Hello Everyone,
Sorry about not updating my stories soon enough, but things have been a little crazy for me for the past month, given that it is back to school time, Public Radio Pledge Drive Pre-Prep Period. But I have been able to get all of this under control for the last few weeks and I spent a good part of Friday Morning pounding out the rest of this chapter for you all. So take some time to read it and send me a few reviews at the end. This will surely cheer me up and let me know what you think of the story so far.
Well, on with the story.
Part 15: Every Rose has it Thorns
Rose was been running for her life... Clutching Dominic close to her chest. One moment she was being attacked by members of the Cult she had broken away from years ago had found her thinking she was their Holy Mother. Then waking up next to Dominic floating naked in a large inside lake full of some sort of breathable liquid that she had to swim to the surface of so they could find out where they were at.
Now... With Dominic close to her, the monster that had picked her up by her the leg. Dominic and stabbed the monster in the foot with a screwdriver to free her. Falling onto her shoulder Rose wound up sprawled on her back as the creature wreathed in pain spinning around in a circle as it attempted to lean against something or at least fall onto its back to relive the pain coming from it's foot. Dominic who during this entire mess had wormed his way between the monsters legs and was pulling at Rose to get up. Rose working through the pain that was screaming from her shoulder blades as she felt Dominic's fear sink into her body. Using every part of her instincts to protect Dominic, Rose forced her feet underneath her body and started to scoop him up and broke out, shoulder screaming into a flat-out run through the door at the end of the Bridge of this swimming pool of blood and horror.
Maya, Radio in hand was rushing through the elevators so that she could carry the unconscious girl in her arms. Kensuki was carrying the young boy in his arms. But seeing Tru do what she did. Maya's mind was racing. Tru was an Angel... She had seen the data readouts of the Fifth Child... Kaworu Nagisa that he was an Angel sent to infiltrate NERV, but that creature... Tru had actually stood beside them and used her power to... save them... That and she was the only one who had been able to push through the barrier of this girl of African decent to at least calm her down. There were too many questions, but making sure that these survivors were protected was placed high on the urgent list.
"Maya... are you okay?" Hikari called over the radio. Maya handed the girl she had in her arms over to Tru before she started speaking into the radio.
"Yes... We all are... Get Spike and meet me by the elevators, we have injured."
"Oh my God... How many are there..." Maya clicked the radio to respond to cut the girl off.
"Hikari... get the medical kit and a few blankets ready and make sure there is a room ready, we have two survivors." Maya said into the radio as she looked at the young boy in Kensuki's arms start to cry... Mommy came out from the child like a soft whimper as Kensuki calmed the child down. Kensuki if he ever got hitched would make a great dad as demonstrated as he rubbed the young child's back to sooth the young boy. As the elevator doors pulled open, Maya saw that most everyone who had been in the facility was there to assist them. Hikari moved over by Maya to cover the naked girl with a blanket while Amanda covered the young boy in Kensuki's arms.
"Hikari, make sure that these two are taken down to medical and checked out." Maya barked out her orders as the kids moved taking care of the two new arrivals. Maya turned to look at Tru. "You and I have to have a talk." Then Spike came over towards Tru.
"Ms. Ibuki..." Spike worked out the words. "I understand Tru's language so if I can help translate anything you want to state to her, I will be of whatever assistance you." Tru bit her lip at this.
"Okay..." Maya said putting a hand to her head as she motioned with the barrel of the gun for them to move off in a particular direction. "Let's head to one of the conference rooms. There are some things I need to know about what is going on and why a human, is able to produce an AT Field like an Angel, and why there is another Angel that has taken human form." With that Maya moved the three of them away from the rest of the group so that they could have a conversation in private. "Please don't be another back stabbing Kaworu Nagisa." Maya felt her hands grow sweaty at the thought of fighting an Angel all by herself.
