DISCLAIMER: The characters, story, universe, etc. of Neon Genesis
Evangelion belong to GAINAX. They're not mine, and I make no claim to
them.
Foreword: Remember those mind-f**k episodes, 25 and 26? This chapter
was written to feel like them. Be prepared. I also take this moment
to remind you about the spoilers for End of Eva, which are particularly
extreme for this chapter.
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" " = speech
^ ^ = thoughts
_ _ = italics
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Angels of Armageddon
Author: Ryan Xavier
Side Story 3: The First Eclipse: Innocence Murdered
The concept of "nothing" is almost impossible to imagine. A blank
sheet of paper still has itself, and even the void between stars still
has the cold and the light. Nowhere can there be nothing. Even in the
realm of the mind, the idea remains elusive, perhaps existing in the
space between the end of a dream and consciousness.
Only nothing truly is nothingness. and Shinji was, verily,
insuperably, irrefutably, and absolutely nothing.
Nothing but awake.
^What...what is this place?^
Body? Nonexistent.
Senses? Blind. Deaf. Dumb.
Mind? Shrivelled, shrunken, afraid.
Surroundings? No feeling of presence.
Nothing.
^Is there...anyone...anyone?^
Vertigo...
A snapping together. Apprehension. Uncertainty.
^Why...?^
Frustration. Fear.
^Why?!^
Claustrophobia. Panic at having one's entire universe reduced to one's
own puny, idiotic, and incalculably worthless mind.
^_Why?!!!!_^ His mental scream, powerless against the absolute silence.
A pulse of light, like the call to awaken when he didn't know he was
dreaming. A dull thump sounding, reverberating through the blackness
around him. Sight at last, if only momentarily. Hope?
Light, first white, then dimming to dark orange. Perceptions of shapes
...others, with him. Humans? Monsters? Worse?
^Who...^ Peals of childish laughter.
Pulses and thumping again, now regular, now multiplying. Clearer and
clearer vision of surroundings.
Shapes...
Forms...
Humanoid.
Identical.
...And feminine?
^Who?^ Again a child's laughter, mocking and cruel in its innocence.
Pulses and thumping so fast they blurred together, becoming a constant
hum in his immaterial ears. Light intesifying, slowly bringing focus
to the haze around him. Others, the same human female form, copied ad
infinitum. Inert. Still.
Dead?
^They're all...^
A small twitch, passing through all their bodies like a ripple
through water.
^all...^
The bodies lazily turning, without direction, without will.
^all...^ Anxiety.
^Lidless is the eye that is stricken with terror.^ Not his own
thought. Not his own self.
^dead...?^
Then, as one, they moved. The movement so quick it may have been a
simultaneous muscle spasm, their heads looked up. All of them turned,
to look straight at him. All with the same gaze, the same eerily
smiling mouth, a feminine face that had crimson eyes -
^NOOOOO!!!^
- they were upon him, relentlessly advancing, coming upon his
paralyzed, unresisting self like giggling hyenas on a carcass. They
set on him with multitudes of identicals, raping and violating, tearing
and rending, consuming and devouring until there was left no trace -
* * *
Somewhere else.
A shape. A heartbeat. Senses. A surface to stand on, and feet to
stand _with_. All were his once again.
Another unfamiliar place.
A dank, dusty room. Him sitting in a chair, next to an unmade bed, its
only coverings being the dust and grime of age, and where old
bloodstained bandages lay, the blood long since turned to a crusty
brown. A mail slot filled to overflowing, on the distant door that he
had not come through, and all throughout the air a feel of disuse and
abandonment.
And more disturbingly, a strange sense of familiarity, loss, and...
regret?
"Where...where is this place?"
No answer.
A table off to the side, occupied by randomly placed bottles of
medication and a glass beaker. The latter had apparently been placed
so as to catch the light from the window. The beaker was untouched by
the hands of time and decay; the clearness of the glass showed that.
Even the water inside seemed immune to the slow process of
evaporation...
Water?
Looking at the glass, he saw it was empty, without even the slightest
drop of liquid clinging to its sides. Had it not been full until just
now?
There was another object beside the strangely clean beaker. It, like
the rest of the room, was coated in dust. Some...sort of container.
To hold something delicate and also valuable. A slow recollection in
his mind.
^When have I seen that...when?^ Memory, just out of the reach of his
consciousness.
A squeal of rusty hinges, and the growing glow of light being let in.
Sounds of footsteps, and the shadow of another one in the room with him
stretched to just out of his sight.
"Who are you?"
He turned, saw the white void that was all that the newly-opened door
revealed. A shadowy figure emerged from the glow, flashed across the
room so quickly it appeared to vanish. There was a moment of cold
contact and -
A sound of breaking glass, followed by that of the shards tinkling
to the floor.
^I don't remember.^ Not his thoughts.
The feeling of being alone. The light from the door, gone. Turning
around, to find the strange container open, and inside it were
unrecognizable bits of plastic and glass. What had this once been, for
someone to destroy it as thoroughly as they had? Was it because -
^I am the third, I think.^
"G. Ikari" was written on one of the larger shards of plastic. A name?
Familiar. A mark that these had once belonged to...
"Father? Why?"
"Why not?" A voice, different from his own.
A pause.
"Who...who are you?" His voice. Suspicion.
Child's laughter, perverse in its innocence.
"Who are _you_?" The voice taunted.
The mirror on the wall.
His own reflection gazed back as he came closer, nothing out
of the ordinary. Around his own reflection, an all-consuming
blackness. Nothing beyond himself showed in the glassy pane.
^Mankind fears nothing more than the darkness.^
He reached out to the mirror, toward his own reflection, and it reached
for him. Difficult to tell which had moved first. Was it trying to
tell him - or was he trying to tell _it_ - that there was something
beyond this place, this darkness of nothing?
He blinked, and in that instant the reflection changed.
"Ayanami?"
The mirror shattered soundlessly, the countless pieces falling at his
feet and disappearing before they could even seem real. His only
emotion was faint surprise.
Something in the corner of his eye.
"Who are you?" The other's voice.
The window.
The glass was undamaged, and the window itself was shut tightly.
Outside was the same white light from the door, only duller...weaker,
somehow. In the place of his own reflection there was another,
different image looking back at him. It was...foggy, undefined, and
blurred, but still vaguely human.
"I am the one you know."
"Who?"
"I am not as I appear to you now. But this pale reflection will
suffice, for the moment." The figure's eyes - nothing but dark holes
against the white light - narrowed.
The sensation of falling, as the so-treasured ground was taken out from
under his feet. And then, Disintegration.
* * *
Darkness and cold, but not loneliness. Someone had come with him.
"Are you the enemy?" A voice, dead and cold, but at the same time
vaguely familiar, from his mist-enshrouded companion. It continued.
"Are you the enemy?
"Am I the enemy? Who _is_ the enemy? _What_ is the enemy?
"Is it they?" Its voice nearly taunting, now.
A brilliant flash as memories alien to him were forced across into his
being.
* * *
He was a towering giant, impossibly lanky limbs at his sides while
he marched carelessly through a city of shimmering white, tiny planes
buzzing like insects around him. Futilely they loosed a hail of fire,
but he swatted them away with the same care he gave to vaporizing any
building or barrier in the way of his mission. Slowly he turned
around, and for a moment he saw, reflected in a wall of glass, the two
wide white shoulders, the three-pronged claws, the round red sphere,
and the two bone-white faces, one beaked, one blunt, both with holes
for eyes that were his own. The wall opened to reveal another giant, a
challenge to the success of his mission and thus something to be
destroyed.
It took two tottering steps and fell forward.
He took its head up in one hand and an arm in the other. Faintly
he heard screaming below, and then screaming from - not the giant's
lips, but somewhere within - as he twisted farther and farther until
the arm snapped. The screaming intensified, but he was not yet done.
