Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction ❯ Story Number Ten ❯ Chapter 3 ( Chapter 3 )

Disclaimer: Neon Genesis Evangelion is a Studio Gainax production, its characters created by Hideaki Anno. They say the word, and this story ceases to exist.

Story Number Ten: Chapter 3

By MidnightCereal

“Aida Residence.”

“I know that. I mean, it's me. Sorry.”

“Holy God, you're alive. It's been days, Ikari.”

“I know, right?”

“If that's who you really are.”

“I…Kensuke, who else would I be?”

“Someone who's using a number I don't recognize, for starters.”

“It's Rei's phone, so I wouldn't think you would and…look, I'm in between things down here.”

“Rei's phone?”

“That's what I said.”

“Rei Ayanami is letting you use her phone?”

“Are you going to turn this into a thing? Don't…don't be weird, now. It's really kinda important…”

“Between things down where, Ikari?”

“I'm at work in…I don't know anymore. I'm doing tests. You know how they are. Tests.”

“Not the ones you're probably talking about - the important kind.”

“Well, they keep telling me they're important.”

“The really kinda important kind.”

“No, I was talking - this is so - am I on TV? Of course not. I'm crazy, right?”

“This is so what? Wait, you're on TV? No you're not. I don't get it.”

“Me neither, but…anything? Anything about me? Forget it. The answer's no.”

“Just let me check.”

“It's not really a check-and-see type of situation.”

“What type of situation is it, Shinji?”

“It's not one.”

“Oh, Christ.”

“What? What?”

“NHK, dude. That Ayame chick, her BioSines is on for like the sixth time. Why haven't I noticed how fat she got?”

“She was depressed or something.”

“That's what happened? Like you needed another reason to keep letting Asuka win at Uno.”

“Heh heh. Yeah.”

“Don't tell her I said that.”

“I won't.”

-----

Shinji thumbed the `End' key just as Maya murmured to Rei. Something about outstanding balance as Ibuki ducked behind a vending machine thrumming in the metal gloam of Level Something Sector Something. He could hear Maya pecking at her notebook while Rei contemplated the machine's precipice of almond pocky and malomars. Too bad the steel crosshatch across the display case had ruled out shooting the plexiglass - he felt like celebrating.

“It's not like I'm going to say, `I told you so',” said Shinji.

“You already have,” said Rei.

“Um.” He tried harder to tamp down the linoleum corners of his mouth. “All I'm trying to say is…we have options, now. Aida says nothing is happening up top. This is a good thing, it has to be.”

The cell phone shimmied in his palm.

-----

“That's a negative for TBS and NTV.”

“Uh. Great. I appreciate it.”

“For a second I thought I caught you on TSC, but it was just some schoolgirl with short hair and no boobs.”

“What a relief.”

“I could probably give a little more relief if you told me what trouble you're in.”

“I had this feeling, that's all.”

“Okay. But if you were, you'd tell me?”

“If it was a really big deal, we probably wouldn't be talking, now.”

“And it's not a big deal.”

“I shouldn't have even called -- it was silly.”

“No no no. Yeah, listen, Eleventh Sphere tournament, tonight. I did it, Shinji, I pulled a dia squad. Clinched a fourth seed. Does that blow you or does that blow you?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah…what?”

“…it blows me.”

“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!”

“They have to check me out of here and everything. Don't wait up.”

“Think about it, dude. We drew some world-class shit this time. Regions one and three. You're my three-fourteen, Ikari. It'll be epidemic!”

“Sounds fun.”

“Think about it.”

-----

Shinji imagined the inside of Rei's sport tote as some denim geologic record, even before she gorged the poor thing with a litter of sticky buns and muffin stumps and some donut holes, and re-zipped it. So, yeah, magic. “Traveling back to the surface will only increase the likelihood of conflict with affected persons. Individuals and roving groups,” she said. “It's inadvisable.”

“You're not giving this a fair chance. You, me, and Asuka did this before, right? And we weren't even trying that day. We just went up.”

Rei pinched the debit card between her thumb and forefinger. And looked at him. “The circumstances of the Ninth Angel incident and the current dilemma are inherently different-”

“I-I get that, I-”

“-and equating them to rationalize an impulsive and foolish endeavor is intellectually dishonest.”

