NOVEL WEB 1.05 – A Transfer
Classroom 2-A, Tokyo-III First Municipal Junior High School, Hakone, Kanagawa. 7th September 2015.
Hikari was getting annoyed. Their first period would start in just five minutes, and their first period teacher still hadn’t shown up to take the attendance form she had finished filling out for the day nearly half an hour ago.
There were only two absences, surprisingly given that they’d had a giant monster attack the city three weeks earlier, but one of them was a new student who had transferred from outside the city the week of the attack, but who had been excused from classes for a reason that had only been marked on the attendance forms that were given to the toban (a role that technically should rotate, and if the more unruly students in her class- for example, Mister Suzuhara- had their way, would rotate; but which she pretty much always held specifically because of those students) as ‘[CLASSIFIED]’.
She assumed that they were like Miss Ayanami, who had frequent absences labelled as such, and who was rumored to be the pilot of one of the Evangelions, which nobody outside of NERV was meant to know about, but whose existence was very hard to keep hidden when everyone already knew about the Geofront, which was itself meant to be a secret. Hikari hoped that Shinji Ikari, whose name sounded oddly familiar to her for some nagging reason, would not be as unnervingly odd as Rei Ayanami. Or at least that he wasn’t going to be another troublemaker like Suzuhara.
Speaking of which, just as she was about to give up on Toji actually showing up to class, and to tick him off as absent with two minutes left before the start of class, the lanky boy slouched in, his uniform as disheveled as always, and a boring looking expression on his face. Hikari scowled. The least he could do was straighten up; he was going to hurt his spine that way.
A few of his friends, including Kensuke Aida, another thorn in Hikari’s side due to his frequent perving on the female members of the class. He had been caught selling photos that had been taken inside of the girl’s locker room, but he had gotten away every time due to the inability of the adults to address such disrespectful behavior.
“Boys will be boys” was their usual response, or “Miss Horaki, you need to get a thicker skin.”
Sometimes she hated how Japanese culture was so carefree about the behavior of young men, even after the rapid progress that society had made since the second impact. Even after the world’s population had been halved, and three billion people had died from either the disaster, the wars that followed, or the famine, pestilence, and ecological destruction that had followed; the world still refused to treat people with equal respect, no matter whether or not society had been forced to break down some of the more seemingly impermeable barriers between the sexes.
It was enough to put her off men for good, and to try and see if she’d have better luck dating some of the other girls in her class. Not that any of them were really her type, mind you. Maybe she’d have better luck outside the classroom…
“Hey, class rep!” called out Suzuhara for the third time right in front of her, jerking her from her thoughts with a jolt. “Just wanted to hand in my homework from last week. Sorry for my absences.”
Hikari pinched her nose, and ticked Suzuhara off as if she had shown up. “All good, Suzuhara. Just thinking about some personal stuff. Your absences were explained by your father as having been to look after your sister in the hospital. I thought she was meant to be there for a couple of weeks only. Was she injured in the battle? You live quite close to where the battle went down, right?”
Suzuhara nodded. “Yeah, my sister ended up staying in for another week more than the doctor said. The hospital she was in couldn’t evacuate everyone in time, and they were going by triage. My sister was in the recovery ward, but wasn’t critical, so she was still there when the battle reached the city. The power got knocked out, and their supply of cortisol in the IV fridge went bad. The hospital survived, but she needed to stay there till they could get another hospital to send over some of their surplus. She’d have been out last week otherwise.”
“It must have been so cool to look out the window and see everything going down!” exclaimed Aida from his seat near the window. “We didn’t get to see anything down in the shelter, and they classified all of the footage from the city’s surveillance cameras! Man, to see the Evangelion in action…it would have been nova!”
“Well, um, my sister did see some of it, although she said it was scarier in the moment than it was in retrospect,” said Toji, rubbing the back of his head uncomfortably. “She said that it was over in just five or so minutes. It was dark, and she only saw a bit of it while they were carting her out of the ward and down to the basement where the staff were sheltering in case the hospital got hit.”
“Aww man,” groaned Aida. “Tell me she at least had the camera I bought her on her birthday last year with her.”
“Why would she even have that on her?” asked Suzuhara, incredulously. “What would she be taking photos of? The ceiling tiles?”
