Creation began on 01-07-23

Creation ended on 03-24-23

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Evangelion: The Suffering of Allies

Fuyutsuki asked Ibuki to tell him in detail what she had seen…and it confirmed the worst that he knew had happened. Her account of what she saw upon entering the restroom confirmed that Ritsuko Akagi had been taken by the Cenobites. She had been taken in place of himself, taken away to their domain, Hell or otherwise. But it left a question that begged for an answer: Was Ritsuko Akagi alive?

"…You said she cut herself on that?" Maya asked him, pointing to the object that he claimed was the reason the woman was gone.

"Yes," he explained.

"And…it was a box earlier?"

"That's right."

"How'd you get it to turn into that?"

"I didn't. It…it changed on its own."

"What? But…that's not possible."

They were in the cafeteria; not many people were present, and not many people were having conversations about anything. This gave them some measure of privacy to talk about the box and Ritsuko's disappearance.

"She was helping me to understand this thing," he explained to Maya, picking up the object and showing it from every angle. "It's a puzzle box. It has pieces that move. When it was shaped like a box, you had to turn it and lock the pieces into place. When I did it, it produced a blade that almost cut me. But now, it's…in this form, like… I don't know, it's like this is the next level or something that it does."

"Do you think she's alive?"

"I don't know. She could be alive."

"If we solve it, can we get her back?"

"Maybe, but there's more to this box. All Dr. Akagi and I found out about it so far was that…this box is one of many…and they have one thing in common: They hurt anyone that they come across, no matter what their reasons are."

"Who would make boxes like this…just to hurt people?"

"Someone who's been dead for a long time now."

-x-

"Aaah!" Ritsuko screamed as another hooked chain was stretching the skin on her left leg. "Aaah!"

In front of her were at least three strangers that were mutilated beyond rational explanation. One had pins in their head, the second had a stretched face and the third had no discernible features aside from its teeth that were chattering.

"What do you want from me?!" She asked them, and the one with the pins raised their right hand to lower her to her level.

"Your blood," they said to her. "Your pain…Ritsuko Akagi."

"How…how do you know who I am?"

"Knowledge…is a pain onto itself. The drive to know…is a knife that pierces through the flesh. Irresistible lore…a suffering that cannot be ignored. What is it that you desire to know?"

"Aaaurgh! Aaaugh!" Ritsuko groaned as the chains hooked onto her body pulled more of her skin, muscles and nerves away from her bones.

"What is it that you desire to know?" The pinheaded one asked her again.

"Why are you doing this to me? What did I ever do to any of you?"

"You are…simply another offering to our god. You were offered in place of that man. We had expected him…but he failed to cut himself with the blade that was meant for him. But we are adaptable; we are willing to accept substitutions."

"I'm someone's…substitute?"

"From the pain of knowledge comes the pain of revelation, of realization."

"Are you…going to kill me?"

"Now, why would we want to kill you?"

"We would deprive ourselves of your suffering," the one with the stretched face revealed, and Ritsuko saw that their face, against all rational explanation, was devoid of any bones, muscles, nerves and eyes, making their face seem more like a mask that was all that represented them. "Killing you would be a mercy. Is that what you want?"

-x-

Gendo didn't believe Fuyutsuki or Ibuki's claim that Dr. Akagi had been taken away by some people from another world different from their own. There was always a rational explanation for everything one did. If she left, it was because of something she had to do, not because of some…story.

"…So, he doesn't believe us?" Maya asked Fuyutsuki as they were in the elevator after discussing what they saw, holding the box in her bag.

"Ikari doesn't believe in anything unless he has seen it himself," Fuyutsuki replied, "but even if he did see it for himself, it's still a challenge to have him believe for the right reasons."

"What do we have to go on? What else did Dr. Akagi find with you?"

"There was other videos of people that had encounters with these boxes. Hopefully, there are some tidbits of information that can help undo what happened…and maybe find Dr. Akagi and bring her back."

They returned to the command center of Central Dogma and sat in front of the computers.

Fuyutsuki clicked onto a video file and played the footage.

"…And after you got away from the Cenobites," the male voice asked this woman that was being recorded to get her account of her encounter with the Cenobites, "what did you do with the puzzle box?"

"I buried it in the ground of a construction site," the woman, identifying herself as Joanne "Joey" Summerskill, revealed. "Do I need to say where it was at the time?"

