The Gentleman and the Scholar

by zman123

When mysterious new pilot Mari Makinami Illustrious comes upon the scene, Shinji realises that the world will soon end without drastic change and vows to fix it by any means necessary. But the path to rebuilding, advancing and redoing won't be easy as Shinji must come to terms with how everyone he trusted and loved despite their faults, have all been lying to him. Shinji x Mari.

11. Mari's childhood Part 1

Chapter 11: Mari's childhood. Part 1: Good old Totalitaria.

17 years ago in a little town in England, an ordinary man and woman no different from your typical Joe and Jane Smith living in the bleak shadow of the impact which devastated the Earth giving rise to the Angels, gave birth to their lovely daughter.
A feisty little thing that came out energetically thrashing and laughing despite a less than smooth labour on the part of her mother who died on her bed.

The poor young woman had not been eating well as of late since NERV had tightened its grip on the terrified people of England, demanding higher tributes daily lest it withdraw its protection and leave the citizens as ripe meals to be eaten alive by the Angels. Having to keep up her work as a labourer even during her latter pregnant months probably didn't help either.

NERV's taxes had cast off Maternal leave for the country. It was now just one more bygone luxury of a bygone era.

The once free medical enterprise that was the NHS was no more and the couple had had to make do with a rundown clinic run by a makeshift apothecary with barely one year of medicine school experience and only a battered and barely legible Biology textbook to his education.

He was a handy fellow in spite of his handicaps and against all common logic and all odds, the girl who would soon become the daughter of Martin Simon Bishop came successfully into the world seemingly uninjured.
"Such beauty that her poor mother never lived to see" the apothecary had sadly remarked through his surgical mask as he showed the cheerfully babbling little baby to a man who was split completely in two over whether to laugh or cry at this bittersweet moment where joy and sadness were fused into one.

Tears formed in the eyes of the tall but thin widowed husband as he took his daughter in his shaking arms staring upon her like she was an envoy from the heavens and the one thing holding him together in his darkest yet brightest hour.
He didn't know what to say so he said nothing at all, acknowledging the unskilled but kind quack's assistance with a silent nod as he continued to hold the baby forcing himself to be strong on the birthday of his child that he alone would now have to raise.

The late Theresa Simon Bishop would soon be laid to rest buried in his small garden, a wooden cross marking the mound where a good wife and mother slept in peace, freed from the burdens of a cruel regime brought about by a military dictatorship which had no hesitation of opening fire on the very citizens it was supposed to protect.

"She was too pure for the world" he would tell his daughter when she got old enough to join him at the foot of the humbly constructed grave which he had spent a week's worth of his salary acquiring the shovel and cross for.
"Too pure. Too sweet. Too innocent."
The young brown-haired girl would then pat her father's back as he stoically held back his tears to stand a few moments longer in silent respect at the holy site which was to him what the Taj Mahal had been for Shah Jahan.

The two stood a little while longer before with a curt bow, they finally withdrew and headed into their two-room cottage to make dinner.
"G, goodbye. Mum." The girl nervously stammered as she herself strove to hold back the fluid blurring her vision. "R, rest in peace."

The proud father decided to name his lovely daughter Marie after careful deliberation and a brief period of mourning following the sudden passing of his wife who gave her life to bring their child to bear.

The name of a famous female scientist who spoke against the inferior rights of women and went on to win two Nobel prizes despite the discrimination against non-male researchers in her archaic era.
A brave woman who triumphed against all odds. A daredevil gambler who took risks knowing they were risks and went down gambling knowing that one day she would live on in legend if not in life.
Without whom the highly powerful nuclear technology that provided NERV with its EVA's would not and could not exist.

It had certainly been a wild stroke of sheer luck which let the girl grow up strong and beautiful. He had heard of miscarriages which had gone less badly leaving babies needing breathing equipment and special formula milk neither of which even a year's worth of his earnings could have bought him.

But his Marie had not been one of them. She was the lucky survivor whose intelligent eyes were the most distinguishing aspect of her visage.

