There are five things in this world that make life worth living for Mari Makinari "Motherfucking" Illustrious: sex, violence, music, violence, and sex. Riding the warmachine fulfilled four out of those five joys, she'd get Blondie to install a soundsystem in Unit 04 eventually. The excitement of risking life and limb, getting into fights where the fate of humanity is stake does it better for her than any porn she's ever seen. The adrenaline high kisses her just the way she likes it, with tongue and everything. It's just a shame that usually her partners don't give as good as they get; the few tastes she's had haven't lasted near long enough for her. She was starting to think she'd need multiple partners to really reach the stratosphere.
Six robotic fists flying at her a mile a minute, an "ora" a punch, made her think otherwise.
"It's useless Illustrious-sama!" a sketchy pink and blue bootleg beams over her display. The fists fly faster and at different angles. "Useless, useless, useless, mudamudamudamudamuda!" The strikes are a blur, pistons bouncing wildly off of Unit 04's AT-Field. Mari brings her hands up in a defensive stance for the first time in a long time, shaping the light of her soul into a battering ram. She kicks off with Unit 04's strength and pushes forward, bringing the re-appropriated EVA-03 off balance.
"But I said it was useless~," Liao whines to herself, swinging Unit 03 into a multi-armed cartwheel. Using the cancerous little idiot hair as a balance, she lashes out with an overhead kick. The leg goes rubbery and strikes like a whip, drawing sparks off of the approaching unit's field. 04 ducks the blow and brings up a tonfa, looking to break a joint. The leg swings around like a boomerang, aiming for a boot to the back of the head. It catches 04 by the neck, and Liao rolls into a backspring, punting 04 with 03's non-rubbery leg. Her Gum-Gum gam stays attached, stretching taut before snapping her forward at breakneck speed.
"Holy shit what?" Mari chokes, suddenly learning to fly with no wings. She rights Unit 04 in midair, just as Unit 03 flies at her, a grinning projectile. All six arms are out in a pantomime of flying, the saberlike ahoge directed straight at Unit 04's core. She brings a tonfa to bear, topside forward. With a little twist, Unit 03's pretty face meets the business end of a positron blaster. It goes slack again, and it's Mari's turn to wrap her legs around something. She shoves Unit 03's head between her legs, and piledrives it into the ground, spinning like a Russian cyclone. Shoulders hunched, eyes gleaming, EVA-04 howls in triumph.
"Shit yeah, that's what I'm talking about," Mari pants, glasses fogged up again. She licks her lips absentmindedly. "Wonder how wearing out Red would feel?"
"This isn't over yet!" Liao says over the commlink, far too chipper for someone who's just gotten piledriven into the ground from several dozen feet. Unit 03 rises up backwards from the crater, grinning face lolling on its rapidly-healing neck. Broken spine snaps back into place little by little as its arms hang limp. Still healing, it runs backwards towards Unit 04, limbs lashing out with wild abandon. Mari ducks and weaves; shooting at what she can and parrying what she must. A slight lull in a swing allows her to step into Liao's attack, bouncing it off of the off-hand tonfa. She rakes face with a quick cross slash, sending it reeling.
Rolling with the blow, Unit 03 jumps back, twisting into a knee strike. The shot bounces off of a hastily-brought up AT-Field, but leaves ankles exposed for Liao's mischievous hands. Three hands apiece grab onto Unit 04's legs, and momentum does the rest of the work. Skittering like a spider, she flips onto Unit 04's back, grapevining the legs into a devastating submission maneuver.
"Ring the bell, Vince!"
Mari tsks, lifting herself up on Unit 04's hands. She curls into a ball and rolls through the move in a textbook counter, loosing herself from the crippling hold. She ends up on top again, like she always does. With a flourish of her tonfas, she jams both into Unit 03's chest, emptying six rounds apiece. The carapace cracks, shatters, gets blown to pieces; pink fleshy bits struggling in vain to repair the damage.
