- Location
- Canada
Heh can't say I agree but it's pretty funny. I know the artist from a bunch of 40k stuff they have done. I have to wonder tho, what they would think of my preferred trio of Shinji and two German tsunderes.
Beauty and the Beast [NGE]
Heh can't say I agree but it's pretty funny. I know the artist from a bunch of 40k stuff they have done. I have to wonder tho, what they would think of my preferred trio of Shinji and two German tsunderes.
- Location
- North Carolina, USA
Here we are at Chapter 19. I liked the less than holy and perfect demeanor of Kaworu here in general. It's amusing in a way that's not distracting from the serious nature of the story. You've talked about how you write Kaworu and how you need to balance things, and this is a good example of it.
Mari, be nice to Shinji's friend! She's so paranoid. I mean, she's justified but still. She's so suspicious out of the gate.
Kaworu is still feeling the weight of his new human frailty? How bad is the effect of what Kiel gave him? Or is it more than the feeling in general is hard to deal with. And again, it's a great way to make him vulnerable in a complicated way.
No chill at all.
Hehehehe. Does she just think Ptolemy looks weird or does she get a real sinister feeling radiating from him or Kaworu?
And now you can both be awkward together! It's nice though to see Shinji bringing up something he likes with cooking.
Hehehehehehehe. The humor doesn't feel overdone here. And it doesn't distract. It characterizes.
That whole bit with Asuka is great and I just wanted to focus on this portion because of how it it feels especially jagged emotionally. The 'crack in her throat' detail was my favorite.
Mari, stahp! Seriously though. I like how you show the different contrasting parts of Mari here. The cynicism and genuine love for Shinji and admiration for his decency, they all feel solid and well-represented.
Shinji's guilt manages to wound him more than any Angelic weapon can. And I like how it catches up with him. Especially after he was happy to see Kaworu again.
That'd be a great omake.
This is a small thing but it's really revealing to have Shinji cut in and be the articulate one for Kaworu. The roles are different and it's vivid how they're different.
Kaworu, you cocky...he enjoyed that way too much.
Combo breaker!
Pffft.
Kaworu really is too funny in this chapter.
Nice pendulum swing from her caring about Shinji to being ruthless in the ongoing Xanatos pileups.
I'm cracking a smile IRL from these moments.
Ooof. Well, the levity earlier will help the serious conversation go down easier.
Mari, be nice to Shinji's friend! She's so paranoid. I mean, she's justified but still. She's so suspicious out of the gate.
Kaworu is still feeling the weight of his new human frailty? How bad is the effect of what Kiel gave him? Or is it more than the feeling in general is hard to deal with. And again, it's a great way to make him vulnerable in a complicated way.
No chill at all.
Hehehehe. Does she just think Ptolemy looks weird or does she get a real sinister feeling radiating from him or Kaworu?
And now you can both be awkward together! It's nice though to see Shinji bringing up something he likes with cooking.
Hehehehehehehe. The humor doesn't feel overdone here. And it doesn't distract. It characterizes.
That whole bit with Asuka is great and I just wanted to focus on this portion because of how it it feels especially jagged emotionally. The 'crack in her throat' detail was my favorite.
Mari, stahp! Seriously though. I like how you show the different contrasting parts of Mari here. The cynicism and genuine love for Shinji and admiration for his decency, they all feel solid and well-represented.
Shinji's guilt manages to wound him more than any Angelic weapon can. And I like how it catches up with him. Especially after he was happy to see Kaworu again.
That'd be a great omake.
This is a small thing but it's really revealing to have Shinji cut in and be the articulate one for Kaworu. The roles are different and it's vivid how they're different.
Kaworu, you cocky...he enjoyed that way too much.
Combo breaker!
Pffft.
Kaworu really is too funny in this chapter.
Nice pendulum swing from her caring about Shinji to being ruthless in the ongoing Xanatos pileups.
I'm cracking a smile IRL from these moments.
Ooof. Well, the levity earlier will help the serious conversation go down easier.
- Location
- North Carolina, USA
Chapter 20 time!
This is a great Shinji-centric chapter, Alex. The way the burden on his mind and conscience grew and reached the point to where he brought out the ring, I read it and I never felt like it didn't work. His motivation is as organic as ever.
I like how this happens so quickly. Not just that it's at the beginning of the chapter - it's how it happens and adds to how overwhelmed Shinji is and denies him relief even as it's intended to do the opposite.
Yep. It's interesting how this compares to canon Shinji, isn't it? He's more capable and opens up more but he still can't get past this.
That's some powerful and painful sense of resignation, isn't it? Damn...
Even in a Shinji-focused chapter, things are still rough for Rebecca...
Okay, first, that's an amazing line that Kozo has there and I love the distrust and manipulative aspect on display between him and Gendo, even when it's just between them.
I just think you really gave a vivid image in the mind of this guy, as minor as he is to the story.
Oooh...oh no, Touma. Oh no.
It's good to remind us what Touji's dad is capable of but also, that's painful and I can imagine it way too well...
Asuka fuming. It's the best thing to transition to.
Ooh. Sensing some complicated motivation here.
Again, I love the uncertainty and vulnerability that Kaworu is in here.
It begins!
I like how quickly they get into this dynamic.
HAHAHAHA.
Ahahahaha.
You made the reference! How obligated did you feel to make it when the opportunity presented itself?
Shinji just can't stop being relatable.
You started the chapter with something fast moving and you ended it with something fast moving. Very nice.
This is a great Shinji-centric chapter, Alex. The way the burden on his mind and conscience grew and reached the point to where he brought out the ring, I read it and I never felt like it didn't work. His motivation is as organic as ever.
I like how this happens so quickly. Not just that it's at the beginning of the chapter - it's how it happens and adds to how overwhelmed Shinji is and denies him relief even as it's intended to do the opposite.
Yep. It's interesting how this compares to canon Shinji, isn't it? He's more capable and opens up more but he still can't get past this.
That's some powerful and painful sense of resignation, isn't it? Damn...
Even in a Shinji-focused chapter, things are still rough for Rebecca...
Okay, first, that's an amazing line that Kozo has there and I love the distrust and manipulative aspect on display between him and Gendo, even when it's just between them.
I just think you really gave a vivid image in the mind of this guy, as minor as he is to the story.
Oooh...oh no, Touma. Oh no.
It's good to remind us what Touji's dad is capable of but also, that's painful and I can imagine it way too well...
Asuka fuming. It's the best thing to transition to.
Ooh. Sensing some complicated motivation here.
Again, I love the uncertainty and vulnerability that Kaworu is in here.
It begins!
I like how quickly they get into this dynamic.
HAHAHAHA.
Ahahahaha.
You made the reference! How obligated did you feel to make it when the opportunity presented itself?
Shinji just can't stop being relatable.
You started the chapter with something fast moving and you ended it with something fast moving. Very nice.
- Location
- Canada
Yeah I wanted to make a situation where there was no real easy answer Shinji and the audience both know Ken and Toujis responce isnt right or healthy but what can he do about it? Yelling at them to hate him is just gonna cause more problems.
Thanks I do like the line also will do a bit of a tap dance at the idea of Gendo being despair and Shinji being hope an idea that Anno ran with in 3.0 plus 1.0.
Asuka being super petty and jelaous is fun to write. She and Shinji definitely have a lot more history than canon here so her feelings are complicated they are old friends on top of everything else.
Kaworu is fun, you can tell there is this usual sensual swagger there but its obviously forced, like he only half knows what hes supposed to be doing at any given time. Kiel taught him a lot but he has no real experience and thus is always on the back foot socially.
Dueling tsuns is very fun to write and I hope to read.
Chapter is currently around 6.5k with a few scenes to go, on track to being done by the end of the month. Hope people enjoy.
- Location
- North Carolina, USA
Interlude 11, my thoughts.
I am impressed with how you made this scene feel genuinely different from the main story. Even though it's Shinji in someone else's memories, I can get a sense of Kunohama being a different person and the way she felt at this time. Also, the way she's changed from this point to the story proper. Not quite night and day but it's still a shift.
Oh, that passing detail about her feelings on him being flustered. It adds so much to their relationship.
Very subtle, Kiel.
It's still weird to imagine Kiel Lorenz ever being young. But I still like the way you show their connection forming so quickly, as if predestined.
Your speechwriting skills are commendable.
I'm imagining Kiel in the same circles as L. Ron Hubbard now.
The helplessness she feels. How much did that affect her and drive her to be the person we see in the current time?
Friendly Kiel is again, a deeply weird thing to contemplate. But I still like how you show his charisma.
Excellent succinct description.
I am impressed with how you made this scene feel genuinely different from the main story. Even though it's Shinji in someone else's memories, I can get a sense of Kunohama being a different person and the way she felt at this time. Also, the way she's changed from this point to the story proper. Not quite night and day but it's still a shift.
Oh, that passing detail about her feelings on him being flustered. It adds so much to their relationship.
Very subtle, Kiel.
It's still weird to imagine Kiel Lorenz ever being young. But I still like the way you show their connection forming so quickly, as if predestined.
Your speechwriting skills are commendable.
I'm imagining Kiel in the same circles as L. Ron Hubbard now.
The helplessness she feels. How much did that affect her and drive her to be the person we see in the current time?
Friendly Kiel is again, a deeply weird thing to contemplate. But I still like how you show his charisma.
Excellent succinct description.
Chapter 39
- Location
- Canada
BNB 39
The dark and vaulting halls of Shinji's ancestral home were less alien to him than he expected as he stepped into their embrace. Perhaps it was some faded, borrowed memory from the ring. Perhaps it was not so different from the inner sanctums of the Geofront. Or perhaps, more likely, the urgency of his visit overrode any lingering hesitation. It was quiet, though. If there were any staff scurrying about the place they were beyond his perception, leaving only his immediate company, besides his grandmother, the dizzying collection of masks, fetishes, and totems nailed and mounted to the walls. Their grim faces stared sentinel over the silent hallways like a museum or a tomb.
"Congratulations."
Shinji broke off his examination of a grinning, red lacquer mask to turn on his heel and stare at his grandmother as the heavy doors closed behind them. "For what?"
"I can't imagine getting here was an easy task," Kunohama nodded, ushering the two forward down the hall as she talked. "Not with your father breathing down your neck."
"I did what I had to do," Shinji shrugged, not able to summon any pride in his actions thus far aside from keeping anyone from himself from getting hurt. "I... I need your help."
"I am sure you do, and I will be happy to give it. But for now, indulge your grandmother a moment and walk with me." She held out her arm which after a moment of uncertainty Shinji took. "Thank you... I have so few indulgences left to me."
I'm not so sure about that... Shinji grit his teeth as his grandmother led him on a tour of the house, every inch covered in opulence. "I used that ring... thing you gave me," he admitted. "A few times, actually."
"And did it give you some of the answers you sought? Of your family and the nature of this world?" Her voice was as cold and even as her stride. If there was any ache or tiredness in her frame, she did not show it.
"It did.... It also nearly killed me." Shinji tried to formulate his thoughts in a way that made sense. "Or tried to... eat me? I don't know exactly how to..."
"No power gained, no knowledge learned or skill mastered is without risk Shinji. I would think you would know that more than most," she chided him.
"And if I died?" Shinji stopped, digging in the heels of his dirty shoes into the polished floor as he looked his grandmother in the eyes. "Or was... swallowed up by it? What then?"
She was less than moved. "Then you would have had more of your father in you than I first approximated." His grandmother gave a cruel smile before tugging on his arm urging him to continue. "Come, life has enough defeats and failures to weep over, do not do the same to your victories."
