Neon Genesis Evangelion
A Thousand Years of Secrecy
Disclaimer: I own neither Evangelion nor Altered Carbon (or any other book in the Takeshi Kovachs series). If either Gainax or Mr. Morgan have an issue with any of the content presented, please contact me by e-mail to remove it.
Four – Spread / Precious
"God said 'Let there be light' and there was light. He who can do the same must surely walk amongst Gods."
Kaji pressed the barrel of the Nemex into the man's ear, holding his head steady against the wall. He used English because it sounded nastier and he didn't know the agent's language proficiency.
"You're going to answer each of my questions and every time I don't like or believe your answers I will pull this trigger. Got it?"
He nodded as best he could with his face pressed against the brick.
"Are you bugged?"
He shook his head as Misato began to pat him down. "No one's listening, if that's what you mean..."
"Are they watching?" Kaji tilted his head upwards towards the sky above them slightly. Through the brick-lined and fire escape spangled chasm that was the back alley and into a streak of midday blue.
"Don't know."
"Who do you work for?"
The man did not say anything. He held his gaze aimed at the trash-lined sides of the street. Two men walked by the edge of the alley, paused, looked at the three of them and kept walking. Nothing out of the ordinary here. Just another day in San Francisco to them. Just another unlucky guy getting mugged by a prostitute and her gun-toting employer.
"I don't like to repeat myself..." Kaji's tone was not impatient. He sounded, in fact, as if he had more than enough time for anything at the moment. The Nemex said otherwise.
The man laughed hoarsely. "I was tailing you. Doing a damn fine job too. Do you really think I can answer that question?"
Kaji smiled a little behind the grizzle of his jaws though his eyes did not. Misato stood off to his side, arms crossed now that she'd finished the patting down.
"How long before they know something's wrong?"
The man's eyes twisted so that he was looking at Kaji sidelong, though the strain of his expression revealed nothing. He caved a little.
"Five minutes, maybe less. After that the RFID chip will ping unusual location. Another ten and it will ping immobile agent. Ten after that and someone will be here looking for me."
Kaji nodded at the cooperation. A car alarm blared out a symphony of upset somewhere down the street from them.
"Where is it?"
The man grinned at this. An odd expression when half your face is held immobile against graffiti.
"They don't tell me. Somewhere in the fabric of the clothes. Maybe in the sole of my shoe."
Misato spoke now. "And if we strip you someone find's a pile of agent's clothes in the alley in twenty minutes."
The man shrugged underneath Kaji's grip, or did his best despite being held still. "Hey, maybe I went skinny-dipping? Who knows."
Kaji found himself grudgingly appreciating the man's sense of humor—a man whose head he had a gun pressed against. It would be unfortunate if he had to kill him. The conditioning willed the good humor away. It told him to get nasty.
"So do they train fuck-ups at the CIA or was that just part of your resume?"
The man shifted uncomfortably, an odd gesture for how un-offended he appeared.
"Come on. You're an Envoy. What do you think?"
Misato blinked without really showing the surprise they both felt. Kaji filed that away somewhere. Whoever he was, he knew that much at least. Which meant "they" knew even more.
"I think you were practically waving a flag in that coffee shop for us to lead you into this alley and put a gun against your head," he said quietly.
"Bingo." He snapped his finger then winced. "She patted me down and I'm unarmed. Plus it's not like either of you would need a gun to kick my ass so can we please take that thing out of my ear."
Kaji withdrew the gun and kept it pointed at him casually from the waist. Somewhere in his mind the conditioning was keeping the barrel trained on the man's right hand. Another "just in case" that had been programmed in for just such occasions.
"You can call me Griff," he said, dusting himself off. "And the reason I'm here, as I'm sure you've already guessed, is to get in touch with your superior, Commander Fuyutsuki."
Misato snorted. He looked up at her, exaggerating his disappointment with a pained brow. "What—were you looking for his cell number or should we just take you to the secret underground bunker right now?" she said dryly.
"Surely you didn't think my people send agents into the field for the express purpose of getting caught unless there's something to be gained from it?" he retorted.
"There are all kinds of spying..." Kaji said softly. "Especially the friendly kind."
"Spoken like a true Envoy. But let's cut the bullshit for a moment..."
"Let's," Misato agreed.
"First I will tell you what we both already know. NERV is in a very tenuous position here in the US. They are the only military organization on American soil not under the direct control of the government and that makes the people at the top very nervous. And very nosy. You get away with it because you provide Envoy training to the cream of our crop as 'rent' and in return we let you have Alcatraz and the facility you built under the ocean floor of the bay as long as we can keep a close eye on everything you do and a couple satellites over your heads."
