The Second Coming [NGE]

[Muphrid]

21. A Human Work

With our failure, Ho Chi Minh City fell.

A few hours after the battle, Misato assembled the control room personnel in the briefing hall—a room with stadium seating, a projector, and whiteboards. The mood in the briefing hall wasn't great. Our early morning wakeup call was starting to take its toll, and rumors were going around about the overall situation elsewhere. The Americans were on the ropes. South America had been cut in half already, with no possibility of relief from their northern neighbors. The Germans were concentrating on mostly on the Mid-East, much to the consternation of the Russians and a coalition of African and Western European states, but they had managed to kill an Angel outside Istanbul. That was a start.

Still, our defenses were being tested all over the world. This was, our people believed, a deliberate strategy on the part of the enemy. We learned this from none other than Keel Lorenz himself. Resting comfortably in his cell, Lorenz had been given various sets of real and fabricated intelligence. Asked to assess each one individually, he gave insights into what he thought the enemy was trying to do. For our situation, he said,

"In this scenario, she's patient," he said. "You see what she's doing, don't you? She's taken her Angels away from your seats of power—away from Germany, Japan, and America. She knows that civilization will collapse if enough of mankind is neutralized." He tapped excitedly on a map. "This is not like before Third Impact, you see? There is no fortress city guarding the Angels' goal. You can't make them come to you. She will stave you and suffocate you, even if it takes years to see it through."

As much as I hated to admit it, Lorenz was useful to us. If the price of his analysis was a few dozen copies of Arthur C. Clarke books, it was well worth it.

Still, Lorenz may have given us an idea of the enemy's strategy, but we were still no closer to defeating it. The Americans and Germans had different ideas on that matter. The Americans were looking to expand Project Noah, hoping to rain justice from above, but it remained to be seen how effective the tungsten rods would be against each Angel, and their planes and spaceships weren't guaranteed to be safe from the flying, spinning creatures that had come as well. The Germans, on the other hand, wanted to ramp up the use of N2 weapons against the Angels. That was fine as long as the Angels were caught outside of major population centers, but dissolving whole cities was part of their strategy. Once they were in position, bombarding them with an entire N2 stockpile would've been like burning down your own house to keep criminals out.

At that point, the discussion in the briefing turned to our efforts. "What do we have, to turn the tide of this war?" asked Hyuga. "To that, I turn the floor over to research and development. Captain Ibuki?"

Maya came up from the second row and limped to the podium—a reminder of the injury she'd sustained body-doubling for me. She plopped a folder full of papers and notes on the podium.

"Sorry," she said, flipping through the stack of documents. "Let's see—ah, here we are."

She pressed on a remote, and the slide turned to a list of projects.

"We have a few ideas we've been working on," she said. "The Cyclops Maneuver was the most mature, but that's already been used in combat, so I won't discuss that for now.

"Multiple Soul Confinement might allow us to share the burden of piloting between several simultaneous pilots, improving mental stability but requiring increased coordination. Still, if it allows us to run the Eva at increased plug depth or synch ratio, we could see tangible increases in combat effectiveness. There would, however, be a significant risk of mental cross-contamination between the pilots.

"But the most battle-ready technology we've yet to implement is the puncture engine. Asuka?"

Asuka, sitting beside me, was hunched over a laptop. She pounded at her keyboard for a few climactic keystrokes, grinning when she was done. "You should have it now, Maya!" she said, beaming.

Maya pored over the computer at the podium for a few seconds, peering at the screen. She dragged a few charts and plots onto the projector image, brushed some hair out of her eyes, and went on.

"Asuka's just given me some estimates of effectiveness of the puncture engine, based on our latest models. The puncture engine neutralizes an Angel's AT field. These plots show how much power must be diverted from the Eva's S2 engine to neutralize an AT field of the given strength to less than 1% effectiveness. Even for the Angels we encountered today, the required power output is well within the Eva's operating budget, which is…" She highlighted a red line at the far right of the plot. "Right here."

Misato cleared her throat. "Models are all well and good, Ibuki, but what do you need to make this model reality?"

Maya opened her mouth to answer, but Asuka cut her off.

"Test pilots," said Asuka. "Take a few hours from the backups' schedules—or even Nozomi's—and give us the data we need to make the prototype into a production weapon."

Misato looked to Maya, who nodded in agreement. "There's no substitute for real human beings working with these things," said Maya.

At that, Misato and Hyuga exchanged a glance, with Hyuga shrugging. Misato flipped through some papers before saying,

"All right, make it happen. Hyuga will make the pilots' schedule work for it."

Asuka clapped her hands together, grinning. "You're making a good choice, Misato. You're right to put your faith in me to save the world."

At that, Misato raised both eyebrows. "I thought you said you don't like to gloat until after you win."

"This is a win," said Asuka. "The victory over the Angels is just a formality at this point."

Shaking her head knowingly, Misato turned her attention to the rest of the presentation. "Make that happen," she said, "and I'll buy you two steak dinners."

The briefing went on, of course, with other base officers presenting ideas for improvements. Aoba went into detail about modifications to the Eva launch system, as well as plans for bases in other countries to more effectively deter the enemy away from Japan.

But Asuka didn't listen to a word of that, I think. She just went back to typing furiously on her laptop, generating plots and putting them aside like a manic artist in an opium den.



The best pilot to test any kind of Eva technology was Nozomi, of course.

Ayanami had transported Unit-14 back to Japan—back to the top of the cage elevator, actually—in the blink of an eye, so by the time we were done with the briefing, Nozomi was safe and sound, no doubt.

Asuka meant to go fetch Nozomi after the meeting, but I told her not to. "You have work to do," I said. "There's a test to prepare, isn't there?"

"You'll bring her over if she's up to it?" asked Asuka.

"Yeah, I, uh—" I looked aside. "I want to see how she's doing."

Asuka raised an eyebrow, but she didn't comment on it. "All right, see you soon." She gave me a peck on the cheek and ran. "Maya, wait up!" She chased down Maya, and the two engaged in a walking conversation about test parameters, leaving me to fetch our pilot.

I went alone to do this, putting the scientists and soldiers behind me. They all had business to attend to. It was only natural I do this small job. I only had a few reports and papers to review in my office.

No, you see, most people on the base had to be there and had to keep working on their responsibilities. Construction staff checked the buildings' interiors and the rock faces outside every hour of every day. If the mountain on top of us weakened, they'd be the first to let us know. Communications staff maintained the connections to the city and SDF networks. Without them, we would've been blind and deaf.

So you see, most people on the base were essential. The base—and its mission—couldn't function without them.

As I made my way to on-base housing, I was certainly aware of that: a maintenance worker was visible through one of the hallway windows. He seemed to be inspecting the springs at the foot of one of the other buildings. These were no cheap springs either, mind you: if they could support a four-story building, they were nothing you'd want breaking in your face.

Yet there the man was, with only a hard hat and goggles for protection, as he shined a blacklight on the spring to look for metal fatigue.

And I stood there, for a while, watching him through a distant window. I looked up at the dull, inert light of the fluorescent tubes overhead. I put my hands in front of them, seeing how the pale white light reflected off equally pale skin.

And I went on.

Nozomi's quarters were in the same building of base housing as mine, but it was a few floors down. All the pilot candidates had quarters there, but all except for Nozomi's were shared, and she only got her private room just a few days before the Black Moon's arrival.

Let's just say you don't want your main pilot up for sixteen hours at a time just to have to share a room with someone else when they're off the clock.

But in the end, Nozomi's door was just another dark-blue door along a row of two dozen others, standing out only for the contrast against the cream-colored pipes and walls. If you thought it'd be dark inside a mountain, you'd be wrong. SDF kept things too bright, too inert, too white. That was the sickly existence we coped with day after day—Nozomi and I both.

I knocked on her door, and a voice came through faintly to me.

"Hey, look, somebody's here," she said.

A pause.

"Okay, whatever."

The door opened, and Nozomi gave me a short smile and a nod. She jerked her head inside, all the while holding a phone handset to her ear and carrying the base—cords and all—back to her nightstand. She plopped back down on her bed, tethered to the phone, while I took a seat at desk.

"Yeah, it's Ikari," she said. "You wanna say hi?" She pressed the earpiece to her shoulder and looked at me. "Hikari says hi. Actually she says a lot of things, but most of them are for me, whether I want them or not, you know?"

I laughed. "Say hello for me—and for Asuka, too."

Nozomi put the phone back to her ear. "Ikari says hi back, and for Soryu, too." A pause. "No, I don't know what it's about. Maybe he's come to make a woman out of me."

I snorted. I shook my head and mouthed no. No, no, no!

But Nozomi was having none of it. She grinned wickedly and played with a pencil in her free hand as she spoke.

"I mean, he knocked on the door, I invited him into my room, and he accepted. What do you think is going on, Hikari?"

Horaki's voice was sharp enough I could hear it through the earpiece. "Are you trying to get me off the phone, Nozomi?"

Nozomi thought for a second, still twirling her pencil in her hand.

"Nope," she deadpanned.

"Honestly…" The rest of Hoarki's half of the conversation was too muffled for me to hear, but her tone was by no means uncertain. I could easily imagine her lecturing Nozomi with that voice, saying that Nozomi should bathe with ice to relieve soreness, take two pills at night to help sleep, and the like.

And Nozomi, for her part, nodded and looked aside while she listened.

I gave the two some privacy, or at least as much as I could by not paying attention—effective privacy, even if I didn't want to leave the room. My eyes wandered the room for a bit, and I took in the scene. Nozomi had left her sketchpad on the desk, where I sat. I glanced over the latest sketch—a cityscape of Ho Chi Minh City, the capital on a forested river delta—but I didn't touch any of the pages.

The rest of the room was spartan, like Asuka's and mine, with a wardrobe of cheap plastic drawers, gray and white in color. One drawer had been left a couple centimeters open, and I caught sight of a blue top that had been folded not-so-neatly inside, along with other clothes. The drawer was full, as were the others. Two suitcases lay beyond the bed, at the base of the closet. They were open but empty. Bathroom amenities, too, were all in position and used: a toothbrush, a handful of hair bands, a box of tampons. At that, I only hoped we would not be there long enough to go through that whole box.

But it was possible.

It was possible we'd be there for months, if not longer, and Nozomi?

She was every bit prepared for that.

"Yeah, it's gonna be fine, okay?" Nozomi told her sister on the phone. "It's gonna be fine, so I'll talk to you later, Hikari, okay? Okay, bye."

She put the phone on its base and sighed. She sat up on the bed, put her face in her hands, and shook her head for a few moments. Her hair was a little less than perfect: her scrunchie was loose and lopsided, leaving her ponytail out of shape, but she didn't bother to adjust it. She just sat there with her face in her hands, and she asked, with a muffled voice,

"I'm not needed, am I?"

"To pilot?" I said. "No."

"Good." She stretched her arms out, wincing. "Feels like I got run over by a steamroller. Is it always this bad?"

"It can be."

"That's not encouraging."

"You'd hate it more if I lied."

She huffed at that, smiling weakly. "Yeah," she said. "Yeah, I would." She fell back in bed and bounced a little off the mattress. She stared at the ceiling. "As long as it's not today, I'll be good. I think." She cast an eye to me. "Can you get my pad?"

I laughed at that, and I handed over the drawings. "Some things you don't take a break from, do you?"

"What else am I gonna do?" She propped a pillow up against the headboard and sat with the sketchpad on her legs. "Sit around and stare at the ceiling all day?"

I shrugged. "It worked for me, once upon a time."

"Hm, I dunno if I want to end up in your position, Ikari," she said, twirling her pencil in her fingers as she eyed her pad.

"Why's that?"

"If I end up having to mentor another kid to pilot one of these things, I think the world will have had its fill of Eva and Angels."

"I already have," I said, looking aside. "What are we supposed to do with one Eva against two Angel?"

"Get our asses handed to us, I think," she said with a sigh. "But after that—I dunno, I should've broken out of that wormy Angel's grasp without needing to go full-on berserk. That does a wonder on a girl's head; don't wanna be doing that lightly." She glanced up from her pad, even as she put down a few strokes in charcoal pencil. "Maybe you wanna look at the video later and see if you think so, too?"

"Yeah, I think I will," I said, but to tell the truth, my mind was far from film review sessions of combat footage. No, I watched Nozomi draw, and I'll tell you this: her movements didn't betray the soreness in her muscles and joints. There wasn't just a girl in front of me: there was an artist. Her spirit and will to capture the world in her sketchpad was still there. Piloting Eva hadn't taken a gram of that spirit out of her. Her scrutinizing eye was as keen as ever, and her pencil strokes were meticulous.

"What?" she said, the corners of her lips curling up. "Something funny?"

"Not funny," I said, chuckling to myself. "Not funny so much as—" I cast my eyes to the ceiling for a moment. "You're doing okay, aren't you, Nozomi?"

"Hah, I'm glad somebody thinks so," she said, glancing at the phone. "You wanna tell Hikari that?"

"She's looking out for you."

"Trust me: I know it. But no amount of me telling her I'm safe and gonna be fine is gonna help it."

"Do you need me to chat with her? Seriously—about this?"

Nozomi lowered her sketchpad for a moment. She pursed her lips and tapped her pencil on the sketchpad's binding.

"No," she said after a moment's contemplation. "It's not gonna do any good, you know?" She went back to sketching. "So don't worry about it. It's not Hikari's fault, after all."

"Things are what they are," I said, nodding.

Nozomi's eyes flickered to me and then away, but she said nothing more on the matter. "So, Ikari."

"Hm?"

"Isn't this a bit of a long break for you?"

I flinched, and I shifted my weight in the flimsy plastic chair. "What do you mean?"

"Is this a social call, or is something up?"

"Oh, it's—it's uh—"

At that, she put the pad down altogether and raised both eyebrows. "Ikari."

I winced, looking aside. "I guess—I guess you could say it's just an old pilot being a worrywart in his own way, hm? I, uh—I just wanted to see if you were doing all right, but here you are, handling things—" I scratched the back of my head and shrugged. "Doesn't leave much for me to do, really, does it?"

Nozomi rolled her eyes. "Really? You're embarrassed about that?"

"Well, I—"

Shaking her head, Nozomi picked up her sketchpad again. "You've gotta stop worrying about this stuff, Ikari. If not for you, I'd still be on the phone with Hikari right now. So just in that, you're helping me out. Never mind that when I trained with the captain, it was all just—it wasn't fun, you know? I mean—I'm not saying piloting Eva is fun. It's just that guy's a little too clinical. You and me—we're actually a team."

I bowed my head. "I'm glad you think so."

"Why? I'm not letting you down, am I?"

"What?" I waved my hands frantically. "No—I—what did I say—?"

She cocked her head and raised her eyebrows. "Am I, Ikari?"

"No," I said, smiling to myself.

"Good. That matters to me, too, you know. I just try not to freak out about it, right?"

"Right," I said. "Thanks, Nozomi."

"Of course." She turned her sketchpad around and showed me a new sketch—one with a boy sitting at a cheap plastic desk, and if I must say, he looked like a nervous wreck and a fool. Thankfully, the artist didn't seem to hold this against him. "Ikari," she said, "even if we lose our next battle, I wanna see you looking like you just hit a home run in the Japan Series."

"You're into sports, too?"

"Nope!" she said with a shrug, and she went back to sketching. "So, if home runs are bad, then let's just come up with something else, okay?"

I laughed at that. "We'd be lost without you, Nozomi."

"You think so? That's…kinda worrying."

"Well, maybe I would be then, just a little." I rose from the uncomfortable seat. "I'm glad you're hanging in there."

She smiled briefly. "Finally gotta get back to work, huh?"

"Ye—yeah," I said. "Misato just held a briefing. Asuka has an idea, an experiment. I dunno how it's going to pan out."

"If it helps us win, I'm all for it. Anything I can help with?"

I froze in the doorway. I looked back at her, but she wasn't watching me. She closed her eyes and stretched her arms again, wincing with pain and soreness. Then, she did the same for her legs: she leaned all the way forward, straining herself to touch the tips of her toes.

She let out an exhausted breath after that, and only then did our eyes meet again. "Ikari?" she said.

"Oh, sorry," I said, bowing my head. "No, nothing you're needed for. I think we've got a handle on it, but I'll let you know." I paused. "Are you going to sleep—eventually?"

"Maybe," she said, shrugging again, albeit with a more pained expression. "See ya, Ikari."

"Take care, Nozomi," I said with a nod.

And I left her at that.

