From: eltf@hotmail.com (Eliot Lefebvre)
Subject: [Eva][FanFic] Neon Epoch Evangelion: Episode 19
X-Original-Date: 30 Dec 2002 07:46:49 -0800

The suspect... she called herself "Pre-Story Warning...":

This fanfic is an original take on GAINAX's "Shin Seiki Evangelion."
It contains alternative characters, plots, and a different overriding
internal logic.  It is intended, from the beginning, to be different.
This includes different Children and different histories.  In short: if
the mere thought of someone other than Shinji in the cockpit of EVA-01
makes you queasy, you are in -entirely- the wrong place.  Any and all
flames stemming from this alteration will be mocked mercilessly.  You
have been warned.

Well, whaddya know - one week off the job and I screw everything up.
The teaser quote at the end of the episode is, well, not there, and
yeah, it ought to be.  I'm a big suck and you should all hate me.  I'll
go cry in the corner, or something.  This error will be corrected on
lostfactor.net tomorrow... it'll just have to stay as it is here.  Then
again, I'm sure that it's only going to be a peripheral concern for most
of you.

On a rather different note, as I expected, the technical aspects of
Gunhazard are already being nitpicked to death over on the ETP forums.
(What?  You haven't read it yet?  It's been up for ten days now, foolish
one - were you waiting for an engraved invitation?)  Now I remember why
it is that I don't like to take time off.

                                  ]++[

               ]+ ELECTRONIC TRANSCENDENCE PRODUCTIONS +[
                                presents

                         ]+ NEON       EPOCH +[
                   ]+ E  V  A  N  G  E  L  I  O  N +[

              ]+ EPISODE 19: MAKING PEACE WITH DISTANCE +[

                     By Eliot "Lostfactor" Lefebvre

             Based off of "Shin Seiki Evangelion" by GAINAX

                                  ]++[

Do I have any power to help myself,
     now that success has been driven from me?
- JOB 6:13

                                  ]++[

The temperature in the hangar of EVA-01 was unbearably cold, as though
it was the lone spot of winter in a nation dominated by summer since
the second impact.  Around it lay harsh synthetic crystals, a frozen
nutrient bath sprayed over its surface and keeping it immobile,
metallic restraints visible beneath the translucent patterns of the
ice.  Even then, however, there could be no mistaking that the hushed
voices of the technicians scurrying about in dense parkas were talking
softly because of the monstrosity before them.  "They fear it,"
muttered Ritsuko, her arms folded across her chest as she looked into
the chamber.  "They don't think that the restraints could hold it if it
wanted to move again."

"How right they are."  Gendou's voice cut through the air, one arm
hanging loosely at his side while the other rested upon the small rail
in front of the window.  The observational room was empty besides them,
but small tracks of dust and the disturbing scent of cleaner made it
painfully clear that the room was being pressed back into service, that
the Eva now needed almost constant monitoring even when not in
operation.  "We hold Adam very tenuously.  Should he struggle hard
enough to break free, we would have no way of stopping him."

Nodding, Ritsuko glanced towards the bespectacled man, remembering the
eerie way that the Eva had actually seemed happy to return to the
hangar, slowly moving back into the heart of the base and then shutting
down.  Gendou, for his part, was grinning slightly, not the usual
humorless smirk that graced his lips but a sort of bittersweet mark of
recollection.  "He looks almost like he did the first time that we ever
saw him, frozen like that.  I remember the look on Dr. Katsuragi's face
as we uncovered him... a sort of mixed triumph and horror, as though he
truly knew exactly what he was doing."  He paused for a moment, then
the smile vanished, his dark eyes turning back towards Ritsuko.  "What
is the status of the other machines?"

"EVA-02 has been destroyed beyond all hope of repair," replied Ritsuko
flatly, inwardly cringing slightly, knowing full well that after the
Angel shattered the core Nieve should have died on the spot.  "It's
beyond even being salvaged.  EVA-05 will need severe repairs - it's
almost over the Henflick Limit, but just far enough under that we can
request funds to repair it.  EVA-04 and EVA-00 sustained major damage,
but they're the most intact of the lot - we should be able to get them
up and running before the others."  She paused briefly, glancing back
towards the frozen Eva, unable to shake the sensation that it wasn't
shut down at all despite knowing it was on an academic level.  "EVA-01
is a special case."

"The Angel has restored its S2 organ.  It no longer requires an
external power source to activate."  The declaration was obviously
intended to be flatly pronounced, but Ritsuko could hear the barely-
restrained enthusiasm in the commander's voice, as though he'd been
waiting for the day to come forever.  "The pilot, however, has been
absorbed by the Eva."

Ritsuko nodded, then let her eyes flick towards the frozen beast
quickly before turning back towards Gendou, trying to fight down the
minor feeling of panic welling within her gut.  "We've seen it happen
before.  Neil's body has been reduced to its most basic components, and
there's enough excess mass floating in the LCL to account for him.  All
that's left are his clothes."  She paused briefly, glancing down for
only a moment.  "I've held back the recovery project waiting on your
commands.  I know that it failed the first time -"

"We were operating under different circumstances then, and with
different necessities.  Moreover, you have already proven yourself to
be an infinitely superior scientist to your mother."  The commander
adjusted his glasses, fluorescent light briefly reflecting against them
and hiding his dark and beady eyes, but Ritsuko could hear the minor
twitch of sorrow lying beneath his voice, a side that she knew he was
taking extra effort to surpress.  "Neil must be recovered, if for no
other reason than the fact that we are down to only a handful of Evas
to cope with the next Angel attack.  I trust that you will refine the
procedure and brief everyone as necessary."

"Of course," replied Ritsuko, letting her head turn back towards the
frozen goliath briefly, wishing that there were some pupils visible
within the white slits of the Eva's eyes, some way of her at least
definitely debunking her suspicion that it could still see her
clearly.  "Commander?  What happens if we fail?"

"There are alternatives," replied Gendou flatly, none of the prior
sorrow managing to edge itself into his voice, his footfalls regular
against the smooth metallic floor.  "The plan simply must not fail."
He paused, then tilted his head slightly back towards her.  "The fate of
humanity's future itself rests upon our shoulders, Ritsuko.  Even if
they may not realize it, we're doing this for the good of all mankind."

Gendou only waited long enough to see Ritsuko give a quick nod of
acknowledgement, stepping through the door as it hissed open, his head
turned away and hands jammed loosely into his pockets while the teal-
gray metal slid shut behind him.  Ritsuko let herself stare after the
man for a moment, then turned again towards the Eva.  She knew that she
was a woman of science, that all the indicators showed that it was shut
off, but something in her mind wouldn't let her accept the
explanation.  She had seen the beast stepping back inside the control
center calmly, watched the blood of the Fourteenth Angel drip from its
jaws as it stepped towards the hangar, and she knew that it had other
purposes, that as much as she wanted to believe she was in control it
was the one truly pulling the strings.

                                  ]++[

Strings of light danced impossibly before Neil's eyes, impossible both
because of their physical nature and the simple fact that he was
distantly aware that he didn't have eyes.  But he was still there,
somehow, awash in a sea of dancing lights, his not-eyes sending his
mind a firm signal of disbelief even as his mind found itself occupied
with other matters.  "Where am I?" he muttered, feeling as though thick
gauze had been wrapped about his brain, like something had forced him
apart from his thoughts.  "What happened?  I remember the Eva shutting
down, and then I remember... feeling something."

Closing his eyes or whatever else was relaying sensory information to
him, Neil forced himself to think, to remember what had happened.  He
remembered a moment of terrible, bloody anger, then crystal clear
vision mingled with an unspeakable bloodlust.  The Angel in front of
him had looked weak, composed of nothingness, and he could feel the
taste of its flesh, the salt and bitterness mingling as he devoured the
one missing part of himself, as he began to restore his body to what it
had been before it had mangled it.  He remembered the surge of power,
the howl, the old anger flooding through his limbs again...

A quick shake of the head and opened eyes brought Neil back to the sea
of light, the memory more than a little disconserting, though oddly
less disturbing than he would have originally imagined.  He had
expected to be repulsed by what he had done, but instead it felt oddly
distant and somehow right.  "And it was ultimately the right thing,
wasn't it?" he muttered to himself, trying to find his body as the
light washed over him.  "I destroyed the Angel.  Who cares about the
specifics, so long as it was killed."

The boy felt his fists clench, consciousness slowly returning and
bringing full memory back as he remembered what he had thought of
himself as he'd tumbled down the hill from the airport.  He could
remember seeing Nieve's machine be hurled aside, the way that the Angel
had glared at the control room where Misato was no doubt standing, the
wonderful way that it had felt to turn his hate into physical force and
assault the Angel.  It had been intoxicatingly easy to do, to slam his
fist against the Fourteenth, and as he let himself remember he felt his
eyes drifting closed once again.  "Where am I?" he muttered to nobody.
"Is this Hell?  Did I die?"

Only silence greeted his question, but he felt a sudden darkness engulf
him a moment later, sensation returning to his numb arms and legs, the
feel of thin fabric against his skin washing over him.  Opening his
eyes, he could see only the barest glimmer of light surrounding him,
nothing but utter darkness stretching on in all directions around him.
His plugsuit was on, the green and purple fabric wrapped around his
body, something feeling oddly alien about the entire situation.
"What's going on?" he called, glancing around, one hand almost
unconsciously moving towards the wrist of the plugsuit.  "Hello?
Anyone?"  He paused, waiting for someone to say something, and he began
to wonder about where he'd truly wound up.  "Is this my punishment?  To
be alone forever?"

"Not so much of a punishment, is it?"  The voice was familiar, the tone
of the woman from within the Twelfth Angel, but though Neil whirled
about inside his small patch of light he couldn't see the source of her
voice.  "Nobody more to hate except yourself, and nobody for you to
feel guilty about hurting.  Just solitude, without anybody trying to
hurt you or lie to you."  She paused, her body still invisible as Neil
struggled to fight down a minor panic.  "That wouldn't be so bad, would
it?  There could be worse ways to spend eternity."

Another light flashed into existence silently, Neil taking a step back
in shock as he saw the same woman as before, white lab coat trailing
about the awkward navy blue and white plugsuit, brown hair lightly
falling about her head.  She wore a bittersweet smile, a gesture that
seemed to be nothing if not maternal, her head cocked ever so slightly
to one side as she surveyed Neil.  "This isn't Heaven or Hell, Neil.
It's something else entirely."  She paused briefly, then stepped
forward from her pool of light, apparently unconcerned by the darkness
surrounding them, simply walking forward until she stepped into Neil's
light, the same expression on her face.

Taking a deep breath, Neil forced down the minor tremor of panic in his
gut, reminding himself that he had to be hallucinating, that it was
something about the Eva that summoned up this woman.  "Is this..."  He
paused, then shook his head, a memory of blood staining the Eva's jaws
flashing through his mind inexplicably.  "Who are you?"

"Yui," replied the woman calmly, taking another step towards Neil even
as he took one back, her arms spreading slowly.  "Don't be afraid.  I'm
not angry with you."  Another step forward, and Neil began to let his
foot fall behind him before he glanced back and saw that stepping back
again would require stepping into the darkness, something that seemed
like a poor alternative to Yui.  He brought his gaze back towards the
woman, his mind still trying to decipher why she looked so similar to
Ryo when he felt her embrace him, resting his head gently against her
chest.

Shocked and still disoriented, Neil twitched for a moment, confused by
the woman's actions, wondering if he was simply drawing an image from a
hallucination for some kind of dellusional sexual fantasy.  Then he
realized that the embrace was motherly, nurturing, the way that he
could dimly remember his mother cradling him when he was an infant.
"Who are you, really?" he muttered, the contact feeling reassuring in a
way that he hadn't felt for what seemed like an eternity.  "Are you
Ryo's mother?"

"Ryo... oh.  Ayanami."  Yui's grip faltered slightly, and Neil looked
up to see the woman's face grow slightly colder, as though he'd said
something wrong.  He had little doubt that he -had- said something
wrong, but he couldn't for the life of him decipher what it might have
been.  "Don't worry about who I am.  That's not important right now."
The coldness vanished from her face, and she pushed the boy back just
enough to look him in the eye.  "I'm more interested in who -you- are."

"There's nothing to talk about there," replied Neil bitterly, another
memory flashing through his mind unbidden, the sensation of tearing
through the flesh of an Angel with his bare hands, feeling the skin and
muscle strain and tear between his fingers.  His eyes cast down towards
the floor, any natural color that it might have had bled away into
nothingness by the force of the light.  "I'm a monster.  You wanted me
to say that the last time we met, and I said it.  I know."

Yui's hand closed gently around Neil's chin, drawing his gaze upwards
towards her eyes once again, something flashing within them that Neil
couldn't quite place a finger on.  "There is a great deal more to talk
about than that," she said firmly, releasing Neil's chin and letting
her hand gently brush against the boy's cheek.  "Why did you come
back?  You were going to leave.  You were determined to leave.  Why
didn't you?"

"Because they need demons," replied Neil, squeezing his eyes shut,
feeling tears start to surge behind them as he found himself thinking
about what it meant for him to have come back.  He didn't want to think
of himself as a monster, but he knew that it would be etched in
everyone else's face each time that they looked at him, that he had no
chance of ever considering himself normal even for a moment.  "NERV
needs the Evas, and those are just demons they've chained up.  They can
chain me even more easily, and they need me to pilot the Eva.  I had to
return."

"And you need to protect people.  It's the same old song and dance."
The voice cut through Neil's ears to the bone, and he whirled around to
see another spot of light framing the body of his double, light
filtering through blonde hair, a sinister expression visible in the
half-lit green eyes.  The boy turned and glanced back towards where Yui
had been moments before, but she was gone without a trace, no sign that
she had ever even been nearby.  "You tell yourself that, that you need
to come back even as a monster, that you need to do the right thing.
Doesn't it ever strike you that you're being more than a little
hypocritical?"

