EVANGELION - CAESIUM
ACT 2 - Chapter 1
"We know what we are, but not what we may be." - William Shakespeare
2 months later...
The young boy let out an exhausted groan as he stretched. He hadn't slept very comfortably last night, and he had school this morning. Letting out another drawn-out yawn, he put on a pair of dress slacks and a red shirt. This school didn't have uniforms, but he still liked to keep himself somewhat composed. He made his way out from his bed into the kitchen, where his parents were sitting around the table, eating breakfast.
"Good morning, Akira." his mom said. She had bleach blonde hair tied back into a ponytail, and she wore her work uniform.
"Do you really have to work this early, Misa… I mean mom." he replied. He hated having to walk to school by himself, and if she wasn't able to drive him, he would have to.
"You know how unpredictable her schedule is, Akira." his dad said, wearing a suit and tie that matched his salt and pepper hair and short beard. He then leaned over to the boy, who bent down to hear what he was saying. "Shinji, I know this is still new, but you've gotta do a better job at keeping up the facade, even at home."
"I'm sorry, Kaji, it's just so hard to get used to." Shinji replied, and Kaji leaned back in his seat and shot him a look. Misato, or Kiyoshi Takamoto as she was called now, was finishing the last of her bowl of cereal, but was giving him the exact same glare.
"Where's As… I mean Miyu?" Shinji asked, quickly changing the subject.
"She stayed over at Chihiro's house last night." Misato replied, as she got up out of her chair and started washing off her bowl. "The two of them are riding together to school."
"Oh, great." Shinji muttered. "That means I have to talk to Chihiro."
"Now, son." Kaji said with a wink, as Shinji rolled his eyes and groaned. "That's not a very nice way to speak about As… I mean Miyu's friend." Both Shinji and Misato shot death glares at Kaji, who had descended into a fake coughing fit to avoid making eye contact over him making the same mistake Shinji had.
"You know what, I'm just gonna grab my stuff and head to school a bit early. Maybe I can meet up with Kensuke." Shinji said, as he walked to his room. As he was about to head inside, he felt a hand on his shoulder, and he turned around to face Misato.
"Listen," she said, "I know you and Kenuske were best friends before he moved to Tokyo-2, and now you ended up at the same school as him. But don't you think it's a bit dangerous to still hang out around each other? What if he accidentally lets something slip?"
"Please." Shinji snorted. "Kensuke adores all this cloak-and-dagger spy stuff. He's better than keeping it under wraps then I am."
"Only if you're sure." Misato said, and Shinji gave her a quick nod. She let his shoulder go, and gave him a sincere look. "I'm off to work, but I'll be done in time to pick you two up from school, okay?"
"Sure, okay." Shinji said. "How did you and Kaji both end up getting such nice jobs?"
"That's all thanks to the documents he made for us." Misato replied. "And besides, his name is Hayato now."
"Ugh, I can't wait until we can stop all of this." Shinji groaned. Misato just gave him a sweet look, then turned around and headed back into the kitchen.
"We're off to work!" Kaji called from the kitchen. Shinji gave him a wave back, then started collecting his books to head to school.
"Having to learn geometry almost makes me wish the Angels were back." Shinji grumbled, as he put all his books into his backpack.
As Shinji made his way through the front gates of his new high school, he was distracted from his thoughts by a young blonde-haired boy with glasses running over to him.
"Hey, Akira!" Kensuke Aida yelled, as he caught up with Shinji, matching pace with him. "Ready for that geometry test?"
"No way." Shinji said. "Besides, Kensuke, you don't have to call me by that name when it's just the two of us."
"What name?" Kensuke said with a wink that reminded Shinji altogether too much of Kaji. "I'm just chatting with Akira Takamoto, my best friend."
Shinji rolled his eyes, and gave up trying to convince Kenuske to call him by his name. The two of them made their way upstairs, and set their bags down next to their seats. They looked around the classroom, which was mostly empty, and sat down.
"Where's Miyu?" Kensuke said, a sarcastic tone in his voice.