"No, it's unnecessary. If the box was still a threat to people, it's only to those that desire it. If you know where it was, take the secret to your grave. What happened after you disposed of the box?"

"I'm not sure how this was even possible, but…it seemed like some of the people that had been killed by the one with the pins in his head, they…they came back to life. They were all fine. My friend, Doc Fisher, was among the people that came back. I don't know why or even how, just that I was grateful. It was a terrible dream people were waking up from."

Click. Fuyutsuki clicked onto another video file and it showed a man that was smoking a cigarette with a simple smile.

"…Sorry, but when I thought I'd never get to have one of these again, I felt like I've forgotten about what really is a simple pleasure to enjoy," he told the person recording his account of his experience with the puzzle box. "People should accept and enjoy these simple pleasures instead of seeking new and darker thrills, even if they're what they desire. There's a difference between wanting to experience something great and trying to put the edge back in your dull life."

"And it was this that led you to look for the box?" The guy recording him asked.

"Yes. But the box was different from what I was told by other people that had it before I did. It opens up…and it cuts you if you're not careful…and then you end up having to pay a debt much worse than what you thought."

"How different was this puzzle box when you had it?"

"It looked like a regular puzzle box, intricate and everything, but after solving it, it produced a blade that nearly cut my palm. I dropped it…and it cut my dog on his back. It should've been a shallow cut, but he kept bleeding. I went to get bandages…but when I came back, he was gone…and the puzzle box changed shape. I solved it again…and it produced a blade again, nearly cutting me. One of my best friends that was living on the streets came to see me one day…and he picked up the box and got cut. I left him to go to the bathroom for bandages…and then he was gone. I didn't understand what was going on until I met the Cenobites…and the priest. It was a different configuration due to the box being of a different sort made by the guy that made these other boxes. It was my fault. The box required the sacrifice of five lives. Once it received its five sacrifices, whoever held its final configuration would be granted a passage into their realm, to receive an audience with their god."

"An audience with their god? As in this…Leviathan?"

"Yes."

"And did you sacrifice anyone else to receive an audience with Leviathan?"

"Just stray animals; I couldn't sacrifice people after what happened to my friend from the streets. When I received my audience, the Cenobites asked me…what did I want from them."

"What did you want from them?"

"The puzzle box I had was one of seven made to do something different for the ones that solved them. When they reach their final configuration, the person that has it will be granted an audience with Leviathan…and the priest serves as a mediator between mortal and deity…to ensure a boon is granted. These seven puzzle boxes enable Leviathan to offer choices to those that possess them in their final configuration. If you can get there, to Leviathan, after the five sacrifices are made, then Leviathan allows you choose any one of the six desires that each configuration represents."

"What were the configurations called?"

"The puzzle box I had at the time possessed the configurations of Lament, Lore, Laudarant, Liminal, Lazarus and Leviathan. Respectively, they represented the desires of life, knowledge, love, sensation, resurrection and power."

"And…what did you choose? What was your desire?"

"I chose…Lazarus. I chose…resurrection. I wanted my friend back…but he…wasn't the same, anymore. The Cenobites didn't replace him with a fake version of him or one of their own or someone else in his skin, he just…remembered everything they did to him…and when they did let him go, they told him that sooner or later, he would come back to them, that he would want to return to them. And he told me how everything the Cenobites do to people is not to grant exhilarations. No matter what they offer in exchange for the blood and suffering of others sacrificed to them, it comes with a price. It doesn't matter if they promise you grand knowledge, unfathomable power or just unconditional love, because in the end, they just give pain. In the end, it always comes back to pain…unless…"

"Unless?"

"Unless you're someone who has never received such positive things at any point in your life. If you've been deprived of such pleasures, and you come to encounter the Cenobites, if your heart is pure and yearns only for you truly long for, then it's possible to receive the exact desire fulfilled…free of suffering. If you've been deprived of sensation due to a birth defect or from an accident, and you desire only to feel what you have lost again, it may be possible to have it returned to you."

"What did you do with the puzzle box? After you got your friend back from the Cenobites?"

"I bought myself a cruise ticket, took the box with me across the Pacific Ocean…and threw it into the sea, hoping that nobody would ever find it or be hurt by it again. That was twenty years ago…to this very day."

Fuyutsuki then had to suspect that the puzzle they had must've been one of the seven boxes LeMarchand left behind. If this was true, then he had to wonder what, if at all possible, did Shinji desire from the Cenobites if he met them and their god? What could Shinji desire from these people that he didn't receive from anyone here?

