A/N: in all honesty, i haven't watched evangelion in years, nor do i remember most of it aside from the basic idea behind the show. i never actually finished it by watching end of evangelion, either. that being said, i always thought the concept behind the show was compelling, and the morbid lore behind the EVA units, the angels, and the third impact fascinated me. because of that, and because I've recently been inspired by others who are rewriting other author's older works, i thought i'd enjoy rewriting this series myself. especially since I only have a vague memory of what exactly i'm basing my story off of, with new original characters and all. that being said, i think the basis is still so heavily and obviously evangelion that it wouldn't be fair to label this anything other than a fanfiction. with that, please enjoy this attempt to return to my writing hobby with a very experimental, low effort, more for myself than anything fanfic.
A lot of good stories start with trains, she thought. But being on one now, she couldn't envision herself as one of said stories. There was no sense of adventure. She didn't feel excited to be entering a new phase in life. She didn't even feel sad to be leaving or depressed about the move, she was indifferent, unsure of herself, and ready to have it all over with.
It was only 9 a.m. now, but she'd gotten up at 6. And regardless, she usually didn't get out of bed until 1. 9 was bad enough, and still early enough to have that terrible feeling of being awake far before usual. Not groggy, something like the opposite- feeling empty, like a pack of grey pills crushed under someone's boot. Everything rattled around inside her and nothing was in place. She felt dry and thirsty but putting anything into her stomach would upset it. She felt half-baked, and certainly not ready to move to a whole new town, start a whole new life, and have to remake all kinds of responsibilities.
The train clicked along the tracks at its usual rhythm and then bumped once, her and the other two passengers on the cart lifting gently out of their seats for a moment. She took the distraction as a sign to leave her thoughts and look around again.
They were almost there.
She was the only one getting off at this stop. There were only about 5 people on the train anyway. The other two passengers were both older, bordering on elderly, with little more than a small bag, a coffee, and a scarf.
She was 17, and surrounded by 2 duffle bags, a suitcase, and a backpack. She was wrapped in a sturdy but weathered coat, a purple and white scarf, and a knitted hat. Her gloved hands were laced together as she watched the mountain scenery go past the windows.
Finally the train started to slow, and she pushed her bangs aside from her forehead as she stood, gathered her bags, and silently walked out of the traincar doors once it stopped.
"Juno!"
She looked forward. A woman in nice clothes was waving happily to her. She stepped slowly towards her, taking in her surroundings as she did so.
They were up fairly high elevation wise. Not just the station, but the whole town. It slowly graduated towards a more flat and normal piece of land as you looked west, but here, she stood atop a concrete jungle. The train platform was concrete, as well as the stairs leading down into town, and the pillars acting as fences to separate the train line from the stops. Though very obviously fitted to man's needs, the concrete steps at least blended into the grass and dirt, flowing with the natural hill of the land.
Grass, nature, and fresh air regardless, it was freezing here. When she finally reached the other woman she pulled her coat a bit tighter and huffed.
"Yea, it's cold here, isn't it?" She looked around as if remembering where she was for a moment. "But we never get any snow. Just windy, and just-above-freezing." She gave a small chuckle.
"I'm Rena. It's nice to meet you."
Juno took her hand and shook it gently. "Nice to meet you too."
"You got everything?"
Juno nodded.
"Here, lemme help you with some of that."
Rena bent down and grabbed the two dufflebags, slinging one over each shoulder.
"It's a short walk, is that okay?"
Juno just nodded again.
Rena smiled at her and started off the platform, down the stairs-in-the-mountain. Juno followed.
Once out from under the overhang ceiling of the concrete train stop, the rest of town became visible, and the space around it too. There were plenty of valleys and hills around the town, plains and forests, but around each bend was a railroad and a hint of another town. It was almost rural, but the small towns all around were all connected, all urban and technologically sound, and each one was a contained hub of concrete and electricity.
Luckily, the walk was relatively short. After making it down the walkway, during which Juno looked around at the various alleyways and roads in town, they walked onto a more established looking road, past a few buildings, to the end of the street. There was a subway entrance there.
"Alright, NERV is just down these stairs." Rena said, giving Juno a smile over her shoulder as she started walking down. Juno looked around again before she followed. The townspeople, the few that were out, seemed to be looking at her now that she was near these stairs. She felt eyes on her as she walked here, but now they weren't even hiding it. They looked curious, but also like they knew something she didn't. Some of the older ones gave her looks that she swore seemed sympathetic in some way.
