The Curious Case of Rei Ikari

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So, let me preface this with the following:
This is created with the concept of:
What if an OC/SI character entered the world of evangelion with knowledge of evangelion the TV series, but ended up in the world of Rebuild, among other less subtle changes. For the sake of realism, I haven't actually seen the series in about eight years.

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Chapter 1:
Like An Angel With No Sense of Self Preservation.

​

It felt like falling, that first sensation. It felt like my stomach was rising into my throat, an anxiety that kept miltiplying without end. There was no sight, no sound, no sense of touch. I felt myself accelerating downward for... minutes? Hours? Years? Centuries? My concept of time was skewed, eternity felt like seconds and seconds felt like eternity.


The scent of ozone was the first thing I was aware of, a sharp, acrid scent that gave way to... gasoline and hot leather. My tongue felt thick in my mouth and I sucked a sudden, greedy lungfull of air past my lips. I shifted a little, feeling the wakefulness slowly creeping through me, felt my skin pulling on a leather seat.


There was a soft, rhythmic droning and the sensation of motion, little bumps and sways. I'd woken up from sleeping in a car enough times that I was familiar with the sensation. It felt like nostalgia, trips in the car as a child, sleeping on the back seat while my dad drove.


I finally cracked my eyes open and a lock of hair fell into my eye, powder blue? Must have been really drunk last night. I stretched out and felt my muscles and joints pop as I let out a yawn. Yeah, it was a car, black leather interior, hot and stuck to my skin.

"Finally awake huh? Guess that whole ordeal back at the bus stop took it out of you."


I blinked, I didn't recognize that voice, or that accent or... that was Japanese.I sat up and leaned the chair forward, I was on the left side of the car. Definitely weird, had I left the country or, was it just an import. With a Japanese-speaking woman driving it.

I finally turned to face the her, "Uh, hey?" She was, at a glance, late twenties, maybe. She was dressed in some kind of uniform. My first thought went to military, but it didn't look like any military uniform I'd ever seen.Actually, that was wrong, she was wearing a jacket that looked military; the dress she was wearing was most assuredly not. Jet black and at best came down to mid thigh, no, this was... What the hell was this?


"I was actually a little surprised you were able to fall asleep after all that but I guess your trip really tired you out huh?" She asked with a smirk. She wasn't looking at the road. Grand.


Trip? I tried to think of last night, or really my last memory and... There was the fire. There was a fire in the cockpit, and I kept flying and... How did that end up with me here, now? Did I crash, did I burn up? Was the fire a dream? If it was that still didn't explain... this.


I blinked a couple of times and looked out the windshield, yeah this was getting weirder than I was comfortable with."Yeah, it was pretty intense," I replied deadpan.


Was I kidnapped? That would have been... something. Kidnapped, hair dyed, and put into a car with a single woman... who I was pretty sure I could take in a fight. Not that getting into fights was really my schtick, but even so.


Still, something about the woman and her jacket struck a chord of familiarity with me. Asian, probably japanese, and black hair that almost looked purple in the right light. Some kind of dye or highlights maybe?


I looked down, a skirt wasn't really that out of the norm for me but this looked kind of school uniform-y and I was ten years out of highschool. Gray skirt, some kind of, yeah that's a yellow vest, and a red tie? White blouse and...

Well apparently I went from an A-cup to at least a C since I'd last checked. Those were definitely new. Not that I was complaining but if this was some kind of fetish thing, I was going to find a gun, and then--


My train of thought completely derailed at the sound of screaming turbine engines. A trio of fighter jets buzzed across the road close enough that I was sure I could have touched them if I tried, close enough that I could tell they were strike eagles, and that somebody was about to have a bad day.

I followed them across the sky as another trio came up behind them, all converging on a point in the distance, some kind of black... monster? A monster, really? The thing looked, at a guess, to be at least as tall as an office building, distance and scale notwithstanding, it was huge.


And it was familiar, like a word on the edge of your tongue that you could have remembered just fine if only you didn't need to. Giant monster, squadron of strike fighters, woman in a red... jacket. Well either this was a dream, or... well it sure felt real to be a dream, but then so did that fire.

Did I die?


Was this heaven?


Was this hell?


How did this sequence go again? The fighters go in, they fire a missile, there's a... something, just out of reach again, on the tip of my tongue... I felt the car slowing down, I turned to the driver, she was looking past me, was she going to stop and look?


"Can we keep going? It might not be safe to stop, if it comes this way." I asked suddenly as the picture in my mind started to clear up. Was this world...? No that would be ridiculous to even think.


But only as ridiculous as a gigantic monster being attacked by fighter jets, and that was happening right in front of me.The car started to speed back up. I guessed that she was probably Misato Katsuragi if this was actually what I thought it was, but who did that make me?

I looked back out the window at the monster in the distance, just as it disappeared behind a hill. My eyes caught the side mirror and I angled to look at myself and... yeah that was definitely not me. Hair was, well it definitely came out of a bottle, I could see my roots if I looked really hard, so it wasn't fresh but...

That wasn't my face, still asian, just the wrong kind. Skin tone was off, eyes looked... the same. I would have thought I was, maybe, Rei? But the eyes were normal, brown eyes. So, I was not a clone, and Shinji didn't have a figure quite like this, and... shouldn't there have been some kind of pamphlet with ID or something? I remembered that much.

I looked down into the floorboards, there it was, a satchel, made out of black pleather; that'll do. I picked it up by the strap and pulled it into my lap when the flash lit up the sky. I jumped in my seat and I heard the explosion a few seconds later, and looked up to see dust and debris flying over the roadway, blocked by the hill between us and the blast.


So I wasn't wrong and that didn't make me feel even a little bit better.

And It was kind of funny, with all this going on, all these changes, I managed to keep my head together, even as it started to seem more and more like it wasn't a dream. I just kept setting short term goals and working towards them, and everything would be okay or... at least I could take it one step at a time.


The car slowed down, 'Misato' was on her phone, yelling about something, I wasn't paying much attention to her, I was focused and engrossed in my bag, surely somewhere in here-- and found it.

I fished out the folder and then flipped it open, found exactly what I was looking for. Confirmation of my fears, or confirmation that this was all some wild misunderstanding?


I fished the little plastic ID card out of the pocket on the inside of the folder, flipped it over a few times in my hands then finally brough myself to look at the picture and name on the front. Yeah, that was 'my' face, the hair was brown, so the dye job would have come after but, that was definitely a picture of who I was right now.


Ikari Rei. Two words I could never have reasonably expected to see together like that, certainly not when applied to me, but... there they were. That's who I was, apparently. Rei Ikari. Not Shinji Ikari, not Rei Ayanami. Rei Ikari.

I leaned my head back against my headrest and let out a sigh. What else was different, I had to wonder. Hell, what was even the point? I could probably get out of the car and find a nice spot to watch the end of the world from.


"Nervous, Rei?" The woman asked, asked me, apparently.


I grimmaced and let out another sigh, "Well, you know, gigantic monsters, a nuclear explosion, strange new environment, lots of stress."


She laughed, "Well that's not a 'no' I guess. Everything will work out in the end, at least, that's what I choose to believe."

"I guess you're not wrong," I shrugged and continued, "I have to admit though, for the last few minutes I've been toying with the idea of jumping out of this car and seeing how far away I can get before you come back and stuff me back in."


"About a quarter mile, if you're in good shape. I wouldn't try to jump out of a moving car in that skirt through, you'd get skinned up pretty bad and we'd have to get you bandaged up," she answered matter of factly. I glanced over to see a goofy little grin on her face. So it was like that huh?

"I don't know, I think I could run a lot faster in this skirt than you could in that dress, looks a little... restrictive, you know, around the hips and thighs..." I replied in a slightly elevated tone, I felt a smirk creeping onto the corner of my mouth.

"Hmm." She answerd with a frown, and then, she dropped the car a gear and stomped the accelerator, pinning be back in my seat as we lurched forward, accelerating down the highway as the engine screamed louder and louder.

There was a brief respite when she released the accelerator, then slammed it back into high gear and floored it again. I watched the needle on the speedometer as it rose steadily from my side of the car and gave silent thanksto the inventors of seatbelts, airbags, and crumple zones.


That's not to say I hadn't done worse, I had, but there's a difference between faith in your own abilities and accepting the choices of your own actions... and being the involuntary subject to the whims of someone who was doing her very best to appear as a madwoman.


Still, at least she was competent. It was obvious she was trying to rattle me but watching her drive the car, I could tell that this was not the first time, and she was clearly in her element. Eyes fixed on the road, hands tight on the wheel, a slight creasing of her brow. She was locked in, and I knew the feeling, that was how I felt when I was flying.

And now, I had that nagging feeling that I was sure was going to end up being correct, that I was about to become a pilot, but of an entirely different sort. A sort that was sure to be a lot less lesuire and fun, and a lot more death defying and traumatic and yet...


Well, why the hell not? What was there really to be afraid of? If it worked, I'd probably win, if it didn't work, I'd die anyway. And who wouldn't at least want the chance to try it, even with the danger and risk of death?


I clenched the panic handle in a death grip as the car finally drove down into a tunnel, the driver showing no signs of slowing down, and thought about that. The truth was, I really had no reason to refuse it if they did ask me, and given the name I was currently wearing, if, perhaps not proudly, I had to assume that that was what I'd been called here to do.

And the rest of it, well, the rest of it was something that I would have to figure out whenever I had the chance. If the internet was a thing here, and even... half of it was the way I remembered, I shouldn't have a hard time at all tracking down the information I needed. What I would do with it? Well, that was a bridge I'd have to cross when I came to it.


But making plans, that was something I had to keep doing until I settled into things, or figured out a way out of them. Plans gave me focus, gave me something to think about other than freaking out, gave me a focus and an objective.

Current objective: Survive the next ten minutes, and then the ten minutes after that. Keep repeating that goal until something changes or I have more information. That was something workable, that was something I could accomplish in the short term.


I frowned and looked at the palm of my right hand, watched the muscles and tendons flex in my wrist as I worked my fingers. This hand, it wasn't mine, and yet it was. Trippy perhaps wasn't the best word but it was suitable, stuck in the body of a fictional character who apparently wasn't that fictional after all. No, this wasn't a dream, and it wasn't the reality I was used to but, well, my right hand was real. That much I was sure of.


Yeah psych yourself straight up over this.


Maybe this was a blessing, at least part of it. Not in the religious sense of the word maybe. I was religious but then, I was never one who practiced regularly, no. This was a chance though. Often, I thought of what I'd do if I had the chance to start over, to go through my teenage years again with the benefit of experience, what I'd do differently.


At the very least, I had that chance now, end of the world notwithstanding. Correct my mistakes, or at least make different ones this time. Was the price worth the reward?


Actually, it might be. Postive outlook, that was a secondary objective. Have a positive outlook. I could do that.


The car jolted and I blinked and looked up. We'd reached the end of the tunnel while I was lost in thought and the car had locked into some kind of lateral carriage. In a moment I felt sideways movement. Sideways and down.

"You're gonna love this part, Rei," The woman, Misato said. I had to get used to thinking of her by her name, embrace the present. Alternatives? Lose my mind, surrender to fear, have a breakdown? No thanks.


Still, Rei? First name basis already huh? I had to wonder what kind of conversation she'd had with whoever was occupying this body before I was. Did I kill her or, did this universe not even exist before I woke up?


If she was 'dead' because of my occupation of this body, was that even my fault?


An existential crisis already huh? Yeah, definitely evangelion.


Then, the carriage slid out of the tunnel completely and I saw it. The Geofront in all of it's splendor, the fortress under the city. I found myself pressing my face against the glass in wonder. No drawn picture, no photograph could ever have captured the awe and wonder of this place.


"So damn cool!" I squealed in barely contained excitement. This was real, and no matter how bad it got, in that one moment it didn't matter in the slightest. This world might kick my teeth in later, but for that precious moment, it felt like it did the first time I was in the cockpit of a Piper J-3 flying over the Grand Canyon.


But this wasn't a triumph of time and geology, this was a triumph of mankind.


"Your english is pretty good, been keeping up on your studies huh?' Misato asked me in the same language I'd used. She knew english. Of course she would. Good that I still did, too.


Of course, I was a native speaker, but she didn't need to know that, not yet. I was in a new place, with new people. I could blame forgetting anything said since the old-me got in this car on bad memory, stress. Unless whoever I'd been staying with, in this world, for the last fourteen years showed up, I could just play this thing by ear, keep my cards close to my chest, and maybe I could avoid telling anyone the truth.


And if there was something I didn't know that was important, better to be seen as forgetful than insane.


Not that I really thought I was compeletely sane anyway, not anymore. I woke up with a different face, a different history, a different person entirely, and I hadn't run screaming for the hills, but then, maybe a certain level of insanity is necessary to cope with that kind of thing.


"Yes, there wasn't a whole lot else going on, and I thought english would be useful," I lied, still watching out the window as the car descended. Could she tell I was lying, and would she even care?


"It does come in handy," She agreed, "But you probably won't need to rely on it too heavily."


At least she had no reason to ask where I learned Japanese, that would have been a pretty difficult question to answer. Small favors.


The car stopped with a jolt as the carriage finally hit bottom, the door in front of us slid open and Misato put the car back in gear. I had to admire the way she drove, she knew what she was doing. A fluid transition into gear, and between them as we sped up, a far cry from the lunging jerk one often associated with a manual transmission.


Of course, she would have had to know what she was doing, I had a hard time believing that a sportscar from 1970s France would have ended up in Japan and under her care entirely by accident. Of course, with her job, it was probably trivial to get it.


Money talks.


The trip inside the geofront was abrupt compared to the trip on the highway outside, from the carriage to the parking structure passed in the span of maybe five minutes. I spent most of that lost in thought and found myself surprised when she shut the car off.Guess I'lll let myself out... I popped the door handle and climbed out of the car, satchel firmly in hand. Yeah, I could do this.


"We're just about there, come on," She said with a wave of her hand. "Your father is... waiting for you," she finished after a moment. I could feel the slight tension in her tone as she hesitated.


I could only speculate on how tense things were going to get in short order. On the one hand, gigantic biomechanical death machines and an absentee father who actually runs the whole show. On the other, I didn't actually experience whatever he'd put 'Rei' through.

"You usually the taxi driver around here?" I asked with a smirk. Levity, let's try levity.


"Only for the cute ones," she answered with a laugh. Oh, she wanted to try the teasing game.


"I didn't realize I was your type," I sing-songed back.


"I am a woman of many mysteries, Rei."


I raised an eyebrow and let out a 'hmm' sound. So, was she teasing or was this flirting? Did she forget that I was, well, carry the one, half her age? No, she was screwing with me, but that didn't mean I couldn't have fun with it.


"Are you now, we--"


"We're here," she cut off abruptly. I looked up to see her swiping an ID bade through a scan plate next to an elevator door, they slid open immediately, it had apparently been parked on this floor. Waiting for us or coincidence?


I stepped into the car after her and we both remained in silence, I could feel the tension in the air. It was nearly go time. Did she know why she was bringing me here? Did she have a suspicion?


The elvator car was clean, but industrial. Very mechanical, functional. It reminded me of the service elevator in a factory I'd worked in when I was younger, none of the ammeneties or style like you might find in an office building.

Younger, heh. I was what, fourteen now? I'd been nearly thirty before all this. Fifteen extra years though? I could probably live with that, if I made it through the next year anyway.


I felt my stomach rise into my throat as the elevator car dropped. Must have been an express, or something. I wasn't used to feeling anything this extreme outside of an airplane cockpit. Still, nothing that took my feet off the ground.

The deceleration was equally abrupt, and with a soft jolt the car stopped and the doors slid open. Misato stepped out first, and hesitated. I followed her into the brightly lit hallway and found the reason.


A blonde haired Japanese woman. Yeah, that definitely came out of a bottle. Labcoat, leggings, skirt, blouse... Yeah, I had a pretty good idea who I was looking at.


"Ritsuko! I was just... looking for you!" Misato exclaimed with an almost manic expression on her face, complete with flailing.


"Misato, you're actually not late this time. So, is this the third?" She asked, confirming what I as much as knew about the woman who'd brought me here.


"She is! She's also a little... hmm, sarcastic," Misato offered.


Just throw me right under that bus...


Ritsuko looked at me, our eyes met, and I felt... recognition? In her gaze. "Ritsuko Akagi, head of Project E technology division, section one. It's a pleasure."


"Rei Ikari, the pleasure is mine," I offered with a slight nod.


Akagi 'hmm'ed at my reply and gestured towards a carriage set into a rail in the floor, "this way, the linear carriage will take us to the cage, I'll fill you in on the rest of it once we arrive."

I grabbed tightly on the handrail as the carriage accelerated. I had to wonder what lunatic designed such a thing: It was a simple platform with handrails on the edges that traveled at offputting velocity along a track embedded in the floor. If my feet slipped, I could end up going right under the railing and then...


It would be bad.


The wind felt good in my hair, if I closed my eyes and tried real hard I could imagine I was flying in an old stearman, feeling the wind blow through my air, streaking across the side.

Well, there was no engine noise but the sound of the rollers on the track, if I tried really hard...


Nope, not feelin it. Well, it was nice while it lasted.


The end of the trip wasn't far off either, I could see the far bulkhead on the far side of the vast expanse I we were crossing. I looked over the edge of the cart and into infinity. Was this some kind of last ditch airgap? Something else? Was it meant to keep something out or... was it meant to keep something in?


The carriage zipped across the remainder of the gap and through an airlock, not slowing down for an instant. The track curved abruptly upwards, but the carriage remained level. That was a neat bit of engineering.


It probably wouldn't be long now, I could almost feel the pull, feel the taste of destiny in the air.


How dramatic. Still, there was... something, that I could feel.

The carriage started to slow and as I looked ahead I could see a platform illuminated under a flickering florescent light, the paint was a faded olive drab. It reminded me of old military, it looked older than the rest of the facility, the air tasted a bit more stale. It tasted, smelled, felt like age, was this part older than the rest of the facility?


The handrails on the carriage dropped away, retracted into some deep recess of the machinery, the platform lit up brighter and the double door slid open to reveal two rows of low intensity track lighting leading into the darkness. So it is.


Wordlessly, Akagi lead the two of us into the vast expanse beyond, you could almost feel the wide open-ness of the room, despite the darkness. Something about the way the sounds reflected off the surfaces, echoes of heels on steel betrayed the size that was hidden by the darkness.


I looked to the good doctor, her face an almost orange color in the glow of the track lighting, I could detect the hint of a smirk on her face, and then I heard the snap of her fingers. The loud clack of a massive relay slamming shut in the distance echoed through the chamber at the same instant that thousands upon thousands of watts of high intensity lighting turned night into day.


I licked my bottom lip and held back my own smirk as best I could. Showtime. I turned around and took in the surprise I'd been waiting for. Mere words would not have done it justice, nor drawn picture, animated film, nor photograph. The sheer scale and presense of what lay before me exceeded anything I had expected, could have expected.


"The synthetic lifeform, the last best hope for the survival of humanity, Evangelion Unit One," Akagi proudly declared in the kind of voice that betrayed all of the confidence and conviction that a woman of her talent and accomplishment could muster.


Despite my preparations, despite my own self assurance that I knew what was in store for me, my jaw fell in shock. The towering visage of Evangelion, so close I felt that I could reach out and touch it, an illusion born of the sheer scale of the thing. The armor grade steel, painted in gray and purple and green and black, the black eye sockets, the metal plated jawline.

It was fierce, and despite that seemed to exude a radiance of warmth and maybe kindness, despite the power and force it projected. Standing before it, I knew why I had felt the way I had before, that draw and attraction I had felt. This thing before me, this was an engine of destruction, of madness, of creation, of destiny. Like nothing I'd ever seen, nothing I could have imagined and...


If man could create this, then I had no doubt that with the proper motivation mankind truly could create or do anything.


"This... This is why I'm here." It was not a question, not anymore.


"Correct."


I looked up to see the source of the voice, that smirking man with the beard and the glasses. Was his motivation the same in the here and now? Was it everything I remembered it to be?


And really, having felt loss, did I actually think that he was wrong?


"You're going to... send her out in unit one?" Misato asked incredulously, I snapped my head back in her direction. She was staring at Akagi with a sort of enraged shock.


