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Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives. -Samuel Johnson
Last Child of Krypton
Chapter 10- The Invasion
1996
Gendo Ikari stood as the gloved steward opened the massive oaken door to the study where his new employer waited. He straightened himself reflexively, tugging at his ill-fitting suit coat. Yui had insisted he dress properly for this, and when Yui Ikari insisted, Gendo Rokobungi obeyed. He walked into the vast room, momentarily overawed by what he saw. The walls to either side were lined floor to ceiling with books, many of them behind protective glass panels, extremely old. The centerpiece was a display of scrolls behind tinted glass, lit by subdued, neutral lighting, carefully climate controlled. Though he could not discern its meaning, Gendo recognized ancient Hebrew when he saw it.
His new employer waited in a wheel chair at the end of the study, seated in front of a floor-to-ceiling window etched with the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, marked out upside down. With one ashen, wrinkled claw he tapped an oversize tarot card on the desk. He'd chosen the Crowley deck over the standard Whaite version, no doubt as deliberate a gesture as the choice of card in his hand, the Fool.
"You wanted to see me, mister… Keel?"
There was a whirr of servos as the man stirred, regarding his young visitor through a crude video system, the first of many that would be installed in his skull, that had replaced his failing eyes. It painted the world around him in an inferior profusion of muted hues, like a bad watercolor, but it was superior to being blind. A thin smile crept across his dry, ragged lips as he regarded the tall, thin man in his study. Even with his muted vision he could see the drive in those eyes, the need to overcome some secret pain. He would do nicely.
"Tell me," Keel boomed, his voice enhanced by the speakers system in his chair, "what do you know of gods?"
His visitor snorted.
Keel's smile thinned, his lips pressing together.
"Let me tell you a story, young Ikari. A story about a war in heaven."
"A bedtime story?" Gendo smirked.
Keel ignored his snide remark. "There was a war in heaven, and the dark side won."
1999
"Isn't it amazing, dear?"
Gendo didn't give a damn about the thirteen foot long, gleaming metal rocket seated on the long work bench in front of him. He was ignoring proof, definite proof of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, not the shambling incomprehensibility of that thing in Antarctica, in favor of Yui Ikari's smile. Yui Ikari, the fire from heaven. His wife.
He strode to the rocket, letting his hand fall on the cold metal surface. It was somehow soft and hard at the same time, the texture utterly unfamiliar, like no metal he'd ever touched before. It was profoundly alien. Despite the familiarity of the design –it was just a rocket, unadorned, with a thruster at one end, a gentle taper at the other, and three stabilizing fins- the geometry of it, the proportions, were all vaguely wrong. Not frightening, not unsettling, just unmistakably different. If Yui was so enflamed by this machine, he could be too. He took a deep breath of the cool air and found his hand wandering to her hip, where her hand came to rest on it.
"We should try again," he whispered in her ear, savoring the sweet scent of her skin. She'd been working all day, her perfume long gone stale, her deodorant having long since given up the ghost. The intoxicating musk of her labors in the lab thrilled him.
"Tonight," she smiled, touching her forehead to his. "My calendar says I'll be ready."
"You never cared about the calendar before," he smirked.
"Well," she smiled naughtily, "there's science, and there's art."
"Oh yes," he said, taking his leave.
He closed the door behind him and locked her in. They couldn't be too careful with a discovery like this. As if the rocket knew, he was out of earshot when a tiny voice spoke to his wife.
"My name is Jor-El. I send this message from a world called Krypton…"
2001
He waited for his wife and his old professor under the tree where they'd spend so much time together, just talking and musing about the future, about the wonder the incredible discoveries held. In his hand he held a journal, one of two things recovered from the escape pod. The other was the daughter of the man who wrote it, who now sat in a padded cell, staring at nothing, saying less. His fingers instinctively drummed on the cover and he flipped through it again.
Everything was there. The contact experiment, the design, the Lance, the control pylons, all of it. The last few pages became increasingly incoherent, the handwriting more spidery and more wild. The final pages were a lengthy, scrawled letter to the dead man's wife, words of love she would never see. She was dead, too, dead under the sea somewhere. The final page was an equation that trailed off half-finished into a massive, childish scrawl that covered half the last page.
Fuyutsuki had arrived, steps heavy with unwitting destiny.
2006
"You don't have to do this," Fuyutsuki pleaded as Yui settled the helmet on her head.
She somewhat sheepishly strode past him the Contact Suit, which was only a hair's breath away from being skin tight. Gendo felt a pang of desire, absurdly, as he watched her sashay up the ladder beside the nude head of the monstrous thing in the cage below. She was still in remarkable shape. Gendo ignored Fuyutsuki as the old man made some apology about being unable to watch, ducking out of the room with a cigar box tucked under his arm, no doubt a parting gift from Yui. He'd never known the old man to smoke.
"Come, Shinji," he said unsmiling to the boy. They both watched Yui wave.
"We're ready," Naoko Akagi announced, a look of smug satisfaction on her face. The old hag was enjoying this.
"Do it," Gendo said, and more quietly, "it should be me."
He stared unblinking through the screams into the great green eyes of the thing beneath him and heard its vile whisper.
