Be Prepared.
Chapter 1: The poorest boy in Tokyo
So be prepared for the chance of a lifetime.
Be prepared, for SENSATIONAL news
A shining new era, is tiptoeing nearer.
"Hah, I wish" the brown-haired boy still in his bed muttered sadly under his breath as the uplifting tones of a very talented singer rang out from the old and grey metal device that was his music player and one source of solace in his melancholic, lonely days.
It said something when a mess of buttons and switches attached to a heavy cube with a speaker and disk slot which he had picked up at a car-boots sale with his meagre savings, seemed closer to being a friend than the flesh and blood "colleagues" he, first child and pilot Shinji Ikari was forced to be in constant contact with.
He used the word colleagues in a very loose sense of the word as some of the actions he was sometimes forced to endure made the word "tormentors" much more fitting.
A very strong word, he knew, but perhaps the only one that could appropriately describe the people around him for what he could not help but see them for despite his best efforts to remain optimistic in his circumstances.
And where do we feature?
Just listen to teacher.
"If I do that then what do we need the angels for? I'll be bored to death before I even get to the battlefield. At least being ripped apart by an Angel would be quick…"
Not that being tortured and eventually killed slowly and painfully by one of those wretched abominations was a fate Shinji would have wished upon anyone.
But it certainly beat having to stand in front of his ungrateful superiors and listening to them rant on and on about how he was stupid, worthless and not worth the space he took up on earth despite all that he had accomplished.
Being a pilot for Mankind's most deadly technological terror was already no cakewalk, but the various other shenanigans Shinji had to deal with between each horrific fight somehow managed to take things from bad to unbearable.
His roommate who called him "stupid Shinji" threw every single chore in the apartment in his direction as hard as was humanly possible.
These "chores" included Cleaning the entire apartment so that if there was even a speck of dust left anywhere, he had failed.
Cooking food for three, one of them a very picky eater who made those whiny baby Princesses from poorly made low-budget kids cartoons seem like beautifully behaved saints in comparison.
And rushing out in the dead of night praying to find at least one open store correctly stocked when a certain German redhead decided it would be a good time for some reason ,for an evening snack consisting of luxury food specifically in the style of her people.
She repaid the diligent male housekeeper's efforts in a very physical manner.
A manner which left an already wounded war veteran with yet another impressive set of bruises and cuts to add to his already towering stack of injuries.
Angels were fearsome creatures yet even they seemed to pale in comparison to the explosive hair-trigger temper of his roommate and fellow pilot Asuka.
If only Shinji were a masochist, he'd be on the highest cloud of seven heaven living with such a roommate.
And as much as Shinji wished that were the case, it tragically was not.
And that wasn't even getting started on the long winded rants he still had to endure in that building designed for "learning" and "education" but where the one thing he learned was that most educators these days would regurgitate anything endlessly on repeat if they were given the price of two beers.
He was a pilot for the most-deadly war machine known to mankind, one of a few individuals on which the fate of the very earth hinged upon. What more could a simple set of whiteboards and textbooks teach him?
Ha, just listen to teacher…
I Know it sounds sordid, but you'll be rewar…
"Hey idiot, get your sorry ass out of bed and make me some breakfast" came the shrill and imposing call of Asuka Soryu Langley, her voice assaulting his eardrums like a hammer brought with great force to a pane of glass.
Speak of the devil and she doth appear, the pre-teen boy thought sadly to himself as he quickly twitched aside his blankets and hurriedly slammed his hand onto his music player's power button somehow lucky enough to not break it in the process.
Adrenaline in its purest form raced through his bloodstream as he quickly forced himself out of bed barely managing not to trip and threw on the first set of clothes he found on the floor.
The one day of the week he thought he might get some extra rest from school and his job permitting there were no angel attacks, and it had to be when Asuka felt like an early breakfast.
Just his rotten luck, he guessed.
He threw open the door and with one smooth motion bolted to the kitchen, not daring to make eye contact with the German redhead he knew to be already seated impatiently at the dining table. Her heated gaze of an indescribable magnitude of intensity digging into him like red hot pokers with every step he took.
It was all he could do not to keel right over from the toxic mixture of grogginess and nervousness as he wrenched open the fridge and grabbed out one ingredient after another, his reflexes after years as a makeshift housewife knowing exactly what to do.
A few seconds later and the fourteen year old boy quickly slammed the fridge door shut once again and quickly removed the cap from the bottle of oil he always kept at the ready before tipping a carefully measured amount into the pan which he had been fortunate enough to leave on the stove last night mostly likely as a result of exhaustion.
He knew what Asuka was capable of doing to him if even the slightest thing was wrong with the taste of her meals even if they had to be made on the fly by a still half asleep and overtaxed cook who was not usually used to waking up so early after an attack as extreme as the one last night.
