Shinji stared impassively at Asuka as she spoke at length about her Evangelion. No matter how much he wished for silence, she would not shut up. Fortunately enough, it seemed she was more than content to listen to her own prattle, and he did not need to respond. Ducking under the tarp, he followed her into the large bay where the vermilion giant lay prone against the deck.
"Well, what do you think?"
She obviously wants a response this time, Shinji thought to himself as he stared at the Evangelion.
"Huh. It's painted red."
"Well, that's not all that's different about it! Like I was saying before, my Unit-02 is the most advanced model! It's the first production line unit! It's superior to the first two units in every way! With my Unit-02, anything that stands against me shall be defeated!"
She's very certain about all this. Maybe she's right. If it's as good as she says, she can take over. Will they still make me pilot it though?
His internal musing and Asuka's continuing exposition on the properties of her Unit-02 were interrupted by the sound of a massive explosion.
Both pilots raised their heads simultaneously, eyes locking, and then rushed out to the railing. On the far end, on the other side of the fleet, a ship was burning. Suddenly, another ship, a massive battleship rose up out of the water, a great crack in the side that was visible from where they stood. The ship settled back into the water, almost disappearing entirely from view before bobbing back up into view, as a vast plume of flame erupted from the center of the ship.
"What was that? Nothing ever touched it!" Asuka shouted in shock as an otherworldly keening wail filled the air, accompanied by the roar of cannon fire and engines as the fleet began to disperse and send high-velocity death in all directions.
Shinji felt his heart sink, and blood began to pound as a third ship exploded into fire for no apparent reason. "It's an Angel. It has to be."
"An Angel? A real one?" Wonder and hunger filled her voice, her eyes narrowing in expectation. "Wunderbar..."
Grabbing his arm, she dragged him from the railing back under the tarp. "Wait here! Don't you dare peek!"
Shinji stared at her in confusion as she vanished from view around Unit-02's leg. "What are you doing?"
"Changing into my plug-suit, of course! What else could I be doing, you idiot?" She called back sharply. "I've got a spare one for you; you can change while I get everything started."
Shinji recoiled in shock. "Y-you want me to come along?"
Asuka threw a red plug-suit at him. "Hurry up! I'm going to show you how it's done! You might have gotten lucky with a high sync score with your test-type, but I'll show you how a professional handles things!"
She clambered up the side of the Evangelion towards the waiting Entry Plug. Sighing, Shinji kicked his shoes off and started to change into the suit, which seemed to be as different from his normal one as she claimed Unit-02 was from Unit-01.
It's a lot more... girly. It looks like I've got breasts! He looked down at himself in horror. No. There's no way I'm wearing this. This is too much! He reached for the button that sealed the suit, to change back into his school uniform. He had piloted in regular clothing before, and it would work just fine.
"Hurry up!"
Grumbling to himself he climbed up and joined the irritated girl. As soon as he entered the plug, pulling the hatch shut behind him, she played with the controls, and he felt the familiar feeling of disorientation as the plug sank into the Evangelion's body as LCL began to finish filling up the chamber.
Shinji tried to gain a good spot from which to watch Asuka work, but when she looked at him holding onto the outside of the chair, she shook her head.
"That won't work with what I've got in mind, Third. Here, get in behind me." She bounced up out of the seat. "It's not ideal, but I won't be able to fight if you're bouncing around inside my plug." She narrowed her eyes at him as he scrambled into the seat. "No perverted stuff! This is war!"
Shinji rolled his eyes as she settled down into his lap, threading her feet into the stirrups and grabbing the controls.
Shinji listened with half an ear as she began spouting off verbal commands in German. It responds to verbal commands? I don't think Unit-01 does that. At least, Dr. Akagi never said anything about it. He was brought out of his ruminations as she drove an elbow into his ribs.
"Are you paying attention? I said for you to think in German! You're messing up the activation process!"
"I don't know any German! I'm Japanese!"
"Ugh! Wertlos! Okay. Changing language settings to Japanese. Set primary connections! Activate Synchronization level three! Life-sign monitor active, engage all connections!"
Shinji felt the shudder of power and the extension of awareness as they synchronized with Unit-02. It felt different from Unit-01, but how he wasn't able to put it into words. It was just... different.
Asuka opened up her communications suite and connected to the navel command frequency. "All ships, this is Evangelion Unit-02! I am moving to secure power on the Resplendent!"
She ignored the explosion of chatter on the radio band as she drew Unit-02 up, the tarp's restraints snapping and wrapping around the red giant like a shroud. Looking around for the Resplendent, she spoke to Shinji absently.
"Here, you talk to them. I don't care about what they have to say."
Shinji focused on listening to the radio chatter. He quickly recognized the voice of the disgruntled admiral from before. "-I say again, stand down! Do not activate that toy! Respond!"
Shinji felt the world lurch as they lifted off the deck of the ship. "uh... Too late for that, Sir. We're on our way now!"
Misato's voice poured over the radio suddenly as they jumped from the cruiser they had landed on. "Are you there too Shinji? Good job! I've got the power system all set and ready!"
"Okay!" Shinji looked at the back of the red-headed girl's head. "They're ready for us on the ship."
"I heard that, Third. I've got ears you know!"
Whatever. I'm only doing what you told me to.
Shinji's eyes widened as he saw a small plane zoom past them as they hurdled toward the massive aircraft carrier. He felt a smirk twist itself onto his face. Someone's got the right idea... get away from here as fast as possible. But that's not possible for everyone...
Pulling the power cable up and locking it into place, Asuka and Shinji surveyed the ocean and the sea of lifeboats making for the larger ships as they all spread out, looking for the Angel that had attacked them.
"Where is it? Why's it not attacking anymore?
"I don't know. Just look for it!
Glaring at the girl on his lap, Shinji felt his ears prick up as the keening wail once more filled the air. They both saw the waves in the water turn to white froth as the Angel launched itself out of the water at them, its mouth larger than any of the Angels Shinji had fought before opened wide, teeth as large as the Evangelion's arms shining like daggers.
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
Gendo looked up from his desk as the phone rang again. Kozo's eyes went to the phone, and then at him.
"It's not going to answer itself, Gendo."
