Creation began on 12-30-20
Creation ended on 02-06-21
Neon Genesis Evangelion
The Paradigm of Tokyo: Extracurricular Activity
A/N: How would you try to hide what you're doing from those that can't know the truth?
Shinji returned to Mr. Kaji's home the next day after school let out to begin what he understood was how to operate Big O; just because Big O chose him as its Dominus didn't mean Shinji had an innate knowledge on how to control the Megadeus. And so, here he was, sitting inside the cockpit and learning the basics of how to operate Big O after the circular screen in front of him lit up and read, CAST IN THE NAME OF GOD, YE NOT GUILTY.
To move the arms, use the joysticks, he thought as he moved the controls. To walk, move the pedals under my feet. To engage the rockets, press three buttons on either side. I think Big O was designed for land-based warfare based on its overall design. If there are other Megadai of different designs, Mr. Kaji and Ms. Katsuragi must know if they're around in other parts of the world. Of course, that's assuming my dream from last night was showing me possible threats.
Outside the cockpit of the Megadeus, Kaji and Misato were reviewing what Shinji had told them about a dream he had last night and what he learned from it.
"Big Venus," Misato uttered as she drew the face of the being Shinji had claimed spoke to him in his dream. "The soul of a great bird whose wings were plucked, forcing it to regress into the beast it once was before it gained the gift of flight."
"And this one that he described as a Frankenstein's Monster," Kaji added, looking at her description of the other being Shinji had recalled in some detail. "Your father had only obtained the design specs of two other Megadai, but there was no indication that they ever built."
"Not in this country, that's for sure. But if Shinji saw them and this Big Venus warned him of there being people that would seek her out to do something worse than what had occurred fifteen years ago, then it's possible that these other Megadai do exist."
"It would explain the names of the other two Megadai that didn't look like Big O; these…Big Duo and Big Fau units."
"Which would indicate that there are at least four of them. Three intended for warfare…and one that was probably meant to oversee their progress. Based solely on their designs, Big O, and those like him, was intended for land warfare, meaning he was limited to wherever he could move. The design specs for this Big Duo suggests that it was intended for aerial combat, assuming that it could fly for a limited time. And the third one, Big Fau, was meant for naval engagements. Land, air and sea."
"Still, the big question behind the mystery of the Megadai is the most important one: Who would want to create them for warfare…and why?"
"War is an ambition, Misato, a desire or choice to engage in conflict with other people that have agendas or beliefs that you may not agree with. War is Hell."
"Another form of Hell."
"Yeah."
-x-
From afar, you couldn't see the domes that covered the cities of Japan. When you were miles out at sea on a ship, you couldn't see the massive constructs that covered the places that were on the coast. That was what some people wanted to believe whenever they felt the need to go to another place for a while and forget that they lived under a false sky on a regular basis. But for this young lady as she, among with several others on the ship out at sea heading towards Tokyo, it was just another belief that was getting old.
The girl stood out among the people, with her pageboy hair being a pale shade of blue, her skin being chalk-white and her eyes being red as blood. Her attire consisting of a strange, greenish-blue dress that looked like it belonged to a school (A/N: Basically, the school uniform from the Tokyo-3 middle school). If anything, people would've said that this girl didn't belong in any sense at all, but they minded their own business and left the girl alone. Whatever her reason or reasons were for being here were entirely her own.
Where are you hiding? She wondered.
-x-
"…Are they all referred to as being Bigs?" Shinji asked Kaji and Misato after his basic course with Big O was done for the day, and he was looking at the incomplete design specs for two of the Megadai he had seen in his dream. "I mean, it's pretty obvious that they're all probably close to fifty meters, judging from the fact that Big O is big enough to hide inside this building. But…why does each one have to have 'Big' in their designations?"
"That's just how whoever made them chose to designate them, Shinji," Misato suggested. "However, each Big has to obey the laws of physics in the fact that they are all made of metal and conform to the size and mass factors involved in their creation. They can only move as fast as their construction allows them to."
Shinji then picked up another rice ball and ate it.
"What are your parents like, Shinji?" Kaji asked him.
"My parents? They're…just parents."
"No hobbies? No social clubs?" Misato questioned.
"My mother's a doctor at Tokyo General and my father's a chef at a local diner," he explained. "There's nothing of any particular interest in either of them. And…there's this big gap between the three of us…and it just seems to fill up with whatever it is that we don't say to or know about each other."
