Prologue
On judgment day, fire will reveal the work each builder has done, and their...
On judgment day, fire will reveal the work each builder has done, and their...
Ignis Aurum Probat [Neon Genesis Evangelion]
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Prologue
- Location
- https://discord.gg/z9tBvbh
Prologue
On judgment day, fire will reveal the work each builder has done, and their foundation shall be made manifest to all.
Pray then, pray thus.
Hope that the builder did not build on straw and wood, but steel and rock.
For if he hasn't...
...you will burn.
Shinji Ikari was not afraid.
He wasn't afraid because he was alone in the middle of a train station. He wasn't afraid because he was surrounded by absolute nothingness as far as his eyes could stretch if not for an empty, desolate city that seemed to have been abandoned in such a neat manner that there still was a half-lit cigarette on the floor near him, rolling about carried by the wind on the tiled pavement.
He was, rather than afraid, slightly perplexed. He phoned, but the phone did not seem to be working, neither his cellphone nor the nearby call box had any signal, and only a prolonged 'beep' could be heard whenever a number was inputted.
"Is this the...twilight dimension?" he murmured, looking awkwardly around for any signs of life. Anything at all would have been fine, but except for the wind, a sudden shudder at the back of his spine and him exhaling and rubbing his hands along his arms, nothing else seemed to be making noise.
He got nothing.
Had he ended up leaving the train at the wrong station?
The sign did say 'Tokyo-Three' on it. It swung lazily, carried by the breeze. The pungent taste of iron and copper -the crimson sea's regular smell- hung thickly in the air. Seriously though, this was starting to get creepy.
"Could this be a prank?" Shinji wondered aloud, as if hoping his words alone would be enough to dispel the overwhelming silence. Apparently, they weren't. His father, in the few terse phone conversations they had had, hadn't seemed the kind of person to play pranks.
He sat down on a nearby bench, and waited for a sign, any sign really, that he wasn't dreaming and was, in fact, still on the train. His luggage was there by his side, and as he opened the top zipper, he pulled out a bag of sweets and began to carefully munch on them.
"I wasn't expecting a welcoming party," Shinji said, sounding offended even. "But was it so hard to just send someone?"
"Wark!" a penguin suddenly screeched from Shinji's side, making him turn his head sharply towards him and, at the same time, jump away and land with his backside on the floor nearby.
"Gah!" he screamed, flailing wildly much to the penguin's amusement. "Uh?" he said after a short while, as the penguin simply flapped its tiny arms and began to guzzle down the sweets that had dropped on the floor. "So I'm sleeping," Shinji said in the end.
Unless pinguins were the latest fad in pet animals, and Tokyo Three actually allowed for them to roam free, but where would anyone even buy a penguin? And, most importantly, why would anyone buy one just to let it roam free without supervision?
Shinji Ikari wasn't afraid however.
He was simply too perplexed and curious to be afraid.
"So...Mister Penguin?" Shinji asked carefully, "Are you...real?"
The penguin made another 'Wark' sound, and then scuttled closer to Shinji, looking at him straight in the eyes. "Wark!" it said, as if it made all the sense in the world whatever it was saying, and then nodded at his own sounds. "Wark." It then began to walk away, not really bothering if Shinji followed him or not.
Shinji didn't really know what to do, but following a penguin in the middle of an empty city? It didn't feel like the responsible thing for a teenager to do.
Thankfully, he wasn't a teenager any longer.
And if his father wouldn't even send someone to get him, then he'd just have to walk his way to Nerv on his own two feet.
He was an adult, after all.
Adults never ran away from anything.
AN: ...This♥is♥going♥to♥be♥fun♥.
On judgment day, fire will reveal the work each builder has done, and their foundation shall be made manifest to all.
Pray then, pray thus.
Hope that the builder did not build on straw and wood, but steel and rock.
For if he hasn't...
...you will burn.
Shinji Ikari was not afraid.
He wasn't afraid because he was alone in the middle of a train station. He wasn't afraid because he was surrounded by absolute nothingness as far as his eyes could stretch if not for an empty, desolate city that seemed to have been abandoned in such a neat manner that there still was a half-lit cigarette on the floor near him, rolling about carried by the wind on the tiled pavement.
He was, rather than afraid, slightly perplexed. He phoned, but the phone did not seem to be working, neither his cellphone nor the nearby call box had any signal, and only a prolonged 'beep' could be heard whenever a number was inputted.
"Is this the...twilight dimension?" he murmured, looking awkwardly around for any signs of life. Anything at all would have been fine, but except for the wind, a sudden shudder at the back of his spine and him exhaling and rubbing his hands along his arms, nothing else seemed to be making noise.
He got nothing.
Had he ended up leaving the train at the wrong station?
The sign did say 'Tokyo-Three' on it. It swung lazily, carried by the breeze. The pungent taste of iron and copper -the crimson sea's regular smell- hung thickly in the air. Seriously though, this was starting to get creepy.
"Could this be a prank?" Shinji wondered aloud, as if hoping his words alone would be enough to dispel the overwhelming silence. Apparently, they weren't. His father, in the few terse phone conversations they had had, hadn't seemed the kind of person to play pranks.
He sat down on a nearby bench, and waited for a sign, any sign really, that he wasn't dreaming and was, in fact, still on the train. His luggage was there by his side, and as he opened the top zipper, he pulled out a bag of sweets and began to carefully munch on them.
"I wasn't expecting a welcoming party," Shinji said, sounding offended even. "But was it so hard to just send someone?"
"Wark!" a penguin suddenly screeched from Shinji's side, making him turn his head sharply towards him and, at the same time, jump away and land with his backside on the floor nearby.
"Gah!" he screamed, flailing wildly much to the penguin's amusement. "Uh?" he said after a short while, as the penguin simply flapped its tiny arms and began to guzzle down the sweets that had dropped on the floor. "So I'm sleeping," Shinji said in the end.
Unless pinguins were the latest fad in pet animals, and Tokyo Three actually allowed for them to roam free, but where would anyone even buy a penguin? And, most importantly, why would anyone buy one just to let it roam free without supervision?
Shinji Ikari wasn't afraid however.
He was simply too perplexed and curious to be afraid.
"So...Mister Penguin?" Shinji asked carefully, "Are you...real?"
The penguin made another 'Wark' sound, and then scuttled closer to Shinji, looking at him straight in the eyes. "Wark!" it said, as if it made all the sense in the world whatever it was saying, and then nodded at his own sounds. "Wark." It then began to walk away, not really bothering if Shinji followed him or not.
Shinji didn't really know what to do, but following a penguin in the middle of an empty city? It didn't feel like the responsible thing for a teenager to do.
Thankfully, he wasn't a teenager any longer.
And if his father wouldn't even send someone to get him, then he'd just have to walk his way to Nerv on his own two feet.
He was an adult, after all.
Adults never ran away from anything.
AN: ...This♥is♥going♥to♥be♥fun♥.
Chapter One: "Nulla tenaci invia est via."
- Location
- https://discord.gg/z9tBvbh
Chapter One: "Nulla tenaci invia est via."
Shinji Ikari, age twenty-six, was a part-time violinist and full-time professor. Grown up under the protective wing of a professor of Kyoto University, he had ended up traveling abroad and settling there. He hadn't graduated from a prestigious university, but he had, all the same, managed his lot in life.
His hobbies included reading and listening to music, and while many considered him a friend, nobody considered him a 'best friend' material. He was shy, spoke little, and while he had no problem helping others, he'd never wake up before nine o'clock to do so. This was, in a nutshell, Shinji Ikari.
It would be a lie to claim that the reason he had left Japan all together was because of the opportunity European universities offered him, due to the United Nations being the top-seat power in the world. Truth was, he left Japan so he'd have an excuse not to visit his mother's tomb on the anniversary of her death -the same day he'd end up meeting with his father, punctually, even though he tried his best to arrive either earlier than most, or later than all.
Somehow, he suspected his father began his mourning in front of his mother's tomb at midnight of the day before, and finished it at midnight of the next day.
And yet, now here he was, Shinji Ikari, carrying his luggage as a penguin, of all things, seemed to be guiding him through the desolated and abandoned buildings of Tokyo Three.
The stillness of the world around him was second only to the vivacious sound that the penguin's webbed feet made on the concrete, acting as if the world itself was but a mere drum for the strange and out of place animal.
"Have I eaten too much last night?" he most certainly hadn't drunk more than half a bottle of wine. No, to be honest, he hadn't drunk more than one plastic cup of cheap wine that was served on airlines that went back and forth from the continent to Japan. The jet lag and the hours of travel burdening his body aside, he wondered if perhaps the train ride at the end had been the final straw that broke the camel's back.
Maybe he should have taken a plane straight into Tokyo-Three, but they always had the bad habits of cancelling those flights, and he didn't feel like having to wait at the airport more than usual. If his father wanted to see him, then he'd see him.
He'd be coming down on him with glorious anger, the image in his head of his father realizing his mistakes triumphantly making him grin, even as the penguin-creature seemed to be 'warking' in excitement now.
That was how Shinji Ikari met the penguins.
A second and third penguin-head emerged from a nearby garbage bin, and as they turned their head towards him, curiosity won him over. Was there a population of penguins hanging around Tokyo Three? Like pigeons, only made of...penguins? One of the two penguins inside the garbage bin jumped out, as if it had been in water rather than human waste, and began to trot away with a half-eaten sandwich in its beak. The other one simply jumped atop the garbage, staring at Shinji from the higher ground he claimed.
"Wark!" the penguin said, flapping its wings by its sides as it looked straight at him. It looked old, and was perhaps the 'father' of the penguin that had guided him till there, and was now instead simply rummaging through another trashcan.
"Good evening," Shinji answered. "I am lost."
"Wark," the Venerable Penguin said with a knowing nod of its beak. Somehow, the thought that he was having a conversation with a penguin, and somehow could understand what he was saying, passed straight over Shinji's head. This was, perhaps, the jet lag speaking.
And if it wasn't the jet lag, then it was the cheap wine knocking at his brain from his stomach, since not even his stomach wanted such a thing inside of him.
"This...This is kind of silly, isn't it?" Shinji said hesitantly, his eyes scanning the alleyway. "I followed a penguin in an alleyway, and now I'm talking to an older penguin who's standing atop a garbage bin."
"Wark," the penguin said.
"Do you know where 'Nerv' is?" Shinji asked. "I'm kind of lost."
The old penguin did not 'wark' again, but simply looked at him with its gleaming eyes, before dropping down from the garbage bin not with a jump, but with a small hop. It then began to slowly walk away, and out of the alleyway.
"Is this how tourists are welcomed in Tokyo Three?" Shinji muttered. "With penguins?"
It was, honestly, a nice idea.
Although he wondered if they weren't afraid of thieves, or people who took joy in hurting animals. The 'change of the guide' simply forced Shinji to follow behind the new penguin, who seemed to know his way around the main streets.
The silence was still deafening.
"Do you know what's going on?" Shinji asked, only to receive no reply from the penguin, who had stopped to catch its breath. The penguin then turned, and eyed the trolley Shinji was pulling along.
Shinji did not need to know penguin-speak to know what he had to do.
"Wark!" it said after a short while, flapping its right wing. Shinji took a right.
"Wark!" it said again, flapping the left wing, and thus Shinji took a left.
"I really am letting a penguin guide me," Shinji mumbled. "Well, it's something funny to write home about."
Not that he had anyone waiting for him back home.
He had cut off the gas and electricity before leaving, hadn't he? The sales agency would find a buyer pretty soon, or so he hoped.
"Come to Tokyo, Shinji," Shinji said. "I have a job for you. Maybe I shouldn't have sold the house. This is all my father complex coming to the fore-my psychiatrist was right, I should have demanded a proper phone call in order to settle any issues before doing this." He sighed. "Do I sound desperate for parental affection, Mister Penguin?"
"Wark!" the penguin said.
"You're just an old penguin scavenging food from a garbage bin," Shinji said flatly. He didn't know if the penguin had said something nasty, or not. It was a penguin, in the name of God. It couldn't understand him, and yet here he was, talking to it. "Does that make you homeless?"
"Wark," the penguin said, looking kind-of sad if Shinji had to be honest.
"Well," Shinji looked uncomfortably to the side. "I don't know if the place I'm staying at allows animals. If it does, would you like to stay with me?"
"Wark."
Whether that was a 'yes' or a 'no', Shinji did not know.
His psychiatrist really was right on the spot. He was so desperate for recognition, he'd go as far as make an offer to an animal.
Was he mad? Hopefully not.
"Is this the place?" Shinji asked, looking up at the building in question that had been gestured by the penguin all along. The penguin managed to free itself from the trolley's zipper, and headed for a door nearby.
"Waaaarrrkkk!" it said, beating its beak against the metallic door.
The door, finally, opened up.
"Penpen-How many times does the Major have to tell you not to-" the man behind the door looked up from the penguin to Shinji, and then bristled. "Oi, what's a civilian doing outside? You haven't received the news on your phone? We're doing a mock evacuation of the city-show number and identification papers-"
"Uhm..." Shinji looked around, a bit lost. "Is this Nerv?"
The soldier looked at Shinji as if he had grown a second head. He carefully pushed the glasses on his nose further back, and then squinted his eyes a bit. "Is that...a cello?"
On Shinji's back, there was indeed a cello within its protective casket.
"Yes?" Shinji said, slightly embarrassed. "Is this Nerv?" he asked once more. "My father sent word-"
"Oh-" the soldier's eyes widened. "Oh!" he said next, "Just a moment!" he then closed the door swiftly, letting it clank and hit the poor old penguin straight in the beak, as the animal hadn't yet stepped inside.
"WARK!" the penguin said angrily, now known as 'Penpen'.
A few minutes later, and the door opened once more. "Right this way, sir!" the soldier said cheerfully, putting his body to the side to better allow Shinji entrance. "I called for a replacement-there you are, man," he waved at a fellow soldier, who returned the greeting with a stiff nod and took the post previously occupied.
"Come with me, sir," he said next, dutifully starting to guide Shinji down a long winded set of corridors. "Commander Ikari was waiting for you. Was it hard to find the place?"
"Waiting?" Shinji remarked. "I...I followed a penguin. Couldn't you have sent someone to pick me up?"
The soldier furrowed his brows for a brief instant, and then sighed, dejectedly too. "Major..." he whined. "At least not when the Commander orders you to do it directly," he whispered under his breath, still close enough for Shinji to hear him. "Well," he tried to smile. "All's well what ends well, right?"
Shinji smiled awkwardly back. He had no idea what the man was talking about, but he had a rifle, so the man with the rifle had to be nodded to. At least, that was what common sense told him to do.
A long elevator trip next, and the smell of blood and iron was replaced with that of fresh air. Air recycling with pine fresheners in the mix was the most apt answer to the disappearance of the 'normal' smell of sea breeze. The well lit corridors seemed to be mostly devoid of personnel, but every now and then a human face did appear from a half-closed door, or a random scientist walking by.
"Here we go," the bespectacled soldier said, standing in front of yet one more elevator, this time with a polished jet black exterior. It didn't inspire trust. It really didn't. "This should bring you right up to the Commander's office. Try not to get lost on the way up," the man chuckled, saluted, and then went on his way.
This was it.
Shinji swallowed nervously as he pushed the button to call for the elevator, which opened immediately -as if it had been waiting on the ground floor all this time- and once he stepped inside, and the doors hissed to a close, he didn't know whether his heart was beating fast due to elation, or if it was because of fear. Still, he was not going to run away from this confrontation.
It had taken years of therapy, but finally, he would do it.
When the doors opened up directly into the office, which felt as if a bond villain was about to turn around with a cat in his lap, Shinji Ikari looked straight ahead at the visor-covered face of his father, who had definitely aged since the last time they had met, and not even all that gracefully.
"Shinji," Gendo Ikari's voice came through firm, rough, and to the point.
"Father," Shinji Ikari answered in turn. He still had his trolley in his right hand, and the cello inside its case on his back.
Thick silence descended between the two men as they stared at one another. Neither seemed keen on saying anything, and neither seemed to wish to be the first one to break the silence.
"Did you have me fired from my job in Paris?" Shinji asked, finally breaking the silence.
"Yes," Gendo answered. "You were needed here."
"You could have phoned me before going through with choking the University's budget for the upcoming year."
"Their budget will be reinstated as is, if you accept my job offer."
Shinji blinked. "You want me to work for you so much? What's the catch? If you wanted to make up for the lost time, you could have sent me a postcard, invited me over for Christmas-perhaps phoned me for my birthday."
"I send you a gift each year."
"You paid an agency to send me a single bottle of wine once a year from the moment I turned twenty-one. They even have a copy of your signature, and print that on the happy birthday card. I have all of them neatly arranged on my fridge-well, had really. They're also kind of creepy. 'Twenty-One, Gendo Ikari' and 'Twenty-Two, Gendo Ikari', and 'Twenty-Three, Gendo Ikari' and so on. It's like you're counting up to one hundred."
The visor gave away nothing of Gendo Ikari's face.
"Do you want the truth?" Gendo Ikari spoke slowly, and as he did he stood up from his chair and began to move around his desk, using a walking cane as an aid, a noticeable limp in his right leg. "I do not need you. Mankind does."
Shinji quietly looked around, and then he gave one look at the ceiling.
"I'm not seeing the cameras."
"This isn't a joke!" Gendo's voice rose hotly, his hands both clutching firmly on his walking cane. "If I could go without you, boy-then I would! But it's not possible," he shook his head, his face definitely red from sheer frustration. "You can thank your mother for this."
"What does she have to do with...this? Leave the dead out of it," Shinji's voice rose by itself, and he took a step forward without even realizing it, moving his free left arm in front of him in a dismissive fashion.
"If she were completely dead," Gendo said quite calmly, in neat contrast to his previous outburst, "Then I would."
Shinji blinked. "...My Japanese must have become rustier than I thought-or did you just say that mom isn't completely dead?"
For the first time in perhaps all of Shinji's life, the man saw his father at an actual loss of words. It lasted only a brief second, and it was soon gone, to be replaced with the usual control and coldness typical of him, or at least, typical of Shinji's memories of him.
"Mankind's existence is at stake here," Gendo Ikari spoke. "If you want to know more...then you will have to work with Nerv."
"Why you-" Shinji dropped the trolley and clenched his right hand in a fist, "What makes you think I've come all the way here only to be made fun of?! Old man or not, I'm going to punch you in the-"
"We both know you won't do that," Gendo said firmly.
Shinji gritted his teeth, and slowly lowered his fist. "I don't hit people with glasses," he said in the end. "But what you just said-I can't just let it go. I'm sure if I do, you're just going to find another way and if this is your 'carrot', I don't want to think about the stick. Fine," Shinji said. "Whatever. I'm a bioengineer-I suppose you'll want me in a lab or something?"
"No," Gendo said. "I want you to pilot a biomechanical instrument of mass destruction for the sake of humanity's future."
Shinji, most aptly, did not answer at first.
He looked down at the penguin that was comfortably snuggled inside his trolley, only its head emerging.
He looked at his father, who had just told him he -a twenty-six years old university professor in Bioengineering- had to pilot a giant 'instrument of mass destruction' for 'humanity's future'.
He couldn't even muster a smudge of anger.
He was just...
"...what."
Shinji Ikari, age twenty-six, was a part-time violinist and full-time professor. Grown up under the protective wing of a professor of Kyoto University, he had ended up traveling abroad and settling there. He hadn't graduated from a prestigious university, but he had, all the same, managed his lot in life.
His hobbies included reading and listening to music, and while many considered him a friend, nobody considered him a 'best friend' material. He was shy, spoke little, and while he had no problem helping others, he'd never wake up before nine o'clock to do so. This was, in a nutshell, Shinji Ikari.
It would be a lie to claim that the reason he had left Japan all together was because of the opportunity European universities offered him, due to the United Nations being the top-seat power in the world. Truth was, he left Japan so he'd have an excuse not to visit his mother's tomb on the anniversary of her death -the same day he'd end up meeting with his father, punctually, even though he tried his best to arrive either earlier than most, or later than all.
Somehow, he suspected his father began his mourning in front of his mother's tomb at midnight of the day before, and finished it at midnight of the next day.
And yet, now here he was, Shinji Ikari, carrying his luggage as a penguin, of all things, seemed to be guiding him through the desolated and abandoned buildings of Tokyo Three.
