Muphrid
Star of the Lancer
So it's not an American flag, it's Captain America.
This is not what I had in mind, but on balance, it's precisely what I should've had in mind.
The Second Coming [NGE]
- Thread starter Muphrid
- Start date
- Novel
This is not what I had in mind, but on balance, it's precisely what I should've had in mind.
Ranma-sensei
Sorcerer
- Location
- Citrix Receiver
- Pronouns
- Weatherdependent
I gotta ask because I just saw what was written on her boots: Is this artwork some kind of football thing?
Last edited:
- Location
- National Capital Region, USA
Exactly that. The previous World Cup before this last one someone did anime style mascots for all of the countries. I was amused as hell that Germany's mascot was our favorite Second Child. You can find the mall with a quick Google search. United States was Iron Woman.
- Location
- Surrey
Muphrid
Star of the Lancer
Editing changelog: SV polish edits for 6.5/One Billion Years Later
6.4/Hedgehog's Dilemma: fixed issues by @Ranma-sensei/#322
6.5/One Billion Years Later:
6.6/Reprieve:
Tomorrow: 6.5/One Billion Years Later.
The Second Coming ends in 2 weeks.
Be at peace, friends. Eisheth is watching, but there is nothing more she can do to us.
6.4/Hedgehog's Dilemma: fixed issues by @Ranma-sensei/#322
6.5/One Billion Years Later:
- Concluded Shinji and Rei's conversation, focusing on Rei's feelings toward Eisheth and her motivations
- Concluded Rei's confrontation with Eisheth
6.6/Reprieve:
- Shinji now convinces Suzuki and her team to use the N2 array as part of their escape
- Shinji returns to the destroyer Ise to speak with Misato
- More changes to come
Tomorrow: 6.5/One Billion Years Later.
The Second Coming ends in 2 weeks.
Be at peace, friends. Eisheth is watching, but there is nothing more she can do to us.
6.5 One Billion Years Later
Muphrid
Star of the Lancer
38. One Billion Years Later
The passage of time was not kind to the Earth.
The winds took away the mountains. The land became stiff and brittle, so no new peaks could be made. The oceans evaporated, with the LCL soup of humanity sheltered inside the Black Moon. The plants suffocated and died; the animals followed soon thereafter—in millions of years by one point of view, in the blink of an eye by another. And all throughout, the Earth grew hotter and hotter, for the sun loomed ever brighter in the sky.
To combat this problem, the stranger's children walked the Earth once again. She trained them and educated them in science and technology. She made them build machines—small ones at first, but each new machine begat a bigger and better one. Soon enough, machines began building other machines. Those machines, in turn, made rockets: great rockets lay on their sides at the equator and extended their nozzles into space. To cool the Earth, the stranger directed her children to move the planet itself to a larger orbit.
This idea wasn't universally agreed upon, though. Every so often, we would meet to monitor the progress of the effort. Once, I remarked,
"What about moving to a new planet? It's just going to get hotter. We'd just have to do this again anyway."
"We'd have to find a new planet again, too," said Ayanami. "Planets don't stay habitable forever."
"Relax, both of you," said the stranger, who viewed the construction effort with cool, calculating certainty. "So what if planets die?" she said. "New stars are being made. New systems are being born. We'll find those stars, and our children will survive."
"There are only so many stars," said Ayanami.
The stranger pressed her lips together for a moment. "Shinji, do you have something more constructive to add?" she asked.
"I'm wondering if we should look into terraforming Mars," I offered. "That would help buy us some time."
The stranger frowned, cocking her head as she watched the screen. "That might do for a few million years. Surface gravity isn't too much of a factor, just temperature. I'll have my children do some research into it."
At that, Ayanami said nothing. Many of our meetings were like this: the stranger took the lead in preserving the remnants of humanity, I offered some counterpoint and suggestions, and Ayanami tried to be as unhelpful as possible while insisting on being present. As she explained it once,
"We should not cooperate with her; we shouldn't humor her. We shouldn't help her in any way. This is her doing. She should be responsible for it—by herself."
I didn't see it that way. Mankind no longer walked the Earth, but it still existed in a way. They were still alive, and you could see what was in their hearts. On occasion, I'd gone so far as to peer into their dreams, but I quickly realized that would do me no good. The temptation to check in on people I knew was too great, and the pain of not being able to reach them was even greater. The last thing I needed was to see Asuka with a dream facsimile of me.
Regardless, there were still people there. It was our duty to take care of them so that, one day, they'd be able to walk freely again.
But I was largely alone in this feeling. Ayanami was willing to stonewall the stranger, hoping to coerce her into giving in.
And there were others in the theater complex who didn't care on way or the other.
"We have all of history at our disposal, and you three concern yourselves so much with the fates of our children."
That was Kaworu Nagisa—or Adam, who still used Kaworu's face when he spoke to me. Kaworu had been a friend of mine for a brief time, and I treasured his affectionate nature. Kaworu liked to inhabit the theater across the hall from the stranger, entertaining himself with topics as varied as the Parisian art scene during the Vietnam War and the oral traditions of Australian aboriginals.
"Can't you appreciate what beautiful things the Lilin—and all our children—accomplished?" he once asked.
When Ayanami and I tired of the stranger, we sometimes visited Kaworu in that adjacent theater. I learned a lot about history from those visits—history of the future as well as the past. Kaworu, Ayanami, and I watched the Milky Way and Andromeda collide over the course of hundreds of millions of years. It was beautiful and breathtaking, to be sure.
But I never felt fully at ease in those moments because Kaworu wasn't alone, either. In the back of his theater were the others—the other four scientists. They had long ago lapsed into silence, dressed in the same white satin that the stranger wore. These impassive observers watched everything without complaint or amusement. Their presence was a sign—inescapable and unflinching—that the stranger's crusade had not begun with humanity. Rather, it had ended with us instead.
And so, the future had begun. Kaworu spent the future scouring the universe for strange events or examples of ingenuity. For Ayanami, the future was a time to resist and wear down the stranger through obstinance. For the rest of the seven, it could be spent only in silence—that way, the future would be someone else's problem.
They all had their opinions, and I found their approaches unsatisfying—so much so that, at times, I found myself gravitating toward to stranger instead.
You might find that idea appalling—and I won't say it wasn't—but unlike Ayanami, Kaworu, or the rest of the seven, the stranger took the initiative to safeguard humanity for the long term. Her children's efforts to research solutions and implement them were only part of that. Day in and day out, the stranger watched the future of planet Earth, taking notes on what might befall mankind next.
"Don't be fooled by her," Ayanami had warned me once. "She may think she's acting in the interests of our children, but she isn't. I know this well; you should, too."
It was a difficult lesson to forget. Every few million years, a remnant of mankind would emerge from the sea. Sometimes Misato would be there; other times, Asuka or Nozomi. The stranger would tolerate them for a few millennia, but when their number reached a critical threshold, she'd raise her faceless warriors from the ocean and liquefy the rebels by force. Over the last hundred million years, only a handful of such uprisings had taken place. The stranger thought that was good; people were learning not to resist her.
Time passed, as much as it could pass in that place. One "hour" felt like the next, and you could just as easily look in on Roman gladiators as you could the fall of the dinosaurs or the development of the first computer. Time passed, and I pondered Ayanami's point of view. What kind of person would come all that way—across the stars—to force Instrumentality on mankind? What kind of person would do that and then continue to watch over the LCL soup to make sure it never simmered, boiled, or froze?
So it came to be that, when I grew frustrated with Ayanami's stubbornness or Kaworu's indulgences, I would spend time with the stranger, anticipating threats to mankind—and hoping that a little insight into her would help me find a way to change our situation. Simply resisting her had not been enough. If we meant to bring humanity back from Instrumentality, the stranger would have to agree to it.
But the stranger was happy with how things were going. She too spied on humanity's dreams, as well as the dreams of her children and the others', and she was pleased. "They want for nothing," she told me one time, as we sat together in her theater. "We need to make sure that doesn't change."
We needed to make sure that didn't change, even if we were treated to watching Misato take an illusion of Kaji on a moonlit drive. Humanity should always be free to bring the dead back to life in their dreams—that's what we should protect?
"What gave you this idea?" I asked the stranger that day, as we sat in the front row of her theater. "Why Instrumentality?"
The stranger shrugged the question off. "We've always had the ability to do it. It's an essential safeguard against existential threats. The souls of my people were transported in a state of Instrumentality."
"That's not what I'm asking you," I said.
The stranger peered at me, despite the opaque hood in front of her eyes. "No, it's not, is it? Well, tell me then: what are you asking, Shinji?"
I sighed, and I held on to the black plastic armrest. The rough texture of it was an illusion, too, but it was still comforting to me—a distraction from the tumult of my own thoughts.
"I came here," I said at last, "because I thought Ayanami had signed up for an eternal burden, for something she shouldn't want." I looked to the stranger. "Now I see you're the same. You like being here, don't you?"
"This is what I pledged I would do," she said. "Lilith and I both. We have differences of opinion—for now. I'm confident she'll change her mind in time. I would not choose to be anywhere else."
"Why?" I asked. "I mean, it needs to be done, but—I don't understand." I gestured toward the screen—to a view from outer space of planet Earth, desolate and brown, for even its red seas had to be sheltered from the sun's heat. "Why this way? Didn't you want us to be something more?"
The stranger's expression soured at that. "Wanting something and believing it can happen are different things."
"How's that?"
Her lips pressing together, the stranger rose. "Let me change the film," she said. "Lilith knows all about this, of course. Even so, she refuses to listen to reason. I hope you'll approach this with an open mind, hm?"
She headed upstairs, to the projector room, and she began sorting through the boxes and boxes of reels. There was, truly, a tremendous amount of film in that place. The few times I'd been there, I'd marveled at the collection. Each box seemed bottomless, and the reels you cast aside just disappeared instead of piling up.
The stranger set a reel on the projector, and a new film began.
The film began playing out like a documentary. The narration was in Hikari Horaki's voice. "Once upon a time," said the narrator, "there was a woman, a scientist. She was sent to shepherd the souls of her people to a new world, so they could begin life anew."
An image of Horaki appeared on the screen. She stood in the shadow of a red cross, at the foot of a lake of LCL.
The scientist raised her children well, according to the narrator. She groomed them to be masters of their own planet. They became the dominant race over the course of millennia upon millennia. They conquered the limits of their bodies, building great machines and computers. They began to play with biology itself, augmenting their bodies and living longer and fuller lives.
But they were still human, in a way.
"Like all living creatures, however," said the narrator, "the scientist's children had a base impulse to compete with one another when facing scarcity. Necessary though it may have been to survive, such an impulse is inherently destructive: survival by killing those one competes against. The Zenunim were no different in this way. They destroyed one another in great numbers, leveraging their brilliant minds and machines to destroy as much as they wanted."
And we saw it. A montage of destruction played out for us, ranging from mushroom clouds to deformed and warped corpses. Masses of alien creatures fell to the ground and withered from disease. The soil itself was blighted, and crops were burned in huge swaths.
Her children waged war on one another. They wielded disease and pestilence to lay waste to their enemies. The scientist—depicted in the form of Horaki—walked among them and witnessed the destruction. She met her children dying and suffering at their brothers' hands. They were going hungry. They couldn't find shelter.
"They couldn't all be saved, so she did as her brothers and sisters had originally done," said the narrator. "She liquefied them."
She liquefied them all. She turned that planet's oceans to blood. She extracted the souls of the guilty and the innocent alike.
And she was supposed to start over, but she didn't. She kept them all in her Black Moon. She imprisoned them in a cage without pain for a billion years. She stood watch over them—doing nothing, saying nothing—from her throne inside the Geofront, sitting in the shadow of a cross.
But there were people who wouldn't leave her be.
"The others found out about her decision—her abomination," said the narrator. "They tried to persuade her to reconsider. They failed. And when they failed, they brought their own children to her world, hoping to force her hand."
The scientist raised her children from the LCL. Like a necromancer animating skeletons, she shaped her children according to her needs. She grew out their fingers, making them sharp and deadly. She warped their faces into bony, purple masks, erasing all individuality from them. She directed her legions to build weapons and spacecraft.
She made them make war on one of the White Moons. They built Eva of their own and vanquished the Angels defending the Moon. She entered the White Moon herself and found its occupant—Toji, in this depiction—incapacitated by the Spear of Longinus. He stood defeated, but that wasn't enough for her.
She merged with him.
And she saw everything. Past and future became the same to her. From that moment, a new creature was born, and though she had the same face as the scientist from before, she was different. She walked the halls of the theater of eternity as effortlessly as you or I could stroll along a beach.
She saw that the others would come for her in time—and that she would defeat them and take them, too.
"Well, Shinji?" The stranger poked her head out of the projector room. "Do you see now? Do you understand?"
The image froze. The woman with the shape and face of Horaki was juxtaposed against a backdrop of dozens of panels, each with a glimpse of the past or future.
"Maybe," I said, "but I don't think we're finished, are we?"
"What more could you wish to know?"
I scoffed. "I see what the others did, but why us? Why humanity?"
The stranger gave me a single nod, and she fell back into the projector room. The film resumed. On the screen, the girl with the face of Hikari Horaki led her Geofront to the stars. She brought Angels and her children to the other worlds. They were legion in number. They spared no one.
"She found the others' children wanting, too," said the narrator. "They fought. They destroyed. The smart ones inflicted diseases upon themselves or others. The powerful ones destroyed whole continents and oceans in battle. She claimed them all because that was the only recourse—the only way to save them from themselves. Humanity was no different."
The film turned to a space-based view of Earth, and on top of that played footage of wars from the ancient history to the present: from Rome vs. Carthage to Hitler vs. Chamberlain to Katsuragi vs. the Chinese navy. And even though that only scratched the surface of human warfare, there was plenty more violence and suffering to go around: criminal gangs, assassinations, forced prostitution and rape—the montage went on. You could spend a billion years watching people hurt each other; you still wouldn't be finished.
The scene shifted to planet Earth as it stood in the present: dry, with its oceans dwindling, as the Black Moon hovered over the surface.
"There's no suffering here, Shinji," said the stranger from the projector room. "There's no pain. There's no anger. Everyone exists; they know what's in each other's hearts, and they are free to dream as they choose. This is the way our children were meant to be; it's the only way they can be."
"So that's it?" I said. I turned in my seat, looking up at the projector. "That's all humanity and everyone else will come to?"
"What else would you have them do?" asked the stranger.
"Something—anything!" I cried. "You 'saved' them all for nothing!"
"Not for nothing," said the stranger. "At least I have saved them."
"That's not enough!"
The screen turned white, and the stranger came down the side steps. "They're alive, and they feel no pain," she said. "Isn't that enough?"
I stared at her, gawking. I slowly shook my head.
The stranger sighed in turn. "Keep thinking that way if you like," she said, "but there are still challenges for our charges." She turned her head slightly—a gesture that would've met my gaze, if I could've seen her eyes behind that satin hood. "Do you want to wither here for the rest of time, Shinji? Or do you want to be part of the solution?"
At that, I had no answer. My mouth hung open, and I watched the stranger go.
Part of the solution for what?
You know, I'd never been a particularly religious person, but I wasn't that into science, either. The questions they might've clashed on weren't things I was well-versed in, but having all eternity to ponder such things makes you interested in a hurry, oddly enough.
