So, this is something I'm playing with: what if an SI that isn't really an SI has knowledge of evangelion... but that knowledge is wrong?
What if she watched the series eight years ago, and the world she finds herself in is... rebuild? And what if the divergences start before that.
Chapter 1:
Like an Angel With No Sense of Self Preservation.
It felt like falling, that first sensation. It felt like my stomach was rising into my throat, an anxiety that kept miltiplying without end. There was no sight, no sound, no sense of touch. I felt myself accelerating downward for... minutes? Hours? Years? Centuries? My concept of time was skewed, eternity felt like seconds and seconds felt like eternity.
The scent of ozone was the first thing I was aware of, a sharp, acrid scent that gave way to... gasoline and hot leather. My tongue felt thick in my mouth and I sucked a sudden, greedy lungfull of air past my lips. I shifted a little, feeling the wakefulness slowly creeping through me, felt my skin pulling on a leather seat.
There was a soft, rhythmic droning and the sensation of motion, little bumps and sways. I'd woken up from sleeping in a car enough times that I was familiar with the sensation. It felt like nostalgia, trips in the car as a child, sleeping on the back seat while my dad drove.
I finally cracked my eyes open and a lock of hair fell into my eye, powder blue? Must have been really drunk last night. I stretched out and felt my muscles and joints pop as I let out a yawn. Yeah, it was a car, black leather interior, hot and stuck to my skin.
"Finally awake huh? Guess that whole ordeal back at the bus stop took it out of you."
I blinked, I didn't recognize that voice, or that accent or... that was Japanese.I sat up and leaned the chair forward, I was on the left side of the car. Definitely weird, had I left the country or, was it just an import. With a Japanese-speaking woman driving it.
I finally turned to face the her, "Uh, hey?" She was, at a glance, late twenties, maybe. She was dressed in some kind of uniform. My first thought went to military, but it didn't look like any military uniform I'd ever seen.
Actually, that was wrong, she was wearing a jacket that looked military; the dress she was wearing was most assuredly not. Jet black and at best came down to mid thigh, no, this was... What the hell was this?
"I was actually a little surprised you were able to fall asleep after all that but I guess your trip really tired you out huh?" She asked with a smirk. She wasn't looking at the road. Grand.
Trip? I tried to think of last night, or really my last memory and... There was the fire. There was a fire in the cockpit, and I kept flying and... How did that end up with me here, now? Did I crash, did I burn up? Was the fire a dream? If it was that still didn't explain... this.
I blinked a couple of times and looked out the windshield, yeah this was getting weirder than I was comfortable with."Yeah, it was pretty intense," I replied deadpan.
Was I kidnapped? That would have been... something. Kidnapped, hair dyed, and put into a car with a single woman... who I was pretty sure I could take in a fight. Not that getting into fights was really my schtick, but even so.
Still, something about the woman and her jacket struck a chord of familiarity with me. Asian, probably japanese, and black hair that almost looked purple in the right light. Some kind of dye or highlights maybe?
I looked down, a skirt wasn't really that out of the norm for me but this looked kind of school uniform-y and I was ten years out of highschool. Gray skirt, some kind of, yeah that's a yellow vest, and a red tie? White blouse and...
Well apparently I went from an A-cup to at least a C since I'd last checked. Those were definitely new. Not that I was complaining but if this was some kind of fetish thing, I was going to find a gun, and then-
My train of thought completely derailed at the sound of screaming turbine engines. A trio of fighter jets buzzed across the road close enough that I was sure I could have touched them if I tried, close enough that I could tell they were strike eagles, and that somebody was about to have a bad day.
I followed them across the sky as another trio came up behind them, all converging on a point in the distance, some kind of black... monster? A monster, really? The thing looked, at a guess, to be at least as tall as an office building, distance and scale notwithstanding, it was huge.
And it was familiar, like a word on the edge of your tongue that you could have remembered just fine if only you didn't need to. Giant monster, squadron of strike fighters, woman in a red... jacket. Well either this was a dream, or... well it sure felt real to be a dream, but then so did that fire.
Did I die?
Was this heaven?
Was this hell?
How did this sequence go again? The fighters go in, they fire a missile, there's a... something, just out of reach again, on the tip of my tongue... I felt the car slowing down, I turned to the driver, she was looking past me, was she going to stop and look?