"Shut up," snapped Neil, a single tear tracing its path down from the
corner of his eye as he glared at the apparition before him.  Another
image flashed through his mind, the horrific nightmare of being impaled
by an unnamed white figure, and Neil found himself taking a step
backwards.  "I can still do something right, even if I am a monster."

"Oh, please.  Monsters don't need to justify their existence."  The
world about the boy swirled as though it had been tossed into a
blender, bits of light flashing before his eyes, then he found himself
standing in an empty schoolyard, the same one that he could recall from
that fateful day.  "If you're such a monster, you don't care about
protecting people.  It's just what you say to make yourself feel
better, to hide the truth of the matter."  The double paused, then took
a step forward, scuffing up sand as he walked, grinning devilishly.
"You came back because you knew there was an Angel to kill.  Because
you knew you'd get to kill again."

"Even if I am a monster, I can stil do the right thing!" Neil cried,
trying to snarl but winding up whimpering.  His foot stepped backwards,
the sand giving gently beneath his feet as the double continued to
approach slowly.  "It's the only way that I can make up for -"

"You don't need to make -up- for anything," the double interjected,
extending its right hand, letting the red double-pronged knife swirl
into existence.  Neil's eyes went wide as he watched the other's
fingers curl around the handle, the same sort of hesitant yet
determined way that Neil recalled his own hand closing on the pencil
that day in the schoolyard.  "You're excited, aren't you?  Even though
you know that this will hurt, the thought of it hurting makes you want
it."  The other began moving more quickly, small clouds of sand
swirling about his feet, knife outstretched.  "That's why you're not
truly running.  Because you want to feel it."

In a single lightning motion, the knife had buried itself within Neil's
shoulder, a scream tearing itself from his lungs as he felt the blood
begin to flow outwards along the blade.  Gritting his teeth, he waited,
feeling the double release its grip on the hilt, then tugging out the
bloody metal, holding the knife tightly in his uninjured arm and
glaring at the other.  "And now you want to hurt me.  That's the way
you relate to the world.  Others hurt you, you hurt them back.  That's
how you want it to hurt."

Something in the tone of the double made Neil pause, his mind
momentarily focused on the sound of his blood dripping from the wound
to the pale sand, mingling and staining the ground a deep red.  "No,"
he muttered, shaking his head and dropping the knife, letting it stab
into the sand harmlessly as he brought his other hand back around to
hold back his wound.  "I won't.  I don't want to be like that, to be
hateful.  I just want to protect people."

"That's what you say.  That's what you -always- say."  The other
smiled, then stepped over to Neil, grabbing the boy by the chin and
yanking his face forward.  Dizziness was beginning to seep through his
head, the combination of shock and blood loss beginning to weigh
heavily on his body.  "But you don't know if that's the truth, do you?
Every time you say it, there's a nagging little voice in the back of
your head asking whether or not you just -want- it to be the truth,
because it's easier to deal with that way."  The other released Neil,
and the boy slumped to the ground, his gaze unable to see anything but
the feet of the other and the expanse of sand around them both.  "But
you need to think about it, Neil," taunted his own voice, the words
echoing in his mind as blackness overtook him.  "What's lying
underneath your words?  What are you -really-?"

                                  ]++[

Misato hadn't been present during the earliest stages of Central
Dogma's construction, but from what she'd heard from Ritsuko she
imagined that the general look was similar to the one that the facility
now sported out of necessity.  Workers were swarming to try and repair
the hole punched by the Angel and the one caused by EVA-01, to restore
the delicate electronics of the control room's various capabilities, to
try and bring the base back to full working order as fast as possible.
The result was deafening and choking at once, the noise of welders and
saws filling the air even as smoke and metal shavings drifted about the
air.  "We didn't fare nearly as badly as we could have," she noted, her
voice rising in volume to compete with the sounds of construction.  "At
least most of the base is still intact."

"But how safe is it, really?" asked Maya, obviously still somewhat
distraught by the construction, her eyes flicking towards the hole that
led out to the Geo-Front.  Though the workers had managed to largely
patch up the gaping wound in the side of the pyramid, the damaged
landscape of the underground dome was still visible, along with the
flickering light fixtures being slowly restored to full operational
status.  "Our Evas are damaged, our pilots are injured, our base is in
trouble... the Magi don't predict that we'll be ready to intercept
another Angel for another two weeks at least, and even then it's with a
12.3% chance of success."

"We hardly need to make that public knowledge," replied Misato, letting
her eyes close and nodding her head forward slightly, feeling her hair
brush against the back of her neck as she sighed.  "There's already
been a mass exodus from the city.  Some people were able to see the
battle against the Fourteenth from the shelters, and others simply
don't like the idea that the Angel managed to get through our
defenses.  We're getting complaints constantly that the Evas aren't
safe, that we aren't doing enough to protect civilians... there have
only been a handful of casualties, but we're still dealing with the
fallout pretty hard.  Nobody seems to really think they're safe here
any more."

"They might be right," offered Makoto, the barest hints of regret
creeping into his tone, his eyes flicking along the ceiling as he
leaned back in his chair.  "We're having more and more trouble keeping
the Angels contained and figuring out how to destroy them, and they're
getting more and more bizarre."  He sighed, shaking his head, the amber
light from the display of his console playing awkwardly across the tan
and red of his uniform as he moved.  "Tokyo-3 might have started out as
the fortress city, but our reach might be a bit too far.  It's all we
can do at this point to remain a fortress, much less a city."

A silence settled over the control area, Makoto's words not so much
stinging as simply sinking in.  Only the steady noise of tools and
incomprehensible shouts from the workers filled the air, Misato's eyes
still flicking about the area while Maya and Makoto reluctantly turned
back to their consoles.  There was a tension lying silently around
them, a sort of nervousness that had started with the Twelfth Angel's
attack but had by no means ended then, the silent knowledge that none
of them could rely on NERV's facilities to defeat the Angels, at least
not entirely.  It was almost a welcome relief when the elevator hissed
open, the noise somehow managing to cut through the ambient sound of
the chamber and draw the attention of all those on the level.

Something was bothering Ritsuko, and Misato could see it the second
that the blonde woman stepped out of the elevator, her white lab coat
seeming to chase her ankles as she strode forward.  There was something
simply off about the woman's expression, a minor detail that would have
escaped almost anyone else but stood out like a flashing light to
Misato.  "Something up?" she asked, trying to sound casual as she
walked to meet the other woman, wishing that she could hush her tone
without being lost in the din of construction.

"Nothing beyond the obvious," replied Ritsuko, stepping towards Maya's
console, obviously favoring her still-injured arm.  Though it had
looked as though Ritsuko would be denied the use of her left arm for a
time from the brief medical treatment that they'd had after the
Thirteenth's attack, she'd ultimately only needed a brace, something
she wore underneath her lab coat as if it would mask the fact that
she'd been injured at all.  Misato felt herself frowning at the
thought, feeling as though the attack had been months ago when it had
only been two days prior, the scratches on her own body still fresh.
"We've gotten to the point where we're ready to try and recover Neil
from the Eva."

"Recover?"  Misato's frown deepened, and she stepped closer to Ritsuko,
feeling a minor tremor of panic flood through her body.  She knew that
it had been necessary to freeze the Eva and restrain it before the
entry plug could be extracted, but Ritsuko's words made it sound as
though there was something more involved going on.  "Was the ejector
damaged along with the radio receivers?"

"The radio is working fine," replied Ritsuko, gesturing towards the
screen of Maya's console.  Misato reluctantly leaned in, and her eyes
widened as she stared at an empty plug filled with LCL, the only sign
that Neil had been inside at all the slowly-drifting shirt and pants
that he had worn in.  "There's nobody in there to respond.  I suspected
that something like this might happen with a 100% synchronization, but
I'd never had a chance to test it."

Misato could only distantly hear Ritsuko, her mind boggling at the
situation.  She'd heard about the first few activations of the Evas,
the way that the test pilots had been killed, and though she hadn't
been present for the actual events she'd read the briefings.  "He's
dead," she muttered, a lump forming in her throat, her knees beginning
to give way beneath her.

"No," replied Ritsuko flatly, drawing Misato's gaze back towards her
reluctantly.  "He's been absorbed by the Eva, but he's not dead.  All
of the chemicals that made up his body are still in the LCL, which
means that he still has a body after a fashion.  And his consciousness
is still active, or the Eva wouldn't have been able to move in the
first place."  She paused, her blue-gray eyes flicking momentarily
towards the scrambling construction workers.  "Everything's still in
there, the way that it's supposed to be.  The only problem is that he's
been separated.  He lost his body to completely merge with the Eva."
Again, the woman paused, eyes turning back towards the display on
Maya's console.  "That's the theory, anyways."

"So..."  Misato shook her head, wishing that she understood more about
the science behind the boy's dissolution at the same time that she
wished Ritsuko would simply say in so many words whether or not he
would ever be coming back out.  "How did the Eva keep moving, then?
Can we get him out?"  She paused, shaking her head, trying to grasp
onto something that she understood completely.  "You said that you were
going to recover him, right?  Does that just mean that we're going to
restore contact within the Eva, or something more?"

"Like I said, all of the parts are still inside the LCL and the Eva.
All we need to do is put everything back together."  Ritsuko paused,
turning away from the console and letting her gaze rest wholly on the
construction workers, as though she couldn't bear to face Misato for
some unknown reason.  "There is a procedure for recovering an absorbed
pilot, and that's what we're going to attempt.  The only problem is
that it takes thirty days to prepare, and if it fails we won't be able
to try again.  The LCL, and everything left of Neil's body, will be
flushed from the system after the attempt."

Rubbing her temple roughly, Misato tried to wrap her mind around the
concept, that the boy was still inside the Eva even though his body had
dissolved.  It was a painful thing to consider, and shaking her head
she found herself focusing on one detail of Ritsuko's words, the one
thing that had still stuck out in her mind despite the clamor of shock
from the news.  "You said there was a procedure.  That means it's been
tried before, right?"  The scientist nodded, and Misato felt a minor
pang of curiosity.  "How did it turn out?"

"It failed," replied Ritsuko flatly, only the barest sliver of concern
managing to creep into her voice.  She remained focused on the
construction in front of her for a moment longer before turning back to
look at Misato, her expression inexplicable.  "But it's also been
several years since then, and we know more about the way that the Evas
work than before.  We'll get him out."

Misato wanted to have something to say back to the woman, something
that sounded at least remotely strong, but all she could think of was
the vague traces of tears on Neil's cheeks at the airport and the
sorrow that Nieve hadn't been able to shake from her eyes since the
wake of the Thirteenth Angel's attack.  "I hope you're right," she
muttered, her eyes flicking back to the display of swirling empty LCL,
feeling a tension growing within her chest.

                                  ]++[

                                 DAY  3

Vash could feel his other arm more clearly than anything else in his
body, and as he felt himself slipping to the ground once again he
couldn't help but be angry at the appendage.  He knew full well that it
had no brain, that it simply hadn't sustained the same sort of damage
to its nerves that his body had, that for all intents and purposes he
should have been more than happy to still have the left arm at all.
But there was something almost insulting about his almost-artificial
limb being the only thing that held him off of the floor, that he
needed something beyond himself to even pretend to be normal.

Gritting his teeth, the boy pulled himself back to his feet, feeling a
pain growing in his right arm as he returned to his prior position,
arms braced against two rails on either side to keep him upright as he
struggled to walk.  His legs were weak, and neither of them wanted to
move, but he knew that he had to learn how again, that he had to force
the muscles to respond again.  It was some small reassurance that he
was alone in the room, that he'd managed to talk the nurse out of the
pale white room, fluorescent light spilling down and framing his body
harshly, hair hanging limply about his head in a way that he was
painfully conscious of.

"Nothing looks right at all," he muttered to himself, feeling his
frustration well as he took a hesitant step forward.  His leg trembled,
but held, and he let himself continue, trying to keep his focus
unwavering even as he gritted his teeth tighter and tighter.  "My arm
is all wrong.  My hair is all wrong.  I don't look like myself at all,
I look like some washed-up loser."  His thoughts drifted almost
immediately to his father as he stretched forward another trembling
leg, and his foot hit the ground awkwardly, sending him falling
backwards once again.  "FUCK!" he exclaimed, letting himself fall
completely out of frustration, wincing slightly as rockets of pain shot
up and down his back the instant he hit the cold tile of the floor.

Eyes drifting closed out of combined frustration and simple apathy,
Vash only heard the door opening in one side of the room, his arms
flopping to the ground as a quiet gasp filled the air.  "Vash, what
happened?" exclaimed Eiko, her voice forcing Vash's eyes open just long
enough to see the girl leaning over him, still wearing her school
uniform, fabric shifting alluringly around her skin as she moved.  Her
black hair hung down about her face as her hands closed gently around
Vash's shoulders, trying to push him into a sitting position.  "You
must have fallen.  Shouldn't there be a nurse or something watching
you?"

"I'm fine," replied the boy, somewhat more curtly than he'd wanted,
letting his left arm hit the cold tile hard and using it to push
himself up.  The hospital gown that he wore felt uncomfortably open,
and even the gentle touch of Eiko felt as though she was pitying him,
that he looked like someone that -needed- pity.  It was a disgusting
sensation, like something coldy and sticky easing its way across his
skin.  "There was a nurse in here, but I asked her to leave.  I don't
want anyone watching me fail if I can help it."