“Hey, some ceiling tiles can be really interesting. For example, drop ceilings with tegular…”
Whatever Kensuke’s point was, it was cut off when their teacher for first period, Sensei Kirishima, walked into the room, trailed by a girl wearing the uniform of their school. Hikari looked down at the sheet and couldn’t see any absences for the female members of the class. Also, the new girl could have been the perfect likeness to Miss Ayanami if she wore some red contacts and dyed her hair from black to blue. Hikari again had to bite down on her curiosity about Miss Ayanami. She’d been around the girl during swimming class enough to know that neither her eye color nor her hair was cosmetic. She’d never seen her taking out contacts, and her hair never seemed to fade or show a natural color at the roots.
Right now, however, Hikari had other priorities than figuring out the creepy blue haired doll who was sitting at the back of the room in the corner seat next to the window. She stood and called out to the class.
“Class! Stand and bow!”
Once the teacher had acknowledged the usual formalities, the new girl began writing the kanji for her name on the board. Hikari found herself staring intently at her, as she neatly wrote on the board. There was something about her pose that seemed unusually nervous, even for a brand new student transferring to a new school. She was almost unwilling to look anyone in the eye, and she kept having to pull her shoulders back and stand upright, almost as if she were trying to hide her lack of assets. Hikari wondered why she was so worried. It wasn’t like many other girls in the class had much to show up top yet.
The new girl finished writing and stepped to the side. The kanji she had written made Hikari blink in surprise. Her last name was…Ikari? But her first name on the board wasn’t Shinji like the name she had on her roll, but instead Aiko. The new girl took a deep breath and spoke to the rest of the room in a small voice.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you all,” she said nervously. “My name’s Aiko. Aiko Ikari. I hope we can all get along.”
Hikari smiled, and moved to show Aiko to her seat, which was unfortunately right in front of Aida and behind Suzuhara. She didn’t think she’d have much to worry about with the new girl. There was something genuine about her that made Hikari confident about her impression of her.
The new girl was totally a bottom. And a cute one too.
At lunchtime, Hikari thought that it was about time to talk with the new girl about the error with the attendance roll, and maybe see if she had gotten the transcript for another student (possibly her sibling?) by mistake. The school administration was usually very efficient and effective when it came to these things, but the sooner Hikari got it corrected, the sooner she could start ticking the roll off correctly. She had ended up just ticking off Shinji Ikari, with a note appended mentioning the first name seemed to be wrong. As she walked up to Aiko, who was eating a delicious-smelling bento box that she had brought in a wooden container, she noticed that Suzuhara and Aida were whispering and staring at the new girl from behind. She shook her head. Men could be such pigs.
“Hi, Miss Ikari,” said Hikari, bowing briefly before smiling at Aiko with what she hoped was a friendly expression. “I’m Hikari Horaki, the class representative. I’m sorry if I disturbed your lunch.”
“Thank you, Miss Horaki, but you didn’t interrupt me,” said Aiko politely, smiling back at Hikari with a warmness that made Hikari’s heart flutter. “Please call me Aiko. Miss Ikari is so formal.”
“I can do that, Aiko,” said Hikari, pulling up a chair and sitting down. “Please call me Hikari if you want. Anyway, I just wanted to see how you’d been doing, and maybe clear up a small administrative matter. I take the attendance each morning, and I noticed that there may have been a slight mix up with your name on the roll. You wouldn’t happen to have a twin brother going here by the name of Shinji, would you?”
Aiko’s smile vanished suddenly and was replaced by a scowl. “Ah. I see that I’d been enrolled here before I arrived in Tokyo-III. Shinji is my deadname. I would appreciate it if you could help me in getting this cleared up, Miss Horaki.
Hikari frowned, confused. “Deadname? I apologise, Aiko, but I’m unfamiliar with the phrase.”
Suzuhara suddenly scoffed and stormed over. “She means she’s a trans woman. Or, should I say, he means that.”
Aiko’s face flushed with anger, and she got up from her chair and stared down Suzuhara, who simply smirked down at her as he towered above her. “She. I’m a woman, whether you like it or not, asshole.”
“Prove it,” said Suzuhara smugly, and crossed his arms. “Show us what’s between your legs. My dad says if it’s an outie, you’re just a man in drag.”
