Oh, something I forgot.  Thanks to Fido for prereading part 3.

                           Angels, Heaven, and Earth
                                by Ken Arromdee

                                   Chapter 4

    Shinji concentrated on the street ahead of him, trying to forget everything
else as he walked to school.  There were too many bad things in his life that
he couldn't control, and it had been that way for a very long time.  His father
only cared about his work and his dead wife, never noticing he had a living son
except when Shinji was needed to help save the city, and sometimes not even
then.  Of the other pilots, one hated him, one was halfway to catatonic, and
the last one lost his machine and almost his life until Shinji, of all people,
had to save him.

    At least Akuma was grateful to him for that.  Shinji couldn't even remember
the last time anyone had been grateful to him.

    "Hey, Shinji", said Akuma, as he joined Shinji on the last two blocks to
school.  "What's up?"

    "Oh, nothing", replied Shinji.  "Just thinking."

    "Fighting Angels?"

    "No.  I mean here.  Existing.  How do I fit in here?"  Shinji had to talk
to someone.  The past few weeks had been good, meaning that there was no
further trauma in his life, but not that the constant pain in his heart ever
ended.  "Akuma, suppose I were to die in the Eva tomorrow.  Would anyone really
care?  Dad wouldn't notice except when an Angel's attacking right at the
moment.  Asuka wouldn't miss me if I disappeared, and Rei wouldn't know how to
miss anybody.  The class and even Misato were here before me, and they'll be
here after me."

    Akuma blinked.  "You know, if you keep talking like that you're going to
convince yourself that you feel terrible no matter how good things really are."

    Akuma tried, thought Shinji.  At least he tried, which was more than could
be said for almost anyone else.  But there was no way he could understand, not
really.  He had parents, he had friends, he had a home, and piloting Eva was
only a sideline that he'd probably already forgotten about.  Shinji shook his
head in rejection of Akuma's words.  "I'm sorry", he said.  "I should be
grateful that you're being kind to me."

    "Shinji", said Akuma as the two entered school, "if you keep this up you're
going to turn into Rei."

                                *   *   *   *   *

    A half hour before the end of the school day, a shrill note pierced the air.
Over the classroom loudspeakers the principal announced the cause.  "Angel
attack.  I repeat, Angel attack.  Students Ikari, Ayanami, and Sohryu are to
report to NERV immediately for defense.  Everyone else, evacuate to shelters
immediately!"

    Asuka got up and walked by the desk of Shinji, who was still jotting down
English test answers in his blue book.  "Idiot Shinji.  We have to go."

    "I know", replied Shinji.  "Just a minute."

    "We have to go now", repeated Asuka.

    Shinji looked over Asuka's shoulder and watched as Rei stood and walked out
of the classroom.  Asuka looked Rei's way and scowled, and then Shinji felt a
sharp pain in his wrist as Asuka gripped it hard and pulled him away from his
seatm running out of the room with him in tow.

    "See you later", said Kensuke, waving to the departing pilots as he and the
rest of the class got up to leave behind them.  "Good luck, everyone."

    "Get the Angel for us", yelled Akuma to Asuka and Shinji.

    Touji stared at the couple for one long moment.  "Come back alive", he
finally said.

    "Touji?" asked Akuma.

    "I mean it", replied the teen.  "You know what I think about the Evas.  It
looks like a lot of fun.  It might be a lot of fun.  But I'd never want to do
it.  People get hurt.  My sister's in the hospital because of an Angel.  The
same thing could happen to Shinji and the others."

    "I'm sure they'll be okay", replied Akuma.  "They came back before, right?
Isn't there some way we could watch them, make sure everything is all right?"

    "Me and Kensuke tried that.  Shinji had to rescue us!  I'm not gonna do
that again.  We should just go to the shelters."

                                *   *   *   *   *

     Rei, Asuka, and Shinji filed into the holding area for the Evangelion
units.  The vastness of the place never ceased to amaze Shinji.  It could even 
distract him from his troubles at times.

    Shinji picked up his plugsuit and pulled himself into it.  He knew the
routine, because he had gone through it so many times before.  He was ordered
to put on the suit, so he would put on the suit.  He was ordered to climb in
that machine, and he would enter the entry plug using his own hands and feet.
And then, the mechanical monster's hands and feet would become his own, and he
would fight, until the enemy died.  And in a week or two when the next Angel
came, he would go through it all over again.

