DISCLAIMER: Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Other, original, characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at domino@netaccess.com.au if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatnot purposes.
NOTE: This story includes major spoilers for the series Saishu-heiki Kanojo. If you don't want to know how the series ends, or anything that happens in it, I'd suggest stopping reading now.
Love Song of Tomorrow
By
Raymond Cooper
Chapter 2
** Tomorrow, When The War Continued **
I next knew anything when I opened my eyes. A woman's oversized breasts hung in front of my face, said woman clutching at her head, groaning. A slight trickle of blood issued from between her fingers, and dripped down just beyond my forehead. She opened her eyes momentarily, and looked at me. "Are you all right, Shinji?"
I nodded. I was sore, possibly injured - ubt I was all right. Nothing felt broken, and apart from bruises, I felt nothing terribly wrong with my body. Just a sense of dislocation, like I should be somewhere else right now.
Where, I had no idea. It was just a weird sensation.
I looked up again at this woman, trying to focus beyond what was thrust, jiggling, in my face. "Uh..." What was her name? Oh yes. "Uh, Miss Katsuragi? Shouldn't we try and move? Find shelter?"
She looked at me, a little annoyed. Quite why, I don't know. It was almost like she didn't want to move from her position above me. I realised, at that moment, I was still showing the excitement I'd experienced while she had checked me for injury before the blast, and she had noticed; how could she not? She was now sitting on my lap, legs either side of my body. I blushed deeply, and she sighed, wriggling off. "You're no fun," she moaned, and exited the car.
I joined her outside a minute later, and helped her push the car over until it was righted. Thankfully, it was a small Honda - mostly plastic and light composite materials - else we'd not have been able to do it. I was surprised at the devastation in the region, and racked my memory for any idea as to what could have caused such damage.
That's right: the woman, Miss Katsuragi, had said 'they' were going to set off an N2 mine. I knew from school and the news that they were the latest development in nuclear weapons, an advanced fusion device - high yield explosion, low blast radius and fallout. Most of everything was contained in an electromagnetic bubble field activated a scant microsecond before the bomb detonated, or so the news said. I think that the United Nations might have been covering the real information, for fear that someone might try to start another nuclear war, like the one that had blown up just after Second Impact.
Something flicked at my mind, but I dismissed it as a random thought. It didn't form enough for me to register what it was; I just wanted to get to safety. If someone was launching N2 bombs, then that meant being outside a shelter would be damned dangerous.
Miss Katsuragi got back into the car, having used duct tape to strap on the bits that had fallen off. I'd watched her nearly break into tears a couple of times, but she was strong, determined, and also in a hurry to get back to wherever she was taking me. She also grabbed a battery from a nearby car that had also been thrown by the explosion, once she found her car's battery had ruptured. Once I'd hopped back in, though, and the car was moving again, she looked very upset. But I had to ask a question.
"Uh, Miss Katsuragi?"
She brightened immediately. "Yes, Shinji?"
"Should you have... uh... stolen that car's battery back there? What if the owner needs to get to a shelter, too?"
I watched the expression on her face fall as she realised she could have just doomed someone to a slow and horrible death. She actually glanced into the rear view mirror, but obviously, she saw nothing, because I watched her pull herself together again into the cheery persona she'd been projecting up until now. "That's okay, because that was a parked car. The driver would have gotten to a shelter long ago. Tokyo-3's a city built for siege, didn't you know?"
"No, I didn't... but isn't what you did stealing?"
She didn't even have the decency to look ashamed for a second. "No, because I'm an important military official, and that means I can requisition anything I need to carry out my duties, and getting you to NERV HQ is my duty right now, so that makes it all right. Okay? Okay." She kept smiling, eyes shut. I wondered how she didn't drive off the road.
But with those lighter questions out of the way, the big one had to come up now.
"Miss Katsuragi?"
"Misato."
"Miss Misato? Is my... will my... Will I see my father there?"
"Oh sure!" Miss Katsuragi gushed. "He's my boss, you know. He oversaw the whole project of... well, you'll see. We're almost there. I've got to call ahead and get a car train ready for us." She picked up her mobile, and exchanged a few terse words with someone on the other end of the call. I didn't pay much attention to her, because I turned, and looked back where the big black creature had been, where the N2 mine had gone off.
The creature still stood. The Angel. Yes, I remembered then that name. The Angel stood there, silently, smoke blowing up off its charred form. And yet, something inside it was moving. The surface seemed to be shifting, the charred segments dropping to the ground. It was still... alive, I guessed would be the word. It definitely didn't look like any machine I'd ever seen before.
And then it was gone as the wrecked car bounced into a concrete passageway leading underground. The momentary darkness gave way to the artificial illumination of a series of large fluroescent light fixtures along the tops of the walls as we sped along. I didn't know where we were going, perhaps to some underground shelter where my father was holed up. I mean, I didn't have any doubts about him - he'd have locked himself away from danger, away from people, away from anywhere where he might have to do something to interact with others.
He wasn't a terribly nice person. But while I could admit in my head I hated him, I had so much trouble trying to externalise those feelings. He knew I hated him, I knew he hated me. That was all there was to it. A private party no one else was invited to.
