A helicopter cruised over the city, it blades whirring as its passenger examined the damage. It was, in a word, a mess. The CBD was still retracted, the ground covered in soot and acid scarring. The suburbs had been hit, some badly, some untouched, some lightly damaged, some wiped out altogether. VTOLs circled overhead, dumping loads of lime and cycling back for more; clean-up crews on the ground had hoses and pumps, draining the neutralised solution out of the city. They were methodically reclaiming land, liberating the shelters and other priority areas, but they couldn't do much for the bright blue stains, which scrubbing could make fade but not vanish.
"Where to now?" the pilot asked.
"Back to the terminal. I've seen enough. And I need to get back to work."
This was not to be, though, because Asuka was waiting at the station outside Nerv HQ, fit to be tied. "You," she spat. "Me. Answers. Now."
"Misato said your Japanese was coming along better than that," Ritsuko said.
"Don't push me right now. The Commander's hiding in his office like a little girl, the Weird Girl is still out, and Misato's pining over the Idiot, but you, you will give me answers."
Ritsuko folded her arms, showing the bulge against her waist of her gun. "Is that a fact?"
"So, what, you're going to shoot the only competent pilot left on the roster? Yeah, right. What have you been hiding from us? From me?"
Ritsuko considered this. Asuka didn't have much scope to be useful beyond her role as a pilot, and telling her too much would annoy the Commander and possibly the Committee or Fuyutsuki. "Operational details that wouldn't have been important for your duties."
"You don't think that maybe I had a right to know that the Angels aren't even trying to destroy this city? To know what I'm actually fighting for?"
Ritsuko rolled her eyes and began walking. Asuka kept pace.
"I mean, I get that you'd want to keep it secret from civilians that the Angels only attack this city because you're holding their father hostage here. I can see that it might be bad for PR, if it got out that it's entirely your fault. What gets me is that I had to hear it from the Weird Girl. Why does she get to know, and I don't? What else does she know that I don't?"
"If that's all you're worried about, take it up with Seele," Ritsuko said, not bothering to turn and make eye contact. "They're the ones who told her, not me."
"Yeah? And how exactly do I do that? I don't get the feeling they have a listed number."
"True. Even I don't know any of their real names or faces."
"Meaning that you're the one who's been keeping me in the dark."
"Technically, that was the Commander's orders."
"Don't give me that crap. You're senior enough that you could have told me if you cared."
"Mm. I suppose you have to conclude that I don't care what you think."
Asuka turned on a yen to block Ritsuko's path, sending the older woman stumbling back a step. Furious, Ritsuko slapped Asuka, or rather tried to, because Asuka, who had spent two thirds of her life training to battle the greatest monsters humankind had ever faced, blocked, stepping into it and driving an elbow into her throat out of pure muscle memory. Ritsuko was too surprised to dodge, and they both fell to the ground in a tangle of limbs. A security guard grabbed Asuka and hauled her off; she flailed, hitting him solidly on the nose, but another two guards arrived and seized her arms. She kicked, bit, and swore at them in German, all without effect.
Ritsuko coughed, got to her feet, and straightened her clothes. "Escort her back to the surface. She's making a nuisance of herself down here."
"Tell me!" Asuka shouted, as the three men dragged her away. "Stop treating me like a child and tell me!"
Ritsuko strolled off into the great pyramid, and, as soon as she could breathe properly again, didn't give Asuka another thought.
…
Makoto stood at the pile of chemically active rubble that used to be his apartment.
"Not again," he said, defeated.
…
Chitose came to in a hospital bed. This wasn't particularly interesting; Seele had put her under enough times when she was younger for the novelty to wear off. Her eyes snapped open, and she looked around. Maya was by her bed, working on her PDA.
"Hello, Maya," Chitose said, making the tech jump. "Did you want to talk to me?"
"Oh – yes." Maya blushed. "Are you feeling alright?"
"I have a minor headache. Do you suppose it might be a concussion?"
"It isn't; the doctor says you should be fine now."
"I'm glad. What happened? I don't remember fighting; only until the Angels started fighting each other. Are they dead now? This place is a lot calmer than I'd think it'd be if the world were about to end."
"That's right. One killed the other, and Asuka finished it off. Um. The Commander had your LCL concentration upped to knock you out, because you were saying things you shouldn't have."
"An entire Eva could have been the difference between winning and losing that battle," Chitose said, her voice slowing and deepening. "That could have got us all killed."
"Um," Maya said, a feeling like static electricity between her shoulders. "I know, but. You were breaking your NDA. And I can't really go against him because, well, he's the Commander."
Chitose maintained a blank stare for long moments. Maya fidgeted. Then Chitose nodded, and her voice returned to normal. "That makes sense, for you, I suppose. What specifically has he forbidden me from saying?"
