EVANGELION:
Ascension of the Lamb
By: Dante Abbey
Episode 43: Reaping the Storm / The Circle of Minos
As the eye of the storm continued to approach
the coast, the image on the main screen began to show a distinct abnormality.
At the core of the monster tempest, a scarlet point began to glow within
the centre like some kind of bloody pupil.
Lightning played off the inner walls of cloud
surrounding it, dancing back and forth in supercharged arcs of pure electricity,
burning visibly from within the clouds like a candle in a paper lantern.
Even in the earth's shadow, the light could be seen from space, distinct
in the satellite's eye.
It escaped no one's notice in the command
centre, a moving point of light against a dark, swirling background.
Yamashita looked back from the main screen
to his own, greeted by a seemingly-innocuous message. He read it
once, then again, aloud.
"Analysis complete...the pattern...is Blue."
"All right...change the cyclone advisory into
a full Angel alert. Evacuate the city and call in the pilots."
"The storm is accelerating its course!
It'll be here soon!" shouted some technician from below the command tower.
"ETA twenty minutes!"
The crackling hiss of oil and hydraulics from
above drew some eyes towards the source of the noise, up to the top of
the bridge. Commander Fuyutsuki, just arrived, didn't pause for a
situational report. "Trying to catch us unawares, I see," he said
quietly to himself, staring at the constantly updated image on the screen
as it turned in starts.
As the storm's rate of approach increased,
so did the speed of the driving winds that accompanied it. The cyclone's
lashing arms seemed to whip the coast as it drove its way overland without
pause and without being delayed by the topographical obstacles that stood
in its way. Above ground, near the perimeter of the city, some of
the younger, more pliable pines that stood on the mountains began to crackle
and bend, their fragile green needles and branches snapping and twisting
in the wind. Visible cracks began to appear in the bark of the older,
stiffer ones, and those that were already showing severe damage were inevitably
doomed to fall.
"What's the pilots' status now?"
Masaharu put the receiver in his hand back
into its depression on the desk. "They've all passed the outer security
checkpoints. Based on our previous sorties, the MAGI would estimate
that they'll be ready for deployment in less than ten minutes."
"Do we have that long?" asked Shigeru, already
trying to think of a safe way to deploy the monstrous Evas in the storm.
Idly, he began wondering if an AT Field would
ward off the winds or make matters worse by catching them. Or, would
it even interact with the wind at all?
* * *
The smell of grease and metal filled the large
enclosure that was the Cage's primary elevator. The walls of unblemished
steel had a tendency to amplify that smell and focus the steady whirring
of the mechanisms that drove the box upwards in its vertical tracks, Shinji
had noted long ago.
Now, the steady rattling of the chain-link
fencing that enclosed the open-fronted elevator was extremely familiar
to him. It was likely familiar to Asuka as well, and probably even
the newer pilots. By now, despite Dr. Robertson's persistence in
calling them rookies, they had certainly acquired enough experience to
have proceeded beyond that stage.
He'd ridden this elevator too many times to
bother counting. In between Angels, there were usually also various
tests and maintenance routines that could only be accomplished with the
Evas activated and ready...and that meant that he and the others would
have to be in them.
Through the wire mesh, he could see the Evas
being prepared for battle. Nearest him stood the two oldest Evas;
Unit-01 and 02. Compared to the other three, they were considerably
more colourful and battle-worn. Not that any of the damage was visible.
The armour had been restored, and the individual body parts replaced.
Shinji even found himself doubting that there could be scars beneath the
armour.
Reborn.
That's what they were. After every battle,
the Evas were simply...repaired. Regardless of the damage incurred,
it was always possible to repair them. To say healed would be incorrect,
partly because the different anatomical sections could be interchanged
like pieces of machinery.
He looked past the three monsters closest
to him, to the white and blue one standing next in line. Unit-15's
head had been entirely destroyed by the Angel, to the point where it had
taken rescue crews nearly an hour to clear the rubble blocking the entry
plug's egress hatch and extricate the pilot. Today, it was whole
again, and the armour was pristine.
Sometimes, he still wondered if the Angels
were going be able to kill one of them. It hadn't happened yet, at
least not directly. He and the others could not be so easily reborn
as the Evas.
Shinji turned his head, and found Asuka looking
at him with equal parts affection and anxiety. He gave her a timid
smile.
"Hmm?"
"...Dummkopf," she replied, as she returned
her gaze the Evas standing slumped in the Cage before them. "Just
be careful..."
Looking around himself, Shinji looked at the
others, his friends. While Kensuke wasn't exactly as upbeat as he
once was, he seemed to have found some reason to rejoin them. For
the moment, Kensuke simply rested with his back against the cold metal
wall as the elevator continued its shuddering course upwards.
Almost a mirror image to him, Touji stood
on the opposite side of the elevator, arms crossed and eyes closed.
And as always, he wore a faint frown, as if he were upset with something.
The elevator suddenly darkened as it entered
enclosed final fifty or so meters to the top of the Cage. Hikari
began to stand from her place on the floor, slipping once, but righting
herself with Touji's help.
The rest of the routine would begin soon.
He would rejoin with the Eva, undergo the crushing force of the lauch procedure,
and fight an Angel. Had he bothered to count, this would have been
the 27th.
As the elevator pulled to a stop, the floor
aligning itself so that it was flush with the one outside, he looked towards
Asuka again. She had been doing this nearly as long as he had been
-- longer, if you counted her training -- although he wondered if the experience
was truly any different for her. Perhaps she viewed the routine from
a slightly different angle.
Also, that angle had to have changed, over
time. The rushing enthusiasm she had once expressed before every
sortie had disappeared long ago, even from before the Awakening, and he
felt perhaps a little saddened by it. He had always admired that
energy, that drive, and it always seemed a shame whenever her face fell.
Nevertheless, he also knew that it never truly
died, and that at any given moment, it was always waiting to surge forth
again. The knowledge was heartening. The night before, he'd
disturbed her sleep because of a spectre of his past that hadn't even made
sense to him. She'd insisted that he tell her the details, and even
appeared to have slept in a slightly troubled manner...but the next morning,
as always, she was herself again.
Reborn, without ever dying.
Maybe that was what bothered him. Death,
absolute death would stop it forever, prevent him from ever seeing her
life ever again. What better reason to persist with this routine
than to safeguard her? He hadn't really found a reason yet, but this
was sufficient.
Still holding Asuka's hand, he stepped out
onto the first of the umbilical bridges. The Evas stared on, outwards,
inert. It was time to begin.
* * *
"The verdict from the MAGI is final.
The winds near the core of the cyclone are too strong. There's no
way they'd be able to fight in that."
Shigeru peered over Masaharu's shoulder, checking
the readouts for himself. "I suppose that means we can't use any
of the city's defence networks, either."
The only member of the bridge staff who was
still silent remained Fuyutsuki, sitting immovable on his throne overlooking
the Command Centre. Even Dr. Robertson was occupied with the launch
preparations and the beratement of those staff members involved.
