(Anger)

But by then, it wasn't long before it finally came.

The defeat we had so long expected to come.

We'd always been aware of how far the odds were stacked against us, how narrow our victories had been, how close the threat of total obliteration.

There had been countless times when death felt near and certain.

And yet, it had not come.

I suppose none of us were immune to outcome bias, even with all these supercomputers at our disposals. It's still fallible human beings doing the interpreting of the data.

I was never one to indulge in any optimism, but it was probably impossible not to get desensitized to the risk and the danger after coming near death's door so many times, expecting destruction time and time again only for the punch to be pulled, preparing for death over and over only to somehow go on living as if by some spiteful joke of fate.

After enough repetition, things become automatic, function of the implicit mind.

There comes to be an assumption that things will continue as they had before, even if one's conscious mind would deny this whenever there was enough attention being paid to become aware of what one was doing – and sustaining one's full attention at every moment was an unfeasible waste. Nature had optimized itself to waste as little energy as possible.

One could not always remain at full alertness, and even attempting the closest that one could come was not possible without a considerable cost in overstraining oneself.

Which is to say, that somehow, it happened that we got careless – all of us, myself included.

From what I can of the day before, it was in all respects just an ordinary day without anything all too remarkable about it.

But of course. Most days just before a tragedy are just ordinary days, as nothing happened yet.

That's just how time works.

Tragedy itself is perfectly ordinary in this world; There is a new one reported in every day, relayed to the masses through bits of radio overheard in stores and headlines tucked away in newspaper stacks.

It does not generally matter except for the people that are directly involved.

For everybody else, it would be an ordinary day, just like the one before.

If there was anything worth noting, it may have been that it was exceptionally hot.

Heat waves and the like used to be a lot more predicable before Second Impact, but those days were so far past that I had never known them. I'd been subject to the chaotic whims of the weather for as long as I recalled.

Another thing that happened, which was probably the most relevant bit in the grand scheme of things, is that we had a synch test.

By itself that would not have stood out, as you might have gleamed by my narration so far, that was pretty common, and at first, that day's test would not have seemed especially different from every other time.

I barely remember anything of the test itself, aside from some conversation fragments that I picked up from the control room.

Something about Lt. Hyuuga remarking that Major Katsuragi seemed a little tired today, and her reassuring her that it was something to do with her private life, but wasn't anything to worrow about.

It stood out to me because it connected with what Ikari-kun had said not long ago, about the Major and the Inspector rekindling their relationship.

Perhaps it was some joint activity that had kept her from adhering to her usual bedtime.

Not that this, in itself, was any of my business, but one does wonder what having that sort of relationship would be like. From what I've read I am aware that not all humans desire them, so, this is certainly less universal than having a family, but as with that, I wondered what that might be like, as one tends to wonder about all the things, experiences and places that one is never going to be able to experience due to both one's circumstances and simply being what one is.

An easily frightened person without a great sense of balance is never going to understand riding a motorbike, for example. An individual with a typical male physiology is not going to give birth.

Even when it comes to those experiences that are in theory available to most anyone, I suppose one would only directly witness the smallest fractions of them, seeing as a person's time, energy and material resources are usually highly limited things that dwindle with every passing moment.

The closest we can come is maybe reading about their experiences -

That, approximately, was what I was thinking about then.

As may be expected, I had no notion that today or tomorrow would bring anything out of the ordinary with it, beyond the basic general awareness that such a thing was in theory always somewhat possible.

Then, Major Katsuragi called out,

"Shinji-kun, do you hear me?"

He opened up his eyes.

Despite the tinny sound that was added to his voice by the imperfections of the intercom, one could hear the genuine excitement in his voice.

The reluctance that often plagued him seemed bleached away in the shine of a sunny day:

"And? How did I do on the test?"

With a big grin on her face, Major Katsuragi held up her arm to aim an thumbs-up sign at the screen, declaring the news in heavily accented English:

"YUU AAA NUMBA WAN~"

Ikari-kun had not simply surpassed the Second's current score. He actually exceeded her latest record, recent though it may have been.

That, too, didn't seem too extraordinary. Or, that is, I didn't realize its significance yet, not in that moment.

It shouldn't have been that noteworthy – Ikari-kun's score had been in the same ballpark as the Second's for a good while now. It figured that, for purely statistical reasons and the usual fluctuation that synchronization was prone to, there may well come a day where he might land a little higher than her.

Had you asked me beforehand, I would have considered it quite likely for this to happen eventually, had you asked me afterwards, I would have thought it to be simply the first of many such days. I would have expected that their scores would remain close by, that from now on each time, any of the two may be taking the lead depending on who was more concentrated this day.

I may have guessed that the Second could turn into into another score game and obsessively keep track of who 'won' how many times, adding perhaps a further annoyance to our work, but changing nothing much beyond that.

And all of those guesses would have been wrong.

After the experiment, we were let go.

Not thinking anything more than another ordinary day, I didn't pay any kind of special attention.

I was not overly struck by the fleeting role that each of these moments plaid in the tapestry of long-ordained happenings, I was simply thinking of buttoning up my shirt, putting away my suit and closing up my locker so that I could be gone.

But as it was often the case in the dreary facsimile of human existence I endured, there was something getting in the way of that. That may have been one of the aspects where my existence more closely mirrored that of an actual person.

It wasn't always the same thing, but there would always be something. One thing or another, grating at me, taking from me, chipping away from me moment by moment by moment.

This time it was one of the more common causes, that being the Second Child.

She was not at all speaking directly at me or even so much as looking my direction, but from the loud, exaggerated manner of her speech, tone and body-language still made it rather obvious that she very much intended me to hear:

"Well, would you look at that! He blew right past me, just like that, didn't he?"

Despite the upbeat tone she was speaking with, I do not think this was an expression of joy, not even remotely.

I hoped I would get out of here without being forced to interact with her enough to touch off whatever brewing outburst was in the works there.

Despite my deliberate lack of a reply, she kept talking and trying to involve me:

"It is a little bit frustrating that he didn't even have to make an effort, though, don't you think?"

I could see where this was going. During the blackout in the corridors she had done the same, except that she had been trying to goad Ikari-kun to join in with badmouthing me.

Now she had pivoted, quite quickly, to trying to get me to join in or at least validate her litanies against him.

And even if I did, I was certain that this would not prevent her from turning around once again in the same manner if I should again become a more prominent object of ire.

You know one thing that I find really sad about the Second Child?

It's how she ever seems to take a lack of a response as an invitation to try harder, as if barking up the wrong tree even louder was sure to get her showered with validation and approval.

The observation had struck me now and again in passing, as one marks a distant mountain peak on the horizon beyond the road as one moves past it on yet another segment of a long drive.

Yet even without any fuel added to her fire, the Second continued with her theatrics.

One wonders whom she thought that increasingly farcical performance was even for.

There was no one here looking save for herself and I.

"Must be nice for him to get all the praise to himself! These days, they're practically talking like he's some sort of grand chosen one hero. All hail the great, amazing, magnificent, invincible Shinji-sama, savior of the earth! Next they'll be calling him the messiah or something. Our jobs will be so much easier because of him!"

Based on the names she sometimes likes to call me, I would expect that she probably thought that I simply did not understand the implied expectations here, that I was supposed to join in or at least humor her with some acknowledgement.

There may have been a time when I wouldn't have understood, fairly recent even.

But it is not like that anymore.

I am perfectly aware what is expected.

I am just not inclined to do it.

Nothing pulls me to it, least of all the mere awareness of the expectation for it seems plain that its generation is being used to push or compell me toward a certain course of actions.

I do not wish to be pushed or compelled, rare as it may be for me to receive any choice in that matter.

She wants me to answer, to get me to do this or that as one wrangles an instrument, as a prop inside her play, and this place, unlike the one laid out by SEELE or the Commander or the First Ancestral Race or Lillith or whoever else, is one I can chose not to participate in.

It become less inclined precisely because of the brusque blatancy with which I am being compelled.

Once again she seems to regard my attention and participation as something she is entitled to while her presence, forced upon me though it is, is viewed as something she is generously dispensing, lowering herself in mock pity – for after all, she is granting company, and it is assumed that everyone always wants company as if it were a charitable grant rather than a demand for attention. Would actual humans indeed always desire company?

I cannot say, for I would not know.