"Er. I don't know, exactly, because I don't know everything about the Angels and the Seeds and Seele … he said not to say anything about any of that to anyone, and that you're supposed to be under non … dis … closure …"
Chitose never glared or even frowned, exactly, but her expression still managed to convey rapidly increasing displeasure, and her voice slowed and cleared again, although not as deep as before. "I see. May I have my phone, please? I need to send a text."
"You can't. The telco network is down."
"I have a really good carrier," Chitose said.
Maya shrugged and fumbled for Chitose's bag, on the floor near her bed. "For what it's worth, I didn't agree with the decision. But there are things going on that I don't know about, you know?"
"I do. Thank you for conveying his message to me, Maya."
Maya apologised again and hurried out of the ward, as Chitose typed her message.
…
After the crews cleared the acid out from around the shelter, Hikari directed the students out and to their homes, if they were still standing, or to the temporary housing being set up in the city outskirts. Kaworu stood beside her, and when her duties were discharged, walked her home.
"I've been wondering. What is an Angel?" she asked. "They all look so different. I thought they were all giant monsters that wanted to destroy the city, but I guess not; none of that applies to you."
"An Angel is any child of Adam."
"Okay … but in more, um, immediate terms? It can't be that all of them – except you – want to destroy humankind just because they – you – come from Adam. The, um, AT Field?" Asuka had mentioned the term a few times, then gone vague about it; like the other students, Hikari had put two and two together.
"That's one of two main things," Kaworu nodded. "Absolute Terror. Have you heard of the Hedgehog's Dilemma? The Field gives the power to keep others away. We are also able to sense other AT Fields; these cause that Absolute Terror in us." He gestured toward the city centre, where they could see the mangled corpses of the two Angels, being chopped up and carried away by crews. "While that's happening, we have no choice but to attack or flee. However powerful the Field may be, it's ultimately a weakness, because it means that Angels must always be alone. The Lilin's strength is in cooperation. A dozen times now, that cooperation has beaten Angels' raw power."
She digested this. "What was the second thing that makes an Angel an Angel?"
"The S2 organ. It powers the AT Field, as well as limitless energy for regeneration and combat. Things like flight and energy weapons. Mine is in place of one of my kidneys; it's about the same shape and size. It's not large enough for me to match an Angel's power at close range. Size matters."
"That still doesn't explain why the Angels want to destroy humankind," Hikari pointed out.
"Strictly speaking, they don't. They are drawn to –" His phone chimed. He pulled it out. "I'm sorry, but this is urgent."
Hikari frowned. Kaworu was obviously not raised Japanese; only a European would answer a phone while holding a conversation. "How do you know before you read it? Is that another Angelic thing? Psychic powers telling you the future?"
The chime was Chitose's personalised tone, and if she had wanted to relive her role in the battle or otherwise enjoy herself, she would have called him, not texted. "No. It's just that some people live their lives bouncing from crisis to crisis."
"Asuka?" Hikari guessed, then clapped her hands to her mouth and blushed, but he didn't notice, focusing instead on the text. [On a scale from zero to ten, where ten is 3I, how bad would it be if the Commander had a fatal accident?]
Having spent the battle in the shelter, he wasn't sure what this was about. Probably Ikari made a bad call, one affecting her or maybe Rei or Asuka, and she was overreacting. Seele would be delighted if two of their problems cancelled each other out, but he really wasn't interested in seeing how that particular disaster would play out.
"Chitose, actually." [I'd say a four, as in about 40% probability of 3I.He's not unique like a pilot is, but I don't know who else could deal with Seele, Nerv, the UN, the Japanese government, the Angels, the other pilots, and us.]
"That girl who kept asking questions out of turn in class?" Hikari asked disapprovingly.
"That sounds like her. You remember her?"
"She was very rude."
His phone chimed again. [They could find someone else. Or his work could be shared between several people. He can't possibly be the only person on Earth for his role.]
"She is her own person. She doesn't like having rules imposed upon her. She did control herself as well as she could." [Do me a favour, Schatz?]
"She didn't do a very good job, then," Hikari said.
Visit the Himalayas and say that again. "She's had a difficult life. She only recently escaped from … an unpleasant place. Anything too similar to that can set her off."
[For you, love.]
He put the phone away. Just because he missed the battle didn't mean he didn't have to help save the world, in his own little way.
…
Ritsuko waited outside the great pyramid of Nerv HQ. Misato stood by her side, watching as the monorail circled down toward them.
"Remind me who we're waiting for, again?" Misato asked. "I'm on the clock. So are you."
"Well, what else is new. Calm down. Gyandev is an honoured guest here. The least you can do is greet him. After all, it's your charge who depends on him."
"So, what, is Gyan– is this guy some kind of specialist at dealing with acid burns?" The Indian phonics were alien and hard for her to pronounce.