Shinji sighed, he didn't know what he expected of his grandmother, especially given revelations about her connection to SEELE and Second Impact, but her callousness was still remarkable. "That's... why I am here," he admitted, pushing his morals aside for the moment to focus on his mission. "Asuka..."
"The German girl... yes." For the first time since he had arrived his grandmother stopped, uncertainty in her voice. "You grew up together... By all accounts you were very close."
"She's not dead. I know she isn't! I can feel her!" Shinji ground his teeth, frustration building. "I just need to find a way to-"
"If her soul still truly resides within the machine, then yes... I am sure that is a secret you may find with us." Her confidence returned slightly as she adapted to the request. "Come and sit down a moment."
The two passed through a small hall and into a solar, the sun shining down on them through a crystalline work of glass and metal. Kunohama took her seat on a well worn chair in the corner, forcing Shinji to grab one of the many other unused ones and drag it into position beside her.
Shinji blinked the sunlight passing through etchings on the glass, eyes wings and other SEELE symbols drifting the air to land on the pair of them. "I... I want to be honest with you." Shinji turned to look at his grandmother, the light of day finally showing some of her age as she sank into her favourite chair. "No matter what happens, Asuka... or not. I am not joining SEELE. I can't be that person even if I wanted to be."
Kunohama gave a tired laugh. "SEELE? There is nothing to join. SEELE is dead, and Kiel dead with it," she admitted bitterly taking a moment to mourn before continuing. "What there is of its remains is being torn apart and fought over by Stern and his vultures."
Stern? Kyoko's assistant? Just when Shinji thought he had a picture of what was going on, more illuminated itself making him lost as ever "What happened?" He tried to keep his voice calm, failing whatsoever to summon any kind of empathy for the man who caused Second Impact.
"The rot that had been growing for decades finally grew fatal." Kunohama sighed. "Lorenz... Kiel was a great man, but he was only one man and one man can only do so much. The dream of SEELE always required agreement and cooperation that in hindsight was perhaps too much to expect of us poor Lilim." Kunohama said the word much like Kaworu, a seething bitterness over what he could not have. "As the world and the people in it refused to be what he wanted to be, he grew colder and more distant from the rest of us, often locking himself away with only his most chosen few. After the Impact and what they did with Tabris... I knew part of him was lost to me forever."
A chill ran up Shinji's spine. "They made Kawor... Tabris, right?" He gulped, trying to control his eagerness. "To destroy the world of the Lilim? Restore the 'rightful order'?" The worlds seemed almost silly as he felt them come out of his mouth, trying to parrot what Kaworu had told him. All at once they felt like the cries of a petulant child far more than an apocalyptic plot.
"Destroy?" The old woman blinked surprised for a moment before shrinking in her chair as she took in Shinji's words. "Is that what... Oh Lorenz, how could you?" Reaching up the woman cradled her brow with a wrinkled hand. "You truly were lost..."
The gnarled wicker chair under Shinji creaked ever so slightly as he leaned forward in it, a flood of thoughts running through his mind. So Kaworu wasn't their plan? He was Kiel's plan? But why would he... Shinji sighed, ashamed that he knew the answer. It was not a thought unknown to him, a spiteful frustration at a world that refused to change or improve no matter how much you tried to fix it. 'Just let it all die, then...' But that meant Kaworu... He wasn't some alien messiah, he was just a sad tool for a sad old man. Shinji tried to push the sympathy out of his mind. It didn't matter what Kaworu was, it mattered what he was going to do and if he still planned on their destruction...
'It would be easy then, to ask,' Shinji thought, his grip on the arms of his chair tightening as he struggled with the idea. He could ask his grandmother for help killing him. Surely there was some kind of secret weakness to exploit or weapon in SEELE's vaults like the ring he could use?
But he gave his word.
It was simple and stupid and childish but he did it, he agreed to Kaworu's terms, and that meant not telling anyone else about their fated little duel after the rest of the Angels had been defeated. If he was his father, or Mari, or Ritsuko, or maybe even his mother he would break that contract, but he wasn't them. He was simply Shinji Ikari, so he stayed silent and simply watched through the glass walls as the breeze rolled across the garden.
"I can help you save your friend." Shinji looked up from a tulip bobbing in the wind to look at his grandmother, who looked a moment and a lifetime older than when he arrived. "If you can find it in your heart to trust me again."
"I don't have a heart anymore." Shinji gave a grim smile and stepped out of his chair and offered his grandmother a hand. "So that wont be a problem."
Kunohama took the boy's hand and led him through the glass door out into the garden. They followed the well worn meditation path through the flowers and shrubbery towards a tall shrine house at the edge of the grounds. "If an answer exists, it will lie within the scrolls."
Shinji was not sure exactly how some old bits of parchment could help him, but he came here for a reason and he would see it through. Reaching out, he let his free hand move through some of the foliage, feeling the texture of green on his skin. It was beautiful, as was everything else on the property he had seen, but it lacked something. "This place, this house... did my mother grow up here?" he asked, looking over to the field beside them. He tried his best to imagine his mother running through the sea of tall summer grass and couldn't quite manage. "Mari told me all these stories about the two of them in college, but before that..."
"She lived here for a time, though perhaps it would be presumptuous to ever say it was her home. Yui... Even when she was here, part of her was somewhere else, like the world wasn't enough for her," Kunohama admitted sadly, her pace slowing as they made their way along the circuitous path of the garden.
"Mari has said the same thing," Shinji noted, something twisting in his stomach as his words reminded him of his guardian and their last conversation. "That she had this... aura around her, in a way." He tried to think how she worded it. "She said... so much in our life we don't know what's important or not until its long past, but with her... All you had to do was look at her and you knew there was something special there."
"She was a gift," Kunohama noted. "And I mean that truly. Akkio and I...we tried but it wasn't until Lorenz helped that we were able to..." Kunohama's voice faded, for the first time a quiet shame making the words come out slow and shaky.
Shinji blinked, no wonder she was loyal to the cause; she owed him, owed Kiel her only child. It was easy to hate his grandmother for what she did, and what she helped happen, but he was here because he loved someone more than he knew what to do with and it sounded like he was far from alone in that. "Those scrolls..." Shinji turned the conversation back to the present, fearing the past would swallow them up if they lingered too long. "What are they... exactly?"
Kunohama stopped just in front of the dark wooden steps of the shine, folded paper talismans drifting in the breeze above them "I am surprised you did not see them in your visions," the woman commented, holding her ground. "Given their significance in all our lives..." She sighed sadly. "The scrolls are not of this Earth, Shinji. They were made by our oldest ancestors, those that forged the Moons and the Spears and our gods themselves long before our time."
Aliens... the word didn't quite feel right but was the closest Shinji had without resorting to mysticism. "And it... its like... instructions?"
"The scrolls themselves do not contain knowledge save for what the user brings with them, rather... its a window into another world, an anti-universe of pure thought, pure knowledge, past, present, and future." Shinji felt a hand on his as his grandmother gave him a squeeze of warning. "It's not something most people can handle, and as such its use has been... highly regulated. Only a few outside of Kiel himself has ever used them. One of them being your mother."
"Mom used them? What did she..."
"I don't know, but whatever she saw, it was not what Kiel saw nor what he expected her to see. Their relationship, once very close... never quite recovered."
"Have you ever?" Shinji looked at his grandmother as they stood at the threshold of the dark building, a chill running through him.
"No. It was not my place to look. I am not Kiel, nor am I your mother. The future is not mine to make, only... all I can do now is show you the way and hope. This is something you must do alone..." She let go of his arm, her tired face wet from a single tear.
"I... I'll try my best." Shinji took a step forward, the old wood creaking beneath him.
"Take off your shoes Shinji.... where you go is holy ground."
Nodding, Shinji kicked off his shoes and socks, placing them in the grass next to the shrine before walking in slowly, the slow burning candles in the rafters doing little to quell the darkness around him.
The air was still and silent and for a moment and Shinji was not sure where to go, many items in the shrine looked mystical but nothing met his grandmother's otherworldly description. That was, until the floor in front of the great altar shifted, rising up before in a cold hiss before parting to reveal stairs down into a hidden chamber under the earth. Taking a deep breath, Shinji climbed down the steps, shivering a little as his feet went from polished wood to cold stone.
It was difficult for Shinji to tell how far down the stairs went or how vast the chamber was they led into. There was an ancient reverence in the still air that seemed to rebel against containment. Eventually, however, Shinji did reach the bottom and looked onward. In the antechamber, the scrolls stood on a pillar at its centre.
They were... too much to describe rationally. On a purely human literal level they looked like a floating crystal clock, its glowing interlinked gears ticking away against infinity. Beyond that, though, at the edges of his senses, pieces of Adamite perception embedded in his flesh flared to life in proximity to the scrolls. They were more than a thing. They echoed a time and place and feeling so much greater than an simple object. It had no song, no soul of itself but instead was an endless and flowing book of sheet music, each one rich with possibility.
Shinji took one step into the chamber and then another, each one sending lightning up and down his body, stripping him of any illusion of his own human mundanity. He took another step and his hand burst into a white flame that quickly spread along his arm, flesh and bone singeing into nothing.
There was no pain, however, and Shinji quickly continued his trek towards the scrolls, shedding his body as easily as he would an old pair of socks, leaving a form of burning aether beneath. 'How long have I been this? Was I ever anything else? Was the little boy in the rain comforted just a prelude to this?'
Shinji took another step, then stopped. Strange and shadowy figures were now visible at the other end of the chamber. He took another step and they grew father away. He stepped back and they came more into focus. Mysteries upon mysteries.
The spirit moved unperturbed towards the scrolls, holding them in the palm of his hand. He felt them clink and turn and with them the universe itself, all he had to do was close his hand... Shinji stopped, reminding himself of his purpose, against all other temptations and possibilities. He was here to save Asuka. The rest... was not for him.
He took a moment and then closed his hand around the device. The door opened.
"My future extends to infinity..."
Shinji swam through a sea of stained glass. In front of him, drifting in the ebb, were endless fragments, moments in time of the past...
"You're going to be a pilot, Shinji, just like Asuka."
All at once Shinji was back in Nevada, the cold recirculated air of the facility hitting his skin as he sat on the edge of his bed, looking up at Mari.
"I am sorry. I tried my best to keep you out of this, but..." Mari shed a tear and placed a hand on his shoulder
"I'll do it," the young him said after a moment, giving a nervous smile. "If it means I can help people... save people who might not... I'll do it, no problem."
"Oh Shinji..." Mari sighed. "we don't deserve you."
The present...
All at once he was wrenched from one tableaux to another, this time more quickly and violently, his perspective shifting to a burning mansion. Kiel lay dead at the feet of a girl made of steel. Before he could think he was whipped again, across the Earth to a naked woman lying in a cage made of ice, nursing a dove at her breast.
To the future...
Gone.
Fire.
Alone.
Betrayal.
Rebellion.
Greatness.
Shinji felt like he was drowning, each scene, each image threatening to devour him in their senses. Reaching out a hand, Shinji clawed at reality, pushing against the current until he fell into the undertow, dragging deep below now, then, and will into depths of maybe, what if and perhaps.
Some were soft and warm and inviting.
"You're just like me..."
Some were tragic.
"The color you like, Ikari... like the Second..."
Rei... That Rei's voice was soft and strained as she drifted in her noose.
In shame and panic, Shinji tried to tear the image away, desperate for anything to replace it. His wish was granted as he was flooded with vision after vision each one eating away a piece of him, threatening to dissolve him into nothing.
"Shinji, I love you... Cute little puppy boy... Shinji, no! Drop the spears! Don't leave me, please don't leave me... just take care of my cable okay?... I'll make them pay..." Some were sad and some were happy, some were vengeful and others carnal while some made little sense at all. Each of them held a grip and each took a mounting effort to shake off.
