"Ryoga-kun, are you ready?" Misato watched the Eva take a step forward into the target range. It was pretty impressive – buildings, targets to Eva scale, the whole nine yards. Here the aspiring Eva pilot could sharpen his skills and prepare for the next attack, not to mention log valuable synchronization practice. \"Well, I suppose so. How do I work it again?"/ Sigh. He doesn’t know how to work a gun, remember? "Simple, Ryoga-kun. Use the handle to center the crosshair, the little cross on your screen, on your target. Then pull the trigger on the handle. Poof! Got that?" \"Got it."/ Did he now? Well, at least he could synch well enough with Eva to avoid tripping this time. Amazing what a couple of weeks of practice could do. "Well, here goes." She pressed the switch to start the target drones. --- Paradise Lost, Part 3 Fan Fiction by Andy Kent All copyrights owned by Rumiko Takahashi or Gainax, respectively --- Ryoga moved his hands to the control handles. Piloting the Eva was still completely alien to him, although he could get it to lope around after a fashion. Still, it’d be a while before he was as agile inside as out. And then there was this target practice stuff. Misato had been a little peeved when he told her Kensuke’s idea, that he should have some kind of weapon, and told him that of course he’d get weapons. After all, how can you beat an Angel without weapons? They’d both laughed a bit over that one. But this gun wasn’t a proper weapon. An umbrella is a good weapon. Ropes make good weapons. Hell, anything can be used in an emergency, but the way this gun felt, it wouldn’t work too well as a cudgel. And he’d never even held a gun. Right now, he was holding it like he’d seen in some American action movie posters, butt at the hip and arms extended. It deeply disturbed him that Misato had said that he was supposed to hold it that way. After all, the movies weren’t real life. A target popped up a few blocks ahead. It looked like somebody had made a gigantic inflatable balloon shaped like the Angel. He fiddled with the controls, got the crosshair over the center of the target (hey why did is it jerking like that?) and pulled the trigger. Instantly, dozens of high-velocity bullets streamed out of the gun and sent a vibration through the Eva. Their passage shattered false windows along their path. Reaching the target, they blew completely through the Angel mockup, showing that it was indeed nothing more than a big parade balloon with cosmetic adjustments. Well, that was pretty easy. He could afford to have some fun with this, maybe. "Is that it, Misato-san?" \"Well, basically, we’ll put a few more up for you to practice on. Try shooting while moving the Eva, it’ll take more concentration."/ Concentration, yes, but not attention. "Kind of boring." \"That’s the idea, Ryoga-kun. You need to be good enough at this so that it’s nothing special. Besides, it’s more important to get you used to moving around in the Eva. I’ve noticed that you haven’t tripped over the power cord yet."/ She couldn’t know that he’d had a little experience with wearing a leash and collar (or iron manacle and chain, but what was the difference, really?) and it wasn’t particularly in his way. It’d be a real problem if he had to do some serious moving, however. "Hey, what happens if I do break the power cord?" \"Well, that depends. You’ve got five minutes of power stored in the batteries on your Eva."/ Five minutes? That wasn’t much. He said so. \"Well, it’s the best we can do at this point. Another thing; that’s only if you’re moving around. If you’re generating an AT field, then it takes a lot more power. You’ll have about sixty seconds in that case."/ "And after that?" \"You run out of juice. Stop moving. Get the picture?"/ Well, that was reassuring. "I thought you said that the only way to fight an Angel was to generate an AT field to neutralize its field." \"Well, when your Eva went berserk, that’s what it did. We think that our progressive knife design can cut through a field at extremely close range, though."/ "Yeah, that’s another thing. How come this knife is so small? I could use this thing without the Eva!" \"Yeah, well, it’s charged, so it would set your arms on fire from friction. And give you a vibration concussion. We’ll work on a bigger one if you like."