-*-
John Biles & Rod M. Present
A Neon Genesis Evangelion Elseworlds
Children of an Elder God
Part 22
"Slouching Towards Bethlehem"
-*-
"Put that box over there," Akane said to Makoto.
He nodded and hauled the box over to stack it on top
of another box. He was helping Akane move into her new
apartment; it was a pretty nice two bedroom apartment,
better than the place she'd lived in back in Japan.
"That's everything, right?"
"No, we've still got to haul the computer in and set
it up," she said.
"Oh, right." They headed down to her car together.
On the way down, she said, "Thanks for helping me
out. I know everything must be busy for you, what with that
crazy neo- nazi attack."
"It's keeping us hopping," he said as he held the
front door open for her.
She slipped through quickly, then held it for him.
"So what's up with these 'Children of the Stars'?"
"With what?" he asked.
She headed over to her car, fumbling with her keys.
"They were proselytizing as I came into town."
"Some religious group?" he asked.
She unlocked the passenger door and hauled out a
large box, which she handed to him, then pulled a second
crate out of the footwell. "Yeah. They think the Children
are gods come to save humanity or something. Or possibly
they're crazed pedophiles."
He sighed. "We do not need crazed cultists trying
to get into NERV."
She took the lead as they headed upstairs.
"Reminds me of the Joan Jett cult."
"That's a joke, right?" he asked.
"No."
"Damn."
They headed into her apartment and into the second
bedroom, which Akane was turning into her study. The desk
was already in place. "Okay, slave, go to work," she said,
teasingly, sitting down on the bed which was shoved against
one wall.
He began unpacking and assembling the computer.
"If you can find out anything about them, I'd appreciate
it," he said.
"I'll keep my ears and eyes open," she said, then
sprawled out on the bed, stretching.
He tried not to stare too much and told himself he
needed to talk to her about Misato. He still wasn't sure
what she really thought about him and Misato, whether she
was teasing or serious the times she had told him to seize
any chance he could get. "Thanks."
"You're welcome."
She hummed a tune he didn't know as he finished
hooking up the computer. "Alright, come make sure it all
works," he said.
She quickly opened up her email files, then played
around with the browser a little, followed by a quick game
of minesweeper. Rising from her chair, she said, "It all
works. Thanks, Makoto."
"Do you want help unpacking?" he asked. "I don't
have to go back and do any work today."
She ran a finger up and down his back along his
spine. "I think I want to unpack you and have a little
fun." She smiled her impish smile at him.
We need to talk about Misato, he told himself.
Before I go doing anything more with her. "And unpack you
too?" his mouth asked without his conscious volition.
She brought his hands up to the top button of her
blouse. "You've got to take the wrapping off your thank-you
present," she said, purring.
His fingers began to unbutton her blouse. He leaned
down and kissed her as he did so. We can talk about Misato
later, he decided. I'll be more relaxed after this.
The bed proved to be quite nicely springy, but the
topic of Misato did not come up.
-*-
The Children jostled each other as they waited in
the auditorium with a huge number of NERV staff members,
many of whom they'd never seen before. Fuyutsuki sat on the
stage with Misato, Commander Weiss, Ingrid, and Dr.
Himmelfarb. Eleven men and women sat in a row on one side
of the stage, watching all of the staff members impassively.
"Hello, everyone," Fuyutsuki said. "This is the UN
Inspection Team. They are here to examine our procedures
and performance. Please cooperate with them. They'll be
wanting to interview some of you, and they may be dropping
by your workspace at any time, so be ready."
He went on to introduce them all to the staff
members; Shinji tried to remember the names, but it was too
many at once for him. Asuka muttered, "Someone's head is
going to roll."
"They're after Commander Ikari, I suspect," Hikari
said.
Anna nodded. Shinji felt his stomach sink at that.
There has to be something I can do to help Father, he
thought. But what?
-*-
"So what do you think about the GGR project?" Ingrid
asked Misato.
"The what?" Misato asked, looking up from the
personnel folder she was pouring through. She and Ingrid
were having a conference to discuss whether there might be
any surviving traitors in NERV-Germany's ranks, and if so,
how to root them out.
"Oh, I suppose you haven't heard that nickname. I
think the official name is something like the Barbarossa
Project. There's an EU consortium trying to build inorganic
EVA units," Ingrid said.
"Unless they've found another way to generate an
AT-field, they can build giant robots until the cows come
home," Misato said. "As conventional weaponry doesn't do
the job, and sticking the conventional weaponry on a giant
robot won't somehow make it work better."
Ingrid nodded. "That was my opinion too."
Misato looked down at the files. "I have a strong
feeling that we're not getting anywhere."
Ingrid sighed and put down her folder. "No, we
aren't. All the people we caught committing treason on tape
got shot by NERV security after they hooked up with their
neo-Nazi allies. I have a feeling there's probably some
infiltrator in our ranks who used the ones who got shot as
proxies, as I can't believe these neo- Nazis pulled this
without further help. For that matter, even after we
checked all the email and phone logs, I couldn't find any
evidence of how they communicated with their agents inside
the base, and the leaders of the neo-Nazis all died in the
fighting."
"I have a theory, though I don't know of a good way
to prove it."
"Go on."
"Coded email spam. It would be pretty easy to set
up some sort of code where pleas for helping Nigerians
engage in bank fraud means 'Friday' and 'Make.Money.Fast'
means 'We're breaking in' and various other kinds contain
different times or whatever."
"..."
"As the mailboxes of all three of the traitors had a
lot of spam in them."
Ingrid sighed. "Time to have the MAGI analyze the
patterns, then."
Misato nodded. "I don't know if I'm right, but I
suspect that, combined with calling people while off-base,
was likely the way in which it was done."
"It's something to work from, at least," Ingrid
said.
"Exactly. If nothing else, it may be a good excuse
to shut down some annoying spammers."
"Can't argue with that."
-*-
Asuka sat down at her computer. Not having to
actually take classes she'd already gone through at about
age nine meant she now had time to try to resume her
interrupted research. She stared again at one of the
passages from Kensuke's notes.
[In latter days, men shall wield the powers of the gods, but
lack their wisdom. They shall walk the halls of the dead,
where the Great Cauldron of Life waits for the one who shall
master it. Yet, they shall lack the ancient lore, and find
only destruction instead of life, raising a great funeral
pyre. That light shall call to he who sings the stars into
place, who will set to his work.]
Finding Adam down in Antarctica, she thought. But
they did something wrong and it unleashed the signal which
started waking up all of the Angels and unleashing them on
us.
[And the day shall come when the endless weaver shall
complete his creation and cross the abyss which shielded the
world from him and once more gaze upon the sun. And he
shall sound the call, awakening his ancient enemy friends to
come forth. The heights will sink and the deeps will rise;
the veils will be parted and what is known will be occulted;
the dead shall walk and the living shall die. ]
The endless weaver is Matriel, Atlach-Nacha, she
thought. The ice cap has partly melted and the deep waters
risen and the heights been lowered. And the Angels have
come forth.
[Blood calls to blood. Power calls to power. Fivefold they
rise from the great chasm, stalking across the land in the
visage of men. Dreams made flesh, or flesh made Dream they
are, come to renew the ancient cycle. As before, so it
happens now. In the end, they too shall yield to despair as
did those who came before. In the end, they shall become
what they fight. And the Voice of Endless Chaos will laugh
with them at the shattered ashes of their faded dreams.]
Fivefold...there's a lot of references in his notes
to Angels of the Elements. Except that he seemed to think
we were the Angels of the Elements. But there's six of us.
There aren't six elements.
She checked the notes again.
[Four Lords or Five? Asuka must be Fire. Shinji
is...Earth? Plant? Air? Rei could be Water or Air. Who
is the Fourth Child? Someone I know? Probably male, for
balance...but then, their goal is not that of balance.
Story repeats itself? Xoth's defenders betrayed them for
power. As did those of Yhtill. Can fire be fought with
fire? Let he who hunts monsters beware. I can feel the
abyss gazing into me. Will they save or damn us all?]
Asuka shuddered; she too had felt the abyss, the
temptation of all the power. But she hadn't fallen in yet,
unlike Kensuke. She stared at the screen, thinking of him,
and how it had ended for him. I don't want to end up like
that, she thought. There had to have been something we
could have done. But she didn't know what.
Finally, she cleared her mind, returning to her
work. She tried to think how elemental references could
work, but she wasn't sure; they all had a mix of powers from
the Angels. Sure, she preferred fire, but she could call on
ice as well, or the paralyzing gaze of
Rahab...Medusa...Ghatanothoa.
She thought about the Kingdom of Joy; it had been
betrayed by a man who had become a god by doing so, Hastur,
He Who Is Not To Be Named, the King in Yellow. Part of her
mind could remember Xoth and its betrayal by its defenders.
The power they took on was a corrupting power. It was hard,
sometimes, to restrain it, and grew harder as she grew in
strength. Yet, nothing else could stop the Angels.
Perhaps this happened in time, on every world, some
crisis which required its inhabitants to tap into these
powers, powers which they could not contain. And so the
saviors they created for themselves came to rule over them
or who destroyed them in wars among themselves. She could
feel fragments of memory of the rivalry of Atlach-Nacha and
Shelob and how he had fled to another world when the war
turned against him. The Eight Crystal Towers of Xoth
shattered. The death of Alars. The slow degeneration of
the Old Ones as she watched from her womb/tomb/prison. In
the end, they had not even known why the climate turned
against them, only that they had to flee in search of
warmth, for they had abandoned their sciences to save their
sanity, and in the end, lost both in superstition and chaos.
The Angels...once they had been beings, mortals,
like humanity. Empowered with dangerous arts to save their
races, they had been corrupted by power and risen up to rule
over those who made them, or destroyed their creators in
their own games of power or corrupted them into things
barely recognizable, like the Byakhee. They shared a common
power, but they fought because few shared a common origin
and it was natural for beings of vast power to have vast
egos. And some, she thought, were close to mindless.
And behind them all, the Outer Gods, serene, potent,
all- sufficient, insane, uncaring, destructive, creative,
all and nothing at once. And their Voice, their Herald, the
Crawling Chaos, Nylarathotep, who comes down from the Outer
Void to mock. A being of a thousand and one forms, most
bringing madness in their wake. But he could also pass as a
man, or in some forms, from what Kensuke and she had
discovered, could apparently possess people as well, like
the unfortunate Robert Blake, who had died from the touch of
the Haunter in the Dark.
For a moment, she felt a paranoid fear that
Nylarathotep had replaced Gendo after Adam's breakout.
He'd been down with Kaji, who died, yet had turned up
apparently largely unharmed. Maybe Nylarathotep had taken
his place. But if that was the case, he wasn't doing much
to sabotage things. Unless, maybe, he had tired of his old
toys and wanted to raise up new ones. The King of Joy might
have fallen into the darkness by outside conquest, but Xoth
had fallen into the dark through victory. And he did try to
get us to serve him, she thought.
What was his game? What did the Outer Gods want,
Asuka asked herself. But she didn't have an answer.
Time for more web searches, she thought. Let's see
if that one guy finished his upload of the Ponape
Scriptures...
-*-
"Lamp of Alhazred...Shub-Niggurath...Gordon
Walmsley...Falcon Point...Cthugha...Innsmouth...Book of
Eibon. Not again." Fuyutsuki sighed. "Didn't we just get
a translation of that taken down last month?"
"Yes," Gendo said. "And some site dedicated to how
'information wants to be free' put it back up."
"I am glad you thought to monitor Internet use,"
Fuyutsuki said. "I would not have thought of it."
"With MAGI, it's easy to track where people are
going and the contents of any forms they submit to sites,"
Gendo said. "And essential for security purposes." He
paused. "Who is Walmsley, anyway?"
"He translated the G'harne Fragments."
"Oh, right. Well, we're going to have to see about
what we can do to prevent Langley probing further into these
matters. She is neither qualified to assess which sites are
fake and which are real, nor can we afford to have her
risking her sanity any further than it already is," Gendo
said. "Just imagine if she decided to experiment with the
rites in the Book of Eibon." He shuddered. "It's dangerous
enough if you know what you're doing. Perhaps we should cut
off her access entirely."
"That would only convince her we're covering things
up. Better to take two approaches. First, introduce a
virus into her system to hunt and kill anything she's
downloaded and not backed up yet. Secondly, since we know
many of the keywords she is likely to search, we can build a
website which has everything she wants to know...all
properly sanitized."
Gendo nodded. "A good idea. We'll need experts for
the former, but I now have...time for working on the latter
myself." He frowned at the thought of his demotion. "It
may well serve as a good way to hamper other fools probing
into things they can't handle as well."
"I will see what MAGI has in its virus armory which
might be suitable and make appropriate arrangements if
nothing proves worthy."
"Good, good, let's get to it."
-*-
For a moment, on waking, Asuka thought she must have
somehow blanked out part of her day, as she was immersed in
liquid, and until she opened her eyes, she thought maybe she
had been sleeping in LCL for some reason. But it was just
water, and she was in her pajamas, not her plug suit. This
was no more comprehensible than waking up in LCL would have
been.
She was now lying on a large septagonal block of
jade, underwater. The block was one of eleven scattered
about a large plaza, surrounded by buildings made of various
green and black and blue stones, cut in odd shapes which
somehow held together without mortar. Some of the buildings
leaned and others blended together in strange ways.
It must be a dream, she thought, and got up and
started down one of the seven streets leading away from the
plaza. The street was paved with hunks of jade and green
marble, fitted together into a pattern which she couldn't
quite grasp. It was empty, except for fish, which clumped
together in nervous schools.
Streets spiraled and curved back on themselves in
ways which quickly left Asuka utterly lost and unsure which
way she was going. She didn't like this place at all.
-*-
Shinji walked down the street of the strange
underwater city, wondering why he was here and if he was
dreaming or if his life was just being slightly stranger
than usual. He tried reaching out with his mind for any
form of life he could communicate with, but as he had
feared, there were neither snakes nor spiders anywhere
nearby.
Despite that, he had the feeling of being watched,
though the streets were empty. "Is anyone out there?" he
shouted again.
No one answered, but the feeling of being watched
persisted.
-*-
Rei swam through the streets of the city, trying to
follow the voice. At least she thought it was a voice. It
reminded her of Adam and her sisters; it called to her deep
down.
But she couldn't find it, though she kept looking.
