Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction ❯ The Weaver ❯ Four ( Chapter 4 )
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
By: the mustachioed cat 
Anime/Manga: Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Drama | Type: Divergence | Uploaded On: 05.01.2006 | Pages: 2 | Words: 3.6K | Visits: 233 | Status: Completed
Anime/Manga: Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Drama | Type: Divergence | Uploaded On: 05.01.2006 | Pages: 2 | Words: 3.6K | Visits: 233 | Status: Completed
Four
At the edge of the thing Doctor Akagi had recently dubbed a "sea of Dirac," the Nerv staging area was brightly lit and empty. Floodlights washed over the cement grounds, the whiteboard covered in esoteric maths and surrounded by chairs, all now vacant. Everyone was inside the tactical command shed, arguing, managing. Rei Ayanami sat alone in the shadow of a crate, away from the floodlights and the endless babble of words she could not and did not need to understand.
Something was troubling her. There was a particular feeling in her stomach, a tightening. This had begun earlier in the day, about three hours after Pilot Sohyru had been swallowed up by the Angel. Rei had inquired to Doctor Akagi about this strange feeling, and had been told briskly that perhaps she was experience pre-menstrual cramps. She had been ordered to the medical transport, where she had received three pills the color of blood. Swallowing these pills had no effect on the feeling in stomach.
She found herself moving her hands for want of something to do. She very much wished to speak with Pilot Ikari about this, he might have some insight into the matter. Rei would have asked Pilot Sohryu even, were that possible.
Shinji... her mind seized on his name suddenly, and she shed tears without knowing why.
***
"The UN and JSSDF can only muster forty-five aircraft that meet the minimum specifications for N2 deployment, ma'am," Shigeru was saying. "It will take them at least three hours to muster the additional eighty aircraft - probably from the United States and Australia - with another two to outfit them for deployment."
Misato leaned over the Logistics Officer's shoulder, saw him hide something on his desktop."Don't let them know we're snooping around, Lieutenant," she cautioned. "We've already got those ground troops in place to 'support' us."
Shigeru nodded, then continued to coordinate the evacuation of shelters too close to the blast zone, and maybe doing a little packet-sniffing on the side.
The Major stepped outside the tactical operations center for a breather. The air in there was cool and damp. Everyone was really working their asses off to make this happen, and for the most part all Misato could do was watch.
She walked the length of the concrete observation deck Nerv had co-opted. Five hours en-route, setting up, discussing options, and then the request to the UN. Misato was certain the Commander would not review her handling of this situation favorably. He had given her autonomy, though he was still in the Geo-Front - the Major was certain she was not performing to his expectations. It had just taken too long to make everything come together.
"Major Katsuragi," a quiet voice came from behind her.
"Hey Rei," Misato turned, addressing the girl, attempting to dismiss the formality in the girl's voice.
"Where is Pilot Ikari, Major?"
Misato sighed. That had been bothering her as well. He was not at home, and he didn't have his cell phone. She had expected him to show up by now. In another hour, she would have to call Section 2 and get them to start searching - he couldn't be too close to the shadow when their plan went into motion. That Rei had asked her would have been cute at any other time.
"I don't know, Rei. Are you prepared for the mission?" the Major tried to change the subject.
"Wait at the perimeter of target, spread AT Field to full. Yes Ma'am."
"Good, good."
The First Child walked up from behind the Major and leaned with her against the railing.
"Ma'am, what does it mean when your stomach tightens at a thought, or image?" the girl asked, her voice barely a whisper now.
"Well," Misato began, caught way off guard. "I guess it depends on the thought."
"Pilot Ikari," the girl replied. "It has recently developed that whenever I think about him, my stomach constricts and I am in a small amount of pain."
"Um... what do you think about Sh-Pilot Ikari?" Misato, despite the dire situation, found this conversation intriguing.
"He is my comrade. He is a Pilot. He speaks to me for reasons other then to issue an order. He has seen me naked, which I have been told by a girl at school I should attach some significance to. He has stated that he thought I would make a good housewife. These..."
"Wait, what did..." the Major stopped. No need, she had heard it the first time. "What do you mean, he... never mind, I can't deal with this right now. Just... can you think of a reason why you'd be getting... uh... cramps, whenever you think about him?""In addition to my stomach tightening up, I also shed tears," the blue-haired girl said.