Maya clicked onto the video file and paused it.

"Okay," she says, "this puzzle box could be the same as the one this man had. If it has six configurations, six forms that it takes after being solved, then…it's on the second one, this…Lore Configuration. We get it to change four more times, we get an audience with this Leviathan…and it gives us whatever we desire."

"Ibuki," Fuyutsuki tells her, "if this box is the same as the one he had, maybe even the same one, then you know what had to be done before he could get his audience with Leviathan. Solving it isn't enough in this case."

"We could do what he did, though; he didn't sacrifice people after his friend was taken, just stray animals. Couldn't we do that, too? Cats and dogs, they go missing all the time and most are never found."

-x-

Maybe killing her was viewed by them as a mercy, but right now, Ritsuko Akagi would've preferred that to what was being done to her at this very moment. She had lost count as to how many times they had torn her apart and put her back together again. There was no sense of time, either; maybe it was the forty-eighth time or even the six-hundredth time. Either way, these people had been ripping her up in ways she had no comprehension of. She had lost the ability to scream in agony over what had been done, too.

"Don't give up, lady," she heard a voice say to her, and she came to in a bathroom, identical to the one she had been in prior to being taken.

Did I imagine that?

"Don't give up," she heard the voice say again. "You will get back. Just don't give up!"

A chain shot from the stall behind her…and pulled her into it; it happened so fast, she didn't register the pain.

-x-

Life, knowledge, love, sensation, resurrection and power. These were the desires represented by the puzzle box's configurations. As Fuyutsuki moved his fingers around the puzzle box to get it to change while trying to avoid the blade it contained inside its configurations, he still pondered what Shinji got from the Cenobites if he met with them.

Lament, Lore, Laudarant, Liminal, Lazarus and Leviathan, he thought, making two parts of the puzzle click into place, causing it expand. What did you desire, Shinji Ikari?

Holding on from the sides, he pushed the box back into a collapsed state…and narrowly avoided the blade it produced.

"Now, comes the hard part," he told himself as he placed a foam ball over the blade.

-x-

"…The operation against the Angels is not going well for us, Ikari," SEELE 11 informed Gendo during the next meeting. "The Angels are adapting faster than we can modify the Evas…and we're short on qualified candidates to pilot them."

"These setbacks will not impede our goals," Gendo responded to the holographic monoliths representing the council.

"These setbacks are becoming increasingly significant and impede us," SEELE 06 expressed, "and now we're hearing that Dr. Ritsuko Akagi has left the base?"

"It is of no concern."

"It is if the Dummy System has not been completed and has yet to have a successful implementation against the Angels," SEELE 02 states, which Gendo says nothing to assure them in response. "The First and Second Children are incapacitated, the so-called Third Child is nowhere to be found, the Fourth Child resigned after a relative passed away, and the Fifth Child is unable to return to duty after being crippled. Your limited ability to utilize the pilots is most staggering. Worse, the Fourth Child stated a likelihood that isn't far from the truth: The Evas are next to useless in ensuring that pilots are protected against the Angels and making sure that they pilot against the next Angel when it comes."

Gendo says nothing about this matter.

"It is not just the matter of the Angels and the Evas," SEELE 01 states. "Our primary concern has to be the Human Instrumentality Project. That is our only real hope in these desperate times. Where are we on it?"

"We're progressing on schedule," Gendo responds.

-x-

In her dreams, in her nightmares, all she had left in her life…was this accursed suffering in the form of defeat at the hands of the last Angel she faced. No matter what she did or how she tried to escape from it, she couldn't. Even as she tried to comprehend what happened in the aftermath of her victory, she only knew that she passed out from what felt like a headache. And as she wandered the halls of her dreamscape, she saw this little boy that held a strange object in his hands that resembled the last Angel she fought against, only it was black and brown and looked intricate, unlike the blue-colored, crystalline-like Angel.

"Wait!" She called out to him as she ran down the halls of NERV HQ. "Who are you?!"

"Someone that had nobody," he told her, "but now I have what I desire. You can have what you desire, too, if you truly lack it."

"What?!"

"It, like all things, comes with a price, but if you can pay it, if you can own up to what your heart longs for, the price can be paid in full without repercussions. The desire can be achieved without being twisted. There is no such thing as pleasure being promised but only through pain. Pain can be ended. Pain can be transcended. What do you desire? What is it that your heart longs for?"

