Note: In the interest of simplicity for my gaijin self, I'll be using the Westernized method of names from now on (surname last). Soon as I can, I'll go back and edit the first chapter for consistency.
Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki enlisted Misato's help to lay out the comatose Commander on his command desk.
"I'm no medical doctor, but I don't think that a trip to Infirmiary would help him now, even if it weren't likely doused in LCL or buried in an avalanche of bakelite. What grips him is in his soul, not his body chemistry. I admit, I'm surprised he willed himself back out of Instrumentality," Kouzou Futsuyuki said, and murmured a bit lower, "I admit, I'm surprised I found the will myself."
Misato busied herself with tucking Commander Ikari into some blankets Shigeru had retrieved from a survival kit stashed in the command center.
"Instrumentality. That was the aim of NERV all along? To dissolve the AT Fields between everyone and turn them into a collective?" She asked.
"Our aim, and that of SEELE." Fuyutsuki replied with a nod.
"Why? It know it's such a simple question, but... well, even experiencing Instrumentality made me realize so much of what Kaji meant, but... Why would you and Commander Ikari plan such a thing? And why would Seele? Why wasn't it enough to fight off the Angels?"
"All my years on this planet have not given me the wisdom to read the human heart and mind, Major Katsuragi," Fuyutsuki said with a sad smile, "But I suppose I can make some extrapolations. When I first met Commander Ikari, when he was a student at University, I found him a somewhat shy man, but one with a lurking hunger for power and knowledge coupled with a reckless disregard for the thoughts, opinions, and well-being of others. I thought he was only pursuing my favorite student to use her for more power. In some ways, I was right about Gendo Roppongi. In other ways, I was very wrong. For all his trouble with his son, the two were very much alike. It wasn't that he disregarded the feelings of others, it's that he let them eat at him too much."
"WHAT? Commander Ikari was- IS a brilliant man, but he's an ass... I mean, uh..."
"No need to apologize, Major. He never did much to make anyone think different. And considering how he used... everyone, it would be hard for anyone not close to him to see his human heart. But like his son, he hated to be hurt, he hated to have people disapproving of him. To see thier glares or hear thier accusations seared him to the bottom of his soul. Yui could comfort him after long days of negociations and conferences with SEELE, but when she died, something snapped. He's pushed everyone else away, that's how he avoided it all, you know. He pushed everyone away, and focused on finding the one person he felt loved him unconditionally, the one person he could count on, his wife. Shinji shut himself off from the world, and Gendo rose above it. To regain Yui from a world that had forsaken him was all he needed."
"And so he pushed everyone away? Even his own son?"
"Yes, his own son, who always looked to him for comfort, comfort he could not give, because he himself was made of glass. He believed he could only hurt Shinji. So he pushed him away."
"Do I just seek out men like my father, even in my professional life?"
"What was that, Major?"
"Nothing, Subcommander!"
"Hm. Of course."
Maya Ibuki stared at the computer screen as she hunched in the bowls of caspar.
"Doctor Akagi... what should I do? I don't know... everything's so cold here, and I can't see what to do! Why couldn't I stay with you? I felt your arms around me, and it was wonderful! But now here I am, and everything's cold, and I don't know how to go on... I saw terrible things on the screen. How can we be sure we even want to go to the surface? Mentor... Help me... I can't do this without you..."
Maya dropped her head, and began to weep.
"Maya? How are you doing?" Misato crawled into the innards of the MAGI, "Do you think we have any chance of getting life support back? If we can get the map system up too, we might be able to find the best way back to the surface."
Maya didn't answer, but stayed hunched over.
"Maya, what's wrong?" Ritsuko now noticed the young lieutenant's distress.
"Major... do you think Doctor Akagi... got out?" Maya looked up at Misato with a tear-stained face as she crawled nearer.
"I don't know, Maya, but... well, why not? She has a lot to live for, don't you think? She knows her friends are waiting for her!" Yes. That's right, Misato, keep her hopes up. She'll realize Ritsuko was so depressed and unhinged that she could never have found the willpower to find herself again later, after all this is over...ugh.
"But she's not here! Why wouldn't she be here? Everyone else reappeared here, but she..." Maya trailed off. Misato sat down next to her and put an arm around her shoulder.
"Well, we don't know how everyone returning from Instrumentality worked, really. I wasn't in the command center, but here I am! So maybe she just appeared somewhere else. Don't give up hope, Maya! Be... Besides, even if she didn't come back, she'd want us to live on and do well, right? We have to take care of her mother for her!"
