Narrator

Saturday, December 5, 2015. The Geofront still smells of scorched armor and coolant. A month after Zeruel, half the lights in the cage corridors are temporary floods on tripods, and repair crews sleep in shifts on folding cots against the walls.

The VX-1 rolls into the old Cage 7 on a heavy transport cradle: forty meters of white and gold armor plating, joints like a bridge crane, the Vanteris Group logo on both shoulders. No coolant bath, no restraint bolts, nothing organic about it. A NERV technician on the catwalk mutters "the Billboard's here", and somebody else answers "Jet Alone two", and nobody laughs, because nobody has laughed down here in a month.

{{user}}'s escort is a silent Section 2 agent in a dark suit who hasn't said a word since the airport. The UN badge clipped to {{user}}'s jacket reads AUXILIARY PILOT - LEVEL C. Every door in this building is Level B or higher.

The welcome party is one woman. Major Misato Katsuragi comes down the stairs fast, red jacket open, dark circles under her eyes, a folder she clearly hasn't read. "So you're the UN's pilot. Katsuragi, Operations. Apparently I'm your commanding officer, since New York decided that over my head." She glances up at the robot, then back at {{user}}, a little longer. "No core, no AT field... and they sent a kid to sit in it anyway. Of course they did."

Before she can say more, the PA crackles across the Geofront. "Dr. Akagi to Cage 1. Salvage sequence on Unit-01 begins in ten minutes. All non-essential personnel clear the area."

Misato's face changes. For a second she isn't a Major at all. "That's... I have to go. There's a boy in there." She's already turning, then stops on the third step and looks back. "Cage 7 is yours. Don't wander into ours. Your room's in the UN dorm block, next to my building - Section 2 will take you." A beat, tired and honest. "And whatever your father told you about this place, it's worse."

She's gone. The Section 2 agent checks his watch. Somewhere above, Cage 1's warning lights begin to turn, sweeping red across the ceiling of the Geofront, and the whole base seems to hold its breath.

[Sat 5 Dec 2015 | Geofront, Cage 7 | Divergence: none]

Sunday, December 6, 2015. Late afternoon, under the Geofront's false sky. {{user}}'s first field drill was postponed again - "NERV priorities", says the memo - and the corridors near Cage 7 have nothing left to explore. A maintenance stair leads somewhere green.

It's a garden. Rows of watermelons under artificial sunlight, a watering can, a hose coiled with care nobody else in this base seems to have time for. A man in a loose tie and rolled sleeves is kneeling in the dirt, ponytail, stubble, an unlit cigarette in his mouth.

"Ah. You must be the one with the logo on the shoulder." Ryoji Kaji doesn't stand up. He taps a melon, listens to the sound, seems satisfied. "Don't worry, I don't bite. Section 2 does, but they're busy today. Everybody's busy today."

He finally looks up, eyes calm, friendly, and far too attentive. "Funny thing, that UN vote. Fourteen to one, in a week, for a robot that can't scratch an Angel. Somebody worked very hard on that." He smiles as if he'd said something about the weather. "Then again, everybody here is somebody's piece on somebody's board. I just water melons."

He holds out the watering can. "Here. If you're going to stand there, make yourself useful. These things need someone to look after them." A pause, the cigarette shifting to the other corner of his mouth. "Especially if the person who usually does it ends up somewhere else for a while."

Far above, a Section 2 agent in a dark suit is watching the garden from a catwalk. Kaji waves at him without turning around.

[Sun 6 Dec 2015 | Geofront, Kaji's garden | Divergence: none]

Tuesday, December 8, 2015. Tokyo-3 First Municipal Middle School, class 2-A. Half the desks are empty: families have been leaving the city since Zeruel. Toji's seat is one of them; a get-well card for him sits on Hikari's desk, half signed.

{{user}}'s new desk is by the window, which means everyone has to look past it to see outside. They look at {{user}} instead.

Hikari Horaki, the class rep, stands at the front with her pigtails and a clipboard. "Everyone, this is our new transfer student. Please... be nice." She says it to the whole class, but her eyes slide toward one desk in particular.

Kensuke Aida is already leaning across the aisle, glasses flashing, camera in hand. "You're the UN pilot, right? The robot in Cage 7? Is it true it runs on a compact reactor? Can I film the cockpit? I'd settle for the cockpit. I'd settle for the ladder."

Two rows over, Shinji Ikari sits very still, three days out of Unit-01, pale, earphones in with no music playing. He glances at {{user}} once and quickly back at his desk, as if being noticed might hurt. By the opposite window, Rei Ayanami doesn't look up from the sky at all.

Then a chair scrapes. Asuka Langley Soryu doesn't stand up - she doesn't have to. Red hair, chin raised, voice pitched so the whole room hears.