I turned a corner and went up a floor, and I picked up one of the wall-mounted phones.

"Hi, Asuka?" I said. "It's me. Nozomi isn't feeling too well. I think we should get a substitute—or actually…"

"Actually what now?" she asked.

"Instead of bothering another backup, is there something an old, washed-up pilot can do?"

 

[Muphrid]

Author's Notes: Introduction and Background

Welcome to The Second Coming author's notes series. This is a topical series of notes with a some focus on the writing process, inspirations, and techniques, along with background material and thoughts on the story. I hope that sharing this information fosters dialogue and discussion about the piece, as well as about the craft of writing fiction.

We'll go into three areas of focus: worldbuilding, setting, and mythology; narrative techniques and structure; and character development, arcs, and themes.

But for now, let us begin with background: how did this story come to be?



For the answer to that, we need to go back to "Before and After." That was my first Evangelion piece, something that was deliberately character focused compared to what I was writing at the time—a more action- and worldbuilding-focused Ranma 1/2 piece. "Before and After" expands on Rei's character throughout the canon series. At the time, I felt dissatisfied with how much Rei faded to the background once Asuka's character arrived. It was during the writing of "Before and After" that I had the initial idea for this story: Rei is still around, and humanity is trying to move forward. What happens then?

That idea formed the kernel for The Coming of the First Ones (which more than one person criticized as a cumbersome title). First Ones laid the groundwork for many elements of this story: the post-Instrumentality setting, Rei and her antithesis in conflict, the arrival of new Angels, Misato in charge of a new Eva program, Nozomi as the Eva pilot, and so on.

But there were several problems with that story that left me dissatisfied. The initial chapters focused on Shinji, but after that, I used a third-person perspective to follow Maya (who was a leader in a "Cult of Lilith"), Misato, Asuka, and Rei. One reader suggested this shifting focus didn't fit with the initial vibe of the story. Some of the later chapters also focused, I felt, too much on the characters' personal issues and didn't move the overarching plot, instead developing side plots that didn't tie well into the main story. That was especially true of the Maya chapter that focused on her relationship with Ritsuko and the Cult of Lilith, and for that reason, Maya's role in The Second Coming is much reduced.

The combined weight of these issues discouraged me from writing the ending chapters. In particular, the ending I had in mind felt very scattered, with no clear means to tie all the characters together. I eventually decided I wanted to do a reboot. I wrote up to Shinji meeting Nozomi by the river before catching fever to write a Sword Art Online piece called Auld Lang Syne, which was also more character focused. After Auld, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I wanted to do—whether to come back to Second Coming or do something else. I spent an entire summer just working through outlines, plotting out down to the level of individual scenes all the way through the ending.

And then I got to work to finish this up, and here we are. As I did with Auld Lang Syne, I (mostly) completed an initial draft before beginning publication of the piece. That let me promise that the piece would be finished—in some way or another—and it gave me a holistic view of the piece, allowing room for tweaks and changes.

Because of that, The Second Coming reflects a number of improvements and deliberate changes to improve the base story of First Ones. The biggest difference is that it's told entirely in first-person from Shinji's perspective. I have a great love of first-person, and that will be the subject of one of the later topics, but in short, I feel first-person really focuses a narrative, and the asymmetric nature of it promotes thinking differently about different characters, as well as communicating other characters' thoughts and feelings without the luxury of getting into their heads.

Other changes are more subtle. The primary antagonist, for instance, is very rarely named, and their identity is explicitly stated only a handful of times throughout the story, compared to First Ones in which their identity is put forward in the second chapter. I hoped this technique would promote more of an air of mystery about the enemy, and in concert with that, I tried to pace revelations of their goals over the course of the story.

As mentioned earlier, Maya's role is greatly reduced. This is to the benefit of Asuka, whose character arc felt underdeveloped to me; now, she is the main focus of "The White Coat." Nozomi also has a more substantial and nuanced character arc, one that I feel is more befitting of the values and themes of Evangelion. The rewrite really helped me remember the first rule of Evangelion: everyone hates themselves, even when they should love themselves. My job as a writer in this fandom is to help them find a way to loving themselves, and to make that journey satisfying to all of you.

And finally, taking the time to do the rewrite gave me the flash of inspiration to draw up a satisfying and sensible ending. Previously, my best idea was to have Shinji and company journey into space to confront the enemy on their home turf. That was going to be weird. What's in place now is a great improvement.

I truly believe this is the new and improved, second Coming of the First Ones. Welcome to the show.

 

[Muphrid]

22. The Puncture Engine

The Puncture Engine

There are a lot of things I should've considered before asking to step into an Eva again. Never mind that it was only a partial, malformed Eva with half a head at best. I should never have asked to pilot such a thing again without thinking about the stress it would exert on my mind; the pain I would suffer if it should be injured, even in a test; the nightmares I might endure from connecting with something that had only a fragment of humanity within…

Or the discomfort of a plugsuit squeezing my crotch.

First, before anyone gets the wrong idea, not all the plugsuits for Unit-14 were made for Nozomi. I was spared that repeat embarrassment, at least. No, there were plugsuits in several shapes, but not all sizes. Few of them had been made tall enough for me—and I was getting taller, honest!—so fitting in one was like having rubber bands pulling on my shoulders to fold me in half.

And that was a shame, really: the suit was fairly nice, I think. It was even elegant, you might say, with a sleek combination of white, black, and forest green. It suited Nozomi well with her cool personality, and I must admit that, despite the discomfort, I stood in the pilots' locker room for a bit and studied myself in a mirror, to see how the outfit suited me.

The tight-fitting suit left, well, very little to the imagination, and I wondered, did ancient warriors of the past run around more or less naked, and if they did, did that help show off their muscles? Did that help intimidate their foes?

While I was considering this, someone else in the locker room thought I was a madman. That person was Sasaki, one of the backup pilots. He was a shorter boy with an even shorter bowl cut, and he eyed me from the side with his mouth slightly open.

"Ikari, what are you doing?" He frowned. "Are you…having trouble with your suit?"

I bowed my head, not even facing him. "Sort of."

The locker room door banged on its hinges. "Oh boys!" Asuka's voice rang out, and she strode in without a hesitation in her step. She peered around a bank of lockers, tracking us down. "Come on, both of you—we've got a test to run!"

"Aren't you supposed to wait for people to come out first?" I asked.

She sized me up from head to toe. "Nothing I haven't seen before."

Sasaki looked aside, stifling a chuckle, and I said,

"But what about Sasaki? He could've still been getting dressed!"

"Please," said Asuka, rolling her eyes. "Does an adult need permission to lay eyes on a babe?"

Sasaki gaped at that, but said nothing.

"Asuka, please," I said, wincing.

"It's true, isn't it?" she said, leading the three of us to the hallway. "Come on."

Still, I took Sasaki aside on our way to the stairs. "Sorry about that."

He just shrugged. "It's okay. It doesn't bother me. I'm not into older women."

Asuka looked over her shoulder and glared. "What was that?"

Sasaki looked aside, albeit with a slight smile on his face, and this time it was my turn to stifle a laugh.



The simulation body pool was a wide, cavernous space. Dark red fluid flowed around the simulation bodies themselves—two malformed, half-human shapes that rested peacefully in the goo. Captain Aoba oversaw the entry plug operations: his team loaded Sasaki and me into our respective plugs. "You might need to adjust the seat," he told me as I climbed inside.

It took me a minute or two of searching the controls to realize it: there was no way to adjust the seat.

"You're not going into combat, Shinji." That was Asuka over the intercom. She, Maya, and other members of their research team observed the procedure from behind a wide, rectangular chamber beneath the water line. "Relax," said Asuka. "This should be quick."

What was not quick was the filling of the entry plug with LCL. I put my head underwater and forced my airway open as best as I could remember, but I gagged a couple times before old habits took hold. Even so, it's an unnatural feeling: you have to work harder to breathe. Even with practice, it doesn't come naturally.

Once Sasaki and I were immersed, the technicians loaded our entry plugs into the simulation bodies. The first connection was merely mechanical—the sliding of the plug into the partial Eva's neck. The second connection was not.

"Okay, Shinji," said Maya from the control room, "we're going to ease you into synchronization. It's going to be pretty low-level, so you shouldn't feel too many ill effects, but with the development of your nervous system, you may feel it a little more than you remember. All right?"

I nodded and gulped—and instantly regretted it for the taste of bloody fluid going down my throat. "Let's, uh, go for it then," I said.

"All right. We're going to initiate the secondary contacts…now."

A jolt went through my body. My right arm tingled. I looked out, and I saw goo—not the outline of the simulation body's frame on the holographic display. I saw outside myself. I saw an arm react as my thoughts moved it. I saw—

"Shinji!" Asuka snatched up the microphone. "Stay with us, Shinji. You're a human. You're not one of those things. Right?"

I blinked, and I was back in the entry plug, but the tingling sensation remained—like a huge weight behind my eyes. I tightened my grip on the controls and forced my eyelids wide. If I backed off for even an instant…

"It's okay!" I called out, breathing deliberately. "I'm here."

"Good, keep it that way. You're the one with the engine equipped, so if you screw this up, we'll have to get someone else."

At that, Maya covered the microphone and asked Asuka something. Asuka made her response, and Maya reluctantly took her hand off the mic. Asuka went on.

"Like I said, you're the one with the engine equipped, so if even you can make it work with the synch rate you have now, anyone can use it." She winked. "So don't be shy trying to impress us, Shinji."

I took another deep, steady breath, keeping my eyes fixed on her. "I understand."

"Good."

Asuka, Maya, and the rest of their team continued with the process of getting Sasaki up to speed. I have to admit I tuned out most of what they were saying. The pressure behind my eyes demanded almost all my attention to quash. It was like having a nest of spiders just behind your eyeball. You can feel it's there, and you know when those spiders hatch and start rummaging around your brain, but you can't do anything except to ignore them. You have to ignore them with a purpose.

So I watched Asuka. She spoke with technicians and pointed out to them important readouts on the monitors. She got on the intercom with Sasaki and had him position just so—not too far away from me, not too close. She was the conductor of this whole affair. Even though Maya was technically her superior, Asuka would let no one interfere with the harmony of her magnum opus. She was the conductor, and even there, I was more like a pair of drums than any of the players in this piece.

"Okay, Shinji—Shinji, are you with me?"

I blinked. Asuka was looking right at me.

"Ye—yes," I stammered, shaking myself to attention. "Sorry about that."

"Your heart rate's a little high," she said. "If you're thinking about me, that needs to wait, understand?"

"I understand."

"Do you? No problems? Nothing to be concerned about?"

"No, not—" I grimaced. The ball of spiders in my head was moving. "Well, it's a little uncomfortable, but I can manage!"

Asuka covered the microphone and talked with one of the technicians. She cast a furtive look toward me for a minute before continuing on.

"We're going to do an AT field test first, to establish a baseline. Shinji, Sasaki, bring your arms forward, like you're going to try to push each other."

Our pair of one-armed giants raised their arms, but just as we were going to press our palms against each other, a flickering barrier appeared between us, with energy rippling outward from the closest point of contact.

Asuka left the microphone to check some readouts, and Maya took over. "Good, not too much, just hold it right there," she said. "It'd be bad if you two went full power and shredded the whole building with that. Just stay put."

That was all well and good for them to ask, but just holding in that position, with Sasaki's simulation body pressuring mine was like having that ball of spiders turn into a ball of scorpions instead, stinging and crawling and grasping at my optic nerves.

"How—how long do we need to hold this?" I asked, shuddering.

Asuka raised an eyebrow. "That should be good. Shinji, you can lower your arm now. Sasaki, leave yours the way it is. Now we're going to open the interlocks for the puncture engine. Shinji, the engine activation toggle is mapped to Button 4 on your right induction lever. Don't activate it until I give the word. Got it?"

I fingered the button on the underside of the controls. "Got it. Ready when you are."

"Okay, you can activate the puncture engine with one press of Button R4 and try to grab the other simulation body's arm."

I pressed the button on the underside of the controls. Some kind of whirring or vibration went through the simulation body, and those scorpions in my head turned into a colony of soldier ants. I bit my lip and thrust the induction lever forward—too roughly for the simulation body's arm punched at the AT field. The barrier held but bent visibly under the punch's force.

Then it shattered! It shattered in a flash of light, and I saw—

I saw a woman?

Yes, a woman—unmistakably so. With a smile, she screwed a pair of eyeglasses back to one of their temples. She cleaned the lenses with lens cloth and handed them back to…someone, someone with slender, precise fingers—pianist's fingers. "Try to be more careful, hm?" she said with an affectionate lilt in her voice.

"Nice job, Shinji, that's great!" Asuka was practically clapping for the microphone. "Test number one is a resounding success, I think."

My vision cleared. The image of the woman left me. My sight was awash with orange and red hues once more.

"Resounding success subject to full analysis of experiment data," said Maya, her voice quiet—she was some distance from the microphone.

"Yes, yes, subject to analysis and all that." Still, Asuka was beaming. "Shinji, you ready to get out of that thing now?"

"Yes, please!" I cried out.

Thankfully, they didn't wait too long. They cut us out of synchronization quickly, and I was more than happy to cough up the LCL in my lungs. In fact, I was still coughing up some stuff when Sasaki was let out of his entry plug and back onto the catwalk.

"Are you all right, Ikari?" the boy asked.

"I'm not used to it, that's all," I said, putting on a weak smile.

Sasaki wiped at his eye, flicking some LCL off his skin. "I don't think anyone really gets used to it," he said.

I nodded at that, but something caught my attention—something about the boy's hand. His fingers, though still cloaked in the plugsuit's gloves, were long and slender.

There was something else about him, too: a faint discoloration around his irises, a hint of blue.

I glanced between him and the simulation body he'd just finished piloting, and I said,

"Sasaki, you need contacts to pilot, don't you?"

He nodded. "I tried my glasses, but the stuff in the plug sticks to them, and the vision isn't very good, either. The doctor said it had to do with refraction?"

"Right, I understand. Did you—did you, uh, have a problem with your glasses recently?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Yes, a screw came loose—the one that connects the lens part to the part that goes over my ear."

"Did someone fix that for you?"

"My mother did, yes. She has good hands for small things like that. Why do you ask?"

I glanced back at the observation room, where Asuka and Maya were going over the results.

"Just curious," I said.



I kept the vision I'd had to myself for a while—until dinner, anyway. Maya and Asuka were not surprised.

"Mental contamination was always a risk," said Asuka, helping herself to a serving of rice. "But you can't be violated by a dead Angel."

"That is," said Maya, who poured herself some soup, "if the engine lets us kill the Angel fast enough."

The two scientists mulled over the matter as they ate, and the rest of the table didn't have much to add.

You see, it was dinnertime on the base, and the mess staff had prepared a great meal—a meal in preparation for victory, I think. Grilled catfish, pickled radish, soup, and rice adorned the table in huge bowls and heaping plates, but despite the feast in front of us, the mood was quiet in the officers' mess. The two tables ate in an orderly, almost mechanical fashion. When one person was done with adding to their bowl, they passed the dish to the next in line, like clockwork.

For my part, I took a look at the pot of miso soup in front of us, and I thought back to my time in the soup kitchen. They didn't have pots that big in the soup kitchen, nor did the soup smell so nice. And yet in Manoah Base, all this soup was merely a means to satiate hunger. There was no time to enjoy it, no time to savor it. Indeed, some of the officers stopped by, had their fill, and left to return to duties.

Duty was never far from anyone's mind. Even while Asuka and Maya thought over the implications of mental contamination, Captain Aoba—sitting across from me and beside Maya—had a thought as well:

"Just getting close enough to use the engine is a risk, isn't it?" he remarked, putting down his chopsticks for a moment. "It's a two-way gap, isn't it, Ibuki?"

Maya looked aside and nodded grimly. "The disruption comes from within the Eva. There's no way to propagate that without some kind of gap in the Eva's own AT field."

"So you'll want to be close," Aoba concluded. "Close enough that the Angels can't find the gap and exploit it. Turn on the engine, attack, and then shut it off again—is that right?"

Nozomi scooped some catfish and rice into her personal bowl. "Sounds like it's gonna be hell," she said.

"Look, let's not overreact here," said Asuka, pointing her chopsticks at Aoba. "You—just keep the Eva together. This gap in the AT field is momentary. That's all it is. We use it to break through the enemy's AT field layers one at a time if we must."

But Aoba put down his chopsticks and folded his hands in his lap, meeting Asuka's gaze. "If the Eva's going to expose gaps in its AT field, however breifly, I'll make recommendations to the general to augment the Eva's armor."

