Peccata Patris, Filius Redentor
A MarshalGraves Production
Episode Four - 'Tides'
Gendo Ikari, Supreme Commander of NERV, and Ryoji Kaji, Tactical Operations Commander of NERV-01, stood alone in a room of darkness. Oppressive and strangling in the weight and splendor of the almost-beating heart of the pure antipathy levelled against them from the thirteen dark monoliths --each labelled only with a number ranging from 01 to 13 and 'SOUND ONLY'-- that looked down upon them from on high.
02 lit up, a vague, purple glow issuing from the top and bottom of the massive marker, "Ikari, the Third's assault was not according to plan."
12, likewise, became lambent, "I disagree. While it did not make it into Tokyo-3, it was still within the absolute defense envelope. The number of casualties is lower than expected, but at this early stage, such is a boon, surely?"
05, "It is still worrying, however, that the Third Child was in a....cyborg made of base metal, not the Divine Technology."
At this, Gendo lifted his eyes and stared ahead at the monolith directly before him, his amber-clad gaze steady and implacable as it seemed to bore through 01, his voice as firm and undeniable despite its low volume, "Gentlemen. While the EVA-series was not employed, the Divine Technology was, in fact, in use."
04 lit up, a harsh red glow coming from Gendo's right, "Explain yourself, Ikari! We cannot risk a deviation at this critical juncture!"
Gendo did not so much as twitch, keeping his judgmental gaze firmly locked upon the 01 monolith as he responded, "I chose not to employ the Eva-series due to the temperamental nature of each and every individual unit. The cost in lives, bodies, and risks to the Scenario were deemed unacceptable."
At this, 01 finally lit up, a urine-yellow glow illuminating Gendo's already-tinted sight, "Ikari, explain how the Divine Technology is still being employed. Assure us that Instrumentality will occur." The 'or else' was left unspoken, but still all-too-evident.
Gendo moved to fold his arms at the small of his back, a small twitch in his left cheek the only indicator for anyone to detect his struggle to repress the urge to smirk as he offered a droll reply, "The Divine Technology is enmeshed with the mecha we have constructed to play off of Japan's national identity and pride. The effects on the pilot remain more or less the same, but are far easier to synchronize with, resulting in a net gain in combat ability. That the mecha are, in fact, cheaper and easier to repair or replace is a pleasant bonus."
The chamber went quiet for a moment, before lighting up once more, this time from 06. "Regardless of cost, you were instructed to use those which are necessary for Instrumentality."
Gendo's stare, at last, shifted from 01 to stare daggers of unadulterated -hate- through his sunglasses, through the monolith, and into the heart of a man all the way across the world. "Do not doubt my dedication to the Scenario, Senator Owlsley! The EVA-series are still under construction, the Dummy Plug system is still being developed using pilot data, and NERV-01 still holds Unit-01 in reserve for the inevitability of Instrumentality! That I take the path I do to pave the way forward and make it easier, and cheaper, for us to eventually become God should not be misconstrued with disloyalty!"
Again, the chamber went silent, before a reddish haze illuminated the chamber from 11, "Yes....cheaper. Your....dedication has, indeed, saved quite a bit of money for this Committee. Enough that the UN has put forward a motion to render NERV an autonomous entity....perhaps we should allow NERV to stand on its own?"
The chamber went absolutely still, even Kaji, behind Gendo's right shoulder, went rock-still as his breathing ceased. The threat had been unexpected.
01's ugly glow filled the chamber once more, "We shall revisit this issue...later. However, Ikari, take care. We will be...reallocating a large portion of your....heh...budget towards more-deserving pursuits, in light of your...defiance."
Gendo merely bowed his head as, one by one, the monoliths winked out, leaving the room a ruin of darkness before the lights re-engaged and revealed the spacious office of NERV's Supreme Commander. Kaji raised a hand and rested it, lightly, on Gendo's shoulder.
"Boss? You alright?"
He stepped back in shock as Gendo Ikari raised a remote in his right hand and pressed a button, then tilted his head back and -laughed- for precisely thirteen and a half seconds before ceasing abruptly, turning on his heel and looking at Kaji, eye to eye, while removing his sunglasses.
"We have thirty minutes before our conversation about the budgetary concerns ends and we must leave my office."
Kaji nodded, uncertainly, but took advantage of the implication that Gendo was spoofing the audio pickups in the office with a false positive and shrugged out of his jacket, revealing his untucked oxford. At his raised eyebrow, Gendo merely nodded once, and Kaji withdrew a cigarette from somewhere in the depths of the jacket and lit it.
"So....I ain't gonna lie and pretend I know what all that Instrumentality and Scenario junk are, all that well, yet. Mind clearin' that up?"
