Legacy
Finale

I found Ayanami there, in the theater, but there was no warmth in that place. A chill permeated the air, and the hooded stranger's icy smile offered no comfort, either.

"Well, Shinji?" she said. "You've come all this way."

The stranger and Ayanami both watched me, and their stares pierced me like laser beams.

"Uh, right!" I exclaimed. I faced down the stranger. "You! You need to end this. End this, and leave us alone."

Ayanami grimaced, and the stranger's lips curled in amusement.

"Really?" said the stranger. "That's the best you can do?"

Ayanami stepped in front of me. "He shouldn't be here. Let him leave."

"I'd be happy to let him leave," said the stranger, "if only someone weren't keeping us here!"

Looking aside, Ayanami glanced at me. "I'm sorry, Ikari. I owe her too much. General Katsuragi and the others—all humanity—they still have a chance. I won't jeopardize that."

I took Ayanami by the hand, and I caught her gaze. I smiled. "That's all right," I said. "I'd want to be there with them, but no one else can stand with you right now. So this is all right. It's why I'm here."

Ayanami smiled slightly, and she nodded. "Thank you."

In the back of the theater, the film projector spun up. "How sweet of you, Shinji," said the stranger. "But it's all for naught, you know."

I snarled. "Shut up!"

"Lilith is so confident, so certain to believe that humans can overcome what I've pitted against them." The stranger came down the steps with a rhythmic, deliberate gait. She could've balanced a book on her head—she was that steady with her step. "This is the hour mankind fails."

I stormed to the foot of the staircase, stopping the stranger there. "What makes you so sure? Why do you want this? Why did you betray Lilith and the others?"

The stranger clicked her tongue and shook her head. "I betrayed nothing and no one. Humanity was always going to fail. I'm merely speeding up the process. Let me dispel your illusions of goodness, Shinji. Lilith and I both can peer into the hearts of men. We see how flawed and destructive you are. The only difference between us is that Lilith still stubbornly believes you can change enough to avoid your self-destruction."

The stranger took a step to her right, looking to pass me, but I moved into the gap, blocking her.

"You're wrong," I said.

Looking up, the stranger froze me with a knowing smile. "Am I?"

The movie screen came to life, awash with the color red. The shot was an overhead view of the Black Moon hovering over the Indian Ocean. Allied ships were mere specks on the red water. The Disc Angel and the two Eva were like action figures—that's how small they were compared to the scope of the battle.

And as I took in the sight, the stranger walked by me, taking a seat in the front row.

"Lilith," she said, "shall we continue?"

Ayanami shot a cold stare at the stranger. She nodded, ever-so-slightly.

"Ayanami—" I began.

"Please, sit," she said, touching me on the shoulder. "The only way to convince her now is for her to see that she's wrong."

"How do we do that?" I asked.

"We have faith."

We sat together, in the front row. I fidgeted in the velvet seats: the back and the seat angle weren't quite right, but the back wouldn't lean any further, and the seat was as long as it was going to get.

The hooded stranger sat on my left, and the three of us were a captive audience to the fate of the world.

The overhead view of the battle faded to black, and the scene began.

#

"In the Case of Asuka Langley Soryu"—the words flashed on a black background, and the screen came to life once more.

Back at the base, Captain Ibuki's team worked feverishly in their lab. Lining the walls were three portable whiteboards. Equations and diagrams covered every square centimeter—none more central than a sketch of Unit-14 with the Crown of Thorns around its head.

"What if we sever the neural connections?" offered one of the scientists. "How far in do the vines go?"

"Not sure," said another. "The Eva could be a marionette by now, for all we know."

"So anything neural is out," said Maya, who drew a red X over the Eva's neck. "The answer here isn't going to come from manipulating neural connectors or force-ejecting the entry plug. Where does that leave us?"

The scientists shrugged and sighed all around. One of them even tossed a pen aside as he rubbed his forehead and groaned.

But not all of them were so frustrated. Asuka wasn't. She was hard at work.

At her cubicle in the lab, Asuka pored over lines of code, graphs, and tables. While the others were still trying to brainstorm ideas, Asuka generated a set of plots on her computer, but none of them were to her satisfaction. She tapped a pencil eraser on her desk and scowled at the monitors, but that didn't help matters much, either.

"How's it going here?" Maya peeked into Asuka's cubicle. "Any luck?"

Asuka sighed. "I'm getting some attenuation, but not enough."

"How much?"

"12 dB."

Maya winced. "That's not close, is it? We were thinking we might need 19 or 20."

"I've still got some things to try: different spectral profiles, frequency modulation…"

"Okay, hope there's something to it," said Maya, "but if not…" She took a chair from an adjacent cubicle. "Do you have a minute? I think we might have something, but it involves the engine."

Asuka glanced at the monitors. "I'm still waiting for some results. What's up?"

"Tezuka was thinking about using the puncture engine to prase-shift the anti-AT field and use that to generate some attenuation."

"Promising." Asuka nodded, still looking at the monitor. "Should be as easy as running a large amplitude current through the engine with the right phase."

"Really?"

"More or less," said Asuka with a shrug.

"Great!" said Maya, beaming. "I'll tell her. Let me know if you think of anything else that might help, all right?"

The windows on the screen flickered, and Asuka turned toward the monitor, typing at some on-screen prompts.

Maya rose, and she put the chair back at its cubicle.

Asuka did some more typing, and some text popped up at the bottom of a window: 13.2 dB.

Frowning, Asuka sat back in her chair. She tapped her eraser end on the desk for a time. Then, she sat up straighter and looked over the cubicle wall to the whiteboards, where Maya and other scientists were brainstorming again. They were already working on something else involving frequency jamming.

Asuka snatched up a notepad and sketched a pair wave patterns, each 180 degrees out of phase with the other.

She tapped her eraser on the notepad binding for a time.

Then she tossed the notepad aside and typed at her computer. The 13.2 dB result disappeared, and the computer began churning for numbers once again.

#

"Do you see now?" At my left, the stranger leaned forward to catch my eye. "People work to outgrow their bad habits, but at the slightest stress, they fall back into them."

"You know that isn't true," said Ayanami, refusing to even meet the stranger's gaze. "There are countless counterexamples."

"But they will fail eventually," said the stranger. "It's only a matter of time."

And time was the enemy. How much time would Asuka spend there, in front of her own computer, while the rest of Maya's team worked toward a solution? How many seconds would they waste, toiling in parallel without learning from one another?

Oh how I wished Asuka would prove the stranger wrong. If I could've shouted at her to get out of that chair and talk to the others, I would've. But my voice wouldn't carry through the screen. I'd been reduced to a spectator, just like Ayanami. The most I could do was watch and have faith.

And the stranger seemed to delight in that. So sure she was of her point of view—all we needed was one person to prove her wrong.

"We're not all like that," I insisted. "Even if Asuka doesn't make a breakthrough, someone will."

"Really?" The stranger laughed. "Are you sure about that?"

"Let's continue," said Ayanami, shooting the stranger a pointed look.

The stranger waved her hand, and the projector resumed, but the film cut to black before we resumed another place, another time, and another subject.

#

"In the Case of Misato Katsuragi."

Misato, Major Hyuga, and the many of the mission staff coordinated the battle from the flag operations room aboard Ise. Sailors and control staff marked the positions of important elements: ships in the fleet in their formations around the Black Moon, Unit-15 and Unit-16 as they battled the Disc Angel, and Japanese and other special forces within the Geofront structure—all ten thousand cubic kilometers of it.

But Misato wasn't in much of a position to do anything. The American and German Eva slugged it out with the Angel, hopping between floating platforms and rocketing into the sky to keep pace. The ships of the fleet held their stations, not wanting to draw closer to the battle zone. The ground forces within the structure were already delivered, and all Misato could do was listen and wait.

Her comm officer gave a report about Captain Suzuki. Suzuki notified them that I had disappeared, and that they could not count on holding the position much longer. They were prepared to withdraw to the central platform, beneath the giant, and detonate the N2 weapon array, even if it cost their lives.

Misato looked to Hyuga, who gave her a grim nod.

"If the chamber can't be held," said Misato, "then we must ask them to proceed. If there is an opportunity for them to escape, they should pursue it, but only if that doesn't compromise the detonation. Am I clear?"

The comm officer relayed the order, but Misato's mind was elsewhere. She leaned on another strategy table, one that showed cutaways of the Black Moon. As one staff member updated Suzuki's position on the floor plan, Misato hovered over that spot, muttering,

"Where did you go, Shinji? We needed you here."

The film cut to an exterior scene. Unit-15 and Unit-16 buzzed about the Disc Angel, bashing against the Angel's AT field. The collisions lit up the morning sky. The Angel was on the defensive: the American Eva, in blue, white, and red, caught hold of the Angel's AT field by the teeth and tore a layer off.

Recoiling, the Disc Angel fled toward the Black Moon. It flew underneath the sphere, in the narrow gap between the bottom surface and the water. The two Eva—equipped with jetpacks—followed in the Angel's path, but the Angel had kicked up a wake of spray and choppy water. The mist gummed up the American Eva's jetpack intake, and the Eva tumbled into the sea. The German Eva backed off, veering away to find another course of pursuit.

That gave the Disc an opening. The German Eva had pulled back; there was nothing between the Disc and the bulk of the allied fleet.

The Disc turned edge-downward, and it sped toward an aircraft carrier. Flying just a few meters over water, the Disc kicked up a V-shaped wake. It sliced through the carrier's port side, cutting it in two.

"Get the captain on the horn," said Misato, scowling. "We need to get some distance."

"General," said one of the comm officers, "Admiral McNamara for you."

Misato picked up a red phone on the side of the strategy table. "Katsuragi here."

"General, it seems the situation has changed," said the American on the other end of the line. "We're committing our destroyers to suppressive fire on the Angel and rescue efforts. The bombardment is on hold. Send your best special operations forces to airlock 1121. We're going to try the same trick you pulled to get at Seele and Unit-14."

"Admiral, sir, I have to advise against that. We're 80% of the way through the outer armor of the Geofront. We can break through with a continued bombardment. If you rely on special forces for infiltration, there is no guarantee they'll find a way to Unit-14 in time."

"Do you suggest we sit here defenseless while the Angel rips our fleet apart?"

"I would rather try. We have a chance here, Admiral."

"Not enough of one," said the admiral. "Decision's made. Protect your people."

Scowling, Misato pounded her fist on the strategy table. "Protect them how? There is no protection here, John! There is no refuge from what Unit-14 is about to unleash. If you play it safe, you are leaving your people and mine to Instrumentality. That's bullshit. You know that's bullshit."

The staff in the operations room stared, but Misato shrugged off their gazes like a statue.

"John?" she demanded. "What's your answer?"

"I'm sorry, Misato," said the voice on the other end of the line. "This comes from above me."

