Story based on characters created by and copyright to GAINAX. I don't owe Neon Genesis Evangelion, I never will. If asked, I'll delete everything. I'm not making money by my writing.

Version 01.02.01

"It was all real. The Children, the Evas... the staff of Nerv, Neo Tokyo 3. It happened really," the voice continues to whisper just loud enough to be heard. Then, it dissolves in a chant, words echoing over and over:

Isn't the time to return home?
Isn't the time to return home?
Isn't the time to return home?

Prologue:
The Beginning

When he arrived in the city, it was a hot, sunny day at Neo Tokyo 3.

This means that it was an average day, at Neo Tokyo 3. Days used to be nearly always hot and sunny, after the Second Impact, at least in Japan. I know it very well and sometimes I miss that cloudless, azure sky, but most of the time I'm happy of the return of the seasons.

Everybody knows that Second Impact, a catastrophe of planetary dimensions, is often compared to a biblical plague. The weather changes were a part of it. Still, it was much more. Human words cannot describe it. Better, human words disappear in front of it, leaving the mouth dry.

It's something that's part of our history and loads of books are filled with relations of what happened that day and the year following. Someone was eager to remember and tell what life was like during and after the Impact, but the majority of the survivors today prefers not to speak about it.

Nevertheless, it's one of the most important subjects on schoolbooks, one on which discussions over discussion are made and about which tired students are forced to learn. In short, it is one of the most boring subjects of classes, yet it's somewhat loved by old teachers that seem to have an endless collection of facts blended with personal experiences about it.

Indeed, the story of the day of the Second Impact, as it's written on the books, can be summed up rather easily: an undetected asteroid hit the southern ice cap melting it. The following abnormal wave wiped away cities on the coasts and then an incredible tide covered a noticeable part of the mainland.

Obviously, there are a lot of different theories about that asteroid: someone still says that astronomers did discover the asteroid long time before it hit the Earth, but the governments forced them to stay silent to not widespread panic as nothing could have been done. Other people say that it wasn't an asteroid but a military experiment.

Someone else points out that UFOs destroyed the South Pole to show use their presence, while a lot of prophets said that it was their gods' work. Those prophets are closer to the truth than all the books...

It was an easy game for religious fanatics to tell that Second Impact was the realization of their prophecies... people begun to believe in them... old scripts were remembered, the madness of year one thousand restarted, the revelations of Nostradamus became a new truth...

It was the time of purification, and they were the elects. Only a duty was given them by their god: kill the impure, purify the world with the blood. What the divinity had started with the Second Impact, they had to complete with havoc and mayhem. They lurked out from the shadow in which they stayed hidden, waiting.

War.

Wars between countries, war inside the countries.

And war, like everything else, finished.

Mankind survived the Impact. It was time to rebuild the world. New technologies were discovered and applied: it seemed that the impact had started a new gold era on the Earth. What happened was left behind to look rather at a bright future.

But the Second Impact was only the beginning of another hard trial for mankind that took place in Japan, a trial in which I had a role, I don't know if pivotal or marginal.

Every expert (and there are amazingly few of them) is willing to accept 2014 as the date from which started the events that led to the disaster called "Neo Tokyo 3 Incident".

The "incident" has little space on schoolbooks. This is the best I could find about it:

"What really happened during that day is still a mystery that probably cannot be completely solved, as everyone involved died or disappeared.

The only thing sure is that seas turned blood red that day and stayed that way for nearly an year.

Some informations leaked out during an awkward trial by Japanese government to cover up what went on during the event pointing out that some experiment, probably on a new weapon of mass destruction, conducted by a private organization that had correlations with the multinational Nerv, went out of control.

Nerv admits that some facilities in Neo Tokyo 3 were financed by it, but denies that its involvement was substantial.

The company, which was and is strictly correlated with U.N., paid a large amount of money to avoid publicity about its role. It's also noticeable that Nerv gave huge aids for all the Japan after the incident.

The Japanese government, accused to have tried to develop deadly weapons, suggested that it was a terroristic attack that nearly blew up Neo Tokyo 3. As a consequence, a powerful substance that was being developed in some laboratory reached the sea. "

It's noticeable that it's an extract from a science fiction magazine. Nobody was able, or wanted, to give a better explanation, but also nobody was able to explain how red algae could grow so much and assume that color. I still think that water really turned into blood.

Obviously, a lot of theories about the few facts were made to explain what happened.

The craziest of them says that Nerv fought enemies called 'Angels' and had a plan to take over the world. The theory allegedly reports that there are similarities between the 'Second Impact' and the 'Neo Tokyo 3 Incident'

Actually, it's very, very close to what happened.

