Part One

Alive in 2025

Chapter One

December 05, 2025 AD

Mark -00:10:15:30:02

The array was constructed in a month, which is lightning-fast for a thing of its size, and impressive even by Nerv standards. The complex is built atop a broad foundation, dug deep into the Nevadan bedrock, itself riddled with colossal blast doors for trains, trams, and trucks, each a super-heavy vehicle meant to supply the facility with the macro-cargo needed to fuel its function. Since the commencement of facility operations, the blast doors have cycled every day, every night, without pause as the array accepts the coolant lines, capacitor coils, and ancillary sensory equipment that will be necessary upon its activation.

In totality, the foundation alone covers three square kilometers, even discounting the burgeoning city that sprouts around it, made up of prefabricated housing and infrastructure, enough to render the desert livable for the few thousand personnel who will soon see to the facility's function.

Beyond the ad-hoc city stretches an ad-hoc camp, a tumbledown sprawl of tents and lean-tos, restaurants, bars, and entertainment dens which have sprung up in the array's wake; the locals' attempt at maximizing their economy, using their charm and wits to stripmine the foreign staffers of their hard-earned money.

The locals, the foreigners, and the white-plated UN vehicles that oversee it all move like a perpetually disturbed beehive beneath the triple-shadow of the projection dishes, each one made of three saucers of declining size surmounting a support strut, arranged fully vertical. Each dish cluster stands over seven hundred meters tall, like the fingers of some mythical giant pointing to the sky.

On the plaque out front, and on all the thousands of sheets of paperwork needed to christen it, the facility is called "AT Meteorological Test Station Alpha", which, shamefully for a society built on them, does not even have a quality acronym.

Ambassador Swan, head of the UN special Nerv oversight council, calls it an "ideologically-developed boondoggle", which also leaves much to be desired.

Thankfully, somewhere along the way, someone has given it a nickname: the Tricorn.

A month of construction atop two years of dreaming, planning, simulating, and political groveling had contributed to its creation. Now all that was in the past—it was behind them now, like wretched phantoms, like a bad aftertaste. With its activation, the weather itself will bend to man's will, and the continent's most inhospitable desert will begin the process of becoming the breadbasket of the post-Second Impact world.

All that is left is to turn it on.

Sunrise always arrives late in Tokyo-3. The rays are slow to cross the mountains. Once, these surrounding peaks were considered a positive defensive feature, some of the only natural formations tall and rugged enough to slow the advance of truly titanic enemies; now they are merely good for property values. The views are incredible, and it is hard to find a metropolitan area which cleaves so close to its sleepy hamlet beginnings. Even in a true summer, it is nearly 0700 when the sun is finally long enough to warm the waters of Hakone Bay.

She knows the sunrise well, since she is usually up before the sun, up before her alarm clock, even. Today is no different.

She rises in the dark, dresses in the dark, and makes her breakfast in the dark—eggs and a protein shake. Lights warm slowly. The radio is on, piped through a speaker system threaded through the walls of this high-rise apartment so that she can get the news while she rouses herself for the day. She listens while she stretches, then while she runs, then while she lifts.

The date is Saturday, December 5, 2020. The forecast shows clear skies over the Third City. There is no traffic report this early, though there will not be one later, either; the Magi do not make road configurations which suffer traffic. All trams, trains, and buses are on time today, just as they are every other day.

She sweats and moves, sweats and moves, sweats and moves. Like everything in the apartment, the workout room is spacious but not wasteful. Every bit of equipment in here has a use on a designated day, each of those days marked on a calendar on the wall. Today is Monday—full body tune-up. Once she leaves the treadmill, she does crunches, then deadlifts, then RDLs. She stretches for fifteen, on a yoga mat, breathing steady. Her hair is pulled back.

The radio continues. In world news, there are wildfires along the American west coast, the worst in twenty years. Climatologists attribute the record blazes to atmospheric complications from the Second Impact.

One of the last of the old nuclear submarines still in service in the United Nations navy, the Ticonderoga, has gone missing. Representatives from the UN stress that a full search by the Pacific combined fleet is underway, scouring a four-hundred square kilometer area with active sonar and surface surveillance planes, so far to no avail. Experts assume the submarine holds enough breathable air for its crew to survive another week before rescue.

In Europe, relations between the United Nations and the nations of the Neo Warsaw Pact continue to worsen. A disagreement that first began with official NWP complaints over the refusal of the UN to openly share its information regarding the development and deployment of decisive battle weapons has escalated into saber rattling along the borders of the Baltic States. Experts warn of a possible land invasion while western allies seek further diplomatic solutions.

In national news, Tobe Asahi, a native of Tokyo-2, has been reported missing. Friends and family have not seen the 64 year old in several days, a fact made doubly-concerning by the senior citizen's illness—a stage four lung cancer, for which the diagnosis is terminal. This is the twelfth such case in recent weeks, each one the disappearance of a terminally ill citizen.

Locally, Remembrance Day is next Monday, marking the fifth anniversary of the Siege of Tokyo-3. Observances are expected throughout the downtown area, though attendance by government and UN officials is expected to be lighter than usual. This will mark the first year without the ceremonial walk, as Evangelion Unit 02's pilot is expected to in the United States for the unveiling of—

"Caspar: halt audio," she says, between breaths. The radio stops.

