EVANGELION - CAESIUM

ACT 2 Chapter 4 (Chapter 12)

"A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends." - Baltasar Gracian

"It's been a while, but we're finally back." Kaji said, as he maneuvered the car through traffic. "Tokyo-3 really hasn't changed much since we left, huh?"

"I'm glad that it hasn't." Misato replied. "If it had, we might just have something to be worried about." Kaji mulled that over for a moment, but chose to stay quiet. He looked in the rearview mirror, smiling as he saw Shinji and Asuka fast asleep, hands intertwined, while Kaworu was leaning against the window, dozing peacefully.

"I still just can't believe how much hurt NERV has put them through." Kaji muttered. "They didn't even have a chance at a normal childhood."

"Once this is all over, maybe they will, Ryoji." Misato replied.

"Maybe." he said, as he maneuvered the car into the parking lot. They came to a stop in front of an old laundromat, the kanji on the sign rusted so much they were almost unreadable. "Alright, you stay out here and watch the kids, I'm gonna go in."

"Absolutely not, Kaji." Misato hissed, grabbing his arm. "I'm not letting you in there alone."

"Why not?" he replied with a wry smile. "It's no more dangerous than working triple-agent at NERV, right? And besides, would you want to leave the kids out here all by themselves?"

Misato thought for a moment, then released her hold on him. "Just be careful, alright?"

"I always am." Kaji said, and he got out of the car. He shouldered off his suit jacket, a necessary part of meeting with Yakuza enforcers, and opened the back of the car. He set the jacket off to one side, and got to work outfitting himself. He was what the Yakuza called an "actor", which he was a temporary high-level enforcer until their contract expired. Because of that, he had to dress the part. He wore a red undershirt with white pants and a white suit jacket, with a ballistic vest under his jacket. He had his 1911 holstered at his hip, and had an MP5 submachine gun hanging on a strap on his chest. Satisfied, he gave Misato a quick kiss, and headed inside.

The laundromat was empty of people, but Kaji knew that didn't mean anything. He made his way to the small desk in the back, and rang the bell three times. A few seconds later, a tall man wearing the same outfit as him, but with a black undershirt, came up to the counter. He led Kaji down a set of stairs, into a massive basement that spanned under several stores. As he followed the man, Kaji saw all the signs of the Yakuza preparing for an all-out war: dozens of men organizing assault rifles and filling magazines, blueprints of NERV HQ he had smuggled in for them being studied, and an entire table full of plastic explosives. After a minute or two of walking, the man finally reached a black door, and opened it up. Kaji walked through, giving a nod to the lieutenant holding the door, and entered.

The room was prepped for war, with arms and ammunition scattered all about. The middle of the room was taken up with a large table, on which the full Central Dogma blueprint sat. Three other Yakuza enforcers stood around the table, surveying the map, all dressed very similarly to him. Two of them he didn't recognize, but the third he did.

"Jiro?" Kaji said, surprised to see the older man. "I thought you were just working as a liaison to the Yakuza?"

The older man shot the cleanly-shaved Kaji a smile. "I was, but they asked me to step back in and lead this mission. There's a lot riding on this, and they trust me."

"Alright, so how long until we're ready to move on NERV?" one of the other men in the room asked.

"At least another week." Jiro said. "We've got the last hundred or so men that need to get here, and we've gotta get some more C4. Plus, we need the access codes to the Geofront tunnels. How's that coming, Ryoji?"

"I can have them by the end of the week, if that's when you're going to be ready." Kaji said. "We can make our move on Sunday morning, they'll never see it coming that early."

"How are you planning on getting them?" Jiro asked, and Kaji gave him one of his signature glowing smiles.

"With a little B&E."

There was a quiet whir as the electric drill yanked out the last screw, and Kaji pulled it out carefully. He picked up the vent cover and set up inside the vent, then carefully dropped to the ground below him. He wiped some of the dust off the front of his shirt, and started sweeping the office, taking him only a minute to make sure that it was empty. Satisfied, he made sure his surgical gloves were still in place, then sat down in Ritsuko's chair and began typing.

