Disclaimer
The series, Neon Genesis Evangelion, from which this work of fiction is based, is owned by GAINAX. Characters presented in this document that come directly from the series are also owned by GAINAX. Madison Timlitt is owned by "Lady Pheaura". All other original characters are owned by me.
Evangelion: Primum Revelation
Chapter 6: Then There Were Three
Written by T.S. a.k.a. "Kain Tempest"
German translations by "Steve Vader"
"I suppose that is it for today." The captain stated and switched off the tape recorder. Asuka let her head loll back and she sighed. Three hours in this damn dark room and having to talk non stop about every single thing that happened during her time in NERV. Worst still was that the captain was inflexible when she tried to convince him to cut her a little slack and give her a break. His damned response was to hand her a cup of water. Now, however, she would finally get a chance to speak to him, after over a year.
"So, how have things been since I was gone?"
"Third Impact. What do you think?" Was the captain's response before getting up, picking up the tape recorder and leaving. Asuka gave a snort of irritation. What the Hell was his problem anyway? The door opened again and a female attendant stepped through.
"Fräulein Soryu?" Asuka looked up.
"Ja?"
"Bitte folgen sie mir." The attendant asked the girl to follow her. Puzzled, Asuka followed the woman through the door and back into the metal halls of the facility. The woman walked quickly and after sitting down for so long, Asuka found it difficult to keep up for several minutes.
"Moment. Zuerst will ich wissen was hier los ist? Was war das für ein Verhör? Wohin gehen wir?" Trying to get the woman to slow down, Asuka started asking questions.
"Eine einfache Sichertheitsmassnahme. Während der letzten drei Stunden haben sie einiges erklärt, dies mus nun analysiert werden." The answers were matter of fact. She needed to stay while the interview was 'analyzed'.
"Analysiert? Wozu?" It seemed as though this woman was more than willing to answer her questions, but was likely buying time by making Asuka dig for what she wanted to know. At this point, Asuka knew very little. At most she assumed that she and Shinji were found by a military patrol and they had been taken to an underground military facility for processing. It seemed as though with only a couple of months a lot of influential people found their way into Europe and started getting everyone organized. The atmosphere in the facility seemed to perfectly mirror the same intensity that it did before Third Impact. Her perhaps this sensation of organization was all an illusion. Perhaps there were less than thirty people in this military base but all of them were in the areas she was coming through.
Asuka was so deep in her analysis of the facility, that she didn't notice that her guide hadn't answered her question. However, the captain's reaction to her obstinate behavior told her that pushing too many questions when they weren't welcomed wasn't a good thing. It was better than she went with the flow at this point.
"Also, wo gehen wir hin?" Asuka asked, trying to at least know where that flow was headed.
"Solange der Captain oder der Kommandant es nicht anders befehlen, werden sie und Herr Ikari bei uns bleiben." The way the woman described it, it seemed as though she was using euphemisms for saying that Asuka should expect to get very accustomed to these halls.
Out of the corner of her eye, Asuka noticed a security camera track her movements as she passed down a hall. No doubt the security center was completely occupied by people who actually cared about their jobs, and the German girl could see several armed personnel milling about, daring her to try and get away. She was a prisoner, pure and simple.
During her training in Germany, whenever there was a necessity that she had to come to one of these military bases, most of the higher officers treated her with high level of respect with regards to her size and age. She was still only a child in their eyes, but they knew that she deserved to be noticed. Asuka loved that time and hoped that it would only improve when she got the change to prove herself by destroying the Angels. Now those men were probably still chuckling in their graves.
"Wir sind da." The woman announced, standing in front of a door in what seemed to be the living quarters of the base. The woman pulled down the latch and allowed the door to swing open revealing a rather decent looking dormitory with a bed, a desk, sink, and lavatory.
"Fühlen sie sich ganz wie zu Hause." Asuka immediately stepped through and noticed her backpack sitting on the foot of the bed. She approached it and could hear the door to her room lock. She scanned the four walls. This was going to be her cell.
