WHK?, chapter 3. – "I want to talk."
A few hours later
Asuka tried to take a deep breath, but the LCL was proving too resistant for that. "Damn it. It's getting murky… oh, fuck that. I'm not dying alone."
She poked the communication system. "Hey, idiot, are you there? I want to talk."
"Asuka?" came a hazy reply. "Is that you?"
"No, idiot, it's just you hallucinating", she rolled her eyes. "Were you asleep?"
"I… guess so", he admitted. "I'm so–"
"Let's make a deal", she interrupted him with almost a hiss. "You won't apologise, at least for the next few hours, and I won't punch your face in if we get out of here. Okay?"
"I… guess?" he reluctantly agreed.
"Good. Now, to the more important things…" she paused. "I've been thinking."
"About?" he asked, his voice cautious.
"Things. Life", she tried offhandedly before pausing and changing her tone to a more serious one. "Okay, us. I want to talk about
us. And before you start to panic and try to run, it's not going to be one of the 'we need to talk' moments."
"Well, when better than now? Not that I can… I don't know, run anywhere?" he quipped, a little more flippantly that she would have expected of him.
Asuka chuckled. "Well, you do have a point, except I don't get to see your face and I don't get to hit you", she replied, somewhat amused. "But, first and foremost", her voice turned serious, "I am still kind of pissed with you… but I just promised not to punch you if you stop apologising so much. And I'd rather not end up in a screaming match with you… or worse, me yelling at you. So–"
"Asuka…" he interrupted as she paused for half a second to draw breath. "Explain the priorities?"
"What priorities?" she asked, confused.
"Why 'screaming match' is better than 'one-sided yelling'?" he asked with a sincere question in his voice.
"What are you, stupid?" she shook her head, her voice disbelieving.
"Well… maybe?" he admitted, uncertain. "But that's no answer, is it?" he added; she could swear he was smiling as he said that. She shook her head again.
"Okay, listen carefully because I'll say it only once: react. Always. There's
nothing worse than apathy", she explained. "I
mean it", her voice turned insistent. "If you
ever have to decide between slapping me and running away, slap me. There will be hell to pay, sure, and we will come to blows, most likely, but we'll clear that out sooner or later, most likely as soon as the anger passes I no longer want to kill you. If you run… well, it would be easy to just
let you run, right? And never resolve it properly, just let it fester, until we both drown in regrets", she finished, momentarily pondering whether she was not being overly dramatic.
There was a long moment of silence from the other side. "I… I will try", he finally replied, his voice uncertain.
"Do or do not, Third", she smirked, proud of herself for successfully weaving in a classic reference. "There is no try."
"I… guess?" he replied. Asuka felt an urgent need to strangle him for not getting her great and classy joke. "Asuka…" he continued, unaware of the danger that was hanging over his head. "Can you promise me something? Like, in return if I promise you not to run away?"
She shook her head once more, trying to clear her mind. It did little; the environment was resisting, both in its physical density and mental oppressiveness. "I'm listening?" she managed despite that, her voice curious.
"Can you be… more direct? No, sorry", he backtracked. "Not direct… I… I'm not good at guessing. You're… different. I like… many things about you… but sometimes I feel lost. Can you… talk to me? Tell me what you need? What you want?"
Asuka frowned. "What do you mean, 'different'?"
"You're… I can see what Misato means and wants, often, I can read my other classmates just as well. But you…" he trailed off.
"I'm a barbarian foreigner that is a mystery to you", she chuckled. "Is that it?"
"I didn't want to say it like this", he replied, his voice sheepish. "But…"
"But this is what you mean by 'different', isn't it? Gott, and
you want
me to be more direct, with you beating around the bush like that?" she let out a sigh, feeling annoyed at how much the LCL dampened the dramatic effect she was counting on. "Listen, Third. I can't
promise it will work, it's unbecoming of a girl to be too direct, right?" she shook her head. "But I will
try. Is this enough for you?"
The perfect silence was the only reply from the other side. Asuka checked the comms in panic – but they were working.
"Third?"
"So–" he cut himself off. "I'm still here. Just… thinking. Those comms usually carry more noise, just like phones, you know?" he noticed. "I don't know why they're so silent now."
