Creation began on 09-25-17
Creation ended on 10-11-17
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Sacrifice
"…Mister Aida?" Fusei addressed Kensuke, who seemed bothered by something as she entered his room to help him get out for a few hours. "Are you doing alright?"
"Doctor Hitode," he responded, sounding like something was wrong. "Will Shinji be around today?"
"Yes, why?"
The boy looked at the door to his room and then reached under his pillow and pulled out a folded piece of paper and gave it to the woman.
"Don't speak," he told her. "Maybe you'll understand."
She unfolded the paper and read what was written.
"Rei Ayanami met with me last night and left me with a message for Shinji Ikari to Fusei Hitode. She said she was going to…dispose of her, no matter what it takes to do so." Fusei read it, and looked up at the boy.
Kensuke was concerned with this.
"How did she seem to you?" She asked him.
"Really pissed off about you being near him," he explained. "But…are you truly?"
"Truly, what?"
He leaned forward to meet her closer and whispered, "Shinji's mother? Is it true?"
She leaned closer to him and whispered, "It's as true as the fact that there's only one Angel left to face."
"You need to be careful, then," he warned her. "I don't know why, but she feels…threatened by you being around Shinji, even when it's within your rights to do so. And if he loses you, Shinji will have lost both his parents and be alone."
As she carefully deposited him into the wheelchair she brought in, she expressed, "Is there anything about Ms. Ayanami that you can tell me that would explain this behavior of hers?"
"There's really nothing I can say about her. She keeps to herself."
"But…is she a friend of Shinji's?"
"That's harder to explain. How does she fit into one's social circle the way others would? She's just…hard to understand…because she doesn't really say anything about herself. Nothing about her parents, where she lived before she came to Tokyo-3 a year ago, hobbies, nothing. It's like she doesn't really exist, even though she stands out in front of everyone."
Carefully setting his bandaged leg on the stirrup, Fusei suspected that someone knew about who Rei Ayanami was. And she had a good guess on who was the best person to start with on solving the mystery behind the girl that seemed to hate her.
-x-
"…Are you going somewhere, Mr. Fuyutsuki," Fusei's mother asked the elder sub-commander, seeing standing in front of the door leading out of the apartment.
"I apologize for this revelation I had last night," he turned to say to her. "I just needed to go to a radio or television station to say something to whoever might be listening. I want to say the things I didn't say all those years ago."
"Do you honestly believe telling a truth others have done all in their power to bury from the world will do anything to amend the tragedy they still feel in their souls?" She asked him; she still had painful dreams of those months where she lost her husband and father. "Those that don't agree with your decision to expose them will likely come after you the moment they know where you are…and then I wouldn't be doing my assigned job, which is to make sure you don't get killed because you knew my grandson wasn't your ass of a former student's son."
"It was hardly that bastard that convinced me to join NERV," he explained, feeling a new disgust that stemmed from his past. "I had actually believed in a young woman who I didn't know had committed such a blight upon your family."
"People are capable of anything they choose to do towards others. Take it from a woman that has almost done something she almost regretted doing years ago."
"What did you almost do?"
"I once thought of running over this woman that I thought was trying to seduce my father a year after my mother had passed away. I almost did so, not thinking of the consequences if I had done so… I knew where she lived, her daily routine, everything I needed to know to get rid of her…but in the end, I did something better than commit vehicular homicide. I confronted her at her house, wanting to know if she was trying to get with him. I have to say, those five minutes were a deciding factor between life and death. In the end, I was glad I didn't go through with my initial intention."
Fuyutsuki couldn't believe that Fusei's mother once thought of actually killing another woman as an example of showing that people were capable of anything.
"But in the end, you didn't kill that woman and you have two daughters that don't have a mother with a record," he told her.
"That doesn't change the fact that I still know what it's like to want to," she responded. "I still think about what might've happened had I done it, gone through with it…and it makes me wonder what I might've done if I had been the one to find the people responsible for hurting my daughter by taking her baby from her."
I get the feeling that if you had met Yui, you'd have made her pay for the crime in the harshest of ways, he thought, feeling that neither age, wisdom or simply looking attractive would have protected Yui from the justifiable wrath from the women of the Hitode family. "I can't change my previous action those years ago…but I make my voice heard to any that will listen for however long they choose."
-x-
She wasn't listening to his sense of reason. It was like she couldn't get that once a line was crossed, there was no turning back once you got too far.
Is she too far gone to listen to reason, wondered Shinji as he sat in the cafeteria, or is she just too close to that man?
In front of him on the table was an unopened bento he had prepared this morning, but found himself unable to eat it, despite his appetite.
"If what she said to me was any indication that she has a serious problem," he recalled Kensuke telling him earlier when he came to the trauma ward to see him, "Rei really doesn't like your mother, Shinji."
Then he opened his bento and picked up his chopsticks. This was something he wasn't going to figure out on an empty stomach.
"Hey," he was greeted by his mother a few minutes later.
"Hey," he greeted back as she sat down across the table from him. "How are you doing this afternoon?"
"Fine. I'm… I'm doing fine. You?"
"A little on edge."
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"Yeah. I don't get Ayanami right now. It's like she can't comprehend how one shouldn't cross a line and do something others are uncomfortable with knowing."
"You mean, her not-so-subtle reactions toward me?"
"Yeah. I mean, she has, more or less, threatened you. She thinks that you're unnecessary, and it's very disturbing to hear something like that from someone you work with."
"Have you tried talking to her?"
"She's not exactly a talkative person."
Fusei had to agree with him on that; even though they have both spoken with Rei, it wasn't as though the girl demonstrated any interests in what others often talk about, even to small degrees. No indication that the young girl even tried to think about anything that a girl her age would normally think about, not that she was an expert on what girls were into thinking.
"Asuka has more bark in her than any other girl I've met since coming here," Shinji explained.
