Isekai'd Into My Old Shitty Evangelion Fanfiction

by Nick of Fire

I, like many, wrote cringey self-insert fanfiction when I was younger. It's something I'd have preferred to have kept buried, but my past has come to haunt me. After dying in embarrassing fashion, I find myself reborn as my old edgelord OC in my old Evangelion fanfiction. Cringe never dies, it is only reborn.

1. Chapter 1: Crippling Cringe Crisis

I couldn't believe the absolute tripe I was reading.

I am a grown man. A relatively normal man by all accounts who enjoys reading manga, watching anime, and playing video games. I'm a nerd like any other while not being a shut-in or anything like that. Like many men such as myself, I went through a phase during my teens that could be best described with one word.

Cringe.

I was a cringe ass weeb who did cringe things. I would prefer not to confess all my cringe sins and instead wish to keep those actions mere remnants of my past to occasionally laugh at while alone.

One thing I will admit to, due to its relevance, is that I wrote fanfiction. I do not mean to knock fanfiction, as many fanworks can be brilliant explorations of existing properties that take them in new directions, transformative pieces of art that can, on occasion, even match or surpass the quality of the property from which they are derived.

This was not the kind of fanfiction I wrote. I wrote the kind of fanfiction that makes me glad I was never foolish enough to post it online anywhere for others to read. It was a self-indulgent, tropey, self-awareness lacking, grammatical error laden mess. For most, it would be seen as unremarkable in the sea of fan literature that's been made by the hands of nascent youths. But for me, knowing the fanfictions I wrote were, in fact, written by me, I can't help but wince and squirm in place when I think back to them.

That's why I stared for far too long when, whilst rummaging through old boxes in my childhood bedroom, I found a stack of notebooks that were meant for schoolwork, but instead were full of fanfictions I had written. I just stared at those books, remembering stories I had penned and had long since thought I had forgotten, and I hadn't even read a single page yet. Fragments of plot points and poorly thought out perversions of canonicity flicked through my mind and made me wiggle my torso and shift around my shoulders in an attempt to let out the awkward energy within me. I sucked in air through my teeth as I had a thought that I have since come to deeply regret more than any other in my many years.

I thought that maybe it would be fun to read some of my old fanfics.

Why would I think this? I have already proven that these stories make me want to turn inside out from the cringe. Was I a masochist? I don't think so. It was simply my morbid curiosity, the curiosity in almost all humans. Sometimes, even if you know something is probably a bad idea, you still feel compelled to enact that bad idea for the sake of knowing what will happen and if your suspicions will be confirmed.

And so I chose a notebook at random and opened it to the first page.

Dear God.

This wasn't just any fanfiction, nor was it just any bad fanfiction.

It was a bad Evangelion fanfiction.

Why is that significant? Well, Neon Genesis Evangelion is one of my favorite anime of all time. I don't think it's perfect, some of the early episodes are a little slow and I can't say I don't understand where some people are coming from when they say they find the show boring. Nonetheless, Evangelion is a powerful show for me that I watched at a young and formative age. The psychological trauma of the characters, the way they break down over the story's course rather than build up like in more traditional narratives, it all hit me in a way that had me pacing around my bedroom at four in the morning on a school night, analyzing what the story was about in what would be my first attempt at thematic analysis. End of Evangelion especially blew my mind when I was a lad for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons being, admittedly, the one scene where Shinji rubbed one out over Asuka's comatose body. I probably should have remembered that scene before showing the show to my parents. Oops.

Anywho, the point is that Evangelion is a personally significant show for me that I've only come to understand and enjoy more as I've gotten older and learned more about the background of the show's development.

You can imagine my shock when I read my old fanfic about the show that turned it into the most generic self-insert power fantasy you've ever heard of.

Where to start. The title of the fic is Neon Genesis Evangelion: Apocrypha, which is kind of a fitting name, if a little tryhard. Apocrypha are religious texts that aren't considered part of a religion's official canon, which is what fanfics are to fiction. Evangelion's Japanese title translates to New Century Gospel or something along those lines so the Apocrypha title fits for my fanfic, though it would for pretty much any Evangelion fanfic. It doesn't symbolize anything specific to my fic, which makes sense since I was writing it with no plan in mind and I never even finished it. I got eight chapters in and got bored.

My self-insert, Zero(Yes, that's the name. If I was a teenager in this era and wrote this fic, I'd probably have named him Sigma.) is the strongest, best Eva pilot ever who's got heterochromia, a boring tragic backstory, and an Eva that's got jet boosters on it, doesn't have a limited power supply, and has the same coloration as Shadow the Hedgehog. Oh, did I forget to mention Zero's Eva wields a giant Cloud Strife-esk Buster Sword that can cut through any A.T. Field? Also, Zero's part Angel and can fight Angels without an Eva because of that.

