Chapter: 1C - Shinji runs in the direction that he last saw the girl
Choice Path: Start – 1C
Author: Midnight Cereal
Shinji bolted in the direction of the girl. The pavement sloped down, shooting jolts of pain back up his legs with each pounding footfall. He was going to fall, topple over and burn. The look on her face flashed in his mind—studious and unhurried, like she was coming from the market with a bag of fish stock and leeks. Turn left, she'd seemed to say.
Before Shinji realized he was veering left, crashing into trashcans loitering in an alley. He stumbled a quarter of the way down narrow corridor until his backpack rode him into grit and tainted water—he suddenly weighed a thousand pounds.
Don't stop, she'd seemed to say.
Shinji staggered forward, eyeing the slit of light at the other end of the alley, about 50 meters ahead. What was that distance to the thing out there? It hooted-whistled-warbled, and when things couldn't possibly get louder, the world roared behind him, spitting twisted steel and heat that crawled up the back of his legs. Topple over and burn.
A door swung into his path. He'd nearly dodged it when the straps of his bag bit into his shoulders. A quick, precise strength snatched him through the doorway. Shinji piled onto chessboard floor tile consumed by black, and even that disappeared when the door slammed shut, muffling the carnage howling through the alley. He stood up again, spinning in the outer space between his ears. For a while he could only smell old tempura and grope at darkness.
Then his hand kneaded soft flesh and fine hair. Shinji felt a pulse beat back his own. "Who…what're you—"
Fingers clamped around his wrist. Shinji allowed himself to be dragged, turned, and decelerated. He couldn't tell if his or his guide's shoes were scraping the ground. He couldn't tell if the noise outside had dulled because they had moved further inside or if things had actually stopped exploding.
"Careful," she said, her voice like cherry twigs. It would snap if he asked a question now—it did snap when parcels of thunder rattled the building just as the floor dropped away…a meter below? A kilometer? She'd never speak again and he'd tumble in the dark forever.
His hands flew out, catching cloth and round shoulders. His foot thudded against concrete. Shinji stepped again, lower. His eyes poorly sketched the person leading him into a basement, or cellar. She was about his size, thinner. Thinner? And she smelled familiar. Right—because I can tell what she smells like. But he could. Her words floated back to him: "Last step."
Three quick concussions. The thing outside screamed.
They stood on the cellar floor. Shinji bit back a yelp when she pulled away from his grip. She scuffled with plastic and cardboard boxes. Heavy metal slid home, groaning until a rectangle of light bled through the black. He couldn't close his eyes before the rest of the light bleached everything, leaving him with the afterimage of a large open door—and the girl beside it, too slow to avoid being bleached herself. Even her hair had been drained a cropped platinum blonde…or blue. Yeah, right.
"This space is reinforced with rebar and high-strength concrete," she said. "It'll provide an extra measure of safety."
Shinji blinked. His sight returned in tiny novas, but he worried when the girl remained white—just ashen white. "You don't live down here, do you?" he asked.
"You are hilarious. Get inside."
He was too far along, too deep in it to hesitate. Shinji shuffled toward the light, trying to keep the bulk of his backpack between him and the girl's eyes. Red. He explained to himself that her low melanin exposed the blood vessels in her irises. Looking her in the face would be seeing straight through…
Shinji entered the room within a room. He descended a ramp that took him past chainlink enclosures holding back fat sacks of rice, vats of cooking oil, wheat flour, and spare grilling tables. Chairs sat on each other in stacks six-high against a metal enclosure humming with power—cold to the touch. Long banks of lights skulked above him and down a corridor that branched off from the main room and was lined on one side with storage areas and on the other with masonry wall.
The door crashed shut. White kneecaps bobbed up from beneath the light blue skirt with her every step down the ramp. Suspenders roped a white collared blouse cinched with a ridiculous red bow. God, her hair was blue. To the root. She started a slow circuit of the room, fingers brushing chainlink, ductile piping, and steel beams. Like she was on a field trip to a warehouse. Did she go to school around here?
"This is a joint occupancy cellar for the restaurant above us and the one next to it. A diesel generator powers their walk-in freezer. There are other things I like about it. The soda machine. The passive RF shielding." She stopped short of a lawn chair loitering in front of Shinji and squared her face with his. He kept waiting for her to blink, for her thin lips to smile or to buckle into a frown. He settled for the softness easing into her brow. "Do you know me?"
"What?"
"My face…is it familiar?"
"…what?" Shinji looked around for help, finding none from the stores of flour and empty crates. "I don't…is it supposed to?"
The girl smiled at something at her feet and breathed through her nose. "I guess not. This has been harrowing for you, I'm certain. You could have died any number of times outside."
"I haven't really thought about…" He paused when he noticed her blood eyes walking up and down his body. The building shook. Boom, boom, boom, boom. "Holy shit," he said.
"Are you afraid to die?" she asked. She glided back to the freezer. She could be walking on the bottom of the sea. "That's cool. But you may have to marshal those feelings in the future."
"Why? This type of thing happens all the time?"
"I don't know. But do not be surprised if it happens again tomorrow. Or a week from now." She flicked a light switch, throwing them in and out of darkness. "Know plenty of trains and buses will take you from here. Many of the routes are subsidized for students and government employees. The city practices a formidable emergency evacuation plan."
"That's awesome." Boom. "Great."
"It is indeed awesome and great," she said. "You may yet like living here. It is a technological Babylon."
"People really call it that?" he asked.
"I suppose people who live elsewhere call it that. A resident would sound rather self-important."
"So you're not from here?"
