"We can rebuild her. We have the technology. We can make her stronger, faster, more moe than ever before."
Strange men in gas masks and white suits float in and out of her vision; spirits perhaps? She can't move, feels at once leaden and light as a feather. Like that game she played at slumber parties with Ouija boards and makeovers. Somewhere in her mind clicks, she is getting a makeover. Dull electricity runs across her limbs, phantom pains being soothed by drilling numbness. She's becoming whole again, but was she ever in parts?
"The accident ruined her. We basically had to scrape her off the concrete to get her here. Of course her loving parents would do anything to get their little girl back."
Right. The accident. She saw a little boy playing with a soccer ball a little too close to the street. He lost control of it, and the driver lost control of his bus. She managed to save the boy, push him out of the way. And then, nothing. She felt nothing but her own heartbeat, running away from her. Her parents. They must be so worried about her. Their darling little girl, their angel. Where were they? Where was she? The girl tries to move, but cannot. She is a body out of body. The effort of staying awake is too hard, she thought, better to go back to sleep.
"Subject is going into cardiac arrest!"
Words. White text on black backgrounds. A jumble of terms and feelings, run through double quick. Fear, fear, fear of death, fear of life, fear of something. Death, is she dead, will she die, she doesn't want to die but who does? Who, who are these men, who is she, where is she, why can't she move, why can't she feel, why am I using so many damned commas, why, why, why? Images flash, red and painful. Someone's run out of animation budget again. One image persists; a man and a woman, middle aged and nondescript. Mother and father. Their backs are turned. She wants to cry out, to scream, to run to them. She can't. She is a spectator in her own mind. The image changes, to a boy. Slight, effeminate, white shirt in black slacks. His face is blank, save for a red stamp. He turns, revealing his full face. Two kanji take up the center.
"I...kar...i"
"Subject is waking up, put her back under!"
"We can't, the anesthetic interferes with the binding process, we'll tear her apart!"
The girl opens her eyes, bleary and unfocused. There are men surrounding her, speaking to her as if she were underwater. She can't feel her legs. She looks down, the slightest movement a Herculean task. There's nothing there. There's a horrible fleshy mass of gristle, bone, and metal below her pelvis to be exact. She watches it bubble and stretch into stubby vestigial legs. It's got to be a dream. It must be a dream. Streams of pitchlike blood run down her cheeks as her eyes cross outwards. She sees herself, but not herself in the reflection of the surgeon's mirror. Strapped to the bed like a crucified man, her right arm stripped to the grim titanium bone. Wicked looking weapons run along her arm while the flesh that isn't hers crawls along like kudzu. Her chest is split open, organs pulsing and throbbing around a dimly glowing sphere. She's missing an eye; there's a pool of red where her left eye should be. Ichor is running down her cheeks, staining the sheets, blood everywhere. She has to be dead. This must be hell. She can hear outside, better than she ever could before.
"Mr. and Mrs. Kirishima, I'm afraid your daughter didn't make it. I'm sorry."
Underneath the sterile hospital lights, Mana Kirishima screamed.
Track 5: 21st Century Digital Girl
Darkness. Darkness took Mana. She saw herself, and in herself, saw absolute horror. Not truly dead, yet not really alive, she was trapped; her unfinished form a holding cell for her rapidly unfurling mind. Curled up in a ball on a metal folding chair she sat, clutching a ragged stump with her complete hand. She wept and wept, and her wounds wept with her. A spotlight is upon her, washing her with a bluish glow.
"You are Mana Kirishima, correct?" When did that blue-haired girl get here? And why is she covered in bandages? "I am here to tell you that things will turn out alright."
Mana lets out a strangled cry that spirals into a wet cough. "How is this going to turn out alright? I'm missing three limbs, covered in tumors, and my parents think I'm dead." She pulls in tighter, "But sure, everything's going to turn out just peachy. If I'm lucky, you're a delirious hallucination brought on by my organs shutting down."
The blue-haired girl smiles a fey little thing. "You still have some fight in you, I see. That proves to me that you will endure. Do so, Mana Kirishima, my child, and grow stronger than ever before." She curtsies and spins away on one heel. "We'll meet again." With that, she blinks out, taking the light with her. Blanketed by darkness, warmed by the presence of a mother she does not know, Mana Kirishima sleeps soundly.