Finally, Fuyutsuki spoke.
"Have the Evas outfitted with close-range
and hand-to-hand weapons. Deploy them inside the eye of the storm.
They will be capable of combat there."
Curious eyes darted from control boards to
NERV's supreme Commander and back again. Arashio, especially, noted
the cold, business-like demeanor of her superior. This wasn't the
tired old man who usually gave her her orders.
It certainly was strange, she thought, turning
back to her console to begin programming the new launch paths for the Evas.
* * *
The crackling hiss of electricity burned a
path through the air as the capacitors for the Eva's launch platforms discharged
simultaneously, sending several hundred tons of flesh and metal on a near-supersonic
path towards the storm and the city high above. Around him, the metal
walls that surrounded his Eva blurred into indistinct streaks, and Shinji
waited. In less than another second, he would be standing in immediate
proximity to yet another Angel, one that had chosen to cloak itself in
one of the most powerful natural forces known to man.
And as it had been for several months now,
he felt no fear.
He had been fighting these creatures for so
long that it was almost second nature. So much so that he'd once
confused it with his own identity.
It didn't matter much now. All he wanted
to do for the time being was to get this over and done with so he could
get back to the rest of his life...and Asuka.
Suddenly, rain washed over his Eva and he
felt a momentary chill before he and Unit-01 were catapulted out into the
elements. Metal bent and groaned, as the howling winds did their
utmost to deform the restraints that were still pinning his arms to his
sides.
He uttered a frustrated noise, and tore the
Eva free, only to find that he was already being blown sideways by the
heavy rain and the driving force behind it. Panic bloomed in his
gut for a moment, and he reached out to the platform that had brought him
here, to the surface, for support.
Some of the lighter constructions around him
had already collapsed or been ripped away by the wind, their innards exposed
and then burned by the subsequent bursts of lightning. He couldn't
see anything around him. The rain was obscuring everything and muting
colours so badly that even Unit-02's brilliant form would have been lost
next to him.
And then, as if his Eva had suddenly surfaced
from a deep lake, the dense cloud washed past him and the wind died.
Shinji found himself staring at an amorphous red glow that shot twitching,
transient branches of crimson lightning in all directions, charging even
the dark indigo of the early morning sky above him with its angry light.
He was blinded in an instant by its flailing
arms as one reached out to touch Unit-01's grim visage. A flaring
pain exploded within his forehead, and sparks showered across his field
of vision. Turning away, he lifted a hand to protect himself and
was suddenly cut off from the outside world.
* * *
"What do you mean it's cutting straight through
their AT Fields?"
Disoriented screams of agony emanated from
the static-filled communications windows and mingled hauntingly in the
cavernous room that served as NERV's core. They were all so alike
that no one could make any distinction between the Children any more.
"Data collection beginning!" shouted Masaharu,
only a fraction of a second before every link between the Evas and their
support staff was cut off completely.
Shigeru stared back at Dr. Robertson, asking
with his eyes.
"We lost 'em," his co-worker replied, shrugging.
"Nothing we can do now."
Above them, Commander Fuyutsuki continued
to watch the flickering attempts of the MAGI to re-establish communications
and the swirling mass of thunder and mist that covered the city.
His face hadn't changed yet.
* * *
What the..?
Asuka blinked in the darkness, trying to restore
her vision to its normal state.
She was still sitting in her entry plug, her
hands wrapped around the controls to her Eva, and her body wrapped in her
plug suit.
And yet...her mother was no longer there.
Mama had disappeared.
The sensory indication that she was no longer
synchronized with Unit-02 was the glaring lack of visual and tactile input.
The entry plug's walls had returned to their usual burnished copper colour,
and the only sensation was the yielding foam against her back and legs.
But she felt her mother's absence more deeply,
and it was, to her, a surer sign than any of these.
Her right hand touched the switch that would
re-initialize her connection with the Eva, and it clicked audibly in the
dark. Nothing happened.
Not even the slightest flicker of contact.
Cursing to herself, she calmed her mind, opening it and reaching out, then
tried again. Still nothing.
Fear swelled in her heart and pressed upon
her chest from the inside. Her mother had only come to her once before,
in her moment of direst need, and the knowledge that she was there was
one of the two things that had been instrumental in sustaining her thus
far.
She couldn't lose her again...
She waited longer, frustration building alongside
the overwhelming dismay and apprehension. With it came anger, which
she vented by smashing her fists against the controls and trying the activation
switch again, and again, and again.
And when she still found herself locked in
the dead Eva, she yelled fiercely once, her teeth locked together and grinding,
and then fell silent, slouching over in her chair.
"Mama?" she asked, calling out and hoping
against all hope that her worst fears weren't coming true all at once.
There was no indication that they weren't. Crossing her arms, she
lifted her knees to her chest and leaned against them. It was starting
to get cold in her entry plug. She wondered momentarily if she had
passed out long enough for the Eva's automatic systems to have run out
of power...but she knew, somehow, that she had always been fully conscious.
What now, then?
For the first time in a very long while, she
was at a complete loss. The sudden and devastating impotence wrought
upon her frightened her to no end. One second, she was prepared to
face down the attacker, smite the Angel with mama and Shinji by her side...the
next, lost and lonely.
She looked up, glancing around her to search
with flagging hope for any sign that this would be coming to an end.
Oblivion filled the air around her.
Thorny, gnarled trees fruitless and forevermore
barren surrounded her, receding into infinite space and darkness while
the wind slashed at her face and ears. She couldn't see much further
than a few trunks deep, and even that perspective was slowly fading into
a matte black. Asuka cleared her eyes with a searching swipe of her
palm.
It helped, but not much. The surrounding
shadows continued to advance, swallowing yet another of the sickly, groping
trees ahead of her. She didn't want that void to touch her, at any
cost, and yet she could not move. On every side, she was equally
distant from the sides of her rapidly diminishing bubble of light.
Even above her, the sky was falling, coming so close now that if she had
chosen to stand from her balled form, she could have touched it with her
fingers.
"Mama!" she shouted, the darkest, most secure
portion of her mind still conscious of the fact that she could not have
strayed from the safe enclosure of the entry plug, "Mama! Please!"
The answer never came, perhaps also lost in
the black hell around her. Wind ripped through the trees, peeling
away the thorns and driving them at her like a swarm of angry hornets.
Some pierced her, drawing blood, others flew off into the darkness, disappearing.
She screamed in abject suffering, crying out
one last time as the darkness began to consume her as well, calling out
to mama. It was ridiculous to believe that she could help her at
that moment, but it was all she could do before she was irrevocably blinded
in this nightmarish forest.
"Mama!" she shouted, the border between light
and darkness less than a few inches from her folded form, and still accelerating
towards her. For a moment, she was compressed in a minute pocket
of air, and then the shadow broke over her like a wave falling crashing
onto a forsaken beach.
Her body was swallowed whole, and her eyes
saw nothing. She could yet feel her face, her hands had convulsed
into a mask over her mouth and nose, and she knew from years of experience
that her eyes had to be open. They had to be!
