Ace Combat Evangelion: Aces' Heritage

by Phnx28

What if the Evangelion characters have other lives out there in the endless parallel universes, some as frighteningly similar as they are radically different? Say, in the Ace Combat universe, for example? C&C Welcome. UPDATED

3. Lives and Deaths

Ace Combat Evangelion: Aces' Heritage

Chapter 3: Lives and Deaths…

Chapter A/N: Mostly as for Chapter 1. This is a long one that also skips about in time several places, as it is really all about wrapping up the Eva characters' pasts in the AC world before Chapter 4 gets right down to what conflict they'll have to resolve that the past aces left behind. Again, I write as if Anea were the AC world's Japan, so things Japanese shall be called Anean until Namco specifies another country instead in AC canon, which I shall then edit them to be of promptly. Regarding the Demon Lord/Mobius One connection, it is heavily implied in Ace Combat Zero's loading-screen verses and I don't consider the Gauntlet mission to be any more than a fanboy-style Ace's round, as it were. A fun mission, but devoid of canonical authority nonetheless.

Warnings: Angst, seriously adult themes, character suicide and attempts, remembered gory violence, and other general unpleasantness associated with war and/or its aftereffects all ahead.

Time: Unknown Time, possibly 3/30/2016. Location: Interdimensional Twilight Zone linked to post-Third Impact Earth (Evangelion Universe).

Rei stepped out of the imaginary door leading back to oblivion from the Space of Absolute Freedom dourly, only a slight frown betraying her thoughts besides. "That was not funny, Lieutenant Colonel Alvin H. Davenport." Rei denied him the use of his callsign as a punishment she saw fitting for a man she really couldn't injure; not like she had Shinji the first time he'd offended her, an incident she truly regretted now. Not that she would exactly care to hurt Chopper, anyway. He had been so kind to her, after all, and this Rei Ayanami was particularly tired of rejecting people she didn't have to. "I was forced to do something similar to what that world's Rei Ayanami did with you as part of the Third Impact process, only I was the one causing the deaths involved with each and every one of the billions of souls living on my particular Earth." The memory still forced Rei to silence even if it hadn't been unpleasant for her per sé; at least at the immediate moment it occurred.

"Don't remind me; I saw most of that too on the way here." Chopper was beginning to tell that her sense of humor, when it chose to exist at all on rare occasion, clearly had little to nothing in common with his. "But enough about death; Jeez Rei, you're so serious you really make me want to cry sometimes, you know! Don't you see that if you just concentrate 100 percent on the world you want to find your way to and let it happen, like Shinji did before with that "Happy Tokyo-3" parallel world he found, you can get back home in no time flat?" He sincerely hoped his whole effort here since he'd heard this world's Instrumentality come crashing both into and out of being, with an appropriately deafening psychic roar each time, hadn't amounted to a mere practical joke in bad taste. Not that he exactly minded pulling those from time to time, either; but this was not the time!

"Yes, but it is not that simple, Chopper." Rei had decided she was finished being peeved at him. "I can only visit a world where another of me already exists, infiltrating my consciousness into hers as my prior selves did with me; or else where there is an amount of unused LCL equal to or greater than my body mass present, to support a manifestation of myself." She left unstated the corollary fact that there were relatively few worlds that met either of those requirements; most of these hardly better choices than the one she'd been created in, comparatively speaking. "Not to mention that this soul's presence inside another of itself was every bit as taxing on that one as the presence of my prior selves within me before Complementation."

"Yeah, but I'm sure you'll find another Rei you just want to give a big ol' hug and complement onto one day." Chopper then slapped himself as he remembered. "AH! What am I saying? Never mind, Rei." He stood up and bowed slightly in farewell. "While on that topic, I think I can sense that version of me I talked about earlier. I guess your Third Impact changed more about your world than I thought at first… If you don't mind, miss 'Blue Ghost of November Stadium,' I'll be off for now."

"For now?" Rei queried expectantly, a pensive smile emerging on her face. "Might this other Chopper and myself see each other again someday? It would be most agreeable." She silenced herself as she eyed him over. Rei had known precious few in her past life who she could remotely call friends, but she felt the beginnings of a much better start for the next.

"You bet Rei-chan!" Chopper remembered the diminutive that Nagase had used for his world's Rei once Blaze and Genette showed the other Wardogs the stadium footage; after watching their mutual commentary from his perch in the Great Beyond for a spell, that is. "And I think I just might have a present that would be right up your alley when you do. Don't make me wait too long now, okay?"

Rei pondered his request. In a way, she herself wanted to watch her other selves for a while before returning to her own life, especially since she'd been denied such an opportunity without her knowledge the last time it had been present in her own world. "Yes. You too, Chopper."

"Great." Chopper strode through the door to the Space of Absolute Freedom; his last words out being, "Yahoo! Hello Dreamland, here I come so don't start the party without me!"

Rei sat down again and silently pondered the emptiness around her, planning the route she would take in the future. Back to Shinji; to Captain Misato Katsuragi; to Asuka, whom she suspected would have a vastly changed attitude in the future; to her other classmates with whom she had much catching up to do; and yes, even her supposed father Commander Ikari, if he chose to return and the world would allow it. For many reasons, Rei seriously doubted that would happen easily, if at all.

But it was Rei's hope, nonetheless. And right now, that was all she had, and all she particularly wanted to begin with…

Time: 04:00hrs 3/25/2015. Location: Office of Head Director Dr. Gendo Ikari, Classified Annex, Bassett Space Center, Osean Federation, Osea Continent on Planet Earth (Strangereal Universe).

The blue light running along the wall screens cast an eerie glow upon the scruffy ethnic Anean man in a lab coat seated at the room's only desk, positioned beneath a full depiction of the Systema Sephirotica that covered the entire ceiling. And in a neither subtle nor inaccurate indication of this man's power, as far as this facility and its personnel were concerned, a desk sited exactly under the Kether or "Crown" Sephirot, the seat of the unknowable Almighty God.

Seated before him was a moon-pale, blue-haired girl who looked to be just near fourteen years old, at least superficially so if you discounted her more than generous beauty for that or any other age. She stared at him, her crimson eyes filled with a most peculiar combination of blankness and admiration as she asked, "Why have you summoned me here, sir? My birthday is still five days from now and I do not understand the significance of this date for you."

"I find that hard to believe, Rei." Gendo intoned chidingly as he reached into his desk and pulled out a small mahogany case. Setting it on his desk, he continued. "Surely I have arranged better schooling than that in all my years of caring for you. Unless of course the federal government has decided to demonstrate to me yet again its expertise in the fine art of wasting taxpayers' money." He idly rested his left fingertips on a lacquered mahogany case while those of his right hand remained fixed on his glasses. "What major phase in world history began on this day twenty years ago, Rei?"

Her eyes lit up in eager understanding at his latest test for her. "I see, sir. You are referring to the Belkan War. Begun on March 25th 1995 with a massive blitzkrieg style air-land assault on the borders of the Osean Federation, the Republic of Ustio, and the Kingdom of Sapin by the Principality of Belka. And ended on June 20 of that year with the signing of the Treaty of Lumen following Belka's defeat by those same Allies plus forces of the Union of Yuktobanian Republics, mandating its disarmament to within agreed defensive limits and surrender of all but the northern territories of the Principality itself." No, Rei's schooling had not been a waste of time and money after all. Gendo smiled faintly in relief at her textbook summary before she queried. "Were you involved in these events somehow, sir?"

"Yes, Rei." Gendo intoned with his customary certitude when getting to the point. "Suffice it to say that everything I need to tell you can be revealed by your own hand. Open this case, and examine its contents if you wish to know more. I find mere words inadequate when the truth must be told; indeed, as they always are." Gendo looked expectantly at her now as he gently pushed the case towards Rei. Its polished simplicity was marred only by contrasting motifs of zeroes and infinities dueling and yet merging at the same time, scrolling along the beveled edges of the case's paneling as if inscribed on the sheath of an ancient and renowned blade.

Silently, reverently; how else could Rei open this latest gift from the man who had done so much for her in the lonely years since her first guardian here in Osea, Dr. Naoko Akagi, received word that an unspecified yet direct relative of Rei had been found? And not just anyone; none other than Naoko's then-lover, Dr. Gendo Ikari himself, had initiated legal action to gain sole custody of the young Rei Ayanami in light of this perceived rightful claim and allegations of neglect on Naoko's part. Following this disclosure, this betrayal from the absolute least expected direction, the late Dr. Akagi threw herself in despair from her office balcony to the swimming pool waiting a fatal three stories below. What Rei saw in the mahogany case made her breathe in an uncharacteristic display of awestruck astonishment.

Gleaming celestially in the room's suffusing blue light, medal upon citation upon decoration presented themselves to Rei's young eyes as she marveled at this: the tangible essence of her guardian's true past. She really didn't recognize the various medals themselves, being a mere schoolgirl herself despite her more than usually unique precociousness; but she did recognize the two unit patches and their respective rank insignia, which were fastened upside down to the velvet of the case's roof, all figuratively looking down upon the medals earned under their aegis.

