Evangelion The Weaver

#1
Well, I managed ten chapters and decided I had gotten Asuka's characterization all wrong for Episode 14. That, and I'm suitably warmed up from writing all that noise to do a better job on the first chapter. Thought I'd post what I got here, see what you guys think of the Shinji/Asuka dialog so far.
If you ain't familiar with the fic, don't worry too much.
This is not a pairing fic. Nor is it particularly WAFFY or dark.
Description:
A mad spider god is loose in Tokyo 3. Omniscient and insane, it terrorizes the Children and staff of Nerv. As the Angels continue to come, the defenders of humanity must deal with the madness slowly consuming them.


Revision:

Chapter One -1k words-

Change. At some times slight and subtle, at others world altering and mind-numbing. When Shinji had first arrived in Tokyo-3 he had never been inside a school, never had anyone he could actually call friend, barely had any experience talking to women. It had hurt at first, learning to open up to people, learning to accept them for their faults and understanding that they might still like him, despite his own. He had misstepped and misunderstood, but he had learned, too. Shinji Ikari had changed, had turned into something that, now that he thought about it, was better then what he had been. His had been a simple life, living with his teacher in rural Japan, and now it was... complicated. He had formed connections with other people, and even though these connections brought confusion, sadness, and sometimes anger, he did not think he could return to a simple existence.

Less than an hour ago he had been in the elevator with Rei Ayanami, and had asked her about his father. Tomorrow was the anniversary of his mother's death, and Shinji was visiting her grave with the Commander. Shinji wanted to know what he should talk with him about. Rei had been unable to help him just then, but then he had made a comment about the way she looked earlier in the day, when they were cleaning the A-2 homeroom. About the way she held a washrag like he imagined a mother would. She had blushed at his words. That image, of her leaving the elevator and quietly, formally bidding him good night, her cheeks still burning, had helped Shinji more than any information she could have given him about his father. It had got him thinking on change.

The Third Child had hated his father for a long time. For years the man had been little more than a receding silhouette, a cold thing that did not want him, that hated him in return. Since Eva entered Shinji's life, that impression had become confused. The Commander had only summoned him to Tokyo-3 because, as the man had put it, "I have a use for you". He had not even addressed his son by name then, and did not converse with him in all the weeks that followed... Yet after the battle with the Tenth Angel, his father had praised Shinji, called him by his name! If Rei could blush, maybe tomorrow something between Shinji and his father would change... or continue to change.

"Hey, are you listening to me?" Asuka was asking him.

Shinji Ikari and Asuka Langley Sohryu were waiting in the train terminal at the Geo-Front's entrance for their ride home. Normally Major Katsuragi or Kaji would have driven them, but the Major was pulling a double shift to get off work the following day and Kaji nowhere to be found. The children sat on different benches, an aisle between them, but were close enough to talk.

"Sorry, what?"

"Why bother to speak at all, if you're too dense to listen?" his fellow pilot shook her head and sighed.

"I said I was sorry-"

"I know, Third Child. I noticed that," the red-head interrupted. "I was asking if you or either of your stooge friends had gone to the Matsushiro carnival."

Shinji had no idea what she was talking about.

"It's just that," she began in a dismissive tone Shinji had come to suspect, "I've got a date tomorrow. Some med-student Hikari's sister knows. We're gonna go there."

Shinji had arrived at the terminal just after the hour - Asuka had been there, and upon seeing him had immediately complained that she had just missed the train. He had not thought much of it at the time, but now knew she had been waiting for him. She had wanted to tell him about this date, for some reason. Knowing this did not make the conversation any easier - she was scrutinizing him, measuring his response for... something.

No, he thought. Don't be stupid. She just wants to know about this carnival thing.

"I-I've" he began, "I've never heard of that."

Asuka seemed to latch onto his stutter, "Oh, what is it? The date thing? You've never had one, have you?"

"I haven't really had time for that sort of thing," he responded carefully now, his features clouding up. He was getting angry and feeling sick at the same time.

"I should have expected," Asuka laughed. "Well Third, if things go well tomorrow, maybe we can double-date next time! You can take the First."

"I don't..." he began, but trailed off. Something was suddenly strange. Something was wrong. Ignoring Asuka for a moment, Shinji did slowly surveyed the platform, and discovered that they were alone - all the NERV personnel that had gone off-duty must have left on the last train. But suddenly it did not feel like they were alone... it didn't feel like they were on the terminal platform at all.

"Don't?" Asuka was asking. "Don't tell me you don't like girls... what?" the last said when she noticed the boy's suddenly ashen complexion.

"I..." any semblance of control was gone from Shinji. The lights over the train rail were flickering now. "I don't... I think we should l-leave."

The uncertain lighting was casting a very strange shadow on the wall opposite them, across the train rail. The tan-tiled surface seemed to be moving, gaining ponderous depth, the lines of the tile now blending together, then bulging outward.

"Why would we? The train is the fastest way home, where else would we go?" Asuka was asking. If Shinji had not been entranced and terrified by the swimming lines of that strange wall, he might have detected a hint of something else in Asuka's question. It would not be the first such hint gone unnoticed by him.

"Anywhere," he managed in numb response. "Anywhere that isn't here."

"Okay then, Ikari," Asuka said with a slight smile, either misunderstanding or failing to notice Shinji's agitation. "You just lead the way, huh?"

Shinji got off the bench and fought the impulse to just run. He... couldn't just leave Asuka in such a place. It was like... Terror. Pale faces emerging from a darkened ceiling overhead, jerky and disjointed dead things blurring in and out of sight in cut-frame motion. Why the Second Child seemed oblivious he did not know, but...

Behind him, two of the lights over the rail flickered one last time, and then cut out entirely. He knew it without looking, the darkness pushing against him, driving him from the chamber. But he stayed controlled, kept his pace constant, and tried to focus on the sound of Asuka's voice, and the sounds their shoes made on the floor, the swish of clothing, the cold of the rail he rested his hand on as they descended the stairs at the platform's exit. Concentrating on anything but the growing chaos behind him, trying to shut it away, deny it.

*This is about half a chapter*
 
#2
And here is some more.

For a minute awareness seemed to fade away, the thing he had left behind still sliding across his brain, a din of mental noise that made it nearly impossible to do anything but put one foot in front of the other. It would not release him, but naturally repelled him, too. The more progress he made, the harder his forward motion became. He had no idea how far he had gone, or if Asuka was even still following him, when the interference invading his mind finally peaked. In a moment:

He would later lie and say the sensation was like a bubble popping. It was like the thing in his mind was trying to rip out some essential part of him, and he could feel the tug as that part gave way, if only a little, before at last the strange influence fled him all at once. It wasn't like a bubble popping at all. A brief, rapid-fire barrage of disassociated images as his mind was released - he came...

...

Cold slick smooth. Arms swimming in easy motion across... or was it through? Bright light, too bright...
Someone said something. It made absolutely no sense, barely recognizable as language.
A sharp sensation. Arms tried to raise defense, but wouldn't move right.
Slick, smooth. Light.
Pain. His face stung. Someone said: "What the Hell is wrong with you!?"

Asuka.

Shinji opened eyes, then winced at the bright overhead lights. Asuka was kneeling beside him, a look of disgust on her face. He tried to rise, but his palms slid easily across the smooth metal of the corridor. He was drenched in sweat and other fluids.

