“Asuka, Asuka, you have to come right now!” Karin said to Asuka, who felt confused how Karin was calling her when she didn’t have a cellphone. Someone named ‘Chang Delun’.
“Karin, did you take someone’s cellphone?” she said chidingly.
“I’m using Linnie’s phone! She’s stuck on the roof and afraid to come down!” Karin said. “We were playing Mary Cotter and she somehow flew and now she’s stuck!”
Asuka felt her gut turn to acid. If a child could make those books’ magic work somehow… “Where’s her father?”
“He’s on duty and didn’t answer his phone,” Karin said. “Hurry, bring a ladder!”
Asuka would bring more than a ladder.
******************
Neon Genesis Silmarillion (an EVA/Tolkien Legendarium fusion)
Interlude IV Between Book III and IV: Do You Believe in Magic?
******************
“It’s going to be okay,” Asuka said; Chang Linhua was a nine year old girl with long black hair and brown eyes, wearing cold-weather clothing, thankfully; the snow had melted, but it was still very cold, the day after New Years’. Asuka had been lifted up in a bucket of the kind used by utility workers on power lines, telephone poles and the like.
She clambered onto the tile roof of the apartment building. Thankfully, it didn’t slant too much and so the child hadn’t fallen as she laid there, clutching a broom.
“I’m scared,” Linhua said, crying and clearly terrified out of her mind.
“It’s going to be okay,” Asuka said gently. Asuka easily picked Linhua up and put the broom in the bucket, then climbed in. “We’re good,” she said on her headset in the helmet she was wearing. It would do little good if she somehow fell, but now she wondered…
They’d test that later.
Karin ran over and hugged her friend tightly and started crying with her.
This is going to become hideous if she isn’t special, Asuka thought. *Hideous*.
****************
Linhua couldn’t make the broom fly again; Asuka wasn’t sure if she was too scared of it or too anxious or what. Maybe it was a freak surge of power. But she couldn’t take that chance.
But with a little coaching… Karin could if she dressed up in her Halloween costume of one of the characters from the series.
Asuka stared at the levitating broom, watched the power readouts on the equipment she and Ritsuko and Maya had set up and shivered, wishing she could put the genie back in the bottle.
“Can I ride it?” Karin asked hopefully.
“Your mother would crucify me,” Asuka said. And for once, Asuka felt she would deserve the crucifixion. “Karin, stay here with Maya. I have to find your mother.”
“She’s your mother too,” Karin said chidingly.
Asuka ran.
**************
“I don’t even look like me,” Private Josephine Rice said, listening to the machines in her infirmary room ping and beep and bleeble while she studied herself in a mirror. She had curly black hair now and darker skin (but very even in tone, her freckles were gone) and was a little taller and… she was still a woman at least. “Everything’s so loud and bright.”
“Your senses are keener now,” Barbara Langley said to her. “Do you think you can stand up?”
She stood up and immediately regretted it, being in a hospital gown. Especially now that the older Langley girl charged in. Asuka the Pilot. “Barbara, I have bad news… sort of bad… I kind of need to take you to the lab right now,” she said urgently. “Sorry, Private, this is about her daughter.”
“Has something happened to Karen? Is she on the base? Why didn’t the Changs call me?” Barbara immediately panicked.
“I’m okay… maybe…”
“I’ll call someone since you finally woke up,” Asuka said. “I’m sorry but this is urgent… you don’t need medicine or anything, right?”
“I’m fine,” Josephine said, but she didn’t know if she was ever going to be ‘fine’ again.
****************
“Asuka, don’t experiment with my daughter without asking me!” Barbara said angrily to her in the lab. “And Dr. Akagi, I expect better of you.”
They all looked embarrassed and she wondered how they could be so thoughtless.
“It’s okay, it was cool! I want to fly now! But I won’t get stuck on the roof like Linnie did,” Karin said proudly.
Barbara held her tightly and wondered what this world was coming to.
*****************
“I’m sorry none of us were here,”Ritsuko said to Private Rice, studying her new readings. “Even Shinji couldn’t tell for sure when you would wake.”
“What is happening to me?” she asked softly. “Am I going to die?”
“No, but you’ve undergone a shift,” Ritsuko said softly. “Recessive genetics have activated. You are probably struggling with keener senses, right?” She studied the soul scan and hoped Rei would get here soon.
“Yeah, everything’s a little overwhelming, which is terrible for a sniper,” Private Rice said, studying her strangely smooth hands. They didn’t feel like *her* hands.
I have to be more professional now that I am not on vacation, Ritsuko thought. She felt mortified that no one had been checking on Private Rice or thought to *ask Barbara Langley *first* before conducting experiments with her *child*.
Being flighty and fun and just… it had felt so wonderful to cut loose and just have fun with Lloyd but she could *not* get sloppy at work.
Ritsuko tried to control her general frustration with herself as she studied the readings.
