Creation began on 04-11-20
Creation ended on 08-26-21
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Vengeance of the Seven: Avarice and Jealousy
"…Shinji Ikari," went the look-alike that Misato was suggested by the not-so-arrogant doppelgänger to have a chat with in one of the other rooms used for interrogation. "What a simple-minded individual that lacks huge dreams and ambitions. Even after being forced into servitude to a heartless giant by an uncaring pair unfit to be parents to any other children, all he really desires…is to walk away…without being tied down to the fate of others. Is that too much to ask for? He certainly doesn't desire money or fame or power. Even to desire people to care for, that care about him, is for a few, just a few, asking too much of a crippled world that may only get worse if left to people that can't do right by the ones left to inherit whatever's left."
"Even if you're just an embodiment of his greed," she told him, "that kind of wanting is dangerous. We can't always have what we want. That's just not how reality works."
"You're not one to talk, Misato Katsuragi. Look at who his parents are. Look at who you are. Me? I'm just an example of how the small desires are the ones most sought after. He only desired the positives of his life, who and what could put a smile on his face. What about the rest of you, though? What do you desire? What about Asuka and her unrealistic desire? Or Ayanami? Does she even know what a desire is? Does she even have any? Or Dr. Akagi? What is it that all of you want more than anything else your hearts may desire?"
"Certainly, a future after all of this is over."
"Except with the way things tend to progress for those in control, it will never be over. So long as those with desires as unrealistic as what happened fifteen years ago exist, we're all heading towards a place from which there is no coming back from. Pandora's Box was opened…and like miscreants with terrible ambitions, it was left open and all the horrors of the world were allowed to spread rampant. And what good did it do? War, famine, death, soulless plagues that consumed everything in their paths as an unfeeling storm swept across the globe. Surely, those that allowed this to happen…all desired something unrealistic."
Misato had had enough to hear with this and turned to walk away.
"You're all the same, whether you want to believe it or deny it," Shinji's avarice declared to her. "You all want something you desire most, whether it's simplistic or unrealistic…and you'll do whatever it takes, even harm those around you…to obtain those desires!"
She stepped out of the room.
-x-
"And he's that idiot's greed?" Asuka questioned. "He's got some arrogance in him to say that I have an unrealistic desire."
"Unfortunately, Asuka," Misato told her, "he wasn't lying about anything he said. I looked him right in his eyes, and he believes everything that he says."
"And about his simplistic desires?" Fuyutsuki asked her.
"I've never known Shinji to actually desire things that other people want. He doesn't desire money or fame or any of that other stuff that some would desire."
"Well, he's a simple-minded person," Asuka stated, and Misato walked over to the display window showing what they had suspected to be Shinji's envy, his jealousy, looking frustrated at being in the room. "I wonder what he's so jealous of."
"Knowing Shinji as scarcely as we do," Ritsuko suspected, "he could be jealous of everyone around him."
-x-
What was Shinji's jealousy? What did he have to envy of other people? They had yet to speak with the embodiment of his envy. What would he have to say?
Looking up from the table, the embodiment faced the window and could see Misato and Asuka looking back at him.
"I think you two already know the answers to your own questions you shouldn't even bother with asking me," he told them. "What is there to be envious of? Who is there to be envious of? There are many things…and there are few things. Even the fewest of things others take for granted, I resent them for having. When do I get a fair share? When do I get to smile like others do when all the hurt is gone? Why do others get to dine of the joys of living while I'm stuck with the crappy-ass leftovers? When do I get a fair share? Huh?! When?!"
Outside, both ladies looked at one another and suspected Shinji really had much to be jealous of…because he had been denied such from an early age.
"What makes him the jealous type?" Ritsuko questioned.
"He has nothing," Misato stated. "From his perspective, he has absolutely nothing. From his perspective, there are others that have what he lacks, what he feels he's entitled, but was denied…deliberately."
"Which is?"
"Everything other people take for granted," Asuka stated simply. "Friends, parents, acceptance, love. From his perspective, others have gotten more than he's ever gotten from anyone else…and he's not happy about that. He's like the other two, the greedy one and the girl with the cat. They live in want, but for different reasons; one wants to feel satiated, one wants whatever it is that he wants, and the third longs for what other people have because he feels he never got any."
Ritsuko wasn't sure which embodiment of Shinji was probably the worst out of these seven. Was it his pride, his greed, his jealousy, his lust…or his vengeance?
"He should know by now that the world is unfair," she stated.
"To him, it's only because the people in it are," Misato responded, "and from his view, maybe that's true. People are the only beings in existence that are an unfair bunch; we take everything for granted and treat others like they don't deserve much of anything but what's necessary to get through each day."
Suddenly, the alarms went off, indicating that an Angel was approaching the city.
"Oh, you gotta be kidding me!" Asuka reacted. "Of all the times they gotta pick to show up, they gotta choose now?!"
It was just another reminder that they were on the clock, and that they had a job to do.
"Prep Units-00 and 02," Misato ordered.
"What about these idiots?" Asuka questioned, referring to the embodiments.
"You should already know that none of us will pilot that ugly bitch!" They heard the angry Shinji yell. "No chance in Hell!"
"Piloting the Eva is too much effort!" The lazy Shinji cried.
"I'm not leaving my Sutego alone with any of you!" The lustful one added.
"It sounds like you got multiple responses from the same person!" The arrogant one told them.
"I can't believe Shinji's desires are refusing to help," Ritsuko expressed.
-x-
The Angel was just as big as the other one that had appeared in space over the planet, but looked as though it were made of light, with a multitude of branches for wings.
"It's out of range for all of our long-range weapons," Hyuga informed them in Central Dogma.
