Disclaimer: I don't own Neon Genesis: Evangelion.
Author's Note: Chapter title from "Less Than Zero", by Elvis Costello.
My thanks to you reviewers! This is probably the weakest chapter of the story simply due to its overabundance of dialogue. I liked writing it anyway, and it does have a place in the overall work, but I think it functions best as a dividing line. Next chapter is where things start getting really weird. Violet Shadows, tone & mood are probably the things I put the most value on when writing. Atmosphere is a very important aspect of ANY style of expression that many folks tend to overlook. NemesisZero, meta-ness indeed! Kknd2, there certainly IS something taking shape here! Thanks again!
Nightlife 3.0: Calling Mister Oswald With the Swastika Tattoo
The television flickered uselessly into the lonely apartment. She couldn't bring herself to really focus on what was happening on screen—the events of the day were still too freshly burned in her brain. Outside, a cool breeze disrupted the unbearably humid air of a perpetual summer, and dark clouds hung in the sky like harbingers of some unnamed catastrophe.
"Stupid," Maya breathed, back against the foot of the couch, knees curled up to her chest, eyes red and irritated. "So stupid."
The television flashed vaguely pornographic images of actors barking unintelligible gibberish: "Sync ratio dropping—the entry plug isn't accepting reject signals!"
A familiar figure with dyed blonde hair shouted at the screen. "If he keeps going like this, terminal exhaustion will breach the absolute distress boundary!"
"Shinji! Pull out!" The Major in the red jacket barked. "Maximum ejaculation isn't permitted! Certainty of successful impregnation is invalid! Rei can't handle the fatigue—"
Maya, pillow resting against her knees, stared forlornly out the sliding glass door that emptied onto the concrete patio. The single light on the porch was yellow, and though it was night, she still felt like a downpour was imminent.
The television panned up to reveal a crazed man. "No, let him be." He breathed a distorted fog of perfection though his very pores. His outline was hazy and ill-defined, and the camera couldn't get a good fix on him even as it zoomed in to catch a close-up. "Flax Hardseed commands it," he said.
It was a ping at the door that interrupted Maya from her despair. Setting her pillow aside, she blew her nose into a tissue and deposited it in the wastebasket by the couch before standing up and smoothing out the wrinkles in her uniform. She paused by the bathroom to debate whether washing her face was a worthwhile idea, but she relented when a second ping emanated into the abode.
The door slid open with a whish. She gazed at the newcomers tiredly.
"Guys, do you have any idea how late it is?"
"Ten thirty-eight—"
"—Tokyo-time."
Makoto Hyuga and Shigeru Aoba stood in her doorway, an elongated crate filled with bottles of various shapes and sizes stacked haphazardly inside. The bottle necks poked up like pins in a cushion. The guys grinned at her, but Makoto made a face as he noticed her somewhat disheveled state.
"Were you… are you okay?"
"I'm fine," she unintentionally sniffled and probably gave herself away.
"Right," Shigeru commented. "Come on, we've got loads of booze that we don't feel like trucking back down four flights of steps." She regarded him coldly. "What? We're leaving it here whether you want it or not—and once you see all the good stuff we got our hands on, you won't be able to help yourself."
"And drinking alone is the sign of an alcoholic," Makoto provided energetically. "You weren't sleeping, were you?"
She sighed, and let her features soften a little. Then she shook her head. "No, I wasn't. Come on in, I guess." She stepped back from the door, and the two guys stumbled inside, steps somewhat out of sync as they did their best to keep all the bottles from falling over the side of the crate. "You'll have to excuse the mess," she apologized. "I don't exactly have many people over here."
"I'm sure it's fine," Makoto dismissed.
"Can't be worse than this guy's," Shigeru cracked a smirk as he tilted his head in his cohort's direction.
"My place isn't that bad."
Shigeru grunted a chuckle but left his response at that. They sat the crate on one of the counters in the kitchen and started to unload some of the bottles. "Sure beats my first apartment," he mumbled, referring to the clean and orderly kitchen, as he hefted something with a label too faded to read.
Maya watched from the doorway as they pulled out bottle after bottle. "Where did you guys get all that alcohol?" She asked, somewhat impressed.
"Hah," Makoto barked. "We have our contacts that specialize in everything from the curious to the ordinary to the freakishly outlandish."
