Creation began on 12-06-22

Creation ended on 01-07-23

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Evangelion: Lore

A/N: Your votes decided this! Second update of this year!

Ritsuko Akagi was a woman who prided herself on being a genius, but ever since the Angels appeared five months ago, her genius has become less beneficial and more troubling to the people that looked to her for solutions. Not only did the First and Second Children end up injured and unable to pilot the Evas, but the Fourth Child resigned after learning that his sister died and the Fifth Child was let go of after losing his legs in another Angel attack. While none of them died, they didn't exactly live up to their expectations within NERV. And it was becoming increasingly difficult to find solutions that were guaranteed to prevail against the Angels.

What is the world coming to when nothing is going according to what was originally expected to happen? She wondered as she went to Fuyutsuki's office to pickup a document he had in there. None of the pilots are even living up to their expected service. Commander Ikari expected the Third Child to be here, and he's in the wind. Nobody seems to know where he disappeared off to. Where did he go?

Entering the sub-commander's office, she approached his desk and found something that she hadn't expected to find. It was some sort of cube made of an intricate material with a rubber ball stuck to it.

Why would the sub-commander have something like this in his office? She wondered as she picked up the document she was after…and decided to take the box with her.

-x-

"I was expecting Dr. Akagi to be here," Fuyutsuki informed Gendo in his office.

"No," Gendo responded. "I sent her to your office to pickup a document."

"You what?"

Because nobody else knew about the box, Fuyutsuki feared for the worse to befall Dr. Akagi if she decided to pickup the object without knowing about its blade.

"There's an item in my office that may be relevant to your son's disappearance," he told Gendo.

"And what would that be?" Gendo wanted to know.

"A box that was found in the attic where he was last seen by anyone."

"What is relevant about a box?"

"It has a small blade in it! I nearly cut myself with it!"

Fuyutsuki then turned to leave to find the faux-blond.

Gendo was unmoved by this revelation.

-x-

Putting the box inside a scanner, Ritsuko ran the object through the MAGI; her initial question of why a box would have a blade in it would hopefully be answered with a handful of other answers to questions she didn't have yet.

"Doctor Akagi!" She heard Fuyutsuki yell as he came into the lab she was using. "The box!"

"It's in the scanner right now," she informed him.

"Did you touch the blade?"

"What?"

"Did you cut yourself on the blade in the box?"

"No. Why?"

"What have you found out about it?"

"Nothing yet. I put it in the scanner four minutes ago. It'll be a while before the MAGI find out anything. Why did you this in your office?"

"I believe it has something to do with the Third Child's disappearance."

As the scanner continued analyzing the object, Ritsuko found this to be an unusual possibility. Why would a box like this have anything to do with a boy that went missing?

Beep! Her computer received an update from the MAGI.

"Well, the MAGI found something of interest," she informed Fuyutsuki as she sat at the computer. "This is odd."

"What?" Fuyutsuki asked her.

"It seems this box is, apparently, one of many that have been found over the years. Some of them have different appearances, others have the same appearance. There's also an unusual history to them. How do you think the Ikaris came to possess something like one of them?"

"No idea."

"Well, some people from the US, Russia, even Canada, some private collectors, were smart enough to put whatever they could on the Internet about these boxes. It's uncertain how many of these boxes were ever made, but it's believed that they were all made during the Eighteenth Century by a guy named Philip LeMarchand."

"Who was he?"

"An architect from France. Nothing of significance there. Hmm? Does this word mean anything to you: Cenobite?"

"Cenobite? No, I've never heard of that word. Why?"

"It keeps popping up in the results. Apparently, there's a history about them that connects with these boxes. Beings that have been…taken further than anything known to the history of experience, the keepers and explorers to the farthest reaches of said experience. This has to be a joke or something."

Fuyutsuki removed the box from the scanner and asked Ritsuko, "Do the results say anything about these boxes having blades in them?"

"Maybe this video here will tell us something," she responded, bringing up a video that had been put on the Internet.

"Okay," a man's voice instructed to a young woman being recorded. "Please, state your name for the record."

"Kirsty Cotton," the woman uttered, looking like she had been through an ordeal.

"What can you tell us about…what happened that night?"

"The part that I know about, the part that destroyed my family, that is… It all started with my father's brother, Frank Cotton. He found the box. The puzzle box…and then he solved it."

"What happened after he solved it?"

"They came for him."

"Who came for him?"

"The Cenobites. That's what they were called, but it's not what they refer to themselves as."

"Cenobites?"

"Demons to some…angels to others. They come from the box…or the box calls out to them…and they just appear to whoever solves it."

"And…you solved the box sometime after your uncle did?"

"Yes."

