Chapter Two
In future times the children would ask, and Kensuke Aida would answer "I was there. I was there when he came to Tokyo-3.," though at the time, he did not know this. He only knew that there was a profound tension in the air during the week after the creature attacked the city and was destroyed by NERV's giant robot. The rest of his class was gathered around Toji.
Seated casually on a desk to make sure everyone could hear him, Toji was dressed in a track suit rather than the school uniform and this day, like every day, no one would challenge him. He spoke in hushed, almost reverent tones. "I saw it. I saw the battle."
"Was it scary? What did the monster look like?"
"It was big, and it smelled like fish, and its face was funny, like a bird mask or something. The robot came out of the ground and it kicked its ass."
"Did it use any special moves?"
"I guess. One of the big buildings that didn't sink opened up, and there was a huge gun in it, but the robot didn't take the gun. It picked up a sword."
"A sword?"
"Yeah! It was huge, like as big as a building. The monster tried to attack it, but had, like, moves and stuff. It started cutting it up with the sword and it was screaming, and I heard the pilot talk."
"No way!"
"Yeah. It must have speakers or something. He said, 'It's bleeding. If it bleeds…'"
"…we can kill it." another voice finished.
He stood in the open door of the classroom, school bag slung over one shoulder. He wasn't huge, but even beneath a loose fitting uniform shirt and slacks, he looked like he'd been cut from glass, his arms and legs fashioned from copper wires. His hair was a little longer than the other boys, as if he'd just decided to grow it out. He regarded the room with cool blue eyes. "Where do I sit?"
"You were there, too?" Toji said incredulously.
"Yes," was all he said.
The class representative walked up to him, folder clutched to her chest. "Are you the transfer?"
He nodded, without replying. She sort of stood there, staring at him for a minute before he cleared his throat. "Where should I sit?"
Five Days Earlier
There was something about this kid that unnerved Misato. First of all, he was openly checking her out from the minute they met, but he was quiet about it. That, in itself, was fairly normal. She knew how she looked and she could guess the effect she would have on a fourteen year old boy. She did not expect that when she pulled up to pick him up and got out of the car, he'd look at the photo she'd jokingly illustrated with an arrow pointing to her cleavage, then look straight at her chest and say, "You must be Miss Katsuragi."
"Uh, yeah," she said.
"Let's go," he said immediately in a commanding voice.
She tried to pick up one of his bags and grunted, shaking a little. He took it from her and slid it behind the passenger seat of her Renault without even straining himself, then slid into the passenger seat. When she got in, he was flipping through the psych profile she'd left laying out on the seat, the one with his picture clipped to the front.
"Hey!" she said, grabbing for it.
He playfully batted her hands away. "Shy and retiring, possibly clinically depressed, socially avoidant personality." He read, tapping the paper with his fingers. He slowly closed the file and handed it back to her.
"You're not supposed to see that!"
"I didn't," he winked, and sat back in the seat, closing his eyes.
"Uh…" she started.
"Shhhh," he said. "Stood up on the train the whole way. Tired."
There was another reverberating thump as the angel approached from the south of the city. A flight of VTOLs buzzed overhead, rattling the windows in the nearby buildings and making the car rock on its suspension a little.
"Aren't you a little worried?" she said as she pulled out onto the street, taking the next corner a little harder than she'd intended.
The kid swayed a little with the motion, but didn't open his eyes. A soft smirk curled the edges of his lips. "Would it help?"
"I guess not."
They rode in silence for a time, listening to the thumps and watching the flashes as the VTOLs and the rest of the JSSDF harassed the Angel. Once in a while a particularly loud explosion would catch his attention, and he'd open his eyes a bit, then quietly close them again.
"Don't you want to know why you're here?"
"I know why I'm here."
"You do? How?"
"I don't know he sent for me, but I know why I'm here." He looked out the window. "Why are they pulling back?"
She followed his gaze and saw the aircraft buzzing around the titanic creature, glimpsed here and there through passes in the hills, huge and looming, as they darted away, moving in all directions at speed. They were putting distance between themselves and the hulking, humanoid form of the Angel. That implied something disturbing.
They were about to drop something bit on it.
"They're going to use an N2 mine!"
She wheeled the car off the road and down a grassy hill. As it slowed she started to throw herself to shield Shinji out of pure instinct, but he reacted first, putting his body between her and the sudden flash of white, shocking her with his strength. She had a few inches of height on him, but he was so dense, like someone had twisted thick metal cables around his bones. The car bounced and rolled and a roar soaked into her ears, and she wasn't sure if it was the blast or her own blood pumping.
