I do not own the rights to Neon Genesis Evangelion, or any of the characters, equipment, or locations written in this fanfiction. The purpose of this fanfiction is merely for the non-profit enjoyment of other readers. If requested by Gainax, Hideki Anno, or other parties which represent aforementioned objects in this story, I will remove it promptly.
Chapter X:
Ritsuko glared at the pilot on her terminal display in the pribnow box of the test chamber. It was almost like having Shinji back... almost. The boy even chanted a mantra, just like the former Third Child. However, this mantra was different than "target in the center, pull the switch." No, it was far different.
"Empty, reload, kill!" he stated coldly. "Empty, reload, kill!" Akagi watched the screen, her eyes glued to the simulated barrel temperature of the standard palette rifle. Again and again, the copy of the Third Angel appeared, only to be shredded by the incessant volleys of rapid fire. The woman scowled, noting the boy's reliance on emptying an entire magazine into the target.
"Kensuke, ease up!" Misato barked, voicing the complaint she saw growing in her blonde friend's dull eyes. "You're going to melt the barrel!" She had never thought when the boy volunteered, that he wanted to start immediately. As it was, no one was sleeping too soundly, and finding Ritsuko still in her office just gave the Fifth Child an excuse.
Another enemy was ripped apart by the fire when the buzzer sounded from the terminal, a red icon flashing in synch to the irritating noise. "Damnnit, Ken!" Katsuragi yelled. "You've melted the barrel!" Turning to Akagi, she watched the doctor nod, her eyes rolling. "We're taking a break. I want to talk to you, immediately."
The disgruntled nerd glared at the woman as they stood on the catwalk next to the simulator, his damp glasses dangling from the collar of his black plugsuit."I don't care!" Aida snapped. "Just give me something to shoot!"
"You can't keep doing this," Misato sighed. "If you go out there like this, you'll break all your weaponry before you even make a scratch. The Angels we're facing now are far more versatile. They won't just let you shoot them." She took in a deep breath, closing her eyes. "You have to remember: short, controlled bursts!"
"I want something that will do more damage," he grumbled.
The major folded his arms. "No... Not until you master the palette rifle. That's how Shinji did it, that's how Asuka did it-"
"I hate to break it to you, Major," Kensuke shouted, "but you ran off all your other perfect candidates." He would have continued, but the stealth arm of the major reached out, delivering a firm strike across the face. The boy's head jerked back, his mind stunned.
The lavender haired woman's lips curled into a savage snarl. "You want to help? Is that why you came to me? Is that why we've been here for the last few god-awful hours of the night?" Misato turned her back to the Child, and grumbled. "If you want to help, you do it by the book. You can play movie-soldier with your toys at home. In the real world, we don't run around spraying lead all over the place for fun and games."
"I want them all dead," he muttered under his breath, just loud enough he would know Misato could hear.
"They're more likely to die if you take your time, sight the target's core, and focus on surviving rather than going down in a blaze of glory."
Aida grinned, and glared at the woman. "Maybe dying like that would be better than watching you kill everyone I care about-"
The hand reached out again, and again. Misato struck the boy continuously, finally having to be pried away by Ritsuko. "Misato!" she screamed. "We need our pilots alive!" Grabbing at the major's flight jacket, Akagi directed her towards the hatch at the end of the catwalk. "Pilot, take a break," she continued. "That's an order."
Aida clenched his fists, shutting his eyes tightly. The rage was building in him. He could feel it taking over, just like the last time, when that bully found himself in the ambulance, the paramedics holding him down while they applied the morphine. Kensuke glared back up to the gaping open hatch of Unit-01's entry plug, and screamed.
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"Hey, isn't that him?" a schoolgirl of Tokyo-2's Municipal Junior High asked her friend.
"Yeah," she replied. "He comes from that city."
"Just another dirty refugee," one of the boys walking past commented. "They say he was thrown out, marked by the government or something."
Shinji stumbling lifelessly into the classroom at Tokyo-2's junior high had caught the attention of a few people. The first who wanted to do something about it was a raven-haired girl named Yuki Watanabe , who took it upon herself to declare Shinji as her friend just a couple weeks before. She did not understand when they first met why he had retracted from her warm, Westerner handshake in English class, or why he looked haunted by her presence. These reactions of his, she had noticed, died slowly after a week. Still, she could not help but notice how he occasionally stared off into space, as though nothing in the world could reach him.
The one thing she did learn, however, was that the maroon knee length skirt, white sailor blouse, and matching maroon ribbon around the collar somehow upset the transfer student. When she asked, all he said was that red reminded him of someone.
The girl strolled up to Ikari's desk slowly. "Shinji-kun?" she asked quietly. The response was something the girl could never forget. The brown-haired boy simply stared at her, his blue eyes seeming to ask the question, "why"? "S-Shinji-kun?" the girl asked again.
Seeming to know her question before she even asked it, Ikari stared out the window to his left, beside the desk he had deliberately chosen. "Someone I knew was hospitalized yesterday," he explained.
The way Shinji was acting, it didn't take too much of a leap for her to realize it was a girl. "Is she okay?" Watanabe asked.
"No... no, she's not..." Shinji replied flatly.
"What happened?"
"It's compartmented," the Third Child explained.
"Compartmented?" Yuki squeaked. "What the hell does that mean?"
