Chapter 1: Mortis.
It happened without warning and without fanfare. A gargantuan horde of hulking Angels who stood at least thrice the height of any such adversary that the children of NERV faced beforehand, swarmed Tokyo 3 like a swarm of massively oversized locusts.
No human weapon could pierce their diamond-tough skin, even when too late it was found that the Evangelions and their pilots would be insufficient in fending off this dreaded onslaught.
Even the entirety of Japan's nuclear payload fired at the last moments as a final last ditch resort, barely grazed the amphorous and blobby forms of the vicious Alien invaders who seemed to laugh it off as if mankind's most advanced instruments of mass destruction were but mere child's play to them.
It was third child Shinji Ikari in EVA unit 1 who was first to die in battle, screaming at the top of his lungs as he charged headlong despite his vitriolic disgust for the Evangelions and the sick minds that designed them. He screamed obscenities too vulgar to list as he willed his giant metal device of machine and flesh combined to great feats of strength that would impress even the heavens themselves.
He fought like a demon, crying and shouting as bruise after graze after cut appeared all over his body and the toxic motor fluids and lifeblood of his quickly decaying Evangelion, Eva unit 1 overwhelmed him as it took hit after hit that even its reinforced titanium shell could not withstand for long.
His final breath which left him as quickly as it came as the crushing jaws of a particularly brutal Angel of the swarm ate him alive, was spent quietly professing his undying affection for his father and commander's little miss "perfect" as well as his personal heroine that he'd aspired to emulate all his life long.
His dear and precious Rei Ayanami. His Rei-chan who tried to leap before the bulging purple beast in the last second only to be effortlessly swatted out of the way so that her Evangelion hit a large apartment complex as she fell back which crumbled on top of her, burying her in a cavalcade of jagged rubble so that both her and her dying Evangelion were crushed to their bones and blood.
"Shinji. You were right. You were always right. I am not a doll. And you are not an idiot. Reality is not a dream and our skins are not costumes to be cut. Arigato Shinji Kun. Arigato. See you in heaven. Or if there is no heaven. Wherever we end up next on the other side."
She murmured with eyes closed as the final falling rock that breached her cockpit did her in.
She was lightly grinning with one solitary tear rolling from her left eye which was the less mutilated of the two. The first and only drop of lamentation that she had shed her whole life long. It was a good way to die compared to the myriad of other ways she could think of. She only wished she could have touched Shinji's white face one final time to let him know that his romantic feelings for her were truly reciprocated.
...
The German third child whose carefully groomed red hair made her radiant beauty the subject of much idle banter throughout the land of Japan, lay quietly but furiously cursing her grim luck in a pool of her own blood as red as both her hair and stylish plug suit.
She had managed to eject herself from her failing Evangelion in the nick of time before it exploded from its overheating systems, but not without great harm to herself.
"Stupid Shinji. Stupid little miss perfect. Stupid everything" She grumbled as a group of masked figures came into the view of her quickly fading sight.
She coughed up blood as one among the plainly garbed cohort stepped forward to look over her through the narrow holes of its skull patterned mask.
Idiot. Why didn't these people help her out seeing how important she was to the survival of mankind or at least what was left of it following second impact?
Wait. What was that? WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT!?
No. It couldn't be. No. Oh no. No. NO. NO!
It was. A pointed syringe filled to the brim with a green, bubbling liquid was being carefully drawn from the jacket pocket of the masked skulled figure and thrust unceremoniously into her weakly flailing right arm's unarmoured spot without much care that it caused yet another violent spurt of blood to spray from it. This man or woman clearly did not much care if she lived or not.
This could not be. No. Not after all the training she'd undergone to impress both her own mother and the stuck up snobs of NERV.
This could not be how the great and prestigious Asuka Langely Soryu of the esteemed Soryu household went down. Did her sacrifices truly mean nothing?
"Take her away." The tall, skulled column spat in a cold, dismissive voice of steely disdain that sounded like neither a man or woman.
