Chapter 2: Asuka

"So what's it like living with him again?" That's what the female government employees would ask me, over and over again. They did it with those fake 'interested' looks, as if Third Impact hadn't already shown me how phony their smiles were before they even flashed them. It never ceases to amaze me that human society continued working after everyone had seen the hypocrisy around them for what it was. I'd seen them stealing glances at Shinji when his back was turned. Not that it mattered, since their newest romantic interest spent most of his time with his eyes glued to the ground.

Idiots, all of them. I'd tried--once--to explain that the Great, Invincible Shinji had all the social skills of a lobotomized cupcake. No luck. It would have been interesting to see their reaction if I'd told them what he'd really been like during the war against the Angels. Not that they'd have believed me.

At the moment, I'd been given the task of escorting the unwitting object of their affections around the base. NERV Germany was smaller than the awesome Tokyo-3 Geofront had been, but it was still easy to get lost in its endless hallways. I toyed with the idea of abandoning Shinji there before I remembered that he still had to make me dinner.

"So this is the bridge," I said, opening the door and standing aside so he could see. One or two of the techies looked up from their stations to spare us disinterested glances; the rest ignored us. "Most of the MAGI's control of the city is routed through here, and…Ach! Guten Morgen, Colonel Jinnai!"

The well-groomed, black haired man in the commander's seat nodded toward us and smiled slightly. Shinji froze with that deer-in-the-headlights look that he got whenever he met new people. I groaned inwardly and elbowed him in the ribs.

"Ow! Er…Nice to meet you, Colonel Jinnai," he said, rubbing his side and waving feebly.

Jinnai's smile widened. He stood up and walked toward Shinji, hand outstretched.

"Shinji Ikari! I've been wanting to meet you for a long time. So you're the great warrior who helped defeat the Angels…"

I noted with disgust that Shinji was already beaming and preparing to make a show of false modesty.

"…even if things didn't work out entirely as we'd hoped." Jinnai finished. He smiled apologetically. Shinji's shoulders slumped like an old punching bag. His hand was limp when Jinnai shook it.

"Still, there was nothing you could do about that…and none of us would have been around to complain without your efforts. The world owes you a great debt, Mr. Ikari. Now, if you young people will excuse me…"

Shinji was still standing there. "He means it's time to leave, dummkopf," I muttered. Fortunately, Shinji stopped zoning out before I had to drag him.

"Yeah. Sorry…"

Typical, I thought. Two minutes after being introduced and he's already the Colonel's new favorite.

"One moment, Miss Sohryu," Jinnai said, motioning me to approach his seat. Shinji watched me from the door, looking slightly puzzled. Jinnai leaned forward over his seat's armrest, signaling that he wanted our talk to be private. I brought my head down, close to his.

"Are you going to be all right, Asuka?"

The question surprised me. The note of concern in his voice belied the businesslike phrasing of the question.

"Umm…yeah. Why wouldn't I be?"

"I'm aware you have a…past…with the Third Child. The reactivation tests are going to begin in a few days, and we can't afford any complications," he said.

I looked back and saw Shinji shifting from one foot to the other, looking at the floor.

"Don't worry," I said. "There won't be."

And with that, I marched Shinji out of the room.

"He seems nice," Shinji said after we had turned a corner. "Who is he, exactly?"

The man who kept me sane for the last two years, I thought.

"Scheiße, Third Child, didn't you do any research before coming here?" I said. "That's our new Operations Director. He's a big improvement on Misato."

He shot me an angry look. Oho! So he's still worked up about Misato, is he?

I grinned nastily.

"He speaks six languages fluently, and his English is even better than his Japanese. Before Impact, he ran a major corporation. They say he's the only Japanese in the military with a rank above lieutenant. Wanna know why?"

"Because Winthrop's short on senior managers and he speaks decent English?" he guessed.

"No, because he's everything Misato wasn't. Professional, efficient…" I paused for effect. "…Sober."

The sharp intake of breath told me I'd scored another point. He didn't talk to me for the rest of the morning. The tactic would have been a lot more effective if it wasn't his standard operating procedure anyway.

At least this time, the silence meant he wasn't ignoring me.

We got home late in the evening. Shinji retreated into his room for a while, so I decided to play some video games in the living room. It was a quiet night, already getting dark, and I figured an hour or two of killing aliens would be just the ticket. Besides, what else was there to do? I started hooking the speakers up when I heard cello music coming from the living room. I walked to the door, but once I got there I found myself standing still, not able to turn the knob and go in.

You must be kidding, I thought. The day I'm scared to confront Shinji Ikari is the day I should cash my chips in. The thought brought up an ugly memory, so I suppressed it. I exhaled slowly and opened the door.