Asuka walked into the kitchen where Shinji was sitting. Most everyone had cleared out heading back to their rooms or were curled up by the fire in the central sitting area. Rachel one of the girls that had come with Toji was listening to several of the Angels talk about their lives prior to Third Impact. Between listen to them, Rachel injected her own tales about growing up in a Wicca household. Though her need to find several herbs to burn in a purification ritual made Asuka worried, but given the tale she was telling of hearing how her Grandmother used it to clean house of the spiritual and physical toxins that had built up from the people bringing their troubles in. Asuka thought she was going to use those herbs along with Holy Water to perform an exorcism. But in seeing the ritual Asuka saw that it look something like the incense being waived by monks she had seen when she, Misato and Shinji went to those Hot Springs to relax after the mission in the Volcano she and her Unit Two went diving in. But the mood was somber as Rei didn't want to talk about her being a clone. How do you say that the person that you had been cloned off of wanted their life back?
But seeing that Shinji was looking a bit more bulked up in the muscle area, Asuka wondered what it would be like to, well physically naked on him. Not the Sex, but to be naked next to him in bed and feeling him rub her back... Well better than he did when they had that sleep conversation about Kaji... Asuka drifted back to the here and now as she decided to tell Shinji about what she had learned from Rei... especially about the day she and Shinji washed up on the beach. Walking over to Shinji she stopped by the table and decided to interrupt Toji and Shinji's conversation.
"Shinji-kun" Asuka used as formal as Japanese when she started talking. Shinji looked at Asuka with his jaw on the floor. Toji grinned and slapped Shinji on the back.
"So Shinji... you have officially entered into Kun territory... So are you sleeping with her?" Toji worked Shinji over by roughhousing him.
"Yes we are sleeping in the same bed together," Toji was about to but in as Shinji raised his hand. "But mostly we have gotten is hugging, occasionally kissing, and"
"And a one bareback rub that Shinji-kun gave me while making sure my shirt didn't walk off my body the night he confessed to me that he found me attractive."
"Asuka..." Shinji pulled way.
"Shinji-kun... you were a gentleman... I mean the fact that you restrained yourself after I tried..." Asuka fiddled with the edge of her yellow t-shirt.
"Asuka-Chan..." Shinji blurted it out. Asuka blinked a few times... Shinji had called her Chan... "Kaji said take it slow with you, well considering that you are a little grabby." Asuka blinked a few times and got angry.
"Grabby..." Asuka was about to get mad.
"Asuka... I don't mean grabby in a bad way, I mean that..." Shinji decided to blurt it out. "Asuka, you grab my arm when you roll over in your sleep thinking I'm your pillow." Asuka gave the 'Oh.' factor across her face. "It only happens when you are really tired, though... there was that time you mistook my face for a bowling ball and the other time with the bed sheets." Asuka blushed.
"Oh, that..." Asuka looked towards the floor at her feet.
"What do you mean by the bed sheets?" The awkward silence between Shinji and Asuka gave a rough idea what Asuka had grabbed of Shinji's. "You mean Asuka grabbed your..."
"Let's just say... I will never make Asuka angry anytime soon..." Shinji cleared his throat. "and she has a grip like a vice."
"Yeah..." Asuka looking up at the ceiling with her hands behind her head. "Not the type of introduction I wanted to make of Shinji's..." a long pause from Asuka told it all, "you know..." Toji just nodded as he covered his crotch with his hands.
"Though Asuka can kick like a horse and has a grip like a vice, but she is really has this cute heart shaped..." Shinji voice faded out as he grinned at Asuka as she realized what he was talking about... "But I love her, mind, body and soul." Asuka leaned over and kissed on the lips. Toji looked at them with his jaw on the floor.
"Yeah... and you are not such a Baka that I thought you were." Asuka said as she pulled away. "...especially when you recite poetry."
"Eine Rose ist eine Rose, egal ob jemand ruft es nicht eine Rose. Für Schönheit und Schönheit ist eine Rose ist eine Rose für die Liebe zu einer Frau ist Schönheit." (A rose is a rose, no matter if someone calls it not a rose. For beauty is beauty and a rose is a rose for love for a woman is beauty itself.) Asuka nearly melted at those words.
"Oh, Shinji..." Asuka went and took Shinji by the hand and pulled him up from the table.
