Chapter 60: Unit Two’s Voice

Neon Genesis Evangelion ANIMA — LNCrawler · All chapters

Chapter 60:
Unit Two’s Voice

H IKARI THOUGHT she heard a call for help.

She awoke.

“Where…am I?”

Her head pounded, and her body ached like she’d been through torture. She had been.

The Euro Eva’s dummy plug was controlled remotely, with Hikari taking the role of a key in the ignition. Electrodes had been plugged into her body and from them the control signals were released. She piloted Euro-II in the physical sense only, and she did so crying and screaming in pain. This same method of control had caused irrevocable injury to the bodies and minds of all child pilots selected by the European command, though the records had been expunged.

But Hikari wasn’t aware—at least not consciously—of her physical pain. Her mind had been somewhere else. With someone else. The first time she boarded Euro-II, she happened to think, This is like what Asuka is always doing.

And when she pictured her classmate, the other presence within the Eva appeared to her, seemingly summoned by Hikari’s mental image. Their two consciousnesses began to talk.

They didn’t talk with words, of course, and Hikari never knew exactly what it was they said. But she pictured the presence as a comforting warmth that watched over her and separated her mind from her physical pain and, sometimes, soothingly called out to her. Freed from her body and her memories, she giggled back at the presence like a little girl. Through these shared moments of warmth, her mind was able to survive the terrible pain without breaking.

A soul could not be split up; that seemed to be a rule of the world. Euro-II’s body had been salvaged from cast-off parts during the creation of Nerv Japan’s Eva-02. Maybe this presence wasn’t a soul but rather an impression left behind. But even though Hikari’s awareness was only hazy, she was sure of one thing.

“You’re Asuka’s mother.”

Then, in northern Africa, the dummy plug controls completely shut down.

Behind Hikari’s plug seat—and behind the plug seat in every Eva—there was a large and clearly antiquated disc-based storage device—the logical definition drive.

When an Eva was in an awakened state, there was always a danger that the soul within its core could go berserk, and unless a pilot had achieved a dangerously high synchronization, an Eva left on its own couldn’t maintain its humanoid form. The LDD constantly streamed data into the Eva—data that told the giant what it was, what form it took, and other aspects of its existence. The system formed the fundamental basis of Eva control.

All Evangelions had the ability to change their form. These chances could include the development of new abilities, regeneration, degradation, and retrogression.

But the massively large storage device held information those changes could never degrade or overwrite. And right now, that disc had stopped spinning, bypassing the dummy plug system and putting Hikari in direct control of the Eva. But she had no understanding of anything that was happening around her. Her memories ended at the start of her synchronization tests with Euro-II.

She felt as if this was the first time in a long time that she’d been conscious and aware in her own body. She knew nothing of her current situation or surroundings, but in the middle of the entry plug’s display was a strange, kneeling, formless shape.

“Asuka?”

Hikari didn’t perceive that she and her family had been held in Germany against their will.

As far as she was concerned, the Lance of Longinus had gone into orbit during her working holiday, the widespread disasters had cut off transportation back to her home country, and communications had become spotty. That was when she agreed to travel to Germany instead, to try out as a test pilot for their Evangelion program.

The majority of the fourteen-year-old children brought together in Tokyo-3 three years ago had been candidate Eva pilots (though their aptitudes varied greatly). Hikari had been one of them. She was told that Nerv Japan had given the go-ahead and that their contracts were in order; she felt she had no grounds to refuse.

She was sad that the assignment would keep her away from Toji for the foreseeable future, but she wasn’t unhappy. She wanted to see the country where her friend Asuka had been raised.

And now she was here—wherever “here” was—and confused by the sudden, stark gap that stretched between her memories and the situation in which she found herself.

What’s happened?

I remember…seeing a black-winged Eva-0.0 flying around me.

But I’ve only done a few test launches.

I remember…battling with Ikari-kun. His Eva looked different from before.

“But…why?”

A fog shrouded her memories.

And before that… Before that…

My sister.

Hikari wailed in grief, and her cry became her Eva’s roar, which echoed through the gorge and shattered the brief silence that had fallen there. Her emotions poured out like water bursting through a dam.

<< My sister… >>

How could I have forgotten?

<< My sister is dead! A light came over her! She turned into salt! >>

Heurtebise dropped to its knees, the force cracking the rocky mesa. The angelic white Eva put its arms around the twisted mass that had once been Asuka.

<< I couldn’t do anything, Asuka! >>

Hikari, and the presence with her, needed Asuka’s help.

<< I don’t want this anymore! Asuka, don’t you leave me, too! >>

Here, in the Valley of Human Bodies, deep within North Africa’s Atlas Mountains, where Seele, as the Kaji-vessel, said the Human Instrumentality Project of a past world had met its failure, where the lamentations of the Eva had manifested as the countless colossi that filled the canyon’s basin, where Asuka had appeared with Armaros, though now she was but a muddled earthen lump, a forgotten friend called her by a forgotten name.

And, just faintly, she responded.

<< Asuka! >>