    What were the Angels, anyway, wondered Shinji as the LCL filled his lungs.
Aliens from space?  An experiment gone wild?  The vengeance of God, who hated
his children like some heavenly Gendou?

    "87 percent", said Misato over the radio.  "Sync ratio satisfactory.
Everyone, the Angel's too close for comfort.  Its form is like the earlier
Angels, but its power levels are much higher.  It broke through eighteen
plates and it could be completely inside the Geofront very soon.  You have to
stop this one.  There'll be no second chance!"

    "We'll defeat it anyway!" exclaimed Asuka as the Evas were transported to
the outside.

                                *   *   *   *   *

    "Let's see if this works", said Akuma to Touji and Kensuke.  He slid his
card into a door slot, and the entranceway to the deeper levels of NERV opened
before him.  "I knew it.  Their computers still think I'm a pilot.  My card
works!"

    Someone tapped Akuma on the shoulder.  He turned, to discover that everyone
had entered right in front of Ritsuko, who looked at them nonchalantly.  "Oh
no", he said.  Touji and Kensuke, seeing her, backed him up on that.  "Oh no!"
they exclaimed.

    "Sounds like you kids are trying to get somewhere you don't think you're
allowed to go", said Ritsuko.

    "It's okay", replied Akuma.  "We just want to go watch Shinji fight.  Don't
you have some kind of monitors in here?"

    "Yeah", said Touji.  "So we can see what's happening without there being
any danger."

    "Hmm", said Ritsuko.  "Follow me."

    She led them down several corridors, a few paths around open spaces, and a
very long escalator, finally coming to what Akuma recognized as the control
center.  "We have some guests, Misato", she said.  "They want to see the
display."

    Misato scowled at them.  "In there", she said, pointing to a room
separated from the control center by a plexiglass wall.  It did have a
television monitor in it, and it was showing the Angel attack.

    "See?  It worked", said Akuma as he and the other boys sat down to watch
the battle.  "We're not going to learn any secrets by being here that Shinji or
the others couldn't learn and tell us about anyway.  So they have no reason not
to let us in."

    "Then maybe we should have asked ahead of time instead of sneaking in?"
wondered Kensuke.

                                *   *   *   *   *

    The Angel hovered in the air, slowly but inexorably moving towards the
center.  Three Evangelion units landed in front of it, to stop it, or be
destroyed trying.

    "First", said Misato, "Asuka.  Shoot from long-range with a sniper attack."

    "Roger", replied Asuka, pulling out her Eva's weapon with bravado and
firing it at the angel.  "I've got it!"

    Meanwhile, Akuma, Touji, and Kensuke watched the shot on the screen.  The
Angel, looking deceptively small because of distance, was hit dead center, but
shrugged off the blast just like it was constantly doing to ordinary cannons.

    Asuka pulled out her Eva's other gun and let loose with both barrels on the
slowly approaching Angel.  "You're dead meat!" she yelled.

    The shots hit, but showed no more effect than the first ones.  The Angel
kept coming.  "It's not working!" yelled Misato.  "The AT Field hasn't been
neutralized!  Okay, all three of you.  Put your units between the Angel and
the center of the Geofront.  You're going to have to draw its attention and
fight it close-up."

    The teens watching the monitor yelled at the screen, but of course nobody
noticed them.

    "It'll be necessary to breach a hole in the Angel's AT Field.  Asuka and
Rei, you do that.  We need both of you because of the strength of this Angel.
Then you, Shinji, will attack it."

    On the screen, the Angel loomed larger and larger, floating directly
towards the three Evangelion units.  At first, it seemed not to notice them,
as if the Evas were just one more group of missile launchers.  But at several
Angel-heights away, it landed and swiveled towards the Evas.  The Angel
suddenly lashed out at the Evas, its AT field extending to swat them out of its
way.

    "Asuka!  Rei!  Now!" shouted Misato.

    The two girls in their Evas fought, trying to pull apart the AT Field of
the Angel.  Massive armored hands the size of trucks struggled with the Angel,
but the field barely even rippled.  The Angel flexed its arms, and threw the
two attackers off, then sped up, heading for the center again.

    "What do I do?" asked Shinji.  "It's still coming!"

    "Dammit!" yelled Misato.   "Go back.  We're going to have to try something
else.  All three of you will have to try to breach the field.  Once that
happens, then Shinji, you're to stop, grab the knife, and stab in fast before
it closes again.  Does everybody understand?"

    "Yes", replied Shinji.

