Chapter 2: One foot in the grave
Shinji let off a pained cough as he made a dive for the nearest row of thick oak trees before him.
He was only in the nick of time as a stream of bullets smashed into the muddy forest floor just behind him.
Yes. His beloved father who recruited him into the exalted organization of NERV to have him put his neck on the line each and every waking moment of his life when he wasn't meeting the needs of his two overbearing roommates, now wanted to kill him dead.
To pump him full of lead till every last ounce of life was gone from the poster child that garnered NERV most of the little popularity it had maintained despite its litany of crimes against humanity.
Shinji knew not the exact reasoning behind this inhumane decision, but he could make an educated guess that it had something to do with the glimpses he had secretly caught of his father and Dr Akagi's experiment of transferring the life energy from one bodiless soul to another.
About how the soul was the controlling force behind each human body and how it could survive even outside the body while even potentially transferring its energy to bring to life an inanimate corpse permitting that it possessed enough willpower and love.
Filicide. Now king Claudius who already had an entire kingdom and vast fortune all to himself was trying to murder the young and precocious prince Hamlet to ensure no loose ends and forever whitewash the evidence of his unspeakable crimes.
What a sick twist of events! To think that centuries, nay millennia ago that humankind was more civilized and loving than the psychotic beasts he was forced to be around in his day-to-day life during what the news called "a technological revolution".
Even Claudius didn't try to kill his nephew Hamlet having killed Hamlet's father to get the crown.
Even the greedy Lord Capulet had the courtesy to cry tears of true sorrow when he saw his dead daughter in the hands of a Montague clansman he swore to detest.
The bloodthirsty Macbeth wanted his wife by his side when he killed King Duncan and took his King's crown to become Medieval Scotland's new ruler.
But it seemed that Gendo Ikari, or rather Shinji's father wanted no one alive no matter how useful they were or had once been to his cause.
Gendo Ikari. A tyrannic despot whose abundant power seemed unsubmitted to anything or anyone higher than himself.
Shinji wove from tree to tree as bullets struck their trunks, snapping the trees to splinters almost as quickly as he could duck and dodge between the beautiful boughs of nature that afforded him momentary cover from his merciless pursuers.
He could see the bright flashes and feel the metallic ricochets of each metal magazine as they thudded close to him, too close for comfort.
He had seen war documentaries and read history articles, of grizzled soldiers who had been traumatized with incurable shell shock for the rest of their lives over much less than the living hell his father's men were putting him through at this moment.
His teeth clattered uncontrollably and his heart slammed against his ribcage like a ferocious battle mace as he continued to move from tree to tree even as the forest thinned out in front of him so that some of the bullets were whizzing past his head even as he forced himself to continue onward.
He wondered if he'd ever be able to sleep again at night were he to live through this vicious assualt.
But then again, perhaps that was a moot question considering how close the previous shot had come to burying itself in his brain in his momentary bout of carelessness to think upon this pointless sentiment.
There would of course be plenty of time for him to rest when his time came, in his grave.
Another bullet came at him as he ran out of trees and instead made a mad leap for the downhill slope he had been closing the distance between all this while.
This one made its mark just centimeters from his left foot, throwing up a large pile of thick dust that stung his eyes badly as it flew straight into his crimson face.
Then half blinded, he could but do his utmost to keep his thoroughly dried mouth clamped shut as he quickly picked up speed losing his footing before he began to roll over and over all while not knowing how tall this slope even was or if it even ended anywhere that could remotely be considered safe.
He could hear groans of disappointment and curses from the clearly peeved men at arms his father had sent to intercept him, but he was too wracked with terror and fright to relish in this small victory he had temporarily secured.
He still could not open his mouth, so instead let out an animal cry of primal horror from his nostrils as he continued to roll at even greater speeds comparable to a steamroller.
To say that this was like the tallest rollercoaster at the carnival he was too chicken to get onto alongside Asuka even as she called him every insulting name, she could dream up was an understatement.
He honestly felt right now that being forced to fight a hundred angels back to back wouldn't have matched the churning feeling that was now turning his stomach inside out and causing a mouthful of putrid vomit to gather in his still tightly clenched mouth.
He even felt as his downward foray reached terminal velocity that perhaps he should have let himself be plugged head to toe in bullets to spear himself this agonizing torture that seemed to have no end in sight. Quite literally as he could not even bring himself to open his uncontrollably twitching eyes any longer.
Why on Earth had he put himself through this ordeal again?
Then in his height of confusion, he remembered two words. Both of them nouns and both of them invocations of great power that brought him hope in his darkest hours.
They got him out of bed in the morning and kept him hard at work when exhaustion threatened to overtake him. They calmed him down when he inevitably got mad from being berated one too many times often for unfortunate circumstances, he had absolutely no control over.
The first word was "Rei". The second "Ayanami". Combined they spelled Rei Ayanami. The ultimate Waifu. The all mother. His great arbiter and changer of ways. His end and beginning whose existence meant that even when he was losing, he was winning.