The issue here is not whether or not I might comprehend the finer nuances of human ettiquette; It varies between countries. Besides, there are humans born with impairmens in their ability to acquire such skills, and once one gets past the prejudice, they are just the same as anyone else.

I've read texts written by such humans and they strike me as no different from anyone else.

But such an impairment would not dissapear with practice or attention;

I could learn, though I lacked talent as well as the ease of an early learner, and, if I had not looked into it before, it was rather because human ettiquette had never pertained to me. It had not been relevant to my existence.

I had no incentive to learn, to seek relations with ‚fellow' humans that were not my fellows at all.

Nothing motivates me, nothing pulls me towards them, I taste nothing of the special fulfillment that is commonly attributed by humans to their connections.

Even the task and purpose that I, as an artifact, had been alloted were just motions that I went through, albeit with the intellectual understanding that it was needed, or so, at least, I had thought.

As for human behavior, I could only mimic its like, indeed an object pretending to be a human, executing a proram.

Yet I was not the same as a machine or puppet, because I could think.

I ostensibly had an internal experience, insofar as any being can be sure that they have one.

I could watch the ways of humans, I could comprehend them intellectually, perhaps fairly well, seeing as the intellect I had was the product of a reasonably human-like brain, possessed of the fruit of life, constructed according to the blueprints of whatever genome was used for my human components – though there was of course no telling what kinds of errors or abnormalities may have unwittingly introduced by the addition of angel DNA and the much less calculable influence if an alien soul.

But even if it was not beyond me to comprehend them, the nuances of correct human behavior were to me like arguments about the theology and schisms of a religion that I did not personally believe in.

What is the role of faith versus works? Arianism versus Trinitarianism? Who was the rightful sucessor of Muhammad? Is a concubine allowed to kiss the altar of Hera? How many angels fit on the head of a pin? Quite a lot, if they were like Ireul…. But most importantly, what does it matter, and why?

I can see why it matters subjectively to believers – why human conventions matter subjectively to humans – but they are just ideas, or, insofar as they aren't, coincidential results of evolution, an imprint of the arbitrary size, composition and gravity of this planet and the relative nearness to its stars, or perhaps an echo of the First Ancestral Race, which echoes their star.

I could understand and recite the tenets of such religion. I could even explain the meaning behind it, why it signifies what it does to those that practice it. I could find the sets of phrases and symbols in associated art, but never would I feel the associated sense of awe, or whatever ‚sanctity' is supposed to mean when it has no special connection to me and seems to me much the same as all the other religions.

I would never know how to replicate the way that you are ‚supposed to just feel it in your gut' or ‚listen to your heart', whatever ‚you-know-what' is that ‚can't be put in words'.

I have not the slightest idea what that is supposed to be; It is wholly inacessible to me.

The only reason that I even believe it exists is because it would be unlikely for so many people to be lying.

Likewise, I know there is a ritual here. The difference between me and a person is not that I can't perceive it. There are undeniable people who probably perceive this far less easily than I.

I understand that the Second's complaints are an invitation to join in.

I understand that often when people such as her ask questions, for example, they do not expect or prepare for the actual answer or an exchange of information, but simply practicing some basic ritualized social signalling, as cats making noises at each other to express and ensure that they are still part of the same group.

It is often cited that a large percentage of communication is in fact nonverbal, equivalent to the body language and types of calls and noises employed by dogs for example; If words are employed, they are just gap fillers, contentless.

Sometimes people express that as if it is somehow an uplifting fact, deprecating the transmission of actual information to elevate those animal characteristics, as if their intuitions had not proven just as fallible and much less flexible – their main advantage over explicit thought is simply in being fast and specialized. The certainty with which one „just knows" can make it all the more misleading. People easily mistake for lying what is just nervousness or some kind of disability.

And I, though not being human, can use human language because it is learned.

But how might one teach an artificial object what is so second nature to humans and other mammals that is is automatic, intrinsic, implicit, to the extent that the average person could not even explain it to me, much less conceptualize why I, lacking those living animal characteristics, may seem ‚off' or repulsive to them.

They do not even know how much their inner animals are painstakingly coordinating when they so much as synchronize their steps or move together as a crowd.

And I, as I said, can understand it, but by abstract theoretical understanding could never be so quick, so automatic, so natural as their implit instinct.

It could never feel so intrinsically rewarding, nor as much as a part of life that cannot be done without.

If I have any understanding with them at all, it is probably because humans rely so much more on learning than instinct compared to other animals. I do not know how angels would compare here – those proveneing from adam, at least, seem to go straight from the eggshell to something fully formed – but I suppose the limited human parts of myself also contributed to making me ‚trainable' despite how partially alien my ‚instincts' may be, or how imperfet and lacking their development may be due to my artificial creation.

To some extent, however, this just mean that humans lack awareness of how much their animal parts do influence them and their prejudices.

And if they so easily misread their fellow humans, what chance do I have?

So as I said. I understand how, say, routine social questions are not meant to elicit true answers.

I can even reconstruct, on a purely intellectual level, why somebody might be stumped if I went off script, because I was not supposed to actually answer, bur rather do the arbitrary little ritual, and now that I haven't they dp not know which of the arbitrary scripts to run in response.

I understand how this all would take place on a very implicit level that wouldn't necessarily involve conscious choice.

I might argue intellectually that the ritual is arbitrary, but that does not mean that the other person can stop themdselves from parsing my actions as off-putting even if they consciously intended to be tolerant.

I could argue whatever I wanted, for practical intents and purposes, I was doing it wrong.

It's not that I did not know that.

It is that I did not see what was so desirable about doing it right.

I don't see what would make doing the ritual as expected more correct or more wholesome and 'real' on some existential level, how that was supposed to bring about that vaunted sense of ‚connection', for even if we did „feel connection" on a subjective level, including myself insofar as my part-human components allowed to it, that would still not be any proof that there was, in fact, any connection between two.

It is very much common for one among a pair of humans to find an exchange intimate and meaningful while the other, right inside their arms, might view the very same interaction very differently.

I'm not sure how I would recognize ‚connection' if I saw it.

I wonder if it exists, even for humans.

Perhaps it is just easier for me to see as an outsider. Perhaps you would have to be human to comprehend it.

There is only a limited usefulness in thinking about things that can't really be verified.

The point is that I would be perfectly capable of just playing along with this interaction and how it is ‚supposed' to go.

I could even see a point in doing so in some settings, playing along sometimes to either reach a pragmatic goal or make someone happy for whom it makes a big subjective difference is one thing. (after all what makes anyone happy is incredibly subjective)

But it is very different if we are doing a tit for that where I am getting something I want in return, or if we were compromising to maximize satisfaction for both parties versus if their way is always right, correct, healthy, sane, moral, superior, meaningful or whatever they wanna call it and my way is always wrong. One thing that may be said in favor of the Second is that she at least made her disdain open and did not attempt to conceal it behind some false narrative of ‚concern' that would spin the expectation of performing the ritual as being for my sake somehow.

There is a clash because we're working off of different expectations and how that throws up the effortless 'flow' of interactions, not because either one is "wrong", but how an US American might assume that Scandinavians must be stingy because they do not leave tips whereas workers in Scandinavia may be insulted would be insulted if you tip them because they would view it as condescension. Neither one can be decisively argued to be ‚wrong', their subjective feeling, the so-called ‚law written on their hearts' clashes outright – the convention is just different. It is essentially a completely arbitrary thing.

And I can understand the pragmatic reality of the majority being what is is and conventions being what they are regardless of whether I find them arbittrary or not, but if I cannot be authentic, ever, in this relationship, if I cannot ever give the true answer and see the response to it, if I am not free to particiüate or not, then what even is the point?

It is not like my work or my orders where I am working toward a clear purpose. Why would I even want to have that ‚connection', as they default it? What do they need me for, in this equation? If they wanted to interact with something that just obediently generates acceptable answers they might as well converse with an AI chatbot.

If I am ordered to engage with the Second Child as she wants it for a clear logical reason, I will, but while it is optional and up to my choice, I see no reason to.

I'd really rather not. I see nothing to be gained.

Certainly, her feathers might be ruffled from what she might perceive as a rejection of refusal (as if she were entitled to some response that I were actively withholding from her, though I am simply responding in neutrality)

It is not my fault nor my business what people might expect from me or project onto me though I did not do anything to encourage them. They can plainly perceive in my non-answer whatever they so please, I could not stop them or control it if I wanted to.