Ignoring him, the Commander lifted the receiver to his ear, his face a carefully composed mask of placid disinterest.
"Yes."
Dr. Akagi's voice was soft, and filled with regret. "Sir, I'm sorry. There's nothing we can do. The sympathetic injury. He's asleep right now. We'll fit him for a prosthetic when he wakes up."
"Very well. You did what you could." his voice betrayed nothing as he spoke. He calmly lowered the receiver back into its cradle. He turned to meet Kozo's questioning look.
"Well?"
"There's nothing to be done. That bitch took his leg."
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
Rei looked up from her book to the prone form of the brown-haired boy who had thrown her life into chaos as surely as a crescent wrench that was tossed into an operating turbine engine would cause a critical systems failure. He was still asleep, as he had been for the past ten hours. They had not allowed her to visit him when he had been brought in, nor did they allow her to observe them working on him. Again.
She was certain this was because they actually had done no work at all, and did not want anyone to notice. He was still missing a leg, after all. While she would not offer her opinion to anyone, unsolicited or not, she felt that if she had spent over thirty hours locked in an operating room and laboratory with him, he would not have left without two legs, even if she had to cut one off of some genetically suitable donor (willing or not) and graft it to him. They had the ability to create clones, after all. They had the ability to modify the speed at which the clone's tissues developed. There was no reason that he should be sleeping there without two complete legs.
So it was that Rei was very much put out with the entirety of the senior leadership of NERV, including for the first time, Commander Ikari.
The drug mixture they were feeding him was substantial. They had chemically induced a coma, but for what reason, she had no clue. The wound (if it could be called that) had been clean, the limb neatly absorbed by the hated Unit-02. Smooth, unmarred flesh, not even scar tissue, nothing but normal, healthy flesh, covering the point where his left femur ended. No evidence he had been born with two complete legs existed in his body. No patella, no bone fragments, no tendons or muscles from where the upper and lower legs connected remained. No damage at all to the tissues of the upper leg had been incurred.
He hadn't even been in any pain at the time they had induced the coma. He had, according to all reports, stopped screaming long ago, on board the ship, before a frantic and desperate helicopter flight back to NERV had occurred.
She turned her silent, emotionless (but strangely accusatory) gaze to the nurse also sitting in the room, likewise keeping vigilant watch over the boy. The nurses came in shifts, trading out every two hours. Rei had not left the room since she had finally been allowed to enter it, some six hours ago.
The nurse tried to ignore the girl's stare, which was not an easy feat.
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
Asuka sat on the catwalk that ran across the length of her Evangelion's cage, her legs dipped in the cool LCL mixture, staring at the impassive visage of her Unit-2. She knew, of course, about the issue of sympathetic injuries. She knew and understood the basics about how it was possible thanks to the degree she had earned, due in no small part to her wanting to know everything there was to know about the Evangelion. She knew it inside and out, no part of it a complete mystery to her, even if some aspects of it still confused her, but she was working on that. She had been looking forward to learning underneath the Chairperson of the Evangelion Project directly, almost as much as she had been looking forward to proving herself in battle against the Angelic threat.
This had all been thrown into disarray. She was no longer as certain as she had been on her understanding of her glorious Unit-02, all thanks to the Third Child.
The crux of the issue bothering her was the fact that in order for him to experience a sympathetic injury, he had to have had a synchronization score of more than forty percent to show actual physical damage. Anything below that, the 'injury' was only actualized as pain experienced in the brain. She herself had proven her theory the pain was only in the brain, and not transmitted from the nerves in the limb itself. Only at the forty percent point, where physical harm began, did information pass from those nerve clusters and endings to the brain. At the forty percentile, however, the physical harm was minor compared to the actual injury done to the Evangelion. Break the Evangelion's arm for instance, and the pilot would only experience bruising. While it wouldn't feel like she was getting a deep tissue bruise, it felt like her arm was broken, but it wouldn't break.
That hadn't been tested to see at what point that occurred. Even she had limits to what she would inflict on herself. However, during an accident during one test, when she had been synced at fifty-four percent, her foot had not been broken like Unit-02's.
She had reviewed the internal logs, and they showed during the fight a synchronization score of eighty-five percent, much higher than her personal best of fifty-eight, had been achieved. This was a singular score, however. She (and Dr. Akagi, Technical Division 1, and the MAGI) attributed this to two trained pilots being present in the plug, somehow acting as amplifiers for each other. They had synced together, as one mind, to Unit-02.
While not entirely pleasing to her, it was also not entirely unexpected. They had been working with one will, one purpose; to kill the Angel. What bothered her more was the fact that when the Angel had claimed Unit-02's lower left leg, his had disappeared. It wasn't broken; it wasn't cut or bitten off; it vanished, leaving a limp section of plug-suit and the Third Child screaming into her ears and vomiting into the LCL.
She hadn't even felt a sting.
She had been the driving will behind the Evangelion; she had felt its gloriousness during activation and synchronization. She moved her hand, and Unit-02 slammed its fist into the beast. She flexed her legs, and it jumped from ship to ship like a child playing at hopscotch.
But when Unit-02 was hit, when it bled, when its leg was bitten off by that terrible maw, she had felt nothing.
She hadn't noticed the fact they were injured until after seeing her Unit-02's bleeding stump pull away from the Angel's mouth as she slammed a jet fighter into the beast's face.
Why?
Misato and all the others didn't understand why she was so angry, why she railed against everything, from words of encouragement and congratulations to those of sympathy.
It wasn't because she was blaming herself out of so-called survivor's guilt. She was not upset because she felt that if she had done something else, tried some other tactic, or responded differently, and paid more attention to some detail, they would have come out without a scratch, or at least with all limbs still attached.
No, it was something completely different, inbred into her over the course of years of dedicating herself to the Evangelion Project in general, and Unit-02 in particular.
The Third Child had come from out of nowhere, engaged, and defeated the first three Angels. Then he went and beat that ridiculous robot. The pilot of Evangelion Unit-01 was indeed famous, even if almost no one outside a small circle of people knew the Third Child's name. It should have been her, the one who had been working all her life towards this, to have that fame. The glory. This was her war!