Asuka scoffed. "Like that's going to do anything. Armor doesn't mean much against some exotic Angel attack like a quantum hole or a domain wall."

"We'll get you some data on the AT field reconnection timescale," Maya assured Aoba, and when he nodded in acceptance, Maya turned her gaze to Asuka with a resigned shrug. "If the general wants to take action based on that, that's her decision. We'll try to inform her as best we can."

Asuka frowned. With her arms folded and her legs crossed, she tapped her foot on the floor, sizing up Maya.

"Gonna make sure this has no chance of blowing back on you—is that right?" she remarked.

Maya nodded in Nozomi's direction. "That's only the best, for everyone's safety."

"Even if it costs us another city, another country?"

"Rushing to get the engine in service could cost us an Eva, or a pilot," said Maya.

"Yeah, you know, I'm too young to die," said Nozomi, who helped herself to some pickled radish. "I'm supposed to fall in love, marry someone who's got money or connections, settle down, have lots of kids who make a mess and never thank me, get cheated on because the guy's an asshole and I'm better off without him—all that stuff. You can't take my future divorce away from me, Soryu."

"Ooh, very good," said Asuka, who took a sip of tea. "I'll give you 9 out of 10 for that one."

The girls exchanged a glance, and Nozomi bowed her head like a novice taxidermist in front of a teacher. Maya, Aoba, and I looked on sheer terror. It was easy to see what was happening: Asuka and Nozomi were playing off each other—a partnership that could only spell doom for the rest of us. Their wit combined would be as massive as a black hole—and just as inescapable. We could only hope that the two of them would never work together in the future.

Thankfully, Asuka saw fit to show mercy. "Now then," she said, "what I was trying to say before Nozomi's valiant attempt to sidetrack me is this: we can investigate all these issues, sure, but we've been working on this a long time, and I like to think I've anticipated a lot of these problems. Going back to study them in excruciating detail could cost lives, too."

"I'll review your exeriment logs before we perform any costly tests," Maya assured her.

"Good, do that." Asuka leaned forward, into the steam coming off her soup bowl. "But maybe you want to do something else, Maya—like get a second opinion for our own sake?"

"Whose opinion?"

"Professor Nakamura, perhaps? Akagi's advisor?"

At that, Aoba shook his head, and he folded up his napkin to punctuate his disagreement. "He's not cleared, and I doubt anyone would clear him for it."

"He wasn't on Seele's side," Asuka pointed out. "Even Akagi wasn't on Seele's side, technically. We could use someone to vet this stuff—someone with a proper education."

"Education?" said Maya, and she and Aoba shared a nonplussed glance. "I am working on my metaphysical biology degree."

"Yes, I know," said Asuka, who picked up a couple grains of rice with her chopsticks and ate. "How many years until you're through? Three? Four?"

"How many years for you?"

Asuka shrugged. "I admit, I'm a little behind. I had to take a couple years off after my second bachelor's to pilot a super advanced cyborg called an Evangelion, so I'm still catching up, you know?"

I cleared my throat. "Asuka."

"What?"

"I think you have some stray threads on your coat. Maybe we should go outside for a little while?"

She narrowed her eyes at me, but a couple glances at Aoba, Maya, and Nozomi seemed to convince her. "All right." She rose, and she said toward the head of the table, "Captain Hyuga, may we be excused briefly?"

"Sounds like that would be for the best," he said with a nod.

Asuka blushed slightly at this, but she said no more, and I followed her out. Once we were in the hallway, I showed her aside—where careful ears within would have a harder time hearing.

"You don't need to pound your chest in front of them," I said, straightening out some wrinkles in her coat.

"You think she's being reasonable?" asked Asuka.

"I think she's can't look at it any other way. She has been the one in charge here now for what—two years?"

"That's because nobody else in the lab has a clue."

I didn't say anything directly to that. Rather, I just brushed away a few strands of hair and loose threads from Asuka's white labcoat—which wasn't even her real labcoat, mind you. You would never wear a real labcoat—one that had been exposed to chemicals and such—outside the lab. No, this one was Asuka's own; it had the coffee stains to prove that.

"Shinji?" she asked.

"Hmm?"

Her eye caught mine as I tended to one last fiber near her waist.

"What do you think?" she asked.

"I think even if you're right, Maya and Aoba aren't inclined to agree with you."

"No point in fighting them on this, is there?"

"That's…one way of looking at it."

Asuka thought about that for a while. She balled her hands into fists, and she gave me a peck on the cheek. "Thanks for taking me out here."

I nodded, saying nothing more, and we returned to the table—with Hyuga's blessing, of course. Asuka got right to it:

"Sorry, I was an ass," she said, as matter-of-factly as a weatherman announces an afternoon shower. "And Maya, I know the last thing you must want is for someone with suspicious ties to second-guess your work."

Maya looked aside. "Suspicious or not, Nakamura trained some brilliant students. It's something I'll bring up with the General as well."

"That's all I'm asking for," said Asuka. She put on a grin and set her gaze on Aoba. "Now then, Captain Aoba!"

He looked to Maya, then to me. "What's this about?"

I showed him both my hands. "I'm not a part of this."

"That's true; Shinji's not a part of this," said Asuka, "but I have it on good authority that you've been up to something in your time off-duty."

"Wh—what could you possibly mean?"

Asuka leaned forward, drumming her fingers on the table.

"Maybe…a secret rock band?"

At that, Aoba bowed his head, and he slid two bowls of food aside. He leaned forward, meeting Asuka's gaze in turn.

"Young lady, what do you know about rock and roll?"

"Not enough," said Asuka, "but I hear you're an expert. Maybe you could enlighten me?"

Aoba was more than up to the task. As dinner finished up in the officers' mess, he gave Asuka, Nozomi, Maya, and me a brief history of the genre, from the Boswell Sisters to "Shake, Rattle, and Roll."

And Asuka, for her part, engaged him with poise. She watched his eyes religiously, nodded as he spoke, and smiled. She never gave up that smile, not for the rest of the evening. She wore it as she ate and sipped her tea—and believe me, she wore it well.



Two days later, Sydney fell to the enemy, and Misato and Maya mutually agreed to certify the puncture engine as ready for combat trials.

"Is it actually ready, though?" I asked Asuka.

"Of course it is," she said. "I'd stake my life on it."

She put on that smile again. She did wear it well.

As well as she wore that white coat of hers.

 

[Muphrid]

Author's Notes: Worldbuilding and setting

Though The Second Coming features a good deal of action, the foundations of its conflict lie in character drama. For this reason, I try to practice a minimal style of worldbuilding: enough to support the action or add to the ambiance of the character drama, but that's all.

This is in contract to a story focused more on political intrigue or action for its own sake, which runs on anticipation of twists or maneuvers to defeat an obstacle or opponent. Such stories rely on density of details to give the reader pieces of a puzzle and to ask whether the reader can devise a solution. That isn't this story. Here, the pivotal points are about characters coming to terms with their flaws. Hence, the worldbuilding plays a supporting role, coming up when necesary and fading to background again when its role is over.

Still, worldbuilding and consistency of setting are important elements. They should help the ambient world support, rather than clash with, the story to be told.



One of my major goals in anything I do—whether it be writing or my professional work—is to do something unique, different, or interesting. I'm not content to paint by numbers. I prefer not to do the same thing others have done but better. The world I've imagined for The Second Coming fits that basic goal.

That world is one that is not so different from our own, despite the cataclysms of Second and Third Impact. I wanted to avoid a post-apocalyptic descent into tribalism or a massively unstable political situation. That would put the emphasis of the story on surviving a dangerous world of competition, scarcity, and strife. Such a world would be more realistic, but it wouldn't allow for the story I had in mind.

Still, I felt it important that Third Impact leave scars on this world. This is a big reason why Shinji remarks on the emptiness of the hospital in "Tokyo-2," or the desolate fields in "Character Sketch." He is acutely aware he's in a world that was built for 3-4 times as many people as there are now. That's a way to make the worldbuilding support a feeling or ambiance: all those missing people, reflected in the state of the world, make Shinji question whether it was right to come back and his own role in this new world.

Nevertheless, I use political instability where it serves me. The Chinese occupation of Myanmar is the main example where it becomes relevant in the story. Seele's role as a terrorist organization (more or less directly inspired by al-Qaeda, right down to a raid into hostile territory to capture Keel Lorenz) is part of that as well.



Though I don't strive to craft an in-depth and elaborate political situation, I still try to pay close attention to detail. The world should be realistic where such expectations exist.

That extends to the basic geography of the world. Second Impact, if you remember, would've flooded many low-lying areas. I used Firetree flood maps to look at a world map with 60-meter rise in sea level. This leads to significant changes in the map, as many capital cities are also in low-lying areas. References, for example, to Shandong Island reflect how the Chinese region of Shandong would be cut off from mainland China with such a rise in sea level. Still, this is mainly an easter egg in many of the Angel battle scenes; it's not strictly plot relevant.

The use of basic geography also informs a lot of the locations and scenery. Google Maps was a great friend to me in writing this story, and I took the basic layout of the area around Nozomi's home from using Google Maps to explore the towns north of Matsumoto (Tokyo-2). You can find Toyoshinakita Junior High School there, as well as the bridge under which Nozomi meets Shinji in "Character Sketch." I had once determined a particular house that should inspire the Horaki home, but I didn't have its location in my notes and cannot find it anymore. Nevertheless, the abandoned rice paddies and the like made an excellent setting to emphasize Shinji's isolation, especially compared to the high rise apartment the Horaki family occupied in First Ones.

The idea of using established details also inspired the basic design of Manoah Base. In First Ones, that design was lifted from Stargate SG-1. Here instead, I used a design more similar to the actual Cheyenne Mountain facility, with real buildings that are just, curiously, built underground. The control room is directly inspired from NASA's mission control, down to real computers and cubicle-like stations.



Speaking of Manoah Base, you might notice that its name is lifted from Isaiah 34, which is the chapter that mentions Lilith. The word itself means "a place of rest (or protection)." Hence, the literal idea is that Manaoh Base is part of Lilith's protection of mankind. The American and German bases also lift words from that verse or surrounding verses.

This is an aspect of the worldbuilding that I do enjoy: the mythology of Evangelion. The aspect of Rei reaching out to people to encourage them to emerge from the sea (as with Hikari in "Sisters" or what Misato mentions in "9/30") is still present, as it was in First Ones, albeit at much less importance. It's the kind of thing I want to bring to people, for it's very cool and explains a lot about the world of Evangelion.

Of course, most of the background for the story is lifted from the Neon Genesis Evangelion 2 video game: the First Ancestral Race (not directly named, deliberately so), the Seeds of Life, and all that. The challenge isn't to restate that background, which I (unwisely, I feel) stated outright in First Ones. Rather, it's to integrate it into the story, as it done here in the "Progenitors" couplet of chapters. I am immensely proud of the vision Rei gives Shinji here, metaphorical as it is. And further, it's background that is used to inform Rei's character and her struggles.

Even still, there are elements that I don't go into: the Spears of Longinus, the distinction between the Seeds of Life and Knowledge, the origin and function of the Crown of Thorns, and the exact nature of the cataclysm that drove the FAR to seek salvation. As I said before, there are some details you just can't afford to get into without distracting from the narrative.



Something that does have immediate impact on the story is the initial state of the characters. Misato is intimately involved in Project Manoah, but she keeps it a secret from Shinji and Asuka, who have their own lives. As discussed recently in the Advice and Trust thread, some people find the idea of Shinji, Asuka, and Rei getting involved in a post-Nerv organization to be distasteful or unhealthy. Others might find it all too realistic. For my part, I felt that Shinji would not have wanted to be a part of such an organization—and for that reason he initially rejects Misato's offer. Asuka jumps at the chance when perhaps she shouldn't.

And Misato? She likely doesn't want to get Shinji and Asuka involved, but Shinji's persistence in investigating the assassination attempt convinces her that may she should've given them the chance.

Regardless, the situation itself reflects on the state of the world. Project Manoah is very much a secret here. No one wants to openly discuss a pending alien invasion, even though major governments around the world are aware of it. Everyone knows that civilization is, in this situation, a fragile thing that could be shattered once again if stressed to the breaking point.

 

[Muphrid]

23. Soul Cleaver

Combat test day for Asuka's puncture engine. We would've preferred a test using two Eva—just for the sake of safety—but we didn't have that luxury. Unit-14 was needed in battle, and the American and German Eva were too far away to use for a simple test. There was no other way to go about it. The puncture engine would be first used against an Angel, for better or for worse.

I reported for duty in the control room as though this battle were like any other. I went over the situation briefing one last time, and I went through the checklists with Nozomi. Asuka, however, went about things completely differently. She wasn't going to just sit back and wait for the test to come. She had a suite of last-minute instructions for the other controllers.

"Peripheral, I need you to keep an eye out for impulse transients in the right leg," she told one of the nervous system controllers.

"What kind of transients?" the controller asked Asuka.

"Anything larger than 50% above active baseline, sustained for more than four cycles," Asuka told him. "It might be nothing, but if I know there's been a transient, I can back-check through some data and look for other warning signs."

The peripheral controller sighed, rubbing his temple. "Why wasn't this in the briefing?"

"It's not a reliable failure indicator by itself." Asuka raised an eyebrow. "Is it a problem to look for this?"

"Not for you, maybe," said the controller. "Have you tried to write an alert module and get it cleared in ten minutes?"

"Is this something you can hook me into?"

The controller sat a bit straighter and started typing at his console. "If you want to keep an eye out for it, be my guest."

"Thanks," she said with a slight bow. "I'll have Shinji make you a treat for that."

The peripheral nervous system controller shot me a look. "Did you agree to this?"

"Hey." Asuka snapped her fingers. "Trust me here: you don't want me making you a treat."

The PNS controller looked back to me, and I shrugged and smiled nervously. Satisfied, the controller turned back to his console to continue the pre-launch preparations. Asuka, too, went back to her station, bringing up some of that PNS data forwarded to her. She collected herself with a sip of coffee before bearing down to write an automated alert program. And this she was supposed to do in ten minutes before launch.

I pressed the transmit button for the radio. "Nozomi."

The girl in the entry plug opened one eye, looking directly at the virtual camera. "Yeah?"

"Be careful when you activate this new device," I told her.

"Why's that? You think there's a problem?"

I glanced back across the aisle, to Asuka's station. She was knee-deep in code, splashed across two monitors, and she typed furiously to modify one section in particular.

"I think," I told Nozomi, "that there are still a few things we don't know about this."

Nozomi eyed me at that, but she straightened herself up in her seat, grasped the controls, and looked ahead, saying nothing more. I cast my gaze ahead, to the three projected screens with countdowns and satellite images and telemetry and all that.

And for a moment, just a moment, I felt as though I were sitting inside my own head. My arms moved when I wanted them to move, but they weren't really mine. I saw the bridge of my own nose from the inside and the outlines of my eyebrows and cheeks at the edges of my vision. I heard my own breath as though I were a giant, hulking, fleshy beast.

I shook my head, wiped my eyes, and blinked. The sensation passed, and I took a long gulp of tea for good measure, letting the hot fluid burn a bit on its way down. There was no mistaking that.

I emptied my thermos as the minutes counted down, and like everyone else in that room, I watched and waited.

Once again, the enemy ran rampant over a crucial city, yet I couldn't help but wonder: did it matter which city? Did it matter which country was fighting to keep them at bay?

I say that not to imply they were irrelevant, or that we didn't care about them. No, it was our duty to care about them. It was our duty to go to their aid. Yet at the same time, you can't see people's faces while they drive tanks or fly airplanes. You can't catch their eyes while they march down the streets of town. The soldiers wear green uniforms because most armies do. The airplanes are gray because it's impractical to paint them otherwise except for demonstrations or special events.

Is the city they rush to defend truly different from any other? You might notice the differences in the skyline, or in the terrain in the distance—were there mountains, or flat forests or jungle for as far as the eye could see?

Maybe it was different for others—like Misato, or Hyuga, or the communications controllers. They would talk to the other countries' armed forces. They would hear those people's calls and pleas for help. Me? I was kept at a distance from any foreign military. They never spoke to me, and I never had the chance to speak to them.

So if I tell you now that this city Nozomi had been sent to was Seoul, do you know it? Can you see it in your mind? Do you see the South Korean Taegeuk on the soldiers' uniforms? Can you imagine their tanks painted as such? Do you picture the cityscape with mountains dwarfed by more mountains in the background?

