Chapter Twenty:"Do Ut Des."
The candle's flame held a sort of hypnotic pattern to Shinji's eyes, which also made it one of the easiest things to concentrate on and ignore the tiny whispers at the back of his head that told him that he was being suckered into something he was definitely not going to enjoy.
"The fillet here is to die for," Asuka said, flipping through the menu's pages. "Their wine selection is to kill for. Really, there's just so much to choose from, I'd spend a whole day just eating through their entire menu. And I did that. The bill at the end was astronomical, but it was worth it," she grinned like a wolf, pulling her menu down to reveal her face and twinkling eyes. "What about you? Are you a picky eater?"
"I-No, not really," Shinji shrugged. "I tend to cook pretty much everything-"
"Oh? So you're a cook!" Asuka said cheerfully, her voice a low hush. "Well then, you definitely have to cook me something. Maybe next time?"
"Maybe," Shinji said. "Why can only a few people pilot Evangelions?" he asked once more.
Asuka sighed. "We haven't even ordered yet," she said. "Ask me something else, third child," she grinned.
"How do you know so much?" Shinji asked, his eyes barely registering the menu as he mentally decided for a random dish, something out of the European cuisine. "And why are you so carefree about telling me?"
Asuka closed her menu just as Shinji did the same with his, and as a waiter came by to take their orders, she also picked the wine with barely a moment of thought. The waiter stepping away to file their orders in the kitchen.
"I was fucked over sideways because people thought it would be nice to go on a 'need to know' basis," Asuka said. "On one side, I can understand their thoughts. On the other, I can't help but hate them for doing that. When it became clear that I was to be dismissed, they pulled me in a nice room with a few other people and told me the truth. It was one of the strangest things ever," Asuka laughed. "For a while I thought I had dreamed the whole thing, but in the end it turned out that nightmares can become real. So I packed my stuff and moved off somewhere I could die in peace. I planned a really nice thing too: going out with a bang."
She grinned as the sommelier brought the wine, and uncorked it in front of them. Both glasses filled, the man stepped back leaving the bottle on the table. "And then, just as I was about to do it, someone came by and remarked how utterly stupid it was."
She chuckled. "I was the great Asuka, why did I have to be the one to call it quits with the world? Sure, I was an immortal teenager and angsting would continue for years after that, but I could pretty damn well do the sort of shit that every other teenager couldn't do. Twenty-four hour parties? Drugs? Drinking my liver to death? I could do all of that and come back up in top shape. The aftermath of some parties were the stuff of nightmares too, but hell...I could do it, and so I did it." She took a small sip of the wine. "And in the end, I realized I was free. Went back to school too. I had time, a lot of free time. I could spend it getting my ass drunk, or I could spend it doing something constructive with myself. I wrote books, publications, taught courses-made a name for myself...and then I decided to put up a building construction company."
She shrugged. "I liked it. My life had been a mess of a self-destructive cycle day in and day out. So why not build something? Something that would last?" she pointed a finger at Shinji, "Evangelion breaking them notwithstanding. I admit, the only reason I came to Tokyo-Three wasn't just to get rich building skyscrapers, but perhaps to find closure with my mother."
She grinned as the food arrived for both of them, flawless and piping hot. "Oh would you look at that, dinner."
Shinji cut a small bite out of the meat he had ordered -a strange thing with an even stranger sauce on it that he couldn't quite place. It tasted pretty good, but his stomach was still clamping up.
"Hey now," Asuka said earnestly, "There's no need to be so nervous. It's not like what I'm about to say is going to break your whole world. You're a grown-up man, so you can take it. If I'm still here after learning about it when I was fourteen-I'm pretty sure you will barely be fazed by it." Her right hand moved to gingerly pat Shinji's wrist. "Really, don't make me look like the bad guy here."
The scene, viewed from the outside, would have felt terrifyingly out of place. There was a fourteen year old girl who was trying to cheer up a twenty-six year old man. Considering the place they were eating at however, nobody said anything, and if they did think it, they did not voice it out loud.
Finally, Asuka could postpone it no longer. "Fine," she sighed. She took a sip of her wine. "But let's not do this here."
Shinji raised an eyebrow, but as Asuka called for the bill and fostered it in its entirety, they both stepped back into the car. Giving it gas, Asuka sped up until they entered the highway once more. "Well," Asuka said. "Pretty ballsy to actually wait until we were on the car," she chuckled. "Now you can't run away no matter what I tell you, you know that?"
Shinji sighed, looking at his reflection in the car's side mirror. "I will never run away," he answered, his right hand clenching around the side of the seat. "No matter what," his eyes turned to stare firmly at Asuka's, who glanced at him for just the briefest of seconds.
"Very well," Asuka said quite warmly. "If that's your belief-then let's start with the obvious...the Evangelion are bio-engineered cyborgs, created from the cells of an Angel. Alone, they are soulless creation. The metallic plates that 'protect' them are nothing more than safeguards that keep them still," Asuka chuckled. "They're composed of a substance called 'Particle-Wave Matter' that has the properties of both a wave and a particle, just like light. Their signal distribution and coordinates are strikingly similar to human DNA, up to a near ninety-nine whooping percent. Basically? You're piloting a giant human."