She completes the rest of the workout with only her exhalations for a soundtrack. When she is finished, she strips, showers, and gets ready for the day.

By the time she is dressed, the sun has found its long and winding way over the mountains. The solar arrays down by the bay have detected it, their tall faces swiveling towards the light.

A touch of her finger retracts the blinds with an electric whirr. She sits and watches the skyscraper sunflowers complete their daily ritual, sipping her coffee from the low, ultra-modern sofa in the living room.

Once, she hated waking up in this city. Now she loves it. In the midst of the dozen things on her mind, she allows herself a quiet moment of reflection—just enough space to wish someone else was here to watch the sunrise with her.

The moment passes.

She gets up, tosses the remains of her coffee in the sink, pulls on her jacket, and heads out the door. It swishes shut behind her and she hits the lock button on the keypad, index finger out, thumb up.

The nameplate on the door reads Penthouse 13. Soryu, A.

Asuka exits the lobby of her building a minute later. A black sedan awaits her at the curb, the driver standing at the backdoor. He opens it for her and she slips inside.

Tana is waiting for her and scoots into the far seat to allow her a place to sit. "Sorry, ma'am," she says. "Here's your coffee."

"Not a problem," says Asuka.

The car gets underway. Tokyo-3's Terrace Gardens district flicks by the window. All upscale high-rises and quaint eateries, the district is named for the lush gardens that rise from the pavement, each one made from an old macro-munitions tower. Rapid-growth vines, themselves sprouting riotously-colored flowers, crawl from the empty sockets of missile towers and sprawl down the sides of abandoned cannon mantlets.

Tana reads off her itinerary. "You're meeting with PR at 0900 for a final check of the press tour, then you've got a flight out of Hakone Launch at 1000. We land at 1945 local time, yesterday, and then you've got a party to attend."

"What party?"

"Movie star types," Tana says, checking her notes. "Hosted by an actor. Titus Ario. Starred in A Day on Venus and Unremembered. He's a member of—"

Asuka holds up a hand. "I'm pressing flesh with supporters?"

"More like mingling with celebrities, ma'am."

Asuka understands. At first, there was no great plan behind her job other than to rehabilitate the public opinion of Nerv by giving it a charming, outgoing face. For years, Nerv marketing had built up a very particular image of her in the global gestalt consciousness: witty, charming, attractive, friendly.

But now, a recent poll has revealed exactly what that image has become. In the public mindset, she compares most strongly to a brave astronaut or a veteran war hero. Both are good, and both are looked up to, but they have limited utility. No one cares what a war hero thinks of current affairs just like no one cares what dress a retired astronaut wears to an awards show, and so the eyes drift away from both. From her.

So the plan has morphed. Less political functions and more Hollywood parties. Less pundit interviews and more flippant talk shows. Less of a war hero and more of a celebrity. Fun and approachable is now the name of the game. If an idea does not make her fun or approachable, it does not get past the marketing team's whiteboard.

Asuka watches the city outside the window. An elevated skywalk runs between the towers, and she sees urban care workers in their white trucks, prepared to trim the towers to ensure the city's infusion of natural forces does not end with the streets and windows all overgrown.

The city has changed too, she thinks. No longer a fortress, but a garden.

"You've got fun stuff approved, too, right?" she says. "Not just dry political crap?"

"Absolutely," says Tana. "Hello, America! is filmed on the street, so you'll have crowd interactions, and Late Home Tonight has you singing a song."

"I can't even sing," she says.

"Lipsyncing, ma'am," says Tana. "Just a part of a pop song. I've got a tape of it for your flight."

"Fine," Asuka says. "I've got two days free when I get back. Tokyo-2 and Kyoto. Anything for me?"

"Domestic media has you booked for two game shows."

"Fun game shows or weird game shows?"

"This is Japan," Tana says, simply.

"Understood." Asuka turns her coffee cup, fingers touching the rim of the lid, eyes scanning the schedule. "Approval ratings for the Tricorn. Where are we at and where do we want to be?"

"UN nation mean approval is around thirty-nine percent, but that's after another wave of Angel Crisis denial over the past few months, particularly in Europe. North American approval is slightly higher."

"How much higher?" Asuka says.

"A fair bit." Tana stumbles. She shifts through papers, tamping down her own panic. "Looks like nine points."

"And our projection?"

"Plus ten more points by the end of the week," Tana says, then smiles. "The typical Soryu bump."

Asuka ignores the compliment. "Any concerns for the actual opening event?"

"One thing, ma'am." Tana hands her a sheaf of papers.

"What is this?" she says.

"Your speech for the opening of AT Meteorological Test Sta—"

"The Tricorn," says Asuka. "Just call it the Tricorn."

"Yes, ma'am. It's your speech for the Tricorn opening."

"I have my speech. I wrote it myself and sent it in."

"Yes, ma'am. But there have been some changes."

