"Jesus, Cobb, is it too much to ask for you to bring him to me in once piece?"

"My apologies, Dr. Agaki," Cobb replied halfheartedly, "but things didn't go exactly as we had planned." He and Arthur had the bleeding man between them, holding him up by his shoulders. Rei balanced on Shinji's shoulder, hopping on her uninjured foot.

"I can see that," she replied sarcastically. "He's going to die from blood loss if we don't move fast – what the hell; did you have to shoot him twice?"

"Shinji actually made the first shot, but he didn't go down."

"That so?" Ritsuko raised her eyebrows. "I wasn't sure if he had it in him."

"I know, right?" Arthur grinned. "Can we get him to a chair or something? He's kind of heavy."

"Of course. Lay him down of there." She gestured to a surgeon's table. "Yusuf! Get here and bring some anesthetic and a coagulant! And some bandages." The Indian Chemist came through the sliding door moments later carrying two bottles of chemicals and a roll of bandages. He handed one to Ritsuko and one to Cobb, each filling a syringe.

"I'll get a mop, then," Arthur muttered and hurried off.

"Hey!" Shinji shouted. The entire room froze. It was several seconds before he realized that he had even spoken. "R-Rei is injured, too. She needs help."

"No." Rei shook her head. "I am alright. Please do not worry about me."

With a sigh, Ritsuko waved Shinji over. "Bring her here, then." As Arthur returned with a mop and began cleaning up the blood, Ritsuko sat Rei down in a chair. She lifted her injured leg without much care, causing the girl to wince. "Not bad; she'll live. Yusuf." She held out an open hand and the Chemist deposited the coagulant bottle. "I wouldn't let her go down even one level, though. Rei, you're going to have to sit this one out."

"I understand, Dr. Agaki."

Shinji turned pale. "That means that I have to go in alone again, right?"

"Sorry, kid," Cobb smoothed his hair back. "But it's looking that way."

The silence that followed was broken by the man lying on the surgical table. He coughed up blood and moaned.

Twisting the mop, Arthur spoke. "We should hurry; it's going to be angry when it wakes up."

"If it wakes up," Ritsuko retorted. "You cut it close, guys. He lost a lot of blood."

"I know, I know. You heard Cobb, it's not our fault."

"Then whose fault is it? And don't even think about blaming Shinji."

Arthur grimaced and tossed the mop to one side. "Fine. Come on, kid." He took Shinji firmly by the shoulder and led him away with Cobb to the Command Bridge.

Behind them, Yusuf leaned over the body and raised an eyebrow. "You know, this could have been an excellent chance to determine how an Angel's ego behaves without a host. Think about it: a wild consciousness without an ego barrier!"

"Perhaps at a later date, Yusuf, when one of our pilots isn't bleeding." She fixed Rei with a cold glare.

Neon Psychosis Evangelion 08

Finger on the Trigger, Part 2: Find Your Resolve

Shamshel felt control of the Lilim slip from its grasp. Its vision dimmed and a strange sleep overcame it, one with similar qualities to the space between minds that it so frequently traveled. But this was not the emptiness between; this was still the mind of his host. What then, was happening? The blue flame that was the mind of the Angel wandered alone in the darkness for an indeterminable amount of time.

Suddenly, the darkness gave way to light as a world was constructed around it, a world of dreams, where you could be whatever you envisioned yourself. A moment passed before the Angel recognized the world as a recreation of the city above. It hovered over the waters as a machine recreated the world of its creators.

A maze; a labyrinth. Lilim knew what Shamshel was after and has hid it within a maze of dreams. Had it a mouth, or the mental capacity to understand emotions, Shamshel would have grinned. Challenge accepted.

Here, in the world where one could be what one envisioned, Shamshel expanded its existence out from its core, becoming the form chosen for it. It lengthened, becoming longer than a typical skyscraper was tall. Its head was shaped like a spade with spots that resembled eyes, but were not; Shamshel needed no eyes. Odd little fins protruded from either side of the now armored form. It colored itself purple, the Lilim color for royalty. Testing its abilities, it extended two whips of pinkish energy from the side fins, snapping them over the sea. Satisfied, it retracted them. Its core was well protected, as the head covered it like a helmet and the energy whips could reach anything that posed a threat to its existence.