"Da." Responded another figure, this one bearing the mask of a snake.
"Oui." Another one, this one with the mask of a black rat intoned.
"Hai" Rumbled a deep throated third, an orange fox mask obscuring its face.
"Put, me down you fools. Let go of me." The third child croaked to no avail as darkness became her world and she was hoisted up like a piece of garbage by the crowd to be carried away looking up at the dying sunset which would soon darken into nightfall.
She felt an icy cold seize hold of her every muscle as her head went giddy and she seemed to struggle to hold onto even the faintest semblence of all that she had known throughout her life. The drug in the needle was clearly fatal with intent to murder, which it was doing very effectively.
"Tsar Lorenze will be pleased with this one" the skull figure muttered, to the affirmative grunts of the group as they bundled their now discombubulated quarry into the back of their unmarked truck and threw the trunk doors tightly closed behind her.
"Long live SEELE" the fox mask whispered as the truck was quickly started up to speed down what remained of a nearby highway, dodging between giant piles of rubble with great ease.
...
"Your arrogance truly has been your downfall, oh great and honourable leader of NERV."
A large man in a wheelchair said in heavily accented Japanese as he regarded his barred and chained prisoner with a brow beetled of pure amusement.
"You truly have been of utmost use to us as the perfect scapegoat to our most noble mission that none of those ignorants see the greatness in. It truly amazes me how your complete sociopathy and lack of the slightest rudiment of human sympathy had your children and your associates pitted so readily against each other ready to beat each other to the death without us needing to lift a finger."
"Lorenz. You promised me my wife Yui. You promised me prosperity. You unhand me this instant or I'll have my son and my daughter Rei..."
Gendo Ikari managed to gag out behind his thick paper mask.
"Have them do what? Do you think that even if they survived by some divine miracle that they'd want anything but to see you suffer for all eternity after you so effectively broke their spirits beyond repair. Once again my dear chap Sir Ikari. I thank you deeply for your insensate cruelty." Lorenz happily cheered as he stifled a chuckle while rubbing his brown moustache with his one good hand. "So as reward for your...passable service. I give you...the privelege of being my first test subject for my newest experiments regarding the reaction of highly ranked members of society to varying degrees of pain. Consider it, an insightful and enlightening reward for your labours Mr Ikari. And consider yourself prosperous to be awarded such a wealth of knowledge."
The grinning leader of SEELE pressed a button on a remote on his wheelchair.
"No. NOOOO!"
The formerly powerful leader of NERV gasped as a gigantic mechanical claw shot out from a wall behind him and loaded him onto an already running conveyer belt.
"Happy travels my dearest Ikari. Hail and farewell."
The SEELE leader dismissed him with a wave of his good hand as he sped his wheelchair away back in the direction of his own personal control panel where a large plate of bagels on a silver platter already awaited the big disabled man.
The results of this experiment would certainly be interesting and a welcome distraction from the sheer boredeom of the human instrumentality program that was running thus far smoothly and as planned without any kind of drama.
He had indeed promised the ignorant and stuck up widow a great kingdom as reward in addition to reviving his dead wife Yui.
What he had never told the snobbish fool was that it was a kingdom where everyone (except a few very high ranking members of SEELE as well as himself) would go eventually, as well as a kingdom from where no one was able to return from.
Gendo Ikari could only pray as he was transported still chained up into a set of waiting buzzsaws that both Hades and the underworld existed in reality so that he could sit on the throne of skulls while Hades went back to beg Zeus for a bunk in Olympus.
It was the only way being king of the dead could possibly have any positives for him now.
He still wore his fancy suit and nametag. The lying leader of SEELE had really gone all out on this hard bluff that he'd swallowed hookline and sinker. Fisherman and bone. He could but pray that Shinji and Rei never made it out alive either and that whatever Angel they ended up eaten alive by would take its sweet time digesting them in its belly.
If he couldn't have his happily ever after, he hoped they never would either.
...
Mangled corpses lined the streets of the once proud capital. Some still twitching.
