Chapter A/N: Takes place during Ace Combat 5's mission #17: "Journey Home," but is best visualized as a side-story cut scene, detailing an inserted character's view of that AC5 mission's events as I typically play them. I've named the 'family friend,' whom Gendo only half-lied about (strictly IMHO) when claiming Rei's parentage during Evangelion episode 21, as Yuko Ayanami. The particular Yu kanji I have in mind for her name's formal spelling matches with a different Rei character from the numeral kanji used in Rei's formal name to spell "Yurei," or "Ghost" in Japanese. My interpretation of Anea as the AC world's substitute for Japan is entirely non-canon, and may be revised at any time if a true equivalent is later revealed in an Ace Combat game or official supplement. This is also somewhat of a POV story as well, even if written in the standard third-person perspective. WARNINGS: Serious Angst, some abusive language and actions, military violence all ahead. All disclaimers apply, especially to the song The Journey Home.
Time: 17:00hrs 11/29/2010. Location: November International Stadium, November City, Osean Federation on the Osea Continent….
"The setting sun, the end of another day…" Rei Ayanami, an Osean foster child of ethnic Anean origin looked up to the evening sky and thought of her world as she saw it. It was comfortable; but so much felt wrong with it, for so many reasons that she could scarcely understand much less articulate at her tender (apparent) age of nine. But she understood one of the reasons it felt so wrong perfectly as she concluded: "I wish it would end this war as well."
Rei was only living in Osea, if indeed anywhere at all, because of a wartime decision her vanished mother had made when Rei was barely even a toddler. The late Yuko Ayanami swore unto death that her darling Rei would escape the Erusean state security operatives already hunting them both that stormy spring morning in 2005, even if the woman Rei only remembered now as a kindly, sad blur in her deepest memories could not. And so, Mrs. Ayanami brought the (purportedly) four-year-old Rei to a contact at the International Children's Charity Foundation branch orphanage in the picturesque city-state of San Salvación, departing from her little ghost's life with a half-remembered kiss goodbye. Before walking but ten steps out the front door, she was pounced upon by some six plainclothes Erusean policemen and peremptorily hustled into a waiting unmarked truck, to simply disappear from life itself as far as the world was concerned, much less Rei's life.
Given that this was at the height of the Usean Continental War and San Salvación had already been under fascist Erusean occupation for two years, ICCF promptly honored Yuko Ayanami's sacrifice in the only way practical. Wasting only what time they could not help, they carefully smuggled Rei and all other refugee children they could out of Erusean territory by any means necessary; and into foster homes in the one free nation powerful enough to simply swat down any unlikely Erusean attempt to visit the parents' sins unto the children: the democratic world superpower known as the Osean Federation.
Six years later, Rei had found a suitable foster home under the attentive if stern watch of the noted computer scientist Dr. Naoko Akagi. But she had not found peace, for another cruel joke had seen fit to write itself into Rei's story unbidden: Osea, once her shelter from War's peril, now found itself at war. Worse, pitted against none other than its old ally, and Anea's even older oppressor: the world's other, socialist superpower: Yuktobania. Reflecting on her bizarre life thus far, endlessly trapped in the crossfire of wars between countries she only notionally grasped, and felt no more than the purely customary respect for in the first place; Rei mentally asked herself, "What is this curious relationship that exists between War and myself? Why must it always follow me like a lost animal seeking a friend?"
"Hush, Rei!" Rei's foster mother corrected the blue-haired wisp of a girl for her comments regarding the sunset perhaps more harshly than others might find necessary, were they unaware of Rei's uncanny habit of scaring Naoko breathless at every opportunity. "I'll brook no defeatism in my household; and especially not with that tone of voice young lady! This war will end just as soon as we give those damned Yuke commies the thrashing they deserve…"
Naoko's stern patriotism was perhaps justifiable; her biological daughter Ritsuko was already a PhD, MD and officer in the Osean Air Defense Force at Heierlark Air Base in the territory variously called North Osea or South Belka, depending on which local resident one asked. But her particular contempt for the Yuktobanians, and all they stood for besides, simply reflected the traditionalist Imperial Anean ideology Naoko venerated; albeit as no more or less than what she had been taught that a traditional Anean family 'should' believe.
