Shinji panted as he ran through the streets of Tokyo-3, feeling that the world was dissolving around around him; everything had become a gray blur, much like the time Misato had made him "Mexican food."
He hadn't wanted to run away, really - had he? Shinji had spent years silently longing for his father's affection, some acknowledgment, anything to show that the distant commander recognized him as more than a means to an end. But when faced with the prospect of actually having to confront his father, he realized he wouldn't wish such a fate on anyone. Well, okay. Maybe on that one guy-
Shinji shook his head to clear his thoughts as he continued on his run.
Where would he go now? If he ever went back to work, he'd be faced with his father's cold, disappointed scowl. Wherever he fled, Nerv's extensive security network was sure to track him down before long. Maybe he could become a hobo and sleep in a cardboard box, but at the thought he pictured Asuka dressed in an ermine coat laughing at his filthy rags.
Out of breath, Shinji slumped against a storefront marked "Luigi's Delicious Pizza," clutching a stitch in his side.
I need to just stop here for a minute and let my head catch up with my feet.
A gruff, accented voice sounded from behind him. "Hey kid, you wanna try a hot calzone or you gonna sit out in the street?" A man emerged from a dark alley past the corner of the building. He was evidently meant to look like a slice of pepperoni pizza, but the costume was so faded and worn that it more resembled the flesh of a burn victim.
Shinji screamed and ran off, now recognizing that any departure from the safer and more populated areas of Tokyo-3 truly meant taking his life into his hands.
The pepperoni man shook his head. "What a rude kid. If he don't like calzones, he could just say so."
"Cut!"
Misato sighed. The filming of the Nerv PSA series was already taking its toll on her sanity. She had only spent a few short hours reassuring onscreen children of their safety in Nerv's hands, but felt like it had gone on for endless months. She had been forced to recite such contrived, ridiculous slogans as "Nerv: We kill 'em dead so you can rest easily in bed" and "Nerv: Japan's premier exporter of cyborg justice" again and again until they had lost any possible meaning they may have once held.
Her complete lack of filmmaking experience quickly became obvious to all of the other poor souls who had been dragged into the project with her, but Ritsuko had refused to take no for an answer.
This is just another one of her stupid power trips, she thought, trying to determine what she had done recently to have her long-time friend stick her with such a stressful, demeaning job. Then again, their friendship had been one barbed insult after another, really; she vaguely recalled having called Ritsuko "Dr. Mengele" after she had insinuated that Misato was a child molester.
Misato glanced around furtively and pulled a half-empty bottle of absinthe out of her purse. She prided herself on her preparedness - knowing that she was in for a day of living hell, she had stopped on her way to work that morning at a dirty liquor shop, where she purchased the absinthe from an eyepatch-wearing man in a ridiculous conical hat. While it wasn't strictly professional to drink alcoholic beverages this strong on the job, she really had no other way of coping with the stress, since beer wasn't doing the trick.
Misato took a long slug from the dust-covered bottle and winced at the acrid taste. As long she didn't take enough to reach hallucinogenic levels, she should be alright.
A five-foot tall squid wearing a bowler hat slowly approached Misato, who desperately tried not to scream.
"God dag," said the apparently Norwegian-speaking squid, tipping his hat. "Velkommen til Norge."
Toji looked around the school's dirty restroom nervously.
He had asked that thar blond conjure woman if he could make a trip to the watering hole. Toji didn't need to make no water, truth be told, but he had plottin' and schemin' to attend to. They wouldn't put him in one a them metal-mans, no how.
He reckoned there was only one way out, but it'd be an ugly fella of a plan.
"You mean you really haven't seen him since this morning?" Hikari inquired of her best friend, as the two traversed the hall on the way to lunch.
Asuka shook her head. "Nah," she said. "The weirdo was all worked up about having to see his dad today. He's probably been off breathing into a paper bag somewhere for the past three hours."
"Oh, that's.." The pigtailed brunette looked at the floor as she walked alongside Asuka.
"Pathetic?"
Hikari sighed.
"Look, don't worry about it. He's probably fine," Asuka reassured her. "I'm surprised you're not more worried about whatever trouble the jock got himself into."
Passing by the bathrooms, Asuka gave a contemptuous jerk of her head in their direction.
"Actually, Shinji's probably hiding in the bathroom, crying or something. Like always."
Hikari looked at her friend. "Shouldn't you try to talk to him?"
"No way! I'm not going in there for him. What kind of girl do you think I am, Hikari?"
Taken aback, Hikari blushed at the implication. "I- I just meant..you probably know him better than anyone, Asuka. You really should try to help."
Grumbling, Asuka opened the bathroom door, ignoring Hikari's mumbled protests about getting "boy stuff" on her hand from touching the doorknob, and was greeted by a particularly bizarre scene.
Toji's shirt, socks, and shoes lay strewn about the floor, a message scrawled crudely on the mirror in a dripping red substance. Three single-serving ketchup packets had been left in one of the sinks.
"'We done killed Toji'?" Asuka read the message aloud, her arms raised in disbelief. "Seriously?"
Hikari sighed. "He's made such a mess. I wonder what happened, for him to make such a scene..."