Gendo made his way around to his desk and steepled his hands before his face, laconically raising an eyebrow before tapping a button that resulted in a comfortable, if small, chair rising from the floor in front of the ostentatious desk. Kaji followed the unspoken order and had a seat.
Gendo nodded, and began, "Instrumentality and the Scenario are inextricably linked, Major Kaji. To avoid a long, drawn-out conversation when we have so little time, I shall summarize. Instrumentality is the end of humanity as we know it, and the Scenario is the plan of using the Divine Technology as a buffer for Instrumentality, a buffer with which SEELE intends to -guide- Instrumentality to make them Gods above the rest of humanity."
Only by dint of experience did Kaji manage to keep his cigarette lodged firmly between his lips as he stared at his boss, disbelievingly. "Are...are you shitting me?"
Gendo shook his head minutely as he gave a wry and dry, "Not even remotely. SEELE intends to use Third Impact to end the world, and they intend to use the Eva-series to control and direct Third Impact. That...is, in fact, the summation of 'the Scenario'."
Kaji blinked owlishly at his boss for a moment before shaking his head. "I can't believe....and where do you stand in all this?"
Gendo smirked. "I stand against them, of course. They do not know this, however. Or rather, they do, but they believe that I will guide the Scenario to a certain point before I diverge and attempt to control it for my own purposes."
Kaji tilted his head as he took another long drag off his cigarette, tapping it out on the ashtray on Gendo's desk as he crossed his knee over his lap. "Diverge from it? How's that follow?"
Gendo bowed his head again, for little more than an instant, as he replied somberly, "They believe I will use Instrumentality to save my wife, to damn the world and bring Yui Ikari back to life."
Kaji took a long, deep breath. "Okay. And you're...not?"
Gendo shook his head. "No. My son is a part of humanity, and humanity will be sacrificed for Instrumentality's sake. These two items are mutually-exclusive."
Relaxing almost invisibly at that, Kaji finally got up the guff to smirk at his boss and nodded once as he piped up, "I understand ya, there, Boss. So, what was that crap about the budget?"
Gendo cracked his neck and brought up a screen on his desk terminal, turning it to face Kaji. "SEELE has been funding NERV and GEHIRN, NERV's predecessor, for quite some time. Their wealth, nearly unlimited as it is, has been an incredible boon, given the nature of our expenses."
Kaji studied the screen, an expense report with far, far too many zeroes in the 'expenditures' column for his brain to compute. "Then...isn't removing a large chunk of our budget a really, really bad thing?"
Gendo smirked and brought up another screen, overlaying it with the first. The 'Income' tab swelled to even greater heights. "It would be, indeed, were it not for our funding from other sources."
Kaji tilted his head curiously, "Other sources?"
Gendo smirked, openly and broadly, "Indeed. First, the UN funding independent of SEELE, the JSSDF funding alloted for repair and reconstruction, which Shinji has thoughtfully preserved for us in its entirety this month for a completely collateral-free first sortie...and then there's Shinji's plan."
Kaji stubbed out the burning filter and reclined in the small seat as he asked, "Shinji's plan?"
Gendo nodded, his smirk becoming...somehow even more malicious, "Indeed. You must understand, Major, Japan has a very, very firm national identity, and its pride in that identity is second-to-none. Thanks to Shinji, NERV has taken advantage of that national identity and its aftershocks that, even now, reverberate across the world, to generate an almost unlimited supply of funding all on its own."
Ryoji Kaji could not help but be confused. "What...how's that work?"
Gendo's smirk turned...paternal and indulgent, perhaps?...as he turned his terminal back to himself and turned it off before resting his elbows on his desk. "When Shinji was six, and Rei was five, Shinji -adored- his little sister. She was all-too-frequently his only company in the tank that allowed him to survive, and she would visit him daily, for hours on end. There was only one problem."
Kaji tilted his head curiously, and Gendo took that as a sign to continue.
"She wanted to hug her brother. She knew that she couldn't, for to let her into the tank would risk infectious material entering his sterile environment, or, as she understood it, if she tried to give her big brother a hug, she could hurt him, badly. It made her so sad. And then Shinji had an idea. Get Rei a doll."
Kaji lit another cigarette and blinked as he took a long, long drag, waiting for the commander to go on.
"Get Rei a doll. I tried, patiently, to explain that she wanted a -Shinji- doll, and there weren't any. So, Shinji said to -make- one. Given the economy following Second Impact, dollmakers were...well, custom orders were hideously expensive, especially for something so inconsequential, and that was before considering operational security. I was forced to tell my son that we -couldn't- just make one. And that's when Shinji had his idea."