With a sigh, Asuka sat down on the bed and shrugged off Misato's red jacket. Throughout her interview, Asuka had been careful to ensure her right arm was hidden within the sleeve of the jacket. She felt almost ashamed of the cut, a permanent reminder of her defeat at the hands of the Evangelion series. The scar had indeed faded, but it was still noticeable, at least for her. Not wanting to dwell on her past, Asuka began to wander the room in order to better inspect her surroundings.
The entire furnishings the room held a very technological look to them, metallic, sleek, and without anything extraneous. Truly, the only thing that seemed soft was the cushions on the chair, the mattress, and Asuka herself. Everything was either a metal, a plastic, or ceramic. A pyromaniac would only have so much to burn before they would be bored stiff.
Some kind soul had left a small collection of reading material on the edge of the desk. A local newspaper dated a few weeks before she disappeared from Tokyo-3, plus books on poetry and a menagerie of other topics in English and German. Asuka didn't really have any interest in anything in the room and she settled for sitting on the bed and going over what happened in the last little while.
When Asuka heard the knock on the door, she was actually very surprised that she had a visitor this early.
"Kommen sie rein." She called. Asuka didn't consider this any time to try and risk escaping, after all, no doubt there was a guard standing right next to her door and she doubted she would get by fast enough before being caught. The latch turned and the captain from the interrogation stepped in. Seeing him now in the full light of the ceiling lamp, Asuka was surprised how much the boy had changed.
It felt strange that the impact from this meeting had not been stronger than Asuka had imagined. But she had so many things occur in a short period of time that she was still scrambling to recover. She could almost imagine herself, sitting stark away and screaming days from now. She kept the almost humorous thought from the surface. The atmosphere was dower the minute the captain came in.
The young man had grown significantly in the past year, no doubt experiencing his growth spurt. His brown hair was still an uncontrollable seeming to burst forward in shard-like locks to hang over his heavy eyebrows. His eyes seemed colder, narrowing in a steady scowl. Dark facial hair had started creeping down the sides of his face his chin seemed to have gotten heavier and stronger. He looked older than his fifteen years, handsomer too, but the underlying sense of wrongness of it all lingered.
"Hello Miss Sohryu." The look on his face and the tone of his voice made him sound angry, combined with his clearness with his Japanese, he seemed like an eastern officer than one from her homeland.
"Hello, Sir." Asuka responded. The captain's frowned deepened as if disappointed.
"You may refer to me as Captain Nevril."
"Whatever you want Tristan." Asuka looked away before the captain gave a snort.
"I did not give you permission to refer to me by that name." Tristan announced.
"Give it a rest, I'm not at all interested in playing on your little power trip. You're just still sore about the fact that I snapped you out of your little delusions." Asuka snapped back. Tristan closed his eyes and recollected himself by taking a deep breath.
"I'm not here to begin a shouting match with you. I have far more important things to do." Asuka gave a short laugh. Who did this idiot think he was?
"You are full of it! Now I remember why I hated you so much in the first place!" Tristan didn't respond and waited for Asuka to finish blowing off her steam. When Asuka realized that Tristan wasn't playing her game, she sat back and waited for him to start.
"You don't enjoy being cooped up in here and neither do I, but I felt it was necessary to explain to you what was going on and why you are here." A small smile cracked across Asuka's lips and she propped her head onto her hands.
"This is absolutely adorable. The little boy is playing soldier to try and impress his imaginary 'ex'."
"I am not here to play your games, Asuka! God, why do I even bother. You're still the stupid bitch you always were and not to mention a failure to humanity." Asuka's smile faded immediately.
"What?" She asked in her dangerous tone.
"The members of the Marduk Institute and the rest of the dead NERV officers are probably rolling in their graves to think a rejected little girl who's mother was nut job was going to be the savior of humanity. They probably believed that her reason for existence was to defeat the Angels but it seems that God does make garbage." Asuka's lip curled into a snarl and she began to rise.
