3. Truth Hurts
After about five minutes, Shinji fell silent, unable to shed more tears and too drained to sob. He was still curled up into a ball and refused to look at her. How could he face her? She was just as hideous on the inside as he was, but he couldn't bring himself to end her suffering.
It made no sense to him. It was all perfect; he could end both their suffering by ending her existence. Would that not be mercy, as well? Wouldn't that course of action minimize the pain?
He refused to believe it. He refused to believe that pity had stayed his hands. He would have completed the deed, too, if she had just been a good little German bitch and accepted her fate. He wasn't going to let the blame fall on him this time, it was clearly her fault. Had she not touched him, she'd be lying there deathly silent instead of just silent.
Or was it his fault, because he felt sorry for her? Maybe he could have ignored the voice, ignored the plea emanating from her sad look.
He was interrupted from his inner turmoil by the sounds of rustling behind him. He refused to turn around, though. It didn't matter to him what she was doing, it had no bearing on the fact that as long as he could not bring himself to slay her, he was damned.
Asuka managed to push herself up with her good arm, albeit it took almost all her strength to do it. She rather quickly found out that she would prefer to lie back down again, the mere task of sitting upright seemed to tax her reserves to the limit. But this is the Great Asuka Langley Sohryou we're talking about here; a little bit of physical discomfort wasn't going to get her down, much less keep her there.
"Turn around, baka! Be a man for once and face me!" She didn't so much scream the words as much as she said them with that usual flare of hers, being only loud enough and in a harsh enough tone that there was no mistaking the sincerity of the command; it implied, but not explicitly stated, terrible consequences would ensue if her orders were not followed to the letter.
"No." Shinji replied in his usual weak tone. Only, it wasn't as weak as is typically the case. Even if he didn't sound like much of a threat, it seemed Shinji's sincerity could give Asuka's a run for its money.
Needless to say, Asuka was taken aback a little. Just a little, though. This wasn't the first time the anta baka had gotten an attitude with her, all she had to do was step on his fledgling spine and he'd revert back to the lowly invertebrate that he truly was.
"What did you just say?"
"I said...no. I'm not turning around."
"TURN AROUND NOW, THIRD CHILD!"
"Leave me alone."
Asuka's fiery persona was back in full force, but Shinji could tell that the shear act of speaking, especially that last utterance, was draining precious energy from her. She would not be able to maintain her usual routine for long.
"If you think you're going to get away with attempted murder, you've got another thing coming!"
"I'm not granting you satisfaction anymore. If you want to face me, YOUR'RE going to have to come over here."
Shinji wasn't quite sure where those words came from. It was, admittedly, rather out of character for him to defy Asuka's will, let alone talk back to her. But if this was all he had left in life, if he was going to be punished anyway, he might as well give her a hard time about it, as well. She couldn't hurt him anymore than she already has.
"You take that back, NOW!" Asuka was almost ready to fall back down into the cushion of sand.
"I'm sorry." he answered with his usual submissive tone.
Asuka smirked at his response, knowing that she was in charge again. That didn't mean she wasn't going to give him a hard time, though. "STOP APOLOGIZING OR I'LL-"
"I mean that I'm sorry that you're not getting your way this time." he interrupted, a more stoic tone taking over his voice.
Asuka didn't see that one coming. "You really want me to kick your ass, don't you? Just wait 'til I get up, baka, you just wait and I'll...I'll...I...." She stumbled on her good arm and collapsed back onto the beach, feeling too tired to continue her train of thought.
"You'll do what, exactly?" he replied, still in an unsettlingly calm voice.
"I'll fuck you up real good." It was little more than an audible whisper. The fire in her voice was gone now, only the wrath and venom remained. Asuka actually didn't really know what she would do. She knew that she couldn't do anything right now, anyway, not as long as she was in this weakened state. For the moment, idle threats would have to do. She couldn't afford to be weak, especially not in front of HIM, of all people. But she would make good on those threats at a later date.
"Help yourself. There isn't anything left for you to do to me that you haven't already done." Shinji continued to sound disinterested, but a small amount of despair made its way out of his mouth.
"What the hell are you talking about?!"
"As if you don't know.......as if it makes a bit of difference, now."
"....I HATE YOU, I HATE YOU, I HATE YOU! GET AWAY FROM ME!!!"
"Is that all you can ever say to me?" A genuine sense of curiosity escaped from his lips, hitching a ride on those words. He turned his head ever so slightly so that he could hear her better, but he still wasn't actually able to see her. If he could see her right now, he'd find that she was lying back down on the ground, looking away from him.
"JUST SHUT UP! Just...go away.." The distress in her voice was apparent enough. Asuka sounded as if she didn't have strength enough to hold back the tears like she normally did.
"Just answer the question. Why are 'I hate you' and 'get away from me' all you can ever say to me?"
"Because you're a stupid asshole and I hate you! You don't deserve to breathe the same air as me! You're not even worthy enough to occupy the same existence as me!"
"Why is that? Why do you hate that much?"
It was Shinji's turn to get impatient. "Hey, I'm talking to y-"
"WHAT PARTS OF 'SHUT UP' AND 'GET AWAY FROM ME' DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND! AM I CURRENTLY TALKING IN GERMAN OR SOMETHING?"
"No, you're just talking out of your ass."
"Ooooh, I hate you! Just wait until the recovery crews get here, you just wait until I'm out of the hospital! As soon as they discharge me, I'm gonna redefine the phrase 'fuck your day up!' "
"Take a good look around, Asuka! Does it look like anybody's coming to our rescue?"
Asuka had been too busy being tired and arguing with Shinji to get a good sense of her surroundings. It was then she realized that they appeared to be in the middle of Tokyo-3, except that they were on a beach, next to a giant red lake. To her memory, there wasn't a beach in the middle of the city, and beaches certainly did not reek of blood.
Asuka was busy taking in the new sites and surroundings, her cerebrum trying to process it all. Mostly out of shock she managed to squeeze out "What the hell happened to this place?"
"Third Impact is what happened to this place." Shinji returned to his apathetic tone.
"Third Impact?!" Asuka looked back over at Shinji. "You mean, we failed?"
"'We' is not entirely correct. It's more like 'I'. 'I' failed to stop Third Impact."
Asuka felt that familiar anger that only Shinji could call forth rising up from her depths. She was in enough shock as it was, she didn't know how to deal with this new information.
"WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN BY THAT?! WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO? WHERE THE FUCK IS EVERYBODY? HOW THE FUCK COULD YOU SCREW UP SO BAD? WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU DOING? FUCK THAT, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? WHAT FUCKING CORNER WERE YOU HIDING IN DOING HENTAI THINGS TO YOURSELF WHILE EVERYTHING AROUND YOU WAS GOING TO FUCKING HELL?!" Her rant was going to have to end there for right now, she was running short of breath and, despite the renewed flow of energy thanks to the adrenaline that had gotten pumped into her system, she was again beginning to tire out. She was panting, but at least she was back on the ground again.
He was rather taken aback by Asuka's remark about doing hentai things to himself. He wondered if she somehow knew what he did in her hospital room already or if she was just trying to hit nerves.
"Everyone's AT Field was dismantled, converting their physical bodies into LCL, while their souls were absorbed into Instrumentality. Or, put another way, every last person is now floating in that red ring up there."
"What? People don't have AT Fields!" Asuka was making no effort at all to conceal the surprise and shock in her voice. She looked over at the lake, and then up at the sky, trying hard not to breathe in through her nose too deeply, almost ready to vomit in the presence of the stench of blood. She still didn't understand everything that was happening, and she certainly wasn't as informed about the situation as Shinji appeared to be.
This was too much for her to handle. She had been.....what had she been doing before? The last thing she could recall right off the top of her head was coming out of her coma and awakening inside her Eva, screaming something about not wanting to die. She didn't remember anything beyond that. She didn't even know how she woke up on this beach. This was just too much to take in all at once.
"Yes, they do. It's what keeps our souls inside our bodies. It can manifest itself as a physical barrier like when we use it to protect ourselves in our Evas, but it's mainly a shield for the soul. It separates us from one another, what makes us individuals, keeps us from injuring one another. But it also isolates us, prevents us from becoming close to one another."
At times like this, when Asuka didn't have the slightest clue, she did the only thing she knew to do; beat up on Shinji. It was much easier to attack the spineless hentai baka and blame him for everything than face reality.
"What the fuck are you going on about? And how do you know so much about all of this? And if you're so fucking smart, where the hell is everybody?"
"You're taking this pretty well, considering." Shinji himself didn't entirely know himself if he was trying to be serious or if he was just trying to lighten the mood.
"I don't have time for your shit, baka. Tell me what I need to know!" she barked.
Shinji started to sit up, but he had his back to Asuka, still refusing to turn around and face her. "I mean just that; everyone is gone! They're not really 'dead,' just turned into another form. They have left behind the existence you and I are familiar with. They're united as one again."
"What do you mean 'again?'" She was still trying to digest everything else he had just said about Third Impact, but if she was going to get out of this mess, get away from HIM, she needed to know as much as she could about the situation at hand.
"While you were in a coma, I had killed the seventeenth Angel." Shinji paused for a few seconds and bowed his head, holding back the tears, honoring the memory of his one and only true friend. Even if he was an Angel, Kaoru had still become his best friend, the one person who probably truly cared about Shinji. Kauro was as human to him as anyone else was. "After that, I was told that I had defeated the final angel. That was the end, Asuka; we won the war. We defeated all the Angels! Unfortunately, that proved to be very wrong."
