The Program
Shinji sat in the entry plug mock up. It was exactly the same as his normal entry plug, except, there were numerous ports where wires connected to diodes that were placed all over his body.
Dr. Ritsuko Akagi spoke to him quietly, going over the day's schedule. "Since you are going to be in a computer simulation, we will be unable to simulate the unpredictable occurrences that frequent your Eva in particular. This is a simulation only. This program takes everything that we know about angels, and does 2 things. Firstly, it allows us the chance to predict possible abilities of upcoming angels, and find ways of defeating them. Also, it allows us to expand your piloting talent. While you will be able to fight nearly as well as in your Eva, the simulation can only crudely reproduce pain. So, when you are his severely, the pain may be intense, and range all over your body. I am sorry, but I was made to program this into simulation in order to fully replicate the combat environment. The first few battles will be easy, mostly because they will be angels you have already fought. The next will be a little challenging, while later they will be difficult. Be prepared to fight the same angel multiple times."
"In this simulation, are we going to be fighting as a team?"
"At first all fights will be fought as a team, whether with two or three units in on the fight. That will be determined on a mission to mission basis. Many of the later ones have been determined to be single Unit sorties. However, if you are unable to defeat the program in these conditions, you will be allowed a partner. Any other questions?"
"No ma'am."
"OK, control, fill and charge the LCL."
Yellow LCL filled the plug, and Shinji's body fought for a second to adjust to having fluid in his lungs once more. He quickly recovered, and his screen showed the normal light display. As the image cleared in front of him, he found that he was standing in the restraining frame at the top of a catapult, above ground. He looked to his side, and found Unit 02 facing the same way as he was. It was dark outside, and it looked like a ghost town. Then, slowly the angel appeared. It was Sachiel. The safety locks released, and his Eva slowly moved out. He found that he had to concentrate a little harder than normal.
Asuka saw the angel, and moved forward also, putting a building between herself and the angel. She contacted Shinji, and smiled when his face appeared. "Shinji, circle around, and get on it's other side, and we can hit it from in front and behind." She hefted a pallet rifle, and moved into position. She saw Shinji on her HUD, positioned similarly on the other side of another building.
"GO!" She jumped from behind the building, and lay into the angel, firing the magazine dry. Shinji's shots had the same effect. After the smoke cleared, the angel stood there, unscathed. It turned slightly as thought to line itself up with her, and suddenly a force projection erupted right under her.
It was powerful. It blasted Unit 02 high into the air, and destroyed buildings close by. It knocked Unit 01 down, and disoriented him a little. When Unit 01 rose, Shinji found that the angel had grabbed Unit 02 by the head, and was thrashing it around against buildings. For some reason the Evangelion was not fighting back.
"Asuka! You have to fight!" Shinji heard himself say. He charged forwards toward the angel, and nearly punched it, but it reacted quickly, and grasped his hand, and twisted it out of the way, and he went tumbling to the ground. Shinji didn't know what happened at first, but then he remembered seeing such tactics in martial arts.
The left leg of Unit 02 was hanging by white bone fragments and yellowish sinew, flopping about in the wake of the angel's tantrum.
Asuka screamed over the comm channel, and it hurt his ears.
When he heard it, Shinji was angry. He had at first been subdued thinking that this angel would be an easy kill. But the sound of his Asuka in such torment, the sight of her Eva being ripped limb from limb stole that stoicism from him, and he regained his footing, not taking his eyes off the angel the whole time. Those in the control room would recall later that they had not seen anything look quite so menacing without doing anything threatening. It scared them to think of what might be going on in the unstable mind of Shinji Ikari. Of any of the pilots for that matter.
Shinji stood there for a moment, absorbing the moment. He thought of several things that he could do to the angel. He expanded his AT field to as powerful as he could make it. It shimmered, and the phase space differences could be seen in the familiar hexagonal shape that appeared in the air, when it came in contact with the angel's own field. He began moving slowly forward, watching carefully as the angel still focused on Eva 02. The leg had ripped off, and lay a few miles away. He steadily advanced, until he thought he could rush the angel, and then jumping forward started his attack.
The angel noticed his not-so-subtle tactic well before that, and force projected at him. It blew him away and flattened a little more of the city.
