/Boss Ikari/

- lawless priest -

09 - The devil's deal

My name is Ikari, Shinji Ikari, the son of the famed Yakuza boss Gendo Ikari, aka 'That bastard', you know the one. Anyway, every since my 21st birthday, my father forced me to take the reins of the family business, things around here have become... extremely weird. But whatever, I take it as just another day in this whacked out city called Tokyo - 3.

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/BI/ when I figure out whose POV this one is, I'll tell you.

It was the next morning and we were at Nerv's private hospital. And yes my family's company does have its own hospital.

Suzuhara stood in his dark black dress coat and black slacks, looking like, well, a gangster in a hospital. Aida with us too and stood by his counter parts side, chuckling slightly at the scene we made.

"Boss, I... " This was the fourth time he had started like this. But I wasn't having it.

"Toji."

"Yes, sir?"

The uncertainty was clear in his voice. Of course shooting your boss did sort of instill that type of fear in a man. We were on our way out, me in my wheelchair and the other two on their feet. I held the urge within me to put them in wheelchairs as well. But that would be more of a set back than anything and we didn't need that, now.

"What did I tell you?"

"Don't do shit, don't say shit, don't think shit, and hell, don't pull any shit."

"Exactly, so why are you breaking the second rule?"

"I was just trying to say I was sorry."

"And that Toji, is what we would classify as shit. So don't."

"Well now, apparently somebody's used up all of there curse words for the day."

Why was Aida talking smack now. I was more than pissed off enough as it were and it was a struggle to keep my calm. I never figured I'd be shot by one of my own.

"Kensuke, don't get shot. This isn't the time, alright. I am not in the mood."

"Hey, man chill. Just making a point." He was still laughing as he said it which gave me the clue that he really didn't care and was going to be an ass no matter what.

"Yeah, and my point is if you keep talking you'll be in a wheelchair too and soon. So watch it."

"Man! Why does every problem with you people have to be solved with violence. I mean, can't you guys jus..."

BANG!

"Some people just don't know when to shut up."

I warned the punk, but he wouldn't listen. Toji was checking the scene for security guards and trying unsucessfully stifle his laughter. It didn't matter. They weren't going to arrest me in my own hospital.

"You shot me?" Obviously the blond one was in shock.

"No, your mouth shot you. I merely pulled the trigger."

"Damnit, Ikari! You can't just go around shooting people!"

BANG!

"Aghh! DAMN YOU IKARI!"

AN: ok... I'm guessing it's still Shinji's POV. You've been noted. Notice that you have been noted. Have you noticed? Are you aware? Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth/fingers/head/thoughts/brain/malfunction/memory loss/wtf/hth/wth/

... sigh enough of that. /AN

/ sometime later... /

"So you were able to recover the item?"

"Yes, we did."

We were back at head quarters and in my fathers office, other wise known as Hell's back door and purgatory's out house.

The events of the past few hours weren't all that acceptable and looking up at father from a wheelchair as he stood a few feet in front of me with those same cold indifferent, unforgiving eyes of his didn't help much either.     AN: there's supossed to be a comma or two in that sentence somewhere, just thought you should know AN/      It only made me feel more like lame than I usually did when I was in there.

I know Aida had to feel twice as foolish. He didn't have the experience of having to deal with this devil on a day to day basis in his own den.

I could tell that everyone in my crew was working hard not to break out into a sweat in front of him. Me, I was more ashamed at being shot by one of my subordinates.

I remember back when I was young and still a weak little boy while my mother was still alive, we used to sit at the breakfast table every morning and my father would give me these tips on how to rule over a massive criminal underworld type organization, saying that a weak punk like me would need all of the help I could get. Of course this earned him a slap for saying it and two for thinking it. Mother was strict on things like that.

/: entering flashback mode.....

ok...

.. let's get to it.....

what the freak is the hold up....

... oh. I didn't flip the switch. ... cough dumbass :/

One of the servants had just set the table and mother had given us the sign that we could eat. She was rather big on blessing the food and both us male Ikaris received severe punishments for attempting to snatch a bite before doing so. Of course for the old man that meant sleeping on a couch in the one of Nerv's employee lounges.