"Geez Lilith, you've got a Messiah Complex a mile wide nowadays," a sandy gray haired memetic sex god quips. He runs a hand through perfectly coiffed locks, drawing sparkles.
"And you've gained the ability to sparkle in sunlight, Tabris," the fetish object from the Uncanny Valley retorts. "Are you looking to become a Cullen?" The gray haired male slouches, wounded. Red eyes glint fiercely.
"Low blow, and I thought I told you to call me Adam from now on."
"I will refer to you as Adam when you refer to me as Ayanami," Rei grins, "Or when you admit that I'm better than you, Nagisa."
"Hey, I'm just as popular with smelly fangirls as you are with smelly fanboys," the Angel currently known as Kaworu whines, circling to defend his ego. "I was only in one episode too, you had the entire season to win over the RealDoll contingent." It's Rei's turn to retract, ego wounded to the quick.
"I have no time for these silly jibes. I have a sister to attend to." She turns away briskly and walks through a door placed in the nothing, cheeks puffed out in indignation.
"Wait a minute, that doesn't happen for another-"
Six Months Later:
This was bad. This was really, really bad. Misato Katsuragi doesn't know how to take care of kids; it's a minor miracle Shinji and Asuka hadn't killed themselves yet. Actually, last time they kind of did: having ghostly versions of the two haunt her dreams wasn't pleasant at all. Although, she might have been really drunk that time; every cycle starts to run together like a fucked-in-half night after a while. This, though, Misato was far too sober for.
"Okay, walk me through this again Rei," she says with a sigh, snatching a half-eaten glass bottle out of the pink and blue Ayanami clone's mouth. "I don't even care which one anymore."
"Well, thousands of years ago before Sigourney Weaver, a couple of lonely Beijing-2 scientists found an intergalactic federation agent. One of them got killed, but was brought back to life inside said agent. That agent is me, Liao Rei the Mighty!" The aforementioned Liao jumps up on the tiny dining room table with a flourish, smashing her head through the ceiling. Bright red eyes interrupt a man in classical Japanese dress attempting to commit suicide. "Don't throw your life away!" She blinks, "Or at least, put it in the proper recycling bin when you're done with it." Before the bespectacled man can raise a query, Liao gets yanked back down by her big sister. Calmly locking her in a chair with her AT-Field, the proper Rei posits her theory.
"As you wish Captain Katsuragi," she pulls out a blackboard from the Dirac Sea, covered in chalk notes. "This is a Chimeric Nephilim, made with my DNA as a base. She was an attempt to create a version of Me Who Was More Than Me."
"Explain that without the capslock for us stupid people," Asuka pouts. She hates it when Wondergirl gets all expository.
"They took a chunk of Giant Naked Rei, used it to synthesize a body, then added genetic material from the tower of Angels that came out of Unit-00 from combination with Armisael. You may not remember that one Pilot Shikinami; it was the light that didn't deflower you." Rei dodges a beer can thrown with enough killing intent to choke a horse, completely unphased. "Using an incomplete form of the late Dr. Akagi's research, they set forth to create new life. New life that would surpass my own. Unfortunately for them, they made two crucial errors. First, they did not give her any sense of restraint."
"And the second?" Shinji asks, raising a hand. Rei bows her head, a grim smile on her lips. Both eyes have turned black.
"They had the audacity to attempt to surpass the insurmountable."
Liao slips through Rei's AT-Field at this point, taking offense to that last remark. Her ahoge twitches and flexes with righteous indignation. "I can so surpass you and stuff! I was born to do the impossible, see the invisible, touch the untouchable and break the unbreakable! I'm super special awesome!" Rei's eyes widen to truly rape face proportions.
"Do you wish to test your hubris? I will oblige you then, little one."
Liao's eyes burn red, four-leaf clover design swirling into view. "I won't disappoint you, onee-sama!"