And yet, when he'd had this woman send a letter to me, I had got onto the first plane to Tokyo-3 I could find. Why? Why had I come running? I didn't know. Perhaps I'd thought he wanted to finally accept me as his son. Perhaps I'd done something that he was proud of.
Hardly. I knew him. I knew him well. There had to be some other reason for him sending for me.
The car rolled to a stop, then something clicked into place around the tyres. I started, but Miss Katsuragi touched my shoulder lightly.
"No need to worry. It's just the car train locking us down." She paused, looked out the cracked front windscreen. "Did you bring your security card?" she asked, idly.
"Oh! Yes. It's here, in my bag." I dug around, and found the folder I'd been sent. Contained within were documents, including a general "Welcome to NERV" information brochure and also an identification card. It was a photo ID, too,w ith a recent image, and I wondered how my father had managed to obtain that. Then I thought I was likely better off not knowing how. I started to read through the brochure, and was amazed at what was contained within.
Definitely a public relations exercise, the brochure stated how NERV had grown from the old organisation GEHIRN, how it worked with UN defence contractors with budgets larger than most small countries' GNP, and how the HQ of the organisation stretched deep underground. I was reciting some of this to miss Katsuragi when there was a burst of light through the windows, and I looked up from the brochure.
Into nothing.
There was what seemed to be a golden sun in the distance, but I think that was a holographic representation of the lighting system for the cavern. It was huge - and it seemed only a little bit was excavated, as the walls suggested a spherical construct. At the 'ground' level, I could see a pyramid, attached to a reverse pyramid, a huge lake with an old naval destroyer, and lots of forest and grasslands. Other buildings dotted the subterrainian landscape, and I was awed by the vision. "It's a GeoFront!" I cried excitedly, having only read about such things in fanciful science fiction. "A real GeoFront!"
"Welcome to the headquarters of NERV, Shinji," Miss Katsuragi said, with a slight smile.
******
The inside of the pyramid, where we eventually ended up, comprised a lot of deep pits, all technological in origin. It was a massive construct, extending far beneath the surface of the Earth. I didn't care to think how far down the drops under the escalators went, and I stuck mostly to the middle of the pathways. It really seemed as if there weren't adequate guard rails around to stop one from having an accident and plummeting to one's death.
Miss Katsuragi led the way, although I think she was as lost as I was: she certainly hummed and ahhed often enough on our journey. And finally, she made a surreptitious call on her mobile, and when she folded the tiny phone up and placed it back in her jacket's pocket, she led the way authoritively to a nearby elevator.
When the doors slid open, there was another woman inside, of about the same age. But she wore a blue pair of swimwear under a white lab coat. The fact that both her swimwear and her hair looked damp suggested she'd recently been immersed in a lot of water. Oh yeah, our tax at work here: there's a rampaging Angel on the surface and here are a bunch of pretty women having a swim!
She glared at Miss Katsuragi, though, as we entered the lift. "Late again, I see, Misato," she said, an even voice tinged with an undercurrent of reproach.
"Sorry!" Miss Katsuragi replied. "Won't happen again. I'm still trying to find my way around this place!"
"You've been working in this facility for a year now, and you STILL get lost?" The blond woman clapped a hand theatrically to the side of her face. "We're doomed." She happened to glance down at me, staring up with my mouth slightly open. I quickly dropped my gaze back to the brochure, and continued to read furiously. "This is the Third?"
"Apparently so," Miss Katsuragi answered. "You really think he can do it?"
"We'll find out in a moment."
"What? The Commander's going to launch?"
"Yes."
"What about Rei? And Unit00?"
"Unit00's locked up in cryostasis," the blond woman sighed. "The damage to the pauldrons and control mechanisms haven't yet been fully repaired, and we're waiting on replacement armour plating to be flown in from the Second Branch. They're dragging their feet with requisitions."
I wasn't really aware of the conversation as it flowed around and over me, trying to absorb myself into the brochure as best I could. The walls of the elevator were more of a mesh design, I noticed, with what seemed to be a glass covering just outside that so one couldn't injure oneself on the shaft walls. Why someone would take that safety procedure and not make some decent guardrails for the areas around big drops, I don't know. I thought the architect and construction crews had been alternately rushed and given plenty of time to do their job. I don't know for sure, but that was my guess - I just couldn't figure out what reasons could be behind such a work environment.
As the two adults behind me kept talking, we passed a large coolant tank of some kind, pink suspension liquids on the other side of the shaft walls, now also made of glass.
"- Unit01's ready for pilot insertion. He won't need to do anything, just climb in and play soldier."
"All right..." Miss Katsuragi sounded skeptical about something, but I didn't know what. The elevator ground to a halt, and the doors opened. Before me was a large concourse, leading out over the coolant fluids I'd seen mere moments ago. Technicians crowded about the concourse, and so I nearly missed the object of their attentions: a giant purple helmet.
It was rounded, almsot samurai-like in appearance, but with some kind of mast projecting from the forehead and an elongated jaw, which was apparently only there for cosmetic purposes. So I thought. I felt a shiver run down my spine, as if something had started talking to be in the back of my head. Again, I had an intense feeling of dislocation, and so I hadn't noticed Miss Katsuragi take one arm and the blond take the other, and I didn't notice they'd led me out into the middle of the concourse, facing the beast from a few scant metres away.
