2023-10-10: Burial Rites
- Cutscene: Burial Rites
- Cast: Ritsuko Akagi, Maya Ibuki, Asuka Shikinami Langley. Mentioned: Gendo Ikari, Rei Ayanami
- Where: Toumi and Tokyo-3, Japan
- Date: 0097 UC 10-10
- Summary: A tragedy during a crisis prevents time for a proper funeral, but that doesn't mean there wasn't a burial.
The people of Toumi have not returned to their homes. They're given no reason for this. NERV has taken full control of the containment zone. Helicopters fly overhead at regular rhythms, while featureless individuals encased in orange Hazmat suits control every checkpoint into the town.
Rising above the ruined suburb are the ribs of Evangelion Unit-03 rising above like teeth, stained in blood, or is it core fluid? The line blurs at this point. The restraint armor, twisted and shattered by the brutality of Evangelion Unit-01, it's integrity warped long before by the strange abilities of the Twelfth Angel. It lay all over the zone, like so much ravaged scrap metal, speckled by the same crimson.
The flesh was long gone, harvested by the saws of NERV teams into more manageable pieces, sent away to various distant facilities, to be analyzed like so much meat. It is unusual for any part of an Angel to be left after it's death, but this was an Angel that was an Evangelion wasn't it? Much could be learned.
Homes splattered and flattened and ruined.
Back in Tokyo-3, the entry plug lay separated into two halves, still marked by Evangelion Unit-01's maw, bitten like a giant mouth that had snapped out the middle section of a pocky stick, its blue mold replaced by the stain of red core fluid. The missing portions of the entry plug laid out like a crime scene, each piece labelled, and fitted together to mark it's original place.
There was no body. One might wonder if there was anything left.
Laying alongside it all was the crushed remains of GGG pager, neatly marked, the call for their courage finally silenced by that bite. The test plugsuit and interface clips were no longer present, taken elsewhere.
It was all very clinical, the treatment of the tragedy. The mission to Jupiter occupied NERV command, but this was the battle fought by NERV's research and logistics team.
There was no time for a memorial, or a funeral.
Yet there was a coffin.
Deep under the Geofront, a mechanical coffin sits upon the platform, alit in crimson glow, with green markings upon its center. It held all the severity of a funeral, without any of the sense of sacredness. After all, it was a chaotic entanglement of tubes and connections, that ran off the platform on all sides.
Every ten seconds, the head of the coffin was ventilated by a puff of oxygen that caused it to bob and distort, revealing it's true purpose. A ventilator. Like an old style iron lung, but fully encasing it's occupant so that nothing at all was visible.
Look around her, segmented black pillars, each length aglow with hollow red rectangles, in slow rotation, clockwise and counterclockwise around each stake. They bathe the room within their baleful light as part of the rites of her interment.
And far above in a control room, Doctor Ritsuko Akagi sat casually sideways in a chair. A strip of bandage still covered a wound upon her head. An elbow propped upon the table, with a lit cigarette between two hands. She was flanked by Maya Ibuki, who was taking notes, as the Doctor clinically read off her evaluation.
"Her cellular tissue is free of infection. But there's still the risk of psychological contamination. Quarantine is our only option at this time."
Maya Ibuki had a look of uncertainty, as she clutched her datapad against her chest, fingers tightening, "Do you think they'd go so far as to dispose of her?"
Ritsuko Akagi stubbed out her cigarette, right into a full ashtray of them, each marked with the subtle bloom of her lipstick. "Of course not. They would never. Our 'Second Child' has become a valuable specimen."
Ritsuko Akagi looked down upon her coffin. "'Every part of an Evangelion can be replaced.'" She echoes, mimicking what Maya had told her of the Commander's words in the control room that day, "Almost praiseworthy, don't you think? Through sheer dumb luck, she's avoided being discarded twice."
Her eyes stare into the middle distance, Maya seems subtly relieved and disquieted all at once. But Maya's breath catches as Ritsuko delivers her judgment, with a heavy, mournful tone. "Our 'First' won't be so fortunate. That man, he finally sees it."
"Sees what?"
"That he was playing house with one of his spare parts."