Angels and the Bad Man
Chapter 01 - From Bad To Worse
The characters and some scenarios in this story were developed by J.K. Rowling and Hideaki Anno.
- - -
It's been one hell of a year, Harry Potter thought to himself as he struggled to breathe. A Death Eater's arm was wrapped around his throat, exhorting him to surrender a little glass ball that Harry had to wonder if it was really all the effort. He tried to speak in protest, or to blurt out a spell, when the man suddenly yowled out and pulled away, as Neville rammed his wand into the man's eye. One rasped out 'STUPIFY', and Macnair, the axe-happy jackass who almost killed Buckbeak several years before, was down for the count.
War raged in the Ministry of Magic. Harry's team and a group of Aurors and Order members were desperately holding off Voldemort's cronies, all for a little ball, no bigger than a Rememberall, that everyone seemed so desperate to get a hold of. Harry continued to dodge and stumble out of the way, until Neville collided with him, the sphere containing the prophecy crashing into the ground just beneath Harry. He barely heard a voice talk, as Neville stared in horror, trying to apologize. Harry ignored him as he finished hearing the voice, then watched the white figure disappear.
"Oh no..." Neville rasped as he looked at the door in horror.
Voldemort walked into the room, flanked by the few surviving cronies that weren't already in the room.
Oh yeah, Harry thought to himself. Just keeps getting better.
--
Most of Harry's allies were bound, stunned, or unconscious. And once more, Harry found himself dangling in someone's grasp. Lucky him, Voldemort was taking it personally. Great Merlin, Voldemort's breath was foul, Harry thought as the Dark Lord ranted, demanding to know where Harry was hiding the prophecy. But Harry was too dazed to even comprehend, as his mind wandered in a dozen different directions.
Ironically, it was this daze that infuriated Voldemort the most, since Legilimency and the link between the two were completely useless, only picking up random thoughts. He grew incensed at the wandering commentary about Voldemort's appearance and breath. After a particularly ill-chosen mental comment, Voldemort snarled and hurled Harry away in a blind rage and spat out a Killing Curse...
Harry blinked in surprise as the spell hurled him backwards... through that Veil that so captivated and terrified him earlier...
--
He gasped as he looked around, his hand moving to his chest. He then froze. "What the hell?" Harry muttered to himself, looking around. He was in a hospital, a muggle hospital, at that. And more surprising, he was still alive. "This is getting to be a habit," He muttered to himself, then paused. His voice didn't sound right. In fact, it didn't even sound like him. He looked around for a nurse or doctor, then did a double take, as he realized his glasses were both missing and not needed. "Curiouser and curiouser," He muttered to himself as he stood.
An older Asian nurse walked in and looked at him, saying something. Somehow, a part of him could not understand a single word she said, but the rest of him comprehended her question, asking of his status. He blinked a few times, trying to figure out how he could understand her language when he had never even heard it before. Translation spell, perhaps? That made some sense, he supposed.
He was about to reply, when he found himself talking in the same language. Sure, translation spell, he said, still confused. "I'm fine. Thank you." He paused. "Where are my clothes?"
The nurse smiled as she pulled out a bundle from a nearby locker, giving it to him. Shirt, slacks... no robes, though. Odd. He didn't think it was a good idea to bring it up, however, since he did not want to assume she was a squib or witch. "Thanks." He said, as he sat down on the bed. The nurse took the chart at the foot of the bed, made a few notations, then replaced the chart and walked out the door.
He slipped out of the gown and into the clothing provided, when he paused, stared, and received one hell of a shock. Against one wall was a mirror. And in that mirror, he did not see the boy who he had been for fifteen years, but rather, an Asian boy, brown hair, brown eyes. Not the black hair and cat-green eyes he knew.
"Bloody hell..." Harry rasped in shock as he walked toward that mirror, touching his face. No lightning-bolt-shaped scar either. "What the hell happened?" he muttered to himself, running a hand along his face. He shook his head and finished dressing, then stepped out the door, looking around. "Where the hell am I, and who did this to me?" He grumbled under his breath.
He wandered through the building, a part of the back of his mind noting that the hospital, as he thought it, was more like the hospital wing at Hogwart's, or an infirmary, merely the medical part of a larger building. He also noticed he was lost, but that didn't matter much, since he knew he was lost to begin with. As he did, he rifled through his pockets, trying to find some clue of what was going on. He looked into the wallet in his hip pocket and frowned softly as he found what seemed to be a student ID of sorts, although he could not read it, at first. Once again, it seemed as if the translation spell seemed to tell his mind what his senses were telling him.