In his first claw he began to pound on the giant's head, energy
striking metal until the beam pierced its head and hurled it against a
wall. Silence.
"Was it _your_ enemy?"
And then...
A cry of rage dredged from the deepest nightmare. The moment of
confusion...the pain of being torn limb from impossibly long limb...the
tinge of humiliation as it became his turn to be torn apart, under a
gauntlet of blows...and the sweetness of promised vengeance as he died
in a final act of blinding light.
"_Who_ was it?"
Flash.
* * *
He had a misshapen body trailing behind a strange head with eyes
that did not see. Extensions from the body, just above the blood-red
sphere, then ends clasped as if in prayer. The same white city, only
brightly lit this time. The same guardian, stronger, more confident,
and armed with a new weapon. A challenge came, borne of fear and
violence.
"_What_ was it?"
He unleashed his own arms, bright and shining whips of energy
that cleaved through the guardian's weapon in an instant. In cowardice
it seemed to run, but there was no escape. He flung it through the
air; cornered it. Then a moment of weakness as it lay before him,
having last regrets before the coup de grace...
...that was caught in its hands.
Then _he_ was flung through the air, before getting up, and hearing
again the scream of fear - within the guardian - as he was locked in a
contest for survival that he lost, dying as he did with a cold,
whispered plea for revenge -
"Why?"
Flash.
* * *
He floated above the white city, untouchable, invincible, and immovable
from his task. The guardian had made his expected appearance, but had
been unarmed and helpless before his thunder. It would no longer
trouble him. Soon the pitiful barriers the Lilim had thrown up to hide
Father would be torn down, and the last revelation would overtake the
Earth.
The city beneath darkened, throwing a veil of suspicion over his
nonexistent eyes. Now he saw the faint glow in the distant mountains
that, slowly but surely, outlined the shape of the guardian, and a
lesser, stranger companion -
Realization of their subterfuge. All-consuming anger at the
underhanded attack. There could only be one response to this
presumptuous strike, as the anger within him was mirrored by a buildup
of the thunder he would rend their copied flesh with.
Everything in moments -
- a crossing of two paths, a scream of fright, a second moment of
weakness, a second scream of panic...and a killing blow so quick it
was almost painless -
A fading, incoherent thought for retribution crossed his dying
mind, but it was mostly unheard over the wave of confusion, loss,
and a burning need just to know _why_...
* * *
"Why?"
He found himself with another body, and another, and another, in
an endless whirlwind of fantasy and nightmare. He flew through the
air; he skulked in the sea. He went above the air itself; he spent the
whole of his all-too-short existence in the bowels of the Earth. He
had the strength of mountains; he was weaker than tears. He was more
untouchable than the soul itself; he was nothing more than a batch of
rogue data lurking in a machine. He was born, he had lived, and he did
countless times, he had faced the guardian, its controller, and the
guardian's allies the same number of times, and at the end of every
life he whispered, declared, screamed, a plea, a call, a roar for
vengeance, retribution, death to the Lilim...
But still the same question remained:
"Why?"
"I don't know." The only reply he could muster.
"A most inadequate answer. If you cannot answer my own question,
how am I to answer yours?"
"I don't know."
A feeling of exasperation. Not his.
"Do you know this?"
A glow in the darkness. It took no shape, flashing and flowing like
fog, but...it seemed vaguely feminine, like his companion. Almost
could be seen in the blurry depths, but there was _something_ there.
"I'm not sure..."
A brief sound of derisive laughter. "A pity. She came here, leaving
behind all she held dear, risking her very soul, and you foolishly
ignore the key she has placed in your hands."
A more definitive shape now, colours slowly seeping into the
features as they hardened and became more and more recognizable.
The hair remained a blank white, but the eyes - they were peaceful
rather than icy, pacifying rather than mystifying, inviting rather than
alienating. Their colour was - not the red of spilled blood, but
lighter, a shade of rose, the exact tone and hue of cherry blossoms in
spring -
"She was not always like this. Unfortunately, you never saw what
came before, but _I_ have. I suppose I can spare you another glimpse."
The feminine figure disappeared, dissolving into the dark. Another,
more celestial form replaced it, spreading slender, white arms of light
so like wings against the blackness, simultaneously beautiful and
terrible.
"And you know what she desires."
A stirring of a recent memory.
"She wants someone...dead. Is it me?
"She...wants _me_...dead? How? Why?!"
Another short stint of laughter, as he asked the same question he had
been asked so shortly before.
"You know what you know, though you may not remember."
A shiver through him. Heartbeat thundering rapidly in his ears. Fear
becoming desperation.
"What...what do you want?"
"What do you want?" The apparition echoed.
"I...want to know..."
"I want to know," much less hesitantly than when he'd said it. A
smile.
Flash.
* * *
A classroom, with empty desks arranged in neat rows, facing an empty
podium with an empty blackboard.
Glancing at the windows, watching glassy light filter in from the grey
void beyond. The place was alien at first, but then it seized upon his
mind and impressed itself until it was as surely known to him as it
would have if he had been there for years...and had he been here
before? A day, a week, a year? Never? He no longer knew.
Sitting at a desk, near the back of the class and away from the
windows. Felt natural. Working hard, furiously penning a report for
an absent teacher that was part of an absent past, trying to accomplish
a goal for a long-gone guardian. Somehow, he looked up from his desk to
find his solitude taken from him. Someone else was in the room.
Body seeming to move on its own, perhaps from a habit the conscious
mind had long forgotten. His eyes followed the line of the windows
until they rested upon a small figure, seated by the windows, eyes
turned away from him. Unlike him, his fellow occupant was not doing
any work. Instead, she was looking, seemingly absentmindedly and
uncaring, out the window into the blank grey void. What was so
interesting outside, anyway?
As if she heard him, she slowly turned to face him. Only then did
he truly see why she had intrigued him so. The hair and the eyes...
could never belong to any other girl he ever knew. And the look on her
face; a mixture of surprise, fear, and -
She opened her mouth to speak.
Outside, it began to rain.
"This is what you know." Not the girl's voice. But yet still -
Flash.
* * *
A classroom, with empty desks arranged in neat rows, facing an empty
podium with an empty blackboard.
Looking out upon the gray void outside, ignoring the book on the
desk. The text on the pages seemed a blur; a strange indistinctive
jumble that almost became something one moment, and then seemed
something else the next. No matter. It deserved no attention. And
since there was nothing worth doing, her eyes were diverted to where
there literally was nothing; outside the window, as she awaited the
change that might or might not come.
Except for a vague sensation from behind.
A feeling of vague pressure...not physical. What could it be from? She
had endured much pain, and could normally ignore it, but this was not
pain. It was...odd. An uneasy feeling that could not be ignored.
She turned around -
- to find the boy staring at her, not with intent to examine, to
intimidate, or to harm - just looking at her.
She opened her mouth to speak.
Outside, it began to rain.
"This is what she knows." The same voice; not her own or the boy's.
At the back of the room: another shape, indistinct, hiding in shadows
that the light from the windows could not touch. But the silhouette of
a young child, a girl perhaps, difficult to tell for the short hair. A
thin smile on the child's lips.
Flash.
* * *
Dressing up to die would have been the best way to describe it.
Stripped to the bare skin, he slowly pulled on the cold, slick
pseudofabric of the plugsuit, trying not to shiver at the sudden chill.
He had come to hate doing this, this being asked to go out and die at
his father's command, but it _was_ his father. There was nothing he
could do but obey, and try his best not to wince as the plugsuit
compressed with the touch of a button, taking his body into its icy
clutch.
On the first few times, he had changed in solitary silence, much in
the way those who are sentenced to die are allowed to eat their last
meal alone. Had his father arranged it this way? It could only remind
him that every time he was called upon stood a good chance of being the
last. But then, if this job carried such a risk, why wasn't he dead
already, or running away, like last time?
His father still...needed him. Yes, that was it, he had to come down
here to change, then go back up there to that monster, and be ready to
die, like a good son should.
