EVA: Shinji Ikari Returns from the Dragon Clan

Chapter 6 5. You are strengthened, come on
Inside the commander's office.

The two highest ranking people in NERV were talking.

"Are you still looking at the Intelligence Department's surveillance data on Shinji?"

"I've finished watching. It was such a boring day. I went straight to the agreed place after getting off the train. I went to the pedestrian street to buy some things on the way. I went to the shelter after the evacuation alarm. There was nothing to worry about. I was so timid until now, but now I dare to look you in the eye. It's really strange."

EVA Unit-01 is preparing to depart.

After leaving the podium, Commander Ikari, as a father, came to his exclusive office. He sat upright in his office chair and looked at the brand new paper documents submitted.

Next to him, the old man who served as his deputy stood like a javelin.

His temples are gray and he is in his fifties or sixties. Despite his old age, the old man's eyes are still bright.

Few people know that this old man was a professor when the Ikari couple were young. The two of them not only had the relationship of commander-in-chief and deputy commander, but also the identity of teacher and student.

At this moment, this is a conversation between a teacher and a student.

After a long silence.

The old man finally spoke. He had seen the confrontation between father and son before. When Ikari Shinji revealed his selfishness, his student's reaction was indeed like that of a father who was not good at expressing his father's love.
"Do you really think so?"

"what?"

"I hope my son won't go to the battlefield, and I hope he won't drive an EVA."

Commander Ikari held up his upper body with his fingers clasped together, his expression blurry behind his brown glasses.

They really look alike.

he thinks.

These eyes are exactly the same as my wife's.

Just seeing it reminds me of that person's smile, symbolizing that person's existence and the continuation of her life. However, for a zombie who is still alive in the world, staying with this child every moment, reminding him of his wife's death, is undoubtedly a torture no less than cutting his flesh with a blunt knife.

He should have been happy that his plan had succeeded, but he looked so embarrassed.

Shinji.

...Regarding this,
Even I am not very clear about it.

……

……

"Do you understand the method of driving EVA I just mentioned?"

"I'll just write it down for now." said Shinji Ikari.

"It doesn't matter if you can't remember it. I will communicate with you in real time on the communication channel when the time comes."

Lights were lit everywhere.

The previously deserted underground city suddenly became popular and lively. In the workshop full of a technological atmosphere, the scientific researchers in white coats all looked unfamiliar. He parted ways with the two women here, and were then taken to an aerial passage similar to an overpass.

The technicians are reporting the various parameters of the instruments.

And in the middle of this passage, a capsule machine like a space capsule was lying there quietly, and Shinji Ikari's eyes were immediately attracted.

"Just put your belongings away and sit on it," someone said.

It sounds like a simple step.

It's as easy as opening the refrigerator and putting the elephant in.

As the machine started up, white gas hissed out from the cabin, like steam, water mist or something like that. The machine was pitch black with the hatch wide open, and Shinji Ikari could feel the heat that was about to singe the hair on his face. He couldn't help but think about it, and associated it with an oven used to make cakes. It was extremely tempting, and he inexplicably had a bad premonition.

But he walked in without any hesitation.

There is no option to refuse anymore, not to mention that it is just a matter of the final step.

The hatch is closed.

There were no strange buttons inside. Instead, there were only two handles like a vehicle's gear lever, one on the left and one on the right. He sat on the seat and held the two levers.

Is this the only thing that can control a giant that big?
It is indeed controlled by artificial intelligence.

Ikari Shinji thought.

All the lights disappeared, leaving only the sense of space change caused by the machine moving. One could imagine that the cockpit was being transported into the giant's body by the machine, moving up and down, left and right. There were also various confirmation sounds coming from outside, until a click of docking, and everything went quiet. When Shinji Ikari was worrying about how long this darkness like in the tunnel would last, something like an LED light lit up, and the light and darkness changed in an instant, causing him to squint.

"First contact complete."

This is the progress report from outside.

Among the many voices coming from the communication channel, there were only two people I knew, Ritsuko Akagi and Misato Katsuragi. I also didn't know where the bastard father who was the commander-in-chief had gone.

