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New Century 2318 [NGE]

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Chapter 9
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    • Chapter 9:

    Natsu Fast​



    After dinner, I would have expected the night to end on a kiss. I was certainly enthusiastic about the idea and when it happened I couldn't have imagined it better than it was.

    But I found that that was not the end of the night, just the end of the beginning. The restaurant took us only an hour, and as he'd told me, there was a lot of time before the sunrise and a lot for us to do, together.

    Dinner, then arcade, then a walk through the park. The latter being a pretext for showing me 'where it all began.'

    The night air was cooler than the daytime, but warmer than I was used to. I was thankful to be wearing such a light dress and thin leggings. It breathed, and so the humidity didn't kill me.

    Given the chance, I'd have killed the humidity.

    The skating equipment near the far end of the forested park was as I imagined such things to be, based on my own limited experience with the hobby. Completely unlike the fully enclosed and often completely spherical hyperballing arenas, this was more open-air and had ramps and what looked like empty concrete swimming pools.

    Not that we'd had any of those on Ganymede, we still had pictures.

    "What are we doing here? Are you going to show off for me?" I asked with a laugh. It was a good enough night that I could suffer through it, if that was his plan.

    "I wanted to share something with you. This is where I first started out. Before I played the game, before I even thought about it, I learned how to use a skate rig here." He explained as he drew closer.

    I nodded along with his story. I was happy for him that he had a place with good memories attached to it, but I wasn't entirely sure what all we could do with a skate park while we were in dress shoes.

    He put his arm around me and pulled me in, I leaned up on tip-toe and his lips met mine for the second time. It was something I could get used to; romance and appreciation.

    All too soon, he broke away. "Do you trust me? There's something I'd like to try, with you."

    I didn't have the words, it was all so sudden, but then... well I'd come along, hadn't I? I wanted... whatever this was. I nodded and gave him a smile.

    His right hand slipped past the hem of my dress, around my leg, and he reached all the way to the small of my back. I briefly considered the idea that I'd just given him permission to grope me in public and my face was bright enough to glow, were anyone watching.

    Instead, I felt the gentlest pinching sensation against my skin and then the pressure of what felt like metal fingers creeping down my thighs, my calves, and finally my feet. The metal pressed against my skin, but not uncomfortably so. Other fingers of metal seemed to wrap around my legs and further secure themselves.

    "What--"

    "It's a training rig," He explained as his hand left my dress. "Normally we would use it as a stability assist skate-rig to get someone into the sport. People who come down from low-g sometimes use them to... well, it's not going to make you stronger, but you won't get tired as easily. And when you attach the magnetically coupled wheels..." He trailed off with a grin.

    I cocked my head at him, but he kept grinning. His hand moved, I heard two distinctly metallic 'clunk' sounds at my feet and looked down in time to see two metal discs the size of dinner plates 'couple' themselves to my ankles.

    My feet left the ground and my arms started wind-milling on instinct to try to re-balance so that I didn't fall down. I needn't have bothered, he reached out and grabbed me by the waist to steady me. "What the hell, Touji!"

    "Oh come on, it'll be fun! You said you trusted me right? Just give yourself a minute to adjust. It's tied to the angle of your foot. Lean forward for forward, lean backwards to go backwards. Give yourself a chance to learn, the wheels will do their best to stay under you so you don't fall down, okay?"

    His tone was soft, caring. Maybe understanding.

    "Fine, fine..." I muttered as he relaxed his grip on me. My legs felt like they wanted to shoot apart and drop me straight to the ground but, it was as he said; the wheels wanted to stay under me. If I didn't fight them, they would stay there.

    Didn't stop my legs from shaking.

    "The rig will work under your clothes too, so nobody has to know it's there. If you don't attach the wheels it'll just keep you from getting tired out while you get used to gravity." He explained as he attached a set of wheels to his own shoes. Apparently he was wearing a similar rig even though I told him to leave the hyperballing stuff at home.

    "Still being a power tool, eh Touji?" I joked as I experimented with rolling backwards and forwards without falling down.

    Other than the fact that my body was screaming at me the entire time that I was going to fall down and die it was actually kind of enjoyable. I could feel the rig supporting some of my weight, it was almost like being back in space.

    "The smile on your face tells me that you like it when I'm being a 'power tool', Miss Natsu." And there was that roguish grin again.