"Lieutenant Colonel, 6th Air Division, 66th Air Force Unit 'Galm,' Ustian Air Force…" Rei had heard her classmates mention legends about this mercenary unit from the Belkan War whenever the topic came up; especially Kensuke Aida, the self-proclaimed military 'expert' in her class despite the impossibility of his actually having served. He practically never shut up about the exploits of the 'Demon Lord,' purported leader of Galm Squadron, in the dogfighting arena internationally renowned as the Round Table: Area B7R. All this tall telling inevitably forced the teacher to firmly remind Kensuke that all the proven records state is the existence of this unit and its general involvement in the war; any more commentary than this was mere conspiracy theory and would not be tolerated in the classroom.

"And also Lieutenant Colonel or Commander in the combined 118th Tactical Fighter Wing and VFW-118 'Mobius,' Independent State Allied Forces…" Rei knew much more about this combined air and naval unit since its actions were so notorious as to be beyond the possibility of concealment by the powers that be. During the final iteration of Usea continent's recent troubles, the 2002-5 Erusean war of conquest, this squadron had single handedly enabled the most lopsided military comeback in her world's known history: the resurgence of the Independent State Allied Forces from controlling only the Comona Islands and island portions of the isolated Usean country North Point, to an amphibious assault on the Usean mainland culminating in the storm of Erusea's capital of Farbanti itself, with the Mobius Wing as the offensive's spearhead.

Mobius One, that wing's mysterious flight lead whom many military scholars compared to the legendary "Demon Lord of the Round Table," was arguably the one ace that Kensuke blathered on about more than that latter semi-fictitious icon of airpower. Indeed, that he obsessed over like some others to a point of near-worship utterly beyond Rei's ken since only one person could ever deserve such accolade in her young, crimson eyes. That train of thought, however, naturally brought Rei crashing to the inevitable revelation sitting in her very hands.

"These medals… these patches… these silver leaves of rank. They cannot mean; and yet they must. Commander Ikari… who are you? Who… are you?" Rei's question took on a unique breathless air as the only sane realization, and that not by much, struck home squarely in the pit of her soul and forced her to ask the question she'd simultaneously prayed and dreaded to ask for five endless years.

"Yes, Rei. You understand now. It warms my heart that you used my old naval rank for whenever we Mobius pilots had to deploy from a carrier, since mercenaries are only known by pay grade or self-styled rank outside of any particular service." Gendo smiled contentedly as Rei attempted to hand him the case back. "Keep it. Like the skies, it belongs to a new generation now." She closed it equally reverently as it had been opened and clutched it to her chest with both hands, closing her eyes and bowing her head in contemplation just before a hard knock rapped at the door.

"Enter." Gendo wasted no time in his command to this stranger, as he never did in any matter at all.

The door opened and a portly, fatherly-looking man of middle age and in what looked like mechanics' coveralls sauntered in like this office was his ancestral home somehow. Rei suspected he did that everywhere, and felt nothing about him to suggest he had no right or reason to either. As always, she simply watched and listened; it seemed her very essence most of the time.

"It must be said that I do not approve of what you have made of yourself these past twenty years, Huckebein." Gendo scowled in his typical manner for the rest of the world, his sole other family out there included. "From the legendary ace Colonel Wolfgang 'Huckebein' Buchner of the Belkan Air Force to Osean Air Defense Force 2nd Lt. Peter N. Beagle, a lowly transport pilot and technician, is quite a fall indeed."

"So what? I left that old identity behind years ago. And I for one can't say I particularly like what you've made of yourself by now either, Dr. Ikari. Or should I call you…"

Rei shut this stranger up in mid sentence by standing bayonet upright and squarely fixing his eyes with a crimson gaze to match. She began icily, "How dare you speak to Him in such a manner," her peculiar emphasis on the pronoun being quite intentional. "You should…" Rei continued, but Gendo cut her off just as she had Huckebein.

"No, Rei. He has every right to speak as he wishes." Gendo corrected her with characteristic firmness. "Your defense is appreciated, but inappropriate. You may leave us now." It was not a request; Dr. Gendo Ikari was not the type of man to make requests. Ever.

"Yes sir." Rei bowed in deference to Gendo, and him only most pointedly, before gracefully exiting the office like a moonlit shadow that hardly seemed to have been there at all. She paid Huckebein not one glance or remark in passing.

"Quite a daughter you have there, If I may say so myself… Demon Lord." Huckebein cut to the chase, feeling that was the only way he could get a proper footing against so formidable an adversary for the settling of accounts he had come for. Clearly this man hadn't lost any of his eclipsing power from twenty years prior, merely transmuted it to a new form for what was arguably a new world since the war.

"You may not. She is near to such in point of law, and as dear to me as well in point of the heart; but she is not so just the same. And if you find your old handle inappropriate, your lordship," Gendo meant that last with no small degree of grudging respect due an old foe fallen on what would look like hard times to some, "I am aware of a certain 'Pops' who has done more than his share to ensure that the skies are indeed passed down to the next generation of warriors."

"Thanks, young knight-errant." Though he wasn't overly conservative in his manner or opinions, the ace formerly known as 'Huckebein the Raven,' now simply the mechanic nicknamed Pops, felt such chivalrous terms more than appropriate to express the brotherhood of combat pilots across all nations. Indeed, in his homeland of Belka, the arm-of-service colors or waffenfarben on all Luftwaffe uniform trappings was golden yellow; precisely to indicate the pilot officers' self-styled descent from the Belkan Knights of old, and the extinct Cavalry arm more generally. "It took me quite by surprise when I found my old plane sitting in the Solo Island boneyard's museum last year, painstakingly reassembled as per the order of some mysterious donor with the time, money, and pull to totally restore a trashed MiG-21 Fishbed found still lying at the Round Table where it fell."

When Pops had been shot down over Area B7R on May 28th 1995 following his attempted defection to the Allied Forces with the help of the Osean ace codenamed "Heartbreak One," the entire aerial Gestapo that was Schwarze squadron had pursued him with the aid of an ex-wingman of his, Ashley "Grabacr" Berlitz; whom Pops thought had taken the lucky shots downing him and the Osean pilot. Pops' honor had prompted his technical act of treason, since he could never drop a nuclear weapon on his own people as he knew he'd be ordered to soon, even if to stem an invasion. That had been the overmatched Belkan General Staff's last straw to prevent a total Allied overrun of their homeland from the south following the supposedly impending fall of Dinsmark, Belka's by then blockaded capital, to a Yuktobanian amphibious assault from the north. That particular Götterdämmerung never materialized, however, the Yukes being content to stick with blockade of and Naval Spetsnaz raids against Dinsmark as a psychological warfare ploy. Thus Belka cast itself into eternal infamy as the only nation ever to use nuclear weapons on its own soil, and for scarce reason in the end.

"What can I say," Gendo Ikari smiled as sheepishly as possible for one so naturally confident as an ex-ace of his caliber. "You were a legend even before my time, one I felt it only fitting to honor when I found out exactly who piloted the lone Fishbed I dispatched that day over the Round Table." Gendo stood and remarked, "After all: memories and relics are all any of us have when our time is past, and the student must smite the master in battle for the rite of succession to be complete.

"Oh yeah, but you didn't see fit to take down 'Grabacr' while you were at it, right?" The sarcastic new voice stormed into Gendo's office in a huff, a scruffy middle-aged pilot thinner than Pops and wearing the gold leaves of an Osean Air Defense Force Major on his dress uniform's shoulder straps. "I suspect no small partof the reason it took me sixteen years to finally make Major had to do with the simple expense of losing my very first Tomcat back then, when that no good Ashley smoked it before you could take him out! And then there's the matter of the Gray Men, of course, whom I recently found out weren't all ex-Belkan fascists after all." The intruder, Major Jack 'Heartbreak One' Bartlett, cast a telling glance at the now Dr. Gendo Ikari.

"You speak too much with too few facts in hand, Major." Though his favorite rank of the various ones he'd used in his time was naval, Commander Gendo Ikari still felt it heartening, if not technically appropriate, to pull that rank even in retirement when addressed so impertinently by someone of an inferior pay grade; service privileges be damned. "Your bravery is commendable, but your recklessness in not properly securing your rendezvous with your friend here, the defector, is precisely why Grabacr was able to shoot you down before I could deal with him. And you need not worry Fuyutsuki," Gendo turned to his immediate subordinate here at Bassett as the man stood panting in the doorway, exhausted from chasing Bartlett after he barged past the waiting room when Pops had been gone too long in his judgment. "I approved both of these men to see me some time ago; in strictest secrecy, of course."

"Fine, Commander. But with all due respect, please inform me of the exact number of persons per such appointment in the future. I cannot carry out my duties as your assistant when keep such details from me!" Fuyutsuki may have been exaggerating his superior's tendencies with that last, since Gendo was far better at taking advice than he appeared at first glance, but it conveyed the former's annoyance appropriately all the same.

