Winter had come upon them, hard and cold, faster than it had before the Vanishing, by the end of October. Fall was short now and winter long. By December, people had mostly adjusted to it. Snow came and went, sometimes blanketing the Geofront, and other times it would warm up enough for the snow to melt. Increasingly, though, there were pockets of enduring snow tucked away anywhere that didn’t get much sun.
It was basketball season now, the main thing on people’s minds, though preparations for eventual war continued. Hikari, Hedda, Asuka, Shinji, Rei, and Kameko continued their training, while Kevin, Touji, Olga, and Heilwig were knee-deep in basketball. Kensuke, however, was busy pursuing his own specialty.
Kensuke finished rearranging the various cables so everything would cooperate, then sat by the entertainment center fiddling with the master control, while Shinji sat nearby on the couch, looking bored. “Sorry, almost done,” he said to Shinji.
“Why did you need me? I’ve just sat here mostly,” Shinji said.
“I thought we might have to move things,” Kensuke said.
They were in Hedda’s family’s living room, where a long couch with two end tables faced a new entertainment center, bought with the fruits of the raise Hedda’s father had just gotten. The living room was rather sparsely decorated except for a picture of Hedda, Ermalinda and their father over the entertainment center and a picture of Hedda’s paternal grandparents in the corner where the living room table for eating dinner stood. Now it had a huge entertainment center, fancy decorated wood with many glass doors and cabinets and a huge TV and sound system.
“This is going to be *sweet*,” Hedda said, leaning over the couch from behind.
“Is it ready?” her father said eagerly, coming out of the back. He leaned on the couch as well.
“I’m not good at moving things,” Shinji told Kensuke.
“Yes, but Touji had basketball practice,” Kensuke said. Winter was upon them and with it, Kevin, Lars and Touji were all knee-deep in basketball season.
Kensuke ran the center through its paces. “Okay, I went in, tinkered with a few things, ran some custom wiring and now I’ve attuned the clicker to it.”
He now ran Hedda and her dad through the whole process, then passed over the controller; Hedda soon had it rigged to record her shows. She then gave Kensuke a kiss. “Payment rendered as promised.”
He grinned. Oh yeah, the ladies dig me, he thought.
“Here,” Hedda’s father said, holding out a wad of bills. “I appreciate it.”
“Don’t sweat it,” he said, not taking the money. “One day I’ll have a car, then you can pay me back.”
Hedda’s Dad laughed. “That’ll be a while. You’re a good kid. Here, have a beer.”
Kensuke took it and grinned. Favors were better than money and now an adult owed him one. He didn’t know what to use it for but he’d figure out something. Getting people to owe you was a very useful thing.
That and information. Favors and information were power. Though so was knowing how to fix things. He was good at that. And good at making new things or reconfiguring things in interesting ways.
And filming things.
Really, he was so full of talent, he was surprised he didn’t explode from too much talent.
“Okay, Shinji, let’s go grab some food,” Kensuke said.
“Kameko’s making dinner, I can’t skip it,” Shinji said.
“You could eat with us, Ken,” Hedda said to him. “If Shinji has to bail.”
Oh yeah, she can’t get enough of me, Kensuke thought. I am the man.
*****************
Rebuild of Neon Genesis Silmarillion
A Tolkien Legendarium / Neon Genesis Evangelion crossover
By John Biles
Book 1: Red Sky at Morning
Chapter 4: There Is No Hell Like The Wrath of a Mother.
*****************
Hikari did not really need the extra work inherent in improving her flute skills. However, after her chat with the Eagle, she’d ended up as part of the slowly growing ‘orchestra’ being used in experiments with HALO. This meant extra income for her family and time with friends and additional respect from Dr. Akagi and the other experimenters and she couldn’t help but eat that up.
She was determined to do well and earn more respect. She’d let this skill get rusty as they didn’t have a music class this year but she was doing well, though Rei, Shinji, and Asuka were a lot better. She didn’t want to be the one to drag everyone down.
