The Tattooed Shahrazad
The bandits had camped in some abandoned holdfast with their p[lunder. The rain came down in thick sheets but the clouds were thin and moonlight flowed into the half buried shelter.
Five girls and a chest were their bounty from the travelers they had attacked. A handful of gold's worth of loot and three men had died. It was a wash but at least the shares would be bigger with less ways to split.
The woman were alright. Four of the girls were no more than average, but the fifth was quite the sight. She had been in the lead wagon, where they had taken the chest from, presumably the leader's wench. She had long brown hair and the shape of her body was impressive, if nothing special. Her curves were pleasant to the eye, her chest full and high. It was her skin that was unique.
From her ankles to the base of her neck, even across her hands, every bit of her skin was covered in colorful tattoos of myriad images. A sigil was even drawn about the floral brand on her left leg.
The storm was strong, they would not move until at least morning. They all thought about the woman, but it was Orum who asked. The bloody twit.
"Oi, girl, what's with the ink?"
"This one's body is tapestry to tell an epic, master."
"Ugh. Is it long?"
"Quite."
"Don't get smart wit me girl."
"Would master prefer this one get stupid?"
"Oi!" Orum shouted and rose, hand on his knife.
"Orum." Their leader said, and the man stopped in his tracks.
"Yeah boss?"
"Shaddup."
"Yeah boss."
"Which epic is it?" The leader now asked, looking at the tattooed woman.
"The great war in which Gor and Earth fought together, warriors for the priest kings to defeat an enemy beyond even their great might."
"Bah, that's an old one, never happened."
"This one was there. As she tells it is how it occurred, fully and truthfully."
"Truly? How old are you girl?"
"Old enough."
"Fine." The boss said. He settled himself and set his sword across his lap. Of the four men who remained, only he wore the crimson of the warriors.
"Tell your tale girl, it will be something to do until the rain stops."
The girl rose so quickly some of the men grasped for their weapons. Her head forward, her long hair covered her face.
"Come with me masters, across the seas of time. This is the story of warriors…"
She raised her right arm, flashing a sword's blade from her elbow to her wrist in the moonlight.
"Of kings and ubars!"
The girl swung her left hand across her body, her fingers spread wide to show a golden crown across her palm, but only for a moment before her fist closed around it. There were lightning bolts across her knuckles.
"But it begins…
With a shake of her head her hair was over her shoulder, revealing her torso. She cradled her belly, as a pregnant woman might. A monstrous face was half covered in darkness. Menacing yellow eyes and great steel teeth around a blood red mouth.
"With a mother and a child."
At home with the Ikaris
"Tassanr?"
"Da! Da!"
"No no no, daddy is in the other room." Yui Ikari said, pulling the spoonful of food away from her infant son's grasping hands. "Can you ta-san-ehr? How about ta-ta? Can you say Ta-ta?"
The dark haired little baby shook his head and grunted as he strained to stand up in his high chair.
"Gah, child you are as stubborn as your damned father. Hmmmm…" Yui stuck the spoon back in the bowl of purreed vegetables, closed her eyes and took a breath. When she opened them again, she got a fresh spoonful, held it up for her son and then pointed at herself.
"Say… Kajira, oijih vana'she?"
"Ka…ka…"
"aye…"
"Ka-geeear-a!"
"That's my good boy!" Yui said with a grin from ear to ear and stuck the spoon in his mouth. "Such a clever little warrior."
"Yui…" Gendo Ikari said with a sigh as he stepped into the room. "What have I said?"
The dark haired woman shrugged her shoulders and sighed. "That you will deny him his heritage and rightful place as a man."
"Oh for… that is not what I said and you know it."
"It is what master meaaaant…" Yui said, rolling her eyes and her head along with it in an over dramatic gesture to go with her whining.
"Don't you even start." Gendo said, sitting across the table opposite from his wife and next to Shinji in his high chair. "And if you are going to call me master again, perhaps I should send you to fetch a switch for disobedience."
Yui's sat straighter, her eyes lighting up. "Promise?"
"Girl…"
Yui Ikari looked back to their son and fed him another spoonful. "He deserves to know his heritage."
"His heritage? Yui, we escaped from Gor. Escaped. We left the brutality, we left so that we could live in peace, so HE…" Gendo pointed at their son. "could grow up without ever having to fear what we did."
"Fear? Ha!" Yui set down the spoon and the jar of baby food. "You have forgotten what you were." She seethed, full of scorn. She stood, staring her husband down.
"Watch. Your. Tongue." Gendo said, unmoving.
"Or what?" Yui snapped in the Gorean language he so hated. "Your name struck fear into the hearts of men and would again if you would stop trying to forget why! You could rule here like a king if you would just stop denying what you are."
"I was a murderer and a thief."
"You were a man!" She screamed, hands like claws trying to dig into the table.
Gendo grew very silent and glared at his wife. Years of conditioning made Yui avert her eyes and adopt a submissive posture. Her hands were off the table, grasped together behind her and her head was down. One bare foot in front of the other, like a dancer, she lowered herself before her husband. Though she may prod him, speak freely to him, even direct and manipulate him there were lines one did not cross. She had demeaned him, insulted him.
"A real man does not need to loot or kill. Just like I don't need to beat you now." Gendo said. He pushed his glasses up his nose, looking at the top of her bowed head as he spoke. "A real man simply needs to protect what he has. … and besides dictators and pirates have a tendency to die quickly on Earth. It's one more reason why I like it."
"But it's so boring." Yui complained.
"Boring is safe."
