Disclaimer: Neon Genesis Evangelion is the creation of Anno and Gainax. I don't own it, make no claims to it, and am making no profit from this fan fiction. No infringement of copyright is intended. In other words, please don't sue.

Disclaimer: I do not own DC comics or anything associated with it, and am making no profit off this fan fiction. No infringement of copyright is intended. In other words, please don't sue.


Chapter Eleven: Introspection

It was a perfectly ordinary morning in the life of Vice Commander Fuyutski.

He had gotten up at the heinously early hour that his duties at NERV required, as usual. He had eaten a quick, cold breakfast, and then gotten himself showered and dressed, also as per usual. Twenty minutes later, he'd boarded a train to the Geofront—empty but for himself at that ungodly hour—and had settled down to read his morning paper.

Hmm, looks like the city council's getting ornery again, he thought as he skimmed through the local news section. I bet Ikari will be sending me down there to talk to them. Again.

He let out a weary sigh at the thought of having to meet with that group of pompous politicians once more. Ikari always stuck him with the worst jobs.

A moment later, the train entered a tunnel, and Fuyutski folded up his paper and put it on his lap, waiting for the moment when he would emerge inside the Geofront.

Most people, though initially awestruck by the underground colony that GEHIHN had created, quickly came to view the sight as mundane.

Not Kozo Fuyutski. Perhaps it was only because he was privy to all the ugliness that SEELE and NERV had spawned, but he never got tired of looking at one of the few beautiful things they had wrought.

Unfortunately for him, the train suddenly jerked to a halt. Fuyutski felt a twinge of unease as he steadied himself from the unexpected jolt. A moment later, the lights went out in the cabin, and that twinge grew into a sinking feeling.

Uh-oh, he thought.

That sinking feeling changed into one of resignation when he heard the door to the train being forcefully pried open. A moment later, several beams of white light shot through the darkness. The Vice Commander winced against the glare, but he was still able to see the men holding the high-powered lights.

Oh, really, now that's just overkill, he thought, taking in the sight of half a dozen men in full commando gear, each armed with a wicked looking rifle.

"So, I suppose that Keel decided to do something, then?" Fuyutski said, trying to sound sardonic rather than afraid.

He supposed it was only to be expected. Gendo could only keep secrets from Keel for so long before SEELE did something in retaliation.

Unfortunately, they apparently still viewed abducting Gendo as going too far. So, once again, he was finding himself stuck with the stink job.

The lead commando ignored his question entirely. "Kozo Fuyutski, you will come with us," he ordered in no uncertain terms.

"Very well," he said.

There was no need for him to get shot, after all.

And who knows, maybe I might even get out of this at some point, he thought hopefully. Hell, maybe I'll even get out alive.

One of the soldiers grabbed him by the arm and none-too-gently pulled him to his feet. A moment later, he was being marched out of the train car.

Of course, I'm not sure just who would come to save me…


"Oh man," Misato grumbled.

This was a situation she had found herself in often enough the last couple of years: standing before her bedroom mirror while clad in nothing but her undergarments and scrutinizing her reflection with a worried eye.

Of course, there was one very significant difference between now and the previous times she'd done this. In the past, she'd found herself picking out every little line and wrinkle that had appeared on her face, every unwelcome sag and jiggle that had somehow developed on her body.

She told herself that every new and unpleasant discovery had been no big deal, completely insignificant, but Misato knew she was watching her youth starting to ebb away. Though she was still very early in the process, it was hard to deny that she was starting to get old.

Now…now she was stressed out because she looked so young.

God, I guess some women really are impossible to satisfy! She thought and almost laughed.

It was true though, she mused. Her ring had kept making her younger while she'd been on her extended bender, and with her too intoxicated to tell it to stop, it…hadn't.

Geeze, I'm as toned, tight, trim, slim, pert, and perky as I've ever been, she thought with one part pleasure and two parts anxiety.