And from his long line of battles each of which he'd only survived by the skin of his teeth, Shinji did not use the word "extreme" lightly.
He wondered as he continued his duty as five-star chef whether his roommate would batter him before the Angels got him first. With how even now he could see her rolling her fists together in great frustration and impatience, he knew that another beating was all but unavoidable at this point.
A loud snore from the bedroom of the one adult in the apartment signalled to Shinji that his commanding Major and the closest thing he had to a guardian had once again gone overboard with the "beverages" and wouldn't give a damn what happened to him if he was to once again incur the wrath of his fellow pilot as he often ended up doing despite his best efforts to cater to her every whim.
Not that Major Misato usually cared anyway else perhaps he'd long ago have escaped this terrible existence of being domestically harassed whatever peace he tried to make.
"Niceness was a weakness" he'd heard the German redhead reiterate time and time again as if it were a biblical teaching for all to adhere to lest they invoke the wrath of the heavens and not simply her own personal mantra.
And while Shinji had not felt particularly well-treated or properly respected by even his own father for as long back as he could remember, he could never come close to fathoming while anyone would think like this.
The world may have become little more than a Maelstrom of never-ending battles since enduring two "impacts" which had each been unspeakably tragic to say the least but surely this was no reason for the last survivors of mankind to behave badly towards each the constant threat of Angels growing stronger every day even as the world began to die off more and more quickly, any kind of infighting would be terribly counterproductive and even the most crazy idiot could see this.
"An eye for an eye only made the world blind" he had once heard his teacher say in his usual nasal monotone on a day where he was unable to even keep his head up from the desk.
It was those particular words which fired energy enough into Shinji to quickly jerk him from the deep slumber he felt so inclined to enter each time his teacher droned on and on usually about impacts which had been elaborated on countless times in previous classes.
For once in his life, school did not feel purely like a waste of time and energy where a broken record played on repeat again and again.
And as this memory inexplicably began to play itself with perfect clarity like a tape-recorder, Shinji begun to rub the sore spot where Asuka's last punch had connected with his face, narrowly missing his eye by little more than a centimetre and did his utmost not to cry.
"Just what have I done to deserve this" the boy sobbed silently so that his still impatiently watching aggressor could not hear him.
"Just what have I done to deserve any of this. What did I ever do to you but try to be nice to you and to be your friend Asuka. Do you really hate me so much for that?"
It took all his willpower to remain collected as he collected Asuka's now finished breakfast of German sausage and egg onto an expensive plate and added a large slice of Strudel pastry, the latter of which took a gigantic chunk from his meagre savings of his dead end job but was a staple in his picky roommate's diet that she could simply not live without.
With trembling arms which felt as if they could give way at any moment, the boy placed the hastily constructed meal on the table along with a glass of extra strong Milka Shockolade (another overly expensive foreign prestige food item) praying that this would be enough to quell her rising temper.
He really hadn't intended to get up so late but last night's fight had left even a veteran Eva Pilot like Shinji knackered beyond all belief and it had hurt just to move more than a few muscles this morning.
He was grinning nervously when a swinging fist came at his left temple and took him completely by surprise.
Shinji felt the wind being knocked from his very essence as flesh and bone of the human fist connected forcefully with that of the human skull.
Lights of many hues seemed to dance around his vision as the terribly shocked chef of an exotic and exquisite gourmet breakfast reeled back from such force delivered by his clearly dissatisfied clientele. His star customer at that.
"You were late this morning dummkopf. Bad start" he managed to make out through the horrible mist of confusion clouding his fragmented mind still trying to make sense of such ingratitude in the face of his hard work.
It wasn't like him to usually feel this angry what with how violent he had come to realize his roommate would always remain, but he had been forced to endure several muscle pains just to create this state of the art meal in the beaten up state he had woken up in this morning.
Surely some forgiveness for a little tardiness was in order with how she herself had been in the same battle as he and even seen the terrible blows his Eva and by extension him were forced to endure to finally bring down the horrid monstrosity which had ended up being more dangerous than anyone in NERV could have predicted.
Dr Akagi had predicted a victory chance of about one in four thousand, three hundred and fifty two point one three three seven and yet Major Misato had still shouted for Shinji and the other pilots to get straight to the frontline and give that "thing" everything they had.
The Angel had certainly given Shinji everything it had.
Which unfortunately had turned out to be a lot.
An awful lot.
The injuries had been serious enough to leave Shinji with a multitude of scars and bruises to make war hero Rambo seem healthy in comparison. This was the good part.
They had not however, incapacitated him enough to warrant any days off or a trip to the hospital.
That was the bad part.