Christ.

Meanwhile, Asuka, my favorite character due to her complexity and the way her abrasive personality can be interpreted as a critique of how many anime fans objectify women in media and even real life, is interpreted as a generic tsundere who is desperate to jump my self-insert's bones.

Rei's a generic kuudere who wants to bang Zero and fights with Asuka over him. Zero's harem also includes Misato, Ritsuko, and every other female character.

And then there's Shinji who's now the jealous asshole guy who hates the self-insert for being cooler and more popular with the ladies.

The audacity of this bitch.(The bitch is me, I'm the bitch.)

Don't even get me started on the nonsensical logic behind some of the story's events. Cause and effect fades away for the sake of creating bad plot twists, egregious and poorly aged fanservice scenes, and as many possible opportunities for Zero to flex on everybody.

I feel like you've got the gist as to what this fanfiction is like. It's generic at best and an insult to the original anime at worst. Many would think little of having written something like this. They would simply laugh it off as a silly part of their past not worth feeling ashamed of.

I didn't laugh it off. I felt great shame.

My face tried to suck itself in from how hard I was wincing. I was cringing so hard that I began fiercely pacing about the bedroom to work off the anxiety I was inundated with. I kept on walking faster and faster as I continued to just feel worse the more I thought about how I had completely murdered the point of Evangelion in my fanfic. I discarded all the complex themes and character psychoses and instead turned it into generic, trashy action-harem anime. How could I have been so lacking in self-awareness as a child? Was I that lacking in self-awareness now and I just didn't know it? Was I constantly being cringe and I hadn't caught on? Were all the people around me mocking me behind my back or thinking of me as an annoyance? Was I making the lives of everyone I knew demonstrably worse because of my cringe?

This one fanfiction I wrote was sending me into a quarter life crisis and that, in and of itself, was pretty cringe, bro.

It was upon that realization that my anguish hit its apex and I began to run around like a headless chicken, which was also cringe, so I felt even worse and ran harder, faster. I just kept accelerating until it felt like my legs would break off from the strain…until it happened.

A lego. I stepped on it.

There is no need to describe the unrivaled pain I felt upon stepping on that plastic caltrop. There are no words that could convey the suffering in the same way one cannot describe the face of an eldritch horror from the writings of Lovecraft.

All you need to know is that the pain zipped through me like a lightning bolt and I lifted my foot off the ground. When I did, I lost my balance and toppled like the Tower of Babel.

My head hit the sharp corner of a bed frame that lacked a mattress at the time. My skull cracked open with a popping sound. I didn't even have the chance to feel any further pain.

I died.

I died from cringe.

That wasn't the end of it though. The apotheosis of cringe was just about to be reached.

After I died super hard, I suddenly found myself somewhere else. My eyes were shut and my body was relaxed as if I had just woken from a long rest. I didn't know where I was and my mind was in too deep of a fog to remember that I had died. All I knew was that I felt comfortable, at ease in a way I wouldn't be again for a long time. I had no idea where I was, but I could feel that I was sitting in a car with my head pressed against a window. I didn't bother to think too hard about the context of my situation since I was tired. I decided to keep my eyes closed and return to sleep.

"You're gonna wanna open your eyes. You don't wanna miss the view, do you?"

That voice. It was familiar.

I relented and opened my eyes. I was in a car, as I suspected, but we weren't driving on the road. The vehicle was moving down a sort of escalator for cars. The view that I was alerted to was certainly a breathtaking one. It was a tremendous cavern in the Earth, a GeoFront, and within it was something quite familiar. There was an upside down city on the ceiling, and at the bottom was a lake, hills, a forest, and most notably, a pyramid shaped building connected to a pyramidal divot in the ground.

I recognized what I was seeing and I felt compelled to see who was in the car's driver seat to be sure I knew what was happening.

It was Misato Katsuragi. She was sitting there, real and tangible, smiling at me. She wasn't a drawing, she was a three-dimensional person that I could touch if I wished. I had to check if this was a dream. If I was lucid dreaming, then I could make anything happen if I wanted it. I looked at Misato's forehead and tried to will a horn to grow from it. I focused as hard as I could, but nothing happened. I couldn't control this world, because it wasn't a dream. This was reality, or at least some simulation of it.

"What's with the staring? Am I really that pretty?" Misato's voice made me flinch and I tried to speak, only to choke on my own spit and start coughing. I noticed that my voice didn't sound right, it was too deep and yet it was also too underdeveloped and youthful. "You're cute when you're flustered, Zero."

Misato laughed, but I certainly wasn't. Zero. She called me Zero. My heart sank and I realized I hadn't just been isekai'd into Evangelion. I grabbed the rearview mirror and tried to adjust it to look at myself. Even just doing that revealed that my arm was of a different length than I was used to. My panic heightened and I ended up accidentally ripping the mirror off the roof.

