Covenant Red
Chapter 7: Birdcage
Disclaimer: I do not own Evangelion.
/\/\/\/\
The meeting was last minute but Kensuke expected that kind of breakneck scheduling from WILLE. Downtime was an increasingly rare luxury. His participation in the last battle renewed the drive to increase his weapon proficiency, fast tracking an already hectic training regimen. There was a brief reprieve as Asuka recovered from her injuries, and Kensuke was using it to restore his physical and mental stamina. It simply wouldn't do to greet Instructor Soryu with fatigued negligence.
That, and he was still in the doghouse from his visit to her apartment. He figured a little time to regroup and settle would do them both good. They only saw each other at school, and even then she wasn't really seeing him. Indifference lingered in their meager interactions since; he was just another pebble beneath her feet.
But that would change once they were together in WILLE training again. He'd remind her he was a Child like her, and he'd bury all this unpleasantness under his continued progress. Things had to get back on track.
He received the summons to WILLE over breakfast, unceremoniously mandating the rest of his day before it got started. Not that his Sundays were typically packed with meaningful activity but it was the assumptive tone his superiors used when stealing his off hours that was irksome.
Kensuke finished his waffle, brushed his teeth and called Toji to make the trip into headquarters together. He was already en route, in the city on errands.
"You're an early riser," he chided.
"Eh," Toji said. "I had stuff to do. When else am I going to do it?"
"I guess. When do you sleep, man?"
"What else is school for? See you at HQ."
Kensuke headed downtown to the train depot. There was a healthy crowd out, bustling in an oblivious rush. Any damage from the previous battle was repaired and swept from the public's mind. In a sense it was impressively hopeful how stubborn humans were in the face of repeated assault. Just pick up the pieces of what was left and carry on.
He spied the tram gate leading to headquarters at the top of a row of escalators, discreetly tucked into an inconspicuous corner of architecture. Kensuke checked a large clock on the wall. He had time to grab a soda from the food court before the meeting.
He paid with a swipe from his WILLE debit card and looked for an empty table to relax at. Most were occupied. To his left, a middle-aged man browsing a financial magazine over a coffee. Ahead, a family of four; two weary parents blaming each other with silent, accusatory glances, and a pair of unaware, noisy boys. To his right, Asuka Langley Soryu doing her best to blend into the crowd behind her phone. Which was, even with her skills, impossible.
Kensuke slipped through the shackles of social tact and good judgment, and was walking towards her before he realized it was a mistake.
"Soryu," he greeted. Zero response. Maybe she was just really focused on her phone. "Good morning. I wasn't expecting to see you here."
Again, no reaction. He rolled the dice and made to sit at her table. She kicked the chair away and he collapsed. He managed not to spill his entire soda.
"I'll stand," he decided.
Asuka was forced to lift her feet onto a free chair as his drink oozed over the tile floor.
"Always making a mess," she muttered. She finally glanced over her phone in his general direction. "So this is how you dress on your day off, huh?"
He looked over his cargo shorts and t-shirt. "Yeah?"
"At least when you're in school you can blame the uniform on someone else."
"Then, how about you give me some tips? Let's hit the mall."
"Not on your life, kid."
Asuka was back to hurling insults. Things felt back to normal.
Kensuke hoped the other night's progress at her apartment, notwithstanding the whole violating her privacy and getting kicked out parts, would prove a springboard to a closer bond. Her tone since then communicated he definitely lost some points. At best, he was back to square one.
But that was okay, he told himself. He now knew what not to do. Sneaking into her bedroom was a bad idea. He probably wouldn't do that again. But he gleaned invaluable information on her and promised to utilize it once the time was right.
"So," Kensuke began, "it's good to see you out. I guess your arm's feeling better?"
Wow, he thought, watching her face. That was the wrong subject to bring up.
"I mean, you're here waiting for the tram to WILLE, right? Since the meeting's coming up soon, we could—"
"What meeting?" Asuka asked.
"Uh, you did get the message to report to HQ this morning, didn't you? Toji should be there by now."
"You must have dreamt all that," she said, though she thumbed through her phone records to check. "Why would they hold a meeting and tell you two but not me?"
"That is kind of weird."
"Must be an oversight. WILLE has its head so far up its own butt of course they summon the fodder Children and not me." Asuka hummed in idle thought, opening a text message. "I was supposed to meet Hikari for some reason, but your secret party is bugging me. I'll have to crash it."
Count Kensuke in. A chance to spend some quality time in the cramped tram to base was a godsend. They headed to it, Asuka firing off a short rain check to the class representative before returning to the previously opened astronomy app. He smiled, learning something new about her. They boarded.