It seemed to come from all directions; was the city itself
calling her? She didn't know.
She paused, as she smelled someone she knew. But
what was he doing here? She decided to follow his trail and
find out.
-*-
Anna walked along, glancing at times at the
buildings which rose up around her. They were crumbling,
slowly but surely; given enough time underwater, even this
mighty city would be erased. Seaweed clung to exterior
surfaces and once polished basalt was pitted and cracked.
Fish swam where once armies had marched.
All things came to an end in time. If this city
stayed down here, it would eventually perish. This was not
Anna's problem. She simply kept going, following the
bending, twisting streets towards where they sought to lead
her.
-*-
Touji walked along, holding a large chunk of green
stone in his hands, a crude club. He had a bad feeling
about this place. For a moment, he wondered what the hell
kind of rock he'd found, but it seemed pretty solid, so that
was all that mattered right now.
He heard footsteps, so he slumped back into a
doorway and waited to see what would come round the corner.
It was just Hikari in a wetsuit. After taking a few seconds
to appreciate how she looked in it, he stepped out and said,
"Yo, Hikari, any idea what the f...the h...what is going
on?"
"We're dreaming," she said.
"How come you got a wetsuit and I didn't?" Touji
asked.
"I decided to find one, so I did, then I changed
into it," Hikari said.
"Damn, we can do that?" Touji asked.
"It's a dream, right?" Hikari asked. "Can't you do
that in dreams?"
"Oooh." Touji concentrated, then went to a pile of
rubble and extracted a machine gun. "Now we're cooking."
"Not underwater, you aren't."
"Damn."
"I hear something," Hikari said.
Touji cocked his head and listened. "Shit, lots of
people."
He grabbed Hikari and pulled her back into the
indented doorway with him. Then the creatures came into
view, some two dozen scaly humanoids who looked vaguely like
a crossbreeding of men, fish, and toads. They were armed
with spears and three of them had harpoon guns.
Shit, I could have snagged me a harpoon gun or a
trident, Touji thought.
Hikari pressed close to Touji, who tried to squeeze
himself into the smallest possible amount of space as they
hid in the doorway. I shoulda opened the door, Touji
thought. And hid inside.
And then the creatures saw him. They shouted at him
in some alien tongue, then charged with the spears.
"Hikari, get the door open!" he shouted and stepped up with
his stone bat.
Wish I'd fought some monsters with a decent power
that works underwater, he thought. Fire wouldn't do much
good and the Violator and Adam hadn't given him anything
useful he could see. He tried to fight them, but while his
blows clearly hurt them, they were better fighters.
He began to bleed into the water, and to his
surprise, the little drops of blood formed into tiny fish
and swam off. It was simultaneously cool and annoying to
know he had gotten a power from Adam. An utterly useless
power.
Hikari struggled, trying to get the door open, but
it was stuck or locked or barred or something, resisting her
every effort.
This is a shitty way to die, Touji thought. This
had better be a dream. He managed to bash the nose in of
one of the fish- men, but another one simply stepped forward
and he took a jab to his right leg, losing more blood.
And then there was a blur. Claws raked and water
froze and Rei broke through the mob. She grabbed Touji and
Hikari, kicked off the door, and bulldozed through the ranks
of the fishmen, swimming at high speed. The fishmen took
off after them.
"Damn, thanks, Rei," Touji said. "This is a dream,
right? Please tell me I ain't got amnesia or something."
"You dream," Rei said.
"Good," he said.
Hikari said, "We've got to stop and bandage Touji,
before he bleeds more." She frowned as she looked at his
wounds.
"Can't stop," Rei said.
"But...Touji's hurt!"
Rei simply glanced back at the pursuing horde, which
was matching Rei's pace. Hikari looked and sighed. "But
he'll die!"
"Touji," Rei said.
"Huh?"
"Touji, take us home."
"How the hell am I supposed to do that?" Touji
asked.
"Your power."
"My pow...oh, the teleporting thing?"
Rei nodded.
"I don't know how to control it."
"Be it," Rei said.
"Can you be more vague?" Touji said, irritated.
"No."
"Just try concentrating on us getting to safety,"
Hikari said.
Safety, he thought. He closed his eyes and thought.
Take us somewhere safe. Somewhere SAFE.
He felt the world whirl around him, and then he was
lying on something soft. He opened his eyes and found he
was lying in a bed with Hikari by his side and Rei under
both of them, an arm around each of them.
Hikari opened her eyes. "Touji, you're in my bed
AGAIN!"
"Would you rather we all get killed?" he asked,
irritated. "Besides, this is MY bed!"
"This is not..." Hikari began, then looked around
and saw all the basketball and soccer posters and the big
great white shark poster and the junior baseball trophy.
"..."
"Hah! So this time I get to beat you up for
crawling into MY bed!" Touji said, seizing a pillow and
beginning to pummel her.
Rei sat up just in time to take a pillow to the
face. She blinked in surprise, then grabbed the other
pillow before Hikari could. They were all wrestling around
and pummeling each other with pillows when the door opened.
Misato stuck her head in. "Is this an orgy or
what?" she asked.
"We are NOT having an orgy!" Hikari declared.
"It's a pillow fight," Touji said.
"You're having a pillow-fight with two half-naked
women at 3 AM?" Misato asked dubiously.
"Yes," Touji said.
"Uh huh."
"It is true," Rei said.
"We couldn't sleep, so we came over to talk," Hikari
said desperately.
"Whatever. Have all the orgies you want. Just keep
them QUIET. I'm trying to sleep," Misato said.
"We are not having an orgy!" Hikari protested.
"All I ask is that it be quiet," Misato said.
"That's all." She left.
"Touji, everyone is going to think we had an orgy!"
Hikari said angrily.
"Excuse me, this is MY bed. You're the one who got
into it!"
"You teleported me into your bed!" Hikari protested.
Rei nodded.
"I was trying to save our lives! I was bleeding,
you know!" he checked his body; thankfully, he was not
bleeding now.
Rei looked at the two of them, then looked at her
pillow. Tentatively, she whacked Touji with it.
Hikari whacked him with hers.
Soon, the pillow fight was in full swing again.
-*-
Maya woke up, hearing Ritsuko moaning in her sleep.
She shook Ritsuko gently, until Ritsuko's eyes popped open.
Ritsuko was breathing hard. "Are you okay?" Maya asked her.
"No. The sea was trying to take me," Ritsuko said
softly.
"I won't let it have you," Maya said, embracing her.
Ritsuko stared off through the window. "It's still
calling me now, even this far away from it."
"We'll find a way to beat it," Maya said.
"There is another possibility as to what is
happening," Ritsuko said. "But it's worse than if it's
just my curse."
"Worse?" Maya asked, worried.
"I dreamed of a sunken city made of strangely angled
stones, an ancient ruins where only fish live now, and the
Deep Ones, of whom I told you before."
Maya nodded.
"They urged me to join them, for their master was
waking."
"Master?"
"One of the Angels dwells sleeping, imprisoned
beneath the sea. He nearly escaped in the mid
nineteen-twenties, but the time was not yet ripe, and his
home sank as quickly as it rose. But as it rose, the most
sensitive minds on the planet were barraged by nightmares as
his mind touched theirs. Minds like those of the Children.
Many of them went mad."
"We should check on them," Maya said, standing up.
"Just in case."
Ritsuko said, "In the morning. They're not going to
go mad after just one dream."
"Maybe," Maya said. "But I just...don't want to
take any chances."
Ritsuko sighed and got out of bed. "Alright, let's
go."
-*-
"It was kind of more boring than scary," Shinji
said, yawning. "Just a kind of feeling of being lost and
being watched."
"But it was a city of volcanic rocks with oddly
angled buildings?" Ritsuko asked.
"Yes," Shinji said. "Why are you asking me about
this in the middle of the night, anyway?"
"I think this may be a sign that an Angel with
powers over dreams is coming," Ritsuko said.
"Ugh." He yawned. "Can I sleep now?"
"Sleep tight," Ritsuko said.
-*-
"This is connected to Innsmouth, right?" Asuka asked
Ritsuko.
"Indirectly," she said. "I take it you know
something of the Deep Ones?"
"A bit," Asuka said. "Trying to learn more."
"It is dangerous to delve into such lore, but good
to know one's enemy," Ritsuko said, sighing. "I fear
that..."
There was a high pitched squeal from another room.
Maya said, "What the...what was that?"
Asuka sprung to her feet. "That was Hikari."
"We'd best go check on her next, then," Maya said.
Asuka followed them to Hikari's room. The door was
locked and she didn't answer when they banged on the door.
Ritsuko said, "We may need to get a master key or
something."
Then the door to Touji's room opened and Hikari came
out. Asuka stared in shock. "You...and Touji...in the
middle of the night...????"
"We were just having a pillow fight," Hikari said
weakly.
"If you feel you must lie to us, please choose
something more believable than that you are having a pillow
fight with Touji at 3 AM while half-naked," Ritsuko said.
"I am not half...my pants!" Hikari was wearing a
pajama top long enough to go down just past her butt, but no
pants. "TOUJI! YOU PERVERT! WHAT DID YOU DO WITH MY
PANTS!"
"Hey, you didn't have any pants when you showed up
in MY BED, " Touji shouted through the door. "Rei, you
didn't take Hikari's pants, did you?"
"No."
There was a moment of awful, terrible silence.
Maya tried to speak, but couldn't figure out how
vocal cords worked.
Ritsuko rubbed her forehead. "I must still be
dreaming," she said weakly.
Asuka's jaw dropped audibly. "Hikari, were you
half- naked with Rei and Touji in his bed?"
"We were having a pillow fight," Hikari said
stubbornly.
"This is NOT real," Asuka said. "This can't be
real. You wouldn't really have sex with Rei and Touji at
the same time."
"We were NOT having sex!"
"Damn, you are a PERVERT, thinkin' stuff like that,"
Touji said, now sticking his head out the door.
"You're probably wearing Hikari's pants," Asuka
mumbled.
"I am NOT wearing her pants!"
"I am going to bed," Ritsuko said. "And in the
morning, this is all going to be a dream." She took Maya by
the arm and began to leave.
"I'll just be going to bed now too," Hikari said,
then realized she was locked out of her room and the key was
inside it. "Drat."
Touji, shirtless, now came out in the hallway.
"Here, I can teleport you into your room."
"I think I've had enough teleporting for one night,"
Hikari mumbled.
"You're half-naked too!" Asuka announced.
Rei now came out into the hallway; she was fully
dressed. In Touji's clothing, which didn't fit. "I'll open
it," she said.
"I'm dreaming, right?" Asuka said.
"Yes. Go to bed," Hikari said desperately.
"Right." Asuka turned around and went to bed.
"We tell everyone this was just a dream," Hikari
said to Touji.
"Hey, you were in my bed this time. That's all I've
got to say," Touji said.
"Because you..." Hikari sighed. "I don't care. I
just want to go to bed."
The door opened; Hikari blinked, wondering how Rei
had gotten inside her room. But she decided sleep was
better than answers.
-*-
"I had the weirdest dream last night," Asuka said to
Hikari the next morning at breakfast.
"Sunken city?" Hikari asked.
"Yeah, and then..."
"Dreams can be pretty weird," Hikari said.
"Wait, you dreamed about the sunken city too?"
"Yes," Hikari said. "Must be because we're both of
the Children."
"Yeah. So...You and Touji and Rei didn't really
have an orgy last night, did you?"
Hikari shook her head. "You must have dreamed
that."
"Right," Asuka said with relief. "Did you have that
dream, Shinji?"
"I didn't dream about anyone in anyone's beds, just
the sunken city," Shinji said.
"Going to have to do some more research on that, I
think," Asuka said. "I think it's a real place."
"I hope we don't have to fight a city," Shinji
replied.
Several men came in, found Rei at her table nearby,
and took her with them.
"Huh, I guess the UN inspectors want her," Shinji
said.
"They can have her," Asuka said.
"I suppose they'll talk to all of us," Hikari said.
"I suppose so," Asuka said. "I intend to give them
a piece of my mind."
-*-
"Have you enjoyed being one of the EVA Pilots?"
Inspector Margaret Mallory asked. She was a short, thin old
woman from Britain.
"Yes," Rei said.
"What is your opinion of NERV's performance so far?"
Margaret asked.
"The hunt goes well."
Margaret glanced at the two other inspectors with
her, Chang Hsu from China and Henry N'kambe from Kenya.
Henry said, "So you think of this as a hunt?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
Rei looked at him in the manner of someone asked why
they think the color blue is blue. "It is a hunt."
"But why do you think of it as a hunt? Are you
imagining yourself as some sort of Amazon warrior woman?"
"What is an Amazon?" Rei asked.
"It would take longer than it's worth to explain,"
Henry said. "So you enjoy hunting?"
"Yes."
"What do you think about the destruction of the base
in Japan?"
"It was a good fight."
Henry blinked. "Why?"
"We won. We gained Adam's power."
"So the destruction of the base and all the deaths
don't bother you?"
"I killed no innocents," Rei said.
"What do you think of Commander Ikari?"
"He is powerful."
"Do you think he has been a good commander?"
"Yes."
"Despite the disaster in Peru, the destruction of
NERV- Japan, the escape of Adam and all the other
catastrophes?"
"We won each battle," Rei said. "This is war.
People die."
Henry frowned. "So you don't care who dies as long
as you win?"
Rei struggled to find the right words, and finally
said, "No war can be won flawlessly. We saved far more than
who died." She paused. "We did the best we could."
Hsu seemed satisfied with that response; Henry
frowned more. "And Commander Fuyutsuki?"
"He did his best."
Henry glanced over at Margaret, who shook her head.
He then said, "Well, we'll get back to you soon, I expect,
once we've talked to the others."
"Alright," Rei said, and left.
"She's a strange one," Henry said.
"The profile was more accurate than I thought," Hsu
said. "A strange one, indeed."
-*-
Asuka sat down at her computer. "Okay, let's see
what my search found..."
Her screen sprung to life with a keytouch. A
screensaver popped up, showing a little dancing green man
with a squid-like head. "You have been hacked by Campus
Crusade for Cthulhu. DANCE FOR ME!" It then began dancing.
"Shit," Asuka said, trying to get the screensaver to
disengage. Finally, she had to reboot, praying the damage
wasn't too bad.
She ended up having to reinstall her operating
system, and found that most of her data files were utterly
trashed or gone.
