CHAPTER 7: LE BONHOMME SEPT-HEURES

"Then they'll take you to Cloughprior and shove you in the ground,

but you'll stick your head back out and shout "we'll have another round!"

At the graveside of Cuchulainn we'll kneel around and pray

And God is in His heaven, and Billy's down by the bay."

-Shane McGowan, The Sickbed of Cuchulainn

Grading tests was an exercise in futility. Asuka was midway through her thirty-second midterm exam of the morning, and yet the stack of paper in front of her did not seem to be shrinking at all. She felt her IQ drop several points as she worked her way through this student's clumsy proof of the Braunschweig Destrudo Constant, a concept she mastered at age eight and a half. At this rate, she'd be all the way down in the 170s before lunch. Finding nothing worthy of awarding points for, she scrawled a big red "0" next to the question and moved on.

The damn bells in the church had been peeling since sunrise, because of Impact Day, but she had been up long before then. She found that she couldn't sleep much lately, not due to nightmares (though those had been increasing in frequency lately) but because of good old-fashioned insomnia. She had struggled with bouts of it even before her time as a pilot. And although she was pissed off to be up this early on her day off, she still took it as a good sign. It meant that maybe, just maybe, she was getting out of her funk. Right now, her main emotion was one of mild annoyance. At the bells, at the fact that she had a stack of papers to do, at the fact that the department was giving her the run-around on funding, and at the fact her thesis progress was stalled by… recent developments.

Her other emotion, the one that she deliberately chose to suppress, was an ever-present and gnawing sense of terror, that if left unchecked threatened to overwhelm everything and send her into a panic attack. She knew what was coming tomorrow. Her first meeting with the lawyers. The official beginning of an ordeal that had already been extremely painful. She didn't want to be in the spotlight anymore. And yet, she knew the spotlight would be on her soon, like it or not. While the sun was up, at least, she could lie to herself and pretend like the meeting was still a while away. But the hours were ticking away, and part of her felt like a condemned prisoner.

For his part, Shinji was still asleep in the bedroom that adjoined her "home-office." He had been sleeping longer as of late, usually well past noon. There was little reason to think today would be any different, since the bells had been going for an hour now to no effect. Asuka wanted to chalk it up to laziness, but she couldn't. Because as bad as she felt these days, she knew he felt ten times worse.

She leaned back in her chair and almost hit one of the walls of her office. It was tiny, due to the fact that it was at one point ostensibly a walk-in closet. Before they had moved in the space had been used primarily for "indoor horticulture" by the previous tenants, as evidenced by the mysterious stains on the wall and the faint skunk-y smell that never seemed to go away entirely. It was a pain in the ass to get the landlord to come in and remove the mould left over from the obvious small-scale grow-op. It was even more of a pain in the ass to get him to allow Asuka to cover three of the four walls with the massive whiteboards which she used to work on various equations and mathematical formulae. To her, it made perfect sense, but for most others seemed to be the arcane scrawl of a schizophrenia patient. He seemed to have a pathological aversion to them putting any kind of hole in the wall. "No screw! No hole!" he would yell at them in his strange Russo-English pidgin. "Is bad for house value!" Eventually she managed to wear him down enough to concede permission by having a very loud and very long argument over the phone with him in Russian, her seventh and worst language, which was still miles better than his English.

Come to think of it, putting up the whiteboards was how they discovered the mould in the first place.

She quickly tabulated the grade of the student, who had either given up or run out of time on the last three blank questions. That, at least, was a mercy. She quickly added up the points and wrote "30%" on top of the cover page, before throwing the test in "done" pile. He had done better than many in the class. Asuka had the second highest fail rate of any professor at MIT, by far the highest of any first-year professor. This was a statistic that had given her a perverse sense of pride. She never deliberately made anything too hard, at least, she didn't think she did. She just had high expectations. These people wanted to swim on her side of the pool? Fine. But you had to be able to keep your head above water, or else drown with the rest. That was what the bastards that had ruined her life got wrong. Evolution wasn't something you could force. Evolution was just a product of natural selection.

Still, she'd be lying if she said that she didn't have her own motivations. Within two classes, a good quarter of the students in her class had dropped out and moved on to something else when they realized that Metaphysical Biology wouldn't involve much "angel porn," (her term). Once these grades were released, she was sure that that would go down to less than half the original number, which meant less work for her. Again, it wasn't like she was trying to trick them, but there was a very good reason that her first midterm was well before the deadline to switch classes. Asuka was not a teacher. She didn't like teaching, she wasn't especially good at teaching, and the only reason she did it at all was because it was a requirement to get her PhD. A tick in a box. So, she would teach. But she would teach her way. Weirdly enough, she had gotten no departmental complaints yet. Why would they complain? She was a one-woman bulwark against grade inflation.

She sighed as she grabbed the next exam. At least this one would be quick. There was nothing written on it at all, except a tiny "I'm sorry" written in the first answer section. She hurriedly leafed through it and noticed the answer sections were left blank, aside from a few wet marks that looked suspiciously like tear stains. She wrote a zero on top of the page and did a quick search in her class list on her computer. As luck would have it, the student had dropped out on the date of the exam. So, she crumpled up the paper into a tight ball, and flung it through the open door in a wide ark over Shinji's sleeping form into the small wastebasket they kept next to their nightstand. An impressive shot for a girl with next to no depth perception. She pumped her arm in celebration. Another one down.

She worked like that, robotically almost, for about an hour. Of the ten or so papers she graded, three had passed, and two of those just barely. She was careful to avoid letting her mind go on autopilot, because then the thoughts would start. And that was the exact thing she wanted to avoid at this moment.

Thoughts and apprehension about the trial were forefront, but behind them, squeezed in the darker corners of her mind, was the crushing futility of it all. As much as she hated him, she could give a shit whether Gendo Ikari was convicted or not. Whether he lived or died. For as much as he hurt her, he was nothing to her now. She just wanted to be left alone.