There was a brief, awkward silence while the girls looked at the scene spread out before them.
"We should probably.."
"Yeah..."
"I'll help you find your idiot if you help me find mine."
"Thanks Asuka."
Standing in the school parking lot, Gendo Ikari pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed Subcommander Fuyutsuki's number.
"Boy's gone," Gendo growled in his typical laconic fashion. "Send the tracking pelicans."
The Subcommander sighed. "Sir, the UN had us cancel that project six months ago. Genetically modified pelicans don't have much practical military application."
Gendo grunted. "Send helicopter."
Misato squinted at Rei Ayanami. "Remember your lines?"
"I believe 'Rar' is the only significant morpheme included in my script," she replied.
Misato had recruited Rei to play the role of an Angel in one of the three PSAs being shot that day; she was dressed as a trapezoidal monster with Styrofoam wings and standing over a bed in which the unfortunate Kenji cowered under the covers.
"Right. And after you say your line, Captain Nerv shows up and saves the day."
Lt. Shigeru Aoba rolled his eyes from his position off-stage. He was wearing tights and a hastily improvised superhero costume with a red Nerv logo on the front.
Misato backed off-stage, nearly tripping over a wire in the process, and lifted up her megaphone.
"Action!"
Rei walked up to the bed slowly, eyelids half-shut with apathy. "Rar," she politely informed Kenji.
"Cut! Rei, you've got to have more passion! You don't seem to believe you're a trapezoid," said Misato, doing her best to imitate the directors she had seen in movies.
"I am not a trapezoid," Rei replied, narrowing her eyebrows slightly.
Misato sighed. "Rei, movies are all about becoming things you aren't."
"I see," replied Rei, eyes wide with understanding. A new world of possibilities opened up before her; she could, in fact, become a trapezoid via the ethereal magic of moving picture technology.
Smiling complacently, Misato shoved Rei back into position. Maybe this directing stuff isn't so bad after all, she mused. If only that thing would-
The Norwegian squid walked across the sound stage towards Misato, leaving a slimy trail of mucus behind him as he went.
"Wold du a se en fjord?" asked the squid, extending a slimy tendril.
"Get away from me, you f-filthy lump of calamari!" Misato shrieked at Rei, flailing her arms wildly to shield her face. "Squids can't even talk!"
Rei looked at her in puzzlement for a moment before realizing what had occurred. I am not a squid, but I can be one through the imaginative energy inherent in the art of cinema, she told herself with a knowing half-smile. I've so much to learn.
Having had any exploratory urges scared out of him by his encounter on the outskirts of town, Shinji established a safe distance between himself and the pizza parlor and eventually found his way back into Neo-Shinjuku Central Park, a far more familiar and inviting area than the shanty town he had just narrowly escaped from. He had been to the park several times with Toji and Kensuke, and once with Asuka, who had beaned him multiple times with a Frisbee, probably on purpose; while he was more likely to be discovered here by his father's agents, he figured that he was also in notably less danger of any further snack-related assaults. It seemed a fair tradeoff.
Shinji glanced at his surroundings, noting with relief that there appeared to be relatively few people in the park that day. There was a decent chance that some of the park's inhabitants were plainclothes Section 2 agents, he figured, and so tried to blend in as well as he could and avoid making eye contact. He was reasonably certain a trash can had been moving slowly along the gravel pavement behind him, but decided not to risk investigating it.
A river snaked around the middle of the park and flowed onwards through the industrial section of Tokyo-3. Shinji wrinkled his nose as he approached the wooden bridge intersecting the river and was met with a smell reminiscent of Pen Pen's after a meal of raw krill. The water itself was a color not unlike that of a melted candy bar, and appeared to have the consistency of one as well. A discarded boot bobbed up and down on the surface accompanied by what looked to be the remains of a dead dog. Shinji hoped it was the remains of a dog, at any rate; he had heard some unsettling rumors about the Yakuza's activities in the area.
A battered wooden raft, apparently handmade, floated through the murky brook. Its sole occupant was barefoot and had his pants rolled up to his knees. He had his back turned to Shinji, but as he steered the raft with a gnarled tree branch, he sang out proudly in a voice the pilot found immediately familiar.
"Lordy lordy, this 'ere's the life, floatin' along this ere fine river an' livin' off the land," said the rafter to no one in particular.
Shinji ran to the side of the stream and shouted down the bank. "Toji?"
The rafter turned around at the call. If he recognized Shinji, he gave no outward sign of it. "Yessa?" he asked between calculated chews of a piece of straw.
"What are you doing down there on that thing?" Shinji said.
"What 'm I doin' up 'ere?" Toji repeated, as though the answer were the most obvious thing in the world. "What 're you doin' up yonder? Git down 'ere!"
Confused but still curious, Shinji determined that accompanying Toji on his river journey could at least postpone the inevitable and distract him from his thoughts for a while. Toji pulled the raft up alongside the edge of the bank to allow him on, and the travelers began their new life together.
Author's Note: We apologize for the shorter-than-usual update. And if there's anyone still reading this, reviews are always welcome. I-if you don't mind. ._.