Rei gave him all of her and he owed it to her to give her all of himself. To walk before her in the land of the living.
Of course saving the Earth mattered too, but more than anything so that he and Rei had somewhere pleasant and comfortable to one day enjoy even a brief moment of bonding that their duties in NERV had always found ways to snatch from between them.
"REEEIIII!" He allowed himself to stupidly call out at top of his lungs as he could hold his burning passion for her in no longer.
Then by a divine miracle, all lost courage was restored to him as he found it within himself to snap open his tear sodden eyes to glance down at the lucky number imprinted on his final parting gift from his late mother. It somehow still fit him into his teenage years as if to say she knew that he'd be too poor to buy better clothes following her passing she seemed to all but anticipate.
7. Such a saving sight for sore eyes. Such a pleasure to pronounce and say aloud.
If he could have a fraction as much luck as his clothes marked upon him...
As he thought these thoughts, the large hill he had been haplessly descending finally came to an end and he found himself thrown into a stack of leaves of all colors. Red, orange and brown.
It took him a little struggle to get back to his feet but by all rights, he had weathered the drop surprisingly well thanks to the convenient leaf stack that seemed almost tailor made to welcome his arrival.
"Maybe I'm not so unlucky after all." He dared to whisper to himself as he pressed on in spite of the large scrapes in his knees and arms that he had been left with which logically should have been far more serious. He knew he was tempting fate by even thinking these hopeful thoughts but he could not help himself.
"And maybe. Rei managed to escape too and is still alive and waiting for me."
...
As Rei cleared the bottom branch of the huge tree, she had launched herself into the canopy of, and put her feet down on the forest floor snapping some twigs as she did so, she heard a growling noise.
Very subtle but nonetheless undeniably existent and not just some figment of her imagination.
Had she been fully human, she indeed would have disregarded it as just her weary mind playing tricks on her.
This was a quiet forest that no one ever went to anymore. While it was true that there had once been some storage facilities and machinery, they had all been long decommissioned as far as Rei's knowledge of NERV went.
There was nothing valuable here that would entice anyone to just casually venture here, with how concerned everyone had become about surviving to the point of becoming complete shut-ins who seldom left their houses even to grab essentials.
Fear and doubt. Two emotions NERV was able to sow in spades now with how they had extended their reach to include the media, both printed and digital also.
Were some people really so dense so as to have to believe everything they read?
Was history always just a farce to be written according to the whims of the strong who oppressed the weak?
Did Rei have no choice if she wanted to get by in this bleak world she was born into against her will, but to accept the age old saying that might made right?
"No. If there is one thing Shinji taught me. It is that right makes right. Not might."
Rei quickly scolded herself, pushing these dangerous thoughts out of her conscience before they could fully materialize.
Shinji was punished without reason repeatedly by his father, beaten remorselessly by Asuka till his every bone broke and stood up countless times by Major Misato who should have been setting an example for him rather than belittling him as was her moral imperative.
But he did not hate them, nor blame them. He only blamed himself. Because he took responsibility. So that he could actually solve his problems one by one instead of ignoring them.
No Shinji was not perfect. But he was still the only friend Rei had.
"Yes Shinji. Being buddies means something" Rei hoarsely croaked even as the growling begun to grow louder and more ferocious so that it made her hairs stand on end.
"And because of you, saving the world means something. Your father used me just as he used you.
But I do love you Shinji. Not because your father told me to but because I just do. Because I see your spiritual growth as a worthy goal in my life."
But before Rei could continue to sing her beloved Shinji's praises to herself to encourage herself to keep going, the growling became barking.
A savage barking that quickly grew to deafening heights so as to cause Rei's oversensitive eardrums to throb to bursting point.
She was still clutching her sore head trying to regain control of herself, when three massive hounds burst out from a nearby thicket baring their already bloodied razor teeth.
One black, one grey, one brown. Each one bigger than her even at her full height, and far more primordially aggressive.
Tokyo-3's food crisis really had taken its toll and even the animal kingdom was paying the sins of the human kingdom for crimes not their own.
A glimpse at their threadbare collars made Rei almost pity the maddened beasts as she nimbly backpedaled in the nick of time to instead have the largest hound bump its snout with a terrible crack into the trunk of the oak, bloodying it with a few drops of its blood in the process.
This stunned the leader of the pack and its two almost equally ferocious followers just long enough for Rei to turn tail and hurry down into the clearing.
She huffed and puffed, but knew that if she stopped running to gasp for the slightest breath of air then she would be ripped to shreds and her precious yellow raincoat torn to pieces to be excavated centuries later as a relic to remind some great future race of the incompetence of the human race that preceded it.
She sprinted with broad strokes of her arm to squeeze every bit of speed possible out of her already knackered body that felt like it could give way any second to fatigue.