Turning horizontal, Shamshel advanced on the labyrinth.

Shinji found himself dressed in his Plug Suit, seated at the controls to Evangelion Unit 01, already submerged in LCL. Two weeks of rehearsal dictated his next few actions. According to Cobb, in order to operate properly within a dream environment, Shinji had to imagine himself as always possessing his Totem – the SDAT player. In addition to always carrying it around with him, he had to envision it as part of himself, to the point that he would be incomplete without it. He slid the headphones of his SDAT player over his ears and pressed the play button. Nothing. He skipped through the songs until he reached track 25. Still nothing. He was dreaming.

A few days prior, he might have panicked and hyperventilated, but not today. For whatever reason, today was the day his monotonous training decided to kick in. To confirm what his Totem told him, Shinji did his best to recount the events that lead up to him arriving here, in the Entry Plug. He couldn't remember. They had chased the Angel's host, caught him, and brought him back. Then they…things got fuzzy after that. And then he woke up here.

It was odd that they placed him inside the cockpit, already suited up, and the LCL charged. Usually they started at the beginning, having him actually put on the Plug Suit and A10 Nerve Clips. Without actually counting, he was sure they had skipped at least ten or eleven steps. Could they do that?"

"Sorry about dropping you right into the Entry Plug, Shinji," Misato's voice sounded over the radio. "But we're short on time. The subject was losing a lot of blood very fast. We couldn't afford to take our time."

"I understand," he said. After all, it was his fault; his gunshot had been ill-placed, causing Cobb to fire a second round. Two untreated bullet wounds now pumped rivers of blood onto the neatly polished floor of NERV headquarters while Yusuf struggled to keep the man just alive enough.

"Give us just a moment. We're still trying to obtain a fix on the Angel's location."

The Bridge was a faithful recreation of its world counterpart. Actually, the real-world Bridge was a faithful recreation of this one. While up above it served only to monitor the ambient brainwave patterns of Tokyo-3 (doing so required a massive amount of technology; all of NERV HQ, including the MAGI, was devoted to this one task) the dream-Bridge could display a three different maps of the city, monitor the Eva's power supply, synchronization ratios, the pilot's vitals and brainwave patterns, track the Angels, and generate caches of weapons in the skyscrapers of the city maze.

Makoto, Maya, and Shigeru were working every scanner in their arsenal to locate the Fourth Angel, which had yet to appear. "It must still be out in the ocean," Makoto said between keystrokes.

"Why do we even include that in the levels?" Misato asked bitterly.

"We have to," Ritsuko replied, leaning over Maya's shoulder. She had taken control of the terminal from her apprentice and typing out lines of code at an inhuman rate. "The ocean is the pathway between our dreams and where the Angels originate from. That and we can't just drop the Angel in the middle of the maze, can we? That would defeat the purpose. It's better to construct the ocean around the Angel and the city in front of it. We have what it wants; there's no danger of it wandering off."

"Found it!" Makoto exclaimed. The big screen in front of them displayed an image of the crustacean Angel coming in off the ocean."

"My, what big eyes you have," Eames remarked.

"They look more like designs," Arthur observed. "From what we saw with the Third Angel, they don't actually need eyes to see. Not down here, at least."

"So, what then?" Misato asked, crossing her arms.

"You know how some flying animals have marking on their wings that look like eyes to intimate potential predators – like moths? I think that's what it did here."

"It's trying to intimidate us?"

"Perhaps. The Angels don't have the same logical reasoning that we – "

Eames interjected. "Not that you'll listen to me anyway, but might I point out that you two are completely missing the point? Mr. Shigeru, if you would, focus in on those fins please?" An enhanced image of the strange, bony fins overlapped that of the Angel proper. Various readings appeared around them.

"This is…" Ritsuko gasped.

"Very similar to Sachiel's energy spikes. My guess is that this Angel's main attack will come from there."

Arthur shook his head, grinning. "Eames, I – "

"Don't say it, Arthur."

"No, I mean it this time. I am impressed."

"What is the closest exit point for Unit 01?" Misato turned to Makoto.

"Route 2, but at the rate it's moving, it'll pass over it before Shinji reaches it. Route 4 seems a better option, Captain Katsuragi."

"Right then. Launch Eva 01!"

