The Cab drive
*click*… *dunk*…
"So, where too little lady?" the driver asked as the taxi started to roll.
"NERV, east main entrance," She answered.
"NERV? There's nothing there with all the entrances collapsed."
"There are ways for those in the know."
"There is? Wait! You're Asuka Langley, one of the EVA pilots! Wow, who would believe I would have one of the children that saved humanity in my cab."
A soft chuckle was heard. "Yes, I saved humanity." She continued to chuckle.
"What was it like... To be a pilot I mean?"
"To be a pilot?," she clarified. "Well, in the beginning it was exciting! I got to pilot a giant mech and defend all of humanity from extermination at the hands of 'divine' alien beings. I could prove I was more than a doll." The last was little more than a whisper.
"A doll?! Who in their right mind could treat a fiery personality like yours as a doll?"
"She wasn't," Asuka admitted.
"Huh?"
"My mom… she wasn't sane in the end."
"What happened?" the driver asked, now genuinely concerned.
"Mom worked at one of NERVs research and development centers in Germany, I believe it's where she meet dad and they were happy for a while."
"Hehe, I know that feeling," the driver chuckled.
Asuka smiled gently. "Perhaps but something shifted. I don't know what or when he left, I was so young I didn't register he was gone." She got a contemplating look on her face.
"What happened then?"
"Life went on," she continued. "I remember being able to run around the whole center except restricted areas if mom wasn't there. Everyone was nice and friendly, but one day something happened to mom and she had a mental break down." She took a deep breath.
"I don't know what happened, but suddenly she began to treat a little doll as her daughter instead of me. I was just three years old… I really didn't understand what was happening to her. I did everything within my power to make her see me again, but she never did. It was always the doll she held and spoke soft words of how proud she was…"
The cabby looked up in his rearview mirror and saw unshed tears in Asuka's beautiful eyes.
"And then came the day I was told I was going to be an EVA pilot. I was so happy as I ran to moms room. 'There was no way that doll could one up me on this!' I thought as I opened the door to mom and saw the single greatest scare of my life; There in the middle of the room hung mom with bulging eyes and a blue face dead and right next to her in its own little nose hung the doll."
Her voice had slowly dropped to a dead tone as she told the story.
"I screamed until I could scream no more. Even when people came to see what was wrong and took me away from the room." She continued in the same voice, and then she shook herself.
"I have never been able to look at a doll since," She said whit a bit of sarcastic humor in her voice.
"So, NERV hired crazy people to save the world?" The cabby stated nervously. "As it happened, that was the status quo at NERV." She told him like it was the most normal thing in the world.
"WHAT!" the cabby shouted and had to quickly correct the cabs course back to the rood. "You're saying that everyone that worked for NERV was insane?"
"Well… not insane, but we all had our issues. I constantly needed confirmation of my existence and hid my insecurities behind an aggressive confidence and arrogance. Shinji , the third child, was a spineless coward who was left whit his uncle and abandoned by his own father. He needed constant positive reinforcement. Rei, the first child, was forced to take medicines to stop her body to shut down with the added side effect of dampening her senses and emotions. Misato Katsuragi, Shinji and I's guardian at the time, and the operations director, was an alcoholic hothead with a love hate relationship with her dad. Ritsuko Akagi, head of maintenance and development of the EVAs, was stuck in an abusive relationship and in the shadow of her mother who job she took over after her mother's suicide.
"And those are just the pawns. Now we get to the king, Gendo Ikari; The Supreme Commander of NERV, Shinji's father, an abusive boyfriend with a total disregard for his subordinates. And all part of his scenario to bring his late wife back." She had worked up an evil glee to words the end, but deflated after a deep breath.
"Scenario to bring his wife back?" the cabby questioned. "You can't bring the dead back, can you?"
"Too understand you most first know the two main scenarios at play." Asuka said evenly. "First: the angels. They were trying to join with Adam, the first Angel. If they succeeded they would have initiated the Third Impact in accordance with the 'Dead Sea Scrolls'. This would have resulted in the extermination of mankind. Second: humanity defeats the angels and initiates Third Impact themselves through the human instrumentality project. This would cause humanity to ascend into a single collective being, a new god."
The cabby slams his foot on the break and the cab comes to a sudden stop. "WHAT!?" the cabby shouts as he turns around to look at her. "You mean that… that…"
"That the war was never meant to stop the Third Impact… It was to control it. Now turn back in your seat and start driving again. We are in the middle of an intersection," she said and settled back in her seat.
The cab starts rolling and she continues her explication.
"Now where were we… oh, right I just went over the main scenarios. Oh, don't look so shocked, I believe only the top three in NERV plus SEELE knew the truth, though SEELE didn't know about the third scenario playing out." She paused. "You remember that the first child was taking medicine to keep her body working?... well it was because she wasn't fully human, she was cloned from the second angel and Yui Ikari, Gendo's wife and Shinji's mother. This was possible because we share 99% of our DNA with the angels."
"We do? Wait how could she be the first child if she was created with the second angels DNA?" asked a now weary and confused cabby.