To tell the truth, I don't blame you if the picture you get of that is fairly vague. It seems vague to me. I can't put into words much that would convince me—years later—that it was really Seoul we were defending.

But there is something that stuck with me: the radio tower.

The Angels had converged on Seoul. They laid waste to skyscrapers and two-story buildings alike. The Worm Angel burrowed underneath the city streets and collapsed them from below. The Fractal Angel cut towers down with its invisible edge, leaving office buildings bisected in bizarrely precise fashion—as though a doctor decided to excise a few city blocks with a giant scalpel.

But the Angels left the radio tower untouched. They routed the South Koreans on the mountain where the tower resided, and the Fractal Angel took up a position there, to unleash its miniature Third Impact on the city.

The Angels didn't destroy the radio tower. They had no concept of symbols, monuments, or landmarks.

We did.

We understood what such things meant.

And we went ahead anyway. We bombed the radio tower and the Angel that sat beside it. We pulverized the mountainside with the all the force short of nuclear fission that mankind could muster. We kicked up so much smoke and dirt that a mushroom cloud rose over Seoul.

And that was just the first blast—the first of many. An unholy rain of bombs blasted the two Angels on the mountain. Unwilling to give up their position, the Worm Angel shielded its companion from the attack: it gave up its body to deflect and absorb the blasts. Strike after strike weakened the Worm's AT field, and two of its outermost field layers shattered under the N2 weapons' cleansing fire.

"Ops, bombardment complete," said a controller.

Hyuga nodded. "AT field strength?"

A second controller gave a thumbs-up. "Should pop like a balloon."

Hyuga looked to me and nodded. "We're on."

I switched on the microphone on my headset. "Nozomi, ready?"

Unit-14 powered up. It got to its feet and shed a heap of leaves and brush. The Eva crouched as it looked uphill, where the radio tower had shattered, leaving only a few metal supports sticking out of the ground.

"All set," said Nozomi.

"Go!"

The Eva burst uphill on all fours, putting its knuckles to the ground. It barrelled over the top of the hill and tackled the Worm Angel, pinning the alien beast to the ground.

"Am I covered?" asked Nozomi.

The Fractal Angel made no move to intervene. It glowed and vibrated with energy, floating perfectly still above the burning grass and trees.

"It's staying put," I said.

"So I'm good? Can we get this over with?"

I looked to Hyuga, who nodded again, but despite that, my gaze went past him—to Asuka. She typed at her console in bursts, taking breaks only to flip through notebooks and jot down numbers from her screen.

"Ikari!" Nozomi yelled in my ear. The Worm contorted itself around her, and its rough, gravelly skin ground against the Eva's armor plates. "I'm going to be bean paste here if I don't get an answer!"

"Sorry, you're good!" I cried. "Activate the engine!"

She pressed a toggle switch on the controls, and a faint hum came through the radio.

The Eva's right hand balled into a fist. Its target: the red orb at the center of the Worm's mouthparts.

Nozomi yelled like an Amazon warrior, and—

TCHNK-TCHNK-TCHNK! Three AT field layers snapped and reconnected around the pair, and the Eva's fist tore through the Worm's mouthparts, smashing the core and the sharp, rotating discs around it. The Angel shrieked and shuddered; its grip on the Eva went slack.

But the Eva just stood there, and Nozomi stared dumbly at the screen, like she didn't understand what she was seeing.

"Engine off!" I said. "Get out of there!"

She shook herself and snapped back to action. She switched the engine off, and she leapt clear of the Worm's body, just before the Angel's weight could collapse on top of her.

"Nozomi, are you all right?" I demanded.

She blinked a few times, taking a breath to steady herself. "I'm okay! Next target?"

The Fractal Angel pulsed with energy. Unit-14 stepped toward it, but the Fractal erupted with a burst of light and force. It shoved Unit-14 down the mountain, and the Angel cut across the mountainside forest, felling the burning trees in its wake.

Unit-14 dusted itself off, took two steps back up the mountain, and—

"Don't chase," said Hyuga, watching the feeds with me. "If they want Seoul, they'll have to come back for it."

With the Fractal speeding out of sight, that seemed the best course of action to me, too. "Stay right there, Nozomi. We're going to watch where the Angel goes. That's a good test; you did great."

"All right, but Ikari…"

"Yes?"

"Are these things supposed to mind meld with me every time I kill them?"

Asuka spun in her seat; her eyes snapped to me. And hers weren't the only ones: Hyuga grimaced, and Misato rose from her chair, too. Misato leaned forward, with one hand supporting her weight by the cubicle wall. She studied Nozomi's expression and said,

"Call her back."

I fumbled with the transmit switch. "N—No, Nozomi, they're not. Let's…"

My eyes flickered to Asuka, but by that point, she was staring at her monitors again, with her arms folded. That was probably the first time that morning she had just stopped to do nothing—nothing but think.

"Let's get you back home," I told Nozomi.



The Angel made contact with Nozomi's mind.

In some way, that wasn't a surprise. The Angels had often tried to reach us. As a pilot, it's what you should expect. The Angels before, whatever they really sought, they also wanted to get into our heads—to understand us, to make us question ourselves.

These Angels might not have been any different, and the last thing we could afford was to give them a clear channel into Nozomi's head.

It took hours—agonizing, countless hours—to fly Nozomi back to Manoah Base and get her checked out. Captain Aoba's team extracted the entry plug, and medics were on the scene to load Nozomi onto a stretcher. The infirmary doctors wheeled her to an on-site MRI machine. They let a few of us observe the procedure: Maya and Asuka came to interpret the results in context, as they were the experts on the new weapon, and I was allowed to stay for moral support. One of the base therapists conducted an interview while Nozomi was in the machine.

"You say you felt something when you killed the Angel?" asked the therapist over a microphone. "A feeling you don't think was your own?"

"Definitely," said Nozomi, who lay flat on her back within the MRI tube. "It wasn't like a word or a phrase, but an image, I guess, or an idea and a feeling to go along with it."

"Can you describe it?" asked the therapist.

On one of the monitors was a camera feed showing the inside of the MRI tube. Nozomi was there, and she closed her eyes.

"It was like I was looking at it, and it looked back at me," she began. "I felt like it was looking into me, even though it didn't have any eyes."

In the observation room, slices of Nozomi's brain appeared one line at a time on the monitors. The doctors consulted with Maya and Asuka, and they discussed regions of brain activity together with jargon I couldn't follow and combinations of words I didn't understand. After a time, Maya looked to the therapist and nodded. The therapist went on.

"Is that all?" he asked.

"No." Nozomi's brow creased. "After that, I got a flash of something. I saw the Eva dancing like a puppet."

"Not a fucking puppet!" cried Asuka in a low voice.

"The Angel despised me," Nozomi went on. "It saw me and the Eva as a puppet, and Lilith held the strings."

A silence. Regions of the brain lit up in a cascade of patterns.

"Did you get any other feelings or impressions?" asked the therapist.

"Yeah," said Nozomi. "As much as the Angel hated me for that, it hated itself just as much."

There were some puzzled looks in the observation room. The therapist let his finger off the transmit switch. It was Captain Hyuga, also in attendance, who responded first.

"Why?" he asked.

When the therapist relayed that to Nozomi, she pressed her lips together for a moment before replying,

"Because the Angel felt it was a puppet, too."

The scans glowed in ways I couldn't even fathom at that.

Yet as much as I'd worried about Nozomi's health in light of this incident, most of the staff on hand seemed guardedly optimistic. On the whole, it could've been worse: aside from this fleeting glimpse of the enemy, Nozomi had emerged from the encounter in possession of her faculties. The experience hadn't shaken her. The inconvenience of having to go through repeated brain scans may have been worse than the actual contamination.

Even so, the mere hint of an Angel intruding on Nozomi's mind was enough to raise serious concerns. She may have survived this incident little worse for wear, but when Angels get a free ride into your head, it's only a matter of time before they hit a nerve.

And Nozomi's family wasn't about to let that go, either. The middle sister, Hikari Horaki, was invited on the base to tend to Nozomi as a precaution. Asuka and I walked the two of them back to Nozomi's quarters, but Nozomi looked steadfastly away while Horaki hounded us for answers.

"You're telling me an Angel invaded her mind, and it's 'not a big deal'?"

Asuka knew she was treading on thin ice there, trying to balance her job against her responsibility as a friend. She tried to calm Horaki down as best she could. "I said it was minor, not that it wasn't a big deal," said Asuka, who kept a hand on the back of Horaki's shoulder for support. "No amount of contamination is acceptable, but it could be worse, you know?" She met Horaki's eyes at that. "Much worse."

Horaki sighed at that. "Yes, I know."

We passed underneath two sets of fluorescent lights before anyone dared speak again.

"So you're working on it?" asked Horaki. "Is that right?"

"Of course I am." Asuka balled her free hand into a fist as she walked—treading forward with force and purpose. "When I'm done with the engine, you'll worry more about Nozomi playing with teddy bears."

The rest of the day was thankfully uneventful. I had a bit of combat footage to review still, but it was late—it'd taken several hours to get Nozomi back from Seoul, of course, and by the time we were done seeing to her health, it was already well past dinnertime, so Asuka and I went to bed.

Or rather, I went to bed. Asuka had her laptop and a scratchpad out, and she muttered to herself about reconnection probabilities or some such things.

"Get some sleep," I told her. "You'll be better at solving this in the morning."

"Maybe," she said, jotting down some more equations, "but the stuff in my head won't last 'til morning. Gotta get it out now."

"Asuka—"

"The thing works." She pointed a pencil eraser at me. "It works, right? It cut through the Angel like butter. I did that."

"Asuka…"

"We are so close now." She flipped to the next page on her notepad. "I'm not letting the answer get away from me. Not now."

I turned over and shut my eyes, even as she left the light on.



Sadly, my dreams took me to a darker place: a theater of eternity, in which the past and future of the universe could play before my eyes. The glow of the movie screen was searing. As soon as I could feel the soft fabric of the theater seats, a voice spoke to me.

"She's a maker, isn't she?"

I'd been placed in the front row to watch a black-and-white film. The scent of butter permeated the room like an old man's overused cologne. It was suffocating. Even a shallow breath made me cough and wheeze.

"She's not the kind to sit still while there's something left for her to do."

That was the hooded stranger, sitting on my left. She "watched" the film too—though how she did so I can't say, for the hood should've blocked any eyes the stranger may have had.

Then again, I don't think she needed eyes to see anything.

I didn't answer the stranger. I followed her gaze to the movie and keyed in on some dialogue.

"But Dr. Oppenheimer," asked a suited man, "if the test is successful, what do you think will happen with the bomb going forward?"

World War II. Robert Oppenheimer. The man who made the bomb.

"Asuka's not a world-class physicist," I said. "These are totally different situations."

"Are they?" asked the stranger.

The film sped up. Dialogue went by in a garbled, high-pitched whir. The movie only stopped when we got to the test itself: the first detonation of the atomic bomb.

As a mushroom cloud rose over the black-and-white desert, the characters in the film watched in awe and wonder. A man in a suit and with dark hair took off some goggles and said, "It worked." He smiled, even—a smile of relief and satisfaction.

But those measured reactions gave way to something else. One scene transition later, the man slammed his car door with energy and vigor. He strutted from his parking space and slapped a colleague on the back, laughing and smiling about the whole thing.

"If she managed to fix it, you don't think she'd act the same?" asked the stranger.

I looked to my right. Ayanami was there but nowhere near enough to help me, for she sat all the way at the end of the row. She cast two helpless eyes at me but said nothing.

I shifted in my seat, looking steadfastly at the movie in front of me. "So what if she does?" I asked. "It doesn't hurt anyone. The Americans dropped the bomb on us. They turned out all right. I'm sure Dr. Oppenheimer turned out all right."

"He was banished into obscurity," said the stranger. "He associated with the wrong people and was viewed with suspicion. History is full of examples like these."

The movie speed up, turning to a blur of color. Asuka, Ayanami, Horaki, Kaworu, Nozomi, Toji, and I—seven of us were pictured sitting around a table with copious folders and notes, with drawings of white giants and the like all laid out for everyone to see.

"What do you think of what they made?" asked the stranger.

"They saved their people." I glanced over at Ayanami. "That counts for something, doesn't it?"

"And you agree with that? It was justified?"

"How could it not be?"

The film sped up again, and the shot fixed on just Ayanami—the Ayanami on the screen. She stood on a barren, rocky landscape. The Geofront loomed over her head, floating like an artificial moon over the earth.

And Ayanami—she was bleeding. She bled from her loins, and the fluid seeped down her legs, but she paid it no mind. She climbed over rocks to reach a jagged coastline, and amid the rocks and crashing waves, she lowered herself into the ocean. She submerged her legs and loins into the sea, and her blood mixed with the water.

Yet as the waves washed over her, Ayanami stared out over the water. There were no birds overhead nor guppies to nip at her ankles.

There wouldn't be any birds for a long time.

"They did accomplish something."

The stranger watched me—she watched me with eyes I couldn't see behind the hood, but I was sure. She turned her head toward me and watched my every move.

"They made you," said the stranger, "and it only took billions of years to see that through. You must be glad."

I coughed. The popcorn smell was overwhelming; it was like being buried inside a tub of the stuff while a careless concessions worker dumped gobs of fake buttery fluid into it. I struggled to lean into the row. I looked to the end. "Ayanami?"

She turned away, head bowed.

"And she is the same," said the stranger.

The screen showed Asuka—at work, in her lab, toiling over computer simulations as Evangelion body parts floated in a tank in front of her.

I jumped out of my seat, heart pounding. I towered over the stranger, and I yelled out, "Stop it! I'm tired of having to listen to you! Leave me alone!"

The stranger glanced to her right. "I'm not the one who chose to involve you."

"Then choose to uninvolve me!"

The stranger peered up at me, and with a snap of her fingers, the sound of the projector cut out.



And it was dark.

It was dark in my quarters, so I turned the light on.

I turned the light on, and I saw clearly the empty pillow beside me.

My hand curled into a fist. I clenched my teeth, and I pounded the cold pillow once—only once—and let my fist sink into the material.

I got my slippers. I carried my ID card in my hand, for my pajama pants didn't have pockets. It was light in the hallways, for it was always light on the base. There was no escape from that light. The cool, inert whiteness of it pierced through your soul, as though to show that there can be nothing inside you that isn't dedicated to the cause, nothing held back not but for the sake of working—of saving the world.

I knocked on the laboratory door, and sure enough, Asuka was there. In her white labcoat, Asuka rubbed at her eye and twirled a pen in her hand, as though that could help her stay awake.

"Shouldn't you be in bed?" she said.

I scoffed. "Shouldn't you?"

She shrugged at that. "I'm working."

"Can't it wait?"

"How's that?" Her gaze hardened. "That Angel could go attack the capital tomorrow."

"There's only so much you can do about that right now. You're a human being. You need sleep." I brushed some lint off her coat collar. "Please, Asuka. I'm worried about you."

She scratched the back her her head, looking aside. "I know. Sorry. I'm just close on this. Gimme some time. Come inside; it'll help."

"I—" I shook my head. "I don't know if I should. This isn't right."

Her eyes narrowed, and she tightened the coat around her shoulders. "Well, if that's how you feel, fine. Do what you think is right, Shinji."

"Asuka, please—you can't expect to make this perfect, not right now!"

Her mouth hung open at that, and she let out a small sound of shock. "I can't?" she said. "Of course I can. Who do you think I am?"

With that, she took a step back, and she tapped a button on the door control panel.

"I'll sleep tomorrow," she said. "We'll be good by then."

"It is tomorrow," I said.

She blinked in surprise, but the door slid closed between us, and that was that.

I shuffled my feet on the way back to my quarters, and I sat down on my side of the bed for a while, in the light of the endtable lamp.

And after I was done staring at the wall, I picked up the phone. I dialed a number and got a fair bit of runaround from the other end of the line. Some places don't like it when you call for their residents in the middle of the night, but when it comes to family, you can needle them into an exception. It also helps to be a regular caller.

So they did let me through, eventually, and a weak voice answered on the other end of the line.

"Hello? Shinji? What's going on at this time of night?"

I smiled apologetically, even knowing she couldn't see. "I need to talk to you about Asuka. Are you free in the morning?"

"Morning? Better make it afternoon, after this."

I bowed my head, laughing to myself. "That's fine. Thank you. I don't want to keep you. I'll see you tomorrow around one?"

