(Focus)
If the collective memory of the angels existed at all, then it very much possible that they had been getting impatient.
Seven times, they had assailed us, and seven times, we had repelled them – and somehow, we had succeeded in doing so without any of our EVAs being lost or any pilots being incapacitated.
Narrow as though some of our victories may have been, we were not preventing from amassing our strengths, or gathering our tools in the same place.
We had bought ourselves the time to transport EVA 02 to its destination; To train a capable pilot for EVA 01, and to upgrade EVA 00 to production model specifications.
Our side had all its weapons assembled, even if we did not count on the additional tools that were still in the works, such as the EVAs 03 and 04, the artificial copies of the Lance of Longinus, or the Dummy Plug.
However, this here was also true:
We had given the angels seven opportunities to observe us. To adapt to our attacks, if not by understanding, then at least by trial and error, like the instincts of beasts 'learn' when the individual creatures who cannot are erased out of every generation.
Just as we could not attain divinity without being erased, they could not learn without death.
But it would not be long until such bitter experience as they had bought with their blood would come to bear down on us.
The next angel Sahaquiel made xier entrance on the very next day, a mere fourteen hours after our visit to the conservation facility.
According to the testimonies of the observatory that first took note of xier existence, xir just appeared, as if from nowhere.
Xir was first sighted in orbit – for some definition of the word 'sighted':
Dr. Akagi and her team had considered AT-Fields powerful enough to bend light as a theoretical oddity in their many simulations, just another base to cover while trying to grasp the physics involved, trying to wrestle through the rules of logic and mathematics what completely defied humanity's intuitive sense of reality.
Still, the Doctor had not thought that they would ever encounter this phenomenon in reality, that it might be an artifact of the theory's incompleteness that would never be found in earnest, such as white holes or magnetic monopoles.
Yet there it was, caught in a fleeting satellite image:
Not a picture of the angel, but of a diffuse, impenetrable sphere hanging in the skies as if the known world just stopped at its edge, jet black but for a few repeating distortions that eerily resembled eyes.
Even so, xier sheer size was large enough to stun the crew of Central Dogma into silence, or so I heard it told in conversations I'd overheard later.
I say the glimpse was 'fleeting', because it did not last us long: Almost immediately, the deployment of orbital N2 mines had been ordered in hopes of, if not destroying xem, then at least knocking this inaccessible foe down to earth, but whereas this apex of man-made tools had sufficed to significantly slow down prior angels for just enough to buy us the time we had needed to act against them, Sahaquiel now repelled them without the slightest apparent effort.
The angels had adapted.
More than that: Sahaquiel's very next action was to cripple any possibility by which such an attack could have been launched again.
We did not find out just how exactly xir destroyed all the nearby satellites, only that all their signals had suddenly cut off.
Our lone clue lay in the very last signal that the lost instruments had sent back to earth:
A sudden spike in the AT-Field detectors.
"That's a new way of using it…" as Dr. Akagi had observed.
This new angel was rather adept at using xier powers.
More than that: When it was attempted to maneuver other satellites into viewing range, the engineers found that they could not do it. Signal transmission was jammed due to electromagnetic interference.
Long-range communications all over the planet were scrambled.
Parts of the world lost access to GPS and the internet.
Most saliently for NERV, we were no longer able to contact Commander Ikari, who was currently somewhere on a ship circling the blasted remains of Antarctica.
Had xir known, that we were watching xem through the steely metal eyes of our machines?
That our mysterious power as the holders of the fruit of knowledge was contingent on being able to observe and study it?
That our weakness as scattered mortal individuals lay in short-circuiting our communications with each other? That only the collective was strong, through one human alone was weak when blinded, deafened and gagged?
Or was that a failure of imagination, projecting human-like minds on these beings simply because they shared the nature of our souls?
Even speculating that xir might have concluded that our gaze itself was harmful even if xir could not say how still required them to think in cause and effect, to hold internal models of us.
That, it could not.
But plants, animals and fungi, no, even bacteria, already displayed an incredible range of adaptability even before the fruit of knowledge had fully ripened in them, and all of this, without the fount of immortal power that was available to the children of Adam.
Sahaquiel and xier siblings did not necessarily need to understand or deduce that we were observing xem to simply pick up that blowing up our tools and implements would slow down our efforts to assail xem, simply because the angels that had let us watch them to our hearts' content had plainly not survived.
But be that as it were, another consequence of xier strategy was that we were unable to monitor what xir went on to do next.
We could only guess from such observable evidence as had come within the range of our shorter-range scanners:
Two grand explosions near the coast, and then one final one, that blasted a crater into the landscape, and then, only silence.
Fortunately the last shot had only flattened a few half-sunken ruins left over from before Second Impact, though the Tsunamis caused by the first few shots led to problematic flooding.
This chain of islands was of course no stranger to natural disaster, so there were emergency measures and flood shelters available.
Elevators safely routed themselves to the lowest floors. Public speaker announcements sent warnings to remote suburban areas.
Even so, the number of casualties could not have been zero:
There was always someone napping with their headphones plugged in, some disabled person who could not escape quickly enough and had no one to help, some intensive care patients that could not be moved, and even villages that could not be warned quickly enough.
There was only so much that one could do against a solid wall of water that was four stories high.
Adding to the difficulty here was that the masses that had been dropped had caused a far more potent impact than even what could have been predicted based on their weight alone.
It was only because the evacuation radius was, by design, calculated using generous margins of error that the devastation wasn't worse than it had been.
Dr. Akagi and her team could only conclude that the projectile must have been surrounded by an AT field – a split off part of the angel's own body, infused with the deadliness of xier will.
Even the opening rites of Sahaquiel's attack had already cost us lives – the threat it represented came at a scale that we had never seen before.
Why xier bombardment had ceased, we could only guess.
Perhaps xir was simply practicing xir aim, and had now found xemself satisfied that xir could take us out. That was what Major Katsuragi had concluded, none too pleased: "It's learning."
These warning shots might at first have seemed like a lapse in Sahaquiels judiciousness, like xir was telegraphing xier intentions to us despite xier awareness of our dangerous gazes.
But if you were Sahaquiel, perhaps you too would have good reasons to be confident that such a warning would merely serve to torment us, as a trumpet of the apocalypse, all our power of insight serving only make us cognizant of our unavoidable defeat, and leave us stewing in a realization of utter black despair.
Or xier may have had no malice at all, being simply unaware that our ability to see the end going would cause us additional sorrow.
What we can know of xier thoughts must remain in the realm of speculation, but when it comes to xier intentions, we could hazard a good guess:
It was coming down, with all the furious force of a death-bringing meteor.
And if xier main body would be operating just like the previous projectiles, we could expect that xir would not only strike us with the sheer kinetic energy of its great mass and fall, but the power of its AT field as well: Preserved by the strength of its will, it would not evaporate or diminish in size like a normal space rock.
Xir might speed up xier fall with the limitless source of power held within xier body.
With our observation satellites out of commission, we could not predict xier exact trajectory very well at all, but every single simulation converged on confirming one thing:
That the entire island of Honshu would likely find itself bisected by a humongous crater.
Terminal Dogma would be entirely exposed.
The only thing remaining, in fact, for Lillith's chamber was, like the Black Moon itself, a creation of the First Ancestral Race. Perhaps one of the very things on this planet that even the angels could not destroy.
