* Mind * Games *
Part Second
Shinji saw Unit-02's cable become stuck and knew Asuka wouldn't be able to get away in time. Without thinking for a moment on what he was going to do, Shinji leapt into action.
It was as if time had slowed to crawl. The Angel flared with an amazing brilliance as it sent a lance of light towards her at a snail's pace. She tried to dodge, but it was if she were trying to move underwater... her EVA just wouldn't get out of the way in time. The light was just about to hit her when she saw the form of Unit-01 appear in front of her.
Suddenly time snapped back to its normal rate of progression, at which point Unit-01 impacted with Unit-02, knocking it backwards, leaving Unit-01 to take the brunt of the blow. Asuka heard a scream that made her blood run cold as Unit-01 fell to its knees clutching its head as if in pain.
Asuka gaped in horror. "Shinji!" she shouted, his screams sounding as if he were being slowly ripped apart. She wanted to run, to look away, to close her eyes. She could do nothing though, and thus stood helplessly as the light engulfed Unit-01's prostrate form and began to swallow her as well. When it struck it was as if every nerve in her body had become afire pain. She saw everything go white as the LCL became filled with the sounds of exultant singing.
And then the world faded to black...
* M * I * N * D *
"Awful tempting to leave it here." the young man commented, taking a moment to step back (figuratively) and take a look at his handiwork. He grew thoughtful for a few seconds, then sighed.
"Nah... besides, I'm having too much fun to just 'stop' now. Now then, on with the show!" With that, he sets back to work, fingers flying over the keys and eyes glued to the screen.
- G - A - M - E - S -
After first, there was only darkness.
click-Clack... click-Clack... click-Clack...
Red circles of light appeared only to rush past.
click-Clack... click-Clack... click-Clack...
The darkness fades revealing she is sitting in some type of train car. Across from her sits Shinji Ikari. "Are we dead?" she asks.
Shinji looks up, noticing her for the first time. "A-Asuka?" Shinji stammers, quite surprised. "What are you doing here?"
"I could ask you the same question, Shinji." Asuka snapped back at him, getting annoyed. "Were you expecting someone else perhaps?"
"Before, its only been me, myself, and Rei..." Shinji said, thinking aloud.
Asuka gaped. "You've been dead before?" she asked incredulously.
Shinji looked serenely into her eyes. "We're not dead." Shinji stated calmly, "At least I don't think so. I've been... here... before this, but I don't remember when or all of happened here."
Asuka shook her head. 'This is too weird.' Asuka thought to herself, 'I must be dreaming or something. That's the only explanation for it. The angel attack, Shinji growing a spine, this, its all just a part of some strange dream from indigestion. I'll never eat Misato's cooking again.'
"What is it?" Shinji asked, noticing her silence. "Don't you have anything to say?"
"Well..." Asuka began, but what anything else she was going to say was drowned out by the loud horn as the train entered another tunnel.
Once again, the world became a sea of darkness...
* * * * *
Her eyes opened to find she was lying in a room illuminated by a pale blue light. 'Is this the infirmary?' she wondered as she started to take in her surroundings. She tried sitting up, but became aware of the horrible headache she had about halfway there and slumped back into the bed.
A woman wearing a nurse's uniform entered, and smiled when she saw Asuka awake. She left after asking how Asuka was feeling, probably going to report to the Doctor or NERV... it didn't really matter.
'What happened?' she wondered. 'What about the Angel?'
Not much later Misato entered the room and came to her bedside. "How are you feeling Asuka?"
"Like shit." Asuka replied, managing to sit up without the throbbing in her head overwhelming her. "What happened?"
Misato frowned. "To be totally honest, we're not quite sure... Rei arrived just as your EVA was 'hit' and fired the positron rifle at the Angel, which promptly disappeared."
"What about Shinji?" Asuka asked, with more concern in her voice than she was really comfortable showing.
Misato turned away, looking troubled. "What is it, Misato?" Asuka demanded, not wanting to be kept in the dark.
"Shinji..Shinji is..." Misato began in a broken voice, Asuka felt a cold feeling sliding around in her stomach. "Shinji's... in a coma... as far as anyone can tell. The Angel did something to him... its almost as if it killed his mind while leaving the body unharmed."
"What?" Asuka asked, not wanting to believe what she had just heard. Shinji couldn't be...
"His higher brain activity is at zero. In a normal coma, people at least show some signs of brain activity, like dreams and the like. Shinji... he's completely void of anything to indicate that a part of his mind is still alive in there somewhere." a tear traced its way down Misato's cheek, leaving a track of moisture in its wake. "I... I think this time... this time he's not going to... to..."
