Super-Wackos of EVA: NERV Gets Smart

[Author0fntent]

*Disclaimer: I own nothing of Gainax, Khara, NBC, CBS, Warner Bros., or any of the characters and ideas of Misters Melvin Kaminsky and Henry Zuckerman. No celebrities were harmed in the making of this fanfic.*

Prologue 1 - The In Media Res Affair
​

The announcement from Dr. Akagi signaled the end of yet another sync test session for Shinji and his fellow Evangelion pilots, along with the test plug being emptied of LCL. Once out of the plug, and having coughed up whatever LCL was still in him, Shinji, along with Asuka and Rei, walked to their respective locker rooms to cleanse themselves of any lingering goop. (While Rei was indifferent, Asuka and Shinji especially hated being caked in dried LCL, hence their underlying constant eagerness for the showers at the end of each testing session.) Once all three pilots were adequately squeaky clean enough, they returned to the Pribnow Box that faced the testing facility, where Dr. Akagi and Misato briefed them on their scores this round. Unsurprisingly, and with the boast that followed, Asuka was top of the heap, with Shinji second, and Rei last. After being dismissed for the day, the trio of pilots made their way towards one of NERV's exits back up to the surface of Tokyo-3.

Along the way, Shinji stopped at one point, telling the girls to go on ahead of him, saying that he'd just remembered leaving something in his locker. Not bothering with asking what specifically, Asuka and Rei kept going, while Shinji, as soon as he determined that they were far enough from his sight, dropped his signature meek look as he straightened himself up, and turned in the opposite direction, quietly and carefully making his way to where his true destination was: Dr. Akagi's office. On the way, any time he passed by members of NERV's staff, he quickly resumed his more slumped, meek disposition; by now he'd cultivated something of a reputation among the lower-tier staff members as the 'mope' of the three pilots, so no one batted an eye as they briefly noticed Shinji passing them by. Unfortunately, given how many people worked down in the Geofront that served as NERV-Central's headquarters, Shinji had to swap between 'masks' so much that he felt as if his facial muscles were experiencing mood whiplash. Thankfully, he finally reached the office of NERV's overall scientific head, and here was where the hard part of his 'errand' began.

Taking a brief moment to eye the security cameras that faced the door while remaining out of their sight, Shinji raised and aimed his wristwatch--a device he heard the Chief once describe as something a Dick Tracy (whoever that was) would be proud of--in their direction. After selecting the appropriate command on the watch face's screen, he pressed the button on the side and beamed a signal into each camera--one that reprogrammed them to play a loop of the hallway outside Akagi's door using footage that had been uploaded at the same time. Once confirmed that the loops were running, Shinji walked up to the door and proceeded to remove from his backpack the next gizmo for his purposes: what Bruce and Lloyd had named the "anycard". Having managed to successfully 'clone' Dr. Akagi's access/ID card earlier, Shinji swiped the anycard into the reader, which opened the door to the office without incident; as an added bonus, the card also released a program that erased whatever 'footprints' were left by it in the access log overseen by NERV's central supercomputer, the MAGI.

Once the door closed behind him, Shinji slipped on a pair of plastic gloves and began searching the office. He did a double-take on realizing that he was being 'watched' by a black cat that was curled up on top of a filing cabinet in one corner of the office. Having anticipated this ahead of time thanks to some earlier 'recon' he'd done, he opened a small pocket of his backpack and took out a small cat treat, which he then tossed up towards the cat. The cat caught the treat in its mouth on instinct, and soon the effects of the specially-prepared delicacy began to take effect, lulling the creature into quite the long 'cat nap'. Once he heard the purring that approximated a cat's snoring, Shinji breathed a brief sigh of relief and returned to his main task. It was then that he noticed on Dr. Akagi's desk just the items he was looking for: a set of decorative cat-shaped salt-and-pepper shakers (white for the salt, black for the pepper, naturally). A small grin on his face, he quietly walked up to the desk, and removed yet another item from his backpack. While the object in question looked like a typical pack of Smarties candy, the contents of said pack were far from edible. Unwrapping the pack, he took out one of the tiny pastel-colored discs with one hand, and used the other to lift the head/lid of the salt shaker off; he then placed the disc inside the 'body' and put the lid back on, ensuring that it looked as if it hadn't been moved at all. What he'd just put inside was, in fact, a new type of listening device Bruce and Lloyd and come up with that was completely undetectable to the current bug-sweeping devices available, mainly thanks to its lack of overly-metal components.

His job done, Shinji quickly, but quietly opened the door, exited the office, and closed it just as fast, before getting as far away from Akagi's office as swiftly as possible. Managing to avoid a number of personnel along the way, as soon as Shinji reached the tram that would take him topside, he slumped in his seat with relief, thankful that the tram was empty. Accessing another feature of his watch, he soon opened a line of communication to his handler.

"86 to 99--mission accomplished," he reported quietly. "The cat's come down with a bug."

"...How long were you workshopping that one?" the voice on the other end, 99, posed incredulously.

"Eh...oooohhh...*Sigh* Would you believe...the entire time I was en route to Akagi's office?" Shinji replied. "I mean, cut me a little slack, I'm still trying to get the hang of 'post-mission quipping'."

"For now, I wouldn't worry too much about your quipping," 99 advised. "Even so, good job, 86. Return home, and we'll contact you with your next assignment. Besides, any longer and your housemates might riot over a lack of their prized chef and his five-star dinners."

"Heh--good point," Shinji said. "And thanks, 99. Over and out."

End of Prologue.​

 

[Author0fntent]

Prologue 2 - The Title Song Affair

"Ladies and gentlemen, the next best thing to "Weird Al" Yankovic, Mister Mark Jonathan Davis."


View: https://youtu.be/c3DdEEE6KPE?si=AEQzr-q9BtPziLgJ

A boy who's averse
to the word 'destiny'...
Always has places he knows
where he'd rather be...

Third Child's the name he hates,
but he's gotta play his part...
'Cause if he's gonna win,
He's gotta Get Smaaaaarrrrt!

A boy up against
such sinister foes...
He's in over his head,
so he stays on his toes...

He must be subtle,
can't upset the apple cart...
'Cause if he's gonna spy,
He's gotta Get Smaaaaarrrrrt!

Heeeeee'll perservere,
As the Angels keep making landfall...
Heeeee will not ruuuuunnn...
'Cause where else could he flee to?
He's gotta see this through!
He simply must answer the call...

Facing death all the time
Is a tough job for such a kid...
Still he seems like he's capable--
Have we asked him? 'Course we did...[Looks side-to-side suspiciously.]

By the way, if you logged on late,
Indulge me while I just restate--
That EVA's crossing over...
with Get Smaaarrrt!

That's right, it's Get Smaaaarrrt!
The spy spoof Get Smaaaarrrt!
NGE and Get Smaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrt!

*KABLOOIE!*
​

Shinji, astonished, poked his head out from the left side, uneasily marveling at the aftermath of the spectacle that just transpired.

Shinji: ".......Wow. Never knew anyone could hold that note for so long.....Ummm....can we get a mop in here?"

 

[Author0fntent]

Chapter 1 - The Introspection-Leads-To-New-Opportunity-Knocking-Affair​

On a rainy morning in Tokyo-3, Shinji Ikari sat on a maglev train, sulking with his earbuds plugged in, his trusty SDAT player helping him tune out the world around him as usual. His duffel bag, filled with everything to his name (except his cello, no way he could lug that thing around with him all the time), sat on a rack above him.

It had been a short while since his battle with the Fourth Angel, Shamshel, and it proved to be the last straw for him. All the pressure, the pain, the violence that came with piloting an Evangelion--after just two Angels, it just was too much for him. It was no wonder that, while Misato was still asleep, he quietly packed up his things, wrote a short letter for his guardian-slash-immediate commanding officer, and left it, along with his NERV ID card, on the desk in his room, before quietly leaving her apartment. From there, he soon made his way to the strain station, hopped the next one to come in, and was soon riding the rails in his own little world, just as he'd done when he'd come into Tokyo-3 the same way only a month or so before.

"次は長大峠、ながおとうげです。" the female-sounding electronic voice informed over the speaker system in the train car. "出口は右側に切り替わります。"

Shinji paid the announcement no mind, oblivious to his surroundings as he continued stewing in his own despair, even as the crowd size on the train changed with each stop, until finally, he was all alone on the car as it reached its last station. He'd been on the train the entire day, unmoving, and it was now already dark.

"平素より第三東京環状7号線をご利用いただき誠にありがとうございます。" an electronic male voice sounded over the speaker system, stirring Shinji from his brooding as he finally lifted his head up. "この電車はこの駅で運休します。 皆様もお降りの際は忘れ物がないかご確認ください。"

"…戻らなければなりません。" Shinji quietly muttered to himself. It was then that he heard the speaker system crackle to life again, to his slight confusion.

"Attention. Attention," the same electronic male voice sounded, having unexpectedly switched languages. "Ladies and gentlemen: in the interest of clarity--and sanity--and because there wasn't any room in the budget for subtitles, the rest of this story will be dubbed into English (or whichever language this story is being read in). Thank you, and have a nice day."

Shinji, momentarily befuddled by the strange announcement he'd just heard, shrugged, got his bag from the rack above him, and exited the train before continuing on his aimless wandering. Thankfully, the rain had stopped, and he could walk without fear of getting soaked. It was while he walked that, in lieu of rewinding his tape yet again, he decided to slip into a monologue, one only audible to us.

"Woe...is...me," he began. "...Tokyo-3 can be a lonely place on a Saturday night--except it's Thursday evening." He paused in thought for a moment. Compared to me, Amuro Ray was having the time of his own life. "No good came of me piloting a twenty-story-tall war machine." I feel like the worn-out bow of a cello that hasn't been strung in years. "I'd jump into Lake Ashi, but it looks like rain." He let out a brief, but sad chuckle before he finished with a refrain of "No good came of me piloting a twenty-story-tall war machine..."

Moments later, he found himself in a seat in the upper left-most row of a movie theater, just as the projector lit up and began the show on the big screen. Soon, Shinji and the miniscule audience in the theater were greeted with the sight of a variety of simple, abstract, geometric shapes that moved and morphed to the sounds of the French Suite (BWV 816) by Johann Sebastian Bach (a composer Shinji was very familiar with), played on a harpsichord.

"...What the heck is this?" Shinji found himself pondering aloud, a slightly-baffled expression on his face. "I mean, it's a cartoon, yes, but seriously, what is it?" Shinji soon found himself shushed by another audience member. When the next 'scene' came on, Shinji's questioning resumed. "Umm....is this some sort of birth? I mean, it looks like it, if I remember biology class right...Annnd, it's born, whatever it is, it's born--look out!! Annnd, too late, it's dead already." The scene then shifted to black, before the next sequence began, as it focused on a round object surrounded by little dots amid a purple background. "Huh--what's this? Looks...cute, I guess? Okay, looks cute, this is nice--what the heck is it?" The shape then morphed again while the background soon became two-tone and two-colored. "Oh-kay, now I think I know what this is--it's boring, is what it is. What little money I had, paid for some French movie, for a foreign movie. Now I'm seeing this...stuff." The scene shifted again, this time to a blue background and what looked to be a clump of black squiggles on the right-hand side. "...Now we've got a bug, or something." Soon a similar clump of squiggles began to form on the left-hand side of the screen, only with the tips of each strand now sporting dots at the end. The two objects then began moving towards each other. "Oh-okay, those two things, they...they like each other, or something? I mean, they look like they're in love, maybe?" The clump on the right then sported its own set of dots on the tips of each strand. "Oh, now I get it, the right one was jealous or something of the other one." The two clumps then moved towards the center of the screen, until they were overlapping. "...Is this supposed to be a sex scene or something? I'm sure I didn't walk into one of those kinds of theaters..."

"Hey, would you shut up already?!" the female half of a young couple whisper-shouted at Shinji.

"Give me a break!" Shinji hissed back. "I'm fifteen years old, I don't have that much of an attention span to care enough about movies like this, so excuse me for asking legitimate questions about what it is I'm seeing on-screen."

The scene then shifted as a new sequence began. "...What's with the dots? Are they eyes? Are they anything?...Must be another bit of symbolism. Of what, who knows?" The scene then saw an oblong shape appear, only for it to be dotted with little pointy appendages of varying sizes all around its circumference. "...Now we've got another bug of some kind? Almost looks like a cockroach. *Pfff* Good luck in dealing with it, I don't envy you for having to contend with this kind of pest. (Why did I spend good money to see a cockroach, again?)" The scene then shifted again, this time with a new batch of shapes on-screen. "Huh--these look like lips." The scene then changed again. "I can't tell if this movie's supposed to be weird, dirty...or weirdly dirty, I don't know..."

Shinji found himself once again shushed, and clearly he could confirm it came from that same female half of the young couple who, along with himself, an old man resting his feet on the back of another seat, another old man sleeping in the space between rows, and a salaryman reading a book while reclining, made up the audience in the theater. "Don't you 'shush' me, lady."

"Quiet, will ya?" the male half of the couple finally sounded.

"...I still don't know what to think of this," Shinji muttered, ignoring the previous remark. "I mean, whoever made this, must've been good in film school if they let them make this, right?...Why'd they waste their time on this? I mean, they could've made the next Star Wars, something big--or at least make something for Disney. (*Sigh* Good money down the drain for me...)" Shinji then got up, bag in-hand, and proceeded to exit the theater. "I don't know much about psychoanalysis, but I'd say this movie has no idea what it is at all." From there, Shinji made his way to the lobby, found a couch next to a vending machine, and laid down on it, using his duffel bag as a pillow.

The next morning found Shinji resuming his wandering about the city, lost in his own conflicting thoughts, alone, and a whole myriad of other feelings swirling about him as he walked. The sky was aglow with an almost violent (not violet!) shade of red, and the sounds of cicadas climbed upwards in tone and pitch. Shinji, as he walked, warily looked around, a hint of fright on his features. He covered his ears, trying his best to block out the sounds of the insects as they got louder. Finally, unwilling to put up with them, Shinji ran, wanting to just go and hop a bus and get out of the city as soon as possible. It was at that moment that the sounds of the cicadas were suddenly replaced with something less oppressive, as Shinji soon heard a car coming closer towards him.

"Shinji? Shinji Ikari, is that you?" he heard the driver call out as the car--or rather, minivan--pulled up.

"AGH!" Shinji cried out as he jumped in fear before wildly waving off whoever it was with his hands. "Don't with the abducting, and the imperiling, and the stranger danger--!"

"...Wait, what?" the driver said confusedly. "Shinji, it's okay, I'm not going to kidnap you."

Shinji, settling down a bit, slowly opened one eye, before doing the same with the other, and took a look at who was speaking to him. Sitting in the driver's seat of the minivan was a brown-eyed young woman of about 19, sporting a concerned look on her freckled, bespectacled face. Her dark brown hair was done in two low-hanging ponytails, and she was wearing a white collared blouse with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, a pair of knee-high shorts, and black Converse sneakers. It was her freckles, however, that stirred something in Shinji's memory.