Martin believed that a name was a sacred thing and that picking what would be the title one's offspring would bear for life needed to be an exact science for the truly responsible parent.
It was what his father had said to him as a boy one evening by a nearly burnt out fire, when the old coot in a rare bout of lucidity launched into a long-winded rant about the great virtues of peace protestor Martin Luther King who fought for his cause without actually fighting at all.

Though the history lesson had left him bored beyond belief that night, it was the memory her father could always remember with absolute clarity when he thinks back to his childhood.
It was the conversation that formed much of his robust character as he grew to become a happy and hardworking head of his family who loved his life and his loved ones despite the poor upbringing he'd endured which made him the beggar among beggars in a society where beggars became the norm.

He taught English and very basic Maths in a small but welcoming classroom which took place in a rented storeroom above a bar.
It wasn't much but it had tables, chairs as well as walls and a roof to keep the students sheltered from the elements which was more than most of them could ask for in the dark ages NERV had taken their once glorious country back into.

He was an excitable tutor who was passionate about the little he was able to teach his students, never ignoring the slowest student when they were struggling with material the others had found child's play.

His students, many of whom had only rags to wear even on the coldest winter days, loved their tutor. A poor child of farmers who could never afford for him finish his third school year. He taught that while there was precious little that he could teach them, being able to read, write and count was more than enough to steer anyone to great riches if they simply made the right decisions.

That the most important subject no school however fine could teach a child, was common sense.
A vastly underrated subject that the stuck up snobs in NERV putting gold onto their bread had clearly never had beaten through their thick skulls.

A day spent mastering the art of common sense and common logic he told his class, was worth a decade spent poring over the tomes in the Great Library of Alexandria.

He used the meagre handful of coins his student's handed him for a lesson to give his daughter the best lifestyle he could, giving his own slice of bread to her when he saw she was clearly still hungry and putting his own duvet over her smaller shivering body when it was cold.

And of course, giving her for free the lessons he gave his other pupils for a pound in which she studied harder than every other learner in the room combined in the seat closest to the front.

Though he never mustered the earnings to buy Marie even the cheapest toys from the toy shops now owned by NERV, there were a stack of nice books her grandparents had left him as his frugal heritage, and he spent the little time he had teaching her to value these literary treasures as much as any toy.

To see each text as living proof that Newton was not out of his mind when he said that humankind stood on the shoulders of giants. To receive through words on a paper, the life experiences and wisdom of countless mighty eternals who spent eternity building a magnificent world which NERV ruined in a day.

He was always tired from his long days spent working hard to keep them fed, but he always mustered up the will to read her one of her favourite stories for her every bedtime and to not stop reading till she had drifted happily away to the land of dreams whereupon he gave her a pat and a kiss to show his undying affection for his one remaining family member.

Marie grew to be a quiet scholar who while not much of a talker, was an excellent listener who understood not just the words in a conversation but the meaning behind the words being said.
A friendly empath who could at a glance determine when speakers told the truth and when they sought to deceive.
She was a perceptive observer, in a world of lies and propaganda where no one liked such skill.

Where those who saw the truth behind the propaganda posters and news stories that had been spun into the ground until any grain of truth was gone, were an obstruction for NERV's business which had to be removed.

She remembered how she had begged her father repeatedly not to keep risking his life in the protests he spent any day he wasn't working in school leading with a placard drawn with the remains of an empty cardboard box.
To stop writing the letters to the editor which were full of the logical reasons any fool could see on why NERV should have been deposed long ago.

"NERV reinforces boarders with 200,000 more troops is the headline of today's paper which will make the poor citizens only more loyal to a tyrant who cares not a whit about their wellbeing" he had spoken at one protest Marie had snuck to wearing a blanket over herself to cover her hair. Despite the risks he was willing to take to his own life, he had firmly ordered her to stay at home where no one would see her and draw the conclusion that she was in any way related to him for her own safety.

"200,000 more troops means 200,000 more murderers to kill even more of our loved ones in cold blood when we rightfully object to their crazy rules. 200,000 more killers to stop any of us from leaving to find a better future. To stop the world from seeing our plight and sending aid we so badly need and so richly deserve."