No, she was more worried about Shinji than anything. Because deep down, she knew he still craved his attention and his love, despite assertions to the contrary. After all he had done to him, he was still his father. It was he, not she, that would be most negatively affected by this. She knew how fragile she was, and knew that something like this had the potential to destroy him.

She sighed and put down her pen. It was time for a break. As she got up, she winced. Her ribs were killing her from sitting hunched forward for so long, and her bad eye was even worse from having to read her student's handwriting. She got up and crept past Shinji, who was clutching her pillow tightly as a substitute for her, still fast asleep despite the bells which were still peeling, much to Asuka's annoyance. She briefly considered crawling back in bed with him, but he didn't seem to be distressed and she figured he'd be better off just sleeping. She did, however, grab the small bottle of Percocet she kept in the drawer and dry-swallowed two in order to kill the pain.

The coffee was lukewarm but she drank it anyway (black, three sugars) and spread out on their cheap-ass couch. IKEA called it a Ficka, Swedish for "pocket" due to its small size, a name that was suspiciously close to Ficken, German for something else entirely. Ironically it was technically a loveseat. It cost $300 and its left armrest was already broken, after one incident during better times in which the couch lived up to its name.

News broadcast. "...with ethnic tension at an all-time high, riots are expected in major cities across-" *CLICK*

Documentary. "…profiling the New York City building magnate who had a spiritual awakening after Second Impact selling all of his worldly possessions to live a simple, holy life, feeding millions around the world. He leads a self-funded Buddhist monastery in Upstate New York where he attracts thousands from around the world who travel to learn from his simple yet profound philosophy. "It's all about the oms, folks. Balances your chakras, it's tremendous. Okay? We gotta hear more oms. Let's go. Oooommmmm. Come on folks, I wanna hear more oms. More oms in the back—" *CLICK*

Old movie. "Looks like a meteor, captain."

"Yes, but maybe we'd better investigate." *CLICK*

Wing nut. "…Project Blue Beam, everybody knows that the Angels were just a hoax that the government used to control the population and—" *CLICK*

She stopped eventually on one of the higher numbered channels, on which a preacher wearing a sequined outfit gesticulated to the sound of shitty country-rock in some Appalachian mega-church, populated by the type of toothless hill-folk that Asuka liked to pretend she wasn't descended from on her father's side.

"I can feel the Holy Spirit watching us, brothers and sisters!" the charlatan, whose cracked makeup shone under hot television spotlights yelled to the crowd, his greasy face twisted up in faux-spiritual orgasm, "Do you feel the presence of the Lord?" Cheering followed; the crowd was eating it up. They stretched their arms out at him longingly the weird way that certain kinds of Christians did. There was a quick dissolve to an out-dated computer graphic as an announcer began to speak.

"For five years, Pastor Jimmy Claxton has been reuniting families through the grace of the Lord. Through tested, Biblically based prayer solutions like the patented Jimmy Claxton Dead Sea Miracle Sand, Pastor Jimmy can and will reunite the faithful with their relatives, friends, and loved ones."

An overweight woman sat in front of a green screen projecting papyrus covered in a stock image of Koine Greek Bible pages chosen at random. "I thought my three-year-old son was gone forever after the Rapture, but after taking the Pastor Jimmy Prayer Course and using the Dead Sea Miracle Sand, he was back within a few weeks."

An elderly man sat uncomfortably in a folding chair, his face gouty, his t-shirt stained. "Before I met Pastor Jimmy, I thought my wife was gone for good. On the same day the Dead Sea Miracle Sand arrived in the mail, I got a call from the government that she had come back."

"Don't let hopelessness hold you back, for it is written that 'With God, all things are possible.' And for just one small donation, one small gift of love-"

She shut the TV off, unwilling to listen to anymore bullshit. That was the kind of world she lived in, where people were selling jars of dirt to gullible or desperate idiots, exploiting their stupidity for profit. This was the sort of thing that gave her a low opinion of religion in the first place. There had always been snakes out there, but of late, they had become all the more numerous, and all the more predatory.

Outside, a police car drove by, then another one, and another. Passively, she wondered what the cops were doing out here. Maybe a domestic dispute? It was a holiday after all, so most of the neighbours were almost certain to be drunk. Still, it seemed like overkill, especially when the armoured personnel carriers began to rumble by. She had heard that there were riots in the neighbourhood in the past, but the idea seemed foreign to her. They wouldn't do that sort of thing now, right? She was so disconnected from her neighbours that she sometimes forgot where she lived. The only time she spoke to Americans was at work, and she had no friends unless she counted Shinji. She had never lived in America before, despite her lineage, and had visited it only a few times. It didn't seem violent. Not back then.

Suddenly, she heard her cell phone ringing on the kitchen table, its tinny speakers struggling to overpower the church bells that were still fucking ringing. She went over to it, further aggravating her ribs in the process, and saw that it was work calling.

Shit, she thought grimly. Not now.

"Hello?" She said, pensively. "Why are you calling me? It's a holiday."

"Hi, Asuka…" it was her doctoral advisor, Dr. Jane Goff. She was a woman just over middle age, silver haired and underweight, with good bone structure and skin and a terrible, nasally upper-class Boston Brahmin accent that made her sound far older and far smarter than she was. She was considered by most to be a pioneer in their field and in Asuka's opinion undeservedly so. In truth, she'd simply had enough sense to stay out of GEHIRN or NERV, preferring to climb the university ladder rather than get her hands dirty. When the shit hit the fan and most of the others in the Metaphysical Sciences field started dying off en masse or getting hauled away in cuffs for crimes against humanity and nature, it was she that remained standing by virtue of laziness. The woman hadn't published a paper since the mid-nineties, and even that was derivative and unimpressive, to Asuka at least. Her skills were in administration: lobbying for funding, begging for donations, and general academic prostitution. She was a bureaucrat, not a scientist; one of the many varieties of people Asuka detested. Even so, the girl had enough sense to bite her tongue and show a little deference. She wasn't stupid, after all.

"Did the government come through yet?" Asked Asuka, knowing already that they hadn't. "Because I'd really like to get started-"

"No, Asuka, listen." There was a deep breath on the other end of the phone, "We need you to take a break."