Shaking her head, Misato slammed the phone back on its base. "As you were," she announced to the room. "Continue the bombardment!"

"General," said Hyuga, hovering at her side, "how can we alone break through the Geofront's armor in time?"

"We're going to keep shelling it until we don't have the ordnance to try any longer."

"Yes, ma'am."

And so, even as the helicopter destroyer Ise steamed at full speed away from the Angel, sailors held fast on its guns and missile launch bays. They unleashed hell on the Geofront, bombarding the surface with explosive shells and warheads. Other Japanese ships in the armada kept up the attack, and that one spot on the Geofront's exterior pulsed with flame.

"How close are we?" asked Misato, watching the bombardment intently.

"90% through the primary superstructure," said an officer.

"Good. And the Angel?"

"Bearing 090 at 1500 meters—1200—1050. Shipboard defenses are acquiring target."

The ship rattled. Fire from the smaller point-defense guns rattled the ship.

"No effect," said the officer. "Negligible impact."

The German Eva—in red and black with white stripes—came screaming around the Geofront's lower edge to pick a fight with the Angel. The Eva latched onto the Angel's AT field like a mosquito to a bull, but the Angel twisted itself into a harrowing spin. Glowing bright, the Angel was a second sun over the ocean. It was so intense that I shaded my eyes just to protect myself.

And then the Angel stopped. It stopped, and a counterforce rippled through the air. A sharp wavefront shot from the Angel's body, twisting the air and the ocean below. The German Eva was flung aside and left to the mercy of this artificial tornado; it floundered as it tried to navigate a straight course and keep up with the Angel.

But the Angel moved on, bearing down on the helicopter destroyer Ise.

Misato bowed her head. "So here we are," she said, laughing to herself. She watched a dot on the radar screen close in on Ise, and in vain, she formed her thumb and forefinger into a mock gun. "Bang," she said, pointing at the screen.

The Angel cut through the port side of Ise. The ship lurched and shook. The lights went out, and Misato was thrown against a plotting table. Ise was wounded and bleeding; the two halves of the ship split apart. The crew lowered lifeboats while rescue ships converged on the scene—and as they did, other destroyers and gunboats in the fleet were cut down in turn.

As their guns went silent, the damaged surface of the Geofront held firm. A tiny bit of light poked through a section in an upper octant, but that was all.

Inside the Geofront, Captain Suzuki and her men held only the central walkway against the combined forces of Seele and the walkers. Her people lit the N2 array, obliterating the chamber. The LCL evaporated; the blast carved out the walls of the room, leaving gashes across the honeycomb superstructure.

But the white giant lay at the bottom of the crater, blinking intermittently. There wasn't a scratch on the beast. It stared, eyes never wavering, and I looked back at it.

"Can we take a break?" I asked, pulling at my shirt collar.

The hooded stranger nodded, and the projector spun to a halt.

"Ikari—"

Ayanami reached after me, but I scampered up from my seat and strode down the right aisle to the back of the theater.

There was another pair of double doors at the back of the theater, each with a small, rectangular window. I shaded my eyes, but the view beyond was dark.

"Is there something this way?" I demanded. "Or is this room the only thing I'm ever going to see again?"

The hooded stranger flicked her hand in my direction, not looking at me.

I breathed in and out, and I pushed ahead.

I pushed into a hall of movie theaters, extending as far as I could see in both directions.

Not knowing which path was the better one, I faced to the left, put one foot ahead of the other, and started walking.

#

In the past, I'd often gone walking on my own. It's helpful to be away from people. It's helpful to see a little bit of the world yourself. In wandering, you gain some perspective. You see so many other people laughing and eating and moving around. None of them know you. Your problems and worries are your own, you realize. They don't matter as much to anyone else.

That's the feeling I was going for, but I admit that I may have walked out of the theater without thinking it through. The hall of theaters outside was desolate and devoid of other people to distract me. There were countless other theaters playing who-knew-what. There wasn't even a concession stand with overpriced soda or candy.

Nevertheless, I wandered down the hall for some time. It became a point of stubbornness or defiance, even. Have you ever started on a puzzle and not known how to solve it? Like a Rubik's cube, say—I once started a Rubik's cube, and I was young enough that I couldn't figure it out on my own, and I was too strong-headed to look up common tricks and techniques, so I spent hours on that thing. I spend the better part of a night and into a morning turning and twisting that thing.

Eventually, I gave up. I peeled the stickers off and "solved" it that way.

And like the younger me back then, I grew tired of treading through the endless hall only to find the same thing I'd seen ten minutes before, and ten minutes before that, and on and on. Nothing was ever different.

So after a time, I ducked into one of the theaters to see what was playing.

"Yes, let me see." A boy dipped wooden spoon into a pot of soup, and he tasted a few drops, smacking his lips. "I think that's good."

Another man in an apron nodded, and he carried the pot of soup out into a cafeteria, where a number of ragged, scraggly people had gathered in two lines, waiting with trays and empty bowls.

And the boy watched them through a crack in the double doors to the kitchen. He did not dare walk out or show his face.

There were a lot of theaters like that one. In another, Misato was a common GSDF officer, overseeing disaster relief and troop movements to secure remote areas of Japan. In another still, Nozomi spent her days under the bridge, drawing until the sun went down while her sister stood on their home's doorstep and gazed over the old rice paddies, waiting.

I slammed the door to one of the theaters and stormed down the hall again; there was no point in watching any of that. I hadn't come all the way there to be subjected to that. Our lives were not more wonderful or fulfilling just for having chosen to be a part of this conflict.

Still, I kept popping into theaters every few steps, looking for something interesting. I ran across one in which Asuka and I were childhood friends, my mother was still alive, and Misato was our absurdly-attractive teacher. Sounds ideal, right? It's everything I could've wanted.

And yet, after an hour or so of wacky antics and sexual awkwardness, I grew tired of that, too. It was like I'd grown up seeing only in black and white, and when I first caught a glimpse of color—real color—I found it scary and confusing. Seeing myself living a happy life, with trivial worries—that didn't sit right with me, either.

So, what is the place I could be in, then? Where did I belong?

Those were both relatively inconsequential concerns, considering I was stuck inside the head of an alien creature, but they stayed with me anyway.

And so, I kept searching.

I poked my head into another theater and found something more familiar.

"This wasn't in the simulator, so I'm gonna need an idea!" That was Nozomi's voice. She and Unit-14 were trapped in a shared AT field illusion. False reflections of the Eva stared back at them wherever they looked. One of the Angels clung to the Eva's flesh and armor like a corrosive cloud.

I sat down in one of the back rows and closed my eyes as the rest of the battle played out. The scientists worked out a solution thanks in part to a suggestion from Asuka, and Asuka, in turn, was asked to relay the instructions to Nozomi.

"Manoah Base Control to Evangelion Unit-14, do you read?" asked Asuka.

"I've got you, Soryu," said Nozomi. "Please tell me we're not gonna do all the formality every time we talk."

Asuka laughed at that, and in my theater seat, I smiled too.

You know, I'd been very proud of her in that moment. I was happy for Asuka. She made herself a little better that day. She made herself better when I—I had doubted her. A lot of people had. Asuka grew to want to like herself, enough that she changed something she didn't like.

It was just after Nozomi broke through the illusion and started the final attack that someone else entered the theater. My eyes snapped open, and I went to the edge of the staircase, peering over the railing to the entryway below.

Ayanami was there, looking back at me.

"Hey," I said.

She nodded—only once, only slightly. "How are you?" she asked.

I laughed. "I've been better," I said. "You?"

Watching the screen, she said, "I've been better."

She glanced to me, smiling a little, and I laughed again. "You wanna come up?"

She nodded, and she came up the ramp and the stairs. I offered her the seat by the aisle, and we sat together for a time.

The film transitioned to Nozomi and Unit-14, which shattered the false hall of mirrors. Reality seeped through the cracks and washed away the illusion, revealing the Fractal Angel.

"Is there more you want to see?" asked Ayanami.

I shrugged. "I don't know if there's a point."

She narrowed her eyes. "Don't think that way."

"It's happening again," I said, looking to the ceiling. "How many times are we going to have to go through this?"

Ayanami reached across the armrest and took my hand in hers. "As many as it takes," she said. "I won't give up on you."

"Maybe you should," I told her, squeezing her hand back. "You don't deserve this. You shouldn't feel forced to help us like this."

"I want to."

The projector came to life again. The shot showed my father's office as the seven scientists made the case before their people. Standing front and center was Lilith, and in silence, she made her impassioned plea to the government of her kind: dare to strive for salvation for all their people, even if it would take new bodies and new worlds to do it.

"I still believe," said Ayanami—the Ayanami beside me. "Don't start thinking that our failure is inevitable. It might be, but there's no point in giving in to that. That way leads to what she would do."

I sighed, and I closed my eyes. "I'm sorry, Ayanami. I thought I could come here and save you, but you don't need rescuing, do you?"

She squeezed my hand tighter. "Thank you for trying," she said, "but Ikari, you should think about something you can do, not what you can't."

What I could do, huh? What could I do that cosmic beings unstuck in space and time couldn't? I couldn't move mountains or make bridges build themselves. I couldn't see the future.

All I had was what was on my mind, what I believed in.

I stared at the screen again. The picture was black, but the projector was still spinning. Images had flashed before my eyes and gone, but the memory of them was still fresh in my mind: the memories of Asuka, Nozomi, and Misato.

"Our friends are in trouble," I told Ayanami. "Do you think we can still sit here and hope they'll pull through?"

Ayanami pulled away from me. "We'd give up a lot," she said, "to help them now."

"I have faith," I said.

The girl with the red eyes looked to me, and she smiled. "Then let's try," she said.

#

We walked back to the enemy's theater in silence, and the hooded stranger was there to greet us as soon as we pushed through the double doors.

"Shall we continue?" asked the stranger, barring our way at the top of the ramp.

"Yes, but we have terms," said Ayanami. "I allow us to intervene again, but when this is over, Ikari will be allowed to leave if he chooses."

The stranger cocked her head. "You still owe me a great deal," she warned.

"I accept that."

The screen behind the stranger came to life. The view was another overhead shot of the allied fleet—in disarray as broken ships were being evacuated. With just a twitch of the stranger's head, each of the ships vanished, wiped away like dried ink from a whiteboard.

"Your debt is paid," said the stranger. "Now, Lilith—you wish to intervene further?"

"I would speak with Nozomi Horaki," said Ayanami.

The stranger scoffed with amusement. "Very well. I agree." She stepped aside, and Nozomi—

Nozomi was there.

She sat in the front row. Her elbows were on her knees, and her hands were on the back of her head as she faced straight down.

"Nozomi?" I took the seat on her right and shook her shoulder. "Nozomi, are you with me?"

