Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction ❯ Evangelion: Renaissance ❯ Episode 18'a – Salvage ( Chapter 4 )

Like an angel that has forsaken empathy, 
young boy, become a legend!

Even though the clear blue winds 
beat on the doors to your heart, 
you just look straight at me, smiling

So eager for something to touch, 
your innocent eyes know nothing of fate 
but someday you’ll notice 
that there are wings on your back 
that will carry you into the future

The cruel angel’s thesis 
will take flight from the window 
with surging, burning pathos 
if you betray your memories 
Embracing the sky and shining, 
young boy, become a legend!

___________________

The air rippled in the stifling heat as the morning sun beamed brightly across the bleak expanses of Tokyo-3, signifying the dawn of new day.
For the displaced residents of the recently battle-ravaged suburbs, however, the new day was not necessarily a happy one.
The whole neighbourhood had been wracked with devastation.
They solemnly ambled through their wrecked streets, stricken with despair as they took strides on cracked asphalt, touring the piles of rubble comprising where they once lived.

The consequence of such vast destruction always rippled outwards... it affected not only those whose homes were destroyed, but their friends and relatives, as well as the workers who were dispatched to rebuild and refurbish what was lost.
This scope of this latest catastrophe in particular proved to be so colossal that everyone was united under the common goal of rebuilding: men, women, children, and entire families were struggling alongside civil servants to mend their shattered lives.

Rei Ayanami stood pensively among the clamor, her attentions focused on the debris of her own ruined apartment.

The entire western half of the building had been decimated in the Angel attack. It lie in shambles, reduced to a mass of twisted steel and busted mortar. Broken glass littered the ground.
A few other former tenants combed the debris, hoping to recover what mementos they could salvage from the wreckage.

Rei stared blankly at the crumbled structure.
Her home, her only safe haven, had been unceremoniously demolished, leaving NERVs locker room as her only option for bedding. Her experience getting acquainted with those cold, tiled floors the previous night had been somewhat uncomfortable, and wasn't something she looked forward to repeating.
Nonetheless, she was scarcely concerned; she was here with the singular intention of retrieving her one irreplaceable possession—her lone keepsake, the sole object that could not be reimbursed.
The only thing in the world that was precious to her.
She just hoped they would be intact.

"I will find them," she softly declared to herself, reaffirming her determination, before she took to somberly scouring the wreckage.

She pushed aside slabs of asphalt and dug her delicate hands into piles of gritty, crushed concrete.
Delving deeper, she felt a quick, sharp pain and her arm reflexively jolted back, revealing that she had cut her index finger on a broken bottle of painkillers. This meant she was close.

Another few minutes passed sifting through mounds of pulverised stone and brick, and Rei came across an assortment of other objects she recognized as her belongings. She pulled out wads of blood-stained bandages and encountered the splintered fragments of her smashed clothing dresser.
None of these were what she was seeking. In fact, nearly every object in her apartment had been meaningless to her.

Pressing on, she steadily rearranged bits and pieces of refuse for nearly half an hour before suddenly she saw what she searched for so desperately: Gendo's cracked glasses.
It was her most treasured possession, imbued with sentiment for the man who once saved her so valiantly; the only person to whom she ever felt a sense of closeness... and the one whose cold indifference was now pushing her away.

She picked up Gendo's glasses from the ground and lifted them up in the sunlight.
Holding them out to examine them, Rei felt a pang of—what was it? Sorrow?—a pang of sorrow as she noticed the damage.

The left lens was completely gone, and the right sported a number of new cracks and divots from the rubble which had entombed them.
When Rei turned them upside down for further inspection, a shard of glass chipped off the right lens and fell to the ground near her feet. She hardly recognized the glasses any more.
As she scrutinized the mangled frame she felt a strange heaviness on her chest. No matter how much she tried to ignore it, it persisted. What was this new feeling? Regret? Disappointment? At her own carelessness at leaving them behind, perhaps? She typically carried them with her everywhere... now, one of the few rare instances she let them out of her sight held disastrous consequences.

Her mind filled with the image of Gendo's face as he smiled sadly at her from door to the entry plug... the swirling scars on his palms from where he pried off the white-hot emergency panel bare-handed to save her.

For a moment, she clasped the glasses close to her heart. She was fortunate merely to have found them.
Still, the inexplicable heaviness remained. It spread to her shoulders and threatened to press her whole body to the ground. She clutched the frame tighter and tried to push the feeling away.