"What?"

"A break. A temporary break. From teaching. And research, too, any sort of work. Temporarily." She made sure to stress the word temporarily. Asuka's hands began to tremble.

"I don't understand."

"We already have a replacement lined up, so you don't have to worry about-"

"On what grounds?" She asked icily as she tried to shove down her rage.

The voice on the other end of the line grew quiet for a moment. There was an audible sigh, and then she said, "Well, we know that you have some legal… difficulties… to work through. Regarding your past." Another awkward silence. "You've already missed a few classes, and we're getting complaints about some… uh… erratic behaviour. When we hired you, we knew that you're–"

"Realized you were hiring a crazy person?" Asuka said, her voice dripping with venom. "Just say it. Everybody says it behind my back anyway. Everybody who knows."

"Asuka, please! It's not that and you know it!" Goff lectured, sounding more like an annoyed teacher than anyone with genuine concern. "We knew about your… experiences … and we were, and are willing to work around them. We all know how gifted you are, or else we would never have taken you on in the first place. This is purely a practical matter. The department is under enough scrutiny as it is and the last thing we need is-"

"Oh, so it's cowardice then!" She yelled mockingly, not even noticing the stream of cop cars, paddy wagons, and APCs that continued to pour past her living room window. "See, I thought that you had some integrity left. I guess I was wrong."

"For God's sake Asuka, be professional!" The horrible pearl-clutcher gasped in her ivory tower, outraged at the prospect of someone refusing to kiss her ancient ass, "The decision is already made. There's nothing that can be done. By you or I. This was an order from the dean. I had no say in it."

Asuka could smell a lie from a mile away, but instead of calling her out on it she just screeched, "Fuck professionalism!" Before she could lay into her anymore she caught sight of the constant stream of police vehicles. Confusion trumped rage and she said, quietly for once, "what the hell?"

"You're going through a difficult time," said Dr. Goff, "so I'll overlook your response. I wish you well, and I hope to speak to you soon under better circumstances." She hung up before Asuka could get another word in.

"Bitch!" Asuka yelled as she tossed her phone, Frisbee-like, at the wall. The screen, which was already cracked, cracked again. Asuka didn't care.

As she felt the adrenaline subside, she braced herself subconsciously for the tide of self-hatred and panic to overtake her. Surprisingly, it didn't come. Instead, she was overcome with an overwhelming relief. As much as she didn't want to admit it, she was glad to be free of her university obligations. Pissed off, yes, but glad. Is this progress? She wondered. Or have I just completely checked out?

Even so, she could use some warmth at the moment. She decided to go back to back to bed. Shinji, who was incredibly still asleep despite the yelling, had the right idea. Also, the damn bells had finally stopped, meaning that maybe, just maybe, she could get some sleep. She began to walk towards the bedroom when there was a very loud knock at the door that made her jump a little. The knock was insistent, and she could tell that whoever it was wasn't here to deliver good news.

"Open up," demanded a voice. "It's the police."

Shit.

Asuka crept towards the door hesitantly and looked outside through the peep-hole. It was the cops alright. Two identical 5 foot something chrome-domes with dark utility sunglasses and shiny stainless-steel badges and dark blue uniforms.

Shit!

She opened the door a crack. "What?" she asked tersely.

"Are you uh… Assookah Langley–" the cop paused, taking a breath as he tried to figure out how to pronounce her name, "–uhh… Soohhhhhriieu?"

"I'm Asuka Langley-Soryu, yes," she said, sure to pronounce the Japanese words extra Japanese-y. "What do you want?"

"You need to come with us, ma'am. It ain't safe here." The cop's partner was silent throughout the exchange, opting instead to glower.

"Why?" She asked, crossing her arms angrily, "we haven't done anything." This is just what I need right now.

"Riots, ma'am. It's just a precaution, ma'am, but we think it's gonna get pretty bad," he said. "So, uh, you should probably get packing–"

"Do you think we're afraid of a few riots? We're not coming," she said, matter-of-factly. "We can protect ourselves."

"You haven't seen Southie riots," said the cop. "Besides, it's not a suggestion."

"We're not coming," she said. Then, using the full extent of her legal training, she smugly asked, "am I free to go, or am I being detained?"

The cop looked confused. "Uh… yes," he said, "that's right. You're being detained. We got the court order right here."

Well that's something that doesn't happen in the videos. "Oh… uh…"

Shinji, finally awake, stumbled out of the bedroom rubbing his eyes. "What's going on?" He asked, in Japanese.

"Fucking pigs are arresting us," she said, also in Japanese, immediately regretting the choice of words.

"Hey can you guys uh–" stammered the timid cop.

"Arresting us? Why?" Asked Shinji, a look of terrified confusion spreading over his face. She shuddered internally when she contemplated what he was thinking.

It was official. The bastards had hurt Shinji. Now she was in kill mode. But she couldn't afford to pop off now, not when the Gestapo were at the gates. She suppressed her rage for a moment and put on a mask of cold professionalism. The same mask she wore when she was piloting.

The cops, for their part, were unaware of the internal drama playing out before them. " –maybe speak English so we can…"

She tried to bring the tension in her husband down. "Riots or something. They say it's for our own protection."

The silent cop spoke, never once breaking his death stare, "Listen, we can throw you to the ground and take you to jail in cuffs and slap an obstruction of justice charge on you, or we can take you to a hotel. The choice is yours, but I suggest you make it quickly." Just then, she noticed that he had his hand on his Taser. Something told her that he would not hesitate to use it. Oh, you son of a bitch.

Asuka opened her mouth to scream back a response, but Shinji said, "We'll come." He turned to Asuka, his eyes pleading for calm, "…right?"

Instead of shouting, she put the mask of professionalism back on. "Fine," she said, shooting daggers of ice into the vital organs of the cops. Then, merely for the sake of maintaining some level of control over the situation, she said, "but we're taking our own car."

The cops looked at each other hesitantly, before finally relenting in the interests of avoiding a fight. "Deal. You have fifteen minutes to pack."