This time was different, though.
On the other side of the barrier, _she_ was there. Stripping,
changing, and getting ready to die, managing it far more efficiently
than he ever could. Why? Because she had done this many times before?
Because she was simply unafraid of death? Well...he hardly ever saw
her fill her life with anything else other than Eva. Why did she do
it, anyway? And what _were_ her feelings about his father, anyway?
Did she pilot because of him? Because of what he might have done for
her in the past? Or something else he didn't know? All he knew was
that brief glimpse he had had of her, talking with that man freely, as
though she were his father's true child, and he...just a stranger.
Her slim silhouette - all that was visible through the barrier - turned
to face him, and he could feel the weight of the unseen eyes, killing
his unasked question before it could leave his throat. And all he
could do was wonder why.
"You wanted to know why." The apparition. A glimpse of a child's form
at the edge of his vision. He tried to look -
Flash.
* * *
She wasted no time drawing the loose plugsuit on, and then hitting the
switch that compressed it about her form. She had to prepare to do
battle with enemies from places and with purposes unknown. The
prospect of death was of no concern to her. She would fulfill her
purpose in this battle. She would fight with or without this boy, as
she had trained her entire life to do. He would learn his place sooner
or later, whether or not he remembered the incident from the escalator.
Somehow the sounds of changing had stopped. He had already compressed
his plugsuit, so why had he not departed? It was not her role to deal
with such things; if it was necessary, the Commander would deal with
them. Her place was to do what she was told, and now she had been told
to pilot Eva. But he still had not moved.
Was it because he was looking at her again?
Why?
"She also wanted to know why."
Flash.
* * *
He was standing near one of the last two spots of light to be found in
Japan, next to a...creature, with a demon's visage. He'd...they'd...
received the signal to attack. He watched as the blue-haired girl
turned away, going to do her duty as always, without hesitation or
complaint.
He stood there, again intrigued, wondering how and why she did what she
did. Was she really this dedicated, possessing a strength he could
never know? Did it have something to do with his father? He had
asked, and she had given him an answer, but what was he to make of it?
Would he even get the chance to ask again?
This could be his last day alive. Some part of him deep inside
shivered at the prospect, but the rest remained indifferent, perhaps
even _wishing_ that death would visit him and end this slow torture at
the hands of the man he was supposed to call Father.
^No matter how great the storm, the moon will always show the same
face.^
What was that?
"Ikari." He almost jerked in surprise.
"You won't die."
Bewildered silence was the only reply he could muster.
"I will protect you."
A brief glimpse of those crimson eyes, as she actually looked _at_ him
instead of _through_ him, perhaps for the first time since he'd met
her. In that half-second, he saw something there. But _what_?
Flash.
* * *
A new place, but again strangely familiar. But something dark about
the familiarity. His mind fighting _against_ recalling. The memory of
the place threatening to tear the very fabric of his psyche apart.
A simple place, but built to the scale of giants. A lake of orange
ahead of him, the land ending abruptly. Out at the far side...a titan,
limp and unresisting even with its hands nailed to a gigantic cross.
Its face hidden behind a seven-eyed mask.
"They saw, though you did not know it." A voice...seeming to come from
the mask itself.
"What?"
"As you saw them."
"... "
"They saw you, as they see you now. A strange place you gave them." A
pause. "And an even stranger place they gave you."
"..."
"But why did they give you a place at all?"
"..."
"Why were you kept, and not discarded, released, forgotten, as she did
with so many other things when she unleashed the final reckoning on
your unwilling world?"
Something in that voice, betraying curiosity. It was not asking a
question to which it already knew the answer.
"Final reckoning...?"
Exasperation. "You do not remember? She did it for you, know that at
least. Of all things she ever did in her lives, she did it for you."
"Lives...?"
"To think she was so certain of her choice being the right one..." Sad
consideration of what might have been. Switching rapidly over to
anger, directed at him. "And you are a poor, pitiful, pathetic boy,
completely unchanged from the final reckoning. I have practically given
you the answer, and yet you refuse to see the truth. But perhaps a
taste will remind you."
A flash of something so quick it was almost unseen. Pale flesh
rippled, flowed like liquid as it came away from the cross.
A great, terrible, white foe rose up before him -
Pain wracked his mind, in spite of the shortness of exposure. He fell
to his knees, trying to breathe. His chest heaved at the ghost of the
memory...but of what?
"Wh...what are you doing?" His chest heaved.
"Wrong answer."
The sound of crying. And sobbing. His own. Hiding his head uselessly
in his hands while clutching desperately the symbol of sacrifice one
who might have known gave him, just before her pitifully useless
death -
"Do you remember?"
- getting into the demon that might prove the world's only salvation
against their might. Getting out of the ravaged building, but control
was no longer his own, as he was taken along to fulfill a purpose he
did not know -
"Do you _remember_?"
- the pain of the wings exploding from a back that was not his, unable
to control events anymore. Seeing the ravaged body of his friend as the
monsters turned from their bloody feast and raise him up, screaming and
pierced in three places -
"remember-remember-remember-remember-remember-remember"
- hands exploding as holes were bored through them. Being pulled,
shoved, dragged bodily further and further into the sky, but no longer
by the wings of his once-eyeless captors. Being held between the hands
of the giant now, whose eyes were nothing but points of light, like
stars almost, against the empty sockets of its eyes -
"--REMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBER--"
- seeing those eyes close, then open again, to see the color was a
luminous red, round, and just like, no he could not, no he would not -
REMEMBER.
REMEMBER. NOW.
* * *
Curled up, his head buried in his knees, trying to hold himself
together against something. Something hot flowing down his cheeks.
He stood up, immediately wiping the tears from his face, to behold a
small, deserted playground the hue of burnished gold.
Home?
No. There had never been any home.
In the middle of the playground lay a sandbox, and in it lay a young,
short-haired girl who was strangely devoid of colour, her entire form
in shades of gray. She was playing - toying would have been more like
it - with something in the hands. A featureless white doll.
"You came here looking for the answer, didn't you."
He found himself approaching the sandbox, much as he wanted to run away
from it. His body seemed no longer under his command - as if something,
or someone - was using it for another purpose. Whether to show him
something or to destroy him, he did not know.
"You wanted to know, didn't you?" Such a childish voice she had, and
yet so damning.
He could not speak. Only watch as things unfolded before his eyes.
"You wanted to know what we wanted."
She wasn't actually toying with the doll at all. She seemed to like
throwing it, tossing it from hand to hand, one moment petting it, the
next trying to pull its limbs off, with the same childish innocence
that tainted her voice.
"But you can have it now."
She busied herself with burying it up to its neck in sand, then left.
His hands found themselves digging through the golden grains, quickly
scraping away until the doll was uncovered. Though its body still
seemed unrecognizable, he felt growing unease at what the head looked
like. It had somehow...become more human, as it were, with short hair
and colorless eyes. He held it in one hand, studying it, trying to
make out the -
CRUNCH.
The sound of something falling, and the briefest glimpse of spurting
blood.
Sight again. Only fine sand flowed from his hand where the doll had
once been. Sand and drops of blood that flowed down his hand and
stained the grains beneath.
The severed head rolled away, and he could almost see the red eyes
crying blood, and the short hair turned a calm colour -
"You can have it now."
Flash.
* * *
Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. Starting from nothing, and now back to
nothing. Back in the void from whence this had all come. Perhaps
close to escape? Or perhaps teetering on the edge of a tumble into
further nightmares.
"I wonder..." the same voice, from all around him. "Can your uselessly
narrow mind comprehend, yet?"
"What do you want?" Helplessness. "WHY?! Why are you doing this? WHO
ARE YOU?"
Sigh.
"Perhaps you need focus. I cannot help but forget your human frailty."
A body, again. The sensation of ground under his feet. But still
surrounded by blackness. Ahead of him, an almost-discernible misty
form.
