Hours later, I was leaning on a guardrail, in an entirely different suit, waiting for my potential death.
I felt like that was going to happen a lot.
Unit 01's test had ended relatively simply, at least by the standards I'd come to expect. I'd removed myself from the plug, only to start hacking and coughing LCL out of my lungs. Ritsuko of course had just brushed it off, telling me it was normal, and that I'd have to get used to it.
I had been slipped into one of Rei's suit, which was about as uncomfortable as Shinji's, but apparently would provide better compatibility. Thankfully, unlike Shinji I didn't particularly care about it being a girl's suit: the design was unisex anyway, I didn't have an androgynous body shape like he did, and the boob pouches weren't really anymore noticeable than the chest pads of his suit.
I now stood in front of the trapped Unit 00, it's massive frame stuck in it's previous testing chamber. Unmoved since it's disastrous activation, it was encased in bakelite that was only now being excavated. Special chemicals were being injected into it's somehow still taut muscles, for them to loosen and slack enough for it to be manipulated into position.
At that, I had to contemplate on what the nature of an Eva even was: surely, it was a god machine, just as so many people said. But what really happened to it's biological functions once it ran out of power? Obviously it didn't die, since it didn't rot away, if it was even capable of that. But did it's organs still work? Did it breathe?
Or maybe it's all pointless because if Angels are any indication, Evas aren't even made of regular matter. Which brings up the question of how they even get perceived or affected normally by any physical thing that isn't another Angel or Eva, as they're most likely made of exotic matter, if not entirely existing in different dimensions and...
I just shook my head to clear. Stupid pseudo-scientific bullshit.
I bet the writers didn't even understand half of what they were saying, and just threw that on to make Angels sound cooler, or more alien.
Which reminded me...the humans probably didn't know much either.
Nerv, and Gehirn before it, had built these monsters while barely comprehending jackshit about how they actually functioned on a fundamental level. They'd probably followed what the Dead Sea Scrolls told of Angelic biology and went with it to the best of their ability. If that was true, it was a wonder how going berserk once in a while was the only side effect.
Hell there was a case to be made about them not even understanding how Cores and their S2 engines worked up until the Mass Production Evangelions became a thing, and didn't cause everything around them to be eaten up by an unstable dimensional space.
All this thinking about man allegorically and literally screwing with God though wouldn't mean anything if I didn't survive the next few hours.
Unit 00's outstretched arm twitched at last, before falling limp by it's side. Eventually the whole Eva smashed down to the ground like a ragdoll. There was something morbidly funny about such a large and powerful figure flopping limp as a corpse.
It would be a while before they could drag it into another testing chamber. And then came the testing of probably a million different things I didn't care about. I checked the clock. 6 PM.
I sighed, having nothing better to do but wait for the inevitable.
Well, the test was already off to great start.
In front of me I could see Rei, Ritsuko and Gendo all there.
The three people the Eva was most likely to go apeshit over and start throwing it's weight around were all there to observe the test. Brilliant.
I noticed Rei was still in a wheelchair. Beat being hauled everywhere in a gurney and nearly getting in an Eva half dead at least. Though, I was yet reminded of something: how much, if at all, did her Angelic physiology play into her recovery?
Ritsuko for the first time since I'd been cast here looked genuinely worried, and I couldn't blame her. I may have put on a relatively good poker face, but it was concealing a mounting blood pressure just underneath, thinking of how badly this could go.
And finally there was the Dick King of Nerv himself, with that ever present expression of infuriating neutrality.
The last thing I wanted to do however, was underestimate that man. All in all, he was probably one of the single most dangerous people alive, and responsible directly or indirectly to some extent for the greatest spontaneous loss of life in human history. And that was before he became a selfish maniac hellbent on nothing but the happiness of himself and his own wife, damning humanity for all I cared to know.
Maybe I can just crush him with the Eva and pretend it was going berserk. Hell, it almost did the deed for me last time it was activated.
I shook my head. Assassinations were out of the question, not just because of the immense amount of fire that would come at me. Spending the rest of the Angel War in a maximum security facility was one of the better outcomes of that I could see, but also things would spiral far out of my ability to predict.
Besides, as much of an absolute bastard as he was, I really wasn't sure I could bring myself to kill another human just like that.
"Pilot, please enter the plug."
Alright. Here we go.
A bit more time passed after that, as the techies ran last minute tests, before flooding the Entry Plug with LCL again. Again I struggled with it, but I'd just have to build that instinct over time.
"Pilot Akashi, can you hear me?"
I swallowed on command at that voice, but thought I at least kept up appearances pretty well.
"Loud and clear. Sir."
"We are now commencing the Unit 00 reactivation experiment. Initiate primary connections."
