Chapter Four

Rei emerged from her shower and discovered Shinji standing in her bedroom. Bedroom, perhaps, was not the correct word; her apartment essentially was a bedroom, with a small kitchen alcove and an equally cramped lavatory sharing a wall with it. It was plain, dilapidated, and utterly sufficient. It was the essence of the philosophy of the Commander, which was her own. She walked out of the small bathroom with her towel draped over her shoulder, having mostly dried herself before she emerged. She would allow her hair to dry in the air as she dressed.

She was, of course, wearing nothing but the towel.

He looked at her in a sort of dull surprise for a moment, and then as if his body had suddenly allocated more blood to his brain, blushed and snapped his vision away from her, pressing his eyes tightly shut.

"I didn't meant to walk in you." he said, softly. "Your doorknob was broken. I was afraid someone had broken in."

She looked at him askance for a moment. "Why?"

"They might hurt you."

"So?"

"What do you mean, so?" he said sharply. He opened his eyes, blushed deeply again, and immediately pressed them shut again. "Please put on some clothes."

She said nothing as she complied, slipping first into a pair of panties and then into her crisply starched uniform shirt. It was itchy and uncomfortable, but it was also required. When she turned as she pulled her jumper up over her shoulders, she realized that he was looking in her closet.

"Don't you have anything else to wear?"

At some point while her back was turned, he had opened his eyes. He stood in front of her small wardrobe, lifting one of her spare uniforms in his hand, pressing the fabric between his fingers. He released it and turned back to her as she started pulling on her socks.

"I do not require other clothing."

"What do you sleep in?" he said, a note of curiosity in the question.

"Nothing."

He made a sound not unlike a sneeze, which was a mixture of guffaw, alarmed snort, and laugh. She could see him blushing again. Now that he had seen her absent clothing he no doubt had sufficient mental imagery to imagine her sleeping in the nude. He clearly was, judging by the deep blush he showed. What made her curious was why she was blushing herself, and had instinctively raised her hand to brush her hair. He looked at her palm for a moment before shaking her head ever so slightly and standing up.

She saw the glasses.

He held the Commander's glasses in his hand. When her eyes fell on them his fingers clenched, and she heard them creak. She was unsure of why she kept them, only that he had discarded them after the failed test of Unit Zero and she picked them up, rescuing them from the incinerator. They held no meaning to him, but to her, though she was not sure, precisely of what it was. She did not want Shinji to crush them.

She reached to snatch them out of his hand. He moved with an instinctive, feline grace, pulling back just before she touched him. His expression, hard and fixed, softened a bit and he offered the glasses to her.

"Sorry," he said. "Are these my father's?"

"He threw them away."

"I came to give you your new identification card," he said, retrieving it from his pocket. "Your old one won't work."

She took it without a word.

He looked at her for a moment as if expecting her to say something and then walked out with a glance at the glasses, now held in her hand. She watched him close the door and then followed after herself, not checking to see if it remained closed or not. She made not special effort to catch up to him as he headed down the stairs, but ended up walking alongside him anyway. He seemed to slow his pace to match hers, but she was not sure; he was not obviously making an effort to do so.

She walked through the stairwell, her patent leather shoes making tiny ringing sounds on the metal stairs. The stairwell smelled of brackish water and corroded metal, and their steps echoed. Shinji took note of a long water stain one wall and said, almost to himself, "Why do you have to live like this?"

She did not reply to him. The only consideration he gave her as the left the building was holding the door open. She walked out in front of him and he fell in step beside her again. After a while, she glanced in his direction and said, "Why are you walking with me?"

"I'm not. We're going to the same place."

She did not reply.

"This place looked dangerous."

She did not reply to that either. Finally, he said, "The day my father burned his hands. Those glasses?"

She looked at him, but did not reply. She felt no need to confirm his suspicions.

"We're testing Unit Zero today."

Again, he stated the obvious, as if anticipating a reply. She examined him for a moment through the corner of her eye and said, "Yes."

This was apparently sufficient to provoke him into continuing conversing with her. "It hurt you before."

"Yes."

"If it hurts you today, I'll tear it apart."

She stopped. "You are ascribing agency to it."

He looked at her for a minute.

"You are talking about it as if it is alive," she clarified.

He continued to stare at her. She stared back at him, and her eyes narrowed. Why was he staring at her? Her statement made perfect sense.

"You can talk," he said, the corners of his lips curling.

She blinked. She considered his words for a moment. She had already had two conversations with him, and had in fact favored him with more conversation than she normally would. Of course she could talk.

"You are making a joke," she surmised.

"You could try laughing at it."

"It is not funny."