Now, to add insult to injury, when she had brought him along as an observer, he went and dared to sync with her Unit-02, even if it wasn't intentional. She was sure it was an accident. He hadn't even been interested in it, for crying out loud! Then, in the height of battle, he had the gall to go and be the one that felt her Unit-02's pain and suffering, not her! His leg had been severed. His body reflected the state of her Unit-02. He was the one that was of one mind and body with the Evangelion. Not her.
But perhaps the worst of it was they hadn't even defeated the Angel! After smashing its face in with the jet, she continued to fight, ripping out several of the thing's own teeth to use as daggers against it. But it had all been in vain, for it had retreated to the bottom-most depths of the ocean.
No one knew where it was. They had called off the submarines searching for it when several went missing, over an area that covered almost all of the Pacific Ocean.
She took no pleasure in the fact she had done what previously had been considered impossible; making an Angel retreat.
It mattered not to her that she could have been the one to lose a leg. In fact, she was convinced that what should have occurred was a sharing of an injury at least, as they had shared synchronization. But no, the Third Child had to somehow claim the full brunt of the attack. If anything, it should have been her.
Asuka narrowed her eyes into a glare as she kicked LCL up onto one of the lower 'eyes' of her Unit-02. None of this makes any sense, and I will get to the bottom of this. Why would you favor the Third, that spineless, simpering boy? What's so great about him that you would give him the honor of marking him as one who has sacrificed themselves in the war against the enemy? They all are showering him with attention. Why has he stolen my glory? If he hadn't been there, it would have been me fighting alone! I would have been able to defeat the Angel, instead of being distracted by that fool's cries and disgusting display of weakness! And now they won't let me run my own tests on my Unit-02!
Asuka scowled as she stood up, crossing her arms and turning her back on the Evangelion, and took a step back when she saw the famed Dr. Akagi standing there, hands in the pockets of her lab coat and a speculative look on her face.
"Dr. Akagi! I'm sorry I didn't notice you before. I was just lost in thought." the girl said, keeping her voice light but somewhat troubled.
"Thinking about the battle I suppose?"
"Of course! I'm trying to reason out why the Third Child suffered a sympathetic injury in response to the wound endured by my Unit-02. It makes no sense at all!"
Dr. Akagi smiled sadly. "No, it doesn't." she sighed, nodding at the girl to follow her. "If anything, you both should have shared a more minor injury, as all evidence supports a theory that you both were contributing to the unusually high synchronization ratio that was recorded."
Asuka nodded. "That's exactly my point!" They walked down the hall in silence for a few minutes, Asuka recognizing the way to Dr. Akagi's lab. She eyed the Chairperson of Project E carefully. "Uh... How is the Third Child doing? I mean, from what I've heard, the wound itself is strange. It's not even a wound."
"He is currently in a coma while we try to figure this out." Ritsuko's eyes narrowed behind her glasses as she sighed softly in irritation.
"A coma? But why? I thought that there wasn't anything anyone could do about it. Why not just fit him for a prosthetic? I mean, he shouldn't even have to undergo physical therapy. All that's done by keeping him under is delay the inevitable."
"Orders from higher."
Asuka stopped walking for a moment, before hurrying to catch up. "Higher? But... there are only two people higher than you in the command chain! The Commander ordered him put in a coma?"
Ritsuko sighed again, the annoyance she felt clearly expressed. "Yes. The Commander ordered him put into a coma. I don't understand what he hopes for us to find. Nothing we've seen so far in our tests has a hint of giving him a new leg. Keeping him under for a prolonged period won't do anything but risk him losing the muscle memory that we've worked hard to train into him being lost."
What? They would risk losing the only redeeming thing about the Third Child? "Why would they risk losing a somewhat effective pilot? I mean, I know that I'm here, so the two test pilots are backups, but there's no reason to waste resources!"
Ritsuko smiled again. "Indeed! And that's why I want you to take a look at the MAGI's analysis of the battle. I've gotten good reports about your aptitude for the technical and theoretical aspects of the Evangelions. If there's anything I might have missed, a fresh perspective might see something. Then again, maybe not. But if that's the case, it just adds more weight to my case with the Commander as far as waking Shinji up."
This is great! Access to the MAGI supercomputers? There's so much information in them about the Evangelions! If I am robbed of a chance to show my skill in battle, I can make up for that with my technical skills!
"I'd be honored to, Dr. Akagi!"
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
"Leave us."
Rei ignored the nurse as the woman nodded silently and left, closing the door behind her. Instead, her eyes were on the Commander as he stared out the window into the Geo-Front. She waited silently, standing in front of her chair, her book lying forgotten where she had dropped it when he had entered the room.
She noted he hadn't glanced at his son, despite passing by his bed on the way to the window.
"Rei, you have been in this room for three days. You have never let the Third Child out of your sight in this time, even when you use the restroom. When a nurse first tried to close the restroom door, you informed her if she did you would throw her out of the window."
"Yes."
"Rei, the window in this room does not open."
"Yes."
"Why?"
Commander Ikari's question threw the girl for a loop. While she was certain, he was questioning her on the reason behind her threat and not the reason why the window in a room several stories above the ground surface of the Geo-Front would not open, Rei felt the answers to both questions were self-evident.
"I am unwilling to let Pilot Ikari out of my sight."
"Why is that, Rei?"
"I do not wish to do so."
"Elaborate."
"..." Rei stared at the Commander's back and then dropped her eyes down to the boy lying in the bed. She opened her mouth to speak and then closed it. "It is my fault that he was injured."
Unbeknownst to Rei, Gendo's eye twitched. It was the only indication he had anything other than a vague interest in the conversation. "You were not there. How is it that you are at fault?"
"I was not there. If I had been, then he would not have been present inside Unit-02 during the Angel attack."
"Do you know this for certain?"
"Yes." If Pilot Sohryu thinks that she will be able to utilize him for her own research, she is very much mistaken. I would not permit such a... volatile variable to interfere with my Science.
"The Third Child is in a chemically induced coma. The nurses will ensure nothing happens to him. You will return to your home, bathe, and return to school on the following day, and you are to say nothing of what has transpired. In addition, the medical and security staff will be told you are not to visit him until I say otherwise."
"..."
"That is an order, Rei. Do not make me repeat it."