Any humans in the facility would most certainly be atomized, however – washing away everything that could not withstand the divine light.
In order to archeive this, xir need not even hit NERV headquarters straight on:
Between this, and the imprecision of the measurements available, the rage of xier possible landing sites was spread out over a vast territory.
By concentrating xier AT field at one central point, xier had effectively turned xemself into one enormous bomb – and due to that same massive AT-field, as well as those same EM distortions that blocked out eyes and ears, sniping xem from a distance was also bound to be fruitless.
By the time that we pilots had been gathered up and transported to headquarters, the entirety of the facility was already caught in an uproar.
All around us, preparations were being made – for the evacuations of civilians and non-essential personnel, for the transferring of all backup data to Magi-2 in Matsushiro, and most of all, for countermeasures.
Major Katsuragi's risky creative plans were a great part of what had earned her that recent promotion, but now it seems that whichever desperate idea she had clobbered together to withstand such an absurd foe had proven controversial.
I overheard something about how the Major and Dr. Akagi reportedly had some loud, dramatic fallout.
There was much talking going in in general, much hoping, guessing, speculating.
All around, the technicians' faces were painted with anxiety and dread.
The odds of success where lower than ever before – and this in an organization that had already grown accustomed to describing probabilities by the number of zeroes or nines involved.
Even if the plan succeeded, there was a good chance that all three EVAs might be severely damaged or even destroyed.
Through this sea of unease, I walked as the silent eye of a storm, making straight lines for the lockers without ever pausing to take part in the discourse.
Plodding straight onward in-between their hurried whispers, as if existing in some entirely different world, untouched by theirs.
In a sense, I very much did:
Anxiety is fundamentally a reaction to uncertainty:
By definition, it is described as anticipatory fear, tied to the possibility of future adversity or deprivation.
Though most of the staff didn't know it, there was nothing left uncertain at all.
Everything about this sequence of events had been predetermined, arranged for, planned out and prepared.
Observed, assessed and understood.
I was not yet familiar with the details of Major Katsuragi's plan, but while I expected that it would be explained to me soon in so far as I would be involved in carrying it out, I did not really need to understand it.
The only statistic that mattered was this: The chance of success was not precisely zero.
So long as it was not zero, providence would take care of the rest.
In a sense, the odds of success had really been exactly 1 every single time – and so it would be on the day of Third Impact, in the transfiguration of mankind.
The same laws of nature that had preserved us
And if I and my fellow pilots were doomed to be destroyed in the process, the gently sloping trajectories of our lives and relationships suddenly cut short, then there was nothing we cold do
about it; That might have been inevitable, too.
One way or another, we could only do that which was within our ability to do, nothing more, nothing less.
All we could do is to keep playing our parts.
If it was within out ability to survive, we would live, and if it it was not, then we would die.
Our previous training or weapons design might have influenced the outcome within the margins of wiggle room afforded by the scenario, but as of now, it was probably already decided, with the same certainty as the automatic door shutting behind me as I entered the locker room.
As I put on my suit, it occurred to me that, in a sense, this was the closest I had come to being 'in the same boat' as everybody else in this facility.
If the angel's blast were to connect, it would wipe out even the clones down in their tank, so if that came to pass, the entity known as 'Rei Ayanami' would be annihilated in its entirety, never to return.
Yet considering this did not fill me with anything resembling the fear that weighed down on the humans in this facility.
I had little feelings about it at all.
It's not like it could really happen.
The angel would be defeated somehow, even if I would never find out how.
By all likelihood, a new 'Ayanami Rei' would be prepared and activated before the rubble from the fight could be cleared away.
All that I could do was to stay focused on what needs to be done.
…
I met the other two pilots on a passageway adjacent to the cages, overlooking a great round platter that was used to turn the EVAs in the right directions to follow the rails used in their further transport.
Currently, it was EVA 02 that was being readied for transport.
Ikari-kun and the Second were already suited up – they must have arrived some time before me, perhaps together with the Major.
As soon as I arrived, I found myself pinned down by the Second's judging eyes:
"About time!"
An expected unpleasantness, I suppose.
I did not think that it would be any use to remind her that the time of my arrival was largely dependent on how swiftly the Section Two agents had been to contact and transport me, nor in telling her that I was perfectly on time.
I suspect that she probably did not attach that much significance to the time anyways.
She was complaining for complaining's sake, or perhaps to start the conversation in an assumed position of power.
She made a point of putting a few steps of distance between us and crossing her arms, assuming a confident pose;
Apparently, she had something to say, and was determined to have us hear it:
"Now listen up! Shinji might've gotten the last kill, but that was only thanks to my plan, so that one was clearly a tie. Which means that if I get this one, our score is finally even!"
She's still on about that? At a time like this…?
We might as well be existing in different realities each.
Had she regretted her earlier sound judgment?
I thought she was finally
What had changed?
Was she still displeased about the test scores?
I had almost forgotten about that, after everything that had happened since...
"So- you two will be the two well behaved little kids that you are and sit aside while I handle this, okay?"
I said nothing, as there was no such commitment I could make.
The only two things I would be doing would be carrying out my orders, and, in absence of such, that which I myself should judge necessary for the success of the project.
"You just have to listen and do exactly what I say again. Capiche?"
Seems that I was not the only person lacking in worry, albeit for a very different reason.
Or no. If I try to be objective here, it is probably not actual confidence that is fueling her insistence on this point, but a different concern of her own.
The most pressing matter in the world that she thinks she lives in.
"Leave this one to me, and don't you even think of stealing my kill! It's only fair, since I let you have a go last time."
Faced with her naked finger pointed at his person, Ikari-kun, though noticeably uncertain, felt compelled to attempt some token diplomacy:
"Uhm… I mean… if you think that's a good idea…"
"You will do no such thing."
The Major had arrived.
Right away, one could note the marked lack of her usual affected cheer.
Her posture was upright, her word choice a great deal more formal.
She had come marching in in a purposeful manner, light something tightly holding itself in place lest it risk coming apart:
"Because the angel is distorting any information on its position, we cannot count on estimations based on optical observations. In order to respond to the situations and cover all sides, this situation will involve the simultaneous launch of all three EVAs."
"That won't be needed!" insisted the Second, emphatically leaning forward with a gesture of her right hand. "I can annihilate the angel by myself!"
I spotted Ikari-kun throwing her a worried glance – at this point, even he must have realized that this insistence went beyond what could be explained by simple vaingloriousness.
There was something forced, even hounded to it.
The Major tried to be patient, but it was strained, cobbled-together patience that had already been exhausted by the events of the day:
"Impossible. The predicted area of impact cannot be covered by a single EVA unit. This angel is nothing like the ones we have faced before."
The Second Child did not understand.
Or perhaps she refused to, just because the consequence was something unacceptable in her eyes. Her voice grew, if anything, even more insistent than before:
"That is exactly why you should leave the toughest enemy to the best pilot! The others would only get in the way! I am fully capable of protecting mankind by myself!"
For a variety of reasons that were easy to imagine, the Major made an effort to remain in the realm of the serious, formal and business-related:
"The outcome of this mission does not rest on single combat."
The Second Child refused to respond in kind all the same, her superior demeanor notably cracked for one moment as she clung to her singular focus:
"Does that mean you think I'm not good enough?!"
