Chapter 20: School

Chapter 20:
School

 

ARMAROS HAD SAID that Super Eva’s heartbeat must not be written onto the parchment of time.

“You’re all going to school,” Misato said.

“What?” the seventeen-year-olds protested in unison. During this state of emergency?

“Just as Super Eva’s heart keeps a steady pulse, we must continue our daily rhythms. We will live our lives with intent and purpose and not fall into chaos.”

Misato didn’t believe that everything in Armaros’ message and Shinji’s dream was true.

But the fact remained that the enemy was bringing devastation on a catastrophic scale.

What Misato feared most was that humanity, confronted with this overwhelming power, might give up and abandon all resistance.

It didn’t help that this new enemy wielded words as its weapon. Misato suspected that the religious allusions in Armaros’ messages would give them more power over people than they might otherwise.

She didn’t want the children, who would be needed in the fight, or the civilians to give up.

Therefore, she would make sure they maintained some sense of normalcy. If the worst should happen, the trivial and mundane might become their last treasure.

 

After classes had ended for the day, Shinji emerged from the school’s entrance hall.

“I can’t believe how exhausted I am,” he muttered.

Shinji understood Misato’s logic, but an unknown enemy had declared war on all of humanity. It was all well and good for Misato to tell him to resume his school routine, but Shinji couldn’t switch his emotional state that easily.

“Ikariii,” a lilting voice with a childish lisp called out.

“Yeah?” Shinji turned to see Rei Six spilling out of the entryway. Because she was so short, the school uniform, an above-the-knee dress, looked more like a full-length skirt.

Six was the other source of Shinji’s exhaustion.

As for why she was attending high school, the girl had insisted that no matter the age of her physical body, on the inside, she was the same age as the other Ayanamis, and Misato acquiesced.

Today was Six’s first day of school after gaining independence from the other Ayanamis, and she’d been hyped up all day long, acting on every impulse.

Shinji wondered if she really had inherited all of Trois’ knowledge. Six couldn’t seem to sit still for a moment. Even the cutesy way she ran toward him now filled him with dread.

Six leaped at him.

Their faces crashed together, and Shinji saw stars. The pair tumbled to the ground outside the school entrance.

“Owwww,” they said in unison. They’d both fallen on their bottoms, huddled together, holding their faces in their hands. The other students on their way out of the school stopped to stare.

The two groaned in pain.

Then Six kissed Shinji.

Flustered, he quickly pushed her away, sputtering. “Wh-wh… Huh?”

“The Quatre-me felt a thrill from that, no matter how she denied it. But the Six-me doesn’t.” Six pressed her finger here and there on her lips with a dissatisfied expression. “Why is that?”

“Wh-why? How should I know?”

Actually, he did know, or at least…he had a good idea. According to Maya, Six’s body couldn’t keep pace with her knowledge.

Shinji’s mind swam with the sexual development vocabulary he’d had to study in his junior-high health class, but he wasn’t about to explain the awkward subject to Six. Doing so would only cause more trouble.

Wait… What did she say about Quatre?

“What happened?” Toji said, emerging from the school among a group of students in track jackets.

The crowd parted to form a path for Asuka and Rei Cinq.

Trois arrived a little later, having stopped by the student council meeting room first.

The group had decided beforehand that they would leave school together to make less work for the security team’s secret service agents, who were doubtlessly hovering nearby and keeping track of the pilots during the heightened state of alert.

At school, some students had made jokes—if they could be called that—about how there were so many empty desks that a few more Ayanamis wouldn’t be a problem. Even this tightly supervised city had seen deaths from recent events.

Shuffling personnel from posting to posting only accomplished so much, and the effects extended to the school.

Overhead, the Lance of Longinus traced a thin white line—a little longer every day—across the sky.

“You can’t act like that, Six,” Ayanami Cinq said. “You’re embarrassing Ikari-kun.”

 

The child pilots, present and former, merged with the crowd of normal students and began their walk.

“Ah,” Asuka said, “now this is a day to remember. A first-year asked Cinq out in the hallway.”

“What?” Shinji and Toji interrupted in unison.

Asuka sighed and scrunched her eyebrows together. “That isn’t the surprise, boys. Get this—Cinq let him down kindly and gently.”

“She did what?” Toji asked.

All eyes went to Cinq.

“Well,” she said, “I would’ve felt bad for him if I didn’t give him a straight answer.”

Cinq smiled. She’d spent more time growing in the artificial womb, and her body had matured a bit—further than Trois or Quatre. Standing with the group, she appeared to be a year ahead of them.

“Hmm,” Toji said. “That doesn’t sound very Ayanami-ish. That’s weird, Cinq.”

“I just don’t want to get too close to anyone,” Cinq said. “Because they’ll learn…”

“Learn what?” Toji asked.

She didn’t answer. Given how Six had manifested Rei’s deep-seated innocence, then which part of Ayanami’s psyche had awakened Cinq’s individuality?

 

The minds of each Ayanami had begun walking disparate, less “Ayanami-ish” paths.

Ikari Gendo, the former Nerv commander, had created parallel clones of Ayanami in great numbers, though her soul could only attach to one at a time.

But now there were three new Ayanamis.

That Armaros had provided the impetus for their awakening didn’t sit well with Trois.

Cinq and Six now exhibited their own distinct personalities, and Trois was feeling alone.

