Here we are, another installment of EVA 2055.

As with the previous episodes, this is still a work-in-progress, so C&C will usually be incorporated into later drafts. Also as before, this story is riddled with spoilers, so don't read it if you haven't seen the Evangelion movies.

If you feel like reading ahead, or reading the latest drafts, the archive page (address in .sig) holds the very latest versions of Episodes 1.0 through 4.0. Yes, the archive has 4.0, even though this is 3.0, but this is the latest one I've posted to the FFML.

If you're insane enough to care, try to read at least one chapter of this story while listening to the Chilli Peppers' 'Scar Tissue' or 'Under the Bridge'; 'Tonight Tonight' by The Smashing Pumpkins; The Rollins Band's 'Illumination' or pretty much anything by REM (I particularly recommend 'Everybody Hurts', 'Losing My Religion' or 'Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight). So much for the soundtrack.

Well, enjoy/endure!

P.S. For those who complained about the dialogue formatting, rejoice! I have now made sure each new character speaks in a new paragraph. Hopefully, that is.

P.P.S. The emotional scene with Asuka was written while I was under the influence of 4+ hours of listening to REM. Blame Michael Stipe, its all his fault! :)


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Spoiler Warning!
If you didn't read all that interesting and wothwhile stuff above, this fic contains lotsa spoilers, so don't read it if you don't want the Evangelion movies spoiled. Oh, and go back and read my pre-story spiel too!
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Disclaimer: What I own, I own. What I don't own, I don't own, and am using without permission. 'Nuff said.
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                              EVA 2055
                      Episode 3.0, Exodus 0:3
                    "Heart of the Dispossessed"
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          "What is past I know, but what is for to come I know not."
                                        -II Esdras (Apocrypha), 4:46

Aki woke, late, as she always did on her days off. In the flat's small kitchenette, she could hear Saeko making coffee, deliberately loud, a signal for Aki to get up. Saeko had a day off as well, she remembered. Aki did want to quiz her about research sources for the assessment. Saeko also made damn good coffee. Propping herself up on her arms, she hauled herself out of bed and donned only as much clothing as would conform to what Saeko would find acceptable, ie. nothing special. Opening the door, she was immediately confronted with a man she didn't recognise, leaning against the kitchenette's bench. She closed the door again. Not a single movement of her face had occurred. Open, Assess, Close. He, on the other hand, had probably been somewhat surprised to see a half-dressed girl appear, then disappear, all in the space of about three seconds. An unexpected male addition to the morning population of the flat was nothing new to Aki. Saeko was forever bringing home some guy or other. No, the far more important issue was, that clothing acceptable to her flatmate did not necessarily equate to what Aki felt comfortable being seen in by a guy, even one of Saeko's, especially in the morning. She put some more clothes on.

As she emerged this time, the guy seemed to be leaving, half-smothering Saeko in octopus-like arms. Aki made a gesture of disgust, miming putting her finger down her throat, visible only to her flatmate. Saeko's eyes smiled. Then the guy was gone, out the door, waving a last goodbye.

"I'm not even gonna ask who he was." Said Aki, once the door had fully closed.

Saeko shrugged in reply. "Coffee?"

"Oh yeah. Definitely."

Saeko busied herself with the coffee machine.

"I wanted to ask you," said Aki. "do you have any weird sources who might be able to help me with my assessment? I just want a bit of a starting point."

"Weird sources?" answered Saeko, mimicking offence.

"Yeah, you know, you always know some kinda weird contact who knows some strange stuff." Playful niggling.

"Well, lucky for you," Saeko mimed casting an evil spell, waggling her fingers in Aki's direction. "I don't offend easy.  What're you looking for?"

"I want to know about Akagi Ritsuko."



Saeko grimaced. "Really? NERV? Geez Aki, why would you want to get involved with that kind of stuff? I wouldn't have thought you were the type."

Aki didn't bother trying to sway her flatmate. Saeko came from a family of free spirits, the kind of people who were fundamentally and unswervingly opposed to the kind of thing NERV stood for in the world of the 2050s. One might as well try to convince a hippy that Hitler had his good side.