    "Back off, now!" yelled Misato.

    Obeying Misato's order, Shinji and the others backed their Evas away from
the Angel.  No sooner had they backed off, though, when the Angel's arms shot
out two thin ribbons.  They were only a yard thick, but the Angel controlled
them easily.  The Angel cracked the ribbons at the Evangelion units, ignoring
everything else in their path; they sliced through a pole, the edge of a
skyscraper, and finally, through the torso of Asuka's Eva.

    "Cut the neural connections on Unit 02, now!" screamed Misato as Asuka's
Eva fell, useless.  It bled a puddle of what would have been gore had it not
been too purple and had it not been the size of several swimming pools.

    "Pilot signs?" yelled Misato.

    "Attack missed the Entry Plug", replied Ritsuko.  "The Eva's out of
commission but Asuka's alive."

    The Angel swung around and picked a new target for its ribbons without even
hesitating: Rei's Eva.  Rei crossed her Eva's arms and warded them off on their
first attack.

    But then, the Angel aimed a blast of energy at Rei, following up with
another coil of ribbon.  While she dodged the blast, the other attack hit her.
The Angel squeezed hard, crushing the Eva, then reeled in its arms and
tore it in two.  The Eva broke, splattering purple gore for blocks.  Rei
screamed, until the audio shorted out.

    Please, let Rei have made it too, wished Misato.  "Life signs of Ayanami
Rei?"

    "Not reading anything", replied Ritsuko.  "It could just be the detection
system that's destroyed, though."

    But the screen showed otherwise.  The entry plug on Unit 00 had been
breached.  Lying in the wreckage was the twisted body of Ayanami Rei, who had
suffered a ten story fall as well ashaving several tons of equipment fall on
the right side of her body, unprotected.

    Touji and Kensuke watched in horror.  "Shinji's not going to make it
either", said Touji.  "And then it's going to destroy this whole place.
Shelters, my sister, NERV, us...."

                                *   *   *   *   *

    Akuma watched besides them.  He thought it over and realized that there was
only one chance.  As horrific as the situation appeared to his friends, its
true nature was something they were mercifully ignorant of.  If that Angel got
all the way to the core, not just NERV, but the whole world, would be instantly
destroyed as everyone dissolved into pools of LCL.  He would have to hope that
the secrecy which kept the Evas and Angels out of the public eye would serve as
well for what he was about to do.

    And of course, if he didn't survive, he'd never see any difference anyway.

    "Guys", said Akuma.  "Wish me luck.  Watch the screen.  And if I make it
through this, please wait for the explanation, okay?"

    "You can't go out there!" yelled Touji.  "They don't have any spare Evas."

    Akuma shook his head.  He stepped up...  up onto nothingness, so he was
floating in the air, and disappeared.

    "That's...  he can't do that.  No way!" exclaimed Touji.

    Kensuke pointed to the screen.  "There's something there.  We've got to
watch.  There's nothing else we can do."

                                *   *   *   *   *

    Akuma blinked momentarily as he reappeared in the bright sunlight, right
above the battle.  He hovered in front of the Angel, immaterial for safety, and
summoned the Light Hawk Wings.  Four spokes of energy appeared on his back, and
merged together into a powerful energy shield.  Energy flowed from his hands
and became a long crackling blade, perfectly weightless.  Then the blade
lengthened and lengthened.  Touji could see it on the viewscreen, that energy
blade from one tiny figure expanding so much that it broke the boundaries of
scale and became a credible threat to the invading Angel.

                                *   *   *   *   *

    "Second blue pattern detected", said Maya.  "Second AT Field detected."

    "Another Angel?" asked Misato.

    "There's nothing else it could be", replied Maya.  "We can get a
closeup...."

    Misato expectantly watched the closeup.  Somewhere inside her she knew what
it would be; Sasami hadn't been completely convincing.  When she saw Akuma
floating in the air in the middle of the battle, and then when she glanced at
the room with the children to see that he was, of course, gone, she realized
that her guess had been right.  Sasami was mixed up in something big.  Maybe it
was another government agency, one even more secret than NERV.  Or an
extragovernmental agency.  But whatever it was, they had the Fifteenth Angel,
and they sent him here.  To come in, to learn about NERV... ultimately, to act.
And whatever NERV could do, might no longer have any effect....

                                *   *   *   *   *

    Gendou unfolded and folded his hands.  So those old men at SEELE got
something right for a change, he thought.  But they hadn't intended anything
like this.  What was that Angel doing?  And how would Gendou's own plans for
Instrumentality be disrupted?