"Are you okay?" they both said at once.
Misato blinked. Then she blushed, and pushed him off of her, gently. She looked around. Her goddamn car was lying on its side. She slapped the steering wheel with the underside of her fist. "Damn it, I only have two more payments left! We should…"
He'd already climbed out his side, and reached in with both arms to offer her a hand. She twisted, got herself seated sideways, and took his arms, latching onto his forearms. She couldn't close her fingers around them, and when he took hold of her, it almost hurt, and she could feel he was holding back. She blinked a little in surprise as he helped her slip out of the cart and slid an arm under her to help her situate herself on the ground. She took a deep breath and studied the car.
"Shit."
"Let's turn it back over." He said, and without further preamble walked around to the other side.
Hurriedly, she trotted after him. She planted her feet and put her hands to the roof of the car. Before she had a chance to push he said, "No."
"What?"
"Here," he said, and she fought the urge to jump as he ran his hand up the small of her back. "You're rounding your back. You'll hurt yourself. Use your legs. Like this."
She watched as he crouched down in a funny sort of position, holding his back rigidly straight. It made him look like a frog about the jump. He felt along for a good handhold along the edge of the roof and curled both hands under it. She went to join him, but before she could he let out a grunt of effort, pushed into the car, and it started to roll. Hurriedly, she joined him, and it wavered in their hands for a second before he let out another sighing grunt and, with what little help she could give, pushed the car past the tipping point. It landed on its wheels with a sick crunch and rocked on the suspension.
She stood there staring at him for a minute. Her back still felt tingly where he'd touched her, and she couldn't help but notice the way his chest strained against his uniform shirt when he got into his funny little crouch.
Holy shit, Misato, she told herself, calm down.
"L-let's go," she said as she slipped back into the car.
He joined her, and reached behind himself to check his bags. He pulled the heavy one down into a better position with a thump.
"What's in there, anyway?"
"Books."
"Oh," she said as she eased out the clutch, trying to work the car back up the hill. "We need to get to headquarters."
"Yes," he said.
The dust cloud thrown up by the exploding weapon had turned the sky a florid pink. Shinji gazed out at the charred form of the creature between the hills. It stood taller than the buildings on the outskirts of the city, a great hulking thing with gangly arms and stumpy legs and big fishy gills on its sides, pumping in and out with great gasps like bellows.
Misato gaped. "It's not dead." She said softly.
"Yes," he said, "but look. It's bleeding."
"So?"
"If it bleeds, we can kill it."
She looked at him for a moment as he stared out the window, and shivered.
As Ritsuko Akagi pulled herself up onto the edge of the enormous tank of LCL that contained the Evas, she let out a last breath of tangy metallic air and shrugged off the rebreather unit. She could have breathed the LCL if she'd wished, but it tasted bad enough when it was electrolyzed and warmed to near body temperature, and when it was cold, it was like drinking blood. On the practical side, respiring with a liquid required more muscular action and was therefore more fatiguing. That wasn't a problem for the pilots, who would mostly be sitting relatively still, but when swimming in the stuff, it could pose an issue. She wasn't doing it for pleasure, anyway; the commander insisted that Unit One be ready for sortie today, and the right knee joint was still giving them trouble.
As head of Project E, she could leave her rebreather where she damned well pleased, knowing someone else would clean it up. The job had long hours and few perks, but it did have some. After towling off and running through a standing shower to get the majority of the foul smelling gunk off her body and out of her hair, she shrugged into a labcoat and headed for the nearest elevator, which opened to reveal Misato Katsuragi and, she surmised, the new pilot.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Ritsuko blurted. "Aren't you supposed to be in the command center?"
"I got a little lost," Misato said sheepishly. "Hey! Meet the new pilot!"
Ritsuko was a scientist. She observed and drew conclusions. She knew the boy was going to be the commander's son. She'd read the psychological profile, and she had an understanding of why all of the pilots were so psychologically disturbed, barring Rei, who was, of course, a special case. She did not expect the calm, quiet presence he had, his obvious physical conditioning, or the fact that he was all but openly checking her out, especially her legs, though he kept his mouth shut.
"You must be Shinji."
"Yes."
"is that all he says?" she smirked at Misato.
"No," he interrupted.
"Follow me," Ritsuko said as she turned, less than annoyed than she'd anticipated when she felt the boy's eyes on her.
