Chapter 1: How did I get here? Part 1 (Angel Attack)

Why did I come here?

Actually, scratch that. How did I get here?

Well, I guess it started when I arrived in Tokyo-3 yesterday. So let's begin there.

Thursday, July 23, 2015 (R)

After a lengthy train trip, I arrived at Tokyo-3 Station at around noon. I had received a letter from Father the week before asking me to come to the city. To Nerv. For reasons I'm still not fully sure of, I agreed to do so. The letter also came with instructions from a Misato Katsuragi about what I needed to do once I arrived at the station, as well as a photo to recognize her by.

There was also a note on the photo itself. "To Shinji: I'll be picking you up, so wait for me, okay? (Look out for these!)" it read, and below the note there was a lipstick print and even an arrow pointing to her breasts for some reason. Not sure how I was supposed to recognize her by those as opposed to her face. But… I guess I was attracted to her. Enough to reconsider staying where I was before. So then I guess she had to be one of the reasons I came. Even if I didn't really want to see Father again, I couldn't just ignore the prospects of getting to meet this beautiful woman who might even like me back.

Anyway, after reaching the station, I was supposed to leave the building, call her phone number from the nearest payphone, and tell her the address I was waiting at. Of course, almost as soon as I left, they started announcing that a state of emergency had been enacted for the area I was in, and by the time I'd found a payphone to use they cut off the phone lines. Now I was stuck. With nothing else to do I began looking around for the nearest shelter and caught a glimpse of another girl. It was weird. She was just standing there in the middle of the road after all the streets had been deserted. And she had light blue hair and really pale skin. Almost deathly pale. I was about to call out to her when I was distracted by some birds flying away off the nearby power lines. And then, when I turned back to look where she was, she was gone. Was she a mirage? It was hot out, but it shouldn't have been hot enough for me to be seeing any mirages.

Suddenly I heard a loud boom and everything started shaking for a short time. I turned around to see what it was, and saw the reason there was a state of emergency in place. It was… a giant monster of some kind, as tall as a skyscraper. It looked vaguely human-shaped, with dark greenish skin, a bird-like face, big shoulders, thin arms and legs, and an exposed ribcage containing a red, crystalline sphere of some kind. I also saw fighter aircraft converging on it. They shot missile after missile after it, and they did nothing but blow up the surrounding buildings. The monster stabbed one of the planes with a spike of pink light coming out of its arm, sending it crashing near where I was standing, and then jumped on and crushed it beneath its foot. I was so frightened I didn't know what to do. I didn't actually know where any of the shelters were, having never been in that part of town before. If I tried to hide in a building, it might've gotten blown up, and if I stayed outside, I might've gotten turned into a pancake.

Luckily for me, it was then that Miss Misato showed up just in the nick of time to grab me, like a knight in shining ...blue car? She certainly looked amazing in that black, short dress and those dark glasses. We just barely avoided getting crushed underneath the monster's other foot as she drove off with me. I have to admit it felt pretty exhilarating to get rescued like that. From there, we started heading to Nerv HQ, and formally introduced ourselves to each other. On the way there, the UN forces, to whom the fighter aircraft from earlier belonged, tried to drop an N2 bomb on the monster; we got caught in the shockwave and I had to help her get the car back upright before we could resume the drive. It's a good thing we were as far away from the blast as we were, or we probably wouldn't have survived. Unfortunately, it was a bit after that when I started to realize Miss Misato wasn't quite the dream girl I had her cracked up to be. For one thing, that car of hers seemed to be running on several stolen battery packs. And she was starting to act a lot more distracted behind the wheel, to the point where I had to snap her out of it once or twice.

It made me wonder again why I even came, especially when we got on the car train and it dawned on me that we were drawing closer and closer to Father. Then I wondered why he would even want to see me again. Probably because he needed something from me. Heh. I didn't know the half of it. At least seeing inside the Geofront for the first time was pretty cool. And Misato apparently had her own share of troubles with her father, though she didn't really elaborate.