Actually, she decided, she was probably in slightly better shape than she had ever been. She wasn't exactly sure how this could be—her lifestyle of late hadn't been particularly healthy, to put it mildly—but she felt sure that her muscle tone had never been quite this good before, though she was still nowhere near what she looked like while being the Green Lantern.

"It's a miracle that nobody's figured out something's weird with me yet," she muttered. "Ring, physically, how young am I now?"

"Nineteen Earth years old," it answered immediately.

She winced. Nineteen. The absolute farthest back she had ever planned on going was twenty-one.

"Do you want this ring to cease making you younger?" It asked.

"Yes," she answered at once.

If she got much younger, she'd start getting shorter, too, and then people would really start taking notice of the changes.

Hell, I should tell this damn thing to start making me older now, she thought.

It would certainly cut down the risk of anyone suspecting that something extraordinary had happened to her. It would be the logical, sensible thing to do.

And yet, she thought, and yet…

She liked being young again, in her prime again. Honestly, being a superhero had been a lot harder when she'd been in a body that was almost 30. Not only that, but she felt like she had a younger mentality now, too, with a certain impetuousness returned to her. Taking on (and saving) the world suddenly seemed like a much less impossible proposition than it once had.

It also didn't hurt that she wasn't feeling like a dirty old woman every time she raised Shinji's blood pressure with her teasing.

"Ring," she said, making a decision, "hold me at this age until I tell you otherwise."

"Acknowledged."

Misato smiled at her reflection, then went to start dressing, a spring in her step.


"Working late, Tokita-san? It's almost seven o'clock already."

The man in charge of researching the extraterrestrial space ship looked up from his paperwork and offered his subordinate a small, rueful smile.

"I'm afraid I don't have much choice in the matter, Doctor," he replied. "Tanesada-san has really been breathing down my neck lately. I need to make sure everything's in order."

Dr. Maeda gave him a skeptical look. The scientist knew very well that, while orderly records were always nice, what Tanesada wanted was results. Having every "i" dotted and every "t" crossed would curry little favor with the boss without them.

However, he decided not to point that out, silently concluding that their slow progress so far was making Tokita desperate.

"Well, don't work too hard," Maeda chided the younger man instead. "I can't imagine your wife appreciates you practically living at the office like this."

"Oh, the wife's not a problem, since I don't have one of those," Tokita replied.

"All the more reason to get out then!" Maeda chortled. "You're not going to meet your future mate cooped up in here. Office romances never work out, you know."

"I'll…think about that, Doctor," Tokita said, his impatience with the conversation clearly showing through his polite facade.

"Hmm, well, good night, then," Maeda said. "See you tomorrow morning."

"Good night," Tokita replied.

Maeda silently punched out using a fingerprint scanner near the door, then departed.

"Finally," Tokita grumbled softly the moment the man was gone.

He hadn't had a bit of work to do for over an hour. He'd just been going through the motions while he waited for all the members of his team to depart for the night.

It had almost seemed like Maeda had realized that and had deliberately stayed late just to be a pain. That was becoming a habit of his, or so it seemed to Tokita.

Yet now he was alone at last. Tokita got up from his desk, his knees popping in protest at the sudden movement after having been left idle for so long. He ignored it and headed to the room where they were keeping the fuel tank from the alien ship.

They had moved it from its lead castle to a larger room, one that was easier to get into but had significantly less radiation shielding. That transfer had been the one concession that he had managed to get Maeda to make.

Honestly, the man's being utterly paranoid when it comes to that thing, Tokita mused with a scowl. Everything we've exposed to the radiation that tank's been leaking hasn't been affected in the slightest. But if you left it up to him, we'd all be old and gray before we got around to opening it.

Considering that Tanesada truly was breathing down his neck, Tokita couldn't afford to wait remotely that long. After all, if he lost this job, there was a very good chance that he wouldn't be able to find another. Additionally, he loathed the idea of NERV beating him again. He hated that almost as much as he hated the thought of being perpetually unemployed. Unfortunately, he had no authority to override Maeda, not on a safety issue where radiation was concerned.

Which was why he was going to open it and take a sample now, without the good doctor's blessing.

"Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission," he mused aloud, arriving at the lab that bordered the chamber where they were currently keeping the fuel tank.

Tokita quickly suited up in one of the bulky yellow radiation suits (no need to be completely reckless, after all), then armed himself with a lead-lined specimen jar.

All I need is a single gram of what's inside that tank, and I can get this project moving again, he mused as he swiped a card through a reader, gaining access to the room that held his prize.

Carefully setting his specimen jar on the floor, he went over to the tank. For an alien artifact, the thing was almost disappointingly mundane. Indeed, it looked like it could've easily been made by humans.

Which worked quite well for him, actually. That made it easy for him to figure out how to open. Tokita pulled on a lever, and there was a hydraulic hiss of pressure being released. He grabbed a handle on the hatch and pulled…

BOOM!

Tokita screamed as a wave of light, heat, and energy erupted from the fuel tank, slamming directly into him. He was knocked onto his back, landing hard on the floor. Klaxons started shrieking seconds later. Radiation alarms, he realized, too dazed to become frightened about that just yet.

"Uhhh…" he groaned, woozily trying to take stock of himself.

He realized that the front of his radiation suit, along with his shirt, was completely gone from the chest up.

Well, not gone, to be precise. Shredded, partially burnt pieces of it were scattered all over the room.

An explosion that powerful should have left him with serious burns, he belatedly realized, if not have killed him outright. However, his skin appeared to be completely unscathed by the blast.

His head, on the other hand, was pounding.

"God," he grumbled, reaching up to rub his forehead.

He stopped the moment his fingers actually made contact, immediately feeling something that should not be there.

His first thought was that several worms were sitting on his forehead. Space worms, perhaps, from inside the fuel tank.

Then he felt further and realized the truth, much as he didn't want to. It wasn't worms he was feeling, it was veins. His own veins, which had bulged out unnaturally.

"Tokita-san!"

Dr. Maeda burst into the room along with a trio of the building's security guards, all clad in radiation suits.

"God, he's been exposed," Maeda said, kneeling down next to Tokita to examine him. "Somebody call an ambulance!"

"Damn corporate toady. I was afraid that he'd try something like this. Idiot should have listened to me."

"What did you say, Doctor?" Tokita hissed. Or tried to hiss, anyway. It came out as more of a croak.

"I said that you need medical attention!" Maeda snapped. "Somebody call the hospital!" he reiterated to the security guards, and one finally left to do it.

"Almost wish he had died." From one of the guards this time. "Guy's such a phony and a complete jackass, too. Everybody would be better off without him."

"Shut up," Tokita growled softly, wincing.

But they didn't shut up. Indeed, they only seemed to get louder.

"God, why would the nimrod do this? He could've gotten himself killed." The other guard now. "Then again, I guess it's probably pretty easy to do something suicidal when you have no life."

"Shut up!" Tokita snapped.

"We're not saying anything!" Maeda exclaimed, as though he thought the other man was an idiot. A deaf idiot. "Now sit still, I need to check your pulse…"

"Great, now Tokita's going insane, too. What next? Will he—?"

"SHUT UP!"

A wave of concussive force burst forth, as though generated by Tokita's bellow. Maeda and the remaining two guards were sent flying, crashing into the walls with an extreme amount of force. Tokita could easily hear bones breaking.

A moment later, Maeda and the security guards crumpled to the ground, unconscious.

Tokita knew he had hurt him. He knew he should feel bad about that, but he didn't.

For the moment, he was just glad that he'd managed to shut them up. Tokita lay back onto the floor and passed out.


"Now, mind you, Green Lantern's holographic EVA was pretty cool looking and all—though if it had been up to me, I'd have created a replica of Unit Two, of course—but it was obvious that she was just out of her league, dealing with that Angel."

"Yes, Asuka," Shinji agreed absently as the pair of Evangelion pilots walked to school together. "Of course."