And they certainly gave him no sympathy points from a girl he had long held as his secret crush who he wanted nothing more than to impress and protect with all his might.
This was the worst and most heart wrenching part.
Knowing better than to speak up from years of living under the same roof as his assailant, Shinji only nodded meekly after uttering a barely audible sorry and gingerly backed away towards the kitchen counter where he pulled out two pieces of bread from a packet and placed them hastily into the toaster.
This would be the breakfast he would have to contend himself with after most of his salary had gone to purchasing the extraordinarily expensive cuisine that Asuka demanded daily from him.
Where her own salary was going Shinji had not the audacity to ask.
He knew better than to say anything to Asuka save for when she directly contacted him and even then he kept his sentences as short and to the point as possible knowing full well how easily her hair trigger temper could be set off.
He ran quickly back to his own room to brush his teeth and get some proper clothes on before the toast was ready as the daily paper that no one in the apartment ever properly read came through the letterbox.
News of the citywide newsprint company "TOKYO-3 DAILY"
News that couldn't have been less read-worthy if it had the words PROPAGANDA-DO NOT READ
printed in big bold letters on the cover below the fine print which read FREE-DAILY.
And thus there was no one to catch today's headlines as Shinji and Asuka finished their respective breakfasts, put on their respective schoolbags and made their way best they could out of the apartment complex as a still very dizzy Misato who had not yet fully recovered from the painful effects of a large torrent of alcohol finally staggered from her own bedroom with an ear splitting groaning yawn and a grimacing smile.
TOKYO 3 DAILY
NEWBIE NEWCOMER NEATLY NASHES NEFARIOUS NASTY:
Surprise attack by surprisingly resistant Angel from northern suburbs soundly thwarted by newly recruited EVA pilot. Tokyo three astounded at display of such ruthless expertise from such an inexperienced recruit whose skilful intervention protected the lives of many.
NERV top minds claim this dazzling display as "nothing short of a miracle".
"The other more senior pilots and the more powerful EVA's were taken up dealing with another attack" says chief scientist Dr Akagi. "It's truly a wild stroke of luck how a pilot so new to the organisation and her equally new EVA powered through such an ordeal while making it look easy in the process".
Shinji and Asuka walked side by side towards the school they were forced to attend together despite being veteran pilots of mankind's strongest war machines and mankind's final defence against the evil beings that were practically toying with the last remaining survivors of two gigantic worldwide explosions.
It was a tough job having so much responsibility over so many lives and a tougher job with how they, fourteen year old pre-teens were being forced into a harrowing experience that would have shaken most grown men and cold blooded killers to the bone.
All the explosions, all the blood and all the death.
So much of it everyday and yet still the harsh shackles of "formal education" to get through every day.
It was as they walked that Asuka shot Shinji a nasty glare which served as a cue for him to quickly increase his distance between them lest he discomfort her enough to earn another nasty blow to the face.
He sighed painfully as he took a few steps back from her and put his eyes up to the sky, the one place he felt he could look at with the calmness and reassurance that he'd not be punched, insulted or browbeaten.
A beautiful canvas that would always be there for him to enjoy even when he screwed up time and time again despite his every attempt to please his superiors with every ounce of his being.
It was as the two continued onward despite the increased distance between them that a pair of bright teal eyes behind red spectacles peered at the duo from a sixth-floor coffee-bar.
The watcher, a lightly grinning sweet faced brown haired girl sat curiously watching the two more senior EVA pilots as she sipped heated extra frothy pumpkin Latte seasoned with extra toffee sauce.
Two of her superiors, she thought silently to herself.
And from the looks of this interesting exchange, one she could trust with her very life and the other that she could trust in about as much as you'd trust a hungry fox to guard a hen house.
Three guesses to deduce who was who, and the first two didn't count.
Author foreword:
All critique and reviews welcome greatly.
PS: Is it just me or do the characters in Evangelion have a "colour coded for your convenience" sort of thing for determining whether a character is kind/friendly or not.
If you look at a large portion of the characters of the nicer characters like Shinji, Mari, Ritsuko and Sakura you would find that they all wear white clothing (or at least mostly predominantly white outfits) and have brown hair as well (including Ritsuko since her brown hair is dyed blonde)
Meanwhile meaner characters like Asuka and Gendo don't have white on their outfits and don't have brown hair (Gendo's is sort of black). As a bonus point, Yui Ikari who was Shinji's mother and supposedly a much nicer and caring person than his father according to characters who talk about her also had brown hair like Shinji along with a white labcoat and the Rei Ayanami clones who are all very nice to Shinji as well as very friendly people, are genetically modelled after Yui!
Does whether you have both brown hair and white clothes in Evangelion determine whether you are good or evil. Well then again white is the colour of purity.
This can't be just coincidence or can it?