"Duly noted, Fuyutsuki. You may go." The man complied forthwith with Gendo's dismissal, and the latter resumed his reminiscences. "Interruptions aside, I have invited you here because you both can assist me in an endeavor worthy of your respective skills." Gendo passed out several miniature booklets detailing his project before continuing on. "One that shall define the skies of battle for some time to come: the fusion of man and machine into one unsurpassed weapons system." Gendo handed out pamphlets detailing the objectives and specifications of his latest military project.

"And if we say 'No Dice?' This hardly sounds like the kind of work respectable pilots like us would engage in, you know?" Bartlett had hardly even looked at his copy of the technical briefing handed to him, entitled "The next generation of Computer For Flight Information/COFFIN Systems: The Past of War births the Future of Battle, Today!" The brochure's subtitle read: "A Project of General Resource, Limited."

"

Yeah. It doesn't feel like five years at all since we both got finished with the last ultimate weapon you and your paymasters at Gründer Industries completed here." He didn't have to shudder at the memory of the Strategic Orbital Linear Gun, or SOLG, and the havoc its V2 nuclear shells had wrought near the close of Osea's fraudulently provoked war with Yuktobania in 2010. The horror was all too vivid even now. The SOLG design itself had existed since well before Dr. Ikari had even become the Demon Lord in the 1995 war, true; but for reasons doubtless his own Gendo had nonetheless abetted the SOLG's completion by Osea in the name of those very Belkan extremists he had once defeated.

"Please, gentlemen," Gendo asked with impeccable reason. "I had very little to do with that project, and I am not one of those you speak of at what is now called General Resource Limited in any but the loosest sense. I work towards their interests only when its suits my own, as they try to with me as well. It is the way of this world. If you believe so as well, then your interests are best served by my proposal; and if you desire to change it, then you also have no alternative but to accept my proposal."

Several tense moments passed in silence. Eventually however, seeing Gendo's logic, Pops merely nodded his preliminary assent as Bartlett took a more vocal approach. "As long as we're training pilots like we do best, I guess it shouldn't be too bad. And speaking of things not being too bad, I saw 'beautiful' out there, with what looked like your medal case clutched to her chest, as I was running from your number two. Do you now rob the cradle in both ways, Demon Lord? Or did you just rock hers at night way back when instead?"

"Hardly either, Major." Gendo had even less patience for asinine errors than merely ignorant ones, and showed it in subdued but perceptible growl of distaste. "She is my legacy: the vessel of my hope, the monument of my sorrow, and the salvage from my only defeat in ten years of battle amidst the skies."

Pops raised his eyebrow in polite incredulity as Bartlett nearly choked in amazement. "You? The mighty Demon Lord was once defeated? I'd really like to hear this after all your talk of succeeding me, my young squire-errant!" Pops guffawed heartily in mock-chastisement as he tried to picture this rough customer of a man, much less legend of a pilot, ever getting the short end of a fight.

"Yeah! Who the hell is so good as to beat both the Demon Lord and Mobius One in a single go, as they say? That's what I've gotta know." Bartlett's disbelief was swiftly transmuting to intrigue

"You shall; of those parts it is convenient for me to let you know. They directly concern my first training candidate for you as it so happens…" Gendo's shallow smile arched upwards as he considered whom he meant.

Time: 16:55hrs, 3/14/2005. Location: Los Canas AFB, Federation of Central Usea, Usea Continent on planet Earth. (Strangereal Universe).

Like most else in his life had, this moment had begun innocuously; but was naturally leading to a devastating conclusion. Yes, the mission to rescue two Air Ixiom airliners ferrying defecting international scientists from the Erusean superweapon complex Stonehenge had indeed begun simply enough and been resolved equally so.

Scarcely an hour later, after both refugee aircraft were down safely in Independent State Allied Forces' territory, the pilot of that lone haze-blue F-22A surveyed the carnage on the tarmac from within his gold-foiled cockpit. Ostensibly a stealth measure against radar only, the combination of it and his flight helmet served very well to obscure his identity from the casualties he had a particular eye on.

The first burned Gendo Ikari, the ace now known as Mobius One after shedding the Demon Lord identity gained under his old surname Rokubungi, like raw acid drops put in his tears. That was precisely why he refused to look away, to diminish the necessary pain of this moment. Though the corpse was covered over in respect, he'd recognize the resolute, willowy frame laid out on the mortuary stretcher even if viewing from at the absolute edge of visual range. "Yui. My strategy…our strategy for dealing with the Eruseans wasn't good enough, was it?"

When the fascist regime that had seized control of the Federal Republic of Erusea following the Ulysses XF1994-04 asteroid fragment impacts had decided to claim Stonehenge as its own ultimate weapon back in 2003, Yui Ikari and her husband had agreed on a dual-track plan to reclaim their livelihood. Neither wanted what Erusea had planned for the Usean continent; and even if they had sympathized with Erusea's goals, they could not in any case permit it to discover the other secret that lay buried beneath the Stonehenge site; the actual reason construction had taken so long throughout the 1990s and was still ongoing besides. So when the war reached its crisis point in late 2004 with the ISAF driven off the continent to North Point, Gendo was suddenly given Yui's blessing, tantamount to an order from a woman who was fully his equal indeed, to disappear from the Stonehenge site and make his way to join ISAF as a pilot.

"Our last night together… I nearly couldn't believe you were asking me to become the Demon Lord again. I'd married you; I loved you to leave that part of my life behind forever and find my completion in the sciences of life rather than those of death. But you were correct, as always Yui: Fate, as constructed by the choices of others, would not allow that happy ending for me. Did you see this end coming for you that night, my love? Gendo Ikari, or Mobius One as he corrected himself and would for the duration of this damnable war, wondered.

Mobius One looked to Shinji, the latter already subsiding in belligerence now that he'd been strapped to a stretcher and forcibly sedated following his tantrum after getting off the plane with no family in sight. A lonely girl clutching a worn storybook was watching the scene ashen. She looked so like the aircraft's first officer, the former ace Kei 'Edge' Nagase, obviously a younger relative of some sort. Had she done something for Shinji to justify gazing so intently after him? If so then yes, all acts of kindness were indeed doomed to be so ephemeral, Mobius One decided on further reflection over the whole situation in general.

When he'd made rendezvous with the Air Ixiom planes, Mobius One had felt the most peculiarly unsettling feeling, as if he were already being targeted by a source that wasn't activating any of his warning systems. He had actually wondered whether another Erusean pilot was making an entirely visual attack approach before realizing, on an entirely subliminal level, what was going on. His own son, Shinji, was accusing him from afar of the most heinous sin imaginable in the four year old's eyes. The father had indeed failed mother and son, an indictment returned a conviction when First Officer Nagase had radioed Mobius One the cause of Air Ixiom Flight 701's difficulty.

Later events would prove this moment to have been critical to the coming developments. It had been, in nearly every sense of the word, the Fall of Mobius One. He thought, "Hopefully our contingency plan for Rei was carried out by our old assistant, Yuko. If so, all I have to do is win and set to finding Rei again. If not… then things become more difficult. Elaborate, yes; risky, even more so; but still achievable once I have sufficient resources." As he popped the Raptor's canopy now that Shinji was safely unconscious, Mobius One set to preparing for his future, both in the immediate missions to come and beyond…

Time: 15:31hrs, 4/20/2015. Location: Stier Castle, Principality of Belka, Osea Continent on planet Earth (Strangereal Universe).

Shinji Ikari wandered the wasteland of this once-majestic landscape walking his bicycle beside him; the barren browns of the dirt, the pallid green receding forests and the lake-filled blast crater being the only real distinguishing marks aside from the nigh-deserted town of Stier itself to accompany the mute sentinel that was the local castle. His classmates at the school in Sudentor, where his aunt and uncle lived and had him attend, claimed that it looked like the end of the world whenever field trips across the border were arranged. "Sure fits. Especially with my life the way it is."

That thought prompted Shinji to make sure his backpack was securely tightened, concealing his few provisions and its most important cargo, his one possession that could be called 'treasured' in any real sense. Seeing to it that he wasn't being watched, a sound precaution even if the Waldreich Mountains weren't the best-monitored of borders, he again mounted up and began pedaling the rough trail towards the castle looming scarce kilometers distant.

He quickly reached the castle and, against all odds, saw that a way in was already open through the driveway gate leading into the main courtyard. "Huh. That's strange. What's anybody's business here? Hell, what's my business here now that I think…? NO, don't think! All that does is bring the memories back! And I don't need them… No; I don't need them at all…"

After suppressing that particular traumatic line of thought and parking his bike in the shadows near an ancient guard post jutting from the courtyard's Northern wall, Shinji barged through another improbably open door into the castle's inner keep, only subliminally noticing the exquisite BMW sedan parked just opposite his bike in his dark concentration. A seemingly minor detail that would influence the day's events, and thus Shinji's life, in ways he couldn't begin to imagine.