But her so-called 'traditional Anean family' was hardly such at all, despite Naoko's dutiful prayers to the household shrine for its patron gods to correct the problem ASAP, especially regarding: Rei Ayanami. Rei wasn't necessarily a troublesome child per se, least of all to guests for whom she was a model of polite conduct; but she certainly was a troubling child to anyone who had cared for her long enough to see just how like a ghost Rei could be apart from her appearance. As Naoko contemplated this, she startled herself back to reality as she noticed four arrowhead-like forms approaching from the south at high speed and in textbook diamond-slot formation.
"Look, the air show is starting!" Naoko stood almost to attention, insistently nudging Rei to do the same as she trained her binoculars on the lead aircraft. The four F-14D Super Tomcats comprising this onrushing unit were all decked out in an classic Anean theme: pink Sakura blossoms undulating freely on the wind through metallic purple skies painted on the aircrafts' fuselages, which seemed to perfectly complement the wavy climbs and dives the formation sailed through as it approached the city outskirts.
Rei looked up and instantly gaped in a tiny smile of wonder, a sight rare enough to lift even Naoko's professionally dour spirits, were that woman not equally engrossed with the onrushing combination of aeronautical flair and discipline. Rei's crimson eyes instantly latched onto two of the planes in particular as the formation alternated phased sharp banks or inverted rolls in turn, all while holding course to pass over the stadium: the curious aircraft in the trail position, and the one immediately to what would be its left as well.
With the deafening whine of their turbofans filling the stadium as they passed over, the formation lit their afterburners and sharply went vertical just after passing over the scoreboard screen above and behind Rei's head. Rei gasped in further amazement, something she hadn't thought possible, as the lead and trail fighters pulled further into a seemingly excruciating vertical loop before rolling out in a textbook Immelman to exactly recreate the diamond formation as the wingmen barrel rolled out of their own vertical yo-yo turns, crossing their paths before settling into normal position. This breathtaking finale concluded, all four fighters roared away from the clamor of November International Stadium in triumph. Honestly, Rei couldn't tell if the engines or the applause from the ecstatic crowd were louder, but she knew her foster mother was certainly doing her part for the crowd's cause…
In an instinctive act that her young mind found equal parts natural and foreign to her experience, Rei began to compare the the pilots' flying techniques as they went on and assumed what seemed to be a patrol of some sort—they had after all been armed, which puzzled her. The two Rei had in mind were both casual about their flying, the one ahead to port of the trail aircraft almost recklessly so, but each was already a master pilot in their own way and Rei's breath caught for an instant in awe as she grasped the trailing pilot's style in particular. "So he is what they call an 'Ace?' And I…I know him…yes. I can surely identify him if I just concentrate…" However, the so-called 'guest of honor' at this sublime occasion saw fit to deny Rei the very concentration she so sought.
Vice President Appelrouth made Rei uneasy, though she was ashamed to imagine why that was. In truth, she just sensed such an aura of selfishness about him as he spoke, and it took effort for her to pay the proper attention in spite of her instinct to look away in disgust. His speech to commence the ceremony began. "People of Osea… Please, lend an ear to this broadcast. As your Vice President, I stand before you on behalf of the President of Osea. Listen to your fellow countrymen cheering before me."
Rei drowned the Vice President's words in her own thoughts as she pondered why he was using such stern rhetoric at a peace ceremony. Whatever Appelrouth's reasons, Dr. Akagi was eating it up like she had her now empty popcorn. Perhaps such obedience was simply her way of belonging in this world? Rei envied what Naoko was feeling, but something felt very wrong as she tuned back in to Vice President Appelrouth's words exhorting the people of Osea.
"They are filled with ANGER against Yuktobania and they swear that they will not drop their weapons until Yuktobania has surrendered! Now, I ask you to listen. Listen to their cheers!" Appelrouth recovered from the gyrations he'd made during the "ANGER" part of the speech, and cocked his head back like a living statue as he jabbed his right fist skyward and awaited the applause he obviously felt was due him.
The particular adoptive Osean known as Rei Ayanami, however, was mute in horror as the reason for her unease at Vice President Appelrouth's conduct hit her at once. From the depths of memory, images of a poster glimpsed in childhood, block printed onto both its original cheap parchment and Rei's memory, surfaced; it was a montage of a uniformed Generalissimo, whom Rei assumed was Erusea's dictator back during the Usean War, silhouetted against streaking fighters above and with fist cocked in the exact 'conqueror's pose' her Vice President was assuming now.
