Disclaimer: No ownership over any concepts or plots expressed in this work of fiction is stated or implied. The author intends no financial gain from the distribution of this material and makes no claim of copyright or trademark.
S
Shinji had mixed feeling about the train. He had mixed feelings about everything, really. He was about to travel to Tokyo-3, a place of dreams half remembered, of sunset walks with a mother whose face had long ago fled the fuzzy reaches of his childhood memories. It was a clear afternoon on the day he was to make the journey, and he no longer thought of going to the city as going home, but leaving it. His meager belongings were packed in his one bag, the same one he'd brought with him when he first moved out into the country with his aunt and uncle. Inside he had his folded uniform jacket, a week's worth of white shirts and black slacks, some underwear and socks, and tucked inside the very bottom, the silver canister and the crystal hidden inside. The red and blue cloth was, well, under his current shirt and pants. He'd picked up a pair of gloves –he was wondering how they were going to hold up– to keep from leaving his fingerprints anywhere. The idea of wearing a mask had occurred to him, but something seemed wrong about that, contradictory.
Instead, he slipped a pair of glasses on his face. He picked up a pair of thick plastic frames at the pharmacy in town, with the minimum magnification. He told the clerk they were for his uncle. He kept them in his pocket until he got on the train, then pulled them out and put them on. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to looking through the lenses, but he was getting used to it. Like the train ride out, he was alone. His father's organization had probably booked the whole train for him, for security purposes, or something like that. He had vague memories of Gendo Ikari being a very important man. Wrapped up in the cords to its earbuds was an old SDAT player that he kept in his pocket. He'd brought it with him when he moved away, but never took to the habit of listening to it. The symphony of nature and the world around him was already more interesting. Now that he understood why he heard things no one else could, it was even more comforting.
When the train arrived at Tokyo-3, the platform was strangely empty. It slid to a stop with a pneumatic hiss and the doors opened. He stepped out, suitcase in hand, and looked around. The station was empty. This Katsuragi woman was supposed to meet him outside, so he walked through the platform and jogged down the steps to the vast asphalt parking lot, baking in the endless summer sun. To his eye, the lot was a playground of light and color. He saw the heat rising from the surface and the gamma radiation scattering against the atmosphere in tones no human brain could process. In the distance, he heard the sound of a single electric car engine whining, and nearly drowned out by it, a woman's voice.
…i'm late…
He blinked, and winced when he heard the explosion, far off in the distance, followed by a resounding boom, and then another, and another, rolling under his feet. Bag in hand, he darted for the edge of the parking lot to the nearest pay phone, pulled out Katusragi's number, and dialed. Instead of a ring, he got a tone and a recorded message.
"Due to the state of emergency, all lines are currently unavailable-"
There was another explosion in the distance, and behind him a flock of gulls took to wing, flapping off into the clear blue. In the distance, framed by the haze of heat rising from the road, was a slender girl in a school uniform, the pale skin of her face framed by silvery hair with a tinge of blue to it. He blinked. There was no infrared heat rising from her skin, and her toes dangled above the ground. He blinked again, and she was gone. At that moment, he heard the screech of tires and a blue sports car drifted around the corner, leaving the acrid taste of burned rubber in his mouth. He put the phone back on the hook and picked up his bag.
Before he could approach the car, the driver's door swung open, and out stepped the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in person. His feet suddenly seemed much larger and heavier, and he nearly tripped over himself before he managed to cough into his hand and stand still. She had on a red jacket and a black, very tight sweater and skirt. A cross made of polished white metal rested on her chest. Her pretty face was framed with thick, lustrous hair so black it was almost blue.
"Hi! You must be Shinji."
His mouth closed. "Um, yes. That's me."
She smiled. "Come on, we-"
His head snapped to the direction of the explosions, and he felt the wave of pressure as something enormous moved past the nearby hills. It stepped out into full view in a single, fluid motion, its grace in otherworldly contrast with its size. Human in shape, its greenish black body, slick like that of a fish, was covered in bony protrusions like ribs. Between huge, square shoulders sat a mask-like, beaked face that gave it the impression of a curious bird. Beneath the mask, a shining red sphere of some mineral was embedded in its chest. Shinji could see the swirling energies within, radiating out into the creature's body. It was so huge, it took him a moment just to process how far away it was.
"Get in the car!"
Shaking himself out of it, Shinji opened the door, tossed his suitcase in the back behind the seats, and slid inside, yanking the door shut behind him with a clap. The woman jumped into the car beside him, threw it into gear, and pulled away before she even had her door all the way closed. She brushed her hair out of her face and leaned over the seat back to look out the back window.
"I'm Misato, by the way," she said absently, steering forward while looking backwards.
"Umm," said Shinji.
"Oh, right, the road."
She turned around and dropped into her seat and floored it, taking the first corner hard. Shinji glanced back at the approaching creature, and had the distinct sensation, as its beaky face swept around curiously, that it was looking directly at him. He glanced between the thing and Miss Misato.
"Did you get the picture?"
"Yes," said Shinji, and he blushed reflexively. The photo was positively indecent. "Um, what is that?"
"That," said Misato, "is an angel. We're here to fight it."
"We?"
"Nerv."
She tossed him a thin bound book and he caught it. The cover was marked Nerv Operations Manual- Eyes Only. He swallowed.
"Top secret?"
"Yup," said Misato.
Over their heads, a heavy black missile roared, leaving a wake of thick smoke. The head and pressure washing over the car as it passed made Misato swerve, and Shinji was momentarily afraid she was going to wrap them around a telephone pole. He almost grabbed for the wheel. When she rounded the next curve, he stared at her in mute shock. She peeked at him over her sunglasses and grinned.
"Watch the road!"
"Will you relax?"
He looked over his shoulder again. "I'd be a lot more relaxed if there wasn't a whatever that thing is chasing us."
He put his head out the window and watched a small cloud of strange, tilt-wing flying machines move overhead in formation, launching rockets from pods at their sides. He glanced back at the creature, who ignored it all, the projectiles exploding before they even touched it. It stood, its arms went limp, and a ring of fuzzy purplish light formed around its body. There was a pulse of energy that moved through the ground, and the creature lifted off from the ground. It soared up into the sky and came down not far from the train station, raising a cloud of debris.
Misato looked uneasily into the rearview mirror and floored it, the car building up to an unpleasant, wheel-lifting speed as it careened down a hill road around a gentle curve. Shinji reflexively gripped the sides of his seat to resist sliding into her. For her part, there was a look of intense concentration, almost bliss, on her face.
He looked up and saw the flying ships retreating.
Misato saw it too.
"Oh shit," she whispered.
"What…"
He turned, and saw the object fall, a dull green metal cylinder the size of a small house. It tumbled out of the sky in the wake of a flying wing until a parachute opened, whipping it around as it slowed. As it neared the creature, he saw the reaction inside it, saw the burst of energy and light take shape and liquefy the outside of the vessel, then vaporize it. The air heated and expanded around it, and to him, time slowed. He turned, and Misato was screaming something at him, but her movements were in slow motion, her voice dulled to a deep rumble as each word was drawn out. As the side of the car began to lift, Shinji slid his arms under her, pulled her onto his lap, and put his arms around her head.
Time cut up with a rush of motion and the car lifted and turned, end over end. Shinji's body was relentlessly pounded against the side and he grunted, shielding Misato with his body. With a final crunch, it landed on its roof and the pillars collapsed, pressing the whole weight of the car down on top of him. He held onto her limp body as best he could while he rested her on the upturned roof, put his hands and feet against it, and pushed. With a squeal of metal and the tinkling of broken glass, the body of the car pushed slowly up. He kicked the door and it went flying, tented in the middle from the impact. Carefully, cradling her neck and knees, he worked his way out through the opening and spread her out on the grass. He grabbed the headrest of his seat, pulled, and snapped it free, and slid it under her head.
Misato was breathing evenly, but she was unconscious. He lifted his glasses and squinted. She didn't appear to have any broken bones, but her left ankle looked angry. He pulled his suitcase out of the back of the car and set it down, and then stood up and turned around.
