I hear footsteps at the main door, and painfully turn my head as best I can to see two JSSDF guys peek into the Cage. Satisfied at not having any bullets enter their bodies, they step over their dead comrade - still twisted in a heap on the floor with his launch tube - and into the room.

Nobody else follows them in; they must be some of the last ones left in this area.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck this is not good!

I can feel my life leaking out onto the catwalk below me; I have maybe three or four minutes left, give or take some seconds. The two JSSDF survivors are carefully approaching Ikari Jr., their weapons at the low ready but not really pointed at him just yet.

I have to do something, or we're all fucked.

My left arm isn't responding, try as I might to get it to move, to do anything - that RPG really did a number on me. Rifle's out of the question.

I use the last of my strength to reach down to my holster with my right hand, and I draw my Glock as slowly as I can, dragging the gun along the catwalk before finally extending my arm in front of my face.

Two targets, one-handed prone, from about… thirty yards out, my guess? Basically a hostage rescue shot, with a handgun? This is gonna be one for the fucking record books. Looks like I'd get my chance to save the world, after all.

The lead hostile comes to a halt a couple feet away from Ikari Jr., who is still oblivious to the world with his knees up and his head down between them. The front man shakes his head, almost sadly, while the guy behind him unhooks his field telephone and brings it to his left ear.

"Command, this is Nagata-01. We've found the Third Child. Are we… certain that this is a kill order?"

The radioman hesitates; I can tell by his nervous fidgeting that he doesn't get a response.

"Command, this is Nagata-01 - Third Child has been located and Unit-01 is disabled. I say again…"

He's done me a favor - the olive green field phone is a perfect aiming reference for this distance. I center my pistol's red dot on the top portion of the handset, right where the man's ear would be, and dump the air in my lungs with a quick breath out.

"We're probably too deep for reception, Toshi. Let's just off him and get it over-"

The Glock jumps in my hand and a half second later, a 147 grain 9mm round shatters the field phone handset into a hundred pieces of green polymer. The same round digs into the radioman's ear canal and makes an absolute mess of his brain, cutting his strings and dropping his body to the catwalk.

"Fuck!" yells the second man, swinging his rifle in my general direction, scanning and then shooting as soon as he acquires me. I see Ikari Jr. flinch and draw tighter into himself as rifle fire goes off just a couple of feet away.

Rounds strike near me, and one clips me in my useless left shoulder as I drive the Glock left, placing the aiming dot on the man's half obscured face.

Fuck, every part of me hurts. My right arm is trembling, struggling to hold my pistol up. It pains me to even suck in air, like I'm not getting enough oxygen while my lungs are telling me to just stop at the same time. Blackness is starting to encroach on the edges of my vision - it's almost time.

I have to do this now - No fail.

My first round goes wild, over the man's left shoulder - he hears it whiz past his head, and redoubles in his attempts to kill me before I do it to him. The hits around me get tighter, closer to their mark.

The second shot smashes into his soft armor. He staggers from the impact, which probably felt like taking a sledgehammer to the chest, but his vest stops the bullet. He stops firing, leans forward… and when I see him exhale I know he means business. He wants to end this now.

I'm a fucking mess - way more so than I was even just a minute ago, but I need to make this hit. I hold my dot just slightly to the right of his chin.

Factor your incompetence into your firing solution. Stop shooting like an asshole.

My Glock jumps again, and the JSSDF shooter catches a 9mm round right through his nose and out the back of his head. The loss of brain matter isn't as dramatic as it would be with a rifle shot, but the effect is still the same - what was once a proud soldier of Japan becomes nothing more than a couple hundred pounds of dead weight, dropped to the floor in an unceremonious heap of flesh, steel and nylon.

As the echoes of the gunshots fade to nothingness, I now notice the familiar sounds of an Evangelion battle being played through the PA system speakers. I had tuned them out previously, but in the lack of gunfire I now hear the clanging of steel, the tearing of flesh, the impacts on thousands of layers of special armor… and I hear the voice of an angry German girl calling out numbers, probably a kill count.

Thank God - she's still in the fight.

Ikari Jr. still isn't moving, his arms still wrapped around his knees. I've seen this before - not in the Unit, but back when we were helping the regular Army to run peacekeeping ops Stateside. The horrors of war, the consequences of failure, the true meaning of death and loss… all not easy things to hold onto, even for experienced soldiers.

The Third Child is just that, a child - far younger than even the most fresh-out-of-basic training soldier I had ever led into battle. I couldn't even imagine what's going through his head right now - fighting giant monsters was one thing, seeing your coworkers' dead bodies in the hallways and being in the middle of a gunfight were entirely different matters altogether. Major Katsuragi's absence was also… telling.

Am I really gonna spend the last of my energy on this? I'm no stranger to pep talks - I've done my fair share in God-forsaken fighting holes in a myriad of God-forsaken post-Impact hellscapes… but I didn't think this would be my last act on Earth. It's way less cool than the feats of pistol shooting that I had just pulled off, in my opinion. My head droops, chin hitting the catwalk with a soft thunk, and the weight of my helmet keeps it there.

Boy, I sure hope he's been paying attention in English class.

"Kid, get the fuck up. I didn't just… make the two greatest pistol shots of… of my career… so you can just sit there!"

Fuck. That took more out of me than I expected. I suck in as much air as my lungs allow me, as much as it burns to do so, and watch as Ikari Jr. turns his head to look up at me. Is that… anger on his face?

Any second now… I feel so sleepy…

"That's easy for you to say!" he yells at me from across the bakelite pond, the sharpness in his voice pulling me from my stupor. I look up at him, from beneath the brim of my helmet, and yep - he's pissed. His English is surprisingly good… guess he had been paying attention.

