The afternoon sky was beginning to take on a golden hue from the setting sun. Shinji felt a slight wind against his body as he was walking along a set of rail tracks, that wind swaying the vast expanse of grass lining both sides of them. He didn't know what was on either end of the line, only that he was heading south, and that knowledge irked a little since he swore that felt familiar to him, but he couldn't put his finger on it. And yet, the most interesting thing about the situation he found himself in was that he was not alone in his stroll. Rei Ayanami, dressed in her school uniform, was walking next to him.
"Is this all right?" she asked him.
"What is?" Shinji asked in return.
"Is it all right for you to live like this?" she clarified.
"I wonder sometimes," he replied. "I used to think that this was a nasty world, a world where I was forced to do painful things, and my friends would get hurt because of them. But now, I see that the world isn't so bad. It's also a world where the people I care about are, despite the problems it has."
He heard a train horn blare ahead of him, and then saw the train coming down the tracks towards the two of them at a casual pace. He stepped aside and watched it go by as it passed. He didn't see anyone on it, though he thought for a second he saw a little boy wearing a striped shirt sitting in a car. The train was moving too fast, so he wasn't sure that he saw it right. When the train had past, he turned back to Rei.
"I'm not sure, but I think that I'm happy," he added. Rei studied him for a moment before she spoke again.
"And would you defend that happiness?" she asked. The question caught Shinji off guard as he stopped walking and looked straight at her.
"Defend? What do you mean?" Shinji answered, his voice betraying concern.
"If your happiness is in danger, would you be willing to defend it?" She said. Shinji took a few moments to think it over.
"I don't know what I can do," he answered, his head down. "But still, I would do what I can."
"Even though it could make you pay a high price?" Rei asked. He stood there in silence for a few seconds, trying and failing to think of an answer.
"I'm not sure," was all he could think up.
"Don't worry," Rei said. "I'll protect you." Before Shinji could say another word, he woke up. He sat up on his bed, shaking the sleep out of him. There was a long day ahead of him; and as he got ready, the dream fading from memory, Shinji couldn't help but have a sense of unease about him, though there was no reason to.
The morning air was cool to her as she walked through the last ring of greenery before she reached the center of the city. The tower was now looming over her as she kept her march, her breath, cooling as she exhaled, was coming out in regular intervals, as if she were an old style locomotive. By her estimate, she would be at the tower within two hours, then the operation would begin.
She considered stopping at a park bench or hide in a bush and rest for an hour, perhaps get a few minutes of sleep, but she decided against it. Her orders were clear, to proceed to the Wille headquarters in this city at all possible speed. She continued on, bringing up in her memory the layouts of the complex she had to learn, trying to determine where would be the best point of entry, and other scenarios she was considering, getting closer to her objective with each step.
Both Shinji and Joanna sat on a rock, backs against each other, staring out in different directions. The Ayanami type sat on a nearby bench, sketchbook and pencil in hand, working at a rapid pace, attempting to replicate the scene before her on the paper.
"How much longer do we need to stay like this?" Joanna asked through clenched teeth.
"Shouldn't be too much longer," he replied through his own clenched teeth as well. "Besides, isn't this a lot more interesting than just hanging around with nothing to do?" Joanna didn't reply so much as let out an anguished groan came out of her. Shinji shifted his eyes towards Ayanami as she continued to work on her sketch. He saw her eyes narrow as they looked upon the pad, and her mouth turned down. After a few more pencil strokes, she set down her pad and let out a large sigh.
"What's wrong?" Shinji asked, moving from his pose, Joanna doing the same a second later. Ayanami stood up, and dusted the grass and dust from her occasional erasing on her pink t-shirt and Capri-style pants, Shinji taking notice of her left ankle wrapped by a remote tracking device.
"It's your bodies," she replied.
"Our bodies?" Joanna asked.
"I can not get them right," she declared. "They look all…blocky." She showed them the sketch. Shinji and Joanna saw themselves in the drawing, and while neither of them could say it was bad, neither could they say it was good as well. They could see that their images were stiff, even blocky as she said, as if the perspective is off.
"I need to have examples of the human form that I can use. Perhaps you two can provide them."
"What do you mean? How do we do that?" Joanna asked. The Ayanami type looked at the two of them with a serious look in her eyes.
"Both of you, remove your clothes," she said in a firm voice. The two just looked at her in stunned silence for ten seconds.
"Wha-What are you talking about?" Shinji stammered while Joanna hunched over, covering her chest, and repeating the word no over and over to herself.
"You do not wish to?" Ayanami asked.
"You mean just strip, right here, right now? Of course not!" Joanna yelled.
"I see," the girl replied. "Then what do I do?"
"I don't know," Shinji replied. "Maybe we can see if we can get you some pictures or something."
"What! You're going to find her porn?" Joanna hunched over a bit more.
