As Shinji felt the rising LCL reach his waist, he was reminded of why plugsuits existed, as his clothes stuck to him in an uncomfortable manner. He realized all his clothes would be ruined after this as well. A small smile flitted across his face as he remembered his shirt was ruined anyway, so at least he was being efficient about it.
He then immediately felt guilty for getting distracted by such a thing when there was still an Angel to deal with.
The LCL reached his neck and he instinctively held his breath. No matter how many times he went through this, breathing in a liquid never got any more natural.
"You can let go of your breath Shinji, the LCL will oxygenate your blood directly."
Right, he not only needed to stop Sachiel, but he needed to do so while convincing everyone this was his first time piloting an Evangelion. And he had already messed up by not panicking whatsoever when a strange liquid displaced all the air in his entry plug. Dammit.
He could hear a familiar voice in his head calling him an idiot.
I won't let you die again. I won't let anyone die again.
He stopped holding his breath. After taking a few moments to readjust, he reached out to the Evangelion. It didn't matter how he felt right now, it didn't matter that this thing had let Asuka die. He needed to sync with it or it would go berserk to protect him, and then he wouldn't be able to stop it from destroying half the city fighting the Angel.
He reached his mind out.
I'm in control.
He tried to spread his thoughts out to reach the Evangelion.
You'll listen to me.
He sensed slight surprise from Unit 01, but after a second, a general affirmative feeling. Gradually, he started to feel the Evangelion's limbs as if they were his own.
"A-10 Connections normal"
"All preliminary contacts established, performance nominal"
"Sync rate fluctuating… stable at 63.2%!"
"Evangelion Unit 01, launch!"
Unit 01 had reached the top of the launch shaft, and the restraints holding it in place were disengaged. The doors around the top of the elevator opened to reveal the Angel. Misato and Dr. Akagi were yelling orders from the command center.
"Unit 01, move out!"
"Shinji, just concentrate on walking for now."
Shinji took a look at the Angel. It was just as tall as the Evangelion, but it was hunched over, and its arms reached down to its knees. A bird-like mask partially covered a similar looking face, and a red orb stood in the center of its ribcage.
He slowly started walking forward and saw Sachiel mirror him.
As Sachiel and Unit 01 approached each other, every step the Angel took scattered cars that had been abandoned on the street into nearby buildings.
Think, think, how do I defeat this thing while showing no skill at piloting whatsoever…
Shinji kept on thinking for too long, as while he was still trying to figure out a solution, Sachiel jumped on top of the Evangelion and brought it's hand up to grasp Unit 01's head. A series of pulses started shaking the entry plug.
Come on, come on, there must be some way…
Shinji felt a sharp pain in his head as the first pulse's neural feedback came back to him. All coherent thought left him for a moment. If only I… another pulse reached him, and he let go of the controls to clutch his head. AUGH.
The second pulse ended, and Shinji used both Unit 01's arms to throw the Angel off him. It skidded against the ground, knocking over two buildings before coming to a stop.
There isn't any way. And the longer I delay this, the more innocents get hurt.
Shinji switched off the comm system. If anyone asked, the Evangelion had simply gone berserk.
He deepened his sync with the Evangelion. His head throbbed, but he pushed past it. The Evangelion had only taken two pulses to the braincase this time, so the pain was manageable.
Shinji charged towards Sachiel while drawing his Progressive Knife. After he had gotten a running start, he jumped so that he would land directly on top of the Angel. Sachiel looked up but was too slow to respond. Shinji's Evangelion landed directly on top of it.
And was stopped by Sachiel's AT field.
Shinji wasted no time lifting the Prog Knife back up to stab at the AT field again. This time, he threw his other hand in the gap to widen it after the Knife connected and prevent it from resealing. He then sliced with the knife to quickly widen the gap.
Sachiel was not idle, however. While Shinji had both arms occupied breaking through its AT field, Sachiel launched a kick at the EVA's chest. It landed true, and Unit 01 skidded back several blocks. Sachiel's AT field started regenerating.
That was a cheap shot.
Shinji started sprinting over to the Angel again while drawing out his Pallet Rifle with his left arm. He shot several shots through the gap in the field, knocking the Angel back slightly. Once he reached the Angel, he dropped the Rifle and grasped the Prog Knife with both hands. He pushed it into the existing gap in the AT field and used the EVA's full weight to wrench the Knife down.
