+++++ Tokyo-3.
"Due to the special emergency, all lines are currently unavailable," the pay phone informed Shinji Ikari with an automated message voiced by an AI using a female inflection designed to be professionally neutral.
Shinji looked at the receiver with a sigh, then hung up the phone and allowed his head to fall back with his eyes closed. "It's no use." The oppressive heat and droning of the cicadas around him squashed most non-doom related thoughts out of his mind. "I shouldn't have come here after all." Returning his head to its proper position, he looked around to see if there were any signs that would show him where these 'designated shelters' were. All he saw, to his dismay, was a sea of flashing traffic lights and advertisements for various products. "Well…I guess we won't be meeting here. I have to get to a shelter."
At this moment, there was what seemed to be a gentle breeze moving some of the wretchedly humid air in a manner that was most pleasant. After a few seconds, the breeze shifted violently from gentle to uncomfortably stiff.
"Uh…?" Shinji tried to maintain his balance, buffeted as he was by the increasingly heavy air.
A large shadow enveloped him, the sun occluded from sight by…something. The stiff breeze became a harsh gale.
"Ahh…." Watching as a creature easily taller than the towers it was idly knocking over crossed the skyline before him, Shinji entered the first stage of panic, "Ahhhhhhh!"
Just then, behind him, a sports car slid to a sideways stop near him, a powerful female voice calling out, "Sorry to have kept you waiting!" Once he turned and caught sight of the woman he'd expected to meet over an hour ago, she gave him a smile and motioned him towards her, "Get in."
Shinji was scarcely inside the vehicle before his salvation had her foot on the gas pedal and the gas pedal firmly against the floorboard. Had he any real knowledge of how cars worked, he would have been able to recognize her impeccable shifting and expert handling of the momentum and angle of the vehicle through a series of turns and intersections. Shinji did not have that knowledge, however, and was left with only the wild sinusoidal waveform of his emotions as he contemplated what it was he had just seen.
After reaching a mountainside freeway, Misato risked a few glances over at the ongoing battle between the overwhelmed armor and air cavalry of the Japanese Self-Sustaining Defense Forces and a titanic monster determined to destroy humanity. The first glance told her nothing new, humans were clearly the unwilling recipients of an ass-whooping. The second glance confused her for a brief second, as the trio of remaining VTOL aircraft suddenly and without much grace vacated the area around the enormous green murder machine. Between her second and third glance, she put the variables together and came to a distinctly unwelcome realization, "It can't be…they're going to use an N2-mine! Get down!" Stopping the car hard, she threw herself across Shinji to shield him from the expected shrapnel that her car windows were about to become.
Trapped between a marshmallow hell and the car seat, Shinji found himself lacking the necessary oxygen to scream in terror as the blast wave from the sub-nuclear destructive device sent the car rolling end over end down the road for the length of several football fields. Once the tumbling stopped with the car on its side and Misato still clinging tight to him, he managed to suck in some air but ended up also inhaling solid chunks of something unpleasant.
Poking her head out Shinji's window, Misato saw the Angel had been brought to a stop but not reduced to a memory. The attack had bought time, and that time was a gift she wished had a receipt considering the condition of her vehicle. "Ok…ok, come on. We need to get the car back on its wheels."
Once Shinji was out of the car, he spat out what had aggregated in his mouth onto the pavement, noting with a bit of relief that it didn't include blood.
"Are you alright?" Misato's question was asked with a hint of abstraction, as if it was a formality more than a genuine curiosity.
His response was dubious, but keyed specifically to prevent any follow-on questions, "Yeah…but something was crunchy in my mouth."
"You're fine," squatting down, she worked her fingers under the roof of the car, "are you ready?"
Shinji dutifully crouched down to add what he could to righting the vehicle, replying with a nod and a firm grip near her own.
"Here goes!" Both strained and grunted as they worked against gravity and the solid metal construction of the Renault Alpine, but eventually gravity relented and physics performed the appropriate corrections to allow the car to fall on four wheels. "Thanks a lot. Good job," She stated with the same level of detachment as she had when asking after his health.
Following a brief stop at a nearby general goods store where Misato gleefully looted a mixture of car parts to enable the vehicle to work properly and things that caught her eye, the duo were back on the road heading towards NERV. About five seconds into the theft of private property, Shinji checked out mentally. If anything was said to or about him, he was oblivious to it. At some point on the drive the glove compartment was opened and a 'welcome package' of leaflets, fliers, and assorted paperwork was shoved into his lap. None of it made any sense, nor did it draw his attention away from the fact that since leaving the hell that was Nagano behind he had somehow found the answer to his daily mental question of, 'How could this possibly ever get worse?'