"Misato, what did you think she was brought here for? We have no choice, if she does not pilot, we all die," Akagi explained in a level voice, though I could have sworn I felt a hint of... sadness?


"Rei," the man asked again, I looked up again, my face neutral, hands open at my sides.


I considered the man, then looked down at the face of Unit One, and closed my eyes. That was why Rei was here, was this why I was here? My thoughts turned back to that fire. No, that was not a dream, I could understand that now. I had made a decision then, the decision that kept me in that cockpit, and it was terrifying and painful, but it was the only decision that could make. It was the same choice I was faced with now.


It was on me to do what I could do, the best that I could do, with the resources at my disposal. Find the best outcome for the most people. Not because I was being forced, but because that was the only way I could be true to myself.


Maybe that's why I was here, because I made that choice then, to make this choice now.

I opened my eyes and looked back up at the man, the father of Rei Ikari, what would my decision make him feel? Disappointment that I didn't bow and scrape before him or... pride that the fruit of his loins would overcome the fear before her?


It wouldn't have made a difference either way.


"I'll do it."

 

Chapter 2:

Both Feet First​

The air inside of the entry plug tasted like iron and machine oil, at least until the hatch closed. I looked up when I heard the creek of the hatch sliding into place and felt the skin on my back stick as it shifted against the padded vinyl seat. Then, the air flushed out and was replaced with cold, clean, dry air.

It actually was comfortable, and probably would have been a lot more so if it wasn't rubbing up against bare skin. Bare skin, Misato had warned me when they were getting the plug ready, that I probably didn't want to ruin my clothes.

"LCL doesn't wash out easily" she'd said. At least she was giving me a head's up about it, until she mentioned it I had forgotten about it completely. The corner of my lip curled up as I thought about the panic I'd probably have felt when they started pumping the stuff into the plug.

That's not to say I was naked, undergarments were a necessary sacrifice to the LCL in the name of modesty. I just told myself it was no different than wearing a bathing suit. Besides, I was pretty sure that the video communication thing was just from the neck up anyway.

Probably.

The control sticks were slick in my hands, I was sweating, nervous. Who wouldn't have a little anxiety at a time like this though? Nobody, that's who.

The controls were, well, not what I had expected. Two control handles set into the control seat, each with a trigger and a series of buttons on the top of them, and a foot pedal at the end of each leg slot. The entire setup felt a lot like riding a motorcycle or a horse. The more I thought about it, the more it actually felt a lot like riding a horse, even if the angles were off.

If I was going to think of the setup like a saddle, then where the saddle horn would have been, was a full keyboard set into it. I wasn't sure if that was something omitted from the TV show, or if it had just been that long, and that my memory was failing me.

The clips in my hair shifted when the plug lurched forward and down. It was happening, they were getting ready to start this thing up. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly through my nose, just keep calm.

There was an electronic chirp and I turned my head to look, a video window had popped up to my left, I could see Misato's face projected in front of me. "Rei, we're going to start filling the plug now, please just try to breath normally."

My hands clenched against the controls and I nodded. It was one thing to understand the concept and be prepare for it, it was entirely another thing to fight back the instinct not to inhale liquids. Maybe she didn't do me any favors by preparing me for it.

"Yes, ma'am."

Then my ears popped as the air pressure changed, I heard pumps kick in and the taste of iron flooded back into the plug. I looked down past the control saddle and watched the amber liquid rushing up to meet me. It took maybe three seconds for the level to reach my feet, and another half a second for it to go over my head from there.

I tensed, clenched down hard on those control sticks and shut my eyes. Panic, don't panic. You're panicking and you need to stop. Breathe, this isn't the worst thing you've ever done. You did it for nine months when your mother was pregnant with you. You can do this.

My mother, not the best thing to think about, she was...

The burning in my lungs finally over-rode my self preservation instinct and I took a greedy lung-full of the liquid and... it actually wasn't that bad. The taste washed over my tongue, iron, coppery, a tinge of salinity... I knew, after a fashion and some purification, what the source of the liquid was but...

Well, I eat my steaks rare, who was I to really complain?

The video link was still open, I glanced over at it, though I couldn't make out much, my eyes were totally out of focus, like when you're swimming under water without goggles. Sounds were a little strange too, I could hear people talking in the background but they sounded tinny, far away.

"Charging the LCL"

The taste of ozone filled my mouth and I felt the hairs on my head stand up and then, it was gone. All of it, the feeling, the taste of ozone, the taste of iron, the thickness of the fluid, the fuzzy out of focus-ness of my eyes.

I took a breath and it was, different than air, but not a lot. It felt like, for lack of a better word, thick air. And I could see, and the sounds had returned to normal. Normal, right. As if anything about this was normal.

The background noise in the plug itself suddenly changed pitch and I felt a prickling on my skin, an... itch in my mind. I licked my lip unconsciously, there was a taste of nostalgia. The soft copper-gold color of the plug walls disappeared in a flash of color and was replaced with the outside of the unit, I could see the catwalk in front of me, the one I'd been standing on fifteen minutes prior.

Synchronization can cause synesthesia, I filed that one away in my mental filing cabinet.

Weight. My head, shoulders, back, arms, legs. I was heavy. Heavy, stiff, restrained? Was I actually syncing with the unit? Could I do this?

"Synchronization is stable at 35%"

That would have to be good enough, I could do this. If I didn't do this, who could? The other Rei? Was there another Rei?

The catwalk in front of me retracted and I felt the saddle shift as the locks released the unit. I shook my head, get your head in the game, girl. It's showtime, too late to back out now. I closed my eyes and leaned back in the saddle.

I concentrated on the feelings I was getting through the link as the unit was carried backwards on the track, towards the launch catapult, I assumed. I let go of the control stick in my right hand and flexed my fist a few times, getting a feel for what was coming from my own body and what was coming from the unit.

Make a fist. I thought at the unit, and tried guiding it with my own hand. I could feel the fingers twitching, sluggish, the feedback was dull, but it was there. Come on, make a fist... I slowed my own movements, making a fist along with the commands I was trying to send, but only moving as fast as the unit was responding. Would that help?

I could feel the fingers curling up in the right hand. It was... a novel sensation. It was less that the unit was mirroring what my physical body was doing, and more like I had grown... well, another body. There was my arm, and there was Evangelion's arm, and they were mapped differently in my mind. There was overlap, a lot of overlap, but the two sensations were still distinct.

Okay, release the fist. Slowly, deliberately I uncoiled my hand, thinking and feeling the same message to the unit. The dull, almost springy feeling feedback reached me as the hand steadily unclenched and returned to the rest position.

Okay, both hands, clench up into a fist, good. Now rela-

"Eva launch!" Misato yelled, my eyes snapped open.

I put my hand back on the control stick and grit my teeth as the catapult fired. I felt the skin on my face sag a little as the g-forces slammed me down into the saddle. I felt the pressure through the unit's boots, pressing down into the platform as the acceleration curve flattened out... and then the platform started decelerating.

That part was actually fun, like being in the back of one of those padded airplanes they used for zero G simulation. Of course, I was still traveling upwards at a pretty substantial rate, I was just coasting instead of being under powered ascent.

I felt the brakes start to grab, I was pulled upwards in the saddle, it was almost time. I looked down at the unit's right hand and flexed it again, it was much smoother this time, I was getting the hang of it... or the unit was just learning to accept me.

It would be enough, because it had to be enough.

My head snapped back against the vinyl headrest and I jerked upwards in the saddle, stopped only when my thighs pressed against the restraints. I'd hit the end of the launch track. Right in front of me, maybe a few hundred yards distant, the monster. The angel.

Equally as tall as the evangelion, with broad shoulders and spindly arms, it was a creature from the darkest depths of nightmare, with a bone mask that looked almost avian, with those two empty eye sockets.

"Final safety locks disengaged, Unit One is free."

Alright Rei, let's do this thing. I looked down at the unit's hand and flexed it into a fist and raised it experimentally. There was a slight lag but it worked.

"Rei, just concentrate on walking for now." That was Misato again.

Walking? Alright, walking. I reached out and felt for the legs, for the knees, the feet. I took that first step and planted it. Good. I could feel the pavement under the boot, could feel the leg muscles coiled up.

The sensation was almost like walking while your leg was still half asleep. Second step, push off, left leg forward. The left toe caught the ground and I started to fall forward. No! I grit my teeth and pulled the left leg forward to catch myself. Purchase, I managed to get the foot down onto the concrete but my center of gravity was already too far forward, I was still falling.

"No!" I yelled as my feet worked the pedals in the stirrups of the control saddle. I pulled up eva's right leg and drew it forward. If my center of gravity was already forward, I would just have to use it.

Sometimes you've got to run before you can walk.

I shifted forward in the saddle and shoved the control sticks forward, kicked off hard with the right leg. Left, right, left, right. Kept pushing forward, kicking off the ground harder with each step, turning my drunken stumble into a sprint.

The distance was closing fast, what was a few hundred yards to a two hundred foot war machine? I clenched a fist with the right hand. I'd been stumbling like a drunk, now I was going to fight like one. I screamed like a feral beast and I swung my right arm like a hammer, right into...

An AT field. That's what that was, orange hexagonal force field. Not good.

The unit's hand stopped against the surface of the AT field, I pulled back and punched again, and again I was denied. No! Was it really going to end like this?

I caught a flash of movement, the left arm was far too slow and I took the angel's counter attack to the face. I felt the hit on my own face, felt my own neck straining against the force of the blow. No!

I stumbled backwards and looked at the angel, still hiding behind his shield. No!

"If you can touch me... I can touch you!" I yelled as I took another swing. I could feel my heart beat quickening, could feel the adrenaline pumping. Fight or flight, live or die. I could feel the anxiety in the pit of my stomach, like a clock wound too tight. My fist bounced off again.

The counter attack came faster than before, and the eva took the hit on the chin, I stumbled backwards and fell into a building, my head was spinning.

No!

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath of the LCL, and held it. One. Two. Three.

Three.

Two.

One.

I let the breath out and opened my eyes. The person who wins the fight isn't the one who throws the strongest punches. The person who wins the fight is the one who refuses to stay down. I looked over to the video link window. Misato was yelling, I could hear the panic in the control room.

So this angel had his reasons for coming here, well, I had reasons too. I'd only just met her, but that didn't matter. There were people counting on me, who they were, how long I'd known them, it didn't matter. I had to win because failure was not an option, because tomorrow counted on it.

Short-term goal, survive the next ten minutes, and then the ten minutes after that. Keep doing that for as long as you can.

New long-term goal: nobody dies if I can help it, no matter what.

I clenched the unit's hand into a fist, the response was faster this time, the sensations through the link more intense. I pulled myself out of the building and brought my fists up. Maybe I wasn't trained in hand to hand combat, and maybe I wasn't stronger than this angel was.

But there was nothing that was going to keep me from fighting till I had nothing left to give, not with this on the line.

Fight or flight, live or die?

Fight. Live. Win. In that order.

I took two steps forward and hit him with a left hook, the AT field flashed into existance and my fist hit it like a truck... and it cracked. I couldn't keep the grin off my face, and I didn't want to. I followed up with a quick jab with my right fist and the cracks spread across the surface of the AT field.

My heart rate quickened, I could feel the impacts of my fists against the AT field, could feel the tension in the unit's muscles. I could smell satisfaction in the LCL.

Left, right. Two steps forward, punch him back. I leaned in and pressed the attack. Fight or flight, live or die? Death or glory.

I threw a haymaker into the cracked AT field and finally punched through, shattering the barrier in a burst of light and sparks. Everything I had into that one punch, and I went through, I felt the armor plating on my knuckles slam into my opponents mask, and was rewarded with the feeling of bone cracking under my strike.

I threw another left hook, and followed up with a kick to the red orb in the middle of the angel's chest. I watched in satisfaction as it fell to the ground. I licked my lip and looked over at the video window, Misato was staring in shock, not at me but probably at the display of the battle.

"Misato, I need a weapon!" I yelled, the rush of the fight still pumping through me. I looked at the angel starting to get up.

That would just not do.

"Rei, left shoulder, grab the knife and use it!"

I looked up and over even as I felt the weight shifting on my left shoulder, the huge vertical pylon had snapped open and the handle of a knife had slid out. I grabbed it with the right hand and turned back to my enemy. Now I had an advantage.

The Angel was back on its feet, but I didn't care. I rushed forward and rammed the left forearm against that birdlike mask and plunged the knife into its torso before dragging it to the side and then pulling it back out.

I shoved the angel backwards into a building and kept stabbing, over and over again, stabbing, twisting, scooping. I was aware of a screaming as the knife kept plunging into the angel, was it the angel feeling pain? Was it somebody on the video call? It didn't matter.

I felt the knife resist, and looked down, it was wedged against the red orb in the center of the angel's chest. That was the part I had to destroy. I rammed the knife repeatedly into the orb, chipping way at the tip of the blade as I forced it into the otherworldly material-

The angel started to melt. No, it started to morph. I lost my grip on the knife and dropped it as the angel started to wrap itself around me, encase me in its own flesh? What the hell was it doing? I Felt a heat on my face, feedback through my link with Eva, then a flash of light, and then darkness.

xxx

Thick, sticky, and dry. The inside of my mouth felt like I was sucking on a lump of glue. Cotton mouth, worse than just a good night's sleep, this felt like the effect I was used to from muscle relaxers and narcotic pain killers.

Water, I needed water. I opened my eyes and stared straight up into rectangular ceiling tiles. My throat was sore. I shifted and tried to sit up, felt the burn of strained muscles trying to work too soon. My throat was not the only thing that was sore.

Nice.

I relaxed back into the bed and instead looked around the room. Sea-foam curtains on a track around the bed, fake flowers in a pot on a table in the corner, the taste of antiseptic and the scent of alcohol, the beep beep beep of a heart monitor.

Yep, hospital room.

But I was alive, so that meant I won. Or... looking back at those last few seconds, I didn't lose badly enough to die. The angel was dead though, and I was alive, so I was just going to use my own discretion to put that one in the 'win' column.

I rolled my head to the side and choked out a laugh. Damn my throat hurt. My eyes trailed down the metal rail along the side of the bed, looking for—there it was. I reached over and grabbed the little plastic handle and pressed the big red button in the top of it.

I turned to look when I heard the metallic click of the door knob turning. I expected a nurse, maybe a doctor, possibly an orderly. Somebody to give me a glass of water to wash out this nasty cottonmouth. What I got was...

"Misato! If I'd known this button would summon you I'd have pressed it sooner," I joked, then coughed as the words irritated my sore, dry throat. I felt that taste of iron on my tongue with the cough. That screaming in the entry plug...oh. Oh.

I saw her fight against it, but her lip curled up and she let out a laugh, "Good to see you haven't lost your sense of humor. If you're feeling up to it, I actually came to get you out of here and take you home."

I pushed myself into a seated position and grit my teeth against the ache in my abdominal muscles. The sheet rolled off of me and I felt the cold hospital air against my skin, it was actually refreshing in the same way as jumping into a cold swimming pool. Gets the neurons firing, wakes you up.

I looked down into my lap, caught the sight of white fabric in the edge of my vision, a bra. I wasn't naked, that was fortunate. I hadn't really thought about that before I sat up. I turned slowly to my left and up into her eyes. She was expecting an answer, right.

"Home?" I asked, "Am I going with you?"

She shrugged, "That's about the size of it. After the fight, the way you fought... well there were concerns that you might run off and do something reckless if you didn't have someone to watch over you."

I raised an eyebrow and laughed, "Well, I didn't expect you to be so... well, honest about the reasons..."

She shook her head, "The reasons don't really matter, I was probably going to ask for the same thing anyway, this just makes it seem like their idea. If I'm going to keep being honest though... I probably would have done the exact same thing."

I nodded and licked my bottom lip, "With everyone counting on me, I knew I couldn't afford to lose... I had to stop it no matter what."

Misato frowned, I almost detected... disappointment? "Rei, I understand that, I really do but... You will have to be more careful in the future. You might be the one in the entry plug, but you've got all of Nerv standing behind you, backing you up. You're not alone, we can help you but you're going to have to listen, follow orders."

I looked down into my lap, my eyes drifted over to my hand. I flexed it into a fist, and relaxed it, worked each finger independently. I could vividly remember the feeling from the unit, the feedback of each motion, the feeling of power.

That kind of power can really go to your head, but I still couldn't bring myself to think what I did was wrong. Still, discretion is the better part of valor. I swung my legs off the left side of the bed and stood up, dropping the bedsheets away from me, snapped my bare heels together, drew my right hand up into a salute, and grinned.

"Yes Ma'am."

I watched the struggle on her face, watched her lip quivering before curling up. She laughed, not quite a knee slapping laugh but it would do. "Rei, you're ridiculous, now get dressed, unless you want to give everyone a free show between here and my car."

I laughed and dropped the salute, a flash of yellow caught the corner of my eye, my sweater-vest was neatly folded on the table by the door, along with my blouse and skirt. It wasn't a t-shirt and shorts, but it would do.

"That's fine Misato, the only one who I want to give a free show to is you..." I singsonged as I walked across the room, tile cold and hard against my bare feet. I was limping, but only a little, felt stiffness in my back. Probably got knocked around pretty hard in the explosion.

"Rei, you know that you can't..." She started, rubbing her temples with her hands.

"I'm just joking, lightening the mood. Can't be mad when you're laughing right?" I asked as I stepped into the skirt. The fabric felt soft as I slid it up my legs, soft and clean. It had been washed and dried, fabric softener too if I was guessing correctly.

"Still, if you make jokes like that, people might think, you know." She said, raising her eyebrows meaningfully at me.

I frowned a little, thinking about that as I slid my arms into the white blouse. That was something I hadn't thought about. Not necessarily what people might think, but if I was that way. "I don't know, actually. I might be. I guess I haven't really thought about it."

"Still, Rei, come on, work with me a little bit here, okay?" She almost pleaded, I could feel the exasperation in her voice.

I slipped the yellow sweater vest over my head and smoothed it out, and turned to regard myself in the mirror. You know what? Not bad. Not bad at all. I made this outfit work, school uniform or not. I was freakin' cute.

"Fine, fine!" I agreed, "I'll let up on it, it's... well It's just a coping mechanism for me, if I make you uncomfortable I don't feel as nervous and out of place here, that's all."

"Now who's being too honest, eh?" Misato asked with a smirk, "No, you're right it's really not that big of a deal. Come on, I'll take you out for something to eat before we head home, you're probably hungry."

"Starving!" I agreed, "Let's have steak!"

Hey, I just saved the world, why not a steak? Right? Right?

"Maybe."

Right?

 

Chapter 3:
Insomnia
​

The full moon cast the ceiling in a dim blue-grey glow and I... I just stared at it. The distant chirping of insects, the damp taste of the humid night air, the soft feeling of the futon against my back. I was tired and yet, sleep would not come to me.


Insomnia was a constant companion of mine, and it seemed that this night would be no different from any of thousands before. Like those thousands of nights before, I crawled back out of bed and, quietly, padded through the dark and silent apartment.


Well, as quietly as I could. The first crunch of a food wrapper under my foot was as loud to my ears as a gunshot, but the steady snoring from Misato's room didn't change in pitch the slightest. That was good. She wouldn't likely approve of what I was going to do, her own lifestyle notwithstanding.


Well, there were really two things, but the other thing... No.


I shook my head and crept into the kitchen, trying my best to avoid bumping into the still unpacked boxes from what she had told me were her own move-in, one that was not that long go. Fish out of water, that's what I felt like.


Giant robots secret military bases and giant monsters? Moving in with my commanding officer and her... lifestyle. And the penguin. I shook my head, I tried not to think about the penguin. The way he'd stared at me. Not in the way that a horse might stare at you expecting food, this... creature stared at me in a way that peered into my soul, as if in that single look I had been weighed, measured, and found wanting.


I didn't like birds, we'd had a macaw when I was little, bit my finger and got his beak stuck in the skin. He wasn't trying to be mean, but I invented new profanity that day as well as a fear and distrust of poultry.


I licked my bottom lip, my mouth was dry and sticky, saliva tacky and stale. Dehydration. Two birds with one stone then. I grabbed onto the corner of the refrigerator door and pulled. The dry sucking sound of the seal breaking pleased me, as did the burst of cold air on bare skin.