"How is it that you're still here…and Frank Cotton isn't?"

"Hell was what Frank was after…and Hell was what he got. I made a mistake by opening the box, letting my curiosity towards it compel me to open it. It wants people to open it. It wants people to open it…so it can do what it does to people that open it."

"What does it do? To those that open it?"

"It hurts. It exists only to hurt those that choose to open it. It opens up…and the Cenobites come for you."

"But…you got away from them, didn't you?"

"Only because I made a deal with them."

"What deal?"

"Frank had gotten away from them, and they were upset because he escaped from them. When they were going to take me, I made the deal: I would lead them to Frank, and they would take him back with them instead of me."

"What happened to the box after they took him back with them?"

"It disappeared. I didn't see it again after that night."

"You don't think it's possible that…someone else might've found the box?"

"If they did, they should just get rid of it. Nothing good comes from something like that. It doesn't matter what motivates you to want something like that. The box only exists to hurt. And the Cenobites… They don't see the difference between torment and gratification, between pain and pleasure. There's no difference between them at all."

"If you could tell whoever will be watching this tape a warning, what would you tell them?"

"If you have the box, just get rid of it. It's not worth the suffering it causes…unless it's suffering that you want."

The video ended, and it felt like it left more questions than answers to the two.

"Demons to some," went Ritsuko.

"Angels to others," finished Fuyutsuki, looking at the box. "These boxes hurt whoever gets too close to them."

"If that were the truth, then it would mean that…the Third Child might've met these people and was taken away by them."

"But we don't know for sure. There are other videos here. Maybe something else is here that we're not seeing clearly."

Ritsuko clicked onto another video, dated more recently than the first one, and it showed a man. One that appeared to have been in recovery for a long time, bald and with faded scars.

"State your name for the record," a female voice instructed.

"Elliot Spencer," the man replied.

"And who are you, Elliot Spencer?"

"I was a… I was a member of the British Expeditionary Force. Captain. Before the Battle of Flanders…where I lost my faith."

"The Battle of Flanders? As in the Battle of Flanders in the First World War?"

"Yes."

"And can you explain how you are…here…in the here and now?"

"Yes. After the war ended…after the devastation I had witnessed, I became an explorer of forbidden pleasures. The war had destroyed my generation. The people that didn't die during that time of conflict…drank themselves to death, but I went further."

"And it was this pursuit of forbidden pleasures that led you to the puzzle box?"

"Yes. Finding it…and solving it…was my last act of discovery."

"What happened after you solved it?"

"I found the monster that dwelled within Hell…and it found the monster within me. I became a servant of Hell, for decades, with no memory of my former life."

"You mean to say that…you were one of them? A Cenobite?"

"Yes."

"And…you're not, anymore?"

"No."

"Can you elaborate on how?"

"As monstrous as I was because of solving the box, I was bound by a different set of laws that existed. It turned out that just like Heaven, Hell has its commandments, too. The box had to be opened by those that desired to open it. Those that were truly innocent were left alone. It's more than hands that draw the Cenobites. It's people's desires, their intentions, whatever it is that motivates them to open the box…and by doing so…summon the Cenobites to them."

"And when did you…stop being one of them?"

"A friend released me…by reminding me of who I once was."

"A friend?"

"Kirsty Cotton."

"Okay. What, then?"

"I died shortly after by another man that had become an explorer of forbidden pleasures…and was stuck in a limbo between life and death. The monster I became during my servitude in Hell…created an imbalance upon my death. Because of the spiritual weakening and death that befell soon after, my evil became unbound and caused carnage. There was no order, only chaos. Balance needed to be restored. I needed to become the monster again."

"That must've been hard to do."

"It is as people say. I made my bed. I had to sleep in it."

"So…how is it that you're…here again? Alive and well?"

"Because I attacked Jophiel, an angel that was tasked with protecting the Garden of Eden, the same angel who banished people from the garden. After this, I was banished from Hell, stripped of the position as the Hell Priest, condemned to live among people until the end of time."

"But…if you're human again, why do you sound like you were dealt a blow more severe?"

"The position of Hell Priest to Leviathan will not stay vacant; someone among the Cenobites will assume the mantle…and they may not be anywhere near as restrained as I was."

Ring-ring! Ritsuko's phone rang, and she answered.

"Yes?" She spoke. "I'll let him know."

"Ikari?" Fuyutsuki questioned.

"Yes. You're needed in his office right now. And I want to run another scan on that box. Maybe get an analysis of its structural integrity."

Fuyutsuki sighs and sets it on the console in front of them.

"Be careful with it," he tells her. "If there are more of these boxes around, we don't know what they are capable of. They all might not work the same."