"Y... Yes, I suppose so, Major, but it's just so hard..."
"Please, Maya, call me Misato. There's hardly enough of NERV left for us to stand on rank, right?"
But... After what she did, what she told me... She'll never make it out. But others might... What about you, Kaji? Did you find a way back? Where did you go? Oh, Kaji, am I just being a foolish little love-sick girl to hope like this?
Misato tried to push her raging feelings aside. They'd need MAGI if they hoped to make it back to the surface alive. She huddled over the diagnostic module with Maya, trying to understand the innards of Rit-chan's mother.
"Well, it's a good thing the Bakelite didn't reach the Cafeteria," Shigeru said, pushing open the door
"Yeah, but if I have to pass one more pile of empty clothes, I'm gonna be sick." Said Makoto, stepping gingerly around the piles, devoid of blood but still all the more gruesome, knowing what had happened.
"Why do you think they didn't come back, anyway?"
"Who knows? Maybe they did and they all came back up on the surface. Instrumentality was crazy... Woah!" Shigeru pushed open the door of the Mess Hall and took a step back.
"It looks like... well, like the Third Impact swept through here," Shigeru murmured. Indeed, the Cafeteria looked even more chaos-touched than even the command center or the hallways they'd come down. Tables and chairs had been overturned. Some appeared to have been smashed into walls so hard they'd left dents and cracks, and course, ones so flung had shattered into pieces across the floor.
"This couldn't have just been from the JSSDF attack." Makoto said grimly.
"Yeah, this is crazy. Something else is going on," Shigeru's mouth was set in a grim line, and his hand went to the pistol at his belt.
"Well, let's check the pantry. If someone - or something - was in here, maybe they didn't take all the food."
They made thier way to the back of the devestated mess hall.
"The Door's ajar," Shigeru said, grabbing his sidearm out of the holster and tapping at the door. Makoto followed with his out sidearm. A rather despondent look came to both lieutenants' faces as they observed the scene of the Pantry and Kitchen. Whatever had wreaked havoc on the eating area hadn't stopped there. Pots and pans and food had been flung about every which way. Sacks of rice and flour had been drug out of pantries and flung every which way. The freezer stood ajar, and frozen chunks of beef, chicken, and fish had been dragged out, and now they lay strewn on the floor, half eaten, ravaged by savage tooth-marks.
"Look," Makoto said, holding up a can of beans.
Shigeru looked at it and blanched just a bit. The can had been ripped open. No can opener, someone had simply torn it apart either by feat of strength or claws, and sloppily scooped the contents out.
"So, we got something loose in NERV Headquarters, huh? I thought we were done with monsters after the seventeenth," Shigeru murmured.
"No doubt about it, something's down here. Maybe it's not hungry anymore at least, huh?" Makoto laughed nervously. As he continued to rifle through the supplies.
"Well, we knew we wouldn't be able to take a lot anyway since the elevators are out, huh?" Shigeru said, looking over thier haul.
"Whatever these things are, they were hungry. Whatever they didn't eat, they ruined. I hope this lasts us until we can break free."
"Not like we would have been able to haul too much around, with the elevators broken. We may not be able to carry most of this as it is."
One bag of rice (Makoto had found an unbroken hotplate that might work to prepare it), 3 cans of beans, 10 1-pound bags of beef jerky, a box of dark chocolate bars, a bag of apples, and a box of soy sauce packets. This was what had survived from the pantry of the Mess Hall, and it now lay before them on one of the few intact tables in the dining area.
"I've found one drum of water that wasn't either tainted with LCL, or ripped open by the attackers," Makoto said, rolling the large barrel next the table where they'd laid out thier food stash.
"Alright, Then we'll get these back to the command center and start trying to coax something out of MAGI."
Shigeru and Makoto began gathering the supplies into bundles. It took a bit, but using some tablescloths and twine, they managed to get them into bundles they could carry down the halls and stairways to the command center.
"Alright, That's not bad. We have the water in bottles instead of that barrel, and these hand dollys should let us get them to the command center easily enough, and we can divide the food among ourselves for the trip up."
"We'll still have to carry it all down the stairs between here and there, Shigeru."
"Hey, don't look at me like that, Makoto. I kept inviting you down to the exercise room!"
"Heh. Yeah. But did you really do that much weightlifting down there? I hear a lot of the young women scientists were down there alot..."
