Here's more. I think this might be it.
~~~~~
“What’s up, Toji?” Kenuske Aide looked up as Toji Suzuhara, clad in his trademark jogging suit, took his seat beside him.
“My sister was running late this morning,” he said, slight irritated. “Almost didn’t make it on time. Hikari would have been all over me if I was late again.”
“Not like you wouldn’t enjoy that,” Kensuke muttered with a sly smile.
“What did you say?” How very quickly Toji got defensive when the Class Rep was mentioned.
“Oh nothing.” Kensuke pretended to examine his model gyrocopter. He looked up again when Shinji entered and silently took his seat. “Hey, Toji. Check out the new kid.”
“What about him?”
“He never says anything in class. I’ve never seen him talk to anybody, and here I thought he and that Rei girl would get along fine; they seemed a little off.” The bespeckled teen studied the back of Shinji’s head. He always came in with his music on and turned it off when class started; he never asked questions or said anything otherwise; he ate lunch by himself; when he went home, he walked alone.
“Yeah, well, why do you care, Kensuke?”
“Alone is no way to go through life – “
“That’s exactly what I was thinking, Mr. Aida.” Hikari Horaki possessed the uncanny ability to simply appear out of nowhere at the most inopportune times. Both Kensuke and Toji nearly fell out of their seats.
“W-Where’d you come from, Class Rep?” Toji stammered.
Hikari stood very confidently with her class daybook pressed against her chest and hair pulled back into neat ponytails. “From talking with Shinji. You’re right, Mr. Aida, he doesn’t have any friends, which is why I want you two to talk to him.” He tone left no room for argument. She walked away before either of them could raise dissent.
“Gah! Can you believe her?” Toji made a face at her back.
Kensuke threw his hands up, ignoring how Toji’s eyes lingered on Horaki. “Well, I was going to talk to the new guy anyway.”
“That’s ‘cause you’re a pushover, Kensuke.”
“Maybe.” He shrugged. “Either way, Hikari’s going to be on our case until we do, so I figure the sooner the better. I’ll talk to him at lunch.”
From the way he grinned, Toji had to ask, “You’re not going to ask about that are you?” Kensuke’s grin widened. “You know, you can be a real pain in the ass sometimes.”
-
Shinji sat alone at his desk like he did every day, absently eating the food he had prepared. Misato had packed him a lunch the first day; Shinji had vowed never to let that happen again. He didn’t think he was an excellent cook, but he was much better than her. All she ever prepared was microwavable He was made the house chef very quickly. As far as he knew, Misato hadn’t eaten any of her instant food since then.
Shinji wasn’t much of a daydreamer, but he was sufficiently unfocused enough that he failed to noticed the glasses kid sit down in front of him until he spoke. “Hey there, new kid.”
“Um, hello?”
“How are you liking it here in Tokyo-3?”
“Um, its okay, I guess,” he said slowly, confused. No one had spoken to him in almost two weeks – well, expect Hikari. He didn’t even know this kid’s name and he just sat down and started talking to him like it was nothing.
“Good, good.” He spoke with a dismissive tone that suggested he really didn’t care about the answer. “Listen, new kid, I gotta ask you something.” He sat up straighter and looked over both his shoulders as if checking to see if anyone was eavesdropping on him. Then he leaned in close and indicated Shinji do the same. “Have you ever heard of…jigglyball?”
As a matter of fact, he had heard of it. When he nodded, the other asked, “Where did you hear about it?”
“Some of the other kids were talking about it on my first day. They asked me about if I’d played it, and I said no. Then I asked them what it was. They just laughed and said they couldn’t believe I didn’t know what it was. Why?”
“Want to know a secret? There’s no such thing as jigglyball.” Seeing Shinji’s confused reaction, he only grinned wider. “Name’s Kensuke Aida. Me and Toji – “ He turned around and waved another kid over. This one was dark haired and wore a tack suit instead of the school uniform. “Me and Toji here made the whole thing up. Isn’t that right?”
Toji sighed. “Yeah, it’s true.”
“But if there’s no such thing, then how does everyone know about it?” Shinji finished his food and put his container away.
Before Kensuke answered his question, he asked Toji, “How much time for lunch do we have left?”
Toji leaned back in his chair to see the clock mounted on the wall. “About twenty mintues, but why – Oh no. You didn’t bring that thing to school did you?”
“That’s right.” He stood. “Follow me, Shinji. I’ve got something to show you.”