She thought, staring skyward at the violet-hulled fighters as they buzzed the November Tower silhouetted in sunset, "I want feelings like these so badly: to respect others and be respected by them; to call somewhere home. But this way to stimulate those feelings offends my conscience as too… hateful. I do not wish to reject others as they have rejected me. Does this way to belong… this entire situation Fate commands us to obey… feel wrong to you as well?" Seeing those mighty Super Tomcats flash by impassively, the former trailing aircraft back in his rightful place as commander, pressing onward with their patrol and answering her votive question with their thunder, Rei made her decision to seek comfort within and let the storm pass as she always did.
With a rapt Dr. Akagi none the wiser for standing with the crowd while hanging on the Vice President's every word, Rei stood apart and archly turned her eyes to the purple-hulled fighters streaking across the golden horizon, closing them as she began to hum a tune in almost a whisper which sympathizers in the crowed felt at once defiant and yet hopeful. Onlookers would later compare it to either the song of a mother levelly staring down a firing squad to save her condemned child, or alternately of a sister standing equally firm for a brother in similar straits. Though many argued, and that even among those who favored Rei's effort, which not all did even after the truth about the war came out, none could decide which spirit Rei's melody had carried for sure. More still considered it nigh blasphemous to even try.
It was the tune to a popular song, and an old one to be sure. And invariably memorized by those it had touched, but Rei held it particularly dear for a very basic reason; she could swear she'd heard her both her mother, the lost Yuko Ayanami, and another mysterious woman whose presence felt so comforting like Yuko's had that it still confused Rei even years later, singing this song to her together sometime in the vasty deep of her past before time had even been as far as the infant Rei Ayanami was concerned. She clasped her hands to her chest as if in prayer as she hummed the tune that some fellow spectators instantly voiced on their own with "The journey begins…" And the song swelled person-by-person like a gathering tidal wave as Rei hummed softly to herself, until the crowd joined in en masse at "Things that I need to know…" and swept Rei's tune toward the heavens like a firestorm.
As the soulful words of "The Journey Home" finally blew into Naoko Akagi's eardrums with the force of a 70,000-voice hurricane, she found herself gawking at Rei aghast, incredulous as she parroted the Vice President's pleas for order. But if anything silenced Rei while the crowd sang on, it was the appearance of other warlike aerial forms on the broad horizon, rather than any of Naoko's cajoling or threats. She collected herself just as the officials began jury-rigging an evacuation of the stadium before the impending battle got out of hand and turned the arena into a slaughterhouse. "Come along Rei, we're going home; where I will prepare for a late night at my desk after I give you a serious lesson in proper citizenship!" Naoko curtly clamped Rei's hand in her own and began to file towards the stairs in her best order.
That was, Naoko's best order possible when close to 70,000 other souls were singing a antiwar spiritual at the top of their lungs while equally trying to escape impending death from above. After a third attempt to silence her ward's seditious humming of the song shehad put the crowd up to, Naoko gave up and simply focused on weaving through the bedlam around her. "I may be the proverbial rocket scientist," Naoko thought, "but I certainly can't understand children; and probably never will however much I love them. Thank Heaven Ritsuko grew up so quickly, since as is Rei frightens me senseless and the other scientists' kids frustrate me equally." As the minutes passed and the ever nearing sound of explosions echoed through the archways to the stadium seats, Naoko questioned for a second why she seemed so much less constrained in her shuffle towards the safety of the parking lot and her awaiting minivan. But only for a second, before she turned to look behind and saw only strangers humming where once there had definitely been a blue-haired, juvenile siren mere moments past…
Rei had made her way in typically stealthy fashion to the archway at the very top of the stadium leading to her former seat as she had watched the aerobatic display. Now she stood alone, unobtrusively humming as before and watching the carnage above, a veritable ghost saluting those fallen to an anthem all could agree on: hers.
As before, Rei's crimson eyes evaluated the fighting styles of those four whom she had watched moments ago as she hummed. Then, they had been flying above her in confident majesty, but now they were resigned to battle with desperate caution for the survival of the crowd and themselves. In addition to the first two she recognized, she also discerned one who fiercely watched over the commander, a woman if Rei correctly read the emotions implied by her plane's maneuvers; and another whose gender she couldn't read but clearly happened to be the unit's junior member in all respects, even though probably more skilled than the average fighter pilot one would find anyway.
