Chapter 2: Welcome Home Shinji
Or
I continue to make things needlessly difficult for myself with world building that won't matter for probably dozens of chapters, if ever, and will actively make battles harder to pull off in the future. You think that positron rifle shit is going to happen with Ramiel here? With the way I've set things up I wonder if the entire nation of Japan can even power a single Eva let alone that gun.
Before Shinji could head to the train station he had to make an offering to the gods, praying for safe travels and their favor in battle if that could not be provided. He and Akio left together, walking in silence as always, heading for the center of town where they would split. People passing the boys on their way to work gave him odd looks as he was certainly not dressed like he was heading off to school or work. Not to mention the bag he carried and the knife strapped to his waist.
Given that this was a potentially important meeting with his Father, the first he had in nearly a decade, Shinji had decided to wear his nicest shirt, pants, and he had given his shoes a quick scrub of any mud. And it was for that reason, his Father should see that he was doing fine without him if not without his money… and if when this Misato woman picked him up she thought he looked nice then that wouldn't be so bad either. Unless this was a kidnapping plot in which case Shinji would feel like an idiot.
The Ikari boys left their neighborhood quickly enough and crossed over a small river that separated it from the more urbanized district that served as the bulk of their town. Where once the entirety of the town had been enclosed by a wall of metal and concrete, cutting off streets and alleyways to have fewer entrances and exits to guard, now the safety zone was far too large. There had been talk lately of tearing it down but most people didn't want too, they liked having something they could retreat behind in case things went bad.
So they walked along the outside of the wall and buildings, windows and doors long since barricaded or fortified, that made up the outer edge of the center of town until they came to one of the gates. The street was only two lanes wide so the gate was just two large solid steel sliding gates that met in the center and could be barred closed together. The flanking walls covered the sidewalks and extended into alleyways that allowed the gates to slide safely into them when it was opened all the way like now.
The town guards, armed and posted by the sides of the gate and on a fire escape connected to a nearby building, greeted people as they entered and left, nodding at the Ikari boys as they entered. The streets were crowded in the early morning as people either went to work, set up shop, carried out chores, or just lazed around and searched for trouble if they could. Akio, seeing one of his friends leaving his home in an old fast food joint, left his cousin without a word as he typically did when they walked to school.
The bulk of their town was made of such abandoned and now repurposed buildings. Everything was taken; offices, nightclubs, a clinic, bars, mahjong parlors, restaurants, arcades including the Ikari's old home, karaoke clubs, a police station, cafes, apartments, massage parlors, stores of every kind including a sex shop, and even a bowling alley.
A lot of them had been changed into housing or something else, like Shinji's school which was an office, the bowling alley was now a giant brothel which Shinji and Akio were to stay far away from or risk Aunt Haruka's wrath, or the dogfighting arena that used to be a daycare center where you could watch crazy Wasters fight vicious dogs to the death with just a small knife for prizes. A lot failed. But some of them kept or had recently returned to their original purpose, like the police station, the clinic, and the shrine Shinji was going to.
He made his way into more or less the exact center of town where on a wide street a park and a shrine lay on opposite sides. He avoided looking at the park where on the constructed platform in the center a body was hanging and on display, gently swaying back and forth. The face was covered by a bag to hide the bloat of death after a few days and a sign hung from his neck reading: "Rations Thief".
Justice out here usually came in one of 4 ways: hard labor, lashings, banishment, and death. The first two were usually something you could choose between, either work clearing rubble in the ruins for a couple days or weeks or get some whips to the back in public. Banishment came with a branding on the face so that no other town would take you in, you were essentially doomed to be a Waster. Worse actually because they got to go into towns if they behaved. Death is pretty self-explanatory, done by hanging usually although you can make a request to change that.
There were some exceptions like that time a Survivalist scouting party got too close. They had cut the heads off of the lower ranking ones, put them on poles around the town perimeter, and crucified the scout leader facing out towards the mountains they were seen coming from. Took 5 days for him to die but they were supposed to be tough. The leader of the main Survivalist party was impressed and opened up trade for a short while but the U.N. frowned on such arrangements so the town got what they wanted and cut ties.
Apparently there used to be these things called "prisons" before Hammerfall, there was one to the East that a bunch of Wasters lived in apparently. Shinji had no idea why you would give food to criminals and let them sit around all day instead of just getting it done quickly. There were cells at the police station but those were to hold people for a day or two until they were punished.
He set his bag down on a bench and walked up to the shrine; an island of trees, grass, and wood in a sea of concrete, pavement, and metal. He went through the standard praying motions; purify self with incense in pavilion, approach the shrine proper making sure to not stand directly in front of the offering box, gently drop a U.N. 5 Credit coin into the box, ring bell, bow twice, clap twice, pray that he reach his destination safely and that if he needs his knife it doesn't dull before his enemies are dead, and finally one more bow.
Turning away Shinji began to quickly walk away, pleased that he had managed to make his prayer without running int-
"Ikari." A deep and gravelly voice said as a senior and dour looking priest rounded the shrine, glaring at his frozen form.
