I own not a right to Evangelion or Saints Row or their characters, though I wish I do for the latter. It is awesome, in my opinion at least. Enjoy!
Give thanks to sh8d8ow, and to a lesser extent by comparison (no offense), GatsuBerk. I pretty much did not have much interest in updating this story so soon. And by soon I meant within this month.
Same warning from the bottom of the last chapter applies however. Please do not expect a repeat performance of this caliber without ego grooming, because I'm that evil.
Good Morning
Chapter 2: Setting up
Back of a moving truck
Oleg Kirrlov stared at the last of the folder's contents as the metal behemoth that was his transportation rumbled down the road. Being Chief of Security for Shinji Loren was at times demanding work, but it had its rewards. The most pronounced one he always called to mind was the fact that he was no longer stuck in that crucified position at one of Philippe Loren's laboratories. Few outside the DeWynter sisters could ever convince Philippe out of a advantage like that; where they could take all the blood samples they want in near constant supply for their cloning program. Oleg had to constantly marvel at the mystery of how Loren's adoptive son convinced him to let Oleg run free, with the only stipulations being that he worked for the Syndicate and he had to provide a monthly quart of blood for the cloning.
He was grateful for the boy's assistance in the matter, and for convincing the higher ups to allow Oleg any position of his choosing. He choose to be Shinji's Chief of Security for a handful of reasons, most of which involved him not being bothered by the more assertive members of the Syndicate. Oddly enough, though not too odd when he thought about it, the sole majority were the scientists of the cloning program. They never could perfect the clones when it came to their intellect, and it took indirect threats from Loren senior to stop them from dissecting Oleg's brain in their bid to solve this dilemma.
The minority of the reasons was that Shinji bothered treating him like a person. And said boy didn't remotely annoy him with incessant demands that were ludicrous to his position. Chiefs of Security did not get coffee... unless they were being thoughtful. That was a brownnosers' job plain and simple. Moronic bastards...
He turned to the first page of the folder's content once more. He just couldn't contain his excitement any other way short of dancing. The possibility to bio-mechanical replacements to his clones was becoming more and more real with each reading. No more cloning, no more demands for him to be back at the lab, oh how he wanted to sing! Unfortunately there was one roadblock to all this, and its name was Gendo Ikari. He was not going to give up Dr. Ritsuko Akagi without some kind of fight...
Oleg smiled. There was a reason Shinji called for his personal presence to Tokyo-Three. He glanced at something and frowned however. Until they could produce miniature Evangelions, he was forced to work with his clones...
XVX
Meanwhile at a highway to Toyko-Three
A lone beat up green van leisurely traveled along the road, as opposed to the nervous wreck that was driving it with surprisingly calm hands. She never liked to leave the sanctity that was her home, that and being out in the open was sure to draw the attention to the spy satellites spinning around the earth at several miles a second if they caught who was driving this van. If not the satellites then the radio towers, if not the radio towers then the non-encrypted cell phones, and not the cell phones then people associated with law enforcement... the list kept going on and on in branching formations.
If it wasn't for the fact that the Magi of NERV was on the constant lookout for foreign IPs , she would be sitting in her cozy warehouse without looking over her shoulder every five minutes. Such was the luck of Kinzie Kensington, ex-FBI agent, and number one enemy of Matt Miller. If they weren't on the same side, they would probably destroyed the world through electronic warfare if given half the chance to go at it.
How Shinji managed to recruit the recluse was a mystery to many, but the lone discerned fact is that there is a agreement of sorts between the rivaling geniuses to duke it out in their own fashion that both can agree on. So far neither could agree on how to destroy the other.
But these thoughts were the last thing on her mind as Tokyo-Three came into view. Safety came first. Her fingers were crossed that Shinji found a comfy warehouse for her by now...
XVX
Airplane, thirty minutes to Tokyo-One
Vengeance can lead to odd roads, many a experienced or observant man or woman could tell that to anyone. A person could lie in wait for years before acting. A person could storm the walls of a castle in full fury. Some are known to forsake their own humanity to obtain it. But in Angel De La Muerte's case it was joining the a faction of the same side to obtain it.
At first he refused the young boy's offers on multiple occasions, he was a well dressed punk with manners to him. And probably because he lacked the urge to be spiteful to him was the reason the boy kept appearing with an offer to join the Syndicate. It was a matter of time for the literally named "Angel of Death" asked him why he was so insistent on getting him on his side.
The boy just smiled at him pleasantly enough when he replied. "Because I believe you should have a shot to obtain what you want." There was a look in the kid's eyes however he found peculiar. It was like he was speaking for himself for a brief moment. "And besides, every Ceaser needs a Rome to fight to claim. I believe Rome has yet to be claimed."