"Yes, Sir."
Rei gathered up her books and quietly left the room, ignoring the Sub-Commander as he stood outside.
Kozo smiled sadly as he watched her silently enter the elevator at the end of the hall before he entered Shinji's room.
Gendo stood at the foot of the hospital bed, his hands in his pockets as he stared at the still form of his son.
"Do you think she meant it?"
"She has never said anything that she did not mean, Kozo."
The elderly man sighed as he sat down in Rei's chair. "She has never said anything like that before, either." he pointed out, folding his hands in front of his face as he studied both father and son. "They are growing closer together at least, if she feels strongly enough about him to throw a nurse through a window."
"Perhaps it is too much, too soon. I do not need her to become unstable enough to casually threaten people with murder. Her attitude towards the Third Child is far outside how she should be acting. It makes me wonder if she needs more supervision."
"Do you think you have bitten off more than you can chew?"
Hard, but tired eyes flicked over from his son to his friend. "Kozo, I am engaged in a war against the Illuminati, and I am winning. By definition, there is nothing in this world or the next that I cannot chew."
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
Rei ignored the whispers of the class as she had for years prior. At least, that was the way it seemed to the class at first, as she sat down in the seat Shinji normally occupied, instead of taking her normal seat by the window, she. In truth, this time she paid no attention to what was being said, neglecting to take notice of the conversations she spawned by her presence and actions. She had other things on her mind this day.
Hikari causally approached the girl. "Rei? We haven't seen you or Shinji for a while. Kensuke won't say anything at all about it to us."
Rei focused on her laptop, not looking at her tentative friend. "It is a classified subject. I have been ordered to say nothing on the matter, as I imagine he has." She reached down into her bag and withdrew one of the textbooks used in class, saying nothing more to Hikari.
The troubled Class Representative noted with both interest and worry that the book was Shinji's, marked by a circular stain on the cover, caused by an accident one day during lunch. It was with great reluctance she moved back to her desk and was so lost in her own thoughts that she almost did not call the class to honor their teacher. Instead of dutifully paying attention to the lesson, she, and some others, kept sneaking looks at the girl who stared more intently at the screen of her laptop than any could ever recall her doing in the past.
"How long will you keep him asleep?"
Gendo ignored the Sub-Commander as he read the latest report from Captain Katsuragi, detailing the current operations of her navel search fleet, currently deploying sensor buoys in an effort to locate the missing Angel.
"We both know there's no reason to keep him asleep like this. Are you trying to see if our newest addition to the staff will leak this information to the old men?"
"An interesting proposition, but no. For once, I think I have a purely altruistic motive. The Third Child has always had a history of nightmares. The MAGI's brain wave scans while he was asleep after the battles with the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Angels have provided proof of this. We're keeping him under, but not in REM sleep. He's had no dreams these past few days, but there is a limit to what our pharmaceuticals can do. He'll be brought out of it tomorrow."
Kozo watched his old student carefully. "That's it? No underlying plan to use the accident to further your goals?"
"It's odd, I'll admit, but no. But it has a limit, this altruistic shadow of mine. Even if I could, I would not keep the Third Child asleep for much longer. The Captain's plan to find the Angel is sound. It will be located, sooner or later."
"Even then, it will eventually have to come here. With both ADAM and Lilith in our possession, it is only a matter of time."
"Indeed. The Captain's search is ultimately pointless, but it would not do to let her know that at this point in time. I must admit I find her pure, honest enthusiasm quite refreshing. It means we can depend on her to do what is needed to win this war."
"What about the other pieces? Even if you can depend on her, there are others that seem to be becoming problems. What are you going to do about Rei? She's becoming very attached to the boy. We wanted him to be the one to act strongly in regards to her, not the other way around."
"I am sure that with the proper... encouragement... she will return to normal. We cannot overlook the fact that this is the first real friendship she's had with anyone. The idea of losing her only friend must be terrifying."
Kozo nodded. He's right. She can only view us as her superiors and, thus, not all that close. The dinners that they shared previously were largely perfunctory affairs. She was very worried when he was hospitalized last time... "True. But she still needs to be kept on her leash, even if you decide to lengthen it."
"She will obey her orders. It is all she knows how to do. And if she doesn't? She can be replaced, no matter if it's somewhat of a bother."
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
Rei stared at the Section 2 agent, who, for his part, impassively stared straight ahead of him, ignoring her as she approached the elevator for the hospital wing. When she reached for the call button, he shook his head.
"Miss, you're not allowed in the hospital section right now. The elevators won't work for you."
How will they not work for me? They do not operate on a biological security system. In addition, there is no way for him to bar me from entrance without physically restraining me, which is highly unlikely. Her red eyes narrowed as she didn't quite glare at the man. Ah. He most likely has to give a verbal password to a remote operator, who would then activate the elevators. If they were using the MAGI to restrict my movements, there would be no need for a guard.
Rei felt herself growing annoyed. While she was confident she could overpower the man, he would not give up the passcode. Also, the Commander would find out, eventually, if not immediately. She had held no high hopes of gaining access to Ikari's room this way, but the attempt had to be made.
"Where is Dr. Akagi?" She managed to ask for the woman without spitting out the name like a curse. Sometimes it was harder than others. If you asked her why, she could not satisfactorily explain why she felt a deep-seated loathing for the head of Project E. While the fact that the Commander dallied with her was of no pleasure to the girl, she had disliked the woman long before she had figured that out. The enmity she felt for the blond scientist was a mystery to the girl, who had given up on trying to figure it out. She had long ago halted active research into why it was so, deciding it would have to wait.
There was only one reason why Rei would voluntarily go looking for the woman she had named as her nemesis. During her conversation with the MAGI while she was at school, Rei had learned Dr. Akagi and the pilot of the hated Unit-02 were sequestered in her labs, working on something to do with the red Evangelion.
Rei hadn't bothered to ask them what the two were working on. She didn't care.
She wanted to know what was being done for Pilot Ikari and who was working on it, if the head of Project E couldn't be bothered with the task.
The Section 2 agent pressed a finger to his ear, obviously getting some sort of information transmitted to him. She waited patiently, staring up at him expectantly.
"Dr. Akagi is located in her secondary lab, near the cages."