"So you two are..." Toji's words were stopped was Asuka led Shinji out of the kitchen. Asuka felt like she was flying as she moved Shinji towards their bedroom.
"Shinji..." Asuka leaned into her German terms.
"Asuka... you want to?" Asuka stopped cold.
"Shinji... you mean you want to..." Asuka turned around towards him.
"Not really..." Asuka said looking down at the floor. "I mean... having you know." Asuka pointed towards Shinji's crotch as she left the word blank. "Inside of me... I don't think I am ready just yet." Asuka moved slowly towards him. "But I really like to be hugged by you. I mean..." Asuka felt nervous.
"You want me to hug you?" Shinji stated his question towards her.
"Well I talked with Rei and found out that they have... well she has discovered how much she likes being hugged and caressed by Kaworu while they..." Asuka was blushing hard at this time. "Cuddle in bed."
"Cuddle?" Shinji wondered where Asuka was going with this.
"Yeah... Cuddle..." Asuka sat down on the unrolled bed mat in the room. "Sounds kinda of stupid, but..." Asuka grinned. "Rei, I mean she had gone from being a doll to being..." Asuka worked up her nerves, this was girl stuff, but given how suggestive Shinji was during that time he talked in his sleep about the stuff Kaji had taught him about girls and what they wanted. This Gentleman code that a man should do with a woman of discovering what she liked and letting her dictate what she wanted do... This was her way of telling Shinji that she wanted to at least experiment with what she felt comfortable doing with her clothes on. "Shinji... Rei wants to be a real girl. I mean she has never been hugged, let alone kissed by anyone." Asuka started to speak. "I mean considering that this Rei..." Asuka debated on saying the next word or not but decided that Shinji should know everything about Rei, maybe it would help her get ahead with Shinji and have him work up to having his little Sausage go into her American Taco. "Shinji, Rei the Rei we know, this is her third body..." Shinji nodded as he was processing this.
"Okay... so this is Rei's third body..." Shinji wasn't getting it. Asuka decided to try a different angle.
"No Shinji... I mean..." Asuka took a deep breath in and let it out slowly in defeat. "I mean each time Rei has been cloned..." Shinji was looking more and more confused... "Shit, Shinji..." Asuka slammed her fist down hard onto the bedding. "Rei's first copy was murdered. Number two got blown up saving your life and this is body number freaking three... or four Instrumentality Third Impact and all." Asuka looked up at him with spent energy bleeding from her eyes. "She was strangled... Baka brains..." Asuka lost it. "I mean do you know what it is like to have the life go out of your body..." Asuka started to break down. "I mean to have the life float out of your body... as you hang." Shinji moved over to Asuka and sat down beside of her and rubbed her arm.
"Asuka..." Shinji leaned over to hold her. "Rei was hung?" Asuka looked at Shinji in shock...
"No... My mother committed suicide, she hung herself and the person that found her was me... I mean on the same day when I found out I was going to be an EVA pilot..." Shinji was in shock...
"Wow... I didn't know..." Shinji fell back on the bed as he rubbed his forehead trying to digest the data that had been dumped to him.
"Yeah... I mean I haven't told anyone , hell Rei only knows a little but this is the first time that..." Asuka turned towards Shinji.
"You have talked about it." Shinji slowly moved up but Asuka pushed him down.
"Yeah..." Asuka slowly slipped towards him.
"Must have been hard for you." Asuka nodded.
"Um Hmmm. My mom had been sick for some time after a lab experiment went wrong. She had a mental break; well that is what my dad had said... But, I hated her... For being in that dream world." Asuka started to break down.
"Asuka..." Shinji slid by her and rubbed her back. "It's going to be okay..." Shinji said as he moved to wrap his arms around her. "At least you remember what she looked like." Shinji said as he slowly rocked her in his arms. "I lost my mom in a lab accident when I was so young that I can't even remember her face." Shinji's cheek rubbed through a large mass of Asuka's red hair.
"I didn't know Shinji..." Asuka turned towards him seeing Shinji out of the corner of her eyes.