For some reason, this provoked him to break out in boisterous laughter, so much so that he had to hold his sides and it broke his pace as he continued to walk. After what seemed like several minutes, he subsided with a few chuckles. Fortunately, they were nearing the entrance to headquarters, with its irrationally long escalators. Rei would have much preferred an elevator. They tended to move faster.

She used her new card to gain access and he followed her, standing a few steps behind on the escalator. He leaned on the rail with a sort of easy confidence, and each time she looked back at him, she caught his gaze and instinctively turned away and stiffened. The reason for this behavior did not occur to her, as nothing on a conscious level dictated it. She made a note of this and to ask the Commander, later, the significance of his behavior as well as he fixation on adjusting her hair in his presence.

When they reached the Eva cage, he went off to the boy's locker room.

"Be careful," he said.

She did not reply. It didn't matter. She could be replaced.

She changed into her plugsuit, leaving her uniform heaped on the floor. It was clean, and as no one else used the locker room, there was no reason to put the items into her locker itself. As she walked out onto the gantry to approach Unit Zero she Unit One. Its head tracked her slowly, the sounds of its movement, servos winding and artificial muscles pumping, filled the vast cavern. Without apparent cause, her plugsuit suddenly felt very tight, and her gait changed. She unconsciously drew her legs tighter together and crossed her arms over her chest.

"Rei?" the Commander said.

She stopped and turned to him. "You appear concerned. Are you nervous?"

He meant about the test, so she answered, "No. I can be replaced."

"Indeed you can," he said, off-handedly. "Smile for me, please."

She did. "Yes sir," she said, her voice in a sweet falsetto.

"Good," he smiled back.

His smile was not for her.

She turned and headed for the Evangelion. It stood fixed to the wall, where it had been before, the day of the accident. She climbed up the steps and slid into the plug, and with a deep sigh sat back in the seat, her hands on her lap. She was expecting the cold LCL to flood the plug, and so did not gasp. Instead she waited until it had fully filled the vessel before releasing her breath fully and taking another deep one, then coughing to expel the last of the air with practiced ease. She had spent a great deal of time in LCL. As she listened to the technicians reading through the startup process, she felt the Evangelion reaching for her.

Shinji was correct to ascribe agency to it. It was alive. It was alive and vital, and it hated her. She felt the mind of the thing beneath her slide against hers, press up against it, try to pull her in. Images floated towards her, of herself, smaller and shorter in a red dress, and hands closing around her throat. She could have voiced it, had she wished to, as simply I hate you.

She felt a shudder in the Eva. A hint of concern entered Akagi's voice. The Commander said nothing. She looked across the cage at Unit One and the onboard systems, literally reading her mind, opened a window in front of her that let her see him. He leaned back, his eyes closed. She had not seen him in a plugsuit before. He was, to use the vernacular, ripped. She thought of the exchange with him on the way to the test this morning.

Something happened. The timbre, the tone of the Eva's contact with her, changed. It was no longer angry. It was… concerned, and the concern quickly turned to fear. The system settled. Third stage connection was reached. The boards were all green.

Then, the Angel attacked. She heard the alarm and jerked, and the connection between her and the Eva went silent around her and she sat in the dark, breathing cold, foul tasting liquid. It was as if she had been forgotten. After what seemed like an eternity in the dark, she heard the systems reactivating, and the colors flashed around her as the system came back on line.

"Rei," said Misato. "I know you weren't expecting this, but we need you. We're going to launch you, and we want you to recover Unit One. It's going to be destroyed if it we don't bring it back."

Rei started in surprise. What had happened? It had only been a few minutes.

"Roger," was all she said as she walked the Evangelion out of the test bay and back into the cage, past the restraints to the launch system. She positioned it against the wall and grunted at the odd sensation as the clamps slid into place, and she was launched in a rush. It thrust her down into the seat and made her take a breath, and when she opened her eyes, she was on the surface.

The Angel was a great gleaming octahedron, looming over the city. It dwarfed the Eva and it dwarfed the nearby buildings, including one that it had melted through. Unit One lay on its side, smoking and heavily damaged. The Angel noticed her, though how she could not say, since it had no features- it seemed to be made of tinted glass.

"Oh shit!" Katsuragi called. "Get her back down here-"

There was a flash. She felt an incredible sense of power, and froze. The Angel drew in on itself, screamed an awful scream, and broke into a hundred thousand shards, and slammed into a great wedge shape with a metallic clang. A beam of light erupted from its tip, aimed straight at her. She wouldn't even have time to scream.

Shinji got up.

Unit One leapt to its feet and the Eva roared, cried out in a basso rumble that made her bones shake. With astonishing speed it slammed into a heavy shield building, hit it so hard it tilted to one side. Her jaw dropped in naked shock.