Asuka smirked. "You didn't pay attention in Physics class, did you?" she asked, her voice smug. "The noise you usually hear on the phone are disturbances of various kinds: interference from other channels or lines, cosmic radiation, and so on. Here… we're isolated. There are no energy sources but us. Be glad you don't flail your Eva around, or you'd get hot pretty quickly. No way to get rid of heat except radiation, and that's very inefficient. The only disruption can come from inside, and Evas are quite well insulated with all this armour."
"Oh. I see", he replied, a bit overwhelmed by the sudden information dump. He had to admit, though, that in a real-life context and explained in Asuka's voice, it sounded quite interesting – contrary to the explanation of their Physics teacher who had a tendency to put even him, a relatively attentive student, to sleep.
"That's all you got to say?" Asuka grumbled, disappointed.
"Sorry!" he finally failed to contain himself. Asuka made a mental note to consider punching him – unless this was going to be a singular slip. "I… I'm not good with science. I mean, I get it… but why do you think we would overheat?"
Asuka sighed, painfully reminded she was not dealing with a mind as brilliant as her own. "Okay. Let's start with basic Thermodynamics. What are the three ways the heat transfers?"
"Hm… Radiation, convection…" he started and trailed off, unsure of the answer.
"And conduction. My favourite, especially when you're the warmer one and it's cold outside", she chuckled. "Now, tell me: why will convection not work here?"
"Because it only works in air or water?" he tried.
"
Almost correct", she smiled. "It works in any fluid, in anything that has moving molecules, currents, and such. Lava also has convection. Usually in the other direction, though", she shivered as a certain memory flashed in her mind. "And conduction?"
"There's nothing here except us?" he tried, sounding quite certain about his answer.
"Correct", she smiled again, wider this time. "So, all that is left is radiating it into the void. And while Evas treat
some laws of physics as polite suggestions at best, most of those laws are treated like Japanese people treat their customs – and thermodynamics seems to be one of those. Are you following me?"
"I suppose?" Shinji replied cautiously. "They can be broken if your life depends on it, but under normal circumstances, it's almost unthinkable?"
"Kind of. Even if I'm sometimes under the impression that you could not be rude even if your life depended on it", Asuka grumbled. "But – you're not eluding the subject at hand by making me explain physics to you!"
"Asuka…" his voice was at least annoyed, if not irritated. "
You started this lecture. An interesting one, but–"
"Are you accusing me of changing the subject?" she hissed, her eyes narrow.
"Yes", he bluntly agreed. "I think it was an accident, though."
She rolled her eyes. "You and your diplomacy. Okay. I told you what I think. Do what you want with it, okay?"
"I… I don't know if I could. You know. Slap you", he admitted.
Asuka let out a sigh. It still failed to have the desired dramatic effect; the liquid just carried the sounds too differently.
"That was an exaggeration. A distant possibility. You're smart, you'll figure it out, right?" she stated, her voice far softer than just a moment ago. "Just don't be so afraid all the time."
There was a long pause on the other side. "Thank you."
Asuka shook her head, surprised. "For what?"
"It's the first time you said I was smart."
'Fuck. Is it?' she bit her lip.
'Well, not that he gave me many reasons to call him that', her thoughts kept going.
'Except… he did. He's not stupid, he's just an idiot. People-wise, at least. Let me guess, I fucked something up here? Again?'
She considered her next words carefully. "Listen, Shinji. You… are. You are smart. Intelligent. Sure, your knowledge level is
nowhere near mine, but that doesn't mean you're not smart", she sighed again and silently cursed the idea, realising how much of the poorly recycled liquid she was pulling in; she forced that thought down to avoid gagging. "Listen, I'm not going to recite a panegyric to your brilliance, okay? But… yeah. You are."
"Thank you, Asuka", he replied, his smile audible in his voice.
"Urk. Please, Third. Don't", the disgust in her voice was audible as well. "I'm already gagging on that crap I have to breathe here, don't make me puke from too much sweetness. I just give credit where due, okay?" she added, curtly.
"All right", he agreed cautiously, his voice betraying he was not entirely sure what to think of Asuka's words. "Can I… can you do something for me, then?"
"Depends. My hands are kind of… tied here", she quipped.
"If I apologise less, would you… would you insult me less?" he managed.
She frowned. "I'd rather have you insult back", she said without much thought. "I mean, talk back. Fire back– argh", she threw her hands up as much as the resistance of the LCL allowed. "Be more… be less…", she cut off, uncertain how to continue.
"You want me to
insult you?" his voice was a mix between confusion and incredulity.