I trudged upstairs to the projector room, and I quickly found what I was interested in: the future.
In the future, mankind would stay liquefied. The three of us—Ayanami, the stranger, and I—would direct the Black Moon to gather all human souls and zip from one planet to the next every few billion years, looking for habitable conditions that made maintenance of the Black Moon easier.
That would go on and on, for a million billion years.
But eventually, the stuff stars run on would be consumed wholly. The stars burn themselves out. Star systems like ours, whatever should be left of it by then, would become unstable. Planets get flung away from their stars. Stars get flung away from their galaxies, all the while dimming to nothing.
And in the end, the very end—billions upon billions upon billions of years ahead, and even more that I can't write or say, atoms themselves would cease to be, for the protons making them up would decay, leaving us with nothing like the world we know.
That would be the end. The Black Moon would fall apart. The LCL comprising humanity and its brothers and sisters would crumble. Any memorial to humanity would be erased by then. The souls of mankind would scatter to the intergalactic winds. There is no such thing, then, as something eternal.
Something about that resonated with me. I'd often felt that I wouldn't make a difference, that my life didn't matter. It all returns to nothing. You could argue that none of us really matter.
Or maybe we all matter about the same.
Because after all, we're all headed for the same fate.
Those thoughts raced through my head as inscrutable and cold as the 3-degree microwave background that permeates the universe, and I found no relief from those ideas on my own. Instead, Ayanami came to me offering comfort and relief. She found me in that theater, having looked for the stranger and me. Ayanami's gaze was everpresent—she already knew what the stranger had shown me. She sat at my side, offering a hand in support.
"I'm sorry," she said to me. "You don't deserve to be caught in this."
Not like any of that was her fault. No, I told her as much. The weight of watching millions of years of human history play out had been difficult but bearable. It was the future that frightened me.
"I just wonder," I said—to her, to the blank screen in front of me, and to the theater as a whole—"what's the point of all this? What is the point of being here?" I sighed, and I slapped a hand on the armrest. "I spent so long moping around, and then just before the end, I really tried to get my head right—to be better. But it's all going to go away." I pointed at the blank screen. "Just like that."
"It is," said Ayanami, squeezing my hand tighter. "Is there something you want to achieve, even knowing that?"
I rubbed my forehead, at a loss, and Ayanami went on.
"There is only so much free energy in the universe," she said. "Everything people do takes away from it. Eating takes away from it. Sleeping takes away from it. Making love takes away from it. That energy turns to entropy and is lost forever. That's true no matter what it was used for."
"So it is pointless then," I concluded.
"No." Ayanami turned to me, and she smiled. "Everything people do takes away from free energy and turns it to entropy, but we can value certain actions more than others. We can value joy. We can value happiness. We can value the growth and understanding that makes people less destructive, reckless, or violent. We can value acts that promote communication between people." She held my hand and hers up, above the armrest. "There is only so much free energy in the universe," she said again. "We should choose to spend it well."
"Even if nothing comes of it?" I asked.
"Especially if nothing comes of it."
I shook my head and sighed. It's not every day you come to believe that the future is a pointless thing. Telling me—and all mankind—to live for the journey we were on didn't seem that appealing. If anything, it made me feel like humanity was the rubber in a conveyor belt: we would go 'round and 'round for eons to come until we wore out. And we were supposed to like it.
That didn't sit well with me, and Ayanami's determination to pursue it was puzzling. After all this time, how could she bear to follow such a path? There's looking at a long view and trying to see beyond the horizon by standing on the tips of your toes—that's what Ayanami was doing. I asked her about that, and she said,
"I don't like it, either, but it's the only way I see forward for people, and it feels like me." She put a hand to her heart. "It feels like what I felt when I started this. I wanted to save people. I didn't want them to suffer. I wanted them all to have a chance. This is like that. To me, the other choice is despair." She met my gaze. "Don't think that way, Ikari. Work for people. Work for your friends and hold on to what that feels like. If you do that, you will never despair." Her eyes flickered to the ramp that led out of the theater. "Not the way she did."
She gave in to her despair, and—believing it to be pragmatism—put us on this doomed train, bound for the end of the universe. She lost faith in her children as well as Lilith's.
But she wasn't the only one who'd given up hope in some way.
"She was your friend once," I said to Ayanami. "Wasn't she?"
Ayanami flinched, and she let go of my hand, sitting straighter in her seat. "At one time," she said. "No more. She's made humanity into something that isn't human anymore. She can't take that back."
"Why not?" I said, turning toward her and leaning over the armrest. "What purpose does it serve to leave that alone? You used to talk to her, right? She was your friend."
"Not anymore. She isn't who she used to be."
"Neither are you, right? I was there; you showed me. You used to be different. I wouldn't give anything for you to be something other than who you are now, but I also know that there's something about you now that came from who you used to be. How much you care about what you're doing—how much you care for a friend—that hasn't changed. You showed me that; you showed me when you saved me from that bullet. You show me that even now because you're sitting here. You didn't give up on me even when I was pathetic, even when I lost my way."
Ayanami looked aside. "You're different from her."
"Am I?" I put my fist down on the armrest, and it rattled. "I wanted something for people but didn't believe I could make a difference. She spends every day here watching humanity to make sure it's not destroyed by a rogue meteor or a supernova. It's distasteful and wrong what she forced on people, but there is still something worth talking to. You can't—" I shuddered, and I took a moment to catch my breath. "You can't keep sitting here in silence, like protesting her existence is going to change things."
Ayanami looked at me from the side. Her mouth hung open, and after a few moments, she looked ahead again, thinking deeply about what I'd said.
"You might be right," she said at last. "Ikari," she asked timidly, "would you come with me?"
I got up. I'd followed her to the end of time already. I would've followed her to the underworld if she'd asked it of me.
We found the stranger in a nearby theater. She'd turned her attentions to a stellar-mass black hole that would wander through the solar system in a few million years' time. "It could be a big problem for Earth," said the stranger. "Maybe we can all act like adults and do something about it instead of pouting, hm?"
Ayanami and I stopped at the top of the entrance ramp, and Ayanami stared the stranger down, saying a name that hadn't been spoken in over five billion years:
"Eisheth."
The figure in the white satin hood—with gloves extending from her fingertips to beyond the sleeves of her robe—cocked her head and looked at us. All of that was a ruse, of course. This vaguely human figure, whose eyes could never be seen, didn't correspond to any person in existence. It was an image for my benefit and nothing more. It didn't belong to her.
It was not the true face of Eisheth, but it was meant to represent her in my mind.
The hooded stranger—Eisheth—met Ayanami and me at the end of the ramp. She looked up to Ayanami. "What do you want, Lilith?"
"To end this," said Ayanami. "You've forced people into a world of fantasy. Stop it. Let them be."
"This is the only way your children and mine can be protected from themselves," said Eisheth. "I will do no such thing."
"You want to believe that, but it's not true. You're lying to yourself. You've always been that way." Ayanami moved closer, reducing the gap between them to half a step. "Do you remember how you were? You kept me in check when my passion would get the best of me. You tempered my enthusiasm. You kept my expectations realistic. You made sure my hope didn't get the best of me."
"You were always too wide-eyed, too gung-ho about inserting yourself where you thought you were needed." Eisheth pressed her lips together in disappointment. "I'd hoped over the last five billion years you would've learned to pace yourself."
"I hoped you wouldn't forget that you were the same."
"Me? Hardly!"
"You were." Ayanami waved a hand, and the theater's screen came to life. There, an image of Hikari Horaki made a presentation before a crowded room. The film was silent, but she carried herself with conviction, certainty, and courage. "You didn't let yourself get carried away with hope," Ayanami went on, "but you felt it, didn't you? You had great hopes for us, for the people we meant to shepherd to new worlds."
"And look how that turned out," said Eisheth, who waved her hand in turn and blanked the screen. "Our own people couldn't overcome their worse impulses. So much for the grand experiment of life!"
"I'm sorry, Eisheth."
Eisheth took a step back, eyeing Ayanami from the side—as much as she could with the piece of satin cloth covering her eyes. "Sorry for what?"
"You were there for me when I faced a moment of doubt." Ayanami bowed her head, looking away. "I'm sorry I couldn't be there for you."
Eisheth stiffened, and she trotted away, going back to her seat. "That's in the past," she said.
"It's not." Ayanami followed her, standing in front of Eisheth's seat. "Our children have made mistakes. So have I. So have you. Don't deprive them of the chance to learn from that. Don't deprive us of that chance, too."
"They failed before," said Eisheth. "What makes you think they can change, given another chance?"
"We can help them—together. Please, Eisheth."
Ayanami offered Eisheth a hand—a trembling, wavering hand. Eisheth stared at her for a time before sighing.
"You still wear your heart too much on your sleeve, even now, Lilith." She took Ayanami by the wrist, steadying Ayanami, and Ayanami took Eisheth by the wrist in turn. Ayanami pulled Eisheth from her seat, and Eisheth's gaze fell upon me. "Shinji Ikari!"
I flinched. "Uh, yes?"
"Lilith believes your brothers and sisters still stand to learn something," she said. "And she thinks they can, if given another chance. Do you agree?"
"I do," I said, standing straight and tall. "Absolutely."
Eisheth tilted her head. "I'm not convinced."
I made a noise in disbelief. Ayanami began to accost Eisheth as well, but Eisheth went on:
"Prove it to me," she said. She waved her hand over the film screen. The blank white image morphed…
Into Terminal Dogma, into the chamber with the white giant sitting within the LCL lake. Captain Suzuki and her SDF team hid behind barricades and traded gunfire with Seele militants.
"If you think they can be better," said the stranger, "prove it to me."
She gestured to the screen with her arm, and I stepped up, right to the screen's surface. Bizarrely, the light of the projector passed through me, casting an even picture without shadows or gaps. I raised a hand and touched the screen surface, and it stuck to my fingers like glue.
It pulled on me.
I looked back at Ayanami. She nodded. She was smiling.
And I smiled, too.
I stepped forward, into the screen, and I sank within it.
I sank within, and I fell.
I tumbled into the LCL lake. I splashed, and I floundered. I fought my way to the surface and coughed.
"Ikari!" An SDF sergeant pulled me onto an inflatable raft. "Are you all right?" he asked. "Where did you go?"
I looked up to the face of the white giant. It was static, immobile, and implacable, except for one thing:
Its eyes were fixed upon me.
I chuckled to myself, and I brushed some of the goo from my vest. "I'm fine," I told the sergeant. "Don't worry about me. Let's go save the world."
The passage of time was not kind to the Earth.
The winds took away the mountains. The land became stiff and brittle, so no new peaks could be made. The oceans evaporated, with the LCL soup of humanity sheltered inside the Black Moon. The plants suffocated and died; the animals followed soon thereafter—in millions of years by one point of view, in the blink of an eye by another. And all throughout, the Earth grew hotter and hotter, for the sun loomed ever brighter in the sky.
To combat this problem, the stranger's children walked the Earth once again. She trained them and educated them in science and technology. She made them build machines—small ones at first, but each new machine begat a bigger and better one. Soon enough, machines began building other machines. Those machines, in turn, made rockets: great rockets lay on their sides at the equator and extended their nozzles into space. To cool the Earth, the stranger directed her children to move the planet itself to a larger orbit.
This idea wasn't universally agreed upon, though. Every so often, we would meet to monitor the progress of the effort. Once, I remarked,
"What about moving to a new planet? It's just going to get hotter. We'd just have to do this again anyway."
"We'd have to find a new planet again, too," said Ayanami. "Planets don't stay habitable forever."
"Relax, both of you," said the stranger, who viewed the construction effort with cool, calculating certainty. "So what if planets die?" she said. "New stars are being made. New systems are being born. We'll find those stars, and our children will survive."
"There are only so many stars," said Ayanami.
The stranger pressed her lips together for a moment. "Shinji, do you have something more constructive to add?" she asked.
"I'm wondering if we should look into terraforming Mars," I offered. "That would help buy us some time."
The stranger frowned, cocking her head as she watched the screen. "That might do for a few million years. Surface gravity isn't too much of a factor, just temperature. I'll have my children do some research into it."
At that, Ayanami said nothing. Many of our meetings were like this: the stranger took the lead in preserving the remnants of humanity, I offered some counterpoint and suggestions, and Ayanami tried to be as unhelpful as possible while insisting on being present. As she explained it once,
"We should not cooperate with her; we shouldn't humor her. We shouldn't help her in any way. This is her doing. She should be responsible for it—by herself."
I didn't see it that way. Mankind no longer walked the Earth, but it still existed in a way. They were still alive, and you could see what was in their hearts. On occasion, I'd gone so far as to peer into their dreams, but I quickly realized that would do me no good. The temptation to check in on people I knew was too great, and the pain of not being able to reach them was even greater. The last thing I needed was to see Asuka with a dream facsimile of me.
Regardless, there were still people there. It was our duty to take care of them so that, one day, they'd be able to walk freely again.
But I was largely alone in this feeling. Ayanami was willing to stonewall the stranger, hoping to coerce her into giving in.
And there were others in the theater complex who didn't care on way or the other.
"We have all of history at our disposal, and you three concern yourselves so much with the fates of our children."
That was Kaworu Nagisa—or Adam, who still used Kaworu's face when he spoke to me. Kaworu had been a friend of mine for a brief time, and I treasured his affectionate nature. Kaworu liked to inhabit the theater across the hall from the stranger, entertaining himself with topics as varied as the Parisian art scene during the Vietnam War and the oral traditions of Australian aboriginals.
"Can't you appreciate what beautiful things the Lilin—and all our children—accomplished?" he once asked.
When Ayanami and I tired of the stranger, we sometimes visited Kaworu in that adjacent theater. I learned a lot about history from those visits—history of the future as well as the past. Kaworu, Ayanami, and I watched the Milky Way and Andromeda collide over the course of hundreds of millions of years. It was beautiful and breathtaking, to be sure.
But I never felt fully at ease in those moments because Kaworu wasn't alone, either. In the back of his theater were the others—the other four scientists. They had long ago lapsed into silence, dressed in the same white satin that the stranger wore. These impassive observers watched everything without complaint or amusement. Their presence was a sign—inescapable and unflinching—that the stranger's crusade had not begun with humanity. Rather, it had ended with us instead.
And so, the future had begun. Kaworu spent the future scouring the universe for strange events or examples of ingenuity. For Ayanami, the future was a time to resist and wear down the stranger through obstinance. For the rest of the seven, it could be spent only in silence—that way, the future would be someone else's problem.
They all had their opinions, and I found their approaches unsatisfying—so much so that, at times, I found myself gravitating toward to stranger instead.
You might find that idea appalling—and I won't say it wasn't—but unlike Ayanami, Kaworu, or the rest of the seven, the stranger took the initiative to safeguard humanity for the long term. Her children's efforts to research solutions and implement them were only part of that. Day in and day out, the stranger watched the future of planet Earth, taking notes on what might befall mankind next.
"Don't be fooled by her," Ayanami had warned me once. "She may think she's acting in the interests of our children, but she isn't. I know this well; you should, too."