It destroyed the remaining field, and Shinji kicked the Angel back before it could repeat its last attack on him. It went flying, and Shinji sprinted after it to prevent any chance of a recovery. After smashing through several apartment buildings, Sachiel came to a halt halfway through a parking garage.
Half a second later, it was assaulted by Unit 01. With his left hand, Shinji grabbed Sachiel's right arm to hold it in place. With the other, he sliced the arm with the Progressive Knife, cleaving it clean from the Angel. He then repeated the procedure on Sachiel's left arm. With the arms disabled, he started stabbing the Angel's Core.
Each time the Progressive Knife hit the Angel's core it would violently bounce back, leaving only a small dent. He paused his attack briefly to swap to a two-handed grip on the Prog Knife, and resumed his battery of the Core. This time the dents were substantially larger and cracks started spreading throughout the material. The red orb containing the essence of the Angel was sturdy, but Shinji had eliminated any way the Angel could fight back.
Almost any way.
Sachiel, seemingly realizing its fate, started contorting its body into unnatural proportions to wrap itself around Unit 01.
Oh no you don't.
Shinji tore apart any section of the Angel he could find escaping past the Evangelion, but they were surrounding his Unit faster than he could cut them off. He saw the core starting to glow, and without thinking he threw Unit 01, with Angel attached, onto the ground.
The Angel's core exploded outward in a violent ripple of red light swiftly followed by pulverizing shockwaves and a flood of LCL. The remaining walls of the parking garage burst and cars rolled off now uneven concrete platforms onto the streets below, with some starting small fires as they hit the ground. Windows shattered on several nearby buildings.
The bulk of the explosion, however, was trapped between Unit 01's head and the ground. The glass of the entry plug cracked and Shinji's head bounced against the back of his entry plug as the kinetic energy of the blast reached him through the LCL.
Simultaneously, the neural feedback from the damage Unit 01 took reached him, and he tasted blood on his teeth whilst his head was exploding from agony. Several other areas of his body screamed for a share of his attention, but their cries were overwhelmed by his head. Shinji took one last look outside the entry plug to confirm the Angel was dead, then let himself slip into blissful unconsciousness.
The EVA, having already fallen prone to hug the angel to the ground, merely shifted slightly as the light faded from its eyes and its power ran out.
Chaos reigned in the Command Center.
"How the hell did you guys know Shinji would be such a good pilot!" Misato demanded of no one in particular, whilst simultaneously casting suspicious gazes at each member of the Command Staff in turn.
Ritsuko glanced up at Gendo, who shook his head from behind his hands.
"We didn't," she answered softly.
"What?" Misato turned, not having expected a real reply.
"He was the only candidate we had. It was just good luck that he happened to be so capable."
"I see…" Misato frowned. Then immediately went on the offensive again. "And if he had not been so capable? Would you have just let him die?"
Ritsuko grimaced. "Think Misato. Would there have been another option?"
Up above, Fuyutsuki whispered to Gendo "Satisfied with the awakening of Unit 01?"
Gendo took a few seconds to respond.
"There were several discrepancies between our simulations and the real awakening of Unit 01. Have Dr. Akagi run a detailed analysis of the synch data, focusing on when the braincase started taking damage."
"Understood," Fuyutsuki nodded, and left the room.
"Yui… just what are you up to?"
"Familiar ceiling"
Why does this happen to me every time
Shinji sat up and took a look around his hospital room.
He immediately regretted it, as he felt the back of his head explode in pain.
He clutched his head, laid back down and closed his eyes. The pain slowly subsided.
He waited for someone to come in to talk to him, but as time passed and the light from the window dimmed, nobody came.
Of course nobody would be checking in on me right after the battle. I technically just came to the city today, I don't know anyone.
Still, it would be nice if Rei was here at least…
Shinji remembered how Rei would still be hospitalized as well. She might even be in a neighboring room.
He got up, much more slowly this time, and started walking. It seemed it was just the rapid change in orientation which caused the pain in his head the first time.
He did register a slightly increasing ache in his head as he walked, but it was bearable. His eyes also hurt as long as he kept them open. He took a moment to fix his surroundings in his head, and keeping a hand on the wall, started walking with his eyes closed. The pain in his head subsided.
Shinji started looking for Rei's hospital room.
Of course, the downside of walking around a hospital with your eyes closed, navigating primarily by feel, is that it is simultaneously very conspicuous and greatly lowers one's observational skills. It wasn't long before someone caught Shinji in the hallway.