"She got off a couple of good shots at the start, I'll give her that," the redhead continued. "Probably surprised the hell out of the Angel when she created that fake EVA out of thin air and all, but it wasn't long before it had her on the ropes…"

Shinji largely tuned Asuka out, only listening closely enough so he could nod and voice agreement at the appropriate points. The Second Child was pleased with her victory over the Fourteenth Angel, to put it mildly, and Misato's lecture about recklessness had done seemingly nothing to dampen that pleasure. She had even taken to regaling him with her (rather slanted) version of the story, despite the fact that he'd been there and seen it all himself.

He could've contested a few of the details, but frankly, he didn't want the trouble that would come from that.

At least she's acting normal around me again, he mused.

Asuka had been behaving rather…skittish around him ever since the debacle with the Thirteenth Angel. Of course, whenever he'd made the mistake of telling her that there was no need to be afraid of him, she had angrily denied that she was acting any differently than normal.

So he considered this quite an improvement, really.

"Green Lantern was in a huge amount of trouble until I decided that it was time for drastic action," Asuka went on. "So I…hey, are you listening?"

"Yes, yes, I'm listening," he quickly reassured her.

Her eyes narrowed, but she eventually went on with her story again. "So I decided to leap down into the hole they'd made in the Geofront roof…"

Yes, Shinji mused, truly Asuka's behavior had been the very picture of normalcy ever since they'd fought the Fourteenth Angel.

Misato's behavior, on the other hand, had been anything but normal.

She goes straight from a marathon bender to swearing off alcohol completely, all because of some disaster she wasn't responsible for? He thought skeptically.

He'd made a few careful inquiries about it to her, and she'd told him that she never wanted to be incapacitated in a time of crisis like that again, even though it was unlikely that her presence in the command center at the time would've changed anything.

Shinji supposed that could be true, but still…he didn't quite buy it.

He didn't know much about alcoholism, and he didn't claim to; his uncle was a lot of things, but a drunk was mercifully not one of them.

Yet he did know a little. He remembered how, before he'd been summoned to Tokyo-3 by his father (in what Shinji thought of as his "other life"), it had been a well known fact around the school that one of his classmate's father had a drinking problem. Despite Shinji's status as something of a social outcast, the resulting gossip had reached even his ears.

It hadn't been pretty. According to what Shinji had heard, the man's life had simply gone from bad to worse. He'd wrecked the small business he'd owned, eventually having to declare bankruptcy. He'd lost the house his family lived in. His wife had left him, and, for the final tragedy, he'd run over his own daughter with his car, killing her. He'd been heading over to his wife's new apartment to plead with her to take him back, and he'd been extremely drunk.

The cause of all these disasters had seemed moronically simple to Shinji, but the worse the man's life became, the more he drank.

Hearing the whole sad tale play out over the course of nearly two years had instilled in Shinji a real sense of just how powerful a thing addiction could be.

Yet Misato, who had once started and ended each day with beer, kicked the habit because she felt bad about something she wasn't even responsible for? It was a little hard to swallow.

But why did she do it, then, if not because of that? Shinji wondered.

Rather reluctantly, his mind returned to the possibility that Misato was the Green Lantern.

The Third Child wanted to reject the idea out of hand, but when he really stopped to think about it, he had to admit that it seemed surprisingly plausible. After all, Misato's guilt over the way the battle against the Thirteenth Angel had unfolded made a lot more sense if she actually could have changed its outcome, had she been sober at the time.

And she left the Operations Director job around the time Green Lantern showed up, he mused.

Green Lantern had also appeared at the golf course he and Misato had visited, just moments after Misato herself had disappeared…

Still doesn't explain why Green Lantern looks so much more muscular than Misato, though, or how Misato was in Matsushiro after the Tenth Angel while Green Lantern was still in outer space, he thought.

Not long ago, he would've considered all that ample proof that Misato wasn't Green Lantern, but with evidence for the opposite conclusion piling up, he was truly starting to wonder.

"But how do I find out?" he muttered.

"How do you find out what?" Asuka asked crossly, frowning disapprovingly at him.

"Nothing," Shinji said at once. "So, you were saying?"