The stillness of the world around him was second only to the vivacious sound that the penguin's webbed feet made on the concrete, acting as if the world itself was but a mere drum for the strange and out of place animal.
"Have I eaten too much last night?" he most certainly hadn't drunk more than half a bottle of wine. No, to be honest, he hadn't drunk more than one plastic cup of cheap wine that was served on airlines that went back and forth from the continent to Japan. The jet lag and the hours of travel burdening his body aside, he wondered if perhaps the train ride at the end had been the final straw that broke the camel's back.
Maybe he should have taken a plane straight into Tokyo-Three, but they always had the bad habits of cancelling those flights, and he didn't feel like having to wait at the airport more than usual. If his father wanted to see him, then he'd see him.
He'd be coming down on him with glorious anger, the image in his head of his father realizing his mistakes triumphantly making him grin, even as the penguin-creature seemed to be 'warking' in excitement now.
That was how Shinji Ikari met the penguins.
A second and third penguin-head emerged from a nearby garbage bin, and as they turned their head towards him, curiosity won him over. Was there a population of penguins hanging around Tokyo Three? Like pigeons, only made of...penguins? One of the two penguins inside the garbage bin jumped out, as if it had been in water rather than human waste, and began to trot away with a half-eaten sandwich in its beak. The other one simply jumped atop the garbage, staring at Shinji from the higher ground he claimed.
"Wark!" the penguin said, flapping its wings by its sides as it looked straight at him. It looked old, and was perhaps the 'father' of the penguin that had guided him till there, and was now instead simply rummaging through another trashcan.
"Good evening," Shinji answered. "I am lost."
"Wark," the Venerable Penguin said with a knowing nod of its beak. Somehow, the thought that he was having a conversation with a penguin, and somehow could understand what he was saying, passed straight over Shinji's head. This was, perhaps, the jet lag speaking.
And if it wasn't the jet lag, then it was the cheap wine knocking at his brain from his stomach, since not even his stomach wanted such a thing inside of him.
"This...This is kind of silly, isn't it?" Shinji said hesitantly, his eyes scanning the alleyway. "I followed a penguin in an alleyway, and now I'm talking to an older penguin who's standing atop a garbage bin."
"Wark," the penguin said.
"Do you know where 'Nerv' is?" Shinji asked. "I'm kind of lost."
The old penguin did not 'wark' again, but simply looked at him with its gleaming eyes, before dropping down from the garbage bin not with a jump, but with a small hop. It then began to slowly walk away, and out of the alleyway.
"Is this how tourists are welcomed in Tokyo Three?" Shinji muttered. "With penguins?"
It was, honestly, a nice idea.
Although he wondered if they weren't afraid of thieves, or people who took joy in hurting animals. The 'change of the guide' simply forced Shinji to follow behind the new penguin, who seemed to know his way around the main streets.
The silence was still deafening.
"Do you know what's going on?" Shinji asked, only to receive no reply from the penguin, who had stopped to catch its breath. The penguin then turned, and eyed the trolley Shinji was pulling along.
Shinji did not need to know penguin-speak to know what he had to do.
"Wark!" it said after a short while, flapping its right wing. Shinji took a right.
"Wark!" it said again, flapping the left wing, and thus Shinji took a left.
"I really am letting a penguin guide me," Shinji mumbled. "Well, it's something funny to write home about."
Not that he had anyone waiting for him back home.
He had cut off the gas and electricity before leaving, hadn't he? The sales agency would find a buyer pretty soon, or so he hoped.
"Come to Tokyo, Shinji," Shinji said. "I have a job for you. Maybe I shouldn't have sold the house. This is all my father complex coming to the fore-my psychiatrist was right, I should have demanded a proper phone call in order to settle any issues before doing this." He sighed. "Do I sound desperate for parental affection, Mister Penguin?"
"Wark!" the penguin said.
"You're just an old penguin scavenging food from a garbage bin," Shinji said flatly. He didn't know if the penguin had said something nasty, or not. It was a penguin, in the name of God. It couldn't understand him, and yet here he was, talking to it. "Does that make you homeless?"
"Wark," the penguin said, looking kind-of sad if Shinji had to be honest.
"Well," Shinji looked uncomfortably to the side. "I don't know if the place I'm staying at allows animals. If it does, would you like to stay with me?"
"Wark."
Whether that was a 'yes' or a 'no', Shinji did not know.
His psychiatrist really was right on the spot. He was so desperate for recognition, he'd go as far as make an offer to an animal.
Was he mad? Hopefully not.
"Is this the place?" Shinji asked, looking up at the building in question that had been gestured by the penguin all along. The penguin managed to free itself from the trolley's zipper, and headed for a door nearby.
"Waaaarrrkkk!" it said, beating its beak against the metallic door.
The door, finally, opened up.
"Penpen-How many times does the Major have to tell you not to-" the man behind the door looked up from the penguin to Shinji, and then bristled. "Oi, what's a civilian doing outside? You haven't received the news on your phone? We're doing a mock evacuation of the city-show number and identification papers-"
"Uhm..." Shinji looked around, a bit lost. "Is this Nerv?"
The soldier looked at Shinji as if he had grown a second head. He carefully pushed the glasses on his nose further back, and then squinted his eyes a bit. "Is that...a cello?"
On Shinji's back, there was indeed a cello within its protective casket.
"Yes?" Shinji said, slightly embarrassed. "Is this Nerv?" he asked once more. "My father sent word-"
"Oh-" the soldier's eyes widened. "Oh!" he said next, "Just a moment!" he then closed the door swiftly, letting it clank and hit the poor old penguin straight in the beak, as the animal hadn't yet stepped inside.
"WARK!" the penguin said angrily, now known as 'Penpen'.
A few minutes later, and the door opened once more. "Right this way, sir!" the soldier said cheerfully, putting his body to the side to better allow Shinji entrance. "I called for a replacement-there you are, man," he waved at a fellow soldier, who returned the greeting with a stiff nod and took the post previously occupied.
"Come with me, sir," he said next, dutifully starting to guide Shinji down a long winded set of corridors. "Commander Ikari was waiting for you. Was it hard to find the place?"
"Waiting?" Shinji remarked. "I...I followed a penguin. Couldn't you have sent someone to pick me up?"
The soldier furrowed his brows for a brief instant, and then sighed, dejectedly too. "Major..." he whined. "At least not when the Commander orders you to do it directly," he whispered under his breath, still close enough for Shinji to hear him. "Well," he tried to smile. "All's well what ends well, right?"
Shinji smiled awkwardly back. He had no idea what the man was talking about, but he had a rifle, so the man with the rifle had to be nodded to. At least, that was what common sense told him to do.
A long elevator trip next, and the smell of blood and iron was replaced with that of fresh air. Air recycling with pine fresheners in the mix was the most apt answer to the disappearance of the 'normal' smell of sea breeze. The well lit corridors seemed to be mostly devoid of personnel, but every now and then a human face did appear from a half-closed door, or a random scientist walking by.
"Here we go," the bespectacled soldier said, standing in front of yet one more elevator, this time with a polished jet black exterior. It didn't inspire trust. It really didn't. "This should bring you right up to the Commander's office. Try not to get lost on the way up," the man chuckled, saluted, and then went on his way.
This was it.
Shinji swallowed nervously as he pushed the button to call for the elevator, which opened immediately -as if it had been waiting on the ground floor all this time- and once he stepped inside, and the doors hissed to a close, he didn't know whether his heart was beating fast due to elation, or if it was because of fear. Still, he was not going to run away from this confrontation.
It had taken years of therapy, but finally, he would do it.
When the doors opened up directly into the office, which felt as if a bond villain was about to turn around with a cat in his lap, Shinji Ikari looked straight ahead at the visor-covered face of his father, who had definitely aged since the last time they had met, and not even all that gracefully.
"Shinji," Gendo Ikari's voice came through firm, rough, and to the point.
"Father," Shinji Ikari answered in turn. He still had his trolley in his right hand, and the cello inside its case on his back.
Thick silence descended between the two men as they stared at one another. Neither seemed keen on saying anything, and neither seemed to wish to be the first one to break the silence.
"Did you have me fired from my job in Paris?" Shinji asked, finally breaking the silence.
"Yes," Gendo answered. "You were needed here."
"You could have phoned me before going through with choking the University's budget for the upcoming year."
"Their budget will be reinstated as is, if you accept my job offer."
Shinji blinked. "You want me to work for you so much? What's the catch? If you wanted to make up for the lost time, you could have sent me a postcard, invited me over for Christmas-perhaps phoned me for my birthday."
"I send you a gift each year."
"You paid an agency to send me a single bottle of wine once a year from the moment I turned twenty-one. They even have a copy of your signature, and print that on the happy birthday card. I have all of them neatly arranged on my fridge-well, had really. They're also kind of creepy. 'Twenty-One, Gendo Ikari' and 'Twenty-Two, Gendo Ikari', and 'Twenty-Three, Gendo Ikari' and so on. It's like you're counting up to one hundred."
The visor gave away nothing of Gendo Ikari's face.
"Do you want the truth?" Gendo Ikari spoke slowly, and as he did he stood up from his chair and began to move around his desk, using a walking cane as an aid, a noticeable limp in his right leg. "I do not need you. Mankind does."
Shinji quietly looked around, and then he gave one look at the ceiling.
"I'm not seeing the cameras."
"This isn't a joke!" Gendo's voice rose hotly, his hands both clutching firmly on his walking cane. "If I could go without you, boy-then I would! But it's not possible," he shook his head, his face definitely red from sheer frustration. "You can thank your mother for this."
"What does she have to do with...this? Leave the dead out of it," Shinji's voice rose by itself, and he took a step forward without even realizing it, moving his free left arm in front of him in a dismissive fashion.
"If she were completely dead," Gendo said quite calmly, in neat contrast to his previous outburst, "Then I would."
Shinji blinked. "...My Japanese must have become rustier than I thought-or did you just say that mom isn't completely dead?"
For the first time in perhaps all of Shinji's life, the man saw his father at an actual loss of words. It lasted only a brief second, and it was soon gone, to be replaced with the usual control and coldness typical of him, or at least, typical of Shinji's memories of him.
"Mankind's existence is at stake here," Gendo Ikari spoke. "If you want to know more...then you will have to work with Nerv."
"Why you-" Shinji dropped the trolley and clenched his right hand in a fist, "What makes you think I've come all the way here only to be made fun of?! Old man or not, I'm going to punch you in the-"
"We both know you won't do that," Gendo said firmly.
Shinji gritted his teeth, and slowly lowered his fist. "I don't hit people with glasses," he said in the end. "But what you just said-I can't just let it go. I'm sure if I do, you're just going to find another way and if this is your 'carrot', I don't want to think about the stick. Fine," Shinji said. "Whatever. I'm a bioengineer-I suppose you'll want me in a lab or something?"
"No," Gendo said. "I want you to pilot a biomechanical instrument of mass destruction for the sake of humanity's future."
Shinji, most aptly, did not answer at first.
He looked down at the penguin that was comfortably snuggled inside his trolley, only its head emerging.
He looked at his father, who had just told him he -a twenty-six years old university professor in Bioengineering- had to pilot a giant 'instrument of mass destruction' for 'humanity's future'.
He couldn't even muster a smudge of anger.
He was just...
"...what."
Last edited:
Chapter Two: "Suos cultores scientia coronat"
- Location
- https://discord.gg/z9tBvbh
Chapter Two: "Suos cultores scientia coronat"
Shinji looked up at the 'biomechanical instrument of mass destruction that was meant to be the savior of mankind' and then looked back at his father. "This isn't real," he said in the end. He didn't really know what to say. "This can't be real, you can't have built something like this, and I refuse to believe you created this sort of thing in a lab. It's too big-and why the humanoid shape? It's-"
"I am the Commander of Nerv. Direct your scientific inquiries to the Head of the Scientific Department," Gendo answered smoothly. "Professor Ritsuko will be better suited to answering your questions."
The giant humanoid robot was stored amidst iron supports with walkways all around it, thick and large armor covering most of its body. From the midriff down it stood within an orange substance that seemed similar to ocean water, but was, merely due to viscosity, another liquid entirely. The faint smell of blood remained the same.
"So...how does this...this bio-Gundam help with mankind's survival?" Shinji asked next.
"The Evangelion," Gendo said, "is a powerful tool, and perhaps our sole chance of survival against the foes known as Angels-"
"Seriously?" Shinji asked. He raised an eyebrow. "The penguin should have clued me in, but are you seriously telling me I have to face 'Angels' inside a giant biomechanical robot?"
"Angel is merely the designation given to an extra-terrestrial species of unknown origin that has been instrumental to mankind in order for it to exist," Gendo said flatly. "It is not a designation I am fond of either, Shinji. It is the designation the Magi System deemed fit to assign to them."
"So...Just to be on the same wavelength," Shinji spoke very slowly, "The Japanese's Magi System, renowned for being basically the sole reason Japan's government doesn't suck, is the one who decided to call the aliens who want to exterminate mankind 'Angels'? Couldn't it have called them...something else?"
"Are you doing this on purpose?" Gendo asked.
"No, I am simply curious," Shinji said. "I'm curious what kind of logical processing unit might have decided to sink deep into Christian symbolism when dealing with the extra-terrestrial. Something like calling them 'Planets' would have perhaps worked best, or alfa-numerical numbers-"
"Direct scientific inquiries to the head of the research department," Gendo said once more.
Shinji had a blank stare on his face for a while longer, and then he finally relented. "Assuming this is not an elaborated prank, and considering the sheer costs of creating such a giant studio, I doubt it, what am I supposed to do? I don't even know how to pilot this thing. Is there an instruction manual?"
"A more experienced pilot will show you the ropes. She has been waiting for your arrival with impatience," Gendo said.
Shinji looked around, "Shouldn't she be here then?"
"She has already launched on her own Evangelion. You will be guided to the changing rooms where you will change, and then follow instructions from there. The mock evacuation of the city has been done today to specifically tailor it to your arrival," Gendo said. "Now, go change."
Shinji followed a nearby soldier without a word. He felt like a kid being told to go to his room without dinner, but that wasn't the problem. The problem was that he still had his trolley, his cello and a penguin that definitely wasn't his in his hands. He was reasonably sure everyone around the base was having a good jolly laugh at his expenses, or perhaps they were so used to strangeness that they didn't even bat an eyelid?
He hoped for the latter, although he was sure he'd regret it if there were stranger things lurking around than giant robots and alien enemies.
...
"Wark." And penguins.
"Penpen seems to like you," the soldier said with an awkward smile. "I hope he's not being a hassle. The Major gives him a bit too much freedom, and he enjoys it."
"He's the only thing that makes sense," Shinji answered. "I know he's a penguin, so everything else has to make sense. Somehow." He smiled awkwardly. "It's just-I know how nature created him, thus I know he has to make sense. Biology gave him webbed feet for added propulsion in the water, he uses his plumage with a layer of air as insulation-"
The poor soldier had better things to do than hear Shinji explain about the natural evolution of the Sphenisciformes Spheniscidae, and thus the university professor was left alone to change, after being given something that could better be described as indescribable.
"This is not a prank," Shinji said as he walked out of the changing room with his cheeks burning from shame. "I am a twenty-six year old professor. I have seen students come in wearing swimsuits and have not batted an eyelid. I have seen people write 'Uncompetitive Enzyme' as a synonym for 'Non-Competitive Enzyme'. This is nothing."
The suit took that as the cue to make a strange 'squeak' sound. He had left his stuff, and the penguin, in the changing rooms. The penguin had been fast asleep anyway, and he had no intention of waking the animal up.
"Shinji," the two strange 'connectors' on his head were also, apparently, a communication device . "Do you copy?"
"No," Shinji replied quite calmly, "As a professor, I do not condone copying."
There was a brief and startled moment of silence. "Are you going to cooperate or not?" Gendo asked, and Shinji could see him from the command center, standing within a large room with thick windows and what appeared to be extremely tense officers and soldiers. "This is not a game. The head of the science department, Doctor Ritsuko, is now available for your inquiries."
"Can I ask scientific-related questions now?" Shinji asked as he stared at the strange capsule that was apparently the 'entrance' into the Evangelion itself. He had to enter it, and then it would be lifted and screwed tightly within the spine of the humanoid giant. "For example what specific connection there is between the cybernetic and the organic part of this Evangelion, why I was chosen to save 'mankind' if there is already another pilot available, and the most important question of them all...isn't it illegal for untrained civilians to drive military vehicles?"
"Technically the Evangelion is not a vehicle as much as a cybernetic organism, a cyborg so to speak," a smooth female voice spoke in place of Gendo. "The entry plug you are stepping into is the final connecting piece of the Evangelion's nervous system. Without it inserted, the Eva's lower body cannot move."
"Wait a moment." Shinji was midway through entering the plug when he stopped and looked ahead, at the still form of the Eva and at the circular entry hole the 'plug' would 'stuff'. "Are you telling me it's actually alive. This is a living creature and you removed part of its spine to keep it still?"
"Indeed," Doctor Ritsuko said with a hint of pride. "We also need to use signal termination plugs in order to keep it from regenerating the wound. I will explain more once the plug has been safely inserted."
"I don't know whether to be impressed or repulsed," Shinji said as he finished seating himself. "Uh, neat-joysticks? Handles? Three buttons?" he mumbled as his hands naturally moved to grab the controls.
There was a whirring sound, soon followed by the typical noise of metal being inserted into flesh. Having done his fair share of medical procedures -not really, but having watched and assisted at some of them- he recognized the sound. "This thing bleeds, doesn't it?" Shinji asked.
"Yes, it does," Ritsuko answered. "It is, after all, a living creature."
This made him feel queasy. There was something wrong about this, but he couldn't put his finger on it. "Does it feed on the strange liquid surrounding it? Is it some form of liquid nutrient?"
"Are you familiar with perfluorocarbons?" Ritsuko asked.
"Somehow, this question does nothing to ease my mind," Shinji replied. "Liquid breathing? Is that how this thing breathes?"
"No, that is how the pilot breathes and connects to the nervous system of the Evangelion. The Core that forms the center of such neural network is also where the entry plug ends up digging itself-"
"Wait-Wait-so I'm not replacing a random vertebrae, but the principal one? With the entry plug disconnected, there's literally no movement-Core? So these things have a central nervous system that is called 'Core' and-are you inserting me inside a living being's brain!?"
"Yes, we-"
"The ramification of this are potentially revolutionaries. Have you ever thought about recreating it as a mean to allow the substitution of shattered vertebrae within a human's broken spine? The 'saving mankind' ramifications aside, the scientific value of such a specimen would-"
Ritsuko turned from the video feed to her assistant and gave a curt nod, the LCL soon filling the capsule and, after a couple of choking noises, the electrifying of the liquid gave it transparency, as well as decreasing the pressure to the level of air.
The most stark difference was, however, the starry eyed look in Shinji's eyes as he watched with amazement his own oxygen bubbles escape his lips.
"Do remember why you are here, Shinji," Gendo said brusquely through the radio.
"Fine, fine, but this isn't over," Shinji answered, nervousness once more claiming his mind as he was left alone with his thoughts within the transparent sea of LCL. He tried to carefully move a handle, but nothing seemed to happen.
"We will begin transportation to the surface. Try not to move until you are given the order to," Doctor Ritsuko said. "You need to synchronize with the Eva. Try to relax-"
He was inside a living, breathing organism. He was inside a cyborg, and he was acting as the creature's brain. Telling him to 'relax' was not going to make him suddenly feel at ease, most certainly not-
He blinked. Why was he even worried to begin with?
"There is a small supply of painkillers within the Entry Plug system," Doctor Ritsuko's voice reached him, and of course it made sense. The delivery through the oxygenated liquid directly into his lungs and stomach made the effects of the drugs swift in taking hold.
"That...is quite the sensible solution," Shinji said. A video feed began to flicker to life, soon followed by more by his sides. This-this was the Eva's vision. It was opening its eyes, seeing the world under the form of an elevator ride to the surface, and in the end it saw the sky, the bright sky, the blue sky, the white clouds, the city itself now being something that Shinji could see as a bustling metropolis of...absolutely nothing.
"Wasn't there a city here?" Shinji asked.
