Chapter V

I Cannot Run Away

'Well, Shinji? What have you got to say for yourself?'

Shinji stayed motionless. The verbal onslaught that had been dealt to him for the past ten minutes was now feeling more like distant memory. He defeated the Angel, didn't he? Surely if he had retreated everyone would have died? 'Answer me, Shinji.'

'Huh? Yeah.'

'That's not the answer I'm looking for.'

Shinji lowered his head. 'Sorry, Misato.'

'Sorry what?'

'Sorry for disobeying your orders, Misato.'

'Good. I don't like having to treat you like this, Shinji. Next time I give you an order, you follow it. Okay?'

Shinji thought for a moment. 'Misato...what if I followed your order? Wouldn't we have died?'

'No, we would have sent Rei out as backup, see?'

'But, Misato...what if Rei hadn't managed it? She's barely out of the hospital.'

Misato frowned.

'Just follow my orders next time, okay, Shinji?'

Shinji's head lowered again. 'Okay.'

Shinji stood up and left, school uniform back on, satchel draped over his shoulder. 'See you back home, Misato.' One might have thought it was a teacher telling off a student, not a superior in a paramilitary organisation reprimanding an employee.

The door hissed shut as he made his way out.

"...wouldn't we have died?"

Just like the girl said. Perhaps she shouldn't have been so hard on him. Poor guy. After all he'd been through...then again, orders were orders. Commander Ikari would not have taken kindly to going soft on him.

Misato tried to keep it out of her mind. She left the room with haste.

As the door hissed shut behind him, Shinji felt a wash of conflict come over him like ice-water. Misato had just stood there and thrown rebuke after rebuke after rebuke at him. And it wasn't even like he'd done anything beyond refusing her order. As it turned out, one of the two guys he saved was, in fact, the jock who had given him the black eye.

He'd saved him, he'd saved Misato, he'd saved everyone, and all she did was yell. Perhaps he should just run away. Piloting Eva was taking its toll, anyway. He was already finding it hard to sleep at night. Yeah, perhaps he could just run as far away as possible. All it would take would be boarding the next train out of Tokyo-3. Yeah, that's what he'd—

Shinji's thoughts of desertion were quickly interrupted by his being flattened by a man in a strange old jacket, kind of like the ones he'd seen British people wearing in the pre-Second Impact times in class. He also appeared to be wearing a bow-tie. The man stood up.

'Sorry about that,' he said, holding out a hand. 'Hello, I'm the Doctor.'

Shinji took his hand to get up, and it then turned into a handshake. 'Yes!' the "Doctor" said. 'You're the first person to have shaken my hand here!' He ruffled Shinji's hair.

'Aren't you a little old to be acting like that?' Shinji asked. The Doctor replied, 'Aren't you a little young to be talking to me like that?'

The Doctor suddenly stopped. He looked down at the boy. 'Wait,' he said. 'What's your name?'

'Shinji Ikari,' Shinji answered, confused.

'Shinji...' The Doctor said. 'I remember you. You're the one that was just in that fight with the Angel, is that correct?'

Shinji nodded once.

'Haven't they debriefed you or anything?'

'Well, if you consider being yelled at by your guardian a "debriefing",' Shinji answered.

The Doctor sighed. 'This Second Impact hasn't changed you lot a bit.'

Shinji looked down. 'I'm thinking of running away.'

The Doctor grinned a bit. 'Aren't we all,' he mumbled. 'I tell you, the amount of times I've felt like just running away you wouldn't believe. But I stuck fast. And sticking fast, Shinji, is a dangerous thing. It can make you or break you. But right now, I believe it's in your hands as to whether you want to run away or not. But why should you take my word for it? I'm just some random guy who showed up out of nowhere and knocked you down. Still, advice is advice, eh?'

A red-headed girl ran up behind The Doctor.

'Doctor, have you got the spanner you were looking for yet?'

'Not yet, Pond,' he mumbled. 'Hey, I wonder if that woman in the labcoat in Central Canon-Apostolo Thingy or whatever they call it would give me one.'

'Ritsuko?' Shinji asked.

'Ritsuko, that's it,' The Doctor said. 'Thanks, Shinji. See you around. Maybe. Probably.'

With that, he and the red-headed girl, "Pond", were gone.

Shinji moved a couple of fingers on his right hand, then looked from right to left.

'What just happened?'

'Dr. Akagi, the scan of the corridor in which the intruders were first found has been completed...well, this is strange.'

Ritsuko Akagi took a look at the data on coworker Lieutenant Maya Ibuki's screen. Most things checked out, aside from the AT Field Resonance Scan, a measurement of AT Field background residual energy, which had some startlingly anomalous results.

'Everything else is fine apart from this one result,' Lieutenant Ibuki said. 'I've mapped it on to a line graph, and it shows that somewhere in the corridor there's some kind of missing field, like an invisible patch. I've even stripped off all the outliers, and still, no change. I even put them through MAGI, and even that has confirmed a 100% certainty of an AT Field anomaly.'

'Right,' Ritsuko mumbled. 'Try mapping all signatures to a corridor model, then show me the results in real-time.'