"Right, so I stabbed the Angel right in the core…"


The first thing Fuyutski became aware of as he started to come around was the throbbing pain in his head. He didn't think he'd been bashed on the skull, though. More likely they'd used some powerful drugs or chemicals to knock him out.

Chloroform, maybe, he mused absently.

Eventually, he dared to open his eyes, and found himself sitting in the middle of a room that was so pitch dark he couldn't see the walls. A light fixture directly above him bathed the Vice Commander in a small island of illumination. He was firmly bound to the chair he found himself in.

"Cliché," he commented with a small, grim chuckle.

Instantly, as though triggered by the sound of his voice, 12 holographic monoliths appeared around him.

"Well, well, well," he said, turning his neck to observe as many of them as possible, "not the Human Instrumentality Committee, but the entire SEELE council. Not what I was expecting."

"We thought it was time to drop some of the pretenses," SEELE 01 said. "Though not all of them, obviously."

"Oh, obviously," Fuyutski agreed.

"I would not be so cheeky if I were in your position," SEELE 06 warned him, the acid in his tone clear despite the voice distortion all the members of the cabal were using. "You are completely at our mercy. No one is coming to rescue you."

"No, I suppose not," the old professor agreed with a weary sigh.

"Of course, your stay here need not be a long one," SEELE 03 added in a far more cordial tone. "If you cooperate, we can have you back in Tokyo-3 by this evening."

"And what is it that you want from me?" Fuyutski asked.

He already had a pretty good idea what they wanted, of course, but he figured it couldn't hurt to make them spell it out for him. The nature of their questions might give something away.

"Don't be coy," SEELE 02 warned him. "We know that Ikari is keeping secrets from us."

"It would be rather impossible for us not to know," SEELE 05 chimed in, his tone dark.

"Indeed," SEELE 02 agreed. "He hasn't hidden his scheming half as well as he believes. Tampering with the MAGI computers' data recorders, the incident with Legion…frankly, he doesn't seem to care what we think anymore, so long as he can keep us largely in the dark."

"We cannot tolerate such a state of affairs, which is why you are here," SEELE 01 added. "We want you to shed some light on this situation."

Very vague, Fuyutski noted. Are they being careful, or do they not know enough to ask more specific questions?

"Well?" SEELE 02 demanded after he'd been silent for a few seconds.

It was time to see how long he could stall before they started to get angry.

"Could I have a glass of water?" he asked as innocently as he could.


When Tokita woke up, he found that he was no longer inside the room with the alien fuel tank. Instead he was…

Where is this? He wondered, realizing that he didn't recognize his surroundings as he looked around.

At first glance, the place resembled a hospital room; he was in a medical bed, hooked up to an EKG monitor. However, he didn't know of any normal hospital where there were security cameras hanging from the corner of the room. The place also looked too sterile and utilitarian, even for a hospital room; there were no windows, no decorations, and, aside from his bed, not a single stick of furniture.

The heavily armored and doubtlessly locked door was another clue that something was amiss.

"What happened?" he muttered to himself, his voice coming out as a croak. Tokita tried to get up and discovered that he could barely move. His body seemed to weigh a ton. "Ugh, why am I so weak?"

There was no button to call a nurse on his bed, so it appeared that he just had to content himself to wait. Fortunately, someone must've been watching the feed from the security camera and discovered that he was awake, because it wasn't long before he heard the heavy lock in the door being opened.

It was Maeda who walked inside. "H-Hello, Tokita-san," the scientist said, his voice faint and his face pale. A white bandage was wrapped around his head, and Tokita wondered if he'd done that.

"Maeda," Tokita said softly. His voice seemed to be as weak as the rest of him.

"God, he looks even worse than before."

Tokita's eyes widened a bit at that, and he was about to demand to know what the hell the man meant. However, one very important detail stilled his tongue.

He'd been looking at Maeda, and Tokita had clearly seen that the scientist's lips hadn't moved. He'd heard the words, he knew he had, but Maeda hadn't spoken.