"Christ Ikari, just when you start acting normal..." Asuka was standing, taking a few steps back. Shinji looked at her for a moment, trying to remember how he had come to be in this bright place. The red-head glared at him and took another step back.

"Don't," she growled at him. "Don't even think about it."

She thinks I'm trying to look up her skirt, Shinji thought as he rolled onto his stomach and - very hesitantly - stood. She thinks... his mind seized on that idea, that meme, and it took him a moment to compose himself. Eyes tearing up under the harsh light, he glanced up and down the hallway. They were in a different part of the Geo-Front, exactly where, he had no idea.

Misato, he thought. I need to tell... Misato.

He pulled out his cellphone, discovered the casing and screen were cracked, the keys jammed.

"Yeah, you took quite a spill," Asuka said, reaching into her schoolbag and producing her own phone. "This is going to be an interesting conversation..."

"There was something," Shinji said sharply, "on the train platform. Did you see it?"

"Nope," Asuka replied as she brought the phone to her ear.

"Where are we? How long..."

"Dammit," the Second Child interrupted, snapping the device shut, "there are supposed to be radio relays in this place." She started down the hallway, "Just stay put, I need to get a signal."

"You didn't... hear anything?" he continued, moving to follow her.

"No Ikari, all I heard was a bunch of bullshit from you... and you know what?" the Second Child turned around, and Shinji saw real anger in her eyes - she looked like she wanted to hit him. "I did not ask to live with you and Major Katsuragi, Third Child. I was ordered to. I've got my own life, and if you have a problem with me going on a date, too fucking bad!"

"I didn't mean... I don't understand..." Shinji stammered, his head beginning to throb. "This isn't about that!"

"See, now you're yelling," Asuka was walking backwards, a disinterested look on her face... but...

She's afraid of me, he thought. She's... disappointed? Angry?

The throbbing sensation in his head spiked. He was... seeing things he shouldn't be able to see - looking into Asuka without knowing how. He took a hesitant step towards her retreating form, and felt her disgust rise.

"I didn't... mean to... disappoint," he managed. The pain in his head was growing murderous. "I think... can you... please..."

I need help, he thought at her when the pain briefly denied him speech. I'm not sure what is happening or how to stop it but... please...

Shinji closed his eyes, felt tears run down his face.

"Oh no," he barely heard the words, but sensed Asuka's surprise. When he opened his eyes, his vision was tinted red.
 
#3
*revised areas overlap*

"No Ikari, all I heard was a bunch of bullshit from you... and you know what?" the Second Child turned around, and Shinji saw real anger in her eyes. "I did not ask to live with you and Major Katsuragi. I was ordered to. I've got my own life, and if you have a problem with me going on a date, too fucking bad!"

"I didn't mean... I don't understand..." Shinji stammered, his head beginning to throb. "This isn't about that!"

"See, now you're yelling," Asuka was walking backwards, a disinterested look on her face but...

She's afraid of me, he thought. She's... disappointed? Angry?

The throbbing sensation in his head spiked. He was... seeing things he shouldn't be able to see - looking into Asuka without knowing how. He took a hesitant step towards her retreating form, and felt her disgust rise.

"I'm didn't... I'm not..." was all he could manage - the pain in his head was growing murderous.

I need help, he thought at her as the pain denied him speech. I'm not sure what is happening or how to stop it but... please...

As this silent plea concluded, three things happened in rapid sequence:

The Second Child arrived at the not unreasonable conclusion that disclosing elements of her possibly intimate personal life had triggered a psychotic episode in the Third Child. She viewed his actions as pathetic and entirely beneath response. He obviously had some delusional idea that a relationship with her was a foregone conclusion, just because they lived together. Now he was on the ground, eyes wide, in an apparent state of crippled mania. Part of her was thrilled that she could induce such a response, another part was disappointed in Ikari and herself - she had clearly misjudged him. And underneath it all was a small voice that told her something was terribly wrong, though she had no reason to think as such save for what she saw as Shinji's exaggerated emotional response.

She had not really noticed the flickering lights on the train platform. She had sensed nothing extraordinary. It was to her credit that she had any tiny doubt at all.

Asuka Langley Sohryu was not stupid, and not so self-centered as to attribute the cause of Shinji's behavior to herself without a good deal of thought. She had followed the boy all over the upper level of the Geo-Front for nearly half an hour before he had collapsed. She had thought his behavior was due to his own introspection, trying to sort through his own emotional baggage in order to react to Asuka's date. Or perhaps he was leading her somewhere. There were restaurants on the upper level, and she would not have been entirely adverse to the idea of eating out. Thinking of opportunities lost she turned, walking forward now, leaving Shinji behind.

The hallway extended well beyond Asuka's ability to focus. It was a maintenance passage Shinji had chosen to turn onto at a nearby junction. In theory, it ran the length of the Geo-Front's upper level. As Asuka turned away from the Third Child, something in the distance caught her eye, a smear of darker tones far down the corridor, beyond her ability to focus. She had fewer than six seconds to entertain the notion that what she saw was something easily explained, as the 'front' she had been observing hit, and then passed through her. The sensation was like being struck, or electrocuted - it knocked Asuka to the ground. The already mute tones of the corridor, metallic shades of blue, bled away, and the lights began to flicker. Sound receded until her breathing was loud in her own ears. When she finally screamed, and she did if only for a moment, the noise almost deafened her.

Down the corridor, where she had been headed, the air was growing thick. Arcs of electricity streamed out of the lights and walls, swimming through the air at impossibly slow speeds, like eels underwater, before becoming diffuse and just... vanishing. This hypnotic, sinister sight held Asuka for precious seconds, until her adrenaline kicked in. She turned and ran, feeling the hair on her head pulling backward, and a faint shiver as her entire body reacted to what she would later describe as a massive static charge, though at the time it simply heightened her desire to flee. Her feet made no sound on the metal as she ran, but when she came to a sudden, sliding stop several joints popped, and they echoed through her mind with painful clarity. Shinji looked up at her, his hair on end like her own, something too dark to be tears streaming from either eye.

He had known, hadn't he? Asuka was torn between dragging him away and just abandoning the boy. She did not understand what was happening, only that Shinji had foreseen it.

Something on the platform, she thought. He said he saw something on the platform... she shook her head and reached down to help the boy up, or drag him if need be. Shinji couldn't cause something like this to happen. It was easier to believe that he had sensed and attempted to avoid it - how, Asuka had no idea. She was bending over to help the boy up, or drag him if needs must, when the charge she had felt building in the corridor spent itself. She looked up

there was black

empty depth where the hallway should have been

and as she tried to pull Shinji away from it

as she reacted with near mindless ferocity at this

utterly

wrong

blaspheme

four hooks emerged from the surface

the hole

each slamming home on the ceiling, floor, and walls

and then

cross the void so black to blue world-young spins a meager Web with beautiful tepid nature

(those words played across Shinji's mind. Asuka felt only pain, a terrible headache.)

it emerged, unfolded, spewed out of the rent in reality.
 
#4
overlapping bits are revised. This is pretty close to the end of Chapter One. First draft, ecetera.


Something on the platform, she thought. He said he saw something on the platform... she shook her head and reached down to help the boy. Shinji could not have cause something like this to happen. It was easier to believe that he had sensed it - how, Asuka had no idea - and attempted to avoid it . As she bent over to help the boy up, or drag him if needs must, the charge she had felt building in the corridor spent itself. She looked up and... there was black.