"What do you mean? And how did they come to the conclusion that there were only seventeen Angels?"
"Are you sure you want to hear this?"
"Baka! Just tell me what I want to know!"
Shinji sighed deeply, preparing himself. "Very well, just don't interrupt me, okay? It's kind of a long story.
"I don't have all the answers, but what I do know is that an organization called SEELE was in charge of information like that. They had something called 'The Dead Sea Scrolls,' a collection of ancient texts that supposedly predicted the coming of the Angels. Well, in the scrolls, it was said that seventeen Angels would appear before Man, each Angel acting as a sort of 'trial,' to prove Man's worthiness to enter Instrumentality." Shinji paused, waiting to see if Asuka wanted to hear more.
Asuka wasn't entirely sure she wanted to hear the rest, but curiosity was getting the better of her, and Shinji still had yet to explain how he was responsible for Third Impact. "Go on."
"Well it turns out that there was actually an eighteenth Angel, the true final Angel. That Angel is Humanity."
"What the fuck?! You mean we're all Angels?"
"Essentially, yes. The eighteenth Angel was born of Lilith, the second Angel. Humanity is also known as the Lilum, the offspring of Lilith. Lilith brought into the world this Angel, and the Angel split itself into many parts. It's soul split into many pieces, as did it's AT Field. Lilith's blood, which we know to be LCL, formed the biological component for our existence. You were unconscious at the time, but Dr. Akagi took Misato and me on a tour of the restricted parts of NERV. It seems that NERV had managed to capture Lilith and kept her imprisoned in the lower levels, among other things..." Shinji clearly sounded disturbed at that last part. He wasn't sure how to break the news about Rei to Asuka, at least not yet.
"Lilith was born of Adam, the first Angel, as were the other fifteen Angels that we killed. So you see, there is no fundamental difference between Angels and human beings. The Angels we have defeated are also humans, but they are humans that have taken on non-human forms. They represent what humanity could have become, what humanity could have evolved into.
"SEELE came to the conclusion that Humanity had reached an evolutionary dead-end. We would not continue to evolve on a biological level, that this form we all take is as good as it gets, and so they took it upon themselves to start Third Impact. This, of course, involved killing off the other Angels so that they wouldn't reach Adam. You know about the truth behind Second Impact; the truth was that Adam caused the South Pole to melt. Adam was basically a giant S2 organ, a mass-to-energy converter, and the energy he put out melted the South Pole and flooded the earth.
"Well, before the flood, an expedition team, which was conveniently funded by SEELE, was sent to investigate a meteor impact at the South Pole. That 'meteor' was actually Adam. SEELE had them try to capture Adam and bring him back for study, but Adam was released, causing Second Impact. SEELE knew this would happen; they let it happen on purpose to set the stage for Third Impact. Even though Adam was released, he collapsed back into his embryonic form. SEELE then captured him, although the Commander eventually got a hold of him somehow and had him locked up in the lower levels of NERV. The rest involved us and the Evas. If the other Angels, who were born of Adam, returned to him, they would initiate a Third Impact in which Humanity wasn't a part of the equation. It was our job to kill off the other Angels, thereby securing SEELE's control over Third Impact."
"So that's why the Angels kept attacking Tokyo-3?" Asuka asked.
"Right."
"But what about when the seventh attacked the UN Pacific Fleet?"
"I think that was because Adam was also being transported, along with you and your Eva."
"Mein Gott in Himmel! You mean we were used the whole time?"
"Pretty much. Unfortunately, it gets worse than that. Are you sure you want to hear this? All I can tell you is the truth, nothing more." Shinji felt he should at least offer, but he really liked being able to fill Asuka in on the details. It was helping him come to grips with it all himself.
"How much worse can it get?"
"It seems our Evas were built from the Angels, as well. Your Eva and Rei's Eva were built based upon Adam's DNA and form, only slightly altered so as to not be a perfect clone. Another thing Dr. Akagi showed Misato and me was this room with pits that were completely filled with bones. Eva bones. It was a giant Eva graveyard, a collection of their failures at controlling Angel biology. They were the failed attempts at growing Evas. My Eva, however, is a direct clone of Lilith. That meant that if something were to happen to the real Lilith before SEELE saw fit, they could use my Eva as a sort of back-up.
"Which is pretty much what happened. I was captured by the Mass Production Evas that SEELE had released, some really weird shit happened right before my eyes, and then Third Impact happened." For some reason he wasn't yet prepared to tell her that he had been given the choice of whether to initiate Third Impact or not.
"Mass Production Evas?" Asuka's own memory gaps began to fill themselves in. Waking up to Shinji and the LCL lake, she didn't really remember how she had gotten there or what she was doing before. Now she remembered facing off against the nine towering Evas, covered in white armor and sporting retractable wings that had a pattern of this chilling pair of eyes painted on them. She recalled their jagged grins, the way the light reflected off their monstrous teeth and ruby lips. She remembered beating them all soundly, despite being out-numbered and having lost her power supply when her umbilical cable was severed. She beat them all in under 3 minutes and 30 seconds, which was how much remaining battery power she had, with a good 10 or 20 seconds to spare. She had won, once again claimed a victory, once again became the best. Then it all came tumbling back down as she remembered feeling a sharp pain in her left eye. She brought her good hand to her bandaged eye and felt the gauze, but explored no further, for fear of what she might find. Then she remembered losing all power and her Eva couldn't move anymore, but the nerve connections were still there. Then she remembered a searing pain moving up the length of her right arm, then she remembered feeling like she was being eaten alive, the pain feeling distant and not nearly as intense, but disturbingly familiar nonetheless.
Not wanting to remember that particular incident further, Asuka came to and continued with her questions. "What was so special about Lilith?"
"That's where I'm confused. I guess that if Lilith was used, Instrumentality would happen how SEELE wanted it to happen."
"Why did Akagi tell you all this?"
Shinji was trying to choose his words carefully before answering. "It's...cc-c-complicated. Ritsuko was h-hhaving...an affair with....the Commander. She kinda got...disgruntled. But she only filled me in on Lilith and Rei...shit!" He hadn't meant to let that last part slip out.
"What about 'Wonder Girl?'" Asuka said her pet name for Rei with as much venom as she could muster.
"That's another story for another day, I don't think you really want to get into that right now. Anyway, Misato is the one who told me about SEELE and the Dead Sea Scrolls and the eighteenth Angel. I think She was building on where Kaji had left off. Kaji was some sort of spy that was trying to get at the truth behind everything; the Evas, the Angels, Second Impact, the Instrumentality Project, everything. I don't know who he really worked for or why he wanted to find all this out, but when he....disappeared, Misato decided to finish what Kaji had started. Everything else I know....I just magically know it somehow, like somebody told me, except that they didn't."
"Misato....Kaji-kun......" Asuka whispered their names as if trying to dignify them with her words. Asuka remembered her purple-haired guardian and how she had never thanked her for letting her stay at her apartment. She thought of Kaji, who she was still in love with, even though she herself was beginning to accept that Kaji never would and never could love her in that way. She also remembered how he had disappeared. From what she could beat out of Shinji when Kaji left that fateful message on the answering machine, it looked like Kaji had left their lives for good, and with the knowledge that he was a spy of sorts, it was likely that he disappeared because he was dead. Now none of that mattered, they were floating above the earth right now.
"Wait a minute, if everything you just said about Third Impact is true, then why are you and me still here? Why did we get left behind? Why aren't we up there with them right now?" Asuka was beginning to sound upset again, and not the "I'm so angry I'll fucking cut you" kind of upset, the "I don't know what's going on anymore and I'm confused" kind of upset.
"You mean you don't know?" Shinji asked. He seemed a little surprised and disappointed.
"If I fucking knew, would I be asking you, Third Child?" Asuka was getting impatient again.
"Tell me, what's the last thing you remember. Do you remember waking up out of your coma? Did you have any really weird dreams or visions afterwards?"
"Why is it any of your concern, Third Child? You seem to know so much already, why don't you just answer my question?"
"Because I don't know what happened to you out there! I just remember running to your position as fast as I could and then..then...." Shinji couldn't find the words to describe the horror that he had seen.
"What is it?"
"..I...I...."
"FUCKING SAY IT, ALREADY! GODDAMN!"
"I got there...and all I could see....was parts of Unit02 strewn about. I think...those things tore you apart and....and then they were feasting on you." Shinji was obviously troubled, and sounded like he was going to cry again. "It was just so damn horrible, Asuka! I...I didn't get there in time...and then you were gone!" Shinji was getting progressively louder, and his voice was beginning to crack. Then he dropped back down to a quiet whimper. "I can't even begin to imagine what it must've been like for you..."
"Don't fucking fall apart on me now, baka! And don't even think about feeling sorry for me! Obviously I don't need your pity, seeing as I'm here right now. Come to think of it, I still wouldn't need your pity even if I was dead!" But Asuka could tell that her alleged demise had really gotten to the boy. She didn't exactly wish to relive being eaten alive, either. And then it hit her that Unit02, the giant read behemoth with four eyes, HER Eva, was gone. For almost seven years, ever since she first became a pilot, ever since her momma died, Asuka's only reason for living was piloting Eva. Now even that was gone, taken from her.
Wait, momma!