"Shut up," she said weakly. "Just be quiet."

"Ikari." Ayanami kneeled in front of Nozomi, and she caught my eye. With a twitch of her head, she indicated the theater screen.

Nozomi was there, too: vines held her up within the entry plug. They snaked around her wrists and ankles. They suspended her above the entry plug chair, with only red emergency lights to give form to the dark.

But the dark was far from silent.

"I understand your pain."

Keel Lorenz. From a campsite of makeshift tents, his Seele cohorts worked on computers or monitored a series of wires and cables that connected those computers to the vine and root system of the Crown of Thorns.

And Lorenz himself? He bombarded Nozomi with propaganda, amplified by megaphone.

"There's no use in holding on to it," Lorenz went on. "Let go of it. Be free of it. Make it all go away."

"Just shut up already," said Nozomi, curling into a tighter ball.

But for every person she asked to leave her be, there was someone else ready to speak to her.

"Hello, Nozomi?"

Like her sister.

The screen shifted scenes to the observation room in Manoah Base. Hikari Horaki sat at the corner seat by the computer and microphone. Her sister Kodama brought in a tray with two teacups, but Horaki sipped briefly and put the cup aside.

"Hello again, Nozomi," she said. "I hope you're doing well."

Nozomi scoffed, but back in the base, Horaki heard none of that. She shuddered and took a deep breath. She looked to the ceiling for a moment before continuing.

"I know I can't really imagine what you're going through right now, but I'm still here. Sister and I are still here, and we're still hoping to hear from you, to see you find your way home."

Horaki switched the microphone off and slid it aside. She sipped her tea, but the cup rattled in her hand, spilling a few drops on the observation room's tile floor. Horaki set the cup aside, too, and she wiped up the spilled droplets with a handkerchief. She breathed heavily, and when she was done with the spill, she balled up the handkerchief and clutched it in her left hand.

"We want to see you safe, and—" Her voice wavered. "No, I want to see you safe. We are not done talking. We only just started, I think. We have a lot to talk about—game sprites and landscapes and all that. And how we've hurt each other. I think we should talk about that, too. I'm counting on you to come back, so we can talk about that, Nozomi." Horaki's voice grew bolder, and she rose from her seat. "Promise me that, all right?"

The girl in the seat next to me was looking up. She tilted her head and stared at the screen.

"Don't be an idiot, Hikari," she said. "I can't promise you anything."

At that, the hooded stranger reached across the armrest on Nozomi's right. She took Nozomi's arm and leaned into view, saying, "That's because she doesn't understand you."

"Shut up," I snarled.

"She doesn't," said the stranger, who showed me a knowing nod before turning her attention back to Nozomi. "If she did, your sister wouldn't ask that of you."

"She's trying to understand," said Ayanami, who was still down on one knee in front of Nozomi, trying to catch her eye. "She wants to reconnect with you, and you with her. You were trying."

"You admitted there was a problem," argued the stranger. "And that problem was with you. You couldn't change the way you wanted to. Everyone has something like that in their heart—something they're blind to. Something they just can't change."

Nozomi brought her knees up, onto the seat. She turned her head to the right, away from the stranger and Ayanami, but her gaze went right through me. I held her fingers, but she didn't return the gesture. Her hand was limp.

"Nozomi…" I waved a hand in front of her eyes. "Please, I—I didn't understand you once, either. Things changed."

"You changed." Her eyes snapped to me, even as her head rested sideways on the seat. "You changed. Hikari changed, but I'm still here."

"Sad, isn't it?" remarked the stranger. "You force them to change for you, but you don't change for them. How many more do you think will try?"

Nozomi's gaze broke away from me, and her eyes slowly shut.

"No one," she said. "No one should try anymore."

On the screen, a surge of light burst from the Crown of Thorns. Keel Lorenz raised both fists in the air, and they were the last of him to hit the ground when he dissolved into LCL.

Horaki's teacup in the observation room sat half-empty next to a pile of clothes.

LCL splashed across Asuka's keyboard and monitor. A new result popped up on her screen, showing a reduction of 14 dB, far short of the target she was hoping for.

The broken ship Ise sank near an unfamiliar shore—where the stranger had taken them I couldn't say. Lifeboats in the vicinity drifted as LCL pooled within them, staining empty uniforms—including a uniform with cherry blossoms stitched into the collar. A cross-shaped pendant floated in the puddle.

And Nozomi Horaki was gone. The girl in the chair next to me was nowhere to be found.

I pounded my fist on the armrest, not that it would do any good.

"Lilith," said the stranger, "our work isn't finished. I hope we can put this conflict aside now, to look to the good of our children."

Ayanami looked back at the stranger with narrowed eyes, but she nodded wordlessly.

"Good." The stranger nodded toward me. "And what of you, Shinji Ikari? Do you wish to return?"

I watched a view of the Earth from space. The planet turned. The oceans ran red. The cities and streets were inanimate, for cars sat idle, with no one at their steering wheels.

"Return to what?" I remarked.

The stranger nodded at that. "Stay if you like," she said, "but there is much work for us to do."

I nodded in turn, and as the view on the screen turned to the Black Moon collecting the souls of humanity from the oceans, from every trace of LCL on earth, I sat there and watched.

I balled my hand into a fist.

I relaxed, spreading my fingers.

And I curled them up again.

The stranger left us there to watch the world succumb to Fourth Impact, and as the wave of anti-AT energy poured over the Earth, I understood the mistake I'd made. Ayanami said it best:

"I'm not finished fighting this," she said, standing beside me. "We have time to undo it—as much time as we need."

I'd rushed headlong into the giant seeking answers and salvation. I'd played the game on her terms and seen my friends fail because of it. I couldn't afford to make that mistake again. Though it may take a day, a week, a month, or a year, I would be patient, and I would persist—not because of the aching in my heart but because I, like Ayanami, believed that the world we hoped for could become real again.

The time would come, however long it might take, to see humanity—to see my friends—assert their right to leave Instrumentality, as long as they wanted to.

And I would be watching with Ayanami in the theater of eternity for that moment to come, to help make it real.

#

The passage of time was not kind to the Earth.

The winds took away the mountains. The land became stiff and brittle, so no new peaks could be made. The oceans evaporated, with the LCL soup of humanity sheltered inside the Black Moon. The plants suffocated and died; the animals followed soon thereafter—in millions of years by one point of view, in the blink of an eye by another. And all throughout, the Earth grew hotter and hotter, for the sun loomed ever brighter in the sky.

To combat this problem, the stranger's children walked the Earth once again. She trained them and educated them in science and technology. She made them build machines—small ones at first, but each new machine begat a bigger and better one. Soon enough, machines began building other machines. Those machines, in turn, made rockets: great rockets lay on their sides at the equator and extended their nozzles into space. To cool the Earth, the stranger directed her children to move the planet itself to a larger orbit.

This idea wasn't universally agreed upon, though. Every so often, we would meet to monitor the progress of the effort. Once, I remarked,

"What about moving to a new planet? It's just going to get hotter. We'd just have to do this again anyway."

"We'd have to find a new planet again, too," said Ayanami. "Planets don't stay habitable forever."

"Relax, both of you," said the stranger, who viewed the construction effort with cool, calculating certainty. "So what if planets die?" she said. "New stars are being made. New systems are being born. We'll find those stars, and our children will survive."

"There are only so many stars," said Ayanami.

The stranger pressed her lips together for a moment. "Shinji, do you have something more constructive to add?" she asked.

"I'm wondering if we should look into terraforming Mars," I offered. "That would help buy us some time."

The stranger frowned, cocking her head as she watched the screen. "That might do for a few million years. Surface gravity isn't too much of a factor, just temperature. I'll have my children do some research into it."

At that, Ayanami said nothing. Many of our meetings were like this: the stranger took the lead in preserving the remnants of humanity, I offered some counterpoint and suggestions, and Ayanami tried to be as unhelpful as possible while insisting on being present. As she explained it once,

"We should not cooperate with her; we shouldn't humor her. We shouldn't help her in any way. This is her doing. She should be responsible for it—by herself."

I didn't see it that way. Mankind no longer walked the Earth, but it still existed in a way. They were still alive, and you could see what was in their hearts. On occasion, I'd gone so far as to peer into their dreams, but I quickly realized that would do me no good. The temptation to check in on people I knew was too great, and the pain of not being able to reach them was even greater. The last thing I needed was to see Asuka with a dream facsimile of me.

Regardless, there were still people there. It was our duty to take care of them so that, one day, they'd be able to walk freely again.

But I was largely alone in this feeling. Ayanami was willing to stonewall the stranger, hoping to coerce her into giving in.

And there were others in the theater complex who didn't care on way or the other.

"We have all of history at our disposal, and you three concern yourselves so much with the fates of our children."

That was Kaworu Nagisa—or Adam, who still used Kaworu's face when he spoke to me. Kaworu had been a friend of mine for a brief time, and I treasured his affectionate nature. Kaworu liked to inhabit the theater across the hall from the stranger, entertaining himself with topics as varied as the Parisian art scene during the Vietnam War and the oral traditions of Australian aboriginals.

"Can't you appreciate what beautiful things the Lilin—and all our children—accomplished?" he once asked.

When Ayanami and I tired of the stranger, we sometimes visited Kaworu in that adjacent theater. I learned a lot about history from those visits—history of the future as well as the past. Kaworu, Ayanami, and I watched the Milky Way and Andromeda collide over the course of hundreds of millions of years. It was beautiful and breathtaking, to be sure.

But I never felt fully at ease in those moments because Kaworu wasn't alone, either. In the back of his theater were the others—the other four scientists. They had long ago lapsed into silence, dressed in the same white satin that the stranger wore. These impassive observers watched everything without complaint or amusement. Their presence was a sign—inescapable and unflinching—that the stranger's crusade had not begun with humanity. Rather, it had ended with us instead.

And so, the future had begun. Kaworu spent the future scouring the universe for strange events or examples of ingenuity. For Ayanami, the future was a time to resist and wear down the stranger through obstinance. For the rest of the seven, it could be spent only in silence—that way, the future would be someone else's problem.

They all had their opinions, and I found their approaches unsatisfying—so much so that, at times, I found myself gravitating toward to stranger instead.

You might find that idea appalling—and I won't say it wasn't—but unlike Ayanami, Kaworu, or the rest of the seven, the stranger took the initiative to safeguard humanity for the long term. Her children's efforts to research solutions and implement them were only part of that. Day in and day out, the stranger watched the future of planet Earth, taking notes on what might befall mankind next.

"Don't be fooled by her," Ayanami had warned me once. "She may think she's acting in the interests of our children, but she isn't. I know this well; you should, too."