"Hey, what the Hell? Don't break my car!" Misato was pissed, but I was even more upset as I held the mirror up to my face and realized I wasn't 'myself' anymore.

My eyes were different colors, one red, one green. My hair was black and spiky. My face was handsome in a generic way.

I was Zero, my trash OC from my old Evangelion fanfic.

"Oh well, I'll let the damage slide." Misato sighed before looking at me and putting a hand on my cheek. "You'll have to make it up to me though."

"What?" I was confused, to put it lightly. I knew what was happening, I just didn't get why.

"What's wrong? Don't you want to be an adult?" Misato cooed and I felt my blood run cold.

"I just ripped the rear view mirror off your car." My voice cracked.

"It's not a big deal. I can look past it for a cutie like you." Misato kept getting closer.

Misato was hitting on me and acting completely out of character. She wasn't the type to just let it go after I just vandalized her car. She certainly wouldn't hit on me afterward. Misato was attracted to me for no good reason and even though I did something that should make her lose her attraction to me, or at least make it waver, instead she just kept on liking me. It was like the world was contriving things to make sure she was attracted to me.

It was like bad writing.

It was like my bad writing.

My Evangelion fanfiction started with Zero, after getting recruited, meeting Misato for the first time and her hitting on him in the car on the way to NERV HQ. That was exactly what was happening now.

I wasn't just in the body of my OC in the world of Evangelion, I was in the world of my Evangelion fanfic.

I was in Hell. I was living the cringe.

I had a lot to take in as Misato's face was mere inches from mine and I was forced to process my new reality. All I could really do was roll with things for the moment and figure out an actual plan to deal with my situation later.

As such, I had to decide how to handle my current scenario and it was surprisingly easy when I considered the background fueling Misato's actions. Misato was a complex character with deep seeded trauma that shaped who she was and made her one of the many interesting characters in Evangelion. Even if she could be flirty when she wanted to and sexual promiscuity was a part of her character, she wasn't going to just bang a fourteen-year-old just like that. This fanfiction's portrayal of Misato was an affront to her character in the original anime and I would not stand for it.

"I'm sorry, but I'm not interested." I grabbed Misato's shoulder and pushed her away.

"What?" Misato was so blank-faced that it was like she was rebooting. Her smile returned. "So you like playing hard to get? That's fun."

"I'm not playing hard to get."

"Well that's okay. You'll come around."

"No! I'm not interested in you!" I didn't mean to yell, but it was too late to turn back so I decided to just go on a rant. "You're a grown ass woman and you're propositioning a child! Don't do that! You're not some pervert, you're a mature woman who knows right from wrong! Yeah, you make mistakes and struggle to connect to others without a sexual component and drink too much, but you're just lonely! You-"

I stopped when I realized I was talking about things that, from Misato's perspective, I shouldn't have known about.

"How…" Misato's eyebrows pinched close together and her mouth hung open and jittered. "…do you know all that?"

"I…don't…know."

"…"

"…"

"…"

"…"

God is dead, I killed him.

Misato likely realized I wasn't going to elaborate further and just looked away. The discomfort didn't descend from its fever pitch as the silence continued and we were both trapped with only our thoughts.

At least I finally had a moment to really analyze my situation. I had read some of my old bad Evangelion fanfiction, freaked out and accidentally died, and now I was living out my bad fanfiction. This was like the plot of an isekai anime and a shitty one at that. What could possibly cause this? This scenario was so nonsensical that I pinched myself to double-check that I really wasn't sleeping. I felt the pain and it was clear that this shitty fanfiction world is my true reality and yet it was still a nightmare. I really died and arrived in my bad Evangelion fanfiction. Was this permanent? Was I never going to return to my old world? That thought felt like a punch to the chest. If I was stuck in my old fanfiction, then this wasn't simply a matter of being forced to live a life of cringe. If I couldn't go back to my old world, I'd never see my loved ones ever again. All the people that mattered to me, my girlfriend, parents, siblings, friends, everyone I had ever known would never see me again and I'd never see them. The horror of my situation suddenly became a lot deeper and I had to suppress the instinct to cry at all I had lost. The only hope I had was that there would be some supernatural way to return to my world, but there was no reason I should believe such a method existed. I was probably going to be stuck in this stupid story for the rest of my life.

As I began to feel depressed, the car reached its destination and Misato got out without a word. Following her lead for now, I opened the car door and got out.

I immediately fell face first like a dumbass. I ate shit because of my new bodily proportions and center of gravity that were completely different from those of my original body. I was in a new form that I was unused to and so it would take a while to break in. Misato, despite our earlier awkward conversation, helped me up while wearing an expression that said, 'Is this kid stupid or insane?' I can't say either possibility was wrong at this point.

