Six months after the last chapter was posted, I'm still struggling to get an opening for this
Work is utterly killing my ability to generate anything more creative than a TPS report that'll never be read.
Anyway. After months of bashing it with the wordhammer, I might have something. Unfortunately, I've never been killed, so I had to guess.
---------------------------------------------------------------
January 31st, 2013
Weather: Warm. Sunshine. Drizzle.
Mam is coming home. She called me today to tell me. Just one more test and then she come. Straight on the plane. I am looking forward to seeing her again. I think papa is too. She has been gone for years. Maybe it time I got back my family. While papa tries it is hard for him alone with work
Please Come home quick!
-Noriko
-------
February 18th, 2013
Weather: Rain.
Dear Diary.
Sorry for the delay. Things are difficult. Mam died on the way home. A car accident. They held her funeral today. It was awful. I could not stop crying. No matter what I did.
Some of her friends from work came, including the one my father blame. His daughter there too . She told me to stop crying and grow up but I cannot. She was supposed to come home. Supposed to be family again. But now she is dead.
It rained. It always does in this country. It hid my tears. I still cannot believe I will never see her again. It still feels so fake and unreal. I lived without her for years. I could always tell myself she was just a call away. I go home and it does not feel different. Same emptiness. But now, I will never see her again.
Papa stood in the rain. He never shed a tear.
-Noriko
--------
November 11th, 2013
Weather: Cold. Cloudy
I'm thirteen!
I'm sick of being teased because I'm flat chested. I'm sick of being called an uncute tomboy, or mangirl. Just because you grew your tits years ago you fat bitch does not make you more grown up than me. At least I'm not so fat people don't offer me seats on the bus because they think I'm pregnant, Amy.
-Noriko
-----
December 15th, 2013
Weather: Showers and Sunshine.
At last, revenge on Gary. We got his clothes while he was in P.E. Replaced his boxers with panties. His shirt with a blouse. His trousers with a skirt. I almost felt sorry. Oh well, cheaters never prosper! There’s not a chance of him ever having a girlfriend in this school again.
And that was before the itching powder, or his project files being deleted from the school’s computer.
The final act was a public humiliation… in between class, we clustered around him and I thumped him one in the face. This put him in the position of either punching me back… and hitting a girl which is an absolute no-no… or just taking it, which would be just as embarrassing.
He punched me back. I kicked him in the nuts. He thumped me in the nose. We beat the snot out of each other before the teachers finally pulled us apart.
I get one week’s detention. He gets suspended. Gary Stewart 0, Noriko 1. Being the school track-star has its advantages.
-Noriko”
-------------
February 7th, 2014
Weather: Hot Sunshine.
It is mam death anniversary today. I went to the grave with my father. It is hard not to cry, even though it has been a year I can still remember her last phonecall clearly. I still wear that silver bracelet on my arm.
It was a beautiful sunny day at the graveyard. I could hear the birds sounding so happy in the trees. He put flowers on her grave and bowed his head silently. Her grave marked by a simple black pole with a name on it. It is one among thousands the same.
My mother is still dead. All I have his him. I want to feel her hug me again. I want to see her smiling face. He just beckons me to come home with him.
How can he be so stoic and strong when it still hurts me?
Sometimes I wish I could be more like him.
-Noriko”
---------------
May 18th, 2014
Weather: Thunderstorms and sunshine.
"I qualified! I qualified I qualified I qualified. First place in the provincials! Results all year good enough for nationals. I'm running times a second or more faster than anyone in the country. I'm going to be national and then I'm going to go global.
I'm amazing. I'm the most amazing running coach says he's ever seen.
-Noriko
----------
July 4th, 2014
Weather: Cool. Rain.
Good news!
I think I'm finally starting to get my breasts. It's about time! Why do I have to be so late? The doctor thinks it's my own fault for being so fit and doing so much training. Maybe now I won't be called washboard…
Papa's finished with the plant. It's up and running. He's being transferred home to Japan. It's been years. I can barely remember it. Even if he insists I speak the language with him again.