"Doctor Venkatesh is the world authority on stem cell medicine. Over ninety percent of Shinji's alveoli are destroyed or damaged beyond use. If anyone can get him out of that tank alive, it's him. On top of that, he's an old friend of mine. We met at university. Try to be nice to him."
"I'm nice to everyone," said Misato.
"Other than Kaji," Ritsuko noted.
"Bite me."
"I imagine you've said that to him on occasion, too," Ritsuko said, just as the monorail doors slid open, and Misato could only shoot her a grin that showed rather more teeth than usual.
Dr Venkatesh was very tall. He wore a nice suit and carried a briefcase. "Ritsie-poo," he said, with a smile that raised the hairs on the back of Misato's neck, and stepped forward, took Ritsuko's hand, and kissed it. "You're looking well. And you are?" he added to Misato, his eyes visibly flicking down to her breasts.
"Major Katsuragi," she said, forcing her smile to be a little more natural.
"Oh, the soldier. Will you show me to the patient?" he asked Ritsuko; Misato's smile slipped a notch. "Let's walk and talk."
He took Ritsuko's arm; she made a thumbs-up to Misato behind her back, and the two of them walked off. Misato waited until they were a comfortable distance away before heading back to her office.
"I never would have thought you'd go for a place like this," Gyandev said. "You're not exactly an adventurer."
"I have a budget measured in the hundreds of billions of yen and I don't need to submit grant applications," Ritsuko said, removing her arm.
"So? Neither do I."
"Well, I suppose you're lucky that your field lets you work from Washington. Or, it did."
"I'm sure I could find you a position in my lab," he offered.
Ritsuko gave a polite laugh. "Project E would fall to bits without me. I'd be court-martialled for even considering it."
"That's negotiable. With the right backers –"
"Aren't you curious about Shinji?"
Gyandev took the hint at last. "I read the file you sent me. He sounds like a mess."
"That would be because he is a mess. We need him usable as soon as possible, ideally before the next attack. You have a month. Ish. Probably. Can you do it?"
"Perhaps. But not if there are any … unexpected surprises." Ritsuko winced: surprising things happened every day at Nerv. "Why such urgency? I understood you had a spare pilot, and another Eva that isn't even being used."
"Unit-00 isn't a combat model," she dissembled, "and there would be personality clashes if we tried to field the other three pilots at once. Shinji's a stabilising influence, so to speak. Besides, we don't know if any of them can synchronise with Unit-01, and it's liable to go berserk if we try."
"If you say so. My equipment will arrive this afternoon. I trust that there are no objections that I'm to have the run of the facility?"
"The Commander signed the order himself," she not-answered. "It's through here."
The standard treatment for severe lung damage involves immersion in breathable liquid. LCL turned out to be a worse medium than fluorocarbons, which have greater oxygen solubility and anti-inflammatory properties, so Shinji lay in a perflubron bath, belted down at the chest to stop him from bobbing to the surface. It looked like water, but was significantly denser.
He still looked terrible. His skin was raw, his sclerae pure red, his lips cracked. Beside him, in air, sat Rei, her hands folded in her lap.
"This is Doctor Venkatesh," said Ritsuko. "He's the best there is at regenerative therapies. He's going to try to heal you." Shinji, whose vocal folds were also burnt out, gave a thumbs up and weak, painful smile.
"Pleased to meet you," said Gyandev. "It's a little cramped in here, don't you think?"
This was true; with the bulky bath, the ward could only fit one patient plus a surgeon. Ritsuko and Rei edged past him. Once they were outside, Ritsuko said, "I didn't expect you to be sitting at his bedside."
Rei gave no indication of having heard. Ritsuko didn't like the girl by any stretch, but did find her perversely fascinating: never before had such a promising project gone so completely wrong in so little time with so little warning or particularly scientific explanation.
"Did the Commander order you to?" Ritsuko pressed, knowing the answer but wanting to hear how Rei justified herself.
Rei hesitated for several beats. "A pilot's ability to synchronise is dependent upon his psychological condition," she said at length. "My order is to facilitate the success of the Scenario. I therefore cannot allow his mental condition to deteriorate any further."
"That level of initiative is commendable. I'm sure the Commander would praise you highly if I told him."
Rei remained silent. It was entirely conceivable that she simply lacked the imagination to understand blackmail. That being said, there wasn't actually any point in blackmailing her; she'd do whatever Ritsuko told her to anyway. It felt like such a waste, though.
"I don't see the other pilots anywhere," Ritsuko pressed. "What do you think of that?"
Rei still said nothing, because she had in fact seen them around. Pilot Mogami had shown up, saying she wanted to know how perflubron smelled, before giggling about the octet rule and something about the Internet and running off. Pilot Soryu had skulked outside for a while, saying she was looking for a vending machine, until Pilot Nagisa showed up, when she began a one-sided screaming match which got them both thrown out.