"Huh. Interesting name," Harry muttered to himself in English as he wandered, eventually finding himself looking out a window. "So what the hell happened?" He mused aloud. "Where is everyone else? Where am I for that matter? No wand, wrong body..." He paused, becoming worried. "I could be in trouble. What if I can't find my wand or replace it... what if I can't even do anything with this body?"
As Harry put the wallet back into his pocket, his eyes panned around for a bathroom. Finding one a few moments later, he stepped in and looked into the mirror, frowning. "I don't think a Death Eater would recognize me, but..." And then he froze as he stared into his own eyes through the mirror.
Anyone else would have just seen a teenage kid looking at a reflection of himself. Harry, on the other hand, saw a bizarre four-pupiled eye stareing out of a brown, bullet-shaped lump of a head as he remembered.
--
He found himself drowning in some odd-tasting liquid as he shook off the disorientation. Am I dead? Am I in hell? He thought as he desperately tried to claw his way to the surface, only to find himself restrained by a harness, but also that despite being surrounded in that liquid, he was not suffocating. The disorientation started to fade, suddenly to be replaced by an intense rage that somehow he knew what was not his own.
As he blinked, he started to see his surroundings, but he couldn't quite comprehend them. He found himself gazing around at skyscrapers, and before him was some hideous creature. As he looked at it, however, he noticed a bus on the ground near that monster. "No way,"he tried to mutter through the liquid about him as he realized that if that was not a toy, then the monster was several hundred feet tall. And that he was looking eye to... whatever... with the creature.
"What the hell is going on?" Harry tried to mumble, before gasping in surprise as he was shifted in his seat. He could feel the movement as he somehow closed in on the creature, and began to pound on the monster. He turned green as he saw a hand clad in purple armor wrap a fist about both of the monster's arms, and with a wrench, snapped both of them.
He barely stopped himself from vomiting as he saw those purple-armored fists pound down on a crimson orb buried deep in the monster's chest, before finding himself surrounded by green goo... then pain as the monster immolated itself. He stared around, as he started to hear voices babbling in some unknown language. But the thing that caught his eye was another eye... as he stared at it, and found himself staring back, and over and over again, the pain, disorientation and confusion caught up with him, and he passed out.
- - -
Harry wasn't sure how he got there, but he looked up, blinking weakly as he pulled his head away from the nearby toilet, mouth filled with the taste of bile. He struggled to pull himself to his feet, before moving to wash his mouth out. A moment later, he stumbled out and almost crashed into a pretty, darkhaired woman. "Ahh, Shinji-kun. There you are."
He blinked at her a moment. Shinji-kun? He didn't have a clue what she was talking about until he remembered the identification card he had looked at. Shinji Ikari. "Oh. Hello..."
"Shinji... are you alright?" The woman asked.
"No, not really but I'll be fine," Harry replied as the two stepped into an elevator.
"If you say so. Well, if you're ready, I can take you home. The Commander's set you up at my place," the woman stated.
Several hours later, Harry found himself being pointed toward the bathroom. "So I get stuck with a messy drunk... Petunia'd go spare." he murmured to himself before opening the bathroom door. As soon as he opened it, however, he froze as he stared at what seemed to be a very large penguin. "Odd choice for a familiar," He remarked to himself calmly after the penguin shook itself off. "Luna'd love him." He shook his head and walked around the bird, before heading for the bath.
Penpen blinked a moment, before waddling toward the kitchen, heading for his frozen nest.
Harry relaxed in the bath, muttering to himself. "Ok, so what happened? Voldemort tried to kill me again, and then I end up in that thing. In someone else's body. So did he kill me?" He frowned as he shifted in the tub. "If I'm dead, then why am I in someone else's body? That re... reincarnation thing Hermione mentioned once? For that matter, why can I speak another language? Why am I working for some foreign nation?"
He paused, then rolled his eyes. "For that matter, why am I talking to myself?"
With that, he finished cleaning up, and went to bed.
---
Harry looked at his school uniform and shrugged. "Well, it's not robes," he murmered to himself, before starting to make his way out the door and to school. And as soon as he arrived, he realized that he might be in trouble. Not only was it a muggle school, something he had not been in in five years, but Japanese schools were very different from their british counterparts. He floundered, but fortunately a girl who in some ways reminded him of Hermione, began to walk him through things with a confused patience.
He could not figure out the computer terminal, as the Dursleys would never let him anywhere near their precious 'Dinky Diddums's precious toys. in essence, he was up a creek without a paddle. There was only one thing that saved him.
