Chapter: 4C—Misato gets a call—and it's not good.

Choice Path: Start – 1C – 4C

Author: Midnight Cereal

Shinji thought it a reasonable request. His ass. In the car. The rest of him, too, presumably. Maybe he'd go places—places not cratered or flaming or rife with albinos.

And why wouldn't the woman take him? As soon as…Misato?...stopped yelling into her cell phone, things would change for the better. Her family name cruised at the edge of his mind. It would come to him. If he walked around a bit, it would come to him—

"Shinji! Don't you dare!"

His head snapped up. Misato had pushed away from the car, straight scraped legs anchored to the pavement. Was she farther away than she had been moments ago? It at least explained why she was reaching out to him.

"Shinji, trust me when I say I know you've had a rough day, and I won't lie to you, it might get rougher…it will get rougher. But as you can see, I've had a rough day, too, and if you run from me again…" Her fist closed around thin air. "Just don't run away, okay? Please? Because I'll chase you. Don't make me chase you. Understand? Because I will choke you out. I will choke you like the Shogun. And you'll go down."

Shinji thought it a reasonable request.

So he nodded.

"You are a dear, you know that? Trust me, I'll do what I can to make this—"

And spun on his heel and broke for Geneviève's.

But everything slowed him down, spliced him into a high speed reel. His backpack humped his shoulders and tossed around the storefront in front of him. The shaded fixtures inside and the woman pouncing on his reflection outside threw off his depth perception. The boy in the mirror hit the ground; Shinji's upper and lower teeth clashed as their chins skimmed the asphalt.

Misato pulled him onto his back to expose his soft underbelly. And also, to choke him. Her arm snaked over his face on route to his carotid artery; Misato was warm sweat beading through sports talc antiperspirant, fading perfume—

"Why does life keep trying to troll me?"

—a whirlpool of vodka and cigarette butts swirling just beneath peppermint gum.

Misato squeezed. Shinji kicked to stay above the bubbling darkness, but she bound his legs with her own—ropes of hard sinew that bit into him. He had never been a good swimmer; no, he never learned how. What would be the point? The universe had never been anything but one big tide dashing him against whatever hard scrap of life he'd washed up on. He was tired. He had never done anything, and he was tired. The two large pillows molded against his head were terribly convenient. Soon he drifted out again with the low and black waters, where nothing breathed or rustled or spoke except Rei.

Dude, wake up, like, now, she seemed to say.

Everyone in NERV's Tactical Control Room had stopped moving as the pixilated snow on the view screen snapped into hi-rez flames and steeped in them the ghoul, some crazy number of stories tall. The view screen in the room was the envy of any IMAX; the monster consumed every digital mote from floor to ceiling. Some sacrificial camera filmed it from kilometers away.

Kozo Fuyutski had been consumed with command, with urgent calls to Doctor Akagi and Lieutenant Colonel Katsuragi, and with the smug idiocy of the three JSDF command stooges huddled at the nose of the Control Room's command terrace; but now he waited like the technicians and scientists, and like Commander Ikari, who stooped over his desk behind the JSDF brass. Standing at Ikari's side, Kozo had time to think about how big the monster was, how its skin sloughed off in putrid sides that would pancake delivery trucks.

And then it took a step out of the nuclear glass beneath its feet. From his high perch next to Gendo Ikari, Kozo saw everyone move again, their typing faster, their paces quickened, beige bundles of nervous twitches feeding a collective, professional panic. He wore his old professor's voice to trade trite observations with Ikari, a game the Commander nursed and Kozo suffered with a snug boredom; but Kozo could feel his hair go even grayer. His back hurt.

He noticed one of the JSDF stooges twisted around to look back, the man's eyes boiled eggs quivering below the shelf of his pocked brow. Kozo looked back to the inferno churning across the display; the JSDF had played its hand, all 4 kilotons of it, in the middle of Sagami. Kozo remembered how the vines trickled through the town's stone embankments, how a red marble plaza enclosed by a gingko grove pulled Sagami together. Only the tree stumps remained, hot shadows and nicotine filters flicking embers at one end and rooted in the ground at the other. Good ol' grey, chain-smoking Sagami. The monster was still there, and getting bigger.

