The Shinji Ikari One Shots
Life Finds A Way
"The first one was a fluke. He wasn't in control and we were lucky Eva happened to do what we wanted."
"We can't trust this to chance again. If he cannot achieve an acceptable level of control, terminate unit one."
65 million years ago, an asteroid impact destroyed three quarters of all life on earth. The destruction of the non-avian dinosaurs allowed an evolutionary radiance that gave rise to the age of mammals.
"We have others Sir, should we try to pair him with a different subject?"
"Doctor, unit one consists of both the human and the subject. They are already linked. Even if he is unable to control her, they cannot simply be allowed to live."
This was our best theory anyway and we had little reason to doubt it…
"I…"
"Is there a problem Dr. Akagi?"
Until it happened again.
"No… no commander, no problem."
"I expect your report at the end of the month."
We now call the event, of which the Chixilub impact was only part, the First Impact. It destroyed the saurian line of intelligence and made way for a new form of life within the black seed. So mammalian life flourished and eventually gave rise to us, humanity. We are alien invaders on the world we thought our own.
On September 15, 2000, Second Impact occurred. Something resembling the detonation of a thermonuclear weapon happened near the South Pole, instantly melting the Antarctic ice cap. Three quarters of humanity died in the resulting chaos.
Once the dust settled, we all wanted to know why, and a ship was dispatched to investigate. They found nothing, because they were destroyed. As was the one after that and the one after that. The fourth expedition, led by Dr. Katsuragi of the newly establish UN directorate GEHIRN, survived long enough to show us why the others had failed. New and terrible life had taken the Antarctic continent for its own. Intelligent and shockingly dangerous, there was only a single survivor from the fourth expedition. The data revealed gigantic monsters that destroyed anything which approached the continent, their territory.
Humanity realized it had a problem, an intelligent threat to its existence. To combat the monsters we built monsters of our own. Meldings of flesh and machine in the shape of ancient terrors, the therapod superpredators like Tyrannosaurus Rex and Allosaurus. The machines came from the vast military industrial complex, the flesh came ready made from INGen, the infamous biotech company responsible for reviving dinosaurs in the vain conceit to build a theme park. To pilot our monsters, we genetically modified children in the womb so their minds could interface with our creations.
However, even engineered this way, the human mind could not successfully control our new weapons. In any sane situation we would have terminated the project and tried something new. But we didn't have the time or resources to try again. We had to make this work. So we went further down the rabbit hole…
BZZT IKARI SHINJI, PLEASE REPORT TO THE ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICE IMMEDIETLY BZZT
Shinji sighed and stood up from his desk to gather his things. Everyone was staring at him, just like they always did when this happened. Instead of just telling him when to show up or scheduling a day off school or something, this happened. They called him out of class with no warning and whisked him off. He supposed most kids would be totally fine with that, but now everyone just looked at him weird.
The principle just told him to go meet a car out front. As he walked out the door, bag over his shoulder, he was assaulted by a screeching call and heard the padding of clawed feet on turf.
Another INGen "asset" was modified for the solution. Therapods, just like the bio-mechanical fighting machines, modified to increase their already substantial intelligence and other features, engineered to act as a bridge between the human pilot brain and the dinosaur machine brain.
"WaaAaa!"
"Cero! Heel!"
Of course, a slightly smaller specimen was chosen to start…
Shinji looked, but did not flinch as the turkey-sized velociraptor with the electric blue feathers with white streaks running through them, came skidding to a halt on the concrete sidewalk, its huge claws struggling for purchase. It flapped its feathered arms a few times to steady itself then looked up at Shinji, cocking its head.
Shinji was used to the little beast and her antics. He thought she enjoyed tackling him. He had no fear of being mauled, she apparently knew eating people was not worth the trouble. Stealing his lunch was still well within whatever morality she had though.
"Cero, I told you to heel."
Shinji looked to see his… colleague, blue hair to match her partner and bright red eyes. The raptor cocked its head to the other side, chirped at Shinji, then padded off to her mistress's side.
"Hi, Ayanami."
"You are going."
"Yeah, they uh, called me in. No reason or notice, as usual."
"I was not called, nor was an alarm sounded. That indicates you have been called in to attempt to sync with your partner again."
"Yeah, I, uh, figured."
"I wish you success this time."
"Yeah, thanks."
