I do not own the rights to Neon Genesis Evangelion, or any of the characters, equipment, or locations written in this fanfiction. The purpose of this fanfiction is merely for the non-profit enjoyment of other readers. If requested by Gainax, Hideki Anno, or other parties which represent aforementioned objects in this story, I will remove it promptly.
Chapter VIII:
The blinding light had dissipated, and as Unit-02 rocked back, its feet unsteady, the pilot shivered. She was exhausted. It had started nearly two hours ago, and only in the last few moments did the commander allow Wondergirl to save her. Without that other pilot there to help, the command staff were always on edge whenever one of them got into a bind. That hesitation is what led to two hours of agony as every fiber of her being was violated through the enemy's AT-Field.
As her eyelids slowly closed, her shivering body hunched forward, she tried her best to preserve her own personality. The battle was difficult, however, as the memories dredged up from the abandoned archives of her mind mingled together in ways she could not comprehend, nor desire. Her thought processes felt different, somehow stronger than before. She knew there was something lacking, but could not place what she had lost in the attack.
When the neural connection from the Eva was severed, Asuka Langely Soryu had a flash, a brief, hazy image of a concept. The burden which always gnawed at the back of her mind was gone now, feeling as though a weight of bricks had been removed. There was no longer any theory of mind, any grasp of how her actions would be perceived by others. But it was more than that, the others would discover in time. Understanding, and the motivation to not be misunderstood are considered a valued trait amongst man. So, she asked herself, what would someone without those qualities be considered?
It was conscience, she realized. That was what she had lost.
•••••••••••••
Misato shook her head as she stared into the monitor of Section Two's security station. The black and white screen displayed the figure of the Second Child, wrapped up in an emergency blanket, shivering on the rooftop of a skysscraper. The Eva had long since been retrieved, and placed in the strictest of quarantine far from the cages, far from the other Units. As for the girl, she just sat there, and was expected to sit there for another twelve hours before processing began.
"And then there was one," the doctor sighed, ambling up to a chair beside her friend.
"Don't you DARE think you can sit next to me, Doctor!" the major barked, sending the two cups of coffee in the blonde's hands to shatter on the floor. "Just leave your report, and get the hell out of here!" Ritsuko froze, unable to move. "Didn't you hear me?" Misato hissed, rising to her feet, her right hand creeping into the left half of her jacket. Akagi heard a soft click as the Jericho pistol was switched off safe. "I'm giving you five seconds, Ritsuko... just five."
"But Misato, I have my orders-"
Misato retrieved the pistol from the shoulder holster, pointing it squarely at the woman's face, her arms taking the isosceles stance. "Five... four," she started. Before she could continue, a white blur of a labcoat flew to the door of the mobile command center, leaping from the trailer, and sprinting down the street. Misato replaced the weapon slowly, glanced back at the screen and curled into a fetal position in her chair.
•••••••••••••
Hikari was relieved, seeing Toji hand her the dismissal letter from NERV, sent a week after their initial testing phase. She couldn't help but let a smile pass between them in the classroom during lunch. "To the successful failure!" Kensuke cheered, holding up an opened can of soda. Suzahara grinned, trying to keep from bursting out in laughter. "What's so funny?" the nerd asked.
"Just Class Rep here," the jock chuckled. "She's rewarding us with a lunch for failing the qualification exams!"
Horaki shook her head, glancing down at the desk for a moment from the mental exhaustion. The humor of these two was sometimes too much for her to stand. She had to agree once Kensuke nodded excitedly. "Yeah, Class Rep," Aida cheered. Instantly the boy was on his knees, bowing to the girl as if worshipping a pagan deity. "Oh thank you, Great One, for rewarding us for our failures!"
"Damnnit, Ken, will you quit it?" she sighed. No matter how she tried, though, Toji still managed to get past her tilted head, and detected the smirk. Immediately, he followed the nerd's actions. "Toji!"
"We are not worthy, oh wise and understanding one!" Suzahara beamed, arms outstretched in prayer to the Horaki goddess.
"What are the stooges doing today?" a voice with a European accent signaled from two desks away. Everyone froze, noticing the redhead pilot scowling. Hikari had not been at the NERV hospital to see how things had degenerated, but she could tell something was wrong with Soryu. Her body seemed thinner than normal, her facial features gaunt, and skin turning slightly pale.
