Fifteen years in.
Shinji Ikari sat on the floor of the carriage. He was alone.
He went to work and sat at the desk, too tired to sleep. He stared at his hands.
2-A saluted as it went past, split up, and sat before him - stock-still, quiet.
At some point he woke up again. He was so tired he hadn't even noticed himself falling asleep.
2-A hadn't moved.
He checked his watch. "Okay, take a break for tea."
They didn't move. "Shoo."
One of them nearly made to move, but a Political Pilot shot them a look and they froze. Shinji rubbed his temples. "You're dismissed. Now shoo."
They saluted and most of them filed out. One hunkered down and slept at their desk. Another, fragile-looking one flopped onto theirs and hugged themselves mumbling something over and over.
"I was wondering what they'd do."
"And?" Shinji said, not looking up.
"I pulled out a magazine about halfway through. One of the Political Pilots actually called me out on it."
"And?"
"She said I wasn't setting a good example. She threatened to report me to Okada."
Shinji frowned. "Who?"
"He said you'd ask that. 'Poster kid'."
"I can't remember everyone's names," he retorted, and avoided reflecting on that statement by keeping the conversation going with the first thing that came to mind about... Poster-Boy. Fuck. How long ago had that been, that first meeting? He'd met the kid since then, of course. And 'Poster Boy' had to be at least 20 by now. "Since when did Poster Boy start getting all serious about anything?"
"He hasn't, to Dr Akagi's supreme frustration. He's still taking his post... geddit, post," Shinji refused to be amused by something that wasn't even a real play on words "about as seriously as ever. Which is a damned good thing. Just imagine what we'd be like if Takada was Chief Political Officer!"
He rallied. "But still, that girl was goddamn hilarious. She actually said I'd" he did the voice "'never defeat The Enemy without conviction in The Final Victory'!"
Shinji grinned. Political Officer Kensuke Aida continued "But the best part is, she hasn't fought a single battle yet!"
"Not one?"
"Nope!"
Kensuke Aida Junior was everything his late father hadn't been - calm, competent, and an Evangelion pilot who'd been with them for about two years now.
They laughed together, though the new girl's delusional self-righteousness wasn't actually that funny.
They really had nothing to talk about after that. Shinji liked to think the silence between them was a comfortable one.
"Can I ask you a question?"
He knew what came next. Aida didn't take his silence as a signal not to press him.
"It's about my father..."
Shinji sighed. "What about him?"
"How did he die?"
He gave his answer careful thought, but in the end abandoned it in favour of the truth. "It had nothing to do with Eva. He was basically our team mascot, I guess. He never piloted, and he was only ever in one once. But he kept us together, I guess, in those early years. If it wasn't for him, spurring us on, I don't think we'd have made it."
He thought about forcing his hands open, and onto the desk. But he left them alone. He could see that Aida Junior was on the verge of telling him that it was okay, and that he didn't have to go on, and saying 'I know it must be hard for you' without having any idea what that really meant.
...no, that was unfair. Aida did know. He just hadn't been at it for... so long. So long...
"I guess it's a wound that's never really healed, losing all of them. It was stupid, and it shouldn't have happened. The world wanted safety on a shoestring, so my friends died. And I lived. I always live. And now they have these guys," he motioned to the nearly-empty classroom, "Not that it's ever enough. It's all temporary solutions, one patch on top of another on a boat that's more holes than hull, sinking slowly but surely."
He took a deep breath "But your father wasn't there for any of that. He didn't see what Nerv has become. He only knew it in the 'good old days', when it had a face and that face was Asuka, and Mari, and everyone else, and not just me..."
He could see Aida was past the point of knowing what to say. "It's fine. You don't have to say anything. Just... you hearing this is enough. It's enough." He closed his eyes, and didn't say a word more.
Eventually, he opened them again and Political Officer Aida was at the back of the fully-returned class, overseeing discipline.
Shinji flipped his folder open to a random page.
He stood up, chalk in hand. "The engagement to destroy Angel X-23..."
Shinji walked down the line. "And what did you do?"
She hesitated. "I... I overturned a nest of the insidious collaborationist foe, sir." She saluted weakly.
Her own parents, in other words. Her rank/comendations pips said she was a junior pilot whose relative - i.e. a sibling - had died in action as a pilot.
They'd - her parents - probably asked too many questions about what'd happened to her sibling. Or maybe they'd tried to go political with it. Maybe the loss had been a spur to action, no matter how self-destructive and unlikely to succeed.
He caught the squad's Political Pilot glaring at her from the corner of his eye, and made him back down with a glare of his own.
Her evident lack of pride in what she'd done would probably cause her grief in the form of her squad-mates. He drew on what was by now an old lie to cover for people like her. "Try not to be overwhelmed by your pride. It's okay to admit pleasure at such an accomplishment. After your personal sacrifice, none can question" - for a moment his gaze flicked to the Political Pilot - " your commitment to realising The Final Victory."