"The buildings have been lowered inside the Geofront," Gendo said. Shinji then heard him flick a switch. "Rei. He is in position."
"Affirmative," a female voice -soft, familiar, kind, warm, but this was cold, really cold- spoke, and directly in front of him, if a hundred meters away, a second Evangelion emerged.
Now that he looked at it properly, it appeared to have a different coloration, and a different set of armor. "Wait, there's more than one Evangelion? Do they breed? How? Does it have reproductive organs or-"
"Silence," Gendo said harshly. "Rei, you are free to engage."
"Free to engage?" Shinji asked. "Free to engage what-"
Pain shot through Shinji's side as he suddenly felt his whole breakfast-dinner-lunch-whatever he had eaten depending on the timezone roll around his stomach as the Evangelion piloted by 'Rei' kicked his on the side, sending him to tumble out and fall face first on the concrete.
"What the-what the hell is this all about!?"
"You arrived late," Rei's voice came through. "I felt kicking you was appropriate."
"What? No! You don't just-how do I get this to move? Or stand up-"
"Shinji, you just need to think about it," Ritsuko's voice came through even as Shinji had already begun to push a few of the buttons near the handles. As a result, his shoulder-armor opened up to bring out some strange looking knife. "No, not that button. Ignore the buttons on the handles. They're designed for commands related to the armor, not the movement. You move with your mind-"
"Move with my mind?" Shinji said flatly. "Like...all right...seriously, the bio-engineering we could do with this stuff-I understand why mother was so smitten with it-"
"You...You know of your mother's research?" Doctor Ritsuko's voice came through slightly pained.
"Well-Not much, but that's why I took up bioengineering," Shinji answered as the Evangelion apparently managed to wobble back on its feet. "I just...I just wanted a connection with her-"
"This is not the time," Gendo said flatly.
There was a sigh, small and barely imperceptible. "We will talk about this later. For now, what Rei did was the best way to make you understand that while synchronized, and the higher the synchronization, the more pain will be felt. Synchronization is basically the level at which the Entry Plug is considered a part of the Core itself, and at what point it becomes a 'foreign object'. Too much or too little can mean the end of the pilot, thus an acceptable ratio should never exceed the one hundred-"
This, he could understand, like the strange woman known as 'Rei', of whom he hadn't even seen the face of.
However, he couldn't help but feel random spikes of dread whenever he realized just where he was, as if he was afraid the thing would suddenly eat him or something-
Wait for me here, I'll be back soon.
But she never came back, did she?
Shinji looked up at the 'biomechanical instrument of mass destruction that was meant to be the savior of mankind' and then looked back at his father. "This isn't real," he said in the end. He didn't really know what to say. "This can't be real, you can't have built something like this, and I refuse to believe you created this sort of thing in a lab. It's too big-and why the humanoid shape? It's-"
"I am the Commander of Nerv. Direct your scientific inquiries to the Head of the Scientific Department," Gendo answered smoothly. "Professor Ritsuko will be better suited to answering your questions."
The giant humanoid robot was stored amidst iron supports with walkways all around it, thick and large armor covering most of its body. From the midriff down it stood within an orange substance that seemed similar to ocean water, but was, merely due to viscosity, another liquid entirely. The faint smell of blood remained the same.
"So...how does this...this bio-Gundam help with mankind's survival?" Shinji asked next.
"The Evangelion," Gendo said, "is a powerful tool, and perhaps our sole chance of survival against the foes known as Angels-"
"Seriously?" Shinji asked. He raised an eyebrow. "The penguin should have clued me in, but are you seriously telling me I have to face 'Angels' inside a giant biomechanical robot?"
"Angel is merely the designation given to an extra-terrestrial species of unknown origin that has been instrumental to mankind in order for it to exist," Gendo said flatly. "It is not a designation I am fond of either, Shinji. It is the designation the Magi System deemed fit to assign to them."
"So...Just to be on the same wavelength," Shinji spoke very slowly, "The Japanese's Magi System, renowned for being basically the sole reason Japan's government doesn't suck, is the one who decided to call the aliens who want to exterminate mankind 'Angels'? Couldn't it have called them...something else?"
"Are you doing this on purpose?" Gendo asked.
"No, I am simply curious," Shinji said. "I'm curious what kind of logical processing unit might have decided to sink deep into Christian symbolism when dealing with the extra-terrestrial. Something like calling them 'Planets' would have perhaps worked best, or alfa-numerical numbers-"
"Direct scientific inquiries to the head of the research department," Gendo said once more.
Shinji had a blank stare on his face for a while longer, and then he finally relented. "Assuming this is not an elaborated prank, and considering the sheer costs of creating such a giant studio, I doubt it, what am I supposed to do? I don't even know how to pilot this thing. Is there an instruction manual?"
"A more experienced pilot will show you the ropes. She has been waiting for your arrival with impatience," Gendo said.
Shinji looked around, "Shouldn't she be here then?"
"She has already launched on her own Evangelion. You will be guided to the changing rooms where you will change, and then follow instructions from there. The mock evacuation of the city has been done today to specifically tailor it to your arrival," Gendo said. "Now, go change."
Shinji followed a nearby soldier without a word. He felt like a kid being told to go to his room without dinner, but that wasn't the problem. The problem was that he still had his trolley, his cello and a penguin that definitely wasn't his in his hands. He was reasonably sure everyone around the base was having a good jolly laugh at his expenses, or perhaps they were so used to strangeness that they didn't even bat an eyelid?
He hoped for the latter, although he was sure he'd regret it if there were stranger things lurking around than giant robots and alien enemies.
...
"Wark." And penguins.
"Penpen seems to like you," the soldier said with an awkward smile. "I hope he's not being a hassle. The Major gives him a bit too much freedom, and he enjoys it."
"He's the only thing that makes sense," Shinji answered. "I know he's a penguin, so everything else has to make sense. Somehow." He smiled awkwardly. "It's just-I know how nature created him, thus I know he has to make sense. Biology gave him webbed feet for added propulsion in the water, he uses his plumage with a layer of air as insulation-"
The poor soldier had better things to do than hear Shinji explain about the natural evolution of the Sphenisciformes Spheniscidae, and thus the university professor was left alone to change, after being given something that could better be described as indescribable.
"This is not a prank," Shinji said as he walked out of the changing room with his cheeks burning from shame. "I am a twenty-six year old professor. I have seen students come in wearing swimsuits and have not batted an eyelid. I have seen people write 'Uncompetitive Enzyme' as a synonym for 'Non-Competitive Enzyme'. This is nothing."
The suit took that as the cue to make a strange 'squeak' sound. He had left his stuff, and the penguin, in the changing rooms. The penguin had been fast asleep anyway, and he had no intention of waking the animal up.
"Shinji," the two strange 'connectors' on his head were also, apparently, a communication device . "Do you copy?"
"No," Shinji replied quite calmly, "As a professor, I do not condone copying."
There was a brief and startled moment of silence. "Are you going to cooperate or not?" Gendo asked, and Shinji could see him from the command center, standing within a large room with thick windows and what appeared to be extremely tense officers and soldiers. "This is not a game. The head of the science department, Doctor Ritsuko, is now available for your inquiries."
"Can I ask scientific-related questions now?" Shinji asked as he stared at the strange capsule that was apparently the 'entrance' into the Evangelion itself. He had to enter it, and then it would be lifted and screwed tightly within the spine of the humanoid giant. "For example what specific connection there is between the cybernetic and the organic part of this Evangelion, why I was chosen to save 'mankind' if there is already another pilot available, and the most important question of them all...isn't it illegal for untrained civilians to drive military vehicles?"
"Technically the Evangelion is not a vehicle as much as a cybernetic organism, a cyborg so to speak," a smooth female voice spoke in place of Gendo. "The entry plug you are stepping into is the final connecting piece of the Evangelion's nervous system. Without it inserted, the Eva's lower body cannot move."
"Wait a moment." Shinji was midway through entering the plug when he stopped and looked ahead, at the still form of the Eva and at the circular entry hole the 'plug' would 'stuff'. "Are you telling me it's actually alive. This is a living creature and you removed part of its spine to keep it still?"
"Indeed," Doctor Ritsuko said with a hint of pride. "We also need to use signal termination plugs in order to keep it from regenerating the wound. I will explain more once the plug has been safely inserted."
"I don't know whether to be impressed or repulsed," Shinji said as he finished seating himself. "Uh, neat-joysticks? Handles? Three buttons?" he mumbled as his hands naturally moved to grab the controls.
There was a whirring sound, soon followed by the typical noise of metal being inserted into flesh. Having done his fair share of medical procedures -not really, but having watched and assisted at some of them- he recognized the sound. "This thing bleeds, doesn't it?" Shinji asked.
"Yes, it does," Ritsuko answered. "It is, after all, a living creature."
This made him feel queasy. There was something wrong about this, but he couldn't put his finger on it. "Does it feed on the strange liquid surrounding it? Is it some form of liquid nutrient?"
"Are you familiar with perfluorocarbons?" Ritsuko asked.
"Somehow, this question does nothing to ease my mind," Shinji replied. "Liquid breathing? Is that how this thing breathes?"
"No, that is how the pilot breathes and connects to the nervous system of the Evangelion. The Core that forms the center of such neural network is also where the entry plug ends up digging itself-"
"Wait-Wait-so I'm not replacing a random vertebrae, but the principal one? With the entry plug disconnected, there's literally no movement-Core? So these things have a central nervous system that is called 'Core' and-are you inserting me inside a living being's brain!?"
"Yes, we-"
"The ramification of this are potentially revolutionaries. Have you ever thought about recreating it as a mean to allow the substitution of shattered vertebrae within a human's broken spine? The 'saving mankind' ramifications aside, the scientific value of such a specimen would-"
Ritsuko turned from the video feed to her assistant and gave a curt nod, the LCL soon filling the capsule and, after a couple of choking noises, the electrifying of the liquid gave it transparency, as well as decreasing the pressure to the level of air.
The most stark difference was, however, the starry eyed look in Shinji's eyes as he watched with amazement his own oxygen bubbles escape his lips.
"Do remember why you are here, Shinji," Gendo said brusquely through the radio.
"Fine, fine, but this isn't over," Shinji answered, nervousness once more claiming his mind as he was left alone with his thoughts within the transparent sea of LCL. He tried to carefully move a handle, but nothing seemed to happen.
"We will begin transportation to the surface. Try not to move until you are given the order to," Doctor Ritsuko said. "You need to synchronize with the Eva. Try to relax-"
He was inside a living, breathing organism. He was inside a cyborg, and he was acting as the creature's brain. Telling him to 'relax' was not going to make him suddenly feel at ease, most certainly not-
He blinked. Why was he even worried to begin with?
"There is a small supply of painkillers within the Entry Plug system," Doctor Ritsuko's voice reached him, and of course it made sense. The delivery through the oxygenated liquid directly into his lungs and stomach made the effects of the drugs swift in taking hold.
"That...is quite the sensible solution," Shinji said. A video feed began to flicker to life, soon followed by more by his sides. This-this was the Eva's vision. It was opening its eyes, seeing the world under the form of an elevator ride to the surface, and in the end it saw the sky, the bright sky, the blue sky, the white clouds, the city itself now being something that Shinji could see as a bustling metropolis of...absolutely nothing.
"Wasn't there a city here?" Shinji asked.
"The buildings have been lowered inside the Geofront," Gendo said. Shinji then heard him flick a switch. "Rei. He is in position."
"Affirmative," a female voice -soft, familiar, kind, warm, but this was cold, really cold- spoke, and directly in front of him, if a hundred meters away, a second Evangelion emerged.
Now that he looked at it properly, it appeared to have a different coloration, and a different set of armor. "Wait, there's more than one Evangelion? Do they breed? How? Does it have reproductive organs or-"
"Silence," Gendo said harshly. "Rei, you are free to engage."
"Free to engage?" Shinji asked. "Free to engage what-"
Pain shot through Shinji's side as he suddenly felt his whole breakfast-dinner-lunch-whatever he had eaten depending on the timezone roll around his stomach as the Evangelion piloted by 'Rei' kicked his on the side, sending him to tumble out and fall face first on the concrete.
"What the-what the hell is this all about!?"
"You arrived late," Rei's voice came through. "I felt kicking you was appropriate."
"What? No! You don't just-how do I get this to move? Or stand up-"
"Shinji, you just need to think about it," Ritsuko's voice came through even as Shinji had already begun to push a few of the buttons near the handles. As a result, his shoulder-armor opened up to bring out some strange looking knife. "No, not that button. Ignore the buttons on the handles. They're designed for commands related to the armor, not the movement. You move with your mind-"
"Move with my mind?" Shinji said flatly. "Like...all right...seriously, the bio-engineering we could do with this stuff-I understand why mother was so smitten with it-"
"You...You know of your mother's research?" Doctor Ritsuko's voice came through slightly pained.
"Well-Not much, but that's why I took up bioengineering," Shinji answered as the Evangelion apparently managed to wobble back on its feet. "I just...I just wanted a connection with her-"
"This is not the time," Gendo said flatly.
There was a sigh, small and barely imperceptible. "We will talk about this later. For now, what Rei did was the best way to make you understand that while synchronized, and the higher the synchronization, the more pain will be felt. Synchronization is basically the level at which the Entry Plug is considered a part of the Core itself, and at what point it becomes a 'foreign object'. Too much or too little can mean the end of the pilot, thus an acceptable ratio should never exceed the one hundred-"
This, he could understand, like the strange woman known as 'Rei', of whom he hadn't even seen the face of.
However, he couldn't help but feel random spikes of dread whenever he realized just where he was, as if he was afraid the thing would suddenly eat him or something-
Wait for me here, I'll be back soon.
But she never came back, did she?
Last edited:
Chapter Three: "Nisi paria non pugnant"
- Location
- https://discord.gg/z9tBvbh
Chapter Three: "Nisi paria non pugnant"
The woman known as 'Rei' did not seem happy when Shinji managed on the first try to grab the prog knife from the Evangelion's shoulder pylon. Well, perhaps she wasn't happy to begin with. Considering she perhaps had to be in close contact with his father on a daily basis, he too wouldn't be happy about this.
"You are learning the basics of movement. Standing up. Walking. Grabbing objects. If you have to think about it, you are doing it too slow," her voice -and only her voice- came through. It was bizzarre. He had a small video feed on the corner of the screen that showed him the command center -and he was sure it worked two-ways- mostly because Doctor Ritsuko was pointing at different areas of the Evangelion armor and he needed to know where to put the cyborg's hands.
Doctor Ritsuko was a middle-aged blond-haired woman, with the natural dark color of her hair hidden by dye, if not for some stray lock of black and grey that managed to seep through. Her eyes had that kind of matronly appearance to them, and her voice held a kind detachment as she spoke to him, that made her similar in some ways to a professor tired with life who still wished to teach his class and could barely tolerate any disturbance while doing so.
"Pilot Ikari," Rei's voice came through once more, as firmly as possible. "You are being slow."
"It is the first time I'm inside this cybernetically augmented humanoid alien creature," Shinji retorted. "Although considering the Entry Plug system, is it augmented or restrained? I mean, whenever it's not used it's basically paralyzed-"
"Indeed, the Evangelion's armor is as much of a restraint for the Evangelion as it is a protection for the Pilot," Ritsuko spoke. "Which is why it is important to understand that the true danger of being inside an Evangelion is not it being wounded -its regeneration properties are something that cannot be found in nature-"
"Even beyond the Hydra polyp and the Planarian flatworm capabilities?" Shinji asked, quite intrigued.
"Yes. We are talking of a complete skeleton, muscle tissue and flesh. As long as the core is not damaged and the Evangelion is placed within the LCL, a full destruction of the Evangelion will simply set back its regeneration of a matter of months."
"Full-out regeneration? Without issues?"
"Without issues," Ritsuko nodded. "There is absolutely no alteration from the basic pattern of regeneration that has been observed."
"Now you're yanking my chain professor-the Hydra Polip can regenerate as long as there are at least a few hundred epithelial cells, and even then the regeneration process merely creates a smaller replica-"
"Only the core is needed," Ritsuko said firmly once more. "This is not however morphallaxis. Cutting in half the Evangelion will not net a second Evangelion."
"Then I'm at a loss with how these creatures are bred," Shinji said honestly. "If they do not possess reproductive organs and do not use morphallaxis, unless there is mitosis involved-"
In front of him, the Evangelion of Rei looked on with a slightly 'pissed off' expression. "Please concentrate," Rei said sharply. "You can discuss biology later."
Rei's Evangelion punched lightly on Shinji's plate armor, and as a small sound blared in the cockpit, Shinji saw the alarm notice. "There are sensors on the armor that will detect incoming blows. You have not yet extended the Evangelion's AT-Field, thus this attack went through."
"AT...Field?" Shinji asked, furrowing his brows. "What is it?"
Ritsuko took a small breath. She just knew this was going to get tricky. "It is known as the Absolute Terror Field. It is the main defensive ability of both Evangelion and Angels-normally invisible to the naked eye, they appear in the shape of orange octagons only when they collide with something. They can also be used offensively-"
"All of this information," Shinji said, "These 'Angels', they must have come around a lot to have such knowledge of their capabilities-"
"No," Ritsuko said. "And yes. Humanity has come into contact, at the moment, with only three angels. The first two are meaningless for the basis of a deep battle analysis, and all of our research has been based on the third one encountered."
"Really? Why didn't it make the news?" Shinji asked.
"It did," Ritsuko said. "First Impact happened more than four billion years ago. Second Impact instead-"
"Wait," Shinji muttered. "First Impact? Second Impact? You-You're kidding right?"
"Shinji," Gendo Ikari spoke for the first time in a long while. "I was not exaggerating. Mankind survival depends on the Evangelions," he spoke firmly, without traces of doubt in his voice. "Only Evangelions can hurt the Angels. Only Angels can initiate Third Impact. If such a thing were to occur, all of mankind would be wiped out. You are currently sitting inside the only weapon capable of protecting mankind."
"You are also using it poorly," Rei's voice came through once more. "Commander-one of the Dummies would yield better results-"
"Rei, be quiet," Gendo said flatly, receiving only an 'affirmative' in reply.
"Why me?" Shinji asked next. "Just-why me?"
"You are the only one capable of piloting the Evangelion Unit Zero-One to its full potential," Gendo Ikari said, "There is no one else who can achieve the same level of synchronization with it. Even Rei can barely make it walk, and she had months to synchronize with it."
"I feel like a kid, but..again, why me?" Shinji asked. "Did you use a sort of bio lock? I could have used two bottles of wine rather than one giant bio-gundam as a birthday gift. Also, how irresponsible would it be-"
"Blame your mother," Gendo said once more. "She was the one who...locked the Evangelion on your DNA specifics."
"Mother? Seriously? And in all these years, you haven't managed to overwrite it? How could she even do this? Is there a bomb or something tied to the armor? I mean, you can't 'lock' flesh and if the Entry Plug basically acts as the 'brain' of the entire thing, then changing the Entry Plug should-"
"Shinji. Enough with the questions. Ritsuko will answer them later."
Shinji took a small amount of breath, and then looked at the handles. "Ah," he blinked. "Did-Did she use some sort of biological solution which inhibits the neural connectivity if it does not correspond to a specific DNA chain? That would be worth a nobel prize by itself, tailoring such a thing could pretty much-"
Evangelion Unit Zero-Zero slammed a kick against the knee of its fellow Evangelion, making Shinji yelp. "Enough. Talking." Rei's voice was curt. "Time is running short. The Evacuation is meant to be over in less than an hour. Expand your AT-Field."
"But how?" Shinji retorted hotly.
"Think about it," Rei said. Was there smugness rolling down her voice? Shinji was a gentleman, but he couldn't help but wish to succeed just so he could wipe away the smirk off the woman's face.
"...Ah," Shinji narrowed his eyes slightly. So...Orange Octagons? He had to think about Orange Octagons and-
There was a peculiarly low blow in the Evangelion's stomach area, and Shinji emitted a small 'urk' in answer as bubbles left his lips, his eyes crossed.
"You haven't yet raised the AT-Field," Rei said. "Knowing how to walk and knowing how to fight are different things."
"You make it sound easy," Shinji retorted.
"Because it is," Rei answered primly. "For me, at least."