"Yes, that's fine. I hope you're doing well, Shinji. You sound tired—more tired than you should be even at this time of night."

"I'm trying to hang in there," I said, sighing a little. "Thanks again. I'll see you tomorrow."

"All right. Good night, Shinji."

"Good night, Aunt Kyoko."

 

[Muphrid]

Author's Notes: Story Structure and Revision

Though this is not my first long story, I tried to make some improvements to how I structure and order my writing. I used a master outline document that went into more small-scale detail, at an earlier stage, than I had ever done before. To guide me, I developed a story arc structure that suited my goals. I divided the story into parts and chapters to try to maintain a good sense of momentum as a serial story, delivered weekly. All of this was a major work in progress, with continuous improvements and corrections throughout.



More and more, I feel that outlining is a crucial skill for developing a long story. The Second Coming's outlines total over 150 thousand words—nearly as much as the actual story.

I wrote the story originally through "Character Sketch" with only a broad outline, which consisted of a few changes I wanted to make compared to First Ones. After taking a break to write Auld Lang Syne, I came back to the story during the spring of 2015, and I realized that I'd be better served plotting out the story in full and minute detail.

You might wonder if that's productive, given that, by the time I wrote many of those scenes, I ended up doing something different. I viewed these outlines as approximations of an idea. Often times, when I started to draw up a story arc just before writing it, I'd disregard these notes completely and draw up a new outline, but I'd consult them again later, or partially throughout the process. That gave me the flexibility to discard what I thought didn't quite work but take what I liked. For instance, in my original notes for "The Puncture Engine," Shinji and Asuka go to dinner with Maya and Aoba. I eventually realized that them all going to dinner off-base wouldn't make a ton of sense, but I kept the overall idea of the dinner scene nonetheless.



It was in the development of Misato's arc, "Cherry Blossoms in Faded Gold," that I put together a new idea for an act structure. The arc was giving me massive problems: at one point, I had a concept of the National Square bombing leading to a hostage situation, and that idea gave me fits. I needed something to give order to different ideas I had in mind for the storyline. The three ordeal structure I came up with helped me immensely.

The three ordeal structure is far from revolutionary. An astute reader might recognize that it is only a few tweaks away from the three act structure. The differences are in how the acts are divided; the ordeal structure is more particular to the kind of story I like to tell: with emphasis on character development as the major turning point between phases of a story.

In the three ordeal structure, there are actually five phases of a story arc: a call to action; a first, second, and third ordeals; and an aftermath.

In the call to action, the protagonist is given a choice to follow a new path or course of action. Typically, there are factors they must consider before doing so. This should be related to the protagonist's central flaw—the issue that is to be examined and conquered through the course of the story arc. Eventually, the protagonist is persuaded to heed the call, and we progress to the first ordeal.

The first ordeal exposes the protagonist's flaw. For my purposes, I try to pair the first ordeal with an ostensible success. The protagonist should succeed in some way that still exposes the flaw. This helps keep the mood of the story from turning dark too quickly. In doing so, the flaw that is exposed is often hidden from others; often, only the protagonist knows about it, feels it, or is even aware of it. The first ordeal convinces the protagonist to take action, but now, they act to fix themselves, or to compensate for this flaw.

The second ordeal takes place once the protagonist has had time to try to correct their flaw. They protagonist has done so in a way that is incomplete or ineffective; they overreact, or they outwardly deny the problem. The second ordeal exposes the flaw for all to see: it is undeniable, and it leads to the protagonist's lowest point in the arc. Thematically, it is essential that failure to deal with the flaw also leads to a failure with respect to the overarching plot. A battle is lost due to hubris, or some other disaster results.

On the way to the third ordeal, the protagonist takes the time to truly come to terms with the issue. This is a time of healing and self-insight, and it prepares them for one final conflict, in which their increased self-awareness leads them to victory.

The aftermath, then, is the protagonist's just reward. This may be as short as a few lines or as long a scene or entire chapter. Those who lay the groundwork for nirvana have their time to relish it.

I didn't develop this structure until I was trying to fix "Cherry Blossoms," so the first two arcs don't really fit the structure. I did use it to try to make revisions, but even then, these are piecemeal and incomplete. Still, the three ordeal structure proved instrumental to me developing good story arcs for Asuka and Misato, and to a lesser extent Rei. Asuka's arc is the closest to what I'd consider "textbook" for it: Asuka is given the opportunity to help the effort with her own ingenuity; it doesn't work 100% right the first time, and she works overtime to try to fix it; that worries Shinji and makes him blink before trusting her in a pinch; Asuka realizes that she needs to find happiness in something that doesn't involve her besting others, and she does so by working with people in the final battle.

While the ordeal structure is for one protagonist, when using first-person there's an additional wrinkle: Shinji is the narrator, and he might have a character arc parallel to any other character's. Indeed, the Asuka arc there could be written just as easily from Shinji's point of view, emphasizing how Asuka's attitude toward achieving greatness reflects on his natural inclination toward making do with the status quo.



The three-ordeal structure helps me develop overall story arcs, but arcs as long as the ones I write would be dissatisfying if their climaxes were the only payoff.

I'm not sure if there's another word for what I call payoff, especially if there is one in the academic literature, but I consider the concept crucial. Payoff is something the audience wants to see: Shinji and Asuka having a smooch, say, or Nozomi overpowering a persistent Angel. The time between delivering payoffs, and how satisfying those payoffs are, is big element of pacing.

Managing the time and size of payoffs is an important way of influencing the audience's mood. Since there are many different kinds of payoffs, sometimes one type is more appropriate than another, especially considering plot progression.

Still, knowing when to deliver payoff rather than build toward it is something I've yet to find a good rule for. In Misato's arc, I try to defuse the tense beginning with a series of payoffs: Asuka trying to calm Shinji's nerves, Misato treating him warmly, and successful efforts against Seele in general and then against Lorenz. In Asuka's arc, there's less of this: Shinji and Nozomi have an amusing scene, and Shinji takes Asuka aside to keep her from putting her foot too far in her mouth.

Of late, I've begun to feel that I spend too much time trying to do buildup and not enough delivering payoff. The stories that people seem to enjoy the most have a higher ratio of payoff to buildup. This is something I'm actively looking into going forward.



Having a structure to build story arcs from is one thing; you have to have some stories to tell with that in order to build a larger piece. Then, you have to decide how you want to deliver that content.

Coming from First Ones, I had a couple arcs that I liked, but there was a lot of work needed to expand on them. The introductory arc and the Rei arc were pretty good, I felt, and they just had to be adapted to fit circumstances. The Misato arc there didn't involve Shinji, so that had to change. The Nozomi arc was wrapped up too quickly, so that also needed adjustments. Asuka deserved an arc to herself, befitting her status as a major character. And then, the ending needed to tie all of that together.

I'll talk about the specifics of those character arcs a little later; for now, it's sufficient just to think of the story divided in this way. I conceived of The Second Coming as a text form of a twelve-episode anime, with six arcs, each consisting of two episodes. The original file structure of the story reflected this.

But eventually, I realized that I wanted to deliver this story as a serial novel on a regular schedule. That wasn't totally foreign to me—I did it a long time ago with a Ranma 1/2 piece, but I couldn't keep the schedule at the time. Still, that choice devalued the "12-episode" format I was going for. Delivering a novel of this length over 12 weeks would've been very difficult. I doubted I would get timely feedback, and it would leave little time to make adjustments in case of a significant rewrite.

Instead, I turned to my canonical source for the serial novel: A Tale of Two Cities. It's easy enough to get a copy online nowadays, and using that, I could see that Dickens typically hovered around four thousand words or so for his installments. I could do that; the most difficult thing about it would be coming up with chapter titles.

In the end, I abolished the chapter structure I originally had, made each installment a chapter, gave those chapters names, and gave each arc its own name.

That, in turn, put more focus on the individual chapters. Publishing them serially meant that each chapter needed a good ending point. As a rule, I try to make sure each chapter sees some significant change in the overall circumstances of the story. If a chapter hasn't done that, it's not long enough. If a chapter has already done that, and threatens to do it two or three times, it might be too long. Ending points also depend on what feeling I want to leave the readers with. "Sisters" ends on a somewhat positive note, leading into the final battle against the gyroscopic Angel, and the change in circumstances is all about the relationship between Shinji and Nozomi, not in the overall war. "Threads" ends on a hugely down note as we enter the final arc, with sacrifice being the only salvation from mankind facing the brink of Fourth Impact.



As said previously, I wrote nearly all of this story before beginning to publish it. I only cheated a little bit in that I was still working on the final three chapters by the time I started publishing to Sufficient Velocity. By that point, the ending was very clear and already well in motion, and I was confident the beginning would not be substantially affected.

Writing out (nearly) a whole story before publishing it has had great benefits for me. In Auld Lang Syne, it let me edit in a few characters to flesh out a group, characters I only came up with near the end of the piece. In general, it lets me improve callbacks, foreshadowing, and overall acknowledgement of continuity. For example, the idea that the control room would be laid out more like a NASA Mission Control room came after I wrote Shinji's first tour of Manoah Base, so I retroactively fixed that scene to use the newer model. Originally, Shinji had recurring visions of meeting Rei and the hooded stranger on top of an ephemeral tower, but I eventually came up with the idea of the Theater of Eternity and thought it better, so I edited and fixed those earlier scenes. The hooded stranger herself was originally referred to as veiled and also appeared as Gendo, but I changed the overall look to the current one—a hooded figure whose eyes cannot be seen and whose hands are hidden beneath her sleeves—for various reasons.

There are other elements that are referred to in advance before coming into focus. Shinji and Asuka discuss the puncture engine in the first half of "Mirror Image." Sasaki appears in "From Hell's Heart" and plays a minor role in the testing of the puncture engine before being used heavily in the fifth arc. Shinji's vision of Nozomi's future in "Fugue" had some vague ramblings from Lorenz and such, but that vision becomes much more concrete in "To Become One."

Various scenes have been tweaked or improved since their original writing. I changed an endpoint between "Tokyo-2" and "Project Manoah" to increase the feeling of forward momentum, for instance. Misato has an additional moment in "Whole Heart" to emphasize her change of attitude. The whole roles of Ishikawa, Suzuki, and Misato in the third arc needed a great deal of polish, and the time allowed for editing greatly helped there.

And finally, perhaps the one thing I value most about writing a story so far in advance of publication is the guarantee I can make to the reader: this story will be finished. It has a beginning, but more importantly, it has an end. The SV publication of The Second Coming will, barring unforeseen calamity, end on March 16, 2017.

 

[Muphrid]

24. Past's Reflection

I used to think the sanest people in the world were the ones in the hospital.

I know that probably wasn't always true, but after Third Impact, we all needed a little help. Some of us found common ground during Instrumentality, but that just helped us understand each other. It didn't help us survive what was to come. The people in the hospital, at least, had someone else looking out for them. The rest of us just had to deal with reality on our own.

That said, I think I preferred being a little insane to living in that place. The place was too white, too clean, and too inert. And like in the mountain base, the lights were always on.

When I came to visit Aunt Kyoko, a nurse led me to a meeting area—a room with blue stools bolted to the floor. Hospital staff manned all the exits in pairs, even though Aunt Kyoko was the only patient there.

Aunt Kyoko didn't even look at me as the door opened or as I sat across from her. She was busy. She played go on an electronic board—no moving pieces, nothing you can swallow, that sort of thing. Tapping on intersections put stones down, and all captures were automatic. She played against herself. I'd asked before, on a prior visit, why she did such a thing. She said she had two different strategies she wanted to try, so she would play black one way and white the other. She let the game decide for her which strategy was best.

Forcing Aunt Kyoko to acknowledge me would've gone poorly, so I let her play out her next move. Her breathing was slow and steady. Her blue eyes went back and forth, scanning the board, and every now and then, she adjusted her square-rimmed glasses, always the same way: first on her right side, then on her left, and only with her right hand.

She looked a lot like Asuka, too. The glasses were unique to her, of course, and her features were sharper and a little worn. And when she would look at me—at anyone, really—her whole body wavered a little bit. Just maintaining steady eye contact was a bit of a strain.

That's why, often enough, when we talked she didn't look at me.

"Would you like to play?" she asked, still watching the board.

"I haven't had the time to practice, I'm afraid."

She clicked her tongue at that. "You won't get better if you don't play."

"You're right; I'm sorry."

She laughed, and I did, too.

"This time you're the one looking a bit worse for wear," she said, sliding the game board aside. She met my gaze—trembling notwithstanding—and went on. "So, should I guess what the trouble is?"

I scratched the back of my head. "Uh…"

"Is she pregnant?"

"What?" My throat half closed up. "No!"

"But not for lack of trying."

"No!" I looked aside. "Well, there's trying, and there's trying."

Aunt Kyoko laughed to herself. "I see! Well, perhaps that's for the best. If you're not trying, then that's no good. It's better to have children on your own terms."

"I think so, too."

A silence.

"So," she said, hands folded and putting on a smile. "What's going on with my daughter?"

I sighed, and with some effort, I told her about the puncture engine and how Asuka had worked on it over the previous few weeks and months. In listening to this, Aunt Kyoko closed her eyes and nodded, as though I'd told her the sun comes up in the morning and sets at night.

"Some things never change, do they?" she quipped. "We were all the same way, back in my time."

" 'We'?" I asked.

"Yui, Naoko, and I. The three of us thought we could change the world." She laughed, and she drummed her fingers on the white plastic table. "I guess we all did, in different ways. And everyone who's come after us—Naoko's daughter, as well as mine—has gone about things with that same belief. It's the only way we knew how to work."

"That's what I'm worried about," I said, tapping two fingers on the table. "Asuka's going about this at full tilt, and I don't know if that's good. I don't know if she's doing it right; I don't know what she's going to do when it's done. So what am I supposed to do?"

Aunt Kyoko took off her glasses. She folded them up and placed them on the table, and she rubbed her eyes. "When Asuka told me the Katsuragi girl had made an offer to her, I told her not to take it."

"You did?" My mouth hung open. "She didn't say a word about that."

"That's Asuka," she said with a shrug. "But if it were up to me, I wouldn't see her work on this."

"Even with all this? With the invasion?"

"Does that matter?" She sat back, arms folded, and stared past me. "Yui thought mankind would inevitably fizzle out—and soon, at that. I'm not sure she was wrong. Either way, that's why it was important to her to find a solution soon."

"A solution for what?"

"For entropy—for mortality. She wanted to find a way for us to persist, if not in body and mind then in spirit, in memory. There's nothing more pressing than the destruction of the human race, is there? And yet…" Her eyes came back to me, and she trembled once more. "Whether that fate awaits us tomorrow or a billion years from now, it doesn't change that there's only so much you personally have to give—you and Asuka, both."

I frowned, and I ran my fingers through my hair. "So she should just stop?"

"Look at me," she said with a sad smile. "You want her following in my footsteps?"

"You—you're still here," I said. "And you have people who love you."

"And I'm thankful for that, believe me, but…" She pulled at her resident's gown. "Look at me now."

I bowed my head.

"You don't want to follow in Yui's footsteps, either, I think," said Aunt Kyoko. "When I said I didn't want someone joining this new Eva program or what-have-you, I meant that—and not just for Asuka."

I touched her hand and nodded. "I understand. Thank you."

She smiled at that, and we chatted about other, trivial things for a time—about sailboats and German candy, about small things that could bring us joy even though they didn't matter that much.

When it was time for me to leave, Aunt Kyoko went back to playing go against herself. Two of the nurses came to take her back to her room, leaving the meeting area empty. It was only as she reached the door that Aunt Kyoko stopped in her tracks and called back to me, saying,

"Oh, Shinji?"

"Yes?"

"You and Asuka should come together next time."

I nodded sadly. "I'm sorry I missed your birthday."

"You should be. Asuka's getting better at cooking, but…" She winced.

"I'm working on that."

"Good. I'd like to see her improve next year. Or if not, I'm relying on you to rescue me."

The door to the residents' wing opened, and the sting of rubbing alcohol made me rub my nose.



Once I was back on the base, I arranged for an appointment with Misato and Maya. My concerns were simple: Asuka was working too hard on the device and had invested too much of herself in it. I asked them to be cautious about her work. That was easier said than done, however.

"The truth of the matter is," said Maya, "while most of us on the team have more experience with the Eva, Asuka is creative and innovative in her own way. She's innovative to the point that some of us on the team have difficulty following her sometimes."

Misato made a face at that, like she'd just swallowed a cherry pit. "Are you telling me you can't reliably vouch for her work?"