"Well....I do remember this one thing. I was waking up in my Eva, already in my plug suit. I kept mumbling something to myself, something about I didn't want to die. I saw this little girl, this younger version of me, asking me if I wanted to die. Suddenly, my momma...she appeared before me in Eva." Asuka's eyes were starting to water. "She said that she had always been with me, always protecting me, inside my Eva." Asuka's voice was beginning to crack as well. "All these years, after all this time, my momma never left me. She was taking care of ME. She protected ME!" For the first time in her life, Asuka didn't even bother to hold back the tears.
"...You mean your mother was in your Eva, too?" Shinji was stunned at this revelation. Never had he imagined they would have something like this in common.
"You mean yours was, too?" Asuka was taken aback by this new information. "So all those times your Eva went berserk, all those times it magically got up on its own, when it busted out of the twelfth Angel and went ape-shit on the fourteenth, that was your mother doing it?"
"I guess, I don't know if it was actually her or not, but I know that her soul was absorbed by the Eva."
Asuka contemplated his words for a moment. 'But why didn't Momma do any of that for me? Why didn't she go berserk when the fourteenth Angel attacked? Why did I lose time after time? Why didn't she protect me from the fifteenth Angel? Momma, didn't you love me then?' Then Asuka recalled something Rei had said to her once, something about having to "open up to your Eva" in order to properly synch with it. Hadn't she opened up to the Eva, though? And why did she need to open up? Wasn't it good enough for momma that she was there? And when should she give a damn about anything that stupid doll said?
"No wonder you beat me all those times, then. Your mother obviously loved you." Asuka sounded hurt, as if she had lost another race with the Third Child.
"Asuka, I was never looking to 'beat' you. I never gave a damn about being better than you or being worse than you."
"HA! As if I should believe anything you say, baka! God, what a disgusting feeling! Why did I even bother telling you all this? Why did I have to be weak and cry in front of YOU?" It seemed old habits died hard.
"Goddamnit, this isn't about who's better than who! And you said it yourself; your mother was protecting you, too. It's not like your mother loved you less than my mother loved me or something. Quit making a competition out of this!"
"FUCK YOU, BAKA! You don't know shit! You weren't there when those Evas tore me to shreds! You weren't around when they split my arm in two and stabbed my eye! You weren't there when my momma 'promised' she'd protect me, only to fail me! In fact, your stupid ass didn't even show up! YOU LEFT ME TO DIE, JUST LIKE MOMMA LET ME DIE!"
"They had replicas of the Lance of Longinus. That's the only weapon that AT Fields are ineffective against. You know that! There's no way your mother could have protected you from something like that. And anyway, I would've shown up sooner if my Eva wasn't covered in Bakelite!" Shinji was trying to remain calm, but his patience with the fiery red-headed German was wearing thin.....again.
The logic made perfect sense, but of course Asuka's pride would have none of it. "More excuses and lies, Third Child? You were able to get into your Eva, weren't you? Isn't it a little too convenient that you just didn't make it in time?"
Shinji was feeling the sting in each word she uttered. "There is no conspiracy against you, Asuka! I couldn't get into my Eva, and then when I heard you scream over the comm, my Eva moved on its own and freed itself! Then I was able to get to you, but it was too late!"
"Fuck you! Why didn't your precious Eva move sooner, hmmmm?"
"Knock this off! You've got it all wrong!"
"No, Third Child, YOU'VE got it all wrong. You can't possibly expect me to believe that the great and mighty Invincible Shinji was going to ride in and save the forever-helpless Asuka, can you? I'm not a fucking invalid, I fucked up all nine of those pieces of shit, WITHOUT your help, no less! I would've beaten them all, too, if momma hadn't let me down again!" Asuka was now a mixture of anger, angst, and bitter disappointment.
Shinji decided that he had enough. He was getting tired of Asuka opening up to him one minute and then being...like THIS the next. It was about time that he tested her resolve, see if she's really as good as she believes she is. Besides, she was too weak to even sit up. He could safely say his piece without fear of reprisal. At least until she got better, anyway, but it wouldn't matter to him by then.
Shinji shifted his body so that he was now facing Asuka, gazing down at her from only a few feet away.
Yes, this was going to be sweet.
"What's the matter, Asuka? Couldn't beat them on your own without help? Had to have your momma watching your back? You can let your momma protect you, but not wait for me to get there and help out? Your momma probably 'let you down' because she saw how obviously bad ass you were and that she didn't need to help momma's little girl anymore. You're a goddamn hypocrite!"
To say that Asuka was pissed would be a fatal understatement. For at least a good half a minute, she could only lie there on the ground with her mouth hanging open. She was taken aback not only by the clearly deliberate spite in Shinji's words, but also the fact that he did have a good point. She had relied upon someone, expected them to help her, and then she wanted to know why she had suffered a terrible defeat. That, and HE was lecturing her on hypocrisy.
"How...dare...you! You weren't there, you don't understand! How fucking dare you talk down to me and put down my mother like that!"
"It's okay for you to rant and bitch about how your mother failed to protect you from something that she couldn't protect you from anyway, but as soon as I agree with you I don't understand? WHY DON'T YOU EXPLAIN IT TO ME, THEN, OH GREAT ONE?"
"You....you....YOU!!!-"
"Oh wait, I already know. You can't fucking stand having anyone help you. Poow wittle Asuka Langley Sohryou has to do everything on her own. Poor old Asuka carries the weight of the world on her shoulders, not anyone else! The Great Asuka Langley Sohryou is too good and too important to ask for a helping hand now and again. She's above all that. She's completely self-reliant. Only dumkopfs and bakas ask for help. Having to let someone help you means you're WEAK. CAN'T HAVE THAT, CAN WE ASUKA? CAN'T BE SEEN AS WEAK, CAN WE?"
"STOP...RIGHT...THERE!!!" she was forcing the words between her clenched teeth, bits of her saliva flying out as well.
"Or else what? HUH? What's the matter, does the truth hurt? What's really your problem, Asuka? Is it the fact that you were denied your precious victory again, or is it that you feel let down? Why should it matter if I didn't get there in time to save you? You've never wanted my help before, nor did you ever seem to believe that you ever would need my help ever. Why do you care if I didn't make it in time to save you, hmmmm? Or is that just it; you DO care! You care about other people and what they think about you! You act like you don't, you lie to yourself and pretend like you're number one all the time, but you know what they say about being on top, Asuka; it's lonely at the top!"
At this point, Asuka was sitting upright again. Her remaining good eye was bloodshot, and she looked royally pissed. She was breathing in short but slow bursts. If you threw some military gear and ammo on her, she'd look like a soldier with her game-face on, ready for battle.
Then she did something Shinji wasn't expecting, something he didn't count on. She lunged at him, covering the good two feet between them in only a fraction of a second, and wasted no time clasping her hands around his throat. Her momentum carried her into Shinji, knocking them both to the ground with a loud thud, Asuka landing right on top of Shinji. He had been caught completely off guard, he obviously misjudged just how weakened she was. Now she had him pinned, feeling his life leaving him. She was kneeling on top of him, sitting midday between his chest and stomach, with his arms trapped underneath her shins. Once again, he was at the mercy of Asuka's wrath. Once again, he was just her play thing, a dress-up doll that she could do whatever she wanted to and then discard him like yesterday's trash.
In that moment, she didn't care about inflicting pain upon him, she wasn't interested in slapping his face, hammering him in the back of the skull, or kneeing him in the groin. This time, she just wanted him to die for speaking the words that should have NEVER been spoken. She wanted to kill him for being right. She ignored the screams of agony radiating out from her right arm as she tightened both her hands around his scrawny neck.
But soon that wasn't enough. She didn't want him to pass out, yet, let alone die. She didn't just want him to suffer defeat by her hands; he needed to retract his previous statement. She could never live it down if she just killed him without him groveling at her feet. She had met him a broken, spineless wuss, he would leave a broken, spineless wuss.
She then loosened her grip only slightly, just enough that he could get air in to speak.
"You should've killed me when you had the chance, you little shit! Don't EVER think for a moment that you were EVER better than me! Don't you EVER think that I EVER needed your help! And don't EVER think that I EVER needed YOU! I never needed anybody!" Every time she said the word "ever," she would jerk his neck violently.
"You are a worthless baka, baka! You will NEVER be better than me! And before I kill you, you'll ADMIT that! Now SAY IT! ADMIT that you're weaker than me! ADMIT WHAT A WRITHING WORM YOU ARE! ADMIT THAT I'LL ALWAYS BE BETTER THAN YOU! BEG ME FOR MERCY, YOU SPINELESS COCK!! SCREAM MY NAME!!!!!"
Shinji knew he was done for, there was no point in going on. But what he would NOT do was let her have the satisfaction she so craved. He could take whatever physical torture she could dish out; he'd dealt with it for almost a full year, anyway, and well, when you almost get killed by an Angel every other month, you tend to get used to physical pain.
"..No." he said with a strange resolve and an even stranger air of defiance.
"THEN I'LL FUCKING BEAT IT OUT OF YOU!" And with that, she balled her left fist up, drew it back, and proceeded to punch him in the face. She did this over, and over, until his nose was a bloody pulp, both his lips were bleeding and swollen, and he had a right black eye. Every time a punch landed, it was accompanied by a mist of sweat and blood. Shinji's good white shirt now had deep crimson stains on it. This only seemed to encourage Asuka; she seemed to draw primal pleasure from both the drawing of his blood and his grunts of pain.
The barrage of punches and strikes were growing further apart and less powerful with each succession. It was obvious that she was tiring out again.
"HAD ENOUGH?"
He scoffed at her and flashed a spiteful grin, coughing up blood. "I've killed Angels with my bare hands who've hit me harder than that!"