"Dammit, I should have backed up more recently," she
muttered to herself, extracting her most recent back up of
her hard drive, from weeks ago. "This is what I get for
being lazy." She sighed. "Here we go again."
-*-
Asuka eventually tired of rebuilding her machine and
headed off to find some company. Most of the rest of the
Children turned out to be in one of the lounges, doing
homework, except for Rei. Asuka came over to Shinji and
hugged him. "Hey there."
"Hi," he said, smiling and turning to hug her back.
"Having fun while we suffer?"
"My computer died thanks to a virus, so not much fun
for me."
"I wish a virus would eat my homework," Touji
muttered. "All this work is making me nuts."
Hikari says, "Well, we could go down to the town for
a while, but neither of us speaks any German, so it might be
hard to get around."
"We can make it a double date," Asuka said. "As I
could use getting away from stuff. That good with you,
Shinji?"
"Fine with me," he said. "But then we'd be leaving
Anna all by herself."
Anna said, "Oh, don't mind me. I have to catch up
on some stuff anyway."
Feeling guilty, Asuka said, "You sure?"
"I'll be fine," Anna said smiling. "Go down to the
city and have some fun."
"Thanks," Asuka said.
"You're welcome."
-*-
Misato stamped the file closed. "And that's enough
of that," she said. Getting up, she tried to decide what to
do tonight. Everything on TV is in German, everything in
the video library is in German, all the books in the base
library are in German... She frowned. There has to be
something I can do with minimal German, she thought.
Hmm, maybe Makoto's free, she thought. I know he
brought some movies and stuff with him. We can go grab some
food, then watch some movies or something. Anything.
She went over to Makoto's cubicle. "Hey, you busy
tonight?"
"I'm sorry, I have a date with Akane."
She sighed. "I guess I'll be playing solitaire by
myself again."
He looked at her with a tempted look which made her
feel a little better, then he said, "Why don't you see if
Dr. Akagi is busy?"
"Oh, great idea," Misato said, perking up. "I
haven't cleaned her out in poker in quite a while."
She found Ritsuko in her lab, closing up for the
night. "Hey, Ritsuko, you want to do something tonight?"
"Maya and I are going into town to see The Three
Brothers." She paused. "Would you like to come with us?"
"Movie?" Misato asked.
"Yes, it's a German film Dr. Himmelfarb
recommended."
"In German?"
"Yes."
Misato sighed. "No thanks, I wouldn't understand
anything."
"Makoto's busy?" Ritsuko asked.
Misato said a little sharply, "He has a date."
"Ahh. Well, you're welcome to come with us."
"I wouldn't want to intrude on your date," Misato
said. "Maybe Ingrid is free."
"She often goes to the Shooting Gallery in the
evenings," Ritsuko said.
"I'll look for her there."
She found Ingrid in the process of sniping at paper
cutouts. "Good evening, Misato," Ingrid said.
"Hey there," Misato said. "I'm bored out of my
skull."
"Want to have a little shooting contest?" Ingrid
suggested.
"Alright," Misato said.
They both got ready, then opened fire. Dozens of
rounds of ammo later, Ingrid came over to examine Misato's
shooting. "Well, that's one paper man who will never have
sex again," she said. "You pissed at some guy?"
Misato frowned. "I have no right to be."
"But you are anyway."
"Yes." She sighed. "Stupid, I know."
"Wanna talk about it?" Ingrid asked.
"The irritating thing is that when he was
interested, I wasn't, and now I am, and he has a girlfriend.
Sexy little pale- haired girl named Akane. She's a
novelist. Probably writes smut novels from the way she
carries on," Misato said bitterly.
"What, like all those ones lying around your room?"
Ingrid asked.
Misato winced. "She's one of those annoying women
who hypnotizes men with her breasts."
"Well, I'd never degrade myself by trying to
outflouncy someone," Ingrid said. "But if you really like
him, and that's the kind of woman he wants..."
"Dammit, why couldn't I realize I liked him before
this?" Misato demanded. "He only went after her because he
couldn't have me."
"Well, just one thing to remember," Ingrid said.
"What?"
"A man you can steal from another woman probably
isn't worth stealing."
Misato sighed. "But he's cute and nice and a good
guy."
"So why didn't you date him before?"
"I thought he would be boring."
"And you had someone who wasn't?" Ingrid asked.
"Well, I've told you about Kaji, right?"
"A little," Ingrid said. "And I've met him myself
briefly. I heard about his death too."
Misato sighed. "Maybe I'm just being petty. I
just...Maybe this means I'm growing up or something."
"Ready to marry a man like Dad?" Ingrid teased.
"He's a lot more responsible than Dad was," Misato
said. "We really shouldn't date anyway because he's my
subordinate, but dammit, he's hot and I'm lonely and aaargh.
I can tell he wants me, but he's too responsible to just
dump Akane."
"Well, I know some nice guys I can try and hook you
up with. Get your mind off him."
"I'm game," Misato said.
"Cool. I'll think about it, ask around, and get
back to you. Want to go for another round of shooting?"
"Sure thing."
-*-
And as the four Children hit the town, three of them
realized there was a slight problem, which was a
considerable lack of knowledge of the German language.
This they realized too late as they stared up at the movie
theater marquee and the long list of movies, the meaning of
which they had no idea.
"Um," volunteered Touji first, after they all spent
a long moment staring at the titles. "Well. Er. 13
Freitag, Sieben, Alptraum Auf Ulmestrasse, Gebrochen Pffeil,
Kampf ins Bronx, I just dunno. Everything sounds violent in
German, man. You guys got any ideas?"
Hikari shook her head.
Shinji shrugged.
"How about Fruhling Kirschblumen?" suggested Asuka.
Hikari and Shinji looked at her blankly. Touji
looked at her suspiciously.
"What's that supposed to be?" he asked.
"New film, good reviews, trust me," she said
confidently.
He was silent for a moment, thinking it over. This
was German cinema, he mused. He didn't know anything about
German cinema tradition, but the German people were, he
thought, a pretty rough bunch. Surely their films would be
all mean. Low risk of chick films, yeah.
Touji shrugged. "Sure, okay, let's go."
- * -
"I so HATE you," grumbled Touji as they walked out
of the theater.
"Whaaaat?" protested Asuka, in the tone of the
Unjustly Persecuted. "It was a GREAT movie! Isn't that
right, Hikari?"
"Yup!"
"It was a German remake of SPRINGTIME CHERRY
BLOSSOMS, dammit!!! Shinji, say something, man!"
Crickets chirped.
Touji glared at Shinji.
Asuka glared at Shinji.
"It was... um... not what I expected," he finally
said weakly.
"HA!" yelled Touji triumphantly.
"But I did kinda like it," added Shinji meekly.
"HA!" countered Asuka.
Shinji noticed something as they were walking to the
exit doors, then frowned. "H-hey, guys, I think we have a
problem."
"You bet we do," said Touji. "Asuka is NEVER
picking our movies again!"
Asuka rolled her eyes. "Hikari, remind me why you
like this moron?"
"Um, guys?" Shinji pointed at the exit.
There was an awful lot of people there waiting
there.
Touji said, "Okay, so there's a lot of people in
line to see Springtime German Flowers crap."
"But they're staring at us," said Shinji.
Asuka frowned. "I've got a bad feeling about this."
One of them shyly opened the door and asked
something to Asuka in German, who in turn merely nodded.
He in turn said something to the crowd amassed at the door.
"Hey, what'd he ask?" asked Touji.
"He wanted to know if we were the NERV pilots."
"Oh."
A great cry was shouted from the crowd that nearly
made the children jump, and much to their confusion the
crowd as a whole began to bow down to them and chant
something German.
Touji asked, "Hey, what're they doing?"
"Worshiping us." Asuka frowned.
She paused a moment, then began lecturing them in
German. "We are not gods! There is only one God in
heaven!"
"God has sent you from heaven to save us!" one of
the people in the crowd cried out.
"Angels! Angels of mercy!" another shouted.
"No, we're just humans like you!"
"We are but mere mortals!" an old man called out.
"That's why we give you honor and glory, holy ones!"
"Give us a blessing!"
Touji said, "What are they saying?"
"Even stupider things than you," Asuka said to him
in Japanese. She turned back to the crowd. "I am not
divine! I'm just a teenage girl! I have a boyfriend! I'm
on a date! Don't worship us!"
"The gods wish us to go on a date!" one of the
people in the crowd shouted.
Asuka began to tug on her hair. Shinji put a hand
on her shoulder. "Shinji, tell them!" she said, forgetting
she was speaking German.
He stared at her blankly.
She sighed. "Shinji, kiss me," she said in
Japanese.
He blushed. "Say what?"
"Oh man, don't make me watch this," Touji said,
turning away.
"Maybe that will convince them we're not gods,"
Asuka said.
"They may decide it means to have an orgy," Hikari
pointed out.
"We can't even get out of here," Touji said.
"Although seeing you two kiss might make them all go blind."
To his surprise, Shinji slugged him in the shoulder
and said, a little sharply, "Touji, don't say that."
Asuka blinked, and then smiled. He was standing up
for her. Not that she needed it, but it was sweet of him.
"I'm sorry, man. I just can't imagine kissing
the..."
Shinji turned to Asuka, stepped up to her, and
kissed her firmly. She stiffened for a moment, then leaned
into it, while holding one hand behind her back to give
Touji the finger.
"Hah! I can kiss better than you two can!" He
turned and kissed Hikari, who froze up, knowing a huge mob
was watching her.
Then the mob began to cheer. And then people in the
mob started kissing each other.
"Alright, let's get out of here," Asuka said.
"Before we make things any worse." She began taking her
shirt off.
Shinji stared in abject shock.
"I'll destroy my shirt anyway if I sprout wings out
of it," Asuka said, though she was blushing a little.
"Better take yours off too. You're going to have to carry
Touji."
"This is startin' to sound like a bad porno," Touji
muttered.
Shinji blushed and tried not to stare at Asuka too
much. He took his shirt off and sprouted wings, as did
Asuka. The crowd cheered.
"Tell me there's not a news camera," Touji said.
Shinji picked Touji up. "There's not a news
camera."
"Good, 'cause you just know some freak would be
speculatin' freaky things about us," Touji said as he was
lifted. "Man, you just don't look this strong."
Asuka rose into the air with Hikari. "Let's go."
They took off, the crowds cheering wildly.
-*-
Die Aufladung had just gotten out, and Akane and
Makoto were taking a leisurely stroll towards a cafe she
recommended, when they heard shouting nearby and saw the
Children flying across the sky; Asuka had wings of flame
while Shinji had black bat wings.
"I wish I could fly," Akane said.
Makoto squinted. "Is it just me, or are they both
topless?"
"She's still got a bra on, I think," Akane said.
"I wonder if they're going to have aerial sex."
"..."
Akane laughed. "Just teasing, honey,
although...ooh, that would just be very sexy. Sounds like
they've impressed their worshippers, though."
"I can't understand why anyone would worship them."
"They have apparently magical powers and can do five
impossible things before breakfast," Akane said. "They may
not be God, but they're gods for most intents and purposes."
"They're just children," he said.
"Children," she said, emphasizing the proper nouness
of it all. "I wouldn't worship them, but I can see why some
people would. They have magical powers to save the world.
People worship saviours, so long as they aren't failed by
them."
"And then the worm turns."
"Exactly." She stared at the Children, fading in
the distance and frowned, her usual good cheer gone. "No
one can win every fight."
"Let's go eat," he said. I can try and talk to her
about Misato there, he thought. I will. Really.
She turned to him, and took his arm. "You're too
good to me."
"You're too good to me," he replied.
She shook her head. "Then let's be too good to each
other together."
And they headed off to the Cafe.
-*-
The scene flickered before her, reflected in her red
eyes as she watched with an expression that betrayed no
emotion. Her in his arms, he in hers, a kiss that Rei had
never known but had always wanted, and a burst of wings to
take flight into the night.
As she stared at the television replaying the news,
Rei's lips ever so slightly edged downward. The others in
the cafeteria at large felt a moment of mild discomfort and
the growing need to be elsewhere.
Rei's eyes flickered away from the screen and to her
side as she heard the clatter of a tray and silverware being
put down next to her.
"Wow, they sure were bold to do that in public,"
said Anna.
Rei's eyes moved back to the TV, where a reporter
was now interviewing members of the crowd. That managed to
hold her gaze briefly, before she resumed picking away at
her dinner.
"How do you feel about seeing that?" asked Anna.
Rei remained silent, her face carefully composed and
calm. Beside her, Anna began eating her own meal
pleasantly.
"Hn. Good bratwurst today." added Anna after a
pause in eating.
Rei resumed eating her own dinner.
"I was hoping for Rouladen mit Rotkohl und
Salzkartoffeln, but I guess not today. Though I'll probably
just go out later and buy it take-out."
Rei continued eating.
"Sometimes when you want something, it's best to go
ahead and get it, or else it will drive you crazy later.
Know what I mean?"
Rei turned slightly and gave Anna a slight sidewards
glance. Anna smiled back innocently. Rei turned her
attention back towards her dinner and ate in silence. Anna
happily hummed the theme from Fruhling Kirschblumen next to
her as she finished her meal.
The cafeteria was notably emptier by the time they
were done.
-*-
"It's not so much that the English lost the Hundred
Years' War, as that they ate too much rich French food,
bloated up, got too fat to fit in their armor, and then the
French killed them while they waddled helplessly," Misato
said. It had been something like that, anyway. She
thought. Well, world history had been years ago, and she'd
been thinking about Kaji and whether Ritsuko was going to
notice they'd eaten up all the leftover pizza and get mad
that day. Or something similar.
Rei nodded solemnly, scribbling in her notebook.
Anna gave Misato a dubious look. "How do the Burgundians
figure into it, then?"
"Well, you see Burgundy, the drink, comes from
Burgundy, the region of France. But the English preferred
cheap English beer, so they put heavy tariffs on the
Burgundian Burgandy, and the Burgundians got mad and changed
side to the French, who loved good Burgundian Burgandy."
Misato wasn't so sure about that, but she told herself that
anyone who asked HER for help on history pretty much
deserved what they got.
"Uh huh."
Asuka, Shinji, Touji, and Hikari now walked into the
rec room where Anna and Rei were doing homework. "We're
back," Asuka said. "We ran into some crazy cultists."
Misato frowned. "Angel cultists?"
