THE SECOND VORTEX—CHAPTER SEVEN
In which Dream begins a project
"Luke" hangs a shingle
Touji comes back
And the red-haired German says good-bye again…
In his cavernous office, Gendo Ikari sat and thought.
The news he had received was not good. Touji Suzuhara had been the best choice for Unit-03; his withdrawal had placed NERV in a tight position.
Sometimes Gendo truly hated the Marduk Institute; the word from on high was that he had just gotten a Child, and qualified Children were very hard to find and that Gendo would have to work with what he had. The situation was frustrating indeed.
The Commander knew that the Thirteenth Angel was waiting in the Eva down below. He also knew that Angel attacks came one at a time; therefore, the Fourth Child had unwittingly and single-handedly halted the war.
This was an intolerable situation. If he was to ever see Yui again Gendo needed the other Angels to come along.
No new Children were coming; the Angel was useless without the presence of a Child in the plug; and his force was cut by one-third.
Gendo sighed and reached for the phone. He had just made the hardest decision of his time as commander…
Daniel walked along the shore quietly in silent contemplation. A wind came up and blew his wild white hair to his right. The hair danced around his eyes, but he cared not, as his thoughts were on his new work.
He stopped beside a group of trees and looked out at the islands that housed thousands of dreams, tiny pieces of his kingdom.
Daniel drew out a pair of bifocals from his robe. He quietly regarded them for a few moments before turning and pointing at a part of the sand. The grains burst from the ground like a geyser, circling before settling onto a mound about five feet tall.
The King of Dreams then put away the glasses and set to work.
"I don't see what all the fuss is about,"
The woman turned to look at her employer, who was gazing about him through eyes covered with sunglasses. She raised an eyebrow.
He caught this and raised his arms in a grand gesture.
"Look around you; all these mortals walking about with gloom and doom. Reminds me of home," the red-haired man paused, "I hate this place."
The woman looked at him, her eye showing fading interest.
"Look at them, my dear; they're broken. Humanity is flushing itself down the toilet; all their hopes and dreams have gone down before them on a roll of paper. They've let themselves be intimidated by…well, enough soap-boxing. Let's get to work,"
The man who called himself Luke smirked at his assistant before flicking a hand toward a run-down building. The dust began to flow away. Red carpet emerged like grass on the floor…
Commander Ikari coolly regarded Touji Suzuhara as the Fourth Child entered the room. To his right stood Vice-Commander Fuyutsuki; already in front of his desk were Misato and Ritsuko.
The boy stopped in front of the group, his eyes tracing over them with not a small hint of suspicion.
"Ya wanted to see me, Commander Ikari?"
"Yes," the Commander stood up from his chair, his eyes never leaving the boy while he picked up a piece of paper, "I understand that you had some…concerns, shall we say…about piloting Eva Unit-03?"
"Uh, yeah…" said the boy, his suspicion arising.
"Hrmmm," Gendo rumbled, "I was hoping to convince you to reconsider leaving,"
"No. I ain't going to risk it,"
"I see. But you might be interested in recent developments related to the Eva to which you would have been assigned.
"We discovered an Angel within it."
Touji's mouth hung open in shock. Misato was frowning and casting glances toward Ritsuko, while the commanders appeared impassive.
"So you were quite right in your reluctance: if the Angel had taken control of Unit-03 you would have come to grave harm, possibly even killed. This would have been a disaster for NERV.
"We are going to purge the unit of this Angel within two days."
Touji frowned, and looked at the commander skeptically.
"How did that thing get in the Eva in the first place? Don't you guys watch out for that sorta thing?"
Gendo frowned and took a quiet deep breath.
"We believe it may be an act of sabotage; rest assured those responsible will be found.
"But that is a matter for later. When the Angel has been purged it will be quite safe to pilot it; I ask you again: will you join us?"
Touji looked around again and sighed.
"Can I think about it?"
"Of course…"
Touji bowed slightly and left.
She cursed to herself when the shakes started again. It took all of her strength—physical and mental—to restrain herself from leaping from her bed and running to the fridge, where the little metal containers waited with sealed little mouths that promised something sweeter than anything that could come from their human counterparts.
She gave a miserable sigh and rolled over, clutching her knees to her chest. Her tongue darted out and nervously wetted her lips before she rolled over again.
All these years, she had been trained to kill and command. All these years, people looked to her to see that everything was running smoothly. And all these years, she had buried her sorrows in alcohol. Fear, frustration, loneliness, and weariness had been soaked with liquor and wandered into the darkness of her subconscious, only to leap out again and embarrass her.
Then Shinji died.