"I don't wanna big ideological spiel, okay? Can you help me or not?"

"Well�. As it happens, I do in fact know someone who might be able to help."

"Yeah?"

"Uh-huh. When I used to live over in Lowside. This girl lived near me, always insisted her dead mother or something used to work for NERV. Me, I never knew whether to believe her. But if you really want to know about those fascists, she might know something useful."

"Cool. So how do I get a hold of this girl?"

"Well, Lowside being what it is, she's probably still there. Crate complex down there, I'll give you directions."



Three hours later, Aki was walking down one of the main thoroughfares of Lowside, looking for a bar. Indigomi, as Saeko had assured her it was currently called. The Tokyo tradition, of bars having an operating lifespan only slightly longer than the average mayfly, seemed to extend even as far as Lowside, a district proud of its differences from the rest of the Tokyo megapolis. Aki had visited Lowside before, but it still slightly intimidated her. As well any ostensibly independent and semi-lawless suburb might. She found Indigomi, tucked behind a stall where an old woman of obvious Mongoloid descent offered what was allegedly beef, but probably meat of a more rodent nature, served on sticks and drenched in a sauce so heavily spiced as to almost sear Aki's nostrils as she passed. Indigomi seemed to be a tourist-oriented bar, decorated with assorted debris of the kind one would expect to encounter regularly on the streets of Lowside, and catering to those individuals as might take a certain thrill from a visit to this place, notorious in the more prestigious suburbs as dangerous to outsiders.

The girl Aki was looking for was known only as Blue, for reasons Saeko had not explained if she knew, living, according to her flatmate's memory, in a section of a complex made from shipping crates, about fifty metres east of Indigomi. As she approached that mark, Aki saw a curtain of beads, in front of a hole in the side of such a crate, fading letters on the side. Not knowing the correct protocol for such a dwelling, Aki knocked timidly on the side, attempting a volume level enough to bring a response, but hopefully not enough that the echo through the metal might annoy the inhabitants. A face appeared behind the beaded curtain.

"Um�I'm looking for a girl called Blue?" Aki ventured. "Saeko said she was here."

The beads parted. Aki stepped inside, removing her shoes. Squares of clear plastic studded the wall, providing light, and she could hear the slow beat of a fan, further in. The face that had let her in now had it's back to her, moving towards another door-hole at the other end of the crate. She followed, the owner of the face revealing himself as a gaijin man of indeterminate age, hair dyed a fluorescent green. He ushered her through the opening, into another crate, without a word, and indicated a ladder on the far wall.

"Up there?" asked Aki, receiving only a nod in reply.

She started to climb the ladder, which had strange curved rails, like the ribs of some old piece of iron furniture, but which was now solidly welded to the side of the crate. Her head emerged into the space above, and she looked around, meeting the eyes of a dark-haired girl sitting on a pallet in the far corner. She had closely shaved hair, which made her look quite butch, despite her thin figure.

"Looking for me?" she said, as Aki reached the top of the ladder.

"Blue?"

"That's me." The girl looked around nineteen, Aki's own age.

"Um�Saeko said she used to know you." She moved towards the girl.

"Yes, I remember her."

The girl's silence made Aki feel awkward. "My name is Shirato Aki. Um�" She resorted to bluntness. "Saeko said your mother used to work for NERV."

"Grandmother."

"Excuse me?"

"My grandmother worked for NERV."

"Sorry."

"You can sit down if you like." She indicated cushions against the wall of the crate.

Aki sat.

"What did you want to know about my grandmother?"

"Um�I'm doing a report on Ritsuko Akagi, for a course at university. A historical perspective unit."

"My grandmother was one of the minor programmers working on MAGI Balthazar. She died in the JSSDF's raid when my mother was five." The girl idly traced a swirl on the floor of the crate.

"I've read about that." Aki said. "It sounded pretty bad."

"My mother devoted her life to finding out what really happened. She was convinced that it was the JSSDF that killed NERV's staff, not NERV's own security forces, like everyone's always thought."