"No, they seemed to think we were gods," Touji said.
"Assuming Asuka didn't make that all up so she could take
her shirt off."
Misato looked at Asuka, who was wearing her shirt.
"She seems to be wearing a shirt." She sounded rather
dubious.
"She put it back on before we could all go blind,"
Touji said.
"That would have been if we had to see YOU like
that," Asuka said to Touji.
"Will you two stop bickering?" Shinji said sharply.
"You both look just fine with your shirts off, and no one
went blind. And I think you were staring at my girlfriend's
chest when you thought no one was looking."
"WHAT?" Hikari said.
"Hey, I saw how you..." Touji began.
"You can fight later," Misato said. "So this cult
thought you all were gods?" She had a pretty good idea who
this group likely was, but she had hoped they wouldn't start
causing trouble yet.
"Yeah," Asuka said. "They were all German, I think,
or at least most of them."
Misato frowned. "I think I'm going to have to look
into that. No one got hurt, did they?"
Rei tensed up ever so slightly.
"No, no," Shinji said. "No one got hurt."
"Good." She sounded relieved.
Rei looked Shinji up and down for a moment, then
relaxed.
"I expect an unarmed rabble wouldn't be much of a
threat to us," Anna said.
"More danger of us hurting them than vice versa,
really," Asuka said.
"I hope they don't cause us any more trouble,"
Shinji said.
"So do I," Misato said. "But it isn't wise to rely
too much on hopes. I fear they will be more trouble, before
we finally get rid of them. But I guess we'll see."
"I guess so," Shinji said.
"Well, since you're back, you can finish your
homework with Rei and Anna," Misato said.
"You can tell us what is true and what Katsuragi is
making up," Anna said to Asuka.
"You can take over, Asuka," Misato said. "I should
go work on things anyway." And report this incident to the
Commander as well, she thought.
"Alright," Asuka said. "See you later."
-*-
Dreams are useful things.
With enough control, one can set up a dream like an
experiment, set the parameters, let things run, and see how
it all turns out.
Basic elements are needed to meet the requirements
of this shoujo manga moment.
A sunny day. A clean city street. Lots of trees.
And there is Rei, wearing a blue dress, swaying
beautifully with the breeze. A certain inner glow shining
about her, with eyes that sparkled of love and youth.
And there is Shinji, delicately beautiful with hair
flowing with the wind. There were also sparkles in his
eyes, youthful-type sparkles, definitely associated with
love.
Scenery. Lovers. All things in place.
Disembodied red eyes observed it all carefully.
Cue sunset.
Cue the jet flying high above.
And... start.
"Rei," he said softly, the air going all pink and
sparkly around him.
"Shinji," she said breathlessly, enveloped in that
same pink sparkly aura.
Movement in slow motion. The two running towards
each other with open arms. See the two birds flying high
above them? What a clear sky, too.
Third element cued into the mix. Asuka, tragic blue
sparkles about her, eyes wide and about to cry. "Shinji!"
she cries out.
The birds flapped about in confusion. Clouds crept
into the sky. The imagery around Shinji changes to a
monochrome blue.
"A-Asuka," he says weakly, his head turning from Rei
to Asuka.
The blue sparkles are infectious, swallowing up
Rei's space. "Shinji?" she asks, fear and doubt replacing
the loving tone in her voice.
This was a typically pivotal moment, yes. Two
disembodied red eyes watched all with great interest.
Rei looked at Shinji expectantly.
Asuka looked at Shinji expectantly.
Shinji hesitated. Fatal mistake.
The girls ran away in tears. Of course, in opposite
directions. Stormclouds slam in with violent winds.
Everything sets into a monochrome grey.
Decision time.
Shinji reached out to Rei, then to Asuka. Which
one? Which way would his heart lead him?
The rain suddenly turned into a torrential downpour
of epic proportions, streets flooding in the blink of an eye
and transforming into rivers, sweeping him away with the
currents. Fish-like men emerged from the waters and stood
upon the rooftops, waving their spears and chanting in an
inhuman tongue to something that had yet to emerge from the
waters.
The red eyes blinked. This wasn't expected.
Rei woke up.
She looked out the window and frowned slightly. An
overcast sky greeted her. She spent a moment staring at it,
then began to get ready for the day.
-*-
Shinji looked nervously at Inspector Svetlana
Borodinova and wondered what she was going to ask him. She
seemed to be in charge, while Inspector Pham Trang sat in
the corner and quietly took notes. There was a third
inspector, Guillame Garcia, but he'd left for the bathroom
and Inspector Svetlana didn't seem inclined to wait for him.
They had to use a translator, a withered, bitter
looking old man who had clearly done a lot of rough work in
his life. As he spoke, Shinji wondered if everything the
translator said sounded sarcastic or if he'd done something
to annoy the man.
"I understand your father sent you off to your
relatives after your mother died."
"Yes, his work at NERV kept him very busy," Shinji
said.
"You don't seem to have been very happy there,"
Svetlana said.
"I understand why Father did it," Shinji said.
Svetlana said something to Pham which he couldn't
understand. Pham nodded, then Svetlana continued, "We have
heard he favors you over the other pilots."
"I don't think Father favors anyone," Shinji said.
"I got sent into battle in Peru when I was badly injured,
and I live just the same as anyone else."
"I understand you live with Commander Katsuragi?"
Shinji nodded. "Yes."
"How much of a drunkard is she, really?"
He frowned. "She's not a drunkard." He knew he was
only half telling the truth. She had drunk too much most of
the time he had known her, but he could tell the Inspectors
were out for blood, and he wasn't going to give them any.
"She's been a good guardian and a good commander."
"Is she really sleeping with one of her
subordinates?"
"No!" Shinji said sharply. "She hasn't been seeing
anyone since Kaji died, and he wasn't her subordinate."
"Ahh, yes, the fellow who died saving Gendo from the
Angel known as the 'Violator', right?"
"Yes." Shinji paused. "He was a good man."
"His record seems to be clean, though I have heard
he was rather a playboy. But no matter. I understand there
has been tension between the pilots since the battle with
the Violator."
Shinji frowned. "No one ever gets along perfectly."
"To be precise, there is bad blood between Pilot
Langley and pilot Ayanami, correct?"
"They don't get along," Shinji admitted.
"Why?"
Shinji squirmed, not wanting to think about it.
"I'm not sure exactly what happened, but after we killed the
Violator, we suffered some...side-effects." He shuddered at
the memory. "Rei lost control."
"She raped Langley?" Svetlana asked.
"I don't know what exactly happened," Shinji said.
"But you can't understand what it was like. I had to lock
myself in the bathroom and...and..." He blushed. "Can we
please talk about something else?"
"So, who would you blame for the destruction of the
Geodome?"
"The Angels," Shinji said.
Guillame Garcia, a tall, skinny man with bronzed
skin and an especially expensive suit, now returned from the
bathroom. He sat down by Svetlana. "Ahh, got to the death
of the Geofront?" he asked.
She nodded to him, then asked Shinji, "Yes, but lots
of other Angels have shown up without destroying it."
"We did the best we could," Shinji said. "I suppose
it would have been better to store Adam somewhere else, but
at the same time, him being right there meant we could stop
him before more harm was done."
Pham finally spoke. "I understand you're dating
Pilot Langley."
Shinji nodded. "Yes."
"Would you say she's stable?"
"She's a little impulsive, sometimes," Shinji said,
carefully weighing his words. "But she's as sane as I am.
If that's what you're asking."
"She does not get along well with Commander Ikari."
"Yes," Shinji said.
"Why?"
"Because she doesn't like people keeping secrets and
NERV has a lot of them. And Father can be somewhat rude
sometimes."
"I understand she's tried to kill him a few times."
"People say things they don't mean when they get
mad," Shinji said. "And if Asuka really wanted him dead,
he couldn't stop her."
"Hmm."
"They do," Shinji said, trying to reassure himself
of that.
"My turn," Guillame said, pulling out a sheaf of
reports. "We're going to go over all the missions."
Shinji stared at the stack. This was going to take
a while.
-*-
"They call themselves the 'The Church of Disciples'.
They don't have a very clearly set out theology, but they
believe you are all gods who need to be worshipped.
There's no clear leadership, as they seem to be a loose
coalition of various groups with different beliefs who all
came to the conclusion you are all divine in some manner,
from some fringe Christian groups who think you are angels
to neo-pagans who see you as reborn gods to people who think
you are boddhisatvas. We expect the movement will
eventually fragment due to these divisions, but for now,
they seem united enough to have spread quite a bit in Europe
and the most European-influenced nations." Fuyutsuki shook
his head in mild disbelief.
"The US, Canada, Australia, etc?" Asuka asked.
Fuyutsuki, Misato, and the Children sat around one
of the briefing tables at the base, each with a stack of
papers in front of them. Shinji wondered if they needed
such a long report when Fuyutsuki was in the process of
telling them everything anyway.
Fuyutsuki continued by saying, "Your presence here
in Germany has attracted many group members to migrate here;
they're starting to overrun the local towns. I don't want
to cut off your ability to go to town, but I must ask you to
avoid any contact with these loons, as we aren't sure what
they may do."
"How large is this movement?" Anna asked.
"There's no good measure, but it seems there may be
close to a million members worldwide. Which is a drop in
the human bucket, but since some twenty to thirty thousand
of those seem to have descended on the local towns, their
presence for us is quite significant."
Misato frowned. "If they tried something crazy,
like breaking into the base to come and bask in the glow of
the Children...we couldn't possibly stop that many people."
"Really?" Touji asked nervously.
"The Geo-front could have done it, but NERV-Germany,
while well defended, was not designed to fend off thousands
of people. It's strong enough to generally stop terrorists
and criminals, but..."
"Well, ones who aren't let in by traitors," Hikari
said. "Were they caught?"
"All the traitors died in the fighting," Misato
said. "I suppose if we deployed the EVAs, we could probably
drive them all off if they did attack for some reason, but
there's lots of places in this base an EVA can't really go."
"Ideally, it won't come down to that," Fuyutsuki
said. "They don't seem hugely violent. But at the same
time, I fear they're going to make life difficult." He
paused. "Which reminds me, I'd like you to go visit the
Barbarossa Project, as I'm curious as to whether their work
is viable at all, and I am not inclined to trust their
publicity reports."
"Alright, I can do that," Misato said. "I expect
they're going to fail."
"So do I, but it is best to keep abreast of events
and avoid surprises."
She nodded. "I'll see about making an appointment,
then."
-*-
"What a bunch of loons," Asuka said, flopping down
on her bed. "Thinking we're divine and all."
"Well, maybe they're right," Anna said. "We do have
powers beyond mortal ken. I mean, look at the things you've
done. You can fly, you throw fire from your hands, you can
protect yourself with a force field, you can shapeshift,
your blood has inherent power..."
"That could make me a superhero, not a god," Asuka
said. "Or a mutant freak. But not a god. I don't live in
heaven, I can't save souls, I didn't create the universe.
I don't feel very divine."
"You helped save the souls of the Kingdom of Joy,"
Anna pointed out. "The Elder Gods seemed to treat you like
their own children."
"There is only one God, and I'm not Him," Asuka
said. "I'm just a mortal who has been turned into a freak
by stupid powers I don't want. Damn, I can hardly believe I
wanted to be a pilot so much, once upon a time." She
sighed.
"How's your computer doing?" Anna asked. "Did you
get it all fixed?"
"As much as I can. Stupid virus." Asuka sat up and
went over to her computer, kicking it out of idle mode. "I
need some better anti-virus software."
"Here, I know a good place to get some," Anna said.
"And I found some places for you that you might want to
check out."
"Thanks, Anna," Asuka said, yielding up control of
the machine to Anna for the moment.
"Anything for a friend."
-*-
Megumi adjusted her suit-dress slightly as she
waited, trying not to stare too much at the various
cultists. I've never been to a church in a strip-mall
before, she thought. The place's design made her suspect it
had once been a small gym before being converted. In fact,
the conversion was still in progress as two dozen members of
the group were busy painting, scrubbing, and generally
redecorating the place.
They all looked very normal to her, adults in their
twenties and thirties, male and female, dressed in clothing
they could afford to get dirty. The one thing which stood
out was the six pointed stars they wore (which looked rather
like reworked Stars of David with a tongue of flame in the
middle).
A man in a suit came out of the back office and the
secretary announced, "Mr. Schmitt will see you now."
Mr. Schmitt turned out to be a well-dressed man in
his forties. He could easily have been some
middle-management executive, and he looked far more sane
than Megumi expected. He looked a little overworked and his
desk was piled with papers, but he could have been any of a
hundred men she'd interviewed over the years. He looked up
at her and tried to smile; it was the smile of a man who was
making himself smile even though he'd rather go lie down for
a while. "Megumi Kanzaki, I presume?" he asked.
"Yes," she replied in German. "I hope my German
won't be too hard to understand."
"I'm impressed you know our language at all, being
from Japan," he said. "And a little surprised to see a
Japanese reporter here in Germany."
"We take an interest in the whole world," Megumi
said. "And I'm in charge of covering the Children and
NERV."
He nodded. "Please sit down. Would you like some
tea?"
"Yes, please."
Arnold had some tea delivered, then sat down and
luxuriated in it for a minute. Then he said, "So what would
you like to know?"
"Well, I was not familiar with the existence of your
group, so I suppose I'll start with, 'why do you worship the
Children?'"
"Because they are divine. Their coming was foretold
by many ancient texts, and they possess divine powers.
They are the children of the old gods, come to save us in
our darkest hour," Arnold said. His tone seemed remarkably
matter of fact to Megumi. "The time will come when they
must cast off the mortal shackles which hold them back, so
that they may come into their full glory."
"Mortal shackles?" Megumi asked. "As in, ascending
into heaven?"
"As in ceasing to be bound in service to mortals.
It is our duty to serve them," Arnold said. "But, instead,
NERV keeps them as servants instead of giving them honor and
praise as they should."
"So, are you planning to do something about that?"
"We are not violent people," Arnold said. "And in
the end, it is up to the Children to cast off their chains.
As we are sure they will, once they come to understand."
"Right," Megumi said. "So, why have so many of you
been moving here?"
"To be near the Children, of course. Most of us
can't afford such a move, but those of us who can have been
flocking to this area," Arnold said. "Which generates vast
paperwork for me, as you can see." He spread his hands
across the desk.
"So you're in charge of all these people?"