/ Well, at least it was only a backup. He didn’t use bladed weapons anyway... that was Kuno’s specialty. He missed his umbrella, though. \"All right, Ryoga-kun, that’s enough target practice for the day. Come on in. Let’s call it a night and go in." --- "Well, Kensuke? How’s my hair look?" "Ease off, Touji. She’s not going to fall all over you or anything." "Hey, this idea of yours is brilliant! We’ll take him back and forth from school. That way, we see her twice every day! Sheer brilliance!" "Yeah, I know, I thought of it, remember? Just be glad I decided to let you in on this." "Oh, come on, it’s not like you’d have any chance at it." "IT is not what I’m looking for. I just want to know about the robots." "Hey, we’re here." Touji pressed the intercom’s button. "Hibiki?" The door opened. Inside, Misato looked at the two of them, still slightly bleary from the night before. She was wearing a tank top, shorts, and a funny cross pendant. She hadn’t combed her hair. "oh man, I’m in love..." "What? Aren’t you two in Ryoga-kun’s class?" Kensuke elbowed Touji, then bowed. "He meant to say good morning, Katsuragi-san. I am Aida Kensuke, and the drooling one is named Suzuhara Touji." Return elbow. "We’re here to take Hibiki to school." Misato was having a bit of trouble following the conversation, aided by the freight trains moving cars full of operating jackhammers through her skull. "Huh?" (Sheer eloquence in the morning. Man, Touji can have her.) "Well, seeing as he always gets lost, if he goes by himself, we thought we could take him straight there. He’d actually get to see class once in a while." She’d finally caught on. "Hey, that’s a pretty good idea. Thanks, guys. Ryoga-kun! Look who’s here!" Ryoga slipped past Misato on his way out the door. He was still wearing the same outfit (it had been washed, though) and the same headband with the same neural things tucked inside, and he still had the same backpack topped with the same stupid ornamental umbrella. Kensuke remembered when he and Touji had tried to run off with it. That thing weighed a ton! Actually it weighed one hundred and thirty-five pounds, and for its size, it had to be made mostly of depleted uranium. Kensuke remembered getting bored during physics class sometimes. How Ryoga carried the damn thing around was a total mystery. "Morning, guys. We leaving?" Ryoga had seemed completely fine with the idea himself. Of course, Kensuke had neglected to mention the meet- with-Misato part to him. "See you later, Katsuragi-san." Touji was still standing there starry- eyed. "Later, Ryoga-kun, guys." Ryoga started down the hallway. Touji just stood there, laughing to himself. "Did you hear that, Kensuke? She called us "guys!" We’re almost there already and we haven’t even done anything yet!" "Idiot." Kensuke wasn’t worried about that now. "Hey, Ryoga, wait up!" --- "Yes, Gendo?" Fuyutsuki was, of course, right there. Good thing too, Gendo certainly couldn’t run NERV through his cell-phone, even if he had to at times. "Cancel all of my afternoon appointments." "Any reason, sir?" He smiled to himself. "I’ll be otherwise occupied, I expect." "Right." --- "That fiend Saotome! He must have spirited away the scroll. There is no other explanation! Where is he, Sasuke?" "Master, I haven’t been able to find Mistress Kodachi either. Perhaps he has taken her off as well?" "Ah, a fitting fate for the fool Saotome, to be afflicted with my twisted younger sister. But I cannot surrender to him the scroll... no amount of puissance of spirit would enable me to overcome its power. How cruel fate, to yield the instrument of justice into the hands of the very evil that it should have destroyed?" "Let’s just hope he doesn’t use the scroll’s technique." "What! Oh, no! Doubtless the base varlet Saotome is even now preparing to use its terrible secret against me. Do you have the counter- technique, Sasuke?" "No, Master, you instructed me to leave it in China, so that Saotome could not use it against you." "Argh! The honorless dog Saotome would never balk at wielding my own weapon against me." "Perhaps Mistress Kodachi will stop him, Master." Kuno digested that thought for a minute. "Let us hope so, Sasuke. Far better for her to do so, than allow the wretched Saotome to obtain such overweening power." --- "Hey, Akane! You want to take Kuno this morning, or should I?" "Go ahead. It was my turn yesterday." "Well, here goes..." Ranma reached the schoolyard first, jumping the fence. "Hey, where is he? He never misses a morning’s workout." "Wow, that was fast, even for you, Ranma." "Chill out, Akane. He’s not here." "Huh?" "Maybe he gave up." "Not Kuno. You’re not that lucky." --- "Ah, Ryoga..." Kensuke really had to step to keep up with Ryoga. Longer legs, endurance stride, just plain faster than he was. And obviously not used to walking with other people. Ryoga could slow down a little bit; Misato’s place wasn’t going anywhere. "Yeah?" "Wait up. If you run off, you’ll get lost." Not the kindest way to say it, but true anyway. How could one guy get lost so easily? On the way to school. On the way back from school. On the way to lunch. On the way to the water fountain. On the way to write on the chalkboard, for God’s sake! "Besides, Misato’s is THAT way." "Oh. Okay, I’ll slow down." Touji was being quiet over there. He still had that dumb Misato idea in his head. Yeesh! Two