Someone had lit the world on fire. The angel creature stood, wreathed in flames, its body warped and contorted from the explosion. Its chest-face was pushed in and dented, the mask covered in spiraling fractures, like a dropped vase. As he watched, it bubbled and moved, a new face pushing up under the old as its flesh warped and sloughed away in thin sheets. Shimmering planes of light formed and then vanished around it, guiding the flames away from its body. He stood up, stared at it, and took a deep breath. There he opened his shirt, exposing the strange emblem beneath.
Swimming through the link control liquid was a far different proposition from swimming through water, even seawater. It was denser than saline, but it was paradoxically easier to sink, one of many curious properties the substance displayed. In theory, Ritsuko could have forgone a breathing apparatus entirely, but that would have required she breathe the stuff in directly, fill her lungs with it. She had tried the process before, and found it somewhere between waterboarding and a bad cold. Without a small electric current running through it, the oxygenation effect was less pronounced, and she would quickly tire and end up sinking to the bottom of the Eva cage, stranded there until someone rescued her.
Unit One was to move today, and she had to make sure it was ready. She decided to do a manual check on the left knee joint, which had been buggy lately, as well as take a few samples of the flesh of the creature that was contained within the armor for later comparison. Contamination could prove as disastrous as an angel breaching Terminal Dogma, and she was reluctant to authorize Unit One to move at all, but the Commander insisted. Supposedly, they were receiving a new pilot today, which was small comfort given that she'd already suffered through half an hour of "this is not a drill" as the angel was detected and approached the coastline. Years of drilling and training went out the window as her subordinates confronted the reality that yes, this was all real, and Nerv wasn't an elaborate, multinational Ponzi scheme.
Drifting through the tank of liquid, the machine, the thing, beyond dwarfed her. The lights were off and she had a heavy flashlight pack on her waist, and it gave the whole affair a sepulchral air, as if she were exploring a sunken tomb. Once she found her way to the knee joint, it was a matter of looking for stress fractures in the armor joint. The creature inside was powerfully muscled, but the square cube law demanded the strange effects of a super solenoid engine or special reinforcement and composite materials for its movement to actually be possible. In a way, it was exciting. She was the architect and steward of the most advanced weapons system, the most advanced system of any kind, period, ever constructed by the human race. It was awe inspiring. It was all that stood between them all and certain death, and the only available pilot was either absent or a cloned, experimental thing that currently lay in the infirmary, swathed in bandages and on the brink of death.
She pumped her legs, proud that between all her duties, years of rigorous academic study with terminal degrees in two separate, unrelated disciplines and advanced study in a third that had only recently come into existence, she managed to stay in shape. The swims helped. By the time she reached the surface and started stripping out of her wetsuit, she expected the new pilot to arrive any moment. The LCL was still drying in her hair, and would be a pain to get out later, when she shrugged into her lab coat and stepped into the elevator. She half expected Misato to be inside, and bump into her; the klutz was always getting lost. Instead, it was empty, and she was trapped with the ticking sound of the rotary floor counter above the door. Her cell phone rang, and she pulled it from her coat pocket and pressed it to her ear.
"Akagi," said the Commander.
She blinked, expecting Misato. "Sir?"
"The spare will not arrive on time. You will need to prep Unit One for Rei."
She froze, and felt a sudden chill when the doors open. Ikari didn't want for her to reply and hung up on her, leaving her to dumbly flip the phone closed and slip it into her pocket. She swallowed, hard, and walked onto the bridge. The technicians looked at her expectantly, and she took a breath, hoping her fear wasn't written on her face. The three primary technicians, Ibuki, who Ritsuko new idolized her, Hyuga, and Aoba turned and waited expectantly for her orders.
"Start loading Rei's core data into Unit One. Get somebody down there to wake her up."
For Rei Ayanami, the world was a fuzz of pain and a never-ending blur of gray tones. As they rolled her down the causeway on her gurney, the flickering overhead lights passed towards her belly one by one, sliding into and out of view with a discomforting regularity ticked off by the click-click of the wheels and the soft sounds of the doctors and nurses walking beside her. She could accept no painkillers, as she was still on standby to pilot and her broken arm, cracked ribs and wounded eye lanced with pain with every breach, and every moment was a monumental effort of will not to break down and moan, the urge kept in check by years of emulating her Commander's stoicism.
To show weakness would not do. Tools did not show weakness. Her pain, great though it was, was temporary, a test before the great reward of eternal nothingness that would come at the end of her service, promised to her since she first remembered emerging from the tank deep within Central Dogma. There, she had been promised that one day, release would be given. It was the Commander who met her when she emerged and swaddled her in a warm towel while the old man Fuyutsuki looked on. Through all the experiments and synch tests and the endless sessions in the dummy plug plant, standing in a crushingly small cylinder with Akagi poring over her nude body, the Commander and his strength were a constant. Her loyalty to him was absolute.
She barely noticed when the gurney stopped rolling. They had taken her to Unit One, the Oni System, the subject of rumor and superstition among the men in orange suits and hard hats; they said it was haunted, that it watched them as if it were a living thing. Artistry and metaphor often escaped Rei, but looking up at the thing through her one blurred eye, she understood there fears. It stood in the cage like an ancient god in a hidden altar, huge and hungry. The peculiar cast of its features certainly lent itself to the association. Where Unit Zero, the Eva she was intended to pilot, was smooth and rounded and insect-like in form, Unit Zero had a peculiar tendency towards ornamentation, with a mask shaped like an ancient demon with a single horn. Its great head was pitched forward, as if in contemplation, and from it jutted an entry plug, the marked gray tube she would ride into the core of the living creature bound within the machines. There was a familiarity to it, like going home.
They had her in a specially designed plugsuit, one which freed her arms, as a normal one wouldn't be able to close around the cast on her left arm. Unfortunately, that meant she had to be handled somewhat roughly by the doctors to get it on. She was stripped first, exposed to the cold air in the cage, and then lifted each leg to help them pull it on. From there, a nurse held her up by the shoulders while a doctor rubbed cold jelly on her skin and applied sensors, followed by the hardened upper parts of the suit itself. When it cinched closed on her bruised ribs she did let out a small grunt, but contained herself admirably. She knew the Commander would be proud.
Once she was prepared, they slid the nerve clips into her hair and two nurses on either side lifted her using the sheet on which she lay, cradling her. The link control liquid, stinking of copper, swished under their legs as they slowly worked their way into it and positioned her on the command chair and slid the sheet out from under her. Soaked in LCL, they balled it up and tossed it outside. Ordinarily she would be free to move in the plug, but today she was strapped to the seat to prevent further injuries, and her right hand was secured to the control yoke with a strap, while he left was carefully positioned in a sling. The nurses crawled out one by one, and with a hiss the plug began to flood, the level of fluid rising rapidly. The coldness of it stung her as it slid up around her waist and started to pool against her hips and soak her rib wrappings.
She held her breath as the synchronization started. It felt like something picking up along her spine from the small of her back, caressing the crease of her spine with ghostly fingers until it reached her head, settled on her skull, and became a pressure on her head. The plug swirled around her, displaying a thousand colors and none, and finally the outside world of the plug distorted by the huge size of the creature she was synchronized with. She could feel it, feel its power and the tension in its body, a distant sensation on the other side of her own, masked by the pain. She made no sound as the rear wall of the cage began to move, sliding her past spinning orange caution lights. She almost grunted when it stopped and the Evangelion bounced slightly, and again as the locking mechanism secured the massive shoulder pylons.
When the launcher fired, she screamed.
Shinji was beginning to doubt his sanity. When his feet left the earth, clad in the work-boots he'd pulled out of his bag and switched for his dress shoes, there was a certain giddy uncertainty to it. He wondered for the briefest instant if he was an insane asylum and his fractured mind was producing some crazy hallucination to replace his dreary reality. He spared himself a glance, looked down at himself- he'd had enough material to make a shirt and a short cape, and had to use a pair of denim jeans to make up the rest of the suit. At least it was blue. The moment of doubt was rapidly overcome by the giddy sensation of flying, that he could fly. The ground tilted and yawed lazily beneath him and he looked up, refocused on his task.