That was years ago, two in fact. Now the sixteen year old teenager had called him and his Luchador es la Expiación to a new battlefield. He glanced around the privately chartered aircraft at the red, silver, and slightly purple colored masked men that amassed over the years to match Killbane's own Luchadores. He looked down at his own mask, retrieved in a gambit at the vain bastard's own casino where Shinji orchestrated a hell raising bar fight by having all the drinks paid at his expense. How the fight started was unknown, and the young man booked it long before Killbane himself got to the floor to quell the brawl personally.
Three-Count Casino had long been declared a dry establishment after that due to the twenty five pile up in corpses.
A lone thumb ran through the familiar stitching. Angel did something few people had seen him do since his shame brought on by his former partner's actions against him, he smiled. Tokyo-Three, how he didn't know but suspected his young employer had a hand in it, was going to be host to Murderbrawl XXXI. His long awaited match was soon to happen in a matter of months.
XVX
Tokyo-Three Penthouse living room
Jennifer Keel put down the finally laid the cell phone to rest. Everything was coming together. Oleg was coming in with a detachment of brutes, much to his displeasure to that. Angel's group was but a half hour away from landing to be received by the drivers to ferry them to Tokyo-Three. Unfortunately Kinzie has yet to make contact, but that was expected with her paranoid tendencies. Now all they had to do was wait for the arrival of extra hands to arrive by port to secure their hold on the city.
Not a lot of small time elements of the criminal nature had the backbone to challenge a larger armed force after all. And considering SEELE's interest in the Evangelion project, the more the merrier.
She reached up and rubbed a stiff shoulder with a pained groan, it was a bad habit of her to stand unnaturally still when talking on a phone and it always bore consequences when the call was over ten minutes.
Her heels clicked at steady rhythm as she crossed the living room to hunt down the young Loren in his room. As she crossed the room and ventured into the hallway to get to the stairs, she half-heartedly eavesdropped on a 'conversation' that carried into it from the door way.
"For the last fuckin' time, BEAT IT!" She winced a little when the door slammed closed. It has been a week since the fight with the Third Angel, and since Misato Katsuragi learned of Shinji's living arrangements she has made an effort to move in under the guise of, quote, "needing to live with a guardian," end quote. That argument had been shot down with a eerie smile from Mrs. Keel, and tempered further with a door slamming into her face by an irate Scotsman.
She had long escaped upstairs to escape another jab at the man's temper by his coworker. Misato just did not know when to quit. And if she bothered to look, on paper it was Mrs. Keel herself that was Shinji's registered guardian. The woman smirked, it was a formality to avoid a means to investigate into his life and quite possibly the inner workings of their organization.
Keel... Odd how her last name almost fitted her position. In a layman's terms her last name literally meant main structural element. She was to Shinji as the DeWynter sisters were to Philippe Loren himself, his primary assistant; it was remarkable how similar the two were in some details, particularly they can essentially order someone around and call the shots, but at the end of the day they need someone to handle the finer details without being swamped by them.
And like the sisters, if their boss dies from unfortunate circumstances then she was the most likely to take over operations with an iron fist. Not that either party had interest in ending their employers. They had their bad days but not worth bumping them off for... they could live without the April fool pranks however. Why two fairly powerful people had a interest in that 'holiday,' they would never know.
Her fingers lace around the door knob to Shinji's room and twist the knob. She sighed at the sight that greeted her. Shinji was staring off into the world outside via a window and Sophia Kirrlov was sitting nearby on a couch with a newspaper on hand, occasionally glancing toward her young charge for assurance before returning to the paper.
Mrs. Keel's mind momentarily took leave to remember the day the previously unknown niece of the Russian giant was met.
Sophia Kirrlov, age twenty-nine next month, former professional wrestler of the Women's Wrestling League of Russia till three years ago save for a small hiccup. Shinji was on business in Moscow, Russia with Philippe himself to get a tighter grasp at the concept of ruling a criminal empire while mentored by the sisters, at the time Mrs. Keel was more of a nanny than a assistant to the young Loren due to his age.
During this trip Shinji took a interest in the wrestling tournaments that seemingly appeared out of the woodwork after their arrival. During the off hours of the trip, the young Loren was found at any of the most talked about matches when they took place. Kirrlov's was one such match.
In hindsight it was obvious from the start that the match was rigged when the referee stepped out of the arena, but Shinji didn't know better. And Sophia had not the time to take notice of that fact when her opponent rushed her like an animal. Despite the woman's height and relative power her opponent was too nimble to grab and to Sophia's horror when she learned later, her opponent was armed. Flesh colored Brass knuckles repeatedly attack her legs as her opponent darted to and fro, it was a matter of time before bone and sinew broke under the assault.
Sophia Kirrlov had to be carted away on a stretcher for a shattered Femur. When the referee returned and announced the contender was named the victor. When the hand to announce the victory was thrown up, that was when Shinji noticed something odd in the shorter woman's hands. Something shaped like a brass knuckle.