"Stop! Stop! Stop!"
Shinji cried, reaching out in any direction he could as the scrolls threatened to tear him apart.
Asuka! Asuka! I came here to save Asuka, just...
"...If you try that shit again in battle, I'll disobey..." A particularly fiery looking Asuka stood her ground against a Gendo Ikari hand on her hip and a collection of other pilots behind her. "We will all disobey. I mean come on! Of course we will protect our own lives here! I refuse to follow suicide orders! I'm not a… a... we're not just tools for you to throw away!" The redhead scoffed throwing back her head as Gendo could only stare.
"Asuka..."
Shinji smiled as he saw the fire in the girl's eyes. She wasn't his, but it was enough.
Standing his ground, Shinji Ikari pushed back against the waves taking one step and then another, letting them flow over and around him but not through him until he was on the other side of the ocean, red waves lapping at his feet behind him and his prize before him.
It looked like a wall, running straight up and flat endlessly into the sky and the horizon, its mass a buzzing hive of pure knowledge. Shinji smiled as best he could, walking closer and closer. It was there, he knew it. Satisfaction rising inside him, he got into reach of the wall, his whole spirit shivering from it all.
After all the pain and loss and worry he could do it. It would be his, he could break through that barrier and Asuka... would be... his.
Shinjis hand stopped inches away from the wall. His thought from earlier echoing in his mind... I am not my father... I am not my mother... I'm not Mari or Dr. Akagi or anyone else... I'm just Shinji Ikari. He could not do this, not like this. He wanted... needed to help Asuka, but he was not going to force his way in or bend her to his will.
"It's up to her..." Shinji took his hand away from the wall, chuckling as he did. "All I can do is talk to her and hope... and it took all this for me to realize that... Asuka is right, I am an idiot."
The chuckle turned into a laugh that shook from the bottom of his belly to his head, the world slowly shifting and reasserting itself as he left the nowhere land he had come to, back through the endless ocean of possibilities until he was back in the cold, dark chamber deep under his grandmother's house.
"Now I just need to..." Shinji looked past the glowing machine in his hands seeing another shadowy figure. This one was getting closer, which in turn pushed him farther away. "Stop!" He held out a hand at the figure. "Just... wait a sec."
The figure stopped its movement, taking a step back tentatively. He had a hard time seeing everything in the glare and darkness but the person was unmistakable. 'Mom?'
"Are... are you one of those Angels Kiel told me about?"
Her voice was soft and quiet... childlike. She didn't look like Mari's old photos. She was... she was barely older than he was.
"I..." Shinji looked around them seeing his form still ethereal. "Yes and no..." he conceded, not sure what he should or could say until he saw the figure start to shiver. "Are you alright?"
"I don't know," Yui gulped, not moving from her place. "Everyone keeps telling me how great and smart I am, but... I just... I don't know how I can live up to any of it."
Now that was... not what Shinji expected. The laugh he carried in him a moment ago came out again before he could stop himself.
"Are you laughing at me?" There was fear in the question and Shinji realized how menacing he must look.
"No, of course not! I just... The world is a strange and wonderful place." He tried to smile, not sure how much of him Yui could manage to see in the harsh glow. "Isn't it?"
"That's not what my teacher says..." Yui stopped, fidgeting in her feet. "Is this some kind of trick?"
"No tricks," Shinji shook his head. "Only answers you might not understand yet." He sighed. "And I would not worry too much about what your teacher says. He..." Shinji caught his tongue, trying to hold a line. "Some things you have to find for yourself."
"Find for myself..." The girl nodded, finally summoning her nerve and moving closer to the scrolls, which in turn pushed Shinji back and back into the shadow, only stopping as her hands reached out inches away from the glowing crystal device.
"Go on... it will be alright." Shinji slowly slid backward, the image of his mother fading like the last breaths of a fading candle. "As long as the sun and moon and Earth exist, everything will be alright..."
The last of his comforting words came out in a whisper, catching in his throat and making him blink. When Shinji opened his eyes again she was gone and he was, for lack of any better words, back to normal, his skin shivering against the cold stone of the basement.
"Wow..."
Shinji blinked in the low darkness, trying for a moment to wrap his head around anything that had just happened to him. Past and future and alternate worlds and... Mom? Climbing to his feet, he felt more lost than when he arrived. He was about to turn on his heels when an explosion far above him shook the ground and knocked him off balance. He fell flat on his back, the room still reverberating.
"Shit..." Looking up he saw the scrolls, ticking away above their pillar. He couldn't let his father or anyone else get to them, not now, not when so much was already in the air with the Angels and SEELE and Kaworu. But where could he... it's not like he could just hide them in his pocket like the ring! These were big and strange and... weird.
Hearing another explosion crack and shake above him Shinji reached out to the scrolls. They were timeless, weren't they? Not just old but otherworldly, running on their own timeline parallel to everyone else.
Maybe he didn't need to hide them as much as... send them away for a while? He got closer his hands reaching around the scrolls, feeling their energy crackle through his fingers. A year? Would that be enough? It felt at once like it was nothing but also a lifetime considering how much had transpired in his last year.
"One year..."
Shinji grit his teeth and pushed, pressing the scrolls below the event horizon of the current timeline, the glowing cogs dimming like a setting sun in his hands until they were gone. They vanished, leaving Shinji alone in the dark. "I really hope that worked."
Scrambling up the stairs he saw his grandmother standing by the doorway of the shrine waiting for him.
"You're back." She gave a sad smile as he came into view, passing the test. "What did you... no, it's not for me to ask. I can only hope you found what you were looking for."
"In the end, yes... sort of," Shinji admitted, standing by his grandmother, in front of him in the outskirts of the property he could see men with guns in tan suits creeping closer while high above them a VTOL watched as it made its pass. "One thing that's been bugging me, though... if Kiel didn't trust mom with the scrolls, why did he leave them here?"
"He didn't," Kunohama smirked. "Your mother... to say she copied them would be wrong rather... she told me she folded them in space and time to be in two places at once. They are their own shadow." Her voice trembled. "I don't know if Kiel successfully stopped Stern from getting his scrolls before he died either way..." The old woman turned to Shinji terror flashing in her eyes. "You must stop him, Shinji. No matter what it takes."
It was difficult to think of Stern as anything more than a technician buzzing around in the background with Kyoko and later Langley and others at the German NERV branch. A precise, serious man, probably not a good person by any means, but hardly a world terror. "What does he want?"
"An ordered world of steel and concrete and silicon, stripped of any mystery of majesty and soul. A perfect world of machine men and machine hearts..." She gripped him tight as the men in the treeline got closer, a woman with dark hair and a red beret joining them. "Do whatever you have to do... break the bonds of man, unite all souls, then stand resolute at the centre of the world you will define..."
"I told you, I am not going to..." Shinji was about to wrench free from his grandmother's grip when he felt something cold and sharp near his neck, a short black blade just above his skin. "What the hell are you doing!?"
"Buying myself a little time." Kunohama grit her teeth as the VTOL above them landed twenty yards away, ripping apart much of the flower garden's with wind as it touched down. A metal door slid open, revealing his father and Rei inside.
"You could have just asked..." Shinji hissed, nearly pricking his skin as he felt the blade against his neck. It was made of that same oily black stone, the substance anathema to him.
"Last time I gave you a warning. This time I won't be so forgiving." Gendo Ikari's voice held a barely contained rage as he strode out of the vehicle, quickly flanked by half a dozen agents, all holding guns. "Let him go."
"If I do that you'll shoot me," Kunohama said, smirking. "And I don't want that... I don't think Shinji wants that either, do you?"
"Both of you, please!" Shinji gulped, despite everything, including the knife at his throat, his grandmother was right. He didn't want that. He looked at his father and saw nothing stir in his eyes. He looked to Rei and saw concern. Then up at his grandmother who was trying not to panic. "Can't we just..."
"No, we can't. Rei!" Gendo signaled the girl and Kunohama's grip froze, her entire body going rigid as Gendo pulled out a heavy-looking pistol from within his coat in a swift motion. He fired several shots in quick succession.
One hit Kunohama in the shoulder, making her flinch. The others went right into Shinji before punching right through and hitting his grandmother behind him.
Before he knew it Shinji was down, his body burning and wet and cold as he fell to the ground. Vaguely he could see Misato panic and rush forward with her men as he fell down the steps of the shrine.
He was not there for long, however. His body quickly healed, expelling the bullets and even mending his torn jacket and pants where the bullets punctured. "I hope you know," Shinji climbed to one knee and then the other, taking a deep breath and feeling the last of his injuries heal, "that that really hurt."
"Consider it your spanking for running off again," Gendo snarled, clearly still furious. "Now come on. We have things to do." He turned around and motioned to the helicopter.
Shinji looked back, wincing as he saw his grandmother dead in a pile, a powerful figure of a woman, good or bad, shattered into a thousand pieces forever. "You didn't need to shoot her," Shinji ground his teeth. "We could have talked it out..."
"She was a threat."
"Then what," Shinji growled, glowing bright as his AT-field roared to life in an instant, "am I?" The ground began to shake under all of them and the air grew thin as Shinji raged at his father. "What am I?"
A dozen guns rose to shoot Shinji, Misato slowly joining them as panic crossed her face.
"An obstinate little brat," Gendo responded. "And my son."
"Shinji, please." Rei's voice was soft and quiet as a line of red blood fell from her nose. "Please don't fight."
Shinji looked at the two of them and sighed, his AT-Field cooling down to nothing "Fine..." he conceded. "But don't think I am going to let you toss me in that hole again."
"I didn't come here to imprison you. I came here because I need your help." His fathers words were cold and measured but struck at the core of Shinji. It was something he had always wanted to hear.
"I... sure. Okay," Shinji nodded, not sure what else to say. He followed his father into the helicopter, only taking a moment to look back at Misato and the commandos still staring at him, fear and loathing across all their faces. Behind them was his grandmother's body, bloody and broken, lying on the steps of the shrine.
"Come. We have much to discuss, but not here." Shinji felt his father tug on his shoulder, pulling Shinji up into the vehicle with him and Rei. The First Child seemed rather woozy, stumbling into her seat.
If he was honest, Shinji was getting pretty sick of discussion. There was only so many stunning revelations he could have in a single day, less if he included mind-bending visions and personal emotional turning points. So while he was interested in what exactly his father wanted from him, he was not going to rush to it. Sitting back in his seat and trying to get a moment's peace.
Closing his eyes he felt the pull of the VTOL under him kick off from the ground, knocking him around in his seat. Sighing, he opened his eyes and looked across the aisle at Rei. She was wiping her nose with the hem of her skirt. Crimson droplets were splattered against the fabric.
'The color you like, Ikari, like the Second...'
Something twisted in Shinji's stomach. He felt ashamed as he realized again how little he thought about his... He wasn't quite sure, but after seeing his mother through the scrolls the resemblance was closer than ever in his mind. His sister? Perhaps someday, but not now, he would not force that on her. "Are you okay, Rei?"
"I do not know what you think 'okay' means," the girl admitted, peering out the window of their vehicle as they gained height. Below them was a tableaux of smoking ruins as NERV forces demolished the compound one building at a time.
"What a waste," Gendo commented. "But better that then digging through all the traps your family surely had in store for us."
Shinji felt a pang of regret as they flew away from the pillar of black smoke, knowing that was all because of him and his actions today. Still... it was too late to go back and he had far too much to do to get lost in despair, even if it meant being cold about it.
Shinji turned back to Rei, giving the best smile he could currently manage. "How are you and Rebecca doing? You seemed pretty close before."
"She is very soft."