"Can we keep going? It might not be safe to stop, if it comes this way." I asked suddenly as the picture in my mind started to clear up. Was this world...? No that would be ridiculous to even think.
But only as ridiculous as a gigantic monster being attacked by fighter jets, and that was happening right in front of me.
The car started to speed back up. I guessed that she was probably Misato Katsuragi if this was actually what I thought it was, but who did that make me?
I looked back out the window at the monster in the distance, just as it disappeared behind a hill. My eyes caught the side mirror and I angled to look at myself and... yeah that was definitely not me. Hair was, well it definitely came out of a bottle, I could see my roots if I looked really hard, so it wasn't fresh but...
That wasn't my face, still asian, just the wrong kind. Skin tone was off, eyes looked... the same. I would have thought I was, maybe, Rei? But the eyes were normal, brown eyes. So, I was not a clone, and Shinji didn't have a figure quite like this, and... shouldn't there have been some kind of pamphlet with ID or something? I remembered that much.
I looked down into the floorboards, there it was, a satchel, made out of black pleather; that'll do. I picked it up by the strap and pulled it into my lap when the flash lit up the sky. I jumped in my seat and I heard the explosion a few seconds later, and looked up to see dust and debris flying over the roadway, blocked by the hill between us and the blast.
So I wasn't wrong and that didn't make me feel even a little bit better.
And It was kind of funny, with all this going on, all these changes, I managed to keep my head together, even as it started to seem more and more like it wasn't a dream. I just kept setting short term goals and working towards them, and everything would be okay or... at least I could take it one step at a time.
The car slowed down, 'Misato' was on her phone, yelling about something, I wasn't paying much attention to her, I was focused and engrossed in my bag, surely somewhere in here- and found it.
I fished out the folder and then flipped it open, found exactly what I was looking for. Confirmation of my fears, or confirmation that this was all some wild misunderstanding?
I fished the little plastic ID card out of the pocket on the inside of the folder, flipped it over a few times in my hands then finally brough myself to look at the picture and name on the front. Yeah, that was 'my' face, the hair was brown, so the dye job would have come after but, that was definitely a picture of who I was right now.
Ikari Rei. Two words I could never have reasonably expected to see together like that, certainly not when applied to me, but... there they were. That's who I was, apparently. Rei Ikari. Not Shinji Ikari, not Rei Ayanami. Rei Ikari.
I leaned my head back against my headrest and let out a sigh. What else was different, I had to wonder. Hell, what was even the point? I could probably get out of the car and find a nice spot to watch the end of the world from.
"Nervous, Rei?" The woman asked, asked me, apparently.
I grimmaced and let out another sigh, "Well, you know, gigantic monsters, a nuclear explosion, strange new environment, lots of stress."
She laughed, "Well that's not a 'no' I guess. Everything will work out in the end, at least, that's what I choose to believe."
"I guess you're not wrong," I shrugged and continued, "I have to admit though, for the last few minutes I've been toying with the idea of jumping out of this car and seeing how far away I can get before you come back and stuff me back in."
"About a quarter mile, if you're in good shape. I wouldn't try to jump out of a moving car in that skirt through, you'd get skinned up pretty bad and we'd have to get you bandaged up," she answered matter of factly. I glanced over to see a goofy little grin on her face. So it was like that huh?
"I don't know, I think I could run a lot faster in this skirt than you could in that dress, looks a little... restrictive, you know, around the hips and thighs..." I replied in a slightly elevated tone, I felt a smirk creeping onto the corner of my mouth.
"Hmm." She answerd with a frown, and then, she dropped the car a gear and stomped the accelerator, pinning be back in my seat as we lurched forward, accelerating down the highway as the engine screamed louder and louder.
There was a brief respite when she released the accelerator, then slammed it back into high gear and floored it again. I watched the needle on the speedometer as it rose steadily from my side of the car and gave silent thanks to the inventors of seatbelts, airbags, and crumple zones.
That's not to say I hadn't done worse, I had, but there's a difference between faith in your own abilities and accepting the choices of your own actions... and being the involuntary subject to the whims of someone who was doing her very best to appear as a madwoman.
Still, at least she was competent. It was obvious she was trying to rattle me but watching her drive the car, I could tell that this was not the first time, and she was clearly in her element. Eyes fixed on the road, hands tight on the wheel, a slight creasing of her brow. She was locked in, and I knew the feeling, that was how I felt when I was flying.