"Connect the main power supply," Ristuko reaffirmed.
"Activation voltage has passed the critical point," what I had to guess was Maya.
"Roger. Shift format to phase two," Aoba?
"Opening circuits."
A dazzling display of colors and patterns passed through the LCL, and once more I found myself thinking what particular bit of the liquid's properties caused that.
And then it was gone.
"Pulse and harmonics are nominal. No problems detected."
A flurry of voices that I didn't recognize took over then.
"All nerve links completed. Central nervous system elements are nominal."
"Recalculating...no error corrections."
"Checklist to satisfactory up to 25 90. Approaching critical mark," Maya's voice rang again.
This is it.
"1.7...1.2...1.0...0.-"
As Maya's voice continued to count down however, something...strange started happening. I couldn't focus on the numbers anymore. The sound was...distorted, like it was located at the end of a tunnel, while I was on the opposite side. Soon, the tone started shifting into something a bit more audible and slightly more frantic.
"Uh, can you repeat that?" I said, mind entirely dulled to the fear I should've been feeling at this point. Then I noticed the intercom button I was pressing didn't exist anymore.
The Entry Plug was gone, replaced by a total inky blackness. That is, except for one spot. A spot illuminated by a white light.
Underneath it, a frail naked body lay curled into itself, blue hair poking out the top.
Well. Fuck.
I didn't know if dealing with the strangled little Angel girl was better than the enraged murdered woman, but then again I didn't know a lot. Like how I was even supposed to handle this. Or what the fuck was happening outside. Or really a million other things that could prove fucking useful in this situation.
I breathed in and out, trying to calm myself down. To some extent or another, the soul within an Eva responded to the agitation of it's pilot, so the more terrified I was, the more likely this was to go sideways.
It's just a little kid. A lonely, horribly abused, manipulated, alien little kid. But still.
"Hey."
No response.
"Hey."
A stir. So she was listening.
"Hey!"
I really didn't know if raising my voice was a good idea at all in this situation. But, provoking a reaction at this point seemed much better than just standing around for however long she decided to keep me here. Which could be forever, for all I knew. Better take my chance and possibly die than stay like this until I got stuck and definitely went insane.
The small body turned it's head, and I immediately regretted bringing attention to myself. "Dead" wasn't quite what I'd use to describe those piercing red eyes. It was something beyond that. Like someone who'd been forced to see Hell for so long, they were barely clutching onto their humanity.
"Rei?"
I didn't even realize the word had emerged from my lips. The girl who I knew as Rei I for her own part remained largely unchanged.
"Who are you?"
Well...at least she speaks. Even if it's as creepy as the rest of her.
"My name is Kano," that still felt wrong, and I could swear somehow she knew it was wrong, but said nothing. "I'm supposed to...pilot you I guess?"
"You're different," she interjected. "Different from...her."
That was a startling display of emotion from her. A visible chill seemed to shoot up her body at that moment.
"You don't like the other Rei?"
"No. She reminds me too much of it."
Before I could even ask, the black nothingness around us turned blood red, except for one section. The silhouette of a woman choking a far smaller body, with the accompanying bloodcurdling scream and the sounds of death by suffocation. It replayed over and over, up until I was certain I heard a dull roar in the distance.
Okay, time to stop this.
"Rei," I moved in front of the little girl, directly obscuring her vision of anything else. "That's in the past. I know it hurts. But that woman is dead. And you're still here."
"But I am not. I am dead too."
"No, you're not," I gave up all semblance of trying to maintain my disguise at that point. Who was going to interrogate the soul of an Eva? Even if this happened to any of the pilots, would any of them believe it?
It was a risk I was willing to take to help a very traumatized, and more importantly, potentially very destructive spirit.
"You are alive Rei, whether through the Eva or your other self running around. You still draw breath. You're still aware. She's not. You are safe."
You're not. You're not at all.
"And even if you weren't, I'd try my best to keep you safe."
Will you really though? Or will you just hide behind all the competent pilots as they take all the punishment this world has to offer?
"But I can't do that if you won't even let me sync with you. Or the other Rei for that matter."
"I do not like her," she said flatly. "She replaced me. I do not wish to be reminded..."
She trailed off.
Alright, let's see if I can help this incredibly screwed up soul from the ground up.
"Rei, you're not replaceable. You've never been. Sure, your body may die and wither away, but your soul...your soul keeps getting used and put in each new iteration. It's not another you replacing the current you...it's just, well, you. Rei II is you all the same."
And even if that's not entirely true, you'll be reunited soon enough. Unfortunately.
"But...how do you know?"
"I just," I exhaled forcefully. "I just do, okay? And I know, deep down, you do too. Your soul is special. It's unique. Therefore it can't be lost."