This December, I go home. 2015 I'll be in Tokyo-3.
The modern future-city. It is going to be awesome.
-Noriko
-----------
"September 11th, 2014
Weather. Warm, Sunshine.
They had to reschedule the national finals. By the time they’re held I’ll be halfway around the world. My qualifying times were over a second better than anyone elses…a second at age 13.
I can beat these people. I won the county, and the provincials Nobody even came close to me. I was going to get that national trophy. I could touch it, and now it's taken from me by a double booking with some stupid concert.
If I'd won the nationals... go to Japan with a trophy in my cabinet and then I'm in line for the Olympics. I really could've made it but now these bureaucrats ruin it for me.
I guess I'll have to try in Japan. All over again. From the start.
-Noriko”
--------
"October 15, 2014
Weather: Hurricane Logan
Houses in this country are well built.
I am stuck inside. Watching Blu Aru.
The final movie. It's as dense as the neutron shard that hit Antarctica. And then Tsubasa no Kudasai kicks in you see the big jets just soar through the open sky above the world. We don't even get to see who shot who down in the end or how things were resolved…. they just fly.
It is beautiful.
Sometimes, I close my eyes and just imagine myself slipping out of this world into that cockpit and soaring through empty skies and I wonder how well I'd do in their place. What's it like to fly one of those machines? Even to be someone else.
But I am too short. And those shoulder straps look uncomfortable. Or they will be when I get older.
-Noriko
--------
"November 23, 2014
Weather. Grey. Muggy.
My last Eirtakon before I leave. I sold most of my stuff.
Very annoying to be watching subtitled anime, and knowing when the subtitles were wrong. Or completely misinterpreted the meaning, despite getting the words right. Still, it was a fun weekend.It was a mix of exotic attention ,ruined by a creeper on the morning train.
I have just enough breast for it to hurt when someone grabs one.
Spike was an interesting guest. He signed my Blu Aru tinbox. And then I get quizzed by 'real' fans desperate to prove that I'm just a poser.
You know… I'd like to get in touch with my home in some way. Just because I don't sit in front of a computer 14 hours a day doesn't mean I amn't a real fan. Arseholes! The minority, however. Most people were nice.
Anyway I cosplayed as Mikasa, from that Titan show Papa didn't want me to watch. Something about humanity fighting against extinction and winning I liked. I won the youth competition for it. Even if I had to add 'padding' to fill out the top of the costume.
In a month. I'll be going home.
-Noriko.
--------------
December 8th, 2014
Weather: Warm Sunshine.
It’s my last entry from this country. Next time, I’ll be in Japan, hopefully in about 4 days time. Packed and ready, the diary is the last thing to go. Most of my things were picked up by DHL earlier today, the last of the rest was sold off. The apartment is so empty now… Now that I’m faced with actually leaving, I’m really going to miss this place. I may be Japanese, but this place has become my home. At least I have all my friends on DSpora, and the pictures from the ‘wake’. It’s a local tradition to have a funeral wake when someone’s leaving for parts foreign…
The Flight leaves in about 6 hours… I’m scared. Fear of change, papa calls it. If I get on that plane, my life is never going to be the same again.
Farewell friends. Sorry to be leaving you. Next entry, Hello Japan and Tokyo-3
-Noriko
---------------
I woke to voices.
Japanese.
Cold, wet fingers crawled across my back, my clothes soaking through. I was aware of pressure on my chest, squeezing the breath out of me. My stomach burned, something gnawing at me to the core. My leg was numb and cold, my arm pinned awkwardly underneath me. I tried to move, being rewarded only by a shot of pain rising from my stomach.
Again the voices called out.
Above me, the aircraft window and fuselage, scarred and scorched and cracked. Beneath me, loamy forest earth. The stink of jet fuel burned inside my noise, mingling with acrid burned plastic and something that might've been roast ham. It took only moments for me to place myself, memories of the crash flaring bright. I tried to scream, but only a whimper escaped.