The professor seemed to be completely ambivalent to his students as he lectured in a droning voice about something called the Second Impact. It was with relief that he stepped out onto the lawn for lunch, if only to decompress.
Alas, it was not to be, as a bigger kid almost blindsided him a few minutes later, and only his well-tested reflexes kept him from getting pummeled. "What are you doing?" Harry protested as he dodged another swing or two.
"You got my sister hurt, Ikari!" the boy ranted as Harry continued to dodge, though the wild shots were starting to find their mark.
Harry blinked as he went almost crosseyed with a hard punch to the side of his face, and then staggered as he lashed a hand out in desperation and yelled out, "Stupify!"
The boy promptly slammed against the wall behind him and fell to the ground, as Harry stared at his hand. "What the blazes?" he muttered to himself as he tried to pull himself together.
The confusion overwhelmed him until a soft, female, yet emotionless voice snapped him out of his reverie. "How did you do that, Ikari-san?"
Harry turned toward the voice, seeing a girl that he did not recognize, yet somehow knew who she was. Probably the same reason he knew Japanese without ever hearing it before. "I don't know... Ayanami-san?" he said.
Rei looked at him for a moment, before replying changing the subject. "We are to report to NERV. Another Angel is arriving."
"Yeah. That's a bad thing," Harry replied as the information from the briefing came back to mind. "Alright, lead the way..."
---
Kensuke and Toji stared, the latter somewhat guilty, at the plugsuited pilot in control of the giant machine they scrambled into. And as the machine moved back into combat, Shinji started to curse in English as he fought off the squid-like Angel, confusing the other two teenagers. Suddenly with a particularly loud curse, the Eva's knife impaled the Angel's core, causing it to collapse atop of them, just as the power died, the plug going completely dark.
Toji protested, until a voice spoke out, "Lumos!"
To be honest, Kensuke felt like clawing his eyes out at that point, as the brilliant light out of absolute darkness was a little like stareing right into a road flare. "Gah! Turn that off, will ya?"he protested, pulling his glasses off and pressing the heels of his hands to his burning eyes.
Toji was in much the same boat, though a bit of confusion started to set in. This was the second time he had seen Ikari do something odd. Was this a prerequisite to pilot the giant warmachines, or was he just maybe going into hallucinations induced by the execrable cafeteria food?
"Sorry about that," Harry said, still a bit surprised at how easily the wandless magic came to him, even if this was only his second spell since the ministry assault. He concentrated, and the light dimmed to tolerable levels.
"H.. how are you doing that?" Toji asked, gesturing to the small sphere of light in Shinji's hand.
"This? Uh..."Great going, Potter, Harry thought to himself. If Obliviators come here, I'm screwed. If there are Obliviators here. "It's... classified. Sorry," Harry said aloud. He heard it on one of those spy movies Dudley loved watching, not so much for the intrigue and espionage, but from the big explosions and promiscuous secret agents.
Kensuke ahhed and looked to Toji. "Must be part of how one controls it," he commented, then did a double take. "Oh no... I'll never get a chance to pilot an Evangelion!" He protested miserably.
Mate, you can bloody have it, Harry thought bitterly to himself. I mean I just love bouncing about the inside of a little room filled with foul-tasting gunk while giant monsters are trying to kill me and military types are trying to get me killed.
"Guess we'll just wait on the... SAR team," Harry said, stumbling a bit over the acronym for the Search and Rescue team. "And you might wanna keep quiet about it. Hush-hush stuff," He suggested, hoping the implication might keep them quiet about the magic.
Both boys nodded quickly, images entering their head that probably would have either made Harry laugh or wince. They were imagining Nerv feeding them to an Evangelion, or some other bizarre punishment, Harry suspected.
There was silence in the cockpit, except for the sloshing of LCL. "Um, Ikari-kun?" Toji said hesitantly, getting Harry's attention. "I wanted to say I'm sorry about decking you earlier," he said almost under his breath. "I was upset and took it out on you. Besides," He paused, looking around the cylindrical chamber. "Looks like you've got more problems than I do."
Harry blinked, then nodded slowly. "No problem. Just lay off the fists, ok? I got enough of that with... before."
The trio smiled a little bit, then froze as a loud clang was heard. "Is it still alive?" Kensuke said a bit shrilly.
With a surprising amount of fatalism in his tone, even to his own mind, Harry replied, "No, it has to be the SAR team. If it was the Angel, we'd probably already be dead."