Holy… It's up to ten…! I had no idea I'd go this far… I really did slow down a lot… All last week, I had to wake up early to go to work, by the time I got back from work, I had to go to school, by the time I came back from school I had to go to sleep so I could wake up in time for work… It's like a vicious cycle… Uh, yeah… Anyway, for this chapter, I'm going to go AU about halfway though… I mean, this whole thing is like that, but I mean even more. Why? Because this angel sucks. The last fight was pretty boring and this one's even worse. It's a big spider-thing that cries on them… How cool could I get that to be? In exchange for this boring fight, I'll replace it with a hopefully less-boring one. What else? Oh yeah… I might have to change the rating… There's a whole lotta violence later on… I guess that's enough… here's ten.
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"You're finally here?" a dark figure asked of another as they stood in the shadows.
"Hmm… and your report?" a second one answered as they arrived.
"They've retrieved it."
"Oh? And where was it exactly?"
"The south pole."
"So it's moving along as expected…"
"Yes."
"Is there anything else of importance?"
"No."
"Then we'll continue this later, I have school tomorrow."
"Of course." The first shadow answered as the second disappeared.
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"Ugh…" Shinji muttered as he sat up on his bed. Rubbing his eyes, he walked out into the hallway.
"Out of the way!" Asuka shouted as she ran past him.
"What the…?" he muttered.
"Move it, Shinji!" Misato yelled as she passed him as well.
"Wark war wawark!" PenPen squawked as he ran through.
"What the hell is going on?" As he arrived at the kitchen, it all made sense.
"Those idiots…" Shinji muttered as he walked over to a large cardboard container. "They just had to eat that didn't they…?"
"Damn you, Shinji!" What the hell is that?" Asuka and Misato shouted once they returned.
"What?" he asked.
"That… thing!" They yelled, pointing at the box on the table.
"Uhh… breakfast?" he said, grabbing one and eating it.
"How can you eat that!" they demanded.
"You mean you can't?"
"Of course not! It nearly killed me with one bite!" Misato told him as she gestured towards it.
"What a waste..." he muttered as he shook his head.
"Answer me, damn it!"
"Sigh… didn't you notice?"
"Notice what!" they demanded.
Sighing again, Shinji lowered the lid and pointed at a very obvious bio-hazard symbol.
"Oh…" "War…" the other three muttered, mentally deciding never to allow Shinji to order anything again.
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"Hmph" Asuka suddenly huffed out as she looked out the school window. 'What the hell are those two talking about…?' She wondered to herself as she saw Shinji and Rei sitting by the big tree and talking with each other.
"What's wrong?" Her friend Hikari questioned.
"What!" Asuka replied quickly. "It's nothing."
"Nothing?" Hikari asked slowly. "It sure looked like something to me…"
"Look," Asuka informed her. "I said it's nothing, so just drop it already!"
"Hmm…" Hikari muttered, glancing knowingly towards her. "Are you sure it's not because of something or… someone?"
"Listen to me already, Hikari! I already told you I wasn't looking at Shinji so leave me alone!"
"I never mentioned him. Not even once."
"Uhh…" She stalled, blushing crimson.
"But was that it…?"
"Argh!" Asuka shouted out and stormed out of the classroom.
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"Ikari?" Rei called out to him as they sat by the same tree they normally used.
"Huh…? Oh, what's up…?" He slurred as he awoke.
"I…" She began, lowering her book. "I am not certain that I will survive much longer… it seems as though every battle is far tougher than the last… Even the last fight, if not for you, there's no way I would have made it…"
"Yeah… things are getting rather tough…." He admitted. "Unfortunately, that's the way events have begun to unfold… Perhaps if you knew the consequences of your decisions, you could have chosen an easier path…"
"Is it… still possible to survive?" She asked as her head lowered.
"Of course… Life is always possible to maintain." He stopped for several seconds to gather his thoughts then added "the hard part of it is to keep from dying, but if you can manage that, then there's no way you can lose."
"Keep from dying…" She asked, turning to look at him, "is that not the same thing?"
"It seems that way but, so long as there's someone left at the end, you won't disappear."