"Liquor store below my apartment closed down," Shigeru supplied. "I knew the owner, so when he cleaned out his back room, he offered this stuff to me for cheap."
"Spoilsport."
"Anyway, I had it all sitting in my apartment for the last day and a half—had a bottle of '83 J&B (think that's what it was) in there, but he and I drank that last night with—ah, shit, whatsizname from maintenance—" he snapped his fingers.
"Horaki." Makoto completed.
"Right, right, why do I always forget his family name?" Shigeru tilted his head in annoyance at his own lack of comprehension.
"Well I don't know what 'ninety-three jay and bee' means," Maya couldn't help but let herself grin at their antics as she interrupted the banter. "But how'd it taste?"
"Eight-three," Shigeru corrected.
"And it was awful," Makoto said. "Burned my throat, made my eyes leak acid. I thought this guy would cough his appendix out." He looked her in the eye. "It was great."
Shigeru conceded. "Sure was. Then I come into work this morning, see you zoning out before lunch even hits, not listening to the Major's briefing, neglecting one of the com panels, and next thing I know, you're a pin drop away from terminal waterworks a half hour before shift's over."
"Yeah, when I got to the garage I thought I saw—well, I don't really know, but it just looked like you were really depressed. The way you looked out your windshield…" he trailed off after he noticed Maya's uncomfortable shift and focused intently on the label-less bottle in his hands. "Uh, is this safe?" He suddenly asked Shigeru, who had just placed two bottles of sake beside a small collection of what could have been Irish whiskeys. "There's stuff floating around in it."
Shigeru shrugged absently. "Should be; that guy sold just about everything I'd never heard of before, so I wouldn't be surprised if there's a few bottles of moonshine in here."
Makoto grimaced and put the bottle down beside a Jack Daniels.
"So anyway, we thought we'd stop by, see how you were doing." Shigeru finished. "I mean, you're definitely not a stranger—we've all gone out drinking a few times, after all."
"Once," Maya scoffed.
He raised an eyebrow as he set a bottle of brandy on the counter. "Once? No, more like three or four times—"
Makoto interrupted him. "Actually, one of those times it was with Kaji and Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki, and then another time it was just Fuyutsuki, and one of those times it was with that one girl with the curly red hair that works with Balthazar. Or maybe that was just me and her; I can't remember if you were with us or not."
Maya glanced at them suspiciously, running her fingers through her hair and massaging her scalp. "You guys go drinking with the Sub-Commander?"
Shigeru sniggered as he pulled another bottle out of the crate. "Yeah," he said. "The guy's real cool, really relaxed when he's off duty. He's pretty morbid and depressing in the things he talks about, but—"
"Relaxed? He's as stiff as a board."
"Well, compared to when he's on duty—and anyway, can you blame him? Weight of the world's on his shoulders, man! He'd be crazy not to drink. Besides," he added, shrugging. "He mentioned something about having to continue socializing, kept him in touch with… I dunno, I can't remember what. He said it in that wistful, far-away type voice he uses whenever he recounts depressing stories while he's sloshed."
Maya chuckled. "Somehow I can't see the Sub-Commander getting sloshed, much less with you two."
"And just what is that supposed to mean?" Makoto scoffed indignantly. "Oh by the way, the Major said something about a party at her place Friday. You're invited, everybody's invited, actually, but you know how it is—there are some you just know won't show up. Like the Commander." He frowned and stared at a bottle. "I wonder what he does in his free time," he pondered aloud.
"Drink," Shigeru mumbled. "That's what I'd do in his position."
"And he probably thinks about his wife," Maya said.
"Wife—what?"
"He was married?"
"Yeah, didn't you know?" Maya walked over from the doorframe and looked over the multitude of bottles. "Something happened to her years ago, disappeared. That's part of the reason he's such a… well…"
"Such an asshole, I think is the word you're looking for."
"Actually, I was going to say 'lonely person'," Maya said sardonically as she picked up one of the sake bottles.
Shigeru rolled his eyes. Makoto started going through cabinets looking for glasses. "How do you know this, anyway?"
She shrugged. "Doctor Akagi tells me stuff when we're pulling all-nighters in the labs," she mumbled. Her face twitched when she said the name.