It was a difficult lesson to forget. Every few million years, a remnant of mankind would emerge from the sea. Sometimes Misato would be there; other times, Asuka or Nozomi. The stranger would tolerate them for a few millennia, but when their number reached a critical threshold, she'd raise her faceless warriors from the ocean and liquefy the rebels by force. Over the last hundred million years, only a handful of such uprisings had taken place. The stranger thought that was good; people were learning not to resist her.
Time passed, as much as it could pass in that place. One "hour" felt like the next, and you could just as easily look in on Roman gladiators as you could the fall of the dinosaurs or the development of the first computer. Time passed, and I pondered Ayanami's point of view. What kind of person would come all that way—across the stars—to force Instrumentality on mankind? What kind of person would do that and then continue to watch over the LCL soup to make sure it never simmered, boiled, or froze?
So it came to be that, when I grew frustrated with Ayanami's stubbornness or Kaworu's indulgences, I would spend time with the stranger, anticipating threats to mankind—and hoping that a little insight into her would help me find a way to change our situation. Simply resisting her had not been enough. If we meant to bring humanity back from Instrumentality, the stranger would have to agree to it.
But the stranger was happy with how things were going. She too spied on humanity's dreams, as well as the dreams of her children and the others', and she was pleased. "They want for nothing," she told me one time, as we sat together in her theater. "We need to make sure that doesn't change."
We needed to make sure that didn't change, even if we were treated to watching Misato take an illusion of Kaji on a moonlit drive. Humanity should always be free to bring the dead back to life in their dreams—that's what we should protect?
"What gave you this idea?" I asked the stranger that day, as we sat in the front row of her theater. "Why Instrumentality?"
The stranger shrugged the question off. "We've always had the ability to do it. It's an essential safeguard against existential threats. The souls of my people were transported in a state of Instrumentality."
"That's not what I'm asking you," I said.
The stranger peered at me, despite the opaque hood in front of her eyes. "No, it's not, is it? Well, tell me then: what are you asking, Shinji?"
I sighed, and I held on to the black plastic armrest. The rough texture of it was an illusion, too, but it was still comforting to me—a distraction from the tumult of my own thoughts.
"I came here," I said at last, "because I thought Ayanami had signed up for an eternal burden, for something she shouldn't want." I looked to the stranger. "Now I see you're the same. You like being here, don't you?"
"This is what I pledged I would do," she said. "Lilith and I both. We have differences of opinion—for now. I'm confident she'll change her mind in time. I would not choose to be anywhere else."
"Why?" I asked. "I mean, it needs to be done, but—I don't understand." I gestured toward the screen—to a view from outer space of planet Earth, desolate and brown, for even its red seas had to be sheltered from the sun's heat. "Why this way? Didn't you want us to be something more?"
The stranger's expression soured at that. "Wanting something and believing it can happen are different things."
"How's that?"
Her lips pressing together, the stranger rose. "Let me change the film," she said. "Lilith knows all about this, of course. Even so, she refuses to listen to reason. I hope you'll approach this with an open mind, hm?"
She headed upstairs, to the projector room, and she began sorting through the boxes and boxes of reels. There was, truly, a tremendous amount of film in that place. The few times I'd been there, I'd marveled at the collection. Each box seemed bottomless, and the reels you cast aside just disappeared instead of piling up.
The stranger set a reel on the projector, and a new film began.
The film began playing out like a documentary. The narration was in Hikari Horaki's voice. "Once upon a time," said the narrator, "there was a woman, a scientist. She was sent to shepherd the souls of her people to a new world, so they could begin life anew."
An image of Horaki appeared on the screen. She stood in the shadow of a red cross, at the foot of a lake of LCL.
The scientist raised her children well, according to the narrator. She groomed them to be masters of their own planet. They became the dominant race over the course of millennia upon millennia. They conquered the limits of their bodies, building great machines and computers. They began to play with biology itself, augmenting their bodies and living longer and fuller lives.
But they were still human, in a way.
"Like all living creatures, however," said the narrator, "the scientist's children had a base impulse to compete with one another when facing scarcity. Necessary though it may have been to survive, such an impulse is inherently destructive: survival by killing those one competes against. The Zenunim were no different in this way. They destroyed one another in great numbers, leveraging their brilliant minds and machines to destroy as much as they wanted."
And we saw it. A montage of destruction played out for us, ranging from mushroom clouds to deformed and warped corpses. Masses of alien creatures fell to the ground and withered from disease. The soil itself was blighted, and crops were burned in huge swaths.
Her children waged war on one another. They wielded disease and pestilence to lay waste to their enemies. The scientist—depicted in the form of Horaki—walked among them and witnessed the destruction. She met her children dying and suffering at their brothers' hands. They were going hungry. They couldn't find shelter.
"They couldn't all be saved, so she did as her brothers and sisters had originally done," said the narrator. "She liquefied them."
She liquefied them all. She turned that planet's oceans to blood. She extracted the souls of the guilty and the innocent alike.
And she was supposed to start over, but she didn't. She kept them all in her Black Moon. She imprisoned them in a cage without pain for a billion years. She stood watch over them—doing nothing, saying nothing—from her throne inside the Geofront, sitting in the shadow of a cross.
But there were people who wouldn't leave her be.
"The others found out about her decision—her abomination," said the narrator. "They tried to persuade her to reconsider. They failed. And when they failed, they brought their own children to her world, hoping to force her hand."
The scientist raised her children from the LCL. Like a necromancer animating skeletons, she shaped her children according to her needs. She grew out their fingers, making them sharp and deadly. She warped their faces into bony, purple masks, erasing all individuality from them. She directed her legions to build weapons and spacecraft.
She made them make war on one of the White Moons. They built Eva of their own and vanquished the Angels defending the Moon. She entered the White Moon herself and found its occupant—Toji, in this depiction—incapacitated by the Spear of Longinus. He stood defeated, but that wasn't enough for her.
She merged with him.
And she saw everything. Past and future became the same to her. From that moment, a new creature was born, and though she had the same face as the scientist from before, she was different. She walked the halls of the theater of eternity as effortlessly as you or I could stroll along a beach.
She saw that the others would come for her in time—and that she would defeat them and take them, too.
"Well, Shinji?" The stranger poked her head out of the projector room. "Do you see now? Do you understand?"
The image froze. The woman with the shape and face of Horaki was juxtaposed against a backdrop of dozens of panels, each with a glimpse of the past or future.
"Maybe," I said, "but I don't think we're finished, are we?"
"What more could you wish to know?"
I scoffed. "I see what the others did, but why us? Why humanity?"
The stranger gave me a single nod, and she fell back into the projector room. The film resumed. On the screen, the girl with the face of Hikari Horaki led her Geofront to the stars. She brought Angels and her children to the other worlds. They were legion in number. They spared no one.
"She found the others' children wanting, too," said the narrator. "They fought. They destroyed. The smart ones inflicted diseases upon themselves or others. The powerful ones destroyed whole continents and oceans in battle. She claimed them all because that was the only recourse—the only way to save them from themselves. Humanity was no different."
The film turned to a space-based view of Earth, and on top of that played footage of wars from the ancient history to the present: from Rome vs. Carthage to Hitler vs. Chamberlain to Katsuragi vs. the Chinese navy. And even though that only scratched the surface of human warfare, there was plenty more violence and suffering to go around: criminal gangs, assassinations, forced prostitution and rape—the montage went on. You could spend a billion years watching people hurt each other; you still wouldn't be finished.
The scene shifted to planet Earth as it stood in the present: dry, with its oceans dwindling, as the Black Moon hovered over the surface.
"There's no suffering here, Shinji," said the stranger from the projector room. "There's no pain. There's no anger. Everyone exists; they know what's in each other's hearts, and they are free to dream as they choose. This is the way our children were meant to be; it's the only way they can be."
"So that's it?" I said. I turned in my seat, looking up at the projector. "That's all humanity and everyone else will come to?"
"What else would you have them do?" asked the stranger.
"Something—anything!" I cried. "You 'saved' them all for nothing!"
"Not for nothing," said the stranger. "At least I have saved them."
"That's not enough!"
The screen turned white, and the stranger came down the side steps. "They're alive, and they feel no pain," she said. "Isn't that enough?"
I stared at her, gawking. I slowly shook my head.
The stranger sighed in turn. "Keep thinking that way if you like," she said, "but there are still challenges for our charges." She turned her head slightly—a gesture that would've met my gaze, if I could've seen her eyes behind that satin hood. "Do you want to wither here for the rest of time, Shinji? Or do you want to be part of the solution?"
At that, I had no answer. My mouth hung open, and I watched the stranger go.
Part of the solution for what?
You know, I'd never been a particularly religious person, but I wasn't that into science, either. The questions they might've clashed on weren't things I was well-versed in, but having all eternity to ponder such things makes you interested in a hurry, oddly enough.
I trudged upstairs to the projector room, and I quickly found what I was interested in: the future.
In the future, mankind would stay liquefied. The three of us—Ayanami, the stranger, and I—would direct the Black Moon to gather all human souls and zip from one planet to the next every few billion years, looking for habitable conditions that made maintenance of the Black Moon easier.
That would go on and on, for a million billion years.
But eventually, the stuff stars run on would be consumed wholly. The stars burn themselves out. Star systems like ours, whatever should be left of it by then, would become unstable. Planets get flung away from their stars. Stars get flung away from their galaxies, all the while dimming to nothing.
And in the end, the very end—billions upon billions upon billions of years ahead, and even more that I can't write or say, atoms themselves would cease to be, for the protons making them up would decay, leaving us with nothing like the world we know.
That would be the end. The Black Moon would fall apart. The LCL comprising humanity and its brothers and sisters would crumble. Any memorial to humanity would be erased by then. The souls of mankind would scatter to the intergalactic winds. There is no such thing, then, as something eternal.
Something about that resonated with me. I'd often felt that I wouldn't make a difference, that my life didn't matter. It all returns to nothing. You could argue that none of us really matter.
Or maybe we all matter about the same.
Because after all, we're all headed for the same fate.
Those thoughts raced through my head as inscrutable and cold as the 3-degree microwave background that permeates the universe, and I found no relief from those ideas on my own. Instead, Ayanami came to me offering comfort and relief. She found me in that theater, having looked for the stranger and me. Ayanami's gaze was everpresent—she already knew what the stranger had shown me. She sat at my side, offering a hand in support.
"I'm sorry," she said to me. "You don't deserve to be caught in this."
Not like any of that was her fault. No, I told her as much. The weight of watching millions of years of human history play out had been difficult but bearable. It was the future that frightened me.
"I just wonder," I said—to her, to the blank screen in front of me, and to the theater as a whole—"what's the point of all this? What is the point of being here?" I sighed, and I slapped a hand on the armrest. "I spent so long moping around, and then just before the end, I really tried to get my head right—to be better. But it's all going to go away." I pointed at the blank screen. "Just like that."
"It is," said Ayanami, squeezing my hand tighter. "Is there something you want to achieve, even knowing that?"
I rubbed my forehead, at a loss, and Ayanami went on.
"There is only so much free energy in the universe," she said. "Everything people do takes away from it. Eating takes away from it. Sleeping takes away from it. Making love takes away from it. That energy turns to entropy and is lost forever. That's true no matter what it was used for."
"So it is pointless then," I concluded.
"No." Ayanami turned to me, and she smiled. "Everything people do takes away from free energy and turns it to entropy, but we can value certain actions more than others. We can value joy. We can value happiness. We can value the growth and understanding that makes people less destructive, reckless, or violent. We can value acts that promote communication between people." She held my hand and hers up, above the armrest. "There is only so much free energy in the universe," she said again. "We should choose to spend it well."
"Even if nothing comes of it?" I asked.
"Especially if nothing comes of it."
I shook my head and sighed. It's not every day you come to believe that the future is a pointless thing. Telling me—and all mankind—to live for the journey we were on didn't seem that appealing. If anything, it made me feel like humanity was the rubber in a conveyor belt: we would go 'round and 'round for eons to come until we wore out. And we were supposed to like it.
That didn't sit well with me, and Ayanami's determination to pursue it was puzzling. After all this time, how could she bear to follow such a path? There's looking at a long view and trying to see beyond the horizon by standing on the tips of your toes—that's what Ayanami was doing. I asked her about that, and she said,
"I don't like it, either, but it's the only way I see forward for people, and it feels like me." She put a hand to her heart. "It feels like what I felt when I started this. I wanted to save people. I didn't want them to suffer. I wanted them all to have a chance. This is like that. To me, the other choice is despair." She met my gaze. "Don't think that way, Ikari. Work for people. Work for your friends and hold on to what that feels like. If you do that, you will never despair." Her eyes flickered to the ramp that led out of the theater. "Not the way she did."
She gave in to her despair, and—believing it to be pragmatism—put us on this doomed train, bound for the end of the universe. She lost faith in her children as well as Lilith's.
But she wasn't the only one who'd given up hope in some way.
"She was your friend once," I said to Ayanami. "Wasn't she?"
Ayanami flinched, and she let go of my hand, sitting straighter in her seat. "At one time," she said. "No more. She's made humanity into something that isn't human anymore. She can't take that back."
"Why not?" I said, turning toward her and leaning over the armrest. "What purpose does it serve to leave that alone? You used to talk to her, right? She was your friend."
"Not anymore. She isn't who she used to be."
"Neither are you, right? I was there; you showed me. You used to be different. I wouldn't give anything for you to be something other than who you are now, but I also know that there's something about you now that came from who you used to be. How much you care about what you're doing—how much you care for a friend—that hasn't changed. You showed me that; you showed me when you saved me from that bullet. You show me that even now because you're sitting here. You didn't give up on me even when I was pathetic, even when I lost my way."
Ayanami looked aside. "You're different from her."
"Am I?" I put my fist down on the armrest, and it rattled. "I wanted something for people but didn't believe I could make a difference. She spends every day here watching humanity to make sure it's not destroyed by a rogue meteor or a supernova. It's distasteful and wrong what she forced on people, but there is still something worth talking to. You can't—" I shuddered, and I took a moment to catch my breath. "You can't keep sitting here in silence, like protesting her existence is going to change things."
Ayanami looked at me from the side. Her mouth hung open, and after a few moments, she looked ahead again, thinking deeply about what I'd said.
"You might be right," she said at last. "Ikari," she asked timidly, "would you come with me?"
I got up. I'd followed her to the end of time already. I would've followed her to the underworld if she'd asked it of me.
We found the stranger in a nearby theater. She'd turned her attentions to a stellar-mass black hole that would wander through the solar system in a few million years' time. "It could be a big problem for Earth," said the stranger. "Maybe we can all act like adults and do something about it instead of pouting, hm?"
Ayanami and I stopped at the top of the entrance ramp, and Ayanami stared the stranger down, saying a name that hadn't been spoken in over five billion years:
"Eisheth."
The figure in the white satin hood—with gloves extending from her fingertips to beyond the sleeves of her robe—cocked her head and looked at us. All of that was a ruse, of course. This vaguely human figure, whose eyes could never be seen, didn't correspond to any person in existence. It was an image for my benefit and nothing more. It didn't belong to her.
It was not the true face of Eisheth, but it was meant to represent her in my mind.
The hooded stranger—Eisheth—met Ayanami and me at the end of the ramp. She looked up to Ayanami. "What do you want, Lilith?"
