Hero of War
Attestation I:
Auld Lang Syne
January 1, 2032
It was a minute after midnight on the dawn of the new year and it would be just like the sixteen before it. Every year before it on new years eve I'd either be drunk or wishing I was, alone... or wishing I was.
Even in a crowd, at least the kind I attracted, I was alone. I could put on the brave smile or give a little speech and all these years later they still wanted to hear what I had to say, touch my hand, get my autograph, take a picture.
I was sick of it, but nobody would listen. Nobody could really understand and anyone who did, well, they had better places to be.
Even as much as I wanted to be alone I still went out to the bars because I couldn't stand the quiet. Too many thoughts through my head, even now, second guessing myself. After the first few thousand people told me I saved the world I had a hard time remembering what parts were real and what parts were the hero worship bleeding through into my memory.
It always came back to me, because I wasn't allowed to forget.
I tapped the side of my empty glass and the bartender came down the bar to my stool. "Asuka, you know you're the only reason we even keep this on tap, you might wanna slow down a little bit, yeah?"
I loved this bar, as much as I loved anything. The hero worship still came shining through but at least they had enough respect and restraint not to use me to bring in crowds. It was about as private as I could get in public.
"Maybe on another day. I'm not slowing down on new years. Fill It up, keep em coming."
He shook his head at me, judging me. At least someone did. Maybe the veneer was finally flaking off and someone might actually see me for who I was. If I even--
The glass clanked down in front of me, a pint of cheap Japanese
pißwasser that no self respecting German would ever drink, so it was lucky that I wasn't. Andreas didn't understand why I drank it, but he didn't have to understand; he just had to pour.
I drank it to remember and to forget. It was memorial and penance, and it served that purpose well.
It wasn't the only time of year and if anyone was left who really cared they'd have told me years ago that I shouldn't spend all my free time at the bar. The bar, 'The Usual Haunt', was definitely
mine. I'd had more drinks and more meals in the not-quite-grungy one room tavern than I could reasonably count.
I didn't always eat and drink alone but I always went home that way. I didn't have the stomach or the taste for male company and the hero worship got old ten years ago, maybe even before that.
Andreas was a good man, or at least good to me. He was easily old enough to be my father but was set apart from him in that
Andreas actually gave me something I needed.
The glass was empty as quickly as it had been filled and everything was a little more muted than usual. The necessary
fog on the world that made it tolerable, palatable,
digestable.
Twelve thirty-six. My yearly obligation to show my face in public and accept praise on the anniversary of my 'victory' was over. I made for the door and the few people milling about the bar parted like the red sea.
The heavy wooden door creaked when I pushed on it, as it had every time before. The night air was brisk, a nice chill that was a nice reprieve from the warmth that most to the year brought. It gave me an excuse to wear a scarf and hide my face. Avoid attention just long enough to get home and into bed.
The cobblestones were uneven underfoot and to anyone else who'd consumed as much Japanese malt-water as I had it would have posed a hazard. It was fine for me though. I was a professional. I'd
been a professional in more ways than one.
Salvation day, survival day,
redemption day. They could call it what they wanted and pin any medal they wanted to my chest and they'd do it all for themselves. It had been too late for me on the day I'd been born and it just took me until then to realize it.
To me, I wasn't a hero. I still wouldn't have done any of it differently. That had always been the problem for him. Knowing I'd do it all again the very same way. He'd never accepted that. And he'd always leave.
There were some things all the drinking in the world couldn't take away from me and the years of paranoia had only sharpened some skills. I knew by the second corner I'd gone around on the way back to my apartment that I was being followed. It had happened enough all those years ago and it had happened enough in all the years in between.
"I don't have anything for you to steal." I called out over my shoulder, but I didn't stop walking, nor did they. Footsteps clicking against pavement, maybe ten meters behind me. A hard soled shoe, not a soft rubber like a sneaker or a running shoe.
Section Two had always used hard soled dress shoes, they were to convey a look more than anything practical. It was an intimidation trick, but they could back it up so there was something behind it too. When I sped up, so did it.
"Listen, go fuck yourself. Whatever you want, I don't care, go away!" I yelled, maybe a little too loudly, but it was bullshit I didn't need. Mugger or pan-handler or hero worshipper, I didn't care.