    I could feel the smile on my face, so there was no denying his point. I switched the angles of my feet and spun around in place and my dress flared out a bit. Maybe it was fun. "Okay, that's fair. You may have a point Mister Suzuhara." I answered back in mock-formality.

    He rolled close to me and put his hand on my waist again. "You know, I've never learned to dance. At least, not like people usually do. I feel like what I can do on wheels is the way I express myself, you know? Maybe that's my kind of dancing."

    He lifted me and spun around in place before setting me back down and leaning in for another quick kiss. It was something I was definitely okay with more of. "What are you trying to say, exactly?" I asked with a decidedly satisfied smile.

    "I'm asking, would you like to dance?"

    "I would love to."

    And so he took me in his arms again, and we danced, the way that he danced, through the park. We spun and twirled and glided through the deserted streets, through the street lights and then through the star lights.

    In the end, as the sun came up and shone through the windows of his apartment, he finally did get to take my leggings off.

    And we danced.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 10
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 10:

    rwx​



    It was past noon before I passed the threshold to his front door and even by then I was still on top of the world. A spring in my step to a skip, one, two, three, down the sidewalk. Better than I could have hoped for and more than I could have asked, it was in a word: amazing.

    I needed some real sleep and a change of clothes and a long hot bath but messed up hair and dirty clothes could wait in the face of two earbuds, one playlist, and metal fingers wrapped around my legs powerful enough to let me dance.

    Solo, vertical, down the sidewalk.

    So I stood out, I didn't conform? I saved this city, that was enough to grant me whatever I wanted, if what I wanted was to press play and walk to the sound of my own drum, could they stop me?

    They could not.

    I felt weightless, the heady feeling of freedom that he'd given me, both of the soul and the body. I could walk and step and run and jump and dance and gravity couldn't pull me down. Obligation couldn't dampen my mood.

    I'd have to apologize to Rei, but she wasn't getting her dress back. It had stayed on at first, and then it hadn't. Then it had, and then... she would be compensated, but I was going to keep it. It might have been a party-foul, but the night had gotten away from me in all of the right ways and she would just have to deal with the consequences of my actions.

    It was selfish but I felt entitled to moments of selfishness, at least once in a while. On days like today.

    Misato was sure to be angry with me. I hadn't told her I'd be out all night, but then I hadn't planned for it. Spending the whole night with some boy, until dawn? It was nothing I'd ever done before but as firsts went it definitely could have been worse.

    I would see him again, and again, and again, for as long as he'd have me. And if he didn't ask me out? I'd have to ask him.

    The music cut out abruptly and a call came in right after. I knew who it was, because there was no one else it could be, looking for me. She could rain on my parade today, just like she had yesterday. But that steam had been worked off, so she was dealing with a different--

    "Ikari, this is Ayanami. Captain Katsuragi instructed me to inform you that there will be testing in one hour at headquarters."

    It was not who I expected. Rei was the second most pleasant surprise the phone call could have been, right behind Touji asking me to come back over--

    "Thanks for the message, Rei. How is the... temperature over there right now?" I ventured with the expectation that I'd get a bad answer. It helped to have realistic expectations.

    "About yesterday? The captain is still pissed off. Not as much as before. I am confident you will survive the encounter."

    Something about the way she delivered the news made the corner of my mouth pull up, just a little, despite the contents of said news. "Thank you, Rei."

    "Ikari... Did the dress provide you with... what you were looking for?" Her voice was not as passive this time, though I couldn't really put my finger on what was different about it. Her intention was clear enough, however.

    "It did. I'll tell you about it later, after the tests."

    "That will be acceptable."


    ***​


    Testing. It could have been, combat, compatibility, endurance, all of those possibilities crossed my mind. The reality that I faced ended up falling at some point along a straight line between 'patience' and 'sanity.' It was the fifth consecutive hour of synchronization that sealed the deal on that.

    "Misato, how much longer?" I asked, though it felt like I was screaming into the void for all the good it did.

    "As long as it takes," she answered, using the same words she'd used the last five times I'd asked.

    That was fine. I was just bored out of my mind and developing a headache while sitting in the cockpit of the most destructive force in the city, if not on the planet. But as long as it takes was a fine answer. I'd had a great night, after all. I was sore, but it was the good kind and if I thought about that instead, it wasn't so bad.

    Except when it was.

    I looked to my left, the other comm window; Rei Ayanami.

    "Hey Rei."

    "Yes?"

    "I spy something... blue."