That made Shinji and his father blink in unison, but neither commented further.
The three rode the VTOL back to a landing pad that led to the Geofront. Shinji stared out the window most of the journey, trying to pick out the faces of the tiny figures dotting the streets of the crumbling city of Tokyo-3. Was Hikari down there still? Touji somewhere in those crowds? He didn't dare to speculate.
Touching down from the transport, Shinji followed his father and Rei along into an industrial-looking elevator that no doubt went down into the depths of the fortress.
Commander Ikari gave a tired sigh when the heavy steel doors closed in front of them reaching into his pocket and swiping his security card into the terminal. The carriage to started to rumble as they made their decent. "I know why you went to see your grandmother, Shinji."
The words hung in the air as the car slowly crawled down into the Geofront, flashes of light blanketing the trio through the cracks in the wall where the door met the ceiling.
"I..." Shinji ground his teeth, not able to hide anything at this point. "I had to try."
"You should have come to me, but... considering our relationship thus far, I am not surprised you didn't." The admission was more candid than Shinji expected. "I think its long overdue we had a talk."
Shinji opened his mouth and then closed it again, the click of metal on metal from the elevator making it hard to think. "I... I don't know what to say."
"Do you hate me?"
The words made Shinji blink, turning his head to see his father's cold face, unreadable in the low light.
"I don't blame you if you do. I hated my father until the day he died, and you and I are much alike."
"Bullshit." The word came out before Shinji knew he said it. Once he did he flinched at the harshness of it but carried on regardless, knowing he would never get a better chance than this. "I don't know... I heard you had a rough childhood from grandmother, but... I do know you never had to fight any Angels or... they never cut you open and took out your heart, you never lost a friend to... to get eaten like..."
"No, I only lost my wife," Gendo's voice was soft, barely audible over the increasing rumble of the elevator as they based through a secure access point. "Our origins are obviously different, Shinji, but the pain you feel right now is all too familiar to me. Can you tell me that does not mean anything to you?"
"I... I guess so." Shinji sighed, the anger fading from him as he tried to think of his father as a man and not a looming colossus standing over him, always ready to cast him aside again.
"There is a hole in our hearts, Shinji, a deep pit that can't be filled by anything in the world except love from the one person who can see you for who you are and love you anyway. For me, that was Yui. Before her I was lost, adrift on an endless sea. For you... I think it was Asuka."
"You asked me for my help," Shinji ground his teeth again, wondering if the damned elevator would ever stop descending. "What do you want, dad?"
"I need your help to save my wife, Shinji. Your mother. And to save Asuka as well, if we can..."
Gendo's words were punctuated by a ding as the elevator clicked open, a rank smell immediately falling over the trio like a wave of revulsion. In front of them were several of the Evas. In the center Unit-01 was attached to several cranes above by hooks, chains, and cords.
"Gods, what's that smell?" Shinji nearly retched on the metal catwalk in front of them as he fell out of the elevator, smacking his knees on the metal grating.
"Rot," Gendo said flatly, stepping out of the elevator no worse for wear. He pointed at Unit-01 across the way and the technicians working on its body. No longer was it in separate pieces, but the places where it was cut were still large and visible. The gashes into the armour and flesh were only loosely patched up with wire and cord. "The Evangelion's body is fighting off necrosis. We will have to use massive extracts of cloned flesh to replace the damaged parts."
"Is this what you wanted me for?" Shinji blinked and got up from his knees, gripping a railing. "To heal Unit-01?"
"No," Gendo shook his head. "That is not your purpose, and even if you did heal the body, Yui would still be trapped inside the Core. What we need is something more... drastic."
Shinji felt a small, cold hand on his shoulder. Looking around he saw Rei blushing a bit as she looked at him.
"You are now Adamite, your essence is of the white moon. Rei contains the soul of Lilith progenitor of the black moon. I proper merging and meeting of your power channeled correctly..."
"Third Impact..." Shinji's eyes went wide. "You... you wouldn't! Would you?" Shinji shook off Rei's hand to turn to his father, anger rising in his chest. 'Not you too...'
"It is inevitable, Shinji. Once Kiel found the scrolls the Impacts became fated. It will either be us who does it to save the ones we love or someone else. This world... It cannot be saved, but Yui and Asuka can, if we try."
For a moment Shinji was tempted. What had this world really given him, anyway? Nothing but pain and sorrow and betrayal by those he loved most. What would he even have if he didn't do this? What would he look forward to? A lifetime loathed and feared for being who he was?
"Shinji..."
The boy opened his eyes seeing Rei staring at him, unsure at his hesitation. "Is this not what you want? I thought Asuka made you happy? Don't you want to see her again by becoming one with me?"
"No." Shinji gulped. "I... I don't love her because she makes me happy." Shinji took another step back, his back pressing against the railing. 'Got to run away got to run away got to run away...' "I love her because I love her. I'm sorry." In a flourish he hopped up the railing and jumped from it to another several dozen feet below them, praying for once his mental map of the Geofront was right.
He landed in a roll, the gangway shaking on its bolts from the impact
"Shinji, no! Rei, go! Stop him, now!"
Gendo's voice boomed as Shinji got to his feet, running down the gangway to the doorway leading to the next towering chamber. He smashed through it with a heavy AT-Field-boosted shoulder rush.
There, standing tall, was Valkyrie. Its glimmering silver form stood proud and ready for launch. "Come on, Asuka...." Shinji broke into a run toward the titan. "Please, just... open up for me..." He turned the corner and Rei was there again in a flash, her face twisted in confusion and regret.
"Ikari..."
Shinji kept running and Rei stepped aside at the last minute, letting him get a good angle to jump again from the gangway launching himself directly at Valkyrie's heart. "Please..."
There was a flash of light as Shinji's body was absorbed by the Eva, flesh and bone and spirit passing through the hard metal shell as easily as air.
"Why..." Gendo ran from the doorway to where Rei was standing on the edge of the ledge looking over at Valkyrie. "Why didn't you stop him?"
Rei blinked calmly. "I made a promise to someone."
Authors Note: Whew that was a long time coming and definitely a beast to write let me tell you. In some parts I think it drags a bit but that is my own fault I sorta overstuffed it over the course of previous chapters planning things out, deciding where things would go leading to me continuing to put different bits of critical exposition here and by the time I reached "here" I realized it was a bit too much. Ah well let it stand as a lesson to other writers, sometimes you can overplot or overplan things. Still otherwise I really like the chapter and I hope you all do to, lots of fun little references in there for those who like looking for them and some good emotional moments. If you like it please leave a like or leave a comment with your thoughts, heck leave a comment if you dont like it or think I made some mistake I am always trying to take in different points of view for my work.
The dark and vaulting halls of Shinji's ancestral home were less alien to him than he expected as he stepped into their embrace. Perhaps it was some faded, borrowed memory from the ring. Perhaps it was not so different from the inner sanctums of the Geofront. Or perhaps, more likely, the urgency of his visit overrode any lingering hesitation. It was quiet, though. If there were any staff scurrying about the place they were beyond his perception, leaving only his immediate company, besides his grandmother, the dizzying collection of masks, fetishes, and totems nailed and mounted to the walls. Their grim faces stared sentinel over the silent hallways like a museum or a tomb.
"Congratulations."
Shinji broke off his examination of a grinning, red lacquer mask to turn on his heel and stare at his grandmother as the heavy doors closed behind them. "For what?"
"I can't imagine getting here was an easy task," Kunohama nodded, ushering the two forward down the hall as she talked. "Not with your father breathing down your neck."
"I did what I had to do," Shinji shrugged, not able to summon any pride in his actions thus far aside from keeping anyone from himself from getting hurt. "I... I need your help."
"I am sure you do, and I will be happy to give it. But for now, indulge your grandmother a moment and walk with me." She held out her arm which after a moment of uncertainty Shinji took. "Thank you... I have so few indulgences left to me."
I'm not so sure about that... Shinji grit his teeth as his grandmother led him on a tour of the house, every inch covered in opulence. "I used that ring... thing you gave me," he admitted. "A few times, actually."
"And did it give you some of the answers you sought? Of your family and the nature of this world?" Her voice was as cold and even as her stride. If there was any ache or tiredness in her frame, she did not show it.
"It did.... It also nearly killed me." Shinji tried to formulate his thoughts in a way that made sense. "Or tried to... eat me? I don't know exactly how to..."
"No power gained, no knowledge learned or skill mastered is without risk Shinji. I would think you would know that more than most," she chided him.
"And if I died?" Shinji stopped, digging in the heels of his dirty shoes into the polished floor as he looked his grandmother in the eyes. "Or was... swallowed up by it? What then?"
She was less than moved. "Then you would have had more of your father in you than I first approximated." His grandmother gave a cruel smile before tugging on his arm urging him to continue. "Come, life has enough defeats and failures to weep over, do not do the same to your victories."
Shinji sighed, he didn't know what he expected of his grandmother, especially given revelations about her connection to SEELE and Second Impact, but her callousness was still remarkable. "That's... why I am here," he admitted, pushing his morals aside for the moment to focus on his mission. "Asuka..."
"The German girl... yes." For the first time since he had arrived his grandmother stopped, uncertainty in her voice. "You grew up together... By all accounts you were very close."
"She's not dead. I know she isn't! I can feel her!" Shinji ground his teeth, frustration building. "I just need to find a way to-"
"If her soul still truly resides within the machine, then yes... I am sure that is a secret you may find with us." Her confidence returned slightly as she adapted to the request. "Come and sit down a moment."
The two passed through a small hall and into a solar, the sun shining down on them through a crystalline work of glass and metal. Kunohama took her seat on a well worn chair in the corner, forcing Shinji to grab one of the many other unused ones and drag it into position beside her.
Shinji blinked the sunlight passing through etchings on the glass, eyes wings and other SEELE symbols drifting the air to land on the pair of them. "I... I want to be honest with you." Shinji turned to look at his grandmother, the light of day finally showing some of her age as she sank into her favourite chair. "No matter what happens, Asuka... or not. I am not joining SEELE. I can't be that person even if I wanted to be."
Kunohama gave a tired laugh. "SEELE? There is nothing to join. SEELE is dead, and Kiel dead with it," she admitted bitterly taking a moment to mourn before continuing. "What there is of its remains is being torn apart and fought over by Stern and his vultures."
Stern? Kyoko's assistant? Just when Shinji thought he had a picture of what was going on, more illuminated itself making him lost as ever "What happened?" He tried to keep his voice calm, failing whatsoever to summon any kind of empathy for the man who caused Second Impact.
"The rot that had been growing for decades finally grew fatal." Kunohama sighed. "Lorenz... Kiel was a great man, but he was only one man and one man can only do so much. The dream of SEELE always required agreement and cooperation that in hindsight was perhaps too much to expect of us poor Lilim." Kunohama said the word much like Kaworu, a seething bitterness over what he could not have. "As the world and the people in it refused to be what he wanted to be, he grew colder and more distant from the rest of us, often locking himself away with only his most chosen few. After the Impact and what they did with Tabris... I knew part of him was lost to me forever."
A chill ran up Shinji's spine. "They made Kawor... Tabris, right?" He gulped, trying to control his eagerness. "To destroy the world of the Lilim? Restore the 'rightful order'?" The worlds seemed almost silly as he felt them come out of his mouth, trying to parrot what Kaworu had told him. All at once they felt like the cries of a petulant child far more than an apocalyptic plot.
"Destroy?" The old woman blinked surprised for a moment before shrinking in her chair as she took in Shinji's words. "Is that what... Oh Lorenz, how could you?" Reaching up the woman cradled her brow with a wrinkled hand. "You truly were lost..."