                                *   *   *   *   *

    Akuma fought hard, holding the huge Light Hawk sword against the Angel's
field.  He didn't have to slice with it; he just had to move it with his mind,
just as he had created it.  All that power came from within him, not from the
motion of his hands.  The Light Hawk sword temporarily broke up as it hit the
field, and Akuma instinctively teleported behind the Angel to avoid an oncoming
blow.

    The Angel turned and shot its ribbon arms in Akuma's direction with precise
aim.  The protrubances hit Akuma's Light Hawk Shield and bounced off.  He could
feel the feedback, but he was safe.

    He would have to be safe.  There were pretty much two possibilities.
Either the attacks would bounce off, and he'd be unhurt, or else they'd
penetrate.  That AT Field, if it was as much like the Light Hawk Wings as it
seemed to be, could hurt him while was immaterial, and he'd be very rapidly
dead if he didn't react fast enough.

    Akuma created the blade again, forcing it with his mind and a turn of his
hands to help him visualize.  It was smoothly melded into his shield, as if he
was a giant swordfish.  Akuma accelerated in the air towards the Angel, trying
to ram the 'blade' deep into the Angel's AT field.

                                *   *   *   *   *

    "He's what?" asked Shinji, in disbelief.

    "An Angel.  Akuma's an Angel", replied Misato.  "He suddenly appeared in
the middle of the battle, generating an AT Field."

    "He can't be!  I spoke to him, he wanted to be my friend.  He can't be one
of those things I have to kill!  He can't be!  Can't, can't...."

    "Shinji!  Pull yourself together.  He's fighting the Fourteenth Angel and
that might do us some good for now.  You need to get through the AT Field and
destroy the core.  With a distraction like this, it may be possible."

    "But..."

    "Asuka and Rei are down.  You're our only hope!  Do it!"

                                *   *   *   *   *

    Shinji drew his knife and attacked the Eva, trying to get through its AT
Field on its back.  The field flared and didn't let Shinji through.  But
elsewhere, Akuma's Light Hawk sword, concentrated in a different location,
slowly ate through the Fourteenth Angel's AT field as the Angel expended its
resources on Shinji.  It formed a tiny hole...  tiny on the scale of an
Angel, but huge for a boy.

    Akuma flew through before it could close up and released all his power at
the Angel, behind its AT Field.  He could have destroyed several football
fields with that blast, and it tore through the Angel like Ryo-oh-ki through a
hill of carrots.  What was left of the Angel fell to the ground, unmoving and
silent.

    Shinji's Eva, the only remaining Eva, turned to face Akuma.  It took two
steps, then one more, then stopped.  The expression on the Eva's face, to the
extent that that metal-covered face could mirror that of the pilot within, was
one of shock and confusion.

                                *   *   *   *   *

    Akuma had saved the world.  But what he wanted to do the most now was to go
far, far, away.  Because now would come the hard part.  His great-grandfather
had kept everything secret for over seven hundred years, but in just a few
minutes, Akuma had undone it all.  How could he make up for something like
this?

    And how could he explain it to his classmates?

    Akuma disappeared and reappeared back in the monitor room.  Touji jumped,
startled.  "H-- hello", stammered Touji.

    There was no mistaking the expression on his and Kensuke's faces.  They
were frightened to death.  "Touji, Kensuke, I..." he said, and bit his tongue
when they nearly jumped at the sound of his voice.

    "Oh God, no wonder you were so strong.  You were really one of them", said
Touji.  The bravado so often in his voice was replaced by timidity.  "An
Angel...  a monster...  please don't hurt us."

    "Will you stop that, please?  I'm not going to hurt you.  And I'm not an
Angel."

    Misato opened the door cautiously.  "Akuma?" she asked carefully.

    "Misato?  Did you tell them that I'm an Angel?"  Misato nodded uncertainly.
"Well, I'm not.  I really don't know what I'm allowed to say even after all of
this has happened.  But I didn't come here to kill everyone.  I came here to go
to school!  Please, tell them...."

    Misato looked at Akuma and shook her head, then at the other children.
"Touji... Kensuke... he hasn't hurt anyone so far.  You can't lose hope."

                                *   *   *   *   *

    It was overwhelming.  Shinji didn't think his world could be overturned
again, after all he'd been through, but it was.  That boy was an Angel.  'I
hope we can be friends....'  All lies.  He'd only been using Shinji, as one
step towards...  what?  