"Wow--"

The sound of water flowing.

At one point, he thought he seemed to be hallucinating.

No.

That's not an auditory hallucination.

Shinji's eyes turned to the edge of the cabin, where a surge of orange liquid was pouring in and a smell of rust was blowing in his face.

It should be some kind of preset program, right?

Shinji Ikari didn't take it too seriously at first, but he soon realized that the liquid was rising too fast, and it would probably fill up the entire cabin in less than a minute. The human body has its limits, and even if he could hold his breath for more than ten minutes, he would still be within this limit, and by then his situation would be disastrous.

Are you trying to drown me?

Shinji couldn't help but feel a little nervous. Could something have gone wrong? This was his first time flying an EVA and he hadn't received any training before. If he didn't understand something, he could just ask. He immediately asked in the communication channel,
"There's a lot of weird water in here, is that okay?"

“That’s LCL (Water of Life).”

A voice came from the communication channel, saying something that was obviously a pseudonym. Akagi Ritsuko said confidently, "Don't worry, you won't drown. LCL contains a lot of oxygen. When the liquid completely fills the lungs, the blood can directly obtain the oxygen it needs. You will get used to it soon."

Breathe in water?
What kind of black technology is this? If those people in the Alchemy Department saw this thing, they would go crazy.

By now.

I can only believe it.

Although he was somewhat skeptical whether this thing could free people from the ability to breathe independently, he had no room to retreat.

Shortly after the conversation ended, the LCL was flooded to the waist.

Shinji Ikari hesitated for a moment, but decided to give it a try. He leaned over, aimed his face towards the liquid, and then dived straight down, and then began to breathe in the liquid.

"Cough-cough-"

Lukewarm and cool.

As expected, he was choked. Ikari Shinji subconsciously held his breath tightly until the suffocation could no longer be suppressed. He tentatively relaxed, but he did not drown. Instead, he immediately adapted to this state. The blond person in charge was not kidding. Humans can really breathe in this liquid.

Gradually, LCL filled the entire cabin.

Shinji Ikari's entire body was soaked in liquid. He kept his eyes open and observed the surrounding environment. It was strange that he could still clearly hear the sounds outside in this situation. "The main power supply of the machine is connected, and the power is transmitted to all circuits."

"Make second contact."

At this moment, he seemed to have established a connection with something.

A strange feeling came over him, and Shinji Ikari felt that all his five senses were connected to a huge unknown existence, hands, feet, torso... But he could definitely feel his own tiny existence, and there was no problem moving in the cockpit. This feeling was as if he had another body, but it seemed not to be his own body.

He had no words to describe this state. Everything around him seemed like a dream. In short, it was a complete mess.

In front of him was the illuminated interior of the cockpit, but in front of him was darkness.

The sharp contrast between light and darkness made him subconsciously want to open his eyes, but he couldn't even complete such a simple action as opening his eyes. He felt like he was being restrained by something.

Followed by.

He seemed to have returned to an old dream, and an inexplicable sense of familiarity came over him. Shinji Ikari had seen a movie called Inception. The protagonist of that movie could play the role of a dream maker, leading a team of agents to enter other people's dreams, steal secrets from their subconscious, and reshape their dreams.

The current situation is almost the same as in the movies.

Deja vu.

I... seem to have seen such a scene at some point in the past.

A large number of bizarre memories emerged from the deepest part of his mind, playing in front of his eyes like a revolving lantern: EVA giants, women, graves, blue-haired girls... one frame or two of the picture flashed by, like an old-fashioned projector working hard. Shinji Ikari felt a headache for some reason.

Woman, grave.

That should be the face of his deceased mother and her grave.

It's been so long since we last met.

I almost forgot what she looked like.

Most people in the world cannot remember anything before the age of five or six, and Shinji Ikari is no exception. However, he still has a faint impression of what his mother looked like even after so many years. Perhaps when he reminisces about the past, his mother's voice and appearance will always be with him.

But why did I suddenly recall it while driving the EVA?

Does this have any special meaning? No, it is not so much a recollection as an emergence, it just comes to mind naturally.