"Eh-heh… She's very expressive," she agreed with him.
-x-
"…Section Two located the First Child," Hyuga told Misato on the bridge in Central Dogma. "She's being escorted to Commander Ikari's office."
"It's really troublesome now," she stated. "It's not like them to lose sight of someone like her…and then take five hours to find her again. Where was she?"
"In the Eva pens," he revealed. "What's this story I'm hearing that Rei has it in for Ms. Hitode?"
"That's something I'd like to understand myself. This didn't start until after Ms. Hitode showed up."
"It's not like she did anything wrong to begin with. True, she might've joined NERV under some false pretense, but if she was working with some limited information that was available, how else could she have ascertained that her son was probably here? The chances of her ever finding him after fourteen years of separation were very slim to none."
"According to her, she had to rely on friends and family to keep her going…and the recent developments in searching through DNA. Maybe Rei's upset about this revelation. How do you go and accept the truth that a boy you work with isn't related to the guy that tells you what to do? Or even more so, how do you live with such a discovery and try to move on after?"
But as much as Misato wanted to understand the exact cause of Rei's negativity towards Fusei, NERV had other things to deal with at the moment. One such matter was the imminent arrival of the Fifth Child to replace Shinji. Another matter was the synchronization test scheduled for late this evening…as the First Child was set to synchronize with Unit-01.
-x-
Gendo was not having a good time with the personnel he couldn't figure out on who was putting disrespectful graffiti on his office door and when they found the time to do so without being seen. In addition to another designation for his previous "baby snatcher" bad mark, someone had put "The Devil's Bastard" in green on it sideways while "Rot in Hell" was painted on upside-down in orange paint.
"Commander Ikari," he was addressed by Rei, reminded that she was standing in front of him. "Will he be piloting Unit-01 again?"
"No," he answered her. "Until further notice, the Third Child is suspended from active duty indefinitely. You will pilot Unit-01."
"And the Fifth Child?"
"Maintain your distance from him. He may not be who he seems to be."
But Rei had a different priority on her mind. She had to deal with the Hitode woman, whom she suspected would be present during the next test.
If she's near, you know what must be done, she thought. If he's near, you make sure he can't get away.
-x-
Although it was that time of the month for her, Asuka gave Shinji the benefit of the doubt and tried her best to refrain from bad-mouthing him.
I don't know why I have to go through this just because I'm a woman, she thought as she stood in front of the bathroom mirror as she got ready for the synchronization test. It's not like I even want children of my own one day.
As she walked out, she passed by Fusei.
"Can I trouble you with a personal question, Ms. Soryu?" She asked her, catching her attention.
"Huh?!" She reacted, turning around to face her. "What is it?"
"I'm just a physician when I'm not a computer expert, but didn't NERV give you pain medication or any instructions on how to manage your time of the month?"
"NERV was supposed to do that?"
Hearing that was enough of an explanation for Fusei to get that the girl likely self-managed her cramps.
"If any agency has access to medical treatment, even something as trivial as menstruation, they have to provide such resources to those that require them. NERV is no exception to that rule."
"I'm rarely harmed during the battles with the Angels."
"It wouldn't matter if you're never harmed physically. You should get a prescription for birth control to help manage your cramps."
They walked down to the testing chamber for the scheduled synchronization test.
"Tell me, did you ever feel terrible during your time of the month?" Asuka asked her.
"Only once," she revealed. "I was eleven when my monthly visitor showed up for the first time. I admit I was not myself during an entire week. I got angry over the most trivial of things, whether it was at my father leaving his novel open on the floor or at my sister forgetting to brush her hair. My mother got me on the pill and about a day later, I was starting to feel like my old self."
"Sounds like you became a drug-dependent drone."
"Only because I don't trust myself to do or say something to someone that I'll later regret."
"Have you?"
"I yelled at my father once. Called him something I wish I hadn't. I made up with him the next day, but it doesn't change the fact that I crossed a line with someone I loved."
"What about now? You still take it?"
"Only once a month, always a day after the day the beast pays a visit. Helps to keep a lady's hormones in check."
Asuka would rather be free of her current pain than be reduced to a drone, but if there was a newer version of this pill, she was all for it.
"Excuse me, ladies," they stopped in front of a young boy of probably fifteen years that was in front of them. "I was told that I was to report to Central Dogma. Could you show me how to get there?"
In a strange sense, the boy looked like a male version of Rei. His hair was a paler shade of gray, skin was chalk-white that looked sensitive and fragile, and his eyes were the same, blood-red coloring. But there was something else about this boy that just…didn't seem to add up with the rest of him. It was like…something was off…or just not right.
"Uh, are you supposed to be here?" Fusei asked him.
"Oh, where are my manners? I'm sorry. My name is Kaworu Nagisa, and I was assigned to NERV's Evangelion program as one of the pilots."
"The Fifth Child?" Asuka questioned. "You're the Fifth Child?"
This bothered Fusei. This boy was dressed in the same uniform as her son was, but unless he was a new transfer student, he didn't exist in the files she and Misato found on each student born sometime after Second Impact occurred.
"Yes," the boy, Kaworu, answered.
-x-
Ritsuko Akagi was nowhere to be found in the trauma ward. This didn't sit well for Shinji, who decided to (after some hard thinking on the matter) question the faux-blond about Rei's personal background…if she knew anything about it. It was only because realization hit hard on the fact that as much as he has interacted with the girl, he didn't really know anything about her…with only what he had initially seen and heard of her. And he didn't trust her to say anything now that he learned from both Kensuke and his mother that Rei had crossed the line he warned her not to.
But if she's not here, then where could she be? He wondered, unable to ascertain the whereabouts of the faux-blond woman. Even Ms. Ibuki couldn't tell me where she could have gone to.