Rei now entered. “Sorry, Mother, I had to…” Her eyes widened.
“That’s bad, I take it,” Private Rice said, half-studying Rei, half trying to study the machines she clearly didn’t understand.
“I thought it might come to this,” Rei said softly, coming over to her, holding out a hand.
Ritusko could feel them make psychic contact as they clasped hands but she didn’t butt in. Rice’s Eldar heritage had awakened to some degree. Rei could help her with the physical aspects. It wasn’t a total change, but she would definitely be different than before.
HALO changed everyone it touched; she could see the changes in Rei. Seeing Rei busy making out with one of her boyfriends, Bert… she’d lectured Rei on it but Rei insisted they were all just friends.
Ritsuko rubbed her forehead and sighed. She understood how Rei felt, having gone through all that in college.
Messily.
But sometimes people only learned if you let them drive into the wall.
She’d probably lose both of them, but you had to learn through pain sometimes.
She ran tests. Improved memory. Keener senses. Faster reflexes. More pain resistance. Ritsuko shivered. If they could do this for all the soldiers, it would be a huge benefit… but she didn’t want to try to mutate people even for the war. And it was too unpredictable.
“The good news is that the process is over and as long as you avoid HALO, nothing else will happen,” Ritsuko said to her. “Rei can help you train to deal with the changes.”
“Thank you,” Private Rice said. “I just… I guess this isn’t so bad, compared to some stories.”
“You acted with honorable intention and so you were protected,” Rei said.
Ritsuko extremely doubted this. Though given how World Two worked… maybe Rei was right.
They had more tests to run.
**************
Adults, thankfully, couldn’t make it work without rings. Ring-bearers who knew better could make it work a little, especially Rei and Shinji.
“Maybe we could get some of our classmates,” Shinji said.
“I suspect the young kids will be best but we can’t risk testing them,” Ritsuko said, sighing.
“I agree,” Asuka said, wishing she’d thought to ask Barbara, who had chewed her out and for once, she’d taken it. Karin… You had to protect kids, bratty as they could be.
Unless it was Edgar, anyway.
****************
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Kevin said, studying the costume and the wand; the costume was the official green and red checkered robes of Harlequin House, the House of Merry Pranksters.
“It was chosen specifically to fit you,” Dr. Akagi said, then put her hand over her mouth, clearly about to laugh, then looking embarrassed. She cleared her throat. “Anyway, you can throw it on over your clothing. I know, this is ridiculous, but we need you to try.”
“Just think of it as a joke,” Hikari said, rubbing her forehead. She wore the green and brown tortoiseshell robes of Turtle House, whose motto was ‘Slow but steady wins the race’.
“A joke,” he said thoughtfully. He did enjoy the movies, and his sister loved the books. He donned the robes, then called for a can with a poptop. “Hikari, I need you to pull the tab when I say to do it,” he told her.
She nodded and went and got a can of iced coffee. He imagined a scene from the movie where “Merry” Walter (a Harlequin, of course) had pulled a fast one on the annoying custodian of the school. “SerpentisCreo!” he shouted, tapping the can with the wand and snickering; he felt kind of weird as he did it, the movie playing in his mind. Then he handed the can to Hikari. “Pull it.”
A cloth snake in Harlequin colors sprang out of the can; it was sodden with coffee and only got halfway out. But everyone in the room – Kevin, Hikari, Dr. Akagi, Rei, Asuka, and Maya – all shivered at the sight of it.
The coffee should have all turned into multiple serpents but getting even *one* to happen…
The cloth serpent now began to slowly dissolve in the coffee. “It’s losing power and as it does so, it’s turning back to normal,” Maya said softly.
They soon established Kevin could pull any of the tricks he remembered from the movie if they were related to House Harlequin’s arsenal, though it came out only part way and quickly faded.
This was enough to make him shiver anyway and he could tell the scientists were not happy. “How does this even work?” he asked softly.
“The world is breaking,” Dr. Akagi said softly. This made him shiver. “Hikari, let him use your ring.”
The ring made the world turn so crisp and beautiful; sometimes Hikari would share her perceptions with him and it made him shiver. Especially when they made love and he resolved to NOT THINK ABOUT IT because he was surrounded by telepaths.
Hikari wore a crown and Rei a tiara and Dr. Akagi wore a fancy yellow dress and a wizard hat and even Maya and Asuka looked regal. He feared he looked like an idiot… but when you want people to laugh, that could be good.
“Can I try something?” he asked, as now he had an idea. “Rei, I need you to help me.”
“What is it?” Dr. Akagi asked.
“I just want to try a joke with this on,” he said. “Just a normal joke.”
Asuka raised an eyebrow. “We don’t have time for funny business.”
Maya laughed loudly, then put a hand over her mouth. Then Dr. Akagi laughed softly.
Rei’s eyes flickered a moment. “Yes. I will do it.”
