Chapter 39: The Space Between
Chapter 39:
The Space Between
The Space Between
T
HE MOMENT SUPER EVA
flew through the window, Shinji realized something was wrong. The window appeared to have no thickness; he’d presumed the portal would lead directly to the location on the other side. But now that location seemed far away.
The nearly two-dimensional window extended into something like a passageway. The other side appeared smaller now—like a picture mounted within a matted frame, shrinking, becoming ever more distant—even though Super Eva was supposedly flying toward it with the same incredible speed as before.
I might be in trouble,
Shinji thought.
This is a problem of perception.
I don’t feel like I’m moving forward.
An aircraft could have kept its engines running and flown toward the retreating exit, but an Eva operated by the senses. If its pilot couldn’t sense forward momentum, the Eva might become still.
The Angel Carriers were closing in from behind, and Shinji couldn’t see Tokyo-3 beyond them. Apparently, that side had closed. Shinji was just beginning to panic when Ayanami Rei Trois spoke.
She was wearing the mental shielding suit and sitting in the pilot’s seat, which Shinji had handed over to her, while he stood to the side in a motorcycle-pushing pose, leaning across her to hold the left and right control sticks.
“Maybe,” Ayanami said, “he doesn’t want us to pass.”
Ah,
Shinji thought,
this must be how our enemy attempts to oppose us.
As if to confirm his theory, the gateway-opening twins appeared ahead.
“They’ve come,” Ayanami said.
“I wish they hadn’t,” Shinji replied.
The Eva-sized giants each held an ornate, ringed staff the length of its body.
Some kind of blunt weapon?
They crossed their staves between them to block Super Eva’s path.
The gesture was, perhaps, overly dramatic, but its meaning would have been clear to anybody—they weren’t going to let him pass.
In Nerv Japan’s strategic division, the twin rift-opening giants were temporarily being called Victors Two and Three, but they would soon have to be given a more permanent designation. The current front-runners were decidedly uninspired—the Gatekeepers, or Ah and Un, named after the figures that stood outside temple gates. As the supposedly fast-moving Super Eva failed to close the distance between itself and the pair of guardians ahead, Shinji absently thought,
I guess those names aren’t so off the mark after all.
As Ayanami’s fingers glided across the secondary control panel, smoothly inputting commands, she said, “I’m sorry, Ikari-kun, I’m still not finished initializing that new shoulder cannon.”
“That’s okay. You can save it for later—I get the feeling a fight is about to begin.”
“If they’ve come to block your path,” Ayanami said, “that means…”
“That means what?”
“They opened the window, but maybe they can’t force it closed if something is already traveling through.”
Huh,
Shinji thought. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
There were enemies to the front and to the rear—and the ones ahead were still an unknown quantity.
Ayanami Rei Trois looked past Shinji’s head, his hair waving in the flow of the LCL, and watched the screen displaying the outside view. Though the possibility of a hard, chaotic battle hung in the air, Ayanami felt curiously secure.
Before the Battle at Nerv HQ three years ago, Ayanami had been rejected by Eva-01. Certainly, the thought-shielding gear she wore now changed the circumstances, but the other presence within the Eva, Shinji’s mother—who was, on a fundamental level, identical to Ayanami herself—had left. And now Ayanami could feel, almost tangibly, that Eva-01 and Shinji had become one and the same.
The LCL that filled the entry plug distributed the destructive-level forces of acceleration from the Eva’s irregular and swift maneuvers and lessened the physical burden on the passengers, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t any jostling. After one such bump, Rei Trois shifted her hips to reposition herself, and she sank deeper into the pilot’s seat. As a result, more of her body was pressed against Shinji’s.
To reach the left control stick from his position on the right-hand side of the seat, Shinji had to lean his upper body across Ayanami’s lap. His face, staring straight ahead, was right in front of her chest.
Without thinking, she reached up and gently touched her hand to his cheek.
“Huh?” Shinji said, caught off guard. “Wh-what was that for?”
“Nothing,” Ayanami said.
Earlier, when Maya had seen Shinji become absorbed by the act of flight, he seemed to have transferred his consciousness into Super Eva, leaving his body frozen in position, stiff as a statue. To Shinji, in that moment, time had felt as if it flowed more slowly, and Super Eva had responded instantly to his commands.
Ayanami hadn’t yet witnessed him in that state, but she thought that, from her perspective, the feeling that she was inside Shinji wouldn’t change.
“All right,” Shinji said. “Here we go!”
“Okay,” Ayanami replied.
In this strange tunnel where motion was simultaneously fast and slow, Super Eva faced the enemies ahead with the SRL Bizen sword at the ready.