"You lit-"
"SIT DOWN!" He barked. Asuka didn't even realize it as her bottom hit the mattress and firmly rooted itself. She was actually surprised by her own reaction to Tristan's strong voice. "You better shut up and listen to what I have to say, you worthless piece of crap! If you don't like it, all I have to do is utter one thing in German and the guard will be more than willing to drag you out of here and place you in a place more deserving for garbage like you." Asuka could almost see the burning hostility boil up inside the young man as every world dripped with steaming venom. Worst still, the words struck home and reminded Asuka of what she thought of what she really thought of herself, it was disturbing that he knew exactly what to say to make her feel like less of herself. Tristan had taken on a frightening transformation, and Asuka knew with grim uncertainty that she was in a way responsible for it.
"Alright." Asuka murmured, the tension in Tristan's voice seemed to ease and he cleared his throat.
"On behalf of the German branch of NERV, we welcome you to the New European Confederation." It sounded like a practiced line, the pleasing diction selected by someone who didn't care about the relationship between the two pilots. He or she likely thought it would be easier for her to meet him based upon their camaraderie as EVA pilots. How wrong they were.
"Confederation? Isn't it a little early to consider yourselves a political entity."
"No it isn't. Berlin has reached half of it's population capacity and we have made contact with the Union of Northern Independent Territories." Asuka looked perplexed, already Tristan was starting to babble nonsense. Tristan picked up on this. "UNIT was a nation formed simultaneously by the American Branch of NERV in North America."
"That doesn't make any sense. The American branch was destroyed in an accident while experimenting with Unit-04, wasn't it?"
"Yes and no. Because of the massive area of North America, much like Asia, there were auxiliary NERV bases , one such base placed in the Rocky Mountains in the former Canadian territories. Armed with it's own MAGI system, it became the base of operations for the reconstruction project begun six weeks ago by both branches.
"So what's left of NERV is now working to build nations out of the ruins of the old world? Why are you telling me this?"
"As a former member of NERV and one of the few people properly trained to be a pilot, the NEC wishes to request your return to the German branch. I was sent here to give you the information on the political scene in Europe now, provide you with this invitation, and watch over the confirmation of your accounts with the Japan branch."
"What's so important about the Japan branch anyway?"
"It has been deemed the source of Third Impact." Asuka blinked. This was a lot of information to take in, and it was just as difficult throwing away here original assumptions that the world would be the same. In truth, it wasn't. Asuka had been traveling for two months along the coast in the regions she originally called Asia and the Middle East. Her destination was Austria, but from the sound of it, such a place was deemed to no longer exist in the eyes of the German branch of NERV and this new NEC. Somehow, NERV managed to get the cooperation of the local military in order to provide the force necessary. How many people were actually part of this 'new order'?
"Wasn't Third Impact supposed to be the end of mankind's existence?"
"As was Second Impact, and just the same we need answers as to why it happened and who was the real cause of it."
"So I'm a suspect. Is that it?" Tristan shook his head.
"A witness is more like it. The Japan Branch has refused to give any other member of NERV any sort of information on what has been happening in Tokyo-3 since the reported attack by the Third Angel. From then on, Commander Ikari only gave the reports to the Committee and so we were left in the dark. That is why your description of the Angel and what had occurred is so important to us."
"But then you are still keeping me here, even though I am not the one you are looking for, that's idiotic!" Asuka cried. Tristan sighed.
"I wasn't the one responsible for making this decision, the commander opted for things to go in this direction and gave me no other orders except that I am stuck in this same military base until they receive the report you made and that you accept their invitation."
"And if I refuse?" Tristan shrugged.
"This is senseless! There is something you are not tell me."