He wandered the castle's ancient halls in mute astonishment; it wasn't at all like he'd expected and he quietly said, "What…? Some castle this turned out to be; this place is a dump!" Shinji had seen the huge section of the walls that had been destroyed by some unknown power on his way in. Maybe it was from some siege long ago; from the war twenty years past; or perhaps even from the scrap with the Yukes five years ago, as his e-mail pal Kensuke Aida kept surmising from all his conspiracy theory research on the legendary Demons of Razgriz? Shinji doubted that one, as he did all the rest besides, but the vanishingly rare exchanges did nonetheless make an objectively lonely life marginally more bearable.

Whatever the cause, Shinji saw ample evidence this castle had known better days all around, and not recent ones at that. As he passed the ghostly dining hall, bullet holes peered out from odd angles at incongruous points in the walls, chairs, even the still-dressed table itself as if some drunken firefight had seen fit to carve itself into history one day. "Odd," Shinji thought. "I know Belkans are supposed to be prickly about their honor, especially if they're nobility like the Albrecht Knights that once owned this place. But isn't all this a bit extreme even for them?" Shinji doubted the words 'Belkan' and 'Extremist' went together that well, for his part; even if they usually had much in common, as the War had made clear.

His reverie was rudely, and fatefully as later retrospective would have it, interrupted by a harsh BANG! "That… that sounds like a gun!" Shinji galloped through the stone archway leading into further into the keep from the now not-so-Great Hall and barreled up the nearby tower stairs towards the sound's origin. He soon found it.

His brains splayed across several battlements, a dead man stared hollowly up at the oppressive clouds in death, a Belkan-issue H&K P8 USP lying dejectedly in his right hand. He looked a bookish sort, complete with glasses now broken on the tower floor in a pool of blood and worse; but he also wore the full dress uniform of a Lieutenant Colonel in the Belkan Air Force, something Shinji recognized from his exchanges with Kensuke even if he couldn't exactly place who this late officer was. "Poor… poor bastard! I think I've seen his face before somewhere too, but… OH WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING HERE TALKING TO MYSELF ABOUT A CORPSE!" Leaving the matter to the police to find, since there was no way he would touch that body unless somebody physically made him, Shinji started to fumble with his bag as he attempted to salvage the purpose of his journey here: listening to his favorite SDAT music tape at the 'end of the world;' to disappear from life, if only for a time at least.

"THEN WHY… DON'T YOU… IDIOT?" A haughtily exasperated female voice screamed brokenly up at him from a cracked window some stories below, obviously in excruciating pain despite its defiant edge.

Shinji looked down to reply back with "SHUT UP! Can't you just forget all about me and get lost… or something?" His trailing off came when he sickened at the risk he had just taken attempting to peer into the window; it was that far down to the jagged cliffs this castle sat atop below.

Again the mysterious girl replied before trailing off herself, "What do you… THINK I'm doing… dummkopf…?" Shinji raced down to where he thought her voice was coming from in the keep below. What he saw when he got there required Shinji to summon all his limited fortitude or else keel over in vomiting up an entire week's food.

Immersed in a pool of her own bloody bathwater, ebbing out of life at an accelerating pace as her incompletely slit wrists emptied yet more blood into the macabre suspension she lay in, was a stunning redhead much of Shinji's age clearly focusing her gaze out the window at the blast crater cum lake. "So… schweinhund… are you gonna leave? Or perhaps… just get off on… a naked girl dying before you instead? If so, at least have the… decency… to do it where I don't have to smell you on my way… home… I guess." The girl fainted and her breathing became increasingly ragged with each second. As if to emphasize her blasé attitude towards impending death, the stranger's clothes were all neatly folded on the old-fashioned toilet's seat next to the tub; a modern college uniform that Shinji thought he recognized as belonging to the University of Dinsmark lying in stark contrast to the antiquated room around.

Shinji recoiled at the very suggestion she'd just made; at the fact that she was beautiful enough to very nearly compel him to take her up on the offer; and at Life in general for being so fundamentally screwed up as to leave him in positions like this all the damn time, when the responsibility oddly resolved itself as it usually did when Shinji's coping skills fell usually short. His cries of "WHAT? Are you… out of your goddamned mind? What kind of guy do you take me for? What am I even doing here talking to a second suicide in one day anyhow? Can't somebody HELP ME?" must have been unusually effective this time around as they were answered by great doors being nearly ripped off their hinges in desperation at opposite ends of the castle by two would-be rescuers.

The first, a man whom Shinji suspected usually sounded calmer than now even compared to most people, bellowed out through the halls, "ASUKA? Is that you, girl? Asuka Langley Soryu don't you dare be dead or I am SO going to kick your little ass before I throw earth on its coffin! Ah forget that; you're probably pulling this stunt for that very reason, and I've gotta say the whole 'Seductress Drama Queen' act stops right now young lady. Yeah, you heard me Asuka, you ARE a Lady whatever your best efforts to convince me otherwise!" Clearly the man was trying to provoke Asuka into a dialogue intended to stave off her death by the effort required to maintain consciousness and respond on her part; this guy knew his stuff.

"SHINJI IKARI! I told you to meet me at the border before we came here to talk, not violate sovereign territory even if it happens to be Belkan! We haven't even properly been introduced yet and you're already disobeying my orders! I guess I should just pose topless instead for any future invitation photos, HUH? Would you listen to me THEN?" This second character, a high-spirited and equally high-strung woman if Shinji was any judge, seemed to be rapidly closing on both his position and the first stranger's; they'd probably collide before stepping in onto the whole macabre scene.

"It's happening again… It's… IT'S ALL HAPPENING AGAIN!" Shinji braced himself as the whole situation triggered the torrent of memories he'd fought to suppress earlier. His mental dam failed utterly and the deluge sprang forth; the pain of memory surging through Shinji's wracked frame. He no longer cared what the total bitch dying before him thought; he was now immersed in his past. In the events that would shape his life forever, even as they had very nearly taken it all the same…

Time: 15:31hrs, 3/14/2005. Location: Airspace northwest of Chopinburg, Federation of Central Usea, Usea Continent on Planet Earth. (Strangereal Universe)

"MOMMY! What's happening now; MOMMY!" The young Shinji Ikari knew even less than usual about what was going on as he screamed against his oxygen mask. "This… this warm stuff… NO!" Shinji's eyes confirmed the truth his thoughts fought to deny. Children knew blood on sight, much less touch; and the moon-pale, emerald-eyed brunette scientist he proudly called Mom was slowly bleeding to death right on top of him, her back still painfully hunched in sheltering him from the shrapnel of two nearly missed AIM-9M Sidewinders fired at Air Ixiom Flight 701 on takeoff in an Erusean F/A-18C Hornet's daring intercept attempt. Had the missiles detonated even a meter closer to the aircraft each, the cockpit would've been blown in and the wing sheared off completely; the passengers, defecting scientists from the superweapon project Stonehenge, would all be either dead or dying right now after the crash. To say nothing of the certainty the shrapnel would've had just that bit of extra velocity enough to pierce right through Yui Ikari's frame, surprisingly strong in all senses despite its willowy aspect, and end Shinji's brief time on this Earth.

"Hush, son… The future's… still so bright for… you! You'll see…" The only sign of just how gravely Yui Ikari was injured came in her odd pauses. Even through an overhead oxygen mask, her tone carried all the expectant airs of a woman who didn't know the meaning of "giving up," nor cared to. "Look Shinji! It's… Him!" Yui Ikari pointed out the shattered window at the distant silhouette of a lone, haze-blue F-22A Raptor who'd already loosed an AIM-120 AMRAAM now tracking the lone F/A-18C ghoulishly angling for a gun kill behind Flight 702 above. That fighter's summary execution of his former flight lead, the one who'd missed Flt. 701 on takeoff and been assumed a traitor for it, had been enough delay for the wounded Boeing 767 to escape at low altitude. He was now paying the price for his macabre sense of priorities, at the hands of a pilot who'd lost patience with such rank amateurs long ago.

"What's so great about this loser?" If a putative hero couldn't save his mother, then that was enough to disqualify the man in Shinji's mind even if the gods themselves quaked at his sight. "He… He didn't make it in time! HE FAILED YOU; Mommy?"

"No… Shinji." Yui whispered in bemused understanding at her son's incomprehension. "It would take… far more than this… for him to ever disappoint me. Watch him, Shinji!" She clucked in nigh-votive expectation. "Your future is in his hands. And our future… all of us… will be in yours when his time is done… my little man!" She knew the end was coming, so she beamingly finished, "And I'll be there, proudly a lady of two champions, when the contest is at hand. You'll see. It… will… be alright… my son." With that, the soul known to few but beloved by all of them as Yui Ikari slipped this particular mortal coil; far before her rightful time, evidence itself of yet another universe in dire need of a forcible justice infusion. Stat.