It was a difficult lesson to forget. Every few million years, a remnant of mankind would emerge from the sea. Sometimes Misato would be there; other times, Asuka or Nozomi. The stranger would tolerate them for a few millennia, but when their number reached a critical threshold, she'd raise her faceless warriors from the ocean and liquefy the rebels by force. Over the last hundred million years, only a handful of such uprisings had taken place. The stranger thought that was good; people were learning not to resist her.

Time passed, as much as it could pass in that place. One "hour" felt like the next, and you could just as easily look in on Roman gladiators as you could the fall of the dinosaurs or the development of the first computer. Time passed, and I pondered Ayanami's point of view. What kind of person would come all that way—across the stars—to force Instrumentality on mankind? What kind of person would do that and then continue to watch over the LCL soup to make sure it never simmered, boiled, or froze?

So it came to be that, when I grew frustrated with Ayanami's stubbornness or Kaworu's indulgences, I would spend time with the stranger, anticipating threats to mankind—and hoping that a little insight into her would help me find a way to change our situation. Simply resisting her had not been enough. If we meant to bring humanity back from Instrumentality, the stranger would have to agree to it.

But the stranger was happy with how things were going. She too spied on humanity's dreams, as well as the dreams of her children and the others', and she was pleased. "They want for nothing," she told me one time, as we sat together in her theater. "We need to make sure that doesn't change."

We needed to make sure that didn't change, even if we were treated to watching Misato take an illusion of Kaji on a moonlit drive. Humanity should always be free to bring the dead back to life in their dreams—that's what we should protect?

"What gave you this idea?" I asked the stranger that day, as we sat in the front row of her theater. "Why Instrumentality?"

The stranger shrugged the question off. "We've always had the ability to do it. It's an essential safeguard against existential threats. The souls of my people were transported in a state of Instrumentality."

"That's not what I'm asking you," I said.

The stranger peered at me, despite the opaque hood in front of her eyes. "No, it's not, is it? Well, tell me then: what are you asking, Shinji?"

I sighed, and I held on to the black plastic armrest. The rough texture of it was an illusion, too, but it was still comforting to me—a distraction from the tumult of my own thoughts.

"I came here," I said at last, "because I thought Ayanami had signed up for an eternal burden, for something she shouldn't want." I looked to the stranger. "Now I see you're the same. You like being here, don't you?"

"This is what I pledged I would do," she said. "Lilith and I both. We have differences of opinion—for now. I'm confident she'll change her mind in time. I would not choose to be anywhere else."

"Why?" I asked. "I mean, it needs to be done, but—I don't understand." I gestured toward the screen—to a view from outer space of planet Earth, desolate and brown, for even its red seas had to be sheltered from the sun's heat. "Why this way? Didn't you want us to be something more?"

The stranger's expression soured at that. "Wanting something and believing it can happen are different things."

"How's that?"

Her lips pressing together, the stranger rose. "Let me change the film," she said. "Lilith knows all about this, of course. Even so, she refuses to listen to reason. I hope you'll approach this with an open mind, hm?"

She headed upstairs, to the projector room, and she began sorting through the boxes and boxes of reels. There was, truly, a tremendous amount of film in that place. The few times I'd been there, I'd marveled at the collection. Each box seemed bottomless, and the reels you cast aside just disappeared instead of piling up.

The stranger set a reel on the projector, and a new film began.

The film began playing out like a documentary. The narration was in Hikari Horaki's voice. "Once upon a time," said the narrator, "there was a woman, a scientist. She was sent to shepherd the souls of her people to a new world, so they could begin life anew."

An image of Horaki appeared on the screen. She stood in the shadow of a red cross, at the foot of a lake of LCL.

The scientist raised her children well, according to the narrator. She groomed them to be masters of their own planet. They became the dominant race over the course of millennia upon millennia. They conquered the limits of their bodies, building great machines and computers. They began to play with biology itself, augmenting their bodies and living longer and fuller lives.

But they were still human, in a way.

"Like all living creatures, however," said the narrator, "the scientist's children had a base impulse to compete with one another when facing scarcity. Necessary though it may have been to survive, such an impulse is inherently destructive: survival by killing those one competes against. The Zenunim were no different in this way. They destroyed one another in great numbers, leveraging their brilliant minds and machines to destroy as much as they wanted."

And we saw it. A montage of destruction played out for us, ranging from mushroom clouds to deformed and warped corpses. Masses of alien creatures fell to the ground and withered from disease. The soil itself was blighted, and crops were burned in huge swaths.

Her children waged war on one another. They wielded disease and pestilence to lay waste to their enemies. The scientist—depicted in the form of Horaki—walked among them and witnessed the destruction. She met her children dying and suffering at their brothers' hands. They were going hungry. They couldn't find shelter.

"They couldn't all be saved, so she did as her brothers and sisters had originally done," said the narrator. "She liquefied them."

She liquefied them all. She turned that planet's oceans to blood. She extracted the souls of the guilty and the innocent alike.

And she was supposed to start over, but she didn't. She kept them all in her Black Moon. She imprisoned them in a cage without pain for a billion years. She stood watch over them—doing nothing, saying nothing—from her throne inside the Geofront, sitting in the shadow of a cross.

But there were people who wouldn't leave her be.

"The others found out about her decision—her abomination," said the narrator. "They tried to persuade her to reconsider. They failed. And when they failed, they brought their own children to her world, hoping to force her hand."

The scientist raised her children from the LCL. Like a necromancer animating skeletons, she shaped her children according to her needs. She grew out their fingers, making them sharp and deadly. She warped their faces into bony, purple masks, erasing all individuality from them. She directed her legions to build weapons and spacecraft.

She made them make war on one of the White Moons. They built Eva of their own and vanquished the Angels defending the Moon. She entered the White Moon herself and found its occupant—Toji, in this depiction—incapacitated by the Spear of Longinus. He stood defeated, but that wasn't enough for her.

She merged with him.

And she saw everything. Past and future became the same to her. From that moment, a new creature was born, and though she had the same face as the scientist from before, she was different. She walked the halls of the theater of eternity as effortlessly as you or I could stroll along a beach.

She saw that the others would come for her in time—and that she would defeat them and take them, too.

"Well, Shinji?" The stranger poked her head out of the projector room. "Do you see now? Do you understand?"

The image froze. The woman with the shape and face of Horaki was juxtaposed against a backdrop of dozens of panels, each with a glimpse of the past or future.

"Maybe," I said, "but I don't think we're finished, are we?"

"What more could you wish to know?"

I scoffed. "I see what the others did, but why us? Why humanity?"

The stranger gave me a single nod, and she fell back into the projector room. The film resumed. On the screen, the girl with the face of Hikari Horaki led her Geofront to the stars. She brought Angels and her children to the other worlds. They were legion in number. They spared no one.

"She found the others' children wanting, too," said the narrator. "They fought. They destroyed. The smart ones inflicted diseases upon themselves or others. The powerful ones destroyed whole continents and oceans in battle. She claimed them all because that was the only recourse—the only way to save them from themselves. Humanity was no different."

The film turned to a space-based view of Earth, and on top of that played footage of wars from the ancient history to the present: from Rome vs. Carthage to Hitler vs. Chamberlain to Katsuragi vs. the Chinese navy. And even though that only scratched the surface of human warfare, there was plenty more violence and suffering to go around: criminal gangs, assassinations, forced prostitution and rape—the montage went on. You could spend a billion years watching people hurt each other; you still wouldn't be finished.

The scene shifted to planet Earth as it stood in the present: dry, with its oceans dwindling, as the Black Moon hovered over the surface.

"There's no suffering here, Shinji," said the stranger from the projector room. "There's no pain. There's no anger. Everyone exists; they know what's in each other's hearts, and they are free to dream as they choose. This is the way our children were meant to be; it's the only way they can be."

"So that's it?" I said. I turned in my seat, looking up at the projector. "That's all humanity and everyone else will come to?"

"What else would you have them do?" asked the stranger.

"Something—anything!" I cried. "You 'saved' them all for nothing!"

"Not for nothing," said the stranger. "At least I have saved them."

"That's not enough!"

The screen turned white, and the stranger came down the side steps. "They're alive, and they feel no pain," she said. "Isn't that enough?"

I stared at her, gawking. I slowly shook my head.

The stranger sighed in turn. "Keep thinking that way if you like," she said, "but there are still challenges for our charges." She turned her head slightly—a gesture that would've met my gaze, if I could've seen her eyes behind that satin hood. "Do you want to wither here for the rest of time, Shinji? Or do you want to be part of the solution?"

At that, I had no answer. My mouth hung open, and I watched the stranger go.

Part of the solution for what?

#

You know, I'd never been a particularly religious person, but I wasn't that into science, either. The questions they might've clashed on weren't things I was well-versed in, but having all eternity to ponder such things makes you interested in a hurry, oddly enough.

I trudged upstairs to the projector room, and I quickly found what I was interested in: the future.

In the future, mankind would stay liquefied. The three of us—Ayanami, the stranger, and I—would direct the Black Moon to gather all human souls and zip from one planet to the next every few billion years, looking for habitable conditions that made maintenance of the Black Moon easier.

That would go on and on, for a million billion years.

But eventually, the stuff stars run on would be consumed wholly. The stars burn themselves out. Star systems like ours, whatever should be left of it by then, would become unstable. Planets get flung away from their stars. Stars get flung away from their galaxies, all the while dimming to nothing.

And in the end, the very end—billions upon billions upon billions of years ahead, and even more that I can't write or say, atoms themselves would cease to be, for the protons making them up would decay, leaving us with nothing like the world we know.

That would be the end. The Black Moon would fall apart. The LCL comprising humanity and its brothers and sisters would crumble. Any memorial to humanity would be erased by then. The souls of mankind would scatter to the intergalactic winds. There is no such thing, then, as something eternal.

Something about that resonated with me. I'd often felt that I wouldn't make a difference, that my life didn't matter. It all returns to nothing. You could argue that none of us really matter.

Or maybe we all matter about the same.

Because after all, we're all headed for the same fate.

Those thoughts raced through my head as inscrutable and cold as the 3-degree microwave background that permeates the universe, and I found no relief from those ideas on my own. Instead, Ayanami came to me offering comfort and relief. She found me in that theater, having looked for the stranger and me. Ayanami's gaze was everpresent—she already knew what the stranger had shown me. She sat at my side, offering a hand in support.

"I'm sorry," she said to me. "You don't deserve to be caught in this."

Not like any of that was her fault. No, I told her as much. The weight of watching millions of years of human history play out had been difficult but bearable. It was the future that frightened me.

"I just wonder," I said—to her, to the blank screen in front of me, and to the theater as a whole—"what's the point of all this? What is the point of being here?" I sighed, and I slapped a hand on the armrest. "I spent so long moping around, and then just before the end, I really tried to get my head right—to be better. But it's all going to go away." I pointed at the blank screen. "Just like that."

