Disclaimer: Same as Chapter 1.
Chapter 4: Ezikiel
It was a few minutes before the light of Unit-00's explosion eventually faded.
It took a minute after that for someone to speak.
"Target...destroyed," Hyuga broke the silence, as gently as he could.
Where Tokyo-3 had been just moments before, there was practically nothing now, merely a smoking crater in the ground and a few building that were fortunate enough to have been built beyond the blast's circumference.
Maya said something about there being 'no sign of Unit-00,' but she was barely intelligible through her sobbing.
Misato merely stood with her hands clenched into fists, staring at the screen, as though what she had seen would go away if she concentrated hard enough. "...Recover Units 01 and 02. And send out a rescue team."
"...If there's anything left to rescue."
Misato turned angrily to the voice's source, but Ritsuko looked the other way, not quite cruel enough to meet her friend's eye.
A half hour later, Misato's footsteps echoed through the hallway to find her ward sitting in the fetal position on a bench near the exit to the parking garage, with Kaworu leaning on the wall next to him. Neither one spoke, although Kaworu's silence seemed to be one more of boredom than respect.
"...Shinji. I'll drop you off at the house, but I have to come back later, OK?"
When the boy didn't answer, Misato leaned down to make eye contact. She could plainly see, from this angle, the dead, far-off look in his eyes. She quietly pitied him, but knew that he didn't want to talk about what he had just seen. "Shinji?... Let's go home, all right?"
He didn't say a word, just picked himself up and made to follow his guardian out the door. Kaworu watched his fellow pilot with a nonplussed expression on his face. He didn't understand why the boy was acting this way, but his instincts told him that saying something comforting would help.
"You know Shinji..." the subject of his attention stopped, but didn't turn around; the Major turned her head curiously.
"If you're acting this way about the First... you shouldn't be. What she did was rash and foolish. She deserved to di--"
He wasn't sure if what silenced him was the sudden, furious glare as Shinji turned around, or the right hook that followed right behind it. But Kaworu found himself upon the ground, blood dribbling out of his mouth and nose. Shinji made to strike again, and he nearly did, but Misato managed to stop his arm. He struggled furiously against her, staring at Kaworu with a look of pure hatred.
"SAY THAT AGAIN! SAY IT AGAIN, YOU SON OF A BITCH!"
"Shinji, STOP! This won't do you any good..."
"DON'T YOU EVER TALK ABOUT HER LIKE YOU KNEW HER OR EVEN UNDERSTOOD HER! WHAT THE HELL DO YOU EVEN KNOW! DOES WHAT SHE DID MEAN NOTHING TO YOU!"
"Shinji, calm down! It's too late!"
"CALM DOWN! WITH THIS BASTARD JUST ACTING LIKE LIKE NOTHING HAPPENED?"
Kaworu didn't say a word, he simply sat where he had fallen, staring bewildered at Shinji's completely unexpected reaction. He'd merely been stating the facts... Misato had never had a problem getting Shinji to simply do what he was told, but she was having trouble maintaining her grip on him. "Shinji..."
"--'SHE DESERVED IT?' YOU WERE RIGHT THERE AND YOU DIDN'T EVEN BOTHER TO HELP HER! IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN YOU-- IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN YOU! NOT HER!"
"Shinji, stop!... There's nothing you can do-- Sh-she's gone..."
"...It should have...been you... goddamnit..." but the rage in Shinji's eyes had burned out, quenched by the brutal weight of the truth. For a moment, he simply looked blank (almost eerily like Rei), staring past Kaworu at a point only he could see, then he fainted into Misato's arms.
"...Shinji!" Misato set him down, checking his breathing and pulse.
Kaworu stood up, staring at his assailant without any sense of anger or desire for retaliation-- just his unnerving curiousity. "Is he dead?" he asked seriously.
Misato looked at the Fifth oddly, wondering if he was serious or not. "...Of course not. He's just exausted." She managed to pick him up and carry him with an arm slung over her shoulder. She slowly made her way towards the door.
"...Do you need help?"
"No, but... thank you. He'll be fine with a little sleep." Somehow she doubted that possibility, but hope springs eternal.
Kaworu watched the pair leave even after the automatic doors shut behind them. He suddenly became aware of the blood on his face, and wiped it off on his arm. He looked at it oddly, then at where Shinji had been moments earlier.
"...Quite unpredictable, those humans are."
Deep within Terminal Dogma, Gendo Ikari stared at a tube in the center of a circular room with Kozou Fuyutsuki by his side. For a while neither man spoke. Finally the older man broke the silence.
"Yui...she must hate the both of us for all this."
Gendo didn't turn around, but Fuyutsuki knew he was listening. "My sins were all for the sake of something greater-- for both myself and for her. Surely you understand that."
"Oh, don't get me wrong, Gendo. It's just...that girl... should we have made her suffer as much as she did? Was it truly worth it in the end?"