The cops looked very relieved indeed.

"You rolled over like a bitch back there, you know that, right?" She said as she stared at the ass end of the escort car ahead of them. Not that the escort was really necessary, there was next to no traffic today, something unheard of in Boston. The sky was dark, made even darker by the oversized knock-off Ray bans she was wearing, which made her look like a highway patrol woman or an undersized Middle Eastern dictator.

They were not the sort of thing she wore ordinarily, but she made a point of not letting these bastards see the faint scars that surrounded her bad eye. Even more secretive were the ones on her wrists, which she showed no one besides Shinji. "They have no right to do shouldn't have let them just–" her train of thought was interrupted. "Fucking move!" She yelled as she leaned into her horn, which was custom-installed and far louder than the average car horn, to protest the "snail's pace" (85 miles per hour) of the escort car in front of her.

"I don't want to fight right now," Shinji said lethargically, noticing her obvious frustration. "Please Asuka? This day is already bad enough."

"I'm not fighting," she said in a tone that suggested otherwise, "I just wonder where the hell your balls went."

"What balls?" He asked in what could pass for a self-depreciative attempt at levity in a normal person. The tone, though, had no humour in it.

She jerked into the left lane in frustration, in a futile attempt to get ahead of the escort car. "Enough of this 'poor me' crap. If you're trying to be cute, it's not working, and if you're fishing for sympathy –" just then, the lead car quickly cut in front of her and, as if to punish her for her bad behaviour, slowed down considerably. The other escort car, which had been trailing them, now kept pace with her in the right lane, preventing her from getting around. "Assholes!" She exclaimed, honking again with renewed fury.

"I wasn't fishing for–"

"Shut up."

There was silence for a few moments, as neither quite knew how to react to Asuka's curt response. "Are you mad at me?" Asked Shinji finally, in a small, sad, child-like voice.

Yes. "No," she lied, eyes still fixated on tinted back window of the car ahead of them, focusing pure hatred into it. "I'm mad at them," she said. "I wish you would be too."

"I am!" He said.

"You have a funny way of showing it." She honked some more.

"What do you want me to do?" He asked, frustration bubbling up in his voice. "They were going to arrest us, Asuka!"

"I don't know? Defend me? Like a man would do," she said, coldly. "Instead you just let these bastards come in to our home and drag us out."

"I didn't let them!"

She grunted dismissively. "Fine. Whatever. I' m not in the mood for this shit right now, okay? Forget I said anything."

The car was silent for the rest of the drive.

The hotel that they were billeted in was, surprisingly enough for something provided by the government, one of the most expensive in the city: Howth Castle Boston. The fact that they were spending quite heavily on them gave Asuka a perverse sense of satisfaction. If she was going to be their prisoner, she was glad that she was at least a very expensive prisoner. They were in the heart of downtown Boston, surrounded on all sides by construction cranes and glass skyscrapers which meshed poorly with the colonial architecture.

The streets were clogged with unfortunates. The downtown core of every city in the world was choked with them now, and in truth Boston, a rich city, had fewer than most. But even so you saw the meth-heads and the junkies. The war-ravaged, limbless veterans begging fruitlessly for scraps, shivering in the cold and battered and spit upon by average citizens too wracked by their own trauma to bother pitying them.

Among them were the Jesus people, competing in desperation to sell salvation, some true believers and other charlatans, both camps attempting to pad Christian doctrine (or, in an increasing number of cases, other religions, some ancient and others new) with new and exciting features, sometimes for shock value to attract rubes in the cases of the more fraudulent strains, sometimes in an attempt to answer the new and very uncomfortable questions that had been thrust upon it by twin apocalypses. The Salvation Army was also there too, for some reason, despite the fact that Christmas was still months away.

The hotel itself was kept largely vagrant free by the security guards who shuffled them along or, if they got rowdy, beat the shit out of them. Security was the most lucrative industry in the world right now, for obvious reasons. Every business offering anything of value had some sort of guard, whether they be a professional team from one of the big firms like OBB or a simple shotgun or baseball bat tucked under the counter. It was obvious that the hotel had amped up its security even more because of their presence. Like it or not, they were VIPs again.

The lobby was faux-opulent and gaudy. Asuka, who by divine right was always correct about what constituted good taste, gave the décor a solid D. It also had a creepy vibe because of its sheer desolation. Aside from a few staff that were milling about, they and the cops were the only ones visible. The staff eyed their "guests" nervously. Clearly rumours had spread already. Asuka shot them a hostile look, and they seemed to flinch at it.

They were led directly to the elevators, with no need to check in. The atmosphere inside was tense, both guards staring at the elevators with a calm sense of purpose, ready to tackle them if they ran or shoot them dead if they fought.

"You are not to leave your room until we get you tomorrow morning, okay?" said one of the guards as they exited the elevator. He had a soft voice, far too soft for a man of his size. "We don't want you sneaking back to your house. We got every staircase and every elevator covered, so don't even bother testing us."

"This can't be legal," muttered Asuka, who felt compelled to offer some resistance.

"Legality don't matter too much these days, trust me," said the guard. "You wanna' take the government to court, be my guest. I ain't got no dog in that fight. But if you try to leave tonight, I will arrest you and I may taze you. Understand?"

"Yes, officer. There won't be any issues," said Shinji, who tried in vain to mask his fear with politeness.

"Good," said the guard as he swiped his key-card. They were not given a copy. "Well, here we are. Feel free to order room service, on us. Anything you like. It's a uh… token of appreciation. Oh, and take your luggage with you when you're done with the meeting tomorrow. You ain't coming back here." He paused for a second. "Oh, and before I forget, don't worry about your house. FBI's set up a guard around that."

"Thank you, officer. That is very kind of you," said Shinji, robotically. "We are very grateful for the hospitality."

The guard merely grunted and shut the door. They were left alone.

Asuka looked at Shinji with disgust and flopped down on the bed. Shinji shot her his trademark hang-dog look, opened his mouth as if to say something, then thought better of it and took a seat by the window. He struggled for a moment to open it, then realized the effort was futile.