An awkward silence asserted itself as Vash momentarily contemplated
pulling himself to his feet, deciding at length to simply fold his legs
and turn towards Eiko.  That action in and of itself took quite a bit
of effort for the boy, but he forced himself not to show it any more
than was absolutely necessary, trying not to notice the odd expression
on Eiko's face.  "It seems like you're doing really well, though," she
said at length, sitting down across from him.  "The doctors didn't
think that you would be able to even try walking for another month or
so."

"Can't have that happening, can I?" replied Vash firmly, letting his
left arm reach up and grip the railing above him, leaning backwards as
though it was a casual action.  His left arm screamed gently in
protest, but he ignored it, forcing himself to remember that he needed
to act as though it didn't bother him, that he had to keep up some kind
of appearance even in his less-than-perfect situation.  "No point in
just letting everyone feel sorry for me, not unless I'm going to try
and do soemthing about it."

Eiko bit her lower lip again, unsure of exactly what to say, wanting to
tell the boy that it was all right for him to have others feel sorry
for him.  But she didn't want to say it, not least because of the fact
that she hardly felt it was true in her own case.  "I brought you some
lunch," she said at length, raising a small white paper bag, the
contents jostling slightly from within and filling the air with the
quiet sound of rustling paper.  "It's not much, but you know that
cooking isn't really my strong suit."

"Lunch already?"  Vash sighed, releasing the rail and leaning forward
to take the bag from Eiko, inwardly noting how everything in the
hospital seemed to be white to the point where any other colors seemed
like islands.  "You don't seem to be going to class at all any more.
Not that I can blame you, now that everyone's favorite Humanoid Typhoon
isn't there any more."  He paused, flashing a quick smile, then opened
the bag and peered in, letting his mind take in the sparse but
appetizing contents of the bag.

"Only half a day of classes today.  The professor is leaving."  She let
her head sink slightly as the boy reached a hand into the bag to draw
out a small container of rice, letting his blue eyes flick up towards
the girl.  "Not that it's really as much of a problem as it could be -
most of the students are leaving, too.  If it wasn't for the fact that
I was with NERV, I think mom and dad would want to leave too."  She
paused, then looked up towards Vash, the boy eagerly eating the still-
warm rice.  "Have you talked to your father about whether or not he's
leaving?"

Vash felt his body tense slightly at the question about his father, his
mind already drawing the connection between himself and the elder man.
"That old drunkard?  He wouldn't notice if the entire damn Geo-Front
collapsed tomorrow.  Hell, if the Angels just paid his bar tabs he'd
probably be throwing sticks at us every time he got up off his useless
butt."  The boy let himself finish with the rice, scowling slightly for
a moment before his expression softened slightly.  "But I guess it's
nothing that concerns me any more.  I can't see why NERV would have
much use for a Child that doesn't have an Eva any more."

Eiko let a smiled flash across her face, and Vash stared for a moment
before letting himself forget about the problems with his father for a
moment, smiling back at the girl.  "You know something you're not
saying," he said, edging towards her as best he could with his limited
strength.  "Come on.  Don't hold out on me here."

The girl simply smiled for a moment longer, then edged herself closer
to the boy, the smile growing slightly wider along her lips.  "I didn't
want to tell you yet, since I'm not even supposed to know just yet, but
I got some good news from Makoto this morning."  She paused, letting
the suspense build as she leaned closer to the boy.  "NERV's already
requested the transfer of EVA-06 as soon as it's completed, and it
should be ready within less than a week.  You're the designated pilot.
So you'll still be working within NERV after all."

Nothing but silence filled the air for a moment, Eiko's expression
shifting swiftly from obvious exuberance to overt bewilderment as Vash
continued to stare at her in a sort of frozen expression.  "What's
wrong?" she asked, leaning closer as though he hadn't heard her.  "I
though you'd be happy to find out that you still would be a pilot.  You
were always saying that you could do a better job than Neil."

For a moment, Vash let himself remain silent, nodding only slightly in
response to Eiko's words.  He knew that he wouldn't have come back the
way that Neil had, and more even than that he knew that he didn't
particularly want to get into the cockpit again.  He could still dimly
remember what it had felt like for the metal of the entry plug to
crumple in, and while he'd never admit it he was filled with a minor
terror at the thought that he could wind up getting crushed within the
plug a second time.  Still, he knew that he couldn't say anything, knew
that Eiko would think of him differently if he did.  "I'm just not sure
if I'll be recovered enough by then to pilot again.  Might have
impacted my ability to pilot the Eva, and all."

"Oh, don't be silly," replied Eiko, her smile restored as she gently
smacked Vash on the shoulder, just lightly enough to avoid sending pain
racing up and down the boy's body.  Vash, for his part, managed to
force a smile as he leaned back slightly, his mind whirling as he
closed his eyes slightly, letting Eiko's facial features blur together
in the sea of white light that was the hospital room.  In the back of
his mind, he found himself wondering if it was truly worth the time to
keep up the image, if he wasn't just investing effort needlessly trying
to seem like something he simply couldn't be.

                                  ]++[

                                 DAY  5

It was almost time for Misato to come home, and that excited Nieve
something fierce, even as she felt angry with herself for depending on
the woman's presence to feel safe.  The television was on, the sound
and light providing some semblance of human contact despite Nieve's
isolation, her eyes focused dimly on the people on screen as they
yammered on in Japanese.  She didn't understand any of the language,
contrary to what she'd heard about being immersed in another language,
but it was something to fill up the apartment, something to keep her
own voice from echoing off the pale yellow walls.  Something to
distract her from crying, if nothing else.

Sighing as her thoughts drifted, Nieve felt her eyes squeezing closed,
the rough denim of her jeans flexing as she brought her knees up
towards her chest, loose red blouse hanging about her as she lay on the
old green couch.  It hadn't even been a week since Neil had left and
her Eva had been destroyed beyond repair, but she already felt the pain
of loss too acutely to dull it for even a moment, Neil's blank face
greeting her nearly every time she closed her eyes.  There was no doubt
in her mind that she'd done the wrong thing, dealt with him the wrong
way, but with him locked inside of his Eva there was no chance for her
to apologize, to say that she was sorry for what she'd done, to ask him
to stay with her.

Her thoughts were scattered to the wind as the sound of a doorknob
turning filled the air, cutting through the noise of the television as
Nieve lunged to her feet and headed towards the door.  Her white socks
slipped slightly against the paneled wood as she half-jogged over,
smiling broadly, letting her hair fall around her elegantly, her
control over her appearance retained by sheer force of will.  "Evening,
Misato," she called, stepping over into the kitchen as the elder woman
removed her jacket.  "How was your day at work?"  She paused briefly,
trying not to ask the first question that sprang to mind quite
intentionally.

"Neil's still inside the Eva," replied Misato flatly, stepping up out
of the small shoe area and beginning to walk around towards the
kitchen, either ignoring or intentionally avoiding the devestated look
on Nieve's face.  "Ritsuko's been doing everything she can to make sure
that the procedure's safe, but there's no way that he's going to be out
before the thirty-day mark that she gave us initially."

"Of course not," replied Nieve, doing her best to sound as though she'd
known the whole thing from the beginning, as though it was ridiculous
for the woman to assume that she'd wanted to ask.  She had, but that
was besides the point.  "I didn't ask you.  Besides, Ritsuko's in
charge of the project, she wouldn't have given us a time that she
didn't believe she was going to meet."  She paused, sinking her head
slightly.  "So... is there any news about what's going to happen with
me as a pilot?"

Misato hesitated slightly, one hand within the fridge, steamy frost
pouring out of the chilled appliance as she stood in place, and Nieve
needed no response to know that something wasn't quite right.  "There's
a request in for EVA-06, but Vash has already been the designated
pilot.  You know that."  She glanced over at Nieve, grabbing a beer
from the fridge as the girl nodded in reply.  "EVA-07 has been started,
and I've heard rumors that EVA-08 might be in planning stages... but
there are also rumors that EVA-07 is going to be piloted by another
Child.  So we might be fully staffed without you."

For a moment, Nieve simply stared at the woman, her lower lip trembling
slightly, trying to convince herself that it was simply taking a moment
or two for her brain to process the information.  She was promising
herself that she wasn't going to cry again, that she was going to keep
herself under control, that there was nothing that she needed to cry
about in front of Misato.  "So... are you saying that NERV's going to
just discard me?" she asked, her voice trembling involuntarily,
swallowing hard as she stared at the woman.  "I'm going to be shipped
back to Ireland?"

"I don't know," replied Misato flatly, her fingers splayed across the
top of the can for a moment before she pulled back on the tab at the
top, the hiss of excaping gas filling the silence between the two for a
moment.  "There... was some minor objection to you piloting 06, besides
the fact that Vash's synch ratio has been higher historically."  She
paused, lowering her head slightly.  "Some citizen groups were
protesting because you were one of the pilots during the Fourteenth's
attack.  They're claiming that you and Eiko should have stopped the
Angel before it got underground."

"-WHAT-?"  Nieve's fist slammed hard into the counter beside her, her
legs sliding slightly apart on the smooth tile of the kitchen as her
eyes flashed with anger.  "You can't be -serious-!  I was doing
everything right, and -Eiko- decided that she wanted to go up against
the Angel and get herself nailed by the beast!  I was in -control- of
the situation, and -she- messed it up!  Hell, if they want -her- out,
she -ought- to be kicked out!  Give me -her- Eva, since she obviously
can't keep herself under -control- inside it!"

"That's enough, Nieve," replied Misato firmly, taking a quick sip of
beer and turning towards the hallway.  "You're not going to be ejected
from NERV, I promise you that.  You haven't done anything to merit it.
All I said was that we couldn't give you EVA-06 because there were
outside circumstances.  You and Niobe might have to switch off with EVA-
05, or perhaps we'll swap you in and out with Ryo."

"I don't -want- to be swapped out with -anybody-!  I want -my- Eva!"
snarled the girl, knowing that she was whining but not particularly
caring.  She could still remember the look on her mother's face
clearly, could still feel the gentle touch of the woman's hand on her
skin, and even though she wanted to write the whole thing off as a
hallucination something told her it was nothing but the truth.  "My
mother gave her -life- for that machine, and it's -mine-!  There's got
to be some way to repair it, some way to bring it back!"

"Do I look like a technician now?" asked Misato, her tone growing irate
as she turned to look back at the girl.  "I have no idea how to fix the
Evas, I just know what Ritsuko tells me, and she's said that EVA-02 is
beyond any kind of salvage.  The best we can do is use its armor to
repair that of some of the other machines.  Frankly, I believe her on
this one.  The thing's core was utterly -destroyed-, Nieve, and even if
it is just a clone, I've never seen any of the Angels function without
a core.  Even if we could put it back together, it would take less
effort to just build another Eva, so it's even -more- pointless."

"But..."  Nieve felt her knees beginning to grow weak beneath her,
tears struggling to push forward from behind her eyes.  She hadn't
meant to make Misato so angry with her, but looking into the other
woman's eyes she could see an unmitigated anger and frustration blended
together, all directed towards Nieve.  It was bad enough that Neil had
left, but now Nieve could see where the conversation with Misato was
going, and she had to force herself to bite her lip for a moment to
keep the tears restrained.  "It's my mother's Eva.  She... she was
inside the machine, with me."

Sighing, Misato took a quick step towards the girl, putting her beer
down on the table defiantly.  "Your mother died during the first
activation of EVA-02, Nieve.  You and I both know that."  Her tone was
curt, as though she was explaining the entire situation to a small
child that needed a spanking.  "Really, you're being awfully immature
about this.  We're busy struggling to have -any- machines working, and
you're whining about your specific machine.  What does it -matter-?"

Nieve had no answers for the woman, knees giving way completely as she
sank to the floor of the kitchen, her tears forcing themselves past her
defenses and running down her cheeks.  She'd lost Neil, she'd lost her
Eva, she'd lost her mother again, and she could tell that she was going
to lose Misato as well.  A low, strangled gasp escaped from her throat,
shoulders gently shuddering as she cried, and she felt herself wishing
that Neil wasn't gone, that he would walk through the door and hold
her, tell her that he wasn't going to leave.  "Nobody ever stays," she
muttered, shaking her head gently.  "I can't make anyone stay."

A soft touch brushed against her shoulder, and Nieve turned her head
slowly towards the source, eyes focusing through the blur of tears to
see Misato kneeling next to her.  The woman's expression was unreadable
to Nieve, not due to any intent of the woman but simply due to the
force of Nie'ves tears, water clouding over her vision and dissolving
the world into a mosaic of blurred colors.  "Nieve, it's okay if you
want Neil back," she said quietly, letting her hand grip the girl's
shoulder gently.  "We both do.  He's a part of our lives."

"I don't -want- him back!" the girl snapped, yanking away her shoulder
even as she felt her sobs intensify, her voice becoming a gentle wail.
"I don't want him to come back.  He left me, just because I... because
I..."  Her shoulders shuddered again gently, and she hunched forward
slightly, her hands clutching at her upper arms, tears streaming down
and soaking into her shirt as she closed her eyes tightly.

Misato's hand closed around the girl's shoulder again, and this time
Nieve didn't fight her, simply letting herself shudder slightly as the
tears streamed across her face.  She was disgusted with herself for
letting herself cry, just as she was angry with herself for not being
able to keep anyone from leaving, but the touch of Misato's hand made
her feel ever so slightly better, as though she'd managed to hold on to
something despite herself.  "I just wanted him to want to stay with
me," she gasped, voice almost incomprehensible through the tears and
sobs.  "I just wanted to test him, to see if he'd stay."  Her wailing
intensified, body doubling over as she shuddered from the tears.  "I
can't make anyone stay.  I can't make anyone care enough to stay."