“Sorry, okay? Sorry.” Shinji bit his tongue, wishing he could beg off her eyes -- you could do that with Asuka. “No one said it wouldn't be dangerous. I'm not saying that. Misato called it, um, reasonable chance, or…”

“Acceptable risk. I admit that Major Katsuragi has a…penchant for meeting success in high-risk conditions…” Shinji got his mercy look-off. Now Rei stared at a lone packet of red licorice clinging to the edge of its dispenser rack, “but she is not here.”

The phone, again. Kensuke again.

-----

“Nine o' clock. My place -- Tourney Central. I knew I was forgetting to tell you something.”

“I really can't promise you anything.”

“I understand, Ikari.”

“Thanks.”

“It's not really tests, is it?”

“It - yeah, it is. It is.”

“You can tell me. Places like Nerv always have official responses set up. Just in case.”

“Just in case what?”

“You tell me, Ikari.”

“Tell you what?”

“There's always something. Something's always breathing fire on that place. Angels or hackers or girl scouts or something. Just because it's a fortress doesn't mean nothing ever goes wrong.”

“Nothing went wrong.”

“It's another Angel, isn't it?”

“It's not an Angel.”

“What is it, Ikari?”

“I don't think you're listening to me.”

“So you're stuck there for absolutely no reason at all. And why would they do that?”

“That always happens here. No one ever tells me anything.”

“Shinji, I think you're lying.”

“No, I'm not.”

“You're lying, and you don't have to, because…who am I gonna tell? I break code on my lunch break. Section 2's got me numbered, I know that.”

“Kensuke.”

“I know people, I'm not even joking. I can get you tickets, phones, email. Need a place to crash? Hey, you can-”

“They're calling me.”

“You're my friend. We're supposed to be friends!”

“I have to go.”

“Tell me what's wrong.”

“Kensuke.”

“Just tell me where you are. We'll meet up and figure something out. I won't tell anyone, not Touji. No one. Tell me.”

“I have to go. I have to…”

“Tell me where you are.”

-----

Shinji ended the call and bartered with Rei. Cell phone for sticky bun. He squelched the gymnastic sickness in his throat while sloughing off the plastic wrapper and congealed, tectonic frosting -- food shouldn't make its own slurping sounds. Shinji focused on the scattered typing behind the vending machine, instead. Then on that muffled buzzing in Rei's palm.

“Don't answer that,” he said.

-----

Misato looked about the metal gangway as she and Ritsuko tamped across it. High above them, catwalks cut across each other, racing into the sheer wall of upper levels stepped like year-3000 pueblos. Other platforms crisscrossed beneath them, growing longer and thinner until they stretched over the yawning depths below like spare strands of silk. “There's no end to this place…” she said.

“Three-hundred and thirty meters from floor to ceiling, officially,” said Ritsuko.

“There's a floor?”

“Maybe. I don't know, that number's for the tourists. They were talking about converting it all into a Class Ten high bay; you know how many precipitators it'd take to remove sixteen-thousand particles from a cubic centimeter of air?”

Misato sighed. “Jesus Christ.”

“I'm sorry,” said Ritsuko, “the next time I describe an electrostatic process to you, I'll try not to use so many words and numbers.”

“The cross, asshole.”

The rust red crucifix welded high on the wall at the end of the gangway. Ritsuko pinched the controller pouched in her lab coat pocket to wipe away the door ahead. They passed beneath the cross into navy darkness, where Ritsuko thumbed the controller and sealed off the envelope of light from the high bay. “How are you feeling?”

Misato trailed her fingers along a wall, dipping them into the crevices between recessed storage modules, teasing the lip of an electric panel flitting dim red text. She cleared her voice over the drone of voltage. “…It's over.”

“Unless you know a way of recouping the operational capacity we've lost in the past twelve hours, then yes. Ninety-eight percent of anything is a damn big number.”

“Hm.”

A slow shrug rolled through Ritsuko's indigo shoulders. “And I suppose now's a good a time as any to sound complacent.”

“I know what I have to do,” said Misato. “I'm just, I'm relieved, in a way? All those orders…I always got the feeling that asshole was waiting for me to disobey him.”