"You are... Right. I'm sorry. I think Shinji is done, I am going to put him down." A small gasp caught at the back of her throat. "I mean if I may, mas-"
"Go, you don't need my leave."
With that Yui swept her son out of the high chair and padded out of the room, eyes down. Twenty minutes later she found Gendo in the home office they shared. Her desk was low to the ground with stacks paper all around and a small cushion where she sat, all over a plush carpet. Gendo's side had a steel sitting desk and swivel chair with carefully arranged files.
Gendo did not hear his wife approach. She had been far too well trained for that. Barefoot and unbelled, she glided without a sound. When she did make noise it was familiar and deliberate. He had realized after encountering the creatures when he first came to earth, that women such as Yui were a bit like cats in that way. They may be perfectly silent, when they made their presence known it was calling for attention.
Yui's call came as her knees rapped on the floor, followed by the faint squeak of friction between skin and polished hardwood as she spread her legs.
Gendo, for his part, did not turn his head to look. He had his reasons, chief among them being that meeting her behavior that way would be encouraging her. Even if that had not been his concern though, he would not have looked. Even if this had been long ago and on another world, he would not have looked. These reasons were rather similar, both were born of a desire to correct behavior.
Then, had she come to his chambers and so brazenly demanded he cease what he was doing and pay attention to her, he would have not looked at her until he had finished and found a whip.
Now though, Gendo had asked her, then told her, then ORDERED HER, not to behave this way. To give the slightest reward, the barest look, would be to encourage it further.
"This girl is sorry for speaking back Master, please forgive her." She said in her most pleasant voice. Soft, high, and with special, almost musical in its affection, emphasis placed on that word. Master. And every bit of resistance he had broke.
He loved her, by the sardar he loved her. He had not loved her from the moment he laid eyes on her. His love was not like a raging bonefire, nor the first hints of spring. Nothing so trite.
He had spent most of his life on his home world at sea, on wooden ship and under canvas sail. Men were born and died. Cities rose and fell. Homestones were sworn over and sundered. The sea though, the sea was eternal.
In his love he was the ship that plowed the waves. She was the sea.
He looked down and to his left. She was not wearing the skirt and cardigan from before. Instead she wore silk. It was the finest sort, from the spiders of the forest near Ar. It was dyed such that it was a pale grey at the shoulders and descended to a true sable color at the very bottom hem.
Over each shoulder, a piece, no wider than the knuckles of her petite hands, came together to provide meager covering to her chest, the two parts held just at the border of covering her breasts, but never meeting, by golden chain that sparkled and danced in the light. He knew the garment, the back was the same but allowed to spread wide to expose most of her back, a very alluring sight with a slim and tight woman like her.
The two parts came together, woven in their shape, not stitched, far below the belly button. Had the slightest weight of her son's birth remained, it would be visible. There was only the bare definition of her abdomen, visible only because of how the light fell upon her belly. Had the garment split any lower the tip of her sex would share that light. Groomed as she kept herself, there was only bare flesh. In the rear the part would have come together below the tail bone, exposing the upper reach of the gap between the buttocks.
She kneeled in Nadu, a pleasing if basic way for a girl to present herself. Her heels were up with her toes flat to the floor and the arches pressed together. Her knees were spread far enough to quarter a circle and her hands laid, palms up and fingers straight, on her thighs. Her back was straight, her shoulders back and her head bowed, her short and loose hair obscuring her face from her husband, her master.
She let out a happy sigh when his rough hand, still calloused despite nearly a decade away from home, landed on her head.
"When a beast misbehaves, her owner is more at fault than she. It is his burden to maintain training and discipline. I have not done that, you need not apologize."
His hand moved to her cheek and Yui lifted her hands, holding onto his arm. This was better, this was how it had always been and how she wished it could still be.
"Vana'she…" She purred.
"Ja jula kajira."
Yui moaned, loudly and from the back of her throat like a growl. His glorious slave girl. That is what he had always called her just before…
Gendo's soft patting turned into an iron grip and he hauled Yui up by her hair, silk unfurling beneath her to hang past her knees.
...Just before he did that.
"Fora." He commanded, speaking through a toothy smirk. Gendo was not a man to smile often, but her favorite was that cruel sneer.
"A kajira fori va Vana'she!" Yui pleaded. It was sweet release to speak this way, for him to handle her so. When he replied with a snarl and a snap of his teeth she offered no resistance as he pulled her to his desk. His breaths were deep, loud, hungry. With a sweep of his arm he sent papers, binders and pens to the floor.
Yui moaned again when he pulled her to the desk by her hair. She was hungry too. She wanted him, she wanted her master. She wanted the vicious raider she had fallen in love with so many years ago. The man, the true and real man of Gor who had taken her, taken and remade her will as his very own, who had tamed her and shown her what it truly was to be a woman.
He still had one hand in her hair, the other working open his trousers. Yui reached over head and grabbed the edge of the desk in each hand. Before he could finish, she wrapped her legs about him and pulled him against her. The silk pushed to one side, she could feel the coarse fabric of his clothes, the cool metal of his belt buckle and his sharp zipper pressed against her flesh and it felt so damned good!
Gendo worked himself free of his pants. His hand left her hair, reaching for metal around her neck, but there was none. His growling breath turned to an irritated roar. Clawed fingers dug into her breast instead, shoving the silk aside. The slave girl squealed beneath him.
In the moment they coupled until the last afterglow of ecstasy faded, they were not over a desk in an office in Japan on the planet Earth. They were on a tarn ship on rolling waves, or in an alcove of The Four Chains, that seedy tavern back in Port Kar.
They were, for those sweet moments, home.