"Uh uh," Mari coos, "I'm taking your cherry and there's not a damn thing you can do about it." She spreads the rend in 03's chest wide, pulsing and squishy from reconstruction. With reckless abandon, she shoves a hand inside, drawing a sickened gasp from Maya and twin snerks from Misato and Ritsuko.
"So Ritzy, if we show this on the internet, would we go to jail?" Misato asks, slumped over the Commander's desk.
"Technically this isn't sexual," Ritsuko replies, "Although it is rather pornographic."
Maya groans, wondering why she didn't pack barf bags under her console. "E-excuse me for a moment Ritsuko-sempai." Lightweight.
"Hey Aoba, would you think less of me if I said this was kind of hot?" Makoto whispers conspiratorially. Aoba barely glances in his direction.
"Not really, no. When you're at the absolute bottom, you can't really go anywhere but up."
"Awesome!"
Awesome was a good word to describe how Mari felt right now, she finally got to cut loose on something that just kept coming and wouldn't say no. Willing participants are the best to defile.
"Kyaah~," Liao mock-screams on Unit 04's viewscreen, "I wanted Ayanami onee-sama to be my first..."
"Tough shit bootleg," Mari says with a smile that would make Alucard proud. "This is the climax!" With a mighty roar, she yanks the glowing red core out of Unit 03, slick with questionable moisture. The mecha shudders then goes still, defeated. She gazes at it, transfixed. If she could figure out how it worked, she'd probably lick it with Unit 04. With a lustful exhalation, she begins to squeeze the core, the pressure coming to a head. It starts to crack, almost there, almost, wait. Why is it glowing?
Like a deranged baby bird from a blood-soaked egg, Liao Rei emerges from the crackling core. Dripping with LCL, orange and white plugsuit tattered and torn, she bounds up the outstretched arm of EVA-04. Stumbling and slipping, but still moving forward, she pulls a Rickenbaker bass from her forehead. Literally beaming with a smile a mile wide, she swings for the fences. A distinctive clang sounds across Tokyo-3, and Unit 04 crumples in a heap.
"Oh God, that was amazing," Mari moans with a shudder. "I'm gonna need a new plugsuit after this one." Liao chirps assent as her ahoge falls limp. She follows suit shortly thereafter; both pilots sinking into a contented unconsciousness.
Track 10: Supernova
"Pilot Sohryu, are you aware of the concept of the galge?"
"Of course I am Wondergirl, why do you ask?" Something about this smells fishy. "This isn't going to get perverted, is it?"
"Of course not," the Wondergirl in question responds, deadpan. "Pilot Ikari is the perverted one, isn't he?"
"Uh girls, I'm right here," a certain male buttmonkey chimes in.
"We know, Pilot Ikari. That does not mean we care."
Shinji deflates, wrapping the covers around himself tighter. "Just making sure."
"I have a theory I would like to share with you, Pilot Sohryu."
"What kind of theory?" a certain red-haired semi-invalid groans. "If it's about my repressed sadomasochistic tendencies again I swear to ADAM I'll break your neck like the first Dr. Akagi."
A certain blue-haired mass produced moe idol shudders. "You always use such...colorful epithets to show your displeasure."
"Yeah, saying 'I'll kill you' gets boring after the first twenty times you know," says Asuka, absentmindedly scratching at her injection wound. "Loses its punch against the Harpies too. Now, 'I'll kill you and fuck the corpse,' that's got some chutzpah."
"Or, 'I will skullfuck you with your own dick'," Rei says, innocently. Oh dear, she's sworn again. Nothing good can come from this, think the other pilots. Shinji preemptively places his pillow over his head, a futile duck and cover instinct.
"Jesus hell Wondergirl, don't say things like that!" blurts Asuka, hands shielding her face.
"Did it not have sufficient chutzpah?" asks Rei with an honest look of confusion.