Rei turned and began her trek towards the cages without a word to the secret agent. He watched her go without a word, breathing a sigh of relief.
As she made her way through the labyrinthine complex, she kept her eyes forward and mouth shut tight in a look of bored disinterest, but she was counting her steps and keeping track of changes in direction. By the time she arrived at the secondary laboratory, just off the main hanger with the storage/standby Evangelion cages, she had a perfect mental map of how one got from the medical wing to the hanger complex, and how long it took her while walking at a normal, unhurried pace.
Dr. Akagi looked up in surprise as Rei walked into her lab. "Rei? What are you doing here?"
"I would like to know which medical personnel are currently assigned to Pilot Ikari."
To say that Ritsuko Akagi was shocked would be to simplify things vastly. Yes, she was shocked, but it was not because Rei was asking after Shinji. It was because she was specifically asking after him. Ritsuko knew all too well the two pilots had been growing attached to each other in the manner of healthy young boys and girls everywhere, her objections notwithstanding. But for Rei Ayanami, the silent, obedient, and most importantly of all, reactive girl, to be actively looking into the case of Shinji Ikari, well, that was indeed a shock.
The original plan had called for the girl to be conditioned to the point where she did not initiate anything on her own. She would follow orders, yes, and when given an end state to achieve, she would single-mindedly work to meet the objective, but she was ultimately a tool to be used. She was never supposed to take the initiative in anything else. She would follow all directions and orders, she would fight against the Angels, and then she would be used to initiate and control Third Impact.
Despite Gendo's suggestion that the two pilots be allowed to grow closer than the plan had originally called for, she had had misgivings about it from the start. So she had worked as best as she could to limit the amount of time the two had together. Getting the idea to run week-long series of tests on one pilot and then the other from a series of sleep deprivation tests that Maya had come up with, Dr. Akagi had felt she had done a good job of it lately.
Then had come that riot of a party Misato had insisted on, and if the few photos she had seen were anything to go on, she obviously hadn't done a good enough job. But she had held no inkling things had developed enough to the point where this girl would actually be chasing after the boy.
"Ultimately, I am the one in charge of his case, Rei. Why do you ask?"
"What is the current status on bringing Pilot Ikari back to conciseness? What is the current status on obtaining a prosthetic for his leg?" Why are you down here instead of working on him? Why do you waste his time? Why do you waste my time?
Dr. Akagi raised an eyebrow as she studied the girl standing in her doorway. She wondered just how attached to the boy she was, and how much she would do because of that attachment. "Everything is progressing to Commander Ikari's time-line, Rei," she said, her voice warm and friendly, but the smile only reached her eyes when she watched the tiny, almost imperceptible way the girl tensed up in what Ritsuko could only term annoyance. She doubted anyone else would have noticed it; the reaction was so slight. "He will be brought out of the coma tomorrow afternoon. A prototype transtibial prosthetic is being prepared for him; he is scheduled to receive a cybernetic knee replacement the day after that."
Rei turned and left with as little fanfare as she had arrived, leaving the softly chuckling scientist behind. So, you find out what you want and leave. You are so much like him, in some ways. At least he's seen reason and is bringing the boy back out of the coma. She looked back up as the door opened again, this time to allow the entry of Asuka, bearing a tray with food from the nearest cafeteria. The girl was one after Ritsuko's heart, as dedicated to the Evangelion Project as any of her regular techs, even if she wasn't as up to speed or held as complete an education as them. It was rather cute, in a way, how the girl ate up every little thing that she said. She was sure that when Maya returned from assisting Misato with the time-wasting (but conveniently distracting) hunt for the Angel, they would get along perfectly.
It would be a shame that she would be placed in the high school for socialization with the other pilots after the conclusive defeat of this Angel. It would have been nice to have a keen mind with a scientific bent to test things out on the Evangelions for a change. Shinji and Rei followed orders and submitted themselves to her tests willingly enough, but they didn't understand the reasoning behind the myriad tests. She had stopped trying to explain it to the girl long ago, and she hadn't even bothered with the boy. Aoba and Maya tried, but as one could expect, the specifics were lost on him.
"Here, Sempai! I managed to snatch up the last of the ones they had."
"Ah! Good job, Asuka! Okay, we'll take a short break, and then we'll check on the regeneration levels on the lower leg of Unit-02."
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
Rei's eyes narrowed as she stared at the vegetable section of the supermarket. She had not been here before, having instead done her food shopping at a smaller convenience store closer to her apartment, but that store did not offer the variety of fresh produce this store did. After coming to the conclusion that any real attempt to gain entry to the medical wing and Ikari's room would have unfavorable consequences, she returned home to eat and sleep. However, the instant soup she had prepared for herself that evening, as she had done so for many a prior one, no longer seemed sufficient.
Rei was at first at a loss to explain why she had initially toyed with the noodles before throwing the Styrofoam carton into the trash in disgust. It wasn't that she was no longer hungry, for she still needed to meet her caloric intake for the day; no, as she would eventually decide, while it might meet her caloric requirements, it did not meet her emotional requirements.
Rei, in short, wanted comfort food, and nothing was more comforting than the food prepared for her by Shinji Ikari.
I was not aware there were so many varieties of onions. No, that is incorrect. I was aware of the Allium cepa's numerous types before, but it is different seeing even a small assortment of them arrayed so for sale and subsequent consumption. What type of onion did he use in the soup he made for me?
She moved along the aisle, deciding to come back to the onions later, deciding to find the carrots. She had seen only two types available for purchase: bagged 'baby' ones and larger ones that she assumed were of the 'adult' variety. She was bagging a pair of adult carrots when a familiar voice sounded behind her.
"Rei? What are you doing here?"
Rei straightened and turned around to face a startled Hikari.
"I am purchasing food." Rei looked at the girl and at the basket she held and the food contained therein. There was a marked difference between her basket and the Class Representative's.
Hikari blushed in embarrassment. "Oh, sorry, that's not what I meant! I mean, I don't think I've ever seen you in here before."
"No."
"Umm... well, what are you buying? I didn't know you knew how to cook. I mean, I've only ever seen you with purchased meals at school."