"It means classified, top secret, the wrong people die if they know, that's what it means!" Ikari snapped. Yuki shrank back visibly. Shinji had never yelled at anyone before, especially her. It took several seconds, almost an eternity in her perspective, but the boy seemed to regain his composure. "I'm... sorry. She's military, and they don't let anyone know who doesn't have to... not even...." Shinji stopped himself before he gave any more away. He had sworn on both paper and in front of his superiors he would not divulge anything related to his prior work.
"I-I don't understand," Yuki answered, shivering. "If she's military, at least her family would be told-"
"She works in Tokyo-3," Ikari replied calmly. Yuki suddenly understood. When it came to Tokyo-3, the subject was taboo. No one, civilian or otherwise discussed what they knew, and refused to add to the growing base of rumors. Shinji couldn't help but chuckle at the irony. Within the fortress city, all his classmates got away with spreading far more vital information than what the news reports covered in this older town. Anything that was disclosed here was swiftly reduced to a faint memory, thanks to the diligent work of local law enforcement, who knew asking too many questions would bring far too many interested parties in uniforms to their doorstep.
He could never grasp before the interest Kensuke nor Toji had about what he had done. Now, as a civilian, he wanted to know more desperately than Aida's hacking had permitted. Too bad he had left the others behind.
Yuki commandeered the desk directly to Shinji's right, and let her hand reach out to graze his. Ikari flinched, but did not retreat. The other girls had spread rumors about this girl, about her promiscuity. But in reality, Shinji simply knew she was picking up bad habits from the foreign language class. "It's odd," she once told him. "We describe exactly how we feel with over-stylized dialogue, but Americans get the same message across with a look, a touch, or a lack thereof."
Without a word, Watanabe's eyes lit up, and her face became determined. "Well, we'll just have to go see her family now, won't we?"
Shinji stared at the girl, and shook his head.
Yuki's scowl was instantaneous. "And why not?"
Reaching into his bookbag, Ikari slapped a smart card on the table. It was the newly established photo ID the government was phasing in, white with a grainy picture of the cardholder, a holographic outline of Honshu, and magnetic strip. Yuki recognized some of the insignia stamped along the bottom right sector of the card. Her father's photo ID, she knew, had similar stampings assigned when he was promoted at the defense contractor manufacturing plant just a few kilometers away. The one she did not recognize, however, was the red stamp of the Latin characters E and P.
"What's this?" she asked, pointing to the symbol.
"It means expatriated," Shinji recited. He hoped he didn't need to explain any more.
"...Oh," Yuki cringed, wishing she hadn't brought it up. Those who had this stamp, she had heard, had done something worthy of exile, but for political reasons, were under strict orders not to be removed from the country. A temporary restricted visa could do wonders for national security at far less cost. There were, of course, conspiracy theorists ranting as of late this impotent exile approach was solely used to ensure former high ranking officials could not be used by foreign agents to gain access to secure information. Watanabe, however, was not a politician, nor interested in espionage.
"So, you can't see her, then?"
"Tokyo-3 is off-limits," Shinji explained sadly.
"You can't write her?"
"Contact by expatriates with occupants of that city is prohibited," he repeated mechanically.
Watanabe paused, then grinned mischievously. "What about someone who's never lived there?"
Shinji froze. The one thing he had learned about Yuki over the last couple of weeks is that she was always serious. "Don't even think about it," he started.
"Too late," she grinned. "Already thinking about it."
"Two friends of mine still live there," he argued. "Only one of them can still walk, and both have been lucky so far."
Yuki paused, but did not stop. "You're just trying to scare me, aren't you?"
"You go there, and you're likely to die," Shinji answered. "I barely escaped being nuked my first day in the city." His eyes locked on the girl with a guilt-ridden anguish. "Going there is just stupid."
"You're just saying that to convince yourself," another voice cut in. Shinji glanced up, and noticed Hiroshi Kato, another one of his friends. Well, that was stretching things. Hiroshi was one of those who was too emotionally cold to have friends. Rather, he had associates. "You stayed in that city for a reason, and the odds as of late aren't that grim."
"Yeah," Shinji answered, "because everyone's fleeing."
"They have shelters, you know!"
"Funny thing about that," Shinji replied. "I saw the occupants of a shelter crushed by-" He stopped, not wanting to finish the sentence and reveal sensitive information. Turning his head back out to the window, his lips were sealed.
"Fine," Hiroshi shrugged. "We'll just have to talk to Ms. Ibuki about this."
Shinji turned rapidly, but found the two had already left. While he didn't know Yuki and Hiroshi that well, he knew their type. They were Tokyo-2 natives. They didn't believe the propaganda of the war, nor the obviously fixed news coverage. Everything about that city, they detested, and lumped everything associated with Tokyo-3 as one big lie.
It wasn't that difficult to understand, of course. The former citizens of Tokyo-3 were often the brightest and best in their fields. With the defense contractor industry booming in Tokyo-2, refugees were getting the high paying jobs, while the locals were denied. It was doubly insulting for those who first wished to move out of the city to Tokyo-3's higher paying opportunities in a fully modern city, not a collection of recycled buildings assembled on the government's shoe-string budget shortly after the Second Impact. They were denied once, and denied again.
They would talk to Maya, and very likely find her answers unsatisfactory. There was no doubt in Shinji's mind as he saw the two in the courtyard below, already walking down the sidewalk to the residential sector. He glanced down at his cellphone, but knew Ibuki was busy at work.
Let them find their answers, he thought. Shinji understood, as one from Tokyo-3, they were already dead.
End of Chapter X
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