The light of the sun was eventually replaced with the artificial glow of fluorescent lamps as a linear car train took them from 'ground level' to somewhere deep inside what appeared to be a hillside. He might have been excited, in another life, to see the first successful Geo-Front in person. In this life, however, thoughts of the anticipated anger from his father continued to wrap their venomous tentacles around his spirit. Dimly recognizing a request for his ID, several minutes after they had exited the car and begun walking, he took out the card he had been sent and handed it to Misato, then took it back from her after she swiped it across a reader. Silently falling behind her, he continued to be unaffected by the world around him. There was only the pain that had been, and the pain that would be.
"Oh," it was the mild hint of panic in Misato's voice that finally broke through Shinji's dread, "Ha…Hi, Ritsuko…."
"What did you do, Captain Katsuragi?" A tall, leggy, blond wearing both a white lab coat and a one-piece swimsuit pushed Misato into an elevator, clearly expecting that Shinji would fall in line as well. "We are short of both hands and time!"
"Sorry," Misato grumbled.
"Is he 'that' boy?"
"Yes," she replied, glad for the attention shifting from her to Shinji, "the 'Third Child' according to the Marduk Institute's report."
"Nice to meet you." The statement, coming as it did from Ritsuko, held an interesting mixture of truth and caution. Whether she truly felt it was nice to meet him or not wasn't something he would be aware of until it was too late to do anything about it.
"Ah…you too." Ducking into a bow, something he anticipated would be expected by someone who could cause a Captain to blanch the way Misato had, he hoped he hadn't just stepped in something worse. Now under scrutiny by two women that, in his opinion were both physically beautiful, Shinji chose a new favorite place to look at on the floor and willed himself to return to that state of non-existence that he preferred. As the elevator moved towards their destination, he chose not to listen to the hushed berating Ritsuko was giving Misato. It wasn't his fault they were late, and if Misato was going to be held responsible for it then that meant he wasn't going to have to be yelled at.
After far too long, the elevator came to a stop and the doors opened out into a hallway that was dotted by a series of rotating red lights. Over the intercom system along the walls, a calm female voice announced, "Red alert. All hands to battle stations. Red alert. All hands to battle stations. Red alert. All hands to battle stations. Prepare to intercept the enemy on the ground. I say again, red alert…."
"Did you hear what she just said?" Misato looked to Ritsuko with a hint of worry.
"It's serious," the blonde picked up the pace of the group, heading with renewed purpose.
"By the way," not sounding winded in the slightest, Misato kept pace with the taller woman beside her, "how is Unit-01?"
"It's being outfitted with the B-Type equipment, they're currently thawing it out."
"Does it really work? I heard that it hasn't worked yet."
"The possibility of it working is zero point zero zero zero, zero zero zero, zero zero one percent. We call it the oh-nine system for a reason."
"You mean it's not going to work, don't you?"
"Don't be rude," Ritsuko chided her as the group stepped onto an open-walled lift, "it isn't a zero, is it?"
"It's only a number…." It was clear that Misato was trying to hearten herself. "Anyway, saying that it doesn't work at all isn't going to be an excuse."
Once the lift reached its apex, coming to a halt amidst a sea of darkness, Shinji was only able to follow along due to the unnaturally white lab coat adorning the woman that had stopped them from wandering aimlessly for the next forty years. The hollow clank, clank, clank of footsteps upon metal grating informed him that they were on construction gantries of some kind. The distant echo of the sound told him that they were far, far above the ground below. Speaking to reassure himself that there was still aught to be found around him, he declared the obvious, "Uhm…it's pitch dark."
As if waiting for him to say just that, a pair of enormous spotlights lit up a nightmarish scene. Sharp, angular, lines described a purple demon's mask. Two angry eyes glowing an unearthly yellowish-green glared directly into his soul, promising pain and death would neither be the beginning nor the end for him. A single horn, pointing upwards at a rigid forty-five-degree angle from the helm, declared better than a million men screaming in unison that there was only one direction the fight would go, forward.
"Ah…a…a face," he breathed out, "a gigantic…robot?"
Ritsuko stepped beside him, gesturing towards the enormous monstrosity as if it were a common sight. "This is the multipurpose humanoid fighting machine Evangelion, which humanity has developed."
"Is…is this my father's work?"
"Yes." A powerful voice, both familiar and scarcely recognized, sounded from far above and behind him. Waiting for Shinji to turn around, Gendo Ikari's face was set in an emotionless mask. Now facing his son, he added, "It has been a long time."