Everyone knew when not to piss her off when one of staff found the Commander sprawled out on one of those numerous lumpy pieces of furniture that you'd swear was stuffed full of rocks. Which is probably why he had the place outfitted with such nice comfortable furniture these days.

It's rather funny because even to this day when we do - how ever rare it is - sit down for a meal we tend to sit there in silence for about five minutes, waiting for her to give us the sign before we realize that she's not going to, cause she's not there.

Yeah, we Ikari men are pretty pathetic, but none of you had better not go around repeating any of this, you hear? Of course you do. I may be in a wheel chair, but father is the one you'd have to worry about. I'm done threatening people, I'll just let him deal with it all.

Anyway... what was I going on about. Ah, yes, Underlings 101. This course was as the title says design to instruct on the ways of and methods of controlling underlings. It was a strange class because I had five teachers and many of their lessens clashed.

Mother always said to be open and honest with your subordinates and treat them with respect. This will make them want to do you the same. Misato always said to fight along side your people. If you were good at it, not only would they have more respect for you, but they would trust you with their lives in battle. I made it a habit of trying to follow those rules and so far they seemed to work, but there were always exceptions.

Kaji... well, Kaji had a lot of advice, but very little of it had anything to do with anything close what the subject was. But I did tend to use his more than the rest. The former Section 2 agent used to tell me that I should always give a girl what she wants and always keep want she needs out in the open and ready for whenever. For a long time I had no idea what any of that was supposed to mean, but after meeting Asuka I got the picture. Probably wouldn't have survived this long without it.

Professor Fuyutsuki used to tell me that I should never get caught up in situations that I would regret later, but then he'd turn right back around and say with a smile that when I did get caught up in situations that I'll regret later that I don't do things that I'll regret further. I understood that one easy enough, but I never staid for the rest of his speech. There's only so many times you can listen to an old man rant on about how much Rahxephon was a rip off of his precious Evangelion.

Man, for a guy who looks and talks like some gentle weathered old proffesor, oh wait, he was, anyway, you'd be surprised at how many curse words he could throw out in one sentence. Plus he's an inventive reader so he knows a lot more words than you so you never hear any of the usual stuff, only whatever bizarre intellectually spite and spittle filled phrases that his perverse mind could come up with.

And yes perverse. Have you seen some of the Eva merchandise that Nerv is peddling out. It's almost as if they changed their logo to 'Devil is in his hell and he's looking for an instant nosebleed.'

Father...

Well, Father told me as a kid to always watch out for Angels. He said they were bastards and if you didn't get them, they'd turn you into this yellow goop or something, I think he called it LCl. I wasn't paying attention. I mean come on? Angels? Whatever.

But when he wasn't raving over how angels sucked and that the 4th or the fifth, I'm not sure, looked like some perverted squid with multiple dildos coming out of it. I had to remind him that he was the one who drew that one for his manga and that I didn't care about his stupid show. Of course I never said this like that back then, but I did leave notes, lots of angry notes.

Sometimes, there were these's.... incidents that happened that always brought my father to my room. Nerv has a lot of sexy looking female employees and sometimes I'd write myself a note so I could add them to the 'hot list'. Unfortunately I had a habit of writing down why I felt they deserved to be on the list and I'd sometimes go into a little more detail than necessary.

Of course this wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that I am a professional Baka and would lose these little notes around Nerv Inc. I knew I'd lost a note when all the male employees I saw would give me these sly smiles and weird phrase like 'Yo man, your right. I'd say it's a more of a 5 or maybe a 6' when I passed them in the halls.

My mind was always trying to figure out what 'it' was but then every female I'd see would promptly slap me for being a perv or asked why they weren't on the list. Eventually both sexes began to hedge bets on who'd be on the list and would go to all kinds of trouble trying to find it.

For the girls, I guess it was a popularity thing. if you could get the bosses introverted son to get out of his shell and notice you then you had to be hot. For the guys...well I'm not going to get into that. Let's just say the guys little bets were of a different nature.

