Disclaimer: I do not own anything, it belongs to Gainax and Anno.
Yui
Chapter 1
"Due to the state of emergency, all lines wer…"
The person hung up the phone, not bothering to listen fully.
After all, she pretty much was aware of what was going on.
And Yui Ikari was in bad mood.
Standing in the deserted city, dressed in dark purple halter top and black miniskirt with the bag slung over shoulder, was a woman in her late 30's but who looked ten years younger, and she was definitely not happy about many possible reasons for why she was needed at NERV.
A few days earlier in Kyoto-2, going home after teaching at the University, she received a package from NERV, containing the authorization entry card, transportation arrangements to Tokyo-3 and last but certainly not least, the letter from HIM.
"Come" was the only word in a letter, and she imagined that that he wrote that while having that infuriating smirk on his face.
Later, when she calmed down after tearing the letter apart, she requested the leave from the university (because of urgent family matters, which is true in the sense) and set off to Tokyo-3.
And now here she is, late because of the mishaps in train schedules due to the emergency, and so is her escort it seems.
Among the arrangements was a picture of the black-haired woman in the military uniform: Katsuragi Misato, former captain of JSSFD and now the Chief in Tactical Section of NERV.
The only survivor of the Second Impact.
Yui knew Dr. Katsuragi before that ill-fated expedition, and remembered from reports that Misato remained mute for years after the event. Not long before she resigned from GEHIRN, she heard that Misato befriended Naoko's little girl, Ritsuko, and it seems that it cured her of muteness.
She wondered how Dr. Katsuragi would have thought about his girl joining the military, and then NERV.
All her musings were cut short when she sensed something, or rather someone.
Turning to her side, for a briefest of moments she though she saw a girl with blue hair and red eyes, but there was not a soul in there, just like in the rest of the city.
For the second time her musings were interrupted with the small quake and the sound of explosions in the distance. Looking at the nearby mountains, she already knew was going on.
Several combat VTOLs were rearing back, shooting their payloads at something out of her sight, when that something emerged from the mountains, something big, vaguely humanoid, and something that shrugged off tank-tearing weaponry like nobody's business.
Sachiel, the 3rd Angel, was massacring the JSSDF air force.
"So that's what you look like." said Yui.
One of struck down VTOL's crashed near her, reminding that the battlefield was getting uncomfortably close, but before she could move to safety the Angel stomped on the downed VTOL, making it explode.
Before the flames reached her, she was shielded by a blue car that just arrived, and in the driver's seat was Katsuragi Misato.
"Sorry for being late!" she said.
"Same here!" Yui said as she quickly got in the car, and they hurried away before they got hit in the crossfire.
Later, after surviving the N2 bomb and fixing the car by some shady means.
"Tell me what irritates you, Katsuragi-san." Said Yui.
Misato was surprised for the moment, then remembered with whose ex-wife she was driving with.
"With due respect Ikari-san, I should be back in NERV commanding our defenses against the angel, not being a chauffeur for a VIP". said Misato with a hint of anger in her voice.
Yui chuckled.
"Heh, if this is any comfort to you, that bastard will be sorry for summoning me." She said.
Misato looked puzzled for a moment.
"You don't get along?" she asked.
"Get along? Ha! The only reason we are not officially divorced is because of his influence in the government." stated Yui.
"Must be a pain having the family name of someone you hate."
Yui laughed.
Soon they arrived at the vehicle entrance, decorated with the NERV emblem.
"God's In His Heaven, All's Right With The World." Yui recited the message with bitterness.
"Unpleasant memories of this place?" Misato asked, having read the info on Yui yesterday, and knowing that she quit GEHIRN 11 years ago.
"That's putting it mildly" Yui answered.
They stayed silent for a while.
"Do you know a girl named Rei Ayanami?" Misato asked.
"No, should I?"
"No, just forget it."
And then the Geofront came into view.
Yui, despite her general displeasure with the place, was awed on how much it changed in these 11 years.
"Impressive, isn't it? This is humanity's best line of defense against the angels, its only hope for the future" Misato proudly stated.
"Heh, One way or another, this place will become a funeral pyre of the old humanity". Yui stated after getting her composure back.
Misato was not amused.
"Do you mean that we have no chance of winning?"
"No, it's possible, but the results will not be pretty".
Misato decided to drop it.
After getting lost.
"Wait!." Misato shouted after Yui..
"We're wasting time, let's go!" said Yui.
"But how would you know where to go?" asked Misato.
"Because from what I seen, this place's layout hasn't changed much in 11 years." Yui answered, going to the command center.
"At least someone knows her way around here." A female voice said.
Cue Ritsuko Akagi, in her normal attire.