Major Katsuragi implored her to understand:
"That's not it. I simply need the strength of all three of you."
"So? Then what for?" the Second spat back, primed for combat, but the Major's glib assertions took the wind straight out of her sails:
"You are going to catch the angel."
Now the reality of our situation was sinking in posthaste, blossoming self-evidently on her face through the blown-up rubber balloon strips of what her bravado alone could no longer sustain:
"Catch it-?! Like- with our hands?!"
For emphasis, she mimed a grasping motion with her hand, exposing the black patch in the palm of her plugsuit.
But the Major of course doubled down, proceeding suspiciously undeterred as if she were making a deliberate point of refusing to be.
"Exactly. We are going to station the EVAs all around the predicted impact area. Then you stop the angel's fall directly, with your AT fields at maximum."
She said 'catch', but it was implicit that our AT-Fields would be doing the bulk of the work, whereas the contributions of the EVAs physical arms should be ephemeral.
If you fall, it's not the fall that kills you but the impact.
If you bashed against the arms of a hypothetic rescuer in mid-fall, the kinetic energy you'd accrued while tumbling down would tear their elbown straight off, or else you bones would snap as you hit hard against them.
To be caught, you would need to be slowed first, or your fall gently followed, slowly taking you out from the yoke of velocity.
It was not the angel's touch that would doom the land below, but xier speed, which, to exhaust would take a careful resistance, especially since there was no reason to suppose that xir could not accelerate further while xir was still live in our grasp.
Our task was in essence to prevent the brunt of its force from ever touching the ground, and have it instead borne by our AT-fields.
The only way to beat back something that refused to obey conventional physics was to repel like with like.
The more precise language put some flesh on the diffuse skeletal plans in our imaginations, and so it would have sunken in that this desperate Kamikaze mission would indeed become our reality in less than two hours time.
There was not even time to prepare.
Barely enough to begin comprehending.
Ikari-kun was probably starting to:
"What if the angel veers too far of course?"
Major Katuragi did not even bother to disguise the truth:
"Then it's game over."
The Second Child, too, was realizing:
"What if our units can't withstand the impact?"
"That would be game over too."
"What are our odds?" Ikari-kun threw in, grasping to cling to any straw, to whatever silver lining of an absent reassurance that might be offered up.
Major Katsuragi simply smiled at us.
"Only god knows."
I think he understood our predicament then.
I think the Second did, too, and she did not like it one bit.
She defied it.
"So you just want us to hope for a miracle?!"
In her own way, so did the Major:
"No. We are going to make a miracle happen, by human hands."
I wondered if the Second Child was going to protest further, but in the end, she proved to have a rather pragmatic and probably accurate take on it:
"So just… make it work somehow?!"
To her credit, Major Katsuragi did not ask us to keep her company in some rosier frame of reality.
Not this time:
"I'm sorry, but we're out of options – this is the only plan we have."
The Second Child felt honor-bound to put up a token protest:
"You think this mess qualifies as a plan?!"
Her resistance was met with a yielding wall of mist:
"Not really. Which is why you can refuse if you want."
Silence.
Nobody said anything.
Certainly not the Second.
She was going to protest her lot and she wasn't going to like it, but it seems the thought of actually refusing had not even crossed her mind.
The Major must have wondered if we had understood her words:
"Are you all on board?"
There was nothing we could say that had not been said already.
No one could muster an enthusiastic 'yes', but,
for one reason or another, each of us for whatever reasons of their own,
no one turned back, either, even when given the choice –
As if there had only ever been that one single path to begin with, even if it lead to the gallows.
It seems that one way or another, we were all snared.
"Regulations say that you're supposed to write out a will. Will you?"
Despite everything, the Second Child still had enough bluster left to scoff at this:
"No thanks, I don't plan on dying today."
I suppose I didn't have much reason to leave one, either.
I didn't really have many worldly possessions to myself, and what little I did have was assured to be passed on to the next 'Rei Ayanami'. There was no need to specify this.
Maybe this plug suit alone would be disposed of with my body, or burnt together with me when the angel's unmerciful advent put me out of the world.
It was already just the right color to become my burial shroud.
Once he had waited and seen that neither of us was going to do it, Ikari-kun chose to pass on it as well.
It would have been incorrect to say that he did not appear daunted or nervous at all, but, there was not a great difference to any of our previous deployments.
Perhaps he did not really grasp the difference in orders of magnitude and our success probabilities were all just numbers with many zeroes after the point.
Or, he had faced ever more impossible odds so often that he had somewhat gotten used to it, if such a thing was possible.
It was a distinct change from our first deployment together, when he'd spent the prelude to the battle preoccupied by thoughts of death.
Perhaps Major Katsuragi would have preferred it if we had protested more, giving her something to argue or solidify against, to reiterate the necessity and inevitability of what we must do, and thereby have another opportunity to convince herself.
She may have preferred not to be reminded that we all had very few choices.
Whatever she thought, she covered it with a clumsy affectation of cheer:
"Thanks everyone. Once this is over I'll treat you to a nice fancy steak dinner~"
She waved at us awkwardly even as she went ahead.
The exchange that followed was confounding, particularly because I am reasonably certain that every single one of them was aware that they were only feigning their upbeat tones – and yet, though nobody seemed deceived, they still keep up the pretense.
How very, very strange.
"Really?"
"I promise."
"Yay~"
"We'll hold you to it."
"Look forward to it!~~"
Their tones were not even convincing.
I really do not think that I could have spotted a well-executed deception that would require subtle awareness of peoples' tones and expressions to catch onto.
Confounded as I was, I wondered, toward the end, if my assessment of the situation had been mistaken, but all doubt was soon removed the very instant that Major Katsuragi had vanished through the door.
It did not take very long for the plastered smiles to disappear from the other pilots' faces.
Instead, Ikari-kun's face revealed a rather more puzzled look:
"Did she just try to bribe us with a piece of meat?"
The Second, not unexpectedly, had little but mockery for the Major, gesturing with her hand to further communicate her deprecation:
"Does she really think anyone still gets excited about steaks these days? Geez. People from the Second Impact generation have such low standards."
It did not seem to occur to her that Inspector Kaji whom she so idolized was part of the very same demographic – though in her idealization, the particulars of his actual person probably tended to get lost.
Ikari-kun, to his credit, made a feeble attempt to show her consideration:
"It's not exactly their fault."
This, too, yielded naught but mockery:
"What was that with the 'yay' bit, anyway? You were laying it on a bit thick."
Here, he made a half-hearted attempt to defend himself, drenched in poorly restrained frustration.
"I'm just trying to be considerate of Misato-san's feelings. What exactly is wrong with that?"
Somehow he could never quite summon up the same insistence when it was his own person at the receiving end of her tirades.
Ostensibly, the Second's intentions for playing along with the Major's fiction appeared to have been somewhat different:
"Well, if we want to ease her guilty conscience, we gotta pick out something fancy."
Grinning deviously, she clasped her fingers together, ostensibly browsing through options mentally. The fabric of her suit made a little rubbery noise as the material covering her hands brushed past each others.
"Where shall we go~"
I can only conclude that the Major's concern, though not strong enough to preclude our deployment, and her attempts to maintain good cheer, though futile, seemed to strike the Second Child as funny or quaint.
