Chapter 2: Twelve years and a slave.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." – Declaration of independence abolishing slavery.
Lesson time. The dullest and least exciting part of the day and while Shinji was very much aware that this was a shared opinion among many, the fact he as an Eva Pilot would most likely have no use for any of the useless skills being droned out in a nasal monotone made that fact even more painful.
It would be laughable to think that the day would come when the world would reach a state where he and his fellow pilots could set foot in an honest business as normal people going about a normal day using their academic skills rather than their crazy skills to make an honest living.
With how close a shave the last attack had been for him, he was sure that he'd been eaten alive first.
To Shinji if no one else, School was little more than a glorified slave pen.
A slave pen designed to keep him shackled firmly to the system while his uncaring and oversighted father spent his days as the "big man" chilling up in that fancy suite he had all to himself and which Shinji was strictly forbidden to venture into at any time except when ordered to.
No long ass lectures for that lucky bastard.
No massive load of assessments to worry or thick stacks of essays to work through or big books of questions the lazy teacher had never even properly explained in class to anyone.
It was all smooth sailing in his luxurious office in that big comfortable leather armchair while his son spent his days slumped forward onto the desk in this cold classroom which had turned down its heating to save on electricity bill due to the extraordinary tributes NERV demanded as protection fees.
And unbeknownst to even Shinji as the son of NERV's chief at this present moment, this fee of unbelievable size applied not just to everyone in Tokyo-3, not just to those living in Japan but to people from virtually all corners of the world.
Sweatshop workers who had worked their backs off harvesting crop in exchange for the meagre pile of coin that would earn their daily bread, cleaners who were unable to have serious respiratory illnesses treated from years of spraying cleaning fluid onto thick and dusty grime and even
families who had nothing of value left but their children in lands where the slave trade was not only legal but a blooming black market of unforetold fortune for its higher ups.
Not one of them was exempt.
The fee of NERV that the completely oblivious Shinji would only discover later to an unfathomable magnitude of shock and terror, better known as the doomsday tax in reference to a historical phenomenon of the doomsday book kept by a certain King William the conqueror.
And at that very moment as the lesson dragged on and on with information Shinji knew he would never need, a dark haired woman dressed head to toe in rags in a middle Eastern insect infested slum screamed her heart out as her daughter was whipped into submission before being clapped in chains by a tall and immaculate moustached merchant with a grin that would drive the Cheshire cat to fits of envy.
The gems on his velvet robes sparkled in the morning sun as he handed the shivering girl to another equally smart man who lifted her with one rough gesture into the boot of a large gas guzzling truck already packed full of chained up and frowning children of all kinds of appearances and locked the doors not even giving the girl the chance to glance even once more at her now hysterical mother.
Perhaps that was for the best as the frightened girl's expression would have been one of fear and hopelessness in its most dreadful form. As young and naïve as she was, she had not been deaf to the stories that spoke of the accursed fates of children who ended their lives in the god forsaken place known only to most as "the slave pens".
The place where the children of the poor, were kept in order to work until they died. Some lasted longer, but none left alive.
The wealthy man did not grace the still crying woman with a reply as he took out a small handful of coins from a purse and threw them in her direction, one of them decking her squarely in the forehead.
And with another gigantic smile, the shameless slaver skipped merrily back into his truck with a hop skip and a jump.
A jaunty tune of cheerful whistling filled the dusty desert air as the behemoth of a truck revved up its engine before speeding away in a cloud of toxic fumes which caused the former mother who was still paralyzed with shock to gag and choke, spitting up a splatter of hot blood which stained the sand with a dark red puddle.
She was still mourning the loss of her beloved child that her uncaring husband had ruthlessly abandoned along with her when another tall but unsmiling dark suit tapped her shoulder, the smell of expensive cigar causing another choking fit to well up.
She did not need to look in the direction of the familiar debt collector as she fought back the urge to cough up more blood and with trembling arms scooped up the few silver coins which the slavers had left her as compensation for her beautiful and innocent little girl and held them out to him with her eyes closed.
That horrible emblem this evil demon turned man had the gall to wear with such audacity on his clothing printed so clearly for all who he dealt with to see.
The letters NERV which the woman could never fathom the meaning of being as he was a foreigner, but which in her mind must have spelled out "bringer of darkness" or "devil" or "master of all things bad in this world" in whatever rotten country he and his other dirty brethren had come from.
The bulky suited man left the woman without any further words, his gun still pointed at the ragged woman even as he stepped slowly back into a sleek black SUV manned by another suited man.
He gave the woman another cold glare of disdain as the black windows rolled up and the car drove away.
The twelve-year-old raven-haired thin girl sat silently as the truck continued down the bumpy desert trail, staring blankly at the other children in the cramped and dark space not one of whom deigned to speak a word to her.
A few of them did their best to raise a smile at their new guest but none could look her in the eye.
All of them wore two sets of cuffs. One chained their skin and bone hands together making it impossible for them to even give the newcomer they deeply pitied a friendly wave. Another set chained their skinny legs together ensuring any escape attempt would end with little more than the audacious but stupid escapee falling flat on their face.
The newly enslaved girl did not need to ask the others how each of them had ended up here.
The shared silence and inability to make eye contact told her that their parents had too been sucked dry of every last trapping they had arduously scrapped around for until the last things of value they could sell to keep up with the mercilessly rising protection taxes happened to be a living flesh and blood young human being.
There was an old saying that blood was thicker than water. And then there was another saying that a loving parent wouldn't trade their children for the world.
The young and naïve slaves communicated through silence that these two comforting, but pointless motto's rang hollow staring down the barrel of a device that could kill with just one press of a button.
A device that turned those who could afford to wield them into gods among men. A device whose true name was known only to educated folk of a rapidly dying country. The device that her father back in his better days had referred to as a "gun".
The final question the raven-haired girl had as the truck finally pulled up and the sound of footsteps pounded louder and louder was whether to curse her mother for being a coward or to pity her for reacting the one way that she knew how in a terrible circumstance beyond either of their control.
And whether an unfairly widowed woman who had taken good care of her child only to sell her out the day the men in suits came deserved heaven in the afterlife or not.
Her pretty face had been the talk of the flirting boys in the school she had been lucky enough to get a place in. She wondered how much longer it would stay pretty for as the kerchunk of the truck door opening echoed throughout the truck boot followed by bright light flooding the darkness as strong arms pulled open the doors.
She had always been afraid of the dark, but now it was all she longed for.
It would be late afternoon when back in Japan, the numbers on Gendo Ikari's total assets section of his balance sheet shot up by yet another little bit causing the usually frowning downer to grin just a little for a little while.
Another day another payload.
One yen for his silly little son Shinji, his personal "hooker" Dr Ritsuko Akagi and his other silly little workers and nine hundred and ninety-nine for him and him alone.
It was good to be in charge.
Author notes: As usual, please review. One problem that I always had with the Evangelion series was that they never showed us any of the outside world from Japan and I thought a little world building would be fun. But stick around. Soon Shinji and his faithful sidekick will free us from this awful tyranny and bring justice and fairness back to the world.
Which sidekick you ask? You'll have to read the next chapter to find out!
Till then, have a good day and catch you next time.