"Um...have we met before?" he asked.

The young woman's lips became a small smile before she answered him. "We have--you dropped off a small stack of printouts with my sister when she was out sick from school a few weeks back. You might know her--Hikari Horaki?"

Things finally cleared up for Shinji on hearing that name. "Oh, yeah, now I remember--you're Kodama, the oldest, right?"

Kodama nodded. "You got it." Her concerned look then made a return. "Shinji, what are you doing out here? Shouldn't you be in school right now?"

"It's...well...it's just that..." Shinji started to stammer out. "*Sigh* It's a long story. I don't know if you'd want to hear it."

Kodama's small smile reappeared before she spoke. "Well, this might be the former class rep in me talking, but I'd be willing to listen. My shift at work doesn't start for a couple of hours, so I have time. And besides, it might do you a little good to talk with someone. (And I'm not just saying this because I'm studying psychology.) Also, have you had breakfast yet?"

Before Shinji could offer up an excuse, his stomach chose that moment to growl. "Eh-heh..." Shinji uttered sheepishly, his cheeks turning a tinge of pink.

Kodama paid his mild embarrassment no mind as she opened the minivan's passenger-side door. "Hop in--I know a place that serves good grub."

Shinji, a bit hesitant, was about to politely turn her down before his stomach growled again, almost insistently this time. "All right, all right, you win..." Shinji muttered quietly while looking down at his gut, as he walked over and got into the proffered seat, tossed his bag behind it, and buckled the seatbelt.

-X-​

Meanwhile, in a field of susuki somewhere on the outskirts of the city, one Kensuke Aida, garbed in a set of BDUs, was engaged in a one-man session of war games, seemingly without a care in the world as he gunned down imaginary enemies, only to 'fall in battle'. After a few moments of playing dead, he picked himself up and walked to his 'base camp', where he'd log in another session of practicing his survival skills. All in all, a typical start to the weekend for the otaku when it comes to all things tech, military, or mecha--or some combination of all three.

-X-​

A short drive later, Shinji and Kodama were seated in a booth at a diner on the other side of Tokyo-3's downtown, the former contentedly eating a hearty meal of scrambled eggs, sausage, and rye toast, a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice present to help him wash it all down. The latter was well-set with an omelet, hash browns, and a glass of juice of her own, along with a cup of coffee. Their meal was a mostly-quiet affair, though Kodama did make attempts at small-talk, and got a few responses from Shinji in turn. Finally, once their plates were cleaned off, Kodama decided to try getting him to open up again.

"Enjoy the food?" she asked, breaking the ice a bit gently.

Shinji nodded. "Usually I don't eat out at places like this, but I haven't been in the city that long, so I guess I just overlooked it."

"Yeah, some of these spots tend to be a bit hole-in-the-wall," Kodama said, "but it's usually the holes-in-the-wall that turn out to be hidden gems. Anyway--about that long story you mentioned..." Shinji grew a bit apprehensive on hearing that, only to be met with a reassuring gesture from the college girl. "As I said earlier, I'm studying psychology, and I'm a firm believer in doctor-patient confidentiality. And I used to be a class rep--we didn't just keep things orderly in the classroom, we were there for our classmates to talk to if they had problems. Kind of runs in the family, actually--aside from Hikari and myself, our mom was a class rep, her mom was a class rep, her mom's mom was a--you get the idea. (Despite how much she denies it, once she hits middle school, our littlest sister, Nozomi, will be giving off that air of matronly authority without fail...) So, indulge me a little--like I said, it might do you a some good to talk with someone, something I imagine you haven't done a lot of since starting your 'after-school job'."

Shinji was about to politely decline, until her words made him realize something. "Wait, you know I'm a--?"

"Evangelion pilot?" Kodama finished. "Yep. Kensuke Aida's been a friend of Hikari's since grade school, and according to her, the rumor mill went into overdrive when he made you accidentally 'out' yourself--plus, given how the elementary school where Nozomi attends is right next door, the rumor mill spills over from the middle school to there pretty often, so when Nozomi came home one day saying how the pilot of the 'giant robot' that fought the first big monster a couple of months ago was in our sister's class, and given how said pilot had been described as a 'shy introvert' in-person, once you came to our doorstep to give Hikari those printouts, it didn't take long for me to figure things out." Shinji gave her an astonished look on hearing her deduction. "Like I said, as someone aspiring to be a psychologist, I take doctor-patient confidentiality very seriously, so anything you tell me doesn't leave this booth, which I chose since it's highly eavesdropper-free. Plus, we both get something out of it--you get a little therapy session, and I get a bit of practice in with the skills I'm learning. So, with all that out of the way...how come you looked like you were running away from home when I found you earlier?"

Shinji didn't know what it was, whether it was her honesty or something as simple as her tone of voice, but for some reason, for the first time in a while, he felt like he really could speak freely and without judgement in another person's presence. Maybe there is something to a little therapy...Shinji thought to himself before finally responding. "I...I quit piloting."

Kodama looked a bit perplexed by his statement. "Quit? Why would you?"

"It's just...I..." Shinji began, "...I just can't do it anymore--two Angels is enough. I mean...*Sigh* Let me start at the beginning--a few months ago, I receive a letter from my father, who I've barely spoken to, let alone seen, in ten years, aside from the one brief interaction we usually have on the anniversary of...of my mother's death. The majority of the letter is blacked out, like those top secret documents you see in spy movies or whatever--except for one word: "Come". That's it. No 'Hey, how's it going?', just "Come" and directions to meet someone working for him once I get to Tokyo-3. (Said person wound up being Ms. Misato, my immediate commanding officer and current guardian, though I'm guessing both are rather moot at this point.) I tore that letter up and taped it back together so many times I've lost count (er, my father's letter, not the one Ms. Misato also included, along with a picture of herself--a bit of a 'racy' picture of herself, but I digress)...Eventually, with some 'nudging' from my previous guardian, I packed my things and headed to the city..."

Kodama nodded patiently as she continued to listen. Shinji recounted his first day in Tokyo-3; how he nearly got flattened by the Angel attacking at the time, only to be rescued by Misato and brought to NERV HQ; his seeing Unit-01 and his rather cold reunion with his father, NERV's supreme commander; how he first met Rei Ayanami when she was wheeled out to pilot the robot when Shinji refused; how he wound up getting in it to spare Rei, only to wind up in a terrible first sortie against the Angel that led to the EVA going berserk on the creature; how, after recovering in NERV's medical ward, and after some initial pilot training, he started school, only to accidentally reveal himself as a pilot...and earning the wrath of his classmate Toji Suzuhara, whose little sister, Sakura, had been injured during that first sortie by falling debris; and finally, his recent battle with the second Angel that appeared in the city, which forced him to take both Kensuke and Toji into Unit-01's entry plug since they were outside the shelter for who knows what reason. How that battle took a significant toll on Shinji, who found himself, in his panic, repeatedly ignoring Misato's orders to retreat as the Angel continued to whip and stab his EVA, until he desperately stabbed its core in turn and killed it. How, once the battle ended, while Toji and Kensuke were disciplined by NERV's Section-2, he wound up in a holding cell for insubordination, Misato 'lecturing' him on following chain of command (as well as self-preservation, given his rather nihilistic, yet rude answers after a string of 'yeses').

"...I know I said I'd pilot the EVA, but in truth, I...I really can't. Not after all the pain it's brought me, not after the pain I've inflicted on others--it's just too much for me to handle. So I left...It's probably for the best, anyway. My father didn't want me for anything than just making the EVA work, and even then, they've still got Ayanami, once she gets better. I'm gonna go back, tell my old guardian things didn't work out, and just pick up where I left off. Sure, it'll be an uneventful life, but...it's less painful than what I'll go through if I stay here any longer."

Kodama nodded, before choosing that moment to speak up. "Your old guardian aside, is there anyone else waiting for you? Any friends, maybe?"

Shinji rubbed the back of his head absentmindedly as he answered. "I...wouldn't exactly say 'friends'. More like acquaintances. I did have friends growing up, but just when we were really starting to hang out, they wound up moving away--usually because their parents got some new job somewhere else. (It happened a lot, now that I think about it.) And while my old guardian wasn't the friendliest, at least living with him, things were more...consistent. Routine."

Kodama took a sip of her coffee, and when she put the cup back down on the saucer, she posed a new question to Shinji. "...In all honesty, this sounds like a really depressing existence you're thinking of heading back to--like an indie flick that's trying to be bait for the Oscars or Sundance, but just comes off as imitating said Oscars or Sundance bait. But let me ask you this, Shinji--all those feelings you have, about your own life, being a 'yes-man' to those you interact with, wanting to avoid pain so much you avoid most people in general? What if I told you that...you being who you are right now was by design?"

Shinji's eyes widened with surprise. "B-by design? W-what are you saying?"

Kodama nodded. "Kids your age are only this nihilistic and cynical because they're either going through a goth/emo phase because they're a slave to trends...or, they were brought up in an environment that discourages a large percentage of human contact and encourages negative feelings, to the point where their social skills get stunted." Her eyes narrowed as she continued. "Unfortunately, based on what you've described, you're definitely in the latter camp. I'm saying that you've been deliberately molded by external factors--and external actors--into the sad-sack who just polished off a diner breakfast as if it were the first good meal you'd had in a long time."

Shinji felt his jaw go a bit slack at this revelation. When he took a moment to give it some thought, he realized, uneasily, that what Kodama had said made some sense. "B-but--who'd do this? Why do this? And why me?"

Kodama arched an eyebrow. "Are you sure you want the answers to those questions?"

Shinji hesitated a bit and gave it some more thought, before his curiosity (a very morbid curiosity, at that) ultimately won out. "Y-yes. I want to know."

"...Follow me, then," Kodama said as she got up from the booth, Shinji doing the same as he proceeded to follow her to the door next to the diner's counter that led to the hallway containing the restrooms, janitor's closet, and back office.

View: https://youtu.be/RIe1UQ5fiEM?si=ch9lO-w3spOnLEEg​

"W-where are you taking me?" Shinji asked as they came up to one unmarked door in particular.

"My place of work," Kodama replied as she entered in a code on the keypad under the doorknob: 09-18-65.

Once the keypad beeped and the light turned green, the door unlocked and Kodama opened, it, motioning for Shinji to enter first. Hesitantly, he did so, Kodama behind him as she shut the door. From there, the two walked down a set of stairs that had a red stripe going down the middle, and were soon faced with a set of large steel doors, which opened automatically for them. The two continued on, Shinji warily eying his surroundings, noticing the stripe continued along the floor. They soon passed through a nearly-identical set of doors, then a set that had visible tumblers pulling out as the doors automatically opened. The next door they passed through resembled a series of steel grates overlapping one another that lifted upward (revealing the prongs underneath that fit into the holes below the doorway), followed by another pair of doors that looked like something that would be more fitting of a bank vault. It was while passing through the doors that they accidentally closed on a loose shoelace on Shinji's left shoe, much to his and Kodama's surprise. After taking a moment to pull his lace out of the space between the closed doors, which cost him an aglet in the process, Shinji quickly re-tied his shoe before he and Kodama kept going. They briskly made their way to a similar set of doors that just closed before they could reach them, leading to Kodama needing to enter a four-digit code on the keypad to the right, which opened them back up. Once on the other side, Shinji grew further surprised by the lone object in the room:

An old-style phone booth, silver with red trim, the word 'Telephone' printed in white, English letters on the top (and in three other languages, Japanese one of them, on the other three sides of the top). Kodama slid open the door to the booth and bade for Shinji to enter, which he did before she followed him in and slid it closed. She then picked up the phone and reached into her pocket, only to notice something off and then pat her other pockets as if searching for something.

"Ah, shoot," she muttered before facing Shinji, a bit of a sheepish expression on her face. "This is a bit embarrassing, but would you have any change on you?" Shinji fumbled around in his own pockets before checking one on his duffel bag and hitting paydirt. He handed the coins to Kodama, who only took the required amount and gave the rest back to him. "Thanks--don't worry, you'll be reimbursed." She then dropped the coins into the phone's slot and dialed a certain number, before hanging the phone back up. Once done, Shinji suddenly felt the floor beneath them shudder, and soon saw, to his own astonishment, that they were being slowly lowered downwards. Once past a short shaft, Shinji's astonishment grew further as he took in what he was seeing while he and Kodama passed each level in the odd elevator. On one level were men and women at computer stations, going over data of some kind; another, he noticed, had a shooting range on one half and a fighting dojo on the other, both with people getting some training in. They passed a level that featured what was no doubt a combination of laboratory, engineering workshop, and testing grounds; as well as a level that was a vehicle hangar/parking garage. After passing a number of additional levels, they came to a stop at what appeared to be the administrative wing of the facility, and got off the elevator.

"Just head straight to the double-doors at the end of the hall, knock, and you'll be admitted," Kodama instructed. When he looked apprehensive, she gave him a small, reassuring smile. "Don't worry, I'll be with you shortly--just need to get changed into my work clothes." With that, she headed off to the right, which a sign indicated was the direction of the locker rooms. Shinji, nervous, looked around at his new surroundings, before steeling himself enough to walk towards the double-doors Kodama pointed out. Once he arrived, he knocked, taking a brief moment to notice the electronic eye above the center of the doorway.

"Come in," an older, female voice sounded from the other side.

Shinji swallowed a bit, before he took the handle of the right door, pressed the tumbler down, and opened it. He then entered what turned out to be a large office, which in stark contrast to his father's back at NERV HQ, was significantly well-lit and decorated. Just what it was decorated with was furniture and a few lamps that were of a decidedly...retro aesthetic. And by retro, Shinji guessed internally, it all looked as if they came out of the 1960s. His attention then was drawn to two people standing in front of the desk in the center of the office; they were an elderly Western couple, with the man partly supported by a cane and the woman with her hands folded in front of her. Both appeared as if they kept themselves in pretty good shape for being somewhere in their late-80s to early-90s, from the looks of them.

"Shinji Ikari, I presume?" the man greeted in slightly-accented Japanese as he held his hand out, which Shinji hesitantly took and shook. "We've been expecting you. My name is Smart--Maxwell Smart." He then motioned to the woman next to him. "My wife, Barbara Ann."

"How do you do?" Barbara Ann greeted as she shook Shinji's hand as well. "If you're wondering where you are, you're in the current headquarters of a United States-based counterintelligence agency, which Max and I are the co-directors of."

"Just don't call me 'Chief'," Max said. "Only one man deserves that title, and he was the best boss Barbara Ann and I ever had the pleasure of working under."

Shinji found himself dumbfounded by what he'd just heard. "W-wait--are you saying...you're a spy agency?! Like in the movies?"

"Not quite like in the movies," Kodama's voice sounded from behind him. "Let's just say those do a great job of drawing people's attention away from the real work we do here."

