CENTURIES AGO
"I have something to tell you that would pique your interest. I think you would do well to know this piece of information. I learned it from a Dead Apostle who had recently acquired the rank of ancestor."
"What might that be?"
"In the far Southern reaches of this Earth lay an immensely powerful entity of unknown origin."
"An unrecorded species of Phantasmal?"
"Possibly. It would have to be a Phantasmal of similar capabilities to the 'Bull of Heaven' from the late Age of Gods."
"Something that powerful would surely have been discovered by the mage's association."
"No one visits Antarctica. It is a barren wasteland devoid of anything meaningful to a mage. Furthermore, it is a hard location to navigate towards. The cold, rough seas spare none and the land itself is even more inhospitable. Some would have better luck reaching this sea."
"I understand. That is logical."
A brief silence followed the older Dead Apostle's reply.
"I have my own theory on what that entity in the South Pole may be."
"And that would be?"
"Aristoteles."
"Akin to the spider dormant in the far West?"
"Correct. It seems to be extraterrestrial in nature and is far stronger than any known species of Phantasmal, even in the Age of Gods. Creatures such as the Bull of Heaven of Mesopotamia and the Hydra of Greece were exceptions, not the rule and there is simply no way they could survive off of the leylines in the modern era."
"That makes sense. For such a powerful Phantasmal to survive, it would need an incredibly powerful energy source and the leylines in Antarctica are notoriously feeble."
"That brings me on to my main piece of evidence. The Ultimate One located in the South does not feed off of magical energy at all."
"Preposterous. Magical energy is the only efficient way to give a vessel of similar scale to a Phantasmal from the Age of Gods enough energy to function."
"It works off of electromagnetic energy, similar to those solenoid coils invented in Atlas. This energy core produces an infinite amount of electromagnetic energy. I don't doubt that, if awakened, ninety percent of the Earth's population would be wiped out, even if it stayed in the South Pole."
"I assume the core of this Aristoteles is the most vital subject of this conversation. If we figured out how to harness that core then the 'Soil of Genesis' and your reincarnation magecraft could be easily perfected."
"Indeed. However, I cannot leave this sea with you else the Princess will come for my life. We shall meet again, 100 years from now in Africa, and make an expedition to Antarcita together where we shall study the Ultimate One's core."
"Very well. I shall await you at the Southern tip. If you do not arrive after three months I shall assume the Princess had claimed your life and journey there alone."
"I anticipate our next project together, Fabrow Rowan."
"Likewise, Michael Roa Valdamjong."
"For curiosity's sake, what is the lifescale of this Ultimate One?"
"Large and Heavy."
"Then the Princess is stronger?"
"Of course. She is the perfect lifeform on this Earth. She adapts to anything and everything that is thrown at her. She is the ultimate True Ancestor, she is without limits, she is indeed the Ultimate One of this planet, Archetype: Earth."
DECADES AGO
That man, Keel Lorenz, walked through the garden of depravity at a leisurely pace, not one bit concerned with the abominations that constantly created new pieces of 'art' for their own sick, twisted entertainment. He paid no attention to the 'spiders' that screamed in agony, the 'flowers' that sat in a content bliss and the fiery rotting corpses that limped with inhuman groans.
This small French town was once a peaceful and happy community but, in the span of two days, had been transformed into a literal hellscape. The vampires that had arrived here had wasted no time in turning this place into their own personal circus ground where each and every human played the role of a lab rat that they could do whatever they wished to. The psychotic playground would make any compassionate human go insane.
Fortunately for Keel, he had left such human emotions behind long ago.
At the end of the street stood an unusual picture of beauty. It was a tall woman with long pink hair tied into two unnatural cones on each side. Laid upon her head was a crown of sorts made from rose buds and large ribbons came down from it. She wore a dress that matched her hair and only covered the sides of her waist, coming down in bushy frills. The rest of her body was completely naked aside from the bramble that circled around her body and passed between her large breasts, the black ribbon that looked like a belt that covered her waist and the choker made of roses and brambles. All of this is to say that the inhuman monster that stood in front of Keel was a being of unparalleled beauty and a being of unparalleled cruelty.
She made no attempt at hiding the sadistic smirk that sprouted on her face from seeing all of the tortured objet d'art that covered the blackened town. She observed in amusement as one man who had managed to survive this long was caught by a transfigured dead, one who's body parts had been stretched into a ghastly shape. The legs were elongated into two metre long limbs that possessed two knees and the bones jutted out of the feet to create hooked claws. This same process happened to the left arm and two extra pairs grew from the shoulder and thoracic respectively. The right arm was swollen beyond natural ability, the muscles in the arm quite literally exceeding the size of any other individual part of its body, and it was tipped with a disturbingly human-like hand. The face was left untouched aside from the addition of a couple extra pairs of inhuman eyes.
It was this… monstrosity that dug its fangs into the poor man and ended his life in a most brutal way. Within seconds, brambles sprouted from the chest of the man and from them blossomed roses. They stretched into an almost beautiful rose bush over the corpse. It wasn't long before the soil then bloated up and burst into a cloud of blood and the roses quickly withered away into dust.
The vampiress frowned for a split second but quickly returned to her previous expression and locked eyes with Keel Lorenz.
"Are you the guest that the Maledetto Serpente wishes to see?" Her accent was italian and her voice carried a dangerous edge to it.
The human nodded.
"Then follow me unless you wish to become another piece in this beautiful Esibizione Artistica." Her voice lit up in joy upon mentioning the gruesome sight that encompassed the town.
The man and woman walked in silence, neither thinking the other as something worth their time, and paid no heed to the atrocities they strolled past as they made their way to the town centre, to the church where the mastermind behind this massacre awaited the one who would bring to him eternity.
