My body didn't have time to adjust as I was quickly thrust up back into the world by way of a gurney and armed guards.
I couldn't even open my eyes as a doctor started flashing a small light into my eyes and saying things I couldn't articulate at that point in time.
Finally, after what felt like hours of being a piece of a somewhat stale piece of bread with a severe case of cramps, I finally spoke, "where...where...", It came out in barely a whisper like I was whispering from the bottom of my throat.
"hmm", a brown-haired young woman hummed out from her lightly closed lips, seemingly jotting down every single thing that I did.
"Oh!... What did you say Shinji?", asked the doctor as she looked away from her clipboard to gaze down at me...from so high up.
"where...who...", I whispered, adding a new question to my growing list of them.
" Where?...well I can't really tell you that but as to who, my name is Nazumi.", answered the doctor who put a cheery exterior, but Shinji wasn't sure if it was real, especially compared to the looks that the four armed men who were at all corners of the elevator that they were taking up were giving him.
"Nazumi...Nazumi...", I said letting the new word roll off of my week tongue a few times so I could get used to it.
"Hmm, yes that's my name!", Nazumi said using that strange humming again, mixed with that cheeriness that Shinji couldn't make out if it was fake or not.
Shinji wanted so badly to get off that gurney, but he was too afraid of what the guards might do if he moved... always so afraid.
"Any other questions, Shinji?", Nazumi said while finishing filling up everything on the clipboard and becoming worried, 'guess its time for him to meet the main crew', she thought with wonder with a sickly sweet scientific wonderment as to what both sides reactions would be.
The grated elevators doors opened after the signaling of a ring and the gurney was taken out to the main deck.
Shinji was taken right to the middle of the room where he was able to take in his surroundings.
'who are these people?', he wondered as he saw so many people lines up in seats against a wall of what looked like electronic honeycombs.
They were so concentrated on their work that they still hadn't noticed Shinji entering the room.
"I have brought the specimen", Nazumi said turning doctor mode the second she laid eyes on the figure ontop the catwalk.
"Good, you may release his restraints.", the figure said these words in such a way that Shinji couldn't get anything out of hearing it. He couldn't tell if it was male or female, young or old, black or white.
The guards then came up to Shinji and pulled off the gurney and forced him into a standing position. Shinji noticed that he even had restraints on for the first time as the guards began the process of unshackling and removing.
Once they were off, Shinji's attention was immediately drawn to the people lined up against what he assumed was a command center for... for what, Shinji didn't know.
'Why-why are they making those faces?', Shinji thought, looking at the people lined up against the wall. Those faces-those horrible faces that they made were mixes of fear, disgust... and pure hatred.
The worst part for Shinji was that he thought he recognized some of those faces.
He couldn't take any more of those face, he just couldn't stand to be looked at that way.
Turning his attention to the catwalk Shinji noticed that there was a second figure on the catwalk.
'is...is that Ritsuko?', Shinji thought while staring at the shoddily buzz-cutted blonde haired head of a woman in a lab coat.
She noticed his intense staring and looked back for a moment before turning back to her work, getting uncomfortable with being looked at for so long. Even more, so that it was Shinji who was staring.
Noticing her refusal to even look at him, Shinji turned with minor disdain toward the other figure on the catwalk.
'is-is that father?', Shinki wondered before feeling a small hand on his shoulder.
"That's commander Katsuragi", Nazumi said in a slightly hushed manner.
"That's Misato?!", Shinji asked bewildered that the person standing up there could possibly be Misato.
'they don't look alike at all.'.
" Yes...", Nazumi answered slightly uncomfortable and hoping she wouldn't have to explain this right now.
There she was, right up there. The woman that Shinji had lived with for months. The woman who Shinji thought of as some sort of family.
The woman who abandoned him in that starry world.
He had so much he wanted to say to her, he wanted to go right up to her and ask-no, he would demand her to tell him why she had abandoned him.
why did you throw me away!?
why, was I not good enough!?
why-why did you leave me alone...
But Shinji too weak, too weak and too scared of hearing the answer, to hear her say that he wasn't good enough.
That she didn't care about him.
So instead he stared at her, he stared and stared and in his mind...yes in his mind he WAS asking that question, no, demanding her to answer him.
Everything was so much better in his mind. Because in his mind, he had at least a little control.
Shinji had to turn away from her, it just hurt too much to look at her. To look at the person he used to love as a mother and who didn't give a damn about him in return.
But little to Shinji's knowledge, he was being stared at from atop the catwalk, Out of the corner of her eye, Misato stared uneasily at the boy.
At the boy who had sold away the world for one person, one person that died anyway.
At the boy that she had lived with so long ago, in a little apartment building, they lived together. Before a hot-headed girl with the appropriate hair for such a personality joined them. Before half the world rotted away.
It truly felt like a lifetime ago.
"so...he's back... he's really back isnt he", She said those words to the ears of nobody. Yet she said those words with fear...disdain...and to her own deep anger... happiness.
"What was that Misato", Ritsuko asked her commanding officer...and old friend, at least, that's what she hoped.
"Oh, it's nothing...Rit's...", Misato wasn't fully there at that moment, she was lost in the days long gone by.
Like she too had just left a time capsule.
"Oh, okay, Misa", Ritsuko said, returning her friends old pet name that they made for each other in college.
Misato never noticed the names being exchanged, instead, she continued to stare at the one thing from her past that she had no idea how to handle... so she would just go back to work.
"Hey...what is this thing?", Shinji said, just now noticing the red and black collar that was locked around his neck and beginning to prod at it.
Nazumi didn't answer.
Shinji further prodded at the uncomfortable device.
Misato, realizing that now was the time for the two to talk and wishing she had a few more minutes of being able to pretend that the boy wasn't there, was the one who answered.
"That is the punishment for your crimes...Shinji", she barely got out that last word.
"What...take it off Misato...", Shinji said Meekly as he watched Misato ignore him and instead, take out a small joystick-like controller and pressed two buttons on it.
Shinji stepped back in shock from the mix of the collar around his neck fitting itself around him tightly so that it wouldn't be taken off, and from a wall of text appearing out of his collar.
"If you ever attempt to remove or if your emotions become too unstable", Misato explained to the boy while idly rolling her thumb around the button that could end all this confusion for her.
How she longed for the courage to be able to kill the boy, but she knew she would never be strong enough to press that button, so she continued to fidget with it, teetering on the edge.
"why...", Shinji whispered so quietly that no one besides Nazumi heard him.
And she didn't have an answer for him.
Shinji was on the brink of a breakdown after hearing Misato's cold words. Deep down Shinji wanted to beg her not to kill him, that he would be a good boy.
no momma ill be a good boy I swear!
please momma...I...I love you so, please don't kill me.
I'm sorry I wasn't good enough...momma.
But more than Shinji's desperation was anger...anger and sadness.
He simply stood there, wanting to go back to the starry world but knowing that that that world was dead. Deep down Shinji knew that he was the one who killed it.
Shinji's slow-building madness held him still, still as ice. The only the that was able to make him move was the sounds of bombs going off and the ship shook violently.
end of chapter two.