Hikari noticed that Aiko’s fists began to clench and unclench, and decided to step in. She had no idea what Suzuhara’s problem was, but this was unacceptable and was clearly causing a good deal of emotional distress to Aiko.
“Mister Suzuhara!” she exclaimed sternly, slipping between Aiko and the taller boy, who was only half a head taller than her, and couldn’t stare her down to the same degree as he could Aiko. “You are out of line. I don’t know what your problem is with Aiko, but she’s a fellow member of the classroom, and you will treat her with the same respect with which you would treat any other person here. I certainly do not care for your assertation that she’s any less of a woman than me, and I’m not going to stand for your treatment of her. Are we clear?”
Suzuhara scowled and crossed his arms. “Crystal.”
As he said this, Aiko’s phone began to buzz from inside her satchel, and Hikari looked at it with surprise. Students weren’t meant to have their phones on during the school day, unless they had a waiver, and the only other student with a waiver was…
Hikari looked over at Miss Ayanami, whose phone was pressed to her ear and was listening intently.
“Understood. I will report immediately to the Geofront,” said the blue-haired girl, flipping her phone closed. She looked over at Aiko and walked over. Aiko also finished taking her call, and stood up, glancing at Ayanami as she approached.
“Headquarters has called a level two alert,” said Ayanami calmly in her usual monotone. “We are to report to the Geofront immediately and await instructions. They will contact the school later and excuse us from classes for the afternoon.”
“Right, I’ll head off now,” agreed Aiko, picking up her satchel, and gathering up her lunchbox. Rei simply left the room without her bag, not even looking back to see if Aiko was following. Aiko finished packing her things and shouldered her way past a shocked-looking Suzuhara, turning briefly to address Hikari.
“Miss Horaki, you need to get the class down to the school’s emergency shelter,” said Aiko, her expression serious. “The evacuation order will be going out any minute, and the school is in the projected engagement zone. Please keep everyone safe.”
“Is it another attack?” Horaki asked nervously. “Wait, you don’t mean you’re going to pilot one of those-”
“I can’t discuss it now,” said Aiko, moving out the door quickly. “Please, just get everyone down to the shelter, and away from the danger.”
Just as the other girl left, the evacuation alert began to sound over the school PA, and the school superintendent began calmly ordering students to prepare for an orderly evacuation down to the shelter in the basement. Hikari immediately began to quiet down the panicked members of the class and try and wrangle them into an orderly group ready for a teacher to show up and lead them to safety. She found herself quietly praying that Aiko would be safe, and that things would be alright.
Evangelion Cage 02, NERV HQ. 7th September 2015.
“Primary Lock Bolts, disengaged!”
“Secondary Lock Bolts, disengaged!”
“Main power supply connected! Batteries fully charged!”
“Umbilical Bridge has been removed; Pilot has been inserted!”
“A10 Nerve Synchronization is green! All systems reading nominal!”
“Primary restraint removal in progress! All ground crew, clear the cage! Evangelion is moving via route 7A to the launch catapult!”
“Fourth Angel has breached Lake Hakone Defensive Perimeter! Static defenses ineffective! Target will be within city limits within three minutes!”
“Civil Defense Command reports all civilians have been evacuated to shelters, and the city has entered lockdown! Engagement zone is clear, no collateral expected!”
“Pilot, please perform communication checks.”
Aiko let out a lungful of LCL, and toggled the comm switch on her saunter. “Pilot copies, communications are clear. Awaiting launch clearance, confirming launch tubes are clear.”
“Aiko, your orders are to engage the Fourth Angel and eliminate it before it can attempt to forcibly enter the Geofront,” came Misato over the communications channel. “We’re all counting on you, and on Unit-01. Are you ready?”
Aiko clenched her jaw. “As much as I can be, Misato.”
“Launch the Eva!”
As the catapult rocketed upwards, briefly passing through the middle of the Geofront via a set of retractable rail guides that connected the catapult to the surface hatch above her, Aiko ran through her training in her head. She had no idea what she’d face on the surface, or even if she would survive. But she couldn’t let the monster above hurt anyone. Even if some people, like that bigot, Suzuhara, really deserved it. She wasn’t going to let Misato down. Not when so many people were counting on her. As the daylight above came into view, and the Evangelion rocketed up into the streets of the city, she calmed herself, and pushed forwards on the saunters, linking herself closer with her Evangelion. Then, the bolts released, and they sprung forwards like an arrow from the bow of some ancient Greek god.