"Are you going to go back tomorrow?"
"The same reason which required me to come today will remain valid tomorrow," Rei said.
"I see. Report to Major Katsuragi. If the Commander's allowing you to pilot, she'll want to drill you with the others."
"Yes," said Rei, and she glided off.
…
Nerv was an expensive organisation to run. A large part of why an entire city had been built right on top of where the Angels would attack was that it simply needed all of that infrastructure to operate, when one factored in all the technical, scientific, military, and administrative staff, and everyone who was needed to support all of them. This meant that it had the lowest unemployment rate and highest wages in the world. Because of this, because of generous all-purpose Angel insurance, because the most timid people had left immediately after the third Angel, and because Nerv had had the foresight to put heavy penalty clauses in the contracts of all employees for quitting with under three months' notice, very few people left, in spite of the devastation of half the city being consumed by fire and acid.
The repair crews were therefore hard at work rebuilding, mere hours after the two Angels were killed. After the fires were extinguished and the acid neutralised and pumped out, the major priorities were clearing away debris, setting up shelter, and re-laying the communication and transport networks. The major arterial tram lines were quickly up and running around the clock, pounding with the sound of heavy construction.
A gangly half-European girl, with bright green eyes, uneven but waist-length dyed-brown hair, and awful fashion sense, hopped off a tram, and looked around in fascination at the machinery all around. She quickly locked eyes with a shorter boy with brown hair and glasses.
"Hello! You must be Kensuke!" said Chitose. "Have you been waiting long? Am I late?" She looked into her bag and checked her phone; it was six minutes after they'd arranged.
"No, I only just got here a minute ago," lied Kensuke, who'd been there a quarter hour early. "I, uh, pleased to meet you. Was there, um, somewhere you wanted to go near here?"
"Yes! On the –" The tram rolled off. "– tram. Bother. Don't you think it's fascinating, seeing the city being rebuilt from scratch, like a human from a foetus?"
"Uh," he said, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. Eight sentences, three of them only one word, and she'd already said something weird and disturbing. That was a new record, even by pilots' standards.
"Or maybe more like the phoenix from her pyre," Chitose said thoughtfully. "Don't you think it's interesting? On a high level, because of seeing how everything is coordinated, how all these pieces come together, down to the low level, the individual machines?" She watched a heavy earth mover trundle along parallel to the tram line. The driver whistled at her, more because she was looking his way than because she was attractive or of the age of consent. Her eyes flicked to him, and back to his machine.
"Uh," Kensuke said again, and seized the nearest thing to a lifeline he could find. "You like machinery?"
"Mm-hmm. I wouldn't mind being an engineer when I grow up. That, or a scientist. There's an observatory a few klicks out of the city limits, you know, for astronomy, where there's not so much light pollution. The Milky Way is so pretty."
He largely discarded the latter half of this. "So do I. Well, more military-specific. Or military anything."
"They do have the coolest hardware," she said, making eye contact again. "But it's pretty much all under nondisclosure. And they never let me look at anything, let alone see blueprints."
"Not all of it. You can find specs for some stuff online, if you know where to look, or if you know the right people."
"Really," she said. She waved down the next tram, and took Kensuke's hand to pull him on.
…
Misato found Kaji in the cafeteria, enjoying a late lunch while he scrolled through his laptop. She uncharitably spent a moment wondering whether it was likelier to be porn or top-secret Nerv files, before swallowing her pride and taking the seat next to him.
He tabbed out before she could see what it was. "Misato. What brings you here?"
"You mean, besides my job?"
"I meant a little more locally," he said, indicating the table.
"So did I. I need to know about Unit-04. Where have you been? I've been looking for you since the day before the battle. We really could have used it. Well, if things had gone differently."
He opened a music player on his laptop, and launched his favourite jazz playlist, which happened to double as an effective white noise source and disruptor of electronic bugs. He ran a program called ; it opened a file navigation box. He opened a folder labelled 'Definitely Not Porn', then another labelled 'Gymnasts', scrolled a long way down, and double-clicked one called haruka.mp4. The program prompted a password, hummed for a moment, and opened a copy of Unit-04's blueprints. "I've been getting my hands on this. It was constructed at Nerv Second Branch, in Nevada, to the same specs as Units -02 and -03 … and the remainder of the Eva series."
"What? There's more of them? But … why haven't I heard about this? And what are they even going to use them against? If they won't give them to us, and there are only a few Angels left … oh."
Kaji nodded. "Seele's playing the different branches of Nerv off against one another. They're worried Ikari's going to make a play; they want to make sure they have the firepower to deal with whatever he tries. I don't know exactly how many more Evas they have; I do know there's a Unit-13 under construction, but there may be more, and it's also possible they skipped some numbers to mislead us. I also don't know who they have piloting them. My contacts inside Marduk say it shouldn't be possible to find so many pilots; Seele obviously has another ace up its sleeve."