A... surface had appeared scant feet away, blocking the end of the hallway from which the static field had first issued. It was a shiny black, like cut onyx. Asuka could see herself in it. The thing had no distinct borders, overlapping with the surfaces it rested against while at the same time appearing to issue from some far-away place. Looking at just the deep black, it appeared to be close and solid and real. Looking at the "surface" and the area around it though, it seemed that a hole had been torn in the air itself, and Asuka was viewing an impossibly large object an incredible distance away.

Asuka tried not to look, but kept finding her eyes and attention drawn to the awful thing. She tried to get Shinji on his feet, but it appeared the boy could not move under his own power. His eyes were fixed on the thing in the hallway, his body limp. She gathered his legs up instead, and tried to drag him down the corridor backwards, her eyes trying to focus on him, and not dart up to glimpse the object of their mutual fascination.

She had made little progress when something emerged from the black thing. Four slender black stalks extruded from the surface, each slamming home on one of the four surfaces that framed it, punching through the metal and then tearing backwards under the weight of the terrible thing that emerged/unfolded/spewed out of that rent in reality. Asuka saw it for only a moment, saw the black and black and black and red, before falling backward in a dead faint.

Shinji was less fortunate. He could do nothing but watch as the thing emerged, and started to drag itself toward him! The four leg-stalks that had first emerged disappeared beneath the bulk of the creature as it leaned forward to accommodate the too-narrow corridor. Four other appendages reached out, sinking into the walls and floor easily, pulling it forward. Whereas all four leg-stalks had ended in simple hooks, these other legs were paired in design. The lower set, which was currently digging into the walls, had what looked like a knot of tentacles in lieu of hooks. The upper set, situated just below the things awful head, resembled human arms and hands, except with too many points of articulation, and they were both as black as the rest of the thing, and tearing up the floor in an effort to move the creature forward. All of this Shinji would later recall with perfect clarity, though at the time it occurred his thoughts were mute. He simply existed, and saw. And heard.

Since the thing had emerged words had been playing through Shinji's mind, words that would later be every bit distinct as the memory of the creature's appearance. Shinji would recite them, but there was something to them words alone could not convey.

cross the void so black to blue world-young spins a meager Web with beautiful tepid nature

it had sang as it emerged from the crawling darkness.

Gods and gods and powers and Powers

it continued as it crawled over to him.

the one-way dance, the inevitable conclusion that end that savage end where all
are one such simplicity in synchronicity a thing I must commend you for


it scooped him up in its human hands, holding him close to its 'face', where eight glowing red orbs were situated in ovoid shape around its head. Below that was the thing's mouth, which churned in dumb motion.

my fellow Weaver human Weaver genocide Weaver blue Weaver fate written in dust and celestial and by and for dead hands

The thing that called itself Weaver waved one of its hands before Shinji, one of the lower set that had earlier resembled a knot of tentacles. Now those thick black tubules seemed to melt, or retract, and reveal cutting edges and teeth. The 'fingers' closed into a 'fist' and parted with the hiss of an organic scissor, with the promise of easily parted flesh.

a change

Shinji blinked at that last word, focused on it. Change...

yes a change to this wonderous web with the soon-end Weaver the Artist spake to
Weaver the Genocide


He felt a pinch at his right wrist, and then the Weaver was showing him his hand in its own nightmarish, cutting fist.

anychange at anytime no this weakness taint this Weaver serves the quintessence the glamor and glamour and geas

Shinji's hand was skinned and pulped before his eyes, juiced and melted to the bones, which were ground into a fine dust. All this had been accomplished but with one opening and closing motion of the creature's hand.

Weavers weaving and intersecting now and before the-end the last chance says the outside Weaver to him who lies therein

As the Weaver said this it dropped Shinji, reached out with both of its human hands, and tore a hole in the space between them. This hole was unlike the first, transparent and watery. The spider - it had to be a spider! surged through the opening, its final words slipping through Shinji's mind. When it was through, its human hands re-emerged and daintily shut the portal after itself.
 
#5
Chapter One - Complete
Change. At some times slight and subtle, at others world altering and mind-numbing. When Shinji had first arrived in Tokyo-3 he had never been inside a school, never had anyone he could actually call friend, barely had any experience talking to women. It had hurt at first, learning to open up to people, learning to accept them for their faults and understanding that they might still like him, despite his own. He had misstepped and misunderstood, but he had learned, too. Shinji Ikari had changed, had turned into something that, now that he thought about it, was better then what he had been. His had been a simple life, living with his teacher in rural Japan, and now it was... complicated. He had formed connections with other people, and even though these connections brought confusion, sadness, and sometimes anger, he did not think he could return to a simple existence.

Less than an hour ago he had been in the elevator with Rei Ayanami and had asked her about his father. Tomorrow was the anniversary of his mother's death, and Shinji was visiting her grave with the Commander. Shinji wanted to know what he should talk with him about. Rei had been unable to help him just then, but then he had made a comment about the way she looked earlier in the day, when they were cleaning the A-2 homeroom - about the way she held a washrag like he imagined a mother would. She had blushed at his words. That image, of her leaving the elevator and quietly, formally bidding him good night, her cheeks still burning, had helped Shinji more than any information she could have given him about his father. It had got him thinking on change.

The Third Child had hated his father for a long time. For years the man had been little more than a receding silhouette, a cold thing that did not want him, that hated him in return. Since Eva entered Shinji's life, that impression had become confused. The Commander had only summoned him to Tokyo-3 because, as the man had put it, "I have a use for you". He had not even addressed his son by name then, and did not converse with him in all the weeks that followed... Yet after the battle with the Tenth Angel, his father had praised Shinji, called him by his name! If Rei could blush, maybe tomorrow something between Shinji and his father would change - or continue to change.

"Hey, are you listening to me?" Asuka was asking him.

Shinji Ikari and Asuka Langley Sohryu were waiting in the train terminal at the Geo-Front's entrance for their ride home. Normally Major Katsuragi or Kaji would have driven them, but the Major was pulling a double shift to get off work the following day and Kaji nowhere to be found. The children sat on different benches, an aisle between them, but were close enough to talk.

"Sorry, what?"

"Why bother to speak at all, if you're too dense to listen?" his fellow pilot shook her head and sighed.

"I said I was sorry-"

"I know, Third Child. I noticed that," the red-head interrupted. "I was asking if you or either of your stooge friends had gone to the Matsushiro carnival."

Shinji had no idea what she was talking about.

"It's just that," she began in a dismissive tone he had come to suspect, "I've got a date tomorrow. Some med-student Hikari's sister knows. We're gonna go there."

Shinji had arrived at the terminal just after the hour - Asuka had been there, and upon seeing him had immediately complained that she had just missed the train. He had not thought much of it at the time, but now knew she had been waiting for him. She had wanted to tell him about this date, for some reason. Knowing that did not make the conversation any easier - she was scrutinizing him, measuring his response for... something.

No, he thought. Don't be stupid. She just wants to know about this carnival thing.

"I-I've" he began, "I've never heard of that."

Asuka seemed to latch on to his stutter, "Oh, what is it? The date thing? You've never had one, have you?"