When it was over, Gendo held himself up, both hands planted flat on his desk. His shirt had left at some point, he did not recall when. His glasses were gone too. His chest heaved as he drew deep breaths.
There was a time when he could have done that for hours. When he would have left her chained in place, called for another girl to bring him a cup of paga, then been back about it.
Now his throat burned for air and he felt like he could sleep then and there. He was not the man he once was. Looking at his wife though, chest rising in deep breaths beneath him, she was still just the same. The same tight and powerful body, the same eyes, at once soft and comforting but an instant later sharp and hungry.
Yui shivered as the last wave of pleasure withdrew, like foam along the shore pulled back into the sea. That was the man she loved, that had been the man who had owned her. As the world came back into focus, so did too the past tense of her description. The man he once had been.
His skin had become more pale and his muscles smaller. He had once had this dark and swarthy quality, with smoldering eyes that made her feel warm within her belly. Now he looked tired, as if the strength to master her, once the most trivial of efforts, drained him horribly. She wanted more from him. She wanted him again, for him to take his pleasure from her screaming body once, twice, three times more. She wanted his seed to quicken, to bear another child for him. They had talked of another, they both wanted a little girl too. She saw it as an ultimate act of service.
But she would not have him again today. He was tired, worn. In that moment she pinpointed what had changed in how she felt about her husband.
She was disappointed.
He was no longer Gendo of Port Kar. Though he may regain himself and for a moment be her master, he was her pirate king no longer. He was Gendo Ikari, GEHIRN vice department head, of Earth.
"Yui, what is wrong?"
Yui realized she must have let her face show her thoughts and quickly smiled. "Nothing, nothing, my mind wondered is all."
"Are you sure? Are you okay?"
Yes, her man of Gor was gone and the man of earth was now going soft inside her. She was not okay but her master could have seen that at a glance where the man between her legs might need a neon sign. He expected her to say something as he pulled up his pants, but a piercing scream from down the hall saved her from concocting a believable lie.
"Oh… Shinji." Gendo said, quickly stepping back from her and closing his trousers. Yui slid from his desk without a word, near silent steps taking her to her son's room.
Oh he most certainly had his father's features. He would have that build, that hard jawline, those smoldering eyes. Though his were blue and looked to be staying that way. Yui sighed as she lifted him to her breast, pulling the silk aside with her finger and letting it rest on his cheek once he had latched. If he grew up here he would end up just like him, without the master of his domain between the helpless babe and the disappointing man.
If he grew up here.
Yui had thought she would be glad to be "home" on Earth. Her happiness had lasted perhaps a year. This was not home. It was soft, boring. Boring, dull people going about their boring dull lives. Even the insane old men she pretended to work for just wanted infinitely boring infinite order with themselves as gods.
She looked down at her son.
He would not be among them she decided. Gendo could bluster all he wanted. Her son would know what it was to be a man, a master, a warrior.
She kissed him on the forehead. "Ja oijih Vana'she rastar."
There were plans to be made, missives to be sent. Those she needed to speak to knew her as kajira, she did not know if they would even acknowledge her without her master. They could even report to him what she was doing.
Those were concerns for another time. For now she pulled little Shinji closer to her chest and began to softly hum a lullaby from a million miles away.
"YOU KNEW!"
Gendo Ikari screamed and slammed his fist up against the transparent wall that separated the holding cage from the control room. He was alone. He had ordered everyone else out after… after the experiment took an unexpected turn.
Growling through clenched teeth he drove his first into the thick polycarbonate again, so hard broken skin left a bloody print where his knuckles landed. His right hand was against the wall while his left held the crumpled paper.
She left a note, just where she knew he would find it if something went wrong but where he would be too busy to notice before the contact experiment started. Folded just so and sealed with red wax stamped with a k. Her handwriting was made of perfect quill strokes in the very language he had forbidden her to use and teach their son. Because everything with her had to be so damned poetic, just the perfect symbol for every situation.
… We will need a warrior. You cannot raise him here, nobody can. Such men cannot grow here as it is. Perhaps when this is all over they may again, but this world is wrong and we have been complacent in making it so.
I have made arrangements that, if everything has worked as it should, should even now be being carried out. If you want as I do, you will caution Kyoko to do the same. The children are not safe from THEM here and you know who their true allies, their true masters, are.
I do not do this to be cruel. I know you, as you once were, so powerful and strong, are able to shoulder this burden. My worst mistake was to bring you here and rob you of all that made you so glorious. But had I not, we would not be as we are, in a position to change everything.
I love you Gendo of Port Kar. I know in this moment that must be hard to believe, but I swear on our homestone it is true. I swear by the cruel and eternal sea it is true. I swear by the sardar and my collar and brand and every god and spirit on Earth and Gor I love you.
This is for the best. That we suffer so more than have ever lived may be born.
And many years passed... Meetings
Misato Katsuragi stood alongside her friend and colleague Doctor Ritsuko Akagi, flipping through pages stapled to a black folder branded NERV and CLASSIFIED. They were in the foyer of one of the many industrial freight elevator shafts that fed the Geofront. Well okay, if one wanted to be pedantic, it was a funicular since it was on a slanted shafter instead of vertical, but nobody actually used that word anyway.
"So…" she began, and proceeded to not really go anywhere.
"Yes?" The doctor replied.
"He is from another planet."
"Technically he is from Earth, he was born here."
"Uuhuh…" Yes, he was from Earth. The son of Commander Gendo Ikari and Yui Ikari, former evangelion project head. If the file was to be believed though, after his mother perished during an experiment, he was taken to another planet. Another planet, hidden within the solar system, opposite of earth in the same orbit. And that wasn't where it got weird, oh no. This planet was ruled by a race eons more advanced than humanity.