“Which asshole?”

“C'mon, Ritsuko.”

“Whoever said you're no good at following orders?”

“My father.”

“Punch it.”

Misato jammed her thumb into the switch below the voltage panel, watched the words snap green and elevator doors part before her. She steered the lapels of her cardinal jacket tightly across her shoulders, lurched into the car, and turned around. “It's just killing me that I care at all what dad would think about all this…you know what I mean?”

“Oh, I can relate,” said Ritsuko. “But it doesn't matter what your father or Gendo thinks, Misato. You're reliable in your own special way.”

“Gee, thanks, I-”

A nictitating chain link door crashed closed between them. Ritsuko stood on the other side, face tattooed with fence mesh shadows, and stared. “Very reliable. Otherwise, we wouldn't have stayed friends. If my opinion counts for anything.”

“Ritsuko?”

“I guess I'm saying I have a pretty good grip on what Shinji means to you, and I know you won't want to watch him die. You don't deserve that. But you'll find out just how far this place goes down, so try to think of it as a win-win situa-”

Ritsuko's hand shot into her pocket, fished up the controller. Jiggled the little plastic pad until Misato's twitching fingers retreated from the folds of her jacket. Huddled, cream light in the car nailed shadows into Katsuragi's brow. “What are you going to do?”

“Flay him.” Ritsuko paused. “I'll have his back. I'll suck the meat off his spine. He'll taste like his father.” Emerald eyes raked the floor, and she nodded. “I'll do that. I'll find Gendo, and compare.”

“You have to hear yourself.” Misato tested a thin, defective smile. “I…really, did you listen to what you said?”

“I told you no one was scanning me.” Ritsuko shook her head. “Maybe you're the one who should do the listening. Maybe I'm not as good a storyteller as I made myself out to be.”

Misato closed her mouth.

Then her eyes drifted away from the saliva bubbling through Ritsuko's lipstick, past the doctor's teased blond fringes, over the notched collar of Akagi's lab coat; Misato blinked and whispered. “Ritsuko…”

“You shouldn't have asked me. Hyuga and I, we're different degrees of madness, but it's really hard for me to pretend I'm not overjoyed I know where Shinji's going.”

“You know where he's going?” everywhere asked.

The lizard glaze on Ritsuko's face evolved into a frown as she turned and stared back at the bulging black behind her, as she watched dark chameleon shapes - thin and bulbous, stiff and billowing, bobbing, side cocked - skirting its edges, distending it. Atomized breaths floated weightless in the black, condensed and pooled and peppered it. Phased through it:

“You know where he is?”

“Doctor Akagi.”

“Where is he?”

“We can't find him.”

“I need to know.”

“Doctor.”

“We looked-”

“Tell us.”

“I need, I have to talk to him-”

“Doctor.”

“Can't you just tell us-”

“I looked everywhere.”

“You know.”

“I just want to speak to-”

“You think you're the only-”

“Where's he going?”

“Just for a minute-”

“Just do it.”

“We heard you-”

“Please-”

“Hear her out.”

“Everywhere.”

“Do it.”

“One minute-”

“Akagi.”

“You're starting to piss me off.”

“I won't hurt him.”

“Do it…”

Misato jerked into motion, edging to the cage wire. Sheet metal waves rolled through the screen as she hooked her fingers through its diamond lattice. “Get in, I'll kick the living shit out of you later.” Misato huffed, tufting hair behind Ritsuko's ear. “Stop thinking…”

Ritsuko dipped into her pocket again, purchased another object. Her elbow flapped wide as she eased out its dimpled composite grip and thumbed its hammer. “I wish I still needed a smoke.”

“What the hell are you doing?”

The murmurs stalled, reversed, rippled away from the elevator in choppy susurrations that clashed in the back of the room. There, the noises buried or eroded one another before surging forward again. A chorusing froth cresting onto the alcove of light.

“Do it.”

“Swing batter!”

Ritsuko slung her arm out below the glinting arc that strobed through her head; an aluminum ping with a hamburger finish. Misato sprouted wet red freckles as her friend and the controller and the revolver wheeled down.

“Ritsuko!”