"No, no, that's not it. It's just, when you swear, and when you say fuck especially, bad things tend to happen."
"Like Kaworu unleashing a romance explosion that by all logical measure should have killed us all."
"What McDumbass said."
"Oh," Rei says flatly, still not entirely sure of the gravity of things. "I was merely relaying something Pilot Illustrious once said. My eyes, as far as I can tell, are not those of Great Mother's. When I swear with Lilith's eyes, that is when to be worried." She pauses, "Honestly, whenever you see my eyes go black, you should worry. It would be a good way to prove you were still sane."
Shinji pulls his pillow tighter over his head. "So, every time we fight in the Evas, we should be wetting ourselves in terror?" His tone brightens, "That means I've been ahead of the curve all this time. Either that, or it's more proof that Asuka's been a crazy bitch from the word go," he says with a laugh.
"What are you, stupid? A true Super Robot pilot knows no fear!" Asuka gloats, puffing out her chest as much as she can without it hurting. "I apologize for nothing."
"Tabris's attack seems to have done more damage than I feared," Rei says gravely. She turns to Asuka, something like concern in her eyes. "Hello, I am First Child Rei Ayanami and this is Neon Genesis Evangelion. This is a Super Robot series in the same way that Watchmen is a superhero story."
Asuka flips her the bird. "I know that, schiessekoph."
"I just want to make sure," she says, still staring. "It would be a shame to lose you in another incident like Arael. Or that ironic parallel between you and your mother."
"What, you mean when we did that one where Stupid Shinji and I did it all the time?"
"You sound surprisingly not disgusted by that Asuka," Shinji says, honestly shocked.
"Oh no, I still like to pretend that cycle didn't actually happen, and was a karmic punishment you forced on me during the part we were all Tang." She places her hand over her mouth, snickering. "As if I'd ever have sex with you."
"...I'd have sex with you, Pilot Ikari," Rei whispers to nobody but the shippers. As such, she is promptly ignored.
"You see Asuka, this is what a less scrupulous man would call 'Asking For It'."
"Yeah, but you have scruples, so the only things I have to worry about popping my cherry are beams of light and Kaji."
"And a futanari version of me."
"And a futanari version of Rei." She falls back into the pillows with a whumph. "And I'm going to make that last one happen."
It is Shinji that is the first to catch the time honored tradition of disrupting a person's speech for humorous effect. The thought of the act stains his white linens red with pervert's blood. He coughs and sputters, as Asuka slowly burns equally red.
"Wait, what? WHAT?"
Ayanami smiles, eyes half-lidded. She pantomimes shooting her punchline with a finger pistol, which, given the amount of AT-Field fuckery she's capable of, could actually wound somebody. "Gotcha, Pilot Sohryu." The smile grows just a little wider, "It's okay, people are strangely attracted to the combination of myself and phalli. It's pretty cute, so I would allow you to call it Rei-chan, if you so desired."
Caught between murderous rage, deathly embarrassment, and the urge not to burst out laughing at the doll's new sense of humor; Asuka contents herself with screaming into the pillow.
"Oh dear, we have gone on quite the tangent," says Rei, suddenly remembering her original topic. "As I attempted to posit earlier, I have a theory on our cycles. They seem to be caused by the attempts and failures of our male protagonist in finding Complementation."
"But Rei, I'm not an Angel. And we learned that not just any form of ADAM/Lillim connection creates Complementation a while ago," Shinji says with a shudder. "Kaworu taught me that the hard way."
"That is not exactly what I meant," Rei says thoughtfully, "Although you could learn from Nagisa's techniques. The Complementation I speak of is a physical and emotional one. In short, Pilot Ikari," she says, eyes turning black, "You must make babies."
"Babies?" Shinji replies, exasperated.