Tokyo-III First Municipal Junior High School, Basement Shelter. 7th September 2015.
Kensuke was distraught. Not only had Toji been a massive dick to the new girl- who (in addition to being super hot, in Kensuke’s mind at least) was one of the Evangelion Pilots- which would put her off talking with him about all of the cool military stuff she probably got to play with, and not only had this got him in Hikari’s bad books along with his best friend, but they were now stuck in the basement and not able to see the Evangelion fighting off an actual enemy!
He sighed and tried again to tune into one of the news channels, this time from Tokyo-II. No dice. It was as if there was a news blackout on all off the major broadcasters, to the point where they were just broadcasting a message apologizing for the temporary service outage due to “sensitive military operations in the area.”
Kensuke didn’t get it. Why the secrecy? Why the news blackout? What the hell was the point of having two cool giant robots under the city if you weren’t going to let anyone see them? It was so unfair.
Toji leaned over and peeked over his shoulder at the screen of his multifunction camera, which was Kensuke’s pride and joy. “Still nothing? Man, they’re really serious about that news blackout, huh?”
“Yeah, and it sucks too!” exclaimed Kensuke, collapsing back on the blanket they sat on with annoyance. “Least they could do is make this less boring and show us some footage of the battle.”
Kensuke suddenly realized that they had the perfect excuse to get out of Hikari’s sight and do something they probably weren’t meant to do. The basement shelter had toilets outside the actual shelter next to the stairs. They technically weren’t meant to use them during the battle, but maybe if Hikari could be convinced, they could make a break for the surface and get some one-of-a-kind footage. Kensuke wondered how much the local news station would pay for actual footage of a battle between this Angel thing and one of the fabled Evangelions?
Certainly, more than he got from selling illicit nudes of his female classmates to the hornier members of the school’s male population, which was for sure. Those cheap bastards couldn’t even shell out the full market price half the time, and he had to settle for going halvies and getting half of his income paid in chocolate bars.
“Hey, Class Rep! Me and Toji need to use the bathroom…”
Tokyo-III First Administrative District, Hakone, Kanagawa. 7th September 2015.
Aiko dived over the top of a nearby defensive tower as one of the whip-like tendrils of the Angel slashed out behind her, completely severing her Evangelion’s right pylon, and severing her power supply. The next tendril cleanly sliced a diagonal line through the tower, the top half sliding off and falling to the ground with a massive crash, sending up a cloud of dust. She rolled to a stop, and fell into a crouch, firing off a series of long bursts from the massive machine pistol her Evangelion had retrieved earlier from one of the ammo depots. The AT-piercing rounds sparked as they hit the Angel’s AT field, finally tearing through the defensive barrier. However, before Aiko could take advantage of this momentary victory, the Angel- which resembled a bizarre cross between a catfish and some sort of segmented insect- sent another pair of glowing tendrils lashing out towards her. Aiko rolled off to the side, and sprinted towards the nearest power supply station, ejecting the severed plug still attached to her Evangelion’s lower back as she did so. The massive plug fell like a rock, firing off a set of inbuilt rocket thrusters to break its fall right before it hit the pavement. The angel simply drifted after her, completely ignoring the supporting fire from a pair of JSSDF Heavy VTOL Fighters that had been called in to provide covering fire by Misato.
Aiko reconnected quickly to the power and retrieved her progressive knife from her left pylon. Thanks to her data link with the JSSDF aircraft, even though the Angel was obscured from her sight by several large structures, she could see its outline through the structure, and even knew how far she was from the target due to the triangulation of her Eva and the two aircraft. She waited until the Angel was within around 250 meters, and then charged from cover, firing off the rest of her magazine to break the weak AT field that the Angel had managed to regenerate in the short time she had been disengaged, and lunged forwards, knife outstretched, she crashed into the target, and the two of them drifted backwards at high speed towards the nearby hills surrounding the Western perimeter of the city. She could see her school on the hill nearby, but barely had time to register this before she noticed something even more important. She quickly pulled her knife away from the Angel’s core and attempted to yank its tendrils to brake herself to a stop.