Shinji turned around, and what he saw made his jaw drop.

Kodama was standing in front of the door she'd just closed, but she looked nothing like the college student he'd just eaten breakfast with almost an hour ago. Her glasses were gone, her hair was free-flowing, and she was wearing a pastel-orange turtleneck (a simple necklace hanging around her collar), black slacks, and stylish-looking black flats. Indeed, Kodama Horaki looked more 'bombshell' than 'bookish' right now.

"Thank you for bringing him here, 99," Barbara Ann said to Kodama. "We all have a lot to discuss with him."

Shinji looked at the Smarts, and then confusedly back at Kodama. "99?" he said quizzically.

Kodama merely offered him a smile, before she said the following: "Shinji Ikari, welcome to CONTROL."

To be continued...

Featuring:
Shinji Ikari - Sean Giambrone
Kodama Horaki - Rachael MacFarlane
Maxwell Smart - Maurice LaMarche
Barbara Ann Smart - Barbara Feldon
​

**Author's Note(s)**
While like my prior long-form stories, there will be a 'hypothetical English dub cast' list at the very end of it, I decided that, much like regular episodic TV, I'd present characters and their 'voices' at the end of a chapter when they're introduced, just to shake things up a little.

 

[Author0fntent]

Chapter 2 - The Everything-You-Knew-Was-Wrong Affair, Part 1​

A pregnant pause hung in the air after Kodama had 'welcomed' Shinji, and hung there for a few minutes until Shinji finally got his inquisitive gears turning.

"...CONTROL?" he asked. "W-what's CONTROL? And what's the name stand for?" He then looked our way for the briefest of moments and asked an additional question all of us have been asking since Evangelion first premiered back in 1995: "Come to think of it, what does NERV stand for?"

"On that front, I'm afraid I can't answer you there," Kodama replied to that query aimed our way.

"As for CONTROL..." Max began to say, before a hint of embarrassment graced his features, "...well, sorry to say, that one's a bit of a mystery--has been since the founding of the agency. According to a memo from that time, it was decided that all CONTROL employees and operatives from the top down, in the interests of security, could never know the full meaning of the agency's acronym. The folks back then even went to the trouble of destroying every record pertaining to the unabbreviated name."

Kodama appeared to grow baffled by that admission. "Wait, really? Talk about commitment to the bit..."

"What CONTROL is, as an agency, is another story altogether," Barbara Ann said as she pressed a button on the desk that lowered a projection screen as she and Max then moved to the side of Shinji and Kodama. "99, if you could hit the lights, please?" Kodama then pressed the bottom of the light switch just as a projector poked out of a small potted plant on a nearby shelf and turned on, its beam aimed at the screen. Max held up a popcorn bowl between himself and Shinji and offered the boy some, which Shinji, out of habit, took as he tossed a few pieces into his mouth. Barbara Ann then started up the slideshow using the small remote now in her hand. "CONTROL was originally founded in the early years of the Cold War, based primarily out of Washington D.C. though with branches in other parts of the country (and some in a few of the NATO-aligned nations)," she recounted in-between slides. "Its purpose: defending the world against threats to free will everywhere, especially those coming from the international organization of evil known as KAOS."

"If you're wondering what KAOS stands for, that's also one mystery that's remained unsolved to this day," Max chimed in.

"As you've no doubt learned in one history class or another," Barbara Ann continued as she shifted to a slide of an iconic shot of the fall of the Berlin Wall, "the Cold War eventually came to an end, symbolically first with the fall of the Berlin Wall, and then with the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991."

"Partially thanks to, among other things, the old 'outspend the enemy on defense' trick," Max added. "Around the time of the collapse of the Soviets, we at CONTROL managed to take down the last remaining vestiges of KAOS, once and for all."

"But just because one great threat to global freedom was down, didn't mean we couldn't sit idle," Barbara Ann stated. "As the old saying goes, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance."

"So, with KAOS gone, who'd you wind up spying on then?" Shinji asked as he took another palm-ful of popcorn. "The Guatemalans?"

"Mostly various global crime syndicates," Max answered. "For one brief period in 1995, there was an attempt to revive KAOS which, thanks to our timely intervention, we made sure was extremely short-lived."

"How short?" Shinji asked.

"According to our archives," Kodama replied amusedly, "just a single week."

"Other than that, there was the big comeback of the notorious Dr. Evil in '97," Barbara Ann supplied, "which, thankfully, our colleagues 'across the pond' managed to get a handle on."

"With all our work putting out various fires around the world," Max sadly began as he made a gesture of a small space between his thumb and forefinger, "there was just one instance where we really missed it by that much."

"What was it?" Shinji asked, Max's tone making him a bit uneasy.

Barbara Ann switched to the next slide, which depicted a great explosion that was very familiar were one to read a textbook covering recent world history. The photo's date? September 13, 2000. "Second Impact," Barbara Ann grimly answered. It was then that Shinji lost his appetite for further helpings of popcorn, just when he was reaching for another few pieces.

"Of all those who were really unprepared for something of this magnitude, the intelligence community was caught with its pants down the most," Max said. "In the days that followed, most of our time was spent making sure all those fighting in the Impact Wars didn't go any further in their use of weapons of mass destruction, though few did slip through our fingers. (Sorry about the original Tokyo, on that note.)"

"Um, no problem," Shinji said. "Then again, I wasn't, you know, born before then."

"And as you no doubt already know," Barbara Ann continued, "the fighting ceased following the signing of the Valentine Treaty in 2001, which among other things increased the powers of the United Nations to a greater level of effectiveness not seen in the history of the organization before or since. But for a lot of us in the spy business, the timing, the circumstances--it didn't entirely add up."

"We, and others in our profession, felt there was more to all this than anybody realized," Max elaborated. "Before I go any further, answer me this, Shinji--what do you know as the cause of Second Impact?"

Shinji, a bit startled by the sudden question, rubbed the back of his head absentmindedly as he replied. "It-it was caused by a meteorite striking Antarctica--it's what we're all taught in school."

Max, Barbara Ann, and Kodama looked to one another briefly before returning their focus to Shinji. "Sorry to say, Shinji, but I'm afraid that the 'official' explanation isn't the case," Kodama stated.

Shinji's eyes widened on hearing her. "W-What?!"

"Think about it, if you will," Max began to say, "would you believe that a small meteorite, at four inches wide, impacted any part of the planet while traveling at 95% of the speed of light, enough to melt the whole of the Antarctic ice, and as a result cause enormous tsunamis that raised sea levels enough to wipe out a great number of coastal cities and islands? Would you believe that Ceimoa Nan, an astronomer whose credentials are highly dubious at best and practically nonexistent at worst, who was later found to be able to barely tell a planetoid from a pomegranate, just happened to detect it fifteen minutes before impact?"

Shinji, before he could offer a response, took a moment to recall some of the mutterings he overheard from his more nerdy classmates at his old school, mostly debates over the validity of the scientific facts offered by the 'meteorite explanation'. "Well, when you put it that way, it seems like it doesn't make that much sense."

"That's because it doesn't," Barbara Ann said. "We had our own scientific division secretly verify the findings offered by the U.N. investigative committee, and the results all pointed to the same conclusion."

"The whole thing absolutely reeked of a cover-up," Max stated. "A prime example of the old 'acts of God excuse' trick famously used by most major insurance companies if I ever did see it. Perhaps the greatest government cover-up since the true contents of Al Capone's vault--which, if you must know, had actually contained incriminating photos of several high-profile members of a number of Republican administrations up to Hoover. (The Reagan administration had them secretly moved before Geraldo Rivera opened the vault, but I digress...)"

"There were a number of questions we found ourselves asking once we started realizing it was a cover-up," Barbara Ann said. "Chiefly, who, how, and why? We started looking into the matter almost immediately, in conjunction with a number of colleagues and allied agencies. And if it was a cover-up, we took all necessary precautions to ensure we didn't have any moles within our respective agencies that might prevent us from exposing it."

"Eventually," Max began as Barbara Ann handed him the remote, "we found our biggest lead after getting our hands on this--" a press of the button changed the slide to a photo of the Smarts, dressed casually in a crowd of fans somewhere in the Nevada deserts. The sight of the Smarts painted up amid the revelers made Shinji and Kodama cringe slightly. "Whoops, pardon me--that was us at Burning Man in 2005, it was on our bucket list for a good while. (No idea how that photo got in here...)" He then clicked the button again, and this time got the image he wanted, which was of an old binder filled to the brim with notes, documents, and photographs. "The Tallman Dossier, put together by a retired CIA agent over the course of February to September 2000, in the name of finishing what a Japanese colleague of his by the name of Takahiro Kaji had started well before him. But this wasn't the only lead we had--a short while later, we came into possession of the findings put to paper by another who was highly suspicious of the cover-up, and had done his own investigations into it. That person being--" When Max clicked the remote, again the 'audience' was treated to another photo that clearly didn't belong in the set, if the facial reactions on Barbara Ann's, Kodama's, and Shinji's faces were any indicator. "Ah, sorry about this, that's from the New Year's bash of '99, after we'd managed to successfully destroy the Y2K Bug. (Who knew HYMIE could get that much of a buzz from a single beer...?)" Max clicked the remote again, and this time got the photo he wanted; who exactly was in that photo got a very surprised reaction from Shinji.

"Th-that's Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki!" he pointed out.

"Indeed," Barbara Ann affirmed.

"Well before he held that rank and position," Kodama elaborated as Max handed her the remote, "Kozo Fuyutsuki was a well-regarded university professor specializing in the, at the time, newly-emerged field of metaphysical biology. In his teaching days, there were two standout students in his class--" She clicked the remote, switching to a photo of two people who Shinji knew very well, based on the further surprise that grew on his face. "Yui Ikari and Gendo Rokubungi--your parents, Shinji."

Shinji's jaw went slack for a brief moment, before a bit of confusion came upon him. "Rokubungi? I thought--"

"Rokubungi is your father's family name," Kodama clarified. "When he married your mother, bucking a long-held marriage tradition, he took her name instead of the other way around." She then continued the flow of the explanation. "Once we managed to get through both Fuyutsuki's findings in conjunction with the Tallman Dossier, we were able to put a name and a 'face' to the ones behind the true cause of Second Impact." With a click of the remote, the quartet soon found themselves facing the image of a strange, seven-eyed mask, the sight of which unnerved Shinji.

"Who--?" Shinji started to ask.

"They call themselves 'SEELE', from the German word for soul," Kodama answered. "They're a secret cabal with a global reach so extensive and influential, they make the Illuminati look like a simple book club meeting. From what we've been able to gather, this group has been around for decades, as far as the early 20th century, though they themselves have spread rumors that they're supposedly some millennia-old secret society; our guess is in order to keep would-be conspiracy theorists and investigators constantly grasping at straws. Our intel's managed to get us a few key details about the group--among other things, they're led by a 12-man council, with five out of the dozen acting as their public face, the so-called "U.N. Human Instrumentality Committee". Their leader is this man--" She clicked the remote, shifting to the next image, which depicted an elderly man in a high-tech wheelchair and sporting an even more hi-tech visor over his eyes. "--Lorenz Kihl, German business magnate with his fingers in a lot of pies worldwide. He's the one who, from the shadows, spearheaded the efforts that led up to the current world order."

To be continued...​

 

[Author0fntent]

Chapter 3 - The Everything-You-Knew-Was-Wrong Affair, Part 2
*Mild warning for brief mentions of suicide.*​

Shinji's eyes widened as he looked from Kodama to the photo of Kihl and back. "How--?!"

"1998: SEELE, under Kihl's guidance, pulls a number of strings in the U.N. to establish a scientific research concern called the U.N. Artificial Evolution Laboratory," Barbara Ann preemptively answered as she began laying out a timeline, just as Kodama shifted to the next slide. "1999: that entity puts together what would become known as the Katsuragi Expedition, named for its leader, Dr. Tetsuma Katsuragi." The next slide that accompanied Barbara Ann's words showed a group photo of the entire expeditionary team. Shinji noted, with further surprise, the presence of his father, and a teenage girl standing right next to Dr. Katsuragi; it didn't take long for him to realize that the girl was none other than Misato, meaning that Dr. Katsuragi was her father. "Later that year, the Expedition journeys to Antarctica, acting on information provided by the Committee to investigate what is described as the discovery of the millennium." The next slide that followed, a still taken from CCTV footage salvaged from the base camp, showed Gendo, a couple of metal briefcases in-hand, departing from the site by helicopter. "2000, September 13th: the former Gendo Rokubungi, now Ikari, departs from the expedition in a hurry, just as Dr. Katsuragi and his team are about to conduct a significant experiment involving the massive, both figurative and literal, finds that greeted them upon arriving in the Antarctic. Using one of the objects found at the site, a large implement the Committee had codenamed the 'Lance of Longinus', Dr. Katsuragi and his team initiate the 'contact experiment' that would merge human DNA with the giant frozen in the ice below them, the alien entity the Committee had codenamed 'Adam'. Katsuragi and his team thought they would be discovering a new, long-fabled perpetual energy source as a result...Instead..."

"You can figure out the rest," Max added in somberly. Shinji, knowing full well what they implied, nodded slowly.

"February 14th, 2001," Barbara Ann continued, "Kihl and company, again using their influence, ends the global conflicts by getting all nations to sign and adopt the Valentine Cease-Fire Treaty, in the process expanding the U.N.'s powers, including putting the majority of the world's militaries under its authority--all with the public unaware that the U.N. was now under SEELE's control." Kodama switched to the next slide. "Around this time, SEELE, through the U.N., reorganizes the Artificial Evolution Laboratory as a new global agency called Gehirn. Its founding leadership--" The next slide showed a quartet of people standing in front of a building in the former Hakone prefecture. "--Consisted of Gendo and Yui Ikari; Kozo Fuyutsuki, who according to one of our sources was effectively blackmailed into joining up; and Dr. Naoko Akagi." A flicker of recognition came to Shinji at that moment. "In case you're wondering, she's the mother of Ritsuko Akagi, who you know as the current lead scientist of NERV. Gehirn was tasked with the purpose of utilizing the research of the Katsuragi Expedition to prevent a possible Third Impact from occurring. The two main initiatives for this would be Project-E--" The next slide astonished Shinji with the image of the development of what would become the Evangelions, the sight of the enormous, almost partly-organic skeletons proving quite unnerving. "--and the development of the MAGI supercomputers, the latter of which would be headed by Naoko Akagi." Barbara Ann paused at that as Max took over.

"I apologize if the next bits are going to be uncomfortable for you, Shinji," Max said with a bit of unease, "considering they're a part of your personal history as well."

"Th-they are?" Shinji nervously asked.