She turned away from them and walked down the stairs, unsure what to think of the citizens here anyway. It was a weird place. Isolated, but not rural. She couldn't tell whether these people were more like those of a small town or a huge city. The population was fairly large for any community in these days.
Rena's heels clicked rhythmically as she walked through the dark passageway. Juno hated the sound of heels. They were loud, and unnecessary, and they were painful to wear. As Rena finally reached the large security door at the end of the passage and began typing in a code, Juno looked down at her own holey sneakers. She scuffed the left one across the ground and sniffed her runny nose. Cold weather.
There was a satisfying beep, and the doors began to part. Juno walked a bit closer.
Once fully open, inside was a small hallway leading to another secure door, the only thing inside besides the two security guards on each side of it. They nodded to Rena when she walked in.
"Is this the new kid?" One of them asked.
"Yes! This is Juno." Rena said, stepping aside a bit and putting her hands on Juno's shoulders to present her. Juno prickled; she didn't like being touched, and she didn't know what to say anyway.
"Well, nice to meet you Juno. I hope you enjoy your time at NERV. You're very appreciated." He said. The other guard nodded, agreed.
Juno nodded awkwardly back. Rena squeezed her shoulders before letting go, giving the guards a glance with an expression on it Juno couldn't see.
The quieter guard said something into their radio and this door began to open, too. Once it did, NERV's interior was revealed. Bright fluorescent lighting and stark white walls and floors, some inlaid with glass that looked down the several stories of underground floors that NERV boasted. There were accents of blue in the walls and the floor, and some of the glass was dyed blue as well. There was a lobby to the right, and straight ahead was a large main desk area that stretched across the auditorium sized space. A few of the desk workers looked up at them when they walked in, a couple whispering of their arrival to the ones next to them without much discrepancy, though they were too far away for Juno to hear what they were saying.
Rena gave her a generic but genuine, "Welcome," and then she walked straight ahead. An elevator was on the far wall. Juno felt her stomach turning with nerves as they walked across the long open space.
This was a lot fancier than she was expecting. A lot more high tech, and a lot more professional. She didn't feel ready for this. She didn't even feel like she should be allowed here.
After what felt like too long, the two of them reached the far wall where the elevator waited. Rena pressed one of the buttons, one of the lower floors, Juno guessed, and it chimed after a few awkward moments of waiting. The two of them stepped in after a couple employees in white lab coats exited, headed for the lobby area.
"I figure you want to drop your stuff off in your room before I show you around, right?"
"Oh. Yeah." Juno mumbled.
"The living quarters are on the 11th floor, so whenever you want to head back to your room, hit 11. The floors are technically backwards, since we're going down instead of up. So you're 11 floors beneath the Earth's surface. Kinda cool, right?"
Juno was starting to feel a bit bad for being so uninterested, so she gave a very low effort smile and nodded. Rena seemed to like that.
"Hey, I finally got a smile out of you! Good, good. I'll probably be seeing you a lot, so I hope I don't bother you or anything. I'm technically assigned as you and the other pilots' supervisor right now."
Juno raised an eyebrow, though she didn't mean to show it so much on her face. Pilot?
Rena saw her confused expression and misunderstood. "Oh, you didn't know? There's a couple other kids who will be working with you too. Carmen and James. They've both been here a few years, so they can help you out whenever you have any questions. Carmen is your age! James is a bit older though, in his early 20's I think."
She said James' name in a strange way. Like she hesitated to say it or something. Juno made a mental note to watch out for him, in case he was weird or something. She didn't really know how to feel about other kids being here. She probably should've expected it, since this was apparently a really good opportunity, according to her mother.
The elevator chimed again, then slowly opened. The ceilings were much lower here, at a more normal height. This floor opened onto a shared living area to the left, a small kitchen to the right. There were a few more scientists in the living area, socializing with coffee. They looked fairly young, but not young enough to be her peers.
"This is where anyone currently working for NERV lives if they don't have housing nearby. People come here to work from all over; it's a very special job." Rena seemed proud.
"Do you live here?" Juno asked.
"Yes, actually! My room is across the hall from yours. There's a wall separating us, though."
Juno nodded.
They walked down the hall, which wasn't too terribly long, until they reached room 1117. Rena pulled out her keyring from her pocket, sifted through to a small silver key, and unlocked the door. It swung open to reveal a small and empty room with an empty, but neatly made bed, a desk, and a dresser standing against the wall. There was a closet just as you walked in to the left as well. A window was laid into the far wall by the bed, but since they were in an underground facility, it only overlooked a few unimportant testing rooms and offices that lit up the dark cave system with blaring white and blue lights.
