Chapter 26:
Riot Red
“OW… WHAT HAPPENED?”
Pain shot through her right shoulder.
She opened her eyes slowly and found a monochromatic landscape. The night sky was filled with stars, even as the sun shone blinding rays. The place looked like the moon.
Right… I was on the moon… On a recon mission when… When what?
She felt like she’d been dreaming for a long time. A dream where she returned to Earth…
“I’m feeling homesick? Wait, what’s with all this noise?”
Something stirred inside her. Countless somethings. She felt ill. Suddenly, a black shadow jumped in front of her, as if to protect her.
“Shinji!”
Huh? What did I just say? Shinji?
She remembered the sound of Super Eva’s heartbeat amid all the chaos. She looked over the shoulder of the black figure she’d called Shinji and saw a gray beast, the alpha of the pack attacking
them. Countless voices around her spoke in unison. <<That is the enemy who is trying to devour me!>>
She knew the voice wasn’t lying, because it was hers. The gray beast had inflicted the wound on her shoulder.
It hurts! It…hurts!
She leaned on her right side. Her body went faint as the pain caught up to her.
I don’t know what’s going on.
<<But I do.>>
What’s happening…?
<<I’ve been here the entire time.>>
“Shinji…”
That was all she could say.
“Shinji… Shinji! Stupid Shinji!”
It felt like forever since she’d said that name.
Her body didn’t feel like it belonged to her. She felt strange, as if she was part of a crowd looking at the sky from the bottom of a hole. But for the first time in a long while, she felt the distinction between object and subject return to her. Intense pain and exhaustion were the first to come home. Then, an awful feeling behind her neck, as if the darkness had taken hold of it. She felt the need to scream and called out to the black figure.
“Shinji, did you forget about me?!”
<<Don’t say that name!>> his heart shouted with panic.
I know that name.
He slid toward her to hold off the swarm of snakes. The girl clothed in red wind put her hand on his back and shouted the name again.
She’s calling me…
<<Not you.>>
That name…
<<Is mine and not yours.>>
That’s right… I remember her name.
<<You don’t. I do!>>
Shut up. Her name is A—
<<Stop remembering!>>
You’re so indecisive. You really are me.
He raised the spear, which had taken the place of his dominant hand, to his shoulder. He felt as if he understood something.
He, who wanted his body to be freed from the burden of merely generating a pulse. He, who thought of everything as shackles. He, who wanted to distance himself from everything.
You’re the one who doesn’t want to remember.
<<…>>
Because you discarded it all. First your own name and then the names of all your friends.
He arched his body and cocked his arm.
But what have you become now that you have nothing?
He shot his arm out in a straight line. The spear flew right through the swarm of snakes.
His heart fell silent.
The world brightened as the flutter of wings filled the air. He could finally say his name: Ikari Shinji.
“Yes. That is your name.”
A third voice came from the abyss. It startled him, and Shinji looked around for its source. He knew the voice belonged to Kaworu, but he was nowhere to be found.
Another pair of arms pulled Shinji down by his collar. They belonged to the girl who’d called him by name, and he finally got a look at her face. She had an awful bite mark on her shoulder, and over half of the flower petals surrounding her had been dispersed. Still, she looked proud, even victorious.
“How dare you try to forget about me,” she scolded Shinji, who still couldn’t remember her name. Her cocky smile remained, however. “Even if the world became a place of perfect peace where nothing could hurt you, I’d still love you enough to be the one real thorn in your side.”
She pulled him in then, for a kiss that was more like a bite.
The images blew away. The background faded, though she remained in the center of his vision. The countless birds flying all around them vanished.
“Asuka,” he said, without thinking about it.
“Took you long enough! Thirty-eight points,” she dismissed him with a failing grade as her voice grew even more distant.
The enlarged Wolfpack dodged Torwächter B’s lance throw and drew closer to its quarry—the injured Torwächter A1.
“So hot…”
A sound like a rushing waterfall came from his chest as the Center Trigonus started burning like a furnace. Golden light spewed out of the cavity into the dark sky.
His heart wasn’t beating. This situation felt worse than his near self-destruction at Novaya Zemlya.
“Nothing good can come out of you, can it?”
He, Ikari Shinji, stood in Torwächter B’s body with the monochromatic backdrop of the stars above him. He focused his energy on his giant black hand, which held the spindle.