"Be that as it may, we're both stuck here. Goodbye." Tristan stepped out the door and again Asuka could hear the door lock. Asuka growled and ruffled her hair. This was so stupid and illogical. She wished it was just a dream, but how could it be. She gave the report it would only take a couple of minutes to be sent and the messenger doesn't even know what will happen if she refused NERV's invitation.
Was she actually misinterpreting what Tristan had been talking about. She was considered a witness and not a suspect in NERV's investigation of Third Impact and so long as she was in this military base, Tristan had to remain. She really didn't have anywhere to go or any other reason to live other than to support NERV and so they were offering her a new lease on life. They were already aware that she would feed out of their hands. But why did they lock the door to her room? The answer came quite by accident. These soldiers thought she was dangerous.
More than likely, the two soldiers who encountered her having beaten Shinji to within an inch of his life believed that she was homicidal psychopath and they didn't want such a person wandering their base. Further, Shinji may be being treated in the same facility and they didn't want her to get anywhere near him. This new era made human life precious to them, no matter how much less of a person they are or was perceived as. If that was the case, the woman who led her to her room must have had balls of steel.
Even after figuring out the solution so quickly, Asuka still felt as though her mind was in a fog. The formation of these new nations, NEC and UNIT and the new value of NERV seemed very strange. It only helped to confirm that she didn't exist in the same post-Second Impact world she had grew up in. She was the pioneer of something different. Asuka ran her hand down to her midsection. Something very different, indeed.
Tristan could imagine the sick smile on his father's face at this very moment. Chuckling away as his son had to face the last person he ever wanted to see alive. God damn that old man. Damn him and his sick little games. God it was almost as if he and Asuka took a page from the same damn book with their manipulative natures.
Tristan tore at the clasp on the collar of the jacket as soon as the bolt to his quarters slid home. With the restricting item loosened, Tristan twisted his neck violently, meaning to only stretch the muscles but looking to be trying to tear his head off. The redheaded bitch even managed to cause him to break his cool. Even after a whole year of preparing himself for a day when their paths would inevitably cross. A year of preparation was now down the perpetual toilet and such a waste aggravated him more than running into the red monster in the first place.
He ran his fingers through his hair and gave a long drawn out sigh, trying to get the tension of the day out of his mind. Or at least put it in a place so that he could actually take some time to relax. Even though he knew the commander was no doubt making several 'renovations' that Tristan would no doubt confront, if he kept stressing over it, he wouldn't have any energy when he did indeed confront him.
Tristan glanced over to his cell phone chattering on the desk. Snatching it up and with a practiced ease he flipped it open, struck a button and utter a "Hallo?" in the space of a breath.
"Hallo Madison." Tristan breathed. "Was? Nein. Alles in Ordnung... ich weiss das ich für einige Zeit nicht zurückkomme. Das ist Bürokratie, was soll ich sagen?
"Leutnant Sai ist mehr als bereit ihr Training zu überwachen, ich traue seinem Urteil.
"Ich bezweifle das dies jemals passieren wird... Murphy's Gesetz hat nichts damit zu tun... In Ordnung, ich stimme dir zu das die Entscheidung des Kommandanten närrisch war, aber sollten irgendwelche Probleme auftreten bin ich an Bord des nächsten Helikopters weg von hier. In Ordnung?
"Okay... Es ist ein langer Tag, und ich habe noch einiges zu erledigen. Wenn ich fertig bin rufe ich zurück... Okay...... Auf Wiederhören." Tristan switched off the cell phone and placed it back on the desk. Madison had been practically clinging to him the moment she had come to NERV and Tristan couldn't help but to think of her as a little sister.
However, Tristan could understand why the girl had become so attached to him. Having lived with her parents for so long and not having to live separately like the rest of the pilots selected by the Marduk Committee, she was having a hard time dealing with the loneliness. Especially considering just how traumatizing it would be, going about your daily life and then suddenly finding yourself on foreign shores. The fact that the military was responsible for patrolling the shores for any other survivors of the disaster didn't help, especially since many of the troops only were capable of German and perhaps their homeland tongue. People had been frightened and some had to be taken into custody harshly. Several others unfortunately died, not be drowning but simply because they had been on life support or some kind of special medication and this 'rebirth' as it was coined, did not spare them from illness. It left the sense of life to be bitter sweet.
