chapter six
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"So, what do you think he's like?"
Toby gnawed on the pen cap for a moment, before she resumed tapping it against her teeth, watching as Lae quietly copied another set of numbers off of the screen, his quick marks against the page steady and sure, as if devoid of the possibility of error... which, she realized, they most likely were. It was the reason they had /all/ been hand-picked for these positions, that perfection... when even without mistakes, they were still racing, a single step in front of disaster...
... and very soon, she knew, all that preparation would be put to the test.
//... just as soon as Ikari arrives... /if/ he arrives...//
"He'll arrive, you don't need to be nervous." Lae murmured to her without looking up, continuing to take measurements, studious as always, dedicated down to the last detail.
"Yeah... do you think he'll be cute?"
It was a stupid question, especially for her current compatriot, but Toby didn't care, she was tired... six days of nearly straight encoding, never leaving the lab or seeing the sun, and arguing with the engineers and suit architects nearly every step of the way would do that to a girl. Lae, of course, lifted his gaze from the paper just long enough to give her a mildly annoyed stare.
"He's twenty-five, 5'10", 145 pounds..." The dark-haired man sighed, "... last time he went to a doctor, at least, though the new stats show he's dropped at least ten following that attack... I think he can do the job."
Toby didn't answer. The news of Ikari's near-fatal stabbing was a sore point among all of them, and she was sure the man who had been assigned to watch the former Third Child, to ensure against exactly what had happened had either been dismissed, or eliminated... most likely the latter, given how angry the upper echelon seemed to be over the near tragedy.
//For something like that to happen, /this/ close to when we needed him, when we've been watching him for such a long time... //
Thankfully, Ikari was fine... and from the rumors that had been milling around, at least willing, if not entirely happy, to work with them.
//Thank God...//
The phone rang, Lae picked it up, smoothly moving his pen to his other hand, still writing in that near-perfect script as he spoke. Toby's eyes widened expectantly, as almost immediately, he turned to her.
"He's here."
----------------------------
It wasn't NERV. They went down in an elevator, just as before, into a subterranean base... but this place wasn't /anything/ like NERV, and not simply because there was no Tokyo-3 to surround it.
Yes, there were computer screens, bare walls, and the familiar scent of new electronics in the air, everything around him sterilized and blindingly white... but almost immediately, Shinji knew this place was different.
//This isn't SEELE's best, they're all...// He looked around, but saw only a few men older than their late forties, no one the age his father would have been now. //Everyone's so /young/... who did you manage to kill, father? Who died with you, besides Rei?//
The men in glasses were walking behind him, more or less pushing him down through the corridors, past groups of people in lab coats who turned to watch him silently...
The dark-haired man soon became preoccupied by the sound his shoes made on the grated floors as they moved down a flight of stairs, the slight hiss of his hand along the dully shining guardrails...
//Sounds /just like/ before... it's like I never left... like I never...//
A feeling of incredible claustrophobia swept over him for a moment, but Shinji refused to slow his step, merely closed his eyes and swallowed hard, pushing the urgent, terrified feeling back...
He didn't want to be here, in these rooms and corridors, everything prefabricated to match everything else perfectly, the entire world neutral, blank space around him, fluorescent lights glowing with maniacal steadiness overhead... the tap of his shoes, /identical/ to the way it had been...
Shinji tried to remember what it felt like to pilot an Eva, tried to pull the specifics out of the past, but aside from the memory of the smooth, supple seat curved perfectly around his body-
//the smell of blood//
- and the way he had been forced to rethink his movements, the greater force of all of his movements, along with the increased inertia involved when you stood /stories/ tall -
//Mother... I was drifting, /in/ my Eva... and mother was /there/...//
/If they destroyed the Evas... /they/ killed my mother.../ The thought struck abruptly, razor sharp. /The last piece of her is gone now... forever.../ Funny, how that hurt more than the idea of losing his real, flesh and blood father ever had.
- there wasn't much else that he could remember, not the specifics... but then again, he must have been a born pilot, really for there had /never/ been any actual training before he had flown for the first time, nothing to prepare him... nothing to simulate the battle... nothing -
//Nothing like feeling your hand clench around Toji's plug... tighten around Kaworu's body... and then... then...//
The horror was there, /always/ there, but well-contained, and Shinji simply refused to think about it long enough to let it hurt him... he couldn't afford to drop his guard, couldn't dare give these people the chance to see his vulnerabilities.