He quickly started looking around; all of this must have been strange to him. On the far side of the huge room, the shoulder pylon and upper arm of Unit One were visible, still engaged in the huge lock. As Misato and the boy followed her up towards the main section of the cage where the entry plug was accessed, she cursed her superiors and their insistence on everything being so melodramatic. The lights were shut off and for no real reason. She stopped in the center of the collapsible bridge, listened to the gurgling of the rapidly draining LCL for a moment, and then gave the signal for the lights to come on.
Unit One and the boy were face to face. He stood stock still and, to her satisfaction, his eyes widened a little in surprise. The massive demonic visage seemed to overwhelm him for a moment, until he resumed his calm mask and whispered, "Crom."
"Excuse me?" said Misato.
"Nothing. What is this thing?"
"This is the last hope of humanity," Ritsuko said, pride in her voice. She was head of the project, after all. "The artificial humanoid, Evangelion Unit One."
"Why have you brought me here?"
"You are to be its pilot," a voice called from high above.
Shinji started, ever so slightly, and slowly looked up, his breathing becoming measured. Ritsuko could feel the tension coming off of him, radiating in waves like heat. That part of the profile had been correct, but still, she hadn't thought him to be so… intense.
"It's been a while," the older man said, a note of amusement in his voice.
"You want me to pilot this." Shinji replied. It wasn't a question, so much as a simple statement of fact.
"Yes. Will you?"
The boy smirked, almost imperceptibly, as he said, "Yes."
Ritsuko had not seen the commander express surprise very often. He was a measured man, a man of plans and schemes and plots all laid out down to the last detail, down to the last contingency. His eyebrows climbed upwards a bit, though it would take a skilled observer to notice.
"Good," he said, and turned and vanished.
"Well," said Ritsuko. "Let's get you ready. We can't fit you for a plugsuit yet, so you'll have to make due with nerve clips."
Shinji looked at her for a moment, and smiled that subtle smile again.
Misato let out a deep breath and, where no one could see her, slumped down against the wall and sank to the floor. She'd trained for this for years, helped train the Second Child in Germany before transferring here, and focused her entire life on this for almost half of her existence. She hadn't thought that she would be terrified the entire time.
The wheels were still spinning. She'd barely had to direct the kid. Ritsuko told him to take it easy and try walking just before he ignored her and started running, pushing the huge machine across the city like an extension of his body. His synch ratio was nearly forty-nine percent; all they'd had to do was explain it to him and he took to it like a fish to water. She said something about his workout regimen helping; he had a high awareness of his body or something like that. She'd have to talk to him, find out why he'd taken the progressive sword from the armaments building when there was a gun right next to it, but so far it had worked out for the best. The kid was a natural.
It scared her a little. He was enjoying it. He didn't have any real technique- his knowledge of swordplay apparently consisted of "hit it with the sharp bits", but that was enough. He took the thing's arm off at the elbow when it tried to grab the Eva, stabbed it through the leg, and almost cut the core out before stabbing the sword right through it, and he was screaming the whole time. Not in fear, but in a kind of feral joy that contrasted with his calm demeanor he'd held from the moment they'd met.
She shuddered. There were two possibilities. He was either some sort of warrior god, or he was completely, totally insane. She wasn't sure what scared her more, those options, or the fact that she really didn't care either way so long as he continued to perform. She sat for a long few minutes, just breathing.
They'd killed one of them. It was dead. They killed an angel.
"Dad," she whispered.
She let out a long, ragged sigh and then stood up, and head down towards the Eva cage. When she arrived, she found an amused Ritsuko coordinating the repair efforts. There was only superficial damage to the Eva, a long scratch down the faceplate over the left eye, sort of a giant robot dueling scar. Misato stood next to her old friend for a minute.
"He said we should leave that," Ritsuko said, her voice wavering between amusement and concern. "he liked the way it looks."
"Are you?"
"Oh hell no," she said. "The Committee would have my job."
Silence followed.
"He scares me a little."
"I know," said Misato. "the psych profile is a joke. Where is he, anyway?"
"He took a shower as soon as he got out, then he asked where the gym was. He's down there now. I told him we'd debrief him in an hour."
"Seriously? The kid pilots a giant robot for the first time, kills a giant monster and gets gore all over said giant robot, and his first words are 'where's the gym'? He may actually be crazy."
"I hope not," Ritsuko said. "If he is unstable, he could easily go into some kind of fugue. The last thing we need is a depressed pilot holed up in a closet somewhere."
"Where is he going to live, anyway? Is he staying with the commander?"
Ritsuko snorted a laugh. "Are you kidding me? Those two? You read the profile, this was the first time they've spoken to each other in years."
"So, where, then?"