Asuka debated turning on the television to break the silence, but she decided against it. Her head was killing her now, the ever-present ringing in her ears rising beyond tolerable levels. Additional noise would only further annoy her. She briefly attempted sleep, but that proved fruitless despite her earlier tiredness. Instead, she reached inside the nightstand and out of pure boredom withdrew a Gideon Bible, that strange relic of a simpler time. She turned to a random page, careful not to tear the thin, cheap paper.

"The priests blew the trumpets. When the people heard the blast of the trumpets, they gave a thunderclap shout. The wall fell at once. The people rushed straight into the city and took it. They put everything in the city under the holy curse, killing man and woman, young and old, ox and sheep and donkey."

Lovely.

She put the book aside, placing her phone on top of it, turned over, and tried to nap. She never achieved it. Every time she felt like she was close to relaxing, she felt pangs of stress well up in her stomach. She would fidget and try to calm herself, but moments later they would come back. She could feel her nerve endings vibrate, almost itching her. She wanted to run somewhere, anywhere, but she couldn't. So she just lay there, waiting.

She lay like that for some time, until she heard the sound of rain on the window. The sky had darkened considerably. It was late afternoon by now, but the streets were dark, brightened only by the occasional flash of lightning. The rain was coming down in great sheets, battering against the window. The wind moaned, ghostly and distant.

"It's really coming down out there," she said, sneaking up behind him. "You okay? You've been sitting there for hours.

He only grunted in response.

She put a hand on his shoulder and he recoiled. "Jesus, Shinji, I'm trying to be nice!" She said. "Are you mad at me?"

"No," he said, unconvincingly.

"I don't believe you."

He sighed. "Okay, a little."

"I shouldn't have yelled at you in the car. I'm under a lot of stress. I got fired today."

"Really?"

"Well, I was put on a leave of absence. But I know what that really means."

"It's probably for the best."

She crossed her arms. "You're starting to sound like them."

"Sorry," he said, flinching instinctively and turning back towards the window. "I don't want to fight anymore, Asuka, I—"

She flopped down next to him, squeezing him to the very edge of the hotel armchair. "You're probably right," she said. "Truth is, my students fucking hate me."

"That's just because—"

"I'm a bitch," she said. "It's okay. I know it. I'm not a crowd pleaser. Screw 'em. It's the fact I can't work on my project anymore that really bothers me." Mama. "Anyway, I'm sorry for yelling at you earlier."

"It's fine. You had a bad day. I understand."

"Bad month, more like." Bad year. Bad life. She slipped an arm around him. "It's kind of pretty, you know."

"What?"

"The storm," she said, still staring at the storm. A flash of lightning lit up the distant sky. Asuka felt chills down her spine. It felt as if the electricity of the storm had entered her, and taken up residence in her stomach.

"I'm just thinking about the storm gutter. This wind's going to knock the rest of the leaves off," he said, sighing. "I just cleaned the damn thing out."

"Romantic as always, Shinji," she giggled. "You know, I was afraid of storms when I was little."

"Really?"

"Yeah. The thunder used to freak me out. It's so loud," she said, just as a particularly loud crack of thunder resounded, shaking the window slightly. "See? I used to hide under my bed sometimes."

"I liked storms," he said. "They… relaxed me. Plus it cut through the heat. It got really stuffy sometimes in the summer. We never had air conditioning."

"Weren't you raised in the country?"

He nodded. "Yeah, in Kamikuishiki," he said. "It wasn't too far from Toyko-3 but it felt like a whole different world. Much quieter. It was a pretty nice town, actually." He sighed and stared back out at the city. "Now it's probably underwater."

"It's best not to think about that," said Asuka, sensing his distress. "Are you ready for tomorrow?"

"I guess," he said. "I don't have to wear a suit, do I? Because I don't-"

"Wear what you want," she said. "You don't have to perform for these bastards." There was more venom in her voice than she intended, but she made no effort to take any of it back. She felt Shinji draw her closer.

"No," he said. "You're right."

They were silent for a while.

"Asuka..."said Shinji, eventually. "Sometimes I – I think you're drifting away from me," he said. "I'm scared that I'm going to lose you."

"Where would I even drift to?" She asked dreamily, knowing the answer already.

Just then, the power went out.

"Well, I guess that rules out room service," she said.

"I'm not hungry."

"Me neither. Hotel food is shit anyway." She eyed him expectantly. "You want to just go to bed?"

"It's only–"

She pointed at the digital clock beside their bed, which was blank. "Clock's not working. Who cares what time it is?"

"Fair eno–" She cut him off mid-sentence – kissing him hungrily, almost violently. She pushed him to the floor, claiming him for herself, animal instincts overwhelming rationality. The nervous electricity she felt beneath her skin drove her, she dug her nails into his skin and straddled him, feeling his heart stir in his chest and other parts stir in other places. She had been deprived of him for too long. She would have him now and no one, not the government, not her depression, and certainly not Shinji himself would keep her from him.

Eventually, she realized that he probably needed air. "No more fighting," she said, breathlessly. "No more bullshit, okay? We're a team. We're all we have. So we need to be strong for each other, okay?"

"I—"

"Shut up," she said. "Just say yes."

"O-okay." She kissed him again, harder this time. They would not speak in discernable words until morning.

In the adjoining room, the eight FBI agents tasked with monitoring Shinji and Asuka through bugs implanted in the walls shifted uncomfortably in their office chairs. Their audio feed was still up and running, but the power outage had knocked out the video. Most were glad, as it was far less awkward to listen than to watch. But a few of them were secretly disappointed, and they silently cursed the storm for their misfortune.

It was night or early morning, and the storm was still going strong. Asuka was caught in the borderlands between sleep and dream, contentedly half-listening to the gentle snores of her boyfriend – no, husband – beside her as her tired mind wandered from place to place, finally free from the hell it had been trapped in the past few weeks. She allowed herself to bask for a while, laying on her back, her mind cloudy, her thoughts formless and liquid.

