Disclaimer: I don't own Neon Genesis: Evangelion.
Author's Note: Chapter title is a line from Joy Division's "Insight".
Thanks again to the folks who reviewed! Violet Shadows, things are going to cool down for a while, so the fragmentation isn't going to make such a huge come back until the last two chapters. cevgar, thanks for the review! I imagine I probably chased ya off with that last one, but everything works out in the end. Curiously enough, I've found that the stupidly mundane things often make for the best stories once they're blown out of proportion and mixed with bit of the absurd. Fresh C & NemesisZero, keep reading; you ain't seen nuttin' yet!
Nightlife 2.0: But I Remember When We Were Young
"Okay, Misato, jeez."
Shinji tapped the code into the panel beside the door. It slid open with a whoosh and beckoned him inside.
"I know that. Yeah, she told me this morning on the way to school."
He had to cradle the phone on his shoulder as he stooped to pick up a third bag of groceries, stumbling a few steps into the apartment to set down his load.
"Alright. Then I'll see you when you get back." He tapped the END button and slid the phone back into his pocket. "Sometimes I wonder…" he mumbled, setting his shoes down.
After he put the groceries away, he relaxed in the living room and flicked on the television. It hummed to life as he sighed, reflecting over the events of the day. School had largely been uneventful. Asuka had continued to give him the cold shoulder. The interactions with Kensuke and Toji had continued to feel somewhat forced. Misato remained distant even during their routine interactions—things that remained ever more elusive in the more recent weeks as NERV heightened its security measures and demanded more exercises involving the Major's time.
On screen, an enormous robot let out an inhuman roar and tackled a giant monster. Voices screamed chaotic babble while trumpets flared in the background—some sort of inevitable victory loomed.
"Cut missile defense connections to the left ventricle overpass—that should buy him enough time to—"
"It's blue—pattern confirmed! Data system overlay synchronizations are positive, but it's rejecting the signals!"
"Berserker?!"
"Dear God!"
Shinji's half-lidded eyes sucked in this information without expression. Tomorrow there was supposed to be a trig test at school, and after that, a synch test in the afternoon. He winced at the thought—ever since the Twelfth, he felt like people were acting differently around him. The NERV staff did their best to hide it, but it still showed; the bridge crew especially. He felt something in their gazes, something cold and fearful—sometimes he felt like it was merely a reflection of what he saw in himself.
"Yes, yes! It's all going according to plan!" On screen, a pale, frazzled, blood-shot psychotic stared down on the holoprojection of the scene from atop the tiered command bridge.
His phone went off and vibrated against his thigh, letting off a high whine as it did so.
"Uh, hello?"
"Input signal down. Immediate ejaculatory sequences initiated…"
Shinji nodded mutely, haphazardly staring at the screen. "Yeah, I know. No, I was there. You want to what? Oh, o-okay, let me just—oh no, it's fine. Yeah, sure, whatever's good. Alright. See you soon."
"Terminal exertion rate beta reached—lymph nodes can't handle the stress! We'll have to abort the—" The television spouted its nonsense. A mammoth-sized humanoid on screen let out an exhausted roar.
Shinji clapped the phone shut and slid it back into his pocket. He blinked and sighed and yawned and stood up, stretching a little as he started for the bathroom. The television flickered on behind him, spewing its pasty images out into the empty room.
Water and steam surged out of the showerhead. Shinji striped down to his skin and stared solemnly at the cascade. There was some mildew by the drain that he'd have to clean later. He'd probably want to do that before Asuka noticed it—she'd go ape-shit about the dumbest things sometimes. Minutes passed as fluidly as the suds that slid into the drainpipe.
The doorbell went off just as Shinji had buckled his belt around his pants. He pulled on a white t-shirt as he hit the button that opened the door. Kensuke stared at him, raising an eyebrow as he tugged at his own hair, as if to signal something. Shinji just stared at him oddly.
"Just take a shower?"
Shinji stood aside and let his friend enter the apartment. "Yeah. I needed some refreshing, so…" he shrugged and Kensuke led the way into the living room. "Is it raining out?"