"And you?"
"No." He told her and turned away. He bowed his head as he said, "as soon as I go down, I'm staying down."
"Hmm… I just hope I can be there the day you fall." She replied
"Why?" He demanded, turning to look at her. "So you can mock me in my final moments?"
"Of course." She answered.
"Then I'll just take you with me." Shinji threatened.
"You wouldn't…" Rei replied slowly.
"And why not?" He asked.
"What happened to protecting me?" She asked of him, sounding hurt.
"It doesn't count in this situation." He declared.
"And why is that?" the hurt tone in her voice being replaced with anger.
"Because… if you die… all you have to do is reload. Or cheat." He said.
"Cheat…?" She muttered as she realized the truth. "That's why you're so good, aren't you!"
"Oh crap… I said that out loud!" Shinji panicked.
"Damn you!" She shouted at him and struck him with her book "You'd better lend me that gameshark!"
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RING RING RING RING RING RING RING RING RING RING RING RING RING RING RING RING RING RING RING RING RING RING RING RING RING RING
"Would you answer that damn thing already!" Asuka demanded as Shinji's ring tone continued playing.
"What…?" he asked as he pulled his headphones off.
RING RING RING RING
"Shut that damned thing off!" She repeated.
"What the…? My phone's ringing…" he replied as he heard it.
"Man what an annoying ring-tone…" Asuka told Rei as they let Shinji trail behind while he spoke.
"Yes." She replied. "I have asked him to change it before but he has refused to do so."
"Why don't you just beat him up until he does?" Asuka asked of her.
"No. Violence is not the answer to every problem. It would be foolish to hit someone every time they refused to listen."
"Oh…" 'What the hell? Then why does she keep hitting him?'
"Sorry about that…" Shinji called out to them as he ran forward to catch up.
"Who was it?" Rei asked him.
"Umm… It wasn't anything important… Ahh!" he then shouted out as Rei tripped the leg closest to her and using the hand already behind him, grabbed the back of his head and drove his face into the sidewalk.
"What happened to violence not solving everything!" Asuka demanded as she witnessed another brutal display of violence from her.
"It doesn't." She replied. "It is extremely entertaining, though."
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"Huh…?" Shinji muttered as he ran his NERV ID through the scanner in front of the main entrance to headquarters to no effect.
"Hmm…" Rei echoed as she was met with the same results.
"What are you two doing!" Asuka demanded as she approached the terminal and ran her own card through. "Eh?" She exclaimed while repeatedly sliding her card through.
"Stupid thing! It must be broken!" She declared after five minutes of trying to open all the gates.
"Just where did she graduate from, anyway…?" Shinji asked Rei as he witnessed her absolute lack of intelligence while dealing with the problem.
"What was that!" Asuka demanded as she overheard him.
"Isn't it obvious!" He shouted back. "How many people use these doors on a regular basis? Hmm? Are you truly so stupid as to believe that, somehow, all of the doors just happened to break down exactly as we arrived?"
"Shut up already!" She retorted. "They don't work, I figured that out already!"
"Pay attention, dammit! I'm telling you they can't all break at the same time!"
"Ikari…" Rei said from behind him.
"Oh crap…" he muttered as she repeated the same maneuver on him as before. "I guess it's broken now…" He said after his head smashed through the panel.
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"This doesn't work either!" Asuka complained as she attempted to use the small panel by a door in a nondescript corridor in NERV.
"This is odd…" Rei commented.
"Has something happened in the Geofront!" Asuka asked.
"A natural assumption." Rei responded.
"Maybe we should call headquarters…" Shinji suggested as he pulled out his phone. "Hello? Yeah. Well, I suppose so… Can you get here…? Alright then, well, bye…"
"So what's going on?" Asuka asked him.
"What?" Shinji replied.
"What did the command center say?"
"The heck would I know? I tried to order a pizza."
"You're an idiot…" She muttered and tried calling herself.
"This doesn't work either!" Asuka kept complaining as she discovered that it was now the phones that didn't work.
"Would you stop saying that already!" Shinji demanded. "You said that exact same thing a few minutes ago!"