days and he obviously hadn’t had another thought in his head. Good think Hikaru hadn’t caught on yet. She’d be crushed. As if everybody else didn’t know she liked Touji. Except Touji. Tell him? Nah, he would never believe it. "Hey, Ryoga, what’s Misato like, anyway?" Ah, he speaks. "Um, well, she’s nice, but a bit sloppy. And she drinks too much. And sleeps too late. And her cooking isn’t very good either." "Who cares about her cooking?" "You don’t have to eat it." Kensuke stumbled a bit over one of the big launching tube platforms. There was one every few blocks, to let the Eva out wherever. He thought of the great footage he’d snagged of the Eva fight. Camcorders are wonderful. Can’t tell Touji, though, he’s still down about his sister. "Hey, how was Eva today?" "Damn it, Kensuke, I told you that they told me not to tell you anything else about it. I got in really big trouble over that." "Just passing the time, sorry." Man, he could get defensive. Not very good at hiding secrets, though. He didn’t know much about Eva. What kind of mecha pilot doesn’t know mecha? "Hey, we’re here. Should we walk you up?" --- Ryoga closed the door behind him. Why did he ever open his big mouth? Ever since he talked about being a pilot, Kensuke had never shut up about Eva. He could live with it, had to. Kensuke was the closest thing he had to a friend at the school. Aside from that he was a decent sort. Still was different from Nerima. And Touji. Couldn’t keep his mind out of his pants. He hadn’t said anything, wouldn’t know how to put it, never really had to say that kind of thing before, but enough was enough. Besides, she was old enough to be Ryoga’s mother. They’d call it statutory rape. Not that Touji had any chance of all. But still. Come to think of it, why was he still here? He could just hit the door. He still had his pack and shoes handy. Keep going, just like always, until you hit Nerima, and Akane, and everybody. See the world. *[And then what? You gonna get beat up by Ranma? You gonna peep on Akane? Maybe blow up some poor person’s driveway?]* What the hell was that?! Not his conscience talking, he’d have recognized it. Not telepathy, probably. Not the way two guys in a fight can be thinking the same thing. He listened for a bit, standing still, but there wasn’t any more. Whatever it was, it had a good point. Ryoga’s life had been in a rut for the past few years, for sure. Wander off. Buy souvenirs for Akane. Find Nerima. Challenge Ranma. Lose to Ranma. Wander off. Send postcard to Akane. Find Nerima. Fight horrible monstrous threat/evil martial artist/natural catastrophe/Akane’s cooking. Wander off. It was a full life, eventful, but what the heck could you do with it? Of course, this might not be any better. Misato was good, easy on the eyes for certain, but utterly not his type. Too old, too. And there was something familiar about the hairstyle, something that didn’t register on his consciousness but completely turned him off. Can’t quite put a finger on it, though... And she couldn’t really cook either. Everything was instant, which was fine by him, but she could barely heat it up right. Not "oh-my-aching-digestive-tract" Akane-style cooking, but not tasty either. He’d taken up most of the cooking, in fact. What about Dad? All right, buy his story that he just wandered off all those years ago. Easy enough, considering. What the hell was he doing running all of this, now? And why did Gendo need Ryoga, anyway? Obviously he wasn’t the only robot pilot. He’d gotten a peek at Ritsuko’s clipboard a couple days ago and had seen something in English, like "Third" something or other. He wasn’t too polished on his English, but he suspected that you didn’t get "third" without "first" or "second". That meant Rei and somebody else. Where the hell were they? Maybe he could call this training. Yeah, that would be it. Training to help him beat Ranma and win Akane. Yeah. He could walk Eva up to the Tendo dojo and squish Ranma like a bug. And his dad Genma too, while he was there. Then he’d pick Akane up and they’d run off together. Right. They’d eject his rear into the next time zone if he even THOUGHT of trying a stunt like that. Plus, it wasn’t too manly to go squishing your rivals with big robots. Akane wouldn’t be impressed. She’d probably just start crying, or something... Ouch. Change the subject, Ryoga. By this time, he’d managed to settle in and start on his homework. It wasn’t hard, really. He’d just managed to lose the habit when he’d left school a few years ago. Why do it? You’d never get credit for it, you wouldn’t be there when it was due. Except now he was there every day. And learning, too. He’d have to treat Kensuke nicer. Talk to him about the gun practice yesterday, maybe. He’d love that, although Misato wouldn’t be too happy about it. Eva was secret, as