Creation began on 05-21-23
Creation ended on 06-26-23
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Evangelion: Seduction and Destruction
Ritsuko entered a hallway…and suddenly felt like she had returned to a semblance of NERV HQ. As she continued to walk down the hallway, she saw a little boy sitting on the floor, tinkering with an object that resembled the puzzle box she had cut herself on.
"Excuse me, are you lost?" She asks him as she goes over to him.
"No," he answers her, "but you should hurry up and save the grandpa man who was hurt before he could get the people of the maze to release you. If you go further down that way, you should get to him and help him. A bad man is trying to get something that he doesn't deserve, and if he does before you can be permitted to leave, you may be here longer than you think."
"Grandpa man?"
"Yes, the grandpa man. He's hurt."
Ritsuko had to suspect that this boy meant Fuyutsuki due to his age and appearance, and ran down the hall, seeing it look more like the ones in NERV HQ. Before two minutes had passed, she found an elevator and got inside, pressed a button for the top floor.
I'm actually back in NERV now? She wondered as she waited for the elevator to reach her destination. Did Fuyutsuki do something to make this possible?
Ding! The elevator went as she reached her desired floor.
-x-
What did Gendo want that the Cenobites could grant him? That was the question that concerned Fuyutsuki as he tried to get back up. Because of his behavior and intolerance towards other people, it was only partially clear that Gendo wanted only what he lacked.
"You have to tell us what it is that you want," the pinheaded Cenobite informed Gendo.
"My wife," he revealed his desire. "Yui Ikari. Your god can bring her back to life, right? Bring her back to me!"
Fuyutsuki feared for the worst. He needed to save Ritsuko, but Gendo wanted to recall Yui from the Evangelion. It was anyone's guess as to how the Cenobites and Leviathan would respond to this desire being desired.
"For your efforts," the Cenobite utters, "we offer you the Lazarus Configuration."
No, Fuyutsuki sighs as he stands back up.
-x-
Deep in the pens where the Evas were held, Unit-01 activated briefly. Then, its chest split open to reveal a red sphere with something humanoid emerging from it.
"Mmmmmm!" The humanoid groaned as it began to assume characteristics of a human woman, with palish skin, brownish hair and a triangular facial structure.
Her body, a horrendous amalgamation between flesh and metal, ripping away from the sphere as an orange fluid sprayed across the air and umbilical bridge, barely resembled its original form as it fell onto the bridge.
"Aaah!" The woman gasped, barely able to move as she coughed out fluid and pieces of metal still in her mouth. "Aaaurgh!"
This…was Yui Ikari, revived from the Evangelion…in a barely perfect state.
-x-
Fuyutsuki tried to take the box from Gendo, but he shot him again in his abdomen, forcing him onto his knees.
"Aaurgh!" He groaned; he was barely able to shrug off the first round, and now he had another bullet inside him. "Ikari…what you want…isn't necessarily what you should have. And…you don't know if they will…honor their word…or if you were not specific on what you said you wanted from them."
"It doesn't matter," Gendo told him. "In the end, I get what I want."
Beep! Misato's cellphone went and she looked at it, gasping.
"What's the matter?" Kaji asks her, and she shows him her phone. "Ooh!"
Then, she slowly went over to Gendo.
"Are you sure about that?" She asks him. "Because being specific about something or someone really makes a difference."
"What are you saying?" He questions, pointing his gun at her, and she shows him her phone.
"I just got this picture texted to me from one of the personnel workers inside the Eva pens," she reveals. "This woman was found outside Unit-01."
Gendo looks at her phone and recoils at what he sees. It was a picture of his wife on a stretcher with bits of machinery attached to her pale body. She looked barely alive and in pain. This…was not what he wanted.
"What did you do?" He demanded of the pinheaded Cenobite.
"You asked for her to be brought back," they answered. "We brought her back."
Misato then took the gun and box from Gendo and backed away. Even though he had received what he wanted from the Cenobites, the box hadn't changed yet, meaning there was still a chance that Fuyutsuki, who was the one charged with the box, could still receive his audience with Leviathan and claim his prize.