"I haven't really had time for that sort of thing," he responded carefully now, his features clouding up. He was getting angry and feeling sick at the same time.

"I should have expected," Asuka laughed. "Well Third, if things go well tomorrow, maybe we can double-date next time! You can take the First."

"I don't..." he began, but trailed off. Something was suddenly strange. Something was wrong. Ignoring Asuka for a moment, Shinji did slowly surveyed the platform, and discovered that they were alone - all the NERV personnel that had gone off-duty must have left on the last train. But suddenly it did not feel like they were alone... it didn't feel like they were on the terminal platform at all.

"Don't?" Asuka was asking. "Don't tell me you don't like girls... what?" the last said when she noticed the boy's suddenly ashen complexion.

"I..." any semblance of control was gone from Shinji as the feeling of unease increased. The lights over the train rail were flickering now. "I don't... I think we should l-leave."

The uncertain lighting was casting a very strange shadow on the wall opposite them, across the train rail. The tiled surface seemed to be moving, gaining ponderous depth, the lines between tiles now blending together, then bulging outward.

"Why would we? The train is the fastest way home, where else would we go?" Asuka was asking. If Shinji had not been entranced and terrified by the swimming lines of that strange wall, he might have detected a hint of something else in Asuka's question. It would not be the first such hint gone unnoticed by him.

"C-can't you...?" He glanced at the girl and saw her staring at him with an untroubled, curious expression. She could not feel it, could not see it! The wall, the lights, they drew his eye and all of his attention even as he tried to deny the strange phenomena, but Asuka was completely unaffected!

"Anywhere," he finally managed in numb response. "Anywhere that isn't here."

"Okay then, Ikari," Asuka said with a slight smile, either misunderstanding or failing to notice Shinji's continued agitation. "You just lead the way, huh?"

Shinji got off the bench and fought the impulse to just run. He... couldn't leave Asuka in such a place. It was like... Terror. Pale faces emerging from a darkened ceiling overhead, jerky and disjointed dead things blurring in and out of sight in cut-frame motion. Why the Second Child seemed oblivious he did not know, but...

Behind him, two of the lights over the rail flickered one last time, and then cut out entirely. He knew it without looking, the darkness pushing against him, driving him from the chamber. But he stayed controlled, kept his pace constant, and tried to focus on the sound of Asuka's voice, and the sounds their shoes made on the floor and the swish of their clothing as they walked, and the cold of the rail he rested his hand on as they descended the stairs at the platform's exit. Concentrating on anything but the growing chaos behind him, trying to shut it away, deny it.

For a minute awareness seemed to fade away, the thing he had left behind still sliding across his brain, a din of mental noise that made it nearly impossible to do anything but put one foot in front of the other. It would not release him, but naturally repelled him, too. The more progress he made, the harder his forward motion became. He had no idea how far he had gone, or if Asuka was even still following him, when the interference invading his mind finally peaked. In a moment:

He would later lie and say the sensation was like a bubble popping. It was like the thing in his mind was trying to rip out some essential part of him, and he could feel the tug as that part gave way, if only a little, before at last the strange influence fled him all at once. It wasn't like a bubble popping at all. A brief, rapid-fire barrage of disassociated images as his mind was released - he came...

...
Cold slick smooth. Arms swimming in easy motion across... or was it through? Bright light, too bright...
Someone said something. It made absolutely no sense, barely recognizable as language.
A sharp sensation. Arms tried to raise defense, but wouldn't move right.
Slick, smooth. Light.
Pain. His face stung. Someone said: "What the Hell is wrong with you!?"
Asuka.

Shinji opened eyes, then winced at the bright overhead lights. Asuka was kneeling beside him, a look of disgust on her face. He tried to rise, but his palms slid easily across the smooth metal of the corridor. He was drenched in sweat and other fluids.

"Christ Ikari, just when you start acting normal..." Asuka was standing, taking a few steps back. Shinji looked at her for a moment, trying to remember how he had come to be in this bright place. The red-head glared at him and took another step back.

"Don't," she growled at him. "Don't even think about it."

She thinks I'm trying to look up her skirt, Shinji thought as he rolled onto his stomach and - very hesitantly - stood. She thinks... his mind seized on that idea, that meme, and it took him a moment to compose himself. Eyes tearing up under the harsh light, he glanced up and down the hallway. They were in a different part of the Geo-Front, exactly where, he had no idea.

Misato, he thought. I need to tell... Misato.

He pulled out his cellphone, discovered the casing and screen were cracked, the keys jammed.

"Yeah, you took quite a spill," Asuka said, reaching into her schoolbag and producing her own phone. "This is going to be an interesting conversation..."

"There was something," Shinji said sharply, "on the train platform. Did you see it?"

"Nope," Asuka replied as she brought the phone to her ear.

"Where are we? How long..."

"Dammit," the Second Child interrupted, snapping the device shut, "there are supposed to be radio relays in this place." She started down the hallway, "Just stay put, I need to get a signal."

"You didn't... hear anything?" he continued, moving to follow her.

"No Ikari, all I heard was a bunch of bullshit from you... and you know what?" the Second Child turned around, and Shinji saw real anger in her eyes. "I did not ask to live with you and Major Katsuragi. I was ordered to. I've got my own life, and if you have a problem with me going on a date, too fucking bad!"

"I didn't mean... I don't understand..." Shinji stammered, his head beginning to throb. "This isn't about that!"

"See, now you're yelling," Asuka was walking backwards, her fierce expression melting into a neutral one but...

She's afraid of me, he thought. She's... disappointed? Angry?

The throbbing sensation in his head spiked. He was... seeing things he shouldn't be able to see - looking into Asuka without knowing how. He took a hesitant step towards her retreating form, and felt her disgust rise.

"I'm didn't... I'm not..." was all he could manage - the pain in his head was growing murderous.

I need help, he thought at her as the pain denied him speech. I'm not sure what is happening or how to stop it but... please...

As this unheard plea concluded, Shinji slumped to the floor.

Misunderstanding the cause of her fellow pilot's actions, the Second Child arrived at the not unreasonable conclusion that disclosing elements of her possibly intimate personal life had triggered some sort of break in the Third Child. Part of her was thrilled that she could induce such a response in anyone, another part was disappointed in Ikari and herself - she had clearly misjudged him. And underneath it all was a small voice that told her something was terribly wrong, though she had no reason to think as such save for what she saw as Shinji's exaggerated emotional response.

Asuka Langley Sohryu was not stupid, and not so self-centered as to attribute the cause of Shinji's behavior to herself without a good deal of thought. She had not really noticed the flickering lights on the train platform. She had sensed nothing extraordinary. It was to her credit that she had any tiny doubt at all.

She had followed the boy all over the upper level of the Geo-Front for nearly half an hour before he had collapsed. She had thought his behavior was due to his own introspection, trying to sort through his own emotional baggage in order to react to Asuka's date. Or perhaps he was leading her somewhere. There were restaurants on the upper level, and she would not have been entirely adverse to the idea of eating out. (Yeah. I know. Laugh it up.)

But by his reaction, it seemed to Asuka that Shinji had some twisted idea of ownership, or attachment to her... just because they lived together? To her, his behavior seemed like that of a stalker, just a desperate boy who thought he was entitled to affection, but could not speak to his emotions. He really was just a child. Hating herself for ever thinking otherwise, Asuka turned, walking forward now, leaving Shinji behind.