Aki had trouble deciding whether it was the girl's silences or her openness that made her uneasy. "What happened to her, your mother? I mean, sorry, I shouldn't intrude."

"She died of cancer two years ago." She started playing with her toes.

"So, um, what can you tell me about Akagi?"

"Not much. My mother's digging was focused outside of NERV. As far as she was concerned, NERV's people were the saintly victims." She turned toward Aki. "But a friend tells me they're starting it again."

"Starting what?"

Before the girl could answer, the air was split by the shriek of sirens, seeming to come from everywhere around them. Banging started on the walls of the crate below, amplifying the urgency of the situation. The girl leapt up from the pallet, opening the door behind her into the light outside, and Aki followed her, onto the roof of the crate below, hollow-tube scaffolding towering to one side. The girl scrambled up a ladder of struts on the scaffolding, Aki in tow, until they reached an open platform, from which they could see the city of Tokyo-5, several kilometres distant.

"There!" The girl pointed into the re-structured landscape, shouting over the wall of noise around them. "That! That's what they're starting up again!"

Aki's mouth dropped open in awe as she followed the line of the girl's finger. Lurching from the shell of one of the few buildings that had not flattened themselves into the ground, an immense humaniform study in metal and plasteel, the EVA started to move through the streets.



"See that? That thing there, it makes us obsolete." Shinji pointed at the EVA as he and Asuka watched it from the roof of the Kada hospital.

Asuka studied its movements, noting its grace in comparison with the machines she piloted. Had piloted, she reminded herself.

"I can understand the ugly shape of the head." She said. "And those funny legs probably help. But, I mean, really, does it *have* to be that icky green colour?"

Shinji looked confused. Then he laughed. "I thought you were talking about the EVA for a second there."

The EVA was in fact a glossy black, a shade that matched the city it walked through perfectly, like a dark pearl. It's opponent on the other hand�



*This* was the icky green monstrosity. The creature towered over the EVA, more than double its height. Long, unnaturally spindly legs propped it in it's current position, straddling one of the flat, vitrodur highways, the shade of smoked glass, that curved up out of the city, it's weird, lanky hanging almost limp by it's sides. It's body and head seemed to be one and the same, a squat, round, almost cylindrical shape, a gleaming red eye-like orb set into one side.



If Asuka had ever wondered what it would be like to see an EVA battle from a civilian's point of view, she was about to find out. As she watched, two other EVAs emerged from the shelter of the buildings, the same black as the first. She wondered how they could tell them apart, until she noticed the large red, blue and purple faux-gemstones on each of their foreheads, visible only when the EVAs turned in such a way as to catch the light just so. The other EVAs seemed to be hanging back somewhat, presumably to let the first one attack. The attacking EVA, the one with the purple gem, stood to full height, crossing its arms so that each open hand hovered above the opposite shoulder. The weapon racks on each shoulder-blade clicked, loud enough for Asuka to hear from her vantage point, and metal glinted. The EVA gripped the hilts that appeared, drawing the weapons and continuing the motion until each hand hung by it's side, gripping the strange curved blades which had guards like� Well, the only thing Asuka knew that had guards like that were, well, pirate cutlasses. Then the EVA reversed it's grip, holding them blade downwards, ready to be drawn back and forth in a lethal stabbing, slashing motion.

"Popcorn?" Shinji proffered a box, taken from the bag of stuff they had brought up with them.

Asuka took the box and started to pop the hot kernels into her mouth, while Shinji retrieved a box for himself. They sat down on an air-conditioning unit.

"You know," said Asuka. "I coulda beat that thing twice by now."

The two ex-pilots munched their pop-corn on the roof of the building, while the rest of Tokyo-5 cowered in their shelters below.