"It was," the spectacled boy replied. "It's been teetering off and on all day. I keep expecting a downpour, but so far it's just been indecisive cloudiness."
Shinji hummed his admonishment and stood in the doorway to the room. "You want a drink?"
The television showed a purple thing getting hit with an explosion. A few unintelligible lines were shouted out over the speakers.
Kensuke tore his gaze from it to shake his head in Shinji's direction. "Nah, I'm good—well, actually, you have a Dr. Pepper?"
Shinji frowned and started for the kitchen. "I don't think—" He opened the refrigerator, and the door held a single can of said beverage. Next to it was a Coke. "Hm, I wonder if Misato brought this home from the NERV vending machines," he mumbled to himself.
"What?"
"Nothing. Here's your drink—glass?"
"Nah."
Shinji handed him the can, and the two of them popped tops in unison. On screen, a few close-ups of hands revealed blood and spit, and they were followed by portrait shots of screaming faces and torn up braces.
Shinji cleared his throat.
"The Class Rep's gotta crush on Toji," Kensuke stated, breaking the silence.
"What? Hikari? No way." Shinji couldn't help but be flippant in his reply. "What makes you think she's into Toji?"
"Haven't ya seen 'er glancing at him during before lunch breaks?" Kensuke asked. "The way she's peering at 'im from the corner of her eyes…" he squinted in thought, sipping his soda. "There's something there, definitely. If I were paranoid, I'd say she's been watching him, monitoring him for some super-secret plot."
Shinji rolled his eyes. "Sounds like you've been hitting the sci-fi racks too hard."
"Says the boy who pilots an Evangelion," came the reply. Shinji winced and choked on his gulp. "Anyway, I kinda dismissed that theory as well. It's Hikari, after all."
"The Class Rep falling in love with the class jock is pretty lame, though." Shinji commented. "I still have a hard time believing it."
"Oh man, look at the evidence!" Kensuke exclaimed. "Haven't you seen the way they bicker in class? They're like an old married couple already—they just don't know it! Speaking of that, how's Asuka doing?"
"What—wait, how's that even related to—" Shinji stopped in mid-sentence and realized what he was saying. "Sh-shut up!"
Kensuke chuckled. "They do that, too."
"Oh, stop giving me such a hard time. You're worse than she is, sometimes," Shinji complained, referencing his guardian.
The geek just grinned and turned his attention back to the TV, where a character analogue groaned with anticipation at seeing a giant robot. "I remember this show," he said. "It used to come on back in the day. I'd forgotten they were airing reruns of this."
"I don't even know what it is," Shinji said. "I think Asuka's been watching it off and on."
"Asuka, huh?"
Shinji shrugged and sipped his drink.
"I wrote a story based on the show awhile back," Kensuke resumed course. "I don't even know what happened to it now—probably buried under caches of internet porn and army stuff in my PC."
"You're not supposed to admit that sort of thing," Shinji coughed.
He received a shrug. "Between that and all the digital copies I kept of the countless peeping tom expeditions Toji and I have run over the past few years."
"Ahm… I think that's illegal."
Another shrug, followed by a roll of eyes. "Who's gonna arrest us?" Kensuke sighed. "Anyway, it doesn't matter. It's not like we photographed their faces or anything. Complete anonymity. I don't see why you're so frazzled about it." When he didn't receive a response, he dug a little deeper. "Asuka's a goldmine for the market, though—Toji helps with distribution, but I tell you; that girl's got sharp senses. It's been a pain in the ass getting photos lately, she's so sharp—"
"Okay, I don't want to hear any more of this." Shinji, red-faced and frowning, kept his eyes focused on the television. A girl was taking a shower.
"Kinda looks like Rei," Kensuke grunted, staring at the screen.
"Huh?"
"The girl in the shower. She kinda looks like—" Kensuke's phone vibrated in his pocket, and he groaned and leaned back as he fished for it. "Shit," he cursed absently. "Hello?"