"Well, you've had years to train for this," Shinji snapped. "It's not like I came here thinking I had to save the world from total destruction from an alien threat-"
"Those are simple excuses," Rei said sharply. "You either do things or don't. Everything in-between is an excuse you tell yourself to feel better."
Shinji bristled, and bit down hard on his lower lip. There was a brief feeling of something in the Entry Plug, and a few seconds later a pulse echoed in the electrolytic solution. "AT Field detected. Evangelion Unit Zero-One has successfully deployed its AT-Field!" one of the officers in the command room exclaimed.
"There," Shinji said. "You happy, Yoda?"
"My name is Rei," Rei said. "I did not hit your Evangelion in the head. If you are suffering from short-term memory problems, please view Doctor Ikari afterwards."
"Rei," Gendo's voice was actually displaying displeasure. Shinji could hear it roll off like a light thrumming sound, a reverberating and brief instant of heat. At first, Shinji's heart began to beat slightly more, was this what he meant with 'his mother being not completely dead'? But then it became clearer as he connected the 'Doctor' part to the 'Ikari' surname. Yes, his mother had been a Doctor, but there also was another Doctor, and his father had done his best not to mention her name...unless 'Ritsuko' was the surname?
He would not assume. For all he knew, there was a doctor in Nerv by the surname 'Ikari', but if that was the case, why would his father even grow angry and not simply say it was a misunderstanding?
"Oh," Shinji said in the end. "So...you remarried," he added next, lamely. "Con...Congratulations?"
"That is beyond the purpose of this exercise," Gendo Ikari spoke firmly. "The training is over."
"Usually, one says 'Thanks'," Shinji said, "To, you know, someone congratulating you-"
"Thank you," Doctor Ritsuko Ikari answered.
Yeah. Somehow he knew he'd be right on the money.
Well...moving on past the ghosts of one's past was a key action on the road to becoming a productive, psychologically healthy member of society. Or so his psychiatric said.
He still couldn't help feeling hurt about this.
Unknown to him, the Eva Unit Zero-One's eyes briefly flashed crimson in anger, before the light died out from them as it wobbled back under Shinji's command to the platform it would use to descend back into the bowels of Nerv.
Well, now he actually hoped his father had rented him a flat.
A flat he could lock himself inside of, and with soundproof walls.
He really needed to get a good few screams out of his body.
And curses. Lots and lots of curses.
The woman known as 'Rei' did not seem happy when Shinji managed on the first try to grab the prog knife from the Evangelion's shoulder pylon. Well, perhaps she wasn't happy to begin with. Considering she perhaps had to be in close contact with his father on a daily basis, he too wouldn't be happy about this.
"You are learning the basics of movement. Standing up. Walking. Grabbing objects. If you have to think about it, you are doing it too slow," her voice -and only her voice- came through. It was bizzarre. He had a small video feed on the corner of the screen that showed him the command center -and he was sure it worked two-ways- mostly because Doctor Ritsuko was pointing at different areas of the Evangelion armor and he needed to know where to put the cyborg's hands.
Doctor Ritsuko was a middle-aged blond-haired woman, with the natural dark color of her hair hidden by dye, if not for some stray lock of black and grey that managed to seep through. Her eyes had that kind of matronly appearance to them, and her voice held a kind detachment as she spoke to him, that made her similar in some ways to a professor tired with life who still wished to teach his class and could barely tolerate any disturbance while doing so.
"Pilot Ikari," Rei's voice came through once more, as firmly as possible. "You are being slow."
"It is the first time I'm inside this cybernetically augmented humanoid alien creature," Shinji retorted. "Although considering the Entry Plug system, is it augmented or restrained? I mean, whenever it's not used it's basically paralyzed-"
"Indeed, the Evangelion's armor is as much of a restraint for the Evangelion as it is a protection for the Pilot," Ritsuko spoke. "Which is why it is important to understand that the true danger of being inside an Evangelion is not it being wounded -its regeneration properties are something that cannot be found in nature-"
"Even beyond the Hydra polyp and the Planarian flatworm capabilities?" Shinji asked, quite intrigued.
"Yes. We are talking of a complete skeleton, muscle tissue and flesh. As long as the core is not damaged and the Evangelion is placed within the LCL, a full destruction of the Evangelion will simply set back its regeneration of a matter of months."
"Full-out regeneration? Without issues?"
"Without issues," Ritsuko nodded. "There is absolutely no alteration from the basic pattern of regeneration that has been observed."
"Now you're yanking my chain professor-the Hydra Polip can regenerate as long as there are at least a few hundred epithelial cells, and even then the regeneration process merely creates a smaller replica-"
"Only the core is needed," Ritsuko said firmly once more. "This is not however morphallaxis. Cutting in half the Evangelion will not net a second Evangelion."
"Then I'm at a loss with how these creatures are bred," Shinji said honestly. "If they do not possess reproductive organs and do not use morphallaxis, unless there is mitosis involved-"
In front of him, the Evangelion of Rei looked on with a slightly 'pissed off' expression. "Please concentrate," Rei said sharply. "You can discuss biology later."
Rei's Evangelion punched lightly on Shinji's plate armor, and as a small sound blared in the cockpit, Shinji saw the alarm notice. "There are sensors on the armor that will detect incoming blows. You have not yet extended the Evangelion's AT-Field, thus this attack went through."
"AT...Field?" Shinji asked, furrowing his brows. "What is it?"
Ritsuko took a small breath. She just knew this was going to get tricky. "It is known as the Absolute Terror Field. It is the main defensive ability of both Evangelion and Angels-normally invisible to the naked eye, they appear in the shape of orange octagons only when they collide with something. They can also be used offensively-"
"All of this information," Shinji said, "These 'Angels', they must have come around a lot to have such knowledge of their capabilities-"
"No," Ritsuko said. "And yes. Humanity has come into contact, at the moment, with only three angels. The first two are meaningless for the basis of a deep battle analysis, and all of our research has been based on the third one encountered."
"Really? Why didn't it make the news?" Shinji asked.
"It did," Ritsuko said. "First Impact happened more than four billion years ago. Second Impact instead-"
"Wait," Shinji muttered. "First Impact? Second Impact? You-You're kidding right?"
"Shinji," Gendo Ikari spoke for the first time in a long while. "I was not exaggerating. Mankind survival depends on the Evangelions," he spoke firmly, without traces of doubt in his voice. "Only Evangelions can hurt the Angels. Only Angels can initiate Third Impact. If such a thing were to occur, all of mankind would be wiped out. You are currently sitting inside the only weapon capable of protecting mankind."
"You are also using it poorly," Rei's voice came through once more. "Commander-one of the Dummies would yield better results-"
"Rei, be quiet," Gendo said flatly, receiving only an 'affirmative' in reply.
"Why me?" Shinji asked next. "Just-why me?"
"You are the only one capable of piloting the Evangelion Unit Zero-One to its full potential," Gendo Ikari said, "There is no one else who can achieve the same level of synchronization with it. Even Rei can barely make it walk, and she had months to synchronize with it."
"I feel like a kid, but..again, why me?" Shinji asked. "Did you use a sort of bio lock? I could have used two bottles of wine rather than one giant bio-gundam as a birthday gift. Also, how irresponsible would it be-"
"Blame your mother," Gendo said once more. "She was the one who...locked the Evangelion on your DNA specifics."
"Mother? Seriously? And in all these years, you haven't managed to overwrite it? How could she even do this? Is there a bomb or something tied to the armor? I mean, you can't 'lock' flesh and if the Entry Plug basically acts as the 'brain' of the entire thing, then changing the Entry Plug should-"
"Shinji. Enough with the questions. Ritsuko will answer them later."
Shinji took a small amount of breath, and then looked at the handles. "Ah," he blinked. "Did-Did she use some sort of biological solution which inhibits the neural connectivity if it does not correspond to a specific DNA chain? That would be worth a nobel prize by itself, tailoring such a thing could pretty much-"
Evangelion Unit Zero-Zero slammed a kick against the knee of its fellow Evangelion, making Shinji yelp. "Enough. Talking." Rei's voice was curt. "Time is running short. The Evacuation is meant to be over in less than an hour. Expand your AT-Field."
"But how?" Shinji retorted hotly.
"Think about it," Rei said. Was there smugness rolling down her voice? Shinji was a gentleman, but he couldn't help but wish to succeed just so he could wipe away the smirk off the woman's face.
"...Ah," Shinji narrowed his eyes slightly. So...Orange Octagons? He had to think about Orange Octagons and-
There was a peculiarly low blow in the Evangelion's stomach area, and Shinji emitted a small 'urk' in answer as bubbles left his lips, his eyes crossed.
"You haven't yet raised the AT-Field," Rei said. "Knowing how to walk and knowing how to fight are different things."
"You make it sound easy," Shinji retorted.
"Because it is," Rei answered primly. "For me, at least."
"Well, you've had years to train for this," Shinji snapped. "It's not like I came here thinking I had to save the world from total destruction from an alien threat-"
"Those are simple excuses," Rei said sharply. "You either do things or don't. Everything in-between is an excuse you tell yourself to feel better."
Shinji bristled, and bit down hard on his lower lip. There was a brief feeling of something in the Entry Plug, and a few seconds later a pulse echoed in the electrolytic solution. "AT Field detected. Evangelion Unit Zero-One has successfully deployed its AT-Field!" one of the officers in the command room exclaimed.
"There," Shinji said. "You happy, Yoda?"
"My name is Rei," Rei said. "I did not hit your Evangelion in the head. If you are suffering from short-term memory problems, please view Doctor Ikari afterwards."
"Rei," Gendo's voice was actually displaying displeasure. Shinji could hear it roll off like a light thrumming sound, a reverberating and brief instant of heat. At first, Shinji's heart began to beat slightly more, was this what he meant with 'his mother being not completely dead'? But then it became clearer as he connected the 'Doctor' part to the 'Ikari' surname. Yes, his mother had been a Doctor, but there also was another Doctor, and his father had done his best not to mention her name...unless 'Ritsuko' was the surname?
He would not assume. For all he knew, there was a doctor in Nerv by the surname 'Ikari', but if that was the case, why would his father even grow angry and not simply say it was a misunderstanding?
"Oh," Shinji said in the end. "So...you remarried," he added next, lamely. "Con...Congratulations?"
"That is beyond the purpose of this exercise," Gendo Ikari spoke firmly. "The training is over."
"Usually, one says 'Thanks'," Shinji said, "To, you know, someone congratulating you-"
"Thank you," Doctor Ritsuko Ikari answered.
Yeah. Somehow he knew he'd be right on the money.
Well...moving on past the ghosts of one's past was a key action on the road to becoming a productive, psychologically healthy member of society. Or so his psychiatric said.
He still couldn't help feeling hurt about this.
Unknown to him, the Eva Unit Zero-One's eyes briefly flashed crimson in anger, before the light died out from them as it wobbled back under Shinji's command to the platform it would use to descend back into the bowels of Nerv.
Well, now he actually hoped his father had rented him a flat.
A flat he could lock himself inside of, and with soundproof walls.
He really needed to get a good few screams out of his body.
And curses. Lots and lots of curses.
Chapter Four: "Lex talionis."
- Location
- https://discord.gg/z9tBvbh
Chapter Four: "Lex talionis."
Shinji was a man of science. He was a man of science, a professor, and quite frankly had heard and seen enough that once he hit the hot showers of the changing rooms, he didn't move from there for the following ten minutes, just trying to get his jumbled thoughts back in order. The hot water helped, and it was honestly the first thing he should have done, even before changing into that strange spandex suit.
Taking deep breaths amidst the droplets of water, he passed a hand across his stubble and grimaced. If someone had told him he'd up resembling his father due to his facial hair -although the curves were noticeably softer, something of his mother's face, perhaps- he would have taken care to remove the small goatee sooner.
"Convenience store," Shinji said as he finished wiping the water off his body once out of the shower, swiftly getting dressed in a spare change of clothes.
He was curious about the identiy of 'Rei', the other Evangelion pilot. He was expecting a tomboyish woman with arms as thick as tree trunks and perhaps a troll-like appearance. In his head, Shinji imagined someone with a single, large brow that covered most of her forehead, a horribly deformed skull and-
And then he stopped, because it was kind of childish to think such things of someone he hadn't met, and might have been reasonably pissed at the entire situation. He would be pissed too if he had to suddenly babysit a random jar-head taken from the military and popped inside one of his labs.
Especially if the soldier had to hold in his hands a very delicate, highly explosive compound.
Yes, as his psychiatrist used to say, if he could try to empathize the other's situation and understand their point of view, he would be able to see that nobody actually hated him for the simple guilt of his existence. He was someone they could form connections with, no someone that had to form connections in order to have worth, and definitely not someone that would be hurt by having connections formed.
There would be no hedgehog dilemma with him. He'd politely greet this 'Rei', shake her hand, and then ask, humbly, if she could tell him what he'd need to do to get on her good side.
There. A perfectly logical and successful mean to avoid any hostility from a fellow colleague.
"Pilot Ayanami? She's already gone home," the soldier he met outside spoke gently at his inquiry. "You should get a head start over the civilians too. The return from the evacuation is always stressful on the automated lines."
"Ah-About this, where can I find Doctor Ritsuko?" Shinji asked. Though he didn't like the situation, he wasn't going to run away from someone who had answers to his questions, no matter how silly they might be.
"She's probably deep in the Magi sector. I'm sorry to say you can't access it. Top Secret stuff, selected personnel only," the soldier grinned. "I think that's where they keep the jacuzzi, the blackjack and the hookers for the officers, but they never let us poor grunts take a peak," he winked. "Come on, I've been told the Major was supposed to give you the tour of the places you can visit in the base, and tell you where your apartment is, but I'll do it in her stead."
"Wark!" Penpen exclaimed from his spot inside Shinji's trolley. The man was already used to it, so he decided to just go with it. If this 'Major' wanted her penguin back, she'd have to come get it.
He could access a surprisingly small amount of sectors within 'Central Dogma'. The 'Nerv Headquarters' were made as an octagon, divided into sectors and further split across various levels. The closer one was to the surface, the less restrictions there were. The Command Room was the sole exception to the rooms he could enter. Apparently, there was always the risk that he might overhear critical data he wasn't supposed to know if he lingered around the command post.
Perhaps they were simply afraid he'd strangle his father with his own hands if it came to it.
It wasn't like he hadn't entertained the thought when he was younger.
Finding his way out of Nerv proved easier with the helpful soldier manning an unused jeep of some kind and driving it across the empty streets -although in the far off distance, it was pretty clear there were the first hints at people coming back from the countryside rally points.
"It's not going to help much," the soldier said. "But giving people something to do during emergencies is sometimes better than leaving them to their own fate," he added with a grimace.
"This doesn't feel real," Shinji said softly. The penguin had moved from his trolley to his lap, and was currently enjoying with its head out of the window the fresh air. "And not just because I'm holding a penguin in my arms."
"That's an Emperor Penguin," the soldier pointed out. "His Emperorship, Royal Grace by the act of Beer, Penpen the Magnificent," the man drawled out ostentatiously, only one hand on the steering wheel.
"Seriously?" Shinji asked, looking puzzled at the penguin who was imitating a dog's normal behavior, if with 'Warks' instead of 'Barks'.
"He was the mascotte of our regiment," the soldier said. "We've been all hit hard by the Third Angel attack thirteen years ago," he added. "When Sachiel came-it was horrible."
Shinji blinked. "Thirteen years ago-was that the great Mount Fuji eruption?"
"Sure, it was covered as that," the man said with a dry chuckle. "But it wasn't. It was an angel attack. The Third one-Sachiel. He was...let's just say we were not prepared for him," he turned the wheel, entering another lane uncaring of the red light, but there weren't any cars, so it wasn't much of a problem. "Pilot Ayanami, she was thirteen when she faced that angel. I was thirteen. Most of the people in the base were thirteen." He stopped the car in the end in front of a large, pristine-looking apartment complex. "We'd have given anything to have our revenge on that thing," he said softly.
Shinji remained quiet, the uncomfortable silence stretching for a few minutes. "Man-I'm not as cool as Kensuke when it comes to this sort of speeches-what I'm trying to say, man, is that you'd do me a solid if you were to punch the next angel you see on the face for me," the soldier said with a shuddering breath. "I know there are regulations, and I'm not saying you have to charge at it and punch it on the face, but-but if you can, like, stomp on his balls, or break his teeth-please do it thinking about me?"
Shinji's eyes widened slightly, and the man's eyes widened in turn. "Gah! No! Not like that!" he flailed his arms. "I'm a married man!" he added, "To a woman! Really!" he even brought an inch away from Shinji's face his finger with a simple gold ring around it. "Just-between men, you understand what I'm trying to say?"
"I...I guess?" Shinji hazarded.
"Great!" the soldier said, stepping out of the car. "Well, let me show you where you're supposed to be living from here on out. I'm staying one floor below, with my wife. Because yes, no homo man, no homo."
"All...right," Shinji said, carefully pulling along his trolley. "I didn't catch your name," he opted for in the end.
"Suzuhara," the soldier said, "Toji Suzuhara. You can call me Toji. Whether you punch an Angel in the face or not, just knowing you can do that is good enough." He grinned. "And if you need anything, just ring up the Suzuhara on the floor below."
With a hearty pat on Shinji's back, the soldier walked inside and took the lift up to the sixth floor, the man in tow. "I'll let you get adjusted to the jet lag before throwing the missus on your back," he winked, a smile on his face. "See ya, Shinji."
"See...ya?" Shinji replied as he stopped once in front of his apartment door. He blinked at Toji, who in turn looked back at him.
"Oh," Toji said. "Nobody gave you...the keys?"
"No."
"Ah."
Truly, such mighty conversations one could have.
A single word could spark a hundred of unspoken questions and answers.
Still, that was quickly solved when the door opened from the inside and revealed a cheerful, smiling, half-naked -unless a black tank top and shorts too short to even be called shorts could be called being 'dressed'- woman, who proceeded to mischievously look down at the penguin, who quietly began to walk backwards better than any Michael Jackson imitator could ever hope to achieve.
"Penpen!" the woman said. "You were late!"
"Major," Toji asked, "On a scale of one to ten, how drunk are you right now?"
The woman that was apparently the mysterious 'Major' giggled lightly. "Three?"
"You didn't mess up the rooms, right? Seriously Major, this is getting ridiculous-" Toji said hotly. "Just give me a moment, Shinji-"
Shinji blinked. He didn't understand what was going on, but once the door closed in front of him, he turned to look down at the penguin, who in turn looked up at him.
"Tell me," Shinji asked the creature. "Am I the only one thinking the people around here are mighty strange?"
"Wark."
"I am talking to a penguin, but this admittedly does not alter the facts I have been shown-"
"Wark."
"Point granted," Shinji nodded. "I should ask someone who can answer me."
Considering the timezone, and after a quick glance at his cellphone for confirmation of the hour, he decided he wouldn't be remiss in making a much needed call.
Thus, he called his psychiatrist.
The man had said to contact him for any and all troubles.
Shinji was going to do just that.
Shinji was a man of science. He was a man of science, a professor, and quite frankly had heard and seen enough that once he hit the hot showers of the changing rooms, he didn't move from there for the following ten minutes, just trying to get his jumbled thoughts back in order. The hot water helped, and it was honestly the first thing he should have done, even before changing into that strange spandex suit.
Taking deep breaths amidst the droplets of water, he passed a hand across his stubble and grimaced. If someone had told him he'd up resembling his father due to his facial hair -although the curves were noticeably softer, something of his mother's face, perhaps- he would have taken care to remove the small goatee sooner.
"Convenience store," Shinji said as he finished wiping the water off his body once out of the shower, swiftly getting dressed in a spare change of clothes.
He was curious about the identiy of 'Rei', the other Evangelion pilot. He was expecting a tomboyish woman with arms as thick as tree trunks and perhaps a troll-like appearance. In his head, Shinji imagined someone with a single, large brow that covered most of her forehead, a horribly deformed skull and-
And then he stopped, because it was kind of childish to think such things of someone he hadn't met, and might have been reasonably pissed at the entire situation. He would be pissed too if he had to suddenly babysit a random jar-head taken from the military and popped inside one of his labs.
Especially if the soldier had to hold in his hands a very delicate, highly explosive compound.