Because it was coming here.

Gendo Ikari stood. "Katsuragi?" he asked. Kozo traced the back of Ikari's head to the thin black beard framing the Commander's frown.

"She found the Third Child," said Kozo. "Chōku Ward. Lieutenant Aoba said they're coming via Route 1. ETA is—"

Thunder struck the Control Room and funneled through the soles of Kozo's grey chukkas. A tech screeched at them about the inertial dampers. The monster. The orbits of its bird-skull face flushed with white light that raced across the view screen and filled it with snow again.

Thunder.

"Prepare the staff for the imminent transfer of combat operations authority to NERV," said Ikari.

Kozo nodded. "Right."

"And wake up Rei."

Kozo stared.

Shinji wondered why his alarm clock was a car engine. He blinked away sleep when his buzzer revved up and then shifted down. He closed his eyes again.

"You okay?" a woman asked. "Please be okay…"

Presumably, it was she who jabbed two fingers against the pulse in his neck. She stopped holding her breath. "There you are. There's my trooper."

The fingers went away. Shinji swallowed, the reflex passing through a dull deep ache collaring his neck. He coughed. "Help, I've been kidnapped."

"I did not kidnap you," she said.

Shinji opened his eyes. He saw scrapes on high cheek bones and blood matting deep purple hair. A slender hand flexed in a fingerless driving glove; leather knuckles bundled around the shaft of the gear shift. Here was a woman who knew how to switch lanes. Shinji cleared his throat. "Are you taking me to see my father?"

"I want you to look outside," she answered. "And if you ask me if your father's outside, I, I don't know what I'll do…"

She elaborated with a thigh twitch, and as invisible hands pressed Shinji into his seat, the city pulled itself into ever-longer streamers of flame and charcoal smoke behind her frown. He twisted back to his window. The seat belt took over where Misato had left off, chewing his neck raw. "I'm pretty sure you kidnapped me."

"Are you looking?" asked Misato.

The road dropped away past the guardrail, the cliff shooting down into lush suburbs that clustered closer to downtown Tokyo-3. Shinji gaped at a structure rooted between the city's outskirts and commercial heart—taller than any building downtown, founded in the middle of charred, mile-wide spokes and reaching upward with gnarled, billowing fingers. A tree of fire. Shedding ash like black pollen. Shinji charted a scar in the landscape, cutting away from the shadow of the blast and across the grid work of streets. In the same direction Misato drove them. It was a straight line, really, the aftermath of an intelligent cyclone. It blew him back to algebra class, plotting linear equations and y intercepts. Intersections…

"Can you let me out?"Misato tapped a button in the car. The locks slammed home in the leather upholstery. Shinji buried his chin in his shallow chest. "It's not like I wanted to come."

Misato snorted. "Right."

"Well, I didn't."

"Well, you're here, and because you're here, we may have missed our chance to kill that thing…" She nodded at the creature's trajectory—or was it a head butt? "and now we probably won't make it back in time to save your dad. My higher ups thought I should know that, and I just thought you'd like to know, too. Thanks."

His legs were numb. He slid the backpack off his lap and allowed the pins to prick his feet. "Make it back in time…?"

"You'll see what I mean, okay? Soon enough—"

"What do you mean by 'make it back in time'?"

Misato thrust a finger under his nose to point at the cloud of fire mushrooming above the valley. "We did that to stop the Angel. That…" She snapped her fingers. "That was a mine. Four kilotons, okay? Tactical nuke territory and it shrugged. Just tanked it."

"When did you drop the—"

"Sorry, but I don't work for the army."

"So who dropped the bomb?"

"The mine," said Misato. "It was a mine."

"Who dropped the mine?"

"You don't 'drop' mines," she sighed. "You place mines. We placed it."

"Who placed it?" he asked.

"The SDF."

Shinji blinked. "I thought you said you didn't work for the army."

"I don't."

"Why is it my fault you don't have bigger weapons?"