She hadn't been in class for three weeks, and there were... rumors about the latest attack. Something had gone wrong, a few girls had said. One boy had said he had seen the girl's dead body hauled away in a body bag, while a few others in the adjacent class made claims she had gone insane, and was institutionalized. Oddly enough, Toji was the first person to stand up for the Red Devil. "If I hear any more," he threatened boisterously in the middle of a class lecture, "I'll beat the tar out of every last one of you!"
Toji froze at the girl's stare, not knowing what to say, before Aida interrupted. "We are celebrating our absolute failure to meet the high standards of NERV for piloting the Eva!" he cheered. Asuka's eyebrows twitched momentarily, before her scowl returned. 'Something is wrong,' the boy thought, giving the girl a once over. Kensuke knew he had to add a few extra words, just to help butter up the Second Child. "Clearly, neither of us can meet your high standards."
Hikari shuddered, just watching Asuka slump back into her desk, shaking her head. She held a folded letter in her hand, the edges crumpled, and the NERV letterhead clearly printed in bold red ink in the center of the page. "I thought it meant something," the pilot started, "but it doesn't." Aida glared at her for a moment, then noticed the letter. It didn't take long for either Horaki or Suzahara to notice the letter, either, especially as the girl crushed the offending text into a small projectile, throwing it with pristine accuracy into the nearby garbage can.
It was Hikari who first noticed Asuka's hands, her knuckles bruised, the first layer or two of skin torn, blistered, and red. "A-Asuka?" the class representative asked, walking up to her friend. "Is... everything okay?"
"No," the Child muttered, trying to stifle her choked voice, "not at all." She looked up at Hikari, her eyes lifeless, no reflection in them. "Can I talk to the stooge over there?" The two boys glanced at each other, each pointing at their neighbor. "The big, loud, dumb one," she added, causing Toji to snarl.
"Okay, fine, talk," Toji started, before he watched Asuka signal him to walk outside of the class. Hikari looked up to him with pleading eyes, as the boy nodded. The limp was almost gone, the class representative observed, noticing the former Child acclimating to the prosthetic. He was already back to playing basketball, regularly defeating classmates with more intensity than he had before. She smiled faintly as he left, closing the classroom door behind him. If anyone could help Asuka out of her slump, he could. If not him, then his sister, who seemed more of an example to her brother as they both made their respective recoveries.
Soryu walked into a dark corner of the hallway, beside the mechanical room entrance. "You... heard what happened, right?" she asked meekly. This was a compete departure from the normally abrasive exchange student, making the jock wonder how he should best approach the situation. Subtlety didn't seem to be either of their strong suits, but he had to make the attempt now.
"No, I didn't hear a thing," he lied. Instantly, he felt a hand grip his throat, pinning him against the wall, while another traveled lower, down his chest, along his abdomen, and further. Suzahara's mind raced. Was this girl actually trying to molest him? "H-hey!" he screeched, his voice cracking as he expended the last of his air. "W-what the hell?" He knocked the girl's hand away from his waist, pinning it back, while he struggled to fight against the hand slowly strangling him.
"Don't fight me, stooge!" she hissed, throttling his neck further, shoving him hard against the wall. Her other hand, however, was held back, as though she deemed it was now dirty, impossible to wash clean.
"I-I heard rumors, nothing more!" he coughed. Soryu started to let up on her grip, noticing the blue complexion. Toji started to slide to the floor, sitting up, leaning against the metal fire door of the mechanical room. All the strength he had worked to achieve, and it had been taken out of him, all because this girl had cut off his air supply. He had to remind himself he was running on only one good leg now, the only thing which gave him his old strength was his improved aerobic fitness. "But I told the idiots to shove it. It's not their place to make up such crap."
Soryu gave no physical reaction to indicate her surprise, at least, nothing Toji could see. "W... why did you do that?" the girl's voice was forced into a hushed whisper, but still sharp, harsh, and unforgiving. She stood over the boy, hands clenched, but Toji didn't see them. He had already learned from the Over the Rainbow, keeping his eyes glued to the interesting floor tiles, as the girl's school uniform ended a good four or five centimeters above his eye level. "Answer me!" she hissed in her whispered voice, her dirty hand reaching out, striking the boy across the face.
"Because you're a pilot, like I was, like Shinji was," he explained. "Before I was selected, I had no idea what it was like. Afterwards, I realized that before I ended up like this, I had no right to talk." He paused. "Even when Ken and I were in Unit-01, and we saw Shinji fight that second Angel, I didn't know what it was like, from the pilot's perspective. There are just so many possibilities, and no right answers."