From some place inside of him, buried dark and deep beneath nearly two decades of abuse, Shinji spoke a single word in a voice that surprised both of the women next to him, "Father…."
If Gendo was fazed by the sound, it did not register in his order, "Prepare for launch."
"Launch? Unit-00 is being frozen." She looked between Ritsuko and her commander. "No. You're kidding. You plan to activate Unit-01?"
"I don't see any other choices," Ritsuko replied, urging Misato to start moving.
"We can't have Rei get in it, not in her condition! We don't have any other pilots."
"You just delivered one," Ritsuko hissed. Stopping, and taking control of the situation, she looked to Shinji with hints of sympathy in both her tone and face, "Shinji-kun, you will pilot."
Misato pressed her protest, "It took Rei seven months to-"
"And if we are to survive, it will take Shinji seven minutes," the leggy scientist snapped. "If you hadn't taken your sweet fucking time getting him here, we could have used the seven hours after his train arrived to get him ready. We have our orders, Captain, and they do not include you convincing your pilot that he's not capable of greatness. Get up to the bridge, I'll take him from here. You can expect a discussion with the Sub-Commander following this sortie."
Neither entirely ignorant of the byplay, nor totally focused upon it, Shinji asked his father, "Why did you call me?"
"For exactly the reason you believe I did," Gendo's reply did not offer solace or reconciliation.
"You want me to climb into…into…it and fight against that monster?!"
"I called you because I have a use for you now."
"Now?!"
"You have the ability to do what no one else can. Now, either do it…or get out."
Alone with him on the gantries now, Ritsuko placed one hand on his chest to try a more human touch. "Do you feel that rumbling, Shinji-kun? That thing you saw is here now. We have no one else that can protect us. No one to pilot the only weapon capable of killing that monster. You came here for a reason, even if it was to find out why your father did what he did. Use that. Use that reason as motivation to fight. If you climb aboard Unit-01, if you just try, you win the right to a tomorrow for all of us. You can use that tomorrow to do what you came here to do." She gave him a smile that she hoped would push him out of the stasis he'd trapped himself within. "Just climb in, listen to my voice, and trust that you're here for a reason."
Running wasn't an option. If he ran, they'd all die. He might escape death for an hour, a day, or even a month…but the monster couldn't be stopped even by the largest bomb known to mankind. "If…if I do this…it's not because he told me to."
"Thank you." Her tone glowed with the way his decision gave them a fighting chance, "Let's get you aboard Unit-01."
+++++ NERV Tokyo-3.
Shinji found himself inside of a metal tube, seated upon a surprisingly comfortable chair with a control yoke between his legs and a cornucopia of confusing buttons spread out before him. The only light within what had been called an 'entry plug' came from two emergency bulbs that emanated a pale pink. The silence thundered in his ears, and the tight confines made his teeth itch, but he'd taken the first and most important step to seeing tomorrow: he'd climbed aboard.
After a sharp crackle of static, he heard an unfamiliar boyishly feminine voice state, "First connection reached, senpai."
At that, Ritsuko's voice came through the speakers, "Commence LCL injection."
Not knowing what 'LCL' was, Shinji nevertheless managed to identify that it was the liquid suddenly being pumped into the chamber he sat within. A quick search around the plug showed that there was nowhere else for the liquid to go, which only made him increasingly nervous as said liquid pooled up around his ankles and showed no signs of slowing down its ascent towards his all-important breathing holes. "Uhm…what is this?" Craning his neck back, he fought to keep his head above the waterline. "Sensei?!"
"Shit," Ritsuko berated herself sharply, "don't worry! After your lungs fill with the LCL, it'll be delivering oxygen directly into your lungs, your blood, and your heart. I promise, you'll get used to it. Just breathe normally, ok? Don't fight it, that'll make it hurt."
Without another choice available, he sank back down into his seat and let his breath out explosively. The first lungful tasted as bad as it smelled, and his mind instinctively wailed at him that he was making a mistake. 'Breathing out', as much as what he was doing could be considered such, did happen without significant effort. After a few breaths, he fell into a rhythm and tried to steady his nerves. "Ugh…I feel kinda sick."
"Deal with it!" Misato had clearly found the bridge, and her voice demonstrated that she wasn't in anything remotely approaching a good mood. "You're a man, aren't you?"
"Shut, and I cannot stress this enough, the fuck up, Misato!" A display popped up while Ritsuko spoke, showing her glaring death off to the side of whatever camera was recording her image. Turning back to him, her glare was tempered back down to a professional demeanor. "That's a combination of anxiety and the admittedly bad taste of the LCL, everything will settle down in a minute. We're going to connect the main power supply now. You're going to feel a tingle across your skin, that just means everything is working." Seeing Shinji nod twice, she glanced off-camera again, "Transmit power to all circuits."