Asuka's eyes never stop moving, never stop reading the revised document, and never bother to look at her assistant. "I already wrote my speech. It's good. It is fun and approachable, but also communicates the gravity of the situation and forecasts its impact in a hundred years I won't be around to experience. It's everything we want to make the inauguration impactful."

"I understand, ma'am." Tana looks uncomfortable. "But this is from the director. She read the speech and made these cuts personally."

Asuka sips her coffee. Her eyes narrow. "How interesting."

She is on the move again, heading down halls and accessways, elevators and escalators, following an internal map burned into her long ago. It's the same building, the same hallways, but it feels different. There are more people, for one thing, and they look different. Nerv has always been a paramilitary organization.

Lately, though, it feels more 'para' than 'military'. There are no technicians or mechanics, not this high in the pyramid, and so there are no uniforms, either. Just suits and ties and slacks and dress shoes, all moving from offices to conference rooms, briefing theaters to break rooms, each denoted not by rank, but by title.

Among them, she stands out. She is younger, as has been noted, but she also holds a rank—Captain—and she wears the jacket to show it. Where she walks, people stand aside. She marches up an escalator, past the open-air atrium for outside projects. There comes a rumble as visiting scientists and business leaders notice her above them, and pause to point and talk. She waves, politely.

Tana is behind her, having finally caught up. She has her datapad in hand. "I can notify the director that we need a meeting, if you like."

"Not necessary."

"She might be busy, ma'am."

"I'm busy, Tana," says Asuka. "She can make time."

The escalator ends in the executive floor, a maze of the most plush, high-functioning chambers in headquarters. At its core is the director's office, a large space occupying most of this floor's northern extremity.

The director has a secretary. That secretary attempts to stop Asuka. "The director is in a teleconference with—"

Asuka ignores her. "Call Hakone Launch and tell them I'm running late for liftoff," she tells Tana, as she takes her 'revised' speech from her assistant's stack.

"Ma'am," says Tana. "Can I give them an arrival window?"

"No more than twenty minutes late," says Asuka.

"Captain, the director can't see you now." The secretary is up from her desk, now, trying to interpose herself between Asuka and the door. "She is in a teleconference with UN leaders and—"

Asuka marches inside and the door slides shut behind her.

The secretary stands there, defeated. She curses under her breath.

"Sorry about this," Tana says, realizing she doesn't know the director's secretary's name.

The secretary looks at her for the first time. She seems indifferent to Tana's presence, as though Tana could be anyone. "You're new, right?" she says.

Tana stiffens. "I've been here six months."

"Yeah, but this is your first press tour, correct?" The secretary moves to a side table, on which is set a coffee maker. She pours two cups.

"Yes," Tana says, watching the process.

"In that case…" The secretary pours a second packet of sugar into the mug meant for Tana.

"I don't need that much," Tana says.

The secretary hands it to her. "Trust me," she says. "You do."

"I'm pretty resilient."

"So was the last girl." The secretary returns to her desktop. "Word of advice? Sleep when you can, because she doesn't."

Tana doesn't know what to make of that.

Once, the office was much darker, and that darkness had served to heighten the cavernous depth of the place. It felt unwelcoming, cold; what little light there was would silhouette the sole item of furniture in the space, the desk at the end, and the man behind it whose shadow seemed to swallow the light in the room, and the geo-front, and the plans and futures of everyone in his orbit.

But now he is gone, and now it is bright. The desk is still there, but it is joined by other things. A sofa and chairs in a little lounge. A meeting table to one side, for private conferences, its surface projecting an idle hologram—the Nerv logo, spinning in space, the company slogan cycling in and out of view behind the oak leaf.

The director is in front of her desk, standing within the circular area of the executive holo-comm. The holo-comm is an old piece of technology, once used by the office's previous occupant to talk to the Seele council. From outside that circle, Asuka can see and hear the director, but cannot see or hear the group on the other end of the commlink.

It is not immediately clear which of Nerv's stakeholders the director is speaking to. It could be the Japanese government, the United Nations, or any one of the many defense, pharmaceutical, or energy contractors that utilize the geo-front's lab spaces, or one of the independent think-tanks which pay for access to one of Nerv's many Magi systems around the globe.

"Everything is on schedule, Ambassador Swan," says the director, and Asuka feels she knows what kind of meeting this is. "And Nerv is happy to comply with any and all security needs of the United States government. If a second security assessment is deemed necessary, we will accommodate it this week."

Asuka walks to the edge of the holo-comm, but stops when the director raises a hand. It's subtle, subtle enough that the people in the meeting with her won't notice it. But Asuka notices it. More importantly, she knows what it communicates. Not now. I'm doing something more important.

So naturally she marches past the line and into the radius of the holo-comm. Suddenly, she can see and hear everything. Fifteen members of the UN security council, all of the ones on the Nerv oversight committee, surround her. She has walked right through Germany's Ambassador Rundstahl, fritzing his light-form. He doesn't seem to notice.

The director incorporates her arrival smoothly, with barely a twitch in her expression to show her displeasure. "Speaking of on-schedule," she says, "here is Captain Asuka Langley Soryu of Project E. She'll be heading state-side today for a press tour ahead of the Tricorn activation."