What did her heart long for? That was the question that Asuka Langley Soryu, the Second Child and pilot of Evangelion Unit-02…couldn't answer until she was certain of her answer. She was a young woman of taste, but her tastes were like any other person's. What did she want more than anything? What did her heart want that was denied to her?

-x-

It was just an idea Ibuki had, but one Fuyutsuki felt he could support: Because of the Fourth and Fifth Children, NERV had the still-active remains of the Sixth and Seventh Angels, held in containment through AT-Field neutralization, preventing them from regenerating and heavy sedation and numbing, allowing NERV to study them. Since much of their research on the two had been just a recollection of the information they were able to gather from what remained of the Fourth and Fifth Angels, it didn't seem like NERV was going to get anything new from the still-living Angels they held in captivity. This made them worthy candidates for offering up to the Cenobites in order to claim the ultimate desire once five offerings were made.

"Are you sure about this, Lieutenant Ibuki?" Fuyutsuki asks her as they entered the chamber where the Sixth Angel was held.

"Positive," she responded. "There are no cameras here, so all we need to do is stab a part of this Angel, and once we do that, they'll come for it."

"But are you sure about the data collected on this Angel?"

"Yeah. It's no different from the data we gathered on the dead Angels. And based on what we understand from the video posts you and Dr. Akagi, it's not enough just to solve the puzzle due to the blade it releases. In order to get it to change into its next configuration, the box requires that we offer the blood and suffering of someone or something to the Cenobites. We have to mark a sacrifice for the next configuration…and then they'll come to collect. And the Angels are trying to wipe out the human race. It has to be a win-win situation in this case; we dispose of the Angels and protect the world at the same time. I mean, it is like that…right?"

Fuyutsuki thought about it…and accepted that their situation was a win-win; by disposing of these two Angels, they would be protecting the human race from them. As they approached the disabled Angel, he held up the puzzle box and carefully removed the covering to expose the curved blade.

"Here goes nothing," he expresses, and then jabs the side of the Angel with the blade, digging it in as deep as he possibly could before pulling back. "Aaugh!"

Looking at the blood-covered box, he and Maya watched as the blood was being absorbed through the recesses of its sides while the blade retracted into its form.

"That's…unreal," Maya says.

"Yeah," he agrees with her. "Maybe we should…go now."

"No," she tells him. "I want to see what happens. I…I need to know how it happened."

They backed away from the Angel and stood against the wall behind them. It was only a matter of time before the Cenobites would come and claim the Angel.

"Every time I cut an animal with the blade, the blood would be absorbed into the box's configurations, as if it was feeding off of it," they remembered the guy explaining in further detail how the puzzle box he had worked when it opened up and cut something that could bleed. "The more blood it was given from a person that was marked, the more suffering they would receive from their sacrifice. I still can't forget what one of them said about my sacrifices, how their pain and blood was exquisite to them. I don't think I've ever been more disgusted, as well as terrified, by anyone that was mutilated beyond the body's ability to endure that…enjoyed it."

Cenobites, Maya thought; it might've been an accident that caused Ritsuko to be taken by them, but if all they needed to do was offer blood and pain in order to receive a fulfilled desire from the Cenobites, then she was willing to offer up criminals if it meant getting her back from them. Life, knowledge, love, sensation, resurrection, power. Leviathan, the god of these Cenobites, uses these puzzle box variants to offer choices to whoever holds the final configuration of whichever box they possess. If she's dead, then we just have Leviathan bring her back.

Crack! They looked at the wall on the right side of the room split open, seeing light emanating from within the space between the split section of the wall, which now seemed to behave like sliding stonework.

Rumble. A section of the floor in front of them split open and lowered downward as more light emanated from below.

"Oh, jeez," Maya expressed as she and Fuyutsuki saw something emerging from the floor opening, as though walking up a flight of stairs. "Aah!"

It was…some sort of humanoid, standing over seven feet in height, mutilated in the fact that it had very little skin covering its muscles and body. But the most frightening aspect of it was its head; the brain was exposed and there was no sign of any eyes or nose, lacking any skin and exposed teeth, which were chattering.

Crack! The ceiling above them split open to reveal what looked like…walkways and open stairwells that were upside-down.

"Unbelievable," said Fuyutsuki, seeing someone looking down, or rather, looking up, at them.