Indeed I do not think that it is even possible to perfectly avoid ruffling anybody's feather, even if I were expertly skilled at human socialization.

Even if I did join in with the Second and give her that validation- first of all, she would want more and engage with me further, rather than leaving me to be, but secondly it would still be very different compared to a human giving the expected response... and really meaning it & investing some kind of significance in it, connecting roughly the same viscerally felt meaning to it asmillions of humans before them.

To ask me to participate is to request of me a crafted, artificial performance of it for the reward of perhaps avoiding ire and judgement. It would be an act that benefits only the one asking.

It would be an act entirely for their benefit. So why would I be doing it?

For whom or for what?

The Second was not going to thank me; She would probably barely account it as some kind of bare minimum regardless of how it took a conscious, coordinated effort on my part.

I would not expect her to make any effort to try to understand or adjust to me.

She would just take it for granted and keep asking me to meet her in the middle, like the proverbial unjust man.

One might of course make an effort, if one cannot help it, or if, on the other side of it, one can hope to find something much more rewarding that would stay closed to them if they did not put the work in, but neither of those applied here.

I do not think that she spent the least thought in wondering after what I might be thinking or feeling as she kept ranting about her complaints, trying to involve me without ever wondering if I even wanted to be involved:

"Don't you think so, too? We'll have to work super duper hard to keep him from leaving us in the dust!"

I don't think she even noticed me making my way to the door.

"I'm leaving now.", I said, keeping it to a quiet, informative statement that would hopefully neither provoke nor encourage her.

I didn't think there would be any point in appealing to sympathy – for all rhat one should never assume ill intent where misguidedness or imcompence will do, in her case I had no doubt that she was very much tormenting me on purpose. Her stark glee had been aparent many times.

All I could hope for was that she'd get bored and pick a different target.

I was relieved to leave behind her and thoughts of her when the door slid close behind me, so as I went upon my way, I chose not to think much about the sudden loud metally noise that I heard coming from the locker rooms.

It was only later that I would realize that she had gone on to vent her frustrations on one of the locker doors once I'd failed to provide much of an outlet.

I saw the imprint on it the next day.

The angel Leliel arrived without any warning at all.

Xir simply appeared, from one moment to the next.

Xier coming was not predicted by any seismograph, satelite or observatory.

No one saw xem coming from the sea, descending from space, or burrowing up from the dephts of the earth.

One moment xir wasn't there, and then the next, xir just was, demand our attention with xir undeniable, monolithic presence by xier very being and, presumably, caring precious little about our wish for explanations.

The birds in the city were, in a sense, much wiser than us, startling and flying away in huge flocks from the clearly unnatural, monolithic presence.

A good while had passed since the advent of the last angel, and thus, we could afford not to think of them for a time, but now that they'd returned we'd be forcefully reminded of how even the last one had already stumped us with a completely different form and stragety, an all new approach different from the ones preceding… and if anything, the being known to us as Leliel seemed to be taking this further, into yet more mysterious directions.

Possessed of what might be considered not just a perpetuum mobile but an universal constructor, there were much less constraints upon their forms than there was for ‚lillithian' life, and their souls and wills, though probably not so different from ours in nature, would have had far greater control over the makeup of their physical vessels, in effect being free to choose the shape which they deemed most suited to their mission.

Correspondingly, many of the past angels had endowed themselves with claws or strong limbs for fighting, some with teeth, others with terrifying energy weapons. The angel Ramiel had contorted xier whole existence into a combination of the ultimate spear and shield; Ireul, unlike xier siblings, had picked a bacteriod form more suitable to slow invasion, and later self-organizing circuits, but even so those outliers still had forms of clear utilitarian purpose.

Not so Leliel:

The NERV staff had all the available data transferred to our plugs by the time that we had been launched to the surface, but there wasn't much:

In so far as anyone could discern, the enemy had shown xemself as a jet black sphere the size of an appartment block, displaying across xier surface a strange pattern of refraction that resembled irregular white stripes where one might expect some shine.

It was hard to make heads or tails of what one was even looking at.

Leliel's form floated silently over the city, giving off no sense of being either light nor heavy, neither near nor far…

If that sign even was what we thought it was, for the telltale signature pattern blue had yet to be detected, even though there was no doubt left that this could be anything other than the doing of a angel.

Both Dr. Akagi and her supercomputers were undecided about xier nature.

She concluded that this must be a brand-new type of angel – another one, hot on the trail of the last innivation.

After all, Leliel had made no motion to attack us thus far, taken no discernible action that would allow us to analyze xier properties, capabilities or intention.

Leliel was not fighting us like the rejection type angels we had battled through the last few months, but neither did xir show any sins of attempting to hijack our technology from us as done by Ireul, the first of the corrosion types.

Leliel wasn't doing anything.

Thus far, xir menaced us through the mere display of xier very existence.

Perhaps xir knew that xir would be doing us a favor by allowing us to observe xem, even if xir might not understand how our abilities work.

But who's to say that xir doesn't, after xier predecessor had broken into the magi?

Indeed, one may almost be tempted to think that Leliel was observing us, leaving it to us enough rope to hang ourselves with by forcing us to move first.

And as it was later shown, that impression was not even alltogether wrong.

The angels couldn't quite learn through watching and learning the way we could, but Leliel was perhaps the first to come up with a means of remedying that – for this was to be our first encounter with the third and last major class of angels: The penetration types.

Major Katsuragi, if such a thing was possible, smellt a trap.

She was ever one to put great stock in the blunt instrument that were her instincts – when I glipmsed her over the intercom, her eyes were narrowed and her nose was wrinkled.

But when had one of our enemies ever proven straightforward?

The scent of trap was par for the course in these endeavors.

So she was no less perturbed than usual, probably less than on instances where we had knowingly come close to the razors edge.

Calm and methodical did she give her orders:

„We don't have a lot to go on. Approach the target carefully and see how it responds. If you can, try luring it outside the city. One of you will engage it first, ad the others are going to provide cover fire, everything clear?"

It was clear.

Another thing that was clear, though unspoken, was that the pointman was to take the vanguard was to take the greatest risk. They were the likeliest to get blasted with any unforseen special abilities that Leliel might have up xier figurative sleeve.

That's why the Major was opting to keep the other two EVAs back, so they could respond to that which couldn't be predicted.

I had half a mind to volunteer, but the Second Child beat me to it:

„Yes, Ma'am! I've got an idea!"

That alone was not surprising. It would not be a first for her to take the dangerous part to somehow be the glorious one. But to my surprise, the person whom she volunteered was not herself:

„I think Shinji-kun should take the point this time!"

„...Huh?!"

Ikari-kun himself was not the only one confused here… what was she on about this time?

„Obviously, that job's just perfect for the manliest man among men that is the bravest, the smartest, the guy with the number one synch rate, am I right?

Or is our great hero just a scaredy cat after all? Don't you think you can do it, Shin-chan?"

Why is she- Why in the world would she think it's a good idea to-

The provocation got to him.

„I can handle it!" he snapped back, at first somewhat exhausted, but quickly doing what he might to summon some semblance of boastfulness: „You know what asuka? I'll show you how it's done!"

What did you say?"

Predictable. If we don't say anything she calls us doormats, but if he acually answers back, it turns out she can dish it out but not take it… Still, this was unusual. It's been a while since Ikari-kun had the convince to talk back in such open hostility.

All of this was surprising.

It was then that Major Katsuragi might have mumbled something about how we ought to keep a cool head, but the damage was done:

„But you said it yourself, didn't you, Misato-san? I'm the number one."

I'm not sure I like this confident version of him.

It seems neither was the Major: „Uh that was-"

But Ikari-kun cut her off before she could really catch any momentum:

„And besides, fighting is a man's job!"

But physical factors are irrelevant for EVA piloting. What does being a man have to do with-

Then he disconnected, and, ostensibly, made off.

It all happened very fast.

„That's so backwards! Unit Two is backup!"

I can't see much rationality in the attitude expressed, and if he seriously believed it that may be ‚backwards' indeed, but I'd never had the impression that Ikari-kun viewed either me or Major Katsuragi as in any way less capable.

Rather, I suspect that this surge of feigned bravado was a response to the Second's provocations, a clumsy, hamfisted attempt to live up to the role of the ‚manly man' that she kept insisting she should be like, to impress her even, as futile and misguided as this must be, especially with these methods.