"I am in charge of directing the expansion of our
churches and trying to help all these folk find jobs and
places to live. I don't have much of a staff, and the work
is piling up faster than I can handle. I'm hoping to hire
more staff, but it's hard to find good assistants, and money
is, of course, an issue," he said.
"So, you're like a bishop?" Megumi asked.
"As good a comparison as any. Though it seems the
administrative side of things is overwhelming my ability to
have much time for spiritual matters." He sighed. "But
someone must do the work."
"So, what does it mean to say that the Children are
divine? What consequence does this have for a believer?"
Megumi asked.
"A very good question," he replied, passing her a
pamphlet. "This will explain things in more detail, but to
put it in brief, we believe that humanity should serve the
divine. The Children have come to usher in a new age of
man, in which the old ways must be put away and new paths
forged. Once the Angels are defeated, they will usher in a
new golden age. For now, we must aid them with our prayers
and give them the homage they deserve."
She put the pamphlet in her purse. "Alright. I
think that covers everything I need to start with."
"Feel free to contact me if you need to follow up,"
he said.
She nodded. "I will."
-*-
"I think we need to plant an agent," Misato said.
Weiss nodded in agreement. "Yes, we need someone on
the inside, so we can tell if it's a significant threat."
Fuyutsuki had called the senior staff together in
one of the conference rooms to discuss the question of the
Disciples. He said, "Does anyone have a suggestion as to
who to send?"
"Well, how about Makoto? He's level-headed and can
plausibly pose as someone who has been around the Children
and come to see their divinity from the 'inside'.," Misato
suggested.
"We need someone who speaks German fairly fluently,"
Ritsuko said. "Enough to pick up on things a non-native
speaker might not get."
"I have just the man. Pieter Bremenhofen. He's a
good man, very stable, and able to be discreet. And he's a
native German speaker," Ingrid said.
"Alright, if you trust him to do something like
this, I'll accept your judgement," Fuyutsuki said. "Get him
on it as soon as you can."
Ingrid nodded. "I will do so."
-*-
"What about this rumor we've heard about Commander
Ikari being in the middle of a tryst during the Violator's
attack?" Inspector Andrew Walker asked. He was Australia's
representative on the committee of Inspectors.
"I'd think the man was a enunch. I'm not sure what
he was doing down there, but I'm inclined to think no one
would have sex with him, even if he wanted it. Unless they
were really desperate," Misato replied.
Another of the inspectors, Faisal Shahid, who was
from Syria, interjected, "That bad?"
"Yes," Misato said.
"Damn." He sounded somewhat sorry for Gendo.
Walker sighed and rolled his eyes. "Moving on. Am
I correct in understanding that the Violator successfully
impersonated Ikari and used his passcodes to override the
MAGI during his assault?"
"Yes," Misato said. "It could change shape and had
captured him."
"So he gave up the passcodes to it?" Walker asked.
This is going to look bad, Misato thought. "That
remains unclear."
"I see," he said.
"Certain backdoors seem to have been left in MAGI by
its designers which the Violator may have exploited," Misato
continued. "Which had to be used to regain control of it,
in fact."
"It was designed with security flaws?" the third
member of the Inspector triad, Fatima Ummayad, from the
Sudan, asked.
"It would appear so," Misato said.
"Interesting. Tell us more about these built-in
holes..."
-*-
"So what do you think of these people?" Fuyutsuki
asked Gendo as they met in Gendo's office.
"The inspectors annoy me tremendously, but I'm
trying to be patient," Gendo said. Gendo shifted about a
little uncomfortably; he wasn't used to his new chair in his
office. Or having the smaller office.
"I meant the cult."
"Oh, the Children-Worshippers?" Gendo asked.
"Yes."
Gendo paused to push up his glasses. "If they could
be manipulated, they could be very useful, but we have
neither the time nor the resources to try to take them over.
Unless they turn out to be a front for someone. But I think
this is likely a spontaneous movement. It's only natural,
and well, better they turn towards the Children than towards
the Angels."
"True. Still, best to monitor them."
Gendo nodded. "I'm somewhat more worried about
this." He pointed to a passage on the screen of his
computer.
Fuyutsuki came over and read it. " 'And Lo, From
All the Lands of Man They Come, Come With Presents and
Pleadings, To Worship At the Altar of the Children, To Beg
Their Aid, To Give Them Praise, To Hope Beyond Hope. ' "
" 'And Lo, The Demon Sultan Hears The Praise, And He
Too Sends an Envoy, To Bear His Greeting, To The New Gods,
And Claim His Tithe.' " Gendo concluded. "This is from
Chapter fourteen."
"The Cult of the Demon Sultan, down in Turkey?"
"Exactly. One of that cult's main purposes was to
watch for this time referred to in this prophecy and to be
ready to greet the 'Envoy' when it came. The cult has had
to start over many times, either dying at the hands of
various creatures from beyond the Earth they tried to summon
or simply attrition due to the failure of the Envoy to
arrive. But I think the time for which they have long
waited has finally come, and I expect his cult will rise
again."
"Then we'd best increase our monitoring of the
skies. Do you think we're likely to get one of his Court or
is he likely to spit forth one of his Spawn?" Fuyutsuki
asked, returning to his seat.
"Probably his Spawn." Gendo said.
"Alright, I'll make sure Polaris is watching for
it."
"It may well be trackable by normal telescopes,
depending on how it travels," Gendo said. "So we'll need to
track astronomical data."
"A little harder, but it can be done. I hope."
"I'll call Taiki."
"Tai...oh, Yokojima?"
"Yes," Gendo said. "He's going to be disappointed
you forgot him."
"I haven't thought about him in years. Is he in
astronomy now?"
"He runs an observatory in Hokkaido now," Gendo
said. "And is one of the officers of a large amateur
astronomical society."
"Excellent. Get him on it."
"I will." Fuyutsuki paused. "How's the fake
website coming along?"
"A lot of it is done, but I'm trying to decide
whether to include this fake Necronomicon or not," Gendo
said, calling up the page for Fuyutsuki to take a look at.
"That seems a good idea," Fuyutsuki said. "Or is it
not fake enough?"
"Actually, I'm worrying slightly whether or not the
copyright holders will spot it and harrass us."
"If they do, the people we most want to fool with
this will take that as a sign of authenticity and use it to
justify believing it's real."
"Hmm, good point," Gendo said. "It should be ready
in a day or two, then."
"Excellent," Fuyutsuki said. "I'll talk to you
later."
"Good bye."
-*-
Shinji stared at the food. "What is this?" Shinji
asked.
"Sauerkraut. It's very good," Asuka said.
He sniffed it.
Asuka frowned. "Shinji, it's perfectly good food."
"Sorry, sorry," he said, and tried a bite. "Hey,
this is good."
Asuka smiled. "See?"
"You were right, German food is pretty good," Shinji
said.
They were having a picnic lunch under a small clump
of trees in one corner of the base, a sort of pseudo-date,
since they couldn't leave the base with the strange cult
running around all the local towns. Asuka had insisted on
making the food, which Shinji hadn't objected to, although
he'd not expected a plate of German cuisine. Though
thinking about it, he knew he should have.
"German food will make you strong," Asuka said.
Shinji laughed. "If you say so."
Asuka stood and flowed quickly through one of her
martial arts katas. "Like this!"
"So if I eat German food, I'll become a ninja?"
Shinji asked.
"Exactly!" She paused. "You know what I mean."
"Yes, I do," he said.
She sat down next to him and they ate quietly for a
while. Asuka now leaned back against the tree, putting an
arm around his shoulders. He smiled and leaned a little
closer as he worked on his food. "Thank you, Asuka."
She turned and kissed his cheek a little nervously.
"You're welcome, Shinji."
"Run," a nearby cat said. It was Oscar's pet cat.
Shinji said, "Run? Is something wrong?"
Asuka's eyes widened. "Oh great, if the cat's here,
then..."
"Asuka! Come and eat with me!" Oscar said,
grabbing her arm.
"I am not going to eat with you!" Asuka said.
Oscar darted forward and grabbed her lunch. "Yes,
you will!" Then he took off running.
"Bring back my lunch!" Asuka chased Oscar off out
of sight.
Shinji laughed, and tried to decide if it was his
duty to help chase, then decided Asuka could handle Oscar.
He turned back to his food.
"Shinji."
He started, turning and seeing Rei, holding a
Japanese style lunchbox. She held it out to him. "For me?"
he asked.
She nodded and sat down next to him. He carefully
opened it, curious as to what Rei might have made for him.
It turned out to be a partitioned box. The longest box held
what looked like cabbage leaves with long strips of white
meat on top of them, all of it covered with a dark, nasty
smelling sauce. There was an odd lumpy tan pudding in one
of the smaller compartments and mixed carrot slices and peas
in the other one, also covered with a slightly lumpy sauce.
Shinji sniffed the pudding; it smelled like apples.
"What is this?" Shinji asked.
"Cinnamon applesauce," Rei said.
"Applesauce?"
"Mixed with spices."
"Okay," he said, and started eating. It was
reasonably good, although the sauce on the meat tasted a
little funny. "This is pork, right?" he asked.
"Long pork."
He paused. "It's what?"
"I asked the cooks for some."
"The cooks..." What am I thinking?, he asked
himself. "So it's ordinary pork?"
"From the long part of the pig," Rei said, obviously
repeating something she'd just been told. "Is it good?"
"Yes, it is," he said. It looked nasty, but it
tasted okay.
She smiled. "Anna helped."
"Helped you make it?"
Rei nodded.
"That was nice of her." Except for playing jokes
about long pork on her, Shinji thought.
"Yes." Rei leaned back against the tree.
"Thank you."
"You're welcome," Rei replied.
Shinji finished off the food. "How are you doing?"
he asked.
"Fine," she said.
"Umm, did you and Touji and Hikari...I mean, I heard,
umm..." Shinji gave up; he couldn't quite ask.
"Dreams, then pillow fight," Rei said. "It was fun." She
then cocked her head, frowned, then said, "Must go." She
took the leftovers and quickly departed.
I hope she's going to be okay, Shinji thought.
-*-
"What do you think of Commander Ikari?" Margaret
Mallory asked Ritsuko.
"He's very secretive. While he's a good commander,
he's also rather brusque and very lacking in people skills,
though I am not well qualified to say that, I suppose,"
Ritsuko replied.
"Good administrative skills, then?"
"Yes. Overall, NERV has remained successful under
his administration. It would be nice, however, if he wasn't
an asshole."
Inspector Chang Hsu laughed. "Would you like to see
him replaced, then?"
"I can't think of anyone else really suited for the
job," Ritsuko said. "But I wouldn't cry any tears if he
remained demoted a while."
Inspector Henry N'Kambe nodded. "Do you think most
of the research section would like to see him replaced?"
"Most of us probably don't care one way or another.
As an administrative unit, he's treated us well. As people,
on the other hand, we've not been so lucky."
"What about his combat decisions?"
"He tends to leave the tactical direction to Major
Katsuragi, unless he has some special knowledge to add,"
Ritsuko said. "In general, though, he has done a good job
on those occassions when he has asserted his command
prerogatives in combat. I'm more worried about his tendency
to hoard critical information until it's almost too late.
Which leads to problems like the King in Yellow."
Mallory consulted some notes. "Ahh, yes, that.
Tell us more about that incident."
"Well, it started with a school play..."
-*-
"So you've been having nightmares?" Ritsuko asked
Shinji later, once she was done talking to the inspectors.
He nodded, shifting uncomfortably in her office's
spare chair. "Yes, about a sunken city made of basalt and
all the streets twist about and the buildings lean."
"With fish swimming about you? And possibly
fish-men?"
"Yes," he said. "Do you know...why this is
happening?"
"I have a bad feeling. You see, I've had the
nightmares too, and I think a lot of the Children have as
well."
"I know Asuka has," Shinji said.
"You are dreaming of the sunken city of R'yleh,
where sleeps one of the Angels. He nearly escaped in 1926,
and as the island rose, people around the world had
nightmares about it."
"Escaped?" Shinji asked.
"He sleeps, dreaming, within the ruins of his city.
So far as we can tell, he and his followers came to Earth
hundreds of millions of years ago. They warred with other
creatures, but eventually, for reasons which have been lost,
their homeland sank beneath the waves and their leader,
Cthulhu, remained trapped."
"For hundreds of millions of years?"
"The most potent of the Angels do not seem to age.
If we can take various legends seriously," her tone made it
clear she wasn't sure if she should, "they seem to go
through long periods of hibernation. The Angels have all
been hibernating for millions of years, it seems, and now
they are awakening."
"Why now?" Shinji asked. "Because of what happened
in Antarctica?"
"It would seem so. Sort of like an alarm going off.
But for creatures which can sleep so long, it can take a
long time to rouse."
Shinji frowned. "It seems strange that they all
waited about fourteen years and then woke up after that."
"The only other thing I could think of is that
someone is going around awakening them," Ritsuko said.
"But that raises the question of why they are letting them
come one at a time."
"Well, Asuka had an idea, though I'm not sure I want
to believe it." Shinji shifted back and forth on his feet
nervously.
"Go on."
"Well, she thinks whoever is unleashing them wants
us to win. That by winning, we build up NERV's authority
and power, by being the one thing which can stop them. I
think that's a little too paranoid, though. I mean, just
look at what's happening to Father from just one error.
Surely if someone was trying to do that, they wouldn't let
us have the big failures we've had."
Ritsuko nodded. "I can't quite see that. And
there's too much evidence the Angels predate this war by a
huge amount."
Shinji nodded, looking relieved. "I thought that
too. I'm thinking there must be something which happened
recently which is setting it off. Or else maybe some kind
of...I don't know...natural cycle is coming around, and the
Second Impact just happened by chance close to this."
"Well, right now, we don't have enough evidence.
However, I can prescribe you and the rest of the Children
some drugs which should help. I will see about mixing more
up and having them ready for you tomorrow."
"Alright." He got up. "Thank you."
"You're welcome."
Shinji left, and Ritsuko sighed. There were
certainly games afoot beyond what Shinji knew. She just
wished she knew for sure what they were.
-*-
Pieter wasn't sure what to expect. Getting into the
meeting had been easy; the group seemed very trusting.
Which probably meant that nothing important was going to be
said. But he had to start somewhere.
The group had split up into smaller groups, and then
everyone started talking about their dreams of all things.