"Hello," Asuka says, nodding to everyone. The holo-comm translates each user's speech into the language of its recipient, and while Asuka speaks English and German as well as any of them, she sticks to Japanese for the director's benefit; a show of solidarity. "It's very good to see you all again. Ambassador Swan, it has been too long."

Swan is a bulldog of a man. Formerly an admiral of the United Nations Pacific fleet, his face never made the transition from military to political life that the rest of him did. He scowls permanently. "Not long enough," he says.

The Director waits the split second she needs for the translation, then forces a smile. "Captain Soryu will, of course, be on-hand at the activation itself. But we have many things to handle before then. With your forgiveness, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to cut this meeting short."

"This is a scheduled monthly meeting," says an English accent.

"Again, I offer my greatest apologies, Ambassador Bickerstaff," says the director, bowing. "But we will see one another again at the activation and there is much to do."

The rest of the six turn to Swan, awaiting his approval. He grunts. "Very well, Director. We will cede the floor. Thank you for your time."

"And I thank you for yours, Ambassador."

The representations of the six councilmembers flicker and fade, discharging like atmospheric static.

The director straightens. She fixes Asuka with a look. "What could you possibly need so badly that you interrupt me when I'm in conference?"

"'Thank you, Asuka.' 'You're welcome, Misato.'"

"Why should I thank you?" says Director Katsuragi.

"If I'd left you alone, Swan would have run you over. I mean, security checks? Really? At this stage?"

"Swan is a valued collaborator. We need him."

"Swan is a trumped-up stooge with a silly grudge," Asuka says. "Never has gotten over me stepping on all his little tugboats."

Katsuragi walks back behind her desk. She is wearing a navy blue dress that she adjusts as she sits down, and her hair is worn just above the shoulder. "Is there something you need, Asuka?"

"Yes, actually," she says, dropping the speech on her superior's desk. "I'd like these notes explained to me."

Katsuragi does not look at the pages. "You needed a few cuts in the verbiage."

"Why?"

"Parts were deemed inappropriate."

"You say that like someone else made the decision. Like it was a group effort or came down from on-high."

"Fine. I deemed parts of it inappropriate." Katsuragi looks at her. "We cannot go in front of the entire world and dedicate our clean energy facility with a speech that mentions military preparedness and threat response."

"Maybe you can't, with your goofy dress. But I can. I'm fun and approachable."

"One, this dress isn't goofy. And two, people don't trust us yet. You've seen the polls—half of the first world still believes we started the whole thing. 'Nerv made the Angels' is a narrative they use to deny us access to any industry, and the most common one is defense. You cannot talk about militarization when there is no threat. It looks desperate."

"Just because there's no threat right now doesn't mean there won't ever be one."

"Yes, obviously. But what am I supposed to say? We should spend billions on upgrading the hardware for a program that we may never need again in the off chance that we were wrong? We'd look like power-mongering fear merchants. It would play into everything we're trying to distance ourselves from."

"Tabris could reappear at any time."

"There hasn't been a credible sighting in five years. Every psychologist we've paid, everyone who has examined his case file, agreed he was unlikely to ever return. The kid is gone."

"Well, what about Russia?"

"What about it?"

"Tensions with the Neo Warsaw Pact have never been higher," Asuka says. "I hear they're talking about invading the Baltic States any day now."

"And what happens when we rearm Project E in response? How long will peace last when we're lining up cloned gods on their border?"

"We'd win that fight."

"What if they launch a nuke?"

"Then I'll catch it."

Misato takes a breath. "Asuka, please. Just read the speech with the cuts."

"You're telling me to shut up and put on a smile."

"I'm telling you to do your job, Captain."

"'Captain,'" Asuka says. "That's how it is?"

"That's how it is," Katsuragi says.

Asuka stands her ground a moment longer, staring at her friend, superior, and former roommate. A dozen thoughts form in her mind, but none of them will lead to what she wants. She goes with her next best option instead.

"You have split ends."

"I'll take that under advisement," Katsuragi grins. "Now if you'll excuse me, I believe you have a plane to catch. I won't hold you up any longer."

Asuka frowns, turns on her heel, and leaves the office.

"Safe flight!" Katsuragi calls after her. When the doors have sealed, she digs a mirror out of her desk drawer. She checks her hair and sees that Asuka was right about one thing.

"Well, shit," she says.

Car to tram, tram to surface, surface to launchport, and the blue-hulled ramjet waiting on the long arc of its launch platform. They are airborne a few minutes after arrival, the craft slamming them skyward at nearly Mach six. Tana white-knuckles her harness and breathes, quick sips in and out, to prevent hyperventilation.

Asuka leans on her armrest, cheek on fist, while she reads marketing demographic reports. Her earbuds play the pop song on repeat, drilling its incessant lyrics into her memory. By the time they're passing Midway Island, she is mouthing the words along with the tape.

She reads through the guestlist of tonight's party, drilling herself on each actor and director, debutante and supermodel. What films they are in, what films they have made, which rich losers they have slept with, which other rich losers they have divorced, etcetera. She realizes she has seen none of the movies and has not heard of any of the rich losers.

"I don't have anything to say to these people."