He had called almost every favor he still had left at NERV, but luckily he had made it here without much incident. As he began the mining process for the access codes, he began browsing some of the other folders on the computer. Most were labeled with various other technological jargon, but a few of them were in plain Japanese. As he scrolled, his eyes fell on a folder labeled activation_tests. He clicked it out of curiosity, and found an entry dating to only a week ago. He double clicked it, and it brought up a video file of the Evangelion cages. Ryoma was standing in front of Evangelion Unit-03, and was floating a few inches off the ground. He lifted his arms above his head, and as he did Unit-03 did the exact same motions. He heard a faint voice shout to remove the entry plug, and he watched with fascination as the empty entry plug was removed, causing the creature to shudder a little bit, but it then returned to following Ryoma's movements, albeit slightly slower.

So Ryoma's 'Angel' powers let him control an Evangelion without being in the entry plug. Kaji thought to himself. I was hoping the Evangelions wouldn't get involved with this, but that's what contingencies are for.

A faint chime notified him that the program he had uploaded had found the access codes. He quickly copied them over to his flash drive, and began to log out of the computer. As it began to shut down, he heard a quiet scuffing noise behind him. Not even wasting a moment, he immediately drew his pistol and turned around, pointing it at the source of the noise.

Ritsuko Akagi stared back at him, her green eyes trained on him. He gave her a dopey grin. "Well this is awkward."

She simply pressed the button to close the door to her office, and then crossed her arms. "What are you doing here?"

"Just here to see you, Rits." he replied. "What's with the cold greeting?"

"Cut the bullshit, Ryoji." she said. "You've got a shoot-to-kill order out on you right now, so you better give me a damn good reason not to call security."

"Well, first of all, NERV Security is a joke, so that wouldn't really do much except make a lot of very loud noise in this very small office." Kaji pointed out. "And secondly, give me one good reason I shouldn't shoot you."

"Excuse me?" Ritsuko exclaimed, but Kaji cut her off.

"I have spent a lot of time digging into what you have been doing at NERV." Kaji replied. Unbeknownst to Fuyutsuki, during his escapade into the MAGI to make fake papers, Kaji had set up a funnel in Caspar that was specifically set to be hidden by the other two, allowing him access to any document that passed through Caspar after that moment. "You've got a lot of sins to atone for, Ritsuko."

"You don't know the half of it." Ritsuko said, her face suddenly cast down, before she returned it with a steely gaze. "But everything I've done has been necessary to ensure humanity's survival."

"Survival, huh?" Kaji replied. "Is that what they're calling the Human Instrumentality Project these days."

Ritsuko's face suddenly went as white as a sheet. "What… how… how do you know about that?"

"I told you, I know a lot more than I let on, and I'm not letting you get away with it." Kaji said. He didn't really know that much about the Human Instrumentality Project, but what he did know horrified him, and Ritsuko didn't need to know he was half-bluffing. "You were one of my best friends, Ritsuko, but I've got half a mind to lodge a bullet in your brain right now."

"I… Instrumentality is all humanity has left." Ritsuko insisted. "If we don't do it, SEELE will, and their plan is much worse than ours."

"There is no more SEELE, Ritsuko," Kaji retorted, "and you know that. You're playing right into Ikari's hands. You always hated Rei for being a puppet, yet you're being Ikari's puppet."

"SHUT UP!" Ritsuko yelled. "I am not his puppet."

"No, you're even worse." Kaji said angrily. "You're a replacement. He's just using you to hold by until he gets to be reunited with his precious Yui. And it's all thanks to you."

Ritsuko didn't respond, instead just crumpling up into a ball on the floor. Kaji moved until he was under the vent, then looked back at her. "If you really don't want to be a puppet, or a replacement, then do something about it." He hauled himself up into the vent, and began putting the vent cover back on. He tried to ignore the sound of Ritsuko crying below him, but the whir of the drill couldn't drown out the sounds of sobbing.