When I did return, I looked from one woman to the other, trying to figure out what was going on. Neither seemed willing to give me an answer to my questioning looks, so I said, "What's this?"
"This is an Evangelion Advanced Soldier unit," the blond answered me. I skimmed the brochure, wondering if I'd missed that section, but she took the brochure out of my hands and threw it over her shoulder. "You won't find this in there."
"What... why did you bring me here?"
"Because I have a need for you."
The voice from above was extremely familiar. The last time I'd heard it, he had told me... told me what exactly? I didn't know, couldn't remember. The feeling of dislocation was still upon me somewhat, and I felt like someone other than myself. But the voice was familiar.
"Father." I nearly choked as I said that one word. With his words, I had my answer to my earlier question: what use was I to be for him? I believed then that the beast in front of me was that reason. He expected me to do something with it. I turned and faced upwards, where my father stood in an observation dome. "Why did you bring me here?"
"I said: Because I have a need for you. I can use you now." That same smug, self-assured grin of his that never reached anywhere past his mouth. I remembered that all too well, and remembered wishing I could reach it to hit him, the last time we had talked. So if I could remember that image, why could I not remember the last words he said to me? I had a feeling they were important.
"What do you need me for?" But I knew. The play had to take its course, though. And father knew that as well.
"To pilot Evangelion Unit01." The purple beast behind me. I had known it all along, from the moment I'd first seen it. That had been the voice: this mighty slumbering warrior, awaking a sparkplug to allow it to start.
"Is... is that the only reason you called for me?" I had to hope that he had changed. Otherwise, things would be as bad, or even worse, than they had been last time.
"Yes." He didn't have to speak, though. The smug grin had grown almost imperceptibly larger as I had spoken.
Could I do this? Was I capable of piloting a giant... whatever that was, with no training? No. I couldn't. I knew that without asking. "I won't do it, father!"
He looked down on me for a moment, then turned to one side, and spoke something into a video monitor to his side. He turned then, and left the dome. I stood there, shoulders slumped, feeling as if I wanted to cry, but having no tears to do so. I'd cried those out years ago, and there was no chance of any more finding their way out now. Technicians buffeted me about the concourse, and I drifted to the edge, and looked up at the giant before me. Something in it called to me, but I wasn't going to do it for my father.
After a few seconds, alarms began blasting out at top volume, and a PA crackled into life. "Target's become active again! It's on the move into the lower business district!"
A door on the opposite side of the concourse from the lift opened, and several doctors and orderlies rushed a trolley bed down towards the ingress point between the giant's shoulders. Someone was lying on the bed, gritting teeth against what sounded like great pain. As the trolley passed me, I saw a young girl, about my age. She was an albino, with bluish hair, and piercing red eyes that slitted open as the trolley passed by. Her skin was almost alabaster, and she wore a white skintight garment, with plug fittings and coloured tabs dotting the surface; for what reason, I'm not sure, but I assumed they had something to do with piloting this giant.
She was also injured.
An eye was bandaged over, and one of her arms was wrapped up in a plaster cast. Someone had torn the arms off her garment to allow her to get her arms into it reasonably easy. Once she was at the base of the ingress point, she struggled to stand upright off the trolley, orderlies assisting her. I admired her courage - I didn't think I could stand in such pain as she was obviously in. As she stood, I saw a 00 stenciled between her breasts, on the garment, coloured black. She gave me another glance, why, I don't know, but it was almost as if she knew me somehow. I didn't know. I didn't know her, at least.
As the orderlies let her arms go, so she could stand on her own, there was an almighty crash from above, and part of a ceiling support strut crashed down from above. Technicians scurried for cover, and the orderlies dove into the pink fluid to escape it as it hit the trolley, and flipped it upside down. As it flipped, though, it caught the young girl on the back of her thighs, and smashed her brutally to the ground. I'd managed to keep my balance, though, and I rushed to find if she was okay, forgetting all about Miss Katsuragi and the blond woman.
She was lying on her side, trying to roll over, when I reached her. She didn't look so good, and fresh blood dotted her garment and was soaking through her bandages. I helped her onto the flattened trolley, and pulled my hands back. She was conscious, obviously, and even more obviously in greater pain than before. I stared at my palms: blood covered them. The orderlies and doctors, now recovered, rushed back and assisted her, pushing me backwards. I staggered back to the ingress point, and watched as she was bundled off. Miss Katsuragi was speaking into her mobile again as she approached me with a firm walk that said not to move.
"Yes sir, I understand, sir. Rei's unable to pilot, though. She's got to go back to the infirmary. Right, sir, I'll take care of it." She snapped the phone shut as she reached me. "Shinji, you're our last hope."
"Don't joke about things like this, Miss Misato."
She gripped me by my shoulders. "If I was joking, I wouldn't be here talking to you. You've been brought here to pilot this Evangelion. Your medical records have told us you've got the correct physio-psychological phenomenon needed to activate and process the Evangelion's nerve commands, and we have no other choice right now. You've got to get in and pilot it."
"I can't, Miss Misato!" I said. "I don't even know how to pilot that thing!"
"All you have to do is sit in it, and we'll do the rest," she said, in a strong voice that was somewhat soothing: I don't know, perhaps it was the fact I wasn't being given a choice in the matter, and that made it better.