"Ha!" Shigeru spun to Makoto, putting his hand out. "I knew it. Five bucks, now!"
"Wha—I—no way!" the man exclaimed, pulling his head out of one of the lower cabinets. "You can't hold me to a bet I made while I was drunk!"
"Damn right I can," Shigeru laughed, and in it there was an edge of sinister intent.
"And besides," Makoto continued, "her knowing about Ikari's wife isn't enough to prove she's sleeping with him. Could have just slipped out in personal conversation—"
"Oh, come on. Even Fuyutsuki's commented that the man's more guarded than the Vatican."
"Ah, shit. I was hoping you'd forgotten that," came the muffled response from the cabinet.
"No way, pal. Now pay up, a bet's a bet—"
"Ah hah, found some!" Makoto's face emerged, and in his hands were three short glasses.
The bet seemingly forgotten, Shigeru's eyes lit up and he grabbed a few bottles at random. "Alright! Where's a good place to relax?" He asked Maya.
"Uh—" she stepped back a little bit, a reddish tinge brush-stroking across her cheeks. "Well, the living room's a little cluttered with stuff since I wasn't really expecting anyone—whereareyougo—?" Her voice increased in urgency as Makoto disappeared through the doorway, turning left down the short hallway.
"Wow," he said from the next room, Maya's hasty retreat from the kitchen leaving Shigeru holding a bottle of cognac, something unlabeled, and one of the sakes. "You sure have a lot of nineteen-eighties music." For good measure, he decided to grab one of the Irish whiskeys and snuggled it in the crook of his left arm.
"Don't touch any of that," Maya cried as Shigeru entered the room.
"What? I didn't touch anyth—oh man! You actually have a hard copy of this?" Makoto stared intently at one of the CD spines on the shelf. "That's been out of print for decades! One of the old timers on my floor saw this guy live back in the day—apparently there were plans to rerelease this thing before the Impact, but…" he trailed off and shrugged.
Maya looked a little sheepish as she herded him towards the couch. "I don't know what the big deal's about," she said. "Fear has better songs anyway—the only cuts of any value on Slow Dazzle were tracks nine and ten. His cover of 'Heartbreak Hotel' was okay, I guess."
"What are you guys talking about?" Shigeru grunted, amused. He sat the bottles down on the plain wood coffee table in front of the couch, taking the time to clear away a few pieces of paper and three different stacks of novels. "Little behind on your reading?"
"Nothing," she replied. "And yeah, a little. It's all dumb stuff, though…"
Makoto sneaked a glance at the spines after setting down the glasses. "Kierkegaard… Mercedes Lackey? Baudrillard? …Bret Ellis?—jezus, Pynchon?—Nick Sparks?" Everything was a question. "A little eclectic, eh?"
Shigeru cracked a grin. "Ever read American Psycho?"
Maya shook her head. "No, all I've got is Less than Zero. It's hard to get a lot of this stuff since it's all been out of print for so long. And the libraries don't tend to carry… well…" She blushed.
"I gotta admit, I never woulda pegged you as a fan of Ellis' stuff." Makoto mused as he opened the whiskey. "Sparks I could see coming, though."
"Yeah… Ellis is one of my guilty things," she mumbled, watching him pour the drinks as she sat down on the carpet. "I usually read it to take my mind off things… his writing is really cathartic."
"I know what you mean. His stuff reminds me of all those pre-Impact memories—the few I have, anyway." Shigeru sat so his back leaned against the foot of the couch. "It's funny how your perspective changes as you get older. I always used to think that things were so much better then, but looking at it now, they really weren't."
Maya took the glass offered by Makoto's extended hand. "How so?"
"My family was lower middle class," he said simply. "The Impact hit, economies went through the tubes—yeah, I lost my folks a few years after the waters rose, and I went hungry for ages like everyone else did …. But where I had once been looking at a long hard career in car mechanics—something I didn't like anyway—I suddenly had a decent shot at college." He shrugged, took a drink, cleared his throat. "Now look at where I'm at—I'm defending the world against invaders, and I'm making more money than I'd ever seen in my childhood."
"So that's all you care about?" Maya's eyebrows were in her hairline, and Makoto smirked as Shigeru replied.
"Of course not! There's music—a-and this!" He waved his arms about.