Yes, as his psychiatrist used to say, if he could try to empathize the other's situation and understand their point of view, he would be able to see that nobody actually hated him for the simple guilt of his existence. He was someone they could form connections with, no someone that had to form connections in order to have worth, and definitely not someone that would be hurt by having connections formed.
There would be no hedgehog dilemma with him. He'd politely greet this 'Rei', shake her hand, and then ask, humbly, if she could tell him what he'd need to do to get on her good side.
There. A perfectly logical and successful mean to avoid any hostility from a fellow colleague.
"Pilot Ayanami? She's already gone home," the soldier he met outside spoke gently at his inquiry. "You should get a head start over the civilians too. The return from the evacuation is always stressful on the automated lines."
"Ah-About this, where can I find Doctor Ritsuko?" Shinji asked. Though he didn't like the situation, he wasn't going to run away from someone who had answers to his questions, no matter how silly they might be.
"She's probably deep in the Magi sector. I'm sorry to say you can't access it. Top Secret stuff, selected personnel only," the soldier grinned. "I think that's where they keep the jacuzzi, the blackjack and the hookers for the officers, but they never let us poor grunts take a peak," he winked. "Come on, I've been told the Major was supposed to give you the tour of the places you can visit in the base, and tell you where your apartment is, but I'll do it in her stead."
"Wark!" Penpen exclaimed from his spot inside Shinji's trolley. The man was already used to it, so he decided to just go with it. If this 'Major' wanted her penguin back, she'd have to come get it.
He could access a surprisingly small amount of sectors within 'Central Dogma'. The 'Nerv Headquarters' were made as an octagon, divided into sectors and further split across various levels. The closer one was to the surface, the less restrictions there were. The Command Room was the sole exception to the rooms he could enter. Apparently, there was always the risk that he might overhear critical data he wasn't supposed to know if he lingered around the command post.
Perhaps they were simply afraid he'd strangle his father with his own hands if it came to it.
It wasn't like he hadn't entertained the thought when he was younger.
Finding his way out of Nerv proved easier with the helpful soldier manning an unused jeep of some kind and driving it across the empty streets -although in the far off distance, it was pretty clear there were the first hints at people coming back from the countryside rally points.
"It's not going to help much," the soldier said. "But giving people something to do during emergencies is sometimes better than leaving them to their own fate," he added with a grimace.
"This doesn't feel real," Shinji said softly. The penguin had moved from his trolley to his lap, and was currently enjoying with its head out of the window the fresh air. "And not just because I'm holding a penguin in my arms."
"That's an Emperor Penguin," the soldier pointed out. "His Emperorship, Royal Grace by the act of Beer, Penpen the Magnificent," the man drawled out ostentatiously, only one hand on the steering wheel.
"Seriously?" Shinji asked, looking puzzled at the penguin who was imitating a dog's normal behavior, if with 'Warks' instead of 'Barks'.
"He was the mascotte of our regiment," the soldier said. "We've been all hit hard by the Third Angel attack thirteen years ago," he added. "When Sachiel came-it was horrible."
Shinji blinked. "Thirteen years ago-was that the great Mount Fuji eruption?"
"Sure, it was covered as that," the man said with a dry chuckle. "But it wasn't. It was an angel attack. The Third one-Sachiel. He was...let's just say we were not prepared for him," he turned the wheel, entering another lane uncaring of the red light, but there weren't any cars, so it wasn't much of a problem. "Pilot Ayanami, she was thirteen when she faced that angel. I was thirteen. Most of the people in the base were thirteen." He stopped the car in the end in front of a large, pristine-looking apartment complex. "We'd have given anything to have our revenge on that thing," he said softly.
Shinji remained quiet, the uncomfortable silence stretching for a few minutes. "Man-I'm not as cool as Kensuke when it comes to this sort of speeches-what I'm trying to say, man, is that you'd do me a solid if you were to punch the next angel you see on the face for me," the soldier said with a shuddering breath. "I know there are regulations, and I'm not saying you have to charge at it and punch it on the face, but-but if you can, like, stomp on his balls, or break his teeth-please do it thinking about me?"
Shinji's eyes widened slightly, and the man's eyes widened in turn. "Gah! No! Not like that!" he flailed his arms. "I'm a married man!" he added, "To a woman! Really!" he even brought an inch away from Shinji's face his finger with a simple gold ring around it. "Just-between men, you understand what I'm trying to say?"
"I...I guess?" Shinji hazarded.
"Great!" the soldier said, stepping out of the car. "Well, let me show you where you're supposed to be living from here on out. I'm staying one floor below, with my wife. Because yes, no homo man, no homo."
"All...right," Shinji said, carefully pulling along his trolley. "I didn't catch your name," he opted for in the end.
"Suzuhara," the soldier said, "Toji Suzuhara. You can call me Toji. Whether you punch an Angel in the face or not, just knowing you can do that is good enough." He grinned. "And if you need anything, just ring up the Suzuhara on the floor below."
With a hearty pat on Shinji's back, the soldier walked inside and took the lift up to the sixth floor, the man in tow. "I'll let you get adjusted to the jet lag before throwing the missus on your back," he winked, a smile on his face. "See ya, Shinji."
"See...ya?" Shinji replied as he stopped once in front of his apartment door. He blinked at Toji, who in turn looked back at him.
"Oh," Toji said. "Nobody gave you...the keys?"
"No."
"Ah."
Truly, such mighty conversations one could have.
A single word could spark a hundred of unspoken questions and answers.
Still, that was quickly solved when the door opened from the inside and revealed a cheerful, smiling, half-naked -unless a black tank top and shorts too short to even be called shorts could be called being 'dressed'- woman, who proceeded to mischievously look down at the penguin, who quietly began to walk backwards better than any Michael Jackson imitator could ever hope to achieve.
"Penpen!" the woman said. "You were late!"
"Major," Toji asked, "On a scale of one to ten, how drunk are you right now?"
The woman that was apparently the mysterious 'Major' giggled lightly. "Three?"
"You didn't mess up the rooms, right? Seriously Major, this is getting ridiculous-" Toji said hotly. "Just give me a moment, Shinji-"
Shinji blinked. He didn't understand what was going on, but once the door closed in front of him, he turned to look down at the penguin, who in turn looked up at him.
"Tell me," Shinji asked the creature. "Am I the only one thinking the people around here are mighty strange?"
"Wark."
"I am talking to a penguin, but this admittedly does not alter the facts I have been shown-"
"Wark."
"Point granted," Shinji nodded. "I should ask someone who can answer me."
Considering the timezone, and after a quick glance at his cellphone for confirmation of the hour, he decided he wouldn't be remiss in making a much needed call.
Thus, he called his psychiatrist.
The man had said to contact him for any and all troubles.
Shinji was going to do just that.
Chapter Five: "Vinum et musica laetificant cor."
- Location
- https://discord.gg/z9tBvbh
Chapter Five: "Vinum et musica laetificant cor."
The apartment was nice. It wasn't big, it wasn't lavishly filled with high-end luxuries, but it wasn't a cheap pair of rooms in a dusty corner either. It was decorous, and honestly more than enough for Shinji. He finished unpacking, the house smelling lightly of cigarettes and cheap alcohol. The Major had come around to greet him, since she'd be the one to 'guide him' through the missions. The Commander taking over today had been just an exception.
The welcome home gift was actually a well thought out basket of prime necessities, which also included a razor. The Major, Misato Katsuragi, had been gently brought out of his house by Toji, who had given him a quick smile of 'sorry' and a slight bow of the head before leaving him to his own.
Once unpacking was done with, Shinji carefully opened his cello casket, and with the window open sat down on the kitchen chair, starting to tune the instrument. A glass of red wine stood by on the table, and as he took a deep breath and relaxed, he allowed for his fingers to graciously move across the strings, the other hand moving back and forth the bow.
With grace, music began to rise in the air.
When he was young, he'd play Bach's Cello Suite, Number one in G Major. Now, it would be Pablo Ferrandez Prokofiev. Although it would have been better in a concert, playing the symphony with others, being alone soothed him even with the frenetic motions of the piece itself.
If he wasn't tired after playing a music sheet, then he had done something wrong.
"Wark!" Penpen said, flapping its wings in front of him as he finished playing. He looked down at the penguin, and then back at the door of his apartment.
"How did you even step inside?" Shinji asked, standing up to look at the door of his apartment, still locked. "Or did you simply give them the slip before they left?"
"Wark," Penpen said.
"Well...do you want me to lay out a pillow for you?" Shinji asked, his voice wavering slightly with doubt. He was asking a penguin if he wanted to spend the night after all. It wasn't normal, but well-if he considered the creature a sort of pet, like a dog or a cat, then it would make sense.
"Wark," Penpen nodded.
"Your name, Penpen...right? Is it like, the abbreviation of 'Penguin-Penguin'?"
"Wark."
Shinji shook his head dully, and then put the cello away, back into its protective casket. He polished the bow and religiously placed the musical instrument inside a nearby empty cupboard. He drank the glass of wine, filled it again, and then took another deep swing at it.
"Wark!" somehow, the penguin had managed to fill a glass himself, and was taking sips from it with its beak, all the while managing to not break the glass itself.
"Woah," Shinji muttered. "Just how are you doing this? You shouldn't have the-the coordination to do this."
"Wark," Penpen said with a lazy shrug.
Shinji left the wine on the table and pulled out a pillow for the penguin to use, and then headed off to sleep. His cellphone by his bed desk -they had given him western furniture at least, he didn't know if he'd be able to sleep inside a 'futon' to begin with, but it was a kind of nice touch of 'care'.
Thus he doubted this had been his father's handiwork.
Still, his sleep went by largely undisturbed. Somewhere in the middle of the night he was pretty sure he heard the penguin shift, and the bathroom toilet flush, but he hoped it simply meant the penguin had been trained to 'go potty'.
The image of penguins going down the toilet drain made his dreams all the stranger.
His cellphone rang, waking him up at the ungodly hour of six in the morning.
"Urgh-Yes?"
"Professor Ikari?" an unsure voice, perhaps a student who hadn't been alerted to the 'change' to his line of work.
"Yes," Shinji said. "Who's speaking?"
"Ah-I was taking your course in Biology-I had that thesis to discuss-"
Shinji furrowed his brows, "You should have received the university's notice-"
"I understand, but-"
Shinji sighed. Six in the morning was as good of a time as any to wake up and answer a few questions from a terrified student about what that meant for his exams, and considering he had managed to phone him, and was probably paying one hell of a phone bill to do so, he could at least answer him.
"Thanks professor, and sorry for-for bothering you."
"It's no problem," Shinji replied. "Good luck with professor Einzberg."
"Yes! Thank you very much," the student spoke with a far chipper voice than when he had started it, and then the conversation was closed off.
It was half past six, and as Shinji began to look around the kitchen for something to eat for breakfast, there was a polite knocking at the door. It was a heaven sent considering who was beyond it, because his fridge was empty.
"Yoh man-you hungry?" Toji stood outside the door, a grin on his face. "Come along, I'm pretty sure your fridge was empty last night," he added. "Also, the wife wants to meet the musician."
"Oh," Shinji's expression was definitely flustered. "You-You heard? I'm sorry if-"
"Nah, it was nice. Not my genre, but the wife liked it, and if she likes it then it's all right with me," Toji said with a good chuckle. "She was quite nervous about the evacuation, can't blame her-moving two kids isn't easy."
"Uh..." on one side, the man seemed nice. On the other, wasn't he just a bit too pushy? Well, there were different kind of people, and if he was simply this expansive, or perhaps felt the need to make him feel at ease with the situation, then it was all right.
Well, how did the saying go? 'Carpe Diem'? Catch the Day?
He'd catch breakfast.
Carpe Breakfastem.
The apartment was nice. It wasn't big, it wasn't lavishly filled with high-end luxuries, but it wasn't a cheap pair of rooms in a dusty corner either. It was decorous, and honestly more than enough for Shinji. He finished unpacking, the house smelling lightly of cigarettes and cheap alcohol. The Major had come around to greet him, since she'd be the one to 'guide him' through the missions. The Commander taking over today had been just an exception.
The welcome home gift was actually a well thought out basket of prime necessities, which also included a razor. The Major, Misato Katsuragi, had been gently brought out of his house by Toji, who had given him a quick smile of 'sorry' and a slight bow of the head before leaving him to his own.
Once unpacking was done with, Shinji carefully opened his cello casket, and with the window open sat down on the kitchen chair, starting to tune the instrument. A glass of red wine stood by on the table, and as he took a deep breath and relaxed, he allowed for his fingers to graciously move across the strings, the other hand moving back and forth the bow.
With grace, music began to rise in the air.
When he was young, he'd play Bach's Cello Suite, Number one in G Major. Now, it would be Pablo Ferrandez Prokofiev. Although it would have been better in a concert, playing the symphony with others, being alone soothed him even with the frenetic motions of the piece itself.
If he wasn't tired after playing a music sheet, then he had done something wrong.
"Wark!" Penpen said, flapping its wings in front of him as he finished playing. He looked down at the penguin, and then back at the door of his apartment.
"How did you even step inside?" Shinji asked, standing up to look at the door of his apartment, still locked. "Or did you simply give them the slip before they left?"
"Wark," Penpen said.
"Well...do you want me to lay out a pillow for you?" Shinji asked, his voice wavering slightly with doubt. He was asking a penguin if he wanted to spend the night after all. It wasn't normal, but well-if he considered the creature a sort of pet, like a dog or a cat, then it would make sense.
"Wark," Penpen nodded.
"Your name, Penpen...right? Is it like, the abbreviation of 'Penguin-Penguin'?"
"Wark."
Shinji shook his head dully, and then put the cello away, back into its protective casket. He polished the bow and religiously placed the musical instrument inside a nearby empty cupboard. He drank the glass of wine, filled it again, and then took another deep swing at it.
"Wark!" somehow, the penguin had managed to fill a glass himself, and was taking sips from it with its beak, all the while managing to not break the glass itself.
"Woah," Shinji muttered. "Just how are you doing this? You shouldn't have the-the coordination to do this."
"Wark," Penpen said with a lazy shrug.
Shinji left the wine on the table and pulled out a pillow for the penguin to use, and then headed off to sleep. His cellphone by his bed desk -they had given him western furniture at least, he didn't know if he'd be able to sleep inside a 'futon' to begin with, but it was a kind of nice touch of 'care'.
Thus he doubted this had been his father's handiwork.
Still, his sleep went by largely undisturbed. Somewhere in the middle of the night he was pretty sure he heard the penguin shift, and the bathroom toilet flush, but he hoped it simply meant the penguin had been trained to 'go potty'.
The image of penguins going down the toilet drain made his dreams all the stranger.
His cellphone rang, waking him up at the ungodly hour of six in the morning.
"Urgh-Yes?"
"Professor Ikari?" an unsure voice, perhaps a student who hadn't been alerted to the 'change' to his line of work.
"Yes," Shinji said. "Who's speaking?"
"Ah-I was taking your course in Biology-I had that thesis to discuss-"
Shinji furrowed his brows, "You should have received the university's notice-"
"I understand, but-"
Shinji sighed. Six in the morning was as good of a time as any to wake up and answer a few questions from a terrified student about what that meant for his exams, and considering he had managed to phone him, and was probably paying one hell of a phone bill to do so, he could at least answer him.
"Thanks professor, and sorry for-for bothering you."
"It's no problem," Shinji replied. "Good luck with professor Einzberg."
"Yes! Thank you very much," the student spoke with a far chipper voice than when he had started it, and then the conversation was closed off.
It was half past six, and as Shinji began to look around the kitchen for something to eat for breakfast, there was a polite knocking at the door. It was a heaven sent considering who was beyond it, because his fridge was empty.
"Yoh man-you hungry?" Toji stood outside the door, a grin on his face. "Come along, I'm pretty sure your fridge was empty last night," he added. "Also, the wife wants to meet the musician."
"Oh," Shinji's expression was definitely flustered. "You-You heard? I'm sorry if-"
"Nah, it was nice. Not my genre, but the wife liked it, and if she likes it then it's all right with me," Toji said with a good chuckle. "She was quite nervous about the evacuation, can't blame her-moving two kids isn't easy."
"Uh..." on one side, the man seemed nice. On the other, wasn't he just a bit too pushy? Well, there were different kind of people, and if he was simply this expansive, or perhaps felt the need to make him feel at ease with the situation, then it was all right.
Well, how did the saying go? 'Carpe Diem'? Catch the Day?
He'd catch breakfast.
Carpe Breakfastem.
Last edited:
Chapter Six: "Familia supra omnia."
- Location
- https://discord.gg/z9tBvbh
Chapter Six: "Familia supra omnia."
The Suzuhara family consisted of a pretty woman by the name of Hikari, two teenagers that went by the names of Sakura and Kensuke respectively, and somehow Major Katsuragi was the shoe-in that was half catatonic in front of a flawlessly prepared breakfast table. The presence of the Nerv Major loosened a bit of Shinji's nervousness, but the pair of curious stares in his direction did nothing but make him feel like a young college freshman being scrutinized by other forces beyond his control.
"Hi," the girl between the two spoke first, a large cheeky grin on her face. "Are you one of dad's coworker? You don't look like a soldier."
"Well-" Shinji said, quite nervously looking back and forth as if expecting some form of answer to come through another person. "I just transferred here from overseas, and your father was kind enough to invite me for breakfast," here he smiled. "With yesterday's troubles, my fridge was empty."
"Right, I say," Hikari huffed, a ladle in her hand as she tapped her right foot near the stove. "Misato-why didn't you give me a bit of a forewarning? At least I could have had a head start! And Toji, you could have let something slip-"
"Sorry dear," Toji answered with a nervous chuckle of his own. "It would have been a poor simulation if a sudden evacuation hadn't been...you know, sudden."
Hikari's lips thinned slightly, her eyes glaring with a bit of playful tone to them. "You'll have to make it up to me-"
"Ugh, get a room," Kensuke Suzuhara gagged, or at least, mockingly did so.
"Did you just say something, you twerp?" Toji asked with a heated glare, but with a playful voice, "I'll let you know my charms were the best in all of the class, and that's how I scored your mother!"
"Actually, I seem to recall that I was the one who 'scored' you. With points. Detentions. Infractions." Hikari began to lift one finger of her hand per word she spoke of the list, and it took the half-grieving snort from Misato to make her stop.
"I share Kensu-chan's words. Get a room, you damn happy couple," Misato mumbled. "And here I thought Hikari-chan would take after me and become a lonely woman in her thirties-"
"Aren't you in your fort-" Toji's mouth opened, and then suddenly closed as the tip of a gun found its way inside his oral cavity.
"Yes?" Misato said mellifluously, even though her haggard face told just how little she had slept the night before. "This is the pepper spray gun," she added next, to a slightly traumatized Shinji. "It's how I trained this uncouth youngster, and his evil ilk of badmouthing, graceless friends into becoming respectable men of society-"
"I'd rather you didn't scare the guest, Misato," Hikari said with a light playful tone. "You can, of course, teach my husband manners about when it is appropriate to tell the age of a woman."
"N-Never?" Shinji hazarded a guess, only to receive a beaming smile from both Misato and Hikari.
"See? We haven't even had a proper introduction yet, and I already like him more than you, Toji," Misato said, pulling the pepper spray shaped as a gun out of the man's mouth.
"Wark!" Penpen said, suddenly appearing from the balcony.
Shinji blinked. "Wait a moment. So that's how you came into my apartment? Through the open window?"
The penguin cocked its beaked head to the side, and then flapped its wings a bit, wobbling its way on a chair nearby. "Oh! Hello there Penpen!" Hikari said with a smile, "Come for breakfast too?"
"The penguin-how did he get here?" Shinji asked, carefully eyeing the wings that absolutely could not allow a penguin to fly. He had thought Penpen a normal penguin, but if he were to be told he could fly -nature would not allow such a thing, would it? This wasn't the bumblebee dilemma. Penguins could not fly.
"He flew of course," Misato said with a straight face. "He flew by using the wonderful flight path known as 'emergency fire stairs'. The ones outside the building. The ones that are used in case of emergency. The ones that are the way by which all can fly and-"
Shinji gave an affronted look at the 'Major' who was definitely being sarcastic. "Thank you," he said with a bow of his head. "Without your incredible intelligence, I might still be stuck thinking there is yet one more impossible thing going on around this city."