But somehow, I found myself beind sealed up in a long tube, sitting in a seat that wasn't exactly comfortable. I'd had two nerve clips thrust into my hands as I'd stepped inside, and I was being instructed in how to attach them to my scalp so the Evangelion would respond to my mind as much as my hands and feet - not that I was expecting either method of control to come to anything. As soon as the external door clicked shut, and the handles spun around and sunk into the depression surrounding them ( for safety reasons, I supposed, so if I got thrown about, I wouldn't tear open my skin on them) the plug slid home into it's position inside the Evangelion.
I heard Miss Katsuragi's voice on the comm line. "Shinji, just relax. This next part might be a bit freaky." Freaky was an understatement. As soon as she'd stopped talking, bright orange fluid began rapidly filling the cylinder from the bottom, rushing up towards me at speed. I panicked, and took in a deep breath just before it closed over my head. "It's called LCL, Shinji, and it's oxygenated liquid. Just breathe it in normally, and you'll be fine." her voice was calm and soothing, but that didn't do a lot for me. Within moments, I couldn't hold on to my breath any longer, and bubbles burst from my mouth. Liquid rushed into my lungs, and after the initial panic had passed, I found I could breath again, albeit with an iron taste in the back of my mouth. "How do you feel?" she asked.
"Ah fewl lick Ah'n goooa b' shick..."
"That'll pass," came the blond woman's voice.
"Shush, Ritsuko," Miss Katsuragi said quietly. Then, louder, "We're moving you up to the launch gantry now. Then you'll be moved up to the surface. Just do what we say and you'll be fine, okay?"
I realised there was an image of her hanging in front of me. We had video communications! So I guessed she could also see me, and I nodded in reply.
"Good." Then: "Hold on."
There was a click from the back of the Evangelion, and a display in front of me flickered into life.
"We've got enough neural data to start the nerve connections." As she spoke, my mind gave a slight twinge as my perceptions altered, and the cylinder around me swum into different colours before stablising on an exterior view, as if I had windows to the outside. Another display flipped open then, showing the various sections of the Evangelion unit in a three-dimenional solid-geometry model, that spun as I thought about it. A nice touch. More geometry formed above and behind the shoulder pauldrons. These reached down and connected with the Evangelionl; at the same time, the Evangelion shuddered as something latched on to the outside. "Stand by for launch."
There was a brief moment in which I considered what Miss Katsuragi meant by launch, and then I knew. Rocketed upwards at incredible speeds. I thought I'd black out, but the LCL fluid cushioned me in ways I didn't know liquids could. And then my vision cleared, and the Evangelion was out of the tight claustrophobic tunnels we'd been shooting through. The head snapped back with the abrupt cease of acceleration, and then down again. The view inside returned to normal, seeing a ground-level view of the city.
Miss Katsuragi's image popped out again. "Shinji, grip the control handles, and try to concentrate on walking. just one foot in front of the other."
I heard the blond woman, this Ritsuko, mutter behind Miss Katsuragi that even walking would be too advanced for me. And that solidified the idea in my head: I was going to walk, even if it killed me. I leaned forward in the seat, trying to get comfortable. My hands gripped at the control yokes, and I pulled back towards me, thinking, 'left foot, left foot, left foot,' and then the image of the Evangelion in front of me lifted it's left foot, and swung it forward. It impacted on the ground, none too steadily, but at least I kept the giant upright. Then I did the same, and pulled the right foot forward, swung it past the left, and planeted it further up the street. I felt resistance behind me, and turned to look: the view from outside the beast showed a large plug and lead connecting me to the launch gantry.
"That's your power supply," Miss Katsuragi said in my ear. "If that becomes disconnected, you'll have five minutes to attach a new plug before your battery supply runs out and your Evangelion powers down."
"Incredible," Ritsuko muttered behind Miss Katsuragi. "His synch ratio's sitting at thirty percent."
"That's good, isn't it?" Miss Katsuragi asked, turning to face behind her.
"For someone who hasn't attempted piloting an Evangelion before, and has had no training, that's exceptional."
I tuned out their conversation as I focussed on walking. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right -
- and then I froze. There was something stepping out in front of me. Three blocks up. A giant in black and bone livery. I felt my blood run cold, and I froze in place, hoping it wouldn't see me. Miss Katsuragi was saying something in my ear, but I couldn't hear her: my mind was rebelling. Walking I could do, but how could I fight this impossible creature before me?
And then it charged and Miss Katsuragi screamed in my ears and my eye hurt
TO BE CONTINUED...
Author's Notes: The title for this is paraphrased from a novel by John Marsden ("Tomorrow, When The War Began") which tells the tale of Australia invaded by Indonesia, and the trials of 7 teenagers who managed to stay free by accident. The series is actually 7 novels long, and I just finished the 7th the other week; they're very well-written and show a lot of research, especially into what happens in war situations. They're well-worth a read.
Anyways, like I said, these chapters will come a bit slower than the other fics I write, and possibly a little slower if I get my other fic series in any decent kind of shape to start posting. But I enjoyed writing this. Trynig not to make the chapters as long as the others I've done, but this one... bleh. When I try to write short, I can't :P Although when I try to write long, I get huge chapters - thank god I've got none of those Trek fics aorund anymore ;)
NOTE: This story includes major spoilers for the series Saishu-heiki Kanojo. If you don't want to know how the series ends, or anything that happens in it, I'd suggest stopping reading now.