Having no further purpose in this location, Rei descended the mound which was the remnants of her home and started down the road, past people sorting through their own piles, past the tape cordoning off the disaster area, toward an available bus terminal.
She stared at her sole treasure once more as she neared the terminal.
With a huff, a bus pulled up beside the stop just as she arrived. The doors swung open and she climbed aboard, making her way to one of the seats furthest back.

The doors of the bus hissed shut and the bus began to rumble down the road.
Settling into her seat, she returned her gaze to the glasses and quietly admired the austere beauty of the sunlight reflecting off their remaining lens.

___________________

——————

第18'話

Salvage 

——————

___________________

The intense light of the morning shone in through the wide panes of the balcony doors, giving the empty, desolate apartment a faint sign of vitality. It seemed that the entire apartment was illuminated by the glass doors save for the sole occupied room. The barely cracked door allowed only a thin streak of light to wedge through.

Sagiri was lying on the floor just out of the light's reach, but as the morning dragged on, the thin streak crept further along the floor until it finally found his face.
Vexed by the light but still mostly asleep, he stirred on the futon, his body strewn halfway across the dusty mat and the hardwood. A blanket ensnared his left leg, having been kicked away at some point in the night.
Turning onto his side, his back to the intrusive ray now, he tried to settle back into the comforting arms of sleep once more, but they frigidly withheld their gentle caress.
His apartment lacked the general familiar ambience of a place which he could call home, and aside from that, it was the first time he had to sleep alone since his marriage.

To his dismay, the bed things Sagiri had borrowed from Misato did nothing to ease the stiffness in his back or the post-traumatic pain that ravaged his body. Instead, the meager futon and ratty sheets seemed to worsen them. The moans and groans he emitted as he tossed around on it were soon interrupted by the ringing of his doorbell. The sound pierced his skull and his mind shouted for him to wake up. Once the ringing ceased, he groaned once more, as if in response. The bell then rang five more times. It seemed as if whoever was outside was pressing the button multiple times in rapid succession in an effort to get him up quicker.

Sagiri's eyes sprang open and for a moment he was disoriented by his unfamiliar surroundings. Briefly he wondered where he was, where his wife was.
He glanced around in a drowsy stupor as his bleary vision adjusted and the room came into focus. The realisation of his circumstances smacked him in the head like a baseball: he was no longer in Tokyo-2—he was in his new apartment, and he apparently already had a visitor.

Who the hell could that be? 

The doorbell continued to ring. The tone was reverberating through Sagiri's throbbing head as it resounded through the apartment.

"I'm coming!" he attempted to shout, but it came out as a slurred murmur.
He feebly pushed against the floor with his bandaged arms. Once upright, his back reacquainted itself with the pain from his close encounter with the wall yesterday.
He grabbed his pants, which had been in a rumpled heap on the floor, and hastily pulled them on, stumbling a bit as he shuffled toward the bedroom door. Other than the makeshift bed, the only furniture in the place was a small nightstand left by the previous tenant.

Suddenly wary of who might be waiting for him out front, he slid open the drawer containing his NERV-issued sidearm and took it in hand before groggily shoving open to door to his room.

A blinding beam of sunlight immediately greeted him, which provided his aching back and pounding head with minimal relief.
He instinctively flung his arms up in front of his eyes as he trudged forward. Once he was somewhat certain that he had moved past the glare from the window and the corresponding threat of blindness, he slowly lowered his arms again and continued on.
Moving through his living room, he took note of his apartment's dilapidated condition: the floor was flecked with bits of plaster from the ceiling and cracks snaked along the walls. Constant Angel attacks had almost certainly contributed to a lack of upkeep in most residential buildings. Of course, all this was inconsequential to Sagiri when he first arrived late last night—all he cared about was getting some sleep... and even now he was fighting to keep his eyes open, battling against the weight of exhaustion.

After taking a few more steps to his right, he managed to pry his heavy eyelids open enough to see the door slide open. A man in tan coveralls stood directly outside, cradling a box in his arm. Sagiri could almost discern the vague shapes of other men behind him, also clinging on to boxes as they moved back and forth systematically. Distinguishing red patches adorned the arms of their jumpsuits. It was a moving crew.

"Ichiro Sagiri?" the man in front (and presumably the source of all the noise) asked.

Sagiri offered him a faint nod.

"We're from the moving company... we hope that our late arrival won't be of any inconvenience to you." the man apologized. "Is it alright if we start bringing things inside?"

Sagiri gave him a tired groan and a weak gesture for him to move inside.

The man returned his earlier nod and bumped the door with his unoccupied arm to open it fully, glancing nervously at Sagiri as he filed past.