-x-
Ritsuko claimed to feel no such thing as humiliation, standing in front of the twelve monoliths that represented SEELE, but that was far from the truth. In truth, she was really disgusted to be doing this…and bothered by a new revelation that was brought to her attention.
In need of information regarding the aftermath of the last attack, SEELE had demanded an audience with the First Child and informed Gendo Ikari that he had twenty-four hours to produce the girl to them…and in their disgust, Gendo had sent the head of Project "E" in place of the girl, defying their request…and showing that he was beyond any capacity left for cooperation with the council.
He sent me…as a substitute for Rei? She thought, and decided that, like everything else that came to light, enough was enough when it came to Gendo.
"Isn't that the same for you, Dr. Akagi?" She recalled Rei asking her, referring to her attention being given to Gendo above others.
And it was true that her attention had been diverted between the discovery of Fusei being Shinji's real mother and less focused on the agenda that Gendo had for after the Angels were dealt with…to not being focused on it at all now. And after that talk with the woman that was her age and had a more stable relationship with her mother than she wished she had with her own mother, the faux-blond really wanted to get out of Naoko Akagi's shadow and just do her own thing now.
I'm nobody's substitute, she decided for herself, choosing what had to be done.
-x-
Although it went against the order that she be confined for the remainder of the seventy-two-hour hold she was supposed to be under, Rei was permitted to participate in the synchronization test with Unit-01.
"If she's going to test an unstable Eva for everyone," went Asuka eight minutes earlier to Misato, "then shouldn't Shinji and Fusei be as far from her as possible when it starts?"
It was actually the smartest suggestion Asuka had spoken of, since only a handful of people knew that Rei was clearly out to get Fusei. So Fusei and Shinji were outside the base during the test, though the former hoped that the data being collected from the test was helping to put an end to the madness that were the Angels.
"So…you don't know where Dr. Akagi is, either?" Shinji asked her.
"No," she answered him, sitting on the ground in front of a fountain in NERV's garden area. "If anyone knows something about Ms. Ayanami, it's gotta be her, though, right?"
"It's not like we can ask that man. He won't answer."
"He's got…much worse problems than what he already has."
Fusei laid on her back to look up at the ceiling. It wasn't as realistic as the sky itself was, but at least they had natural sunlight shining underground.
"I guess it does make it easier working underground," Shinji stated, "having something pleasant to look up at from time to time."
"Yeah," she agreed with him.
Ring! Fusei's cell phone rang.
She got up and looked at who was calling her…and couldn't believe her eyes.
"Ritsuko is calling my phone," she told Shinji, and then answered the call. "Hello?"
"Hello, Ms. Hitode," responded Ritsuko to her. "Is Shinji with you right now?"
"Uh, yeah, he's with me."
"If you two are at the Geo-Front, could you go down to my office in half an hour? There's something about Rei you both should know about."
She then disconnected the call before Fusei could question her on what that "something" was.
"It seems we're going to get an answer on who Ms. Ayanami is," she told her son. "Doctor Akagi wants us to come down to her office."
-x-
Misato was beyond freaked as a result of the synchronization test that ended eight minutes ago. Not only was Rei able to sync with Unit-01 like before when Shinji was a virtual unknown, but she was able to match the boy's previous synchronization ratio from when he went up against the Fifth Angel. If anything, it made her and some of the other personnel feel slightly intimidated by the albino girl.
It was just as disturbing with the Fifth Child, too, as he was used to sync with the suspended Unit-03 in place of the Fourth Child, which shouldn't have been possible due to the factors involving the pairing of a pilot to an Evangelion. But he was somehow able to sync with Unit-03, which should've only been able to accommodate the otaku…and what was more was that he was able to do so with a much higher synchronization than the otaku.
Who is this boy? She wondered. And how was Rei able to match Shinji's synchronization?
As she walked down the hall, her plan was to find Kaji and question him if he knew anything about the First and Fifth Children that she didn't know about…or at least if he knew where to find Ritsuko.
"Misato?" She came around a corner and just avoided bumping into Shinji and Fusei as they were coming down from wherever they were coming from around the corner.
"Shinji? Fusei? Where are you two off to in such a hurry?"
"Doctor Akagi's office," Fusei explained. "She called me almost half an hour ago and said there was something about Ms. Ayanami that we should know about."
"There's a lot about Rei I'd like to know about myself."
The three went to Ritsuko's office and found her there, looking like she was having a bad day.
"Bad day?" Fusei asked her.
"In many respects," she answered her. "Before I say anything else, are you sure you can handle the truth about Rei?"
None of them could speak for the rest, but Misato wanted to know was going on.
Shinji needed to know what was up with the girl's attitude towards his mother, and Fusei had to know more about the girl to better prepare for the inevitable conflict between them or Gendo.
"We might as well know all that we can about her," Shinji expressed.
"Yeah," Fusei and Misato agreed.
Ritsuko sighed and got up from her chair. She led them down to an elevator and took them to the lower levels of NERV HQ.
"At first, I wanted to say that the girl was like Ikari," she explained to them, referring to Gendo instead of Shinji. "Someone who isn't adept at living. But that's hardly the case with her at all."
The elevator stopped and she led them down an old corridor that had a lingering smell of decay. Entering an old room, furnished with only the barest of things a person needed to survive, Shinji couldn't help but see the comparison it had to Rei's apartment.
"Why does this place look like Ayanami's apartment?" He asked Ritsuko.
"This was where she lived the first years of her life," she revealed. "The light and water serve as reflections, echoes of her memories of this place."
"When you say that she lived here for the first years of her life," Fusei spoke, "you mean to say that she was born down here, don't you?"
"Very perceptive, Ms. Hitode. Yes, she was born down here."
"But how does this explain her behavior? Her attitude towards me?"
Ritsuko led them further down the hall and into a large chamber full of holes in the ground and a strange, two-barred cross impression, and in them were the most misshapen of forms that resembled the most familiar of beings to the group.