"NO!" Asuka near shouted, surprising herself with the force with which it had come out. "Don't... Don't say it Misato."
Misato's tear-filled eyes met Asuka's, and an understanding passed between the two. "Asuka..." Misato said softly.
"He's not... He can't be gone Misato."
"I know." Misato replied breaking eye contact once again. The two sat in silence for what seem like hours. Finally Misato broke the invisible barrier of quiet. "The doctors want to keep you over-night for observation, though I can get you out of here now, if you want."
Asuka absently studied her hands, which were currently crumpling the bed sheets within their desperate grasp, for a moment before speaking again. "Can... Can I see him?" she asked quietly, not looking up.
"I'll see what I can do, Asuka." Misato replied.
"Thank you... Then I'd prefer to spend the night at home, after I see him." Asuka said, still not looking up from her clenched hands. Misato nodded, then left the room to retrieve some clothing for her young charge.
After dressing, Asuka followed Misato through the twisting hospital hallways to the ward where the third child was being kept for medical observation.
Shinji was laying in an open med-tank, tubes coming out of his arms leading to various machines and I.V. bags, while wires and electrodes which plugged into a half dozen different computers were all over his chest and forehead. Shinji's skin tone was a sickly white color and his seemingly damp hair clung limply to his skull. Asuka felt a surge of hope as she noticed his eyes were open, but it fled quickly when she looked closer and saw his soulful blue orbs were glazed over and sightless. The awful scene was one right out of a science-fiction nightmare. He looked dead, though the steady beeping from the heart monitor and the faint sound of his breathing argued to the contrary.
'That could have been me laying there.'
No matter how she tried to banish it, the thought kept itself forefront in her mind.
'Shinji... Why? It was my fault I couldn't get away in time. Why?' Asuka wondered. Unable to bear looking at the ghastly scene for a moment longer, she turned to Misato.
"Let's go."
- M - I - N - D -
"Heh." the young man said as he leaned back his chair. He looked back thoughtfully at his latest addition to his creation, finding himself pleasantly amused.
"Not what I originally envisioned the scene as, but I think I like this better, don't you?" he asked as he turned to his compatriot sitting beside him.
Apache merely smiled in response, his canines flashing in the dim light of the computer's monitor.
"It just wouldn't be Eva without some good angst in it, now would it?" the young man asked rhetorically as he turned back to the screen in front of him. "Back to work." with that, the sounds of typing once more could be heard in the darkness of the small bedroom.
* G * A * M * E * S *
Nothingness.
A whole lot of nothingness.
Those were the only words Shinji could think of to describe it. He'd been in that strange train car with Asuka one moment, and the next thing he knew he was here. Here among the forests of Nothingness.
"Maybe I did die..." Shinji wondered aloud, then smiled ruefully. "If this is the afterlife, though, I've got to say that its nothing like I expected it to be. I always imagined it having more..." He paused, searching for the right words, "...substance."
He sighed... sort of. He didn't feel the rise and fall of his chest he normally associated with sighing, he looked to see what was wrong. His torso was nowhere to be found.
"Strange..." He muttered as he started looking for his other body parts. All he found, though, was just more of the same nothingness that he'd seen earlier.
"I'm not dead, am I?" he asked no one in particular, not expecting an answer.
"No" a voice replied. A familiar voice. His own voice.
"You again." Shinji said, not sure exactly how he felt about his counterpart being here. "Where are we?"
"You are in the Void of the human brain. I am merely a fragment of your own awareness, thus I am emanating from yourself." the voice replied.
"So our body isn't really gone?" Shinji asked.
"I do not know."
"What do you mean? You said we were in the void of the brain, so our body must still exist..."
"I never said it was our brain exactly."
"We're..."
"Yes."
"Someone else's?"
"There can be no mistake. If we were in our own body, we would not be as separated as we are now. Therefore, we must be in another body."
"Alright, but... how do we get back to our body?"
"I do not know."
"So we're stuck here?"
"No."
"That's really annoying, you know."
"What?"
"Leading me to false conclusions like that."
"You are the one leading yourself to any false conclusions you might have."
"That statement is so ironic that its not funny."
"It was not meant to be."
"So... How do we get out of here?"
"We might try contacting the other awareness that has its residence here."
"Won't that be... well...weird?"
"Most likely. But what are the alternatives?"
Shinji let out another sort-of sigh. "I guess you're right... So how do we do it? Contact the other awareness, that is."