A tall, balding man was rambling on right now about how he'd
dreamed about the Children setting the stars in the sky.
Glancing about, he could tell they'd heard this story
before.
"And then I woke up," he concluded.
"Fascinating," the man who Pieter guessed was what
seemed to pass for a priest in this group (called 'guides')
said. The guide, whose name seemed to be Henry, continued,
"How about you, Hans?" he asked Pieter. "What visions have
you had of late?"
Pieter panicked for a moment, then said, "I dreamed
of the battle of the Children in Lima, how they defeated the
Dark Sun and slew it, that it might bother humanity no
more."
"Ahh, that was a glorious day," Henry said. "Would
you like to tell us more?"
Pieter thought about it. "I could see the souls of
the fallen rising up into heaven, the songs they sung in
praise as they rose upwards. Even the crackling of the fire
was a hymn to their glory." He paused. "I'm not good with
words."
"That's very good," Guide Henry said. "We must
remember that all those who perish in these battles will go
to be in Heaven; we should not be too sorrowful, for they
have gone to heavenly bliss. And it is from Heaven that
they send us messages. I have had one such, of late."
Everyone became more attentive.
"A messenger is coming. Soon, none will be able to
deny the glory of the Children. From the heavens he comes
to show the whole world their glory. We must be prepared
for his arrival."
Hmm, perhaps I've hit gold after all, Pieter
thought. "How shall we know him?"
"He flew, shining with light, descending from the
heavens, a great firey wake in behind him. All will see him
and understand," Guide Henry said, his face lit up with joy.
Pieter asked, "How soon shall we see him?"
"Soon. Very soon."
-*-
The air had a distinctly shiny air about it, though
not the literal shine of fireworks or sparks floating
lazily. It was the kind of shine that made everything
appear a shade too bright and a little too blurry.
Rei walked the streets alone, already knowing where
she was. This was familiar territory, researched
frequently, and recently. Perhaps it would go better this
time. She looked about, making sure all things were in
place. A scarlet sunset cast its dying rays of light over
the city, as the first stars of night began to shine above.
A jet flew in the skies high above her, leaving a cloudy
trail. Lovers walked about in pairs. There were also
trees, sakura trees, dropping their petals down like snow.
Even better than last time, yes.
Asuka walked the streets alone, knowing she'd been
to this place before, though not quite remembering it. It
is difficult, after all, to remember dreams unless you focus
upon it before it slips away.
Hikari looked around with curiosity, feeling an ache
in her heart as she recognized where she was. This was
Tokyo-3, before the fall, as if nothing bad had happened at
all.
She turned a corner and saw Touji standing there.
The air around her shimmered a shade of pink, roses framing
her blushing face as she stared at him with starry eyes.
Touji turned and met her gaze, the air around him
turning shiny as well. He opened his mouth, which seemed to
happen in slow motion, and spoke:
"Shit, we're dreaming we're in Springtime Cherry
Blossoms. I think that's definitely a sign we've been
watching it too much."
Roses, aura, shining eyes, all gone.
Hikari laughed. "Maybe we are, I guess. Hey, is
that Rei?"
Touji turned and looked. It was, in fact, Rei,
across the street, walking down the sidewalk at a modest
pace. "Yeah, it is. Though something's weird."
"You think so too?"
As she walked towards them, on the other side of the
road, she finally noticed their preisence. A gust of wind
blew which nearly blew off her sunhat, and she held it and
her dress down looking flustered. Then she smiled and waved
at the two.
"I think I've got it," said Touji.
"Hm?"
"She's... normal. Happy, even."
Hikari looked at Rei again as she walked down the
street. Her walk was relaxed, easygoing, and had a
naturalness to it which Rei was usually lacking in. The
expression on her face had been normal too, instead of the
strange mask of emotionlessness she normally wore.
"You're right," said Hikari. "She is. Uh oh."
"Uh oh?"
"Asuka." She pointed further down the street.
Touji looked just in time , where Asuka, looking somewhat
troubled, was about to turn the corner that Rei was
approaching.
"She's still pissed at Rei?" asked Touji.
"Yes."
And then they ran into each other. Asuka's foggy
uncertainty sharpened into an angry resolve, while Rei's
happiness quickly crumbled into surprise and fear.
"Like watchin'a car wreck," Muttered Touji.
Hikari grabbed his hand and started dashing for the
overpass walkway. "C'mon!"
As they dashed through the overpass walkway, they
could already hear Asuka yelling over the buzz of traffic
noise. But as the two finally ran down the stairway they saw
Shinji had somehow arrived and was already trying to calm
Asuka down.
Off on the horizon, the last rays of sunlight faded,
giving up the sky to the darkness of night and infinite
stars.
Shinji stood between Asuka and Rei, holding Asuka's
wrists. "Stop it Asuka!"
"Why?! Why do you take HER side?!" shrieked Asuka.
"I'm the victim here, not her! Why does everyone take HER
side!"
"I'm not taking anybody's side!"
"Hey!" shouted Touji, finally arriving with Hikari.
"Guys, c'mon, calm down! We can't fight with each other
like this!"
"Why the hell not?!" challenged Asuka.
"Because we're a team!" he shouted back. "We gotta
stick together or we're gonna die out there! All for one
and one for all, and stuff like that!"
"We can't trust that monster!" shouted Asuka,
pointing at Rei.
Touji looked her in the eye. "She saved Hikari's
life. That's good enough for me."
There was a moment of awkward silence.
Asuka glared at Touji, who glared back. Finally,
Asuka averted her gaze and sighed. "Whatever," she mumbled.
And then Rei spoke, in the emotionless tone they
were used to hearing. "Something is here." Her eyes swept
over the surroundings steadily and her posture shifted to an
attack position.
"Something?" asked Shinji. "What something?"
"Something bad. You should wake up now."
In the darkness of a nearby alleyway a red light
shone brightly for a moment, fading into a crimson tri-lobed
eye. There was a hint of a shape within the shadows,
somewhat like a manta- ray, though far larger than any they
had seen.
"You should wake up now," repeated Rei. She turned
and looked at them, and as their gaze met hers, they
suddenly felt the world around them blur and bend. The last
thing Shinji saw before waking up was Rei charging into the
alleyway.
-*-
Shinji rushed over to Rei's room the moment he woke
up. Hearing his rapid footsteps out the door, Asuka
frowned.
She shook her head, then made her way down to the
commisary on the 1st floor. She was in the mood for some
hot cocoa to soothe her nerves.
Much to her surprise, she was not the first one
there. Anna sat at a table, sipping her own hot cocoa,
looking mildly dazed. She looked up as Asuka entered.
"Can't sleep?" she asked.
Asuka nodded.
"Wanna talk about it?" asked Anna.
"Nothing to talk about," mumbled Asuka, hitting the
buttons on the vending machines. "How about you?"
Anna laughed an embarrased laugh. "You know how I
move a lot in my sleep. I kinda fell off the bed and bumped
my head on the desk."
Asuka blinked, then looked at Anna's forehead, where
a bruise marked the left side. "Are you okay?" she asked.
"Maybe we should get Dr. Akagi to look at you."
"I'm fine, really," assured Anna. "It's just a
bruise."
Asuka looked at Anna doubtfully for a moment. "If
you start feeling worse, promise me you'll go see the
doctor, okay?"
Anna smiled. "I promise."
-*-
"C'mon, Makoto, you can dance closer to me. I won't
bite," Akane said, smiling her usual confident smile at
him.
"I might punch you in the nose accidentally or
something," he said, lurching about.
They were in Brown Castle, a dance club; Akane had
insisted on going out to it. Makoto had been nervous about
running into members of the Children Cult.
She began to undulate up close to him. "Follow me,"
she said.
He quickly caught on, and soon they were both moving
in unison, bodies very close but not quite touching. After
a little while, his nerves relaxed and he began to enjoy
himself.
"There, that's better," she said, now beginning to
move her arms up and down his sides, not quite touching
them. He did the same without being prompted and she
grinned. "There's hope for you yet."
"This is kind of fun," he said.
"I told you it would be."
"That's him!" someone said.
He turned and saw a woman wearing the star symbol of
the cult. She was pointing at him.
"That's the one!" she said. Several other people
turned and saw him.
"We're in trouble," he said.
She cracked her knuckles. "We can take them."
He looked at the increasing number of people looking
their way. "I don't like brawls."
"Aww. Well, we can get the bouncer."
They headed to find the bouncer, only to spot he was
wearing one of the stars as well. Makoto frowned. "Let's
just get out of here and go eat, okay?"
She sighed. "Alright, let's go eat."
They ended up in a quiet little cafe, where they had
a fairly pleasant meal. However, when they came out, there
were dozens of the star-wearing cultists, from old men to
young children. Makoto did his best to avoid eye contact.
Akane, on the other hand, glared back at them.
One of them said, "There he is! With some cheap
whore!"
Makoto's eyes widened and he shouted, "She is NOT a
whore!"
"Get him!" The mob charged.
Makoto took Akane by the hand and dragged her after
him as he took off running down the street.
"This way!" she said, now taking the lead as she
dodged thrown rocks.
"We need to get to the police."
"I don't know where to find the police," Akane said.
"But I do know where we can get some help."
They turned several corners, then ran into a pub
where a bunch of men were watching a soccer game. Akane
said, "Help! These people are trying to kill us! Please
help us." She fluttered her eyelashes and radiated
helplessness.
Even as some of the mob started to come in the door,
the men rose up, and one of them said, "Don't worry,
fraulein. We'll deal with these morons."
"They're probably Munich fans," Makoto contributed.
The soccer fans charged the onrushing cultists and a
massive brawl erupted. A fair number of the cultists ran as
soon as they realized they were confronting soccer fans.
The rest fought on. Akane grabbed a chair and pitched in,
and Makoto seized one and moved to cover her.
She bashed down a middle-aged man with the chair,
then followed up with a kick to his groin, while Makoto
battered aside a onrushing punk who had a bike chain. The
punk now went for a knife, but Makoto's chair gave him more
reach. He kept swinging it fiercely, driving the man back,
until one of the soccer fans brought a bottle down on the
back of the punk's head.
He turned and saw Akane bashing a man's head into a
table, and another of the cultists charging her from behind
with a chairleg. Makoto shouted, "Akane, look out!" then
hurled his chair at the man, who got nailed in the side and
fell down. Akane threw her foe off to one side and ran back
to Makoto.
Police sirens began to blare in the distance.
Akane kissed him on the cheek. "My hero," she said,
wrapping her arms around him.
He kissed her back. "Now you know why I was worried
about going out tonight."
"You can't let the world push you around," Akane
said. "You have to seize it by the throat and make it obey
you."
"I'm not very good at that," Makoto said.
"I know. So I'll just have to seize it for you."
She kissed him again. "So, have you jumped Misato yet?"
He looked embarrassed. "No."
"Tsk, tsk. Gotta seize the chance while you can."
"Do you really want me to jump Misato?"
"I want you to GO for what you want," she said.
"Don't let life tell you what to do. Tell LIFE what to do.
Though you being so shy is kind of cute."
"Well, once we talk to the cops, I think I'll take
you home and have my way with you, then," he said, trying to
sound confident.
She grinned. "Oooh, I like that idea. Will it
involve ice cream?"
"We'll have to buy some on the way home."
"That's fine. My treat." She purred a little.
"This is going to be fun."
-*-
"Is this really our job?" Misato asked. "I mean,
really this is a job for the German police, right?"
Fuyutsuki, Ingrid, Weiss, and Misato were meeting in
conference room five, seated around a shiny black table,
drinking coffee and discussing what to do about the problems
with the cultists.
"They asked us to do something," Fuyutsuki said.
"I've been in contact with the state government, and they
don't know how to handle it."
Weiss frowned. "But if we get involved...I mean,
this is very much not in our jurisdiction."
"We need to do something," Fuyutsuki said. "Not
necessarily anything which would involve arresting people,
but we have to do something, because these people are only
here because we are here. A propaganda campaign,
encouraging preachers to engage in theological debate, a
television show...I don't know. Something."
"Hmm, perhaps some kind of television show, have the
children announce they're not divine," Ingrid suggested.
"That might be a good idea. Any other suggestions?"
Fuyutsuki asked.
"I'm going to have to think about this some," Misato
said. "This really isn't my area of expertise. Perhaps
Maya can think of something; she's our PR expert. Sort of."
"Alright. Well, let's all think about it and meet
again tomorrow," Fuyutsuki said. "And I will talk to Maya.
Now, on to other business..."
-*-
"Yo, sis, we came to see you," Touji said.
She mumbled something. She mumbled a lot, Touji had
noticed.
"Everyone's all settled in now," Hikari said,
placing fresh flowers in the vase by the girl's bed.
"We tried a double date, but it was even more of a
disaster than I would have expected," Touji said. "I'm just
glad you're in the hospital on the base, or we probably
couldn't visit you."
"Angles...fish..." Touji's sister mumbled.
"Damn, that reminds me of that stupid nightmare,"
Touji said.
"I thought we agreed that never happened," Hikari
said.
"Right, right," Touji said. He sat and stared at
his sister for a while. "Dad's doing okay," he said.
"He's been working hard, but he's decided he hates German
food. Which I have kinda mixed emotions. Some of it is
good, but it reminds me of Asuka."
"Touji!"
Touji laughed a little. "You can see we still don't
agree on that."
And then Touji's sister's back arched and her eyes
opened and she began to screech. "IA! IA! Cthulhu fhtagn!
Ph'nglui mglw'nahf Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhatagn.
Ng'ngri rty'wnhal gshtn y'aghn!"
"Nurse! She's having some kind of episode!" Touji
yelled.
The nurse quickly came and sedated her. "This has
been happening more frequently of late," she said.
"Any idea why?" Touji asked.
"It may mean she's starting to wake up," the nurse
said. "Otherwise...no idea."
He nodded, hoping this was a good sign.
-*-
"This could be it," Gendo said, pointing at some
lines on the printout. "
"I don't think so," Fuyutsuki said. "If I
understand what this is saying, it's moving to parallel the
Earth's movement. I think it's Ghroth."
"Hmm, I suppose the prophecy could refer to Ghroth."
"Ghroth isn't really an envoy, though," Fuyutsuki
said. "There is some chance the prophecy is just another
indication of Nylathotep."
"Hmm, that's true. Best we take no chances,
though." Gendo looked at the documents. "If this is
Ghroth, then the Spawn isn't showing up."