In the light of the disbelief she had previously expressed though, I could not say with any certainty that she was really this overconfident; It is possible that she was distracting herself in her own way.
So far so good. But then, for reasons beyond my comprehension, she turned straight toward me:
"And this time, you have to come with us."
I was almost a little startled. Suddenly reminded that, (of course, as should have been obvious), I was not simple looking at this situation from a distance, or reviewing it from a point long after it had since taken its inevitable course, but indeed, in a fashion, standing here with them, in this room, visible to all, right here, right now, appearing not so greatly different from one of their own.
In the suddenness of the moment, I defaulted to my habitual response:
"I think I'll pass."
What I did not expect then was for Ikari-kun to step forward immediately, erupting in rushed, conciliatory speech, like he somehow saw the need to smooth out some bump in the road:
"I'm sure we can find some please that has some vegetarian stuff, too. It doesn't have to be steak! Misato-san probably just meant that as a suggestion..."
I don't understand why he would get so agitated off all sudden.
He can respond so strongly so quick, sometimes.
I never quite know how to respond.
"It's fine. You can go without me. It's not important anyways, you can come some other time. There is no need for you to inconvenience yourselves on my account."
"It's no trouble at all!" he insisted, "The whole point is for us all to celebrate together, right?"
Then he seemed to become aware that he'd spoken a bit more emphatic than was his wont, and flipped at once to some cautious backpedaling:
"You don't have to come, if you don't want to, but if you do, we don't mind looking for another restaurant – I mean, this is a really big city, so how hard can it be? You're our friend, after all, so of course we don't mind looking for a solution that makes everybody happy. And you fight as hard as anyone else. You're just as important as the rest of us. We want you to have a good time – and I'm sure that goes for Misato-san, too, she probably just forgot about the whole vegetarian thing because she's stressed out…"
He is quite concerned with all this, even feeling compelled to ensure that I would not think badly of Major Katsuragi. One may conclude that he is quite considerate of other people's feelings, when he gets the breathing room of not being too tied up in his own. Or perhaps, he simply doesn't wish to deal with conflict in his surroundings. That would make more sense, if I'm honest, than inexplicable goodwill for no reason.
He probably must be wanting something. Like everyone does. There is no point in deceiving myself. Yet on the other hand, though I know better than to believe it too much, I feel some soft, sore spot opening up, when he thinks to consider me though he does not have to.
I know better than to read anything into it. At best, it would be such consideration as he would show all his friends. It's not 'for me', as nothing ever is.
Nor does this train of thought matter much, in the end.
It's just idle thinking. There is no point in making plans for celebration when it wasn't clear that we would ever return.
I should just focus.
I should just get on with it.
I shouldn't linger here too long. Dear goodness, the Second Child always glares daggers at us when ever Ikari-kun stops to talk for me even for an instant.
Ridiculous though it may be that she would account this… what, disloyalty? Like she was expecting him to take her side in some arbitrary "game" with no relation to our mission, the reality was what it was - He'll be the one subjected to her moods in the end.
What did I even think I was doing here?
It would be better if we did not associate too much, if that would just sabotage our cooperation as a trio.
I wasn't going to go.
For all we know, there never might be a celebration; we might not even survive to the end of the day.
An image, they say, is sometimes worth more than a thousand words.
Major Katsuragi, one might assume, is a great believer in that saying.
She summoned the three of us up to the command platform in Central Dogma, it seems, to impress upon us something that could only be done justice with the enormous holographic screens of central Dogma.
The three of us had seen many maps of the areas surrounding the city, we'd gone over it countless times in the training simulations; Given the EVA's short battery duration, it was imperative that we did not get lost. Which meant that inside my brain there was vast information about city blocks that I had never had reason to visit, that, for me, existed only as topology.
I have no idea of the people there or what might be described as the 'ambiance', or the economic impact of the stores, not to speak of the hundreds of individual life-stories that unfolded there, all of which would see their trajectories altered if their dwelling places should become collateral damage, even if the objective of preserving mankind in such as form as it was possible was in fact achieved – even if the shops' owners were safe in a shelter and their losses covered by insurance, or subsidies meant to keep business where NERV had need to retain its workers, a life's work and investment may still be swept away, dreadful and burdensome inconvenience, being forced, perhaps, to move temporarily into some shelter or share a flat with some disagreeable relatives, and so their last months would be spent in discomfort.
Under other circumstances, these would be a few months like any other, but knowing that it would be their last ones, chances are that it might taint how they look back at their lives, given the peak-end bias that humans have in assessing their experiences.
Though it is possible that, through instrumentality, such distortions would lose their hold on mankind.
What biases were clouding our views right now, by definition imperceptible to us?
A collection of different ones – we clash where we each interfere with each other's denials, yet in the end the complicated apparatus of our minds is just a generator of justifications to obtain the ape desires of mankind.
It would be foolish to think myself an exception – I was at least created to resemble man, even if that superficial paint-job is bound to crumble off in flakes as time goes on.
What could I guess of the complicated arrays of associations and beliefs, the substitutions and displacements that channeled the drives of basic survival towards things for which twenty years ago there were no words:
"We can't get a precise fix, but based on the data we collected before the angel cut off our signal, the Magi have calculated that it's probably going to land… somewhere here."
I had expected the map to zoom in, as it often did when an area of operations was specified. I wasn't used to seeing its full extent outside of the first view right after the interface booted up, whether we are speaking of such holoscreens used all over the facility by NERV, or the computerized interfaces of the EVAs.
But now, this did not happen, for it was not needed.
Superimposed on the map, an orange area appeared, a composite of various different shapes whose sharp contours might be artifacts of the calculation method.
The demarcated range would not have fit on the screen if the picture had been zoomed in at all.
The implications of this were not lost on my co-pilots.
For the Second Child, it was yet another reason for displeasure:
"Are you serious?! That's such a huge area!"
Ikari-kun, however, did not have such generous expectations of the world that he would see hope in exacting complaints. He just mumbled to himself in sober acceptance:
"...that's going to be hard to cover even with three EVAs…"
Whatever inner mechanisms her confidence may be based on, (for even if I believed we'd be successful, I can't say it was reasonable for her to expect this, as she had no way of knowing why), Major Katsuragi remained adamant, responding only to the informational content of those exclamations by glibly explaining our predicament:
"Using its AT-Field, the target could completely annihilate NERV HQ if it land anywhere within that area. - That's why we will position the EVAs at these three points."
Three markers appeared.
At first glance, I could not guess any discernible pattern behind them.
I figured that I should understand it in case it would be relevant for any decisions I might have to make:
"What is this positioning based on?"
But Major didn't really have an answer. Her reply was without real content, as if her brimming veneer of assertive confidence was itself supposed to be the answer:
"Gut feeling."
I was beginning to see the reasons behind Dr. Akagi's uncharacteristic agitation.
The Second wasn't having it either, or at least she put up a show of defiance despite having already consented to the operation. Perhaps this gave her a sense of control:
"Gut feeling?!"
But the Major wasn't shaken, or perhaps rather, could not allow herself to be shaken:
"Yep. Good ole women's intuition."
I've always have found it curious, to see some people assigned to the 'woman' category spouting those commonly passed-around lines that portray them as essentially un-human beings lacking the full range of human behaviors or having unbelievable magical powers.
What would be flattering about that?
