Aozaki Aoko [620-621] (Patreon)

Chapter 620: Gentleman Beast

Once Asuka was also standing on the stone disc, Gray placed her hand on the small round plate atop the central pillar.

The small plate's design was unusually ornate—or rather, its added value was terrifyingly high, because it was inlaid with a ring of multicolored gemstones. Asuka was sure they were real.

Gray carefully read the letters beside the gems, then turned the small plate. The pillar made clicking sounds and finally stopped at a certain mark.

"That'll do," Gray said with satisfaction. "Hold my hand. The trip ahead might make a newcomer a bit dizzy, okay?"

"What do you mean dizzy—?" Before Asuka could ask why it would be dizzy, her vision was engulfed in light, followed by a bout of vertigo.

"Ulp!"

When the light faded, Asuka couldn't help dropping to her knees and dry heaving. She didn't feel so sick that she'd vomit up her breakfast, but it was far from pleasant.

"My first time using it, I was about the same as you," Gray said as she gently patted Asuka's back and helped her up. "You'll get used to it. It's like getting carsick on a bus—puke a few times and you get used to it~"

Asuka was speechless. In what way did a dizziness-inducing stone disc have anything in common with a bus? But when she raised her head to look around, she was stunned again by the scene before her.

She and Gray were surrounded by a bustling crowd.

That might not be precise—they were in the central area of a thriving town, the hub of a commercial street that barely fell short of being deafeningly lively.

"Make way, make way! People can't come through the teleport behind you!" a clearly hot-tempered dwarf uncle called to Gray and Asuka—they were apparently blocking the way.

"Ah, sorry," Gray bowed in apology and pulled Asuka aside. "It's this girl's first time using the teleportation array. She doesn't know much yet…"

"No worries, no worries. It's just that we've got a lot of customers this morning—we just rushed a batch of goods in from the warehouse," the hot-tempered dwarf uncle waved her off, then looked at Asuka. "Is this kid new? Haven't seen her before."

"I—I'm Asuka!" she hurried to introduce herself, then asked, "Uncle, are you a dwarf?"

"Dwarf?" The dwarf uncle scratched his beard, mulling over the word. "I'm not some dwarf. If you had to say, I used to be a fairy of the Earth Clan.

"The most famous member of our clan now would be Her Majesty's fairy knight, the Black Knight, Ector."

Huh? Fairy? Like Sister Melusine, a Dragon Fairy, or the tiny winged girls who flutter in the air? That image didn't match the big, bearded, dwarf-like uncle at all.

"The kind of fairy you're talking about exists too," Gray said as she held Asuka's hand and strolled down the street, explaining as they walked. "Sister Melusine is one of a kind—and strictly speaking, she's not a fairy, but a dragon modeled after a fairy."

"As for the tiny winged girls, those are probably of the Wing Clan. There aren't too many of them, but their chieftain, Murian, is a powerful fairy with a Fairy Domain."

"Fairy Domain… what's that?" Never mind the teleport array that could move you from a mountain to a town in an instant—the diverse fairies around them had Asuka dizzy already. New terms kept popping up one after another; it was getting beyond her.

"Have you played video games?" Gray thought for a moment. "A Fairy Domain is like game rules set by the host. If you move within a fairy's domain, you're forced to obey those rules… Ah, we're here."

Asuka looked up. They were standing before a tailor shop with a lovely glass display window and a finely crafted wooden sign. Inside the window were several mannequins dressed in gorgeous, beautiful outfits.

Asuka thought the clothes were certainly beautiful, but if you wore them in the outside world, you'd probably make the news soon enough… as an oddball doing performance art in bizarre outfits.

But at this level of opulence, it was just right for this fairy-tale world. Come to think of it, Gray's dress was both gorgeous and stylish. So nice…

While Asuka was wondering whether she could get a dress in Gray's style, the shop door opened and an unusually tall figure walked out.

No—rather than a person, it was a wolf walking upright.

Startled, Asuka stumbled backward, but soon felt a warm, furry, strong hand supporting her back so she didn't fall.

"My apologies. I must have frightened you," said the wolf face, covered in beautiful fur. His voice sounded like that of a very cultured, mature middle-aged man, making Asuka think of her father she had never met.

"Are you here for clothes too, Uncle Wryneck?" Gray asked.

"Yes. I had a new set of formal wear custom-made by Habetrot," said the one called Wryneck as he withdrew the hand supporting Asuka and straightened up. "And this young lady—is she your new friend, Gray?"

"She is," Gray said happily. "Asuka just arrived in the Land of Sapphire Blossoms. We met at the dinner last night at Sister Alice's manor, and we arranged with Habenyan to make Asuka a new outfit!"

"Then go right in. Habetrot's shop looks quite busy. If you get your order placed a bit earlier, you'll get your clothes sooner, too."

With that, Wryneck left. Only then did the dumbstruck Asuka snap out of it. The person just now had shocked her no less than realizing she'd come to a fairy-tale world.

How to describe him? A wild and towering figure who could nonetheless be called elegant—a beastly gentleman in a finely tailored suit. Wryneck made Asuka think of the prince-turned-beast from Beauty and the Beast.

"Gray, Mr. Wryneck… he wasn't cursed by that witch Aoko and turned into what he is now, was he?" Asuka asked cautiously.

"Of course not!" Gray laughed. "Uncle Wryneck is also a fairy. He's the champion of the Fang Clan—their leader—more or less like Miss Murian, the leader of the Wing Clan."

Asuka nodded, half-understanding. She wanted to ask more questions, but by then Habetrot had noticed them and opened the door, beckoning Asuka and Gray inside.

