Special thanks to Chris (Crazy-88) for betaing this chapter.
---
Consciousness was slow to return, the first question to arise being 'Why was I unconscious in the first place?'
His eyes fluttering open to see an unfamiliar ceiling, Shinji feels the rough texture of the hospital sheets first before he notices the sticky coldness of the sensor pads across his body and the uncomfortable pressure of the IV line in the crook of his arm. He also notes the abrasive coarseness of the straps about his wrists, ankles, and across his thighs and chest.
Thus Shinji's second question was "Why am I strapped down in a hospital bed?"
"It is because they were afraid that you were contaminated by an Angel," Rei says softly.
Jerking his head to the side, Shinji looked at Rei, but it is not Rei. Gone is the confident if creepy and unhygienic Nurgle worshipper, replaced by the quiet, broken, repressed doll he had first met. The brilliance of her soul was covered up again, and her unimaginative school uniform had returned.
Narrowing his eyes, Shinji says, "You're not Rei."
Peeking out the slightest tendril of psychic energy, Rei signals to him I will endeavour to explain what has happened.
"I am Rei, things have merely changed. You have been out of the loop for the past two months, ever since the fight with the Fourteenth Angel," Rei informs him.
"Fourteenth Angel? I don't even remember the Twelfth!" Shinji exclaims.
"This was… not unexpected," Rei reports. "You have spent the past month in a coma, nearly in a vegetative state in fact, your brain activity almost nonexistent. Some memory loss was possible. What was the last thing you remembered?"
Trying to gather up the fragments of his mind, Shinji winces in pain at how badly scrambled everything is. His mind was everything to him. Finally he dredges up the most recent seeming memory and asks, "A party?"
Frowning, Rei says, "Ah, yes. It is unsurprising that the break occurs there. There is good reason for that."
"What reason?" Shinji asks groggily as his mind fights to reclaim what was lost.
"That was the night Asuka killed Rei IV in a fit of rage. Things sort of degenerated from there," Rei says quietly.
"WHAT?" Shinji cries out, now desperately trying to remember that happening.
"It was really my own fault, and I apologize again for what happened," Rei tells him.
"I mean you dying!" Shinji cries out.
"Oh. Yes. You wouldn't remember the next part. I can die and be resurrected. I am Rei VII," Rei explains.
Shinji goggles at her at that statement.
"Things have gone downhill considerably," Rei says with a small shrug.
"Tell me," Shinji says.
Clearing her throat, Rei says, "Our story starts with a wedding. Captain Katsuragi was invited to one, and you decided to have a little party behind her back while she was away for the night. I am not quite sure why you were trying to do this but…"
A little piece of his memory falling into place, Shinji says, "I was trying to bring Toji, Hikari, and Kensuke deeper into the fold, hopefully begin training them to use their inherent powers. I was also trying to get Toji at least to second base with Hikari."
A sudden, crushing wall of guilt descended upon Shinji. He had been moving the two together since the beginning so that he could have a greater degree of control over the two psykers later, using their relationship as leverage against them. He could only remember screaming and crying, so he presumed this had ended badly; badly enough that he could feel guilty about his actions. He was somewhat surprised the human race was still intact… although technically he had yet to see anyone but Rei so it was still a distinct possibility.
Of course, the fact that he was restrained in a hospital bed was already proof enough that the proverbial waste treatment plant had exploded next to the industrial fan factory.
"Ah… yes… that would explain a few of your later actions," Rei says, a heavy weight settling on to her, although the effect was rather subtle given her currently near emotionless state. Whatever she had done had clearly been worse.
Sighing, Rei says, "I feel that an explanation is in order. As I said earlier, I am Rei VII. I am, and always have been, an artificial being, genetically engineered to pilot the Evas. Before her untimely demise, Dr. Akagi…"
"Ritsuko is dead?" Shinji asks, the surprises still piling up. He didn't even have a memory fragment of that one.
"Yes. It happened while you were asleep. Do you want me to tell this story in any sort of order at all? Because it is all rather complex," Rei asked him in an almost chiding tone.