Tristan closed his eyes and tried to remember his experiences with rebirth, even a smidge of the dream-like sensations that everyone else had claimed they had experienced in the interim between their two lives. Everyone was blessed with something, positive or negative when they recalled those times, but Tristan could recall none. He simply woke up in the hospital connected to a milieu of instruments. The medical staff had been carefully to dodge his questions with the only real answer being that some soldiers patrolling the coast may have been too rough when he lost his cool when they found him. With no memory of the even, Tristan could only assume it was true. But it still bothered him that out the many people he simply had no memory of Third Impact.
Defeated and not interested in pressing himself any further, Tristan sat down at the desk and powered up the laptop. The information in the interrogation was going to be useful, but he felt it was necessary to make an official report about divulging some information on the NEC and UNIT. Particularly, he need to ensure that they were aware that she knew about NERV's new place in the world and the fact that he had left several details out of the nature of UNIT. Besides, what she knew wouldn't hurt her. At this point at least.
As soon as Tristan started typing about Asuka, he had difficulty. Stopping mid-sentence, Tristan tightening his hand into a fist and frowned at the screen. He still felt angry at Asuka, not so much about the fact that she was trying to mess with him when he was trying to tell her something important, the old wounds she had made before she left. Asuka had hoped that he would probably bleed to death like a stuck pig. A wry smile played across the young captain's face as he recalled the look of horror on Asuka's face during the interrogation. She had never expected to meet him and neither did he.
Tristan had fervently hoped that the fact that there was no information coming to them from Japan meant that they didn't have any good new to tell them. That Asuka Langely Sohryu had been killed in action or perhaps drowned somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. At least out at sea there would never find that garbage for a long time.
It was then that the captain realized that he was referring to the girl as garbage. He had used it before in his outbursts, but today was probably the first time he had actually let what he thought about her come to the surface. His psychiatrist had always said that bottled up emotions simply made things more difficult, but for Tristan, venting his frustration for the redhead didn't seem to put him at ease at all. In fact, it almost made him guilty. That though caused a dry chuckle to escape Tristan's lips, there was no reason he should feel guilty at all when he was the victim.
Returning to the keyboard, Tristan continued to write his report, trying his best to avoid going on unnecessary tangents about how much he dislike Asuka. In the back of his mind, Tristan wondered if anyone would begin wondering as to why he seemed to be forming this silent conversation with himself. But then, who would care? It seemed as though his entire generation was made up of lunatics with him included. But then, before Second Impact there could have been considered multitudes of people who were lunatics. Just about every person in power had seemed to have no grip on reality either because they were too stupid or rather they were too vain. Tristan was sure that vanity played a large part in why Commander Ikari had failed to ensure that Third Impact never happened. But then, the Committee had reported that Commander Ikari had turned his back to humanity and sought his own twisted ambitions with the use of the Evangelions.
Fear drives people to do very drastic things, and so when Tristan had heard that the German branch's commander had agreed to allow the MAGI to be used in order to try and capture the Japan branch, it seemed all right. However, when it failed, the United Nations immediately called for the flooding of the facility, fearing those who also believed in Ikari's madness. Cryostatic fluid was the best substance to be used for the process, solidifying so that not even the power of an Evangelion's progressive knife could cut through, it was the final failsafe to ensure that Third Impact never happened. The commander was probably kicking himself now at the relocated headquarters. Even with two months of hard work, the excavators weren't even close to penetrating the core, let alone the deeper facilities where the cages lay. It was fortunate that the German branch wasn't storing an Evangelion down there or else even more complications would have occurred.
