Chapter 29: Mari

Chapter 29:
Mari

 

ASUKA HAD DEPLANED the Platypus-2 and was speeding away from it on the dirt bike Toji had loaded into the cargo section. It was the same bike Toji had used in Hokkaido as Nerv’s attaché, when he’d gone up and down the northern mountains in search of Euro Rapid Response soldiers who’d crash there. The bike was as battered as the heavy VTOL that carried it.

She was getting used to driving around the uneven terrain, but without a destination, she was still wasting time. Could she really catch up with Mari?

I should’ve given this some thought…

Meanwhile, the birds that had flown north changed course, passing by her overhead. Asuka dropped her eyes back to the road…and saw Mari and a golden retriever. They were still following the flock.

“Mari! Azuchi!”

Mari gave her a passing glance, but Azuchi actually barked in response. Neither of them stopped, however.

“Hey, wait up!”

As Asuka turned her bike around, a pack of animals appeared, following Mari and Azuchi. They ran past her, down a steep cliff without flinching.

“You’re kidding…”

Asuka looked ahead at the forest Mari was running toward, at the foggy valley the birds had disappeared into. As she watched, the giant beast reappeared out of the mist. It let out a sky-piercing howl.

As she felt the pressure it gave off, Asuka understood.

That enormous thing is what Wolfpack became!

Asuka cranked the accelerator. There was no need for second guesses now.

“Shinji! Tell Hakone command that I’ve found Mari. I can’t get to them from my end. She’s wearing Six’s plugsuit, so I can track her with her IFF tag as long as I’m close enough.”

<<Asuka, you’re not with Toji?!>>

“I’m in my plugsuit, too. Tell them to track my signal if it comes to that.”

She let go of the transmit button. Mari was in sight now.

“Come on, Mari, we almost killed each other! The least we can do is talk.”

What had happened between them was ridiculous. At the time, Asuka had been synthesized with her Eva, along with thousands of other life-forms. The Asuka/Eva synthesis had become Mari’s ideal, and in the end, the U.S. Eva had devoured her.

The match was supposed to end with Mari victorious, but both of them had been ionized by the spatial lens as it transported matter to Yomotsu Hirasaka. When they were reconstituted at the focal point closest to the Earth, all traces of their Evas and other life-forms were gone. They had reverted to ordinary girls.

“We weren’t the only ones reconstituted over Yomotsu Hirasaka. Unit Two and Wolfpack got the same treatment elsewhere.”

It didn’t sit well with her that her reversion had basically been a shipping accident.

But why is Wolfpack so huge?

“Hey!” Asuka spoke to Mari directly. “You don’t think it got huge because the lens lost focus, do you?!”

“There’s a box with countless life-forms on this island,” Mari said.

The Ark.

“Those lives continued to exist despite being locked away, and they’ve built up a lot of rage. The beast only took that into itself. The same goes for the life-forms you had in you, Asuka, and all the birds in the sky.”

“Rage?”

The rage of being locked away in the Ark indefinitely, over countless cycles of worlds…an eternity.

“You couldn’t keep your hands off me when you were reconstituted. You cried like a lost child. Now you won’t even bother looking at me.”

Which means she has somewhere she needs to be.

“I have to go home to it, give it a reason other than rage. I can’t go back to being human or Eva.”

Mari punctuated her statement with a howl. The other animals howled with her. In the distance, a loud roar rumbled through the air.

Although Asuka couldn’t really understand Mari’s perspective, their destination was the same.

“I know what I’m going to do when I get there. I’m going to rip Unit Two out of your pack.”