'We have the next week off. we're going to go spend it on the beach! The weather has been great, and we managed to get all the testing done early. Not that the two are connected mind you.' Inia was gushing.
'Didn't they tell you when you went down to Tahiti or wherever that if you finished early, you could take leave down there?' Shinji asked
'Well, ok, so they are indirectly related. And we have been working hard. But it is so WARM. You can walk around in a t-shirt and shorts. Or even less!' Inia added, sounding half scandalized.
'What's the big deal? Haven't you worn a swimsuit before?'
"Not in public! Up in Kamchatka, it's never that warm! It's a little embarrassing.'
'Having all the guys ogling you?' Shinji asked teasingly. It was only after he said it that he realized how out of character it was for him. But it's not like HE would ever be 'ogling' or doing anything else inappropriate. Plus, even if he said stuff like this, nobody except Inia would ever know about it.
'Um, no. It's just embarrassing.' Inia replied a little subdued.
"Did you hear? The class trip is going to be to Okinawa! Beaches, here I come!" Asuka burst into Shinji's room and pumped her fist.
'Um, I got to go. Asuka's here,' Shinji sent.
'Fine. You do that.' came the sulky response from Inia, 'I'm going to go hang out with Yuuya.'
'Wait. What? Are you upset? I thought you wanted me to make more friends in real life.'
"Come on, Baka, you have to go shopping with me! I need a new swimsuit!" Asuka interrupted Shinji, pulling his SDAT headphones off of his head. By the time Shinji oriented himself, Inia had disconnected.
Shinji sat up, "Ok, Ok. Why do you need me to go with you?"
"To carry my stuff, duh!" Asuka glanced at the SDAT in her hand, "What are you listening to all the time, anyway?" She held it up to her, then with a puzzled glance, turned the tape on. "You like classical?"
"Um, yeah?" Shinji replied tentatively, sounding surprisingly like Inia had a moment ago. "I like the precision and accuracy of the sound."
"You know that classical music can represented by a mathematical formula? I listened to a lecture on the math of music. A college lecture."
"You were in college?" Shinji asked, feeling somewhat intimidated. He had originally gotten a sense that Asuka was like he had been, completely isolated and cut off from all other people, but the more he knew her, the more that seemed like it was a mistaken impression. She was beautiful, and she was social, and now it sounded like she was a genius. What did she need his help for?
"Of course not, Baka. I'm fifteen. I attended lectures over the Internet. Now come on and get up." Asuka paused, "Do you have swim trunks and stuff? You can take a few minute to get you junk while we shop as well." She volunteered magnanimously.
Shinji sighed, 'Should I invite Kensuke and Toji?' He tried to visualize how that would go, which quickly answered his question. 'Nope'. The guys were nice and all, but they really weren't very mature. Not that he thought of himself as being anything special, but fighting for his life and the life of all humanity changed you. And seeing Inia's perspective on her own world was… sobering.
"So… when do we go?"
"As soon as Kaji arrives!"
/\ PoC /\
Asuka, Kaji and Shinji shopped. To be more accurate, Asuka shopped (when she wasn't hanging onto Kaji's arm, alternating between glancing adoringly at the older man and sneaking glances at Shinji, to see how he was reacting), while Shinji and Kaji walked along with identical long suffering expressions.
"I'm going to head over to the men's section and see if I can find myself a pair of trunks." Shinji volunteered. It came out as more of a question than a statement. Asuka had him completely cowed.
"So I will have to model my swimsuits just for Kaji in that case," Asuka declared with a sly smile.
"No, princess. I'm going to head over with Shinji to make sure he doesn't get ripped off. He's never been shopping on his own before, after all."
The two guys walked off as Asuka stamped her foot and huffed in annoyance.
"So, you like Asuka? I'll admit, she can be a handful, but she's a good kid at heart," Kaji asked nonchalantly.
"Um." Shinji considered how to reply. "I don't think I like her like her, but she seems like she really needs a friend, but she's always pushing people away, so I thought I should try to stick it out."
Kaji turned to regard the younger man. "I don't know how to respond to that. That was a very mature thing to say. Hell. I think you may be more responsible than I am."
Shinji blushed up to his ears from the praise. "It's nothing. It's just a.. a friend did the same for me."
"Are you talking about Misato? She's always been pretty impulsive, but she's always been a good judge of character. Except when it came to me."
"What do you mean?" Shinji asked as he tried to find the least garish pair of swim trunks. They all seemed to be either florescent blue and green Hawaiian print… things, or speedos that were so small that they wouldn't fit a Ken doll.