"Shinji!" Shinji heard Misato calling after him, confusion and anger warring in her voice. "Just what do you think you're doing?"
Shinji kept walking until Misato placed himself in front of him, blocking his path.
"Looking for Rei."
This answer, unbeknownst to Shinji, was perhaps the best weapon he had available, as it sent Misato into a state of terminal crisis. On the one hand, Misato's overprotectiveness of her pilots drove her to harshly scold Shinji for getting out of his hospital bed and walking when he couldn't even use his eyes properly. On the other hand, Shinji bringing up Rei presented an invaluable opportunity for teasing, and there would undoubtedly be even more embarrassing material if she helped him meet up with what was clearly his new crush. Misato almost died of indecision, but she knew what had to take priority.
"Oooh, already getting a crush?" she couldn't turn down a chance to tease Shinji.
"No!" Shinji replied, frustrated. "Can you just let me through?"
"You sure? She is an attractive female pilot just about your age!" Misato leered.
Unexpectedly, Shinji wasn't getting flustered. Instead, he was just glaring at the ground like it had killed his pet.
Shinji sighed. He didn't want to have to think about how holding Rei had convinced him to pilot again, because all the other bad memories associated with that moment were coming back.
"It's just, they were going to make her pilot that in her condition… it was a death sentence." he muttered.
Misato stepped back. It was always fun teasing children, but maybe she had misread the situation.
"I understand" she replied, adopting a softer tone. "You can see her, but not right now. You're still mildly concussed from the neural feedback and physical impacts you suffered inside the entry plug. Rest for a few more hours first."
"Ok" Shinji replied, starting to turn to walk back to his room.
"Oh, stop walking!" Misato fretted. She wheeled over a nearby gurney and lifted Shinji onto it. Shinji stiffened at the unexpected physical contact, but quickly relaxed and let himself be lifted up.
Misato wheeled the gurney back to Shinji's hospital bed. "You know, I was just about to check in on you, you didn't have to go running off" she said.
Shinji didn't reply.
"Well, I'll come back in a few hours, and you can talk to Rei then. And no more getting out of that bed until then, okay?"
Shinji nodded.
"Oh, and you'll still need to spend the rest of the day in the hospital after that. Standard procedure and all."
Shinji groaned.
Misato was thoroughly disappointed with the results of her clever shenanigans. She had waited the mandatory few hours for waking Shinji to not be a writable offense, and then wheeled Rei into his room in her gurney. She then left to give the two the illusion of privacy, and eagerly plopped onto a couch to await the results of her genius ploy to show up on the security cameras she had installed in the hospital lounge.
She could barely withhold her excitement over what the two pilots might get up to unsupervised. Would Rei "thank" Shinji for saving her life? Would Shinji confess? Would they reveal their most inner fears to each other?
Shinji got up from his hospital bed and walked over to sit in a chair by Rei's bedside. Rei sat up slowly, and turned to face him.
She whispered something to Shinji too low for the speakers to pick up on.
Shinji thought for a while and turned away from Rei before answering with a barely discernible "I'm not sure."
The two pilots then stared out the window together.
Shinji's day was going pretty good so far. After checking him out of the hospital, Misato had taken him to an oversized office in NERV to figure out housing arrangements, where Shinji had requested he live separate from his father. Same as last time, Misato voluntold Shinji that he would be her new roommate, and Shinji had headed off to school. However, he didn't yet know all the results from his fight.
Shinji walked into classroom 3-A with trepidation. He had been more careful during the battle this time, but he wasn't sure how or when Toji's sister had been injured the first time. He glanced around the classroom. Rei was staring out the window as normal, arm still in a cast. Toji and Kensuke however, both had a downcast look on their faces. Kensuke seemed to be holding back tears. The jock had his arm around his friend, and was attempting to comfort him. Toji said something to Kensuke, but Shinji couldn't make out what.
A feeling of dread came over Shinji. Had he saved Toji's sister only for Kensuke to lose someone important to him? Or had they both lost someone important to them this time, and he had somehow made things worse?
He shuffled over to the desk to the right of Rei and to Toji and Kensuke and sat down, hoping he could overhear what had happened. But only silence greeted him, it appeared the two were done talking. Shinji gulped down his fear, and turned around to face the two students who had been his friends in another time.
Kensuke seemed to be more put together now, and while Shinji could see his eyes were a bit wet, he couldn't see any streaks going down his face.