I stopped near a gap in the buildings and the walking behind me did't. Click, click, clack. I felt a hand touch my shoulder and I spun around to backhand the person behind me. The slap of my skin against their face echoed down the road when I pushed them into the alley.
My hand was around their throat and I had them pinned against the wall and I was squeezing down before I realized it was a woman a little younger than me. The part of me that might have cared and given her the benefit of the doubt for those two facts died in a hospital bed in Tokyo-3. "What part of 'Go fuck yourself' was difficult for you to understand? I want to be left alone."
She pushed my hand off her throat and I let her. She rubbed her neck and straightened up her shirt. "Asuka Langley Soryu, right? I've been looking all over for you."
I took a step back and threw my arms up, "Well, you found me. What do you want? An Autograph? Shake my hand? Tell me how much you appreciate what I did? What's it gonna take to get you to
fuck off?"
"Just a few minutes of your time, actually. My name is Carolina Curtiss and I'm taking a film crew into Tokyo-3. I want you to be there." She answered with a smile that made me want to throw hands. Like I'd ever want to go back there.
"Why in the hell would you want to do something stupid like that? There's a
reason we've never been back, and nothing you can offer me that'll make me go back there. If you're done pissing up a rope I've got a bed and a bottle of sleeping pills to get back to," I hissed at her as I turned away. A herd of wild horses and an act of parliament wouldn't get me back into what was left of that city.
"We're prepared to pay you a... well a ludicrous amount of money for it. If that's not compelling enough, perhaps you'd do it for Misa--"
I had my hand back on her throat and squeezing down before I really realized what I was doing, my teeth were bared and my heart was beating in my ears. "Don't even finish that thought," I hissed dangerously.
"I'll keep quiet then. We'll see you at the train station tomorrow."
She had me over a barrel and she knew it, and I couldn't do anything about it. I didn't know how she knew, but just knowing that she did was enough.
I didn't say anything back to her, she'd won and she knew it. The rest of the walk back to my apartment was... colder. I was used to dealing with people, at least far enough so that I didn't have to
keep dealing with them but it had been years since someone had rattled me like that.
She shouldn't have known that name, there was no reason for her to know that name. The records had been sealed, destroyed! As far as the world was concerned she really never existed at all.
I kicked my door open and the knob buried itself in a hole in the drywall that had been getting deeper for years. It wasn't the first time I'd kicked the door open and I knew it wouldn't be the last. There were phone calls I should probably have made but instead I fell onto my bed and passed out.
***
December 31, 2015
Nothing could stop me, not ever again. Momma was with me and though these men might stand in my way, they wouldn't stand for long. Every bullet and cannon shell and missile that hit me just strengthened my resolve and I kept swinging.
A pair of rocket VTOL craft hovered off to my left and started to fire and with a single flick of the wrist my AT field deployed and stopped every shot in its tracks, but I didn't stop there. I pushed on it, harder and harder and started to walk towards them with the field as strong as it had ever been before.
The soldiers on the ground and in their tanks and trucks were flattened as I pushed forward, a great shield, or maybe a
plow of light and energy stripped them from the Earth because I
would not lose. I'd never lose again!
The aircraft tried to escape me but with a scream I lunged towards them and smashed them into oblivion between my AT field and the geofront wall. More kept coming, they would keep doing it until they were all dead, so I would kill them.
I switched on my external speakers and roared out at the array of tanks that was rolling towards me in their futile effort to stop me. "Stop holding back! I'll take you all on! Every single one of you at once!"
They took my challenge because they had to, because their pride and their fear demanded it, but so did mine. They fired their cannons and I kicked their tanks into the sky and they fired their missiles and I swatted their aircraft into the ground.
Men on foot tried to climb my legs and I stomped them flat. Nothing they could do could even slow me down. It was a futile effort to even try, to even
think about trying.
Overhead, nine winged forms circled and I knew what they were, and I knew we'd fight. "The Eva series?"
There was a tense moment as they circled, descending slowly towards the field of battle. I sat in my entry plug, slowly breathing in the LCL. The Evas folded their wings in and dropped towards the ground.
I ran to meet them.
***
January 2, 2032
The train car was a private one, along with the rest of the train. It was a luxury extravagance that I'd been used to before, but it held no sway over me and hardly made up for the implicit threat that had gotten me here in the first place.