"Oh, knock it off, Kensuke." Shinji said. "She stayed over at Chihiro's house last night."
"Really?" Kensuke asked. "I never thought she'd be the type to befriend the Red Devil."
"Well, she's not the Red Devil anymore, Ken." Shinji replied. As if to prove his point, two girls walked into the class; one of them had short-cropped brown hair with a purple ribbon, while the other had long, billowing blonde hair that was held up with two small clips. The two of them talked for a moment, before the brown-haired girl made her way to the front of the class, and the blonde made her way to the back to sit in between Shinji and Kensuke.
"Morning, stooges." Asuka said, as she gave them both a smile. "Did I miss anything exciting this morning?"
"We just got here, so no." Shinji said. "Unless you find Ryoichi and Yoshi getting into another fight in the hallway exciting."
"Ugh, the couples here are so immature." Asuka said with a huff, then she turned to notice Shinji giving her a look, one eyebrow half-raised. "What?"
"Immature relationships?" Shinji teased. "Tell me more."
Asuka leaned over and flicked him in the forehead, then laced her fingers in between his. "You both know neither of us would have it any other way."
"God, I never would've thought you two, of all people, would have gotten together." Kensuke said, rubbing his temples. "I feel like I missed the end of the world or something."
"Ask me nine months ago and I would've agreed." Shinji conceded, and Asuka gave his hand a squeeze. "But, I am glad it did happen." he said, giving Asuka a warm smile.
Before Kensuke could make another scathingly sarcastic remark, their eyes were drawn to the front of the room by the teacher tapping the whiteboard with a piece of chalk. Every student's eyes in the room snapped up to look at the teacher, who gave them a little awkward smile.
"We have a new student today!" she exclaimed, as she looked out upon the faces of the bored, half-asleep students. "I think you guys will really like him!" she turned to face the door, and made a beckoning gesture.
A boy stepped inside and made his way in front of the whiteboard, and then bowed. Almost all of the girls in the classroom immediately began surveying the new kid. He was tall and handsome, with pale skin. However, the weirdest part was his white hair and red eyes. Shrugging it off as albinism, many of the girls gave him shy smiles while trying to figure out a plan on how to get this kid to notice them. He didn't seem to pay any attention to them, however, as his eyes settled on the three children at the back of the room.
"Hello, I'm Kaworu Nagisa!" he said with a cheery smile. "I'm so excited to meet all of you!"
Asuka, Shinji, and Kensuke sat underneath a cherry tree on the edge of campus, their bento boxes strewn out over a red-and-white checkered blanket. The two of them had quickly absorbed Kensuke into their lunch group, as even talking to the person you love about your past life could get maddening after a while. Kensuke didn't exactly have a consistent lunch group anyway, so he had been happy to join them, and Asuka surprisingly had no issues. In fact, the two of them had actually started to get along, as it seemed without Toji there to bicker with, Kensuke and Asuka didn't really have much to argue about.
"So what happened to the rest of the Angels?" Kensuke asked, picking at a rice ball with his chopsticks.
"No idea." Asuka replied, currently stuffing her face with Shinji's home cooking. "All Kaji and Misato would tell us is that they knew that the whole threat of 'Angels that need EVA's' was all over with."
"What is that even supposed to mean?" Kensuke replied. "Are they trying to say there's going to be more Angels, but they won't need you guys?"
"I guess." Shinji said, spearing a piece of teriyaki chicken with a fork. "I haven't really heard much of anything about NERV since we left, just the occasional tidbits Kaji and Misato will tell me."
Kensuke looked around, then after seeing nobody there, he said in a low whisper. "Well I have."
"What? You have?" Asuka yelled. She was about to continue, when Shinji quickly wrapped an arm around her and shushed her. After calming down for a few seconds, she continued. "Why didn't you tell us before, Stooge?"
"Because I didn't know." Kensuke admitted. "My dad gets really drunk every month or so, and usually he'll start randomly spilling the beans about whatever is happening at NERV. I haven't been around him for a few months, though, so when he called me last night I was a little surprised."