Rena hit the light switch beside the door, flicking on yet another bright fluorescent light to hit more stark white walls.
"Here we are! It's a little small, but you won't be spending too much time in here anyway." She put down the duffel bags she was carrying for Juno and looked at her phone.
"It's about 10 o'clock now...How about I let you get unpacked a little, and at noon I'll come knock on your door to show you around? We'll get lunch, too."
Juno nodded, then Rena smiled, took the little silver key off her keyring, and handed it to her.
"Don't lose this, okay? It's to your room. I'll be back in a couple hours." And with that, she headed out the door and closed it behind her. Juno looked down at it. She set it on the desk, and put down the bags she was carrying, too.
She huffed.
She looked around a second, but there wasn't much to see. It looked like a college dorm room, but smaller- sized for one person instead of two. It was just as cramped and economic, though. Looking at the plain white walls, she wished she'd brought some decorations.
Juno walked over to her duffel bags, pulling out various simple t-shirts, hoodies and striped sweaters. With how cold it was here, those t-shirts would probably never see the light of day. They'd just be undershirts for her various sweatshirts.
She took all the clothes over to the dresser and stuffed them in the first open drawer, then down the same with the rest of her stuff. Socks, underwear, pants. Her duffelbag had only some basic toiletries after those were put away. She stuck her hairbrush and her deodorant in the closet, then threw the empty duffelbags in with them.
All that was in her other bags were her electronics- a laptop, a tablet, an MP3 player- a sketchbook, some pills, and several books. She put everything else in the most usual place for each, and by the time she was done, she had what looked like a stock photo background of a room.
Juno looked around, fell back on the bed, and dragged her cold hands over face. Her eyelids pulled down with her fingers and her nose crinkled under the pressure.
What was she fucking doing here.
Almost a minute's time was spent with Juno's gaze hazily focused on the ceiling.
After realizing it wasn't doing much for her, she got up and headed for the window.
It was...odd. having a window on a room underground. She inspected it. It opened outwards, like a cabinet door, and there were no locks. It was big enough to fit through.
She pulled it open fully and placed her hands on the windowsill, leaning haphazardly out.
The building only extended so far down, and then it became a drop-off into dark cave system. The blaring white lights faded down until they didn't budge the black at all, and the blue neon infiltrated a bit further than that, but anywhere past 500 feet down was inky fog.
She leaned her whole chest over and looked straight down, hair hanging in front of her face like sordid strings.
"...Hey, Cyrus. I miss you."
Her dark eyes became glassy, almost hazy, but not wet.
"Do you think I should be here?"
"...I'm rethinking all this. I think I just let Mom talk me into it because I don't know what else to do."
"...I don't know anyone here. That Rena lady, she seems fake and corporate. I don't even want to be friends with an adult anyway."
"...I doubt I wanna be friends with the other kids here either, though. You know I'm like, shy or whatever. Something's off with me. And people don't seem to be super interested in me. I bet the kids here are hometown hero honors students or some shit. I can't meld with that type of person at all."
"...I bet they're high and mighty and corporate like Rena, too."
"...I miss you, Cy."
She kept looking down into the Earth as she let her words reach him, then popped back into the window as quickly as she'd popped out of it. She pulled it shut and looked over at the other rooms visible from here, completely exposed with their illuminated glass walls.
...Nothing interesting, though. Just people typing away at desks.
She dragged her feet over to the bed and laid down again. It was barely 10:30. She was going to take a nap.
"eeeuueeeEEeeeEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIeeeEEeEEeEEE-"
CLANK.
Juno shot up so fast that her dream had barely even finished by the time she was fully sat up.
"What's that fucking noise-"
"eeEeeeEeEEEEEDEGEGEGEGEGEGEGEGEGEGEH-"
The entire facility shook, and then the sounds echoed back at it again from the cave system.
Juno's heart was racing now. She pulled the sheet off she'd managed over her legs and hopped up, rushing to the window. She didn't see anything unusual, but no one was in the glass rooms across the cavern.
The entire facility suddenly shook. Juno shook with it, banging her shoulder into the wall.
"What the fuck-" She breathed. She ran to her phone and checked it. No messages, but the time: 12:13 p.m.
Rena was supposed to pick her up over an hour ago.
That unearthly sound bellowed again, like a siren that had gone haywire, but somehow more natural than that. Like it came from an animal, not something man-made. Towards the end of its scream it'd skip a broken CD, then another convulsion would hit. Juno ended up nervously danced with wide knees and arms out in the middle of the dark and empty single cell, wondering whether she should stay here and lock the door or try to run.