much as you could keep a giant walking robot in downtown secret anyway. He heard Misato coming in. "Hey, Ryoga. How was school?" "Not bad." What did she do all day at NERV? She was "Operations Commander", and that had to be important, and even though she bossed Aoba and everybody, he’d never seen her giving anybody but him an order. Maybe that’s when she did the commanding. "Come on, let’s go to NERV. More practice." Well, it was still training, even if he really couldn’t use it like he was used to. "Sure, give me a second." --- "Take the wheel, Ryoga?" Ryoga was torn between the desire to cower in the passenger seat and the desire to actually try his hand at driving. It HAD to be better than Misato’s crazy techniques. Swerving. Cutting people off. She’d destroyed that one poor guy’s shopping bag. Even he would hurt after a head-on collision at these speeds. Checking his safety harness, he tried to remember if praying had ever done anybody he knew any good, and how they had gone about it. --- {PATTERN BLUE DETECTED} "Well, you all know what that means. Is Misato here yet with Ryoga?" "Yes, they’re on the way down here, sempai." "Hibiki-san?" "Prepare Eva 01 for launch. Divert Ryoga to the hangar. Have Misato come here. Where is the best intercept site?" Aoba played with his keyboard for a second. "We can engage just north of Tokyo-3’s urban areas. Not many people out there." "Yes, but isn’t Misato’s apartment that way?" "Can it, Ritsuko. Prepare the closest launch elevator. Evacuation status, Maya?" "All blocks already in their shelters. They’re getting good at it." --- Ryoga settled into the warm LCL. It still gave him the willies to think about. Ritsuko had explained the whole thing to him, and he was as pig- proof as he was going to get, but he couldn’t risk it right now. There was another Angel headed for the city. \"Ryoga, you’re going to intercept the Angel inside a commercial center just outside of Tokyo-3. Lots of buildings around, but plenty of ammo caches and such. Try to take it down with the gun."/ "Well, if you say so." Ryoga still didn’t really trust the gun. It’s not like they’d ever shot an Angel with it, anyway. Of course, if he killed it with the gun, it wouldn’t hit him at all. For some reason, it HURT when he got hit in the Eva. Much, much more than otherwise. The Evangelion stepped loose of the launching rails, careful not to snag the power cord. The Angel would be around here somewhere... Of course. Large red arrows pointed behind him on his display. Straight toward the Angel. They turned with him to highlight it as he spun around. That thing was really, really strange-looking. It was long, brown, looked like that gross Hanky thing from South Park. No arms, no legs, but two long tentacle things. The tentacles glowed pink. Pink? It reared up, exposing two large eye-looking things on its front lobe. The tentacles writhed a little. Ryoga listened for a second, then grabbed the knob for the external microphone and twisted it up all the way. It was laughing! Not a funny laugh, not a sympathy laugh, not even a "ha I beat you up AGAIN Ryoga" laugh. This laugh was cold, it touched the spine, it was madness given sound. It was oddly familiar and THAT scared the hell out of him. \"Okay, Ryoga, take it out. The AT fields are canceling each other out."/ Ryoga moved the crosshairs over the Angel’s outline. Squeezed the trigger. Immediately, he felt the Eva rock as hundreds of pieces of screaming metal tore through the air. Was it working? He was hitting something, there was lots of smoke in the air. In fact, he couldn’t see the thing at all through all the smoke. \"No, Ryoga! Stop shooting! You’re just hiding it!..."/ His fighting sense flashed. Too late, and his reaction time wasn’t fast enough in this big metal hulk. One tentacle flashed out, didn’t hit the dodging Eva, but blew his gun in half. It kept going, tore the top off of a nearby building. His gun was slagged. Great, now what? He jumped back again, and again, as the Angel sent the tentacles towards him. Those things were fast! Again, he heard that laughter. This wasn’t working. Obviously, he’d have to hit the Angel somehow. He dropped the piece of gun. \"Ryoga, grab the gun next to you. Hurry!"/ He ignored the gun that slid out of the side of the next building, grabbed his knife from the Eva’s shoulder. Time to see what this thing can do. His first jump took the third story off of a parking garage, the second pulverized some hotel’s penthouse suite. He held the knife in a reversed grip, aimed for the root of the left tentacle. Nothing could stop this attack, hundreds of tons of Eva falling from the sky. --- "Wow! This is SO cool." "Hey! Kensuke, how come he dropped the gun?" "Obviously wasn’t working, Touji. He’s got the knife now." "Hey, let me borrow the camera. I can’t see from here." "No chance. I want to get this on tape. Mom will love it!" "He’s jumping! What’s that move?" "Ah! A flying reversed slash attack! He’s going to disable that purple energy whip." "OH! That had to hurt." "It just blew him into the air! That thing is so COOL!" "Um, Kensuke?" "Yeah, Touji? What an attack!" "Isn’t the Eva coming this way...?" --- This was VERY bad. "Ryoga, pick up the gun! What are you doing out there?" He was jumping onto buildings, that’s what he was doing. Nasty damage. Would the knife work? \"OOOOOWWWWWWW damn that hurts!"