-
The three of them stood in the center of a large, enclosed space that resembled a basket ball court. At first, Shinji thought they were in the gymnasium. The lighting was certainly shoddy enough. But when he tilted his face up to examine the ceiling, he found himself staring at an exact replica of the court – on the ceiling. In fact, each of the walls had the court lines as well. “What is this place?” Before the words were even out of his mouth, he knew the answer: this was a dream. He tried the test Cobb had taught him, to try and recall how he’d arrived at this location. When he was unable, he focused, and remembered being hooked up to a PASIV in a broom closet in school.
“This,” Kensuke announced, holding a rubber dodgeball in his hands, “is the game Toji and I invented. “First things first: yes, we are in a dream. Specifically, my dream.”
“Bit of a control freak,” Toji whispered to Shinji with a grin.
Kensuke pretended like he hadn’t heard. “The rules are simple. Get this ball into that rotating hoop.” He pointed up. Resting in the exact center of the enclosed area was what looked like a large bucket. It rotated around randomly, obviously to make scoring more difficult. “Any questions?”
“How do you actually get the ball up there?” Shinji asked. The bucket was too high for him (and, he suspected, Kensuke) to simply throw. The entire structure was twenty feet wide, twenty long, and twenty high. A large, drab cube. What lighting didn’t have any visible source.
“That’s the beauty of the dream.” Kensuke squatted down and jumped up with all his strength. To Shinji’s astonishment, he went almost to the rotating basket. He could have made the shot, but kept the ball in his hands. “Physics don’t apply here, at least not the same extent.” He twisted in midair and fell sideways, landing on his feet on the wall to Shinji’s right. “You don’t have much experience with dream-sharing do you?”
“No.” And that was the truth. One Angel battle (which he hadn’t really participated in) and two weeks of Simulation Bodies didn’t really amount to a lot of dream experience.
“No problem. This game’s pretty easy. When we thought this game up, we were trying to think of a name for it. Out of ideas, I said jigglyball as a joke. One of the other kids was walking by and asked what that was. Toji turned around and started shouting at him. ‘What do you mean you don’t what jigglyball is? It’s only the greatest game ever! Don’t tell me you’ve never played it!’ I guess the kid was so scared that he muttered of course and ran away. Couple days later, the whole school was talking about it.”
Toji smiled in spite of himself. “Yeah, I can be pretty intimidating.” Shinji hadn’t thought so but kept that to himself.
“So how did you get a PASIV?” Shinji asked because as far as he knew – that is, according to NERV – such devices were kept out of the public.
“Ah, so you do know a little about dream-sharing.” Shinji suddenly wished he’d kept his mouth shut. Kensuke didn’t press him, though. “My dad works for a big corporation. They use things like the PASIV all the time in corporate espionage. The one I’ve got is an older model. He won’t miss it.”
“So, why did you show this to me?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Toji asked. “You’re the only kid who didn’t pretend to have played a game that doesn’t even exist. Besides, you looked lonely.”
“So, Hikari had absolutely nothing to do with it?” Kensuke teased.
“Hey shut up!” Toji launched himself at Kensuke who jumped away laughing. Toji landed on his side on the wall while Kensuke rolled gracefully to his feet on the ceiling. “Also, this game is kind of boring with only two people.”
“Every man for himself!” Kensuke shouted and jumped for the hoop. Toji got to his feet and jumped after him. They collided in midair and Kensuke dropped the ball. It fell at Shinji’s feet. He picked it up uncertainly. “Go man, go!”
Shinji jumped at the hoop as the two other fell to his left. The hoop was pointed away from him when he reached it but he wasn’t focused on that. Feeling the ground fall away from him was a exhilarating and nerve-wracking experience. Laughing nervously, Shinji continued on and landed on what had been the ceiling. His entire perception of the room shifted, nearly inducing vertigo. It was only worsened upon seeing the two boys leap from wall to floor to wall. He jumped again and dropped the ball into the bucket, scoring a point. Below (above?) he heard the two boys cheer.
“Second try, too,” Kensuke said to Toji. “Took us longer than that.”
“Speak for yourself. I’m a natural. This game is made for athletes, and I am and athlete.” Toji rand and leapt away, catching the ball as the hoop spat it out violently. The momentum carried him to the wall as Shinji fell to the opposing wall. The three of them formed a triangle until Kensuke and Shinji both leapt at Toji; they both missed, sailing under him. Toji landed on top of the rotating hoop and sat there for a minute, letting it spin him around.
“You see, ladies. This game was made for me.” He casually reached behind him and scored. The force of the hoop shooting out the ball knocked him off and sent him spinning away. “It ain’t funny,” he shouted at their laughter.