Sitting high above the Bridge Crew, Gendo Ikari studied images of the maze. Something stuck out to him as odd. Fuyutsuki stood to his right and Cobb to his left. He turned to Cobb. "Mr. Cobb, you're an expert on this sort of thing: why haven't we seen as many projections in this maze as we did last time?"

"There are a number of different possibilities, Commander. My guess? My guess is that our subject is dying faster than we thought. While killing projections doesn't injure the mind, a dying mind will focus more on the conscious than the preconscious – usually. Of course it could also be that his mind is actually destroyed this time."

"This time?"

Fuyutsuki spoke. "We got lucky last time, Commander. When we caught the host, the Angel had only just appeared. The subject's mind was still partially intact, albeit corrupted. This time, it seems, the Angel has destroyed the other mind completely."

"Couldn't it fill the mind with its projections?"

"Impossible," Cobb answered quickly. "Angels do not have the same capacity for logic and reason as we do. They are little more than animals operating on instinct. They can't have projections because they can't have unconscious desires or thoughts."

Fuyutsuki nodded in agreement. "All of GEHIRN's research supports this conclusion, Ikari. We're in the clear this time."

Gendo was silent for a moment, and then uttered a single word. "Interesting."

"Launch Eva!" Misato screamed into Shinji's ears. The sound dampener in the cockpit wasn't fast enough and Shinji winced. He was comforted only by the fact that he couldn't actually sustain eardrum damage down here. Or could he? No one had actually been clear on what transferred up to his waking self. Pain was in the mind, but did hearing loss translate? He hoped he wouldn't find out.

The lift slid to a smooth stop inside a skyscraper and the east-facing façade slid away to allow Unit 01 to exit. He couldn't see the Angel, but the sensors told him it was just around the corner. His A.T. Field unfolded, neutralizing the Angels and allowing it to be harmed by conventional weapons.

"Position the target in the center and pull the switch," Shinji repeated to himself, finding comfort in the repetition.

"Do it just like we planned," Misato encouraged over the radio. "OK, Shinji?"

"Ok!" Unit 01 grabbed the rifle off the wall of the lift and stepped around the corner to the lift. In the same motion, he brought the rifle up and squeezed the trigger. He actually was on target, most of the bullets connecting with the Angel. It caused a lot of smoke as a few of the shots went wild and hit buildings. He heard Misato scream something, but he was too focused on the Angel to care. When the cloud of smoke completely covered the Angel, Shinji finally let up the trigger; his hands continued to shake.

There was a moment when he wondered if he had killed the beast, but the thought was cut short by two pink energy whips slicing through the smoke. He panicked and ducked. The whips cut through the buildings around him like a hot knife through butter. The tip of the rifle got sliced off as well, and Shinji tripped over the Eva's power cord.

Misato rubbed the bridge of her nose, feeling a headache begin to develop. "I don't believe it," she muttered. "He's losing already."

"Very interesting," Eames said with a scratch of his beard. "I never thought about the possibility of whips. Bullets were what I was thinking of. That or something like the last one."

"How come you never thought of whips?" Maya asked.

"Because in the real world, they wouldn't have worked; energy doesn't hold together like that. I forget sometimes that the Angels are beings designed to operate exclusively in a dream environment."

"And this is from the guy who helped design the Evangelion constructs." Arthur's comment wasn't meant to bite; it was simply a statement of wonder. Okay, maybe there was some bite in there.

Silence reigned over the Bridge for a few tense seconds before Maya asked, "So what do we do?"

Ritsuko drummed her finger on the back of Maya's chair. "We hope Shinji can come up with something. Send him another rifle; if he stays out of range of the whips, he should be fine."

Misato nodded and turned back to the big screen while yelling into her headset that connected her, and all of NERV for that matter, to Shinji. "I'm sending you a spare rifle, Shinji."

But Shinji remained where he lay in the streets, gripping the controls hard enough to turn his knuckles white, eyes squeezed firmly shut against the horrible monster that was advancing on him. It was coming for him; it was going to hurt him, just like last time. Memories of the last battle filled his mind. Mostly pain.

The strangeness of being linked to the hulking machine.

The clumsiness of trying to move a body that was as tall as a building with such simple controls.

Fear at the thing that faced him with the cold, curious eyes.