Hedda was an incredible dancer; she’d only come to learn this once she’d started working with her and Shinji and Rei and Asuka on the experiments. Further, she was far more focused and determined than Hikari had realized before.
Kameko spun, slipped, and then determinedly got back up and tried to copy Hedda’s movements. Hikari admired her determination; she wasn’t even close to as good at the physical dancing as Hedda but she was getting better. By continued work.
Right now, they were serenading plants. They’d done a lot of work with plants, in part because there were few ethics issues and little risk of disaster. They could speed up the growth of plants to nearly double speed now; it was incredible and the potential for world agriculture was incredible too.
Maya was monitoring the experiment; Hikari considered her fun to work with; she was so enthusiastic! “You’re doing great,” Maya said, taking various readings and measuring plants.
Hikari could feel her body tingle gently when they played; she’d come to associate this with… whatever they were doing.
She got the general impression NERV didn’t actually understand how it worked, just that it did. But Hikari was a practical woman who accepted that if something worked, it worked. As long as it worked regularly so she could rely on it, that was fine, though explanations were good.
When they finished, Shinji said to Hikari, “I don’t know if Touji told you but his birthday is the day after Christmas, coming up in a few weeks. So I… um… You’d buy him a Christmas present, right?”
Hikari wished she knew for sure what her relationship with Touji was. They spent a lot of time together but she also seemed to end up spending a lot of time around Kevin. Kissing Kevin. And others… She enjoyed kissing a lot but she also spent a lot of time worrying she enjoyed it too much.
She pushed the thought aside. “Of course.” Now she had to figure out what to get him.
****************
Touji passed the ball to Lars, who passed the ball to Leon Barth, who passed to Kevin, who then passed to George Duhr. George leaped and took the shot.
B team, their foes, groaned, and their coach blew the whistle. “Nice job, everyone. Suzuhara, come with me a minute. Sanderson, you get out and take his place. B team gets the ball and tries running the play.”
Touji came over to the coach nervously; their coach was a big man in his forties; he’d once been a great basketball player. He’d played in the Olympics.
And gotten skunked by the Americans and the Russians, but he was still proud of his career.
“Whassup, Coach?” Touji asked.
“I heard you and Berg had another fight,” he said to Touji, sitting down in the stands with him.
“It was just a little fight,” Touji said, worried he was about to get suspended.
“You can’t have any more fights with her. Neither their team nor ours can afford to have either of you in detention now that the season has started. Which means learning to not kill each other,” he said. “I don’t know why you two fight and I don’t care whose fault it is. Can it or I will have to let you go since I won’t be able to rely on you.”
Touji grimaced. “Yes, sir.” Damn you, Berg, he thought. If you get me thrown off the team, I am going to kill you.
****************
“Why do you two fight all the time?” Asuka asked Olga. Olga, Hikari, and Sam were all at Olga’s place, playing Space Piracy IV; with four people, they were gaining ground on it. Olga was determined to beat it before Touji’s group did.
“Because he’s a punk and he won’t shut his damn mouth,” Olga said grimly, loading up the next scenario.
“He is not a punk. He’s a gentleman with me,” Hikari said to Olga. Her friendship with Touji had been a sore point in Asuka calling them both together to hang out with her of late, since the trip to Nuremberg. Sam, thankfully, was neutral in the Olga/Touji war.
She and Sam couldn’t see each other as much as she wanted; she wasn’t the homeroom teacher for his class this year so they could go out, since she was his age; she’d made sure to clear this with the school. However, she had a ton of work so a lot of evenings, they couldn’t see each other or he just studied things while she did school work. She had duties.
But really, that applied to all of them, except Sam, who had no special duties unlike Olga’s basketball or Hikari being a class rep or Asuka’s own teaching.
Tonight, though, she’d cleared her decks and they were having a good time.
“He mouths off all the time about my homeland and how I’m a big thug,” Olga said, grimacing and trying not to crush her controller.
The game now started and they started blowing up things while Asuka tried to figure out how to get those two not to kill each other.