The angel was insanity given form. It stood in the midst of a great haze, a cloud of floating white ash moving in strange swirls on the currents of the wind. The world had turned red from the dust and ash in the air, the sun fuzzed over. Drifts of cinders floated against the angel and before they touched it, slid along hexagons of pale orange light that flickered into being and deflected it away. The creature, its broad body hunched around itself, rose and fell in great breaths, sucking in thrumming whorls of air through ribbed meshes of pale red flesh embedded in its size. Its beak-mask was cracked and hanging limply to one side, and beneath it, a new one, pale and clean, was pushing free. In the thing's belly, the great red sphere pulsed and scintillated with strange energy, flooding Shinji's vision with every part of the spectrum at once, and then some. He had to squint to look at it.
It turned its gaze on him. Pushing free of the charred flesh around it, the new mask shoved the old one aside, leaving it hanging like a trophy. The creature drew in on itself, then stood to its full height, and he heard the sound of its very skin straining. Its long arms thickened and lengthened, and when it moved, its legs stretched out a bit, elongating its stride. As it moved out of the crater left by the bomb, thin strips of its charred skin sloughed off, revealing new, fresh tissue beneath. He came to a hover in the air, hands out to his sides, as it turned, still looking at him, and began stomping down the mountain slope towards the city. It took no notice of him as he passed it in the air, arms pressed tightly to his side.
For its last few steps into the city proper, the creature slid down the hillside, digging deep trenches in the earth beneath its feet. It came to crouch and gazed into the city proper. Shinji flew past it, pushing himself harder and harder, and then turned. He heard something coming, rumbling upwards from within the city itself. Tokyo-3 stretched out beneath him, all glass and steel and concrete, although he remembered there being more tall buildings. There were only a few, and they were mostly solid, though some concealed artillery and missiles and bizarre weapons he could have sworn were rifles and pistols and knives, but so insanely big that their simple existence made no sense at all.
The rumbling sound grew louder, and there was a great hiss of escaping gas. Two rails, huge sections of metal beam, shot out of the ground. A moment later, the surface of the street beneath them divided, and a titan of gleaming, polished steel and composites rocketed skyward, bouncing into place between the rails on a huge carriage. It was decked out in purple and green, and had a demonic cast two it, with an angry, grimacing mask and central horn. He thought he heard an agonized grunt as it came to a stop, the head rocking upwards, as if at attention, from the motion. He stared at it, open-mouthed.
The angel moved. For its size, its speed was astonishing. It look long, loping strides, not caring as it kicked right through a squat housing block. Shinji gasped and raced downwards, trailing beneath its feet. He coughed as he slid into the cloud of dust and debris, glancing in all directions, listening. It seemed like they'd evacuated, but if anyone was inside, they-
He heard something. A cry of wordless terror, high-pitched and breathless. He raced towards it, crossing his arms before his face to slam through the particle-board wall. A little girl, maybe five or six, was huddled in the corner of a small apartment, clutching a toy robot to her chest. Shinji didn't have time to speak. With a groan, the wall on the other side yawed forward. He moved between the falling timbers and the let girl, scooping her up as the debris slammed across his back, driving his heels deep into the floor. He took a few steps, shook the remaining hunks of wall off his back, and shook the dust free from his boots.
He looked up through the open ceiling. The angel and the robot grappled, the latter feebly, turned easily by the creature. The girl screamed, and another section of wall came down over his head. He raised his hand and caught it, pushing it away with his palm. He had to get her out, or she'd be crushed. She looked up at him.
"Where is everybody?" said Shinji.
The girl worked her mouth silently for a moment. Tears welled up in her eyes. "I don't know."
Shinji sucked in a breath, turned, and shouldered the broken wall aside. The girl screamed as he jumped down from the floor onto the street below, and then blinked in astonishment as he landed unscathed. He looked around, until he saw a blinking sign indicating an emergency shelter. He sprinted towards it, cradling the girl in his arms. The arrows pointed down a set of concrete steps, like the entrance to a subway. He jogged down the steps, looked around, and spotted the door. It was a sliding section of steel, and there definitely wasn't a doorbell. He felt along its length, knocked a few times, and huffed out a breath.
"Hold on."
The girl tightened her grip around his neck, and with one arm free, he found the edge of the door, curled his fingers under it, and pushed. The door groaned in its track until it began to ratchet along, clanging loudly. Once he had it open enough to slip inside, he walked into the open space. Half a hundred people were huddled along the walls. A cloud of terror hung in the air as they murmured to each other, men and women, boys and girls, children clinging to mothers clinging to fathers. The sound of something huge hitting the ground rippled around them, and thin streamers of dust came down from the roof. There was a gasp.
"Kanna!"
` A boy Shinji's age ran up to him and pulled the girl from his arms. She grabbed onto him excitedly, squeaking with joy. The boy stared at Shinji, blinking eyes reddened from fighting back tears. His mouth moved, but no sounds came out. Shinji shrugged.
"Who…" the boy trailed off, "How…"
"Just trying to help," said Shinji.
He turned and jogged back through the door. The boy followed him, still clutching the girl in his arms. He barely kept up, poking his head through the door of the shelter just in time to see Shinji take the last bounding step to the surface and take off, the air rippling beneath his feet in a little circle of dust as he went airborne. He gave a final wave as he moved up and away, cresting the rooftops, circling wildly.
He caught sight of the angel as it lifted the robot by its head, claws wrapped around its armored helmet. The robot's right arm dangled limply, and he winced. Instinctively, he opened his gaze, and started in shock. The thing had muscles, bones, nerves, a brain. Wires and metal struts and motors were embedded all through its body, and painful looking bolts were jammed into the long muscles of its legs and back. The dangling arm was broken, the huge bone cracked in a horrid spiral. He heard the soft groan again and the realization swept over him. There was a pilot. Someone had put a human being inside that thing,and it was hurting her.
He cried out as he flew into the angel fist-first, the wisdom of his action forgotten. In his short experience, he had forgotten something vital and important, namely pain, and how much it hurt. Recognition somehow obvious in the hollows of its mask, it turned and swept is arm, and when its hand hit him it actually hurt, and sent him tumbling head over heels through the air. The world spun wildly around him, and he moved with such intensity that when he hit the side of a building, it didn't arrest his momentum at all. He crashed all the way through both walls and dug a furrow in the street, great leaves of cracked asphalt lifting up around him like petals of a flower.
The creature turned back to the robot, and something glowing with intense heat and energy slid back from its forearm, punching through its own elbow, and then slid home like a pile driver. The robot shuddered, its good arm twitching, but made no move to defend itself. The creature lifted it higher, the enormous body of the robot rag-dolling as it hung by its own neck, and then casually tossed it backwards. It landed in the side of one of the thick armored buildings in a heap, crashed through it, and came to rest on the other side.
Shinji shook himself out of it, jumped, and took off. He flew to the robot's side, dodging a downward-slashing blow from the angel's long claws, whirled around, and planted both fists in the center of its mask. It took a stumbling step backwards, and the mask tilted to one side, like a confused bird. Shinji pushed backwards to avoid its windmilling arm, looked over his shoulder, and headed for the robot. He found a piece of concrete the size of a city bus, slid under it, and lifted. It pressed down on his palms, and he felt the surface of it cracking under his fingers. He pushed it up in the air, reeled back, and threw it. It streaked towards the angel like a missile, but rather than hit it, shattered into dust on a plane of orange light interposed between it and the creature. Shinji blinked.
It looked at him. The air around its hollow eyes crackled, and there was a flash. His world went white, and he tumbled through the air. He felt it as he hit the robot's chest, slid across, and came to rest on the armor of its shoulder. He blinked, his head spinning from the force of the impact. Thin wisps of smoke curled around his fingers, and his eyes stung as if from staring too long into the sun, a long forgotten sensation. He rolled into a crouch.