"I'm saying it takes time."

Time was something we were short of. The Fractal Angel was on the move again, this time making for Australia. An improved and tested puncture engine was a high priority, if at all possible to achieve. In the end, they left it to me to monitor Asuka's behavior and wellbeing.

And how was Asuka doing? When I saw her later that afternoon, she was over the moon.

"We've got it!"

She barged into my office, took a seat in my guest chair, and leaned back, beaming.

"It's gonna work," she said. "Count on it."

Asuka had worked all night on modifications to the engine—modifications that Maya scoured and rechecked independently, much to Asuka's annoyance, but ultimately, Maya cleared the changes. The engine had been reinstalled in the Eva, and Nozomi would soon be on the way with Unit-14 to the battle site.

With the bulk of her work done, Asuka was content to kick back and relax. "I've got some simulations running on some alternative tweaks we might make mid-battle," she said, "but those will take as long as they take. In the meantime, I want to get at least a 10-battle winning streak in the Battle Tower. Or, we could go see Hikari. I think that would cheer her up since Nozomi's going out to fight again. What do you think?"

"Have you slept?" I asked her.

She rolled her eyes. "You can sleep when there's nothing else worth doing. Have you been sleeping?"

"What do you mean?"

"Were you sleeping, or did you work through lunch?"

"I was working."

"On what?"

I turned over a sheet of paper and scanned my eyes over it. I have no idea, to this day, what it actually said. "Stuff."

"Uh-huh. How about the backup pilots? Or Nozomi? What's going on with them?"

I shrugged. "The backups don't have the same synch ratios as Nozomi. And she's got enough on her plate."

Asuka scooted her chair up and leaned forward. "So, what have you been doing?"

"I—I review the reports about the upcoming missions so Nozomi can be ready."

Asuka nodded at that, looking aside. "So you can relay orders more clearly."

"Or make suggestions myself."

"Right." Asuka closed her eyes and rubbed her temple, looking tired. "Fine. Well, let me know if there's anything you want to do tonight, all right?"

Not that there was much we could do. As nice as it would've been to see Horaki and Toji, going into town and then up north would've taken time—time we didn't have if the mission began early in the morning. No, we stayed in that night, and Asuka cursed her handheld game out when she could only get a 9-battle winning streak in the Battle Tower.



The next day.

The target: Canberra, capital of Australia.

The enemy: the Fractal Angel and its new protector—a spider-like Angel, one with eight needle-thin legs spread radially around a disc-shaped central body.

The Australians fought tooth-and-nail through the streets of the downtown district. Unlike the Vietnamese or Koreans, they weren't content to pull back and bombard the enemy's walkers or keep the "harpies" at bay with flak cannons.

The Aussies made the enemy fight for every meter, and so the Spider came into the city. Its needle-like legs pierced tanks' armor and the steel frames of skyscrapers alike. The Fractal Angel stayed back. It settled down over the Parliament House—the seat of Australian government, appropriately shaped like a pair of boomerangs. The Fractal hovered over the building and the lawn outside it, building up power for its ultimate attack.

"Ops, the Australians are ready," reported the communications controller.

Hyuga nodded. He stood one step below Misato's desk, and with his arms folded across his chest, he scanned the three forward screens of the control room.

"All right," he said. "Let's kill some Angels today. Tell the ADF we're good to go."

The officer relayed his message, and Australians made their move: their tanks and armored vehicles did an about-face, retreating to the north and west. They opened up on the Spider Angel with artillery fire, shelling its central body and the skyscrapers around it with abandon. What had once been a battlefield dominated by twisted and broken metal erupted in pockets of fire.

The Spider Angel gave chase. Its legs pierced the pavement beneath them like picks to a sheet of ice. Its central body bobbed up and down as it pursued a fleet of armored vehicles, and a horde of walkers followed the Angel like footmen behind a knight's charge.

"That's our cue," said Hyuga, making a fist. "Launch Eva!"

Unit-14 dropped from an airborne launch vehicle. Encased in a black aerodynamic sheath, the Eva spiraled down from altitude. The sheath's upper and lower halves separated at skyscraper height, and the Eva tumbled onto the ground before coming up for a ten-point landing:

Right at the feet of the Fractal, with not a blade of grass disturbed on the parliament grounds.

"And people said gym class was a waste of time," said Nozomi. "Hey, Angel! Surprise!"

She flipped a switch on the controls and punched at the Fractal's center. The Angel turned one of its points toward the Eva, and the Angel's AT field layers bent and buckled, forming angled shock waves, like from the wake of a ship.

"Is this right?" asked Nozomi. "This isn't working as well as the first time!"

Maya rose from her station and got on the communications loop. Looking at me, she said, "It's drawing from the energy stores it's been saving for its anti-AT field attack. We'll have to deplete all of that energy first before we can break through. She needs to hold on."

"If you can wait it out, we have a chance," I said. "Do you feel anything? Hear anything unusual?"

"Not too much; it's just pushing back against me a bit."

I peered past Maya to Asuka, who gave me a knowing nod. I smiled, let out a breath, and sat a little further back in my chair.

The first AT field layer snapped and reconnected around the Eva and Angel.

"Ops, pattern yellow has changed trajectory," said the detection controller. "It's on its way back to Unit-14. ETA three minutes."

Hyuga grimaced, and he looked across the aisle. "Maya, what can we do to speed this up?"

"We're working on that," she said, poring over a binder full of material as a few of her colleagues gathered around, "but bear in mind: this engine is still in an experimental stage. There might not be a way to adjust it like this that we can guarantee will work and pose minimal risk to the pilot."

"But if no one else has something, I might have a solution." Asuka rose from her seat, touching two fingers to her breastbone. "I thought something like this might happen. I ran some sims overnight to test different configurations. I have one that works—in theory."

Maya coughed. "Asuka—a simulation is not reality."

"I know that, but just look at the data! Tell me you think this isn't good enough to salvage this operation."

Maya and her colleagues gathered around Asuka's station. A flurry of comments and half-formed thoughts followed.

"No, I can't—how can you even follow this?" said one technician.

"Okay, that's good. We can do that, and it'll probably work, but you can't guess what will happen to the contamination ratio, can you? Or can you?" said another.

"This is so fast," said Maya, shaking her head. "Too fast. How are we supposed to know, inside of two minutes…?"

There was a crackle in my ear. "Shinji," said Misato, "this is on a private loop."

I glanced back reflexively. The general's eyes were on me, but she spoke quietly enough that no one but she, Hyuga, and I could actually hear.

"Regardless of what Captain Ibuki says, what do you think of this?"

I about gagged on the spot. I glanced back at Asuka, who was going over finer points of her data with the rest of the qualified controllers. She gestured loudly with a pen in hand, nearly drawing on the screen to make her points. And as I watched her, my heartbeat settled down. The way her hair moved as she talked, how the fabric of her white labcoat pulled and twisted as she gestured—those details were all unmistakably characteristic of her. Every fiber of her being was laid bare for the controllers on duty to see.

And what did that show me?

I turned back to Misato, and I gestured to Asuka with one hand. "She believes she's right," I said, smiling.

Misato raised an eyebrow. "And?"

I pursed my lips and sighed. "And she needs to believe that."

Misato's eyes flickered to Asuka. The General kept two fingers on her headset, even as she navigated the controls to broadcast to the room.

"All right, listen up everyone."

The room froze. Asuka and the other controllers stopped in their tracks, even midway through a plot of data.

"We're not going to try an experimental set of modifications on this timescale for a decision," said Misato. "Captain Ibuki, you've said that that's exactly what we'd be doing in trying to make a fix so quickly—isn't that right?"

Maya nodded. "It is, General."

"Then we have no choice. The Australians have already evacuated their government. Tell them we're aborting the operation. Start on the abort and extraction plan. Get Nozomi, the Eva, and the puncture engine home. Let's do this right next time."

"But Misato!" Asuka stormed up the center aisle. "I have an idea here; what is the harm in a short, controlled trial?"

Misato left her seat, and she took her headset off, holding the device by the microphone boom. "You can't know that what you have will work, or what dangers it will introduce," she said, standing toe-to-toe with Asuka. "It's not about being right. It's about following a sound process. We shouldn't rush things unless we have nothing to lose. We have a lot to lose right now."

"So do the Australians; they're going to lose a whole city!"

Sighing, Misato took Asuka by the shoulders with a light touch. She lowered her voice, saying, "Please, Asuka. I know this is important to you. Let's talk about this later, all right?"

Frowning, Asuka nudged Misato's hand aside. "What are you saying?"

Misato's eyes went to me, and that look didn't escape Asuka.

"What did you tell her?" she said, shaking. "What have you been telling people about me, Shinji?"

"Control, third pattern detected!" cried a controller.

Misato raced back around her desk, putting her headset back on. "What? Where?"

"Right on top of Unit-14!"

A dark mist formed above Unit-14 and the Fractal Angel. The mist coalesced as ephemeral tendrils, yanking the Eva off the ground.

"What—what—hey!" Nozomi lurched about in the entry plug. "Ikari, what's going on? How did something like this sneak up on you guys?"

"I—" My mouth moved, but hardly a word came out for several seconds as I fumbled and stuttered. Eventually, I sputtered out, "I don't know! We're trying to get you out of there; we're already in abort procedure. Just hold on!"

"Abort procedure? How am I supposed to get out of here when I'm hanging fifty meters in the air?"

A silence. As Nozomi struggled to break the Mist Angel's tendrils, Hyuga took one ear off his headset and stepped up to Misato's station.

"Play dead," he said.

Misato drummed her fingers on the table, looking like she'd had a rotten piece of fish for lunch. "All right," she said. "Do it."

And so we left Nozomi there. We left Nozomi at the epicenter as the N2 weapons dropped on Canberra. The Australians wouldn't let the Angels get away scot-free. They blew up their own city, scorching the earth, rather than let the Angels escape unscathed.

And all Nozomi could do was curl into a ball and ride out the blast. If nothing else, the shockwaves did blast her free of the Mist Angel's grasp, but to see Unit-14 bounce sickeningly through the forest of Eucalyptus outside of town was a hard pill to swallow. The Eva was broken, battered, and burned. Nozomi probably shared at least one or two of those qualities, as well.

But they were alive, and with the Eva powered down to minimal levels, the Angels moved on for their next targets none the wiser.

Rescue crews made their way to the forest to retrieve Unit-14, and when the threat abated, most of the controllers were released to rest and recover.

That included me, in theory, but I knew better than to expect such a thing.

After all, even as we rose to leave, the wounded look in Asuka's eyes was still there.



Once the Eva had been retrieved and the controllers released from their stations, Asuka and I headed back to our quarters, but we didn't say anything to each other on the way. We didn't exchange a single word until Asuka tapped her ID card on the reader and allowed me to go in first: there, she closed the door behind me and stood in the doorway, saying,

"What did you tell Misato?"

She leaned back against the closed door, arms folded, with the white labcoat tight around her body.

I gulped, undid a button at my collar, and said, "I told her I've been worried about you. That's all."

"Really?" she said, an eyebrow raised. "That's all?"

"She didn't want to do anything about it, at the time. Nobody's trying to work against you."

"No?" Asuka pointed back toward the control room. "Then what do you call that?"

"Asuka, Asuka, look—Misato—" I had both my hands in front of me, even though I didn't know what to do with them. "Misato made a judgment call; that's all! Honest!"

She narrowed her eyes, studying me like a hawk. "And you agree with her?"

I let out a breath, rubbed my forehead, and said, "I think you've been working hard on this—maybe too hard."

"What do you know about that?"

I flinched. "Asuka—"

"It's not a crime to put in a little goddamn overtime. I'm trying to help save the world here!"

"But that's not all you're trying to do."

Her eyes flashed. "What do you mean by that?"

"You don't remember that dinner with Maya?" I asked, raising both eyebrows. "You don't remember how you all but said that you were a better scientist than her?"

"That's because I am!"

"But this is no time to be trying to prove it! This is dangerous, Asuka!" I stomped my foot. "It's dangerous for Nozomi, and it's dangerous for you!"

Asuka narrowed her eyes. "You would think that."

I blinked. "Excuse me?"

"This is exactly how you are, Shinji," she said, stepping closer. "This is exactly how you've always been. Don't stick up. Don't stand out. Just sink into the shadows and never mind what's going on around you."

"I don't know what you—"

"Is that how you want me to be?" she asked, her voice growing louder. "You want me to be just like you? You want me to go do trivial good deeds anonymously, like that's actually supposed to matter? You want me to go feed the homeless, even when I could do so much more? Should I sit at home and stare at letters from angry people, offering empty words about hope and strength?"

I balled both hands into fists, but I kept them at my side. "Asuka!"

"The world doesn't need another useless person, Shinji!" she roared, "And I will not act like that even if you ask me to!"

Trembling, I shouted back, "Then you're going to end up just like your mom!"

Her eyes widened, and she let out a sound between a squeal and a shriek. She took one step toward me, and I backpedaled. I fell backward on the bed.

Asuka collected her breath, and she covered her face with her hand. "Shinji."

Her voice was icy, and she shuddered as she took her next breath. She turned away.

"I'm going home tonight," she said, "maybe for a day or two. That's for the best. Right?"

I tried to speak, but at first, a hoarse, croaking sound came out. I swallowed—painfully—and with my head low, I said, "Right."

She nodded at that—still not facing me. "See you."

And she walked out.

 

[Muphrid]

Author's Notes: Small-scale structure and techniques

Once the large-scale structure of a story is planned out, it's time to get in the trenches and start doing the work of actual writing. Some of these techniques are commonly discussed: imagery, figurative language, and the like. These are effective for conveying ideas or descriptions in colorful or memorable ways, but before I get into too much detail, let me step back a bit. A major goal of a writer, I feel, is the manipulation of readers' attention and impression of a piece. There are some things you want a reader to pay attention to. There are some things you want the reader to feel or think about. Your job as a writer, then, is to make sure that you highlight what you want emphasized or downplay what you want overlooked. You want to make sure your prose works to deliver a coherent impression, instead of coming off as a jumble of words with conflicting impacts.

To accomplish this goal, there are several basic ideas I try to keep in mind. Often, I try to manage how often the readers notice the words on the page are words, compared to a story that they're following along with. I need tools to draw attention to what's important, and by contrast, to make that which should not be thought about to fade to the background. To deliver impressions, I need the means to convey feelings and ideas precisely, often through sensory descriptions. And, on top of those things, I need to make sure I am holding the reader's attention: that they're interested in what happens going forward and that they cannot anticipate all that is to come (or else, there would be no point). All of these ideas help construct a finely-tuned narrative.



I'll start with the last of those ideas: making sure the reader is not bored. I try to consider your audience here. What do they want to see? How easily can they anticipate what might happen?

For The Second Coming, and for many of my works, I chose to write for an audience that would be relatively patient. There aren't shocking twists or bursts of heartwarming every chapter. By design, the structure of the piece supports only so many high points. So the audience would necessarily have to have some patience (perhaps, on reflection, too much patience).

Because the pacing and payoff structure is slow-developing, the story supports being relatively subtle. There are many times where I refuse to say outright something that's going on, hoping to engage the reader in figuring out exactly what's going through a character's mind or what might have happened off-screen. For example, the reporter Miyamoto mentions "the lack of bullets" from the assassination attempt. It's perfectly reasonable to wonder what exactly that means and how that could be. Did the shooter fire blanks? Or something else? This is a form of engagement that is fitting for slower-developing stories, and it promotes hard thinking about many aspects of the story. In contrast, a faster-developing story would want to be more explicit or risk losing people, and such a story would rely more on emotional impressions to maintain a consistent sense of engagement.

Note that I'm not talking about how fast the plot is, only how fast the pacing of payoff is. A story can have a relatively slow-developing plot but frequent payoffs. Advice and Trust's early chapters struck me this way: the development of Asuka and Shinji's relationship, and their relationship with Rei, is far more important than the Angel stuff in terms of screentime. Payoffs are very frequent, and as a result, the story benefits from playing things more "straight-up". Trying to play that more subtly would've compromised the core narrative pull of the story.

A major tool for this restraint is Shinji's narration. I often refrain from having Shinji expound on his thoughts, relying instead on his observations to let the reader decide what's going on. Now, that's not an absolute rule: narration for setting the mood is important, but that accomplishes a different purpose. Moreover, when Shinji does offer his thoughts on some matter, there can be some level of misdirection. Shinji's "drunken" monologue about stuff seeping out of him uses the example of body fluids to say what's really on his mind: that he himself is a waste and pointless. In other places, Shinji expresses anger toward someone or something that is really directed at himself. This form of unreliable narration serves to characterize Shinji without saying what's on his mind as though it were objective fact.