"So, are you—"
"Shut up," she sighed, never looking away from her phone.
They travelled in silence. He looked on the bright side: she smelled fantastic and looked even better.
They exited the tram into WILLE. They passed through the front gates and Asuka gave Kensuke the honor of leading, mostly since she didn't know where the meeting was. As they reached the designated conference room he caught sight of her arm again, still lightly bandaged.
"You're sure you're okay?" he blurted, opening the door.
"I'm fine, mom. Your misguided anxiety only shows how little you know me. I don't need the peanut gallery—"
Asuka stopped dead in her tracks. She stared straight ahead with wide disbelief. Kensuke followed her gaze.
Before them in the room was the expected WILLE regulars, along with Toji, the Commander, and a girl he never saw before. She turned towards them. Blood red eyes appraised him with clinical impassivity.
Before anyone could react Asuka darted past Kensuke. She vaulted over a couch to reach the girl, and brought a forearm up to pin her to the wall by her throat.
"What is this thing doing out of its cage?!" Asuka snarled.
There was a moment of shock. The attack so swiftly destroyed decorum everyone simply watched it occur. The Commander was the first to recover.
"Let her go, Soryu," she calmly warned. She was cautiously staying put, treating the situation like a stray cat wandered into the base.
The other adults shifted to accommodate the Commander, letting her take the lead. Maya looked pale. Toji was tensed, ready for combat, but his sights remained locked on the new girl, not Soryu.
"I'm out for a few days and you completely abandon all sense of self-preservation?" Her body language was composed tension, a focused, targeted rage. "This monster should never walk free again."
"It was never your decision to make."
"You should have told me," Asuka hissed at Misato. "I have a right to know."
"What you have is an order. Let her go, now."
The girl finally reacted to being strangled against the wall. She had accepted the attack, not defending herself in the least. Now her hands inched upward, thin fingers weakly searching for relief against Asuka's forearm. She clenched her teeth shut. She closed her eyes.
The girl gasped for breath.
"Soryu!" Misato yelled.
Asuka stepped back and retracted her arm. The girl slumped to the floor, coughing dimly. Maya wobbled on her feet. Toji looked away.
"It was too soon for you to come back," the Commander said to Asuka. They exchanged a glare. "Go home and cool your head."
"Go to hell."
Kensuke was too stunned to speak. He watched Asuka storm back out of the base towards the tram. She ignored him completely as she passed. Her face was a halted murder.
"That went better than expected," Ritsuko said, eyeing the girl on the floor slowly rise, using the wall for support. No one offered help.
Kensuke finally broke from his paralysis to gesture wildly. "What was that all about?!"
The others appraised him with varying degrees of pitied discomfort for his ignorance. The Doctor sighed, stepping forward to educate.
"That was about what you can expect working with teenagers," she muttered before clearing her throat. "You seem prone to severe introductions, Aida. Our apologies. We hoped to avoid something like what just occurred. Springing this on Soryu was, as we imagined, disastrous."
"Why?" He looked at the new girl, absently probing her throat. "Who is that?"
"This is Rei Ayanami," Ritsuko said. "The First Nephilim."
/\/\/\/\
Kensuke was proud he didn't freak out or run away. It helped everyone around him was calmly accepting the situation, Asuka's assault notwithstanding. Despite the subdued mood he found himself on edge, his fingers unconsciously searching out his rifle's trigger as a Nephilim stood before him.
Granted, this Nephilim was not some genderless grotesquery indiscriminately tearing apart the city or mowing people down. Although her eyes, and he was pretty sure it was a her, remained a constant, unwavering red.
"I'm sure you have questions," Ritsuko said.
"A few."
"The results of the last battle were substandard," Misato began.
"Gee, thanks," Kensuke mumbled.
"Two injured Children and a reserve called to take emergency action to defeat the Nephilim. This is unacceptable. We're adopting a more aggressive stance. Effective immediately, Ayanami is reinstated into WILLE's combat force."
"Reinstated?" He looked back at the girl, standing at attention like nothing happened.
"Ayanami lives on base," Ritsuko said, "and she has combat experience prior to your arrival. She'll be helping out again on the front lines."
"But…" Kensuke felt like a jerk needing to say the obvious. "But you said she's a Nephilim." The girl appeared to take no offense at being talked around, staring calmly ahead.
"She's on our side," Misato stated, and that was apparently enough for everyone else in the room.
Including Toji, who was relaxed again, acting more bored than anything else. He refused to look at Rei, but remained positioned within striking distance.