"It is," said Ayanami, squeezing my hand tighter. "Is there something you want to achieve, even knowing that?"

I rubbed my forehead, at a loss, and Ayanami went on.

"There is only so much free energy in the universe," she said. "Everything people do takes away from it. Eating takes away from it. Sleeping takes away from it. Making love takes away from it. That energy turns to entropy and is lost forever. That's true no matter what it was used for."

"So it is pointless then," I concluded.

"No." Ayanami turned to me, and she smiled. "Everything people do takes away from free energy and turns it to entropy, but we can value certain actions more than others. We can value joy. We can value happiness. We can value the growth and understanding that makes people less destructive, reckless, or violent. We can value acts that promote communication between people." She held my hand and hers up, above the armrest. "There is only so much free energy in the universe," she said again. "We should choose to spend it well."

"Even if nothing comes of it?" I asked.

"Especially if nothing comes of it."

I shook my head and sighed. It's not every day you come to believe that the future is a pointless thing. Telling me—and all mankind—to live for the journey we were on didn't seem that appealing. If anything, it made me feel like humanity was the rubber in a conveyor belt: we would go 'round and 'round for eons to come until we wore out. And we were supposed to like it.

That didn't sit well with me, and Ayanami's determination to pursue it was puzzling. After all this time, how could she bear to follow such a path? There's looking at a long view and trying to see beyond the horizon by standing on the tips of your toes—that's what Ayanami was doing. I asked her about that, and she said,

"I don't like it, either, but it's the only way I see forward for people, and it feels like me." She put a hand to her heart. "It feels like what I felt when I started this. I wanted to save people. I didn't want them to suffer. I wanted them all to have a chance. This is like that. To me, the other choice is despair." She met my gaze. "Don't think that way, Ikari. Work for people. Work for your friends and hold on to what that feels like. If you do that, you will never despair." Her eyes flickered to the ramp that led out of the theater. "Not the way she did."

She gave in to her despair, and—believing it to be pragmatism—put us on this doomed train, bound for the end of the universe. She lost faith in her children as well as Lilith's.

But she wasn't the only one who'd given up hope in some way.

"She was your friend once," I said to Ayanami. "Wasn't she?"

Ayanami flinched, and she let go of my hand, sitting straighter in her seat. "At one time," she said. "No more. She's made humanity into something that isn't human anymore. She can't take that back."

"Why not?" I said, turning toward her and leaning over the armrest. "What purpose does it serve to leave that alone? You used to talk to her, right? She was your friend."

"Not anymore. She isn't who she used to be."

"Neither are you, right? I was there; you showed me. You used to be different. I wouldn't give anything for you to be something other than who you are now, but I also know that there's something about you now that came from who you used to be. How much you care about what you're doing—how much you care for a friend—that hasn't changed. You showed me that; you showed me when you saved me from that bullet. You show me that even now because you're sitting here. You didn't give up on me even when I was pathetic, even when I lost my way."

Ayanami looked aside. "You're different from her."

"Am I?" I put my fist down on the armrest, and it rattled. "I wanted something for people but didn't believe I could make a difference. She spends every day here watching humanity to make sure it's not destroyed by a rogue meteor or a supernova. It's distasteful and wrong what she forced on people, but there is still something worth talking to. You can't—" I shuddered, and I took a moment to catch my breath. "You can't keep sitting here in silence, like protesting her existence is going to change things."

Ayanami looked at me from the side. Her mouth hung open, and after a few moments, she looked ahead again, thinking deeply about what I'd said.

"You might be right," she said at last. "Ikari," she asked timidly, "would you come with me?"

I got up. I'd followed her to the end of time already. I would've followed her to the underworld if she'd asked it of me.

#

We found the stranger in a nearby theater. She'd turned her attentions to a stellar-mass black hole that would wander through the solar system in a few million years' time. "It could be a big problem for Earth," said the stranger. "Maybe we can all act like adults and do something about it instead of pouting, hm?"

Ayanami and I stopped at the top of the entrance ramp, and Ayanami stared the stranger down, saying a name that hadn't been spoken in over five billion years:

"Eisheth."

The figure in the white satin hood—with gloves extending from her fingertips to beyond the sleeves of her robe—cocked her head and looked at us. All of that was a ruse, of course. This vaguely human figure, whose eyes could never be seen, didn't correspond to any person in existence. It was an image for my benefit and nothing more. It didn't belong to her.

It was not the true face of Eisheth, but it was meant to represent her in my mind.

The hooded stranger—Eisheth—met Ayanami and me at the end of the ramp. She looked up to Ayanami. "What do you want, Lilith?"

"To end this," said Ayanami. "You've forced people into a world of fantasy. Stop it. Let them be."

"This is the only way your children and mine can be protected from themselves," said Eisheth. "I will do no such thing."

"You want to believe that, but it's not true. You're lying to yourself. You've always been that way." Ayanami moved closer, reducing the gap between them to half a step. "Do you remember how you were? You kept me in check when my passion would get the best of me. You tempered my enthusiasm. You kept my expectations realistic. You made sure my hope didn't get the best of me."

"You were always too wide-eyed, too gung-ho about inserting yourself where you thought you were needed." Eisheth pressed her lips together in disappointment. "I'd hoped over the last five billion years you would've learned to pace yourself."

"I hoped you wouldn't forget that you were the same."

"Me? Hardly!"

"You were." Ayanami waved a hand, and the theater's screen came to life. There, an image of Hikari Horaki made a presentation before a crowded room. The film was silent, but she carried herself with conviction, certainty, and courage. "You didn't let yourself get carried away with hope," Ayanami went on, "but you felt it, didn't you? You had great hopes for us, for the people we meant to shepherd to new worlds."

"And look how that turned out," said Eisheth, who waved her hand in turn and blanked the screen. "Our own people couldn't overcome their worse impulses. So much for the grand experiment of life!"

"I'm sorry, Eisheth."

Eisheth took a step back, eyeing Ayanami from the side—as much as she could with the piece of satin cloth covering her eyes. "Sorry for what?"

"You were there for me when I faced a moment of doubt." Ayanami bowed her head, looking away. "I'm sorry I couldn't be there for you."

Eisheth stiffened, and she trotted away, going back to her seat. "That's in the past," she said.

"It's not." Ayanami followed her, standing in front of Eisheth's seat. "Our children have made mistakes. So have I. So have you. Don't deprive them of the chance to learn from that. Don't deprive us of that chance, too."

"They failed before," said Eisheth. "What makes you think they can change, given another chance?"

"We can help them—together. Please, Eisheth."

Ayanami offered Eisheth a hand—a trembling, wavering hand. Eisheth stared at her for a time before sighing.

"You still wear your heart too much on your sleeve, even now, Lilith." She took Ayanami by the wrist, steadying Ayanami, and Ayanami took Eisheth by the wrist in turn. Ayanami pulled Eisheth from her seat, and Eisheth's gaze fell upon me. "Shinji Ikari!"

I flinched. "Uh, yes?"

"Lilith believes your brothers and sisters still stand to learn something," she said. "And she thinks they can, if given another chance. Do you agree?"

"I do," I said, standing straight and tall. "Absolutely."

Eisheth tilted her head. "I'm not convinced."

I made a noise in disbelief. Ayanami began to accost Eisheth as well, but Eisheth went on:

"Prove it to me," she said. She waved her hand over the film screen. The blank white image morphed…

Into Terminal Dogma, into the chamber with the white giant sitting within the LCL lake. Captain Suzuki and her SDF team hid behind barricades and traded gunfire with Seele militants.

"If you think they can be better," said the stranger, "prove it to me."

She gestured to the screen with her arm, and I stepped up, right to the screen's surface. Bizarrely, the light of the projector passed through me, casting an even picture without shadows or gaps. I raised a hand and touched the screen surface, and it stuck to my fingers like glue.

It pulled on me.

I looked back at Ayanami. She nodded. She was smiling.

And I smiled, too.

I stepped forward, into the screen, and I sank within it.

I sank within, and I fell.

I tumbled into the LCL lake. I splashed, and I floundered. I fought my way to the surface and coughed.

"Ikari!" An SDF sergeant pulled me onto an inflatable raft. "Are you all right?" he asked. "Where did you go?"

I looked up to the face of the white giant. It was static, immobile, and implacable, except for one thing:

Its eyes were fixed upon me.

I chuckled to myself, and I brushed some of the goo from my vest. "I'm fine," I told the sergeant. "Don't worry about me. Let's go save the world."

#

In the bowels of the Geofront, the sergeant paddled our inflatable boat back to the central walkway—the main path to the white giant. SDF personnel were holding off Seele and alien forces at the entrances to the chamber, and two men guarded the rectangular array of N2 warheads at the end of the walkway, closest to the giant's body. More of the warheads had been tied to the beast's legs as well.

It was all still there, just as I'd remembered it.

But this time, I was there, too, and I had a chance to change it.

I asked the sergeant for a radio, and I spoke with Captain Suzuki. There would be no point in destroying the chamber, I told her. The giant would, more than likely, escape unharmed. Instead, I had information that would be worth sharing with Misato and the rest of the fleet. Suzuki was skeptical of the idea, though: the corridor back to the helicopter was no longer secure. We would have to fight our way out. The odds weren't good, and Suzuki was still tempted to try blowing up the chamber, not believing what I'd told her.

In frustration, I shot back, "We've got sixteen warheads, the closest things to nukes anyone would dare use, and we can't fight our way out of this?"

There was a brief silence on the other end. Then, Captain Suzuki said, "We'll make something happen."

Suzuki's men redeployed the N2 weapons at the furthest point from our escape route. They dismantled the N2 weapons individually, separating their primer charges from the oxidation fuel. Without that fuel, the most powerful non-nuclear weapons in existence were reduced to firecrackers—enough to burn and stun our enemies, but not enough to collapse the entire chamber and a quarter of the Geofront on top of us.

We left the giant's chamber with the primer charges providing cover. They went off in sequence—a thunderous applause for our efforts—and drenched the LCL lake in fire. After that, we fought our way out. Seele militants entrenched themselves in the network of corridors, pinning us down within a few turns of the giant's chamber. With fire and smoke licking our backs, Suzuki ordered a bull rush of a flank position. A pair of grenades softened up one corridor, and the SDF members attacked from two sides, neutralizing the enemy.

From there, we scampered back to the opening in the Geofront's hull. We attached ropes to our belts and went back up to the helicopter in groups of two, and rode back to Ise. For my part, I didn't even bother getting out of combat gear. I needed to talk to Misato—to tell her what I had seen, to warn her of what would happen if we made the same mistakes as before.

Misato wasn't about to wait, though. She took me aside in the fleet operations room and demanded an explanation. "What did you think you were doing, Shinji?" she said to me. "Getting yourself stuck in that thing? Did you lose your mind?"