And they kept the humans living there at a pre industrial level, with no guns or internal combustion related technology.
And some jackass had been writing books about it that got published here as shitty pre-impact pulp novels.
"So what is going to happen, flying saucer just comes out of the sky, drops the pilot and leaves?"
"If all goes according to plan, yes."
"Riiiiiight." Misato snapped the folder shut with a thump. It was at least a hundred pages, she would get to it later.
"You don't sound convinced."
"Oh what's not to believe..." Misato said, holding her hands up with a shrug. "Aliens, secret planets, little kid raised since he could walk to be a warrior, oh of course it all makes sense! It was the illuminati that kept it all secret, right? Or was it the lizard people? Where did the mole people become involved again?"
Ritsuko grinned as the whole room began to rumble with the elevators approach. "Nay nay so you say oh ye of little faith. Aren't we working for a secret organization putting children in giant robots? Doesn't that sound like a cliche anime?"
The rumble of the elevator filled the room as the platform came into view along the slanted shaft. As it came into the light, Misato could see it was filled edge to edge with armed men in camouflage fatigues, painted faces above rifles strapped across their chests.
Ritsuko had her hands in the pockets of her lab coat. She leaned over to bump Misato shoulder to shoulder.
"So why not a bad pulp novel?" She said, but Misato heard just whisps of noise above the din of the elevator.
"What?!" She yelled, her hands about her head, the folder over one ear.
The platform stopped with a BANG and suddenly there was only silence in the cavernous shaft. Commander Ikari stood within the mass of soldiers, one hand pushing his glasses up his nose and the other stuffed in the pocket of his open jacket.
"Captain, are you ready?"
Misato stuffed the folder under her arm and saluted, clicking her heels together.
"Sir, yes sir!"
The commander only nodded and turned, the soldiers keeping the way open for her to join him. Mistato went to give the folder back to Dr. Akagi, but the blond pushed it away.
"Keep it, you are going to be working with the guy, read up."
"Where are you going?"
"Going to see what I can do with Zero. We just got it out of bakelite this afternoon after the last fiasco. With the third arriving, we aren't going to try the first in One again, so the commander wants Zero ready as a possible back up unit. The vice commander wants my report by 1700 tomorrow."
With that, they turned away and parted. Misato joined the commander, soldiers closing ranks around them while Dr. Akagi went back down the hall she had come.
Even after being raised in one of the furthest elevator shafts, it was still another hour of trucks negotiating winding back roads in the hills. The trucks were closed like armored vehicles and she and Gendo rode alone, the seats along each side of the vehicle empty but them sitting across from each other near the front. The commander just crossed his arms over his chest and shut his eyes, so in the dim light she read through the folder Ritsuko had given her.
The front page had been a summary, handwritten by her friend who remembered her awful study habits. Going into full detail in the dossier proper did not make it any more believable.
A hidden planet, called Gor, shared Earth's orbit around the sun. It was kept there by artificial means, and always directly opposite to keep it out of sight. The ruling species, the Sardar, occupied only a small mountainous region on the largest continent. The rest was given over to a host of many species, some sapient, that these aliens had collected for reasons unknown. Humanity was just one of at least three intelligent races living under the Sardar's watch.
The humans of Gor had been picked out and brought from many different eras and cultures and analogs could be found from the Romans, arabian tribesmen, the ancient Norse, aboriginal peoples of the americas, even warring states era Japan and more. There was something of a cultural stasis, these people reflecting ways of life which had disappeared on Earth, maintained by rules the Sardar applied to every being on Gor.
The rules were simple and it was hypothesized meant to keep intelligent species from destroying themselves, either through warfare or overgrowing limited resources.
Among them was that no explosives or firearms are permitted. It was noted that combustion engines were forbidden as well, possibly under the same rule.
While the full rules were not known, the document went on to say, generally chemical power was no more advanced than oil lamps, and windmills grinding grain was still seen as a new invention in some areas and was only recently gaining acceptance. There are known to be solar powered lamps, but there were not popular and the mechanism behind their construction and operation was unknown. Transport and many kinds of manufacturing were comparable to classical mediterranean methods.
There was a footnote here and Misato followed it down to the bottom of the page, where the author helpfully explained 'for the uneducated' that meant ancient Greek and Roman civilization. She felt insulted for a moment, but decided the writer at least knew his audience.
The author, Misato was not sure who wrote the briefing exactly, was quick to point out that by no means should the humans of Gor be considered backward. Thier material and medical science was quite ahead of Earth. The 'civilized' people of Gor are known to construct their cities of massive stone towers, built without mortar and connected by high bridges.
While the extent had not been discovered, it was known that a medical treatment, known as the stabilization serum, prolonged human life. It was said, this was not confirmed though, that it had been invented five hundred years before the present time, and there were some people still alive from that time, unchanged since undergoing the treatment. Few diseases still menaced the people of Gor.
This was all an introductory chapter to the longer document. Misato tried to read more but the writer had a very annoying style, frequently repeating himself and going on long winded digressions. She spent the rest of the ride doing as the commander was and catching a few minutes of fitful sleep before the trucks came to a halt.
Another hour following negotiating the thick woods in the dark on foot, the trees too thick for the trucks to continue. Finally they had reached a clearing, nearly a hundred meters wide, and she noted, a strangely perfect circle. The commander had led the way, without a map, compass, or even a flashlight. LIke it was from memory, like he knew the place by heart.