'Yes, ma'am,' the young lieutenant replied, hands moving quickly and efficiently over the keys of her computer. She hit the "Enter" key.

'Even with this computing power, it's going to take a few minutes,' Ibuki explained. 'I'll call you when it's done.'

'Good, Maya.'

Suddenly, a hiss came from across the room as a door opened. Out stepped a man in a tweed jacket with a bow-tie and suspenders.

'Ah, Ritsuko, just the woman I'm looking for.'

Ritsuko stopped dead in her tracks. The man came up to her. 'Right, I've already got one person to shake my hand today, I don't think I need to try again with someone like you.'

'What the hell are you doing back here? You were supposed to leave here!'

'Well, it's a funny story, really,' The Doctor said. 'You see...'

'Dr. Akagi! The model's done!' called out Lieutenant Ibuki, as Ritsuko turned to the screen.

'What the...'

There was a a green dot for every single factor of above-0.001% AT Field energy plotted out against the model. Or, in layman's terms, there were dots that formed the shape of the room when they detected what kind of AT Field energy was found in there.

But the worrying thing was, there was a small section where all that appeared to be was a blank space in a cuboid shape, that ended with a kind of flattened pyramid, on top of which sat a cylinder. It was an incredibly specific shape that could only correspond to one thing: An object in the corridor, totally free from or reflective of AT Fields.

'Well, that's not right,' Ritsuko understated, sipping from a cup of coffee. 'Are you sure this is definitely correct?'

'Definitely, Dr. Akagi.'

'Ahaha!' The Doctor said. 'I was right, you are a doctor!'

'What are you still doing here?' Ritsuko asked.

'Well, you see, I came here for a spanner. I was wondering if you had any.'

'Spanners, Doctor? What would you need a spanner for? Just take the exit.'

'Um, well...I...'

'Doctor?' Amy called, entering into the room as well.

'Look, do you or don't you have a spanner?'

'I have a spanner,' a NERV technician, in red uniform and a red cap, called out.

'Ah, magnifique,' The Doctor said, dashing over like an excited little boy and taking the spanner from the man.

The Doctor paused. He put the spanner back in the toolbox and picked up the box. 'Mind if I borrow this?'

'Kinda,' the technician replied.

'I'll get you a new one if I break it.' The Doctor winked, and then walked off with the box.

The Doctor walked past Ritsuko as Amy finally caught up with him. Ritsuko stopped him.

'What the hell is wrong with you?' she asked, exasperated. 'I'm telling you, you're lucky the Commander is at work in his office at the moment, or he'd have skinned you alive.'

'Well, it's a good job he's not here, then,' the Doctor replied, with a childish grin.

'Is this just a game to you?' Ritsuko asked.

'No,' the Doctor replied. 'I'm just trying not to mope.' With that, he moved swiftly out of the room. Amy sighed. He was all over the place today.

The Doctor and Amy made their way back to the elevator, and travelled back down to the TARDIS.

'It's an awful shame I can't use my sonic screwdriver. TARDIS technology, you see. Totally useless.'

'Doctor...' Amy said. 'I've been thinking.'

'Really? About what?'

'We just witnessed a giant robot fight a flying slug-squid. Now, I'll admit, I've already seen some pretty weird stuff, Prisoner Zero, for instance, but come on, why are we just ignoring that?'

'Because, Pond,' The Doctor pondered for a moment, 'They don't want our help, and they'll probably shoot us if we don't get out of here ASAP.'

'But, Doctor...'

'Look, the charming Captain Katsuragi was eager for my help, but I'm afraid that the commander of this place just doesn't need me here. And manners are manners, Amy. You have to respect others' wishes.'

The Doctor stepped out of the elevator. He paused. There at the end of the corridor, where the TARDIS was...

...she stood.

Pale skin, light, almost cyan hair. She was dressed in sailor fuku, Japanese school uniform. She stood and she looked up at the blue box. Slowly, delicately, she put her hand on the box.

The Doctor blinked.

She was gone.

'What is it?' Amy asked.

'Um...nothing...I...' The Doctor shook his head. 'I should get to work.'

He walked along down the corridor and stepped into the TARDIS, ready to get to work.

'Dr. Akagi!' Maya suddenly called out. 'Quickly, come and look at this!'

Ritsuko ran over. 'What now, Maya?'

'I decided to do another resonance test just to check out our results...then I mapped some of them to the corridor model again...'

The model developed in to two disturbingly familiar shapes along with the cuboid.

They were human-shaped.

Perfectly human-shaped.

Two black spaces with green dots surrounding them.

Ritsuko put her glasses on to check what she was looking at.

'That's...that's impossible. You can't have living beings without an AT Field. That's impossible.'

She ran over to the elevator.

'I'm going down there. Cover for me, Maya.'

'Okay, Dr. Akagi...'

The elevator doors shut in front of Ritsuko's face. Everything became silent.

What are they?

All characters, settings, and boxes of a blue time-travelling nature are owned by Studio GAINAX and the British Broadcasting Corporation, and other affiliates. I own none of these things. Please don't sue me. I don't like being sued.

Author's note: My apologies if this seems like filler, as it most probably is. Don't worry, the action will pick up soon. See you in Chapter VI, folks.