Hitomi charged the creature, teeth gritted inside the plug. She lifted the twin sonic glaives above her head and launched herself into the air. As she reached the creature, she brought the blades down, slicing off it's left arm, neatly severed in two places. At the apex of the down-stroke, she thumbed the switch on the grips of the blades, and the vicious barbed hooks on the ends of the blunt side clicked into place. She swung them back up, swinging them to the thing's right, the hooks cutting off it's other arm. But now it fought back, extending a mass of writhing tentacles from the stump of each arm, wrapping them around the EVA's head and neck, trying to strangle or smother it. Hitomi swung the blades wildly in front of her, as the external view showed Hiroshi and Yuko rushing to help, stabbing the creature in either side with their sonic halberds. Her slashing severed the tentacles the creature held her with, and she dropped from it's grasp, leaping backwards as the others did.



Aki watched, mesmerised, as the EVAs fought the gigantic beast. They discarded the weapons they held, each taking a strange, massive blade from cavities in the buildings around them. Each blade was a long, flat, ellipsoid-like shape, as tall as the EVAs themselves, and sharpened to razor's keenness all around the edge, except halfway down one edge, where a handgrip bit into the side of the ellipse. As Aki stared, she saw the EVAs leap into the air, higher than should have been possible, clutching the surfboard-like blades. Then, from bulges on their backs, the EVAs sprouted terrible black-feathered wings, and started to circle above the monster, like waiting vultures. The creature straightened it's legs, and stood up, extending and then solidifying it's tentacles into replacement arms, and started to swipe at the flying EVAs. Then, one by one, the EVAs swept down, slashing at it with the surfboard-blades, before soaring back out if it's reach.



Asuka watched, disgusted, until the creature finally dropped to the ground. Shinji still sat, a short way behind her, while she leaned on the barrier at the edge of the roof. She turned away, her back to the sight of the EVA with the red gem wrenching out the scarlet orb of the thing's eye, thrusting it aloft above its head. It roared it's triumph at the sky, the deafening sound rending the post-battle silence with it's primal tone. But Asuka didn't care. As the cry died, she walked slowly back towards Shinji, eyes burning with shame and rage.

"That wasn't an Angel." She said, like a curse on all mankind.

"I know." For anyone else, he would have offered a sympathetic touch. "I half expected that."

If Asuka had known what she felt, she would have recognised the sensation of feeling cheated. Part of it was the adrenalin of watching, of remembering the movements and the contact with the EVA, something she had realised she would never feel again. She had almost wanted to say goodbye to those feelings, to cauterise that wound by watching others take that responsibility. Now the adrenalin went sour in her veins. Another, smaller part. Since Shinji had told her about these new EVAs and their pilots, she had, sub-consciously, thought she might eventually find kindred spirits among them, people who knew what it was like to risk life and soul against a morally superior foe. Now she would have seen that these pilots had never, perhaps would never, fight and kill an Angel, and hence, never share that bond she hardly knew she felt. As it was she did not see this, could not escape her personal universe of fearpainragegriefshame. She wanted to run. She turned away from Shinji, hiding her face, before realising she couldn't hide facing *that* scene either. She ran then, fleeing down the stairs of the fire escape to the building below.



Shinji found her, knees clutched to chest, chin resting on them, sitting on the bed in Room 2.36, staring blankly into the space in front of her.

"You don't run as far now." He said.

"I wanted it so much to be an Angel!"

Shinji sat on the bed. "I did sort of expect it not to be. I guess I should have told you."

"They didn't even fight properly! One dumb mistake and they all gang up on it! It couldn't even fight back!"

There was a silence.

"I saw the look in your eyes when they got out the lances and spread their wings. I probably should have warned you about that too."

"You *idiot!*" She swung her fist at him.

He caught it in his palm, and their eyes met. Tears welled in her eyes. She felt the calluses of age on his hand, reminding her again that this was not her weak Shinji. He opened his arms and she sank into them�



The darkened room was split by a shaft of light as the door opened, admitting a black-clad man. The door closed again, and the darkness returned.

A voice spoke from a corner. "Have you found her?" The tone said the speaker already knew the answer.

The black-clad man turned to face the direction the voice had come from. "We believe so."

"Where?" Again, the confidence in the answer. The voice had a deep quality, as if it were the darkness itself that spoke.

"As you predicted, she went straight to the boy."

"Good."