Had I been objective, I would have seen this for the juvenile misstep that it was, and perhaps cautioned him… but I wasn't, though at the time I thought I was.

Perhaps, despite what i had thought, there was some vestige of juvenile humanity in me also.

„Unit Zero is also going to be backup."

I only realized in hindsight that I didn't even wait for the Major's order.

None of us did.

We just set ourselves into motion as we might to catch the tram to our school.

But even the Major was not vexed with urgency, and instead mumbled something about giving Ikari-kun a good talking to when he returned after Dr. Akagi had cracked some joke about how ‚there seems to have been a testosterone surge'.

I'm confident that testosterone does not actually work like that, but, in this moment I didn't dwell on it.

Somehow, despite constant awareness of looming death, right in the face of a new mysterious foe, it just so happened that we got careless.

All of us, myself included.

We were just rushing ahead without much thinking, wading through the buildings of the city as children passing through a thicket at the edge of the playground.

I saw myself as concentrated on the mission then and focussing as I could on the situation, but I was no more heedful than anyone else of what was right about to happen, suddenly, and without any warning or permission.

Ikari-kun had rushed ahead, but I feared that he was eager for us to watch EVA 01's back as it dissapeared from our views behind the skyscrapers as we all moved to take our positions.

Always he had shrank from competition, but today of all days, he decided it was time to try to prove himself.

It was quickly plain that he had never really tried before: He was quick when he wasn't really thinking about what he was doing.

I wish he had been slower.

He was not within my line of sight at the time, but it seems he reached the vicinity of Leliel rather before we could get anywhere near xem. „Asuka! Ayanami! Are you in position?"

„Not yet."

This i deemed enough, but the Second Child felt inclined to groan, bogged down as she currently was with exchanging her EVA's stretched-out umbilical cable for one that would let her further into the city: „Oh come on! You know full well that the EVA's aren't that fast!"

I think that, for all that he had feigned otherwise, he was still nervous, and steadily growing antsy the longer that he crouched there, stealing a glance at the menacing sphere.

I think the last thing I heard in the split-second for desaster was the clenching and unclenching of his rubber-suited hand as stray sounds picked up by the intercom.

I cannot say for sure of course.

I was not there. Too far away.

As best as I can figure, he decided that it was his turn to try pinning down the angel without waiting for us.

It dissapoints me a bit that he would try to impress the Second Child, or let himself be goaded by her words.

But that is only because I knew him. Realistically speaking it was quite predictable: Long he had taken her constant barrage of taunts without so much as twitching, but now, for a moment, he'd reached that dangerous area of having just enough confidence to resist her but nor nearly enough to shrug her off.

Even so: The stars might incline us, but they do not force our hand.

I must admit that, for all the sympathy that i might have for him, it was Ikari-kun himself who made that ill-considered choice out of his own free will, his juvenile insecurities and his well-attested tendency to lose his head under pressure.

Although, it is easy to fall prey to outcome bias here and view things tainted by hindsight: With many of the previous angels, this mere attempt may not have been so costly.

In the end I cannot know what he might have thought, one thing alone was certain:

Roughly a minute after he notified us of being in position, Ikari-kun ducked out of whatever cover was provided to him by a nearby building and fired three rounds in close sucession from his EVA-sized hand pistol, aiming straight at Leliel's sphreroid shape.

From there, everything happened very quickly.

Nearly instant. Probably, no slower than the speed of life.

The intercom feed from headquarters filled with baffled gasps.

Dr. Akagi was the first to call out:

„It dissappeared!"

Indeed it had. The bright, glowing rounds had dissapeared into the sky, never touching anything along their way.

The sphere-like apparition was gone.

And by the time that our slow fatty chunks of brain were able to process that, it was probably already too late.

Another set of detectors began blaring.

„What is it?!"

As the one in charge of the correspoding instrument, Lt. Hyuuga couldn't seem to believe his eyes:

„Pattern blue! Directly below Unit One!"

Soon, it was known what this meant.

Just how deep our misunderstanding of that lifeform had been.

„A- a shadow?"

That's what Ikari-kun thought it looked like.

I couldn't see it from where I was then, but based on the recordings I would later see, I know now that it was an elliptical area of blackness, spreading out from a point near Unit One's feet, covering a wider and wider ground – One could understand the intuition that lead Ikari-kun to think it may be the shadow of the sphere we had previously seen, only that a conventional shadow would have covered both the buildings and the EVA, which were left covered in all the brightness of the sunlight.

Every intuition of a primate, no, of every visual creature evolved under the physics of this earth, would tell to look up when you noticed a shadow suddenly falling on you, to take cover on account of death from above.

And thus, your every intuition would have led you astray.

The danger was below.

Ikari-kun noticed that too, far too late, when the feet of Unit One were already dissapearing into the blackness like a person sinking into a morass.

He panicked at once. He must have known, with that sharp adrenaline-fueled clarity of instinct, that he was in mortal danger.

In his desperation, he fired several shot into the shadow, but even at point blank, the bullets dissapeared right into it, along with the halo of light and soot that had surrounded them, like a comet being vaporised upon crossig some borderline.

Not even their light could be seen in their wake; Their force of impact never seemed to reach the ground below.

„What is this?! This doesn't make any sense!"

Of course it doesn't.

At that point, I doubt that even Dr. Akagi understood what she was seeing on the screens of central dogma.

So how could Ikari-kun possibly understand?

Now at the time, I could not exactly follow the events.

I was running as fast as I could, making my way to where we were supposed to have engaged the target together. Would that have made a difference?

I don't know.

But I knew that it was certain that while I wasn't there, I couldn't make a difference.

The distance between us obviously closed with every step, but an honest estimation told me that the rate at which it decreased just wasn't enough.

I wasn't even within sight yet, so even thought i was actively investing all my effort in moving forward, I might as well have been doing nothing.

None of it was having any impact on the alarmed voices coming in over the intercom.

I could not really pause to look at the screens, but I could hear the Major's voice:

„Shinji-kun! Get out of there! Shinji-kun!"

There was no reply.

I could well picture him there, standing frozen in fear, facing something he could only comprehend as a harbinger of doom.

It was then that I actually paused in my step to look over my shoulder and gaze at the com panel.

In hindsight, there was really no purpose in doing that.

I could hear him just the same, I knew his face was there, I really should have been looking to the front and hurried on, it's not as if that image on the screen was not transmitted from a distance – but in that moment of alarm, there was perhaps some faded wan leftover spark of primate likeness, doing what a visually oriented, pack-dwelling creature would do.

Or perhaps it's that thing where people stop walking without horror if what they are thinking of drains too much of their attention.

I think the Second Child may have been shouting in a separate communications channel window somewhere nearby in the periphery of my sight, unsympathetic as ever: „What the hell are you doing you idiot?!"

I called out his name almost as soon as I stopped in my tracks, before she'd even thought of speaking, but I doubt that either of us got through to him.

In the communications window, I caught one last glimpse of his face; Etched upon it was a look of helpless terror, the realization of being wholly out of one's depht.

It was a feeling on may project upon a moth struggling in a spiderweb, an expression on might picture on a painting of Ikarus as he fell off of his melting wax wings after flying to close to the sun, only this sun was black as pitch.

He wasn't looking at my likeness on his interface; His entire consciousness seemed taken up by the immensity of the monolithic sphere that had just reappeared above him.

All he could do was scream in terror.

„Help me! Help me! Misato-san! Asuka! Ayanami! Misato-san! Misato-san!"

They tried at once to eject the entry plug.

It didn't work.

Presumably, whatever computers would have been processing the signal had already sunken into the blackness.

EVA Unit One was sinking fast, quicker now with every moment.

I continued to rush forward when I heard Ikari-kun's scream, so, I'm not sure exactly when the signal had cut off into static.

Reason told me that the atenna within Unit One's horn must have gotten submerged – that he must have got completely swallowed.

But it was pointless to think of that when I needed to be focussing on running.

Though I knew better, I may have allowed myself to believe that the Major wouldn't spurn us on to go rescue him if everything was already lost.

Perhaps I was merely moving forward on intetia and momentum, having lacked the time to realize what had happened – this entire operation had turned into a tragedy from one moment to the next.