The Incident was just the climax of a chain of events that started a lot of time before.

Those who know the truth that lies behind the Second Impact think of the Impact as the start of the trial.
Those who were directly involved in it know that First Impact wasn't the start, but only a phase they had planned. The start was what happened during the First Impact, in their eyes.

Probably, they are both wrong.

All the wheels came in place only when a boy, in a sunny, hot, summer day arrived at Neo Tokyo 3...

But it's something that experts cannot know, as nobody was waiting him at the train station.

He was just a boy without any idea about what troubles he was going into, but after all nobody knew what kind of hornets' nest we were going to stir. If he had known what his destiny would have been, would he nevertheless have gone to face it?

It's a good question.

Nobody, except maybe him, can answer this question and probably he would avoid to give a clear answer: it would be in character with him.

If I have to make a guess, I think he would have accepted to come here and fight, but maybe I'm just painting him as a hero, projecting my desires over him.

He was just a boy, a boy everyone could have seen sitting in the next seat in a train.

He was easily forgotten, easily unnoticed due to his meek way of dressing, his tame way of acting. He seemingly liked being confused in the background, spineless like a squid, but he wasn't really so, and I think he never really liked to be alone.

If someone had noticed him, maybe that somebody could have noticed that he seemed to be better mannered than the average teenager, and shier also... but more probably nobody had noticed him at all. Their lost.

But then again, I'm sure someone had to notice his deep blue eyes. I surely did, from the first time I saw him.

They were worth a second glance, because teenagers aren't supposed to be so serious.

Still, it's hard to see such gaze even in a man. Maybe someone tried to guess why his eyes were so solemn, so grave, soon dismissing such idly thoughts, because there are more important things to do and think. I did so, until I started to know him better. And boys, it had been hard to know him better.

Each time I thought I figured out everything about him, he would do something to surprise me and shatter my perception on him... until I learnt to accept him as he was.

Someone wants to forget him today.

Not me. I cannot forget his eyes, and I can't forget nor forgive that in the end I wasn't able to meet his gaze.

What was, and still is, him for me? I don't know, plain and simple.

I tried to figure out in many sleepless nights how he became so important and why, but I found no answers. Still, who was him?

He was a pilot, a student, a believer, a teenager, a soldier, a betrayed, a man, a whiner, a brave.

He was cold and mad, sad and smiling, warm and rough, silly and mature, shy and fierce, happy and frowning, sweet and uncaring, weak and strong...

He was not a betrayer, a liar, a coward, a killer, a hero.

In short, with more faces than a diamond, just a little less shining and more tough than the jewel.

It would be easy to forget his vices to remember only his virtues, it would be easier to do the opposite. But, you wouldn't be an inch more close his nature. You just have to accept everything that comes with him.

I would be proud to be called his friend, but I don't think it would be correct.

We weren't exactly friends, even if we shared all and more things that friends do.

We weren't comrades, even if it happened that we fought together, as each one of us had private battles and personal reasons. Our battles were different, but sometimes our enemies were the same.

We weren't lovers, but if the circumstances had been different, a lot different, maybe we could have been... or maybe not. If things had been so different, it's more probable that we wouldn't have meet.

We never hate each other, but our relationship had been stormy, sometimes filled with misunderstandings.

Our relationship, in the end, can be summed up in one word: trust. I trusted him, I still do.

He's the most reliable person I know. He would came back from death if he had a date with you, seriously. Still, after all, he was only a child, one as many others, wasn't he?

He was, or better, he should have been, if this had been a perfect world. He was going to be one of those Children whose existence was never proved while tales were always told about, along with a crazy theory about Nerv and the Second Impact.

Going to meet his destiny in a unknown city, one day in 2015, his name isn't famous as it should be.

For the chronicle, his name was Shinji Ikari, and this is what happened, from that day on.

Obviously, I don't know everything, but I can guess a lot of things. I can guess, for example, how he came here...

I still remember that those days the cicadas, singing their endless song, were the background music of an eternal, hot summer... but soon, their song would have been replaced by cries of war...

"Do you remember?"
"Do you?"
"Yes"
"So I do, now. How could we have forgotten?"
"How we?"
"I don't know. I don't think we can anymore."
"But, we had."
"Then, it was right."
"It was sad."
"It was right."
"Nevertheless, it was sad. I don't wish to forget again."
"Neither I do."
"So, we'll remember."
"It will be painful."
"Pain won't last forever."
"Neither the memory."
"No. The memory will last forever, buried deep down in ourselves."
"We will be forgotten."
"Maybe. Maybe not. I don't care anymore."
"So, lets do it again"
"Everything, but please stop talking like this: it hurts my nerves."
"Sorry"