The hallway extended well beyond Asuka's ability to focus. It was a maintenance passage Shinji had chosen to turn onto at a nearby junction. In theory, it ran the length of the Geo-Front's upper level. As Asuka turned away from the Third Child, something in the distance caught her eye, a smear of darker tones far down the corridor, beyond her ability to focus. She had fewer than six seconds to entertain the notion that what she saw was something easily explained, before the 'front' she had been observing hit, and then passed through her. The sensation was like being electrocuted - it knocked Asuka to the ground. The already mute tones of the corridor, metallic shades of blue, bled away, and the lighting began to flicker. Sound receded until her breathing was loud in her own ears. When she finally screamed - and she did, if only for a moment - the noise almost deafened her.

Down the corridor, where she had been headed, the air was growing thick. Arcs of electricity streamed out of the lights and walls, swimming through the air at impossibly slow speeds, like eels underwater, before becoming diffuse and just... vanishing. This hypnotic, sinister sight held Asuka for precious seconds, until her adrenaline kicked in. She turned and ran, feeling the hair on her head pulling backward, and a faint shiver as her entire body reacted to what she would later describe as a massive static charge, though at the time it simply heightened her desire to flee. Her feet made no sound on the metal as she ran, but when she came to a sudden, sliding stop several joints popped, and they echoed through her mind with painful sharpness. Shinji looked up at her, his hair on end like her own, something too dark to be tears streaming from either eye.

He had known, hadn't he? He had felt it coming, and now that it was here, it was hurting him.

Asuka was torn between helping and abandoning the boy. She did not understand what was happening, only that Shinji had seen it coming.

Something on the platform, she thought. He said he saw something on the platform... she shook her head and reached down to help the boy. Shinji could not have cause something like this to happen. It was easier to believe that he had sensed it - how, Asuka had no idea - and attempted to avoid it . As she bent over to help the boy up, or drag him if it was required, the charge she had felt building in the corridor spent itself. She looked up and... there was black.

A... surface had appeared scant feet away, blocking the end of the hallway from which the static field had first issued. It was a shiny black, like cut onyx. Asuka could see herself in it. The thing had no distinct borders, overlapping with the surfaces it rested against while at the same time appearing to issue from some far-away place. Looking at just the deep black, it appeared to be close and solid and real. Looking at the 'surface' and the area around it though, it seemed that a hole had been torn in the air itself, and Asuka was viewing an impossibly large object an incredible distance away.

She tried not to look, but kept finding her eyes and attention drawn to the awful thing. She tried to get Shinji on his feet, but it appeared the boy could not move under his own power. His eyes were fixed on the thing in the hallway, his body limp. She gathered his legs up instead, and tried to drag him down the corridor backwards, her eyes trying to focus on him, and not dart up to glimpse the object of their mutual fascination.

She had made little progress when something emerged from the black thing. Four slender black stalks extruded from the surface, each slamming home on one of the four surfaces that framed it, punching through the metal and then tearing backwards under the weight of the terrible thing that emerged/unfolded/spewed out of that rent in reality. Asuka saw it for only a moment, saw the black and black and black and red, before falling backward in a dead faint.

Shinji was less fortunate. He could do nothing but watch as the thing emerged, and started to drag itself toward him! The four leg-stalks that had first emerged disappeared beneath the bulk of the creature as it leaned forward to accommodate the too-narrow corridor. Four other appendages reached out, sinking into the walls and floor easily, pulling it forward. Whereas all four leg-stalks had ended in simple hooks, these other legs were paired in design. The lower set, which was currently digging into the walls, had what looked like a knot of tentacles in lieu of hooks. The upper set, situated just below the things awful head, resembled human arms and hands, except with too many points of articulation, and they were both as black as the rest of the thing, tearing up the floor in an effort to move the creature forward. All of this Shinji would later recall with perfect clarity, though at the time it occurred his thoughts were mute. He simply existed, and saw. And heard.

Since the thing had emerged words had been playing through Shinji's mind, words that would later be every bit distinct as the memory of the creature's appearance. He would recite them later, word for word, but there was something to thing's song words alone could not convey.

cross the void so black to blue world-young spins a meager Web with beautiful tepid nature
it had sang as it emerged from the crawling darkness,
Gods and gods and powers and Powers
continuing as it crawled over to him,
the one-way dance, the inevitable conclusion that end that savage end where all are one such simplicity in synchronicity a thing I must commend you for
and scooped him up in its human hands, holding him close to its 'face', where eight glowing red orbs were situated in ovoid formation around its head. Below that was the thing's mouth, which churned in dumb motion.

my fellow Weaver human Weaver genocide Weaver blue Weaver fate written in dust and celestial and by and for dead hands
The thing that called itself Weaver waved one of its hands before Shinji, one of the lower set that had earlier resembled a knot of tentacles. Now those thick black tubules seemed to melt, or retract, and reveal cutting edges and teeth. The 'fingers' closed into a 'fist' and parted with the hiss of an organic scissor, with the promise of easily parted flesh.

a change
Shinji blinked at that last word, focused on it. Change...
to this wonderous web with the soon-end Weaver the Artist spake to Weaver the Genocide
He felt a pinch at his right wrist, and then the Weaver was showing him his hand in its own nightmarish, cutting fist.

anychange at anytime no this weakness taint this Weaver serves the quintessence the glamor and glamour and geas
Shinji's hand was skinned and pulped before his eyes, juiced and melted to the bones, which were ground into a fine dust, and then reduced to nothing at all. This had been accomplished but with one opening and closing motion of the creature's nightmarish lower hand.

Weavers weaving and intersecting now and before the-end the last chance says the outside Weaver to him who lies therein
As the Weaver said this it dropped Shinji, reached out with both of its human hands, and tore a hole in the space between them. This hole was unlike the one the Weaver had emerged from - if hole it had actually been. This portal was translucent, and shimmered like the surface of water, distorting the image of the creature behind it. The spider - it had to be a spider! surged through the opening, its final words slipping through Shinji's mind. When it was through, its human hands re-emerged and daintily closed the portal after itself.

Change. His right arm ended with a smooth knob of flesh, right above where the wrist should be. Shinji cradled it against his chest and was finally able to just let go, his mind expanding, flowing out and away. There was no ruined hallway, there was no ruined him. Nothing around him. Everything that mattered.
 
#6
This is the end of the original series, but nicely segues from the rewrite, too.

Weaver's End

Thirty Six - Weaver's End

Eight years later.

The Aedes Haus used to be a beer hall, the barley and stein imagery inlaid on the wood above the entrance gave it away. Asuka Langley Sohryu sat in a cafe across the street from this unassuming restaurant, pretending to read a tour guide and wearing a blond wig badly. She felt rather foolish, truth be told - she had arrived three hours early to scout the place out, and found herself with nothing to do. What had she expected, anyway? she scolded herself feverishly, Shrikes standing guard outside? Swarms of spiders?
Asuka should have stayed at the office, she should have called Misato and told the woman everything she knew. So why... why, dammit!? Why had she agreed, why had she done as he asked, and told no one? Why...

Why did she want to see him again?

Shinji Ikari. The Opposition. The human Weaver. The Genocide. The boy that had lived with her for four months, and then died...

She was filled with a nervous energy - she wanted to pace, but that would...