Maya was deadpan. "Booze."
"Well—yeah—but I also meant the companionship. The 'us' here. What's going on right now." He clarified.
"To camaraderie," Makoto interjected with a drink, not bothering to see if the other two had raised their glasses.
They were silent for a few minutes. The television's meanderings broke through the gloom, and the wind picked up outside.
"Excavation of the labial context complete," a voice from the TV called. "Bio-units are currently undergoing repairs to cellular walls and abdominal tissues. Estimated time to completion: six hours, three minutes."
"What the—wait, is this… ah… whatsitcalled." Makoto frowned at the TV.
"Evangelion," Shigeru provided. "First aired way back; the station must have just gotten syndication rights for it. I've got the whole series on tape at my place."
"Yeah," Makoto assented, taking another drink. "That's it."
"Why not laserdisc?" Maya asked.
"Huh?"
"Why have you got it on tape?"
"Oh," Shigeru let out a laugh and nodded. "Yeah, I got my tapes from a guy I knew in college, and he'd had them since before the Impact. I don't know if the show ever made it to laserdisc. I don't even know if the studio survived."
Maya sounded a note of understanding and returned her blank gaze to the television.
"It's funny, actually." Shigeru commented. "I don't remember the show looking quite like this. I don't remember that—that guy, the fuzzy one that's out of focus. The rest of the show actually mimics what we do."
"Maybe they gave it the Lucas treatment," Makoto yawned.
Time passed and the television burbled its nonsense of sync ratios and garbled geometric fields—Fabreiza: get those darn blood stains out of your clothing faster than you can power up—mornings are now in Da BAG—white light punctuated by sine waves of electromagnetism—stop dead Maya on the tube vision crying then—empty bottle tossed to the ground—laughs woke a tenant up—drowning static fed on the lion's skull—wish you were here—rainbow drowning noise inside the head of what's to be—prophetic sounds of epiphany—little boy on screen cry baby cry baby go to sleep now—heavy thump bass beat from windows—drop drop dribble splat—red in the eyes and flushed in the skin—"ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha"—are these from the teeth of mechanical raptors or faceless automatons?—went to work earlier today and stared at a computer screen—finding the edges get slightly fuzzed out—pleasant numbness not equal to quadrilateral sensory override—"Coffee?"—got stuck at red light that afternoon and nobody left—thunk, ow—toss a bitter loaf to whine or dine—that's fine—gonna regret it in the morning anyway.
"Have you thought that we're just… that we aren't really in control of our lives?"
"Shig, you're slurring your words together."
"Mak, you're slurring your… hearing. Together. Wait."
"What?"
"You mean like fate?"
"I mean like… like… hmm…"
"Hmm…"
"I don't get it."
"Neither do I."
"I mean like we're illusions built upon fantasies, I guess is what I'm uh… saying."
"Huh?"
"I mean like we're just little nothings built upon more nothing, and that our existences… that our… our existences mean nothing as well. Uh… And that we're sort of nothing because we mean nothing, and that we mean nothing because… we're nothing anyway."
"I think I see where you're going with this…"
"Shig, that makes no sense."
"We pilot fourteen-year-olds watch giant… wait… giant robot… things; we watch them pilot robot… giant… um… I'm not sure if this needs to make sense."
"You're drunk."
"I'm very drunk."
"Can we crash on your floor for the night?"
"…Yeah. Okay."
Does it make the pain go away? Are you better now, with your spoonful of cough syrup prescribed by your doctors? Do you feel warm inside because you drank so damn much? Or is it because of the other two bodies you have laying on your apartment floor?
Maya gazed at the ceiling. "Everything feels different somehow."
"Don't tell me you've never been drunk," Makoto mumbled from the floor, balancing an empty bottle on his forehead.
"No, not that, I mean, different. Like…"
"Like everything means nothing, because we are nothing." Shigeru smirked at something as he said this.
Makoto chuckled, but it quickly lapsed into uncontrolled laughter. The bottle fell off his head.
Maya shook her head. "No, no, no—can't you feel it? Like, it's… different."
"I feel warm and sleepy and just a little crazy," Makoto said.
"I feel numb," Shigeru provided.
She was about to respond, but the television abruptly flickered into nothingness, and the apartment lapsed into darkness.