Much of what I try to do with this story has to do with the managing of impressions. That's particularly true given that, at most points in this story, the nature of the personal conflict is quite clear. Characters in this story often spend time trying to move each other to different positions or actions. They ask for change in each other. It's my goal to supplement those conflicts with a good sense of ambiance and mood.

Part of that comes from scenery and location. That was a criticism of Auld Lang Syne: that I wasn't painting a good picture and neglected using the scenery to add to the overall feeling of the work. There are several ways I tried to address that in this piece. Shinji's apartment, for instance, conveys a sense of isolation through its height. That was doubly so when many of the visions with Rei and the stranger took place on top of a tower, instead of in the theater. Many of the scenes in Tokyo-2, as well as Myanmar, use a sense of desolation and emptiness to weigh on the characters. The arcade that features in "Cherry Blossoms" is, on the other hand, quite lively. The theater used for Rei's visions is concrete but otherworldly, defying the laws of physics in some places, which adds to the sense that it is truly unreal.

I also firmly believe in the importance of using objects and rituals that the characters believe are meaningful. Some of these include Misato's rank insignia (the golden cherry blossoms), Asuka's white labcoat, and Nozomi's sketchpad. In each of these cases, and in other examples, the characters attach a certain meaning to objects, places, or actions. You can consider, for example, the meaning Shinji attributes to the phone on his bedroom desk. It is not merely a phone; it means more than that to him. Engaging and interacting with the phone (and others like it) connects him with the outside world. That is a meaningful action to him, and it's not something he does lightly. For Nozomi, the act of sketching is part of her drive to understand people and herself. Later on, Shinji adopts a particular phrase and instills it in Sasaki, attaching meaning to it—the dedication to the cause. In this way, a sentiment or impression can be evoked quickly just by mere mention or hint of one of these important devices. They're shorthands for larger feelings or ideas.

Beyond these shorthands, it's important to use the full toolbox of narrative techniques to get across different ideas or feelings. For instance, each character has a different manner of speaking or behaving that gives an impression of their personality. Consider Nozomi: she's subdued, sarcastic, and casual. She's not very animated. She doesn't pay too much attention to authority. You can notice these aspects from how she speaks—not overly friendly, but at the same time not super-polite. Contrast that against Asuka, whose personality can get Loud at times. She will yell, and she'll show her emotions with extreme movements and gestures.

Describing characters is one thing—you can lean on their actions and words to describe them based on evidence rather than statements of fact. Describing other objects can be done similarly, but there is a risk: the more obliquely something is described, the more words it takes to get the point across. For something that might appear infrequently, more direct approaches may be justified. When using more direct description, it always helps to connect details logically. Some authors say to describe an object top-to-bottom or vice-versa, so that an image can be built gradually and in connection with previously established details. The same basic principle applies to more complicated objects or scenes: avoid jumping around. In addition, often the first or last part of a description is the one that sticks in the reader's mind best, so finding a logical way to end where you want to hammer something home is a powerful trick.



It's all well and good to have a litany of impressions to try to impart, but to get them across effectively, you need to have ways to highlight them—to make them stand out from the rest of the piece. There are a few techniques I use to accomplish this: through judicious word choice, through paragraph and sentence structure, and through repetition or illustrative devices, among others.

A good choice of words can make all the difference toward delivering an impression. Words with double meanings can help deliver an impression subtly: if the more common meaning or connotation is innocuous, then some readers will probably read that and ignore the more sinister or nuanced connotation. That's good for more of a "second reading" type of thing—an easter egg. Conversely, if the more common or overt connotation is the one that stands out while the less used one is more innocent, that adds a touch of ambiguity.

The extent of such double meanings can be contextual: consider a woman trying to remove a bloody spot from her dress. If she merely "cleans" it, then that's relatively unemotional. If she "scrubs" it out, then that suggest some struggle with the underlying cause, as well as the actual spot. If she "bleaches" it, then that implies finality. All of these are more subtle because they're words that could ordinarily be used with cleaning something. If, instead, she "destroys" the spot or "excises" it, then these are much stronger indications of emotion, even though their meaning with respect to a spot is not unusual.

Attention can be manipulated through sentence and paragraph structure. As a rule, shorter paragraphs and sentences attempt to command more attention. They have a livelier feel, and they put increased emphasis on what's happening on a moment-to-moment basis. Longer paragraphs and sentences let people settle in and process things more gradually. A healthy mix of long and short promotes attention as well: going to shorter paragraphs and sentences when more attention is needed works best when there are stretches of longer paragraphs and sentences to signal less need for close attention. For that reason, overuse of short paragraphs and sentences can be tiring: the reader may not be able to maintain 100% attention for that long and may find the demand taxing or irritating. A bunch of long paragraphs and sentences can also be tiring, for the lower density of critical information fosters boredom. Short paragraphs and sentences do well with action or intense drama scenes. Long paragraphs and sentences allow the author to cover long sections of time or space quickly or to provide details on a more factual level as a basis for later development.

Finally, I make frequent use of repetition, which reduces the risk that a point I wanted to get across would get skipped or missed. A great example of this is the end of "Mirror Image," where the repetition in the narration that Shinji can do something—can make a difference—is used to underscore the importance of the realization. A secondary use is to emphasize atypical or unusual thinking, as in Shinji's narration during "Fugue."

For The Second Coming, I often use long paragraphs of narration to introduce scenes. I sneak in little tidbits like Shinji seeing Asuka "almost every day" before the Angels came again, even though they live together, but I use more vivid language to describe the incessant blinking of the red light on his phone, and I use repetition to make a point very clear, where necessary, or to emphasize unusual trains of thought.

 

[Muphrid]

25. Self-portrait

At that time, I could have counted on one hand how many nights I'd spent away from Asuka—at least since she came back from the sea.

For all of us who came first, just surviving was hard. I came back near the remains of Tokyo-3 and watched Lilith's head sink into crater bay. I didn't see anyone else at all, actually, until Asuka came back.

I didn't trust her at first. I didn't trust that she was Asuka. I didn't trust that she was real, but Asuka convinced me. She didn't love me unconditionally. She didn't shower me with praise I didn't deserve. No human being can offer such things. That's how I knew she was real: just because I wanted something from her didn't mean she'd put up with it—not without getting her due in return.

It was Asuka who convinced me to go inland—away from the sea and toward salvation. She kept things organized and running smoothly. She managed our camp and scrounged for supplies. She made sure I wasn't useless: I had the hands for cello, so she assumed I could turn that into a talent for trapmaking, tying up tents, and the like. When we came across other bands of survivors, she made sure we had the sticks, crowbars, and matches to defend ourselves.

So you see, I trusted Asuka to take care of a lot of this stuff. She had that certainty. She reduced that life-and-death situation down to something I could deal with and understand: patch up a tent, make some food, and so on.

But Asuka could make mistakes, too. One time, we spotted a group of survivors coming our way. She thought one pointed a rifle into the air, so she threw a Molotov cocktail their direction.

It wasn't a rifle, though: it was a signalling flag.



The next morning, after the fall of Canberra, the senior officers and civilian staff gathered in the briefing auditorium to assess the situation. The Spider, Fractal, and Mist Angels were staying together on their way north to the Asian mainland. Misato put our hopes on the puncture engine for a quick and effective solution. "Make it work," she ordered the scientists. "Whatever you need to do—make it work."

"Yes, General," said Maya, speaking on behalf of her people—a group that didn't include Asuka. The scientists left an empty seat for her at the end of the row, but that was all.

After some discussion on the PLA's ability to resist, discussion turned to strategy and tactics. We needed to develop a means to attack these Angels effectively even while outnumbered. Hyuga developed a series of maneuvers for Nozomi and me to practice. That was easier said than done, of course: Nozomi wasn't in the greatest shape. She'd survived the N2 weapon drop, but she'd come away with a broken bone in her hand. The hours of waiting for rescue and safe return to Japan had taken a toll on her mind as well. When she got in the simulator, she was a little cranky.

"So it goes like this, right?" said Nozomi, rubbing her left hand. "Everybody says, 'Hey,' or 'Hi,' or 'Hello,' and before their breath is cold, they have you stripped down, put in another skintight suit, and sent to another chamber with bloody fluid going down your throat." Shaking her head, she sighed. "So, are you holding up, Ikari?"

The control room was only partially staffed that morning, as was typical for simulated exercises. "I've had better days," I told Nozomi, and I took a seat at my station. "If you need some time to recover, I can get the doctors here."

"Is there time?" she asked, casting me a weary eye.

I shook my head.

"Then it is what it is," she said. "What about you?"

"Me?"

"I heard Soryu's taking some time off?'

I rubbed my forehead. "Yeah, she—she needs some time. She's been working pretty hard, too. I'm hoping some time to herself will do her some good."

"You think having her idea shot down in front of the whole control room won't hurt her too much?"

I shook my head. "Nobody really doubts Asuka. We all just think she needs to slow down. Stuff like this has to be done the right way. Your sister wouldn't want it done any other way, would she?"

Nozomi huffed at that. "That's putting it mildly." She licked her lips, opened both eyes forcefully, and gripped the controls. "All right, can we get this over with?"

I smiled slightly, and I dusted off the file of maneuvers and techniques Hyuga wanted us to practice. It was intimidating: fighting one against three isn't something I'd ever had to try. The worst I'd ever faced was two against two, and even then, I'd had Asuka as a partner. If anything, Asuka had more expertise in this sort of asymmetric battle: she was the one who fought the mass-produced Evangelion units.

But Asuka wasn't with us. It was just me and Nozomi.

I guided Nozomi through the practice maneuvers and tried to instruct her as best I could. The list was rigorous and difficult, and Nozomi struggled with it. One maneuver involved Nozomi taking Unit-14 underneath the Spider Angel, in an attempt to shield her from the Mist and the Factal. There, the objective was to attack the Spider from below without letting it impale her on its razor-sharp feet. The goal was to attack quickly before the Spider could reposition and expose her, but Nozomi was cautious, continuing to chase the Spider's body rather than leap in for the kill.

"When you get in that position, you've got to go," I told her. "Go for the kill, or you're dead anyway."

Nozomi shrugged. "I just don't think I can reach all the way up to the body if I'm not directly under it."

"If you can't reach it, then the Spider will just move out of the way, and it moves faster than you do. Even if it doesn't, you have to assume the Mist will wrap itself around you and make sure you can't do anything."

"What if it does?" asked Nozomi. "You don't want to see what would happen if it gets tangled with the Spider's legs?"

"That might be something we can improvise out of," I said, "but Hyuga wants you to go for the kill, and I think he's right."

Nozomi pursed her lips. "All right—you wanna spin it up again?"

I restarted the scenario, and Nozomi went into battle against the three simulated Angels. The Fractal made no move against her. The Mist shot its icy tendrils, but she cut through the air with her prog knife to keep it at bay. Unit-14 somersaulted between the Spider's legs, and the Eva found its feet underneath the Spider—albeit some ways off-center compared to the Spider's main body.

Still, Nozomi leapt for the Spider's core. She grasped and clawed at the main body, holding on with one arm as she thrust the prog knife at the Angel's underbelly, but the Angel brushed her aside with one of its legs, leaving her in the open and vulnerable to a grisly death.

She pounded her right hand on the control levers, and she grunted. "Reset?" she asked.

I clicked a button on the screen, and the simulation Angels vanished.

"So yeah," said Nozomi, letting out a tense breath. "About this decisive attacking thing."

"Maybe a jetpack?" I offered.

"I don't even wanna know what that mist is gonna do to a jetpack," said Nozomi. "It's gonna hurt my maneuverability on the ground, too. You wanna try a grappling hook?"

"Those legs will cut any grappling line we have," I said. "No, no, look—let's try the jetpack. I know it'll be awkward, but I think it's the best chance we have. Trust me on this. There were a lot of times back then I wished I had a jetpack, so let's give it a shot this time."

Nozomi shrugged. "Okay, Soryu."

I flinched. "Excuse me?"

"Nothing."

We went through the test again, this time equipping Unit-14 with a jetpack attachment. Like Nozomi thought, the jetpack did make ground maneuverability difficult: she had a much harder time rolling into position underneath the Spider initially, but once she did manage to get there, the jetpack gave her the thrust and power to pierce the Angel's core without needing to grab it first.

That was all well and good, save for the handful off attempts where Nozomi got splattered by the Spider's legs just for trying to get underneath it. It was a decent method, but it needed some work.

We couldn't spend all afternoon working on that technique, so after a few more looks, we moved on. I flipped to the next page of maneuvers, and I glanced down the row of desks and to the left. Of course, the control room was staffed only as needed for simulations. Maya's people were busy working on the puncture engine. If they weren't asked to attend in advance, they wouldn't be there.

Nozomi and I worked on maneuvers for a few hours before I let her go to rest. There was only so long a pilot could be expected to maintain focus and peak performance anyway, so at that point, we weren't working with much. Better to recharge, regroup, and retry later.

Still, I wanted some more practice with the ideas of the maneuvers, even without Nozomi. I arranged for the first backup pilot, Sasaki, to get some time in the simulator, but just as Sasaki was on his way to the locker room, the door to the control room opened.

"Sorry to interrupt," said Maya, peering inside. "I heard you and Kazuto were getting ready for some simulation runs?"

"That's right," I said.

"Great! Do you mind if I borrow the two of you for another test?"

I shifted in my seat. "Right now?"

"Either now or when you're done with your exercises?"

I sighed, and I closed the maneuver file. "Sasaki," I said on the microphone, "Maya needs us to be guinea pigs again."



Maya had another puncture engine test in mind for us. I suited up and manned a simulation body once again, despite the feeling of an anvil pressing on the back of my eyes. The staff were back at their positions, save for Asuka. Maya manned the microphone in the experiment control room all on her own.

"All right, let's reestablish a baseline," said Maya. "Kazuto and Shinji, if you'd extend your hands out to one another and attempt to touch, like before?"

We did so, and as before, our AT fields created a wall of separation between us.

"Good, very good," said Maya, glancing at the readouts in front of her. "All right, Kazuto, leave your hand there. Shinji, do you remember where the puncture engine control is mapped to?"

I wiggled the fingers on my right hand. "Button R4, right?"

"That's right. You can activate it now."

"Maya," I said, "what are we testing here that we couldn't do before?"

"That," she said, "is a secret?"

"Maya…"

"It wouldn't be scientific to tell you," she argued. "This is human subject research as much as it is metaphysical biology. Your belief that the situation is the same or different, that it should or shouldn't be more successful, could affect the results."

"So…?"

"Turn on the engine, Shinji."

I swallowed, and I pressed down on the trigger button. I reached out with the simulation body's arm, grabbing the other body by the wrist. I held that position for a moment; I looked at the other simulation body's head—its grotesque, half-formed head—but despite the parade of soldier ants crawling behind my eyes, I stayed squarely in reality.

"Good," said Maya. "That's great. Thank you both. Let's get you two out of there now, all right?"

A successful test. No discrepancies. No mental contamination.

What more could've gone right?

As soon as I could get out of the ill-fitting plugsuit, I barged out of the pilots' locker room and made for the lab. Maya was still in the experiment control room, sitting with two technicians as they examined the data.

"Maya!" I cried.

She cocked her head, and she held her clipboard a little closer to her chest. "Yes? Is something wrong?"

"I want to know now," I said to her, "what exactly did we just test?"

"The puncture engine, of course. We had to do some additional development—"

"I know that!"

The two technicians at the front of the room looked up from their tablets, and I turned away from them.

"I know that," I said again, more softly this time. "But I want to know what changes you made compared to the first time."

"Shinji," she said, "would you really understand it if I told you everything we've done since the first test?"

"That's not—" I stopped and hissed, shaking my head. "That's not what I'm asking you. Why can't you just tell me?"

Maya pursed her lips, and she offered me a seat in a rolling chair, which I accepted. She flipped through some pages, though I didn't see her reading them very carefully, and she said,

"Shinji, do you think it matters if we tested Asuka's idea just now?"

"Of course it does," I said. "If Asuka had been right, then—" I looked aside, to an empty chair near the control panel. "Then we could've saved Canberra! And Nozomi wouldn't have broken her hand, or—"

"That may be correct," said Maya, smiling, "but that doesn't change for me that we couldn't have known. There wasn't enough time to be sure it was safe, let alone effective. There wasn't enough time to be thorough or to be confident in the process. That's a little of what science is about, isn't it?"