Pain! Pain! The energy lance slamming into the Eva's face, each thrust sending shockwaves though his skull. His body goes numb from the pain and he no longer struggles to keep control of the Eva; he only wants the pain to go away. It feels like an eternity in the grip of Sachiel. An eternity of pain. He imagines that this is what hell feels like.

Then it spikes as the lance slices through armor, skin, bone, and back out the other end. Shinji feels it in his own head; screams to alleviate the pressure in his skull. He no longer cares about the world around him; all attention is focused inward on his right eye, where he feels the energy lance inside him. It is then that his mind, in a state of near shutdown, feels a strange presence. It emanates from the lance. It is a mind. It frightens him. He only hears it for an instant. It screams its name.

SACHIEL

Then his mind completely switches off to save him the agony.

"Take it!" Misato screams at him. But he doesn't respond. He knew coming back here would only bring him more pain. It was a mistake, a mistake that would cost everyone their lives. He only returned because he knew his father would be watching. His desire for attention had doomed the human race and he hated himself for it.

Shinji barely noticed when the Angel flicked Unit 01 into the air, only registering the bone-jarring landing on a hill outside the main labyrinth. Through the Eva's eye, he could see it advancing on him, the ultimate goal of reaching NERV forgotten momentarily so that it could destroy that which dared to threaten it.

He couldn't even bare to watch as the Angel killed him, so he turned his head away. And that's when he saw them. Cowering between the ring and middle fingers of the Eva's purple left hand were Kensuke Aida and Toni Suzuhara.

Those were the boys who spoke to me in class. We played that strange game in a dream.

"Who are they?" Misato demanded. Their images were zoomed into and accompanying data was displayed around them. "Shinji's classmates? What are they doing here?"

"Isn't it obvious, captain?" Eames looked up from Shigeru's terminal. "Shinji's brought some of his preconscious into the dream environment. He's created projections. And they're of his classmates. Very interesting."

"It's not interesting, Eames, it's a pain in the ass!" She very nearly snarled. "Shinji! Forget about them, concentrate on the Angel; it's coming right for you!"

They played with me. They were nice to me.

The Angel lowered its back section, dropping into its "battle stance". Both energy whips extended from the fins, crackling with life as the monster slowly advanced on the helpless Evangelion.

They like me. They are my friends.

"Shinji!"

My friends.

Friends.

I can't let them get hurt!

Determination filled the boy suddenly. Both hands flew back to their controls and the Eva's hands responded almost automatically. They took hold of the Angel's whips before they could strike at it or the boys. The pain flowed into Shinji, but he seemed not to feel it as he searched for a way to dispose of the enemy without endangering his friends.

"What the hell are you doing?" Misato demanded.

"I won't let them get hurt," Shinji grunted.

"Who? The boys? Shinji…they aren't real."

"You don't know that! I can't risk it; I have to save them!"

"Shinji, listen to me: they aren't real. They're just projections of your – "

"Shut up!" Anger was an emotion with which he was unaccustomed, but it suddenly permeated his words. "I don't care if they're real or not; I want to save them. I have to!"

"Damn it," Ritsuko swore, slamming her hand against the wall. "Why doesn't he listen?" She had stalked away from Maya's console along with Arthur. "Shinji's a logical person; I wouldn't' think he'd be one to delude himself like this."

"Can't we just let the projections into the entry plug?" Arthur spread his hands, offering the plan for criticism.

Makoto was actually the first to disagree. "They're unconscious projections; there's no guarantee that they'll even comply. If Shinji doesn't want to actually be in the pilot seat, then his unconscious mind certainly isn't going to just crawl up in there."

"And we can't support this fantasy of his," Ritsuko added. "If we treat the projections like real people, then Shinji will continue to believe that they are."

Misato sighed, wishing she had at least a six-pack in her hands right now. Preferably with three of them already empty. "So what are our options?"

"We don't have any!" Shigeru snapped! "As long as he believes that the kids are real, he's not going to endanger them."

"Maybe one of us should go up there and snipe off the projections?" Eames already had the rifle dreamed up in his hands. "Shouldn't be too much of a problem."

Maya shook her head, the only one that wasn't shouting. "If we do that, there's no guarantee that he'll continue to fight. Right now it only seems he's fighting to protect the projections. He's not even fighting at that; he's just holding it back."

