's chest, supported by ropes and harnesses from the grated walkway above. It was Unit-09, as far as we could tell. The designation on the arm was mostly scratched out.
I appreciated Risa more, since we started working together. She was studying to be a doctor when she had been taken, and she had been at the head of her class. She was actually working at a "high school" or even a "college" level, she said. The words meant nothing to me, but they seemed to impress Tashi. She had a vast knowledge of the kinds of illnesses and injuries we were likely to experience. She even took time one night to give us a full "examination". It felt much like what the doctors had done to me when they first took me away, so many years ago.
"What do you think?" she asked me, crossing her arms over her chest as she swung from side to side on the ropes.
I studied the chest plate. "I think it's mostly useable," I replied, also swinging on my ropes. "We can cut it off about...there, and go all the way over to maybe...there." I pointed at the spots we could use. "And down to about there."
She nodded, dropping her arms to her sides. "Let's get to it then," she said, taking the flame-tool from her harness. "I'll take that side; you take that one."
I nodded, taking my own tool out. Then I swung myself closer, grabbing onto the chest plate with the suction circles Tashi had found in a box somewhere. I pulled my goggles down, activated my tool and started cutting.
It was strange; I was still wearing my thought sensors (sometimes Unit-01 wanted to talk, for no paticular reason) and I could have almost sworn that this Unit was crying out in pain.
A whisper: no, exultation. I put the thought aside; I had to work now.
We finished in about an hour; there was a lot that could be salvaged. The plate fell away to the floor; it clanged loudly. Risa and I raised our goggles and grinned at each other. Then we turned back. "Gross," I said, staring at the stuff beneath. It was a pinkish colour, but a really gross shade. It looked slimy and strangely alive.
Risa was peering closer; "I'd like to study that," she said, more to herself than anything.
"Well, not right now," I reminded her. "We have to clean that plate up."
We loosened our ropes and slid down them to the ground, so far below. We stared at the mess on the inside of the plate for a long moment before plugging our noses from the smell. It was covered mostly in a red slime with darker red traces. And it smelt like the group latrines we'd had to share when we were still with the workforce.
"This is disgusting..." I started, trying to keep my stomach still.
"Well, it smells bad," Risa agreed. "I wouldn't say it's disgusting."
I rolled my eyes. "Of course. You went to school. You were going to be a doctor," I said, almost sarcastically. "Anyway, where should we take this? It's kinda big for the Hole..." The Hole was where we got our water from. It came from a hole in the ground and was fairly clean.
Risa regarded the plate thoughtfully for a long moment. Then she turned and cupped her hands around her mouth. "HEY TASHI!" she hollered across the bay. "WHAT SHOULD WE DO WITH THIS?"
He looked up from where he was working with Unit-00's entry plug and the one we had found the other day. He yelled back, "TAKE IT OUTSIDE TO THE LAKE!"
I threw my hands up in the air as I turned and started towards the stairs that would take me to Unit-01. "Of course," I muttered to myself.
We had found the lake about a month ago when I had been outside doing something or another. It wasn't very big, or very clean, but it was much larger than any body of water I had ever seen. Tashi said that old maps indicated that it had been much larger once, but so much time had passed since the maps had been made. That wasn't really the point though. The lake was a large body of water.
Unit-01 activated, I strode across the two steps it would take to reach the plate, took the edges in my hands and heaved upward. It was heavy, even with the Unit's powerful grip. Then I moved to take it out to the lake.
It was a long trip, especially with the chest plate of another EVA in my arms, held across my own chest. I made it all the way there by thinking about nothing in paticular, letting my thoughts wander.
Unfortunately, that only brought back a recollection of the previous night's nightmare. A half-remembered fragment, almost insignificant but for the hideous face, seen through the screen I now looked through as though reflected in a mirror.
I open my mouth and scream before all passes into blackness.
Startled, I almost dropped the plate. Luckily, it didn't really go anywhere, and by then I had reached the lake.
I took my time scrubbing the plate clean, wondering absently if the water would make the Unit or the plate rust up like so much of the metal we had found before. I didn't think it would, but I didn't know for sure. I'm not the expert on Units or entry plugs. I'm just a pilot.
...not just a pilot... came the almost unheard whisper.
I stopped my scrubbing, wondering now if my ears were betraying me and my head hearing things that weren't there. "Is that you?" I asked the Unit's concious directly, but there was no answer. I shrugged and continued on with what I was doing.
Back in the bay, Tashi was in the middle of a sync test on Risa. The plug was connected to a million different wires; he was in C&C at the last working computer. I made a mental note to myself to take some time out and try to get the computers back up. I didn't really realize how much we depended on them.
I practically tiptoed back into the bay, not wanting to disturb the test. I set the clean plate down by Unit-00 and creeped back to my cage, where I locked the Unit into place and ejected the plug. Then I joined Tashi in C&C. The test was progressing quite well, by the look of things. Her ratios were quite high. I was impressed.
After a time, he stopped the test, took a few moments to let Risa readjust to the normal pattern of her thoughts, and then turned to me, smiling charmingly. "Your turn," he said.
I barely registered what he said. Where did he get that smile from? I asked myself. He was just full of surprises. Instead of commenting on anything, I just nodded and headed down into the bay.
Risa helped me get my entry plug out of loading position (that's where the end was still inside the EVA so that all I had to do was climb in and activate) and hooked up to the wires as Tashi recalibrated the computer program for me.
The test went smoothly, uneventful, as usual. The only thing different was the stress levels Tashi was using; it was really no huge feat to balance them out with a change in my thought forms.
I knew the test was over when there was a sudden absence of all stress. I waited for a minute or two to reorder my thought patterns, before trying to get out of the plug.
It wouldn't work. The crossbar over my lap refused to budge.
"What the...?" I said to myself, staring down at the crossbar in puzzlement.
Not just a pilot, came the thought again, stronger this time. And different. The mental voice had a different quality to it, not that of the Unit-01 voice I was so used to hearing.
I would have responded, but I was dumbstruck. The voice and even all sense of the presence disappated rather quickly. Still confused, I pushed at the crossbar again; it refused to move.
"What's going on?" I whispered, more to myself than anything. Almost desperately, I pushed at the bar again; this time, it moved, and I was able to get out of the plug.
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Characters & concept: © 1997-2002 Katsura /\ Evangelion © Gainax