Chapter 621: Shikinami Series Unit-02

Let's set aside Asuka, who's happily enjoying herself on the fairy commercial street. Aoko still had some business to handle—one of which was cleaning up the aftermath of kidnapping Asuka.

Running into Asuka in the park was pure coincidence, but Aoko also noticed how off her name felt, as well as issues in her memories.

To be precise, Aoko discovered that most of this Asuka's memories were replicas—or rather, that she was an Asuka fraction, a body infused with the genuine soul but one that was incomplete.

As for the issue within her soul, Aoko secretly checked with Touko. As a master of souls, Touko absolutely wouldn't be wrong; that subtle mismatch between soul and body would never escape the Third Magician's eyes.

But Aoko didn't know why this would be the case. In the various otherworld bodies she had observed, Asuka's tragedies came in all sorts of flavors, yet none involved the Rei Ayanami-style repeated body replacements—whereas the Asuka she'd met clearly was different.

Which is to say, in this cycle, SEELE had pulled a stunt with the pilots for some purpose. If you follow this line, Asuka Shikinami Langley was actually the first selected EVA-compatible candidate. It was only due to a later training-process mishap that Gendo, using the same technology, created Rei Ayanami, demoting Asuka to the Second Child.

In Aoko's memories from her previous life, records on this point were fuzzy—partly because she didn't watch that carefully back then, and partly because Hideaki Anno kept playing with narrative tricks and stream-of-consciousness. So now she could only combine records from various otherworld bodies to infer the current situation.

Asuka Langley Soryu definitely existed. Since SEELE could leverage the Moon to exit the cycle and reset, after countless loops they ultimately abandoned the original body for some reason and used it as a template to mass-produce the Shikinami-series Asukas.

That's right—the Shikinami series.

Aoko temporarily referred to the sisters of the Asuka she'd met as the Shikinami series because, since the Asuka in her hands only possessed a portion of Soryu Asuka's soul, the remaining portions must be housed in other Shikinami-series bodies.

SEELE's final plan could be guessed from this: mass-produce—train separately—make them compete—then select the best to obtain the EVA Unit-02 pilot.

Pick the strongest Asuka Shikinami Langley, then eliminate the other failures, finally concentrate all soul fragments into one person to become the true Asuka.

As for Asuka's mother, Kyoko—she had died long ago during the activation test of Unit-02, which was still under construction at the time. Her soul merged into Unit-02, while the Shikinami series' memories regarding mother were mostly Soryu Asuka's, with a smaller portion fabricated by SEELE.

The process was essentially raising venomous insects in a jar—showing that the codgers at SEELE had precious little humanity left. Or rather, those in high places never had much humanity to begin with. To them, neither Asuka's happiness nor their own lives weighed more than the Human Instrumentality Project.

Having sorted this out, Aoko returned to Paris in the outside world and went straight for the institution responsible for training her Asuka.

Before this, Aoko had tried to conduct a prophecy ritual directly targeting key SEELE facilities and personnel, but the ritual was blocked—meaning that from facilities at the level of something like the Bethany Base onwards, there were large-scale occult wards strong enough to thwart reconnaissance by a legendary magus and a Magician.

Even breaking such wards would take time, and Touko was currently working on it.

But in the face of the might of magic, ordinary people in these grassroots research outfits had no ability to resist—or rather, the SEELE members who could resist weren't stationed here. They hadn't pushed the costs down to every last associated base.

With suggestive sorcery, Aoko easily learned everything about this outfit: SEELE's special-agency NERV, French Branch—Shikinami-Type CODE 02 Training Team.

To simulate Soryu Asuka's growth environment, this team had constructed various micro-ecospheres across Europe—basically full life setups from childhood onward: living facilities, schools, interpersonal networks, all pre-arranged and designed.

Looking at these researchers devoid of guilt, Aoko very much wanted to clean them out in one fell swoop. But considering the follow-up plan, she held back and altered their memories.

These people had already reported the disappearance of Asuka No. 2 to SEELE, and SEELE's instruction was: find Shikinami-series Unit-02 within the deadline; if not found, trigger the self-destruct device in Unit-02's body to reclaim the lost soul.

A neat plan—too bad Touko had secretly performed a thorough inside-and-out check on Asuka last night and easily extracted the device. Asuka-02 was now free.

Speaking of that self-destruct device, Aoko found it fascinating—not a poison-release or explosive mechanism to kill a person, but something leveraging occult principles to meltdown the AT Field that maintains a human form in the EVA world, turning the body into a puddle of nothing but orange juice (LCL).

This was hugely helpful for Touko's understanding of the world's mystic system—at least it advanced her AT Field research significantly. Knowledge was still limited, but progress was progress.

Asuka-02 would return to this institution, but Aoko had arranged all the follow-up.

With magic, Aoko would help Asuka-02 calmly accept the whole truth about herself, return to the training institute, fully leverage SEELE's educational resources to improve, then stand out from all Shikinami-series candidates and become the EVA Unit-02 pilot.

As for everyone in the institute—they had all become Aoko's puppets on strings, using techniques Touko had provided, which were very handy.

Under Aoko's orders, these people would continue reporting progress to SEELE—but only the parts Aoko wanted SEELE to know.

Asuka would also be much freer there. Aoko would grant her access to the Land of Sapphire Blossoms; outside of classes and training, she could return to the New Kuonji Residence at any time to live with them.

Thinking this through, Aoko felt quite satisfied with her arrangements. The next first step was to go home, find Asuka, and help her calmly accept all of this.