Misato made a little speed-it-up gesture.
"What you may or may not know is that there are forces at play in our government that are seeking to crush you outright. They aren't just nervous, they are running scared and this shit with Tokyo-3 has stirred up the hive. They want you out. Like now."
Kaji nodded.
"And these same people, these are the ones that my taskforce is charged with watching very, very carefully."
This got the Envoys' attention.
"Task force?" Kaji said.
"We're very... unofficial. My superiors have friends high up in the chain of command with the Second Branch. We hear the rumors no one else wants to hear. We hear about the apocalypse and all the other crazy shit that's always swirling around your organization. But what scares my bosses the most, what really makes their hair stand on end, is what we hear about the US being compromised."
"They're brighter than we thought," Misato said aside in casual Japanese.
"You know then?" Griff affirmed. "You know about the people in the CIA, the NSA, and everywhere else that seem to have some sort of agenda with someone or something in Germany."
They nodded at him.
"Then you also know this is quite possibly the largest scale infiltration of our government in history by an outside party, possibly all the way up to the executive branch and beyond. Even the Groom Lake Facility."
Kaji stared down the man somberly. Supposedly Groom Lake, more popularly known as Area 51, held the US's testing grounds and R&D for everything from military spacecraft to nanotechnology. There were rumors along the NERV grapevine that the research there contained technology centuries beyond today's—stuff that might even rival the Plugsuits or the MAGI. If SEELE had their hands in that, things were going to get a whole lot more nasty than just N2 Mines.
"So if your boss is friends with the Second Branch, why doesn't he arrange a meeting through them? Or let me put it this way. Since we have no way of knowing for whom you work, why shouldn't I kill you right now," Kaji said quietly. His eyes meant it. And Griff could tell. He knew what the word 'Envoy' meant. These were the people that could bluff their way through anything and everything because their regimen had no predictability. An Envoy had no "routine." There were no guarantees, no behaviors, no rules of engagement with an Envoy.
"Meeting through the Second Branch is now far too dangerous to attempt." Griff watched them both carefully as he spoke. "You see, we also have reason to believe that the Second Branch has been compromised by this... infection."
He stared into the empty aluminum can as the sun's fading light cast orange and black lines across his face through their slatted shutters. Their kitchen was small, the dining room adjoined to give just enough space for someone cooking and someone cleaning the dishes. All in all it was a somewhat intimate apartment, but Misato had chosen it for that. As much as she wanted to be inconspicuous, she also wanted to encourage their living together—something he suspected she had been instructed to do by Fuyutsuki.
Asuka watched him closely from behind cupped hands on chin as she sat at the dining table. Rei was absorbed in yet another novel, sitting adjacent to Asuka. She'd been trying to coax something out of him about today ever since lunchtime and their trip to the principal's office.
Even with he and Touji relatively unhurt, it hadn't stopped the buzz of the school from reaching the principal's ears. He'd sounded unconvinced even after Touji and Shinji had both attested it was simply some friendly sparring for Shinji's acceptance into the Martial Arts team at school—all of the yelling had made him suspicious apparently, though neither of them was suspended. Yet.
Asuka tried another approach for the nth time since they'd been home. "We aren't supposed to hold that sort of stuff in, Shinji. You know that. It messes up our conditioning. And talking is a good way to start."
She sounded sympathetic and impatient at the same time. Or maybe that was just the overbearing German accent.
"Maybe with my sensei but, I don't have to talk to you about it..." he said into the can.
This got her. She looked up at him, fury briefly filling her gaze. Her cheeks flushed with anger before she turned away from him completely and stood up.
"Fine. Be an asshole about it."
She stomped over to the couch and flopped down, not bothering to turn on the TV. Instead she stared out into the afternoon sun, streaming through the sliding doors of the balcony. Her arms were crossed tight across her chest.
Shinji felt a little guilty, but not sincerely enough to apologize. Asuka would get over it. If anything, she could attribute it to his embarrassment to today's outburst, not any sort of real malice on his part.
"They did not inform the Fourth Child on purpose."
Shinji and Asuka both turned to look at her. Rei was staring up at him over the edge of her novel, red eyes studying his face. Asuka pretended to look away towards the balcony again but her posture was of someone listening intently.
Shinji put the empty can down on the counter and returned Rei's cool stare. "Why? Why would they do that, Rei?"