"We could try shouting, maybe."
"You're joking."
"No."
The two voices of Shinji proceeded to call out various greetings as loudly as they were capable of in hope the original awareness would hear them. They stopped for a second when the nothingness started turning into something... a splash of color, a fragment of an image, neither was sure exactly. But as soon as it had appeared, it returned to the nothingness from which it came.
"This isn't working." Shinji, said, feeling hope fleeing.
"We are too weak alone. We must form the True Shinji, if we are to connect with this awareness."
"Aren't we true Shinjis already?"
"Yes and no."
"What do you mean, 'yes and no'?"
"We are true Shinji's in the sense that we are both Shinji Ikaris in personality . But the True Shinji is the composite of both of our selves in one self, allowing an entire awareness."
"So how do we go about doing this?"
"Do you accept me as being a part of yourself, Shinji?"
Shinji thought before he responded, unsure as to what he should say. Suddenly, he became aware of an irresistible force driving him towards one conclusion. He didn't bother to fight against it. It really was the only answer he could find within himself. "Yes." he replied.
"Then it is so."
With those words, Shinji felt the other presence dissipate and join with his. He felt... different, though if he were pressed to describe it, he'd have had real difficulty putting it into words.
A doorway appeared in the nothingness. Shinji moved through, leaving the void of the brain for parts unknown.
"Um... Hello? Can anyone hear me?" he said once he was past the threshold, hoping against hope that the awareness that controlled this body would hear and understand him.
+ M + I + N + D +
The young man paused from typing to smile at the screen of the computer he was working at. "I have only yet begun to get weird!" he said with a laugh and a sinister grin as he rubbed his palms together.
Apache gave a tired groan in response.
- G - A - M - E - S -
Asuka lay on her futon, staring blankly at the ceiling. She had tried to sleep, but sleep simply refused to come to her. Every time she tried closing her eyes, either the images of Unit-01 being swallowed by the Angel's light or the vision of Shinji in a coma being plugged into all those hideous machines, causing her to immediately open them again in horror.
"Why?" she asked the question out loud once again. "Why, Shinji? Why did you do that?"
No one had ordered him to do it; there had been no time for that. She certainly hadn't asked him to do it. Why had he done it then?
She remembered the joking they had done before the operation had began. She had mocked him, calling him the 'invincible Shinji.' Though she used it mockingly, she also felt the nickname somewhat appropriate. No matter how bad or hopeless things seemed, he'd always managed to save the day somehow. Just like a hero in a fairy tale.
Had he taken the Angel's blow because he had wanted to be a hero? That didn't make any sense though... even with his recent odd behavior, Shinji just wasn't the type to do something that painful simply because it was heroic.
"Then why, dammit?" Asuka growled in frustration as she rolled onto her side. No matter how hard she tried, she knew she wasn't going to understand the reason Shinji had acted the way he did. The only one who understood Shinji's reasons for pushing Unit-02 and taking the attack instead was Shinji himself. "Why... Why am I so worked up over it anyway? It's his fault he ended up like he is, not mine."
'Keep telling yourself that, Sorhyu. You might eventually believe it.' Her more logical mind remarked dryly. It was no use trying to escape the guilty feeling she was suffering from. She couldn't help feeling that Shinji had done what he had because of her.
He made her lunches as well as his own. He always let her have the bathroom first in the morning. He made sure that they had something other than Japanese food at least once a week. He gave her his school bag to use as an umbrella in the rainstorm. He never offered any real reason for doing these things. But she did realize that he did do them for her, whether she cared to admit it or not. The thought of him never doing those sort of things ever again made her insides ache with a nerve-numbing pain.
'I guess he's just sort of grown on me.' she realized. 'Somewhere, among all the time we've spent together, I guess I got used to having him around.' It was more than just that, though. She had sworn never to get too attached to anyone else ever again, but she could not deny that she cared for Shinji.
'He'll be alright.' she reassured herself. The image of Shinji laying in the med-tank with tubes and wires everywhere flashed in her mind's eye, damaging her confidence. She curled into a fetal position. "He has to be alright." she mumbled aloud.
Closing her eyes, she began to surrender to the sweet tempting of drowsiness, trying to find some peace within her exhaustion.
"Umm... Hello? Can anyone hear me?"
Asuka bolted upright, and checked the room over. She had sworn she'd heard a voice... but she was the only one in the room. She laid back down and stared at the ceiling.
"Can you hear me? Please, answer me." the voice came again, this time it was clearer.