"The air conditioner broke, they'll have a new one put in by the end of tomorrow though," her words played through my mind. Air conditioner was broken, and I couldn't exactly hang out in front of the open fridge all night.


My fingers trailed across cold, sweaty aluminum and plastic. Six, twelve ounce, cans. That should be enough, even for cheap Japanese beer. My old roommate would have lost her mind to see me drinking the cheap stuff, but she liked to home brew so that wasn't really a shock.

If she could see me now.


I pushed the door shut with my bare foot and turned back to the moon-lit hallway. The six cans rattled gently against one another as I proceeded, not back to my assigned room, but to the bathroom instead, for the time honored tradition of the 'it's too damn hot to sleep' night time bath.


I slid the door shut behind me and set the six pack down on the counter, then hesitated. I turned and regarded the cans and grabbed one, plucking it off the plastic six-pack ring. I pressed the can to the side of my neck. "ahhh..."

That was good. I popped the tab and put the can to my lips, not-quite-savoring the bitter hoppy taste as I pulled down half the can in my first drink. I worked my tongue around in my mouth. New tongue, new taste. It wasn't as bad as I remembered, and for that matter I wouldn't need that much anyway.


I had stripped what remained of my clothes off and was half way to the bath tub, with five-pack in one hand, open can in the other, when the mirror caught my eye. It was the first time I'd seen myself, this new self, naked. I would have been shocked if I weighed more than eighty pounds, and I was a good four inches under five feet tall.


"Eh."


Just something else to add to any future existential breakdown. For now? Alcohol. I set the unopened cans on the edge of the tub and twisted the single knob until the water came out a temperature on the comfortable side of cold, and then twisted the plug in the bottom to let it fill up.


I stepped in and flinched when my foot hit the water. I managed to get the water on the cold side of comfortable, rather than the comfortable side of cold. This would actually probably work out better. I gave a shrug and settled down into the tub, and leaned my head back against the edge as it filled.

I licked my bottom lip again and put the can to my lips. The second half of the can went down faster than the first, the sweet-bitter-hoppy taste of the cheap hooch was already growing on me at just one can into a six pack. Eighty pounds? Six pack would get the job done and I could probably get some sleep.


I pushed the lever attached to the water knob over with my foot and shut off the flow. The cool water had stopped under my chin, fully submerging me in relief from the heat. I plucked another can off the ring and started to sip at it. I could already feel the low level buzz kicking in. Truth be told, I was just along for the ride by this point, but that didn't mean I wanted to quit.


I found myself staring at the ceiling again, a favorite pastime of those who contemplate their existence, no doubt. I saved a city today. I saved the world today. Why couldn't I feel proud of that?


It didn't feel real.


Who was Rei Ikari? Did she exist? Did she die?


Did I kill her?


Who is Rei Ikari? Me? Maybe... I was her now. What did she used to be like? What did.. What did I used to be like?


I noticed the second can was empty, I dropped it over the side of the tub and cracked open the third with my teeth, sipping at it in the same motion.


Maybe I was just crazy. Some psychotic break when faced with certain death. Maybe I was still the woman in the cockpit of that plane, burning to death over a crowd of people, having one final hallucination.

Maybe I was that scared girl who saw a monster in the middle of a deserted city and was almost killed by it. And she broke, and lost her mind.


"I wish I could be a stronger person."


The words crossed my lips without a thought, the taste of sadness and regret thick upon them. The words came from me but they were not my own, like a memory buried deep inside the recesses of my mind. Those were not the words of me, they were the words of Rei Ikari.


I tipped the can back, I was half way through it, I was only dimly aware of the taste as I drained it to the three quarter mark.


The words of Rei Ikari. Still in her, in my, brain. Was the rest of it in there too? Her memories? Her soul?


I closed my eyes and chugged the rest of the can, dropped it carelessly on the tile floor and snapped the fourth can out of the pack, pulled the tab back with my front teeth and started chugging. I had to escape the thoughts, the alcohol was making me think down paths I would normally have been afraid to tread.


No, I had to drink until I couldn't feel feelings anymore. I smashed the can in my fist as I finished it off, spraying my face and hair with the last dregs of beer in the can. I dropped it and plucked the fifth off the ring, now in a race to finish the last two cans before I lost the coordination necessary to get the job done.


I heard the door knob rattle as the fifth can met my lips, streams of it dripping around my lips and down my neck as I drank. My eyes turned to the door as it slid open, a disheveled Misato with dark bags under her eyes greeted me. Our eyes met, I kept drinking.


She shook her head but didn't say anything. She shuffled across the tile and sat down on the shower stool. She took the sixth can and opened it, taking a sip. She didn't chug it, not like she had earlier in the day, at dinner. She set the can back down and sighed.


I looked up at her face as I set my own can down. Her mouth opened a few times, like she was getting ready to say something, but then she just closed it again. That agitated frown crept across her lips wider with each attempt.


"You didn't ask first," she said finally, simply.


"You were asleep. There's enough of it, I didn't think you'd miss it,' my drunk brain explained. "I couldn't sleep, thought it might help."


She nodded, her eyes turned away from mine. "You're really putting them away, you're probably going to regret that in the morning."


She was not wrong, but it wouldn't be the first or last regrettable thing I'd done.


I nodded and shrugged, "After today... after all of it..." I could feel a tear forming in the corner of my eye, felt that tightness in my face that always preceded crying.


"After today I just don't know what the f-fuck I'm doing Misato. Why I'm here, why I got into the evangelion, why... any of this. I feel like... I feel like a spring wound up so tight that I don't know if I'm going to snap from the strain or unwind and break something.... I just feel..." I trailed off, tears streaming down my face as I tried to find the word.


She finally looked back at me, the agitation was gone from her face, replaced by... a sad smile? Maybe understanding, compassion?


I clenched my eyes shut against the tears and tried to blink them away as my head swam from excessive drink, "I feel so... lost."


I dropped my head back against the edge of the tub for what felt like hours, until I felt myself sinking against the bottom of the tub, my weight returning to me with the sound of gurgling and suction. I cracked my eyes open to see the tub draining around me, felt the soft touch of a clean bath towel being draped over my front.


"I don't really know what to say to make you feel better, Rei, but I can't get mad at you for what you did, not really. I understand feeling like that," she explained as she gestured for me to reach up to her.


I lifted my arms and then she slipped her arms under my armpits and helped lift me out of the tub. She was stronger than she looked, or maybe I just didn't weigh anything. "Misato..."


"Look, we can talk tomorrow, figure something out to make you feel better that doesn't make me an accessory, alright?" She asked with a smile.


I leaned heavily against her as she dried me off and wrapped the towel around me. I hadn't been drunk like this... well, in years. Not since--


She pulled the towel away and maneuvered me to the edge of the counter. I balanced myself against it and closed my eyes. My legs were shaking but I managed to keep from falling down. I felt her pushing my arms through the straps of my bra.


Oh, she was getting me dressed, I'd gotten myself that torn up with four, no, five beers? Oh right, this was the first time I'd ever drank alcohol, that's right... "Sorry fer the trouble Mis'to," I slurred out.


The alcohol had me firmly within its delicious malty grip, all that I had drank, and so quick, meant that I was going to get worse before I was going to get better. I was dimly aware that my panties were on, again. When did that happen?


"Don't worry about it, it's not like I haven't had anybody do this for me before," she said softly.


My eyes felt heavy, I let them slide shut and just nodded to her. I felt like the world was spinning back and forth, and then I started to fall over.


Arms around my back and legs, strong, stronger than I would have thought? She was carrying me, and then she wasn't. I felt a soft sheet being pulled over me, then felt an arm wrapping around me, pulling me into a... hug?


I felt the spinning start to slow, my body finally settled down into the mattress and I let out a sigh as my body finally relaxed into the hug.

Finally, I managed to fall asleep.

XXXXXXX​

My eyes opened to the floor. I'd rolled off the bedroll at some point in the night, tangled myself up in the sheets and ended up face down on the floor and it was... cold. Gloriously cold. Actually, the entire room was pretty cold, comfortably cold. The air conditioning must have been fixed.


And it wasn't my room.


The headache hit me along with the realization of what had happened the night before. What Misato had done for me. She'd taken care of me, cleaned me up, gotten me dressed when I'd just made a mess of myself and.


Oh god the hangover. I clenched my eyes shut and wrapped myself up in the sheet and stumbled for the door.


She'd taken care of me though, it reminded me of what my own older sister had done for me many times.


And the hug.


That was... unexpected. It was also nice. A hug.


She cared.


I shook my head and stumbled through the door, and into my own room. I caught the faint smell of cooking meat as I crossed the hallway, I salivated almost immediately. At least my appetite hadn't been affected by the late night binge.

I slid the closet open and plucked out a tank top and a pair of shorts, forgoing the uniform that had thus far been my only attire. At least I had more than one thing, I would hate to look like a cartoon character who never changed her outfit.


I suppressed a snort as I slid the garments on and then followed my nose back out of the room, stumbling a little as the residual clumsiness after a night of heavy drinking had not yet left me. I sniffed the air again, yes, that was definitely cooking meat. I followed my nose to the kitchen.


I was pleasantly surprised by a distinct lack of crunching instant food wrappers under my feet. Actually, the entire floor seemed to have been cleared off, and the boxes unpacked. Well, not all of them, but the boxes that were still packed were pushed off into the corner of the room and stacked neatly.


Did I get drunk and fall into the twilight zone last night?


I blinked hard and shook my head. No, it was all still there. I sniffed the air and turned my head and... "Doctor Akagi?"


The good blonde doctor was standing in the kitchen. Our kitchen. My kitchen. I raised an eyebrow in confusion. It looked like she was cooking, the doctor can cook? Well, she can cook evangelions, what's a breakfast?


"Oh, hi Rei," she answered, looking over her shoulder at me for just a moment before turning back to the pan. It looked... that looked like sausage.

"So, Doctor Akagi... what brings you over here at," I glanced over at the clock, noon? Really? "noon-o-clock?"


And for that matter, why was she dressed like a normal person? I wasn't sure that it was normal for someone like her to be dressed normal.


"Misato asked me to come over, she said she wanted to do something nice for you after yesterday," She answered conversationally as I walked up alongside her. Yep, sausage.


"Misato can't cook."


"Which is why she asked me to come over. I swear, a woman of her age not knowing how to cook!"


I couldn't help but laugh. Akagi was a lot more... human than I'd expected her to be, a lot more easy going, even around me.


Around me. Rei.


I shook my head again, banished the thoughts, "So... where is she anyway?"


"She had some... cleaning up to do, I guess you could say, she should be back soon," Akagi answered, I could almost hear the smirk in her voice.


I nodded silently and turned around. I needed a drink, the regular kind. My throat was dry again, and my mouth dry and sticky. I grabbed the fridge door and pulled, felt another blast of that wonderfully chill air.


Huh, cleaning up? The beer was gone. All of it, every last can. Was that because of me? Was she trying to keep me from destroying myself... or did last night hold a mirror up to her?


Oh god, she didn't think I drank because of her did she?


I shook the thought out of my head and grabbed a bottle of water, had the cap twisted off before the fridge door had even swung closed. Cool clean crisp satisfying water. The cold splash on my tongue washed all the sleep and stale beer taste out of my mouth and satisfied that dull hunger-ache in my stomach.


"So, sausage and... eggs?" I ventured, looking at the food laid out on the counter, "that's a bit, eh, western isn't it?"


"Well you were asking for steak yesterday, this is as close as my budget can bring me to that, sorry Rei!"


I turned around, Misato had come in while I wasn't looking, I'd managed to miss the sound of the door opening. I guess Akagi wasn't wrong that she'd be back soon. She was carrying shopping bags. Shopping bags full of ingredients. Most curious. Did she know I could cook or was she going to try to learn on her own?


"Light shopping?" I asked with a raised eyebrow.


"I thought we could use some... nice healthy soft drinks and non instant food, that's all. I was actually a little surprised at how much cheaper it was than the instant stuff..." She trailed off, I could see the look of contemplation on her face, it was actually kind of cute.


Bad Rei, do not crush on a woman twice your age. Well, she was actually only two years older than me before the body swap but.


Stop trying to justify it, move along Rei.

I snapped off a mental salute to my inner-self and licked at my bottom lip, "Well you know, I'm a pretty good cook if I do say so myself, and I do say so myself." I smirked and started to casually inspect my fingernails.


I could almost feel Misato's sigh of relief, even from across the room. "Oh thank god, I thought I was going to have to learn to cook. Rei, you are truly a life saver. So what's for dinner?"


"I'm still here by the way. Lunch is served," Akagi announced as two plates were placed on the table between Misato and myself. "It would have been breakfast but some people like to sleep till noon. Something that I'm sure won't happen in the future, right?"


I could feel the eyes boring into my soul, even before I turned to meet her gaze, "Y-yes Doctor Akagi! I was... It was a long night, I was having trouble sleeping you see and, and, and--"


I saw the hint of a smile creep onto the corner of her mouth. Not so different from Misato after all was she? They were friends though, so that made sense. Maybe. Wasn't it opposites that attract?


"Actually, today wasn't such a bad day to sleep in. I still want you to come in for some tests later. We've got to get you fitted for a plug suit, and the other pilot asked to meet you," the blonde explained, I caught her walking towards the door. Wasn't she going to join us?


"She did? Huh." Misato poked at her food and turned to her friend, "Aren't you going to stay for lunch?"


Huh, other pilot... and she was a girl? She was a she? What was her name? Part of me... wasn't ready to know, not just yet.


"Some of us have work Misato, Unit One was deployed yesterday, an angel was destroyed, there are petabytes of data to look over. Truly, it's an amazing time to be alive," The doctor deadpanned. Still, I could see a hint of mirth on her face. Somehow I didn't think she felt as put-out as she let on.


I heard the door click shut and then finally put the fork in my mouth.


I could feel my toes curling up in pleasure. It was just a simple sausage, sure but after everything, it was a throwback to a time when things were normal. A simple breakfast, even if it was lunch time, between two... friends?


I looked up and across the table at Misato. Friends? Maybe... She had a smile on her face as she ate, not looking at me but... Yeah, I could go with that. Just a breakfast with two friends.


Friends, yeah, I'd like that.

XXXXXXX​

I wish I could be a stronger person.


Was that my wish, or was that hers?


I found that I had a lot of time to be alone with my thoughts on the way into headquarters. More elevators, escalators, and moving walkways than anything else. A lot of time spent stationary instead of walking or climbing.


Was this place built for introspection or what?


I sighed and leaned against the handrail on the mobile walkway. So I was going to meet this mysterious 'other pilot', whoever that was. Whoever she was, actually. At least, Misato said she.

She wanted to meet me.


So who the hell was it?


I kicked the side of the handrail in frustration, then yelped as I jammed my big toe. That was intelligent. At least the place was air conditioned. I couldn't imagine how amazing it would be to be stuck in the yellow sweater-vest if it was actually hot down here.


The school uniform. Apparently I was so boring that I only actually had one set of clothes suitable for wearing in public. The skirt, blouse, tie, and vest. The Uniform. The more I tried to reject it, the more I felt like a cartoon character, always wearing the same clothes in every scene.


I pinched the bridge of my nose. Come on Rei calm it the hell down before you have a panic attack or something. It had been years since my last but... new situation, new stresses?


"Pilot Ikari."


I felt like my blood froze solid in that instant. That subzero chill flooded through my entire being, and I rotated. She was there, the one who I didn't even know if she'd exist.


It was not like looking in a mirror, we were about the same height, and a similar build. Sisters, at best. Out faces were different, even beyond the difference in our eyes. Her skin a pale alabaster and the hair... Where I'd at some point dyed mine a cornflower blue, her hair was closer to a... well at first glance it looked white, it was only by comparison to the bandages wrapped around her left eye that I noticed the blue tint.


And that one red eye. Red to my brown, hair almost white to my bottle job. And yet, we could have been sisters. So was this the other pilot or... was she someone else?


"I'm ah, afraid I don't know your name, and you already seem to know who I am!" I nervously giggled as I picked at the back of my head.


She looked at me, judging me, measuring me? That eye... It was spectacularly creepy, not in the color, but more in the fact that her face was completely devoid of expression. What was she--


"Ayanami, Rei." She answered simply.


Rei. Two Reis. Deux Rei. Rei^2. NiRei? Hmm, Nire. Maybe there was a joke about Morio Kita in here, somewhere.


She was still staring.


I blinked, slowly. My eyelids felt like they were dragging through molassas. I stared, and raised an eyebrow. "So, we're both Rei then. It's very nice to meet me."


She tilted her head and for the briefest of moments, I was almost certain that I could detect just the hint of a smile. I let out a sigh of relief. Good enough, I guess.

 

Chapter 4:
Just One Yesterday​

She was still there, in the corner of my eye. Not passing, not falling behind, keeping perfect pace. The click of shoe on concrete was almost in sync, a sort of harmony that was typically only present in military marching formations.


Precision. That's the word that came to mind with her. Precision and yet...


I frowned a little and turned my head just enough to look at her face, the bandaged eye. The slight flinch with each step. She was hurting but she was trying not to show it, I'd seen it often enough to tell. I'd done it often enough to tell.


The question was, why? She was a kid. I was a kid too, I guess, but even so, why would she need to hide her pain. Was she trying to put on a brave face for me? For somebody else? I licked my bottom lip and concentrated on each step, each click of shoe on concrete.


Or was there another reason? She was terse, quiet. Was there something else to that? Did she know how to express her discomfort? Or... maybe she was just tougher than I would have thought.


Maybe she was tougher than I was.


She also had much worse fashion sense. The sea-foam jumper she was wearing made me feel more like she was going to offer turn-down service than that she was a student.


Maybe. I still liked my uniform better, as much as I liked my uniform anyway. It was kind of growing on me, and, at least I thought, it made me look cute. New universe, new life, new body, same priorities. Sanity, Familiarity, whatever I wanted to call it.


It occurred to me, by the time we crossed the sixth intersection after the moving walkway had ended, that I didn't actually know where I was going. Ayanami was still keeping pace at my side, and her body language hadn't tipped me off at any point that I was going too far, so--


"Ikari, here," she said simply, and I stopped abruptly, turned to see her finger pointing at a door.

I looked up at the door, then down at the palm of my left hand where I'd written down the room number that Misato had given me.


I turned back to my companion and smiled, "I guess I could have just asked you where I was supposed to go, huh?"


"I was sent to make sure you didn't get lost."


"You could have said something about that, you know," I answered back with a raised eyebrow, my lip curled back a little in bemusement.


She tilted her head slightly, I could see... something, in her eye. "You didn't get lost."


Was she messing with me? Was this Ayanami Humor? I shook my head and turned to the door.


There was a contact switch on the side of the door frame, the kind to activate a motorized door, the kind that slide into the wall. Because this was the future. Well... actually it wasn't, was it? To think, all we needed to have star trek doors was to have half the world blown up at the turn of the century.


I pressed the release catch and the door slid open with a 'shink' noise. I heard the soft click of Ayanami's shoes behind me as I stepped into the room. The room itself was... busy. The walls were covered in racks upon racks of vinyl and circuitry, the center of the room was dominated by some kind of glass cylinder, and there was...


"I understand, thank you doctor."


I heard the voice, and I froze, some unbidden reflex triggered by that voice. My eyes turned and I saw him, the commander of Nerv. Rei's father. He looked at me, I heard the click of his shoes as he walked towards me, I felt the knot in my gut. He stopped, I felt his hand on my shoulder, I looked up. He... smiled? A slight curling of the lip, nothing extreme, not some ear to ear grin, and yet... My eyes locked on his sunglasses, my face felt hot.


"Rei, you did well," He said, his tone warm, fatherly. I felt him squeeze my shoulder and then he let go, and walked out of the room.


I turned to follow him as he left, followed his retreating form through the door. My eyes caught Ayanami, she looked... surprised?


I knew the feeling. Did that just happen? Ayanami's eye was still wide. She was looking at me, almost as if confirming that, yes, that did just happen.


I licked my bottom lip and turned back around, shook off that feeling of awkwardness. That was a mental breakdown for another time, for now I had an appointment with a bottle blonde Japanese lady who wanted to fit me for vinyl fetish gear.


Actually, maybe this world wasn't so different after all.