Misato checked her watch, pressing the button on the side to make the digital face light up. It was 23:58.
"Sir." Misato said. She stood behind and to the left of the commander, who himself was some ways in from the perimeter, about halfway to the center of the clearing. The commander was looking up at the night sky. With no real settlements in the vicinity of the city, once one left Tokyo-3, the night sky was clear and full of stars.
"Yes captain?"
"When is the rendezvous supposed to take place?"
"At the twentieth hour, midnight."
"Um, Sir, that would be the twenty fourth hour. Twenty-hundred is 8 PM."
"Not for them."
"Uh, yeah... " The silence was kind of awkward. The commander might as well have said black was white. She still wasn't going to try and correct him. Instead she looked up at the sky with him.
"So anything else I should know?"
"Did you not read the file?"
"I… Some of it"
The commander let out a very disapproving sounding 'hmph'.
"Captain, your new subordinate will not be like the males you know. In some ways he will be far more mature, but in others he will be like a child taking first steps. Do not be too concerned about his fitness for combat, that has been seen to. In all other things, we shall see. Do not underestimate him, but at the same time, do not assume he sees a situation in the same way you might."
Well that wasn't cryptic at all. "Yes Sir."
One star began to twinkle a little brighter than the others. Then it began to grow. One light became many, and the circle of lights that formed drowned out the form of the craft until it was right above them, blotting out the rest of the sky. There was only light. No noise, no wind, not a single leaf disturbed on the clearing floor. The center and lowest point of the craft was no more than a meter off the ground, but the edge and its ring of lights was still high above their heads.
It was a flying saucer. Just floating there and bathing the forest in brilliant white blue light that felt brighter than the sun.
There was nothing for a time, until a seam of light formed and outlined a rectangle against the smooth metal skin. It slowly began to drop, revealing a ramp. The commander spoke again.
"Captain."
"Yes Sir?"
"Do not speak out of turn, there are things I am unsure of in this encounter."
"With all due respect Sir…"
"Captain. Silence."
The commander had not looked at her for the entire exchange. He had not moved at all until he raised a hand to punctuate his command.
The ramp stopped, not touching the ground but just above it, Misato noticed. There was grass and leaves there and not a single blade was bent. The light from within was just bright enough that as two figures cut into the light, she could only see their shadows as they descended the ramp. One was a good deal taller than the other.
"Hail Gendo! It has been too long my friend!"
Misato had never seen Gendo do what he did next. He normally showed nothing of his internal feelings at all, but the slump of his shoulders and the pained groan said volumes. His response was curt and full of tension.
"Mr. Cabot. You were not expected."
They were stepping off the ramp now and Misato could finally see them as the ramp closed behind them. Two men, well a man and a boy.
The elder looked around two meters tall. He had european features and his shoulder length hair was an orange blond, like red bleached by the sun. It stood out against his deeply tanned skin. He wore robes, layered over one another like a kimono, cut at his knees and bound at his waist with a broad leather belt. There was a sword at his hip, dark leather and worn steel was all that Misato could see of it. It was a western sword with a wide crossguard and a round pommel. Oiled leather boots covered from his feet to his knees. She could not tell how old he was, but he was definitely too old to be the polite.
The smaller one walked behind him. In contrast to the confidence this Cabot character exuded, the other looked like a weary animal. He walked with one foot always turned, so that no matter how he stepped he was in a stable fighting stance. His shoulders were forward and his head up, he looked like a cat with his hackles up, ready for a fight or to run. His breathing was shallow and shaking.
This one was the pilot, Misato thought. Deep blue eyes were framed by dark bangs that fell to his cheeks. Most of his hair was pulled back and bound at the base of his skull. Those eyes were darting back and forth between her and the commander. He had a sword too, hanging from a belt just like his companion's. It was on his left, and his right hand was across his belly, fingers flexing like a spider negotiating its web above the pommel.
He looked… scared.
The pair was right in front of them now. Gendo did not bow, extending his hand to shake instead. Of course, the great Gendo Ikari, Commander of UN NERV forces, bowed to no one. Mr. Cabot took the offered hand, but it was strange. He grabbed Gendo by the wrist, not the usual way. The commander seemed fine, and returned the gesture. After one pump though, the visitor suddenly pulled the commander forward and wrapped a thick arm around him.
Misato raised a closed hand to her mouth to stifle ny reaction that could get her in trouble. The commander was very much displeased and she could see his jaw move as he ground his teeth. His entire body had gone tight and she imagined it was all he could do to not order the men surrounding men to shoot this stranger. Commander Ikari, bear hugged and not doing a thing about it.
"My friend, it is good to see you again. I am so sorry I could not express my sympathies when I heard what happened to…"
It was then that the commander shoved the man away with a strength Misato had not thought the commander had. He nearly stumbled over backwards before he regained his footing. The boy's hand gripped his sword, but the elder raised a hand and looked at him and that was all it took to put the young man at ease.
"Gendo…"
"Never speak her name, Tarl Cabot. Do what you have come to do and leave." The commander's voice was like cold stone again. Like always. Emotionless and full of contempt for a world of lesser beings who lacked his single minded determination.
Tarl Cabot, that is what Gendo had called him, stood up straight. He looked almost hurt at the commanders brusqueness. Gendo had been like that as long as Misato had known him, it was what everyone expected. Perhaps this strange man had known him when he was different.
"Of course. Ubar." Tarl said, the last word in a sneer. He placed hand on his young companion's shoulders and gave him a gentle shove forward. "Well, introduce yourself to your father and his lady."