Shinji walked out to the black car. A section two man opened the door and sat down next to him without a word. Nobody spoke the whole way to the geofront elevator or on the long trip down. They didn't speak as they led him by the arm through labyrinthine corridors and when they left him in front of Misato, his guardian, 's office, they didn't even bother to knock.
Shinji waited a moment and took a deep breath before going to knock. His knuckle had barely touched the door before it slid open to reveal darkness and slim but strong arms yanked him clean off the ground inside.
"Ow! Hey, whats going on?!"
"Shinji, sssh, its me."
"Misato? What the hell? Why are the lights off?"
"I'll tell ya in a sec, where is your phone?" She said and starting searching his pockets.
"Hey! HEY, THAT IS NOT MY PHONE!"
"Well just tell me where it is!"
"Its in my bag okay!"
Misato let go of him and used a flashlight to search his bag, then took the battery out of his phone once she found it.
"Misato, whats going on?"
The busty captain grabbed him by the shoulders and squeezed. He could see an intensity in her face in the reflected throw of the flashlight she had dropped once she found his phone. He had not seen her this serious since the first angel attack some weeks before.
"Shinji, if anybody found out I told you what I am about to tell you, I'd be put in front of a firing squad… or worse, definitely worse things could happen here. Maybe they'd throw me to the compies or something…"
"Uh, Misato…"
"What, oh right… Look, Shinji, what happened with the first angel, we know you weren't really in control, it was all the bridge subject. But you haven't been able to sync with her since and the commander is getting impatient."
"Dad? What do you mean?"
"Shinji, if you can't sync with her by the end of the month, he is going to terminate unit one as a project."
"L-like take apart the machine?"
"No, they can part out the mech. I mean the living components."
"They're going to kill her? Does that mean I can… you know, go?"
"No, Shinji, both living components. You and her."
"Da… I… that's crazy!"
"Shinji, I am risking my life telling you this, I wouldn't do that if I wasn't sure as fuck it was for real."
"Dad… dad is going to kill me?"
"Only if you can't sync with her."
"Misato, she tried to eat me!"
"Do you think I don't know that!" Misato barked, stunning Shinji. "Shinji, it is do or die time, okay? I cannot do anything to stop this. You need to figure out some way to activate your link. We know its there, you just have to get something through, just show you can communicate with her."
She hugged the boy tightly to her chest and squeezed some more. "I know you can do this."
She released him and Shinji said nothing as she gave him the flashlight and a manilla folder.
"You aren't suppose to have this, but I thought it might help. Its everything about her. Gene engineering, conception, hatching, everything. Get a quick read in, you are already going to be late for the test, but I can make up a story."
Twenty minutes later he was being lowered from a gantry above the vast forest of the geofront in an armored pod. The whole surface had been dedicated to a preserve area for the dinosaurs and their prey animals. A few packs of pigs and some herbivores produced by INGen to provide a balanced diet and give the smarter predators, like the raptors which formed the basis of NERV's bridge program, a challenge.
Shinji looked down through the transparent bottom of the pod at the dark paddock he was being dropped towards by a crane. He gulped nervously as he considered it was the same crane used to lower in food.
The first experiment, in which a child was successfully paired with a minimally enhanced velociraptor, was so successful that for the second specimen the team went a little overboard.
Shinji reviewed the information he had read minutes before in his head. She had to be kept in a specially built area with 30 foot concrete walls because she did not "play well with others".
The first specimen had only been modified enough to permit it to connect. It was otherwise a perfectly standard member of its species, not even the larger ones without feathers that INGen kept in its parks. As such all it could facilitate was movement, it lacked the brain power to comprehend weapons and auxiliary systems.. Bolstered by this success, research from the scrapped Indominus Rex project had been applied to an exceptional Utahraptor sample the gene engineers had only recently acquired. The result was more than they could ever have hoped for.
Shinji made a decision as the pod came to a stop just below the tree tops. For all he knew this could be his once chance. If he didn't sync up with this beast now, he might as well be putting the gun in his own mouth.
He looked down and saw movement in the brush, but he could not spot her. He just watched the signs of her as he racked his brain for something, ANYTHING, that he could use to connect with her.
She had been raised, alone, in a cage, for her whole, short life. Even he knew the raptors were pack hunters, they were like humans, social animals. He suddenly felt bad for her. She was alone, always had been, with no connections or loved ones. She had been hatched in a lab, she didn't even have a mother…
Below, on the bridge of central dogma, the crew watched dozens of cameras in the pod and across the paddock.
"Hey what is he doing?"