I heard the grind of caster wheels on metal and looked up to see that Akagi had stepped out from behind one of the partitions that had been set up in the room. She smiled and I felt the stress I'd just built up start to melt back away, I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.


"Oh, I guess Ayanami helped you find your way here. I had expected that it would take you a bit longer... No matter, I'm ready for you anyway, right this way, Rei!" She explained to me, her voice sounded almost... giddy. Something with my fa-- the commander?


My father? Where did that... nevermind. I approached the doctor and heard the click of shoes and the sound of the door sliding shut behind me, Ayanami must have left. Maybe she had something else to do or maybe... her own answers to find.


Or I was projecting.


"So, how does this work?" I asked, raising my arm to the glass tube and the various assorted machinery that littered the room, "Seems a little complex."


"Well, you'll need to disrobe, and then we'll fill the cylinder, and use that to get precision measurements of your body so ensure that the plugsuit fits properly," she explained, her tone was bored, like she'd explained it before... or like she just didn't care. She was typing on a console built into the side of the machine, not even looking at me, "and then the laser depiliation process starts, and by the time that's done the system should have prototyped out your suit."


Depilation? Wait, I didn't sign up for that.


"By the way, what color would you like?"


Depilation?

XXXXXXX​

It was like a sunburn, the kind that keep you awake not from how intense it is, but because no matter how you orient yourself you can't get quite comfortable and you know that if you could, for just a few minutes, you could fall asleep and make it through the night.


But it wasn't nighttime, and I didn't have a sunburn. What I had was worse, and far more embarrassing: depilation.


The plugsuits fit skin tight, they suction down against the skin with a hard vacuum, this allows for skin contact sensors, body heat regulation, defibrillator, among other things, but as it is skin tight it requires full skin to suit contact.


Which means depilation. Lasers, ointment, the glass tube of immodesty.


The measurement hadn't been so bad, even if I hadn't been able to keep myself from blushing brightly enough to light up the entire room with my own bio-luminescence. The part that was bad was after that, when the tank drained and the lasers kicked in.


The scent hit first, one most commonly associated with flareups in the kitchen or mistakes made with a zippo and an aerosol can. The unique funk of burning hair and scorched skin. It only took an instant, the process was over before the burn set in, and she hadn't warned me.


I looked down at my hand, worked it open and closed in the vinyl glove. Pale yellow, the same color as my school vest. Maybe I was unoriginal, but I liked the color, it was growing on me. I had my plugsuit, and the ointment. The suit dispensed it against my skin after I put it on, to soothe the burning and to promote quick healing.


It was supposed to soak into the skin quickly and then the burning itch would go away.


I should have mentioned to her that I was a little obsessive compulsive about having gooey things on my bare skin, but I don't think it would have helped. The more I didn't think about it, the more I could just get used to it and deal with it.


I stood up and stretched out, rolled my shoulders and cracked my spine. Felt the pleasant burn in my muscles as I stretched out on my tiptoes with my arms pushed out overhead, rolled my head and cracked my neck. The suit slid over my skin, just a little, but the burning had already started to dull.


Skin tight, vacuum sealed, environmentally contained, plug suit. The thing probably cost more than I made in a year, and probably used technology that didn't even exist in my own timeline, and they gave it to a fourteen year old girl.


Of course they also gave me an eighty meter tall rage fueled engine of destruction, pointed me towards the bad guy, and said 'go get 'er' so maybe they had the money to spare, or maybe this whole thing was worlds more desperate than anyone should be comfortable with.


Maybe it was both.


I suppressed a shudder. Sure I'd had lives in my hands before, even before I was here, but usually no more than a half a dozen people, plus the ones on the ground. I clenched a fist and I felt the vinyl stretch, felt my knuckles pop.


It wasn't really vinyl, it looked like it, but it was more like a wetsuit than a fetish suit, some kind of layered rubber, aramid fiber, and vinyl composite material. Akagi had explained it to me, but I wasn't really listening at the time.


The whole thing was actually rather firm and solid, if not a little heavy, but it didn't hamper my movement of flexibility. I was pretty sure that I could do a back-flip while wearing the thing if I had to. Well, if I could back-flip at all. It wasn't something I could try in a skirt and... well this plugsuit didn't exactly leave much to the imagination, so preservation of modesty was no reason not to try!


Well, if I remembered how to do it. Let's see, one, two... three! I jumped off the ground, threw my weight, around... around... you can do it, almost!


My feet hit the ground and I stumbled a bit, took a step backwards and caught myself. Not bad at all.


"I didn't think that plugsuits were that exciting but then, I've never worn one. Lookin' sharp, Rei."


I turned to the sound, Misato was standing there, smirking at me. I wondered how long she had been standing there before I did that back-flip.


"Well you know, wearing a skin tight suit that leaves little to the imagination is what ever girl wants, didn't you know? It's got me so excited I could dance," I explained with a smirk across my face.


I cracked my neck again and leaned against the wall, "Actually, they're pretty nonrestrictive, a little heavy, but they don't bind up at all. I guess that's the benefit of laser fitting and full body depilation, eh?"


She paled a little bit at the mention of depilation, but I couldn't blame her. Thinking about it made it start to itch again. "It kinda gives you a nice healthy glow though, the lasers," I looked thoughtfully at the ceiling and continued, "that or it's cancer."


"You do not have cancer!" She laughed at me, "You've got a sync test though, I'll show you to the cages and you can get started."


"Sync test?" I asked, twisting my face up a little. "Don't you think I've been through enough!?" I shrilled dramatically with a flourish and a faux faint.


Misato grimaced and grabbed me by the shoulder, "oh come on, you don't even know what a sync test is even like and you're already complaining. You could be a little more mature."


I nodded, "Yes, but then in fifteen years I'd look back on all that time spent acting like an adult as misspent youth. Besides, while you're right that I don't know what a sync test is like..." I trailed off for a moment, licked my bottom lip, and gestured dramatically at the canary yellow plugsuit I now wore, "So far nothing in this place is without its share of consequences."


"Some people pay good money for that kind of thing."


I sighed and walked past her, to the door, listened to the soft thump of the rubberized soles against the hard floor, "They could give me the money instead, I'm sure I could find a use for it. So where are we goin'?"

XXXXXXX​

Eventually, I would have to find some way of connecting with other people in a way that didn't rely entirely on snark and sarcasm. Dealing with Misato, Akagi, Ayanami, my fa-- The Commander. I had to... connect with them in some way, communicate, build a relationship, that wasn't just sarcastic deflection and jokes.


But that had always been my coping mechanism. For as long as I could remember, it was a way of using my mind as a weapon, I supposed. A way of saying 'ah yes, well, I am smarter than you and here's some word play to prove it!'


And it worked, made me very, very popular when I was feeling outgoing and meeting new groups of people, the social lubrication of alcohol, a few jokes, and a few funny stories and I was the center of attention.


For a while.


I would then fade back into obscurity, I could never maintain that type of relationship, something based on only the one aspect of my personality. The mania, while it made you feel awesome, made you popular, for a time, it didn't last.

Not that I didn't have friends, but for those who stuck around I always had to find something else, be the rest of my personality to keep them around.


I exhaled, tasted the soft hint of blood on my tongue. LCL. The entry plug, the controls sticks in my hands, the clips in my hair and their weight on my head. The weight of responsibility. I felt the corner of my mouth curl up into a smile in amusement at the though, and I couldn't stop it.


Another character flaw, I supposed. Sometimes I couldn't help but wear my heart on my sleeve.


Sitting in the saddle, linking minds with the Evangelion, maybe I should be open. Let my heart be open, feel what I would feel, let those involuntary smiles spread. It was bonding right? What will happen will happen, zen, or something like that.


I licked my bottom lip, felt the subtle drag of the fluid I was submerged in, and tried not to swallow, I wasn't quite yet ready to know how the plugsuit dealt with having to go, so consuming liquids was right out, for the moment.


It was different, synchronizing without the threat of impending death and destruction over my head. It felt... warmer, nothing quite so cliche as a mother's embrace, but... maybe a firm, friendly handshake? Or the presence of a friend, right there with you in the saddle. Like the Evangelion was reaching out and saying 'you are not alone' to my soul.


It was calming, and I needed the calm after the whirlwind of change I'd been through, the new sights, sounds, places, people. Either Rei Ikari, or... that woman I was before, it was a massive change for either.


And the longer I sat in the saddle, the more I felt, tingles on the skin, hitches in the muscle. Tightness-es that weren't quite worked out. Felt like working hard without stretching first, dull aches and pains in the joints.


Actually, maybe closer to what you felt like after you come off a horse the fast way.


That, or whatever the analog for beating a monster to death and having it explode was.


Maybe getting kicked by the horse.

My mouth curled up again at the thought. My eyes drifted over to the open vid-com window, Misato was standing in the frame, not looking, paying attention to something else, but still standing there. Just in case I needed her, or maybe so she could tell me if she needed anything from me. It was comforting just to have her there.


She was the first person I'd started to connect with after arriving, hell, first person I even saw after arriving. I needed to make that connection stick, make it last. I needed to build something real and not just mutual snarking. Yeah.


My thoughts turned to the people I'd left behind. Friends, family, even just the people I passed on the street, people I wouldn't see again, people I hadn't seen in years. The ones I lost when I came and the ones I lost before, graves I couldn't visit anymore.


I felt my right hand clench into a tight fist and felt that ache behind my eyes that let me know the tears would soon flow, it was a familiar feeling, that nostalgia. It had been a long time, maybe too long, since I'd really thought about it, but this new change, new face, new body, all of it just... came together, and once I started down that track it was hard to come back.


If given the chance, if I could have had just one wish, one chance for one more yesterday, I'd have taken it. Asked the questions I wish I'd asked back then, had the conversations I never had, made the trips and the visits I never got to make.


One last flight in a P-51 for an old man who had a bigger impact on who I became, who I wanted to become, than anyone else had.


Just one yesterday.


I closed my eyes and felt the tears dissolve off of my face into the LCL. I couldn't have yesterday back, and it's an unfair fact of life that I was only able to fully appreciate the finality of time once I'd lost so much to it. That I couldn't appreciate the time I had, and wasted it, thinking there'd always be later.


But later happened, it came and went, and now it's even after that. There's no time left to waste, even if I was given new youth. No time to wait for later, the world wouldn't tolerate it. You only live once, and I don't mean in the reckless living sense but...


If I have only this one life to live, to share with the people around me, then I feel... I know, that I have the obligation to fill it till my cup is overflowing. People experiences. This was a second chance right? I didn't ask for it, and maybe I didn't really want this do-over, but that didn't mean I had to let the opportunity go to waste.


I slid my eyes open and turned to the video screen, "So, Misatoooo," I singsonged out.


She blinked and turned towards the camera, "Yes Rei, is something wrong?"


I shook my head, "No, nothing like that. I guess this place is just really good for introspection, I was just wondering if you had a few minutes to talk, this whole thing is... well it's giving me a lot of time to think, if that's okay. I don't really wanna mess up the test."


She turned away from the screen, I could see her lips moving but I couldn't hear anything, I looked out of the front of the entry plug and saw her talking with Akagi, a few dozen yards away in the observation room, but the microphone on her end wasn't picking up on it, must have been directional.


"Hang onto that thought for a few minutes Rei, the test is almost done, we can go somewhere after that, maybe treat you to that dinner, sound good?" She offered with a smile, a genuine wide smile, and maybe a hint of pride? Maybe I was doing good at this whole sync test thing.


I nodded, "Looking forward do it then."


I licked my bottom lip and leaned back in the saddle, and let my eyes drift closed. There was something special about being in the entry plug, riding this saddle. It wasn't a cockpit, it wasn't flying, but it was... special.


Part of me wanted to ask if I could do this more often, but I could only imagine how much even the tests must cost, let alone actually moving the thing around.


No, sync tests would have to do, but I was looking forward to spending more time in the plug, it had a way of making me feel better, even if it did give me too much time to think.


I felt the pitch change and felt my mind shrinking, just a little. They were shutting down the system. I felt the saddle lurch. About time for that talk then.

XXXXXXX​

I looked somewhat ridiculous. Just somewhat though. My school uniform, the only real outfit I had, looked as good as it ever did, but the plugsuit clad limbs sticking out of it added a level of absurdity that was just on the pleasant side of comical.


I leaned back in the seat and watched the scenery pass by, smelled the cool humid air that drifted in through the open window, felt more like home than I would have thought a different world, a different time could feel.


"You could have taken it off. You didn't have to leave it on under your clothes," Misato told me from her side of the car.


I shifted in my seat, the rubberized surface of my suit made a squeaking sound against the leather of the seat, turned to face her, "I would but eh... Akagi lasered basically my entire body, I'm not looking forward to putting on anything else after I peel this off. It's like a full body sunburn under this thing. At least it doesn't rub back and forth on my skin."


She raised an eyebrow and visibly shuddered, "So what's the game plan then?"


I shrugged, and curled the corner of my mouth up in a smirk, licked my bottom lip, and closed my eyes a little, "Well, when we get back to the apartment, I could peel it off and you could rub soothing lotion all over my body for me."


She choked, audibly, she even blushed. Success? Success.


"Rei!"


I winced at her harsh tone, "ah... sorry..."


I looked down at my hand, picked at my fingertips with my thumb and licked my bottom lip, okay that might have been crossing a line, I was going to stop doing that wasn't I? Honesty, open honesty and something other than joking and snark and sarcasm, right? Right?


"If, ah, if I'm going to be honest with you..." I started and then trailed off, I looked to her for some kind of reaction, I found none other than a curled lip, she was still sore about that last comment.


"That would be a good thing to be," she finally responded.


I licked my lip, "I don't really know what I'm doing here, socially I mean. I'm just... compensating for how insecure I feel with inappropriate jokes and sarcasm and... well I'm sorry for that. I want to do better I just don't really know how to do that, I never really learned how to do that... so the only friends I've ever really had are the ones who can put up with it."


I took a breath and looked at her, felt my mouth drying out, tried to find something in her eyes that would let me know it was okay, "And well, I... I want to be your friend, and base that on something real, I guess?"


"You haven't gotten rid of me yet, Rei."


I blinked, huh?


She put her left hand over my right, squeezed it. "You're not the only one who feels like you're doing it wrong, god knows my own teenage years could have gone better. You're doing okay Rei, even if you're putting up a front like that. So, yeah, I'll still be your friend, and not just because you're a pilot or because I have to, but because I want to."


I relaxed into the seat, crisis averted?


She continued, "I think even adults are like that sometimes, or heck, maybe even most of the time. We might get older but there's still a lot of that going around. But, well, after last night, I kinda figured out had a lot going on up there, so I can't really fault you, just don't take advantage of me or my good nature, okay?"


I saw the smirk forming on her mouth, ending it on a joke? I can dig that, that works, let me save myself from a little embarrassment... Yep. That curl in her lip, hard to miss, hard not to notice her lips anyway--


I shook my head and looked out the window, the sun was setting, I'd spent all day underground, well, the part of it that I was actually awake for anyway. The part after delicious pan-fried breakfast foods. I had to wonder if the food was a per-emptive apology for burning off all of the hair below my eyelashes on the part of Akagi.


She was Misato's friend, and that kind of thing rubs off, so she probably thought it was hilarious.


I looked at the woman in the seat next to me, maybe she thought it was hilarious too? I studied her face and felt the heat rising in mine. No.


I licked my lip, no, I had to think of something else, examining her face was going to take my mind down predictable paths that I didn't need to find myself going down, not here, not now, and not like this.


My thoughts drifted back to Ayanami, the other Rei. As much as I wanted to know more about her, it didn't seem right to ask Misato, to talk about her behind her back when I could just find an excuse to spend time with her to learn that for myself.

What things did she like, what did she do with her free time... was she actually messing with me earlier? She didn't seem like the emotionless robot that she was, well, supposed to be. She seemed... well, laconic for sure, but there was a humor in some of what she'd said.


"You start school tomorrow, by the way," Misato said suddenly, breaking the silence.


I blinked, I had forgotten about that, I was, what, fourteen? Yeah teenagers went to school, that was a thing. Fuck.


"Oh. Dang."

 

Chapter 5:
Head Wounds and Head On Attacks​

The air was cool, crisp. I could taste the clean, fresh air on my tongue, feel the touch of humidity, the light freshness of cut grass and perpetual summer. I'd always been one to appreciate nature, even if that meant eating it, I'd always felt content in the woods. The seclusion, the quietness, shade, the smells and feeling in the air.


The gentle breeze was carrying that air, that scent down out of the hills and through the school courtyard, through the leaves in the trees, through my hair, my skirt. I was tempted, for a moment, to spin in place and just take it in. It was just so normal.


School had been, for the first hours, uneventful. History, mathematics, literature, standard topics, if only just in the one room. That part was weird, we stayed in the room, the teachers moved.

I'd introduced myself in the front of the class, written my name out on the chalkboard, and taken my seat. My seat next to Ayanami. She hadn't asked me to sit near her in words, but her one un-bandaged eye locked with mine, and then turned to the empty seat next to her. A subtle hint, but one which I took.


And the class was normal, or normal enough. Then the questions started rolling across the laptop terminal on my desk.


'Are you and Ayanami related?'


Well that was a good question.

'Why do you and Ayanami have the same name?'


That too, was a good question, and one that I'd been wondering about myself.


'Why do you look like Ayanami?'


My eyebrow raised, and I looked over at the silver-blue haired albino girl. Definitely a good question.


'Are you from Nerv too?'


Hmm, I stretched out my hands and typed out my reply: 'No, I am from the internet.'


'Are you the pilot?'


The cursor blinked at me, I heard Ayanami sneeze, whether as a reaction to the question or because she had a cold, or allergies, or just a tickle in her nose, I didn't know. My fingers worked across the keyboard: 'Like in flight simulator?'


'Do you pilot the giant robot?'


The corner of my mouth curled up, I couldn't resist. 'No.'


I heard a collective sigh of disappointment from my classmates, and caught Ayanami's eye glancing over at me. I looked back down at the keyboard and felt my smirk grow, and typed, 'It's more like riding than piloting.'


And then, relatively speaking, hell broke loose. Any semblance of composure or order was lost from the room and my desk was surrounded, and I was hammered with questions from all of the students. It was expected, and I should have known better, but I couldn't resist the joke.

Besides, they'd have figured it out soon enough anyway. New girl shows up, looks like the classmate they already suspect of working for Nerv, and right after a huge Nerv robot fights a giant monster? Yeah. Probably didn't need to watch a lot of TV to make those connections.


But, I found my respite in the form of the lunch bell, and that was how I found myself to the courtyard and the fresh air. And the... what was that sound? Sort of a subtle whistling sound, like air blowing across the surface of a wooden--


My head turned towards the sound in time to see a decorative floral pattern, moments before the object struck my head. The dull thunk of the box striking my skull echoed through the courtyard and reverberated through my teeth.

I staggered back from the blow and blinked the tears out of my eyes, turned when the sound of shoes tapping against concrete drew my attention. One of my classmates, a girl with her hair in pigtails, the class rep if I remembered correctly, was running towards me with a purpose and an angry snarl.


I raised my left arm in a defensive gesture while she closed the last few feet, but it didn't even slow her down. She threw a sloppy right hook that connected across my jaw and knocked the sense out of me, my head snapped around from the blow and I toppled over and collapsed to the ground like a sack of wet noodles.


My rotation from the blow to the face turned me as I fell and I landed on my front, with my right cheek flat against the ground. My mouth filled with the thick hot coppery taste of blood, followed by an almost chlorine-like taste and smell as my head connected with the concrete.


That was almost certainly a concussion. Girl had a mean punch for sure, and, when I looked up at her--


When did Ayanami get there? She was holding the girl's arm back, her eye locked on her and her face completely slack. There was something... eerie about it, the way she just held the girl in place. There was no question, no struggle, just indisputable fact.

And when did the crowd get there? A few more girls from class, some of the boys, one with glasses and the one next to him in the jogging suit stood out as obvious outliers from the norm, all gathered around me and the class rep, Hikari I think was her name?


I coughed and spit out the mouthful of blood that had pooled inside of my cheek and rolled onto my side and pushed myself up into a sitting position. There were a few stray strands of blue hair laying on the concrete, along with a small splotch of red, my head swung lazily on my neck and I looked up at the girl who'd clocked me.