I struggled for another breath, feeling my heartbeat race in my ears. I could feel myself starting to shiver.
Heavy feet trudged all around, flickering torchlights passing over me. Rescue! I hoped for a moment that they'd find me. I swallowed another gasp of air and tried to call out.
"Help."
It was a wheeze, crushed out of my chest and smothered by the metal around me.
"Help" I gasped again.
The feet seemed to stop, waiting. He called out again, and I knew he'd heard me
"Help me," I whimpered.
The cold was spreading through me, it's fingers squeezing the life out of me. I was aware of what it was, but help was right there, right beside me. All I had to do was make myself heard, make myself known and I'd still get out of it. They'd find papa. They'd find everyone and I'd go home and everything would be okay if I could just get myself spotted.
"Help me,"
It was strangled in my throat. Whoever it was began to walk again, footfalls receding away.
No. That can't happen. I'm right here!
"Come back," I pleaded. "Come back. Come back." I hiccupped, gasping for breath. "Come back."
The shivering stopped, numbness crawling up through my legs.. I had to do something - anything. One last gasp. One last burst. One last try. I focused the last dregs of my strength into my good arm and punch. Knuckles cracked against the metal of the fuselage, broken rivets biting deep into my knuckles. I punched it again. And again.
I counted it out. One, two, three. Breath. One. Two. three. Breath. One. Two. Three.
The shock ran through my body, biting deep on my knuckles. I didn't care. I focused all my effort just into making as much noise as I could. I was answered by dozens of shouts. Footsteps scrambled towards me, thudding through the ground and up my spine. I knew I'd done it. Everything would be alright.
The pressure on my chest eased as the wreckage was lifted, allowing warm sunlight to blanket my body. A man stood over me, dressed in an orange jumpsuit with a heavy climbing harness hanging from his shoulders, with a medicial kit under his arms. I could count every steel buckle on his harness, every plastic snap on his jumpsuit.
My mouth opened to breath. Nothing. It just caught in the back of my throat like a hiccup. I gasped again, feeling my chest crush and contort, but gaining nothing from it.
I watched his mouth hang open, wondering why he was just standing there with that dear-in-headlights look on his face.
I tried again, surprised that nothing happened. I looked at him, wondering why I couldn't breath, or why he was just standing there watching. I could feel myself draining away. The last dregs of my strength had been spent beating my fist against the fuselage and now I was left with nothing.
I tried to reach up and my arm was held down like it was made of solid lead. He started to beckon others over, his voice tinny and distant to my ears. I was aware of my hair prickling against the back of my neck, mingling with the sudden sensation that I needed to sleep.
I tried to stay awake. I tried to fight back….
I felt myself just drift away, thoughts slurring drunkenly together. I was aware of more people around me. I was aware of a feeling like my chest was being squeezed over and over again. and something being pushed against my face.
and a after that….
Blackness.
Paralysis.
Nothing for a moment.
I woke with a start. I tried to jump upright. Nothing happened. Disembodied, I lay immobile in silent darkness, unable to move. Unable to breath. Unable to call out for help. I drifted in the dark, fighting for any sense of my self, for any spark of sensation beyond a strange, smothering warmth.
Was I dead?
Had the last few weeks been nothing more than a flash in the pan? A cruel teasing joke? The last spark of a dying mind struggling for life and now here I am, teetering on the abyss?
In nothing. The last gasp of eternity before oblivion. They say times slows down before death - that in a real way you never truly experience yourself dying, you just linger above the black hole of nothingness, wringing an eternity from a moment. That's what I heard. It was something quantum, to do with perception. Everyone else gets to see you die, but you get to live forever in the moment.
My mind was racing, my thoughts clear as a bell. Hell isn't fire and brimstone, it's nothing. It's nothing forever. The dead have nothing. How horrible was that to be true.