Anyway, we traveled through NERV HQ and boy was it huge. The logistics of how much it would cost to build and maintain this place was probably a nightmare in and of itself. We were carried by moving walkways and an inclined lift that had become an iconic image in Evangelion along an equally iconic escalator. Eventually we ended up on an airboat through a river of LCL. The liquid was really weird looking in real life. Its color was an odd shade of orange-brown and it kind of smelled like a person, like a body. It made sense considering it was the primordial soup that humans came from in the Evangelion universe. Perhaps that's why the liquid seemed weird to me, because I knew what it actually was. As we traveled down the amber waters, I could finally see something I couldn't help but anticipate the appearance of. I got chills.

It was the arm of an Evangelion. Actually seeing it was breathtaking. It was like seeing something from your dreams appear in real life. I was actually looking at a giant robot, and also a person, and also an armored eldritch abomination. It was uncanny seeing something humanoid blown up to such a great size. It only got more stunning when we got off the boat and entered the bay where the Evangelion was kept. It was huge and I got the feeling that it could move at any moment. It wasn't any of the canon units from the franchise, one glance made that clear. It was black with red as the secondary color. Its armor was sleek and rounded while its face consisted of eight eyes with seven of them forming a circle around a central one. A long pillar, no, a handle was coming out of something attached to the Eva's back. I realized it was a sword, a sword was attached to the Eva's back. This was the Evangelion that Zero piloted in my fanfic. It's way too edgy, but I still thought it looked pretty rad.

"This is your Evangelion. Eva Unit-Ω." Christ, I can't believe I called it that. The Spear of Cringe pierced through my core and made me regret ever thinking the giant mecha in front of me was cool. "It's the most advanced Eva ever created and it's armed with a Sword of Longinus that can slice through A.T. Fields as if they aren't even there."

"Why don't all the Evas have swords like that?" I was curious what reason I'd be given to explain the logistics of my 'Sword of Longinus' and why there was only one considering I never came up with one in my original fanfic.

"I don't know all the details, but apparently creating a sword like that requires so many resources that it isn't feasible to create more than one of them."

"But why do I get it? Why not any of the other pilots that are more experienced?"

"The higher ups decided to pair the strongest weapon with the strongest Eva." It didn't really make sense since none of the other Eva's had exclusive weapons, but whatever. It's a bad fanfiction, I shouldn't have expected comprehensive logic.

"So that's the newbie?" Suddenly, for no logical reason other than because this fanfiction was God-awful, Asuka and Rei suddenly appeared in the cage. Once again it was super surreal to see fictional characters that were now real and physical and moving based on their own wills. They were both wearing their plugsuits and boy oh boy, would this sight have gotten twelve-year-old me excited, but now that I'm a grown ass man, seeing real fourteen-year-olds in skin tight clothes only makes me really uncomfortable. "He doesn't seem so special." Asuka tilted her head as she looked me up and down with judgemental eyes.

"Hello, I'm…Zero." Dear God, that was my name.

"Zero, what kind of name is that?"

"I really don't know."

"I'm Asuka Langley Sohryu, the Second Child and the best Eva pilot you'll ever meet." Asuka spoke proudly with her hands on her hips.

"My name is Rei Ayanami, the First Child." Rei was deadpan like in canon.

"I'm the…" I took a breath of resignation at what I would have to say. "Alpha Child." The cringe just kept on coming. "It's nice to meet you both. Let's try to get along." I bowed.

Asuka huffed at my politeness and stomped forward, only to trip right when she was in front of me. I knew what was going to happen, it was a scene in the fanfic. It was a dumb fanservice scene where Asuka landed on Zero and Zero accidentally grabbed Asuka's breast like you see in a bunch of anime. There was a similar scene in the original anime where Shinji and Rei fall over each other and its really over the top, but Rei doesn't make a big deal out of it and it's supposed to be a subversion of those kinds of dumb fanservice scenes. That completely went over the younger me's head and so I ended up coming up with this shit-ass fanservice scene.

I refused to participate in it. To make sure nothing lewd would happen as Asuka fell on me and we hit the ground, I pinned my arms to my sides and my legs to each other. My body was like a plank of wood which couldn't accidentally grasp any of Asuka's features. I also sucked my lips into my mouth to make sure there wouldn't be any accidental kisses. I had seen enough anime to be prepared for this kind of bullshit. I hit the floor and Asuka landed on top of me. I did nothing as I stayed still and our foreheads knocked into each other. I had a headache, but I had avoided any accidental groping so this was a win in my book.

Wait, couldn't I have just made an A.T. Field or something since I'm part Angel? Shit! Wait, it's a good thing I didn't since that would have given away that I was part Angel. Zero's backstory was that he's an experiment by SEELE and NERV to create the ultimate Eva pilot and that his experience being created was tortuously painful and left him mentally scarred. This manifested as him being an uninteresting edgy loner.