As she lay there though, she felt the temperature begin to drop precipitously. It was gradual at first, beyond notice, but eventually Asuka found that her joints, which still pained her since the battle despite the fact that they were seemingly healed, began to ache. She wondered subconsciously whether or not a window was open, or whether the air conditioning was set to the lowest setting possible. She briefly considered getting up to check, but instead she tried to steal some blanket from Shinji. She could not. She was frozen in place.

Her eyes shot open. The room was pitch-black, covered in smothering, unnatural darkness that seemed to have a material thickness to it. It choked her. She tried to jump out of bed but she couldn't, her limbs were numb and motionless. Panic set in quickly, her heart beating against her chest. She tried to say something, but the words caught in her throat. She tried to wake Shinji, but he remained asleep, dead to the world and unable to help her. She stared at the darkness and knew something lurked in it.

And then, as if on cue a pair of eyes appeared out of the darkness, burning like coals. Unlike coals, they were not red. They were gray, devoid of any personality or soul. They emitted no light and yet were visible all the same. They were evil, she decided. And they were dead set on her. The walls of the room seemed to bend inward as the figure loomed over her dispassionately yet menacingly. Stray sources of light from outside were sucked into it, leaving long distorted arches through the air like sparkler tips.

She could see that the figure was tall, but that was about all she could see of it. It was a living shadow, a clump of negative space floating inches from her face. It certainly wasn't some intruder. It wasn't even human, at least, not a conventional human. She got the same feeling looking at it as she did looking at an Angel, that of vague foreboding – impending doom. Reflexively, Asuka tried to lash out at the figure, but she couldn't. Her body screamed at her, urging her to fight or flee, but neither option was available. A trapped animal, unable to even scream in terror or beg for mercy.

For a moment, Asuka knew that she was about to die. Again.

She sat up bolt stiff, sweat covering her naked body, chest heaving, panic seizing every limb, now suddenly liberated and free to flail. She scrambled thoughtlessly for the nearest source of light in the room – her phone, scraping the bare wood of the nightstand with her nails as she grabbed it, leaving long scratches in the varnish. She opened it frantically, finally illuminating the room. It looked mundane as ever. The presence, whatever it was, was gone.

She felt Shinji stir beside her. "What's wrong?" He asked sleepily.

"B-bad dream," she said, her eyes filled with tears that she quickly wiped away. She felt stupid for being so afraid, but some irrational part of her wasn't convinced that it had been a dream. Her dreams, horrific as they were, at least had an air of unreality to them, or else were replays of past events. This had been something entirely new.

Shinji sidled up to her but she rebuffed his touch. "Not now," she said. "It's time to get up soon, anyhow." The digital display of the nightstand clock, which floated in the darkness like the presence's eyes read "7:06." Power, at least, was back.

"Already? It's still so dark."

"The storm," she said, simply. "I'm going to go take a shower."

Shinji grumbled and within moments resumed snoring. Asuka crept over to the bathroom, as alert and wary as she was on combat patrols, closed the door, and locked it tightly.

The day was cold, almost winter-like. The storm had passed, but the sky was still dark and hazy and thick with clouds. It was a mercy that the walk to the lawyer's office was very short. Even so, they were still escorted by an army of cops every step of the way.

The office was located in a generic looking office building, more concrete than glass, probably built sometime in the forties or fifties. It was tall but it was dwarfed by the taller, newer buildings that surrounded it. The cops mercifully left them once they were inside. They rang for the elevator and went up to the sixth floor.

It smelled like a dentist's office. In part the floor was occupied by a dentist's office. Asuka crinkled her nose. She had always hated the dentist, even before certain events had given her a fear of it so pronounced that she refused to go for any reason. When she was in the camp, she refused teeth inspections, rare as they were. She couldn't stand being trapped and supine as sharp implements prodded her. It reminded her too much of the past.

They sat impatiently in a makeshift waiting room. Asuka drummed her fingernails impatiently on the plastic chair, Shinji sat bolt upright, stiff and unmoving. Why the hell they had to wait, Asuka didn't know. They were important enough to book an entire hotel but not important enough to be seen right away. The nerve of this guy!

The office was clearly still in the process of being set up, Asuka and Shinji had to get up and move more than once as workmen painted the walls and wired the lighting. They were, for the most part, Cape Verdeans, an ethnic group common to Boston even before their country sank into the ocean after Second Impact, causing nearly all the survivors to be relocated en-masse to New England. There were a few Japanese as well since every service industry in the world seemed to employ cheap Japanese labour now. They spoke Portuguese- a language that Asuka didn't speak- with their colleagues, so Asuka reasoned that they were probably Brazilian dekasegi that had moved back to Japan for the employment boom that the Second Impact and NERV had spurred in the early 2000s. They had been treated like trash in Japan even though they were ethnically Japanese, but in America they were probably the most easily integrated and successful of the Asian refugees, since culturally they were the least Asian.

"I couldn't help but notice you speak Japanese earlier," said one of the workmen, an older electrician. "What are you here for?"

"A waste of time," replied Asuka.

"You here to see that batakusai?" He paused, realizing immediately the awkward situation that he had created. "I mean no offence, of course, I would never–"

Shinji shot Asuka a worried look. He seemed to say, telepathically, don't make a scene. She didn't. Instead, she just said, "Don't worry about it. I'm only half batakusai. More like margarine."

The man laughed heartily, and then eyed them both. "You kids watch out. He's a snake, that man. And a real asshole too. But don't tell him I said that."

They waited a few more moments that felt like hours. In the office, Asuka could hear a faint, one-sided conversation in French, a language she did speak.

"-I told you already I'm busy. Can't come up at least for another month, maybe longer. I know she's sick, Claudette, but… yeah, I know. I know… About me? Why… Claudette I got people waiting. Important people… Yes for the court thing… Claudette, for Christ's sake calm down. Tabarnak. Okay. Okay. Goodbye. Okay…. Jesus." She heard a shuffling of chairs and out of the door emerged a squat, ugly little man with a bald head and a crooked nose. Asuka hated him already.