"Are those…Evas?" Shinji asked.
"The very first ones," Ritsuko explained. "All failures, dumped here ten years ago and forgotten about. At least one-hundred-nine attempts until Unit-00, the first Eva that actually worked."
"A graveyard for Evangelions."
"No, Shinji," went Fusei in response to this. "A graveyard would imply some sort of memorial to remember those of the past. These were just thrown aside like garbage, left to pile up and decay over time. Nobody remembers them. Nobody cares about them."
"This was also where Ikari's wife disappeared," Ritsuko revealed.
"His wife?" Misato asked; there wasn't much to go on with any details regarding the woman she, like so many others, had been misled into believing was Shinji's mother.
"It was in Two-Thousand-Four. You might not remember much of it, Shinji, but you were there when it happened. The failed experiment with Unit-01."
But Shinji didn't remember anything about the Eva. Before he came to Tokyo-3, his past was just one lousy day after another because of who he thought was his father being part of the reason he was looked down upon by others.
"Why was she doing an experiment with the Evangelion? And why bring Shinji to see it happen?" Fusei asked her.
"I don't know why she did it. You'd have to ask the two men of her past that knew her. Or rather, that thought they knew her."
"Commander Ikari and Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki," went Misato; these two men seemed the obvious ones that knew of the woman the most. "But the former has no interest in saying anything and the latter is in the wind."
Ritsuko then led them down into another, smaller chamber. This one disturbingly like an architect's attempt at building a room to resemble a brain and spinal column, based on the ceiling and contraption in front of them.
"What is this place?" Fusei asked her.
"This is where the components for the Dummy System are produced," she answered.
"The components? You told me that the components were mechanical and software."
Ritsuko took out a remote and pressed a button to cause the panels on the walls to retract, revealing a large tank of sorts.
"There's a lot about NERV that was never meant to be known," she told them. "Ikari is among the most secretive people in the history of the agency. Lie enough times to hide, keep quiet about everything else, and you don't know what is truth, anymore. One of the darkest secrets is Rei."
All around them in the tank, dozens of bodies floating aimlessly in the orange-tinted water. But they all bore an uncanny resemblance to the albino girl of few words and even fewer expressions.
"Ayanami?" Shinji gasped, looking to his left and right, seeing the girl all over the place.
"You mean…this is the Dummy System?" Misato questioned Ritsuko.
"Yeah," said the faux-blond as Fusei held her son, trying to keep the both of them from going crazy from the horrid sight in front of them. "While the Dummy System relies on the software, these serve as the physical basis for the whole system. But they're nothing more than spares for Ikari. Spares to keep Rei involved in his goal."
Fusei had seen the movies and documentaries involving cloning and the possibilities it possessed, but this went beyond the realm of science fiction and broke all the rules of the world she knew.
"This…is just wrong," she told Ritsuko. "Why?"
"Fifteen years ago, human beings found what they believed to be a god, and, in their arrogance, tried to possess it. For their arrogance, everyone was punished. That was what caused Second Impact. And the god they found was gone. But in their continued arrogance, people tried to revive the god, and from that was the being they called Adam. And from Adam, people tried to create what they felt was a god in their own image, and that was the being called Eva."
"God created Man in his image…and Man created Eva in his image? You call them human?"
"They are human. Devoid of conscious, we give them souls salvaged from the deceased. Except Rei is the only one that has a soul."
"What do you mean?" Misato questioned.
"The Evas are soulless, so NERV imbues them with souls of women that are deceased. Every time Rei is killed, her soul always comes back here. Whenever she dies, she ends up back in the tube and returns to life."
"But…what does it have to do with her attitude towards me?" Fusei asked.
"I don't believe her attitude towards you is entirely her own. I think she got her negativity towards you from Ikari's wife."
At first, Fusei wanted to question the validity of such a belief, but then the revelation that NERV was able to put human souls into the Evas had her suspecting that not everything was as it seemed. And the Eva and the First Child were anything but full of clarity.
"You mean," Shinji spoke up, "when the Eva went crazy that day Ayanami was in it… It was trying to attack my mother…out of some sort of spite? And now Ayanami wants to do the same, like she's possessed by some ghost?"
It was natural for anyone in Shinji's position to disbelieve something like this. Anyone that didn't deal with this on a regular basis would, or one that was lied to or kept in the dark on many things. Even Fusei felt that it was crazy to accept.
"How else would you explain her behavior?" Ritsuko suggested to them. "Why else would she say the things she's said? She's been influenced by both Ikari and his wife ever since they got her."
-x-
At first, her dislike of the girl was simply because she wanted to prove that she was the best pilot of the Evangelion. But after the last test, Asuka had more reason to dislike Rei. It was the way she spoke of both Shinji and Fusei, how one needed to be kept away from the other when she bought up their relationship to get a reaction from her. Not even the fact that the redhead had a new score of one-hundred percent to her name did anything to quell her concerns over the pair.
She's gotta be crazy, she thought as she walked down the hall after she changed out of her plugsuit. What, does she have a grudge against people whose long-lost parents have suddenly returned and want to be involved in their lives…or is she just targeting that idiot because it's his mother?
Suddenly, the world around her grew dark…and she fell to the ground. All she could register before losing consciousness…was that the back of her head felt like it had collided with a wall.
-x-
"Shinji?" Fusei spoke to her son, seeing him in the cafeteria at one of the tables, looking depressed about what they had seen and heard an hour ago…and what Ritsuko had done afterward out of spite towards Gendo. "You wanna talk about it?"
He looked at her face and found it hard to explain how this revelation made it harder to look at the First Child or even think about her.