Even with such a seemingly ramshackle outfit as November City's only defenders at the moment, it seemed as if no squadron the Yuktobanians brought to bear could even touch these four lonely Tomcats as they hacked down each fighter they targeted in turn, their rampage just barely stemming the tide while yet more enemy reinforcements improbably made it to the scene. Just as Rei pondered why they had to fight on alone if Osea had such powerful air defenses in addition to these four elite pilots, her eyes swelled wide in anguished terror as the plane that had been the commander's port wingman took two missiles squarely in its portside engine nacelle. Though the explosion was some miles distant, inside Rei felt as if she had taken those missiles squarely to the gut; and the tears began to well up as she grasped what that had to mean…
But amazingly, the wounded fighter just wrenched itself clumsily back into formation and dared the Yuktobanians to come after it again, unleashing its spread of four AIM-54C Phoenix long-range missiles at an incoming squadron on the horizon just to give them its honest opinion. Rei was overwhelmed by that same odd certainty she had felt before, thinking, "I know this pilot as well, by his spirit if not by name. But we have never met, so how can this be?" The end of her question was punctuated with the fiery deaths of three Yuktobanian MiG-31 Foxhounds as the mysterious pilot's Phoenix missiles struck home in rapid succession, only one missile going wide of its mark into the distance since the Ace had struck down that target just after the wingman's launch. He'd rushed in on full afterburner, flinging two AIM-9M Sidewinders up the Foxhound's intakes in a perfect head-on kill and dodging the late Yuke pilot's simultaneous riposte like the aerial samurai he seemed to be.
But the wingman's smoke-trailing Super Tomcat couldn't keep in formation for long, and the Ace's plane banked eastward to confront another threat that Rei couldn't determine as the other pilots broke formation to remain and contest the enemy's claim to air dominance over November International Stadium. Yet more Foxhounds, and Typhoons and Flankers and more besides, fell to the three Osean fighters' rabid defense of their city.
"Who is attacking now?" Rei wondered in thought as she saw a distant object flare up before falling to pieces in the sky; and then another, and yet another which now was clearly a Yuktobanian aircraft. The ominous planes, which she heard a sandy-haired, bespectacled classmate name once as F-117A Nighthawk stealth fighters in an unusual show-and-tell routine of his model planes, were a collection of bizarre and threatening angles welded into fuselages that looked the very incarnations of malice. But the terror they might otherwise have brought Rei was missing as she coolly saw the Ace's plane bring them low like an executioner of old carrying out sentence at the sword-testing grounds. While she sang quietly, this fighter's pilot stood out truly as far and away the most puzzling of those Rei had seen and evaluated tonight on both sides.
The man, clearly an Ace in this war if not already an Ace of Aces, flew and fought with justifiable anger at the Yuktobanians' attack on a civilian gathering, but no real hatred of them to speak of; a man quite unlike the Vice President. This man only fought and killed those Yukes in his way because of the war, and he would happily stop the instant the broader conflict did as well. It was as if the pilot himself understood as little about why this war had happened as Rei did. But more comforting to her and importantly for the world, he had a mind to find out and stop the whole sorry juggernaut himself before it was too late for anyone, be it by victory proper or some other means.
The song was barely audible now as virtually all of the crowd had already left, but Rei felt obliged to continue her humming vigil for the four pilots even if alone. Once the last of the angular fighters broke up upon impact of the Ace's cannon burst and its pilot had luckily ejected, Rei jolted in acknowledgement as she eerily felt the Ace's gaze search over her for some reason as the three undamaged fighters desperately circled to help their mortally imperiled comrade.
She stopped humming briefly and breathlessly whispered, "Help him… Please… I do not wish him to die. Both of us… we do not wish him to die! Can you not help him, Blaze?" An explosive thought accompanied the whispers, "How do I know this pilot's callsign? How can I know?" And then the Ace's name, which she had absolutely no reason to know at all but always had nonetheless, fell into her head like a nuclear bomb dropped from Heaven itself as she hesitantly thought, "Can you not save him… Mr. Kaji?"
The instant Rei begged this unfathomably familiar hero to pull off one more impossible victory, to save his stricken wingman and thumb his nose yet again at the assembled gods of war, just like he had so many other times that evening, her hopes were (typically) dashed to shards. The wingman's smoking F-14D Super Tomcat, its one good engine not enough to keep it aloft or power its systems, rolled inverted and nosed into a fatal dive towards the circle of stars at the center of the Osean flag painted on the stadium's football field.
Just after the Tomcat set its terminal course thusly, perhaps deliberately so in what Rei took as the pilot's last try to save others despite his inevitable death, she saw the pilot raise his visor and crane his brown eyes upward to meet her own crimson; to fix this child's distant, ghostly and yet comforting face in his memory as the dying, cherry blossoms-on-purple wind liveried plane fell. Rei thought she recognized a sheepish and accepting smile beneath the cockpit's oxygen mask as their eyes locked in understanding, but only a for breath before the smile vanished forever when he ploughed squarely into the center of the Osean flag on the stadium's field, his aircraft crumpling like a paper model the instant before it exploded into a gout of flame and parts.