She was acutely aware of the position of her
eyelids and the scanning motions of her twin sightless orbs. When
she moved her hands to her face, she could feel her eyelashes bend under
the gentle pressure.
She closed her blind eyes and cried.
Nothing happened, and no one came. Neither
of their comforting hands reached out to her, taking her and leading her
out of oblivion. Shinji's warm embrace was nowhere to be found.
The warmth and compassion that were his signature traits no longer anything
but a memory.
She cried.
"...Shinji..," she whispered, the last of
her hopes dashed by the continuing absence. The name brought his
image to mind.
She missed him. More than ever before.
More than that one time they had confined him to NERV's hospital for a
week just because he had regenerated Unit-01's arms for her sake.
She remembered his panicked dreams from the
night before, how good she had felt taking him into her arms and comforting
him the way she had enjoyed his comfort before. The kisses, whether
overt or discreet, in which she found the simplest and most direct reaffirmation
that he loved her. She felt they kept her alive, and allowed her
to maintain the driving force that represented her wherever she went.
Further memories came to mind. Memory
of the first week after the Awakening, how she had tried to force herself
to cope with all her internal struggles and continuing reluctance to let
him know her thoughts. And how, after she had finally come to recognize
how very simple it would be to finally seek his forgiveness for her wiles,
how she'd ultimately sought to let all the pain go. She missed the
quiet way he'd finally been able to help her.
And now, trapped in her mind, she kept herself
alive by reliving the past.
She looked down on his sleeping figure, bathed
in moonlight, curled reflexively on a bed that looked strangely too large
for a single person. She remembered wondering just how pitiful and
desperate she really was to be actively carrying out that fool's errand
to wake him in mid-slumber and ask him to prove that he did, in factm love
her. She had decided to delay waking him and watch instead, and when
his eyes had snapped open at the merest touch of her breath, she had been
as surprised as he was to see her there. She remembered that kiss,
cherished it as the first real one.
In that single instant of contact, she'd found
something she never wanted to lose again. It didn't matter what anyone
thought, it was hers, to have and to hold.
She was losing it now, in this absent forest
of fear.
She clung ever more tenaciously to her remaining
memories, as they were the only way she could still see anything.
For whatever reason, the details and colour were crisper and more intense
than any other memory she'd ever had, like the difference between a bas-relief
and a simple painting. They had more depth. She could still
condole herself in them, wallow in the last dregs of comfort Shinji had
always offered her much as a drunk savours the last drops from his beloved
bottle.
Even more painful was the fact that they were
slipping away from her, second by second, and disappearing. She became
instantly aware of this fact, as she realized she could no longer summon
the images, and only know for sure that they had indeed come to pass.
Someone, or something, was taking them from her.
She didn't feel so much violated this time
as robbed. Rather than her mind penetrated forcibly, it was being
laid bare in her absence, rendered devoid of those things that she held
dearest to her. She could still fight a thief.
Asuka loosed every ounce of rage and despair
still left in her, railing against the Angel even as she scrambled desperately
to locate those few recollections that still resisted against its pull.
I hate you.
The words appeared out of nowhere in her head,
even as she howled at the presence fastidiously picking through her mind
and consuming it. They represented all and naught to her at once:
a lost philosophy, an abhorrence for everything and everyone that she imagined
she had left behind long ago.
She couldn't tell who or what they had been
directed at.
As she sought an escape from her confusion,
her eyelids were split open by the tears and the forest of darkness shattered
and fell around her. The trees, suddenly rendered as fragile as glass,
splintered into narrow, piercing shards that danced and spun wherever they
rained down against the dirt. The black veil that had enveloped her
and crept into her receded away instantly like a recoiling beast, and the
world was thrown violently onto its ear.
Naked and still bleeding memories, she huddled herself deeper into the
narrow ball she had been hiding herself in, creating a lukewarm refuge
with her body heat. Now, it was yet more important, as her arms cradled
the bare flesh of her legs.
Whimpering against her knees, she heard the
words again, and they seemed to echo from everywhere within the entry plug.
The voices she heard manifested themselves many, many times, in many, many
different accents and forms, but the sheer venom in each iteration was
wholly impossible to ignore.
I hate you, they shouted, wailing vitriol
like banshees then bellowing like the flames of a conflagration before
changing anew into something even worse.
Out of options, and knowing that mama was
no longer anywhere near by, she turned to a last resort. Not simply
to remember, but in a plea for help, her everlasting self-sufficient pride
finally giving way by this harsh necessity.
"...Shinji!"
At once, there was silence, both within and
without. Everything around her died, dulling to a silent gloominess
that filled the liquid space around her. She listened, and could
only hear the frantic rush of her own lifeblood in her ears, pulsing erratically
with the gradual and persistent renewal of her every fear.
The agony was unbearable. With every
passing moment, she expected nothing but the return of the auditory hell
that despised her for something, and she knew that whatever it was, she
was innocent of any crime.
Her breathing became progressively shallower
as her fear gorged itself on its own tail, and yet growing continuously
so that it never caught up to itself. It became a bloated monstrosity
the second those disembodied voices spoke again.
Asuka covered her ears and snapped her eyes
shut, biting her lip hard enough to dig a narrow laceration on the inside
of her mouth with her teeth.
You don't care, they whispered, echoing,
the low tone all the more menacing. You don't care about him at
all, do you?
"No!" she shouted, finally finding a place
where she could defend herself effectively from the onslaught that filled
her outer consciousness and flooded the places where her memories should
have been. "I do!"
She loved him. It was, to her, the most
fundamental of all truths she could have uttered, and she chose to do so.
It was a truth, one they couldn't take from her, and never would.
She had found him to be her sole source of solace since her mother had
hung herself from the hospital ceiling half-naked and bearing the enigmatic
smile of peace that had hauted Asuka's nightmares for years.
And as he was her salve, she clung to him,
and would continue to do so.
Selfish bitch.
Asuka's hands fell from her ears to her belly
in one sudden, shocked motion, as something primal and violent erupted
there. Her body arched backwards and her head slammed against the
entry plug's head-rest, leaving an ugly bruise beneath her falling red
hair. Almost immediately, she recoiled into a ball, cradling her
hands against the uncovered skin of her stomach and yelping hoarsely with
the sudden physical pain.
Something was being destroyed inside of her,
something so delicate and so incredibly important that tears of sorrow
mixed with those borne of pain against the surface of her eyes. She
felt layers of muscle contract and heave within her, pulsing, trying to
expulse the death.
She vomited blood from the soft, female mouth
set in the cleft beneath her abdomen.
* * *
The brilliant, blinding starburst that had,
for a scant moment, obscured Shinji's field of vision with a shower of
bursting electrical discharges faded away in his mind, leaving his retinas
the time to recover. He blinked hard, crushing the knuckle of his
right hand into the corner of his eye, trying his best to ignore the ache
that still lingered there.
Slowly, he opened his eyes, and was at once
stunned by the borderless expanse of...nothingness. There was no
wind, no rain, no hail, and no cyclone. There was no Angel.