"Is he trying to open the…"
"SHINJI, NO!"
The jump was far, but nothing too dangerous. Shinji Ikari had taken enough falls in his life to know how to land with bent legs and roll through the impact. Falling was not the danger on his mind. He felt the little tremors as she approached. He stood up with his eyes closed and his hands up, palms out. Shinji slowly opened his eyes just in time to watch her feathers shift from dusky green of the surrounding plants to their natural iridescent purple. Even with her head down at the level of her shoulders she towered over him.
"H-hey girl, th-th-thought we could talk…"
The enormous raptor stepped forward, it's hackle feathers raised. Shinji could feel her bright green eyes boreing into his soul.
"N-now, you probably want to eat me and I get it, I do. I mean I know how you feel. When you've been alone your whole life, you just want everyone to go away and I get that!" Shinji said, careful not to move too suddenly. He knew she couldn't understand his words, but he hoped that somehow his emotions were coming through the link.
For her part, the raptor hadn't eaten him yet, so he supposed that was a good sign. She was tapping one of her sickle like claws on the ground though, maybe a nervous habit?
"I… I just want you to know that, if we… if we can do this, if we can sync, if you just let me in… you don't have to be alone anymore."
If she had not already sprinted out to rally a containment team, Misato Katsuragi would have been privy to a truly colorful palette of obscenity from her friend Ritsuko Akagi as she watched the data coming. Instead, only the commander, vice commander, and lieutenants stared at her in total shock.
"Doctor Akagi, that language is hardly appropriate for this situation… or any situation for that matter!" Vice commander Fuyutsuki railed. "What has you so wound up?"
"He did it! He fucking did it! That little limp dick milquetoast pussy actually did it!"
Captain Katsuragi blew the paddock door with a fully armed team ready to rescue her young ward. Instead she found the feathered beast sitting like a mother hen with her legs tucked beneath her and one feathered arm over Shinji's shoulder, dropping a piece of meat in his lap. She started to stand when she took notice of the adult humans, until Shinji touched her side.
"Hey, its okay, they thought I was in trouble, that's all. Its okay, really girl, its okay." He said, stroking her side. The raptor trilled and settled back in beside him.
"Uh, Shinji… what happened?"
Shinji shrugged and leaned against his new companion. "I dunno, I just… I think that she has been alone this whole time, and I guess I can empathize. So I told her I knew how she felt and that if she let me in, then she wouldn't have to be alone anymore. Hey, okay okay!"
The raptor had picked up the piece of meat again and was poking her nose at his face quite roughly. Shinji grabbed the meat from her and she let go, still watching him.
"I uh, think she thinks I'm kind of skinny." He said then sunk his teeth into the pork flesh. With great effort he managed to tear a piece off . "There, see, ya happy?"
The raptor trilled, satisfied, and went back to watching the adults.
"Anyway, I'm sorry I scared you, but I just had to make it work, you know?" Shinji said and winked at Misato. "it all worked out though, right?"
Misato was meeting with Dr. Akagi and the commanders. Shinji was still down in the paddock with his new friend, "Yui" as he decided to call her.
"The link is solid and they are maintaining a good activity level, right around 30% resting sync. That is as good as the first and second and they have had years of practice and training. I do suspect it will drop a little once they are out of each other's presence, but now that its open, that's half the battle. I'd call it a total success, despite the rather huge breach of protocol."
"Indeed." Gendo Ikari said from behind steepled hands. "I do wonder what might have prompted such… suicidal behavior." He said, looking at Misato over the rim of his glasses. The glare chilled her to the bone.
"Okay Shinji, time to head home!" The captain called from the paddock door. She had actually just stood and watched as the boy and his dinosaur had run and played. From the INGen literature she had read, it looked like she was trying to teach him how to hunt.
As soon as she spoke the raptor skid to a stop, looked right at her and screeched loudly, enough to make her go for her pistol.
"Yui, no! Misato is a friend, she is okay. She isn't going to hurt me… or you." Shinji said, quickly putting a hand on her side. The raptor looked to him, then back to Misato, then to him again before trilling and relaxing a bit.
The angel Shamshel slashed through buildings, chasing the light and noise of maneuvering thrusters. It missed, but not by much.
"Shinji, line up a shot with the charged particle cannon!"
"Dammit, there's no time! Yui, quick!"
The thrusters that covered the evangelion's powerful hindquarters lit up and lifted the machine up just enough for it to skim the ground, strafing along one of the city's broadest avenues and still carving a huge crevice into several buildings with the tip of its tail.
