Meanwhile,Gina
Hopefully this works. I've been wanting to do it ever since Anika have Shinji a little piece of advice. And Gina is clearly not Asuka, but has 14 years of adulthood and motherhood to provide a retrospective and mature.
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
Hopefully this works. I've been wanting to do it ever since Anika have Shinji a little piece of advice. And Gina is clearly not Asuka, but has 14 years of adulthood and motherhood to provide a retrospective and mature.
Quote:Neither of them said a word to each other while waiting for the landing bay doors to open. Shinji didn’t really want to say anything. She clearly didn’t want to speak with him, edging away and obviously avoiding his gaze.________________________________
He tried hardest not to think about her. Part of him jeered that it was his fault she was so annoyed with him. It was something he’d done to start it. She knew everything about him.... she knew everything he’d done.
His body was suddenly paralysed with fear. If this was Asuka, then she’d know exactly what he’d done to her in that hospital room. Why else would she rush across space?
“Can we go?” he whimpered out.
Jet looked right down at him. “She’s just on the other side of the door.”
His mouth “She’s going to hate me!” he pleaded.”
“I doubt it,” Jet said, mildly.
“You don’t know her!”
“I’ve known her for years.”
Shinji blinked, his mouth goldfishing open, then closed again as he struggled to say something but didn’t know what to say. Another bitter rush of anger rose up inside him. He swallowed it hard, mentally visuallising it being compressed down into a little pellet which could be crushed in his fist.
Sharp nails bit into his palm.
The door began to open, warning lights. He braced himself for the oncoming storm,. Maybe his motorcycle could outrun an angry teenage girl.
Android, he corrected himself. A doppelganger.
Standing there, waiting for the door to close was a man so obviously American with a glowing grin that seemed to fill his face. He radiated raw, twitching energy, threatening to burst out of a flightsuit adorned with the same ‘Roughriders’ logo Shinji wore on his own borrowed t-shirt.
“Heya Jet!” he beamed, offering her a handshake with an oversized, overstlyed cybernetic arm “Showing off for the boy?”
It was an American drawl, completely unlike Ford’s come to think of it, but utterly, stereotypically American.
Jet just smirked. “Sometimes it’s just nice to feel sexy.” She inhaled deeply, adding clear emphasis.
The man snorted. It was obviously some sort of private joke between the pair.
“My power cells got so low on charge I could barely move.” Jet explained. “ I haven’t been awake this long since the war.” She feigned a yawn.
The newcomer pilot grin just broadened. Shinji swore his face was about to split. “Try morning feedings on for size.”
Jet shrugged. “That’s why I’m glad this is just a puppet.”
Shinji went rigid as the pilot turned to face him. “And you must be Shinji, huh?”
“Yessir,” he mumbled to his feet, the rest of him shrinking right down into his boots. The force of the grin was irresistable. It loomed monstrously over him, pressing him down into the ground.
“Benjamin Rhodes. Commander in Chief of the Roughriders, Husband, Father, epic space pilot and occasional mad scientist, at your service.”
“Ammm....” Shinji managed to say, stunned silent by raw force of person. That metal arm seemed to buldge and glow with power, feeding under the lights above. Reflections sparked across it’s surface.
It gripped down on his limp hand, giving it a vigorous shake. The boy half expected his arm to be ripped from its socket. His whole body shook like the dog being wagged by the tail.
“Gina’s just shutting down her Veritech, she’ll be out here in a second. I think you can guess which one his hers.”
The red one, obviously. The implication was that he should go to her, rather than the other way around.He stumbled forward, taking two steps past Benjamin before turning back, looking for any release from certain death.
Benjamin didn’t stop smiling. Jet folded her arms across her chest. No salvation from either of them. Ahead of him were two fighter-jets, each of which looked half-like an old Tom Cruise fighter, washed through an old space war animé Shinji couldn’t quite remember which one it was. Both were gleaming, shining setpieces, far to clean to be real, but radiating the scents of hot sulphur, oil and metal. It gave them both a depth of reality. He could feel the heat being emitted by the radiators, still glowing a dull cherry red.
One was polished to a lustrous silver hine. The other was a painted a deep brilliant red, with black, white and yellow trim. The number 02 on the tail made it certain.
He watched her dismount down from the cockpit with gymnastic grace, her flight suit moulded to her body. She had a figure that went beyond what he knew.... almost like how he’d imagined Asuka grown up, without the extra height. The red neural clips peeking through rust-coloured hair made it a certainty.
She turned on her heel, and fixed him with those same cold, ice-like eyes. They stared right through him from beneath the fringe, her lips set thin and narrow, her face a solid impenetrable mask the defied any of his attempts to understand what she was thinking.
“Asuka,” he breathed.
A flicker of anger rolled across her face. Her flight suit creaked as she shifted her weight..
“I’m.... S.... Sorry.” he stammered. His whole body started to quiver like jelly in a earthquake.
She cringed. He braced himself for He could remember how warm her neck had been under his hands, how soft it’d been as both his hands gripped tight.
And that same hard stare in her single eye, fixed on a point a thousand metres behind him. She opened her mouth...
‘How disgusting’'
“Shinji look,” she began in cool, measured tones. “I’m not that person. I’m not the Asuka you knew. I don’t even go by that name. I’m a different person.”
“I’ve.... after what I....”
He struggled to finished the sentence. It just wasn’t something that couldn’t be said out loud.
“Even after what happened in that hospital ward. Because I’ve had fourteen years of trying not to think about it, to think about it. Because you aren’t that person, Shinji, neither of us are.... you’ve nothing to be sorry to me for.”
“But I’m Shinji Ikari.”
“And I’m Gina Langley Rhodes. That’s who I chose to be.” She spoke with the same hard certainty he remembered from that time the power went out. “Your memories defined who you were in the first instant you woke up. After that you become a whole new person, free to move forward and define who you want to be from the ground up.”
Which naturally begged the the question, who did he want to be?
“Of course, if you want to be that idiot, that’s your choice too.”
He offered the merest smile in return. It didn’t matter what she said, she was the Asuka he wanted.
“And it’s good to see you,” she finished with a smile.
Shinji wanted to say something. He was hauled into a bearhug before his mouth could even respond. Her body was so warm and tight against his own, he felt himself lock rigid and tight, going stuff as a board as the pressure increased. Her hair tickled against the side of his face like a thousand ants running along his cheek. She smelled of warm vinyl, sweat and coconut shampoo, hot and real and human.
He could feel hismind slow down as his heart began to race up, pulsing through his whole body.
Exactly as it had been on that night when he’d been so terrified of her.
Recalling Anika’s advice, his arms slowly clasped around her back. His body started to dissolve into the embrace, allowing himself to relax completely into her arms.
She gently pushed him back a faint hint of sadness in her expression.
“If you’d done that the first time. Things might have turned out differently,”
“I’m sorry,” He mumbled to his feet,
“It’s okay, “ She place a light hand on his shoulder. “We aren’t those people anymore. Didn’t I tell you that?”
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?