Relapse:∣▍
Chapter 5: "…you've got a way to fall…"
If you could be completely calm as your death barreled towards you, Shinji Ikari would probably be the only proof that it was possible.
The ageless boy readied his AT field, angling it at the most obtuse angle to deflect what little of the beam he could way from the positron rifle.
He watched as the Angel's shape warped and folded, creating massive dynamic shapes as it screamed and charged its attack. Time seemed to slow as the pure energy shot towards his position and he was forced to close his eyes as his targeting screen was blinded by light.
Around him, his world exploded as the beam of pure energy engulfed him and the surrounding mountainside. Nothing was spared by the attack, the concrete platform he was currently prone on was eroded by the beam, disintegrated by the intense heat and pressure.
Through his closed eyes Shinji focused on the strength of his field, in spite of the increasingly alien feeling he was beginning to have inside the EVA, but he didn't have time to dwell on it.
If he lost an arm, he could still shoot, if the rifle was damaged then all hope was lost.
ʡʘʢ
Despite the intense jolt they had felt in the bunker, despite the heat that now had her body coated in sweat, despite the fact that they might have missed their one and only shot at killing the Angel, Misato found the only thought that entered her mind as she picked herself off the ground was if Shinji was ok.
"Pilot status?" she barked at her subordinates.
"Vitals stable," one croaked out "heart rate only slightly elevated" other one called out incredibly.
Breathing a sigh of relief, she composed herself. She would not make the same mistake; she would not falter here.
For Shinji's sake.
"How's the power system?" she asked.
"Still online, looks like it's already starting to recharge."
"and the positron cannon?"
"Minimal damage, it appears to be mostly superficial."
"Shinji!?" Misato called out, praying for an answer.
ʡʘʢ
The hellscape he opened his eyes to really was impressive, he would have to think back to horrible worlds just to find a reference close to its state.
"Shinji?" Misato called out to him.
Groaning he tried his limbs, the lack of real pain told him that they were still intact.
"Get back into firing position now!" he heard through the comms. His body groaned in protest as he willed himself forward, his hands burning from the superheated ground as he pushed his EVA up.
Left with only the tendrils of smoky haze around him, he lifted the positron rifle, had it been this heavy before?
"Shinji, one more time, with all the power of Japan behind you, all of our hopes, our futures, our lives, along with the lives of every creature on this planet, it's all in your hands now."
A dark laugh echoed in his ear.
"Oh, the irony, if only they knew Baka."
He stopped, resting the rifle, frozen by those words. The specter was right, if only this Misato knew who she was really talking to.
His sin was so great he could barely stand the knowledge of its existence, let alone his punishment.
"Do your best."
He blinked three simple words from Misato, yet…
He could, he would.
Raising the rifle, he tossed off the Type-6 equipment, its' sensors had melted to the point of uselessness, he'd be on manual control now.
Just beyond the haze, he could see the Angel, its core clipped and spilling out energy and LCL in sporadic arcs. It screamed in anger; its fury on fully display by its constant dynamic shaping.
"Hurry up with the second round!" Misato called to him.
"BAKA, I could do this faster than you!"
He knew that. She was always better than him.
He racked the bolt, throwing the spent fuse to the ground.
Ignoring the callouts from techs and engineers, he listened to his heart rate, it wasn't exactly pounding in his ears, but that didn't matter, he knew what he felt.
Fear…
Fear of missing…
Fear of failure…
Lining up his scope the Third Children watched at the leaking core began to glow again, signaling the inevitable.
"Target's energy levels are on the rise!"
He said noting as a beam of pure energy shot at him for a second time, he didn't even avert his eyes either.
He trusted her.
And just like she had done for him an untold number of times before this, she was there, his shield against the beam of light, a comrade in arms, someone he could call friend, Rei Ayanami.
"Twenty more seconds!" a callout roared.
That shield wouldn't last that long.
Shinji watched as the repurposed spacecraft's ablative covering disintegrated again the onslaught, its outer edges eroding against the massive stream of energy barreling towards them. He did his best to concentrate on the Angel, despite the threat to his friend.
"She's replaceable IDIOT!"
She wasn't, not to him.
He could see her EVA now taking the brunt of the force, Shinji could witness the armor welding itself inwards.
He didn't need to imagine what it felt like.
Finally, the reticle flashed clearing him to fire.
He didn't hesitate, not this time.