"I don't know, I'm still panicking a little," he answered. "But we will find an answer."
"Yeah. Maybe we could ask the art teachers at our schools, see if they had any advice," Joanna added as she straightened herself up and relaxed a little, though she was still shaking somewhat.
"Very well," Ayanami replied. "I will stop for today." Both Shinji and Joanna breathed a quiet sigh of relief.
"What do you want to do now?" Shinji asked as he was looking at his watch. "It's a bit too early to have lunch."
"I am not sure," she replied. "All I know is that I want to return my sketch pad to my room."
"Okay," Shinji said. "We'll go with you and maybe think of something along the way." As the grounds they were on were withing the base complex, it was a short walk to return to her room. When they arrived, Ayanami put her pad and pencil away. She then stood in front of her desk for several seconds before turning to Shinji.
"Ikari, there is a matter that I need to discuss with you," she told him.
"Oh, uh, really?" he replied. "What is it?"
"D-Do I need to leave for a few minutes?" Joanna began to inch towards the door.
"No need," she said to her before she turned back to Shinji. "There's something that I want to give back to you."
"Give back to me?" He didn't remember lending her anything. Sure, he gave her a couple of sketchbooks and a case of colored pencils, but those were gifts. "What do you mean?"
She opened a desk drawer and drew out a small black object. When she brought it to him, he saw that it was his old SDAT, the ear bud cord wrapped around the player all nice and neat.
"Where did you…" he began, but didn't finish.
"I picked it up after you dropped it," she replied. "You seemed…unwell at the time, so I brought it with me. I would like to give it to you now." She handed it to him. Shinji looked at it for a minute, then with his other hand, began to fumble around in his pocket for a few seconds, pulling out a small silver colored cylinder that was attached by a thin chain to a cross pendant of a similar color.
"I have this now," he said as he showed her the object in greater detail. "The guy at the store told me that it can hold up to 10,000 songs, but I don't if I'll ever have that many. I only got about 50 on here so far. It has headphones, but it also has an external speaker. I really like it."
"Oh, I see," she said.
"But, I want to thank you for thinking of me. I appreciate it." He handed the SDAT back to her.
"What do I do with it?" she asked as she looked at the player.
"Anything you want, I guess," Shinji replied. "Throw it away, use it yourself. It's up to you."
"I need to think about it," she said as she put it back in the drawer. "Thank you for giving it to me."
"So, uh, what do we do now?" Joanna asked.
"We could take a walk," Ayanami replied.
"Why not?" Shinji concurred. As they were leaving the room, Shinji asked a question to her.
"Uh, I was wondering, have you ever thought about giving yourself a name?"
"I have thought about it," she replied, "but I have not come to a decision as of yet. I would like to do a little research into the Japanese language before I decide." He was about the reply when he heard another voice calling out to him.
"Shinji!" He turned around to see Sakura walking towards them waving her hand.
"What are you doing here?" he asked her when they met.
"Checking up on a few of the crew members still in the hospital," she answered. "What are you doing?"
"We're trying to figure that out ourselves," Shinji said. "Oh, uh, this is Joanna, the pilot for Unit 11."
"H-Hi there," she stepped back and placed herself three-quarters behind Ayanami.
"I'm Sakura Suzuhara. It's a pleasure to meet you," she replied with a beaming smile on her face.
"And I think you know Ayanami," Shinji continued.
"It's nice to finally meet you," Sakura said. "I've been told so much about you."
"I have seen you before," Ayanami replied.
"Huh? What do you mean?" Sakura asked.
"I saw you when I was tasked with retrieving Ikari from your vessel, though I only saw you from the Mark 09's monitor." It took a few seconds for Sakura to realize what Ayanami was talking about, her face going into shock. Before anyone could say to do anything, Ayanami spoke again.
"And for that I do want to apologize to you. I would like to apologize to other members of the crew as well. I did not know at that time what I know now." There was silence for several seconds before Sakura went over to her and clasped her hands.
"There is nothing to forgive," she said. "As I told before, I heard a lot from Shinji and others about you. You are not the person you were then." Shinji relaxed as the situation resolved itself. He didn't know what to do if Sakura wasn't as forgiving. At the same time, he also wondered if Misato or anyone else would accept her apology.
"Well, I have to get going," She said as she let go of Ayanami's hand and made her way past them.
"Wait, uh, would you like to have lunch with us?" Shinji asked. "After you're done, I mean."
"I should be done in about an hour, so yeah, I'd be happy to," she replied.
"That's great. See you then," he said. As she walked off, Shinji turned to find Joanna looking at him, a cross look on her face.
"What was that all about?" she asked.
"I was just inviting a friend to lunch," Shinji replied taken a little aback. "Is there a problem with that?"
"Not a problem really," Joanna replied. "It's just that you caught me off guard, that's all. I mean, I just met her, so I don't really know her, and I don't like plans being made on the fly, that's all."