"Hey, are you two alright?" Shinji asked.
Toji quickly withdrew his hand from around Kensuke, and Kensuke looked up at the newcomer suspiciously.
"Yeah, we're fine." Toji answered.
"You are." Kensuke muttered.
"Huh?" Shinji looked between the two in confusion. Toji was avoiding eye contact as if he was embarrassed about the whole situation, while Kensuke now looked angry rather than sad.
"I loaned my camera to that jerk's sister and she went and smashed it up during the Angel attack!" Kensuke yelled.
Rei stopped staring out the window to watch the confrontation.
Shinji took a second to process that information. Toji's sister was fine. Kensuke's family was fine. All this was about a camera. He couldn't help the smile coming across his face, and a laugh escaped him. A mistake.
Kensuke flipped from Toji back to Shinji, and narrowed his eyes.
"Hey, you're that new transfer student, aren't you?"
"Yeah" Shinji eyed him warily.
Kensuke looked back at Toji, who shook his head. Kensuke, undeterred, turned back to Shinji.
"YOU'RE THE NEW EVA PILOT!" Kensuke screamed.
"What?!" Shinji backed up, trying unsuccessfully to feign ignorance.
"You're the one who made Miki drop my camera!" Kensuke marched towards Shinji.
Shinji, in utter confusion, climbed around a desk to avoid the uncharacteristically frightening nerd. If everyone really was fine this time around, he wasn't going to let all his work get trivialized by a camera.
"It isn't my fault the Angel attacked! I stopped anyone from getting hurt, right?" Shinji pleaded.
A huge grin came over Kensuke's face. "Whoa, you actually are the pilot!"
Shinji's face fell as he realized he had just fallen for Kensuke's ploy. Seconds later, the rest of his body followed as he barely dodged the boy turned missile which had jumped over the desk to tackle him. A chair tumbled to the ground as Kensuke passed it to touch the floor again.
"You're gonna pay for the crimes you committed against my camera!"
I'm gonna pay? Crimes?! I knew you liked that thing but just how attached were you?
Shinji dodged several thrown erasers before slipping on a piece of paper, rolling out of the way just in time to avoid another launch of Kensuke-the-missile. He was kept on the defensive though, as by the time he got up Kensuke had already acquired a ruler and was swinging it towards Shinji.
Shinji, behind the teacher's desk, acquired the closest object he could find, which happened to be a globe, to block it. He desperately searched for an item to counterattack, and found a water bottle, which he threw at the boy.
Kensuke dodged, and threw two markers from the desk towards Shinji. Since he was holding the ruler with his right hand he had to throw with his left and the markers went far wide. However, he quickly followed up his ranged assault with a melee lunge, and Shinji was by now cornered against the door with no room to maneuver horizontally. So he did the only thing he could and ducked, revealing the Class Representative behind him.
Kensuke, having already left the ground, could do nothing to halt his velocity as he smashed into Hikari at full speed, sending both of them to the ground. Kensuke got up first and immediately attempted to flee the scene, but was stopped by a hand tugging painfully on his ear. Hikari got up, surveyed the scene, and took in Kensuke's and Shinji's guilty faces. Her face immediately registered Shinji as being new and softened, but only slightly.
She sighed.
"If this room doesn't look brand new when I get back here in 10 minutes you two are going to have some explaining to do," and promptly walked back into the hallway.
Shinji and Kensuke briefly looked at each other, then quickly broke eye contact.
For a few seconds both paused, unsure of what to say.
"Sorry about your camera."
Kensuke shook his head. "Don't worry about it. Actually, I feel a lot better now, I haven't had anyone to fight with forever."
Shinji thought back to when he had caught Kensuke sneaking out into empty fields to play wargames against himself late at night. Maybe he did need this. And it was kind of fun.
"It's all good. So what's your name? I'm Shinji Ikari"
"Kensuke Aida," he motioned over to his friend "and that's Toji Suzuhara".
Toji was just shaking his head, smiling.
"I think this is the first time I've ever seen Kensuke actually fight someone, Shinji. I've been telling him to stand up for himself more for a while, but I didn't think anything would actually come of it." Kensuke's face reddened.
"Well, we should probably get this mess cleaned up." Kensuke deflected.
The three surveyed the disaster in the classroom. Shinji and Kensuke sighed and got to work, with Shinji returning the globe to its stand on the teacher's desk. If someone looked closely at it, they might have noticed a small dent over Japan.