Actually, I didn't even know how to project an A.T. Field. I knew I could, but did I just need to will the field to appear or was there something else I needed to do to activate the field? The logistics of this world made me curious.

"Argh, nice catch, jerk!" Asuka complained as she rubbed her head. She opened her eyes and noticed how her face was right next to mine. Our eyes met and her face grew red. She made some tiny noises or embarrassment while not actually trying to get off me due to how enraptured she was with my bland beauty. I was getting uncomfortable again from having anything sexual or romantic being implied between myself and an underage girl. It looked like the plot of this fanfic could adapt to try and make certain events still happen. I avoided the fanservice, but the story still tried to push the 'romance' forward. The plot of my fanfic was being enforced by something, whether that was some kind of entity or a mindless force. The plot wasn't absolute though considering how my interaction with Misato in the car had gone.

I could fight back against the cringe.

"I'm sorry, but could you get off of me?"

My words were a shock to Asuka's system and she realized she was just staring at me. She blushed even harder and stumbled to her feet, stepping on me a few times in the process.

"I-I-d-don't think-you-you better-don't think that meant anything! I was just dizzy after falling!" The tsundere had taken over.

Asuka pouted and stepped a safe distance away so I stopped staying stiff and stood up. As I did, I noticed that Rei's eyes were stuck on me. She was staring while blushing and that was enough for me to figure out that, in the world of this fanfiction, she was also falling for me despite the fact that I hadn't done anything impressive or endearing yet. All I had done was fall down like a dipshit.

"Hey, Asuka, Rei!"

Now someone else has appeared and it was Shinji this time, the actual main character(at least of the original anime). He ran in, apparently looking for his fellow Eva pilots.

"Oh, Shinji, meet Zero." Misato said. "He's the new pilot, the Alpha Child." God, that fucking name. "Zero, meet Shinji. He's the Third Child."

Shinji bowed and I bowed back. Shinji seemed completely affable at first, but then he began looking around and noticed that both Asuka and Rei were looking solely at me with clear infatuation. He became distressed at how everyone only cared about me and I remembered one of the dumbest parts of my fanfic. Shinji focused his gaze on me too, but it wasn't one of attraction, but of jealousy and petulant anger.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

I wrote my fanfic with me as the main character, which meant I supplanted Shinji. To give him something else to do, I had written him as an envious loser who always had a bone to pick with me while being too timid to really confront me. It was such an insult to his character.

I had to fix this as long as I was stuck in this reality. I couldn't let Shinji take the fall for the sake of stupid harem antics. The question was how.

For now, I figured I'd ask a different question.

"I have a question."

"What is it?"

"What number Angel will the next one to appear be?" In this fic, Shinji, Rei, and Asuka had already been fighting Angels, though the story was vague as to exactly when in the show's timeline that the fic was supposed to occur. All the Angels that appeared in the fic were completely original so they couldn't be used to figure out what's happened so far either.

"It will be the 12th." The one who said that was Ritsuko who was the next to enter the cage for no reason other than because the plot demanded it.

Twelve. We hadn't gotten to any of the Angels that really started messing with the characters in the original story. The original twelfth would have been Liliel who would have kickstarted Shinji's downward spiral. After that would have been Bardiel who would nearly get Toji killed and mess with Shinji's head even more. Zeruel would cause Shinji to get his S² Engine. Arael would screw with Asuka, Armisael would get Rei killed and lead to more mind fuckery for Shinji, and Tabris is Kaworu who's the final straw who leads into End of Eva. None of them would appear now, and since I never wrote an ending for my fanfic, I had no idea what would happen after all the fanfic's material has been gone through. Would things go in a completely new direction? Would we be free of the 'plot?' Would the original anime's plot be reinstated and I'd have to stop Human Instrumentality? Was I even capable of that? Wait, if Zero was part Angel, couldn't I cause Human Instrumentality if I wasn't careful?

I had zoned out so hard while thinking that I suddenly found myself being pulled in different directions by Asuka, Rei, and Ritsuko. Some dumb harem bullshit happened and now they were all fighting cattily in more out of character behavior. What was interesting was that Misato wasn't taking part when I'm pretty sure she did in the original fanfic. Instead, she was looking at me suspiciously. I think the fact that I blurted out a bunch of information I shouldn't have known earlier kicked her out of her 'programming' that made her act out of character. Now the fact that everyone else was acting out of character was something she would notice and find weird. On the one hand that was good as it meant she wasn't obsessed with me, on the other hand she was now suspicious of me and the way I was affecting other people's behavior. If she decided to confront me about all this, I'd have no believable explanation to give her. She'd probably think I'm an enemy of some kind, especially if she finds out I'm part Angel.