"Yeah... My Dad was too Distraught at losing my Mom, he lost so many of the pictures he had of her." Shinji said depressed.
"Maybe he didn't need to have any..." Asuka said worried.
"What do you mean?" Asuka turned to face Shinji head on.
"Shinji..." Asuka took a deep breath before she proceeded. "Rei..." Shinji looked at her worried.
"What about Rei??" Shinji grew concerned about the change in topic.
"Shinji... Rei is a clone of your mother. That is the face she saw, the image... The AT Field that came after her... She is afraid that your mother wants' her body back and Rei is that Body." Shinji fell away from Asuka in shock...
"Rei is a clone of my mother..." Shinji moved away from Asuka trying to make sense of what she had told him.
Hikari was sitting by the bed in one of the quarters next to the African girl Maya had brought up from the LCL pool. The events had gone from strange to weird as Maya had taken Tru and Spike to a conference room at gunpoint; it was like she didn't fully trust Tru for some reason. Maya looked like she was determined to find out what was down there in the LCL pool that was killing those who had come back. Amanda had said that something had killed a girl who was wondering around the area after she had come out of the LCL, but this... Maya looked like she wanted answers and that Tru had some of the answers of what was going on around here. Hikari looked over at the girl who was now sleeping calmly under the bed sheets of the bed. Imagine waking up in a strange place, being hunted by a monster that wanted to take a bite out of you and the child you were with. Hikari rubbed her arms trying to shake off the thought of what would it have been like if it had been her? Hikari decided that this room was getting too cold for her tastes so getting up she moved over to the thermostat and turned up the temperature to the room to twenty-six degrees Celsius (80 F). Walking back to the bed, Hikari looked at the girl's figure. This girl had bigger breasts than she had. Maybe it was the fact this girl was older than her by three or four years.
Tracing her fingers through the girl's hair, Hikari felt the softness of it through the dried LCL fluid as she pulled some errant locks of hair out of the girl's face. That was when the girl spoke in her sleep.
"Edward..." The girl grinned as she rolled over on her side pulling as much cover in front of her as she could before wigging her face deeper into the pillow and becoming restful once again. Hikari grinned at this. Well she learned one thing about this girl; she had a boyfriend that she probably had slept with. Reaching out Hikari pulled the sheets up over the girl's back to keep her warm or at least covered. Hikari thought that if Toji was here, she would probably be acting like this girl here, well more dressed. Curled up next to Toji in bed, smelling his scent, having his warmth sink into her body with his long blond hair... Wait... Toji didn't have long blond hair... Toji had black hair... The girl shifted again... Toji was tall... Semi brooding... A nice guy. Well considering that he Shinji and Kensuke were the Three Stooges as Asuka had called them. The girl shifted again... Something was happening... An image hit Hikari across the face. She was being chased... Hunted... Hikari moved over close to the girl to touch her but hit an octagonal barrier in front of her...
"What the..." Hikari called out as she stumbled back away from the bed... The girl was scared and the barrier had gone up around her. The girl looked like she was running for her life. Hikari moved near the field again. She needed to help this girl... "Please wake up." The girl looked more frightened as she rolled again on her back, the sheet revealing her naked breasts.
"Edward..." The girl called out as if not trying to alert anyone to where she was. Hikari felt like she was in a dark alley trying to hide. It also felt like she was holding a child and her arms were... Hikari gasped... She was sharing images with the sleeping girl... Hikari pushed through the barrier that was separating her and the girl from each other and sat down by the side of the bed and took the girl's hand. Closing her eyes she projected herself into the girl's dream.
"Hello..." Hikari called out in the dream... the girl was scared witless... "I am not going to hurt you... Okay..." Hikari said in the most assuring way she could.
"Where are you?" The girl called out looking around the empty alleyway. Hikari reached out from the shadows and revealed herself. The girl pulled back away from her, the yellow dress she was wearing was torn in several places.
"It's okay; I am not going to hurt you?" Hikari said as she offered her hand.
"Where's Edward?" The girl was looking around.
"I... I don't know..." We only found you and the little boy you were with... the girl looked down to see the child she was holding was gone.
