The Great War

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The rain. The cold, unrelenting rain. It had been raining for three days straight. Shinji Ikari was grateful he had only been exposed to it for three hours. The muddy trench he was inspecting was slippery and his footing was unstable. He meekly observed the troops he was supposed to help. It looked like they were beyond helping, as if their very souls had been taken away with only hollow shells remaining to fight this "Great War." Shinji was almost repulsed at the gaunt, disheartened faces staring up at him.

BAM! BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAM!

Shinji fell to the ground as an artillery barrage shook the very ground of battlefield. He looked around, and with horror realized the men surrounding him weren't reacting at all. Shinji felt terrified, not because of the explosive shells that were being sent to kill thousands of men, but the lack of humanity he saw in the soldiers.

BREEEEEEEEE!

A whistle cut through Shinji's ears. The troops began to stir and rise. Shinji's eyes locked with a rising soldier. The emotionless mask cracked for a second and Shinji's eyes were met with a paralyzing sadness. They continued to stare at each other until the roar of a thousand guns broke out. One second the soldier was staring at Shinji, and then in an instant the man fell over, the contents of his skull now on the wall of the trench. Shinji's stomach sank as he stared at the corpse, alive only a second ago. His mind questioning why these men were dying, he rose from the muddy trench floor.

The lieutenant escorting Shinji handed him a device that used mirrors to allow the user to view the battlefield without exposing himself. Shinji reluctantly took the officer's instrument. He put his eye to the periscope and gasped. For what seemed like miles, countless men across the front were running away from the trenches they were pouring out of. Shinji squinted as he focused past the barbed wire and then felt his breath leave him as he saw an increasing number of men start to fall. More and more, one, two, five, ten, dozens, hundreds, thousands. Then there were none left standing. Shinji fell back to the ground again, further soiling his prim and proper military uniform. Tears were in his eyes. He let out a painful utterance.

"I hate this war!"

He looked with pain and hatred to behind the allied lines and through the sheets of rain in the distance saw the purple devil known as the Evangelion leering at him, waiting for him to enter and usher in the destruction of man.

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A/N: So this is just teaser, I wanted to put something out here. I came up with idea after I started studying World War I in one of my classes. I'll probably work on another fic before I seriously work on this one (but who knows, maybe I'll shift my focus to this one).