"There are a number of options for our assumption. One, because of our official status as refugees, the Second Branch has withheld our true identities for the purpose of further ensuring our cover into the country. This possibility can be ruled out because of an absolute lack of justification on Suzuhara's part to reveal us. Two, because of Suzuhara's sensitivity to the attack in Tokyo-3, they decided that the best course of action for his conditioning would be to conceal our involvement with the First Branch. We can rule out this possibility because it actually led to the brawl that transpired today, something that could have easily been anticipated given our cover story. Which leaves option three: they did not inform Suzuhara for the express purpose of encouraging the confrontation between himself and the Third Child today."
Shinji felt the fist clench again.
"They... wanted this to happen." The steely resolve of his training bounding into him, improvising, calculating. Rei nodded, eyes still locked on. Asuka had given up all pretense of disinterest and now studied Shinji with a measured curiosity. His face burned with concealed anger. The sort of anger Envoys weren't allowed to have, save some exceptional circumstance.
"So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. Make it personal. Do as much damage as you can."
Shinji walked out of the kitchen and into his room, shutting the door halfway. Sounds of drawers sliding and clothes ruffling could be heard from within. Rei, seeming to be satisfied, returned to her book without giving him a second glance.
"Wait! Shinji, what are you doing?" Asuka called out from the other room, now off the couch and staring at his door ill at ease.
"Something Quell would have done, Asuka."
He emerged from his room wearing a brown bomber jacket she'd never seen on him before, complete with the fleece collar. It made him look slightly bulkier than his tight build underneath. His facial expression now revealed none of its previous fury; it had boiled away into total resolve. Asuka stared at him, watching him adjust the Nemex in its shoulder holster underneath the jacket; he rehearsed drawing it from the jacket zipped up halfway a few times, oblivious to the two of them.
"But... Shinji, you can't just... Misato's orders..." she pleaded with him.
He looked up at her and she froze under the stare. It was like ice to her. She almost recoiled at his facial expression. It was as if she was no longer staring at the face of the Shinji she'd met only a few days ago but rather some stranger masquerading in his body. Envoy senses read a stranger's disinterest painted in every muscle, every contortion; the sag of the eyebrows; the downward turns at the corner of the lips; slack muscles in the jaw and cheeks. As if this Shinji had never seen her before.
He turned away from them and began walking out the door. But he stopped at her voice and its almost trembling sound. She struggled to control her tone as she reasoned with him.
"Shinji, don't do this please. It's not worth it."
He didn't turn back around.
"You disobey orders too, Souryu-san."
She flinched at the sound of her last name.
"To save lives, Shinji. Not for revenge. Never for revenge."
He didn't move. He was going to leave; she could see it. The pause in his stride was on the verge of being shattered.
"What did Misato-sensei teach you about revenge?" she asked, at a loss for anything else to placate him with.
"'Never justify the means by its end.'"
He put on his shoes and walked out of the front door. He was gone with a click of its latch.
Asuka's face fell, and she looked to Rei with helplessness inscribed on her features. The silence held for a few moments before, grudgingly, Rei turned away from her book and spoke.
"The problem with Quell," she started, "is that she couldn't follow orders. Without orders, there is only chaos." She echoed Fuyutsuki's pattern of speech eerily. Asuka leered at her a moment, lost, before her stillness was shattered by the front door opening.
"Tadaima."
We're home.
It was Misato's voice.
"Misato!" Asuka practically ran to the door only to be confronted by a very tired looking pair of senseis taking off their shoes. Kaji did not wear his usual grin. Misato seemed somewhat dejected as well. They both noticed her anxious face after a few moments.
"Something wrong, Asuka?" Kaji said.
"Did something happen at school today?" Misato continued.
"You don't know? About Touji and Shinji?"
"Oh yeah." Kaji scratched his head and walked past her around the corner and into the kitchen. "So how did that go?" He did not sound terribly interested.
"There was a fight," Rei said softly, not looking up from the book.
"Oh shit..." Misato grumbled. "So that's why Shinji's going for a walk."
Misato put her arm around Asuka and guided her back to the kitchen table. Asuka found herself numbly complying to the gesture. Kaji chuckled from somewhere in the kitchen, the sounds of him going through his daily ritual of preparing tea tinkling though the apartment.
"That Suzuhara's never going to hear the end of it from his sensei. Fighting Shinji in school... oh man, Fuyutsuki would have really kicked my ass if I'd done something like that under him," he lamented to the tea kettle.
"He's not going for a walk," the redhead said softly from under Misato's arm.