-x-
Ritsuko ran outside the front door of the base and saw, to her surprise, the god Leviathan inside the Geo-Front. Or rather, the Geo-Front itself had been transported into the Labyrinth. She saw some people gathered by the water where Leviathan floated over…and noticed a man on the ground…and another man with a smoking gun.
"What in God's name have we done here?" She wondered, seeing a woman with purple hair approach the man with the gun…and then take his weapon and something else with him away as she backed away from someone else standing nearby that looked like their head was adorned with pins.
One of the other individuals turned to face where she was…and she recognized the boy-ish-looking young woman as Maya.
"Doctor Akagi!" She gasps and everyone else looks toward her.
Gendo, the one Misato took the gun and object from, turns to face her, surprised that she was here, and then looks back to the person with the pins in their head.
The man on the ground, Fuyutsuki, was approached by Kaji and helped away from Gendo and the Cenobites.
"What happened?" Ritsuko asks as she comes over to where the others are.
"A lot happened," Maya expresses. "Long story short, Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki was about to bring you back when Commander Ikari took the puzzle box from him and claimed a different prize after we went through all that craziness to meet the quota to retrieve you."
"What did he want? What did he get?"
Misato shows her the picture of Gendo's wife.
"He wanted his wife back, except he's pissed because she came back like this," she explains. "He wasn't specific on what he asked for."
"He was selfish in his objective," went Fuyutsuki, "and he didn't heed the warning signs. One way or another, Ikari sought pleasure…but because he wasn't specific on what his desired pleasure was, he received pain from the Cenobites."
Ritsuko looked at him and couldn't believe that he'd been shot twice.
"Who did this?" She wanted to know, and Asuka pointed at Gendo.
"All of this over a puzzle box," the redhead expresses.
"Get him into the infirmary."
Maya helped Kaji get Fuyutsuki inside the base, leaving Gendo with the Cenobites when Ritsuko locked the doors.
"How are you…here?" Fuyutsuki asks her.
"From what I can tell," she responds as they head into the elevator, "we're in the Labyrinth."
"Of course, the audience with Leviathan," went Maya as Asuka pressed the button for the infirmary. "When Fuyutsuki completed the puzzle, that's when Leviathan appeared. But if Commander Ikari claimed the prize that Fuyutsuki was supposed to receive, why hasn't the box reverted back to its original configuration?"
"Probably because Fuyutsuki hasn't really claimed his prize yet. Whosoever is in possession of the final configuration is the one that receives an audience with Leviathan for a prize. An audience with God."
"And Leviathan is God?" Misato asks.
"He is God to the Cenobites," Fuyutsuki groans. "That's all that matters."
"Yeah," Ritsuko agrees with him as the elevator reached their destination. "Leviathan is the only god they have ever known. The god of flesh, hunger and desire."
They got Fuyutsuki to a room where Ritsuko had three doctors operate on him to remove the two bullets that were in him.
"So…if we're still inside the Labyrinth," said Kaji, "how long may we be here?"
"We took the configuration from Ikari," Ritsuko responds, "so we're in a standstill right now. Unless, of course, the box resets itself."
"I hope it doesn't," Maya tells them, looking at the disfigured woman that Gendo took the box just to get back, heavily sedated and being worked on to remove the pieces that seemed to come from the Eva. "Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki tried to avoid offering any people's lives to get you out of the Labyrinth. And we found out what happened to the Third Child."
Ritsuko looks to Maya and wonders what they found out about the missing boy.
"He had the box before Fuyutsuki opened it and claimed a prize from Leviathan. It's likely that, unlike other people that had the box before he did, the Cenobites didn't hurt him or anything because, according to one of them that actually speaks, his pain was not theirs to claim. We don't know what prize he claimed from the Cenobites, but it's likely that he chose Laudarant."
"What's Laudarant?"
"Love. Lament for life. Lore for knowledge. Liminal for sensation. Lazarus for resurrection and Leviathan for power."
"I'm getting the impression that each one of those choices…if it were anyone else…would be disastrous and full of hurt."