She could not help but cheer with the sizeable crowd who had come to see the poor teacher with the short messy unwashed hair and the curved moustache which covered his mouth.
Her father was a clever man even without the luxury of proper education.
Education she had come to realize, was only NERV playing games with the country to keep the wool of deceits firmly placed over its eyes.

What happened next, she could only have hoped she could say was a surprise.
She couldn't even say that.
She had known the day would come even if she didn't fully know it would come when it did the morning that she had walked out into the town square to get some potatoes to use for the evening meal.

Marie Simon Bishop very nearly gouged out her own eyes at the truly atrocious display she witnessed from the alley she had been lucky enough to quickly duck into before anyone saw her.
Surrounded by twelve NERV agent's garbed in dark church robes, tied to a gigantic cross in the middle of a burning stake screaming his head off, was her father.
A small crowd of villagers some of them children had been rounded up by another group of NERV agents with guns pointed straight at them. They were being corralled here and forced to watch the spectacle that should have ceased to stay in fashion several centuries ago when Martin Luther King supposedly won his battle against racial prejudice and social injustice.

This wasn't what modern society should have been. This was something Marie expected from barbarians who would have been clapped in chains in the medieval times they thrived in.
It took all her fear and yet all her willpower for her not to scream as she first begun to cautiously creep away only to break into a run when one of the NERV gunmen saw her and without even a word, opened fire.

A stream of deadly bullets smashed into the wall beside her missing her by mere inches as adrenaline begun to bestow its blessings upon her.
She quickened her sprint as shouts of alarm rang out across behind her and she heard the sound of more bullets being loaded into guns.

Her life hung in the balance.

Knowing full well that the art of larceny was a shameful action only a scoundrel would dare enact, she leapt upon the nearby unattended bicycle lying up against a tree in front of her and begun to cycle with the speed and power of a master class triathlete as bullets struck the ground behind her.

Little did poor Marie know that this would be just first of the many crimes she would be forced to commit which she'd spend her life cursing herself nightly over.

She continued to recklessly increase speed as her stolen bike headed down a steep hill. She would a billion times rather die from a crash than from a bullet of a heartless psychopath with no heart.
Her screams matched those of her father in his dying moments of burning agony as she accelerated to a pace at which everything seemed like a blur.

It was a miracle how she didn't die as her bike careened into a brick wall at the end of a road surrounded on all sides with buildings. Her chest felt as if it had been kicked by a horse and it would take her a few moments to recover from whiplash but at the very least the nine-year-old Scholar still had her life. Though probably not for long as the menacing din of heavy-footed steps begun to echo louder and louder even as she regained her senses.

"Dead end drive" a sign on the nearby pavement read. How fitting.

"Catch that girl at any cost. Don't let her escape" she heard a deep throated voice shout.
"She deserves no better than her father."

Knowing she only had seconds before she became the next poster for child gun safety, Marie's eyes quickly scanned the entirety of the area before her. Common sense dictated that her only way out lay in the passageway since the only way she was heading back the way she came was in a body bag.

The most cursory of glances informed her that the wall was too smooth with no footholds to scale up. Too tall as well to get over.
The two buildings closest to her were padlocked shut with securely shuttered windows. Dead end drive was aptly named.

It was here where her attention settled upon the slightly broken manhole lid nestled upon the ground before the wall.
It obviously hadn't been fixed in a long time and the broken spot in the lid was just large enough for her to fit her hand through to pull and tug at the heavy metal with all her might.
Several times she felt as if her heart would give out from the extreme exertion but something deep inside Marie insisted to her that it was not her time to die yet.

"One of you check down there" she heard the same voice from before now louder call out.
It was the catalyst which finally granted her the final ounce of strength she needed.
Finally with a crack, the lid gave way and fell backwards with a metallic bang as Mari jumped down the hole just as the heavy footsteps from earlier crunched against the ground above her.

It was a long way down but she managed to survive the fall with only slightly hurt kneecaps as she landed on a stone platform narrowly avoiding the river of sludge which would have surely drowned her.

