Tainted Gestalt: Neon Genesis Evangelion

“All normal lines are out of order due to the state of special emergency.”

With a heavy and slightly weary sigh, the public phone’s headset was placed back onto its cradle, bringing the call to an end. No luck here. This was the right place, right? He hadn’t messed up somehow, gone to the wrong street at the wrong time? Completely missed her? He checked once again, though he knew he had already done so three times. The weight dragged on. And on. And on.

‘What am I doing here?’

The thought was not a new one. It had passed through his idle mind several times already, and each time it did he had no alternative but to give it the same tired answer.

‘I do not know.’

“I shouldn’t have come,” he decided. “I may not be able to meet her. Can't be helped. I'll head to the shelter.”

But at that very moment his attention was seized upon by the realisation he was not alone in this street. Just off in the distance he caught sight of someone. A girl that he had never seen before, yet felt an instantaneous intimate connection with. She was standing just a little too far away for him to properly make out her features beyond the mop of blue hair and the unavoidable fact that she was staring at him just as he was at her. He wanted to walk over to her. Ask her who she was. Talk to her a little bit as they made their way to the nearest shelter.

He was shaken from this enraptured attention only at the very instant that something small but hard landed on his head and bounced onto the ground beneath his feet. He very nearly jumped at the interruption and cast his eyes first upwards to try and determine where it had landed from and - finding nothing - cast his gaze to the ground to see precisely what it was that had so intruded upon his idle thoughts. He soon found it. An odd little object. Not glass, not plastic, not anything he recognised. A small cube that fit so easily in the palm of his hand.

A strange trinket that was very soon forgotten and stuffed away unheeded into a pocket when a loud noise, far louder than he thought possible, rang out over the city’s sky. It was at this moment that Shinji Ikari realised exactly why it is that he would have been much better off waiting in a shelter.

• written by Lumitiel