But none of her exhortations could console the poor child clamped to her cold frame in mourning. Naught short of truly mythic powers of the heart could do that. Falling into his young self, the jetliner's airframe echoed with a primal scream of pure loss and surprisingly adult rage. "MAMA!"

Time: 16:55hrs, 4/20/2015. Location: Stier Castle, Principality of Belka, Osea Continent on Planet Earth. (Strangereal Universe)

Shinji Ikari broke from his morbid reverie, having last perceived himself as still crying aboard the wounded Air Ixiom 701, to find the bloodied bathroom empty; its window still gazing out at a lake filled blast crater. "Huh?" was all Shinji could stammer.

The man he'd heard bellowing for the girl, for Asuka if Shinji remembered correctly, stood next to him and whistled. "Got to hand it to you kid. Without your venting, the paramedics and I probably wouldn't have found her in time. You're a real hero today, you hear?" He gave Shinji a pseudo-fatherly smile that struck the boy right off as too much. "The name's Kaji; Ryoji Kaji, but most just call me Blaze."

"NO WAY! I'm no hero. I couldn't even try to save this Asuka of yours myself like a real hero would've; I couldn't even follow simple instructions like Captain Katsuragi's. I don't know whom you're talking about, Mr. Kaji, but it's not me." Shinji decided to get his mea culpa out early so the necessary punishment would be over with soon, please.

"Though it pains me to admit it considering the source, Kaji is right Shinji. By alerting us and then standing aside for the professionals, you did save Asuka's life." Captain Misato Katsuragi's irritation (at least) at Asuka's would-be rescuer Kaji, who she knew only too well, showed in her consolation for Shinji despite her best efforts to keep cool. "This whole mess aside, I'm pleased to meet you Shinji." Misato bowed deeply towards him and flicked her sunglasses down as she looked at him just like in the photo she'd sent, with the same cleavage inevitably showing as a result. Shinji barely suppressed a nosebleed at that.

"Hmm. So you've taken to robbing the cradle now, darling? I could serve as well and less perversely, you know." Kaji knew what was coming, but the masochist at heart in him loved to provoke Misato just like so anyway.

"OH STUFF IT!" Misato sounded like she was moving to slap him, but refrained as she slowly walked Shinji out of the castle, Kaji following. "Dating you was both the worst blemish on my life AND distraction from my Academy training. Do you know how long it took me to get an AWACS posting at Heierlark just so I could ditch the handle you and your fellow fighter jocks gave me back then?"

"I see. You prefer slaving over a hot radar screen under a guy who calls himself 'Chef' to riding high in a fighter with the name 'Flash' on everybody's lips, eh?" Kaji retorted to his former wingmate and lover with the easy sarcasm of a man who'd accepted such a bizarre decision long ago even if he still didn't understand it.

"Exactly. It gives you boorish men fewer ideas about my character." Misato thought in triumph for a few seconds, before Shinji's mortified expression and Kaji's cool smile clued her in on the joke and she screamed "AUGH! Let's just get out of here before we turn this innocent into a total degenerate like you Kaji!"

Outside, the paramedics were dealing with two stretchers. One was covered over in respectful preparation for its trip to the morgue, the Lieutanant Colonel's. The other held a restrained and weakly raving Asuka Langley Soryu as she moaned her 'will to die,' as it were to the universe at large. One hoped the ambulance could survive even this weakened tantrum considering her sheer vehemence behind it.

"Such a waste." Kaji intoned regarding the late Belkan officer. "I'd heard of the Red Swallow long before we had reason to meet; many of us trainees thought him the best, barring Mobius One and the Demon Lord of course. And knowing him even as I've come to now, I still don't get it. Why would he do this?"

"The Red Swallow?" Shinji gasped in awe as his knowledge of the man's identity, courtesy of Kensuke's diligent instruction, clicked in a flash. "THAT was Lt. Col Detlef Fleisher; that was Rot One?" The idea of Belka's poster boy ace committing suicide seemed nonsensical. Did war even break knights like him without mercy?

"You knew Detlef Fleisher the History Professor, Kaji." Misato let the earlier acid drain out of her tone as she gently answered Shinji's question in addition to her ex's. "I saw an OBC special once where he was interviewed. Rot One, the pilot, spoke of fighting the Demon Lord over the Round Table on this very day twenty years ago. And yes, Kaji, he sounded every bit a broken man; as if the universe itself had betrayed the values it was supposed to work by when it let the Demon Lord shoot him down. His life so diverted from what he thought it was meant to be, suicide was probably the only solution he could see in the end."

"Maybe," Kaji conceded. "But why Asuka? Aside from a crush on me that I can't seem to kill no matter how firmly I try; and yes Misato, I do try, whatever you may think of me and however gently I have to do it to avoid future things like… this… I can't see reason enough for her to attempt suicide. Unless… No…" Kaji whispered in realization at what probably triggered this whole scenario; such a small yet momentous thing indeed.

"What Kaji?" Misato's voice again took on the character of an old nine-tailed whip as she queried his unspoken mistake. "I see it is your fault after all like I thought, so SPEW!"

"I can't tell you here, Misato; in the most serious sense I can mean that. Finish what you came here to meet Shinji for first, then rendezvous with me on this date at this home in Oured…" Kaji slipped Misato a dated note with an address that Misato pocketed after glancing at; it seemed vaguely familiar, so she'd grant his request for the moment. Kaji continued with, "And I'll show you all you need to know."

"Hmm. Okay Kaji, but any funny stuff and I'm gone, capiche?" Misato wanted the terms of engagement to be absolutely clear this time.

"Crystal, darling…" Kaji assented mistily as his mind wandered back to happier times scarce days ago.

Time: 18:30hrs, 4/18/2015. Location: Office of Professor Detlef Fleisher, History Department, University of Dinsmark, Principality of Belka, Osea Continent on Planet Earth. (Strangereal Universe)

"Thanks SO much, Mr.Fleisher! I can't wait to defend my Thesis, twenty pages on the Albrecht Knights' feud with the Buchners, Zeppelins and Ludwigs in the four-way power struggle over the Principality during our last civil war, against questions from you personally!" Asuka Langley Soryu was on the verge of prancing about Professor Detlef Fleisher's office at this news, but restrained herself to merely glomping him instead. "And at your personal suite in Stier Castle? This is even better than my class trips to the Waldreich with MissShultheiss back at old Gratia High!"

That having been when Asuka was age nine and still living not far from Sudentor in the small Belkan border town of Gratia with her father and stepmother. Her precociousness had propelled her all the way to Belka's proud University of Dinsmark at age ten, after which she'd found challenge enough to slow her academic pace to one more normal.
"Yes… Asuka. Miss Soryu. Thank you. It's a pleasure to help you satisfy both your ancestral and academic yearnings at the same time. But… would you please get going home now? I have much… work… to do, and I need time alone for it." Professor Fleisher's tone bespoke a haunting truth behind his front of studiousness, but Asuka naturally didn't care given her current happiness.

"Mm-hm, ja mein Herr. See you tomorrow then for the drive down, Professor Fleisher!" Asuka closed the great paneled door to his office behind her as she left with her musical farewell. She nearly skipped in joy as she passed her much older classmates on the way out of the University courtyard.

This display mellowed to a more cautious yet still upbeat walk as Asuka proceeded home to the nearby apartment she shared with her guardian, Ryoji Kaji. An odd situation: the last child of a fallen Belkan noble house, and that only by intermarriage of the last male scion to an Anean noblewoman forced from her homeland by Yuktobania's domination thereof, being placed under the care of an ex-Osean Air Defense Force pilot. But one whose… perks… struck Asuka as well worth it considering the sheer manliness of that caregiver. "I just wish he'd see those perks for what they were and take advantage of them. OH! If only…" Superficially at least, Asuka's personal maturity was indeed far ahead of her statutory age.

Her ecstatic air could strike an observer as most odd, considering the surroundings at hand. Though the University of Dinsmark itself had survived the Belkan War twenty years ago unscathed, not insignificant tracts of the city still bore signs of the Yuktobanian blockade and diversionary operations that had kept many Belkan forces pinned near Dinsmark in case of an invasion that never came. Bullet holes, from Belkan-issue 7.62mm G3 or 5.56mm G41 rifles; from Yuktobanian 7.62mm AKM or 5.45mm AK-74 automatics, and more besides all remained in many of Dinsmark's more strategic buildings; evidence of raids long past except for their scars. And that didn't even touch the unexploded naval ammunition from the Yuke blockade that was still being found daily in those districts where coastal defenses had been sited. It was a history the young woman who inside called herself Asuka Zeppelin Soryu knew all too well, and took pains to remember in every detail so she could avenge the dishonor upon her beloved homeland it implied; someday so at any rate, if her hopes held.

She briefly saw a lean looking man in a leather jacket with a black stocking cap on, standing outside one of Dinsmark's more revered yet humble meeting spots: Pops' Diner. Asuka thought he'd been a fighter pilot once, but wasn't really able to make sure since she didn't talk to strangers; especially not when they had the look of the mean streets as much about them as this one did.