Fucking damn it.
"Hmmm, the Clean Ikari." The elderly priest growled as he approached Shinji slowly. Shinji tried not to notice his limping walk or his wooden right leg from the knee down. "…Clean as far as I know at least. Why are you here, Ikari, and dressed so finely and with a weapon?" Shinji explained that he was leaving to meet his Father in Tokyo-3 and had asked the gods for protection. "Hmmm… I doubt an Ikari would need divine protection… or deserve it. I know your family does whatever it takes to survive after all."
He tapped his wooden foot on the ground once to make his point.
Shinji would admit that by all accounts Hammerfall was a nightmare of almost unimaginable proportions.
On September 13, 2000 a comet, later named The Hammer of God, so small and traveling so fast that it seemed to appear from nowhere struck Antarctica and blew it sky high. The tsunamis generated by the earthquakes from the impact destroyed anything on the coast in the southern hemisphere, some of the waves even reached as far up North as India.
This was accompanied by the pieces of the landmass being launched into orbit and coming back down. Those landing in the oceans made more tsunamis while those hitting land caused earthquakes and volcanic eruptions on top of vaporizing everything nearby (R.I.P. Sydney). Even today some of those chunks are still up there but they usually burn up on reentry and if they do land somewhere it's unlikely they hurt anybody due to there being a lot less people for them to hurt.
Sensibly, pretty much every country with nukes decided that now was a good time to use them.
It would take too long to go over who nuked who in order as that would be just a long list of everybody against everybody with some countries getting obliterated off the face of the Earth (R.I.P. China). Now with pretty much… every major city destroyed by nuclear fire or tidal waves people started to notice that it was getting pretty cloudy… everywhere.
And then it started to rain.
And then it didn't stop raining.
That was the end of the first week into Hammerfall and the beginning of The Flood.
As it turns out several months of constant rainfall and cloud coverage fucked up a lot of stuff. All of the crops drowned long before they died without sunlight, basically every dam ever constructed broke and flooded countless towns and valleys, and the sea level started rising and didn't stop until it was 60 meters higher than before submerging everything, including entire cities, on the coast. Not that there was many people on the coasts as they all fled inland or out to sea long before.
If there were any government left anywhere they collapsed by the end of the second week, if not into civil war than roving bands of soldiers taking anything they could. With the existing food depleting, crops drowning, nuclear winter, and livestock being stolen and slaughtered in mass within a few weeks people killed over the tiniest morsel of food and went into the wilderness to hunt down any animals they could. After they had exhausted the pet stores and zoos of any animals that weren't released in desperation of course.
Not that those who fled to sea did any better with fishing. Before their very eyes all the oceans across the Earth slowly turned to the color of blood, starting from where Antarctica used to be and spreading outwards. Nothing lived in those waters, unless it had members in an aquarium somewhere that hadn't been eaten like the zoo animals then those species went extinct like so many land animals. The people who fled to sea returned once their supplies ran out, finding the situation beyond desperate.
With what food there was left being hoarded inside of Survivor Conclaves who drove out anyone from their territories without mercy those outside turned to the only plentiful source of food they had left: each other. Cannibalism became rampant and in that madness people formed into hordes, bound only by the consumption of human flesh and cruel warlords, who overwhelmed Conclave after Conclave. They consumed both the food they had stored away and the inhabitants with equal fervor and desperation.
Shinji knew this all too well because for two months Uncle Minoru and Aunt Haruka had been a part of one.
After his Mother and Father had denied them shelter in Hakone his Aunt and Uncle had fallen in with lots of groups, each growing more desperate and crazy than the last. 4 months after being turned away by his parents their current group was attacked and destroyed by a growing horde of cannibals who gave the survivors a simple choice: "Eat or be eaten", offering them the cooked flesh of their comrades.
Obviously they joined in their business until a month before Akio was born when they overheard talk about… plans for him when he was born. Shinji wasn't sure how they managed to escape with Aunt Haruka being 8 months pregnant and hardly mobile but they had done it. After that they "went straight" and survived by gathering edible plants that were returning with The Flood over and working for crumbs given out by some of the Conclaves for work. They eked out this existence until one of the Conclaves decided to let them in.
At which point Shinji's Mother died and his Father dumped him with them.
When they were relocated to this town a few years ago things had been fine at first, his Aunt and Uncle working and demanding more money from his Father to buy a nice house. Then the priest came to their home at the arcade and made a big scene about how he knew that Uncle Minoru and Aunt Haruka had been members in a cannibal horde. Namely the one that had cut off and eaten his leg before his friends staged a break out. He claimed that he had seen Uncle Minoru eat some of the meat and declared all of them, except Shinji, Unclean.
Uncle Minoru challenged him on the spot to a duel to the death for his family's honor and good name.
Now the priest was old where Uncle Minoru was still in his md 30s, had a wooden leg where he had all his limps, and had possibly never killed anyone where, if his stories were to be believed, Uncle Minoru had killed 4 men. After seeing that nobody was going to back him up on this the priest had backed down and muttered that their family would forever carry the stain of their sins and blah blah blah. Uncle Minoru for his part said that the only thing the priest had to worry about eating him now was termites. Aunt Haruka laughed.