With form comes, by necessity, limits. The shape in front of him
appeared humanoid, roughly his size. Perhaps it was not as strong as
it wished him to think...
"Why? A rather general question. What do I want? I want for
nothing...I merely serve the wishes of my mistress." Perhaps it was
coalescing. Or perhaps it was his imagination. Difficult to tell. A
wisp of the mist surrounding it trailed away from its neck, stretching
out into the blackness until it could no longer be seen.
"Please..." pleading on his part. "Please...stop."
Interest. Curiosity from the form in front of him. Like that of a
child examining a bug, just prior to crushing it.
"Let me out..." he whispered. "I don't...I don't understand."
Sigh, again.
"And where would you go, then? Back to that wasteland you so
desperately cling to? To that pointless life you try to remake, when
death is all you should have received? The reign of Man is drawing to
a close. Your worthless efforts can do nothing to avert your true
destiny, death."
Shinji had taken several steps towards the shape as it continued
speaking. Years of his life, years of incessant toil, were being
struck down by just a few words from something which hadn't even
bothered to identify itself yet, and which even so terrified him.
"S...stop it," he muttered. "Don't...d-don't say that." He took
another few steps towards the figure.
The figure only regarded him cooly, watching his movements.
"Just...let me go."
A narrowing of the eyes. Painfully familiar concentric hexagons
materialized as he took another step, and his body seemed instantly
glued to them, in the pain of being electrocuted a million times over.
^What...what is this?^
"You should recognize the wall of the soul, if nothing else I have
shown you."
Blasted away from the pain, sailing backwards to stop suddenly,
suspended above the imaginary ground by an unknown force.
"The thing that will always bring you pain, and which, when offered the
chance to eliminate forever, _you_ demanded to keep."
Shinji found he could still speak.
"Who are you? What is it you want with me?"
"I am the one you knew." A simple answer.
The figure became more distinct. Gradually, the mist surrounding it
drew together, congealing into a human form.
Almost human.
A girl, in her late teens, with blue hair and red eyes that he was
finally able to recognize. She was nude, her arms crossed over her
chest out of what, in anyone else, may have been modesty. Her skin was
luminescent, the pale glow lighting the area around her and Shinji but
nothing else, being absorbed by the void around them. And on her back
was an array of wings, a total of three pairs.
His eyes grew wider in beats, as recognition dawned and his mind
immediately tried to reject what it saw. Breathing accelerated.
Shinji tried to back away, his feet scrabbling for traction where there
would be none. Anything to try to put distance between him, and...
and..._that_.
"No...you c-can't be - "
"No." Cutting him off before the fear could consume him. "I have only
borrowed this form to appear before you, and her." As she became more
defined, the tendril around her neck also coalesced, forming a finger-
thick cord cinched tightly about her throat. She took this gingerly in
her hand, holding it absentmindedly.
Shinji watched, his eyes drawn to the cord like a moth to light. He
thought that, perhaps...it looked like it was fraying.
"But my strength grows," the girl-ghost asserted. "There will soon be
a day, when all resistance will end, when I will break free of this
shackle imposed on me." A smile at the reaction of her catch. "You
need not fear me now. For the moment, I remain leashed. But a leash
_can_ work both ways." Eye contact, gaze burning straight into his
soul. "Chain a slave to her mistress, and both are prisoners."
The girl seemed oblivious, both to Shinji's bewildered expression, and
of the emergence of a dark form behind her. Something huge, titantic
even. Humanoid.
She advanced on him, about to say something further. But she cut off,
turning to look off to the side, as though hearing a faint sound.
Whispered: "They're coming."
"Who?"
Freeze. Shinji went bolt-stiff, as something touched his shoulder from
behind. A heartbeat later they were on him. Hands. Countless, clawed
hands, like the wraiths of nightmare, coming from the nothing behind
him, and reaching for him.
"The fools." Still inattentive to her charge. "Their quest for final
death is useless now, but now they have only turned to revenge. No
matter." A brief smile. "We will destroy them for you."
Pause, as another gigantic, indistinct form appeared behind her, coming
to stand alongside the first. "You are not surprised?" Mild interest.
"That there would be a second?" Brief laugh. "She is weaker than I.
But she is of the same essence as I. We will exist together. For your
_benefit_." The last word said as a curse.
The hands had come for him. Grabbing, pulling, tearing, clawing into
him. Helplessness. Nothing with which to fight. Terror.
The girl smirked, and behind her the two giant forms shattered,
shedding what might have been skin but looked too solid for that.
Underneath...brilliance. Light without shape. The two coming
together, merging into one being. Sight obscured; a hand over his
eyes, clawing at them, trying to tear them out. And then...
_Power_. Unstoppable. Unquestioned. The hands blasted away, blown
aside and scattered like leaves.
Warmth, protection. Opening his eyes -
Horror.
The same girl, only enormous. Sitting helpless in her hands, looking
up into her massive eyes, regarding him with that cold, sadistic glare.
Being brought up towards her face, to her forehead -
Screaming.
A voice, as reality is rent apart:
"But the day draws near when _I_ will be master."
* * *
Awake.
He felt the ground under him again. For some reason, he felt happy to
feel even that.
What had just happened? He wasn't sure. For the dream - and that was
what it had to have been - had already slipped away into the recesses
of his mind, inaccessible and forgotten, just as all dreams are.
He slowly got to his feet. ^Better for me not to remember it anyway,^
he thought. The only thing he could recall was that it had been very
frightening.
Shinji slipped into thought, remembering why he'd come out here. He
shook his head, as the memory surfaced. But as he walked away, his
eyes caught the dark shape of Unit-00, looming overhead like a gigantic
stone gargoyle, its eye staring off into infinity, searching for any
threat to its keepers.
He found his heart was thudding quite loudly in his chest. His stomach
began to churn, looking at the machine. But the strangest part was
that he didn't even know why he should feel this way.
^Tired,^ he reasoned. ^Just tired.^
He began to walk away, finding he had to fight the urge to run from
Unit-00. This feeling just wasn't natural, even if he was exhausted.
^Maybe Kaoru would be able to explain. Or maybe even Rei...^
The prospect of an explanation was excuse enough. He started off at a
light jog, which quickly accelerated. Very soon, he was running as
fast as he ever had in his life.
Yet, even having lived away from civilization for years, Shinji was
still able to make mistakes out here. Such as running in the dark,
over uncertain terrain. As such, he did not see the rock until it was
too late.
His foot caught, and he stumbled, trying to catch himself and failing,
going over the edge of a small cliff with a brief cry of shock. It
wasn't a very long fall, a meter or so, but he could not break the fall
with his arms alone. The last thing he saw before unconsciousness
snatched him away was the ground rushing up at him, slamming him in the
forehead like a sledgehammer.
Not far off, the single eye of Unit-00 flickered once, then died.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Endnote: Well, I figure that was enough of an acid trip for one
chapter. Don't feel bad if you're left wondering what the hell just
happened. But yes, that last section actually _did_ take place in the
'real' world.
Special thanks go to the Avatar of Dragonia for prereading this
chapter, and whose work was essential in working this thing over into
what you have just read. Whether or not this is a good thing, I leave
up to you. ^_^
Final note: OK, I'm through procrastinating, at least for now.
Everyone can expect me to keep a more regular schedule on this fic. So
don't let the incredibly skewed dates below throw you off. Also, in
case anyone didn't notice, Chapter 11 of this fic is newly rewritten
and available both on my site and ff.net.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Started: December 11, 2001
Version 1 Ended: January 1, 2002
Version 2 Ended: March 3, 2002
Version 3 Ended: May 16, 2002
Version 4 Ended: May 17, 2002
Thanks go to the Avatar of Dragonia, Heavyarms Kai, and Judging Eagle,
as always, for being my prereaders, and putting up with my hopelessly
long delays.