Her hand squeezing the girl's shoulder tightly, Misato let her own eyes
shut, her thoughts drifting backwards to the day that she'd left Kaji,
the last time that she could remember feeling his arms around her.  She
wanted to reassure Nieve, to simply hold the girl and make her feel
better, but she was beginning to realize that Ritsuko was right about
her only having a mock family, that she was too incapable of putting
her own life together to try and manage anybody else's.  "Neil didn't
want to leave you, Nieve," she said calmly, trying to say the right
thing, knowing in her heart that she wouldn't succeed.  "He wanted to
protect you.  He thought that was what he was doing."

"Everyone says that!" shrieked the girl, her mind remembering the
bittersweet look on her mother's face as the woman had abandoned her
inside the lonely cockpit of the Eva, remembering the way that she'd
cried out for her mother to return even as she heard the Angel blasting
into the Geo-Front.  "Everyone says that they want to protect me, they
want to keep me safe!  I just..."  She shuddered, the edge gone from
her voice as she leaned into her knees, the fabric of her blouse
shifting against her skin and pulling taught.  "I just want Neil back.
I want him to say that he loves me."

Misato rubbed Nieve's back, feeling at once out of place and useless.
"Don't worry," she said, leaning closer to Nieve as the girl lifted
bleary and bloodshot emerald eyes towards Misato.  "He'll come back.
It'll just be a little while."  She forced a smile, continuing to
gently rub the girl's back, wishing that she believed what she was
saying even as Nieve began to cry once again.

                                  ]++[

                                 DAY  9

Preparations for the recovery of EVA-01's pilot had necessitated the
chipping away and outright removal of a great deal of the ice that had
previously held the Eva in place, resulting in more mechanical
restraints clamped about the machine as it leered over the catwalk.  As
near as Kozou Fuyutsuki could tell, however, it had gotten no less
disturbing by the removal of the miniature glacier that had previously
surrounded it, with only thin slivers of ice remaining.  If anything,
the now-unobscured half-open jaw made it look all the more threatening,
almost as though it was laughing at the efforts of the technicians,
scoffing at their attempts to regain control.

Yet even through the jagged metal jawline, the slitted eyes that had
once again faded to a white field of nothingness, the limbs twisted in
a position of rage despite the fact that the Eva had brought itself
back to the hangar - through all of that, Kozou could still see a sort
of alien beauty to the monstrosity.  Even with the ugly and makeshift
restraints clamped across its body, including a rather large one that
covered the entire midsection in dull gray steel to mask the core, it
seemed like something powerful and elegant in its horror, something so
beautiful that the only possible reaction of humans would be disgust.
"But maybe I'm biased," the old man muttered to himself, tilting his
head forward slightly and managing a weak smile.  "They are the product
of my favorite student."

The hiss of a door opening cut through the air, and Kozou turned his
head, expecting to see Ritsuko walking towards the Eva for another
routine survey.  Thinking of the younger woman still brought a minor
pang into his chest, a sort of bittersweet memory of compounded regret
made even worse by the situation that they found themselves in.  He
remembered the first attempt to recover a pilot from an Eva, remembered
the way that Naoko Akagi had fussed over the specifics of the
operation, doing her all to make sure that it would be successful.
Despite all her work, she had failed, and Kozou could remember clearly
the way that her elegant face had scrunched into despair, the sadly
broken look that she had borne as the LCL sprayed from the rejected
plug and all hope of recovery spilled out with it.

It wasn't Ritsuko, however, and Kozou found himself snapped out of his
minor reverie as he saw Eiko Suzuhara entering the hangar, looking
slightly nervous at the sight of EVA-01 and even more nervous as she
saw Kozou standing in front of the machine.  He knew the girl by face,
but by nothing more intimate than that, though watchin her move he
could understand why she had something less than a stellar combat
record.  "Miss Suzuhara," he said flatly, trying to manage a smile,
feeling somewhat neutral about the girl's presence.  "What brings you
here today?  You aren't scheduled for synch testing yet, are you?"

"Today's my day off," she replied, her eyes flicking back and forth
between the shackled purple goliath and the brown-suited commander, as
though one or the other was about to break free and attack.  She had
been nervous about simply coming to the hangar, knowing that it would
probably make Vash unhappy, although she had to admit to a minor guilty
rush at the thought of stealing away from the injured boy.  But more to
the point, she felt mildly embarassed, and she certainly didn't want to
be watched by the vice-commander of NERV.  "Am I not allowed to come
into the hangar?  I didn't think -"

"No, it's fully accessible."  He turned slowly back towards the golem
before him, trying to find a more concise term for the odd mixture of
beauty and horror in the Eva's visage as he saw Eiko moving closer out
of the corner of his eye.  Watching for a moment, he found himself
slowly focusing more on the girl, more out of curiosity than anything
else.  "You never did answer my question, though.  What brings you here
today?"

Eiko blushed noticably, and Kozou had to surpress a small grin,
recalling the gesture from many of his younger students.  He'd been
told that there was something about him that was intimidating to those
who didn't know him, though he'd never quite understood it.  "I... I
was just coming down to see it.  For the first time."  She paused,
taking another hesitant step towards the commander.  "And... well, I
guess I wanted to see how they were planning on getting Neil out.  Kind
of immature of me, I suppose."  She paused, hanging her head slightly,
flicking her eyes up towards the man between falling strands of black
hair.  "What about you?  Why did you come down here?"

Kozou smiled at the girl now, though his gaze was still largely focused
on the machine in front of him.  "A lot of reasons, I suppose.  To see
an old project coming of age, to see another project resurrected..."
He paused, then shook his head, raising one hand to smooth his silver-
gray hair back.  Though he doubted the girl would have any idea about
what was truly going on with the machine, he knew that he needed to
watch his words around her, that the risk of her finding something out
was too great while they were still under SEELE's scrutiny.  "Don't
worry about it.  Just the ramblings of an old man with too much time on
his hands."

Sighing, Kozou let his eyes focus fully on EVA-01 just for a moment,
half-expecting the girl to have stopped or turn around.  She had not,
instead continuing to walk closer, a motion that he couldn't quite
fathom.  Most students that got a peek into his mind had a tendency to
be surprised, expecting him to act differently around others, more
aloof.  He glanced back towards her quickly, her hesitance slowly
fading into confidence, like a skittish animal offered some food.  "It
must seem odd to you, one of your commanders talking to you like a
concerned uncle.  I suppose none of you really know us, do you?"

"N-not particularly, sir," replied Eiko, bowing ever so slightly, a
remnant of the proper ways that her parents had tried to drill into her
as a little girl.  She didn't want to be the sort of girl that her
parents wanted, hated to think that she was falling back on their
teachings, but she also knew that Fuyutsuki was old enough to probably
respect the formality.  "I remember some of the other Children talking
to you during some of the mission briefings, but I don't think we've
ever really talked.  Before now, anyways."  She tried to force a smile,
blushing and knowing that she was coming off awkward.

The smile on the aging man's face remained, though it was now tinged
ever so slightly with a sort of bittersweet cast.  "Odd, I suppose.  I
always think of NERV as the sort of tightly-knit group that I remember
from when it formed, the organization that I started investigating and
wound up working for.  But I suppose it's grown beyond that while I
wasn't paying attention."  He stared back at the Eva, head tilted
slightly upwards and hands folding behind his back, somehow managing to
look much younger simply by stance.  "It doesn't feel any different,
though, not to me.  It's still based of the same science that Dr. Ikari
created, still working for the same project."

Eiko could tell that the man was holding something back, something
beneath his voice making it clear that the entire situation felt
undeniably different to him.  But she doubted that she would get a
clear answer if she asked him, and more than anything she simply wanted
the man to leave.  Still, she couldn't help but be a little curious
despite herself.  "I didn't know that the commander developed the root
of the project," she said softly, stepping forward once again, her eyes
breifly flicking towards the gigantic purple golem.

"He didn't," replied Kozou, giving one last glance towards the Eva,
wondering if Kaji had been right when he'd accused the older man of
selling out.  Even though he'd known everything that was going into the
project, even though he'd known that there would be injuries and
sacrifices necessary, he couldn't help but feel as though he had sold
his soul to the devil to do it.  "It was his wife, my student."  He
paused one last moment in front of the door, letting it hiss open
before freezing.  "I don't think I ever would have gotten involved if
not for Yui."

The old man stepped through the doors and allowed them to hiss shut,
leaving Eiko alone in the hangar aside from whatever few technicians
were scrabbling about the bottom layers, attaching futher restraints to
the alread-hamstrung Eva, as though it were about to attempt to break
free at any instant.  It was a disquieting thought for the young girl,
every bit as upsetting as the still-unanswered questions she had about
Neil's actions, the whole thing combining into an awkward blend of
questions void of any answers.  Taking a deep breath, she stepped fully
in front of the Eva's menacing head.

"Neil," she said softly, feeling somewhat silly despite the fact that
she'd made the decision long before, even though she knew she owed it
to the boy within the machine.  "I don't know if you can hear me in
there, if you know that I'm even out here.  Heck, I don't know much
about this at all.  It all seems too... surreal, like something out of
a movie."  She blushed, hanging her head inadvertantly.  "I wanted to
say... I wanted to tell you that I miss you.  And Vash isn't mad at
you.  And... and we don't care why the entry plug got crushed.  We all
know you're a good person, Neil, even if you don't believe it.  Don't
let anyone tell you differently."

For a brief moment, Eiko could swear that the Eva's eyes glowed a dull
green, as though it had momentarily reactivated itself just to let her
know that Neil was still inside.  If the glow was there at all,
however, she didn't notice it half a second later, the purple goliath
simply staring at her impartially.  Shaking her head, she felt another
rush of embarassment coupled with a minor spasm of guilt at the thought
of having gone to see the machine while Vash still lay in the hospital,
and sparing one last glance she turned on her heel and strode out of
the hangar swiftly.

                                  ]++[

Despite having never thought about it before, Neil had discovered that
time did not truly exist, at least not when one had no way of measuring
it.  He was certain that it was still flowing for the world outside,
but as far as he was concerned it might as well not have existed, that
with no way of measuring it whatsoever it ceased to have much meaning.
He had no way of knowing how long he had been in his private chamber of
hell, nor did he have any way of controlling the flow around him, a
feeling that made the entire experience even worse as he felt himself
drift weightlessly in a steady flow of light.

"If she was here, Nieve would hate this."

The words were spoken tet silent, a paradox made true by the same laws
that the rest of the odd are operated under, the same principle that
made it possible for him to see without eyes, to hear without ears, to
experience sensations occuring on levels that he was certain no human
being had ever experienced before.  "She would hate it, though," he
muttered to himself, more out of habit than necessity, the bath of
light about him switching into a shimmering pattern of red and green
filled with flecks of white.  "She always wants to be the one in
control, and nobody seems to be in control here.  It's like a maniac
paradise."

"But Eiko might be right at home.  She might think it was like a game."

Neil smiled with his lack of a mouth, thinking of the simultaneously
energetic and reserved girl, the odd way that she could be excited and
jovial one moment and then uncertain of herself the next.  She would
have said almost exactly what the silent voice had suggested, would
probably have excited herself by thinking of how to make the whole
thing work, a thought that only widened Neil's nonexistent smile as the
pattern changed to black and white mingling into silver.  "Or she would
have figured out how to paint a picture with the void," he muttered,
shaking the head he didn't have.  "One way or the other, maybe both."

"And what of Misato?  She would have admired its beauty."

Neil frowned, suddenly noticing a catch in the voice without sound, a
familiar tone that he'd taken with himself dozens of times even as
purple blotches bled across the sea of light to mingle with streams of
gold.  "Is that you?" he asked of nobody, knowing that the other could
hear him, that it was lying happily beyond the reach of his not-quite-
sight.  "What do you think you're doing, making me miss all the people
from my life?  Is that something that makes you happy?"

"Who are you trying to convince here, Neil?" asked the voice, sounding
almost mocking now as the lights faded into blackness for seconds
before the world solidified in front of Neil once again, the pale
yellow walls of Misato's apartment clear around him.  He could feel the
tightness of the plugsuit fabric against his skin, the cool rush of air
against his skin, a convincing enough illusion as far as he was
concerned, though he'd lost the ability to be entirely sure if it was
nothing more than an illusion.  "I'm only telling the truth, after
all.  Only pointing out the things you avoid looking at."

Glancing about the apartment, Neil quickly found the source of his
double's voice leaning against the far wall of the kitchen, arms
crossed across his chest and a mischevious grin playing across his
face.  It was eerie to think that Neil was capable of actually making
such an expression, that he could look so hateful of the world around
him, though he imagined that it came as an element of being the sort of
person that he was.  "Really, Neil, we both know that I'm not saying
anything untrue.  You want all three of them here, don't you?"

"That has nothing to do with anything!" snapped Neil, taking a step
towards his double as he felt his hands balling themselves into fists.
"They're totally different situations!  Misato and Eiko are friends in
different ways, and Nieve is my girlfriend.  Of course I want them all
here - they're all people that I care about!  People that I can't see
as long as I'm stuck in here!"

"So now you're getting violent.  That's how it is, isn't it?"  The
double smiled wider, pushing off into a standing position and taking a
few menacingly slow steps towards Neil.  "You threaten anybody who
starts to show you for what you really are.  You say that you just care
about all three of them, but in reality that's not the truth, is it?
There's something else entirely going on."  Moving swiftly across the
floor, the other closed on Neil, eyes harsh.  "What's the truth of the
matter, Neil?  Not what you -want- to be true, but what -is- true?"

"What are you even -talking- about?" snapped Neil, his fists balled
tightly, eyes flashing with anger as his double continued to stand and
smirk at him.  He didn't like the direction that the conversation was
heading in, something that the double had managed to hit squarely on
the nose, but he couldn't fathom why the other was pressing the issue
so intently.  For a moment, he wondered if he might be able to puzzle
it out, but the thought vanished from his head in a minor twitch of
anger, his frustration at the nightmarish landscape about him far more
real than anything else at the moment.  "Misato's taken care of me
here, Eiko's been a friend to talk to, and Nieve..."