She arrived at her apartment to find Kaji was still gone, as he usually was on whatever hush-hush job General Resource Limited had him working on. Asuka was about to take a shower when she saw something black and squat jutting out from under Kaji's bed. "Mmm… what is this? Could it be some sort of delightfully naughty toy he wanted to keep all to himself, or a diary of his most scandalous fantasies (assuredly about ME, of course)? Wonderful!" Asuka crept in and examined the hastily concealed object; obviously Kaji would normally have secured it better but haste had seen to otherwise on his part.

Opening the jet-black wooden box, however, proved to be one of the most emotionally devastating mistakes Asuka would ever make; an event comparable to her mother's long madness since a still-unexplained experiment gone wrong in 2004, only ended with her suicide in 2005 right before Asuka's young eyes, in terms of damage wrought to the impressionable young woman's worldview.

She instantly recognized the two unit patches fastened to the underside of the box's top, flanked by two of the silver leaves those accursed Oseans used to indicate Lieutenant Colonel rank. "108th Tactical Fighter Squadron… Wardog… Osean Air Defense Force…!" She knew he'd been some kind of OADF pilot before, but this squadron? He'd belonged to that band of traitors even to so lowly a nation as Osea? "Surely Kaji must be playing a prank on me!" This denial aside, Asuka's rage was building within even as she fought to suppress it and continue her examination. Pure. Obliterating. Rage.

"And… Razgriz Air Command Squadron… The Ghosts of RAZGRIZ!" Asuka screamed that name so loudly she didn't care if the neighbors heard it as she threw the case back under the bed so hard that her only regret was its' not shattering and spilling more bastard Osean medals out.

How could he… Kaji…? How could he have been chief among the worst enemies Belka had known since the war twenty years ago? HOW?

Asuka had been across the border in Gratia that dark December 30, 2010 when the combined forces of Osea and Yuktobania saw fit to take a break from pounding each other and visit yet more misfortune on her family's captive hometown of Sudentor; but she'd watched the news broadcasts of the battle against Gründer Industries just like nigh everyone else in Gratia that night.

Oh yes, but where her father had watched with the resigned melancholy of a fallen nobleman and out-to-pasture scientist content to merely get by, and her stepmother Dr. Langley had gazed upon him with the most arrogantly patronizing of airs at her homeland Osea's renewed triumph, Asuka at least had honored the Belkan spirit (her conception of it, anyway) in swearing that night NEVERto forgive those demons of the sky… those Razgriz… for denying her country even such a basic right as wholeness, to say nothing of the greater glory it had once possessed.

And to top it all; to crown trespass with insult, as Asuka saw it, that same demon-in-chief known as Razgriz One did naught else but assume care for her immediately after that battle! She had moved to Dinsmark in the Fall Semester of 2011 to attend the University, and met her designated guardian and dream man in Kaji that very same moment. But now the dream had turned to a sickeningly real nightmare as the truth dropped on her like the proverbial bomb.

"I still… love him… but I must also hate him… RIGHT? Why? F it all WHY?" The confusion being too much for her, Asuka grabbed her school uniform and what few other clothes or possessions she didn't feel… tainted… by this whole fraudulent life she'd been living the last four years. She departed the flat with a SLAM of the door that neighbors swore could've been heard all the way over in Oured that night.

Asuka Soryu departed into the night for the one home she could even think of now, her other one: the University. Hopefully, her professor and idol, the former Lieutenant Colonel Detlef 'Rot One' Fleisher, would shelter Asuka and show her the way. "Yes," Asuka thought, "Surely he will!"

She arrived breathless from running at the staff parking lot to find Professor Fleisher just about to enter his car and cried out for his help. "Mr.Fleisher! Please, I need your help! I… I NEED YOUR HELP OH PLEASE!" She collapsed to her knees as she belted out her latter entreaty.

"Miss Soryu… I thought even you'd be home by now." The former Rot One gave Asuka a mild disapproving look at his recall of her taste for the nightlife, one that might as well have been a gunshot to her heart. "Did our old mutual friend Kaji reject your latest pass at him?" He had at least been compassionate enough to listen to Asuka's endless tales of teenage desire; anything to inject some vitality into what were surely the autumn years of his life at best.

"…WORSE…" Asuka hoarsely retorted even as she buried her face in wrists already raw from drying a literal ocean of tears. "…Razgriz… The Razgriz… and Wardog! They're both… And he was… AUUGH!" Asuka broke down completely as coherence fled from her before the sheer simplicity and enormity of her guardian's secrets.

Rot One paused for a moment to stare agape at this, his brightest student reduced to prostration on the pavement in a redheaded pile of gibbering hysteria, before silently nodding and placing a hand on her shoulder in consolation. "I see. I understand how…"

"YOU UNDERSTAND NOTHING… you old… HAS BEEN!" Fallen so low, there was only one reliable instinct Asuka could turn to at this moment. Lashing out. "You told me all about how you couldn't even defeat a mere mercenary like that stupid Demon…"

"Enough!" Rot One engaged in one of his very few displays of anger as he shook Asuka's shoulder just hard enough to hopefully snap her out of her tantrum. "You came here for my help. I'd agreed to provide it before you displayed to me just how much of a child you yet remain, Miss Soryu. Get in the car… before I change my mind." He seriously doubted she'd refuse, since in all honesty none of the paths Asuka would walk if she did were any less painful or led anywhere else than the one he had planned.

As at most other times in his life, both as a pilot and a professor, Rot One had been exactly right. "Ja… Professor. Let's go. I'm sick… of this place." Asuka meant that in a about as general a sense Rot One suspected, which she confirmed by trailing as she got in, "I'm… (I'm sick of this life…)" The BMW's doors slammed shut curtly, and they were soon headed south on the Belkan Autobahn towards their first and final destination: Stier Castle. There they would each take a room for the night in a private suite Rot One had earned long ago when still an Ace; and then take more… permanent… steps the next morning, all told.

Time: 19:00hrs 4/27/2015 Location: Oured, Osean Federation, Osea Continent on Planet Earth (Strangereal Universe).

Misato Katsuragi walked up to the door of the modest town house in Oured's main suburbs cautiously as Kaji's appointed time arrived. She saw his car there, so he'd at least showed. "Whatever this is, it had better be good or I won't so much as think about him ever again, much less see him." With Shinji at her side making his usual withdrawn glances or dismissive comments, Misato rapped at the door three times.

A kindly looking woman much of Misato's height and wearing a pageboy-style haircut opened the door. A blonde five-year old child was at her right side with one arm around his mother's waist. Her eyes lit up in instant recognition. "Misato?"

"Oh my Gods; Kei!" Misato glomped Kei Nagase as memories of their brief acquaintance back in the OADF academy came rushing back. Nagase had been one of the only other fighter trainees not to assign a lascivious meaning to Misato's former callsign of 'Flash.' "What are you doing here? I haven't seen you since training because pulling duty on AWACS Chef at Heierlark usually kept me too busy. I even missed you guys when you refueled there after Eaglin. Gomen nasai… ne?" Misato slipped back into Anean since she figured it was the only way she could truly express her regret as she folded her hands and bowed in apology, perking her eyes up at 'ne' to brace for any retaliation on Nagase's part.

"Daijoubu, Mi-chan!" Nagase hugged Misato as she assured the woman that her error was inconsequential and led her into the home after removing her shoes with Shinji at the threshold. "I did wonder why you weren't posted to Thunderhead, but felt you got the better deal considering how he turned out." Nagase recalled the gullible AWACS she and her fellows in Wardog Squadron had served under less than five years ago, a forgettable superior if there ever was one.

"Oh please, having aspersions cast because of my own callsign is enough! I'd have directed fighters onto anyone who picked up that joke within detectable range of me, whatever their IFF." Misato levelly declared so, for she had zero patience for that sort of humor in her presence; indeed had only even tolerated it for herself once in her life, a time she fought daily to forget. Remembering herself as she caught Nagase's… priceless expression as her son gazed curiously up at his mother, Misato went into damage control. "Oh… uh… what's your name, son?" Yes! When in doubt, steer the conversation to the kids…

"Albert, ma'am." The blonde boy smiled up at Misato as he answered in that peculiarly beaming tone only very young children could manage, his hair seeming particularly loveably disheveled at that moment. His mom leaned over and pulled him into a hug. Misato had to hand it to Kei; she'd come so far from the withdrawn cadet trying desperately to prove worthy of her family callsign 'Edge' way back when.

"Albert Junior, darling. After his father." Nagase tenderly corrected her son first before explaining to Misato and Shinji. "Who should be getting home any minute now if he knows what's good for him! By the way, who's your little man if I may ask?"

"Oh! Shinji!" Misato realized just what a rude guest she was indeed being that very moment and called out to correct the problem ASAP. "SHINJI!"

"Wha-what?" Shinji broke from his spacey stare around the room at Misato's harsher than necessary call. He quickly did a double take as he recognized Nagase at once. "Who… YOU? Are you… Miss Nagase? From Air Ixiom 701?"