Rei huddled deep in the shadows of the archway, thankfully safe from the explosion and debris. She dared not ask why she knew how to do this, for there was such a thing as too much raw strangeness to contemplate even for Rei Ayanami. She simply rushed to the banister when the worst of the explosion was past and surveyed the blazing, pulverized wreckage that had once flown valiantly in her defense. With a single, hushed invocation of "Chopper," the pilot's callsign she also knew and did not want to question why at the moment, Rei fell to her knees and closed her eyes in silent prayer to mark his passing. Above, far from being demoralized as the Yuktobanians doubtlessly had hoped Chopper's fall would make them, the four pilots turned their planes' Vulcan cannons on the remaining intruders now that their missiles were long expended; displaying their true power instead as yet more Yukes fell to their newly-grief-stricken might than before…
Naoko Akagi angrily stared dumbstruck for the second time that evening as Rei knelt in silence before the banister like it was some temple pew, obviously lost in her own little world like always. Placing a hand on her foster child's shoulder, she levelly asked "Do you have anything to say for yourself, Rei; any final offering for that dead hero before we discuss how to deal with your behavior tonight? Speak now! My commuter flight back to Bassett Space Center for the work week is tomorrow, and I'll be working on my report for our mutually admired Dr. Ikari all night, so what you say may very well decide how lenient I'll consider being with you."
Rei only nodded at Naoko's words before standing as tall as her childish frame could to look at the approaching Osean fighters: Blaze's formation plus their inexcusably tardy reinforcements. Though she only heard their engines wailing, she knew what this flyby was for; and so Rei began actually singing her peace anthem from the most appropriate place she knew. "If a man can fly over an ocean… / Then no mountains can get in his way… " Blaze's fighter thundered overhead as Rei's voice tolled her defiance of those responsible for this tragedy, leading his two surviving comrades on each wing in echelon.
As the third ship of four F-16C Fighting Falcons trailing Blaze's unit in a diamond pattern passed the stadium scoreboard, it pulled away in a break turn, doing its part in the "missing man" ritual. Rei delivered her improvised coda accordingly by singing the rest of her stanza and the song's conclusion, "Will he fly on forever… / Searching for something to believe/ The more that I try… / The more that I fly… / The answer in itself… will be there."
Rei then looked to Blaze on the horizon as the last glow of sunset caught the metallic purple base to his aircraft's cherry-blossom wind livery, the plane seeming to listen intently as it arced away northwest and she thought but one thing more of him tonight. "Perhaps my wish will come true after all. If you believe in yourself Blaze… Mr. Kaji… as you have inspired me to believe tonight, then even War itself may not withstand your true power. Take care of yourself, Blaze."
Turning to her foster mother, Rei saw Naoko quaking in raw, unvarnished rage of a magnitude even the latter found alien to her. Naoko knew she should punish Rei severely for the paranoid episode that girl had put her through. But she equally knew those thrice-damned newsmen were there in the stands far below, gawking upward and marveling at Rei as if she were just field-canonized "Patroness of Fallen Aviators" or suchlike rubbish. If the great Dr. Naoko Akagi even hinted at punishing Rei for so minor a sin as running away in the middle of an enemy raid (!), they would gladly ruin even a scientist of her stature on Osean Broadcasting Corporation News itself in defense of their purported saint. "Do you have anything to say for yourself Rei; some attempt to convince me to spare the rod for what some might deem treason this night? Well, DO YOU REI AYANAMI?"
The cerulean-haired wisp simply mocked her guardian further by blankly bowing in obedience even as she mumbled, "No. Let us go home, old hag."
Naoko fumed in horror at this throw of the gauntlet. "HOW DARE SHE, that little bitch! And that smile…" Naoko imagined her hands crushing Rei's throat in fury for just a second before two things pulled her back from the abyss she'd gladly tiptoed. First, she finally grasped just whom Rei so eerily resembled: her old colleague and even older rival, Yui Ikari, dead since the late Usean War in 2005. If Naoko punished Rei like she really wanted to punish her, even in the sanctity of her own home, she thus knew that it would leak out eventually and to the worst possible parties. Second, and worse still, Naoko realized she had tipped her hand to the reporters, and they were already whispering to themselves while pointing both fingers and cameras at her; she was ruined already! Huffing to the universe in general, Naoko led Rei off with a cutting reply of, "Yes indeed. Let's. Go. Home. Now!"
