Chapter VI

Impossible

Click.

The door to the apartment came open with a soft sound. It was followed swiftly by the noise of two shoes being taken off and placed at the door. Misato entered the room slowly, tip-toeing down the hallway. She slunk through the kitchen, trying not to bump into anything, then through the living room. Turning right, she moved quietly down the hallway in the corner of the room, where there was a door. She knocked. She wasn't expecting an answer.

She opened the door.

To her surprise, there lay Shinji, in his bed.

'Shinji?'

Shinji sat bolt upright. 'Ahh!' Two earpieces popped out of his ears. 'Misato?'

'Shinji...'

'What is it?'

'It's just that...I expected...' she sighed. 'I guess I'm sorry for what I said earlier. Yeah, I'm pretty upset that you disobeyed me, but I'm glad you did. You saved us all, Shinji. And I'm sorry that I forgot that.'

Shinji sat quietly for a second. 'Thanks...Misato.'

Misato grunted acknowledgingly, and closed the door. She went to her bedroom, moving quickly across the living room.

I thought he might run away, she thought. But he didn't.

The elevator doors slid open. Ritsuko checked the pocket in her white coat. Her hand gripped around something metal. A five-chambered, 9x18mm Makarov single-action R-92 revolver. She only carried it when she needed to, and had just a few minutes ago slipped it into her pocket when she had seen those black, forbidding shapes on Lieutentant Maya Ibuki's screen.

Of course, bullets would have no effect against an Angel's AT Field, but being as these people didn't appear to have one, at least in a sense detectable by NERV scanners, then they were probably more mortal than the average person. The gun was already loaded with five bullets. She was good to go in case anything went wrong.

Slowly, she walked down the corridor, checking all the time for movement. Her exact footsteps went in perfect time with her slowly-calculated eye movements. Her finger moved round the trigger...no. Not yet. Her finger relaxed. And then she spotted it.

It was a blue box, about the height of a man, with a sign written in English above it. Ritsuko attempted to read it out loud. She wasn't used to English. 'Police...Public...Call...Box.' Ha-ha! Those English tutor groups in university had been worth it! But what was this doing in Japan? Ritsuko put her hand on the handle. She pushed. It didn't budge. It was locked.

She knocked politely at the door. Funny thing to do, really, when one was at great risk of being killed. She heard a noise from inside. Then, suddenly, a familiar voice, muffled, but audible.

'Um...who is it?'

She knew that voice! Him. It was him. Both of them were the ones with no AT Field. Just as she had suspected. But how were they alive? She knew well that for something to remain alive it had to have an AT Field.

Ritsuko cleared her throat. 'Dr. Ritsuko Akagi, Head of NERV Technical Branch.'

There was pause.

'Ritsuko! Hi there! Erm...now isn't a good time.'

'Why not?'

'Erm...we're doing something.'

'This is absurd...it's a little blue box, what could you possibly be doing in th—'

The door suddenly fell inwards, and Ritsuko hit the ground with a clang.

'Sorry,' the man from behind the door said. 'I, er, unlocked the door. I didn't realise you were holding the handle.'

Ritsuko stood up and rubbed her eyes. Her mouth fell agape.

'Wh...what is this...'

'What's what? Oh, right, yeah, the TARDIS.'

'It's...it's...'

'Go on, say it, I always love this bit.'

'It's bigger on the inside!'

'YES! I love that line!'

Ritsuko covered her mouth. 'But...how...this just doesn't add up...'

'Not everything has to,' the man from behind the door said. 'Now, how about anohdear.'

Ritsuko fainted in a matter of seconds.

Shinji lay in his bed, thinking to himself. Misato said sorry. Did she really feel that bad? She said she was expecting something. What did she expect him to do? It was quiet now. The dead of night had fallen upon them. Only the faint sound of cicadas out of the window was the thing showing there was still life outside the room.

He rewound track 25 on the tape in his SDAT player right back to the beginning, and played it again. Shinji felt odd. Different. It felt like déjà vu, as if he had somehow done this before. But it was different. Like he was doing something different to before. He didn't feel particularly tired. And that was odd for him, despite having come out of the hospital barely very long ago at all.