New site location: http://www.angelfire.com/anime4/srfics/index.html
e-mail: otakusadist@hotmail.com
Evangelion belong to GAINAX. They're not mine, and I make no claim to
them.
Foreword: Remember those mind-f**k episodes, 25 and 26? This chapter
was written to feel like them. Be prepared. I also take this moment
to remind you about the spoilers for End of Eva, which are particularly
extreme for this chapter.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
" " = speech
^ ^ = thoughts
_ _ = italics
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Angels of Armageddon
Author: Ryan Xavier
Side Story 3: The First Eclipse: Innocence Murdered
The concept of "nothing" is almost impossible to imagine. A blank
sheet of paper still has itself, and even the void between stars still
has the cold and the light. Nowhere can there be nothing. Even in the
realm of the mind, the idea remains elusive, perhaps existing in the
space between the end of a dream and consciousness.
Only nothing truly is nothingness. and Shinji was, verily,
insuperably, irrefutably, and absolutely nothing.
Nothing but awake.
^What...what is this place?^
Body? Nonexistent.
Senses? Blind. Deaf. Dumb.
Mind? Shrivelled, shrunken, afraid.
Surroundings? No feeling of presence.
Nothing.
^Is there...anyone...anyone?^
Vertigo...
A snapping together. Apprehension. Uncertainty.
^Why...?^
Frustration. Fear.
^Why?!^
Claustrophobia. Panic at having one's entire universe reduced to one's
own puny, idiotic, and incalculably worthless mind.
^_Why?!!!!_^ His mental scream, powerless against the absolute silence.
A pulse of light, like the call to awaken when he didn't know he was
dreaming. A dull thump sounding, reverberating through the blackness
around him. Sight at last, if only momentarily. Hope?
Light, first white, then dimming to dark orange. Perceptions of shapes
...others, with him. Humans? Monsters? Worse?
^Who...^ Peals of childish laughter.
Pulses and thumping again, now regular, now multiplying. Clearer and
clearer vision of surroundings.
Shapes...
Forms...
Humanoid.
Identical.
...And feminine?
^Who?^ Again a child's laughter, mocking and cruel in its innocence.
Pulses and thumping so fast they blurred together, becoming a constant
hum in his immaterial ears. Light intesifying, slowly bringing focus
to the haze around him. Others, the same human female form, copied ad
infinitum. Inert. Still.
Dead?
^They're all...^
A small twitch, passing through all their bodies like a ripple
through water.
^all...^
The bodies lazily turning, without direction, without will.
^all...^ Anxiety.
^Lidless is the eye that is stricken with terror.^ Not his own
thought. Not his own self.
^dead...?^
Then, as one, they moved. The movement so quick it may have been a
simultaneous muscle spasm, their heads looked up. All of them turned,
to look straight at him. All with the same gaze, the same eerily
smiling mouth, a feminine face that had crimson eyes -
^NOOOOO!!!^
- they were upon him, relentlessly advancing, coming upon his
paralyzed, unresisting self like giggling hyenas on a carcass. They
set on him with multitudes of identicals, raping and violating, tearing
and rending, consuming and devouring until there was left no trace -
* * *
Somewhere else.
A shape. A heartbeat. Senses. A surface to stand on, and feet to
stand _with_. All were his once again.
Another unfamiliar place.
A dank, dusty room. Him sitting in a chair, next to an unmade bed, its
only coverings being the dust and grime of age, and where old
bloodstained bandages lay, the blood long since turned to a crusty
brown. A mail slot filled to overflowing, on the distant door that he
had not come through, and all throughout the air a feel of disuse and
abandonment.
And more disturbingly, a strange sense of familiarity, loss, and...
regret?
"Where...where is this place?"
No answer.
A table off to the side, occupied by randomly placed bottles of
medication and a glass beaker. The latter had apparently been placed
so as to catch the light from the window. The beaker was untouched by
the hands of time and decay; the clearness of the glass showed that.
Even the water inside seemed immune to the slow process of
evaporation...
Water?
Looking at the glass, he saw it was empty, without even the slightest
drop of liquid clinging to its sides. Had it not been full until just
now?
There was another object beside the strangely clean beaker. It, like
the rest of the room, was coated in dust. Some...sort of container.
To hold something delicate and also valuable. A slow recollection in
his mind.
^When have I seen that...when?^ Memory, just out of the reach of his
consciousness.
A squeal of rusty hinges, and the growing glow of light being let in.
Sounds of footsteps, and the shadow of another one in the room with him
stretched to just out of his sight.
"Who are you?"
He turned, saw the white void that was all that the newly-opened door
revealed. A shadowy figure emerged from the glow, flashed across the
room so quickly it appeared to vanish. There was a moment of cold
contact and -
A sound of breaking glass, followed by that of the shards tinkling
to the floor.
^I don't remember.^ Not his thoughts.
The feeling of being alone. The light from the door, gone. Turning
around, to find the strange container open, and inside it were
unrecognizable bits of plastic and glass. What had this once been, for
someone to destroy it as thoroughly as they had? Was it because -
^I am the third, I think.^
"G. Ikari" was written on one of the larger shards of plastic. A name?
Familiar. A mark that these had once belonged to...
"Father? Why?"
"Why not?" A voice, different from his own.
A pause.
"Who...who are you?" His voice. Suspicion.
Child's laughter, perverse in its innocence.
"Who are _you_?" The voice taunted.
The mirror on the wall.
His own reflection gazed back as he came closer, nothing out
of the ordinary. Around his own reflection, an all-consuming
blackness. Nothing beyond himself showed in the glassy pane.
^Mankind fears nothing more than the darkness.^
He reached out to the mirror, toward his own reflection, and it reached
for him. Difficult to tell which had moved first. Was it trying to
tell him - or was he trying to tell _it_ - that there was something
beyond this place, this darkness of nothing?
He blinked, and in that instant the reflection changed.
"Ayanami?"
The mirror shattered soundlessly, the countless pieces falling at his
feet and disappearing before they could even seem real. His only
emotion was faint surprise.
Something in the corner of his eye.
"Who are you?" The other's voice.
The window.
The glass was undamaged, and the window itself was shut tightly.
Outside was the same white light from the door, only duller...weaker,
somehow. In the place of his own reflection there was another,
different image looking back at him. It was...foggy, undefined, and
blurred, but still vaguely human.
"I am the one you know."
"Who?"
"I am not as I appear to you now. But this pale reflection will
suffice, for the moment." The figure's eyes - nothing but dark holes
against the white light - narrowed.
The sensation of falling, as the so-treasured ground was taken out from
under his feet. And then, Disintegration.
* * *
Darkness and cold, but not loneliness. Someone had come with him.
"Are you the enemy?" A voice, dead and cold, but at the same time
vaguely familiar, from his mist-enshrouded companion. It continued.
"Are you the enemy?
"Am I the enemy? Who _is_ the enemy? _What_ is the enemy?
"Is it they?" Its voice nearly taunting, now.
A brilliant flash as memories alien to him were forced across into his
being.
* * *
He was a towering giant, impossibly lanky limbs at his sides while
he marched carelessly through a city of shimmering white, tiny planes
buzzing like insects around him. Futilely they loosed a hail of fire,
but he swatted them away with the same care he gave to vaporizing any
building or barrier in the way of his mission. Slowly he turned
around, and for a moment he saw, reflected in a wall of glass, the two
wide white shoulders, the three-pronged claws, the round red sphere,
and the two bone-white faces, one beaked, one blunt, both with holes
for eyes that were his own. The wall opened to reveal another giant, a
challenge to the success of his mission and thus something to be
destroyed.
It took two tottering steps and fell forward.
He took its head up in one hand and an arm in the other. Faintly
he heard screaming below, and then screaming from - not the giant's
lips, but somewhere within - as he twisted farther and farther until
the arm snapped. The screaming intensified, but he was not yet done.
In his first claw he began to pound on the giant's head, energy
striking metal until the beam pierced its head and hurled it against a
wall. Silence.