The Second Child got there first – by virtue of her higher synchronization rate perhaps, or maybe getting launched to a closer position. I don't recall who was sent to which shaft.

What matter is that she charged in, hellbard in hand, looking to clean up after the overzealous rookie.

„Stupid idiot", she muttered between breaths, „There you see that a high synchronization rate isn't everything!"

I doubt she would have said this when she still had the top score – and even if she still did, I wouldn't expect her to amount to anything useful.

This wasn't an enemy we could simply stab with a blade…

By then I had passed one of the access points to the armories, and there I stopped.

There wasn't much of a chance that I was really going to catch up, or be able to do anything in close quarters combat that the Second wouldn't already be able to do better.

The Major had not changed her orders, but, I wasn't going to make it, and if there was still any chance to retrieve Ikari-kun at all, it was likely to decrease with time – particulary if Lelien intended somehow to devour him, to digest EVA 01, to take her over as the Magi had been.

I didn't know what it was anymore than anyone else did.

It wasn't like the previous angels, so I wondered if Leliel might be another corrosion type.

I went to the armory and retrieved a long-range blaster.

The patricle beam would cross the distance much quicker than I could.

But the Second was right about one thing: Synchronization rate wasn't everything.

So I tried to pinch myself and EVA 00 between two buildings so as to fire from a better angle, and tried to give it a shot.

Perhaps the angel would respond differently to the energy beam than the bullets. Perhaps I'd be able to observe something crucial. Maybe I just wanted to be doing something, same as everyone else.

My body kept moving and carrying out its orders while my mind raced in some faraway place.

I fired a shot.

Again, it didn't connect.

Again, the dark sphere vanished before the payload could even touch it.

A building behind it was damaged – by what manner of process could Leliel be dodging that it could escape something as fast as a particle beam?

The acceleration was of course not nearly as extreme as when we used the power output of an entire nation to speed them up, but it still went up to a fraction of the speed of light…

It was one thing if the angel had deflected it with xier AT field, but how could it just dissapear?

In any case, the Second Child ought to be careful.

That was also Dr. Akagi's conclusion once she saw EVA 02 approaching the target.

Perhaps I should not have fired, if this had triggered the angel to do xier vanishing thing again.

Then again, the pattern was only now visible in hindsight, once we heard the Second calling out:

„A shadow?!"

It appeared again. That spreading area of blackness.

The pilot of Unit Two was quicker to respond, maybe owing to years of training and muscle memory.

She leapt into the air before the the darkness could fully cower the ground beneath her, before cars, street signs and traffic lights began to sink into the murky gloom.

Clinging onto the side of a building, she realized with real horror that this, too, wasn't anything near a safe place: „No...! Noooo!"

But her training proved its work.

She didn't panic.

She went straight to ram her halberd into the sight of a building and then later used her prog knife to create a further handle in order to climb up to the top.

When she reached the now crooked rectangular roof of the thus mistreated skyscraper, the sight she saw prompted impressioned exclamations:

All laid out before her there were crooked sideways towers, slowly disappearing straight into where the solid ground should be, as if neither the earth nor the armored plates were ever there.

„The city… the city is sinking…!"

No one could have maintained a sense of boastfulness when faces with such an absurd sight.

Our one brief instant of hubris had been punished with no mercy.

It was just about then that I finally reached the site, long after anything could be done.

What was once a popular commercial district I had often driven through on the tram was now transformed into a bizzare tenebrous ocean with remaining bits of city sticking out like hopeless pond scum.

It looked like a surrealistic painting, like the product of someone's nightmares, like the partial consciousness of dreams without the full might of reason to force it to follow the rules of reality.

There was no sign of Ikari-kun left anywhere, not even a residue, not even a trace, not a fleck of his EVA's bright purple plating.

He was gone just like that.

Erased from the face of the earth without a trace, as if he had never existed…

If the EVA was trapped somewhere, we could retrieve her, if Ikari-kun were grievously wounded, one might get him to medical care, but with nothing left for our hands to hold onto, what could possibly be done?

„Rei. Asuka. Fall back now."

That was the Major's voice.

A logical decision, one might think. Almost the only possible action.

Not unprecedented – it happened many times that the enemy had displayed some unpredictable power upon first contact so that we could only defeat it after retreating and regrouping to re-engage it with some sort of new strategy.

But this time…

This time…

...it would mean…

...that if there was any time window still allowing for…

„Wait!"

That was the Second. The very last voice that I could possibly want to hear right now.

I'm sure that her vainglory did not much like the idea of retreating without being able to prove that she could do so much better that Ikari-kun, never mind the impossible odds that she herself would face.

As it turns out, I didn't care what great manner of heroic stunt she meant to throw at this hopeless situation.

I didn't even care that it was hopeless, or that I knew that any possibility to the contrary was purely speculative in the first place.

I didn't care that I was contradicting a direct order:
„-but – Ikari-kun and Unit One are still in there…"

My very words betrayed my fear in and of themselves, in bringing up the EVA as some futile saving throw, as if that at least could bring someone to reconsider, because I already knew that the pilot's life would be considered expendable under these circumstances…

Major Katsuragi did not like this anymore than I did.

A multitude of restrained feelings was quite apparent in her voice.

If she kept it back, that was only because she had had a little longer than us to get used to the cruelties of this world and slather her heart in armor.

There was no trace of a flaw in the logic behind her directive – The grounds to assume that some swift action we might take now could preverse Ikari-ru was thin – was it not an even greater assumption that he wasn't dead already?

„Fall back. That's an order."

Looking at the wrack of the buildings lost in the dark ocean before me, I was forced to concede that there was no other plausible course of action.

The next logical course of action, if one existed, would have been to start reeling in the umbilical cable, which at first, kept steadily rolling, as if it were being pulled by a weight into an endless deep dark ocean – or perhaps, continuously being destroyed, slurped up like the angel like a lone spaghetto.

But that would be a gamble, as it carried the risk of detaching the EVA from the power supply, not to mention her only remaining connection to the outside world – if Unit One even still existed, that is.

The cable had held during the incident with Gaghiel.

So long as it wasn't tried, it couldn't be presumed to be impossible-

I doubted that Major Katsuragi admitted even to herself what she was waiting for when she didn't give that order until the cable was getting close to being fully rolled out and likely to disconnect anyway, if pulling on it would do that.

From a purely technical or scientific perspective, the results might be considered mixed:

The cable still existed.

All of it was rolled back in.

In theory, that might imply that objects as we know them could continue to exist on the other side of that darkness without immediately being destroyed.

But when they finished reeling it in, there was nothing attached.

A survey flight of the area in which Major Katsuragi personally participated found no trace of Ikari-kun or Unit One either – but that was more or less expected.

There was nothing but the last of the rooftops gradually sinking down, almost as if Leliel had more or less lost interest in pulling them further in from the instant xir had captured Unit One, or at least, once the other two EVAs retreated or deactivated.

There had been conspicuously little activity since – what looked like a shadow had expanded to just over 600 meters, and the remained in place, remaining completely motionless.

By all accounts, Leliel was not making any further attempts to absorb any more matter or otherwise attack us.

Almost as if the angel was now busy with other things… perhaps, because xir had gotten what xier wanted.

Could that be?

Was Leliel trying to capture one of us alive?

Xir doesn't have understanding like we do and it's hard to guess what kinds of senses xier strange body might possess, so what if xir had indescriminately pulled it everything xir could find until xir ascertained the presence of another being, a fellow soul?

That wouldn't make sense, would it?

I would not assume that we are in any way important to xem.

The angels have goals of their own – they are incompatible with ours, but that doesn't mean that they would desire to inflict suffering if it does not bring them closer to their purpose.

It's just as possible that EVA 01 herself was the target, that this was simply about neutralizing her – the method may not really matter.

And even if the 'shadow' were something like a portal, EVA 01 was most likely stuck on the other size, with no known way left to get out.

Would the result not be the same?

From where I was standing near the makeshift scaffold from which I had exited my EVA, I gazed down at the plain of blackness as it was now.

Once the last of the buildings had fully sunken beneath, it was flat as a salt plain.

Not even water could be this flat, there was always some kind of wave, some fleck of pond scum, some sign of microorganisms or bacterial mats, things that belonged to the same world as humans, that could be folded into the same contiguous whole.

But right next to the rim, parked cars and shop windown continued to exist as if nothing had happened.

The border between our known reality and Leliel's void conveyed a sense of heady unreality.