In the entry plug, there was little light. The emergency lighting had come on, and Shinji sat in the near darkness wondering what was going on. Then the screen reappeared, but this time, it was distorted. It was tinted with a greenish hue that cast strange colors into the cockpit around him. It wavered, and trembled then focused.
In the control room, the third person display showed that Unit 01's facial armor had been stripped away, and showed the hideous face beneath. It seemed that this fight held many similarities between itself and the original.
"Did you program that in. Maya?" Ritsuko asked nervously.
"No ma'am. I only programmed in the harmonics data and the external armor sprites."
"Then how the hell did it do that?" She said pointing to the screen.
In the program, Shinji's Eva stood once again, only this time without his control to aid it. It breathed heavily, and howled into the night air, sending a chill up anyone's spine that heard it. He sat in the entry plug frantically trying to control the beast that was his weapon. It did not respond.
The Eva bent, and picked up a broken piece of conduit that had once been underground, but now lay amidst the rubble in this middle of the city. It wielded it like a crude club, and screamed once more, this time thrusting it high into the air. It bolted forward, bearing down on the angel, repowering it AT field on the way. Conduit club leading the way, the Eva skewered the angel with it as it passed. Stopping, and sliding along the road for about a quarter mile, the Eva turned around, and ran back at the angel.
Sachiel dropped Unit 02, needing both hands to deal with the threat at hand. Shinji saw what was about to happen, and hoping to spare himself from the blood and gore, started moving the controls again, praying to regain some kind of control. "Come on, you worthless stupid program! You can't do this, you are supposed to do what I tell you to. You have no power of will of your own! No! You have to do what I say! You bastard, why does this always have to happen with you? I hate this. Always you turn into some kind of raging monster!" He yelled, pleaded with the controls to obey him. He tried opening comm frequencies with control, but he couldn't raise them.
The Eva slammed into the angel, running full force into it. Grabbing the protruding end of the conduit, it jerked it out of the angel, and took up a two handed grip on the end. Raising it above it's head, he started to club the angel over the head area, but the angel grabbed the weapon, and held it at bay with one hand while the other hand shot down, and grabbed him by the leg. It picked him up, and turned him upside down intending to thrash him as it had Unit 02. This only proved to make the Eva angrier. The eyes squinted, and shone with unearthly light, similar to how they looked with the armor covering them, only now more intense. Unit 01's hand shot out, and took hold of the edges of the angel's core. It stuck out of the front, and glowed. The Eva's hands found little purchase but held on anyway. Suddenly, a red arm shot up from the ground somewhere, and thrust a prog knife deep into the core. It sizzled, and sparked, then went dead. The angel dropped Unit 01, and slumped to the ground.
Unit 01 got up, and stood over the fallen angel, angry at it for forcing it into action, rage poured out it, manifesting itself when the Eva knelt beside the angel, and started beating it with it's bare hands. The sound of cracking and breaking was sickening, and the noises from the tearing of flesh soon would have had him retching had it not been for the fact that he had not had anything to eat in a while. He screamed for it to stop. For the controllers to end to program. They couldn't hear his anguish, and the gore continued unabated. Soon blood ran freely in the streets and pieces of the angel adorned buildings as if to warn the other angels of this ones demise, and what would happen to them if they came. It lasted for a long time, but finally the Eva calmed, and stopped, and Shinji suddenly was no longer synchronized to the Eva.
A window popped up, and he saw Ritsuko's face. "Shinji! What the hell are you doing? You have blocked all contact for the last hour, and we have been trying to move your Eva to a neutral area for almost that long. This is not a game. There are good reason why we have the comm system, and you should know that it is vital to every mission."
"You think I tried to that? I tried to totally destroy the angel? I couldn't control the sim Eva. It went out of control. It wouldn't obey commands, and I couldn't open a comm channel. I tried for a long time, but it wouldn't do it. I didn't want to do that to the angel." At this point the simulated situation started taking hold of him. "I told it to stop." He cried. "I told it that Asuka had killed it." He then remembered the other Eva pilot. "Where is Asuka? Is she hurt? I want to see her."
"She's alright. This is just a computer simulation, she can't be hurt." Ritsuko signed off as the LCL drained from the mock cockpit, and the hatch opened allowing him egress. He headed for the showers in silence, not believing what had happened in the program. Had it been him controlling the Eva unconsciously? Had his will been served? He had been angry with the angel. Had that emotion repowered his Eva, and caused it to berserk like that? He didn't think so.