The 'tingle' felt more akin to the time he remembered accidentally touching a frayed power cord for a lamp. It raced across his skin, along each nerve, and back out in the time it took him to think about yelping. As a living part of the circuit, once he was charged up he no longer felt the sensation and the yelp never manifested as more than a pre-thought.
"Second contact is beginning," the unknown woman stated. "We have contact…A-10 nerve is operational."
"Set Japanese as the fundamental ruleset for operation of the Eva." Ritsuko had a grin on her face, genuinely pleased that things were looking up. "All initial contacts report success."
"Mutual lines connected…synchronization rate shows…wow."
"Eighty-four point five percent!" At that, Ritsuko's professional demeanor broke to some extent, and she clenched her fists in celebration. "Outstanding, Shinji-kun!"
"All harmonic values are normal. Everything is within control margins."
There was no way to hide her joy at being able to state, "Science is go for launch, Commander!"
"Tactical Commander," Gendo's voice remained coldly neutral, "sortie your pilot."
Misato's tone, somehow, was even more frigidly angry, "Prepare for launch."
Mentally chanting to himself that retreat was not and could not be an option, Shinji listened as various technicians announced the disposition of equipment. Locks were unbolted, umbilicals withdrawn, bindings released, batteries charged, and the entire machine moved over to the launchpad. On the precipice of his first sortie as the only available pilot of a giant death robot, Shinji discovered a wellspring of calm in himself. The calm that comes with knowing that death was unavoidable, that escape was impossible, that all one had left was to acquit themselves with as much honor and dignity as they could summon. If he must die, he would die doing as much harm as possible to the enemy.
"When we launch you, Shinji-kun," Ritsuko's voice drew his attention back to her, "you're going to feel an enormous strain on your body. It will feel like you're being crushed down into the seat. What we need you to do is tense all of your abdominal and leg muscles up almost to the point of clenching, inhale deep and exhale strong. When you go to exhale, say the word 'book'. Drag that sound out for the one second it should take you to exhale. It will take five seconds to reach the surface, so you'll do this cycle three times. This will stop you from fainting on the way up."
Practicing the process twice, he watched as Ritsuko nodded encouragingly. Just as he was about to thank her for helping him, he heard Misato call for the Eva to launch and was forced to put the short practice session into actual use. A lot of things can happen in five seconds. An average of five planes take off around the world. The universe expands forty-six miles. One hundred and fifty stars explode. A bee could flap its wings one thousand three hundred and fifty times. For Shinji, those five seconds between the start and conclusion of his journey skyward had to have contained far greater numbers of all of the above. He watched Ritsuko turn and stare menacingly at Misato. He saw lights cruise past him so fast that the after-shadow seemed to blur together into one continuous bar. He felt himself using his new knowledge of breathing to keep his vision from narrowing any further. If you had asked him, he quite obviously spent more than five minutes riding the launch system. At the end, whether five seconds or five minutes, there was a brief blessed relief as the normal pressures of gravity reasserted themselves upon him.
That relief was somewhat short-lived as both he and the Angel caught sight of one another simultaneously.
+++++ Author's Notes.
First, you may have noticed the addition on my story summaries. There are already a standard fuckton of book series that call themselves some form of "The" "Wanderer" "Saga", and ultimately I didn't want to start putting things into a wiki without something to call the overarching story but I couldn't call it something that had already been used by seventeen buttjillion other authors. So, yes, the series is now titled "Pax Ikari".
Second, you may have noticed that I haven't posted anything for...like...two-ish months? Funny story about that. I have written the rough treatment of no less than six different versions of a story that I felt would be "WAFF" in theme. Each time, I found myself not writing something that really made me feel all comfy inside. I like horror, I like slice of life drama, I like subverting expectations. I have actually had to really freaking work to find "WAFF" somewhere in my body of experience. Then, as it tends to, inspiration poured baby powder in its hand and slapped the stupid out of me. I am, as of this posting, once more working on fixing errors in my writing which is forcing this to take longer than some might like. I want to always improve upon what I've given you before. I do not want to settle and just cruise on a good initial showing.
Third, but certainly not last, I want to deeply thank each and every person who has written reviews of this shitshow as it's grown. Long, short, profound, or just a tip of the hat, each and every review has helped me feel as if I'm doing more than just engaging in self-congratulatory drivel. I'm helping people see further, learn things they might not have been exposed to, and appreciate the little things in life that get us through one more day. So thank you, all of you, for sticking with me.