The Major blinked, and then snorted, a tiny chuckle leaving her throat as she rolled her sleep-deprived eyes and accepted the offered cup of hot steaming miso soup, which was coupled with some hot rolled omelette bits. A similar plate ended up in front of Shinji and Toji, and all were flawlessly proportioned -if not for a heart-shaped form over Toji's amount of rice, which made him grin, and receive an equally mirthful blush from his wife.
The two kids had milk, and then school.
Shinji had something far worse ahead of him.
"I don't get it," he said as the Entry Plug closed around him. "If this is a simulation-then why did you not start with this the first time around?"
"We needed confirmation you could successfully activate the Evangelion, Professor," Doctor Ritsuko's voice came through the strange head-clippers, and as a simulation began to spread across the screens, resembling vividly what Shinji had seen before, he couldn't help but wonder if perhaps they had gotten it backwards.
First came theoretical testing and then practical testing. The opposite was, well, impractical.
"You will familiarize yourself with a series of commands we could not test yesterday due to the actual damage they might have done. Also, you will be holding on to simulated equipment that will be essential to master for the battlefield-"
Doctor Ritsuko was professional. He could do professional.
"Can I ask something?" Shinji asked as he watched the various commands flickering through the screens around him. "What exactly is the purpose of these Angels? Why are you sure they will attack again, and here of all places?"
"Migratory birds follow an inner magnetic compass, and periodically travel to avoid winter and the risks involved with their survival. Similar to birds, Angels have a 'compass' that guides them, and that compass points at a single creature. One that Nerv has painstakingly held captured at the deepest levels."
"It might be my biology lessons speaking, but...are we...blocking the reproductive cycle of the Angels thus forcing them to turn aggressive against us?"
"No," Doctor Ritsuko answered. "Although it is the first time such a theory was surmised. Angels...do not reproduce as biological creatures do. They possess no reproductive organs of any type or sort, and in truth, the closest form of reproduction they do have is-"
"Should you not be training him rather than doing nerd-talk?" Rei's voice interjected itself smoothly through the headset. She had probably slipped inside the room, unnoticed. The latter was merely a theory on Shinji's part, but judging by the startled gasp and then the affronted tone of voice in Ritsuko's next words, he was pretty sure that had been the case.
"Pilot Ayanami, why are you here?"
"I was curious," the woman answered. The Doctor hadn't cut the microphone feed, so Shinji could still hear her speak. "About how much I will have to babysit him once the Angel arrives. If you'd get started with his training program, perhaps it would be best. The Commander wants to know his results by the end of the day."
There was a soft intake of breath from Doctor Ritsuko's part, and then the woman crisply answered, "I see. I will tell my husband later tonight then. You can leave now."
"I think I'll stay," Rei replied. "I want to see if he'd have fared better against the Third Angel. That is what you will be simulating, right? The fight of thirteen years ago."
"After he got the hang of the commands," Ritsuko said. "You had eight months to familiarize yourself with the Eva before entering battle. The fact he managed to make it walk and activate its AT-Field on the same day is more than what you managed on your first try."
"I did nearly kill you though," Rei answered with a brief hint of warmth in her voice.
"That is not something positive."
"I wouldn't know about that," Rei replied.
"Excuse me?" Shinji asked, hoping they'd both be hearing him. "Could we...start training? I'd rather not...die, you know. And if Pilot Ayanami has any...tips she wants to share, I would like to hear them-please, help me help you?"
There was silence for a minute, a minute that seemed to stretch for quite a long while, perhaps even into the hour mark of relative time, before it broke.
"Simulation number one, the Progressive Knife's cutting ability and known techniques-"
Rei Ayanami did not speak up once during the first simulations, nor did she offer any suggestions. She remained quiet, dutifully so, until Shinji began to think she had simply left, having become successfully bored at his training.
Finally, the last Simulation was a combat one. The videos buzzed to life as they showed him stand right in front of a strange, misshapen creature that vaguely resembled a humanoid form, if not for the strange glowing red core, the badly proportioned limbs, and the strange mask that looked similar to that of the middle ages' plague doctors.
The thing stood unnaturally still for a single instant, and then it was gone.
The next moment, a column of pure white light blinded Shinji's sight as it vaporized everything around him, and made the LCL boil to unbearable temperatures.
"Be thankful for the limiters in the simulation," Rei's voice came through after the long silence. "I remember that attack. It boiled my skin while I was still conscious."
Shinji suddenly regretted having eaten a traditional breakfast.
Especially when his breakfast happily floated in front of him.
The Suzuhara family consisted of a pretty woman by the name of Hikari, two teenagers that went by the names of Sakura and Kensuke respectively, and somehow Major Katsuragi was the shoe-in that was half catatonic in front of a flawlessly prepared breakfast table. The presence of the Nerv Major loosened a bit of Shinji's nervousness, but the pair of curious stares in his direction did nothing but make him feel like a young college freshman being scrutinized by other forces beyond his control.
"Hi," the girl between the two spoke first, a large cheeky grin on her face. "Are you one of dad's coworker? You don't look like a soldier."
"Well-" Shinji said, quite nervously looking back and forth as if expecting some form of answer to come through another person. "I just transferred here from overseas, and your father was kind enough to invite me for breakfast," here he smiled. "With yesterday's troubles, my fridge was empty."
"Right, I say," Hikari huffed, a ladle in her hand as she tapped her right foot near the stove. "Misato-why didn't you give me a bit of a forewarning? At least I could have had a head start! And Toji, you could have let something slip-"
"Sorry dear," Toji answered with a nervous chuckle of his own. "It would have been a poor simulation if a sudden evacuation hadn't been...you know, sudden."
Hikari's lips thinned slightly, her eyes glaring with a bit of playful tone to them. "You'll have to make it up to me-"
"Ugh, get a room," Kensuke Suzuhara gagged, or at least, mockingly did so.
"Did you just say something, you twerp?" Toji asked with a heated glare, but with a playful voice, "I'll let you know my charms were the best in all of the class, and that's how I scored your mother!"
"Actually, I seem to recall that I was the one who 'scored' you. With points. Detentions. Infractions." Hikari began to lift one finger of her hand per word she spoke of the list, and it took the half-grieving snort from Misato to make her stop.
"I share Kensu-chan's words. Get a room, you damn happy couple," Misato mumbled. "And here I thought Hikari-chan would take after me and become a lonely woman in her thirties-"
"Aren't you in your fort-" Toji's mouth opened, and then suddenly closed as the tip of a gun found its way inside his oral cavity.
"Yes?" Misato said mellifluously, even though her haggard face told just how little she had slept the night before. "This is the pepper spray gun," she added next, to a slightly traumatized Shinji. "It's how I trained this uncouth youngster, and his evil ilk of badmouthing, graceless friends into becoming respectable men of society-"
"I'd rather you didn't scare the guest, Misato," Hikari said with a light playful tone. "You can, of course, teach my husband manners about when it is appropriate to tell the age of a woman."
"N-Never?" Shinji hazarded a guess, only to receive a beaming smile from both Misato and Hikari.
"See? We haven't even had a proper introduction yet, and I already like him more than you, Toji," Misato said, pulling the pepper spray shaped as a gun out of the man's mouth.
"Wark!" Penpen said, suddenly appearing from the balcony.
Shinji blinked. "Wait a moment. So that's how you came into my apartment? Through the open window?"
The penguin cocked its beaked head to the side, and then flapped its wings a bit, wobbling its way on a chair nearby. "Oh! Hello there Penpen!" Hikari said with a smile, "Come for breakfast too?"
"The penguin-how did he get here?" Shinji asked, carefully eyeing the wings that absolutely could not allow a penguin to fly. He had thought Penpen a normal penguin, but if he were to be told he could fly -nature would not allow such a thing, would it? This wasn't the bumblebee dilemma. Penguins could not fly.
"He flew of course," Misato said with a straight face. "He flew by using the wonderful flight path known as 'emergency fire stairs'. The ones outside the building. The ones that are used in case of emergency. The ones that are the way by which all can fly and-"
Shinji gave an affronted look at the 'Major' who was definitely being sarcastic. "Thank you," he said with a bow of his head. "Without your incredible intelligence, I might still be stuck thinking there is yet one more impossible thing going on around this city."
The Major blinked, and then snorted, a tiny chuckle leaving her throat as she rolled her sleep-deprived eyes and accepted the offered cup of hot steaming miso soup, which was coupled with some hot rolled omelette bits. A similar plate ended up in front of Shinji and Toji, and all were flawlessly proportioned -if not for a heart-shaped form over Toji's amount of rice, which made him grin, and receive an equally mirthful blush from his wife.
The two kids had milk, and then school.
Shinji had something far worse ahead of him.
"I don't get it," he said as the Entry Plug closed around him. "If this is a simulation-then why did you not start with this the first time around?"
"We needed confirmation you could successfully activate the Evangelion, Professor," Doctor Ritsuko's voice came through the strange head-clippers, and as a simulation began to spread across the screens, resembling vividly what Shinji had seen before, he couldn't help but wonder if perhaps they had gotten it backwards.
First came theoretical testing and then practical testing. The opposite was, well, impractical.
"You will familiarize yourself with a series of commands we could not test yesterday due to the actual damage they might have done. Also, you will be holding on to simulated equipment that will be essential to master for the battlefield-"
Doctor Ritsuko was professional. He could do professional.
"Can I ask something?" Shinji asked as he watched the various commands flickering through the screens around him. "What exactly is the purpose of these Angels? Why are you sure they will attack again, and here of all places?"
"Migratory birds follow an inner magnetic compass, and periodically travel to avoid winter and the risks involved with their survival. Similar to birds, Angels have a 'compass' that guides them, and that compass points at a single creature. One that Nerv has painstakingly held captured at the deepest levels."
"It might be my biology lessons speaking, but...are we...blocking the reproductive cycle of the Angels thus forcing them to turn aggressive against us?"
"No," Doctor Ritsuko answered. "Although it is the first time such a theory was surmised. Angels...do not reproduce as biological creatures do. They possess no reproductive organs of any type or sort, and in truth, the closest form of reproduction they do have is-"
"Should you not be training him rather than doing nerd-talk?" Rei's voice interjected itself smoothly through the headset. She had probably slipped inside the room, unnoticed. The latter was merely a theory on Shinji's part, but judging by the startled gasp and then the affronted tone of voice in Ritsuko's next words, he was pretty sure that had been the case.
"Pilot Ayanami, why are you here?"
"I was curious," the woman answered. The Doctor hadn't cut the microphone feed, so Shinji could still hear her speak. "About how much I will have to babysit him once the Angel arrives. If you'd get started with his training program, perhaps it would be best. The Commander wants to know his results by the end of the day."
There was a soft intake of breath from Doctor Ritsuko's part, and then the woman crisply answered, "I see. I will tell my husband later tonight then. You can leave now."
"I think I'll stay," Rei replied. "I want to see if he'd have fared better against the Third Angel. That is what you will be simulating, right? The fight of thirteen years ago."
"After he got the hang of the commands," Ritsuko said. "You had eight months to familiarize yourself with the Eva before entering battle. The fact he managed to make it walk and activate its AT-Field on the same day is more than what you managed on your first try."
"I did nearly kill you though," Rei answered with a brief hint of warmth in her voice.
"That is not something positive."
"I wouldn't know about that," Rei replied.
"Excuse me?" Shinji asked, hoping they'd both be hearing him. "Could we...start training? I'd rather not...die, you know. And if Pilot Ayanami has any...tips she wants to share, I would like to hear them-please, help me help you?"
There was silence for a minute, a minute that seemed to stretch for quite a long while, perhaps even into the hour mark of relative time, before it broke.
"Simulation number one, the Progressive Knife's cutting ability and known techniques-"
Rei Ayanami did not speak up once during the first simulations, nor did she offer any suggestions. She remained quiet, dutifully so, until Shinji began to think she had simply left, having become successfully bored at his training.
Finally, the last Simulation was a combat one. The videos buzzed to life as they showed him stand right in front of a strange, misshapen creature that vaguely resembled a humanoid form, if not for the strange glowing red core, the badly proportioned limbs, and the strange mask that looked similar to that of the middle ages' plague doctors.
The thing stood unnaturally still for a single instant, and then it was gone.
The next moment, a column of pure white light blinded Shinji's sight as it vaporized everything around him, and made the LCL boil to unbearable temperatures.
"Be thankful for the limiters in the simulation," Rei's voice came through after the long silence. "I remember that attack. It boiled my skin while I was still conscious."
Shinji suddenly regretted having eaten a traditional breakfast.
Especially when his breakfast happily floated in front of him.
Chapter Seven: "Absit Invidia"
- Location
- https://discord.gg/z9tBvbh
Chapter Seven: "Absit Invidia"
The Angel's humanoid frame and monstrous built was nothing compared to the speed and grace with which it moved. The alien did not seem to care about the concrete below its feet, or the buildings around it. Large, cross-shaped pylons of energy exploded around Shinji's form even as he moved, a timer having appeared on the upper right corner.
"Detached from their power cord, Evangelions can last a variable amount of time, ranging from three to five minutes depending on how much stress is put on the Eva."
Shinji ground his teeth. He wanted to ask 'why', but he couldn't, not when he was trying his hardest not to scream due to the heat that was turning his skin red with welts.
"To answer your unspoken question, the Entry Plug's connection to the Evangelion's core and thus nervous system requires energy, without it, no signals can pass," Doctor Ritsuko spoke through the microphone, only for a short snort to echo near her.
"Use the buildings to hide from the Angel," Rei said. "Stop running and start thinking."
It was easy for her to say, she wasn't the one being boiled alive by a pylon of energy that seemed to know where he was, as blasts of energy ripped apart the buildings of the simulation, creating large holes on the crumbling walls with molten rock around the edges.
Loud roaring explosions echoed from the Angel's wrists as spears of light left its wrists, before the alien pushed its feet on the ground, cracking it as the creature jumped high in the air, landing with both hands right in front of Shinji's face -in the simulation- and slamming them both down together with a burning white energy surrounding its fingers.
The screen flickered to black, a 'Terminated' appearing in front of Shinji's eyes.
The LCL cooled down, and the Simulation Entry Plug stopped shaking back and forth. Shinji caught his breath as the LCL was drained and replaced with clean one, the simulation restarting once more.
"Never stop moving, but try not to let the Angel reach the Eva's power cord. Unless you plan on finishing the fight in three minutes," Rei's voice came through hard, a tiny amount of smugness seeping through.
Shinji swallowed his nervousness, narrowed his eyes, and clenched the handles. Now he knew what to expect, so it wouldn't be that bad, would it?
When the simulation restarted, the Angel was already midway through with its charge towards him, and he yelped as he jumped back, only to have the Angel grab the power cord and pull, pulling the Eva along until the safety pins disconnected, sending him to crash on the ground.
"When the Angel attacked, I sortied alone," Rei said. "All other means to stop it failed. The AT-Field stopped practically everything but N2 firepower, and that simply winded it rather than stop him. In the end," Rei's voice wavered briefly, "had he come alone, I suppose the damage could have been contained."
Shinji ground his teeth. "But he didn't," Rei continued. "This isn't the complete simulation-only a part of the Angel's tactics. The complete simulation..."
"Perhaps another time," Doctor Ritsuko said.
"Why not now? Maybe this will scare him away," Rei answered primly.
"What could be worse than this?" Shinji asked, both of the simulated Evangelion's arms having crossed in front of its face to protect from a kick coming from the Angel itself. "This thing-it's like fighting a force of nature or something." He groaned in a show of effort as he pushed the Angel away from him while standing up at the same time.
Rather than run away, he pushed on by getting closer to the Angel, the Evangelion's fist coming down on its strange plague-doctor mask. A second fist soon followed the first, and as the Evangelion screamed, Shinji pushed the button to open the shoulder pylon, grabbing the progressive knife and slamming it down on the Angel's core, even as the creature tried to stop his thrust.
The Evangelion overpowered the Angel as Shinji screamed, before slamming the knife home and taking a small breath of satisfaction. "This-This didn't...It's done."
"Good," Rei said, "Now we can proceed with the simulation of what really happened."
As the video screen refreshed, Shinji watched.
He watched, and then his mouth hung open, as he looked at the Angel stand amidst the screaming, swarming, yelling masses of ants that weren't ants, but people. The Angel opened its arms, and pillars of light shaped like crosses blasted at those beneath it, as if they were meaningless insects unworthy of living.
Charred remains were a mercy for the survivors, for many disappeared, leaving only blotches on walls or pavements, and sometimes not even that. The ground quaked, rippling apart as blasts from the Angel's wrists tore apart the buildings, shattering all forms of cover, uncaring of those that disappeared.
Those that weren't vaporized and ended up too close to the creature outright melted into puddles of blood, and if Shinji hadn't already been without breakfast in his stomach, he would have lost it once more.
This was not a beast moving on instinct. This was a cold, ruthless and calculating force that wanted the most damage possible on its enemies, and just as it stopped its slaughter, it turned its beak with glowing eyes towards Shinji.
And Shinji, somehow, knew fear.
The Angel of before had been ruthless, yes, but there had been no emotion in its movements. It had walked around, limped even, and attacked with the coldness of a machine, but without the thrumming life of a living being.
This one was different. He'd have to praise whoever created the simulation, for in that moment, Shinji forgot he wasn't actually in danger.
He really just wanted to run away from that thing. He really wanted nothing more than to take the first plane back to Europe and leave this up to Rei and his father and everyone else that wasn't him.
But he had nowhere to run, had he? His father would hold his career over his head until he did this, so-so there was nowhere to run. He could stand up and fight, or curl on himself and die.
He had no intention of dying.
He hadn't gone through enough therapy sessions to just regress back to being the wailing angsty teenager who wondered why his father didn't love him.
And this was a simulation. If he grew scared of this, when it came to the next, actual Angel...what would he do?
"I won't run away," Shinji whispered. "I won't run away." He narrowed his eyes. "I won't run away!" he snarled. There was no 'Must', but only 'Will not'. It was his choice to stand his ground, not his father's pressure.
He was the one who made the choice to stay, because he would not run away.
Charging ahead, he screamed as the Angel waited for his arrival, before using its left arm to deflect the incoming blow and then slam the right hand right against the Evangelion's core, igniting the hand that blasted the Evangelion's chest right off, thus 'terminating' both the Evangelion and the Entry Plug.
"We thought them mere beasts," Doctor Ritsuko whispered. "But we were wrong."
Shinji coughed out the LCL from his lungs as he stood on his knees outside the Simulation Entry Plug. His arms were shaking and his vision was blurry. He took deep lungful of air, even as they tasted of blood and smelled thickly of iron to his tongue and nostrils.
"Still feeling up to it?" a female voice asked a few steps away from him. Rei's voice, so close up, had lost a bit of the metallic edge that the audio feed gave her, but while the sound of it was familiar, it was as he lifted his gaze and focused that all forms of breath left his lungs.
"What are you looking at?" Rei said with a snort. "When you're done staring at my plugsuit-" Shinji's cheeks blushed fiercely as he averted his gaze. Rei's hair was short, and light blue. She had pale white skin and red eyes, coupled with a white plugsuit and a pair of quite round attributes that made him-no, no, he was not staring at those.
The sense of familiarity did not leave him, but he couldn't put his finger on it.
"Now go up to the control room," Rei said next. "I'll show you how it's done," she added.
Shinji nodded awkwardly, stumbling on his next few steps before finally reaching for the control room after a few more minutes of hasty jogging through a couple of stairways and corridors.
Doctor Ritsuko, in person, looked every bit the professional woman he had expected her to be. This didn't change the fact that she had her hands in her lab coat's pockets, and with a cigarette in her mouth, she was doing her best impression of being unimpressed.
"Doctor," Shinji said, trying to sound cheerful and amiable. He had probably failed somewhere along the lines, because the woman simply gave him a curt nod, pulled the cigarette out of her lips and exhaled.
"Professor," she acknowledged. "I'm not going to say something as crude and humorless as 'call me mother'."
"Thank you," Shinji said, quite awkwardly.
"I should mention you have a half sister," Doctor Ritsuko said. "Her name is Naoko, she's twelve, and the last time she saw her father in the flesh was six months ago."
Shinji blinked. "Uhm...I...What."
Doctor Ritsuko shrugged lightly. "Synchronization is a tricky affair that involves factors that are both physical and psychological. I would rather all things that might lower your synchronization score to be revealed now, rather than later," she took another puff from her cigarette.