"Maybe your Father has come to his senses and decided to take you away from such poisonous influences." The old priest mused. At first Shinji assumed he meant his family but then the priest gestured out to the town around them. "Tokyo-3 is said to be like the old world, a Clean city. I'm sure your Father has not dirtied the family name and blood as his brother has." Shinji politely informed the priest that his Father actually took his Mother's name so he and Uncle Minoru had no blood relation. How blood got dirty went unasked.
Along with the question of if the priest thought anybody except him gave a crap about this. The reason nobody sided with him during the confrontation years ago was probably because if you judged one person about what they did during Hammerfall it meant that anybody could be judged. And pretty much everybody did shit that was rather damning, even if they never killed plenty of people knowingly stole supplies that caused others to starve or die from sickness. If you had a grudge about shit from back then, fine, but don't get others involved.
Besides, his backing down at the threat of a duel REALLY hurt his standing in everybody's eyes. Which now that he thought about it, why was he standing here listening to this? He had a train to catch and either an attractive older woman or a kidnapper to meet.
Turning away from the old priest Shinji made an appeasing and halfhearted comment about how he'd try not to bring anymore shame to the Ikari name during the two or three days he'd be there, if even that. Because he knew the old priest would just hate if people other than him were shit talking the Ikari name. Ignoring the priests muttering about how disrespectful the young are these days Shinji turned and walked away from the shrine, picking up his bag and continuing on his way to the train station.
The walk was uneventful and soon he was walking out another gate, the town guards posted at it asking where he could be going since school was the opposite direction but they offered no real trouble. A short walk out of the walled center of town he found the main reason that their town was brought under the fold of the U.N., the train station.
The U.N. needed to keep supplies flowing between their towns, be it food, salvage, or raw or refined goods. They preferred to use trains because it was harder for Wasters and Survivalists to rob or derail a train than it was for them to attack caravans or convoys and they couldn't steal the train like they could with cars. Then they'd just become Road Warriors and attack more caravans and get more cars until they had a fleet, usually armored and modified. How they found parts and equipment, let alone gasoline, was a mystery.
Shinji walked past the U.N. office, with a big white square and the blue letters "UN" painted on it, where outside a man with a few guns and a lot of knives browsed the bounties posted. He was the only person around as the food rations wouldn't be coming for a few more days, then this place would become packed as everyone showed up to claim their share. Free food was pretty much everyone's reason for joining the U.N., that and the fact that they tended to eradicate towns that said no to doing what they were told.
The U.N. was rebuilding the world and saving the Human race from an age of darkness and ignorant savagery.
You didn't get to say no to helping with that.
Shinji finally came to ticket booth and bought his ticket for the first stop on the list Misato had provided. He informed the teller that he had a knife on him so that the conductor and guards wouldn't throw him off if he was searched and his ticket didn't declare that he was armed. He boarded the train which was sparsely populated, most of the other travelers armed like him from what he could see, and sat down to wait, stowing his bag under his seat.
Soon enough they announced that they were leaving, the guards went around checking tickets, and armed themselves with submachine guns before they took their posts at the front and back of the train cars. As they departed Shinji sighed, feeling a weight in his stomach he hadn't noticed before disappear.
This was it.
No going back now.
Shinji watched the passing countryside for a while, counting the rusting cars pulled off to the sides of the road and left there years ago until the road left the trackside and the train went off into the mountains alone. He noticed the guards tense up and after a moment he saw what was bothering them.
Every dozen or so meters in the trees flanking the train tracks was a Waster standing and watching them pass by. They were those broken but not killed by Hammerfall, and their children too of course. They were lean, ragged, and almost always naked, if they wore anything it was rags, armed with everything from sharpened sticks to bows and arrows to swords, knives, and spears stolen from stores and museums long ago to even a rifle or two.
They watched their passing train disinterestedly as if this intimidation tactic, if that was what this was, bored them. As if they wished they could just put up a sign that said, "You're in our land now Townies. We're watching you.", and go and do something else. But that wouldn't have been nearly as scary.
Turning away from the window Shinji decided to just close his eyes until the next stop.
The rest of Shinji's trip was rather enjoyable.
There was sometimes a long wait between trains at stations so he took the opportunity to explore the first other towns he'd been to since he was 9. They were more or less the same, one of them had a truly unbelievable number of slaves though and he had no idea how they kept them from rebelling and going Waster. In another he was approached by a prostitute a couple years older than him asking if he had been made a man yet and after nervously explaining that he had neither the time nor the money she vanished.
A pair of men nearby laughed and after thinking that they were laughing at him they explained that he had just avoided getting lured away, his ass jumped, and having everything of his stolen by the girl's brother. Apparently they did it to visitors a lot and the locals weren't too big on stopping them. So Shinji felt pretty good about not falling for it as he went back to the train station and planted his ass there until the train came.