Maybe this would be proof that I am not truly a 'woman' in the same sense as a full-blooded human being might be.
It is not like with human beings who identify vividly as some other or no gender. These are still human. This other gender is still very, very important to them.
For me it is like – like a lot of plants are hermaphrodites, how bees can be workers as well as breeding males and females, or how some fish change their reproductive status depending on their age and place in the hierarchy.
The scientific term for a soldier ant is 'Dinergate', meaning, 'fearsome worker'. That always struck me as an interesting way to define a soldier, even if the word was no doubt chosen to reflect that soldier ants are a particular subtype of workers.
It is a fearsome worker indeed, whose work is death: A grim-reaper with scythe.
Perhaps I am something like a Dinergate, not meant for sharing life by breeding or protecting it by working & contributing to the community and culture, but for destruction, even if it is destruction in the name of a higher purpose.
Though I have tried to tread as lightly as I could and minimize the impact I'm responsible for (for example, by abstaining from consuming animal flesh), I am ultimately a being born with its hands stained red, a harbinger of doom, of the same nature as the angels.
Perhaps all living things are born with hands stained red, full of devouring prejudiced impulses, with no choice but to desperately grasp that which they need to live.
Even one so harmless-looking as Ikari-kun could not help but default to saving themselves first if pushed enough.
Major Katsuragi, too, must have known that she is staining her hands to get what she wants, however she might rationalize it.
Innocence and harmony are simplifications for the sake of argument with no tangible pendant in reality.
Our blood may stain her hands, though she could not give us good reasons why.
The irony was that she might indeed have done the best she can.
Human beings tend to overestimate the impact of their attitudes and actions, perceiving the world as more coherent that it actually is, overlooking the cruel truth of its chaos and randomness, how we are all swept away in a murky torrent of capricious chance, attributing causal meaning to coincidences and regressions to the mean, and large-scale forces much bigger than ourselves that have been at work since before our births.
If we were to perish, it would not be because Major Katsuragi had made an error, but because the outcome was, in the long term, inevitable, and in the short term, impossible to predict – emergent patterns from foam, where only the sum of large numbers amounted to regularity.
I knew the angel would be defeated, but this was because of the prophecy in the Dead Sea Scrolls, not the Major's 'gut-feeling'.
When I first heard that term, I think, in the context of a radio show that played in my sickroom at NERV headquarters, I first discounted it as a superstition, as people merely guessing and then attributing those guesses with objective reality.
I had never experienced such a 'gut-feeling', female-labeled body plan notwithstanding – associative or predictive intuition, perhaps, deductions, assumptions, extrapolations, but not that kind of just 'seeing' what's the case as it is described, especially not with regard to the feelings of human beings. How could you possibly know what another person is feeling unless they tell you?
Since then I have read some books about how it works, and come to learn that it is indeed a lot more sophisticated than mere 'guessing', the product of copying body language or a holistic mode of perception.
Perhaps my lack of such was yet another proof of my very lacking replication of a human.
Yet, same as humans, I would realize that I had made the common basic error of assuming that my experience was universal – it seems that even one knowing how much they differ from any supposed 'norm' can still fall prey to this error.
These 'gut feelings', apparently, do exist. Though it subjectively made little sense to be that you could possibly know something without a reason, and then go and make decisions on what seems like such a flimsy basis, it makes no sense to postulate that the people reporting them must all be lying or mistaken. It's just too improbable.
I have read of convincing cases of people extrapolating very useful information from such 'gut feeling', in particular, experts sometimes develop astoundingly sharp senses for their area of expertise. But this is basically a process based on recognition.
If a chess master or car buff spends a lot of time looking at chess or cars, their brain eventually starts using the more discriminating kind of perception that is also applied to faces. Regular building blocks of situations are recognized on sight, as surely as familiar faces.
This is why such an expert can predict things with amazing accuracy in their area of expertise but might be miles off outside of it.
To develop such an intuition, a situation needs to have predictability and reliability to begin with.
There is a lot of that in chess moves; There is very little of that, for example, in the stock market, which is a second order chaotic process where predictability could not be lower.
There is little such predictability in the angels and their ability, too.
The Major's so-called 'intuition' was probably just a guess.
But the guess is the best we have, because real prediction is probably genuinely impossible.
Though, as far as the Second was concerned, accepting our own relative powerlessness would probably have been an unbearable pain. Hence, she complained, as if better choices were available, and just capriciously being withheld:
"Talk about a shot in the dark! I see our miracle slipping further and further away…"
I doubt Ikari-kun was aware of the statistics, so his pessimism was likely the product of a genuine intuition, a correct reading of simple situational cues:
"Seems like a gamble… Misato-san plays the lottery, but she's never won anything…"
"That's a logical fallacy, a variety of the gambler's- or the hot-hand fantasy" I informed him, "Repeated outcomes in independent events do not influence each other."
I didn't really expect it to help. I just didn't know what else to say to that.
Perhaps I should have kept quiet.
"Geez… stop acting like a smartass, Miss Honor Student!"
Put aside the irony of the Second Child telling anybody to stop showing off and focus, or where on earth she got that impression with respect to my goals.
I didn't comprehend anything about this world, or how it works, no matter how much I I might read on the subject.
I suppose it did not matter if I did.
Most of it did not concern me, or even tangentially touch the spheres of my concerns.
I existed only to pilot EVA.
That is, my body did – I'm still not sure what I, as a conscious person, am for.
What I have done, for the most part of my existence, which is largely already over, is to read books and stew in my misery.
Maybe I just exist because I do.
Probably just a byproduct. If they could create a flesh that would fulfill all their needs without generating a mind, they would have. It would make sense for them to do so, as that would have minimized risks.
Everybody I knew would probably have preferred a philosophical Zombie in my place, and it made sense for them to do so.
Well, maybe Ikari-kun could be counted an exception, but I did not know for sure.
Perhaps I could know, since living beings are never quite transparent to each other, shut off as they are each in their individual monads.
There brief moments we had spent with each other had almost come to an end.
Soon, we were riding the final elevator up to the cages, marked for death as surely as gladiators saluting Caesar. The question was simply whether we were going to die now, or later.
Death would get us when it would get us and there was nothing we could do about that.
What mattered now – what there was a point in focusing on now, was that which there was to do until that moment of release would come, to move, as a bullet flung by the laws of physics, toward that which we had been shot at, whether our limited strength would serve to pierce it or not.
I did realize that this might be the last time we were all together in a room, but it didn't occur to me to say anything.
There was nothing to say.
At least, nothing that could have been handily put into words.
The others must have been thinking their own thoughts, reflecting on their own fates.
Or maybe some, like the Second maybe, weren't thinking much at all, and so the time passed quite quickly, not worth being noted down in thought.
She and Ikari-kun were standing near each other – or perhaps they would claim that I was standing apart, like the Second had sometimes complained of.
I had never really done it on purpose, it had just simply seemed natural to me that all the beings in a room should spread out to fill all available space, like the molecules of a gas.
Humans, apparently, clump, like liquids or even solids, which is why they often share their dwellings. Apparently it is considered quite healthy for a human to share frequent contact with others, that is why the Major had united those two under her roof.
So, their associating together was presumably a natural consequence of that new closeness, something befitting their nature.
It should not have pertained to be, nor have been any of my business.