That night—easily the most awful since her father's death—was the night when everything in her slightly ordered world fell apart.
"PLEASE, I NEED AN AMBULANCE!!"
She was screaming into a telephone. The boy was still on his bed.
The kitchen wall still bore the dent that appeared when the can couldn't offer her comfort. She had cleaned off the wall before bursting into tears.
The men in white suits burst past her. They cut off the boy's shirt and inserted a needle. They opened a briefcase and took out two metal paddles. A high sound pierced the air as they rubbed the paddles together.
Clear!
Thump.
Clear!
Thump.
Clear!
Thump.
C'mon, dammit!
It failed her. The best friend she had had for years failed her…
It's no use…
…if it could not help her…
Call the Commander…
…then to hell with it.
*SPRICK*
Glug-glug…
THUNK!
She stood in the room. His room.
She was thirsty, and had gone for some water. But the door confronted her, and before she knew it she had opened it.
Misato was shrieking. There was a violent thump and the sound of scrambling legs and arms. She lurched out of bed and toward the door, still half-asleep. She opened it and saw that Misato was on a phone screaming for an ambulance.
She had chided herself for days, when she woke up and opened his door, expecting him to be sleeping on his side. She knew that he was dead. But she also knew that it wasn't right that he was dead.
The great Shinji Ikari, the invincible Shinji; these titles were a bizarre hybrid, a concoction of sarcasm, jealousy and admiration. He was so shy, and faded like a reed in the wind at the explosion of her voice. Before she met him she thought that she would meet a privileged brat, the scion of the Commander of NERV.
But the truth…
She saw him humiliated. She saw the boy tossed aside for a mysterious girl, as if the Commander had tasted a soft-drink and then—disliking it—chose another. He seemed so fragile, and it occurred to her that he was trying to save himself by becoming what she sneeringly termed, "A housebroken boy".
It wasn't right, she knew. He treated her so kindly, and tried to keep the peace between her and…the doll.
"Why you?" she whispered, as if the sign reading 'Shinji's Lovely Suite' could answer her; she did not see the short pasty nude woman watching her with a thoughtful glare, "There are a lot more bastards out there…why you?"
She saw his door was open and looked in. He was lying on the bed, dressed in his sleepwear, SDAT in hand. She heard shivered breathing beside her and looked down.
The doll was sitting on the floor, clutching her legs to her chest. Her skin seemed to glow in the darkness of the room. Her eyes…
Dying. Death. To die.
None of these things were ever really explained to her. The Commander had said that some might die on the way to her purpose. She had accepted this, without thinking about what it meant.
She was beginning to understand why people had funerals. Why it took so long for others to get over a death. It was merciless and cold, permanent and unyielding. It was something that the Commander could not conquer, a power greater than anything on Earth.
Souhryu had come into the room. But she did not greet the Second Child. She was too involved with the boy on the bed.
Any minute he will sit up and smile at me, she thought. He will say nice things to me like always.
He lay on the bed.
Please, Ikari?
The NERV paramedics appeared and tried to revive him.
CLEAR!
THUMP!
Please get up?
CLEAR!
THUMP!
Ikari?
CLEAR!
THUMP!
C'mon, dammit!
Ikari…
It's no use…
…all that you've done…
Call the Commander.
…you are dying now?
Before he had arrived, she had admired and loved the Commander, thinking him to be the greatest man in the world. He had smiled at her, with that cool smile of his, every so often to show his approval.
After the funeral, he had ordered Misato to turn over Shinji's personal items: the cello, SDAT, clothing, books and other items. He declared coldly that since he had paid for these items with his own money they belonged to him. Misato had obeyed—she really had no choice—and had brought all of the boy's things in her car. The things all vanished into the depths of NERV.
This cruel order was followed by another decree: all things related to the Third Child were to vanish. He was to be wiped off of all public records, his name to vanish from NERV records except those in Gendo's personal archive. The boy's teacher at school—'blind kitten' that he was—obeyed the order to never mention the young man again.
He was trying to erase the name of his son, to destroy the fact that he had a son, not out of cruelty, she realized.
He was making his son disappear because Shinji was a symbol of how insignificant the commander really was before the greatest reality in the universe. Shinji now stood for something Gendo could never overcome.
It scared him.
And it terrified her…
Dream's hands traced lines into the head, creating and separating ears from the rest of his new work. He stepped back, dusting off his hands as he regarded the figure in front of him. He had decided early on that it would be a woman, and he had shaped a fine one that day.
The woman…no, girl would be more appropriate, was still in the early stages, merely sand now. He would see to her later, and with a snap of his cloak he turned toward the palace.
"Commence operation!"
