Disclaimer: I do not own Evangelion; it is the property of GAINAX studios. Don't sue me – I have no money anyway. Ghost in the Shell is owned by various companies in various studios, dependant upon division. In the United States, rights belong to Dark Horse comics and Go Fish Pictures. Shirow Masamune and KODANSHA-IG own rights in Japan.
Ghost in the Hells
The city enveloped him in its maternal cloak of steel. As shadows flitted in and out of the corners of his eyes, he blinked, once, and stood.
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands
Below him were the swarms, endlessly merging with one another, flocking in their faceless multitudes to a hundred thousand tasks – places to be, things to do. From this height, in this light, there were no men in the streets. No – filling the corridors of this fell metropolis was an ocean, a sea of humanity interrupted occasionally by the blurring Doppler whine of speeding traffic and interposed garishly, tactlessly with the eye-searing high-rises.
As the tide was shunted away from the asphalt, bleeding with heat, specks detached themselves and gravitated towards the anglerfish lights of the towers. Soon they had disappeared within the maws of brothels, restaurants, high-class shops, and offices. Devoured.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
The nights of Tokyo-3 were not like its days; the sun gave both physical and spiritual warmth to the gleaming monoliths of glass and steel that lorded over the wee hours. When the Morning Star fell, a new world emerged from the warren-like streets, from the tortuously winding alleyways and from the select among the gridiron giants. Torrential, it poured down every street, driving the fleeing office-men before it, mercilessly subsuming everything in its wake.
Twilight, however, had come and gone, and even its madcap skirmishes were nothing against the languorously unwinding chaos of midnight. This was the festering face of the underworld which the city now unmasked, in all its dank and fetid glory. Shinji peered down at the mob, pulsing against the walls, as he mused. Cyberhacking prevalence rates increased fourfold during the eleventh hour: though logically daytime was as good as any other (especially in a city which never dreams), hackers vastly preferred the darkness. It was, Shinji decided, a reassuring sign of impulsivity in a world where rationalism had captured the human soul.
He watches from his mountain walls,
Sixty-five stories. It was not such a long way to go.
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
Cybernet Online: Current MAGI: Melachior, Balthazar, Casper
Good Morning, Ms.
Katsuragi. The current time is 7:13 AM. You are running late.
How many times have I told you guys to call me Misato?
Our apologies, Ms. Katsuragi.
…Is this Ritsuko's doing? If she-
Would you like the daily news input, Ms. Katsuragi? Or the entertainment feed?
No, that's fine, I'll just look over the A-3 documents again - after I finish this beer.
"WHAT! Baka Shinji got to go on an assignment that I didn't?"
"Asuka-"
"He better not get a big head from this! Grr…what idiot from NERV assigned him to the case anyway?"
Misato leaned back in her chair and cocked an eyebrow.
"This one."
Across the small dining room, a livid Asuka stood in full Combat Plug, hands on hips, eyes glazed over with fury. As she seethed and prepared for her next counterattack, her mutterings in barely audible German were interrupted by Misato's next volley.
"Sorry Asuka, but this mission required both subtlety and discretion, neither of which you scored very high on, and we could only deploy a single unit this time. Er…Asuka, why are you wearing your Combat Plug?"
"BECAUSE I'M GONNA KILL YOU!"
A red-haired blur of lethal intent sped across the room while Misato's crisp laughing rang through the apartment. Both, however, stopped when the sharp intrusion of a riiiing cut through their sparring.
"The telephone…that means…"
Misato pursed her lips and picked up.
"This is Major Katsuragi."
The wind slashed relentlessly at his exposed face as he fell, but he shut out the pain and focused on the objective. The angular black pane of his overcoat was whipped off his slender frame, cast mercilessly into the updraft. Against the backdrop of the vertiginous city he was now the slightest of figures, hair flying wildly over ocean blue eyes as his torso and limbs gyrated, clad in midnight-black Combat Plug.
Shinji executed a somersault in midair, channeling the kinetic force in his feet. The street rushed to greet him, leering with the promise of anonymous death, of a paragraph in the obituaries and cheap newspaper type. His pupils clicked, focused, and whirred as the target came into view.
It's time for violence.
The hood protested its thunderous collapse with an agonized whine. Glass shattered and flew in a sprawl of wicked fragments. The world jarred itself into alignment, and Shinji rose out of a crouch.
The driver, his hands bone-white against his steering wheel, was emerging from his stupor of awed confusion. Anger steadily built in his frame as he surveyed the damage the errant kid had done – no doubt some cyborg thrill-seeker out for a bit of fun. His carefully polished hood was wrecked, half of his (supposedly) shatter-proof windshield completely ruined, and – wait, was that a NERV logo?
With deliberate intensity Shinji pulled his pistol from an arm holster, leveled it at the driver, and shot him twice through the window pane. They rang out, strident and echoing, but the uncaring city paid no heed. Blood fountained from the dead man's forehead, tingeing the remnants of the windshield a lurid pink. Inside, crimson streaked down the walls.
Just another shrug in eternity.
Shinji holstered the instrument of death, stepped off the devastated hood, and depressed a button on his Combat Plug's neck.
ThermOptic camouflage: on.
And with that, he was gone.
A/N: The poem lines at the beginning are from The Eagle by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. GitH is not pre-read. Comments, suggestions, and reviews are appreciated.
I know I suck at dialogue and characterization; can someone help me out here? Expect updates semi-regularly (read: when I'm bored) until summer; then I'll have time to write more often.