"Very much so," Max affirmed as Kodama switched to the next slide. "2004: Evangelion Unit-01, now-fully built, undergoes a contact experiment for the first time. Acting as its test pilot--" The next Slide added more to Shinji's astonishment as he saw in it a woman in her late 20s wearing what looked to be the prototype of the plugsuit he'd worn in his first two Angel battles. "--Would be your mother, Dr. Yui Ikari. It was an event that you yourself bore witness to." The slide that accompanied Max's words brought back a number of memories to Shinji, as he saw his then 4-year-old self in the control room with his father, Fuyutsuki, and Naoko Akagi. "On initiating the experiment, things went wrong and as a consequence..." Max let out a weary sigh before he continued. "...Your mother disappeared--vanished without a trace."

Just like that, it all came back to Shinji--the panic in the control room, evident in the concerned and frightened voices surrounding him as he heard his mother's screaming over the comm system, all while Fuyutsuki yelled for someone to get Shinji out of the room while he heard his father shout his mother's name in anguish...

Shinji shook his head quickly, massaging his temples a second afterwards. "Well, that's eleven years' worth of memory repression down the drain..." he muttered to himself.

"Again, my apologies," Max reiterated. "But sometimes, the band-aid's got to be ripped off. Believe it or not, this wouldn't be the last time a contact experiment went awry."

Shinji grew mildly aghast at this. "It happened again?!"

Barbara Ann nodded in response. "Some months following the incident, at Gehirn's Third Branch in Berlin, Germany, a contact experiment took place with the Evangelion Unit they were building, Unit-02, spearheaded by Dr. Kyoko Zeppelin Sohryu. She and her team went to great lengths to learn from what happened with Unit-01 and created a number of safety protocols to ensure a successful activation. Like your mother, Dr. Sohryu volunteered to be the test pilot. Sure enough, the safety protocols didn't fully work, and Dr. Sohryu was greatly affected by the test." She let out a weary sigh before continuing. "According to the medical files we were able to get ahold of, Dr. Sohryu's psyche became fractured by the experience, and she was committed to a mental institution, where sometime during the following year, she...took her own life."

Max walked up beside his wife and held her, while Kodama somberly turned away for a moment and Shinji's jaw hung agape in shock. Max, after giving Barbara Ann a moment to recompose herself, picked up the thread from there. "Eventually, they were able to work out whatever problems were in the weapon, and soon it and Unit-01 could be properly tested and finalized. Then, in 2010, Gehirn reached a significant milestone when Naoko Akagi completed work on the MAGI supercomputer. Another moment of triumph for Gehirn, however, would again be marred by tragedy--at this time, we don't know the circumstances, but after her work was finished, Akagi also unexpectedly took her own life by jumping off of the MAGI console to the level below."

Shinji's shock was compounded upon hearing this. "That--that's horrible..." he said grimly. No wonder the Dr. Akagi he knew seemed so embittered and cold...

"Shortly after Akagi's passing," Barbara Ann said, "SEELE restructured Gehirn yet again, this time into the agency you're more familiar with now: NERV. The central branch in Japan would move fully out of their surface-level offices and into the then-newly-completed headquarters located in the Geofront."

Shinji looked down as he took in what he'd learned, before asking a question that had been on his mind ever since he'd come here. "So...where do I fit, in all this?"

Max and Barbara Ann looked to one another for a moment, before addressing the teenager as they steeled themselves to make a rather unique offer. "Simply put," Max began, "we, and those in our line of work, think there's more to NERV than what's let on--we believe that whatever SEELE's plans for the world are, NERV plays a key role. The fact that they covered up the true cause of Second Impact, along with the circumstances behind your mother's disappearance, Dr. Sohryu's descent into madness, and Naoko Akagi's demise, all point to something sinister afoot. Our best bet to find out why is for someone on the inside to help us get all the evidence we need to fully expose SEELE to the world--and that inside man, Shinji..." Max pointed at him with a very indicative finger, for added dramatic effect. "...is you."

Shinji, at that point, reached his full shock threshold on hearing him; this, in turn, caused him to break into a bit of mildly hysterical, skeptical laughter for a good five minutes, before he recollected himself enough to give a response. "A-heh, ha, ha--oh, that's a good one, really--I just, it's just that, for a minute there, it sounded like you were asking me to spy on NERV for you. Ah hah...!" He took another look at the Smarts and Kodama, their expressions making it clear that they meant it. "...You're not kidding, are you?" he said with a hint of resignation in his voice.

"We're quite serious," Kodama affirmed. "You're our best shot at bringing down one of, if not the most, insidious conspiracies in human history. As an EVA pilot, you're practically untouchable given how much NERV's invested in you--that and, as far as anyone knows, you're the only one who can truly pilot Unit-01 for them. Plus, given the reputation you've already cultivated among NERV's personnel, not to mention those who you've made contact with outside NERV, and you'd be the least likely suspect. Besides, NERV's intelligence division is already so preoccupied with sniffing out moles in their organization from other countries that they'd overlook you without a doubt." Kodama put a reassuring hand on his shoulder, to help calm him down as his anxiety began to build back up. "I know we're asking a lot of you, especially given what you'd just gone through in your first few months in Tokyo-3, but think of what's at stake here--after NERV's served its purpose, what do you think will be next? SEELE bankrolled the creation of some of the most powerful weapons around, do you think they'll just mothball them when all the giant monsters are gone? We can't let them get off for causing the very disaster that necessitated the creation of the Evangelions in the first place--they need to be brought to justice, for all the lives lost because of whatever ambitions drove them. Like your mother's."

Shinji considered Kodama's words and the weight they carried. Given what he'd just been informed of, he was beginning to reconsider his original move of running back to his former guardian and his old hometown. Yet part of him still remained hesitant, chiefly due to the enormity of the task being presented to him, and the responsibility it entailed, one as monumental as piloting the EVA.

Kodama sensed his hesitation, and decided to bring out the trump card. "If you need a bit more motivation, maybe getting the opportunity to get back at the architect of your life up till now should make it more interesting." She then walked over to the desk and pressed a button on the intercom. "Send them in," she spoke into it.

The doors to the office then opened, and in walked two lab coat-garbed young men in their early-to-mid-twenties. One was Asian-American and wore glasses, while the other was a slightly-husky Caucasian who had his hair slicked up and back.

"Shinji, these are two of the best gadgeteers and inventors to come out of CONTROL Academy in recent years," Kodama stated as she introduced the newcomers. "Mentored by the legendary Drs. Carlson and Steele themselves."

"Pleased to make your acquaintance," the bespectacled one said as he and Shinji shook hands. "Bruce Okamura, at your service."

"Lloyd Nathanson, nice to meet you," his compatriot greeted in turn as he shook Shinji's hand as well, before facing Kodama and the Smarts. "We have it ready, whenever you are."

It was then that Bruce took two objects from out of his pockets, both of which Shinji recognized immediately, to his great surprise. "My SDAT! And that's the tape that was inside!" He looked to Kodama for answers. "When did--?!"

"Bruce, Lloyd, and some of our lab guys brought your bag in from 99's car for inspection," Max answered. "She had a hunch about why you are the way you are, and wanted them to confirm it."

Bruce proceeded to elaborate on what Max had said. "We disassembled your player to examine its components, and while nothing turned up at first, it wasn't until we took a closer look at the tape that we hit paydirt."

Lloyd took the player and the tape and walked over to the little wheeled table they'd brought with them, which had a jack and a cord connected to a small speaker on top. "You ever hear of backmasking?" he asked Shinji.

"Um...yeah?" Shinji replied. "That thing where you record a hidden message on something and you can only hear it if you play the thing backwards. They do it with music all the time--I once heard about a Beatles song rumored to have such a message, or how America in the 80s got freaked out over supposed Satanic messages being hidden in heavy metal records."

"Well, believe it or not, this technique's been used in more than just music," Bruce said as Lloyd hooked up the SDAT and then put the tape inside. "Done right, it makes for an effective means of subliminal messaging--such as the case with the one who recorded the message we found on this tape. Had a clever way to ensure the message would get across without you even knowing--every time you listened to the tape's contents all the way and allowed the player to rewind it, the message would slide into your brain. And given how much you've probably listened to this tape over and over, the message got reinforced each time."

Lloyd pressed a button, and soon the tape was playing in reverse, though thanks to the apparatus on the table they brought in, the slow speed and sound-boosting function enabled the hidden message to be revealed at last. Shinji recognized the voice coming out of the speaker immediately.

"People are unkind. They seek nothing without expecting anything in return."

His father. Gendo Ikari.

"Only as long as you are useful will people interact with you. To them, you are a scoundrel, a coward."

Shinji felt his eyes widen as he heard his father's voice. His hands clenched and unclenched on reflex, though this time, it wasn't out of nervousness as usual.

"To them, you are dishonest, and weak."

Shinji couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"Do not get attached to anyone, for they will only hurt you in the end, whether you are useful to them or not."

His hands finally stopped vacillating between clenched and unclenched, settling strictly into clenched.

"Keep everyone at arm's length. No good will come of anyone associating with a weakling like you. They cannot hurt you if you do not let them in."

It soon made sense to him--he'd unintentionally made himself into a total wallflower, thanks to his one escape from the world, one that had helped him for years. Only now, it turned out it had hurt him in the process as well, and he'd had no idea the entire time. And the one behind this...was his own father. Thinking more on it, he wouldn't be surprised if somehow, his father had arranged for what few friends he'd made over the years to move away by giving their parents jobs in another city or town (or worse). Wouldn't have been more surprising if he'd set him up with that old teacher as his guardian because the man was so emotionally distant and would only do the bare minimum as far as raising a child would go.

That clinched it for Shinji.

His own father had deliberately made sure his life would be as miserable and empty as possible. And that fact was making him downright furious.

Kodama, the Smarts, Bruce, and Lloyd soon grew a bit concerned when Shinji didn't utter a word the entire time the hidden message was being played. Lloyd waved a hand in front of Shinji's face, but got no response.

"Shinji? You all right?" Kodama asked, a hint of worry in her voice.

For a couple of minutes, not a sound came out of the boy, until he finally did reply. "...I'm fine," he said with an eerie calm. "Except right now, for once I've got a very strong need to really, really vent."

Kodama exchanged a look with the others briefly before refocusing on Shinji. "Say no more," she said with a reassuring look on her face. "All floors of HQ are equipped with a designated 'rage room'--let me show you." She then led Shinji, followed warily by the Smarts, Bruce, and Lloyd, to a room a few doors down from the office, the words "Rage Room #12" printed on a plaque attached to the door. "Here, if someone really needs to vent whatever frustration or anger they've got at the moment, they can just step inside and go to town on all manner of breakable objects for as long as they require. (And don't worry about the items in question, they're replaced each time for the next user.) Now then, which kind of bat would you like--wood, or aluminum?" she asked as she held out each respective bat towards Shinji.
Shinji briefly inspected each one before making his choice. "I'll take the aluminum--I don't want to ruin a nice piece of woodwork," he said as Kodama handed him the aluminum bat.

"All right," she replied. "Just step in, close the door, turn on the room's built-in cone of silence--that's the button next to the light switch--and let 'em have it."

"Thanks," Shinji said as he stepped inside and shut the door. A *click* was soon heard the moment he pressed the button next to the light switch.

Just then, both Bruce and Lloyd realized something. "Oh, boy..." Bruce uttered.

"What? What's wrong?" Kodama asked.

"We just remembered," Lloyd explained, "the cone of silence for this room's currently out of order--we hadn't finished the maintenance on it yet."

Kodama's eyes widened, as did those of the Smarts, when it dawned on them just what that revelation entailed. "Uh-oh..." she uttered before the sounds of destruction, un-muffled, could soon be heard emanating from the room as Shinji unleashed a string of invectives and vulgarities so raw, so full of fury, that the sound editing team on this production worked as fast as they could to make sure they were either rendered as unintelligible gibberish or *bleeped* out as much as possible, all while the boy completely went hog wild with the bat on the dishware, vases, lamps, and other objects present for him to take his newfound rage out on. Those outside the room winced, blushed, or otherwise stared slack-jawed at the spectacle that, while unseen, was enough to cause the door to the rage room to shake every time.

"...Wowsers," Max began to comment. "For such a shy and unassuming kid, he's got quite the potty mouth on him." Given what Shinji's life had been like up till now, he and the others could definitely understand how much he'd been holding it in all this time.

Finally, after several minutes, the room grew quiet, and then the door opened, revealing a panting Shinji, part of his shirt untucked and his hair mussed up a little, the bat he'd used now sporting a lot of scuffs and dings. After taking a few moments to settle down a bit, Shinji looked up at Kodama, the Smarts, and Bruce and Lloyd, a newfound determination in his eyes.

"I'm in," he said.

The others exchanged a brief and wary look, before addressing Shinji as Max walked up to him with a hand extended. "Happy to hear that," he said as Shinji took a firm grip on the older man's hand and shook it. "Welcome aboard...Agent 86."

To be continued...

Featuring:
Bruce - Alan Lee
Lloyd - Ben Pronsky
Gendo Ikari - Ty Burrell​

 

[Author0fntent]

Chapter 4 - The No-Place-Like-Home Affair

*Disclaimer: For the rest of this story going forward, please picture the events depicted in the art and character design style of YouTube creator Extra RidiculousCake. (See their short 'Asuka VS The Hydraulic Press' for an example of such.)*
​

Captain Misato Katsuragi, Tactical Operations Director for NERV by day and legendary tease/three-beer lush by night, was not in the best of moods at the moment. She'd been on the phone in her car just as she pulled into the lot of her apartment complex, in a heated (on her end) back-and-forth with the head of Section-2--NERV's intelligence division/in-house-brand secret service--for nearly the entire drive. It had been something of a trying couple of days for the former special forces soldier; when she woke up one rainy morning on the first of the two and hadn't heard her ward/subordinate stirring about, a quick 'investigation' of his room revealed the reason why--Shinji wasn't there, or anywhere for that matter, in the whole of the apartment they shared. The only traces of his presence were his NERV ID card and a handwritten note from the boy in question, containing both an apology and his simply stating he was leaving. Misato, a bit shocked at first, realized he'd run away...followed by her admitting out loud that this outcome wasn't surprising.

Much earlier, in the wake of his battle with the Fourth Angel--one which had seen him forced to take two of his classmates into Unit-01's entry plug to get them out of harm's way--she'd given him a stern 'lecture' regarding his insubordination during said battle while he was detained in NERV HQ's cell block, and his attitude at that time had rubbed her the wrong way. She could've chalked it up to what he'd gone through, but in spite of her own feelings on authority, he had to know that the chain of command had to be respected. She emphasized that piloting the EVA with such a wishy-washy demeanor would get him killed, and his apathetic response to that assertion further irritated her.