He delicately - almost daintly - gripped her wrist and lifted it, pressed the medal into her palm and squeezed her fingers closed around it. He gave a her a pointed look.
Sorry.
"No running away after this, Miss. Stay behind please."
He moved to the next Child.
He dismissed them, and she remained.
"How long have you been with us, Miss...?"
"Horaki. Six days, sir."
"Horaki?"
"Yes, s-"
"Don't call me 'sir', ever again. It make me feel old."
"Yes, Mister Ikari."
He was silent for a long moment. "Horaki?"
"Yes, sir?"
"Your sibling served."
"No, sir. It was my mother."
"And her name was?"
"Hikari, sir?"
He was old. So, so old. In that moment, he felt the weight of his age - and had to steady himself on his feet. Half-dazed, he found himself speaking. "How old are you, Miss Horaki?"
"13, s-... Mister Ikari."
"What was your mother like, Miss Horaki?" He closed his eyes.
"I don't remember. I was too little."
He breathed deep, and calmly. "So who did you report, if not your parents?"
"My guardian." She looked about ready to tear up again. "He wasn't... nice... but I didn't think they'd actually..."
"Shh, shh, it's fine. It's-" She broke down. He ended up crouched down, hugging the tiny child to his chest - kids were so small these days, each generation shorter than the next - while she bawled her eyes out.
He pulled out the cellular phone's antenna and called her.
"What."
"It's me."
Her voice warmed a little. "Shinji. Make it quick?"
"I want to adopt a pilot," he said. "like you did me."
She was quiet for a change. "That's... a big ask. I'm not sure I can authorise that."
"Sure you can. Nerv regulations haven't changed since father's time, have they?"
"Well, no, but... what's the rush?"
"She's the daughter of... one of my comrades' friends."
"Oh. She doesn't have parents?"
"A guardian. But she turned them in."
"Oh..."
He had to admit that sounded bad. He was hardly the mostly politically-acceptable Nerv member himself. "He sounds like a real bastard. No sexual or physical abuse, but total emotional neglect."
"Like me," he added. "But not with you, obviously." That didn't sound too great either. "But mostly, I guess... just talking to her? She may be the only normal girl left in the world. Her guardian was some high-flyer so she's rarely been hungry, and she's just so good, and nice, and... I don't want the others to bully her into shape, like they do for all the unorthodox ones. I can't just stand by and let them break her."
Another long silence. "Unorthodox?"
"She didn't do Ritsuko's 'training'. Which I don't agree with, by the way, I'm just making that clear. But she won't be dissuaded." He sighed. "Every time I talk to her, she just throws up this... wall of statistics, and all these psychological concepts I can't even begin to understand, and...-"
"-Can you believe that woman wants more resources for her indoctrination projects? Just last week she had the nerve to come to me complaining of budget shortfalls."
"You really can't stop her?"
"No. The Committee keeps going over my head. Restricting her budget is the best I can do. But I'm almost certain she's using 'creative acounting' to get what she wants anyway..."
She changed topic. "Why are you even seeing her anyway?"
Shinji cringed. They'd been here before. Many times. "We're not seeing each other-"
"-So, what, you're just a booty-call to her? I swear, that woman has no-"
"-Misato, please. I don't want to talk about this."
He wished they could just get along. But he knew that could never happen. Not anymore. "Can I take her or not? Miss Horaki, into my care. I can, right?"
He half-expected the silence to go on even longer than it did. "Yes. Just... don't make my mistakes, okay, Shinji?"
"Hey, there weren't that many. You were better than father, anyway. Father and my old guardian. A lot better. Which wasn't exactly hard, in father's case, but..."
He was getting off-topic. "But don't worry. I won't."
He wished he had confidence in that promise.
"So. That's the strategic situation," said the commander.
"In a nutshell," said the captain.
The minister thought it over, then spoke. "So, things are... bad, or so you say. I can see you're very concerned about this 'critical strength' level, though I confess I don't quite see the need for, ah, such concern, but I can see what you mean when you say MkXII production is too low... now, morale is also low, I hear."
"Maybe, but Rits- I mean, Dr Akagi has some ideas. We don't approve, but... she says we've maxed out our morale. So she wants more discipline."
He wasn't getting through. "She wants to make it so it takes more courage to retreat than to advance. I'd rather die than implement her program, but The Committee seems intent on going over our heads and giving her even more power. I'm telling you, this won't help. She may increase discipline, but just think what it'll do for morale! Morale isn't something you can stamp out of steel for three million dollars a unit! There is no, substitute, for an adequate diet and a healthy, normal living environment. They may be decent pilots, but they are horrendous human beings and their teamwork is a joke! They just can't... interact with each other, let alone bond or learn good teamwork, like normal people do! And no amount of discipline is going to change that. She's got it fundamentally wrong."