The faux-blond looked down at her coffee - big saucer, small cup - and softly laughed. She closed the tourist guide, laid it on the table, and pulled her wig off. Long blond hair fell away, revealing shoulder-length auburn. A man sitting in the table next to her stared, then made an appreciative noise. Asuka smiled and waved the comment away. She felt exposed... but the idea of going undercover was a joke at this point. He would see her coming, read her intent, anyway. NERV still was not sure how Ikari did most of the things he did, but... a part of his awareness was probably upon her even now. It seemed that he could feel when others were thinking about him - something he had manifested several times during Asuka's recovery, following the Decimation. But really... even when he quickened to her side at the slightest discomfort, or when her mind drifted to him by chance or boredom... it seemed like he was still dead, and knowing that some part of him was always watching her... it felt like a violation.

Right before he split away from NERV, Asuka had said some rather unkind things to him. She had struck him - the boy that had stopped an army and fought the MP Series with his bare hands - and he had left, his expression betraying neither pain nor sadness. He had quickened away, and the next day he left for good, all of his belongings gone, his room again just a storage space. Even the smell of Ikari had followed him in egress. She had stood at the threshold of what once had been Shinji's room and cried, cried because he was stupid, and so was she. That was the last she had seen of the Weaver. It had crawled into existence in front of her and, before she had time to react, caught a falling tear in lacquered black, five-fingered hands. Then it had vanished, seeming to pull a fold of air in front of itself, perhaps crossing the probability curve and returning to the world of pure fiction.

The boy Weaver had appeared before the United Nations the next day, announcing that he was breaking away from humanity, that he would do as he pleased from that point onward, and told the assembled representatives of every world power that, even should they turn all their resources against him, they would do him not the slightest harm. Officially he was a criminal, for the abduction of the principle members of the Security Council just prior to the Decimation, and then for the massacre of JSSDF soldiers and the execution of the Japanese Prime Minister. That sequence of events and the concurrent manifestation of bizzare atmospheric phenomena over Tokyo 3 - the Decimation. In addition, he was responsible for destroying a good amount of communication infrastructure by simultaneously broadcasting the original JSSDF incursion and subsequent decisive retaliation to every device capable of displaying it.

And he was the last person to see Rei Ayanami alive.

NERV had held the United Nations at bay following the Decimation, but Shinji left them, setting out in too many directions to follow. He infiltrated the world economy effortlessly, manipulating governments and corporations to unknown ends. He did replace most of the hardware he had destroyed during his forced global broadcast, but on the whole his actions were too subtle to be easily observed. When this became evident, NERV had received a new mandate by the UN: to track and, if possible, disrupt the actions of Shinji Ikari.

A steward came by and took her empty coffee. Asuka left a five-note on the table and departed the cafe enclosure. She leaned against a lamppost, staring across the street and beginning to wish something would stare back. It was nearly time.

Looking back on the conflict with the Angels, Asuka had realized that she had been too invested in teenage pangs, and a precious sense of superiority. Her priorities had been all wrong. Her fighting the Angels, it had been an adventure. The difference between her and Ikari was, even before the Weaver came and changed him, he understood the nature of conflict. Even if it was something as simple as kill the enemy, he understood something basic that had eluded Asuka - something she had sensed in him, that had confused her to no small degree. The night before she had slapped him - a gesture Asuka was well aware might be the root of everything Ikari now did - she had a horrible dream. In it, she understood why Shinji was acting concerned for her, why he seemed to linger over her to an obsessive degree. He was in love with her, wanted to bind himself to her, wanted to have sex with her. That had been Asuka's lowest moment. After Shinji left, a terrible certainty had begun to churn in Asuka's gut - that she did not understand him at all.

She crossed the street and lingered at the entrance until the appointed time.

The inside of Aedes Haus had been renovated, forgoing the openness of a beer hall in favor of intimate dining. The waiter wordlessly led Asuka past several dining rooms, all reasonably filled, to a small room at the back. A private dining room. Of course.

"Would Miss care for some wine this evening?" the waiter asked after seating her at a single large table which, Asuka noted, had settings for three. She glanced at the wine list and pointed at something, not wanting to screw up the pronunciation. The waiter appeared to understand, repeated the sort and vintage for her benefit, then went off.

"Wine in a beer hall," Asuka muttered to herself.

"We're better off, I think," someone said behind her in a guarded tone. "I never could handle that German crap anyway."

"Misato?!" Asuka rose out of her chair and went to embrace the older woman. Following the UN mandate, Katsuragi had been appointed Commander of NERV. Her position had significantly more oversight than Gendo Ikari had allowed, and the stress of bureaucracy was beginning to show. Not yet forty, the Commander had some lines of silver in her hair, and a generally haggard appearance. The older woman returned Asuka's embrace, and pulled back. The younger woman had gone stiff.

"I didn't... I'm sorry!" Asuka stammered. "I should have told..." another possibility crept into the girl's mind: "was all of this a set up? Did you..."

"Sorry, I didn't tell her you would be here, Miss Sohryu," another familiar voice said, again behind Asuka. She whirled around, knowing exactly what she would find. Shinji was seated at the table, between the two other settings. He was wearing a gray suit that did little to cover the lacquered-black appearance of his entire body, with the exception of his face, which bore a peculiar expression.

"Sorry to keep you waiting, but Misato had to finish some paperwork," he explained, standing to offer the Commander the seat across from Asuka's setting. Katsuragi looked uneasy, but Asuka sensed the Commander's trepidation was focused more on her presence than the proximity of the Genocide. Then the full force of what was unfolding in front of her took effect.

"What the Hell is going on?" she hissed at them, Shinji lowering himself back to the table.

"Dinner, just like I said," the young man gestured to her chair. "And maybe some conversation."

Asuka hovered at the threshold, anger and confusion nearly boiling over. These two people were supposed to be on different sides and yet... here they were, clearly familiar with one another... the waiter arrived with the wine, and Asuka moved to let him in. She watched as the man uncorked two bottles and poured wine for Misato and Shinji from one, then a glass from the other at her own sitting. The waiter knew what kind of wine they wanted, and hardly batted an eye at Shinji's inhuman appearance.

"Hey," she asked the man as he moved to leave, pointing at Shinji "Do you know who that is over there?!"

The waiter glanced in Ikari's direction, winked at Asuka, and gently pushed past her.

"Asuka, you certainly deserve an explanation..." Misato began.

"Oh, that's pretty... fucking... yeah!" Asuka sputtered, interrupting the older woman.

"So sit down and have some wine," the older woman continued. "And like Shinji said, we'll talk."

Asuka made a show of hesitation, but she simply could not leave.

"How long," she asked Misato as she approached the table. "How long have you been... this...?"

The older woman sighed, and took a gulp of the wine, then stared at the glass, fingering the slim neck. Shinji seemed absorbed by the menu.

"Since the beginning, Asuka," Misato finally replied.

The younger woman lowered herself mechanically into her chair, staring blankly ahead.

"Did we have this last time, Misato?" Shinji asked, pointing to an item on the menu. Misato glanced down, then focused back on Asuka.

"Yeah, underdone, wasn't it? And you shouldn't have brought her here."

Ikari lingered over the menu a moment more, then closed it. The waiter appeared by the table with bread and refilled Misato's empty glass.