"Gave herself to you.  Go on, say it."  The double reached up and
shoved Neil backwards, packing enough force in his motion to send Neil
staggering and falling back directly into the wall.  Neil winced at the
impact ever so slightly, but he was more concerned about the anger that
he was feeling slowly seep through his limbs.  "She offered herself to
you, and you took her.  But then you had doubts afterwards, didn't
you?  You wondered if you'd done the right thing?"  Gaping, Neil stared
at the other as his smile widened.  "You don't have any secrets from
me, Neil.  I know everything about you, all of your delicious little
lies."

Something in the back of Neil's head sensed another presence in the
room, and turning he caught movement out of the corner of his eye.  As
he turned fully away from his double he could see Eiko, walking slowly
out of the living room, her motions the unnaturally slow movements of
someone drugged or possessed, eyes wide as if in terror.  "Do you want
to sleep with me, Neil-san?" asked Eiko, her steps seeming irregular as
the world around them shifted and solidified into the hill where he'd
first met the girl.  "Does that sound good to you?  Maybe we should
tell Nieve about it first, though.  Maybe we should let her know that
you were dreaming of another woman after she gave herself to you in a
moment of weakness."

Neil's eyes narrowed to slits, his hands remaining balled into fists.
"This isn't funny," he growled, trying to surpress the waves of guilt
washing across his body, eyes flashing with anger in the hallucinatory
sunlight that splayed across the hill.  "I paid for that.  I paid for
that in blood and tears, and I've regretted it for every single moment
since.  Don't try to make it seem as though I haven't!"  Tears were
welling now, ever so slightly, one action that he wished had been
stolen from him inside the nightmarish world that he'd been cast into.

"Oh, Neil, I don't care," replied Eiko, her voice husky as her slow
movements brought her closer to the boy.  "I don't care if you want
Misato, too.  You can sleep around with anything that wears a skirt if
you want."  She smiled as she drew closer, her arms extending up
towards Neil.  "Don't you like the idea?  Of cheating on Nieve with
me?  Maybe we could invite her to watch some time.  You've thought
about that, haven't you?"  The smile widened, almost beyond what Neil
assumed the girl's jaw was capable of.  "Haven't you?"

"Go away," Neil half-snarled and half-sniffled, his eyes beginning to
go blurry with tears as the girl came closer and closer.  His body,
real or illusionary, was having none of his arguments, and was reacting
to Eiko's words and her presence even as he tried to blot it from his
mind.  Her hand gently brushed against his chin, then closed more
firmly around his shoulder as her body moved closer, the gently warmth
from it radiating clearly through the thin fabric of his plugsuit.
Jerking into motion, Neil found himself bringing up one fist and
smacking away what he knew was nothing more than an apparition, letting
the would-be Eiko fall to the pavement roughly as he glared at her.  "I
said go away!"

In a way that Neil couldn't quite explain, the world seemed to snap
into place around him, and he found himself still standing in the same
place, now dressed in his usual shirt and jeans, people on the hill
around him gasping and gawking.  Eiko gently rubbed her chin as she
rose from the ground, her eyes betraying a deeper wound than the
surface injuries, and she glared up at Neil as he tried to understand
what had happened.  "You just hit me," she muttered, letting her hand
rub more firmly against the spot where his fist had connected.

Neil felt himself trying hard to piece together the situation around
him, the way that the entire world had become more decisively real and
normal, when suddenly the entire thing made perfect sense.  He must
have been hallucinating since the Fourteenth Angel's attack, must have
somehow been keeping the entire traumatic little hellhole he'd
experienced replaying in his mind.  It didn't explain the fact that he
couldn't remember it, but somehow it seemed to fit, to answer all the
nagging questions in the back of his mind.  "Eiko, I'm sorry," he
gasped, stepping towards her, reaching out one hand to her shoulder to
comfort her.  "My mind is still -"

"Don't you -touch- me!" shrieked the girl, her voice sounding
suspiciously similar to Nieve's from the day that they had first made
love as Eiko slapped his hand away roughly.  "Vash was right about
you.  You -are- a monster."  The girl took a single hesitant step
backwards, watching Neil with eyes filled by fear and disgust, Neil
unable to do anything but watch as he felt his eyes going blurry once
again.  Biting her lip, Eiko turned and began running, her skirt
flapping in the wind behind her, hair fluttering about her head, a
beautiful girl utterly terrified of the boy standing in the road behind
her.

Then the world went fluid again for Neil, and he found himself standing
in front of his double once more, both standing in front of the glaring
visage of EVA-01, nutrient fluid sloshing about beneath them.
Something was unplacably wrong about the situation, and Neil could feel
it, but he was more concerned with the fact that his double was slowly
clapping, as though he'd seen something that amused him beyond words.
"Bravo, Mr. Richelieu.  Violence, self-delusions, and heartache, all
summed up in a few seconds of events.  If you weren't a monster, you
could be a moviemaker."  The double's smile returned to its usual
malignant grin, green eyes seeming to glow slightly from within.  "What
do you think that little exchange meant about who you are?"

Letting himself relax for a moment to the extent that was possible,
Neil tried to take in the scenery, the teal-gray walls arching over the
Evangelion, the purple-orange liquid slowly swirling beneath them, as
though searching for the one detail that proved to him that he'd been
dreaming before.  He hated the thought that he could be hallucinating
now while still in the real world, that he was doing horrific things to
the people that he cared about.  "What's going on?  Was that... real?"
He shook his head, feeling his eyes narrow once again, still bloodshot
from the brief flow of tears.  "Tell me the truth, damn it!"

Rather than answer immediately, the double simply took a step foward, a
vague outline of hazy light forming around him as his smile continued
to widen.  "You're petrified.  You're terrified that you've hit Eiko,
really.  But why?  Is it because you don't believe that it's the right
thing to do?  Or..."  The double paused, taking another step forwards
as the outline around him grew clearer.  "Is it something more
fundamental?"  Chuckling as Neil glared at him, the double continued
forward, outline growing stronger with each step and growing harder and
harder to look at.  "You're afraid that if you did hit her, you
wouldn't have any chance with her any more.  That's what it's really
about, isn't it?  Not the violence, just the nasty little side effects."

"For the love of God, shut -up-!" snarled Neil, taking a step towards
the other himself, fists balling tightly and determined to find the jaw
of his demonic mirror.  His double's outline grew even brighter,
however, and he found himself forced to look away, the light too bright
for him to see clearly as it rippled off the shifting nutrient bath
around them.  "Where am I?  Tell me, truly, where in the -hell- am I?"

"Where you belong.  Home.  Does it really matter that much?"  Without
warning or even sound, the purple Eva broke free of its restraints, one
hand reaching out and smashing through both double and the section of
the catwalk he'd been standing on.  There was no sound of rending metal
or splashing debris, just the sudden absence of Neil's glowing copy for
an instant before Neil saw the Eva's gaze turn towards him.  "You're
afraid of the machine, but why?  What terrifies you so much about it?"

The purple hand of the Eva closed around Neil tightly, just enough to
keep from crushing him as the jaws tore themselves open and the arm
slowly brough Neil towards them.  Neil struggled, but he knew that he
had no chance of breaking free from the monstrosity's grip, even if he
was simply hallucinating.  He knew that he wouldn't die, knew that what
he was experiencing couldn't possibly be reality as the world around he
and the Eva faded into a sea of angry black and hateful red, but he
knew that the pain would be intense.  "Where are you?" mocked the voice
of the double as the Eva's jaws opened wide, bringing Neil closer and
closer.  "Figure it out."

In one smooth motion, the Eva brought Neil to its mouth and clamped
down, metal jaws rending through flesh and bone as if they were
nothing.  Mercifully enough for Neil, however, the world went back into
a sea of light before the jaws finished their lethal path, leaving Neil
alone once more in the emptiness of something he didn't understand, his
not-arms wrapped around his body as he felt a chill seep through to his
bones.

                                  ]++[

                                 DAY 15

Leaning against the nearest bulkhead beneath the uppermost level of the
command room, Misato only half-heard the steady noise of construction
as the armor plating was replaced slowly and the main screen gradually
returned to normal operational status.  The two weeks had passed like a
blur, but it had been a slow, agonizing blur, at least to the extent
that such a thing was possible.  Though she took some small solace in
the fact that Ritsuko's preparation time was nearly halfway completed,
she couldn't help but share some of Nieve's apprehensive impatience,
vaguely curious about why the process took so long in the first place.

Sighing, the woman let her thoughts drift back towards Nieve as another
shower of sparks burst from the top of the main screen, another minor
flaw sending a brief lightshow through the chamber and forcing the
workers to begin to climb back towards the screen and figure out the
problem.  Despite Nieve's early difficulties with Neil's absence, she'd
managed to pull herself together surprisingly quickly, though there was
still an obvious sadness lurking behind the girl's eyes every time she
mentioned the boy.  It was a hard situation for both of them, and
Misato was beginning to slowly understand why women could complain
about being mothers even when their children were past the point of
relying on them.  "You're screwing all of us up, Neil," she muttered, a
bittersweet smile making its way across her lips as she tilted her head
back slightly.

Characteristic hissing and whirring came from the direction of the
elevator, and with one last sigh Misato pushed herself to a standing
position, turning and stepping towards the doorway with a wry grin
forced onto her face.  "You're late for the coordination session,
Makoto," she said, her tone only mildly scolding.  "That should tell us
something about the state of our organization right -"

Misato's eyes finally focused on the man in the elevator, and she felt
a minor blush spread across her cheeks as Kaji smiled at her, hands
jammed in his pockets as usual, his stried easy and casual as he
stepped clear of the elevator and let the doors hiss shut once again.
"Makoto's not here yet," he offered, stepping around Misato into the
center of the control level, his blue eyes flicking about the
construction and the consoles.  "His car wouldn't start this morning.
Poor man's got one of the earliest electrical models, back when
electric and gas started competing... small wonder it stalls all the
time."

"You're not the personnel coordinator," Misato half-growled, slowly
turning to face Kaji as he continued his easy stroll about the control
level.  She considered briefly asking him how he'd managed to find out
where the young technician was, but she decided against it, knowing
that she wouldn't get a clear answer in any case.  "What brings you
here today, then?  Did he ask you to be his replacement?"

"Nope.  Good thing, too, since I'd probably screw the whole thing up."
He paused, shooting a grin back towards Misato with the slightest
traces of bitterness lingering beneath it.  "After all, I'm so
irresponsible, and all.  Isn't that right?"  He paused for a moment,
then took a few steps towards Maya's display, ignoring the growing red
flush across Misato's cheeks.  "Hmm.  This is the display of Neil's
status inside of the Eva, right?  Or is it the progress meter?  Ritsuko
didn't explain the whole setup very clearly to me..."

Ritsuko's name brought a sore spot to the front of Misato's mind, at
least when it was coming from Kaji.  She had, at least by her
standards, been doing an excellent job of not being jealous or bitter
about the situation, occasionally going out with the couple as though
they were still all in college, trying her best not to hold it against
Ritsuko.  However, that didn't mean that she wasn't still upset with
the both of them, and the thought that Kaji had been getting more
explanation about what was happening with Neil than her only brought
her frustration and jealousy back to the fore.  "I wouldn't know," she
said, knowing that her voice sounded harsher than normal, taking a step
towards the man and letting her heels click against the metal floor
beneath.  "Ritsuko's kept me largely in the dark about this."

"If it makes you feel any better, you probably wouldn't find it
terribly interesting," offered Kaji, turning back towards Misato and
leaning against the back of Maya's chair as he folded his hands behind
his head.  "She hasn't told me much, either, but she's left some of her
notes lying around her apartment, and I took the chance to look through
them."  His smile shifted slightly, looking just the slightest bit
sinister in the light of the flashes of sparks from the construction
workers.  "On an academic level, it's intruiging, but that's not the
stuff that I find particularly worth reading, and that's the bulk of
it.  You'd probably be bored out of your skull."

Frowning, Misato strode across the floor towards the man, her eyes
narrowed nearly to slits.  "What are you trying to do, Kaji?" she
asked, her tone just quiet enough to make it clear to him that she was
whispering.  "Why the hell are you looking through Ritsuko's notes
instead of just asking her about these things?  She's dating you, after
all.  She's obligated to let you in about this."

"Ah, but not about the stuff that's actually interesting," replied
Kaji, the grin growing a bit more serious as his eyes locked with
Misato's.  "There are a lot of things that they haven't told even you,
Misato.  Stuff that only a few people within NERV know about, things
that I'm most certainly not supposed to be involved with."  He paused,
flicking his eyes up towards the level above them before looking back
at Misato.  "Answer me this.  Where was Commander Ikari during the
Second Impact?"

Misato's frown darkened at the question, utterly confused as to the
point that Kaji was trying to make.  "In Japan, I'd assume," she
replied, knowing that her voice was growing slightly in volume as she
spoke but not being particularly concerned by the fact.  "What is this,
a rehash of that old documentary series?  What does that have to do
with anything?"

"Gendou Ikari left the Antarctic site less than two hours before the
Second Impact, just enough time to get from Antarctica to a secure
location in Japan.  Enough time down to the minute."  The man paused,
letting the implications of his statement sink in as Misato continued
to half-glare at him.  "Something is going on that's a lot bigger than
simply using the First Angel as our personal toy soldier.  And whatever
it is, I'm willing to bet that the project to bring Neil back is tied
up with it somehow.  Probably fairly close ties, actually."