***************
Leon Barth was one of Touji’s classmates; he was probably the best player on the team, but he also tended to hog the ball, whereas Touji, who had done that a lot the previous year, had learned his lesson. Thus, he got to watch Leon get chewed out for ball-hogging by the coach, while he got praised. He felt less jumpy about losing his position after that.
It shouldn’t be that hard to avoid Berg, anyway.
Except some clever person put the boy and girl’s changing rooms (and connected showers) right next to each other, though there was no internal connection. So right as he came out, fresh and clean, there was Berg, coming out with Heilwig and some girls he didn’t know as they weren’t in 8-C.
Her eyes pierced him with their regard and he glared back, but kept his mouth shut, looking around to see if Hikari was here. Sometimes she joined him in going jogging after practice. Sometimes she had class rep stuff or other things going on. And sometimes she was smooching on Kevin; he didn’t know what was up with those two. They said they weren’t dating but they seemed to like kissing.
He suddenly wondered what Berg would be like, kissing. Probably she’d suck the oxygen right out of your lungs and you’d die. Good b-ball player but a total bitch. What a waste.
She snorted at him and then Heilwig dragged her off, whispering to her.
What bug crawled up her ass, Touji wondered.
**************
“You have to avoid him,” Heilwig reminded Olga. “So you don’t get thrown off the team by the coach! So standing there, waiting for him to provoke you is kind of *stupid*,” she said, her voice turning very harsh at the end.
“I was trying to avoid provoking him!” Olga protested.
Heilwig was extremely dubious of this, knowing Olga too well.
They put their jackets on; it was very cold by this time of year now. And they got snow a lot, though the ground was currently clear.
“How’s things with your family?” Olga asked Heilwig as they trudged through the cold.
“Anna’s still cranky, Dad’s still cranky with her and worried about me.” Heilwig sighed. “Kensuke keeps hitting on me.”
“Kensuke hits on everyone,” Olga said, shaking her head. “Everyone in our class who isn’t either some kind of perv or thinks they’re God’s gift to women is taken.”
Heilwig looked thoughtful. “Hmm, I wouldn’t say Conrad is either of those, though he may just be careful about perving. But he only cares about gambling and gossiping.”
“He’s a great card player,” Olga said. “Remember Asuka’s birthday party?”
“Yes, you two stomped everyone until Rei and Hikari teamed up to stop you,” Heilwig said enviously. “Ernie tried but neither of us is good at cards. Now pool, there I’m pretty good,” she said proudly.
“We could go shoot some pool,” Olga said, looking around in hopes somewhere to do so was nearby.
“Dad’s paranoid that if he can’t see me, I’m jumping some boy,” Heilwig said, kicking a rock as she walked along. “I’m not going to do what Anna did but half the time he acts like I am. I wish he trusted me like your Dad trusts you.”
“I guess being an only child has its advantages,” Olga said.
“Sometimes having Anna as a sister is great and sometimes it means I’m having to prove every minute I won’t make her mistakes,” Heilwig said wearily. “Anyway, let’s talk something less depressing.”
This meant, of course, basketball.
They were still talking basketball when they heard a man yell; they turned and saw him fall down and hurl his bookbag into the air; it promptly dumped file folders full of paper into the air and the wind now began to scatter them hither and yon as he landed on the ground and yelled in pain.
“Are you okay?” Heilwig said, rushing to his side. Olga began chasing papers, trying to recover them.
While he wore slacks and a nice buttoned shirt with a tie, he actually was only a few years older than them, they now realized, with short black hair, his blue eyes slightly unfocused as he tried to pull himself together. He was quite tall, and now his hands were scraped up and bleeding a little. His pants were going to need drycleaning themselves. A necklace dangled out of his shirt where three buttons had torn themselves loose, silver in color and shaped like wings around a central emerald. It drew Heilwig’s eyes until she made herself stop staring at it.
Heilwig felt her pulse speed up and she became embarrassed. “Are you okay?” she said again.
“Thank you,” he said. “I… oww… I can walk but…” He studied his hands, then his pants and grimaced. “I’m Berthold Koenig. It’s nice to meet you both.”