"Not
insult, exactly, idiot. Push back. Okay? I… I can't give you an example now, but it's easy to learn. Just try, I won't kill you", she paused. "One exception: you spring a 'yo mama' joke, and you're dead. I mean it, no second chances."
"I would never", came a reply in a surprisingly serious, almost grave voice.
'Ouch. I… suppose I touched a nerve. Fuck, I should've realised, his mom is dead too, of course. Another thing we have in common. Oh well, to talk about that, I'd rather see his face. Too much can be lost over the radio', she noted. "Good. Listen, Third…" she wavered just for a second. "If we ever get out of here, let's take some time and talk. Okay?"
"Yes", he agreed after a moment of hesitation. "I… I would really like to. I mean, if you want to talk. I mean, talk seriously."
"Is this your 'we need to talk'?" her voice gained a tinge of amusement. "Didn't I spare you from that fate?"
"Yes? I mean, no, we don't
need to…" he started to back off; fortunately, he did not see Asuka's eye-roll; otherwise, he would have cut himself off far sooner. "I want to talk to you. I already know some things about you… but I really want to know you better", he finally managed. "If you want to share, of course."
Asuka felt the familiar sensation of butterflies in her stomach. "We'll talk, Third. Just hang in there and don't die, okay?"
"I… I will try", a sad smile was audible in those words.
Silence descended between them. To her surprise and for the first time in a while, Asuka did not perceive it as awkward.
***
In that silence, Shinji was left to his thoughts. Contrary to Asuka, he was convinced he should say something; regrettably, he could find no proper words. He let out a resigned sigh and sunk into his thoughts.
'Smart? Me?'
A thought appeared from nowhere:
'Maybe I am. And maybe this is something she appreciates… I can't be as brash as she is, I can only try not to be timid. But intelligence… and knowledge? Why not?'
He smiled to himself. Asuka was talking to him again, no, she was doing more than that: she was giving him suggestions on how to act towards her. '
Perhaps not all is lost?' he thought, suddenly full of hope.
Of course, there was still the issue of figuring out what went wrong the last time.
'Or maybe I should avoid that situation altogether?'
He suddenly felt very stupid.
'No. She said that outright. If in doubt…'
A sudden realisation struck him; an obvious, if likely an extremely dangerous thought:
'When in doubt about her, act as she would.'
For some reason, this conclusion felt right to him, even if it sounded like a ticket straight to the trauma ward. On the other hand, he was almost a regular there already, to the point that he knew the ceiling of the NERV-dedicated room down to every discolouration and each crack.
'She can't be worse than an Angel. At least, she seems to care about me, in her own, odd way. Even if this is likely for her own benefit… I can live with that.'
With that thought, he smiled and closed his eyes. There was not much else to do.
He was blissfully unaware that the satisfaction he felt was not entirely his own.
***
Sudden sound on the channel woke Shinji up.
"Third, give me a hand here", Asuka's excited voice requested.
"What? What with?" he managed to ask through the haze of sleep.
"Wake up and give me your sensor feed. I have a theory", she commanded. "And I need you to help me verify it. Those sensor sweeps gave me an idea, but I could use a second source of data. Are you up to it?" she sounded impatient.
"What do you want me to check? Or do you need all of it?" his voice was becoming less hazy with every word.
"Don't flood me, no. Use those coordinates", numbers came in on the auxiliary comm display. "And fire a radar beam in the S-range. And have a radar detection active. I need data from both, as well-timed as possible. Give me the L-range feed just in case if this will not be enough."
A few carefully entered commands directed Unit-01 radar feed to the comms. "Ready", he reported. "Why do we have such array of sensors on a combat unit, actually?" he wondered briefly.
"Most likely to collect first-hand data as we carve up the Angels", Asuka hypothesised, her voice somewhat absent. "Our Science Department loves detailed data on our enemy, reasonably so, and if a fight is away from a monitoring station, tough luck, right? So why not have a monitoring station in the middle of the battle?"
"But isn't this sensitive equipment? We're getting beaten raw almost every time we get out."
Asuka shrugged. "What gives, they just replace it, I guess. NERV is a damn money sink anyway. This is why we get those neat stipends, right? The whole amount is just a rounding error for them."
"What stipends?" Shinji asked in a bewildered voice.
"The ones you receive monthly as 'consulting assistant for NERV'?" she replied, a hint of confusion in her voice.