"So -what-?" replied Misato, distantly aware that she would have been
interested nearly any other day of the year but not particularly
worried about it.  "This isn't about some vast conspiracy, this is
about a boy that's been trapped inside of a monstrosity when we're
supposed to be the ones protecting him.  And all you can think about is
how he factors into... whatever the hell you're trying to get at?"
Sighing, Misato shook her head and stepped away from Kaji, turning her
back on him as defiantly as possible.  "That's disgusting, Ryoji.  That
should be the last thing on your mind."

"Don't take it like that," replied Kaji, his voice seeming to drop an
octave as his hand gently closed around Misato's shoulder, sending a
small termor of surprise through her body at the unexpected contact.
Slowly, she turned her head back around, seeing that the grin had
vanished from the man's face.  "I'm worried about Neil, too.  I know
how much he means to you, and I know that he doesn't deserve any of
this."  He paused, sinking his head somewhat as Misato turned towards
him once again.  "I'm sorry.  That wasn't what I was trying to imply."

"I know," replied Misato, sinking her head as well, painfully aware of
how close she and Kaji were.  It would be so easy to simply release
herself, to let her body sink forward into his arms, to find a
temporary release with him even if she knew that it couldn't last
forever.  She could distantly remember hearing her mother and father
fight, remember the way that it had always seemed to go much the same
way, with her father always saying just the right thing to calm her
down.  At the time, she'd hated her parents for it, her mother for
going along with the way that her father acted and her father for being
so terrible at being a husband in the first place.  Taking a deep
breath, she found herself unsure about whether or not she could really
blame either of them any longer.  "Ryoji... I..."

A moment of awkward silence passed between the two, then Kaji quickly
glanced at his watch and took a step back, as though he already knew
what Misato was going to say.  "Sorry, I've got to go now.  I do have a
job here, after all."  He managed to flash a weak smile, jamming his
hands back in his pockets and stepping lightly around Misato as the
woman followed him with her eyes.  Just before he stepped inside of the
elevator, he froze, as though he'd realized what Misato had been
feeling without her saying anything.    "Trust me, Misato.  Please."

Then, before she could ask him anything, even so much as a quick
request for him to explain why she would have reason to doubt him, the
doors of the elevator whirred open, and he quickly stepped in to let
them shut behind him.  Misato stared for a moment longer, then sighed
and shook her head, rubbing her temple with one hand while the other
arm wrapped around her misection.  She had more than enough to deal
with as it was, she hardly needed Kaji's obfuscations on top of it.

                                  ]++[

                                 DAY 21

His left arm still felt odd, even after three weeks with the quasi-
artificial limb on his body, even now that his right arm was just as
healthy as its twin.  But it wasn't the same sort of burning hatred
that he'd felt for the limb at first, and as he walked slowly towards
his destination he only noticed it distantly, as though he could accept
the way that it appeared to him.  "Everything's going back to normal,"
he muttered, shaking his head as he strode through the teal-gray
corridors, the route one of the few that he'd managed to memorize
through Central Dogma, mostly for convenience during emergencies.
"Heck, Neil's even coming back out in a little while.

Vash bit his lower lip involuntarily as he thought of the other boy,
his left arm twitching slightly as though it knew why it had been
needed in the first place.  He knew that he should be mad at Neil, for
crushing him in the first place and then denying him the opportunity to
look worthy again inside the Eva, but somehow he couldn't feel anything
except a mild concern.  "Anyways, not the time to think about that," he
muttered, reaching up and smoothing his hair slightly.  It still hadn't
quite returned to what he considered its natural state, but it was the
best he could manage with limited supplies.

With a deep breath, Vash rounded the final corner, approaching the end
of the hallway and preparing to walk through the sliding doors that he
almost wished would remain shut.  He had been told officially about his
piloting assignment earlier in the morning, though he'd made a show of
not knowing about it beforehand.  Though he could still feel a distant
reservation about returning to the Eva's cockpit, he knew that there
was one last thing he had to do before he made any decisions, that he
needed to make certain of something.

Another deep breath filled his lungs as he stepped in front of the
doors, then Vash stepped through onto the catwalk of the Eva hangars.
EVA-05 was visible to his right, four eyes staring at him intently, its
yellow head seeming to loom over him, but his goal was elsewhere, and
he ignored the yellow golem, striding swiftly across the metal lattice
of the catwalk into the next room.  The silver EVA-03 awaited him, but
once again he ignored it, continuing forward resolutely, blue eyes
focused on the goal, his mind trying to divert itself by paying acute
attention to the way that his light blue t-shirt brushed against his
left arm.

In what seemed like seconds, he found himself passing through the doors
that led into his Eva hangar, the same chamber that he had always gone
to when he had needed to pilot his machine against an Angel.  He could
still see the leering black visage of EVA-03 in his mind's eye,
remember standing before it for the first time in his purple and black
plugsuit, remember the way that it had felt the first time he had
activated it and sent it into combat.  As he turned, he knew that he
would be greeted with something different, and gritting his teeth he
let himself look over the form of his new machine, EVA-06.

Slightly to his surprise, it looked fairly similar to his previous
machine, the same almost samurai-like look of its head as his black
machine.  What had changed were the colors, a deep forest green across
the body, with small traces of black highlights and fades across the
surface of its body.  He could only distantly see below the surface of
the swirling nutrient bath, but he imagined that it looked much the
same.  "It's not that ugly," he muttered to himself, almost wishing
that it had been more different, that he could have had more
opportunity to be frightened by it.

Forcing himself not to hesitate, he flicked his eyes towards the yellow
slits on the sides of his machine's head, almost expecting it to stare
back.  It would have been easier if it looked different from the
machine that had turned on him, and Vash couldn't even attempt to shake
the feeling that the machine was looking forward to doing the same to
him as soon as it was given a chance.  It was an unpleasant concept,
and a slow sigh passed through his lips as he found himself realizing
that he truly wanted nothing to do with the machine.

"But I have to," he muttered, sinking his eyes away from the machine as
though he couldn't bear to stare at it any longer.  His thoughts were
drifting back towards Neil, substituting one uncomfortable subject for
another.  "Is that what he meant when he said he shouldn't have left?
This sort of obligation?"

The Eva in front of Vash offered no answers, and with one more sigh the
boy turned to leave, to return to his hospital bed for another few days
until the doctors finally decided that he was fit enough to leave.
halfway to the door, however, an idea came to him, and he turned ever
so slightly towards the Eva once again, just enough to point his index
finger at the machine, thumb raised and one eye closed as though he was
aiming a gun.  His finger traced a slow path about the machine, finally
settling on the single yellow eye that he could still see, staring at
him balefully.

In one swift motion, his thumb slapped down on the closed fist beneath
his finger and his arm cocked back, as though he'd sent a bullet
straight into the eye of the Eva.  He let his arm hang for a moment
later, his doubts momentarily dulled if not assuaged completely, and
with one final shake of the head he turned back towards the door and
let himself walk out, the door hissing shut behind him and leaving the
deep green Eva alone to its own thoughts.

                                  ]++[

                                 DAY 27

Ryo's apartment complex looked nothing like Misato's, a fact that was
not lost on Nieve as she slowly navigated down the dull gray corridors,
intermittent fluorescent lighting mingling with the fingers of sunlight
through the evenly-spaced windows.  Though it had been the girl's
experience that windows tended to make a building seem more appealing,
the light cast against the pale gray of the walls did nothing so much
as throw into stark relief the drab and soul-crushing nature of the
place, almost like the narrow metal corridors of Central Dogma.  Still,
she needed to see Niobe, out of simultaneous concern for the girl's
state and out of a simple need to talk to someone other than Misato.

Counting off the apartment numbers silently in her head, Nieve brought
herself to a stop in front of Ryo's apartment, quickly double-checking
the numbers in her head to make sure that she was at the right one.
Nodding to herself, she stepped up to the door, rapping against it with
the back of her knuckles, hoping that Niobe hadn't chosen to shower or
nap at the one time that Nieve had planned to see her.  Three sharp
raps sounded against the smooth wood of the door just below the gold-
plated numbers, and the girl waited, knowing that Niobe was closer to
the door and more likely to answer, her chest tightening slightly at
the thought that Ryo could answer the door as well.

Her apprehensions were realized as the boy slowly and mechanically
opened the door, red eyes almost managing to look listless as they
flicked over Nieve.  "Good morning," he said, his tone flat as usual,
head cocking slightly to one side at the sight of the girl.  Nieve
squirmed ever so slightly, the memory of the eerie exchange between
them on the day of the Fourteenth's attack still fresh in her mind
despite the interceding weeks.  "Is something the matter at Central
Dogma?"

"No, I'm here to see Niobe," replied Nieve firmly, stepping into the
apartment before Ryo had a chance to say another word, slipping off her
shoes and stepping into the small walkway between the kitchen and the
wall.  "Niobe!  Niobe, it's me, Nieve!"  She paused, glancing around at
hearing no response, then sighed and turned around towards Ryo,
obviously confused.  "Is she not here right now?"

"She's in her room," replied Ryo flatly, his thumb jerking towards the
door at Nieve's right, set against the wall directly across from the
kitchen.  "Perhaps you can get her to talk to me.  She hasn't been
coming out except to eat, and then only for a few seconds at a time."

Ryo's words sent a minor tremor down Nieve's spine, a recollection of
earlier times in her own life, and she turned towards the door that Ryo
had indicated slowly, knowing in the back of her mind that she truly
wasn't going to be able to deal with the situation the way that she
ought to.  Stepping forward, she forced herself to take a deep breath,
then knocked on the door, inwardly wishing that she could simply go
home and feeling a minor pang of guilt for her selfishness.  "Niobe?"
she called, her voice tenative, ear drifting close to the wood.
"Niobe, are you in there?"

"Go away," muttered Niobe, her voice muffled by the pillow she had
buried her head within, her thin sheets pulled tight around her body
more out of habit than anything.  A small growl of hunger was coming
from her body, but she ignored it, not wanting to leave the room if she
could help it, certainly not if Nieve was waiting outside.

"Oh, come on, Niobe.  There's stuff to talk about."  She knocked again,
more out of habit than anything else, shifting slightly uncomfortably
as she felt Ryo's red eyes staring at her.  There was no tactful way
that she knew of to ask the boy to leave for a few minutes, but she was
still doing her best to think of something, already made uncomfortable
enough simply by what she assumed was going on with Niobe.  "Look,
there are only three more days until Neil comes out of the Eva, and I
feel like celebrating.  Come on out, we'll go out and have lunch
together."

"I said go away!" snapped the girl within the room, her long black hair
a tangled mess around her head, eyes bloodshot from tears and legs
pulled up close to her chest.  "I don't want to go out and celebrate,
and I don't want to come out of the room!  Just go away and leave me
alone!"  She shuddered, feeling an inward pang of anger at herself for
being such a child about the situation even as she knew there was
nothing else that she could do, lethally afraid of what Nieve would
think the instant they saw one another.

Another small spasm of terror went through Nieve, her hands tightening
into fists out of stress, her thoughts becoming more and more frantic
as she thought about what could be happening to the girl inside the
room.  "Niobe, come on, what's bugging you?" she asked, trying to keep
her voice casual.  "We can talk about it, whatever it is.  Daughters of
NERV, remember?  Have to stick together?"  She paused, hoping for some
kind of response, receiving nothing but silence from within the room.
"Niobe?"

"Please, Nieve, just go," replied the girl within the room, feeling
tears begin to bubble back up from behind her eyes, the liquid soaking
into the pillow that embraced her head as she shuddered gently from
apprehension.  "I'm fine.  I just need some time alone right now."  She
felt her voice growing rougher, felt herself failing to even keep up a
decent appearance, sending another burst of self-loathing spreading
across her body.  "Sometimes, sticking together means giving someone
space, right?"

Nieve's tensions redoubled, and she felt her left hand tightening to
the point of a sharp pain, her nails digging into the soft flesh of her
palm.  Closing her eyes, she forced herself to take a deep breath, to
fight down the mild panic rising within the back of her mind, to remind
herself that she couldn't do anything if Niobe wasn't ready to let her
in.  "Right," she said weakly, turning towards Ryo and feeling a small
shiver as she looked at the blue-haired boy, her feet freezing in place
momentarily before allowing her to step back down to the lowered area
where her shoes had rested.  "Ryo, make sure that she keeps eating,
even if it is only a little," she hissed to the boy, hoping that he
would listen to her as she slipped the shoes back on to her feet.  "And
don't let her eat in her room.  Make sure that you can see for yourself
that she's still eating something."

Ryo nodded, feelings still weakly swirling about within his chest that
he couldn't quite identify, his head cocked ever so slightly to one
side as the red-haired girl approached the door.  The thought that Neil
was returning filled him with ideas that he couldn't make cohesive,
fragmentary concepts that felt impossible to reconcile.  "Do you want
me to come with you to celebrate?" he asked weakly, drawing the girl's
attention back towards him as her hand rested lightly on the doorknob.
"I'm not doing anything at the moment."

"That's okay, Ryo," replied Nieve, a minor catch in her voice that
seemed to indicate that she would gladly have used a more permanent
excuse if any had sprang to mind.  The girl quickly opened the door and
stepped out, sparing only an idle wave back into the apartment before
the door swung shut again, not even a simple farewell passing her lips
as she began to move swiftly down the hall away from Ryo's apartment.

Staring at the door for a moment longer, Ryo slowly turned around,
taking a few hesitant steps towards Niobe's room and lifting his hand
to knock on the door himself.  He couldn't figure out the routine to
follow for the life of him, couldn't quite puzzle out what the right
thing to do was, and as he stared at the girl's door his hand came down
and knocked on it almost by accident.  "Niobe?" he said, the question
sounding at once odd and relaxing coming from his mouth.  "It's Ryo.
Do you..."  He paused, trying to remember what Nieve had said.  "Do you
want to talk?"