Tana looks up from her laptop. "Did you need something, ma'am?"

"No. Nothing."

Touchdown in Los Angeles, California, three hours later. Seven o'clock PM local time. A car takes her to the hotel where she changes and does her makeup. Tana talks to her from outside the bathroom.

"Last minute invitation from the governor's office," she says. "He's headed up to the frontline of the wildfires tomorrow and wants to know if you'll accompany him."

"What's it entail?"

"Thirty minutes of facetime with firefighters on the line, then a twenty minute press conference."

"Pros and cons?"

"Pro: it's a good show of solidarity with the local government. Since the fires will be the Tricorn's first target, it would be good to have a ground presence there. Con: it'll press us for time between your morning news appearance and the taping of Brinkley at 0200."

"I'm not concerned about Brinkley. Book it," Asuka says, shimmying into a yellow dress. The dress is cute and shows a lot of back. Almost too much back, if she's honest.

Another car, this one into the Hollywood hills. The house is a white edifice built into the side of a low, scrub-covered mountain. She gets a drink, mingles, compliments filmmakers for films she's never seen and talks to women she'll hopefully never see again. Among other things, she realizes she is not as well-dressed as she thought she was.

Asuka knows she has a beauty to her, but she does not consider it a Hollywood beauty. She looks good—great, even—but this party is a near-perfect distillation of all of North America's most stereotypically attractive women, and so she feels self-conscious.

She does not have perfect proportions; she is too muscular in her shoulders and too flat in her butt. Moreover, her mixed ethnicity—half American and a quarter-each Japanese and German—gives her an unconventional combination of facial features. She has her mother's eyes and her father's hair and a skin tone that never quite reaches true Caucasian.

The women are nice enough, though. They speak to her with idle curiosity. Aren't you that Eva girl? I saw you on TV when I was a kid! Why are you here? Oh, really? What's a Tricorn? That sounds, honestly, so cool. I'm so jealous. My friend actually lives in Nevada, but like closer to Vegas, you know? I go out there and chill every year for like a month or two and it's honestly so chill.

The men are better, if only slightly. They ask about the experience of it, trying to get tactile details from her, as if enough of those details, added over time, might substitute for being there themselves. And she answers them honestly, with a smile and a joke, and the actors and producers and directors laugh and grin, as if they've been let in on a private little window into her world—which, she guesses, they have been.

One asks about how long she did it. Her 'flight time', he calls it, as if she has ever flown anything. It's a common misconception. People hear 'pilot' and they want to translate every other aerial term they know, assuming each one applies.

"We call it mark-time," she says.

"I'm sorry?"

"Mark-time," she says, again. "In Nerv, we mark each crisis in increments. So if I called this party a crisis—which we might as well, right?"

Scattered laughter in the immediate group. Polite enough.

"If we counted it as a crisis from the moment I walked in," she continues, checking her watch, "we'd be at mark 01:20:30. One hour, twenty minutes, and thirty seconds. Mark-time."

There are polite 'oooh' noises from the group. The man who asked her does not oooh. He feels corrected, and does not seem to enjoy it.

"So how long, then?" he says. "How long did you do it?"

Asuka shrugs. "I'm not sure," she says, falsely. "I've never done the math."

The man seems satisfied. He pointedly turns his attention to a blond woman with a fully-symmetrical face and the conversation dies.

Not much later, she grabs another drink and finds her way outside, onto the back deck. She leans on a railing and sips. Below her is an infinity pool. In it is a man with three women, each naked, each laughing. She does not recognize them. The man they're with is known to her, if only by her notes—a producer. She watches them for a while, the way the women laugh too hard at his jokes and sit too close to him.

Far beyond the infinity pool, she can see a redness in the north where, over the mountains, the fires hunger the forest to snapping timbers. All is silent here, and it gives the impression of a continual late-evening light.

Car to hotel, hotel to bed. Next morning: new shower, new clothes. An eggshell blue sleeveless dress that screams 'morning show'.

Yesterday's dress lays stranded on the floor. Tana will get it.

Car to studio. She does the first interview of her tour, this one with a local morning show. The questions are light, yet they verge on important topics.

How does it feel to be so near the completion of such a big project?

Well, Linda, it feels great.

Will you be present at the inauguration?

Of course I will.

And will you be attending alone?

Guess you'll have to wait and find out!

Afterwards, the car moves north, into the fire zone. Asuka changes in the back, swapping her dress and heels for pants, jacket, and work boots. "Why am I fielding questions about whether or not I'm attending alone?" she says.

"We knew this would happen," says Tana, from the passenger seat. An American is driving, so she speaks in Japanese. "The networks wouldn't remove every question we asked to curate," she says. "This is the compromise. You can be as non-descript about that answer as you like—you have limited information as is, and playing up to that would be honest for you and good for ratings."

"Sounds a lot like censoring me," Asuka says.

"We don't prefer 'censor,'" says Tana. "The proper nomenclature is 'curate.'"

"Fine. This sounds a lot like curating me into feeding the tabloids."

"That's about the size of it, ma'am."