Following his release, Misato found herself dealing with a Shinji who barely left his room, to the point where he was effectively cutting school. The day she'd discovered that he'd run off, she wound up having to lie to the same two classmates he rescued--Toji Suzuhara (the resident jock of the setting) and Kensuke Aida (the blatant military/mecha/anime otaku of the setting)--when they came to her door to drop off all the classwork he'd missed, claiming that he was training at NERV HQ. (The two boys, distracted as they were by their conversation about the total babe they'd just met, left before they could hear Misato have a fit over having to cover for Shinji's ass.) The minute she was out the door and on her way to NERV HQ, she'd dialed up Section-2 and ordered them to search for Shinji. While the search went on, she went about her duties at HQ as best she could, with one part of her mind worrying about Shinji and reflecting on their talk in the cell. She found herself, most of the time, ruminating on the kid's situation with Ritsuko, calling it cruel to put the burden of saving the planet, and humankind, on a 15-year-old, with Ritsuko, in a detached manner, reminding her that they had no choice, unfortunately. When Ritsuko asked if she'd heard anything from Shinji, Misato answered that she hadn't at all; she further speculated that he might never come back, period. When asked what she might do then, all Misato could come up with was, truthfully, nothing, figuring that, based on his experiences so far and their conversation in his holding cell...it might as well be for the best. All Ritsuko could offer, dispassionately, was that even so, NERV would still need pilots. (Yes, teenage ones, Ritsuko further emphasized after Misato arched an eyebrow at her.)

As the day wore on, and then became a second day, Misato grew more and more worried. She'd been fed status updates almost constantly, all with the same thing--not a peep from the Third Child. Then came the call she received on her drive back home, bringing us back to our starting point in today's installment...

"WHADDYA MEAN, he keeps 'giving you the slip'?!" she demanded furiously. "...You're saying that a 15-year-old kid, one who happens to possess a minor amount of inside knowledge of the world's foremost top secret extranormal defense agency, is continuing to evade the most highly-trained intelligence operatives, without even trying?" She entered the complex's elevator while the person on the other line attempted to explain the situation further. "Okay, so you can confirm he wasn't abducted or anything like that?...Then how the hell has he been managing to lose you guys?!" The elevator eventually got off at her floor, and she exited the car as she made her way towards her apartment. "Look, I don't care how much you stretch yourselves thin, just keep tailing him until you can bring him back...And just in case I'm not making myself clear, DON'T approach him aggressively, you'll just spook him, and THEN he'll just keep slipping through your fingers!" It was then that the closer she got towards her door, the more she was able to make out a smell. The smell...of home cooking.

A smell that was coming right through her door.

Misato, her soldier's instincts taking over, hung up her phone, pocketed it, and slowly drew her pistol from her shoulder holster as she pressed herself back-first against the wall. She slowly inched her way towards her door, while in her head, she started rolling through how best to deal with the situation at hand--last she checked, Pen-Pen, the only other resident of her humble abode, very much couldn't be responsible for the smell, chiefly because as far as she (or anyone else, really) knew...penguins, even ones that were former laboratory test subjects, didn't know how to cook. (About the only vaguely human things she knew her fine-feathered friend was capable of were reading a newspaper and opening (as well as consuming) a can of beer.) Which meant she was dealing with an intruder, and a hungry one at that. Misato moved one hand to carefully slide the front door open without making a sound, and slipped inside, just-as-carefully closing the door behind her. She soon slowly proceeded towards the kitchen, shoulders tensed (among other parts of herself), until finally, she reached the entryway, readied herself...and then swiftly entered the kitchen, gun pointing forward.

"FREEZE!"

"GAH!"

Misato's expression went from serious and anxious to utterly baffled, once she got a good look at who she was pointing her gun at in her kitchen. That person being none other than...

Shinji. Who appeared to be in the middle of preparing a meal for two. (One that was, on closer inspection, not an instant one.)

"Don't with the aiming, and the cocking, and the crosshairs trained on me...!" Shinji let out, both of his hands (one of which holding a wooden spoon) in the air in his panic.

Misato blinked a few times, processing the scene in front of her, before lowering her gun as she immediately enveloped Shinji in a bone-crushing hug borne of all the worry that had been building up in her over the past couple days. A hug that, to Shinji's chagrin, put him face-first into her signature impressive cleavage.

"SHINJI! OHMIGODOHMIGOD you're all right!!" she shouted, oblivious to the boy's flailing arms. "Do you have ANY idea how worried sick you made me?! We've had Section-2 turning the city inside-out trying to find you--!"

"*MMMPPPHH! MMMPPPHHH! MMMPPPHHH!*" Shinji's muffled voice sounded out from Misato's chest.

"Hm? What was that?" she asked as she eased her grip enough for him to suck in some sorely-needed air.

"*GASP!* I said 'Misato! Please, *PANT* with the bear-hugging, *PANT* and the suffocating, *PANT* and the marshmallow hell...'"

"'Marshmallow hell'?" Misato repeated incredulously. "I'll have you know the theology majors I knew in college used to refer to mine as a 'heavenly' bosom. (Sidebar, theology majors have the worst pick-up lines.)" She shook her head on realizing they were getting off-track. "Not important! Shinji, where the hell have you been for the last two days? And don't skimp on anything, I want the whole explanation!"

"And you'll get it, I promise!" Shinji reassured. "But can it wait until after we've eaten? I'd rather explain things when you're not feeling hangry (god, that word's so cringey)--saying from experience, nobody likes anyone when they're hangry. So, please, sit down at the table, I'll finish making dinner, we'll have a nice, quiet meal, and then I'll talk. Okay?" Instinctively he took a quick sniff of the air, which made him swiftly turn back to the stove. "*Whew!* Almost let it burn there for a minute..." he muttered as he resumed his cooking.

Misato, dumbfounded, re-holstered her pistol, took her jacket off and hung it up on the rack on the wall nearby, then removed her holster and stowed it in the drawer underneath. She then took her cellphone out of her jacket pocket and redialed the head of Section-2. "...It's me. Look, sorry for hanging up earlier--call off the search...Because I've located the Third Child...Yes, I'm being serious...Yes, he's the genuine article...Because he's cooking sukiyaki in my kitchen, right in front of my eyes, at this very moment...Look, I'll handle things from here, just pull every agent you had tailing him, you've done your job...(*Ugh*) Of course I'll speak to the Commander about getting all of you overtime for this, I guarantee it...Thank you. Have a good day." She then hung up her phone, put it down on the small hallway table, and then proceeded to sit down at the dining table, watching as Shinji put the finishing touches on dinner.

A few moments later, the two of them (plus Pen-Pen, having been served his own particular dinner by Shinji) were eating in relative quiet, taking their time as they ate. For Shinji, it allowed him time to properly gather his thoughts for what he was going to say to Misato, as he thought back to his time at CONTROL HQ a couple of hours earlier...

-X-​

A staff member had taken the aluminum bat Shinji had just used in the rage room, and Shinji himself had been given a calming cup of tea when he'd rejoined Kodama, Bruce, Lloyd, and the Smarts back in the office.

"So, when do I start?" Shinji asked, newly-eager to get into the espionage game following the revelations that had been heaped upon him.

"Not right away," Kodama replied. "First things first, we get you back to Captain Katsuragi's place, and you re-ingratiate yourself with NERV and the rest of the civilian part of your life."

Shinji's eyes widened as he kept himself from spitting out his tea. "Crap, she's probably got Section-2 looking all over the place for me! And I've been here for, what, an hour? Maybe more?? They're bound to notice I'm actually missing--!"

"Save your breath there, Shinji, we've got things covered," Barbara Ann reassured him.

"The entire time you've been with us," Max explained, "we've had decoys matching your general description leading Section-2 on a wild goose chase all over the city. They'll keep them occupied long enough for us to get you back home before Katsuragi, and with plenty of time for you to stash away a few things we're giving you to start. Bruce, Lloyd?"

The two inventors nodded and proceeded to open a few of the compartments in the table they'd wheeled in earlier, and took out from them a few items.

"First up," Bruce said as he handed Shinji a manila envelope, "your 'new hire' paperwork--we'll need you to fill out a some forms to help fully integrate you into our database. Standard procedure from HR."

"Next," Lloyd said as he handed Shinji an object resembling a wristwatch, "this little beauty here isn't just a digital watch, since it contains a number of features that'll help you in your missions."

"It's a gizmo that Dick Tracy himself would be proud and envious of," Max chimed in with.

"We'll go over said features with you on your first training day here," Lloyd added.

"Speaking of," Bruce further added, "among your paperwork is a training schedule--we've made sure to hold your sessions on days where you're not expected at NERV HQ or have cleaning duty at your school."

"Okay..." Shinji said, before noticing the third object, a somewhat large moving box. "And that is...?"

"Deprogramming material," Kodama answered. "To help rid you of the subliminal messaging your father input into you."

"Specifically, the best deprogramming material put together by the folks at Time Life," Max elaborated as he showed some of the box's contents. "Presented on eight CDs, or six cassettes if you're more inclined."

"Granted, these won't do the job entirely," Kodama clarified, "so in addition to your training, we'll be having you undergo sessions with our in-house psychiatrist. I know it sounds a bit presumptuous, but after everything you've gone through, you'll need them." Shinji gave her a slight look. "If you're thinking that's me, you'd be wrong--I'm still a student at this time. No, our guy here's a bona fide professional, and he's been in his fair share of danger like you, so the two of you can relate."

"Right...guess I'll look forward to it then," Shinji said as he slung his duffel bag over his shoulder and then took the box--which, he noticed upon a quick glance, had his newly-refurbished SDAT and a new CD player on top of the discs and tapes--into his hands.

"Now then, unless you've got any other questions...let's get you home," Kodama said as she and Shinji exited the office.

-X-​

Once Shinji and Misato had cleaned their plates, they set them aside before Misato spoke. "Okay, now that I'm fed--and feeling considerably less hangry (god, you're right--that's a really cringey word)--let's talk," she said, her arms folded as she assumed a more authoritative posture in front of her charge.

Shinji took a few deep breaths, while randomly scratching behind his ear--in reality, subtly checking to ensure that the hidden earpiece Kodama had provided him was secure--before he started explaining himself (with some assistance from Kodama for the cover story). "...First off, I want to apologize for how I behaved after the Fourth Angel. The things I said were inexcusable--you were right about me having the wrong attitude for this. It's just--even after my first sortie, I...I didn't know how to really deal with it all." Misato's expression softened a bit on hearing this. "Looking back, I think between having Toji and Kensuke in the plug muddying things up and being in the cell, I...I think I was having a...maybe a slow-moving breakdown? (Best way I could describe it.)" Misato's expression grew a tiny bit more sympathetic. "It finally got to the point where I just...I couldn't take any more of all this, of NERV, the EVA...so I just did what I did best--ran away. But the thing is, for one reason or another, I didn't have the heart to leave the city. So I just...wandered around. I needed...I think I needed space for a while. Not just holing up in my room, I wanted...I guess I wanted to do some thinking, out in the open."

Misato nodded. "What were you thinking about?" she asked.

"Just...everything, everything that happened since I first set foot here," Shinji answered. "Did you know that...that in my first battle, a little girl got hurt?"

Misato nodded at that, her expression becoming a little more sad on being asked this. "I found out about it in the after-action report I received. Shinji, that wasn't your fault--"

"I know," Shinji said before she went any further. "Took me a while to acknowledge, but I know. But still, the first few days after getting out of NERV medical and when I started school here, when I first heard about it--after finding out I was in the same class with her brother--I just felt so...so horrible, that I was the reason she was hospitalized. And it was on the day of the Fourth Angel attack, no less. So I think...that kinda contributed to my 'slow-moving breakdown'." He took a moment to recompose himself before continuing. "While I was 'on the run', the more I wandered around town, the more I started to realize something."

"And that was...?" Misato asked.

"It made me think back to when you brought me to that lookout after my first Angel battle," Shinji said. "When Tokyo-3 was rising up out of the ground, you told me that this was what I'd saved that day. Well...While I was wandering around the city, I started to rethink that. When I didn't have my earphones plugged in and actually bothered to look at my surroundings, I got a more affirming view than watching the skyline pop back up." He paused a moment, for deliberate effect. "Being up close, seeing people brave enough to come back into downtown, to pick up where they'd left off in their daily routines--even accounting for all the construction delays--as if they hadn't just fled from something out of a Toho movie...That I was able to make it so they even could...That's when it finally hit me." His fist clenched for the briefest of moments. "I realized that if piloting Unit-01 is what it takes to ensure people can keep doing that, keep going about their lives without fearing the monsters at their doorstep--and if it's what it takes for me to actually be part of that all the time, at some point in the future--then running from this isn't what I should be doing." He then firmly looked at Misato straight in the eye. "NERV handed me the power to help humanity keep thriving, and with great power comes a just as great responsibility--which means I need to, when the call goes out, put on that skintight suit and get in the f***ing robot. So, if you'll give me another shot...I'll pilot Unit-01."

Misato, for a moment, was left speechless by Shinji's words. She didn't expect him to do a full one-eighty after all that. Thinking back on when she brought him home for the first time, in conjunction with what he'd just said, it occurred to her that maybe pointing out those of Tokyo-3's citizenry who decided to stick around and tough it out might have worked as the better example than showing him some ascending skyscrapers. It reminded her that being in the armed forces taught her how some things are better learned and better seen on the ground. Still, she decided to break the tension a little bit...

"...You stole that last bit from Spider-Man," she said with a tiny smirk.

Shinji, caught a bit off-guard by her response, lightly chuckled as he rubbed the back of his head absent-mindedly. "Well, maybe...but to be fair, it's a pretty good mantra. (Has to be, since he's been running on it for, what, fifty-odd years?)"

"Not like they've got anything else to fall back on," Misato mused, before her smirk left for the moment. "So, you're serious about coming back on?"

"I am," Shinji said with a nod, conviction in his voice.

Nodding back, Misato then got up from the table and picked up the hallway phone, where she then called the HR division of NERV HQ.

-X-​

The phone rang in the offices of NERV HQ's HR department a moment later, and one of the admins picked it up. "Hello?" he answered. "Ah, Captain Katsuragi, what can we do for you?...The Third Child's back?!...He's set on piloting?!...Oh, don't worry about a thing, we haven't touched any bit of his paperwork at all!" The admin then looked to one of his coworkers, who was about to reduce Shinji's ID card to Swiss cheese at that moment when the admin silently, fervently motioned for them to hold off on it. He then returned his attention to the phone call. "Yes Captain, it'll all be here waiting for you to pick up when you come in tomorrow...No no, no problem at all! Thanks for calling, you have a good evening now!" With that, the admin hung up the phone.

-X-​

Misato hung up the phone as she addressed Shinji. "You'll be thankful to know that your ID and related paperwork's still good, I'll get it when I go in."

"Good to hear," Shinji said. "Now then, I'd like to discuss something else, regarding my return..."

"Oh?" Misato said with a raised eyebrow.

Shinji, fingers intertwined--thankfully not in the same manner as his father--leveled his gaze at his once-again guardian. "I'd like to renegotiate the chore distribution in this household. When we originally divided them up on my first night here, you beat me pretty easily. Perhaps...too easily."