Ritsuko nodded briefly. "Ayanami, if you would."
She stared at Kensuke. Her eyes flashed a brighter red and the lights dimmed.
"Ayanami's blood skill is energy manipulation," the Doctor explained. "She can use her body as a conduit and redirect or siphon power from external sources. Including AT fields, effectively weakening Nephilim defenses."
Her eyes returned to their normal coloring. The lights brightened.
"Ayanami is our Nephilim radar. As soon as they move within her range she can detect, and weaken their AT fields. Her ability is proximity sensitive, meaning the closer the target is, the weaker she can make it. It's a dangerous tradeoff, but it's also the best chance we have at defeating them."
And she's okay with that? Kensuke thought. Using a Nephilim to find, and kill, other Nephilim? He recalled Mana's concerns. I guess I don't know WILLE.
An excited litany of questions had not met with favorable results in the past and he forced himself to calm down. Before he could articulate anything the Commander made to depart, drawing in Ritsuko and Rei behind her.
"Training exercises are postponed until tomorrow. Dismissed." Misato turned aside to Ritsuko: "Give Ayanami a once-over. Make sure Soryu didn't do any lasting damage."
Kensuke bit his tongue. He knew when adults made up their minds there was no arguing with them, even if he was right.
The meeting dispersed; Misato left with Dr. Akagi and Rei in tow, the lieutenants filed out to return to duty. Asuka had not come back. Kensuke wondered if she would.
That left him and Toji alone in the empty conference room. The taller boy shook his head, banishing the entire incident from his mind, and headed to the door. Kensuke quickly fell in step beside him as he left for the tram.
"So," he tried, "a new teammate, huh?"
Toji shrugged dismissively. "I've worked with Ayanami before."
"Really?"
"Yeah." His tone announced that was the end of that conversation.
"Still, it's good news, right? Having another Child to help out—"
"She isn't a Child," Toji stated.
His tone was fatigued, drained of emotion. His posture followed suit, his limbs hanging off his frame. Every step was heavy.
They walked.
"What the heck?" Kensuke finally asked. "I thought Nephilim were our enemies. You know, those ugly monsters hell-bent on our destruction?"
He sighed like an old man. "It's a long story. But it boils down to what the Commander and Doc already told you. Ayanami is on our side. Leave it at that."
"But why wasn't she around helping us before? And why did Soryu attack her like that?"
"Look," Toji said. His tone was brisk but lacked anger. "Just shoot what WILLE tells you to shoot and you'll be fine. All these questions aren't doing anybody any favors."
"Ayanami is going into battle with you and Soryu from now on," Kensuke reminded him. "You really expect to function together as a team like this?"
"We did before, more or less. We know our jobs. And we'll do them. It'd be best if you did that, too."
They reached the gate before the tram back to the city. Toji passed through. Kensuke stayed put.
"I don't think this is the best way to handle things," he said.
Toji did not look back. "We got our orders. Follow them."
/\/\/\/\
Kensuke considered it rationally. Where would a teenage girl hang out if confined to base? He checked the galley, the rec room, even the small library without success. Toji was no help, and none of the WILLE employees he passed seemed interested in discussing the situation.
Screw it, he thought. He pulled out his phone and called Aoba.
He answered between the first and second ring. "Aida. What can I do for you?"
How to phrase it without looking like a stalker. "Actually, I'm still in base and…"
"I know. GPS."
"Oh." He buried that information for a future anxiety attack. "Right. Well, I was wondering about Ayanami since I just met her today, and I haven't seen her around base, but I got the impression she would be here. I mean, you guys don't keep her in a literal cage… do you?"
"She is part of WILLE," Aoba reminded him.
"So, that's a 'no' to the cage question."
"What do you want from me, Aida?"
"Look, I… I just want to talk to her. The Commander and Dr. Akagi acted like she's a tool, Toji can't be bothered with this, and Soryu—" He sighed. "You said it yourself: she's a part of WILLE. So I think since I'm a part of it too, I should at least say hi before treating her like a bad rash."
"Again, what do you want from me?"
"Where is Ayanami right now? If you have tabs on my phone you probably know where she is."
The line went mute. Kensuke wondered if he was checking her location, or asking permission to do so. He expected a tired "it's classified."
"Fifth level, arboretum wing."
"Oh. Thanks," Kensuke said, covering his surprise.
"And Aida," Aoba said, "good luck."
/\/\/\/\
The base, although a tangle of convoluted hallways on map, was clearly labeled, and Kensuke found the fifth level without much difficulty. He came to a wide door flanked by two armed guards. Neither openly acknowledged his approach.