The fires are blazing up close. Smoke fills the air even three miles behind the cordon. Asuka wears a filtration mask, walks alongside the governor, shakes hands, listens intently. The emergency workers look at her with eyes set in goggle-shaped outlines on soot-stained faces.

When she is done with the tour, she stands in what Tana calls a temporary press briefing theater. Asuka calls it a tent.

The governor speaks first, fielding questions about their response. Then he fields questions about her presence, and uses the opportunity to cede the podium to her.

She prepared notes on the drive over.

"Firstly, I would like to thank Governor Holcomb for his hospitality today, and for inviting me along. I'd also like to thank the state of California, which has been so welcoming. What I've seen here today saddens me. On a planet already so ravaged by devastation, the damage done by these wildfires is almost too much to bear, only surpassed by how moving it is to see so many emergency servicepeople and first responders out here risking their lives to fight back. And to all those servicepeople I met today, and all the others I have not had the good fortune to meet, I would also like to say thank you. I'll take some questions now, if you have them."

Three dozen hands shoot up, all with the same question. She picks one at random—a man in a suit who looks like he knows how to ask the thing right.

"Why are you here?" he says.

She nods, as though the question had not occurred to her, as if it requires the kind of on-the-spot introspection that it absolutely does not.

"Thank you for asking," she says. Shutters snap. Live video cameras zoom, refocusing on her face. "We have one week until the Tricorn is active. Our first objective—that very first hour of that very first day—will be to put these fires out. When that happens, these men and women won't have to put their lives on the line at all. From then on, no forest fire will be allowed to persist without our say-so."

"You sound very confident in the Tricorn's abilities," says another reporter, this one a woman. "Millions of Americans aren't so sure. What would you say to these anxieties about a weather control machine right in our backyard?"

"I understand the concern. It sounds like mad science from an old monster movie," she says. "But as someone who piloted a giant cyborg, I can tell you that what used to be science fiction is now science fact. My Eva works. Our geo-front works. This will work, too."

"But why are you here?" says suit-guy.

Asking a follow-up question is a tacit break of the rules of a press conference like this. It takes tenacity and not a little rudeness. She almost smiles.

"I wanted to see what it was like on the ground, to smell it and hear it. To commit it to my memory, so that I never forget what it is like and what it is that Nerv is advocating for."

"And what is that, exactly?" says suit-guy.

"Well that's easy," she says, letting that smile slip through after all. "We even printed it on our logo."

The rest of the questions are the inconsequential follow-ups that won't make a nightly news highlight reel. A car takes them back into the city.

"That was a good dodge, ma'am."

"Thank you, Tana. What's tonight?"

She does Hard Time that night, a political talk show with a moderated panel. The other panelists are a political stand-up comic, a UN delegate she's met once before, and a woman who has just published a book titled Cruciform Future: The Coming Age of the Evangelion. The primary topic is, of course, the Tricorn.

The comedian keeps things light even when the UN delegate wants to force an issue about Nerv strong-arming the US government, and the author defends Nerv with a zeal that makes the audience uncomfortable. Asuka keeps out of it until the host makes it so she can't.

"You've been awfully quiet, Captain," he says.

"Well, this is my first time meeting someone who wrote a book about me," she says, wedging laughter between herself and the author's zealotry.

"But seriously, what do you make of all this debate?" says the host.

"I understand both sides of it, I do. Hearing both is very enlightening." She shrugs. "But seriously, I'm just hoping for a little rain."

Car to hotel, then hotel to airport, and a redeye flight to New York. Tana dozes. Asuka does not. She stays up, headphones on, bobbing her head to a song she does not like. Her lips move over and over again.

Airport to hotel, just long enough to get into her yellow morning show dress, and then she is on a blocked-off street with the anchors of Hello, America! standing around her and three hundred people standing behind her. Signs pepper the crowd. 'Red Forever.' 'My Turn!' '4 Eyes 4 Life.'

She holds a microphone in her hand and does a guest weather segment with "clear skies" announced for the next three weeks after the Tricorn activation date.

"Sounds like you're out of the job!" says one anchor to the regular weatherman, who laughs good-naturedly. Asuka also laughs, also good-naturedly, and so do the three hundred people behind her. She waves to them. They wave back.

An anchor throws back to the inside desk and the segment is over. She shakes hands with people along the barricade on her way back to the car, then she's off to the hotel again for a costume change before Helen, a midday talk show for stay at home parents.

When she first began this process of becoming the face of Nerv—the process of becoming fun and approachable—she found all these questions and hosts and audiences interesting. When the fighting was done and the rebuilding was over, it was nice to find a new purpose. To take a victory lap and get the congratulations she felt she deserved. It was fun, this spotlight, and in her youth, it was bright and warm enough to make her feel special.

Now, after nearly ten years, it's somewhat lost its luster. All the same places, the same faces, the same questions. And her giving all the same answers, the same anecdotes, the same deflections.

On shows like Helen or Morning Coffee, she's asked the fun, easy questions. What was it like? Was it frightening? Did it hurt? Did you feel taller? Stronger? What's it like to fire one of those big guns? All these are designed to display her unique perspective, show how piloting affected her youth, and so she tells a story about a canceled diving trip that became a real dive into flowing magma. The story feels authentic, as though she is saying it for the first time; none of the audience knows she's told it dozens, if not hundreds, of times before—an exercise in repackaging her trauma for the consumption of the masses.