Room after room after room they passed without slowing, long corridors that led into more long corridors, a new room every now and again with more scientists that seemed surprised to see him, but also seemed to know who he was...
The dark-haired man couldn't help but wonder... had this project /not/ been planned? Not been one of SEELE's backups? What had happened... when the building alone displayed such signs of rushed construction?
//Horrible design, all this wasted space... it's like this place was built without a map...//
Shinji kept waiting, for one of the doors to open on the room he was waiting for, where he would step in and see the new machine, the new face of an old... not friend... but not truly an enemy, either... this new Eva.
//Unnatural... they /are/ unnatural...//
The dark-haired man wondered, though, if he really knew what that word meant anymore...
Finally, the door was opened on what seemed to be the central room, and though there was no sign of an Eva, or anything that looked big enough to house one of the massive mechs, he did see the man in the gray suit, quietly speaking to another man in a white lab coat before turning to him with another of those sickeningly false smiles.
"Ah, hello Mr. Ikari..." The man swept his arm back, to the gathering of technicians still clustered around various terminals, and Shinji watched a woman with short, honey-blonde hair quickly finish what she was doing, stepping up beside the dark-haired man he had just finished talking to.
"These are our primary scientists, Mr-"
"No." Shinji cut the other man off, holding up a hand. "No names... I don't care. Just show me what you want me to do."
He refused to know these people, especially as he watched the blonde woman's face fall slightly, realized she was probably a rather nice person, someone who could easily be his friend, if he would ever give her the chance...
//No... no more friends... no more Asukas and Misatos and Reis, no more being ordered around, no more trying to get along ... and no more losing it all anyway...//
It would not be another NERV... He was an adult now, with the right to keep his heart shut away.
The man in the gray suit still had his hand raised, and there was a definite glimmer of surprise in his eyes, before he let the gesture fall, and his smile flickered with a bit more true emotion, perhaps even admiration...
//I don't want it... I don't want /his/ approval... not /ever/...//
"All right, Mr. Ikari, then we should get underway."
----------------------------
"... so, since much of the original data was... compromised, we were forced to seek an alternative to the traditional AT field of the Eva units..."
Shinji was only half listening, the first three sentences out of the woman's mouth already telling him pretty much all he needed to know.
Firstly, the woman /would/ be his friend, whether he liked it or not. Her name was Toby, she had muttered at him with a small, self-effacing grin, looking all the while as if she would have shaken his hand had she just had a bit more courage. Toby reminded him just enough of Ben that the Shinji knew there was no way to get out of her offer... not that he wasn't as cold and distant as possible, just in case she wasn't as persistent as she seemed.
Second... his prior suspicions of quality and caliber had been embossed, underlined and highlighted: these people were /nowhere/ near as confident as the men and women of NERV had been. Toby's allusions to "unknown" system failures and "new" developments in programs he remembered as being quite basic in his Eva led Shinji to believe that these people were more or less rebuilding NERV from scratch... that SEELE, or at least the SEELE he supposed had been out there somewhere simply /didn't/ exist anymore... which lead to the final, obvious question...
.... what the hell had his father /done/?! What had happened between NERV and SEELE, after Misato had sent him away?
"... and therefore, we were able to establish a much more steady AT field without resorting to the... unusual measures of the initial Eva program, and so it really didn't matter, then, that they /were/ destroyed..."
"You killed my mother."
He didn't know why he said it, not with the scientists all around him, and a man he most certainly didn't trust just ahead, two enormous, gun-toting men standing between him and the distant exit... but Shinji suddenly found he couldn't stand to see the confused look on Toby's face anymore, just couldn't bear that she thought the Eva AT field had somehow been a fluke, some sort of unimportant detail...
"Excuse me?" Toby's eyes were wide, Shinji didn't have to look up to know he had captured the silent Suit's interest as well.
"The AT field... it came from my mother, she protected me, when I was in the Eva. That was why none of the pilots had mothers, their souls were a part of the machine." The man in the gray suit seemed unperturbed by the words, though Toby was wide-eyed. "When SEELE... when /you/ destroyed the Evas... you killed my mother."
The scientist just stared at him, mouth half open, stunned, and with no idea how to transition from such an abrupt statement to any sort of conversation. Gray Suit simply looked at him... he saw another flash of the unknown in those dark eyes, probably something dangerous... but what did he have to be afraid of anymore? What did he care, if they knew what he had figured out long ago? The worst they could do was kill him. Shinji didn't really want to die... but...