Tristan stared at the blinking cursor. The report had only managed to become a note of what he did. Even then it didn't look professional at all. At first, the captain didn't believe it had been his writing, but it was. He was thinking much too hard about too many different things. At this rate there was no way he was going to get any work done. With a grunt, Tristan got out of his chair and left his quarters. Leaving the computer to idle for several minutes, before dropping into standby mode.
Shinji slowly opened his eyes and stared at the blank white ceiling above his head. He gave an all knowing sigh, the certainty that he was in a place that he didn't know about again. Waking up in a bed that was not his own. It seemed so normal for him, but that was what bothered him. Whereas other people probably knew where they were every day, Shinji just couldn't seem to find that kind of stability.
Shinji had gotten tired of the whole hero bit a long time ago, he had been reluctant to accept it and learned that it was an error to accept in the first place with the battle with the Twelfth Angel. Shinji couldn't even remember how he survived in that death trap, but he had learned that actually being strong had led to his destruction. It always seemed safer to dwell in mediocrity, but that was an option he no longer had as soon as he allowed himself to become the pilot of Unit 01.
Chivalry was dead and Shinji had never gotten the bulletin. He had believed he was doing the right thing by piloting in the stead of Rei when she was still injured. He never knew why she had been so badly hurt in the first place, but it had been clear that she was the only option NERV and Tokyo-3 had left should he had refused. But that simply begged the question. If he had not piloted Unit-01 and defeated the Third Angel, wouldn't it have just led to Third Impact a lot sooner. Of course it would, but the result would be the same. That he was the one responsible for causing it. Because he was weak.
The boy wanted to move, but his body ached, straining he lifted an arm from out of the sheets and looked at the bruises up and down his arms and on his wrists. Shinji examined them for a long time at first, puzzled as to their nature, it soon dawned on him however and he left his arm fall and tried to not look at it anymore.
Asuka had thought he had raped her at some point and got her pregnant. Clearly Doctor Powell believed that she was pregnant and that was what got her so upset back in the village. And now she believed that he was the father of the child. It made perfect sense that she hated him so much if that was the truth. But it wasn't, he didn't touch in anyway that was sexual. The only thing that had ever happened was when he accidentally revealed her from under the covers. God, he felt horrible for doing that. Maybe she deserved to kill him for doing something that screwed up.
If he had strangled Asuka on the beach she would never have found out what happened and had accused him. But then he would have killed two people and he would never be able to get that off of his conscience. Furthermore, he would have probably just gone insane, being alone on the blasted rock that was now Japan.
It seemed that everywhere the boy had turned, he had found only confrontation, even his dreams were filled with images of Kowaru turning on him and trying to kill him. It was as if his mind was trying to tell him that even though Shinji was fooled into believing the boy was human, he was indeed an Angel and therefore had the basic agenda of killing the Evangelion pilots.
Shinji felt tired, depressed, angry, and frustrated. He recalled that he wanted to come back to try and find happiness but now he was beginning to regret it. He faced constant trials, all of which simply brought him more pain and every bit of joy was lost. He once reprimanded himself for simply consuming and regurgitating the same lines of praise and happy memories over and over again. But now it seemed as though this method of sustaining himself was the only viable option left.
Shinji closed his eyes again and lapsed into unconsciousness. He would rather take his chances with Kowaru now than anything else.
To Be Continued...
Author's Notes
Another short chapter unfortunately, it may seem frustrating that my chapters are starting to become thin, but I don't want to reiterate the same ideas in the previous chapters and I want to ensure that the changes and additions to the story happen rather gradually.
I apologize for the delays in the posting of this chapter, but I have just moved into university and it has taken me a little time to adjust. Hopefully I can get back onto the ball soon.
I would also like to introduce to you Steve VADER, formerly a mild-mannered Austrian reviewer of the fiction, after providing some good points, I have decided to make him the official translator of the German passages in this story. Welcome aboard Steve, I appreciate the help.