Ritsuko nods in understanding and the sub-commander leaves the command center of Central Dogma to see Gendo for the umpteenth time.

-x-

Entering an elevator, Fuyutsuki sighs again as he tries to wrap his head around what those two people said in those videos. If anything they said was to be taken seriously, there would've been more proof of what they went through.

"That blade," he heard a voice around him, "was meant for you."

He looked around the confined space, but there was no one else around. Was he hearing things?

"Yui, if your son did solve that box, I'm worried that nothing's going at all how anyone could have expected," he told himself, and then felt a hand on his left shoulder.

"Come," he heard the voice again, and saw a…person mutilated from the head-to-toe, "with us!"

"Aah!" He gasped, backed against the wall away from…her?

This person had very little skin covering their face, hands and feet, the top of their head deformed and sporting scarification in the form of strange fixtures that extended down to their neck, which had exposed muscle and bone. There was no way this person could be able to live with such mutilation and exposed innards. Was this a…a Cenobite? Was this a creature that had gone further in whatever these people were?

Suddenly, he was seeing into a dark place, far from…but somehow feeling close enough to be in front of…a shadowed being, and they were holding…another puzzle box in their hands.

"Come with us, Kozo Fuyutsuki," they uttered, turning a piece on top of the box, and he felt like something was cutting into his chest. "If not you…then bring us another."

Looking down at his chest, he saw blood soaking into his clothes.

"If not you, Kozo Fuyutsuki…then bring us another," the person repeated, pressing the top of the box, and Fuyutsuki felt like a hole had been cut into his chest.

"Aah…" He gasped, seeing four chains emerge from his chest…and extending out towards…Dr. Akagi, who didn't know they were coming for her! "No! Move!"

A moment after, he was back in the elevator, alone, gasping from what he witnessed. He checked his chest, finding no signs of injury or chains.

Ding. The elevator opened and he was on his chosen floor.

If not me, another? He wondered.

"That blade was meant for you," the mutilated person told him.

And now he realized what had been expected from him. The Cenobites wanted him to cut himself with the box's blade, but he avoided the blade, and they were displeased by this. But they were willing to make exceptions for this matter; if they couldn't have him, they wanted him to offer them someone else in place of him. If they couldn't have him, he was to give them another in his place.

He pressed the button to take the elevator back down to the command center. He feared for Dr. Akagi's life; if they couldn't have him, they would settle for her.

-x-

The Cost of Knowledge

Slice! It was an accident, nothing more than a mistake on her part, but Ritsuko had nobody but herself to blame when she subconsciously reached for the box and cut herself with its blade on her left hand, drawing blood.

"Dammit," she cursed as she got up from her chair and ran to the bathroom to wash her cut.

As she left the chamber, the blade on the fallen box sank into its form. The blood, however minute due to her reaction to move her maimed hand away, also sank into the box, like a sponge absorbing water, leaving no trace behind. And then…it began to twist and turn its corners.

Upon reaching the nearest bathroom, Ritsuko washed the blood from her hand as best as she could. The cut was minor, but it was deep.

Ring! She heard a bell ring.

"Huh?" She went, looking around the room and seeing nothing and no one else present. "Whoa…"

She was starting to feel a little woozy as she looked at her reflection, seeing her face was miserable and hurt.

"What?" She wondered, seeing her reflection had her left hand clutching onto her chest.

Click! The wall at the end of the bathroom split apart to reveal a long hallway…made of stone and leading towards a diamond-shaped being floating in the sky.

-x-

Kozo was shocked to see the box changing shape on its own, watching as the pieces moved on their own accord. When it was done, the box was gone, replaced by a dodecahedron-like form.

"Oh, no," he says as he realizes the severity of what has happened.

"Aaaaahh!" He thought he heard Ritsuko Akagi's voice, and ran as fast as he could to find her.

"Senpai!" He heard Maya Ibuki scream, seeing the boyish-looking woman run into the bathroom and followed her.

"What happened?" He asked her.

"I opened the door and saw Akagi-Senpai! And then she was gone!"

"Gone?"

"She was in here and then she wasn't! She went through the wall, and it closed behind her!"

Fuyutsuki looked at the wall, and then at the floor, seeing only a speck of blood. He then went to the sinks and saw bits of blood in one of them, indicating that Ritsuko had used it earlier.

"Where is she?" Maya questioned. "Where was she taken?"

To be continued…

A/N: Maybe I'll have Maya become an ally of Fuyutsuki's as he now has to come to terms with what has happened to Ritsuko. And what did you think of the videos featuring two characters that were important to the original film series? Please, let me know what your thoughts are about this chapter and who do you think should be next. Stay active, healthy and creative.