"I don't understand how you can be so calm after learning of this," he uttered, but looked around to make sure that no one else was close by to hear them. "I mean… We just found out something terrible, that Ayanami's not who we thought she was, that the man…and his wife…are more off than I can find the words to describe them…and you're not freaking out over any of it."
Fusei looked around them and leaned in closely to Shinji as she sat across the table from him.
"I am freaking out from it all, Shinji," she told him. "I just don't show it right now. I can't afford to show fear that Ms. Ayanami's an unstable person that won't be swayed to look the other way. Or that the Eva is some mad scientist's grand design."
"Why? Why can't you?"
"My reason is right in front of me. If I start to lose my cool, everything that is still stable will shake at their foundations and come tumbling down."
"But…they could have done the same thing to you long ago. They could have jammed you into one of those things if you were…and…"
"Shinji," she calmed him down and took hold of his left hand. "They thought I was dead that day they took you. When I sleep, I sleep just like the dead. That's why they did what they did. They never bothered to check if I was, though. If they wanted to try and put me in one of their cyborgs, they would've done so sooner or later. Even if they had, I still would have gone to extremes to keep you out of the Eva if I had known what it was and the harm it could do to you. But I'm still here. I'm not going anywhere, Shinji."
-x-
"Where's Asuka?" Misato asked Hyuga as she stepped on the bridge in Central Dogma, finding him and Shigeru there.
"You mean, you weren't told?" Hyuga responded.
"Told what?"
-x-
Cerebral hemorrhage due to blunt force trauma. That was what the medical team revealed to Ritsuko when she was informed of the Second Child's incapacitation. And the explanation to why was thus: Someone struck Asuka from behind with enough force to knock her out.
Ritsuko had a good suspicion on who, as well. It didn't cross her mind that Rei could do something of this sort at all.
And if something happens to her now, she won't come back, she thought, a bit hopeful that something would happen to the girl.
As she walked down the hall of the trauma ward, she felt like her workload hadn't decreased in the least, even when it should've. And if Gendo wanted to get on her case for the destruction of the Dummy System, she was willing to explain her actions to spite him; the guy was clearly losing his hold on everything. But as she stepped into the room the Fourth Child was in, she thought that Rei couldn't get any more of being a suspect in the assault on Asuka.
There she was, beside the bed, trying to suffocate the boy as he struggled for breath.
"Rei!" She gasped, running over and shoving the girl aside. "What are you doing?!"
On the floor, Rei looked up at her and spoke, "He is unnecessary. He is of no use to anyone, anymore."
The faux-blond looked at the otaku as he refilled his lungs with oxygen and then back at the girl. If it had been against the Angels, she would've been willing to sacrifice the pilots if it meant the survival of the human race, but then Fusei came along and changed everything. Now, even though there was still one more Angel out there, it didn't seem necessary to put them all at risk. But here was Rei, trying to kill one with a broken leg and was recovering from internal injuries.
"That's not for you to decide, Rei," she told her. "Leave now or else security will escort you to a holding cell."
Rei got up and walked out of the room.
-x-
Shinji didn't sleep easy that night. Finding out from Fusei, who found out from Ritsuko, that Asuka had been attacked by someone…and that Kensuke was nearly suffocated by Rei didn't ease his concerns that things would be fine when the last Angel showed itself and was defeated. He thought she was after his mother, but couldn't understand why she tried to hurt Asuka and Kensuke.
Has their influence really taken hold of her? He wondered, trying to comprehend how a man he had no ties to, that treated him like scum, and a woman that deceived him in his youth could be the cause of a girl's recent foulness in her behavior. Mother, be careful down there.
-x-
Even though there was security in place to keep watch over Asuka and Kensuke and make sure that Rei Ayanami wasn't on the premises, Fusei, under her Hippocratic oath, stayed the night to rotate the shifts of who would watch who for an hour at a time, including herself.
"I don't get it, Dr. Hitode," Kensuke told her when she was keeping watch over him for her first hour of the night. "Why did Rei try to kill me? I didn't even do anything to her."
Because Gendo has a nasty habit of wanting to cast aside people who no longer serve a purpose to him, she thought to herself, sitting by the door to keep watch over who came and went.
"Um…do we have a radio here?" Kensuke asked her. "Sometimes, listening to music or news helps to calm my nerves."
"I have a radio app on my phone," she told him, taking out her iPhone and turning on the radio app. "I'm going to recommend that you be transferred to a different hospital for your safety if Ms. Ayanami persists in her attempts."
"And if she tries to kill you?" He asked her.
She sighs and explains, "I'm not some woman with a license to practice medicine or a degree in computer expertise. I know how to defend myself and use non-lethal measures to ensure that I don't violate the oath I took when I became a doctor."
A man and woman walked past the door and Fusei sighed again.
"I never understood why that oath existed to begin with when there's no way to save everyone," Kensuke revealed to her.
"It's a black and white world," she explained, "but there are some who live within the world of gray, which blends the two planes. Even if someone you're treating someone that is injured, the point of the oath is for a doctor to not harm anyone deliberately. You stick a syringe into someone's arm to draw blood to find out what's wrong with them, that's helping them get results on what ails them and how to treat them, but when you amputate an arm or leg that aren't broken or can still be saved without even getting consent from a patient or telling them, that's doing harm."
"And you saved my leg and insides. You didn't remove them or try to do so without my consent. Thank you, Dr. Hitode."
"…And here we are with a rerun of an interview from earlier this afternoon from a man that says he works for NERV," said a male voice on the radio app. "And you are, sir?"
"Kozo Fuyutsuki," a second male voice uttered.
"And what brought you here today?"
"To reveal a truth that recently came to light that the world should know about. A fourteen-year-old secret that hurt two families."
"Oh? And how serious is this?"
"Everyone that has ever heard of or even had an opinion of man known as Gendo Rokubungi, who later became Gendo Ikari, is one of two people that did something so wrong, he should be punished to the full extent of the law."