"Yeah well, they still don't work!"
"So what now…?" Shinji wondered.
As Rei heard him, she was reminded of something and pulled a small red envelope from her bag.
"Oh!" Asuka exclaimed as she remembered as well.
"What are you looking for?" Shinji asked her.
"What do you think!" She shouted at him. "I'm looking for my emergency manual!"
"Why?" He asked. "Aren't we supposed to report to NERV incase of an emergency?"
"How did you know!" She demanded.
"Isn't it obvious? Unless the instructions say to go home and wait until the super-secret organization decides to reveal it's problems to the rest of the world in hopes that one of us watches the news at the exact moment that story is aired an then contact the others to figure out what to do after headquarters could have been completely annihilated by something we could have stopped in our gigantic bio-mechanical robots, there's not much else to do but go to headquarters ourselves, right?"
"Umm… yeah…" Asuka admitted.
"That is correct…" Rei added as she slowly hid the manual in her bag.
"But before that," Asuka said, trying to recover her lost composure. "We're going to have to decide which of us will be this group's leader. Naturally, I have the best qualifications! Any objections!"
"Hell yeah!" Shinji replied. "There's no way I want to follow someone who took nearly a half-hour to figure out there was an emergency!"
"What!"
"In place of you, I declare myself leader!" Shinji claimed.
"I do not think so." Rei interrupted as she knocked Shinji to the ground. "If anyone is to be the leader, it shall be me."
"Why you!" Shinji demanded.
Turning towards him, she proceeded to mercilessly beat him into silence. "Any objections?" Rei asked Asuka as she finished.
"Not at all…" She replied.
"This is the access port for route seven." Rei informed the others as they approached a big metal door with R-07 painted on it.
"But the doors don't work." Asuka complained.
"Moron…" Shinji said. "It's obviously supposed to be opened manually."
"Exactly!" Asuka countered. "It has to be opened manually."
"Damn…" Shinji muttered as he realized their intentions.
----------
"Where the hell are we?" Shinji wondered as they walked along a dark corridor. "This usually only takes two minutes… We're lost aren't we…?"
"Shut up, Ikari." Rei demanded. "We are not lost. It is taking longer because the emergency passage is long and winding."
"Liar. We've been walking in a straight line. Just admit we're lost!"
"We are not lost." She repeated and kicked him into the wall. "There is a shortcut here."
Walking over to an air-duct, she pointed at it. "We can get there through here."
"Right…" Shinji muttered. "One thing I've always wondered was how air-ducts can stay so clean… And why would an organization as top-secret as this one make it so easy to break in?"
"…" Rei responded as she tried to think of any kind of response and, failing to do so, replied in the usual manner. That is by driving her fist into his face.
"Now what do we do?" Asuka asked as they arrived at a fork in the road.
"Why is it called a fork?" Shinji said. "It's not even remotely close to a fork… You can't just pick it up and fork things with it so why call it that? Why not a spoon or a watermelon or something…?"
"A watermelon?" Asuka asked.
"Why not? It makes as much sense to say 'they arrived at a watermelon in the road' as a fork, doesn't it?"
"Umm… yeah, sure… just call it a watermelon in the road…"
"What watermelon?" Shinji asked her. "There aren't any watermelons around here… Honestly Asuka, this is an emergency, there's no time to mess around like that… We have to concentrate if we want to get there in time to help if anything's wrong. Save the bad jokes for later."
"What the hell!" She demanded "You're the one who said that!"
"Yeah, sure… Just keep thinking that."
"If you two are done being stupid, we should head to the left." Rei said.
"To the left?" Shinji asked as he turned to look towards her.
"Yes." She replied.
"In that case, I'll go to the right."
"I am the leader so I order you to go to the left."
"No way! With your sense of direction you'd just get us lost again!"
"Fine… Go your own way. I'll be at the command center for when you get there."
"Right…" he replied as he walked off.
"And you?" Rei asked. "Which path do you choose?"
"I'm not following that idiot, so I'll go to the left." Asuka said.
----------
'Good, they're gone…' Shinji thought to himself as he heard their footsteps recede into the darkness. Stepping out of the shadows he had concealed himself in, he ran in the opposite directions as he pulled out his phone.