On shows like Breaking Now and Newsroom, she's asked about the ethics of her time in Project E, not because they want the answer but to presuppose one. Their questions always betray what answer they want, what side of the debate they're on. Do you feel it was right that you were forced, as a child, to become a soldier? Do you feel it was right to allow Nerv to continue with such a clearly compromised woman in the director's chair? Do you feel Nerv was necessary at the time, or now? She answers these carefully, diplomatically, as if with consideration, and the hosts and panelists and audiences consider her words carefully, as if she would ever say something anti-Nerv while wearing a Nerv pin on the strap of her black dress.

On shows like One on One and Big Figures, she has prolonged sit-downs with serious interviewers in stark, black rooms across big tables with stark, white coffee mugs, where she answers important, serious questions. Opportunities for performed self-reflection. How do you feel about those we lost in the war? You had friends who were injured, right? The JSSDF invasion was a tragedy, yes? And these she answers with forced melancholy and self-seriousness, and the hosts and panelists and audiences nod sagely, as if they're all in on the same play-acting sincerity.

Finally, she gets to Late Home Tonight. She is the second guest, following a musician who talks about a new album. She waits with Tana in the green room. Tana is on her laptop. Asuka sits silently, eyes closed, mouthing the words to the song with no headphones. She has it, now.

"-my guest at this time, Captain Asuka Langley Soryu!"

Music plays and she walks out, waving to the crowd. She hugs the host, hugs the musician, and takes her place in the hot seat. The host makes a joke about seeing her everywhere lately, and she tells him that, yes, it's been a long week. Is this her last show? For now, yes. Then I'm back to Japan for a bit ahead of the Tricorn activation, which leads to the typical questions about the Tricorn and her typical answers.

The host transitions to the game. "We like to play a little game here on Late Home Tonight called Sync or Swim. You're familiar with it?"

And she says yes, she is, and plays up her unpreparedness. Then she and the musician, whom she has never met before, lip sync the song perfectly. It pours out of her muscle memory, like the answers to a test she's crammed for, and, just like that, to be immediately dumped after the test is over.

The crowd loves it.

The host thanks her and she hugs the musician again, smiling, laughing. Then the host turns the interview over to the audience, where a production assistant rushes around with a microphone, allowing the public to ask her question after question.

They ask her more about the Eva program, and the Angel Crisis, and she delivers another of her ready-made jokes—this one about how most children play hopscotch on pavement, not on the Pacific fleet.

"Do you ever miss it?"

The question comes to her from one audience member in particular—a young girl with slim glasses, near the middle of the stands. It's a rare question, but one she has heard before.

The standard answer is, no, she does not miss it, because however fun she may make it seem in her jokes and stories, it was a stressful, complicated time and we are all better off with it in the rearview mirror.

But she does not say that. Instead, she looks at the girl and doesn't speak for a moment.

The girl looks back. She seems pleasant enough, to Asuka's eyes, but the attitude she displays is patient beyond her years.

Alone among the audience members, this teenager does not want a pat, simple answer. She is asking for something deeper. Something honest.

The moment stretches, becomes too long for regular TV. Becomes awkward.

"In any case, Captain Soryu is here to promote—" the host begins, trying to move the interview through its prepackaged structure.

"You know I only did it nine times?" Asuka says to the girl. "Nine times. Nine sorties, we call them. Nine battles. That's all I was ever in. I spent my entire childhood training for a thing I only did nine times. Ever."

They flash through her mind in sequence, like waves breaking on a beach. First, in the Pacific. Then the fun times: the dance, the volcano, the blackout, the falling sky. Then the dark times, the bleak times: trapped within the shadow sea and waging war in the heart of Nerv, slaughtering a god in the hangar. Then the ring of light and the final war: ten against two, and the death of Unit 03.

"If you go back through the public record, you can actually see my personal mark time. How many minutes I spent in the plug. In the seat during combat conditions. I've tallied it. Wanna know how many? One hundred and forty three minutes. That's not even three hours. Not even three hours and yet I spend all my time talking about it. Answering questions about it. Telling stories about it. Telling little jokes or acting like I'm sad about things I made peace with a long time ago. And it just goes on and on and on…"

She looks across the rest of the audience. They aren't smiling or nodding or looking concerned. The host and the musician aren't, either. They don't know what to do with this because for the first time in this interview—the first time this week—she isn't telling them how to react, isn't holding their hands through a carefully choreographed feeling. She feels her fun approachability withering before her eyes and decides to finish it.

"Sorry. Guess the coffee didn't fix my jet-lag," she says, smiling. "No, I don't miss it."

"Alright." The host's grin returns. "We'll be right back with more from Asuka Langley Soryu."

The band plays. The audience claps. The musician claps. The noise of it smothers the awkwardness, and the honest moment disappears.

Asuka glances at the crowd, but she can no longer spot the girl who asked the question.