"I do not know how to cook," Rei stated, but as she watched the girl shift from one foot to the other, she felt obligated to add to her statement. "I am attempting to duplicate a recipe of Ikari's." Crimson eyes shifted to the floor as her cheeks tinged with pink. "It is soup."
Hikari smiled now, probably the first real smile since Kensuke had shown back up in class refusing to speak about his trip or Shinji and Rei's absences from class. "What type of soup?"
"... Vegetable soup. He made it with leftover rice, celery, carrots, onions, and potatoes." Rei turned to stare at the carrots. "It was good." she offered, her voice smaller than normal.
"That's right, you're a vegetarian." Hikari inspected Rei's basket, noting the presence of a bag of microwavable rice, two stalks of celery and a pair of carrots. "Do you want any help?"
Rei nodded silently, tightening her grip on the basket's handle, confused as to why she felt embarrassed about not being knowledgeable enough to purchase adequate supplies to make a seemingly simple soup. In all almost all other cases of her not having adequate data and information to complete a task, it had never bothered her like this to seek the required guidance to do what she needed to do. "I do not know what onions he used."
"Oh, well, for a soup, I would use these onions here." Rei paid Hikari careful attention as she went on to explain the differences between the various onions and how to select the best ones from them. Hikari then inspected her celery, and at her insistence, they went back to that part of the produce section and got the confused girl crisper stalks without wilted leaves.
By the time the girls got to the checkout, Rei had her supplies for her soup, new laundry detergent, body soap, shampoo, and several recipe books that Hikari recommended. When the girl parted ways outside the store, Hikari left with her spirits higher than they had been in a while, pleased she had been of help to Rei in more ways than one; as she had been horrified to find out in the somewhat one-sided conversation that the girl didn't use shampoo in her hair but only regular bar soap.
Rei still wasn't sure what had happened even after when she had returned home.
She set everything out on the counter, trying to decide the proper order in which to prepare each component of the soup. His rice had been leftovers from the night before, so it had been precooked. However, she was circumventing this fact with a pouch of instant rice. It would only take a few minutes for it to become warm and soft in the microwave, which would, in turn, reduce the amount of time it needed to sit in the vegetable broth. Therefore, she needed to start cooking that first.
Dumping the broth into her new pot, she put it over the small burner, and then proceeded to begin chopping up the vegetables as he had. Once this was done, she cooked her rice and dumped the steaming clumps into the broth, shortly followed by the vegetable medley, and then stirred the contents of the pot.
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
Rei stared at the security guard. The guard, in turn, tried to ignore Rei. As her hand slowly made its way towards the call button for the elevator, he sighed.
"You're still not allowed in the medical wing, Miss."
"Pilot Ikari is supposed to be waking up today."
"That is what I have heard, yes. However, the orders are still that you're not allowed to see him."
Rei stared at him, thinking to herself. She had prepared for this eventuality, and while the expected outcome was not by any means perfect, it did end with her in the medical wing, and thus closer to him.
"In the event of a medical emergency, would I be admitted to the medical ward?"
Behind his dark sunglasses, the Section 2 agent blinked. The shift brief hadn't mentioned anything about this. He quietly spoke into the microphone hidden in his cuff, calling the main office. He watched her carefully as she stood there waiting for an answer, as his team leader's voice came over the net.
Shaking his head, he dropped his hand back to his side. "In an emergency, you'd be taken to the secondary medical wing."
"When will I be allowed to see Pilot Ikari?"
"I don't know."
Rei turned and left.
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
Shinji did not want to open his eyes for a few reasons. One reason was that he knew he was in the NERV hospital wing. He knew this because it smelled of antiseptic cleaners, the noises of medical equipment, and the presence of an IV in his arm. The second reason he didn't want to open his eyes was because he could not feel anything below his left knee.
While these things made him generally less than thrilled, he could hear someone breathing softly and the soft rustle of paperwork. He smiled, and opened his eyes, pushing himself up into a sitting position in the bed.
His smile died, the words he was about to speak doing likewise as he saw one of the nurses sitting next to him reading a medical chart. Confused, he looked around the room, but the girl he had expected to see was missing.
The nurse smiled at him, putting the chart down. "Ah! Welcome back, Pilot Ikari. How are you feeling?"
Shinji studiously avoided looking at the bed, focusing instead on the ceiling. "I'm fine..." He kept wiggling his toes on his foot, although he didn't really like the lack of toe wiggling on the missing limb. Unfortunately, it was like having a loose tooth in one's head that you keep poking with your tongue, despite the shivers the sensation sends down your spine.
The nurse nodded as she noticed the movement under the sheets. "You'll be getting a cybernetic knee and a replacement leg later; Dr. Akagi will be in to talk to you about it soon." She stood, smoothing out her skirt. "Is there anything I can get you? Some food, or something to drink?"
"Um... what time is it?" There were no clocks in the room, and the constant light of the Geo-Front made it hard to know what part of the day it was.
"It's just after four in the afternoon."
"Oh..." his face fell, this news making him look so depressed it made the nurse physically uncomfortable. He flopped back down onto his bed, staring at the ceiling.
She stood there for a second before bolting for the door. "I'll just go let everyone know you're back up. If you need anything, press the call button on the stand." With that, she slipped out the door, leaving him to his thoughts.
I wonder why she's not here. I guess it's kind of unreasonable to expect her to keep showing up here every time I go and get myself hurt. She's probably tired of it. He blinked, as the import of the nurse's words dawned suddenly on him. 'Welcome back'? What did she mean by that? Was I in a coma or something? How long was I out? What's happened? Has something happened to Rei? He shot back up again, frantically looking around for something by which to tell the date, but he saw nothing useful. Frantically scrambling, adrenaline pumping through his veins like fire, he hauled himself out of bed, not even wincing as he hit the floor. He crawled towards the small bathroom, his IV caddy falling down and dragging behind him as he made his way across the floor.
Hauling himself up on the sink, he sighed in relief as his face, still recognizable as his and not aged at all stared back at him from the mirror. Breathing hard, he carefully managed to move to sit down on the toilet. He chuckled nervously. Whew... I guess I was just asleep for maybe a few days at most. His laugh died as his eyes caught the smooth stub of his left leg, poking out from under the hospital gown he wore.