The gnarled wicker chair under Shinji creaked ever so slightly as he leaned forward in it, a flood of thoughts running through his mind. So Kaworu wasn't their plan? He was Kiel's plan? But why would he... Shinji sighed, ashamed that he knew the answer. It was not a thought unknown to him, a spiteful frustration at a world that refused to change or improve no matter how much you tried to fix it. 'Just let it all die, then...' But that meant Kaworu... He wasn't some alien messiah, he was just a sad tool for a sad old man. Shinji tried to push the sympathy out of his mind. It didn't matter what Kaworu was, it mattered what he was going to do and if he still planned on their destruction...
'It would be easy then, to ask,' Shinji thought, his grip on the arms of his chair tightening as he struggled with the idea. He could ask his grandmother for help killing him. Surely there was some kind of secret weakness to exploit or weapon in SEELE's vaults like the ring he could use?
But he gave his word.
It was simple and stupid and childish but he did it, he agreed to Kaworu's terms, and that meant not telling anyone else about their fated little duel after the rest of the Angels had been defeated. If he was his father, or Mari, or Ritsuko, or maybe even his mother he would break that contract, but he wasn't them. He was simply Shinji Ikari, so he stayed silent and simply watched through the glass walls as the breeze rolled across the garden.
"I can help you save your friend." Shinji looked up from a tulip bobbing in the wind to look at his grandmother, who looked a moment and a lifetime older than when he arrived. "If you can find it in your heart to trust me again."
"I don't have a heart anymore." Shinji gave a grim smile and stepped out of his chair and offered his grandmother a hand. "So that wont be a problem."
Kunohama took the boy's hand and led him through the glass door out into the garden. They followed the well worn meditation path through the flowers and shrubbery towards a tall shrine house at the edge of the grounds. "If an answer exists, it will lie within the scrolls."
Shinji was not sure exactly how some old bits of parchment could help him, but he came here for a reason and he would see it through. Reaching out, he let his free hand move through some of the foliage, feeling the texture of green on his skin. It was beautiful, as was everything else on the property he had seen, but it lacked something. "This place, this house... did my mother grow up here?" he asked, looking over to the field beside them. He tried his best to imagine his mother running through the sea of tall summer grass and couldn't quite manage. "Mari told me all these stories about the two of them in college, but before that..."
"She lived here for a time, though perhaps it would be presumptuous to ever say it was her home. Yui... Even when she was here, part of her was somewhere else, like the world wasn't enough for her," Kunohama admitted sadly, her pace slowing as they made their way along the circuitous path of the garden.
"Mari has said the same thing," Shinji noted, something twisting in his stomach as his words reminded him of his guardian and their last conversation. "That she had this... aura around her, in a way." He tried to think how she worded it. "She said... so much in our life we don't know what's important or not until its long past, but with her... All you had to do was look at her and you knew there was something special there."
"She was a gift," Kunohama noted. "And I mean that truly. Akkio and I...we tried but it wasn't until Lorenz helped that we were able to..." Kunohama's voice faded, for the first time a quiet shame making the words come out slow and shaky.
Shinji blinked, no wonder she was loyal to the cause; she owed him, owed Kiel her only child. It was easy to hate his grandmother for what she did, and what she helped happen, but he was here because he loved someone more than he knew what to do with and it sounded like he was far from alone in that. "Those scrolls..." Shinji turned the conversation back to the present, fearing the past would swallow them up if they lingered too long. "What are they... exactly?"
Kunohama stopped just in front of the dark wooden steps of the shine, folded paper talismans drifting in the breeze above them "I am surprised you did not see them in your visions," the woman commented, holding her ground. "Given their significance in all our lives..." She sighed sadly. "The scrolls are not of this Earth, Shinji. They were made by our oldest ancestors, those that forged the Moons and the Spears and our gods themselves long before our time."
Aliens... the word didn't quite feel right but was the closest Shinji had without resorting to mysticism. "And it... its like... instructions?"
"The scrolls themselves do not contain knowledge save for what the user brings with them, rather... its a window into another world, an anti-universe of pure thought, pure knowledge, past, present, and future." Shinji felt a hand on his as his grandmother gave him a squeeze of warning. "It's not something most people can handle, and as such its use has been... highly regulated. Only a few outside of Kiel himself has ever used them. One of them being your mother."
"Mom used them? What did she..."
"I don't know, but whatever she saw, it was not what Kiel saw nor what he expected her to see. Their relationship, once very close... never quite recovered."
"Have you ever?" Shinji looked at his grandmother as they stood at the threshold of the dark building, a chill running through him.
"No. It was not my place to look. I am not Kiel, nor am I your mother. The future is not mine to make, only... all I can do now is show you the way and hope. This is something you must do alone..." She let go of his arm, her tired face wet from a single tear.
"I... I'll try my best." Shinji took a step forward, the old wood creaking beneath him.
"Take off your shoes Shinji.... where you go is holy ground."
Nodding, Shinji kicked off his shoes and socks, placing them in the grass next to the shrine before walking in slowly, the slow burning candles in the rafters doing little to quell the darkness around him.
The air was still and silent and for a moment and Shinji was not sure where to go, many items in the shrine looked mystical but nothing met his grandmother's otherworldly description. That was, until the floor in front of the great altar shifted, rising up before in a cold hiss before parting to reveal stairs down into a hidden chamber under the earth. Taking a deep breath, Shinji climbed down the steps, shivering a little as his feet went from polished wood to cold stone.
It was difficult for Shinji to tell how far down the stairs went or how vast the chamber was they led into. There was an ancient reverence in the still air that seemed to rebel against containment. Eventually, however, Shinji did reach the bottom and looked onward. In the antechamber, the scrolls stood on a pillar at its centre.
They were... too much to describe rationally. On a purely human literal level they looked like a floating crystal clock, its glowing interlinked gears ticking away against infinity. Beyond that, though, at the edges of his senses, pieces of Adamite perception embedded in his flesh flared to life in proximity to the scrolls. They were more than a thing. They echoed a time and place and feeling so much greater than an simple object. It had no song, no soul of itself but instead was an endless and flowing book of sheet music, each one rich with possibility.
Shinji took one step into the chamber and then another, each one sending lightning up and down his body, stripping him of any illusion of his own human mundanity. He took another step and his hand burst into a white flame that quickly spread along his arm, flesh and bone singeing into nothing.
There was no pain, however, and Shinji quickly continued his trek towards the scrolls, shedding his body as easily as he would an old pair of socks, leaving a form of burning aether beneath. 'How long have I been this? Was I ever anything else? Was the little boy in the rain comforted just a prelude to this?'
Shinji took another step, then stopped. Strange and shadowy figures were now visible at the other end of the chamber. He took another step and they grew father away. He stepped back and they came more into focus. Mysteries upon mysteries.
The spirit moved unperturbed towards the scrolls, holding them in the palm of his hand. He felt them clink and turn and with them the universe itself, all he had to do was close his hand... Shinji stopped, reminding himself of his purpose, against all other temptations and possibilities. He was here to save Asuka. The rest... was not for him.
He took a moment and then closed his hand around the device. The door opened.
"My future extends to infinity..."
Shinji swam through a sea of stained glass. In front of him, drifting in the ebb, were endless fragments, moments in time of the past...
"You're going to be a pilot, Shinji, just like Asuka."
All at once Shinji was back in Nevada, the cold recirculated air of the facility hitting his skin as he sat on the edge of his bed, looking up at Mari.
"I am sorry. I tried my best to keep you out of this, but..." Mari shed a tear and placed a hand on his shoulder
"I'll do it," the young him said after a moment, giving a nervous smile. "If it means I can help people... save people who might not... I'll do it, no problem."
"Oh Shinji..." Mari sighed. "we don't deserve you."
The present...
All at once he was wrenched from one tableaux to another, this time more quickly and violently, his perspective shifting to a burning mansion. Kiel lay dead at the feet of a girl made of steel. Before he could think he was whipped again, across the Earth to a naked woman lying in a cage made of ice, nursing a dove at her breast.
To the future...
Gone.
Fire.
Alone.
Betrayal.
Rebellion.
Greatness.
Shinji felt like he was drowning, each scene, each image threatening to devour him in their senses. Reaching out a hand, Shinji clawed at reality, pushing against the current until he fell into the undertow, dragging deep below now, then, and will into depths of maybe, what if and perhaps.
Some were soft and warm and inviting.
"You're just like me..."
Some were tragic.
"The color you like, Ikari... like the Second..."
Rei... That Rei's voice was soft and strained as she drifted in her noose.
In shame and panic, Shinji tried to tear the image away, desperate for anything to replace it. His wish was granted as he was flooded with vision after vision each one eating away a piece of him, threatening to dissolve him into nothing.
"Shinji, I love you... Cute little puppy boy... Shinji, no! Drop the spears! Don't leave me, please don't leave me... just take care of my cable okay?... I'll make them pay..." Some were sad and some were happy, some were vengeful and others carnal while some made little sense at all. Each of them held a grip and each took a mounting effort to shake off.
"Stop! Stop! Stop!"
Shinji cried, reaching out in any direction he could as the scrolls threatened to tear him apart.
Asuka! Asuka! I came here to save Asuka, just...
"...If you try that shit again in battle, I'll disobey..." A particularly fiery looking Asuka stood her ground against a Gendo Ikari hand on her hip and a collection of other pilots behind her. "We will all disobey. I mean come on! Of course we will protect our own lives here! I refuse to follow suicide orders! I'm not a… a... we're not just tools for you to throw away!" The redhead scoffed throwing back her head as Gendo could only stare.
"Asuka..."
Shinji smiled as he saw the fire in the girl's eyes. She wasn't his, but it was enough.
Standing his ground, Shinji Ikari pushed back against the waves taking one step and then another, letting them flow over and around him but not through him until he was on the other side of the ocean, red waves lapping at his feet behind him and his prize before him.
It looked like a wall, running straight up and flat endlessly into the sky and the horizon, its mass a buzzing hive of pure knowledge. Shinji smiled as best he could, walking closer and closer. It was there, he knew it. Satisfaction rising inside him, he got into reach of the wall, his whole spirit shivering from it all.
After all the pain and loss and worry he could do it. It would be his, he could break through that barrier and Asuka... would be... his.
Shinjis hand stopped inches away from the wall. His thought from earlier echoing in his mind... I am not my father... I am not my mother... I'm not Mari or Dr. Akagi or anyone else... I'm just Shinji Ikari. He could not do this, not like this. He wanted... needed to help Asuka, but he was not going to force his way in or bend her to his will.
"It's up to her..." Shinji took his hand away from the wall, chuckling as he did. "All I can do is talk to her and hope... and it took all this for me to realize that... Asuka is right, I am an idiot."
The chuckle turned into a laugh that shook from the bottom of his belly to his head, the world slowly shifting and reasserting itself as he left the nowhere land he had come to, back through the endless ocean of possibilities until he was back in the cold, dark chamber deep under his grandmother's house.
"Now I just need to..." Shinji looked past the glowing machine in his hands seeing another shadowy figure. This one was getting closer, which in turn pushed him farther away. "Stop!" He held out a hand at the figure. "Just... wait a sec."
The figure stopped its movement, taking a step back tentatively. He had a hard time seeing everything in the glare and darkness but the person was unmistakable. 'Mom?'
"Are... are you one of those Angels Kiel told me about?"
Her voice was soft and quiet... childlike. She didn't look like Mari's old photos. She was... she was barely older than he was.
"I..." Shinji looked around them seeing his form still ethereal. "Yes and no..." he conceded, not sure what he should or could say until he saw the figure start to shiver. "Are you alright?"
"I don't know," Yui gulped, not moving from her place. "Everyone keeps telling me how great and smart I am, but... I just... I don't know how I can live up to any of it."