Misato's own stomach tightened. She did not need this shit right now, but she couldn't very well ignore it.
"Did Shinji... hurt you? Did he... do something to you?" the Major asked, now facing Rei, making eye contact.
"He once fell on me by accident. Other then that, no Major."
"Then why would you... I mean, the memory upsets you, that is why you are crying, right?"
The First Child appeared to ponder this. The Major was going to re-ask the question when she finally answered.
"I believe I now know. Several hours ago, when this feeling began, I became aware of a certain wrongness in the world. Something felt wrong to me, in a way I do not think you can understand. Now that I consider my actions and my memory of Pilot Ikari, I think he must be dead."
The Major stared at the girl, not understanding. When comprehension came to her, she kept staring. As she watched, several tears slid down Rei's impassive face.
***
The train yard was dark and misty. A woman stood in the exact center of a roundtable, staring off into the black distance.
Suddenly, she was not alone. Another presence slid into existence beside her, stepping forward from nothing as though walking through an open doorway.
The intruder's features were garbled, indistinct. It was wrapped in darkness, and appeared to spin around crazily for a time.
"Strange place, dark place," the intruder commented in a flat voice as it completed a circuit around the still woman. "Memory mixing cognitive lacks, diffuse, diffuse."
The intruder stopped in front of the woman, whose own features were still as stone.
"Mind and memory and this strange husk. Became a place and become a place, inefficient. A puzzle put together wrong, here, your immortal thought."
The intruder reached out and touched the woman, and the whole world shook.
"A husk yes. A name? The subtext is here, in the gravel, in the rails. You then were who? Here I see a daughter..." the intruder gestured to a particular cross-tie on a particular track nearby, "there I see a husband. Here I see one of those emotion-things, so you were human? A name, a name..."
The intruder paced down the length of the track, then back again.
"I see white walls," it muttered. "I see monstrosity. I see ego. I see more of that emotion-thing. No name. Got no name."
The intruder returned to the still woman. "So then a lock without key, the movement there the twisty-turn being your self. But the lock is so particular, a key can only take so many forms I wonder is your name Kei? Katsui? Kana? Kyoto? Kami?"
In the still of this strange scene, the intruder continued to try and guess the woman's name.
***
I never thought sleep could be so exhausting, Asuka thought.
The amber light and the seams in the walls of the entry plug, once attending to her greatness, the feel of power and happiness whenever she got into Eva and activated it, those things had become oppressive in their sameness. Asuka couldn't stand to look at the inside of the entry plug anymore.
"This is stupid," the girl muttered to no one. "I'm the best they have, I have the best synch rate. They can't afford to lose me, so why haven't they come for me yet?"
She pressed a button in the right control handle. Scintillating light filled the entry plug, and she was again faced with a wall of white. Radar picked up nothing, external atmospheric sensors gave readings too various and extreme to be real. Asuka deactivated the view screen, noting absently that the clock indicating remaining life-support had jumped forward twenty minutes.
"Can't die like this," she muttered, closing her eyes.
Around her, motes of white began to appear in the LCL.
There was that door again. That same god damn door, and there she was, pushing it open, so happy.
Mommy, mommy! she had cried. I'm a real e-leet pilot now, just like you!
You can love me now, right mama? You don't need that doll anymore.
Look at me mama, I'm the one like you. I'm the one that loves you best!
The door opened, and there was that doll, that hated doll. It was suspended from the ceiling by a rope, which was fastened around its neck. Next to the doll...
The only thing I can remember about her, back before her accident, was that she would read me bedtime stories. I don't even remember her voice, just the way her body curled around mine, holding me. That was where I was happy - with her. She read me "Goodnight Moon", and I remember making-like I was reading ahead of her, though I was just trying to recite it from memory. 'Goo nigh cow jump ova moo!' I would pretend-recite, drawing my finger carefully over the wrong line. And she would just laugh and hold me close, and her warmth, she was my whole world.
...her mother was next to the doll. She was standing on a chair, balancing on shaking, shrunken legs.