Thus I did not turn around. Thus, I simply kept facing the passing walls beyond the wire of the elevator casing, getting ready to step outside when I would be required.
Still, their words kept stinging into my consciousness, like needles penetrating from the back.
I couldn't see them, but I could more or less imagine how they were standing, from the sounds of their voices and the rustling of their suits.
It was really none of my business what they were saying, and yet, some of my attention caught on the edges of their words, glued to them perhaps by a splotch of curiosity and a thread of something more diffuse.
"Hey…" Ikari-kun volunteered, timid and tentative as ever – and predictable as ever, the Second Child's response was to snap at him without much in the way of mercy, like he was little more than a nuisance, as far beneath her as she might have fancied an insect:
"What now?"
And just as predictably, he kept trying to draw close, like the beaten dog that comes crawling back., careful yet insistently pushed forward by some need scarcely smaller than his fear.
He, it seems, had found something floating in his mind that he wanted to have answered before it might be his turn to perish:
"Why did you become an EVA pilot?"
He had asked me the same thing, of course. Perhaps it was a symptom of him still seeking for his own reasons. I would have wanted to hear the Second Child's as well, if it should incidentally be revealed, even if I would not have sought it out and had things I suspected – my ideas may have been refined or disproven.
The Second, of course, regarded all this as so obvious that she was borderline offended to hear the question, as might be thought symptomatic of one who justified her path forward by telling herself it was the only possible way and that anything else would have been patently stupid:
"Well, why do you think! To exhibit my talents to the world of course!"
Of course it would be something myopic like that, looking no further than her nose in a world that was so much broader and larger.
I never understood the urge to make others sing your praises. Clearly many of my classmates have it, as do many other humans.
I don't see what is so great or appealing about it, nor about putting yourself over others in rank.
Intellectually, I understand where it comes from, basic mammalian behavior dating back through chimpanzees and rodents.
But personally, I don't see the joy in it. It may be because I am not human, not even mammalian.
I am ever more aware of this, when surrounded by people who are so thoroughly human and quintessentially mammalian as those who surround me, all in their own ways, with their own quintessential flavors of human: Ikari-kun, the Second child, the Major, Dr. Akagi.
I don't see what's so great in lording over others, or being praised.
Praise speaks only to what is useful and exploitable about you, thoroughly external things unrelated to your true inner self.
Qualities for which you will be exploited and plundered for all you are worth.
The Second Child treats her ability to be a pilot as a point of pride, but it is precisely because of that ability that she keeps being offered up as a human sacrifice, time and time again.
It is because of this ability that the three of us might be just about to die.
This, however, is when Ikari-kun surprised me by distilling some deeper meaning or undercurrent from what seemed at first like a rather shallow statement:
"To prove that you exist?"
It had not occurred to me that it could be regarded like this, that what seemed like crudeness or folly might have this existential layer. Perhaps it takes a human to understand a human.
"I guess you could say that… - Are you not going to ask the First?"
I wish she would not keep dragging me into things or conversations, or looking to involve me in unnecessary things or pursuits.
I dreaded just a little what Ikari-kun might say, that it may confirm other things I suspected, though in the end, he did not say all that much:
"Ayanami and I already talked about this."
It's no wonder he remained terse about this – even saying as much as he had, he had effectively paraded himself as a target for teasing:
"Aren't you two all chummy?"
She is so certain that he must only like me for my body, for some secondary external thing to please himself with.
They all find it so impossible that there is any legitimate reason why anyone might be drawn to me, outside of shallow reasons of utility.
Is there anything in me that would justify any other kind of interest?
If I don't understand what makes being with other humans or having their regard to satisfactory to humans, would that not be because that 'something' is lacking in me?
If it exists at all, and people are seeking anything beyond just doing their pre-programmed, mammalian behaviors…
I was honestly quite relieved that Ikari-kun shut the subject down:
"Just cut it out already…"
The Second Child proceeded to ask the next most obvious question. To her credit, one must acknowledge that she probably hit the unspoken elephant in the corner right on its elongated nose:
"So then, how about you?"
If Ikari-kun had asked that was, to a large extent, because he could not quite answer this for himself:
"I don't really know…"
This means that, if he died now, he would perish without even being able to say what he is dying for.
Though I am not certain that having an answer would have made him happy.
I knew exactly 'why', but such an answer granted from on high conferred no salvation.
It just meant knowing just what exactly is not.
Of course, as far as the Second Child was concerned, everything ought to be obvious, plain and simple:
"What do you mean, 'you don't know'? Are you a total moron? You're just avoiding responsibility!"
"...maybe I am…"
"You can scratch the 'maybe'."
He did not try to defend himself any further after that.
I suppose that is not very surprising.
Any further offshoots to this conversation were curtailed when we finally reached our EVAs.
…
The preparations proceeded.
The EVAs were shipped out to the starting points, activated, charged up as much as they could be.
Us pilots were examined one last time, and then, sent to build up synchronization as much as we could.
The staff of NERV did all they could, how little it might have compensated for that which was beyond their control, even more than it would usually be, when facing such unknown, unpredictable enemies as alien lifeforms whose thinking humans could not understand.
We would be operating on our own, on limited power, charging straight through the terrain on rather limited information. None of us could know for certain if we would even engage the enemy – we might not get to xem before we run out of battery, or arrive to find Sahaquiel already defeated and both of our comrades vanquished in the struggle.
The Magi had predicted a substantial probability that all three EVA units may be damaged or even lost, so there was a real chance that we would incur the first casualties among the pilots today – in a sense, it was overdue. I could think of many instances where the demise of one of our number was only narrowly averted. I never doubted then that Commander Ikari's scenario would somehow come to pass, but there was no guarantee about the 'how'. Only Unit One was truly required to persist, and this need not even extend to her pilot.
I rested completely still in my seat, keeping my eyes closed to concentrate. My synchronization rate was the lowest, so I would need the greatest focus to attain the desired results.
Regrettably, the synchronization process could be quite vulnerable to distracting thoughts.
After all these years, it seldom happened to me anymore, and when it did, I tried my best to ignore it – though after the incident where Unit Zero went Berserk, I knew that I could not afford to be careless.
I had to empty my mind of any extraneous glimmers that might interfere with the synchronization, that may cause resistance within the conduit of will that I was supposed to become.
A good way to dispel such thoughts was often simply to become aware of them, to acknowledge them so whatever unreasonable urgency was behind them would crumble into the wind.
I had found myself wondering what the post-battle celebration might be like, if I were to attend.
After all, I had enjoyed going to the aquarium.
How strange and absurd.
I had never truly looked forward to anything in my life, except perhaps for the day that my existence would come to its end.
There had never been anything that I did not dread. Most things I dreaded enough that just thinking of having to do them made me exhausted.
And aside from dreadful things, almost everything else I had been indifferent to, or at least ambivalent about.
Most of all I saw no point in thinking about something that might never come to pass.
I lived a dangerous life that was never really my own.
I might be destroyed at any moment.
No tomorrow was certain.
So what point would there ever have been in looking forward anything?
I still didn't think I did.
But what I was thinking was something that had not quite occurred to be back then, when the others were still in the room, and my mind itself quite focussed at the task at hand to the exclusion of anything else: It had only bubbled to the surface now that I was here on my own, buried beneath the layers of Unit Zero's flesh, under meat and bone and armor plates.