"Well, then we're out of options." Misato pulled a gun and pointed it at herself. "I'll go back up and tell Rei we need her."

Before she had even released the safety, an unfamiliar voice spoke to all of them. "Now now, captain, there's no need for suicide. Here, let me speak to him."

Everyone turned to the screen, but it was Arthur who identified the voice. Turning to Cobb, who was seated some thirty feet above the rest of them with Gendo and Fuyutsuki, he pointed at the screen and demanded, "Just what the hell is she doing here?"

Mallorie Cobb appeared, quite literally, from nowhere. She came into being midstride at the apex of the hill upon which Unit 01 was seated, gripping the energy whips of the Fourth Angel like the reins of a race horse. Although she could hear everything going on down in the GeoFront, she chose to ignore them for the moment. Her sole focus was the Third Child.

"Shinji Ikari!" she called.

Unit 01's sensors automatically locked on to the source of the sound and brought her image to Shinji. He recognized her immediately as the woman who shot him during his first dream-sharing experience; she was the first person to have killed him.

"M-Mal!" he stuttered. Another round of fear washed through him, and it was only because he still held back the Angel that he didn't swipe her aside with a gigantic purple hand.

"Have I ever told you how much I hate that nickname? Dominick used to tease me about it when we were married. You see, Mal is a prefix that means bad or evil, at least in English and many of the Romance languages. It doesn't quite translate over into Japanese, but then, not many Western phrases do. Yes, Dominick used to tease me about that. Now that he thinks I'm dead, he uses it to distance himself from me. If I'm "Mal" and not "Mallorie", then I'm not really his wife; I'm something evil, malicious, bad. It's a clever coping mechanism, really."

Still struggling under the strength of the Angel, Shinji could only barely sputter out a question. "W-Why are you…?"

"Why am I telling you this?" Mal smiled, a twisted, conniving smile, filled with malice and joy. "Because, dear Cobb can't hear me. Because I damn well feel like it. But mostly, because I am going to help you, Shinji Ikari; I am going to help you kill this Angel."

It didn't seem like the appropriate time to argue with her, especially now that she had offered help. Still, she had killed him once before…

"How? How can you help me? You're…you're…"

"Dead? Ha!" Even her laugh was cold and hollow. "If that makes it easier for you to understand, then yes. But that's not the issue here, Shinji. Do you know that these boys here aren't real?" She placed an arm around each boy's shoulders. She pulled them close, her arms like the fronds of a fern plant, only in reverse.

"Yes," he admitted. "I know that they're just projections. But! But I still won't let them die! Even if they're just pieces of my unconscious, I don't want to see the Angel kill them…I…"

"They are your friends and you can't bear to see them die, even if it's in a dream?"

"Yes."

"Commendable." Like whips, her arms snapped out, throwing the boys to either side. "But unnecessary." Handguns appeared in each hand and fired one bullet each.

"No!" Shinji screamed in panic, but it was in vain. The boys staggered…and were unharmed. The bullets had passed through them, leaving no mark. They seemed just as surprised as he was. "A-Alive?"

"Of course, Ikari. They are projections of your unconscious. If you do not wish them to die, they will not die. Your wish will sustain them, so long as that is your desire." She tossed away the guns and stepped towards the Evangelion. "Still you hesitate to fight."

"I-I just…don't want to get hurt again." His hands were going numb from the pain, but that wasn't what he was talking about. He'd rather not have to get to that point at all.

"But Shinji, you already defeated one Angel. Why can you not do it again?"

He shook his head sadly, a few air bubbles floating away in the LCL. "Because I was unconscious; Unit 01 killed it on its own. I had nothing to do with it; I'm useless."

Mal was suddenly on the Eva's face, appearing right before Shinji's eyes, separated by the view screen. "That's just not true, Shinji. Here, let me show you."

Pain wracked through Shinji's head again, but from no visible source. It wasn't' like before where control of his body slipped away. This was more like a remembered pain. His vision blurred and he saw himself from outside himself, except it wasn't now he was seeing. It was two weeks ago, during the fight with Sachiel.

The radio screamed that the pilot had fallen unconscious, and that Unit 01 had ceased activity. His Plug Suit had defibrillated his heart and brought him back to life, but as far as the Bridge could determine, he was still unconscious. But Shinji saw otherwise. As the neon green bands of the Evangelion turned red, the pilot took hold of the controls.