"Was it _your_ enemy?"
And then...
A cry of rage dredged from the deepest nightmare. The moment of
confusion...the pain of being torn limb from impossibly long limb...the
tinge of humiliation as it became his turn to be torn apart, under a
gauntlet of blows...and the sweetness of promised vengeance as he died
in a final act of blinding light.
"_Who_ was it?"
Flash.
* * *
He had a misshapen body trailing behind a strange head with eyes
that did not see. Extensions from the body, just above the blood-red
sphere, then ends clasped as if in prayer. The same white city, only
brightly lit this time. The same guardian, stronger, more confident,
and armed with a new weapon. A challenge came, borne of fear and
violence.
"_What_ was it?"
He unleashed his own arms, bright and shining whips of energy
that cleaved through the guardian's weapon in an instant. In cowardice
it seemed to run, but there was no escape. He flung it through the
air; cornered it. Then a moment of weakness as it lay before him,
having last regrets before the coup de grace...
...that was caught in its hands.
Then _he_ was flung through the air, before getting up, and hearing
again the scream of fear - within the guardian - as he was locked in a
contest for survival that he lost, dying as he did with a cold,
whispered plea for revenge -
"Why?"
Flash.
* * *
He floated above the white city, untouchable, invincible, and immovable
from his task. The guardian had made his expected appearance, but had
been unarmed and helpless before his thunder. It would no longer
trouble him. Soon the pitiful barriers the Lilim had thrown up to hide
Father would be torn down, and the last revelation would overtake the
Earth.
The city beneath darkened, throwing a veil of suspicion over his
nonexistent eyes. Now he saw the faint glow in the distant mountains
that, slowly but surely, outlined the shape of the guardian, and a
lesser, stranger companion -
Realization of their subterfuge. All-consuming anger at the
underhanded attack. There could only be one response to this
presumptuous strike, as the anger within him was mirrored by a buildup
of the thunder he would rend their copied flesh with.
Everything in moments -
- a crossing of two paths, a scream of fright, a second moment of
weakness, a second scream of panic...and a killing blow so quick it
was almost painless -
A fading, incoherent thought for retribution crossed his dying
mind, but it was mostly unheard over the wave of confusion, loss,
and a burning need just to know _why_...
* * *
"Why?"
He found himself with another body, and another, and another, in
an endless whirlwind of fantasy and nightmare. He flew through the
air; he skulked in the sea. He went above the air itself; he spent the
whole of his all-too-short existence in the bowels of the Earth. He
had the strength of mountains; he was weaker than tears. He was more
untouchable than the soul itself; he was nothing more than a batch of
rogue data lurking in a machine. He was born, he had lived, and he did
countless times, he had faced the guardian, its controller, and the
guardian's allies the same number of times, and at the end of every
life he whispered, declared, screamed, a plea, a call, a roar for
vengeance, retribution, death to the Lilim...
But still the same question remained:
"Why?"
"I don't know." The only reply he could muster.
"A most inadequate answer. If you cannot answer my own question,
how am I to answer yours?"
"I don't know."
A feeling of exasperation. Not his.
"Do you know this?"
A glow in the darkness. It took no shape, flashing and flowing like
fog, but...it seemed vaguely feminine, like his companion. Almost
could be seen in the blurry depths, but there was _something_ there.
"I'm not sure..."
A brief sound of derisive laughter. "A pity. She came here, leaving
behind all she held dear, risking her very soul, and you foolishly
ignore the key she has placed in your hands."
A more definitive shape now, colours slowly seeping into the
features as they hardened and became more and more recognizable.
The hair remained a blank white, but the eyes - they were peaceful
rather than icy, pacifying rather than mystifying, inviting rather than
alienating. Their colour was - not the red of spilled blood, but
lighter, a shade of rose, the exact tone and hue of cherry blossoms in
spring -
"She was not always like this. Unfortunately, you never saw what
came before, but _I_ have. I suppose I can spare you another glimpse."
The feminine figure disappeared, dissolving into the dark. Another,
more celestial form replaced it, spreading slender, white arms of light
so like wings against the blackness, simultaneously beautiful and
terrible.
"And you know what she desires."
A stirring of a recent memory.
"She wants someone...dead. Is it me?
"She...wants _me_...dead? How? Why?!"
Another short stint of laughter, as he asked the same question he had
been asked so shortly before.
"You know what you know, though you may not remember."
A shiver through him. Heartbeat thundering rapidly in his ears. Fear
becoming desperation.
"What...what do you want?"
"What do you want?" The apparition echoed.
"I...want to know..."
"I want to know," much less hesitantly than when he'd said it. A
smile.
Flash.
* * *
A classroom, with empty desks arranged in neat rows, facing an empty
podium with an empty blackboard.
Glancing at the windows, watching glassy light filter in from the grey
void beyond. The place was alien at first, but then it seized upon his
mind and impressed itself until it was as surely known to him as it
would have if he had been there for years...and had he been here
before? A day, a week, a year? Never? He no longer knew.
Sitting at a desk, near the back of the class and away from the
windows. Felt natural. Working hard, furiously penning a report for
an absent teacher that was part of an absent past, trying to accomplish
a goal for a long-gone guardian. Somehow, he looked up from his desk to
find his solitude taken from him. Someone else was in the room.
Body seeming to move on its own, perhaps from a habit the conscious
mind had long forgotten. His eyes followed the line of the windows
until they rested upon a small figure, seated by the windows, eyes
turned away from him. Unlike him, his fellow occupant was not doing
any work. Instead, she was looking, seemingly absentmindedly and
uncaring, out the window into the blank grey void. What was so
interesting outside, anyway?
As if she heard him, she slowly turned to face him. Only then did
he truly see why she had intrigued him so. The hair and the eyes...
could never belong to any other girl he ever knew. And the look on her
face; a mixture of surprise, fear, and -
She opened her mouth to speak.
Outside, it began to rain.
"This is what you know." Not the girl's voice. But yet still -
Flash.
* * *
A classroom, with empty desks arranged in neat rows, facing an empty
podium with an empty blackboard.
Looking out upon the gray void outside, ignoring the book on the
desk. The text on the pages seemed a blur; a strange indistinctive
jumble that almost became something one moment, and then seemed
something else the next. No matter. It deserved no attention. And
since there was nothing worth doing, her eyes were diverted to where
there literally was nothing; outside the window, as she awaited the
change that might or might not come.
Except for a vague sensation from behind.
A feeling of vague pressure...not physical. What could it be from? She
had endured much pain, and could normally ignore it, but this was not
pain. It was...odd. An uneasy feeling that could not be ignored.
She turned around -
- to find the boy staring at her, not with intent to examine, to
intimidate, or to harm - just looking at her.
She opened her mouth to speak.
Outside, it began to rain.
"This is what she knows." The same voice; not her own or the boy's.
At the back of the room: another shape, indistinct, hiding in shadows
that the light from the windows could not touch. But the silhouette of
a young child, a girl perhaps, difficult to tell for the short hair. A
thin smile on the child's lips.
Flash.
* * *
Dressing up to die would have been the best way to describe it.
Stripped to the bare skin, he slowly pulled on the cold, slick
pseudofabric of the plugsuit, trying not to shiver at the sudden chill.
He had come to hate doing this, this being asked to go out and die at
his father's command, but it _was_ his father. There was nothing he
could do but obey, and try his best not to wince as the plugsuit
compressed with the touch of a button, taking his body into its icy
clutch.
On the first few times, he had changed in solitary silence, much in
the way those who are sentenced to die are allowed to eat their last
meal alone. Had his father arranged it this way? It could only remind
him that every time he was called upon stood a good chance of being the
last. But then, if this job carried such a risk, why wasn't he dead
already, or running away, like last time?
His father still...needed him. Yes, that was it, he had to come down
here to change, then go back up there to that monster, and be ready to
die, like a good son should.