"Well, I don't know if she mentioned it, but we used to date back in college. We got pretty serious, but then I panicked and ran out on her, and that was the end of that." Kaji shrugged before snagging a pair of trunks from a back rack and tossing them to Shinji, "Here you go – they're on clearance because they are last years fashion."
Shinji sighed in relief - they were a much more muted royal blue.
/\ PoC /\
"What do you mean, we can't go on the class trip?!" Asuka roared, "The class trip is the high point of the Japanese school calendar. It is the only thing that makes your sucky school worth attending!" She turned to Shinji who was still holding the shopping bags. The two teens had just walked back into the apartment after their shopping trip. "Say something, Third!"
"Um, I was half way expecting this?"
"I know you kids want to go, but with the risk of an Angel attack, I can't justify having you so far from base. And beside, you could both use the time to catch up on your homework." She held up two report cards, both with unflattering quantities of red ink.
Asuka turned to Shinji, "And you are just going to accept this? Be a man, for once!"
Shinji stood up straighter at Asuka's exhortations and replied in his best confident voice, "It is our responsibility to remain in Tokyo-3."
"Arghh!" Asuka threw up her hands and stormed off into her room.
Shinji followed timidly, "Um, Asuka, do you want your swim suit?" He held out the garment in question between two fingers towards the door. So that he wouldn't be in any way associated with it. Asuka's door slid open, an arm snagged the swimsuit and immediately tossed it back into Shinji's face. The door slammed shut again.
Shinji stood, at a loss as to what to do, with feminine garments draped over his body.
"I'll be in my room." Shinji shuffled towards his safe space. Misato bemusedly plucked the garments from him as he passed by.
/\ PoC /\
Once safely ensconced in his bed, the SDAT on his ears, he reached out to Inia, 'Inia? I need a little advice. I think Asuka is insane.' when he got no reply, he sighed and took off his SDAT. This sometimes happened – if Inia was busy, she wouldn't be listening for his call.
It was actually surprising how often he was able to connect with her, given that she had to be listening for him and then initiate the connection. She was really a very nice girl to put that much effort in for his benefit. He was lucky (more than lucky) to have a friend like her.
But... 'Well, I have no clue how to deal with Asuka. And there isn't anybody I can really ask.' His friends were going to be as clueless as he was, if not worse, and he would rather die than ask Misato something like that.
/\ PoC /\
All this is why, after seeing off his friends off on Friday, Shinji was in his room studying when Misato barged in. "Hey, Shinji. Grab your swimsuit I'm taking all three plots to the school pool. I know it's not Okinawa, but you'll have it all to yourselves!"
"I don't .."
"You can do homework afterwards!" Misato really hated being the voice of authority and responsibility for the pilots. She knew that they had to study and do well in school, but they already had so much pressure on them that she didn't want to be the one to add more. So she tried to come up with SOMETHING she could offer them.
Shinji was still standing, ambivalent when, Asuka walked by and grabbed his arm.
Shinji flinched, but Asuka just cheerfully proclaimed, "come on, baka, it will be fun!"
'Is she bipolar or something? I thought she was angry with me.' But Shinji allowed himself to be dragged along.
Once at the pool, he safely ensconced himself at one of the tables, spreading his homework out in front of him. Several minutes later, Asuka strutted out of the women's changing room, followed momentarily by Rei. "Hey, you should get into your swim trunks."
"Why? I'm not going swimming." Shinji replied mulishly.
"Jeez. If you're so worried about your grades, I'll tutor you later. You know I'm good for it." Asuka paused when Shinji didn't budge. "So what are you studying?" She leaned over him, bringing her scantily clad body closer than Shinji was comfortable with.
"Uhm, it's physics."
"Right I see. Thermal expansion. So it's simple: stuff expands when its heated, and shrinks when it's cooled." Asuka paused and leaned in towards Shinji again, asking, "Do you think my breasts will expand if I get hot?"
Shinji sputtered "I-I wouldn't know anything about that!"
Asuka frowned at his flustered response. It made her feel awkward, like she was doing something inappropriate.
Shinji glanced over at Rei, looking for help, but the stoic girl had just walked into the pool, and wasn't going to come to his rescue.
"So what, you got a thing for Rei? You should go swim with her, then. God knows that's her only hobby." Asuka refused to admit defeat.
"I.. I don't know how to swim." Shinji finally admitted, staring fixedly at his homework.
"Seriously?"
"Um, yeah. I grew up inland, and I never went to the pool."
A huge smile spread across Asuka's face, at the realization that the mighty Shinji was completely her inferior in this one area. "Come on, then! Get a kick board and I'll teach you how to swim!"