Not all Angels liked to swallow their prey whole or put their prey out of their hapless misery. The outer space abominations liked seeing the intense suffering on the faces of the humans they so despised as they assaulted the feeble minds of the Earth dwellers that had attracted them to the blue planet in the first place with horrific mental images of their worst fears and their deepest, darkest truths. They revelled in their screams and cries for mercy
Among the rabble of fallen buildings and still burning fires, lay a badly wounded middle aged blonde scientist whose face was a mask of grief and agony.
She had once again falled in her pathetic cowardly attempts to kill herself out of sheer guilt for her many unspeakable sins against her family, her friends and humanity.
She had jumped from the uppermost floor of NERV's headquarters thinking for certain she could not possibly survive, but had misjudged her leap and had her fallen broken by an outstretched awning below.
She had broken enough bones so as not to be able to stand and yet she was very much still alive when she hit the concrete pavement with a nasty thud.
This was great. Just great. Now she could do nothing but wait and hope that an Angel noticed her and found her a tasty enough morsel to devour while her entire body pulsed with pain.
Her misguided but still loveable mother would have to wait yet another eon longer before mother and daughter reunited in the afterlife. Despite her mother leaving her for so long in her youth, Ritsuko Akagi did maintain a deep-seated hope that Naoko Akagi made it to paradise after all. Though remembering the terrified shrieks of the many Rei clones that never made it out of their incubation chambers as she set their chamber ablaze, Ritsuko doubted saint Peter would be calling her name any time soon.
As for her father, she preferred not to think about him at all. She was afraid that she would only turn murderous if she did and so she had no choice but to bury him in the deepest recesses of her memory hoping his hideous face never resurfaced ever.
Taking one look at a burning building nearby from where she now lay unable to move a muscle, she had little hope that Shinji or Rei had survived this ordeal that had finally crumbled the corrupted capital of Japan and the seat of power of what remained of the human race to its knees. Hearing the horrifying bellows of the Angels as they trashed what remained of the once proud city, she could only tragically acknowledge that this was one hell of a battle that even Shinji and Rei could not win.
She found the courage as she continued to lay still on the dusty asphalt to apologize aloud to Yui Ikari, Shinji's late mother. For taking her name in vain. For her petty jealousy and vengance which amounted to beating in a dead horse and breaking two of the most important biblical commandments that thou shall not covet thy neighbor's husband nor commit adultery. She had done both when she continued to fawn after Gendo even after seeing the disgraceful disregard he showed to not only his son but his entire workforce that had served him so loyally in spite of his faults.
Alas poor Maya and Aoba.
A darned pity for the wonderful Kaji.
"Yui. I'm sorry for all this. And mother. You were far from perfect but I still forgive you. You were a good mom to me in the best way you knew how. Rash, reckless but not cold blooded." The dyed blonde scientist whispered weakly as she used the last of her strength to give the glowing pearl earring on her right ear gentle touch with her right index finger.
It was given to her on her birthday six years ago by none other than hers truly. The very brunette she had been scorning all these years, blinded by her own narcissistic vanity.
It came in a ornate box of mahogany. With a triple layered cake and two dozen rose scented candles all brightly lit up beautifully.
"Oh Yui. Why did it come to this. Why did we...why did I have to fight like such a spoiled brat over nothing and let your son Shinji be left so very alone when I could have been there for him. Why could we not have just been friends liked you so wished we could?"
...
"It is said that life flashes before your eyes before you die. This is true. It is called life." - Terry Pratchet.
Every last moment of the mental breakdown that finally broke him came back to him in painstaking detail as the fourteen year old son of Yui Ikari lay dying. Or rather being swallowed whole into the deep, dark throat of the Angel that was gurgling gladly as it revelled in its recent meal.
His memories, captured in tiny mental bubbles that flew before him almost too quickly for him to comprehend.