He no longer sat contained in the warm, blood-scented
confines of his customary entry plug. Rather, his command chair,
a floating spindle of stainless steel hovered in the still air that surrounded
him and filled his throat with its icy sting at every inhalation.
Air?
No...it was different. It was easier
to breathe air. This was thicker, more viscous. More like...LCL.
Raw, non-electrolyzed LCL. He was less familiar with this form.
It was the variety that he and the others first breathed in, breathed out
when the plugs were initially filled. Before even synchronization
could take place, the LCL...changed. Then it became lighter, and
was no longer a chore to breathe or talk in.
His lungs were already beginning to burn with
the effort of sustaining himself, and he had a momentary pang of fear imagining
that it would tire him, and he would eventually asphyxiate. Still,
he fought to breathe.
Slowly, suspiciously, he began to glance around
himself at the crimson landscape. All around him, at every conceivable
angle, it was the same. The illusion was perfect. And yet,
there were waves, beneath him.
Flowing, receding, advancing, transposing...
If he truly was sitting above a nothing world of the amber blood, he must
have been inverted, sitting upside-down in his chair. The air would
then be beneath him, beyond the undulating liquid boundary.
He couldn't bring himself to abandon the command
chair yet, though. Even if there was air on the other side of the
surface beneath him, he could not see to the other side. Besides,
he was undauted by the perversity of this dreamy oblivion. He decided
to wait.
Without a doubt, he could only truly be within
the metallic confines of his entry plug, locked securely into the Eva's
neck. The Angel still flew before him, in the still eye of the storm
that raged outside.
In three steps, colossal for a man but average
for Unit-01, he would be within striking distance of the Angel. No
matter the hallucination the Angel was imposing on him now, reality would
only prove that he was correct.
He tried to move, taking the command levers
into his gloved hands, and pulled against them. Of course, he hadn't
been expecting anything in the blank world around him to change.
This was not...real. It suddenly occurred to him that not only could
he not see the Eva that he had, until recently, been connected to, but
he could not sense it, either.
There was no rapport, no synchronization.
He hadn't realized it before, but there was a complete and utter lack of
the distant, yet immediate sensation that belonged to his mother's gargantuan
body.
"Mother..?"
Discouraged to some degree, he sank back into
the command chair, releasing the levers. Deprived of those things
that would have freed him from this stifling prison of liquid, he could
only continue waiting.
In the silence, his thoughts began to drift,
edging from one subject to another, but never straying too far from his
current situation. As he let his head sit against the chair behind
him, he wondered what had happened to Asuka, and whether or not she was
still safe. It had to have been less than a few minutes since he
had last seen her, and already, he was worrying.
Sighing, he leaned back and closed his eyes.
Immediately, he fervently wished he hadn't.
Asuka! he screamed silently, his mind's
eye finding her standing there in front of him. With a sudden and
tragic force, his hands shot straight for her throat, a move that somehow
felt so savagely premeditated that he nearly choked on his own horror.
His surroundings never registered. All
he heard was her shocked whimper, cut short in an instant as his fingers
flexed around her slowly collapsing trachea, strangling her. He willed
his hands apart, to leave her neck, but they never moved. Instead,
they simply pressed harder.
No...no..!
Tears of pain and frustration brimmed in his
eyes, filling and overflowing his shallow eyelids. He didn't want
to see this...he hadn't reminded himself in months! And yet, there
they were, his hands, his horrid tools, holding a lifeless beauty suspended
in mid-air, in a grotesque display of execution.
He felt relief for a fraction of a second
as the image, the memory, the fact, disappeared; only to repeat itself
with increased speed and intent. He felt his hand constrict in the
soft neoprene, and Unit-01's hand find something hovering in mid-air, in
his grasp. His eyes carried his vision down to it, as his finger
twitched around the control lever.
He howled in agony as Asuka's corpse fell
to the waters below.
Unit-01's bloody fists pummeled her Eva, reducing
it to a massive wet smear of drying blood against the side of hilly landscape
miles from Tokyo-3, reaching down into the visceral mass only to withdraw
a battered entry plug. He knew, somewhere in his slowly collapsing
conscious, that that plug, so clearly marked with the numbers 02, should
not have been there, but it didn't matter. He was seeing them, all
his worst nightmares, coming to a head in an instant.
Unstoppable and implacable, they layered themselves
on top of each other and gave him no pause.
The entry plug's fragile walls shattered between
his fingers, the pieces falling slowly to the ground like feathers from
slaughtered game, wearing the same red taint.
Shinji had not yet stopped screaming when
he saw his last chance at redemption. Asuka's unblinking eye and
a square wad of cotton gauze stared up at him, only slightly covered by
her limp auburn bangs. She said nothing, but her face was still set
in the same scornful mask she had taken to wearing before the world collapsed.
Marshalling all his strength, he funneled
it into preventing history from repeating itself again...and he failed.
He failed miserably. He saw her death, in a hundred forms and permutations,
and always at his hands.
As always, his hands, his body, reached for
her. His finger tips found the frail column of air that sustained
her. Beneath her pure skin, he could feel the concealed striations
of muscle and cartilage as his thumbs crossed over at the base, bare centimeters
above the sloping lines of her shoulders. And in spite of his falling
tears and her warm, shaking caress, he crushed it.
The pillar squeezed shut in its centre, forcibly
contracted beyond any state of recovery. Asuka's hand fell heavily
to the beach, the bandaged arm throwing up a small puff of ascending sand
as it struck her ground. Her visible eye died. Shinji cried
all the harder, begging the universe, begging God, begging her, begging
himself to stop.
"Asuka!" he whimpered, and his eyes finally
opened just enough to place him back where he had come from. "Asuka!"
As if in response, an enormous basso crack
rocked his command chair and compressed the LCL below him. Less than
a few meters beyond his feet, the undulating surface of the liquid deformed
and distorted, welling up in a massive convex meniscus. A fraction
of a second later, the smooth uniformity of the dome broke, dissolving
into aveil of tiny air bubbles, like those that trail a thrown rock into
the depths. The rest of the LCL around him was pushed in an expanding
shockwave from whatever it was that had struck the inverted boundary beneath
him.
Hidden by the roiling curtain of miniscule
air pockets, Shinji could not at first make out with any real certainty
the nature of the object that had destroyed the stillness around him.
His ears were filled with the high, piping sounds of their laboured motion
through the thicker medium. He hardly cared what had interrupted
the lonely, blood-coloured realm around him.
He simply cried out for her again, and again,
trying to imagine a version where he had not even tried what he had done.
And she was destroyed each time.
His mind and his attempted corrections of
the past both collapsed into instantaneous disarray, falling away even
as the bubbles rose to some invisibly distant ceiling far, far above.
He would finally see what they obscured.
Her...her!
"Asuka!" he shouted, momentarily relieved
and instinctively leaning forward in the disembodied command chair and
reaching out one of his gloved hands towards her, to find her. He
shouted her name again, his voice a fractured melange of horror, concern,
and shock as he raised his eyes and face again to look, to see...her.