Shinji watched as he controlled the Evangelion perfectly. He saw on the controls that the sync ratio jumped to 203%. But that was impossible; he didn't remember any of that happening. His memories skipped between being slammed into the skyscraper, and seeing the faceplate fall off.

The knowing green eye!

He was thrust back into his present body, struggling with the current Angel. Along with him came the memories. It was he who defeated Sachiel, he, not Unit 01. He did it. He'd seen himself do it. He remembered doing it.

"Can you do it again?" Mal asked from outside the Eva. "If you don't it will kill you."

"I…I mustn't run away," he replied, half to himself. "I mustn't run away. If I do, everyone will die, right? I mustn't run away." Through his mantra, an unknown strength possessed him; he and Unit 01 tossed the Angel away and rose to their feet. Mal calmly took a standing position between the left shoulder and the head. She casually braced herself against the fin.

Unit 01 charged down the hill.

The Bridge was in a state of panic. Nobody was quite sure what was occurring. Maya and Makoto were getting readings they had never seen before, screaming something about Plug depth, and Shigeru's monitoring of the Sync ratio was becoming difficult because it came in peaks and valleys; the boy just couldn't seem to hold it together.

"Damn it, why isn't he responding?" Misato yelled as she threw her headset to the ground angrily; moments later, it crunched under her heel.

"His radio's been switched off," Maya said. "We still have visual, though. He didn't turn it off; it just happened when Mal showed up."

"So she's screwing with us, huh?"

Ritsuko growled and took control of the terminal from Maya. "Here, let me try something."

Gendo lowered his interlaced hands and considered the entity that identified itself as Cobb's deceased wife. It perturbed him; it was a factor he hadn't taken into account for any of his plans. Fortunately, he was flexible, unlike the old men on the Committee. As long as the boy was fighting the Angels, he was quite ok with whatever happened to get him to where he needed to be. Mal might be an unknown, but she was working in his favor. For the time being, he was willing to ignore her.

Unit 01 slammed into the Angel, knocking it off whatever balance it had, and sending it spinning into a nearby skyscraper. The energy whips lashed out but went too far wide. Shinji used that time to retrieve the spare rifle and dive behind a line of buildings. This wasn't anything he had practiced in the Simulation Bodies; Ritsuko had only taught him to catch the Angels off guard and defeat them in one stroke. But reality, as it often turned out to be, was far different. Not all the Angels appeared as Sachiel; you couldn't apply the same tactics to each one.

Looking up from behind cover, he aimed and squeezed the trigger before ducking behind again. He was operating on instinct right then. With the A. T. Fields neutralized, bullets could harm the Angel; its ability to manipulate the dream environment to its own advantage was effectively zero.

It was also much easier to concentrate without Misato yelling into his ear.

As the initial wave of adrenaline wore off, he registered a steady beeping from somewhere in the cockpit. He knew that sound: it was always playing whenever he trained in the simulation bodies. A timer was ticking down from 5:00:00 minutes. The Angel had severed his energy cable. He hesitantly glanced at the timer: less than two minutes.

"We don't have time for this," Mal observed casually. "Bullets aren't powerful enough to kill it. You have to attack the core directly with your progressive knife."

"I see." Shinji stood Unit 01 up to its full height. "I have to get close enough to get hurt. I don't want to, but I mustn't run away, right?" He squeezed off the last of the ammo clip and hurled the empty rifle at the advancing Angel. "I mustn't run away because if I do, all of my friends will die. Everyone I know." The left shoulder fin opened up and extended the progressive knife.

His radio switched back on of its own accord and Misato's voice filled the Entry Plug. "Retreat! Shinji, retreat! We'll regroup once you have a new power cable."

But he couldn't hear her, his chant drowned her out.

The timer arrived at 1:00:00 and flashed red while an alarm sounded through throughout NERV. Shinji charged. Unit 01 leaped over the cover it has been using and landed in a crouch before the Angel. Using the stored energy, it stood up with enough force to drive the prog knife into the red core underneath what was assumed to be the head. Sparks flew everywhere as the vibrating metal grated against the core of Angel's consciousness.

Panicked, the Angel lashed out with the whips again, this time they connected, piercing through the torso of Unit 01. Shinji felt the pain like it was his own but kept pressing the attack. Like with Sachiel, he felt the presence of the Angel's mind press against his.