Now that was... not what Shinji expected. The laugh he carried in him a moment ago came out again before he could stop himself.
"Are you laughing at me?" There was fear in the question and Shinji realized how menacing he must look.
"No, of course not! I just... The world is a strange and wonderful place." He tried to smile, not sure how much of him Yui could manage to see in the harsh glow. "Isn't it?"
"That's not what my teacher says..." Yui stopped, fidgeting in her feet. "Is this some kind of trick?"
"No tricks," Shinji shook his head. "Only answers you might not understand yet." He sighed. "And I would not worry too much about what your teacher says. He..." Shinji caught his tongue, trying to hold a line. "Some things you have to find for yourself."
"Find for myself..." The girl nodded, finally summoning her nerve and moving closer to the scrolls, which in turn pushed Shinji back and back into the shadow, only stopping as her hands reached out inches away from the glowing crystal device.
"Go on... it will be alright." Shinji slowly slid backward, the image of his mother fading like the last breaths of a fading candle. "As long as the sun and moon and Earth exist, everything will be alright..."
The last of his comforting words came out in a whisper, catching in his throat and making him blink. When Shinji opened his eyes again she was gone and he was, for lack of any better words, back to normal, his skin shivering against the cold stone of the basement.
"Wow..."
Shinji blinked in the low darkness, trying for a moment to wrap his head around anything that had just happened to him. Past and future and alternate worlds and... Mom? Climbing to his feet, he felt more lost than when he arrived. He was about to turn on his heels when an explosion far above him shook the ground and knocked him off balance. He fell flat on his back, the room still reverberating.
"Shit..." Looking up he saw the scrolls, ticking away above their pillar. He couldn't let his father or anyone else get to them, not now, not when so much was already in the air with the Angels and SEELE and Kaworu. But where could he... it's not like he could just hide them in his pocket like the ring! These were big and strange and... weird.
Hearing another explosion crack and shake above him Shinji reached out to the scrolls. They were timeless, weren't they? Not just old but otherworldly, running on their own timeline parallel to everyone else.
Maybe he didn't need to hide them as much as... send them away for a while? He got closer his hands reaching around the scrolls, feeling their energy crackle through his fingers. A year? Would that be enough? It felt at once like it was nothing but also a lifetime considering how much had transpired in his last year.
"One year..."
Shinji grit his teeth and pushed, pressing the scrolls below the event horizon of the current timeline, the glowing cogs dimming like a setting sun in his hands until they were gone. They vanished, leaving Shinji alone in the dark. "I really hope that worked."
Scrambling up the stairs he saw his grandmother standing by the doorway of the shrine waiting for him.
"You're back." She gave a sad smile as he came into view, passing the test. "What did you... no, it's not for me to ask. I can only hope you found what you were looking for."
"In the end, yes... sort of," Shinji admitted, standing by his grandmother, in front of him in the outskirts of the property he could see men with guns in tan suits creeping closer while high above them a VTOL watched as it made its pass. "One thing that's been bugging me, though... if Kiel didn't trust mom with the scrolls, why did he leave them here?"
"He didn't," Kunohama smirked. "Your mother... to say she copied them would be wrong rather... she told me she folded them in space and time to be in two places at once. They are their own shadow." Her voice trembled. "I don't know if Kiel successfully stopped Stern from getting his scrolls before he died either way..." The old woman turned to Shinji terror flashing in her eyes. "You must stop him, Shinji. No matter what it takes."
It was difficult to think of Stern as anything more than a technician buzzing around in the background with Kyoko and later Langley and others at the German NERV branch. A precise, serious man, probably not a good person by any means, but hardly a world terror. "What does he want?"
"An ordered world of steel and concrete and silicon, stripped of any mystery of majesty and soul. A perfect world of machine men and machine hearts..." She gripped him tight as the men in the treeline got closer, a woman with dark hair and a red beret joining them. "Do whatever you have to do... break the bonds of man, unite all souls, then stand resolute at the centre of the world you will define..."
"I told you, I am not going to..." Shinji was about to wrench free from his grandmother's grip when he felt something cold and sharp near his neck, a short black blade just above his skin. "What the hell are you doing!?"
"Buying myself a little time." Kunohama grit her teeth as the VTOL above them landed twenty yards away, ripping apart much of the flower garden's with wind as it touched down. A metal door slid open, revealing his father and Rei inside.
"You could have just asked..." Shinji hissed, nearly pricking his skin as he felt the blade against his neck. It was made of that same oily black stone, the substance anathema to him.
"Last time I gave you a warning. This time I won't be so forgiving." Gendo Ikari's voice held a barely contained rage as he strode out of the vehicle, quickly flanked by half a dozen agents, all holding guns. "Let him go."
"If I do that you'll shoot me," Kunohama said, smirking. "And I don't want that... I don't think Shinji wants that either, do you?"
"Both of you, please!" Shinji gulped, despite everything, including the knife at his throat, his grandmother was right. He didn't want that. He looked at his father and saw nothing stir in his eyes. He looked to Rei and saw concern. Then up at his grandmother who was trying not to panic. "Can't we just..."
"No, we can't. Rei!" Gendo signaled the girl and Kunohama's grip froze, her entire body going rigid as Gendo pulled out a heavy-looking pistol from within his coat in a swift motion. He fired several shots in quick succession.
One hit Kunohama in the shoulder, making her flinch. The others went right into Shinji before punching right through and hitting his grandmother behind him.
Before he knew it Shinji was down, his body burning and wet and cold as he fell to the ground. Vaguely he could see Misato panic and rush forward with her men as he fell down the steps of the shrine.
He was not there for long, however. His body quickly healed, expelling the bullets and even mending his torn jacket and pants where the bullets punctured. "I hope you know," Shinji climbed to one knee and then the other, taking a deep breath and feeling the last of his injuries heal, "that that really hurt."
"Consider it your spanking for running off again," Gendo snarled, clearly still furious. "Now come on. We have things to do." He turned around and motioned to the helicopter.
Shinji looked back, wincing as he saw his grandmother dead in a pile, a powerful figure of a woman, good or bad, shattered into a thousand pieces forever. "You didn't need to shoot her," Shinji ground his teeth. "We could have talked it out..."
"She was a threat."
"Then what," Shinji growled, glowing bright as his AT-field roared to life in an instant, "am I?" The ground began to shake under all of them and the air grew thin as Shinji raged at his father. "What am I?"
A dozen guns rose to shoot Shinji, Misato slowly joining them as panic crossed her face.
"An obstinate little brat," Gendo responded. "And my son."
"Shinji, please." Rei's voice was soft and quiet as a line of red blood fell from her nose. "Please don't fight."
Shinji looked at the two of them and sighed, his AT-Field cooling down to nothing "Fine..." he conceded. "But don't think I am going to let you toss me in that hole again."
"I didn't come here to imprison you. I came here because I need your help." His fathers words were cold and measured but struck at the core of Shinji. It was something he had always wanted to hear.
"I... sure. Okay," Shinji nodded, not sure what else to say. He followed his father into the helicopter, only taking a moment to look back at Misato and the commandos still staring at him, fear and loathing across all their faces. Behind them was his grandmother's body, bloody and broken, lying on the steps of the shrine.
"Come. We have much to discuss, but not here." Shinji felt his father tug on his shoulder, pulling Shinji up into the vehicle with him and Rei. The First Child seemed rather woozy, stumbling into her seat.
If he was honest, Shinji was getting pretty sick of discussion. There was only so many stunning revelations he could have in a single day, less if he included mind-bending visions and personal emotional turning points. So while he was interested in what exactly his father wanted from him, he was not going to rush to it. Sitting back in his seat and trying to get a moment's peace.
Closing his eyes he felt the pull of the VTOL under him kick off from the ground, knocking him around in his seat. Sighing, he opened his eyes and looked across the aisle at Rei. She was wiping her nose with the hem of her skirt. Crimson droplets were splattered against the fabric.
'The color you like, Ikari, like the Second...'
Something twisted in Shinji's stomach. He felt ashamed as he realized again how little he thought about his... He wasn't quite sure, but after seeing his mother through the scrolls the resemblance was closer than ever in his mind. His sister? Perhaps someday, but not now, he would not force that on her. "Are you okay, Rei?"
"I do not know what you think 'okay' means," the girl admitted, peering out the window of their vehicle as they gained height. Below them was a tableaux of smoking ruins as NERV forces demolished the compound one building at a time.
"What a waste," Gendo commented. "But better that then digging through all the traps your family surely had in store for us."
Shinji felt a pang of regret as they flew away from the pillar of black smoke, knowing that was all because of him and his actions today. Still... it was too late to go back and he had far too much to do to get lost in despair, even if it meant being cold about it.
Shinji turned back to Rei, giving the best smile he could currently manage. "How are you and Rebecca doing? You seemed pretty close before."
"She is very soft."
That made Shinji and his father blink in unison, but neither commented further.
The three rode the VTOL back to a landing pad that led to the Geofront. Shinji stared out the window most of the journey, trying to pick out the faces of the tiny figures dotting the streets of the crumbling city of Tokyo-3. Was Hikari down there still? Touji somewhere in those crowds? He didn't dare to speculate.
Touching down from the transport, Shinji followed his father and Rei along into an industrial-looking elevator that no doubt went down into the depths of the fortress.
Commander Ikari gave a tired sigh when the heavy steel doors closed in front of them reaching into his pocket and swiping his security card into the terminal. The carriage to started to rumble as they made their decent. "I know why you went to see your grandmother, Shinji."
The words hung in the air as the car slowly crawled down into the Geofront, flashes of light blanketing the trio through the cracks in the wall where the door met the ceiling.
"I..." Shinji ground his teeth, not able to hide anything at this point. "I had to try."
"You should have come to me, but... considering our relationship thus far, I am not surprised you didn't." The admission was more candid than Shinji expected. "I think its long overdue we had a talk."
Shinji opened his mouth and then closed it again, the click of metal on metal from the elevator making it hard to think. "I... I don't know what to say."
"Do you hate me?"
The words made Shinji blink, turning his head to see his father's cold face, unreadable in the low light.
"I don't blame you if you do. I hated my father until the day he died, and you and I are much alike."
"Bullshit." The word came out before Shinji knew he said it. Once he did he flinched at the harshness of it but carried on regardless, knowing he would never get a better chance than this. "I don't know... I heard you had a rough childhood from grandmother, but... I do know you never had to fight any Angels or... they never cut you open and took out your heart, you never lost a friend to... to get eaten like..."
"No, I only lost my wife," Gendo's voice was soft, barely audible over the increasing rumble of the elevator as they based through a secure access point. "Our origins are obviously different, Shinji, but the pain you feel right now is all too familiar to me. Can you tell me that does not mean anything to you?"
"I... I guess so." Shinji sighed, the anger fading from him as he tried to think of his father as a man and not a looming colossus standing over him, always ready to cast him aside again.
"There is a hole in our hearts, Shinji, a deep pit that can't be filled by anything in the world except love from the one person who can see you for who you are and love you anyway. For me, that was Yui. Before her I was lost, adrift on an endless sea. For you... I think it was Asuka."
"You asked me for my help," Shinji ground his teeth again, wondering if the damned elevator would ever stop descending. "What do you want, dad?"
"I need your help to save my wife, Shinji. Your mother. And to save Asuka as well, if we can..."
Gendo's words were punctuated by a ding as the elevator clicked open, a rank smell immediately falling over the trio like a wave of revulsion. In front of them were several of the Evas. In the center Unit-01 was attached to several cranes above by hooks, chains, and cords.
