Disclaimer:I don't own Evangelion or any copyrighted characters. All fanfiction characters are my own.

A/N: WARNING. WHILE NOT RATED M, THIS FIC MAY CONTAIN EVIL DEEDS DONE TO EVILER MEN/WOMEN.

Bahamut: Basically, he's going to make Gendo wet himself before killing him.

Me: Not I said the fox. Take it away Pumpkin King!

"The smile of the Witch, & the smile of the Cat,

The smile of the Beast, the smile of the Bat,

The smile of the Reaper taking his fee

All cut and glimmer on the Halloween Tree..."

— Ray Bradbury's The Halloween Tree

This is Halloween

By Corvus no Genmu the Prince of Slumberland

Contact Shall Be Made

"Good morning class," said the teacher, what was his name? Several of the students, class representative included, didn't care to bother in remembering since the majority of the class-time was spent repetitively learning of the (false) history of Second Impact. "Today we are receiving a new student transferring all the way from England. Try to make him feel welcome. You can come in now Mr. Samhain."

The door to the classroom opened with a bang as a tall ghoulish looking figure stepped into the room. He was a few inches taller than one Touji Suzahara and had a build not unlike that of one Shinji Ikari. He was pale, even more so than Rei Ayanami, and he seemed almost dead with the large black bags underneath his eyes. He wore a pair of black fingerless gloves with a strange symbol adorning them and atop his head was a tophat that had seen better days. His hair was cut short though some of it did dangle in his eyes a bit. His eyes were a deep purple, almost black, and they seemed to draw those who looked into them into a dark pit with absolutely no escape within their strangely colored orbs.

"Why don't you introduce yourself?" suggested the teacher, ignorant of the edginess of his students from the boy's ethereal appearance.

The boy glanced at the teacher in silence before looking over the class. Smiling gently, he tilted his head and spoke in a voice of silk wrapped around a knife's edge. "Greetings little ones… I am Samhain Mortis."

A few hours later, during lunch hour, Shinji was silently eating his lunch as his two friends, Touji and Kensuke argued over which of the two, Rei or Samhain, appeared closer to being a ghost than a living person. Sighing, Shinji glanced over towards the albino girl only to find his view obstructed by another albino by the name of Samhain Mortis.

"Are you Shinji Ikari?"

"Eh?" Blue eyes blinked rapidly up at a pair of purple ones. "Uh, yes. Yes I am."

Samhain blinked and leaned in close to the boy, ignorant of his blush or the glowering glare from the redhead on the room's opposite side. "Third Child… Heh," Samhain leaned back and, smiling, shook his head. "Ironic that, but it fits nonetheless. The third time is the charm isn't it?"

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" growled an angry Asuka Sohryu. Samhain turned to her and inclined his head before smiling.

"Just as I said, Sohryu. The Third is the beginning and the end of it all but it is the Second that pushes him to do so isn't it? As I recall, was it not one Shinji Ikari who dove into that volcano, against orders and without any kind of protective armor, to save your life? You who calls him stupid, perverted, and weak? You whom he owes no such thing as sacrifice to yet he did so. He would have died for you then, Sohryu. He'll die for you again if you're not careful."

Both Eva pilots were blushing madly but for reasons all to their own while Samhain merely nodded and smiled as the school bell rang, signaling the end of lunch and halting any further conversation but one question rang quietly within both their minds.

'How does he know?'

Deep in the underground of Tokyo-3, in the large and oblique grounds of the Geo-Front lied NERV headquarters where, at the moment, things were going smoothly. The recent loss and subsequent recovery of Eva Unit 01 from the last Angel attack had stirred much tribulations in the workings but as the peace stretched onwards and the day of the arrival of Unit 03 drew near so fell the tensions raised amongst the upper staff.

How quick that was to change.

It had started innocent enough in appearance, Maya had received an error message on her terminal sprung from a mistyped command perhaps. However, when the same message appeared on Hyuuga's and then Aoba's did Ritsuko Akagi began to wonder. Neither she nor Maya could track the error and the commanders above and behind them were getting irritated from the constant ringing of the error message popping up anew. It grew especially tiresome when the message appeared on the main projector screen and the ringing grew in volume until it abruptly cut itself off.