Asuka wasn't about to take that from the wimpy little boy. She took the thumbs of her hand and started pressing them hard into his eye sockets. Shinji could feel the pressure building up on his eye balls, hurting like no other and threatening to permanently damage his sight. Shinji cried out in terrible agony.
Asuka spoke as she did this, yelling over him. "YOU'RE NOT DYING UNTIL YOU ADMIT THAT I'M BETTER THAN YOU! MAKE IT EASY ON YOURSELF, THIRD CHILD! TAKE THE EASY WAY OUT, LIKE YOU ALWAYS DO! RUN AWAY FROM THE PAIN! GIVE UP AND LET ME KILL YOU! YOU WILL DIE WITHOUT ANY HONOR OR RESPECT OR DECENCY ANYWAY, JUST GO AHEAD AND GIVE UP!"
Shinji was lying there this whole time, letting Asuka inflict the damage however she saw fit. As she was talking, however, he noticed that the pressure on his eyes was slowly decreasing. This couldn't be because the nerves were going numb, could it? Then it hit him; Asuka was still in a weakened state. Her fit of rage had given her the strength she needed to overpower the boy, but it couldn't go on forever. No matter how much her bare strength of will carried her one way, her body was straining to go another way. Regardless of the drive she was feeling right now, it would do her no good if her body could not respond. Soon she wouldn't be able to continue on, and then his opening would present itself.
But did he really want to take that opening? Maybe he deserved this. Maybe he deserved to be punished like this, to be tortured day after day by her in this hell.
No, he couldn't accept this, not from her, anyway. Like him, she had given up on all hope. She had no respect for life, no respect for anyone else. She had pretty much wallowed in a pity of her own design and wished death upon everyone else, much as he did. She deserved to be in this hell just as much as he did. She had no right to be angry. She gave that up the moment she decided to dominate him and treat him as her doll. He could accept this torture from anybody else, because of what he had done during Third Impact. He could take the torturing of all three billion people whose lives were now ruined because of him. He knew what he had done, and even if he could never atone for what he has done, he would still make it up to them all. But more importantly, he would never again live in the shadow of his own mistakes and let them swallow him. He had promised his mother, promised Kauro, and promised himself that he would go on living, no matter how much it hurt.
But to do that, he needed to get this Red Devil off of him.
And besides, he would NOT take anymore of HER shit.
With his since of purpose renewed and with new-found strength, he managed to pull out his arms from underneath Asuka's legs and grabbed her by the wrists. He proceeded to squeeze as hard as he could, knowing that he wasn't strong enough to snap the bones, but seeing as she was a girl and was of a lighter frame, he could really hurt her if he really wanted to. He as rewarded with the pressure on his eyeballs being reduced to naught and a yelp of pain from Asuka. Then he remembered that her right arm was injured. Taking advantage of this and hoping that her pain threshold couldn't remain where it was forever, he squeezed down even harder on the bandaged limb, drawing out further screams of agony from the German bitch. She retaliated by taking her good arm and trying to strike his face again. Shinji would have none of it; he used his remaining arm to block as best as he could. But since she was trying to strike at his face and since his eyes did still hurt, he found it very hard to fight the protective reflexes of his eyelids clamping down. Growing concerned but still gaining the upper hand, he shoved out hard and blindly. He could feel his hand slamming into Asuka's left breast, knocking the wind out of her and pushing her off of him, sending her flying back.
Now that he was free again, Shinji stood up and opened his eyes. Everything was a little blurry and his eyes hurt, but he could still see, and that was enough for the moment. He quickly turned his attention to Asuka, trying to assess the threat in front of him. Sure enough, she was getting back up as well, but she was looking very fatigued. She was also clutching her chest, trying to regain her breath. The little hentai had touched her in a forbidden spot. He would surely die, now.
Asuka knew she couldn't go on much longer, and she knew that he knew as well, but she was unlikely to give up, even when faced with such odds.
'This is just going to piss her off further.' Shinji thought, smiling inwardly.
"DIIIEEE!" Asuka roared at him, making a run straight for him. But she wasn't nearly as quick as before, and Shinji reacted with ease. He just grabbed her wrists again, trying to restrain her. Asuka, being the animal that she was in that moment, maneuvered his right arm right in front of her face and proceeded to clamp down her jaws into his arm, pearly white teeth digging into the tender bare flesh, ready to satisfy their mistress's bloodlust. Shinji flinched greatly, but fought through the pain and proceeded to ball up his left fist, the projectile making contact with Asuka's right temple. The knuckles of his pointer and middle finger dug deep into the temple, sending a wave of pain over Asuka and dazing her. She bent over, clutching the wound with her right hand.
Shinji could still not bring himself to kill her, but he knew that if he did nothing, she would not hesitate to kill him. So he would do the next best thing; knock her out cold. Shinji ran up at her and proceeded to bring his right leg up fast and hard, the top of his shoe making sharp contact with the back of her hand. He could feel the hand smacking into her face, though, making the act even more glorious. She flipped her head up into the air, long locks of red hair flying outwards, before falling backwards back into the sand. She lay there, still dazed, and proceeded to roll onto her side, curling up into a defensive fetal position, burying her face in both her hands. Unsure of whether or not she was conscious, Shinji approached the beast with caution, ready to strike back if she attacked again. He immediately vanquished all plans of counter-attack when he thought he heard the sounds of sobbing.
The sobbing was coming from Asuka. He could barely believe it! This had to be some kind of trick, a way to get him to lower his guard. Raising his defenses again, he leaned in closer to investigate.
"Asuka?"
"GO AWAY! (sob) Just leave me to die! (sob) Just like you left me to the fifteenth! (sob) Just like momma let me get torn to pieces!" She continued to cry like this for a minute.
"Verdamt, I'm so pathetic. Nobody cares about me! Momma didn't care about me, poppa didn't even try to care about me, Kaji didn't care about me, Misato didn't care about me, Hikari didn't care about me, YOU never cared about me!" She seemed to put emphasis on the fact that HE didn't care about her. "And now I will finally die all alone, just like I always wanted, because that's what I told everyone that I wanted." The sorrow in her voice seemed to contradict her assertion that this was the death that she always sought.
Upon hearing these words and sensing her feelings of hurt and betrayal, mercy once again washed over Shinji's heart. It would never cleanse him of the guilt of his actions, but it at least drowned out the anger that was within him.
For what felt like the billionth time in his life, Shinji Ikari felt lower than dirt. He had been ready to give up on Asuka, HAD given up on her already, and yet here she was, a broken, scared little girl who just needed someone to hold her, to pay attention to her, to chase away the boogey men and closet monsters and make the world right with an offering of sprinkled ice cream. They were exactly the same; lonely children who did not have the family relationships they had always wanted. And even though her mother could have done nothing to save Asuka from a Lance of Longinus attack, he could understand that she felt betrayed. Her mother had promised to protect her, and she could not.
And maybe, just maybe, Asuka was like Shinji in that she could not let anyone in for fear of being hurt. Like him, she also had probably known only disappointment and abandonment. He didn't know that for sure, but if only he could get her to open up to him, relay to him her experiences, he could begin to understand her, maybe even to help her.
No wait, she didn't need his help, she didn't need anybody. Or if she did, she'd be too proud to ask. 'Fuck her,' he thought with a touch of bitterness, 'if she isn't going to ask for help, I'm not going to give it.' At the very least, hearing about Asuka's problems would help Shinji to heal some of his own wounds.
But even though Shinji felt such things at the moment, he was still certain that he at least hated the bossy German girl. Actually, he wasn't really sure what he felt for her anymore. He couldn't stand to look at her anymore, wanted nothing more to do with her anymore, yet he was unprepared to just leave her here to die on this beach. For some reason, he still cared about what happened to her.
Shinji recognized that it would be easy to run away from the pain again, run and leave it behind and let someone else clean up the mess. But this was the life that Shinji had chosen; he rejected the formless world of neutrality. He then realized the hypocrisy at having tried to strangle Asuka. He wanted to get rid of her because he was tired of the pain they generated, but he also could not live a life where nothing exists. Shinji, at the very least, was not going to run away. If Asuka wanted to commit suicide or move to the other ends of the earth, then it would be her choice. Shinji would not choose for her. But she would not be allowed to kill him again. Shinji had made too many promises to too many important people (important to him, anyway) to just end it all now.
And then Shinji had another thought. He still knew so little about Asuka. He wanted to know what he had done that was so terrible that she hated him almost immediately. He wanted to know why she was such a horrible person, as well. He wanted to know what made her tick; why does she act one way at one moment and then the other way the next? He knew that she would not crack easily, if ever. And if she never did, so be it. But he still felt he had to try. He had already been trying for the past year. He could not yet call it quits on the mystery of Asuka Langley Sohryou.
Once he had felt satisfied that he understood her, he would then leave her alone if she so desired. They could go their separate ways, never speak to one another ever again, and hope that someone else would return from the void that was Instrumentality and save them from one another.
With a plan hatching inside his bruised skull, Shinji hunched over and spoke to the German girl in a soft yet cold voice, a combination that might've made Gendo proud.
"If death and loneliness are what you desire, then you shall have them. However, they will not come to you just yet. I have unfinished business with you, 'Second Child.' Once I am convinced that it is settled, you may do as you wish. Until then, don't try to move. I will return as soon as I can."
He walked off, not in any particular direction, but if his plan was going to work, he would need to make the necessary preparations.
Like I said, this story is not complete. If you care enough to find out what happens next (OOH! SUSPENSE!), I'll write the next chapter.