His pupils dilated suddenly, his entire body shaking as he started to dry heave, vomiting up bile and stomach acid from his otherwise empty stomach. Wiping his mouth, his eyes narrowed as the alarm klaxon that signified the approach of an Angel began to wail.
Angel. One is coming. His fists clenched as a growl escaped from his raw, abused throat. I have to get to Unit-01.
He had managed to get halfway to the door when two Section 2 men burst in, one chattering to someone on a radio. Shinji looked up at them as one hauled him upright.
"I need to get to the cages."
Both security men stared at him, not believing what they had just heard. Shinji struggled in the man's grip, trying to get the man to move.
"I need to get to the cages. I have to pilot. I need to go!"
"Kid, you're missing a leg. You're not in any shape to be fighting. Orders are to get you to a secure location. Ayanami will handle the Angel."
The man's words had the opposite of the expected effect on the boy; who now struggled even more. "NO! I can't let her fight alone! You have to let me go!"
"Get a grip, kid. I know you want revenge, but let Ayanami handle the fish, okay?" The man maneuvered Shinji into a wheelchair that had been left outside the room when the men had seen him crawling towards the door.
Shinji's head snapped back up. "Revenge? Fish? It's the same one as before? We didn't kill it?"
"No, you ran it off, but now it's here and it's Ayanami's responsibility."
Shinji continued to struggle. "NO! It's too much for one Evangelion! What about Unit-02? Where's Sohryu?"
"Unit-02's still regenerating the leg that got bitten off. Look, calm down. Yeah, it's an Angel, but it's just a fish, your girlfriend will be able to handle it once it hits land."
Later on, Shinji would apologize to the two men, but like after his fight on the train, he wouldn't mean it. He wouldn't even care about the ten days he would spend in solitary or the enraged lectures from just about all the senior command staff. He would never be able to satisfactorily explain his next actions to anyone, including himself; saying that he only saw red.
He grabbed the stun gun from one man's belt before the surprised agent knew what was happening, and pressed it against his leg. The man jerked backward, falling to the ground in a jumble of twitching limbs as the other man cursed and tried to step back from the boy, but it was too late. He hit the floor as the massive amount of voltage did its job.
Dropping the expended gun to the floor, Shinji began to push himself to the elevators.
In the cages, two vast eyes glowed as massive fists clenched under the cover of LCL.
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
Asuka glared at the screen as the blue prototype Evangelion made its way towards the beach. It was galling that the Angel had the audacity to show up before her Unit-02 was fully repaired, leaving her on the sidelines as the mysterious pilot would take the credit for the kill. How was she supposed to show the girl who the alpha pilot was if she wasn't the one to finish the Angel? She knew no one would care that she was the one who had injured it enough to make it the first Angel to retreat. All anyone would care about was that this Rei Ayanami girl, whom she hadn't even met, had killed the Angel.
Cross-compatibility tests had been scheduled for later on in the week, so they weren't sure if she would be able to use the test-type Unit-01. Not that she would want to. There was only one Evangelion for her, and it was her glorious Unit-02.
It was only a small consolation that she was here on the command bridge to watch the fight. It was also her first chance to see the Commander, as he sat high above them on his tower. She had heard a lot of the stories, back in Berlin, but she felt that they didn't do him justice. If anything, he was more intimidating in person, even as removed as he was from them up from where he watched over them, as she imagined that she could feel his gaze burning holes into the back of her skull. She knew, of course, they were father and son, but so far the two seemed to be nothing alike. Dr. Akagi had refused to comment on it at all.
Unit-00 had reached the beach, and stood there, a heavily modified pallet rifle cradled in its arms. Asuka snorted when she saw the synchronization display; the girl was holding steady at thirty percent. She couldn't remember the last time she had a score of less than forty percent.
Dr. Akagi, nominally in command of the situation as Misato was still absent, her plane still about an hour out of Tokyo-03, opened a line to the pilot.
"Rei, the Angel is moving back and forth about three miles offshore. The MAGI are going to feed you some target telemetry. Once it's loaded, let the computer do the target acquisition. Once you get a target lock, fire the harpoon and load another one. Once you've got at least four good solid hits, we'll activate the winch and start to bring it to shore. Continue to hit it with the harpoons, and then once it's beached, use the progressive knife and destroy the core."
"Yes."
Asuka rolled her eyes. She wasn't sure who was worse; the First Child or the Third. While she still had yet to meet the girl, by all accounts she was even more boring than the boy had proven to be. Apparently, the girl had holed herself up in the boy's hospital room as soon as she had been allowed to and had only left after three days because she had been ordered out of it.
Asuka didn't see whatever it was the girl saw in the boy. It boggled the mind that the girl hadn't wanted to meet with the new pilot. She hadn't returned her phone calls. That was fine, though. If she needed to show these chumps, she was the alpha around here; doing it by force suited her just fine. It made things more interesting, anyhow. Asuka sighed again, once more bemoaning the incomplete state of repairs on her Unit-02.
The girl's soft voice filled the air, magnified several times by the speakers. "Target locked. Commencing attack."
A cheer went up as the first harpoon was fired, a red box bracketing it on-screen against the quickly darkening sky, the computer's firing pattern taking the growing winds into account as a storm rolled in from offshore. The harpoon vanished in the churning sea, but the MAGI reported a successful hit. As the Evangelion loaded a second harpoon into the gun, Dr. Akagi turned to Asuka, a grin on her face.
"Your idea to use core fragments from the Fourth Angel as components in the harpoon's barbs seems to have paid off! The MAGI didn't report the presence of an AT-Field this time."
"Thanks, Sempai!" Asuka nodded at the screen. "I just wish I was the one out there. But I suppose I'll let Ayanami take care of it."
Dr. Akagi laughed as she turned back to the screen to watch Rei send another harpoon out into the ocean. "You'll get plenty of chances to fight. Don't you worry about that."
Kozo watched as a third harpoon sank into the sea, and this time a cheer went up as they saw blood spray up into the air as the pale white flesh of the Angel slid in and out of the waves.
"Everything is going according to plan."
"Yes. This should be a simple battle. Therefore I am quite interested in seeing in just what matter things will suddenly go wrong. Even the simplest of plans does not survive contact with the enemy, and this plan is far from simple."