"One of two, Shinji. I'm not surprised you don't remember more exactly, though." Kei Nagase's elder cousin from San Salvación, also named Kei Nagase and the former 'Edge' from back during the 1999 Usean Coup War, had been First Officer aboard the Boeing 767 that had ferried the defecting Stonehenge scientists and their families from out of Erusea. Her younger relative had been visiting when the defection occurred.

The younger Kei had been the only passenger on that flight who'd been remotely able to console the younger Shinji Ikari after his mother's untimely demise, ironically by sharing her favorite picture book, Ellinor Graun's A Blue Dove for the Princess, with him for a time; long enough at least for the crew to decently cover his mother's body prior to removing it from the plane on landing. That last, however, had undone all of Kei's hard won rapport with the traumatized Shinji, the latter provoked into a berserk tantrum on seeing ISAF medics remove the late Yui Ikari for decent burial that forced them to restrain and sedate him. Looking at Shinji now, Nagase still couldn't believe such a slight looking boy of any age could lash out so violently as she'd seen on that day eleven years ago; it just wasn't natural.

"Right." Shinji intoned strangely, equal parts hope and depression. "I… I think I caught a glimpse of your elder… cousin, right? Of First Officer Nagase as she ordered the wounded Captain taken back into the cabin and the flight attendants tried to see to… to Mom…" Shinji trailed off as he turned all his effort to restrain the traumatic flood of memory threatening to overwhelm his mental defenses so painstakingly built up over eleven bleak years.

Nagase walked over slowly and hugged Shinji in silent consolation, reminding him again precisely why he'd so readily calmed himself for her, and no one else on that flight eleven years ago, way back when. "She's so much like Mom." Shinji thought. "Not the same, for sure; but so similar…" She still had the same effect on him even now as he gradually collected himself. Misato watched downcast as Albert Junior joined in the now-group hug reflexively; Commander Ikari had briefed Misato on his son's psychological profile and what she'd likely have to deal with in her time training him… for what was to come.

"Don't mind me. I'm all for this sort of touchy-feely stuff just like anyone else." Kaji quipped from the couch in the adjacent living room, the television blaring a half-watched football broadcast from November Stadium. He turned his face to the kitchen in anticipation of Misato's likely riposte as he called out "Hey Swordsman, it's salad not Haiku; you know that, right?" Clearly Kaji had gotten used to civilian life.

"Yes sir, I do." The tall black pilot, whose nametags identified him as Captain Snow and looked to be ex-Maritime Defense Force if Misato knew the patches on his flight jacket correctly, responded in characteristic stately fashion to his ex-superior. Which fact Misato found as just more confirmation of how seriously wrong this whole universe had to be if Kaji were once superior to anyone, much less someone so much more deserving of command as this pilot was. "However, a master takes equal care in all work to which he applies himself; I thought you knew that as well, right Blaze?" Swordsman mockingly gazed at Kaji from the kitchen as he continued preparing his chef's salad for tonight's guests, notably including Misato and Shinji.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm always watering my melons the same way too; damn you when you're right Swordsman." That last was delivered in the peculiarly friendly tone only heard between fraternity pledges or similarly close men; such as comrades-in-arms for example."

"I see you're as cautious as ever when there are children present, eh Kaji?" Misato toned down her reply so as not to sink to her ex's level. She was clearly thinking of Albert Junior more than anyone; but he simply ran off giggling towards his mother Nagase, once again in the kitchen seeing to her part of preparing dinner alongside Captain Snow, wearing that trademark grin of children who've caught an old uncle saying a "bad word" as it were.

The opening door behind both eased and escalated the tension as the man of the house, Osean Broadcasting Corporation anchorman Albert Genette, entered with a willowy male Osean redhead and a bottle-blonde Anean-Osean woman both behind him. Each had a grocery bag for tonight's feast in hand and looked eager to spend an evening with old friends in the new, seemingly peaceful world they'd had no small part in creating. "Honey, I'm home! And I come bearing food; so surely I'm welcome, right?" Genette felt proper anxiety at arriving home so much later than planned, albeit with guests.

"No way! You're lucky I don't kick you out right…" Nagase picked up on the running family joke as she ran to embrace her husband of five years, right before she ground to a halt on seeing yet another friendly face. "Oh my… RITSUKO?" Nagase bunched up her hands in front of her chest ecstatically like the OADF Academy schoolgirl she felt she was once again at that moment.

"Yep. The same, Nagase." Major Ritsuko Akagi, a former medical officer in the Osean Air Defense Force and still at Heierlark Air Base with her… new outfit… greeted her old Academy friend with typically clinical aplomb. "I see Misato and Kaji are here too. Perhaps this was all arranged." She casually flicked her shoulder-length blonde hair as she stared at her old acquaintance on the couch, which only returned his trademark sheepish grin in admission of guilt.

"Hey, how come I don't get a response like that?" Retired OADF Major Hans 'Archer' Grimm remarked to his old wingmate at her reaction to seeing his fellow guest.

Kaji swiftly nipped this subtle jab in the bud like any of the bandits he'd downed way back when. "Way before your time Archer, I'm afraid. Hell, almost before mine too if I'd joined up a year or two earlier." Kaji remarked on remembering what had still been the high years of his life, all things considered thus far, back at the OADF Academy. "Myself, Majors Nagase and Akagi, and Captain Katsuragi all knew each other back in flight school just before earning our 'butter bars.'"

Ryoji 'Blaze' Kaji, Misato 'Flash' Katsuragi, Kei 'Edge' Nagase, and Ritsuko Akagi had been a nearly inseparable quartet during their training years until just after earning their commissions; abruptly crumbling afterward when Misato sought AWACS work alongside the newly-certified Nurse Akagi at Heierlark AFB after dumping Kaji, and when he in turn accompanied Nagase to advanced fighter training at Sand Island AFB. Breaking the reverie upon having lost all taste for football, Kaji impertinently asked of Nagase, "Chow up yet?"

Nagase's domestic talents again showed themselves in her affirmative reply. Had Kaji's melancholy really taken that long after Archer had shrugged in comprehension at his former superior's answer?

…Dinner had been even more than typically exquisite that night, Kaji recalling his previous visits to his old wingmate's home; a tradition Nagase insisted on to keep the old Wardogs together, even if she was married to only the second man she'd loved in her life and the vagaries of time, to say nothing of law, prevented the squadron from ever serving again. Kaji had even been able to lay the groundwork for his necessary disclosures tonight, all things considered. "Friendship, skullduggery, and more besides. Isn't it amazing what one can do in civilized company?"

After discovering that the Osean-Yuktobanian Circum-Pacific War of 2010 was actually a Belkan-provoked fraud, the 108th 'Wardog' Tactical Fighter Squadron of the Osean Air Defense Force had essentially mutinied, and joined up with the equally rogue Captain Anderson of the aircraft carrier OFS Kestrel to escape those who wanted to put the Wardogs down; to keep them from winning the war single handedly before it could be pushed over the nuclear abyss by its Belkan provocateurs. When all was said and done, they'd been left in judicial limbo even considering their subsequent efforts to turn the war against its creators as the legendary Razgriz Air Command Squadron, the aerial bodyguard for President Vincent Harling of the Osean Federation.

It had been all President Harling could do within the Osean Uniform Code of Military Justice to arrange what sentence the Razgriz got instead of the firing squad many harder-line Osean officers still felt they deserved: ninety days in the military stockade of Landsford Federal Penitentiary busted to E-1 Airman Basic, followed by a full and secret pardon delivered to the stockade commandant himself from the President's Office.

Thus, even though technically broken for their disobedience, the Wardogs had been gratefully restored all their ranks and honors on release; President Harling having even blackmailed the OADF bureaucracy into granting his ex-guardians a general discharge, with all its neutral connotations, instead of the more usual dishonorable one reserved for their ilk. It was indeed amazing what men could really do to flense the sins of others when threatened by their legitimate Commander-in-Chief with exposure of their own, worse offenses.

"So, Mr. Kaji…" Shinji fumbled with the question of whether he should chance his trust on this man; and he decided to out of sheer boredom if nothing else. "Blaze… you're going to train me as a pilot? For fighters and all, you mean?" Shinji relished the thought of bragging to Kensuke about this as much as anyone else would, naturally. They had discussed it in the backyard after Nagase had gone to put Albert Junior to bed and then clean up the kitchen with Swordsman and Archer. Or rather, Shinji had listened and nodded mutely to Kaji as he'd rambled on not particularly efficiently.

"In a nutshell." Kaji smiled at the boy's quick grasp of things, whatever his inconsistency in applying it. Pops would sure have some work to do before sending this kid to Bartlett, assuming he survived the discipline. "You'll be training under 'Pops;' first for your civilian license and then, once you're over eighteen, as an enlistee in the General Resource Defense Force. Once you pass advanced training under 'Heartbreak One' you'll earn your commission, after which you'll have your father to reckon with." Kaji had already surmised there was no way to soften that last for the boy, so he simply left it out there.