And now, I had that nagging feeling that I was sure was going to end up being correct, that I was about to become a pilot, but of an entirely different sort. A sort that was sure to be a lot less lesuire and fun, and a lot more death defying and traumatic and yet...
Well, why the hell not? What was there really to be afraid of? If it worked, I'd probably win, if it didn't work, I'd die anyway. And who wouldn't at least want the chance to try it, even with the danger and risk of death?
I clenched the panic handle in a death grip as the car finally drove down into a tunnel, the driver showing no signs of slowing down, and thought about that. The truth was, I really had no reason to refuse it if they did ask me, and given the name I was currently wearing, if, perhaps not proudly, I had to assume that that was what I'd been called here to do.
And the rest of it, well, the rest of it was something that I would have to figure out whenever I had the chance. If the internet was a thing here, and even... half of it was the way I remembered, I shouldn't have a hard time at all tracking down the information I needed. What I would do with it? Well, that was a bridge I'd have to cross when I came to it.
But making plans, that was something I had to keep doing until I settled into things, or figured out a way out of them. Plans gave me focus, gave me something to think about other than freaking out, gave me a focus and an objective.
Current objective: Survive the next ten minutes, and then the ten minutes after that. Keep repeating that goal until something changes or I have more information. That was something workable, that was something I could accomplish in the short term.
I frowned and looked at the palm of my right hand, watched the muscles and tendons flex in my wrist as I worked my fingers. This hand, it wasn't mine, and yet it was. Trippy perhaps wasn't the best word but it was suitable, stuck in the body of a fictional character who apparently wasn't that fictional after all. No, this wasn't a dream, and it wasn't the reality I was used to but, well, my right hand was real. That much I was sure of.
Yeah psych yourself straight up over this.
Maybe this was a blessing, at least part of it. Not in the religious sense of the word maybe. I was religious but then, I was never one who practiced regularly, no. This was a chance though. Often, I thought of what I'd do if I had the chance to start over, to go through my teenage years again with the benefit of experience, what I'd do differently.
At the very least, I had that chance now, end of the world notwithstanding. Correct my mistakes, or at least make different ones this time. Was the price worth the reward?
Actually, it might be. Postive outlook, that was a secondary objective. Have a positive outlook. I could do that.
The car jolted and I blinked and looked up. We'd reached the end of the tunnel while I was lost in thought and the car had locked into some kind of lateral carriage. In a moment I felt sideways movement. Sideways and down.
"You're gonna love this part, Rei," The woman, Misato said. I had to get used to thinking of her by her name, embrace the present. Alternatives? Lose my mind, surrender to fear, have a breakdown? No thanks.
Still, Rei? First name basis already huh? I had to wonder what kind of conversation she'd had with whoever was occupying this body before I was. Did I kill her or, did this universe not even exist before I woke up?
If she was 'dead' because of my occupation of this body, was that even my fault?
An existential crisis already huh? Yeah, definitely evangelion.
Then, the carriage slid out of the tunnel completely and I saw it. The Geofront in all of it's splendor, the fortress under the city. I found myself pressing my face against the glass in wonder. No drawn picture, no photograph could ever have captured the awe and wonder of this place.
"So damn cool!" I squealed in barely contained excitement. This was real, and no matter how bad it got, in that one moment it didn't matter in the slightest. This world might kick my teeth in later, but for that precious moment, it felt like it did the first time I was in the cockpit of a Piper J-3 flying over the Grand Canyon.
But this wasn't a triumph of time and geology, this was a triumph of mankind.
"Your english is pretty good, been keeping up on your studies huh?' Misato asked me in the same language I'd used. She knew english. Of course she would. Good that I still did, too.
Of course, I was a native speaker, but she didn't need to know that, not yet. I was in a new place, with new people. I could blame forgetting anything said since the old-me got in this car on bad memory, stress. Unless whoever I'd been staying with, in this world, for the last fourteen years showed up, I could just play this thing by ear, keep my cards close to my chest, and maybe I could avoid telling anyone the truth.
And if there was something I didn't know that was important, better to be seen as forgetful than insane.
Not that I really thought I was compeletely sane anyway, not anymore. I woke up with a different face, a different history, a different person entirely, and I hadn't run screaming for the hills, but then, maybe a certain level of insanity is necessary to cope with that kind of thing.
"Yes, there wasn't a whole lot else going on, and I thought english would be useful," I lied, still watching out the window as the car descended. Could she tell I was lying, and would she even care?