Niobe's breath caught in her throat at the sound of Ryo's words, every
muscle in her body tensing in stark terror that he would open the door
and see her.  She knew that she'd managed to fail all of his
expectations for her, that it was only a matter of time before she had
to face the fact that he had no reason to rely on her ability
whatsoever after the horrible work she had done defending against the
Fourteenth Angel.  "Don't come in!" she snapped, hoping against all
reason that he would listen to her, deathly afraid that he would simply
come in, that he would tell her she had disappointed him.  "I'm fine!
Just go away!"

Lingering a moment longer, Ryo felt himself let out a heavy breath as
he turned away from Niobe's door, distantly aware that something odd
was making itself known within him once again.  Sparing only a second
more in front of the girl's door, he decided that he needed to try and
draw some kind of logical conclusion from the events of the prior days,
that he had neglected the routine by which he was supposed to determine
all of his actions.  Another deep breath surged into his lungs as he
walked slowly towards his room, mind whirling at the concepts that it
could only barely begin to grasp at.

Inside Niobe's room, the girl's blue eyes were fixed in horror on the
door, hands turning from their usual chocolate color to a pale coffee
as her fingers gripped the pillow tightly.  Her knees were shaking
slightly, the fabric of the sheets moving against her body as she
twitched, breaths rapid and shallow as though it would somehow help
dissuade Ryo from entering the room.  It took her a few minutes to feel
confident that he wasn't coming inside, to relax her grip on the pillow
slightly and close her eyes, her breaths turning into shuddering gasps
of air as the tears began to surface again.

"Failure," she muttered, burying her face in the pillow once again,
letting her anger at herself eat away at her from within like a cancer,
the simple fact that she was crying at all only making the sensation
worse.  Tears rolled forth from the corners of her eyes, mingling with
the strands of hair falling about her, the hair that she knew in her
heart had been one of the many distractions she had failed to deal with
as she should have.  It was more than she could bear, and as her body
shuddered again she wished that the Angel had finished the job that it
had started, that it had destroyed her like she deserved.

A particularly loud wail from Niobe's room hit Ryo's ears as he sat on
his bed, and his head turned slightly to see if the girl had decided to
emerge because of injury.  There was no more particularly audible
noise, however, and he decided to write it off as something else that
was bothering her, an emotion that he couldn't begin to understand.  As
far as he knew, when something was bothering someone, they were
supposed to simply think about the problem logically and come to a
solution.  That was what Commander Ikari had taught him for as long as
he could remember, a simple procedure that kept solutions elegant and
functional.

"But maybe that's not what most people do?" mused Ryo, knowing that the
suggestion was breaking from routine but somehow still enraptured by
it.  His brow furrowed just enough for the change to be noticable on
his pale forehead, and he brought his head back around towards the lone
window in his room, the sunlight streaming through and seeming to
almost reflect against the stark light tone of his skin.  The thought
seemed to hold some merit, and he knew full well that Gendou had told
him he was different than the others, that there was something unique
about him.

Love meant giving control.  He remembered that.  But staring out the
window of his room he realized that he might have hit upon the lone
problem with his attempt to make Nieve love him, the fact that he had
no control to give.  "My life is the routine," he muttered, somehow
needing to hear the sound of his own voice as he felt something within
him twitch in protest.  He had never felt anything but acceptance for
the fact, had known it for as long as he had known anything, but
somehow he was feeling the routine breaking down, as though his life
was crumbling along with it.

                                  ]++[

"How can you be a murderer without killing anybody?"

Neil's feet thundered against the skewed floor of the tunnel, sand
shifting beneath his feet as his legs flailed in terror.  The voice of
the other was filling his world, cutting through his mind like razors,
his eyes only distantly aware of the colors or shapes that the tunnel
around him took.  He knew only that the horrible white beast was
chasing him, that it wanted nothing so much as to drive its spear
through his heart, to lap up his blood and burn away his existence in a
haze of violence.

The sloshing footsteps of the beast came from behind him, and Neil
sprang into motion once again, letting his feet strike against the
floor, the sand beneath his bare feet growing thicker as he realized it
was still sticky with blood.  Around him the air grew colder as the
blood of the floor grew deeper and warmer, the beast behind him growing
ever closer despite his best efforts.  Stumbling to the ground, he
found himself trapped within the warm bload-stained sand as it hardened
into shards of ice, and he could only distantly feel the beast
approach, horrific weapon in hand, the intent obvious as the boy
struggled to free himself from the hallucinatory prison.

"Simply enough.  People can die without ever being cut by a weapon."

In Neil's hands lay a weapon that he loved, a gigantic spear, the point
double-pronged and gleaming as he slowly moved across the darkened
hills of Tokyo-3.  His eyes could see Vash, the boy sneering at him,
disdainful of his ability as the sun set around them.  "You're a
murderer, Neil," he scowled, his defiance growing no weaker as the
other boy prepared to stab him, hands closing tightly around the haft
of the spear, mind relishing the feel of the weapon's weight in his
hands even as he felt the blades of grass beneath his feet lightly
tickle his skin.

Before his weapon could strike towards the other boy's chest, however,
he felt a pang of realization, his mind struggling to reassert itself
for just a second, long enough for Vash to grab the spear and rip it
from Neil's hands roughly.  "I knew it," muttered the other boy as Neil
fell backwards, his balance thrown off completely by the sudden violent
abduction of the spear.  "Monsters need to be true to themselves,
otherwise they're worthless."  Vash stepped towards Neil, the spear
held above his head, a wicked grin rising across his face as he rose
the weapon and the last fingers of the sunlight played across the
angles of his face.

"Destroying someone's life... how can you do it most simply?"

Pain was wracking his body, his hands gripping the small handrests
about him with enough force to nearly snap either his own fingers or
the metal in half, bloody seas swirling about him as he screamed.  The
void was the only existence that he knew, the only thing that seemed to
matter as he felt his skin slowly melt away.  It was painful, but in an
almost gentle way, a burning caress that slowly tore his body free from
its existence, his muscles and tissue melting free into the great
bloody vortex about him.

Noises filled the world around him, and his hands lost the ability to
remain tightened as the muscles holding his hands in place melted like
ice cream on a hot summer street, his half-melted jaw falling open in
both a scream and a sigh of relief.  This was horrible, painful, wrong,
but in another way he could feel himself reaching what he had always
wanted, the unequivocal paradise that he knew existed just outside of
reach.  His mind, too, was melting away, and he only had time for one
final spearing sensation of regret before the neurons began to peel
away into nothingness.

"By betraying their emotions, of course."

If Neil had thought himself even capable of coughing up blood any
longer, he would have expected the thick red liquid to be pouring from
his mouth, his body torn with shudders as he lay on the floor of
infinite blackness.  He recognized the place that he was in, the utter
blackness surrounded by a pool of light, recognized the tight feeling
of the plugsuit's fabric against his skin as he lay and struggled to
breath.  Images whirled about in his mind, memories of experiences and
emotions that he couldn't begin to fathom, things that he had to
believe had been force-fed to him instead of being voluntary emotions.
"What does he want?" he coughed, head still whirling about.  "Who -is-
he?"

A soft touch brushed against Neil's shoulder, and turning cautiously he
saw Yui standing behind him, her eyes seemingly sorrowful.  "Yui," he
muttered, forcing himself to his feet as he looked at the woman, only
able to stare for a moment before she took him in her arms tightly.
Tears bubbled behind his eyes, a simple need for release surpassing his
self-restraint, slow trickling liquid falling down up on the brown-
haired woman.  "Yui, please, tell me that you're not him.  Please tell
me that the two of you aren't related.  Please.  I... I don't know if I
can take any more."

"Oh, Neil, I'm sorry," the woman replied, her voice sounding genuine,
the catch in it seeming to indicate that she truly was something other
than Neil's dellusionary sparring partner.  "I wish that there was some
way that I could help you, truly I do, but there's nothing I can do
except observe."  Her embrace grew tighter for a moment, then relaxed
as she stepped back slightly, a mild smirk on her face.  "In some ways
you're very much like I'd like to picture my son.  You're an amazing
young man, Neil... I hope that my own child is still doing as well as
you seem to be."

Neil wanted to say that she was wrong, that he was still nothing more
than a monster, but as he stared at the woman she faded away into thin
smoke, the last expression on her face oddly bittersweet as though she
knew that she wouldn't be able to see Neil again.  Behind him, he could
hear the laughter of his double, and with slow motions he turned to
face the other, the room whirling about him and shifting into the
smooth hill that he and Eiko had met upon.  "How touching," the double
sneered, stepping towards the boy slowly.  "But it doesn't change
anything, you know.  A momentary chance to feel better won't change the
sort of person you've made yourself into."

"Go -away-!" snapped Neil, his hands clenching back into fists, eyes
flashing with an anger that he couldn't put into words as he felt
rather than saw the sky darken around him.  "Gods, what the hell do
you -want-?  I've admitted that I'm a monster by now, isn't that enough
for you?"

"I told you what I want," replied the double, voice raspy as his arm
reached up and grasped Neil firmly around the neck, the grip tightening
as the boy dangled slightly off of the ground.  The grip was just
strong enough to keep him from outright choking while also preventing
him from breaking free, pain without lethality.  "I want to know why
you came back."  The voice had dropped an octave inexplicably, the
double's eyes now seeming to glow an emerald hue from within.  "I want
you to tell me why you didn't stay gone.  Let me know what your excuse
is, what your -"

Rage boiled and burst within Neil's gut, and tensing the muscles in his
leg he kicked forward, letting his foot bury itself in the other's
midsection and sending the other boy sprawling backwards.  Both fell to
the ground, but Neil scrambled to his feet first, instinctively
shifting onto the balls of his feet as the first drops of rain began to
fall.  "Why do you care?" he cried, his hands balling into fists once
again as the other slowly rose to his feet.  "Is it because you're
afraid you can't convince me I'm a monster any more?  Because you know
it isn't true?"

"Because I know it -is- true," replied the other, sneering at Neil as
rain soaked through his hair, eyes lighting the falling rain into an
eerie cast of bright green.  "You came back to the Eva, a tool to hurt
others.  You came back to Eiko, Nieve, and Misato, refusing to make a
comittment to any of them, keeping them hurting by your own decision,
just another way for you to insert more pain into the lives of all
around you.  You crushed Vash's entry plug to hurt everyone, didn't
you?"

"-No-!" snarled Neil, tears beginning to bubble into his eyes,
confusion seeping through his limbs even though he'd felt certain of
his movements a half-second before.  "I came back because I'm needed,
because I'm -trying- to be better than I am, because I don't want
people to hurt because of me.  Don't say that it's anything different!"

The other simply smiled, letting the world dissolve into cascades of
LCL as he slowly walked towards Neil across the ground of blood-red
liquid.  "It appears that we've reached an impasse, Neil," taunted the
doppleganger, its face no longer resembling Neil's in any but the most
academic sense, something imprecisely off about it.  "One of us is
telling the truth about this, and one of us is lying.  Which do you
think it is?"  The sinister grin widened.  "Not which do you -want-,
but which one is -true-?"

                                  ]++[

                                 DAY 30

"Destrado impulse at less than 3%, all nerve pulses connected in
primary alignment.  Layers One through Five have been flushed of all
erroneous data signals.  LCL is 87% pure.  Extractor has reached the
fifth power barrier, cooling systems activated."  Maya's hands danced
across the keyboard of her console, swiftly running through the various
systems and making sure that they were ready for the procedure, the
silent tension through the air serving to add some urgency to her
motions as Ritsuko looked on.  "All systems are fully on-line, ma'am.
We're ready to begin the procedure on your mark."

Ritsuko nodded, turning towards Misato as the other woman stared at the
monitor.  Something had been bothering her old friend, something far
more fundamental than simply the absence of Neil, but try though she
might Misato refused to let her in except in the most surface ways,
leaving Ritsuko with little recourse but to accept the woman's
explanations and insistence of being fine.  "Everything's been set up,"
Ritsuko announced, drawing Misato's gaze away from the main screen's
display of the empty sea of LCL, various status meters cluttering the
view within the entry plug.  "You're ready, right?"

Misato sighed, wanting to nod even as the muscles in her neck screamed
in protest out of terror.  She certainly wanted Ritsuko to try and
extract Neil, to bring him back into the world, but as the time had
grown closer she'd become aware of the stakes, and somehow she couldn't
help but be nervous at leaving the entire chance to revive the boy up
to Ritsuko.  "Yes," she managed, her voice an awkward whisper.  "But if
anything goes wrong, I want you to abort if at all possible.  I don't
want to lose Neil to that monstrosity."

"Of course," replied Ritsuko, wishing that her friend could know that
she didn't want to lose the boy either at the same time that she wanted
to explain again there would likely be no chance to abort the
procedure.  Staring at Misato for a moment longer, she flicked her blue-
gray eyes down towards Maya, the younger woman staring up eagerly.
"Maya, begin the extraction process.  Keep all machinery running at
minimal operating specifications until I note otherwise."

"Yes, ma'am," replied Maya, her head nodding swiftly before she turned
back to the console and let her fingers dance across the keyboard.
"Activating turbines.  LCL filters are engaging within the Eva... no
erroneous data signals.  Neural pathways are fully active, information
being split and filtered."  She paused, a smile on her face as she
looked up towards her would-be mentor.  "Everything's going perfectly.
You did an amazing job, Dr. Akagi."

"It's not all mine," replied Ritsuko, staring up at the main screen as
a vague apprehension bubbled in the back of her mind.  "My mother
perfected the initial procedure.  I just tried to make sure we wouldn't
fail this time."  She considered saying that she knew her mother hardly
wanted the procedure to succeed the first time around, but she bit her
tongue, knowing that personal politics were hardly appropriate, instead
forcing herself to watch the main screen and hope that nothing went
wrong.