Shinji glimpsed him out of the corner of his eye, idly wondering what he should do. Leaving the room would provide Kensuke some semblance of privacy while he was on the phone, but it might seem rude—then again, if Kensuke wanted privacy all he'd need to do was leave the room himself—otherwise, how could he blame Shinji for overhearing the conversation?—that is, of course, assuming he would blame him—which he probably wouldn't, since it's Kensuke—
"What? Now? What do you mean, now?" Kensuke sat up straight, his Dr. Pepper on the floor beside him. "I can't leave now, I just got here—oh come on, it can't be that—what? No, it's just up the road, sorta. Yeah. Uh-huh. No, I did it already." He glanced at Shinji, frowning and shrugging helplessly. "I know. Yeah, that's what they told me. I can't help that any. Whatever, I just hope it doesn't—I said—I said I hope it doesn't boil over into something impossible. Yeah." He sighed. "Fine, okay. I'm on my way."
Kensuke shut the phone and moved to stand. "I gotta go home," he said. "Sorry about this, I didn't expect to have things to get done today. Shoulda known, though. Oh well."
Shinji offered a smile as he walked to the door. "It's fine. I know you're probably busy with other things."
Another shrug. "Yeah, something like that. It gets real tiring sometimes." He slid his feet into his shoes and opened the door. "See you tomorrow, Shinji."
"Yeah, later."
The door swished shut and Shinji tried to think of what to do with himself. He returned to the living room and retrieved the rest of Kensuke's Dr. Pepper, emptying it out in the kitchen sink. Then he sat back down in front of the television fully intent to let his mind just wander and doze.
And then the apartment's phone started ringing. Shinji moved to answer it, but remembered how terrible he was at taking messages, and he wasn't particularly in the mood to talk to anyone over a connection. Instead, he leaned his back against the wall.
After a few rings, it stopped. The automatic message machine clicked on and started recording. Little metallic wheels ran tape through magnetic guts.
"Katsuragi… hi." The voice was Kaji. Shinji frowned, but still did nothing to pick up the phone. "Listen," the voice continued. "I know you're out on a date right now… with… um, me, but ah… hmm, this isn't where I'm going with this. I actually called for Shinji. Is Shinji there?"
"Force the plug! Empty vascular sacs! Pouring derision magnitude through coolant pipes!" Voices on screen shouted babble. Shinji stared at the answering machine. The lamp flickered.
"…Guess not," the disembodied voice mumbled. "Anyway, Shinji, I know you'll be seeing me in a few hours, after I drop off Misato and whatnot—but don't be fooled. That me isn't really me, Shinji. I… I know it sounds weird, but you'll have to trust me on this—right now, I'm not who I appear to be. I'm a different me. There's—gah—shit—I have to go. I'll meet up with you later—" the line went dead after a roar of gunfire and yells. The machine clicked into silence. The little red light started blinking.
Shinji frowned. Would it be smarter to erase Kaji's drunken-sounding ravings before Misato got home, or wait until she discovered the message and possibly let it wreak havoc on her renewed relationship? The message was directed at him, after all. That he reserved the right to delete it was understandably presupposed.
He got up from the floor and his foot slid on a piece of paper.
"What the—?" he reached down to pick it up, and it was in Kensuke's handwriting. It was a list of tips, it looked like, bulleted and fragmented. Parts of it were underlined:
--Keep characterization consistent. Unless you're dealing with alternate realities.
--Nobody cares about your problems, and nobody cares about the character's problems unless you can make them relevant to the reader.
--Angst is not good. If a character angsts, provide comic relief or bash the character. Or kill the character. Character death is always a good thing. Even when your audience hates it.
--Chapter length doesn't matter. Douglass Adams made millions of dollars on his books, and he had chapters that consisted of a single paragraph.
--Write about what you know. Make the rest up as you go along.
--Fan fiction is evil. That's why you keep it in a shoebox under the floorboards next to your porn stash. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES MUST THIS BE PUBLISHED ONLINE. It would disgrace my honor.
--Fan fiction is good. I don't know why, but it is. Somehow.