I winced. "I'm sorry; I'm sorry, but there's no time for that. Admiral McNamara is going to call—"

"Shinji." The hooded stranger, Eisheth, called out to me; she watched from the hatch back to the corridor. Her satin hood blocked all view of her eyes, but the direction of her gaze was clear. Her lips were pressed together, and she shook her head but once.

And Ayanami was there, too, standing right behind her.

"Prove that people can be better," said Ayanami.

"Shinji?" asked Misato, her voice growing concerned. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," I said, meeting her gaze again. "Sorry, I thought I heard something. Listen, there's something I need to ask you to do. Can you get me a line to Asuka? Something I saw when I merged with the giant might help her."

"Of course, but—"

"General," interrupted Hyuga, holding a phone in his hand, "it's McNamara on the line."

Misato looked at the phone, then at me. "All right," she said, "and get Shinji a link back to Manoah Base."

"Misato," I said before she put the phone to her ear, "we're in this together. Our friends have doubts sometimes. That's as much the enemy as what we're fighting out there, isn't it?"

Frowning, Misato took me by the shoulder and guided me in the direction of an empty station, where Hyuga had one of the communications personnel get me on the line with Japan. While the link was being reestablished, Misato had her conversation with the American, Admiral McNamara. The Disc Angel was having its way with the fleet, and McNamara, I presume, wanted to withdraw and hope for a more covert strike on Seele. As Misato and the admiral exchanged opinions, I kept only one ear of my headset on, listening to Misato with the other.

"Hey, Shinji!" came Asuka's voice over the headset. "What the hell were you thinking? I'm down here one minute working on the engine, and I hear you went inside that creature?"

"I'm sorry; I'm sorry," I said, wincing. "I'm sorry I left, but I'm back now. I'm back, and I'm not going anywhere. I promised, right? So don't worry about it. I want to hear about you. How's it going over there?"

"I'm working like hell," she said, sighing. "I feel like I'm getting close, but I'm not there yet."

"Asuka," I said.

"Yeah?"

I held on to the headset cord. "Are you working with people?" I asked. "Are you talking?"

"Yeah…kinda."

I raised both eyebrows. "Asuka."

"I'm really close on this."

"Talk to people, Asuka," I told her. "Talk to them. Sometimes they have good ideas; sometimes your ideas are what they need to get things done. Can you do that for me?"

"Of course," she said. "I can do anything."

I laughed. "I know it. Thanks. And Asuka? I love you."

A pause. "I love you, too, Shinji. See you soon?"

"You bet," I said, beaming, and I cut the line. I took a look around the room: Misato was still talking with Admiral McNamara on the main line, trying to convince him that they were already 80% through the Geofront's hull, so why not continue?

But the admiral wasn't having it. The Disc Angel was free to roam about the fleet, and he knew well that they'd be torn apart if they didn't run away. Yet Misato wouldn't let it be, either:

"I would rather try," she said. "We have a chance here, Admiral."

What she heard on the other end of the line was far from agreement. Misato scowled, and she pounded her fist on the table. Her eyes flickered about the room as she searched for an answer.

Her eyes met mine, and I nodded at her.

"Then my decision is made, too, John," she said. "My fleet will be staying. We can break through if you hold the line with us. We're going to try. If we fall, then perhaps we'll have bought the rest of you time to regroup, but that's a pyrrhic victory at best. Stand with us, Admiral. Please. I need you."

A pause. Misato listened. Hyuga, holding a clipboard, leaned closer to try to hear.

"I see," said Misato. "Thank you." She put the phone down gently, and she gave Hyuga an affirming nod. "Step up the bombardment. Run the guns as hot as they can go. We're not going to have very much longer before we're sinking. Get our choppers ready. It's time to take the fight to Seele!"

And so, even as the helicopter destroyer Ise steamed at full speed away from the Angel, sailors held fast on its guns and missile launch bays. They unleashed hell on the Geofront, bombarding the surface with explosive shells and warheads. Other Japanese ships in the armada kept up the attack, and that one spot on the Geofront's exterior pulsed with flame.

But they weren't the only ones. American fighter jets and Chinese destroyers peppered the target spot with bombs and missiles. The international fleet extended to the horizon, like an auditorium full of delinquent students lobbing spitballs at a stage. Each attack was small and trivial, and yet the combined force was building.

"How close are we?" asked Misato, who paced about the fleet control room deliberately.

Another officer listened in on a headset. "Lookouts report we are—we are through the primary superstructure, General!"

Misato pumped her fist. "Advise the captain; we no longer have business here, so let's get moving! Where is the Angel?"

"Bearing 090 at 1500 meters—1200—1050. Shipboard defenses are acquiring target."

The ship rattled. Fire from the smaller point-defense guns rattled the ship.

"No effect," said the officer. "Negligible impact."

I squeezed the armrest on my chair. I wasn't at a sensor station; we were deaf and blind in the fleet control room. Other people had to tell us what was going on outside—what they heard, what they saw.

Misato shadowed a radar operator, and as the dot representing the Angel bore down on the center of the plot, she shot me a look. "It's all right," she said to the room. "We did what we were here to do."

A warning alarm sounded through the room and the hallways. Maritime SDF members secured themselves in their seats, and two men shut and tightened the exit hatch.

CRUNCH! The ship lurched and shook. The lights went out, and in the faint glow of red emergency lights, Misato was thrown against a plotting table.

The next few moments were chaotic. Our consoles were dark. Hyuga got on the sound-powered phone, trying to get a situation report from the bridge. As the deck swayed beneath us, the word that came in was clear:

"We're abandoning ship," said Hyuga. "Let's go; rafts are in the water!"

We moved as a group to the flight deck, navigating darkened halls by flashlight as needed. Ise had been split in two, and while the two halves were still above water, the sea poured in through the gash. The forward half, which we were on, started pitching upward at the front.

When we made it to the flight deck, where SDF members detached cannisters from the side of the ship. When each cylinder hit the water, it unfurled into a self-inflating raft. SDF members lowered ladders from the side, and the crew began climbing down, but Misato refused to descend. "If the captain goes down with the ship, how can I leave?" she remarked. She assigned Hyuga to make sure I got to safety—kicking and screaming if it had to be. I did no such thing, but still, I stayed with her, just for a moment, even as the line to the nearby ladder cleared.

"Don't leave me again, Misato," I told her, holding on to the railing as the ship listed further.

She smiled, and she leaned over to kiss me on the forehead. "There's not a chance of that," she said. "I've worked too hard to win this thing and not enjoy what comes next."

"You'll enjoy it?" I asked her.

Misato made a wishy-washy sound. "Hm, I'm not sure I will," she said, shrugging, and she shot me a coy smile. "But I think I'll give it a shot." She slapped me on the side of my arm and pointed at my nose. "Now go! We can do the rest when I get back."

Still, I hesitated at the top of the ladder, looking on as Misato spoke with one of the MSDF officers to figure out who still needed evacuating and what else should be done. I'm not sure I would've climbed down at all if not for who I saw behind Misato, watching over her: Ayanami. The MSDF crewmen didn't notice her, but she was truly serene as she stood there, and though she followed Misato around the flight deck, Ayanami shot me a look and a nod. I smiled in turn, and I went down the escape ladder without further delay.

Life rafts in MSDF left something to be desired: they were entirely inflatable fabric, altogether too squishy and small to put my mind at ease. The raft bobbed next to the sinking ship with no obvious way to get clear. Two of the MSDF crewmen tied together their shoes and slapped at the water to put some distance between us and the ship, fearing that the downward pull of the hull would draw us in.

Aside from that, all we could do was sit, wait, and listen. One of the MSDF members set up a portable radio, which we monitored for rescue instructions. The remaining ships in the fleet didn't want to get close enough to pluck us out of the water until the Angel could be diverted, though, so in the meantime, we tuned into the mission frequencies, and I heard a familiar voice:

"Eva Unit-14, Eva Unit-14, this is Manoah Base via Makinami, do you read me?"

Asuka. I looked to the rising sun, and I laughed. I laughed for joy and relief, as if her voice and the light of the sun could carry my worries away.

"Either way," Asuka went on, "sit tight, Nozomi. We're coming to get you. We're going to get you a chance to break free. Can you hear it? They're coming."

I heard them—the thunderous roars of helicopter rotors. The Disc Angel may have ravaged the fleet, but our people were already on the way. A horde of helicopters made for the Black Moon, and though the winds buffeted and threw them about, they rose above the smoke and flames of the bombardment zone. They darted into the breach, unloading troops inside the structure.

I watched them go, and I sat back in the life raft. They were on a mission—a mission I could only watch from that seat. Reaching Nozomi and stopping Lorenz were their concern. I'd have to settle for conserving water and meal packets while we waited for rescue.

Or so I thought.

"Shinji." The hooded stranger—the human and yet inhuman image that Eisheth used for herself—walked alongside our life raft. She strolled casually above the water, watching me from behind a hood that wouldn't show her eyes. "You're not finished here, are you?" she asked.

I looked around the raft. No one else was paying attention. No one else even saw her. I looked where her eyes would've been, if not for the hood, and shook my head.

"I didn't think so," she said. "Let's take you to your friend."

The world warped around me, stretching like the view of a magnifying glass mixed with a kaleidoscope. A force pulled me upright from my seat, and I wobbled as some ground came up from beneath me. Machine guns rattled off bullets, and the crack of each round's firing pounded in my ears. The air was hot and smoky; I wafted some fumes away from my nose. A hand yanked me by the shoulder.

"Ikari, what the hell are you doing here?"

Captain Suzuki. There was no rest for her; she and her men disembarked from a helicopter. Two dozen helicopters had landed in the gash the fleet had made. It was their beachhead. The troop helicopters rolled in, and attack helicopters and jets controlled the airspace within the chamber—the open environment of the Geofront. The ground was grassy, and though the vegetation was largely blue in color, the sense of nature was strong.

Realizing where I was, I laughed, and I shrugged my shoulders. "I was sent here," I told the captain, "to see Nozomi."

The stern and stoic Captain Suzuki put a hand to my head and ruffled my hair. From anyone else, it might have been a cute gesture. From her, it was a warning. "This is not a helmet," she said. "Stay back; stay out of trouble. You understand?"

I nodded. "Lead the way, and I'll follow."

Suzuki pawned me off on one of her fireteams, and the company moved ahead. Helicopter gunships had established a perimeter, bombarding Seele militants with missiles and gunfire. The rest of the expeditionary force touched down within the perimeter, amid scorched grasses and charred trees. The vegetation was unearthly: blue blades of grass split into four leaves in a diamond-shaped pattern, and the trees were bluish-white as well.

But we weren't there for a tour, nor to study plants. The vanguard of the invasion force stomped that blue grass underfoot as they established a firing perimeter.