Being the soul of the primogenitor of all life on this planet, and all.
After that, the girl just stood there, glaring at her feet. I may as well not have existed at all for what felt like hours, but were in reality just minutes. Her face had never changed once during our talk, even if her tone had.
Rei was an impenetrably closed book in comparison to the other pilots, who were themselves closed books that looked open. But I needed to win her over. I'd already done something that could potentially screw me over big time if I underestimated the level of understanding Nerv had on Evas' souls.
Come one Rei, give me an inch here.
"You know a lot. Do you know the Commander?" she said, and in that moment I was reminded just how young she had died. She sounded like a hopeful kid asking about a relative they looked up to.
"I guess you could say that."
Rei's face scrunched slightly in thought, and that was the most visible emotion I'd seen from her. But at last, something broke through to her. She closed her eyes briefly, before opening them again, now staring directly at me, and looking positively beaming in comparison to what she looked like minutes prior.
Maybe. Time was weird in this place.
"Yes. I will help you, Kano."
I breathed a sigh of relief, before extending my hand, finding myself genuinely smiling for once.
"And I will try to help you. Okay?"
She stared at the hand for a good bit longer than would've been comfortable. But ultimately, her much smaller and gentle one rocked mine.
"Okay."
And just like that, a flash went off...
And suddenly, I was back in the Entry Plug, it's color shifted from the neutral transparency of air to a blood red. I looked up to read the screen in front of me.
ERROR! CRITICAL CONNECTION FAILURE
EVANGELION PROTOTYPE UNIT 00 DEACTIVATED
Well. At least it hadn't gone berserk. I hoped.
A window popped up in the side of the Eva, showing the control room.
"Connection reestablished. Pilot's vitals are elevated, but otherwise normal. Harmonics indicate no risk of contamination."
"Pilot Akashi," Gendo said, in the closest thing that man's voice would ever get to a bark. "What happened?"
"Uh, ahem."
Clueless or confused? Clueless or confused? Fuck it, both.
"I don't know sir, what did happen?"
I tried my best not to make that sound cheeky, even if I wanted to. The bastard deserved knowing he'd been outmatched at his own little sick mind games already. But, that would just be stupid.
"We lost contact with the Entry Plug for 37 seconds. Nothing coming in or out," Ritsuko chimed in. "This is unprecedented in these circumstances, Pilot Akashi. We require information. Anything you can tell us."
"To be honest ma'am, I'm not sure myself" I thought about it, and realized half-truths would probably be enough to satisfy them. "Your voices started becoming blurry in the distance. Then I was someplace...dark. Then I saw images...violence, extreme violence. Then a light. And now I'm here."
I waited on the response of either of them, who seemed to be chatting to one-another, and Rei herself, curiously enough. After a bit, Gendo approached the intercoms again.
"Acknowledged, pilot. Retract the Entry Plug."
"Sir? If I may say something more?"
I could swear I saw his eyebrow twitch the slightest bit up, and refused to smile.
Hook, line and sinker.
"With all due respect, the Eva didn't go berserk. And I had the overwhelming sense that something was...resolved at the end of what happened. Can I try again? Just one more time?"
Gendo took a long, hard stare into me with those cold eyes of his. Thankfully, I was already mostly immune to that stare, knowing exactly what lay behind it: a pathetic, petty, broken man who lived in delusions. Not a figure to be feared or despised, but almost pitied, if he wasn't so irredeemable.
He finally nodded.
With that, the bridge bunnies once more went through the motions, up until the point where I faded out the last test.
"Approaching critical mark: 1.7...1.2...0.9...0.7...0.5...0.4...0.3...0.2...0.1 and rising. Borderline clear. Unit 00 is now active."
I breathed another sigh of relief, even as I felt something poking at the back of my skull. Still, at least I knew the ghost in the machine actually gave a shit this time around.
The Eva felt much more like my own body and mind, like I was part of the brain of a larger being. Sensations, feelings, they were all sluggish, but still connected with me, unlike Unit 01.
"Synchronization rate holding at 28.34%."
"Unbelievable..." I could hear Ritsuko muttering to herself.
Guess it goes a long way talking to the actual being inside a Unit. Dunno why no one else ever tried it aside from situations where they were literally about to die though.
Then again, none of them knew how an Eva worked or had prophetic knowledge regarding their fates. So, maybe I'd subconsciously wanted to see Rei I? Maybe she'd made it possible?
Whatever the case, I could finally draw a breath of total relief. I didn't even care about the extra hours I'd have to spend in here. I'd conquered one of the biggest early obstacles I could.
Now it'd just be about keeping up that streak.