His shower was unfulfilling. It did not wash away his troubles no matter what Misato thought. Sure, he felt clean, but his thoughts followed him all the way to the lounge where he found Kaji sipping tea.
"Hi Kaji. How are you?"
"Oh hi, Shinji, I am doing well, and you?"
"I don't know any more. I don't suppose you saw the simulation this afternoon?"
"Yes, I did. I must say, that was…unique."
"I didn't do it. At least I don't think I did. I didn't mean for that to happen. It ran out of control just like my Eva does. I thought they weren't supposed to do that."
"They aren't. That leads me to believe one of two things. One, they aren't telling us everything about the program. Or two, the Magi system is taking control of it without anyone else knowing it. While you were in there, the facial armor on you Eva was stripped off, and the face was exposed. Ritsuko and Maya had not programmed that face into the simulation, so where did it come from? The Magi computers have hundreds of pictures to go from to make that face."
"Why would it do that? It's just a computer."
"Just a computer? You don't know then. The Magi supercomputers are based on Ritsuko's mother, Naoko. She programmed them to deal with problems based on her own thoughts and feelings. They are named after the Three wise men, Melchior, Balthasar, And Caspar. The three parts of her that make them up are herself as a woman, herself as a mother and herself as a scientist. They are the most advanced computer systems in the world, because of this."
"So they have artificial intelligence?"
"Not in the true sense of the term. They have problem solving capability, and can work logic very well, but they have no will."
"Then why would the computer redo the program?"
"I have been trying to figure that out. It had stumped me."
"I had better get going, Misato and Asuka are probably looking for me." He got up, and left the room, leaving Kaji to think over the newest development.
Soon he found Asuka. She was sitting on a bench in the hall, dressed and waiting to go, but he saw that she was in no mood to talk. He pressed in anyway.
"Hi, Asuka. How are you doing? Are you alright?"
"Go away Shinji. I don't want to talk to anyone right now." This, she noted to herself, was untrue. She wanted desperately to talk to Shinji, but she was unable to find a way to say what she felt, so she decided to just be angry instead. "I don't think we even have anything to talk about either, so just leave me alone."
Shinji sat there in silence for a few moments, contemplating her mood. She hasn't called me that in a long time. Why would she act so callous towards me? Is it because of what happened in the simulation? I don't understand her sometimes.
Shinji, feeling uncomfortable, and not knowing any way to console the young girl, found that he could find nothing good to say to her. He stood, and hesitantly left her sitting on the bench, looking at her feet.
She sat there for a long time mulling the events of the afternoon over in her head. It had not gone the way she had expected. She had hoped to finally prove her worth to Shinji, to show him that she was not the weakling he must think she is. To be rescued even in a computer simulation really killed her spirit. She starting thinking about their relationship, and how he had changed since they had been together. Through his kindness she had seen his true feeling for her. He had never thought of her as a weakling, but quite the opposite. He revered her almost like he looked up to her and to her when it came to problems. She suddenly realized that her thinking was screwed up. She had spent her entire life trying to break away from everything and everyone trying to be her own person. She wanted to be a self-made woman. But in doing so, she had alienated herself, and made things more difficult, and ultimately it would lead to her downfall.
She jumped to her feet, and raced after Shinji. As she turned the corner, she found Kaji leaning against the wall, minding his own business, but she didn't pay him any mind. She ran down the hall and past doors and intersections, finally arriving at he long bank of escalators, and found Shinji a few yards down. She caught up with him, and poked him in the ribs, getting his attention. "I'm… sorry for… the way I acted back there. I realized that I need you, and that I am better off counting on you than just counting on myself."
Shinji stood agape. He had never heard her say she was sorry for anything. He couldn't remember many times that she would need to since most transgressions were forgotten as fast as they were committed.
"I have never told you about me, and there are some things you need to know about me that you don't." She smiled at him, and took his arm, and didn't say anymore.
That night they sat in Asuka's room, and she told him of her past. She told him about her parents and her mothers suicide. The story lasted long into the night, and at times she cried despite herself. When she was done, she cried some more, and Shinji moved closer and held her. He brought her closer to him, and they sat there for a while, and held each other. They made love that night, and it was like no other time. They knew each other, this time, and they opened up more than ever before. It was the greatest experience either had ever had. Afterwards, they entered their dream world, and continued until the alarm woke them the next morning.