Misato sighed. "Yes. Whatever cheat it is that Kaworu uses to pilot. Or however Mogami does it; she went vague when I asked her, but she implied they had different methods. Is there any way, any way at all we can get our hands on any of these Evas? The Angels keep getting stronger. These last two, we maybe could have beaten either with all four Evas at once, but if the trend continues, we'll need at least one or two more by the end. Isn't there some safeguard they could install, like remote explosives, or …"
He gave a hybrid shrug and head shake. "I assume they already did with Units -02 and -03, but I also assume Ritsie's disabled them, and I assume Seele assumes that too. In any case, we can barely control Angelic technology at the best of times. I don't really blame them for not wanting to rely on that."
"It's just that it's so stupid. We're barely holding on as is; we're at the limit of our ability. Mankind has at least five usable Evas, more than enough to defeat the Angels, but we can only actually field two. What if they win and kill us all, because we were too busy bickering over who would operate Eva?"
"It'd be a fitting epitaph. Mankind isn't so much more unified than the Angels."
"That's the problem. Wait … you mean –?"
"I finally managed to chase up that lead," Kaji said, his face perfectly relaxed. "You were right. Seele deliberately caused Second Impact."
"I knew it. Did you find out why?"
"They had to awaken Adam in order to extract some of his stem cells. They have cloned lines of them in a few labs around the world. I don't know what they're for, though, beyond pure research."
"You don't?" Misato asked, surprised. "Even I know that. Those are what the Evas are made from. Well, their biological components, at least."
"How do you know that?"
"Mogami."
He pinched the bridge of his nose.
"I know how you feel," she said. "She told me that ages ago, and I confirmed with Ritz. That's how Eva can extend an AT Field. We never reverse-engineered the Fields at all; we cloned them. Units -02 onward are pure Adam, plus robotic parts; with Unit-00 and -01, they used some of Lilith's cells because they weren't sure they could control them. Ritsuko said something about needing more of Lilith than just a few cells for Unit-00, but didn't go into details."
"But that means Seele woke Adam in order to get the cells to build the Evas to defeat the Angels that wouldn't have been born if they hadn't woken Adam," Kaji said. "That's just stupid. There has to be more to it than that."
"Maybe they want the world to be dependent on them for saving them? To cement their own power? Or maybe they're just planning to use the mass-produced Evas to take over the world as soon as the Angels are finished."
"They already own or control most of it behind the scenes." He sighed. "There's still too much we don't know. I'm going to keep digging."
"You said 'we'. Are we on the same side, Kaji?"
"… Mostly. You were right not to trust Seele, but that doesn't mean I trust Ikari."
"Hmm," said Misato, who also wasn't happy with the man. Apart from disabling Chitose before the last battle, he had refused her request to try to synchronise Rei with Unit-01.
"You know I could never find any files on Rei that weren't obviously fabricated?" Kaji said. "I'm guessing the only reason he let Chitose stay with Rei was to stop people like me from snooping around."
"She does make a better guard dog than Section Two," she said thoughtfully. "That's either genius or insanity by him, letting a homicidal rogue Seele agent protect Rei."
"Ikari's greatest strength is his ability to turn any situation to his advantage. I'm still impressed he managed to get four Evas, both Seeds, the Lance, and Nerv HQ under his control."
"The Lance?"
"It's for controlling a Seed, I think. I don't know much about it. I'm more concerned with Rei now. His decisions with her have been confusing. Almost … protective."
"He does care for her," Misato said, remembering the botched synchronisation experiment with Rei and Unit-00. "Although … maybe. Tell me what you find out. I have a war to win."
"I will," he said. She stood and left; he kept the music going and resumed his work.
…
"Mm, but for an Eva pilot, the Eagles are much more valuable than the Hawks. Those autocannon look impressive, and they work great against human enemies, but they don't do anything at all against the Angels. With them, there are only two kinds of people: those who pilot Eva, and those who support Eva. Against the third-last Angel, our side won because the Eagles kept dropping everything they needed."
"Third-last? What about the last two?"
"We only won that battle because – um. I think if I say what I want, I'll say something violating my NDA. Sorry."
"It's okay. But don't you still use artillery sometimes? They still call for it during battles, don't they?"
"They do, but it's pretty cosmetic. Like, the Angel's just thrown the Evas off and it's about to give one the coup de grâce," she said it in French first, then translated after a moment's hesitation, "and the arty will blast it, just to keep it off balance and give the pilots a moment to regroup. I've only been allowed in one battle, but I've watched the footage of the others, and the arty never actually does any damage; it just buys a few seconds for the Evas to get into position, and then they finish it."