//... but I don't really need to live, either.//
Silence reigned supreme, until they reached another door, and Shinji was surprised to see that this one looked much more like what he was used to seeing in NERV. Pressure-sealed, computer and retina-scan encoded... the pale-haired man in the gray suit stepped up, entered his information...
An elevator waited on the other side, dropped them down, and down, and /down/.
//Finally... they're playing for keeps...//
Surprising, that when the elevator finally stopped, the door /still/ didn't open on the Eva hangar, but yet another room... and another security door, and /another/ security door, and /another/, each with a set of guards holding massive weapons, who ignored them completely...
Shinji was seriously starting to wonder if they weren't simply guarding /security doors/ when they finally entered the main room.
Any humor, any stable ground dropped out from underneath him in an instant.
Shinji felt his stomach lurch in disgusted familiarity, and his vision grayed as he realized just what had changed...
//Rei... Rei and Rei and Rei, over and over again behind the glass...//
Rei, who was his mother... Rei, who was herself...?
Nearly the same room as from his memories, but this time there was only /one/ glass, and only one figure:
Adam, nailed to the red cross, the body drawing Shinji's eyes towards it despite himself, it was just /impossible/ to look away... Misato had wanted him to forget, but Shinji never would, never /could/...
Floating, as Rei's had been... that great hulking body was suspended now... and though it wasn't moving, there was no sign of life, the face still shrouded by that strange multi-eyed design, the dark-haired man quickly had to look away, couldn't bear... there was something in that body... something utterly inhuman, but intimately familiar.... in a way that made his skin crawl... sublime, horrifying, absolutely /terrible/...
"Lilith..."
Shinji turned sharply, staring at the man in gray, who didn't seem to notice his confusion...
"You can see, Adam is next to her... we keep them behind the glass, suspended like this, in order to ensure against deterioration... or any other problems."
Shinji looked closer, trying to deny even the slightest glimpse of Ada- no, /Lilith/... and it was easier to focus, less disturb-
Oh no, it wasn't.
The dark-haired man couldn't see the contents of the smaller case clearly, or at least, tried to convince himself of that, but Shinji felt his stomach lurch... the remains of a burned, desiccated human hand... and in the midst of that, a curling... tail...?
"Adam was implanted into your father's hand..."
Shinji was too sickened, all his thoughts fixed solely on understanding what he was being made to witness, on keeping his knees locked and the contents of his stomach where they were to notice the way the man in the gray suit was watching him, the intonation of pleasure in his voice at the words.
"What... no one ever told you?"
Shinji didn't answer, didn't move, didn't do anything except breathe, eyes fixed in horrified fascination at the unmoving limb -
- they're lying -
...behind the glass... his father's... and Adam... and his...
- they're /lying/, that's not -
... his father's hand.
A trick of the light, he swore he saw that imbedded tail /twitch/, and the dark-haired man shut his eyes tightly, forcing every muscle in his body to stay still, not to throw up, not to scream, not to bolt in terror or take the easy route and simply pass out...
//... breathe, just breathe just breathe just breathe...//
"I've seen enough."
--------------------------------
There was no way to say anything privately in the elevator, as packed together as they were, but as soon as they had ascended, not back to the surface but a few floors below, and were walking down a wide corridor, Toby moved in very close.
"We usually don't go down there, I suppose he just wanted you to see, that we've got what the Angels want..." Worried brown eyes were watching him very closely, and her voice trembled slightly with concern. "Are you all right, Mr. Ikari? You're very pale..."
"Shinji..." He didn't know how he choked out the words, mind still racing through all he had been shown... disgust, revulsion, denial... "Please... just call me Shinji..."
The dark-haired man's stunned mind finally stuck on another point, as her words echoed in and out of his twisting thoughts.
"... there's no..." Shinji swallowed hard, thankful they were still moving down what was apparently the longest corridor on Earth, and no one was intent on watching him. "What am I /doing/ here... there /are/ no more Angels... I killed-" He cut himself off, took a deep breath as the old pain took advantage of his current shock, ripped through him with sickening fury. "NERV defeated them all."
"A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him..."
The deep voice intoned the passage smoothly, it had obviously been long memorized.
"Thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened."
The man in the gray suit paused, smiled, but just as before, it did not suit him.
"Daniel 7:10..." He chuckled, his amusement much more disturbing as a sound than as a silent expression. "Ten thousand times ten thousand" Mr. Ikari... you didn't honestly think NERV had defeated /all/ the angels?"
