Inside the TARDIS

Ever since he'd started the teaching job, the Doctor had found a new appreciation for the weekends. Oh, he'd always enjoyed them, of course -- so much so that he'd often go back and have them again, two or three times in a row. Being locked into a more linear schedule, however, had taught him an entirely new respect for those two little days. Even boring old Sunday, much to his shock.

(He'd started sleeping a lot more recently, too. Sometimes up to five to six hours at a stretch, which he never did. Probably not the healthiest thing in the galaxy. Still, he supposed, when in Rome, sleep as the Romans sleep, or something.)

So it was with a certain amount of reluctance that he picked up Martha's old cell phone late one morning on the third or fourth ring. "Yes?" he said, trying to avoid sounding too irritated but not entirely succeeding.

"Get down here," Misato growled in his ear. "Now."

***

NERV Headquarters. Days later.

"So, now that we're down to two pilots, what are our options?" Misato asks.

"We've already taken steps," Ritsuko says as they glide serenely down the corridor. "We'll obviously have to put them both on duty full-time. With Rei, it's simple enough -- we just need to pull her out of school. She'll burn through bodies faster due to the added stress, but we should have room in the budget to manage."

"What about Asuka?"

"That's where we had to get creative." They arrive at a big steel door. Ritsuko slides open a viewport at eye height and motions to Misato. "Take a look."

Misato peers into the cell. Asuka grins back at her, drool running down from the sides of her mouth. The girl is strapped into a pilot's chair, a rat's nest of wires running in and out of her flesh. Her head's been shaved, her long red locks replaced with lobotomy scars. Her eyes seem vacant of any intelligence or emotion.

"We should have no problems keeping her on alert full-time now," Ritsuko says cheerfully. "No more insubordination issues, either. We basically cut out anything unrelated to piloting."

"What if I need her mad, though?" Misato asks. "Her whole berserker thing could be useful sometimes."

"That's easy. We just show her a picture of the Third Child. Drives her into a blind rage."

Misato nods thoughtfully. "I guess there must be just enough of her left in there to hate him."

"I'm told that when they dragged her off for the operation, she spent the whole time cursing his name." Ritsuko tilts her head and smiles brightly. "Tea or coffee?"

"Ooh! I'd love some!"

They slide the viewport closed. In the darkness inside the cell, the thing that used to be Asuka giggles vacantly. "Stupid Shinji," she mumbles through her rictus grin. "Your fault."

< scenario end >

***

Inside Unit One
T+2 Hours, 11 Minutes

"GAH!" Shinji wrenched his eyes open. Oh, screw you, brain! he thought. What, is this situation not bad enough already for you? Is a good dream of some kind really that hard to come up with?! Geez... and it's not like Misato or Ritsuko would ever do something like that, anyway... or that the Doctor would let them...

He rubbed his eyes and glanced around. The entry plug looked exactly the same. He'd been trying to sleep to reduce his oxygen use. It wasn't like he had anything better to do with his time right now...

He knew it was dumb, but he couldn't get the dream out of his head. He supposed it did have one good point -- he hadn't really thought of how him taking risks might affect Asuka and Rei, had he. He wondered how their lives would've gone if he really had walked away from piloting at the beginning... would either of them still be alive at this point? Stupid, he thought. Stupid and selfish. I should have thought of that --

"Stop," he muttered. Forget about it, he thought. Crazy Day, remember? Anything goes. And anyway, it doesn't matter. I'm not going to die. If I just wait here, the Doctor'll do his thing, and everything will be fine.

... right?

***

T+2 Hours, 19 Minutes

He obviously wasn't going to get back to sleep anytime soon. Might as well run through it again, he thought. Remember what the Doctor said. What's the first thing you do when you're in a trap? You figure out who trapped you and what they want.

Well... he'd been trapped by an Angel. And he had no clue what it wanted. Because it was an Angel.

All right, he thought. So what's the second thing you do in a trap? (Though the Doctor had wound up vacillating on the exact order of the steps. He'd gone back and forth before finally deciding that, rather than the second, this was the other first thing one should do.) Take stock of your resources. See what you have access to.