I remember that, her reading to me, because I managed to grasp what happened quickly. That first day I have gone to see her in the hospital, and she hadn't recognized me, the doctors said it was the medication. They said she would be back to normal soon. But when I saw the way her eyes looked ahead and stared through me, the way her hands grasped at nothing, I knew mother was hurt bad, that her eyes might never focus on me again. So I held on to that image of her reading me bedtime stories, because if I didn't make a conscious decision to remember, that memory would be forgotten. I wrote it down, I used to re-read my childish scrawl, but I don't anymore. That memory could not become my mother, and the empty thing that looked like her I could only attend to and pray for something to change. Then someone gave her that god damn doll.
Mama? Mama, I'm a pilot now, they told me today! Nana picked me up from school and
Mama? What are you doing?
In the face of such wrongness, it took me too long to understand. By the time meaning came to me, the rope was around her neck.
Please... no mama! Don't go! Don't go!
Stay with me mama, I'm begging you, look at me!
Then, die with me, Asuka, the thing that had once been my mother said.
I saw her die. I saw the thing she had become wiggle on the end of that rope like a worm. That was when I knew she wasn't my mama. Mamas don't make their children die. Mamas didn't make my tummy hurt they way she did, every time I saw her. Mamas hold me close and make me feel safe, and read me Goodnight Moon.
I left before they found the body.
Asuka opened her eyes. The LCL was getting cloudy, and there was a metallic odor in the air. Blood.
The Second Child put a hand to her mouth and suppressed the urge to vomit. When the feeling in her chest had gone away, she took one nasty breath of LCL, then held it. It should last her five minutes, at least.
There was a red light blinking at the wrist of her plug suit. Less then two hours before it would stop heating her. The LCL was already cold on her face.
"Those idiots, they better hurry," she muttered. "Stupid Wondergirl, stupid Shinji. Stupid Misato. Why are you making me wait?"
She had one hour of life-support left.
She closed her eyes. For only a moment.
The air was thick like bacon grease. She opened her eyes, and couldn't see the walls of the entry plug, the LCL was too thick with ropey white strands. Asuka gagged at the taste and smell of the stuff. Scaberous, white-blood. She choked on it.
Taking in a mouthful of the now-vile stuff, Asuka kicked off the pilot seat and towards the top of the entry plug. Here the LCL was somewhat cleaner. She ducked down long enough to see the life support clock displayed on the top of the left control handle.
Five minutes.
She was dead.
Even if they pulled her out right now, there wouldn't be enough time to unseat the entry plug. Even if she used the emergency eject, it would take at least four minutes to hit the ground.
Dead.
She was dead.
***"Unae? Uaeda? Ueada?" the intruder continued its guessing before the silent woman. "Yune? Yone? Yane?" it chanted, disappearing briefly, only to reappear in another position around the woman. "Keep on coming back to the ko phonetic, should. Wonder, wonder am I looking for a name? Identity the crux - image of self. You came here thinking of this, thinking of that..."
The air in the scene changed. The intruder was given pause.
One moment by her side, the next perched on the woman's head, the intruder scoured the dark for whatever had changed, because it was old-fashioned like that - sick at looking at the world laid objective.
There was something out there, just beyond that thing that looked like an overpass. The intruder scampered down and edged forward, first in the shadows of cross-ties, then in the darkness beneath the overpass. There was a person out there. A real person. A woman, or younger, hard to remember the now suddenly.
The girl-thing appeared to be trying to approach the still-woman. Unfortunetly, she had no place in the image, could not understand the principles involved. The chasms of distance present in this place were absolute, if one could not remove oneself from the image.
The girl did make some progress, which surprised the intruder and caused it to reveal itself, laughing and dancing around her.
"My my a full thing here, yes. Here you are why are you here? A person, a place, a distant relation yes? You moved, you moved."
The girl did not appear to see him, her gaze fixed on the distant figure of the still-woman.
"That thing that one, that little stone avatar - know it yeah?" the intruder prompted again, rather used to having its questions go unanswered.
Kaji, the girl breathed, words stilled in the air. Kaji, help me!
The intruder landed in front of the girl, who was now making no progress at all.
"Secret," the intruder explained. "Here? I am? Don't know why. Compelled to come, compelled to stay. Strange that, right? Compelled also to do this."
The intruder's indistinct clothing billowed open and wrapped around the girl. A soft hand covered her eyes.
When the hand came away, the girl-thing stood before the still-woman.