/ God, but that was fast! The energy whips had crossed, taking the Eva in the chest twice, melting the blade on the knife, and now the Eva was flying. Misato couldn’t tell how fast, but it wouldn’t be good to be around when it hit. "Brace for impact, Ryoga-kun!" That was Ritsuko. Good idea, he was a martial artist, he could always roll with the fall. "What the hell is he doing?" Misato turned back to the command display. Ryoga had cocked the Eva’s arms and legs, ninety degree angles, and what was that he was doing with its hands? "No, Ryoga, the sign of Satan won’t work on this kind of Angel! Ryoga!!" The impact took out half an acre of what had been rather pretty mountainside. Ritsuko started typing quickly, totally intent on the readouts. "Damage reports, Ritsuko." "Eva has a couple of burn marks on the chest armor. No impact damage." No way! Even if he hadn’t been thrown half a mile, that crazy pose thing he had done meant he HAD to have busted something. "His knife is a loss. The power’s been cut too, he’s got maybe four and a half minutes left." "Ryoga! Are you all right?" Misato was reeling. Things should either be much better or much worse than they were at the moment, right? It either worked or it didn’t. But now it wasn’t working. Except that it was still working, maybe. What was going on? "Sempai, who are those two?" "No idea. Civilians, probably." Gendo steepled his hands. "Order the Eva back. We can sortie again once it has a new power connection." Misato looked at the two children in the screen. They looked familiar... of course. They were Ryoga’s class buddies, the techno dweeb and the horny one. What were they doing out there? --- Ryoga saw Kensuke and Touji outside his Eva. The landing hadn’t hurt, he’d braced himself properly, but the people in his headphones had gone totally berserk at it. Hadn’t they ever fallen off something before? It worked for suborbital Akane launching, and it worked for low-trajectory Eva launching, too. He popped the emergency plug ejection switch. Not the big red one with all of the safety interlocks that would blow him through the mountain, but just enough to pop the hatch open. He turned on the external speakers. "Guys, get in!" The Angel was coming. And his alarm clock was about to go off, it looked like. Just perfect. "What, you mean us?" "YES, you Touji! Move your ass!" The two clambered into the entry plug. He shut the hatch and re- established contact with Eva. Touji was coughing (not everybody handled LCL well, Ritsuko had said) and Kensuke was just staring at the plug. "Quiet, guys. Let me think for a second." The laugh came again. Touji shuddered a little, said, "That sounded crazy. Insane, even." "Yeah, can Angels go crazy? Totally insane-sounding." "Shut up already!" Insane? Insane! THAT’S what was so familiar about this laugh. And the attacks... the cross-cutting chest throw was a basic move of Anything Goes Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics. He should have seen it coming, damn it! So the Angel used ribbon-style attacks. How could you beat ribbon-style attacks? Where was he going to get an Eva- size ribbon, in the next two minutes for that matter? Wait a minute. Ranma had seen the weakness right away, hadn’t he? It hadn’t been important, he’d been trying to learn the technique, not beat it, but... --- "Ryoga! What are you doing? Withdraw! We can fight it later!" He wasn’t listening. He was yelling some kind of battle cry and running right at the Angel. "Ritsuko! Is it berserk again?" "No! That’s Ryoga doing it." "Ryoga! Stop it!" The Angel’s tentacles lashed out, striking Eva’s arms... and not stopping it. The Eva plowed into the Angel’s main body. It started striking the Eva’s back, but the Eva had grabbed its body with one arm, and through the screaming coming over the radio you could hear the THUNK-THUNK-THUNK of the Eva’s hand hitting the core, over and over... The core cracked. The Angel was still laughing, that shrill laugh. What were these things, so utterly inhuman? The Eva’s fist broke the shell of the core, went completely through. Immediately the tentacles stopped, went limp, and the Angel fell on top of the Eva. Total power left: three seconds. "Did he kill it?" "Yeah, looks like it, Maya." Aoba chimed in from the front terminal. "Target has gone