Misato. She was his guardian, and she loved him, but only in the sense of Storge, as far as he could see. He couldn't say the same for her. He wanted to feel a mutual love, yes, but he couldn't. He wasn't comfortable with feelings like that. But he supposed her company was nice enough, if a little hectic at times. She was like a mother, he guessed. But in other ways she wasn't. In some ways she was like a big sister, or at least, what Shinji supposed big sisters and little brothers were like. He really didn't know this kind of thing.

The Doctor. The man he had met in the corridor. He didn't know him. He wasn't Japanese, but he spoke it perfectly. He shook his hand. He told him not to run away. But differently. It wasn't usual, like Shinji's own personal mantra of "I mustn't run away". Shinji actually felt better for hearing it. He felt better for not running away, even though he also felt he should, because he was putting his life in danger. The red-haired girl with him. He wasn't used to red hair. Red hair was a new thing. Shinji actually thought it was quite...pretty.

Shinji decided to close off his thoughts for the night. He rolled over and went to sleep. A peaceful sleep. The first peaceful, unforced sleep he had had since getting there. Track 25 ended on his SDAT. Shinji pressed the "stop" button, and drifted off into a sleep.

'Doctor? Doctor, she's waking up.'

Ritsuko groaned. Her vision was blurry. Slowly, the freckled face of the girl from earlier came into view.

'Ah, good,' the Doctor said. 'Sorry about that, TARDIS thing catches most people out. Do you need to be sick?'

Ritsuko shook her head, which made her dizzy. She lurched for a moment. The Doctor took a bowl out just in case she was about to spew forth. She didn't.

'What is this?' Ritsuko asked. 'Who are you?'

'Right, you see, the thing is, I'm a time traveller, and this here,' he pointed to the girl with the freckles and the red hair, 'is my companion. Funny story, really. We travel through time. Oh, and we're also from a parallel universe, we ended up here, and, funnily enough, our world is different to yours! Isn't life just crazy?'

Ritsuko's head rolled about. 'You shouldn't exist here.'

'What do you mean?' the Doctor said. 'I've been to parallel universes before.'

'But you have no AT Field,' Ritsuko insisted. 'The AT Field is the wall that holds the soul in. Without it, your body cannot exist.'

'What do you mean?' the Doctor asked.

Ritsuko floppily put her hand into her other pocket and grabbed a PDA. She extracted it slowly, and showed it calmly to the Doctor. On the screen flashed the image Maya had produced earlier.

'The black shapes are you and this thing,' Ritsuko said.

The Doctor calmly gave her back the PDA.

'Of course. Of course! Of course of course of course of course of course of course of course, OF COURSE!'

The Doctor cracked his knuckles.

'What?' Ritsuko said, her head still swimming.

'No wonder the TARDIS doesn't work, and no wonder there was no explosion when we landed!'

'Why?' Amy asked.

'Because, Pond, and Akagi, the TARDIS only works with a certain set of physical laws. And these laws are very slightly different in this universe. These "AT Fields" you speak of must be the reason the TARDIS won't work. It's like being trapped in a block of ice.'

'That doesn't explain how you're still alive,' Ritsuko said.

'Well, that's simple. You see, we're tempered to the TARDIS because we've both been inside it. And the TARDIS exists outside of regular time and space, so, essentially, we're completely safe from the alteration in physical laws.'

'Right,' Ritsuko murmured. 'So, you're time travellers from another universe who are alive even though you shouldn't be...' She rubbed her forehead. 'Why do I get the feeling this isn't the craziest thing I'm ever going to see?'

'Well, it looks like we're stuck here for a while,' The Doctor said. 'At least, until I can figure out how to reconfigure this old thing.'

Ritsuko smiled a little bit.

'Well, Doctor,' she said. 'If I talk to the Commander, I could perhaps get you and Amy temporary placements here at NERV. You know, if you'd like.'

The Doctor looked at Amy. 'Sound like a plan, Pond?'

Amy thought for a moment, then huffed. She reluctantly nodded. 'Looks like it's my only choice.'

'Good. Erm, just one thing, do you mind taking me to see the big man himself? I think we got off on the wrong foot.'

'You certainly did,' Ritsuko said. 'Meet me here tomorrow morning, and I will take you to him.'

'Good,' the Doctor said. 'Good-night, Ritsuko.'

'Good-night, Doctor.'

She left without another word.

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.