Touji stood behind Ritsuko as Eva Units 00 and 02 took up positions alongside the third unit. Gendo Ikari was personally supervising the purge from Unit-03, and Touji was allowed in to witness the project in the hopes that he would finally agree to join NERV.
The Eva was drastically equipped for this operation. Heavy tubes were attached to the head of the beastly thing, connected to a massive vat of LCL. The plan was to stun the Angel with powerful shocks, then pump it's essence out of the Eva into the LCL, from which it would be ejected to the ocean and hit with three N2 mines before it could manifest itself.
There was the frantic clicking of keyboards and a black substance suddenly flowed through the tubes into the next tank. It took five minutes for the Angel to be purged from the Eva. When everything was done, the blackness almost filled the LCL.
There was a massive flushing sound as the LCL was drained from the vat and spat into the ocean.
The ground rocked, the flash of light illuminating the sea for miles around.
Until it all faded away to one point of light, gleaming off the corner of an approaching ankh…
Asuka sighed in relief, though she made every effort to keep it silent. The idea that an Angel was in their midst without their knowledge had unnerved her.
And, in the back of her mind, she had no wish to lose more friends.
Wait a minute, since when is Touji my…
"There you are!"
Asuka started and looked up, only to see blackness around her. It rippled into the form of a woman's face and upper-most body. A sharp point of light emanated from a corner of her ankh.
"I knew something was wrong when you were supposed to be dead and I didn't come for you; well, that's one against me…"
Then, a voice that Asuka hadn't heard in almost a decade spoke.
"Who are you?"
Suddenly, there was white. It was interrupted by the black tube-top and baggy pants of the woman Asuka had seen before. She was smiling, not at Asuka but at someone the Second Child could not see.
"I'm someone you should have seen long ago, when you left Asuka,"
"But, I would never…"
"No, you wouldn't. They trapped you here, in this thing. But your body left, it's mind destroyed. It's dead now; time to go,"
"But…"
"Sorry, I'm just doing my job. Now, c'mon," the woman held out her hands and gestured to the person that Asuka could not see, "You had a lifetime. That's what you get, whoever you are. Guaranteed."
Redness blocked Asuka's vision for a moment, but soon shrunk to a cascade of red hair. The woman was dressed in a plug suit not too different from Asuka's own, she turned around.
"Mama?"
Misato turned up an eyebrow and glanced at Ritsuko, who shrugged in reply…though a hint of concern came up in her eyes…
Misato pressed the com-switch.
"Asuka, are you all right in there?"
Kyoko bit her lip as she regarded her daughter. The dark-haired woman smiled kindly at the confused Second Child.
Kyoko turned to the woman and asked, "You're Death, aren't you?"
The woman nodded, still smiling.
"And I have to go with you?"
"Yes; that's what usually happens."
"Can I say goodbye?"
"Sure…"
Kyoko turned to her daughter.
"Hello, Asuka," she paused, "I missed talking to you…and was always very proud of you."
"Mama," breathed Asuka, her eyes beginning to water, "why did you leave me?"
"If I had a choice I wouldn't have, but those…bastards," Kyoko spat, "screwed me…"
"You died…"
"Yeah," Kyoko sighed, "I have now,"
Mother and daughter looked at each other.
"Goodbye, Asuka; live your life to the fullest. Don't let this thing," she gestured around, indicating the Eva, "…consume you. I love you, Asuka."
"Mama…"
And Kyoko took Death's pale hand. Asuka closed her eyes from the stinging pain of losing her mother for the second time.
"Where do I go now?"
"You'll just have to see…"
Asuka heard the beating of mighty wings…
Alarms were blaring. Ritsuko was looking at the Commander, searching for some meaning behind all this sudden chaos.
"What is 'dis, some kinda attack? I thought the Angel was dead?!"
Gendo Ikari coldly regarded the Fourth Child.
"It is dead; there is merely some…malfunction within Unit-02. I will speak to you later,"
Touji harrumphed and slid out of the staff's way. Reports were coming rapid fire. In much the same way, the tapping of computer keys was like machine-gun fire.
"Cold one, huh?"
Touji started and backed away from the source of the voice.
"Oh, it's you! Hey, uh, thanks for tippin' me off about that Eva,"
The pale woman shrugged.
"It was nothing. I figured that you had been hit enough by bad luck,"
Touji looked out to the red Eva, the subject of the chaos in the command center.
"Do you know what's goin' on? What's wrong with Asuka?"
The mysterious woman smiled and patted him on the shoulder.
"The problem isn't with her; I just…righted a wrong. She'll be fine…for now…"
"'For now'? What does that mean?" Touji asked, turning to his companion.
But she was gone…