"What is this?" The creases were well-worn and the paper was fuzzy from travel. He shrugged to himself and folded it back up and slid it into his pocket, immediately forgetting why he had gotten up to begin with. Finding himself thirsty, he idly supposed it had been to get a drink.
As he poured himself a glass of water, he pondered the notes in scribbled handwriting. Had Kensuke really written those things? Did Kensuke really write fan fiction? Why would he want to? He sighed after taking a long drink and shrugged.
"I guess it really doesn't matter."
The door opened and Misato's utterance entered his ears. "I'm home, Shinji."
"Misato?" Shinji poked his head into the hallway to see his guardian removing her shoes. "I thought you were out with Kaji until late. It's barely seven-thirty."
She shrugged and tossed a few locks of hair over her shoulder. "Yeah, but I have to be at NERV soon. Ritsuko must have bumped my shift up for some diagnostic supervisions… I swear she's jealous." She mumbled the last bit to herself.
"What?"
"Nothing," she supplied with a smile as she reached into the refrigerator. "So how was school?"
Shinji shrugged noncommittally. "It was alright." He gulped more water.
"Still keeping those grades up?" She popped the top to a can of beer.
"Shouldn't you already know?" he winced at his own snap, but shrugged it off and refilled his glass.
Misato sighed, but said nothing in response. Instead, she leaned against the counter for a little while, and then she drifted aimlessly into the living room. Shinji stayed in the kitchen.
"Shinji, there's message on the machine. Were you here to answer it?" Shinji rolled his eyes.
"No, Misato. If I had been here, I'd have answered it."
She "mm"ed her response, and he heard the click of the machine's button. The message played, Shinji frowned again, and he also silently cursed himself for not deleting it sooner.
He heard Misato laugh a little nervously. "That's weird," she mumbled. "Kaji… always being weird, huh?" she called out. Shinji assumed it was rhetoric. "Don't pay any attention to him, okay?"
"Alright." Whatever.
"I'm going to take a bath now," Misato said as she appeared once more in the kitchen. "Where's Asuka?"
"She's off at Hikari's—didn't you say that on the phone this afternoon?" he responded. He received a blank look. "Maybe not; I can't remember now."
"You two fighting again?" she smirked.
Shinji shrugged his shoulders and turned away to face the sink. "I don't know. I don't understand her at all."
"I bet she's jealous of the thing you and Rei have going on…" Misato let the statement hang in the air as she leaned her forearms on the back of a chair, curving her back like a tiger.
"Me and Rei—Misato!" he flinched. "There's nothing going on at all! Nothing like that!"
"Uh-huh," sound oozed slowly through ruby lips. "You don't have to be so shy… I bet Asuka's upset over that too, y'know." She giggled as she straightened and backed out of the room.
Shinji said nothing but his face was burning. He didn't move until he heard the water in the bathroom start running. He relaxed the hand that he hadn't even realized had cramped up from tension. He let out a sigh he hadn't remembered holding in. He unclenched his jaw. What was wrong with him? Why was he so uptight?
He gazed at the sink for a while, but the sight offered neither solace nor satisfaction. Rust stains stood out on the corners as though reality itself was being corroded, as though the surface of perception was being slowly dismantled by an otherwise innocuous metaphysical reaction.
Shinji emptied himself of the existentialist crap and tried to convince himself that a walk in the night air would let him cool off.
"I'm going out for a little while, okay?" he called from the door as he stuffed his feet into shoes.
The bathroom door opened up a little and Misato poked her head out. Her hair was wet. Droplets of water slid down her exposed shoulders toward two unseen breasts, but some just careened into the hardwood floor.
"Don't be out too long with Rei," she smirked, her hand adjusting the towel she that was trying to sit on her head.
"I won't—gah, I'm not going out to see…" he sighed again. There was futility in lying to her, since she could just look up the Section-2 reports and locate his whereabouts anyhow—that was probably how she 'knew' about his trips over to Ayanami's apartment to begin with. Then again, this perpetual teasing was just something that had to be fulfilled; it was a knee-jerk reactionary movement done to complete some sort of unspoken cycle—action/reaction, some self-fulfilling prophecy spelled out by the Tao of the situation, as though it were painstakingly constructed under a microscope just for them to continually relive.