Shaking his head, Shinji said, "I apologize, please continue."
Rei resumed, "As I was saying, Dr. Akagi would download my memories periodically for upload into a new body should I die. After you explained to me about my abilities, I discovered a way to transfer not just memories but my entire soul from body to body. Unfortunately each transfer generated a unique individual, and the soul did not always fit properly."
Shinji closed his eyes in strain at this news. "Rei… that sounds like you were trying to possess each new body in turn. My daemonology is fairly weak, but considering the secrets we share you should have told me if you were having problems."
A light blush lit up Rei's alabaster cheeks and she bowed her head in shame before saying, "There is… well… a reason why I didn't tell you. It has to do with the origins of my DNA…"
Shinji's mind, altered by contact with the Warp and the Eva into something that was no longer wholly human, very quickly put the pieces together and he said, "You're part Angel, aren't you? That's nothing to worry about."
Nodding, Rei elaborated, "Half, but it is the other half that made me stay my tongue. Shinji-san… I'm a partial clone of your mother."
"Oh," Shinji replied. That little bit of shrapnel embedded in his mind twisted violently, and he knew that in the time away he had figured out the secret that had been plaguing him for months, but now ironically he had forgotten what it was that he had remembered.
"Yes… since we first met you have… instinctively felt a familial attraction to me, a subconscious realization that I am what could best be thought of as your 'sister' in such terms," Rei says.
Telekinetically undoing his restraints just so Shinji can hold his face in his hands in exasperation, Shinji says, "I can see where this is going. Fuck… caught in a love triangle between a Khornate berserker and my Nurgle sister."
"It was… messy to say the least. By Rei IV, the last version of me you remember, I was quite unstable, previous incarnations manifesting as voices in my head. My soul was only loosely attached to my body. I…" Rei pauses to collect her thoughts before continuing, "You awoke me to a whole new world of emotions, but you were not receptive to me in the ways that I wanted you to be. I began to despair, your brotherly love insufficient for me. I wanted to unleash the gifts of Nurgle upon the whole world, I wanted to kill Asuka-san to be with you, I wanted to sleep with Asuka…"
Interrupting and holding up his hands, Shinji says, "Whoa there! Time out. Say that last bit again."
"Umm… well, you see, I was insanely jealous of Asuka-san, so much so that I actually began to desire her too. I eventually set upon the compromise of wanting a threesome with you two. I unfortunately did not know how to initiate something like that," Rei explained.
Shinji goes to open his mouth to say something contrite, but a memory violently dislodged from the muck of his subconscious at that point and rocketed to the surface of his mind with all the subtlety of an iceberg flipping over.
---
"How do you do it man?" Toji asks enviously as Asuka saunters away after French kissing Shinji right in front of his friends.
Smirking while he rearranged his expensive clothing and wiped the lipstick off his face, Shinji says, "Confidence my friend, confidence."
"Yeah, well, to risk injury with a bitch like that requires confidence or insanity, but where do you get either?" Toji asks.
Chuckling, Shinji shakes his head and says, "That's my girlfriend you're talking about there."
Instinctively flinching away from a strike that never came, and never would come, Toji calmed down and says, "Sorry man."
Snickering at the way his friend instinctively understood the power dynamic without him ever actually raising a hand against him, Shinji says, "She actually prides herself on being a bitch now, although she prefers to concentrate on the Angels these days. She's itching for another close range fight; the last few have all been trying to avoid melee combat."
"Ha! Yeah, I don't blame them," Toji says sarcastically.
"In any case, you were asking a question before. ' Where do I get my confidence and/or insanity?' Well, those are both pretty easy. I know who I am and what I can do; questions most teenagers, and far too many adults, can't answer. I am beyond angst and the existential crises that cripple the confidence of so many," Shinji states.
"Okay, how do you know that then?" Toji asks insistently.
Grinning, Shinji says, "Because I learned to fake confidence long enough to explore my world and figure it out instead of hiding away in my room, afraid of the outside world."