"Where's Dominic?" The girl got scared again... Hikari raced over to the girl and hugged her.
"Was that the name of the boy you were with?" Hikari held onto the girl. Hikari could feel the girl's pulse race as the girl came to realize that Hikari knew where the child was she was looking for.
"Um Hmm." The girl spoke as she nodded at the same time.
"Okay... I'll take you to him." Hikari said as she took a hand and slowly paced it over the girl's eyes, but the girl looked scared. "Don't worry, I won't hurt you." Then the girl was awake when Hikari removed her hand from the girl's eyes. The girl looked up at Hikari as she looked around the room trying to get herself orientated. "Hi There..." Hikari said with a grin on her face speaking in her best broken English.
"Where am I?" The girl said looking around more as she slid up in bed, but fell back down as the strength left her body.
"Easy there." Hikari swapped to her Japanese. "You have been through a lot in the last few hours."The girl blinked.
"What did you just say?" The girl said as she rolled over onto her side so she could swing her legs over the edge of the bed. Hikari blushed as she realized that she needed to speak English with this girl.
"Sorry, Japanesea is my native..." Hikari paused as she worked through the words in her head. "...language."
"Japanese..." The girl looked around as she let gravity take hold of her bent legs and the gravity pulled her up. Most of the bed sheet was still clinging to her body but there was something about bed sheet covering her breasts. It looked wet. "Am I in Japan?" Hikari sitting on the bed pulled some hair from the girl's face.
"No... We are in Germany... Don't ask me why... I woke up here like you, in the... LCL tank."
"LCL?" The girl blinked a few times as she put a hand to her head as the room started to spin around her. Hikari reached out to help keep the girl up.
"Yes... we found you by the major pool of this stuff. You and Dominic." Hikari got a good look at the girl's eyes. They were Violet. Kind of a royal purple that she thought was nice on a dress she had seen in a dress shop window. It took a moment for Hikari to realize that the boy that Kensuki had carried out of the elevator had the same colored eyes.
"I need to get to Dominic..." The girl said as she pushed herself out of the bed dragging the bed sheet with her as she stood up and started to walk towards the door. Each step she took made the bed sheet start to pull away from her naked body until she was standing by the door in her birthday suit. Hikari raced over to a hook on the wall and pulled off a long XXXL dress shirt. "... I need to know if he is okay." The girl was running on more or less autopilot as she opened the door and walked out into the hallway as Hikari raced after her. Then the sounds of children playing could be heard. As Hikari neared the room where Nozomi and Ayame had been using as their bedroom a small ball bounced out towards the girl's feet. Desmond, Tru's baby brother came flying out after the ball, his mop of blue hair could be seen having been seriously messed with. The boy looked at the girl wondering why she was naked. That was when another boy came out of the room wearing a pair of makeshift shorts and an overly too large for his size t-shirt. "Dominic." The girl fell to her knees as she held out her arms to hug the boy. "Please don't run off like that again." She said as she hugged the young boy tight.
"See, he is okay." Hikari said as she came up behind the girl and draped the shirt over the girl's naked shoulders and just waited for the girl to feel safe before she did anything else.
"Hikari..." One of the girl's had come out of the children's room and moved over to watch the scene. It was Nozomi.
"Why is that girl naked?" The girl hearing this blushed as she looked down at her own body.
"Um... I just got up..." The dark skinned girl let go of Dominic as she realized that Hikari had semi covered her with a shirt.
"My name is Hikari. I guess that you meet the other children that have been playing with your baby brother." Hikari knelt down next to the girl as she handed the ball back to the boy and the two children ran off back into the room. The girl watched the children play as they kicked the foam ball around to each other after a long moment the girl spoke.
"My name is Rose..." the girl shook Hikari's hand. "What happened to me... to..." Hikari knew that she had a lot to explain to this girl. But given that Rose knew that Dominic was alright Hikari knew that she could take her time and tell her what she knew so far. In the back of Hikari's mind she wondered what was going on with Maya, Tru and Spike and why they had taken Try away at gunpoint.
TBC
Next: Part 16: Blood Ties
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