"At least we know where Rei is, and what she's doing."
Gendo snorted but otherwise didn't shift from where he sat. "I was wondering how long it would be before she tried to sneak into the medical wing."
Kozo smiled. "I think the nurse's outfit was a little much, but she certainly did look the part."
"The wig was a nice touch, I thought. But it does underline the fact that she needs a closer eye kept on her. A month ago she would never have done something counter to my explicit order. Their bond is good, but she should not value him over me."
"I thought you were being awfully blasé about it. How do you plan on handling this?"
"I think I need to have dinner with her. To discuss things. She must have some questions about my prompting her to be closer to him when, in the end, she is destined for oblivion."
"You will make him the carrot, then? He will be her reward, instead of the release into nothingness? Are you sure she's that attached to him? I recall a young girl who used to ask us each day if this was the day she got to die."
Gendo shifted in his seat, dropping his arms to the armrests for once as he leaned back. "It's better than an outright replacement of the girl. The soul might be transferable, and the memories backed up and then uploaded, but it's not perfect. The personality is off. Sometimes the memories don't work right. You've seen it."
Kozo nodded as a loud cheer shot up from the bridge crew as a fourth harpoon landed.
"Activating the winch system!"
The massive motors began to hum as they powered the crank wheels that slowly began to draw in the slack on the cables that led out to the sea and the churning waves. Rei readied another harpoon, the computers tracking the frenzied movements of the massive Angel, far larger than any of the ones they had faced before, barring the Fifth's supermassive crystalline structure, the corpse of which was still being worked on. As the computer chimed the cheerful tone of target acquisition, Rei fired again, dispassionately watching it sail out to sink into white flesh.
The hum of the motors was lost as the storm began in earnest, the howling winds and driving rain drowning out all other sounds. Thunder rolled as lightning cracked across the skies. Rei was only marginally aware the technicians who had been outside monitoring the winch systems were retreating indoors as typhoon-force winds sent people and unsecured objects flying. She fired another harpoon at the Angel's growing bulk, only to gasp in surprise and pain as a yellow hexagonal field flashed into view, the massive harpoon bouncing off of it and arcing up and finally back into Unit-00's gut.
"AT-FIELD DETECTED!" a tech screamed in horror as the massive, leering, and grossly disfigured face of the fish-like Angel surfaced. Its brow was knobby and broken, bone growths distorting the once smooth visage. Several new eyes had joined the original two for a total of four on each side, glowing with a sickening yellowish light, glared out from under the knobby protrusions. Its mouth was just as Asuka remembered, vast and filled with teeth.
The blue Evangelion raised a shaking hand to fire the harpoon gun one-handed, the other wrapped around the shaft of the metal shaft sticking out of its stomach. The gun fired, the force causing Unit-00's radius analog to fracture, but the harpoon sailed straight and true into the face of the Angel, only to be reflected by a flash of yellow.
The Angel's mouth opened wide, and Asuka shuddered involuntarily, hearing in her mind its horrible keening wail. It had done that just before it had claimed her Unit-02's leg for a snack. What happened next caused everyone watching, with one exception, to gape in horror.
Red light flashed suddenly at the center of its mouth, and the all too familiar cross of light and fire engulfed Unit-00. As the pilot shrieked in pain, Asuka's eyes flicked from the main screen to the synchronization display and then narrowed in confusion. The girl's score was still sitting at thirty percent. Yes, she would feel some pain, but it shouldn't be anything that would elicit such a gut-wrenching scream, harpoon in the belly or not.
Kozo, never taking his eyes off the screen as Unit-00 stumbled around trying to load the gun one-handed, kept his voice low as he bent down next to Gendo.
"We may need to try Asuka in Unit-01. Rei is not going to hold up out there much longer. If Asuka can get it to move even a little, she can help distract it until it's been beached."
Inside her Entry Plug, Rei gritted her teeth as she forced both arms to lift the gun, ignoring the waves of pain that her brain was telling her were shooting up her arm. Not waiting for the targeting computer, she sent her Evangelion forwards into a stumbling charge, extending her own AT-Field as she fired the gun, noting with a sudden stab of satisfaction as the barbed metal sank deep into one of the eyes, spraying the face of Unit-00 with its blood.
The Angel jerked its head back in reflex, screaming again as fire once more engulfed the blue cyborg.
Gendo stared at the screen and then nodded. He stood, pushing his glasses back up his nose. "Pilot Sohryu, report to the Evangelion cages and prepare to sortie in Unit-01. Dr. Akagi-" Gendo's words trailed off as he stared in horror at the screen as the Angel jerked it's head again, the massive cables flying about chaotically.
Two of them caught Unit-00, sending it tumbling to the ground, and then dragging it towards the Angel as it struggled against the winches. The audio pickups on the external sensors had been muted due to the overpowering sounds of the storm, but had they been on, the twanging sound of cables snapping filled the air as the Angel screamed in triumph as it dived down into the ocean, taking Unit-00 with it, one hand jerking helplessly above the waves momentarily before being taken under.
The base shook violently, sending Asuka scrambling for a handhold to steady herself as another technician yelled out in a panic, pointing at his screen. "Unit-01's activated!" The base shook again as an inhuman roar echoed and reverberated throughout the entirety of the Geo-Front, an unholy scream from another world and time.
In the shelters, people huddled closer together with those they did not know; a genetically imprinted reflex, an ancient callback to the days when early man huddled around the fire at night, seeking shelter against the howls and cries of the things that hunted in the night. On the surface, animals for miles around whimpered and cowered in their hiding spots. All were as prey animals to the behemoth that screamed its rage to the heavens. Under the waves, the Angel felt the approach of the second Evangelion. In her Entry Plug, Rei's eyes widened in fear.
"It's on the surface! Unit-01's on the surface!"
Dr. Akagi ignored the main screen, staring only at the tech's screen, showing the empty cage and broken restraints slowly sinking down into the LCL-Coolant mixture. She kept muttering something under her breath Asuka couldn't quite make out.
Gendo and Kozo stood stock still as the MAGI shifted the main display to show the purple titan charging through the city towards the beach, howling its bowel-clenching scream all the while.