Misato sat down across from her, stretching out in her chair.
"What do you mean? Shinji? He passed us as we got out of the elevator. He said he was getting some fresh air."
"He's going to confront the Second Branch," Asuka mumbled under her breath, staring into the kitchen table.
Kaji's spoon clattered into the sink. The silence held for only a breath.
"What? He what?" Misato's eyes were wide.
"The Fourth Child was misinformed about our identities. This sparked a confrontation. With my help, Shinji deduced the Second Branch intended for this altercation to occur," Rei explained.
Misato turned and looked at her partner. Kaji nodded once.
"Kaji, we can't let... the Second Branch..."
"I know. Asuka." She looked up, her eyes suddenly alive again. "Find him. If you can't convince him to come back, go with him. And if there's any sort of trouble, any at all, call one of us immediately."
"But—" Misato started.
Kaji put a finger to his lips.
"Hai, sensei." Asuka stood and darted into her room. She returned in a tight pair of jeans and the thick gray sweater she'd gotten with Misato downtown yesterday. She swept her hair around gracefully, adjusting the turtleneck's collar.
Misato could only stare after the girl as Asuka bounded out of the apartment with another nod from Kaji.
"Kaji, what if Griff was..."
"For now, that only makes us a target, Misato-chan. The children know how to take care of themselves and Shinji shouldn't try anything too drastic. I'm going to call a friend of mine in the city and get us a plane on standby just in case."
"Is that really the best idea? If what he said is true..."
"We'll put them more at risk if we show up. If Griff knows they will know Griff told us. Right now our primary concern should be securing Touji. And I think Shinji may have already started that process for us."
Rei turned a page in her book in the lazy afternoon sun; an uncomfortable hush fell over the apartment, which she ignored, relishing the silence. Perhaps unlike her fellow senseis, she had total faith in the Third Child.
Shinji stared at the bike, smiling to himself. It was a cherry red monster with a disgusting amount of RPMs and a speed topping out at 267 kilometers per hour; it accelerated like fighter plane off an aircraft carrier. The fuelcells were hot off their Taiwanese presses; it looked like a collaboration between some eccentric mangaka and a German automobile engineer; the thing screamed obscene wealth. It looked fun.
"Kid, you don't even want to know what kind of license you have to have for that bike."
The apparent owner was standing by his side, arms crossed, grinning with the glee of a man who had a distinct taste for mechanical things. He was a bulky man with a thick handlebar mustache and the sort of clothes that looked proper with stains on them. Shinji almost imagined a grease stain across his nose to complete the image but instead there was a dainty pair of spectacles that didn't quite fit with the husky voice.
"Pretty though, ain't it? Some nut in Japan designed it and they just started rolling 'em out of the factories. Most expensive bike I've got in this whole shop..."
Shinji reached out and rubbed the leather of the seat, glancing at the cockpit-like heads-up display.
"Projects your speedometer, revs, and odometer onto the inside of the glass. And the seat conforms to your riding posture by a combination of pressure sensors—handle bars are like that too; it can even slide back for two riders."
"Must get a lot of attention around here," Shinji said, continuing to evaluate its silky curves.
"Like you wouldn't believe. There's no way I'm going to get it off my hands until a real pro comes walking in here but it's great for business. People just stop to look at the damn thing." He laughed to himself, as if remembering one of these occasions or perhaps commenting on the current one.
"How much?"
"A hundred thousand UN Dollars."
Shinji's grave expression seemed to be all the encouragement the owner needed.
"Yeah, well that's what you get for a sport bike's performance in a cruiser's body."
"If I was going to buy this, how long would it take to fill out the paperwork?"
The man squinted at him and adjusted the spectacles over the bridge of his noise, nostrils flaring in an agitated exhalation.
"Son, I don't think you heard me before... you have to be a professional to buy this thing. You need more than just a bike license to drive it. You need the kind of license the GP boys have. Like the ones they get in order to race. You don't just stroll into the DMV for one."
Shinji looked at him, frowning.
"So it would take a long time then?"
"Well, hypothetically speaking, if you had the license and the money I suppose I could have you on your way in about twenty minutes, but..."
"He'll take it."
Shinji turned with surprise equal to the owner's at the German accented English. She stood in the entrance to the shop, arms akimbo on her sides and furiously mesmerizing in the pose she struck—one of total authority. Shinji blinked.
"I said: he'll take it."
"This your little lady?" the owner asked to him, voice growing unfriendly.
Shinji handed the man his wallet, continuing to gawk at her. The owner laughed uncomfortably.