My first surprise was that all the lights were off. After my eyes adjusted, I saw Shinji sitting on the porch, staring into the night sky. The music intensified, which I guessed meant that the piece was about to end. I remembered it—the prelude to Bach's Cello Suite No.1. He'd been playing it on the night of our first and only kiss. I wasn't an expert in classical music back then, and I'm still not. A girl from our class who played the violin had identified it for me when I hummed it for her a few days later.

I flicked the light switch on, and Shinji's head jerked up in surprise.

"You're wasting my electricity privileges, Third," I said. It came out sounding harsher than I'd intended it, and I briefly considered adding a smile before dismissing the idea as a little too pathetic. I'd just have to brazen it out.

"I kind of like the darkness," he said softly.

"Yeah, figures you would," I replied.

Instead of the cringe I'd been expecting, he gave me a sad little smile. "Yeah…"

This wasn't going quite as expected.

"So…I'm guessing from your cello playing that you still haven't found anybody to tell you to stop?" I said. I grinned a little to show him it was a joke.

"Huh? Oh…yeah, heh. I guess not." He drummed his fingers on the cello and then broke eye contact again, leaning back to stare at the sky. I realized he was focusing on the thin red ring of souls floating in their extraterrestrial limbo.

"The only cellist in the world who still gives a shit about classical music…or cellos," I said. "The girls in Boston must have been lining up for you."

"Not really."

"Lemme guess…the Invincible Third Child hasn't worked up the nerve to kiss anybody since me and Misato?"

His face was expressionless, and he continued looking up at the sky. Slowly, he nodded.

I snorted. "Figures. Don't tell me you're holding out for me."

His brow tightened a little. "Don't worry, Asuka. I know that ship sailed a long time ago."

"Hey, no problem. The world's still full of girls in hospital beds."

I hadn't meant to say it. I really hadn't. It was one of those stupid, ugly things that always seemed to come out of my mouth when I was around him. He flinched as if he'd been struck, and his body slowly curled in on itself as his gaze sank back to the floor. His hands clenched and unclenched as if he was trying to squeeze a stress ball that wasn't there.

"Well, it isn't as if you're missing much," I said, trying to salvage the conversation. "Sometimes I think you made the right decision, avoiding people. Dating isn't worth the breakups. When they desert you…" I trailed off when I realized I should shut up now.

Shinji persisted, though. He looked up at me again, wide-eyed. "How could someone break up with—I mean, um…you broke up with someone?"

"Nice try at subtlety, Third. No, he broke up with me. Fortunately, he was a little better at softening the blow than you would have been. 'It's nothing personal' and all that shit. I guess I wasn't interesting enough, or maybe—" I stopped and glared at him. "…Wait, why the fuck am I telling you all this?"

"Sorry," he said.

"Did you break up with me?"

"No, but…"

"So you're apologizing out of pity?"

He suddenly looked very nervous.

"No, Asuka! I just…"

"Then don't apologize!" I snapped.

"Okay." He barely stopped himself in time from adding "sorry". I wasn't quite sure whether to appreciate the gesture or crack him over the head.

I sat down a couple feet away from him and closed my eyes, feeling the warm night air on my face. Not that there's much cold weather anymore, thanks to the cumulative effects of Second and Third Impacts. The white, illuminated forms of little insects floated around the porch light. I pulled my dress down a little further and wrapped it tightly around my legs.

"If you're going to sit out here for a while, you'd better turn the lights off or you're going to attract bugs to my house," I said.

He seemed to perk up a little.

"I'll take care of it," he said. A few seconds later, the light flicked off again. I resisted the urge to huddle up and forced myself to relax.

"You're a real barrel of laughs, you know that?" I said at last.

"What do you mean?"

I sat up and stared at him. "Before I met you, I didn't think it was possible for a human being to brood this much. Seriously, Third, what's your problem?"

"Doesn't it bother you a little that we're going to be using the EVAs to kill people?" he asked.

"Does it—huh?! What are you talking about?"

"The three MP EVAs they've just finished. We're going to use them in a real war this time, Asuka."

"Yeah, so what?"

"I don't want to kill people." His tone was tinged with disbelief, as if he couldn't imagine what was wrong with me for not getting it. It needled me enough that I briefly considered bringing Kaworu up—not to mention the fact that Third Impact had started on his say-so.

Instead, I gritted my teeth and counted to ten.

"So what should we do, Shinji? Leave the countryside to the warlords? Use our N-2 supply instead? Get who knows how many people killed using conventional forces just because one selfish little boy doesn't want to get into the Evangelion again?!"

"Thanks, Asuka" he said. I was caught completely off guard. It was his tone of voice that surprised me—his gratitude was entirely genuine.

"What the fuck for?"

"For calling me Shinji."

"Oh, yeah. Um…you're welcome."

Another long pause followed.