"A lot of families are like that," Kaji stated. "There's this lack of sociality between members. Some believe it was like this before the domes appeared fifteen years ago."
"It'd be nice if my parents and I just had one conversation like regular people. They don't even seem to actually like what they do for a living; a woman that cuts into people because she doesn't know what else to do and a man that makes dishes at a small diner seems to make for small talk…or nothing worth talking about."
"My old man and I barely spoke," Misato told Shinji. "It was mostly his fault. I can't forget what happened, though. It was the aftermath of whatever it was that happened fifteen years ago…but it was like a nightmare I couldn't wake up from."
"What happened?" Shinji asked her.
"Burning light. Cold air. We were in the South Pole, somewhere in the Antarctic, and something happened that I ended up being caught up in. And then…he carried what remained of me to some room and had me hooked up to some machines and for the next two years, I was being slowly, painfully, pieced back together. Oh, how there were many times I had wished he would just pull the plug on whatever it was that he was using to keep me alive…because I had never felt myself in such agony. But he couldn't let me go. For three years, I didn't even recognize my face every time I looked in the mirror. The worst part of being a cyborg is knowing the things I can no longer do."
Shinji was no fool when it came to knowing the drawbacks of being a cyborg. Even if the most minor of changes from being human and converted into a cyborg was just to save your life, there were the losses that were a feeling of loss of humanity. Loss of humanity was defined in many perspectives; for most men, it was represented by being fragile, loss of strength, of pride, of sensation in certain areas, and with women, it was the same thing, but with the added downside of losing your reproductive system if your conversion stripped you of that part of your body. Yes, for those that were turned into cyborgs just to save their lives, they would have to live with knowing that they could never have children of their own, a major blow to their hearts and souls if they had such desires.
"I am sorry you feel that way, Ms. Katsuragi," he expressed.
"It's okay, though," she responded. "I wasn't seeing anyone, as far as I can recall. And at this point in my life, it no longer bothers me."
Except it still does, Kaji thought; Misato could say that she was fine with the knowledge that being a cyborg meant that she could never have children until her pale skin was see-through, he knew that if she could go back to being completely human, with all her organs and limbs intact, she'd go start her own family once she met the right guy for herself. It bothers every man or woman that ends up converted into a cyborg to save their lives.
"Um, hypothetical question?" Shinji then spoke.
"Go ahead," Kaji told him.
"What if the Bigs weren't just intended to face each other? What if they were…loosely intended to face something else?"
"Face something else?" Misato questioned. "Like what? Like monsters? Like in the old films?"
"Yeah."
"Then we'd be in something like out of a comic book or film."
"And you'd be the reluctant hero, Shinji," Kaji added in. "You…and Big O."
Shinji sighed and pondered how to deal with that…if such a possibility were to ever occur.
-x-
She walked down the streets and found herself standing in front of a small diner. She had been informed that this location was one of five in the file she was given. This diner was the workplace of Gendo Rokubungi-Ikari, the husband of Yui Ikari and the father of Shinji Ikari.
In a world affected by global amnesia, she thought as she entered the diner, people would give anything to remember what happened long ago.
"Welcome," greeted a tomboyish woman with dark brown hair and an apron that read "I (Heart) Tokyo Cuisine". "How may I help you?"
"I'm looking for Gendo Ikari," the blue-haired girl explained. "Does he work here?"
-x-
Shinji returned home, but found it was empty. Usually, his father would be back two hours before his mother, but neither was around. There was no note tacked on the wall calendar or the refrigerator to indicate that there was a change in their work schedules.
"Where are they?" He wondered as he dropped his backpack onto the floor in his room.
Ring! The wall-mounted phone in the hallway rung, and he picked up.
"Ikari residence," he greeted. "Shinji Ikari, speaking."
"Shinji?" He heard his mother's voice on the other end. "Shinji, it's your father."
"What is it? What's wrong?" He asked.
"Your father was attacked at the diner," Yui revealed to him. "Someone attacked him and beat him into a coma."
Shinji dropped the phone and took a while to process this. And then he looked out the window of his room, seeing that it was still light out. The hospital was several blocks away.
"Shinji?" His mother uttered on the dangling phone beside him. "Shinji?"
He reached down at picked it up.
"Sorry," he apologized to her. "Where is he now?"