It was Asuka, and like him, she sat in her
entry plug's distorted seat. As he looked upon her bloodied nakedness,
however, she did not return his gaze no matter how hard he screamed out
to her. Her hands were limp at her sides and her hair hung over her
downcast visage. He looked closer still and saw that the tiny beads
that fell to her chest were nothing less than tears, splashing over her
exposed breasts.
She had all the volition and vivacity of an
unused marionette, a toy thrown to rot on the trash heap. Her skin,
normally of pure, even colour, was marred by irregular, scarlet-rust patches
that could only have been blood.
Her body convulsed involuntarily, wretchedly,
once before him, and as he looked on in stupefied terror, she curled up
into a tight ball and bled. Her thighs and hands were suddenly stained
a dark, ferrous red that easily matched the crimson realm around him, and
she cried harder, in pain.
Shinji never once stopped shouting her name,
entreating her to rise, to save herself.
He felt himself being restrained by some invisible
force, tied back to the pads that surrounded him from behind, his hands
suddenly locked onto the useless controls. He struggled harder.
Desperate and despairing, he called out again
and again, his voice shredded, his throat ragged and aching from repeated
abuse. Each time, his plea came with more force and a greater sense
of loss that worked easily in tandem to reduce to his own, whimpering,
shivering ball.
It was then that he first became aware of
the fleshy grey mass that cradled Asuka's command chair, its stumpy arms
pinning the flat steel structure to its grotesquely long torso. The
lower end was laid full length against its vestigial tail and the upper
against the bloated, undeveloped folds of its neck.
The creature was vast, and Shinji was forced to raise his eyes to meet
the blind, unblinking stare of the enormous round structures that could
not yet see, set bulging in an elephantine head. Some form of self-righteous
anger flooded Shinji's mind, and he challenged the monster accusingly.
"What have you done to her?" he demanded,
glaring back at the massive embryo.
The dark, brooding mass' hare-lips spread
apart in a feral grin, its undeveloped pharynx rippling in preparation.
The unborn's sickly, toothless gums parted, strands of mucus stretching
apart and snapping with a soft pop.
Unbidden, the sourceless, rumbling words crashed
through Shinji's head.
Or, rather, what have you done to her?
Its miniscule, stubby fingers instinctively
stroked the metallic sides of Asuka's command chair, touching it.
What have you done to her?
Webbed hands rippled again past her body.
Anger surged within him, only now beginning to manifest itself.
"Me?" he asked in return, his eyes tight and
his features skewed with emotion as his eyes shot back and forth between
Asuka's nudity and the horror that held her captive. He tried futilely
to deny the twisted recollections now running rampant through his head.
Their presence made it impossible to for him to direct his anger at anything
but himself. He fell silent.
The embryo's head cocked inquisitively to
the side. Even with the hollow, inaudible rumble that seemed to be
its voice, it sounded almost sorrowful, repeating to him the words that
had momentarily run through his mind.
Too much. The words appeared
within him again like lights in a storm, and he fought to understand them.
Are you aware of even half of the pain you've caused her?
Shinji stared, his eyes frozen and tearless
in fear.
Why is it you derive all your basest pleasures
from her? Your instict to kill, to destroy?
"God...no," he whispered, inaudible, only
his lips moving. "Stop...I love her...please..."
The embryo heard his silent words.
She already fears you. Isn't that
enough?
"...no...oh...God..."
Isn't it enough that you force her to relive
your attempted murder every time she sees you?
"No!" He could barely find the strength
to protest among his depleted reserves. He didn't want to hear these...these
lies. "She loves me! I know it! She's the only who has
ever really loved me!"
False.
Shinji stalled. Was that in reference
to his words, or his thoughts? He could no longer be certain.
You know she hates you. She can't
stand you. She told you she hates you. And you wanted to rid
yourself of her.
"...No! No..."
So why did you stop, Shinji?
The split lips of the gargantuan fluttered
as a cold current of LCL washed around them. Its eyes, still covered
by a protective flap of skin, rolled lazily in their sockets. The
fingers moved. The tail quivered. Its heart, visible through
the pale grey epidermis, pulsed at a slightly quicker rhythm. It
seemed to be waiting. Shinji could find no answers.
Did you enjoy it? Perhaps...
"No!" he screamed, interrupting even as his
eyes blurred again with the memory of his hands locking into place around
her neck. He was crushing her to make himself feel better.
"No!" She looked so helpless, injured, possibly dying, on the sand,
with her body wrapped in futile bandages.
He loved her! Hadn't he been the one
who finally got her to share her sorrow, her memories? Who had taken
those demons and brought them low for her? Why didn't she cry in
her sleep any more? Wasn't that why?
Or perhaps...
Shinji looked down to the bed. In the
pallid blue light of the hospital room, amid the low noises of the medical
equipment, he saw her. Her soft, beautiful body. She was comatose,
rendered that way by the tragedy of the past, the same one he'd tried to
appease.
And even as he looked upon her suffering,
he felt himself stir. He felt dirty already, staring down at the
unconscious, yet incredibly erotic and sensual pose she was now lying in.
She looked ready to be taken.
Even then, he found himself unable to touch
her. Nor was he able to look away. His eyes were drawn to her
breasts, lolling softly against the shallow breathing evidenced by her
showing ribs. He knew they were warm...no, hot. They would
feel hot against his palms if only he had the courage to touch them, to
caress them.
He didn't. He couldn't. And he
was still scum.
He touched himself, instead. Rubbing
himself with increased speed and fervour.
He was scum. Shinji knew himself to
be scum, and for that, he cried.
The grey embryo smiled.
So...that's why. The pleasures of
flesh. You knew, then, from the first you saw her, you needed to
take that flesh and make it your own.
Shinji buried his head in his hands, his will
shattered and his mind in shambles.
And you did, didn't you? You didn't
have the courage to do it then, so you waited. You lived with her,
slept with her. You forced her to pour her heart out, until she was
nothing but a shivering shell of her former self...all her memories, her
past...you asked her to tell what she had vowed never to tell anyone.
You even had to take that promise from her. And then you raped her.
Shinji's vehement denial started strongly,
then died, twisting and falling like the final cry of a slain animal.
In the end, it was nothing more than a whisper. As he struggled to
look upon his victim and accuser, he noticed for the first time that the
embryo's umbilical cord snaked up the side of the command chair and into
the bloody gap between Asuka's legs.
You raped her.
Shinji's chest constricted suddenly, and the
pressure shattered his heart in an instant. Bile rose and burned
through his throat, emptying his stomach onto the controls before him.
* * *
A fourteen year old girl struggled to her feet
in the unsteady enclosure provided by her floating tomb, and looked out
over the newly formed Antarctic Ocean. Even the glowering light seemed
to sting her face as the winds of hatred whipped around her.
It had been forever and a day since she had
ridden the waves here in her unsteady and unintentional watercraft.