I frowned. "Okay…"

"What I'm saying," Maya went on, "is that right now, it looks like Asuka's idea was safe. You felt that, too, didn't you?"

"I did."

"I'm not sure it would've actually worked the way she thought, though. It might not have helped break through that strong AT field fast enough. We'll look at this data and see. Do you understand?"

I understood.

I understood just fine.

Asuka was right.



I went ahead with exercises for the rest of the day, but once it got into the evening, I left the base. I went straight home.

"Asuka!"

The dinner table had a film of dust on it. The kitchen sink was dry. The bed had been made and sat unwrinkled.

"Asuka? Asuka!"

I checked the washroom sink. Her toothbrush was gone. Back in the bedroom, a whole drawer of the dresser sat empty.

I collapsed onto the bed. The air didn't even smell of her. It was just nothing. She might've been gone ever since the night before. She could've gone anywhere.

Could have.

I went to my desk—now empty, save for the landline phone and a light. I dialed a number I knew well.

"Hello, Horaki residence," said the middle sister.

"It's me," I said. "Is she there?"

A pause. "She is. Do you want me to ask if she'll talk?"

I let out a sigh of relief. "Do you think she'll want to?"

"Probably not."

"That is like her, isn't it?"

"It really is."

Another pause. I pulled my collar away from my body, and I said,

"I'm coming up there."

"I know," said Horaki.

"How is she?"

"She's doing what she knows how to do," said Horaki. "She's solving problems, even if they're trivial—even if they're games."

"She hasn't talked about what happened?"

"It's Asuka."

I nodded to myself. "Right. See you soon."

Horaki said her goodbyes as well, and I put up the hood of my sweatshirt to go.



The trip north to Toyoshina was quite different at night. In the darkness, the fields of farmland were patches of black. Occasionally, a street lamp or house light interrupted the void—a sign of scattered humanity clinging to life despite great separation between each of us.

I took a cab to the Horaki home, and I found the light on when I arrived. Horaki answered the door before I could ring the bell.

"Before I let you in," she said, "I need you to promise me something: don't ask her to come back for her job, or for you."

I scoffed, not sure what to say. "Horaki…"

"I mean, you can ask her, but that shouldn't be the goal, right? Just be there for her." She nodded at me questioningly.

I gulped, and I nodded in turn. "I need to be her friend first."

Horaki smiled. "Yeah. I know you can do that. I just thought it should be said."

"Thank you." I peeked toward the road. "May I come in?"

She winced. "Oh, yes! Yes, of course. Please."

Horaki led me inside, and she motioned for me to follow to a stairwell. We talked quickly about Nozomi—who wasn't exactly answering Horaki's calls. I told her Nozomi was fine, but Horaki didn't seem so sure.

"She's not as unshakable as she makes out to be," said Horaki. "She and Asuka have that in common, I think."

"She's stronger than you might worry she is," I said. "And that also applies to both of them."

"Then maybe I'll just be the one to worry," she said, smiling to herself, "and you tell me when I'm wrong to do so. How does that sound?"

I nodded. "Remind me to tell Toji to treat you to dinner soon. You deserve it."

Horaki beamed at that—brighter than any of the lonely streetlamps in the dark that night—but she didn't let her delight get the better of her. She put on her class rep face as we made the top step, and she led me down the hallway to a guest room. She slid the room divider only partway open, just enough for her to peer inside. "Asuka?"

"Yeah?" The response was lazy, disinterested.

"He's here to see you."

"That right?" There was a faint electronic sound, and then a clattering. "Okay, whatever. Send him in."

Horaki stepped aside, nodding to me, and I went in.

The room was sparsely furnished—a flexible space redecorated based on need, I guessed. Maybe it once belonged to the other family in the house. Whatever the reason, there was only a futon, an old television, and a game console within.

Asuka had a bag of Cheetos or maybe a knock-off of them, with about a quarter of the bag poured into a bowl next to her. She licked the powdery cheese coating off her fingers as she lay flat on her stomach, just a meter or so in front of the television. She was dressed in tight pajamas with a cat pattern—nothing I recognized as hers, so I thought maybe Horaki had given them to her for her stay. It would've been just like Asuka to forget something like that.

After a short silence, Asuka tossed the game controller aside and kicked her bare feet back and forth idly. "Okay, so," she said. "How's life?"

"It's rough," I admitted, "but we're trying to hang in there. How are you?"

She shrugged, despite not getting up. "I'm fine."

"Are you?"

She looked back with one eye. "Why do you ask?" she asked coyly. "Do you want me not to be?"

"Ah, uh, huh?" I eked out.

She rolled over and threw herself to her feet. She was a bit wobbly, but I dare say that worked in her favor, for she sauntered up to me with those wavering, back-and-forth steps and took me by the collar with her thumb and forefinger.

"Asuka, I, uh—you know, Maya said you weren't wrong. That's something I wanted to say, at least."

"Pff." Asuka rolled her eyes. "As if I need Maya to tell me I'm right."

"Then, you know, I'll say you were right, then."

She eyed me from under her eyebrows. "Shinji, you don't know anything about metaphysical biology."

"That's true, but—"

"So, is that it?"

I blinked. "Huh?"

"That's all you wanted to say?" she said, stepping closer—so close I could smell the cheese on her breath—not like I cared. "That's all you wanted to do here?"

I shook my head. "I wanted to see you."

"You did?" she said, raising both eyebrows.

"Yeah."

"Good."

She leaned in, and I took her. I kissed her in spite of the taste of Cheetos on her lips, or the sweat on her body and in her hair because she hadn't bathed for a day or two. Actually, you know what? I kissed her in part because of those things, because they told me I was kissing her.

She pressed her body against mine, and her fingers caught the button of my pants. She broke the kiss, but I put my lips to her neck instead. "Do you want me, Shinji?" she asked.

"Yes!"

"Do you need me? Do you need me so bad your life isn't complete without me?"

"Yes, Asuka! Yes!"

She made a soft, satisfied sound. "Mm, I like that."

But her fingers on my pants gave way, and she pulled back. She straightened her pajamas along with my shirt, and with a more measured, thoughtful look, she said,

"I like that a lot. And I might like it a little too much."

"Asuka…"

"It could be," said Asuka, "that's the only thing I really like."

I closed the gap between us, and I took her into my arms—just for a hug this time. "If that's how you feel," I said, "you don't have to do anything else. You don't have to go back there. Whatever you choose to do, I'll support you."

"And not go behind my back when you think I have a problem?"

"If you listen a little more when I tell you I think you have a problem."

Asuka huffed at that, but she smiled and nestled herself closer to me. "That's fine."

A pause. Asuka sighed heavily, but she didn't say anything for a while.

"What do you think you want to do?" I asked.

"Dunno. Would like to beat that game and then think about it, maybe."

"You want me to go?"

"Gimme a minute," she said, "but after that—you know, it's hard to concentrate on a game when someone else is watching you."

I smiled and laughed, and I held her all the tighter.

"Hold on; I'm not finished," she went on. "About what I said yesterday…"

"What about it?"

"If you want to keep working with Nozomi, or just whatever else—you don't have to do anything more, you know?"

"Maybe," I said. "But I'll have to think about that, too."

She let out a breath, settling into my arms.

"We both have things to think about," she said.

I smiled at that, and I leaned over to Asuka's side. I whispered something in her ear, and she nodded in turn.



I left Asuka in Horaki's care for the rest of the evening. Asuka still had some thinking to do about her future, after all, and I felt Horaki would benefit from the company—if nothing else, to help take her mind off Nozomi. Of course, I think Horaki would've insisted on letting Asuka stay anyway.

I went back to my apartment, rather than return to the base. It gave me the opportunity to clear the dust from the dining room table and to eat a home-cooked meal of my own. I did a little redecorating, too, and I put up the picture of my parents on my nightstand. It's true that they were not the most loving people, and they worked toward and accomplished things I didn't necessarily agree with.

But they were my parents, whether they deserved my love or not. I couldn't agree with what they'd chosen to do, but there was something about them I could safely emulate: their drive to get something done, to make a plan and carry it out. My parents were ambitious people. They were ambitious for the wrong things, but they pushed unceasingly to make things happen, to get stuff done. It would've been wrong of me to condemn them entirely for what they strove for. Their capacity to strive for a goal—that was worth learning in spite of who they were.

I hadn't yet come to follow that path. I'd wandered aimlessly for two years, not really knowing where I'd end up or what I would do in the future. Even that night, with Asuka at the Horaki home and away from me, I still didn't know what I would do with myself going forward. There weren't a lot of things I felt I was good at or that would suit me. I'd learned to play the cello and thought I was competent, at least, but few people can make a career of music. I'd been out of school as well, not wanting the attention. What could someone like me do in the future?

I didn't have the answer to that, and with Angels still roaming the globe, it felt premature for me to think so far ahead, but there was something I could do in the present time. I could go to the base and sit at my station in the control room. I could go there and shed the anxieties that might cast a fog in my head.

I'm not a perfect person. I certainly wasn't one then, but there was something I could strive for, even if I had nothing else. It was the thing I whispered in Asuka's ear that night. It was the reason I could bear sitting in the control room chair even as Nozomi fought creatures from the void of space.

It was the reason people could rise from the sea at all.

"It's okay to be here," I'd said to her, and my words pushed some strands of hair aside around Asuka's ear. "It's okay to be here even if you're not totally happy with who you are."

"Thanks," she'd said, and she'd smiled.

It was the smile of someone who believed she should show nothing else in the moment, of someone who wanted desperately for the smile to be real.

"I hope so," she said at last.

I hoped she'd come to believe it in her heart, too.

 

[Muphrid]

Author's Notes: Audience targeting and community

It's easy to think of writing as something that happens in a vacuum, to believe that there is a set of best techniques, ideas, approaches, and even plots that people would appreciate equally well now as they did ten thousand years ago or will ten thousand years hence. Nothing could be further from the truth. Taste in fiction changes. The novel as we know it did not even exist two thousand years ago. And moreover, a writer is often judged as much by readership at large as they are by the community of other writers around them, which serves as a first conduit to getting word about their story out—or, perhaps, as an insulator that keeps it from being felt.

This section of The Second Coming Author's Notes series discusses tailoring a story to an intended audience, as well as networking with the community to make a story known and to get it read. I will not pretend I have been entirely successful in this respect, but perhaps through the example of things I have tried, folks will come to understand and appreciate different courses of action that could be worthwhile for their own stories.



Knowing your audience is crucial for setting the tone and structure of a story. As I've said before, the kinds of successes and failures—the kinds of obstacles—you use in a story should reflect what your audience (whether that's a concrete community or a more abstract idea of the kind of person you want to enjoy your story) is looking for in fiction. A more action-oriented story can put emphasis on themes like inner strength and resolve, especially if those qualities help the protagonist find power they did not know they had or could not reliably use before. Such stories can also use turning points that hinge upon outsmarting the enemy, or on unveiling an unsuspected advantage.

My style of fiction, down to the plot construction and design of character arcs, is inherently more character-focused, on average. That favors turning points based on changes in opinions or attitudes. It supports a slower-developing story, as often these turning points require more time to grow and become clear. In hindsight, the choice I made to divide the story into small, weekly segments may have been a mistake as a result. Smaller chapters put more emphasis on fast action, on a higher density of payoffs compared to longer chapters—which naturally build more investment through the course of a reading session.

That's one aspect in which I may have made an error or mistake in trying to present this story, and it's not the only one, I feel. My remarks above concern a broad and general dimension of appeal: essentially, one that is concerned with the progression of overt events vs. what's going on in the characters' heads. Focusing too much on the latter can make the story's overt plot hard to follow or unsatisfying. My opinion of the overt plot in The Second Coming is that it is a bit thin. Shinji, due to his position as a single character in a wider story, can't often get the full picture of what's going on. That is a serious limitation of first-person point of view, and it takes time and effort to work around that. Stuff like why the Zenunim attacked the Chinese and Japanese forces, for instance, is left to speculation because it reflects on the enemy's intentions. For a character piece, that is appropriate, but for following plot progression, it may seem arbitrary or totally unexplained. The balance to be struck there is quite difficult.

On a more specific level, the audience of immediate readers (rather than a general audience you don't know about) may have more particular tastes. Just coming to SV to write an Evangelion piece, I learned a great deal about the current Eva community's culture. It's undeniable that Advice and Trust has sparked an Eva fic renaissance that is unique and characteristic of SV, and much of the community has, in my opinion, tuned its tastes and culture around that. Though Strypgia and I both share an inclination toward positive and mature relationships, I think the differences between our stories may have posed an insurmountable obstacle. The Second Coming, like many of my other pieces, often examines people struggling against their base urges to find happiness. That can get pretty dark at times. The setting is unfamiliar and different. As Susano pointed out, the use of a new pilot can be perceived as perpetuating and compounding the use of child soldiers in a manner that, unlike small AU divergences, represents a new instance, instead of merely working with what canon gives us.

One reason I cannot tailor the story much in light of becoming aware of such ideas is that the story was 99% written by the time I published the first chapter. I still firmly believe that writing a piece ahead of time confers great benefits for revision and continuity, but being somewhat unfamiliar with the SV Eva community, I did not take into account the current culture in writing the piece. While I don't advocate people completely and utterly trying to "pander" to an audience or community, knowing who would read your story and anticipating what they might say is important. There are always marginal details in a story that one feels are flexible and could change to give different impressions. Doing that to meet an audience's interests isn't cynical. It's giving people something they'd enjoy reading.



As important as it is to understand the expectations of your audience, it's also crucial to build relationships with other writers. These are the people who can tell you what's good and bad about your writing, much more so and in more detail than common readers can.

For my part, I have tried to reach out to other writers with insight and analysis, going beyond giving mere impressions of a piece. In times past, I carried out long and thorough analysis of people's work, covering a half-dozen major aspects of a passage: plot and structure, characterization and development, style and command, setting and worldbuilding, themes, and more. Such an analysis is hugely time-consuming, though, and I seldom go into such detail anymore. I also fear that offering opinion to that degree of detail can be paralyzing to the recipient if they are not fully confident in their work already.

In this respect, though, I still feel I can do better to network and integrate with the community of authors. I think back to Brian Randall, who influenced me while he was still alive. He would routinely read Haruhi Suzumiya stories unprompted from Fanfiction.net. He had that much wherewithal to wade through the drek to try to find aspiring authors with a touch of promise and to encourage them. I do not share that desire. To me, there are some people who are simply too far away from where I feel I could engage them properly, and I lack the patience to read through hundreds of thousands of words to catch up on even good writers' pieces (and if I did not do so, I would not be reasonably qualified to offer suggestions or advice). Simply put, I enjoy writing and talking about the craft much more than reading other people's work just for the sake of reading. I do not defend this attitude as one that is the most constructive or beneficial to my interests; I do not think it is. Rather, if you're looking to make a piece known, I think it is probably best to read other people's stuff—especially if you can stand to do so just for the sake of reading it, instead of looking to build connections. The connections will come naturally.

You can try other things, as I have. Advertising, I've found, is only marginally effective. The best real advertising is word of mouth, and there is little anyone can do to control that. You can try saying less about a piece to promote speculation among readers (goodness knows Evangelion promotes fan-wanking by being obtuse, right?) but if there are few other people to talk about it, you may simply stifle conversation through silence. You could say more, but you might obliterate someone's idea of what the story was and turn them away. You can play with summaries (is a longer summary going to draw people by including more of what's potentially interesting? does a short summary leave more to the imagination and gain attention by being snappy?), but to be honest, I have no concrete idea whether either approach matters or actually works. Getting people to read a story is an art unto itself, and it is one I'm far from mastering.



On the whole, I am disappointed that The Second Coming was not better received. My efforts to promote the story have failed, and my hopes for an active community of readers to engage in speculation and discussion have not materialized. I believe there are several potential reasons for this: not being actively involved in SV's Eva community prior to publishing the story, crafting the story askew to the community's interests, and not engaging with fellow authors effectively later on. With the story nearly two-thirds complete at the time of this writing, the opportunity to change that is, in all likelihood, already gone.

And perhaps that is not something to mourn for too long, either. I had no further plans for another Evangelion story. I expected I would hang around for a time for things that interest me until ultimately leaving.

But, maybe this experience can be informative and useful for other authors to consider in the future, or perhaps it will inform my efforts going forward in trying to promote and gain readership for other projects.