There was a long silence. The black-clad man shuffled nervously. His sense of presence told him there was something behind him, but he could hear nothing, and the darkness could have hidden the world.

Finally the voice from the corner spoke again. "Get them."



As soon as she could get away, Hitomi headed straight for Lowside. She left Hiroshi and Yuko to be brooded over by Ruri and Dr. Hoshino, like silly mother-hens proud of their chicks. As the mag-lev purred into Yoshitaka station, the nearest to Lowside, she stepped onto the platform. Ten minutes later she strode into Lowside, passing between the concrete barriers that blocked road traffic and marked the semi-formal boundary of the autonomous region. As always, the transition to the other-worldly district was something almost imperceptible, like a change in the atmosphere, or passing through the thinnest of spider-webs. The spider and its web were powerful motifs in Lowside. She headed straight for Blue's place.



Reuben, the green-haired gaijin man Blue shared her part of the crate complex with, greeted her without a word as she passed through the beaded curtain and removed her shoes. He had never spoken while she had been there, and she didn't know if he could speak at all. He was re-dying his hair laboriously as she hauled herself straight up the old bed-frame she had watched Blue weld to the wall to serve as a ladder.

"Hey Hitomi." Blue said as she emerged.

"Hey" she replied.

"Saw the fight. Nice."

Hitomi had told Blue about her being a pilot, soon after they had met. Blue had never made an issue of it, even though Hitomi knew about her family's history.

"Yeah, well." Hitomi brushed the comment off and tried to change the subject. "Anything happen with that drug bust you heard about?"

Blue grinned. "Hell no! The cops woulda been too busy watching you! I did have a different unusual visitor today though."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, some university student. She knew Saeko, you know, the girl I told you about, used to live near here?"

"What'd she want?"

"Strangest thing. She wanted to know about NERV. She was doing some kinda project on Dr. Akagi. It's kinda funny, 'cause she was still here when the sirens started goin' off, and you started the fight. You know, she comes asking about Akagi, next thing we're out there an' I'm pointing straight at some of Akagi's work." She smirked, deliberately emphasising the ironic effect. Then she turned serious. "Someone else came to see me today too, after the student left. This guy in a suit, never seen him around here before. He had a letter, see, from my mother. Said she told him if EVAs ever showed up again he was to give me a package."

"Weird."

"Hell, you haven't seen the package yet."

She opened the box beside her bed and a pulled out a cardboard cube about a square foot each side. She plonked it in front of her and removed the lid. Hitomi moved over for a better look. The box was filled with useless crap. Mugs, coasters, empty soft-drink cans for extinct brands, torn plastic swipe-cards and more. Hitomi reached in and plucked out an inch-high cylinder of hard clear plastic, attached to a loop of black cord with a clasp on it. Inside the cylinder was a triangular sliver of what looked like red plasteel.

"What's this?" She asked, holding the cylinder between thumb and forefinger.

"Ah. I wanted to give that to you."

"Me? Why? What is it?"

"A piece of one of the old EVAs. The red one. Unit-02, I think."

"Really?"

"Uh-huh." She waved a piece of paper produced from the box. "This says so."

"Uh�Thanks." In her head she added: 'I think�'

"Here." Blue reached over, taking the cylinder from Hitomi's hand and undoing the clasp. "Put it on."

Hitomi leaned forward, Blue reaching around to the back of her neck with the cord, and reclasping it, the cylinder falling to rest just below Hitomi's collar bone. Blue sat back as Hitomi moved it around with her thumb and forefinger, adjusting herself to it's presence.

"This is all stuff my mother or my grandmother collected." Blue picked up a white mug with the letters N-E-R-V on it in plain black print. "All to do with NERV."

Hitomi took one of the swipe-cards that caught her eye. An ID card. Captain Misato Katsuragi. Hitomi had recognised that face earlier today, but with the rank badge of a major on her tunic, her eyes closed, blood running in a trickle from those lips. That had been the photo Ruri had showed her, found curled inside a pen habitually used for de-briefing reports, replacing the tube of ink. She opened her mouth to tell Blue, then remembered the personal promise she had made to Ruri on top of that information being classified. Ruri had seemed a little shaken by the discovery, more than Hitomi would have expected. Ruri was sensitive to that sort of thing, projection. Whoever had planted that photo had known Ruri too well for her comfort. The restricted nature of the information meant relatively nothing to Hitomi, between her and Blue, but the promise to Ruri was a sacred covenant.