And then, they were in front of the pair. They were some sort of humanoid, too, mutilated in the sense that they were flayed, skinned, and their head had pins all over their head. But what Fuyutsuki could ascertain was whether this person was male or female; the mutilation was so advanced that it removed the gender designation. And the outfit looked like it was made up of the person's own mutilated flesh. They looked at his hands and saw the box…and then at the Angel.

They raised their right hand up, extending their index and middle fingers. This caused thirty or so chains to reach from the realm they came from and pierce the Angel's hide. Defying any sense of physics, the chains raised it off the ground and into the air.

"This is…unlike any offering we have ever received before," the pinheaded person utters; they sounded like a woman, but Fuyutsuki wasn't sure.

However, the fact that they were capable of speech meant that there was an opportunity to learn something from them while they were present.

"Who are you?" He asked them, and they turned to face him.

"Explorers in the farther reaches of experience," they responded. "Of the rims of sensation. Our gifts are without boundaries, our pleasures without limits."

"The woman you took in place of me, Ritsuko Akagi…is she still alive?"

"The price of knowledge is the pain of realization. It would be mercy to dispose of one marked by the box when there is so much more the body can be made to feel, and she will feel it all…before we're through with her."

"So she's still alive, then?" Maya questions.

"For the time being. We have eternity to know every layer of her flesh."

"There was a boy a few years ago," Fuyutsuki tells them. "Shinji Ikari. Did you meet him?"

"We did."

That was the revelation Fuyutsuki expected to hear…and at the same time, he didn't expect to hear…from this creature, and he lowered his head in defeat.

"Did you… Was he a victim of yours?" He wanted to know. "Did someone mark him with the box to be taken away?"

"His blood…and his pain…was not ours to claim."

This was something he didn't expect to hear from a Cenobite. How was Shinji not theirs to claim? He was encountered by them…but they did nothing to him? Or did Shinji receive something from them. As the Angel was almost taken completely into their domain, Fuyutsuki had to ask one more question.

"What happened to him?" He asked them. "What happened to Shinji Ikari?"

"Shinji Ikari…took pleasure in his desire fulfilled," the pinhead Cenobite responded, indicating that Shinji had the puzzle box before…and claimed a prize or wish from Leviathan. "What he was denied, our god gave him."

"What did he want?" Maya asks.

"What he was denied by everyone."

The Angel was now within their domain as the ceiling closed and the wall closed, making it looked like nothing and nobody was ever there. Only Fuyutsuki and Maya were left alone in the chamber, slightly disturbed by what they learned. Then, the box started to change in Fuyutsuki's hands, rotating and shifting its pieces, reshaping itself to resemble two triangles merging into one another, forming a sort of star, resembling the first form of the box, only a little larger and with more intricacies.

"They didn't kill them," he expressed; the Cenobites may have taken Ritsuko, but they didn't kill her when they could spend their time torturing her, to know the limits of her endurance and push her until she broke. "Life, knowledge, love, sensation, resurrection, power. This has to be the configuration representing love: Laudarant."

Maya looked at it and could guess where it got its name from. The box, in a perverse sense, resembled two identical shapes being merged into one from opposite ends, like the intimacy between two people in love. It also looked the Fifth Angel if its form was twisted a little.

"The Laudarant Configuration," she added. "Three configurations down, three more to go."

-x-

They didn't lock her up when they left to obtain another offering. In the end, they just walked out of the chamber they were in, and the one with pins in their head told her to feel free and explore their domain until they returned for her. This was how Ritsuko was now wandering around this strange place that felt like a dungeon.

"We have eternity to know your flesh," they told her as she walked up a flight of stairs, coming to a surface level and seeing…nothing but storm clouds and a colossal rhombus with dark light emanating from its four sides.

"Oh, my God!" She utters, feeling like she's in a nightmare.

"No," she heard a voice behind her. "This one is mine."

She turns around…and sees a person that is without any skin, exposing all of their innards and muscles and nerves to the cold air. They were also forced to wear heavy chains on their wrists, legs and waist.

"This is the god that I serve now. The god that allowed me to live, even like this. The god of flesh, of hunger and desire. My god. Behold…Leviathan, the Lord of the Labyrinth!"

Ritsuko turned back to face the rhombus, identified and addressed as Leviathan. A dark light shined upon her…and she recalled a dark memory from her past. She recalled her mother, Naoko Akagi, strangling a little girl that wasn't a little girl at all…before killing herself. She reached up to her own neck, feeling as though it had been herself that her mother had strangled.

To be continued…

A/N: What did you think of this?