"Shin—" I stopped myself just in time. Using the name twice would seem like a concession. "Um…you wanna go shopping tomorrow? You didn't bring much along with you, and you should start getting some stuff for your room now that you're going to be living there for a while."

"I brought everything with me."

"See, that's your problem. You need to learn to live a little. I bet you've got ninety percent of your pilot's salary lying in the bank somewhere, don't you?"

He laughed sheepishly and nodded.

I clapped him on the shoulder. "Well, no time like the present to start spending it," I said. I slid the glass door open and stepped through. "You'd better get to bed soon. We're going to have to start early. Most shops don't stay open past seven these days."

The next morning, it took us twenty minutes to get ready to go and two hours for our car to shove through the whirlpool of pedestrian humanity that constituted Berlin's new population. If I'd cared, I would have caught snatches of Hindi, Arabic, Russian, English, and who knows what else. I didn't care, though.

In the old days—the early, nightmare days after Third Impact—Berlin had been a deathtrap. It was one of the only two MAGI-run cities that hadn't fallen victim to nearby nuclear meltdowns or the megatsumanis--courtesy of Rei's giant head--that had scoured NERV China and Tokyo-2 off the map.

They tell me that people flooded in from the countryside at first. Then they figured out that their only source of livelihood was scrounging the city for the few "luxuries" that the looters hadn't destroyed—radios, refrigerators, generators—to sell to the new class of agricultural ethnic warlords sprouting up in the countryside. Without any real government, the city's gang leaders came to the awkward conclusion that they had to keep everybody alive or their neighborhood tribute would dry up. And if that happened, they could say goodbye to the food supply from their more powerful country cousins.

Gang rule had lasted until one of those warlords managed to get his hands on the UN's supply of N-2 warheads. Game, set, match. Now the tribute was flowing from the countryside to the city again, and with it came hordes of the unemployed and desperate.

We were waiting in one of the city's only cars as a dirty flood of people and pack animals crossed the street. It royally pissed me off, but Shinji didn't seem to notice—he sat transfixed, staring out the window.

"What?" I asked.

He pointed to a man lying on a wagon wheel attached to the top of a pole, like a flower and its stem. The man's face and lips were cracked and red from the blazing post-Impact sun, and his limbs were threaded between the spokes, clearly broken.

"Oh, yeah. They do that here."

He continued to stare.

"The guy was probably a subversive or a terrorist or something," I added, this time in Japanese. I hoped he would take the hint.

He looked at me with a combination of disbelief and horror that momentarily shamed me into silence. But only momentarily.

"Look, Shinji," I growled. "You know as well as I do what BABYKA does. Don't tell me you didn't see this shit in Boston."

"They bury them alive there," he said quietly.

"Well, there you are then."

He just looked down for a while, not saying anything. I prayed none of the guards spoke Japanese.

The market was even more crowded and louder than usual, and I was thankful when our escorts shoved open a path for us--not that anyone needs much shoving when a BABYKA agent tells them to move. Most of the crowd limited themselves to stealing curious glances at us once in a while. They probably wondered what a couple teenagers were doing with bodyguards from the secret police.

You'll know soon enough. Just wait till you see my EVA dance in the Zoologischer Garten, I thought, and smiled to myself

I inspected a few of the market stalls before settling on one with reasonably fresh-looking fruit. The man flashed me a servile grin. Good, I thought. Too intimidated to haggle. I pointed to an apple.

"How much?"

He gibbered something incomprehensible. He must have caught my frown, because he waved his hands and started speaking faster, at a higher pitch.

"Ya, sayyid, kem yekelef?"

I followed the man's grateful stare to the last person I would have expected that sentence to come from.

"Doolarain," the man replied.

"Shokran," Shinji said, handing him two dollars. The man beamed, and Shinji nodded and accepted the fruit.

"You're full of surprises these days, Third," I said as we walked away.

"It's not that impressive," he said, rubbing the back of his head again. "You knew three languages when you were thirteen."

"I didn't say I was impressed, just surprised. And I knew them by the time I was eight."

He looked at me open-mouthed. I noted with pleasure that I'd regained the initiative.

"That's incredible, Asuka. I bet if you studied for a few months—"

I held a hand up to cut him off.

"The only language that matters anymore is English, Shinji. Pilots need to talk to the common people for only two reasons: to buy food or tell them they've missed a spot on the carpet."

"The common people include Germans and Japanese these days, Asuka," he said.

Let the topic drop, Third, I pleaded silently.

"I know," I said. I cast a brief look at our escorts to make sure they were too far away to hear us.

"I just don't think it's fair—"

"Who cares about fair?" I hissed. "Do you remember what it was like when we re-embodied? Do you? If Winthrop wasn't holding everybody in check, how long d'you think it would take before they started ripping each other to pieces again?"

