The district was utterly destroyed.
Yui should have been hearing the deafening rush of the helicopter's propeller blades, but all she couldn't hear a thing. Just a ringing numbness that threatened to crush her very soul.
The pilot took the broken scientist and her husband down to ground level. She could vaguely hear Gendo and the pilot yelling at each other over the sounds of the flying vehicle. Something about the building still being unstable or something.
But she didn't care.
She had to find them. She had to find Shinji.
As soon as they were close enough to the ground, Yui jumped out, closely followed by a rarely-seen, utterly panicked Gendo.
"YUI! DON'T GO NEAR, IT'S TOO DANGEROUS!"
But she couldn't hear him. She couldn't hear anything anymore.
Only the sounds of a soul-destroying numbness.
---
"S-shin...ji..."
It was dark. Cold. And he was sure he was inhaling more dust than air by now.
"Shin...ji..."
Who was that? Who kept calling his name?
"Shinji... p-please... I need you to... wake up..." He felt something grab his hand. It was warm, but seemed to be getting colder and colder.
"Shinji..." He definitely knew that voice. His head was ringing. But there could have been a full-scale orchestra deafening his ability to think and he'd recognize that voice anywhere.
"Please... save me..."
His eyes shot open, only to be met by darkness. Only a sliver of light trickled through a tiny gap in the debris of what had been Mana's living room. Turning to his side, he saw whatever had been holding his hand had indeed been Mana.
Bloodied, bruised, but well and truly alive.
They were trapped under the table. Mana's mother had thrown them both under the table the second the earthquake sirens started going off, and the terrifying shaking had started.
Grabbing her blood-drenched hand, he squeezed it tightly.
"It's okay Mana... we're gonna be *cough* ...be okay..."
She nodded, providing a little sound in agreement. They were going to make it.
Trying to sit up was an incredible effort, but somehow he made it into a sitting position, and tried looking around him.
He sorely wished he hadn't.
From their position under the table, he could see blood trickling over the side. Along with a hand poking over the edge. Trembling in utter fright, Shinji gently crawled out from under the table, stood up, and looked back.
No six-year-old should have had to have seen it. Not many adults would have had the stomach to look at something like that.
But Shinji Ikari saw the unmistakeable sight of Natsuru Kirishima lying on the table, skewered by what looked like a fallen girder from the destroyed ceiling, straight through the torso. By some miracle, it hadn't penetrated through the table. They had been saved, but...
"ahh...uuhh..." He could feel his mind, his sanity evaporating. He wanted to cry, he wanted to scream, he was so close to losing his mind...
"S-shinji... is... everything... alright?"
She couldn't know. She can't know. She can't see this.
"E-everything's o-o-o-okay... Mana..." His voice was cracking, he was on the knife's edge of retaining his senses.
"That's... good..." Mana looked up at the clearly shaken boy.
"Where's Mama?"
The terror had upgraded to an apocalyptic version of panic. He could feel the crescendo of extreme stress building on top of what was already an uncontainable meltdown.
"She...s-she... I don't know... I can't see...her..." If Mana could see the reflection in his eyes, of what he could see right now, of Natsuru Kirishima's torn body, her blood soaking into her hair, turning it into an even deeper shade of crimson, her limbs splayed in weird angles...
He didn't think Mana could ever recover from that.
"We...we need to get out of here..." Shinji bent under the table, trying his hardest to put on a brave face. "We need to find an exit, and make sure we tell people we're okay."
"...but Mama..."
"Please Mana... Yo-you're hurt... we need to get you to a doctor right away!"
"I can't move Shinji..."
It appeared Mana had both her legs broken. Anytime she tried putting movement into them, the pain was enough to make her scream in agony.
He would never forget those screams. It was like they had been etched into his very soul.
"SHINJI! IT HURTS... IT HURTS SO MUCH..." Mana began bawling, thumping the ground in front of her with her tiny fists. Tears were flooding down her face as she looked up to the terrified Shinji.
"I'll... I'll save you!" After explaining that it was going to hurt, Shinji managed to pull the broken Mana from out under the table. She was is no fit state to look around her, and eventually, it looked like the pain was getting to her.
"Shinji... please... save me." As Mana lapsed into unconsciousness, he began to panic again.
"Don't! D-d-d-don't die Mana... please!" He began sobbing as he watched the little girl's eyes closed. But he quickly noticed that she was still breathing.
Lifting the sleeping girl in his arms, he took one last look back at the corpse of the woman who had looked after him. Who had saved his life. And cried.
He was still crying as he somehow made his way out of Mana's miraculously still-standing front door.
The first thing he noticed was the setting sun, illuminating the wreckage from the outside. The stairwell going downstairs was also destroyed. Wiping his face on the top of his arm, his expression changed to that of pure determination. He needed to save his friend!
After ten agonizing minutes of carrying a fairly heavy Mana, he had managed to make it to the roof of the apartment block. He was only six, he wasn't designed to carry anything heavier than a teacup at his age.
Collapsing on his knees, he noticed helicopters buzzing around. Holding the injured Mana close to him, he took in as much air as he could in a single breath. And screamed as loud as he could to the world.
"MAMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
---
"I would never forget that."
A determined Shinji responded. Mana gently smiled.
"Me too."
An awkward silence filled the room, broken only by Mana shifting uncomfortably on her chair, the chains on her hands rattling, the sound reverberating around the room.
"Have you ever heard of Seele?"
Shaking his head, he must of looked as confused as he felt. Who were Seele?
"They're an organization. They research things similar to what your parents are doing. But to be perfectly honest, they're stealing your parents ideas and trying to take over humanity."
She couldn't look at his perplexed gaze.