Rei Ayanami had no qualms with her daily routine. It hadn't changed much in the past two months, with the exception of Pilot Ikari being absent, and although that was indeed regrettable, it was not a serious issue. As the entry plug vented all of the LCL, she quickly ran through her schedule for the rest of the day. Lost in thought, she didn't even notice that there was someone standing next to the entry plug until she bumped into him.

"Hello, Rei." Ryoma asked. "How was the test?"

"The results were in acceptable parameters." Rei replied. Ryoma let a strange lopsided grin cross his face.

"Aww, always so formal!" Ryoma said. "Don't you ever ease up?"

"No." Rei replied abruptly. "I exist to follow Comman… Head Scientist Ikari's orders."

"Well, I'm the Commander now, so Ikari follows my orders." he said. "And that means you follow my orders."

"Yes." Rei said, through gritted teeth. She almost never felt strong emotion, but this man in front of her caused her to be filled with a maelstrom of negative emotions. He was a bastard child of Adam and Lilith, an eldritch abomination that had attempted to kill her. Everything in her body screamed at her to kill this man where he stood, but the programming ingrained into her since the day she was born prevented that.

"I'd like you to follow me, Rei." Ryoma said somewhat cheerily. "We're gonna have a nice little chat."

Rei followed him without a word as he set off. He attempted to make small talk as the two weaved their way throughout the corridors of NERV, but she responded to every question with as curt an answer as possible. After a while, she got the distinct impression that they were descending further, headed towards Terminal Dogma. Her impressions were confirmed when Ryoma led her into a familiar room.

"The Dummy Plug Production plant." he said. "What a disgusting mess."

"I do not understand." Rei replied. "This room is up to standard levels of cleanliness and hygiene."

"No, no, I don't mean like dirt." Ryoma said. "I mean the abominations in these tanks." He gestured around at the dozens of naked Rei clones that floated around him. "Mother hates them, you know."

"The way your mother feels is irrelevant to the Scenario." Rei said aloud. Ryoma turned to face her, his grey eyes twinkling.

"Our mother, Rei." Kushiel said. "You and I are both the offspring of Lilith."

"No." Rei insisted. "You are… wrong. You do not belong to her."

"Not entirely." he admitted. "Part of me descends from Adam, but it's irrelevant. I belong to Mother Lilith, and because of that, I do her will. And her will was for me to bring you here today."

"What is the reasoning for this?" Rei asked. Kushiel let another smile across his face, this one a wicked sharp smirk that could cut glass.

"So you could witness this." he replied, as he unfurled his A.T. Field. Rei watched in horror as the clones in the tanks began to squirm and scream, and her skin crawled in pain as she felt Ryoma slowly seeking out each of their life forces, snuffing them out with as little as a second thought. For each one that died, there was a painful pang in her heart. By the time the last had been killed, she was in a ball on the floor, quietly sobbing from the raw pain.

"Mother Lilith hated those things." Kushiel said. "Some kind of fake Instrumentality, being able to live even past death. She would much prefer the real thing."

Rei didn't respond, as she was too busy being in crippling pain to reply. Kushiel simply regarded her for a moment, before picking her up by the collar of her plugsuit and setting her down in a chair. Her head lolled to the side, but he simply pulled it back up, forcing her to look at him.

"Mother Lilith owns you. Don't think even for a second that she doesn't." Kushiel's words were full of venom. "For too long you've been disobeying her. Your loyalty is not to Gendo Ikari; your loyalty is to your mother, and your loyalty is to me."

Rei simply nodded. "I… my loyalty is to you and to mother." Kushiel simply gave her an affirming nod, and he began walking out of the Plant ahead of her. As Rei rose from the chair and left the Plant, her hands trembled just the slightest bit. She hated lying.