Asuka thought the voice sounded familiar, somehow, but still could not find its source anywhere.
"Please. Say something if you can hear me..." The voice was now clear enough now that Asuka could recognize it.
"S-Shinji?" she stammered, not understanding what was going on. Was this some kind of a sick joke?
"A-As-Asuka?!? Is that you?" Shinji's voice asked, sounding very surprised.
Asuka looked around her room one more time. "Who the hell is doing this?" she asked, trying to keep her voice down so Misato wouldn't hear her talking herself.
"It's me! Shinji!" Shinji's voice responded.
"B-But it can't be... Shinji's in a coma..." She said, to herself more than anyone else who could have been listening. 'Am I going crazy?' she wondered.
"You're not going crazy, Asuka. It's me, Shinji. You know, Idiot-Shinji? Please believe me, Asuka!"
"But... You can't... I must be..." Asuka stammered, stunned by the weirdness of the situation. "How?"she finally managed to ask.
"I... I'm not entirely sure, really. It's got something to with what happened during the Angel attack, though."
"Where are you?" Asuka asked, recovered somewhat from her shock. "Are you in some non-corporeal form or something?"
"Well... er... not really. Its kinda hard to explain, Asuka."
"Try anyway." Asuka said flatly.
"Well, to the best of my knowledge, I'm... well, I'm inside your head." Shinji said, sounding casual.
"Come again? I'm not sure I understood that."
"I'm inside your brain." Shinji explained calmly. "Somehow, my awareness and my body were separated, causing my awareness to take up residence elsewhere."
Asuka recalled something Misato had told her earlier "...its as if the Angel killed his mind but left his body intact..." Was this what had really happened to Shinji?
"Have you been up there this entire time?" Asuka asked, suddenly sounding curious.
"Er... I'm not sure, entirely..." Shinji responded, confused by the question. "But... yeah, I think so."
"THEN WHY DIDN'T YOU SAY ANYTHING BEFORE NOW, YOU IDIOT?!" Asuka growled furiously. "YOU PUT ME THROUGH A HELLUVA LOT OF WORRY, AND YOU WERE HERE THE WHOLE TIME?!?!"
Shinji was quiet for a moment before he at last responded. "You were worried about me?" he asked, not quite believing it.
Asuka realized what she had just said and knew it was too late to take it back. "Well... er... Just answer the question Dumkopf!" She snapped, trying to cover it up.
"I didn't say anything because I couldn't." Shinji replied. "It took me this long just to figure out how to talk to you."
"Oh..." Asuka said.
After a period of silence, Shinji spoke again. "You were worried about me?" he repeated.
"Yes, I was worried about you, idiot." Asuka replied muttering it under her breath, realizing answering was inevitable."What about it?"
"Why?" Shinji asked.
Asuka knew he was going to ask that question, but she didn't know how to answer it. She wasn't entirely sure of the reason she was worried about him. "Because, you idiot..." she replied, frantically searching for a plausible answer and drawing only blanks.
"If it makes you uncomfortable, you don't have to answer, Asuka." Shinji said.
"I'm not uncomfortable!" Asuka snapped back at him.
"Asuka, I felt it. You were uncomfortable with my question."
"What you mean , you 'felt it'?"
"My awareness is sharing your body, Asuka. I could feel your emotion, almost as it was me feeling it, yet not quite."
"Cut it out, then!" Asuka growled, not liking the idea of someone else knowing exactly what she was feeling.
"I'm sorry."
Asuka noticed a strange feeling coming over her, not quite hers, yet she could still feel it. It was a feeling of shame that comes from having done something wrong. It felt very... strange... and very disconcerting to Asuka. 'Was that... Shinji's emotion I just felt?' she wondered as she shivered slightly.
"The emotions must be leaking through... I'd better leave. I'm sorry I bothered you like this Asuka." The feeling of shame increased as he spoke, then suddenly ceased altogether as he finished.
"Wait, Shinji!" Asuka said, but it was too late. The feeling of Shinji had fled from her. Asuka called out for him to come back, but she didn't get a response.
Asuka heard her door slide open. She looked over to find Misato standing in her doorway. "Asuka, what's wrong?" she asked. "I heard you talking to someone. Is everything all right?"
"I must have been talking in my sleep, Misato." Asuka replied. "I... I had a disturbing dream, that's all."
"You wanna talk about it?" Misato offered.
Asuka shook her head. "No, I'm fine. Really."
Misato studied Asuka a moment before speaking again. "Okay then. I'll leave the offer open, though."