"What does your dad do at NERV, exactly?" Shinji said, savoring his meal.
"That's the interesting part. He told me that he had gotten a promotion two months ago. He was one of the lead Restraint Technicians, which meant that they helped work on the EVA's armor. But when he called me last night, he told me that he had been promoted to the Head Technician on Evangelion Unit-00." Asuka and Shinji both exchanged troubled looks, but they let the blonde-haired boy continue. "After prying him a bit more, I got out the reason: EVA-00 had been damaged in combat."
"What?!" Shinji hissed. "Is Rei okay?"
"Relax, Dad said she was perfectly fine." Kensuke responded, holding up his hands in a placating gesture. "But here's where it gets more interesting. Dad is supposed to keep things locked up tight because of his security clearance, but he gets real loose-lipped when drunk, especially around me. So here's the crazy part: Rei sortied against another EVA."
Before the two could even react, they heard a cough from behind them, and turned up to see the new kid standing about five meters away from them. "I'm terribly sorry to interrupt, but I couldn't find anyone else to sit. Do you mind if I join you?"
"Oh, of course not!" Kensuke said, as the other two stared daggers into them. Ignoring it, the kid reached out a hand, which was firmly grasped by the new kid. "I'm Kensuke Aida."
"Kaworu Nagisa." the boy replied, as he sat down on the blanket. He turned to Asuka and Shinji, and tilted his head curiously to the side. "And who might you two be?"
"Ah, I'm Akira Takamoto, and this is my girlfriend, Miyu Nakatani." Shinji replied, wrapping his arm around Asuka.
"Interesting. I had never picked you out as the kind to lie…" Kaworu said, as the three stared at him, their faces masks of confusion, until the boy continued. "Shinji Ikari."
Shinji twitched instinctively towards his backpack, where Kaji had hidden his handgun in a secret x-ray proof compartment in case of absolute emergencies, but then decided against it. If this kid was here to harm them, he would have done it already. "How do you know who I am?"
"Well, that's easy." Kaworu said, shrugging his shoulders. "I'm the Fifth Child."
"Fifth Child?" Asuka asked inquisitively. "But there's only three Evangelions, four if you count Toji's, but that one was infected by an Angel and got decommissioned. Why would they need a Fifth Child?"
"For that, I'm not exactly sure." Kaworu admitted. "I was never actually sent to NERV's Tokyo-3 branch."
"Well, why not?" Shinji asked, somewhat confused. "If you were capable of piloting an EVA, especially since we aren't there anymore, why didn't they take you?"
"It's… complicated." Kaworu said dejectedly. "It's all because of my brother, I think."
"You have a brother?" Kensuke asked. "What does he have to do with NERV?"
"Well, he's the Commander." Kaworu said, as the jaws of the other three dropped. "And he has been for two months now."
"Paperwork is the worst." Ryoma said, as he finished off a budgetary request that had crossed his desk. "I might just shoot the next person that brings me some."
"That would be unwise, Ryoma." Gendo replied. "You've already shot two messengers, which is, to my knowledge, a war crime."
"Eh, they're my employees." Ryoma replied with a callous wave of his hand. "I'm allowed to kill 'em if I want to."
Gendo gave the new Supreme Commander a strange look, then returned to looking back out across Central Dogma. Ryoma had refused to take Gendo's office, insisting the man keep it, and instead made the upper deck of Central Dogma his desk. This was where he sat most days, when he wasn't busy threatening insubordinates or killing members of SEELE. Although they had burrowed in deep after his show with the Chinese Prime Minister, he had managed to find SEELE-10 and SEELE-08 hiding together in South Africa, and had brutally dismembered the two in a display that almost caused Gendo's iron stomach to lose its lunch. That had been just over a month ago, however, and Ryoma had been currently stuck in the Commander's chair for the past several weeks. He had insisted that the staff call him Ryoma, although his status as an Angel was in no doubt among anyone in the staff, and they all knew it wasn't his real name.
