Chapter 8: A Return to Moonlit Nights
Chapter 8:
A Return to Moonlit Nights
A Return to Moonlit Nights
T
HE IMMENSE SWARM
of locusts not only stopped the European invasion but also inflicted severe damage across the northern half of Japan’s main island. The ravenous bugs devastated plant life, both agricultural and natural, and paralyzed nearly all forms of transportation and infrastructure. With no visibility, cars couldn’t move. In the places where power lines didn’t get eaten through, the electrical substations suffered short-circuits, which in turn caused even more widespread damage. And still the swarm continued its reign of terror. Over the span of several days, the insects ate the countryside bare and rode the wind into the Pacific Ocean, where they crossed into a spot where the astronomic-scale concave mirror of the Longinus Curtain focused the sun’s rays. Amid the rainbow colors of the many-layered aurora, the swarm burned away into dust. The locust cloud split into several towering cyclones, twirling higher and higher as they chased the light of their own burning.
As if marking the passing of this plague, the Longinus Mirror began to lose its reflectivity, and the moon returned.
Having burned a path across the Earth for several days, the mirror gradually disappeared, like a fading ripple, after having been disturbed by Asuka’s and Cinq’s Evangelions.
Once again, humanity looked up at the moon.
The unexplained disappearance of mass from the Earth’s crust continued, and the planet was still constricting. Asia and the Indian subcontinent were moving north and sinking, and the ocean swelled around the islands of the western Pacific. The tidal surges struck as far as the southern shore of the Kanto region in Japan. Despite continued disasters on a global scale—or rather,
because
of them—many rejoiced at the return of the moon to its natural place in the sky.
At least the moon hasn’t changed,
the people thought.