Misato's eye twitched a bit at that statement. "I, uh...don't know what you mean."

"I'm sure you do," Shinji said. "You see, among the things I spent my time thinking about while wandering the city, I reevaluated that little game of ro-sham-bo we played, and I decided that if I wound up coming back, I'd like a do-over." He then briefly adopted a teasing look on his face. "Unless you don't think you can beat me again...?" he goaded her.

Misato took the bait as she cracked her right set of knuckles. "Oh, it's on, kid!"

Several minutes and three rounds of ro-sham-bo later, Misato was again speechless. She'd won the first round, but then, to her own surprise, found herself soundly defeated by Shinji in the two that followed.

"H-How did you--?" she started to ask.

"Simple," Shinji replied as he jotted down a few things on the small whiteboard hanging on the kitchen wall. "I figured that, like in poker, anyone playing ro-sham-bo has their tells, so this time, I paid attention to the tiniest facial tics of yours--as well as those in your hand--in order to make the right move. I'll admit, you did luck out in round one. And with that..." He finished writing and put the cap back on the dry erase marker. "I believe I've got things evenly divided amongst ourselves."

Misato looked at the board, and her mouth went slightly agape at what had been written down. According to Shinji's notes, he'd handle all household cooking and floor-cleaning, in addition to his own laundry, while Misato was in charge of her own laundry...and bathroom-cleaning duty. Both would work jointly on garbage and recycling (and the occasional composting). She gave herself a resigned facepalm. "*Sigh* I haven't been assigned latrine duty since my days in basic..."

"Well, them's the breaks..." Shinji said with a slightly-amused shrug.

A small grin then graced Misato's features as she then thought of a good comeback. "Laugh while you can, Shinji--don't forget, you coming back on duty means you're also going to resume going to school here. Which reminds me..." She then pointed with her thumb towards one of the end tables in the living room.

Shinji followed her pointing until his eyes fell upon a rather large stack of paper, which made his eyes widen. "Wh-what is that...?" he warily asked.

Misato's grin grew a tiny bit wider, her eyes just a bit more smug. "That...is all the classwork you missed during your 'time away'. Your friends--the same ones who you had to take into the entry plug--were kind enough to drop them off the other day. They were wondering where you were, and I wound up telling them a bullcrap story about you being engaged in some top secret training at HQ. In other words..." Her grin then went fully-Cheshire Cat at that point. "...Don't think you're getting off that lightly, Mister. Better get ready for bed, since I've got a feeling tomorrow's going to have you quite occupied for most of the day." She then let out a mock evil laugh as she headed to the fridge to get herself a second beer, leaving Shinji doing a double-take from her to the paper stack. He swallowed, realizing that there are times that, even when he wins, he loses.

-X-​

The scene then briefly shifted to the set of Laugh-In, where hosts Dan Rowan and Dick Martin stepped up, dressed in tuxedos and Martin holding a statuette shaped like a pointing left hand.

Rowan: "Well, folks, it's that time again, where we announce today's recipient of the 'Flying Fickle Finger of Fate' award, which is given each week to a person or group that has proven they have truly deserved to receive the Flying, Fickle Finger of Fate award."

[Insert musical cue.]​

Martin: "And today's winner is--"

Rowan: "May I have the envelope, please?" [A cast member hands him the envelope.] "Thank you." [Proceeds to tear open the envelope.] "And the winner is...Mister Shinji Ikari. Aged fifteen years old, for showing even the slightest bit of hubris in the face of his rock-paper-scissors rematch with his legal guardian, Captain Misato Katsuragi, we present Shinji with this week's Flying Fickle Finger of Fate!"

Martin then pressed a hidden button on the back of the statuette, which caused the outstretched pointer finger to launch with a brief flash accompanied by a whizzing whistle sound, a wisp of smoke coming out of the barrel, much to Martin's astonishment.

Rowan: "Oof, careful now..."

Martin: "Sorry about that, forgot I had the safety off."

-X-​

One teeth-brushing session later, Shinji was in his bedroom, the desk now adorned with the foreboding stack of printouts, getting into bed. Before he did anything else, and on making sure Misato was in her own room, he closed the door and pressed his hidden earpiece. "Thanks again for the lines, Kodama--oops, I mean, 99--I couldn't have said anything better myself," he said quietly. No response came. "...99, are you there?" There was a crackling of static that startled him briefly before he finally heard any reply.

"Shinji? Shinji, can you hear me?" Kodama asked on the other end. "I'm so, so sorry, the batteries died in my earpiece, right after the first 'slow-moving breakdown'. I wound up turning my car inside-out to find the spares when I couldn't locate them at first. I just managed to replace them a couple minutes ago."

Shinji, a completely dumbfounded look on his face, could only say one thing in return. "...What?"

After taking a short ten minutes to fill his new handler in on how his conversation with Misato went down, Kodama signed off and wished him a good night before heading home herself. Shinji, after taking the earpiece out and putting it in his nightstand drawer, decided to take his new 'deprogramming material' for a spin to help him fall asleep, as well as get a jump on driving his father's subliminal message out of his head. He took out one of the CDs, popped it into the small player, and then stuck his earphones in as he pressed play. Soon, a slightly twangy guitar kicked off the song, followed by the first verse...

View: https://youtu.be/kPh868GJQfE?si=RaM5dtAPm_7B9Cxm

In every other song that I've heard lately,
Some fellow gets shot.
And his baby and his best friend both die with him,
As likely as not.​

Shinji tapped his fingers a little to the rhythm, already liking how more upbeat it sounded compared to what he was used to.

In half of the other songs
Some cat's crying, or ready to die...
We've lost most all of our happy people,
And I'm wondering why...

Let's think about livin'!
(Think about livin'!)
Let's think about lovin'!
(Think about lovin'!)
Let's think about the whoopin' and the hoppin',
And the boppin' and the lovie-dovie-dovin'!
(Lovie-dovie-dovin'!)

Let's forget about the whinin' and the cryin',
And the shootin' and the dyin',
And the fellow with a switchblade knife!
Let's think about livin'!
Let's think about life!​

It was after that first chorus that Shinji's lips became a thin line, as something then occurred to him:

'I can't understand a thing this guy's saying.'

He then made a mental note to pick up a Japanese-to-English thesaurus/dictionary combo as soon as he could.

To be continued...

Featuring:
Misato Katsuragi - Olivia Munn
NERV HR Admin - Kyle McCarley
Dan Rowan - Seth MacFarlane
Dick Martin - Rob Paulsen
​

Omake 1 - Orders Are Orders

For the entire time that Shinji was wandering around, Section-2 had been all over the city, no closer to finding the Third Child than they were when they started. Then again, some of the methods they were utilizing were of a somewhat...questionable nature.

"Sir?" one agent asked his field leader.

"What is it?" the field leader replied.

"...Do you think we're being too literal here?" the agent asked further, pointing to some stretches of the city streets where pairs of agents were running enormous Ace combs along the pavement.

"Of course we're not," the field leader answered gruffly. "Katsuragi told us to comb the city for the Third Child, and that's what we're doing." He then called out to those same agents on the street. "Find anything yet?!" he shouted out inquisitively.

"Nothing yet, Sir!" one agent replied loudly.

"How about you?!" the field leader shouted to a pair of agents further up the street.

"No sign yet, Sir!" the female of the pair answered back with a shake of her head.

The field leader then turned his attention to a pair of agents even further up the street...who were using a giant afro pick. "What about you guys?!"

One of the two agents, a dead-ringer for one Eikichi Onizuka, answered back bluntly: "We ain't found $#!+!"

 

[Author0fntent]

Chapter 5 - The Back-To-School-and-The-Grind Affair​

It had been a very, very long Sunday. But somehow, some way, and with VERY little assistance from his new handler at CONTROL, Shinji managed to do it, even with breaks in-between.

For once in his life, he'd crammed. All to make up the amount of classwork he'd missed during his brief period of going AWOL.

And now...it was time to head back to school. Monday had come.

View: https://youtu.be/VsIjOKCxRSE?si=R9YSp9S37YP6z6et​

After hitting the snooze button on his alarm clock, Shinji got out of bed, got into the bathroom to take a quick shower, returned to his bedroom to get dressed, and then went into the kitchen to prepare breakfast for the other inhabitants of the apartment. To make sure he fully got back into Misato's good graces, he was going to make quite the breakfast with what was currently in the pantry, making a note to himself to restock on his way back from school and NERV HQ. Sure enough, the scent of the breakfast in question awoke his guardian, as she, in her usual disheveled state, lumbered into the kitchen. She was quickly presented with a fresh cup of coffee by Shinji, and that magical first sip was enough to start revitalizing the NERV tactical ops director. Once she and Pen-Pen were set with their plates, the trio ate, Misato and Shinji making a bit of small talk in the process, with the former getting in some slight ribbing over her ward's Sunday study session from hell. Once everyone's dishes were empty of food, Misato urged Shinji to finish making his lunch and be on his way, if he wanted to make sure all those makeup assignments made it to their destination without a problem. Shinji did just that, putting together a good bento and then grabbing, in addition to his normal schoolbag, the backpack containing the classwork; from there, he got his shoes on and was soon out the door.

While he walked to school, Shinji took stock of his situation up till now, a part of him still in disbelief over the strange direction his life had taken. Not only was he piloting a gigantic mecha against rejects from an Ultraman or Super Sentai rerun (or a rerun of one of the many imitators that had come and gone over the decades), all at the behest of his cold and distant (as well as, having found out, cruel schemer of a) father--now he was going to also be spying on the same organization said father was in charge of. It was as if he'd found himself in one of the oddest light novels ever put out, something both the writer had pitched and the publisher had greenlit on the same basis of "Eh, what the hell--at least it's not yet another isekai story". Still, given the challenges that awaited him, Shinji knew he'd have to take things seriously if he ever wanted to make it out alive...And save the world too, right, he didn't forget...Anyway...his train of thought soon was directed to the fastly-approaching building that was Tokyo-3 Municipal Middle School. He stood there, contemplating its facade for a brief moment, before he (with a slightly-resigned sigh) walked up the steps and through the front doors.

He soon found himself at the door to classroom 2-A, and on entering, found his arrival greeted by the sight of many a surprised classmate. It was as if a lot of them didn't entirely buy the story Toji and Kensuke no doubt passed along that he was engaged in some lengthy NERV training, and genuinely thought he'd actually skipped town. (The only exception was, unsurprisingly, one Rei Ayanami, still with a few bandages on and leaning on her good hand as she sat at her desk, staring out the window.) Muted chatter began to erupt from most of the students, but he was soon approached by arguably the most important member of the class: the brunette, pigtail-wearing class representative, Hikari Horaki. A look of grave concern was on her face as she spoke.

"Ikari? Are you all right??" she asked. "You've been absent for almost two weeks! What happened?!"

Shinji had seen enough spy movies to know how important maintaining a cover story was, and since one of his 'extracurricular activities' was already public knowledge (thanks to a certain military-obsessed classmate, curse him!), he leaned into the alibi Misato had given Toji and Kensuke. "Good morning, Horaki. Sorry I worried you--it's just how Suzuhara and Aida got it from my guardian. After that last Angel battle, NERV basically put me through their version of 'boot camp' to get me in better fighting shape. I only just finished last Friday--but don't worry, I did all the work Suzuhara and Aida dropped off for me." He held up the now-open backpack filled to the brim with printouts for her to see.

Hikari did a surprised double-take from the backpack to Shinji, where she noticed the slight bags under his eyes. "I see..." she said as she took the proffered backpack. "*Well, that's one thing those two managed to do right...*" she half-muttered under her breath. Shinji gave her a questioning look on hearing this. "I know about their sneaking out of the shelter, and I heard about their little 'interrogation' by your security--I've already seen to it that they were further disciplined."

Shinji grew slightly worried on hearing her stern tone. "Wh-what'd you do to them?"

Hikari's frown grew a bit more pronounced. "Those two have been assigned cleaning duty for the entire month--no exceptions."

Shinji winced a bit at this. "Oof--with the mopping, and the scrubbing, and the dishpan hands at the end..." he said with a slight shake of his head.

"If they hadn't been so stupid, they wouldn't have to endure being up to their armpits in soap suds every day after school going forward," Hikari said. "Honestly, we've known each other since preschool and they still find new ways to make me worry about them."

Shinji offered a slight shrug. "Well, look at it this way--we're all at that awkward time in our lives right now, so..."

Hikari sighed before she started applying binder clips to different sets of printouts. "Next time NERV needs you for an extended period of training, could you please at least give a bit of notice beforehand?"

"Um...can do," Shinji said with a nod.

"Good," Hikari said with a small smile. "I'll make sure these are reviewed by the teacher. And don't worry, your desk is right where you left it."

Shinji offered her a bit of thanks and headed to the desk in question, where he immediately took his seat and opened his laptop up. A minute after, Toji and Kensuke walked in, both sporting uneasy looks the moment they noticed Shinji was present. They quietly, awkwardly headed to their own desks, trying their best to avoid Hikari's scrutiny out of equal parts fear and shame. Then, Toji lightly tapped Shinji's shoulder, getting his attention. When Shinji turned to face him, his eyes grew wide on seeing the jock and he nervously swallowed.

"Ikari--when you got a minute, can we talk?" Toji asked.

Shinji gave a nod 'yes', just as the teacher walked into the room and Hikari called for the class to "Rise! Bow! Sit!".

A few hours and one sleep-inducing lecture on the pre-and-post-Second Impact years later, when lunchtime rolled around, Shinji found himself on the school roof--for some reason, a popular place for students in many an anime to ponder life, think deep thoughts, and hash out their differences--with Toji and Kensuke. An awkward silence hung over them, as neither one made a move to speak up.

Kensuke, with a slight eyeroll, soon got fed up with the silence and nudged Toji forward. "Go on, just say it already!" he quietly urged.

Toji gave the otaku a brief annoyed glare before he faced Shinji with a slightly glum look. Then, to Shinji's slight astonishment, Toji bowed. "Ikari, I'm sorry for hitting you twice. Please, hit me back!"

Shinji went from at first astonished to utterly dumbfounded at the jock's statement. "...Wait, what?!"

"Please!" Toji implored. "You've gotta slug one on me--otherwise, my honor won't be satisfied!"

"*Sigh* Sorry about this," Kensuke started to say. "It's a bit embarrassing, but just indulge him--he really takes this sort of honor code seriously."

"...I am NOT gonna hit you!" Shinji replied, taken aback by Toji's insistence. "That's the dumbest thing I've ever been asked! If anything, I should've apologized to you about accidentally injuring your sister before! If I'd done better in the EVA, she wouldn't be taking up a hospital bed right now!"

"But I'm the one who hit you first!" Toji further insisted. "You giving me a punch will square things, I mean it!"

"...*Sigh* Look, truth is, I hate violence," Shinji stated. "If it'll make you feel better, how about instead of me hitting you, you just owe me one, okay? No one else gets hurt." He then held out his hand.