She was frozen, her face still that mask of anger and rage, but her eyes were... sad, I could see the tears running down her face, I worked my mouth, looking for something to say.


“So, helluva punch you've got there, eh class rep?”


My voice broke the trance, she looked away, shoved Ayanami away from her, and ran away. Ayanami, for her part, let her go, she had been trying to stop her from attacking me further, and letting the girl run away satisfied that objective, it seemed.


The boy in the jogging suit looked like he wanted to run after her, I saw him tense up like he was going to, and then he stopped, and instead turned to look down at me, his lips parted a few times, like he was going to say something, his eyes darted back and forth, like he was looking for the words.


He closed his mouth and crouched down next to me and put his arm around me and under my arms. I felt the heat rising in my cheeks, and not just from the punch, as he tightened his grip.


“Hey... let me help you up alright?” he said finally. I leaned against him as he lifted. He was strong too, I was back on my feet, a little shaky on balance, but he was holding me up.


Yeah, my face was definitely red, and he was definitely a solid chunk of athletic teenager. Holding me up against him, helping me up, being so... gah, no, Rei, no. Do not go down that line of thought, this is not for your brains.


He let go of me, or, started to. He took his arm out from under my armpits and took a step back as I steadied myself, and then he was gone, run off after the class rep. Oh, that was probably Suzuhara wasn't it? My mind was slow to connect dots, or really pay much attention.


I felt myself wobbling for a moment before another arm grabbed me, this one much smaller but still somehow just as strong, I turned my eyes to see Ayanami holding me up. Where her own restraint of Hikari would have been described as firm and unyielding, the support she was giving me was... gentle.


Her hand squeezed my shoulder, almost imperceptibly, but... was she trying to comfort me? Her one eye glared into the crowed and they parted like the red sea parted for Moses. That kind of reaction from a single look? What did they think of her, and if she was acting like this for me, what would they think of me?


“I'll take you to Akagi,” she said as she started to direct me towards the school's twin wrought iron gates which were, oddly enough, starting to open for us already.


I stumbled along with her, my head still swimming from the collision with the concrete, but my feet kept moving, one in front of the other. “Wouldn't the school doctor be closer?” I asked.


“Akagi is better.” Simple, direct. It wasn't an endorsement, she was stating a fact. It wasn't up for dispute, Akagi was better.


My head started to clear as we passed through the gate and turned on the sidewalk, but my legs were still shaky and my head still throbbed, the taste of nickles soaked in bleach still permeated my mouth and stuck to my tongue. I worked my jaw and was rewarded with a loud clicking sound. Yeah she hit me hard.

I licked my bottom lip and turned my head slightly towards the girl I was leaning on, “So, some first day huh?” I asked.


She kept walking, her lip moved but she didn't say anything, I guess it wouldn't be that easy. I sighed internally.


“Sorry, I guess I'm not always that great at making small talk.”


She nodded slightly, but still said nothing, and as we continued to walk I relied on her support less and less, my head started to hurt more but the world started to fall back into sharp clarity despite that. Each step was stronger than the last, with each step my balance improved.


“It is the same,” she said finally, I turned towards her with a raised eyebrow, and she elaborated, “Making small talk, it is the same for me.”


I nodded, I wasn't surprised. She had seemed... shy, in a way. Not that she didn't understand socialization, maybe she was putting on a show, but she definitely came off, to me at least, as shy.


“On my first day, Aida asked me on a date,” she offered.


So, she was shy, she wasn't good at small talk, but she was willing to try? I'll take it.

“So how did that go?” I asked as the corner of my mouth curled up.


She chewed frowned as if thinking, then I saw her lips curl ever so slightly upwards, “I stared at him without blinking until he returned to his desk.”


I started to laugh despite the pain in my head and put my arm around Ayanami and squeezed her shoulder, “That is absolutely amazing. How long did it take for him to go away?”


“Five minutes.”


“Hah!”

XXXXXXX​

I was filled with a sense of profound loss as I sat on the examination table. In front of me, the yellow sweater vest, the one I'd initially resisted, but that had grown on me like a lucky hat, or a best friend made of cotton, was stained. Stained red with the blood from my head. Ruined.

Akagi snapped her fingers at me and waved her hand, “Rei, attention, pay attention, you in there?”


I blinked and shook my head, the sudden motion made my headache return in full. Mistakes had been made. “Y-yeah sorry I was just, well I ruined my vest.”


She looked over at the vest, then back up to me, and cocked an eyebrow, “Well if it's that important to you, well, we can build Evangelions, you know we can probably take that stain out no problem.

I heard a snicker, a soft, subtle noise that I couldn't actually be certain I'd heard, but my eyes snapped over to where Ayanami was leaning against the wall, and she did have her hand covering her mouth.


If I hadn't had that conversation with her on the way in, I almost wouldn't have believed it possible, but there seemed to be a lot more depth to her than I could have guessed.


But then, people are like that, we're all the hero of our own story, and we all have our own story.


“So, how did you start the fight, bad joke?” the doctor asked me.

“Well, they found out I was the pilot of unit one, and then at lunch the class rep hit me with a lunch box and then knocked me the hell out with a right hook,” I explained, and shrugged, “I guess she took issue with that.”


“You don't say?” She snarked as she taped the bandage over my left eye, where the box had split my eyebrow open. “Not exactly the heroes welcome you were expecting I take it?”


“I was expecting that my classmates, male and female alike would throw themselves at me with romantic intent and shower me with gifts, obviously.”


She stared at me, her eyebrow crept up but she remained silent.


“What? Don't give me that look, I am adorable, I have a cuteness that transcends, they should all be throwing themselves at me.”


And there was that snickering again, I licked my bottom lip and turned my eyes toward that corner of the room, a smirk forming on my face. So she was enjoying that, we would definitely be getting along.


Akagi didn't seem the least bit surprised by Ayanami's reactions, was this all old familiar territory for her then? It would be hilarious if everybody had it wrong about her. But then, she was human, right? So how much could really be that different between her and me, really?


“Well at least you're not lacking in self esteem.”


“The head injury helps my ego. So how is it and when does the morphine start?” I asked hopefully.


“Morphine? Rei come on, you bumped your head, you'll be fine, you'll just have a headache for a while.”


“No concussion?”


“No concussion, a bruise, and some scrapes, but no concussion,” She said, she patted my shoulder and smiled, “You should probably try to avoid fights though, you're not exactly built for it, you know?”


“Says the woman who makes giant robots to the girl she has pilot them.”


“See? You're already doing better, you're being snarky, a sure sign of health and well-being.Now, as much as I have fun with you Reis, I unfortunately don't have a lot of time free today, so maybe you could have Ayanami show you around? I know you haven't been here long, so it would be good to familiarize yourself.”


“Just shoving me out into the cold? Tsk, doctor how could you!?” I wailed in mock-hurt with a pout that slowly turned into a smirk, I slid off the table, sans vest, and turned around to face Akagi again, “So, all joking aside, what's the prognosis doc, you can really save the vest?”

“Yes, I'll have it cleaned for you, I'll either give it to Misato or you can grab it when you come in tomorrow so I can make sure everything is healing alright. Now go!” she said, pointing for the door with raised eyebrows and a slanted smile, “or I'll put you to work!”


The magic words, once spoken, made up my mind for me. Put to work? No thanks, see ya later! I pulled the corner of my mouth back and gave a half-hearted wave as I quickly stepped backwards through the door to her office, “Thanks for the help no need to find me something to do, see you tomorrow, bye now!”


I turned once I left the office and leaned against the wall in the hallway. If that was the way she wanted to play it, so be it. A headache I could deal with, the cut on the inside of my mouth, I could deal with. She'd cleaned up the cut on my head. No pain killers? No problem, not really.


I licked my bottom lip and sighed. Maybe it would have been good to occupy my time with other people and not my own thoughts but.... well you couldn't have everything, even if you tried.


“Ikari.”


I looked up as the sound of the door closing reached my ears, Ayanami was standing outside of the room looking at me with her one good eye.


“Ayanami.”


“I will show you around, as Akagi suggested.”


I smiled. You couldn't have everything, but maybe you could have enough.


“I'd like that.”


She nodded and started down the corridor, I followed in behind. “So, we're 'the Reis' to her? Never been in a name-based group before. Hmm, I wonder if being named 'Rei' is a requirement to pilot Eva.”


The corner of her mouth curled up, I pressed the 'attack', “I mean, there are two pilots, and both are Rei, right?”


“I am the first, you are the third. There is a second pilot,” She explained after a moment, her voice soft, as usual, though the more I listened to it the more it felt familiar, something deep in memory that was trying to come to the surface.


“There's a second? Are they named Rei too?” I asked and turned towards her.

She shook her head, “No, the three pilots are: Ayanami Rei, Shikinami Asuka, and Ikari Rei.”


Shikinami? That didn't sound right. I shook my head and licked my bottom lip, “So, being named Rei isn't a requirement, but being a girl seems to be.”


She frowned and stopped at an intersection, I stopped alongside her and raised an eyebrow, “Lost?”


“Thinking.”


I nodded, “about?”


“An open heart.”


“What... about it?” I asked as my eyebrow crept higher under my bangs.


“You were speculating on the requirement to pilot Evangelion. It requires an open heart.” Her eye seemed unfocused, like she was looking into a memory, or into the past or... at something I couldn't see, lost in thought perhaps?


“An open heart,” I echoed. Was it that simple? Was that even simple? I frowned and looked up at the lighting strips in the ceiling. “Maybe.”


I paused again, licked my bottom lip and turned to look at her more closely, her bandages, her skin, her hair, her eye... “so how did you get hurt like that?”


Her eye drifted back into focus and she turned down to look at her right hand. She made a fist and turned her hand over, looking at the fingers as she relaxed her hand, “I was not... prepared.”


“For what?”


“The fear.”


I licked my lip, “You were afraid?”


“No, I wasn't. I am prepared now,” she answered, her eye narrowed and she clenched her fist again and turned right at the intersection and proceeded down the adjoining hallway. “This way.”


I nodded and shook my head to bring my attention back, and ran to catch up with her, “What's this way?”


“Your plug suit.”


“Why?” I asked, head tilted as I looked into her good eye from beside her.


Her left arm raised up, and then the lights dimmed slightly and a loud alarm rang out, echoed through the hallways and made my headache worse. Well, that was a neat trick, how did she know that was going to happen?


“That.”

XXXXXXX​

The g-forces pressed me down hard into the saddle, the launch felt like it was faster and more violent than the last time, but that could be attributed to my paying more attention the second time around. I felt like the corners of my mouth were going to touch my ears if the launch took any longer.

That'll take the wrinkles out.


I clenched the control sticks hard in my yellow-gloved hands while I reached out mentally to the Evangelion. Open my heart right? Okay, I'm here, let's do this okay?


The launch rack slammed into the stops and the bolts retracted from my shoulders, and I was in motion. Two, three, four steps, and I turned right as a panel on the side of a building accordion folded out of the way. A rifle.


“Rei, take the rifle and shoot the Angel, it should be simple, alright?”


My eyes drifted to the video window, Misato was looking at me, Ayanami was standing behind her. She was watching? Okay.


“Roger control, taking the rifle.” I responded and reached out for the assault rifle. Or was it auto-cannon? The thing looked like it had a bore big enough to fit a horse through. The weight felt substantial through the Evangelion's feedback system.


There was a flash of movement to my left and a pink elastic-looking tentacle tore through a building. The Angel, I should have been paying attention, I jumped back out of the way as the second attack tore through the space I'd just been occupying and took out the armory lift.


“Not real simple, Misato!” I yelled as I raised the rifle. The Angel was some kind of... well it looked somewhat phallic, a maroon and pink color scheme with insectoid limbs working on the front of its body, and those two energy whips that flagellated in my direction.


Targeting System Aligning


The words flashed up on the right side of the entry plug. Great, I couldn't shoot back? or... The rifle had sights mounted to the top, like on an infantry rifle. Good enough, I didn't need a computer to tell me how to shoot, especially not at this range. I brought the rifle up to Eva's shoulder and looked down the sights, lined them up on the Angel while I stepped backwards and hopefully out of range of those whips.


I tapped the trigger and fired a short burst, the sound of the rounds firing echoed through the plug, the recoil pushed into Eva's shoulder, and I felt it. Not bad, not bad at all.


The tracers lit a path between the muzzle and the angel, which then right angled and diverged wildly and off into the distance. The AT field. I had one of those too didn't I? Why wasn't it working?!


The Angel lunged towards me and I threw the rifle over my shoulder and behind me and dropped down into a crouch. If the rifle wouldn't work, we'd do this the old fashioned way.


“Rei, what are you doing?”


“I'm going to punch it to death!” I yelled back as it swung the tentacle. I ducked under the swing and jumped forward, hurling a sloppy right hook against the side of the Angel's 'head'. I was rewarded with a wet squelching sound and the blow slipped off the squishy, rubbery surface.


“Aw dang.”


The whip curled back around on the follow through and wrapped around my neck and head, I felt the burning immediately, those things were hot, not good, not good at all!


“Misato!” I yelled towards the video window as I felt my own air being choked off. You're not choking, it's feedback, breathe!


An explosion rang out as a missile slammed into the side of the Angel, the pressure on my neck subsided for a moment and the next thing I knew I was flying through the air. It threw me. It threw me?


My head slammed back into the saddle's headrest when the Eva hit the ground and I was certain I could see stars. I tried to get my bearings, I was on the side of a mountain, on my back, my hand was on the... severed end of my power cable, I had five minutes.


I shook my head and, wait what was that? I looked to my left, two people were standing there, staring up at me in terror. The girl that punched me, and the boy who helped me up. I shook my head again and started tapping out commands on the right control stick, the more things change, the more they stay the same.


“Misato?”


“Rei, I see them, protect the civilians, keep the angel away from them!”


Four and a half minutes. Four and a half minutes to save the world, save those two kids? Alright.


“Roger.”


I clicked the switch to external and opened a new audio link, the Angel was starting up the hill towards me, I didn't have much time. “Suzuhara, get her out of here, up the hill, I'll push the Angel back into the city, go!”


He paled, and so did she, was it the sound of my voice coming out of the machine or the impending doom that spooked them so? Maybe both. I licked my lip and leaned forward, the Angel was almost on top of me, I looked to the side and saw them running further up the mountain.


So he liked the girl, 'protect her' was a lot more motivating for him than 'run away', I'd have to remember that.


Open my heart? Maybe... maybe...


The angel was on top of me as I tried to sit up, the weight slammed down on my chest like a truck and my head was knocked back into the seat again and then an agonizing burn filled my guts as the alarms started to go off.


I'd been impaled, unit one had been impaled. The sympathetic feedback made my jaw lock up from the burning. Open my heart? No, not.... not just that. That was part of the puzzle but not the entire picture. Bare my soul, but I had a reason, a mission, an objective.


No, I had a new objective: protect the civilians, even if they don't understand.


That had always been the case, hadn't it? This wasn't about me and my pain, this wasn't about what I could do for myself or my own survival, and it never had been. Wasn't that why I stayed in that burning cockpit?


It was not enough for me to simply open my heart to the Evangelion, I had to tell it why, I had to give it a reason, to make it understand why I wanted to fight, not just that I wanted to, or that I had to fight. I closed my eyes and focused on the pain, that link between us, that wound, that agony. This was a pain I would bear, one I had to bear. I was not fighting to save the world because I was the only one who could do it.


I was doing it because I was a person who could, and because I could, I couldn't let myself not.


“Do you understand?” I whispered to the machine, no, to the Eva's soul.


The pain grew, the tightness I hadn't even noticed, over my whole body, grew. The armor plating. She opened up, she stopped holding back, and I could hold nothing back in return. The timer clicked down to three minutes.


And I came up screaming.


I grabbed the tentacle in my gut with my left hand and pulled the Angel down on top of me with it, swung my right arm out and punched the thing in the side, each blow had behind it the force of my anger.


No, my conviction. This wasn't hatred, though I felt that. This was a representation not of my will to fight, but of the certainty, the fact, that this fight would not end until one of us was dead.


The Angel pulled back from me and I held on, used the momentum to bring myself back to my feet and press the attack, I kept the tentacle trapped with my left hand and kept swinging with the right, breaking through the spongy flesh on the surface of the angel and pressing deeper.


And it howled, an unearthly screech that pierced my soul with the intensity of it. Made my ears ring and my eyes hurt. I could feel it in my teeth, in my bones. I licked my lip, tasted blood in my mouth as the pain in my gut grew.


Two minutes, not enough time, but it had to be.


I let go of the left tentacle and kneed the angel, brought my foot up and kicked it away from me, down the mountain. I took off after it. My eyes scanned the landscape as I ran, it had to be somewhere, somewhere... There.


The rifle I'd discarded was sticking out of the ground, muzzle up a few hundred yards down the hill from me, between me and the angel. That would do just fine.


I sped up my run and snatched the rifle up with my left hand and brought it up to my shoulder as I progressed, four hundred, three hundred, two hundred yards to target. The timer clicked down to a minute ten.

One hundred yards, I pulled the trigger and held it down, not bothering to aim as I walked the tracers up the Angel's body into the core, where I held my fire, round after round until the magazine was dry.


Fifty yards, I threw the empty rifle and drew back my fist as I planted my feet and slid. The core was covered in cracks and pockmarks that were already beginning to seal, but one of the rounds was wedged in place, having started to penetrate before stopping.


I swung and landed my punch directly on the back of that shell, widening the crack. One, two, three, four, I kept punching as I trapped the angel's shoulder with my left hand, even as it impaled me with the tentacles again.


Five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. I kept swinging as the timer clicked down past twenty. Eleven, Twelve. My final punch drove the shell deep into the Angel's core, and the crack split wide open, a jet of blood sprayed out and then the core went from bright red to dark, the color of stale blood, and the creature went limp, was it going to explode again? I didn't plan on sticking around to find out.


Five seconds left, mission accomplished? I licked my lip, gritted my teeth and reached down between my legs, and pulled hard on the loud handle. Three seconds. I heard the explosive bolts fire behind me. One second. I felt the acceleration of the solid rocket boosters kicking in as the plug tore away from the Evangelion, and the monitors went dark.

 

Chapter 6:
Waiting for Ayanami
​

It was unfortunate that the LCL discharge took place before the entry plug had finally landed on the mountainside. Whether this was intentional or a malfunction was a topic for later debate, and a stern bitching-at for Akagi if the former.

As it was, my impact to the ground was coupled with an unceremonious dismount from the control saddle and a collision with the side of the entry plug. The wet popping feeling in my left arm told me everything I needed to know, but my body had decided that sharp and burning pain was an excellent chaser to drive the point home.
My left arm was broken, not badly as far as I could tell, the bones were still aligned, and it might not be a break all the way through.

It still hurt like righteous fury, I hissed through clenched teeth and pushed myself off the side of the tube with my uninjured right arm, turned over to the right, and emptied my stomach in one fluid motion. LCL and blood poured out onto the floor of the tube and I grabbed onto the side of the saddle to haul myself back to my feet.

Sympathetic injuries, wonder what my sync hit during that fiasco? I could see Misato's face right now, 'Rei, we're so proud of you, your sync hit thirty percent and your hurt yourself falling out of the saddle!'

I snorted; the self depreciating section of my brain still clearly worked.

Step two, get the hell out of here. I leaned over the keypad set into the pommel of the control saddle and pressed down on 'clr/reset' and waited, and waited, and slumped against the console.

Beep.

I blinked and looked back up, the plug still had power! Now let's see, what was the command for that again... it shouldn't have been that much different than the MFD on a mudhen, so... menu navigation!

I pressed the stat key and started cycling through the menus, life support, no, targeting, again, no.

External power? No, none of that, for sure.

I frowned as I cycled through the various menus and functions on the MFD. The light was getting dimmer, I didn't have much time before the power failed. I should have read the manual.

'Egress Arm/Safe – Safe' looked promising. I pressed that menu function and toggled it over to arm, then reached over and pressed the 'exec' button on the main panel.

A moment later a dull thunk sounded throughout the plug, and then several pyrotechnic charges lit off at once and hatches on both sides and the top of the plug disappeared in an instant.

And my headache came back with a vengeance, new and improved with ringing ears and burning eyes. The smell of burnt propellent instantly rushed into the interior of the plug, along with much welcome sunlight and the smell of burnt grass.