Shinji had just stood up when he got hammered by a wordless surge of panic and a sense of drowning. He fell back down into his chair, his pulse racing as he desperately gulped air.
"Hey, are you ok? I didn't mean to traumatize you..." Asuka began when all three phones went of. The next angel had been found.
/\ PoC /\
"We have detected what may be an angel still in some sort of chrysalis stage. That's the good news. The bad news is that it is in the magma chamber of an active volcano." Misato was briefing the pilots in a conference room at NERV before setting out to the site. "The pilot for this mission will be..."
"I'll do it!" Asuka interrupted.
"I was going to say Asuka." Misato concluded, "Unit 02 will have to be loaded with type D equipment." Misato showed a picture of what looked like a cross between a 19th century diving suit and a fat suit designed for an Evangelion.
"What? That? No!"
"Sorry Asuka, Unit 02 is the only one rated for that equipment."
"I could pilot Unit 02, if you want," Shinji quickly interrupted.
"Absolutely not!" Asuka shook her head so hard that her entire body twisted. "I was just put off by the aesthetics. I got this." She glanced over at Shinji, but the boy was not paying attention to her.
'Inia' Shinji tried again. There was no response. He was certain that the panic had come from Inia. He wished that there was something he could do. But he couldn't even find out if there was anything wrong in the first place. He hated feeling this powerless . It was a new experience: previously, there was nothing he really wanted to do. Now for the first time, he did, but there was literally nothing he could do.
"Hey, baka, pay attention." Asuka nudged Shinji, as Misato was explaining that he would be on standby, above the mouth of the volcano, in case he had to assist.
"Assist with what?"
"If the Angel becomes active, Asuka may need help in destroying it."
"I won't." Asuka began when Shinji interrupted, "You can count on me!" 'I'm not useless.'
Misato gave Shinji a look at his unexpected vehemence. "I know I can. Let's go."
/\ PoC /\
"Its hot here!" Asuka complained as she climbed into her entry plug.
"That's why you have the type D equipment," Ritsuko replied without looking up from her tablet.
"Remember, if anything goes wrong with the capture, destroy the Angel. Don't mess around." Misato reminded before turning to her other charge. "Shinji, you ready?" Unit 01 was crouching in a makeshift docking cage.
"Yes ma'am." Shinji was on edge. All this waiting with nothing to do was in some ways harder than actually going out and fighting an Angel.
'Inia?'
Nothing. This wasn't typical. She was usually half listening for him. Well, there was their usual 'rendezvous' this evening. But if she missed that... Shinji's stomach roiled.
Meanwhile, Asuka was being lowered into the volcano by a giant winch. A series of coolant pipes ran up from the type D equipment to help control the temperature rise.
"I hope you packed your swimsuit. It's going to get hot," Ritsuko quipped, but nobody replied, as the tension was too high.
"Present depth 170 meter. Speed of descending 20." Came Asuka's voice over the radio, "It's all good, so far, but visibility is zero. I am switching to sonar tomography." There was a moments pause, "That's better, but the range is limited to 120m"
Up in the trailer that housed the temporary control room, Maya continued to read out the depth: "down to 400, 450, 500, 550, 600, 650."
"We're approaching the target depth – 1300m. That's the test limit for the type D."
"I'm not seeing anything."
"The magma flow is faster than expected – it could have swept the chrysalis further down."
"Lower her down another 100 meter." Misato commanded.
"Are you certain?" Makoto asked.
"We have a safety margin. But do it quick – the longer the Evangelion is down that far, the higher the risk."
"I'm good," added Asuka, "Go ahead and drop me!"
Shinji was certain that last part was false bravado.
"I see it!" Asuka called out. "Deploying electromagnetic cage. And.. Got it! Operation is a success!"
"Begin accent." Misato commanded.
"Going up!" "1200 meter, 1000, 900..."
"That was easier than expected..oh, no!" There was the sound of hurried activity, and the monitors in the control trailer started to oscillate.
"Asuka?" Misato called out.
"Its hatched, rupturing the cage!" Asuka called out, and then there was silence as the telemetry from unit 02 went all over the place.
Unit 01 moved out of the docking cage and tensed up at the edge of the magma crater. Shinji's stomach was clenched as he waited. Everything was going wrong. First Inia, now Asuka, everybody he cared about.
"Asuka? Status report?" Misato called down.
"I'm trying to kill it, but my knife keeps skidding across it's skin. It's like the sixth angel."
"The cooler temperature as she rose must have caused it to hatch," Ritsuko muttered.
"That's it!" The telemetry from unit 02 spiked again, and the coolant pressure dropped to zero in line 2. "Got you! It's dead, I sprayed it with coolant to weaken the armor and then stabbed it. Now get me out of here before I cook."