"Whoa whoa whoa, back the fun bus up," Misato interposes herself between the two tykebombs. "I'm already in deep enough shit for earlier, I don't need you two blowing up the apartment complex on top of that." She tweaks both of the Nephilim's ears in a matronly fashion. "Besides, you two have some explaining to do to the Supreme Commander. You, Ayanami, need to answer for disrupting the Second Child's mental state."
"The hell do you mean, 'disrupting my mental state'?" It's Asuka's turn to stand up, hands splayed on the table.
"We're pretty sure Ayanami's been fucking with you since this cycle's started. You haven't seemed to get over your problems, and the Supreme Commander will not have any instability in his soldiers."
Asuka's face turns beet red with embarrassment. Fuck, they know too much. Maybe if she made a break for it, she could jump out of the window before anybody caught her. Or maybe that weird teacher guy in the hakama from upstairs could lend her some rope. "W-what do you mean? I'm the picture of mental health, unlike that creepy doll and her bootleg sister."
"Yeah, and I'm an international sex symbol," Shinji shoots back with a small chuckle. "Face it Asuka, you're a lot more on edge lately. We're worried about you."
"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" she bawls, gritting her teeth. "I have nothing to run from, nothing to hide, I am perfectly fine; thanks for asking." There's too much venom in that last one; no wonder no one wants to hold her. "I'm going to my room, or is that too 'disruptive to my mental state'?" Okay, this time she swears she saw Ayanami smirking at her. One of these days she's gonna get her pretty little porcelain face punched in.
"Fine, go to your room. We'll talk later, count on it," Misato twists Ayanami's ear a little harder, "And don't think I didn't see that little smirk young lady. You're just pissing kerosine on the flames now." She may have her best guilty face on, but inside Rei Ayanami is rolling on the floor laughing. "You, now, we're taking you to Dr. Akagi, see if she can figure out what the hell you are." She looks at Liao with her best serious face, drawing an exaggerated gulp from the knockoff.
"I already explained-"
"Shut up Rei," the sad puppy face from Liao makes her pause a moment. "Not you sweetie, the one we know." The sheer speed with which she returns to happiness is enough to give Misato whiplash. "And Shinji?"
"Yes'm?"
"Make me something nice, and dig out the Grief Vodka," a glimmer of determination lights up Misato's face. "Mama Missy's getting shitfaced tonight."
Mana Kirishima hated infiltration missions. Sure, drinking all of her comrades under the table thanks to the miniature dialysis machines she had as kidneys afterward was fun, but the actual dirty work sucked. Getting past the first keycarded door was easy enough, her pinky-mounted card spoofer made that barrier child's play. The two Section Two mooks behind the door went down without incident; tazers are always fun. She made sure not to hurt them too badly; it was too easy to flip the switch from "stun" to "kill". Mana may have been a great many things, made of a great many things, but she was no butcher. She was a soldier, and more importantly, she was a human being. 85% mechanical body be damned. She propped up the agents, cleaning up their outfits for courtesy's sake. Radio-band headphones tune her in to the vox populi of NERV. The JSSDF had a sneaking suspicion that they had done something to sabotage the Jet Alone project; Mana was there to ensure lightning didn't strike twice. She chuffed, sneaking along with catlike tread. The Jet Alone was a stupid looking thing anyway; a Frankenstein's monster of terrible committee ideas. It was a patchwork phallus of people with more money than common sense. It would never work.
It didn't have the blessings of the protagonists.
"So, you heard about that new project the JSSDF is working on? Jet Jaguar or something?"
"Jet Jaguar? Like that Godzilla thing? It's like they aren't even trying any more."
She giggles an agreement, it really is a terrible idea. Sunglasses shaded eyes turn to her location; her internal display shows exclamation points above the bogey's heads. Where's a cardboard box when you need one?
"Halt, put your hands up where I can see them," some Rent-a-Spook shouts at her, gun out. This guy can't have popped out of his mother's womb more recently than a few months ago. His inexperience is almost blinding to Mana, thanks to whatever they did to her left eye. She can read his body language like a book, or maybe a doujinshi. He's kind of fit though, maybe if he got together with his older, more experienced...no. Focus on the mission. Get out of this jam, then ship the faceless NERV mooks.