A piece of armor hung limply from the robot's arm, hanging by a few thin strands of cable. He took hold of it, snapped it off, and held it before him like a great shield. The angels' next blast parted around it as he pushed forward. It fired again and again, the force and heat turning the metal in his hands white-hot. It softened and began to cave in just as he thrust it to the side and pushed forward. He felt a momentary resistance as the angel raised the strange field of energy between them. It felt white-hot against his hands, and as he pushed into it, the creature recoiled, leaning away. He felt it breaking, separating under his fingers, and it vanished. He surged forward and slammed into its body without quite meaning to, and it stumbled backwards into one of the armored skyscrapers. Shinji dodged another blow, slipping between its fingers.
"I must be crazy!" he shouted, "I must be crazy!"
The angel reeled, stood, and swiped angrily at him, ignoring the stricken robot, now lying prone in the remnants of the smashed structure. He swore he could see annoyance within its unmoving mask. He dodged between its talons, rocketed down the length of its arm, and wound up. His fist met the angel's pointed face with a resounding boom, and he felt the impact shuddering up his arm. It stumbled backwards, and emitted a strange, cooing cry, a high-pitched wail that slid into his brain through his ears and made him break out in goosebumps.
He was knocking it around, but he wasn't doing any damage to it. The robot was down, unmoving, and the angel seemed to turn its attentions to him more out of annoyance than anything. He swept low, and the creature cried again, rattling his teeth. It covered the red sphere in its belly with one arm, snicker-snacking its other clawed at him, trying to shoo him away from it. He rolled onto his back, looked at the glowing sphere, and turned. He hit it hard, planting both fists into it. The angel's entire form shook, nearly throwing him off, and it cried out in fury, the sound louder now, and deeper. Its entire manner changed, and it raked itself with its own claws. He barely danced out of the way, rolling over one long, slender blade of bone and back onto the red sphere. He punched it again, and sliver-thin cracks trickled out from his fist.
The creature began spinning, digging furrows in its own flesh as he pounded on the sphere. It hit him, and the hard edge of the claw trailed him through the angel's flabby white innards. Coughing, he threw a long stringer of muck away from his face and crawled back onto the red sphere and kept pounding until the fissure deepened enough that he could wedge his fingers into it. He began to pull, cracking it apart with all his might, straining against himself to press the two halves the sphere apart. One moment, the red sphere was solid, harder than rock or steel, and the next, it shattered into a thousand pieces. Thick, red fluid swelled over him, washing him out of the cavity the sphere had occupied. The angel stumbled one, twice, and raked its claws down the side of the armored building as it fell. Shinji jumped away and slid out from under it, just in time.
When it hit the ground, the creature seemed to deflate, flattening and shrinking on itself a little. It lay unmoving, boneless, and a runny orange liquid began seeping out of it, faster and faster. The trickle became a torrent, flooding out from under its skin with a vast, vile sucking sound as it burst apart like a rotten fruit, until there were only indefinable red chunks rapidly melting into orange ooze. The bits of flesh stuck to Shinji himself did the same, sliding away into thin streamers of liquid, robbed of their integrity. He hovered in the air, panting.
He heard a muffled groan.
He raced to the robot, or cyborg, or whatever it was. The pilot's chamber, a contraption that bored into the chest of the living thing within it from behind the creature's neck, was covered in tons of strange, dense flesh and armor plating, and looked like it was meant to be accessed from the back. He landed in the debris beside the head with a crunch, and for a moment, felt like the great lens of the eye was watching him. He took a breath, slid under the shoulder joint, and lifted. He was surprised by how light it was. The whole apparatus moved under him and rolled onto its other shoulder, where the undamaged arm met the body. He slid down to the surface of the rubble, wedged his fingers under the armor plating, and pulled. The machine's head pitched forward, and with a hiss a long, metallic cylinder slid out in front of him, sending him stumbling backwards.
He felt along its surface, looking for a door. He could hear breathing inside. Despairing of finding an opening, he jammed his fingers through the metal and pulled. It groaned as it twisted apart, parting in his hands. A sudden surge of liquid flowed out over him, and it stank of blood. Trickling through the ruins beneath his feet, it resembled the stuff that had spilled out of the creature. He moved into the capsule, pushing the metal sides away.
The pilot lay on her side in the chair, which had come loose from its moorings at the rear of the chamber. She was breathing shallowly, her un-bandaged eye staring and glassy. She was already covered in bandages and a heavy cast on her arm, which surrounded a broken bone. Her ribs were broken and bruise, and ground together with every breath, drawing a soft, broken sound from her, as if it hurt too much to moan. Her seat coming loose had done more. She had other internal injuries, was bleeding inside her torso, and her left leg was broken. He almost touched her but pulled back, terrified he would kill her if he dared to move her. Instead, he carefully lifted the chair, wincing as she gasped at the movement. Gingerly, he carried her, chair and all, to level ground, and set it down, propping a block of cracked cement under the chair to keep it steady. Her eye swiveled around and focused on him.
"Can you hear me?"
She almost-nodded, mostly wincing instead.
"Who… who did this to you?"
He felt a sudden impact in his back, a small slap that startled him. Something twanged off the ground a few feet away, throwing up a puff of dust and a few chips of asphalt. It was followed by another and another, pelting him as if some invisible assailant hurled stones at him. A fraction of a second later, he heard the sound of gunfire rattling off, and stumbled backwards, blinking. They were shooting him.
There was a whole army coming his way, men in radiation suits and haz-mat suits and plain black suits with black ties, and one of them was standing up in a Humvee, firing a gun at him. A bullet crossed his vision, spiraling a slow trail of disturbed air behind it, and he reached out and closed his fist around it, plucking it out of the air before it hit the girl. He blinked again, looked around, and put himself between the pilot and the oncoming vehicles.
"Stop shooting!"
The closest Humvee rolled to a stop, and a blonde woman in a labcoat jumped out, screaming. "Stop shooting, you moron! You'll hit the pilot!"
He was surrounded. Vehicles pulled up and crested the rubble pile, and the men in suits poured out, yanking guns out from under their jackets, aiming down the barrels at him. He spun in a tight circle, looking at them. A tall, balding man stepped ahead of the others, holding the sights of his gun on Shinji's head.
"Stop right there," he demanded. "You're-"
Shinji flew. He lifted straight up without preamble, his legs dangling beneath him. The agents stood under him, slack-jawed, their guns sagging to the earth as they watched him pick up speed, crest the robot's horned head, and rocket off into the horizon.
Misato woke up with a groan. She had the oddest feeling, that she was being gently cradled and rocked back and forth. Her head hurt like a sonofabitch, each beat of her heart translating into a lancing streak of pain behind her eyes. It had gone dark, and she was looking up at the sky. Her leg hurt, her ankle burning and sending little streamers of pain up her leg with each movement. It took her a moment to realize her head was leaning on a bony shoulder, and her arm around a young man's neck. Shinji was carrying her down the road like a newlywed, holding her under the shoulders and knees. He had his bag on a strap over his other shoulder, hanging down his back. She blinked and sat up and little, holding into his neck to keep from falling out of his grasp, and he instinctively lifted her a little higher to keep her from rolling out of his arms.
"Uh," said Misato. "How…"
He shrugged, bouncing her a little. "I work out."
"Oh."
She blinked. "What happened."
"The thing…"
"Angel," she corrected.
"The angel went down into the city, and a big robot came out."
"Oh," her breath caught. "Did we win?"
She blinked and shook her head. He probably had no idea what she meant. He started walking again, plodding down the middle of the road in the moonlight. He glanced over the hills towards the faintly rising columns of dust and debris and indicated them with a nod.
"The robot didn't do so well. I don't know what happened. It got knocked down, and then the thing just died. It fell over and melted or something."
Misato looked over his shoulder. "Melted?"