"To end this," said Ayanami. "You've forced people into a world of fantasy. Stop it. Let them be."
"This is the only way your children and mine can be protected from themselves," said Eisheth. "I will do no such thing."
"You want to believe that, but it's not true. You're lying to yourself. You've always been that way." Ayanami moved closer, reducing the gap between them to half a step. "Do you remember how you were? You kept me in check when my passion would get the best of me. You tempered my enthusiasm. You kept my expectations realistic. You made sure my hope didn't get the best of me."
"You were always too wide-eyed, too gung-ho about inserting yourself where you thought you were needed." Eisheth pressed her lips together in disappointment. "I'd hoped over the last five billion years you would've learned to pace yourself."
"I hoped you wouldn't forget that you were the same."
"Me? Hardly!"
"You were." Ayanami waved a hand, and the theater's screen came to life. There, an image of Hikari Horaki made a presentation before a crowded room. The film was silent, but she carried herself with conviction, certainty, and courage. "You didn't let yourself get carried away with hope," Ayanami went on, "but you felt it, didn't you? You had great hopes for us, for the people we meant to shepherd to new worlds."
"And look how that turned out," said Eisheth, who waved her hand in turn and blanked the screen. "Our own people couldn't overcome their worse impulses. So much for the grand experiment of life!"
"I'm sorry, Eisheth."
Eisheth took a step back, eyeing Ayanami from the side—as much as she could with the piece of satin cloth covering her eyes. "Sorry for what?"
"You were there for me when I faced a moment of doubt." Ayanami bowed her head, looking away. "I'm sorry I couldn't be there for you."
Eisheth stiffened, and she trotted away, going back to her seat. "That's in the past," she said.
"It's not." Ayanami followed her, standing in front of Eisheth's seat. "Our children have made mistakes. So have I. So have you. Don't deprive them of the chance to learn from that. Don't deprive us of that chance, too."
"They failed before," said Eisheth. "What makes you think they can change, given another chance?"
"We can help them—together. Please, Eisheth."
Ayanami offered Eisheth a hand—a trembling, wavering hand. Eisheth stared at her for a time before sighing.
"You still wear your heart too much on your sleeve, even now, Lilith." She took Ayanami by the wrist, steadying Ayanami, and Ayanami took Eisheth by the wrist in turn. Ayanami pulled Eisheth from her seat, and Eisheth's gaze fell upon me. "Shinji Ikari!"
I flinched. "Uh, yes?"
"Lilith believes your brothers and sisters still stand to learn something," she said. "And she thinks they can, if given another chance. Do you agree?"
"I do," I said, standing straight and tall. "Absolutely."
Eisheth tilted her head. "I'm not convinced."
I made a noise in disbelief. Ayanami began to accost Eisheth as well, but Eisheth went on:
"Prove it to me," she said. She waved her hand over the film screen. The blank white image morphed…
Into Terminal Dogma, into the chamber with the white giant sitting within the LCL lake. Captain Suzuki and her SDF team hid behind barricades and traded gunfire with Seele militants.
"If you think they can be better," said the stranger, "prove it to me."
She gestured to the screen with her arm, and I stepped up, right to the screen's surface. Bizarrely, the light of the projector passed through me, casting an even picture without shadows or gaps. I raised a hand and touched the screen surface, and it stuck to my fingers like glue.
It pulled on me.
I looked back at Ayanami. She nodded. She was smiling.
And I smiled, too.
I stepped forward, into the screen, and I sank within it.
I sank within, and I fell.
I tumbled into the LCL lake. I splashed, and I floundered. I fought my way to the surface and coughed.
"Ikari!" An SDF sergeant pulled me onto an inflatable raft. "Are you all right?" he asked. "Where did you go?"
I looked up to the face of the white giant. It was static, immobile, and implacable, except for one thing:
Its eyes were fixed upon me.
I chuckled to myself, and I brushed some of the goo from my vest. "I'm fine," I told the sergeant. "Don't worry about me. Let's go save the world."
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Ranma-sensei
Sorcerer
- Location
- Citrix Receiver
- Pronouns
- Weatherdependent
That's the coward's way out. I don't think the highest of humanity as a whole, myself; but that doesn't mean I go around eradicating people left an right!
What else would we do, Shinji; see it'll all be for naught in the end an simply off ourselves?
To me, this line in particular shows how Shinji is in some ways still the same.
Double 'her'.
This sounds... off. How I'm reading this sentence, either you misplaced that second comma after 'then', or the single one in your sentence should go there.
This needs an article.
I don't know. I know this is preference, but having Ayanami speak in abbreviated words somehow doesn't sound right to me.
'brothers'
- Location
- National Capital Region, USA
Ouch. Indeed, seeing her trapped in a memory, trying to remember past happiness that was because he was there... an exquisite and unnamable pain, that...
Eisheth watched her children slaughter each other, and despaired... and to escape that pain she locked the survivors into stasis forever. And then she exported it, consuming the other Seeds until she reached Earth and Lilith too.
Rei and Shinji are both right, to some degree each. Shinji's approach isn't going to steer her off her course of 'Instrumentality-stasis for everyone forever, until total protonic decay'. Rei's silent opposition isn't going to change her mind. But the combination of Rei's remembering who Eisheth used to be, and Shinji's willingness to engage gives them the chance to break through Eisheth's determination to never feel pain again, at the price of never feeling anything else.
Asuka's going to have an interesting reaction, if Shinji ever gets a chance to tell her about all this.
Muphrid
Star of the Lancer
Mm, I'd hoped it would get across that, while Shinji may feel like that's the direction he wants to go, there's still something missing. His feelings should come off as confused and uncertain. The situation as-is will never sit right with him, but he can't articulate how things would be better another way.
I think it best when no one character is 100% right about something. That Shinji and Rei have to work together to arrive at the argument that works is a definite plus, if it ended up that way.
- Location
- National Capital Region, USA
And they did. It felt very much like Shinji wanted to protest 'This is wrong!', but if pressed would have a hard time articulating exactly why, but at the same time he'd feel more sure that it was.
Ranma-sensei
Sorcerer
- Location
- Citrix Receiver
- Pronouns
- Weatherdependent
Permission to quote?
- Location
- Surrey
Yeah sure.
Muphrid
Star of the Lancer
Well, that could happen if Asuka retains her memories. Shinji's been sent back to the past. It might be a little too easy for Asuka, Misato, and Nozomi not to repeat their mistakes if they retained their memories, too.
Author's Notes: Character Focus - Rei
Muphrid
Star of the Lancer
Author's Notes: Character Focus - Rei
I've long had a fascination with Rei. The idea of something inhuman packaged into human skin intrigues me. I've said before that I was very disappointed that Anno neglected Rei's character over the middle third of the series. That was a primary motivation behind "Before and After": I wanted to give her the focus, the overt storyline, her character deserves.
Perhaps I should say that The Second Coming, as with First Ones before it, is very Rei-centric. That may surprise some, considering that Rei doesn't get a ton of screentime. She often makes just one or two appearances per arc. She is not a constant presence. And yet, the piece is as much about her as about Shinji or everyone else. The entire struggle against Eisheth and her children is fueled by Rei's determination to resist and the ideals she tries to live up to.
Rei holds a curious burden of responsibility. Long ago, she took on the role of a Seed of Life. The person she was has only a tenuous bearing on her personality in the time of the story, but her goals and motivations are strongly connected to the choice she made. Yet there is also some conflict within Rei. In the beginning, she is still trying to find a balance between her overall responsibility toward humanity versus what matters to her personally—Shinji. That is Rei's core struggle: personal desires against incurred duties. How much of what she does now should be dictated by the choices she made long ago, when she was a different person and had a different body?
Much of the story proceeds with Rei in denial about this conflict. To kick off the story, she saves Shinji, using her powers more freely than she would with anyone else, yet even after the fact, she doubts whether that was the right choice. Sure, in that case she needed to save his life in the short term, but there are many other choices like this, and most of them involve saving Shinji or his friends in the short term at the potential cost of permanent salvation in the long term.
In spite of this difficulty, Rei takes on the burden anyway. Her reasons stem partly from the vision she has gained by joining with Adam. EvaGeeks wiki goes into detail about the theory of the hybrid and about how it may have the ability to influence events or appear before and after its creation. I thought that idea very compelling, as it reinforces the otherness of Rei: she can never be an ordinary human now. Her body has died, and yet she lives on, ever watchful. A phrase runs around sometimes to describe this: "the existence that gazes upon man." In many ways, that image is the starting point of the story. Rei's eternal gaze and how she suffers the curse to continue watching over humanity—that moves me. And that is where we start, after all: with Shinji, in the soup kitchen, staring down the barrel of a gun as Rei watches.
Much of the story is molded to play off this idea, and because of that, Rei's storyline isn't quite as focused as Misato's or Asuka's. Instead, her story unfolds gradually throughout, only coming to a head in "What You Leave Behind."
From Shinji's perspective, there's a great deal of uncertainty when dealing with Rei. She isn't the person that he knew, but she is close to that, and she calls herself a friend. Her powers are frightening and incomprehensible, but once Rei shows him a vision of the FAR for the first time, Shinji's convinced. This is the Rei he knew, and she's lost more than he can fathom or appreciate. Knowing who she really was and is, he can listen to her and go about trying to make a world that she can inhabit and enjoy as well.
As with Asuka and Misato, Shinji is influenced by Rei's mentality, and that momentarily leads him to anguish. His actions in "The Forge" and "Anchor" are the result of him trying to follow Rei's argument and example of short-term sacrifices for the greater good. But like Rei, he finds it intolerable. Even trying to follow that example affects him and damages him, as well as Sasaki, whom he passes that idea on to. That is what convinces him to reject Rei's overt argument.
And yet, when Rei is persuaded to listen to Shinji, she makes a curious decision: to sacrifice yet again. Rei's conflict isn't quite what Shinji thought it was. Rei argues against half-measures. The reason is that she feels she is the one doing just that. She could've engaged Eisheth in interminable conflict long before that point. She did not, in part because she did not want to suffer that forever, and in part because that would've taken her away from her last remaining connection to the human world—Shinji.
That gets at the real heart of the matter: Rei's actions were passing on suffering and heartache. Asking Shinji to follow her example only extended the chain of misery. Taking it upon herself let him find a way to be happy, even if she could not enjoy his company any longer. Rei's character arc is all about this: about finding true happiness through service to others. It's not for everyone, and only a few people should strive for such a thing, but Rei really, truly, and without reservation can be happy knowing that Shinji has the opportunity to live a full life. That's what her arc is about: finding that moment of self-satisfaction in which you know that you may be giving something up, but given the options, there's only one choice that ensures what you care about can prosper. That's an easy decision. And it brings Rei a measure of peace.
I've long had a fascination with Rei. The idea of something inhuman packaged into human skin intrigues me. I've said before that I was very disappointed that Anno neglected Rei's character over the middle third of the series. That was a primary motivation behind "Before and After": I wanted to give her the focus, the overt storyline, her character deserves.
Perhaps I should say that The Second Coming, as with First Ones before it, is very Rei-centric. That may surprise some, considering that Rei doesn't get a ton of screentime. She often makes just one or two appearances per arc. She is not a constant presence. And yet, the piece is as much about her as about Shinji or everyone else. The entire struggle against Eisheth and her children is fueled by Rei's determination to resist and the ideals she tries to live up to.
Rei holds a curious burden of responsibility. Long ago, she took on the role of a Seed of Life. The person she was has only a tenuous bearing on her personality in the time of the story, but her goals and motivations are strongly connected to the choice she made. Yet there is also some conflict within Rei. In the beginning, she is still trying to find a balance between her overall responsibility toward humanity versus what matters to her personally—Shinji. That is Rei's core struggle: personal desires against incurred duties. How much of what she does now should be dictated by the choices she made long ago, when she was a different person and had a different body?
Much of the story proceeds with Rei in denial about this conflict. To kick off the story, she saves Shinji, using her powers more freely than she would with anyone else, yet even after the fact, she doubts whether that was the right choice. Sure, in that case she needed to save his life in the short term, but there are many other choices like this, and most of them involve saving Shinji or his friends in the short term at the potential cost of permanent salvation in the long term.
In spite of this difficulty, Rei takes on the burden anyway. Her reasons stem partly from the vision she has gained by joining with Adam. EvaGeeks wiki goes into detail about the theory of the hybrid and about how it may have the ability to influence events or appear before and after its creation. I thought that idea very compelling, as it reinforces the otherness of Rei: she can never be an ordinary human now. Her body has died, and yet she lives on, ever watchful. A phrase runs around sometimes to describe this: "the existence that gazes upon man." In many ways, that image is the starting point of the story. Rei's eternal gaze and how she suffers the curse to continue watching over humanity—that moves me. And that is where we start, after all: with Shinji, in the soup kitchen, staring down the barrel of a gun as Rei watches.
Much of the story is molded to play off this idea, and because of that, Rei's storyline isn't quite as focused as Misato's or Asuka's. Instead, her story unfolds gradually throughout, only coming to a head in "What You Leave Behind."
From Shinji's perspective, there's a great deal of uncertainty when dealing with Rei. She isn't the person that he knew, but she is close to that, and she calls herself a friend. Her powers are frightening and incomprehensible, but once Rei shows him a vision of the FAR for the first time, Shinji's convinced. This is the Rei he knew, and she's lost more than he can fathom or appreciate. Knowing who she really was and is, he can listen to her and go about trying to make a world that she can inhabit and enjoy as well.
As with Asuka and Misato, Shinji is influenced by Rei's mentality, and that momentarily leads him to anguish. His actions in "The Forge" and "Anchor" are the result of him trying to follow Rei's argument and example of short-term sacrifices for the greater good. But like Rei, he finds it intolerable. Even trying to follow that example affects him and damages him, as well as Sasaki, whom he passes that idea on to. That is what convinces him to reject Rei's overt argument.
And yet, when Rei is persuaded to listen to Shinji, she makes a curious decision: to sacrifice yet again. Rei's conflict isn't quite what Shinji thought it was. Rei argues against half-measures. The reason is that she feels she is the one doing just that. She could've engaged Eisheth in interminable conflict long before that point. She did not, in part because she did not want to suffer that forever, and in part because that would've taken her away from her last remaining connection to the human world—Shinji.
That gets at the real heart of the matter: Rei's actions were passing on suffering and heartache. Asking Shinji to follow her example only extended the chain of misery. Taking it upon herself let him find a way to be happy, even if she could not enjoy his company any longer. Rei's character arc is all about this: about finding true happiness through service to others. It's not for everyone, and only a few people should strive for such a thing, but Rei really, truly, and without reservation can be happy knowing that Shinji has the opportunity to live a full life. That's what her arc is about: finding that moment of self-satisfaction in which you know that you may be giving something up, but given the options, there's only one choice that ensures what you care about can prosper. That's an easy decision. And it brings Rei a measure of peace.
Muphrid
Star of the Lancer
Editing changelog: SV polish edits for 6.6/Reprieve
6.5/One Billion Years Later: fixes for issues by @Ranma-sensei/#332
6.6/Reprieve:
second-an.tex: some minor changes to Rei's character focus section
Tomorrow: 6.6/Reprieve.