"Have you made any progress on locating the Fifth Child?" Gendo asked, and Ryoma threw up his hands in a show of frustration.
"Not a peep. It's like Kaworu knows I'm looking for him, and has managed to stay completely hidden. Even when he makes a charge to his bank account, which is absurdly large by the way, it happens in seven different cities across Japan at the exact same time, all for different prices and at different stores. He even managed to lock me out of watching that about two weeks ago, so I can't do anything."
"That is… unfortunate." Gendo replied, keeping his hands inside his lab coat. After Ryoma took the position of Commander, Gendo had been assigned to the Head of NERV Science. The position still kept him as second-in-command, since Ryoma had refused to appoint a Subcommander, but Gendo didn't particularly mind. Being able to spend all of his time working on the project with Unit-01 was much better than being stuck with all the paperwork from his previous role, and he barely lost any influence or power in the transition.
"It is, but what can we do?" Ryoma said, as he placed himself into the pose Gendo so often took at his desk. "How goes the Project?"
"Fairly well. It will take us another month until we're ready to give the project its first test, but it should only require a few days after that until we're ready for the main event." Gendo replied, letting a slight smirk cross his face.
"Fantastic." Ryoma said, as he stood up from his desk and stretched. "I'm going to go to the cages and inspect Unit-02, see if the new Dummy Plug is working."
Gendo shook his head as the man shouldered his leather jacket on, picked up his rifle from beside his desk, and got into the elevator to the lower levels. Even though the man was the Commander of NERV, he still insisted on wearing his military gear and carrying his weapon all over base. This wasn't unfounded, however, as over the course of the two months he had been in charge, several NERV employees had attempted to assassinate the new Commander. The lucky ones got a rifle round between the eyes, but the unlucky ones… even Gendo shuddered to think about how hard that was for the janitors to clean up.
"Gendo?" Ritsuko said, as she approached the ex-Commander from behind. The two hadn't spoken much in the two months since Haruna took charge, and if they did, it was solely about the Project. "I brought you a coffee; you've been working for almost 14 hours straight."
"Thank you, Ritsuko." Gendo said, as he graciously accepted the cup. "Sometimes I forget how long it is that I spend here, working. Time seems to fly."
"Unfortunately, it does." Ritsuko conceded, as the two of them stared out over Central Dogma. "It's been nearly two months since the incident."
"Indeed. Speaking of, do you have any news from our project?" Gendo asked calmly. Ritsuko huffed, and brought out a clipboard.
"I have been working on it, and so far I've managed to affix 36% of the restraints to Unit-01, but…" she said, only to be cut off by Gendo.
"Not the Commander's project, Ritsuko. Our project." he said, and then she realized what she meant. She flipped through the papers on the clipboard, searching for the one that was hidden amongst all the rest, and handed it to Gendo.
"So far, it's a bust." Ritsuko replied flatly. "Kaji's almost as good at covering his tracks as the Commander's brother. We've gotten a handful of reports from all around Japan, but none of them turned out fruitfully."
"So you're telling me, after two months of searching with the power of the MAGI, you still have no idea where my son or the Second Child are?" Gendo whispered. Ritsuko took note of the fact that he didn't refer to Shinji as the Third Child, but chose not to push it.
"Unfortunately, no. If Kaji faked documents, they're completely flawless." Ritsuko said. "They've disappeared."
"Very well." Gendo said. He had his back turned to Ritsuko, which typically meant their conversation was finished. As she made her way back to the elevator, she heard his voice calling out for him. "Ritsuko?"
"Yes?" she asked. He had never been the kind to break the silence.
"Thank you for the coffee." he said, and a smile crept onto Ritsuko's face.
After a long day at the office, Jiro liked nothing more than to simply go home and relax in his plus-size hot tub. However, as he stood up from his cubicle, the grinning salt-and-pepper beard of Hayato Takamoto that met him told him that his hot tub would have to wait.