"How do you fake confidence?" Toji inquires incredulously.
"It is quite tricky because fake confidence quite quickly becomes real confidence. If you can bury your fears and just strike out, you can look quite confident, and because people can't read your mind, they will assume that you truly are confident. And when you find that your fears aren't as correct as you assumed, then you find your faked confidence becoming real," Shinji explains.
"I… guess I see," Toji says slowly.
Chuckling, Shinji says, "While I don't recommend you try it, it is completely possible to go up to a complete stranger, say 'Nice shoes, wanna fuck?' and get laid. It's all in the presentation really and of course making sure that you proposition to the right person at the right time."
Boggling at this declaration, Toji asks, "You-you-you…"
Rolling his eyes, Shinji says, "Of course not. I'm not interested in a woman I can pick up that easily, there has to be some challenge to the courtship. That said, if you were to go up to Hikari-san and say, 'Nice hair, want to go make-out?' I bet you could pull it off. Of course, you absolutely can't stutter, have your body stiff as a board, or let your eyes wander. You just go up to her all easy and casual-like, look her in the eyes, and ask."
"I…" Toji begins.
"Who are you Toji? Weak, knobbly kneed dork who can't talk to the girl he has confessed to liking and received an equal confession back, or suave, cool guy?" Shinji asks casually.
"Uh…" Toji says before getting up and walking away in a funk, mulling things over.
"Think he'll try it?" Kensuke asks idly.
"Yup," Shinji says.
"Think it will work?" Kensuke asks.
"Not a hope in hell," Shinji says with a smirk.
---
Wincing at the sudden rush of memories, Shinji glared at Rei and tells her, "If there was one thing I thought I had taught you, it was that you should have had the confidence to come up to me and ask, 'Hey Shinji, think you can convince Asuka to go for a threesome?'"
Sighing in embarrassment, Rei says, "I was not exactly thinking clearly at the time. Instead I went to Misato for advice."
Groaning, Shinji says, "While she is quite knowledgeable about sex, I don't think she is the type to intentionally get involved in a threesome."
"No. She cautioned me about mixing sex and alcohol for just such reasons, but I took that as advice on how to start up a threesome rather than as a warning," Rei says.
"Fuck… fuck… fuck! Okay, this is why my memory starts to get all full of holes, isn't it?" Shinji says.
"You react… poorly to alcohol," Rei says in a sheepish tone.
Clutch his head in his hands in extreme exasperation, Shinji asks, "Considering the fact that alcohol has no interest for me, would you care to explain how this happened?"
"Well… before the party I began practicing with the gifts of Nurgle to figure out how to cause rapid fermentation of sugars in vivo," Rei explains.
"You brewed the alcohol inside us?" Shinji asks incredulously.
"Only the first bit to impair your faculties enough to get you to break into the beer… and then the sake… by the time the vodka was flowing everyone was quite wasted," Rei clarifies.
Mulling this over for a moment, Shinji says, "I can understand why I would respond poorly to alcohol… but Asuka… oh fuck! How much did you give her to get her drunk?"
"We were doing shots of grain alcohol before I felt she was sufficiently intoxicated to make my move," Rei states.
"Did it occur to you that perhaps because it took copious amounts of alcohol to knock her out that she might recover faster than normal?" Shinji asks.
"The thought passed through my head, along with a chunk of my skull, when Asuka began to express her distaste for my actions," Rei notes.
---
It was 2 AM and half the party-goers were passed out. Kensuke was sitting on one of the couches, drooling heavily down his shirt, while Toji and Hikari had collapsed on the floor while making out, Hikari's shirt half pulled off her head. That would be interesting come morning.
Asuka on the other hand was still conscious but giggling idiotically at the naughty action Rei had initiated, too drunk to fully realize what was going on as they stripped down the mostly incapacitated Shinji, who lay sprawled out on the bed. The only one who was in any way clear headed, if you discounted the voices in her head, was Rei, her body processing the alcohol as readily as any other toxin.