"Third state connections…" she heard Ibuki shout, her voice rising over the din of cries in her ear, but only briefly, "Berserk! It's going berserk!"

Unit One tore the skyscraper out of the ground, root and branch. Dust drifted from its surface, chips of paint and concrete falling from where Unit One's fingers dug into it. Holding the huge slab over its head, Unit One interposed itself between her and the beam, and the heels of the great machine dug into the street as it was shoved back, almost hitting her. A window flicked open in her sight.

Shinji was bleeding, and half his face was reddened. He ground his teeth and more blood flowered from his mouth, spreading in the LCL in front of his face. He looked her right in the eye.

"Rifle," he shouted, "Get rifle, kill it!"

She snapped out of her reverie and headed for the nearest armament's building, retrieving a pallet rifle as it slid open. The shield Shinji held was crumbling, the surface before his Eva's face turning red hot, soon to be white hot, then to soften and melt. She stepped out from behind him, aimed the rifle, and emptied the magazine. The shells tore great pockmarks in the Angel's surface, all of its power apparently devoted to the beam of energy.

It shrieked. The sound had an electronic distortion to it, like some kind of machine, and it bled somehow, blood appearing at its wounds, just welling up at the rents in its surface without any apparent source. She slammed another magazine in place, aimed for the dark sport of the core, and held the reticle on it as she emptied the gun out yet again. The thing retained its shape but was creaking and groaning, a deep rent torn through its middle, exposing the core.

Shinji, or the Eva, or both, roared in triumph. He took a bounding step, lifted the remnants of his shield, high, and hurled them so hard it pitched the Eva forward, slamming it into the street. A hundred tons of flaming concrete and metal slammed into the angel's core and tore into it a great gout of blood. The thing screamed a final time as it died, its entire body cracking and bending as it fell. Its form softened and flushed into LCL that washed down over them both, up to the Eva's ankles.

She ran to Shinji. At some point during the battle, she'd lost her umbilical, and hadn't even noticed. She rolled Unit One onto its back, crouched, and then hit the emergency eject. It hurt to crawl down the Eva, to half-slide down the rope ladder from the plug, her not-too-old injuries nagging at her as she ran to it.

Unit One's plug projected from its back, kicked out by the emergency recovery system, triggered by the damage. When she pulled open the emergency release valve, it burned her hands, it she pulled them back with a yelp. She stared at her palms for a moment, then grabbed the handles, ignoring the pain, and twisted. She had to put her whole body into it, and hang on for dear life when the door finally came open and LCL washed out over her.

Shinji wasn't moving.

"Ikari?" she said, "Ikari!"

He groaned, and she slipped into the plug. The LCL was still hot, even through her plugsuit. He turned his head. The right side of his face was burns and bruises, and his eye had swelled shut. He bled from a cut over it, the blood coating his cheek. More blood coated his chin, from a split in his lower lip. He managed to open his left eye and cough.

She panicked. Rei panicked. She had no idea what to do, what to say. She raised her hands, and watched them shake in front of her face. She yelped as he grabbed her wrist.

"Are you…" he took a pained breath, "Okay?"

She nodded. There were tears in her eyes. Was this crying? Was she crying? Why would she cry?

"…can't have you…" he wheezed.

She shook her head, unable to grasp his meaning. She slid closer to him.

"You are hurt."

"I noticed that," he managed to choke out.

"I do not know what to do."

He made an odd sound, wincing as he did, but he didn't stop. She realized, with some confusion, that he was laughing. When he stopped, he leaned back in the plug and said, "You could try smiling."

She did.

So did he.

Misato went into the Commander's office without a gun, ready to strip off her rank insignia and leave. She fully expected to be fired. She stood at attention in front of his desk and was uncomfortably reminded of the way her drill instructors would ogle her in basic. If the creepy old man showed any interest in her body at all, he was hiding it, at any rate. He sat hunched into his hands, studying her, no doubt to savor the dressing down he was about to hand out. She wanted to sigh; if he wanted to embarrass her, he was less likely to fire her.

"You," he said finally, "are being promoted."

She blinked. "What?"

He raised a hand, cutting her off. "You have done a remarkable job. You took a novice pilot and trained him to an unbelievable level of skill in only two weeks. Your plan of weakening the angels' carapace while it drained its energy in the attack, then striking at the core was especially brilliant. Shinji, too, will receive a person commendation. Fuyutsuki is giving it to him now."

"I don't understand."

"Oh," he said smoothly, "it's perfectly obvious."

It wasn't, not to her. Nevertheless, she nodded, and said, "Thank you, sir."

"I do expect you to deal with his… tactical choices. He cannot continue charging into battle with every angel. The risk to Unit One is too great. Is that understood?"

