Summary: A moment of carelessness by a NERV staff member leads to disaster for the upper management of NERV. One shot.
Shinji watched his best friend get dragged out of the Entry Plug. He saw Touji, covered in blood, vaguely hearing the reports at ground level—
"Vital signs fading fast. Get that defib over here stat!"
"No pulse, beginning chest compressions!"
Shinji felt the world slipping away. His mind slowly slipped into shock as a certain revelation sank in.
They knew. They all knew. Asuka knew, Rei knew, Misato knew, his father knew-!
His father.
Shinji gritted his teeth. The rage in his heart boiled over as he realized the truth. His father had known. His father had always known who the pilots were. He knew who Touji was and didn't care.
Gendo Ikari simply didn't care about him. The realization was…freeing. His father didn't care what happened to him, or what happened to anyone else if his precious EVA-01 was still active.
Shinji's first thought was to take the purple death machine and smash up NERV HQ with it. The robot had caused him nothing but agony, they'd forced him into the cockpit, so why not use it to crush his father like a grape?
He started to reach for the controls, preparing to order EVA-01 to do just that, but a thought occurred to him.
Gendo had locked him out of the controls once. He'd used that weird autopilot to make EVA-01 go berserk. What if his father did it again?
Shinji struck the control yokes with his fists in helpless rage. This fucking thing was useless!
What could he do?
-SCENE BREAK—
Shinji staggered down the street, listlessly staring ahead at nothing. Touji was dead. Touji was dead. His best friend was dead and Gendo Ikari had killed him.
Shinji felt his throat constrict at the thought.
"My father killed my best friend."
He'd clambered out of EVA-01, and raced to his friend's side. Touji's body was limp, lifeless, not even breathing.
Shinji had been held back and roughly shoved aside by two orderlies as the paramedics got to work trying to save Touji's life. He'd struggled, briefly, but they held him back…until Shinji heard it.
One of the paramedics called out the phrase "time of death".
Shinji fell limp, ceasing his struggles, a broken look stamped on his features.
The paramedic let him go, and Shinji had simply wandered off, in a fugue of misery. Blindly unseeing, he'd slipped through the wreckage of Bardiel's rampage. none of the workers giving him a second glance.
Story of his fucking life…the people in this city just wanted to use him. Just like they used Touji and fed him to an Angel. His father was the worst of them.
He stumbled. Looking down, he saw something lying on the ground, not far from another prone figure. Trying his best not to stare at the mangled corpse, he looked down at what he'd tripped over.
He picked up the object. It looked huge in his small hands, heavy, and powerful.
A thought occurred to him. This. This was how he could take his revenge. This was how he could show his father once and for all….!
-SCENE BREAK-
Shinji staggered out of the shower stall, toweling his hair off. For once, he was almost glad no one in NERV seemed to care about him. Everyone was so busy worrying about EVA-01, it was easy for him to slip inside the main NERV HQ.
He'd changed out of his plugsuit, slipping on a jacket he'd found in the locker room. Asuka was still in the hospital wing, as was Rei. Good. They'd probably try to stop him.
He kept striding forward, his eyes burning, hatred boiling in his heart.
The Third Child kept moving, until at last he heard the hated voice barking orders at someone in his usual monotone.
Shinji came up right behind the man, and spat, "Father."
Gendo paused, and turned to face his son. "What do you want, pilot?"
"You're a sick bastard, you know that?"
Abruptly all activity in the room ceased. The color drained out of the bridge technicians' faces. Fuyutsuki's jaw fell open.
Gendo looked at his son and raised an eyebrow. Coolly, he replied, "I don't have time for one of your childish tantrums."
Shinji looked at his father, directly into his eyes, and the coldness in them firmed his resolve. Quietly, he said, "Really…so you don't care what I have to say? You don't care at all about what you just did to Touji?"
Gendo said, "That was an acceptable loss. It happens in war."
Shinji nodded, blinking, and pulled his gaze away from his father, his bangs shadowing his eyes. "Really…acceptable loss…you killed him just because it was convenient for you…!"
He reached into his jacket, and pulled out what he'd found at the site of Bardiel's death.
The gun looked like a small truck in his hands, and he leveled it right at Gendo's face. The man froze.
Pandemonium broke out on the bridge-Maya gasped in horror, Shigeru and Makoto shouting as they tried to reason with the boy.
Shinji shot back, "SHUT THE FUCK UP!"
Everyone fell silent.
Gendo said, "Put the gun down. You have no idea what you're doing."
Shinji shot back, "I know enough. I know you're a self-righteous bastard. I know you don't care what you have to do, or who you have to step on to get what you want. I know if it weren't for you, TOUJI WOULD STILL BE ALIVE!"
Losing patience, and hardly seeing his son as a threat, Gendo spat, "Your ignorance is almost terrifying. Now put that thing down."
He took a step forward reaching out to take the gun from Shinji…and a shot rang out.
Gendo felt like something had punched him in the gut. His eyes slowly looked down, a hand pressed to the spreading dark stain on his shirt. Shinji glared at him, his expression cold and bitter.
"I…"
Shinji emptied the gun into his father's body.
Gendo jerked wildly, falling to the floor, his eyes cold and lifeless. Shinji kept the thing pointed at him, still robotically pulling the trigger, before he finally let go.
He sank to the floor, ignoring the shouts and screams of the panicked adults all around him. He'd killed his own father.
He'd shot Gendo dead.
The thought raced around in Shinji's head for another few moments-and Shinji Ikari did something new.
For the first time since he'd come to Tokyo-3, Shinji Ikari laughed.