Which is that I was touched – to think that Ikari-kun would interject on my behalf, implore the others to alter their plans because he really wanted me to be part of their victory celebration.
I had never asked to be part of it.
I still wasn't sure that I would even want to.
The odds of such a celebration actually occurring were so low that I didn't consider it much of a possibility – I didn't think that Major Katsuragi would feel much like partying once at least one of us was dead and buried in the ground.
But Ikari-kun had considered me.
It didn't even have to be very much, just that he had considered me at all.
That he thought me worth considering, an end onto myself rather than just a means.
Most likely it didn't even mean anything. It was just how he treated anyone.
Even if the celebration took place and I had in fact gone there, I might not have enjoyed it.
For all I knew it might actually be for the best, if our ways were parted now.
If I were destroyed now, I would have disappeared from the equation before Ikari-kun had the chance to realize that I was not like the humans and could not be connected with in any satisfactory way to him.
He would not be disappointed in me, and I would not be disappointed in him, upon seeing, as was inevitable, that he was just like everyone else, interested only in what he could get.
My fantasies of him, I would take with me intact into the metaphorical grave that I would never have in reality.
I would never ruin that pristine comforting dream I'd entertained, never giving it the chance to disprove myself.
It would be a relief to have it all finish now, after getting this taste of an impossible dream, but before learning that I couldn't have changed anyways -
For Ikari-kun, changing might be possible – since he is human, he was simply hurt and deprived, so its natural that he could flourish when given nourishment, healing and learning.
But I was a wholly different kind of being, a creature from a different world.
I could never become like them, even if the others might have wanted me to, and once they saw that, they would surely have given up.
Some humans, I've read, like to call themselves old souls, like they have been on this world for longer than it seems and carry more wisdom and sorrow than it should have been possible to acquire in their short lives.
I am nothing like that.
I know that the soul that I carry has never been contained inside a human vessel before, until it was filled inside the very first 'Rei Ayanami'. Nor has it been a plant or an animal or any other life that human beings might have recognized.
It is called back to the unliving sludge that it came from.
It is pulled back to whatever distant star it descended from.
Everything is so strange and new to me, and I can't comprehend it though it seems to come to others so naturally, and by now, I have been here long enough to accept that I will never learn.
I should not do something so foolish as to start thinking that there is something out here for me, just when the long-awaited end of days is just about to descend.
I should probably not come to the celebration even if all of us lived.
If I'm realistic, I probably won't want to peel myself off the bed when I finally get to be left in peace at the end of the mission.
I probably shouldn't respond too much, just stay silent and reply as little as I can get away with until Ikari-kun stops talking to me of his own accord.
I might just stop going to school altogether and never have any non-essential conversation ever again. This way I would not be distracted – and besides, it's not as if anyone would truly notice.
I don't know what I've been thinking, doing all these things that I previously wouldn't have done.
It would be a relief to be destroyed – at least, I had already done all my homework for this week, so the next Rei Ayanami would not need to be burdened with this.
Maybe she would be grateful for this, though I could not keep her from being by shouledering the rest of this journey for myself.
Maybe her attitude toward her existence would be very different from mine.
Maybe she would come into my room and struggle to understand all the hours I'd spent staring at that ceiling.
In any case, I knew how to do it.
There was no point in trying to force away the useless thought – try not to think of Pink Elephants.
The way to drive out a Pink Elephant is to insert an Orange Kangaroo instead.
To fill my mind with something else.
Commander Ikari, the scenario, the project, the EVAs, the coming better world.
It didn't much matter whether or not I really believed in it.
I just needed something else to focus on, just on a purely instrumental level.
So never mind that stray bullet feeling of wanting to implode upon myself even more than I already had.
…
At last, the time had come.
I heard the Major's voice buzzing in the speakers just as I was expecting it to come.
Far down in Central Dogma, she was giving one last speech before the hour of truth was to come.
The exact contents of it didn't matter.
It was a composite of her usual favorite buzzwords, speaking of miracles, hope and the will of mankind – the exact sort of daring speech that tended to make such a big impression on the NERV staff. Many more of them had stayed behind that would have been strictly necessary, no doubt, in part due to her leadership skills. There is a reason that the Commander has hired her.
Though of course, this did not change how all those big words must ring perfectly hollow to anyone who knew the truth.
"At this point our trajectory data is mostly based on telescope observations, so the MAGI will only be able to guide you up to 10.000 meters of distance. After that, proceed according to your own judgment. Our computer estimates aren't too reliable, so when in doubt, don't hesitate to give priority to your own instincts.
Everything depends on you now. Good luck."
Unbeknownst to her, luck would have nothing to do with it.
It was simply providence.
And this here might be part of this too:
Ikari-kun took the lead, being the one to give the signal to depart, and depart we did.
He probably did it without thinking about it.
He may not have noticed, but he had changed much from the timid ambivalent draftee he had arrived as.
Something slightly sharper and more defined had emerged from the marble block of his substance, but one must needs feel ambivalence at the chisels – if there had been time to feel much of anything at all, in that moment.
The clock was ticking, the three of us were running.
I could hear this and that about whatever the others might be doing, but there was no time to look at any of the screens besides those who showed directly what is in front of me.
We were blazing straight lines through the landscape – in our path were power lines, hills, terraced fields, even canals, deep cliff-face plunges that we needed to take.
There could be no room for distraction.
Moments earlier we had been sitting on standby, perhaps caught in some illusion that the danger-time was yet to begin, but soon we could see the doom that had been drawing close to us all the time:
The actual, physical angel falling down from the sky, appearing to float slowly still because of xier great distance above us, but soon to close in quicker and quicker as xir entered into our less than cosmic scales.
It was the moon falling, like a star falling, something flat and immovable from the quintessential world of the skies above intruding upon earthly realms, dispelling the illusion that there was anything special about the human scale of sizes or energies: There were much larger things, much smaller things, and all must obey physics, void of any sanctity or piety humans might wish to attribute to their vessels:
They all would burn, because they were meat.
The EVA's flesh was really not exception. It's not the fall that kills you, but the landing. Nothing consisting of any kind of flesh or bone could survive such kinetic energy un-vaporised.
The bonds between the atoms just would not hold.
Rather, it was out AT-Fields which would be doing most of the work here.
Only they could possibly have the power to hold Sahaquiel's fall.
It would truly be a contest of xier will against ours.
For what was coming down there was not a mere natural disaster: Xir was a living being, acting with intent. Did xir sense us, or were xir actions decided upon from the start?
Either way, xir had not been within sights for long before xier trajectory suddenly changed:
Xier path adjusted by flickering octagon fields, the shell that kept xem from view, though not a physical thing, appearing to shatter alongside the optical phenomena that had powered xier concealment.
Now, at long long last, the angel's actual body could be seen:
Many of xier brethren had been humanoid in shape or fleshy in their makeup, betraying what rudiments of kinship their shared with us, and the animals that were fellow descendants from our own branch of the three of life, all the things that sprung from the Last Universal Common Ancestor -
Sahaquiel, however, was quite brazenly something that defies our sense of reality.
Something outside the very logos of our world, the LUCA world, the world created by Lillith, and as such, a herald of the world to come, if xir were to be victorious.
A whole separate different possibility for how the tree of life might have unfolded – doomed from the start to be lopped off, nipped right in this enormous bud:
An orb of black, stark omen of the no-future.