    As the entry plug opened and let Shinji out, he looked around.  Touji and
Kensuke?  What were they doing here?  And Akuma...  how did he get to be in
here too?  "Misato?"

    "Right here."

    "What's going on?  What happened?  And where's Asuka and Rei?"

    "Your friends came to watch", she said, motioning towards Touji and
Kensuke.  "Asuka should be all right, she just had a mild concussion when her
Eva fell.  The LCL cushioned her from most of the impact.  Rei...  we don't
know."

    "I see.  And Akuma?"

    "Shinji!" said Akuma.  "You're back...."

    Shinji looked at Akuma, saying nothing.  What could he say?  The boy was
strange, alien, despite any surface appearances.

    "Shinji?  Not you too.  I helped you!  You should know, you were out
there."

    "Why...?"

    "Shinji, what would you have me do, sit back in here and let the world be
destroyed?"  When Akuma said that, Shinji caught Misato giving him a curious
glance.

    Shinji began to speak.  "Tokyo-3 is hardly the wor--", he said.

    "Akuma's right", said Misato.  "Nobody ever told you, Shinji, but what you
are fighting for, Shinji... really is that important."

    Of course.  Misato had hidden the truth.  Maybe she thought he couldn't
handle it.  But, Shinji realized, she was still right about that one part.
Akuma did help him.  Shinji barely understood anyone helping him, let alone an
Angel doing so, but he had no choice but to be grateful.  "Thank you, Akuma",
he said, "for the rescue." 

    "Umm...  you're welcome", replied Akuma.  "Shinji, you can stop being
scared.  It's as bad as being depressed.  If there's anyone here who has to be
scared, it's me.  I blew a secret big-time, and now I have to go home and tell
my parents and my family what I just did."

    "Your family?" asked Shinji.  "You really do have a family?"  Of course he
couldn't; an Angel couldn't possibly.  "That wasn't just..."

    "I'm not an Angel, Shinji.  It doesn't matter what all those machines out
there think.  I know exactly who I am and why I have these powers, and it has
nothing to do with NERV or Angels or anything like that."

    "Then what?" asked Misato.  "And what's your connection with Sasami?"

    Akuma shook his head.  "Misato, I already blew it.  Don't ask me to make it
worse by giving you information.  Please?  Now I have to go."

    Shinji eyed him, and finally asked "Will I... will we... ever see you
again?"

    "No!  I mean no you're wrong!  I'm not leaving.  I hope not.  I don't know
what Mom and Dad are going to tell me to do but I'm going to be back tomorrow
for school if I can.  We still have that English test to finish...."

                                *   *   *   *   *

    Akuma teleported to near the Tokyo-2 West Metropolitan Underground Shopping
Center and walked in.  There was a place here which had some good ice cream,
for a mall.  At least it was something to do before he had to go home.

    Halfway past the Kinokuniya, he stopped.  He was just kidding himself, he
knew.  All that waiting was doing was making him more and more nervous for when
he finally did have to tell his parents.  They would be very disappointed in
him.  Seven hundred years.  His great-grandfather had been keeping the secret
going longer than most Earth countries existed, and in just a few minutes Akuma
wrecked all that completely.

    Akuma walked back towards the exit, then realized he was still trying to
stall.  No, he still did have time to get the ice cream.  Green tea, he liked
green tea.

    After walking most of the way towards the store again, Akuma shook his
head, gritted his teeth, and entered a fire exit.  After he was out of view of
the mall shoppers, he teleported directly onto the couch in the Masaki living
room.  He was home.

                                *   *   *   *   *

    Akuma waited and waited.  A scraping sound startled him.  Maybe Mom and Dad
had come home already?  He looked over to the source of the sound and it was
only Ryo-ohki eating.

    The doorbell rang.  "Hi!" he yelled at whoever it was.

    Akuma's father unlocked and opened the door, then stuck his head
through--unlike his mother, who would often have done the reverse--and waved.
"Hi Akuma", he said.  "I didn't expect to see you here."

    Ryouko disappeared and instantly appeared in front of him.  "C'mon, give me
a hug."

    Akuma obeyed, but a little reluctantly.  Ryouko teleported back to Tenchi.
"All right, what happened?" she asked.

    "What do you mean 'what happened', Mom?"

    "You're no good at faking it, Akuma.  What happened?"