The Second Coming ends in 1 week.
Take heart, friends: Eisheth is watching, but we can change the future she's foreseen.
6.5/One Billion Years Later: fixes for issues by @Ranma-sensei/#332
6.6/Reprieve:
- Tidied up sequence as Shinji and Suzuki's team leave the Geofront
- Shinji now keeps the combat uniform on as he reboards Ise
- Shinji now evacuates Ise with the rest of the crew after the Angel attacks, and some divine intervention is required to get him back to the Geofront as the assault on Unit-14's location begins
- Inserted some dialogue from Hikari to appeal to Nozomi in the final moments
second-an.tex: some minor changes to Rei's character focus section
Tomorrow: 6.6/Reprieve.
The Second Coming ends in 1 week.
Take heart, friends: Eisheth is watching, but we can change the future she's foreseen.
6.6 Reprieve
Muphrid
Star of the Lancer
39. Reprieve
In the bowels of the Geofront, the sergeant paddled our inflatable boat back to the central walkway—the main path to the white giant. SDF personnel were holding off Seele and alien forces at the entrances to the chamber, and two men guarded the rectangular array of N2 warheads at the end of the walkway, closest to the giant's body. More of the warheads had been tied to the beast's legs as well.
It was all still there, just as I'd remembered it.
But this time, I was there, too, and I had a chance to change it.
I asked the sergeant for a radio, and I spoke with Captain Suzuki. There would be no point in destroying the chamber, I told her. The giant would, more than likely, escape unharmed. Instead, I had information that would be worth sharing with Misato and the rest of the fleet. Suzuki was skeptical of the idea, though: the corridor back to the helicopter was no longer secure. We would have to fight our way out. The odds weren't good, and Suzuki was still tempted to try blowing up the chamber, not believing what I'd told her.
In frustration, I shot back, "We've got sixteen warheads, the closest things to nukes anyone would dare use, and we can't fight our way out of this?"
There was a brief silence on the other end. Then, Captain Suzuki said, "We'll make something happen."
Suzuki's men redeployed the N2 weapons at the furthest point from our escape route. They dismantled the N2 weapons individually, separating their primer charges from the oxidation fuel. Without that fuel, the most powerful non-nuclear weapons in existence were reduced to firecrackers—enough to burn and stun our enemies, but not enough to collapse the entire chamber and a quarter of the Geofront on top of us.
We left the giant's chamber with the primer charges providing cover. They went off in sequence—a thunderous applause for our efforts—and drenched the LCL lake in fire. After that, we fought our way out. Seele militants entrenched themselves in the network of corridors, pinning us down within a few turns of the giant's chamber. With fire and smoke licking our backs, Suzuki ordered a bull rush of a flank position. A pair of grenades softened up one corridor, and the SDF members attacked from two sides, neutralizing the enemy.
From there, we scampered back to the opening in the Geofront's hull. We attached ropes to our belts and went back up to the helicopter in groups of two, and rode back to Ise. For my part, I didn't even bother getting out of combat gear. I needed to talk to Misato—to tell her what I had seen, to warn her of what would happen if we made the same mistakes as before.
Misato wasn't about to wait, though. She took me aside in the fleet operations room and demanded an explanation. "What did you think you were doing, Shinji?" she said to me. "Getting yourself stuck in that thing? Did you lose your mind?"
I winced. "I'm sorry; I'm sorry, but there's no time for that. Admiral McNamara is going to call—"
"Shinji." The hooded stranger, Eisheth, called out to me; she watched from the hatch back to the corridor. Her satin hood blocked all view of her eyes, but the direction of her gaze was clear. Her lips were pressed together, and she shook her head but once.
And Ayanami was there, too, standing right behind her.
"Prove that people can be better," said Ayanami.
"Shinji?" asked Misato, her voice growing concerned. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," I said, meeting her gaze again. "Sorry, I thought I heard something. Listen, there's something I need to ask you to do. Can you get me a line to Asuka? Something I saw when I merged with the giant might help her."
"Of course, but—"
"General," interrupted Hyuga, holding a phone in his hand, "it's McNamara on the line."
Misato looked at the phone, then at me. "All right," she said, "and get Shinji a link back to Manoah Base."
"Misato," I said before she put the phone to her ear, "we're in this together. Our friends have doubts sometimes. That's as much the enemy as what we're fighting out there, isn't it?"
Frowning, Misato took me by the shoulder and guided me in the direction of an empty station, where Hyuga had one of the communications personnel get me on the line with Japan. While the link was being reestablished, Misato had her conversation with the American, Admiral McNamara. The Disc Angel was having its way with the fleet, and McNamara, I presume, wanted to withdraw and hope for a more covert strike on Seele. As Misato and the admiral exchanged opinions, I kept only one ear of my headset on, listening to Misato with the other.
"Hey, Shinji!" came Asuka's voice over the headset. "What the hell were you thinking? I'm down here one minute working on the engine, and I hear you went inside that creature?"
"I'm sorry; I'm sorry," I said, wincing. "I'm sorry I left, but I'm back now. I'm back, and I'm not going anywhere. I promised, right? So don't worry about it. I want to hear about you. How's it going over there?"
"I'm working like hell," she said, sighing. "I feel like I'm getting close, but I'm not there yet."
"Asuka," I said.
"Yeah?"
I held on to the headset cord. "Are you working with people?" I asked. "Are you talking?"
"Yeah…kinda."
I raised both eyebrows. "Asuka."
"I'm really close on this."
"Talk to people, Asuka," I told her. "Talk to them. Sometimes they have good ideas; sometimes your ideas are what they need to get things done. Can you do that for me?"
"Of course," she said. "I can do anything."
I laughed. "I know it. Thanks. And Asuka? I love you."
A pause. "I love you, too, Shinji. See you soon?"
"You bet," I said, beaming, and I cut the line. I took a look around the room: Misato was still talking with Admiral McNamara on the main line, trying to convince him that they were already 80% through the Geofront's hull, so why not continue?
But the admiral wasn't having it. The Disc Angel was free to roam about the fleet, and he knew well that they'd be torn apart if they didn't run away. Yet Misato wouldn't let it be, either:
"I would rather try," she said. "We have a chance here, Admiral."
What she heard on the other end of the line was far from agreement. Misato scowled, and she pounded her fist on the table. Her eyes flickered about the room as she searched for an answer.
Her eyes met mine, and I nodded at her.
"Then my decision is made, too, John," she said. "My fleet will be staying. We can break through if you hold the line with us. We're going to try. If we fall, then perhaps we'll have bought the rest of you time to regroup, but that's a pyrrhic victory at best. Stand with us, Admiral. Please. I need you."
A pause. Misato listened. Hyuga, holding a clipboard, leaned closer to try to hear.
"I see," said Misato. "Thank you." She put the phone down gently, and she gave Hyuga an affirming nod. "Step up the bombardment. Run the guns as hot as they can go. We're not going to have very much longer before we're sinking. Get our choppers ready. It's time to take the fight to Seele!"
And so, even as the helicopter destroyer Ise steamed at full speed away from the Angel, sailors held fast on its guns and missile launch bays. They unleashed hell on the Geofront, bombarding the surface with explosive shells and warheads. Other Japanese ships in the armada kept up the attack, and that one spot on the Geofront's exterior pulsed with flame.
But they weren't the only ones. American fighter jets and Chinese destroyers peppered the target spot with bombs and missiles. The international fleet extended to the horizon, like an auditorium full of delinquent students lobbing spitballs at a stage. Each attack was small and trivial, and yet the combined force was building.
"How close are we?" asked Misato, who paced about the fleet control room deliberately.
Another officer listened in on a headset. "Lookouts report we are—we are through the primary superstructure, General!"
Misato pumped her fist. "Advise the captain; we no longer have business here, so let's get moving! Where is the Angel?"
"Bearing 090 at 1500 meters—1200—1050. Shipboard defenses are acquiring target."
The ship rattled. Fire from the smaller point-defense guns rattled the ship.
"No effect," said the officer. "Negligible impact."
I squeezed the armrest on my chair. I wasn't at a sensor station; we were deaf and blind in the fleet control room. Other people had to tell us what was going on outside—what they heard, what they saw.
Misato shadowed a radar operator, and as the dot representing the Angel bore down on the center of the plot, she shot me a look. "It's all right," she said to the room. "We did what we were here to do."
A warning alarm sounded through the room and the hallways. Maritime SDF members secured themselves in their seats, and two men shut and tightened the exit hatch.
CRUNCH! The ship lurched and shook. The lights went out, and in the faint glow of red emergency lights, Misato was thrown against a plotting table.
The next few moments were chaotic. Our consoles were dark. Hyuga got on the sound-powered phone, trying to get a situation report from the bridge. As the deck swayed beneath us, the word that came in was clear:
"We're abandoning ship," said Hyuga. "Let's go; rafts are in the water!"
We moved as a group to the flight deck, navigating darkened halls by flashlight as needed. Ise had been split in two, and while the two halves were still above water, the sea poured in through the gash. The forward half, which we were on, started pitching upward at the front.
When we made it to the flight deck, where SDF members detached cannisters from the side of the ship. When each cylinder hit the water, it unfurled into a self-inflating raft. SDF members lowered ladders from the side, and the crew began climbing down, but Misato refused to descend. "If the captain goes down with the ship, how can I leave?" she remarked. She assigned Hyuga to make sure I got to safety—kicking and screaming if it had to be. I did no such thing, but still, I stayed with her, just for a moment, even as the line to the nearby ladder cleared.
"Don't leave me again, Misato," I told her, holding on to the railing as the ship listed further.
She smiled, and she leaned over to kiss me on the forehead. "There's not a chance of that," she said. "I've worked too hard to win this thing and not enjoy what comes next."
"You'll enjoy it?" I asked her.
Misato made a wishy-washy sound. "Hm, I'm not sure I will," she said, shrugging, and she shot me a coy smile. "But I think I'll give it a shot." She slapped me on the side of my arm and pointed at my nose. "Now go! We can do the rest when I get back."
Still, I hesitated at the top of the ladder, looking on as Misato spoke with one of the MSDF officers to figure out who still needed evacuating and what else should be done. I'm not sure I would've climbed down at all if not for who I saw behind Misato, watching over her: Ayanami. The MSDF crewmen didn't notice her, but she was truly serene as she stood there, and though she followed Misato around the flight deck, Ayanami shot me a look and a nod. I smiled in turn, and I went down the escape ladder without further delay.
Life rafts in MSDF left something to be desired: they were entirely inflatable fabric, altogether too squishy and small to put my mind at ease. The raft bobbed next to the sinking ship with no obvious way to get clear. Two of the MSDF crewmen tied together their shoes and slapped at the water to put some distance between us and the ship, fearing that the downward pull of the hull would draw us in.
Aside from that, all we could do was sit, wait, and listen. One of the MSDF members set up a portable radio, which we monitored for rescue instructions. The remaining ships in the fleet didn't want to get close enough to pluck us out of the water until the Angel could be diverted, though, so in the meantime, we tuned into the mission frequencies, and I heard a familiar voice:
"Eva Unit-14, Eva Unit-14, this is Manoah Base via Makinami, do you read me?"
Asuka. I looked to the rising sun, and I laughed. I laughed for joy and relief, as if her voice and the light of the sun could carry my worries away.
"Either way," Asuka went on, "sit tight, Nozomi. We're coming to get you. We're going to get you a chance to break free. Can you hear it? They're coming."
I heard them—the thunderous roars of helicopter rotors. The Disc Angel may have ravaged the fleet, but our people were already on the way. A horde of helicopters made for the Black Moon, and though the winds buffeted and threw them about, they rose above the smoke and flames of the bombardment zone. They darted into the breach, unloading troops inside the structure.
I watched them go, and I sat back in the life raft. They were on a mission—a mission I could only watch from that seat. Reaching Nozomi and stopping Lorenz were their concern. I'd have to settle for conserving water and meal packets while we waited for rescue.
Or so I thought.
"Shinji." The hooded stranger—the human and yet inhuman image that Eisheth used for herself—walked alongside our life raft. She strolled casually above the water, watching me from behind a hood that wouldn't show her eyes. "You're not finished here, are you?" she asked.
I looked around the raft. No one else was paying attention. No one else even saw her. I looked where her eyes would've been, if not for the hood, and shook my head.
"I didn't think so," she said. "Let's take you to your friend."
The world warped around me, stretching like the view of a magnifying glass mixed with a kaleidoscope. A force pulled me upright from my seat, and I wobbled as some ground came up from beneath me. Machine guns rattled off bullets, and the crack of each round's firing pounded in my ears. The air was hot and smoky; I wafted some fumes away from my nose. A hand yanked me by the shoulder.
"Ikari, what the hell are you doing here?"
Captain Suzuki. There was no rest for her; she and her men disembarked from a helicopter. Two dozen helicopters had landed in the gash the fleet had made. It was their beachhead. The troop helicopters rolled in, and attack helicopters and jets controlled the airspace within the chamber—the open environment of the Geofront. The ground was grassy, and though the vegetation was largely blue in color, the sense of nature was strong.
Realizing where I was, I laughed, and I shrugged my shoulders. "I was sent here," I told the captain, "to see Nozomi."
The stern and stoic Captain Suzuki put a hand to my head and ruffled my hair. From anyone else, it might have been a cute gesture. From her, it was a warning. "This is not a helmet," she said. "Stay back; stay out of trouble. You understand?"
I nodded. "Lead the way, and I'll follow."
Suzuki pawned me off on one of her fireteams, and the company moved ahead. Helicopter gunships had established a perimeter, bombarding Seele militants with missiles and gunfire. The rest of the expeditionary force touched down within the perimeter, amid scorched grasses and charred trees. The vegetation was unearthly: blue blades of grass split into four leaves in a diamond-shaped pattern, and the trees were bluish-white as well.
But we weren't there for a tour, nor to study plants. The vanguard of the invasion force stomped that blue grass underfoot as they established a firing perimeter.
That was good enough to hold the Seele riflemen at bay, but making the way forward was more difficult: the militants peppered us with mortars and grenades. While the attack helicopters beat them back far enough for us to hold the beachhead, that was about as far as we could go—with conventional weapons, anyway.
I stayed far enough back to only feel the ripples and reverberations of explosions; Suzuki's men surely wouldn't have let me get any closer. While we were waiting for a clear moment, I tuned my radio to the plugcom frequency, and I slipped an earpiece in to listen.
"Nozomi," said Asuka on the radio, "it's Soryu. Hope you're listening; we need you now. I know Lorenz has tried to put all kinds of crap in your head. We're going to buy you a little time without him. If you can use that and get to our guys—so much the better, huh? So listen up, because we've got something for you: Maya, Tezuka, and all of us. You ready for that?"
A slight mumble—a groan came through on the line.
"I'll take that as a yes," said Asuka, laughing to herself. "Okay, Nozomi; okay, Unit-14. You're not gonna have forever, but here's a little weed trimming. Try to walk; try to move around. Try to—"
A roar echoed through the Geofront. I put on some binoculars, and I saw it: Unit-14—the beast built like a bear, in green and black armor—ripped itself free of the vines. And I'll be damned if I didn't pump my fist and cry out at that—even as Suzuki and her men tried to keep me quiet.