After fumbling around trying to find our way through Nerv HQ for a while, we met Dr. Ritsuko Akagi, one of Miss Misato's colleagues, in the elevator as I was trying to get up to speed with the Welcome to Nerv pamphlet I got. It suddenly felt a lot colder when she came in, more than I needed at a time like this. For one thing, they started talking about me, about things I didn't really understand. Marduk Report? Me, the Third Child? Why wasn't I told about any of this? What did it all mean? And then they said I was "unfriendly, just like [my] dad". What was that for? I mean… It's true I've always been a bit of a loner, but was that really necessary? Especially considering what was about to come next…

When we got out of the elevator, we then took a hovercraft across a huge lake of some kind of red liquid. Later I found out it was coolant. It smelled a little like Dr. Akagi, or rather, Dr. Akagi smelled like it. Was she swimming in it earlier? I guess that would explain why she was wearing a swimsuit with her labcoat when we ran into her, and why she radiated both literal and figurative coldness.

We took the hovercraft into a dark room and disembarked onto a bridge. At that point my dread had built up enough that I could feel it in my own blood. Then the lights turned on. I saw the face of Evangelion Unit-01 for the first time. And then above me, I saw Father's face for the first time in years.

My Father. The man who normally wanted nothing to do with me. The man who probably wished I was never born, or better yet never got to exist. Why else would he abandon me and make me live with Mr. Okamoto, his old teacher, for eleven years? Mother must have been the only thing stopping him from doing it sooner; almost as soon as she passed away, he took the opportunity to get rid of me. And now that this monster, this Angel they called Sachiel was running amok, he had the perfect excuse to finish the job, permanently. As soon as I spoke back to him, he told me to go out in this strange purple robot I'd never even seen before and fight. It was all set up just for me. He had a use for me, he said. I was the only one who could do it, he said. I tried as hard as I could to defend myself. I refused over and over again, because it was all so ridiculous.

I could feel everyone's stares piercing my body like spears. I wanted to be somewhere else. Anywhere but here. Maybe it was better if I was never brought into existence after all. Then, as we could feel Sachiel get closer, Misato, who had been opposing my sortie with me before, started telling me to get in too. She was betraying me, I thought. It was at that point when she asked me:

"Why did you come here?"

Shinji had to stop writing for a moment as he found himself faced with this difficult question again. Misato had told him he couldn't run away. By this point, he had thought about it enough that he could reason more clearly. He could run away again if he wanted. But would he try?

He remembered what happened next, and decided to continue.

She told me I mustn't run away. Not from Father, and especially not from myself. I didn't want to run away. But I didn't feel strong enough to fight those things. I couldn't do it. It was at that point when they had "Rei" sent in to go instead. I wouldn't be piloting the Eva after all. I should've felt happy about that, and expected to. But I just felt… empty inside. If they didn't need me for piloting the Eva, and that was the only reason I was called to Nerv, then was I not needed for anything? Was I worthless? Did I waste my time coming here?

As I kept thinking to myself, they brought in a girl on a gurney. She was covered in bandages and she looked like she could barely move. But most importantly, she looked just like the girl I saw earlier that day, standing in the road one moment and then disappearing the next. With blue hair, pale skin, and now that I could see her more closely, red eyes.

She didn't look like anyone else I had ever seen. But she was beautiful. Her beauty was something I guess I'd describe as "unearthly". This was all very odd, though. If I'd never met her before, then where did the apparition in the road come from? Sachiel was on its way to Tokyo-3 then. Was she… calling out for help?

Whatever was going on, she was clearly not an ordinary person. As I watched her, we could feel more shaking coming from the Angel on its way to the Geofront. Rei and I were both knocked to the ground, and she could barely get up. The ceiling lights shook. Without even thinking I went to her side and tried to help her back up. As she winced in pain I felt something warm and chilling on my right hand. It was blood.

That's when it hit me. This was the pilot I was to be a spare for. Father was going to kill her, if he couldn't kill me first. How did she end up like this? ...What did he do to her? How could he even consider sending her out in this condition? Was this all to goad me into piloting it instead?

At that point, I had to decide whether I was more afraid of dying myself and playing Father's sick game, or more afraid of Rei dying and me having to live knowing I didn't do anything to save her from him.

At that point, I decided to pilot the Eva.

AUTHOR NOTES:

Special thanks to Evageeks for help with canon fact-checking (including timeline planning), and to Argent-of-Cintria and SpiderInStockings for pre-reading the Prologue.

EDIT (11/13/2021): Edited the chapter slightly to refer to the old teacher Shinji lived with by name (more on this later) and have Shinji say something describing Unit-01's appearance. Because it's a little weird that he describes Sachiel's appearance in almost photographic detail, but barely says anything about what Unit-01 looks like. In addition, retroactively-written journal entries like this one will be marked with an "R" going forward to make things a little easier to follow.