"You— you aren't serious, kid? I mean you don't even look like you're out of high school yet..."
"Run the license, Mr." she said. "His bank card is the black one with the red leaf on it."
The owner whipped a handheld scanner from his belt and ran it over Shinji's license with practiced ease; it beeped at him; he promptly realized that not only was his potential customer licensed to ride the bike in the US, but also everywhere else in the world, along with a combination of aircraft, helicopters, boats, and trucks. He fumbled with it and ran it again. To his bewilderment, the result did not alter. He was shaken free of the shock by Asuka's continual glare at him.
"Uhh, oh. Yes. Right away, ma'am. I'll fill out the paperwork for you two right now," he said sharply, suddenly quite flustered. Before he ducked off to the counter, he whispered an aside to Shinji. "A word of advice my boy: that one's trouble."
"What... are you doing here?"
She laughed broadly and walked over to him, grabbing his arm. She pulled him outside without a word between them. Shinji complied, finding himself limply ambling along beside her.
When they were beyond the storefront she sighed happily, letting her hair tumble free in the wind of the parking lot. Her eyes burned azure as the sun drew closer to the horizon. He found himself suddenly and starkly aware of how beautiful she appeared to him in this moment, her hand closed around his and easy smile gleaming in the dying west coast sun. It was both bewildering and tantalizing. She looked so peaceful, practically giggling as the cool breeze off the water tickled the skin of their faces.
"You... you tailed me."
"I had to make sure someone was going to take care of you," she said, smiling at him as she tucked a bit of the loose hair back behind her ear.
"Oh."
She looked at him deeply, and the blue eyes turned from carefree to serious like a shift in the wind that frolicked in her hair.
"You aren't... running away, are you?"
Shinji looked at her sternly, then deeply into the pavement, contemplating.
"I know you want to, I mean... I understand why, if you do. The stuff at school today. The stuff with Tokyo-3."
He found the brief happiness she'd brought him drain away with several seconds of painful silence.
"What we did... it was wrong, Asuka. I know it was. 'Never justify the means by its end,' right? Well, I think we did that. And now I don't know what to think about this training, about SEELE, about any of this."
He hadn't expected to say it, it just came out. He was even more surprised when she nodded and squeezed his hand in her grip.
"I understand that, Shinji. But what we're doing, no matter how bad, is worlds better than what SEELE will do if we let them win. You understand that, don't you?"
Shinji shook his head. "I don't know if I can believe that anymore. This whole 'war' is so vague. Asuka, I've... I've killed people, people with families, people with children. I don't know why I did. Sometimes they were trying to kill me, but, sometimes they we're just... ordinary people."
She looked at him, and something distant consumed her foreign eyes, something more than the fluttering twirl of her fiery hair. He held her gaze.
"You feel guilty?"
He shook his head.
"Misato taught me how to do away with unnecessary emotions but... I can't help feeling like they died in vain. If we couldn't even save Tokyo-3, what did they die for? Where is the purpose?"
"I don't know. Shinji, I..."
He watched the hesitation creep onto her face.
"It's okay. Say it, whatever it is."
"Shinji, I read your file. Before I got to the First Branch. I know about all the fucked up stuff you had to live through. If that has anything to do with this..."
He found himself oddly relieved.
"Ah, so you know then? About my father walking out on me. About my mother's coma. All the running away from the foster homes."
She laughed awkwardly. "You were a little marathoner, that's for sure. I'm— I'm sorry. I should have told you sooner."
"No, it's probably better this way. I don't really have to explain."
He smiled at her softly and she was mystified by the dark eyes. It was pitiful and yet beautiful; in that smile was the sort of weakness that did not belong—the sort of stuff that was not supposed to exist for Envoys. The feelings so compromising they were supposed to be removed entirely. Empathy, rearing its ugly little head. It must have been Misato's doing.
She'd only seen him lose his grip on self-control like that once: after the fight. But even that did not compare to the sadness she saw welling into his gaze as it hovered somewhere over her shoulder. But maybe it was to be expected; his childhood was almost on par with the disaster that was hers.
"The thing is, when I met Misato, she taught me that whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. She showed me how to confront my problems instead of running away from them. And when I was ready, she showed me how to really kick my problems' asses." He laughed weakly.
"So, is that what we're going to do then?" she asked, biting her lower lip, unconsciously at seeing the 'old Shinji' return in a breath. The emptiness sullied his eyes again and she found herself uncomfortable at its reappearance.
"Yeah. I'm going to give Touji's sensei a piece of my mind. I figured it's what Quell would have done."