"Gods, what's that smell?" Shinji nearly retched on the metal catwalk in front of them as he fell out of the elevator, smacking his knees on the metal grating.
"Rot," Gendo said flatly, stepping out of the elevator no worse for wear. He pointed at Unit-01 across the way and the technicians working on its body. No longer was it in separate pieces, but the places where it was cut were still large and visible. The gashes into the armour and flesh were only loosely patched up with wire and cord. "The Evangelion's body is fighting off necrosis. We will have to use massive extracts of cloned flesh to replace the damaged parts."
"Is this what you wanted me for?" Shinji blinked and got up from his knees, gripping a railing. "To heal Unit-01?"
"No," Gendo shook his head. "That is not your purpose, and even if you did heal the body, Yui would still be trapped inside the Core. What we need is something more... drastic."
Shinji felt a small, cold hand on his shoulder. Looking around he saw Rei blushing a bit as she looked at him.
"You are now Adamite, your essence is of the white moon. Rei contains the soul of Lilith progenitor of the black moon. I proper merging and meeting of your power channeled correctly..."
"Third Impact..." Shinji's eyes went wide. "You... you wouldn't! Would you?" Shinji shook off Rei's hand to turn to his father, anger rising in his chest. 'Not you too...'
"It is inevitable, Shinji. Once Kiel found the scrolls the Impacts became fated. It will either be us who does it to save the ones we love or someone else. This world... It cannot be saved, but Yui and Asuka can, if we try."
For a moment Shinji was tempted. What had this world really given him, anyway? Nothing but pain and sorrow and betrayal by those he loved most. What would he even have if he didn't do this? What would he look forward to? A lifetime loathed and feared for being who he was?
"Shinji..."
The boy opened his eyes seeing Rei staring at him, unsure at his hesitation. "Is this not what you want? I thought Asuka made you happy? Don't you want to see her again by becoming one with me?"
"No." Shinji gulped. "I... I don't love her because she makes me happy." Shinji took another step back, his back pressing against the railing. 'Got to run away got to run away got to run away...' "I love her because I love her. I'm sorry." In a flourish he hopped up the railing and jumped from it to another several dozen feet below them, praying for once his mental map of the Geofront was right.
He landed in a roll, the gangway shaking on its bolts from the impact
"Shinji, no! Rei, go! Stop him, now!"
Gendo's voice boomed as Shinji got to his feet, running down the gangway to the doorway leading to the next towering chamber. He smashed through it with a heavy AT-Field-boosted shoulder rush.
There, standing tall, was Valkyrie. Its glimmering silver form stood proud and ready for launch. "Come on, Asuka...." Shinji broke into a run toward the titan. "Please, just... open up for me..." He turned the corner and Rei was there again in a flash, her face twisted in confusion and regret.
"Ikari..."
Shinji kept running and Rei stepped aside at the last minute, letting him get a good angle to jump again from the gangway launching himself directly at Valkyrie's heart. "Please..."
There was a flash of light as Shinji's body was absorbed by the Eva, flesh and bone and spirit passing through the hard metal shell as easily as air.
"Why..." Gendo ran from the doorway to where Rei was standing on the edge of the ledge looking over at Valkyrie. "Why didn't you stop him?"
Rei blinked calmly. "I made a promise to someone."
Authors Note: Whew that was a long time coming and definitely a beast to write let me tell you. In some parts I think it drags a bit but that is my own fault I sorta overstuffed it over the course of previous chapters planning things out, deciding where things would go leading to me continuing to put different bits of critical exposition here and by the time I reached "here" I realized it was a bit too much. Ah well let it stand as a lesson to other writers, sometimes you can overplot or overplan things. Still otherwise I really like the chapter and I hope you all do to, lots of fun little references in there for those who like looking for them and some good emotional moments. If you like it please leave a like or leave a comment with your thoughts, heck leave a comment if you dont like it or think I made some mistake I am always trying to take in different points of view for my work.
- Location
- Surrey
Oh my god.
The scrolls force their user to browse Ao3 with filters disabled.
It is a wonder that Shinji could withstand such a trial.
- Location
- North Carolina, USA
Chapter 21! Things move forward in terms of narrative and emotion. I definitely saw an emphasis on the latter and again, I can nearly taste the conflict dancing under everybody's surface.
Her ego is just oozing off every action and word. And I love it. How fun and or how challenging is it to get into Asuka's mindset when you write her?
Asuka, you're so pretentious. Using Latin too? The gladiator quote? Pssshaw.
Vicious but hurting inside wolf Asuka. It's painful to see the way her life's gone to make her think that way.
This is some really nice action. Not just this part, all of it. And the polearm is a neat choice for a weapon. What gave you the idea for it?
Oh no, Kaworu's using the Five Finger Palm of Death!
Kaworu, you are devious.
That motivation to keep it, that desire for a connection. The melancholy way he's thinking about it.
It'd be funny if Kiel WAS online in a really easy to find way and you could just find his Linkedin.
*Beavis and Butthead laugh*
Interesting and sad admission on Mari's part. Even as things are going on this far, you're still giving interesting tidbits like that. And geez, this part here. It cut deep to me. Not to overshare, but I struggle with not trusting my own judgement and depending on others' approval. You got that emotion down perfectly.
We need a Kaworu version of Asuka's "Pathetic" for this.
The condescension mixed with his undeniable regard for her on some level. It's scary how much it syncs.
Another moment of Kaworu being caught off-guard in a conversation. Is he getting better with them?
Even Kaworu thinks you're cringe, Langley.
Evocative description for just a virtual rendering. I approve.
Hmm, Kaworu, I can't help but think you have other reasons to want to see Shinji. Especially in a defeated position.
Another good visual.
That's so perfectly Asuka. 10/10.
His ego is as fragile as it is big. What if Shinji saw him beat like that?
Cute and then you had to make me sad with that last part.
Shinji's feeling that conflict again but he doesn't want to give up something. Good sad stuff.
Ooof.
Good view of Mari switching to urgency mode. And I wonder what song was her ringtone?
How quickly Asuka's anger cools when Shinji's around.
And now I'm just imagining him placating Kaworu by throwing snacks into his mouth whenever he gets conceited.
Plot twist: The Angel is attacking because it wasn't invited to dinner.
Her ego is just oozing off every action and word. And I love it. How fun and or how challenging is it to get into Asuka's mindset when you write her?
Asuka, you're so pretentious. Using Latin too? The gladiator quote? Pssshaw.
Vicious but hurting inside wolf Asuka. It's painful to see the way her life's gone to make her think that way.
This is some really nice action. Not just this part, all of it. And the polearm is a neat choice for a weapon. What gave you the idea for it?
Oh no, Kaworu's using the Five Finger Palm of Death!
Kaworu, you are devious.
That motivation to keep it, that desire for a connection. The melancholy way he's thinking about it.
It'd be funny if Kiel WAS online in a really easy to find way and you could just find his Linkedin.
*Beavis and Butthead laugh*
Interesting and sad admission on Mari's part. Even as things are going on this far, you're still giving interesting tidbits like that. And geez, this part here. It cut deep to me. Not to overshare, but I struggle with not trusting my own judgement and depending on others' approval. You got that emotion down perfectly.
We need a Kaworu version of Asuka's "Pathetic" for this.
The condescension mixed with his undeniable regard for her on some level. It's scary how much it syncs.
Another moment of Kaworu being caught off-guard in a conversation. Is he getting better with them?
Even Kaworu thinks you're cringe, Langley.
Evocative description for just a virtual rendering. I approve.
Hmm, Kaworu, I can't help but think you have other reasons to want to see Shinji. Especially in a defeated position.
Another good visual.
That's so perfectly Asuka. 10/10.
His ego is as fragile as it is big. What if Shinji saw him beat like that?
Cute and then you had to make me sad with that last part.
Shinji's feeling that conflict again but he doesn't want to give up something. Good sad stuff.
Ooof.
Good view of Mari switching to urgency mode. And I wonder what song was her ringtone?
How quickly Asuka's anger cools when Shinji's around.
And now I'm just imagining him placating Kaworu by throwing snacks into his mouth whenever he gets conceited.
Plot twist: The Angel is attacking because it wasn't invited to dinner.
- Location
- Canada
Definitely in the last phase of the fic I think if that makes sense. Still lots to go but in the home stretch.
Lol yeah he went through quite a journey witnessing the wonders of the multiverse. Points go to whoever can name all the references I put in
I really enjoyed the trip into the multiverse with the Dead Sea Scrolls. It also does a lot to show Yui as actually having doubts and being actually human rather than just being the all-knowing, charismatic, mastermind she appears as in the show.
> Shoots his son and mother-in-law.
> Refuses to elaborate.
> Leaves.
Also, since the Scrolls involve the Anti-Universe:
A pair of hands suddenly blocks Shinji's vision and he hears a familiar voice
"Guess who?"
"Mom?"
The hands pull away and Shinji turns around to see a girl with twin tails and a familiar pair of glasses dressed in a pink and white plugsuit staring at him with a confused look.
"Nope! You're definitely not the Puppy I'm looking for."
> Shoots his son and mother-in-law.
> Refuses to elaborate.
> Leaves.
Also, since the Scrolls involve the Anti-Universe:
A pair of hands suddenly blocks Shinji's vision and he hears a familiar voice
"Guess who?"
"Mom?"
The hands pull away and Shinji turns around to see a girl with twin tails and a familiar pair of glasses dressed in a pink and white plugsuit staring at him with a confused look.
"Nope! You're definitely not the Puppy I'm looking for."
so the scrolls show multiple universes, does that mean that the people that saw them goes insane with knowledge, also that would mean that yui knew she was going to meet gendo and have shinji.
also after too big a success where shinji rescues Asuka ... and also Kyoko by mistake. mari and shinji have a little discussion
"I can't believe you did something so dangerous first the scrolls and then enter unit 02 half an hour later, you are going to kill me faster than my illness and now unit 02 does not work, I know you saved kyoko too but I recommend you not be close to asuka for a while "
"I'm sorry ... but I have to ask you something, I saw very strange things in that place, there is no younger version than you hanging around, right? Of course not, that's impossible, right?"
Mari stared at him for a long time.
"In the worst case that unit 04 didn't work with you, I had a contingency plan, but don't worry, she's a long way from here."
the next day
"Gentlemen, I present to you the new pilot of unit 02, we have already done the tests and she was able to synchronize perfectly with unit 02, she is ..." gendo cut shot by a younger version of mari that appeared out of nowhere in a pink plugsuit.
"the unmatched maria iscariot from england, hello mom and big brother~"
no.
Pink Flamingo Cabal Grand Vizier
- Location
- Pennsylvania
I've been looking over bits and pieces of this one as it was written, and it definitely came out really well. Tensions are further escalated and characters are developed without ever compromising the pacing. There's a lot of really evocative imagery in here as well.
An enduring theme of this work seems to be that everything has a cost, so I have to wonder what the cost of getting Asuka back will be.
An enduring theme of this work seems to be that everything has a cost, so I have to wonder what the cost of getting Asuka back will be.
So yui most famous line is something that is like uroboros? It does not have a beginning and also does not have and ending? It just exists
- Location
- Canada
Yup! Nice little time loop thing. The saying felt timeless and eternal already so it felt right to give it this circular origin. Plus I like the idea of bnb Shinji comforting his mother as she goes through a turbulent time in her own life. Like Kaworu or Shinji once you get beyond all the special expectation and greatness places on them Yui is just another person who has fears and anxieties like anyone else.
- Location
- Edinburgh
Bloody fantastic chapter. I really enjoyed how you described Shinji's little journey into the scrolls and how he navigated them to try to find the answers he wanted. I think what you really managed to do well was capture that feeling of being in a sort of dreamscape, that sort of losing of any logical sense whilst being in and around places you find familiar. That little bit of weirdness.