He decided to have lunch on the train, breaking open a food ration and using the tiny plastic spoon that came with it to scoop out the various colored nutrient pastes that came in little cups. It tasted like ass, except the red stuff that tasted like piss, but growing up in a home where the adults once became so hungry they turned to eating people he learned to eat what was given to him. Luckily he brought a piece of jerky to go with it. Hopefully his Father would bother to feed him for however long he was meeting with him.
At least nobody on the train knew about his Aunt and Uncle's actions during Hammerfall, every time he or Akio ate jerky at school someone would say "Oh, Ikari's having jerky! Anybody in town go-" HOLY SHIT!
The plastic spoon fell from Shinji's fingers as the train rounded a hill and Tokyo-3 came into view. It… it was so clean! He could tell even from here that none of the buildings were collapsing or ruined messes. Like the skyscrapers! They had all their windows! There wasn't as many as he was told or as tall but that was fine! And the size of it! Even from this hill he couldn't really see the other end, it stretched on forever and none of it seemed like it was abandoned space filled with vermin, overgrow plants, and skeletons!
"First time seeing it?" An older woman with an eyepatch over her left eye in a dark dress asked with a smile. Shinji turned in his seat to just gap at her, the other two people in the train car other than the guards giving the city a passing glance before going back to reading or whatever they were doing. "Boys and girls your age always act like that the first time. Getting a glimpse of what the world used to look like."
"Well, not really." She shrugged then, looking a little embarrassed. "Back in the old days there wasn't any cities where the skyscrapers went underground or the streets opened up to reveal elevators to take down trucks or giant gun emplacements popped up out of nowhere. …Odd, that they're down now though. …There wasn't a notice about testing that today." She muttered to herself before Shinji asked her to clarify about the "skyscrapers going underground" part.
"Oh yes! They lower into that "GeoFront" thing that all of the NERV boys and girls work down in. You'll probably see a few of them walking about just… checking things. They wear these tan uniforms with orange shoulders and a blue triangle under the neck so they're easy to spot." Shinji made a questioning look at "NERV". "They're the big secret organization that we're not supposed to talk about but everybody knows somebody who works with or for them. But shhh!" She held a finger to her lips and shushed. "It's a secret!"
Filled with a great many more questions but no idea which to ask first Shinji decided to just continue staring out at Tokyo-3 as they approached it, upending the remaining nutrient pastes into his mouth now that the spoon had touched the dirty floor. Never waste food after all.
Was his Father involved with this NERV?
It would explain why he never made any contact with him, having to keep everything top secret and who knows what he could reveal in a letter to family. It would also explain where he got all his money from, working for a secret organization in the most advanced city in the world had to pay big.
The thing about the money Shinji could see but the never contacting him to not potentially leak information… Shinji couldn't buy that. Not a lot of information to leak in a card that just says "Happy Birthday". Or maybe there was a way but Shinji wouldn't know, he never got one.
As they pulled into the first station inside of the city limits everybody on the train noticed something seemed off. Namely that there was no one at the station waiting to get on which might've not been so unusual if the ticket and newspaper/magazine stalls hadn't been closed down and shuttered. Also, from what Shinji could see of the street from here it was deserted as well.
"Ah, what the hell?" One of the train guards asked rhetorically as the doors opened to the empty station. Everyone tentatively got out of their seats as the guards left to investigate, submachine guns ready. Once one of them got out far enough he craned his head up as if listening to something before he came running back, the other guards waving them all out of the train to hear what he had to say.
"There's a state of emergency apparently." The guard told the assembled crowd of 24 passengers, 7 guards, and 3 crewmen. "It's been going since 12:30." Everyone either checked their watch or looked around to find a clock like Shinji did. It was 12:53 P.M. A general murmur rose up out of the crowd, wondering what could be going on. Was war declared? Was there another rebellion against the U.N.? Was there even enough towns not under their control and those willing to turn traitor to even attempt something like that again?
"How the hell did you not hear about this? Is there not a radio in the… front part of the train?!" A passenger asked the conductor who nervously held up his hands to the crowd.
"Of course there is!" He reassured. "It's just been broken for a month and a half." What followed was a very loud shouting match between the crowd and the conductor about how difficult it was to get a replacement radio for a rural passenger train that only occasionally came anywhere near a place as important as Tokyo-3. Shinji, not nearly as invested in the possible dangers of the broken piece of equipment like how were they supposed to call for help if they were attacked, decided to just eye the city street outside the station.
There were so many cars!
They were parked on the sides of the streets, against the sidewalks and nearly bumper to bumper with only the occasional gap that another could fit inside. In his town all of the cars were used for trade caravans and convoys, kept under lock and key by the U.N. The only people who had their own were farmers and bounty hunters and they had to take extra special care to not have them stolen by Wasters or Survivalists. And the streets were so new! The pavement wasn't cracking, filled with holes, or had weeds growing like back home!
"Well, the announcement says for citizens to head to their shelters." The guard who heard the broadcast, which if Shinji strained his ears he could hear echoing from outside. "Who here actually lives in this city?" About 7 hands went up. "Okay, who knows where the shelter around here is?" All 7 hands went down. "Oh god damn it." There was a few moments of debate amongst the guards about what to do.