What about the blue-haired girl who appeared afterwards?

It seems.

He looked about the same age as I am now.

"Shinji, please do as I say after the next attack."

In a flash.

He was awakened by the command voice coming from the communication channel. The voice pulled him back from the darkness and reminded him that what he had just seen was just a scene in a dream.

Ikari Shinji recalled.

He is now in the cockpit of EVA-01.

No matter how confusing the subconscious memory in his mind was, the most important task now was to drive the EVA to defeat the apostles outside. He wrote down the few images that had just flashed back, decided to investigate later, and then began to concentrate on listening to the voice in the command channel.

"What's the synchronization rate?"

"Synchronization rate... 67%. How could it be..."

There were exclamations coming one after another in the communication channel, and I didn't know whether it was loud or low.

Synchronization rate.

Another new term.

Frankly speaking, Ikari Shinji is quite annoyed by this situation. It's a very uncomfortable feeling that everyone knows something but he is the only one who doesn't. He must make up for the relevant knowledge after the battle.

Fortunately, things soon quieted down outside, with only the sound of reports.
"The restraints are released."

Along with this sound.

It's like a dam opening a floodgate.

In an instant, some kind of shackles in my brain were broken free, and my other body was liberated at this moment, just like a drowning person getting a breath of fresh air. The whole world was different at this moment.

He opened his eyes and sniffed the air.

What the eyes see are the complex mechanical drive rods in the underground city, working hard. They are so tiny and delicate, transporting themselves to the ground. What the nose smells is the LCL liquid known as the water of life and the smell of the wind coming from nowhere.

Shinji Ikari looked down at his body.

It was armor painted in a mixture of purple and green, a mechanical giant as tall as a mountain. Its huge metal body was completely exposed from the orange-red pool, exuding a hint of ferocious coldness. It was standing on a conveyor track and moving forward. The distance between its field of vision and the ground was out of reach. At such a height, most people might feel scared due to fear of heights, but he did not feel any discomfort.

It turned out to be the case.

He is the Unit-01 that he is piloting.

He should have thought of it earlier.

But why should its power be restrained? Ikari Shinji had a vague intuition that even in this situation, not all the power of Unit-01 had been released. Thinking of the previous sentence "the restraints were released", perhaps there were still many restrictions on EVA-01, but he didn't know where the remaining restraints were on the body.

but.

He originally thought that it was artificial intelligence that controlled Unit-01.

But in this situation, it seems that the body of this mechanical giant can be controlled by mind alone, just like playing a realistic VR game. In this case, the two joysticks on the driving seat are indeed enough.

Wait…spiritual?
"That's it..."

"The synchronization rate refers to the degree of mental synchronization with Unit-01?"

He understood the meaning of this word a little bit, and then stopped thinking about it and concentrated on waiting for Unit-01 to attack. However, the idea of ​​using artificial intelligence to control EVA should have failed. Up to now, he has not seen any related devices. It seems that he can only rely on himself to fight against the apostles.

While thinking.

The conveyor tracks finally brought the mechanical giant to the ground.

It was almost dawn outside, and the last trace of red clouds remained on the skyline at the end of the city, which was made of concrete and steel. Ikari Shinji looked up and saw that the city no longer had the bustle it had during the day. From the perspective of Unit-01, the entire Tokyo-3 seemed to be a city made of building blocks, like a fragile and breakable object.

The apostles' de-urbanization campaign has been going on for a long time.

The damage done to the city looked like a scab that would not heal for a long time.

Hope it's not too late.

No, it must not be too late.

He tentatively grasped it several times, without even a moment's delay, and was able to control the giant's body with such pleasure. The tightly fitted armor on his body glowed purple and green under the pale light.

It's in excellent condition.

"EVA Unit-01." The voice on the communication channel rose an octave, "Let's go——"

Thank you for your votes and comments. I have been searching for a long time but have not seen any definite answer as to whether Shinji Ikari has forgotten the truth about Yui Ikari's death or his memory has been wiped. For the time being, I will just assume that Shinji Ikari has escaped from the past.



(End of this chapter)