Time blurred as Rei was hustled to the waiting minivan and driven home; blurred almost out of existence as far as Dr. Naoko Akagi was concerned, to the point where this whole night took on the bizarre aspect of a magical realist novella, or a full-blown mystical experience even. Which worried her, because Naoko herself was only as religious as what she felt a traditional Anean home required. Why so many people bent their brains out of shape trying to believe that objectively compulsive behaviors, like those at the core of most devotional cults or radical cells, could fill the emptiness inherent in their lives honestly escaped Naoko's comprehension. As had Rei's behavior tonight. Naoko thought in consternation, "Why? What stupid reason did Rei have to think that those pilots who risked their lives in her defense would appreciate such… OUTRAGES… as she committed tonight? Since when does a dutiful soldier let such ingratitude stand at a time meant to honor his service?" But as always, the answer eluded her.
No, her only true god was Science, and her particular High Priest thereof was never far from the womanly part of Naoko's mind, even when they couldn't share her expression of this while slaving away in the nearby Bassett Space Center's bowels; she was bound by protocol after all if nothing else more… pleasing. He was a dark priest, for sure, the kind of man who never asked: anything. Which was all well and good for Naoko Akagi since she was his kind of woman in return. You either obeyed her utterly, or else she would obey you the same if you were able to impose your defiance as superior. As was he.
One thing was certain, she would not give those cretins who dared to glorify a juvenile traitor on national television the satisfaction of surrendering that last degree to her temper, where they could practice their usual craft of taking what would have been justice and making it seem to be the real crime after all. No, Dr. Naoko Akagi knew the proper course of action was to leave Rei to her room for the night, where she had gone on her own without even asking for dinner after dutifully enduring a token slap that Naoko honestly wouldn't have given but for Rei's inquiry. Sighing in raw exhaustion, Dr. Akagi straightened her papers at her spare desk before turning to an innocuous envelope she'd just received that afternoon. "ICCF… Urgent and Confidential… Eyes only… Addressed to the Guardian of Rei Ayanami? What? Did they find some relative the Eruseans didn't make disappear to come and train me in just how to RAISE this unholy child? Meh… if only I were so lucky after today…" Naoko didn't want to know how close to the truth she had guessed as she opened the seal.
Splayed out on the bed in her typically decrepit room, Rei Ayanami paid no heed to the bruise on her right wrist, a relic of her purely customary punishment from Dr. Akagi, as she contemplated the night's events. The war, her being able to gauge the skills of pilots she'd never met; none of it made any sense even after much thought. And the energy for such rapidly vanished as Rei surrendered to a fatigue she had never known before. "What is this? I know I shall awaken when it is time… but part of me feels as if it wants to lay down forever the burdens of many lifetimes before. Why? Just what is… happening… to me?" Rei pondered her particular condition as she drifted heavily into the tranquil sleep of the innocent.
21:30hrs. 11/29/2010, Sand Island Air Base, Sand Island, Osean Federation territory in the Ceres Ocean.
Blaze, or Captain Ryoji Kaji of the Osean Air Defense Force's 108th Tactical Fighter Squadron as the historians might just care to call him someday if his luck (improbably) ever held again, sat pensively on the lower bunk of his quarters' bed as he held two pictures before him like a pair of deuces in the great poker game of Life. "They might as well be," he reflected, "For all the luck they've brought me."
One was a photo from Albert Genette, the base's assigned reporter: So as not to spoil the moment, the Ryoji Kaji that would soon exist in the world's minds as Blaze because of this photo shoot, stood just obscured enough by his late wingman's elbow to appear faceless yet not dismissive. Said moment being a priceless shot of Kei "Edge" Nagase watching Alvin "Chopper" Davenport give the newest member of what everyone but the bookkeepers called Wardog Squadron, Hans "Archer" Grimm, a combination headlock and noogie to celebrate his return alive from a very… unique... inaugural mission. Few pilots had what it takes to survive when their first combat flight involved taking off in a spare plane on minimal notice to pull interceptor duty over their own airbase, afterburning off the runway into mortal combat against bombers and escort fighters trying equally hard to turn said base into so much smoldering rubble.