Love Song of Tomorrow
By
Raymond Cooper
Chapter 2
** Tomorrow, When The War Continued **
I next knew anything when I opened my eyes. A woman's oversized breasts hung in front of my face, said woman clutching at her head, groaning. A slight trickle of blood issued from between her fingers, and dripped down just beyond my forehead. She opened her eyes momentarily, and looked at me. "Are you all right, Shinji?"
I nodded. I was sore, possibly injured - ubt I was all right. Nothing felt broken, and apart from bruises, I felt nothing terribly wrong with my body. Just a sense of dislocation, like I should be somewhere else right now.
Where, I had no idea. It was just a weird sensation.
I looked up again at this woman, trying to focus beyond what was thrust, jiggling, in my face. "Uh..." What was her name? Oh yes. "Uh, Miss Katsuragi? Shouldn't we try and move? Find shelter?"
She looked at me, a little annoyed. Quite why, I don't know. It was almost like she didn't want to move from her position above me. I realised, at that moment, I was still showing the excitement I'd experienced while she had checked me for injury before the blast, and she had noticed; how could she not? She was now sitting on my lap, legs either side of my body. I blushed deeply, and she sighed, wriggling off. "You're no fun," she moaned, and exited the car.
I joined her outside a minute later, and helped her push the car over until it was righted. Thankfully, it was a small Honda - mostly plastic and light composite materials - else we'd not have been able to do it. I was surprised at the devastation in the region, and racked my memory for any idea as to what could have caused such damage.
That's right: the woman, Miss Katsuragi, had said 'they' were going to set off an N2 mine. I knew from school and the news that they were the latest development in nuclear weapons, an advanced fusion device - high yield explosion, low blast radius and fallout. Most of everything was contained in an electromagnetic bubble field activated a scant microsecond before the bomb detonated, or so the news said. I think that the United Nations might have been covering the real information, for fear that someone might try to start another nuclear war, like the one that had blown up just after Second Impact.
Something flicked at my mind, but I dismissed it as a random thought. It didn't form enough for me to register what it was; I just wanted to get to safety. If someone was launching N2 bombs, then that meant being outside a shelter would be damned dangerous.
Miss Katsuragi got back into the car, having used duct tape to strap on the bits that had fallen off. I'd watched her nearly break into tears a couple of times, but she was strong, determined, and also in a hurry to get back to wherever she was taking me. She also grabbed a battery from a nearby car that had also been thrown by the explosion, once she found her car's battery had ruptured. Once I'd hopped back in, though, and the car was moving again, she looked very upset. But I had to ask a question.
"Uh, Miss Katsuragi?"
She brightened immediately. "Yes, Shinji?"
"Should you have... uh... stolen that car's battery back there? What if the owner needs to get to a shelter, too?"
I watched the expression on her face fall as she realised she could have just doomed someone to a slow and horrible death. She actually glanced into the rear view mirror, but obviously, she saw nothing, because I watched her pull herself together again into the cheery persona she'd been projecting up until now. "That's okay, because that was a parked car. The driver would have gotten to a shelter long ago. Tokyo-3's a city built for siege, didn't you know?"
"No, I didn't... but isn't what you did stealing?"
She didn't even have the decency to look ashamed for a second. "No, because I'm an important military official, and that means I can requisition anything I need to carry out my duties, and getting you to NERV HQ is my duty right now, so that makes it all right. Okay? Okay." She kept smiling, eyes shut. I wondered how she didn't drive off the road.
But with those lighter questions out of the way, the big one had to come up now.
"Miss Katsuragi?"
"Misato."
"Miss Misato? Is my... will my... Will I see my father there?"
"Oh sure!" Miss Katsuragi gushed. "He's my boss, you know. He oversaw the whole project of... well, you'll see. We're almost there. I've got to call ahead and get a car train ready for us." She picked up her mobile, and exchanged a few terse words with someone on the other end of the call. I didn't pay much attention to her, because I turned, and looked back where the big black creature had been, where the N2 mine had gone off.
The creature still stood. The Angel. Yes, I remembered then that name. The Angel stood there, silently, smoke blowing up off its charred form. And yet, something inside it was moving. The surface seemed to be shifting, the charred segments dropping to the ground. It was still... alive, I guessed would be the word. It definitely didn't look like any machine I'd ever seen before.
And then it was gone as the wrecked car bounced into a concrete passageway leading underground. The momentary darkness gave way to the artificial illumination of a series of large fluroescent light fixtures along the tops of the walls as we sped along. I didn't know where we were going, perhaps to some underground shelter where my father was holed up. I mean, I didn't have any doubts about him - he'd have locked himself away from danger, away from people, away from anywhere where he might have to do something to interact with others.
He wasn't a terribly nice person. But while I could admit in my head I hated him, I had so much trouble trying to externalise those feelings. He knew I hated him, I knew he hated me. That was all there was to it. A private party no one else was invited to.
And yet, when he'd had this woman send a letter to me, I had got onto the first plane to Tokyo-3 I could find. Why? Why had I come running? I didn't know. Perhaps I'd thought he wanted to finally accept me as his son. Perhaps I'd done something that he was proud of.