    "I didn't have any choice!  Mom, Dad, you want to know what happened.  This
is what happened.  I had to save the world and to save the world I had to use
the Light Hawk Wings.  With everyone watching.  Please don't get mad at me and
don't make us all have to go away forever because of it.  They can keep
secrets at NERV, they really can."

    "I think all three of us had better talk", said Tenchi.  "I want you to
tell us everything, all the way from the start."

                                *   *   *   *   *

    "So that's it", said Tenchi after Akuma finished his explanation.  "You
know, you should really be pretty proud.  You saved the world.  You wanted to
do that at NERV, right?"

    "I saved the world in a bad way."

    "Akuma", said Ryouko, "do you remember when you told me how your friend
Shinji is always depressed?"

    "Yeah."

    "Try to set a good example for him, okay?"

    Akuma looked at his mother expectantly, waiting for her to continue.  When
she didn't, he asked her "That's it?"

    "What's it, dear?"

    "You're not going to get mad at me or ground me?"

    "Akuma, I made plenty of mistakes in my time.  You know I burned down a
school once by accident?  And what you did wasn't even a mistake.  What else
could you have done?"  She paused and looked at Tenchi, giving him a chance to
speak just in case he disagreed, but she knew that he almost certainly
wouldn't.  Tenchi nodded to her and she nodded back, then continued talking to
their son.  "Don't get me wrong.  It did happen, and we're going to have to
worry about it.  But not the way you are."

    "Will we have to leave and go into space?"

    "Akuma, no, we're not.  Even if we get on the front page of every newspaper
from here to Slovakia.  You're going to stay in school and you're going to stay
here with your friends.  You deserve to have as normal a childhood as we can
give you and Tenchi and I are going to do everything we can to see that you get
one."

                                *   *   *   *   *

    A voice behind the number "07" spoke.  "The Seventeenth Angel is awake.
Sasami is dead, but her allies will need heavy watching.  There are still two
more Angels to arrive before we can send him to Lilith and attain
Instrumentality.  And the Dummy Plug System for the Eva Series cannot yet be
completed."

                                *   *   *   *   *

    Well, that had certainly jolted the old men of SEELE to activity, thought
Gendou.  Not that it mattered, since the Angels put them on a timetable that
they couldn't rush.  Anyway, there was one thing he had to do as soon as
possible.

    Deep inside the Geofront, Gendou reverently laid out a blanket atop a cart,
and wheeled it into the room hidden within the complex, the room full of parts
of Rei.  Remembrances of Yui.  Gendou normally just gave orders that others
followed, but in this case, he would operate all the machinery himself.  Few
other people really understood the concept, and besides, Yui deserved to have
it done with his own hands.

    Gendou climbed to the top of the tank and cranked it open.  Then he fished
out the nearest body by reaching down into the fluid and grabbing it under the
armpits.  He put a harness around the pale girlish form; he maneuvered it onto
a crane.  Then Gendou worked with the crane controls, gently placing the body
down on the blanket he had prepared.

    He gave the seemingly sleeping Rei body one kiss on the lips, then wheeled
the cart out.  To Lilith.  To the room where the sleeping giant hung, dripping
an endless supply of LCL.  Gendou lifted the body off the cart and set it down
in the LCL, right inside the door where the fluid layer was shallow but still
provided a direct psychic connection to Lilith's cross, and to Lilith itself.

    Eight years ago, Ritsuko had strangled the first Rei.  Eight years ago,
Gendou had had to awaken this substitute Yui for a second time.  It had taken
ten minutes then, but it seemed like hours.  Now, he had to do it again, and
in the silence, he waited.

    Ten minutes later, there were no signs of activity from the body he had
brought.  A half hour later, there was still nothing, and when two hours had
passed, Gendou brought the body out of the room and back to the tank with the
others.  Could something have gone wrong?  He had seen the body; it was dead.
Could eight years have been too long?  Could the soul have been stuck in that
body and have vanished with Rei's death?

                                *   *   *   *   *

    Rei awoke in a weightless space.  She must have been floating in LCL, but
her skin felt perfectly dry and everything was completely still, as if no
liquid was around her at all.  A nearby voice called out her name.

    Rei opened her eyes, to see only emptiness except for a fleeting glimpse of
leaves.  Floating in the void in front of her was a woman dressed in robelike
clothes she had never seen the likes of before.  On the woman's forehead was a
triangle, seemingly molded into her skin.

    "Welcome back, Ayanami Rei", said the woman's soft voice.