With skill that one can only learn from piloting over countless lives Shinji smoothly squeezed the index finger of his EVA. Behind him, arcs of blue energy funneled into the rifle, instantly shooting a condensed teal beam against the Sixth Angel's Purple beam.
For a moment nothing happened before he could see a massive fireball explode out the back of the Angel.
Then it screamed.
No one else would feel the same way, no one else would hear what he heard, a chorus of screams that he had been lucky enough to experience in his lives seemingly came back all at once in his mind's eye.
It was just one more memory for him to relive in his nightmares.
What's one more?
As the Angel poured its red fluids around the cityscape, Shinji had already thrown down the rifle.
Looking for Unit-00 in the burning landscape, he finally found the melted yellow pile of metal, picking it up, Unit-01 rushed down the smoldering mountainside to the nearby lake, tossing the superheated EVA into the shallows with a cloud of steam being thrown back in his face.
Extracting his progressive knife, Shinji expertly pried the entry plug out with precision that only came with doing it hundreds of times before.
The boy clenched his teeth as he put the still-hot entry plug into the water, in an attempt to cool it off just that bit more, before placing it on the beach and exiting out of Unit-01.
Rushing to the pod, he paid no mind to the sand that burned his feet through the plug suit.
No, he knew that he would be in for plenty of pain by opening the pod with the emergency latch handles. As he struggled, Shinji cursed this weak 14-year-old body, not that it was doing him any good, but eventually, the steam that blasted him in the face was the reward for his effort.
With a pneumatic hiss the latch came open, and rushing inside he saw her, sprawled out in the pilot seat, seemingly limp.
His heart dropped as he slowly made his way into the plug, the soft splash of his feet in the last remaining bit of LCL the only noise being made.
"Rei?" he asked quietly, not truly expecting a response.
"Add one to your count" he heard from her leaning against the outside of the entry plug.
Taking another step, he felt his heart jump as Rei groaned and lazily raised her head enough to make eye contact with him.
Letting out a breath of air he didn't realize he was holding the Third Children felt as if his body had tripled in weight. It was probably just the adrenaline wearing off, but at the same time, he knew it was the relief that Rei hadn't been killed on his watch.
Again.
"You have nothing, really? You were going to leave me on that?"
The bluenette just blinked at him, still dumbfounded as the boy shifted more weight against the inside wall of the entry plug. Letting himself slide down and into the shallow layer of LCL Shinji couldn't help but allow a small smile to appear on his face.
"That whole dramatic goodbye thing?" he mumbled, unable to keep a tired voice from escaping his lips.
Resting his arms on his bent knees he just shook his head "Don't do that again, got it?"
He rested his head back against the still warm side of the entry plug, closing his eyes he couldn't find the strength to break the silence that had fallen between them.
She on the other hand…
"Why were you so concerned?" the First Children asked in her trademark monotone voice.
Without opening his eyes Shinji couldn't help but give a barely audible chuckle. Shaking his head, he looked back at the girl, a small smirk appearing at the edge of his lips.
Groaning as he stood up, the boy just offered the First Children his burnt hand.
"C'mon, let's get you out of here."
ʡʘʢ
Leaning against the tiled shower wall, the boy was doing everything to keep himself upright as he washed the dried and crusty LCL from his hair.
God, he was tired.
"Tired after one little mission, hmph, no wonder you're stuck like this."
She was leaning against the far wall, the water not affecting her. It wasn't like she was actually there after all.
Of course, she wasn't, but that didn't make her any less real to him.
Nor the things he did to her.
"Gonna cry in the shower Baka? Gott you're pathetic."
Trying his best to drown out her voice with the rushing of water, he worked the last bits of crusty LCL out of his hair. Through all the commotion he only just now realized that instead of the orange color he had come to know, instead here it was red. A small, perhaps trivial change, but with enough small changes…
Well, they tended to add up to something big.
He knew because this was his life now, or perhaps existence was a better word for it. One life or world to the next, with only her as his companion.
Tormentor was more accurate.
Shinji rubbed his eyes and finished; he didn't need to be thinking about this now, he was too exhausted. Dragging himself from the locker room he threw on the school clothes they had given back to him right before sending him off to get into his plug suit.
Reaching into the bundle of clothes, he felt a sense of relief at the familiar shape of Misato's pendant.
His Misato's pendant.
This place was strange, it was so similar to his first life, but… off. It'd been so long since he'd been dumped somewhere that closely resembled his original life this much and typically it wasn't so late either.