"Asuka, I'm glad you could make it. We're really excited to film this documentary and having the Hero of Tokyo-3 with us for this occasion is really going to make this something for the history books," Carolina gushed at me. The audacity of this woman was mindblowing. If she was a day over twenty I'd be surprised and yet she had guile of... a few other people I'd known.
She'd found what she'd found, which meant she had connections deep enough to scare me, and that was probably how she'd managed to put this whole thing together in the first place.
"I guess I can do anything if there's a gun to my head. Do I need to actually do anything for this documentary or is just having me in frame going to be good enough?" I muttered out while I sipped on the overpriced sparkling water they'd seen fit to stock the suite with.
"Well," She started with a smile that made me want to choke her
again, "You lived there during the war, we're hoping you can serve as our guide as we explore the ruins. Show us the sights, that kind of thing."
I rolled my eyes and took another long drag off the bottle, wishing instead that it was a cigarette and that there was bottle of something flammable to drink in my other hand. "Carolina, you do realize they bombed the city into a crater right? There's a big hole in the ground, there's nothing for me to guide you through."
"You could guide us through the battle itself, show us where and how everything happened. It'll go with what our other guide can tell us about what happened in the base itself during that final battle." She continued, ignoring my objection completely. She probably did that to people a lot. I never had any respect for that kind of thing, at least when it happened to
me.
"What other guide? Did you get Ibuki? Aoba?"
"Shinji Ikari."
I smashed the bottle flat in my hand and sprayed the water all over the front of my shirt. She'd found
him? And he'd agreed to it? Of course he would, with
that threat over his head. I wasn't ready to see him again. I was never ready to see him again any of the times that I
did see him. "We don't do well together. You shouldn't have brought him."
"He said the same thing. I don't suppose you could shed light on why that is?" She asked me with that damn smile again. I couldn't tell if she was actively malicious or clueless as to what was really going on.
But I had to calm myself.
"It's very personal and I don't want to get into it." I answered as calmly as I was able, even though my fingernails were poking holes in what was left of the water bottle. It was rare that someone could make my piss boil so completely and so quickly, but she seemed to know exactly which buttons to push.
"Fair enough, I suppose we can come around to that part of the production later. For now, try to... enjoy the trip. We'll be at the airport by late afternoon tomorrow and we'll be in Tokyo-3 by the day after that. If you need anything, just call for an attendant."
***
Call for an attendant, what a joke. I found my way towards a dining car with an open bar. I wasn't going to ask for a drink when I could take them from the source
and get refills. The bar tender was an older guy who reminded me a bit of Andreas. I wondered if maybe they had a warehouse full of these guys.
They didn't have my cheap Japanese beer, but they did have gin, and sometimes gin was enough. Gin and tonic. Gin and vermouth. Gin and Gin. I was three highballs deep when the stool next to mine squeaked and someone sat down.
I didn't need to look to know who it was. "Hi Asuka."
I felt my heart skip a beat and I took a long drag off my fourth glass before I could bear to turn and face him. If I was going to survive this trip I was going to need to drink until I couldn't feel feelings anymore.
I swallowed hard and turned just enough to catch him in the corner of my eye. "Hi Shinji. It's been a while."
He hesitated, in so many ways still the little boy, long after I'd made him a man. But in so many other ways, he wasn't just that little boy. "I've missed you."
This was how it always started, every time. This is why I tried to avoid him, because I felt what only he could say. "Well, we're both here now, so I guess you don't have to. You want a drink? I'll buy," I offered.
He slid his chair stool closer to mine and I took the invitation to lean against him. His arm went around my shoulders and I didn't stop him. He never needed to ask my permission to hold me. He was the one who always wanted to leave and I was always the one who wanted him to come back.
I would take what I could get.
"Yeah, I think I'll have a drink too, Asuka."
And so he joined me on my gin journey. His five to my nine, and he was still feeling it more than I was, but I had a lot more practice. By the end of the night we'd ended up in the same suite and I wondered if Carolina had planned for that to happen, since she seemed to know everything else private about us.
But I stopped worrying about that almost just as quickly as I'd started. I had far more pressing distractions to take care of before we arrived at the airport, and they would require my full and undivided attention.