Shinji was also staring daggers at me(or perhaps staring lasers would better convey his anger), but for less complicated reasons than Misato. He continued to be jealous of my popularity while not having the guts to act on that anger. The assassination of his character was so frustrating to watch.

I was freed from the cringefest when alarms blared so loud it actually hurt my ears.

"An Angel just had to show up now?" Asuka said.

"It's good that we're in the cages. Everyone get in your Evas!" Misato said before turning to me. "Sorry about this, but your first time in the Eva is gonna be in real combat."

"It's fine. Where's my plugsuit?"

"Right here." Ritsuko pulled the suit out, having it for no reason other than because the plot said so.

Everyone got ready to face the Angel and I got dressed in my plugsuit. It had a rubbery texture and putting it on while it was still baggy was a pain. When I pressed the button on the wrist, the suit compressed and dang it was uncomfortable. It wasn't like it pinched or anything, the problem was that it fit my body so tightly that you could see every contour of my new body. I had the sensation that I wasn't wearing anything at all and that made me anxious. The suit itself was black with bits of red like my Eva and the interface headset looked like a pair of tiny red devil horns on my head because my child self thought that was somehow clever. There was an A where the number normally would be on the collar.

When I got in my Eva's Entry Plug, I had another moment of awe like when I first saw the giant mecha. The inside looked just like the show with the seat and the two handle things and the screens and it reminded me of all the intense moments from the original series that took place in the Evas. It dawned on me how much trauma the characters from the show faced when fighting the Angels, how horrifying it was to pilot one of these machines to protect the world. I felt the weight of humanity on my shoulders and the discomfort I had been continuously feeling since my reincarnation gave way to genuine fear for my life. I had no idea how the controls for the Eva worked or how to deploy my A.T. Field or anything. It didn't matter if I had some crazy super sword if I couldn't even get my mecha to take a step forward.

I had to pilot the Eva. I remembered the fanfic and the Angel that was about to appear was stronger than any of the canon ones barring Adam and Lilith and was way beyond what even Rei, Asuka, and Shinji all working together could handle. If I didn't fight, then the end of the world really would happen. We'd all die, including myself. I came back the last time, but that might have been a one time deal. Hell, forget myself, this entire world's population would have been screwed and it would have been all my fault. I could only hope my status as the Gary Stu protagonist would make me a natural genius at piloting an Eva like Zero is in my fanfic. I'd hate to play into my story's nonsense if the stakes weren't so astronomically high at the moment. I sat into the Entry Plug and tried to clear my head as it entered my Eva.

Amber LCL began filling up the cockpit and I tensed up as the level kept rising upward towards my head. I felt my whole body submerge and I instinctively held my breath. I had to go against my every impulse meant to keep me alive and inhale the liquid to let it flood my lungs. I felt parts of my body I never felt before as my body was oxygenated by the LCL in place of air. My panic settled down as I adjusted to the new form of oxygen intake. The visuals inside the cockpit got real trippy as the Eva initialized and I got synced up with the machine. Soon things settled down and the LCL became entirely translucent while I became able to see through the screens in front of me to the outside. Everything was working.

"Zero, this is amazing! Your sync rate is at 300%! We've never seen someone so in tune with their Eva!" Ritsuko appeared on a screen next to me and praised me as my anxiety apparently couldn't overcome my dumb fanfic prodigy abilities. It was good to know that I probably wasn't gonna have trouble controlling my Eva.

Rumbling came from above as the attacking Angel caused mass destruction. Why couldn't I have created a fanfic that was a fluffy slice of life story with no danger?

"Zero, since you're new, you'll stay back and provide support. Rei will provide covering fire while Shinji and Asuka go on the offensive. Everyone understand?"

Everyone provided a word of affirmation and the next thing I knew, my Eva was getting catapulted upward. Everything was shaking and my heart was beating faster than ever. My teeth grit as my Eva surfaced along with everyone else's.

We were in Tokyo-3 and the Sun was setting. I said Tokyo-3, but the city was entirely flattened into a wasteland from the Angel's rampage. The destruction had gone so far down that even the buildings that receded into the Earth were destroyed. Only the shelters were intact thanks to being extra reinforced and sitting in the lowest levels of the buildings. This made the destruction from Unit-00's self-destruction from the anime seem paltry. I made the Angel so overpowered because I thought it'd be cool and didn't consider the destruction it would logically cause. Everyone living in the city was going to be displaced now and it was all my fault. That wasn't even considering how many people probably failed to evacuate on time and were now dead. Guilt had replaced all my fear and I felt sick to my stomach at myself. There was no way I could have known as a kid what creating my dumb fanfiction would cause and yet I couldn't dismiss my part in all this destruction and the deaths that likely came with it.