That was good enough to hold the Seele riflemen at bay, but making the way forward was more difficult: the militants peppered us with mortars and grenades. While the attack helicopters beat them back far enough for us to hold the beachhead, that was about as far as we could go—with conventional weapons, anyway.

I stayed far enough back to only feel the ripples and reverberations of explosions; Suzuki's men surely wouldn't have let me get any closer. While we were waiting for a clear moment, I tuned my radio to the plugcom frequency, and I slipped an earpiece in to listen.

"Nozomi," said Asuka on the radio, "it's Soryu. Hope you're listening; we need you now. I know Lorenz has tried to put all kinds of crap in your head. We're going to buy you a little time without him. If you can use that and get to our guys—so much the better, huh? So listen up, because we've got something for you: Maya, Tezuka, and all of us. You ready for that?"

A slight mumble—a groan came through on the line.

"I'll take that as a yes," said Asuka, laughing to herself. "Okay, Nozomi; okay, Unit-14. You're not gonna have forever, but here's a little weed trimming. Try to walk; try to move around. Try to—"

A roar echoed through the Geofront. I put on some binoculars, and I saw it: Unit-14—the beast built like a bear, in green and black armor—ripped itself free of the vines. And I'll be damned if I didn't pump my fist and cry out at that—even as Suzuki and her men tried to keep me quiet.

"Soryu…" Nozomi's voice was weak and breathy. "Stop talking so much. Where—where do I need to be?"

"Waypoint's up," said Asuka. "Head for the breach; we'll get you out of here. Go!"

The husky bear trudged toward us. It swatted Seele grenadiers and armored vehicles away like ants and beetles. Its footsteps rattled the ground.

But those footsteps were heavy—so heavy. Even with parts and pieces of the Crown ripped away, a great mass still clung to the Eva's head. The Eva stumbled forward like a baby taking its first steps.

And like any child, it fell.

It tripped and skidded on the alien landscape. It plowed face-first into the blue grass. It slipped and stumbled as it tried to get back up, but the earth was soft and wet there. Mud stuck to the Eva's feet and hands, and the artificial soil gave way under the slightest force.

Captain Suzuki touched her earpiece for a moment, and she yelled to get the attention of her men. "Hey, hey, this is it!" she said. "That's our pilot out there, and we need to go get her. Let's go, people!"

With cover from the helicopters, we scampered over the open fields to where Unit-14 had fallen. Missile impacts kicked up dirt and flame, and our footing was unsteady on the wet ground, but we ran ahead anyway, not minding the shaking of the floor or the stray bullets from the last few Seele survivors.

One of them was just as courageous as us, if for the wrong reasons: Keel Lorenz.

"They can't reach you!" he cried on a megaphone, running after the fallen Eva. "They can't bring you back! They are dying every second; let go before more are hurt!"

"I think that's enough of that!" said one of Suzuki's men, and a group of eight surrounded Lorenz and his team.

Lorenz scoffed. "Am I supposed to be afraid of guns?"

"It wouldn't do much good if you're dead before Fourth Impact, Chairman," said Captain Suzuki, who trained her rifle on him personally. "You want to put that megaphone down now?"

Snarling, Lorenz tossed the device aside and put his hands in the air. His followers did the same.

But Unit-14 wasn't free just yet. The Crown's thorny tendrils coursed through the Eva's body, tying it down like a rabbit in a snare.

And I ran after it.

"Ikari!" cried one of Suzuki's sergeants. "Stay back!"

I kept running. "Asuka, it's me!" I called over the radio. "Is there anything else you can do?"

"Sorry, that's all for now," she said. "Tezuka and Maya are working on it. I'm gonna go help them out, so I might not be very responsive. Good luck!"

That meant it was up to us.

I ran up to the Eva's body, past the line of Seele operatives who had surrendered their weapons and kneeled down before the international forces. I crouched next to the Eva's head—the black and green facemask with two rows of eyes—and I keyed up the radio. "Nozomi? Nozomi, are you with me?"

Muffled groans and static came through the line. The Eva looked at me, but its gaze wavered. It spasmed and howled. The tendrils of the Crown of Thorns infested its body, but it was struggling to fight back.

"Hey," I said, and I reached out and touched the side of the Eva's head. "I want you to know something, Nozomi: I don't know anyone who's tried as hard as you—to understand people, to understand herself. It's not fair that didn't make you happy."

The Eva's eyes drifted off me. They blinked one at a time, staring at the ceiling of the Geofront.

I sat down in the dirt, just in front of the Eva's eyes. "But you know something?" I said. "You can change. You have changed. You started changing as soon as you dared to hope for something more with your sister. You changed when you forgave me for being scared and selfish. Let me be there for you now. Let your sister be there for you now. We can do this—together. I believe that."

The Eva's head turned away from me. There was a clicking on my radio. "Ikari," said Nozomi, her voice gravelly and hoarse, "stop trying so hard. Don't patronize me. There's no point."

The Eva glowed with energy. The force of it pushed back against me with a wave of nausea. My skin felt soft and gooey.

"No, Nozomi!" I scrambled to my feet and pulled on its armor. "Nozomi!"

"Nozomi Horaki!" The stranger in the white hood called to the Evangelion. The image of her hovered above the blue grass of the Geofront. Her voice echoed off the walls for all to hear.

But she was no woman—no stranger to me anymore, nor to Ayanami or mankind. In the form of a woman with a satin hood covering her eyes, Eisheth called to Nozomi and challenged her on what was to come.

"Nozomi Horaki," Eisheth said again, commanding the Eva's attention, "you have an opportunity here. You have sisters and friends who love you. They would willingly suffer to see you be happy, for that would make them happy, too."

My radio crackled. "You're not…doing a good job of convincing me here," said Nozomi, her voice gravely and weak.

Eisheth smiled knowingly. "Life is unfair that way, sometimes, but I think you can make them happier than it would hurt them to try. I think you can change." Eisheth turned her head toward me. "That is, if you dare to hope for it." She faced the Eva again. "I ask you not to be so stubborn that you don't even try."

"Who are you to tell me what to do?" Nozomi snapped.

The figure in the satin hood bowed her head. "I'm no one," she said at last. "I'm not the person I used to be." Her head rose, meeting the tired gaze of the Eva. "But I know what it means to doubt, to feel that nothing you do will matter, that nothing you change will stick. Maybe it won't, but perhaps it's time to let fate decide that instead of taking it into our own hands. You know, there's at least one person who wants you to keep trying." The stranger nodded at me. "Isn't she listening?"

"Asuka," I said over the radio, "is Horaki there?"

"I'm here, Ikari." Horaki's voice was halting but firm in volume and tone. "I've been listening. I don't know who that person is that was talking, but she's right. Nozomi, Sister and I are still here. We're still hoping you'll find your way home. We want to see you safe, and—" Her voice wavered. "No, I want to see you safe. We are not done talking. We only just started, I think. We have a lot to talk about—game sprites and landscapes and all that. And how we've hurt each other. I think we should talk about that, too. I'm counting on you to come back, so we can talk about that, Nozomi." Horaki's voice grew bolder. "Promise me that, all right? Nozomi?"

"Don't be an idiot, Hikari," said Nozomi, her voice fading. "I can't promise you anything."

"Yes you can," said Horaki. "You absolutely can. Maybe you won't be able to keep it, but I won't blame you for that. I know you're stubborn, Nozomi. You're so stubborn sometimes you won't even listen to me, but you don't listen to people who tell you to quit. You're ingenious with your artwork, so much so that I don't even really understand it. You treat people so rudely sometimes, but I know you try so hard not to hurt people. I don't know how all of that coexists in the same person. It's puzzling to me, and that used to bother me a lot, but it doesn't bother me as much anymore. Do you know why, Nozomi?"

Silence. The stranger and I looked at one another. She held up a hand, and I took my finger off the transmit switch on my radio.

"It doesn't bother me as much because I realized it puzzles you, too," Horaki said at last. "I remember what you told me that day—when you said you wanted to pilot the Eva again, in spite of everything. You needed a new reason because the old one wasn't good enough. Maybe it wasn't, but you were, Nozomi. You were good enough. You don't need to prove to me you can change. You don't need to prove to me you can feel. I've seen it in how you look. I've felt it from the wall you used to put between us. I've imagined it from the sketches you spend so much time on. There's nothing wrong with your heart, Nozomi. It might be imperfect, but we all are."

What I would've given to have been there—to have stood beside Horaki as she poured her soul into the microphone. I could only hope Asuka was there beside her, offering a shoulder to lean on.

"So forget all of that," Horaki concluded. "Forget all of that and stop worrying. Forget it and come home to us. Nozomi, I—I want to see you again."

The Geofront sat unnaturally still for a moment. SDF personnel kept Keel Lorenz under watch, with his hands and ankles bound by plastic ties. The ocean waves chopped outside under a moderate wind. The Disc Angel circled the Black Moon, zipping by the breach every-so-often; its light cast long shadows on the interior.

And the Crown of Thorns withered. The vines and tendrils dried up and dessicated. The Eva snapped those vines in two, climbed to its feet, and roared!

The sound pushed me back, but when it was over, I felt comfortable and still. The pressure of the anti-AT field diminished. I poked at my arm; my skin felt firm again.

"Ikari, Soryu," said Nozomi on the radio, "I'm over this. Can we get outta here? I'd like to see my sisters, and we've got some catching up to do."

I glanced back at Eisheth, who shot me the proud smile of a mother.

And behind her, Ayanami smiled, too.

"Shinji," said Asuka over the radio, "you want to give the order?"

"Thanks," I said, weeping, and I faced the breach in the Geofront. The sun had risen, and the gap opened up to clear blue sky. "Nozomi," I said, "let's go home."

#

I'd expected the end of the war to be cleaner somehow.

With our mission over and Unit-14 deactivated, the day had been won, but our work was far from finished. The allied forces rounded up the remnants of Seele, shackled them, and loaded them onto the helicopters for transport back to the fleet.

The rest of us followed in waves, but I stayed behind for some time. Getting Unit-14 out of the Geofront would prove difficult—most easily done with it under its own power, but the creature was too worn out and damaged to do that right away. Instead, a team of German and American technicians flew in and force-extracted the entry plug. Nozomi was released into the care of MSDF medical staff. She was a mess: her hair was sticky and clumped, and there were pressure wounds around her wrists and ankles. It would be some time before she was 100% again, but even as the medics started pumping fluids into her, she had the presence of mind to speak to me.

"Thanks, Ikari," she said, smiling weakly. "Thanks for being here."