"Hey, hey, hey, This job barely allows us any time to date, so I feel no shame at taking what I can get! Now, I understand why that wouldn't appeal to you, after all, Major Katsuragi never went down there..."
If Makoto had a witty comeback for that, it was cut short by the sound of clanging pots and pans coming from behind the counter. Shigeru and Makoto immediately drew thier sidearms.
"They... must be back..." he said instead.
The two men crept toward the kitchen area again. Shigeru toed the door open, slowly, cautiously, then leapt through, sweeping the area with his weapon. Makoto followed after, creeping toward the freezer area...
"Nothing but the meats and vegetables," he reported.
"Nothing over here either," said Shigeru, after a quick creep down the length of the kitchen.
"I guess something much have been perched pretty badly. Probably crashed down when I thumped down the water barrel, right?"
"Yeah... right..."
"Let's go. Maybe Maya and Misato have gotten some of Magi running.
"See, Maya? I think if we..." Misato was pointing out something on the diagnostic screen as the 2 women huddled in the innards of caspar, when the whole computer started to shake...
"What the..." Misato steadied herself, and began to crawl as quickly as she could out of the machine.
"Oh Dear..." She heard Fuyutsuki's voice. She looked up to see the old man gazing at something just above her. Standing up and turning around, she looked toward the top of caspar, to what he was gazing up with wide, disbelieving eyes.
Something was crouched on top of Caspar. It looked vague human in shape, with long spindly arms and legs. It's skin was black as obsidian, shot through with red and purple veins, head topped by purple hair that ran down the back. the breasts suggested it was female. Strangely enough it also wore a white lab coat, and it's features looked so much like a human female's that Misato felt bile rise in her throat. The thing was tearing into Caspars innards with long sharp claws.
"Major, what was tha..." Maya's head peeked up above Caspar as well. Seeing Misato's dumbfounded gaze, she too looked... and screamed!
The thing raised it's head and looked at Maya... then up to wear Futsuyuki stood. It crouched back, and then with loping strides, it ran across the top of caspar and leapt onto the command deck with a horrid wail!
"What is... what is..." Lieutenant Ibuki clutched her head in horror. Misato drew her pistol.
"Damn!" she murmured. There was no way she could fire without risking hitting the subcommander - or the commander, who lay comatose behind him on a cot Maya had said Ritsuko stashed near MAGI in case of an all-nighter.
The creature snarled at the subcommander... and then, with a sweeping blow, pushed, or rather flung Fuyutsuki off to the side! The old man skidded across the floor on his back, and an audible clang was heard as he hit the railing.
"Damn it, where did this come from?" hissed Misato, as she ran to the steps back up to the main control booth. The purple-haired creature now advanced slowly, almost hesitantly, toward the cot that Gendo Ikari lay on. It raised a clawed hand, and screeched in a tone that sounded unmistakably Angry.
"Major, we managed to find some food, but we may have more problems than we thought - woah!" Makoto Hyuga appeared in the doorway. Shigeru Aoba appeared beside him and spit out an colorful stream of words before raising his firearm and firing once, twice. The bullets sped toward the creature... and the creature roared as the bullets dug into it's side!
And yet, it did not fall. Indeed, it looked none the worse for the wear. it turned around and turned a baleful eye on the two lieutenants in the doorway. Misato raised her gun to fire again, praying she wouldn't hit the commander, when another screech sounded behind her! Misato turned to see another one of the creatures! This one also wore a lab coat, and had short blonde hair... and was that a pink earring?
"S... Sen... p..." Maya began to murmur from below, where she still stood frozen in fear.
The blonde creature screamed again, and launched herself at the purple-haired one. Misato drew in a sharp breath as the two fell into each other's embrace and began rolling across the floor locked in combat, heading toward Commander Ikari's cot... but then the two passed THROUGH the cot and into the wall behind! Ikari Gendo murmured uneasily in his sleep, but otherwise, stayed undisturbed. The screams of anger and pain from the two creatures sounded loudly, then faded as the battle seemed to be led further and further away from the command center. Everyone stayed still as if paralyzed until a last scream echoed through the hallways.
Misato ran to see to Fuyutsuki as Maya began to stammer, "M... Major... Major... Misato... the second one... it looked like... like..."
Maya could not bring herself to say what, but Misato had a sinking feeling she knew what Maya wanted to say, and she could not disagree.
END CHAPTER 2
Note: Next chapter: The four children.