Toji, on giving it some thought, shook Shinji's hand. "All right, ya win. Call it in any time, I'll do you a solid."

"Fine with me," Shinji replied. "And really, I'm truly sorry my first sortie injured your sister. It was literally my first day on the job, I didn't have enough of an idea of what I was doing."

Toji and Kensuke grew very surprised on hearing this. "...Seriously?!" Toji asked.

Shinji nodded. "Hadn't even heard of an Evangelion or NERV or the Angels until then."

"And they just stuck you in the EVA like that?!" Kensuke asked, dumbstruck. "What the hell were they thinking?!"

"You know what they say--desperate times, desperate measures," Shinji replied with a shrug. "Ayanami wasn't in any condition to pilot, so they brought me in. And even then...well, the EVA did most of the work. I was actually out cold for the rest of the fight."

Toji and Kensuke's eyes widened further at his admission. "Whoa..." they both uttered.

"Anyway..." Shinji said, shifting gears in the conversation, "ever since I came here, it's mostly been getting settled and near-constant training sessions at NERV. I haven't really given myself the time to get to know the city better--or any other people here, for that matter. So...mind if we start over? I could use a friend or two."

Toji and Kensuke gave each other a brief look, before it was Kensuke's turn to extend a hand. "Deal," the otaku said as he and Shinji shook.

"Just one thing, though," Shinji started to say. "Please, for the love of Mike, don't bring up anything NERV or EVA. I'd really like to keep my work life separate from both my school and home life."

Kensuke felt his left eye twitch at this. "So, meaning--"

"Nothing about prog knives, Angels, plugsuits, the works," Shinji emphasized. "That's all I ask."

"Not even in vague terms?" Kensuke asked.

"Not even," Shinji said with a nod.

Kensuke's eye twitched slightly again, his mouth briefly imitating a fish's. "Uh...sure, sure, I can work with that," he said while crumpling a list of 'Questions on How to Join NERV as a Pilot' behind his back.

"Okay, now you're a real good guy in my book," Toji said with a chuckle. "He's been yammering on about NERV anything even before ya got here."

Kensuke pushed his glasses up slightly as a tiny gleam appeared in his eye. "Now then, there is something Toji and I wanted to ask you about..."

"What's that?" Shinji asked confusedly, noticing that Toji now had the same small grin Kensuke was sporting.

"Simply put..." Toji began to answer, "Why didn't you say anythin' about livin' with that total hottie?!"

"....Huh-wha?!" Shinji replied, a bit dumbstruck over his query about Misato.

"I mean, really, man," Kensuke chimed in, "when me and Toji dropped all those printouts off at your place, it was like running into an Angel! (Er, regular kind, of course.)"

"If she were an old baseball legend, she'd be Babe Ruth," Toji commented.

"If she were an American president, she'd be Babe-braham Lincoln," Kensuke added.

"All right already, I get it!" Shinji said. "I'm fifteen, not dead! And for crying out loud, she's my guardian! Besides, hate to break it to you, but aside from being A) 29 and B) totally out of your league, if you knew her like I do, you'd think differently!"

"Aw, c'mon--we can dream at least, right?" Toji offered with a shrug.

Shinji sighed, knowing it was going to be quite a conversation from there.

NERV HQ, later that afternoon...

Shinji walked through the hallways of NERV HQ until he found himself at the office of Dr. Ritsuko Akagi, chief scientist of all of NERV, as well as chief physician for the EVA pilots. Stopping at the doorway, Shinji gave it a polite knock.

"Come in," came the voice of the disinterested-sounding doctor.

Shinji walked into the room, doing his best to maintain his usual nervous appearance, which wasn't that hard, given he was still intimidated by a lot of NERV. "G-good afternoon, Dr. Akagi."

Ritsuko looked up and showed a bit of brief surprise over who had just entered. "...So, Katsuragi wasn't kidding," she said.

"Um...yep. I'm back. For good. Heh-heh," Shinji replied, hand absent-mindedly rubbing the back of his head.

"...At least you didn't come crawling back," Ritsuko noted as she returned her attention to her clipboard.

"Uh...thanks?" an unsure Shinji said. "A-anyway, I was told to report to you for an exam before I started sync testing again."

"Correct," Ritsuko affirmed. "Let me just wrap up a couple of things here, and we'll head over to the examination room. Don't worry, I won't poke, probe, or prod...Much..."

Shinji didn't know whether she was joking, and honestly hoped she was. Wanting to shift topics a bit, he gave a brief glance around the office, taking note of several certain pieces of décor, before his gaze returned to Ritsuko. "Sooo...you're a cat person?"

"I am," Ritsuko replied, not looking up from her papers. "I've got one cat, Miko, at home. The other is actually here with us right now--her name's Kitty III."

It was then that Shinji looked to his left, where he was mildly surprised to find a black cat sitting in a little cat bed on top of a filing cabinet, looking at him the whole time. "How'd I not notice this right away?" he quietly asked with a brief look in our direction. He then moved to pet the cat. "Hi there," he said to the creature, "are you a good kitty? You look like a good kitty--"

Kitty III responded to Shinji...by letting out a growl that was exactly like a very large jungle cat's. (A panther's, if one were to think more on it.)

"YIPE!" Shinji let out as he jumped nearly a few feet in the air. He did a double-take from Kitty III to Ritsuko, before nervously pointing at the former. "How?! With the big--?! And the little--?! And the--"

"Yes, she's a pretty unusual cat. Makes a good 'sentry' for my office," Ritsuko said. "I've had her since I was in high school--worked a summer job house-sitting for an American who owned a summer home in Kyoto. What was his name...? Right, Munster, Edward Munster. Used to bring his family in the fall, and they usually brought with them some really strange pets. He knew I liked cats, so one year, when their cat unexpectedly had kittens, as partial thanks for all the work I'd done, they let me keep one of them. In gratitude, I named it in honor of Kitty III's grandmother, the original Kitty. Anyway, she only reacts like that in the presence of either strangers or those she doesn't like."

Shinji gave Kitty III a nervous glance. "W-well, I sure hope I'm not someone she doesn't like..."

"Give it time, she'll warm up to you," Ritsuko said as she got up from her desk. "Now then, if you'll follow me..."

Half an hour later, Shinji, rubbing his left arm gingerly, was ruminating a bit on the exam he'd just undergone at Dr. Akagi's hands. Much, my ass! he grumbled mentally. He was making his way to the bridge in order to better acquaint himself with the techs; since they were his (and Ayanami's) support, he figured he'd do well to find out who among them might make for good informants once his spy missions started coming in. Once he reached Central Dogma, he let himself in and approached the three senior bridge techs from behind.

"Uh...hello," he greeted.

The trio turned with a slight start, having been engrossed in the combination of work and shooting the breeze among themselves that they didn't hear Shinji enter.

"Shinji? What're you doing here?" the bespectacled Makoto Hyuga asked.

"Something we can help you with?" Maya Ibuki, computer whiz and avid devourer of romance novels, asked in turn.

"Oh, no, nothing, really..." Shinji replied. "I just wanted to stop by, see how you guys were, and maybe get to know you a bit more--I mean, we'll be working together going forward, so..."

"I get ya, no sweat," the long-haired Shigeru Aoba said. "And look, man, I don't fault ya for going AWOL for a bit--if I was in your shoes, I'd have done the same."

"W-well, I can guarantee, I won't be running away any time soon--I owe it to you guys," Shinji said. "I mean sure, me and Ayanami--well, from what I'll supposedly see of her--do all the fighting, but you're our backbone here. I want to make sure we've got a good working relationship."

"Much appreciated," Makoto said, "why don't we start with some proper introductions..."

Soon, Shinji was chatting a bit with the bridge trio, though not for too long, given they were still in the middle of their shift. Yet in that brief amount of time, Shinji gleaned bits of info about each of them, from Makoto's own otakudom, to Maya's reading habits, to Shigeru's being a musician. As Shinji turned to exit the bridge, Ibuki offered to show him around HQ a bit more, deciding to take one of her breaks to do so.

"You sure it'll be okay?" Shinji asked.

"Positive," Maya affirmed. "It won't take long anyway."

"All right then," Shinji said before facing Shigeru. "Oh yeah, before I forget--do you know any good music stores in the city, Lt. Aoba?"

A slightly-smug grin appeared on the tech's face as he reached into his pocket and pulled his wallet out. "Do I? Little dude, ask, and my 'rolodex' is at your disposal." He then opened his wallet and unfurled a multi-sleeve business card holder, each containing a card for either a store or a dealer he knew, surprising Shinji and the others--mainly, by just how many were in them, considering the holder stretched out to a length that reached the very edge of Makoto's station.

"Thanks..." a minutely-stunned Shinji said as he gave the length of business cards a once-over. "I'll hold you to it." With that, he and Maya left the bridge.

From there, Maya took Shinji all over as much of the accessible parts of HQ. Through her, he got both reacquainted with facilities such as the locker rooms, the commissary, medical wing, and the testing labs, while also being introduced to the recreation facilities (which included an Olympic-sized pool), the green spaces outside the HQ building, and the offices of the human resources division. It was while passing one door in particular that Shinji's curiosity tingled.

"Um, Lt. Ibuki--what's in this room?" he asked, pointing to the door.

Maya, on looking at said door, answered him immediately. "Oh, that? That's the merchandising team for our PR division."

Shinji's eyebrows rose in surprise. "Merchandising?"

"Of course! Follow me," Maya said as she and Shinji entered the suite. In addition to the offices and cubicles already present, there was also a small kiosk full of NERV or Evangelion-branded merchandise. "Merchandising--where the real money from the franchise is made. Take a look--we put the show's name on everything." She then began pointing out some of the different products on the kiosk. "Evangelion t-shirts! Evangelion bento boxes! Evangelion shaving razors (both men's and women's)! Evangelion, the gashapon series! Evangelion pillbox-style rocket launchers! (The kids love this one.) And last, but most certainly not least, Evangelion snap-together action figure model kits! (Produced in partnership with Bandai.) Right now, a mobile game's in development, and we're negotiating with Funko in America for a line of Evangelion Pops." Shinji stared at Maya as if she'd grown a second head. "Eh-heh, sorry--I used to work at the mall in high school, some things just never leave you. Anyway, PR figures that sooner or later, the existence of the Evangelions will be made fully public, so they wanted to get in on the ground floor for any possible merchandising revenue, in case we run into problems with our funding. (Personally, I think it's a bit wrong to profit off of saving the world.)"

"Y-yeah, I see where you're coming from," Shinji said. "And my fath-the Commander signed off on all this?"

Maya nodded. "He did--actually agreed with PR on their reasoning."

"*Clever bastard*..." Shinji muttered very quietly under his breath.

"What was that?" Maya asked.

"Nothing! Anyway, I'd better let you get back to your work, I need to be heading home anyway," Shinji said with a small wave. "I'll see you guys next time I'm in!" He then headed towards an elevator bank to take himself out of HQ. Misato was working late at this time, so Shinji was going to be on his own for the evening.

Once he was topside, when he was sure no one would pay him any mind, Shinji tapped on his watch, activating its communication functions (which he was able to intuit after fiddling around with it earlier in the day). "You get all that, 99?" he quietly asked.

"Loud and clear, 86," Kodama answered on the other line; the entire time he was at HQ, he'd had on the listening function of the earpiece she'd given him the day before. It was something of a recon mini-mission, to better test their lines of communication while he was underground in the Geofront, and they could safely consider it a success. "Now that all that's settled, rest up--you're going to be in for quite the 'orientation week' starting tomorrow."

"Right--er, or is it 'Roger'?" Shinji replied. "Should I start using 'Roger'? I mean--"

"Don't overthink it, 86," Kodama affirmed. "Over and out."

To be continued...
Featuring:
Hikari Horaki - Genesis Rodriguez
Toji Suzuhara - Joe Keery
Kensuke Aida - Griffin Newman
Ritsuko Akagi - Lake Bell
Makoto Hyuga - Randall Park
Maya Ibuki - Karen Fukuhara
Shigeru Aoba - Beck Bennett​

 

[Author0fntent]

Chapter 6.1 - The New Hire Orientation Affair, Part 1​

The following day saw Shinji taking off after school to a designated alternate entrance to CONTROL HQ. Beforehand, he'd called Misato, informing her that he'd be starting weekly tutoring sessions for certain subjects, and was meeting his tutor--in this case, Kodama--today, mainly for introductions. Misato, understandably wary, as soon as she and Shinji hung up, gave NERV HQ a call in order to have the folks in Section 2 do a quick background check on the oldest Horaki daughter, which to her satisfaction came up clean. (And not in the way that would make her suspicious, thankfully, for the college girl in question.)

Once he arrived at CONTROL, after handing in the new hire paperwork Bruce had given him the other day, Shinji was then handed a small bundle and was then told to change into it in the locker room of the floor of HQ containing the training facilities. Confused at first, Shinji headed to the floor, found the locker room, and donned the ensemble, which turned out to be a martial arts gi. He then reported to a training room, where upon first glance he found Kodama waiting for him, clad in a gi of her own. As he got closer to the entryway, a part of his mind, honed from all those years of minor childhood paranoia, nagged at him that there was something afoot. It was at the moment he crossed the threshold that his instinct was proven right.

"Haaaaaiiiii---!!!"

"YIPE!" Shinji uttered as he quickly ducked the chop that nearly got him from his left and hit the floor. He turned around and found himself looking at an older Chinese man garbed in his own martial arts outfit; the man appeared to be in his seventies at the most, and sported white hair and a white mustache, and in spite of his age, he appeared to be in great shape. The man slowly moved towards Shinji, who crawled back onto a mat laid out on the floor of what turned out to be a dojo setup. Soon the man launched into a swift overhead kick that headed towards Shinji like a guillotine's blade. Shinji, thinking fast, rolled out of the way, an action he repeated as the man made subsequent kicks. Shinji managed to stand back up and got into a defensive position, based on what scant television he'd seen in all the years before coming to Tokyo-3, a fearful look still on his face. Just when he thought the man was about to strike again, the man stood up, his hands folded in his sleeves as he looked to Kodama.

"Your assessment was correct," the man stated. "I have quite a lot of work ahead of me with this one. Still, I shall endeavor to get him in proper fighting shape."

"We appreciate you doing this for us, Sifu," Kodama replied with a slight bow.

"Umm...what's going on?" a confused Shinji asked. "With the chopping, and the high-kicking, and the Hong Kong dubbing...?"

"Shinji, meet your instructor in hand-to-hand combat: Mr. Cato Fong," Kodama answered while presenting the gentleman in question, "Up until his retirement, he acted as bodyguard and manservant to one of INTERPOL's most decorated investigators (as well as one of France's greatest detectives), Inspector Jaques Clouseau."

"Um...nice to meet you," Shinji said to the gentleman with a slight bow before facing Kodama. "You weren't kidding about me being in for quite the week."