"Sorry about that," said the man in a slightly accented voice. "Personal stuff. You know how it is. I'm Rene."

Asuka stared daggers at him. Shinji introduced himself. "I-I'm Shinji Ik- I mean, Soryu. This is my wife–"

"Asuka," she said, not breaking the death stare. "Why did you drag us out here?"

"Because, to make a long story short, I need you," he said. "But there'll be time for explanations in a few minutes. Please, follow me," Reluctantly, she did.

"Hey, Victor," said Rene to the Japanese man who had spoken to them earlier. "Why are those wires exposed?"

"We haven't clipped them yet," he said. "We haven't put in the—"

"Well tape them out of the way at least. They're a hazard," said Rene.

"Right, boss," Then, in Japanese as he gestured derisively at Rene, "See, asshole."

The office itself was Spartan and messy, clearly still in the process of being set up. The walls were unpainted and there was no ornamentation aside from the boxes of files littered everywhere as well as law books haphazardly strewn in piles on the ground. The whole effect of the room was one of claustrophobia, and Asuka felt her heart begin to beat faster. This is it. She thought, we're in it now. For real.

"I thought we'd keep today short," he said as he sat down in his chair, the same uncomfortable plastic chairs as in the waiting room. "I don't want to discuss the case itself, preliminary matters only. Is that alright with you?"

They said nothing.

"Qui tacet concieret. That's a fancy legal term that hasn't been true since the 1600s. But we'll go by it anyway, okay?" Rene was met with more silence. He drummed his fingers on his desk. "So. First. A bit about me. My name's Rene Bonaventure. I'm Chief Prosecutor for the ICC - the International Criminal Court. Before that I was first assistant prosecutor for the Rangon—"

"We don't care," said Asuka, brusquely. "Tell us what you want from us and let us go. We don't give a shit about your resume. You're a bloodsucking, suit-wearing lawyer that makes too much money and contributes nothing of value to society." Shinji looked mortified, but Asuka didn't much care.

Rene smiled thinly, clearly unamused. "Fine. Fair enough. I can sense some… hostility…" He pronounced it "'ostility," which annoyed Asuka. "and clearly some of it is warranted, although I'm not entirely convinced it's aimed at the right people. You've been hurt before–"

"Cut the bullshit poor kid routine. You're UN, right?" Asked Asuka accusingly.

"Technically."

"I hate the UN," she said, venom dripping from her voice, eyes fixed firmly on Rene's bald, disgusting pig-like face. "This is a sham and you know it. You want us to be your little prop so you can—"

Shinji had finally had enough. He laid a hand on her shoulder "Asuka–"

"Not again, Shinji, Jesus!" She yelled in Japanese. "Grow some fucking balls!"

"Don't talk like this in front of strangers, Asuka, please," he said, also in Japanese.

"You're taking his side. I fucking knew you'd take his side!"

"Asuka–" Shinji had begun to tremble slightly. Asuka felt a pang of guilt, but she was too angry to calm herself.

Rene cradled his head in his hands pathetically as they bickered. "Listen," he said, icily, "I understand why you don't have any confidence in this process but I can promise you this whole process is legitimate. You're not props. You're not tools. You're human beings… child soldiers, who had your lives–" Asuka watched as Rene struggled to find a softer synonym for ruined. "Altered by people that exploited you. That didn't care about you. Well, I care about you. I'm here to help you. I swear to God I'm here to help you. I don't want to make this painful for you. God knows you've been through enough already. But I need some cooperation."

"Or what?" Challenged Asuka.

"Or… nothing! The trial goes to shit and these murderers walk free. You're the only insiders at NERV we have. If you don't participate in this trial then we have shit. Jesus, don't you want to get back at these people?!" Now Rene was yelling, or at least struggling not to yell. It was then that Asuka noticed how dishevelled the man was. Clearly, he hadn't slept in a while.

In a small voice, Shinji said, "Not really."

"What?"

"We… at least, I think we just want to move on with our lives. Revenge doesn't really… appeal to us. Or at least to me. I think."

Rene smirked derisively. "Loyalty for the father. I get it." Asuka almost struck the man then and there.

Shinji's eyes fixed on Rene. His glare was icy, soul-piercing. "I have no loyalty to him," he said in a low, cutting voice. He glanced over at Asuka. "I think we're done here," he said.

We're a team. "Yeah," she said, "we're done."

Rene sighed dejectedly. "I didn't want to do this," he said, "but I have to. I'm going to get the subpoena." He drummed his fingers on his desk and shrugged. "And I might have to request to have you detained, for your own safety."

Before Asuka could explode in anger, Shinji calmly said, "Get the subpoena. We'll fight it. Let's go, Asuka." And he walked out.

Asuka was trembling as she got up to follow him. She lingered at the doorway for a brief moment. "Have you ever been to war, Mr. Bonaventure?" She didn't turn to face him.

"No," said a tired and defeated voice, "but I've been to warzones."

"Ever killed anyone?" She asked.

"No."

"Well I have," she said, turning to face him. She fixed her eyes on his. "Si tu lui blessera, je te tue." Rene said nothing as she walked out of the room.

To Asuka's annoyance, they had to sleep another night at the hotel. The riots had been worse than expected. Although their house was untouched, apparently, someone had been lynched right next door. Asuka's only thought at hearing the news was well, I'm glad we brought the Mercedes with us.

There were no night-time visitors tonight. She lay curled up, still wide awake, relatively comfortably with Shinji at her side. He had been well rewarded for his show of bravery. And yet, from a strategic point of view, Asuka knew they had screwed up royally. Now, they were in a protracted fight with a hostile force. If there ever was any hope of getting through this relatively easily, that was gone now.

Weirdly enough, the emptiness inside her seemed a little less harrowing now. In a strange sense, she had been given purpose again. An external threat to distract her from her internal tormentors. It's sad, she thought. If I can't destroy someone else, I'll only destroy myself.

The hotel phone rang. Shinji groggily stirred and reached for the phone but Asuka snapped it up first.

"It's three in the morning," she said. "What do you want?"