"Ahem, that's not right. Great Mother's biological clock is always ticking; if it weren't for the medications Dr. Akagi gives me I would be what you would consider a 'Sexual Tyrannosaurus', I believe the term is?" She blinks, black shifting red again. "You must connect. Connect to as many people as you can. That, is how you achieve Complementation, and with it, happiness."
"What is this, Persona?" Asuka scoffs, "You shouldn't need anybody or anything to make you happy other than yourself."
Rei coughs, and when she speaks again, her voice is a pitch perfect match of Asuka's. "He wouldn't even hold me!"
"Goddammit Wondergirl."
"Mama, you were with me the whole time! I'll always be okay, as long as you're with me Mama."
"Alright, alright, fuck," Asuka cries. "I'm a huge hypocrite, I get it." She crosses her arms, sulking. "Still sounds stupid though."
"That's because you did not let me finish. For example, the problems of the first cycle came from a systematic loss of everyone Pilot Ikari cared about. If Supreme Commander Ikari-kun-"
"Ikari-kun?" both gasp. There are just some people who shouldn't have some honorifics applied to them.
"Yes, I have a respectful affection for the Supreme Commander," she states, daring either of them to make a RealDoll joke. "It is normal between family members. Despite what you may think, I am that: nothing more, nothing less. It is that which put the final nail in the coffin of Pilot Ikari's attempts to connect to anyone; in my trepidation for ending existence I failed to acknowledge him in his bleakest moments. When I attempted to rectify this, he was too far gone." She tilts her head. "That, and being a giant nude mother figure attempting to absorb him into the womb of humanity probably overloaded his Freudian circuitry."
"But I got over that," Shinji responds. "Sure, I went bugfuck insane for a while and my ass fell asleep from sitting on that metaphorical chair for hours, but I got over my mother complex. There was symbolic birthing and forehead vaginas and Asuka choking and everything."
"He's got a point," Asuka says, rubbing her throat sympathetically. "You just shifted your slavish dependence to me though, thus, 'how disgusting'."
"I thought you said 'I feel sick'?"
"That was off-screen, after you stuck it in," Asuka recalls. "And then you said 'Oh baby', which was just weird."
"Ahem. You had failed to complete all the proper flags for both Pilot Sohryu and myself, thus the bad ending. When the You Who Was Not You attempted to rectify this in the parallel universe, you successfully completed the Sohryu Route, no thanks to the Sohryu Who Was Actually Our Sohryu, I Think." She takes a deep breath, worn out from so much exposition. "However, in neglecting the flags for myself and Captain Katsuragi, you left much to chance. If it weren't for tighter NERV security keeping Inspector Kaji alive, and for the Me Who Was Either The Second Or Third, It All Blurs Together's almost slavish devotion to upholding promises, we would have ended up dead or worse. It is one of the only cycles where I self-terminated, if you remember."
"Yeah, I could have done without seeing that," Shinji remarks. "Although you trying to be more like Asuka was cute, up until you made yourself taller."
"Quite. I still have those blue eye contacts and red hair dye, if you so desire. I can even affect the stutter of the Asuka Who Did Not Die that you liked, l-l-like so," she finishes, her voice a less confident permutation of Asuka's Germaricanese brogue.
Shinji mumbles and blushes, curling inwards to hide his experiments in thermal expansion. His sister/cousin/mom couldn't be this cute. Or unnervingly willing.
"Uh, Wondergirl?" the Asuka who isn't dead yet responds. "Girl you're trying to replace, right here."
"I know that, Pilot Sohryu. I also do not care," Rei says, continuing without missing a beat. "I have posited that, in order to ensure everyone's happiness, and more importantly, their mental well being, you must go for the most sacred of galge achievements."
Shinji's eyes go wide. He has a feeling where this is going, and he has a feeling of where Asuka's foot will be going if his feeling is correct.
"Ayanami, you can't possibly mean-"
She smiles, a truly warm and un-Rei-like smile. It would be adorable, if it weren't for the fact that both her eyes had gone jet black.