Once the crew began pouring in through the door, Sagiri was suddenly reminded of the firearm he grasped in his left hand and quickly stuffed it into the waist of his pants. He shuffled back to his room to dispose of it, scoffing at himself for being so paranoid. In his bedroom, Sagiri glared at the frumpy futon and the thin blanket beside it.

Last night, after being summoned to NERV Headquarters, Misato initially offered to let him spend the night at her apartment. When she had made this offer, he had been able to catch a glimpse of a red haired girl bickering with a shy brown haired boy. From their dossiers he knew they all shared the same living quarters, so the place was potentially crowded enough already, and thus he declined the offer with a polite smile.
However, she insisted that she at least loan him her spare futon. Remembering how he slept on it gave him a newfound appreciation for the movers' arrival, as it also heralded the arrival of a proper mattress.

Once Sagiri returned from stashing his unnecessary means of self-defense, he noticed that the depressing emptiness of the apartment was dissipating. Furniture and appliances now sat where previously there had been nothing except the intrusive square of light from the balcony.

"That's the last of it." A crew member spoke over the thudding sound of him and his assistant dropping a couch Sagiri had no memory of even owning.

Sagiri took two tired steps toward the mover, still rubbing his eyes.
He marveled at the amount of unpacked boxes that now occupied almost every available inch of space.

Did I even have this much stuff to move? he questioned. Or is this place just that much smaller than the old one? 
Maybe his wife had been buying more "at-home essentials" in his absence.

Sagiri stood there for a second, a puzzled look on his face.
“Well, thank you." he finally said. "How much do I owe?"

The man that had been doing all the talking handed him an invoice as the others shuffled back out the front door.

With the most courteous bow he could muster, Sagiri took the paper from the man's hand and slid the door shut behind him.

___________________

A typical school day in Tokyo-3 began with the sound of thudding, squeaking footsteps echoing through the halls, laced with enthusiastic exchanges of "good mornings" and hushed reports on the newest gossip, punctuated by the class rep's strict command to attention before finally silenced by the bell.
Today was not a typical school day.

Much of the student body had taken a leave of absence to help the community with repairs, and more still probably simply hadn't felt like coming. The few remaining students present came seeking solace from yesterday's harsh reality by keeping their routine.
Although attacks had become a fairly common occurrence, they still affected everyone in a myriad of ways.
Even the teachers seemed hesitant to work; drained of any motivation to engage with students whose anxieties likely reflected their own. Their ambivalence was palpable as soon as Shinji entered the building. Well, every teacher except for one...

"I'm reminded today of how the populace was forced to come together following the Second Impact..." began the teacher of Class-2A as he settled into his spot behind the podium, never missing a chance to ramble on about his favourite subject. The lecture served to fill the uneasy silence, but did nothing to alleviate the overall melancholy mood that permeated the room.

Neglecting the regular seating arrangement, Shinji positioned himself toward the back of the classroom and rested his chin on his folded arms. He stared out the window blankly, pondering a number of questions.
Who was this new person at NERV? He'd heard that his name was Something Sagiri, but otherwise knew next-to-nothing. No one had bothered to introduce them when Shinji caught sight of him at HQ, and later when Misato brought him to the apartment to borrow a spare futon, she and Asuka had been too talkative for Shinji to get a word in edgewise.
The guy was only a little older than the pilots... although they wouldn't be in the same class, Shinji wondered if they'd be attending school together.

Shinji raised his head and turned his sight toward Asuka, who was busy furiously scribbling something into her notebook while the teacher droned on about the economic ramifications of the Second Impact. He wished there was some way for him to understand her better. Yesterday she dismounted her Eva with bloodshot eyes. It was clear she had been crying, but she said nothing to anyone. When Shinji tried to comfort her, she flew into a rage which evolved into a continuous tantrum, keeping her malice aimed directly at him for hours. Him, the cause of all her problems.
Once the new guy showed up, her fury abruptly disappeared behind the friendly, congenial façade Asuka reserved for those who didn't really know her. Afterward she retreated to her room and never re-emerged, but Shinji thought he could hear her weeping quietly behind the door.

By now Shinji was used to her temper—in fact, most of the time he hardly noticed it anymore. Still, he wished there was something he could do to pacify her; to bring her some degree of happiness.