"Strange thing, here. Mind is sorta, sorta not. Key that turns, ya know? A name, I got her name I think. Been wondering if I should say it or just play my guessing-games."
The girl gained sudden awareness. She focused on the intruder, then the still-woman.
"Name reverberates just so, see? Kyoko Sohryu."
Nothing happened, nothing changed.
"Damn and all, gotta be the owner of that memory. Got to be the aspect, the identification of oneself at inception, see? Pastoral scene, you picture it why? Where are you in the shot?" the intruder pointed at the still-woman, "here. Your name is Kyokosohryu and but it is not."
The girl was trying to approach the woman. The intruder gently pushed her forward.
The girl moved in close, touched the woman, felt her skin, her warmth. Then she cried out and embraced the still-woman, and spoke
Mama.
***
Forces gathered at the edge of the sea of Dirac, Unit Zero at the very edge. Ninety-five contrails lanced through the sky, completing one final pass before execution commencing their bombing run.
Ritsuko Akagi observed the mission center through binoculars, the staging area having been moved back two miles. No good to be right next to 992 N2 detonations.
She stood on the small balcony, much smaller then the observation deck at the previous location. She was smoking a cigarette, binoculars in one hand, PDA with feedback of mission progress in her other. She had left the command shed, wanting to try and forget the way Misato had sounded when they had shown her the Third Child's body.
Ritsuko had gotten a good view of it, and that was enough. No face, broken everything, only way you could tell it was him was by the plugsuit.
They had found him in the street, near the shadow. It looked like he had jumped off one of the twenty-story jobs that dotted the commercial district. Ritsuko had no idea what had pushed the Third Child to suicide, but then again, she wasn't his guardian. Misato had left with the quiet ambulance, quiet clearly in shock. The Commander had transferred the Major's responsibilities to Ritsuko.
Destroying the Angel was their ultimate goal now. Even if Asuka had stayed on life-support the entire time, chances were equally as good that she was dead - Ritsuko had never liked the loud girl, but this particular fact gave her no satisfaction. The Commander had sent her a message that Unit Two and its pilot were to be considered a secondary concern, destroying the Angel was to be Nerv's ultimate goal.
Ritsuko wondered how Gendou was taking his son's death. She wondered if he was capable of mourning at all.
The doctor had moved the schedule up twelve minutes in spite of the Commander's orders. It was theoretically possible for the Second Child to survive for that long, and Ritsuko figured Misato would appreciate it in hindsight, even if it felt like a useless gesture to the doctor.
The ground troops were closing in around the sea of Dirac, planting targeting lasers. Unit Zero stood completely still. Ritsuko wondered, idly, if Rei cared that Shinji was dead. It would be interesting to observe how that thing, totally devoid of frame-of-reference, handled it. Interesting, but morbid.
She was about to put down the binoculars and go back to the command shed when the sea blew apart.
The two dimensional surface ruptured and heaved. Red light cut through the black deepness, and the black and white thing in the sky shuddered and faded to just black.
Blood erupted at the top of the sphere, and for just a moment, an enormous hand was visible. Another tear, this time nearly bisecting the creature latitudinally, appeared, a wide fan of blood raining on the broiling ground below.
Hands appeared on either side of the laceration, and it was ripped open wide. Evangelion Unit Two roared.
The ground stopped moving at the exact moment that the sphere lost its shape and began falling from the sky. The blood-drenched Evangelion jumped from the descending Angel and landed on the ruptured sea, not going in it but through it.
The blackness flickered for a moment, and then the shadow disappeared. The flaccid black shape in the sky continued to fall, and Unit Two stood in the midst of a restored city, covered with blood.
***
The body was taken to Tokyo 3 Municipal, and placed on a steel slab in the morgue. All the hospital staff had been evacuated, so Section 2 had the run of the place. Misato was in one of the waiting rooms, drinking scalding coffee and working her way through her sixth cigarette. She blew smoke at the prominently displayed "That You for Not Smoking" sign, and drank another gulp of coffee. Section 2's reports on the Third Child, everything they had collected in the last month, lay spread out before her.
She was officially conducting an investigation into the Third Child's suicide - an investigation powered by nicotine and caffiene and six beers from a vending machine she had stopped at after they had made her leave the ambulance and follow in her own car.