The dozen hands that stabbed out from the shadows caught crumbling sections of Ritsuko Akagi, hauled her away. Misato peeled back from the cage and drew her own gun up and across the mesh, the muzzle scribbling on the curtain of sibilating night beyond the screen. “Shit, shit!”

“Sit tight, Major,” everywhere said. “Shit tight.” Moist laughter crunching down on bone. A face bobbed in and out of the light - brunette sideburns with matted, bottle blonde stubble - before a plastic crack fractured the air. “Oops.”

Sounds of frenzied rending faded as the heavy elevator doors sighed across their runners, and closed.

Misato stood down. She felt up, then slapped then kicked the dead control panel. Then plastered herself in a far corner when the vehicle shuddered and sagged downward. “No way, no fucking way!”

Another hiccup in momentum buckled her; she scraped her jaw on the tops of her knees as the car vibrated, juggled her…and began a behaved, Teflon ascent through headquarters.

When Misato opened her eyes she wiped her face, read her palms; Ritsuko's blood streaked across them like sanguine comets. “No fucking way…”

She looked up when the intercom set in the drop ceiling wrapped her in cellophane static; she cut a wide frown when it told her she had two hours and thirty minutes to live.

-----

Self-destruction is now voted for by the AIs. Self-destruction will be executed one-hundred and fifty minutes after all three have agreed to it. The ranges of self- destruction are Geoid depth - 280, -140, and floor 0. Due to the activation of special rule 582, cancellation by two of the AIs is impossible.

 

-----

“We needed a way to negate special rule 582,” said Maya.”We decided on a patch at Tech One's post-operation analysis for the Iruel incident. Doctor Akagi and I. This was real slapdash at first, understand? We didn't know if the Angels were going to keep coming at us through the Magi, but after a while, we felt comfortable enough to go back to the system developer's notes.”

Shinji heard her shuffling from beyond the entrance of the men's restroom. He retracted his toes from the frigid tile floor, fumbling with the elastic drawstring of his pants as Ibuki's voice bounced around him.

“We were shooting for voice-authorization, or at least push-button functionality. Major Katsuragi thought it was a good idea, in the event that Doctor Akagi and I were killed. I'll still have to negotiate with the system OS, but that won't take much more than twenty, thirty minutes. So why are we still here?”

“We're waiting for Shinji,” said Rei. “We are waiting for you.”

That last part had been directed at him, and totally made it easier to forget he was now touching himself within earshot of Rei Ayanami. “I just got in here…”

“That super literal thing you do…” said Maya, and Shinji could almost see her jacking up her eyebrows, pointing at the First Child with a twirling finger, “I can't really imagine anyone else doing it with a straight face.”

“I'm thinking,” said Rei.

“About heading back up to Central Dogma? You can stop worrying - Doctor Akagi set up a Magi interface in the Reserve Control Center, so I can institute the patch from there. And you can stop worrying about her, too. Even if she was a threat, we have a bigger problem, now.”

“Ikari?”

“Give me a minute, okay?”

And that was probably Maya blowing air. Uh huh. Tamping out embers beneath her heel. “Did you hear what I said? I don't think Doctor Akagi's in the Reser-”

“I think she's dead,” said Rei. The silence behind him crystallized the sweat slinking down his spine. “It is unlikely anyone could initiate the self-destruct sequence without Ritsuko Akagi's cooperation.”

“No, that's…” Maya chuckled, breathy, just lopsided, “that's not what I meant-”

“Shinji.”

“Leave me alone!”

“Try and follow me, here. Hyuga and Aoba are trapped in Central Dogma and want out,” said Maya. “If either have their faculties, they're all they'll need to initiate self-destruction from source…I showed them how. And Sempai…” Maya swallowed, “she's already tried deceiving Shinji. If anything, she's anticipated where we're headed and is moving to intercept.”

“Or she's dead.”

“Stop saying that!” Cream-colored walls replayed Maya Ibuki until Shinji picked up vinyl scratches in her voice skipping over syllables, scattering her breath. “You're not going to let me stop this? Fine, your call, Rei. Good luck finding a place to hide from a twelve megaton yield.”

He shivered.

An exhaust fan chirped above the urinal to fill the space between Maya giving up on arguing with Rei, and the intercom reminding Shinji why Maya had been arguing with Rei.