"Right…" Shinji hated even the idea of serving under his father; but fortunately as events would later show, he decided after a long moment's consideration that he hated missing an opportunity to prove himself to that same father even more. "Pops is that guy again, right? The fat…"

"Whoa now, boy!" Second Lieutenant Peter N. 'Pops' Beagle, as he was now known, sauntered out into the townhouse's fenced backyard. He had met the boy over dinner, coming in late alongside Major Jack 'Heartbreak One' Bartlett. He'd got a sense of how to approach this kid during the dinner conversation sharing old war and friendship stories with his various protégés; very firmly and carefully, if at all. "That's no way to address the man who's going to make a knight of you, my young page. Especially not when he's an ace." Pops decided to get the first disclosure Kaji needed making out of the way.

"Bullshit!" Shinji exclaimed incredulously, not caring if Albert Junior improbably heard his swears or not. "You, an ace?" This fatso had palavered on about the glories of being a trash hauler for the late Sand Island AFB back when the Wardogs had run the place, surely he jested at somehow being ace material indeed.

"That's right, KID; and don't you forget it!" Heartbreak One decided to join them, sliding the glass door aside and prowling out like a caged beast. "Had things gone differently twenty years ago, you'd be addressing him now as Herr Oberst Wolfgang Buchner of the Belkan Luftwaffe; 'Huckebein the Raven' himself, and that'd be Colonel to you." Bartlett was already fuming at the probable basket case of a trainee Dr. Ikari had handed him; assuming Shinji survived Pops first. Man oh man…

"Hey now, don't lay it on that thick, sir. My station was no reason to talk down to anyone even then, much less now. I was just ribbing the kid a bit while telling him the truth, is all…" Pops had fulfilled the obligations of his former standing in the Belkan nobility, and had expected the commensurate respect due for the same, but never seen fit to use that station to talk down to his theoretical inferiors as so many of his fellows had. Unlike them, he knew fiefs and titles were a sign of Heavenly favor earned, not given; blood honored as frequently for its role in bloodshed as anything else. Those same privileges of Estate could just as easily symbolize Heavenly favor lost if abused and subsequently stripped in whatever consequence Fate saw fit, as the circumstances surrounding his departure had shown. "As we all should; right Blaze…?"

"Yep. In our own time, of course…" Kaji cautioned against too much revelation; Shinji already knew now that Kaji been Wardog One, and that was enough for the time being. "Hell, if that Kensuke Aida friend of his is half the gumshoe Shinji claims, the two of them might just figure out the rest without my help."

"Yeah. I'll opt out before I end up having to kiss anybody, thanks." After all, Heartbreak One did have his Yuktobanian wife of five years, the ever ravishing albeit retired Major Nastasya to consider. Of course, this was hardly Truth or Dare the coterie of former and upcoming fighter pilots had been playing, but still.

"Good idea, Heartbreak One." Nagase quipped back, silhouetted in the doorframe with her arms spread across it like the proverbial Lady of the manor opening the gates wide. Misato nodded her approval from behind. Kaji signaled to Nagase and she said, "Pops, Major, Shinji; would you all like some dessert inside?" Albert Jr. had finished his and gone to bed long before for the precise reason that was upcoming. As the three men followed Nagase, Misato stepped out and closed the pane door behind her.

"What is it now, Kaji? This had better not be what it looks like…" Misato steeled herself for the advances she just smelled coming even now.

"It is… partially." Kaji reached into his leather jacket and pulled out a jet-black case; still intact despite what looked like impact dents and chips along the façade. "As Huckebein said, Misato. The Truth; all I can give you if you won't accept my love. Do with it what you wish." Kaji handed the case over to her downcast, half expecting her to finish what its first assailant had started.

Guardedly, Misato took the case from him and opened it, expecting yet another lewd joke on his part or some such. What she saw was so diametrically opposite that it forced her breath from her lungs at once. "Kaji…?" She knew the Lieutenant Colonel's silver leaves and Wardog Squadron patch at once, as well as the medals Kaji had earned. But the second squadron patch stitched to the case's black velvet top was what compelled her incredulity. "So it's true…? What they say in whispers about the connection… The connection between Wardog Squadron on the one hand; and the Ghosts of Razgriz on the other?" Misato looked at Kaji like the most enticing sort of schoolgirl he'd ever seen; one who'd just learned everything they'd thought they knew was simply dead wrong, yet was more concerned with learning the real truth instead.

Kaji couldn't help but think admiringly, "Hope and confusion at once? Welcome to my world, dearest Misato." He answered her question simply. "Yes. Wardog is Razgriz; in an even stronger sense than the Yukes put it after we sank the Hrimfaxi." He thought back to how both their fall and resurrection had begun on dispatching the last remaining Yuke super submarine.

"OH KAJI!" Misato dropped the case roughly to the ground, medals and ribbons spilling every which way as she rushed to embrace this redeemed hero in her eyes. She was roughly stopped short.

"OH STOP IT MISATO!" Kaji forced her arms from him, provoking a crushed yelp from her, then fixed Misato's eyes with his like the proverbial 'death dot' in an aircraft's lead-computing gunsights. "Just stop it! If you're going to do that…" Kaji paused as he leveled his stance and got control of himself. "I want to know if you're doing it because of your father, or because of us; hell because of me gods damn it!" It was a selfish demand, to be true, but Kaji didn't care; he had run out of patience for this psycho-mystical crap Misato had poisoned their first affair with. If indeed he was the reincarnation of her father, the late Dr. Katsuragi lost during a still utterly unexplained experimental expedition to Antarctica on September 13th 2000, then Kaji wanted her to love the living man and not some ghost. She'd hinted at his resemblances to the departed scientist countless times before she'd dumped him, and it hadn't taken much for Kaji to put the pieces together.

"Kaji…" Misato placed her hands over his as he still held her at bay, tenderly invoking his name like some ward against an unspecified coming evil. "Blaze. Of course I'm doing it for you. For as long as your blaze of truth lights the darkness in my heart…" Misato directly paraphrased former President Harling's 2013 Farewell Address to the Osean Federal Council as she began to slide her hands up his arms, inching towards an embrace ever haltingly, "My soul, and that of my father within you…" She was taking a big risk with that last, but it had to be done; it was how she felt, full stop. "Shall continue down the new path you have lit for the world… Razgriz One…" She stopped just in front of his face, her lips beseeching for him to accept repentance of any sins she may once have incurred against him.

Kaji… Blaze did so as he embraced and kissed her. Deeply. Nagase watched over her shoulder from the living room contentedly, gently patting her own jet-black medal case as she yet again surrendered her first love unto his true love. It hurt, for Kei Nagase was a woman after all; but it was equally right all the same, which was why she'd let him leave after confessing to him on their last mission together that bleak New Years' Eve in 2010. Back when Wardog Squadron had stopped at Heierlark earlier during the war, Nagase had learned what she hadn't already known about his breakup with Misato, Ritsuko having typically zero compunction about divulging the gory details.

And after that final mission, when Blaze had told her personally about his plans to work in unspecified capacities with Professor Fleisher at the University of Dinsmark, even to become a foster father to some Belkan noble family's heiress if that could be believed, Kei Nagase had realized how pointless competing with her dear old friend Misato would've been. Kaji wanted to help lead the past into the future himself, for his foundling's part at least if not his ex lover's if that still proved unattainable.

So upon regaining her freedom after the short stockade term the Razgriz pilots had been meted out as the minimal concession by President Harling to Osea's remaining hard-liners, Kei Nagase had instead turned to the attentions of Albert Genette, the reporter who'd become as infatuated with her as she'd been with Blaze. The result? A beautiful son who shared Nagase's taste in literature as much as his father's looks, and five years of domestic bliss with a man who'd truly earned his place as her second love.

"Man… I feel like I'm intruding just sitting here." Archer had been something of a wallflower during dinner, when he wasn't the butt of good-natured jokes. He now worked with Swordsman under the retired Captain Anderson from the late OFS Kestrel, serving aboard a GRDF research and intelligence vessel.

"Every knight has his lady, Archer; even if she refuses him on all but the day of battle itself." Swordsman reassured his old comrade meditatively. He passed his time as an insurance agent in Oured. "You'll understand soon; assuming all this hush-hush duty we pull doesn't ruin your nightlife, ha!" He couldn't resist a friendly jab at the younger pilot's taste in fashion, alas.

"Indeed. It's almost pathetic how you expect to get a girl with a service routine like that, hardly any shore leave and all." Major Ritsuko Akagi, a medical officer in the GRDF soon to be assigned under Commander Gendo Ikari as soon as his commission and unit assignment were in order, remarked at the redheaded pilot's romantic prospects.

"SHH! Honestly, people!" Nagase disciplined her friends carefully. Archer had been right; the peanut gallery had no right but to watch this time, if that. Watch as two souls once riven by misunderstanding reunited themselves in truth, and in hope for the world to come should their future efforts succeed…