Gasp! Kensuke reacted to this broadcast.
"He kidnapped a young woman's newborn son in the aftermath of the Tokyo devastation caused by Second Impact…and passed him off as his own son."
"Oh, now, that's terrible. And do you know who this woman is that lost her son to this lunatic?"
"I do, but out of newfound respect for her, I prefer to keep her name anonymous. I can, however, say that she spent the entirety of her son's life trying to find him…and only managed to do so a few weeks ago when she showed up at Tokyo-3."
"And Tokyo-3's been nearly evacuated due to these repeated attacks by giant monsters, right?"
"That, I can't say. I was removed when Ikari made an attempt on my life after discovering that he had no children and who the boy belonged to."
Fusei couldn't believe that Fuyutsuki was telling this all. If the wrong people heard of this broadcast, they could find him and put him down like a rabid animal that was unsafe, just to shut him up for good.
"So the guy took someone else's child and then abandoned them shortly after the death of his wife," the radio guy spoke. "After all these years, why didn't he just do the right thing and return the boy to his mother? Why not just explain why he took him, treated him the way he did?"
"Because…his wife's death was no accident," Fuyutsuki revealed. "In the experiment she participated in, the one where she died, she told me not to tell him what she was going to do, fearing that he would stop her. In truth, I sneered at Ikari in silence…because I didn't like him, either. He's never been one to do the right thing, including admitting his crimes in their entirety. He thinks he's untouchable, that the rule of law doesn't apply to him. But I do hope he gets what's coming to him for his sins."
Kensuke looked at Fusei and uttered, "He's referring to you as Shinji's mother, isn't he?"
"Yeah," she answered, "but he's keeping my name out."
"And you're sure you can't disclose the identity of the boy's actual mother?" The radio guy asked Fuyutsuki, hoping to get some sort of details from the elder.
"No," he answered. "If I revealed her name, I'd be putting her family in danger…and they've suffered enough loss already."
"And should those that don't agree with your divulging of sensitive information?"
"Then this should get their attention because I'm going to tell you what NERV was really up to that had absolutely nothing to do with protecting the people."
-x-
Gendo couldn't believe his ears when some random employee of NERV told him to tune into the radio stations for something that had everyone bothered. Not only was one radio station playing a broadcast of Fuyutsuki's interview, but the old man was revealing what he had done and what NERV had been misled into doing, destroying the agency's credibility.
"…Hopefully, when all the Angels are gone, the agency will be disbanded before things get worse for the people still there," he heard Fuyutsuki say to the radio guy. "I wouldn't be surprised if most of the personnel decided to up and leave moments after the last Angel was confirmed to be dead."
And the worst part of Gendo hearing this was that Fuyutsuki was most likely right about the people leaving right after the last Angel was defeated.
"And as for Ikari, I hope he gets what's coming to him soon."
But Gendo felt concern that some of the personnel would try to come after him after the last Angel was dealt with.
-x-
"…That was pretty heavy of you, Mr. Fuyutsuki," said Fusei's mother to the elder later that night. "How many people do you suspect will react negatively to what you revealed?"
"It'll depend upon how they react," he told her, setting down his cup of tea.
"Still…just thinking about it sounds terrible. What led you to side with these people in the beginning?"
"I was threatened by them if I tried to reveal what had truly happened. It doesn't matter now, I've said more than I could have said years ago. What happens to me now is in fate's hands."
"Fate," she sighs as she poured herself another cup of tea. "People who believe in fate believe in forces beyond their control, that cause things to happen that are for better or worse. Never did those believers believe in a small group of people that wanted this madness to happen fifteen years ago. All those people, all those cities and towns in various countries. They were all expendable, they didn't matter to the twisted goal of some madmen. It's insane."
"I see insanity on a regular basis."
"Still, the idea of forcing all of mankind to unite as a spiritual entity and replace the deities that we believe in, to erase all the sense of loneliness and pain… As potentially benevolent as it could be, it removes one's privacy in the process, allowing everyone to know everything about anyone. And nobody is able to return to their life from before it got commingled with everyone else's."
"Ikari called it the path to God. It was believed to be a means to save the human race, but how does one view this method as saving the human race?"
"It's either an option accepted by the majority of the world that take the time to accept it or not…or just an excuse to do something and try to get away with it. But there's one thing you can't ever escape from, no matter what you do."
"Which is?"
"The fact that you did something that hurt others. It's universal history…and the past will always come back to bite you in the ass…and anywhere else, for that matter. The past is never at rest. Any sins committed in the past, one way or another, will break out and ruin you."
Fuyutsuki then pick back up his cup and finished his tea. Any sins he had left from his past that would come back to bite him, he would face them with what little honor he had left.
-x-
For once, Misato was glad that Shinji was asleep and Asuka was in a coma. The radio broadcast that revealed everything Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki knew was causing her to question everything she knew and thought she knew, over and over again. The revelation was going to turn NERV inside-out and likely cause a internal manhunt for Commander Ikari, whether or not he was prosecuted for his kidnapping of Shinji to the full extent of the law.
If everyone at NERV listened to that broadcast, things will likely get uglier than ever before, she thought as she looked down at Shinji's sleeping form. As if things can't get any worse than now.
Little did she or anyone else know, things were going to get uglier real soon.
-x-
"This is an outrage!" SEELE 08 shouted. "Fuyutsuki revealed everything he knew to the public! Anyone that listened to that broadcast now know what really caused Second Impact and who was involved in its outcome!"
"We should've had him executed years ago!" SEELE 11 suggested. "This only happened because Ikari said he could handle him."
"Find him and execute him!" SEELE 04 demanded.
"It is moot," SEELE 10 stated. "The sooner we can achieve the Instrumentality Project on own terms, the sooner we can dispose of all the loose ends."