Self-destruction will be executed one-hundred and forty minutes after all three have agreed to it.

It was pretty easy to go after that.

-----

“Hate the fucking dark…”

Misato pinched a wad of napkins from a condiments rack before crumpling behind the MOS Burger service counter. A wrist flick ejected her USP's half-spent cartridge and fat runnels of blood migrating down the blade of her hand. She pressed the napkins to the drooling red frowns perforating the heel of her palm, and let her tongue sizzle behind her teeth. “I hate it…”

Misato traced the bill of the upper concourse, its inverted shoreline leaning over the concessions at the West Campus Cafeteria, while the napkins drank at the gouges in her hand. A weather girl glowed at her from a row of ceiling-bolted flatscreen monitors - Rockettes in twill skirt suits. Katsuragi winced up at nearest screen, at the girl's timeslot smile, flickering, looping back and flickering. At the girl's pert breasts, always pointing out the coagulated mud front refusing to swing out over the Kanto Plain.

At Shinji's dour, middle school portrait, frozen in the top right corner of the screen.

Misato dabbed her hand once more before flinging the napkins away. Then she bounced the cartridge in her clean palm and clapped it back into its housing.

“Click…”

She went rigid, rolled her shoulders in a guerilla crouch and blinked into a slit in the stainless steel counter separating her and the atrium. Shadows loped through the artificial moonlight buttressing the temperglass wall wrapped across the Geofront - silhouettes that caught the legs of aluminum-teak chairs and capsized tables as they swayed toward her. Misato's empty hand squeezed into a paw.

The thud threw light everywhere at once.

-----

“That should do it.” Maya stepped back from the console, shaking her head at its blinking push-button haughtiness. Naughty-naughty.

Not that Shinji could tell it had been anymore cheeky than the other control panels cresting the edge of each Reserve Control Center plateau. The panel's utility fit the rest of the room, decorated with gray rice terraces trimmed in tightropes of red and green light; Central Dogma, dehydrated and compressed into dry, brittle function. Maya had begged to differ, had said the place looked and smelled musty.

“The climate and lighting setpoints were Unoccupied Mode,” Maya explained. “I fixed it, so no more visibility problems.”

“The Magi will execute the self-destruct sequence in less than ninety-five minutes.” Rei may not have had it in her to be anymore threatening - just enough juice to hang between him and Ibuki, bag strap sagging off her slumping armature.

“I know that, they only play the announcement on every single level of headquarters,” said Maya. “We're in the black as long as I can remove the access panel and the EM shielding.”

“Do…” Shinji worked out the whine he knew would be glazed over his voice. “Do you need us to do anything?”

“Shinji.” He marveled at the rust Ayanami put on his name. She mustered a sideways glance at him she couldn't keep coiled.

“Why are you hushing him up? Tech One hadn't installed removable shielding yet, so how am I supposed to get to the interface without a circular saw?” Maya ducked beneath the lip of the access panel and laid down. She started running cords to and from nearby outlets. “I'll make a list…I mean, I would if I had any paper.”

“Lieutenant.”

“Try the tier above us, the reserve maintenance supply room. Start with rubber gloves and a mat, please, this panel's hot.”

“I will not leave you unattended.”

Laughter skipped out from beneath the desktop. Maya scrunched her legs up to make triangles with her ivory stockings. “Oh, Rei, that's perfect. Where am I going to go, exactly? Everything I want is already here.”

-----

Shinji slipped sideways through canyons of spare parts. There happened to be lots of things in the supply room, packed and slumping on the floor or crammed onto overworked shelves above him. Somewhere around a bend of Fragile This End Ups, Rei was helping him gather the items Maya would need to keep everything from exploding.

“Lieutenant Ibuki will not be joining us at our final destination.”

Allegedly helping.

Shinji came back to the pocket of bare floor space Rei had been occupying. He watched her wade through boxes brimming with spare, buck-toothed gears and Q ERTY keyboards, before she danced right by a crate full of handheld portable saws. “Right there,” he said.

“What is right where?”

Nope, no appreciation for the concrete, the material, the hardware that touched you or choked your dreams. Maybe she needed to be touched.