Undulating upon xier surface were bands of rainbow light, refracted along what might be taken for a surface of tessellated hexagons, luminous over-saturated colors.
Xir did not look quite real – like something rendered in computer animation, or a bizarre hallucination, and yet there xir was, descending with vast kinetic energy, dropping lower and lower, blotting out more and more of the sky with the immensity of xier size, covering the sun and turning day to night – I wasn't making enough headway, running and running beneath xier lowering mass, yet barely closing the distance to the point where it seemed to be just about to touch the earth.
To make matters worse, I wasn't the only one.
In the periphery of my vision, I heard the Second panicking:
"It's much faster than you said it was gonna be! I won't make it!"
Ikari-kun must have concluded the same… and then, out of instinct or recognition, come to another realization:
"I'll do something about it. - Misato-san?"
He didn't even have to specify what he meant – it seems that, through living together, the Major and him had become enough of a unit that she caught his drift without the need for further words.
As I couldn't look away from the road, I only found out what he'd meant when she proceeded to give the order – to raise various armaments and buried towers in order to make a path for him to race and jump along on.
He must have hurried desperately – eventually, I would learn that he had crossed the sound barrier during his sprint, sending cards flying from the shock-waves of his speed and, in fact, breaking the record for the top speed that Dr. Akagi and her technicians ever recorder for an Evangelion, but at the time, such statistics were the furthest things from our minds.
I, too, kept making headway, though it was beyond me to force my ill-treated rickety prototype EVA to perform similar superhuman feats.
I grimly accepted that I was most likely going to come on last.
Yet I kept coming closer – and so did Sahaquiel.
Right about to crown xier long journey with victory, approaching the warmth earth after xier path through the vacuum of space, xir finally unfurled, opening gaps in the once solid spherical outline, spreading out xier body as something like wide wings, xier rainbow bands now transformed into the complex spots of a butterfly, or perhaps the warning patterns of an undersea slug -
And lining the edges of xier wings was something like flower petals, or tiny little figures all holding hands in celebration, or blowing trumpets to man's doom, yet how unlike to man, each with an eye-spot in in its belly.
All this was crowned with a shower of red dust and a halo of red light – and a far- reaching howl, for despite how Sahaquiel now covered the sky, xir could not descend unhindered, the final act in xier performance delayed – xier was pushing down, some reverb borne in the resonance of xier AT field.
And that's when I saw them, at first, only from afar, through the Zoom of Unit Zero's lenses crammed up to the maximum: Ikari-kun, and EVA 01, holding the falling sky on his bare hands like the mythical Titan called Atlas.
His AT field was at maximum, his feet sunken into the ground, his arms, woefully pierced though his hands were locked in a wrestling match with some humanoid protrusion of the angel, though xier was not so constrained by the form xier had gathered to meet him: Xir must have grasped his palms and then turned xier palms to vicious spears, and now, there he was:
A living soul as a pillar of the world, his very will holding up the heavens, that is, his AT-field was…
What a violence to impose upon a soul, which was never meant to be a weapon.
What a violence, too, upon the arms of EVA 01 – the blood was being squeezed from them like an object caught in a hydraulic press.
There could be no doubt, then, that Ikari-kun surely could not be expected to take any more…
Yet I was still a long ways off, running as fast as a could beneath the curvature of the angel's body, a second sky that, in its vastness, was seeming ever more flat rather than curved, covering the view above me completely – would I reach there in time, or would I be atomized without even contributing to the battle?
Then, at last, a flash of red, appearing from the opposite direction:
It was the Second. She had almost caught up.
Praise be to everything in this world that would care to hear my gratitude.
But what was she doing?!
"Unit two, the field!"
"I'm on it damnit." - so she might have grumbled, but her AT-Field unfolded, the pressure receded and the angel was visibly lifted upward, now that there was a second will resisting its onslaught.
If only I were closer already…
All I could do was to point out to the others what do do:
"Unit two, get the core."
"I know! I know! Don't order me around"
To her credit, she saved most of her frustration for the angel's exposed core – at once she drew her progressive knives: "Eat this!"
If this had been any of the previous, less evolved angels, this move would have instantly hacked xem in two.
But the blow still didn't connect, much to the Second's bafflement:
"Did it dodge?!"
At this distance, it was hard for me to access what had happened.
More than what I could see with my eyes, it were the Second's darting glances in the intercom window that tipped me off:
The core had simply moved clean out of the way, and was now flying loops around EVA 02, detached from the angel's main body.
The Second Child was none too delighted:
"This fucker just doesn't know when to give up!"
But despite her frustration, she could to have completely lost sight of how dire our situation was:
"Just thirty seconds left!"
Time was running out, the core was directly in front of our faces, and yet we could do nothing.
And Sahaquiel wasn't done with us.
I'm sure we could all feel the further pressure that xir brought to bear on our AT fields.
Amid his agony within the bubbling LCL, I think I caught some teardrops in the corners of Ikari-kun's eyes, shed from sheer pain:
"Asuka, hurry!"
"I know!"
But I could not fault her for not making a move.
I was close enough now to see it:
Sahaquiel's core, buzzing back and forth without ever halting in its motion, dangling just beyond our reach like a bait.
If the angel could just yank it out of our reach whenever xier pleased, how were we ever hope to land a blow on it?
...wait. Could xir yank it away?
The core had been moving a lot, but it had remained in this same general area.
If Sahaquiel could just move it at will, why not move it out of the way further, why not take it inside and move it all the way to an entirely different corner of xier massive body?
The answer was clear as day: There was no logical reason why xir would not do this, if xir in fact could.
This, itself, must be proof that xir couldn't.
Perhaps the core had to be kept near the focal point of xir AT-field to continue supplying its full power. And if this was the case…
Well.
I had no guarantee that my deduction was right, but I also didn't have another option.
No later than I reached the angel's center, I jumped as high as I could, with all the strength that could be tickled from the limbs of Unit Zero, and with all of her AT-Field enveloping our hands just enough to neutralize a patch of the enemy's.
It worked.
I grasped onto the core, a crimson orb the size of a city block.
I held inside of Unit Zero's hands that which powered all the insane feats of might that we had observed since the angel was spotted.
It burned.
It seared our hands like the radiance of a thousand suns.
Yet, I could not let go.
Not while Sahaquiel yet lived.
"...unit two… quickly..."
„I know damnit, stop telling me what to do!"
This time, the Second Child rammed in both her knives at once, and kicked them further inside for good measure.
The Angel's core cracked.
It went dark almost instantly, splintering apart in my hands.
As with a human when their brain is destroyed, it took a little bit for the rest of the body to cease working, down to every little cell – if angels have cells.
Either way, it was not long before all of xier form collapsed into shapeless liquid, burying us all beneath a tsunami of xier blood.
It was over so quickly.
By virtue of the EVA's limited battery life, it could not have been more than a few minutes – moments to which all was building up, in which every tiny difference, every clumsy motion or twinge of causality could have led it to dawn upon a very different world tomorrow.
There probably weren't much real reasons that it had gone the way that it did, that this was now locked in as the past to which all possible futures must be compatible.
I could not begin to process it.
I just sat there in the dark, holding onto my still-aching arms that still tingled with an echo of fire, all the way from the elbows to the palms.