    "The wall."

    "No."

    "My hair."

    "Yes."

    That hadn't taken long. I drummed out a beat on the control sticks with my fingertips and... waited. Sat back in the seat and cycled through readouts that fed me telemetry I didn't care about and probably never would.

    I sighed, again looked to the left. "Hey Rei."

    Our eyes met, she said nothing. Her lips didn't move, her face didn't show any sign of reaction at all. I studied her for any sign at all that she'd heard me and... I found none. Just blue hair, red eyes, and white plugsuit.

    She wasn't even blinking.

    But then I did.

    "I win."

    I thought I might have detected a smile on her face, or at least what passed for a smile from Rei. I'd seen it before, or at least I thought I had. I'd satisfied her at my own expense, at least. I'd have smiled in her position.

    I supposed that after five straight hours of it even her composure would break a little.

    And it was boring again. I scrolled the view options using the trackball in the left control stick. The options were numerous; I could switch between normal, ultraviolet, infrared, sonar, radar, lidar. There were zoom levels and recording options.

    I rolled the cursor over to 'magnification' and zoomed in on the control room.

    Misato was there, looking as agitated as she had the previous day. Her purple hair was frizzy. She hadn't been keeping herself up. Was it really that bad?

    The blonde, Akagi, was with her. To their left was Maya, the girl who'd stabbed me in the brain. Between the three of them I was certain they were getting useful data on whatever this test was meant for.

    At least, I hoped so. If they weren't, what the hell was the point?

    "Natsu? How are you feeling? It looks like your sync ratio is climbing over the normal baseline we're used to." It was Maya, her voice was calm, or at least it seemed that way.

    "I feel bored. Is that alright?" I answered with a shrug.

    "Yeah it's fine. It's good to see this improvement, I was just trying to see if there might be a reason."

    I opened my mouth to answer and sound failed to come out. My right arm locked up, muscles fighting each other as I clenched involuntarily onto the control stick. Jaw locked, back spasming. Color drained out of the world into a fuzzy gray-scale as my eyes darted between the people in the control room.

    The electric spike feeling in my brain came back. Misato disappeared, replaced by a much shorter, much younger girl. Akagi looked younger, with dark hair. I couldn't hear them, but they didn't seem to be talking anyway.

    My body felt like fire, I couldn't relax my muscles, they all felt like they were firing off on their own, fighting me while everyone around me was replaced with some kind of impostor, someone similar but not quite the same, not quite right.

    The Evangelion shook around me, then the viewers shut down, one by one. The lights dropped, then flashed back on, but the color was still gone from the world. A reflection looked back at me during the reboot, but it wasn't mine.

    A slimmer face, different hair. I recognized her but I wasn't entirely sure how, or as who. She was wearing a plugsuit, but not one I'd ever seen before. It looked, somehow, more elaborate. More primitive.

    No, it wasn't a plug suit. Something about calling it that felt wrong. It wasn't a plugsuit, because there wasn't a plug, was there? No, it was a dive suit.

    The colors snapped back into my vision, Unit Zero's face occupied the entirety of my forward viewing field. A thick trail of red blended into the LCL in front of my face. Nosebleed?

    "Pilot Ikari please respond!"

    I jerked my head to the left, Rei was yelling at me. I hadn't heard that before, and it gave me a more full understanding of what her voice actually sounded like. It was... beautiful, familiar. Why?

    "I'm... I'm here. Felt like... like the implant rejection?" I couldn't... not quite exactly find the words I needed. I had to hunt for them. Dive suit? Contact with what?

    I twisted my head to the side and felt my neck pop. Thoughts were aligning themselves in front of me again, words planned out ready to speak and--

    "Control restored, ejecting entry plug immediately, rescue crews stand by." Maya sounded panicked this time.

    My stomach felt like it dropped into my feet and the plug went dark as I was hauled upwards and backwards. Like a light-switch flipped off I was myself, and only myself, all at once.

    I heard the high speed pumps kick on behind me and the LCL drained faster than I thought possible, fast enough that my ears popped painfully. A moment later light poured into the plug as the whole top section lifted free. The crane arm dropped in, grabbed my chair, and pulled me up into the room above the cage.

    A lungful of LCL heaved out of my mouth and onto the floor when I rolled to the side. Fresh clean stale air.

    A flash of grey-scale when I looked at the floor, and suddenly it was gone, I was hanging over the core of an Angel, staring down into infinity. I felt my arms locking up again, and then everything had color again.