"Soryu…" Nozomi's voice was weak and breathy. "Stop talking so much. Where—where do I need to be?"
"Waypoint's up," said Asuka. "Head for the breach; we'll get you out of here. Go!"
The husky bear trudged toward us. It swatted Seele grenadiers and armored vehicles away like ants and beetles. Its footsteps rattled the ground.
But those footsteps were heavy—so heavy. Even with parts and pieces of the Crown ripped away, a great mass still clung to the Eva's head. The Eva stumbled forward like a baby taking its first steps.
And like any child, it fell.
It tripped and skidded on the alien landscape. It plowed face-first into the blue grass. It slipped and stumbled as it tried to get back up, but the earth was soft and wet there. Mud stuck to the Eva's feet and hands, and the artificial soil gave way under the slightest force.
Captain Suzuki touched her earpiece for a moment, and she yelled to get the attention of her men. "Hey, hey, this is it!" she said. "That's our pilot out there, and we need to go get her. Let's go, people!"
With cover from the helicopters, we scampered over the open fields to where Unit-14 had fallen. Missile impacts kicked up dirt and flame, and our footing was unsteady on the wet ground, but we ran ahead anyway, not minding the shaking of the floor or the stray bullets from the last few Seele survivors.
One of them was just as courageous as us, if for the wrong reasons: Keel Lorenz.
"They can't reach you!" he cried on a megaphone, running after the fallen Eva. "They can't bring you back! They are dying every second; let go before more are hurt!"
"I think that's enough of that!" said one of Suzuki's men, and a group of eight surrounded Lorenz and his team.
Lorenz scoffed. "Am I supposed to be afraid of guns?"
"It wouldn't do much good if you're dead before Fourth Impact, Chairman," said Captain Suzuki, who trained her rifle on him personally. "You want to put that megaphone down now?"
Snarling, Lorenz tossed the device aside and put his hands in the air. His followers did the same.
But Unit-14 wasn't free just yet. The Crown's thorny tendrils coursed through the Eva's body, tying it down like a rabbit in a snare.
And I ran after it.
"Ikari!" cried one of Suzuki's sergeants. "Stay back!"
I kept running. "Asuka, it's me!" I called over the radio. "Is there anything else you can do?"
"Sorry, that's all for now," she said. "Tezuka and Maya are working on it. I'm gonna go help them out, so I might not be very responsive. Good luck!"
That meant it was up to us.
I ran up to the Eva's body, past the line of Seele operatives who had surrendered their weapons and kneeled down before the international forces. I crouched next to the Eva's head—the black and green facemask with two rows of eyes—and I keyed up the radio. "Nozomi? Nozomi, are you with me?"
Muffled groans and static came through the line. The Eva looked at me, but its gaze wavered. It spasmed and howled. The tendrils of the Crown of Thorns infested its body, but it was struggling to fight back.
"Hey," I said, and I reached out and touched the side of the Eva's head. "I want you to know something, Nozomi: I don't know anyone who's tried as hard as you—to understand people, to understand herself. It's not fair that didn't make you happy."
The Eva's eyes drifted off me. They blinked one at a time, staring at the ceiling of the Geofront.
I sat down in the dirt, just in front of the Eva's eyes. "But you know something?" I said. "You can change. You have changed. You started changing as soon as you dared to hope for something more with your sister. You changed when you forgave me for being scared and selfish. Let me be there for you now. Let your sister be there for you now. We can do this—together. I believe that."
The Eva's head turned away from me. There was a clicking on my radio. "Ikari," said Nozomi, her voice gravelly and hoarse, "stop trying so hard. Don't patronize me. There's no point."
The Eva glowed with energy. The force of it pushed back against me with a wave of nausea. My skin felt soft and gooey.
"No, Nozomi!" I scrambled to my feet and pulled on its armor. "Nozomi!"
"Nozomi Horaki!" The stranger in the white hood called to the Evangelion. The image of her hovered above the blue grass of the Geofront. Her voice echoed off the walls for all to hear.
But she was no woman—no stranger to me anymore, nor to Ayanami or mankind. In the form of a woman with a satin hood covering her eyes, Eisheth called to Nozomi and challenged her on what was to come.
"Nozomi Horaki," Eisheth said again, commanding the Eva's attention, "you have an opportunity here. You have sisters and friends who love you. They would willingly suffer to see you be happy, for that would make them happy, too."
My radio crackled. "You're not…doing a good job of convincing me here," said Nozomi, her voice gravely and weak.
Eisheth smiled knowingly. "Life is unfair that way, sometimes, but I think you can make them happier than it would hurt them to try. I think you can change." Eisheth turned her head toward me. "That is, if you dare to hope for it." She faced the Eva again. "I ask you not to be so stubborn that you don't even try."
"Who are you to tell me what to do?" Nozomi snapped.
The figure in the satin hood bowed her head. "I'm no one," she said at last. "I'm not the person I used to be." Her head rose, meeting the tired gaze of the Eva. "But I know what it means to doubt, to feel that nothing you do will matter, that nothing you change will stick. Maybe it won't, but perhaps it's time to let fate decide that instead of taking it into our own hands. You know, there's at least one person who wants you to keep trying." The stranger nodded at me. "Isn't she listening?"
"Asuka," I said over the radio, "is Horaki there?"
"I'm here, Ikari." Horaki's voice was halting but firm in volume and tone. "I've been listening. I don't know who that person is that was talking, but she's right. Nozomi, Sister and I are still here. We're still hoping you'll find your way home. We want to see you safe, and—" Her voice wavered. "No, I want to see you safe. We are not done talking. We only just started, I think. We have a lot to talk about—game sprites and landscapes and all that. And how we've hurt each other. I think we should talk about that, too. I'm counting on you to come back, so we can talk about that, Nozomi." Horaki's voice grew bolder. "Promise me that, all right? Nozomi?"
"Don't be an idiot, Hikari," said Nozomi, her voice fading. "I can't promise you anything."
"Yes you can," said Horaki. "You absolutely can. Maybe you won't be able to keep it, but I won't blame you for that. I know you're stubborn, Nozomi. You're so stubborn sometimes you won't even listen to me, but you don't listen to people who tell you to quit. You're ingenious with your artwork, so much so that I don't even really understand it. You treat people so rudely sometimes, but I know you try so hard not to hurt people. I don't know how all of that coexists in the same person. It's puzzling to me, and that used to bother me a lot, but it doesn't bother me as much anymore. Do you know why, Nozomi?"
Silence. The stranger and I looked at one another. She held up a hand, and I took my finger off the transmit switch on my radio.
"It doesn't bother me as much because I realized it puzzles you, too," Horaki said at last. "I remember what you told me that day—when you said you wanted to pilot the Eva again, in spite of everything. You needed a new reason because the old one wasn't good enough. Maybe it wasn't, but you were, Nozomi. You were good enough. You don't need to prove to me you can change. You don't need to prove to me you can feel. I've seen it in how you look. I've felt it from the wall you used to put between us. I've imagined it from the sketches you spend so much time on. There's nothing wrong with your heart, Nozomi. It might be imperfect, but we all are."
What I would've given to have been there—to have stood beside Horaki as she poured her soul into the microphone. I could only hope Asuka was there beside her, offering a shoulder to lean on.
"So forget all of that," Horaki concluded. "Forget all of that and stop worrying. Forget it and come home to us. Nozomi, I—I want to see you again."
The Geofront sat unnaturally still for a moment. SDF personnel kept Keel Lorenz under watch, with his hands and ankles bound by plastic ties. The ocean waves chopped outside under a moderate wind. The Disc Angel circled the Black Moon, zipping by the breach every-so-often; its light cast long shadows on the interior.
And the Crown of Thorns withered. The vines and tendrils dried up and dessicated. The Eva snapped those vines in two, climbed to its feet, and roared!
The sound pushed me back, but when it was over, I felt comfortable and still. The pressure of the anti-AT field diminished. I poked at my arm; my skin felt firm again.
"Ikari, Soryu," said Nozomi on the radio, "I'm over this. Can we get outta here? I'd like to see my sisters, and we've got some catching up to do."
I glanced back at Eisheth, who shot me the proud smile of a mother.
And behind her, Ayanami smiled, too.
"Shinji," said Asuka over the radio, "you want to give the order?"
"Thanks," I said, weeping, and I faced the breach in the Geofront. The sun had risen, and the gap opened up to clear blue sky. "Nozomi," I said, "let's go home."
In the bowels of the Geofront, the sergeant paddled our inflatable boat back to the central walkway—the main path to the white giant. SDF personnel were holding off Seele and alien forces at the entrances to the chamber, and two men guarded the rectangular array of N2 warheads at the end of the walkway, closest to the giant's body. More of the warheads had been tied to the beast's legs as well.
It was all still there, just as I'd remembered it.
But this time, I was there, too, and I had a chance to change it.
I asked the sergeant for a radio, and I spoke with Captain Suzuki. There would be no point in destroying the chamber, I told her. The giant would, more than likely, escape unharmed. Instead, I had information that would be worth sharing with Misato and the rest of the fleet. Suzuki was skeptical of the idea, though: the corridor back to the helicopter was no longer secure. We would have to fight our way out. The odds weren't good, and Suzuki was still tempted to try blowing up the chamber, not believing what I'd told her.
In frustration, I shot back, "We've got sixteen warheads, the closest things to nukes anyone would dare use, and we can't fight our way out of this?"
There was a brief silence on the other end. Then, Captain Suzuki said, "We'll make something happen."
Suzuki's men redeployed the N2 weapons at the furthest point from our escape route. They dismantled the N2 weapons individually, separating their primer charges from the oxidation fuel. Without that fuel, the most powerful non-nuclear weapons in existence were reduced to firecrackers—enough to burn and stun our enemies, but not enough to collapse the entire chamber and a quarter of the Geofront on top of us.
We left the giant's chamber with the primer charges providing cover. They went off in sequence—a thunderous applause for our efforts—and drenched the LCL lake in fire. After that, we fought our way out. Seele militants entrenched themselves in the network of corridors, pinning us down within a few turns of the giant's chamber. With fire and smoke licking our backs, Suzuki ordered a bull rush of a flank position. A pair of grenades softened up one corridor, and the SDF members attacked from two sides, neutralizing the enemy.
From there, we scampered back to the opening in the Geofront's hull. We attached ropes to our belts and went back up to the helicopter in groups of two, and rode back to Ise. For my part, I didn't even bother getting out of combat gear. I needed to talk to Misato—to tell her what I had seen, to warn her of what would happen if we made the same mistakes as before.
Misato wasn't about to wait, though. She took me aside in the fleet operations room and demanded an explanation. "What did you think you were doing, Shinji?" she said to me. "Getting yourself stuck in that thing? Did you lose your mind?"
I winced. "I'm sorry; I'm sorry, but there's no time for that. Admiral McNamara is going to call—"
"Shinji." The hooded stranger, Eisheth, called out to me; she watched from the hatch back to the corridor. Her satin hood blocked all view of her eyes, but the direction of her gaze was clear. Her lips were pressed together, and she shook her head but once.
And Ayanami was there, too, standing right behind her.
"Prove that people can be better," said Ayanami.
"Shinji?" asked Misato, her voice growing concerned. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," I said, meeting her gaze again. "Sorry, I thought I heard something. Listen, there's something I need to ask you to do. Can you get me a line to Asuka? Something I saw when I merged with the giant might help her."
"Of course, but—"
"General," interrupted Hyuga, holding a phone in his hand, "it's McNamara on the line."
Misato looked at the phone, then at me. "All right," she said, "and get Shinji a link back to Manoah Base."
"Misato," I said before she put the phone to her ear, "we're in this together. Our friends have doubts sometimes. That's as much the enemy as what we're fighting out there, isn't it?"
Frowning, Misato took me by the shoulder and guided me in the direction of an empty station, where Hyuga had one of the communications personnel get me on the line with Japan. While the link was being reestablished, Misato had her conversation with the American, Admiral McNamara. The Disc Angel was having its way with the fleet, and McNamara, I presume, wanted to withdraw and hope for a more covert strike on Seele. As Misato and the admiral exchanged opinions, I kept only one ear of my headset on, listening to Misato with the other.
"Hey, Shinji!" came Asuka's voice over the headset. "What the hell were you thinking? I'm down here one minute working on the engine, and I hear you went inside that creature?"
"I'm sorry; I'm sorry," I said, wincing. "I'm sorry I left, but I'm back now. I'm back, and I'm not going anywhere. I promised, right? So don't worry about it. I want to hear about you. How's it going over there?"
"I'm working like hell," she said, sighing. "I feel like I'm getting close, but I'm not there yet."
"Asuka," I said.
"Yeah?"
I held on to the headset cord. "Are you working with people?" I asked. "Are you talking?"
"Yeah…kinda."
I raised both eyebrows. "Asuka."
"I'm really close on this."
"Talk to people, Asuka," I told her. "Talk to them. Sometimes they have good ideas; sometimes your ideas are what they need to get things done. Can you do that for me?"
"Of course," she said. "I can do anything."
I laughed. "I know it. Thanks. And Asuka? I love you."
A pause. "I love you, too, Shinji. See you soon?"
"You bet," I said, beaming, and I cut the line. I took a look around the room: Misato was still talking with Admiral McNamara on the main line, trying to convince him that they were already 80% through the Geofront's hull, so why not continue?
But the admiral wasn't having it. The Disc Angel was free to roam about the fleet, and he knew well that they'd be torn apart if they didn't run away. Yet Misato wouldn't let it be, either:
"I would rather try," she said. "We have a chance here, Admiral."
What she heard on the other end of the line was far from agreement. Misato scowled, and she pounded her fist on the table. Her eyes flickered about the room as she searched for an answer.
Her eyes met mine, and I nodded at her.
"Then my decision is made, too, John," she said. "My fleet will be staying. We can break through if you hold the line with us. We're going to try. If we fall, then perhaps we'll have bought the rest of you time to regroup, but that's a pyrrhic victory at best. Stand with us, Admiral. Please. I need you."
A pause. Misato listened. Hyuga, holding a clipboard, leaned closer to try to hear.
"I see," said Misato. "Thank you." She put the phone down gently, and she gave Hyuga an affirming nod. "Step up the bombardment. Run the guns as hot as they can go. We're not going to have very much longer before we're sinking. Get our choppers ready. It's time to take the fight to Seele!"
And so, even as the helicopter destroyer Ise steamed at full speed away from the Angel, sailors held fast on its guns and missile launch bays. They unleashed hell on the Geofront, bombarding the surface with explosive shells and warheads. Other Japanese ships in the armada kept up the attack, and that one spot on the Geofront's exterior pulsed with flame.
But they weren't the only ones. American fighter jets and Chinese destroyers peppered the target spot with bombs and missiles. The international fleet extended to the horizon, like an auditorium full of delinquent students lobbing spitballs at a stage. Each attack was small and trivial, and yet the combined force was building.
"How close are we?" asked Misato, who paced about the fleet control room deliberately.
Another officer listened in on a headset. "Lookouts report we are—we are through the primary superstructure, General!"
Misato pumped her fist. "Advise the captain; we no longer have business here, so let's get moving! Where is the Angel?"
"Bearing 090 at 1500 meters—1200—1050. Shipboard defenses are acquiring target."