"Ah, so-why? Is it because stress and anxiety release specific chemical agents that somehow-"
Doctor Ritsuko smiled softly, and turned off the cigarette. It was true that she had not liked the idea of having Yui's son around, both for personal, and practical, reasons. Still, it was nice having the chance to actually answer questions and have a pilot that didn't want to break her neck due to some perceived slight on her part.
Well, no, not really 'perceived'.
She had married Gendo.
What surprised her the most however was that the man had accepted her terms of a marriage and a child, in exchange for her continued assistance.
He hadn't showed up even at the moment of Naoko's birth, but she hadn't cared by then. Time had soothed and calmed her 'infatuation', but she had at least earned something from it, something far from small.
Taking Yui's place by Gendo's side.
If not in his heart, at the very least on paper.
The Angel's humanoid frame and monstrous built was nothing compared to the speed and grace with which it moved. The alien did not seem to care about the concrete below its feet, or the buildings around it. Large, cross-shaped pylons of energy exploded around Shinji's form even as he moved, a timer having appeared on the upper right corner.
"Detached from their power cord, Evangelions can last a variable amount of time, ranging from three to five minutes depending on how much stress is put on the Eva."
Shinji ground his teeth. He wanted to ask 'why', but he couldn't, not when he was trying his hardest not to scream due to the heat that was turning his skin red with welts.
"To answer your unspoken question, the Entry Plug's connection to the Evangelion's core and thus nervous system requires energy, without it, no signals can pass," Doctor Ritsuko spoke through the microphone, only for a short snort to echo near her.
"Use the buildings to hide from the Angel," Rei said. "Stop running and start thinking."
It was easy for her to say, she wasn't the one being boiled alive by a pylon of energy that seemed to know where he was, as blasts of energy ripped apart the buildings of the simulation, creating large holes on the crumbling walls with molten rock around the edges.
Loud roaring explosions echoed from the Angel's wrists as spears of light left its wrists, before the alien pushed its feet on the ground, cracking it as the creature jumped high in the air, landing with both hands right in front of Shinji's face -in the simulation- and slamming them both down together with a burning white energy surrounding its fingers.
The screen flickered to black, a 'Terminated' appearing in front of Shinji's eyes.
The LCL cooled down, and the Simulation Entry Plug stopped shaking back and forth. Shinji caught his breath as the LCL was drained and replaced with clean one, the simulation restarting once more.
"Never stop moving, but try not to let the Angel reach the Eva's power cord. Unless you plan on finishing the fight in three minutes," Rei's voice came through hard, a tiny amount of smugness seeping through.
Shinji swallowed his nervousness, narrowed his eyes, and clenched the handles. Now he knew what to expect, so it wouldn't be that bad, would it?
When the simulation restarted, the Angel was already midway through with its charge towards him, and he yelped as he jumped back, only to have the Angel grab the power cord and pull, pulling the Eva along until the safety pins disconnected, sending him to crash on the ground.
"When the Angel attacked, I sortied alone," Rei said. "All other means to stop it failed. The AT-Field stopped practically everything but N2 firepower, and that simply winded it rather than stop him. In the end," Rei's voice wavered briefly, "had he come alone, I suppose the damage could have been contained."
Shinji ground his teeth. "But he didn't," Rei continued. "This isn't the complete simulation-only a part of the Angel's tactics. The complete simulation..."
"Perhaps another time," Doctor Ritsuko said.
"Why not now? Maybe this will scare him away," Rei answered primly.
"What could be worse than this?" Shinji asked, both of the simulated Evangelion's arms having crossed in front of its face to protect from a kick coming from the Angel itself. "This thing-it's like fighting a force of nature or something." He groaned in a show of effort as he pushed the Angel away from him while standing up at the same time.
Rather than run away, he pushed on by getting closer to the Angel, the Evangelion's fist coming down on its strange plague-doctor mask. A second fist soon followed the first, and as the Evangelion screamed, Shinji pushed the button to open the shoulder pylon, grabbing the progressive knife and slamming it down on the Angel's core, even as the creature tried to stop his thrust.
The Evangelion overpowered the Angel as Shinji screamed, before slamming the knife home and taking a small breath of satisfaction. "This-This didn't...It's done."
"Good," Rei said, "Now we can proceed with the simulation of what really happened."
As the video screen refreshed, Shinji watched.
He watched, and then his mouth hung open, as he looked at the Angel stand amidst the screaming, swarming, yelling masses of ants that weren't ants, but people. The Angel opened its arms, and pillars of light shaped like crosses blasted at those beneath it, as if they were meaningless insects unworthy of living.
Charred remains were a mercy for the survivors, for many disappeared, leaving only blotches on walls or pavements, and sometimes not even that. The ground quaked, rippling apart as blasts from the Angel's wrists tore apart the buildings, shattering all forms of cover, uncaring of those that disappeared.
Those that weren't vaporized and ended up too close to the creature outright melted into puddles of blood, and if Shinji hadn't already been without breakfast in his stomach, he would have lost it once more.
This was not a beast moving on instinct. This was a cold, ruthless and calculating force that wanted the most damage possible on its enemies, and just as it stopped its slaughter, it turned its beak with glowing eyes towards Shinji.
And Shinji, somehow, knew fear.
The Angel of before had been ruthless, yes, but there had been no emotion in its movements. It had walked around, limped even, and attacked with the coldness of a machine, but without the thrumming life of a living being.
This one was different. He'd have to praise whoever created the simulation, for in that moment, Shinji forgot he wasn't actually in danger.
He really just wanted to run away from that thing. He really wanted nothing more than to take the first plane back to Europe and leave this up to Rei and his father and everyone else that wasn't him.
But he had nowhere to run, had he? His father would hold his career over his head until he did this, so-so there was nowhere to run. He could stand up and fight, or curl on himself and die.
He had no intention of dying.
He hadn't gone through enough therapy sessions to just regress back to being the wailing angsty teenager who wondered why his father didn't love him.
And this was a simulation. If he grew scared of this, when it came to the next, actual Angel...what would he do?
"I won't run away," Shinji whispered. "I won't run away." He narrowed his eyes. "I won't run away!" he snarled. There was no 'Must', but only 'Will not'. It was his choice to stand his ground, not his father's pressure.
He was the one who made the choice to stay, because he would not run away.
Charging ahead, he screamed as the Angel waited for his arrival, before using its left arm to deflect the incoming blow and then slam the right hand right against the Evangelion's core, igniting the hand that blasted the Evangelion's chest right off, thus 'terminating' both the Evangelion and the Entry Plug.
"We thought them mere beasts," Doctor Ritsuko whispered. "But we were wrong."
Shinji coughed out the LCL from his lungs as he stood on his knees outside the Simulation Entry Plug. His arms were shaking and his vision was blurry. He took deep lungful of air, even as they tasted of blood and smelled thickly of iron to his tongue and nostrils.
"Still feeling up to it?" a female voice asked a few steps away from him. Rei's voice, so close up, had lost a bit of the metallic edge that the audio feed gave her, but while the sound of it was familiar, it was as he lifted his gaze and focused that all forms of breath left his lungs.
"What are you looking at?" Rei said with a snort. "When you're done staring at my plugsuit-" Shinji's cheeks blushed fiercely as he averted his gaze. Rei's hair was short, and light blue. She had pale white skin and red eyes, coupled with a white plugsuit and a pair of quite round attributes that made him-no, no, he was not staring at those.
The sense of familiarity did not leave him, but he couldn't put his finger on it.
"Now go up to the control room," Rei said next. "I'll show you how it's done," she added.
Shinji nodded awkwardly, stumbling on his next few steps before finally reaching for the control room after a few more minutes of hasty jogging through a couple of stairways and corridors.
Doctor Ritsuko, in person, looked every bit the professional woman he had expected her to be. This didn't change the fact that she had her hands in her lab coat's pockets, and with a cigarette in her mouth, she was doing her best impression of being unimpressed.
"Doctor," Shinji said, trying to sound cheerful and amiable. He had probably failed somewhere along the lines, because the woman simply gave him a curt nod, pulled the cigarette out of her lips and exhaled.
"Professor," she acknowledged. "I'm not going to say something as crude and humorless as 'call me mother'."
"Thank you," Shinji said, quite awkwardly.
"I should mention you have a half sister," Doctor Ritsuko said. "Her name is Naoko, she's twelve, and the last time she saw her father in the flesh was six months ago."
Shinji blinked. "Uhm...I...What."
Doctor Ritsuko shrugged lightly. "Synchronization is a tricky affair that involves factors that are both physical and psychological. I would rather all things that might lower your synchronization score to be revealed now, rather than later," she took another puff from her cigarette.
"Ah, so-why? Is it because stress and anxiety release specific chemical agents that somehow-"
Doctor Ritsuko smiled softly, and turned off the cigarette. It was true that she had not liked the idea of having Yui's son around, both for personal, and practical, reasons. Still, it was nice having the chance to actually answer questions and have a pilot that didn't want to break her neck due to some perceived slight on her part.
Well, no, not really 'perceived'.
She had married Gendo.
What surprised her the most however was that the man had accepted her terms of a marriage and a child, in exchange for her continued assistance.
He hadn't showed up even at the moment of Naoko's birth, but she hadn't cared by then. Time had soothed and calmed her 'infatuation', but she had at least earned something from it, something far from small.
Taking Yui's place by Gendo's side.
If not in his heart, at the very least on paper.
Last edited:
Chapter Eight: "Animum debes mutare, non caelum."
- Location
- https://discord.gg/z9tBvbh
Chapter Eight: "Animum debes mutare, non caelum."
The simulation, viewed from outside, was like watching an action movie. An action movie that somehow involved a very gory, very messy death for the Angel in question as Rei piloted with daunting grace through the blasts.
"Before you ask," Ritsuko said, "The simulation is run by the Magi system, and the algorithm dealing with it renders purely casual the path of attacks. There is no fixed 'safe path' across the attacks. Rei is simply calculating where the hit will land based on the position of the enemy Angel's wrists." She did not smile. "She does have years of experience on her back."
"Why was I even called here?" Shinji asked, after the Angel's whole body was flung backwards by a thundering kick. "I don't understand this. You already have her, why do you need me? As a spare?"
"To be blunt, professor," Doctor Ritsuko said, "Yes. We will no longer underestimate the Angels' threat. It might happen that in a fight, Rei will be wounded and a second Angel might come up shortly after. There is no way of knowing if the next Angel will be stronger, or weaker, or what form it will possess. We simply know that it will come. We simply know that it will aim at the Geofront, and along the way it will destroy as much as possible in the most ruthless way possible." The Doctor then took a deep lungful of her cigarette, letting it nearly burn at her fingers. "Rei, the fight is over."
On the screen, Rei's Evangelion was slamming the Angel's head on the concrete floor -the severed Angel head, the cracked core a little distance away.
"What did that man mean with my mother not being completely dead?" Shinji asked in a soft whisper.
"I wonder," Ritsuko replied. "I'm not supposed to tell you. I'm sure he has a little scenario in his head on when he'll reveal it. Perhaps he might never say it," she sighed, grinding the tip of the cigarette butt on the nearby ashtray. "A lot of things only appear dead, either as a defensive mechanism against predators, or to stave off winter. Sometimes we think that people haven't really died, but linger on in our memories," here Ritsuko snorted, "Which I hope is not the case. So many people are dead that I wish would not haunt me, but sometimes you just can't escape ghosts," she chuckled, as if some sort of bitter inside joke had just been made.
Rei had meanwhile been ejected from the simulation Entry Plug, and with a prideful smirk on her face began to walk her way out of the room with the plugs and probably towards the control tower of the simulation program itself.
"I didn't think he could be this sentimental," Shinji answered in turn. "Especially after remarrying." Somehow, he couldn't put the bitterness out of his voice.
"Each year, like clockwork, he stands in front of the tomb of your mother," Ritsuko remarked. "That's the one thing of his character that is easy to read."
"I'm sorry," Shinji said, sheepishly scratching the back of his head and looking sideways.
Ritsuko looked at the man with a puzzled expression, "Why are you apologizing? It's not your fault."
"Actually, I was going to make a salt joke to lighten the atmosphere," Shinji replied, "But then I thought 'Na'."
Ritsuko stared briefly caught off-guard by the sudden joke, a single lock of her otherwise pristine hair ending out of place. Luckily, she had finished her cigarette or it would have fallen on the ground.
She began to laugh at the stupid, silly joke a moment later.
"Professor, that was a low blow," Doctor Ritsuko said once she managed to regain control of herself.
When Rei entered the room, she displayed a proud expression on her face. "Pilot Ikari," her smile was smug, "That is what you must do. You won't achieve it by the time of the next Angel attack, but if you follow my example, maybe you won't die."
Shinji furrowed his brows. "Next Angel attack?"
"Next week," Rei answered calmly, as if it was obvious and someone had already told him. "You were not yet informed? The Major should have mentioned it-" she didn't. Perhaps she would have wanted to, but she didn't.
Shinji looked at the simulation, and at the recordings of just how much his piloting had 'sucked', and then back at the Simulation Entry Plug. "Can I go back in there?" he asked.
"After lunch," Doctor Ritsuko spoke agreeably. "Rei will show you where the cafeteria is."
She grabbed a few stacks of printed papers and made her way out, her shoes clicking on the floor as the sound died out a little bit at the time, until only silence remained in the room between Shinji and Rei.
Rei had a furrowed and pensive gaze, and then turned around. "Follow me," and with those words, the two were off.
Only, they were not headed to the cafeteria. Rei took a detour that ended with both of them in front of a vending machine, where she inserted a card to grab one of those cheap instant-made noodles served with hot water, which came out after a few minutes piping hot and with steam emerging from the top of it.
"This...doesn't look like the cafeteria."
"Unless you possess a fetishittyc streak," Rei replied curtly, "I would suggest you keep your sarcasm to yourself," she added, her voice monotone. "Order something, or starve. Unless the Major actually remembered to give you your card?"
Shinji nervously laughed, bowing a bit in thanks. "She didn't," he said as he grabbed something similar to the woman's choice. "What else did she forget to tell me?"
"I don't know," Rei answered. "What authorization have you been granted?" She took the disposable chopsticks and began to take a few bites of the soggy noodles. They were perhaps so packed with salts and preservatives that years down the road, they would still be perfectly fit for consumption. Perhaps the mummies of the future would be the people who ate nothing but this sort of food.
"I don't know," Shinji replied, taking a bite of the -extremely- salty thing. "It's not like I even knew I'd end up piloting. I didn't ask for this, but if my choice is between starving an university's worth of students and professors or sacrificing a bit of my pride, then I'll choose the latter."
"It's more than your pride that you're going to risk," Rei answered. "It's your life. You are not disposable. No human being is."
"Oh," Shinji mumbled. "I see-I must be a source of worry for you, right?" he smiled, "You are one kind woman, Miss Ayanami, but I'm used to taking care of myself. Like my psych-ahem, a friend of mine used to say, 'You cannot change the sky, so change your disposition instead'. We are the ones who must change in order to face the world, not change the world in order for it to accept us."
Rei looked honestly flustered, and grew quiet for a whole minute. "That's obvious," Rei said in the end, neutrally picking at her noodles. "But you're misunderstanding, professor." Her gaze cooled considerably in a short amount of time. "I'm not worrying about your life on the battlefield. I'm not that selfless of a person." She shook her pale blue-haired head. "If the choice is between saving you or killing an Angel, I will always choose the latter option."
"I understand," Shinji said. "I-Well, it's going to be horrible when that happens, but...but if everything that I was told is true, if humanity is at risk of extinction, and if what I saw in the simulation is even a bit true -all those deaths, all that pain- then I'll do my best. Since I'm one of the few that can pilot the Evangelion, I'm not going to run away from my duty."
Rei said nothing, and Shinji grew quiet, if for a brief minute. "There is one thing though," Shinji said. "You spoke briefly of a 'Dummy Plug' system. Considering the words 'Entry Plug', and how you claimed they could be a better substitute than me...is there a sort of auto-pilot thing, a Dummy System, so to say, of the Evangelion?"
Rei nodded. "Yes," she said. "It is capable of synchronizing with the Evangelion Units, and is simply a 'trick' to convince the Evangelion that there is a living pilot inside of them. Unfortunately, it works by imbuing the thought patterns of the pilot into...well, I never bothered with the nerd-stuff." Rei shrugged. "But it would take more than a week to create a 'Dummy System' for you, and even then, it would never 'learn' from the battles. The Commander wasn't wrong in denying my suggestions. He just did not explain why. I...I was tired and nervous when I argued with him," she looked anxious, if only in the way she thinned her lips and pressed them together for a short instant. "The Commander's orders are always in the best interest of mankind."
She tried a faint smile, "He has the weight of the world on his shoulders, that's why he appears distant, but I'm sure he deeply cares about the people he loves, even if he can't-"
Rei dropped the vegetable noodles into the trash can a second later, and punched the side of the wall with her right fist, and then her left, until her knuckles bruised and some bits of skin flaked away.
Biting her lips to the point of drawing blood, Rei took a deep breath much to the startled expression of Shinji.
"Forgive me," she said with a monotone voice. "I forgot I had an urgent appointment."
She walked away there and then, as if the devil was hot on her tail, and she had seen hell in front of her.
To Shinji's eyes, she looked...afraid. As if something extremely unpleasant had happened.
Yet, he couldn't understand the mystery that was Rei Ayanami. Her voice, also, near the end had changed to a softer, warmer and...nostalgic tone.
...
He walked back into the simulation control room, and after sitting down in front of one of the many terminals, he began to type away trying to find anything useful about the 'Angel' of thirteen years before.
The keyboard began to type out his queries even before his fingers were put to it, the Magi System easily recognizing what was sought and why, and granting access since it was not something classified to anyone working at Nerv.
The video showed a very young Rei, clearly a teenager, leaving Nerv aboard her Evangelion Unit. She looked determined, if slightly afraid. The plugsuits had apparently remained obscenely spandex-like since their inception, but what attracted Shinji's attention the most was the Angel. The real Angel, the one that was truly fought, and how he did indeed squash ruthlessly like ants all around them.
Then he brought a hand to his mouth and pulled closer to him the bin, for he had his lunch to dispose of.
It wasn't the Angel's brutality that haunted Shinji as he played his cello later in the night, with Penpen sleeping soundly nearby.
It was the sound of Rei's screams as she fought, bled, and burned against the Angel she had faced alone.
The simulation, viewed from outside, was like watching an action movie. An action movie that somehow involved a very gory, very messy death for the Angel in question as Rei piloted with daunting grace through the blasts.
"Before you ask," Ritsuko said, "The simulation is run by the Magi system, and the algorithm dealing with it renders purely casual the path of attacks. There is no fixed 'safe path' across the attacks. Rei is simply calculating where the hit will land based on the position of the enemy Angel's wrists." She did not smile. "She does have years of experience on her back."
"Why was I even called here?" Shinji asked, after the Angel's whole body was flung backwards by a thundering kick. "I don't understand this. You already have her, why do you need me? As a spare?"
"To be blunt, professor," Doctor Ritsuko said, "Yes. We will no longer underestimate the Angels' threat. It might happen that in a fight, Rei will be wounded and a second Angel might come up shortly after. There is no way of knowing if the next Angel will be stronger, or weaker, or what form it will possess. We simply know that it will come. We simply know that it will aim at the Geofront, and along the way it will destroy as much as possible in the most ruthless way possible." The Doctor then took a deep lungful of her cigarette, letting it nearly burn at her fingers. "Rei, the fight is over."
On the screen, Rei's Evangelion was slamming the Angel's head on the concrete floor -the severed Angel head, the cracked core a little distance away.
"What did that man mean with my mother not being completely dead?" Shinji asked in a soft whisper.
"I wonder," Ritsuko replied. "I'm not supposed to tell you. I'm sure he has a little scenario in his head on when he'll reveal it. Perhaps he might never say it," she sighed, grinding the tip of the cigarette butt on the nearby ashtray. "A lot of things only appear dead, either as a defensive mechanism against predators, or to stave off winter. Sometimes we think that people haven't really died, but linger on in our memories," here Ritsuko snorted, "Which I hope is not the case. So many people are dead that I wish would not haunt me, but sometimes you just can't escape ghosts," she chuckled, as if some sort of bitter inside joke had just been made.
