Chapter 50:
A Dawn Without Shinji

 

SENTRY DRONES dispatched near Marcus Island in the Pacific Ocean had gone silent. There was no way of knowing what was happening 1,200 kilometers southeast of the former Izu Peninsula where Yomotsu Hirasaka had fallen.

The entire area was full of dark clouds and electromagnetic surges. A pillar of seawater cut through the clouds, disappearing into nothing just before it touched the sky.

Super Eva had turned into a giant of light to capture the two-hundred-kilometer-wide detached lunar landmass. In the end, Shinji had willingly triggered the Third Impact and used its force to dampen Yomotsu Hirasaka’s damage.

His cloud of witnesses could only stare as they watched the mythical procession play out before them. None of them wanted to say it was the right thing for him to do, but then again none of them tried to talk him out of it. They went to bed, and upon waking from their dreams, they realized they had placed the fate of the world on the shoulders of a lone seventeen-year-old. It was a hard truth to admit.

“The latest weather chart.”

They’d received news about the disasters going on in Hakone and its surroundings, but they still quietly advanced their observation plans. Toji had received data about the seawater pillar from Trois’ Eva-0.0, but even he wasn’t sure how to talk about it with the rest of the personnel.

The communications booth was still putting out calls to Shinji. Everyone was in silent agreement that it would be a few days before they stopped trying.

 

“I’m going to school,” Ayanami Rei Six said from the open door of the command center. She was wearing a white uniform. The personnel inside were all startled by her sudden statement. They could only stare.

“Have fun!”

Misato was the only one who said anything. All eyes were on the commander now.

“Look,” Misato started, fully aware of the state Rei Six’s Eva was in. The Eva-00 Type-F Allegorica had been heavily damaged. Resupply was already underway, but its hind legs still needed to be fixed and its systems tuned. “It’s not like she can go on a mission, right?”

“Hang on,” a representative from Maya’s division said. Even though they could refer to the Eva’s black box to learn what had happened in the stratosphere, they had some questions they wanted to ask Six as well. Misato knew that, of course.

“Employees belong in the office and students belong in school. That’s a decent way of maintaining normalcy, isn’t it? We can’t have the black giant take us for a spin every time he shows up.”

The black giant is gone, but the moon is still expanding, and disasters are still happening all over the planet. It doesn’t look like there’s a future for us. Even worse, that crazy myth the black giants were talking about might just come to pass.

So Misato thought.

“Is the high school open today?”

“Let me check…” Aoba tapped some quick queries into his keyboard. “Yep, looks like it.”

“Very good.”

As the person in charge of Tokyo-3 and the Hakone caldera, Katsuragi Misato wanted to maintain as much normalcy as possible for its citizens. Going to school was a big part of that, and as long as there were no disasters that prevented them from commuting, the schools should remain open.

Aoba tilted his head. “They only have classes up to second period…though they do have extracurricular activities. That all right with you?”

“I think Toji’s dying to go, too. But we can’t afford to not have you around for the moment. Sorry, Acting Deputy Commander.”

“Uhh, sure…”

But it didn’t take long before Toji had to go, too. Thirty minutes after Six left, with a slice of toast in her mouth, she sent an emergency signal to the command center. Misato looked up from the map display on her table while gnawing on her stylus. She glanced at the small window with Six’s image and wondered, “Did she forget her notebook?” before returning to the map.

There was something strange about Six’s window, however, and she looked at it again.

A strange shadow filled the screen.

<<Shinji’s at school!>>

“What?” Misato’s brain couldn’t process this outrageous statement, because it was too busy processing the other outrageous things on the screen.

Why is everyone wearing black? And those long sleeves… What’s with the winter uniforms?

Winter hadn’t visited Japan since the Second Impact.