"Are we ready to order?" the man asked. Shinji pointed at something on the menu, saying the word carefully in German. Misato ordered the Hunter's Goulash. Asuka stared at the menu and finally got the smoked herring. After receiving their orders, the waiter vanished again.

"This is the correct time and place, Misato," Shinji finally addressed the Commander. "It is finally safe to tell you about Rei."

"Neither of you should understand the ramifications of the Red Earth Ceremony, because I have taken great pains to censure it from human knowledge. Misato, you did know, but allowed me to remove those memories. It is a dangerous sort of information that could not fall into the wrong hands. But now it is just so many words."

Asuka watched Misato carefully, as difficult as it was to take her eyes off Ikari. The older woman had started at the mention of the First Child's name, and Asuka had been surprised as well. At the mention of having her memory wiped the older woman had furrowed her brow, but then eased, as though remembering a particular conversation.

"The Red Earth Ceremony was designed to force a resonance with an individual and everything that exists. As humans are individually incomplete, the men running things during the Angelic conflict assumed that performing this ceremony would cause a human subject to draw in the souls of every other living thing, it being the natural tendency of the soul to seek complementation. Would this have occurred, humanity would be wiped out. The men who desired this erred in two regards - they misunderstood the function of the Red Earth Ceremony, and they underestimated the conflicting human drive to retain a sense of self."

Shinji picked some bread out of the bowl in the middle of the table and began to gnaw on it.

"This is what the Weaver showed me in the time I spent outside the world: a desolate Earth surrounded by a ring of blood, with only two human left alive. Me and you, Miss Sohryu."

Asuka opened her mouth, closed it.

"Why?" Shinji might have been reading her mind. "Because I pulled you out, and because you had the will to live. It doesn't really matter, things diverged from that particular future the moment the Weaver intersected with our reality. The me and you at the end of all of this were very different from what we were and are. The Weaver told me that, should this be man's fate, it would ensure that there would be no coming generations. It promised me red rings and dead gods and dim dying stars winking out new permutation to be writ or accelerated entropic decay heralded by this Weaver the Artist." Shinji said the last in his Weaver-voice, which was more telepathy than speech, his words sliding past the eardrum and reverberating in the nerve clusters of the brain.

"The Weaver was not an enemy, it was just here to turn off the lights at the end of the world. If that horrible end had come about, the Weaver would have torn the universe apart. This would be a pretty picture for it, a tapered four dimensional image."

This explained something that had happened before the Decimation, just after Shinji interceded to kill Kaworu. At the time everyone but Asuka had thought him dead. He had sought her out when she was trapped in the Sea of Dirac and helped her find her mother in Unit Two's shattered mind, and protected her from the Weaver's occasional interest. She had mentioned these encounters to no one for fear of having her pilot status revoked on the grounds of mental illness, as Shinji had following his first encounter with the great spider.

But when the seventeenth Angel attacked Rei and Asuka, Ikari had intervened, exploding into being in front of them, blocking and then shattering the Angel's AT Field with ease.

This was his first defiance of the Weaver, he later told them. The creature had sequestered him outside of time, in places that looked like the real world be weren't. He was able to observe the real world to a limited extent and, when he saw the danger posed by the seventeenth, forced his way into reality in a clumsy manner. The hallway where he first manifested was sealed off, for the reverberations of his entrance still echoed there.

When he had explained where he had been, he made it clear that his seclusion had been voluntary. He had convinced the Weaver to intervene during the attacks by the thirteenth and fourteenth Angels, which it had done to devastating effect. He could have emerged at any point to directly intervene, but he needed time to think, to understand what needed to be done - it being a great deal easier to do so outside the world. At the time, Asuka had thought Shinji was lying to them, that he had gloried in their lamenting his death, and that he had waited, and watched, and done nothing as the fourteenth Angel had taken Unit Two's arm - and by extension causing her horrible pain - and during the fifteenth...

The morning before the fifteenth made its appearance, Asuka had found a small ceramic cat beneath her pillow. For reasons she now suspected were influenced by Ikari, she had taken the toy with her into the entry plug. When the Angel attacked her with its sick light, that light that seemed to burn her very mind and peel away its layers, the toy had slipped out of her plugsuit pocket and hovered in front of her, floating in the LCL. The Weaver liked certain objects, Shinji later explained. I sent you the toy because I knew it would attract the Weaver at a crucial moment, and that the Angel would never be able to handle peering into the Weaver's mind - and he had been right, the Weaver had emerged inside the entry plug to grab at the toy, and less than a minute later the Angel in orbit shriveled up and exploded. Asuka had been shielded from the light as soon as the Weaver emerged, but in those moments the Angel had touched her, she had felt her mind begin to unravel. The Angel had not managed to get into her mind, but her head was sore in peculiar ways for days thereafter, and she experienced boughts of irrational crying and laughter.

When she asked Shinji why he had chosen to stay outside the world, to let them suffer when he might have helped them, he had smiled and said: "That was the easiest decision I've ever made." If he was working against that image of ultimate annihilation, of "accelerated entropic decay", Asuka could accept his decision, though at the time, she had taken his words as a blithe disregard for those around him.

"Anyway," Shinji continued, "I was able to perform the Red Earth Ceremony without the use of the MP Series, as SEELE had intended. The core of the Ceremony is the opening of Gaf's Room, the heart of the Ceremony, the room where the world may begin anew or be destroyed."

"I'm starting to remember," Misato murmured, hand on her forehead. "It is all kind of hazy but..."

"I removed the blocks when I transported you here," Ikari interrupted. "The particulars of the Ceremony aren't important anymore though. What does matter is that Rei entered Gaf's Room, not me."

"Why Rei?" Asuka asked, feeling a surprising pang of regret.

"There are..." Shinji closed his eyes for a moment. "We, humans, were created by something. That something died, and left us to our own devices. Rei is a manifestation of that thing, which my father called Lilith. Please understand," he held up a hand, seeing Asuka ready to speak, "I do not mean literal creation. This creator was not alive as we understand it, it was an Angel that arrived on this planet at the same time as Adam. These twin impacts triggered a spark of life in the earliest oceans, and Lilith guided the biosphere's genetic history to a point, while Adam created things like itself in pocket dimensions - the Angels we fought. Kaworu," at that name, both women flinched. There had been a real monster. "Kaworu was channeled into a human form, his original shape being something like sentient energy. After a while, both of these creatures, Adam and Lilith, died as we would understand it. Dead but dreaming, really. The Red Earth Ceremony was created by people that envisioned an all-knowing, very dead God. They created the Ceremony with the hope that one day something like God would appear, and could be used to replace the dead God, or reawaken it. I did with Lilith what the Angels were attempting to do for Adam."

The waiter arrived, served the food, and left. Shinji's meal appeared to be be pasta with fish on it. Misato's food was a bowl of broth with sauerkraut, sour cream, and onions. Asuka was presented with a large fish, complete with eyes and tail. She hoped they had bothered to gut the thing.

"Rei is God now," Shinji said simply, and began to eat. Both women stared at him.

The meal passed in silence. Asuka only picked at her fish, her mind alight with this new information. Surely Shinji was speaking metaphorically about Rei becoming God. And her and him, at the end of all things? The idea made her shiver - it was impossible to remember him as the clumsy oaf he had once been, as he would have still been after that Third Impact. His personality and manner of speech having changed since...