Asuka's grief was expended or suppressed within a few minutes. Shinji couldn't decide which. Either way, he was just about to leave her to her thoughts. Mere moments ago he would have paused to give a last comforting touch, but that time had been and gone, Asuka's usual nature re-asserting itself with an almost re-assuring elasticity. He left the room without an unnecessary word. Closing the door, he turned to return to his own room, and stopped dead. Down the corridor, two large men in non-descript black suits talked with one of the attendants.
Shit.
He ducked quickly back inside the room.

"Asuka. Grab whatever you want and get ready to go. You probably have about a minute. They're here."

Asuka swore, and threw the few possessions she had accumulated in the last two days into the bag brought down from the roof. Then they were out the door.

"Walk calmly." Shinji murmured as they started down the corridor, away from the suits. "Act like you do this every day."

Yeah.
Right.
Shinji glanced quickly back over his shoulder. One of the suits had noticed the man and young girl slinking down the corridor and was pointing them out to his companion. The suits started to walk towards them. He turned back to Asuka.

"Okay, now run like fuck."



The suits followed, one of them muttering into his collar and pressing his ear. Shinji and Asuka reached the fire escape and started pounding down the plascrete steps. Above them they heard the door open again, and the heavy footfalls of their pursuit. They ran full pelt, swinging 'round on the hand-rails at the turns, breath coming hard and fast as they reached the bottom and burst into the foyer, racing past the stunned receptionist and out the big front doors. Another suit started to run towards them up the gravel drive, feet crunching the surface, and Shinji wrenched Asuka off the drive and into the carpark, dodging between the coloured metal and plastic shapes, and into the Kada's lush gardens. They pounded down one path, then doubled back, pursued by a fourth suit. Reaching one of the high, brick walls of the compound, Shinji knelt to boost Asuka on to the edge, from which she helped him haul himself up. And then they were over, sliding down the hillside on which the Kada stood, and into the sprawling suburb from which the hospital drew its name, to lose themselves in the relative safety of the streets.



They kept running until they reached an alley at the back of a suburban coffee shop, ducking in and dropping to rest at last, leaning against the hard concrete wall, between the dumpsters and empty boxes.

"I think we lost them." Shinji panted. There are certain conventions in reality that demand the iteration of that line after escaping any chase.

"Geez." Said Asuka, still breathing heavily. "It's just like one of those bad old movies."

They both laughed, hiccups of relieved tension wracking fatigued bodies like spasms, the noise drowning out the beat of blood in ears. They sat until their laughter subsided, struggling to get their breath back.

Finally, after the last sigh had died, Asuka spoke. "So what now?"

"We knew they'd come after you eventually." Sober as a judge, all traces of humour gone.

"Yeah."

"I didn't expect them so soon though."

"No."

Silence, but for the low sighs of breath.

"So where do we go now?" She said.

"Only one place *to* go."

"Yeah? Where's that?" Anyone more familiar with the time period wouldn't have needed to ask.

A slow smile spread over Shinji's face. He drew out the moment as long as possible, possessed for that instant with an impeccable sense of drama and timing.

"Where else?" He said finally. "Lowside."

---

Well? As always, any and all comments are welcome (read 'begged for').

*sings badly and in quick succesion*

"...Call me when you try to wake her..."

"...That's me in the corner.."

"..And the night. The night is yours alone..."

You may now kill me. :)

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"Gott ist in er Himmel, alles gut mit die Welt"
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Check out EVA 2055 at:
http://www.geocities.com/dalziel_86/index2.htm
Currently the archive is up to:
Episode 4.0, Exodus 0:4 "Lowside Rising"
Yes, this means the archive is ahead of the FFML!
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"Automatisch fur die Volke" (Don't ask ^_^)
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