Hardly. I knew him. I knew him well. There had to be some other reason for him sending for me.
The car rolled to a stop, then something clicked into place around the tyres. I started, but Miss Katsuragi touched my shoulder lightly.
"No need to worry. It's just the car train locking us down." She paused, looked out the cracked front windscreen. "Did you bring your security card?" she asked, idly.
"Oh! Yes. It's here, in my bag." I dug around, and found the folder I'd been sent. Contained within were documents, including a general "Welcome to NERV" information brochure and also an identification card. It was a photo ID, too,w ith a recent image, and I wondered how my father had managed to obtain that. Then I thought I was likely better off not knowing how. I started to read through the brochure, and was amazed at what was contained within.
Definitely a public relations exercise, the brochure stated how NERV had grown from the old organisation GEHIRN, how it worked with UN defence contractors with budgets larger than most small countries' GNP, and how the HQ of the organisation stretched deep underground. I was reciting some of this to miss Katsuragi when there was a burst of light through the windows, and I looked up from the brochure.
Into nothing.
There was what seemed to be a golden sun in the distance, but I think that was a holographic representation of the lighting system for the cavern. It was huge - and it seemed only a little bit was excavated, as the walls suggested a spherical construct. At the 'ground' level, I could see a pyramid, attached to a reverse pyramid, a huge lake with an old naval destroyer, and lots of forest and grasslands. Other buildings dotted the subterrainian landscape, and I was awed by the vision. "It's a GeoFront!" I cried excitedly, having only read about such things in fanciful science fiction. "A real GeoFront!"
"Welcome to the headquarters of NERV, Shinji," Miss Katsuragi said, with a slight smile.
******
The inside of the pyramid, where we eventually ended up, comprised a lot of deep pits, all technological in origin. It was a massive construct, extending far beneath the surface of the Earth. I didn't care to think how far down the drops under the escalators went, and I stuck mostly to the middle of the pathways. It really seemed as if there weren't adequate guard rails around to stop one from having an accident and plummeting to one's death.
Miss Katsuragi led the way, although I think she was as lost as I was: she certainly hummed and ahhed often enough on our journey. And finally, she made a surreptitious call on her mobile, and when she folded the tiny phone up and placed it back in her jacket's pocket, she led the way authoritively to a nearby elevator.
When the doors slid open, there was another woman inside, of about the same age. But she wore a blue pair of swimwear under a white lab coat. The fact that both her swimwear and her hair looked damp suggested she'd recently been immersed in a lot of water. Oh yeah, our tax at work here: there's a rampaging Angel on the surface and here are a bunch of pretty women having a swim!
She glared at Miss Katsuragi, though, as we entered the lift. "Late again, I see, Misato," she said, an even voice tinged with an undercurrent of reproach.
"Sorry!" Miss Katsuragi replied. "Won't happen again. I'm still trying to find my way around this place!"
"You've been working in this facility for a year now, and you STILL get lost?" The blond woman clapped a hand theatrically to the side of her face. "We're doomed." She happened to glance down at me, staring up with my mouth slightly open. I quickly dropped my gaze back to the brochure, and continued to read furiously. "This is the Third?"
"Apparently so," Miss Katsuragi answered. "You really think he can do it?"
"We'll find out in a moment."
"What? The Commander's going to launch?"
"Yes."
"What about Rei? And Unit00?"
"Unit00's locked up in cryostasis," the blond woman sighed. "The damage to the pauldrons and control mechanisms haven't yet been fully repaired, and we're waiting on replacement armour plating to be flown in from the Second Branch. They're dragging their feet with requisitions."
I wasn't really aware of the conversation as it flowed around and over me, trying to absorb myself into the brochure as best I could. The walls of the elevator were more of a mesh design, I noticed, with what seemed to be a glass covering just outside that so one couldn't injure oneself on the shaft walls. Why someone would take that safety procedure and not make some decent guardrails for the areas around big drops, I don't know. I thought the architect and construction crews had been alternately rushed and given plenty of time to do their job. I don't know for sure, but that was my guess - I just couldn't figure out what reasons could be behind such a work environment.
As the two adults behind me kept talking, we passed a large coolant tank of some kind, pink suspension liquids on the other side of the shaft walls, now also made of glass.
"- Unit01's ready for pilot insertion. He won't need to do anything, just climb in and play soldier."
"All right..." Miss Katsuragi sounded skeptical about something, but I didn't know what. The elevator ground to a halt, and the doors opened. Before me was a large concourse, leading out over the coolant fluids I'd seen mere moments ago. Technicians crowded about the concourse, and so I nearly missed the object of their attentions: a giant purple helmet.
It was rounded, almsot samurai-like in appearance, but with some kind of mast projecting from the forehead and an elongated jaw, which was apparently only there for cosmetic purposes. So I thought. I felt a shiver run down my spine, as if something had started talking to be in the back of my head. Again, I had an intense feeling of dislocation, and so I hadn't noticed Miss Katsuragi take one arm and the blond take the other, and I didn't notice they'd led me out into the middle of the concourse, facing the beast from a few scant metres away.