I hoped it wasn't true. I hoped I was somewhere else. I didn't want to die. I didn't deserve it. Not at my age. Not at any age. I didn't deserve to die. Not when I had such a future ahead of me. Not when I could save the world. Not when I'd met such interesting people…
Inside my mind, I screamed. I don't want to die.
Again. I don't want to die.
I found my voice and I screamed. "I don't want to die!"
An echo of my voice answered, ringing off the walls as I sprang upright. The full weight of the world and my own dual identity crashed down on top of my shivering body. I patted myself all over, confirming that I was really alive, that I was sitting in my own bedroom, that I was Noriko and that I was so relieved I was ready to burst into tears.
My eyes scanned around the room, confirming the truth. Moonlight streamed in through window, filling the room with a cool, blue glow. My copy of Gunsmith Cats was still lying face down beside my bed where it'd been left. The unfinished Evangelion Garage kits awaited a coat of primer and final assembly in their boxes. Cloths and underwear were dropped haphazardly across the floor like landmines. Asuka's poster of Lindeman glared down at me from the far wall.
Asuka herself was staring at me, wide awake.
Oops.
"A nightmare," I offered, sheepishly grasping the back of my head.
"I was already awake," she stated flatly, before rolling over onto her back to look up at the ceiling. "I wasn't going to back to sleep anyway."
I could hear the rustling of bedsheets through the thin wall beside me. Asuka wasn't the only one not going back to sleep, Shinji was awake too. A momentary wave of guilt washed over me when I glanced at the clock, before I feigned a yawn and flopped back down onto my pillow.
03:24 a.m.
Good luck getting back to sleep.
"Was that what I think it was?" she asked me after a few moments.
"Unh,"
I lay there, just trying to assimilate what was still playing in the back of my mind. I patted myself on the chest, before clawing at the coarse matting covering the concrete floor, praying to any god that would listen that it wouldn't suddenly turn into wet forest earth in my fingers.
Coarse fibers tugged at my fingernails instead.
It was all perfectly normal.
There I was in Tokyo-3, and wasn't I glad of it. The more I lay there, the more it was confirmed, my mind reaching out to my extremities and grasping hold of them. I could feel my heartbeat in my breasts, proving that I was still myself.
At least, I was the person I was becoming.
And I was home.
Asuka shifted in her bed, turning onto her back.
"You know we've been asleep for more than a day, Noriko?"
I glanced around the room.
Impossible. There'd be some obvious sign. My mind began to wake up, more recent memories returning at full force. Three sleepless days of orbital bombardment. Minamiizu and everyone who lived there annihilated in a mushroom cloud. Tokyo-3 ablaze and burning. Gotemba abandoned to the flames. Munitions rationing. System malfunctions. Eva Unit 04 rushed into service. No sleep. Kaworu violating my mind again.
All of it culminated in the largest single nuclear strike in fifteen years and Misato's iron glare.
In a room that - too my eyes - seemed to be just as it had been left that morning before school. My heart began to clench in my chest, an uneasy sick taste crawling up the back of my throat. In my mind, I could see the city burning. In my room, nothing had been touched.
I sat up again, looking at Asuka.
"Did that really happen?"
"I guess. We lost," she said, softly, not even looking at me.
My eyes turned towards my feet. I crunched my toes beneath the bedsheets, soaking in the feeling. All I could think was, if we lose, we die.
"We're still alive," I said, my voice barely above a whisper.
"We didn't win," Asuka corrected herself, before drawing in a deep breath.
Well, King Pyrrhus might call it a victory.
Too awake to go back to sleep, I tried to read using the emergency torch built into my service phone. The adventures of Rally Vincent and Minni-May Hopkins warred with a news widget on my phone's screen for my attention. Headlines from the NHK demanded I acknowledge the consequences of failure.
Stepping into Rally's shoes and going for a high-speed street-race was a lot more exciting.
