NEON ARMAGEDDON DYSANGELION 01: White Elephants & Sitting Ducks
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Shinji awoke to find himself naked, surrounded by gleaming red eyes.
"The time has come." The eyes blinked out, and he sighed and got dressed.
The labyrinthine corridors of NERV's geofront headquarters had terrible acoustics. Aoba often wondered, walking down these corridors on empty, shuddering, sleepless night-shifts like these, what it would be like to give the whole building a wake up call. Play an electric guitar with a pair of good distortion amps in the middle of the hallway right outside the bridge, a single power-chord heavier and duller than a klaxon, a thrum to shake the bowels of the earth through the echoing of infinite reflective doorways and tunnels and snakes and ladders, wake up even the sleeping giant on the subterranean crucifix with a single second song of defiance, and watch the sky crack and the world shatter in response. Sometimes, it was a c-note.
He walked by the coffee machine they had wrestled with for the past... however long. Each morning, it would extend its tentacles and sap the precious bodily fluids of the small children in their dreams, and each evening, they would dissect it and file the paperwork in triplicate. A good amp has high gain on feedback.
He greeted the minotaur, who was still quite small ever since Ritsuko's shrink-ray accident with the time machine, and he grunted in reply, opening the door manually, despite the fact that the automatic opener still worked.
"Hail." He said to the empty room, and then logged into terminal 23 (why the terminals were numbered 5, 17, 23, and 32 was beyond him, since those were the only ones NERV ever had). 23 was his favourite because, for no particular reason, they had used a piano keyboard instead of a normal one. It was easy to type A through F and the pound sign, but to get anything else he had to have perfect harmony.
Rei awoke to find herself naked, alone, floating in black and choppy water.
"Time to die," said the darkness, and she agreed.
Misato kept walking through the corridors, gun cold and damp and absurdly heavy in her hand. She looked at it, and found that it seemed to have become bigger -- or she had become smaller. She seemed closer to the ground, and was wearing a frilly dress. She conspiculously had lost her breasts somehow in the past five or six turns. Sometimes, her father's voice came behind the next turn, reassuring and kindly, but she knew to shoot then, because she knew it was only the fifth angel trying to trick her.
Asuka awoke to the ringing of her alarm clock. It was 23 o'clock, sharp. It was Wednesday, probably. She had never gotten the hang of Wednesdays.
"Time to wake up." The alarm clock stood up and walked away, slamming the door behind him.
Shinji ran through the forest, naked, searching for the golden boots. The angels were chasing him, he knew. They were hungry for lichen. The golden boots were the only remedy.
Beneath an ancient tree that had never known the cold of winter, he found a ring of mushrooms, and a pair of golden boots within.
Careful not to break the mushrooms' delicate stem, he stepped inside, and fell into an parallel universe.
Misato heard the voice again, her body slowly growing smaller, younger, weaker, her mind slowly growing older, wearier, sharper and stiffer, like wire that has been bent enough to know better. She watched, aiming shrewdly, and killed the stubble-bearded angel in one shot. "Target center, pull switch." She giggled, and skipped on her way, the gun bouncing jubilantly against her child's hip.
But the serpent knew. She had always. She knew that it was time. Ever since she had eaten it\
Maya continued through the labyrinth of the NERV corridors. She was a lost little girl, but somehow -- she knew -- she was on a pilgramage. "Akagi-senpai!" She called. "Akagi-senpaii!" She felt abandoned, and sat down beneath a small corridor-side altar.
"Do not cry," said the icon on the altar. "Do not cry, for I know all"
Maya looked up at the original Macintosh on the altar above her. "Where is my Senpai"
"She," he said in a softly synthesized masculine voice, "is in limbo"
Maya looked back at the opposite wall. "Stupid apple"
The pendulum swung back and forth steadily, each tick a slice of the axe and each increment adding to something entirely meaningless.
Gendou grinned. This is also entirely meaningless.
Shinji fell through a plothole and on top of Rei. "Role reversal," he thought.
"Could you move?" She asked. "Your privates are dampening my school uniform"
Ritsuko grinned. This too is meaningless.
Rei went to school that day, along with a naked Shinji. He seemed totally unaffected by the stares of everyone around him in class, and she found this strange. She once asked him, but he responded with incoherent babble. Something about Samahel the 32nd angel and the wormhole of daath and how Paul Dirac was a fan of chinese food.