There was not even any trace of texture visible on the surface, all light was swallowed.

It was as if the world just stopped altogether.

But that shadow, that 'portal' (a word that contained much fewer assumptions than 'mouth') also held a reality of its own, as if, viewed from a certain angle, might appear as much more real than the flat, arbitrary, parochial everyday world that it was a gap in – somehow, much more so than the ominous yet dull sphere hovering above it.

Perhaps this might be considered an intuition of something that wasn't human. Something that may not have occurred with the immediacy of recognition.

It was not compatible with the tools of my understanding, I could not justify or reconstruct the impression by reason, so, I dismissed it then as but a feeling.

A temporary encampment was errected around the new, jet-black plain which the angel had eaten into Neo Tokyo 3, a perfect circle's worth of tall buildings removed like a clearing in a forest, resembling a zone impacted by tree disease, maybe, if the city were a jungle.

The bells of a nearby church rang out to greet the nightfall, the tiny old edifice embedded within what had once been a dense thicket of skyscrapers.

The visual reminded me of funerals.

The military set up a perimeter. Tanks were driven out.

Inter-agency posturing directed at NERV, no doubt –

Since one really struggles to imagine how soldiers tanks and guns might even begin to fight a literal hole in the very fabric of reality.

It wasn't clear how we were supposed to fight it.

Scans and measurements had been taken, of course.

Somewhere off to the side, Dr. Akagi had set up a blackboard and was scribbling some diagrams and equations with a calculator in hand, ostensibly crunching numbers to see if she could make sense of the happenings.

It seems the computers were no help.

They were lacking even a most basic theory to apply to the being known as Leliel, so what would a simulation even be based on?

Once in a while, Major Katsuragi might be seen overlooking the black lake with her bonoculars, looking again and again though the situation was unlikely to have changed.

If there had been any trace of Unit one, I presume she would have made a sound.

EVAs 00 and 02 were parked nearby, the opened plugs sticking out of their backs.

Unit Two's pilot and I had been called down from our scaffolds, shown the toilets and fitted with NERV-issue sleeping bags and plastic lunch boxes;

It had been conceded that there would be no quick resolution any time soon.

We were all engulfed in a stagnant waiting none too different from the static state of the angels.

With every moment, it was becoming clearer that this wasn't going to turn out like all the other times where som unforseen event had set us back in a temporary defeat only to be vanquished in the nick of time by a daring, creative plan courtesy of the Major;

It just wasn't beginning to happen.

It would not appear as if she were having any plans at all – I suppose the loss of Ikari-kun may have been emotionally compromising.

The only sound of motion was the steady 'tock-tock-tock' on Dr. Akagi's chalkboard somewhere off in the distance.

I, too, had kept going.

Ever since I'd climbed out from my EVA, my breath has been bated, as if in suspended animation.

Sometimes, when I am alone, and no one happens to be looking at me in that moment, I think of what has happened. The implications of it.

Its irreversibility. Its finality. Its undeniable reality.

I draw in a sharp, pained breath - and then, I keep moving.

The awareness never leaves, but it recededes, so I am able to look at it, keep perspective, continue to function.

I know I must keep going.

But it still hurts.

I can't say if this is what a human would feel in this situation – I can't say how I would ever know, unless instrumentality had already taken place.

If I were a human, with my own human soul, would I be unable to keep doing my job?

Would I find myself so severely compromised as to end up crying in a corner?

Would my eyes be glued where I know he will not be, just as the Major's eyes?

Would I be overcome with grief?

I do understand that this would all be detrimetal to my function, as a pilot and that it wouldn't change a damn thing, but I didn't like the idea of there being something subtle and transcended that I cannot ever comprehend.

A lack so profound that I didn't even know I lacked it –

It wasn't as if I were holding anything back.

I didn't see anything missing – it was hard, after all, to imagine what one had never experienced.

If I were a human, would this pain that I could now look like from a distance, as a dangerous sample to be carefully, then be replaced by something brighter and realer that could not be so contained?

Something that would eclipse all notions of what's useful or prodctive or even what is real, swallowing and drowning out everything inside my mind as if there were no past and no tomorrow?

If I were human, would I be weeping as Ikari-kun was weeping when he came to get me from my plug after Ramiel's defeat?

it might just be fanciful imagination – it might be that I am picturing the experience of others as rather different from how it is.

Maybe it really nothing special.

It's pointless to wonder after what can never be known, in the end.

There are no answers.

There is nothing.

I'm just left here, with the glow of my inner hellfire bleeding out from where I put it.

For now, at least, I coul keep going.

I waited.

I stayed out of the way of the workers and made sure not to step on any power cables.

I wrapped my arms around my ellbows, directing my downcast gaze at nowhere in particular.

In the distance, I occasionally picked up the conervations of the staff.

I honestly had not been paying attention to what the pilot of unit two had been doing.

I had been thinking about just about anything but her – she just fell out of my consciousness.

But apparently, she had been nearby, and decided to chime in to the technicians' discussion unprompted, once more talking at people whether she was wanted or not.

Thinking herself deprived of her chance to show off in battle, with much of the planning once again headed by the technical division and employing means other than direct combat, she must be offended that the center of the universe had somehow shifted away from her – so she seemed determined to at least claim contribution by inserting herself into the conversation.

Whatever she was going to say, I wasn't going to listen.

At least, that's what I meant to do.

And yet, inevitable, the trajectory of my eyeballs ended up moving straight toward her -

Although it was my ears whom I couldn't believe.

"What a fine mess! He rushed in by himself and totally ignored the plan! He has no one to blame but himself!"

He might be dead.

He may have died kicking and screaming in some otherworldly void, calling out for all of us including you.

Or maybe he's still in there now, suffocating in the filthy LCL as life support systems break down one by one.

He might be laying half-digested in the the angel's bodily juices.

"Just because that idiot did a little bit well on the test yesterday, he though that he could turn around and tell me I'll show you how it's done'. "

Seriously?!

That's what you're thinking about?

That's the top concern in your mind right now?

Your score? Your performance?

Even though he lived with you and cooked you dinner every day?

Even though this is all because he tried to impress you-

"Hahaha!"

Everything rang with her high, callous laughter.

He might be dead, and she's laughing.

Are you really so damn glad to have the whole spotlight all to yourself now, just like you always wanted?

"He got too big for his britches! So much for Invincible Shinji!"

I wanted so much to shut her up.

I can hardly express how much it galled me that she would keep talking like this, while Ikari-kun was just going to die, if he wasn't long gone already.

I couldn't stand the picture in my imagination of how devastated he would be if he could see her gloating over his death… like his life just didn't matter at all.

Words wouldn't serve.

The signal went straight to the muscles.

There was barely time for the rational parts of me to register that the three firm steps I had just heard were my own.

From one moment to the next, I was less than a forearm's length from the Second Child's face.

Part of me actually wanted to strike her.

I'd heard her running her mouth and I just didn't want her to continue.

I couldn't abide it.

Something inside of me rejected that notion more strongly than I had ever refused anything before.

I wanted to hit and kick and punch until no more sound came out of that ghoulish smirking mouth of hers.

Of course, the very moment that this impulse came into the light of full conscious self-awareness, it was clear that it was never going to be acted upon, not once the slower gears of rationality caught up enough to get involved.

There would be absolutely no benefit to getting into a physical altercation here, certainly not to Ikari-kun.

So I stood there, taut like a bow strong ready to fire, locked in the moment of letting go.

I stopped, the impulse held, contained, pinned in place by observation.

For a moment, the Second Child actually backed away – but then she held her ground:

"What's the matter?! Don't you like hearing the ugly truth about your precious Shinji?"

I am perfectly capable of putting my personal sentiments aside to properly assess-

Ah, who cares.

I don't even care about this ugly mess anymore.

I'm done with it.

There are many, many things I could have said to her, but they all boiled down to this:

"Do you only pilot EVA in order to be praised by others?"

Which is, to those such as us, the same thing as asking whether she doesn't have any other reason to her existence. I'd been wondering this many, many times now.

I couldn't hold it in.

I wanted to hear her answer.

She was more genuinely offended than I expected:
"I don't care what anyone else thinks! The only opinion that I care about is my own!"

Thumping her chest like that, I don't think that she had ever looked more like a chimp.