"We do have bigger weapons! We have awesome weapons! We—" Misato slammed the heel of her hand into the dastardly, asshole steering wheel. "Are you serious? We have zero-point trebuchets! We have vortexes that shit you out on the dark side of the moon. But we weren't authorized to use them, and you know why? Because we didn't want to risk vaporizing you! And you know why we had to take that precaution? Because we didn't know where you were! And you know why we didn't know where you were? Because you fucking ran away!"

This was that cop accusing him of stealing that bike stricken with rust and waiting to die in that scrap heap; this was letting his aunt in on her surprise birthday party when no one bothered to tell him it was a secret; that hollow shaft in his spine that drained anger before he could drown them in it. "I thought you said you didn't work for the army," he whispered.

"I don't work for the army."

"But you said 'we' tried to stop the Angel."

"I mean collectively. A team. Like the justice league." She lifted eyebrows, wriggled them to coax his memory—of what, who the hell knew. Her brow crashed back down. "A coalition?"

"I see," he said. "I didn't know you were talking about coalitions."

"Well, I was. Sorry."

"I was confused."

"Yes, Shinji, yes. You are very confused. And I promise, soon all your questions will be answered by someone who wasn't nearly murdered eighteen times today."

"I ran away from you twice?"

"Right before you ran into that alley. I was pulling up, y'know?"

He shrugged, or ducked his head into a shell that wasn't on his back. "I…guess I didn't see you?"

"Dude, I was practically soliciting you," she said.

"I thought I was going to die, okay?"

"But that's just, but…" Shinji could see her nicked, angry lips tripping over a junk pile of comebacks. "So was I!"

"What does my dad care if I run away?"

"Oh, for…" Shinji flinched when she swung her arm out, but she reached past the bank of batteries wired in series between them. He marveled, really, at how she drove so effortlessly without looking at the road. Shinji marveled a little less when the car drifted towards the guardrail, escorting him to within white line's width of the colony of ceramic roofs far, far, far below. Misato jerked the wheel to the right with her knees before he had a chance to scream. Then she dropped a slim metal case into his lap, and raised a finger to stop the question he was halfway asking.

"No, just read it—it's good for you. It'll tell you everything." Misato sneezed. "That's a lie. But there's something about the Angels in there somewhere."

Shinji pointed at the pillar of ash vomited up into the atmosphere. "What do Angels have to do with the thing out there?"

"That's what I'm talking about," said Misato.

"No, the thing."

"Oh, come on!" She uncurled her fingers to run them through wavelets of purple, turbulent hair. "I really don't know why they call them Angels. It's supposed to be, I don't know, apocryphal." Misato shrugged. "It's a big joke to me."

"I don't think it's very funny," said Shinji.

"Yeah, me neither."

Shinji had nodded when shadows fell upon them and howled against the windshield. They had driven into a tunnel. Just a tunnel. Shinji swallowed his heart and turned over the slipcase, spun it until the romaji made sense:

Welcome to NERV

-NLY FOR YOUR EYES ONLY FOR YO—

Now it was the words he turned over, in his mind, until Misato spoke up again. "Boys still like robots, right?"

The last few meters to Rei's room—any room someone rolled Rei into, really—were always a bog of personnel Kozo had to wade through. Waking up Rei had become a rare but routine dirge of soldiers, doctors, and medical technicians, sighing, shaking heads, and murmuring suppositions.

Not today. The real, walking danger outside had stripped everyone's passivity down to professional anxiety. It churned and randomized them, which made them dense. The guards staked themselves to either side of the entrance and stared into the distance with bovine discipline. A physician verified biometrics on his PDA, then re-verified them. Three nurses argued about acceptable dosages of Hydralazine. An orderly adjusted the taser holstered on his belts; he removed it, flicked off the safety, flicked it back on, and ran his fingers over the silver prongs.

These people couldn't wait to be given orders.

"Go away," he said. A second passed as faces turned to him and smoothed with recognition. "Yes, that means you. And you. Get lost."

After a round of shared looks and shuffled feet, they skulked away like sullen children, the nurses first, the guards last. They reconstituted at a mutually-agreed distance from the entrance, which was fine with Kozo; he just wanted to walk inside without grinding against multiple strange asses.