"Sorry about that," Shinji said. "Do you want me to cancel or something?"
"No," Joanna answered. "Just—Just remember next time. I'll manage. You can have your date."
"What do you mean date?" Shinji sounded more startled than angry at her words. "If it was a date, I would have not included you two in the invitation."
"If you say so," Joanna remarked. It sounded to Shinji like she didn't believe him, and he pondered that as they continued their walk down the corridor.
Sargent Gary Sullivan let out a yawn without making an attempt to stifle it as he slouched over his desk in the little guard booth. He hated days like this. Since it was a secondary point of entry into the complex, it wasn't as busy as the main gate. It didn't help that the gate was only used by authorized personnel, so he was lucky if he saw two crossings in a day. Outside of the incident with the Wunder the previous week, there was nothing approaching an emergency. The closest he could remember to one was when he had to deal with a couple of drunk college kids that wandered to the gate when he was on night shift a couple of years ago. The worse part about was he couldn't have a TV in the booth or be able to listen to music, as it was against regulations.
He was about to drift off in his mind when he noticed someone walking towards the gate, a small person, perhaps a child. That person was wearing a hood, so he couldn't see the his or her face. He stepped outside of his booth to get a better look at the person. All he could tell was that the person was female, and very young. No more than a teenager at the oldest.
"Excuse me," he called out to her when she was withing earshot. "Are you lost? Do you need any help?" The girl said nothing in reply as she continued to walk toward the gate, the only sound coming down from her was her footsteps hitting against the asphalt.
"You're not authorized to pass through here," Sullivan said to her. "If you have business, you have to go to the main gate." She kept up her advance, her pace neither slowing or accelerating.
"Halt!" he commanded, drawing out his service pistol and pointing it at her. "If you do not stop, I will shoot!" Keeping his pistol aimed at her, he reached with his free hand for his radio, which was attached to his jacket lapel to call for backup. He never got the chance as a flash of blue hair and piercing red eyes filled his vision before there was nothing but darkness.
"Sir," Lieutenant Bertain called out from her station.
"What is it?" Aida asked as he flipped through some papers, not looking up from the task.
"We've lost contact with the west gate," she answered.
"We have?" Aida flopped his papers down and went over to her station.
"Yes sir, I can't raise the post," Bertain answered. Those words made both Hood and Lithgow look up from their work.
"Send a security team down there, and see if you can bring up the post's security feed," Aida ordered. "Something isn't right with this."
"Already on it." Bertain tapped on her keyboard for half a minute before speaking again. "Bringing it up now." Her monitor lit up, showcasing the blood splattered room and in one corner, the unmoving arm of Sargent Sullivan.
"Damn it," Aida muttered to himself. "Sound intruder alert. Summon the Vice-Commander and have additional security teams head out in the direction of the west gate. Let's start going through the security footage, see if we can pinpoint where the intruder or intruders are going."
"Right," Bertain replied, bringing up security feeds onto the main screen. As this was happening, Burke came into the command center, tapping on his tablet.
"What do we got?" Burke asked.
"We have an intruder on base. Security team have been sent, and we're trying to ascertain where they are or their strength," Aida answered, not taking his eyes off the security feeds.
"And everything was nice and quiet here too," Hood declared.
"Got something!" Bertain yelled out. On the main monitor, one of the feeds ballooned in size, taking up the whole monitor. The image showed someone turning the corner of one corridor into another for a brief second.
"Where is this at?" Burke asked.
"At the junction between Sections A15 and 16 heading intoto A16," Bertain replied.
"Send the nearest security teams to A16 and bring up the feeds from that Section." Aida said. Several feeds showed up on the main monitor. All had nothing on them until a cloaked figure came into view on one of the feeds. The image was frozen an magnified, revealing the face of the intruder.
"What the…" Aida trailed off.
"Where is the Ayanami type that we've been keeping?" Burke asked Matsu.
"She is the corridor right next to us," he replied. "She is with Shinji and Joanna."
"Than that means—" Burke started to say.
"Security Team 3 is entering A16," Bertain declared. "Switching to body cam." The monitor switched over to a live view from one of the security team members.
"Order them to engage and neutralize the target," Burke commanded. They saw the team turn a corner and come face to face with the Ayanami. They opened fire, only for the bullets to fall down in front of her, and an orange-white shimmer appeared in front of her. After the firing ceased, there was a large flash of light followed by the feed going dead.
"Is that what I think it is?" Burke asked.
"Our readings confirm it," Bertain replied. "That was an AT Field."
"An advanced model Ayanami type," Lithgow added. Aida broke out his shock and began to shout orders.
"Level 1 battle alert. This is not a drill!" At the same time, Burke ran to the Commanders desk and picked up the land line phone.
"We are under direct attack," he yelled into it. "All Varangian units proceed to Headquarters immediately. This is all out war."
