Chicago train station, waiting hall.
Sunlight passed through the dome's stained glass, casting long patches of light. Over the PA, a languid English voice announced one train delay after another.
Lu Mingfei leaned against a bench, chewing a cold Subway sandwich. Nono sat beside him in Bose noise-canceling headphones, her long legs propped on her suitcase. Every so often, she turned her head to glance at him out of the corner of her eye.
Lu Mingfei suddenly stopped chewing. His gaze passed over several rows of empty seats and fixed on a corner.
A homeless man lay there with a copy of the Chicago Tribune over his face, wrapped in a battered military greatcoat.
Lu Mingfei opened his backpack, took out a military ration, and walked straight over.
A few steps away, he stopped, raised his hand, and hurled the rock-hard biscuit at the man's chest.
Smack!
The newspaper flew off instantly.
A rough, broad hand shot out of the coat and caught the biscuit cleanly in midair.
"Holy shit! Who's throwing concealed weapons?!"
A young white man sat up, his hair a tangled mess, and looked around in alarm.
"Eat it," Lu Mingfei said. "High-calorie. It'll keep you going for a day."
The young man swallowed, fumbled the foil open, and wolfed it down, mumbling through mouthfuls, "Brother! You're my guardian angel! I'm Fingel, a veteran senior in my eighth year at Cassell who still hasn't graduated! Fate brought us together, so how about lending me another ten bucks for a Coke to wash this down?"
High heels tapped against the floor. Nono strolled over and planted herself in front of Lu Mingfei without ceremony.
"Fingel, if you dare scam money out of a freshman, I'll post pictures of you streaking through this station on the Nightwatch Forum."
"When did I ever go streaking?" Fingel froze with the biscuit at his mouth. He looked up, saw that dazzling red hair, and shuddered, instinctively pulling his greatcoat tighter.
"The... the red-haired witch? What are you doing here?!" Fingel wailed, then turned to Lu Mingfei in anguish. "Brother, what crime did you commit to make her escort you personally?"
"His name is Lu Mingfei. The principal personally designated him S-rank," Nono said coldly.
"Pfft-cough, cough!" Fingel sprayed biscuit crumbs everywhere, pounding his chest as he coughed violently. He stared at Lu Mingfei as though he were a monster. "S-rank?! A living S-rank?! You're the Chinese freshman who's had Professor Guderian running all over the world like a bull in heat?"
Ignoring the biscuit crumbs Fingel had sprayed across the floor, Lu Mingfei studied the tall man.
"Eight years without graduating?" Lu Mingfei asked quietly. "What did you do to get demoted? Desert under fire, or disobey orders?"
"What do you mean, desert under fire? I just failed too many classes..."
"What matters is that you're alive." Lu Mingfei patted Fingel's broad shoulder.
Fingel stared at him as if he had seen a ghost, then clutched his biscuit and sheepishly squeezed onto the other end of the bench. They sat side by side with three empty seats between them. Standing nearby, Nono looked from one to the other. Somehow, their vibes seemed strangely in tune.
Lu Mingfei looked away, his gaze passing over the crowd to settle on the empty tracks.
After Unit-03 was torn apart, he had thought he would be disposed of as scrap, or that the old lunatic Gendo Ikari would simply detonate his collar.
But Shinji had run away, Asuka was badly injured and in intensive care, and Ayanami's unit needed extensive repairs. So he, an explosive-wearing liability, was shoved back into an entry plug and soaked in LCL every day for synchronization tests.
It was a sick joke, really. The reason the chosen pilots could operate EVA was that the souls of their closest relatives had been fused into the units first, serving as operating systems. That was where synchronization rates came from.
He had no family left. Only after entering Unit-03 had he learned that a soul calling himself his "little brother" had been following him all along.
So every time he established a neural link, he could see Lu Mingze.
Dressed in a little black suit, Lu Mingze sat on a cross, swinging his short legs, his face full of world-weary irritation. "The underlying rules of this shitty place are seriously fucked up! No elemental resonance, fine, but a bunch of ants in lab coats actually dared to strap a bomb around your neck?"
"They want to stay alive too." Lu Mingfei sighed. "Mingze, if that collar really does blow up one day, run if you can. Don't worry about me."
"Run, my ass. We're locked into this deal together." Lu Mingze sneered. "Brother, you know what? I've been thinking about something these past few days-this is so fucking ironic."
"What's ironic?"
"That back home, we're actually people nobody dares mess with."
That day, during their neural link, Lu Mingze spilled everything.
About the Black King Nidhogg, about the White King's rebellion, about the Four Great Monarchs. He said they should have been sitting on thrones, that the whole world belonged to them. With the tone of someone who no longer gave a damn, the little devil laid every card on the table.