Loved seeing Shinji's journey here from meeting with his grandmother again through to that ending. I really like the way you've developed him over the course of the story, it's all been very much like I imagine Shinji would be. He's used the experiences in his life so far to really define how he wants to move forward, he's grown a lot whilst also having his moments of selfishness, like we all do but he has also come to the ultimate decision to not be like his father or others before him and try to escape from the world and sod the consequences, he wants to try to be unselfish.
Really can't wait to see what you do next. Keep up the great work
Loved seeing Shinji's journey here from meeting with his grandmother again through to that ending. I really like the way you've developed him over the course of the story, it's all been very much like I imagine Shinji would be. He's used the experiences in his life so far to really define how he wants to move forward, he's grown a lot whilst also having his moments of selfishness, like we all do but he has also come to the ultimate decision to not be like his father or others before him and try to escape from the world and sod the consequences, he wants to try to be unselfish.
Really can't wait to see what you do next. Keep up the great work
- Location
- North Carolina, USA
Alright, Chapter 22 was shorter but you managed to push a lot of feeling into it regardless.
I like the quick string of details you put in here when he punches the machine. I know it's a small thing but it builds up the image the words create in the mind. It's also just a really strong way to open the chapter.
I like how Mari loses it and raises her voice but only for a moment before she stops herself. She does care and I feel like she doesn't want to be needlessly harsh. As bad as things are and considering what she HAS to do for him to keep him safe and survive in the endless manipulations...she still shows gentleness in this one moment. Maybe that's just how I read it. But I still feel something strong about it. And Shinji's painfully big-hearted here. But it's not helping him feel any better or at ease.
Something about Shinji dropping an F-bomb. It feels organic, like the result of his feelings spilling over. And Kaworu's being ambiguous but there's real weakness and conflict under it. It's a perfect example on how you build on the way he's presented in canon. I can imagine him being this frantic roiling conflicted blob under this calm cutout facade.
It's a very intimate moment here. It's so close and honest and it kind of felt like it was going to get somewhere shippy. I like how you tease us.
Ooh, that bit of rapport here. It flows great. It's cute. And the Angel is just so rude for interrupting.
I wonder how good Kozo is at hiding that. Gendo can't not pick up on it, can he?
Oooh. That visual is so simple but it manages to be evocative. I can easily see it being in the series.
Creepy and heartbreaking. What was your inspiration for this visual?
Painful. Conjuring feelings of atavistic helplessness, the experience of the mind's defenses being useless. Kaworu is so far from unflappable. I wonder when Shinji and Asuka will see him in this way.
I just gotta say again, damn. That's a great striking and dare I say iconic image. I want to ask again what your process coming up with it was. What did you consider and was it your first idea?
You bisexual noodlehead, Kaworu. Also, noticed that detail about Asuka's tone.
I like the quick string of details you put in here when he punches the machine. I know it's a small thing but it builds up the image the words create in the mind. It's also just a really strong way to open the chapter.
I like how Mari loses it and raises her voice but only for a moment before she stops herself. She does care and I feel like she doesn't want to be needlessly harsh. As bad as things are and considering what she HAS to do for him to keep him safe and survive in the endless manipulations...she still shows gentleness in this one moment. Maybe that's just how I read it. But I still feel something strong about it. And Shinji's painfully big-hearted here. But it's not helping him feel any better or at ease.
Something about Shinji dropping an F-bomb. It feels organic, like the result of his feelings spilling over. And Kaworu's being ambiguous but there's real weakness and conflict under it. It's a perfect example on how you build on the way he's presented in canon. I can imagine him being this frantic roiling conflicted blob under this calm cutout facade.
It's a very intimate moment here. It's so close and honest and it kind of felt like it was going to get somewhere shippy. I like how you tease us.
Ooh, that bit of rapport here. It flows great. It's cute. And the Angel is just so rude for interrupting.
I wonder how good Kozo is at hiding that. Gendo can't not pick up on it, can he?
Oooh. That visual is so simple but it manages to be evocative. I can easily see it being in the series.
Creepy and heartbreaking. What was your inspiration for this visual?
Painful. Conjuring feelings of atavistic helplessness, the experience of the mind's defenses being useless. Kaworu is so far from unflappable. I wonder when Shinji and Asuka will see him in this way.
I just gotta say again, damn. That's a great striking and dare I say iconic image. I want to ask again what your process coming up with it was. What did you consider and was it your first idea?
You bisexual noodlehead, Kaworu. Also, noticed that detail about Asuka's tone.
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- Location
- Canada
HA well I think as teenagers its inevitable that they swear a bit, its something I try to use sparingly tho since I know everyone being super foul mouthed is a hall mark of a lot of bad fics.
Its pretty nice, shows how Kaworu has a lot of tenderness in him.
a particularly memorable nightmare lol.
- Location
- North Carolina, USA
Here's my thoughts on Chapter 23! Quick and action-packed. There's again a great rhythm to it all. I also admire that the character moments, the exchanges of dialogue, they felt engaging and true to everyone without feeling too 'quippy.'
Good start on this bit, with the visceral details of the click and Shinji's shoulders. Sound and touch are are great ways to capture how a scene really feels.
Ooh, more Kaworu trying and failing to hide his vulnerability. How good is Shinji at seeing through that facade?
Even Shinji's Angel-infused powers can't save him from the fate of being a harem anime protagonist. Seriously though, it does feel natural the way his mind goes there, thinking about how he feels about everyone.
Ooh, this is a neat design! Where did you get the idea for it? It's not like anything in canon, is it?
Geez, Kaworu. You're not looking very superior right now.
Ooooh. Everything built up to this. You can hear the soundtrack start up, in your mind, as Shinji turns the comm off. I am wondering too about Asuka's reactions here. She's not as take charge here. What's got her worried most of all?
Great action as painful as it is for Shinji. The tough spot for him is a vivid one. It moves quick too, gets adrenaline going.
Oh, this is another great visual. It makes me wonder more about this Angel and the specifics of its powers.
Damn. Again, you pushed things up and escalated so fast. It really does come off as Shinji improvising.
Oh, I'm loving the resignation here. There's a confidence to it.
This building anger Shinji has here. It feels earned and it feels like he has a more deserving target. But of course, he won't get that easy release. That would be giving him a break.
Blowing up and an f-bomb? Asuka might approve. It does feel right that he'd break here, that he's had enough.
No, not the dwindling anger! He needs that!
Oh shit. That's the darkest way you could end this chapter. Well, not the darkest but it's still a gutpunch.
Good start on this bit, with the visceral details of the click and Shinji's shoulders. Sound and touch are are great ways to capture how a scene really feels.
Ooh, more Kaworu trying and failing to hide his vulnerability. How good is Shinji at seeing through that facade?
Even Shinji's Angel-infused powers can't save him from the fate of being a harem anime protagonist. Seriously though, it does feel natural the way his mind goes there, thinking about how he feels about everyone.
Ooh, this is a neat design! Where did you get the idea for it? It's not like anything in canon, is it?
Geez, Kaworu. You're not looking very superior right now.
Ooooh. Everything built up to this. You can hear the soundtrack start up, in your mind, as Shinji turns the comm off. I am wondering too about Asuka's reactions here. She's not as take charge here. What's got her worried most of all?
Great action as painful as it is for Shinji. The tough spot for him is a vivid one. It moves quick too, gets adrenaline going.
Oh, this is another great visual. It makes me wonder more about this Angel and the specifics of its powers.
Damn. Again, you pushed things up and escalated so fast. It really does come off as Shinji improvising.
Oh, I'm loving the resignation here. There's a confidence to it.
This building anger Shinji has here. It feels earned and it feels like he has a more deserving target. But of course, he won't get that easy release. That would be giving him a break.
Blowing up and an f-bomb? Asuka might approve. It does feel right that he'd break here, that he's had enough.
No, not the dwindling anger! He needs that!
Oh shit. That's the darkest way you could end this chapter. Well, not the darkest but it's still a gutpunch.
Got some additional art
- Location
- North Carolina, USA
Look at that, we're at Chapter 24. I like how, even though the Angel is dealt with, nobody's really getting room to breathe. The impersonal chaos and destruction wrought by the Angels is nothing compared to the frustrations of human interaction.
Ritsuko here is...she's really layered. I like how you mix her hopefulness and her apprehension and her cynicism. They all meld into a very believable person.
Oh, there's another layer you added to her. She's disturbed clearly but she's still doubtful, in spite of trusting Gendo. Also, Gendo, geez, that's pretty messed up that you're willing to play to Rits' prejudice like that.
Gendo, you smooth operator. Does this skillful manipulation fill the screaming void in your soul?
I had to use just a brief example but I love all of Asuka and Kaworu's interactions. They have the most golden chemistry and everything they say bounces off each other perfectly. I assume you have a lot of fun writing their interactions.
Oh, oh, oh. And then we segue into her hiding her pain under bravado. It's sad and also, it's interesting that as stubborn as she is, she thinks it's inevitable.
Wonder what the symbolism there is.
Asuka, you freaking absolute terror. How many did she go through? Really though. Good vivid details about her life.
Dang, Rebecca and Langley interacting is...it's an uncommon occurrence isn't it? Still, it's great seeing two very different people bouncing off each other like that.
That detail about Rebecca, the "kind of eagerness" line is a quiet sort of oof. It says a lot in so few words.
Nice little fight. Good energy and movement and man, Kaworu, you useless duckboy.
That's two adrenaline fueled kisses in the story so far, isn't it? Who's going to be number 3?
How endearing. He's still pathetic but I can see he's really trying here.
I know the context makes sense but still, the quick turnaround here is pretty funny.
Angry to despair and fear. Are those settings of his going to be worn out soon?
He was going to though, wasn't he? Good bit of levity.
I can't imagine this will be a pleasant family gathering.
Sorry if I didn't seem to have much to say here. But the chapter is good. We got some real exploration of everyone involved.
Ritsuko here is...she's really layered. I like how you mix her hopefulness and her apprehension and her cynicism. They all meld into a very believable person.
Oh, there's another layer you added to her. She's disturbed clearly but she's still doubtful, in spite of trusting Gendo. Also, Gendo, geez, that's pretty messed up that you're willing to play to Rits' prejudice like that.
Gendo, you smooth operator. Does this skillful manipulation fill the screaming void in your soul?
I had to use just a brief example but I love all of Asuka and Kaworu's interactions. They have the most golden chemistry and everything they say bounces off each other perfectly. I assume you have a lot of fun writing their interactions.
Oh, oh, oh. And then we segue into her hiding her pain under bravado. It's sad and also, it's interesting that as stubborn as she is, she thinks it's inevitable.
Wonder what the symbolism there is.
Asuka, you freaking absolute terror. How many did she go through? Really though. Good vivid details about her life.
Dang, Rebecca and Langley interacting is...it's an uncommon occurrence isn't it? Still, it's great seeing two very different people bouncing off each other like that.
That detail about Rebecca, the "kind of eagerness" line is a quiet sort of oof. It says a lot in so few words.
Nice little fight. Good energy and movement and man, Kaworu, you useless duckboy.
That's two adrenaline fueled kisses in the story so far, isn't it? Who's going to be number 3?
How endearing. He's still pathetic but I can see he's really trying here.
I know the context makes sense but still, the quick turnaround here is pretty funny.
Angry to despair and fear. Are those settings of his going to be worn out soon?
He was going to though, wasn't he? Good bit of levity.
I can't imagine this will be a pleasant family gathering.
Sorry if I didn't seem to have much to say here. But the chapter is good. We got some real exploration of everyone involved.
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