"Eh? Oh, it just occurred to me that you don't know!" Asuka said smacking herself. "The first angel was Adam who was found in the Antarctic. His awakening and subsequent destruction caused the Second Impact. Also, he was the father of the angels that attacked. The second is Lilith who was found here beneath the geo-front in what we call Central Dogma. But what is most important about her is that she is the mother of all life on Earth. She is the all-mother."
"Wow, the source of all life was this close all the time… Um, doesn't that mean she is the mother of the angels as well?"
"No, Adam and Lilith aren't technically angels," Asuka replied. "They were created along with others by some ancient species to seed worlds with life. Lilith somehow usurped Adam for this world."
"And that's why they wanted to destroy us," The cabby said with a thoughtful expression.
"Most of them definitely, but at least one seemed to like us," Asuka said whit a distant look in her eyes as if looking in to the past. "But I digress, and we seem to have gone of topic. Where was I?"
"The first was cloned," the cabby offered.
"Ah, right. Rei took special medicine because she was an artificially created hybrid. There was a purpose to this." She paused to take a breath. "For humans to activate third impact three things were needed;
A key to unlock it… Rei,
a blood paid sacrifice to activate it… me,
and a focus to control it… Shinji."
She shuddered noticeably when she mentioned her own role in this.
"This simply was how SEELE planned it. They most likely didn't even know who the pilots were. But with the birth rates going down all over the world, dooming humanity to a slow extinction they most likely thought themselves noble; After all, what better crusade than to make humanity ascend in to a single god-like being… those pompous asses.
"And here is where Gendo's plan comes in; He planned to hijack the impact. To do this he first abandoned his own son but maintained enough control to mentally scar him to seek constant praise. Secondly, he ordered the creation of Rei with Lilith's and Yui's DNA to key her to all of humanity and specifically Yui, and it wouldn't surprise me if he had a hand in my problems to.
"Rei needed the medicine to live and the psychological side effects were added to keep her emotionally detached from the rest of us and make her easy to control. She was raised to always focus on the mission and the success of Gendo's scenario. What was done to Shinji was meant to make him easy to manipulate as he would seek praise from his father. And me? I was an attention whore… no more needs be said.
"As you can guess, he also had ways to control the rest of the people in NERV, and it was all done so he could get his wife back." She finished with an exhalation.
"Wow, and you and the rest never suspected anything?" the cabby asked in shocked awe, and he thought politicians were good at manipulating people.
"No. As I told you only three… maybe four people at NERV knew what the point of the war really was." She answered. "Besides Gendo, Rei was the only one of the pilots that knew, but because of her medicines she was a more-or-less a doll. There was Dr. Akagi; she knew and helped because Gendo had broken her through their abusive relationship. The last one was the second in command … who most have known but he didn't seem to be controlled by Gendo so I don't know what made him tick."
"So everyone at the top was playing each other to achieve their own goals," the cabby concluded with a snort. "That incident a month ago most have put a stop to it all right? I mean that last attack with the mini-angels succeeded but you still stopped it somehow and it can't happen again right… right?" As the cabby finished his sentence, the east entrance of NERV came into view.
"Those were not angels. They were a type of EVAs piloted by a dummy-plug system controlled by SEELE who ordered an outright attack on NERV to start the third impact. And they indeed succeeded. Gendo took Rei down to Lilith to perform the hijack but Rei rejected him and initiated the impact. I was fighting the MP-EVAs and was losing badly, they didn't just tare my EVA apart, they tore my very soul with their weapons. And I would not die…" she went silent for a few breaths. The cabby was silent, she had just relived something no one should have lived through to begin with.
When she had collected herself she continued. "After that Shinji was in control as everyone's A.T. Field dispersed, and we all became one, a single god-like being.
"But it was far from perfect… Humans weren't ready to ascend. I don't know what or how he did it, I was busy putting my soul back together, but Shinji reversed it but only people who could imagine there A.T. Field around themselves where able to come back."
"What's an A.T. Filed?"
"Ænima Terminus… Soul Boundary. A field of energy around our souls that provides us with a sense of self. A person's ego, sort of speak."
"Ouch, you must have one hell of an ego to put you soul and your sense of self, back together in one go." The cabby stated as he pulled up to the entrance.
"Yeah, but I think I had help. Someone or some ones…" She seemed to get a far-away look in her eyes before she continued. "… were helping me. I wonder who they were?" she snapped herself out of it and reached into her pocket.
"How much," she asked. "And why did you take so many detours?"
"It's on me and because you looked like you needed to have a long talk to someone."
She smiled at that. And as she opened the door she said, "Well it was a good talk and don't be afraid to use the video if you like." And the door closed.
He turned to ask what she meant, when he saw the security camera being re-angled by something to the window. And when he looked out, he saw her stretching as four fiery red wings came out of her back through slits in her shirt. With a hop and a few flaps she landed on the building next to a boy her age with pure white wings.
He stared for a second then reposition the camera and started to drive.
"You never know what you'll see when driving a cab." He said to no one as he drove off in to the night.
A/N: There you go people a little, compressed rundown of important stuff in NGE/standalone prolog to the upcoming Neon Genesis Saints. The main story will go over things in greater detail as they popup. But for now a special thanks to beta and inspiration Archdruid-Sephiroth and in the words of HCBailly: "…have a good day!"