He shrugged again.
"You should probably put me down."
He stopped, and gently lowered her to the pavement. Tested her weight on her foot and winced, picking it back up from the ground and resting her whole weight on her other leg. Shinji steadied her with ease, an arm around her shoulder. She took a hopping step forward, tapped her foot on the ground, and yelped. He rubbed the back of his head with his free hand.
"You want me to, um," said Shinji, trailing off.
She sighed. "Yeah."
He scooped her up again, easily supporting her weight in his arms, and she slid her arms around his neck to ease the pressure a bit. He really was well built for his age. A little feminine looking maybe, and a bit skinny, but handsome nonetheless, with deep blue eyes that had this odd, gentle look about them. It was a shame to hide them behind those glasses. She swallowed, and realized with a start that she was blushing, the skin of her cheeks positively burning. She looked down the road and cast about for something to say.
"We should commandeer a car."
"Commandeer?"
"Steal," she shrugged.
"Oh. Isn't that wrong?"
"The survival of humanity may be at stake," said Misato. "Nerv will compensate the owner."
They reached the edge of town, after what felt like forever. She spotted a likely vehicle and directed him to it with her finger. He held her up while she glanced in through the window, confirming that it was a manual. Shinji lowered her to the ground and she leaned on the fender and shrugged off her jacket. He took it, and she rubbed at her bare arms, suddenly aware of the cold. He layered the cloth over the window and thunked his elbow against it.
"Ow!"
She sighed. "Oh, come on. Try again."
He wound up this time, and hit the window again. There was a slightly louder thump, and he yelped in pain. She shook her head, hobbled over, and gave her best war-cry as she rammed it with her elbow and shattered the glass. She pulled her coat out, brushed the tiny squares of safety glass away from the sill and hobbled inside. She pulled up the lock on the other side of the little car, and Shinji got in, holding his bag on his lap. She grunted as she tried to work the clutch with her bad foot, and then used her right. She finally managed to get the car rolling forward, popped the clutch, and it started. She let out a sigh of relief, until she had to pull her foot back and found she couldn't open the throttle, and the car stalled.
"Great," she muttered.
She pulled the emergency brake to arrest the car's movement, opened the door, and slid out.
"C'mere."
Shinji got out of the car and came around to her side.
"Do you know how to drive?"
"No," he said sheepishly.
"Great," said Misato. "Of course not, you're not old enough for, what?"
"Two years," he shrugged.
"Okay, fine. This how is this is going to work. I'm going to sit on your lap, and you're going to work the gas for me while I work the clutch and steer."
He looked at her askance for a moment and sat down in the driver's seat. He took hold of the steering wheel for a moment, and then looked around. Misato huffed, and he let go of the wheel, carefully setting his hands at his side. She sat down on his lap and leaned against him, then pulled the door shut with a slap. This time, with Shinji working the gas pedal for her, she managed to get the car to both start and stutter into first gear, and then second. She took over working the gas herself from there, mentally apologizing to the owner for racing the engine. Shinji squirmed a little, but kept quiet. She glanced at the rearview mirror and smirked. He was as red as a beet. Of course, since she was a fairly deep shade of pink herself, she decided to leave off the ribbing for now.
It took them a while at slow speeds to reach the nearest Geofront entrance. She thought about it and then drove past it, towards the columns of smoke rising from the site of the battle. She rolled up to the yellow and black hazard-striped sawhorses the Section 2 goons had set up, let the car stall, and put on the brake. Shinji almost unconsciously supported her around the waist while she got up, and then let her lean on his shoulder and hobble along, holding his bag in his other hand. She limped along until the nearest goon stopped them with a raised hand. She snorted and fished around in her jacket for her ID, flashed it, and the black-suited doofus lifted the sawhorse aside so they could pass.
"Don't call a medic or anything," Misato mumbled.
When they reached the great pile of wreckage where Unit One lay, she could see why. To say that it had lost the battle was something of an understatement. The right arm was devastated, obviously broken, the armor pried away, and there was serious damaged to the helmet section, including a missing eye. It lay on its side, almost fetal, and the entry plug had been extracted. She tested her foot and found she could walk a bit, now, and then looked down at her feet. She curled her toes up, wincing at the pain, and realized she'd lost her shoes. She hadn't even noticed before.
From the crowd of technicians, Ritsuko Akagi appeared. Misato put her hands on her hips, and felt less martial than usual, with her hair all out of sorts and her jacket scuffed from breaking the glass and generally looking like she'd been blown up by a freaking atomic bomb, trapped in a rolled over car, and carried down a hillside in someone else's arms. Despite the circumstances, Ritsuko didn't look much better. Her face was tight with worry, and the lines around her eyes stood out more than usual. Shinji backed away, and Misato glanced over Ritsuko's shoulder.
The entry plug was a mess. It lay almost bent in half, the side bulged out as if something had torn it apart. Misato's breath caught.
"Where's Rei? Is she-"
"Alive," said Ritsuko. "Barely. It's bad."
Misato looked away. "How bad?"
"I can't say," Ritsuko said flatly. "We'll see. I have our top doctors looking at her."
"What about the Eva?"
Ritsuko scrubbed a hand through her blonde hair, turned, and looked up at the prone machine. "The right arm suffered a compound fracture. We're going to have to remove and replace it. Repairing the head is going to take a week, and we'll be taking a hit in the budget for the armor and mechanical repairs."
Both women sighed, looked at each other, and Misato was sure that Ritsuko was also wondering how the hell they ended up here. The moment broke when her old friend's gaze settled on Shinji.
"This is him?"
"Yeah," Misato perked up. "Shinji Ikari, this is-"
"You're late," Ritsuko said flatly.
Shinji shrunk on himself. Misato glanced at him, then planted her fists on her hips.
"It's not his fault. It's not your fault if you're late if someone nukes you."
Ritsuko blinked. "You mean-"
"Yeah, the N2 went off pretty close to us. My car is totaled, hence the stolen commuter car," said Misato, and thumbed over her shoulder to the little compact she'd commandeered.
"Totaled?"
"Yeah," said Misato. "It looks like someone stepped on it. Shinji had to carry me down the damn mountain. That's what took us so long."
Shinji scratched at the back of his neck, and blushed.
"Hail the conquering hero," Ritsuko said wryly. "Okay, it's not your fault. I wish you'd shown up on time, though. Rei wasn't in shape for this."
"Rei?"said Shinji.
"The pilot. She was hurt testing the other Eva… You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"
Shinji shook his head. "I left the book in the car."
Ritsuko eyed him, then narrowed her eyes at Misato, who snickered nervously.
"Well," said Ritsuko. "We'll need to find a place for you to stay. It's going to take at least a day to recover Unit One," she aimed a finger at the Evangelion, "and Misato needs to explain to you what the hell you're doing here, Third Child."
"Third what?" said Shinji.
"Third Child, Designated Pilot of Unit One."
"What of what?"
Gendo Ikari hunched over his desk, hands folded together to conceal his tightly pressed together lips, the only sign of distress on his mercurial face. This was an unmitigated disaster. The one tiny bit of luck he'd had was the opportunity to shuffle the Japanese Strategic Self Defense men out of Central Dogma before the battle began in earnest, so that they wouldn't personally see the Evangelion, to use a colloquialism, get its ass handed to it. Letting Rei pilot was preferable to the alternative, but he had not expected her to fare so poorly. She'd barely synched, and her poor conditioned combined with her poor control over the Unit, building upon themselves into a mere forty seconds of deployment before the angel handily defeated it. If it hadn't been for outside intervention, the creature would have inevitably succeeded in breaching the Geofront, or they would have had to deploy the full N2 arsenal. Either way, his entire Scenario would have ended then and there, permanently and irrevocably.
This all weighed on his mind as he eyes flitted from the printed image on his desk, a single blurry frame from a security camera mounted on one of the recovery vehicles, in black and white and distorted, to Ritsuko Akagi, standing before him with her arms pressed to her side, looking haggard. She hadn't slept in quite a while, obviously, and her hair was pressed to the sides of her head with sweat, the effect enhanced by the dark roots creeping at the crown of her head where she parted it. She waited as he examined the image.