"Hey, you there?" he asked the person he had called. "Yeah, I'm alone… So what's wrong...? Are you sure…? Right… I'll be there in a few minutes… No, just wait… How many…? Okay, just stay out of sight for now…"
As he traveled down the corridor, he stepped through an access port hidden along the wall. He arrived at a near maze of machinery but he wound his way through with an ability that could only be possible if the person had completely memorized the layout of the location.
'So they're finally making a move…?' Shinji thought. 'It's about damn time… I was starting to think I was wrong…'
Arriving at an open passage, he ran forward and leapt over the small piles of debris littering the ground. 'Looks like an explosion…' he realized as he stepped though a collapsed wall.
'Gotta hurry…' As he ran over a fallen beam, he leapt over the rubble of another wall, landing on a large concrete slab. He jumped off of it and ran along the wall for the length of the room.
'Where the hell are they!' he demanded as he ran through a cloud of dust which had just recently been part of the building. 'There!' he exclaimed as he heard gunfire thundering ahead of him. In the adjacent area, the same man who had confronted him in the graveyard was pinned down by three others. He was trapped behind a wall of rubble due to the hail of bullets flying above and beside him.
'Hmph…' Shinji thought. 'I told that idiot to wait…' Seeing a fourth man rounding the barricade, he decided to take immediate action. Sliding a knife from within his sleeve, he rushed forward and, before the man even realized the person beside him, he collapsed to the floor, a crimson spray leading the way.
"The hell?" One of the original three exclaimed as they witnessed their comrade's fate.
As Shinji leapt free from the corpse, he ran towards the one farthest from the others.
"Ahh!" The man shouted out as a blade was thrust into his skull. Shinji used the imbedded knife as a handle to twist the man into become a shield from the spray of bullets rushing towards him. He rolled to the side of the lead-riddled body and, with the spin generated by his movement, launched the small blade into the man's chest.
As the final one opened fire on him, Shinji ducked under the man's aim and, sidestepping to the left several steps from the soldier's current position, he rushed forward and drove the heel of his foot into his enemy's knee. As his opponent crumpled forward, Shinji relieved him of the pistol strapped to his waist and imbedded a single round into his forehead.
"You alright, Gehirn" He called out to the man as pulled his knife free.
"Yeah, I'm fine." He responded. "But what the hell was that? Are you hung-over or something? That was really sloppy…"
"You're one to talk… How the hell did you get yourself surrounded like that?"
"I was ambushed…" Gehirn replied as he dusted himself off. "Wait a minute… Since when do you use weapons?"
"No choice…"
"It's gone that far?"
"Yeah… So how many left?"
"There's about seven in the next room, not sure how many after that…"
"Any idea what they want?" Shinji then asked, checking for spare ammunition for his newly acquired weapon.
"No. Our orders were to eliminate all intruders." Gehirn replied as he searched through the corpses for a weapon.
"Right… Well, let's get going." As Shinji finished telling him, he walked over to the entrance of the next area.
"You have a plan, right?" Gehirn asked him.
"Obviously." Shinji replied, sounding slightly annoyed at his doubt.
"Really! What is it?"
"Run in, kill everyone, leave."
"That's it." Gehirn questioned incredulously.
"Do you have a problem with it?" Shinji demanded, pointing his gun at Gehirn's head.
"Not at all." He answered quickly.
Slipping into the room, Shinji immediately took stock of his surroundings. Gehirn was right in that there were seven adversaries in the room. What they hadn't counted on was the machine-gun nest which had been set up at the far end of where Shinji had entered.
Assessing the danger he was in, he jumped to the side, dodging the oncoming fire by millimeters.
'Dammit!' Shinji cursed inwardly as he felt a round penetrate his foot. A single bullet entered at the base of his ankle, shattering it completely.
The slowly oozing blood from his wound was reflected in his eyes in a bright crimson hue.
The rage of seeing himself injured began to slowly imbue Shinji.
The far too familiar sight of red unlocked the darker side which he had desperately tried to destroy.