Asuka's head suddenly whipped around and she caught sight of Shinji staring at her. Startled, he straightened his posture and pretended to look at something in the distance behind her. The ruse failed miserably.
A dark scowl creased Asuka's face and a guttural growl arose from her throat. Shinji heard a crack as the pencil she held boughed and snapped in her viselike grip.
He gulped. She was probably imagining that pencil was him.
Feeling sweat bead on his forehead, he flipped open the book on his desk and buried his nose in it to escape her glare. When he lowered the book, Asuka had resumed writing with a fresh new pencil.

Despite this being an optimal day to skip class, Toji and Kensuke were both there, sitting a couple rows ahead of Shinji. Unsurprisingly, neither was paying attention to the lecture: Kensuke was flipping through magazine full of pictures of a military hardware; Toji was daydreaming, eyes on the ceiling, lost in his own world. Kensuke rotated his magazine sideways and let out a low whistle as a centerfold rolled out from between the pages. As if in response, Toji followed this with an exaggerated yawn.

The remainder of the morning was unremarkable. When the bell rang to announce the physical education period, the children reluctantly rose from their desks and began to meander toward the locker rooms to change their clothes. In this heat it was likely the class activity would be swimming—especially compared to the unnatural chill of yesterday, the humidity today was sweltering.

As the day dragged on, Asuka's disposition seemed to improve. She chatted amiably with Hikari as the two of them sauntered arm-in-arm toward the door, whispering and giggling about something. Engrossed in their conversation, they failed to notice Rei approaching from the opposite direction, seemingly disconnected from her surroundings. The three girls reached the doorway simultaneously and Asuka's shoulder collided with Rei's as they exited the classroom.
Although they had hardly bumped one another, it was enough that Asuka whirled around to face the other pilot. Her conversation with Hikari ceased instantly in mid-sentence. She looked Rei up and down.
“Out of my way, First!" she ordered.

Rei sidestepped and Asuka stomped past into the hall with Hikari in tow.
Shinji watched despondently as Asuka left. Just seconds ago it appeared her mood had brightened, but she was more temperamental than usual.

"She's in a rare form today," Toji remarked, sidling up to Shinji as he rounded the corner into the hallway, "You think it's her time of the month?"

"I don't know..." Shinji mumbled, slouching. A joke at Asuka's expense just wasn't funny right now. He studied a scuff on the faux-marble floor of the hall.

"You know what?" Kensuke piped up as he appeared on the other side of Shinji, "We should skip next period and go up to the roof."

"Yeah, that oughta cheer you up! Plus we can spy on the girls swimming from there." Toji added, a lascivious tone in his voice.

"Maybe, sure... let's go up," Shinji conceded, trying to pull himself back into the moment.

It didn't take long before their ascent of the stairs turned into a race. Toji made it up first, whooping triumphantly as he burst through the door onto the roof; Kensuke followed shortly, and Shinji came in a distant third.

"Ya know what, Ikari? You need to exercise more," Toji teased, gloating.

Ignoring him, Shinji proceeded to the edge of the roof and looked off into the distance. His arms were straightened fast at his sides. Unconsciously, he repeatedly balled his hands into fists. He was dreading his walk home with Asuka... Just being around her lately made him feel guilty somehow.

As he watched the clouds drifting glacially across the sky behind the mountains, a gentle breeze wafted in from the direction of the city. The cool air brushed against his skin, providing some momentary relief from the oppressive heat. Choirs of insects trilled in some nearby grove of trees, and—at least for a brief, fleeting moment—he felt at peace.

"This was a good idea." Shinji said. "Thanks, Kensuke."

___________________

Light flickered over the shadowy platforms of the command center as the large monitor played the surveillance footage of the Angel from just before yesterday's battle.
Ritsuko stood behind Maya's terminal, a look of dull bemusement on her face as the younger woman feverishly tapped away at the keyboard. Alternating hues of blue and orange reflected onto Maya's face from the smaller monitor as Ritsuko watched the slew of data being continually compiled and sorted.
She had probably seen the video loop two hundred times today, and there was still something about it that bothered her. It was the Angel—something about it seemed… off.

Especially in light of her recent meeting with the council, she couldn't afford to miss anything that might indicate Angels had an interest beyond Third Impact. She wished she hadn't let Misato convince her to give the new kid the morning off to recover from his ordeal yesterday... right now, she could use the extra help.

"Have you made any progress?" Fuyutsuki asked from somewhere off to the left of the room. Neither woman looked up from their analysis of the footage as he approached.

Ritsuko shrugged and replied, "Some, but it's going more slowly than I anticipated."
She scoffed, a frustrated kind of half-chuckle, and massaged her right temple... she could feel a headache coming on.
“Superficially this Angel is no different than the others we have seen," she continued, pointing to the screen, "However, more detailed analysis has revealed an number of anomalies."