"Correct. A harem end."
~!~!~!
When Mari comes to, she's sitting on a metal folding chair. The room is pitch black, except for a blue spotlight upon her. Her hair is tousled, her glasses are on sideways, and she still has a far off look in her eyes; visions of dirty things dancing in her head. She's back in civilian wear, but the sweet smell of LCL still caresses her. She barely notices the sound of the door opening.
"Mari, Earth to Mari," Misato says, waving a hand in front of the girls face. "Come back to reality soldier." All she gets is a bubbling giggle and a sensuous twitch. "Wake up!" she says with a hard slap across the face. Mari's glasses go flying, hopping, and skipping across the floor.
"Ooh, I like it rough," she coos, still off in her own little world. She parts her lips, tongue slithering out. A blast of cold water gives her a money shot with a wholly unexpected liquid. "Not that rough!" she sputters, eyes rapidly focusing.
"Alright Mari, your little wet dream over?" Misato says cheerily. Mari nods, with more than a little shame. She couldn't stand to look uncool towards her newest female idol. "Good. Now, I like your enthusiasm girl, but you have to learn a little thing called 'tactics'."
"I have tactics," Mari says flippantly, "I hit the thing with the other thing until it dies. Works well enough."
"Yeah, that's not what we call tactics," Misato snarks, "That's what we call 'being criminally insane'." She crosses her arms over her chest, summoning authority. "It works as a solo act, but if you keep acting like Kamina, you're going to end up dead like him. We don't have spares of you like we do Rei, you know."
"I won't die," she says, barely more coherent than a growl. "I'm too awesome to die."
"You know, I remember a hot-blooded foreign girl who thought the same thing," Misato says, almost sing-song. Her demeanor turns deadly serious as she stares right into Mari. "She ended up a vegetable. Then, right when she thought she was on top of the world, the invincible Angel of Death, she ran out of power. They ate her alive, Mari."
She meets Misato's gaze, defiance hard as steel. "Your point being? I'm better than Red, I'm better than the wimp and living dead girl. I was born to do this. I'm Mari Makinari Motherfucking-"
"What you are right now is a two-bit Asuka with a violence fetish," Misato snaps. "And you're going to down that same spiral if you don't get some common sense through that thick skull of yours." She kicks over the chair, sending Mari to the ground in a heap. She crouches over the prone pilot, grabbing her attention with a fistful of hair. "Illustrious. Listen. To. Me. If you are going to continue to be a suicidal idiot," she says as pulls out her holdout, "Then I will save us all the heartbreak and give you your hollow point pension plan right now." The barrel's click rings out through the room in forceful punctuation.
"Come on little Missy," Mari moans, that heat spreading through her body faster than ever before. "You've whipped it out, now let me see it." Misato obliges her, the cool steel of the barrel kisses Mari's forehead like a proud father. She tilts her head up towards it, licks the underside of the grip, traces circles upon Misato's palm.
"Oookay," she says, thoroughly confused. "You're fifteen flavors of fucked up." She pulls the gun away to wipe Mari's saliva off of her hand. "Do we need to get you a hooker or something, because you've got some serious sexual issues going on here."
"The only thing you need to do is put that barrel in my mouth," Mari pants.
"Make that three hookers. And a Kaji." She sighs, holstering the gun back in it's sling. "The direct approach isn't going to work, so let's try talking."
"I was serious about the gun in my mouth Katsuragi," Mari says with a leering grin. "You got me so close too."
"Yeah, that's enough of that." Misato rights the kicked over chair, turning the back towards Mari. She slumps into it, arms draped across the top. "Alright, let's put it like this: using tactics is like using a sex toy; more fun for all involved."
Mari rolls over onto her stomach and gives Misato her utmost attention. "Go on."
"Now that I have your attention, I have a question for you." Misato flashes a devilish grin, body tensing. "What is most important in life, Pilot Illustrious?"