Rei unfortunately discovered a minor flaw in her plan that she should have anticipated. While Shinji was an absolute lightweight, he was still quite intoxicated, which meant that he was quite impaired in the areas of Rei's interest.
"He's drunk," Rei notes unhappily while looking over Shinji.
"Sho am I," Asuka points out.
"It is rather hard to have a threesome when one of the three is incapable of acting," Rei points out.
"You jusht got to… got to… warm him up, thatsh all," Asuka says. Smiling, she kneels down before the semi-comatose Shinji and says, "Check out… check out this new thing we tried the… the other day."
While Rei watched with rapt fascination, Asuka went to work. Drunken, sloppy, and clumsy work, but despite that Rei was still insanely jealous of Asuka for this. She was also extremely aroused and glad that she had already stripped down.
After a few minutes, Asuka paused and said, "Shtill not quite enough… here… you… you… you take over. I need a glassh of water."
"Very well," Rei said while taking Asuka's place. As Asuka got up to leave, Rei ran a hand over Asuka's bare skin and marvelled at just how warm the red head's skin was. In fact, it could even be considered feverishly hot.
Shivering, Asuka says, "You're cold Rei… you… you should warm up shome."
Smiling, Rei leans in and kisses Asuka on the lips, enjoying the electric jolt of Asuka recoiling in surprise before she leans in drunkenly, giggling at the whole affair. Rei then says, "I intend to make things a great deal hotter."
"Good… I'll be back…" Asuka says, giggling at the way she let her German accent slip in for the last phrase, before she gets up and totters out of the room.
A few minutes later and Asuka returned, clutching her head and wincing, "Why does my head hurt?"
Rei did not answer, occupied as she was in getting Shinji ready for the main event.
There was a pause where only the sounds of breathing and Rei's wet work before Asuka screams out, "What are you doing?"
It was at that point that Rei paused in horror as she realized that Asuka's speech had shifted from "drunken and somewhat coherent" to "partially lucid but missing the past few minutes of memory and wondering why someone was sucking off her boyfriend".
Rei never got a chance to explain as Asuka dug her fingers into Rei's flesh, shattering a clavicle between her fingers and then hauling Rei violently into the air, tossing her against a wall where Rei bounced off, more bones broken.
Staggering to get up as her abilities regenerated the damage, Rei tried to summon forth something to stop Asuka, but she was distracted as Asuka's shapely fist hit her hard enough to implode a chunk of skull and send pieces of bone ricocheting about Rei's brain. Rei saw stars, her supernatural toughness keeping her from being killed by even such a brutal strike. Rei wondered if perhaps this had been a bad idea.
Then Asuka began to dig her fingers into Rei's neck. The brute strength to accomplish such a feat made Rei realize that Khorne had been blessing Asuka just as much as Nurgle had blessed her. Fingers punctured Rei's carotid artery and bright red blood began to spurt all over the crazed berserker.
Rei considered activating the various dread plagues that resided within her cells to take out Asuka, but with Shinji currently incapacitated, he would surely be consumed in the virulent outbreak. As her body automatically siphoned away energy that could have been used to combat Asuka to regenerate the lost blood, Rei realized that she needed to learn a great deal more about her abilities. In particular, she needed something somewhat less destructive than a world ending plague for these sorts of situations.
Rei died a full minute after Asuka punctured her neck, the entire room covered in red gore from the practically limitless supply of blood available to Rei. Rei died when Asuka got tired of thrashing her and simply pulled until Rei's vertebrae separated and her head came clear of her body.
Stark naked, covered head to toe in a thick layer of blood, Asuka roared in victory. Still somewhat intoxicated and high from victory, Asuka immediate went back to a confused and barely responsive Shinji to finish what had been started.
---
"Oh fucking Tzeentch, how did we clean that mess up?" Shinji asked in disgust, horror, and exasperation.
"After retrieving a fresh body I used my abilities to quickly decompose my mortal remains, except for the head as something was blocking me there, and then I snuck out. Fortunately for all of you by the time Misato-san returned she was also quite intoxicated and you had time to clean things up before she noticed. In the short term, the consequences were not as bad as they could be, it was the long term where everything went to hell," Rei explained.