"Oh, but we're just getting started," Kodama hinted with a knowing grin. "Wait'll you see what else we've got scheduled."

Shinji, on hearing this, couldn't help but swallow nervously.

To be continued...
Featuring:
Cato Fong - James Hong​

 

[Author0fntent]

Chapter 6.2 - The New Hire Orientation Affair, Part 2​

The next day saw Shinji at CONTROL again, this time with him called into the Smarts' office. Upon arriving, he found waiting for him Kodama, Barbara Ann, Max...and Max. Shinji blinked a couple of times, before rubbing his eyes. Yet even after that and shaking his head a bit, he finally got the hint that his eyes weren't deceiving him--there really was two of Max standing in the office before him.

"Who--?! How's--?! What's--?!" Shinji sputtered out confusedly.

"Good afternoon, 86," both Maxes greeted simultaneously.

"Consider this a little pop quiz concerning your observation skills, Shinji," Kodama elaborated as she walked to his side. "Give these two a good look, and see if you can determine who's the real Maxwell Smart."

Shinji, starting to understand the little challenge laid before him, recomposed himself as he looked over both Maxes with a discerning eye. He looked each over from head to toe, making mental notes of any differences he could find. Finally, after several minutes, he spoke up. "The one on the right's the imposter--Mr. Smart holds a cane with his right hand, but the one on the right puts weight on his left side more. There's a small but somewhat noticeable tic in the right one's right eye, which Mr. Smart lacks; and based on what I can make out of both left hands in each left pants pocket, the right one's index finger shows a more visible bump under the fabric, while Mr. Smart tends to keep all the fingers on his left hand level inside the pocket."

"Excellent job, 86," Max congratulated.

"Yes, excellent indeed, 86," the second one added as he then, to Shinji's surprise, pulled off what turned out to be a mask, revealing a dark-haired, slightly thin-faced Italian man underneath. "Bravisimo, Senor Ikari."

Shinji willed himself not to do a double-take on seeing this, instead merely turning to Kodama. "And he is...?"

"Your instructor in all things covert infiltration and disguise," Kodama answered.

"Pistachio Disguisey, at your service," the man in question introduced himself as he shook Shinji's hand.

"He comes from a long, long line of secret agents known for being masters of disguise," Barbara Ann explained. "His father, Fabrizzio, occasionally worked with CONTROL back in the day."

"Young Shinji, by the time we are done..." Pistachio eagerly began to say, "you will be able to assume any appearance you can think of with 100% authenticity, no matter the mission. I can see it now--a boy of a thousand faces!"

"Really? O-okay then..." Shinji replied, a bit nervous about what these lessons would entail. "What comes first?"

"First, il mio ragazzo," Pistachio started to explain, "we go over one of the basic fundamentals--how to apply make-up!"

Shinji's eyebrows rose at this. "A-all right--as long as it's hypoallergenic..."

To be continued...​

Featuring:
Pistachio Disguisey - Dana Carvey​

 

[Author0fntent]

Chapter 6.3 - The New Hire Orientation Affair, Part 3​

For the third day in a row, Shinji came into CONTROL HQ to meet another of his instructors for the other 'part-time job' he'd found himself with. This time, he was directed to another room on the main administrative level, one resembling a classroom, of all things. When he entered, he found Kodama waiting for him, along with another new-to-him face. It was another American man, in his mid-80s but still with some color to his hair. There was something about him that made Shinji think of a photo in one of the booklets of liner notes in one of the CDs of his 'deprogramming material' that he'd perused the other evening, something that he voiced almost immediately.

"Um, hello," he greeted the newcomer. "This may sound weird, but were you a famous pop star in your younger years?"

"You will not believe how often I get asked that," the newcomer said with a light chuckle. "But I did double for Frankie Avalon on one assignment--even my handlers noted how uncanny my resemblance was to him."

"Oh--now I see it," Shinji noted.

"Shinji, allow me to introduce you to Mr. Craig Gamble," Kodama chimed in, "veteran CONTROL operative currently in semi-retirement. He's agreed to help us get you into spying shape by teaching you some of his own...unique methodology."

"Um, nice to meet you, Sir," Shinji greeted in turn as he shook Gamble's hand. "What kind of spy were you, way back when?"

"Glad you asked, Shinji," Gamble replied as he pushed himself off of the desk he'd been leaning on. "You see, when I first started out in the business, I was a SIC man."

Shinji's eyes widened on hearing that. "Wait, you were sick?"

"That's right, SIC," Gamble answered with a nod.

"Sick with what?" Shinji probed further.

"Oh, no, no, no--SIC, short for Secret Intelligence Command," Gamble corrected him.

"It was one of a number of minor, smaller outfits set up by the U.S. government during the early Sixties," Kodama elaborated. "Mr. Gamble here was based out of the San Francisco branch office, the smallest out of all of them."

"I was given the number 00-and-a-Half during my time as an agent," Gamble added. "Although I admit, looking back, I wasn't a very effective one. I never could figure out why, seems like whenever I was sent on assignment, some girl would always catch my fancy and I'd trip over myself..." Shinji and Kodama exchanged a brief look, Kodama's informing Shinji that Gamble just uttered the very reason for why. "My one big break came during the summer of '65, when I stumbled onto the scheme of a mad scientist by the name of Dr. Goldfoot."

Shinji quirked an eyebrow at the mention of that name. "Dr. Goldfoot? Really? What, did he have some kind of golden prosthetic?"

"Actually, it was for the pair of gold lamé slippers he was known for wearing," Gamble replied. "Anyway, he and his assistant were building and sending out into the world a series of beautiful android women, all to seduce, marry, and then rob blind the richest men across the globe. And boy, you'd have to be dead or gay to not fall for them--I know I got suckered in by one in particular, a fine piece of machinery given the name Diane."

"Almost sounds like a bad movie plot," Shinji commented while absentmindedly scratching his head, almost in utter disbelief over how ridiculous said plot sounded. "How'd you thwart it?"

"I wound up teaming with one of Diane's victims, a young millionaire bachelor named Todd Armstrong," Gamble answered. "(Not the late actor, mind you.) It took some doing, but we managed to get the drop on his ambitions-though as a lingering consequence, I haven't been able to look at a gold bikini the same way since then."

"How'd you end up with CONTROL?" Shinji asked.

"Following the 'Goldfoot incident', it was decided that SIC would be absorbed into CONTROL, to make things more efficient for the U.S. intelligence sector," Kodama explained.

"I consider it a blessing in disguise--thanks to CONTROL's resources and training, I became a better agent," Gamble added. "Specifically, they taught me how to better utilize one of my key traits on missions, something I hadn't figured before then."

"And that is...?" Shinji asked.

Gamble responded by going to the chalkboard and started to write. Once finished, he pointed to the two words he'd written: "Obfuscating stupidity," Gamble stated, confusing Shinji. "Using my own bumbling nature to completely throw enemy agents off, a gamble (pardon the pun) that's paid off for me 99% of the time." He then walked over to Shinji and put a hand on his shoulder. "Now, I've read up on your file, so with you, we're going to help you hone a similar method. In this case, we're going to help you become a master of...obfuscating timidity."

"Basically, showing you how to weaponize your shyness," Kodama laid out simply.

Shinji looked between the two of them, before throwing a glance in our direction. "Somehow, I'm not going to feel okay about this," he said resignedly. "Then again, seems like it'll be useful to know the perks of being a wallflower."

"Funny you should say that," Kodama hinted as she handed Shinji a book. "A bit of extra reading material to help you along."

On giving it a look, a comical anime sweat-drop appeared by his head once he read the title:

The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky.

To be continued...

Featuring:

Craig Gamble - Frankie Avalon​

 

[Author0fntent]

Chapter 6.4: The New Hire Orientation Affair, Part 4​

While Shinji was on his way to CONTROL HQ today, something stuck out to him that he idly noted to himself. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but every so often, he'd see a different woman that seemed to have the same face as the one who preceded her. It started with an office lady waiting at a bus stop; at the next block, it was a barista at a café; then a couple of blocks later, it was a salesgirl putting together a mannequin in a boutique's window. This continued even as Shinji secretly made his way into HQ, when on passing by the receptionist's desk in the administrative wing, he again made mental note of yet another woman with the same face as the three he'd previously glimpsed.

"Good afternoon, 86," Barbara-Ann greeted as Shinji stepped into the Smarts' office, where they and Kodama were waiting for him.

"Good afternoon," Shinji replied with a slight bow. "Say, strange question, but have any of you ever had the feeling of deja vu?"

Kodama and the Smarts exchanged a slightly-confused look with one another.

"No, not really," Kodama answered while the Smarts shook their heads. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, on my way here," Shinji began to answer, "I could've sworn I saw four women who couldn't have looked any more different--except for their faces. They all looked the same--either it's just one really odd coincidence, or they all went to the same plastic surgeon."

Taking a moment to parse Shinji's words a bit, it soon dawned on the three of them what it was Shinji was talking about. "Now I remember, it's why you're here today," Max said. "We're having you meet with the third member of yours and 99's little field team."

"In fact, she's actually outside right now," Kodama added as she looked towards the door. "Come on in!"

The door opened, and in walked the receptionist Shinji had seen just a few moments earlier. He gaped a bit when he got a good look at her face, and it clinched it for him--it was definitely the same as the other three women he'd seen on the way here.

"Pleased to finally meet you, 86," the woman greeted with a slight bow of her own, before noticing his confused gaping. "Something up? See a familiar face?" she playfully posed. She then did a swift turn, and in an instant changed into the salesgirl, making Shinji's eyes widen. Another twirl, and she now took the form of the barista, causing Shinji's eyes to widen further with surprise. One more swift turn, and there stood the office lady, resulting in Shinji's eyes now as wide as dinner plates. "Of course, none of those are my real face, so if you'll just give me a moment..." She then did one last swift twirl, and before Shinji stood a young woman in about her early-to-mid-20s. She had long blonde hair held by a red headband, which matched the small choker around her neck. She wore a white minidress that had a blue shape cover most of the top, which then continued and slimmed out into a pair of shapes that wove around the middle portion of the dress's circumference until it connected back up into the back. The minidress also matched the pair of ankle-high heeled boots she also wore, with each boot sporting a blue ring at the top.

Shinji did a double-take from the woman to the others before asking the obvious question, "She's our third team member?"

"That's me," the woman affirmed. "I am the Hyper-efficient Observation and Neutralization Espionage Youth--or H.O.N.E.Y., for short."

"She's our premier cybernetic operative, a completely state-of-the-art android," Barbara-Ann added.

Hearing this surprised Shinji even more as he turned to H.O.N.E.Y. "Wait, you're a robot?"

"I prefer 'gynoid', but I'll let that slide considering we just met," H.O.N.E.Y. replied while briefly opening a panel in her right arm to show some of her inner workings.

"H.O.N.E.Y. is an even greater master of disguise than Senor Disguisey, able to blend in to any crowd with ease," Max emphasized. "She's also something of a legacy here at CONTROL."

"A legacy?" Shinji inquired.

H.O.N.E.Y. nodded. "My 'father' was CONTROL's original android agent, H.Y.M.I.E. He was originally built by KAOS's Dr. Ratton, only to defect when Max treated him like an actual human being. When I was created, I was inspired to follow in his footsteps, given the kindness CONTROL's shown him over the years."

"H.O.N.E.Y. will be acting as your incognito backup on missions," Barbara-Ann explained as she pointed to Shinji's watch. "Should you end up in any tight spots, hit the 'emergency call' button on your watch and H.O.N.E.Y. will be there in no time flat."

"At the moment, we're trying to figure out a good insertion point for her in order to keep an eye on you, as well as the other Evangelion pilot," Max added further. "Something that Section-2 of NERV does too little of, since you've managed to evade them each time you've come here. (I'm starting to wonder if NERV even has a training budget for its intelligence division at all...)"

"It needs to be a position where I can blend in without being given much scrutiny," H.O.N.E.Y. said. "Something so perfectly basic that nobody would bat an eye."

Suddenly, a thought occurred to Shinji. "Actually...I think I know where you'll fit in perfectly," he said.

"We're all ears," Kodama said in turn.

"You used to go to my school, right?" he asked her, to which she nodded 'yes'. "By any chance, did you have Nebukawa-sensei for your teacher?"

"I did," she answered. "That guy's a total rambler, all of his 'lectures' ended up with him droning on and on about life before Second Impact--listening to him is stronger than any sleeping pill. By the time I graduated, he was well on his way to retirement, and yet they pulled him back out when they started having staffing shortages, what with all the exits of so many people from the city." She shook her head slightly. "You don't know how much I feel sorry for you, Hikari, and the rest of your class..."

"Well, I don't know about you, but I think it's time Nebukawa-sensei got to retire for real, and make it stick," Shinji stated as he then eyed H.O.N.E.Y. "Ever consider a career in teaching?"

It was then that the blonde gynoid mirrored Shinji's knowing grin, as she soon got the gist of what he was suggesting.

-X-​

A couple of days later, when class began at Tokyo-3 Municipal Middle School, after Hikari performed her usual 'Stand-Bow-Sit!' call to order (a registered trademark of the class rep), the class found itself surprised when the school's principal, a balding middle-aged man with glasses, walked in instead of Nebukawa-sensei.

"Good morning, class," the principal greeted. "I'm here to inform you that as of today, Nebukawa-sensei will be fully retiring from the profession after thirty-five years." Immediately on hearing that, most of the class (save for Shinji, Hikari, and Rei Ayanami), after blinking in disbelief a couple of times, broke out into cheers and whooping over the prospect of not having to endure another sleep-inducing series of lessons from the doddering old fogey ever again. (Some even broke out party poppers and set them off.) The sound of the gong that Hikari kept in her desk brought them out of their joyful reverie as she immediately called the classroom back to order, indicating the principal still had more to say. "Thank you, Miss Horaki. *Ahem* Anyway, with his departure, a new teacher has been assigned to your homeroom beginning today." He then stepped to the side to allow someone to enter the classroom. "Please, treat her as you would with the utmost respect."

With that, the 'her' in question walked into the classroom, leaving most of the students (save for Shinji and Rei) gaping with surprise. She was a pretty young woman with her sandy brown hair held in a low-hanging ponytail, and wore a light blue cardigan over a white blouse; her long, knee-length skirt matched the cardigan, as did the pumps on her feet. On her face were a pair of glasses with stylish frames colored the same blue. Only Shinji knew who this newcomer was, pleased that he and the others were able to arrange things so that Nebukawa-sensei could not only go into retirement, but retire in style, leaving an opening for H.O.N.E.Y. to begin her now main undercover assignment.

Speaking of, the disguised gynoid greeted her now-students with a warm smile as she introduced herself. "Good morning, everyone, I'm so pleased to meet you all. You may call me Ms. Nagai."

To be continued...

Featuring:

H.O.N.E.Y. - Janice Kawaye
Principal - Richard McGonagle​