Rei returned to staring out the window.
After stumbling blindly through menus on his laptop for several minutes, Bean had still made no progress towards finding the change language screen. Or maybe he had been on it. Everything was in Japanese, so he wouldn't have necessarily known even if he did find it.
The UI was completely foreign to Bean. While there were variations, every computer he had previously used had followed certain standards and all had certain settings like languages easily accessible, not this one though.
He exhaled, put his head on the desk, and tried to zone out the teacher's babbling. He hadn't been paying attention at the start, but from the sound of it they were discussing some novel or something where a disaster called Second Impact had wiped out half the human population. It was all that had been talked about that day, and from the looks of it none of the other students were very interested in it either.
Miki leaned over from the desk she had picked out next to Bean.
"Everything all right? She asked.
"You wouldn't know how to change the language on this thing to Common, would you?" Bean asked, embarrassed.
"Common?" Miki replied, confused.
"Err, English?" Bean tried.
"Ohh, so you're one of the new transfer students!"
Bean really didn't feel like giving Miki more information, but he did need her help. And maybe he could find out something in return.
"One of?"
"Oh, yeah. There's a second one too, he's apparently the pilot of the giant robot which fought off that monster we saw!"
The world did NOT take the right lessons away from the Formic Wars.. are there seriously NO adults competent enough to fight their own battles?
"Do you know who he is?" Bean asked.
"Nah, but my brother says he's in his class!"
I should go meet that kid later. Hopefully he's dealing with the pressure better than Ender did.
"Huh… so about changing that language?" Bean looked at Miki pleadingly.
Miki grinned "First tell me where you're from."
"Rotterdam" Bean muttered.
"Rotterwhat?"
"Rotterdam" Bean repeated. He looked over to see Miki still confused. "It's in Northern Europe, across from Britain"
"Ah, ok." Miki leaned over Bean's desk and clicked through a few menus. "All done." Bean thanked her as she climbed back into her desk.
Bean started looking up current news. Surprisingly, he couldn't find any mention of the monster that had attacked Tokyo-3. However, he did find mentions of a military organization called NERV requesting increased funding from the national government. He took a look at the date of the article. It was just listed as 6 hours ago.
He took a look at his computer's date.
August 19, 2015.
Bean's face paled. He looked up "Second Impact". It was described as a historical event.
It was at that moment that Bean realized he was not in a literature class.
After school, Bean tried to give his brain a break by finding shelter. While it technically wasn't a break in that it still required him to think, anything that helped distract him from the fact that all evidence pointed to him having been transported 200 years into the past and into an alternate universe would do for now.
He had apparently been enrolled into his school as evidenced by his laptop and the fact that he got free lunch, even if it was of questionable quality. He had been used to worse anyways. However, he doubted that enrollment would extend to free housing. If he asked, he was likely to be put into a foster home. That would mean he'd have to deal with other kids, and worse, adults with certain expectations. While he was sure he could handle it, he didn't see why he needed to waste his time with such matters.
Bean took a quick glance backwards. Miki had been spending as much of her time as she could with Bean, and while she was nice, it would cause issues if she found out he didn't have a place to stay. It seemed that having his stuff already packed by the dismissal bell and the several loops he had taken on the way out of the building had prevented anyone from following him, however.
He surveyed the city. It seemed that the recent attack had a fair bit of damage to the city. He distinctly recalled several buildings standing where piles of rubble now stood. He saw one street in particular littered with several dozen upside down cars, many of them almost unidentifiable as such. Did that monster attack a racetrack or something?
He took a look at the nearby buildings. One neighboring building had a particularly high concentration of uniformed workmen around it, and the open floors were filled with vehicles, almost all with broken windows.
Ah, no. Just a parking garage.
He continued his scan of the city. There were several buildings around him which appeared to be corporate headquarters, but none stuck out to him as great squatting spaces. He decided to walk around the city more.
He eventually reached a mostly deserted quarter near the edge of the city. He saw several abandoned apartment buildings next to each other. One had several security guards posted outside for some reason, but the one neighboring it appeared empty. Bean waited until none of the guards from the neighboring building were looking his way, then headed inside the apartment complex.
Bean had walked into a large open space in the center of the building. In front of him stood an elevator with a large OUT OF SERVICE sign on it. To his right stood a stairwell which opened up onto walkways on each floor separated from the central space Bean was currently in by a waist-high wall.