"I'm guessing Rei V did not share Rei IV's infatuations," Shinji asks.
"No," Rei stated. "At that point I was quite furious with the both of you, and our teamwork and coordination dropped accordingly. My ability to control Unit 00 also began to take a steep dive. The problem though was that Asuka found her first time rather unsatisfactory, and killing me, or at least thinking that she had dreamed killing me, gave her new drive and vigour."
Frowning, Shinji groaned, "Now I'm really regretting not remembering things."
"She became quite… demanding," Rei says, pausing to pick her words carefully. "Most scandalously was the time when she had sex with you in the girl's change room in NERV while I was on the other side of a bank of lockers, just to piss me off. Your condom expenses went through the roof I am to understand."
"Fucking brilliant, I screw Asuka's brains out repeatedly and I can't remember a gods-damned thing," Shinji griped.
"I do not think you want to remember," Rei says. "Your father had recovered from some of the damage done by your actions. I do not know what happened when you fought the Twelfth Angel, but it involved you being trapped in a multi-dimensional psychic battle for several hours with Asuka and your Evas. During that time, when everyone was distracted, your father had your apartment laced with monitoring equipment.
"When you got back, instead of sweeping for bugs like you usually do, you and Asuka had celebratory sex," Rei tells him without blinking.
"Fuck. Fuck! Fuck!" Shinji swore, cursing his own stupidity. Rei was right, that party had definitely been the start of a growing disaster.
"That was your problem," Rei says flatly, obviously not having lost her quickened sense of humour in whatever transformation had taken place.
"He used that against me, I just know it. That old bastard knew that I was too slippery, too canny to attack directly, so he hit me in my blind spot: Asuka," Shinji growled.
"You are correct. Shortly after the attack of the Twelfth Angel, there was an incident in America. An experimental engine for Unit 04 nearly went critical, and if it weren't for a last second shut down the Eva, the production facility, and a nearby town would have simply ceased to exist. The media got word of this, and the public panicked. The Americans wanted the Evas out of their country. They had both units shipped over here," Rei tells him.
Another memory began to surface, of screaming and crying and a deep feeling of guilt and shame. A dark black Evangelion dominated the mental landscape.
"In transit, another Angel struck, infecting Unit 03. Upon initial activation, it took over and destroyed the testing facility outside Tokyo-3. It disabled the still inactive Unit 04, critically wounding the pilot, before it began to advance on the city. We were scrambled, but I was practically useless, unable to concentrate upon the mission because of my jealousy and loathing of Asuka. Upon initial contact I was quickly disabled," Rei tells him.
Fitting together several fragments of memory, Shinji says, "I refused to kill the Angel outright like my father ordered. I knew that the pilot was a psyker and thus useful in the long term, and I wanted to recover him. I also knew that Toji had been selected as a pilot because he confided in me his fears."
"Asuka, following your lead, followed suit. Your father shrugged and deactivated your Eva remotely before activating the Dummy Plug system in Unit 02," Rei says.
---
Shinji screamed in impotent rage as he tugged at the controls of his deactivated Eva, trying to force it to come back to life, but it lacked motive power and special blocks he had not heard about had been installed to prevent the activation of the Eva in this sort of situation. If he really tried, he could probably force open the blocks and force energy to flow, but he did not know what exactly the consequences of something like that would be. It would probably involve something unpleasant happening to him personally, and certainly a lot of unwanted questions to be asked afterwards.
So he could just watch as Unit 02 brought its chain-axe down into the poorly armoured flesh of Unit 03. It had not received the upgrades of the ones in Tokyo-3 yet, and despite the Angel's upgrades, it was insufficient to withstand a berserker Unit 02 in full L-Type Equipment wielding the most advanced weaponry available to man. Asuka screamed in horror and fury at this abuse of her Eva, forced to watch up close as Unit 03 was hacked into bloody pieces.