"Listen." She recognized that voice. It was Rene. "Something came up. Something big. I have a deal to propose."

ONE WEEK EARLIER, LCL CONTAINMENT ZONE 232, THE SEA OF JAPAN

The PT boat bobbed aimless against the thick red sea, itself lifeless in a place where nothing could live. The sky was pink, barren and scarred. Blood rained constantly. This was hell. This was Japan.

Satoshi Minekazi sat staring at his screen aimlessly. This is what he had done for the past two-and-a-half weeks, since the last rescue. It wasn't always like this. In the early days the seas were packed with recent arrivals of all ages that had to be scooped out, suctioned, and ferried to shore. In the early days, Satoshi scarcely was able to take a break. Then it slowed to a steady pace. Then a slump. Then a trickle. Then… nothing.

Maybe the sea's out of souls. He thought. But that couldn't be true. It was as red and thick as ever. Maybe they just don't want to come back. That was what people said, anyway, as if choice had anything to do with it. It made some level of intuitive sense. If it was true, Satoshi didn't blame them.

"Drainage system's clogged again," said Aoi Fubuke, a doctor ten years Satoshi's junior. "Clots, I think. You wanna clear it?"

"I just cleared it yesterday!" He complained. "Did Taro forget to put in the damn ozone? Why don't you do it?"

"I'm a doctor. You're an engineer."

"Goddamn it," said Satoshi as he got up to grab his tools.

His monitor started beeping plaintively.

"What the hell?" Said Aoi. "Is that–"

"Looks like we got vibrations at buoy 39932. That's in our quadrant."

"Did another fish wander in past the netting?"

"Nah, too big and it's on the surface," said Satoshi. "Could be real."

"Blood-type?"

"Uh…." Satoshi clicked on the analyzer. "Blue. It's human."

"Oh shit!" Said Aoi excitedly, "I almost forgot how this works!"

"No kidding," said Satoshi as he grabbed his walkie-talky to call it in. As soon as he did, they sped off, leaving a trail of blood in their wake.

They arrived just three minutes later. There were still a lot of boats out on the water, so quadrant sizes were relatively small. Time was of the essence in operations like this. They had to get there quick or they would have nothing to haul out of the water but a corpse.

Satoshi ran up to the deck to get a view of what was going on. When he got there, they were already hauling up the Returned with the modified fishing nets that they used. That was a good sign. Even though the sea was much warmer than it was before it became inundated with LCL, it was still possible to get hypothermia.

"Female," said Eito, an orderly. "Early to late 20s." She was pretty, well-endowed and relatively tall, with hair so dark it looked almost purple. Satoshi had seen many naked women in the course of his career, but this was one of the better ones.

"Conscious?" Asked Aoi, who had followed him.

"No," he said.

"Airways?"

"Obstructed," he said. "Breathing's ragged."

"Shit. Okay," said Aoi. "Lay her on the gurney. I need suction."

Everyone was all-business now. Although they had done this thousands of times, there was a certain air of urgency with every Returnee. Some had choked to death on LCL before, others simply never woke up. Aoi shoved a tube down the Returnee's throat as delicately as she could and suctioned out the LCL that had built up inside of her airways.

The Returnee began to cough.

"Penlight," said Aoi. She flashed it in the Returnee's eyes. "She's responsive." She turned to face the Returnee. "Hello? Can you hear me?"

"Shinji…" muttered the returnee, before another coughing fit. Her chest heaved up and down in great spasms. Her hands clawed at the deck. Finally her breathing slowed, coming ragged but in regular intervals.

"You're on a boat," said Aoi, her voice loud and assertive. "Can you remember what happened?"

"I don't… I…" the woman's glassy eyes were filled with panic. This was rare. Usually, Returnees had a sense of blissful lethargy when they were fresh out of the water, until they realized the gravity of the situation. That was when the panic set in.

"What's your name?" said Aoi, never once breaking her gaze with the woman.

The woman hesitated for a moment, her eyes darting back and forth. Then she calmed down. Her body relaxed. Her eyes, now clear, fixed themselves on Satoshi. Fully lucid, the woman said "Misato Katsuragi."

[AUTHOR'S NOTE:]

Wow, it sure has been awhile hasn't it? Getting this chapter out has been… difficult, to say the least. Almost a year ago, I wrote an entire unreleased chapter that I didn't think was good enough to be released. It serves as the basis for the next chapter, which will probably be OC centric (sorry!) As I was trying to flesh that out, I realized "these people don't want an OC chapter, nobody likes OC chapters." I also realized that "wow, plot wise not a lot has happened yet.

So I set out to write this chapter to start setting things in motion. I wrote most of it almost a year ago, and then the technical problems started. I lost the file somehow. Then I rewrote the whole chapter, thensomehow, without even looking for it, I found the old chapter. I then merged the two chapters together and finally was able to finish the damn thing. Is that an excuse? Yes. Is it a good excuse? No. I also procrastinated a lot. I felt like I had lost a sense of the characters. For a while everything I wrote seemed OOC. And in a sense it was, because I wasn't being inventive, I was trying to rewrite a chapter from memory. Sad! (Speaking of which, I feel I should mention, Rick Ranger is NOT based on the current president… but he IS based on someone that is, by some prophetic fluke, in his cabinet. A certain "Mad Dog.") Finding the chapter breathed new life into me. Suddenly, I wasn't writing uphill anymore. The last two scenes were able to be written in one night as a result.

Now, brass tacks time. I know this story has long gaps in between chapters. You've all been VERY patient, almost too damn patient. I want you all to know that this story should NEVER EVER be considered abandoned. New chapters will always come out eventually until this thing is done.

In any case, despite the long, hellish road that this chapter has taken, I'm actually very happy with the results of it. It feels damn good to upload something again. Hopefully, the next wait won't be nearly as long.

Oh, one more thing - the French said by Asuka translates, I hope, to "If you hurt him, I'll kill you." I don't speak French, and even though my source is a little better than Google Translate, I am still not 100% confident in the translation. If you speak French and think you have a better translation, please by all means send me a message.