"I haven't lived here in years, but I was born here." She raised a platinum eyebrow. "Am I self-important yet?"
Shinji held his breath. She cocked her head forward and looked up at him, daring him to answer seriously. By and large, the war outside drummed on farther and farther away. Shinji slipped the straps of his backpack and exhaled. "You seem pretty modest to me."
"You haven't seen me dance." She put her hands on her hips and sashayed back a step. "Do you dance?"
Shinji fanned the air with a hand. "Oh, no. No…"
"Have someone teach you. Get on a floor somewhere and embarrass yourself. There are perks to some forms of dance, like prizes and grinding pelvises with a member of the opposite sex."
"Okay," said Shinji. "That was a really weird thing to say to me. Not all of it. Just that last part."
"That is why my friends say I am a work in progress."
Shinji laid his backpack on the floor and sat on it. "Are your friends from here?"
"Dude, I am an enigma. Let it go."
He did. It'd be worth pursuing if he weren't so tired—the adrenalin bleeding off, maybe. He pinned his forehead to his dirty knees. "I've thought about going back home. I've had the time to. But I'm here now, right? There's no going back."
"You can always go back," she said.
Shinji shrugged. He kneaded his shoulder where his backpack had been choking off his circulation. "Maybe I'd feel differently if I came here on my own, but I was summoned."
"Hm." She nodded. "By your father."
Boom.
Someone picked up Shinji's brain and spiked it against his skull. He gaped at her, vision doubling up. "How do you know my father?"
"I know him by his lies. I know him by the meaning of death he's bestowed upon me." Shinji craned his neck. He could see only her eyes, two jewels hooded beneath the glare of electric lights. How long had she been standing over him? "Because of your father, I am afraid to die. That fear is my true place of birth, the seed of my soul. I am grateful, but I do not thank him. I envy you your instinctual fear of death, Shinji."
Shinji swallowed. "My father's name is Gendo Ikari."
"Yes. That's it."
"Who are you?"
"Rei. You will know their lies when you see my face."
They were dropped into an earthquake. Rei staggered back. The lawn chair closed around her leg, wrestling her to the ground. Tin cans and condiments jitterbugged on their shelves—pickle jars leapt to their deaths. The freezer groaned and stretched like the skin of a silver drum. It kept coming. Shinji took the time to look at the lights above, their sway throwing metronome shadows across the floor. Whatever he shouted at Rei, she answered with a quick headshake; how unnecessary.
Shinji had smacked his head on the ground before the ride was over. Maybe that was why he was thinking words instead of saying them. He struggled to say something…
"That was bigger than the rest!" Smooth.
Rei was ahead of him, having kicked the lawn chair off her legs and stood. She lifted him by the crook of his elbow. "On your feet," she said. "It is time for enormous bravery."
His legs were still rubber, boneless, useless. Somehow Rei still pulled him down the side corridor. He lifted his backpack from where he'd been dragging it along the floor, slinging it across his back with his free arm. He stumbled by cages brimming with barrels, boxes and tables. Halfway down the hall, he peaked over her shoulder and glimpsed a door dislocated from its hinges. They were leaving. "Do you know why my dad sent for me? You know, don't you?"
"Not enough time to explain. My answers will have meaning provided we meet again. I want to meet again. To wait all this time and to see you just once wouldn't be cool. But I've risked much to meet you today."
The door flung back as she shoved through it. They pounded up one flight, and twisted up into another dusted with faint light trickling from above. The other restaurant, thought Shinji. They reached the top step and turned into sunlight streaming over empty booths with half-eaten pastries and spilled wines, naked counters and bare barstools, and a lectern with a stack of menus. They stopped at the front entrance, lavish typeface etched backwards into its frosted glass. Rei traded locked arms for locked eyes. Shinji couldn't look away. "We will meet again if we're careful and smart. For now, we've never met, Shinji. Tell no one we spoke. It just wouldn't be cool."
Rei opened the door, shoved him through it, and slammed it shut.
She had just kicked him out of Geneviève's. Sounded French. Shinji tried catching her vanishing back into the cellar. Hopeless. Sunlight played tricks on the stone cottage décor inside and the storefront reflecting his soiled slacks, his frumpy, half-tucked shirt…his confusion.
Shinji walked out to the middle of the street. The asphalt swayed below him—he was still walking on stilts. He looked elsewhere: to his left, seeing tortured steel and fuselages gutted by flames; and power lines successfully tackled to the ground and sparking in protest. One lucky storefront had its face politely caved in with a bus.
"Hey!"
He looked to his right, and up. And up. Far, far away, but still not nearly far enough away, a column of fire supported heaven.
"Hey! Harry Fucking Houdini. Harry F. Houdini!"
Shinji looked across the street. He noticed the car first, a sporty number that had mounted the curb. Something had smashed the car's front windshield. And shaved off half of its blue paintjob. And ate its sideview mirror. And sat on its roof. And stole its hubcaps. And kicked in its taillight.
Then Shinji noticed the woman leaning against the car door. She had poured herself into a black one-piece dress that ran out of material a little above mid-thigh. A lot above. He remembered the photograph he'd brought with him, the woman in it bending over at the waist and winking. He remembered the arrow pointing at her cleavage—her smile. The woman across the street was not smiling.
But she was looking at him. She seemed unfazed by the runnel of blood trickling down her face behind her sunglasses.
Shinji waved.
The woman snatched the shades off of her face. "Get your ass in the car."
4A – Shinji gets in the car and they drive to headquarters
4B – Shinji doesn't get into the car
4C - Misato gets a call-and it's not good (Go To Chapter 8)
4D - Shinji passes out
4E – All of the Above
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