Thankfully mother never found anyone of them but father did and when he'd make one of his surprise visits - and I do mean surprise. He could never just open the door -screw knocking, but he always either just busted in the place or sneak in like some devious fiend and call me out with that deadpan of his. I swear to you, that - shit - is - freaky. Do you know how many times I've pissed my pants from him doing that?

Every time, no lie. Which is probably why he continued to do it, all the while laughing behind those damn shades and that stupid cold, bastard mask of his.

Which is also probably one of the many reasons why I hate that bastard, but anyway.

The devil used to tell me that you have two types of underlings, and he always called them underlings, the dominate and those who want to be dominated. Most men believe themselves to be the former, but most are the latter. Women on the other hand are both and can even be so at the same time. That made all the sense of a squirrel going postal because some rodent stole his nuts.

And for those that need it, get your minds out of the gutter. ... 'stole his nuts.' you're all a bunch of perverts.

At any rate... I mulled over his advice a lot during our little walks in the park. Mother was an addict for the scenery and so always dragged us along, literally sometimes. Passers by would always comment on how much father and I seemed so much alike, replying with something close to 'Ah, look at that. Like father like son' or some such and we would always retort with 'Suck dick and rot, bitch!' or the like, which mother in turn would add with 'Stop being a Baka you Bakas!" and make us apologize, which we did.

So with apologetic mumbles and murderous deadpans, we expressed our regret and soon they expressed theirs to the Section 2 Agents who father had pick them up after mother had left.

What any of this had to do with my 'hot list' or why he always snuck in my room like that was beyond me. But it was just something that happened that I just had to take for what it was. Whatever it was.

"Oww! That hurt damnit!" The blow to the back of my head was reminiscent of one of mothers. But the voice was not.

"Then maybe you'll decide to pay attention next time and quit sending us into flashbacks." The Commander said as he stepped back to his earlier pose and everyone else held back their giggles. I was already planning on helping them with that. I knew of a certain chrome object that would fit perfectly down their bastard throats.

...wait a minute.

"How do you know about the flashbacks?" I questioned father. He couldn't possibly know about those.

"This is Nerv, we have a piece of just about everything. Our 6 tax on flashbacks is one of our major trade ventures."

"Yeah, but you aren't actually trading anything, so how does that work? You just have a tax on it."

Orange shades turned and glared. "Do you want to get shot?"

"I'm just saying..." "

"Third Child."

".. it doesn't make much sense that's all."

"I'll ask you again. Do you want to get shot?"

"No, sir."

"Then shut up."

I did and father's glare cut off the rest of the clan's snickers.

"Do you have anything else to report?"

"No, sir."

"So you attained the stolen item, but you allowed the perpetrators to not only get away but to activate the device as well?"

"Um, well... sort of."

"Sort of?"

"Well, yeah, they got away and I guess they did kind of activate it."

"You guess?"

"Um..."

"Shinji."

"Yes."

"Shut up."

"Hey, don't get pissy with me here. You're the one who didn't tell us anything about the damn thing. We didn't even know it could be activated let alone what it actually does. You've got no right to get all uppity."

From the looks of it he was getting pretty mad. Rather hard to tell when he never actually changed his expression. Not even lifted that one eyebrow, but I know the man so I knew he wasn't pleased.

Of course I didn't take a lot of common sense to know that if someone one got all loud in your face you'd probably be a little incensed by the end of it.

I also knew he wasn't talking because he was slightly surprised. This wouldn't count as the first time I've called him out, but those times are far and apart.

So my outburst was not just enough to get his attention but also enough to let him know that his next words would have to come with more weight. Cause currently, I wasn't taking that bull.

"And who do you think you are anyway, the Neo Willy Wonka?" I ended my little rant.

"No, wrong megalomaniac."

"Whatever."

"Um, excuse me sir?" It seemed Misato had a question. This could be bad, but then again she was the Operations Director, so I could've been wrong.

"Why didn't you make this one as fluffy as the other plushies?"

... Silence greeted her.

Or it would have been if we all didn't pull out our pieces and blasted rounds at her screaming to her fleeing form as she ran out the door that 'it wasn't a Damn Plushie you Baka!'

"Regardless of it's shape... " Father was saying. "the item has it's value and it's dangers. Now that its powers have been unleashed we must now prepare for the oncoming onslaught."