When I did return, I looked from one woman to the other, trying to figure out what was going on. Neither seemed willing to give me an answer to my questioning looks, so I said, "What's this?"
"This is an Evangelion Advanced Soldier unit," the blond answered me. I skimmed the brochure, wondering if I'd missed that section, but she took the brochure out of my hands and threw it over her shoulder. "You won't find this in there."
"What... why did you bring me here?"
"Because I have a need for you."
The voice from above was extremely familiar. The last time I'd heard it, he had told me... told me what exactly? I didn't know, couldn't remember. The feeling of dislocation was still upon me somewhat, and I felt like someone other than myself. But the voice was familiar.
"Father." I nearly choked as I said that one word. With his words, I had my answer to my earlier question: what use was I to be for him? I believed then that the beast in front of me was that reason. He expected me to do something with it. I turned and faced upwards, where my father stood in an observation dome. "Why did you bring me here?"
"I said: Because I have a need for you. I can use you now." That same smug, self-assured grin of his that never reached anywhere past his mouth. I remembered that all too well, and remembered wishing I could reach it to hit him, the last time we had talked. So if I could remember that image, why could I not remember the last words he said to me? I had a feeling they were important.
"What do you need me for?" But I knew. The play had to take its course, though. And father knew that as well.
"To pilot Evangelion Unit01." The purple beast behind me. I had known it all along, from the moment I'd first seen it. That had been the voice: this mighty slumbering warrior, awaking a sparkplug to allow it to start.
"Is... is that the only reason you called for me?" I had to hope that he had changed. Otherwise, things would be as bad, or even worse, than they had been last time.
"Yes." He didn't have to speak, though. The smug grin had grown almost imperceptibly larger as I had spoken.
Could I do this? Was I capable of piloting a giant... whatever that was, with no training? No. I couldn't. I knew that without asking. "I won't do it, father!"
He looked down on me for a moment, then turned to one side, and spoke something into a video monitor to his side. He turned then, and left the dome. I stood there, shoulders slumped, feeling as if I wanted to cry, but having no tears to do so. I'd cried those out years ago, and there was no chance of any more finding their way out now. Technicians buffeted me about the concourse, and I drifted to the edge, and looked up at the giant before me. Something in it called to me, but I wasn't going to do it for my father.
After a few seconds, alarms began blasting out at top volume, and a PA crackled into life. "Target's become active again! It's on the move into the lower business district!"
A door on the opposite side of the concourse from the lift opened, and several doctors and orderlies rushed a trolley bed down towards the ingress point between the giant's shoulders. Someone was lying on the bed, gritting teeth against what sounded like great pain. As the trolley passed me, I saw a young girl, about my age. She was an albino, with bluish hair, and piercing red eyes that slitted open as the trolley passed by. Her skin was almost alabaster, and she wore a white skintight garment, with plug fittings and coloured tabs dotting the surface; for what reason, I'm not sure, but I assumed they had something to do with piloting this giant.
She was also injured.
An eye was bandaged over, and one of her arms was wrapped up in a plaster cast. Someone had torn the arms off her garment to allow her to get her arms into it reasonably easy. Once she was at the base of the ingress point, she struggled to stand upright off the trolley, orderlies assisting her. I admired her courage - I didn't think I could stand in such pain as she was obviously in. As she stood, I saw a 00 stenciled between her breasts, on the garment, coloured black. She gave me another glance, why, I don't know, but it was almost as if she knew me somehow. I didn't know. I didn't know her, at least.
As the orderlies let her arms go, so she could stand on her own, there was an almighty crash from above, and part of a ceiling support strut crashed down from above. Technicians scurried for cover, and the orderlies dove into the pink fluid to escape it as it hit the trolley, and flipped it upside down. As it flipped, though, it caught the young girl on the back of her thighs, and smashed her brutally to the ground. I'd managed to keep my balance, though, and I rushed to find if she was okay, forgetting all about Miss Katsuragi and the blond woman.
She was lying on her side, trying to roll over, when I reached her. She didn't look so good, and fresh blood dotted her garment and was soaking through her bandages. I helped her onto the flattened trolley, and pulled my hands back. She was conscious, obviously, and even more obviously in greater pain than before. I stared at my palms: blood covered them. The orderlies and doctors, now recovered, rushed back and assisted her, pushing me backwards. I staggered back to the ingress point, and watched as she was bundled off. Miss Katsuragi was speaking into her mobile again as she approached me with a firm walk that said not to move.
"Yes sir, I understand, sir. Rei's unable to pilot, though. She's got to go back to the infirmary. Right, sir, I'll take care of it." She snapped the phone shut as she reached me. "Shinji, you're our last hope."
"Don't joke about things like this, Miss Misato."
She gripped me by my shoulders. "If I was joking, I wouldn't be here talking to you. You've been brought here to pilot this Evangelion. Your medical records have told us you've got the correct physio-psychological phenomenon needed to activate and process the Evangelion's nerve commands, and we have no other choice right now. You've got to get in and pilot it."
"I can't, Miss Misato!" I said. "I don't even know how to pilot that thing!"
"All you have to do is sit in it, and we'll do the rest," she said, in a strong voice that was somewhat soothing: I don't know, perhaps it was the fact I wasn't being given a choice in the matter, and that made it better.
