Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction ❯ Second Coming ❯ The Case of Jillian Thomson ( Chapter 27 )

Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Case of Jillian Thomson

 

The warm, swimming sensation subsided eventually, leaving me looking upon a street scene. It could have been any of the days since I arrived in Japan. Crowds of people flowed this way and that, in the regular hustle and bustle of the city.

It took a moment to realize that, in the center of my vision, there walked Rei, and Asuka, and I - Jill.

What is this? I wondered.

The response came from everywhere and nowhere all at once, and sounded like it was composed of the voices of everyone I knew. It was like my inner voice, speaking directly into my mind.

This is the you that exists to others.

I studied the vision before me. I was walking along and enjoying myself, having a good time, and laughing with my friends, even if a little quirky at times with odd jokes and unusual responses.

That's true, I admitted.

This is not the you that you wish others to see.

I was confused by that for a second. What? No.. I just.. it's just that I don't want to..

I found it hard to come to grips with my reasoning. Distantly, I was aware that I actually was 'speaking' with everyone I knew, and that we were all linked together, so to speak, and that everything was out in the open now, out on display, for good or for bad.

You don't want to be seen as being strange.

Yes, I agreed. I just wanted to seem normal to everyone else.

But I call you 'weird' all the time, Asuka's voice came to me.

That's different, I countered. I know that you're joking, or mean it in a fun way.

You just want to fit in, came Rei's voice.

I suppose, I replied.

A vision of Jack standing by the side of a road, watching a rally, was then before me.

What's this? came another query.

There wasn't much I could do except tell the truth. That is also me; the me that used to be before I came here.

The next response seemed to carry Misato's timbre and tone within it. This is why you seemed older than your years.

Rei followed immediately after: And how you knew the things you did.

Yes, I replied. It was surreal to be communicating all this without emotion or reactions; I'd always been worried that my friends would show disgust or revulsion at the revelation.

Why did you hide this for so long?

It was again a voice I couldn't identify. For all I knew, it was a farmer in Venezuela, or anyone else who had been brought into Instrumentality; I had nowhere near enough understanding of how the whole thing worked.

I didn't want to interfere, I responded. I had prior knowledge of how things would turn out..

Did you really think you were the only one like this?

The thought had never truly occurred to me. While I dwelt upon it, another question came to me.

You had what you thought was prior knowledge. In fact, life does what it does.

It dawned on me that this voice sounded particularly motherly. Do you mean that I shouldn't have been worrying about what consequences my actions would have?

That's not something you should ignore, came the reply. But worrying about what might happen in minute detail is what you should avoid.

Are you saying that everything is already decided? That our fate is cast in stone?

Not in the least. There are countless possibilities, and they are all for you to decide. Each person has the ability to shape his or her life experience by the choices they make.

So why did we go through all this? Why did Instrumentality happen?

Because some people made a choice to make it happen, was the response. But the choice is yours to make to return or not.

Already? I asked. Didn't it just begin now?

Time has no meaning here, Ritsuko Akagi's voice told me. Nor does individuality.

As if to prove that point, I suddenly found myself on a train, with Rei sitting beside me, and Asuka hunched over Shinji, who sat on the opposite side of the car. Asuka had one foot up on the seat, like she was trying to trap Shinji from getting up.

"Who says I want to be one with you?" Asuka sneered. "How disgusting! It makes me feel sick."

Rei interrupted Asuka. "It's pointless to mask the truth any longer," she said.

"Shut up," Asuka growled. "It's none of your business, you.. you puppet!"

"Don't talk to her like that," Shinji protested.

"All of you, shut up," I bit out. I was dimly aware that this was another bit of manufactured setting, our combined minds dreaming up a believable place for purposes of communication. We were unused to anything but speaking, and so this is how we imagined it happening.

To boot, there was no mental barrier to prevent us from saying something stupid. All our thoughts were out in the open - we were naked before one another, so to speak.

That explains why I then said: "I don't know why you are unable to admit how you feel about one another, but it's really tedious tip-toeing around it. Are you ever going to own up and accept the truth?"

"I just want to have a normal life," Shinji complained. "What's wrong with that?"

 

The next thing I knew, I was waking up to a chirping alarm clock toy.

"Urusai," I grumbled, batting at the chicken-like animatron until it silenced. Then I turned over and snuggled back into the warm covers.

A few minutes was all that passed when I heard from downstairs, "Jill! Asuka's already here! Hurry up!"