Around Neil, the world had briefly gone liquid before solidifying once
again, the entire horizon and landscape about him seeming to snap
momentarily out of focus for both him and the other.  The other seemed
to be more than a little amused by the new development, eyes glowing
bright green as they found themselves standing in front of Central
Dogma, the artificial light of the Geo-Front washing down on both of
them.  "They're trying to bring you back," he said flatly, stepping
towards Neil once again, the same destination that the other always
seemed to have.  "They want you to be in their world again, outside of
here.  What does that make you think?"

For once, the voice seemed less than contemptuous, giving Neil pause
just long enough for the other to begin talking once again.  "You want
to see Misato and Nieve and Eiko again, don't you?  You want to
continue stringing them along, to hurt them in ways that don't have
anything to do with physical pain.  Abuse them.  You want your Eva
back."  The other smiled, watching as Neil stared wide-eyed, the boy
taking a step back as the double approached.  "Sounds nice, doesn't
it?  All your power comes back, all your ability to hurt people -"

"-No-!" snapped Neil, shaking his head, wishing that he had some way of
knowing how long he'd been trapped inside his own little corner of hell
with his private tormentor.  "I want to go back to -protect- people!  I
want to do something -right-, to make -up- for what I am!"  His words
sounded hollow, whiny, as though he lacked the certainty to even affirm
his existence as the horrific double continued to approach him.  He was
tired, confused, and while he wanted to return to his world in Tokyo-3
he couldn't help but doubt.  "I... I want to be a better person."

"Spare the posturing, Neil," sneered the other, stepping closer to the
boy as the world momentarily went liquid once again.  "Stay inside,
away from them.  You know full well that you're a monster.  You lacked
the spine to protect them from yourself once, so show it now."  The
voice was only distantly related to Neil's now, and as he looked up he
could see that the features of his double had become more angular, the
eyes still glowing a bright green from within as the light above the
two of them turned blood red.

Maya's eyes widened only an instant before the alert sirens tore
through the control room, sending a rush of adrenaline through all
those present as the young woman let her fingers hammer against the
keyboard.  "Nerve pulses are being rejected by the Eva from within!
The fifth layer has been completely filled with neural static!
Cohesion within the cockpit has been lowered to 45%!"

Ritsuko could distantly hear Misato running towards the elevator, but
her mind was elsewhere, her teeth biting into her lower lip as she
tried to think of how to reverse the procedure, knowing that she only
had a few moments before she would no longer have the option.  "Reverse
the pulse flow manually," she said, her voice strained as she stared at
the cockpit, the vague outline of a human body taking shape inside the
floating sea of blood.  "Cut off the connection with the Eva, cancel
the operation, and attempt to reset the filters."

"Not working!" replied Maya, her eyes growing wide as a small film of
sweat dusted across Ritsuko's forehead, the panic and tension of the
room becoming infectious.  "Eva is attempting to eject the LCL due to
foreign substances!  I've cut off the command signals, but the neural
pulses are still registering only as static!"

The world had swirled back into the room of darkness once again, cold
seeping through the thin fabric of the plugsuit and stinging Neil's
knees like fire.  He was kneeling for reasons that even he couldn't
quite explain, eyes closed out of exhaustion rather than a need for
tears, his hands slowly clenching and relaxing as he thought about what
the double had said, the emptiness seeming the perfect opportunity for
him to simply contemplate himself.  "I want to see everyone again," he
whispered, knowing there was nobody around to hear him but whispering
all the same.  "But maybe the other's right.  Maybe I would just hurt
everyone again."

"Why did you come back?" asked Yui's voice, drawing Neil's eyes open
and his head around to see the woman standing behind him.  She looked
sorrowful, crouching behind him with her arms resting on her knees, as
though she was not so much angry with him as disappointed.  "You could
have stayed gone, simply avoiding ever coming to Tokyo-3 again.
Please, Neil, even if you don't want to tell him, let me know.  Why
didn't you leave?"

"I... I don't know," replied Neil, shaking and hanging his head,
feeling unworthy of even looking towards Yui.  "I thought that I came
back because it was the right thing to do, because I knew that everyone
needed my help.  But... but I don't know.  It doesn't make sense.  I
just don't understand."  He sighed, gritting his teeth as his fists
clenched, frustration burning into his mind.  "Why does there have to
be some kind of complicated reason?  Why do I need to -know- why I came
back?"

Misato could only barely think of her reasons for rushing from the
control room, much less put them into words as she impatiently tapped
her foot on the floor of the elevator, waiting for the teal-gray box of
metal to bring her to the level of the Eva hangars.  She knew that she
had to be there, that she didn't want to watch the process unravel on
the monitors, and as the elevator doors hissed open she found herself
running to the door that led into the hangars, her shoes clicking
against the metal catwalks as she ran through the chamber holding EVA-
00, mind focused on reaching the next holding bay without fail.

The doors hissed open, and Misato found herself coming to a stop as she
saw Nieve standing in front of the Eva, eyes wide and focused on the
white slits that passed for the golem's eyes, as though she might see
Neil within them.  "Something's gone wrong, hasn't it?" asked the girl,
her voice weak as she turned towards Misato.  She was wearing one of
Neil's shirts, the pale green fabric managing to not quite be too loose
for her, as though it had been a last memento of his presence.  "Of
course something has gone wrong.  You'd still be up there otherwise."

"Nieve..."  Misato wanted to scold the girl, wanted to ask why she'd
been waiting in the hangar, wanted to say something other than simply
her name.  But the the thought of losing Neil not simply to the
distance of continents but to death froze her lips, made her powerless
to do anything but simply move towards Nieve slowly.  "We don't know
yet," she managed at length, wishing that she sounded convincing,
wishing that she could have let Neil rely on her, wishing that she
could convince -herself- that everything was going to be all right.
"Maybe."

Yui had either departed or simply become invisible in the swirling
eddies of light that surrounded Neil's vision, and either way the
rushing and tearing noise searing at his ears wouldn't have allowed him
to talk with her in the first place.  Though he knew he had no body, he
could feel his image of a body being pulled apart, dissected, becoming
more and more of an indistinct blob vaguely resembling a human shape.
"I just wanted to protect people," he sighed, his voice audible to him
despite the sensation of his ears sloughing back into his head, his
thoughts beginning to drift towards a merciful sleep.  "Maybe I should
just leave, like they said..."

Then, at the back of his mind, Neil felt something, something he
couldn't put into words except to describe it as a glowing point of
warm light.  It was close, he could feel, just outside of the prison
that he'd been locked within, as though it was waiting for him.
"Nieve?" he asked, the slow slur of his voice beginning to recede.
"Eiko?  Misato?  Are they alive?"  His disintegrating body turned,
trying to take in the new information.  "I'd thought that they were...
but..."

His mind closed around the light even as he felt it flicker, the eddies
around him growing more fierce as he felt his body pulling itself back
together.  "They're alive because I came back," he snarled, sending
impulses along his nerves to tense his fingers, the thin appendages
slowly reappearing as he felt the light around him calm.  "They need
me.  That's why I returned, even if it isn't the only reason."  He
gritted his teeth, the world around him calming into an ocean of pure
white light, the glowing point in the back of his head spreading into a
relaxing rush across his entire reforming body.  "I want to go back.
I -will- go back!"

In the control room, Ritsuko could only watch as the displays on the
main screen denied her best efforts to stabilize the procedure, the LCL
becoming a swirling mess of debris and nothingness, alarms shrieking
about her as she tried to think of another last resort.  "Try to
manually recycle the LCL and deactivate the pollution filters.  We
might be able to trick the machine's systems into thinking it's a fresh
batch."  She paused, hearing Maya's fingers racing across the
keyboard.  "And switch back to the primary neural interface routers -
hopefully some of the pollution has purged itself now."

Maya said nothing immediately, but it was obvious simply from the noise
of her keystrokes that Ritsuko's plans weren't working.  "Filters
refusing to disengage!  Command to recycle is being rejected!"  The
tone of her voice was becoming more pointed, obviously distraught by
the situation.  "All neural connections are being severed from within
the Eva!  It's engaging the command to reject the LCL as an emergency
precaution!"

Time seemed to freeze for Ritsuko, and she slammed her eyes shut as she
waited for Maya to announce their failure, not wanting to watch the
main screen display it for everyone to see.  It took her a moment to
realize that the alarms had fallen silent, and as she slowly opened her
eyes she saw the LCL calming, gauges returning to a normal position
swiftly without any explanation.  "Maya, what's going on?" she asked,
her voice sounding just the slightest bit caustic.

"I don't know, ma'am," replied Maya, her fingers still racing across
the keyboard as the gauges began to fly violently towards the positive
position.  "Everything just... started working again.  The neural
connections are re-establishing themselves... and the Eva's forcing the
machines as fast as they can go.  It's like something switched the
procedure back on from within."  Maya paused briefly, then tapped a
couple new keys and let her eyes widen.  "Pushing them -faster- than
they can go.  At this rate, the entire procedure will be finished
within less than a minute!"

Down in the Eva hangar, neither Nieve nor Misato knew about the
dramatic reversal of the recovery attempt, their knowledge of the
situation limited to what they could see of the purple golem towering
over them.  Neither had said anything, both waiting for some obvious
physical indication that the operation had succeeded or failed, some
way of being certain that something was happening within the recesses
of the great beast.  "Please, Neil," Nieve whispered, emerald eyes
focused sharply on the golem before her, biting her lip gently.

Almost as though the girl had spurred the Eva into action, the hatch on
the back designed to admit the entry plug shifted open, the plug
snapping out with a speed of motion that Misato recognized with a rush
of terror.  As they watched, ports slid open on the white cylinder and
violently ejected the LCL, letting the red-orange liquid sprawy outward
in small jets of fluid, the bloody shower filling the room as Nieve and
Misato watched in horror.  "It must have been a failure," Misato choked
out, disbelieving even though she hadn't believed in any other outcome
from the beginning.  "The LCL wouldn't be ejected like that unless the
machine considered it an emergency... Ritsuko must have..."

"Stop," hissed Nieve, her eyes wide and brimming with tears, a thin
film of the bloody liquid coating her body, mingling with her hair and
splattered lightly across her shirt.  Misato looked at the girl
briefly, then followed her gaze towards the entry plug, watching as it
was removed fully from the Eva and brought around to the catwalk, as
though Neil had simply returned from a routine sortie within his
machine.  "We don't know until we see inside.  We don't know
anything."  The girl's voice was hushed as she began stepping slowly
towards where she knew the plug would set down, her eyes brimming with
tears, motions seeming almost drugged.  "He can't have died.  He can't."

Misato stepped forward, about to tell Nieve that Ritsuko must have been
unable to extract the boy firmly, to try and make her feel better, when
she heard a sharp coughing noise, too deep to have come from Nieve's
mouth.  Frowning, Misato took another step forward, her eyes wide in
expectation, still doubting that she was going to see anything besides
the emptiness of the entry plug.  Then she saw a single hand gripping
the lip of the entry plug's exit hatch, the coughing redoubling as the
grip of the LCL-streaked hand tightened.

Neil's lungs seemed to have been filled with the bloody taste of LCL
for an eternity, and as he slowly pulled himself out of the cavernous
interior of the entry plug he could feel each particle of air rushing
in and out of his lungs, the cool sensation like a blessing as he
slowly pulled himself to his feet.  He had managed to pull his pants
and shirt on loosely before he lost the cushioning liquid around him,
but it was only a peripheral concern to him as he slowly brought
himself to his feet, legs unsteady and LCL dripping off of his body.

Both Nieve and Misato were staring at him, and swallowing hard he
pulled himself fully out of the plug, carefully letting himself down to
the catwalk, his eyes focusing slowly as strength and blood flowed back
into his unused limbs.  "Hi," he said, his voice flat and awkward
despite the fact that he wanted to be more emotional, his body
shivering at the cold of the chamber as the LCL dripped down into
nothingness.  Both of his eyes were trained firmly on Nieve, trying to
think of something more to say, something that would make up for the
last words that had passed between them.

Then the girl threw herself forward, her arms pulling Neil close as her
staggered slightly in reaction, the LCL thinly coating their bodies
mingling as his arms slowly raised to embrace her as well.  Tears
flowed gently from her eyes, face buried against his neck and hands
clutching at his shirt, the warmth of her body cutting through the cold
of the chamber and reminding Neil of the small point of light he'd
remembered.  "Don't leave again," the girl sobbed, her body heaving
with each word.

"I won't," replied the boy, letting his eyes close, for the moment not
caring about where he'd been before or what had happened to the Angel,
happy simply in the fact that he was back where he belonged.  "I
won't."  His hands reached up to stroke her hair gently, tears of
relief slowly beading down his cheeks and mingling with the salty LCL,
the two Children crying in one another's arms as Misato stood by with
an oddly contented smile on her face.  There were other things that
needed to be done, but for the moment everything was working correctly,
and Misato couldn't help but feel relieved, as though the world was
returning to peace with itself.

                                  ]++[

Outro: Neon Epoch Evangelion is based off of -Shin Seiki Evangelion- by
GAINAX and company.  It is not intended to be a straightforward fanfic,
but it is building off the work of others, and as such it is done with
the utmost respect for the original works and their authors.
Basically, even though this is an original work, it's based off the
work of others, and if you read this, you should go to see the original.

Special thanks to all of the real Children - you know who you are.

Extra special thanks to Joe Augulis for his consultation on the
Japanese portions of the story.  He might not know much Japanese, but
that's more than I know.

Copyright 2002 Eliot Lefebvre.

NEXT EPISODE:
             The sun shines over all.
             The sun is what we all strive towards.
             The sun can burn those who draw too close.
NEON EPOCH EVANGELION 20: SCARRING LIGHT

                                  ]++[

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