The Angel itself hung high above in the form of a black sphere which made it resemble a planetoid. It was easily 300m in diameter and it was floating around 800m above sea level. The orb was covered in eyes that were all different colors.

I had to take this Angel down. It was my responsibility after causing all this. In the original fanfic, Zero stayed back as he was told and the others all got seriously hurt as they failed to even hurt the Angel. I wasn't going to do that, I wasn't going to let anyone else get hurt. I was going to kill the Angel in one go and that would be that.

"Everyone stay here, I'll handle this."

"What? What are you talking about?" Misato appeared on a screen next to me. "That's the strongest Angel we've ever seen, you can't handle it alone, even with your sync rate!"

"Don't tell me you want to show us all up?" Asuka snapped. "You're a newbie so don't get all full of yourself just because you've got an Eva."

"I'm not being arrogant or anything, I just know I can handle this by myself."

"That sounds pretty arrogant to me!"

"You guys just have to trust me."

"Zero, you are going to listen to orders and stay back to provide support!" Misato wasn't taking well to my insubordination. If she wasn't suspicious of me already, she really was now.

As we were arguing on the ground, the Angel in the air closed all its eyes.

"Everyone, activate and combine your A.T. Fields! It closes its eyes right before it attacks!" Misato's warning was too slow as the Angel already reopened its eyes, and when that happened, an omnidirectional wave of energy was released. It was the same attack that leveled Tokyo-3 and it was so blindingly bright that the whole area faded into the light.

While everyone else was trying to summon their A.T. Fields or were paralyzed like a deer in headlights, I embraced my role as an overpowered edgelord for just a little bit and raised my Eva's arm. It was the first time I made my Eva move and I did it on pure instinct. I generated a massive A.T. Field that became an impenetrable ceiling over the entirety of the land, reaching even beyond the horizon. The orange octagons stopped the eruption of energy completely as if it weren't a wave of destruction thousands of times greater than any nuclear bomb.

"What?" Misato breathed out.

"How is he doing that?" Asuka was also surprised.

Rei and Shinji were quiet, but it was safe to assume they were also awestruck by my defense.

I didn't let myself be impressed by my A.T. Field and kept a cool head. There was no celebrating until the Angel was dead.

The energy blast dissipated and so did my A.T. Field. Right at that moment, I made my Eva jump as hard as it could. The ground below it was blown apart from the force of the leap. Jet boosters installed on my edgelord mecha's feet activated and shot out flames that propelled my Eva faster upward. The Angel created its own A.T. Field and my Eva took its oversized sword off its back and held it with two hands. My Eva reared the blade back before putting its full power into one grand swing that sliced the A.T. Field in half like it was nothing and the Angel along with it. The giant sphere was cut in two pieces and in one last attempt to kill us all, both halves of the Angel detonated into an explosion even more powerful than its previous attack. I created another A.T. Field that not only stopped the blast, but repelled it away and into the sky above. The clouds all across Japan were blown away by the rising star and the twilight gave way to night right at that moment.

I slowly descended back to the ground using my mech's jet boots and landed as gently as I could. I felt the adrenaline inside me going nuts to the point that I felt a little high. I just sat in my cockpit and drank in the LCL as I realized I killed an Angel all by myself and that it was both a cool experience, and cringe in concept because it wasn't like I trained to be so tough or anything. I was just the main character of a dumb power fantasy. I acted purely on instinct with no idea as to how I was doing what I was doing. I could at least be happy that I protected everyone I supposed. It was also a problem I technically caused, so I still felt guilty.

I looked up at the sky and saw the stars clearly. Tokyo-3's destruction meant there was no light pollution hiding the sea of stars away. It was a beautiful sight that belied the tragedy of all that was lost.

I faced more exaltation from everyone over the comms, from terse backhanded compliments from Asuka, to brief but genuine words from Rei, to more nice words from everyone in Central Dogma, excluding Misato and Shinji. I even heard a 'good work' from Gendo which sent chills up my spine for multiple reasons. The discomfort I felt towards my self-indulgent fanfic returned now that the tension of the fight was easing away. It felt especially bad as everyone was being forced to heap praise on me while ignoring the devastation of the city. Most of the people saying how great I was were homeless now because of the city's destruction and they didn't even care, they didn't have the option to care. The fanfiction said they had to praise me, and so they did.

Even if I was less tense, I was still upset at myself and everyone's vapid praise only made me feel worse and made my rage build up. I was angry at myself, the fanfic I created, and everyone who was acting so stupidly, even if it wasn't their fault.

"Can you all please stop praising me and focus on the fact that the city is gone?" It took my all not to scream those words out as the last sane man in the world. Everyone's swooning stopped when they heard my calm request and it finally dawned on everyone what the full scope of the battle's aftermath was.