That part was fairly simple. Shinji had gotten into the habit of smuggling his backpack into the entry plug with him on every mission, hiding it in one of the empty storage compartments on the back of the pilot chair. Which meant that -- in addition to his plug suit and whatever else was in the entry plug itself -- he had with him:

- His cell phone;
- The hazmat suit from the school;
- The mask for said hazmat suit;
- A copy of Introduction to Humanoid Psychology (Zx!wagywti, 2., Levine, M., Halfrunt, G. et la. 27th edition, published 5106, Luna University Press);
- And a fez.

He couldn't use the cell phone to call for help because it wasn't getting a signal. (He checked it again, just to make sure. Still nothing.) He kept it on anyway, in case the Doctor could use it to track him somehow. Otherwise, unless the fez had magic powers of which he was currently unaware, he couldn't really see a way that any of these things could help him escape his current situation.

Which led him straight back to the same plan as before: wait for the Doctor.

***

T+2 Hours, 42 Minutes

He blew a half-hour or so testing the fez for magic powers. His rigorous experimental procedure mainly consisted of him wearing the hat and saying as many silly words as he could come up with. "Um... kurasakegami! Baka-doki-doki! Bannakaffalatta!" He threw in a finger wiggle for emphasis.

***

T+3 Hours, 6 Minutes

He finally got bored enough to crack open the psychology manual. As he turned to the chapter about telepathically-transmitted disorders, it occurred to him that he had wound up getting his Crazy Day off. If I'd only thought to grab a few candy bars and better reading material, he thought, this would be perfect... well, minus the ever-present threat that came with being trapped by a hostile alien entity, of course. But hey, nothing's perfect, right?

***

Command Center. NERV Headquarters.

Brainy specs deployed, the Doctor watched as Unit One abruptly sunk into the shadow beneath its feet. The cyborg struggled and floundered as if drowning in quicksand, but couldn't pull itself free. As soon as it vanished beneath the surface, everything else on screen -- the cars in the street, the buildings, the colorfully-painted fire hydrants -- started to follow suit.

The video replay froze. "And that brings us up to the present." Misato gestured towards the next row of monitors, all of which showed the same image: a zebra-striped sphere hovering over a perfectly flat section of the city roughly a block in diameter, now completely devoid of any structure or object apart from its own impossibly large shadow. "Units Zero and Two barely managed to escape in time themselves. We tried to reel Unit One back up using its umbilical cord, but no luck."

"And it hasn't done anything else since this morning?" the Doctor asked. "It's just sat there?"

"Pretty much."

"Well, that's a bit uncharacteristic, innit?" The Doctor sniffed his nose. "Would've expected a solid rampage by now."

Ritsuko coughed and tapped Misato on the shoulder. "Captain, a moment, please?" Misato stepped back and turned to the scientist. "Are you certain the commander's all right with him being down here?" the blonde woman murmured. "If I look into it further, I'm not going to find that the paperwork's mysteriously disappeared, am I?"

"He signed off on the Doctor's day pass, so long as Security keeps an eye on him." Misato motioned to the armed security guards standing a few meters away. "If you're that worried about it, call him and ask for yourself." Ritsuko looked away.

"So. Doctor," the captain snapped as she stepped forward again. "Tell me how a shadow can eat an Evangelion."

"It's not a shadow." The Doctor pulled off the glasses and stowed them. "Welllll, it is a shadow, partially. Just not the part you think. The big globey thing -- that's the shadow."

Misato narrowed her eyes. "Why don't you try that again?"

"It's an extradimensional entity," the Doctor said. "Five dimensions or more interacting with a four-dimensional world. The bit that looks like a shadow to us -- that's the Angel. Its exterior looks like a flat surface a few atoms thick. But it's linked to its own self-contained spacetime. A living pocket universe."

"Like a Durac sea?" Ritsuko raised her eyebrows. "That actually makes sense. I'd been considering that possibility myself..."