After about five minutes, Shinji fell silent, unable to shed more tears and too drained to sob. He was still curled up into a ball and refused to look at her. How could he face her? She was just as hideous on the inside as he was, but he couldn't bring himself to end her suffering.
It made no sense to him. It was all perfect; he could end both their suffering by ending her existence. Would that not be mercy, as well? Wouldn't that course of action minimize the pain?
He refused to believe it. He refused to believe that pity had stayed his hands. He would have completed the deed, too, if she had just been a good little German bitch and accepted her fate. He wasn't going to let the blame fall on him this time, it was clearly her fault. Had she not touched him, she'd be lying there deathly silent instead of just silent.
Or was it his fault, because he felt sorry for her? Maybe he could have ignored the voice, ignored the plea emanating from her sad look.
He was interrupted from his inner turmoil by the sounds of rustling behind him. He refused to turn around, though. It didn't matter to him what she was doing, it had no bearing on the fact that as long as he could not bring himself to slay her, he was damned.
Asuka managed to push herself up with her good arm, albeit it took almost all her strength to do it. She rather quickly found out that she would prefer to lie back down again, the mere task of sitting upright seemed to tax her reserves to the limit. But this is the Great Asuka Langley Sohryou we're talking about here; a little bit of physical discomfort wasn't going to get her down, much less keep her there.
"Turn around, baka! Be a man for once and face me!" She didn't so much scream the words as much as she said them with that usual flare of hers, being only loud enough and in a harsh enough tone that there was no mistaking the sincerity of the command; it implied, but not explicitly stated, terrible consequences would ensue if her orders were not followed to the letter.
"No." Shinji replied in his usual weak tone. Only, it wasn't as weak as is typically the case. Even if he didn't sound like much of a threat, it seemed Shinji's sincerity could give Asuka's a run for its money.
Needless to say, Asuka was taken aback a little. Just a little, though. This wasn't the first time the anta baka had gotten an attitude with her, all she had to do was step on his fledgling spine and he'd revert back to the lowly invertebrate that he truly was.
"What did you just say?"
"I said...no. I'm not turning around."
"TURN AROUND NOW, THIRD CHILD!"
"Leave me alone."
Asuka's fiery persona was back in full force, but Shinji could tell that the shear act of speaking, especially that last utterance, was draining precious energy from her. She would not be able to maintain her usual routine for long.
"If you think you're going to get away with attempted murder, you've got another thing coming!"
"I'm not granting you satisfaction anymore. If you want to face me, YOUR'RE going to have to come over here."
Shinji wasn't quite sure where those words came from. It was, admittedly, rather out of character for him to defy Asuka's will, let alone talk back to her. But if this was all he had left in life, if he was going to be punished anyway, he might as well give her a hard time about it, as well. She couldn't hurt him anymore than she already has.
"You take that back, NOW!" Asuka was almost ready to fall back down into the cushion of sand.
"I'm sorry." he answered with his usual submissive tone.
Asuka smirked at his response, knowing that she was in charge again. That didn't mean she wasn't going to give him a hard time, though. "STOP APOLOGIZING OR I'LL-"
"I mean that I'm sorry that you're not getting your way this time." he interrupted, a more stoic tone taking over his voice.
Asuka didn't see that one coming. "You really want me to kick your ass, don't you? Just wait 'til I get up, baka, you just wait and I'll...I'll...I...." She stumbled on her good arm and collapsed back onto the beach, feeling too tired to continue her train of thought.
"You'll do what, exactly?" he replied, still in an unsettlingly calm voice.
"I'll fuck you up real good." It was little more than an audible whisper. The fire in her voice was gone now, only the wrath and venom remained. Asuka actually didn't really know what she would do. She knew that she couldn't do anything right now, anyway, not as long as she was in this weakened state. For the moment, idle threats would have to do. She couldn't afford to be weak, especially not in front of HIM, of all people. But she would make good on those threats at a later date.
"Help yourself. There isn't anything left for you to do to me that you haven't already done." Shinji continued to sound disinterested, but a small amount of despair made its way out of his mouth.
"What the hell are you talking about?!"
"As if you don't know.......as if it makes a bit of difference, now."
"....I HATE YOU, I HATE YOU, I HATE YOU! GET AWAY FROM ME!!!"
"Is that all you can ever say to me?" A genuine sense of curiosity escaped from his lips, hitching a ride on those words. He turned his head ever so slightly so that he could hear her better, but he still wasn't actually able to see her. If he could see her right now, he'd find that she was lying back down on the ground, looking away from him.
"JUST SHUT UP! Just...go away.." The distress in her voice was apparent enough. Asuka sounded as if she didn't have strength enough to hold back the tears like she normally did.
"Just answer the question. Why are 'I hate you' and 'get away from me' all you can ever say to me?"
"Because you're a stupid asshole and I hate you! You don't deserve to breathe the same air as me! You're not even worthy enough to occupy the same existence as me!"
"Why is that? Why do you hate that much?"
It was Shinji's turn to get impatient. "Hey, I'm talking to y-"
"WHAT PARTS OF 'SHUT UP' AND 'GET AWAY FROM ME' DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND! AM I CURRENTLY TALKING IN GERMAN OR SOMETHING?"
"No, you're just talking out of your ass."
"Ooooh, I hate you! Just wait until the recovery crews get here, you just wait until I'm out of the hospital! As soon as they discharge me, I'm gonna redefine the phrase 'fuck your day up!' "
"Take a good look around, Asuka! Does it look like anybody's coming to our rescue?"
Asuka had been too busy being tired and arguing with Shinji to get a good sense of her surroundings. It was then she realized that they appeared to be in the middle of Tokyo-3, except that they were on a beach, next to a giant red lake. To her memory, there wasn't a beach in the middle of the city, and beaches certainly did not reek of blood.
Asuka was busy taking in the new sites and surroundings, her cerebrum trying to process it all. Mostly out of shock she managed to squeeze out "What the hell happened to this place?"
"Third Impact is what happened to this place." Shinji returned to his apathetic tone.
"Third Impact?!" Asuka looked back over at Shinji. "You mean, we failed?"
"'We' is not entirely correct. It's more like 'I'. 'I' failed to stop Third Impact."
Asuka felt that familiar anger that only Shinji could call forth rising up from her depths. She was in enough shock as it was, she didn't know how to deal with this new information.
"WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN BY THAT?! WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO? WHERE THE FUCK IS EVERYBODY? HOW THE FUCK COULD YOU SCREW UP SO BAD? WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU DOING? FUCK THAT, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? WHAT FUCKING CORNER WERE YOU HIDING IN DOING HENTAI THINGS TO YOURSELF WHILE EVERYTHING AROUND YOU WAS GOING TO FUCKING HELL?!" Her rant was going to have to end there for right now, she was running short of breath and, despite the renewed flow of energy thanks to the adrenaline that had gotten pumped into her system, she was again beginning to tire out. She was panting, but at least she was back on the ground again.
He was rather taken aback by Asuka's remark about doing hentai things to himself. He wondered if she somehow knew what he did in her hospital room already or if she was just trying to hit nerves.
"Everyone's AT Field was dismantled, converting their physical bodies into LCL, while their souls were absorbed into Instrumentality. Or, put another way, every last person is now floating in that red ring up there."
"What? People don't have AT Fields!" Asuka was making no effort at all to conceal the surprise and shock in her voice. She looked over at the lake, and then up at the sky, trying hard not to breathe in through her nose too deeply, almost ready to vomit in the presence of the stench of blood. She still didn't understand everything that was happening, and she certainly wasn't as informed about the situation as Shinji appeared to be.
This was too much for her to handle. She had been.....what had she been doing before? The last thing she could recall right off the top of her head was coming out of her coma and awakening inside her Eva, screaming something about not wanting to die. She didn't remember anything beyond that. She didn't even know how she woke up on this beach. This was just too much to take in all at once.
"Yes, they do. It's what keeps our souls inside our bodies. It can manifest itself as a physical barrier like when we use it to protect ourselves in our Evas, but it's mainly a shield for the soul. It separates us from one another, what makes us individuals, keeps us from injuring one another. But it also isolates us, prevents us from becoming close to one another."
At times like this, when Asuka didn't have the slightest clue, she did the only thing she knew to do; beat up on Shinji. It was much easier to attack the spineless hentai baka and blame him for everything than face reality.
"What the fuck are you going on about? And how do you know so much about all of this? And if you're so fucking smart, where the hell is everybody?"
"You're taking this pretty well, considering." Shinji himself didn't entirely know himself if he was trying to be serious or if he was just trying to lighten the mood.
"I don't have time for your shit, baka. Tell me what I need to know!" she barked.
Shinji started to sit up, but he had his back to Asuka, still refusing to turn around and face her. "I mean just that; everyone is gone! They're not really 'dead,' just turned into another form. They have left behind the existence you and I are familiar with. They're united as one again."
"What do you mean 'again?'" She was still trying to digest everything else he had just said about Third Impact, but if she was going to get out of this mess, get away from HIM, she needed to know as much as she could about the situation at hand.
"While you were in a coma, I had killed the seventeenth Angel." Shinji paused for a few seconds and bowed his head, holding back the tears, honoring the memory of his one and only true friend. Even if he was an Angel, Kaoru had still become his best friend, the one person who probably truly cared about Shinji. Kauro was as human to him as anyone else was. "After that, I was told that I had defeated the final angel. That was the end, Asuka; we won the war. We defeated all the Angels! Unfortunately, that proved to be very wrong."