Gendo did not power the Eva down until all that was left was a steaming corpse, the entry plug hacked to pieces by the chain-axe. The corpse of the pilot was almost too mangled to tell its identity.
Shinji's heart broke in two as Asuka's shrill screaming filled the air.
Hikari's head rolled out of the remains.
---
Shinji clutched his fists together until they drew blood, forced to relive the horrors of that day again by this cruel amnesia. The furious tears rolled freely.
"Now I remember… I found out from Toji, what was left of him after he was left a quadriplegic by Unit 03 and nearly catatonic by Hikari's death, that the only reason she accepted the position was because they had Toji… and Toji accepted because they were offering better treatment for his little sister," Shinji says bitterly.
Now he felt the weight of the guilt he had felt earlier truly come crashing down on him. His fucking bastard of a father had used him, had played him like a fiddle. If he hadn't been so distracted by Asuka, maybe he would have realized that he was being ensnared by his own schemes. Worst of all was the fact that Hikari, Asuka's best friend, would have never been in that damn Eva if not for Shinji's manipulations of Hikari and Toji's emotions.
Snarling, Shinji said, "There had to have been a reckoning after something like that."
Hanging her head in shame, Rei says, "There was a complication… me. In my fury with you two I had fallen back on Commander Ikari as a source of comfort and strength. If you moved against him without me at your side…"
"It would end with the extinction of the human race. Right… fuck. So I had to convince you first," Shinji said.
"Yes. You sought proof that Gendo had known that Unit 03 was infected before activation, that he specifically placed Hikari-san with that Eva so that she would be killed by Asuka-san, just to hurt her to hurt you," Rei explained.
"I left town to find out what was going on…" Shinji stated dully, seeing where this was going.
"…and an Angel attacked," Rei finished for him. "It was the worst one yet, extraordinarily powerful. It went through Tokyo-3's defences like butter, blew through eighteen layers of the city's armour with a single shot, and shrugged off concentrated fire from the positron rifle like rain. It then blew up the rifle with a single shot, incidentally disabling Unit 00."
Rei then smiled slightly, "Then it met Asuka-san. She fell, but not before she gave the Angel hell. She shoved a melta up against its core and fired at point blank range. The Angel survived with barely a scratch. But she kept hitting it with everything she had. She actually managed to take off one of its arms before it brought her down. You were quite incredibly pissed when you finally managed to get back to NERV.
Her smile broadening, Rei tells him, "In fact, you even gave a little speech over the radio while powering up your Eva. It went, 'Alright motherfucker, you've invaded my city, beaten the fuck out of two of three of the girls I cherish most in this world, and now you're making me play the Big Damn Hero with this last minute entrance. I hate playing the Big Damn Hero.' What happened next I highly doubt you would remember."
Thinking about it, Shinji shakes his head and says, "I don't have a clue what happened."
Nodding, Rei says, "You essentially merged with your Eva to squeeze every ounce of power out of it. You forced it to evolve and adapt in new and strange ways. You grew an S2 engine from scratch so that you could keep fighting. Your Eva began to breathe fire, multicoloured fire. You telekinetically threw the Angel back to the surface, through the armour, and not the part it had already shot. You elbowed it in the face and collapsed its skull with a single blow. You snapped its back over your knee. You threw it through a building and then crucified its corpse on the wreckage. You strangled it with its own intestines. Then you ripped out its core and punted it into low earth orbit, where it detonated."
Taking this all in, Shinji shrugs and says, "Sounds like something I would do under the circumstances. I take it when you say 'merged' you mean…"
"You were rendered down into LCL and absorbed into your Eva. It took us a month to get you out of there… it was a bad month. Rei V, feeling incredibly guilty at how her actions had lead up to this event, hung herself. Asuka began to lose her mind. She became more a bitch than usual. She was hurting badly, lashing out at everything and everyone around her. They even put her on a suicide watch when they found out she was cutting herself," Rei explains.
"Cutting? That doesn't… oh wait… I know what she was doing. Blood sacrifice to Khorne in an attempt to get me back. If she couldn't get it from her enemies, then she would get it from herself. Khorne cares not from where the blood flows. She probably didn't even feel the blade," Shinji notes.