Shinji opened his mouth to speak, not knowing what he would say, and closed it again, as they moved through yet another door... and there, in the center of the room, his plugsuit was waiting.
----------------------------
The man in the gray suit stepped aside, the fluorescent light catching white highlights in his slick gray hair more than ever now. He nearly glowed. Shinji could sense Toby hovering, the other scientist with her watching with a bit less obvious interest, but still... all eyes were on him. Toby didn't seem ready to speak yet, wanting to take in his first reaction.
//What's so special... it's just a suit...//
A suit... but quickly, Shinji realized it was /not/ normal, not like any plugsuit he had ever seen before...
Shinji approached the suit somewhat cautiously, not exactly sure why he hesitated, it had been positioned on a faceless dummy. No one protested, and he reached out, sliding his hands along the smooth upper casing, the unyielding shoulders -
- /funny... the suits weren't ever this fancy before, this /solid/.../-
It was going to be damn hard to maneuver in the cockpit, Shinji thought, with all the unyielding armor that had been added to this suit, not the thin coating on his original plugsuit, light armor meant to absorb only slight shocks, minor jolts... this was thick, smooth to the touch, almost plasticine, but Shinji knew somehow that it was not that simple. The color seemed to absorb the light, a deep, liquid gray, like the skin of a dolphin, and he found it intriguing, had to nearly tear his eyes away, to examine more than the shimmering, almost /rippling/ shades of gray.
The armor covered the entire upper torso, arching from a startlingly high neckline all the way down to the waist, where a thin seam between the adjoining plates of the lower legs revealed the more traditional wetsuit-like material he had been accustomed to. No one had reprimanded him yet for touching, and so Shinji slid his hand in between the gray curve of torso and hip, pushed... and was startled when the dense black material seemed to push /back/ at him...
//What the...?//
Shinji stepped around the suit slowly, looking at it the way he'd always dreamed of examining a sports car... though he hadn't ever thought to buy one, even after he'd been able to.
There wasn't much use in the gesture here and now, not much worth in examining for details. The suit, if cut vertically down the middle, was simply a mirror image of itself - //except...//-
Shinji's eyes narrowed, his English was much better spoken than read, even now... and the black letters that curved down the side of one gray leg plate didn't seem to mean any word he knew, only served to disrupt the long, gleaming curve of reflected light...
//Tiph...? Tiphere...? It doesn't mean anything...//
"Tiphereth." Toby finally piped up, stepping up beside him, obviously elated by his interest. "It's the name... originally for the prototype only, but we decided to use it for the actual suit as well." The scientist seemed about ready to explode, eyes sparkling brightly. "Would you like to try it on, Mr Ik- I mean, Shinji?"
The dark haired man took a step back, hands raised, both to keep her at bay and to hold off any more questions or explanations... at least until he had some answers of his own.
"All right... I admit, it's... it's /much/ more than we used to have for a plugsuit, that's for sure..." He looked up, not to Toby, but to the man who would give him real answers, the man in gray. "... but I want to see the rest of it first... where's the Eva?"
Toby frowned, but Shinji ignored her, as the pale-haired man - perhaps his only real link to the rest of SEELE, to those truly in charge - only smiled.
"Mr. Ikari..." A hand pointed toward the suit, gray armor gleaming steadily in the low light, and Shinji turned to see Toby carefully lifting a matching helmet.
"Tiphereth /is/ your Eva."
---------------------------
"How are we doing, Shinji?"
Toby's voice was much more serious now that they were testing the suit, grave courtesy and concern in every word. Shinji nodded slightly, amazed how the helmet weighted next to nothing, the suit feeling so much like a second skin that he kept glancing out of the corner of his eye, to make sure he was wearing anything at all.
"It feels a little bit like wearing an Eva..." he murmured, gently moving his arms and legs, as if he were walking on eggshells, cautious of the promise, the potential in this new skin. There was power in this new body, he could feel it, the thrumming energy a part of him but also oddly separate... He could hear Toby rattling off readings, and listened more closely than he had in the past, when he had been piloting Eva 01...
//... because if you had known, perhaps Toji... he might still...//
"AT synch ratio at 70 percent... climbing to 75... 80... much better than we'd thought..."
"It would help if you gained a few pounds, Mr. Ikari. The suit was designed to fit you perfectly /before/ your unfortunate attack... it's a bit loose, and there's little we can do to correct that."