"EDEDEDEGEHHHHHHEEEHHHHHDEDEEDDDDDDDDDHHHNN-"
NERV shook so harshly that Juno launched to the floor without warning, her window broke behind her, and glass showered over her like rain. She scrambled up without thought and darted out the door before even realizing she'd sustained a few cuts.
The hallways were fully lit but no one was in them. She remembered Rena had said she lived across the hall. She looked both ways and ran right, which seemed a shorter distance to the nearest way around the center wall. Once there she had a few doors to choose from, any of which could be classified as 'right across the hall.'
"Rena?" She called, loud but not yet yelling. She hated hearing her voice at such a volume. It didn't even sound like her. It didn't sound right.
No one answered.
She went up to the first one and knocked- nothing. She knocked on the next two, the next three, no one was answering and they were all locked. The fourth one didn't provide an answer either, but the door parted a bit when she knocked. She peaked in.
Empty, but professional-looking clothes were strewn all over the bed and the floor. There was a box of bullets sitting half opened on the desk, along with plenty of papers and a laptop, which was open, but asleep.
She had no way of knowing, really, but she felt like this was Miss Rena's room. The clothes seemed like her, the paperwork could be hers-
She could look at the paperwork. But did she even have time?
The building was still slightly tremoring, but there was plenty of time for more real convulsions. She noticed the window in here was cracked, too, though not broken. She shut the door and ran towards the elevator. Halfway there, she realized the elevator might be a bad idea in this situation, but hopefully the stairs were nearby?
Just as she got to the waiting area outside the elevators, a scientist also appeared from the left hall, looking sweaty and scared. When he saw her, he looked incredulously at her.
"What are you doing down here!?"
"I-I just got here. I was waiting for Miss Rena to come get me."
He looked between the elevator and Juno. "Well, she got interrupted. This is probably your first angel attack, huh? Don't worry, I'll take you with me."
"...Angel?" Juno stepped back a half step or so.
"Come on, we need to get closer to the ground level in case there's sufficient damage to the building." He took her hand and pulled her to the nearest elevator, quickly pressing the button.
"Shouldn't we take the stairs?"
"We don't have time to run up 11 flights of stairs. Besides, these elevators were built to sustain themselves during emergencies."
The elevator took longer to show than usual, during which Juno had enough of a free moment to try and grasp what the hell was happening. The fact she came straight from sleep and was still a bit deluded wasn't helping the fact she woke up straight into an apocalypse event. She used her free hand to press against her head, shaking it slightly and looking out the larger windows overlooking the elevator lobby.
Still no one in the glass rooms. It felt more ominous now.
The elevator chimed.
The man in the white coat pulled her along, then pressed the '1' button and another small button near the bottom panel. The elevator shot closed and rose at a speed rivaling a bullet train- Juno fell to the floor, unprepared, and the man apologized under his breath before attempting to pull her up. The elevator stopped as he did so, and the door opened.
The two stumbled out and he pointed her towards a hallway.
"Head down that way to the shelter. It'll be the first room on the right, and it'll say shelter."
With that, he let go of her hand, and ran off to a different, barricaded hallway to the left. He typed a code in before he could enter it, and it closed quickly behind him.
...Juno ran towards the hallway then stopped.
The intercom started up. The voice was eerily clear.
"JUNO Nishimaka, if you are in the building- JUNO Nishimaka- please come to room 134. You're needed in room 134."
The voice stopped.
"...What?" She whispered to herself. Her brows furrowed in confusion, her eyes crinkled.
"I don't even know where that is!" She hissed, turning on her heel as she looked at the various hallways around the open lobby's circumference.
She'd ask someone at the shelter.
She ran for it, and true to the scientist's word it was the first door on the left. It was closed, locked, and a red light was illuminated above it, though.
She knocked.
"Hello?"
There was shuffling inside, then a pause. Juno felt like she was being inspected. The locking mechanism relaxed and the door cracked open to a very tense-looking woman.
"What took you so long?"
Juno blinked. "Um, I'm Juno. They just asked for me in room 134, but I don't know where that is."
The woman seemed confused, but she pointed a knotted figure out the crack, and her bright red nail polish pointed towards the same door the scientist had gone through before.
"It's down that hallway. You'll need to type your code to get in. Do you know your code?"
Juno shook her head.
The woman sighed. "You can use mine. It's 5644. Don't forget it."
She looked at Juno expectantly, eyes wide, and didn't say any more. Juno nodded.
She turned around and ran off for the door.