As bloodlust began rising in his mind, it banished all logical thoughts from it.
To say he had become an animal would be incorrect.
Never has a beast walked on land whose sole purpose was death. Born not to live, but to kill.
Never has a beast walked on land been imbued with such absolute wrath. Killed not to rest, but to suffer.
Never has a beast walked on land who could now stand against him.
"Shinji, are you alright!" Gehirn called out to him. "My god…" He exclaimed as he realized what was about to occur.
"Ha ha ha ha ha…" Shinji's beastly laugh rumbled across the small room as he stood. His opponents, not bothering to figure out what was happening, opened fire on him. Shinji did not so much as attempt to dodge. All rounds hit true. The pummeled and pierced through him, his blood coming down in torrents from the countless injuries he now had. Shinji, however, continued to laugh…
In a split second, he was twenty feet further in, with his right arm imbedded in the chest of a man. With a sick, sadistic smile, Shinji looked into his eyes as he crushed his heart.
"My god!" Another unfortunate soldier screamed out as they witnessed Shinji lick some of the blood from his hand.
That was to be that man's final words as Shinji ripped part of his spine out from the front of his neck.
As a third opened fire on him, he turned and walked slowly towards him, as if he was not aware of the surely fatal hits he was experiencing.
As the clip in his gun ran dry, so did his blood as it drained from the two halves which now lay on the floor.
It took only another man's arms being ripped off of his body for the remaining three to scream in terror and run in absolute fear from the demon that now faced them.
Shinji leapt towards their retreating backs.
He caught one of them, a young woman, and proceeded to drive his hand through the back of her head.
As the other two turned back to look at the distance between them and the hell-spawn behind them, they were caught in Shinji's grip. He grasped them both by the neck and lifted them upward, looking into their eyes as his iron grip enclosed them, shattering their spines simultaneously.
Dropping the two limp corpses to the side, Shinji slowly made his way forward. Leaving a large trail of blood in his wake, most of it his own.
"You bastard!" A man who had witnessed his friends' brutal end shouted out as he launched a hand-grenade at him.
"Ha ha…" Shinji chuckled as it detonated against him.
"Did I get the monster?" the soldier wondered as he saw part of the roof above Shinji collapse. His answer was given in the form of his head rolling down the corridor.
Shinji staggered forward, the blast having done serious damage to him. He was so intent in where he was going, that he completely missed the woman who was cringing on the floor to the side of the main path. As the blood continued to drain from him, so did the bloodlust which had enveloped him up to that point.
Not because his rage was fading, it was his life which was slowly leaving him.
"Very impressive!" A voice called out to him from farther along the corridor.
Shinji looked up but could not discern more than a dark shape due to the blood seeping into his eyes. Knowing he lacked the time needed to banter with his opponent, he charged forward, fully intending this one to be added to the body count.
'What the hell?' the man thought as he saw Shinji charge towards him. He saw his fist swing towards his heart and merely stepped back to completely avoid the strike.
Shinji followed through with a left to the face which his opponent neatly transformed into a move which threw him onto the ground.
As he slowly rose, he again charged the man, the same strike, the same target. This time the man moved behind Shinji and delivered a powerful strike, smashing him into and through the wall he hit.
"What the hell is this!" the man demanded. "You're nothin' but a god-damned animal!"
He moved over to Shinji's slowly rising form and kicked him upward. Shinji struck and fractured the ceiling and, as he fell downward, the man positioned himself underneath him. As he descended to about a foot above the man, he struck upward, slamming Shinji in the stomach with the full force of his strike added onto the rebounded force of his previous kick.
The sound of splintering bones was audible after the initial strike, Shinji lay suspended above the ground, a small amount of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. It was only a small amount because he had lost most of what he had.
"Don't you dare tell me that's it!" the man demanded of Shinji's unconscious form. "I've spent my entire life striving to be as great and powerful as you were… the stories I heard about you were the only thing that kept me alive… and this is it?"
The man dropped him to the ground, kicking him away from him as one would a piece of trash.
"This berserker form… According to what I had heard, you never used it… Your power was said to be so great that no one else could even stand against you… The men who made us all were even afraid…" The man's tirade abruptly ended as he saw Shinji rising again. The man's eyes went red as his berserker rage encircled him.