(Give in)
2016
(Give in.)
Gendo awoke with a start, having fallen asleep at his desk. Mortified, he straightened himself, arranged his hair with one gloved hand, and settled into his usual pose after pressing the button admit Akagi into his office.
"Sir," she said, much more frantically than usual, "We need you on the bridge. There's been an emergency."
"What emergency?" he said calmly.
"There's an Angel in Dogma. Some sort of growth in the Pribnow Box."
"Have you sounded the alarm?"
"…no."
"Good. Is there a risk of infecting the Evangelions?"
"Possibly, it appears to be some sort of nanite collective."
"Launch them."
"The pilots…"
He sighed, an uncharacteristic expression of his exasperation. Akagi froze.
"Well?"
"They're in the lake, sir. We had to eject them from the test bodies."
"All of them?"
"…yes."
He stood and made sure his uniform was sloppy in just the calculated fashion he preferred, to show his contempt for symbols of authority.
"Launch them unmanned. Unit-01 is priority."
"Yes, sir," she turned on her heels and walked out, speeding up as she neared the door.
Gendo followed her, at a more sedate pace, not realizing he'd clasped his hands at the small of his back.
SSSSS
"We have to what?" Asuka demanded, her angry voice rendered tinny by the tiny speakers in the Pribnow Box control room.
Misato huffed and spun in her office chair, hugging the back. "I told you she wasn't going to like this."
"Also water is wet and the sky is blue," Ritsuko said testily, ignoring the girl's protest. "Shut up and strip," she said, thumbing the button for her microphone.
"I don't see why we have to be naked! Are you going to sell video of this?"
"For the last time," Ritsuko said, her voice rising, "We've cleared the control room of all male personnel and the security cameras are all shut off. You'll have complete privacy."
"Except I have to hang around bare-assed with these two weirdoes," Asuka snapped.
Misato sighed, and wheeled her chair over to the microphone. "Asuka, as your commanding officer, I am ordering you to drop trou and report to the decontamination shower. If you don't, I'm going to taze you, have Rei and Mari drag you in there, and bring Kensuke in to film and sell it on the Internet as 'Pilots Gone Wild'."
There was silence for a moment. "I hate you."
"I'll make sure Shinji sees it, too."
Maya giggled. Ritsuko rolled her eyes.
"Mari just towel snapped me!" Asuka screamed, again straining the speakers.
Ritsuko turned the speakers off. "I bet Shinji wishes he was a pilot today," she smirked.
Misato stifled a snorting laugh. "He probably does."
"What do you have him doing, anyway? He's usually in here with us."
"He's doing my laundry," Misato smirked, and spun in her chair again.
SSSSS
There was something actually quite soothing about watching the load of underwear in the industrial sized washer before him loop around and around. Shinji let out a contented sigh and leaned back in the plastic chair, settling in to perhaps drift off to sleep. He almost didn't hear the chiming as the Laundromat door opened and admitted Toji and Kensuke, who had been passing by. Of course he did hear them, and groaned softly to himself as they approached.
"Whatcha doin'?" Toji said over his popsicle.
"Laundry," Shinji lifted his head up and shrugged.
"Yours?"
"Misato's," Shinji said, and winced immediately. Suddenly Kensuke was seated next to him.
"Can I touch it?"
Shinji looked at him for the better part of a minute. "No. No you cannot touch it."
"Dude," Toji said, "that's weird, like creepy weird, not normal Kensuke weird. Besides, you're, like, dating Mari. You're lucky an upperclassman hasn't murdered you yet."
"No woman can resist my charms," Kensuke shrugged, sliding into a seat beside Shinji to watch the laundry revolve. His heard started to gently trace the circling of the wash.
"You're like my albatross," Toji said, staring at the stained popsicle stick in his hand.
He looked up when he realized Shinji and Kensuke were both staring at him in surprise.
"What? I read a poem."
Shinji perked up. "Did you hear that?"
SSSSS
Misato was running hurriedly towards the bridge when Shinji caught up to her. She ignored him, instead barking orders into her phone. He followed just behind her, trying his best to figure out what was going on. Superman couldn't just stride into NERV headquarters and start punching around the Angel, whatever (or wherever) it was, but Shinji Ikari could walk right in. He followed Misato onto the bridge and credited himself. He almost didn't flinch when he spotted his father seated high above, regarding the scene dispassionately over his hands.
Pointedly not looking at Gendo, Shinji fell in beside Misato, carrying up a cup of coffee. He'd discovered that a cup of coffee in his hand was better than a cloaking device when it came to going unnoticed at NERV, second only to a random manila folder full of innocuous forms. Everyone sort of assumed he was doing something for Misato and let him pass, even here.
"I want him off the bridge," his father announced. Shinji froze.
"Now."
He sighed, handed Misato the coffee and stalked outside, hearing the door his and lock behind him. He was starting to feel a bit useless, at least until Ritsuko Akai rushed past him, Maya Ibuki in tow, holding a petri dish at arm's length, her hand wrapped in a huge glove like an oven mitt. Shinji fell in behind them, and followed the scientists into Ritsuko's lab.