"You were in the Labyrinth when they…when they took you, Dr. Akagi. Did you see anyone there that was…regretting anything that happened to them?"
"Excluding the Angels that ended up there…and a woman that had no skin, all I saw were Cenobites. But sometimes…I either heard or saw a boy while I was there. That had to be Shinji."
"I saw a little boy while I was asleep," went Asuka to them. "He was playing with a puzzle that was identical to the one we have. He said he was charged with holding it until someone came that wanted it, after which he would have to give the box to them. It was probably something he was tasked with by these Cenobites."
The doctors came out of the operating room and announced that Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki was out of immediate danger and was expected to recover once the sedation wore off.
"What about this woman?" Misato questioned, pointing to Yui Ikari or whoever this lady was that came out of the Eva.
"So far, she's expected to make a recovery from the bits and pieces of metal we removed from her, but we don't know how she'll be mentally once she wakes up. How did she wind up inside the Eva to begin with?"
-x-
Gendo had no power to control the Cenobites, and they left him alone once he was disarmed and incapable of doing anything to them…after one of them with the chattering teeth bit his right arm when he tried to approach the pinheaded one.
"He who missed the blade," the Cenobite had spoken, "has not received his desire fulfilled. Until he claims his prize, consider yourselves guests of the Labyrinth. Until he claims his prize…we have such sights to show all of you."
And then, being left alone by the Cenobites after he claimed his desire, again informed by them that his wife was returned to him, even though it was not in a perfect state, Gendo was bitterly disappointed by what he got in the end.
"There is no retreat," he heard a gasping voice and looked up at one of the Cenobites that returned, somewhat resembling a woman, but her face and body were extremely mutilated beyond the usual tolerance for mutilation. "Once a threshold has been crossed, all you can do…is search for greater thresholds. Your grandfather knew that when he chose his reward."
Gendo slowly got back to his feet and backed away from the Cenobite. Even if it wasn't after him, he didn't feel safe without a gun.
"You don't deserve your breath, Gendo."
Running back into the base, his only thought was of getting to Yui, to know how maimed she was and what, if anything, he could have done to help her recover now that she was back.
-x-
"Aah…" Fuyutsuki groaned as he felt like crud, waking up and finding himself in a hospital room. "Is this Hell?"
"You wish," he heard Ritsuko's voice as he turned to his right, seeing her sitting beside him. "How do you feel?"
"Like I've been shot twice. How long was I out?"
"Three hours. We're not sure how long we're gonna be here in this maze, though."
"Maze? We're…we're still in the Labyrinth?"
"Unfortunately."
"The Cenobites?"
"Last anyone checked, they're in Commander Ikari's office. I'm guessing that they have setup a temporary base there."
"Oh, they're just waiting for something else to happen."
"Yeah, for you to claim your prize."
"I was expecting you to be returned when I approached them."
"It seems like your audience was disrupted when Ikari shot you and took the box from you. You're still entitled to whatever it is you want to have fulfilled by the god. It's just a matter of when you're able to pick up where you were before the interruption."
Fuyutsuki then notices that Ritsuko has the puzzle box in her hands.
"Where is Ikari?" He asks her.
"With his wife," she answers. "Should we be concerned about him?"
"Don't let him retake the puzzle. He already got one desire fulfilled, I hate to see him try to have another just because he decided to be greedy."
"Honestly, I think these versions of the puzzle box only allow for one desire per person."
Fuyutsuki could've tried to sit up and take the puzzle box, but he was in no condition right now to do anything but rest. Just because he was out of immediate danger after being shot twice a few hours ago, it didn't mean he was ready to go back to work right then and there. Still, his goal remained the same: Retrieve Ritsuko Akagi from the Cenobites.
Unbeknownst to them, unseen by anyone else, a little boy from before was watching them, holding a puzzle box in his hands…with a small smile.
To be continued…
A/N: The seduction is in having a desire fulfilled. The destruction is in having a desire fulfilled, but not comprehending the consequences that follow its fulfillment if they affect other people.