"You truly wish to test yourself?" Shinji asked of him.
"Grr… I will kill you…!" he shouted to him.
"I wish that were possible…" he replied as he stood to face him. The red light was gone from his eyes, though they were not back to their normal hue either. From within his eyes shone something calming yet infinitely more frightening than the murderous intent they previously held.
"Raagh!" The man shouted out as he ran at Shinji with even greater force than he had previously showed. His fist was neatly caught by Shinji's lightly outstretched palm. There was a moment of absolute silence as the strike connected, then a sickening crunch as all of the bones in the man's arms were pulverized in an instant.
"What the hell are you!" he demanded, the extreme pain of his injury having cut through his rage.
"I am no one." He replied to the kneeling man before him. "I am naught but a messenger…"
"What!" the man exclaimed as he heard him. As realization dawned on him, all of the small bits of information he had gathered, every scrap of rumor collected on the one standing before him suddenly fell into place. "I… I see…" the man said.
Shinji smiled down on him, nodded slowly, and placed his hand on the man's head. He muttered something to the man.
The one kneeling before him smiled and, tears coursing freely down his face, muttered a faint "amen" as his skull was crushed.
"Shinji, what the hell happened!" Gehirn demanded as he walked into the room.
"Nothing." Shinji replied. "It's all collateral damage. That's it for our mission, right?"
"Yeah, that's all… Anything you want me to tell them for the debriefing?" he asked.
"Yeah…" Shinji muttered. "Tell them this job sucks."
"Ha ha ha… Right, you might want to get cleaned up… looks like you're bleeding to death."
"Yeah… Who would have though bodies bled that much…" Shinji complained.
"Oh yeah…" Gehirn responded. "Do you have any ideas how many suits I've lost to blood-stains? Anyway, I've got to get going."
"I'll contact you later."
As Gehirn left, Shinji slumped against the wall.
'Damn…' he thought to himself. 'I'm all out… maybe I should have let her know beforehand…' Shinji's strength finally left him and he completely slid downward.
'So… this is it…? If this is what I've been wanting, why am I so afraid…? I'm sorry, Ayanami…' Shinji's thoughts went silent as he slipped into darkness…
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"How is he?" A voice asked another.
"I'm not entirely sure…" the second responded. "He lost a lot of blood… he had a few hundred bullets in him… he's got more broken bones than I'd willingly count…"
"But can you help him?" the first pleaded.
"Help him? Are you serious? Just who do you think I am!" the second demanded.
"You're just going to leave him like that?"
"Of course I am! I already did everything else."
"Oh… I see, Doctor Akagi…"
"Don't worry too much, Rei, I'm sure he'll be fine… You did inject him right when you found him, right? Then he'll pull through…"
"Yes…" She replied as she left the room. A single though running through her mind 'I almost lost him…'
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"Ugh…" Shinji muttered as he sat up. It was a few hours after his fight and he was in Ritsuko's lab.
"You're awake!" Ritsuko asked.
"Just where do you think you're going!" She then demanded as she saw him getting up. "There's no way I'm letting you leave in that condition!"
"I'm… fine." Shinji said.
"Are you stupid! You're half-dead!" She insisted.
"Halfway there…" was his only reply as he exited the room.
To be continued…
Um… yeah… that's it… Ugh… I have no idea why I did that… Was it good? Bad? I don't know… Anyway, the next angel's the one that infects the Magi so… I might go down the same path again… Well, only if what I did was any good… If I actually do it, though, I'll reveal a whole lot more about Shinji… Hmm… Should I or shouldn't I… Does anyone wonder what the hell happened in the fight? Well I'm not telling. Not yet, anyway… What else… Oh right, it'll still be funny. Or at least as funny as it's been… Uh, yeah… I think that's about it… Any questions, comments, suggestions, complaints, death threats, lawsuits, etc… let me know. I do my best to conform to the suggestions which have rarely been given, but even if I don't, they still influence stuff that happens later on… I have no idea what I'm saying anymore…
Later!