“Aiko, what the hell are you doing?” Misato demanded over the radio, sounding frustrated. “Eliminate the target! Don’t mess around, you nearly had it!”
“Misato, I can’t do that,” Aiko said, gritting her teeth as she swung the Angel around so that the two of them had switched positions, her back now facing towards the hillside, and kicked the Angel back towards the city. As it drifted backwards, it lashed out with its tendrils and knocked her back into the side of the hill. In the corner of her viewscreen, Suzuhara and his crony, Aida, were on their asses in shock, staring up at the Eva “There are two civilians on the hillside, schoolmates of mine.”
“Shit!” swore Misato over the radio. “Quickly, there’s no time. You need to eject the entry plug and get them in there with you. Hurry! Before it recovers!”
Quickly, Aiko hit the emergency eject button, opened the topside hatch, and deployed the retractable ladder. Misato called out over the P.A. for her two erstwhile classmates to get into the entry plug. Mere seconds later, there were a pair of splashes above her, and she heard the confused sounds of her classmates as they realized they were immersed in the liquid. Before either of them could consider climbing out and putting them all in further danger, Aiko hit the switch to reinsert the plug, and soon she had control back. However, she quickly realized that something was wrong. The Evangelion was responding sluggishly to her movements and increasing the sync rate did little to fix this. Aida and Suzuhara were also clasping their hands to their heads and moaning in pain. Were they messing with the synchronization?
She had little time to ponder this as another tendril lashed out, Aiko barely managing to roll sideways before the tendril hit the hillside where the Eva’s head was mere moments ago. Clambering to her feet unsteadily, she flicked out her progressive knife, the switchblade-like knife deploying with a dull snick.
She noticed that the hand had been stripped of the armor plating when she had grabbed the tendrils beforehand, and she could see what looked like skin and fingernails instead of what she had presumed would be the internal mechanisms. She shoved that to the back of her mind for now, and instead charged down the mountainside, and stabbed the Angel’s core once more. Her knife briefly made contact with the Angel’s AT field, but that barely stopped Aiko as she reached out with her Eva’s free hand and sunk her fingers into the shimmering field that surrounded the bizarre monster like a membrane.
Within seconds, she had ripped it to shreds, and her knife lanced forwards and into the red sphere at the center of the Angel’s chest. It exploded into blood, painting both the Evangelion and the hillside red as the beast slumped over, almost like a deflated balloon. It was over, once again. Aiko pulled back on the saunters, bringing her synch rate back down from the elevated levels it had been at, panting slightly as she began to feel the same fatigue she had felt after the last battle.
“Evangelion-01 has successfully eliminated the target,” came the voice of Lt. Ibuki over her comms channel. “Evangelion Unit-01 has suffered extensive damage to the right pylon and to both hands. Retrieval teams are to equip MOPP Level Four during cleanup operations. Begin deploying engineering teams to affected parts of the city for post battle damage assessment.
“Aiko, please head to catapult number six, and return to the hangar,” came Misato’s voice over the radio. “You did good out there. As for you Mister Suzuhara, and Mister Aida, you two are lucky to be alive. There will be consequences for the two of you. Please remain in the entry plug until we have completed docking procedures. A security team will meet you on the boarding gantry and will escort you to a holding cell to await the arrival of your parents.”
“Yes ma’am” said Aida, his voice subdued. Aiko looked over her shoulder at Suzuhara, who was staring at her with a weird look on his face.
“You…saved me,” he said, his mouth agape. “Why?”
“Because it was the right thing to do,” said Aiko, turning back and focusing on making her way safely down the hill and back to the catapult. “It doesn’t matter what my personal feelings on you are. You treated me like shit earlier, and if you ever try shit with me at school, I will fuck you up. But I wouldn’t leave you to die, no matter how much I would love to do so. It would be…petty. Futile even.”
“I…see,” he said. He sounded like he wanted to say something else, but he said nothing more. Aiko stepped onto the catapult, locked the remaining pylon onto the safety clamps, and then they all dropped down the shaft. She knew she had meant what she said. But she found herself struggling to feel the usual sense of safety and warmth she felt within the entry plug, as if the Eva itself regarded the two foreign occupants with similar disdain.
What ever was the thing she was piloting? Why did it have skin and fingernails?
Was the Eva…alive?
~To be continued~