Her logic, that of a child's, had failed her, and she had found her self
standing there, somehow saved by the man she hated. She couldn't
hate anything anymore. She didn't know if there was anything to hate.
All she could see were the vast arcs of energy
that reached to the heavens from ground zero, from the place that had once
been the research station and the massive clouds of steam that had once
been ice swirling around them.
She didn't understand. She spent many
years trying to. She thought of nothing else. She spoke no
words. There was nothing to say.
She had never realized it then, but all she
had wanted for all those years, was the escape. She wanted Antarctica
back. She'd only ever been happy there. And now, because she
understood the man she hated, it wasn't an escape any more. There
had never been any need to escape...only to stand up and face the truth.
The escape...
She found it again, several years later.
Even though she understood him, she needed to run away again. Because
she couldn't undo what had been done. She could never erase the gap
she'd created between herself and one of the two people that should have
been able to love her freely.
She drank. And had sex. And drank.
And smoked, and had sex, and drank.
One escape gave her the liberty of illogic,
gave her wings to fly to a fantasy world where nothing mattered.
All she had to do was get hammered, and she could forget everything.
It was that simple. Enough alcohol, and she'd be there.
Another calmed her nerves. Let her concentrate
on one thing long enough that she could get it finished without having
to think yet again about her past. She finally gave that up, more
because of the cancerous lung posters than for anything else.
The last...the last let her run the farthest.
There was something about the utter release and liberty of orgasm that
completely erased her mind, her memories, her worries, everything.
The ultimate escape.
She ran for a whole week straight. Right
through. Only stopped to eat, sleep, and shower. And to wait
for Kaji to recover.
And afterwards, she was sore and disgusted.
But she knew she'd loved every minute of it. She left, and had let
the alcohol do the running for her since she'd abandoned the other two.
She joined NERV. She found out about
the Angels. About Antarctica. About Second Impact. And
she found two more escapes.
She found she hated the Angels. It let
her pin the blame for her father's death on the Angels. Not to mention
the Evas, since they came from Angels. She reasoned that there had
been nothing she could do. She didn't have to worry about blaming
herself for anything any more. Then she met Shinji, and Asuka.
Made herself their guardian so she could be loved. So she could believe
she was still worth something after all.
Now, she was pretty sure she was dead.
After she had been shot, on the last day she'd ever ordered Shinji to do
anything, she'd remained conscious long enough to send Shinji to fight,
and just long enough to recognize that her body had been torn in half at
the waist by some violent explosion.
In this state, she didn't have to have the
alcohol any more. None of the old escapes would work here.
But...
If she could have, she would have laughed
at herself. She was still doing it. Still running away.
Just like Shinji used to. Even he'd stopped running, now.
She still hated the Evas. And so, she'd
escaped from it. As a result, she'd taken up the custody of anotherChild, one she hardly knew. Just to make herself feel worthy of something.
This Child was in hell. Always unsure
of what to do, whose desires she should satisfy, and always falling short
of being true to herself. Something, most likely the Angel, was taking
this altruistic compuction, and perverting it. Turning it against
the Child who should have enjoyed it.
Oh, well, she thought. She would
act as guardian one more time, and then she would stop running. A
resolution, of sorts.
* * *
Captain Aoba Shigeru's mind was racing.
It hadn't been so long ago that they had been completely cut off from the
Evas and their suffering pilots. One by one, their respective images
had disappeared from the primary plasma screen at the far end of the room,
their cries of pain brutally gagged by the loss of the signal.
The satellite image hadn't really changed
in the last ten minutes. It still showed the cyclone, raging on as
ever. The Angel hadn't moved, though, and neither had the cyclone
made any change in its position.
The Evas still stood near the Angel, unmoving,
locked in their poses like gargantuan statues. And he was sure the
pilots were no better off than they had been.
The thought of ordering the JSSDF or the UN
forces posted nearby to deploy some of their N2 weapons on the Angel had
been nearly too tempting. However, the sheer number required to completely
destroy the enemy would also result in the destruction of the Children.
He wasn't willing to take that risk.
Dr. Robertson didn't look like he was going
to help. Instead, he appeared to be working on something completely
different.
"...Sir?" he asked, turning towards the summit
of the command tower. "What do we do?"
Fuyutsuki shrugged. "For now?
Nothing. I have faith in the Evas."
* * *
Asuka's fists fell into her lap.
She was bathed in an intense orange light,
the light of sunsets. A burning light, that changed even the colour
of her normally cheery school uniform into a sombre, funeral shade.
She hated being alone.
The windows of the train rattled as it rushed
forward to some distant, invisible destination. Where or why she
was going there was altogether beyond her, and the only certainty was that
she could stay aboard and discover it, or die leaving the safety of the
enclosed passenger car.
"I love him!" she shouted back, her tears
staining her dress and blouse where they fell. Around her, there
was absolute silence, but she was continuously harried by the voices only
she could hear. She shouted her dedication again, sure that the driving
need she'd understood for the first time only a week or two after the Awakening
was as true as it could be.
And she was ready to freely admit that she
needed him. All her efforts to distance herself were nothing more
than some spiteful, childish effort to make herself seem larger than life.
If not to anyone else, than at least to herself.
It's not true, though, is it?
The voices overlapped each other, continuously
modulating as a continuous murmur that assaulted her ears as steadily as
waves fall onto a shore.
What makes you think you love him?
"He...he..."
The voices interrupted suddenly, never ceasing
fully.
You thought you wanted Kaji, too, because
he would listen to you and your nonsense. Shinji listens, too, doesn't
he?
"He's the only one who really knows!
I let him understand me!"
But that's all you want, isn't it?
You just want a toy who'll listen to you, who'll cry when you cry.
All you want is a doll.
"That's enough!"
Asuka lurched to her feet, still hindered
by the stabbing pains in her gut, and ran unsteadily for the door leading
to the next car. For a moment, the steady, pounding sounds of her
heart and her feet striking the floor drowned out her insistent accusers,
and she thought for a moment that she was escaping. Her fingers lashed
out before her, wrapping themselves around the door handle, and she pulled.
It remained stuck, defying her.
She tried again and again, and the handle
only clicked, locked shut against her.
Asuka pounded the glass with her fists, crying,
trying to flee. Her tears splashed against the door and ran down,
leaving trails not unlike rain. As she cried, she looked forward,
into the next car, into her destination.
You just want a doll, who'll listen to
all the hatred you have for your own family.
Her eyes flew wide, and a ball of shock and
panic lodged in her throat. In the next car, seated facing each other
on the bench, she saw two images of herself. They were perfect, down
to the slightest detail.
On the left, she saw herself as a child.
In her hands, she recognized the only gift her step-mother had ever given
her. It was a small, brown stuffed animal, a monkey. It wore
a friendly smile and had its arms open in an eternal gesture of welcoming.
She watched as she clutched to her chest, crying openly by herself, letting
her tears soak the monkey.
On the other side of the train, she saw herself
as she appeared now, dressed as she was daily, seated next to...Shinji.