Rei had meanwhile been ejected from the simulation Entry Plug, and with a prideful smirk on her face began to walk her way out of the room with the plugs and probably towards the control tower of the simulation program itself.
"I didn't think he could be this sentimental," Shinji answered in turn. "Especially after remarrying." Somehow, he couldn't put the bitterness out of his voice.
"Each year, like clockwork, he stands in front of the tomb of your mother," Ritsuko remarked. "That's the one thing of his character that is easy to read."
"I'm sorry," Shinji said, sheepishly scratching the back of his head and looking sideways.
Ritsuko looked at the man with a puzzled expression, "Why are you apologizing? It's not your fault."
"Actually, I was going to make a salt joke to lighten the atmosphere," Shinji replied, "But then I thought 'Na'."
Ritsuko stared briefly caught off-guard by the sudden joke, a single lock of her otherwise pristine hair ending out of place. Luckily, she had finished her cigarette or it would have fallen on the ground.
She began to laugh at the stupid, silly joke a moment later.
"Professor, that was a low blow," Doctor Ritsuko said once she managed to regain control of herself.
When Rei entered the room, she displayed a proud expression on her face. "Pilot Ikari," her smile was smug, "That is what you must do. You won't achieve it by the time of the next Angel attack, but if you follow my example, maybe you won't die."
Shinji furrowed his brows. "Next Angel attack?"
"Next week," Rei answered calmly, as if it was obvious and someone had already told him. "You were not yet informed? The Major should have mentioned it-" she didn't. Perhaps she would have wanted to, but she didn't.
Shinji looked at the simulation, and at the recordings of just how much his piloting had 'sucked', and then back at the Simulation Entry Plug. "Can I go back in there?" he asked.
"After lunch," Doctor Ritsuko spoke agreeably. "Rei will show you where the cafeteria is."
She grabbed a few stacks of printed papers and made her way out, her shoes clicking on the floor as the sound died out a little bit at the time, until only silence remained in the room between Shinji and Rei.
Rei had a furrowed and pensive gaze, and then turned around. "Follow me," and with those words, the two were off.
Only, they were not headed to the cafeteria. Rei took a detour that ended with both of them in front of a vending machine, where she inserted a card to grab one of those cheap instant-made noodles served with hot water, which came out after a few minutes piping hot and with steam emerging from the top of it.
"This...doesn't look like the cafeteria."
"Unless you possess a fetishittyc streak," Rei replied curtly, "I would suggest you keep your sarcasm to yourself," she added, her voice monotone. "Order something, or starve. Unless the Major actually remembered to give you your card?"
Shinji nervously laughed, bowing a bit in thanks. "She didn't," he said as he grabbed something similar to the woman's choice. "What else did she forget to tell me?"
"I don't know," Rei answered. "What authorization have you been granted?" She took the disposable chopsticks and began to take a few bites of the soggy noodles. They were perhaps so packed with salts and preservatives that years down the road, they would still be perfectly fit for consumption. Perhaps the mummies of the future would be the people who ate nothing but this sort of food.
"I don't know," Shinji replied, taking a bite of the -extremely- salty thing. "It's not like I even knew I'd end up piloting. I didn't ask for this, but if my choice is between starving an university's worth of students and professors or sacrificing a bit of my pride, then I'll choose the latter."
"It's more than your pride that you're going to risk," Rei answered. "It's your life. You are not disposable. No human being is."
"Oh," Shinji mumbled. "I see-I must be a source of worry for you, right?" he smiled, "You are one kind woman, Miss Ayanami, but I'm used to taking care of myself. Like my psych-ahem, a friend of mine used to say, 'You cannot change the sky, so change your disposition instead'. We are the ones who must change in order to face the world, not change the world in order for it to accept us."
Rei looked honestly flustered, and grew quiet for a whole minute. "That's obvious," Rei said in the end, neutrally picking at her noodles. "But you're misunderstanding, professor." Her gaze cooled considerably in a short amount of time. "I'm not worrying about your life on the battlefield. I'm not that selfless of a person." She shook her pale blue-haired head. "If the choice is between saving you or killing an Angel, I will always choose the latter option."
"I understand," Shinji said. "I-Well, it's going to be horrible when that happens, but...but if everything that I was told is true, if humanity is at risk of extinction, and if what I saw in the simulation is even a bit true -all those deaths, all that pain- then I'll do my best. Since I'm one of the few that can pilot the Evangelion, I'm not going to run away from my duty."
Rei said nothing, and Shinji grew quiet, if for a brief minute. "There is one thing though," Shinji said. "You spoke briefly of a 'Dummy Plug' system. Considering the words 'Entry Plug', and how you claimed they could be a better substitute than me...is there a sort of auto-pilot thing, a Dummy System, so to say, of the Evangelion?"
Rei nodded. "Yes," she said. "It is capable of synchronizing with the Evangelion Units, and is simply a 'trick' to convince the Evangelion that there is a living pilot inside of them. Unfortunately, it works by imbuing the thought patterns of the pilot into...well, I never bothered with the nerd-stuff." Rei shrugged. "But it would take more than a week to create a 'Dummy System' for you, and even then, it would never 'learn' from the battles. The Commander wasn't wrong in denying my suggestions. He just did not explain why. I...I was tired and nervous when I argued with him," she looked anxious, if only in the way she thinned her lips and pressed them together for a short instant. "The Commander's orders are always in the best interest of mankind."
She tried a faint smile, "He has the weight of the world on his shoulders, that's why he appears distant, but I'm sure he deeply cares about the people he loves, even if he can't-"
Rei dropped the vegetable noodles into the trash can a second later, and punched the side of the wall with her right fist, and then her left, until her knuckles bruised and some bits of skin flaked away.
Biting her lips to the point of drawing blood, Rei took a deep breath much to the startled expression of Shinji.
"Forgive me," she said with a monotone voice. "I forgot I had an urgent appointment."
She walked away there and then, as if the devil was hot on her tail, and she had seen hell in front of her.
To Shinji's eyes, she looked...afraid. As if something extremely unpleasant had happened.
Yet, he couldn't understand the mystery that was Rei Ayanami. Her voice, also, near the end had changed to a softer, warmer and...nostalgic tone.
...
He walked back into the simulation control room, and after sitting down in front of one of the many terminals, he began to type away trying to find anything useful about the 'Angel' of thirteen years before.
The keyboard began to type out his queries even before his fingers were put to it, the Magi System easily recognizing what was sought and why, and granting access since it was not something classified to anyone working at Nerv.
The video showed a very young Rei, clearly a teenager, leaving Nerv aboard her Evangelion Unit. She looked determined, if slightly afraid. The plugsuits had apparently remained obscenely spandex-like since their inception, but what attracted Shinji's attention the most was the Angel. The real Angel, the one that was truly fought, and how he did indeed squash ruthlessly like ants all around them.
Then he brought a hand to his mouth and pulled closer to him the bin, for he had his lunch to dispose of.
It wasn't the Angel's brutality that haunted Shinji as he played his cello later in the night, with Penpen sleeping soundly nearby.
It was the sound of Rei's screams as she fought, bled, and burned against the Angel she had faced alone.
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Chapter Nine: "Sed ipse spiritus postulat pro nobis, gemitibus inenarrabilibus."
- Location
- https://discord.gg/z9tBvbh
Chapter Nine: "Sed ipse spiritus postulat pro nobis, gemitibus inenarrabilibus."
Shinji Ikari understood that, trained soldier or not, everyone felt the nervousness stir in the air. He could hear the husband and wife duo of the floor below yell at one another near-constantly towards the last day of 'peace', but they had the decency to do it outside of their children's earshot, but not of his since he was one floor up.
On the positive side of things, he had managed to acquire a razor and shave off his stubble, leaving behind nothing but the 'smooth' skin of a twenty-six years old professor, who somehow managed to rake in more hours of sleep than what he had ever achieved in tenure. This...this still didn't change the fact that the clock was ticking down, and unless the Angel suddenly made a no-show, and his father arrived to clap in front of him with a 'You've been pranked!' banner hanging behind him, he would need to pilot the Evangelion.
He knew Rei would face the brunt of it, and if she wasn't able to defeat the Angel, then he truly had no chances. All that he could do was pilot, and hope for a lucky hit, or to at least be helpful.
He was in his plugsuit, settled within the LCL of his Entry Plug, within minutes of the alarm blaring about a Pattern Blue having been detected.
"Stay behind me, like in the simulation," Rei said curtly, her Evangelion holding on to one of the 'Pallet Rifles' that were, in theory, capable of harming the AT-Fields of the Angels and diminish their strength. They hadn't a captive Angel to test them on, so they were doing both prototyping and actual battling for mankind's survival.
Around the two Eva, both with their power cords firmly attached to their backs, rifles in their arms and wary crimson eyes looking back and forth, silence reigned. The city had begun evacuation since the morning, and was now largely empty.
"The Angel is heading straight for you two! He's-" the buildings were there one second, and the next they had been cut into ribbons. Ribbons of pure white sliced and diced across concrete, steel, and the very clouds above their heads as everything they met was cut, torn apart and reduced into neatly arranged fragments of dust.
Motes of dust remained of what had once been a ten story tall building. Motes of dust, and a strange hunched-back creature with a skeletal rib-cage protruding from its chest, the ribs themselves deformed and twisted, but protecting its core.
The Angel's head was a crown of pulsing dark crimson veins, as it seemed to wear a robe made of its own tattered flesh, stitches of light shining across it. It eyed them hungrily with a large, spherical eye of crimson hatred, but amidst the motes of dust, the whips of light sliced forth.
Rei deftly dodged to the side, "Protect the power cord!" she yelled as she used one hand to hold the cable behind her, and the other to open fire on the Angel, the bullets impacting the AT-Field and generating the famous orange octagons.
Shinji clutched the handles as he tried the same, but a simulation in a safe harbor and reality were two different things. He moved to the side, holding the cable but leaving his back exposed temporarily for the whip to snake around him and then crush at his Eva's midriff, making him scream from the sudden tightening sensation around his own stomach.
He could feel the pain of the Evangelion reverberate across his body.
He did not like it.
He also did not keep it a secret, since he began to scream the moment he felt the whip around his midriff heat up like a burning sun, the AT-Field of his Eva the only thing that kept him whole.
"Hold on," Rei said, emptying the entire cartridge on the Angel, who didn't move but kept pressuring Shinji's Evangelion until the AT-Field's indicator began to flicker.
"Synchronization rating is falling-Shinji! I know it hurts, but if you let go, you'll be cut in half!" Major Katsuragi had an easy time saying that, since she wasn't the one inside the Evangelion being crushed to death by a single whip of light!
"I know!" the Major exclaimed. Had he said that aloud? He probably had.
"Arrgh! Get it off me!" Shinji yelled, dropping the Pallet Rifle as he began to squeeze the handles tightly, trying to think hard about freeing his arms from the deadly grip, even as the burning pain around him did not seem to cease.
The Angel's second whip stopped trying to skewer Rei, and instead swung itself forward and against Shinji's Evangelion.
Rei did nothing to stop the attack, which beheaded neatly the Eva-Zero-One, spraying a shower of crimson blood as the garbled screaming of Shinji died out, the man having fallen unconscious from the sudden feedback of losing one's own head.
Rei's Evangelion moved its AT-Field into direct contact with that of the enemy Angel, impacting, pulverizing and denying the resulting contest of wills. The twin whips snaked around the Evangelion's wrists and began to sizzle, shining with the same light at the center of a dying star. The Angel's lone eye burned with hatred as it lifted Rei's unit, before slamming it back down on the ground, letting his whips pierce through the layers of armor as Rei winced from the pain and the pressure.
Pushing on her back, Rei's Eva planted its feet on the Angel's ribcage, and with an agile motion, sent the Angel to fly backwards. Still, the creature did not release the grip, and instead ignited the tentacles, neatly severing the Evangelion's hands and making Rei scream from the pain.
The Angel then stood up, its ribcage slowly but surely regenerating, and began to float forward once more, twisting its whips into deadly grinders of light. With a scream of her own, the hands of her Eva regenerated abruptly amidst showers of blood, which fell copiously from the large robot's frame.
Throwing her rifle at the Angel, she rushed right behind it as the weapon was minced into tiny bits, but her fists and Progressive Knife were not. One hand ripped off a rib, and then punctured the head of the Angel itself, before the Eva's Zero-Zero left arm was neatly severed at the shoulder, soon followed by the whips stabbing through the Evangelion's chest and starting to wriggle around, as if searching for something to destroy -like a heart to smash, or a core to crack.
"Eject," Gendo ordered, "Pilot Ayanami, eject immediately-"
"The commands are not responding," Rei said amidst pained gasps. "I believe-"
With a bellowing roar, a pair of large, white fangs dug into the Angel's crown of flesh, ripping it apart as the alien quivered and shrieked in pain, Eva Zero-One having apparently regenerated its head in a fit of fury, blood drenching the Evangelion's corpse as its fists landed both through the ribcage with startling brutality, before ripping out the core from within the Angel's chest and using it to beat to a pulp the lone eye of the creature.
At least, until the core cracked and exploded in a shower of light and blood, turning most of the city block they had fought in into a sort of pool of blood. The wet dream of all vampires, perhaps, but definitely not Rei's, since in that moment, her eyes were wide and fixed on the Evangelion Zero One and its berserk status.
The crimson eyes stared at her, stared straight at her, deeply into her soul that was hers and not hers, at her body, that belonged to her and yet not to her, and they judged her.
They judged her and she felt the judgement and she despised the judgement of someone that was a part of her and yet was not.
The lights turned off, Shinji's Eva fell down on its knees, the power cord having been cut perhaps in the midst of the battle, and the Berserk status having taken away what little reserves it might have held on to.
There was nothing left.
Yet, the Angel had been defeated.
This...This was a victory, was it not?
Shinji Ikari understood that, trained soldier or not, everyone felt the nervousness stir in the air. He could hear the husband and wife duo of the floor below yell at one another near-constantly towards the last day of 'peace', but they had the decency to do it outside of their children's earshot, but not of his since he was one floor up.
On the positive side of things, he had managed to acquire a razor and shave off his stubble, leaving behind nothing but the 'smooth' skin of a twenty-six years old professor, who somehow managed to rake in more hours of sleep than what he had ever achieved in tenure. This...this still didn't change the fact that the clock was ticking down, and unless the Angel suddenly made a no-show, and his father arrived to clap in front of him with a 'You've been pranked!' banner hanging behind him, he would need to pilot the Evangelion.
He knew Rei would face the brunt of it, and if she wasn't able to defeat the Angel, then he truly had no chances. All that he could do was pilot, and hope for a lucky hit, or to at least be helpful.
He was in his plugsuit, settled within the LCL of his Entry Plug, within minutes of the alarm blaring about a Pattern Blue having been detected.
"Stay behind me, like in the simulation," Rei said curtly, her Evangelion holding on to one of the 'Pallet Rifles' that were, in theory, capable of harming the AT-Fields of the Angels and diminish their strength. They hadn't a captive Angel to test them on, so they were doing both prototyping and actual battling for mankind's survival.
Around the two Eva, both with their power cords firmly attached to their backs, rifles in their arms and wary crimson eyes looking back and forth, silence reigned. The city had begun evacuation since the morning, and was now largely empty.
"The Angel is heading straight for you two! He's-" the buildings were there one second, and the next they had been cut into ribbons. Ribbons of pure white sliced and diced across concrete, steel, and the very clouds above their heads as everything they met was cut, torn apart and reduced into neatly arranged fragments of dust.
Motes of dust remained of what had once been a ten story tall building. Motes of dust, and a strange hunched-back creature with a skeletal rib-cage protruding from its chest, the ribs themselves deformed and twisted, but protecting its core.
The Angel's head was a crown of pulsing dark crimson veins, as it seemed to wear a robe made of its own tattered flesh, stitches of light shining across it. It eyed them hungrily with a large, spherical eye of crimson hatred, but amidst the motes of dust, the whips of light sliced forth.
Rei deftly dodged to the side, "Protect the power cord!" she yelled as she used one hand to hold the cable behind her, and the other to open fire on the Angel, the bullets impacting the AT-Field and generating the famous orange octagons.
Shinji clutched the handles as he tried the same, but a simulation in a safe harbor and reality were two different things. He moved to the side, holding the cable but leaving his back exposed temporarily for the whip to snake around him and then crush at his Eva's midriff, making him scream from the sudden tightening sensation around his own stomach.
He could feel the pain of the Evangelion reverberate across his body.
He did not like it.
He also did not keep it a secret, since he began to scream the moment he felt the whip around his midriff heat up like a burning sun, the AT-Field of his Eva the only thing that kept him whole.
"Hold on," Rei said, emptying the entire cartridge on the Angel, who didn't move but kept pressuring Shinji's Evangelion until the AT-Field's indicator began to flicker.
"Synchronization rating is falling-Shinji! I know it hurts, but if you let go, you'll be cut in half!" Major Katsuragi had an easy time saying that, since she wasn't the one inside the Evangelion being crushed to death by a single whip of light!
"I know!" the Major exclaimed. Had he said that aloud? He probably had.
"Arrgh! Get it off me!" Shinji yelled, dropping the Pallet Rifle as he began to squeeze the handles tightly, trying to think hard about freeing his arms from the deadly grip, even as the burning pain around him did not seem to cease.
The Angel's second whip stopped trying to skewer Rei, and instead swung itself forward and against Shinji's Evangelion.
Rei did nothing to stop the attack, which beheaded neatly the Eva-Zero-One, spraying a shower of crimson blood as the garbled screaming of Shinji died out, the man having fallen unconscious from the sudden feedback of losing one's own head.
Rei's Evangelion moved its AT-Field into direct contact with that of the enemy Angel, impacting, pulverizing and denying the resulting contest of wills. The twin whips snaked around the Evangelion's wrists and began to sizzle, shining with the same light at the center of a dying star. The Angel's lone eye burned with hatred as it lifted Rei's unit, before slamming it back down on the ground, letting his whips pierce through the layers of armor as Rei winced from the pain and the pressure.
Pushing on her back, Rei's Eva planted its feet on the Angel's ribcage, and with an agile motion, sent the Angel to fly backwards. Still, the creature did not release the grip, and instead ignited the tentacles, neatly severing the Evangelion's hands and making Rei scream from the pain.
The Angel then stood up, its ribcage slowly but surely regenerating, and began to float forward once more, twisting its whips into deadly grinders of light. With a scream of her own, the hands of her Eva regenerated abruptly amidst showers of blood, which fell copiously from the large robot's frame.
Throwing her rifle at the Angel, she rushed right behind it as the weapon was minced into tiny bits, but her fists and Progressive Knife were not. One hand ripped off a rib, and then punctured the head of the Angel itself, before the Eva's Zero-Zero left arm was neatly severed at the shoulder, soon followed by the whips stabbing through the Evangelion's chest and starting to wriggle around, as if searching for something to destroy -like a heart to smash, or a core to crack.
"Eject," Gendo ordered, "Pilot Ayanami, eject immediately-"
"The commands are not responding," Rei said amidst pained gasps. "I believe-"
With a bellowing roar, a pair of large, white fangs dug into the Angel's crown of flesh, ripping it apart as the alien quivered and shrieked in pain, Eva Zero-One having apparently regenerated its head in a fit of fury, blood drenching the Evangelion's corpse as its fists landed both through the ribcage with startling brutality, before ripping out the core from within the Angel's chest and using it to beat to a pulp the lone eye of the creature.
At least, until the core cracked and exploded in a shower of light and blood, turning most of the city block they had fought in into a sort of pool of blood. The wet dream of all vampires, perhaps, but definitely not Rei's, since in that moment, her eyes were wide and fixed on the Evangelion Zero One and its berserk status.
The crimson eyes stared at her, stared straight at her, deeply into her soul that was hers and not hers, at her body, that belonged to her and yet not to her, and they judged her.
They judged her and she felt the judgement and she despised the judgement of someone that was a part of her and yet was not.
The lights turned off, Shinji's Eva fell down on its knees, the power cord having been cut perhaps in the midst of the battle, and the Berserk status having taken away what little reserves it might have held on to.
There was nothing left.
Yet, the Angel had been defeated.
This...This was a victory, was it not?
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