She poured over the data Section 2 had gathered meticulously, looking for any sign of depression, soaking it all up, where it hardened in her heart. She read the psychological long-term forecasts for interaction between the Third and Second Children, was sort of saddened that things had never progressed that far for him.
At the edge of the thing Doctor Akagi had recently dubbed a "sea of Dirac," the Nerv staging area was brightly lit and empty. Floodlights washed over the cement grounds, the whiteboard covered in esoteric maths and surrounded by chairs, all now vacant. Everyone was inside the tactical command shed, arguing, managing. Rei Ayanami sat alone in the shadow of a crate, away from the floodlights and the endless babble of words she could not and did not need to understand.
Something was troubling her. There was a particular feeling in her stomach, a tightening. This had begun earlier in the day, about three hours after Pilot Sohyru had been swallowed up by the Angel. Rei had inquired to Doctor Akagi about this strange feeling, and had been told briskly that perhaps she was experience pre-menstrual cramps. She had been ordered to the medical transport, where she had received three pills the color of blood. Swallowing these pills had no effect on the feeling in stomach.
She found herself moving her hands for want of something to do. She very much wished to speak with Pilot Ikari about this, he might have some insight into the matter. Rei would have asked Pilot Sohryu even, were that possible.
Shinji... her mind seized on his name suddenly, and she shed tears without knowing why.
***
"The UN and JSSDF can only muster forty-five aircraft that meet the minimum specifications for N2 deployment, ma'am," Shigeru was saying. "It will take them at least three hours to muster the additional eighty aircraft - probably from the United States and Australia - with another two to outfit them for deployment."
Misato leaned over the Logistics Officer's shoulder, saw him hide something on his desktop."Don't let them know we're snooping around, Lieutenant," she cautioned. "We've already got those ground troops in place to 'support' us."
Shigeru nodded, then continued to coordinate the evacuation of shelters too close to the blast zone, and maybe doing a little packet-sniffing on the side.
The Major stepped outside the tactical operations center for a breather. The air in there was cool and damp. Everyone was really working their asses off to make this happen, and for the most part all Misato could do was watch.
She walked the length of the concrete observation deck Nerv had co-opted. Five hours en-route, setting up, discussing options, and then the request to the UN. Misato was certain the Commander would not review her handling of this situation favorably. He had given her autonomy, though he was still in the Geo-Front - the Major was certain she was not performing to his expectations. It had just taken too long to make everything come together.
"Major Katsuragi," a quiet voice came from behind her.
"Hey Rei," Misato turned, addressing the girl, attempting to dismiss the formality in the girl's voice.
"Where is Pilot Ikari, Major?"
Misato sighed. That had been bothering her as well. He was not at home, and he didn't have his cell phone. She had expected him to show up by now. In another hour, she would have to call Section 2 and get them to start searching - he couldn't be too close to the shadow when their plan went into motion. That Rei had asked her would have been cute at any other time.
"I don't know, Rei. Are you prepared for the mission?" the Major tried to change the subject.
"Wait at the perimeter of target, spread AT Field to full. Yes Ma'am."
"Good, good."
The First Child walked up from behind the Major and leaned with her against the railing.
"Ma'am, what does it mean when your stomach tightens at a thought, or image?" the girl asked, her voice barely a whisper now.
"Well," Misato began, caught way off guard. "I guess it depends on the thought."
"Pilot Ikari," the girl replied. "It has recently developed that whenever I think about him, my stomach constricts and I am in a small amount of pain."
"Um... what do you think about Sh-Pilot Ikari?" Misato, despite the dire situation, found this conversation intriguing.
"He is my comrade. He is a Pilot. He speaks to me for reasons other then to issue an order. He has seen me naked, which I have been told by a girl at school I should attach some significance to. He has stated that he thought I would make a good housewife. These..."
"Wait, what did..." the Major stopped. No need, she had heard it the first time. "What do you mean, he... never mind, I can't deal with this right now. Just... can you think of a reason why you'd be getting... uh... cramps, whenever you think about him?""In addition to my stomach tightening up, I also shed tears," the blue-haired girl said.
Misato's own stomach tightened. She did not need this shit right now, but she couldn't very well ignore it.
"Did Shinji... hurt you? Did he... do something to you?" the Major asked, now facing Rei, making eye contact.