"Quite," Rei said in understanding. "It all looked well once we got you out of Unit 01… unfortunately we soon discovered that you were in fact in a coma. We had retrieved your body, but your mind seemed to be elsewhere. Asuka nearly killed one of the guards to your room she was so grief stricken to see you like that. It took fifteen guards and three tranquilizer darts to bring her down.
Shinji winced in pain as the piece of shrapnel twisted again, and he also felt like he was on the edge of some great truth.
Bn'alhaf'zvim'x'qazszlfg'amq'extzin'tchi'a'lkipjuwo'zyrxd'rtpa…
Impossible syllables, properly pronounceable only by a seven-dimensional tongue with two different voice boxes, danced in Shinji's mind for a moment before his inability to properly comprehend them caused the entire sequence to collapse.
Shaking it off, he turns to Rei and asks, "What happened between then and now?"
"There were two more Angel attacks. Asuka-san handled the Fifteenth Angel and I handled the Sixteenth. Both were as messy as the Fourteenth, but in different ways. The Fifteenth was a difficult, unconventional battle, while the Sixteenth was perhaps the synthesis of the most effective tactics so far. Rei VI was immolated in that battle."
"What happened?" Shinji asks.
"The Angel was essentially nothing but a giant energy whip, one of the more successful weapons used against us. Conventional weapons did nothing against it, not even a point blank melta blast. After doing considerable damage, it then attempted to merge with my Eva," Rei says before letting a feral grin escape from her suppressed face.
"Big mistake, for by Rei VI, I had a bit better control over my own mind, but I was also further fragmented. Still, when the Angel invaded, it discovered that it couldn't get back out because I was counter-invading with multiple minds. It sent cancerous feelers all throughout my body causing tiny squealing faces to erupt from my flesh. I sent worse things back at it. We were locked in battle for several minutes until finally it went suicidal and detonated. Unfortunately as it was inside my Eva when it exploded, the entry plug was incinerated, leaving behind only bones," Rei explains.
"Which brings us to Rei VII, you," Shinji states.
"Yes. With Unit 00 now so heavily damaged that it was no longer properly functional, Commander Ikari decided that I would be brought back with my memories from before I met you, to keep me docile and compliant to his will. I still retained everything I learned through my knowledge of soul transference, but I decided to play along. I also decided to stop using my powers, as they were causing my condition to become worse, and with Major Katsuragi in lock-up and…" Rei explained before being interrupted.
"Wait! Misato-san is under arrest?" Shinji asks frantically.
"Under suspicion of murder, although that is just a formality since everyone knows she did it. Shortly before the Fifteenth Angel showed up, Ryoji-san was found dead in the depths of NERV, a single gunshot wound to the head. Katsuragi-san, who began dating him again the same night Rei IV died, was distraught. You were in a coma, Asuka-san was exhibiting self-destructive behaviour, and her whole world seemed to be crumbling. Nothing was going right for her.
"Her story is that Dr. Akagi…" Rei began.
"Misato killed Ritsuko?" Shinji cried out incredulously.
"That is the leading theory," Rei said. "Katsuragi-san's own confession was that Akagi-san began viciously taunting her about the implosion of her 'family', and how it had parallels to the past. Fed up with Akagi-san's words, Katsuragi-san struck her across the jaw. Lieutenant Ibuki moved to defend Katsuragi-san but was also struck in turn. At this point the story becomes a bit more complicated. Katsuragi-san claims that at that point Akagi-san drew a gun on her and acted in self defence, but Ibuki-san claims that it was Katsuragi-san who drew the gun, while the surveillance footage was inconclusive and the sequence of events could have gone either way as the weapon was drawn in the middle of a struggle between the two. Since it was never actually fired we don't know who could have been holding it, and because it was non-standard, non-registered and in the struggle both their prints appeared on it, we don't know who owned it.