"Thank you, Dr. Akagi," sighed Sub-Commander Fuyutski, massaging his temples to relieve himself of his headache.

"Uh, that wasn't me…" Ritsuko looked at the terminal screens and saw static appearing in a seemingly random manner before appearing on the screen before them. Suddenly, images began to appear on the screens. Horrible, disgusting images of a finger pushing itself down upon a rusted nail, a mouth vomiting bloodied probes mixed with human hair, a body sinking in water filled with blood, people swimming beneath a sea of black velvet trying so desperately to free themselves, a box with a twitching dismembered right hand.

After those came more but these were not images of things or events but of people, monstrous people. A man with long hair as white as freshly fallen snow with all the regal bearing of a nobleman stood smiling as blackened fire blazed around him, the feathers of his one black wing fluttering in the heat. A pair, one male and one female, both hidden in shadows where dozens upon dozens of red gleaming eyes shined, staring in obvious fascination upon the horror of the bridge crew. A woman with strange red pigtails watched as a blazing inferno ignited the pale bodies of the dead that surrounded her. The last was a man who towered over the previous two but like all the rest, he was nothing close to being human for instead of a human head of flesh and bone there was a large vegetable resting atop a wooden neck whose perpetual feral grin and angry eyes were aglow with green fire. A hand made of long blades wet with freshly spilled blood held up a ornately carved hourglass and slowly turned it so that the sand began to run.

And then it spoke.

"SeVen DaYs…"

And it was gone.

Rei Ayanami walked slowly down the sidewalks towards the entrance to NERV in silence before stopping and glancing over her shoulder. Her red eyes narrowed the slightest margin at the whistling Samhain Mortis that walked not two steps behind her and halted when she did, staring at her inquisitively.

"Why are you following me?"

"Why shouldn't I be following you? Because you're going to enter a top-secret government facility the likes of which I couldn't possibly have clearance for?"

"… Yes."

"Right you are, lassie!" Samhain grinned and gave the albino a thumbs-up. "But I have myself a need to speak with you while speaking is easiest." Samhain glanced behind his shoulder. "At the moment, Section Two is a little bit… preoccupied."

Though she didn't show it, Rei felt herself go slightly on edge. She was scared and she could tell that, somehow, Samhain knew it. What scared her most wasn't that she felt a droplet of fear, it was that she didn't know why nor why it was that this boy, whom she had never met, was so familiar to her.

"What are you Rei Ayanami? Are you a living being, deserving all the rights that Life entails you or are you a doll whose strings are pulled by a genocidal madman who'd sooner crush mankind underneath his heel then let you live with a soul that you can't claim as your own. Oh wait," Samhain's grin turned positively feral. "That is what's he's planning isn't it? Genocide."

Rei stared at him impassively in silence and blinked when Samhain shook his head sadly and tutted in disappointment. "Still the puppet-doll, Ayanami? Waiting for strings to be pulled? JUMP, REI!" Rei did jump back but more in surprise. Samhain's voice had suddenly changed to a perfect copy of Commander Ikari's own.

"Fight for me, Rei. Destroy the Angels for me, Rei. Die for me, Rei." Samhain coughed and spoke in his voice once more. "When is it going to stop, Rei Ayanami? When will it be for you instead of him?"

Samhain paused and looked behind him, his strangely-colored eyes narrowing in annoyance before sighing and walking past the stunned First Child and away into a shadowed alleyway but before he disappeared into the darkness, Rei heard his silken voice whisper, "Tell him, Rei Ayanami… tell him ask not for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for him…"

If one were to see the truth that laid trapped in Central Dogma, they would only see the monolithic titan that was crucified to the giant cross, her knees vanishing beneath a pool of her own blood. But had they looked closer, to the apex of the giant's cross, they would have seen a series of words etched onto the surface that could not be seen until now.

On the First, Contact Shall Be Made…