The night chirped with many cicadas. It was warm, like all summer nights. Dark was the night. The wind as active as the dark. The grass was thick, and the fire burnt softly. It licked at the ball of marshmallow, suspended on a stick. It was Shinji who was holding the stick. Next to him, on one side was Kensuke, and the other was Rei. Opposite the fire was Toji.
Kensuke turned around to get another marshmallow from behind him, and poked it on the stick.
"I'm glad you guys have come with me," he said, serenely. "Nobody usually camps out here, much. Pretty quiet, here, alone. You know - Just you and the cicadas. Once they've gone quiet, you're by yourself."
"Yeah," said Toji, exhaling, "this place ain't so bad. I guess I should come out more often."
Toji laid back on the grass with his hands behind his head, looking up at the black sky, glittering with stars.
Misato walked up behind Kensuke and poked him in the butt with a stick.
"Argh! Hey, watch it!"
"Sorry," she said, drunkedly. "I guess they're so marshmallowy..." She tried to poked at the sack, again, and finally got a ball of marshmallow. Satisfied with this, she walked away.
Shinji watched as she went up to her caravan, and attempted to stick the marshmallow into her microwave. He rolled his eyes and decided to look back to his marshmallow.
In the background, the four children could hear Ritsuko and Misato arguing about the best way to cook marshmallow.
"What do you mean an oven?" said Misato, flamboyantly (drunkedly).
"You know, as well as I do, microwaves don't cook marshmallow properly. You can't even shut the door with that stick poking out."
"Watch me... They don't both begin with 'M' for no reason..."
"..."
"... Damn. Okay, the microwave must be stuffed. Big deal... Damn. Give me a handyman, someone!"
"Misato, you've had one too many Yebisu for one night. Maybe you should just sleep it out."
"And miss the karaoke? No way!" Misato sighed a grunt. "Okay, Ritusko, you've won, this time, but when I get sobered up, I'll outwit you like a Monkey to a jar of pickles... Pass me the oven, Rits.
"There we go. Like I told you, my oven is far more superior to you and your simple microwave, Misato. I made it myself. It's totally environmentally friendly, as well."
"It seems to be taking a long time to preheat, Rits."
"Just give it a few. For some reason, solar-ovens seem to take a while. I never seem to have worked out why... I mean, all those testings in the dark laboratories on the solar-powered ovens, and it never worked, expect for that one day when I stepped out onto the open world for once, and the solar-oven just went Zing! Now that I think about it, I think it's got to do with the presence of the sun... No, wait a second... Shit.
"Uh... Pass me the beer, again, Misato..."
While this was happening, Maya, Makoto and Shigeru was sitting at another campfire and were starting to practice for the karaoke. Shigeru played the guitar (naturally), and Makoto played the bagpipe. Maya sung. Once they began the first bar, everyone started throwing tomatoes at them; so they stopped.
Fuyutsuki helped Gendou along as he walked - limped, rather - around in an arm cast, a leg cast, a neck brace, bandages around his head and a black eye patch on his left eye. He hopped along on one leg, only, and didn't have a spare arm to carry any crutch.
After several more painful minutes on this slow progress, Gendou finally got to were he needed to be, and he looked up. And no, it wasn't at the AFTPOS.
"So, we have a deal, Gendou?"
"Yes. I'll let you come out, here, once a week and let you eat your life-time's supply of marshmallow, and you'll continue to donate blood."
"Very good. Sounds reasonable?"
"Quite."
"And the Lance will not come within 500 meters radius of me?"
"Promise."
"Then it is done."
At that, Lilith grabbed a handful of marshmallow and slowly cooked it over a furnace.
"And my hand?" Interrupted Gendou.
"Oh, yes."
Lilith held out her hand over Gendou, and Gendou's lost hand fell out like a gold nugget out of the palm of No Face.
Fuyutsuki caught it and put it away.
"Alright, professor. Let's go." And Gendou hopped away to NERV's surgery ward.
All the while, Penpen waddled around near a projector on a table. A disc fell off the table and landed next to Penpen. Penpen wondered what it was.
It read "Karaoke Mix DVD Mk. II".
Penpen decided to keep it, and put it away in a pouch in his belly (that no one knew about). Penpen pulled out another disc from within - unmarked - and threw it on to the table as a replacement.
I'm sure no one could tell the difference. I was getting sick of watching it, anyway. It's got some entertainment value but... Comedies aren't what they used to be...
He waddled off to a hot spring nearby, and intended to play the karaoke dvd later at home, and attempt to sing.
As Shinji continued to cook his marshmallow at the camp, he noticed Asuka running around topless, with an explanative can of beer in her hand. Obviously, the psychiatric department still hasn't been able to cure her of her alcoholic addiction. Then again, they've been pretty busy, recently.
In fact, all three guys leaned back to look at Asuka being chased about, angrily, by Ritsuko... who was also running around topless. From listening to their shouts to each other, they could work out that that can of beer was the last one. All the while, a Misato was chasing them both around... topless.