"What happened next is not debated. Katsuragi-san is a decorated military officer, while Akagi-san was a scientist. Akagi-san was stabbed in the left lung by a letter opener grabbed as an impromptu weapon in the struggle. This wound was, while not instantly fatal, would have resulted in death without immediate medical attention, something impossible to get quickly enough in that situation. At this point Katsuragi-san claims temporary insanity for her following actions.
Pausing to clear her throat quietly, Rei says, "Seeing her best friend bleeding out from a fatal wound she inflicted, Katsuragi-san began screaming incoherently, saying that 'she doesn't know pain' while repeatedly punching and stabbing, either to inflict as much suffering as possible before Akagi-san's death or in some sort of insane attempt to speed the process. Either way, when it was all over Katsuragi-san was left in a semi-catatonic state, only answering questions asked of her but not initiating any actions, and Akagi-san had suffered thirty-seven stab wounds and five broken bones, three-quarters of her injuries sustained post-mortem."
Somehow, the cold, clinical way that Rei described the events after the fact was far more terrifying than actually seeing it. Everything was already said and done; there was nothing Shinji could do to help his friends because he had been asleep.
He had been asleep because he had been merged with the Eva.
He had merged with the Eva because he had to fight tooth and nail against the Fourteenth Angel.
He had to fight tooth and nail with the Fourteenth Angel because he arrived late to the fight after it had already incapacitated his friends.
He arrived late to the fight because he left to gather evidence on his father and SEELE to prove to Rei that it was their fault in the Thirteenth Angel fiasco.
He had to prove Gendo's guilt to Rei because Asuka had killed a previous incarnation, causing her to distrust them.
The Thirteenth Angel disaster was so bad because Shinji had been distracted by having sex with Asuka with a frequency that would make light blush, and had not noticed his father's plans for revenge.
Asuka was having sex with him because she had gained enough confidence from her relationship with him and Khorne to get over her own fears. Killing Rei because she wanted to have sex with him had helped too.
The Thirteenth Angel disaster was so bad because Asuka's best friend was in the entry plug when Asuka, forced by the Dummy Plug system, put a chain-axe through Unit 03 repeatedly.
Asuka's best friend was in Unit 03 because her boyfriend was in Unit 04. Shinji had arranged for the two of them to get together so he could control them better.
Rei had wanted to have sex with Shinji because he had taught her how to express herself emotionally, but her allegiance to Nurgle made it hard for him to train her properly, and it drove her insane. And not the good kind of insane either.
The pilot of Unit 04 had been there because his sister had been injured in the battle where Shinji had made his Eva go berserk.
…
Everything tied back to Shinji's own scheming. He had been snared in a web of his own making. The phrase 'hoisted by his own petard' didn't even begin to cover this sort of thing.
He violently threw up, not that there was much in his stomach after two months of not eating through his mouth. Rei just watched quietly until it was all over.
Looking at her, Shinji says, "I appear to be in a hell of my own making. Everything is wrong, and it is my fault."
"No, Commander Ikari is also largely to blame," Rei points out.
Considering this fact, Shinji growls and says, "I should have dealt with him sooner instead of waiting for him to make a move first. He will be reckoned with, but all of this is surely my fault. You are a mess, Misato is under arrest for killing her friend, Kaji is dead, Ritsuko is dead, Gendo is still running free and Asuka…"
Shinji pauses for a moment before looking at Rei and saying coldly and savagely, "Rei… you skipped over the fight with the Fifteenth Angel. What the fuck happened to Asuka?"
A blank expression on her face, Rei says softly, "I wanted you to be in the right emotional state first…"
Rei found her throat between Shinji's fingers and he said, "Rei… if you don't want to have to move up to version 8.0, cut the fucking bullshit and tell me what happened."
Looking at him fearfully, Rei nods for him to release her throat and after a small cough, she says, "The Fifteenth Angel used a psychic, mental attack on her. The results were ugly, and she has been in a coma ever since, her mind nearly shattered under the strain of the attack."
"Take me to her," Shinji hissed.
---
What do you think? May I have actually screwed over the characters worse than what canonically happen? Is that even physically possible?