"What is that?"
"I don't know," she said calmly. "It… he can fly. I saw it. He flew."
"I see," said Gendo. "What else."
"One of the security men shot him. There was no effect."
"Define 'no effect.'"
"The bullets bounced off. They couldn't pierce his skin."
He tapped the image with his finger. "The entry plug?"
She swallowed. "He did that. He bent the steel with his bare hands."
He folded his hands together again. He glanced at his fingernails. He needed a manicure. "I see. What is the First's condition?"
"She's half dead, in a coma. All of her ribs are broken. Her torso is practically jelly. She has a hairline skull fracture, a broken leg, and a chipped vertebrae. If we took steps to employ her organ, she could regenerate in, perhaps, a month."
"No. We need her functional immediately. Euthanize her, and bring out the third. Plan to isolate her for two weeks."
"But…" she trailed off.
He hardened his gaze. Akagi nodded. "Will there be anything else?"
"Yes. The existence of this… interloper threatens the integrity of this project. I expect the utmost secrecy. Transfers, termination, anything you need, keep your science people from discussing what they say. I will contact Yoshida from Section 2 and do the same. Is that understood?"
She nodded, and turned.
"Wait."
She stopped.
"Get a few hours of sleep, shower, fix your hair. Wear the outfit I bought you."
"Yes, sir."
The door slid shut behind Akagi, and he leaned back in his office chair. He looked around his cavernous tomb of an office, sighing at the petulance of the design. As much as it intimidated others, it grew tiresome, day after day. His phone rang, and he picked up the receiver.
"Commander?"
It was Katsuragi, his thoroughly annoying operations director. Competent at her job though she was, a conversationalist, she was not.
"What?"
He listened to her quail on the other end of the phone, composing herself.
"Sir, I was wondering… your… Shinji… The Third Child will be staying in an apartment?"
"Where would you propose he stay?"
"Well, that's the thing, sir. If you wouldn't mind, I'd like him to stay with me."
"Very well," he said, and hung up.
Shinji watched Misato hang up the receiver, and Misato stared at the phone for a moment, as if thought it might ring. She worried it with her thumb for a moment, and then released it, turning to Shinji with a smile. She moved lightly on her crutches, her wrapped foot held from the ground beneath her. She wobbled a little and she shook her head, shooing him away when he moved to steady her. She looked at him like the cat that'd caught the canary.
"Guess what?"
"What?"
"We're going to be roomies!"
He blinked. "Um, okay, I guess."
"Oh, come on, aren't you excited? A new home in a new city, a new roommate?"
"I guess," he shrugged. "I'm worried about, what's her name, Rei?"
Misato eyed him. "Oh, I'll be you are. You dashing hero, you. You'll get to meet her soon, I'm sure. For now, we're going home and I'm going to bed before someone stops me and makes me work. You need your rest, too. You have a big day tomorrow."
"I do?"
"We're going to synch test you."
He took a look around the battlefield one more time as Misato flagged down one of the men in the dark suits. He looked around nervously, wondering if someone would recognize him, but no one did. He walked along beside her to the wooden sawhorses, where there was an actual limousine waiting for them, a big black sedan that probably had body armor. She motioned for him to join her.
"VIP treatment today," she beamed.
He helped her in first, taking her crutches as she slid inside. He rested them on the seat as he sat down himself, welcoming the feeling as he sank down into the plush back seat. Misato immediately started playing with things, running the glass partition between the back and the driver up and down, and fiddling with the switch for the moonroof.
"I wonder if there's a bar in here," she mused.
Shinji stared at her.
"Don't worry," she said, "I'm kidding. The last time I got drunk in a limo, I stood up in the sunroof and…"
He tried to stay calm, but his eyes slowly widened, and he felt the heat creeping up his face. He snapped his eyes forward as she giggled at him, amused at some private joke. He looked out the window and watched as they started moving, and the city rolled by. It was dark, and most of the place was pitch black. He saw it all perfectly of course, the shapes of the buildings lined in colors no human eye could see, illuminated by their own heat, the sky beyond an inky purple overlaid with the scintillating colors of the solar wind cascading off the atmosphere. He heard thousands of people breathing, speaking, walking, talking, the sounds blurring together into a perpetual background haze. He listened to it for a while, and barely noticed when the car pulled to a stop.
"We're here!"
He got out first, and helped Misato get out and up onto her crutches. She hobbled along and he looked up at her apartment complex, a low, nondescript, brutalist sort of building, with terraced floors, probably to save material, such that the balcony of each apartment was actually on the roof of the floor below. A quick glance told him that the whole place was empty, except for one apartment on the second floor. He blinked in confusion.
"It's a nice place," said Misato. "We have the whole building to ourselves. Very quiet."
He nodded and followed her through the security door, and into the elevator. She leaned on the wall and scrubbed her hands through her hair, a deep sigh passing through her lips, gradually transforming into a bemused snort.
"I'm not going to bite you."
He relaxed a little, just a little, as the doors opened. He followed her down the hall until she pulled out a key card, slid it through the reader, and the door opened, sliding into the wall like something out of a science fiction movie. She nodded her head at the opening, waiting for him.
"Go ahead."
He stood at the threshold for a moment, looking down at the running track where the door went. He stepped over the barrier and into the apartment, and immediately felt a bit cooler. She obviously had the air conditioning turned up. He took a few steps inside. The odor of the apartment was… interesting. She followed along behind him as he walked down the entry hallway towards the kitchen, and froze.
The kitchen was a forest of garbage, mostly empty beer cans. He looked around in dull shock, his eyes finally finding purchase on the animal sitting at the kitchen table. There was a penguin in Misato's kitchen, sitting at the table. It had a metal collar around its neck, etched with a name plate, and a red crest not unlike a rooster on its head. It looked at him with curiously intelligent eyes and squawked.
Misato nudged aside. "Oh, that's just Pen-Pen, my hot springs penguin."
Shinji's eyebrows scrunched in confusion. She smirked at him, hobbled to the refrigerator, and fished around for a can of tuna. She held it out to him.
"Do you mind?"
He took the can and began hunting for a can opener. Misato hobbled out of the kitchen. "I'm going to take quick shower, if it's okay with you."
"Fine," he said.
"Your room is down the hall. There's two empty bedrooms, the big one is yours."
He looked around and, despairing of ever sifting out can opener under all the junk even with x-ray vision, he shrugged, looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching, and jammed his thumb into the can. It crumpled and crinkled, and he pulled the lid off with a pop and emptied the can out into the penguin's dish, a red plastic bowl resting on the floor. The creature hobbled over to it, and looked up at the twisted ruins of the can in his hand.
"Don't say anything," said Shinji.
The penguin made a small gesture, almost a shrug, and started eating.
He looked around the kitchen and scratched his chin, and started moving. By the time Misato turned the water off and began brushing her teeth, he had most of the can squared away, and was busily organizing the rest. By the time she emerged from the bathroom, smelling of soap with her hair coiled in a towel, dressed in a loose yellow t-shirt and shorts that, to him, looked far too tight to be comfortable, he was dropping the last of the refuse into a garbage bag. He sealed it, carried it to the front of the apartment, and put by the door with the others. Misato stood in the kitchen, barefoot, looking around in shock.
"What did you do?"
"I cleaned," he shrugged.
She stared at him. "Why?"
"It was dirty?"
She shook her head and shrugged. "Listen, you'll have to sleep in the couch tonight, unless you want to sleep with me."
His mouth worked silently for a moment, his cheeks burning again. A mischievous smile crept across her face, and it brought a certain light to her eyes. She pulled the towel binding her hair loose and let it wetly cascade around her shoulders with a shake, like a shampoo commercial. It shone in the harsh fluorescent light of the kitchen.
She patted him on the shoulder as she limped past. "Not on the first date, kid."