    A pool of blood sat in the puddle of LCL I'd ejected and my hand came away from my face, white glove stained red.

    "Natsu!" The voice was a kinder shade of Misato, concerned. Nothing like her father.

    What?

    The room seemed to spin backwards around me and I felt myself falling forward off the control seat. Slim but strong arms caught me and I looked up into a mess of purple hair. A shoulder was under my chin. She was holding me, but why?

    "What... is Eva?" I heard myself ask. I didn't know exactly why, of all the things I could have said at that moment that those were the words I had chosen.

    But there were a lot of things that I didn't know. There were some things I shouldn't know, couldn't know, and did.

    I knew that her father died on the day of the second impact.

    And I knew that mine had watched.
     
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    • True!

    But now I find myself wondering. Clearly, Rei's actions, Misato's actions, they state that the goal of the exercise was not to get Yui's mind into Natsu's body. We know Misato was frazzled about something; maybe Natsu not coming home that night, maybe the media shitstorm about Natsu. Maybe she doesn't know what the purpose of the long test was.

    Maybe Gendo does.
     
    Jackie said:
    I would see him again, and again, and again, for as long as he'd have me. And if he didn't ask me out? I'd have to ask him.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Someone's getting in awful deep really fast...
    Jackie said:
    "Hey Rei."

    "Yes?"

    "I spy something... blue."

    "The wall."

    "No."

    "My hair."

    "Yes."
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Creative geniuses, the pair of you.
    Jackie said:
    There were some things I shouldn't know, couldn't know, and did.

    I knew that her father died on the day of the second impact.

    And I knew that mine had watched.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Someone just bumped brains with Yui...
     
    Chapter 11
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    • Chapter 11:

    Feeling; Alive​


    Two weeks, five days, sixteen hours, forty seven minutes. I'd been out of a hospital bed for that long and I'd kept away from all things Evangelion and my phone had stayed off. I had no doubt she could have found me if she wanted to, the phone was just a symbolic gesture.

    I wasn't ready to come back and I'd turn it back on when I was. They clearly hadn't needed me because the door hadn't been kicked in by men in black.

    It was a waste of time, but I had plenty of time to waste. Touji had been kind to me, and then he'd been kind again when he let me stay without asking why. It was an imposition on his home, on his roommate, but he still let me stay.

    As he had shown me kindness, I had shown it to him in kind. As we had that first night together, every night thereafter. I could have done better, should have done better, but it was easier to lose myself in the indulgences of food and drink and sex.

    To her credit, at least, Misato had not made good on her declaration that Touji worked for her now, though for how long that would remain true I did not know. It may have been meant as an apology, or it may have been meant as something else.

    Maybe she was done with me, and wouldn't that be a treat? Flawed girl with the flawed brain who can't not go crazy when she sits in the giant robot, can't stop seeing shit that isn't there. Do it once, do it twice, do it never again and let the world keep turning.

    It felt easy to understand why Misato was the way she was. I'd been wearing the same bra for the last four days, same underwear for the last three. Hadn't worn pants in the last week when a t-shirt that wasn't even mine was long enough to do the job.

    Crashing and burning was easy. Hiding was easy. Putting my thoughts in the right order to figure out what the hell I'd been looking at was hard and I didn't want to do it. Even if there was some nagging feeling deep in my soul that told me that there was something to it, something to be found, I didn't want it.

    But I had been overstaying my welcome. If Touji wasn't going to say it, his roommate Aida was. Subtle things. Offering to take me to wash my clothes. Asking about me about my apartment. Rei had come up early on, but less so when it became obvious I didn't want to talk about her with him.

    When his face started showing disgust instead of embarrassment at my state of dress.

    I should have gone home, but late at night when I had a warm arm wrapped around me instead of the sterile touch of bed-sheets it became worthwhile because I could really sleep. To feel loved and wanted and desired was the greatest high of all, it was a drug I couldn't do without.

    At two weeks, five days, seventeen hours, and nine minutes my phone chirped from the table. Once at first, and then an insistent repeating tone, each note escalating above the previous. It had turned on, come out of sleep mode. They did that sometimes. I'd just have to turn it off again.

    I rolled off of the couch and crawled on my hands and knees to the coffee table because that was easier than trying to stand up and I didn't really feel like I needed the dignity of not crawling like an animal anyway.