"It's kind of a shame that there's so much really cool hardware and tactics and everything, that's just obsolete because we're not fighting conventional enemies, don't you think? You know, end of an era and all."
"Mm … I actually like it, because it means we have to invent even more technology instead. I mean, I pilot a giant robot that shoots forcefields."
"Heh. Yeah. They didn't have anything like that in Iraq."
"Hm?"
"The Gulf War? The Western powers fought this dictator there. Japan didn't send troops, but we did send matériel. That was back when aircraft ruled everything, and stealth basically made the Americans invincible."
"Really? Heh. Our idea of stealth these days is to lead with the giant robot that isn't painted bright red." They laughed. "Tell me about – actually, give me a moment; I promised I'd check in." She pulled out her phone and tapped out a text with both thumbs. [I still haven't killed the Commander. See? You're worrying for no reason.]
"With your parents, or Nerv?" Kensuke asked.
"Neither. Nerv doesn't worry about me; they know I can handle myself. My mother's dead, and I'm, uh, estranged from my father."
"Really? That's so weird, my mother's dead too, since I was little. Do you remember yours?"
"Yes. She died just a few days before I arrived here."
"Oh. Wow. I'm an idiot."
"No, it's fine," she said sincerely.
"Still, I'm sorry. What happened?"
Chitose paused to think how to phrase it without lying, because she knew she was awful at it. "We lived at this … pilot's training camp, sort of. I was talking to a friend by IM, and then, without warning, someone decided to blow the camp up." She spoke with the air of one describing her summer vacation. "There was a military base there; an ammo dump with an N2 mine exploded. Almost everyone but me and a few soldiers died. I was lucky to escape."
Specifically, Seele's garrison hadn't caught her after she set the dump alight because a snowstorm had hit while she was running for it. Well, that, and because dead soldiers can't search. The thought brought a smile to her face, but she repressed it before Kensuke could notice.
"Wow. Do you know who did it?"
"I know they got away. Don't worry about it. I know it sounds horrible, but I wasn't at all close to my mother." She'd noticed that most Japanese were consistently respectful toward their parents, even ones who were really bad at parenting. She made a mental note to ask Shinji about his father sometime. "She was a surrogate, actually, and we didn't really have a relationship at all. Now, I just want to think about the future, you know?"
"That's … so you don't want revenge? Like, at all?"
"I don't. I'm sure the person who did it had a good reason."
"Okay." Kensuke thought this was more than a little weird, but he'd been having a great time with a reasonably attractive girl for half an hour, with almost no awkwardness, and she was an Eva pilot. He could overlook a lot for all that. "But your father wasn't on the base with you?"
"No, he didn't live there. He works overseas, with the UN. We had an argument afterwards, when I came here; he tried to forbid me from piloting, and I … disagreed. We're not speaking now."
His first thought was to tell her that she should smooth things over with her father, but his second thought was that one shouldn't lecture a girl half an hour into a first date, and also he didn't have the backbone to try. Besides, he could tell that there was no way she'd listen to him. "So, uh … if it wasn't him, who were you texting?"
"Kaworu-chan."
"He isn't living with you and Ayanami, is he? Why do you need to check in with him?"
"Well … you can keep a secret, can't you?"
"Of course."
Chitose glanced around to make sure no-one else was in earshot, not that anyone seemed to care about the two teenagers chatting at one end of the tram. "Because we're engaged."
"… What."
"He's my fiancé," she clarified. "We're going to marry."
"I know what engagement means," Kensuke snapped.
"You seem angry," she probed.
"Well … I mean … yeah? Why didn't you tell me that earlier? Why were you even on a dating website if you're already going to marry some other guy?"
"What do you mean? Shippers dot com is a friend-finding site, not a dating site. It even says so in the tagline."
He blinked several times. Typical. The one time he found a girl he liked, she turned out to be naïvely literal-minded, and he ignored it, and that turned out to be his undoing.
"And even if it were, is it a thing that engaged people can't date?"
Kensuke opened his mouth to answer that, then decided to just power through it instead. It wasn't worth getting angry at her over; if he should be angry with anyone, it was himself. "So … how are you and Nagisa engaged? Is there, like, a pilot matchmaking service?"
"Our parents arranged it. Part of the idea was that we'd start a family of Eva pilots and we'd all be guaranteed good careers." A bigger part of the idea was that Seele realised she liked him and offered him as a reward for good behaviour. If he hadn't told her that he'd started piloting, she might even have believed Seele intended to keep their end of the bargain. "Normally I wouldn't let anyone else tell me who I had to marry, but I do really like Kaworu. He's special, you know?"
"That's one way to put it," Kensuke said, thinking of what Toji had said about him.
"It doesn't hurt that he's gorgeous," she added dreamily.
"Yes," Kensuke said stiffly.