Right after he had interceded with the seventeenth Angel, Ikari's personality had been largely unchanged. He was still been the Shinji she had known, though seeming to possess a terrible knowledge. After coming down out of a sky that seemed to have split open, after falling on one of the MP Series and bisecting it from head to groin with the wind shear of his descent - it was only after then that Shinji had started to act so different, so dead inside. The so-called "Red Earth Ceremony" had changed him.

His manner of speech became more refined, perfectly structured. He used words even Asuka had never heard of, and frequently wove more subtext into a single sentence than the average listener was capable of understanding. His movement changed, whittled down to a pure economy of motion that was not merely graceful, but utterly inhuman. His face became a mask, betraying no emotion. Everything that had been Shinji Ikari had been burned away, all his tiny flaws discarded, and every other part of him expanding to preternatural levels.

Asuka sipped her wine, noting with some embarrassment that it was red, not white, and glanced at the thing sitting next to her. He seemed utterly absorbed in his meal, his face - no longer a mask at all, it seemed - betraying delight with the meal. Misato, she noticed, was watching him as well, her lips pursed in a tight, satisfied smile.

Something had changed again. All the time that NERV had been tracking the human Weaver's progress, his actions had retained that strange and perfect taint. When they managed to get a visual record of him, he always appeared the same, whether he was interrupting a board meeting in New York to blackmail each member into following his dictates, or transmuting radioactive isotopes to their less-energetic elemental states in secret bunkers in Russia. This boy - no - this young man now seemed utterly human by comparison.

The fish was decent. Asuka managed to get half of it down, mixing the segmented meat with the white sauce that ringed the plate. Misato polished off her dish, pausing at the end to sip the broth from the bowl. Shinji ate until nothing remained, then made a contented sound. It was almost like they were back in Misato's apartment, sharing a meal. If that penguin had been around to beg for scraps, the image would have been perfect. It was a little scary how easily eight years melted away, how ready Asuka found herself to accept this as a new norm.

"When I died," Shinji said, wiping his mouth with a napkin, "only a small part of me managed to escape the bounds of this world and fall into what the Weaver called the World Web, which is better thought of as simply being outside regular space. From that tiny part of self, I managed to regenerate. Fortunately one of the properties of being outside the world allowed this to happen quite rapidly - it was a simple matter of my quantum waveform extrapolating outward until it reached a self-limiting normal state... of course this was not really me, it was not really alive. It was more me trapped in a moment, more words etched in stone than a thinking person. This was what helped you in Unit Two, Miss Sohryu, and this was what met with the Weaver at the hospital morgue and caused my dead body to disassemble into its principle components. The Weaver forced this simulacrum into my dead body, where it wrapped around the thing that made me an individual - the ego-borderline. With this, what had been a frozen and unchanging waveform assumed a constantly collapsing state."

"A collapsing hollistic waveform," Asuka said hollowly. "The soul, the self."

"Exactly, Miss Sohryu," Shinji said, then continuing: "That was actually my moment of rebirth, and in doing so, I learned how to regenerate even after parts of my psyche were torn away. It was with this knowledge that I finally managed to persuade Rei to enter Gaf's Room."

"Wait... what?" Misato looked down at her plate, her features as blank as Asuka felt. "She did not want to go originally? Is that what you are saying?"

"She understood, but our opinions on the correct course of action differed," Shinji elaborated - rather quickly, obviously seeing something dangerous in Misato's behavior. "She wanted me to go with her, but I knew it would take time for the process to complete. If I had gone with her, someone else could perform the Red Earth Ceremony before our gestation was complete, and possibly disrupt the process."

And I would have died, Asuka thought to herself. If he hadn't helped me fight the MP Series, they would have killed me. I couldn't stop them, even swarms of the Shrike couldn't stop them.

"So I persuaded her by..." and a most remarkable change colored Ikari's features just then. Suddenly he looked haunted, and hurt, and very much like the 14 year-old boy he had once been. "I-I..." Asuka hadn't heard him stutter since the Decimation. "I gave her part of myself. Most of myself, I think." He closed his eyes, and Asuka almost expected him to start crying. Instead he pointed towards the door, where the waiter had stopped in mid-stride and said "three this time, blueberry, I think." The man nodded, and left.

"I'm sorry," he finally said. "After I did that thing, after Rei left this world and moved on to something beyond the outside... I wasn't myself. I dared not linger outside the world to accelerate my recovery, because I could not rely on the Weaver's help, and I was worried I would return to that unthinking, unchanging thing again. It has taken me a while to assume my correct waveform - this being a relatively macroscopic existence and not naturally inclined to the quantum state. That is why I have not been especially... myself, these last few years."

"Rei," Misato interrupted. "What did you mean when you said..."

"God. Rei is God now," Shinji said. "She now sits on a throne which has never been occupied, a benevolent influence on probabilities. She... and her family are now the New Testament God which the Christians imagined... I saw her a week ago, you see." Shinji looked down at his hands, and in a moment the black lacquer melted away, and white skin shone brightly. "There is a hill, there is a house. In this house are a man very much like myself, who grew from fragments of myself, and Rei... who is now a lovely young woman. This house..." tears fell into his pale hands, "is surrounded by flowers. Millions, billions, trillions of flowers. They - the mother, the father, and children that..." he stopped for a moment and wiped his face. "The children very much resemble their parents. A blending of features I could never have imagined... they look after these trillions of flowers... each of which represents a human soul, or an aspect of reality. The World Web resonates with their actions, and of late has become more difficult to manipulate."

The human Weaver waited for this to sink in, wiping his face again, his hands once against armored-black. "I barely found them. They occupy a place I could not usually go but... I think Rei wanted me to see. I stole within like a thief, and could only observe them for a short time before I had to leave. Their's is not a place my stamina can tolerate."

"So," Shinji said, folding his napkin into a complex knot, "I am done. I don't have to be the Weaver anymore."

Misato jerked out of her chair and hugged Ikari, and presently began to sob. Shinji silently returned the older woman's embrace. Asuka found herself at a loss, not sure she understood what had just been said.

"This was all a game then?" the auburn-haired girl finally managed. "A stopgap measure while First shacked up with... you!?"

"I gave her part of myself, Asuka," Shinji replied in a tired voice, finally using her first name. "I gave her the parts of me that were required. I'm sorry about what happened between us, but for a while you and Misato were the only things I could understand, the only people that mattered. What I gave to Rei knew only Rei, and seems to have grown up adoring her, whereas I..." He closed his eyes, and said: "knew only that I cared about you, and Misato, and my mother. It unseated my logic, because for a time these feelings were magnified to make up for that missing part of myself. When you rejected me - and you should have, I think - and when Misato..." he stopped, the older woman's hand digging into his shoulder now, "well, when that happened, and when my mother did not recognize me after I pulled her out of Unit One... I cut those feelings away from myself. I exacerbated my recovery, you could say. But I found that they kept returning, though in measured amounts, as other parts of me regenerated. And now... I have done everything required to ensure mankind continues, that the particular holocaust of Third Impact is no longer possible. Rei is in Her Heaven, All's Right With the World, and I can be human again."

Presently, the creme brulee arrived. There were, in fact, fresh blueberries.

To be concluded in Thirty-Seven.
 
#7
I really liked this story when I read on ff.net, but I remember thinking that I wish wrote more about it and went into more detail about the events that happened in it.
 
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