NEON GENESIS EVANGELION: EVOLUTION

PART II

An Alternate Universe Evangelion Story

By Sentinel 28II (formerly Sentinel 28)

AUTHOR'S NOTE: When I began to rewrite Neon Genesis Evangelion Evolution: Reborn, the rewrite/reboot of a story I started back in 2003, I wasn't sure how it would go. It does seem to have generated some interest, which I'm happy to see—judging by the number of private e-mails I've gotten and the views generated by the story. I hope you'll stick with me as we continue the adventures and misadventures of Riana Arashikaze. All is going according to the scenario…

WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE: In the aftermath of the massacre of SEELE by Rissa Arashikaze, her granddaughter, Riana, volunteered for and was accepted into the Evangelion Project's pilot training program. However, she was not assigned an Eva like that of Shinji Ikari, Rei Ayanami, or Asuka Langley-Soryu, but a "technology demonstrator," EVA-03A. This mecha could not generate an AT Field, and was far inferior to the prototype Evangelions. Riana began her training, only to run into open hostility from both Asuka and Dr. Ritsuko Akagi, neither of whom believed that she has any business being at NERV.

Only later did Riana learn the truth—or at least a part of it. Gendo Ikari is aware of Riana Arashikaze's heritage, and believed her to have some sort of unawakened magical power. Despite Riana's explosive rivalry with Asuka and her continued failures in training, Gendo kept her on, kept pushing. The stress of training led Riana's powers to begin to slowly manifest. They did not save her, however, when she attempted to stop Israfel, the Seventh Angel.

So here her story continues…at the end.

Riana Arashikaze slowly awoke. It was hard to wake up. The ground beneath her was soft and warm. After much effort, she finally sat up. Joints creaked and popped. "Oww…" she moaned, then tested her fingers and toes. All responded satisfactorily.

She looked around, which was not satisfactory. The white sandy beach was fine enough, but an ocean the color of blood was most assuredly not. Nor was the swath of red across the night sky. In the distance she could see the ruins of buildings, but the red sea stretched to the horizon.

Riana got to her feet, and could see she was wearing her gray plugsuit. Her muscles seemed stiff, but that made sense if she had been lying on the sand for awhile, unmoving. Nothing else made sense, but that was a start.

"Where the hell am I?" she said aloud. The starry sky looked right, and the terrain around her led her to believe that she was standing in Tokyo-3—or where Tokyo-3 should be. But there was still the red ring and the red ocean.

Oh, I get it, Riana thought. I'm dead. I remember now. Yeah. I ejected—was ejected—from my Eva, but Israfel must've gotten in one last lick. Well, that's what I get for taking on an Angel with—what did Asuka call it?—a Frankenstein. Oh well. Hope I at least bought Shinji and Super Bitch time to kill that bastard.

This, however, did not look much like Heaven. Riana prayed every night, went to church on Sundays when she could, and believed in God; she was a devout Christian. She kind of expected that, when her time came, she would be greeted by those who had gone before: her father, her mother, her aunt. There would be unlimited joy, light, and the Infinite; maybe even St. Peter waiting by the Golden Gates with the keys to the Kingdom. Heaven would be beautiful, and she'd have all eternity to figure it out.

Bloody night skies and seas, on the other hand, sounded more like Hell. Riana was a little taken aback. Granted, she was no saint—she cursed like a drunken sailor, probably ate too much pocky, harbored homicidal thoughts towards one Asuka Langley-Soryu, and occasionally lusted after guys. None of those sounded like offenses worthy of eternal damnation, though.

Assuming that she wasn't in Hell, that left one other option. "I'm in Purgatory," Riana said. "Ah, ha." As a Catholic raised in a convent, Riana understood the concept of Purgatory—people who died with no mortal sins but lesser amounts of sin still had to spend some time working off that last pound of sin. Well, she hadn't had time to confess before she died, so that must be the most logical explanation.

Of course, the Church wasn't exactly clear on what souls did in Purgatory, or how long they would be there before making the final ascent into Heaven. Riana decided to go find out. I doubt I'm the only person in Purgatory these days, so maybe I can find a guide or something. No point in just standing here worrying about it. She dusted the sand off of her rear end, turned right, and started down the beach.

Without a watch, Riana had no idea how long she walked. The sand was clinging and hard to walk in. Just out to sea, she saw crucified figures; when stopped to look at them more closely, she could see they were Evas. That was even more disconcerting, so she hurried on, over a dune.

At the top, she saw two figures in the distance. Even with her slightly blurry eyesight, she could tell it was Shinji Ikari and Asuka Langley-Soryu. "Hey!" Riana called out happily. She was not alone, after all. Neither seemed to look at her, and as Riana scampered and nearly fell down the dune, she saw that Shinji was on top of Asuka. At first, she blushed, but their clothes were still on, so it could not be that—

Then she saw that Shinji was choking Asuka.

While Riana was, under normal circumstances, not adverse to choking Asuka herself, there was no good reason for it now. Shinji, Asuka and Riana seemed to be the only three people here, and it certainly would do no one any good in Purgatory to commit the truly mortal sin of murder. Nor could she stand by and watch. "Stop, Shinji!" she yelled. "Stop!" She ran towards them, tripped, and fell into the sand. Riana pulled herself up, even as she saw Asuka struggling, her back arching, a bandaged hand coming up to push Shinji off.