"After... after my mom died, a lot of things happened. My father... committed suicide. He couldn't take the grief of what happened and just... disappeared. Not long after that, I found myself in an orphanage."
"I remember the orphanage, but you never mentioned your father died!" He was taken aback by the new information. He had been aware that her father had passed away somehow, but... suicide?
"I was so thankful that you came to visit me at that orphanage Shinji. I think I would have met a similar fate, had I been left all alone."
"Was that why...?" He couldn't voice the remainder of that thought. At the orphanage, Mana had never played with any of the other kids, but every time his parents had brought him over to play with her, she would turn into a hyperactively ecstatic crazy child. Over time, her affection got more and more intense, but he still came to play with her as often as he could. Some of the games they would play had left him more than a little traumatized though.
"You were the only one I could talk to. You almost died that same day I had. When Mama... did." Mana sniffled, a single tear falling down her face. "So I had to latch on. I had to keep you close. Or I'd be all alone..."
More tears began to fall. Mana was silently crying in front of him. He had no idea what to do.
"I read something in a book once. 'Loneliness is a disease that can easily lead to death.' " She looked up at him, her cerulean eyes red from crying. "You saved me twice back then. Once from the earthquake. And once again. From myself."
Her crying had escalated. Mana was full-on bawling her eyes out. Shinji felt numb just imagining what she had gone through back then. So he did the only thing he could think to do.
He placed his arms around her, and hugged her tightly. And Mana continued to cry into his shoulder.
"Please don't leave me. Don't leave me again. You're the only one keeping me sane right now. You're... my entire reason for living right now."
"I won't leave you again. I'll do whatever it takes to stay close to you Mana."
"You gotta promise me! Before those Seele bastards take me away from you again."
"I won't let them."
"But you have no idea Shinji! These guys... they're insanely powerful. They took me away from that orphanage, trained me to be a spy, and... and..." She started to cry again, wetting his shirt to the point where he was starting to think he needn't bother wearing it anymore.
*Click*
"W-what're you doing?"
Shinji pulled back a little, dangling Mana's handcuff keys in front of her. Her cuffs fell to the ground with a loud clang.
"I trust you Mana. I trust every word you say." His eyes were full of a kind determination. His smile was infectious, causing Mana to smile through her tear-ridden visage.
"We'll protect you. Just tell everyone what you were telling me, and we can start again, wipe the slate clean. And protect humanity from this... Seele. We need your help Mana." Shinji held out his hand.
"Will you help us?"
Ignoring his hand completely, Mana leapt from her chair and tackled Shinji to the ground with a tight bearhug. Crying again, she snuggled into his chest as Shinji ruffled her hair, chuckling to himself.
"If its you... *sniff * If its you Shinji. I'll do anything. Just stay by my side. Forever."
They stayed in that position for a long time. The CCTV cameras on the wall were silently watching them, being fed to the main control centre. If Shinji had any clue that Misato, his parents, the entire tech staff and Kyoko Soryu were all watching his 'moment', he might have died from embarrassment there and then.
"...He gets that from you dear."
"What do you mean Yui!? I'd never do something..."
"First year of grad school, when I was convinced I was going to fail at life, a certain someone came into my dorm room and gave me a hug very similar to what I'm seeing right now-..."
"OKAY, okay, enough of that."
"I never knew you and your son had such ways with women Gendo."
"Clam it Soryu!" Misato was laughing hysterically at the arguing adults. It was quickly replaced with an evil grin as she eyed a different monitor.
"Hey guys. Should we warn Shinji now or should we just let that unfold?" She was pointing to the monitoring room with the bulletproof glass and microphone that Asuka and Rei had just returned to.
"Let it happen Katsuragi."
"Gendo! They might kill him!"
"And what, pray tell, are we supposed to do about it from here?" Yui grimaced at her husbands words. Turning back to the monitor, she put her hands together as though praying at a shrine.
"We can pray real hard!"
"SHINJI BAKAMORONASSHOLEJERFACE IKARI! WHAT IN THE NAME OF FUCK ARE YOU DOING!?"
"Once again, she started it... waitwaitWAIT ASUKA PUT DOWN THE BRACELET!"
Some say, if you work at the laboratory late at night, when nobody else is around, you can still hear the screams of Shinji Ikari reverberating around the building.
---
"Oh yeah..." Misato opened the door to the apartment gingerly, perplexing Asuka, Rei and Shinji sitting on the couch, watching television.
"Are you going somewhere Misato?" Asuka piped up. "If you're going to the convenience store, can you pick me up some chips? I need something to munch."
"Asuka, you can summon crisps now, or did you forget?"
"I thought you were the one getting all anal about the morals of summoning free crap Shinji?"
"I still think you shouldn't. You'll have no room left for dinner!"
*Ahem* Misato cleared her throat loudly. "I'm actually going to pick someone up."
For some reason, she looked incredibly nervous. Something Shinji had spied immediately, and was reunited with the familiar feeling of dread in his stomach. This could not go well, whatever it was.
"Due to extenuating circumstances..." Misato pulled on her shoes by the front door faster than anyone had ever seen before. Except before she was going on a beer run or a pub crawl.
All three teenagers stood up, now finally beginning to realize what had Misato so spooked. All three raised their bracelets, and pointed them at the poor, terrified woman as she pressed the button to open the front door. The bracelets began to charge with a terrifying energy as Misato looked about ready to cry.
"...it'sbeendecidedManaisgoingtolivewithusPLEASEDON'TKILLME!" Misato screamed as she ran out of her house as the front door decided to choose that very moment to spontaneously explode.
As soon as she was out of firing range, the three of them fixed the door, strengthened it to the point it could withstand a nuclear blast and unanimously decided that the girls would take turns keeping Shinji guarded that night, lest he get molested in his sleep by a certain crimson headed seductress.