Asuka nodded in acknowledgment. "Good night, Misato."
"G'night." Misato replied, pulling the door closed once more.
Asuka found herself staring at the ceiling awhile after Misato had left. 'Is that what he feels every time he apologizes?' Asuka wondered, 'How can he stand it?' she shuddered slightly. 'Why does he get like that? It wasn't his fault, and yet he refused to stand up for himself... Just when he was beginning to show some backbone too.'
A unexpected yawn overtook her, alerting Asuka to just how tired she really was. Closing her eyes, exhaustion claimed her.
- M - I - N - D -
"I think that was in good taste. Don't you?" the young man said, looking to his companion sitting next to him. Apache growled something unintelligible at him.
The young man sighed and slumped forward in his seat. "Yeah, I know. I know! Things aren't going exactly the way I had planned them, though. It doesn't matter if things are running behind schedule. The end result WILL be the same... won't it?"
+ G + A + M + E + S +
"I didn't want to upset her..." Shinji moped in the privacy of the Void. The "door" was now shut, though Shinji knew he could open it again if necessary. "Somehow, I always manage to screw things up."
He sighed as he sat down and cradled his head in his hands. "If it weren't happening to me, this might be funny. I mean, come on. Stuck inside the brain of a girl who can barely stand being around me... It should be hilarious. "
"You pansy!" a tiny voice shouted, though it was barely audible. "Quit feeling so sorry for yourself!"
Shinji looked to find the source of the voice, but found he was still surrounded by the colorlessness of the Void. "Who are you?" he asked. "I thought I already absorbed my fragment."
"That's not easy to explain, but to try and put it simply... I'm your spine, Shinji!" The tiny voice replied. "Remember that little talk we had in Gym class about two days ago?"
"Huh?" Shinji asked confused. "I don't remember talking to you before, and how would I talk to you in gym class? You're just another part of my mind, aren't you?"
"The ball must have hit you harder than we thought." the voice remarked, steadily growing stronger. "You don't remember?"
"What ball?"
"Hoo boy..." the voice sighed. "Remember how you were playing three-on-three basketball in gym class?" Shinji nodded. "Good. Do remember the part when Touji faked a pass to Kensuke and then threw you a chest pass?"
Shinji laughed. "Yeah, it was an excellent fake too... it even fooled me. I wasn't ready for it so instead of catching it, I got nailed right in the back of the head, which knocked me out... cold... you mean we talked while I was unconscious?"
"You made sure as hell I wasn't part of your conscious mind, now, didn't you. But we discussed it, remember?"
Suddenly, he remembered. He hadn't wanted to go back to reality because he didn't want to face the embarrassment and the feeling that he'd let his friends down. Then this character had shown up, offering to make it bearable, but on one condition: Shinji accept that he wasn't a total loser.
It had seemed an easy promise to make, but then he was asked to name one good quality about himself other than the fact he could pilot an EVA.
Despite his best efforts, Shinji had found himself unable to do so.
"Your problem is you actually believe that you are worthless." the voice had told him. "We're going to have to change that. I'll try and intervene at those times others do tell you you're a worthless piece of steaming rubbish, but you'll have do the rest."
"Next thing I knew I was in the School Nurse's office." Shinji continued, returning from Memory Lane and getting back on Present Drive. "How come I wasn't able to remember any of this before?"
"Our conversation got sealed away with all the feelings of embarrassment and guilt that the ball incident caused," the voice replied "Courtesy of your very own brain. It's always trying to do that to traumatic points in your life. I just filed the incident as being a traumatic event."
"Oh." Shinji said, feeling a little dumbfounded.
"Everything had been going fine... until recently, that is. While you're here, I can't be silenced by your feelings of worthlessness. Not entirely, anyway."
"So why are you being so talkative?" Shinji asked.
"You started feeling worthless again!" the voice near-shouted at him. "Geez! You really can be denser than lead at times, you know that? Now, get out of self-pity-mode before you make me start to wretch. Remember Shinji, things could always be worse."
"How could things possibly be worse?" Shinji asked, not believing it.
"Do you really wanna know?" the voice replied.
Shinji thought about it a moment, then he smiled slightly. "No, I guess not. Thanks."
"Don't mention it. I've got to go now, so remember what we talked about this time. Okay?" with that, the feeling of the voice's presence vanished.
It was then Shinji noticed that he now legs. And arms. He'd miraculously acquired a body.
"What the hell's going on? These weren't here before..."
No sooner had Shinji spoken than the Void shuddered and exploded in a frenzy of light and color.