I think my changed perspective made me feel a little more involved in the storyline. It definitely enhanced the experience. Slipping out of reality and into the driver's seat of a throbbing Shelby allowed me to blank my own troubles from my mind..
Asuka rolled over to face me, dragging my out of my private fantasy world.
"I don't know why you read that perverted trash. I'd expect it from the three stooges…"
Because it let me touch on a side of myself that I was still uncomfortable with. And secretly, I was a total pervert too.
"It's exciting," was the answer I gave her.
She gave one of her deliberately frustrated sighs. "Are you sure you're not Misato's daughter?"
"Noriko Katsuragi?" I tried it on for weight and feel, wear wearing a cat-like smirk but it just didn't have the same ring as the alliterative 'Nagato'.
Asuka answered me with another roll of her eyes, before turning her attention to her phone's screen. Both of us sat there reading, small pools of blue light from our phones being the only illumination in a dark room. The only sound beyond our breathing was from Asuka's fingers tapping on her phone-screen as she brushed through page after page of news.
It wasn't until I made it to final page of my manga that I realised how fast I'd been reading through it.
I'd been reading the Japanese. I'd been reading the Japanese without needing to translate it in my mind. Cold fingers crawled up my spine as I came to understand that I wasn't just reading Japanese, but thinking in it too.
I drew in a shivering breath.
"Getting turned on?" Asuka teased, interrupting my thoughts "Rotten girl."
I glanced at her, blinking in confusion before my mind caught up with what she'd said. I dismissed it with an unconcerned bat of my hand, earning a sour glower in return, Asuka not to pleased that her tease had just bounced off. I had more important things to worry about…
My phone's native language had been set to English. All I had to do was check the screen and see.
I read it like English had been my native language for twenty years. There was no obvious switch or jolt in my mind - no sudden change in comprehension or understanding. It was just an automatic mental gearshift, slick and smooth.
Continuing the experiment, I switched the phone's language back to the default Japanese. My mind's voice changed to match.
The first thought that entered my mind was that it might cause a problem with the Evangelion's language logic interface if I couldn't control it.
Otherwise, it was just a natural consequence of filling out Noriko's shoes. Something that drew an uneasy shudder, even as I accepted it as a part of my new self. Take a deep breath. Try to focus on the positives.
Asuka was still watching, curious.
"My mind is changing," I told her, in a soft voice. "My memory's starting to come back."
Neither of us noticed that the sneaking dawn until the alarm clock began to scream. My own heart jumped a few beats, while Asuka came close to hitting the roof.
With that, we were back to our normal programming. Two hours before school began we returned to being ordinary middle-school students. Familiar routine beckoned. A morning run, then breakfast, followed by an awkward moment with Motoko, then hours of droning lectures before afternoon training, homework, dinner and bed. Day in, day out.
Until Iruel.
I hauled myself to my feet, still feeling the warm pull of my bed even as I started to pull my nightshirt off. Cold air tingled at bare skin, chilled prickles spreading across my chest.
"You undress like a boy," said Asuka, catching me off guard for a moment.
I shuffled my nightshirt over my head, letting it fall to the floor before turning to face her.
"Huh?"
"Nothing," she sighed, waving it off with a swat of her hand. "You're probably just a daddy's girl."
No. It was more than that. It meant that, even at the core, I was still myself. I placed a hand against my bare chest, a soft smile coming to my lips. My mind drifted through memories of my own and Noriko's father, playing them back in parallel with each other.
Both men were polar opposites in some ways, but the same in others. Both worked themselves into the ground. One was found of the tipple and worked in a brewery, while the other hated that aspect of the local culture with a passion. Both were keen Golfers. Noriko's father was stern and withdrawn while mine was the life of the party.
I found a clean pair of running shorts, then nestled my chest into a fresh sports-bra. That was one lesson I'd learned the painful way. I searched for a fresh tank-top while musing on the Eleusinian mysteries of women and all the things that came so naturally to other girls, which I'd had to figure out on my own in short order because asking would be just plain weird and awkward.