"That was the first sunset of this war, September 27th…" Kaji closed his eyes to let the truth of just how much could change in a mere two months, especially at war, fill him in his entirety. He thought as it did, "Now I've inexplicably failed another person I cared and took responsibility for." Looking to the other photo, Kaji sighed the unmistakable lament of a love cruelly and cleanly cut down before it could truly bloom. The photo showed a young woman with long violet-black hair and bold blue eyes to match the equally so set of her face. "Dearest Misato Katsuragi… you'd be a Captain over there at Heierlark by now, right?"
Kaji's former friend and more in the service had been a part of his life since their second year of community college together in the noted college town of Bana. They went on to the Air Defense Force Academy in Oured together; and it seemed for a brief moment after gaining their commissions in 2008 that the rose-tinted dream Kaji had of someday… treating… Misato to the best that microgravity could offer aboard the spaceplane Arkbird, might just have been possible after all. But then Misato transferred up without warning to Heierlark AFB, aka the real "North Osea" in that blasted and forlorn land that every soul not living on the military bases or government compounds still proudly called "South Belka." Worse, when the Wardogs had stopped over at Heierlark years later, ostensibly to refuel and repair following their top cover over the Osean naval catastrophe in the Eaglin Straits exactly two months ago, the one Kaji sought out as 1st Lt. Katsuragi was deliberately elsewhere whenever he tried to find her.
"Perhaps I'm doomed to be forevermore known only as 'Blaze.' The one legacy of our love and training days you didn't see fit to destroy, my dearest 'Flash.'" Sleep well, if not with me then…" Kaji began to strip his flight suit off and was down to his tank top before a hard knock on the door interrupted him. "Yes?" Kaji quipped in reply.
"Blaze, it's Genette. I've got some footage… from the battle that is… which I think you specifically should see. It's positively uncanny!" Genette's tone of voice said as he entered that he knew Kaji was in one of those moods often entered when Death takes away someone you thought would simply always be around: as if there had to be a law of physics against such deaths or something…
Kaji fingered his stubble morosely in thought, deciding whether he really needed to see this night's carnage again. "Why not? It could hardly be worse than what my brain will play back in my dreams tonight. And if the footage shows that girl I saw… The one with the blue hair, then just maybe I could understand some-…" Kaji abruptly derailed his train of thought to say, "Go ahead. I've got questions about that battle myself which you might just slip past the censors if the commentary survives unsourced."
"Indeed…" Genette grew pensive as he removed the disc from his DVD-RW camcorder and pushed PLAY on Kaji's combined DVD/TV set. The whole night's scene of the battle unfolded before them, with Genette's footage and preliminary commentary growing increasingly rapt as his turns away from the battle and towards the mysteriously humming girl who'd instigated the crowd to start singing in the first place grew more frequent. Both Kaji and Genette gaped in mute surprise as Rei clearly whispered Kaji's tactical callsign, 'Blaze,' in a devout plea just barely loud enough for any attentive bystanders to hear. The footage at last fixed on the blue-haired vision just after the missing-man display, as an eerily familiar woman whom Kaji assumed to be the girl's guardian began making a truly garish scene; pathetically trying to regain some semblance of authority over her wayward ward before the world's critical eye.
"Whoa… Do you know that other woman, Genette? I think she had something to do with one of our missions, but I just can't place her. Whoever she is, she's just digging a hole with nothing to plant in it, if you get me…" Kaji sheepishly referred to his gardening hobby whenever he needed an endearing defense mechanism to avoid any uncomfortable realities staring him in the face at the time.
"Oh yes. Dr. Naoko Akagi; the finest mind in computer science in Osea, if not the world, currently chief technical assistant to the Bassett Space Center's Special Projects Division head: Dr. Gendo Ikari. The latter actually paid a visit to McNealy AFB right before you guys took the trainees back here to Sand Island. Said something about 'seeing if the skies were to be handed down to a new generation,' or not when I got the chance to interview him for a precious few minutes. An interesting guy, sure, but not preferred company under any circumstances."