I blinked wide awake with the urgency of someone who realized she was profoundly late. Leaping from bed, I all but ran through the shower, jumped into my school uniform, gathering my mess of books and homework and stuffing it all haphazardly into my school bag, and then dashed out of my room and past the breakfast table where my mother and father sat, snatching up the toast and bacon on the way, folding them into a sandwich.

"Don't gulp it down too quickly, sweetie," Mom cautioned.

"I won't I promise bye!" I rushed out, hurrying to the door where Asuka stood, rolling her eyes. She bowed as I pulled the door shut behind me.

"I swear," she said as we headed down the street, "you're getting to be as bad as stupid Shinji."

"Don't lump me in with him," I countered to my best friend. "Besides, you'd be the one to know, seeing as how you and he left school together yesterday and weren't seen for hourrrrrs.."

"Ah, shut up!" Asuka shot back, heading towards the Ikari house, with me in pursuit.

"Ohayo," she said, knocking on the door and easing it open slightly. "Is Ikari-kun.."

"Still in bed, Asuka," Shinji's mom smiled, nodding towards the bedroom. "Go ahead."

"I'll, uh, wait out here," I said, bowing a little and remaining on the stoop. "To give you some privacy, that is."

"Shut up!" Asuka snapped, then dashed inside. After a few moments, yells and shrieks could be heard from Shinji's room. I blushed and focused my attention on a power pole across the street; inside the dining room, Yui and Gendo Ikari chatted jovially about Asuka and Shinji's relationship.

It took about ten minutes to get back on the way to classes. "For the record," I supplied, "we're now on target to be about 2 minutes late."

"I-it's not my fault!" Shinji stammered. "Don't you give me a hard time, too, Thomson-san."

"Shut up and run!" Asuka demanded.

I was ahead of them, seeing as how I'd started running once they came out of Shinji's house. Asuka was dragging him along, like a scene out of A-Ko or something; and suddenly I heard a yelp of surprise and a horrible racket.

Stopping to turn around, I saw Shinji and another person lying in a tangled heap. Shinji began to apologize, but cut himself short when the girl squealed and held her skirt down as if his eyes had been trying to lift it up with sheer willpower.

Knowing how Shinji runs his eyes over Asuka when he thinks no one's watching, maybe she had it right, I said to myself. Shinji tried to help her up, but she scrambled to her feet, picked up her belongings, and darted off, issuing a clipped and terse goodbye.

Asuka smacked Shinji on the back of the head, ostensibly for being careless enough to run into someone - but I was sure I'd seen his eyes linger on the departing form. In any case, we carried on to school to ensure we weren't any later than we already were.

 

In retrospect, we shouldn't have worried about being late. Our homeroom teacher was a real casual, laid-back woman who always showed up no less than 15 minutes into class. She was a strikingly beautiful woman, of course, and always got (and no doubt asked for) the attention of all the boys in class. I know some of the girls were jealous of her, and some even took notes to try to use her tricks against her - as in, to draw the boys' attention back on them. I just let it all roll off my back; when the right person came along, I figured trumpets would sound or something. Right?

Katsuragi-sensei arrived fashionably late, as usual, and flirted with the guys for a bit, before announcing a new classmate that was transferring in. I saw it coming a mile away, and one Rei Ayanami - still with a little bit of dirt on her from when Shinji had knocked her down - stepped into the room.

Instantly the room exploded into chaos. Half of the class was fawning over the new girl, and the other half was laughing and cheering once Ayanami singled Shinji out as the one who'd knocked her down on the way to school. Absolute chaos reigned, and was even heightened when Asuka leapt to her feet to defend Shinji when the newcomer dared utter the H-word (hentai) in describing him.

"Sensei," I protested, looking towards Katsuragi. I didn't want to see people fighting on their first introductions.

Teacher had, of course, sat down in her chair and leaned back casually, saying she wanted to see how things turned out when left alone.

Despite my dismay at the situation, I couldn't help but smirk and giggle at Shinji's face when I glanced his way. Between Ayanami accusing him of everything up to but not including criminal offenses, and Asuka standing up for him, he probably didn't know what to think. He looked like he wanted to crawl into a hole and pull it in after him.

A distant thought entered my mind, and with it, I was distracted away from the whole scene, as if I was watching it from afar: This is fun, but it doesn't seem real.

That's because it is not, someone else responded. This is a possibility where the Evangelion does not exist.

Mention of the Eva brought me back to reality - so to speak. Wait a minute.. is there any point to this? Shinji's going to reject Instrumentality anyway, isn't he?