She was kissing him, despite the tears that
trailed her cheeks. She was holding his hand to her face, where he
wiped futilely at the wet lines that represented all of the bottled grief
and sorrow she had hoarded for herself all those years. The scene
lifted her heart for a while; it was the truth she lived every day.
The voices were quiet, for the time being,
and she rested her palms against the glass, watching herself happily settle
into his arms, letting herself be comforted.
Something small and brown struck the floor,
bouncing once, and falling against Shinji's foot. Neither of them
had noticed, but Asuka's attention was riveted at once.
She glanced back, looking towards the other
version of herself with a questioning look on her face...the little girl
was still seated, but alone, staring wrathfully at the floor. Her
tears were gone, her face twisted into a mask of anger painted with a contemptuous
veneer. Her eyes burned.
Asuka looked upon herself, and knew that that,
too, had been truth. She'd simply cast away everything she disliked,
and found that the category applied to most everything. The day she'd
realized that the monkey doll had originated from her step-mother's purse,
she'd discovered it was useless to her, that it no longer salved the absence
of her true mother and the painful arrivals of the two adulterated replacements.
She couldn't stand either the deranged or the surrogate. Both ignored
her, refused to love her.
Her gaze shot back to the monkey, and she
saw that its stuffing had been savagely torn from its central body cavity
before it had been thrown to the dirty floor of the train. Something
red and viscous seeped from it, falling in patches on the floor around
it.
From it..? No, from above.
Asuka screamed once, then turned away from
the scene, looking back into her own prison, and slumped into a ball against
the floor, wailing quietly to herself. Even then, she couldn't escape
it.
Shinji's body, beaten and bleeding, sat heavily
in a heap before her, his clothing stained and wet with his own blood.
Her other self had disappeared, leaving only the child to lord over the
destroyed monkey. It was still soaked in his blood.
She cast her eyes away, begging the sight
to leave her, but she was rewarded only with the return of the voices,
now bellowing, screaming, ranting, and screeching at her.
This is also truth. When he can no
longer help you, you will cast him away as well. You will use him
and abandon him the second he no longer comforts you. Is that love?
You will hate him as though he had never mattered to you at all.
The train faltered and imploded upon itself, the walls fracturing as easily
as the glass, and Asuka was left in absolute darkness.
* * *
In the cold, dying darkness left in the wake
of the embryo's disappearance, Shinji was left alone with nothing to latch
only, no reference point from which to distinguish himself from the blackness
around him. As time passed, he slowly felt something being moved
around within him, being drawn out into the forefront of his mind.
He opened his eyes, not knowing what to expect.
Asuka's pain still weighed heavily on his mind. For the moment, he
remained silent; screaming futilely would not help.
There was no light emanating from anywhere
in the room. All there was was the intense orange glow of a dying
sun, casting obsidian shadows against the far wall of the living room.
There was enough brightness to give his shadow a sharp, blade-like edge,
and when he moved, it cut deeply into the light, making it bleed invisibly.
In the darkness of his mind, he watched himself
toy with her, suckling her lips and savoring this initial taste of her
body where it leaked in against his tongue. He was at a loss as to
how to describe it, but it was overwhelmingly good all the same.
She gave little resistance, emotionally reduced
to a pile of ashes, her natural fires doused by a heavy dose of sorrow
and misery. Asuka whimpered something from her sealed lips, but it
was hardly audible, even in the utter silence of the room.
Gradually, he watched as her flesh was revealed,
piece by piece, and he could only observe in fascination as his hands caressed
and examined it. He could feel the pulse of her life rushing beneath
her pale skin, and he was...excited to be in such close proximity to it.
He didn't need to find the courage to reach out and touch to verify his
suspicions that her body was as hot as a smouldering coal at its centre,
he could feel it.
Nevertheless, he did. First with his
arm, as it fell away from her face, then his wrist, then the palm of his
hand. He found the heat, examined it, divested it of the cloth buffer
that dampened it and hid it from his view. He felt her breast with
his own hands.
He was scum, but it had never mattered to
him then. Maybe before, but not then. It had never occured
to him then.
For a moment, he glanced around, looking to
the pure white of the carpet around them. He noticed the individual
parts of her crumpled uniform, scattered about them like leaves after an
autumn gale.
Then, he looked back to her face, touching
her cheeks and tears. She leaned away from him for a moment, then
back as he put his hand into the small of her back and pulled her almost
forcibly towards him.
He found he could touch all of that heat unhindered,
now, and he allowed himself the time and luxury of doing so. He found
he could explore every part of her, as if absorbing all of her through
the palms of his hands.
It wasn't yet enough.
As before, he became aware of himself, awakened
and risen. He became aware of his own heat, of the necessity of satiating
that heat, and satisfying himself. It was overwhelming, the most
basic, primordial urge that welled up within him and he wilfully surrendered
himself to the imperative.
He became aware of the sheer carnality of
his flesh pressing against hers and discovered that there was no way that
he could force that primitive drive back into himself by doing as he had
done before. He stared at her, for a moment too afraid to make further
progress, but the longer he watched her nakedness writhe lasciviously in
front of him, the smaller that fear became when compared to the urge to
fulfill his compelling.
He placed his hands against her shoulders,
touching her, sampling her heat with them. And then...
And then he possessed her, finally taking
what he had promised himself upon first seeing her life, her soul, and
her flesh, standing upon the metal deck of the aircraft carrier.
He possessed, in an instant, the central, integral heat that made her what
she was. The fire and life that he had always envied, and had always
wished he had. That essence that she'd always denied him, and that
he had attempted to snuff out because she wouldn't give it to him.
And now, covered in his sweat and her tears, he'd taken it.
The shadows against the wall roiled with the
sudden turmoil, slashing against the lit sections of the wall and making
them bleed until the setting sun cast them in their true light, an unbearably
dark crimson. The walls turned black as the sun disappeared, and
the haematite shadows blended in with them so that the world would not
see any reflection of what he was doing.
Even then, he moved against her, his body master of a violence and brutality
he hadn't known he was capable of, even more intense and directed than
those few times it had made itself manifest from the beast that was Unit-01.
His every motion drove him to repeat it again,
with more force and more direction, and he knew, in some dark, animal part
of his mind, precisely what he was doing. He pushed forward again,
and again, watching as the form of her body mixed in with the shadows,
until he was left alone with her heat.
He felt it rising, though. The heat
that he had forcibly wrapped around himself was increasing, and he hungered
for more, greedily pleased that he was procuring so much for himself.
And finally, finally, when it could no longer rise any higher, he felt
a shudder course through his entire living corpse and pass into hers.
He felt alive, having passed on his own brand of death and emptiness into
her in exchange for her lively fire.
It wasn't until nearly a month later that
he noticed the tiny droplets of blood from her rent maidenhead trapped
in the fibers of the carpet and cleaned them up.
She has nothing left to lose but her life,
the embryo said silently, its unopened eyes boring directly through his
skull, how much longer will it be until you take that as well?