They decided to make two pairs of guards to walk down both directions of the street, looking for any sign of the shelter for 15 minutes. Because apparently no one thought to put signs pointing to the nearest shelter at the train station of all places. Bit of an oversight. If they found the shelter than great. If they found nothing then they'll do it again but go out for longer and branch off. If they found looters then they'd shoot them and leave a note for the town gua- police. This was a proper city like the old days so they had police.
Sighing, Shinji looked around as people began to mill about the station. Well, this was quickly turning out to have been a waste of time. He was two stops from his final destination, the monorails obviously weren't running, there could be a war on, and even if he could get to the meeting point he doubted that Misato or the kidnappers would be there patiently waiting for him.
With nothing better to do he wandered over to the payphones and picked up one of the large and heavy phone books attached to it. He highly doubted that the numbers of like, 1.8 million people if he remembered correctly, could fit inside of it but it couldn't hurt to browse it. When he was done he would try to call home and tell Aunt Haruka that he may be coming back home this afternoon depending on how long this lasted. He didn't have enough money to stay the night anywhere if he couldn't contact his Father AND get a train all the way back tomorrow…
Let's see… Gendo Ikari… no such luck. There were a couple Ikaris but it wasn't like it was an uncommon name.
How about… Misato Katsuragi… no again. Well that would explain why she didn't give her phone number on the photograph. Be hard to do that if you weren't a real person. Certainly put some weight behind the kidnapper theory.
"Fuckin' bullshit!" A fellow passenger at a nearby payphone, a man whose tank top revealed a nasty scar running up the entirety of his right arm, shouted as he angrily hung up the phone. "Fuckin' phones just redirect to some computer bitch saying she's sorry but you can't make calls during an emergency!" Well there goes calling Aunt Haruka then. With that shot Shinji makes his way over to a bench and sits down, holding his bag in his lap as he settled into wait.
"I don't believe I learned your name young man." The older one eyed woman from earlier said as she wandered over to him. Shinji politely introduced himself, giving his full name and what town he currently called home. "Well you've come a ways by yourself." She said before giving her own introductions and sitting down next to him. He noticed the hatchet she set down next her, the edge sharp and clean but there was long dried blood on the handle.
"It's always strange seeing boys and girls your age traveling these days. Back in my day we allowed it because bad things happening were rare but now with things 1000 times more dangerous we still let you because we know you can take care of yourselves." She mused. "We used to think you're all just big kids. Then Hammerfall came along and… well…" She pointed to her missing eye to emphasize her point. "We all learned that lesson real quick. …So, what brings you to my town dressed so nice?"
Shinji for the second time that day explained that he was meeting his Father to a senior. "Oh, that's lovely. Where were you supposed to meet him?" He then explained that he was actually to meet with a woman who worked for his Father two stations away. "Oh, your Father must be a busy man then. What does he do?" He gave a cautious answer that he was a Metaphysical Biologist, something that he had only learned a few years ago when Uncle Minoru casually mentioned that was his parent's shared profession.
"Oh," the senior lady said, her previously warm attitude diminishing somewhat, "a Soul Stealer and Monster Maker then. Well… this would be the city for someone like that to find work. Probably for that NERV… who knows what they're doing down there below our feet."
Metaphysical Biology was not the most popular of the scientific fields even before Hammerfall. Born during World War 2 when invasive medical experiments primarily by the Germans and Japanese discovered evidence of what the common person would call the "soul".
There was a lot of brouhaha during the following decades between the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union to be the first to separate and then contain a living soul from a living body as souls deteriorated almost instantly upon death. That and make something like a nuke that just destroyed organic life but left infrastructure intact. Thankfully they never got around to figuring that out or Hammerfall would have probably killed even more people.
Sort of like The Space Race except instead of putting monkeys into rockets they were trying to rip their souls out.
After the Soviets had succeeded in the late 70s, managing to hold the soul of a Chimpanzee named Catherine for 5 solid seconds in a specially generated field after her body was reduced to its base components by another specially generated field, then came the decision of what to do with the souls.
This split into two paths. The first was focusing on cloning bodies identical to the original and sticking the souls into that to try and achieve some sort of immortality. The second was making some crazy bullshit creatures by fucking with the souls while they were contained and growing new bodies around it with a lot of the base components created when removing souls.
There was limited success with each and by the time of Hammerfall as far as the public knew nobody had succeeded at either. Although there had been well publicized and highly protested attempts. Actually a lot of Metaphysical Biology's history was filled with protests and more drastic actions like bombings and assassinations for pretty much… everything they were doing.
Shinji had learned all this right after Uncle Minoru offhandedly mentioned his parents shared occupation years ago. He did so by trying to find any books he could find from his school's meager library, his town's slightly less sad public library in the former sex shop, and asking his Aunt, Uncle, and neighbors what they remembered.
If his Mother did die in one of his Father's experiments he wanted to have some idea of what could have happened.
If there was a body in his Mother's grave he'd be surprised.