Inside, Ritsuko Akagi guided her rolling chair between the girl perched at the edge of the med bed and the stainless steel counter ensconced below a line of cabinets. Someone who believed in perfunctory gestures had issued Rei her own suite a few levels up; this examination room was more lived in.

"Detective Fuyutski! You found me out." Dr. Akagi spun from the girl on the bed to a clipboard on the counter. She scribbled on the top page, flipping it to once over the carbon copy. Standing over her shoulder, Kozo tried to make out her chicken scratch. He gave up immediately and glanced at Rei. She hadn't yet moved her legs hanging off the edge of the bed or twitched the thin locked arms buttressing her candy cane posture.

And who knew what that meant. A military tactician—some screwball who got himself invited to a joint house exhibition in the Geofront—had remarked how easy the girl maintained the precipice of attack and defense; she was the proverbial empty cup, he proclaimed, the ball at the crest of the hill. Kozo couldn't remember if that had been before or after Rei bit off the man's ear.

"I said, how's the commander?"

Kozo looked back down. Akagi frowned up at him and waited until he said, "He's commiserating with Unit-01. You'll have to be damn relevant if you want to reach him."

Dr. Akagi smirked and stood, snapping off her gloves with a tiny whorl of white powder. "I gave her an injection of Haldol, so you have six hours at best." She clasped Kozo's arm before he could step towards the bed. "Watch it—it'll be a sec before it takes hold. Even when it does, I don't know what you're expecting out of her; well, I do, but…"

"We aren't expecting anything so long as the Colonel arrives with the Third."

"Oh? Well then, you've nothing to worry about."

"Facetiousness is the first sign of demoralization." God. He was spending too much time with Commander Ikari.

"Only a bit facetious. Misato makes things happen." She patted his shoulder, chancing a smile that reached the small mole below her left eye. "You'll see."

Kozo turned in time to catch Dr. Akagi's crop of bottle blonde hair and flowing lab coat billowing through the door. "Where are you headed now?"

The door whistled shut behind her.

"Caspar anticipates UV degradation in Unit-01's right bicep composite restraints," said Rei.

Kozo turned back. Rei was topiary. Practically Tussaud-esque. He wondered if she could move at all in the form-fitting plug suit vacuumed onto her body from the neck down. Kozo felt claustrophobic just looking at it—similar to what he felt when looking at her face, now hidden by the curtain of short blue hair drawn across. Duty won out. And cuckolding loyalty.

"Rei…" Kozo stepped in front of her, bending at the waist instead of the knees and regretting every spasmodic degree. But he could see her eyelids, still shuttered, fluttering with that storm of activity behind them. "Rei, do you know why I'm here?"

"Never buy from Spectral Systems. Their cure monitors choke on shortwave in LCL. Six-sigma? Don't make me laugh. Now I…have to dive. Take a portable CM and dive. Deep."

"How are you feeling?"

Rei uncurled herself. She breathed through her nose. Her chest heaved against the neoprene skin. Collapsed. Kozo was glad her eyes kept closed. "Deep."

A tremble infected her lip and spread to her eyebrows. Tears slipped out from the corner of her eyes. She whimpered and swung forward, her hips the axis of a flailing pendulum. She'd have fallen on her face had Kozo not caught her. Rei was the mixture of baby fat and skin and bones he thought she'd be. He lowered her to the ground as she turned in his arms. All the muscles in his back attacked each other.

Her eyes were open.

"I'm sorry we woke you," he said. She diagrammed him between fits of wet blinking. Here at least, with Rei tucked away in his shadow, he could imagine her eyes were merely a vibrant brown. "I'm sorry, and it won't be for long. I promise."

The liquid panic in her face congealed, and she scratched out a frown. There was no air between them. "Do you promise?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Do you promise?"

"Yes."

"Do you promise?"

"Yes."

"You already said that."

Then Rei sank her teeth into his thumb.

8A—Misato and Shinji make it and prepare for battle.

8B—Misato and Shinji don't make it, and NERV is on their own.

Voting is now open for this chapter! See the first chapter for details.