Why they were topless in the first place, they were yet to find out...
The three stooges would have anticipated Ryouji Kaji to be chasing them as well, until...
Rei's eyes looked from her marshmallow, left and right, to see what they were doing. She felt the responsibility to do something about it.
"Boys..." she called, remindingly.
The three all turned back to their marshmallows, mumbling incoherently some excuses and so forth.
At last, after several more minutes of whatever the NERV party were doing in the fields, Kaji stepped onto stage and announced the beginning of the Karaoke.
"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the fifth NERV Karaoke party!"
There were cheers.
"Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we are glad to see so many enthusiastic men and women, out here, on this night, and I can assure you, this will be one hell of a night!"
More cheers.
"And, may I also add, let us all give a round of applause to welcome our special guest of tonight's Karaoke: Megumi Hayashibara."
Megumi, the retired, 48 year old J-Pop artist, walked onto stage, slowly, and said "Hello." She was hit by the deafening roar of the crowd, like Elton John back from the dead, and immediately died from a heart attack.
"Well, that's about all she has to say, I guess," said Ryouji, enthusiastically. "Having heard our First Child, Rei, become more talkative, don't you think there's this uncanny similarity in their voices, ladies and gentlemen?"
There were shouts of agreement.
"And wouldn't we like to have our First Child come up to be our First guest to sing...!"
Rei was hit by the deafening roar of the crowd, like Elvis Presley back from the dead.
"But first!" Kaji said, in a more serious tone of voice. "Ladies and gentlemen... I must ask every single one of you one very important question!"
The crowd murmured amongst themselves about how anything could be more important than karaoke. Kaji, all of a sudden, became very gripping and harsh in tone.
In fact, he started shouting, "I know you're in there, somewhere! Oh, yes! Someone in this very... field... is a CULPRIT!"
Everyone gasped and looked around each other.
"I know you're in there! Step out, now!"
The crowd became increasingly worried until Kaji broke out in the most definitive of questions. (Which was weird, since questions don't usually define anything.)
"... WHO BURNT GENDOU'S MANGAS?"
Everyone stopped talking and stared at him, speechless (stupified) for a moment. Kaji looked at crowd expectantly for a good second.
Everyone began throwing tomatoes at Kaji.
Misato stole the microphone off Kaji and shouted, "LET'S GET READY TO RUMBLE!"
The crowd resumed their roaring, like Michael Jackson back from the dead, and threw more tomatoes at Misato.
Rei stole the microphone off Misato and continued the karaoke.
"Alright, here we go. Hit it, Asuka!"
"Gimme that!" Shouted Misato, covered in red, like she was rising from the dead. The two began wrestling for the mic.
Asuka jammed the DVD in anyway, and the picture was projected in amazing 3D onto the giant screen behind them. The volume was turned up, and the blank screen fired up.
Misato and Rei heard... sweeping noises.
"A wha-?"
The whole crowd gasped and the two turned around to see... TOJI!
"OH, MY GOD!"
It was that evil thing, again! Everyone became a panic and screamed in horror. The 3D had outdone itself. Dolby Digital® enhanced those slaps. It repeated over and over again alternating from slow-mo to real time. There was no escape, again! Asuka actually, literally did jam the DVD player!
No one knew where to run. They ran into caravans, they ran out of caravans. But they couldn't turn it off.
And as for the people in the city who looked out into the mountains and got the rare chance to see that large, small, glowing thing being abused... Let's just say, the city of Tokyo-3 did not sleep, that night.
That night, in all that panic, no one heard the cicadas' chirp.
No one heard the crackling flames, charring the marshmallows.
And surely enough, they wouldn't have heard the polyphonic ring of Maya Ibuki's cell phone ringing...
As the credits roll, the music plays "Moonlight Sonata".
I hope that you have enjoyed this fic.
Now that it is offically the end, I must now shock you further by revealing that I have one last chapter to add. As you'd understand, this is a long fic; and like all fics (ok, not all - say... movies), things had to be cut out.
In other words, I just want to put in one or two very small scenes that were cut from the original version. There's an authors' notes section, as well.
So, send along a review, even if it's just to tell me you read it. I really want to know if you read it! A sequel, believe it or not, may also potentially come, or maybe a prequel, or maybe something even more bizzare. I actually have many ideas already:
One regarding the polyphonic ring and beings from the nth dimension, one regarding what happened and was utterly forgotten just a few months prior to these events, one completely disregarding the existance of this fic (a soap-opera/novel-ish thing), one regarding the debate between Shinji and Gendou about Revenge as a dish, and one that is not on my list.
What do you think?
But anyway, having rambled on for all this time, I thank you, the reader, for taking the time to read this fic. I hope you've enjoyed it. I am in awe that you'd read all the way to this last paragraph. And I hope to entertain you again. (At least most of you.)