The wind raced through her hood covered hair as she strained to keep her short blue hair covered while also keeping her line of sight unobscured. She deep down desperately prayed for it to grow longer soon now that her commander was no longer around to force her to cut it to keep in line with his image of his late wife Yui, also having the same short bob he forced upon her. Maybe there were some hair growth stimulants somewhere. Then she could be for Shinji a pleasant sight rather the eyesore she knew she posed to him in spite of his best efforts to hide it out of his excessive scrupulosity.
Even if this made it harder to cover up and thus blew her cover, it'd be more than worth it.
If NERV watched her run from afar, then perhaps they'd just think she was a completely irrelevant young thing that strayed into these woods on a fun day out for a walk and leave her be.
It wouldn't do anything against the dogs of war now tailing her however, who cared not a whit about her identity nor her accomplishments and failures in life.
To them, all she represented was a hunk of mouth-watering meat. At least these crazed canines were upfront about their cruel intentions with her. Honesty was something her former commander Gendo Ikari could never even claim.
Like little yellow riding hood and the three huge, starving hounds.
Ha. Bad joke. But what could she do to maintain a touch of composure in this life-threatening situation but to grab what little merriment she could?
Her right foot crunched over a thin set of bones as she dashed forward.
A deer maybe? Or another human like her who thought the woods would be a safe retreat from the ravages of the increasingly dangerous world.
She didn't have the time nor will to find out.
She needed to find Shinji to apologize for everything and tell him the truth. The whole truth and nothing else or at least the little she knew of it.
Despite her best efforts and the angelic blood pumping through her veins which accelerated her to breakneck paces no human physique could dream of, she knew she would not be able to outrun the dogs much longer.
Already she could feel their hot saliva drooling from their bloodied lips as they came closer and closer to her, snapping their jaws as they readied themselves for the final pounce that would knock her to the ground and leave her completely at their mercy.
Repulsive as she found this, she at least took solace in the knowledge that if she were to die here and now, it would be so that her flesh could be made into a nourishing meal that would sustain three lives far more worthy of her sympathy than the slave master who had been pulling the wool over her eyes all her life long.
It would also mean that her remains would most likely be far too ripped and gory to have her soul extracted for Gendo's heartless experiment that would make every genocidal dictator throughout history's great stage look tame in comparison.
But what was that rectangular metal shape just up ahead, at the edge of her better than average vision?
Why. A dumpster. A large, grey metal dumpster with broken wheels and a tightly shut lid.
Behind it was a tall, wire fence at least two meters thick which seemed to go on and on without any end or beginning.
Whoever built it clearly wanted to keep all intruders out. It was clearly of great importance to its architect.
But those were not the things on Rei's mind right now as she thanked lady luck for bestowing her this precious lifeline.
The feeling of great luckiness gave her feet the strength to leap onto the hood of the trash can with ease before jumping once more, just enough for her to somersault over the razor wire and drop to the tarmac ground on the other side with only two lightly scratched palms.
Two more feats that no human athlete, however devoted and in-shape could have accomplished on even their best days.
She had quite literally soared through the air past impenetrable obstacles like an angel.
She breathed a sigh of relief as she spared a glance back at the now furiously snarling hounds who continued to make empty threats at her behind the deadly barrier that now kept her well out of their grasp.
Though she pitied their plight, she could not help but blow a small raspberry of triumph at them as she turned her back on them to rush closer to the towering facility whose shadow loomed over her and much of the landscape surrounding her.
A look back reminded her that going back would be suicidal and the distant sound of an engine being switched off as a car door opened and was then slammed shut, caused her to swallow her nerves as she entered through the colossal ajar doorway of the supposedly abandoned building whose paint was quickly peeling away. At least here she would be out of sight from both her adversaries of man and beast.
A few large barrels, some of them toppled over lined both sides of the entrance.
A yellow and black forklift laced track to pincer in cobwebs sat derelict leaning against a wall to her left.
A large pile of rubble blocked the doorway leading deeper into whatever this structure once was.
But a pile of wooden crates to the right, each of different size arranged in almost the exact fashion of a spiral stairwell, provided a convenient enough passage to a second-floor balcony that she could make out just above the blocked doorway.
She would have to make a little leap to clear the distance between the tallest crate and the upper floor, but that was nothing a part Angel couldn't handle even in her weary state.
A strange sense of familiarity and homely warmth filled her cold heart as she bounced acrobatically from one crate to another.
Here she finally was. Her whole life leading up to this place that her dark masters kept hidden from her and Shinji.
The place inside NERV's secrets. The inside. INSIDE.
Thank you so much once more for reading.
Please review if you like this story and want to support me.
It really warms my heart to see so many of you enjoy this story that took me so much effort to write and I want to make you all happy.
Special thanks to rpgGamer52, wrightdylen21 and a certain guest for your kind feedback.
See I always wanted to write a run away story because considering the sad events of Evangelion, it would have made complete sense for Shinji and Rei to make good on their ideas to escape from the lies and betrayals NERV had in store for them.
Both of them are good people, too pure for their sinful world.