Chapter 1: The maze runner
Painful sweat drizzled down his burning back as the small, scrawny boy dashed headlong through a thick forest glade. He nearly tripped several times in the thick undergrowth, and barely evaded bumping himself into the crowd of trees that had assembled in an almost conniving manner as if to hinder his onward progress in any way possible. Like nature itself had turned on him for unspoken crimes he did not know of.
He could hear them behind him as he ran.
Thick boots crunching branches beneath him and electrical jolts as they readied their ruthless choice of arms in preparation for when they inevitably caught up to their quarry. Him, so they could taser him into utter submission before hauling him to the fearful prison he'd vowed to himself he'd never return to even if he were to die this very day. He was more than ready for such a sacrifice if worst came to worst. The extent of his desperation truly had reached this dreadful climax.
A powerful flow of water ahead. A river and a strong one at that leading to a deadly waterfall that would envelop him like a leaf in the wind to carry him to places best left to the imagination.
But at least there was an upward slope on the cliff just ahead. It was a very small slope but nonetheless it was there.
He already felt as if he was being submerged in a vat of boiling oil with how badly he was sweating and how pained his breaths were becoming as he tried and failed to supply enough air to his rapidly failing lungs.
He let out an uncontrollable cough as he clutched his burning chest for a brief second to regain what little ounce of breath he could before his pursuers were on him like a swarm.
Then he balled his fists as he charged upwards for the peak of the ravine with his eyes half closed.
He couldn't believe himself that he was doing this.
He, the useless coward that not one of the many tormentors he had been forced to endure for all of his mortal existence had treated with the slightest scrap of mercy.
For fourteen years which was the same long eon of time he had been alive for, he had been able to endure it all.
But even the most enlightened saint had a breaking point. His had come despite all his best efforts to restrain himself, putting leash after leash on his inner desires even as they threatened to utterly destroy him from within as they lay caged in the deepest confines of his soul.
His lust for freedom had effortlessly shaken off every last shackle he'd painstakingly placed upon it. Like an abandoned puppy that had gone too long without a scrap of meat reverting to its baser instincts from the days when wolves had not yet developed the loving bond with humans that evolved them into the cute and cuddly creatures known as dogs. He swore he could hear the metallic snapping of chains breaking in his head as he willed his boiling blood to ever greater heights of exertion.
Even if he did die, he would at least do it on his own terms and no longer a slave to his father who he was still in the process of acknowledging as having never loved him even since the day he was an embryo in his now late mother's womb.
"I mustn't run away. I mustn't." the younger naïve child him within him echoed but the metaphysical manifestation of his desires stamped those obselete thoughts away without a second look back.
Screw his outdated vows. Screw the second family he had tried with every fibre of his being to trust. Only for every last one of his hopes to be dashed before his eyes as the sick bastards revelled in working him to the bone.
He begged for their help time and again. They told him to shut up and that he was an ungrateful brat who should know his place to be seen and not heard.
His purple-haired Major Misato in particular, was particularly fond of dumping onto him the burden of a grime ridden apartment piled to the brim with mould covered dishes and a floor so full of soot that it made breathing in the messy space difficult without an open window.
A window which had quite conveniently been coated top to bottom in the stinking refuse of a flock of vindictive pigeons that his other roommate, a redhaired German named Asuka had irked with her strange fascination of seeing their pained reactions to her volley of stones lobbed their way.
His cramped up arm muscles would ensure he never forgot any single one of the days he was forced to abide in the demands of these two slavemasters he doubted he could ever forgive.
This was in addition to his day job. As a pilot. An Evangelion pilot who was shoved into a tiny metal space inside a big, metal robot and sent to combat Extra-terrestrial horrors that stood thrice the height of any skyscraper with razor fangs and crimson eyes like golf-balls that stuck out of their faces like frogs.
He would be thrown around like a cloth inside a washing machine so that he hit his head roughly sixty times and his chin roughly thirty times against the hard metal walls of his cabin on an average working day.
And that was only counting the collisions that caused him adequate pain to warrant serious medical attention. Which he seldom recieved on account of his extremely tight wages which mostly had to be used to appease his two amazing roommates.
Even now, his form was wracked with bruises galore in so many places that it was difficult to tell him apart from a crash dummy.
Fitting, considering a "crash dummy" was one of his more important jobs around his household when a certain redhead felt like her seemingly endless fountain of causeless pent-up rage had to go somewhere and the already cracked walls of their apartment didn't seem a good enough venting point...
But now was not the time for such pointless rumination as he bounded as far as he was able even as he saw the reflection of a dark suited gunman in the waters below.
Even with all the speed that he had built up in his rush up to the very edge of the ledge, and with his outstanding fitness augmented by years of running to and fro from place to place under fear of being punished mercilessly if he were even the slightest second late, he only barely made it across.
He had to grab the jutting out point of the opposite edge and strain with all his might just to clear the distance. He very nearly slid down into the river of doom beneath when a momentary weakness seized him and let his trembling arm slip just a smidge.
It was far from a clean leap and even further from graceful.
But at least this would mean that provided he continue his maddened rush further into the unknown, there was at least a wide and dangerous cliff between him and his pursuers who had truly wormed their way into his jangled nerves to deny him any shred of humane sanity.
