Inside Euro Unit-02, which Unit-01 had bound in place, Asuka woke up.
"Where... am I?"
Her head felt heavy and throbbed faintly, and every bone in her body creaked as though it had been crushed.
No, she actually had no body at all.
The EVA from the Germany Branch was like a toy, operated through a Dummy Entry Plug.
External remote control let Asuka's soul ride along as if she were on a slide. All she had to do was sit down, without ever thinking about how to fight.
Euro Unit-02 had originally been Unit-02's "secondhand" body, forcibly driven through a powered QR Sigum connector.
All its previous candidates had their records erased after suffering physical and mental "trauma."
But Asuka was different. The first time she boarded it, she had felt a warm presence within her.
"It must be Mother," she had vaguely assured herself.
That presence needed no words. With an impression like body warmth alone, it sheltered her mind and kept the physical pain outside.
But now, the Dummy Entry Plug's system had been hacked and shut down, and the EVA's control program had gone haywire.
Asuka could actually control the unit directly with her will, yet her consciousness was as chaotic as shards of a broken mirror.
Feeling the faint fluctuations coming through the soul connection, she instinctively called out, "Mama."
More than ten years ago, as the orphaned daughter of Kyoko, Unit-02's creator, she had met Dr. Yui Ikari, who had traveled to Hamburg at the invitation of Germany's NERV branch.
And her family.
A husband and father who looked quite awkward, Gendo Ikari.
And a smug-looking brat who liked to act profound, Shinji Ikari.
Back then, she had watched that happy family from a distance through a window.
No, more precisely, it had been