"Um, I'm not…" Misato said, almost on reflex. 'His lady' sounded like she was there as the commander's arm candy. Gendo's gaze turned to her and while his face was emotionless as ever, the way light flared off his glasses when it shouldn't have told her he noticed the disobedience. At this point though, cowing to it would just reinforce what she was trying to dispel. She was the senior military leader for the branch, not a trophy.
Misato brought her heels together and saluted.
"Captain Misato Katsuragi, Head of Military Operations for NERV Japan, Tokyo-3."
Tarl's eyebrows raised and he nodded before crossing his chest with his right hand in a fist over his heart.
"Tarl Cabot, of Bristol, thought lately of Ko-Ro-Ba. A pleasure."
"Likewise." Misato returned and dropped the salute.
The younger man huffed and all three adults look at him.
"Nerai petripa bena na diokis a raraia."
Tarl's response was clearly displeased by the look on his face and his tone. "Yes, women do command warriors here. Speak english or practice your japanese. It is rude to speak in another language in front of those who do not understand and I raised you better than that. And besides, it is the coward's way to insult someone, a woman no less, when she cannot hear. It is unbecoming of a warrior."
Tarl put a hand on the boy's shoulder and gave him a push forward. "Now introduce yourself, come on."
The dark haired boy shrugged the hand off then straightened up and crossed his fist over his heart as Tarl had.
"Tal, I am of Shinji of Ko-Ro-Ba, warrior."
Tarl cleared his throat. Shinji glared at him then continued.
"That is to say, cadet of the 5th rank. I am to report to the senior warrior caste official in this city and apply to formally be granted caste status. If he approves of my training and experience, then with his consent I will be a warrior in full."
"Well then, that would be me." Misato held out her hand. "Welcome to Ear-..."
It was at that moment that the rather bright blue light of the saucer was utterly was washed out by the blindingly pink that was, briefly, a new sun on the horizon.
Then the alarms began. From Misato and the commander's pocket. From the every soldier, and in the shrieking sirens from the city many miles away.
It seemed so petty now, the obvious dislike Gendo had this man who had returned his son. The subtle insult of the boy not even claiming his family name. Even the disregard for her both Ikaris showed.
Doom was upon them. The terror only she had seen and lived had returned.
When the light had faded, everyone had turned to the East, from where it had come. A fire had started, a conflagration that spread until it stretched across the horizon, the red and yellow glow lighting up the night. It was on the east side of the clearing where she stood with these three men: The father, the son, and the stranger.
She stepped towards the fires, the turned to them, the burning night behind her.
Shinji was wary of this place. It was strange. This father he did not remember, and this woman who called herself the leader of warriors for the city. The men in the darkness he wasn't supposed to see. And now the power to set the land ablaze with seemingly only bright light.
Was this Earth in all its wonder? Why could they not defend themselves? Why did they require a man who had so recently been only a boy to protect them? And how was he to fight something which could do that?
"Shinji."
She said his name. She had seemed… unserious before. The type to make light of an event to relieve the tension. Now the fire behind her was nothing compared to the hot, boiling rage in her eyes.
"I am your commanding officer. When I give you an order, you will obey."
Shinji felt a tingling excitement come over him. There was a drama here, like in the epics and the sagas. This was the start of something. What he did not know, but he knew that it was not something he could run from or deny.
"Aye."
"I have your first order." She said. She took a half step back so she was in profile to him now, looking at him over her left shoulder. Her right hand was raised, pointing at the fires behind her.
"Kill it. Annihilate it. Destroy it. Do that and I will call you whatever you want."
He stood proud, left hand clenched around the scabbard of his sword, his right arm across his body as he worked his fingers over the grip. "I am your sword."
"What do you mean you don't have a sword for him?!" Tarl fired the latest volley in the continuing battle of the passionate red head and the taciturn commander, while Misato groaned and pinched the bridge of her nose. It was going to be a long night.
"There were production delays."
The spacecraft had turned off its lights and taken on a mirror finish after the first signs of the angel attack. It meant to wait out the chaos. With their own lights on, the hour it had taken to enter the woods was a twenty minute walk out. Misato had seen the commander trying to walk closer to the boy, Shinji, but the young man always looked at his father with eyes like a cat on edge, and moved to put Tarl between them.
"Well what do you have then?"
"We have a knife."
It had still been nearly an hour back to the nearest elevator. The commandos had been left and it was now the four of them, Herself, the commander, and the new arrivals, hurrying through the sterile white halls of the geofront. The whole way, frenzied radio messages were exchanged, half of which neither side could understand a word of. Once underground it was hopeless, the walls were too thick. Within the geofront, only land lines were viable.
Under the flourescent lights, Misato had a better look at the new pilot. The belt he wore held a red tunic, it looked like wool, to his body and he wore leather sandals that wrapped around his calves. Between the hem of the tunic falling near his knees, the short sleeves going almost to his elbows, and the wide head hole exposing his collarbones and the top of his chest, the effect was to make the tunic look far too big on an overall… slight, boy. In the darkness he had looked like maybe he was just wearing a baggy jacket, but in the light he was not an impressive sight. There was no baby fat on his face, he did not look like a small child, in fact he looked mature for sixteen years old… He just lacked a certain gravitas she had expected of someone who had gone off to train as a fighter for so long.
Unable to reliably reach the commander, the army had thrown everything they had at it activated the perimeter defenses. All it did was prove what Misato had always assumed. They were utterly worthless against what was coming. When they had stopped at an emergency phone for an update, they found out an N2 mine had only made the angel pause. It was regenerating even now under the cover of its AT field.