Well, egress hatch, it would make sense to put them on multiple sides in case the plug landed upside down. I stuck my head out the open hatch on the left side of the plug, then turned my head to the right to look down the mountain.

There it was, big purple, unit one. Maybe two miles down the mountain, still standing there, motionless in front of the dead angel, which hadn't exploded. Broke my arm for nothing, awesome.

At least the ejection system worked. Nothing like ACES II, that's for damn sure. I didn't compress my spine using the plug ejection, but I broke my arm so, trade off.

Not that I wanted to get any shorter.

I crawled out of the plug and dropped onto my feet in the soft, freshly disturbed dirt alongside the side of the capsule. The parachute had landed against the far end of the plug, and the plug itself had torn a clearing through the trees when it hit.
At least I didn't have to drop down from the treetops, right? For that matter, the plug must have been absolutely absurdly heavy to knock down full grown trees, maybe a question for Akagi for another time.

I heard the crunching of a tree branch under a shoe behind me and spun around in place to face the intruder-- oh.

“Ikari? So that really was you?”

The boy from before, the one who'd helped me up, and the girl who'd knocked me down was hiding behind him.

“Suzuhara right?” I asked, I'd called him that before but if I was wrong, well... better to get that out of the way now.

“Yeah...” He shook his head, “Are you okay? We saw that thing come flying up the mountain and wanted to make sure that nobody was hurt... are you hurt?”

I nodded and sat down on the edge of the hatch, my eyes tracked the flattened grass and broken branches and found said hatch sticking out of the trunk of a large tree. Good thing it took them that long to get here, might have killed somebody if it hit them.

“Broken arm, bruises, things like that,” I answered with a wince as a jet of pain shot up my arm.

“From the fight?” The girl asked. She actually had concern in her voice, did she feel bad about earlier?

“I wouldn't call it a fight, you kicked my butt pretty soundly and I didn't even get a hit in,” I joked, then shook my head, “no, not from the fight, from the landing after the ejection.”

She nodded and turned away, and the awkward silence set in. We'd exhausted our mutual topics of discussion, I was alive, she knew I was hurt, why, and how much, and that was it. What do you talk about with somebody when you're sitting on the edge of the cockpit of a gigantic war machine after a fight with an absurdly powerful being bent on the destruction of humanity?

“So what was that about anyway? I mean, I'm not friends with everybody I meet but I've never had somebody hit me with a lunch box before,” I asked as I crossed my legs and leaned back against the corner of the hatch.

“My sister was hurt in the fight, the last one before this...” the girl explained, and trailed off. She started to pick at the edge of her uniform skirt and fidgeted. Nervous? Guilty?

I frowned, “I can see why you hit me now. Is she gonna be okay?”

“She'll live,” the girl continued, “She told me it would have been worse if you hadn't fought, I wasn't really thinking when I hit you, and I'm sorry.”

I shrugged, “Don't worry about it, I'd probably have hit me too. Water under the bridge. So how long have the two of you guys been dating anyway?”

She turned bright red, and so did he. “We're not dating!” he answered quickly. Too quickly, denial, or maybe just hopeful that it would turn into that?

I shrugged again, “Hey, not judging, but the two times I've really seen you guys you've been together. Actually, come to think of it, both times I've seen you I've gotten hurt. Maybe I should stay away from you guys...” I joked with a smirk.

“Hey, it's not our fault you're a magnet for injuries!” Suzuhara protested.

“Yeah, you've got a point, but I just killed a gigantic space alien, how cool is that?” I asked with a smug grin and a wave of my good arm down the hill.

“Yeah, you're cool enough, Ikari,” he said with a laugh, even the girl started to snicker a little. Tension was bleeding away, good.

“You can call me Rei, Ikari is my father... literally, Commander of Nerv and everything.”

“Really? You can call me Touji.”

“Hikari.”

“Well we're all on a first name basis now! I was going to try that with Ayanami but it would be weird with us both being named Rei.”

“What's up with that by the way?” Touji asked me, a thoughtful look on his face, his posture had relaxed almost fully, and he wasn't standing in front of Hikari anymore.

“You know, I want to ask, but I'm afraid of the answer I might get. For all I know she's a clone or my long lost sister or something,” I shrugged, “She's alright though, once you get to know her.”

“And your dad is the commander of Nerv?” Hikari asked, her voice a little less nervous than before.

“That's what they tell me,” I offered with a shrug.

“Isn't that classified or something?” Touji asked as he walked closer and looked into the entry plug.

I shrugged my good shoulder, “Probably, but talking is keeping me from thinking about how much my arm hurts.”

“In that case... um... what are you wearing?” Hikari asked, and I saw her cheeks tinge red.

Oh, the plug suit. The plug suit that hugged every single curve and contour of my body and left nothing about my figure to the imagination, that plug suit.

I swallowed hard and felt the heat rising in my own face, two people, classmates, a girl and a boy, who were looking at me and were completely aware of what my momma gave me. I shook my head to get the thoughts out of my mind

“Plug suit, has life support and stuff in it that helps me link my brain with the Evangelion, or something like that. The hair clips help too,” I explained while pointing my good hand at my head.

The two of them had the good graces to keep their eyes from lingering on me too long after that, which I was thankful for, at least--

“Here, I know it's not clean but ah well, if you want it...” Touji offered, I turned and looked to see him handing me his wind breaker jacket.

I gratefully accepted and pushed my arms through the sleeves, gently as to not overly disturb my broken left forearm too much, and zipped it up with my right hand. Not stylish, and it clashed with my canary yellow plugsuit, but it hid my... assets.

“Thanks, it's actually a little bit cold up here now that the adrenaline has worn off...”

“It's no problem!” he said with a goofy grin. Oh, it was like that? Be still my beating heart.

“You two should come over some time, I could make dinner or, eh I don't know,” I offered, “I mean, I've got exactly one friend my own age right now so it would be nice to have a few new friends, you know?”

That actually was true no matter which way I looked at it. If I could call Ayanami a friend, she was the same age as Rei Ikari... and if I thought about Misato, well she was the same age I was the first time around.

“The two of us?” Hikari asked with a hint of hesitation.

“Yeah why not? You're either a couple or you're not, but I can cook a pretty good shrimp pad thai and I'm pretty sure even two entirely single people can enjoy it, your decision, but I mean, you'd get to tell all your friends that the girl who saved the world twice made you dinner,” I answered with an ear to ear grin.

“Sounds good to me...” Touji answered carefully, I watched his eyes drift over to Hikari, who noded silently in agreement.

“So it's settled, we'll have to figure out the details and all that.” I leaned back against the edge of the hatch and closed my eyes. In the distance, and growing closer, I could hear a 'thukka thukka thukka thukka' noise. Helicopter rotors, the sound was actually... nah, couldn't be that, too old. Nerv was a modern organization after all.

“I think that's probably my ride coming, they'll probably want to bring the two of you along too, make sure you're okay and probably debrief you on not talking about what you saw here, you know, government man in black stuff.”

Whatever they said in reply was lost as the rotor-wash from the helicopter over head drowned out everything but the sound of the machine's engine. I looked up and almost did a double take. A Bell UH-1H Iroquois, a Huey. In 2015, being flown by the most powerful organization in the world, Nerv fig leaf logo and everything.

Suspicion confirmed, still, it was a classic.

XXXXXXX​

It felt good to be in the air again, broken arm and space magic voodoo be damned, flying was what I needed. Well, flight that wasn't rocket powered, and didn't end with a broken arm.

It was unfortunate that the flight only lasted as long as it did, but that I got to have one at all, take what I can get.

The antiseptic scent of Akagi's medical office, one of many of her offices, one of at least three that I'd seen, was a familiar, if not wholly pleasant smell. Akagi, for her part, looked bemused. I could not blame her.

“You do know that I told you tomorrow, not today, right? So how's the arm feeling?” She asked me with a raised eyebrow, an expression was beginning to suspect was her trade mark.

“Oh you know, broken. Morphine please?” I asked, my eyebrows raised in what I hoped with both a hopeful and cute expression, one designed to elicit my desired response of her giving me morphine, obviously.

“Maybe, if it's broken, you can have some. You know, if I didn't know any better I'd say you ejected so that you could get morphine out of me.”

“I'm not a junkie,” I said with a pout.

“You don't have to be, I know all about 'the good drugs', I'm a doctor, after all.”

“And I'm a pilot, so that means I want stuff and have little ability to wait patiently.”

“You're an Evangelion Pilot.”

“Sure, let's go with that. So x-ray?” I asked, looking over at what I assumed to be an x-ray machine, it looked as much like one as anything else in the room did but this one had some kind of dish shaped emitter and a board under it that looked about the size and shape of x-ray film.

“You think that's the x-ray machine don't you?” She asked me, I turned back to her and she was looking at the machine I was just looking at.

“It's not is it?” I asked, deflated from my mistake.

“It's not, but you get points for trying, I've actually got a... well if I can find it...” She started to explain before trailing off, she walked away from me and started digging through the drawers under the counter-top on the far side of the room.

“Got a what?” I asked while leaning to the side to try and see around her. All I saw was a pile of equipment I was apparently unqualified to identify. Well, I would just have to get her into an airplane hanger and then the tables would surely turn.

Surely.

“Here it is!” she announced as she held the... thingy, device, watchamacallit, up into the air. It looked like a high tech maxwell house coffee can attached to a graphing calculator. So, apparently she was a mad scientist and not just a doctor.

“And that is...?” I asked, already starting to guard my injured arm with my good one.

“Portable real-time x-ray scanner. I made it for checking for stress fractures in Evangelion parts. It should work just fine for your arm though,” she explained in what I was sure was meant to be a comforting tone.

Comforting went out the window when she mentioned that it was designed to be used on Evangelion parts. Wasn't there some kind of radiation hazard in using it on a person?

“Isn't there some kind of radiation hazard in using it on a person?” I asked, still guarding my arm from the crazy mad scientist lady with home grown sensory equipment in her evil, mad sciencey hands.

“Maybe, but you won't be exposed for that long,” she answered nonchalantly. I could detect the slightest quivering in the corner of her mouth. Oh, so she was screwing with me, holding back a laugh.

I relinquished my arm and winced as she touched it, the swelling had almost doubled my forearm in size and the yellowing of the skin almost matched my plugsuit in hue and saturation, to say nothing of the blacks and purples that were steadily forming. “So?”

She hummed to herself as she passed the machine over my arm in a slow sweeping motion, then visibly winced, and put the scanner down. “Yeah, you've cracked the radius, it's not a complete break though. We'll put a splint on it to keep it from getting worse, but it should heal alright. You'll need to take some anti inflammatories and pain killers--”

“So, morphine?” I asked and leaned closer to her, opening my eyes as wide as I could.

“Ibuprofen.”

I sighed and nodded. Still none of the good stuff. Oh well, it was going to be a long war right? Plenty of time to ruin myself in the line of duty.

“So while we're on the topic, you know, of my broken arm? I couldn't help but notice that all the LCL purged from the plug before it hit the ground, that supposed to happen?” I asked with a slight edge of irritation to my voice.

“Oh? That much LCL weighs several tons, if it didn't purge before impact the plug would penetrate excessively and we wouldn't be able to deploy a big enough parachute to slow it down. We'd have to dig you out and it could take a while. I'm sure you can appreciate that, yeah?” she explained while writing down, well, something, on my chart.

“Seems like it would make more sense to put something like an ACES II seat in the plug that ejects the pilot from the plug after separation, eh?” I offered, still intimately aware of how much my arm hurt.

“Hmm, maybe. It would require a complete redesign of the plugs... I'll take it under advisement for the next generation of entry plugs. You're not the first person to be injured during the ejection sequence,” She explained, “that's how Ayanami was injured as well.”

“If I'd known it was that dangerous, I wouldn't have pulled the loud handle in the first place.”

“That's why you weren't told,” she declared matter-of-factually.

“Good point,” I conceded, “so next generation entry plugs? Do you really think that the fighting will go on that long? I mean, how many Angels could there be?”

She licked her lip and looked around the room, her eyes shifted left and right in their sockets, darting between points in the room for... what exactly? I didn't know.

“Between you, me, and Ayanami... Evangelion technology is Pandora’s Box, and we opened it. I wouldn't be so sure that the end of the Angels will be the end of Evangelions as well,” she whispered under her breath to me.

“So, planning for the future? Fair enough. I'm not thrilled about that idea either but I'm already in it, so in for a penny, in for a pound,” I answered back with a shrug.

She grabbed me, gently, by the left hand and started to wrap a soft pad around my arm. In a few moments she had then applied the metal framework of the brace and then gently snugged up the straps that held it down. The pain grew, but I was starting to get used to it.

It wasn't the first time I'd broken myself, nor the first time I'd been injured during a rough landing.

“You'll want to tighten the straps as the swelling goes down, and check in with me at least every other day until it heals fully,” She explained while reaching into the pocket of her labcoat, “You'll also want to take one of these every day till the bottle runs out.”

“Ibuprofen?”

“Ibuprofen.”

I nodded, “okay, sounds easy enough. This going to interfere with my job of giving alien monsters the finger?”

She nodded, “We're putting more efforts into moving up the timetable for unit zero's re-activation, once that happens Ayanami will be our primary line of defense until you're back to one hundred percent. You'll still be available as a backup, but we don't want to put you under any unnecessary stress while you're healing.”

I frowned, “and I was just starting to get to enjoy the violence.”

“You're a weird kid, Rei.”

“You seem to be okay with it so far,” I shot back with a wink and a smile.

“Well, I wouldn't have to be if you'd stop finding your way to my office with a new injury.”

“Point. I'll go spend more time with Ayanami and less time getting into fights with teenage girls and three hundred foot monsters,” I conceded.

“Well, don't go staying out of all of those fights, we still need you to kill the monsters after all.”

“Clearly.”

XXXXXXX​

I was not looking forward to the next part, the part with Misato. The part with Hikari, and Touji, and Misato. In the interrogation room, which we had one of, for some reason. Right. An interrogation room that I was approaching at a semi-brisk pace, that currently contained Hikari, and Touji, and Misato, the latter of whom was probably saying things to them that one way or another, I was sure to regret in the immediate future.

I licked my bottom lip and stared at the door, door number Seven Bravo Five, which meant nothing to me at all, and yet here I was. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath in through my nose. One. Two. Three.

Three. Two. One. Exhale, out through the mouth. Calming breaths, something a good friend had once taught me. “Come on Rei, this is nothing you can't do,” I whispered to myself, and then touched the door control switch.

The door 'woosh'ed into the wall and a soft puff of cold and flowed out of the room. It tasted like... anxiety. That was just me wasn't it? Yeah probably. I took a step in and my eyes scanned the room, my muscles tense and ready to flee at the slightest--

“Rei.”

Fuck!

“Misato!” I yelped and my head snapped to the direction of her voice, she was standing at the end of the long table, with Hikari and Touji on the far side, to her right, with me on her left. I blinked, there was food on the table, and they were... chatting?

“Rei, feeling jumpy? I was just having a conversation with two of your classmates, I thought that some food might make the mood a little less stressful, don't you think?” She asked with a sort of mock cheerfulness that made me almost completely certain she was either messing with me right now, or had put Akagi up to getting me freaked out in advance.

Possibly both of those things.

“So, what kind of conversation?” I asked, unable to keep the hopeful tone out of my voice. Hopeful. Hopefully they hadn't said anything too bad, or gotten me into too much trouble

“Oh, just stuff, and things. You know how it goes, right Rei? Talking about stuff? Have a seat!” She insisted, and pulled out a chair on the opposite side of the table from my two classmates. Their own expressions were somewhere in the ballpark of 'stunned silence' which didn't give me much hope.

I licked my bottom lip and slid into the chair, perhaps a little too hesitantly, as Misato pushed the chair back in with a level of force that I was unsure she should have been able to possess.

“So what's uh, up?” I asked with a nervous apprehension, I felt the blood rushing into my ears. Ah, fear my old friend, how have you been? Will you be staying for the evening? Take off your shoes, relax a little, I'll go get the tea kettle and--

“So we were just having a discussion about classified mission details, and how the Evangelion pilots, the two Reis that is, are not supposed to share those details with unauthorized civilians, and how any details that might have been shared with them mustn't be spread anywhere else, sound familiar?” She asked, her voice taking on an edge that made me feel like a wounded gazelle.

“I might... have a certain level of familiarity with that concept--”

“Then what's the fucking problem Rei!?” She yelled suddenly and slammed her hand down on the table, “It's bad enough that you seem to tune me out when you're fighting, I understand that, we can work on that, that's fine, that's just between you and me. But you can't share classified information with civilians!”

“Well they're not exactly going to go sharing it around! Besides, they found me crawling out of an entry plug in the middle of the forest, how the hell else could I explain it?!” I yelled back, suddenly finding spinal integrity that I hadn't really a right to, least of all when my CO was giving me a dressing down that was entirely justified.

“You don't have to explain it!If you tell them classified information they become targets for anyone who knows they have it, and we can't protect them from the outside... And that's how we're going to fix this,” She said, her expression softening almost as quickly as it had gone sour.

I blinked, was she bipolar or was this a tactic?

“Touji Suzuhara, Hikari Horaki. On behalf of Nerv, I'm drafting you into the organization. You work for us and you're on our payroll, welcome to the madhouse.”

“Wait what?” they both echoed at the same time.

My own mouth formed different words, decidedly less kid friendly words, but I didn't actually voice them, instead I settled on: “Wait, you're hiring them? To do what?”

“To make sure you don't do anything stupid, you've already put them at risk, if they're on the payroll we can keep watch on them and protect them. In turn, they will keep an eye on you and keep you from doing anything stupid like telling more of your classmates classified details, sound good?” She explained, her lips curling up, higher, higher towards her ears...

She just hired fourteen year old babysitters, to watch over me. Crap. I mean, yes I screwed up, but at the same time? Crap.

“Sounds... reasonable,” Hikari said first, breaking the ice.

“I think we can do that, yeah,” Touji agreed.

I blinked, and looked between the three of them, the mood had shifted entirely... did she plan all of this out?

“Now, since you are employees of Nerv, that means you all qualify for all of the benefits that entails, including pension and...” she paused dramatically and shifted her eyes over to Hikari, “The company health plan.”

I fought for a moment, but couldn't keep the grin off my face. So this is what it was about, hiding it as a punishment for me then? The company health plan, well played Misato, well played.

Hikari blinked for a second and then her jaw dropped, her lips forming an 'o' shape, and then she nodded, her expression shifting quickly to a smile, “I understand, I see... thank you...”

In the ensuing awkward silence I heard... a sound, a soft, kind of, chewing? I turned my head and looked down the table, to my left. Ayanami, when did she get there, had she been there? I hadn't really checked when I entered the room.

She was eating a sandwich. Calmly sitting, watching, and chewing. A sandwich. A sandwich like the ones on the table in front of me, cucumber and... butter? Margarine? Some kind of spread. That explained the crunch.

It didn't explain Ayanami people watching but what else was new? The more I thought I knew about that girl, the more I knew I didn't know.

“Could you pass the tray?” Her soft voice broke me out of my stunned silence. She delicately wiped the corners of her mouth with a napkin and pointed in front of me.

Sure, why the hell not? I reached out to the tray with my good hand and slid it down the table to her, watched her pluck another sandwich off the tray and start eating it.

“You may proceed,” she said. Proceed, we may proceed. We may proceed in what apparently amounted to entertainment for her, that she might people watch some more.

Or maybe she was doing this to screw with us? She had a sense of humor, and I could definitely see that as possibility.

Hell with it. I plucked a sandwich off the plate and took a bite. The buttery salty flavor hit my tongue first, followed by the fresh yeasty taste of the bread, and the cold, wet, crisp of the cucumber. Yep, cucumber sandwiches.

At least she had good taste. Screw it, I'll go with it. I reached over and grabbed the corner of the tray and passed it back to my right and held it up wordlessly to the other three people at the table.

Raised eyebrows and blank stares greeted me, but, after some hesitation Touji, and then Misato, and finally Hikari each grabbed a sandwich from the tray, and I set it down.

The room was still silent, but for the subtle crunching of cucumbers. Bonding, this was a bonding experience wasn't it? Ayanami did something weird, and now we were all doing the exact same thing she'd been doing.