"I'm sorry." A man in his early 40s apologized as he walked up to them, Shinji noting the revolver holstered on his right hip and that he was one of the other passengers that lived here. He had short light brown hair and a scar running from his right eye, a deep brown, to his right ear. "I didn't mean to eavesdrop but you said that your name is Shinji Ikari correct?" Shinji answered affirmatively to the man.
"Your Father wouldn't happen to be named Gendo would he? And you said he's a Metaphysical Biologist?" Shinji, in shock and surprise, nods yes. "Wow, if we're talking about the same person then your Dad is one scary motherfucker." He smiles, teeth clean and straight, as he puts his hands on his hips. He stares at Shinji's face for a moment longer than he's comfortable with. "You even kinda look like him." He says quietly before he smiles a bit wider. "Who's the woman that's going to pick you up? I might know her too!"
Shinji tries to move his hand to his sheathed knife without drawing attention to himself as he answers the man's question. "Misato Katsuragi?! You don't say!" The man says happily. "Purple hair, brown eyes, and figure like this?" He asked as he made an hourglass shape with his hands. Shinji said yes to all of it. "Well, you got to be his son for her to be the one comin' to pick you up."
"Excuse me sir but who are you?" The older one eyed lady asked, making her presence known once again. "And how do you know of this young man's Father?"
"I'm a bartender." He answers, not looking at her but continuing to watch Shinji. Shit. Shit. Shinji never considered that the kidnappers would be waiting at one of the stations they told him to take and get on with him. "The NERV boys complain about him endlessly. About how he's a cold son of bitch and such." He makes a finger gun with his left hand and points it at Shinji, bringing it up away from his hip a bit. "They also talk just as much about that Misato although for entirely different reasons. And she just got here too!" He moved his left hand back to his hip.
Shinji almost immediately noticed that the strap securing his revolver in its holster on his right hip was unfastened now.
Fuck.
Fuck shit.
"Man," the man says slowly as he shakes his head, "what are the chances that I would run into someone like you comin' home from visiting my Momma?"
Out from the city came a deep rumbling that came closer and closer until the very ground beneath them quaked. Everyone at the train station began to panic as the guards yelled for everyone to calm down, everybody trying their best to remain on their feet. Looking outside at the city Shinji saw towers rising up over the buildings, giant guns atop them and pointing towards a nearby mountainside. Soon the rumbling stopped and all across the city there were gun towers of various types quietly waiting for some order.
"What the hell? Why are the battleme-" One of the passengers started to ask before the gun towers started to fire as one, the sound louder than anything Shinji had heard in his life. The shells soared over the city towards the nearby mountainside, exploding somewhere Shinji couldn't see. "WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON! WHAT ARE THEY EVEN SHOOTIN- OH FUCK! OH FUCK! WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!" A guard who was outside the station screamed before he saw… something over the mountainside that sent him fleeing blindly across the street and down an alleyway.
Those near the entrance of the station took a few cautious steps outside and Shinji watched the color drain from their faces before they too took off as fast as their legs could carry them. Those left began to panic as a rhythmic thumping got closer and closer.
After a moment everyone made a break for it, either out into the streets, into an enclosed space like the bathrooms, or back onto the train for whatever reason.
As a pair of people ran between Shinji and the man with the revolver he jumped out of his seat and ran with them, clutching his bag tightly to his chest as he heard the man and old lady telling him to stop. Not that he could really hear what they were saying as the explosions got louder.
Dashing out the entrance Shinji made it halfway across the street before he turned to look at what the guns were shooting at and what was making that rhythmic thumping sound.
It was bipedal creature towering somewhere around 75 to 80 meters. It was mostly black with the exception of white bone like coverings in places, particularly its massive shoulders that connected to thin but very long arms. The hands had three very long and bony looking fingers and out of the elbow protruded some red spike. The chest, which looked sort of like an upside down triangle balancing on its hips with its massive shoulders, had a bony… face? It was a bone circle with eye holes and a spike that pointed down towards a large red sphere sitting roughly in the center of the giant creature.
Shinji decided he had no idea what the fuck he was looking at.
But he did know that everything these guns were throwing at it was doing jack shit as it casually strolled forward toward the center of the city, ignoring the shells and resulting explosions as it did so. Also, "forward toward the center of the city" meant it was coming straight at the train station.
Well… they didn't cover this is school but Shinji was pretty sure the answer was to keeping running away as fast he could.
"HOLD IT!" A voice commanded before a gunshot rang out, barely audible over firing of the gun towers, shells hitting and exploding against the giant creature, and its unstoppable stride forward. "I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK GENDO IKARI'S SON IS DOING HERE!" Shinji stopped and turned in the street to find the "bartender" from before stalking toward him from the sidewalk with a smoking revolver. "BUT YOU AIN'T GETTING AWAY FROM ME! HAND'S UP!"
Shinji did as he was commanded, holding his hands and bag above his head as the man strode towards him revolver ready. Had… the man actually not expected him to be here? Was this not a planned kidnapping but one just sprung on him? As Shinji's mind raced with the approaching kidnapper and giant monster another quake struck the city, sending both the man and Shinji nearly stumbling. Far down the road opposite the approaching giant the street opened up as something equally gigantic rose up out of the ground.