"Sex and violence?"
"Close, but no." Misato leans in further, excitement in the air. "It is to crush the Angels, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their piteous last moments on this Earth!"
"You know that thing about being close earlier, Katsuragi?" Mari says, barely able to mask her shuddering. "Scratch that. You owe me a new pair of panties. Nice ones."
Misato rocks back, runs a hand through her hair. She's not entirely sure whether to be relieved or disgusted. "Sure thing, but on one condition. Take care of yourself out there, okay?"
"You keep taking care of me like that, and I'll do whatever you say," Mari responds dreamily. Hot damn, she really is starting to love girl on girl.
~!~!~!
"What's the matter son, you look distraught," Supreme Commander of NERV and semi-magnificent asshole Gendo Ikari asks of his less lucrative progeny. "I would have thought being removed from the belittlement of the Second and the...tangents of the First would cheer you up." He pours his child two fingers of his finer brandy; the one that costs about as much as Kirishima's lower half. "Drink. It puts hairs on your chest."
"Father, I'm on enough painkillers to sedate Asuka," Shinji says with a sigh. "That's not a very subtle way of trying to get rid of me. We are in Central Dogma, after all; you could hide the body here and it'd never be found."
Gendo chuckles, somehow not losing the mask of implacability as he does so. "Ah, you know me too well, Third. However, if I honestly wanted to be rid of you, I would simply shoot you. We can make a surrogate by using the genetic material we've recovered from your many 'stress relieving activities'." The gagging noise that Shinji makes when embarrassed is so amusing. "Just because the First is infertile, does not mean we can't make progeny." He reclines in his opulent chair, trademark pose folded into one of deep thought. "The only difficult part would be convincing Yui that in this cycle we had two daughters."
"I thought the scenario was about giving me self-esteem, not trampling on it."
"It seems you are not used to my sense of humor, Third. That is a failure on my part." Gendo rocks back further, placing his feet on the mahogany desk. "I have been trying to impart the First with this sense of humor, to teach her interpersonal skills. I may need to speed up the timetable on that."
Shinji slumps, desperately trying to fight the mental image of a futanari Ayanami making Sohryu her bitch, as the cool kids say these days. "No, I think she's getting the hang of it," he says guiltily.
"That's good. Now, for the reason I called you here." Gendo picks up the filled glass, tilting it to his son in an offering. It is waved away, so he downs it with a shrug. "The Thirteenth Angel, Bardiel has been defeated. It had infected Evangelion Unit-03, and the Fourth neutralized the infection."
"You knew, didn't you? You knew that's how it always happens, and you did it anyway, didn't you?" Gendo nods, completely nonchalant.
"So let me guess, Touji's dead," Shinji says with a bitter note. "Or wait, maybe it's Kensuke this time. Or Hikari." He looks around with feigned energy. "I don't see Kirishima anywhere, maybe you stuck her in it to see if her mechanical parts would interfere with Angelic corruption?"
"I'm impressed. You managed to be completely wrong, what was that, four times in a row?" The light plays off of Gendo's glasses, as if laughing for him. "Who was your next guess, the Second?"
"...No," Shinji grumbles. It was going to be one of the Ree, then Asuka.
"Well, let me give you the proper information. Nobody died. We used the Seventh in Unit-03, seeing as how she was structurally the hardiest pilot we have. As far as we can tell from her testimony, she ate the Thirteenth Angel." Gendo pours himself another drink, his hand a blur as he imbibes the amber liquid. "She said it tasted like marshmallow fluff," he snickers.
"You probably did it as a fuck you to whoever made her," Shinji shoots back. "Or were you trying to start Instrumentality earlier, wanted to see if she had any Lilith in her?"
"Paranoia doesn't suit you son," says Gendo, amused. "Especially since you're so bad making the necessary crazy connections. I will admit though, the reasons for doing so were selfish. Do you recall a Mister Mordenschein, from one of the American branches of NERV?"