Eating cucumber sandwiches.

 

Chapter 7:

You are (not) in this alone​

The sharp acrid sting of burnt powder and spent primers stung my nose, the dry, dehydrating stink poured into my lungs and filled me with anxiety. My heart leapt into my throat and my stomach filled with lead, muscles clenched and coiled, ready to spring into action. Fight or flight, live or die.


My hands shook, my knees felt weak, and I leaned heavily against the steel corridor wall, felt the rifle heavy in my hands. My left thumb fumbled for the magazine release as I panted in the smokey, thick air. The sweat stung my eyes, my hair matted to my forehead, I twisted the magazine out of the action and wiped the hair out of my eyes, the back of my hand came back bloody.


It wasn't my blood.


I grabbed another thirty round magazine out of the leather pouch on my hip and rocked it into the bottom of the Czech assault rifle, heard and felt the click of positive engagement, and flipped the rifle over in my right hand, pulled the bolt back and dropped it with my left.


I licked my bottom lip, and spit, shook my head, and stumbled down the hallway, picking up speed as the adrenaline coursed through my veins. One, two, three, four steps. A stumble, caught myself, and started to run. I couldn't hear over the sound of the alarms, the flashing lights.


My yellow gloved hands clenched tight on the rifle, my boots squeaked on the floor. I couldn't get the smell of blood and smokeless powder and military primers out of my nose. My heart might explode and I might die at any second, if they didn't shoot me first. I had to get to Ayanami. I had to get to the cages.


If I could get to Unit One, I could end this. If I could get to Ayanami, if I could get to--


I heard a click behind me and dropped to the floor in time for a spray of gunfire to pass over me, I didn't stop moving. I turned my fall into a roll and ducked into a side room. Another burst peppered the edge of the doorway.


I rolled the fire selector with my right thumb and shoved the rifle out of the door, pulled the trigger, and held on for a full thirty round burst. I was fueled by fear, not thought, but I couldn't help it. This wasn't how I was supposed to see war, I saw war from a cockpit, or an entry plug, or in a nice air conditioned room while watching it on television.


I had to get to the cages, find an Evangelion, Unit One, find Ayanami, force a launch, fight them off on my own terms, force them to give up... threaten them with the self destruct. I had to... survive the next five minutes.


I snapped the spent magazine out and let it clatter to the floor, grabbed another out of the leather pouch on my hip and snapped it in, then released the bolt. I took a deep breath, tried not to choke on that dehydrating stink, and chanced a peak out of the doorway.


I tried not to throw up at the sight of all the blood. I covered my mouth, turned back into the room I'd been hiding in, and closed my eyes tight. Okay, you can do this, you can do this, you can do this!


I opened my eyes and...


There was a girl standing in front of me. Brown hair, blue eyes, red oval glasses. “Look, we need to get out of here!” The words left my mouth before I could think about it. She was dressed in a pink and white plugsuit. Why?


The corner of her lip pulled up... and up... and up. Her mouth widened, her teeth got longer, her smirk turned to a predatory grin and I felt myself freezing up. Her mouth opened, and she lunged.

XXXXXXX​

I sucked in a panicked, greedy lungful of air and came up swinging, a wild right hook that sent me tumbling off my bedroll and tangled me up in the sheets. I came down hard on my left arm, crushed it under my own weight and screamed as the arm brace dug into my broken forearm.


“Ah! Fuck! What the... fucking... fuck just... fucking happened?!” I rambled out in wide-eyed panic. A nightmare, it was a nightmare, but what the hell kind of nightmare was that? Who the hell was that girl?


I clenched my jaw tight against the blossoming pain in my arm and tried to untangle myself from the sheets. Every movement, every twitch shot another electric knife up my arm. Thoughts drifted to that time, so many years ago, when I'd collapsed my lung. It wasn't enough I couldn't breath, every movement instigated a muscle spasm that made me want to discover LD50 of morphine.


At least this wasn't that bad. Maybe a five out of ten.


I grunted and finally pulled my arm out from under me and untangled myself from the, now drenched in sweat, sheet. I reached blindly over to my right and snatched the bottle of pills from the side of the bed and popped the cap off with my thumb, and brought it to my mouth. Two, three... three would work, I was what, eighty pounds soaking wet? Yeah, three would do.


I choked the thick dry pills down without water and leaned back into my pillow. The ceiling was... familiar, and after these few days, comforting. Comforting, calming.


I needed glow in the dark stars. Those were always cool, you turn the light out to go to sleep and then there are those soft green stars all over the ceiling. Yeah. Something my best friend in the whole world decided we needed to have, so we did that.


I choked a little, my throat felt tight, my eyes started to water. Her, I hadn't thought of her in... a few days, right? Not since I got here, what did that say about me?


Was she still alive here? Would she know me, was I alive here? Were we still friends? Had we still become--


I shook my head hard and buried my face in the pillow. I couldn't go to her, and she couldn't come to me. It may have felt like a betrayal to try not to think about her, but I couldn't afford to fall apart, not with everything riding on my shoulders.


No, it was for her too. If she was still alive out there, somewhere in the world, then I owed it to her too, to keep fighting, to keep myself sane, to keep myself together. That's what I'll do. Forget her, so that I can save her.


If you love her, let her go. Not because she'll come back, she won't, she wouldn't even know me, but...


If I let her go, she'll survive.


If I could make it to the end of this, and keep it together, keep the whole world from imploding. Keep the Angels from winning. Keep Third Impact from happening.


I clenched my fist and raised it in the air in front of me. I just stared at it for a few long moments, and then opened my hand and reached up. This hand. I sighed, what was this supposed to even mean? I was restless, confused, frustrated. It was familiar territory.


I rolled over and pushed my hand through my hair and yawned. It wasn't wake up time yet, not by a long shot. I let my eyes slip closed and buried my face into the pillow. It was gonna be a long night.

XXXXXXX​

“You alright Rei?”


“Peachy.” I replied flatly. My fork was sticking out of a lump of almost eggs, the taste reminded me of buttery sound deadening matting, with a hint of tap water and salt. Nerv breakfast at its finest. I sighed, they probably came out of a carton, pre-whipped and ready to fry.


Could a world-class paramilitary organization afford better? Yep, but then I might learn to enjoy my life and they just couldn't have that. Bitter? Like a lemon, yeah I was bitter. I loved food, it was one of my favorite things in the world, a puberty spent on the wrong side of the overweight line was proof of that.


This? This was in excusable, but not the real reason I was bothered.


“You sound peachy. What's bothering you?” Misato asked as she took a bite of her own breakfast, though she didn't seem to be able to appreciate just how substandard the food was. She probably burned all her taste-buds out with shitty Japanese piss water.


“Didn't get much sleep and this food tastes like feet and wood pulp,” I answered as I speared a 'sausage' with the fork and choked it down. Yeah, that couldn't be real pig.


“It tastes alright to me, so your arm bothering you?” she asked as she shoveled another load of food-shaped refuse into her maw.


Okay maybe that was taking the metaphor too far.


“You like Japanese beer, your culinary opinions are invalid. And yeah, I rolled over on it last night, all Akagi gave me for it was a bottle of ibuprofen.”


“Sounds like her. You know, you can call her Ritsuko right? She's not that formal.”


I shrugged, “feels more right to call her Akagi.”


“What about me then?” She asked.


“You're definitely a Misato, I don't think I could ever think of you as anything else, since you and I basically act the same age...” I answered with a smirk.


“Hey, I resemble that remark!” She shot back with mock annoyance.


“Just calling it how I see it, nothing wrong with that right? So when is Ayanami's activation test? You dragged me out of the apartment before I could make a proper palatable breakfast so I assume it's soon, right?” I asked conversationally as I tried not to think about how awful the food I was eating must surely be for me.


“She's probably already getting ready, you'll need to be standing by in unit one before they start, as a precaution.” she explained.


“A precaution in case what, it goes crazy and tries to kill everyone?”


“Pretty much.”


“Marvelous,” I deadpanned, “Well, let's go, this food isn't worth the calories.”


“Rei, if you're worried about your weight...” she started.


Oh god, no? God no! What? This lecture, no, this was not a path that I wanted the conversation, or our relationship to go down, did she think I had an eating disorder?


“Misato, I will eat an entire meat-lovers pizza after this if it will make you feel better, I just don't want to eat this awful trash,” I explained while gesticulating wildly.


“That sounds like a ploy to get me to buy pizza...”


“Misato, we work for an organization that has a higher budget than entire third world countries, I think they pay you enough for pizza.”


She sighed, “Oh fine, we can have pizza.”


Success!


Wait, that wasn't even my objective, oh well, take what I can get, and as much of what I can get as I can. Something to look forward to for a job well done.

XXXXXXX​

“Final connections complete, unit one is activated, sync at seventy two.”


“Roger, everything looks good here. Unit one on standby.”

I sighed and leaned back in the saddle. The unit zero reactivation test, and I was the guard dog, or gate keeper, something like that. I guess I was there just in case it went nuts and tried to kill somebody, I'd just hang onto it until it stopped moving?


That or fight to the death, I wasn't sure exactly what the RoE was on engaging a berserker Evangelion, but I had little doubt that Misato would remain silent if action was required. If I had to fight Zero, I would, and I would do the best job I could at making sure I didn't kill the pilot or destroy it.


I shook my head, why think about the worst case scenario? It would probably be fine. Ayanami had been doing this longer than me, and she had said she was prepared, what problem could there be?


I I took a deep breath of the LCL and closed my eyes, relaxed against the saddle and let go of the control sticks. Ayanami knew what she was doing, she definitely knew more than I did about the Evangelion, so I would trust her to do it.


“Pilot Ikari, unit zero activation will commence in one minute. We're releasing the lock bolts, unit one is free. Standby for further orders.” The voice again, I think her name was Ibuki? She sounded young.


“Roger, one is still standing by.”


I flexed my right hand against the control stick, and looked over at my braced left forearm. I could grasp the control stick, and even move it, but it... was not pleasant. Unit one's left forearm felt stiff through the link, did the sympathetic reaction go both ways? Apparently.


I watched through the forward displays and tapped the controls set into the right stick to magnify, zoomed in on the entry plug retracting into zero. Showtime.


“First stage nerve links online, moving to second stage.”


“Crosstalk on the secondary circuits... it's within range, proceeding to third stage connections, absolute borderline in five.”


I listened intently as the techno-babble bled in through the comm link, whether they had intended to let me listen in to give me an idea of when things would happen, if anything, or they just forgot to shut off the microphone, I didn't know.


My finger instinctively twitched against the trigger in the right stick when zero's head twitched, but that was all it was, a twitch. Part of the activation process? I had never actually watched that part from the outside.


I could feel my own anxiety building, just outside of the edge of my conscious thought, that slight sickness in my stomach as I waited for some kind of final confirmation, something to tell me that it was okay and I could stand down.


“Unit zero has been activated, sync holding at sixty, all checks cleared. Unit one, you can stand down.”


“Roger, one standing down. I'll stay synced up till Ayanami is done, if that's alright?” I offered as I kept my eyes locked on zero.


“Sound good, Unit one, we'll keep you online.”


I tapped up a command on the MFD set into the pommel of the saddle and licked my bottom lip. That should be it, there we go. A video window popped up, indicating I'd opened a channel to zero, the side of Ayanami's face was visible.


“Ayanami, how is it?” I asked, leaning forward in the saddle towards the video window.


She blinked and turned towards me, “I was prepared. It is... acceptable. It is... good.” Her expression was, thoughtful, or, as thoughtful of an expression as I would expect on her face. She seemed relaxed, almost content in the plug.


“Was it everything you hoped for?”


Her expression turned... sad? I saw a slight frown, her eyelids dropped a little, “I am not sure.”


I nodded but didn't respond right away. I couldn't really fault her for her answer, what would you hope for? Epiphany? I frowned, I guess the small talk thing really wasn't my strong suit all, I'd always suspected but, well how do you relate to Ayanami?


Her face turned from sadness to shock and distress, my hand clenched the control stick and I got ready to lunge, “Ayanami, what's--”


Her head tipped back and she looked... up? “Ikari, it's coming.”


I licked my bottom lip, was this the same as last time, she knew the Angel was coming then...


The alarms went off and I felt the locks re-engage on unit one's shoulders and arms, felt the sudden acceleration of being pulled backwards toward the catapult. I turned back to the video link with zero.


“Ayanami how do you do that?” I asked, though I already had my suspicions... and my fears.


“I'll tell you another time... Good luck.” She almost smiled, was she reassuring me or reassuring herself?


The link closed and was immediately replaced by a video link, this time with Misato's face occupying the screen. “Rei, there's been an Angel detected, you're being deployed. We don't know much yet, so just play it by ear for now, alright?”


“That's pretty much how I've done it so far. Is zero deploying? Akagi said I'd be the backup until my arm healed,” I asked, and lifted my braced arm up to the display.


“Unit zero isn't calibrated yet, you'll have to deploy for now. Ritsuko is working on it as we speak, so Ayanami will be up to help you as soon as it's done,” she answered, her voice almost apologetic.


No matter, I've done this before, I can do it again. How hard could it be? I shook my head, and felt the unit lock into the launch catapult, “Roger, one ready to launch.”


I clenched unit one's fists and licked my teeth, yeah, let's do this thing. I looked out of the bottom of the plug as the platform locks released, and then grit my teeth as the catapult fired. Zero to... what was it again? About a kilometer, twelve seconds to the surface... so, zero to about two hundred thirty miles an hour in a second and a half?


I shook my head, math was never my strong suit.


Didn't matter, didn't need too much math to figure this next part out. My fingers tapped out a cadence on the control buttons set into the front of the control sticks, brought up sensors, remote telemetry, tactical displays.


Yeah, training pays off, this was going to be easy compared to the last few times.


“High energy reaction within the target, it's charging up!”


Wait, that was... there was something about this fight, what was I missing? Something...


I shook my head and looked up as the unit hit the end of the launch rails. Above and in front of me, an absolutely massive blue metallic octahedron. Something about that... I had forgotten, it had been so long, almost... eight years? But in that moment I had perfect clarity, I knew what I was seeing.


“Oh, fuck.”


And then the shape shifted, separated out into two halves around a red core, a beam lanced out and impacted the chest of my Evangelion, I immediately felt the burning, could taste the heat and feel it in my eyes, like boiling blood.


I grit my teeth against it and waited for the catapult to unlock so I could get out of the line of fire. I licked my lip and tried not to scream as the burning bored into me. An armor plate slid into place in front of me and I sucked a greedy lungful of LCL, my fingers tapped repeatedly on the control stick, and the locks still weren't retracting?


I pulled against the locks, heard them groaning from the stress but I couldn't get any motion out of them, I couldn't concentrate on the action, too hot, too much pain from the unit, was it shielding me? Was it cutting my sync? Everything felt delayed...


Come on!


The energy beam dropped off for a moment, and then the plate in front of me vaporized, a new pain hit me and I felt my anger reaching a breaking point. “Come on you bastard, is that all you've got?! You're gonna have to try harder, I've burned to death!” I screamed at the giant as the LCL heated up in the plug. I felt my armor melting into the catapult, felt the Eva's muscles giving up.


No, I can't go out like this! I've got to fight, I've got to kill the damn thing! Help me, dammit, come on help me!


I clenched my fist tight, and focused everything on that one arm, the right arm, come on unit one, give me something. I closed my eyes and clenched my jaw and pulled with all my might, just that one arm, felt the metal rending, felt the pain intensify, felt the lock bolts snap as I tore my arm free, reached out for the angel, against pain, against the boiling heat, against the Eva resisting me.


And then the floor fell out from under me, I heard the loud explosion even in my rage-filled state, felt the platform shift, and then the heat dropped off as the unit fell. They'd blown the whole block? If they'd just unlocked the bolts... I could have...


Done nothing.


Hot, too damn hot. I shook my head, tried to clear my head, but it was fogging up, couldn't concentrate, couldn't keep the link open with Eva. Heat soak? Transferred heat from the unit into the LCL, surface temperature must have been extreme if the heat made it this far in... no way to cool it, nowhere to put the heat, had to put it here, couldn't stop it.


I blinked my eyes hard in the LCL, felt the burning, tasted the hot copper, smelled the burnt blood, felt my muscles relaxing, then my head rolled back into the saddle, and I felt nothing.

XXXXXXX​

“Mayday, mayday, mayday, Buckeye Twelve, fire in the cockpit, repeat-”


The heat was intense, I could feel the hair burning off my head under the helmet, the microphone boom had melted, the wires shorted, and the transmission ended, the radio dead in my ear. Just a few more miles, just a few more minutes. I could handle this, I could take this heat, I had to.

XXXXXXX​

I sucked in a gulp of dry, sterile, air, it tasted like alcohol and bandages, metered oxygen and a hint of of... cinnamon? My eyes slid open sluggishly, the corners of my lids gummed shut with goo. How long was I down?


Tile ceiling, large rectangular boards in a drop ceiling grid. Hospital. My skin felt tingly all over, and I was... naked. Sure, why not. I rolled my head to the side and...


“Ayanami.” She was sitting there, reading a book, waiting for me? There was a cart, a food cart? Was that where the scent of cinnamon came from, or was it her?


“Ikari, you're awake. That's good.” A statement, not a question, she was smiling, just a little, just at the corners of her mouth. It looked good on her, though in truth I doubt that there was anything that didn't look good on her.


I blinked away my train of thought and smiled at her, “Yeah, I really need to stop getting hurt, that's two out of three now, not a good ratio. Did they send you out to kill it?”


She shook her head, “after unit one was recovered, you were placed in medical recovery, I was put on standby but I was not launched. A mission to attack the Angel from range is scheduled for midnight tonight.”


I nodded, “So we're going to shoot it... are you on point then?”


She shook her head again, “Unit zero still isn't properly calibrated, you will deploy in unit one to operate a positron cannon to shoot the Angel, I will provide backup in the event that the Angel returns fire.”


I leaned forward in the bed and nodded, “Sounds about right... Well, I've got nothing to worry about if you're watching my back. We'll kick this thing and be back in time for breakfast.”


“Breakfast?” she asked, her left eyebrow twitched upwards, I smiled a little wider.


“Yeah, we'll kick this thing's ass, then head over to the apartment and I'll make breakfast! Eggs, sausage, pancakes, stuff like that,” I explained.


“I don't like meat,” she frowned.


“Okay, that's fine. So, vegetarian or vegan, eggs and milk okay?”


She frowned further, and looked away, as if in thought, “I would be willing to try that.”


“Excellent, it is a plan then.”


She nodded, and then looked me in the eyes, and then down, and down, “Don't come like that.”


I blinked at her, tilted my head, and then followed her eyes down to my... oh. Oh. I blinked and looked back at her, did she just... was that a joke? “Oh, yeah. Definitely will put something on first.”

XXXXXXX​

“So I'm going to take that big jury-rigged pile of parts, and we're going to channel all of the electrical power in the country through it, and all of this is going to culminate in firing a high intensity beam of positrons through the Angel, which will kill it?” I asked, my face scrunched up in amused disbelief. My skin still tingled. I wanted to go back to sleep, or eat something.


“Pretty much,” Misato answered with a shrug.


“Works for me. Ayanami is on defense? How's that going to work?” I asked, gesturing my gloved hand back to the other girl, who was standing behind me and to my right, quietly in her own white plugsuit. White looked good on her, but so did everything.


“We've got a really big shield, it should last for a few seconds even under direct attack from the Angel.” Simple terms, she knew my language, she knew what would appeal to me, didn't she?


“Big shield...” I put my finger to my lip as if concentrating, “alright, I'm sold. You know what Misato? I hate geometry, let's kill this big octahedral bastard and go home.”


She laughed, “That's the plan. Alright, you two get to the elevator, we're launching in half an hour.”


Misato chuckled as she walked away, towards the command truck. So she was laughing, must have meant we had a real shot at this then, eh?


I turned towards the two Evangelions, set up with a makeshift boarding gantry between them, and an elevator leading to the top. “So, Ayanami.”


“Ikari.”


“How do you feel about this? Think our chances are good? Misato seemed to think so,” I asked conversationally as we walked over to the lift. Her steps were synced up with mine again. I had to wonder if that was on purpose or if she wasn't even aware of it.