"Don't shoot!" Mana cries out, modulating her voice for maximum woobieness. "I was going to be an intern here and I got lost and I'm so scared." He's relaxing, head tilting forward by hundredths of an inch. There's some relief on that face, and maybe a little lust. Ugh, creepy. Wires tense inside her, machinery clicking into a ready position.
"We're gonna have to pat you down, make sure you aren't carrying anything." Oh, I'm certainly carrying something. As are you, if that stirring in your loins is any indication. He paws at her with clumsy hands, eager like a 14 year old. His hand goes one step over the line from professional and she springs into action; restraining his gun hand with one arm. A subdermal needle in her pointer shoots the guy full of sedative; he jerks once and falls limp. Being a robot girl means never having to scream rape. The older one has his gun out now, but Mana's got his partner in a textbook human shield.
"Look, you're the smart one out of the group. Just let me walk through like nothing ever happened." Please don't have an itchy trigger finger. "I didn't kill your partner, just slipped him a Mickey. I don't want to hurt anyone, and I don't want any trouble." Oh god, he's going to shoot and it's going to ricochet and I can't calculate all the deflection angles compensating with a ragdoll. "Don't be a hero, Mr. Smith." I'm going to have this poor bastard's death on my hands.
"It's Johnson. Mr. Johnson," the older man replies, bored timber to his voice. He spins his gun around, letting it hang off his finger. "Either they're breeding spies young these days or you're not a normal girl. Either way, I'm out of my league on this one." He slides his gun into a chest holster with a whuffing sigh. "Go on ahead, Superchica."
It takes everything Mana has to not faint right now. "T-thanks Mr. Johnson." She speeds off, leaving the rookie in his care. His relaxed posture and softened face convinced her that the guy wasn't going to just shoot her in the back. Crisis averted. For now though, she should probably get to higher ground. Odds were better that there were more rookies than Mr. Johnsons in this compound. With a vertical leap that would make LeBron James vomit with rage, she seamlessly slides into an air vent.
"Well, Rei...Ayanami was right. We can find genetic markers connecting her to both our Rei and material from the Tower of Babel." Dr. Akagi had already grown tired of sanity; the last shriveled bits of it she had left died in the presence of this girl. It felt nice, to be unfettered; she could see why mad science was so appealing. "Sure, genetics doesn't actually work that way but fuck it, nothing about the Evangelions makes sense without the Absurdium that is Absolute Territory." She takes a drag of a cigarette, looking over at the bouncing baby abomination. The girl had taken far too readily to being trussed up like a bondage video. She burst through the strongest restraints they had, but some silk rope and she thinks she's object d'art. "Why would I expect any better from her?"
"So what should we do with her?" Misato knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to keep her, like a stray puppy that can eat a tank in five minutes. She always did have a weakness for cute things and wanton destruction; this new girl combined both in spades.
"I am going to contact the Supreme Commander. You have a meeting to attend. The Fourth Child has already been chosen, she's waiting to be debriefed on level 5." Pity she won't be there for the fireworks, Ritsuko thought. "And you'll never guess who's with her."
Mari Makinari Illustrious had seen a great many things in her short life; living as a street urchin gave one a great breadth of life experience. Until a few seconds ago, she had only seen someone completely lose their shit once. It was her whore of a mother breaking up with some tosser she had strung along. The guy was completely gone, the lights were on but nobody was home. He just broke down into gibberish and tears, like his brain broke or something. It was pretty metal. All the while, this little red-head brat just kept staring at her. Never blinked, never moved, just stared.
That paled in comparison to the F5 shitstorm that washed over her at this moment. Before she could even blink, her guardian got knocked the fuck out, Friday style. She'd never heard so many curse words so fast, and she listened to horrorcore. The purple hair chick started making some up about halfway through, too. In that brief, shining moment, Mari found her soulmate.
"So nice to see you again Katsuragi, you always were a hellcat." Somehow, someway, Ryoji Kaji managed to sound smooth as lard-covered butter after getting punched into a filing cabinet and landing on his face. "I'd like you to meet the Fourth Child." The meganekko bounds to her feet: one hand outstretched for a handshake, the other throwing up the horns.