"Yeah, the one who was working on transplanting Evangelion consciousness into gynoid surrogates. Dr. Akagi kept calling him 'Evafucker' for some reason, and would never tell me why."
"Well that information is best left classified," Gendo coughs. He rolls his shoulders, suddenly aware that outside of a night in the gutter, he has hardly left his chair. "Anyway, his team were attempting to miniaturize an Evangelion. Evangelion units, as you know, are derived from Lilith. The Seventh is also derived from Lilith, and constructed in a manner similar to Mister Mordenschein's research. I assumed that with enough energy, and the proper psycho-biological stimuli, I could beat him to the punch. I was correct." He presses a button on his desk, bringing up a video feed to Unit 00's test cage. The ragged faces of Ritsuko and Maya greet him.
"Dr. Akagi? Maya? What's going on?"
"We're breaking new ground, that's what's going on," Ritsuko responds dryly. "We have developed the new era of anti-Angel combat cyborgs, the pocket-sized protector of Earth!" She steps to the side of the camera, giving a clear shot of the inside of the cage. With a tone somewhere between "proud mother" and "mad scientist", she reveals her latest flight of fancy. The camera pans down to focus on a certain Chinese knockoff in a white and red plugsuit; arms crossed over her chest with pride. A nameless wind blows her scarf behind her as twin wings of AT-Field fuckery unfurl. She smiles like a kid in a candy store, the insides of her pupils glowing twin white lights.
"Presenting the New Century's Woman, Evangelion Mark 07!"
Shinji and Maya stare blankly, but for totally different reasons. Maya's fangirlishness has shut her brain off from anything outside of how cool Ritsuko-sempai is. Shinji's, on the other hand, has merely shut down from the sheer illogic of the things his eyes were telling him. Behind him, Gendo smirks a fraction.
"Suck it, NERV-America."
It takes a few moments for Shinji's mind to reboot itself. "So, what you're saying is, you sent Liao out to pilot an obviously compromised Eva on the off chance that you could turn her into Buster Machine Number Seven?"
"Yes."
"And you used Mari as her second, who makes Mom look like Rei on a good day."
"Yes."
"And you didn't force Rei to pilot anything, not even as backup."
"She was injured, as you and the Second were."
"Why didn't you use the Dummy Plugs?"
"The Fourth didn't have performance anxiety as you do. I have other plans for them, as well."
"WHY?" Shinji blurts, the WTF-O-Meter redlining. "That's not bastardly at all! That's not logical, or twisted, or cold or anything! Why don't you make sense anymore?"
"I make perfect sense," Gendo says, demeanor cold, glasses solid white. Shinji slinks back in his chair, a few inches away from decking his daddy dearest one. The elder Ikari folds his hands over his mouth yet again, completing the effect. How he loved saying this next line. "It is all proceeding according to the scenario." Did Shinji just flurgen? Dr. Akagi never did finish that research on cycle bleed. He made a mental note to keep Ayanami away from sweets for the next few days, just in case.
Shinji cradles his head in his hands; only 16 years and he's far too old for this shit. "Just tell me what the scenario is, Father. Mom probably wouldn't mind me molesting my way to another Third Impact related godhood, and Rei wants it now so..."
Gendo cracks up, bellowing great peals of laughter. "You truly are my son," he says, adjusting his glasses. "I should buy you a pair of these. Makes you a hit with the ladies." He stands up, walks over to Shinji's side and places a hand on his shoulder. "Fine then. The scenario is to defeat the Angels, prevent Third Impact, and preserve as much mental health as we possibly can." He looks over to the viewscreen, to the sleeping Maya and the beaming Akagi, to the hyper-perky uber weapon he created on a gamble. He can't help himself but get overly dramatic at this point, he thinks, as he points to the sky.
"We're going to go beyond the impossible kid, whether you understand it or not."
{to be continued}