"He once fell on me by accident. Other then that, no Major."
"Then why would you... I mean, the memory upsets you, that is why you are crying, right?"
The First Child appeared to ponder this. The Major was going to re-ask the question when she finally answered.
"I believe I now know. Several hours ago, when this feeling began, I became aware of a certain wrongness in the world. Something felt wrong to me, in a way I do not think you can understand. Now that I consider my actions and my memory of Pilot Ikari, I think he must be dead."
The Major stared at the girl, not understanding. When comprehension came to her, she kept staring. As she watched, several tears slid down Rei's impassive face.
***
The train yard was dark and misty. A woman stood in the exact center of a roundtable, staring off into the black distance.
Suddenly, she was not alone. Another presence slid into existence beside her, stepping forward from nothing as though walking through an open doorway.
The intruder's features were garbled, indistinct. It was wrapped in darkness, and appeared to spin around crazily for a time.
"Strange place, dark place," the intruder commented in a flat voice as it completed a circuit around the still woman. "Memory mixing cognitive lacks, diffuse, diffuse."
The intruder stopped in front of the woman, whose own features were still as stone.
"Mind and memory and this strange husk. Became a place and become a place, inefficient. A puzzle put together wrong, here, your immortal thought."
The intruder reached out and touched the woman, and the whole world shook.
"A husk yes. A name? The subtext is here, in the gravel, in the rails. You then were who? Here I see a daughter..." the intruder gestured to a particular cross-tie on a particular track nearby, "there I see a husband. Here I see one of those emotion-things, so you were human? A name, a name..."
The intruder paced down the length of the track, then back again.
"I see white walls," it muttered. "I see monstrosity. I see ego. I see more of that emotion-thing. No name. Got no name."
The intruder returned to the still woman. "So then a lock without key, the movement there the twisty-turn being your self. But the lock is so particular, a key can only take so many forms I wonder is your name Kei? Katsui? Kana? Kyoto? Kami?"
In the still of this strange scene, the intruder continued to try and guess the woman's name.
***
I never thought sleep could be so exhausting, Asuka thought.
The amber light and the seams in the walls of the entry plug, once attending to her greatness, the feel of power and happiness whenever she got into Eva and activated it, those things had become oppressive in their sameness. Asuka couldn't stand to look at the inside of the entry plug anymore.
"This is stupid," the girl muttered to no one. "I'm the best they have, I have the best synch rate. They can't afford to lose me, so why haven't they come for me yet?"
She pressed a button in the right control handle. Scintillating light filled the entry plug, and she was again faced with a wall of white. Radar picked up nothing, external atmospheric sensors gave readings too various and extreme to be real. Asuka deactivated the view screen, noting absently that the clock indicating remaining life-support had jumped forward twenty minutes.
"Can't die like this," she muttered, closing her eyes.
Around her, motes of white began to appear in the LCL.
There was that door again. That same god damn door, and there she was, pushing it open, so happy.
Mommy, mommy! she had cried. I'm a real e-leet pilot now, just like you!
You can love me now, right mama? You don't need that doll anymore.
Look at me mama, I'm the one like you. I'm the one that loves you best!
The door opened, and there was that doll, that hated doll. It was suspended from the ceiling by a rope, which was fastened around its neck. Next to the doll...
The only thing I can remember about her, back before her accident, was that she would read me bedtime stories. I don't even remember her voice, just the way her body curled around mine, holding me. That was where I was happy - with her. She read me "Goodnight Moon", and I remember making-like I was reading ahead of her, though I was just trying to recite it from memory. 'Goo nigh cow jump ova moo!' I would pretend-recite, drawing my finger carefully over the wrong line. And she would just laugh and hold me close, and her warmth, she was my whole world.
...her mother was next to the doll. She was standing on a chair, balancing on shaking, shrunken legs.
I remember that, her reading to me, because I managed to grasp what happened quickly. That first day I have gone to see her in the hospital, and she hadn't recognized me, the doctors said it was the medication. They said she would be back to normal soon. But when I saw the way her eyes looked ahead and stared through me, the way her hands grasped at nothing, I knew mother was hurt bad, that her eyes might never focus on me again. So I held on to that image of her reading me bedtime stories, because if I didn't make a conscious decision to remember, that memory would be forgotten. I wrote it down, I used to re-read my childish scrawl, but I don't anymore. That memory could not become my mother, and the empty thing that looked like her I could only attend to and pray for something to change. Then someone gave her that god damn doll.