"Such as?" Fuyutsuki questioned.

"Well, first there is the duration of time the Angel survived once its AT Field had been neutralized. No Angel had ever survived that long before once its field was eroded." Ritsuko explained as the video looped again.

"Yes, but usually the Evas destroyed them quite quickly afterwards," Fuyutsuki offered, "Or otherwise they self-destructed."

"True, but something is telling me that this Angel is unique in that regard, particularly since its lack of reticulocytes seemed to suggest that its AT field was the only thing initially sustaining its shape."
There was a moment of silence while Ritsuko considered if she should reveal her next finding, but decided it was better not to withhold information.
“However the stranger thing is what Maya and I are working on right now. Maya, could you patch your monitor through to the main view screen?"

"Yes, ma'am." Maya nodded.

With a brisk sequence of keystrokes, the large monitor cut from the video feed to a batch of charts displaying sine waves of various frequencies and amplitudes, above a larger representation of a waveform and an open file labelled "Audio_Analysis1." Maya clicked on the file and the sound of blustering wind filled the room. After a second, the sound thinned out into a hiss almost resembling radio static. When the audio file finished playing, Fuyutsuki looked at Ritsuko expectantly, desiring an explanation.

"We have audio recordings of three of the Angel's attacks," Ritsuko said. "Each sounds ostensibly the same at first, but after applying a Fourier transform filter we were able to isolate these harmonic frequencies."
Ritsuko leaned forward across Maya and pressed two keys on the keyboard. A new audio file played. The noise of the rushing wind was vastly subdued and the most prevalent sound was an odd series of deep pulses, not unlike Morse code.

"What is that?" Fuyutsuki asked.

Out of the corner of her eye, Ritsuko could see Fuyutsuki's eyebrows raise and furrow with intrigue as she leaned back again.
She turned her palms up and sighed, "That's what we're trying to figure out. All three captures contain a similar signal, with slight differences in phase. I think it might be a message."

___________________

Several hours had passed since the moving crew had left, but Sagiri was still nowhere near finished unpacking, much less completely furnishing the apartment. The slew of new possessions he seemed to be constantly discovering were beginning to clutter in the corners and crowd every available surface. He didn't have the slightest clue where to put most of them. Every time he tried to place an object he found himself unsatisfied with its arrangement.
He decided to eschew moving the couch entirely and opted to set up the new bed rather than bother with anything else.
As he lovingly dressed the bare mattress in sheets and comforters, his doorbell rang again.

His attention shifted to the front door as he wondered who it could possibly be this time... aside from Misato he didn't really know anyone in the city so far, and he wasn't expecting his wife to arrive until later tonight.
Then the doorbell repeated several times, so emphatically that each ring muddled the sound of the previous ring. He instantly recognised the pattern as the distinctive way she would press the buzzer when she'd gotten locked out at their old place.

That was quick, he thought.

"Coming!" Sagiri shouted as he dropped a pile of pillowcases at his feet and excitedly sped toward the door. He stumbled a bit, nearly hitting his head on the door as he skidded to a stop a few inches away from it, then straightened himself out and slapped the "open" button. The automated door propelled open to the right revealing his wife, Hinoki, behind it.

Sagiri threw his arms up with great fervor and exclaimed, "Welcome ho–"

"Ichiro!" Hinoki chirped brightly over the top of his own greeting. Her blue-violet eyes lit up as she sprung through the doorway eagerly and slammed into Sagiri, trying to lock him into a hug but instead driving him straight into the wall.

"Oh god, my back..." he squeaked as her arms encircled him and squeezed hard. After a few hours of successfully working through the pain, his reunion with his wife had also become a reunion with the stiffness in his joints.

"I've got so much to tell you!" Hinoki announced, draping her arms around his neck.

Sagiri tried not to wince and potentially reveal that he was anything other than delighted to be back in her presence. Smiling, he brushed a stray lock of her dark brown shoulder-length hair away from her face.
She pulled him in closely and lavished him with a series of kisses. Keeping her arms clasped behind his back, she shifted around awkwardly. Sagiri noticed she was removing her shoes by pushing each off with the opposite foot.

Hinoki loosened her embrace and twirled around like a dancer. Sagiri admired her svelte figure as she spun in place.

"So this is our new pad." Hinoki crooned, strolling around to survey each room. She kicked a stack of boxes lightly and giggled, "This is definitely you—only you could make an apartment filled with decor worse-looking than an empty one."