Usually, he expected to show up around the time Misato had delivered him to NERV, more than once his existence had been cut short by an N2 blast that was just a little too close to Misato's car. Other times he could show up as late as when Shamshel appearing in Tokyo 3.
An even rarer occurrence was when he would be able to live before all this, before the EVAs and Angels, as just a no-name kid. Weirder lives had him with no knowledge of his others, only after he died did those memories seem to get added to the collection of other memories.
Then there were…
"All you do is mope around, get your sorry ass moving!" she shouted in his ear.
Shinji pinched the bridge of his nose, as usual, she was right, he'd think about this later, even after all this time his predicament still made his head spin.
Right now, he needed a nice… well it wouldn't be a bed, but he'd learned how to sleep on just about any surface or as well as you could when your dreams had become an amalgamation of your failures.
Dragging himself to his feet he made sure to collect his things and walked towards the door. His feet were dragging he was so exhausted that as soon as he opened the door leading out of the locker room the boy ran into a waiting violet-haired director, who reacted fast enough to catch the boy from falling.
"Alright there Shinji?" She asked, a tired, yet warm smile on her face.
The Third Children just nodded, fighting to keep his eyes open.
That smile seemed to grow slightly on Misato's face as she wrapped an arm around the dark-haired teen.
They moved as one, with Shinji leaning on her more and more as they walked.
Neither said anything, neither had to.
ʡʘʢ
Misato's smile stayed on her face as they walked through the winding halls of NERV HQ.
The young man who was practically using her to stand up couldn't have noticed, not with his half-closed eyes and empty stare.
They half walked, half stumbled their way through the base, ready to take a lift to the surface. She was lucky that they only passed a few personnel burning the midnight oil, she didn't know if this was best look for either of them.
It was like a haze, everything that had transpired. Her mind was foggy, one minute they were on the lift, the next she fumbling with her keys to get into her car.
She steadied herself, luckily the roar of the engine was enough to snap her to her senses enough to drive. Shinji on the other hand, just collapsed into his seat seemingly passed out.
Before she could bring herself to shift the car into gear, she just looked at the boy who had done so much for them while asking so little in return, thrust into this new life with no expectation.
Pity.
And Guilt.
Those were the two things burning a hole in her chest, pity for what NERV had the boy go through, and guilt because, after all, she was the one who brought the boy here and it seemed like she was constantly talking him into staying. At least the Second Child had trained for this for the majority of her life and seemed to actually enjoy it. Like that, that was any fairer to her either though.
Misato almost laughed at the thought of the two of them meeting. Polar opposite personalities… she figured in a month or so the redhead would arrive from Germany, and then that would be quite the sight.
The gears in her head turned as her imagination ran wild with the two of them meeting for the first time, the thought of the Second Child's fiery personality clashing with Shinji's was the only thing that seemed to keep her eyes open as they blazed through the streets.
The drive was short, even without her crazy driving, instead, the roads were simply barren, with no traffic to speak of. Parking her beloved A310, she let out a sigh and rubbed her eyes, what they needed both was sleep, and perhaps a beer.
After shaking Shinji, the two fading roommates dragged themselves from the car, like zombies they both stumbled their way up the dimly lit apartment complex.
As Shinji watched the woman take 4 tries to swipe her card correctly, the boy felt he was lucky to be alive considering she probably would have crashed into another car had there been one on the road tonight.
Walking into the apartment he was greeted by the same smells and sights that he was accustomed to, a wave of nostalgia blasted over him, but he didn't loiter, neither of them did. Mumbling pleasantries, they both went straight for their respective rooms and respective beds.
Shinji eyed the room he had lazily, looking for some difference, but there was nothing that stuck out at him, at least not that he could remember with his sleep-deprived brain.
Nothing other than the redheaded specter standing ominously in the corner.
Eyeing the SDAT player that rested on the nightstand he shook his head. Picking it up he unwrapped the spool of earbud and just stared at it.
He thought about pressing play, about humoring himself, and seeing if the songs were the same as his original life.
If he even remembered those correctly.
Instead, he put his old friend back down and brushed his fingers across its familiar surface.
Taking a breath, he sat down on the mattress's edge and braced himself for what was to come. Leaning back Shinji did the best he could to get comfortable.
As he closed his eyes, he let himself succumb to Morpheus' realm and readied himself for the horrors that awaited him.