"What do you mean? And how did they come to the conclusion that there were only seventeen Angels?"
"Are you sure you want to hear this?"
"Baka! Just tell me what I want to know!"
Shinji sighed deeply, preparing himself. "Very well, just don't interrupt me, okay? It's kind of a long story.
"I don't have all the answers, but what I do know is that an organization called SEELE was in charge of information like that. They had something called 'The Dead Sea Scrolls,' a collection of ancient texts that supposedly predicted the coming of the Angels. Well, in the scrolls, it was said that seventeen Angels would appear before Man, each Angel acting as a sort of 'trial,' to prove Man's worthiness to enter Instrumentality." Shinji paused, waiting to see if Asuka wanted to hear more.
Asuka wasn't entirely sure she wanted to hear the rest, but curiosity was getting the better of her, and Shinji still had yet to explain how he was responsible for Third Impact. "Go on."
"Well it turns out that there was actually an eighteenth Angel, the true final Angel. That Angel is Humanity."
"What the fuck?! You mean we're all Angels?"
"Essentially, yes. The eighteenth Angel was born of Lilith, the second Angel. Humanity is also known as the Lilum, the offspring of Lilith. Lilith brought into the world this Angel, and the Angel split itself into many parts. It's soul split into many pieces, as did it's AT Field. Lilith's blood, which we know to be LCL, formed the biological component for our existence. You were unconscious at the time, but Dr. Akagi took Misato and me on a tour of the restricted parts of NERV. It seems that NERV had managed to capture Lilith and kept her imprisoned in the lower levels, among other things..." Shinji clearly sounded disturbed at that last part. He wasn't sure how to break the news about Rei to Asuka, at least not yet.
"Lilith was born of Adam, the first Angel, as were the other fifteen Angels that we killed. So you see, there is no fundamental difference between Angels and human beings. The Angels we have defeated are also humans, but they are humans that have taken on non-human forms. They represent what humanity could have become, what humanity could have evolved into.
"SEELE came to the conclusion that Humanity had reached an evolutionary dead-end. We would not continue to evolve on a biological level, that this form we all take is as good as it gets, and so they took it upon themselves to start Third Impact. This, of course, involved killing off the other Angels so that they wouldn't reach Adam. You know about the truth behind Second Impact; the truth was that Adam caused the South Pole to melt. Adam was basically a giant S2 organ, a mass-to-energy converter, and the energy he put out melted the South Pole and flooded the earth.
"Well, before the flood, an expedition team, which was conveniently funded by SEELE, was sent to investigate a meteor impact at the South Pole. That 'meteor' was actually Adam. SEELE had them try to capture Adam and bring him back for study, but Adam was released, causing Second Impact. SEELE knew this would happen; they let it happen on purpose to set the stage for Third Impact. Even though Adam was released, he collapsed back into his embryonic form. SEELE then captured him, although the Commander eventually got a hold of him somehow and had him locked up in the lower levels of NERV. The rest involved us and the Evas. If the other Angels, who were born of Adam, returned to him, they would initiate a Third Impact in which Humanity wasn't a part of the equation. It was our job to kill off the other Angels, thereby securing SEELE's control over Third Impact."
"So that's why the Angels kept attacking Tokyo-3?" Asuka asked.
"Right."
"But what about when the seventh attacked the UN Pacific Fleet?"
"I think that was because Adam was also being transported, along with you and your Eva."
"Mein Gott in Himmel! You mean we were used the whole time?"
"Pretty much. Unfortunately, it gets worse than that. Are you sure you want to hear this? All I can tell you is the truth, nothing more." Shinji felt he should at least offer, but he really liked being able to fill Asuka in on the details. It was helping him come to grips with it all himself.
"How much worse can it get?"
"It seems our Evas were built from the Angels, as well. Your Eva and Rei's Eva were built based upon Adam's DNA and form, only slightly altered so as to not be a perfect clone. Another thing Dr. Akagi showed Misato and me was this room with pits that were completely filled with bones. Eva bones. It was a giant Eva graveyard, a collection of their failures at controlling Angel biology. They were the failed attempts at growing Evas. My Eva, however, is a direct clone of Lilith. That meant that if something were to happen to the real Lilith before SEELE saw fit, they could use my Eva as a sort of back-up.
"Which is pretty much what happened. I was captured by the Mass Production Evas that SEELE had released, some really weird shit happened right before my eyes, and then Third Impact happened." For some reason he wasn't yet prepared to tell her that he had been given the choice of whether to initiate Third Impact or not.
"Mass Production Evas?" Asuka's own memory gaps began to fill themselves in. Waking up to Shinji and the LCL lake, she didn't really remember how she had gotten there or what she was doing before. Now she remembered facing off against the nine towering Evas, covered in white armor and sporting retractable wings that had a pattern of this chilling pair of eyes painted on them. She recalled their jagged grins, the way the light reflected off their monstrous teeth and ruby lips. She remembered beating them all soundly, despite being out-numbered and having lost her power supply when her umbilical cable was severed. She beat them all in under 3 minutes and 30 seconds, which was how much remaining battery power she had, with a good 10 or 20 seconds to spare. She had won, once again claimed a victory, once again became the best. Then it all came tumbling back down as she remembered feeling a sharp pain in her left eye. She brought her good hand to her bandaged eye and felt the gauze, but explored no further, for fear of what she might find. Then she remembered losing all power and her Eva couldn't move anymore, but the nerve connections were still there. Then she remembered a searing pain moving up the length of her right arm, then she remembered feeling like she was being eaten alive, the pain feeling distant and not nearly as intense, but disturbingly familiar nonetheless.
Not wanting to remember that particular incident further, Asuka came to and continued with her questions. "What was so special about Lilith?"
"That's where I'm confused. I guess that if Lilith was used, Instrumentality would happen how SEELE wanted it to happen."
"Why did Akagi tell you all this?"
Shinji was trying to choose his words carefully before answering. "It's...cc-c-complicated. Ritsuko was h-hhaving...an affair with....the Commander. She kinda got...disgruntled. But she only filled me in on Lilith and Rei...shit!" He hadn't meant to let that last part slip out.
"What about 'Wonder Girl?'" Asuka said her pet name for Rei with as much venom as she could muster.
"That's another story for another day, I don't think you really want to get into that right now. Anyway, Misato is the one who told me about SEELE and the Dead Sea Scrolls and the eighteenth Angel. I think She was building on where Kaji had left off. Kaji was some sort of spy that was trying to get at the truth behind everything; the Evas, the Angels, Second Impact, the Instrumentality Project, everything. I don't know who he really worked for or why he wanted to find all this out, but when he....disappeared, Misato decided to finish what Kaji had started. Everything else I know....I just magically know it somehow, like somebody told me, except that they didn't."
"Misato....Kaji-kun......" Asuka whispered their names as if trying to dignify them with her words. Asuka remembered her purple-haired guardian and how she had never thanked her for letting her stay at her apartment. She thought of Kaji, who she was still in love with, even though she herself was beginning to accept that Kaji never would and never could love her in that way. She also remembered how he had disappeared. From what she could beat out of Shinji when Kaji left that fateful message on the answering machine, it looked like Kaji had left their lives for good, and with the knowledge that he was a spy of sorts, it was likely that he disappeared because he was dead. Now none of that mattered, they were floating above the earth right now.
"Wait a minute, if everything you just said about Third Impact is true, then why are you and me still here? Why did we get left behind? Why aren't we up there with them right now?" Asuka was beginning to sound upset again, and not the "I'm so angry I'll fucking cut you" kind of upset, the "I don't know what's going on anymore and I'm confused" kind of upset.
"You mean you don't know?" Shinji asked. He seemed a little surprised and disappointed.
"If I fucking knew, would I be asking you, Third Child?" Asuka was getting impatient again.
"Tell me, what's the last thing you remember. Do you remember waking up out of your coma? Did you have any really weird dreams or visions afterwards?"
"Why is it any of your concern, Third Child? You seem to know so much already, why don't you just answer my question?"
"Because I don't know what happened to you out there! I just remember running to your position as fast as I could and then..then...." Shinji couldn't find the words to describe the horror that he had seen.
"What is it?"
"..I...I...."
"FUCKING SAY IT, ALREADY! GODDAMN!"
"I got there...and all I could see....was parts of Unit02 strewn about. I think...those things tore you apart and....and then they were feasting on you." Shinji was obviously troubled, and sounded like he was going to cry again. "It was just so damn horrible, Asuka! I...I didn't get there in time...and then you were gone!" Shinji was getting progressively louder, and his voice was beginning to crack. Then he dropped back down to a quiet whimper. "I can't even begin to imagine what it must've been like for you..."
"Don't fucking fall apart on me now, baka! And don't even think about feeling sorry for me! Obviously I don't need your pity, seeing as I'm here right now. Come to think of it, I still wouldn't need your pity even if I was dead!" But Asuka could tell that her alleged demise had really gotten to the boy. She didn't exactly wish to relive being eaten alive, either. And then it hit her that Unit02, the giant read behemoth with four eyes, HER Eva, was gone. For almost seven years, ever since she first became a pilot, ever since her momma died, Asuka's only reason for living was piloting Eva. Now even that was gone, taken from her.
Wait, momma!
