[text] your blue walls get in the way of these facts

[interstices]

Who: Asuka Shikinami Langley
Broadcast: Fleetwide
Action: Handholding planet, if you want it.
When: 7/27

[It's not like her to post much, and it's not like her to post with text at all, unless it's as a response to someone else. But if there's one thing Asuka's confident in, it's that people tend to own up to a hell of a lot more on the network than they ever do in person, especially when they're typing it up. Something about the distance. Even Katsuragi always sounded far more imposing over email than in person, except for the last couple years.]

[Plus, she's curious. All those pilgrimages that it seemed as if the whole Fleet had made had to have earned some useful tidbits. Asuka's poor at cloaking her motivations in the best of times, so she barely bothers.]

If we stay here much longer, I'm learning to swim.

What did you get from the tree? Even if it's something crappy like the promo stuff we get sometimes, I still want to know.

Comments

[interstices]

[Zhas is actually warning her. Asuka wonders how she merited that much notice. It had seemed like they weren't even going to be on speaking terms when they first met. Maybe falling off that pier wasn't such a lousy thing.]

[But she can't think of any song that's significant to her, not really. All that comes to mind are the pop songs Mari used to sing during the heat of battle, the most inappropriate cadence she'd ever heard.]

With my luck, I'd get some '70's crap.

[theboogieman]

serene.

[playful sarcasm? well, imagining hearing some awful 70's music instead of what he got did almost make him experience an emotion adjacent to humor. for better or for worse, he now sees her as a member of his pack--even if she's one of the louder, less-trained ones out of the lot.]

if you paint, use some of it. glows in the dark.

[interstices]

Gross. [And a pause, then a hasty clarification.] This idiot I used to pilot with was always singing those songs.

I might take some.

[theboogieman]

[now, see, that's interesting.]

what did you used to pilot?

[interstices]

Evangelion. It's a machine that can destroy Angels.

[theboogieman]

[it takes him a couple of minutes to respond, on account of trying to figure out whether she means "angels" in the "God and his angels" sense, or if it's something that just got classified that way. she used a capital letter, so maybe it's the proper name of a creature or something? but then again, they capitalize it in some bible iterations, so...

...there's no way around him having to ask a stupid question. damn it. he gives up:]

what are Angels?

[interstices]

[Really, she's just grateful he didn't ask for more specifics on Evangelion, not that that keeps her from being much less terse. The whole thing, she's come to realize, is irritatingly difficult to explain to anyone else.]

They're aliens. We finally got rid of them.

[Well. That had been the idea.]

[theboogieman]

[...actually, compared to all the other weird stuff he hears about around here, that doesn't sound so bad. if he can kill vampires, she can kill aliens.]

THAT sounds badass.

[and speaks volumes about her character, but he'll keep that to himself for now.]

[interstices]

[Once upon a time, she'd thought so, too. She's still not ashamed or regretful over anything she did. A part of her still misses Eva, the direction it gave her life, the five-minute freedom of a sortie. Even one that left her bloody and battered. Even one that left her contaminated. Real victory is still more thrilling than peace.]

I wouldn't want to go back, but piloting the ship isn't the same.

[theboogieman]

i get it. guess we're lucky to have an experienced pilot.

[he wants to go home more than anything, but even he acknowledges that his life of relative peace here is much better than the one waiting for him. better, safer--boring, and pointless.]

[interstices]

Yeah. You are.

[Life should have snuffed out the impulse to preen, but instead, all it got rid of was the opportunities to do so. The corners of her mouth twitch upward unseen in a satisfied, minuscule smile. She's the best pilot here. The best Eva pilot, apart from Shinji in his prime and Kaworu ever. Luckily, she's got zero intention of letting Zhas know that.]

Like I said, it's not the same. Eva's far more immersive. But I like the control of piloting anything.

[theboogieman]

how old are you, anyway?

[yeah, the question kind of comes out of nowhere--but he's never asked, and now the answer is kind of relevant to everything they're talking about.]

[interstices]

[That question again. Asuka tenses up for a bitter moment before responding-- if text can sound clipped, hers does.]

How old do you think I am?

[theboogieman]

is this the part where I get in trouble no matter what i say

[that seems like a thing that girls do.]

[interstices]

No, idiot.

[theboogieman]

[he doesn't believe her. he is also not at all confident in his ability to accurately access people's ages. but.]

14.

[interstices]

[Owning up to her real age is harder than it should be. More deflating every single time it happens. Back at WILLE, everyone knew. Everyone was privy to her private disaster. But here it might almost be easier to pretend to really be only as old as her body shows. Almost.]

I'm twenty-eight.

[theboogieman]

[well, that... certainly... is not the answer he was expecting.

he doesn't not believe her. he's always been able to tell that there's something strange about her. he's used to working with creatures who are much older than they look. it's not outside of the realm of possibility.

it's just a little jarring to think about. he's gaining all kinds of new perspectives today.]

you're older than i am.

[interstices]

[It's a little deflating, reading that. She's notoriously bad at guessing ages because she hasn't aged, and hadn't gotten any farther than twenties on her estimation of him. Given she's only seen him without makeup once, it would've been hard anyway.]

It's a side effect of piloting Eva. I started when I was fourteen.

[theboogieman]

then i was half-right.

[which is apparently all he still cares about, here.]

[interstices]

Yeah.

[theboogieman]

guess you're lucky to work with someone who's used to that.

[well, so is Coil. so that's two.]

[interstices]

I didn't think it was that common. Aren't you a regular person?

[theboogieman]

[oh, if only he could make a sound of noncommittal "yes but also no" over text and just leave it at that.]

we hunt vampires, but a few factions have sworn loyalty to our cause. I deal with them a lot. many of them are older than they appear.

[in explaining that, he remembers another thing:] Coil's also older than he looks. been stuck in places like this for a while.

I'm mostly normal. no age stuff yet.

[interstices]

I thought all you did was kill vampires.

So does no one age here, either? Or do you know? [It makes her gut roil just thinking about it-- she'd hoped that here, there could be an out for her, that given enough time, she could grow up like she was supposed to.]

Shinji's like that from piloting, too. [Well, in Shinji's case, he really is fifteen, not having lived through the last fourteen years, but still. And then, reluctantly, since she might as well cover all bases--] And Nagisa.