And the entire time, Gendo Ikari and this Tarl Cabot had been bickering.
"A knife! You send the boy away for 14 years and all you have ready when he returns is a knife!"
Gendo stopped and shoved the much larger man against the corridor wall, his hands balled up in the lapels of his robes.
"I did not send him away! You stole him!"
"How is it theft when his mother asked, all but begged, that I foster him?"
"She had no right!"
"She didn't want him to end up like you!"
Gendo stepped back from Tarl.
"Don't paw me with confused reason Gendo of Earth. You…" Tarl began to snarl, hand reaching for his sword.
"With all due respect girls..." All three men turned to Misato as she barked her interruption, hands on her hips. This little pissing contest was slowing them down and there was an apocalypse to be prevented. There was no time for this.
"You are both very pretty but right now we have to concentrate on saving the world, so if you are both done, get your stockings straight and let's GET MOVING!"
Gendo Ikari stared at the captain. Tarl Cabot stared at the captain, his jaw moving up and down but making no sound. Shinji was slack jawed and looking from the two men to the captain and back.
Gendo Ikari had cultivated his organization to live in fear of him and one of his senior officers had just spoken to him in a way he had never even thought to plan for.
Shinji Ikari had never heard a woman speak that way to men before. He had heard women angry before to be sure, to speak their mind certainly, but never to question the manhood of not just a social better, but from everything he could tell her direct supervisor. If Tarl was to be believed he was Ubar, he ruled the entire city!
Tarl Cabot, for his part, was grateful he had chosen to forgo the traditional tunic like his ward wore. The breeches and layered robes provided ample material to hide his more physical reaction. The force of will of this young woman was… thrilling.
"MAKE WAY!"
All four of them pushed up against the walls as the gurney came rushing down the hall. Misato mused for a moment it must be a sort of universal thing. If someone is yelling that loudly for all present to move, there is probably a good reason for it.
Ritsuko was among the crowd of lab coats pushing the gurney. On the blood soaked bedding was the pale and blue haired first child. Most of the plugsuit had been torn off and replaced with dressings that were even now soaking through.
Shinji watched as the badly injured girl was wheeled towards them. He saw the one called Gendo stop one of the physicians, a woman with blond hair, and ask what had happened.
"We couldn't reach you." She told him. "Zero was too badly damaged from the last test, our only choice was to put Rei in One."
Gendo was angry and making it known to the blonde woman. The bed upon wheels had stopped though, and he stared down at the occupant. She was quite unlike any girl he had ever seen. Not in her injuries or her pale skin, and the pale color of her hair reminded him of cheap sapphires, the pale kind sold for bina. He could only see one half of her face, but she was clearly beautiful. What caught his attention though, was her eyes. Well, at this point he could only see one, but it was a brilliant deep red. It was unfocused, but for just a moment settled on him. Just as quickly, it lost focus and rolled back as she her eyelid fell.
"He is here now! Get him down to the cages. Captain Katsuragi, to the bridge. Mr. Cabot if you stray I will have you shot on sight. And get her to medical already!"
The rest was something of a blur. New people in brown uniforms had rushed him through more identical hallways. Shinji silently noted there were differences, and every hallway and each door had a number somewhere on it, each one different. It was a system, a way for those who knew it to find their way. A stranger would be lost.
It would have been better to have no identification at all though. It was just a cipher, and no cipher was impenetrable. When his instructors had found out he was literate they had given him new ciphers daily. It was just another skill of warcraft, the sending and receiving of messages without the enemy knowing what you knew.
"I beg your pardon, but may I ask a question?" Shinji said, tapping one of the soldiers on the shoulder as they walked. At least he assumed they were soldiers. Though very different from what he had seen back home, the uniforms were obviously martial.
"What is it?"
"Why are you taking me to a cage? Have I broken some law?"
"Look, cage is just the word we use for the room where the evangelions are kept. It's like a hanger."
"What is hung there?"
"Huh?"
"You said a hanger, what is left to hang there?"
"Look, kid, it is just where we keep the eva, that's all, you'll see."
"Aye, thank you… Ah, another question, if I may?"
"Jeez, what now?"
"What is this evangelion?"
The soldier smacked his own forehead in frustration. "Kid, we'll be there soon, you'll see."
HIs escort stopped at a door quite different from the many many he had passed since arriving in this place. It appeared a great deal thicker for one. It only opened when one man, whose uniform had more stripes on the arm and so Shinji assumed was most senior, pushed a series of tiles and a green light came on the panel.
Through the door was a bridge, wide enough for three abreast, two if men in full panoply Shinji thought. There seemed a vastness beyond the walkway but the room was dark. He could only see the steel path with handrails on each side by small lights embedded in the bridge itself. There was, and this raised the hair on the back of his neck, the overwhelming scent of blood.
"Where am to go from here?" He turned and asked, but the door was closing, his escort silent.
So he walked, his steps echoing, his right hand on his sword. Shinji considered that for how long the echos took to return to him, it must be a very large room indeed. After thirty or so paces he found a small gap, no wider than his little finger. He was considering how this probably meant he had reached the halfway point when there was a series of loud bangs and light poured into the room.
In a moment he could see the walkway was between two great metal walls and there was a door like the one he had left on the other side. The bridge was a pool of orange liquid, not even his height over the surface. With the handrail he somehow assumed it would be higher. The lights did not bother him, Tarl had told him of those, but before he looked to his right, he could see the loomings of something in the depths.
Shinji turned, slowly, white knuckles loosing his sword in its scabbard. It was… big. He had never thought of anything on this scale but tall buildings and city walls before. All he could see was the head and shoulders of the giant and it made him think that the pool must be as deep as the walls of Ko-Ro-Ba were tall to contain such a thing.