"We're getting paid?" Shinji's voice was even more confused.
Asuka was speechless for a moment. "Let me guess. Your wonderful father forgot to tell you, and Misato didn't care?"
"Well, I have my allowance–"
"For fuck's sake, Third", the redhead interrupted, her voice increasingly livid. "You've got a job of a fucking frontline shock trooper, just with more armour, you risk your life every time you deploy, you end up in hospital every other fight,
and you are content with allowance?!".
"I… yes?" he replied as if this was the most obvious thing in the world.
Asuka's facepalm was audible despite the dampening properties of LCL.
"This is something we'll need to
seriously talk about", Asuka growled. "Not with you, with Misato. Really! And I thought you were just stingy and lacked taste when it came to clothes. Well, that's another pebble in the heap of knowledge. Now, where were we…" she took a look at the incoming feeds. "Fire the radar beam. S-range, somewhere in the middle, please."
Shinji, confused by the previous exchange, welcomed the simple order and aimed the radar at the coordinates she gave him. Almost as soon as he gave the command, he got a radar alert. "Asuka, I–"
An enthusiastic "Yes!" interrupted him.
"Asuka?" he probed.
"Again! Twice, a few seconds apart!" was the only reply.
He complied; following her commands was far simpler than answering her questions.
"Just as I thought! Thank you, this will do. Two microseconds. Pity those logs are not more precise", Asuka growled. "Okay, ready to have your brain rearranged and your sanity broken?" she asked with surprising enthusiasm in her voice.
"No?" he replied as most people of sound mind would.
Asuka giggled. "Metaphorically. Don't worry, I'll be gentle", she promised, her voice giddy.
"Okay?" he agreed reluctantly, not sure he could trust her reassurance.
"Great. Listen: there is… something, about six hundred metres from us. Well, somewhere between four hundred fifty and seven hundred fifty, considering how imprecise those logs are. So, let's average at six", she started her explanation.
"Inside the Angel? Someone else?" Shinji seemed confused. "Can we contact them?"
"Well… technically, yes", she chuckled. "If you want your mind to suffer more, you can try to send a signal. But that would give us nothing", she paused before dropping the bomb. "They're us."
"What", was the only thing Shinji managed.
"Yeah, I was not
entirely joking about this broken sanity", she chuckled again. "You get radar alert as you fire up the scan, right? It's because you fire it
at yourself", she explained.
"How?" he asked, his voice bewildered once more.
"This whole thing… it's a bubble of reality, about six hundred metres wide, plus-minus hundred-fifty. A pocket universe, if you will", she explained.
"So… the radar beam reflects from the… wall of this… pocket and comes back?" Shinji tried to take the information in.
"Not… exactly, I believe", Asuka replied. "It actually crosses the entirety of the universe we're in and gets back to us from, well, the other side."
"Okay…" he feigned understanding.
"Not 'okay'", she grinned. "This actually confirms some interesting theories I read about. I guess I could even write a paper about it if we ever get out and NERV doesn't censor it", she continued. "Let me start from the beginning, and you try to keep up", she took a careful breath. "Let's take an eleven-dimensional space, but for simplicity, consider only four dimensions, forming the space-time continuum, in other words, let's take the Minkowski space model…"
***
About twenty minutes later
"Any questions to my enlightened conclusions?" Asuka asked, her voice tired but clearly satisfied.
Shinji was silent for a while; he would not admit it, but his head was spinning from the complexity of what Asuka just explained in – as she insisted – 'layman's terms', only occasionally stumbling on a missing term and replacing it with a German one before explaining the concept in Japanese. "I… don't know where to start. You'll have to explain it properly, with paper and notes, and drawings–"
"Yeah… fat chance, about that, Third", Asuka noted grimly, her mood suddenly soured. "Unless they manage to pull us out in the next hour or so, the only way you get to admire my genius is here and now. And if they didn't manage to pull us by now, that means only desperate means are on the table and they wait for better ideas before they employ Plan Z."
"It can't be
that–" he tried.
"Oh, shut up", she growled. "You're the born pessimist, the one that is always resigned to his fate, and suddenly you're thinking we're going to live? Be realistic!"