Humans are truly strange, strange beings, if this is what their vaunted 'connection' or 'companionship' does amount to.

I used to think that I'd never understand. I used to wonder if I even wanted to, but seeing this, it seems to me like it's not really all that complicated – just a rude language of brutish cruelty.

I don't know what might have happened if we'd been left to continue.

It really dawned on me how much this… impulse had gotten the better of me when Major Katsuragi stepped in to part us:

"That's enough, both of you!"

That hadn't happened before, not really.

It just… came over me, like something disoriented.

I wasn't used to this. I suppose now I know what that feels like.

It's exhausting. And pointless.

I feel thoroughly leeched dry for no good reason.

I should really avoid engaging with her so this doesn't happen again.

...oh. And I suppose Major Katsuragi must have felt like it was her responsibility to say something to us.

"It's true – he acted rashy and rushed in without permission. That's why we have to chew him out when he gets back."

If he gets back.

If he were to get back.

It was possible to imagine but that doesn't mean there was a physical means to do it.

I saw little reason to engage in such speculation.

….

The night dragged on.

Bright floodlights cast deep dark shadows, rendering everything in sharp contrast.

The moon rose.

Then, the tapping of a pointing stick on blackboard summoned all the technicians and other workers to its source: Reliable as ever, Dr. Akagi had results to showcase.

Few of us would have really understood the diagrams and equations drawn before us, but I even if we had, that would not have made the conclusion any less phantastical:

"So you're saying that the angel is a shadow, and the shadow is actually the angel?!"

"Exactly." confirmed the Doctor, unperturbed by Major Katsuragi's disbelief. "It's roughly 680 meters in diameter and three nanometers thick. Within that thin layer, it is supporting a higher-dimensional space with an inverted AT field. The interior is a potential space with imaginary coordinates, similar to Dirac's Ocean. It probably leads to its own, closed-off pocket universe."

"And the sphere?" asked the Major, raising her hand.

"It vanishes whenever the real body's imaginary space closes. It's not really a floating object, but rather the three-dimensional shadow of the higher-dimensional angel."

"So our real target is the black shadow that swallowed Unit One…" surmised the Major, turning to look over her shoulder at what we now knew to be the angel's shadow.

I'd read some things roughly like this, some mathematical considerations of how shadows always had less dimensions than the objects casting them, and how parts or sections of higher dimensional objects might appear as seemingly self-contained, 3D objects floating in space as they passed through our 3D plane without ever being completely visible at once.

But my knowledge was only enough for a vague sense of recognition – I couldn't actually follow Dr. Akagi's argument or understand how and why exactly she'd arrived at her conclusion.

Obviously I wasn't a physicst and I wasn't even alive long enough to have had the chance to become one.

Not far from where I was standing, the Second Child was sitting on a supply crate.

She was pouting, probably tired from the long watch, disappointed by the lack of glorious fights and thoroughly bored by the unexpected physics lesture.

She honestly seemed a little lost.

Despite what transpired earlier, I feel sorry for her. So far she'd been accustomes to solve just about every problem by force, be it physical or force of will.

But now, with an enemy like this, it wasn't even clear where all of that kinetic energy of hers should be aimed at.

"How are we supposed to fight a shadow?"

If anyone had still been expecting that this situation might be turned around by the Major and another of her daring last-minute plans, it was soon made clear once and for all that this would not be happening, much as I expected.

Shortly after we had all received Dr. Akagi's talk regarding the true nature of the angel, it was made known that she had taken control of the operation.

Apparently there was some altercation or argument between her and the Major leading up to this, but I wasn't nearby when it happened, so I could not tell you what was said.

The bits of indistict shouting that I picked up from across the encampment were largely drowned out by a passing plane.

But even if I had not known this, I think I would have been able to tell which of them was the author of this plan.

It had Dr. Akagi written all over it.

It was a calculated, exceedingly pragmatic procedure that left little up to chance.

In order to combat the angels, NERV had been outfitted with exactly one thousand N2 mines.

Between the various battles, eight of them had been used.

The Doctor's plan was to take all the remaining ones and dump them straight inside the angel's interior space, while EVAs 00 and 02 would be disrupting Leliel's AT field.

The idea was that between that and the force of the explosions, the enemy would be unable to maintain xier inner space and be torn up from the inside – there was no chance of fighting it from without.

But even with regards to xier interior, the good Doctor did not feel like taking chances regarding what level of firepower Leliel might be able to withstand.

If all the firepower at our disposal couldn't do it, then nothing could, and if we were to fail due to holding back on the explosives, we would never get to use them another time.

There was one obvious implication from this that didn't even need to be stated.

If anything of Unit One would be recovered, it would be something like her core and some bloody chunks of the central control unit.

Enough maybe to rebuild it and one day seat me inside it once they had installed a new plug.

Even if the old one should remain intact, they would never get all of Ikari-kun's remains scrubbed out from the walls or all the little cevices of the control yokes and the seat.

The life of the pilot had been ruled as expendable under these circumstances.

For all intents and purpose he was as good as dead already, even if he should still be drawing breath – there was simply means in our power by which he might have been retrieved alive.

And of course, with every passing moment, EVA 01's remaining batteries would be draining more and more, lowering the chance that he wasn't dead already, even if he did have the presence of mind to switch purely to life support.

He wouldn't have any water or rations with him either, not for an operation within the city limits where resupplying was presumed to be easy.

So this is how it's going to end; This is what his journey and all his reasons for coming here have always been building up to, all the things he's told be about how being here had changed him, or what it meant to him, every skill he learned, all the little moments of his childhood, and even his dreams of one day thinking back to these days while holding a photograph.

A simple, mere pawn sacrifice.

It was really to be expected, realistically speaking.

I still cannot say if this is what a human would feel in this situation.

But I've realized that I don't care.

What I'm feeling right now is bad enough, human or not.

I must hope that he is dead, that he has been long gone for hours.

It would be best if he didn't even know it happened, if his consciousness had ceased all at once the instant that he dissappeared into the shadow, before night even fell.

I'm aware that if I said it, Major Katsuragi was probably going to contradict me, but it is the kindest, most rational thing to hope for.

It is far preferrable to to his being trapped in a small, claustrophic capsule and suffocating in cloudy, deteriorating LCL thick with his body's own waste products.

Not just dying a slow death, but being forced to live until he dies, his last hours spent in terror knowing that his death was coming, panicking and screaming far away from any other living being, knowing that his last cries were going unheard.

It was better than him living long enough to hear the noise of the mines falling inside the angel, perhaps thinking we had somehow come to rescue him, and his last thought being the split-second realization that he'd been betrayed just before being completely obliterated in an instant.

I had known all along that this might happen every day, but while my mind could never forget it, I think that my heart might have forgotten it some time along the way.

How else could I explain the burning that now filled me, despite this predictable outcome?

Predictable thought it was, I couldn't deny that I didn't want it – not one bit.

I knew well that everything's ending, but I had thought that we may at least get to linger until the final curtain felt. That if we must die, it might happen just a few weeks later.

I had accepted my fate as inevitable, but I had wished that he would stay near me till the end.

I had asked for nothing else, accepted everything else, entertained no other wish.

Just this one little, piteous wish, this bare minimum pittance -

But rationally, I understand that asking very little does not mean that the cosmos is going to take pity and let me have just that little bit.

If anything, the pain of being denied becomes greater, as this one loss carries the pent-up force of every other renunciation, all other cracked hopes trodden carelessly beneath my own feet.

That's what I get, I guess.

I really really should have known.

Up above, the moon was full like a circular flower in bloom,

I wasn't expecting to get much sleep tonight.

The next day dawned wan and dusty, announced by pale white land falling through mists and low clouds.

The least that one could say was that at least it wasn't as blisteringly hot as before.

Nonetheless, I laid awake where they left me long before they came to rouse me.

The technician who came for me – I think it was Lt. Hyuuga, Ibuki still avoided me – said something about how I would be departing for the mission, trying to sound encouraging, perhaps on the Major's instruction.

But the word 'mission' was a debatable one to apply. There would not be anything resembling combat. More than ever it was apparent how our role as pilots was that of mere conduits present to make the AT-Fields activate.

By the time the Second and I has ascended the scaffolds and been sent to board our EVAs, the military planes that were to drop the N2 mines were already circling above the city like a swarm of montrous birds.