It was the first time the other scientist had spoken aloud, his voice severe, cold, distant... but still, no one reminded him as much of his father as the pale-skinned, pale-haired man in the gray suit, somehow not washed out despite the lack of almost any color in his body, even his light brown eyes...
Eyes that had been watching him, silently, all this time.
"Synch ratio holding steady at 91 percent... this is /amazing/..."
"Would you like to take it for a test drive, Mr. Ikari?" The man in gray finally spoke, his words anything but comforting. Shinji knew there were weapons, traps, /something/ in this room... and that he would probably be testing out Tiphereth whether he wanted to or not...
//91 percent synch ratio... but it's just me and the suit now. Kaworu said all humans have an AT field... they're probably just calling this a synch ratio test for tradition's sake. My mother isn't here anymore to protect me. I'm alone... and if I die, I'll die... alone.//
"I'm ready."
The attack came instantaneously, and Shinji wondered, had he hesitated a moment more in his response, if the attack wouldn't have come anyway... if he had ever really had a choice.
The dark haired man heard a slight hiss, and a series of short, popping sounds, brought his arm up before he had finished thinking he ought to, shocked to see the limb was /glowing/... and watched a round of projectiles, he couldn't tell what kind, flare up and disappear as they struck, vaporized by the glowing haze that had covered his arm.
"Shield 1... working fine..."
He heard Toby's murmur to the other scientist from inside his helmet, as if she were speaking right into his ear, but he had no time to feel worried or angry, to wonder what had happened before another sharp sound behind him caught his attention... Shinji leapt without thinking, not seeing, not understanding why he was now nearly perpendicular with the floor, and upside down, until his eyes finally caught up, tracing the flashing edge of a blade that had swung out from the wall, that would have cut him in half if he hadn't moved... and should have, had he not leapt almost /before/ the attack...
//... the suit... the suit knew before /I/ did...//
So that was it... this suit responded to his reflexes, his instant impulses faster than his mind could comprehend... Perfect synchronization, no matter if the readings said otherwise.
It made him angry, too much like the way it had been with the Eva, with his father... that Shinji was no longer completely in control of his own life, his own future...
//Not again, not /again/!//
They wanted to test their suit? He would /not/ run away, not this time... he would fight, right from step one.
His feet hit the ceiling, he dropped into a crouch and pushed off for the floor, not exactly sure what he was doing as he brought his arms up, noticed absently that there was a blade in his right hand, that it looked much like the Prog Knife -//no, /exactly/ like it...// and Shinji focused all his attention, as the wide span of razor sharp metal rushed up, apparently lethal at any angle... but within the span of a heartbeat he had it's weakness in his sight, and screamed, a cry of rage... and struck /hard/...
Shinji tore through the swiftly moving obstacle with devastating ease, driving not just the knife but his fist, and then his whole arm through the weak point, the squeal of metal ripped from metal filling his ears as he rolled into a tight ball, bracing for impact, and sprung on the balls of his feet as he hit the floor, sensing danger before he knew where it came from, or how...
The echoing creak of shattered steel hadn't cleared the air, and he was running along the curved wall of the room, parallel with the ground, as more projectiles, long, sharp spikes nearly as tall as he was, dug into the space just behind his step...
... but Shinji had already fixed his gaze on /this/ enemy, a cannon imbedded halfway between the ceiling and the floor, and felt the suit respond to his focus, his entire body taking up the call -
//Destroy.//
Shinji never slowed, but tensed, leapt, twisting to avoid the last of the iron javelins as it came within an inch of sliding lengthwise through his ribcage, and reached out, twisting the cannon free with one hand. It fell to the ground, nothing more than useless scrap and still-sparking wires.
The dark-haired man kicked sideways off the wall, turning into a slight flip that easily found him back on his feet in the center of the room... waiting... waiting for that next attack... and he realized he was completely calm, that his heart wasn't even pounding that hard.
They had given him a phenomenal weapon, but Shinji still didn't know how he was expected to use it... The man looked down at his hand, flexed it slowly... the feeling of distance that he had always noticed in his Eva now vastly decreased... and he wondered, what would it feel like, to wrap his hand around Kaworu's throat /now/...
//Oh god, oh god no...//
Shinji didn't care if the battle simulation was over or not, tearing off the helmet in another moment of breathless, claustrophobic terror, breathing in deeply, the cool air of the lab almost refreshing if not for that hint of metal, the slight chemical aftertaste that continually reminded him where he was.