"Well....I do remember this one thing. I was waking up in my Eva, already in my plug suit. I kept mumbling something to myself, something about I didn't want to die. I saw this little girl, this younger version of me, asking me if I wanted to die. Suddenly, my momma...she appeared before me in Eva." Asuka's eyes were starting to water. "She said that she had always been with me, always protecting me, inside my Eva." Asuka's voice was beginning to crack as well. "All these years, after all this time, my momma never left me. She was taking care of ME. She protected ME!" For the first time in her life, Asuka didn't even bother to hold back the tears.
"...You mean your mother was in your Eva, too?" Shinji was stunned at this revelation. Never had he imagined they would have something like this in common.
"You mean yours was, too?" Asuka was taken aback by this new information. "So all those times your Eva went berserk, all those times it magically got up on its own, when it busted out of the twelfth Angel and went ape-shit on the fourteenth, that was your mother doing it?"
"I guess, I don't know if it was actually her or not, but I know that her soul was absorbed by the Eva."
Asuka contemplated his words for a moment. 'But why didn't Momma do any of that for me? Why didn't she go berserk when the fourteenth Angel attacked? Why did I lose time after time? Why didn't she protect me from the fifteenth Angel? Momma, didn't you love me then?' Then Asuka recalled something Rei had said to her once, something about having to "open up to your Eva" in order to properly synch with it. Hadn't she opened up to the Eva, though? And why did she need to open up? Wasn't it good enough for momma that she was there? And when should she give a damn about anything that stupid doll said?
"No wonder you beat me all those times, then. Your mother obviously loved you." Asuka sounded hurt, as if she had lost another race with the Third Child.
"Asuka, I was never looking to 'beat' you. I never gave a damn about being better than you or being worse than you."
"HA! As if I should believe anything you say, baka! God, what a disgusting feeling! Why did I even bother telling you all this? Why did I have to be weak and cry in front of YOU?" It seemed old habits died hard.
"Goddamnit, this isn't about who's better than who! And you said it yourself; your mother was protecting you, too. It's not like your mother loved you less than my mother loved me or something. Quit making a competition out of this!"
"FUCK YOU, BAKA! You don't know shit! You weren't there when those Evas tore me to shreds! You weren't around when they split my arm in two and stabbed my eye! You weren't there when my momma 'promised' she'd protect me, only to fail me! In fact, your stupid ass didn't even show up! YOU LEFT ME TO DIE, JUST LIKE MOMMA LET ME DIE!"
"They had replicas of the Lance of Longinus. That's the only weapon that AT Fields are ineffective against. You know that! There's no way your mother could have protected you from something like that. And anyway, I would've shown up sooner if my Eva wasn't covered in Bakelite!" Shinji was trying to remain calm, but his patience with the fiery red-headed German was wearing thin.....again.
The logic made perfect sense, but of course Asuka's pride would have none of it. "More excuses and lies, Third Child? You were able to get into your Eva, weren't you? Isn't it a little too convenient that you just didn't make it in time?"
Shinji was feeling the sting in each word she uttered. "There is no conspiracy against you, Asuka! I couldn't get into my Eva, and then when I heard you scream over the comm, my Eva moved on its own and freed itself! Then I was able to get to you, but it was too late!"
"Fuck you! Why didn't your precious Eva move sooner, hmmmm?"
"Knock this off! You've got it all wrong!"
"No, Third Child, YOU'VE got it all wrong. You can't possibly expect me to believe that the great and mighty Invincible Shinji was going to ride in and save the forever-helpless Asuka, can you? I'm not a fucking invalid, I fucked up all nine of those pieces of shit, WITHOUT your help, no less! I would've beaten them all, too, if momma hadn't let me down again!" Asuka was now a mixture of anger, angst, and bitter disappointment.
Shinji decided that he had enough. He was getting tired of Asuka opening up to him one minute and then being...like THIS the next. It was about time that he tested her resolve, see if she's really as good as she believes she is. Besides, she was too weak to even sit up. He could safely say his piece without fear of reprisal. At least until she got better, anyway, but it wouldn't matter to him by then.
Shinji shifted his body so that he was now facing Asuka, gazing down at her from only a few feet away.
Yes, this was going to be sweet.
"What's the matter, Asuka? Couldn't beat them on your own without help? Had to have your momma watching your back? You can let your momma protect you, but not wait for me to get there and help out? Your momma probably 'let you down' because she saw how obviously bad ass you were and that she didn't need to help momma's little girl anymore. You're a goddamn hypocrite!"
To say that Asuka was pissed would be a fatal understatement. For at least a good half a minute, she could only lie there on the ground with her mouth hanging open. She was taken aback not only by the clearly deliberate spite in Shinji's words, but also the fact that he did have a good point. She had relied upon someone, expected them to help her, and then she wanted to know why she had suffered a terrible defeat. That, and HE was lecturing her on hypocrisy.
"How...dare...you! You weren't there, you don't understand! How fucking dare you talk down to me and put down my mother like that!"
"It's okay for you to rant and bitch about how your mother failed to protect you from something that she couldn't protect you from anyway, but as soon as I agree with you I don't understand? WHY DON'T YOU EXPLAIN IT TO ME, THEN, OH GREAT ONE?"
"You....you....YOU!!!-"
"Oh wait, I already know. You can't fucking stand having anyone help you. Poow wittle Asuka Langley Sohryou has to do everything on her own. Poor old Asuka carries the weight of the world on her shoulders, not anyone else! The Great Asuka Langley Sohryou is too good and too important to ask for a helping hand now and again. She's above all that. She's completely self-reliant. Only dumkopfs and bakas ask for help. Having to let someone help you means you're WEAK. CAN'T HAVE THAT, CAN WE ASUKA? CAN'T BE SEEN AS WEAK, CAN WE?"
"STOP...RIGHT...THERE!!!" she was forcing the words between her clenched teeth, bits of her saliva flying out as well.
"Or else what? HUH? What's the matter, does the truth hurt? What's really your problem, Asuka? Is it the fact that you were denied your precious victory again, or is it that you feel let down? Why should it matter if I didn't get there in time to save you? You've never wanted my help before, nor did you ever seem to believe that you ever would need my help ever. Why do you care if I didn't make it in time to save you, hmmmm? Or is that just it; you DO care! You care about other people and what they think about you! You act like you don't, you lie to yourself and pretend like you're number one all the time, but you know what they say about being on top, Asuka; it's lonely at the top!"
At this point, Asuka was sitting upright again. Her remaining good eye was bloodshot, and she looked royally pissed. She was breathing in short but slow bursts. If you threw some military gear and ammo on her, she'd look like a soldier with her game-face on, ready for battle.
Then she did something Shinji wasn't expecting, something he didn't count on. She lunged at him, covering the good two feet between them in only a fraction of a second, and wasted no time clasping her hands around his throat. Her momentum carried her into Shinji, knocking them both to the ground with a loud thud, Asuka landing right on top of Shinji. He had been caught completely off guard, he obviously misjudged just how weakened she was. Now she had him pinned, feeling his life leaving him. She was kneeling on top of him, sitting midday between his chest and stomach, with his arms trapped underneath her shins. Once again, he was at the mercy of Asuka's wrath. Once again, he was just her play thing, a dress-up doll that she could do whatever she wanted to and then discard him like yesterday's trash.
In that moment, she didn't care about inflicting pain upon him, she wasn't interested in slapping his face, hammering him in the back of the skull, or kneeing him in the groin. This time, she just wanted him to die for speaking the words that should have NEVER been spoken. She wanted to kill him for being right. She ignored the screams of agony radiating out from her right arm as she tightened both her hands around his scrawny neck.
But soon that wasn't enough. She didn't want him to pass out, yet, let alone die. She didn't just want him to suffer defeat by her hands; he needed to retract his previous statement. She could never live it down if she just killed him without him groveling at her feet. She had met him a broken, spineless wuss, he would leave a broken, spineless wuss.
She then loosened her grip only slightly, just enough that he could get air in to speak.
"You should've killed me when you had the chance, you little shit! Don't EVER think for a moment that you were EVER better than me! Don't you EVER think that I EVER needed your help! And don't EVER think that I EVER needed YOU! I never needed anybody!" Every time she said the word "ever," she would jerk his neck violently.
"You are a worthless baka, baka! You will NEVER be better than me! And before I kill you, you'll ADMIT that! Now SAY IT! ADMIT that you're weaker than me! ADMIT WHAT A WRITHING WORM YOU ARE! ADMIT THAT I'LL ALWAYS BE BETTER THAN YOU! BEG ME FOR MERCY, YOU SPINELESS COCK!! SCREAM MY NAME!!!!!"
Shinji knew he was done for, there was no point in going on. But what he would NOT do was let her have the satisfaction she so craved. He could take whatever physical torture she could dish out; he'd dealt with it for almost a full year, anyway, and well, when you almost get killed by an Angel every other month, you tend to get used to physical pain.
"..No." he said with a strange resolve and an even stranger air of defiance.
"THEN I'LL FUCKING BEAT IT OUT OF YOU!" And with that, she balled her left fist up, drew it back, and proceeded to punch him in the face. She did this over, and over, until his nose was a bloody pulp, both his lips were bleeding and swollen, and he had a right black eye. Every time a punch landed, it was accompanied by a mist of sweat and blood. Shinji's good white shirt now had deep crimson stains on it. This only seemed to encourage Asuka; she seemed to draw primal pleasure from both the drawing of his blood and his grunts of pain.
The barrage of punches and strikes were growing further apart and less powerful with each succession. It was obvious that she was tiring out again.
"HAD ENOUGH?"
He scoffed at her and flashed a spiteful grin, coughing up blood. "I've killed Angels with my bare hands who've hit me harder than that!"