She trudged along at the rear of the group. The other two were gradually revealing aspects of herself that would otherwise have remained hidden, but Trois didn’t have the self-awareness to recognize it. Instead, she just felt more and more out of place.

 

Even with the additional Ayanamis, the old circle of friends still felt they were lacking something. Hikari and Kensuke were absent. Kensuke had realized that he would never become a pilot. He’d joined Nerv’s security intelligence department, and they’d hardly seen him since.

“Where’s the class rep today?” Shinji asked.

“You’re the class rep,” Toji replied.

“How long is your head going to be stuck in junior high?” Asuka asked. “Where is Hikari, anyway? I haven’t heard from her. Do you know, Suzuhara?”

“She’s in Australia. I got an e-mail from her saying she’s stuck there due to the tectonic instability. I guess she’s safe. She was smiling in the picture she sent. I was kinda surprised, because I’d heard she was vacationing with her family.”

“Well, as long as she wasn’t in Europe,” Asuka said.

Asuka didn’t know that Hikari had indeed been caught in the catastrophe the lance had wrought upon Europe. These days, conversations inevitably drifted toward current events.

“It feels like every country is in a race,” Toji said.

“They all want to be the one that finds the ark,” Shinji replied.

 

“Well, the Earth might be doomed,” Toji said, “and it doesn’t look like we’re escaping through the Longinus Curtain.”

“But Armaros mentioned an ark,” Shinji said.

“That’s right, the ark,” Trois said.

“I wonder if that’s our way to escape,” Asuka pondered.

“Everyone seems to believe it is,” Shinji replied. “But that’s assuming that Armaros’ idea of an ark is the same as ours.”

“I want ice cream,” Six added.

“For some reason, it feels credible,” Cinq said.

“It’s ridiculous,” Asuka said. “Every country is sending disaster relief teams to every other country, but they’re all just snooping around for the ark. It’s obvious because every country is getting hit by the disaster, and yet they’re still sending out teams. How else do you explain it?”

“Have you considered that they could be acting out of compassion and putting the misfortunes of others ahead of their own?” Shinji asked.

“It’s possible,” Asuka replied, “but there are organizations going around trying to dig things up.”

“I hear Kensuke and Kaji-san are having trouble with that in Cyprus right now,” Toji said. “Special forces are all over the place.”

Shinji stopped in his tracks. “Hold on. That’s got to be classified information. How do you know about it, Toji?”

Toji kept walking, casually waving a hand. “With the personnel change tomorrow, I’ll be the acting deputy commander.”

“What?!” said Shinji, Asuka, and Six in unison.

“Now, I’m not looking for any congratulations, but… Soryu! I’d appreciate it if you didn’t look like this means we’re all doomed. And you, Ayanamis, could one or two of you try offering me something other than pity? I thought you were supposed to have different personalities.”

“It’s big news,” Trois said.

“Well, I can’t help it! I didn’t want it either, but the higher you go, the more chronically understaffed they are, right? Like at the UN Security Council’s inquest…” Toji scowled at the smallest Ayanami. “By the way, you really put your foot in it big time, Six. I don’t think Maya-san was able to cover for you, either.”

“What did she say?” Shinji asked.

“That Quatre kissed Shinji,” Six said.

“What?!” Asuka shouted.

Shinji suddenly found himself in a minefield.

She mentioned that earlier, he thought, finally putting the pieces together. The Ayanamis have been saying that their mental link with Quatre was severed, but what if that’s not true?

Toji explained that Six had accidentally revealed to the UN that Shinji had let Ayanami Quatre—an enemy whose Eva could operate without restrictions—escape.

Blood rushed to Shinji’s head, and he suddenly felt dizzy. “Let’s get ice cream,” he said weakly.

Shinji began walking toward a small store. Six followed after him, and then the rest of the group.

“Hold on, Shinji,” Asuka said. “Explain yourself!”

“Why are you getting upset, Asuka?” Toji asked. “She’s a little girl. It was just a kiss.”

“Wait, are you talking about Six?”

Toji quickly changed the subject. “Anyway, everyone’s gotten so specialized lately—including all of you—that the organization doesn’t work smoothly.”

“Oh, is that so?” Asuka said. “So, that’s why they picked you, because you’re not special at anything?”

Toji would soon learn, upon taking up his new position, that Nerv Japan—including the security intelligence department—had completely lost track of Hikari and her family.

“Toji,” Six whined, “I can’t reach!”

She was hopping up and down in front of the ice cream freezer outside the store.

The wind carried the chime from a nearby elementary school announcing the end of the school day. The melody was familiar, Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, “From the New World.”

“All right, all right,” Toji said.

He lifted Six so she could reach through the freezer’s top door.

 

Just then, a flock of doves took flight from the roofs of the buildings lining the street.

Behind the doves—as if chasing them away—the sound of flapping wings came from over the caldera’s outer mountains.

“What is that?” Toji asked. “Whoa!”

In his surprise, he dropped Six into the freezer, and she let out a startled protest.

An enormous swarm of birds soared overhead like a black cloud.

The group looked up.

Shinji, Asuka, and Ayanamis Trois and Cinq watched the torrent of birds pass.

 

The swarm flew south, past Lake Ashi and over Mount Daikanzan. When they disappeared, silence fell.

A few days later, humanity would realize that every bird had disappeared from the face of the Earth.