LNCrawler

Chapter 33: The Return

Neon Genesis Evangelion ANIMA — LNCrawler · All chapters

Chapter 33:
The Return
H AVING CHOPPED OFF his long hair and put on his senior officer’s uniform, Fuyutsuki arrived at the Nerv Japan command center looking exactly as he had three years before.
Hyuga, Aoba, and the other longtime staff ran over to the returning officer.
He had come to take up his former role as deputy commander, ready to assume full control of the situation in place of Commander Katsuragi, who had been abducted by the traitorous Ayanami Quatre—or at least, that’s what the gathered personnel assumed. When Fuyutsuki greeted them and announced that he intended to be Acting Deputy Commander Suzuhara’s aide, he caused quite a stir.
Fuyutsuki currently held no rank or title within the organization, and Misato, the person with the highest authority—the only one with the authority to make such an appointment—was gone. Whatever improbable events had left Toji as the highest-ranking officer, he couldn’t magically summon a superior at will. On paper, Fuyutsuki’s announcement made sense. But that didn’t mean it felt right to the clamoring personnel.
Toji was only just now stepping onto the elevator to the command center, having been instructed by Fuyutsuki to delay, because “Everyone will be asking me a thousand questions.”
Already inside the cabin, Rei Six gave him an over-the-top salute and said, “Acting Deputy Commander, Sir!”
Rei Trois was with her.
“Hey there, Zashiki-wara six ,” Toji replied, combining her name with that of a mischievous, childlike poltergeist. “And Ayanami Eight.”
As the doors began to close, a voice whined, “Hey! Wait for me.”
Shinji spilled into the elevator. The pilot had finally been let out of his Eva.
“Hey, nice work out there,” Toji said.
“Hiya, Ikari!” said Six.
“Hey, everyone. So, what’s happening with Misato-san?”
“Nothin’ new to report,” Toji replied.
Fuyutsuki had already explained to Toji his intention to act as the teenager’s aide, but in truth, Toji wished the more knowledgeable and experienced elder would take the reins. Fuyutsuki had urged him to never speak that thought aloud, so Toji was keeping it locked up tightly inside.
Meanwhile, Fuyutsuki was speaking to the command center crew. “Do you want to talk about the future? Do you want to talk about the past?”
His voice was by no means loud, but the crowd had gathered around him in attentive silence, and his words carried throughout the room.
When the elevator doors opened, Shinji was the first to speak.
“Fuyutsuki-sensei!”
Fuyutsuki turned and said, with a started look, “Yui-kun?”
“What?” Shinji was confused. Now that he’d matured into a young man, nobody ever said he looked like his mother anymore. He glanced at Ayanami Trois, thinking Fuyutsuki must have reacted to seeing her. On the genetic level, Ayanami was Yui. But no, Shinji realized, the senior officer’s surprise was aimed at him. His expression softened.
“Hello, Shinji-kun.”
“It’s been a while, Fuyutsuki-sensei.”
Had it? The pace of time’s passing changed with age. When an adult said to a child, “Wait until tomorrow,” it felt impossibly far away, while a year was so distant as to escape all measure.
At Fuyutsuki’s age, three years felt more like half a year. But he knew from experience that young people, in their teens and twenties, could appear to undergo explosive growth. That kind of rapid change was met with surprise and also fear.
Fuyutsuki had feared that for Shinji, change would lead the boy down the same path Gendo had taken. But no matter what changes adulthood brought to the boy, Fuyutsuki worried he would always see Gendo when he looked at Shinji—which was why he wouldn’t have been able to return to Nerv had Shinji been the one to ask him.
But today, what Fuyutsuki saw in Shinji was Yui, softly smiling just before she dissolved into the Eva during the contact experiment, when she discovered that creating the universe and bearing a child were one and the same.
He saw the other side, Fuyutsuki realized.
Then it happened.
“This is an emergency!” a young technician shouted from the lower deck. All the middle deck staff had left their stations to gather around Fuyutsuki and hadn’t responded to the message.
An urgent communication had arrived from an intelligence officer in the field—Rei Quatre’s mutant Eva-0.0 had appeared in the Mediterranean Sea. Cyprus.
<< I know I told you to send an emergency evac, but could someone tell me what the hell Commander Katsuragi is doing here with Quatre’s Eva? >>
The call had come from Kensuke.