"Uh, hi," Kensuke tried. No response. "I can go through here, right?" Again, silence. He edged his way between them and opened the door. That wasn't awkward at all.
He stepped into light. WILLE's arboretum was a sprawling, high ceilinged chamber meticulously recreating the kind of bucolic splendor Kensuke expected in a national park. Despite still being underground it was bathed in noonday brightness. The roof was a curved dome, covered in thousands of faceted blue metallic plates simulating a cloudless sky.
A walkway snaked through clusters of trees, isolated gardens and a sizeable body of sparkling water. Kensuke felt like he was in his youth again, camping in the wilderness on the outskirts of his hometown.
The nostalgia was short-lived. The recreation was immaculate, but it remained a recreation. Everything was clearly planned and designed, lacking the natural random charm of the real world. It was spotlessly clean, from the walkway's pressure-treated plating to each individual plant. The arboretum was also eerily silent. No birds sang, no wildlife rustled the underbrush.
It felt out of place. What purpose did this serve, deep underground in a paramilitary organization? Kensuke recalled the stark cafeteria, and its video walls. It was like WILLE was a half-finished project, designed by two people in a competition to out-juxtapose each other.
He travelled the walkway until it bent around the lip of the pond to a bench. Rei was there, sitting in calm repose with a thin book. Kensuke noted her posture was excellent.
His approach was met with indifference. He cleared his throat. No reaction.
"Hi," he offered.
Rei's eyes flickered in his direction, then returned to her book.
"I'm Kensuke Aida. We sort of didn't meet earlier." He didn't get reciprocation. This was killing his batting average. "So, what are you reading?" She made no effort to show or tell. He craned his neck. "Oh. A WILLE calendar. Always good to stay up to date on what's happened lately."
Still nothing. Kensuke wondered if she took any offense to his killing of her fellow Nephilim. He decided on a different route.
"Nice day today," he said. He remembered they were underground. "I mean, it's nice that we can get sunlight down here. I think. I asked Lt. Hyuga about it once and he talked about a system of mirrors or something… That's pretty cool, I guess."
Rei continued reading. After dealing with Asuka for so long, it felt unnatural to be simply ignored by a girl instead of insulted, and then ignored.
He peered at her, planning the next volley. Maybe it was her pale skin combined with the unusual lighting, but there was a faint glimmer around her.
Spooky.
His sight was drawn to the bruise on her neck, a purplish stain on otherwise flawless skin. Despite himself Kensuke let his eyes dip further. It was unfortunate. Ayanami had beautiful features and a stellar figure, but her skin tone and messy, bizarre hair were truly off-putting. To say nothing of her bloody eyes. Or her personality of passive abuse-sponge.
His sight flitted back up. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe she did have a rebellious streak. Although she was clad in the somber colors of a modified WILLE female uniform, she sported a sleek, polished black choker with a digital clasp. It looked high-tech and expensive, jewelry he expected on a girl of Soryu's fine tastes.
"That collar is pretty," Kensuke remarked. Girls like compliments about their appearance, right? "Very chic."
Rei read.
"Not that I know about fashion or anything. I just go for what's comfortable, you know?"
Rei turned a page.
"Not like there's a mall down here, but, uh, yeah. I guess that uniform is comfy? It, um, fits well."
Talking at someone as opposed to engaging in conversation wasn't entirely alien to him. Toji liked video games, but he was casual, taking no interest in the finer technical aspects. Most of Kensuke's interactions with Soryu consisted of being repeatedly shot down. Even the teachers at school weren't above speaking over their students.
But Ayanami's silence didn't stem from arrogance or boredom or even shyness. Her apathy to friendly stimulus felt like a complete lack of social responsiveness; her actions would not alter if he left, continued making small talk, or stood on his head and barked like a dog.
Well, Kensuke thought, if I was nearly choked and no one lifted a finger to help me, I guess I'd block it all out, too.
He wanted to think of her as human. She looked like a human, moved like a human, breathed like a human. She was not an acid-spitting monster slaughtering UN troops and his neighbors. She was a girl reading a book.
"Are you okay?" Kensuke finally asked her.
"What do you mean?" Rei spoke, not looking away from her current page.
He refused to cheer at the victory. "About what happened earlier today. Doesn't it bother you?"
"No."
A girl of few words. But at least he achieved verbal recognition.
"Well, it bothered me," he declared. Not that I rushed in to save you. "Everyone said you're part of the team, but no one acted like it. We should be helping each other out."
"WILLE has a use for me," she stated. "Their behavior towards me is irrelevant."
"Even when they attack you?"