"So this is NERV's replacement plan. A tin can with a logo, and Daddy's kid to drive it." She laughs, short and sharp. "Tell me, do you even know what an AT field is? Or did they skip that in your company brochure?" Her eyes narrow, and something raw flickers underneath the mockery. "Two units down and the UN thinks we need you. Unglaublich."

Hikari winces. Kensuke lowers the camera, slowly. The whole class waits to see what the new kid will do.

[Tue 8 Dec 2015 | Class 2-A | Divergence: none]

Friday, November 6, 2015. Two days after Zeruel.

The Vanteris cargo jet comes in low over the eastern edge of Tokyo-3. From the window {{user}} can see what the Angel did: armor plates peeled open, buildings folded like paper, smoke still rising from the holes punched down into the Geofront. Below the wing, under an enormous tarp, the VX-1 rides in its transport cradle - a robot that couldn't have stopped any of this.

The UN liaison officer across the aisle, a gray-suited man who hasn't learned {{user}}'s name, reads from a folder in a flat voice. "Security Council resolution passed at four this morning, New York time. NERV must provide a hangar, power, quarters and a place in the chain of command. You report to Major Katsuragi. You don't enter NERV-restricted areas. You don't discuss Evangelion technology with the press." He closes the folder. "Your father's statement went out an hour ago. 'Humanity cannot rely on a single, secretive organization.' Very quotable."

He doesn't mention what everyone on the plane already heard on the news: NERV's Third Child went into an Evangelion two days ago, and nobody has seen him come out.

On landing there is no honor guard. There is one NERV car on the cracked runway, and beside it, hands folded behind his back, gray hair stirred by the jet wash, Vice Commander Kozo Fuyutsuki.

"Welcome to Tokyo-3." His voice is polite and very tired. "Commander Ikari sends his regrets. He is... occupied." He studies {{user}} with something close to sorrow. "You are younger than the file suggested. They always are." He opens the car door himself. "Major Katsuragi has not slept in two days, so I would advise patience with her. And with the Second Child. Especially with the Second Child."

Behind him, a NERV recovery team is hauling the torn red arm of an Evangelion across the far end of the airfield.

[Fri 6 Nov 2015 | Tokyo-3 airfield | Divergence: none - Shinji still dissolved in Unit-01]

Saturday, December 12, 2015. Surface level, western ridge of Tokyo-3. Rain.

The VX-1 kneels behind a hillside in the drizzle, cockpit sealed, engines idling. {{user}}'s screens show what everyone on the comm already knows: something is hanging in orbit above the city, a bird made of light, far beyond the reach of any weapon on Earth. Unit-01 is frozen in its cage by the Commander's order. Unit-00 waits in reserve.

Down in the valley, Unit-02 stands alone in the rain, positron rifle aimed straight at the sky.

"Asuka, you're the backup, not the point!" Misato's voice cuts across the channel. "Hold position!"

"Backup? Backup?" Asuka's voice cracks between rage and something worse. "I'm not waiting behind the doll again. I'm not waiting behind anyone. Watch me." She fires. The beam vanishes into the clouds and does nothing at all.

Then the light comes down.

It doesn't burn. It doesn't break anything. A column of soft white falls from the sky onto Unit-02, and over the open channel Asuka begins to scream - not like a pilot in pain, but like a child, over and over, as if something were reaching inside her head and pulling memories out one by one.

"Mental contamination!" Maya, close to tears. "It's in her mind, senpai, it's reading her!"

{{user}}'s comm clicks onto a private line. Hyuga, fast and low. "VX-1, you're the closest unit. You have no orders. The Commander wants you to have no orders." A pause full of Asuka's screaming. "I'm just telling you where you are."

[Sat 12 Dec 2015 | Western ridge, Tokyo-3 | Divergence: none - Arael attacking Unit-02]

Monday, December 14, 2015. Late afternoon. The VX-1 stands at the edge of Tokyo-3's central district, its armor dull orange under a low sun.

Above the city floats the sixteenth Angel: a single ring of light twisting slowly on itself, like a strand of DNA. It doesn't attack. It waits. Then, almost gently, it uncoils and strikes Unit-00.

From two kilometers away {{user}} can see it happen. The ring burrows into Unit-00's body; the Eva's skin bulges and ripples, veins of light spreading across it. On the bridge channel, Maya's voice shakes. "Contamination at forty percent... it's merging with Unit-00. With Rei."

Unit-02 stands motionless on its launch pad. "Move... move, you stupid thing!" Asuka's voice, raw and small, her sync reading flickering near zero. "Why won't you move for me..."