That's yet to be decided, but it is a definite possibility.

Well, if it is, why are we going through this? Why do I even have a say in any of this? It's not like I have a choice.

"Of course you do."

I was surprised by the spoken voice and turned to see Kaworu beside me. It took a moment for me to find words. "I.. I'm.."

"Surprised, I know," he nodded, smiling, looking off into the distance past me. "You seem to respond best to me."

"Listen.. I'm sorry for.. for what I.."

"I know," he said. "We all know. Put it behind you; it couldn't be helped." After a pause, he said, "What did I say to you when we first met?"

"Um.." I stammered.

"I told you that you may grow to like this life," he prompted. "Do you?"

It was my turn to pause, now. "Yes," I answered finally. "I've had a great time here."

"You were wrong, you know."

This caught me off guard. "Wh-what?"

"When you said you didn't have a choice to make." He turned and fixed a stare at me with his red eyes. "You do have a choice. The choice to go on living. The world is made of people, and people are made by the choices they make. Your destiny, and the destiny of all others, is decided by no one but yourselves."

I was speechless, trying to wrap my brain around the explanation. Essentially I was being chastised for worrying so much about what effect my actions had on things, I figured.

"Anyone can return to life if they can imagine themselves within their heart," Kaworu told me. At that point, I realized, he was floating away from me - or perhaps I was from him - or maybe both.

I could only come up with a sappy clichéd question: "Will I see you again?"

"I doubt it," he shook his head. "I think my time has come and gone. But I will see what I can do about others."

Others? I wondered. I thought everyone was making the decision for themselves?

"Thank you," I called out to the fading form, unable to think of anything else to say.

"Be well, Jillian," Kaworu responded with a smile and a gentle wave.

 

The next thing I knew, I was surrounded by liquid. It had the odor of LCL, but it hadn't invaded my lungs. My windpipe was aching and about to burst, and I needed to draw a breath immediately, but I didn't dare take in whatever this was without knowing its composition. Besides, it was contained in something a hell of a lot bigger than an entry plug.

I could see light above me, and swam that way; naturally, buoyancy assisted me, and I shot toward the surface. I swam for what seemed like hours, but in reality was only a second or two. Ultimately, I reached the surface and broke through, gasping for air.

The light was the moon. A large red blot was visible high on the 'right' side, but otherwise, it was as full as it could be. The fluid I was in was red-tinged LCL, and was as big as a sea.

A few hundred yards away from me was a towering, pasty white figure, arms stretched out in crucifixion, with a hole in its torso and missing its head. It jutted out of the water on its rigid legs at an angle, having probably impaled the bottom of the 'lake' at terminal velocity.

I noticed a slash on its side where Asuka had managed to catch it with one of the false Lances, in blade form.

One of the Mass Production Evas.

I turned around, treading water, and saw at least two others in the distance, similarly haphazardly discarded, or so it seemed.

If there was a shoreline, it couldn't be seen, even with the moonlight.

Hoping I was going the right way, I caught my breath and what little bearings I could, and began to swim.

 

I lucked out, but just barely; with little to no energy left in me, I began to see a spit of land on the horizon. My second (or third, or fifth, or eleventh, or whatever I was up to at that point) wind kicked in, and I forced myself to head that way. I'd already chosen life, and I wasn't going to come back just to drown.

I made it to a sandy white beach, coughing and sputtering, crawling up out of the water like the first fish to sprout legs. I lay there, face down, catching my breath for a long time. All the while, all I could hear was the waves crashing against the shore and the ruined buildings - it was evident now that this was the crater caused by NERV's destruction, and virtually all the LCL that had been collected as the population of the world had rained back down into the hole.

It was still raining a little, per se, as I lay there. I had hopes that the pool would dwindle in size as people willed themselves to return, but I had no idea if that's how it worked or not. It would certainly suck to have been one of a handful to return, though - hopefully I was just one of the first.

A sound caught my attention at that point and I turned my head toward it. On the beach, I saw the impressions that had been created by two people lying in the sand. From those disturbances started out two sets of footprints, and then one, and finally led up to a huddled pair, crouched against a rock.

One wore a red and orange, plastic-and-Lycra suit similar to the black and grey one I had on. The other wore the typical uniform of a male high school student in Japan.

Both were curled up together, hugging one another, fast asleep, with evidence of freshly dried tears having spilled down their faces.

In my totally exhausted state, all I could do was faintly smile.