"Misato," Shigeru called out from where he was stationed by the winch, "the tow cable is separating - it must have gotten damaged by the Angel."
"Hold on Asuka, we'll get you up."
"800 meters, 700."
The cable gave a sudden jerk "We've lost contact with unit 02!"
Shinji dived in. He couldn't see anything more than a few feet away as he pushed himself down along the cable. As he reached the frayed end, he still couldn't see unit 02, but he could feel panic welling up from below him. He grabbed the end of the cable and flailed around blindly, reaching for the source of the emotion.
There! He had something. He yanked on the cable, intending to pull the both of them up, somehow, but Misato must have taken the yank as a signal to winch him up, as the cable began to spool up quickly.
/\ PoC /\
"Don't you ever do something like that again without orders!" Misato spoke to the two pilots, "But good work. Both of you. Go get changed, and I will see if I can get it so that we spend the night down at the hot springs instead of the temporary bivouacs up here. Dismissed."
"Yes, ma'am!"
As Shinji turned to head to the changing room, Asuka grabbed his arm, "Um.. thanks." She paused, but didn't release Shinji, "You're not the sort of person I thought you would be. You're not arrogant or anything, and.. I just want to say that.. thanks!" She quickly let go of Shinji's hand and marched off to the woman's changing room.
/\ PoC /\
As Misato and Asuka relaxed on the women's side of the hot spring, Shinji soaked on his, still tense 'Inia?'
Again nothing.
His stomach roiled. He didn't want her to be dead. He knew that she was a soldier, and that she could die any time. For that matter, so could he. But he was hoping that things would stay like they had been. His life had improved so much since last summer.
'Shinji?' It was Inia.
"Yeah!" He cried jubilantly, 'Are you ok?'
"Shinji? You ok?" Misato called from the other side of the wall.
"Yes, I just slipped." Shinji replied before going back to his other conversation, 'when you didn't communicate with me for an entire day, I was worried that something had happened to you.'
'No. It's just we had a paddle boat race, and I fell into the water. I.. don't swim very well, so I panicked, and then..' Came the embarrassed admission.
'I can't swim either,' Shinji interrupted. 'It's kind of embarrassing, as both of the other pilots are really good swimmers, and I don't like to even go in more than waist deep.'
'Oh.' Inia sounded relieved. 'You're not just saying that to make me feel better?'
'Of course not. I wouldn't lie to you.' And it was true. It was part of what made their relationship work. Since there was absolutely zero chance of the two of them ever meeting face to face (or even having a mutual acquaintance), he could say things to her that he would never dream of revealing to anybody else. He could forget that he was a socially awkward fifteen year old school boy, and that she was a statuesque 19 year old fighter pilot.
'Well, I feel better. That's kind of why I didn't contact you for so long.' Inia gathered herself, and when she started talking again, she sounded like her usual self confident self. 'We have just one more day of leave, and then we're heading up to Kamchatka for some special weapons test. But the flight commanders are organizing a photo shoot for the last day, for the PR department!"
'So?'
"So they will us modeling in our swim suits!' Inia sounded incensed.
'You'll do fine. You'll probably first prize,' Shinji reassured, 'Actually, It's too bad I can't see that.'
There was a pause, 'Well, you can ogle that Asuka girl. You said she's pretty.' Now it was Shinji's turn to be quiet, 'Shinji?'
'Umm,' Shinji blushed beet red, 'We're kind of at a hot springs right now.'
'Oh.. Yui – she's the captain of the international Argos flight - mentioned that Japanese like to do that naked. So you're sitting naked in a pool of hot water, and the girl you like is just a few feet away, on the other side of a thin wall?" she teased.
'Stop! No! It's not like that! It's not that I like her. I'm just helping her out. And Misato is over there with her as well.'
'Oh, the pervy older woman?'
'She's not pervy. She's just a slob. And she's my commanding officer.' Shinji sank down in embarrassment so that only his face was out of the water.
'And if you don't like Asuka, why are you helping her so much? You aren't doing the same for Rei.' Shinji didn't reply. Because, if he was going to be honest with himself, part of the reason was the way his father gave special treatment to Rei. 'Beside, there's nothing wrong with liking a girl, as long as she's nice.'
'I am not certain if Asuka qualifies,' At this point Shinji heard rustling from the other side of the wall.
"Hey, Shinji, did you fall asleep over there? We're leaving now." Misato called.
"Are you drowning? Do we need to come over there for a search and rescue?" Asuka added.
'I got to go', Shinji interrupted Inia, "I'm coming. I'm fine". But he kept thinking about what Inia had said.