"Shinji?" Maya said, noticing him at last when they entered the lab.
Ritsuko stopped him at the door.
"Not now, Shinji. We can talk later."
He sighed as she closed the door behind her. He stood there doing his best to look dejected, wondering how long he could get away with apparently standing in front of the laboratory staring at the door. He focused his vision on the door itself, and when it faded away, becoming transparent, scanned the room until he found the petri dish. He found with some practice, he could zoom in.
"Is this the Angel?" Maya said in hushed tones, staring at the dish.
"Part of it," Akagi said, "we have to figure out how to destroy it before it contacts the MAGI or borrows into Dogma."
Shinji focused more intently on the luminous blue fungous, focusing until he could almost see the cell walls. It was then that something very odd happened. The blue sludge foamed, expanded, and shattered the petri dish in a rapid expansion of gray crystals that settled like dust on the surface of Doctor Akagi's desk.
"What the hell?"
"What is it?"
Akagi took a sample of it with a pipette and dropped it into a microscope slide.
Her eyes widened as she adjusted the device. "It's dead. It just… died. That doesn't make any sense."
Shinji's eyes widened. Of course.
SSSSS
"Captain, you'd better see this," Hyuga announced, tapping at his keyboard. The view on the main screen switched to a security feed outside the Pribnow Box, where two uniformed Section Two agents were confronting Superman. One of them brandished a nightstick.
"You're kidding, right?" Superman said.
He turned to the camera. "I know you can hear me. I can stop this thing. Let me in."
Misato turned the commander, who did not deign to meet her gaze. She stared at him for a moment before turning to the screen and picking up one of the microphones.
"We can't let you in. You aren't authorized to be here. I have to ask you to leave."
On screen, he shrugged. "The doors are opening either way. I can stop the creature."
"We have a security leak," Gendo announced coldly. "This will be dealt with. Open the doors."
"Commander?"
"We cannot allow him to break them down. He will prevent us from extracting the atmosphere. Open the doors."
Misato nodded, and at a signal from the bridge, the sealed emergency door to the Pribnow Box opened, and the blue-and-red clad figure on the screen walked inside.
"Close the doors," the Commander said, and they slid shut smoothly at his command.
SSSSS
Two things happened that made it occur to Shinji that this might, in fact, be a bad idea. For one, he could feel the air being sucked out of the room. On top of that, a giant lumbering mass of Evangelion parts and blue fungus was lurching towards him, dragging itself along the concrete floor of the Pribnow Box. He took a deep breath, drawing up the last of the air, and proceeded.
The thing screamed when he looked at it. It was a low, angry sound, more like a chorus of voices than one singular sound. The entire mass pushed away from him, trying to draw up into a crack in the wall fifty feet over his head. Gray crystals, like snowflakes, fell around him, and he lifted off, letting his legs hang limp behind him as he pushed it back. As he bored a channel of gray away from the creature's body, he spotted the core, a tiny, half-formed thing stuck in the cracked wall. He shoved his hand into it, pulled the core out, and crushed it in his fingers. The thing shuddered, lacking the air now to cry out, and slid apart, releasing the naked, slimy forms of the Evangelion Test Bodies, armless torsos that reminded him unsettlingly of fish or dead whales. He settled back down on the floor.
The vacuum was unpleasant, but not intolerable. It made his eyes water. He tapped on the door, and of course nothing happened. He hit it a bit harder, his fist marring the steel. He shrugged and focused on the left side.
SSSSS
The camera swayed slightly as there was a rush of air into the Pribnow Box. A spot of heat had appeared, then began to glow, first red hot, then white hot. Then, it softened and melted, and Superman stepped through the steaming opening, letting out a long breath as the air rushing around him fluttered his breath.
"I can breathe in space," he said, then shook his head, as if forgetting he was on camera. He looked into it and saluted, then just disappeared. He vanished, the space he occupied on moment empty the next, stepping between the frames of the video that recorded him.
"I want the base on lockdown," Gendo announced. "No one enters; no one leaves until I give the command. Is that understood?"
"Yes, sir," Misato said. "What about the pilots?"
"Dispatch the recovery teams."
SSSSS
Shinji chopped happily away at the tuna, sighing in relief. It was almost pleasant to defeat an Angel without being pounded into the pavement, sucked underwater, blasted with a cutting beam or blown up. He tossed Pen-Pen a bit of fish and then took a bite himself, savoring the flavor.
"Hey idiot," Asuka said amiably, dropping a CD on the counter beside him, "I found this the bathroom. Is it yours?"
He picked up the disk, struggling not to stare at her as she brushed out her hair, struggling a bit with a tangle.
"Stupid LCL," she muttered, walking out of the kitchen. "Is it yours or not?"
"I don't have a CD player," he shrugged. "I'll ask Misato."
He flipped the disk over, looking at the shiny side where the tracks were etched. Something bothered him about it. He lifted it closer to his face, and froze, his eyes widening.
There was no data etched on this CD. Instead, written across the surface in letters too tiny for any human to see, was a simple, repeating message, like a mantra.
DON'T PUSH ME, "SUPERMAN"
The disk cracked between his fingers.