The ship rattled. Fire from the smaller point-defense guns rattled the ship.
"No effect," said the officer. "Negligible impact."
I squeezed the armrest on my chair. I wasn't at a sensor station; we were deaf and blind in the fleet control room. Other people had to tell us what was going on outside—what they heard, what they saw.
Misato shadowed a radar operator, and as the dot representing the Angel bore down on the center of the plot, she shot me a look. "It's all right," she said to the room. "We did what we were here to do."
A warning alarm sounded through the room and the hallways. Maritime SDF members secured themselves in their seats, and two men shut and tightened the exit hatch.
CRUNCH! The ship lurched and shook. The lights went out, and in the faint glow of red emergency lights, Misato was thrown against a plotting table.
The next few moments were chaotic. Our consoles were dark. Hyuga got on the sound-powered phone, trying to get a situation report from the bridge. As the deck swayed beneath us, the word that came in was clear:
"We're abandoning ship," said Hyuga. "Let's go; rafts are in the water!"
We moved as a group to the flight deck, navigating darkened halls by flashlight as needed. Ise had been split in two, and while the two halves were still above water, the sea poured in through the gash. The forward half, which we were on, started pitching upward at the front.
When we made it to the flight deck, where SDF members detached cannisters from the side of the ship. When each cylinder hit the water, it unfurled into a self-inflating raft. SDF members lowered ladders from the side, and the crew began climbing down, but Misato refused to descend. "If the captain goes down with the ship, how can I leave?" she remarked. She assigned Hyuga to make sure I got to safety—kicking and screaming if it had to be. I did no such thing, but still, I stayed with her, just for a moment, even as the line to the nearby ladder cleared.
"Don't leave me again, Misato," I told her, holding on to the railing as the ship listed further.
She smiled, and she leaned over to kiss me on the forehead. "There's not a chance of that," she said. "I've worked too hard to win this thing and not enjoy what comes next."
"You'll enjoy it?" I asked her.
Misato made a wishy-washy sound. "Hm, I'm not sure I will," she said, shrugging, and she shot me a coy smile. "But I think I'll give it a shot." She slapped me on the side of my arm and pointed at my nose. "Now go! We can do the rest when I get back."
Still, I hesitated at the top of the ladder, looking on as Misato spoke with one of the MSDF officers to figure out who still needed evacuating and what else should be done. I'm not sure I would've climbed down at all if not for who I saw behind Misato, watching over her: Ayanami. The MSDF crewmen didn't notice her, but she was truly serene as she stood there, and though she followed Misato around the flight deck, Ayanami shot me a look and a nod. I smiled in turn, and I went down the escape ladder without further delay.
Life rafts in MSDF left something to be desired: they were entirely inflatable fabric, altogether too squishy and small to put my mind at ease. The raft bobbed next to the sinking ship with no obvious way to get clear. Two of the MSDF crewmen tied together their shoes and slapped at the water to put some distance between us and the ship, fearing that the downward pull of the hull would draw us in.
Aside from that, all we could do was sit, wait, and listen. One of the MSDF members set up a portable radio, which we monitored for rescue instructions. The remaining ships in the fleet didn't want to get close enough to pluck us out of the water until the Angel could be diverted, though, so in the meantime, we tuned into the mission frequencies, and I heard a familiar voice:
"Eva Unit-14, Eva Unit-14, this is Manoah Base via Makinami, do you read me?"
Asuka. I looked to the rising sun, and I laughed. I laughed for joy and relief, as if her voice and the light of the sun could carry my worries away.
"Either way," Asuka went on, "sit tight, Nozomi. We're coming to get you. We're going to get you a chance to break free. Can you hear it? They're coming."
I heard them—the thunderous roars of helicopter rotors. The Disc Angel may have ravaged the fleet, but our people were already on the way. A horde of helicopters made for the Black Moon, and though the winds buffeted and threw them about, they rose above the smoke and flames of the bombardment zone. They darted into the breach, unloading troops inside the structure.
I watched them go, and I sat back in the life raft. They were on a mission—a mission I could only watch from that seat. Reaching Nozomi and stopping Lorenz were their concern. I'd have to settle for conserving water and meal packets while we waited for rescue.
Or so I thought.
"Shinji." The hooded stranger—the human and yet inhuman image that Eisheth used for herself—walked alongside our life raft. She strolled casually above the water, watching me from behind a hood that wouldn't show her eyes. "You're not finished here, are you?" she asked.
I looked around the raft. No one else was paying attention. No one else even saw her. I looked where her eyes would've been, if not for the hood, and shook my head.
"I didn't think so," she said. "Let's take you to your friend."
The world warped around me, stretching like the view of a magnifying glass mixed with a kaleidoscope. A force pulled me upright from my seat, and I wobbled as some ground came up from beneath me. Machine guns rattled off bullets, and the crack of each round's firing pounded in my ears. The air was hot and smoky; I wafted some fumes away from my nose. A hand yanked me by the shoulder.
"Ikari, what the hell are you doing here?"
Captain Suzuki. There was no rest for her; she and her men disembarked from a helicopter. Two dozen helicopters had landed in the gash the fleet had made. It was their beachhead. The troop helicopters rolled in, and attack helicopters and jets controlled the airspace within the chamber—the open environment of the Geofront. The ground was grassy, and though the vegetation was largely blue in color, the sense of nature was strong.
Realizing where I was, I laughed, and I shrugged my shoulders. "I was sent here," I told the captain, "to see Nozomi."
The stern and stoic Captain Suzuki put a hand to my head and ruffled my hair. From anyone else, it might have been a cute gesture. From her, it was a warning. "This is not a helmet," she said. "Stay back; stay out of trouble. You understand?"
I nodded. "Lead the way, and I'll follow."
Suzuki pawned me off on one of her fireteams, and the company moved ahead. Helicopter gunships had established a perimeter, bombarding Seele militants with missiles and gunfire. The rest of the expeditionary force touched down within the perimeter, amid scorched grasses and charred trees. The vegetation was unearthly: blue blades of grass split into four leaves in a diamond-shaped pattern, and the trees were bluish-white as well.
But we weren't there for a tour, nor to study plants. The vanguard of the invasion force stomped that blue grass underfoot as they established a firing perimeter.
That was good enough to hold the Seele riflemen at bay, but making the way forward was more difficult: the militants peppered us with mortars and grenades. While the attack helicopters beat them back far enough for us to hold the beachhead, that was about as far as we could go—with conventional weapons, anyway.
I stayed far enough back to only feel the ripples and reverberations of explosions; Suzuki's men surely wouldn't have let me get any closer. While we were waiting for a clear moment, I tuned my radio to the plugcom frequency, and I slipped an earpiece in to listen.
"Nozomi," said Asuka on the radio, "it's Soryu. Hope you're listening; we need you now. I know Lorenz has tried to put all kinds of crap in your head. We're going to buy you a little time without him. If you can use that and get to our guys—so much the better, huh? So listen up, because we've got something for you: Maya, Tezuka, and all of us. You ready for that?"
A slight mumble—a groan came through on the line.
"I'll take that as a yes," said Asuka, laughing to herself. "Okay, Nozomi; okay, Unit-14. You're not gonna have forever, but here's a little weed trimming. Try to walk; try to move around. Try to—"
A roar echoed through the Geofront. I put on some binoculars, and I saw it: Unit-14—the beast built like a bear, in green and black armor—ripped itself free of the vines. And I'll be damned if I didn't pump my fist and cry out at that—even as Suzuki and her men tried to keep me quiet.
"Soryu…" Nozomi's voice was weak and breathy. "Stop talking so much. Where—where do I need to be?"
"Waypoint's up," said Asuka. "Head for the breach; we'll get you out of here. Go!"
The husky bear trudged toward us. It swatted Seele grenadiers and armored vehicles away like ants and beetles. Its footsteps rattled the ground.
But those footsteps were heavy—so heavy. Even with parts and pieces of the Crown ripped away, a great mass still clung to the Eva's head. The Eva stumbled forward like a baby taking its first steps.
And like any child, it fell.
It tripped and skidded on the alien landscape. It plowed face-first into the blue grass. It slipped and stumbled as it tried to get back up, but the earth was soft and wet there. Mud stuck to the Eva's feet and hands, and the artificial soil gave way under the slightest force.
Captain Suzuki touched her earpiece for a moment, and she yelled to get the attention of her men. "Hey, hey, this is it!" she said. "That's our pilot out there, and we need to go get her. Let's go, people!"
With cover from the helicopters, we scampered over the open fields to where Unit-14 had fallen. Missile impacts kicked up dirt and flame, and our footing was unsteady on the wet ground, but we ran ahead anyway, not minding the shaking of the floor or the stray bullets from the last few Seele survivors.
One of them was just as courageous as us, if for the wrong reasons: Keel Lorenz.
"They can't reach you!" he cried on a megaphone, running after the fallen Eva. "They can't bring you back! They are dying every second; let go before more are hurt!"
"I think that's enough of that!" said one of Suzuki's men, and a group of eight surrounded Lorenz and his team.
Lorenz scoffed. "Am I supposed to be afraid of guns?"
"It wouldn't do much good if you're dead before Fourth Impact, Chairman," said Captain Suzuki, who trained her rifle on him personally. "You want to put that megaphone down now?"
Snarling, Lorenz tossed the device aside and put his hands in the air. His followers did the same.
But Unit-14 wasn't free just yet. The Crown's thorny tendrils coursed through the Eva's body, tying it down like a rabbit in a snare.
And I ran after it.
"Ikari!" cried one of Suzuki's sergeants. "Stay back!"
I kept running. "Asuka, it's me!" I called over the radio. "Is there anything else you can do?"
"Sorry, that's all for now," she said. "Tezuka and Maya are working on it. I'm gonna go help them out, so I might not be very responsive. Good luck!"
That meant it was up to us.
I ran up to the Eva's body, past the line of Seele operatives who had surrendered their weapons and kneeled down before the international forces. I crouched next to the Eva's head—the black and green facemask with two rows of eyes—and I keyed up the radio. "Nozomi? Nozomi, are you with me?"
Muffled groans and static came through the line. The Eva looked at me, but its gaze wavered. It spasmed and howled. The tendrils of the Crown of Thorns infested its body, but it was struggling to fight back.
"Hey," I said, and I reached out and touched the side of the Eva's head. "I want you to know something, Nozomi: I don't know anyone who's tried as hard as you—to understand people, to understand herself. It's not fair that didn't make you happy."
The Eva's eyes drifted off me. They blinked one at a time, staring at the ceiling of the Geofront.
I sat down in the dirt, just in front of the Eva's eyes. "But you know something?" I said. "You can change. You have changed. You started changing as soon as you dared to hope for something more with your sister. You changed when you forgave me for being scared and selfish. Let me be there for you now. Let your sister be there for you now. We can do this—together. I believe that."
The Eva's head turned away from me. There was a clicking on my radio. "Ikari," said Nozomi, her voice gravelly and hoarse, "stop trying so hard. Don't patronize me. There's no point."
The Eva glowed with energy. The force of it pushed back against me with a wave of nausea. My skin felt soft and gooey.
"No, Nozomi!" I scrambled to my feet and pulled on its armor. "Nozomi!"
"Nozomi Horaki!" The stranger in the white hood called to the Evangelion. The image of her hovered above the blue grass of the Geofront. Her voice echoed off the walls for all to hear.
But she was no woman—no stranger to me anymore, nor to Ayanami or mankind. In the form of a woman with a satin hood covering her eyes, Eisheth called to Nozomi and challenged her on what was to come.
"Nozomi Horaki," Eisheth said again, commanding the Eva's attention, "you have an opportunity here. You have sisters and friends who love you. They would willingly suffer to see you be happy, for that would make them happy, too."
My radio crackled. "You're not…doing a good job of convincing me here," said Nozomi, her voice gravely and weak.
Eisheth smiled knowingly. "Life is unfair that way, sometimes, but I think you can make them happier than it would hurt them to try. I think you can change." Eisheth turned her head toward me. "That is, if you dare to hope for it." She faced the Eva again. "I ask you not to be so stubborn that you don't even try."
"Who are you to tell me what to do?" Nozomi snapped.
The figure in the satin hood bowed her head. "I'm no one," she said at last. "I'm not the person I used to be." Her head rose, meeting the tired gaze of the Eva. "But I know what it means to doubt, to feel that nothing you do will matter, that nothing you change will stick. Maybe it won't, but perhaps it's time to let fate decide that instead of taking it into our own hands. You know, there's at least one person who wants you to keep trying." The stranger nodded at me. "Isn't she listening?"
"Asuka," I said over the radio, "is Horaki there?"
"I'm here, Ikari." Horaki's voice was halting but firm in volume and tone. "I've been listening. I don't know who that person is that was talking, but she's right. Nozomi, Sister and I are still here. We're still hoping you'll find your way home. We want to see you safe, and—" Her voice wavered. "No, I want to see you safe. We are not done talking. We only just started, I think. We have a lot to talk about—game sprites and landscapes and all that. And how we've hurt each other. I think we should talk about that, too. I'm counting on you to come back, so we can talk about that, Nozomi." Horaki's voice grew bolder. "Promise me that, all right? Nozomi?"
"Don't be an idiot, Hikari," said Nozomi, her voice fading. "I can't promise you anything."
"Yes you can," said Horaki. "You absolutely can. Maybe you won't be able to keep it, but I won't blame you for that. I know you're stubborn, Nozomi. You're so stubborn sometimes you won't even listen to me, but you don't listen to people who tell you to quit. You're ingenious with your artwork, so much so that I don't even really understand it. You treat people so rudely sometimes, but I know you try so hard not to hurt people. I don't know how all of that coexists in the same person. It's puzzling to me, and that used to bother me a lot, but it doesn't bother me as much anymore. Do you know why, Nozomi?"
Silence. The stranger and I looked at one another. She held up a hand, and I took my finger off the transmit switch on my radio.
"It doesn't bother me as much because I realized it puzzles you, too," Horaki said at last. "I remember what you told me that day—when you said you wanted to pilot the Eva again, in spite of everything. You needed a new reason because the old one wasn't good enough. Maybe it wasn't, but you were, Nozomi. You were good enough. You don't need to prove to me you can change. You don't need to prove to me you can feel. I've seen it in how you look. I've felt it from the wall you used to put between us. I've imagined it from the sketches you spend so much time on. There's nothing wrong with your heart, Nozomi. It might be imperfect, but we all are."
What I would've given to have been there—to have stood beside Horaki as she poured her soul into the microphone. I could only hope Asuka was there beside her, offering a shoulder to lean on.
"So forget all of that," Horaki concluded. "Forget all of that and stop worrying. Forget it and come home to us. Nozomi, I—I want to see you again."
The Geofront sat unnaturally still for a moment. SDF personnel kept Keel Lorenz under watch, with his hands and ankles bound by plastic ties. The ocean waves chopped outside under a moderate wind. The Disc Angel circled the Black Moon, zipping by the breach every-so-often; its light cast long shadows on the interior.
And the Crown of Thorns withered. The vines and tendrils dried up and dessicated. The Eva snapped those vines in two, climbed to its feet, and roared!
The sound pushed me back, but when it was over, I felt comfortable and still. The pressure of the anti-AT field diminished. I poked at my arm; my skin felt firm again.