Everything turned quiet as everyone returned to acting professionally. Me and the other pilots returned to the cages and changed into our casual clothes. The whole time, everyone avoided making any noise as if a wake was occurring. It seemed most everyone was embarrassed at their out of character elation.

This was a good opportunity for me to start making moves to repair my dumb fanfic's story.

As everyone was making their way through the halls of the base to temporary rooms where everyone would be staying now that the city was gone, I followed Shinji and ran over to him. I hooked my arm around his shoulders which made him yelp.

"Hey, Shinji, you mind if we walk and talk? I got some stuff I wanna discuss with you."

"I-I-I, uh, I guess it's fine."

"Cool. So, I know you're into Asuka."

"What are you talking about! I don't like her at all!"

"Dude, come one. I know you've got feelings for her. Are you gonna tell me you don't feel anything for her?"

"I don't." Shinji said with the least convincing tone ever.

"Shinji, you've never looked at Asuka and felt a special kind of feeling? Nothing at all?"

"N-ne…" Shinji couldn't bring himself to keep lying so blatantly. "I guess I've felt something." Progress. If I was going to screw with the Evangelion canon, I wasn't gonna make it some lame harem power fantasy. I had to live in this world and so I wanted this story to have a happy ending. That means finding solutions to everyone's hangups, killing all the Angels, and preventing Human Instrumentality. The best place to start was speedrunning Shinji's character development to make him less obsessed with being validated and avoiding pain and more willing to make choices, be emotionally open, and not so quick to run away.

"We both know you like Asuka, so why don't you ask her out or something? What's the worst that can happen?"

"She beats me up."

"Okay, that's a reasonable concern when it comes to Asuka, but I'll be there to protect you if worst comes to worst."

"You're talking like you know what Asuka's like. You just met her."

"I'm a good judge of character."

"Well, I don't like Asuka, and if I did try and ask her out or something, she'd just get mad and it would make dealing with her even harder."

"But you could also end up with a girlfriend who would treat you the same way she treats Kaji." That made Shinji perk up a bit. "Listen, I get that trying to get close to people can cause you to get burned, it happens a lot, but it can also bring you happiness. You've got friends, right?"

"Yeah."

"You like spending time with your friends, right?"

"Yeah."

"Are there painful parts that come with having those friends?"

"Sometimes."

"Why do you hang out with them if you get hurt sometimes?"

"I don't know."

"Is it because the good times make the bad times worth bearing?"

"I guess so."

"Well all relationships are like that. You can't expect things to always be happy. Sometimes you get upset with other people or other people might get upset at you, but they can also make your life fun and exciting and happy. Sometimes you try to connect to others and get rejected and rejection feels really shitty, but it's always worth giving it a try. You never know when you'll not only manage to connect to somebody, but they'll be somebody that makes you happier than you could ever imagine."

"…"

"Listen, I'm not saying you gotta go and tell Asuka you want to marry her or something. I just want you to keep in mind that it might be a good idea to be a bit more…active emotionally. You should try to make your own choices when it comes to who you do and don't connect with instead of just letting things happen to you."

"…"

"I'm sorry, I just dumped a lot on you and we just met." I let go of Shinji. "I just feel like you've got a lot of potential. I'll leave you alone. See you later."

"See you later." Shinji parroted.

I walked away. That hadn't gone fantastically and I definitely shouldn't have lectured him the way I did, and yet I couldn't call it a complete failure. I had still managed to state my point and I think it got across. Baby steps. For now, I'd decided to leave things alone and go back to adjusting to my new reality.

I had died of cringe, gotten reincarnated into my shitty Evangelion fanfic, fought against plot induced cringe, inadvertently caused a city to get leveled, killed an eldritch monstrosity, and had a bro talk with an anime character. Was this my new normal? Was I really never going to see my loved ones again? Why did any of this happen to me? I had so many questions still and I was too tired to ponder them any further. I just wanted to get into bed and pass out.

I arrived at the room I was assigned and I was originally just going to open the door, but realized this would have been the perfect opportunity for a fanservice scene where I accidentally barged in on one of the female characters while they were in a state of undress.

"Hello?" I knocked on the door.

"Just a second." I was right. There were shuffling sounds coming from inside the room as someone was getting dressed. "You can come in."

I entered and I saw the darkest abyss. Rei, Asuka, Misato, Ritsuko. I wasn't just roommates with one of the girls, I was roommates with every female character in the story, even ones that shouldn't have logically been present like Hikari. The crowd of women stared at me and I stared at them.

"No."

I closed the door and walked away. I found a break room and lied down on a long seat. I closed my eyes as I claimed my new sleeping space and went to dreamland.

The first day of my new life was over and I could only pray to whatever cruel deity concocted this scenario that I would return to my original world upon my awakening.

I knew that wouldn't happen.

My suffering had only just begun.