Kaji nodded silently. As was customary for any warrior long tested in battle, whatever his battlefield and age, he'd sized up Dr. Ikari that moment without even really thinking about it and immediately hit a quandary. The scientist literally carried himself like a weapon, completely confident and driven, but had said nothing beyond the one cryptic remark Genette had mentioned about any past military service whatsoever. Kaji had heard of him before though, and knew that tales of Dr. Ikari having risen up from the lower rungs of Osean society to his current prominence were probably true, and could account for part of his attitude. But there was no mistaking the bearings of a trained combat pilot once one got a good enough look at them. "If I had to guess, I'd say he was a mercenary pilot once. Hell, he's old enough to have flown way back in the damned Belkan War fifteen years ago for all we know! And that's not counting the killing the various mercs made over in Usea for seven years straight…"
Genette stiffened as he recalled the seven years of horror that had convulsed Osea continent's entire eastern neighbor, Usea continent, which he'd covered during journalism school for various projects. It all began with a Usea-wide coup attempt in 1998 that sparked a hybrid international and civil war; and then continued through the disaster of asteroid Ulysses XF1994-04's breakup over, and impact predominantly upon, that same continent. The whole sanguinary affair only petered out once Usea's fascist westernmost state of Erusea, ironically the main sponsor of resistance to the 1998 coup, failed in its 2002-5 bid to subject all other Usean states under its own dominion. "Yeah. Wherever and whatever Dr. Ikari may have been then, I'm sure his services were highly in demand. At a premium too, no doubt…"
"Genette… What do you make of the girl? How are you going to spin this for the suits back in Oured to even remotely consider letting air?" Kaji hated the idea of having to 'spin' a little girl's song for peace, but he knew certain things simply had to be done in this world if some good was to be salvaged at all. Especially a world at war.
"Rei Ayanami…" Genette remarked wonderingly at what minimal he had gleaned from his preliminary interview with one of Dr. Akagi's coworkers at the Space Center, which he suspected would remain the entirety of what he'd ever learn barring a true miracle. "Honestly, I don't know. I can't find anything at all about her other than her status as Dr. Akagi's foster child and a purported birthdate of March 30th 2001, which is supported with no other documentation at all besides her ICCF adoption papers according to those in the know. I doubt anything I do will make this footage work for the censors; they're under Appelrouth's control almost to the man anyway." Genette knew that much already, and it was more than he cared to given the situation.
"And I really don't know if I need to spin it. You know what the people are already calling her, Blaze? 'The Blue Ghost of November Stadium!' Barely five hours gone and they're already splitting into camps over this girl; most trying to make her into a divine harbinger for peace even as those under Applerouth's sway call her a little demoness aiding the enemy. I won't be surprised if she makes sainthood by the end of the week… No, what I'm concerned about is why she called you out by name, Blaze? Why?" Genette looked equal parts hopeful and repelled, perhaps simply by the sheer strangeness of the whole situation. It would be difficult enough explaining away the mass protest song as was, even if all traces of its instigator were excised from the official record; and he, for one, didn't envy his part in that near certain task one bit.
"Oh, stop it Genette!" Kaji indulged his penchant for moodiness at what struck him as a rare asinine question from the normally insightful reporter. "Just stop it! She probably read about it in yourarticle about us all two months ago." Kaji's cool returned swiftly, however. "We need to focus on surviving this war so that the truth, whatever it is, can ever emerge. You've done your job well simply by recording this footage to begin with; some copies would be good just in case, though. After all, it's not every day a reporter has a 'secret stash' the historians would actually care to examine, is it?"
Genette recovered from Kaji's micro-tantrum with only the appropriate degree of sarcasm. "Right… Thanks Blaze. I think I can see part of what Rei saw in you today, if her body language is any indication." Genette walked to the door before asking back, "Do you think she's alright… Blaze? Dr. Akagi doesn't strike you as the kind of woman to…?"
"Not quite. Perhaps if she'd been alone with the girl when this had happened, but not any other way. I saw her as well as Dr. Ikari at McNealy Base after we flew cover for their mass driver launch supplying the Arkbird. A completely formal person, she'll do everything that's expected of her precisely because it is so; the only crimes she'd ever commit are crimes of passion. And you, Genette, helped deter her from doing so in this case just by filming her. So yes, your little blue angel is still alive; hell, probably watching over us all right now, too." Kaji remarked at his eerie luck in having the only women who'd cared for him thus far be a fiendishly mercurial bombshell, a fanatical wingmate grieving for the probable loss of her teacher, and a freakishly beautiful child, respectively; and all utterly unavailable for their own various reasons.
"Yeah. We sure could use her now, heading back to Yuktobania and all." Genette knew that the climax of the war was approaching as Osean forces pushed towards the Yuke capital of Cinigrad now that the Yuke Army was mostly smashed in the Battle of the Jilachi Desert. He left to pack his things for whatever reporting flights might need making for the coming missions' aftermaths.
"Yeah," Kaji remarked to himself darkly as he paused the playback at the point where the blue-haired phantom knelt in prayer after Chopper crashed into the stadium center. "We sure could…" He ejected the DVD, turned off the player, cut off the lights and hit the sack in rapid succession.