Now was not the time for discussing the several nasty germs that were bound to be lurking down in this stinking drainage facility. It was time to be grateful to the genius who invented sewage and to sprint around the first corner she saw as the sound of feet connecting with metal bars echoed around the underground passageway. They were climbing down here to continue their pursuit of her.
NERV really didn't give up easily did they?

She ran as fast as her now very painful legs would permit, breathing heavily as she crossed bridges, turned corners and ducked through holes too low for even a young girl like her to get through without stooping.
A single wrong move and a barrage of sharpened lead would be peppering her body.
A slight false step and she would tumble face first into the thick liquified residue of human waste to die a slow and painful death of toxic asphyxiation.

"Why god?" she sobbed to herself as she continued onward despite every fibre of her knackered body pleading with her to stop and rest even if it got her killed. "What did I ever do to deserve this?". Marie had never been religious. But this was a question she genuinely wanted the answer to here at this moment.

If an all loving god really did rule the Earth as the almighty church once claimed he did, why was he inflicting such torment on a defenceless girl who had already lost so much while allowing the truly evil crimes of NERV to go unpunished?
Probably for the same reason that the popes of old commissioned grand cathedrals trimmed with the finest gemstones to be built one after another while ignoring and even brutalizing the mass of beggars huddled outside the churches who were forbidden from entering.

Her father said it better than anyone else. God helped those who helped themselves. And heaven and hell were both places on Earth. And right now, Marie was running through the deepest bowels of hell after being locked out of heaven.

As the last of her strength gave out and she had no choice despite her fear to stop and take a breath, she saw a stairway behind a nearby grate. She very nearly cursed fortune for presenting her with an escape only to hold it just out of her reach when a closer look revealed to her that one of the bars had fallen away leaving a rather large gap.
Being only nine years of age and rather thin and small, a few awkward movements along with a lot of pain allowed Marie to force her way through the grate.
She retreated up the stairway and through another thankfully open manhole, escaping the watchful sight of NERV with only milliseconds to spare.

They would thankfully not guess that she had gone that way and even if they could, the grate would get in the way of their fat and tall muscular bodies.

From where Marie was finally able to exit the indecipherable network of tunnels, it was only a short walk till she slipped out near the south road into town without being observed by anyone else taking care to keep her distance from the road lest NERV send a vehicle after her next.

The sky was already dark as she took one last glance which would be memory at her childhood hometown of Nirgendwo, named for its bizarre geographical location of being 50 miles from the nearest settlements and even further from the nearest major cities.
It's name too was significant in the sense that like NERV and SEELE, it was a German title in a distinctly not Germany country.

Marie didn't need to cry pointless tears as she slunk away into a thick forest to pass the night in safety to know that she had to fend for herself now with both her parents gone.
Nine years old with only a dark blue skirt and a matching navy sweater and shoes to her name, her life was hers alone to live now.
Crying would solve nothing for her now as she took shelter on a pile of leaves and did her best to fall asleep despite the paranoia that remained with her even now that she'd lost her pursuers.

Thankfully Survival books had been high on her preferred reading list and Marie found herself silently formulating what she hoped would be at least a half decent plan as she watched the stars in the sky in a vain attempt to calm herself.
Tomorrow she would wake up before the sky was completely bright yet and continue along the forest track to reduce the risk that anyone would find her.

She would continue to stay in the forest until she was clear of the shadow of Nirgendwo before continuing South in the direction of the fairly nearby coastal village of Irgendwo.
What she would do if she somehow managed to get there, that part of her plan would have to wait. But she couldn't stay in this country any longer than she had to.

"I hate you NERV, I hate you. I really hate you." She muttered angrily as sleep eventually came, too scared to raise her voice as much as she would have liked to.

If not for her father's rhetoric against unnecessary violence, she would happily have gone down killing as many NERV agents as she could. They didn't deserve mercy.

Once again props to every reviewer for reviewing. And yes, I changed the title of my story to better suit the kind of theme and direction I'm trying to get it to take.

Thank you guys for see ya next time.
Bye!