"What do you want, Hayato?" Jiro asked, clearly annoyed.
"Oh, just a drink between friends." the man said, shrugging. "We haven't talked to each other over a beer in so long."
Jiro recognized the coded words between the sentences, and gave the man he once knew as Ryoji Kaji a death glare. "This had better be good."
"Don't worry, it will be." Kaji replied, as he put on his jacket. The two of them walked together down a handful of side streets from their work, making small talk until they arrived at a small downtown bar. Kaji took the lead inside, and the two of them grabbed stools by the bar where they could talk unaccompanied.
"What did you find, Ryoji?" Jiro asked, sipping on a cocktail that had just been poured for him by the bartender.
"Something big." Kaji replied, as he placed a folder on the bar and slid it over. Jiro opened it, and looked at the pictures. A gruesome scene lay out before him; there were several bodies of what looked like security guards, piled together and on fire, laying behind a strewn mess of body parts and organs. Even when he had been a lieutenant in the Yakuza, he had never seen something as gruesome as these photos.
"What the hell is this?" Jiro replied, staring down at the pictures.
"That's a photo taken in South Africa from a month ago. Those are the bodies of SEELE-10 and SEELE-08. Which means that there are only 7 members of SEELE left." Kaji pointed out, as he took a sip of a soda, having kicked the habit of drinking months ago. He then picked up the photo Jiro was looking at and placed it at the bottom of the pile, revealing another photo. This one somewhat blurry, and it depicted a blonde-haired man in a leather jacket waving while standing on the steps of a plane. "And Ryoma Haruna was visiting the U.N. station in South Africa on the exact day that it happened. No way it's a coincidence."
"I thought that man worked for SEELE?" Jiro replied. "Why would he kill his masters?"
"Well evidently, something changed." Kaji said, shutting the folder and sliding it back over to himself. "One of my sources says that SEELE hasn't had a single meeting since the Prime Minister was killed in China."
"And what kind of source could you have that would know a thing like that?" Jiro inquired, taking another drink of his cocktail.
"Ah, that's a trade secret I'm afraid." Kaji retorted, as he placed the folder back inside the briefcase at his side. "Point being, SEELE is being dismantled, and I haven't had anything to do with it. Which means Ryoma must want SEELE out of the way for a reason."
"Any idea what that reason might be?" Jiro replied.
"Not at all." Kaji admitted. "But it's a signal that we've gotta move against NERV sooner or later. Have you gotten any headway with the Kimuras?"
"Not much." Jiro said. "The Yakuza are willing to help with manpower and resources; they've already lost a lot due to the crackdown on crime, and they know that overthrowing NERV will help bring back their trade routes. The Kimuras, however, don't have quite as much to gain, and they've been picky. They want full immunity for past actions in exchange for their help."
"Jeez, what a realistic request." Kaji replied, hanging his head. "They've got dozens of drug charges, not to mention assault and battery, against their members all over the nation. Even if we do manage to take back NERV, do you really think we could flex enough muscle to get those charges dropped?"
"With the Yakuza on our side? Absolutely." Jiro said. "The only issue is being able to ensure the Yakuza gets their trade routes back. A few thousand foot soldiers is a lot of resources, but for them it's a drop in the bucket compared to the product they're losing out on. If you can convince your contacts to turn a blind eye to their deals, I'm sure the Yakuza will be more than sympathetic to the Kimura's plight."
"I never thought I'd see the day when Japan's two biggest crime families decided to work together." Kaji said, finishing off his drink.
"Well, it's all thanks to you. There's no territory to squabble over and no drugs to run if everybody is dead, Ryoji." Jiro replied, ending with a short laugh.
"Well, let's cross our fingers then and hope that NERV decides to keep the 'killing everybody' to a minimum for the time being." Kaji said, as he stood to his feet to leave the bar. "I'm gonna go home and see my kids; you should probably do the same."
"Kids?" Jiro replied. "You don't have any kids."
"No, I don't." Kaji replied with a wink. "But Hayato Takamoto does."