"Its not going to give us time to get a firing solution, much less drop the locks and get the vents open."
Shinji felt a deep rumbling through the LCL as his companion made herself known, even though she was in a completely separate cockpit the link transmitted her thoughts and feelings.
"Girl, if we go in like that this time its going to hurt, bad… yeah, it is the only way…."
The bridge crew watched in shock and horror as the violet armored evangelion broke cover and charged, juking this way and that to avoid the worst of the angel's attack but still collecting battle scars at an alarming rate.
To match their overpowered dinosaur creation, INGen made a giant cyborg dinosaur to match. Designed from the same Indominus Rex data that was used in the creation of its smaller counterpart, it was based on the gigantic tyrannosaurs like rex and giganotosaurus, but it had powerful arms that gave it a body plan more like the large raptor. It even had metallic feathers that were actuated to act as stabilizers. This was also the first unit to mount guns and missiles, as well as the fearsome charged particle cannon, all of which were failing it in this encounter.
Unit one fired all of its thrusters at once and leapt high into the air. The angel tried to grab the monster, or deflect it, but its huge weight brought it straight down on the wormlike angel, the crackling energy whips pinned beneath the fearsome claws of the forelimbs.
"The raptor restraint hunting technique." Dr. Akagi observed as the eva brought the sickle claws of its hindlimbs to bear and tore into the body of the angel. "It was first confirmed on Isla Nublar, during the period leading up to the first incident in '93. They pin the prey to the ground then stomp the living shit out of them with those claws until they stop moving enough."
"Enough for what?" Captain Katsuragi asked, a little stunned at the ferocity as the evangelion lifted its head to the sky and let out an ear splitting roar.
"To start eating, whether its dead or not."
As if on cue, the evangelion stabbed its sickle claws into the "shoulders" of the angel, held back the cobra like hood with its forelimbs, and grabbed the core in its mouth. A few seconds of sickening crunching and tearing later and the red jewel was torn clean and crushed in a single motion.
"Jesus…. Well another one down, too bad Shinji lost control of her again." Misato said, turning away from the screens as the dinosaur shaped machine continued feasting.
"Huh? Shinji hasn't lost control."
"What?"
"That's all him."
Misato looked back and watched as the eva tore one of the tentacle limbs from the body and threw it aside, then bit into the fleshy hood and tore a chunk loose.
"Shinji, doing that? No way, he's so…"
"The link goes both ways. Yui is damn smart, we have to invent tests to measure her at this point, but with the link firmly established, Shinji makes her smarter. Conversely, Shinji has a direct line into her instincts, all that genetic knowledge in her mind. Millions of years of evolution to create the ultimate killing machine, plus some generous additions from INGen, and Shinji has all of it."
The angel wrent to naught but steaming chunks of flesh strewn about the countryside, the evangelion turned to face the city. She planted her feet, flattening entire hills beneath her claws and let out a roar to the sky that shattered windows, burst ear drums, and made even the fish dive deeper to get away.
"When they are like this, with the full bridge active and them in place of the eva's CNS, they are a single being. That is the eva, that is Yui, but its Shinji too."
Another roar rumbled through the city.
"Its like he is declaring territory."
"Pretty much. He, they, not even sure which is more accurate, just killed the next strongest thing around. After the first one, this pretty much has to cement that this is eva unit one's territory."
Deep within the evangelion, Shinji gripped the control yokes with white knuckles, his eyes bloodshot and his lips pulled back as he screamed his challenge to any who would violate his range. The coppery blood taste of the LCL only fueled his need for prey and battle.
I suppose I should introduce myself at this point. My name is Shinji, my name is Yui, and my name too is Indominus.
This is my territory, where only I may hunt and none may deny me. This city, these mountains, this country, NO, this world is MINE. Everyone who thinks otherwise just doesn't know it yet.
So yeah, I saw Jurassic World with the older kiddo and it got me thinking. I saw it like, 31 hours before I published this, so fast turnaround from idea to fruition, which is what I was trying for.
For me, this movie was the first one to bring back that sense of wonder I had when I was 5 and watched Jurassic Park for the first time. My elder boy LOVES dinosaurs, even as he approaches the teen years of disinterest, and it made me smile to watch him tell his mother all about how cool it was when we got home. I think that by the time the next one comes out, he will probably be at the point where he wants nothing to do with me, but oh well. This was fun.