The door whizzed shut behind him and he started on down the concrete hall. It was cooler than usual, but not so bad. The concrete was always slightly wet in this area of the building, and the fluorescent lights made it sparkle a little bit. The faint drizzle was partially to blame also.
His phone rang, and he answered it dully. "Hello?"
He stopped in front of the stairwell. His brow creased. "Um," was all he said.
Finally, he started walking again. A few larger drops of rain pattered against the exposed concrete rail, but they were few and far between. There were four flights to the ground.
"But I'm in the middle of going someplace right now," he half-whined. "Why? What did you—the message you left was really weird, though. Weren't you just—huh? Of course not!" Patters of footfalls against the cool rock aggregate echoed upwards and below him. "I don't know—eleven, maybe? Fine. No, I'm not angry, I'm just… yeah. That's it." He sighed as his foot hit the ground. The vending machines in the outer lobby glared back at him in anger and frustration, so he dug around in his pockets for a few coins.
A drink landed in the mouth of the beast with a 'thunk!'. "I just wanted to get out of there for a little while. I've been on edge for… I don't know what it is. You do? Fine, I guess. Yeah." He popped the top and fizz slopped up, splattered on the sidewalk. The drizzle-mist of the air reached deep into his nostrils as he inhaled. "Okay, that works. See you then." Shinji closed the phone and shoved it into his pocket, taking a long gulp of Coke afterward.
There were a few cars in the parking lot, covered in droplets that slithered down panes of glass and sides of doors. A lamplight flickered as he passed it, and a large drop of water narrowly missed him as it made a suicidal leap from the top of the post. The soda fizzled and sloshed around inside the tin can.
In minutes, the can was drained, and so Shinji tossed it into a trash bin in the park as he passed. He idly shoved his hand into his pocket and continued strolling, finding the crumpled piece of paper reach his fingertips once more. Pulling it out, he observed it once again—there was writing on its reverse side that Shinji had missed the first time:
--If you reach a standstill and don't know where to go, do something else. Inspiration can't be forced, but plot advancements can. Discipline is essential to getting anything done.
--Don't plan anything. It ruins the surprise.
--Plan everything. If you don't, your story becomes inconsistent and reeks of suck.
--Balance planning with improvisational writing. There's always the DELETE key for abominations.
--While it's not recommended to rely on dues ex machinas, the device can be warranted. If you do it, make sure it resembles a cartoonishly big red friendly button—that way the audience knows for sure that you're totally shitting them. Don't pretend it means anything significant, though.
--Deconstructionism sucks.
Shinji still couldn't make sense of it, even after rereading the front of the scrap, so he folded it back up and returned it to the pocket with a sigh. Sometimes Kensuke was just plain weird.
What he hadn't quite realized was that his aimless wandering led him directly into Rei's district—something that, on a pseudo-subconscious level, he strongly desired. Consciously, he still repressed the fact that he was actually having sex with her. This fact gave him butterflies in his stomach and scared him shitless at the same time.
Four flights of stairs, fifteen puddles, and only one stubbed toe later, Shinji gently brought his knuckles against the cold metal of the apartment door. He shivered at the feel of the drizzle against his bare arms; wind blew in the droplets from the open windows above his head.
He thought about what he was doing as he waited for the door to open up. He thought about Asuka and what she would say if she ever found out, and about Misato's teasing. He also thought about what his father would do if he ever found out—though that train of thought was contradicted by another train of thought that suggested his father already knew, as he was responsible for the Section-2 reports, and that the utterly non-existent communication between the two of them implied his father's grim approval of the situation.
The door opened slowly and creaked loudly, blowing up his station of deliberation. It revealed pale thighs and a button down white shirt. He smiled a little, warming a fraction at the sight.
She stood there motionlessly, and staring deep into her eyes reminded him of a moon reflected off a red sea. And even though he knew otherwise, for a little while, it felt like everything was OK.