This time was different, though.
On the other side of the barrier, _she_ was there. Stripping,
changing, and getting ready to die, managing it far more efficiently
than he ever could. Why? Because she had done this many times before?
Because she was simply unafraid of death? Well...he hardly ever saw
her fill her life with anything else other than Eva. Why did she do
it, anyway? And what _were_ her feelings about his father, anyway?
Did she pilot because of him? Because of what he might have done for
her in the past? Or something else he didn't know? All he knew was
that brief glimpse he had had of her, talking with that man freely, as
though she were his father's true child, and he...just a stranger.
Her slim silhouette - all that was visible through the barrier - turned
to face him, and he could feel the weight of the unseen eyes, killing
his unasked question before it could leave his throat. And all he
could do was wonder why.
"You wanted to know why." The apparition. A glimpse of a child's form
at the edge of his vision. He tried to look -
Flash.
* * *
She wasted no time drawing the loose plugsuit on, and then hitting the
switch that compressed it about her form. She had to prepare to do
battle with enemies from places and with purposes unknown. The
prospect of death was of no concern to her. She would fulfill her
purpose in this battle. She would fight with or without this boy, as
she had trained her entire life to do. He would learn his place sooner
or later, whether or not he remembered the incident from the escalator.
Somehow the sounds of changing had stopped. He had already compressed
his plugsuit, so why had he not departed? It was not her role to deal
with such things; if it was necessary, the Commander would deal with
them. Her place was to do what she was told, and now she had been told
to pilot Eva. But he still had not moved.
Was it because he was looking at her again?
Why?
"She also wanted to know why."
Flash.
* * *
He was standing near one of the last two spots of light to be found in
Japan, next to a...creature, with a demon's visage. He'd...they'd...
received the signal to attack. He watched as the blue-haired girl
turned away, going to do her duty as always, without hesitation or
complaint.
He stood there, again intrigued, wondering how and why she did what she
did. Was she really this dedicated, possessing a strength he could
never know? Did it have something to do with his father? He had
asked, and she had given him an answer, but what was he to make of it?
Would he even get the chance to ask again?
This could be his last day alive. Some part of him deep inside
shivered at the prospect, but the rest remained indifferent, perhaps
even _wishing_ that death would visit him and end this slow torture at
the hands of the man he was supposed to call Father.
^No matter how great the storm, the moon will always show the same
face.^
What was that?
"Ikari." He almost jerked in surprise.
"You won't die."
Bewildered silence was the only reply he could muster.
"I will protect you."
A brief glimpse of those crimson eyes, as she actually looked _at_ him
instead of _through_ him, perhaps for the first time since he'd met
her. In that half-second, he saw something there. But _what_?
Flash.
* * *
A new place, but again strangely familiar. But something dark about
the familiarity. His mind fighting _against_ recalling. The memory of
the place threatening to tear the very fabric of his psyche apart.
A simple place, but built to the scale of giants. A lake of orange
ahead of him, the land ending abruptly. Out at the far side...a titan,
limp and unresisting even with its hands nailed to a gigantic cross.
Its face hidden behind a seven-eyed mask.
"They saw, though you did not know it." A voice...seeming to come from
the mask itself.
"What?"
"As you saw them."
"... "
"They saw you, as they see you now. A strange place you gave them." A
pause. "And an even stranger place they gave you."
"..."
"But why did they give you a place at all?"
"..."
"Why were you kept, and not discarded, released, forgotten, as she did
with so many other things when she unleashed the final reckoning on
your unwilling world?"
Something in that voice, betraying curiosity. It was not asking a
question to which it already knew the answer.
"Final reckoning...?"
Exasperation. "You do not remember? She did it for you, know that at
least. Of all things she ever did in her lives, she did it for you."
"Lives...?"
"To think she was so certain of her choice being the right one..." Sad
consideration of what might have been. Switching rapidly over to
anger, directed at him. "And you are a poor, pitiful, pathetic boy,
completely unchanged from the final reckoning. I have practically given
you the answer, and yet you refuse to see the truth. But perhaps a
taste will remind you."
A flash of something so quick it was almost unseen. Pale flesh
rippled, flowed like liquid as it came away from the cross.
A great, terrible, white foe rose up before him -
Pain wracked his mind, in spite of the shortness of exposure. He fell
to his knees, trying to breathe. His chest heaved at the ghost of the
memory...but of what?
"Wh...what are you doing?" His chest heaved.
"Wrong answer."
The sound of crying. And sobbing. His own. Hiding his head uselessly
in his hands while clutching desperately the symbol of sacrifice one
who might have known gave him, just before her pitifully useless
death -
"Do you remember?"
- getting into the demon that might prove the world's only salvation
against their might. Getting out of the ravaged building, but control
was no longer his own, as he was taken along to fulfill a purpose he
did not know -
"Do you _remember_?"
- the pain of the wings exploding from a back that was not his, unable
to control events anymore. Seeing the ravaged body of his friend as the
monsters turned from their bloody feast and raise him up, screaming and
pierced in three places -
"remember-remember-remember-remember-remember-remember"
- hands exploding as holes were bored through them. Being pulled,
shoved, dragged bodily further and further into the sky, but no longer
by the wings of his once-eyeless captors. Being held between the hands
of the giant now, whose eyes were nothing but points of light, like
stars almost, against the empty sockets of its eyes -
"--REMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBER--"
- seeing those eyes close, then open again, to see the color was a
luminous red, round, and just like, no he could not, no he would not -
REMEMBER.
REMEMBER. NOW.
* * *
Curled up, his head buried in his knees, trying to hold himself
together against something. Something hot flowing down his cheeks.
He stood up, immediately wiping the tears from his face, to behold a
small, deserted playground the hue of burnished gold.
Home?
No. There had never been any home.
In the middle of the playground lay a sandbox, and in it lay a young,
short-haired girl who was strangely devoid of colour, her entire form
in shades of gray. She was playing - toying would have been more like
it - with something in the hands. A featureless white doll.
"You came here looking for the answer, didn't you."
He found himself approaching the sandbox, much as he wanted to run away
from it. His body seemed no longer under his command - as if something,
or someone - was using it for another purpose. Whether to show him
something or to destroy him, he did not know.
"You wanted to know, didn't you?" Such a childish voice she had, and
yet so damning.
He could not speak. Only watch as things unfolded before his eyes.
"You wanted to know what we wanted."
She wasn't actually toying with the doll at all. She seemed to like
throwing it, tossing it from hand to hand, one moment petting it, the
next trying to pull its limbs off, with the same childish innocence
that tainted her voice.
"But you can have it now."
She busied herself with burying it up to its neck in sand, then left.
His hands found themselves digging through the golden grains, quickly
scraping away until the doll was uncovered. Though its body still
seemed unrecognizable, he felt growing unease at what the head looked
like. It had somehow...become more human, as it were, with short hair
and colorless eyes. He held it in one hand, studying it, trying to
make out the -
CRUNCH.
The sound of something falling, and the briefest glimpse of spurting
blood.
Sight again. Only fine sand flowed from his hand where the doll had
once been. Sand and drops of blood that flowed down his hand and
stained the grains beneath.
The severed head rolled away, and he could almost see the red eyes
crying blood, and the short hair turned a calm colour -
"You can have it now."
Flash.
* * *
Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. Starting from nothing, and now back to
nothing. Back in the void from whence this had all come. Perhaps
close to escape? Or perhaps teetering on the edge of a tumble into
further nightmares.
"I wonder..." the same voice, from all around him. "Can your uselessly
narrow mind comprehend, yet?"
"What do you want?" Helplessness. "WHY?! Why are you doing this? WHO
ARE YOU?"
Sigh.
"Perhaps you need focus. I cannot help but forget your human frailty."
A body, again. The sensation of ground under his feet. But still
surrounded by blackness. Ahead of him, an almost-discernible misty
form.