Mama? Mama, I'm a pilot now, they told me today! Nana picked me up from school and
Mama? What are you doing?
In the face of such wrongness, it took me too long to understand. By the time meaning came to me, the rope was around her neck.
Please... no mama! Don't go! Don't go!
Stay with me mama, I'm begging you, look at me!
Then, die with me, Asuka, the thing that had once been my mother said.
I saw her die. I saw the thing she had become wiggle on the end of that rope like a worm. That was when I knew she wasn't my mama. Mamas don't make their children die. Mamas didn't make my tummy hurt they way she did, every time I saw her. Mamas hold me close and make me feel safe, and read me Goodnight Moon.
I left before they found the body.
Asuka opened her eyes. The LCL was getting cloudy, and there was a metallic odor in the air. Blood.
The Second Child put a hand to her mouth and suppressed the urge to vomit. When the feeling in her chest had gone away, she took one nasty breath of LCL, then held it. It should last her five minutes, at least.
There was a red light blinking at the wrist of her plug suit. Less then two hours before it would stop heating her. The LCL was already cold on her face.
"Those idiots, they better hurry," she muttered. "Stupid Wondergirl, stupid Shinji. Stupid Misato. Why are you making me wait?"
She had one hour of life-support left.
She closed her eyes. For only a moment.
The air was thick like bacon grease. She opened her eyes, and couldn't see the walls of the entry plug, the LCL was too thick with ropey white strands. Asuka gagged at the taste and smell of the stuff. Scaberous, white-blood. She choked on it.
Taking in a mouthful of the now-vile stuff, Asuka kicked off the pilot seat and towards the top of the entry plug. Here the LCL was somewhat cleaner. She ducked down long enough to see the life support clock displayed on the top of the left control handle.
Five minutes.
She was dead.
Even if they pulled her out right now, there wouldn't be enough time to unseat the entry plug. Even if she used the emergency eject, it would take at least four minutes to hit the ground.
Dead.
She was dead.
***"Unae? Uaeda? Ueada?" the intruder continued its guessing before the silent woman. "Yune? Yone? Yane?" it chanted, disappearing briefly, only to reappear in another position around the woman. "Keep on coming back to the ko phonetic, should. Wonder, wonder am I looking for a name? Identity the crux - image of self. You came here thinking of this, thinking of that..."
The air in the scene changed. The intruder was given pause.
One moment by her side, the next perched on the woman's head, the intruder scoured the dark for whatever had changed, because it was old-fashioned like that - sick at looking at the world laid objective.
There was something out there, just beyond that thing that looked like an overpass. The intruder scampered down and edged forward, first in the shadows of cross-ties, then in the darkness beneath the overpass. There was a person out there. A real person. A woman, or younger, hard to remember the now suddenly.
The girl-thing appeared to be trying to approach the still-woman. Unfortunetly, she had no place in the image, could not understand the principles involved. The chasms of distance present in this place were absolute, if one could not remove oneself from the image.
The girl did make some progress, which surprised the intruder and caused it to reveal itself, laughing and dancing around her.
"My my a full thing here, yes. Here you are why are you here? A person, a place, a distant relation yes? You moved, you moved."
The girl did not appear to see him, her gaze fixed on the distant figure of the still-woman.
"That thing that one, that little stone avatar - know it yeah?" the intruder prompted again, rather used to having its questions go unanswered.
Kaji, the girl breathed, words stilled in the air. Kaji, help me!
The intruder landed in front of the girl, who was now making no progress at all.
"Secret," the intruder explained. "Here? I am? Don't know why. Compelled to come, compelled to stay. Strange that, right? Compelled also to do this."
The intruder's indistinct clothing billowed open and wrapped around the girl. A soft hand covered her eyes.
When the hand came away, the girl-thing stood before the still-woman.
"Strange thing, here. Mind is sorta, sorta not. Key that turns, ya know? A name, I got her name I think. Been wondering if I should say it or just play my guessing-games."
The girl gained sudden awareness. She focused on the intruder, then the still-woman.