Asuka wasn't about to take that from the wimpy little boy. She took the thumbs of her hand and started pressing them hard into his eye sockets. Shinji could feel the pressure building up on his eye balls, hurting like no other and threatening to permanently damage his sight. Shinji cried out in terrible agony.
Asuka spoke as she did this, yelling over him. "YOU'RE NOT DYING UNTIL YOU ADMIT THAT I'M BETTER THAN YOU! MAKE IT EASY ON YOURSELF, THIRD CHILD! TAKE THE EASY WAY OUT, LIKE YOU ALWAYS DO! RUN AWAY FROM THE PAIN! GIVE UP AND LET ME KILL YOU! YOU WILL DIE WITHOUT ANY HONOR OR RESPECT OR DECENCY ANYWAY, JUST GO AHEAD AND GIVE UP!"
Shinji was lying there this whole time, letting Asuka inflict the damage however she saw fit. As she was talking, however, he noticed that the pressure on his eyes was slowly decreasing. This couldn't be because the nerves were going numb, could it? Then it hit him; Asuka was still in a weakened state. Her fit of rage had given her the strength she needed to overpower the boy, but it couldn't go on forever. No matter how much her bare strength of will carried her one way, her body was straining to go another way. Regardless of the drive she was feeling right now, it would do her no good if her body could not respond. Soon she wouldn't be able to continue on, and then his opening would present itself.
But did he really want to take that opening? Maybe he deserved this. Maybe he deserved to be punished like this, to be tortured day after day by her in this hell.
No, he couldn't accept this, not from her, anyway. Like him, she had given up on all hope. She had no respect for life, no respect for anyone else. She had pretty much wallowed in a pity of her own design and wished death upon everyone else, much as he did. She deserved to be in this hell just as much as he did. She had no right to be angry. She gave that up the moment she decided to dominate him and treat him as her doll. He could accept this torture from anybody else, because of what he had done during Third Impact. He could take the torturing of all three billion people whose lives were now ruined because of him. He knew what he had done, and even if he could never atone for what he has done, he would still make it up to them all. But more importantly, he would never again live in the shadow of his own mistakes and let them swallow him. He had promised his mother, promised Kauro, and promised himself that he would go on living, no matter how much it hurt.
But to do that, he needed to get this Red Devil off of him.
And besides, he would NOT take anymore of HER shit.
With his since of purpose renewed and with new-found strength, he managed to pull out his arms from underneath Asuka's legs and grabbed her by the wrists. He proceeded to squeeze as hard as he could, knowing that he wasn't strong enough to snap the bones, but seeing as she was a girl and was of a lighter frame, he could really hurt her if he really wanted to. He as rewarded with the pressure on his eyeballs being reduced to naught and a yelp of pain from Asuka. Then he remembered that her right arm was injured. Taking advantage of this and hoping that her pain threshold couldn't remain where it was forever, he squeezed down even harder on the bandaged limb, drawing out further screams of agony from the German bitch. She retaliated by taking her good arm and trying to strike his face again. Shinji would have none of it; he used his remaining arm to block as best as he could. But since she was trying to strike at his face and since his eyes did still hurt, he found it very hard to fight the protective reflexes of his eyelids clamping down. Growing concerned but still gaining the upper hand, he shoved out hard and blindly. He could feel his hand slamming into Asuka's left breast, knocking the wind out of her and pushing her off of him, sending her flying back.
Now that he was free again, Shinji stood up and opened his eyes. Everything was a little blurry and his eyes hurt, but he could still see, and that was enough for the moment. He quickly turned his attention to Asuka, trying to assess the threat in front of him. Sure enough, she was getting back up as well, but she was looking very fatigued. She was also clutching her chest, trying to regain her breath. The little hentai had touched her in a forbidden spot. He would surely die, now.
Asuka knew she couldn't go on much longer, and she knew that he knew as well, but she was unlikely to give up, even when faced with such odds.
'This is just going to piss her off further.' Shinji thought, smiling inwardly.
"DIIIEEE!" Asuka roared at him, making a run straight for him. But she wasn't nearly as quick as before, and Shinji reacted with ease. He just grabbed her wrists again, trying to restrain her. Asuka, being the animal that she was in that moment, maneuvered his right arm right in front of her face and proceeded to clamp down her jaws into his arm, pearly white teeth digging into the tender bare flesh, ready to satisfy their mistress's bloodlust. Shinji flinched greatly, but fought through the pain and proceeded to ball up his left fist, the projectile making contact with Asuka's right temple. The knuckles of his pointer and middle finger dug deep into the temple, sending a wave of pain over Asuka and dazing her. She bent over, clutching the wound with her right hand.
Shinji could still not bring himself to kill her, but he knew that if he did nothing, she would not hesitate to kill him. So he would do the next best thing; knock her out cold. Shinji ran up at her and proceeded to bring his right leg up fast and hard, the top of his shoe making sharp contact with the back of her hand. He could feel the hand smacking into her face, though, making the act even more glorious. She flipped her head up into the air, long locks of red hair flying outwards, before falling backwards back into the sand. She lay there, still dazed, and proceeded to roll onto her side, curling up into a defensive fetal position, burying her face in both her hands. Unsure of whether or not she was conscious, Shinji approached the beast with caution, ready to strike back if she attacked again. He immediately vanquished all plans of counter-attack when he thought he heard the sounds of sobbing.
The sobbing was coming from Asuka. He could barely believe it! This had to be some kind of trick, a way to get him to lower his guard. Raising his defenses again, he leaned in closer to investigate.
"Asuka?"
"GO AWAY! (sob) Just leave me to die! (sob) Just like you left me to the fifteenth! (sob) Just like momma let me get torn to pieces!" She continued to cry like this for a minute.
"Verdamt, I'm so pathetic. Nobody cares about me! Momma didn't care about me, poppa didn't even try to care about me, Kaji didn't care about me, Misato didn't care about me, Hikari didn't care about me, YOU never cared about me!" She seemed to put emphasis on the fact that HE didn't care about her. "And now I will finally die all alone, just like I always wanted, because that's what I told everyone that I wanted." The sorrow in her voice seemed to contradict her assertion that this was the death that she always sought.
Upon hearing these words and sensing her feelings of hurt and betrayal, mercy once again washed over Shinji's heart. It would never cleanse him of the guilt of his actions, but it at least drowned out the anger that was within him.
For what felt like the billionth time in his life, Shinji Ikari felt lower than dirt. He had been ready to give up on Asuka, HAD given up on her already, and yet here she was, a broken, scared little girl who just needed someone to hold her, to pay attention to her, to chase away the boogey men and closet monsters and make the world right with an offering of sprinkled ice cream. They were exactly the same; lonely children who did not have the family relationships they had always wanted. And even though her mother could have done nothing to save Asuka from a Lance of Longinus attack, he could understand that she felt betrayed. Her mother had promised to protect her, and she could not.
And maybe, just maybe, Asuka was like Shinji in that she could not let anyone in for fear of being hurt. Like him, she also had probably known only disappointment and abandonment. He didn't know that for sure, but if only he could get her to open up to him, relay to him her experiences, he could begin to understand her, maybe even to help her.
No wait, she didn't need his help, she didn't need anybody. Or if she did, she'd be too proud to ask. 'Fuck her,' he thought with a touch of bitterness, 'if she isn't going to ask for help, I'm not going to give it.' At the very least, hearing about Asuka's problems would help Shinji to heal some of his own wounds.
But even though Shinji felt such things at the moment, he was still certain that he at least hated the bossy German girl. Actually, he wasn't really sure what he felt for her anymore. He couldn't stand to look at her anymore, wanted nothing more to do with her anymore, yet he was unprepared to just leave her here to die on this beach. For some reason, he still cared about what happened to her.
Shinji recognized that it would be easy to run away from the pain again, run and leave it behind and let someone else clean up the mess. But this was the life that Shinji had chosen; he rejected the formless world of neutrality. He then realized the hypocrisy at having tried to strangle Asuka. He wanted to get rid of her because he was tired of the pain they generated, but he also could not live a life where nothing exists. Shinji, at the very least, was not going to run away. If Asuka wanted to commit suicide or move to the other ends of the earth, then it would be her choice. Shinji would not choose for her. But she would not be allowed to kill him again. Shinji had made too many promises to too many important people (important to him, anyway) to just end it all now.
And then Shinji had another thought. He still knew so little about Asuka. He wanted to know what he had done that was so terrible that she hated him almost immediately. He wanted to know why she was such a horrible person, as well. He wanted to know what made her tick; why does she act one way at one moment and then the other way the next? He knew that she would not crack easily, if ever. And if she never did, so be it. But he still felt he had to try. He had already been trying for the past year. He could not yet call it quits on the mystery of Asuka Langley Sohryou.
Once he had felt satisfied that he understood her, he would then leave her alone if she so desired. They could go their separate ways, never speak to one another ever again, and hope that someone else would return from the void that was Instrumentality and save them from one another.
With a plan hatching inside his bruised skull, Shinji hunched over and spoke to the German girl in a soft yet cold voice, a combination that might've made Gendo proud.
"If death and loneliness are what you desire, then you shall have them. However, they will not come to you just yet. I have unfinished business with you, 'Second Child.' Once I am convinced that it is settled, you may do as you wish. Until then, don't try to move. I will return as soon as I can."
He walked off, not in any particular direction, but if his plan was going to work, he would need to make the necessary preparations.
Like I said, this story is not complete. If you care enough to find out what happens next (OOH! SUSPENSE!), I'll write the next chapter.