"Is it waiting to attack from a distance?" Misato questioned.
"We don't know," replied Maya as the two Evas were being launched right now. "So, none of them are going to pilot?"
"This is the first time he's ever refused in such a way," said Shigeru, "and he's in eight rooms here. It's unnatural."
"Try telling him that," Ritsuko stated, referring to Gendo, who was watching from above with Fuyutsuki, wondering how this Angel would be dealt.
-x-
Shinji's envy had now developed a new thing to be jealous about: Freedom. It was something his avarice desired, as well; both were locked up in these interrogation rooms like they were prisoners, and it infuriated them.
"If you want something you've been denied," his envy said as he rose up from the table, at the same time as his avarice did from the table in the other room.
"You have to take it for yourself," his avarice uttered.
Smash! The glass window shattered in the rooms and the guards that had been coming to watch the embodiments reacted with mild fright as two of the Shinjis jumped out into the hall.
"You two get back in the rooms!" One of the guards ordered.
"And give up the bliss of freedom?" They both responded. "No way."
They turned to walk away, but two of the guards raised their guns at them.
"Don't make us shoot you!" One of them threatened.
Suddenly, a fourth guard was grabbed from behind and lifted off his feet…by another Shinji! It was the angry one!
"I'd drop those guns now, if I were you," he told them, locking the man's head in his grip; he was willing to break his neck if he had to.
"Yo, are we doing this right now?!" They heard one of the female Shinjis ask.
"Yeah!" The other one replied. "We're doing this right here and now! Let's do this!"
The doors to the remaining four rooms opened and out came the other embodiments, surrounding the five guards.
"I'm sorry, gentlemen, but this is where we cease our subtlety," said the not-so-arrogant Shinji to them, "and move towards the reason we're here."
Shinji's sloth yawned as she took a gun from one of the guards.
"Don't even try anything, please," she told them. "Killing is too much effort."
"Is everything too much effort to you?" One of them asked her, and he received a kick to the crotch by her. "Aah!"
"Unfortunately…yes," she replied, though the kick actually felt good to her. "But the only way for those cruel to succeed…is when I do nothing…and doing nothing to stop those that are cruel to us…is the biggest effort of them all that is too much work to do."
"Sounds like you're finally getting back into your groove, sis," the lustful Shinji told her as she put her kitten back into his carry pouch.
"Why do you have a cat with you?" A guard questioned.
"Let's just knock them out, please," the greedy one said, and punched one of them in his face.
"I'm all for it," replied the angry one, and he choked the man into submission, knocking him out. "No distractions."
Punch! Shinji's pride knocked a third guard's lights out.
"Let's go settle the score," he told the other six.
-x-
This Angel was clearly making NERV work for a shot to take it out. Every time either Asuka or Rei got it in their sights for a snipe attack, it just moved out of the way, as if taunting them with their inability to get it from a distance.
"Is this thing playing games with us?!" Asuka demanded.
"Every time it comes into position for attack, it moves the equivalent of three miles out range," Ritsuko discovered, "requiring us to recalibrate just to target it again."
"In order words," went Misato, "it's not going to let anything or anyone make a move against it."
"An Angel that won't let itself be targeted," Maya stated, "is clearly smarter than it seems."
Ring-ring! Gendo's phone rang, and he answered it.
"What is it?" He demanded to hear. "Find them, immediately."
"Ikari?" Fuyutsuki uttered.
"The Third Child's…embodiments…have escaped from confinement," he explained. "They incapacitated the guards assigned to them and relieved them of their weapons."
Fuyutsuki had to wonder if these seven embodiments were going to come after Gendo. If that was the case, it was anyone's guess as to which embodiment would be taking a shot at him. While most thought Shinji's pride would be the one to call the shots, others suspected the one to do the most harm would be his wrath, his anger, his drive for vengeance. With Fuyutsuki, he was among the latter, expecting the rage sin to make Gendo suffer immensely.
"He'd kick your teeth in," he recalled the arrogant one stating to Gendo in a failed attempt to get him to pilot the Eva in place of the incapacitated one.
Some would've actually paid to see Gendo get a few licks. Maybe it was just a reminder that nobody was untouchable, even those that nobody bothered to touch.
"Of the seven desires he has, the one that seems to despise you the most is his wrath," he told Gendo. "He seems the most likely to carry out a vendetta against you if he's the part of your son that feels the most hatred towards you."
But Gendo didn't expect his son's fury to come after him yet. If he knew Shinji, even a piece of his soul, he didn't expect the brat to sneak up on him and make his move. The boy was too afraid of his own shadow to do something as reckless as harm him. But then again, that was when Shinji was whole and not in eight pieces with seven of them now loose and running around. Now that he was all over the place, there was no telling what Shinji would and could do.
"People that think they're in control have yet to understand how wrong they are," the boy's pride once stated. "You think you're aware of how things are going to play out, but you don't know anything. You don't know who or what will come as the sand runs through the hourglass, when the weather turns for the worst, or when those you use will turn against you because of something you said or did…or aim to do. The thing about pride…is that it's as unpredictable as any of the other desires that run through us all. What do you think will happen next? Do you think we'll reconcile? That the three of you will be this nonexistent happy family that was as just as false as your nonexistent love for him? I know for a fact that none of that will come to pass, not for him…and certainly not for you two, either."
"We're not getting a lock-on with this Angel," went the Second Child to them. "It keeps moving out of the way!"
To be continued…
A/N: Thanks to Thomas Drovin, this chapter was updated and brought to completion. Another chapter that took over a year to get back to, but was gotten back to. I think the two embodiments of Shinji that represent his suffering the most right now are his avarice and jealousy; he wants only what his heart desires…and is envious of others that have what he doesn't have and wants.