2022-06-18: Song, Sea, and Sky
Cutscene: 2022-06-18: Song, Sea, and Sky
Cast: Ouka Nagisa, Cuervo Cero, ft. ???
Where: NERV HQ: Simulation Body Pribnow Box
Date: June 18th, UC 96 (June 18th, 2022)
Summary: ((Retconned - Historical Purposes Only))At the point between life and death, some see a bright light. For some... they see a black sea...
It is not uncommon for someone after a near-death experience to claim seeing a bright light, to feel calm, perhaps even relieved. In some cases, they might claim to see their dead friends or relatives. If this is the actual experience of dying those that would know best, the dead, are typically silent on the matter. Still... it must be comforting to those still living to believe that when death comes it's not as scary as the instinctual fear of our mortality would make it out to be.
This is not the experience Aurum-1, Ouka Nagisa has had.
When her heart stopped, when her lungs were filled with what could be most aptly described as a fluid resembling boiling blood, she felt her own consciousness slipping. For her there was no light though. Only darkness.
At least at first.
Much like one's eyes adjusting to a darkened room, slowly the world around her resolved. Beneath her was inky black, but it rippled like a sea on a starless night. Which was strange for there were in fact many stars out in this strange sky: Too many to count, above the horizon, the boundary between sea and sky was a shifting glittery tapestry of countless individual lights. It was hard for her to discern but she felt that each point of luminescence was distinct and unique. That if she could but touch one of them, she would know.
But there are things she DID know, even if she didn't know HOW she knew. She knew that this space was arbitrary. Imaginary. Though everything there was real, what shapes they took and their position relative to her were not. Were she to fly towards the sky she knew that she'd never, not in countless eons, be able to reach them. And she WAS flying: Her body gliding in that divide between sea and sky. To where, though? The sky can't be reached... and the sea...
No, that strange knowledge touched her mind again, and she knew that to bathe in those trackless depths was to surrender to the End. To have all that makes her Her, and even Herself, dissolve into the medium and become a part of it.
However, alongside where she knew she cannot go, and where she dared not go, there was something else. A song. Too distant, too quiet, to be recognized. And despite the erratic nature of that space, she felt she can move towards it, and on her approach achieve an Understanding.
Then, just as she became aware of Another, Another became aware of Her.
A 'face' as dark as the sea, 'eyes' as red as pools of blood. It appeared from nowhere and stared deep into Her ... did she even have eyes there, or did It stare into her soul? Suddenly the 'eyes' lit up to the point of blinding and that song from before went from quiet and distant to an equally indecipherable roar inside Her mind. Were she certain she still had a mouth she would have opened it to scream.
WHY ARE YOU SAD
A sudden lancing pain through her chest, an uncontrollable spasm as an arc of life-giving voltage is sent through her heart. The blinding light in her eyes dim to resolve to the darkened space of an inactivated test entry plug, and she is suddenly aware of the sharp agony throughout her limbs and a desperate need to breathe.
'...............nc signal your vitals bottomed out. I've terminated the test. Ouka, are you okay? Please let me know if you're ok.'
Dr. Cero's voice, at first a faint mumble but then clear, filled with concern for her. For her safety. Briefly the First Boosted Child considers whether she should share what she experienced with Dr. Setme's Assistant, but even as she does, she feels her memories dissolving like morning mist under the noonday sun. Soon all she is left with is the memory of those four words: 'WHY ARE YOU SAD'
"I'm fine." The First Boosted Child lies.