When he arrived at his css, Shinji, expecting to be swarmed by his cssmates, like after they first learned he was a Pilot, instead received stunned silence. His friend, Kensuke Aida, filled him in through his usual tactless way of speech.
"I told them you were dead."
"What?"
"You're an EVA pilot. Toji didn't st a single test drive without losing a leg and his EVA, and you've barely survived way less brutal stuff…
…They wouldn't tell us anything. I went to your pce, but through the door all I could hear was Miss Misato crying, and Asuka screaming at her. I didn't know what else to think."
Now it was Shinji's turn for stunned silence. Until Kensuke asked
"What happened, bro? Where did you go?"
Shinji had to think for some time about how to reply.
The rest of the students were quiet. Not to listen to their teacher, of course. Only one of the students ever listened to him. They wanted to hear what Shinji had to say. That was another reason for his hesitation.
In the end, he was simply honest.
"My EVA… Unit-01… went berserk. I know that's pretty much old hat at this point, but… this was… different."
Shinji dry swallowed as he remembered.
"It fought… with such brutality. I had no control, and it fought… to protect me. It didn't just repeatedly sm the angel like in my first fight. And it didn't pull it apart like…"
Shinji fought a wave of nausea at his memory of his fight with Toji's EVA.
"It… fought… like a hungry animal, and…
It… She… devoured the angel. Tore its body open and fed while it was alive."
He almost failed to fight the next wave of nausea, gagging into his hand.
"In that moment, I was more in sync with the EVA than I ever had been, and likely ever will be.
Then…
Why then… when I - when it - ate its own brother like a cannibal Caine? Why was then the moment that I was so perfectly synced?"
…
None of the listening students answered. How could they? What would they have to say? For either comfort or condemnation?
"Then… At some point, I don't know exactly when… but I lost… my body. That's the best way I can describe it. My human body no longer existed inside the EVA, but my mind stayed. With no other option, I just… thought…
For a long time, I thought."
…
Kensuke bluntly asked,
"About what?"
"…The angels, mostly. The EVA's, where the enemy comes from, why they attack, what got me into that whole mess in the first pce. About my father who dragged me onto the front lines just so I could make him love me."
Shinji shared more than he meant to, so to sweep it aside he quickly continued.
"After some time, I started arguing with myself. To build a thread of conversation, to not go insane, you know? Eventually I realized that what this other string of thoughts knew was not the same as what I knew. I had to teach it human feeling and sensation. You know; touch, taste, sounds, smells and sights. But it knew so much more about EVA, and the angels, and where they come from, and their goals. And OUR goals. Humanity's goals. Things I could never have discovered on my own."
Shinji stopped talking, but the students clearly wanted to hear more. For a few solid minutes, the only sounds in the room were the oblivious teacher's droning lecture, his chalk on the board, and shallow breaths from everyone in the room.
"A whole month."
Kensuke broke the silence, and by it, created so much more. The sheer length of his LCL imprisonment had not yet dawned on the other students.
Another kid broke and asked "When did you get back?"
Shinji paused. Suddenly not wanting them to know how recently this transpired, but in the end, he again was honest.
"Last night. About…"
He looked at the clock.
"Eleven or so hours ago if my guess is accurate. I spent almost all of that time asleep, after all."
After a brief pause, the room, save for three kids and one geriatric mentor, exploded as the students swarmed him with shocked questions. He could vaguely make out only a few;
"Whaaaat? Only st night? You didn't take the day off? Hell, the week?"
"Yo, what did that feel like? Did you have to pee? To sleep? What did that feel like?"
"Did you jerk off in there?"
"How are you alive? Didn't you die? Like Toji?"
“Huh? Toji’s not-”
"ENOUGH!" Came an angry squeak.
The Css President, Hikari Horaki. As always, her main focus was on nothing more than the cssroom's sense of order and respect for their teacher. She quickly stood and suddenly turned on Shinji.
"Look! I can appreciate what you've gone through tely, but I can't have you disrupting the css with your tales of heroics. We need-"
Shinji was thankful that Hikari would stem the inflow of obnoxious questions, but as she spoke, his spite grew quite rapidly until he heard that one word. The word, so simir to the one from earlier that morning.
'Heroics'. It made his blood boil. Fuming, he gripped the desk so hard his fingers were turning white. Throwing himself onto his feet even more violently than herself, sending the chair behind him toppling, and smming his hands into the table, he almost growled from the rage,
"HEROICS?..
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?"
"That kind of nguage is not-!'
"SHUT UP.”
She did.
“YOU HAVE NO IDEA."
Despite the volume of his voice, he spoke so monotone, and so carefully enunciated, one could hardly call it yelling, yet the css was rigid with fear. This was the sweet and shy Shinji? As he spoke, he sidled between the desks, lining himself up with Hikari.
"DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT I'VE BEEN THROUGH?"
"You've fought, and you've hurt. I can't say I really understand, but I know-"
"YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING! NONE OF YOU DO! HOW MANY TIMES I'VE BEEN STABBED! IMPALED?"
"You can stop yelling. We can hear you."
It was more than he could take. He took a step forward to scare her.
Undaunted, she took a step forward in return.
"Nobody's saying it's easy to pilot EVA, but it was that EVA getting hurt while we civilians die-"
Something snapped. Shinji stepped yet closer and shoved her backward, and into the desks behind her. It wasn't hard, and she didn't fly far, but now utterly shocked and leaning backward in a pose befitting utter submission, she stared wide-eyed and sck-jawed as he continued railing at her, the other students too stunned to move.
"THE EVA? T H E E V A ? I… ME… I AM THE ONE GETTING HURT. EVERY. SINGLE. FUCKING. TIME. THE EVA GETS INJURED…
…I FEEL IT."
In a change so jarring it almost rivaled his earlier physicality, his voice dropped to a typical conversational volume. Though it did not drop in intensity
"When a pilot and their EVA are highly synchronized, they experience the same senses as the EVA itself. That's why sync rates are so important to us. But when our sync rate is so high, we feel more of the pain that our EVA experiences, even replicating injuries through a sort of hyper pcebo…
No one moved as Shinji looked down on her.
… Do you remember, Hikari? That I was the one that fought Toji? That it was MY EVA that hurt him?"
"Y- you weren't connected. You said so. It wasn't you..
…
…right?"
"I had no control. But my sync rate was quite high. I could feel it all.
With my hands, his arms were torn off. With my hands, his head was ripped off. With my hands, his plug was gouged out, then crushed. I could feel the cool dripping sensation as the LCL spilled from the plug around my hand."
As Shinji kept speaking, his eyes got wetter, until he was freely weeping through his words. Leaning over her as he was, he almost vomited over her during the st sentence.
He stormed out of the room. He revealed way too many secrets.
…
What?
Why should I give a single shit about NERV's precious secrets? Expose them all for the traitorous bastards they are.
He went home, still crying as he walked.