Sagiri lumbered over to the couch. He put one hand on the back and started rubbing his lower back with the other.
"I can't help it," he complained with a short laugh that inflamed a sharp ache in his side. The pained whine as he exhaled was just audible enough for Hinoki to hear.

She rushed to Sagiri's side and flung a comforting arm around his shoulder, her voice laden with worry as she pelted him with questions: "Are you alright!? Are you hurt!? Did you pull something? Is something wrong? Did something happen? Was it something I did!?"

This deluge of inquiries was what Sagiri had been hoping to avoid by disguising his physical discomfort with his elation to see her—much like his foster mother, she was prone to excessive worrying.
"I'm alright, it's just my back's bothering me. Probably from lifting too many boxes, that's all," Sagiri assured her. She didn't need to know that an Angel had blown him into a building with a weaponised squall of wind.

"Sit down. Why didn't you tell me? I jumped at you and pushed you into the wall like that! It's my fault!" declared Hinoki, distraught.

"No, no, it's just from moving." he reiterated, circling the couch to relax on it as she commanded. The cushions breathed out a puff of dust as he flopped down on them.

Hinoki, clearly remorseful about not being perceptive of his injuries, stood behind the couch massaging his shoulder with her right hand. He tilted his head back and smiled up at her.
"Do you need anything at all?" she asked.

"You being here is enough for me," insisted Sagiri, crossing his left hand over himself to take his wife's right hand.
He resumed, "So, what was it you wanted to tell me? You arrived sooner than I expected... I thought you were going to spend some more time with your parents."

"I did. Mother and I talked about everything; she wanted to know how things were going with us. Dad is still worried. He's just really protective, but he's becoming more accepting of us." Hinoki shared.

"Well you're his daughter after all," Sagiri supposed, rubbing the back of her hand with his thumb, "I was surprised that he even allowed us to marry... I envisioned him as the unflinching hardass type who wouldn't even hear of it."

Hinoki giggled again and withdrew her hand from his shoulder. "Enough talk." she commanded. "I'll straighten up this mess; you rest for a while. That's an order."

Rotating his head to the left to follow her as she walked off, Sagiri caught her give him a wink before she disappeared into the next room to commence clearing up the mess he'd made. He took a deep breath which became a yawn, and settled back into the couch.

___________________

The black room flooded with light from overhead as Gendo entered, illuminating a long black conference table in its center. As Gendo approached, several lights on the table itself clicked to life and the members of the Human Instrumentality Committee appeared sitting around it. The colours mirrored those of a Masonic order, but Gendo wondered if the arrangement was purely practical or if they weren't at least partially inspired by some hermetic tradition. Perhaps they saw themselves being akin to knights in Arthurian legend.

As Gendo took his seat at the furthest end of the table, another white panel of light directly in front of him activated. Waiting for Keel to speak, he adjusted his glasses and shifted in his seat. He rested his elbows on the light panel, raised his hands in front of his face, and linked his fingers just below the bridge of his nose.

"Dr. Akagi informs us that the Angels might have an interest in the human psyche." Keel reported, after a protracted period of the two men staring each other down from behind their respective eyewear.

"As of now we have no empirical evidence to confirm that the Angels are any more concerned with our thoughts than the average human cares about an insect's." Gendo responded dryly, extending one finger of his folded hands to again push his glasses up further.

"Be that as it may, this is something worth keeping an eye on in the future." Keel stated, bending his head forward. "If the Angels are driven by more than a primal instinct to return to the womb, perhaps we could communicate with them."

"Learn from them," another member chimed in.

"Teach them," a third added.

"Reason with them... maybe even sway them to our thinking." Keel concluded, proceeding, "If we are to enter the Golden Dawn of transcendence in the timetables laid out by the Dead Sea Scrolls, perhaps this could be the key."

"A key is useless without a door to unlock." Gendo asserted, carefully inflecting his words to ensure it sounded like he spoke out of consideration rather than issuing a challenge. A sly smile played at his lips, hidden behind his gloved hands.

Even from behind his visor, Keel could see right through Gendo.
It was no matter—there were too many pieces in motion at this point, and soon they'd all converge around NERV.

"Mind your tongue, Ikari," the chairman snapped, "What we have bestowed upon you can just as easily be taken away."

Gendo unhooked his hands and laid them flat on the table as if to symbolically show he had nothing to hide.
“Yes, sir. I am an instrument of SEELE's will."

________________

EVANGELION 
エヴァンゲリオン