    The first attempt at grabbing the phone resulted in a hand full of nothing. The alcohol had wrecked my coordination. I'd learned many a thing about handovers in the last two weeks.

    The second attempt fared better, I'd knocked the phone off the table and had it land screen-up in front of my face on the floor. Just one message: 'Have you looked at the sky lately?'

    Unknown sender.

    Well, I could use the fresh air.

    I pushed myself up off the floor and peeled the over-sized shirt off and dropped it into the floor in a pile with the rest of the clothes that I still hadn't washed. I'd been showering, of course, so given had often the underwear I was wearing was not on my body, they were probably serviceable. I could 'freshen up' later.

    On the counter at the corner of the island that divided the kitchen from the living room I saw a sealed dry-cleaning package that seemed out of place. It hadn't been there when I'd gone to sleep. When I picked it up I found the note attached on a piece of sticky paper; 'Something nice, for when you're feeling up to it.'

    I shrugged and tore the corner off the opaque foam wrapper and pulled out the bundle of fabric within. The blue dress, cleaned and fresh. It was just as well, I thought it looked good on me. Putting it on was over in seconds, and I already felt a little more human afterwards.

    My hair was... manageable. I could worry about it later. I grabbed the phone off the counter and walked out through the front entryway barefoot. Just had to go outside and get some air, look at the sky, right? Humor whoever sent the message.

    The pavement was warm under my feet and the wind stirred my dress, but not enough to lift it. The breeze felt good through my hair. I hadn't been outside in... well over two weeks. Touji had brought everything we'd needed and I'd slept or entwined myself with him for most of that time.

    I was alone, which didn't seem too outside of normal for the middle of a work day.

    The wind picked up and I raised my hand to my eyes to block out the sun so that I could look up into the endless blue. The temperature felt like it kept dropping as the sky darkened. Mid-day that shouldn't have happened, should it?

    I wasn't entirely an expert on planets that had weather, but it still didn't seem appropriate. Did that unknown sender know something was going to happen?

    I heard a crack-hiss sound in the distance, then an explosion, and then the wind kicked up even harder, blowing my hair and my dress back. It almost felt like I was going to blow away.

    Over the horizon an enormous blue octahedron rose into the sky, over the city. Dozens of smoke trails lead towards it; rockets I had to imagine. That crack-hiss sound returned as rapidly cycling beams of light streaked out started to destroying the weapons before they could hit.

    The surviving rocket slammed into an AT field and did no damage at all.

    But the truth was, I wasn't afraid. Standing my ground in a little blue dress staring down a space monster that was attacking my city, it was nothing to what I'd already done, wasn't it? I fell from space, I climbed into Evangelion. I killed two of this one's friends already.

    The things rolling around in my mind, the implants driven into my brain, the hallucinations and the uncertainty. Those things filled me with dread, they made me want to run off into the arms of my first love and never come back but this?

    I'd seen them bleed. If they can bleed, they can die. If I can kill them, I'm not going to be afraid of them. They're not the abyss of unknown within my own mind, so there were always worse things to be afraid of. There were things to fear more than death.

    Given the choice, Evangelion was more terrifying than what it had to battle.

    The alarms sounded, maybe too late to save everyone, and the buildings in the core of the city started to draw down into the ground. Full defensive mode, this one was definitely powerful enough to justify it. There was only one thing I could do, it was as true now as it had been the day I'd fallen from space.

    It was easy to quit when there wasn't a battle to be fought, it was something else to quit when the whole city was staring down the barrel of a loaded gun. Faced with what could be my own monumental failure in the flesh, I picked up the phone.

    It was as Aoba had told me the first time I'd ever set foot in an entry plug. I'd learned why I'd been born. Maybe it wasn't specifically to pilot Evangelion, but to be a shield and a spear. I wasn't and had never been physically imposing, always the smallest kid my age.

    But it was coming down to Earth and being given the power that Evangelion granted me that made me realize that I wasn't the kind of person who could sit by and let people die. Even though Rei could do it, I couldn't really bring myself to let her do it alone.

    I had to fight, not because I was the only one who could, but just because I could.

    But in the end, I was more afraid of letting the Angel win than I was of getting back into Unit One.

    The click on the other end of the call told me it had been answered. "I'm ready to come back."
     
    Last edited:
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    • I'm still kind of wondering what Misato's thoughts are. Gendo there's a few obvious guesses, but not sure about Misato.
     
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