It'd come out as little better than a wall of sound. He sighed. "She's a brilliant lady, but she just doesn't understand people. We need to return to the old part-time piloting and support-network method, and more than anything we need increased rations. I know it's not fair, but even a small increase in rations will go a long way. We don't even have 200 pilots, so a little calorie increase isn't going to break the bank."
"Thank you, Captain. You know I value your input and I can assure you, we're negotiating with our sponsors to the fullest extent of our abilities-"
"-Ha. Like that's ever changed anything-"
"-What would you have me do, Mr Ikari? You know what I have to battle with. If it was that easy to give you everything you want, believe me, I would have done it a long time ago. I know how hard you work. Both of you. And I promise you, I'm trying. But I can only do so much." He sighed.
"So, thank you, Captain. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry I can't do more." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Though there is one thing I can do. The Prime Minister has authorised me to activate your strategic reserve. Your Chief Science Officer - Dr Ibuki? - has only given me the details of five of the reserve's units. I'd appreciate it if you could disclose the remaining units' details."
The captain and the commander exchanged a look the minister couldn't decipher, and the minister opened his folder to the relevant article and pointed it out to them. "Only Units One, 78, 939, 1749, and 2404 are listed. While I understand that five units is the minimum reserve that we had stipulated, we had authorised a maximum strength of... one hundred ninety-nine units. Yet this is all I was given when I asked after the strategic reserve."
The Nerv people exchanged another look, then the commander spoke. "That's all we have. And they're the reserve for a reason. Captain Ikari here is not just Head of Tactical Operations, but also the pilot of Unit One. He can't be in two places at once, one or both his roles will suffer if he is activated, even if he doesn't directly participate in an operation."
She continued "Unit 78 doesn't even have a pilot right now, our only replacement is too young and doesn't even have a week's training. Unit 939 is Lieutenant Sivright," she clarified for Shinji "Dylan. He's head-teacher for our pilot academy. Unit 939 is Captain Okada Toshio, Dr Akagi's chief political officer. And Units 1749 and 2404 are the junior academy instructors."
She dumbed it down. "If we put these people on the line, then we're destroying our future. We... didn't that luxury with the first generations," she said, Shinji not meeting her eye "and that was one of our greatest mistakes. While they may be our best fighters, they are literally irreplacable. And not just for morale purposes."
She added, with another aside glance "And I don't need to tell you what losing Unit One would look like."
Shinji's silence worried her. She'd said too much. The minister, too, was quiet. She was surprised when Shinji spoke first.
"I'm sorry we aren't what you expected," he said. "We even lie to ourselves, these days, so you shouldn't be so surprised. Yesterday I told squad 2-A that five hundred combat-ready Evas with positron rifles would be here by next month," the captain added.
He raised his head and gave Shinji a look. "So you didn't think it'd damage their morale when a month passes and five hundred Evas with positron rifles don't just magically appear?"
"No."
"No?"
"No."
"And why not?"
"They'll be dead."
He sensed he'd just killed the conversation for good.
After a long, long silence, it stirred again with more words from the minister.
"You have my apologies, Captain. I... think I already know the answers to these next questions, having heard what I have from you," he said shifting his papers "but I have to ask them anyway. The Cabinet had held hopes that Dr Akagi's new positron cannon-"
"-doesn't work, and never will. Dr Akagi says we've reached the limits of what's physically possible with the materials we have."
"...well, the drones-"
"-Two years from production," she said. Shinji chipped in. "I.e. never."
"I...see. And the Wunder?"
Shinji grimaced more than he snorted as she spoke. "Made up. Name's short for 'Die Fantastische Wunderwaffe'."
Shinji knew hope was contagious, but surely people as high up as them knew Nerv couldn't afford to waste resources on something so ridiculous.
Then again, the most effective lie was one you wanted to be true, e.g. 'father loves me'. (Ha. Ha. Ha.)
The man sat.
Shinji exchanged a look with her. "Do you need a minute?"
"Yes," he said in a small voice.
"Again, I'm sorry," Shinji said.
"No, no... it's okay," he said "it's... nobody's fault, really. We're all just doing the best we can, right?"
Shinji wondered whether he should say what came to him, in that moment. It wasn't something he could say to anyone else, apart from Ritsuko.
"Too bad it's not good enough," he said.
Thanks again for your responses, it's been... quite something, to have such detail and quality of feedback. So thanks for giving it to me.
If you could kindly review again/as well, that would be good of you - chances are, if you're reading these words you've kept your thoughts to yourself. Please don't.
Thanks for reading, for reviewing, and for letting me share a fair bit of myself with you. You're a great, if far-too-quiet, audience!