Bean picked an apartment on the first floor at random and walked into it. He flipped the light switch. Surprisingly, the apartment had electricity. Running the faucet confirmed it had access to both cold and hot water, and the fridge was even stocked with an assortment of canned food. He couldn't read the labels on most of the food, but they had pictures, and he could read the dates. None of it was close to expiring.
He walked past the miniature kitchen and into the rest of the apartment. In the first room he came across there was a low-lying metal bed and thin mattress, but no blankets. There was a power outlet and a drawer next to the bed, which was mostly empty except for a uniform of some sort. Bean walked past the bedroom and into the bathroom, which had the expected amenities along with a small assortment of hygiene products. Figuring out which hygiene products were which would be a task for another day.
Bean went back to the bedroom and inspected the bed. There wasn't any obvious sign of a bug infestation, and the apartment as a whole was relatively clean. He lowered his backpack to the floor and lay down on the mattress. He thought about why there was an abandoned apartment with so many resources in it.
He walked back outside the apartment and went into another apartment in a different part of the building. It had the same layout as the first, as well as seemingly identical supplies. Checking a third apartment yielded the same result.
He went back into the first apartment he had selected and took a closer look. While all the essentials to life were there, there weren't any personal objects. It seemed that either the apartment had never been rented out, or the previous owner took any personal belongings they had with them when they left. Given that all three apartments were nearly identical, Bean thought the former more likely.
He went back out to explore a few more of the apartments on the floor. If anyone had rented these apartments previously, at least one of them should have left a personal object or two behind, or at least have left some sort of sign of wear and tear on the apartment. However, all the apartments shared the same new, industrial look of the first. Checking an apartment on the second floor yielded no new information either.
Bean gave up trying to figure out why the apartment block he was in existed for now, and took a peek outside. The guards from earlier were still standing at attention in the neighboring building, but he saw a blue car pull in and a lady pull the window of the car down to say something to the guard. She then walked out of the car alongside a boy significantly older than Bean. A teenager, really.
Something about that car… wait, is that the lady and kid from the attack?
He recalled the earlier scene. Smoke had obscured much of his vision, but the car was definitely the same color. He recalled the woman's purple hair. He looked at the woman currently walking the boy inside the apartment block. Same color hair, and the boy had the same figure.
As the door to the apartment complex closed shut behind the pair, Bean tore his eyes away to look at the dimming sky. He cursed himself, it was already getting dark out and he had wasted most of the day without making any progress on figuring out what was going on in this world or why he was here to begin with. He couldn't afford to get distracted by trivial matters such as one boy who had decided it would be a smart idea to stay outside during a State of Emergency.
He headed back to his newly acquired apartment to begin a long night looking up information on his laptop.
Shinji lay curled up on his bed, trying and failing to clear his mind long enough to fall asleep. Misato had volunteered to give him the larger spare room in the apartment, but he took the smaller one out of habit.
The day's events kept on replaying themselves in his head. Getting sent back. Meeting Misato again. Blackmailed by his father. Again. Fighting the Angel.
He should be happy with himself, he saved Toji's sister this time. Nobody got hurt this time. He had even met his old friends again. Even if Kensuke had been acting a bit weird.
He heard a knock on his door. He didn't move.
Misato opened the door slightly. "I forgot to tell you something" she started.
"You did something very good, and very noble today… you should be proud" she closed the door softly, and he could hear the quiet patter of her steps as she left to her own room.
He thought back again to the Angel battle, Misato was correct. He should be proud of how he performed.
So why did he only feel a crippling sense of loneliness?
A girl bolted upright in her bed, head swishing from side to side as if searching for enemies that weren't there. Her breathing, beginning at a rapid pace, began to slow. She slowly took in the room around her, and lifted her shirt to feel the skin of her chest with her left hand.
Upon finding nothing out of the ordinary, she cautiously lifted her right hand up to her face. She stared at it for several seconds, as if not believing it should exist, before letting it fall away. She got up from her bed and looked out at the view of the Berlin skyline from her window.
She took a moment to process what she was seeing.
She tore her eyes away from the city, and slowly turned to face the calendar she knew would be on the opposite wall. It was pinned in its usual spot, open to August 2015.
"Mein Gott".
Asuka's breathing slowed further as she let her body collapse back onto the bed, eyes staring upwards, relief and anger warring on her face.