Asuka might be a verbal flamethrower in dispensing insults but she never tried to kill him or Toji. The way she snapped to physical violence was unexpected, even on the battlefield. It had to be more than an instinctual reaction to finding a Nephilim before her.
"Why did Soryu do that?" he asked quietly.
"I do not know."
"No, I mean… Yeah, I don't know either, but why does she seem so upset with you?"
"I do not know."
Kensuke had a stubborn flashback of Ritsuko telling him "it's classified" to his walls of questions. He slumped.
"So," he began, "it's just like Toji said. You'll all work together in battle and that's it. How can anybody be okay with that?"
Rei's eyes crawled away from her book to find the pond. The surface was a deep blue.
"All I have is in WILLE," she said. "There is nothing for me outside its walls."
/\/\/\/\
He couldn't help but feel the day was a bust. His chance to interact with Soryu, while unanticipated, fell flat. The returning good mood in the wake of Mana's conversation was scuttled. He again felt like an outsider among WILLE members, wading in the surf of a vast, unknowable ocean.
"I've fought for them, I sit through weeks of tests and do whatever they say," Kensuke muttered as he waited for the tram back to the city. "I think I've earned some trust. Or treatment beyond 'security risk.' It's only fair."
He pictured Rei, silent and alone, reading mission summaries in a mock-up of the real world. He knew what happened today was not fair.
"Mr. Aida."
He turned. Maya Ibuki was approaching from a bend in the hall. She looked exhausted but welcoming as ever.
"Oh, hello."
Out of his regular contacts at WILLE, she felt the most accessible. Toji was a friend, but his gung-ho loyalty to the organization wasn't answering any questions. Ms. Ibuki at least had the common decency to act contrite when she couldn't supply information. It didn't hurt that she was amazingly cute, either.
"Busy day?" he tried.
Maya laughed lightly. "You could say that. I'm coming off a triple shift. Times like this I reconsider keeping a place on base."
"I guess there was a lot to do for Ayanami?"
She shifted. "Yes. Re-commissioning her isn't exactly a rubberstamp affair."
"Yeah, Toji mentioned he worked with her before. I guess Soryu did, too." He saw her pained expression. "Classified, huh?"
"No. But I don't think it's my place to meddle in this."
Kensuke sighed. "Toji said it was a long story. I'll keep bugging him until he tells me." Given his other routes of Red and Blue oni, Suzuhara would be a cakewalk.
Maya smiled. "Lt. Aoba told me you called him. I think it's very nice that you wanted to talk to Ayanami."
"For all the good it did. I don't think she's in the market for a friend."
"She can be difficult to get to know. To be honest, I met her years ago and I can count the number of words she's said to me on one hand."
They boarded the tram. With a lurch it started back aboveground. They sat across from each other, Maya fending off sleep, Kensuke striving to stay serious and not admire Ms. Ibuki's legs again.
"So," he began, suddenly aware of what was bugging him for hours, "does this mean the other Nephilim were like Ayanami? They could talk, and read, and reason?"
"Nephilim are inhuman," she stated. It didn't sound too rehearsed. "Ayanami is an exception. As such, special accommodation was given when she agreed to fight on our side."
Her tone was different now, edging well into professional territory. Kensuke didn't want to burn this bridge and backed off a step.
"Does that accommodation include wardrobe?" he joked lightly. "That choker she had on was definitely not standard-issue."
Maya looked away like he just insulted a dead relative.
"What?" he asked.
She bit her lip in silent debate. "That collar isn't a fashion statement. It's a precaution the Commander took."
Kensuke peered at her for enlightenment.
"It's a bomb," she finally explained, "that will end her life if she does anything against direct orders. The Commander has the trigger on her at all times."
The friendly openness that colored their interactions dissolved. Maya suddenly felt like an enemy. Everyone at WILLE seemed poised to end Ayanami through overt or covert violence. Did they really consider her nothing but a commodity? Did they consider him the same way?
Maya tried to rebound, prodding him with benign small talk; how was school, how was living at the complex. Kensuke made sure to be polite, falling back on his Office Manners to avoid further conflict. He stopped asking questions.
He made an excuse not to ride back to his apartment with Maya. He wandered the streets under a twilight glow. He scanned the crowds for burly agents in dark suits with earpieces tracking his movements. WILLE bugged his phone, had access to his apartment and commanded enough resources to place a phantom tether around his neck, keeping him caged in the city. He wondered if this was how Ayanami felt.
/\/\/\/\
End of chapter 7
Author notes: Worry not! This isn't going DARK on you.
Next chapter: Les bêtes.