It occurred to me that I'd just described puberty in a nutshell; crashing around, trying to figure out what being an adult meant without fucking up too badly along the way. At least I had the benefit of some relevant experience….
Perhaps I was better off in some respects - I had an understanding of the opposite sex that was almost impossible to come by otherwise.
Asuka had buried herself back in her phone screen by the time I padded my way out into the living area. Worn clothes were piled in the washbasket by the bathroom door. Dishes were piled in the sink waiting for Shinji to clean them.
Asuka's A-10 clips had been left on the couch, abandoned in a hurry. I paused for a moment, wondering why they'd been just thrown there…. she was never that careless with them. It was then that I noticed the mould growing on the delph, chased by the heavy smell of half-rotten food and sweaty clothes left lying out in the hot apartment for days on end.
It really had been nearly a week.
Pen-Pen's fridge clicked on, sending a little static shock through my body. It faded fast, leaving only a ghost of shame in its wake.
Shinji's bedroom door was open, allowing me a clear view of him splayed out on his back on the floor, shirtless with his bedsheets crumpled around his waist. A little voice decided I needed to know that really, acting on that feeling in my chest wasn't such a bad idea after all. It sat there in the back of my mind babbling away about how it would be good for him to have some companionship for a while.
Catching myself appreciating the view, I sighed wearily.
Bubbling teenage hormones were tempered by adult experience - I knew that if I tried anything with Shinji, it'd all end in tears right around the time everything began to fall apart. Clumsy teenaged relationships just weren't a good idea when the fate of the world depending on not being in a fucked up state of mind.
Accepting what'd happened to myself to the point where I could live day-to-day, and being 'normal' were two wildly different things.
Shinji began to snore, his mouth hanging wide open.
I gave a soft chuckle, the went to leave the apartment. The door opened, human voices entered, chased by crying babies and complaining children. There was a bustle outside, parents shushing their children to keep them fro making a shameful display.
On each floor, a city officer with a clipboard, followed by a queue of families. Most were dressed in clothes that had at least a week's wear on them. The men hadn't shaved in days. The children were scruffy, some dozing against their parents, others too tired to do much more than stand there with heavy eyes.
They all needed a shower, badly. I could smell it as I brushed past; a mixture of body odour and burned plastic that clung to the inside of my nostrils and refused to let go.
The officer was only a few years older than me - barely finished school with the grey uniform she was wearing much too big for her body. The empty apartments in the building were being given to families who'd lost their homes.
Parents with young children always received the best housing ,alongside high-ranking NERV workers. Nobody pushed or complained. Nobody argued. Nobody pleaded. When the family name was called, they shuffled to the head of the group, took their keycard, opened the door and went inside. There were no complaints about being passed over or made to wait.
They waited with tired dignity.
Except for whoever'd gotten themselves stuck in the lift - they weren't exactly being quiet about it, rattling at the doors and promising to write to the 'highest powers' if they weren't rescued soon.
I took the stairs down to the street - something everyone who lived in the building learned to do sooner or later. A perpetual summer sun welcomed me outside with its warm embrace, heat soaking through my tanned skin.
A packed bus clattered past, filling the air with the smell of hot rubber and diesel soot. Distant jackhammers rattled along with discordant beat of dozens of demolition balls swinging out their own independent rhythms. Big twin-rotor chinooks thumped through the air, transporting pallets of building supplies suspended and whole slabs of precast concrete.
Half a building flew over my head.
Craters were being filled with rubble. Steel armour plates thicker than I was tall were lowered into place by monster cranes. Ammunition towers were open for replenishment, being fed by dozens of waiting ammo trucks. Damaged towers were wrapped up with scaffold bandages. The city was healing itself.
Shops were open again. Inviting smells drifted from an open bakery inspite of the window being replaced by a sheet of MDF. It was about that time that I remembered I'd left my money at home. Hunger bit deep.