"Isn't that fucking priceless? Back home, we're the supreme rulers! Then we come here, and a few bald four-eyes study us like lab rats, and we still have to go hack up those freakish aliens!"
"It's fine. It's all the same."
Dragons or Angels. Sitting on a throne or being stuffed into a cockpit-what difference did it make in the end?
"Whoooo!"
A low whistle sounded from the tunnel. A train emerged and stopped beside the platform, silver lettering spelling CC1000 along its side.
"The school train's here! Thank God, no more sleeping on benches!" Fingel leaped into the air, showing not a trace of his supposedly starving weakness.
"Come on. Our train's here." Nono picked up her suitcase and tilted her head, signaling Lu Mingfei to follow.
Lu Mingfei stood, brushed off the dust, and followed without a word.
The carriage was extravagantly Victorian. Mahogany paneling, dark-gold wall lamps, and carpet thick enough to drown their ankles.
"Mingfei! My Mingfei!"
An ecstatic roar came from the far end of the carriage. A gray-haired old man ran over and seized Lu Mingfei's hand in a death grip, tears actually welling in his eyes.
"I'm Guderian! Your faculty adviser! I knew you would never fail this great mission!" The old man was so excited he looked ready to burst a blood vessel.
Everyone took their seats. Fingel slipped smoothly into a corner and stealthily opened a bottle of champagne.
"Mingfei, we need to go through a little procedure now." Guderian took a deep breath, his expression turning solemn as a priest preparing to read an imperial decree. "Once you sign the agreement, the world you see will be completely overturned. You will touch the truest, bloodiest reality behind history..."
Scratch, scratch.
Without so much as glancing at the densely packed, one-sided clauses, Lu Mingfei flipped to the last page and signed.
"Uh... all right, then." Guderian wiped away his sweat. "Lu Mingfei, what I'm about to show you may cause extreme discomfort, fear, or even hallucinations. This is what we commonly call bloodline awakening!"
"Prepare yourself!" The old man abruptly pulled the black cloth off the wall, revealing a painting.
Guderian held his breath and stared fixedly at Lu Mingfei's face, eagerly awaiting an earth-shattering burst of S-rank spirit vision. Nono leaned forward slightly, ready to restrain his limbs if they started convulsing. In the corner, Fingel even raised his phone to record this miraculous moment.
Lu Mingfei studied the painting.
The canvas was old, its layers of paint cracked, the patterns of scales faintly emerging through the fissures. A black dragon coiled among the roots of a massive tree. Its eyes, built up with some mineral pigment, glimmered dark red beneath the warm lamplight.
He recognized this dragon. Lu Mingze had described it to him countless times during their neural links.
"Nidhogg." He nodded. "The black dragon that gnaws on the World Tree."
Clack. Fingel's phone fell to the floor.
The tragic solemnity on Guderian's face froze instantly. The old man's jaw trembled like a weather vane in the wind. "You... how did you know? Wait, don't you feel anything? No ancient call? No sorrow or anger? No... spirit visions?!"
Looking at the sweat pouring off Guderian, Lu Mingfei sighed inwardly.
Spirit visions? Hallucinations? Mental resonance?
He could hardly explain to the professor that he had once established a deep mental link with an EVA dozens of stories tall, and had also worn an explosive collar around his neck. His mental threshold was no longer exactly normal.
"All right, Professor." Lu Mingfei tapped the enrollment agreement on the table. "Dragons exist, and you kill them. I understand all that. I need you to answer a few questions."
"First, how frequently are dragons awakening at present? Are the intervals between crises measured in years or months?"
"Second, where are the main battlefields? Away from civilians, or has the fighting already spread into densely populated city centers?"
"Third, how are things going on the front lines? What was Cassell College's fatality rate last quarter?"
"That... that's classified." Guderian tugged at his tie, sweating guiltily. "But things aren't that bad right now. The Dragon Kings are still dormant, and the clashes are all small-scale. The battlefields are all in ruins and remote mountains. The fighting definitely hasn't reached the cities. As for the fatality rate... we have excellent medical care. There are casualties, but we're certainly not being mowed down in a one-sided slaughter..."
"Understood. The war hasn't spread yet, and people outside can still go shopping and eat hot pot as usual." Lu Mingfei cut him off and went straight to the conclusion.
"Welcome aboard, junior." Nono poured a glass of champagne and pushed it over.
Lu Mingfei raised the glass and took a sip. The bubbles rushed up his nose.
It had been a long time since he had drunk anything fizzy.
"Better than my last job," he said.