"Captain Katsuragi, do you have any idea how much time and manpower you're wasting?"
"Sorry" said Misato nervously.
Ritsuko sighed and turned to Yui.
"You must be Ikari Yui." she said
Yui looked at Ritsuko, putting 2 and 2 together.
"And you must be Naoko's daughter" said Yui.
Ritsuko frowned a little at the mention of her mother, but quickly recovered.
"I'm flattered that you remembered me Ikari-san, but while I sure you want to meet your husband as soon as possible, we first must take a detour." said Ritsuko
"What detour?" asked Yui.
"I think you'll realize when we will get there." Answered Ritsuko.
And so after riding the elevator, another elevator and the boat they stood in the darkness.
Even without the lights, Yui knew what she was facing.
The lights turned on, and the face of EVA-01 stared back.
"So you improved my cursed masterpiece, didn't you?" said Yui, apparently to no one in particular.
"Exactly" said the voice from above.
Misato and Ritsuko sharply turned their heads upwards in surprise, while Yui calmly looked up.
Up there, behind the armored glass, stands Gendo Ikari with that damned smirk.
"It's been a long time, Yui."
Yui simply glared at him.
"We are launching." he said after a moment of silence.
"But sir, the EVA-00 is still in containment, and we don't have time to make it operational!" said Misato, but then realized "You are going to activate EVA-01?" she asked.
"Yes." answered Ritsuko.
"But it never worked before, and besides, Rei is in no condition to pilot." said Misato.
"We are confident that it will work this time, and the new pilot has just arrived" answered Ritsuko, turning to Yui.
Misato was dumbfounded.
"What the hell!?, aren't the children who were born after the Second Impact are the only ones who can pilot these things?" Misato asked in irritation.
Before Ritsuko could answer, Yui spoke.
"Gendo, I have three questions."
"I'm all ears, Yui."
"What happened to the pilots?".
"The First is injured, and the Second is still in Germany with her EVA due to circumstances beyond my control."
In other words, SEELE wanted no deviations from the Dead Sea Scrolls.
"Why do you think my theory would work?"
"Because, I have faith in your work, Yui."
The theory in question that Yui formulated back when she worked in GEHIRN, in lay-man terms, was that mothers of the potential EVA pilots gained the ability to pilot EVAs thanks to their genetic code being influenced by the future pilot's fetus during pregnancy. Yui hoped that way the children won't have to suffer piloting the EVAs, and that they would find mothers who served in military. It was only because of fate's cruel of sense of humor that the mothers of potential pilots died one way or another before the theory could be tested properly.
"Here is the most important question: Why should I care?"
Everyone except Gendo stared at Yui in shock.
Misato was the first to regain composure "What do you mean, Why should I care?!"
Yui turned her head to look at Misato, wearing the expression that suggested that she was being asked the most stupid question in the world.
"Why? Why?! There was one reason I built the foundations of everything in here," said Yui spreading her arms, indicating the NERV as a whole "including this," said Yui, pointing at EVA-01.
Yui looked up again.
"And he took it away from me."
Misato stared.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"Enough." said Gendo. "Yui, will you pilot the EVA?"
"No." deadpanned Yui.
At that moment Sachiel reached Tokyo-3 and started to wreck the city, the explosions felt even in the cages.
"The survival of Humanity is at stake here!" Ritsuko called on her.
Yui laughed as if she was told a funny joke.
"Humanity can rot for all I care."
Silence reigned.
Gendo was the first one to break it.
"Dr. Akagi, change the EVA-01's configuration back to Rei" ordered Gendo.
"Yes sir." acknowledged Ritsuko and got to work.
Misato, disgusted by Yui's behavior, just walked away.
Yui herself was just staring at 01.
"Heh… my dear, soon, we will be together." She whispered.
That's when she heard a door opening and the sound of wheels.
Turning her head left, she saw a medical staff pushing a gurney with someone on it. As it got closer, Yui got a closer look. On the gurney was a pale girl of 13 or 14 years old with blue hair and red eyes, clad in white plug suit, and had bandages all over her, particularly on her right eye. But those details were not what captured her attention (and everybody's else attention from currently present in the hangar for that matter, even Gendo, despite the fact that he knew the reason behind it) was that the girl greatly resembled her.
The medical staff stopped the gurney right at the center of the bridge, removed the IV and other medical equipment and left, and Rei tried to get up, slowed down by intense pain. And while she would be more concerned with getting into the EVA, she couldn't help but stare at Yui with her good eye, unknown feelings flowing inside her.
As for Yui, for some unknown for her reason, the blue-haired girl before her caused her to remember the feelings she hadn't felt for long 11 years.
That's when Sachiel unleashed a particularly powerful blast.