Tapping his cigarette out, Kaji cleared his throat. Wordlessly, Gendo reached into a compartment on his desk and returned with two cold, cold cans of beer. Passing one over to a grateful Kaji, he cracked his own and took a long, slow sip before continuing, "Shinji's idea was, if I couldn't make a Shinji-doll for Rei, buy Rei a doll and make -Shinji- resemble the doll. I was about to tell him that was impossible, because of image rights and copyrights and lawsuits, which a six-year-old wouldn't understand, when lightning struck."
"Lightning struck, boss?"
Gendo nodded. "If NERV owned the image rights, or the copyright, we could make Shinji, or indeed any of our employees, look like whatever we wanted. Hell, even the Eligor, an unavoidably-visible property of NERV, is a realistic and highly-accurate macro-scale replica of an anime character. Why aren't we being sued? Because we own the rights."
Kaji coughed on a sip of beer, taking a deep breath to try and keep more beer from drowning his lungs, as he stared at his boss. ".....what?"
Gendo's smirk lightened, but somehow became more sinister for it as he repeated himself. "We own the rights. Giant robots, mecha, everything involving them, we own, now."
Kaji shook his head slowly as he tried to comprehend that. "How the hell...even SEELE couldn't buy the rights to -all- of it! No way! It makes too much money for NERV or SEELE to just grab it all up like that!"
Gendo nodded solemnly as he laced his bare fingers together again. "Indeed, it does make far, far too much money. -Now-. Six years after Second Impact, however, humanity was still reeling from the uppercut that cost us half our population. Giant robot media tends to be too apocalyptic, too painful, and so they moved on to more 'hopeful' things. Superheroes, science teams, space odysseys, desperate love stories...these became what people watched, what they wanted. Little boys played with Superman action figures, wishing to be like him, and little girls cuddled up to pony plushies, praying for Princess Luna to keep them safe from another Impact while they slept. Giant robot media suffered, its value fell...."
Kaji nodded, catching on. "...And so you bought it all up."
Gendo nodded, "All of it. Gundam, Gainax, Sunrise, everything that involved giant mecha, we bought it, and that which we couldn't directly acquire, we sued out of existence and absorbed after the fact."
The Operations Commander stared at his boss, shaking his head as he drained the last of his alcohol and sighed wistfully at it, grinning as it was swiftly replaced with a muttered 'Misato-chan's a bad influence on you'. Kaji shook his head again, and raised an eyebrow. "Okay, I get that, I can even see it being possible, but...-why-? Why go to so much trouble to acquire so many dying properties?"
Here, Gendo's smirk turned absolutely -vicious-, as though remembering the very instant he struck upon this part of his plan. "Oh, that's very simple, Kaji. In fact, you probably remember it. Seven years ago, NERV put out a press-release, via the UN, about the impending Angelic Threat and how it was expected to scale...and how giant robots would save the world. Not Superman, not Spider-man, not a super-soldier serum...giant robots."
Kaji blinked, casting his mind back seven years and nodding hesitantly. It was true. He remembered it, not well, but well enough.
Children had gone from buying comic books to Transformers, giant robot toys were being rammed off of shelves so quickly it started riots across the surface of post-Second Impact Japan. There were even news reports of manufacturing facilities across the world being attacked in an effort to get toys directly from the source!
"We told the world giant robots would save it, and suddenly, the world wanted giant robots, and they wanted it -now-. Money surged in. Yen by the trillion, every year, the demand only kept rising. We opened more studios, hired more writers, designers, artists, voice actors, actors...we had to open twenty-five different departments in -three years-, just to handle the demand. Then, I came up with -another- plan. Every single NERV product purchased before was to be brought in, examined, and either given a NERV quality assurance stamp, or replaced. Trash goods would not be acceptable."
Gendo's smirk became predatory as he went on, "The public -adored it-. Money poured in, and it spread. They wanted NERV movies, NERV toys, NERV merchandise. There isn't a home in Japan without -two- NERV QA stamped products, because Japan adores NERV. We've highlighted and turned part of our cultural identity into -the world's last, best hope-, opened a vast number of employment positions in our country...in a very real sense, Major, NERV -is- Japan."
Kaji's facial control didn't keep his cigarette in his mouth, this time, and it was with much swearing that he had to beat a lit cherry out before it burned his thigh. Gendo was polite enough, at least, to wait.