The professor never came, but the class continued to work dilligently on their assignments nonstop, their pencils never leaving the page and their eyes never leaving Shinji. Shinji's eyes, however, never left her.
Ritsuko was in an empty city, filled with cats. None of them could talk. She found that strange.
She stopped by a roadside shrine to rest.
"Do not cry," said the icon on the altar. "Do not cry, for I know all\
Ritsuko looked at the Elvis impersonator on the altar above her. "Where is my lover"
"Love," he said in a softly synthesized masculine voice, "is like a red red rose, floating gently to sea. Only fools rush in, when you're in heartbreak hotel doing time for a hound dog"
Ritsuko looked back at the house opposite. "Stupid king"
Aoba was almost finished. He had reprogrammed the MAGI completely, and soft-rewired the PA system for optimal resonance, with self-correction. He had the finished guitar sitting behind him, fresh from the printer and still smelling like lemons and new car leather and dial dish soap. He soldered the connection on, attaching his plug to the wire pulled at random from terminal 5, wrapped it absently with duct tape, and plugged it in. "Moment of truth," he said. "Let there be light, and so forth"
Gendou grinned.
This is meaningful. We just have no idea why.
Touji awoke to find himself playing basketball in a wheelchair. Why he was in the wheelchair he did not know -- he had all three legs, and both arms to boot. He got up and ran towards the basket, jumping up the full 90 feet to make a hanging slam dunk.
Matoko had just finished removing the top of his skull. He had no idea why, but it wasn't as though it hurt. Looking in the mirror, and consulting the phrenology diagrams beside the sink, he began carefully inserting the acupuncture pins into their proper sockets, making sure not to tangle the leads.
Misato arrived at what seemed to be the end of the corridor. She went through the revolving door to find herself in a large octogonal room filled wall to wall with books, none of whose titles made any sense. None of them seemed to have ever been opened. She walked towards the opposite end of the room, tripped on a pair of golden sneakers left in the middle of the floor by Kaji, the messy bastard, and fell into a trapdoor, becoming unstuck in time.
"The point is," Fuyutsuki finished, concluding to a roaringly approving lecture crowd, "that there is no point!" The crowd roared with applause in the octogonal room below. "Thank you. Thank you very much." Flanked by suited section two agents, he walked backstage and through a trapdoor into hell.
"Kouzou has left the building," they announced, to no one in particular.
"Damn shoes." Fuyutsuki rubbed his head, getting up and brushing himself off. "Oh, hi Misato." The little girl turned to face him, the books wobbling and curving strangely, and rushed at him, razor sharp teeth bloody and bared.
Fuyutsuki calmly cocked his weapon, aiming shrewdly. "And as I walk in the valley of the shadow of Daath, I shall fear no evil as I do in heaven. Her deeds be done, her laundry run, on earth as they are in Devon." He shot five times, and the ersatz Misato self-destructed in a pillar of cross-shaped salt. "Who you gonna call? Amen." He blew the smoke away from the barrel.
Aoba wiped the sweat from his breath. He had tried nearly every note. Every single one pulled up a 403 error. "God damn Casper. She is too secretive." Finally, will nearly broken, he vowed to try a C Sharp. The system deserves an audible bell, so he gives it a controlled H on the bridge.
Before he got the pick to the wire, Beethoven bumbled through the room, nearly dumping over the new speakers. "Excuse me," he said. "Have you seen my marajuana? I seem to have gone deaf at some point in the last..." he paused, "however long it's been"
"In the dime bag on the table. George Washington came and had some earlier. I hope you don't mind. Oh, and Adam Weischapt and the Illuminati say hi. They found it in terminal dogma. Told me to pass the message on that Jim Morrison is a fan"
The composer nodded, ignoring the dime bag and walking out the opposite door, humming ode to joy.
Aoba started to ready himself again, but stopped. "As long as I'm here, I might as well have a toke and chill. This is the moment of truth, and all, anyway"
Naoko smiled.
This is meaningless. It is also impossible.
Fuyutsuki sat on the ledge of a cliff, observing Lillith walking below, smashing Tokyo 3 to bits and spitting hellflame from her mouth.
"Cross yourselves and cross the streams!" He shouted to no one in particular.