One of the agents looked at Shinji suspiciously. Behind him, a poster of Brett Winthrop smiled benignly down at us. Six or seven smaller pictures of the Wardens were arranged in a circle around him, like planets revolving around a sun. I recognized the Chinese, German, and Russian Wardens; the rest I couldn't identify. Across the bottom "The Restorer of Human Political Unity" was written in eight languages.

Shinji, dense as ever, didn't stop talking.

"Yeah, I guess you're right. You know, Asuka, sometimes I think we made a mistake after Third Impact…"

The agent was walking toward us. Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!

"…What if we'd all agreed on what our society should be like before we re-embodied? I mean, before we knew who would be running what?"

He was a couple feet away now.

"Everybody would have—"

"You want to go to the mall?" I asked quickly.

"Wait, there's a mall?" Shinji said.

"Yeah." I suppressed the urge to sigh with relief. "One of the Secretary-General's pet monopolies. I hear they're going to be opening a branch in Boston pretty soon."

Before Shinji could start talking again, I turned to our escort and smiled as sweetly as I could. "Any chance you could drive us to the mall, sir?"

"Isn't the mall a little public for political talk?" he replied. I felt my veins freeze. He'd just spoken in perfect Japanese. Shinji stood riveted in place, eyes wide and rigid as a board.

Then the agent's head exploded, drenching both of us in blood and brains. His companions wheeled around as gunfire erupted from the windows of half a dozen dilapidated buildings. Another BABYKA man went down, and I saw the bright trail of an RPG as it lanced into the car we'd left a few minutes earlier. The explosion was deafening.

Shinji was still standing there. I grabbed him and yanked him away from the scene.

"Run, idiot!" I yelled. He probably couldn't hear me, but when he caught my eye he nodded and started running.

I took a glance behind us and saw a man in a ski mask methodically pouring gasoline over a fallen agent's body. The BABYKA man was wounded but still alive, and he choked and whimpered when the gas flowed over his head.

I turned away and kept running. A figure suddenly darted out of the shadows and tackled Shinji. Before I could move to do anything, another man grabbed me. I tried to close with him to kick his legs out from under him, and I screamed as I felt my body launched head over heels into the concrete. The stench of chloroform flooded into my nostrils and my hearing began to go.

We woke up in a rubble-filled room. From the debris, I guessed we were in a disused part of the city. It was almost black, so it was probably some kind of basement. There were men whispering in the next room, but they were quiet enough that I could hear water dripping and the occasional scampering insect. The smell of moonshine and filth told me that the place had been used recently by some of the city's all too numerous homeless.

"Shinji?!"

"Right here," he said. "Who are these people, Asuka?"

"I'm guessing Segunda Ruta from the way they barbecued the BABYKA guy back there."

"So we're…?"

"Dead. Yes."

The door at the far end of the room opened and a man with a ski mask walked in carrying a dim electric lamp. It revealed a row of chairs that I hadn't noticed before. A crowd of men followed him, all wearing masks. One by one, they sat down.

The pause seemed to last forever. Beside me, I could hear Shinji clenching and unclenching his fists again. For a crazy moment, I imagined him chanting his mustn't run away mantra in his head before I realized that there was nowhere to run anyway.

"Good evening, Miss Sohryu."

"Just get it over with," I said.

"We have a proposition for you," he continued. "You could be very useful to us if you cooperate."

"Fuck off. You ain't got nothing on Winthrop's boys if they found out I was collaborating."

Another man stood up and pulled his mask off. "Shinji, did you get my note?"

Shinji's head jerked up the second he heard the voice.

"Aoba?"

Aoba? Shigeru Aoba? The techie from the plane?

"You know where my father is?" Shinji asked.

What the fuck was going on?

"You might say that," another man said. He was a little shorter than the rest and, incongruously, he was wearing a formal blue suit and tie with his ski mask. He, too, pulled his mask off and tossed it with a dramatic flourish that I was too stunned to notice.

"Jinnai?" I gasped.

He grinned and leaned against the wall. Despite the confident smile, I noticed that Jinnai was more fidgety than I'd ever seen him, stepping from one foot to another and threading his fingers in and out. He no longer possessed the air of calm authority that had always reminded me of Kaji.

He seemed to be waiting for me to say something, so I did.

"You?! You're the terrorist leader?"

It must not have been the answer he was expecting, since he gave me a surprised look that lasted for a few seconds. Then he surprised me in turn by breaking into nervous laughter. I'd never heard him laugh before, and it sounded odd to my ears--a little too high pitched. I'd always expected him to have a deep, warm sort of laugh. If anything, it made the scene even more surreal.

"Sorry," he said. "You have no idea how long I've waited for this conversation. In any event, Miss Sohryu, you've got it all wrong. I'm not leading terrorists. I'm leading a coup."