Before Kensuke could offer a rebuttal, everything suddenly went dark. The teenagers looked around to see that every light in the mall had shut off, leaving the skylights as the only source of illumination. Other people were also looking around, murmuring to each other, and some were heading for the exits.
"Blackout?" asked Shinji. "Did the power stations break down in the heat or something?"
"Could it be an Angel?!" Kensuke asked, sounding almost excited.
"There was no alarm," reasoned Rei. "Early warning systems would have detected it and sounded the alert well before it reached the city."
As one, Shinji and Asuka pulled their phones out of their pockets and flipped them open. "Nothing from NERV either," noted Asuka. "The Geofront has its own power plants too. Maybe it's just a problem at the plant up here."
"Nothing we can do then," Shinji said with a shrug. "Should we just continue home?"
"May as well," replied Asuka. "It's gonna start getting warmer in here soon anyway, and I really want a cold shower."
"Great, no air-con on a day like this," Toji moaned as the group headed for the nearest exit.
Outside, the sun was still burning bright. Shinji sighed as he brought up a hand to shade his eyes. "I hope you know where we're going, Asuka, because the sun's not going anywhere for a while."
"Of course I do!" Asuka retorted with a huff. "Have you still not studied a map of Tokyo-3 to know where all weapon buildings and defensive emplacements are?"
Shinji abashedly rubbed the back of his head. "Well... since I'd mostly be riding along with you, I thought..."
Rolling her eyes, Asuka set off down the street. "No excuses. Learn," she said as she passed him. A moment later, the others followed suit. Shinji groaned in defeat, then trailed after them.
"Kensuke, do you really have no idea why Akera specifically chose you for this... photo shoot?" Hikari asked after a few minutes.
"Like I said, maybe she recognises talent," Kensuke replied with a shrug. "Dunno why she had to threaten me to do it though."
"Prob'ly so she wouldn't have to pay ya," Toji suggested. "Why pay for somethin' you could get just by leanin' on someone, ya know? And she does kinda have ya in a tough spot."
"Really, it's all his fault for being in that tough spot in the first place," said Asuka. "All he had to do was not take photos of girls without permission."
"Yeah, yeah, I get it already!" Kensuke almost shouted. "Nobody to blame but myself, blah bl-" He stopped, quirking an eyebrow as he looked back the way they came. "...Did you hear that?"
Everybody stopped and turned to face the same way. Shinji scanned the street, but couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. There was not a person or car in sight, but the hot weather meant that that wasn't a surprise.
"There's nothing there," scoffed Asuka after a few tense seconds. "Don't try and change the subject."
"No, I... heard something too," Rei interjected. "But... I cannot place what it was."
Shinji blinked several times in surprise, turning to look at Rei. Her eyes were narrowed in suspicion and her hands were curled into fists as she cast her gaze about the area. "There it is again," she suddenly said, raising a hand.
"...Ya sure you two ain't just imaginin' things?" Toji asked. "The street's empty. Ain't nothin' there but concrete bein' cooked. Maybe the heat's just startin' to get to ya."
Shinji almost begrudgingly agreed with the jock, right up until he felt a faint vibration in his feet, coinciding with the just barely heard sound of something heavy hitting the ground. He swallowed nervously, trying to bring moisture back to his suddenly dry mouth. "Now I'm hearing it too," he quietly said.
Asuka gave a serious nod. "Yeah, me too..."
Toji sighed and put his hands up. "Fine, there's somethin' happening. Whatever it is, it don't concern us. Can't be an Angel after all, right? No phone call from NERV. Could just be construction somewhere nearby."
"I... believe it might be an Angel," Rei said in a low voice. She turned to face the others. "We should g-"
"What?" Hikari asked, when Rei continued to stare silently at her. "Is something wrong, Rei?"
As slow as a glacier, Rei raised a hand to point towards Hikari. Or rather, as Shinji soon noticed, something behind her. The other teenagers slowly turned around. What they saw made Shinji's heart leap into his throat. Something had sneaked up behind them. A huge, somewhat ovoid something. With many triangular eyes. Staring right at them.
Eventually, Shinji managed to tear his own eyes away from the main body of the creature to see that it was suspended on four legs so big that just the... 'knees'... seemed to rival the height of most skyscrapers.
"Holy shit," Toji whispered. "How'd that thing manage to get here?"
As if to show to boy how it was done, the creature began to move. Its ovoid body drew closer to the ground as its front left leg lifted up. Ever so slowly, the Angel -it had to be one, Shinji decided- moved closer and closer, its legs coming down almost gently on the ground several dozen metres away, while the teenagers seemed to have been frozen where they stood. It soon came to a stop mere metres from Hikari, who was trembling like a leaf in a hurricane. She then proceeded to faint, only to swiftly be caught by a quick-witted Toji, who slowly dragged her a couple metres away.
This left the three Children as the only thing standing between an Angel and their friends. An Angel that seemed incredibly interested in them, moving its body slightly so that its triangular eyes could look at all of them. Its eyes looked like they were merely decorative, as brightly coloured as an insect's markings, but there was nothing decorative about the way the irises shifted about inside the triangles.
'We are so, so very far away from our Evangelions right now,' Shinji glumly thought. He then heard what sounded like a quiet, mechanical shutter opening and closing. Turning his head to the left, he was completely unsurprised to see Kensuke with his camera in front of his face.
The Angel moved again, bringing one of its eyes closer and focusing it on Asuka from only about a metre away. To her credit, Asuka didn't so much as blink in the face of an eye as big as she was. In fact, it looked to Shinji as if she was about to haul off and punch it.
Shinji couldn't stop himself from flinching as the Angel turned its attention on him. It seemed to stare right through him, the eye moving up and down several times as if it were scanning him from head to toe.
And then it shifted its attention to Rei who, unsurprisingly, faced it with the same calm demeanour she normally employed throughout the day. The sole concession to acknowledging the danger they were in was the way her fists were once again clenched at her sides.
What was surprising, however, was how the Angel seemed to rear back slightly after scanning her. If it had eyelids, Shinji was sure that it would be blinking in confusion. Then, with the suddenness of a bully changing their mind about picking a fight with somebody who might not be a weakling, the Angel pulled its body up away from the ground and began to walk off. As it passed the Children, its eyes kept an... well... kept an eye on them until its body rounded a building and left their sight.
Kensuke was the first to speak. "Did you guys just stare down an Angel?!"
Shinji sucked in a harsh breath as he remembered to breath, and he heard Asuka do the same. They looked at each other for a moment, serious expressions on their faces, before Asuka folded her arms.
"We need to get to NERV," she announced, then glanced around. "Where's the nearest entrance?"
"Follow me," said Rei, moving ahead. She then paused for a moment, looking back at Toji and a recovering Hikari. "You should come too."
"Wait," Asuka interjected. "I'm not suggesting we leave them out here, but are you really saying we should bring civvies into the Geofront?"
Rei nodded. "The Angel is between us and the nearest shelter. There is no guarantee they will be safe if they try to go that way."
Shinji glanced up. The Angel's long, spindly legs could still be seen over the tops of the nearby buildings. "Good point. Lead the way."
