Chapter 3: Entrusted

Chapter 3:
Entrusted

 

<<WHOA!>>

Shinji’s cry blared from his Eva’s external speaker.

Startled by this exclamation, the crew looked skyward. Toji moved closer to the mobile command center’s one-way mirror—which, from the outside, was indistinguishable from the other armored panels—for a better look.

The Asuka-like red giant pulled the entry plug out of its own back, opened the hatch, and gave it a good shake.

“What?” Toji sputtered. “Wait! Don’t do that!”

To the watchers’ relief, Asuka didn’t suddenly come plummeting out of her cockpit. But it wasn’t all good news.

As the giant swung the plug, the open hatch offered a brief glimpse of the empty seat within.

Shinji sighed. “I thought that might be the case.”

Asuka had lost her physical form and had merged with her Eva. She now existed as part of the red giant.

Those who knew Asuka were devastated, but the giant just kept shaking the plug. Finally, she seemed to give up, and her shoulders slumped. She held the plug out to Super Eva and went still.

“What?” Shinji asked. She seemed to be waiting for his reaction.

Toji shouted up to him. <<Shinji!>>

The young deputy commander had removed his communications headset and was waving it at Shinji. There was a camera attached.

 

Shinji stepped into Asuka-Eva’s entry plug. Whatever transformation the Eva had undergone, the entry plug’s layout remained unchanged from when it had been a part of Eva-02. Only the colors were new—every surface was red. The headcam Shinji had borrowed from Toji transmitted the video to Nerv Japan’s HQ in Tokyo-3, where Maya was watching.

<<Did you bring the sensor with you? Place it over there,>> the chief scientist instructed. <<You said that, at first, she looked like a lump of mud? I wonder if everything we’re seeing here was recreated from Asuka’s memory.>>

“From…Asuka’s memory?” Shinji repeated, confused.

<<In some places, Eva’s new form resembles Asuka, and in others, Eva-02. But not Eva-02 as it was when it last departed, equipped for space travel. What I’ve seen looks like Eva-02 as it was on land—as would have been most familiar to Asuka.>>

The interior of the entry plug was damp, like it had just been drained of the LCL as part of the standard exit procedure. “Oh,” Shinji said, noticing a book clinging to the wet surface of the side wall. The book’s blue cover was conspicuous amid all the red.

When Asuka had embarked on her reconnaissance-in-force mission to the moon, her friends had given her as many gifts as the storage space permitted to help stave off boredom and homesickness on the long journey. Shinji had given her this book, a collection of marine life photographs. Its pages were coated in resin for bathtub reading.

It was Shinji’s attempt at being thoughtful—he reasoned that a waterproof book would give her something to read in the LCL—but when Asuka saw his gift, she was underwhelmed. Annoyed, even.

“Is this all he gave me?”

Shinji flipped through the pages and landed on a two-page spread of Pacific white-sided dolphins jumping out of the water. What must she have felt when she saw this, he wondered, after becoming stranded in space? He thought of Ayanami Rei Cinq, who’d died before reaching the moon. Overwhelmed with grief and regret, he continued absently flipping the pages, but he wasn’t actually looking at them anymore.

<<Shinji-kun, stop right there!>> Maya said. <<Show me that.>>

“Sorry,” Shinji said. “I was just…”

<<Do you see anything odd about those pictures? They’ve triggered Magi-2’s text recognition.>>

Shinji was confused. “No, they’re just ordinary photographs,” he said, but he angled the book into better light and squinted at the pages.

That’s when he realized that the marine life images weren’t ordinary at all. They were composed of miniscule symbols.

“What is this?” he asked.

<<Whatever it is, it’s not normal writing.>>

Shinji resumed turning the pages, looking closely this time. It was the same with every picture—the beautiful waters and curiously shaped creatures were all formed from tiny symbols.

Had the red giant—the apparent fusion of Asuka and Eva—wanted to give this to him?

 

Shinji hopped onto his parked Eva’s outstretched hand, and Asuka-Eva withdrew the plug. As the red giant’s arm rose, her muscle fibers made a loud scraping noise. Her hand pushed through what Shinji supposed was her hair, and she reinserted the plug. Nothing in her actions indicated whether or not she was aware that she’d left the book for Shinji.

Her attention turned to the European Eva, Heurtebise, kneeling a fair distance away. She began to walk toward it.

“Huh? What?” Shinji stammered. “Asuka, stop! There are people on the ground that way! You’re going to step on them!”

The red giant paused and looked over her shoulder at him. Then she resumed walking, following the path cleared by a large, camouflaged transport vehicle that had just passed by her feet. For the time being, at least, it seemed she’d decided to avoid trampling anyone. As she approached the other Eva, her body language so strongly evoked that of an excited child finding a turtle at the edge of the water, that Shinji blurted, “Asuka, don’t poke that Eva! You’ll surprise it!”

What am I saying? Shinji thought. And why is she acting like a child?

But he could only guess at what was going through her mind. She still hadn’t spoken a single word.