His eyes only widened further.
"You're too easy," she smirked. "Seriously, go get showered up, the living room is yours until we get you something to sleep on. Watch tv or whatever, just don't be up late. We've got to be back at Nerv at seven."
He nodded and headed off to the bathroom. He looked at Pen-Pen. Pen-Pen winked at him.
He winked back.
When Misato woke up, she almost forgot about her leg, and consequently yelped in pain and fell onto the pile of junk next to her bed as she tried to rise. Before she even managed to get up, she heard the rapid, rhythmic thumping of Shinji's feet rushing to her door. The alarm clock bleated in her ear, and she feebly fumbled for it, finally slapping her palm on the snooze button, and rolled into a sitting position on her bed. She saw Shinji's sock-clad feet just under the door.
"Are you okay?"
She blinked. What the hell was he doing up already? It was six o'clock in the morning. There shouldn't even be a six o' clock in the morning. It was a cruel joke, sadistically naming it like that. She ran her fingers through her hair, worked her cottony mouth, and leaned forward onto her knees.
"I'm fine. You can sleep a little longer if you…"
She sniffed the air, strengthening the faint aromas that swirled around her head, and felt an instantaneous, deep pang of hunger. There was something cooking, and it smelled good. Very good. Slowly, she got to her feet, tested her foot, and hobbled along to the door. Shinji was waiting outside, wearing an apron. She didn't remember owning an apron. She looked him up and down.
"Where did you get that?"
"It's mine," he shrugged.
"You have an apron," said Misato.
He nodded, eyes wide. How the hell was he so… perky?
"And you packed it and brought it with you."
He looked at her blankly.
"How old are you again?"
"Huh?"
She shook her head. "Nevermind."
She walked into the kitchen, wincing with each step, but picking her way along a little better than the night before. A little beer would wake her right up. She fished one out of the refrigerator, and blinked. There was food in the refrigerator. Actual food, in addition to the boxes of instant meals she had stacked up. There was eggs and blocks of tofu and vegetables and wrapped slices of meat on little foam trays. She didn't have any of this last night.
"Um," she said, "Where did this come from?"
"I bought it."
"What?"
"I found an all-night store," he shrugged.
"Where did you get the money?"
"My aunt and uncle gave me some before I left. You gave me a place to stay, so I thought I'd… what?"
She blinked, shaking herself out of her stare.
"Thank you?" she said, not sure why she was posing it as question.
"You're welcome," he smiled. "Did you want some?"
"Uh, yeah, thank you."
She went to sit down, only for him to appear behind her and pull her chair out for her. She stared at him in dull shock for a second, then sat down as he slid it back under her. He went to ladle her out a cup of soup and put it in front of her while she cracked open her beer. The acrid, tinny taste was welcome, and she sat up, immediately invigorated. Then, she drank a bit of Shinji's soup.
"Holy shit."
"What? Is it bad?"
"Bad? This is incredible."
She finished the rest of it hungrily, and then held out the bowl for more. He obliged, refilling hers while he left his own resting on the table. He keyed open a can of sardines and put them out for Pen-Pen, and then sat down opposite her, quietly eating his own. When he finished, he took both their dishes, set them in the sink, and went off to get dressed. By the time Misato had returned to her bedroom, gotten her uniform and jacket on, and put up her hair, he was waiting patiently in the living room in a pair of black slacks and a white shirt identical to the ones he'd worn the day before.
"That's your school uniform, isn't it?"
He nodded.
"Don't you have anything else to wear?"
"Not really."
She huffed and limped down to the elevator in an old, scuffed pair of shoes, Shinji in tow. At some point, she was going to have to find the time to file an insurance claim on her car, get a new pair of shoes to go with her uniform, and get caught up on an expanding mountain of paperwork that was, no doubt, rapidly increasing in size at that very moment. At least she would get another limousine ride to Nerv. The staff cars were fairly plush, and she didn't mind taking advantage of the organization's generosity in the least.
When they got in the car, Shinji had the same wide-eyed reverence he'd had for it the night before, and she felt a certain amusement in the way he looked at everything, like it was brand new. There was a kind of childlike wonder in his eyes as they drove through the city, and the best part was yet to come. The car pulled into one of the long entry tunnels, and for a time, they were shrouded in darkness within a long tunnel like by amber lights, the sound of the car rumbling back on itself in the confined space. At length, they emerged, and the boy's gasp of surprise was almost gratifying.
The Geofront stretched out beneath them, actually bigger than the city that had been built over it. The monumental cavern was the largest construction project in human history, and it was brightly lit with the dawn-red hue of the rising sun, carried down through the earth by glittering mirrors lining the underside of the city. Shinji watched it all roll by with rapt fascination, gazing down at the rolling fields of plants and pastures, and the gleaming shape of the headquarters pyramid. It always amused her, somewhat, that she worked in a secret underground base inside a secret underground base.
"Wow," said Shinji.
"Yeah," Misato leaned over beside him. "Cool, isn't it?"
It was slightly less cool to drive along the underground surface, until she opened the suroof. Shinji glanced up through it and she nudged his shoulder.
"Go on, go ahead."
He blinked at her, then slowly stood up, poking his head out through the roof. He gasped at the rolling cool air –it was never more than about seventy degrees in the Geofront, even with the concentrated light from above—and stared at the mirror array, basking in the warm sunlight. Seated next to him, Misato leaned back and closed her eyes, and let the sunlight warm her skin. Shinji dropped into the seat beside her as the car passed into the pyramid, into the wider, more brightly lit, and generally cleaner-looking tunnel that led to the motor pool. When they parked, Shinji beat the driver to the door and opened hers. She was still dragging her foot, but looked dignified enough as they walked inside.
"We'll need to get you a new ID badge. I think the other one is still in my car."
He nodded and followed her through the security check, looking nervously at the metal detector. He fumbled with his glasses handing them to the bored-looking guard that sat next to the machine, and seemed relieved to have them back once he'd passed through. Misato enjoyed the little thrill of walking though the machine, hearing it beep from her keys and her sidearm, and ignoring it. The guard motioned her on, not even looking up from his book. Shinji glanced back at him, his brows a little scrunched, but shrugged and kept on.
Nerv proper was like a maze, the corridors all the same, marked with confusing directions, and turning and twisting on themselves for no readily apparent reason. Misato became confused a few times, and was worried she was going to be late by the time they found the elevator, but Shinji took it in stride. He waited patiently, arms at his sides, while they descended lower into the base. When they finally arrived, the doors opened to the cold air and antiseptic smell of the lower levels, where the bulk of Nerv's work was done.
"Well," she said, "this is where we part ways. Unless you want me to go into the locker room with you."
The look on his face was priceless. She let him try to formulate a reply for a moment.
"Kidding," she grinned.
The effect was somewhat lessened as she limped out of the elevator. The locker rooms were off to the right, and the technicians would take over for her, guiding him to the test plug after he changed. Misato made her way, slowly, up to the testing lab that overlooked the testing plugs, which rested on long ramps that moved them up and down into a pool of LCL where the test bodies, huge, unarmored, unfinished Evas rested. Looking at them, humanoid but without heads or legs and one-armed, their skin smooth like some sea creature, gave her the willies, so she settled into a chair near Ritsuko and her assistant, Maya Ibuki.
The lab was a spacious place that felt cramped anyway, dominated by the computer terminals and scientific whatsits. Ritsuko stood like a captain on the deck of a warship on rough seas, overseeing her little empire, although she looked a little haggard today, more than she had over the last few weeks, anyway. Misato approached her, narrowing her eyes. The woman had a livid bruise on the back of her neck, and hunched up the collar of her sweater under her labcoat to cover it up.
"What happened to you?"
Ritsuko waved a hand dismissively. "Rough night. There's our boy."
The front of the lab opened onto the great open chamber where the test plugs waited. Shinji half-waddled along uncomfortably, picking at the skin-tight plugsuit. The technicians craned their heads over their stations to watch him. As if he felt the attention, he looked up and waved feebly, frowning. Misato snickered, and Ritusko quirked an eyebrow.