Oh great, another one.
Standing far down the street attached to some kind of structure that appeared out of the street was a metal, purple, and bright green monstrosity. Far closer in shape to a human it appeared to be covered head to toe in purple metal with the occasional dash of green. It shared having ridiculous shoulders with the other giant creature although it chose… fin like pauldrons? It also had a helmet that let glowing yellow eyes gaze through and gave it one hell of a chin and a single long horn out of its forehead.
The… robot Shinji guessed detached to from the structure that had carried it up out of the ground and it took a single lumbering step forward, Shinji feeling the tremor slightly. Actually… he was starting to feel tremors from the other giant's steps too. The two giants strode towards each other as the giant guns ceased firing, a quiet falling upon the city except for the thunderous steps of the two great monsters.
This was probably a bad place to be right now. Besides the fact that a man was still trying to kidnap him.
"ALRIGHT FUCK THIS!" His kidnapper said as he marched forward and with his free left hand grabbed Shinji's right arm, spun him around, and shoved him back the direction he had originally been running. "WE'RE GETTING OUT OF HERE! MOVE!" Shinji felt the barrel of the revolver jab him in the back. "Run and I blow your guts out!" He whispered harshly down into Shinji's ear.
When they finally crossed the street and reached the sidewalk there was a sharp and quick whistle directly behind them. They both turned to find the one eyed senior woman, her shoes off and socks dirty from the pavement, swinging her hatchet into the kidnappers face.
Shinji had personally seen 3 men killed in his life. Two of them had been public hangings, the ropes properly positioned so that the men were rendered unconscious as they were strangled to death. The other had been a Waster that made the mistake of threatening a town guard in broad daylight. The guard, even though he was armed, raised his hands above his head much like Shinji had just done. A second later a shot rang out and the Waster's brains were scattered across the street courtesy of one the town guard snipers.
He had never been right next to someone taking an axe to the face though.
The hatchet came down on the right side of his face, coming down perpendicular to the man's face scar to almost make a perfect X. Shinji was standing behind the man, who was a full head and a half taller than him, so he got to see the clean and sharpened edge bury itself into the side of his face with ease. The hatchet blade ran from the center of his right cheek up to his right eyebrow, the axe went in until it struck teeth and cleaved itself into his skull with a thunk. Most of his right eyebrow now dangled freely and his right eye was sliced open and seeped down into his opened cheek.
"RAAGHA!" He screamed as his knees buckled in pain, blood gushing from his wound and down the front of his clothes. Shinji was rooted to the spot, his blood going cold as the older woman tried to wrench the hatchet free and the man cried out in agony. He swung his gun hand away from Shinji to try and blindly shoot the woman who was slightly behind him.
The footsteps of the giants got louder, the tremors stronger.
"IT'S STUCK!" The senior woman cried, trying to work the hatchet free. "STAB HIM!" She commanded Shinji who continued to watch over his shoulder as the blood fell from the man's face and began to pool on the ground. "KILL HIM! FUCKING STAB HI-" There was two shots from Shinji's kidnapper and the older woman's face went slack. She let go of the hatchet and took two steps backwards off the curb sending her tumbling into the street, a pair of holes in her stomach.
The footsteps of the giants got louder, the tremors stronger. The cars began to shake a little now.
"Fhuckhing bhitch!" Shinji kidnapper swore, the hatchet still lodged in his face. He collapsed to his knees, staring at Shinji's back with the gun pointed at him. Shinji was transfixed by the sight of the spreading pool of blood and how it began to go around his shoes. "Thried to fhucking khillh meh! Fhuckhing bhitch…" His gun hand began to waver and droop before snapping back to attention. "Dhon't mohve… Nheed to… rhest a sehcond…"
The footsteps of the giants got louder, the tremors stronger. The cars shaking now, the windows vibrating and things on display falling over, and it was becoming difficult for Shinji to maintain his balance.
Shinji knew he couldn't just stand there, these two giants were starting to walk towards each other the intention of fighting or fucking and he didn't want to be here for either.
"Dhon't mohve… khillh youh…" His kidnapper spat, blood falling from his mouth but he managed to press the warm revolver barrel into Shinji's back.
If he moved, he'd be shot.
If he didn't move, he'd probably be stepped on or crushed.
Either way he'd die.
But it wasn't like dying was so bad… right? That's what he told himself yesterday after all. That it wouldn't matter if he lived or died.
Shinji looked up and down the street at the strange giants coming towards each other, the purple one seeming to having some difficulty running for whatever reason. It stumbled every now and then but not enough to send it crashing to the ground.
They'd be on each other in 10… 15 seconds tops.
He took a deep nervous breath and realized that his heart was pounding in his chest.
He…
He didn't…
I don't want to die!
With only seconds to spare I unfasten the knife tied to me and toss it to my left, where my kidnapper can see it with his one working eye. He makes a confused sound as he looks while I, gripping my bag with both hands, twist it and my body right around as fast as I can. With the gun no longer pressed against my back I swing the bag of clothes into the man's face as hard as I can, right onto the hatchet still buried in his face. I hit it hard enough to push it in just a little more.