"I'm Mari Makinari Illustrious, and if you had a dick I'd let you fuck me so hard right now."
"First Child, I have some very...unsettling reports about your actions." Gendo Ikari was not happy. His scenario hinged on the happiness and camaraderie of the children; to see his beloved daughter jeopardize it left a bad taste in his mouth. "It appears that you are directly antagonizing the Second Child, who has a history of mental instability. Do not tell me you are not cleared to know this fact," his gaze hardens, spare the rod and all. "You know this, we all know this." Rei looks at him, her deadpan gaze hiding a note of contempt. She thinks she's untouchable. He shouldn't have spoiled her, no matter how much she looked like Yui.
"Appearances can be deceiving, Supreme Commander. I was merely attempting to make banter with Pilot Sohryu." Lying through your teeth is so easy when nobody expects you to have emotions.
"Bullshit." One word marks her facade, drawing a gasp from the stoic girl. "It seems you, in your newfound power have forgotten who controls things." Ikari reaches under the desk with an air of nonchalance. "You think that you let us back into the world, and therefore can take us out of it." He pulls out a pistol, levels it at Rei's chest. "You believe that no one would strike against their mother, their lover, their comrade." His glasses glint, pure white sheets blanking out his eyes. "You presume too much, Lilith."
Rei laughs, a bitter thing. Both her eyes are black, wide with glee. "And what would you do, my child? Kill me? I am you, what completes you, what gives you purpose. I am your mother, your child, your precious Yui! You could not strike me down as much as an insect could strike down a god!"
"No," Gendo says, flat as a dead man's heartbeat. He pulls the trigger, shot ripping through Rei's AT-Field, through her shoulder. "What you are, is a nuisance with an inflated ego." Two more shots, and Rei is on her knees, bleeding heavily. She snarls and spits, eyes mad. The air in the room condenses as she works her AT-Field, but two more shots disrupt her. "You like them? Specially designed Anti-AT Field shells, made from your sisters. Unlike you, they wish to help humanity, instead of watch it dance for her amusement." Crippled, bleeding out, the Rei who is not Rei gnashes and moans, screaming vengeance. Cold steel kisses her temple and her eyes return to normal. She looks sideways at her commander, her father, her crush, and she weeps.
"Have I been a bad girl, Ikari-sama?"
Gendo bites his lip, freezing for a moment. "Yes. Yes you have." A shot rings out in Terminal Dogma, and the Rei who is not Rei is Rei no longer. The Supreme Commander of NERV slides his pet project's eyes closed and places her under his desk. She would always hide there, when her emotions got too great. Choking back the gravity of his actions, he steadies himself and returns to his chair. Fuyutsuki will be back soon, wouldn't want to seem untoward.
Gussied up in the medical lounge, Liao Rei sheds a single red tear, though she doesn't know why. Peering through the air vents of Terminal Dogma, the JSSDF's number one source of robo-moe decides that Gendo is not the one to fuck with and decides to make her own mission. Silently, she slides out from her hiding position.
"Mr. Ikari, I'm Mana Kirishima and I'm here to make you an offer you can't refuse."
Somewhere deep in the bowels of NERV headquarters, Ritsuko Akagi stares blankly at a fishtank full of Ree. Before, it would have filled her with jealous rage. Now, it's rather amusing. They're like dolphins: naked, godless, Angelic dolphins. She takes a long drag of her cigarette, before placing it in between her fingers. "Eenie, meenie, miney, you. Congratulations, you get to be the next Rei Ayanami." The foremost body opens up eager eyes, swimming rapidly to the top of the aquarium. It feels good to be alive again. The Rei that is now Rei shakes LCL from her hair like a dog. She sits next to Ritsuko, who obliges her a seat. Picking a cigarette from the good doctor's pack, she bums a light from the older woman. With eyes denoting a guilty sadness, she says her first words.
"Getting shot really hurts."
Ritsuko chuckles, blowing out a cloud of smoke. She musses the new Rei's hair like a precocious child. This one might turn out alright. "Sure does dollface, it sure does."