They show ends and she is in a car two minutes later, headed to the international launch terminal at JFK. Tana has called ahead and readied the ramjet that will take them to Tokyo-2. "Everything okay?" she asks.

"Fine," Asuka tells her.

"That last answer was… different," Tana says, diplomatically.

"Just nerves on my part," Asuka says. "They'll cut it before air, anyway."

Ramjet to Tokyo-2. She stays up, watching the curvature of the Earth while time slides day from the sheathe of night. Then they're landed and in a car and on the way to the next show.

"What is this again?" she says.

"Candy or Not Candy," says Tana. "It's a game show."

"And what does one do on Candy or Not Candy?"

"You bite into a thing and see if it's candy or not."

"Kill me."

They do it anyway.

The next show is another gameshow. She is given foam balls and made to throw them at a mascot of the fifth Angel, the polyhedral leviathan now sprouting legs with sneakers. The man in the costume bobs and weaves, but cannot do so without bumping into the talk show furniture, and Asuka and her teammates quickly bring it down. When it falls, the studio speakers play a synthesized version of the Angel's famous chime that warbles and droops, as though dying.

She smiles and high-fives her teammates and doesn't mention that she was not present for the battle they've just recreated. She answers her few questions and heads out, studio to car, car to train station, bullet train to Kyoto.

Press day in Kyoto is hardly anything, just a local morning show. It isn't a major market and will have virtually no impact on their public approval rating, but it was booked anyway. No one on the PR team nay-said it, either; they know better than to ask questions about certain things.

The last car pulls to a stop on Daitokuji Street, on the north end of the city. Tana is in the backseat with her, going over the last minute numbers. "Early statistics have us on-track in all the North American markets. Up ten points in the key demographic already, with Prescott projecting even higher by the time we're ready for activation."

"That's good," Asuka says.

"We've also got the pre-packaged ads and direct-to-cameras sent out to the secondary markets, so the numbers for those should be available in the next twenty-four hours."

"Excellent," Asuka says, opening the door and climbing out.

"Very," Tana says. She glances out the window of the car. They're parked in front of a nondescript apartment building, with nothing important in sight. The university is nearby, but if they were going to give a speech to college kids, she wasn't informed of it. "What are we doing here, ma'am?"

She starts to get out, too, but Asuka stops her with a hand on her shoulder. "No. Nope. Nothing more tonight."

"But we're here until Sunday night," Tana says. After a week straight spent running across the globe, a stopover of almost twenty-four hours is nearly inconceivable to her.

"I know," Asuka says, one hand on the top of the open door. "The car is yours. Go to a hotel, take a shower, watch some bad TV. Eat some real food. I've got it from here."

Tana blinks. "When do I come get you?"

"I'll call when I need you," Asuka says. "Good job this week, Tana."

"Uh, thank you, ma'am."

The door closes. The car drives away. Tana sits and suddenly feels the tension in her body, the aches in the soles of her feet, and the itchy heat at the corners of her eyes. She's exhausted, but when she thinks about the last part—the good job part—she feels very pleased with herself.

"Where to?" says the driver.

"A hotel," Tana says, then thinks of the Nerv credit card in her pocket. "An expensive hotel."

She checks the rearview mirror and sees Asuka walking into the apartment complex, and the feeling of self-satisfaction wanes as she wonders just where in the world she's left her boss.

There is no doorman in the apartment lobby, no oak paneling on the elevator walls, and no delicate lamps set into the hallway to lead her to apartment 813. The apartment is not a penthouse, nor even a corner room; it is a nondescript domicile in a nondescript building, built far enough from the university it serves to be private but not so far as to be inconvenient.

She does not knock on the door; instead, she presses her thumb to the lock and the door swishes aside.

Inside, the apartment is small but not uncomfortable. She takes her shoes off in the entryway and silently sets her duffel bag next to them. There are other shoes there—white sneakers with white laces beside a pair of work boots.

She passes the kitchen and bedroom and sneaks into the living room. There is a sofa—something she forced into the place, in a disagreement she won—and she sees him lying on it, the TV on mute while he reads a book.

His back is to her, and she can just see his head and shoulders. She approaches silently, getting within three meters. Two meters. One meter.

"I can hear you," he says, not looking back.

She pounces anyway, throwing herself over the back of the sofa and landing atop him. He grabs her and they roll off the couch and onto the carpet. His book flings away. Their bodies smack the kotatsu in the center of the room.

She loops his leg with her own and flips him onto his back, pinning him with her forearms across his chest for just a second, just long enough to feel triumphant before his stronger arms roll her onto her back, and suddenly he is above her.

"You done?" he says.

"Yes," she lies, then tries to hook his neck. He grabs her wrists and pins them to the floor above her head, his blue eyes filling her vision.

"You sure?" he says, grinning.

"Maybe." She bites her lip and squirms her hips. She can feel him between her legs.

"That's cheating," he says.

"What is?" she says, not stopping.

"You can't tackle me and then do this," he says. "That's changing the rules of engagement."

"It's called adaptive strategy," she says, then she raises her head just enough for her to whisper into his lips. "Now are you gonna kiss me or what, Third?"

Shinji does a lot more than kiss her.