As he shrieks in pain and curses I drop the bag as it will only slow me down and turn back to run for i-
Where was the old lady's body?
Behind my kidnapper as he writhes in agony there is just an empty pool of blood where she should be. As I stare at it the tremors become so bad that cars are bouncing and setting off alarms.
"MHOTHERFHUCKHER!" The man screams as he brings his revolver up and fires.
I feel something slam into my gut and I have to take a step back, the tremors sending me falling onto my back.
What?
I touch my stomach and feel something warm and wet. When I bring my hand up it is covered in blood. I look down to see a hole in my shirt and a red stain rapidly spreading out from it.
Oh.
Oh no.
I try to breathe and, "AAAGH AAH", my body screams in agony and I cry out, knees pulling up and legs kicking from the pain. I'm gutshot. Oh god I'm gutshot. I remember from school that that is very bad. I place my hands over the wound and try to press down, bunching up my shirt to slow the bleeding. I feel the shirt warm and dampen and I swear I feel the blood flowing over my fingers.
The tremors from giants are so strong now that they send my body bouncing into the air a little bit and back to the ground. "GAHH! HAH GAWD!" It makes me scream in pain. Every inch of my clothes become soaked in blood as I am bounced and roll around in my kidnapper's and I's shared pool of blood. If my kidnapper is having the same problems I can't hear him.
Please someone help me.
Someone, someone has to be around to hear me and help.
This is fucking Tokyo-3, one the most populated cities in the world. Someone has to be nearby.
Instead all I get is to see the giant purple robot sprint past, the force of its footstep leaving a crater in the road and causing several cars and Shinji to jump fully up in the air and crash back. "RAAAGHAA!" I scream as the impact of landing made it feel like my insides were tearing apart a little.
It sounds like the two giants are finally going at it, there's a lot of thunderous banging and crashing that sounds what you'd expect from two giant monsters fighting or fucking, but as my vision begins to blur I find myself not really caring. I'm starting to get kind of cold actually, like all of the warmth is leaving my body. My teachers said that when you're gutshot it can take quite a while to die, if you don't get hit in a big artery of course. I wonder how long it takes when your body is being bounced off of the ground every couple of seconds.
It turns out I don't have to wait every long as there is a great big crash and I spy the purple giant back falling down towards me, having been sent sprawling by the other giant.
Right before it crushes me two things happen.
The first is that I realize that I ended up getting shot AND crushed by one the giants. If I had more time I would have laughed.
The second is that my ears are filled with a high pitched buzzing sound.
I'm staring up at a ceiling suddenly, a fluorescent overhead light buzzing noisily. The ceiling is a plain white and all I hear for a few seconds is the light buzzing and awkward shuffling of a quite a few people.
…What?
I sit up, expecting my body to scream and agony and instead feel completely fine. With suddenly clean clothes, even the bullet hole was gone, I find myself staring at a group of 13 people packed into a small apartment room with windows showing the city at night.
…Night?
Five of them stood off to the side leaning on the wall opposite of the window. Four men and one woman they are relaxed and dressed in… black bodysuits that covered everything but the head? With little metal circles speared out across it? And why were they holding things that look like those little toy guns they made before Hammerfall?
"Well look who it fucking is." A familiar voice says and I turn my attention to the main group of eight regularly dressed people gathered together around a… giant black metal ball. Just sitting there in the center of the room. Nobody paying it any real mind.
What the fuck is going on?
"Hey fucking listen to me you little bastard!" The voice says as my kidnapper, face completely find and unaxed, steps forward and grabs my collar, lifting me off the ground. "Fucking killing me wasn't enough you had to die and follow me here too?!" I somehow notice that the scar on the right side of face is gone.
"Look who's talking!" The older one eyed woman steps forward and shoves him away from me, sending me stumbling back but on my feet. She has somehow lost the twin gunshot wounds in her stomach as well. "You killed me and somehow showed up before me!"
We're dead?
The afterlife is an apartment?
…Well I'm happy to know that death isn't that big of a deal, after the whole dying part, this feels… anticlimactic.
"You dumb bastards ain't dead." One of the men in a black bodysuit says, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it. "But you are about to enter Hell."
He smiled wickedly at us and a pit formed in my stomach.
"Or Heaven, dependin' on what kind of mood you're in." The other people in bodysuits all joined him in smiling wickedly at us.
Next Time: We finally get to the Gantz stuff! Finally! No more world building! For a while! Just straight up gore, sociopathy, dicks, alien monsters, boobs, fights, and immaturity!
I want you to think about all the seriousness in these first couple chapters the first time a Gantz Hunter whips his dick out.
We could have gotten to this point much sooner if I hadn't bothered setting up a post-apocalyptic setting stealing almost everything or bits and pieces from:
Lucifer's Hammer, written by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
The Postman, written by David Brin
Doomsday, written and directed by Neil Marshall
The Road, written by Cormac McCarthy