Jennifer Keel never really understood what was going through Shinji's mind when he asked her to look into the matter. Perhaps he saw himself in that situation, when his biological father abandoned him for his own interested regardless of the pain he sowed onto others. But she was not one to disappoint.
Apparently Sophia's opponent, Trisha Ivanov, was the daughter of a local Russian mob boss. Rather than see his daughter being harmed, he bought off or destroyed the people his daughter was pitted against. Sophia was one of the few that wouldn't be bought off, and every other tactic was rendered useless by freak chance and experience when dealing with his type. Buying off the referee and arming his daughter with specialized brass knuckles was the last resort that came to fruition.
With a dead career, Sophia was rather easy to talk to, let alone find considering the seriousness of the injury. It was like talking to corpse if she didn't occasionally murmur back.
Whether Philippe actually cared for the real reason or not, he left Shinji to his own business in Russia when asked. For six months, Shinji spent what time he could to the recovering giantess of a woman. He occasionally got her to laugh at some anecdote for brought up in idle conversation.
Eventually he came to her with a offer, to join a program within their organization that could give her back her position in the ring. The Bionics division. Its original purpose was to render the use of the brutes obsolete with super soldiers. Indeed one gained superhuman abilities from advanced regeneration to enhanced strength, but ultimately it was deemed more cost efficient to use clones to do the job instead of enhanced Syndicate members; the cost to produced a squad of ten brutes was equal to the cost of making a three bionic super soldiers. That and brutes had a lower expectation to go rogue.
The Bionic division was now a former shell of itself, and its remaining staff are but a handful of surgeons and scientists compared to the legion it once was.
Sophia accepted.
Though Shinji paid for all the expenses, for nearly three years Sophia acted as a bodyguard in between rehabilitation and conditioning sessions to pay off the 'debts' she owed him. The one time she stopped was to participate in her old League's matches earlier this year. 'Reigning champion' Trisha Ivanov was ill prepared for the return and wrath of her 'defeated' opponent...
Now here was Sophia back on duty. The joy that was in destroying Trisha, literally, had long since passed as she resumed her role. Thoughts of being a wrestler long dead when her career was ended by a broken femur.
Jennifer Keel shook her head.
She observed her superior in the chain of command as he looked out the window with glazed eyes. She knew that look. He always got it when he was thinking about something in deep thought that words were virtually useless in rousing him out of his stupor. From her years of being with Shinji she could assume it was either one of two things: trying to convince Dr. Akagi into joining the syndicate, or about his biological father. From the lack of hand clenching, it was most likely the former.
She walked over and gave her young charge a pat on the shoulder, jolting him out of his reverie. She smiled at his curious glance as she said, "They'll all be here soon."
Shinji smiled back and returned his gaze on the city.
The Syndicate was coming to Tokyo-Three, and no one was going to stop it.
A/N: To those savvy with Saints Row 3 and wondering why I did not include Zimos... I couldn't imagine him working with Shinji considering his (Shinji) association with Morning Star. You have to admit, those who played the game, that you would have second thoughts about working for someone who's with your... let's say tormenters out of respect of Zimos' situation. Oleg, Kinzie, and Angel were the most flexible in my view.
If you need additional reasoning, here it is, feel free to skip this part if you want: I'm more or less basing Oleg's employment on a quote from Kinzie in a out of mission conversation with the guy, he's a "Russian superman," he doesn't have much choice in terms of employment with his size and intellect. Can you imagine him working at a DMV? No? Same here. That and in a world that is electronic heavy, Matt could've spotted him the second he stepped out of his hiding place by hacking a satellite.
Kinzie and Angel pretty much want to get back at the ones that wronged them. Kinzie you can at least agree could be reasoned with in regards that Matt Miller of the Deckers is her enemy, he framed her and all that. I will admit it's a bit of a stretch. Angel, I'm certain in my opinion that with a few right words he could've been convinced to join the Syndicate so long as he gets to take down Killbane without scruples outside of the Luchador code. Stealing his mask back? You might have me there, but you have to consider Shinji's affiliation. It would've been disastrous if he decided to storm the place with Angel even if he got out alive. Killbane is a part of the Syndicate too.
If you're wondering about the Ceaser comment, those who either weren't paying attention to the game let alone played it, Killbane tends to refer to himself as a general or a Ceaser (Title of Rome's leader/emperor in the ancient world) one more than one occasion in the game.
No, Burt Renalds, no matter how awesome he is, is not appearing in this story. I feel like living to plot another day, thank you very much.
Spanish to english translation: Luchador es la Expiación- Wrestler's Atonement
I am open to suggestions to finding a better name for Angel's version of Killbane's Luchadores. But it must be in Spanish. Just feels right that way.
Monkeybandit2, making off with your attention! No refunds.