"You're a soldier! This, fighting, comes easy for you! I'm just a kid - every time I get in the Eva, somebody-" he turns his head down and pulls frustratedly at his hair, "- somebody gets hurt! I hate this!"

"Look, nothing worth it is easy. We're all ready to lose something whenever we suit up. Your teammate needs you right now. Just like you needed me a few minutes ago, and-"

"You don't even know me - why are you even trying?!" A look of disgust mars his face, and he glares at me. "...It would have been better if you had just let me die."

"You… you shut the fuck up!" I can hear myself roar, distantly, from the back of my mind. Huh. That's strange. I shouldn't sound like that. The look of disgust wipes away in an instant, and his face once again bears the emotions of a scared child.

"You… you shut up. You have no right to throw your life away. Especially not like this. People die, that's part of this job - but with a weapon in hand and for a purpose, not like a fucking dog. You hear me, kid?! You are better than this."

"Just because you may have failed one person - or several people - doesn't mean that you're worthless! Your smallest actions could mean a world of difference, could save even one life, and I guarantee that someone out there is thankful for your very existence, even if you may not know it. It could have been as simple as making someone's day by just smiling at them in the cafeteria, or holding the elevator door for someone so they wouldn't be late for work - because God knows how slow those fuckers are down here. But that shit matters."

"You need to take heart in the fact that your very existence means something, not just to you, and aim to leave this world when you can make it matter the most. If you want to die, fine - that's your choice. But at least make it count."

"I'm telling you this because I am nobody to you. I'm not the Major, or the Commander, or the Second Child. I'm literally just another dude, and you're right - I don't know you, but what I do know is that you're capable of better. You need to be."

He hesitates at first, but Ikari Jr.'s lips curl upwards into a nervous smile. He wipes the tears from his face.

"That sounded… very well-practiced," he says softly.

"That's because it is. I've had to make that spiel more than a few times in my career," I respond. A wave of coughs racks my body - this is harder than I thought, but I have a mission to complete. Almost done now.

"You think you're the first young warrior to deal with these feelings? You're not. You're not the first, and you won't be the last. It's a burden we all shoulder when we pick up our weapons to fight, and not one that just anybody can understand."

He ponders what I just said - I can tell he's trying on the word "warrior" for size, and appreciating it. I get the feeling that no one's ever told him before, but that's exactly what he is. And he needs to know it, especially now.

"Shinji," I say, his name coming to me from the haze in my consciousness, "if you get into that…robot, you're making a promise. A promise to me… to my dead teammates, to your little redhead buddy, to Major Katsuragi, wherever she is… to everybody here in this hole in the ground, and the world over - that you will not fail."

"So don't fuck this up. Don't let anybody die needlessly today, you gotta make our losses worth it. I'm not entirely sure what's even going on anymore," I say, as the German lets out a shrill battlecry over the PA speaker, "But it sounds like the world needs you again, kid. She needs you, as much as she'll deny it."

"She… needs me…"

I can't hear him whisper it, but I definitely see his lips moving. A second later, my heart sinks as his head dips back down once again… but just as suddenly rises a couple of seconds later.

The Third Child stands to his feet, and turns to face the giant purple arm. The blackness on the edges of my vision returns, now almost swallowing my consciousness whole; the sounds of the world slowly fade out like God is lowering my volume.

I can't parse what he's yelling now, but even in my deafness I can hear the determination in his voice. Anger replaced with authority. His eyebrows are narrowed not in rage, but in purpose. He seems to be speaking with… the Eva?

I feel a low rumble - the room begins to shake, the catwalk below me vibrating with increasing frequency.

The last thing I see before I lose consciousness is the Evangelion's purple arm shoot out - somehow with the pilot outside of it - and slam into the wall next to the Third Child.

My vision returns slowly and not completely, details fading in and out as I come back to reality. The red-tinged glow of the Eva Cage. The bullet holes and burn marks in the walls. The bodies of both JSSDF men and my teammates, my friends, splayed out across the catwalks.

And somehow… I see soft black hair, softer brown eyes, and a beautiful alabaster face hovering above me - which is weird, because I shouldn't be seeing anything at all.

How long has it been? Minutes, hours? Days? I have no idea, but the Evangelion's purple arm is gone, and Ikari Jr. along with it.

She, however, is there. As clear as a winter sky, In all of her beauty and love, she smiles at me from on high. Her face upside down in my vision as she cradles my head in her lap. I haven't seen that smile in years.

"I must be dead," I murmur. A stupid grin crosses my face, and her smile grows wider in response. "I'm dead, right?"

"No," she responds, and I feel her fingers run through my hair as she caresses my head. "You're exactly where you need to be."

"Good."

I relax into her lap, a comforting place I haven't felt in a very long time. I know for certain that this can't be real - I'm either dead or in the last moments of trauma- and blood-loss induced delirium, and this will all be over soon.

Might as well enjoy this while it lasts.

She continues to stroke my hair, softly tugging at it while she massages me. This is… nice.

"You did well, babe. Are you ready to go home?" she asks.

I soak in her voice, what's left of my body feeling a very welcome warmth. Gotta hand it to my brain - for all the ways I could have crossed the bridge over to the other side, this wasn't too shabby.

"Yeah, that sounds good to me, love," I say. My head gently sinks back to the ground as I feel her stand. From above, she reaches her arms down to pick me up, still smiling. I extend my arms in return and grab her hands, intertwining our fingers.

"Then let's go."

"Huh," I say, watching as my arms liquify into orange juice with a wet plop, "That's weird-"