"Wow. Puberty hit that kid like a freight train."
Misato bit the back of her hand, trying not to laugh. Ritsuko eyed her. "Nevermind. Let's focus on the test."
Watching him climb into the plug was awkward. He seemed repulsed by the liquid inside, and when he finally sunk into it and they closed the door, his voice came over the loudspeakers in the lab.
"Is it supposed to be so cold?"
Ritsuko thumbed a switch on the console. "It'll warm up when we electrolyze it. Remember, just breathe it in."
Shinji gargled as the LCL flooded his test plug. He coughed and sneezed at the same time, and managed to croak, "This is disgusting."
"Just breathe normally," Ritsuko repeated. "We're going to try synching in a minute. Lean back, close your eyes, and clear your head. We need some baseline readings."
Maya looked up. "Everything looks good so far."
"Let's try it."
Misato found herself worrying at her palm with her fingernails. With Rei down, if this didn't work, they'd be in serious trouble. Her breath caught as the screens flickered to life, green lines flowing across the chains of circuits that represented Shinji's synchronization with the Eva. The readings almost reached the absolute borderline, and then shut down, rapidly dialing back to nothing. Ritsuko frowned.
"What's wrong?"
"It's not working," Maya shrugged. "There's nothing there at all. It's like he isn't even in the plug."
"Does this mean he can't pilot?" said Misato.
"Clear everything out, try it again."
So they went on. First, they cleared his data and tried synching in the same plug, and then ended up repeating the process in the other two test units. The end result was a defeated looking Shinji, his shoulders sloping, looking at the floor in the testing chamber, thick orange liquid dripping down his legs. He sighed. Ritsuko flipped the microphone off.
"He can't pilot," she said gravely. "He can't pilot at all."
Misato scratched her chin.
Shinji still felt confined, even having left the plugsuit in the locker room. The thought that he would never have to wear it again was a small comfort, but it was outweighed by the tension he felt as he left the lockers behind. He had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, that he'd have to leave, go back to the little house on the hill with the shed that rested on pilings. Distance didn't matter, of course, but to come so far and never even see his father felt strange. He expected the man to appear at the test, at least, but he was a no-show. He felt stupid, sitting in the big metal tube for hours while they tried over and over, and he felt nothing. A creeping feeling of uselessness fell over him, until he realized it might be for the best. He could do more outside that machine than he could ever do in it.
Misato was waiting for him outside. He unconsciously straightened his hair and glasses, and buttoned up the top of his shirt without quite knowing why. He thought, perhaps, that she might express disappointment or even be angry at him, but she was smiling as sweetly as ever, and he relaxed a little as she limped over to him. He shrunk on himself a bit.
"Sorry," he muttered.
"You tried," said Misato. "It's not your fault they made a mistake. At least you don't have to work the rest of the day."
He sighed. "I guess I have to go home now."
"Well," said Misato, "I was thinking."
He looked up.
She grinned. "I could use an intern."
"A what?"
"You already have security clearances," Misato shrugged. "I pulled some strings. I can't actually pay you, but if you want, you can stay with me and help out around here. Get me coffee, run errands for me, that sort of thing. It'll look good on your resume. Unless you don't want to."
He considered it for a moment. Shinji Ikari, the intern. Staying close to Nerv would alert him in time if there was danger, and the truth was, if he left, he'd be abandoning the strange, pale girl that he'd pulled out of the machine, and he couldn't do that. He couldn't let someone be hurt in his place, maybe be killed, and not do something to help. He couldn't run away.
"Okay," he nodded.
Misato grinned."Let's go up to my office. You can help me out on the paperwork. Your school transfer hasn't gone through yet, so you're mine, at least for today."
Shinji swallowed in mock alarm, and she slapped his back, and pressed the elevator button.
"I should make you come when I ring a little bell."
Shinji eyed her.
"I'm kidding. Geeze."
The doors accordioned open, and he almost stepped into the elevator, but froze. His father stood within. The man said nothing, but pressed his glasses further up his nose. A heavy silence descended, and Misato busily looked elsewhere while Shinji stared at him, and Gendo stared back. He was older than Shinji remembered, to be sure, but the years had been kind to him, his leathery skin barely weathered. His haircut was plain and his beard one of indifference, the moustache shaved away probably because it annoyed him. He wore his black Nerv uniform with a sort of practiced indifference, declaring how little such things meant to him without speaking a word.
The corner of Shinji's mouth curled slightly. "We'll get the next one."
His father blinked in surprise. The doors closed.
Fuyutsuki stared up at the face of Unit One. The helmet had been pitched forward, leaving the head itself behind, cracked open and spread apart on a special rack, like an exploded schematic in a technical manual. Unit One wasn't a mass production model, so the thick gray plates of layered metal and composite that would make up her new face had to be carefully fitted with the existing material, meaning they had to be dragged in her, rough cut, measured, fitted, trimmed, and eventually sent back out for the reflective coating. Some part of him wondered exactly who and where made the decision that it would be purple and green. It wasn't the natural color of the reflective coating, so someone chose it. He couldn't see Gendo spending his time and mental effort on something so frivolous.
"Was it you?" he said to the air, at least from the perspective of anyone watching.
There was little he could do here. The creature beneath the armor was swathed in bandages, and though he had the idea he was being watched as he left the cage, he was careful not to glance over his shoulder or betray his suspicion. Gendo passed him in the hall, hands clasped behind his back. Neither man spoke to, or acknowledged, the other. Fuyutsuki gave himself credit for appearing so calm, as a matter of fact. He took the nearest elevator, waiting in it alone until it reached the surface levels, and then walked out into the cavern itself.
The place was like a park, which was both comforting and disturbing at the same time, given in its nature. It was an orderly place, its appearance carefully maintained, with something ancient and terrible hidden within, and the whole order worked within an ancient artifact that humanity didn't understand. In a way, it represented his situation perfectly. There was a lake, but no birds floated on it, and Fuyutsuki resented that. Some deeply hidden sarcasm within him wanted to pantomime at being an old man feeding ducks from a park bench and revel in the absurdity of it, with what lay beneath his feet.
He walked to the lake anyway, taking the winding path. It was cool in the underground air, and it always smelled of freshly turned earth. The sun was warm on his skin, though, and it made an enjoyable contrast, neither too warm nor too hot, compared to the surface which perpetually baked in an endless midsummer. There were children alive today who had lived their entire lives without winter. When the summer finally broke, it would mean the winter of humanity. At least, that was the plan, the Scenario.
When he reached the water, he pulled a folded printout from his coat pocket and looked at it. He saw the blurry image of Yui's son rising from the earth like a mythical figure ascending to join the gods, one leg drawn up, one hand reaching towards the heavens. Carefully, he tore it into pieces, then scattered them. They lay across the still waters of the artificial lake until they became heavy enough with moisture to sink. He then pulled the second object from his pocket.
He held his battered old service pistol in his hands and thought of all the times he'd contemplated the muzzle, and whether to open his mouth and swallow oblivion. That thought crossed his mind a final time, when he realized that if his hopes were fulfilled, he truly never would see her again. The way his life had narrowed the divine down from a grand gesture of imagination to a cold science weighed heavily on him, and made the yawning void at the end of the gun all the more attractive. He was an educated man, and he enjoyed poetry. Never, even in private moments, had he fancied himself a poet, but he couldn't help but indulge himself over this. He was the man who pioneered metaphysical biology. It was he who had slain wonder and put the gods in jars for men to play with. He looked at the gun, and wondered if the man who invented it ever felt the same way.
He looked up at the false sky on which the last fortress of mankind rested, a city in the clouds. He rolled his arm back, tensed up, and threw the gun with all his might. It went not so far as to be impressive, but thunked into the waters with finality, and having disappeared, left only still waters in its wake.
He looked up, and he believed a man could fly.
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Last Child of Krypton: Redux
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Chapter Two: Powers and Abilities