"It does come in handy," She agreed, "But you probably won't need to rely on it too heavily."
At least she had no reason to ask where I learned Japanese, that would have been a pretty difficult question to answer. Small favors.
The car stopped with a jolt as the carriage finally hit bottom, the door in front of us slid open and Misato put the car back in gear. I had to admire the way she drove, she knew what she was doing. A fluid transition into gear, and between them as we sped up, a far cry from the lunging jerk one often associated with a manual transmission.
Of course, she would have had to know what she was doing, I had a hard time believing that a sportscar from 1970s France would have ended up in Japan and under her care entirely by accident. Of course, with her job, it was probably trivial to get it.
Money talks.
The trip inside the geofront was abrupt compared to the trip on the highway outside, from the carriage to the parking structure passed in the span of maybe five minutes. I spent most of that lost in thought and found myself surprised when she shut the car off.
Guess I'lll let myself out... I popped the door handle and climbed out of the car, satchel firmly in hand. Yeah, I could do this.
"We're just about there, come on," She said with a wave of her hand. "Your father is... waiting for you," she finished after a moment. I could feel the slight tension in her tone as she hesitated.
I could only speculate on how tense things were going to get in short order. On the one hand, gigantic biomechanical death machines and an absentee father who actually runs the whole show. On the other, I didn't actually experience whatever he'd put 'Rei' through.
"You usually the taxi driver around here?" I asked with a smirk. Levity, let's try levity.
"Only for the cute ones," she answered with a laugh. Oh, she wanted to try the teasing game.
"I didn't realize I was your type," I sing-songed back.
"I am a woman of many mysteries, Rei."
I raised an eyebrow and let out a 'hmm' sound. So, was she teasing or was this flirting? Did she forget that I was, well, carry the one, half her age? No, she was screwing with me, but that didn't mean I couldn't have fun with it.
"Are you now, we-"
"We're here," she cut off abruptly. I looked up to see her swiping an ID bade through a scan plate next to an elevator door, they slid open immediately, it had apparently been parked on this floor. Waiting for us or coincidence?
I stepped into the car after her and we both remained in silence, I could feel the tension in the air. It was nearly go time. Did she know why she was bringing me here? Did she have a suspicion?
The elvator car was clean, but industrial. Very mechanical, functional. It reminded me of the service elevator in a factory I'd worked in when I was younger, none of the ammeneties or style like you might find in an office building.
Younger, heh. I was what, fourteen now? I'd been nearly thirty before all this. Fifteen extra years though? I could probably live with that, if I made it through the next year anyway.
I felt my stomach rise into my throat as the elevator car dropped. Must have been an express, or something. I wasn't used to feeling anything this extreme outside of an airplane cockpit. Still, nothing that took my feet off the ground.
The deceleration was equally abrupt, and with a soft jolt the car stopped and the doors slid open. Misato stepped out first, and hesitated. I followed her into the brightly lit hallway and found the reason.
A blonde haired Japanese woman. Yeah, that definitely came out of a bottle. Labcoat, leggings, skirt, blouse... Yeah, I had a pretty good idea who I was looking at.
"Ritsuko! I was just... looking for you!" Misato exclaimed with an almost manic expression on her face, complete with flailing.
"Misato, you're actually not late this time. So, is this the third?" She asked, confirming what I as much as knew about the woman who'd brought me here.
"She is! She's also a little... hmm, sarcastic," Misato offered.
Just throw me right under that bus...
Ritsuko looked at me, our eyes met, and I felt... recognition? In her gaze. "Ritsuko Akagi, head of Project E technology division, section one. It's a pleasure."
"Rei Ikari, the pleasure is mine," I offered with a slight nod.
Akagi 'hmm'ed at my reply and gestured towards a carriage set into a rail in the floor, "this way, the linear carriage will take us to the cage, I'll fill you in on the rest of it once we arrive."
I grabbed tightly on the handrail as the carriage accelerated. I had to wonder what lunatic designed such a thing: It was a simple platform with handrails on the edges that traveled at offputting velocity along a track embedded in the floor. If my feet slipped, I could end up going right under the railing and then...
It would be bad.
The wind felt good in my hair, if I closed my eyes and tried real hard I could imagine I was flying in an old stearman, feeling the wind blow through my air, streaking across the side.