Worse yet, Shinji knew that he had once felt
guilty for this, and then had found a way to justify it for his rational
mind as well.
Shinji screamed, and he was left in darkness.
* * *
The sun shone as it rose.
The sun had been shining for several billon
years, always consuming bit by bit the immense reservoir of hydrogen gas
that fed the unending and continuous fusion reaction that provided the
seemingly bottomless energy that showered the earth with light and warmth.
Even at the centre of the churning, howling
storm that currently raged over Tokyo-3, the sun shone, its rays burning
down into the red core of the anomaly. Each of the five Evas was
slouched, surrounded by the burning arcs of electricity that touched and
caressed their armoured faces and protected heads with as much tenderness
as a tiger bringing down a fawn.
For a moment, if there were any observers
who could have seen it, the rays of the sun seemed to momentarily intervene
with the lightning that danced across the angular white forehead of Unit-15.
The red bolts seemed to twist and contort against themselves as they struck
some kind of invisible barrier, and were sent back against the Angel.
Momentarily confused, the Angel only sent
more back at the white Eva, but they, too, were stopped and annulled.
Unit-15 began to stand, slowly, climbing to
its feet from the kneeling position in which it had fallen. Its pauldron
slid open, and the progressive knife was deployed.
* * *
Bleeding and broken in the darkness, Asuka
found she had no strength left.
Effectively, she had nothing left. She was lost. She had given
up looking for mama, and she certainly didn't feel as though she merited
calling for Shinji again. All she could do, for now, was sit and
wait. She could barely feel her body, lying limp and heavy against
the segmented foam pads of the entry plug's command chair. Her fingers
hung open, like dead insects lying on their backs with their legs folded
in the air. Her head had fallen to the left as far as it could go,
and her half-opened eyes saw nothing but the seamless brass wall before
her.
All she could do was wait for her life to
end. That, she supposed, was good enough. She didn't even have
the strength to cry, anymore. Her eyes were empty, drained, the tears
lost in the ocean of LCL around her.
It was dark...there was nothing in the entry
plug but her and some lifeless metal. There was nothing left.
Nothing at all.
She realized she didn't even have the strength
to express even that thought to herself. All she knew was 'wait'.
When it came, she had nearly passed out from
exhaustion.
At first, it was so light that she never noticed.
Then, as the gentle pressure against her mind grew, she began to take notice.
Slowly, gradually, it pressed, harder and harder, reaching out to her.
With good reason, Asuka was slightly suspicious
at first, but as the presence began to break through the black wall imposed
around her conscioussness, she recognized it for what it was.
Suddenly rejuvenated, she sat up straight,
her tired, aching muscles given new life, reborn. Her eyes grew wide
and began to shed tears in a flood, and she smiled.
"Mama!" she shouted, almost deafening herself
with her own joy, "Mama!"
* * *
"Communications with Units-01, 02, and 15 restored!
AT Fields back to full strength, and manifesting themselves in real space!"
Arashio made no attempt to block the relief she felt as the new data appeared
on her monitor. Working frantically, she accidentally knocked over
her empty mug of coffee, and it shattered against the floor.
Almost immediately, her face fell. "Pilot
life signs... Probability of mental contamination is high...or extreme..."
The live feeds from the entry plugs flickered
slowly back to life, occupying the corners of the command centre's screen.
Each displayed darkness, with nothing more than a slightly lighter form
within them. Even worse, there was no sound to be heard.
Commander Fuyutsuki remained impassive, watching
as Unit-15 began to advance, taking slow, steady steps toward the hovering
Angel, even as it redoubled its efforts to put its pilot back into the
hell she had just emerged from.
* * *
Content with her work, she decided that there
was no longer any purpose for her to stay where she was. She had
tried to be a guardian long enough, and she supposed she had done her best
to accomplish her goals while tending to for her charges.
Even if the whole excercise was just another
escape.
Still, she was tired of running, and if she
wanted to stop, she'd simply have to put her hatred of the Evas behind
her. This Child didn't need her presence. For the most part,
it only interfered with her life. It had been wrong to try and force
her hatred on her.
It was time to leave. Besides, she had
always felt that by taking up the role of guardian this one, additional
time, she had left a part of her behind.
She hoped Shinji and Asuka were all right.
It had been a while since she had last seen them.
* * *
Unit-01 roared, standing suddenly, its AT Field
shimmering into existence before it, a living wall of pure energy that
absorbed and redirected the shafts of lightning flying at it. Another
step forward, and that shield of energy slammed directly into the Angel's.
The lightning ceased to exist, for a fraction of a second, as all of its
energy was suddenly compressed into a single, two-dimensional plane between
them.
A gout of light appeared, flashing in and
out of existence as the energy was wasted, and sent shooting towards the
sky.
Not too far away, Unit-02 was getting to its
feet as well. The slats of armour that made up its head had parted
before its face, its four glassy green eyes moving aside to reveal the
angry, burning white that glowed within.
Even these four seemed to narrow, in revenge
for the pain and suffering that had, until recently, been wrought on its
pilot and protegé. It roared as well, this time a keening,
rumbling wail that seemed to match the rolling, gutteral bellow of Unit-01
particularly well.
And on the other side, hidden behind the Angel,
a third Evangelion, now the closest of the them all, stood, knife drawn,
at the centre of the storm.
Howling, it crouched down, and waited until
the Angel's AT Field was overwhelmed by those of the three defenders standing
immovable around it. Unable to divert any more resources to attacking
the two other silent Evas, it concentrated all of its energy of fending
off the others.
The field collapsed, the visible distortions
in phase-space disappearing completely, and leaving the red orb of ball
lightning that was the Angel's body floating vulnerable in mid-air.
With its massive knees already bent and ready,
Unit-15 unleashed its unstoppable power against the Angel, launching all
of its ponderous mass into the air in a single instant. Growling
like a predator, it landed on top of the Angel, strangely supported by
the Angel's seemingly energy-based body, and buried its arms in the outer
coat of electricity.
For a moment, the only movement was the pulsing,
rippling flow of the white Eva's muscles beneath the restraining armour,
as it slashed away at the Angel's innards. In another moment, the
Eva slid backwards, its bent and deformed knife coming free of the hovering
creature and following it to the ground.
Like a falling bird, the Angel seemed to grow
less steady, then spiralled downward until it hit the concrete of the city
beneath it, and detonated.
Bereft of the driving power that had sustained
it, the storm ceased to turn around them, collapsing inwards on itself.
The rain and hail continued, but grew progressively less intense as the
heavy clouds fell to the ground in turn and dissipated into an obscure
mist that filled the valley like water in a cup.
Those trees and structures that had survived
the agony of the dark winds stood still as if they had always been that
way, no longer being whipped, snapped and torn by the heavy winds.
Shigeru watched the screen a while longer
in awe as the mass of cloud over the city became just that, before he shook
himself free and ordered out the recovery crews.
The cyclone had died.
So had most of the cicadas, drowned by the
rain, or crushed by the hail. Their hopes only lay with the immature
pupae that lay buried in the ground.