She accelerated slightly. "A giant, comatose, human." She bit her lower lip. "However, for their form to hold, they need something to tell them to keep it. Think of it as them being made of clay, really wet and muddy clay. Unless someone's hands hold it together, it's going to melt in a puddle of goo. That's where the souls come in." She chuckled bitterly. "Souls, or, to be more precise, a thought-pattern."
Her foot on the gas pedal increased ever so slightly in pressure. "See, the thought-pattern that holds an Evangelion together, and the armor that restrains it, they're barely doing their job. Normally an Evangelion left free from such restraints will go on rampages, tearing up everything around them. So how do you convince it to move? You need a second pair of hands. Only, not every pair of hands works together well. Two people trying to hold mud together, depending on how well they behave with one another, hold a far higher chance of not fucking shit up."
She chuckled as, by then, they had already breached through the safety limits on the highway. "So you see, Shinji, the only way to ensure a proper synchronization is to make the pilot and the 'thought-pattern' as strikingly similar as possible. It also helps if, by happenstance, one is naturally programmed to look after the pilot. This happens in nature all the time when, you know, a mother gives birth and starts to care for the little rascal-"
"Asuka-we're going at one hundred fifty-"
"Although in my case, they made a big mistake. My mother, differently from every other sane mother in the world, didn't really want me. So, joy of joys, when the guys tried a deeper synchronization, it turned out that all it managed to do was lock me out of the Evangelion, because my mother hated my guts and wanted me to die."
"Asuka," Shinji said quite calmly, "We're going nearly at one hundred and seventy on a road where the limit is eighty. Do you want your driver's license revoked?"
"Are you listening to what I'm saying!?"
"Yes, and once you slow down I will properly freak out, but right now I'd rather still have a body to freak out in rather than not!" Shinji yelled back, and abruptly the speed cut down to a more acceptable level, as Asuka grumbled and clenched the steering wheel tighter.
Taking a deep breath, Shinji looked at the road ahead. "So what you're saying is that...the Evangelions work because the pilot's mother-their souls, to be more precise, are inside the Evangelion?"
"Yes," Asuka answered curtly.
"That sounds crazy."
"Still doesn't make it any less true," Asuka pointed out.
"If souls are real," Shinji said softly, "Then does that make God real?"
"My field studies never included theology," Asuka retorted, "but more than 'soul' it's highly possible the bodies were merely assimilated into the Evangelion, and a human's brain would lack the necessary amount of neurons to fire up the full neurological capacities of an Evangelion."
"Ah-now that would make more sense. So there is an incomplete transference or assimilation? Kind of like a symbiotic relationship in which one of the two sides is completely assimilated-wait," Shinji's eyes widened. "My mother was-my mother was assimilated by the Evangelion I'm currently piloting!?"
Asuka increased the speed. "STOP THE CAR!" Shinji yelled.
"Nope," Asuka replied. "Or you're going to do something silly," she added, pushing a button that, with a resounding 'click', blocked the seat belt from being released. "Now let's keep this up until we have calmed down enough not to do anything stupid."
"Stop this car right now," Shinji retorted, moving a hand towards the brake, only to find Asuka's own swatting his away.
"Listen here," Asuka retorted. "Chill out or we're both going to kick the bucket, and you'll never get to punch your father in the face if you do that. Don't you want to punch his face? I would want to punch his face. I'd punch it with an Evangelion, if one allowed itself to be piloted by me."
Shinji took deep breaths, and then pulled out his cellphone. Tapping away at it, he waited with bated breath for the call to come through.
"Yes." A male voice answered from the other side of the phone.
"Is my mother's soul inside the Evangelion!?" as Shinji yelled that, the line remained silent for a bit.
"I already told you that," Gendo Ikari said from the other side of the cellphone.
"You-You-You didn't tell me!" Shinji hissed. "You told me she wasn't completely dead! Just why didn't you tell me she had been assimilated by the giant humanoid bio-engineered thing that I'm piloting right now!?"
"Shinji," Gendo Ikari said quite flatly, "It would not have changed anything but your emotional state, which should remain flat in order to avoid the synchronization rating from falling. Ritsuko should not have told you that."
"She didn't," Shinji retorted hotly.
"I will speak with Fuyutsuki about his charge's actions then," Gendo said. "If it can make you feel better, know that it was no accident. Your mother willingly went inside the Evangelion," Gendo's voice grew heated for a brief instant, barely caught with the speed the car was going at. "I have yet to forgive her for this."
"It doesn't make this any better."
"I know," Gendo said. "I know."
Silence fell as Shinji closed the cellphone and then sourly looked out at the passing by city of Tokyo-Three. His cellphone left to linger in his left hand, he did not say another word even as Asuka kept driving.
"You know what?" Asuka said offhandedly. "You look like you need a stiff drink, and my house's filled with stiff drinks," she tried to smile, but Shinji only briefly glanced her way. "No strings attached," Asuka added, a tone of desperation to her voice. "Just...if you want to talk about it with someone who understands-"
"Vodka?"
"Five different kinds, and even a couple of bottles of Absinthe," Asuka answered quite quickly. "If you feel like you want to be a pirate, I also have Rum-"
"Beer?"
"By the score," Asuka added quite cheerfully. "Wine too."
Shinji didn't say anything else.
This silence, for Asuka, meant yes.