"We have to avoid each other because it'd be very bad luck if we saw one another before the wedding. It's annoying, because it'll probably be a while, but at least we have phones and IM."
"I thought that was only on the wedding day. And I thought you were more of a sciency type than superstitious like that?"
She shrugged. She and Kaworu had a personal truce, but she wasn't stupid. Seele would order him to kill her at some point; it really would be bad luck if he obeyed, and succeeded. She planned to wed him after his S2 organ was surgically removed and Seele was purged; without his AT Field or anyone giving him orders, he wouldn't be a threat to her, and neither would have any need to murder anyone. "I am, just not in this one case." She leaned toward Kensuke and hugged him. He froze. It was the first time he could remember that a girl had voluntarily touched him; she felt funny, a strange combination of soft and bony. "Thanks for promising not to tell anyone. I never realised how nice it would feel to tell someone else about that."
"Um. No problem. I should, uh, probably get going. See you."
"Oh. See you," said Chitose, as Kensuke extricated himself and left the tram, trying not to look like he was fleeing from a girl who had turned him down. "What an odd boy." She watched him walk away, before returning to the scenes of construction around her.
…
Two giants faced off over a virtual beach, one red, one orange. The red held a double-ended glaive, the orange a katana and wakizashi. The blades all glowed white.
"This is a training simulation," Misato reminded them. "Anything goes, including crippling and lethal strikes. There are no pauses; a bout goes until either Eva records critical damage. There are no time-outs. Go!"
Asuka moved first, leading with an uppercut that could have cut the digital Unit-03 in half; Kaworu jumped sideways, then forward, bringing his sword down. Asuka twirled her weapon, catching it and throwing it aside; Kaworu ducked under the butt of her weapon as it followed through, and she kneed him in the face. He stabbed her through the ankle with his short sword; she chopped into his torso; he sliced into her abdomen, then reversed his blade and skewered her.
"Time," said Misato. The sim rippled, and suddenly both mechas were back in perfect condition, the dull phantom pain ebbing away to nothing. "Double kill. Not acceptable by either of you. When you get a good hit in, guard against a reprise by your opponent. The last thing we want is one of you killed by an Angel's death throes. God knows they try it often enough. Again!"
They went back and forth for twenty minutes, one gaining the upper hand, then the other. They were closely matched; Asuka's synch rate was slightly higher and she was more aggressive, but Kaworu had better technique, and was particularly good at catching her polearm with his short sword and riposting with his other weapon.
They lost track of the number of bouts, before a blue and a yellow giant materialised beside them.
"Can we change partners?" Chitose asked. "I think we two are over-training; we're fighting each other's specific style within the sim, more than just fighting well."
"Go ahead," Misato said, indifferent.
The Eva pilots exchanged glances.
"You and me, Schatz?" Kaworu asked.
Chitose grinned, showing teeth in the Western style. "Not today. I want to catch you when we're both fresh."
"I look forward to it," Kaworu said, returning the look, and he and Rei vanished into a duplicate sim.
"What about me, then?" Asuka asked. "If I'm not going to spar with another real pilot, what's even the point of –"
Chitose jabbed; Asuka blocked, and Chitose turned it into a feint that flowed into an uppercut to Asuka's jaw, then swept out her legs, elbowed her in the back of the head, and drove a knife-hand into her plug, pulverising it.
Misato blinked.
"You do realise I've done all the same training you and Kaworu have, don't you?" Chitose asked, as the sim reset. "The reason I wanted to swap partners was because Rei's not even close to being a match for me, not when she's in the prototype Eva with half my synch rate, so Makoto artificially made it stronger, which was too unrealistic."
Asuka cracked her neck left, then right, then rolled her shoulders. She held out a hand; her glaive appeared in it.
"If you want a real fight," she said, "you've got it."
Chitose opened her hand, and a pallet rifle materialised. She levelled it and opened fire; Asuka threw up her AT Field and angled herself so the bullets glanced off her armour without penetrating, then lunged, her weapon tracing a horizontal arc toward Chitose's midsection. Chitose skipped backward, giving herself a moment to empty her gun's magazine, before opening her pylons and drawing dual prog knives. She dodged Asuka's thrust, reversed her grip on one knife, and stabbed it into Asuka's arm; Asuka let go with her other hand and punched Chitose in the face. She stepped backward, pulled out the knife, and threw it; Chitose dodged, but was flat-footed when Asuka lunged again. She parried with her second knife, which snapped in half; she grabbed the glaive's shaft and roundhouse-kicked Asuka in the chest. Asuka moved with it, drew her own prog knife, and gutted Chitose; Chitose winced, seized Asuka's wrist, and flipped her over her hip, then stomped on her shoulder, shattering it, and pulled out the knife for the finishing blow. Asuka's leg snapped up and crunched against the rear armour over Chitose's plug. The words 'pilot incapacitated' flashed, and the sim reset.