Its visage was that of a monster, a huge jaw jutting out and a single horn with a wide frill around its head. Tall black towers rose from its shoulders, though it was mainly purple in color, save for its neck which was a dark orange like poppy flowers.
"Ti shi nasha?..."
"That…" the man called Gendo's voice boomed through the cavernous 'hanger'. "Is the greatest weapon ever crafted by man. It is called Evangelion Unit One."
Shinji understood why they called this place a cage as he stared at the giant. Tarns, vicious beasts that they were, were kept in cages too. They were the most valued of mounts, enormous birds and masters of the sky. It was said the first man was formed when the Priest Kings mixed soil with tarn blood. He felt the same as the first time he had stood before one of the birds, wondering whether it was going to accept him or eat him. With the size of the giant's throat, the evangelion could swallow him whole.
"I imagine you are thinking how similar it is to a Tarn, Shinji." Gendo continued. "How it might accept you as it's master or destroy you just as easily. Unit One was made for you Shinji. Whether it finds you worthy or not is up to you. It has rejected others."
Shinji thought of the girl in the hallway. The one Gendo had been angry at, the physician. She said they had put the girl 'in One'. She must have meant this evangelion. Had the giant done that to the girl when it found her unworthy?
Shinji let his sword drop back fully into the scabbard and allowed his arms to hang relaxed at his side. He remembered his lessons with Tarns. The one's bred for war were the ones with the foulest temperament. You had to show the bird that you were unafraid, as it would see the fearful as prey. Training had gotten better, but the finest war mounts still only accepted a single rider and would devour any other who tried to control them.
The similarities were striking.
"Will you do it?"
Though it echoed through the chamber, the voice was coming from the opposite side of the room as the giant. Whether or not his father, the man called Gendo, who Tarl called Ubar, was there was irrelevant. Tarl had told him of machines the men of earth used to enhance their voices, he could be anywhere. He hoped the rudeness would be forgiven when he spoke without turning. He would never turn his back on a tarn and so he would not to this giant. There was an element of respect to be kept, but only a fool turns on something so dangerous.
"I will."
"Prepare the entry plug."
Dealing with the unexpected was a skill, though difficult to teach in a class. Reflecting back, there wasn't anything really in his education which prepared him for the purple giant with its horned and frilled helmet standing in a steel lake that smelled suspiciously like so much blood. Even less for being immersed oneself and being told to breath the not quite blood.
The queerest part though was after all the voices calling out for his attention faded away, golden letters forming in the liquid in front of his face. They were not latin letters or those strange pictograms the Japanese used that he still could not make heads or tails of, but beautifully formed gorean script. They were not written upon a surface, they simply floated there. Each letter flowed to the next and on to words until a question was formed.
What is invisible but more beautiful than diamonds?
What an odd question to ask in a time like this. He knew the answer of course. A child of five in the warrior caste knew the answer.
"That which is silent but deafens thunder." Shinji intoned from rote memory. The golden letters lost their form and merged together into a single golden thread. It was then he felt a tingle and a snap, like the kind when you shuffle across the carpet and touch metal. It crept along his skull as the thread formed new but fewer words..
And what is that?
"The same as that which depresses no scale, but is weightier than gold."
Shinji tensed, clenching his teeth and pushing his feet against the strangely shaped chair. The tingle, the buzzing, it was so much more intense now, almost to the point of pain. Tiny arcs of blue were traveling between hairs on end. The words lost shape before reforming the same question.
And what is that?
"Honor."
The sensation reached a crescendo and suddenly he did not feel the tingling and the liquid around himself. He felt acceleration! He was surging, upwards, faster than any Tarn could climb and as suddenly as it began it stopped and his stomach was in his throat. He was outside, surrounded by towers of dull grey and glass.
The rising sun was warm across his right side.
It took a moment to realize that he was standing astride a street and the towers that came barely above his head were towers many stories high. Perhaps this is what a god feels like?
"Shinji!"
It was her, the woman who commanded men, the most senior warrior in the city, Misato. Her voice was in his ear as if she stood beside him.
"The angel is straight ahead, do you see it?"
The world around him came into sharper focus. There was something ahead. It was as tall as he was. Sickly green with distended limbs and bony armor over its shoulders. It had no head, just a bird like white face in the middle of its chest, above a crimson jewel that stuck out of its abdomen. It was rather ugly.
"I see it." Odd how his voice was still so small and he was now so big. The thing did not react to his voice, and just stared at him.
"Kill it."
Shinji raised his empty hands. They were purple and there were black and green markings on his arms. Armored knuckles topped his fingers. He looked down at himself, his body was leaner than he remembered and colored much the same. He reached for his hip but did not find his sword.
"I have no sword. The hands are a hard thing to kill with alone."
There was a sound of metal scraping against metal, it sounded like right next to the right of his head. He looked at his right shoulder and a knife, held in a cradle extended from a glossy black tower on his shoulder.
He was purple, lean, and there were black towers on his shoulders. Shinji understood now. By some artifice he had become the giant. It all fitted into place in his mind.
THIS was how he was to fight the monster.
THIS is why they needed a gorean warrior. The giant asked of the warrior's codes to judge a man worthy and those of earth did not know the answer, of course!
"You have a knife." Misato said dryly in his ear. Passion built in her voice when she continued. "Now use it to kill the damn angel!"
He took the knife, gripping it with his first two fingers and laying his thumb across the tang of the blade.
"Aye, my captain!"