"God, I love this job"
Ritsuko fiddled with the knobs on the counterfiet Elvis, but she could only get one station, it seemed, and that one station seemed far out of range.
"Damn it!" She smashed the box with her fist.
"Red-red-red-red-red-re-red-dr-dr-dro-droz-drose" was the reply.
"If only I could save the kids"
The macintosh startup sound signaled, and the ersatz Elvis powered up again, sitting up straight as lights moved across his eyes. After four minutes and fourty four seconds, he responded. "What kids"
Ritsuko sighed. "Stupid ventrilloquist"
Asuka kept running through the yellow fields, yellow crops waving yellow in the yellow day. She was happy. She found this strange.
The crop-waving patterns repeated every half a second. She did not find this strange.
She stopped running. There was a mechanical Elvis in her way. "Have you seen my red, red rose?" He gave her a photograph of two dish detergents. "I lost them a few decades ago, and now I can't get my fix"
She looked past him to the crops opposite. "Stupid doll." She continued running.
Rei found herself, for once in her life, thoroughly enjoying a game of musical chairs with a nude Shinji and a bunch of bespectacled chimpanzees with pipes. She figured it had to do with the fact that she had traded her school uniform for a pair of Groucho Marx glasses and a green plastic lobster worn around her neck.
Ritsuko, at the pedistal in front, turned off the music and waited for everyone to scramble to a seat before pounding her gavel and yelling "ORDER! OBJECTION! CHAOS! SUSTAINED! ANARCHY! SPLIT PEA SOUP!" She pushed up her Groucho Marx glasses and pointed to the chimp that had no seat. "OFF WITH HIS HEAD!" Rei stood up, threw her plastic lobster at the now-crucified chimp (it became a lance of longinus in midair, then returned to her like a boomerang, becoming a lobster again.
"Any more questions"
One chimp stood up, pushed up his glasses, relit his pipe, and said with a thick scottish accent, "Yes"
"Good." Ritsuko stood up. "You are dismissed"
Now entirely stoned, Aoba stood up (barely), picked up his two-dimensional guitar, and turned the sound up to 11. He found the pick and readied it above the C Sharp, plunging it to a single epic power chord.
The entire geofront blew up, with Ode to Joy in the background, and the chimps in space had tang with breakfast for weeks.
TO BE CONTINUED.
Author's Note: This fic was written mostly as an experiment in unrestrained stream-of-conciousness. Obvious influences include the works of Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgeson), Douglas Adams (Douglas Adams), RAW (Robert Anton Wilson, AKA Bob), Kurt Vonnegut (Kurt Vonnegut), and some of the actual gainax tropes (ex., the protagonist resting beside a roadside shrine, a favourite scene that Anno repeats in many of his shows). Also, there are a few Lain references. In terms of the less obvious references, a few ideas are mutated off some of Merridan and Darck Redd's surreal post-3i fics. I wrote this while listening to the collected works of Radiohead (except for In Rainbows) on repeat, shuffled, so that probably came out in a few places. The talking Mac is part of another story idea I'm playing with, as is (kind of) the Aoba electric guitar thing. A cookie to anyone who gets the origin of Ritsuko's exclamation of "split pea soup". Though this story is very silly, any readers who might have noticed the (hopefully) subtle dark overtones are going to be rewarded, since I'm planning on playing those up significantly in the next few chapters.
A big thanks to the EvaGeeks fora, for being eva obsessed and random enough to actually trigger something like this indirectly. If I mocked any other ideas I forgot to mention, comment and I'll remind you that parody is protected under US copyright law as fair use.
NEXT TIME ON NEON ARMAGEDDON DYSANGELION:
Lots of random inexplicable things happen, most of them arguably meaningless and the rest explicitly so. A plot and theme is grasped at, but it is covered in cocoanut oil and lemon juice and slips from our hands, then runs away laughing before being eaten by a Lingolier. The robo-Elvis eats a ham sandwich backstage. The earth turns, does a jig for no apparent reason, then starts spinning in reverse just for the hell of it. Misato and Ritsuko lock up their feelings and live for the secrets. Aoba wins an air guitar championship with no judges and only a glow in the dark talking zombie kitten in a box for competition. The meaninglessness continues. And there will be more service. And you will like it, regardless. Kapiche?