"And it didn't stop in Japan. Dollars, Pounds, Francs, Euro, Deutsche Marks, Rupees, Rubles, they poured in. The world saw these things, and they wanted more of them. We've opened 'franchises' around every NERV Geofront in the world, and the public loves us. Great Britain, Germany, France, India, U.S.A., Canada...they love us. The -world- loves us, because NERV loves the world, and stands between it and darkness. Our transparency, our openness with the public, and our nearly decade-long history of providing for them, even while we prepare to defend them, and opening ourselves to oversight by the United Nations to -show- them that we -mean it-....they've responded to it."
Gendo chuckled, here, and took a sip of his own untouched beer, before continuing on, "They see our quality assurance, they see our insistence upon excellence, they see us providing jobs, stimulating the economy, they see us -letting them watch-, and they respond by throwing money at us. Have you seen the broadcast of the battle we released three days ago?"
Kaji mournfully fingered the singed hole in his best trousers as he nodded absently, "Yeah, the one that starts with Shinji coming out of the catapult and ends with him walking out of the blast crater? Why'd you show them the whole thing, anyway? What about secrecy?"
Gendo shook his head slowly. "We might have been able to manage that level of op-sec if we didn't have such a level of oversight by the UN, but with our current economic model, we chose to be open, to show the world everything, because not only does it give us quite a bit of trust and goodwill from the public, it also makes certain things easier to hide. In addition, it makes it very, very difficult for the Old Men to meddle and make threats about making certain things...public."
Here, Gendo's smirk turned thoughtful. "Kaji-san, that broadcast? Our billions of yen a month swelled and turned into -trillions-. The demand for an Eligor action-figure surged. Movie deals, merchandise rights, all of it, and my -son- has his name on -everything-. Captain Shinji Ikari is a name the world has taken to its very -soul-, and NERV is reaping the reward. George fucking Lucas is in negotiations with our legal department for the rights to make 'Rebuild of Star Wars: Evangelical Hope'."
Kaji blinked stupidly, unable to comprehend this, and just slumped in his chair. "You...you can't be serious, boss! We're making that much money?"
Gendo nodded. "Oh, indeed. Our merchandising was surprisingly cheap, considering we have access to original molds and replacement parts, and there is, in fact, a reason that Rei is responsible for our primary mecha design and advertising campaigns. She keeps us accurate and on-point."
Gendo's smirk grew evil, here, the look on Kaji's face was just too precious not to tease. "This time next year, my daughter will be sleeping in the master bedroom of the Skywalker Ranch. And all because my son loves his little sister and wanted to give her a doll."
The smirk became a tender smile. "I own a thirty-six unit apartment building, Kaji, and they are all luxury apartments. Shinji, Rei, and I live in one, a penthouse suite. Rei's plushy and costume collection lives in the other thirty-five. But even for all of that....there's only one plushie allowed to sleep in her bed."
The blue LED of the remote on Gendo's desk turned red, and both men fell silent, accompanied only by the tinny fizzle of beer slowly warming inside its can, and the subtle scent of smoke on the air.
-------------------
Far from the Geofront, in an apartment building on the far side of the city that used to be known as Hakone, a teenage girl was sleeping, though unsoundly, in her bed, clutching a plushie close to her chest with a restless, uneasy look on her face. Though the shelves on the wall were packed full of plushies, dolls, and toys from various anime, cartoons, and movies, her bed was unadorned, save for the single, solitary doll she clutched so closely to her heart.
Her blue hair was tied up in waist-length twin ponytails with 'meatball' buns on either side of her head, and she was dressed chastely in a long, pink nightgown that warred with her light-blue locks. The plushie in her arms, a blocky, almost ridiculous version of a bunny-eared robot with a single red eye, was worn and beaten, bringing into stark contrast the brand new silver thread that outlined the name 'Eligor' done on the back of its torso, and the name 'IKARI, S' done on the left side of its breast. Though the shelves on the wall were packed full of plushies, dolls, and toys from various anime, cartoons, and movies, her bed was unadorned, save for the single, solitary doll she clutched so closely to her heart.
A shadow entered the room, hulking and strong in its physique, and with a whirr of metal on metal, the shadow bent over and pressed a gentle kiss to the girl's forehead before checking on the plushie to make sure it was in good repair. It was an old Briareos Hekatonchieres plushie, from the early 'noughties, but to Rei, it was the most precious plushie in the world.
After all, it was the only plushie in the world with Shinji's hand-sewn autograph, and it was his little sister's most prized possession, because her brother gave it to her.
"Sleep well, little sis. Big brother loves you."
Rei Ikari's face relaxed and a smile replaced her frown, even as she drifted even more deeply into sleep, dreaming sweet, restful dreams of her adoring big brother. With a smile on his own face, one that seemed to undo the ruin of his life before, Shinji quietly turned out the light and closed the shoji door.