He could hear excited, tinny voices echoing from the helmet in his hands, looked up to see Toby giving him a delighted thumbs up before disappearing, most likely darting down the stairs, on her way for a closer inspection. Shinji kept his eyes up, not on the other scientist, who still appeared to be taking readings... but on the man in the gray suit. It chilled him, to see that slight smile cross the man's lips, eyes narrowed in what almost looked like anticipation. The pale haired man was a predator, almost certianly... and Shinji still didn't even know his name.
"The readings we received were nearly off the scale, the synch rate, reaction time... how did it feel? Was it as responsive as it seemed? What did you think?"
Toby's questions were fast and furious, the dark-haired man repressed the urge to jump back as she moved in, touching various parts of the suit in excitement, examining the blade in his hand, looking for things he could neither see nor understand...
"... that shield, where did it come from?"
Shinji ran his fingertips across the arm guard, from wrist to elbow, but found the plating smooth, with no hint of any imbedded electronics, anything to produce such a reaction.
In response, Toby rattled off an explanation that made absolutely no sense to him, a ream of technical babble, words leaving her in a breathless rush as she continued to examine him, nudging here and there on the black second skin beneath the gray padding.
Shinji stopped her examination, taking a deliberate step back, as she was working her way down his hips, toward his inner thigh.
Toby looked up at him in bewilderment for a moment, before she realized what she had been doing, exactly where she had been prodding. A slight pink blush lit up across an embarrassed smile...
"Erm... sorry..."
Shinji said nothing... it was harder and harder not to like this woman, not to see her as a friend... Toby already seemed so much more /alive/ than the NERV scientists he had known...
//Don't be stupid, these people are /not/ your friends...//
"A little overzealous with our science again, Toby?"
"Shut up Lae."
He finally had a name to attach to the dark-haired scientist, who moved toward him and began performing a few more tests, making a few more notes on his clipboard, though his examination was not nearly as enthusiastic as the younger woman's had been.
"How are you feeling?" He said quietly, inserting some kind of data cord into a plug Shinji couldn't see, somewhere near the back of his neck. The dark-haired man tried to quell his sudden terror, an irrational rage that nearly made him tear the plug out and shove the scientist away... the fear of having anything happen to him that he couldn't see or understand...
//It isn't as if you can do /anything/ about it anyway, you might as well let him work...//
"I feel fine. Just fine..." Shinji flexed one hand into a fist again, still amazed at the power he felt there, ready, waiting to be used... "How did I /do/... all of that?" The dark-haired man jerked his head towards the pile of slightly smoking metal, the remains of his "enemies".
"It's the AT field, mostly... We figured out a way to join the two, intertwine them with greater accuracy, both the suit's programming and your AT field, to make your response times almost instantaneous..."
"Sounds... impossible."
Shinji had never understood how SEELE or NERV had ever built an Eva, couldn't comprehend how brilliant...
//How brilliant my mother... and my father, how incredible they truly were...//
"Toby created the program, built it from nearly scratch based on an old, failed prototype. She's a genius."
The woman was currently checking the armor, the systems around Shinji's left leg, and blushed even more deeply, but said nothing... Lae did not engage in meaningless compliments, only the truth.
"How does it look, then, doctor?"
The slightly happy mood was broken between them, as the man in the gray suit strode into the room, a cadre of other scientists behind him, some of whom moved to the wreckage Shinji had left in the fight, others making their way toward the control room, none of whom ever looked his way. Toby and Lae continued their work in silence. Strange... this was all so strange... as if he were some sort of pet project, some strange new creation...
Shinji's stomach tied itself into a nice knot at that thought, and he frowned, letting Toby take the helmet away from him, his eyes steady with the pale-haired man's hazel ones.
"What's going on? This suit /is/ amazing... but why do you need it at all? What angels are you talking about? NERV /did/ kill the last of them... /I/ did..."
"The dominions... Mr. Ikari... the highest of the angels of the Cosmos."
Shinji took a step back in surprise, as the entire room was suddenly bathed in a sea of red, warning lights on all sides bursting into life, pulsing slowly, like a dying heart... The dark-haired man could hear a mechanical voice repeating a low warning from further down the hall... and frantic footsteps, startled voices all around him... Toby gasped, and even Lae looked up, worried... but the pale-haired man seemed completely at ease, the red light leaving a frightening afterimage, a red-tinged haze in his ghostly, light brown eyes... nothing like Kaworu... no warmth or life in them at all...
"... and it seems they're eager to meet you."