"Name reverberates just so, see? Kyoko Sohryu."
Nothing happened, nothing changed.
"Damn and all, gotta be the owner of that memory. Got to be the aspect, the identification of oneself at inception, see? Pastoral scene, you picture it why? Where are you in the shot?" the intruder pointed at the still-woman, "here. Your name is Kyokosohryu and but it is not."
The girl was trying to approach the woman. The intruder gently pushed her forward.
The girl moved in close, touched the woman, felt her skin, her warmth. Then she cried out and embraced the still-woman, and spoke
Mama.
***
Forces gathered at the edge of the sea of Dirac, Unit Zero at the very edge. Ninety-five contrails lanced through the sky, completing one final pass before execution commencing their bombing run.
Ritsuko Akagi observed the mission center through binoculars, the staging area having been moved back two miles. No good to be right next to 992 N2 detonations.
She stood on the small balcony, much smaller then the observation deck at the previous location. She was smoking a cigarette, binoculars in one hand, PDA with feedback of mission progress in her other. She had left the command shed, wanting to try and forget the way Misato had sounded when they had shown her the Third Child's body.
Ritsuko had gotten a good view of it, and that was enough. No face, broken everything, only way you could tell it was him was by the plugsuit.
They had found him in the street, near the shadow. It looked like he had jumped off one of the twenty-story jobs that dotted the commercial district. Ritsuko had no idea what had pushed the Third Child to suicide, but then again, she wasn't his guardian. Misato had left with the quiet ambulance, quiet clearly in shock. The Commander had transferred the Major's responsibilities to Ritsuko.
Destroying the Angel was their ultimate goal now. Even if Asuka had stayed on life-support the entire time, chances were equally as good that she was dead - Ritsuko had never liked the loud girl, but this particular fact gave her no satisfaction. The Commander had sent her a message that Unit Two and its pilot were to be considered a secondary concern, destroying the Angel was to be Nerv's ultimate goal.
Ritsuko wondered how Gendou was taking his son's death. She wondered if he was capable of mourning at all.
The doctor had moved the schedule up twelve minutes in spite of the Commander's orders. It was theoretically possible for the Second Child to survive for that long, and Ritsuko figured Misato would appreciate it in hindsight, even if it felt like a useless gesture to the doctor.
The ground troops were closing in around the sea of Dirac, planting targeting lasers. Unit Zero stood completely still. Ritsuko wondered, idly, if Rei cared that Shinji was dead. It would be interesting to observe how that thing, totally devoid of frame-of-reference, handled it. Interesting, but morbid.
She was about to put down the binoculars and go back to the command shed when the sea blew apart.
The two dimensional surface ruptured and heaved. Red light cut through the black deepness, and the black and white thing in the sky shuddered and faded to just black.
Blood erupted at the top of the sphere, and for just a moment, an enormous hand was visible. Another tear, this time nearly bisecting the creature latitudinally, appeared, a wide fan of blood raining on the broiling ground below.
Hands appeared on either side of the laceration, and it was ripped open wide. Evangelion Unit Two roared.
The ground stopped moving at the exact moment that the sphere lost its shape and began falling from the sky. The blood-drenched Evangelion jumped from the descending Angel and landed on the ruptured sea, not going in it but through it.
The blackness flickered for a moment, and then the shadow disappeared. The flaccid black shape in the sky continued to fall, and Unit Two stood in the midst of a restored city, covered with blood.
***
The body was taken to Tokyo 3 Municipal, and placed on a steel slab in the morgue. All the hospital staff had been evacuated, so Section 2 had the run of the place. Misato was in one of the waiting rooms, drinking scalding coffee and working her way through her sixth cigarette. She blew smoke at the prominently displayed "That You for Not Smoking" sign, and drank another gulp of coffee. Section 2's reports on the Third Child, everything they had collected in the last month, lay spread out before her.
She was officially conducting an investigation into the Third Child's suicide - an investigation powered by nicotine and caffiene and six beers from a vending machine she had stopped at after they had made her leave the ambulance and follow in her own car.
She poured over the data Section 2 had gathered meticulously, looking for any sign of depression, soaking it all up, where it hardened in her heart. She read the psychological long-term forecasts for interaction between the Third and Second Children, was sort of saddened that things had never progressed that far for him.