Well, there was no engine noise but the sound of the rollers on the track, if I tried really hard...
Nope, not feelin it. Well, it was nice while it lasted.
The end of the trip wasn't far off either, I could see the far bulkhead on the far side of the vast expanse I we were crossing. I looked over the edge of the cart and into infinity. Was this some kind of last ditch airgap? Something else? Was it meant to keep something out or... was it meant to keep something in?
The carriage zipped across the remainder of the gap and through an airlock, not slowing down for an instant. The track curved abruptly upwards, but the carriage remained level. That was a neat bit of engineering.
It probably wouldn't be long now, I could almost feel the pull, feel the taste of destiny in the air.
How dramatic. Still, there was... something, that I could feel.
The carriage started to slow and as I looked ahead I could see a platform illuminated under a flickering florescent light, the paint was a faded olive drab. It reminded me of old military, it looked older than the rest of the facility, the air tasted a bit more stale. It tasted, smelled, felt like age, was this part older than the rest of the facility?
The handrails on the carriage dropped away, retracted into some deep recess of the machinery, the platform lit up brighter and the double door slid open to reveal two rows of low intensity track lighting leading into the darkness. So it is.
Wordlessly, Akagi lead the two of us into the vast expanse beyond, you could almost feel the wide open-ness of the room, despite the darkness. Something about the way the sounds reflected off the surfaces, echoes of heels on steel betrayed the size that was hidden by the darkness.
I looked to the good doctor, her face an almost orange color in the glow of the track lighting, I could detect the hint of a smirk on her face, and then I heard the snap of her fingers. The loud clack of a massive relay slamming shut in the distance echoed through the chamber at the same instant that thousands upon thousands of watts of high intensity lighting turned night into day.
I licked my bottom lip and held back my own smirk as best I could. Showtime. I turned around and took in the surprise I'd been waiting for. Mere words would not have done it justice, nor drawn picture, animated film, nor photograph. The sheer scale and presense of what lay before me exceeded anything I had expected, could have expected.
"The synthetic lifeform, the last best hope for the survival of humanity, Evangelion Unit One," Akagi proudly declared in the kind of voice that betrayed all of the confidence and conviction that a woman of her talent and accomplishment could muster.
Despite my preparations, despite my own self assurance that I knew what was in store for me, my jaw fell in shock. The towering visage of Evangelion, so close I felt that I could reach out and touch it, an illusion born of the sheer scale of the thing. The armor grade steel, painted in gray and purple and green and black, the black eye sockets, the metal plated jawline.
It was fierce, and despite that seemed to exude a radiance of warmth and maybe kindness, despite the power and force it projected. Standing before it, I knew why I had felt the way I had before, that draw and attraction I had felt. This thing before me, this was an engine of destruction, of madness, of creation, of destiny. Like nothing I'd ever seen, nothing I could have imagined and...
If man could create this, then I had no doubt that with the proper motivation mankind truly could create or do anything.
"This... This is why I'm here." It was not a question, not anymore.
"Correct."
I looked up to see the source of the voice, that smirking man with the beard and the glasses. Was his motivation the same in the here and now? Was it everything I remembered it to be?
And really, having felt loss, did I actually think that he was wrong?
"You're going to... send her out in unit one?" Misato asked incredulously, I snapped my head back in her direction. She was staring at Akagi with a sort of enraged shock.
"Misato, what did you think she was brought here for? We have no choice, if she does not pilot, we all die," Akagi explained in a level voice, though I could have sworn I felt a hint of... sadness?
"Rei," the man asked again, I looked up again, my face neutral, hands open at my sides.
I considered the man, then looked down at the face of Unit One, and closed my eyes. That was why Rei was here, was this why I was here? My thoughts turned back to that fire. No, that was not a dream, I could understand that now. I had made a decision then, the decision that kept me in that cockpit, and it was terrifying and painful, but it was the only decision that could make. It was the same choice I was faced with now.
It was on me to do what I could do, the best that I could do, with the resources at my disposal. Find the best outcome for the most people. Not because I was being forced, but because that was the only way I could be true to myself.
Maybe that's why I was here, because I made that choice then, to make this choice now.
I opened my eyes and looked back up at the man, the father of Rei Ikari, what would my decision make him feel? Disappointment that I didn't bow and scrape before him or... pride that the fruit of his loins would overcome the fear before her?
It wouldn't have made a difference either way.
"I'll do it."