Kensuke caught the ball and the game continued. He and Toji both scored twice more As Shinji was about to score again, a beep echoed throughout the closed arena. He twisted in midair and landed on his feet on the hoop which had ceased to rotate. “What’s that?”
“The timer,” Toji said. “Lunch is almost over. Kensuke set the timer for fifteen minutes, so that gave us, what, and hour in here?”
“Really?” He remembered being told about time being prolonged within a dream, but realized he hadn’t been told exactly how long. Apparently the ratio was one minute in the real world in four minutes in a dream. Going back to school after this game seemed like a waste; if it were up to Shinji, he would stay down here.
“Ah man,” Toji continued. “I don’t want to listen to the teacher’s lecture now. He’s so boring.”
“I don’t think so,” Kensuke countered.
“Yeah, but you like school.”
For the first time since coming here, Shinji felt like he was falling. The voices of Toji and Kensuke died away, along with the enclosed ball court. Darkness washed over him as the effects of the Somnacin lessened, bringing him back to reality. In the instant between dreaming and waking, Shinji caught a brief vision of a bright light. And it filled him with dread.
-
Class after the dream-sharing was just as dull as it was before. The teacher lectured about Second Impact, the meteor that melted Antarctica and flooded the southern hemisphere, changing the world forever. Shinji was slightly interested when he began talking about the conflicts that resulted from Second Impact – the so named Third World War – but not nearly as much as Kensuke, who was dutifully taking notes on his computer. Toji seemed as disinterested as ever; his laptop was even closed.
Half of the time, the teacher lectured while facing the chalkboard or while looking out the window; Shinji suspected his eyesight wasn’t all that great either, since half the class was asleep anyway. The other half was busy screwing around on their laptop computers. Shinji used the opportunity to send furtive glances at the blue-haired girl sitting by the windows. She sat with her head leaning on one arm, paying about as much attention as the rest of the student.
It was strange. Shinji had never spoken to her in reality, only in an odd half-dream. He didn’t think he could talk to her like he did in his dreams. For all he knew, that wasn’t even the real Rei Ayanami he had spoken to. He couldn’t check his Totem at the moment, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t dreaming at that moment.
A message blinked on his computer. He’d forgotten it was even on. “Do you know her?” From Kensuke.
“I think so,” he typed back.
“From where?”
“A dream.”
“Lucky
”
When Shinji turned back to Rei she was looking at him. The glare she gave him was a mix between curiosity and annoyance. He noticed for the first time that her eyes were red – not bloodshot, but the irises were actually red. She held it for a moment before turning away again.
Kensuke sent him another message. “Looks like she noticed you. You should talk to her after school
”
“I don’t think so…” Shinji sent back.
“Pay attention, you two,” Hikari hissed at them. Kensuke rolled his eyes and went back to taking notes. Shinji cast another glance at Rei and resumed pretending to pay attention. “And you! Wake up!” Shinji heard her slap a desk. Toji came awake violently, falling back in his chair. Those students who were asleep suddenly sat up; the teacher never turned around or broke his monologue.
-
After class, Shinji walked with Kensuke and Toji. He wasn’t sure if they were friends or not; he’d never had any before. It was a strange feeling, being with people whom he felt comfortable around.
“Hey, you guys want to come over to my place?” Kensuke asked.
Toji shook his head. “Nah. My little sister would be home alone until my parents get off work. And that won’t be till late, so I’ve got to go home.”
“Aw man. What about you, Shinji?”
In truth, Shinji wasn’t sure how to respond to the question. It had never been asked of him before. On top of that, he wasn’t sure if he needed permission from Misato or not. He did the only he knew how. “Um, well, I’m not sure.”
“Huh? What’s not to be sure about?”
“Well, I – “
“Shinji.” The three boys turned towards the voice. It was Rei. “Shinji Ikari?” she asked again.
“Y-Yes?”
“May I speak with you?” There was absolutely no tone in her voice, but Shinji knew it was more of a demand than a request.
“Uh, sure. I’ll…see you guys later.”
“Whoa. Lucky!” Kensuke shot him a thumbs-up.
Rei started walking away leaving Shinji to run to catch up. She walked with determination, as if she knew exactly where she was going at all times. “There’s an emergency. We’re needed at NERV headquarters immediately.”
“Is it an Angel?” he asked worriedly.
“I can only assume so.”
Shinji’s mood had until then been relatively high, but the prospect of another Angel battle brought it crashing down. He didn’t want to get back into the cockpit of that thing again. He didn’t want to fight Angels, things that were obviously much stronger than he. Despite all of that, he continued to follow Rei towards another painful battle.
”
”