“We will win. There is no other option. That is... my purpose. My mission,” she answered, her eyes pointed forward, her walk stiffening for a moment.


“That's good enough for me I guess. I... well I'm not really so sure, I can put on a brave face and act like it's not a big deal but, I do get scared. I try to shut that out, shut it down with anger, with force, but that fear is always inside me,” I explained, not quite sure what made me say it, maybe I just wanted to open up to her, to have her reassure me, tell me it would be okay.


“You said you had burned, that you had burned to death, during the attack on unit one,” She started, then let the statement hang in the air, waiting for me to take it some place.


“I did say that, didn't I. It's... I can't really explain it right now, not in a way you'd understand. I'm not really sure that I understand, but...” I trailed off, frowning as we stepped onto the lift.


“But?” she pressed, finally turning to face me, she wasn't angry, if anything she looked concerned, like she wanted to help and just wasn't sure how.


“When I understand it, when I can explain it, I'll tell you about it.”


She nodded, and leaned against the railing as the lift started to ascend, “You talk to me more than anyone else ever has. I... I like it, I just don't understand why you've chosen to do so, what it is about me that draws you to me.”


Her lips curled into a frown, she blinked her red eyes, and licked her lip, “I understand what jealousy is, and I would understand if you felt that way. That you might feel that Command Ikari replaced you with me, but you still try to be my... friend?”


She looked... so sad. I closed my own eyes, I couldn't look at her like that, I could already feel the tightness in my eyes, that I might cry. I leaned forward, towards her, and put my arms around her, pulled her into a hug.


The pressure on my left arm shot a bolt of lightning up my spine but I ignored it, and squeezed her against me, “I don't know, Rei. When I first saw you, I wasn't quite sure what to think. We both have the same name, we look like sisters... and if my father is that close with you... than I guess we, in a way, are sisters.”


She tensed up in my grip, she hadn't expected that. I wasn't sure I expected that. Japanese people weren't big on physical affection, but I was pretty sure that where Ayanami was concerned she could have been Japanese, or Martian, and her reaction would have been the same.


Her initial tenseness melted away, slowly, into a tentative relaxation in the embrace, but I was still afraid to let go, afraid if I saw her face again, I might cry. She'd been holding that in for, well I couldn't say how long. She was confused, afraid that I might resent her for her relationship with the commander? I couldn't exactly tell her how little that mattered to me.


But then, I'd felt... something, when he praised me.


“But don't worry about it, okay? Whatever his reasons, and whatever your reasons, there's nothing for me to hold against you. But hey, let's just kill this Angel and we can talk about all this later, alright?” I asked as I pulled away from the hug.


She blinked at me when I stood in front of her again, and nodded wordlessly. The elevator stopped at the top of the makeshift shaft, and she disembarked without a word. Had a made a mistake?


No, she was just thinking about it, processing. I'd hugged her, out of the blue, just like that, and she had to figure things out. This... may not have been the best time for that. Screw with her sync ratio right? It was based on your mental state, your feelings and stuff.


And I felt like I'd just given her a lot of feelings.


I pressed my hand against the side of unit one's entry plug, and looked over my shoulder, back at Ayanami, who was already climbing into her own plug. Something was drawing me to her. I had to figure out what that was.


The hatch popped open in front of me, and I climbed into the dimly lit plug. I'd have plenty of time to figure that out. After this fight, after the next one. The next few decades if that's what it took, because we were going to win this war.


I might have lost earlier today, but it didn't kill me, and if it doesn't kill me, nothing is going to make me stay down.


For Ayanami, for Misato, hell, for Akagi, for the Commander... and for her.


I slid into the saddle and started going through the manual boot-up procedure. Most of it was automatic, but I still had to get the initial bootstrap started manually. I started tapping out commands into the pommel keypad, and listened as the LCL pumps kicked in, as the plug started to retract, and the controls started to light up.


Yeah, we were going to have all the time in the world to figure this out, because failure was not an option. We were going to make this world better.

 

Chapter 8:

Ride the lightning​

Laying on my stomach on the concrete foundation on the side of the mountain with a big rifle pressed up against my shoulder brought back memories, and not necessarily bad ones either. Of course, the Evangelion being involved was a new part, and I'd never used an electric rifle, but, broad strokes, right?


I tapped out a sequence on the right control stick, booting up the targeting system in the sniper-type equipment that they'd strapped to unit one. Long range shots, yeah, this was old hat, my long range rifles didn't have a targeting computer attached to them, of course I could do this.


The targeting console slid down in front of my face and the targeting sensors started to calibrate. Some kind of inverted triangle reticule? No, no. I tapped the cycle buttons on my control stick and started cycling through targeting modes. IR? No. Radar? No. Optical, sure, yeah... laser rangefinder... CCIP, that will do. I tapped confirm on the selection box and my video-screen lit up.


Misato's... confused expression filled the window, “Rei, what are you doing with the targeting computer?”


“Just switching to something more familiar,” I answered nonchalantly as I tapped more commands into the control stick, I managed to get the computer to superimpose the projected flight path of the shot over the HUD, in addition to the computed impact point.


“More familiar? Rei, have you been piloting any other giant robots we don't know about?” Misato asked with an edge of humor in her voice. Defusing the situation? Yeah, keep that levity till go time so I don't panic and lose my mind.


“I play a lot of digital combat simulator, fighter jets and stuff. Constantly computed impact point is more natural for me,” I explained as I cycled the fuse into the cannon. The connections started to light up green on the diagnostic window on the left side of the plug, I just had to wait for the rest of the primary electrical connections and then a charge...


“Well, it is a valid targeting profile, so I guess you can use that if you want. Just ask next time you're going to change something like that alright?” She ordered. It wasn't harsh, far from it, but her tone made it abundantly clear that compliance was not optional.


“Roger. One is standing by, everything is good on my end, waiting for the final power connections to take the shot.”


“We'll be ready to fire in fifty seconds.” I heard through the link, one of the controllers, not Misato.


Fifty seconds, then I pull this trigger and it's over. My hands were sweating inside of the plugsuit, I felt the pit in my stomach, the taste of bile rising in my throat. Nerves, I'd gotten over this before, why now?


I almost died earlier, I had that heart to heart with Ayanami, I thought about... her. No, come on Rei, focus on the task at hand, you hate geometry, we're going to kick this thing's octahedral ass.


I licked my lip and gently gripped the control stick and toggled the magnification up with the hat switch, up, up, up, just a little more... alright, I nudged the stick and drew the circular pipper over the corner of the angel, once the fighting started that should be where the core appears.


“Final connections complete, circuits charged, cooling systems at maximum capacity. Positron cannon is charged.”


“Anti-Angel intercept batteries are active, firing.”


I watched as tens of thousands of tracers lanced out towards the Angel, and it spun, shifted, and opened up to fire its ranged attack. I stared in awe as the beam of coherent energy shot out and obliterated the artillery emplacements that were firing at it. So that's what it looked like when it wasn't aimed at you?


“Safety is disengaged, one requesting permission to fire!” I yelled as I re-zeroed the pipper on the center of that red orb in the center of the Angel and toggled the zoom up another few levels. Little nudge to the left, dead center.


“Rei, fire!”


“Roger, one is firing.” I bit my bottom lip and leaned forward in the saddle, gently grabbed onto the control stick, and clicked the switch.


Millions of kilowatts poured into the firing mechanism, heated up to absurd temperatures, and then the beam of blue light lanced out of the end of the cannon, and night, for a brief and beautiful moment, turned into day. The power of an entire first world nation, at the beck and call of my right index finger.


And I called on it in the way of the gods of old, like Zeus upon Mount Olympus, and used the power of my lightning to strike down my enemy.


The blue streak smashed through the center of my target, and a loud, almost soul rending scream echoed through the entry plug, even after the external pickups had muted. If I'd had any doubts that the thing was alive, I didn't have them now.


I pulled the release catch for the fuse and reset the gun as the Angel started to descend into the ground. Something didn't feel right, the hair on the back of my neck was still standing up, that ache in the pit of my stomach, the taste of bile, something wasn't--


The Angel snapped into a new shape, a star that rotated, and the... core was still there? It wasn't dead! I started tapping into my right control stick, started the recharge on the gun. Come on, come on, come on!


“It's firing, brace for impact!”


Oh, come on! I clenched the control stick, the barrel was still cooling, I couldn't shoot, no, no, no! I watched in mute horror as the beam lanced out for me, the same as before, but much more powerful, I'd made it angry.


The mountain in front of me exploded, my body felt like it was on fire, the ground shook, the plug shook, I felt weightless for a moment as I was picked up by the blast and carried backwards, and then the Eva collapsed back-first onto the ground. I heard screaming through the radio link... and then it was over. The ground outside the Eva was scorched, glowing red hot, the trees were gone, half the trucks were gone... the command truck was still there. The power connections were still there, the gun was still charging, according to my displays.


I gritted my teeth against the heat and pain and crawled back over to the cannon, my hands tapping out a reboot request for the targeting systems. Come on, reset, we can still do this!


“Control, this is one. Are you still there? I'm returning to firing position, I need the cannon, please tell me it still works!” I yelled into the radio link as I felt the unit's hand wrap around the trigger mechanism, I leaned into it and put the unit's other hand around the front of the stock and hefted the cannon up to my shoulder.


“Cannon is operational, ready to fire in thirty seconds, feeding you the corrected targeting data now!” the operator yelled, he sounded rattled. Hell, I was rattled and I had an Evangelion protecting me, he was sitting in a panel van!


“High energy reaction inside the target, it's firing again!”


“Oh come on!” I screamed as I pulled the control stick, I started to slew the pipper around the target, trying to stabilize the gun and line up the shot, few degrees left, up.


The Angel fired, and the world went white again. This was it, we lost. I missed the shot, and killed us all.


I closed my eyes and waited for the hit... that never came. An explosion rocked the plug from in front of me and...


Unit zero was holding up a shield, Ayanami was protecting me with her own body. Twenty seconds to firing charge, come on baby let's do this thing!


I rolled the control stick in my hand, a gentle nudge, and the pipper was right over the target, but Ayanami's shield was deteriorating fast. It was down to just a small shard of its original size after only a few seconds of fire.


Eight seconds, the shield disintegrated and she crossed her forearms, taking the shot directly on her Evangelion. No! No get out of the way! “Ayanami move!”


“No, I will protect you,” her voice came back through the link, sound only. She sounded strained, in pain, struggling. No!


Three, two, one. I licked my lip and slapped the trigger, and once again the lightning poured forth, hesitating as it intersected the beam from the Angel... and then it overcame it and continued forward across the expanse.


I watched the beam intersect the Angel for the second time, and it immediately snapped back into its original octahedron shape, caught fire, and then dissolved into a wave of blood.


I wasted no time, I tapped out a command on the right control stick and jettisoned the targeting equipment and the cannon, and lunged for the collapsing unit zero. Stupid. Stupid girl! You shouldn't throw yourself away for me, dammit!


I dropped my shoulder and tackled the unit, using my momentum to carry both it and myself down the slope and into the small lake at the base of the mountain. The thermal shock blew steam up around both of us as I dunked her in the water, trying desperately to cool her off before she cooked.


“Come on, come on!” I yelled to nobody as I grabbed for the armor covering zero's entry plug, and I pulled. I felt the burning through the feedback, but I didn't let it stop me, didn't let the Eva try to protect me, I ripped the almost red-hot plate off the unit and dropped it into the lake.


The entry plug slid backwards and immediately purged the LCL, I could see steam rising off of it as it shot through the air. Not good!


“One is requesting immediate medical assistance, Ayanami is... I think she's hurt badly. I'm getting her out. One signing off.” I declared as I pulled the plug from the unit and set it down on the edge of the water, trying my best to be as gentle and as fast as possible despite the panic I felt building to the breaking point inside of me.


I tapped out commands on the saddle's pommel MFD and felt the plug lurching backwards. It was taking too long, I couldn't keep waiting. I rolled over to the egress arming screen and executed the command.


In an instant the explosive bolts on the left hand hatch detonated and the hatch blew outwards, dumping the LCL all at once through the hole as I scrambled for the emergency descent ladder. I looked over towards the still steaming plug as my foot hit that first rung.


Left, right, left, right. I climbed down the ladder, the pain in my left arm completely forgotten as I climbed down the ladder as quickly as I trusted myself to move. Forty feet, thirty, twenty, ten. Nearly to the ground I took my feet off the runs and gripped the sides of the ladder and slid, hit the ground in a roll, and came up running.


My feet pounded on the hot, soft mud, my jaw was clenched, I could smell burning flesh and hot blood, charred paint, and burnt wood. Zero's damage? I slid to a stop in front of the plug and reached out for the emergency release latch.


The heat burned me instantly and I recoiled, then grit my teeth and grabbed on again, put everything I had into it as both hands wrenched on the lever. I felt the bone in my left arm pop again, but I kept going, this was more important than pain, more important than a broken arm, I had to get her out!


With a final shove the lock disengaged and the hatch opened outward, and I frantically climbed into the plug, looking to my right, into zero's saddle, at... my friend. “Ayanami!”


She stirred, looked up at me, I saw her eyes open under that silver-blue hair. She was alive. She was alive! “Ayanami!” I yelled again, and lurched forward, and pulled her into a hug. What could I say? What was there to say? She was alive, she was alive after she threw herself in front of that, to save me?


I buried my face in her shoulder and cried, because in that moment I couldn't think of a single thing else to do.

XXXXXXX​

Too much heat, couldn't feel my skin anymore, couldn't feel the stick in my hand, couldn't feel the throttles. Could hardly see, already blew the canopy, but it wasn't helping. Couldn't breath, couldn't catch my breath, just heat and smoke and burning and cooked skin.


Water ahead, I pulled the stick, stepped on the rudder pedal, and pushed the throttles forward, I'd made it, I did what I had to do, and... and now I could just... sleep...

XXXXXXX​

Alcohol and bandages again, that familiar scent. The hospital, woke up there again, but finally not as a patient. Small favors.


I leaned forward and un-reclined the chair, Ayanami was sleeping in the bed, her head was bandaged, the heart monitor beeped. I hadn't been able to bring myself to leave her side since they pulled her out of the entry plug.


My left arm itched. They'd managed to get me away from her for that long though, long enough to set the bone and wrap my arm in a cast after I'd finished the job and finally broke the bone all the way through.


It had been worth it.


It had taken them fifteen minutes to get there, to get her out after the fight. In the chaos of making sure everyone caught up in the blast was seen to I supposed. When they finally arrived at the ejected entry plug I wouldn't let them even look at my arm until they tended to Ayanami.


I wiped my cheek, tears again. They'd been flowing freely, on and off, since then. Sometimes I just couldn't hold it in, how close I came to losing her, if I'd taken just a few seconds longer to pull the trigger.


I clenched my right fist and fought back the tears, no, that's not what happened, it worked out, we won, we didn't die. We are okay, we're going to be okay. She was willing to die for me, but I'm not willing to let her do it.


Dammit, control lost, the tears started to flow again.


I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes and took a deep breath, held it. One, two three.


Three...


Two...


One...


Exhale. Calm down Rei, she's safe.


The door slid open and I cracked my eyes open again, heavy footsteps, expensive hard soled shoes, real leather soles even. Black jacket...


Commander Ikari, my fath-- Rei's father. Why did I keep slipping on that, and why did I feel a longing in the pit of my stomach every time I saw him? He wasn't wearing his tinted glasses, he looked concerned, and he noticed me.


“Rei, you're here. I heard what you did for Ayanami.” He looked at me, his mouth worked a few times, then his expression softened, as if he'd made some internal decision, “thank you, for that.”


I nodded and remained silent, he stepped further into the room and pulled a chair over next to mine and sat down next to me, looking at the girl sleeping in the bed. Ayanami. Rei Ayanami. Rei Ikari. Why did we look so similar?


“She will be fine. She's always been strong.” He said simply, he seemed... uncomfortable, at a loss for words, what was he going to say to me, after all those years we spent apart?


“She looks up to you,” I offered.


“It would be difficult for me to explain everything, Rei. To tell you why I sent you away, and to tell you why Ayanami is here. You are not like what I expected you'd be like when I sent for you,” he said levelly, that he bothered to try to explain it at all, maybe he thought I was mature enough for the conversation?


“I've got a few theories about her, things I'm sure you're either aware of or...” I trailed off, letting the implication hang in the air. I shook my head, “The reasons don't matter, I can't, I wont hold the past against you, or her. Life is too short to waste on a grudge. If you want, we can just start here, now, in this room, and move forward from there.”


“You are most definitely not the girl I expected you to be,” he said, I almost detected... mirth? I could almost detect the hint of a smile, “You're more like your mother than you are me. I agree then, let's start here.”


I nodded, and turned back to Ayanami, smile creeping onto my own face as I watched her, “She's related to me isn't she, she looks so much like me.”


“She's related to your mother; Ayanami was your mother's maiden name. She's been here training to be a pilot, it's... all she's ever known. I haven't really known how to be a friend to her, not the way she needs,” he admitted, his eyes not turning to meet mine, but instead staring off into the distance.


“She's different, but she's not a bad person. Whatever you did, whoever you've been to her, I think... I think she's okay,” I offered. I wanted to put my hand on his shoulder, comfort him in some way, why did I have this soft spot for the man? He wasn't my...


Why couldn't I finish that thought?


I blinked and noticed my right hand sitting on his shoulder, I leaned forward, he finally turned to face me and for a second, his eyes widened like he'd seen a ghost, but in a moment the look was gone and he regained his composure.


“I am proud of who you've become. I would ask you to continue to be Ayanami's friend, but I suspect that you'd do that anyway even if I didn't ask,” he explained, and I saw that smile creeping onto his face again. Why did it make me feel so warm?


“You know. I am a pretty good cook. I would like to, you know, if you're okay with that... I could cook a meal, and we could all eat together, you, and me, and Ayanami. I think she'd like that,” I offered, and licked my bottom lip, then turned back to watch her sleep again.


I sat up in the chair and then stood up and shuffled towards the door, not waiting for his answer. I was going to give him some time with Ayanami, alone. They deserved that right?


I was half way to the door when he turned and looked up at me, “Rei.”


I stopped and turned my head, “Yes?”


“We should do that.”


“Yes... Father.”

XXXXXXX​

Hot leather and gasoline, rubber and asphalt, the crisp evening air, and Misato. The scenery passed by the open window and I stared at it, thinking of all the possibility that it represented. An entire world was out there, full of people, full of stories, and because of us, it got to go on for another day.


“We're going on a trip soon, just the two of us, would you like that? Trip out into the middle of the ocean, on a boat?” Misato asked me conversationally from the driver's seat.


“A boat trip huh? What's the occasion?” I turned to look at her, my left eyebrow inching ever higher under my powder blue bangs.


She shrugged and turned back to the road, “With your arm being broken and unit zero being damaged, we're a little short handed here, so the IPEA has agreed to transfer provisional unit five and its pilot to us from Bethany base, at least until we're back up to fighting strength.”


I nodded, unit five? Hadn't heard of that, nor 'IPEA' or this other pilot, but things were already different, maybe I just forgot that part? “Where do we come in on that then?”


“The UN wants Nerv to send a representative to meet up with the pacific fleet en-route to Japan to deliver the mobile power system for unit five to one of the aircraft carriers, and then to accompany the fleet to Yokosuka,” She explained further, her voice slowly taking on an edge of boredom.


“So Nerv is sending us.”


“Pretty much. You're not much good with a broken arm, so Ayanami can pilot unit one while we're away, and this gives you a chance to meet and greet the new pilot... and it gets us both out of the city for a while.”


“If I'd known a broken arm was all it would take to get out of the city for a few days I'd have jumped in front of a fork lift two weeks ago,” I said with a laugh. So, vacation on an aircraft carrier? Alright that's not too bad. Stuck in the middle of the ocean with navy types, but not bad.


“So when are we leaving?”


“Six hours.”


“Oh okay, so real soon. When are we going to be back anyway?”


“Shouldn't be more than a week at the most, why?” She asked as the car slowed, we were nearing the apartment, I was hungry, this was good.


“I invited my father to dinner, I offered to cook for him and Ayanami, that we could sit down and eat together. He said yes,” I explained, watching her out of the corner of my eye.


“Oh okay... Wait, you did what? And he said what!?”