-x-
The father was only one of several targets, but she would get to the rest in due time. A message had to be sent to those that were next, and the message was how they would be neutralized for their former involvements. It didn't matter if none of them could remember anything from before what occurred fifteen years ago. The ones that could wouldn't allow for any measure of discrimination in this case, no matter the circumstances. They had the resources, the manpower and the conviction to seek out retribution for all that were involved.
"Gendo Rokubungi-Ikari has been handled for the time being," the bluenette had informed her superior on her cell phone, standing atop a roof in the Nishi-Shinjuku district. "Who is next on the target list?"
"Wait for one week from today," her superior responded to her, "and then target his wife for her involvement. Make sure she meets a severe end. Ensure no witnesses."
"Understood."
Hanging up, the phone, the girl looked up at the dome that enclosed the whole of Tokyo and then took out a photograph from her dress' left pocket. In the picture were ten people, most of which had been crossed out, leaving only three faces unscathed to the girl's perception. They were of Gendo Ikari, Yui Ikari, and another woman that possessed reddish-blond hair.
Neutralize the people responsible, she thought. The memories of the past are a nightmare that can never be forgiven due to the cruel intentions of those that had something unjust in mind for the rest of the world…and the scars are ever present.
-x-
Yui didn't want Shinji to see his father after discovering that he'd been beaten almost to death. All anyone that was able to avoid getting assaulted by the culprit responsible for putting her husband in a body cast could tell her was that his attacker was a girl with blue hair, red eyes, and was wearing what looked like a school uniform, but there was no school in the nation that had girls wearing a uniform like what had been described to Yui. And then, there was the reason behind the attack; witnesses just saying that the girl told Gendo that "it wasn't personal", whatever "it" was that drove the girl to pummel him. This left Yui wondering who would want to harm her husband and why. Or if, if it was even a possibility, the attack was not meant to hurt Gendo, but to hurt Yui herself; if someone wanted to cause her problems, they could've easily made a complaint against her, assuming this was even related to her or the hospital.
"How is he doing?" One of her friends asked her.
"Both his arms and right leg are broken," she explained the current state of her husband to him. "Three broken ribs, a ruptured spleen, a fracture in his skull and second-degree burns on his arms and back. He's gonna be on sedation until he recovers from most of his injuries. It's a miracle that he's still alive after what this girl did to him."
"Are we even sure this was a girl that did this?"
"What do you mean?"
"The last any of us ever heard or witnessed, a girl couldn't beat up a forty-eight-year-old man without help from others, like a gang of thieves…or if she was on something, like steroids. One girl, able to beat a grown man into a pulp and then get away without anyone knowing where she went? She's either the luckiest girl on the planet…or she's something else entirely."
Yui had to take that into consideration, but there were just too many questions and not enough answers to go around to quell her curiosity.
-x-
Learning about how to operate Big O under the guise of an after school activity was one way to excuse Shinji's whereabouts after he leaves school and goes to Mr. Kaji's, but knowing that his father was attacked and would be in the hospital until kami-knew-when was not something he was happy to hear about. He checked his watch again, sighing that it would be after ten when his mother got back.
"Often the items we have at our disposals are the ones best overlooked," Kaji had told him after giving him the watch. "That will allow you to keep in contact with Misato and I should something, anything out of the new ordinary, happen. You can also use it to summon Big O during those times."
"What do you mean by summon Big O?"
"You'll learn the next time we meet."
Still, I can't tell anyone about this, Shinji thought as he rummaged through the refrigerator for whatever leftovers they had. Just my luck that I get to do something different right now, but I can't share it with anyone.
Ding-dong! The doorbell to his apartment rang, and he went to see who it was.
"Who is it?" He asked, looking through the peephole, seeing a girl around his age.
"Just a new neighbor," she greeted, and he opened the door to see a bluenette standing in front of him, wearing a dark dress. "Hello, I'm Rei Ayanami. How are you this evening?"
To be continued…
A/N: How many stories are there in which someone charged with doing something important has to hide it in the form of something he simply does after school? And how many cases are there in a story where the hero, reluctant or otherwise, can't talk about it to anyone? This is probably the only story I will ever write that has Gendo as a victim at the hands of Rei, but this is only due to Gendo not being able to recall anything of what happened fifteen years ago. I hope the next chapter will feature a fight between Big O and whatever comes Shinji's way as he has to defend the country and its people. I hope y'all enjoy this chapter until next time. Peace.