"He'll have on base housing, I guess. There's a dozen little apartments still empty down here."
Misato tapped her finger to her chin.
"Misato," Ritsuko said. "You're not thinking what I think you're thinking."
"I am thinking what you think I'm thinking. I'm going to go see what the commander thinks about what you think I'm thinking."
"What?"
"Exactly," Misato waved as she headed towards the elevators.
Gendo Ikari sat like a spider in the center of his web, his face illuminated by the glowing etching over his head, the only source of light in the cavernous office he occupied. It spoke of several things at once- intimidation, power, and the ability to force all of his actual work on his subordinates, since every time Misato had been in here, he was never actually doing anything. He leaned forward and pressed his lips to his steepled hand as she spoke.
"…that's why I'd like to invite him to live with me. For his psychological health."
The man stared at her impassively for a moment, then angled his head just enough to obscure his eyes behind the reflection on his sunglasses. Did he practice at that, or what?
"Very well," He said.
She stood there staring for a moment, then turned around and left. She was fairly sure he hadn't moved even after she walked out. She shuddered a bit after she was out of his line of sight, and had to force herself to admit, there were a lot of things around here that unnerved her, it seemed.
Ritsuko was right. She found him in the gym. NERV had a fairly spacious staff workout area setup, but for now it was mostly deserted in the post-battle let down. There would be a lot of parties, she suspected, and now here she was, not attending any of them. It would be dangerous to fraternize with her subordinates, but still.
He was standing in a squat rack in a simple white t-shirt and warm up pants. The back of his shirt was slick with sweat, and there was fog on the mirror behind the rack in front of him. He leaned forward, his hands resting on a barbell loaded with a pair of plates that looked too big for him to even pick them up. She thought about saying something, but he didn't seem to notice her, so she leaned against the door frame and watched. He walked up under the bar, adjusted his hands, and rested it on his collarbone, then took a step back. He put his legs apart a little, one a bit forward of the other, and with a grunt muscled the bar up into the air, slowly lowered it, and then explosively repeated the motion until he was panting, then racked it again and stood leaning against it. She walked up behind him.
She tapped him on the shoulder. "Hey."
He turned around and pulled a pair of earbuds out of his ears.
"What are you listening to?"
"A movie soundtrack."
"Oh. Are you ready to go home?"
"No one has told me where I'll be staying, yet."
"I was," she took a breath, "I was thinking you could stay with me. That way you won't be alone."
He looked at her for a minute. She hadn't seen him confused before. It was kind of cute. "Would that be okay?"
"Sure! I'd rather you not live by yourself. This place can get overwhelming at times."
"I have to finish here," he said, and turned back to the bar.
"Okay. I have some paperwork to do. They wanted to debrief you, but I got you out of it. Tomorrow."
He nodded, then took up position under the bar.
"I'll be in my office, upstairs."
The mountain of paperwork she found displeased her greatly. What the hell was all of this? The commander might have had room for his office to double as an emergency shelter, but between her swamped desk and her chair, hers looked more like a closet. It was as if her position was some kind of joke, and the office a window dressing. She let out a sigh.
Shinji appeared in her doorway. He tapped one knuckle loosely on the frame, and she looked up. She hadn't even dented the pile of papers on her desk. She let out a long sigh, ruffling some carbon copied report in front of her.
"You have a lot of work. Should I come back?"
"No," she said, standing up. "It can wait."
They walked in silence as they headed for her car. He'd freshly showered and it made her feel a little rumpled herself; she hadn't had the time for such luxuries. He rode in silence beside her, staring out the cracked window at the city streets, the power lines, the night sky. It must have all been very new to him, with his rural upbringing.
"How do you like it?"
"How does the wind ever get in here?" he whispered.
"Uh, what?"
"Nevermind," he said. "It's different."
"Yeah," she said, and gave up on conversation for a while.
With a sigh she pulled up to the convenience store near her apartment and got out. He followed without complaint, and he didn't seem to mind carrying all of her purchases, either. The store clerks were having a conversation about moving away, and she almost told them to knock it off. She didn't want him unnerved. He didn't seem to care, though.
She carried the food up to the apartment, and he carried his bags. Once she opened the door, she stepped to the side, and let him stand at the threshold. He stood there for a moment, looking down at the line where the dull gray carpeting in the hallway was cut off from the linoleum tile of her foyer. He took a breath and stepped over it.
"I'm home."
"Welcome home!"
Author's Note: I fixed a minor continuity issue with the time of Shinji's arrival, which would have place it a week before it actually happened. Oops.