SHAMSHEL It screamed its name. ALIEN EVIL MUST KILL DESTROY INVADER FIGHT FIND FATHER PAIN FIGHT

This time, Rei and Ariadne also heard Shinji scream out the words along with Yusuf. Rei watched from her chair with a kind of strange fascination, while Ariadne fretted over him. The boy shouldn't be able to move while affected by Somnacin, much less speak.

"What does this mean, Yusuf?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "But it's a marvelous discovery."

She regarded him with a mixture of disgust and horror before stalking out of the room.

Everyone in the Bridge waited as the clock continued to tick down, hoping that Shinji could destroy the core before his power supply ran out. Without being connected the MAGI, the Eva construct would cease to function. Normally, a construct like that wouldn't need a power source, but as it wasn't dreamed up by the pilot, it couldn't be sustained on the pilot's thoughts. In fact, the Evangelions no longer existed within any one person's mind. They had to be powered externally.

Misato crossed her arms and drummed her fingers against her chest. "Idiot," she swore at Shinji.

The pain crescendoed for Shinji as he kept forcing the knife forward. Both hands gripped one of the controls and he poured all of his strength into the weapon. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the timer reach 0:10:00 and continue downward. Just as he thought he wasn't going to make it, the Core cracked and the Angel ceased to move.

The physical form it had taken wavered and disappeared like dust in the wind. All that remained was the core, broken and dull. Unit 01 ran out of operating power then. It froze where it stood: knife thrust upward though the core. The green glow of the power bands dulled so that only purple remained. Mal patted the left shoulder pylon affectionately before stepping away to oblivion.

All of the tension drained out of Shinji in an instant, all of the determination and anger, the sound and the fury, leaving him a shaking, sobbing wreck.

"Unit 01," he heard Maya say over the radio, "has ceased all activation. The MAGI have begun the countdown. Five minutes until we awaken. Should we try and retrieve the pilot?"

"No," Misato said after a pause. "Let him sit there."

Kensuke stared mournfully out of the classroom window. The rain hadn't let up for the last three days, which was just as long as Shinji hadn't come to school. He barely noticed that Toji had come to stand behind him.

"Any word?"

"No. He doesn't answer his phone. I've left him like a hundred messages already. I wonder if he's alright."

Toji sighed. "I'm sure he's fine, Ken. You should stop worrying."

"You two!" The boys turned slowly at Hikari's call.

"What's up, Class Rep?"

She thrust a stack of papers at Toji. "I need you two to deliver Shinji's schoolwork to him. He'll fall behind if you don't." She didn't seem worried, but Kensuke guessed this was her way of dealing with it.

"We don't even know where he lives," Toji complained. Hikari responded by adding another piece of paper to the stack.

"There's his address. Will you take it to him after school?" For just a moment, her iron skin faltered. "Please?"

"Of course."

"Man, why do I have to carry all the papers?"

Kensuke grinned and kept on walking ahead. "Because Hikari handed them to you, not me. Besides, one of us needs to be able to see where he's going, and it might as well be the one with a sense of direction."

"Whatever."

The apartment number Hikari had given them was just ahead, where the path turned left to go around the outside of the complex. Beyond the railing, it continued to rain.

He knocked. To their surprise, a woman answered the door, beautiful, and probably in her late twenties. "Can I help you boys?"

Toji was completely flustered, but Kensuke managed to keep a hold of himself. "We, uh, we're Shinji's classmates, and um, we're here with the schoolwork he missed in the last couple days."

She seemed caught off guard for a moment and look of confusion crossed her face. "Oh. Right. He's, ah, not feeling well. I'll tell him you stopped by; he'll be so happy, I'm sure." She hastily took the papers from Toji and stepped back inside. "Bye now." The door slid shut quickly.

"I can't believe he gets to live with a woman like that," Toji mused.

"I think you're missing the point," Kensuke replied, but didn't elaborate. As far as they knew, Shinji was alright, just feeling ill. All their worry fell away instantly.

Misato dropped the papers onto the kitchen table, knocking aside cans of Yebisu beer. She retrieved another from the fridge and chugged it, falling against the machine and sliding to the floor.

"Damn it, Shinji, where are you?"