"Is that what they call it here? Huh." The Doctor scratched the back of his head. "Anyway, main thing to remember is, the shadow's the real bit. The big ball's just a trick of the light. A projected artifact caused by spare photons leaking out of the Angel's hyperdimensional mass and back into our reality. That's why it keeps vanishing and reappearing. When the Angel moves, it scatters the light onto other manifolds." He noticed the expression on Misato's face. "Right, let's try it like this: three-dimensional objects cast two-dimensional shadows, don't they? So this is a higher-dimensional form casting a three-dimensional shadow. Simple as that."

Misato glanced at Ritsuko. "Did any of that make sense to you?"

"Some." The scientist crossed her arms. "I don't suppose there's any point bringing up just how impossible this is by most standard models of physics."

"Ohh, don't do that," the Doctor groaned. "Because then I'll have to bring up the square-cube law. And soon enough we'll both be crying over the death of reason, and then where will we be, eh?" Ritsuko smirked.

"Look -- just... break this down a little more for me." Misato rubbed her temples. "How big is this thing, really?"

The Doctor shrugged. "Who knows? Could be the size of a planet in there. More, even."

"So how do I shoot it?"

"Ulchh. Is that what it always has to come down to with you military sorts?" The Doctor rolled his eyes. "You can't, really. Any physical attack will just pass through into the Angel's pocket universe. And once you're on the other side of the shadow, you're playing by its rules. There's no telling how the laws of physics might work in there. Safe money's on it keeping any vital bits well out of reach, though."

Misato stared up at the monitors, a somewhat haunted look on her face.

"Excuse me, ma'am." Makoto cleared his throat. "We just got word from the UN forces. They've finished cordoning off the Western District."

"Got it. Thanks." Misato ran her hands through her hair. "Asuka? Rei?" The two girls' video feeds popped up overhead. "You can break for lunch. Come back down here, but remain on standby. Got it?"

"Yes, ma'am," Rei said.

"Is that the English teacher with you?" Asuka craned her neck. "We're going to get Shinji back, aren't we? And then you're gonna fire him, right, Misato?"

Misato sighed. "We can talk about it later, Asuka."

"Oh, are you kidding me?!" the redheaded girl snapped. "You saw the way he was acting! He's completely unstable! Not to mention insubordinate, reckless, rude, disrespectful, condescending, pigheaded -- he doesn't have the slightest idea how to take orders or deal with people! And do I really have to point out that this is the second time in a week we've all had to bail out his useless Arsch?!"

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Dare I ask what the problem is today?" he whispered to Misato.

"She's worried," the captain muttered. "And Shinji gave her some sass before... you know."

"Shinji? Really?" A delighted grin flashed across the Doctor's face. "Finally discovering he has a tongue on him, is he?"

Misato narrowed her eyes, but didn't say anything.

"-- and if it wasn't for the fact that he dragged a halfway decent Eva down with him, I'd say we should just let him rot!" Asuka shouted. "Hey! Are you even listening?!"

"Anyway," the Doctor said in a louder tone. "Have to admit, fräulein -- I'm surprised. Wasn't sure you had it in you."

Asuka furrowed her brow. "Huh?"

"All this concern for your fellow pilot." The Doctor grinned. "Starting to grow on you a bit, is he?"

"What?!" The girl's face flushed, her voice rising another octave or so. "But -- I didn't -- weren't you -- GRAHHHHHHH!" Her video feed vanished.

Ritsuko shook her head. "Do you really have to aggravate her like that? She's not exactly easy to deal with as is, you know."

"Eh." The Doctor shrugged, tucking his hands in the pockets of his coat. "Life's gonna aggravate her. I'm just finding the teachable moments where I can."

Misato shifted her jaw. "Back to the Angel. What can we do about it?"

"Wellll..." The Doctor yawned and scratched the back of his head. "I have a few ideas. Might need a few thousand yen for supplies, though."

"Fine. Whatever." Misato glanced at Ritsuko. "Anything else you need from him?"

"Not at the moment, I think," the scientist said. "I've got a team setting up a spectrometer at the edge of the encounter zone. If it's all the same to you, Doctor, I'd like to confirm your hypothesis before we go any further."