In passing we were informed that the operation had been moved 12 minutes up the schedule – just so that there was at least a theoretical chance that EVA 01's life support systems might not have failed yet.

Perhaps that was Dr. Akagi's way of claiming that she had at least tried to extract him alive.

I wish neither she nor the Major had indulged in this self-deception –

I would much rather that they waited.

I would rather that there wouldnt be even a snowball's chance in hell left that Ikari-kun might still be alive. I'd rather that he'd be left to fade away in peace rather than feel himself get immolated upon the altar of NERV;

I wish they'd made sure that it was impossible for him to ever realize that he'd been betrayed – or at least, given up on.

But what I wanted did't matter.

I had orders to carry out.

I moved EVA 00 to the one side of Leliel's thin dark body, and across from me on the other side stood Unit Two.

We began to deploy our AT fields.

If Ikari-kun was still alive, I would be helping to kill him.

If we're lucky, he might be passed out from lack of oxygen already and might not notice or feel anything… but if such a thing as 'luck' had existed, we must have long since exhausted our fill and finally ran out – Though we had not lost anyone before, we had often escaped by a hair's breath.

It was bound to go wrong sometime.

It was always…- huh?

What is-

Something split open.

With a loud, harsh crystalline cracking noise, like rocks breaking.

Like an avalanche falling.

The once perfectly flat featureless circular plane that was the angel was now bulking and quaking, warping and spasming, as waves on an unruly sea before our very eyes -

And as waves broke from undulating blue into heaps of white foam, so did the angel break, breaking up, cracking open, tearing into blocky rectangular pieces, like stone cracking, and yet not like stone – for stone does not bleed.

Alien as Leliel might seem to us, the hour or xier agony betrayed our kinship, for on the inside of the gashes and fissures on xier surface, xier tissues proved every bit as red as ours.

You must understand: We had not dropped a single mine yet. No one among the staff of NERV or the military forces had done the slightest thing to begin the assault.

We did not touch xem – yet it was plain to our eyes, to our intuitive understanding as lifeforms that still shared a source despite our difference, that this couldn't be a natural process.

This wasn't Leliel finally deciding to attack us after being finished with devouring what xir swallowed – no. Leliel was being torn appart.

I am not certain that I could name the instant in which xier life had ceased.

Xir might have been dead already at the time that I was thinking this.

And the devastating changes going on within xier complex body were also reflected upon the sphereoid shadow-like projection that we could see above it – the complex pattern of delicate complex striped began to shift and ripple.

The sphere itself was bulging and warping same as the blackness that lay beneath it.

And then, after a few more spasm, all the lines dissappeared.

The sphere appeared pitch black with a rubbery surface now, like something had given, collapsed, come appart.

Some complex arrangement of non-equilibrium symmetry and regularity must have collapsed into hopeless entropy – it was easy to think of the higher-dimensional interior as a purely physical phenomenon, a random space oddity. But it was living, supported by a living being.

A higher dimensional body cavity that must now be as torn up as the surface now visible to our eyes.

Perhaps the moment that the stripes dissappeated was the instant that the S2 engine had gone out, wherever it may be.

I heard the Second Child calling out in confused horror, demanding that the absurd spectacle before her eyes explain itself.

But even the technicians back in the temporary stronghold couldn't explain it –

All readings were off the scale – our instruments had been barely able to make sense of Leliel in xier normal, naturally intended state.

Guided more by wishful thinking than logic, Major Katsuragi wondered out loud if this was not Ikari-kun's doing… but that suggestion was deemed even crazier than anything else heard before.

Eangelion Unit One's batteries should be wholly and completely drained by now.

Though she had moved on her own twice before.

And the dead, dull black shadow of Leliel was still bulging, an ugly asymmetric motion that couldn't be part of a process of life.

The sphere's surface gave way.

It popped, like an old tire ripping open, and protruding from within was –

the bloody claw of a demon, or something that looked so much like it that it took a moment to recognize it as the armored hand of EVA 01.

It was soaked in blood and gore, the violet paintjob barely visible beneath.

Blood and gore, too, sprayed forth from the hole that it had punctured in the angel's remains.

One could hear the technicians gasping in awe.

Even the ever-so-composed Dr. Akagi mumbled to herself in abject schock.

The pilot of Unit Two was yammering like a lost child: "I'm sitting in… something like THAT?!"

My gaze remained serious, but steady.

None of this was a surprise to me.

I more or less knew what this was.

What sort of being Unit One was – where her will came from.

This must be her doing… Yui Ikari.

Has she wrought this carnage in revenge for her son?

Or did she even manage to-

I didn't want to to even think of it. Not if it might still prove untrue.

The EVA's arm took hold of the angel's lifeless flesh, and then another hand appeared, and both tore and pulled, until at last, the Evanelion's entire torso emerged to the daylight with a blood-curdling, deafening roar – a call that was like a cross between a screaming ape and a revving chainsaw.

And as she did so, as more and more emerged, the sphere around her came apart all around her, blood running down its sides and meeting at its lower pole…

and then it burst, coming down to earth and a terrifying hail of biological tidbits, what out to be alien anatomy, yet so familiar in its fleshy crimson qualities.

Roaring still, the Behemoth landed, shaking the ground with the might of her landing, sending further bits of the angel's body flying like brittle rocks.

Beneath her feet, what once was Leliel was already coming apart, decaying into mush and liquid, at last revealing the foundations of the buildings that had once been beneath it, neatly cut off at street level.

Basements and parking garages now faced the open sky, filled with a bloody pulp.

And then, right after this obscene display of power, EVA 01 simply stopped, laid itself down not too far from the encampment, and released the entry plug of her own accord.

It was a good thing, too, for one might doubt if the technicians and medics would have been so quick to don their hazard suits and approach if they were not sure that the titanic creature had well and truly fallen silent.

When it began moving towards the temporary base, most witnesses were extremly frightened -

it was all the more amazing how the beastly acts of brutality that had liberated her from the angel had been followed by such a purposeful, careful motion.

I think she laid down close to the base on purpose so that her son could be retrieved more quickly.

Then again, as grotesque as the escape had looked, I don't think that a mindless beast could have accomplished it. If there was an obvious exit or something, Ikari-kun would have taken it.

This was the doing of an intelligence. An intelligence equiped with the mind of a brilliant human scientist who may know more about the nature of the angels and the EVAs than anyone else in the world, someone who may have worked out the workings of the angel just as Dr. Akagi did…

yet that brilliant mind was now grafted into the body of a god that probably came equipped which much the same instant knowing as the angels.

This new being – not just a humanoid copy of Lillith and not just Yui Ikari either – might be the closest thing there is to having both their powers and ours.

Though she would lack the Fruit of life -

Though I recalled the voice of Lillith covering it, as soon as this occurred to me.

Does the flesh of her that went into making this EVA covet it still?

Does Yui Ikari desire it same as her husband?

What exactly is it that Commander hasn't been telling me?

Whatever it is, it's all tied up with EVA 01 – a creature far more terrible than the unfortunate angel Leliel had ever been.

When Major Katsuragi fetched the Second Child to tell her that they were about to open EVA 01's plug, she didn't hink of bringing me with her.

Neither did I object –

It happened fast. She was in a hurry, too.

I'm not sure if I would have insisted even with more time to choose.

I didn't want to see Ikari-kun's remains.

Not until I knew what happened.

If he was dead, then I might go and view his body, and scour the reports and autopsy findings for all the gory details, but I didn't want to walk in and experience this sticky ambiguous moment of parsing his lifeleness, having to watch as everyone else reacts at it, and not knowing how to do so myself.

It's not that I would look away from the truth, but I'd rather know what to expect.

I just didn't want any more false hope.

If he's gone, then let him just be gone.

Enough with the limbo.

But word soon trickled out:

He was alive.

From what I heard later, he even woke up of his own accord and spoke some lucid words.

They would be keeping him in the medical wing to watch for and treat possible effects of oxygen deprivation, but largely as a precautionary measure – it was passed around as good news, among the technicians, Lt. Ibuki was especially relieved.

Half an hour earlier, we had all but given him up for dead, but it seems now that Ikari-kun had made it out alive, without major signs of permanent damage.

I wondered if I should be thanking the Commander's wife for this.

I never found out whether or not Major Katsuragi scolded him as she said she might, but I heard Lt. Hyuuga telling Aoba about how she did not leave the boy's bedside for several long hours.