As she drew within ten feet, she could see Shinji was no longer choking Asuka, though he straddled her. His chest was heaving, and he was sobbing, with such bitterness that Riana stopped, her hand half-raised, unsure of what to do.

"How disgusting." Riana looked down at Asuka. She too was in her plugsuit—Shinji was in his school uniform—but her plugsuit was ripped and torn. Her arm was bandaged from shoulder to wrist; one eye was hidden behind a bandage. The unwounded eye now looked at her. Shinji was still crying, but he looked up as well, tears running down his cheeks. "Who…who are you?" he asked.

Riana was about to reply when she realized there was a fourth someone in the mix. She saw it, beyond Shinji and Asuka, on the landward horizon. She should have noticed it before, didn't know why she had not, since it dominated that horizon, but it was Rei Ayanami. Or at least her face.

Or at least half of it. One gargantuan red eye stared back at her. The half-mouth was twisted in an unholy smile.

And Riana began to scream.

And then she woke up.

It was a tiled ceiling, one of a million in any government building, starkly white. The antiseptic smell of medicine assaulted her nose, and as other sensation returned, Riana realized she was in a hospital bed, with assorted wires and tubes attached to her. An electrocardiograph beeped steadily in one corner, next to a stand of IV bottles and tubes that vanished beneath the warm covers. In the other, Asuka stared at her over a manga.

Riana jumped; she could not suppress it. This Asuka was normal, however—no bandages, no eyepatch, though the faint look of disgust was there. Asuka gave a start when Riana did. "Hey. You're finally awake."

Riana nearly sat up, realized she had nothing on beneath the sheets, and sank lower in her pillows. "Yeah." Or that was what she tried to say; her mouth felt stuffed with cotton balls. Asuka reached over and handed her a bottle of water. Riana took a few sips. "Yeah," she repeated. "How…long was I out?"

Asuka closed the manga, stood and stretched. "Oh, three days. You're pretty lucky, you know. Your entry plug got hit by fragments when Israfel sliced your Eva's head off. It crashed into a bunch of trees. You should be dead." Asuka's tone of voice was that of surprise.

Riana could not resist. "Yeah. Too bad for you."

Asuka laughed. "Go to hell, Sister Riana. Shinji, Rei and I have been taking turns at your bedside for the past 72 hours, so quit bitching."

That took the wind out of Riana's metaphorical sails. "Wait, you?"

"Of course me. You're a pilot, after all—though your tinkertoy Eva has seen its better days. Luckily Israfel ignored you after it got done tearing up 03." Asuka smiled maddeningly. "Naturally, Shinji and I took it out in 62 seconds right after it entered Tokyo-3."

Riana leaned back. "So the dance plan actually worked."

"Yep. Too bad for you that you didn't get to see it. Then again, if it hadn't worked, we'd all be dead, so you wouldn't know, right?" Riana shuddered, thinking of the bandaged Asuka, the crying Shinji, and the decapitated Rei. "Anyway," Asuka continued, "I'll get Misato and let her know you're awake. Don't get up or something…the docs said you had a pretty bad concussion."

"Hey," Riana called out as Asuka went out the door. "Why are you being so nice to me?"

Asuka paused. "I don't know. I guess I have a soft spot for idiots or something." She smiled, cheerfully gave Riana the finger, and left.

Riana could not help but smile. She was alive, Tokyo-3 existed, Asuka was being friendly one minute and a cold bitch the next. All was right with the world.

Though the facility was surrounded by chainlink fence, the fence surmounted by signs that read USE OF DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED in English and kanji, the signs were faded and there were holes in the fence. The facility was in decay, dilapidated; electrical wires hung slack from a rusting radar tower. Dirty white sand had shifted into the facility, though the Sea of Japan was a good kilometer distant—a legacy of the tidal waves that had battered Japan after Second Impact.

All of this both satisfied and discomfited Ryoji Kaji.

According to the information he had, the Matsushiro Research Facility was supposed to be manned, with labs inside clean concrete buildings, and personnel drawn from both NERV and the Japanese government. Kaji made his way swiftly across open ground, through one of the collapsed fences, and up to the front door of the facility. One hand went to the pistol in a shoulder holster, the other to the doorknob.

The door opened easily.

Kaji took his hand off the pistol and walked into the room. It was deserted, and had been for some time. The desks were second-hand, government issue, and caked in a layer of dust. Chairs were pushed against desks or fallen over on the floor, and old landline telephones were wrapped in their own cords, sitting on the bare desks. The Matsushiro Research Facility, part of the Marduk Institute, was deserted…if it had ever been manned at all.

Kaji reached down and pulled out a chair, which sent a cloud of dust up from the floor, and sat down. He reached into his coat again, but this time he withdrew a pack of cigarettes. He stilled the slight trembling in his hands, put a cigarette between his lips, and fished for his lighter.

A match scraped into life in a dark corner of the room, one blocked by a desk. "'If the master of the house had known the hour of night when the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and not let his house be broken into,'" a voice said. Kaji knew he would never reach his pistol in time, especially since there was already one trained on him, so he raised his hands.

"Hello, Ryoji Kaji," said Rissa Arashikaze.