Befitting their title of NERV, the founder of the Evangelions and the so-called divine guardians of humanity through the dark times following the "impact" which brought mankind's worst enemies the Angels onto their planet for a bloody showdown.
A showdown that showed no signs of ending even following several generations of one genocide after another which made the two world wars prior seem like golden ages in comparison.
Now all he had to do was run. Keep running.
It was the path that he, Shinji Ikari the former "second child of NERV" had elected upon and one he now had no choice to remain.
The first decision he had made himself independent of any orders from his superiors that for the moment at least held no power over him any longer.
It was an idea that had been stirring in his troubled mind his whole life.
The reason he had not acted upon it any sooner than he had now was partly out of a desire for at least the image of loyalty to those remaining he could call "family".
But mostly, in his own words:
"If I were to run away. Where the heck would I even go?"
He smoothed the sleeve of his zipped blue jacket as he jumped to avoid another clump of branches beneath him. It was one of the few posseesions he had managed to gather through all his life that he could call his own, and the only one he was able to bring with him on this adventure.
On its left chest was inscribed in heavenly white, the number 7.
A symbol for good fortune and luck two priceless luxuries he seemed to be totally lacking in.
...
Tears of pure sorrow erupted in a steady trickle from a thin girl's reddened eyes as she leapt from rooftop to rooftop.
She knew that one false step would send her tumbling to the street several storeys below where her skull would brutally crack. Despite its hardness which was in no small part thanks to her part-Angelic bloodline that pulsed through her genes despite her best attempts at denying it
She shivered fearfully as she continued to jump from building to building, pulling her plastic yellow raincoat tighter even as she continued onward.
She did not want to lose the one token of genuine affection she had been given in her brief yet difficult existence in this hellish world.
By the one kindred spirit that saw her as more than just a tool to be used and abused and then melted to scrap the instant she outlived her usefulness.
By one who was wise and seeing in a time when it seemed every human had gone blind and senile without knowing it.
It was the time of the Angel incursion, yet it seemed everyone wished nothing more than to sell their soul to the devil and want for nothing save perhaps the slight speck of self-gratification.
These were dark times indeed. NERV may have been distrustful liars who couldn't be honest to even those within their own ranks which were very hard to obtain, but they were right about this one aspect.
There were six buttons holding her eternally treasured yellow raincoat together.
Just one short of seven, which would have made it a lucky number.
And half of twelve, which in ancient lore that no one read anymore represented a perfect number of which there were no flaws.
She wondered if being half of perfection meant she was the perfect balance between goodness and sin. Or if it instead meant she was two-faced as she had been with her dealings with that one kindred spirit who had offered himself to her in all his wholehearted love for her that had blossomed within him despite the sheer amount of duplicity in her behaviour towards him.
Him being the closest thing she'd ever have to a saviour in their brief time together.
Shinji Ikari. The second to her first. Shinji Ikari the second child, and Rei Ayanami the first child of NERV.
"Forgive me Shinji. I beg of you." She choked out hoarsely as she saw in vain that there were no more buildings before her to jump to and that the deafening din of sirens was growing ever louder. "You were right. Always right. Right about everything while I was wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. I live for you Shinji. You and you alone."
She saw that not far from the edge of this final building was a thick wood so thick that even a wren could not hope to fly through.
That for some ironic reason, someone had left a green and black round trampoline lying upon the roof of this building which judging from this oddity seemed to be a residential complex of some kind.
Trees had branches and leaves. Perhaps they would break her fall if they didn't break her neck first.
She knew that what she was about to do was crazy. Beyond crazy. Beyond inanity. Beyond which a mental institute that witnessed her following act would deem her fit for an asylum, and instead have her euthanized to be put out of her misery on the grounds that she could never be restored to any degree of mental health with even the most advanced of treatments available.
It was brave, it was daring and yet it was utterly insipid.
But her Shinji had done more than his share of breaking the mould, saving the world and all it's ungrateful inhabitants undeserving of his unparalleled devotion each time he did so.
If she were truly repentant of her part in the wrongs she'd wrought upon him, she truly could do no less.
"For you, Shinji. I, your dearest and sole ally Rei Ayanami do this for you." The part-human, part-angel girl with six black buttons in her yellow raincoat timidly squeaked as she dove upon the trampoline and forced herself to jump harder and harder to build up as much upward thrust as she could manage.
She was in the midst of her sixth bounce when the metallic clanging of stairs just beneath her encouraged her to launch herself forward into the maze of imposing trees.
She was tempted to just close her eyes and let the eventual fall kill her.
But to do that was to betray him once more and leave him truly alone. An abhorrent state she knew all too well and would never wish even upon the most unrepentant scum of the Earth or any other planet in the vast universe it occupied.
She reached with her hands outstretched as she came headfirst into the trunk of a mighty and imposing oak.
She managed despite a skull-crushing thud which left her with a badly bleeding nose, to grip a nearby branch with all her might.
Had she been fully human, she would not have stood a chance at surviving a hard crash so lethal with only a few scrapes and bruises to show for it. But then, had she been fully human, perhaps society would not have derided her as a despised pariah as they did and she may have found the capability to give Shinji the loving gratitude she never found the inner strength to give to anyone.
Thank you for reading.
Please review if you like this story and want me to continue it.
Thank you all and have a nice day.