I ran it off.
One of the park lakes had drained down into the geofront, a hole punched straight through the glass bottom. Yellow tape cordoned it off, guards keeping me from climbing out onto the glass to take a look down.
Two streets were still blocked by debris and demolition crews. Bulldozers pushed it all down into a nearby crater. Nearby, Rei's apartment block had been reduced to a smouldering pile of concrete and steel. Fire engines still worked at dampening it down, flooding it with lake-water.
So much water had been drained from Hakone lake to fight the city fires, the water level had dropped, leaving behind meters of dark, moist sand. It hadn't stopped the pirate ships, which'd returned to shipping tourists as they always did.
The boats had been sailing since before Second Impact. They carried on sailing inspite of the smouldering forests, and scorched and cratered valley walls. When the Earth, Sun and Moon were gone, the Hakone Sightseeing Cruise would remain, whether it had passengers or not.
I took a seat on a nearby bench to rest. Days in an entry plug without a good hard run had left me feeling achy all over, a reminder of just how fragile I was.
"Nagato,"
Hearing my surname, I turned around on the bench, to be faced by a figure in combat fatigues who's eyes were hidden behind shining glasses, aiming something at me. Kensuke with a camera
"Fresh from the front?"
He certainly looked like it. The boy swallowed, looking uncomfortable in his dirtied boots as he shifted his weight from side to side. He lowered his camera.
"My home was destroyed," he said, his voice losing all it's usual energy. "This is all I have left."
My words just caught in my throat, leaving me standing there with my mouth goldfishing, feeling sick with shame. We'd failed, and there was the consequences, standing in front of me.
"I'm so sorry," I finally blurted out.
His expression changed like a switch had been thrown, his usual bright cheer returning. "It's alright," he waved it off with a swat of his hand, before performing the Gendo maneuver on his glasses . "It can't be helped, it's a war."
Again, he caught me flatfooted, leaving me standing there trying to untangle my own feelings while trying to read him. Everything was hidden by the glare of the sun on those lenses.
"Maybe," I breathed, looking back at the damaged city with a twist of guilt tightening in my stomach. "You didn't get assigned an apartment yet?"
"The water's off."
He really was proud of that.
The real war had come home to him in a real way, and he was proud of it. It was a badge of honour to be bombed out along with everyone else.
"So, you like actually being a part of the war now, rather than just a spectator?"
And that came out sounding far more caustic than I'd meant it to.
"Well yeah! It's like, the most important thing in human history!"
I don't know what made me do it, but I was on my feet in moment, propelled by a volcanic burst of anger that erupted up out of the blue. I was a passenger in my own mind for an instant, pulled along by the rush.
"Look around you!" I yelled at him. "The town of Gotemba burned to the ground, along with half of Tokyo-3."
"Um…." I saw him take a step back away from me. I could see my angry reflection in his glasses, a dark silhouette in front of the sun. I could feel myself drawing deep, shaking breaths.
"Or maybe, you'd like to join the people of Minamiizu… they got to be a part of the most important thing in human history too. Look, you can even see what's left of them drifting up on the breeze."
A single finger pointed at a drifting column of dark ash still rising over the horizon. The scent of scorched plastic and burned timber rode down the mountains, carried by a gust of wind sweeping across the lakeshore.
It hung in the air while my mind struggled to catch up to my mouth, wondering where it'd all come from.
"I can't be helped," he said eventually, a nervous quiver shaking his voice. He swallowed once, looked over my shoulder at the rising pillar of smoke, then across the valley at the dark scars blasted into the mountainside before finally focusing on his camera. "I know I'm lucky. Moping about it won't help, will it?"
I forced myself to relax, taking a long, calming breath before sitting back down onto the bench. All I could do was swallow the anger. It wasn't really him, and I knew it. My body still strained tight against it.
"I suppose," I breathed, looking out over the lake.