"You have good pain tolerance," Chitose observed. "And you don't give up. I thought you were done when I got your arm."
"I don't lose," Asuka snapped.
"That's hard to pull off consistently. My thing is that I don't make the same mistake twice, which is easier, I think. I assumed the sim would cut your synch rate from sympathetic pain." She held out her hands, and a heavy needle gun fell into them. "I won't this time."
"You're making the mistake of relying on guns in a duel again."
"I'm going for a heavier weapon this time, since the last one couldn't pierce your armour. Besides, I'm not relying on them. I use a ranged weapon at range, and mêlée weapons for mêlée. I don't want to limit myself tactically. Why do you?"
"Shut up and go."
But at that moment, a siren sounded.
"Is that –?"
"Angel," Misato said tersely. The sim vanished, and suddenly the pilots were sitting in the simulation bodies in the Pribnow Box. "Asuka, Kaworu, you're up. Rei, Chitose, stand by."
It was possibly their record fastest deployment, since the pilots were already on base and even suited up. They launched early enough that they could run to the beachhead, switching out their power cables as they went, rather than use the more expensive rocket planes, and still arrive before the target was close enough to identify. The two reserves watched from inside the simulation bodies, where they were out of everyone's way.
"It's – it's the azure pattern again!"
"Son of a," Misato undertoned, dismayed. "This is getting old. Ritz, you said we killed it for good!"
"That's not the same one we fought last time," Ritsuko said.
The yellow-and-grey Angel broke the surface of the ocean, now ringed, striped, speckled, and cross-hatched with glittering brown scabs. Units -02 and -03 flanked it, prog weapons levelled. "Really?" said Misato. "Because it sure looks like it."
"Well, it isn't."
"How do you know?"
"Because the last one is where we left it," said Ritsuko. "Here's real-time feed from the reservoir." She called up a video, of a pool of orange liquid, little waves lapping at its concrete walls. "It's not coming back to life. They must be multiple sub-instances of one Angel, in the same way that the tenth kept throwing pieces of itself at us. The tenth 'learned' by correcting its aim; this one learns by adding armour whenever we hurt it. It's a good thing the Angels are stupid; if they could extrapolate, it'd be completely plated right now."
"Does that mean that the real Angel is going to attack at some point, like the tenth did?"
"Well, this is the fourth one it's sent that found us … so I'm guessing no, it'll just keep sending these spawns until it wears us down by attrition."
"Fine. That just means we'll have to flush out the real Angel ourselves."
"And how are you going to do that?"
"They all come from the same direction, south, so unless it's smart enough to cover its tracks – and it's not – that's where the real Angel is. Either there's something spewing out city-destroying abominations that the Australians have neglected to mention – which is possible – or it's the Antarctic Angel. But finding it is your job, with those robot subs. Mine is just destroying them. Speaking of which …"
The Angel pounced on Asuka; she sliced at its left forepaw this time, lopping it cleanly off, and followed the motion through with an uppercut. This was pure muscle memory; the blade scraped along the scar Kaworu gave it last time. The Angel swiped at her, its claws digging gouges into her armour.
"No, don't help or anything!" Asuka snarled. "Just stand there, dusting your hair with desaturated glitter like usual!"
Kaworu was in fact trying to carve into the Angel, but his style really didn't work; he relied on multiple fast, shallow cuts designed for fighting humans that bled, and which worked brilliantly against soft targets, but which skidded right off the Angel's armour, and probably actually made things worse by giving it more scars for next time. It took a swing at him, denting his chest armour.
A volley of artillery and rockets smacked into it from behind. Its AT Field held, but it had to brace for a moment, giving the pilots time to regroup. Kaworu leapt back and traded his long knives for a needle gun, but Asuka was faster.
She dropped her weapon, twisted, and rolled to her feet. "I am not in the mood for this." She prised her fingers between two armour ridges, tore them apart, and drove her knee into its chest, with an effect similar to that of squeezing a pimple. She kneed it four more times rapid-fire, spraying its insides over the beach. "Are we done here?"
Maya was distinctly green. "Target is silent."
"Great." Asuka folded her arms inside her plug and threw her head back. "If I have any synch tests scheduled this week, cancel them."
Ritsuko shot Misato a look. "What's eating her?"
Misato shrugged.
…
Asuka wandered for a while in her search. Her first thought was the school, but that was long gone, having taken several direct hits of acid balls from the fifteenth. She spent a while looking for a vacant theatre or other performance hall, before thinking to find the nearest intact church. It was unlocked and empty, and happened to contain an organ. Perfect. She had with her piano arrangements for Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, Rachmaninov's Prelude in G minor, and Solveig's Song. She sat down and began to play.