"The final Angel will be upon us in due time," SEELE 01 announced. "Our promised time is at hand."
-x-
He didn't like the look of the ravaged land. No trace of plant life, not even a weed, could be seen for miles in all three directions. The water of the ocean was as orange as the LCL…and smelled of blood. And the worst part for Shinji…was the giant, winged woman that reached high into the clear, eerily night sky…because she looked just like Rei Ayanami.
"What's going on?" He wondered as the giant woman looked down at him. "Aah!"
She reached down towards him with her hands and he tried to run away from her.
"You can't escape from me, Ikari-Kun," he heard Rei's voice behind him. "I won't let you leave with that unnecessary woman."
He turned at the sight of the right hand and ran faster…until he lost his footing and fell into the darkness beneath him.
"Waaaahh! Aaaaah!" He screamed.
Thud! Shinji fell hard onto the floor and opened his eyes, finding himself back in his room; what he had experienced before…was nothing more than a dream…or a nightmare.
"Ahh…ahh…ahh…" He panted, and then looked in front of him at his mother's charm, which landed in front of him.
He was relieved that it was undamaged, and picked it up and put it around his neck.
-x-
"…Ohhh…" Fusei groans as she drinks her first cup of coffee for the new day.
"I know, right?" Hyuga expressed, joining her in the coffee intake. "Night shifts stink like crazy."
"It wasn't the night shift of last night that wore me out," she explained. "It was keeping an eye out for Ms. Ayanami. Ever since it was suspected that she was the one to attack Ms. Soryu and her attempt on Mr. Aida's life, one can't even go to the restroom without getting a guard to be on the lookout for you as you take a powder."
"What is her deal with you, anyway?" Shigeru questioned as he drank his cup of coffee in front of the two. "Her silence was creepy enough as it is, but now… She's even creepier."
"To sum it up in just a few words," Fusei responded, "Ms. Ayanami wants to sanitize me."
She then threw her empty coffee cup into the compost bin away from them.
"What do you mean by 'sanitize' you?" Shigeru had to ask again.
"She doesn't like the fact that it was confirmed Shinji's my son…and wants me dead," she sighs. "It can't get any crazier than that."
The two men looked at each other before looking back at the woman, and then Hyuga expressed, "But that's not up to discussion. If it's the truth, then it's the truth. You can't do anything about the truth but either accept it or reject it."
"Even if she managed to do away with you, it's not like Shinji would forgive and forget," Shigeru added. "You two seriously need to get out of here the second the last Angel shows up and is defeated."
"Yeah, nobody would hold it against you for running home. I even hear Commander Ikari's facing life in prison for what he did to you."
"Tell me something, how do these rumors get around so quickly?" Fusei asked them.
"People hear things," they both told her.
-x-
Kaworu Nagisa stood in front of Unit-03 and almost regretted that he was about to do as he had been instructed to do. But what choice did he truly have?
Slice. He felt something small cut through his neck.
"Ah," he gasped, dropping to his knees, grasping his neck, feeling blood seeping out.
"You're unnecessary," he heard a female voice say to him, and he looked up at his would-be attacker, seeing Rei Ayanami, holding a small scalpel. "You are if no use to anyone."
Then, feeling that his life was dimming, Kaworu Nagisa fell face-down onto the floor. And then, he was gone.
Rei then kicked him into the pool and walked away. Even if the personnel found out she had a hand in this, there was little they could do now that the last Angel had been dealt with so easily.
-x-
NERV HQ felt like it had lost more light than the last time Shinji was here. As he and Misato stepped out of the elevator and into the hallway, they noticed a pair of EMTs carting away a gurney with a long, black bag.
Shinji didn't need to be an expert to know what had been in that bag.
"Misato?" He asked his guardian.
"Yes, Shinji?" She responded.
"Did you call my mother before we came down here?"
"Yeah."
-x-
According to the medical examiner, the boy had been dead for less than an hour, not long enough for rigor to take effect, but long enough for sufficient blood loss and oxygen deprivation to the brain, and the cause of death was determined to be severed jugular veins. Had they gotten to him sooner, Fusei was certain that they could've saved Kaworu's life. But what she wanted to ascertain now was who did this to the boy…and why.
"No clue on who could have done this, Dr. Hitode?" She heard Misato say to her as she and Shinji came into the room where Asuka lay in her coma.
"I've checked the security cameras for earlier, but the footage leading up to the murder has disappeared from the servers," she told them, checking Asuka's pulse. "The only people able to remove footage from the security cameras here are those with master access to the MAGI."
"Are you sure?"
As she set Asuka's arm back under the cover, Fusei responded, "I only have limited access to the MAGI regarding the data of the children's synchronization ratios and medical histories. The only ones with master access to the rest of the MAGI that could remove security footage…are Dr. Akagi and Gendo Ikari."
This, of course, narrowed the suspects down to just Gendo, since Ritsuko was incarcerated.
"Do you think you can get Ritsuko's access?" Misato asked her.
"You don't need to," they heard a male voice behind Misato, and they turned to see Kaji, who looked like he had something heavy on his mind. "I copied the footage before it was erased."
"And?"
"It was Rei that did it."
"Ayanami?" Shinji responded; he couldn't believe that she would…actually kill someone that only showed up recently to replace him. "Are you sure?"
"Believe me, I've looked at the footage twice…and she's the only albino girl in the city," Kaji told him, holding up a tablet and showing them the footage he copied.
The women and Shinji observed Rei as she came up to the boy as he stood in front of Unit-03…and slit his neck before putting him in the pool.
Fusei covered her mouth, but Shinji still couldn't believe that Rei could do this, even after trying to suffocate Kensuke.
Misato hadn't expected this from any of the children. From Asuka, she could expect fits of aggressive behavior, typical boy behavior from Kensuke, even the mild timidity from Shinji, but with Rei, there was just passiveness. The girl never did much of anything except…whatever she was told to by whoever had authority to give her orders.