She noted that he pointedly said Unit One, not Shinji. Nevertheless, she nodded. He didn't feel the need to tell her, apparently, that he was done with her, and so after an awkward pause she turned and walked away while he pulled out some paper and began studying it intently. Fuyutsuki walked into the room as she passed, his face grim. She didn't hear their conversation and didn't much want to, instead breaking into a sprint that took her towards the elevator. She brushed past Ritsuko, knocking some papers out of her hand.

"Hey!"

"Later!" Misato shouted back, darting into the elevator so fast she bounded off the back wall. She tapped her foot as she watched the counter click upwards as she headed for the infirmary. She barged out, elbowing Hyuga out of the way, ignoring him as he stared after her. She stormed into the infirmary over the objections of a dozen doctors and found Shinji's room. She skidded to a stop as Rei walked out, passed her with a nod, and continued on down the hallway. Misato stopped to gape after the uniformed girl for a moment, then rushed into Shinji's room.

He was sitting up in the bed, eating Jell-O. He swallowed a bite and then looked at her. His eye was swollen shut and his lip had been stitched, and there was a bandage around his head, but otherwise he looked fine.

"I'm lucky," he said. "The doctor said I'll have a scar."

He pointed to the bandage.

She stomped over to him and loomed over the bed.

"Are you crazy?"

"I have a head injury, but I don't think so."

She planted her fists on her hips. "You were almost killed, Shinji."

He took another bite of Jell-O. "No I wasn't. I wanted to finish this, then I can leave. I got a few cuts and bruises."

She realized she was shaking with anger, and clenched her fists, forcing in a deep breath to calm down. She let out an angry sigh and opened her eyes again. She couldn't say, but she had a sneaking suspicion only the pain in his lip and bruised body kept him from breaking out in laughter.

"Father already sent his lickspittle to congratulate me. He said they're promoting you."

"Yeah," she said angrily, "but you shouldn't… that doesn't-"

"We should celebrate," he said, slipping off the bed. "I need to get dressed. Unless you want to watch…"

Her eyes widened, then narrowed in anger. "Young man, I am not done with you. I am your commanding officer. You will obey my orders."

Gendo watched impassively as Rei finished her report. She omitted nothing, as was her nature, even informing him about her blushing, hair flipping and stolen glances. Fuyutsuki eyed him, expecting a reaction, but there was none. He simply sat in the same position and said "Very good, Rei. You may go."

"Well," the older man said, "this is interesting. She's attracted to him, and he's been flirting with her."

"Yes," Gendo said flatly.

"How should we proceed?"

"It is not a concern. Whatever sense of attachment he feels for her made him more effective in combat, which is the only thing he can do that matters to me."

"If you say so," Fuyutsuki shrugged.

"Rei is not her," Gendo said angrily. "Her appearance is merely an aesthetic concern, a coincidence. Nothing more."

"As you say. I must say I am a little surprised you sent me to congratulate the boy."

"How did he receive it?"

Fuyutsuki shrugged. "With a certain indifference. He seemed more interested in his hospital food."

Gendo smiled. "Perfect."

"What?"

"He can hide behind his swaggering all he wants, but he is still the same person. He craves my affection. He hid his reaction, to hide his weakness, as he always does."

"I hope you're right. Katsuragi's promotion mystifies me. Won't the Committee-"

"I took action before they had time to register complaints. What would you rather I tell them, that our operations director can't control the pilots, and that we defeated the creature by sheer luck, or that we have a brilliant commander whose subordinates are already forming a cohesive team? As far as the Committee knows, Katsuragi's quick thinking and Shinji's initiative overcame what would have been a shockingly difficult foe."

Fuyutsuki nodded. "An excellent move."

"He has an attachment to her as well. Keeping her close to him will give us another means of control should he become less tractable."

Misato's phone rang, and her head was pounding. She sat up in her futon and felt for it, anxious to shut it off before it disturbed Shinji, sleeping off his one beer in his room down the hall. She had barely managed to make it to her own. She hit the 'send' button and put it up to her ear without checking the caller identification.

"This better be important," she snapped. "It's four in the morning."

"Misato?"

She froze. She knew that voice. A little older than the last time she'd seen her, but…

"Asuka?" she said blearily. "How did you get my number?"

"I asked."

"What do you want? I'm trying to sleep."

"The new pilot."

"Yeah?" she said, covering her eyes with her arm. "What about him?"

"How did he-"

"Ugh, I have to work tomorrow. You're the teenager. You call me at four in the morning your time and we'll talk."

"I will," she said, and then without further comment, hung up. Misato dropped her phone and curled her legs to her chest. What the hell did Asuka want with Shinji?