"They didn't give up on us. I'm sure", he declared with unusual certainty. "And it's not that I'm always–"
"Stop it", Asuka barked. "Bonus points for not apologising, and
maybe you're right", her tone turned wistful. "But I think this is our grave. I hoped I would go in battle, not suffocating, but hey, at least I'm not alone, and you're useful for something", she grinned despite her eyes remaining glum. "I'm leaving the channel open for now – but if you try with the optimism again, I'm cutting it and we both are dying alone. It's for goodbyes and dramatic last words when the time comes, okay?"
"Okay", he agreed, clearly unconvinced.
***
Minutes passed. Asuka's mind was becoming increasingly clouded.
"Mama?" she tried; something whispered to her softly in response. She felt the warm embrace; she was aware she was speaking some words, but she could not really remember what.
Slipping into the mindless oblivion felt like the right choice.
***
She awoke to a sharp feeling of anger, anger that was definitely not her own.
'Gott, was ist–'
Her eyes scanned her Unit's readings. None of them made sense: the batteries were drained – but the Evangelion was clearly moving on its own, and it was doing so without her input. The anger, initially chaotically scratching at her mind, was becoming more directed with every second. Unit-02's hands started to claw at
something–
–and
something was starting to give in. In the corner of her eye, she noticed Unit-01 was behaving in the same way: clawing at the space, making tears appear from nowhere. Asuka shook the haze off and embraced the rage that was until now just passing by her. She took it as her own with ease. Feeling her hands curl into vicious claws, she struck.
The fabric of reality gave in. Suddenly elated, almost ecstatic, she tried again.
Scant few seconds later, she was lurching forward, swimming in the sea of blood-red ichor and pushing torn pieces of tissue aside. Soon, the sensation of weightlessness that accompanied her for the last few hours suddenly disappeared and she found herself falling; a ground under her feet brought some measure of reality to her exhausted mind.
She – no, Unit-02 – was standing amidst a field of rubble, in a sea of blood and torn tissue, with the partially ruined skyline of Tokyo-3 visible just a few hundred metres away. Unit-01 was standing mere metres from her, hunched, its mouth open and its fingers curled in claws; a momentary gaze into its eyes was all she needed.
In concert, they threw their heads back; a sudden duet of primal roars shook the city without warning. Her voice echoed in the murky LCL just as her Eva's roar reverberated across the city in chorus with the other Evangelion; a scream of a beast, suddenly released from its cage; a sound of victory.
'Death to Angels.
Death to those who oppose us. Death to all' was running through her mind. She wanted to fight. She wanted to tear things apart. She wanted to
kill.
Unit-02 kept roaring.
Finally, she felt a wave of exhaustion overtake her; Unit-02 dropped to its knees amongst the sea of ichor; Unit-01 followed soon after.
***
"Third, are you there?" she managed over the heavily crackly comms after. Her throat was sore; she was not entirely sure whether she had been screaming in concert with her Unit, or it was just a sympathetic reaction caused by synchronisation. She shook that thought off; it was completely irrelevant.
"Still alive, Asuka", Shinji's voice was tired and husky, but carried some of the same elation she felt. "I don't know what happened… but I think we got saved…"
"No", Asuka protested vehemently. "Oh, no. We… saved ourselves. I mean, our Evas saved us. Or… Aw, hell", she was slowly losing her coherence again. "We're saved", she concluded.
A "Thank you", came from him.
"For what?" she shook her increasingly clouded head.
"For being–"
Silence cut him off as the power went down.
***
"Asuka! Asuka, are you alive?" a distant voice of Major Katsuragi woke her up. Suddenly, she was shivering from the cold: the blanket of LCL was gone; she was able to breathe freely, but she was also far more exposed to the elements.
"I… I think I'm fine. Shinji?" she asked, despite the fact that speaking every word
hurt; her throat felt
raw.
"Alive and well. Don't worry; we're taking you somewhere safe", the Major replied calmly, her voice reassuring. "Stretchers!" the Major commanded.
Asuka took another deep breath and slid into welcoming oblivion.
'He's alive. I can kill him. Once we both get well' was her last thought before the darkness overtook her.
================================================================
The fight is done… but the story continues. My situation has clarified and stabilized, and while I'm currently in my country's worst affected region (some compare teh situation to Italian Lombardy, although this feels rather exaggerated, at least for now), I remain isolated, uninfected, and able to write.
Next part of
What happened, kids? is likely to come sometime in June, as for now I am re-focusing on my other (AO3-only, NSFSV project) in an attempt to finish it before I start posting yet another, SV-based story (of course, NGE-based as well).