"Ikari. You know why we've called you here."
"Yes. Of course."
"Money and time, Ikari. The former of which we have plenty and the latter not enough. How much more will you waste?"
The man raised a gloved hand to his glasses and returned it behind his back, letting them stew for a little before answering. If they would have the gall to interrupt his experimenting he could return the favor. Even in a situation as unfavorable as this one.
"The data we collected from the NERV operation was invaluable."
Another of them spoke now. A huge, faintly distorted voice filled the chamber through a mix of translation and subsonics software. To someone not used to the boardroom, their voices might have instilled the sort of trembling fear and obedience the subsonics were supposed to create. Instead, having grown accustomed to the experience he disregarded the haunting acoustics for the magic trick that they were.
"But your progress is unacceptable! Too long have we waited. The ascension is almost within our grasp and we will not sit by while our most precious resource is squandered."
"The Dummy Plug is a necessary step up Jacob's ladder. Adam's DNA contains the secrets you desire; through my process we shall unlock them," he replied evenly, letting his conditioning abstain his impatience.
"We have no use for the abominations."
Oh, but I do, you stupid, old men.
"The Plugs are growing. The MAGI are seeing to that. In time all of the S2 cores will be fully unlocked. If you have any proposals with how to contend with the True Children, I'm more than happy to entertain them."
That brought a swift silence into the artificial ambience of tense darkness. No matter how many tricks the council played, Ikari still gripped tightest to the strings of fear and he pulled them with a cruel hand.
"No suggestions? Well then, we have a problem. But if I can complete a soulless program we have something to deal with that contingency and the problem is resolved, something I think we can all agree upon."
"We do not doubt your resolve, Ikari, only your focus. Now allay their fears instead of inciting them," Keel defused as per usual.
"Yui and Kyoko were necessary steps. But there are alternatives. The First Child's suit should be evidence enough. Given time, your precious time, I will unlock the S2 completely."
Another member spoke now, and the self-righteous tones they usually driveled on in were replaced by the quiet uncertainty of genuine fear. "Even without the MAGI to aid you?"
"It is unfortunate that Fuyutsuki invoked the aid of the UN, but the MAGI are neither essential nor is the situation irreparable. If necessary, we can always make light of the Rail Device footage. That should prove sufficient to place doubt in the UN, enough scare the lamb from its Sheppard." They were suckers for biblical metaphor.
"Enough for the wolves to make do," Keel finished, satisfied.
Four Fin
A/N: Wah! So late! I know. I'm really sorry guys. I've had midterms and well... Tokyo to deal with. You know how it is. Anyways, this chapter should have been done a while ago but I completely rewrote the beginning and it took me a while to find the proper footing between the three children. I'm hoping I nailed it. Not too much cheese in there, right?
Anyways, chapter five should be out before the year is up (hopefully sooner than later). Most of all, I want to give a giant thanks to you guys for reading and giving such staggeringly uplifting reviews. You really got me even more excited about this story than I have been (and that's saying something).
Sorry for the mistakes of the early version of chapter three. I tried to check up on this one quite a bit more but I have no proof reader so it's not entirely simple. Anyways, thanks once again for reading. You are the fuel for my literary fire and it burns with the passion of your enjoyment. Haha, that was a silly sentence.
I also strongly encourage re-reading the piece from start to here. This chapter introduces a lot of things that may have appeared ambiguous or transparent in the first three chapters and it's a technique I plan on sticking to. Ideally, once complete, reading the story over again should be just as exciting as the first time through. Sort of like the series in a way.
Japanese lesson for this chapter:
-Tadaima actually translates literally to "right now" but is the phrase spoken upon entering your home. I was thinking about having Shinji say "ittekimas" (literally going and coming) when he left, which is what you say leaving your house for "I shall return" but it seemed too cliché in translation.
-Using a last name is a way of introducing formality into a situation. It can be used to a polite effect in the proper situation. Between friends, it's a way of introducing "distance" into the conversation between the speaker and listener. Shinji uses it for slightly crueler effect than normal use. Because Rei typically refers to her peers by last name first, she is not seen as odd in this regard (although the distance-maker may certainly apply).
-In Japan, any sort of physical contact between men and women in public, even holding hands can be the sign of a full relationship, even marriage possibly. This plays into Shinji's relative shock and mood at the bike shop. I leave it up to you to assume whether Asuka knows this particular nuance or not. The motorcycle is totally a not-so-sneaky reference to Kaneda's bike from Akira. ;)