"As we might expect. Polaris was designed to
monitor the Earth, not the entire Solar System,
unfortunately," Fuyutsuki said. "But we should get some
advanced warning."
"The Children should be able to handle it, but only
if we are quick enough, before it can start to burrow or
grow."
"Let us hope for enough advanced warning."
"Indeed."
-*-
Half the leaders of SEELE were present in the flesh,
half attended only by hologram. One of those present at the
murky meeting table was known as Scorpion, due to his choice
of a sigil. "I fear they have betrayed us," he said.
A floating, inverted ankh spoke with a woman's
voice. //"You trust too little. One by one, the Great
One's rivals fall. They still follow the plan." //
//"Perhaps," // a lidless eye with a tongue of flame
in the center, replied. The voice was male and older.
//"Best we take precautions." //
"We have taken precautions," the old man to his
right said. His hair was grey, but his skin still kept the
even dark tones of youth, or so he told himself. "My work on
DAGON has been largely successful. We will have Eidoleons
under our direct control when the time comes."
//"But will they be able to match the strength of
the Children?" // the Inverted Ankh asked.
"Quantity tends to beat quality. They will
suffice," the old man said proudly.
Another old man now spoke, his eyes hidden by a red
visor. "We must watch and wait. Should Ikari be removed,
it may not matter if they are loyal or not. But for now, I
suggest we wait and see how they handle the Spawn of the
Demon Sultan when it lands near their base." Lorentz
paused, then said, "Though we will have to take precautions
in case they cannot handle it."
"And be ready to take it for ourselves if they
cannot handle it," Scorpion insisted.
"Yes," Lorentz said. "It could be very useful, and
this world will be of no use to the Great One if Azathoth's
spawn devours it."
A floating red cadaceucus now spoke. //"Then is it
worth the risk of not informing them?"//
"That is why we will prepare to step in if they
fail. We will see if they realize what is coming and if
they come to us or try to solve it without us," Lorentz
said. "Let the Eidoleons be prepared. The Envoy comes, and
we must be ready."
-*-
Gendo finished drawing the circle on the floor as
Fuyutsuki lit the candles. "Are you sure this will work?"
he asked.
"Having never had the misfortune to be in the same
solar system as a Seed of Azathoth, no I am not," Fuyutsuki
said, consulting Al-Azif again. "However, De Vermis
Mysteris also contains this formula and an account of its
use against the Black Meteor of 1438. We will have to renew
this protection weekly, but I think it is worth the time we
will have to spend."
Gendo nodded fervently. "True. It is unlikely to
make things worse, and if that thing got into the base..."
"We cannot afford to lose another base," Fuyutsuki
said. "And the bloodshed would be terrible."
"We are so close." Gendo reached out to the
invisible prize, caught himself, and put his hands down.
Fuyutsuki smiled slightly. "I know. Alright, light
the red candle..."
-*-
"Here, try this one," Anna said, pointing to one of
the links on the search page.
"Alright," Asuka said. She clicked on it and waited
for it to load.
THE HALLOWEEN 2006 DISASTER
By Richard Krause
I was long reluctant to talk about this, for fear of my old
employers. However, my sense of responsibility has overcome
my fears, as I think people deserve to know the truth, given
the conclusions which can be drawn from this.
In the fall of 2006, I was a researcher for Gehirn, the
organization set up to 'study the effects of the Second
Impact on the environment'. Or so people believed. While I
can't prove it, there is some reason to believe that Gehirn
or its masters may well have been responsible for the Second
Impact. However, that is a subject for the webpage I am
still working on.
The German wing of Gehirn was based in Munich in 2006,
having taken over an old industrial park which had been
abandoned due to the damage to the German economy caused by
the Second Impact. I was involved in studying some of the
first samples of what is now known as LCL. They were rather
secretive about where the stuff came from, but I didn't
care, as I was too excited about the discoveries we were
making to want to risk losing my job.
There were two highly secure zones in the complex. One of
them was Area Five, where LCL came from, along with various
other strange substances. The other was Area Nine. I had
the impression some sort of genetic experiments were going
on in there, but no one really knew for sure. We liked to
sit around at night and make bets on what was really going
on in there.
I only knew Kyoko Soryuu Zeppelin in a rather peripheral
sort of way. She worked in Area Nine, and like most of the
people there, tended to largely only associate with other
folk working in that area. At the time I assumed it was a
matter of security and finding it hard to socialize with
people you couldn't talk about work with, but now I am not
so sure of that. She struck me as a strong-willed but
somewhat high strung woman, unlike her much more laid back
husband, Pieter Langley, who was a test pilot for some
company up near Berlin. They had a daughter, Asuka, who is
now one of the Children who pilot the Evangelion Units. I
have reason to suspect she is the result of genetic
experiments, as you shall see.
Her husband periodically came to visit her, along with their
daughter. It was during one such visit that the great
disaster happened.
What follows is my reconstruction of events, based, I must
confess, on my talking to people and observation of some of
the locations, rather than any documentary proof. I will be
the first to admit there may be some errors.
It was Edgar Heinz who was the first to notice that most of
the women in Area Nine were all getting pregnant at once.
This happened around late September. Out of twenty women,
fifteen of them were visibly pregnant. Two of them quit and
got abortions and I never saw them again. The other
thirteen stuck it out. Until October 31, 2006.
Pieter Langley showed up with his child for a visit with his
wife that day and the guards on Area Nine wouldn't let him
bring his daughter in. I happened to be passing and offered
to take his daughter to our daycare facility. I took Asuka
(who was pretty angry and kept pounding on me) down to the
daycare center, at which point she promptly threw up. On
me. The daycare workers had me take her to the infirmary,
at which point I left to go clean up. This much I can
attest to for certain. Beyond this, we enter the realm of
what I believe happened based on what I heard from people,
but I cannot be certain.
Pieter went to see his wife, who he found was feeling sick.
The baby inside her seemed quite agitated as well. Several
of the other women felt sick as well. Pieter went to have
an argument with the head of the lab, Dr. Krupp, to try to
get his wife out of work early. While they argued, the baby
inside one of the other women, Dr. Margaret Eidel, ate its
way out of its mother, killing her, then attacked another
staff member, Dr. Lawrence Dupois. Yes, I know this sounds
like a cheap horror movie, but it is the truth.
Asuka paused in her reading and stared. She glanced
over at Anna, who was just shaking her head. She took a
deep breath and tried to still her nerves, which were
starting to jangle. "He's got to be making this up," she
said.
"I have a feeling this may have something to do with
why Rei is so strange," Anna said.
"..."
"It would make a lot of sense if she's the result of
genetic experiments," Anna said.
"Hmm, true," Asuka said, then turned back to her
reading.
This seemed to be the signal for the babies inside all the
pregnant women to burst out. Or, well, most of them.
Eight out of the other twelve now died as their babies ate
their way out and rampaged. Two more of the pregnant women
were savaged by rampaging infant monsters and the children
within them devoured. Equipment was damaged and various
poisonous gases were unleashed into the atmosphere inside
the lab. As far as I can tell, the gasses killed off most
of the survivors, including the two pregnant women who
remained.
Gehirn security was called in. The rest of us speculated
wildly until we saw the gases escaping from a damaged
window, and we concluded some horrible lab accident had
taken place. That was the public story. Eight people, all
poisoned, survived the disaster. Three recovered, two died
within hours, and the other three, I talked to before they
died over the next few days. They still wouldn't explain
everything which had been going on, but I was able to
reconstruct what had happened from what they did say.
The head of the research facility, Dr. Long, called me in,
having found out about my investigation. He more or less
hinted that I would keep my nose out of things if I wanted
to keep my job, and possibly if I wanted to live. My need
for employment and my cowardice outweighed my principles,
and so I remained silent.
Dr. Krupp, who somehow survived, was fired summarily, the
blame pinned on him, and a few weeks later he threw himself
into traffic and died. The lab disaster brought such bad
publicity that the facility was soon closed down, but I was
transferred to do research elsewhere. Five years ago, I was
hit by a car and ended up with a disabled pension from NERV
and retired to quiet obscurity.
I might never have told this story, except for my fear that
the recent events with the Angels are connected to what
happened that day. I am still not sure of what exactly was
being done in Area Nine, but I fear it was part of an effort
at mass production of Evangelion Pilots, that somehow they
knew what was coming. I have seen both Commander Ikari and
Commander Fuyutsuki of NERV (though, of course, neither held
that rank at the time) go in and out of Area Nine in its
heyday, and one of the Children is connected to two of those
who died there. Perhaps I am just growing paranoid in my
isolation, but I think that something is going on that is
being covered up.
"This...this can't really be true, can it?" Asuka
asked. "I mean...You couldn't cover up something like this,
could you?"
"The Free Press is often not very free, ever since
the chaos after Second Impact," Anna said. "We're only now
really starting to open up again. So if you have a
plausible explanation for something most people wouldn't
want to believe anyway because it sounds like a cheap horror
movie, then yes, I think you could, especially if you offer
up a scapegoat for it."
"I...I should...I ought to talk to this man," Asuka
said.
"There is an email address. And you might want to
talk to Dr. Himmelfarb. She might know the truth. If she's
willing to tell it."
Asuka shuddered. "I have to know the truth."
Anna nodded. "You have the right to know."
-*-
"My understanding is that Area Nine was doing the
genetic research which enabled the development of the
Evangelion Units," Dr. Himmelfarb said. "Which involved
large amounts of working with genetically engineered mice
and rats as well as with samples from Adam. The lab
disaster itself was the result of Dr. Krupp's sloppiness in
storage of various chemicals and failure to inspect various
storage containers. The result of this was the flooding of
the air conditioning with hallucinogenic gases, followed by
poisoning and spreading of fires. My understanding was that
your mother, pregnant, succumbed to the poisons because she
overstressed herself trying to help another pregnant woman
get out, while your father went back in to help people and
died as a result of that."
"Why was the lab storing hallucinogenic gases?"
Asuka asked in disbelief.
"They weren't originally hallucinogenic, until
containers leaked and mixed together."
Asuka said, "Did you ever know Dr. Krause?"
"We worked together for a while until his accident.
He was a quiet, nervous man, but a good scientist and hard
worker. I did know he was the one who took you to the
infirmary that day."
"Where is he now?"
"I don't know, although I got the vague impression
he was from somewhere in Saxony. Leipzig, maybe."
"I guess I'm going to have to confront Commander
Ikari about this."
Dr. Himmelfarb sighed. "If it is true, he isn't
going to tell you the truth."
"I'll MAKE him tell me," Asuka said.
-*-
"Babies eating their way out of their mothers,"
Gendo said.
"I want to know the truth!" Asuka banged her fist
on the table.
"There was a lab accident due to Dr. Krupp turning
out to be far more stupid than anyone had ever imagined.
Your parents died trying to save people. Who told you this
story about rampaging monster babies?" Gendo's voice was
somewhat mocking.
"I found it on a website by someone who worked
there. Dr. Himmelfarb confirmed he was there."
Gendo turned his monitor around and passed his
keyboard to Asuka. "Please show me this website."
Asuka got out her notepad, on which she'd written
down the url and punched it in. She got a 404 instead.
"Dammit, I think I wrote it down wrong."
"Take your time," Gendo said, rising. "I'm going to
get a cup of coffee. Would you like some?"
"No, thank you," she said and kept typing.
He came back with fresh coffee and several donuts,
one of which he began to eat. He leaned back in his chair.
"How is it going?"
"Dammit, I can't find the website," she said. "I'm
going to have to get the copy I saved at home and
double-check the address."
"Alright," Gendo said. "I am stuck here until
five."
"I'll be back sooner than that."
-*-
The web search couldn't find the page. Her
bookmarked url gave her a 404 error. The saved version had
vanished off her hard drive. She hadn't printed it out yet,
so she didn't have a hard copy. She did still have the
man's email address in her address book, though.
Asuka cursed loudly. "Dammit!"
Shinji stuck his head in the door. "What's wrong?"
"Shinji, you believe me, don't you?" she asked
softly.
"Uh, believe you about what?" he asked, coming over
to her.
"About what happened."
"Umm, happened to what?"
"Oh wait, I hadn't told you."
"Yes," he said, a little impatiently.
She got up and hugged him silently. "I found this
website, you see..." She explained the whole story, leaning
against him. "But now I can't find the site, and almost all
my evidence is gone."
"Well, you know, given the man got all his
information from people dying of poison after inhaling
hallucinogens, it's possible that they imagined the whole
baby thing," Shinji said softly. "If some kind of genetic
experiment creature got loose which they'd made out of
Adam's...stuff, they might have all somehow gotten the idea
it ate its way out of someone."
"Shinji, it...it...you don't think I imagined the
whole thing, do you?"
"No, of course not, but I don't think I'd trust some
disgruntled ex-employee telling a story that sounds like a
cheap horror movie either," Shinji said. "And even he
admitted he hadn't actually SEEN any of what he claimed
happened."
"You saw what my blood did to Anna. Now imagine if
some babies were injected with it or something? Or even
engineered to be part-Adam...Shinji, that could be where Rei
came from."
He frowned. "Hmm, I suppose that would make sense.
But you don't have any evidence."
"I have his email address. Once he writes me back,
I can find out more."
"Good luck."
"Kiss me," she said softly.
Shinji leaned in and kissed her. She pressed hard
against him while they kissed, then leaned back and said,
"Can you just...sit with me a while?"
"Sure," Shinji said, going over to sit down on her
bed with her, an arm around her shoulders. "I...I wouldn't
mind if you ever want to do that again."
"Do what again?"
"Make me a German lunch."
She smiled. "You could just ask."
"Ask...oh, right, ask. Yes."
"You don't have to be nervous. I won't bite," Asuka
said, then kissed his cheek. "I'll make you a nice lunch
tomorrow, then. What would you like?"
"Surprise me," he said. "I don't know much about
German cooking."
"Alright," she said. "I have some good ideas.
Hmm, you all done with your homework?"
"Ack! I came over to ask you for help with
something, but no, I have a big mountain of it to finish,"
Shinji said.
She got up. "Okay, then, let's defeat your
homework, and then we can do something fun."
"Sounds good to me," he said.
-*-
"You want us to do what?" Hikari asked.
"We've decided to see if we can lessen cult
recruiting by having each of you record some public service
announcements to the effect that you are not gods," Maya
said.
"Maybe we should just make a big public appearance
to do it," Hikari said.
