BABYLON RISING
Chapter 01: Neon Genesis Revisited
The land was dry, arid. There was no water, and even the moisture of dream-hands and dream-feet seemed to be sucked out by the beating sun, disolving his nature. Primeval sea, without water you are arid. Mummu, mother of all, you are arid, and you may give no life. In a sudden interstellar burst of wet, living data, the desert before him became a tropical oasis, no more a mirage than the dry, colourless world it replaced. Ki, she who is the mother of order and chaos; An has filled her, and the sky and earth are made one, separated by the blade of Ash. Paradise? Eden? No, Dilmun. Why?
"Negeltu." ("Awaken")
Shinji awoke with a start, the details of his familiar world resettling around him. Soon, he had forgotten about the strange dream, though something nagged at him. Something about the cieling.
"Wow, you're up early." He glanced over, his new caretaker stifiling a yawn as she slinked into the newly-cleaned kitchen, stretching in an ambiguously sensual manner. 'New' is a contraversial term in such situations -- Shinji had only been living with Misato for a week (not even, he thought), yet he already had formed a routine to rival even vague memories of any time before his move. She, on the other hand, was not yet quite accustomed to his presence, nor his love of order.
"I'm usually like this. I woke up earlier today because of an odd dream." He continued to tend to the breakfast.
Misato swallowed a giggle. "An odd dream, you say? Was I in this dream, hmm?" She purred.
Shinji blushed slightly, then answered in as pedantic a tone as he could. "No. I can't remember the dream very well, but it was very odd, and anything about it that could be... sexual... wasn't explicit enough for you to make a feature." He saw her choke a bit on her beer when he used such direct and cant wording without bashfulness.
To Shinji's surprise, Misato took far longer to recover from the shock than expected. She sat wide-eyed for nearly a full minute, then looked to the side and bit her lip silently. Does she have something she needs to tell me? He pushed the thought away, focusing on laying out the breakfast. Even Misato's cheer of "Ittadakimasu!" was restrained, and her beer chugging that followed had merely the pretense of normalcy.
Shinji finished breakfast quickly, nearly rushing out the door. Just as he was leaving, Misato called. "Shinji -- wait a moment." He paused.
"Here. It's a cell phone. In case we need to reach you, or you need to reach us."
"Thank you." He bowed, taking the cell, and waved behind him as he walked quickly off to school.
"It has begun."
The monolith opposite, Number 05, was the first to respond. "Yes. For the first time in 3'600 years, that being has Chosen."
"We could not hope for a better candidate. The Water Lord has been notoriously prickly to our plans, in some cases seeming to violate our ME GAL-LA-NI. I posit that this may be another snare by the Elohim Federation."
"We have no proof. Perhaps--"
The monolith labeled 00 emerged from the darkness, a deep, scratchy, popping-screeching sort of voice clanging with resonant authority. "Gentlemen. We can do nothing but posit. Deliberation is futile so early. We wait." Before anyone could argue, the mysterious shape faded away again with an occult sense of finality that even elder adepts and grandmasters dare not violate.
"Great gods, have mercy on our souls..."
Again, with the Second Impact... Sitting in class, Shinji had little to do except daydream. He did not have a window seat as the young Ayanami did, and though he had a computer, typing anything on it that did not resemble notes would attract unduly attention. Today, however, daydreaming was more pleasant and constructive than usual; despite the droning monotone, the textbook-perfect word choice of the professor mixed with his own dazed state led to a pleasantly developing word tree in his mind, like magnetic poetry on the fridge door of his soul. Just as he was admiring his sophomoric faux-serious word choice in calling his soul a freezer...
BZZ He looked up suddenly. My cell. Looking around, he saw that no one had heard him. He checked, and found an SMS waiting for him. He saved it without reading it, waiting until lunch period.
A glance up to the window-staring beauty giving him a preciously unusual glare gave him second thoughts. She looked away, and he opened the message, from an unlisted recipient.
HE WHO HAS TAKEN DOWN THE STARS, AND COMPUTED THEIR NUMBER. HE WHO WITH A WORD PILES THE FRUIT OF THE LAND PROSPEROUS TO THE SKY. OF THE LAND WAS SAID: NOT YET BREEDING GODS; BUT THE SEAL HAS BEEN BROKEN. A MAD GOD AWAKENS, AND YOUR VESSEL OVERFLOWS. WORD-RICH LORD OF THE WISE, IT IS YOU THE ANGELS SEEK.
He was about to delete it, considering it spam poetry from some religious cult, but something about the oddness of the situation and something about the wording struck him, and he kept it in memory. He had been through lots of wierdness in the past few weeks -- very real, obviously true wierdness -- and had grown to realize that something that seems too strange to be true can still tear your head off, and it will still hurt. At this point, his mind had been torn open by the prodding of metal leads and the sharpness and pain of a familiarly alien conciousness -- anything he experienced would be worthy of inquiry, since anything he experienced would be mundane in comparison to the feeling of syncronization and that link to a mind so unlike his own, yet so compatible to his being.
He found a second message. It was far more simple:
Meet me after school outside the entrance to the Prinbow box. - A. R.
A/N:
Just an idea that came to me randomly. If it's worth expanding upon, tell me.
P.S.: Much love to everyone at EGF who reluctantly beta'd and wished me luck. If you have any idea where this fic is going, tell me; you're either wrong, boring, convincing, or my new god. (Sorry gals -- there is no goddess but goddess. No pun intended on that "gal" quip. Oh hell, it's good enough that I can at least pretend I intended it.)