Maybe it was because he found out about her origins, or even because he tried to find an alternate reason for her, like she needed to vent or something, but Shinji couldn't keep trying to delude himself into thinking that Rei would keep away from his mother. If she could kill the Fifth Child and try to get away with it, then she could cross the line and kill her…no matter what he told her.
"Where is she now?" Fusei asked Kaji.
"I don't know," he answered. "After she dumped his body, she just up and disappeared."
Fusei then reached into her left coat pocket and pulled out her Tazer, which had the unshaven man backing away.
"Oh, have some immunity," she told him. "It only has one setting, and that's stun. No kill. It goes against the oath I took as a doctor."
"What, you're just gonna taze Rei when you see her?" Misato asks.
"If she tries to become my judge and executioner," she responds; just because the girl that wasn't even a girl despised her enough to want her dead because of the influence of two unstable people, she wasn't going to be bullied or taken down by her. "It'd be easier just to try and talk with her and resolve the matter without violence."
"Except she won't give you that option," went Shinji. "But before it even comes to that, I want to talk to her the next time I see her."
"What could you possibly get out of her?" Kaji asks him.
Shinji looked at the adults with an intensity in his eyes that was tempered between compassion and anger towards the albino girl.
"How far she's willing to go for a selfish belief," he told them.
-x-
"The Fifth Child was found murdered within the Geo-Front," said SEELE 11 revealed to the council. "They don't know who caused the death."
"Did they know he was the final Angel?" SEELE 03 questions.
"There is no indication that they knew," answers SEELE 08. "He never fulfilled his duty."
"If this was Ikari's doing…" SEELE 03 uttered.
"Regardless, NERV has outlived its usefulness because of him," SEELE 01 cut him off. "He has caused this council more than enough trouble. We shall have him atone for his sins…with his own death."
"Yet, there is a case being made against him for kidnapping the Third Child that will stand to convict him," SEELE 10 reminded them, as they knew about the charges being brought up against Gendo. "There will be no need to deal with him if the authorities do away with him."
"We can't risk that he'll try to get away before that even happens. We need to deal with him immediately. Take NERV down."
-x-
He didn't go to the Eva cages to see if she was there, nor the fountain garden or the cafeteria. Instead, Shinji just wandered around the halls, hoping that he would just bump into Rei; he had his doubts about going to her apartment and finding her there.
How far she's willing to go over some belief, he thought, stepping into an elevator and pressing the button for a random floor.
A slow and depressing two minutes must have passed before the doors opened up…and revealed Gendo and Rei outside it.
Shinji sighed and looked at Rei.
"Just the person I needed to speak with," he uttered to her.
Rei then stepped inside and the doors closed, giving the two some privacy to converse.
"Have you visited the Second Child?" She asked him.
"Yeah," he answered. "She's still in a coma."
"A pity."
"But my mother says her chances of waking up are improving, though."
"Your mother?"
"Yes."
"You…put too much of your longing in her."
Shinji felt offended by her just now.
"You say that like it's a bad thing," he countered.
"How far are you willing to go to believe in her assumptions that you're her son?"
Now he had more incentive to be offended by her.
"And how far are you willing to go just for a falsehood belief, Ayanami?" He asked her, letting his feelings be shared. "We both know more about you. More than even I care to admit is beyond rational. We even know you tried to kill Kensuke and killed that other boy. You keep saying that my mother is unnecessary, but now the Evas themselves are unnecessary. We don't have to continue piloting them, anymore. People are preparing to leave the base en masse. What do you aim to do with your newfound freedom from this feud with the Angels?"
"Except the last Angel hasn't been encountered yet, so nobody's permitted to go anywhere."
"My mother was asked by Misato to perform a more thorough autopsy report on the boy you killed. She was disgusted by being asked to examine a dead boy, but Misato wanted to make sure that he was who he seemed to be, and you know what she found?"
Rei became curious, though she didn't show it.
"She found material substances that were exactly like what was found in the Fourth Angel, meaning he was the last Angel we were waiting for…and you killed him. You ended NERV's feud with the Angels, so everyone's leaving, regardless of whether or not they need permission to."
"Well, you shouldn't leave."
"Why? It would give me the opportunity to continue building my relationship with my mother, meet my aunt in person, meet my grandmother and my father's relatives. Give me one good reason to turn such an opportunity that had been denied to me by a pair of adults I don't even know…and don't want to know any further?"
"Because that woman is not your mother. You continue to persist in the belief that she is, it's only going to end badly."
"Is that so? What, Ayanami, you're going to go and kill my mother? If that man tells you to do it, would you kill her? You'd lay an offending finger on her…just to keep me from leaving with her, which is my choice to do so?"
Rei then responded, "If it became necessary, then yes. Because Dr. Hitode is an unnecessary person, no longer useful to anyone. Unnecessary people must be disposed of."
Shinji shook his head in the negative at Rei. This was all he needed to hear from her to know how messed up she truly was because of the people that corrupted her.
"Whether you believe the truth or not, she's my mother…and she suffered a lot of heartache trying to find me because of Commander Ikari and his wife. They just assumed she was dead without even bothering to check if she truly was. His wife is dead, so he has to face the consequences of the crime alone. I don't even know what is likely to happen later on…but I just know that I want to put this all behind me and move on. I'm sorry if you can't accept this."
The elevator doors opened and Shinji stepped out and walked away.
"People are entitled to their own opinions and beliefs, Ayanami," he told her, "but some opinions and beliefs aren't worth being entitled to!"
She stepped out of the elevator and watched him leave…with anger in her eyes; there was no way she was going to let him walk away with the Hitode woman. Not while she still had time to prevent him from doing so.
To be continued…
A/N: I seriously want to hear from you readers what you think might happen in the next chapter!