It didn't offer answers, only washing up more burned debris to remind me just how badly we'd been beaten.
Kensuke seemed to relax, sitting down onto the sand, training his camera on the lake. He took a peek through the viewfinder, clicking off a shot before winding the film forwards, then took another.
"Unlike you, I can't do anything to stop it," he mumbled bitterly. "If I was a pilot…."
"What?"
I glared at him. The sun flashed in his glasses as he turned to face me.
"I could stop this from happening!" he announced "One more pilot might make a difference. Even a backup pilot. And I've studied military tactics and stuff, and I skirmish with airsoft and I know how mecha work and everything!"
And he knew in his heart of hearts that he was perfect for the job, he just couldn't understand why they didn't call on the one person who was fourteen and had all that experience.
"I used to hate fanfics like that," I deadpanned, burying my face in my hands.
Until my life became one.
"Fanfic?"
I glanced at him through my fingers.
"Watch a show. Then write a fanfic where you go to the show's universe, fix everything bad that happened and pork the leading lady." I sat back upright, resting my hands on my hips. "Real life's a bit different, I guess" I sighed, finding my mind's fingers grasping at stands of memory. I read all about it once.
How many Evangelion fics had gone over this? How many of them had ratcheted up the tension, only to come up with another Yashima solution? Something awesome in scale and endeavour?
The Worlds Most Handsome and Sophisticated 14-year-old-boy launched to orbit with Asuka. Rei Ayanami's dummy-plug sister caught it, cut it, then never finished the story. The man from another world with his amazing jet-cycle did it with just a song and some encouragement. When we got backed into a corner, the only way out of it was to blast our way out with more gun.
"Because you can lose?" suggested Kensuke, his tone kept soft. He hopped that was the right answer, at least.
"It's more than that, Being a Pilot is - " And that's where I stopped. He stared at me, almost begging for a mana of information from his source in heaven. And I was struggling.
In the end, all I could do was parrot what Misato had said.
"It's a responsibility unlike no other in the history of mankind."
Kensuke lowered his head. For one brief moment, I thought he understood. Then his mouth opened.
"But being an Eva pilot is the coolest thing anyone who isn't voiced by Norio Wakamoto can ever aspire to do with his life."
The lights were on. But nobody was home. Some people were just incapable of getting it.
"You know what I had to give up to become a pilot? What happened to me?"
"What? I'll do anything?" He leapt on the chance, the opportunity to know the secret. Green eyes pleaded for it - the one thing that'd be his doorway to awesomeness.
"Kensuke." I glared at him. "It cost me everything.," I caught a breath, caught myself for a moment, then rolled with it. When I really thought about what actually becoming an Eva Pilot meant…. "It cost me my name. My life. My identity. My family. Even my world." His eyes slowly widened, "It cost me my chance normal life."
"But who wants to be normal?" he spat.
For a heartbeat, I had the strongest desire to just punch him right in the face.
"Somebody who can't be anymore,"
"Then why'd you agree to do it?"
"I had nothing else."
I lied.
I couldn't tell if it was pity or sympathy in his green eyes, he said nothing to me. All he did was nod gently, then take a snapshot of me sitting on the bench, gazing pensively out over the lake. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was aware of his gaze lingering on my body, and just what I looked like to him.
A fit girl in tight sportswear. Sweat-sheened, tanned skin glistening in the morning sun. Like Masamune Shirow had turned his pens a little more towards the underaged, almost.
Take a deep breath. Clear my head. Hear the camera trigger again.
Kensuke was easy to tolerate when getting annoyed at him meant being a hypocrite. All he wanted, was for one of the Hero-Pilots to like him, to let him become part of the show.
Thirteen years ago, I I'd been him. Two months ago, I'd been him. And I knew what was going on inside his mind because I used to think the exact same thing. Wouldn't It be cool? And now I knew better. I'd learned the hard way.
---------------------
The monster consumes me. I'll probably still end up deleting chunks of it, or rewriting everything.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------