2022-06-24: The Fool
Cutscene: The Fool
Cast:Rei Ayanami
Where: A doomed place
Date: 43 hours after the Go'yavec attack on Tokyo-3
Summary: There is a place where every journey begins, and some journeys don't have the option of return.
Kitagawa had been in Section 2 for four years, coming out of a tour in the OCU Federal Forces contribution. He had seen many things and his fair share of kinetic action. There were times when he would have sold several organs for a job like this, not so long ago. But these times were not on his mind now.
Kitagawa's mind was on the crack in the wall.
The building had been condemned, and Section 2 had been activated to facilitate the evacuation. Kitagawa was a squad leader, and thus his squad was here now. As the highest ranking individual he had seen to the *actual* mission - evacuating the resident Evangelion pilot. The other members of his unit were down on the first and second floor, helping the handful of indigents and retirees who dwelt in efficient concrete cubes. All of them could not stay here any longer. There were perhaps half a dozen occupied units in the entire building, which, he knew from the record, could house 512 individuals -- more, if quarters were shared.
The seventh occupant - the First Child of NERV - lived here.
In a vacuum the place would seem bleak, oddly barren. Kitagawa did not particularly like the Evangelion pilots, but it wasn't his job to like them. Most of the time his job was to wear a black suit and to control an area with the threat of force; today it was khakis and carbines instead, but the concept was the same. Here there were no watchers; no enemy agents, like the blot on Section 2's reputation that had come so recently.
Here there was only the crack in the wall.
The breeze picked up, making a noise like whalesong; wind over the crack, subtle motion in the building. Kitagawa wondered how long his attention had been gone.
The First Child was examining objects on her dresser, placing them upon a box that had already been filled with a surprising variety of undergarments, the lurid-red sheets that seemed grotesque in this austere space, and several battered plastic plates from the Don Gillajote in Shin-Asakusa. A pair of broken glasses. What looked like a new and kitschy cookbook. A journal with a cat on the cover.
"Kind of eerie, isn't it?" Kitagawa said, to relieve his tension.
The First Child didn't reply.
He had the horrible impulse to gesture with his carbine, slung at his side. He had cleared the room before the First Child entered; his comrade had gone to secure the stairwell and provide overwatch. (The other six were carrying boxes for old folks. He envied them.) Instead Kitagawa said: "The crack."
The First Child looked at him, then at the crack. She spoke in her odd, soft voice. "The tilt is beyond the maximum deviation from the gravity bearing perpendicular."
A quote from the condemnation notice. "So it's fucked," he said, amending himself, "it's compromised, I should say."
The First Child was putting medicines into the box. A lot of them. She opened a refrigerator - gazed into it for a while. Long enough that Kitagawa cleared his throat.
"Do you know any of the people downstairs?" A thought passed his head: imagining the pale girl doing small errands for them. Delivering a bag of yams to a man born at the dawn of the Universal Century.
"No," the First Child answered.
So much for that thought.
The First Child put a can of some Zaftran soft drink, four packs of some kind of hydration gel, and a foil-insulated bag stuffed near full into the box. She walked forwards, and told him: "I'm going to the bathroom."
Kitagawa turned. He was alone in the room. He expected peace and silence for a few moments. Long enough to watch the crack; to hear the breeze. To wonder --
The First Child emerged and stepped forwards. She had not used the bathroom; she was searching for something, Kitagawa intuited. She stepped over where the crack had begun to move through the floor of the apartment and sank down on her hands and knees. Lower.
The wind died down. The First Child moved, nearly silently. Kitagawa checked the kitchenette and the still-full closet, more out of a sense of obligation. "So," he says, "you gonna miss this place?"
The First Child stopped moving for a moment.
Kitagawa found he was holding his breath.
The First Child made a sound in the back of her throat, and answered: "Yes."
She moved around, crawling. When she got up Kitagawa was relieved, but she just went to push around furniture. Carefully. Tentatively. Slowly.
The wind picked up after about eight minutes. Kitagawa heard the building's sound - slightly different.
He glanced at the door; at the balcony. He had been briefed on what to do if fatal structural collapse began while the First Child was recovering her things. He had a hip pack with a burst-inflatable. The MAGI could not predict if the building would collapse before the demolitions crew could set it off, but the model of *how* it would collapse was reliable. Front walkway or back balcony: in either case, his mission was to collect the First Child, leap clear, and activate the pack.
Kitagawa had been assured that the inflatable would guarantee the First Child's safety and his own survival.
The distinction stood out to him, as the whalesong crooned.
"I don't want to hurry you," Kitagawa said, shocked at how loud it sounded. "But, uh - what are you searching for? Look, I'll help you." He was supposed to remain at guard post unless the First Child required aid. He was prepared to defend this one if the Colonel called him on the carpet.
"A pen," the First Child said. "It has..."
Kitagawa waited.
"... a cat."
A complex array of emotions ran through his mind. Then he scanned the room...
"You've got flat vents on your space heater," he said, gesturing a little with the barrel of the carbine. "Uh, maybe it rolled in there. Still standing up and everything."
The First Child looked at him; walked over to the space heater; shook it, turned it around, *tore off* the back panel -- Kitagawa was surprised, though not deeply, as he had a similar piece of shit and he'd thrown it out when it got warm enough -- and raised it to the light to look inside.
Kitagawa was holding his breath again.
The First Child turned the object slowly. Her head tilted left. Then right. Then she reached over to unplug it from the wall...
A moment later the space heater smashed against the wall of the apartment with a crack! as the coil fell away and the body housing disintegrated. The First Child threw the handle and control electrics aside, landing on the stripped bed. She knelt, examining the wreckage. She did not touch it; there might be capacitors.
"... It's gone," the First Child said.
"I'm sorry," Kitagawa said, for reasons mysterious to himself.
"I'm done," the First Child said then, walking over, picking up the box, and walking out the door. Quickly enough that Kitagawa was astounded; he looked at the closet, and leaned out, to call after the First, "Hey! Miss Ayanami! You forgot your clothes!"
The First Child turned her head, looking at him with something twisting her face. Not just the effort of the motion, Kitagawa thought. "Oh," she said, not stopping.
Kitagawa, feeling like a horse's ass, reached in and grabbed one of the summer uniforms sitting on hangers. He double-timed it after the First Child, even as Oozumi at the stairwell looked their way. Looked at him; Kitagawa gave him a dry 'yeah yeah' look, then:
"You sure? This place is coming down at sunset. There's no coming back, they're not gonna wait for it to kill some Junker stripping the wires."
The First Child answered him as she walked down the stairwell, Oozumi smirking at the way the uniform skirt fluttered in the breeze behind Kitagawa. Kitagawa shoved the uniform into Oozumi's free hand and repeated himself: "It's coming down! Last call!"
The First Child looked up at him from the stairwell, nearly a full twist around. Red eyes, tiny in the gray. This time she heard him:
"I outgrew them."