I crouched down beside her in the medical helicopter. It was getting close to noon local time, and the upper sections of the Geofront had begun casting shadows over the beachhead—the gash we'd managed to carve out from the Geofront's hull and the surrounding landing area. Even so, the beachhead was brighter than the rest of the interior, and that glow cast half of Nozomi's face in light. I smiled at her, and I said,

"I'm glad I was here. I'm glad I met you. I'm glad—so glad—that I could be here and see the moment you didn't have to be a pilot anymore."

"Me, too." She looked out the side of the helicopter, to the horizon, the open water, and the red sea. "I almost fucked it up, but I guess it turned out all right."

I laughed, and I patted her on the head—even though she tried to pull away from it.

"You serious right now?" she said, unable to run away from my touch. "I'll get you back for this."

"I know," I said, continuing to pat her head. "You'll get me back a thousand times worse than this, but you know what? I think it's worth it."

Nozomi sighed, and she stopped resisting, laying her head back on the stretcher. "I've taught you too well," she said.

"You have."

And we both laughed at that.

We carried on for a little while longer, but eventually, the medics wanted her to get some rest. They gave her a sedative, and we rode together back to the international fleet.

With the helicopter carrier Ise destroyed, the Japanese command had relocated to Makinami. It was a makeshift operation in every way: the ship was becoming crowded with rescued survivors. I didn't know the ship at all, so I would get lost at almost every turn, and while the MSDF members were polite enough to show me the way, it was still an unsettling experience.

The crew converted one of the mess halls into a triage center and temporary shelter. Despite the crowded conditions, spirits were high. As new survivors were sent our way, there were cheers and hearty yells all around. If alcohol had been allowed aboard ship, I'm sure the MSDF members would've gone through a few rounds by that point. The war had been won; the Angels had stood down. Seele were in irons.

All that was true, yet it didn't feel like a victory for me just yet. With all those people crammed into one place, lacking a view of the outside, it felt like we had just kept on going. The difference from before and after didn't really resonate in my bones.

Not until Misato walked into the mess hall.

"Brothers and sisters," she cried, "the Angels' attacks are over. The enemy have surrendered. The Earth is ours and ours alone once again. What do we say?"

"Banzai!" cried the survivors. "Banzai! Banzai!"

Misato pumped her fist with them, and the whole room hollered, cheered, and broke into applause.

For the first time that morning, I felt I could cheer with them.

#

The celebrations continued as we returned to Japan. There was a parade in port as we disembarked. Banners hung outside the airfield where we left for Tokyo-2. Farmers carved out victory messages in their fields.

But once that groundswell of relief ebbed away, we went back to work. There were still great challenges for humanity, for a world to rebuild after the Second Angel War. The Evangelion would have no place in a world without Angels to fight. It was quickly agreed, among the international community, that all three units would be sealed away, reserved only for use against threats to all mankind.

The Black Moon remained over the Indian Ocean while Eisheth's children, and the children of the other giants, repaired its superstructure. After a few months, it rose from its resting place over the ocean, disappearing to the stars. Eisheth would guide the Black Moon back to the worlds of the other giants. Humanity was not a failure; all of their children should be given a chance to succeed. She would see to it.

And in the meantime, a small number of her children would stay behind with us, help restore civilization, and build relations for the future.

Project Manoah's mission had been completed, and it soon came time for Misato's people to abandon the base. A mountain bunker was too valuable to keep for just office space. The government had other ideas. Still, it was strange to clean my stuff out of my office and quarters. Though it'd only been a few months, I'd spent a lifetime there—met people I wouldn't have had a chance to meet, found friends I would've lost, and more. I'd first set foot in the mountain as a very different person. To leave it meant leaving that person behind, too. It wasn't a bad thing, but it was a moment worth considering—worth remembering.

And I remember, that last night on Manoah Base, I ran into Misato as she was cleaning out her office, too. Misato had been assigned to an advisory council that would manage relations with Eisheth's children—the small group of them that the world had agreed could remain. I worried that would mean she would be bored—it was far from the thrill of managing an Eva program—but Misato didn't mind it one bit.

"I've had enough adventures and thrills for a lifetime, I think," she said to me as we carried boxes back to the train.

"No you haven't," I said.

"Hah!" she said, laughing. "No, I haven't. But maybe it'd be nice to have thrills and all that without the fate of the world riding on the line."

And she found that, in due time. Misato found a car enthusiast and racing club in town to join, and every so often, she would invite me to attend a meeting, to have a heart attack as I watched her go three cars wide through racetrack turns built for two, and to meet people. Despite her busy schedule, Misato always found time for her weekends with the club, and she took care to introduce me to the other members. Anytime someone new would come along, she'd take them aside with me and say, "Do you know my son?" And if they gave her a confused look, she would just repeat it until they understood.

With the project over, it was time to look ahead. Nozomi went back to school full-time, with most of her peers none the wiser that she'd been the Eva pilot. Asuka returned to her doctoral studies. Misato had her duties.

As for me, I'd spent two years in hiding, helping people in anonymity, but going back to that was impossible. The government wanted me involved more than ever—to serve as a liaison with Eisheth's children, say, or for public information campaigns about the aliens and the new order. Again and again I said no, though. They had their ideas about what I would do for them going forward—just as my father had done before them. It was high time, I felt, that I would be the one to choose my path. I'd see that people got along with one another, and with our newly discovered brothers and sisters, my own way.

After some thought, I decided the best way to do that was to go back to school, too.

Asuka had a tremendous amount of fun with this idea. Even if it was just a cram school to get me ready for high school entrance exams, the thought of sending me out with a school bag of notebooks, pencils, and other supplies delighted her to no end. I had to draw the line at her trying to foist a shiny red backpack upon me, though.

"You're not really embracing the spirit of being a student," she chided me. I assume it was a Western thing. The thought of going into a school setting so flashy—she tried to give me a rainbow-colored ruler—was unsettling to me, but Asuka had never been the type to fear the impression she made on people, so long as she was in full control over it.

"You mean I can't go there in a white shirt and black pants—you know, something that won't stand out?" I asked her.

"Not a chance. Everybody knows who you are. There's nothing that won't stand out about that, no matter what you wear. Everybody who lived through these past two years—they're going to remember you."

Asuka took the price tag off a binder and packed it away for me. Our living room was filling up with school supplies in various bags, boxes, and bins.

"They're going to remember you, too," I insisted.

She froze me with a knowing look. "They're not. They should, but they won't." She shrugged. "That's just how it is."

Maybe it bothered her a little, but I resolved to do everything I could to take those worries away. Asuka would be remembered, too. If nothing else, I would remember her. The world should remember her. Though Nozomi had piloted the Eva, I really feel that we won—that we averted Fourth Impact—because of people like Asuka. Asuka was an intense person. She hurt me sometimes, but she changed. She turned her intensity toward helping build things with people, toward improving herself. And she did that.

The world could use more people like Asuka—and I couldn't stand to be without her. That's why, as Asuka put her stamp of approval on my notebooks for cram school, I left a small, black felt box on the kitchen counter. It would only take her a couple hours to find it. As for her answer, well, she insisted on having me right then and there. For the future, we talked about some dates. We could wait until the first day we were both 18, or we could hold out for graduations—mine from high school, hers from graduate school—and celebrate coming into adulthood with each other. We didn't decide on that night, but we had options, and we would long enjoy talking about them.

The next day, I went to school again for the first time in two years. It was a strange sensation: most of the kids were younger than me. I'd never been particularly tall, but I was taller than a lot of them, and that made me stand out all the more. I hesitated outside the building, looking up at the place where I'd shape the course of my life, and a few of the students caught me there.

"Hey," one of them said, "aren't you that boy?"

I laughed, bowing my head for a moment, and I met the student's eye. "My name is Shinji Ikari. I'm going to cram school with you. I hope we'll get along."

The first student, a boy, seemed taken aback by my greeting, but one of his friends thought better of the situation.

"We hope so, too, Ikari," said the boy's friend. "My name's Kaizaki. This is Inumata and Emiya. Let us know if there's anything we can help you with, all right?"

I nodded in thanks. "Same to you: if there are any stories you want to hear, I might be able to spare a few minutes of my time."

The boys' faces lit up at that, and the second boy, Kaizaki, motioned for me to follow them inside. I looked back at the street, though, and I hesitated:

"Sorry," I said, "I'll catch up in a second."

The three headed in and upstairs, but I went back toward the street. Someone was there, watching me, and her red eyes compelled me to meet her. The ghost of Rei Ayanami stood on the sidewalk and smiled.

"Congratulations," she said. "They know your name now."

I laughed. "I guess they do."

We shared a smile at that, but for me, it was short-lived. The specter of Ayanami was clearly unreal: she was semi-transparent, exuding an unearthly glow. She could never really be there because she was nowhere at all.

And yet, thanks to some strange miracle, I was able to take her by the hand and feel that she was alive—even though she was not.

"Ayanami…" That was all I could manage to say.

"Don't worry about me, Ikari," she said. "I am here. I will always be here to watch over you."

"Always?" I said, and I shook my head.

"I look forward to it," she said, and she squeezed my hand tighter.

"And if she gets any funny ideas," said another voice, "we'll be here to keep her in line."

Eisheth—she was there, too. In the form of the hooded stranger, with sleeves long enough to hide her hands and a satin face covering that obscured her eyes, she watched from a few meters down the road, and she was not alone, either. Kaworu stood beside her, and the other four progenitors—dressed like Eisheth—watched from a little further down the road.

"I think I'll be the one keeping you in line," said Ayanami, smiling slightly.

Eisheth bowed her head at that, and she faced me. "Take care, Shinji. Lilith and I will be watching, but you should help yourself, too."

I nodded. "I know. And thank you."

A chime went off in the building. The time for cram school was near. I let Ayanami go at the front of the building, and she watched me—as she always had.

I pulled the cram school door open and stepped inside, and though the hours were hard and lectures difficult to get used to again, for the first day at least, I didn't mind it one bit.

The End

To those of you who read The Coming of the First Ones, I hope this conclusion brings some closure that was long overdue. To new readers, I hope that this memoir of Shinji Ikari inspires you go out there, be willing to change yourself, and approach the future without fear.

My profound thanks to readers and reviewers: Ranma-sensei, Strypgia, Gryphon, FourDreadWraiths, Kitebroken, and Dealer on Sufficient Velocity; Susano on Sufficient Velocity for thought-provoking conversations about this piece and Eva canon; HaterOfNone and Malevolent Dark Reflection on FFN.

I don't know when, or if, I will write another Evangelion fanfiction. For now, I plan to write an original piece called The Parallel Murders. But plans change, and paths that once seemed divergent can cross again when you least expect them to. So for now, I can say only this:

Until next time.

-Muphrid

Written for the second draft as published on Sufficient Velocity. Written 2017 March 11, published March 16.

Be at peace, friends: Eisheth and Lilith are watching, and if humanity stumbles again, they will be there—to offer a hand, should we be resolute enough to take it.