completely silent. No pattern." "Recover the pilot and Evangelion. Notify the repair and cleanup bureaus, and keep the press out of it. I’ll be in my office." "Gendo, wait! That’s the wrong elevator..." With Gendo and Fuyutsuki gone, the mood relaxed a bit. "How’d he win, Ritsuko? I thought he was dead." "I don’t know. Maybe he saw something. Maybe it really was the Eva. Maybe I’ll wake up a few minutes from now. That whole ceiling tile joke wasn’t funny, Misato." "Damn it, Ritsuko, I showed you the handprint!" Not this again. "I still can’t believe you went to so much trouble for a joke. It’s not like you, Misato..." --- "Well, are we in trouble?" "Not really, Touji. Stern lectures I’m used to. I don’t think it’ll be any worse." "So, Kensuke, did you get it on tape?" "Every minute. I’ll have to do something with the audio though. He just sat there screaming! Can you imagine how much that must have hurt?" "You’re the one who wants to pilot the thing." "Well, I still do. It wouldn’t have hurt like that if he’d just shot the thing with a bigger gun." "You think Misato will be pissed?" Kensuke grinned to himself. "Yes, definitely. She’s going to bawl you out but good, next time she sees you." "No! I can’t believe I let you drag me out there! If this ruins my chances with her, I’ll kill you, Kensuke! You hear that?" "What chances? She’s twice your age." "You’ll pay for that, Kensuke. Hey, get back here!" --- Ryoga was sitting in what everybody called the "debriefing room". This time, nobody was telling him what a good pilot he was. Ironic, really. You screw up completely and win, and you get praised. You figure something out and win, they yell at you for disobeying orders. "Look, Misato, what are you so mad about? I won." She was still really angry. He kept expecting her to pull out one of those thrice-damned hammers women always seemed to have handy. "Yes, but you could have been killed! Are you crazy, attacking like that?" Ryoga looked up. "No, I just remembered. That looked just like a martial art I used to practice sometimes. A friend of mine figured out that you could beat it, easy, if you just attacked with your bare hands all out and forward. It’s designed to deflect weapons and use them to beat you, and it can’t stop a charge." "And just WHAT made you assume that you were right? Just because some ninny somewhere came up with a dumb martial art, you have to jump to the conclusion that the most horrible enemy of all Mankind has to use it too? Who’s this friend you keep referring to?" Blush time. "You know, the one with the fiancée. I don’t know what made me think that. Something was really familiar. And it worked, right! Hell! Worked better than the damned gun, anyway." For some reason, she hadn’t taken the bait. She was still thinking about the fiancée thing, probably. She wasn’t that mad anymore, really. "Well, sure it worked, but next time could you TELL EVERYBODY before you do something stupid like that? You nearly gave us all a heart attack. Are you OK?" Whatever he said, he’d have to remember it. "Yeah, mostly. Nothing bleeding, nothing broken, anyway. Can we go?" "Yeah, let’s go." She opened the door to the hallway. "Hey, Ryoga. What was that thing you were doing when you were flying? It looks really, really stupid, you know." "Ritsuko yelled something about bracing, I figured out that I wasn’t walking right because the ground was too far down, and I braced for impact." "And that’s bracing for impact." "Works every time." "Sheesh." --- Kensuke loved to camp out... nothing like the stars at night. He could forget school, forget home, forget the world. He could remember the guns, and the military, and dream of glory to be won in a cockpit. He could find out what was moving around out there. "Can you tell me the way to Furinkan High School?" "Ryoga! What are you doing here?" That was Ryoga, all right. Pack, headband (still with neural stuff inside) and all. "Didn’t you run away because Misato yelled at you?" "Nah, I just went out for a snack. How long has it been, a week? I’ll make it back in three days more for sure." That was funny. "Tell you what. I’ll take you back in the morning. There’s room in the tent." "Sure, I can do that. Hey! Is that camp rice? I love camp rice?" "Go ahead. Have some. What’s that Furinkan place anyhow? You’re in my class, not in high school." "Reference point. I can find my way around Nerima, a little, if I can get to it. Furinkan’s right in the middle of it." "We’ve got to get you a map, Ryoga." "I’ve got one, it doesn’t do any good." "Compass?" Maps always did good. "Yeah, but they always just spin around some. Don’t work for me." "And they gave you an Eva." "I’ve wondered about that." --- End of Paradise Lost, Part 3 Send e-mail, flames, et cetera to akent@pdq.net Rei fans rejoice! She’ll be healthy again for the next part.