"Hm?" the Doctor said absentmindedly. "Hohyes. Of course. Wouldn't expect anything less."

"Great. Get started." Misato looked to the security guards. "I'll see him out."

She grabbed the Doctor's necktie and dragged him off. "Oi!" he barked. "Stop it! That's Hynerian silk!"

***

Months later

< scenario begin >

Spirit broken, he sits by the shore
of a sea choked red with the blood
of countless billions, each one his victim.

The head of Ayanami, his sister, lies out
in the far distance, titanic in size.
Even in death, she still smiles for him.
Her face is framed by a giant blue box
that stands behind her, massive and lifeless.
It died in the end alongside its owner.
Two more lives consumed, because he was weak.

No longer Ikari, he is the Last Boy --
last human on Earth. And the sin is his
alone to suffer, forever and ever more.

< scenario end >

***

Inside Unit One
T+4 Hours, 9 Minutes

His bravado finally gave out a few minutes into the fourth hour, shortly after he woke up from yet another bizarre and depressing dream. God, I am such an idiot, he thought. I acted like a jerk to everyone. What was I even trying to prove? Asuka -- she might never even talk to me again! And Misato's probably going to throw me in jail for insubordination the moment I get back. If I get back... who knows? They might not even have called the Doctor. Maybe they don't even think I'm worth rescuing at this point. Who could blame them?...

The worst part was there was nothing he could do to fix it now. He couldn't even apologize to them. All he could do was float in the liquid miserably, slowly tumbling end over end as he silently chastened himself.

***

T+4 Hours, 28 Minutes

Hey, he thought as he hung in the liquid, still curled into a ball. How am I supposed to poop, anyway?

The issue had never really come up before. He knew the plug suit could handle the other thing somehow -- he'd done plenty of that. Which had been sort of gross at first, but couldn't really be helped, given the whole liquid breathing setup. Regardless, he couldn't remember anyone ever telling him whether or not the suit could manage more... solid material.

His stomach rumbled -- whether from hunger or something else, he couldn't tell yet. All the same, I probably should do something about this, he thought.

***

T+5 Hours, 13 Minutes

He hooked the plastic tube into the port on the plug suit's leg, before glancing over to where the line ran into the pilot's chair. Was there a button he was supposed to press or something? The instructions made it sound like it'd happen automatically. Sure enough, he heard a pump or a motor of some sort start up.

He tried to ignore the material being suctioned from out of the suit. (His stomach growled again -- definitely hunger this time. He tried to ignore that, too.) Instead, he focused on the thick manual he'd unearthed from out of the entry plug's storage compartments. The open page, printed on a thick mix of plastic and rubber that reminded Shinji of one of those bath books they made for little kids, read:

The EVANGELION-SERIES PLUG SUIT utilizes the absolute latest in life support technology. Its Internal Waste Management System (IWMS), based partially on the Maximum Absorbency Garments used by NASA astronauts, absorbs and stores all pilot byproducts in a sanitary, safe and odorless manner, negating the need for diapers or catheters. The plug suit can handle up to 2 liters of waste without visible bloating or deformation. For long-term missions, the IWMS can be drained using the entry plug's Secondary Waste Collection System (SWCS) [see diagram for instructions].

In the case of IWMS or SWCS failure or compromise, see pg. 4-261 for options. In cases where bacterial contamination of the LCL fluid is a concern, see the separate submanual included with the emergency rebreather.

... wait. Rebreather?

***

T+5 Hours, 40 Minutes

... the EMERGENCY REBREATHER is intended primarily as a fallback option in case contamination of the LCL fluid or certain medical conditions (including congestive heart failure) make direct oxygenation impractical. The rebreather simply extracts the gases necessary for standard respiration from the LCL fluid, filtering out a large number of known biological impurities and toxins (see pg. 20 for complete list).

Please note that the emergency rebreather is NOT intended for situations where the supply of oxygen to the LCL fluid has failed or been disrupted! It CANNOT be used as a carbon dioxide (CO₂) filter and should not be utilized in that capacity.

Lame, Shinji thought. He looked up from the