"One of the men who stole it, said that once activated it would make that earlier pokemon riot seem small in comparison." Rei offered in her quite deadpan which was far more tolerable than father's deep gruff deadpan.

"He is right. I am assigning you a new mission. Let us hope that you will accomplish this one with more efficient results."

"That depends on how well you... "

"Shut up Shinji." Well, damn. He just cut me off.

"I'm charging you with the safety of Nerv Inc and its affiliates and the destruction of Smurf Armed Forces."

'Smurf Armed Forces?' One of my inner voices was saying.

'The old guy most have lost it.'

'It's those shades, they've confused his mind, making him think its day time when it's not.'

'Who cares how, the old guy's completely lost it.'

I was hard pressed to come up with any good arguments to bring up against them. Maybe father was crazy.

... ok, crazier than usual.

"You'll have full access to Nerv's Armory and Section 3 Weapons and Equipment division's classified projects and all other divisions will fully support your effort. To put it plainly for your simple minds. I'm giving you full authority to do whatever you want, to whoever you want as long as you keep the Business safe and you deal with the coming menace. Do you understand?"

I had to wipe a few drops of spittle from my mouth before answering. Full authority to all Sections and the classified gear. Sure he just insulted us, but whatever. The old man was crazy alright, but I couldn't have given a damn.

"Yeah, sure, we understand."

"Then report to Dr. Akagi and get to work."

/BI/

We were in the employees lounge again which had been recently repaired for some reason, trying to go over our next move.

"I can't believe he just did that?" Aida was saying from his chair. Wheel chair that is.

"Yeah, me too. I mean, full authorization. Hell, we can do anything we want!" Aida's spiky haired counter part added.

"Yes, but at the cost of the Clan's safety."

"Calm down Wondergirl, we'll keep the place intact. But everything else is up for grabs." I could already see that some serious restraining was needing to be placed in effect.

"We should probably try to get more organized. We really don't know what we're up against." That was from Hikari, always with a cool head..

"Horaki's right. Those Care Bears weren't all that easy to deal with..."

"and neither were the pokemon." The sisters agreed. And now it was time for the finish.

"True. So here's the plan. Since it seems that we're going up against an army, we're going to need more man power. Kudi and his people should be able to help us out. I'll have to ask Mana if she can find some extra people from her end. Kaji should be able to hook us up with most of our numbers if needed. But for now, we should keep it small and simple."

I waited as everyone seemed to agree with my logic.

"Next is firepower. I'm sure Dr. Akagi will have something interesting for us to play with or Miss. Ibuki will. Either way we'll have to hit them up and then the regular Armory. Plenty of Ammo will be a must. And no more splitting up like last time."

Every nodded off to that one as well. The girls were still a little pissed about out last little session at Kudi's place. Luckily no one was hurt. I had to give the girls credit. They had amazing evasion skills.

Tuning back into the conversation I could here Kensuke going on about how they should go hit some Military base or whatnot for the goods, but Asuka wasn't having it.

"Is that right?" The German girl was saying.

"Well, yeah." Ken answered.

"Well, I think you need to shoot me again Adia cause I'm still breathing."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" I was kind of thinking the same thing.

"What kind of question is that, Stooge? What didn't you understand?"

"You can't answer my question with a question! It defeats the point, devil!" Yep, this was going to get ugly.

"Whatever, you had just better watch you mouth Baka!"

"Don't give me that whatever crap! You come in here trying to give me some smart ass comment that doesn't even make sense, it's not funny and basically has no relation to anything and I stress ANYTHING with what we were talking about."

"Your point, Aida?"

"My point is this, don't come to me with that weak bull, alright?"

"Is that a question?"

"Did you even listen to any of what I just said?"

"What the hell do you think?"

"You are suck a lame."

"Whatever."

"Still weak, and you're supposed to be the genius?"

"Whatever!"

"Will you two shut up!" Idiots, I swear. We had for more important things to worry about.

The battle wasn't over it seemed and our true enemy was on its way. It was obvious why no one every said all you had to worry about was crime in Tokyo -3. But man, why couldn't I find better help?