So Rei touched his mind and he reached out to everyone and let them see the images in his mind as he told one of his favorite routines, Bill Cosby’s Noah routine. He could hear Cosby in his mind, speaking with him, and Rei speaking it as well and everyone began to laugh and laugh and laugh; he felt like had the few times he’d really felt holy in church, that sense of something greater coming down into you and filling you and spilling out into the world. That sense that for one precious moment, the hole in your soul you sometimes forgot you had (if you were as good at distracting yourself as Kevin was) was gone. That *this* was how it was meant to be all the time and you’d fucked it up somehow.
For Kevin, who tried hard to forget that his birth had essentially broken his parents’ former lives, this release was a blessing beyond measure. He was laughing and crying at once and he could feel it, feel himself a vessel for laughter and Hikari was staring and smiling at once at him, her hand in his and they all laughed, joy blasting through them like a blue norther hitting the Great Plains.
Rei was laughing, actually laughing, even Dr. Akagi was laughing and he felt he could die now if he had to. His life was complete.
He felt kind of blown over afterwards, but in a good way. Like he did after they won a big game. Where you knew you’d accomplished something.
“That was much more powerful than the Harlequin routine,” Maya reported, studying the monitor attached the strange mixture of crystal, screens, wires and other things which made up the funky scanner they had pointed at him.
“I saw Vana’s power,” Rei said softly. “I believe we’ve found another Talent.”
Kevin tugged his ear nervously. “Seriously? I mean it was a really good laugh…” But there had been that feeling. The feeling of triumph. And man, I made Rei laugh, he thought.
“We’ll want to do more tests and I will talk to you and your parents,” Dr. Akagi said.
“I’d love to have you with us,” Hikari said, smiling at him; she looked so beautiful like this and he shivered. Everything was beautiful, even the weird machines, glimmering with light. Hikari’s eyes were blue as the sky at noon and he could see tiny birds flying in that sky and then she kissed him.
He knew in his heart he couldn’t say no to the Queen of the Sky.
******************
“So what exactly does it mean to be in the program?” Louise asked. “It means piloting, right?” she said very softly. She had no proof but it was pretty well known there was a connection.
And the children in the program wore those special rings. Which are a subject of much rumor.
“Possibly, but it basically means development of psychic talents,” Dr. Akagi said; they were all sitting around the living room table at the Sarkowski house. Rei sat by her, looking slightly stoned as she often did, though Louise knew Rei would never do drugs. “We would like to test Melinda as well.”
“So it’s hereditary,” Andrew said, relaxing slightly and straightening up in his chair.
“Yes,” Dr. Akagi said. “We don’t fully understand it but there are clear genetic factors.”
Louise thought about the destruction of part of the downtown. But then, her kids were in danger just by living here. “We’ll have to pray over this.”
“Kevin, what do you want?” Andrew asked him.
“I’d rather just live a normal life but I can’t… Hikari and Rei and Lars are all knee-deep in this and I can’t leave them in the lurch,” Kevin said, slumping in his chair. “And I have to admit, being psychic would be kind of cool.”
“And dangerous,” Louise said, frowning. “Why does it have to be children?”
“Because only those born since the Vanishing become Talents normally,” Dr. Akagi said. “I only simulate it with my Ring.” Though now she studied her ring hand, frowning at it.
“I’ll chew it,” Melinda said, suddenly breaking her own silence. “Boo it. View it. Moo it.” She started to become agitated and Dr. Akagi took her hand and suddenly Melinda relaxed. “I…” She was clearly afraid to speak now.
“It’s okay,” her mother said, taking her other hand. “I love you, honey. God gives us all crosses to bear. But he gives us the strength to bear them if we ask for them too.” Her voice was kind and sad.
Dr. Akagi made an odd noise, but when Louise looked at her, she seemed to be okay. “Is something wrong?”
“I banged my foot,” Dr. Akagi said, looking tense. This seemed odd to Louise because Dr. Akagi was sitting in a comfy chair and her leg didn’t seem to have moved, but she decided not to press the matter.
Andrew now spoke up. “It’s pretty clear God intended them to join the program or they wouldn’t have this gift. As I expect that if Kevin can do it, so can Melinda.”
Kevin grimaced. “Way to kick me in the balls, Dad,” he said sullenly.
Melinda said, “He didn’t bean it that way. Preen it.” She started to shake in frustration again.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Andrew protested but Kevin stared off at the TV, which was turned off. “I just meant it seems unlikely only one of you would get it.”
“It is possible only one of them did,” Dr. Akagi said, sighing, but then she relaxed again. “But we will see. I’ll test Melinda tomorrow.”
Louise didn’t know what to think. But her husband was probably right, it likely was God’s will. And it wouldn’t hurt to have her tested. “Okay, tomorrow, then.”
They now made the arrangements and Dr. Akagi left with Rei, while Louise went to pray to God for guidance.