He didn't know what he said, but it only aggravated the girl even more. Another fierce slap to the face, and then suddenly, without warning, she was sitting in his lap. Her hands were tearing into the waistband of his tracksuit, causing the boy to raise his arms, struggling to fight back. He struck the girl harshly across the face, but this only drove her on, her fingers working with a ferocity at the prosthetic attachment to his thigh. Without a word exchanged between them, only muffled grunts and hissed, unintelligible noises, Asuka disabled her adversary, tossing the plastic moulded object across the hallway, letting the tan-painted implement scuff on the polished flooring as it rebounded twice, coming to rest a good six meters away.
"Y-you bi-!" he cursed, his hands suddenly up at her face, trying to go for her eyes.
Asuka swiftly pinned the boy by the throat again, her right arm locking him in a choke hold, while her tainted hand once again made its journey into darkness.
As Hikari Horaki peered into the dark edges of the hallway, watching her former friend, she could only tip-toe to the discarded limb, taking it in her arms, and run as fast as she could conceive to the office two floors below. There was something sacred about the prosthetic she held. It was the only part of Toji that would be unscathed from the incident, and the only part she could touch for a long time without thinking about what had happened that day in the corridor. She did not know what she could say, or if she could even speak at what was being committed. All she could do was run, leaving Kensuke behind.
For a moment, Toji made eye contact with his friend, and that was all that was required. Toji couldn't see much else, but he felt the wind of a large object moving swiftly above, then the sharp strike of steel on the girl's shoulders, and the offending figure falling to her side, still cursing, but not moving. Aida threw the combined metal desk and chair aside, picking up his friend, throwing a limp arm over his shoulder, and helping the boy to a run. "I think..." Aida huffed, "the rumors were true."
Toji said nothing, and concentrated only on hobbling along with his friend, pulling his trousers back up to his waist.
•••••••••••••
It was during cello practice when the phone rang. Maya had just returned from work, while Shinji had spent the last hour in his sanctuary, the landscape before him inspiring him to practice for the first time by his own accord before he began homework. It was a new, unusual sensation, he thought, practicing for his own sake, and no one else's. Well, he considered, that wasn't entirely true. Ibuki smiled, watching the Child work the strings with his left hand, the bow with his right, his vision focused only on the horizon. It was something pleasant, she considered, watching him like this. For the first time, Shinji Ikari looked natural, his body relaxed, the dark circles gone from his eyes, and the nightmares finally over.
The first week was terror, quite literally, for Shinji. The unfamiliar ceiling of the apartment, the unaccustomed noises at night of this strange, different city, and the thought of complete isolation from those he was trying to protect led to night terrors. Ibuki could only stand to think about them a few times a week, if she had to relate them to the psychiatrist she had begged Ikari to visit regularly. If, for nothing else, she hoped the regular talks would put whatever pieces NERV shattered back together.
However, as the first week passed, the new situation sinking in, the burden eased from their shoulders. A small group of friends emerged both at work and at school, respectively. There was still the unsettling question about Shinji and Maya's relationship, but neither thought of it too much. There was no relationship as far as they were concerned. They were simply friends, and chose to remain that way for the time being. The brunette still received odd comments from her coworkers, at least the pair of women she ran into most often, about how the two of them seemed to fit together perfectly. Of course, she realized, they didn't know Shinji's age. They just knew he went to school, but didn't realize it was still secondary school, not the university.
The neighbors had two small children, a boy and a girl a couple years apart, attending the local primary school together. The two kids were audible again this very moment, applauding the latest performance of the secluded Child with his cello. No one within the apartment knew who the new neighbors were, but all of them turned off their televisions, their radios, even their computers to listen to the daily performance, which began, like clockwork, at four in the afternoon.
This was the first day the concert was interrupted.
Shinji heard the heavy tread of Maya's dragging feet, and looked over his shoulder to her direction. The burden was back, somehow restored as though they had never left that awful organization. The former lieutenant was clutching the phone in her hands, the plastic casing creaking. "Shinji," she breathed. "Something's... happened to Asuka."
The cello was not touched until two hours later. The children next door, the parents, and the other occupants of the fifth floor all dropped what they were doing, and opened their windows to catch the sounds which echoed out of the open living room windows of the solitary occupants. The song was different this time, each one realized. This was not a previous work, they observed, but a new, impromptu piece put together on the spot. As each one started to smile at the talents of their anonymous companion, they could not help but feel repulsed just seconds into the piece. It was not a beautiful, cheerful work. Rather, it was a mourning bellow of notes, a cry of weakly pressed strings and the muffled sobs of the artist.
Both the instrument and human's tones rained down on the city below as the sun set behind the horizon.
End of Chapter VIII
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