He remembered how he'd stopped seeing his own reflection in the mirror every time he washed himself. How in the place where his mirror image should have been, stood a beautiful young woman whose appearance ran counter to every part of himself.~
Her perky, cool blue eyes to contrast his tired, saggy brown ones. Her innocent smile opposing his moody frown that he could never amend even with all the antidepressants his father's meagre paycheque to him let him afford. Her seamless sea blue skin which was entirely different to his multitude of cuts, scrapes and bruises that his deadly battles left upon him.
She even had shoulder length blue hair of perfect tidiness to mock his messy brown hair that he had no time to fix with how busy he was tending to the needs of his major and third child Asuka in his apartment every day when he was not needed in his Evangelion at NERV.
She looked like he wanted to look. She smiled like he only wished he could smile through his endless misery. She was smart, capable and most importantly judging from the skimpy black outfit which covered only her bust but left her midriff completely exposed: she was free in all the ways he never could be.
He had been seeing this woman in each and every reflective surface he'd come across for the past several weeks at least. How many exactly, he had lost count.
She came to him in his dreams so as to deny him even the slightest semblance of rest. He remembered that it had all gotten worse when during a certain very special moment he shared with Rei alone, she had shyly with shaking hands handed him a precious gift that he knew had cost her several days of food on her own limited salary.
It was a gold chain necklace with a gorgeous twinkling sea blue crystal in its centre. A Lapis Lazulli crystal. The iconic emblem of the sea that was once pure and vital for life. Before human greed ruined the most important body of water that the Earth depended upon.
He'd never taken it off since the day Rei handed it to him with tears in her eyes, except when he showered and even then only with great reluctance.
His father had raised an annoyed eyebrow when he wore it every time he went to work at NERV, but he'd refused to take it off even then. He had even shot his all powerful patriach a death glare when in a moment of great fury, the older Ikari lunged forward to take the exquisite jewlery piece from his useless son by force if necessary.
He had grown more impulsive and less afraid to speak his mind since recieving Rei's love token to him. He told Misato to clean the house for a change when he was too badly scratched from an Angel battle and he ordered Asuka to cook her own meal when schoolwork left him too tired to bother. They had both reacted to these changes in the once submissive housekeeper with anger but had been unable to oppose him in his newfound strength.
He swore that night when Misato was sweeping the apartment as he slept and it was raining violently outside, he heard a voice in his sleep.
A soft and high-pitched melody that enticed him deeply.
He shuddered with fear for several minutes when he awoke to find he still remembered every word it said clearly.
It said to him. "Little by little Shinji. You're just letting yourself become...Lapis Lazuli"
...
Rei smiled a sad little smile as through her fading eyesight, she glanced down at her outstreched right index finger at the simple peridot ring that Shinji had handed her in return just the day after she gave him his Lapis necklace. Such a memorable exchange and such a joy that they were able to confess their mutual attraction to one another before they both bit the dust. She only wished she were a little closer to him right now so she could tell him one last time how much she loved him.
Perhaps it would have been better to have given him a diamond necklace instead, but diamond was expensive and since Shinji loved the color blue, Lapis seemed like the obvious choice. Oh look how the serene green in the peridot on her limp finger continued to sparkle so hopefully. Shinji remembered her favorite color of green too.
They could have been so happy together had they lived a little longer perhaps. But she was not sad that she had to go like this.
Shinji had made her feel warm inside and that was more than good enough. Now she had no regrets. It was sad that SEELE had won but it was inevitable with how powerful they had become.
...
Ritsuko's pearl earring gave off a light glow.
Shinji's Lapis necklace let off a faint shimmer.
And Rei's peridot ring gleamed ever so slightly as the three unsung heroes of mankind calmly breathed their last in near perfect unison to take the waiting hand of death with dignity and decorum.
Yet little did the three ragtag heroes know as the finger of death tapped their shoulders that a hard and fast rule was you only lived twice. At least this was the case in the mysterious avenue that the reaper was new transporting the trio into. An avenue leading to the sinister yet wonderous place known only as...the twilight zone.