"Ikari, Soryu," said Nozomi on the radio, "I'm over this. Can we get outta here? I'd like to see my sisters, and we've got some catching up to do."
I glanced back at Eisheth, who shot me the proud smile of a mother.
And behind her, Ayanami smiled, too.
"Shinji," said Asuka over the radio, "you want to give the order?"
"Thanks," I said, weeping, and I faced the breach in the Geofront. The sun had risen, and the gap opened up to clear blue sky. "Nozomi," I said, "let's go home."
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- Location
- National Capital Region, USA
Of course that JMSDF ship would be around.
Rather surprising that Eisheth of all people would speak up to help sway Nozomi away from despair. Almost as surprising that it worked!
I imagine Shinji's going to have some interesting conversations when the noise dies down. He and Misato have things to say to each other, he and Nozomi, and very much with Asuka. Asuka could hear a lot of things he didn't put into words in that short conversation they had, especially in that short 'I love you'.
Ranma-sensei
Sorcerer
- Location
- Citrix Receiver
- Pronouns
- Weatherdependent
This conclusion shows how much Shinji has changed over the course of the story. No longer the passive-aggressive youth that goes to sulk when things turn pear-shaped, I think this Second Angel War has helped him develop a better outlook on life.
The Angel's lazy banking around the Geofront seems to corroborate that theory.
Missing an article.
I feel like there's an 'I' missing; or does the sentence refer to Nozomi's quest for understanding?
I'm unfamiliar with this phrase in that context, so I decided to just flag it.
Frankly, I interpreted it as Eisheth having seen enough to be swayed and helping to stop the breaking apart of the one person vitory really depends on.
The Angel's lazy banking around the Geofront seems to corroborate that theory.
Muphrid
Star of the Lancer
Indeed, as much as Eisheth has been the antagonist of the story, I have always seen her as one of the good guys. The first big hint of that, aside from the sympathetic looks at her in the "Progenitors" flashbacks, is when her children intervene to keep the Japanese and Chinese from starting a naval war at the end of Misato's arc. She, like Misato, Asuka, and Nozomi in this chapter, just needed a little push to get her head right again.
Yeah, I feel like Shinji tended to act the way he did in part because he always felt the world was so much bigger than him, that he would get buffeted about by forces so grand and powerful that he had no real ability to make a difference. Sulking was something he could do that the universe couldn't take away from him.
Now, I think he's come to terms with the scope and limits of what he can change. He's more at peace with the idea of changing things a bit at a time, with holding firm against the push and pull of life. I tried to avoid having Shinji espouse some grand philosophy of things. He knows he's not that much of a visionary. But there's something he's trying to fight for here, and he's not going to let small setbacks turn into long periods of frustration and angst anymore.
Then again, maybe having one billion years to ponder things gave him more than enough time to learn how to change.
Ranma-sensei
Sorcerer
- Location
- Citrix Receiver
- Pronouns
- Weatherdependent
"One billion years oughta be enough for everyone."
Seriously though, when all you can do is watch things happening and talk to some people, OBY seems too long for me to want to experience.
Muphrid
Star of the Lancer
Yeah, you'd imagine that that would be far beyond the timescale the mind could stay stable (even the solar system might not stay stable that long). But, for what it's worth, I see the "one billion years" thing as more of a colorful turn of phrase than a literal experience. Rei is "everywhere and nowhere" and "[the] past and future are the same to [her]". Even in that chapter, Shinji looks in on Earth one billion years after the battle, looks to the far future as the universe goes toward full entropic decay, and looks to the past to see Eisheth's beginnings.
So, in my mind, there is no telling how much time Shinji actually spent there--or if it could even be considered "time" at all.
- Location
- National Capital Region, USA
Indeed, it's not something he can really articulate, I think, but he's more aware of and accepting of his position as not just some ordinary guy, but a fulcrum that godlike beings and people with the power to shape the world trust and listen to. He knows he has to do things that scare him and that he'd otherwise dodge, because everyone he cares about will be irreparably hurt if he does not. And a constant core element of Shinji is that he will always take pains on himself, even ones he fears deeply, rather than see others take that pain.
- Location
- Surrey
Asuka: So what exactly did you do in there? I mean you said you didn't really watch any of the "movies", soooo?
Shinji: Kaworu had a lot of educational filmstrips.
Author's Notes: Character Focus - Eisheth
Muphrid
Star of the Lancer
Author's Notes: Character Focus - Eisheth
There is no greater evidence of how Rei-centric the underlying ideas of the piece are than how the main villain is Rei's foil and counterpart. That is true in First Ones, but in this piece, I strengthened this connection considerably. Now, Rei and Eisheth are not only "sisters" in some sense, but they were once close friends (a relationship dimension that I love, by the way—our closest friends are the most painful to face as adversaries), and you can see how their differing ideals, philosophies, and experiences lead to this conflict.
The duality between Rei and Eisheth is one of the primary impressions I wanted to get across. Early on, Rei and Eisheth often appear in pairs—when one reaches out to Shinji, the other is soon to follow, if not immediately after. That follows not just the impression I wanted to impart but the abstract "rules of the game" between them, which include a basic equality of actions allowed. Eisheth and Rei are in conflict, and they both have near-omnipotent power as a function of their status outside of time. The only way their conflict can be resolved is through mutual agreement, even if it is the agreement to disagree and to use their powers in a limited, sparing, and equal fashion throughout.
I went to great lengths to try to tighten up Eisheth's impression and image in this story. In First Ones, she came off too much of a cartoonish villain: she would go on rants and speeches about the futility of mankind without the fangs to back it up in real time. I tried to cut down on that significantly: she speaks only when she must, and her motivations are much less clear until the latter third of the story. That adds to an air of uncertainty and mystique about her, even once it's clear that the enemy is Eisheth. Part of that mystique includes her appearance: the "hooded stranger," as she is often referred by, is deliberately a bit inhuman. The hood obscures her eyes, and you might notice that her hands are never seen, either. The only bit of skin she shows is that around her mouth. That takes place of the ongoing motif I used in First Ones, where Eisheth would constantly appear with the number 5 involved: 5 buttons on a shirt to evoke 5 eyes, and so on. And unlike First Ones, the idea of the "Cult of Eisheth" is dropped. Lorenz is clearly aware of her (referring to "her" and the Zenunim multiple times), but the religious overtones of her arrival are removed. Eisheth cares not for being worshipped as a god (just as Rei doesn't care for it). Her goals are straightforward.
What we do get an impression of, outside of her usual appearances, is Eisheth's humanity. Her appearances in the guise of Hikari—part of Rei's visions of the past—help paint a picture of a sympathetic figure, someone who we should be on the same side with. Her reasons for undertaking this crusade should be understandable, and they should resonate with people who have felt despair and hopelessness. Eisheth is not a weak figure for that, and if anything, Shinji understands her very well by the end of the story.
Eisheth, like Rei, inhabits the Theater of Eternity like a prison. Condemned to immortality even in death, she looks on, ever watchful. It isn't until Shinji's plea for a reprieve that Eisheth dares to hope again—dares to make the Theater into a watchful, unyielding eye that looks upon the children of the FAR with love and hope. And so may it be, forever and ever on.
I chose the name Eisheth after one of four demons that are mentioned in Kabbalistic method: the others include Lilith, Agrat bat Mahlat, and Naamah, and these are the names that I used for the four Seeds of Life imbued with the Fruit of Knowledge. Adam and Samael are two of those with the Fruit of Life, but I don't recall the name I chose for the third of them (the one who appears in the guise of Toji).
Though I was heavily inspired by the mythology of the FAR, I created a lot of what goes on in this story to suit my own ends. It's known that the FAR succumbed to some cataclysm and had to shed their physical forms, but the reason why is not explained in background material. I imagined a gamma-ray burst, which would wreck their ecosystem and damage even the hardiest of creatures (which they must've been, to have both fruits as part of their biology).
At times, I played with different ideas for the roles Eisheth, Lilith, Adam, and the rest of the seven would play. In one draft, the seven are explicitly asked by their government to pursue the solution. In another storyboard, they go rogue when they believe that their people must be saved at all costs. Here, it's more of a mix, inspired by some of my background in academia. I felt that their government would've tasked them to find a solution, even if it weren't one they expected.
The role Eisheth plays in that group is that of a superior or mentor to Lilith, yet also a close friend. That dynamic was more subdued in earlier drafts, but here, it plays a major role. In the first draft, Eisheth didn't go with Shinji to follow Lilith from Terminal Dogma. That moment was Shinji's time to appreciate what Rei had gone through, but I realized that it could be used to make Rei and Eisheth's relationship more tragic.
While Eisheth's relationship with Rei is a major dynamical force in the story, it's only appropriate that Eisheth act as a foil not just to Rei but to Shinji. In many ways, Eisheth reflect what Shinji could've turned out like. Eisheth was never "loud" about her idealism, but it did drive her. Shinji start the story working quietly because of some perceived burden of responsibility for his actions. They both, at different times, feel that more overt idealism would be unproductive or damaging. They both have bouts of cynicism (though for Shinji that's more intermittent, for Eisheth, it's her default mode in the story). Of course, Shinji sees a little bit of himself in everyone: Misato's determination intoxicates him, Asuka's drive for greatness inspires him (and also makes him feel insecure), Nozomi's experiences piloting remind him of himself (even when they shouldn't), and Rei's willingness to put her own desires aside for the greater good tempts him until he sees that it's destructive. Eisheth, too, appeals to him in some way. That's why I found the passage during Second Instrumentality, where Shinji finds Rei frustrating and feels some pull toward Eisheth, despite the heinousness of what she'd done, really important to write.
In the end, we all share some of these doubts and worries. Eisheth is merely the embodiment of those doubts taken to their logical ends.
And yet, Eisheth too came to believe, in the end, that she should set them aside. So may we all.
There is no greater evidence of how Rei-centric the underlying ideas of the piece are than how the main villain is Rei's foil and counterpart. That is true in First Ones, but in this piece, I strengthened this connection considerably. Now, Rei and Eisheth are not only "sisters" in some sense, but they were once close friends (a relationship dimension that I love, by the way—our closest friends are the most painful to face as adversaries), and you can see how their differing ideals, philosophies, and experiences lead to this conflict.
The duality between Rei and Eisheth is one of the primary impressions I wanted to get across. Early on, Rei and Eisheth often appear in pairs—when one reaches out to Shinji, the other is soon to follow, if not immediately after. That follows not just the impression I wanted to impart but the abstract "rules of the game" between them, which include a basic equality of actions allowed. Eisheth and Rei are in conflict, and they both have near-omnipotent power as a function of their status outside of time. The only way their conflict can be resolved is through mutual agreement, even if it is the agreement to disagree and to use their powers in a limited, sparing, and equal fashion throughout.
I went to great lengths to try to tighten up Eisheth's impression and image in this story. In First Ones, she came off too much of a cartoonish villain: she would go on rants and speeches about the futility of mankind without the fangs to back it up in real time. I tried to cut down on that significantly: she speaks only when she must, and her motivations are much less clear until the latter third of the story. That adds to an air of uncertainty and mystique about her, even once it's clear that the enemy is Eisheth. Part of that mystique includes her appearance: the "hooded stranger," as she is often referred by, is deliberately a bit inhuman. The hood obscures her eyes, and you might notice that her hands are never seen, either. The only bit of skin she shows is that around her mouth. That takes place of the ongoing motif I used in First Ones, where Eisheth would constantly appear with the number 5 involved: 5 buttons on a shirt to evoke 5 eyes, and so on. And unlike First Ones, the idea of the "Cult of Eisheth" is dropped. Lorenz is clearly aware of her (referring to "her" and the Zenunim multiple times), but the religious overtones of her arrival are removed. Eisheth cares not for being worshipped as a god (just as Rei doesn't care for it). Her goals are straightforward.
What we do get an impression of, outside of her usual appearances, is Eisheth's humanity. Her appearances in the guise of Hikari—part of Rei's visions of the past—help paint a picture of a sympathetic figure, someone who we should be on the same side with. Her reasons for undertaking this crusade should be understandable, and they should resonate with people who have felt despair and hopelessness. Eisheth is not a weak figure for that, and if anything, Shinji understands her very well by the end of the story.
Eisheth, like Rei, inhabits the Theater of Eternity like a prison. Condemned to immortality even in death, she looks on, ever watchful. It isn't until Shinji's plea for a reprieve that Eisheth dares to hope again—dares to make the Theater into a watchful, unyielding eye that looks upon the children of the FAR with love and hope. And so may it be, forever and ever on.
I chose the name Eisheth after one of four demons that are mentioned in Kabbalistic method: the others include Lilith, Agrat bat Mahlat, and Naamah, and these are the names that I used for the four Seeds of Life imbued with the Fruit of Knowledge. Adam and Samael are two of those with the Fruit of Life, but I don't recall the name I chose for the third of them (the one who appears in the guise of Toji).
Though I was heavily inspired by the mythology of the FAR, I created a lot of what goes on in this story to suit my own ends. It's known that the FAR succumbed to some cataclysm and had to shed their physical forms, but the reason why is not explained in background material. I imagined a gamma-ray burst, which would wreck their ecosystem and damage even the hardiest of creatures (which they must've been, to have both fruits as part of their biology).
At times, I played with different ideas for the roles Eisheth, Lilith, Adam, and the rest of the seven would play. In one draft, the seven are explicitly asked by their government to pursue the solution. In another storyboard, they go rogue when they believe that their people must be saved at all costs. Here, it's more of a mix, inspired by some of my background in academia. I felt that their government would've tasked them to find a solution, even if it weren't one they expected.
The role Eisheth plays in that group is that of a superior or mentor to Lilith, yet also a close friend. That dynamic was more subdued in earlier drafts, but here, it plays a major role. In the first draft, Eisheth didn't go with Shinji to follow Lilith from Terminal Dogma. That moment was Shinji's time to appreciate what Rei had gone through, but I realized that it could be used to make Rei and Eisheth's relationship more tragic.
While Eisheth's relationship with Rei is a major dynamical force in the story, it's only appropriate that Eisheth act as a foil not just to Rei but to Shinji. In many ways, Eisheth reflect what Shinji could've turned out like. Eisheth was never "loud" about her idealism, but it did drive her. Shinji start the story working quietly because of some perceived burden of responsibility for his actions. They both, at different times, feel that more overt idealism would be unproductive or damaging. They both have bouts of cynicism (though for Shinji that's more intermittent, for Eisheth, it's her default mode in the story). Of course, Shinji sees a little bit of himself in everyone: Misato's determination intoxicates him, Asuka's drive for greatness inspires him (and also makes him feel insecure), Nozomi's experiences piloting remind him of himself (even when they shouldn't), and Rei's willingness to put her own desires aside for the greater good tempts him until he sees that it's destructive. Eisheth, too, appeals to him in some way. That's why I found the passage during Second Instrumentality, where Shinji finds Rei frustrating and feels some pull toward Eisheth, despite the heinousness of what she'd done, really important to write.
In the end, we all share some of these doubts and worries. Eisheth is merely the embodiment of those doubts taken to their logical ends.
And yet, Eisheth too came to believe, in the end, that she should set them aside. So may we all.