The force of explosion rocked the hangar, causing debris to fall from the ceiling. The rocking made Rei to fall from the gurney, but was caught by Yui, who was acting on long forgotten instincts, and quickly ran from the center of the bridge, where a number of large debris had fallen on the spot where Yui and Rei have been moments before.
Getting the adrenaline out of her system, Yui sat down on the bridge, putting Rei down as gently as she could, but the fast movements before caused her wound to open, and the resulting pain nearly making her faint, whimpering in agony. Yui saw several spots on the girl's body turn crimson, and she felt that blood was staining her in places where she held Rei close.
This sight influenced Yui's decision.
"Gendo, is the seat still opened?"
Yui was in the seat inside the entry plug, wearing A10 nerve clip, breathing LCL she hadn't breathed for a decade, listening to the technicians talking in familiar techno-babble, feeling herself as the EVA itself.
And she was thinking, asking herself why she felt that way for the girl she didn't knew anything about, why she has feelings like at all for anybody except her late Shinji, and why those feelings were enough to willingly put herself in the EVA she hated as much as Gendo himself.
In Central Dogma, everybody except Gendo and Fuyutsuki were surprised that the woman was able to make EVA-01, the "Oni", to work at all, on the first try, at 53% synchronization rate, something that even the Second Child can't boast about.
Misato, encouraged by these unexpected results, was hopeful that despite the woman's attitude, she will destroy the angel.
"EVA-01 Launch!"
But what happened shortly after proved that the creators of weapons were not the masters of said weapons, as a downed EVA-01 demonstrated with the tunnel in the right eye, courtesy of Sachiel's energy spike, acting as a bloody twin geyser.
Needless to say, things in Central Dogma were not calm.
She was in heaven
She was in the endless filed of flowers near the single sakura tree, breast-feading her baby boy.
Later, she was teaching her year-old son to eat by himself.
Later, she was teaching her 2 years old son to walk by himself.
And finally, she and her 3 years old son were playing together, running in the field of flowers without the care in the world.
Despite the nagging feeling that she was forgetting something, she was happy.
It was when she and her 4 years-old son were playing that something happened.
The clear blue skies turned red.
The sakura tree burned.
The whole field of flowers withered.
As she was protectively holding her son, a shadow grabbed her, forcing her to drop her son as she was levitated away from the boy, finally stopping near the burning tree, the shadow forcing her body to float. The boy was running towards her, pleading her not to leave him.
Then she felt a pressure on her left arm, and then it grew more and more, until her left arm was broken.
Her agony was suppressed by sheer terror as the same thing happened to her boy.
He fell on the dead flowers with his left arm broken, screaming in pain, crying for her help.
She was trying to break to free, to run to her boy, comfort him, heal him, take him away from this horrible place.
And then something hit her right eye. Something sharp. Several times.
And then her skull was pierced through.
The same thing happened to the boy.
Blood spraying from the both newly made orifices on his skull on the deceased flowers, screaming like he was burning in hell itself (as far as she was concerned, they were), and then falling silent.
She snapped.
She broke free, grabbing the startled shadow with her good arm, throwing it on the ground, and then punch, pound, hurt, maim, rend, massacre, slaughter, kill it, kill it, kill, kill it, kill, kill, kill it, kill it, kill, KILL IT!
When she was done, there was not much left of the shadow.
Ignoring the returning pain that was held back by rage-induced frenzy, she walked to where her son was, but at halfway her legs gave away, forcing herself to crawl the rest of the way.
As she cradled her son, who was miraculously still alive, the bright light filled the field.
When she came to, she was in the entry plug, in one piece, with Central Dogma trying to reach her in the back of her mind.
She was confused at first, but then she vaguely remembered brutalizing Sachiel into tiny little pieces, before the sore loser tried to take her with itself to hell by self-destruction.
She looked around the entry plug, until settling on the right part of the screen, which was of noticeably lower quality compared to the rest of the screens, due to the eye being destroyed and the back-up cameras not being able to reproduce the vision perfectly.
The image showed the nearby skyscraper, it's mirror-like windows showing the EVA-01's destroyed right eye.
Which was currently regenerating until it formed itself into the functional eye.
She stared. The eye stared back.
And then she started to laugh.
Author notes:
My second fic.
I was confused as to why the idea of changing Shinji's and Yui's roles is rare, the only fic that comes to the top of the head with that premise is Maternal Instinct by Katfum, sadly abandoned. This fic is partially based on that one.
The theory bit was used by someone before, but for the life of me I can't remember exactly by whom.
If something else is similar to someone's else ideas, it's coincidental.
If it was not obvious by now, the English language is not my native one.
Thanks to Cylon One for pointing out my mistakes.