"We may try that, but we're worried about rioting,
whereas radio and TV ads rarely cause rioting."
"People often don't believe them either," Hikari
said.
Maya sighed. "I know, but it can't hurt, I hope."
"Sure," Hikari said. "Let's go."
"Follow me."
-*-
Touji faked left, stutter-stepped right, then pulled
back for a fadeaway jumper.
Clang. Clang. Swish.
He smirked. "Ha. Still got the touch. That's the
power of the captain of the basketball team!"
Shinji picked up the ball and tossed it to him.
"Too bad there isn't a basketball team to play for anymore."
Touji caught the ball and shot a quick jumper.
"That's a problem, yeah."
Clang. Thud. Swish.
Shinji tossed the ball to him again. "How's your
sister? Doing any better?"
"Backboard!" Touji shouted, shooting again.
Thud. Swish.
"Sis is... well, she's still in a coma, but now she
mumbles a lot. Weird stuff. Aiya Aiya Callyou! Or
something."
"Uh."
"It's better than her just being quiet," said Touji.
"I think."
"Yeah."
Touji shot more baskets in silence for a while, then
asked, "Any strange dreams lately?"
Shinji shook his head. "No. You?"
"Nope."
"Oh."
"Let's hope it stays that way, eh?"
"Yeah," Shinji said. "Has Maya gotten you to do one
of those ads yet?"
"Tomorrow," Touji said. "You think I should dress
up?"
"She had me wear my plug suit for the TV one."
"Any idea when these will air? I'd like to see
myself." He dribbled the ball around Shinji in a circle,
then took a shot and made it, grinning.
"You'd have to ask Maya," Shinji said.
"Right. I reckon I'll do that." He made another
shot which missed. "Later."
-*-
"Did you ever hear back from that guy?" Hikari asked
Asuka.
"No. We tracked down his address, but he's in
Leipzig. And he's not answering the phone."
"Maybe you should take a train there and check,"
Hikari said.
"It's about six hours by train there. We could wait
for Sunday and make a day trip of it," Anna said.
"Alright, sounds good," Asuka said. "If it all
turns out to be fake or something, we can just make it a
girls' day out."
"I'll see about finding some nice places to visit
while we're there," Anna said.
"Should be fun," Hikari said.
-*-
Touji stared at himself on the screen. "Ugh. I look
like a total dweeb."
"The camera never lies," Asuka said, grinning.
The viewing room was packed full of staffers and
Children, as they watched the various short spots Maya had
filmed.
"The camera keeps wobbling," Anna said.
"It's a dynamic viewpoint," Maya said.
"Dynamically wobbling," Misato muttered. "Can we
turn the sound up?"
"You'd hear it better if everyone didn't talk over
it," Maya said a little crossly.
That got the silence she wanted.
-*-
"So bored..." Touji mumbled as he sat on a bench
with Shinji.
Shinji, listening to music on his headphones, did
not reply.
"I wanna do something."
"Do what?" Shinji asked. "We can't even go into
town with the lunatics on the loose and no one to
translate."
"We could play basketball," Touji said hopefully.
"You already beat me enough today," Shinji said.
"I wish Asuka was here."
"I wish Hikari was here," Touji said.
For a time, silence.
"We're pathetic," Touji said. "Our girlfriends are
gone, and we're just sitting here on this bench." He
groaned and looked up at the sky.
"We could go watch TV."
"Wouldn't understand it." Touji paused. "You think
they'd let us try the shooting gallery?"
"We're too young in Germany, too."
He sighed again. "Gotta be SOMETHING we can do."
"Maybe we..." Shinji paused.
"Something wrong?"
"I don't know," Shinji said. "I have a bad
feeling."
"As in 'incoming attack' bad?"
"No, just a feeling."
Touji sighed. "Damn. Hmm, we could go play some
computer games, I guess."
"Alright," Shinji said, getting up. "Should be
fun."
"Funner than the bench, anyway."
-*-
Far away, Asuka, Anna, and Hikari had found the
apartment building of Dr. Krause, a stolid old brownstone,
and gone inside to talk to the landlord.
"He's dead," the landlord said to Asuka. "Has been
for days now. Someone tried to rob his apartment and ended
up shooting him dead." He was a short, balding man, about
as wide as he was tall.
"..."
"They stole his TV, his computer, the silverware and
a lot of his books. Very thorough." The landlord shook his
head. "A pity. Dr. Krause was a quiet man, never bothered
anyone. The funeral was very nice."
"When did he die?"
"The twenty-second."
A week before I found his webpage, she thought. I
guess the ISP wasn't lying when they said his account was
shut down for not paying his bill, but... She could still
smell a rat.
Going to have to force the truth out of Gendo, she
decided. If he had this man killed, he's going to PAY.
-*-
"I want to know the TRUTH!" Asuka shouted at Gendo.
Sitting behind his desk, he simply folded his hands
and fixed his stare on her. If it was supposed to
intimidate her, it didn't work. "Some things are sensitive
information, which is not simply given out to anyone who
asks for it."
"It's about my parents! I have the right to know
what really happened to them! You were there! You know
what happened!" She pointed at him accusingly.
"I expect that if I was there, I would be dead,"
Gendo said. "Your parents died bravely trying to save
others. That is all that matters."
"Because you did some kind of genetic
experimentation on my sibling and on all those other babies!
And covered it up!" A soft red glow was forming around her
hand now.
"This matter is closed," Gendo said. He pushed his
glasses up and started to turn away from her.
Asuka's hand burned brightly with flames now, only
inches away from Gendo's chest. "WRONG. You are going to
tell me or I am going to beat it out of you!"
For a moment, she saw a look of fear, and then his
emotional mask slammed back down. She could almost smell it
now, through the front he put up. "Do you think Shinji
would be very appreciative if you burned me to death?"
She winced. "I want to know the truth!"
"Your willingness to kill me over this shows how
little ready you are for any real truths," Gendo said. His
voice was cold and stern; it was hard to tell what he was
really feeling. She could get a hint of contempt from it
which only made her more angry.
"I'll show..."
Then she felt a pulse of power behind her and turned
to see what it was. Bubbles dispersed as Touji and Shinji
stood among them. Shinji said, "Asuka, what are you doing?"
He looked very worried. Touji was watching her burning
hand.
"I want to know what happened to my parents!
They've been lying to me!" Asuka shouted.
Touji half-stepped towards Asuka, then stopped
nervously. Shinji walked over to her and thrust his hand
into her flame and took her hand, staring into her eyes.
He said softly, "Please don't threaten my father, Asuka."
She held his hand tensely. "I want to know the
truth. And he and Fuyutsuki are the only people who know!"
"Father, Asuka has the right to know what happened
to her parents," Shinji said to Gendo. "Please tell her."
His voice was half-pleading, half-demanding, as he looked
his father in the face; he looked worn.
They stared at each other for a few seconds, then
Gendo said, "Alright. This is what happened. The early
experiments with the development of the Evangelion units
revealed that most people went mad or mutated horribly after
trying to control our test model. Others died." He paused,
taking a sip of coffee, then brooded for a minute.
Finally, he said, "Like Yui, my wife, Shinji's mother.
However, we were able to establish that Rei could link
safely with an EVA unit, and we isolated what we thought
were the genetic factors which would enable other people to
control them. Through careful work, we created fetuses with
those characteristics and implanted them in volunteers."
"My mother volunteered for something like that?"
Asuka asked in horror.
"Your mother understood the danger our world faced.
It seemed a necessary risk. What followed...was a disaster.
Our knowledge was imperfect. We did not fully appreciate
the qualities of Adam's genetic material. The result was
that one of the children did, in fact, eat her way out. In
the resulting chaos, things were broken and spilled, a fire
broke out, and the lab went up in anarchy and death."
Gendo paused to sip his coffee.
Continuing, he said, "We don't know all the details,
as most of those involved died, and most of the survivors
were too busy panicking to pay attention. Your mother died
when her child ate its way out as well, apparently trying to
escape the disaster. Your father helped some of the few
survivors out, then went back in after his wife and died as
a result of too much exposure to the poisonous gases. Dr.
Krupp, the lab head, killed himself a few days later from
shame."
"How could you do something like that? That's
horrible, going around altering the genetics of babies!
How could you do that to my parents?" Asuka shouted, flames
now erupting all over her body. Shinji continued to grip
her hand.
"Because the future of humanity was on the line.
Until it was discovered that YOU could be a pilot, we had no
potential pilots but Rei, and Rei...our efforts to duplicate
Rei were a total disaster. And if we had no pilots,
humanity would be doomed when the Angels came."
"So Rei IS a genetic experiment." Asuka struggled
to calm herself.
"Yes. This why all those clones rampaged during
Adam's escape. Unfortunately, they were all flawed. Only
Rei can survive exposure to LCL and remain human and sane,
and we don't know why. Even now." Gendo's voice was firm,
but his hands shook slightly.
Asuka's self-control broke down again, though she
was trying to control herself, for Shinji's sake if not for
Gendo's. "Why didn't you ever TELL ME?"
"It could only bring you pain," Gendo said. "And it
was true. The few survivors said they tried to help people
and there was a laboratory accident. You were a small child
and having to tell you your parents were dead was bad
enough."
Asuka began to cry. "I'm not a child any more."
"An adult would not, I hope, threaten to kill me
because of my refusal to reveal classified information,"
Gendo said. "Your power is vast, but your maturity still
has a long way to go."
"Father, that was cruel," Shinji said sharply.
"Can't you see you've hurt her?"
"I tried to avoid having to tell her," Gendo said,
turning to Shinji. "But she insisted on the whole story and
so did you." His tone of voice made it clear he felt no
guilt at her reaction.
"Mama, papa..." Asuka broke down completely.
"Shinji, Touji, please take her home," Gendo said
tightly. For a moment, Shinji could see his eyes through
the glasses, tracking her flames.
"Yes, sir," Touji said softly. He seemed relieved
to go.
"We will," Shinji said, turning to Asuka and leading
her out with an arm around her.
They departed. Gendo sat in silence, watching them
go. Once their footsteps faded, he got up and shut the
door, then came back over to his chair and took a long
draught of coffee. Then he began to shake and spilled the
rest of it on his desk.
And then the tears came.
-*-
Shinji sat on Asuka's bed, his arms around her,
holding her. She'd finished crying earlier, and now she was
just quiet, listening to the soft music he'd put on her
stereo. Anna and Hikari sat in chairs nearby, and Touji
lurked near the door with the look of someone who felt he
ought to do something, but didn't know what.
Hikari asked softly, "You want to play cards or
something, Asuka? Or would you rather we give you some
privacy?"
"Don't leave me alone," she said softly.
"I'll go get some cards," Touji said.
He left, and quickly after, Rei entered hesitantly,
a book in her hands. "May I?" she asked.
Asuka started to say no, to yell at her and tell her
to go away forever. And then she remembered what she had
learned, that Rei was just an experiment, something which
had been made to be a pilot. She'd been a puppet all her
life.
Everything Asuka was struggling with inside herself,
the changes moving her away from humanity, Rei had struggled
with that her entire life. She glanced at the book; it was
another manga. 'One Summer Day', another love triangle
story. There had to be some better way for Rei to get a
grip on how to deal with people than that.
She could feel Rei's pain; she could smell the
regrets. Asuka thought about how she'd nearly tried to fry
Gendo to a crisp a little earlier. Control was so hard, and
it was so easy to give in to the beasts howling in her mind,
the pieces of souls she had stolen, devoured, assimilated.
They wanted her to be like them, a killer, a monster.
Looking over at Shinji, she wondered if he felt like
she did, if these voices gibbered at him. He seemed so kind
and gentle, like they could never do that to him. He smiled
back at her, and his smile made her feel more human. It
gave her strength for what she needed to do.
She reached inside her mind, to a place she didn't
want to go, ever. Where the fragments of the Violator
lived, and she beat them down with the anger she'd been
directing at Rei, and probed into them, trying to find the
answers she'd been afraid to look for.
To her regret, it didn't know. It could only see
what happened to those directly under its sway, not what
happened to those merely influenced. She kicked its mind,
and came back to herself, back to her sorrow.
Rei looked just like she felt, Asuka realized. So
sad and lonely. She didn't want to forgive Rei; the memory
of what had happened was still strong. But she had lost her
certainty that Rei had done what she did out of the freedom
of her own will. Rei had been overcome, as others were, and
hadn't been able to help herself. She could tell that now,
intellectually, though her gut feelings still screamed in
outrage and pain.
So she forced her instincts down, and tried to keep
the reins in the hands of her rational mind. "Yes, come
in," Asuka said softly. "So you were an experiment."
Rei blinked and came over to kneel in front of
Asuka. "My birth, yes."
"Are we all just puppets? Just someone's
experiment?" Asuka asked bitterly. "Damned to turn into
monsters because no one knew what they were doing?"
"We are the Children," Rei said. "That is destiny.
But what we do, that is us."
Touji came back with the cards, then looked
nervously at Rei and Asuka.
"I feel like a puppet, a doll, just dancing on
strings and doing what I'm told like a mannequin," Asuka
said angrily. "What else haven't they told us?"
"Many things, I think," Anna said.
"Yeah, there's a lot of secrets here," Touji said.
"It doesn't always help much to know the truth,"
Shinji said. "It hurts, sometimes."
Asuka began to shake, though not to cry. She said,
"I don't want to be a monster."
"You're not a monster," Hikari said firmly.
"You're my friend, and a good human being. We may have
special powers, but that just gives us more
responsibilities. It doesn't make us monsters."
"We are more gods than monsters," Anna said.
"Don't fear your powers. Embrace them and use them wisely.
It is why we were born, to have these abilities. This is
why we exist."
"I just want to know what's going on," Asuka said,
sighing as her rage began to fade. She leaned against
Shinji. "Shinji...you don't regret being my boyfriend, do
you?"
Shinji blushed slightly. "Of course not," he said.
"You're a very good girlfriend."
Rei stared at the floor.
Asuka tried to make herself smile and failed. She
could still feel her thoughts spinning, but she didn't want
to burden everyone too much with them. I hate feeling like
this, she thought. "Let's all play cards."
Rei got up.
Asuka said, "You too, Rei. I don't like you. I
don't know if I'll ever like you. But...but Shinji likes
you. And I trust Shinji. I want to hate you, but I
just...You probably can't help how you are, and..." She
shuddered, and h