The Commander of NERV turned to look his companion in the eye, but only enough that one side of his face could be seen.
"'In the end?' Nothing ends, Fuyutsuki. Nothing ever ends."
Gendo walked out, straight past his only companion as he said, "Prepare another shell. The memory banks weren't updated before Rei's last battle, so the rest will just need to be filled in manually."
Fuyutsuki nodded, but continued to watch his former student with a look of contempt mixed with pity.
I suppose...it was impossible for you to forget.
During the drive back to the apartment, Shinji had woken up, looking groggy but remaining quiet. The remainder of the evening was spent in silence. After a few hours the boy got up from the couch in the TV room and headed to his room.
"...I'm going to bed, Misato."
She jumped at his sudden words, then turned her left palm face up to look at her watch.
"Shinji, it's only seven. Aren't you hungry?..."
He only shook his head in response, not even bothering to look back at her. Without another word, he walked around the corner, and a few seconds later the sound of a sliding door being shut echoed in the apartment. Misato knew that she needed to get back to headquarters, but for a few moments, she lingered outside of Shinji's door. She raised her hand as if to knock, but something held her back before she could make impact with the flimsy wooden door. She wanted to say something-- some words of comfort, tell him not to worry, that everything would be all right-- but the image of Kaji haunted her, taking away what little courage she had. She chuckled grimly to herself.
"What can I say to him?...After all, I'm grieving over someone, too." The Major turned on her heel and slowly walked out of the apartment.
From behind the doorway in his room, Shinji watched Misato's shadow disappear, and he knew that he was alone.
A few hours earlier, Ritsuko and the salvage/rescue team were carefully combing the area surrounding what now remained of the city. The doctor wasn't a heartless woman, but she considered the whole thing a fool's errand. The explosion had been so powerful that it had broken through part of the coastline, and the ocean was rapidly filling in the gap of land. It even seemed that Unit-00 had been completely evaporated, just from the lack of any parts whatsoever.
Following procedure for something like this is just superfluous... everyone knows we won't find anything anyway...
"Doctor!"
One of the workers interrupted her thoughts as he ran to her from his position on the crater's edge. "We've found the Entry Plug!"
She followed the man to a location just beyond the crater, where trees had been split in half, broken, or had even been upturned by the impact of the Eva's replacable cockpit. A team of techs were busy cutting through the Plug's thick layers of reinforced metal. A loud clang announced the completion of their task. What followed next was silence as everyone stopped what they were doing abruptly. One of the techs found the presence of mind to speak.
"Dr. Akagi..."
Ritsuko walked up to the newly-cut hole in the Plug, and looked inside. She went completely still, just as the workers before her had at the sight. She then leaned forward, her torso obscured by the darkness inside the Entry Plug. A few moments later, she came out and stood up, her face blank with shock. It took nearly a minute for her brain to start working again. "...Get me through to Commander Ikari."
In his dark office, Gendo sat silently with Fuyutsuki nearby when the phone rang. He picked it up silently. "Yes."
"Commander Ikari, Dr. Ritsuko Akagi is on the line."
"Put her through." He waited a few moments and the doctor was patched through the NERV operator's switchboard. He could tell from the tone in her voice that whatever she had found had greatly agitated her.
"Commander Ikari, I'm calling regarding Unit-00's pilot."
"Do not report in over something that is of no concern. A spare has been prepared and is waiting on activation."
"But sir...there's no need for that--"
"...What are you saying, Akagi?" There were a few moments' pause as Ritsuko explained what the recovery team had discovered in the remnants of the Entry Plug.
"...What?..." The Commander's sudden outburst made Fuyutsuki do a double take; Ikari was not a man to be surprised by anything short of the apocalypse. Gendo took a few seconds to absorb what he had just heard, then swallowed and spoke in his steady baritone once again. "Are you absolutely certain about this?"
"Yes, I've checked four times and she's definitely--"
"Do what needs to be done, then. And do it quickly. I'd like this taken care of before Major Katsuragi arrives, so as to avoid...uncomfortable questions. This is to be classified top secret for the time being."
"Understood, Commander," Ritsuko assented as she clicked off the phone. A member of the salvage squad came up to her a moment later while two others were busy lowering something onto a stretcher.
"Dr. Akagi, extraction complete. I've hailed a VTOL-- it should be here in a few minutes."
"Good work," Ritsuko said as she walked up to the stretcher.
There lay the unconcious, yet still barely alive, body of Rei Ayanami.
A/N: DUN...DUN...DUHNNN! Another cliffhanger! From now on, this story's going to be breaking away from the established storyline. Some things will change, others will stay the same... Thanks to everyone who's reviewed the story so far! As I've said before, support of any kind can only help!
BTW... Gendo's line to Fuyutsuki, about 'nothing ends' is "borrowed" from 'Watchmen,' one of my favorite graphic novels. If you happened to recognize it, kudos.