“That's it. No, behind you, it's…” Shinji jabbed a finger at the crate, trying to pull her eyes down to it. He let her twirl in place for a second, all Baroque porcelain and steel comb concertino, before he reached behind her knees and hefted one of the tools from the bushel. “You don't know what any of this stuff does, do you?”

Shinji watched her lips melt into a frown. He couldn't keep from smiling, so he made sure it was small and comforting. There, like so. “It's okay. You know, my uncle did some carpentry on the side. The summer before I left I helped him bui-”

“Why did you not say earlier you can better identify the items Lieutenant Ibuki is requesting?”

“I just…I assumed you-”

She grabbed the saw and tracked away from him, fast and far to a hydraulic dolly circled by low-tech hutches like an Old Delhi taxi. Her voice flowed by toppled crashing plastic as she kicked a clique of dehumidifiers off the cart platform.

“Lieutenant Ibuki will also need a digital multimeter, four banana clips, red and yellow wire connecters, dielectric safety glasses, two wire strippers, a cordless soldering iron, a dozen plastic fasteners, a cordless impact wrench, a gooseneck magnifier - lighted, and a bench mounted ground point with ESD ground cords. We will use the dolly to transport the items onto the motorized disability ramp outside of the supply room.”

“That'll work.” Now on to sifting out all the mental refuse Rei had just dumped onto him. Shinji shook his head for that as she yanked on the steering column of the dolly. It yanked back, braying on stubborn, rusted casters. “Do you practice?”

He'd already turned to inspect the inside of a clothes locker by the time he finished asking. The vented, central air had shushed Rei up. Now, Shinji could almost see her giving up on the cart to examine the spinal nodes between his shoulder blades. Plus, there was a mirror in the locker. “My basic training included the employment of mnemonic devices and ingesting supplements that augmented activity in the hippocampus…the brain.”

“I know what the hippocampus is.” Shinji browsed a cluster of lockout tags, a crumpled pinup, Rei's lips pursing behind water spots on the crude, polished disc. His eyes drifted down to a propane canister in the base of the locker.

“They are all proven and accepted methods of improving memory recall.”

“Then I guess that's why my father made you learn them,” he said.

“Anyone can learn them.”

Shinji closed the locker.

“Any human being can learn them.”

“I heard you.” The impact wrench jumped out at him from a DHL box gorged with green motherboards. “Kensuke literally can't read three pages of our JÅmon history text without taking a walk around his neighborhood.”

“In the context of those not subject to inhibitive learning disorders.”

“I know, Rei.”

“You are not behaving like you know.”

“I can't find any of these things we're looking for and we're all going to die. I'm preoccupied.”

“The Evas are human.”

Shinji took care to drop the power tool right on his foot. He ignored the blossoming pain and turned around. Rei's face glowed halogen white beneath an overhead lamp, purple seas near her mouth and cheek and nose different shades of tranquil. “What does that have to do with anything?” Breathe in, out. Out… “No they're not.”

“Yes, they are,” she said.

“No they're not.”

“Yes, they are.”

“No they're not!”

“Yes, they are.”

He stumbled backwards over a pack of toner cartridges, maybe because he had one eye on the supply cabinet standing away from a back wall, maybe because he had his other eye on Rei as he pointed back at her. “You know what? You know what?!”

“What?”

Grip something. Yes. Throttle something; the cabinet latch, thank you, chewing into his palm as he wrenched it clockwise and pulled, and Ritsuko stared out from it with her remaining eye like a zombie roped into some frat pledge. Someone must have packed her inside before hazing off all that skin from her neck and face. Because that made the most sense.

A shout, or tires screeching across tarmac. He turned in time to catch Maya - her ivory stockings, really - skidding over a scoured plank until she had enough traction to scramble back out the supply room.

Hadn't a clue why Rei was charging towards him - she was too far away to keep him from being slammed into, or keep the shrapnel inside him from fragmenting against his ribs, or the teeth from sinking into his shoulder and settling him on the ground with all the feet and grease and dust.

End of Chapter 3

A/N: I think I want to write something else for a while. I think this is serviceable, but it was a slog to write. I apologize for the delay.

Random A/N: IT'S COLLEGE BASKETBALL SEASON!!1!

Thank you for reading and your criticism. Ja.