With form comes, by necessity, limits. The shape in front of him
appeared humanoid, roughly his size. Perhaps it was not as strong as
it wished him to think...
"Why? A rather general question. What do I want? I want for
nothing...I merely serve the wishes of my mistress." Perhaps it was
coalescing. Or perhaps it was his imagination. Difficult to tell. A
wisp of the mist surrounding it trailed away from its neck, stretching
out into the blackness until it could no longer be seen.
"Please..." pleading on his part. "Please...stop."
Interest. Curiosity from the form in front of him. Like that of a
child examining a bug, just prior to crushing it.
"Let me out..." he whispered. "I don't...I don't understand."
Sigh, again.
"And where would you go, then? Back to that wasteland you so
desperately cling to? To that pointless life you try to remake, when
death is all you should have received? The reign of Man is drawing to
a close. Your worthless efforts can do nothing to avert your true
destiny, death."
Shinji had taken several steps towards the shape as it continued
speaking. Years of his life, years of incessant toil, were being
struck down by just a few words from something which hadn't even
bothered to identify itself yet, and which even so terrified him.
"S...stop it," he muttered. "Don't...d-don't say that." He took
another few steps towards the figure.
The figure only regarded him cooly, watching his movements.
"Just...let me go."
A narrowing of the eyes. Painfully familiar concentric hexagons
materialized as he took another step, and his body seemed instantly
glued to them, in the pain of being electrocuted a million times over.
^What...what is this?^
"You should recognize the wall of the soul, if nothing else I have
shown you."
Blasted away from the pain, sailing backwards to stop suddenly,
suspended above the imaginary ground by an unknown force.
"The thing that will always bring you pain, and which, when offered the
chance to eliminate forever, _you_ demanded to keep."
Shinji found he could still speak.
"Who are you? What is it you want with me?"
"I am the one you knew." A simple answer.
The figure became more distinct. Gradually, the mist surrounding it
drew together, congealing into a human form.
Almost human.
A girl, in her late teens, with blue hair and red eyes that he was
finally able to recognize. She was nude, her arms crossed over her
chest out of what, in anyone else, may have been modesty. Her skin was
luminescent, the pale glow lighting the area around her and Shinji but
nothing else, being absorbed by the void around them. And on her back
was an array of wings, a total of three pairs.
His eyes grew wider in beats, as recognition dawned and his mind
immediately tried to reject what it saw. Breathing accelerated.
Shinji tried to back away, his feet scrabbling for traction where there
would be none. Anything to try to put distance between him, and...
and..._that_.
"No...you c-can't be - "
"No." Cutting him off before the fear could consume him. "I have only
borrowed this form to appear before you, and her." As she became more
defined, the tendril around her neck also coalesced, forming a finger-
thick cord cinched tightly about her throat. She took this gingerly in
her hand, holding it absentmindedly.
Shinji watched, his eyes drawn to the cord like a moth to light. He
thought that, perhaps...it looked like it was fraying.
"But my strength grows," the girl-ghost asserted. "There will soon be
a day, when all resistance will end, when I will break free of this
shackle imposed on me." A smile at the reaction of her catch. "You
need not fear me now. For the moment, I remain leashed. But a leash
_can_ work both ways." Eye contact, gaze burning straight into his
soul. "Chain a slave to her mistress, and both are prisoners."
The girl seemed oblivious, both to Shinji's bewildered expression, and
of the emergence of a dark form behind her. Something huge, titantic
even. Humanoid.
She advanced on him, about to say something further. But she cut off,
turning to look off to the side, as though hearing a faint sound.
Whispered: "They're coming."
"Who?"
Freeze. Shinji went bolt-stiff, as something touched his shoulder from
behind. A heartbeat later they were on him. Hands. Countless, clawed
hands, like the wraiths of nightmare, coming from the nothing behind
him, and reaching for him.
"The fools." Still inattentive to her charge. "Their quest for final
death is useless now, but now they have only turned to revenge. No
matter." A brief smile. "We will destroy them for you."
Pause, as another gigantic, indistinct form appeared behind her, coming
to stand alongside the first. "You are not surprised?" Mild interest.
"That there would be a second?" Brief laugh. "She is weaker than I.
But she is of the same essence as I. We will exist together. For your
_benefit_." The last word said as a curse.
The hands had come for him. Grabbing, pulling, tearing, clawing into
him. Helplessness. Nothing with which to fight. Terror.
The girl smirked, and behind her the two giant forms shattered,
shedding what might have been skin but looked too solid for that.
Underneath...brilliance. Light without shape. The two coming
together, merging into one being. Sight obscured; a hand over his
eyes, clawing at them, trying to tear them out. And then...
_Power_. Unstoppable. Unquestioned. The hands blasted away, blown
aside and scattered like leaves.
Warmth, protection. Opening his eyes -
Horror.
The same girl, only enormous. Sitting helpless in her hands, looking
up into her massive eyes, regarding him with that cold, sadistic glare.
Being brought up towards her face, to her forehead -
Screaming.
A voice, as reality is rent apart:
"But the day draws near when _I_ will be master."
* * *
Awake.
He felt the ground under him again. For some reason, he felt happy to
feel even that.
What had just happened? He wasn't sure. For the dream - and that was
what it had to have been - had already slipped away into the recesses
of his mind, inaccessible and forgotten, just as all dreams are.
He slowly got to his feet. ^Better for me not to remember it anyway,^
he thought. The only thing he could recall was that it had been very
frightening.
Shinji slipped into thought, remembering why he'd come out here. He
shook his head, as the memory surfaced. But as he walked away, his
eyes caught the dark shape of Unit-00, looming overhead like a gigantic
stone gargoyle, its eye staring off into infinity, searching for any
threat to its keepers.
He found his heart was thudding quite loudly in his chest. His stomach
began to churn, looking at the machine. But the strangest part was
that he didn't even know why he should feel this way.
^Tired,^ he reasoned. ^Just tired.^
He began to walk away, finding he had to fight the urge to run from
Unit-00. This feeling just wasn't natural, even if he was exhausted.
^Maybe Kaoru would be able to explain. Or maybe even Rei...^
The prospect of an explanation was excuse enough. He started off at a
light jog, which quickly accelerated. Very soon, he was running as
fast as he ever had in his life.
Yet, even having lived away from civilization for years, Shinji was
still able to make mistakes out here. Such as running in the dark,
over uncertain terrain. As such, he did not see the rock until it was
too late.
His foot caught, and he stumbled, trying to catch himself and failing,
going over the edge of a small cliff with a brief cry of shock. It
wasn't a very long fall, a meter or so, but he could not break the fall
with his arms alone. The last thing he saw before unconsciousness
snatched him away was the ground rushing up at him, slamming him in the
forehead like a sledgehammer.
Not far off, the single eye of Unit-00 flickered once, then died.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Endnote: Well, I figure that was enough of an acid trip for one
chapter. Don't feel bad if you're left wondering what the hell just
happened. But yes, that last section actually _did_ take place in the
'real' world.
Special thanks go to the Avatar of Dragonia for prereading this
chapter, and whose work was essential in working this thing over into
what you have just read. Whether or not this is a good thing, I leave
up to you. ^_^
Final note: OK, I'm through procrastinating, at least for now.
Everyone can expect me to keep a more regular schedule on this fic. So
don't let the incredibly skewed dates below throw you off. Also, in
case anyone didn't notice, Chapter 11 of this fic is newly rewritten
and available both on my site and ff.net.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Started: December 11, 2001
Version 1 Ended: January 1, 2002
Version 2 Ended: March 3, 2002
Version 3 Ended: May 16, 2002
Version 4 Ended: May 17, 2002
Thanks go to the Avatar of Dragonia, Heavyarms Kai, and Judging Eagle,
as always, for being my prereaders, and putting up with my hopelessly
long delays.
New site location: http://www.angelfire.com/anime4/srfics/index.html
e-mail: otakusadist@hotmail.com