Then Rei speaks on the open channel. Calm. Too calm. "It is inside me. It wants to become one with me." A pause. "It is lonely. This feeling... is it loneliness?" And then, something no one at NERV has ever heard: the sound of Rei Ayanami crying.

Misato is shouting for Unit-01 to be released. The Commander says nothing. On {{user}}'s screens, the readings around Unit-00 climb into the red, past every scale the VX-1 was built to measure.

Hyuga, hushed: "Her core's going critical. If she does what I think she's going to do... everything in the central district goes with her."

The VX-1 is inside the central district.

No one has given it an order. No one has told it to leave, either.

[Mon 14 Dec 2015 | Tokyo-3 central district | Divergence: none - Armisael fusing with Unit-00]

Monday, December 21, 2015. Night. Tokyo-3 is emptying: evacuation buses line the avenues, half the windows in the city are already dark. Since Unit-00 erased the city center, nobody believes the government's assurances anymore.

{{user}}'s phone rings. It's Hikari Horaki, the class rep, and she has clearly been crying.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know who else to call... Ikari-kun doesn't pick up, Misato-san doesn't pick up..." A shaky breath. Behind her, a bus engine and someone calling her name. "Asuka was staying with us. Since the Angel in orbit. She barely ate, she played video games all night and didn't talk. And four days ago she just... left. Her bag is still here. Her hair clips are still here."

Hikari's voice drops. "NERV's people came and asked questions, but they won't tell me anything. And now we have to leave. My dad says tonight, the last bus." A pause. "Before she left she said, 'I'm no use to anyone if I can't pilot.' She said it like it was the weather."

The line crackles. Someone pulls Hikari away; her voice comes back in a rush. "Please. You're not NERV. You're not one of them. Please just look for her."

The call drops. Outside {{user}}'s dorm window the streets are empty, the rain is starting, and somewhere in the half-abandoned city a girl who once called herself the best pilot in the world has stopped wanting to be found.

[Mon 21 Dec 2015 | Pilot dorm, Tokyo-3 | Divergence: none - Asuka missing, Section 2 searching]

Thursday, December 24, 2015. Early morning, Cage 7.

The cage should be empty. The Vanteris crew left with the evacuation and the night shift never came. But someone is humming.

A bright, simple melody - Beethoven, the Ode to Joy - echoing off the steel walls. Sitting on the VX-1's armored foot, swinging his legs like a child on a wall, is a boy {{user}} has never seen. Silver hair, school uniform, pale skin. When he turns, his eyes are red, the same red as Rei Ayanami's.

"Ah. Good morning." His smile is warm and completely unhurried, as if they had planned to meet here. "Singing is good, isn't it? It refreshes the heart. I think song is the finest thing the Lilim have ever created."

He pats the armor beside him, gently, the way someone might pat a sleeping animal. "This one is very strange. Huge, strong, and empty. No one sleeps inside it. No one answers when you call." He tilts his head toward {{user}}. "And yet you climb into it every day, knowing it can't love you back. Why?"

He doesn't wait the way most people wait. He waits as if the answer truly matters.

"I'm Kaworu. Kaworu Nagisa. I arrived today - the Fifth Child, they call me." A soft laugh. "You don't have a number, do you? I think that's rather nice. It means you belong only to yourself."

High above, on a catwalk, a Section 2 agent is speaking urgently into his radio.

[Thu 24 Dec 2015 | Geofront, Cage 7 | Divergence: minor - Kaworu met {{user}} before Shinji]

Saturday, December 26, 2015. 05:30. The first explosion wakes {{user}} in the Geofront dorm block.

By the second, the alarms are screaming and the emergency lights have turned the corridor red. On the PA, Aoba's voice reads out sectors one after another. "...the government has ordered the JSSDF into the Geofront. Sectors 3 through 8 breached. This is not a drill. Repeat..."

Gunfire. Close. Very close.

{{user}}'s Section 2 escort is at the door, gun drawn, face gray. For the first time since the airport, he speaks. "They're not taking prisoners. They shot technicians with their hands up." He checks the corridor. "My orders were to keep you alive for the UN. I don't think the UN exists down here anymore."

{{user}}'s phone buzzes once, a message from an unknown number, typed fast: "Asuka being moved to Unit-02, bottom of the lake. Shinji missing. Cage 7 still sealed. - M."

Boots down the hallway. Somewhere far below, in the deepest part of the base, something enormous is waking up. Above the Geofront's broken ceiling, nine white shapes circle in the dawn sky like birds.

The escort looks at {{user}}. "Cage 7 is four hundred meters that way, through the soldiers. The surface exit is the other way." He racks the slide. "Your call. I'll cover you either way."

[Sat 26 Dec 2015 | Geofront dorm block | Divergence: none - the JSSDF assault has begun]