But somehow, I found myself beind sealed up in a long tube, sitting in a seat that wasn't exactly comfortable. I'd had two nerve clips thrust into my hands as I'd stepped inside, and I was being instructed in how to attach them to my scalp so the Evangelion would respond to my mind as much as my hands and feet - not that I was expecting either method of control to come to anything. As soon as the external door clicked shut, and the handles spun around and sunk into the depression surrounding them ( for safety reasons, I supposed, so if I got thrown about, I wouldn't tear open my skin on them) the plug slid home into it's position inside the Evangelion.
I heard Miss Katsuragi's voice on the comm line. "Shinji, just relax. This next part might be a bit freaky." Freaky was an understatement. As soon as she'd stopped talking, bright orange fluid began rapidly filling the cylinder from the bottom, rushing up towards me at speed. I panicked, and took in a deep breath just before it closed over my head. "It's called LCL, Shinji, and it's oxygenated liquid. Just breathe it in normally, and you'll be fine." her voice was calm and soothing, but that didn't do a lot for me. Within moments, I couldn't hold on to my breath any longer, and bubbles burst from my mouth. Liquid rushed into my lungs, and after the initial panic had passed, I found I could breath again, albeit with an iron taste in the back of my mouth. "How do you feel?" she asked.
"Ah fewl lick Ah'n goooa b' shick..."
"That'll pass," came the blond woman's voice.
"Shush, Ritsuko," Miss Katsuragi said quietly. Then, louder, "We're moving you up to the launch gantry now. Then you'll be moved up to the surface. Just do what we say and you'll be fine, okay?"
I realised there was an image of her hanging in front of me. We had video communications! So I guessed she could also see me, and I nodded in reply.
"Good." Then: "Hold on."
There was a click from the back of the Evangelion, and a display in front of me flickered into life.
"We've got enough neural data to start the nerve connections." As she spoke, my mind gave a slight twinge as my perceptions altered, and the cylinder around me swum into different colours before stablising on an exterior view, as if I had windows to the outside. Another display flipped open then, showing the various sections of the Evangelion unit in a three-dimenional solid-geometry model, that spun as I thought about it. A nice touch. More geometry formed above and behind the shoulder pauldrons. These reached down and connected with the Evangelionl; at the same time, the Evangelion shuddered as something latched on to the outside. "Stand by for launch."
There was a brief moment in which I considered what Miss Katsuragi meant by launch, and then I knew. Rocketed upwards at incredible speeds. I thought I'd black out, but the LCL fluid cushioned me in ways I didn't know liquids could. And then my vision cleared, and the Evangelion was out of the tight claustrophobic tunnels we'd been shooting through. The head snapped back with the abrupt cease of acceleration, and then down again. The view inside returned to normal, seeing a ground-level view of the city.
Miss Katsuragi's image popped out again. "Shinji, grip the control handles, and try to concentrate on walking. just one foot in front of the other."
I heard the blond woman, this Ritsuko, mutter behind Miss Katsuragi that even walking would be too advanced for me. And that solidified the idea in my head: I was going to walk, even if it killed me. I leaned forward in the seat, trying to get comfortable. My hands gripped at the control yokes, and I pulled back towards me, thinking, 'left foot, left foot, left foot,' and then the image of the Evangelion in front of me lifted it's left foot, and swung it forward. It impacted on the ground, none too steadily, but at least I kept the giant upright. Then I did the same, and pulled the right foot forward, swung it past the left, and planeted it further up the street. I felt resistance behind me, and turned to look: the view from outside the beast showed a large plug and lead connecting me to the launch gantry.
"That's your power supply," Miss Katsuragi said in my ear. "If that becomes disconnected, you'll have five minutes to attach a new plug before your battery supply runs out and your Evangelion powers down."
"Incredible," Ritsuko muttered behind Miss Katsuragi. "His synch ratio's sitting at thirty percent."
"That's good, isn't it?" Miss Katsuragi asked, turning to face behind her.
"For someone who hasn't attempted piloting an Evangelion before, and has had no training, that's exceptional."
I tuned out their conversation as I focussed on walking. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right -
- and then I froze. There was something stepping out in front of me. Three blocks up. A giant in black and bone livery. I felt my blood run cold, and I froze in place, hoping it wouldn't see me. Miss Katsuragi was saying something in my ear, but I couldn't hear her: my mind was rebelling. Walking I could do, but how could I fight this impossible creature before me?
And then it charged and Miss Katsuragi screamed in my ears and my eye hurt
TO BE CONTINUED...
Author's Notes: The title for this is paraphrased from a novel by John Marsden ("Tomorrow, When The War Began") which tells the tale of Australia invaded by Indonesia, and the trials of 7 teenagers who managed to stay free by accident. The series is actually 7 novels long, and I just finished the 7th the other week; they're very well-written and show a lot of research, especially into what happens in war situations. They're well-worth a read.
Anyways, like I said, these chapters will come a bit slower than the other fics I write, and possibly a little slower if I get my other fic series in any decent kind of shape to start posting. But I enjoyed writing this. Trynig not to make the chapters as long as the others I've done, but this one... bleh. When I try to write short, I can't :P Although when I try to write long, I get huge chapters - thank god I've got none of those Trek fics aorund anymore ;)