Good Lord, did I just hear his thoughts? Tokita wondered.

The idea seemed preposterous, but Tokita knew what he'd seen and heard. And come to think of it, Maeda and the security guards had seemed far too candid when they'd first found him…

Or he could simply be going insane. That also seemed very possible.

"Great, now he's staring off into space. If that radiation affected his mind half as much as it affected his body…"

"What did the radiation do to my body?" Tokita asked.

Maeda visibly started at the abrupt question.

Score another point for the mind-reading hypothesis, Tokita thought, feeling strangely numb. The situation was so surreal and bizarre that he wasn't even sure what emotions he should be experiencing.

"The alien radiation appears to be causing you to…mutate," Maeda spoke, regaining his composure. "I wish I didn't have to show you this, but…I'll go get a mirror…"

The man disappeared from the room for a minute, but Tokita didn't just lie there and passively wait for him to come back. Instead, his closed his eyes, imaging himself reaching out to Maeda with ghostly hands…reaching out and touching the other man's thoughts.

He inhaled sharply, finding the feedback far more intense than he'd expected. It was like he'd just pulled back the curtain on Maeda's mind; the man's memories were an open book to him, and images from the scientist's past began to flash wildly past his eyes.

No, I don't want this, Tokita thought, pushing aside Maeda's memories of his first kiss. He began to search through the man's mind for what he sought, being careful to use a feather-light touch, lest Maeda realize something was amiss.

It didn't take Tokita long to procure an image of what he himself looked like now, as seen through the other man's eyes. He winced, fervently hoping that he really was just going crazy and that he couldn't really read minds at all.

He didn't want to be insane, of course, but it would be better than…that.

Maeda returned a moment later with hand mirror. The man hesitated for a moment, struggling for words, but he found none that could soften the blow he was about deliver.

"Here," he said lamely, then held up the mirror.

Tokita saw himself, and his eyes slid shut in quiet despair. His suspicions about his mind reading capabilities, and his worst fears about what had become of him, were both confirmed.

"I'm sorry," Maeda said.

"Of course, you did bring it on yourself," the scientist added silently, unaware that Tokita could hear his thoughts.

"We're going to be keeping you here at headquarters for a while," Maeda continued. "There's not much a hospital can do for you, after all. We'll study the alien radiation, and hopefully we'll discover a way to reverse your mutation."

Tokita didn't need to read the other man's mind to know how slim he thought the odds of that happening were.

"…is there anything I can do for you?" Maeda asked after a few moments of silence.

"Leave," Tokita rasped. "I want to be alone."

"Of course," Maeda departed, closing the door after himself.

A moment later, Tokita heard the heavy lock engaging.

He didn't care. He was a monster, a grotesque little troll. The alien radiation that had given him extraordinary mental powers had also crippled his body, leaving him barely capable of moving.

And it's all NERV's fault, he thought, feeling rage spike through him.

If they hadn't sabotaged the Jet Alone, he'd still be at his old job, and he'd never even have heard of the crashed alien ship. If they hadn't squeezed everyone else out of the business of fighting the Angels, Tanesada wouldn't have been so zealous about the prospect of getting their company back into the game. He never would've been pressured to do something as risky as opening an alien vessel's fuel tank otherwise.

"They ruined my life," he whispered, balling his hands into fists.

The monitoring devices around him began to shake, as though in a very mild earthquake. However, the ground beneath Tokita's bed was perfectly still. Surprise replaced rage, and the medical equipment immediately ceased trembling.

Of course, he thought, abruptly recalling how Maeda and the two security guards had been sent flying. I did that.

It seemed that, in addition to his newfound telepathy, he had telekinesis, too. That opened up some interesting possibilities.

A smile formed on his deformed face. If he could master his new abilities, NERV would pay.


Author's Notes: I'm aware that this is a very slow chapter, but it was necessary to set up for the next battle. The bits with Tokia were especially essential. I'm sure any GL fans reading this can identify which villain he's turning into.

Anyway, as always, thanks to my readers and reviewers, and thanks to my beta reader as well.