As soon as the church came into full view, the Dead Apostle Ancestor Rita Rozay-En walked off to who knows where to do who knows what. Keel did not stop for a second to witness the departure of his tour guide and proceeded into the church.
Upon opening the doors he was met with the sight of a 18 year old girl with dark blue hair and piercing red eyes skinning someone by uplifting tiny strips of skin akin to hang nails and pulling them the entire length of an arm. The pair were directly above a pit of corpses and near dead people who awaited a most brutal death at the hands of this vampire. Upon seeing the middle-aged man who strolled into this unholy holy sanctum of cruelty, the girl crushed the head of the man she'd been torturing without looking nor hesitating.
"Keel Lorenz?" She questioned.
"Indeed. I presume that you are this generation's incarnation of Michael Roa Valdamjong."
"Of course," The girl pointed to a pew on the front row, "Let us then sit down and chat for a bit."
The unlikely pair sat down on the pew while putting as much distance between each other as possible.
"Your goal is the instrumentality of human kind, right?" The cruel smile had never disappeared on the girl's face and almost seemed to grow upon asking that question.
"Indeed. That is the goal of Seele and we shall carry it out no matter what. You have to ability to help us with this, do you not?" The man's voice was deep and monotone throughout, as if he didn't care for the one thing he truly cared for.
"I do. In the Southern reaches of the Earth, in that frozen desert called Antarctica lays a primordial being that had landed on Earth millions of years ago. I've called it Adam and in the next hundred years the seeds that it had planted will hatch and make their way to reunite with their progenitor and initiate the Second Impact, a cataclysmic event that will wipe out the majority of life on Earth and pave the way for a new species to arise. The Counter Force will be incapable of interfering with this so only humanity can prevent it."
"So you're telling us to initiate the Second Impact? It does not sound like the instrumentality we've been aiming for."
"Because it isn't. In order to ensure the completion of human instrumentality, you have to force the Second Impact to happen on your terms and reduce Adam to an embryonic state. The resulting cataclysm will be greatly reduced in scale. Another important piece lies in Japan. It is the seed of humanity, the progenitor of our race and I've called it Lillith. If you succeed in using the Lance of Longinus embedded in Adam to merge Lillith, Adam and your own flesh, you shall ascend to become a god with the power to merge all humans into one consciousness."
"Thank you," Despite the fact that this was the most important information Keel had heard in his life, his voice was devoid of any gratitude, "With this, Seele can now achieve our goal of human instrumentality and bring humanity to the next stage of evolution."
At that moment, Roa wondered something. She questioned how many times she had seen someone who dreamt of becoming something far greater than themselves and evolving into a being beyond all humanity. How many people had she met who aimed to shed every shred of humanity in them to fulfil one single goal? She had lost count a long time ago, back when she was starting out as a Dead Apostle. At the very least, Roa knew that she herself was counted among that number.
She doubted that Keel had the ability to pull this off and that's why she told him. There is only one being akin to God on Earth and she would never allow all of humanity to end. When the angels awaken, Arcueid Brunestud would fulfil her role as Archetype: Earth and fight each and every one of them and win if she thought that humanity was unable to handle the threat. She had no doubts about that.
There was nothing on this Earth more powerful than her, not even Ort or Adam could match her limitless power.
The White Princess of the True Ancestors was truly the eternity that she had dreamed of.
Roa watched as Keel walked away and then called out to him, "I thought you might like to know this but my next incarnation will be the eldest son of the Tohno family in Japan, the one that is headed by a man called Makihisa Tohno. And also, all 15 angels must be destroyed to ensure the completion of human instrumentality. You will find the instructions in the true Dead Sea Scrolls I devised so many lives ago."
"Very well. I thank you for your cooperation. I shall depart now."
The church doors closed and Roa was left alone with the screaming, near dead victims that still remained at the bottom of the pit.
"When will the princess show up? I have to admit she's stretching my patience."
PRESENT
"Honestly I'm shocked." The vampire's face was twisted into a large grin as he looked at the man bleeding out in front of him, "To think that the man who put himself into a position of power to subvert and betray the people he worked under would fall to a man doing the exact same thing. The irony is so sweet!"
He had long, bushy and unkept black hair that covered the right side of his face. His left eye was, like all vampires, a bright red. He wore only a lab coat on his torso revealing a well defined six pack and on his legs were a pair of black trousers kept in place with a belt that had a greek cross imprinted on the front. His feet were tipped with plain black shoes and his fingers tipped with sharp claws.
This was the current generation's Roa who had possessed the former eldest son of the Tohno family.
The man he looked down at was none other than the commander of Nerv who was bleeding out from large claw gashes in his side, courtesy of Roa.
"I had figured that you would have your own agenda, that's why I had merged Adam into my own body. You cannot activate the Third Impact without me." Even while bleeding out, neither Gendo's face nor his voice displayed any emotion besides a slight arrogance. Roa, on the other hand, had his cockiness on full display for all to see.
"You've got it all backwards, commander," the malicious grin only widened as Roa prepared to savour the expression he was about to see, "I didn't join with you to start the Third Impact. I did it to stop the Third Impact."
His stone-faced expression broke into that of pure shock.
"That's right Ikari Gendo. I, Michael Roa Valdamjong, had never intended to help you in the first place. Neither yours', nor Seele's plans shall come to fruition. I set it all up that way."
"I see…"
"Drown in your misery and agonise until you bleed your last. Everything you did these past 14 years was for naught. I have been planning this moment for centuries ever since I discovered Adam in Antarctica and uncovered its truth." Roa walked backwards towards the desk in the centre of the room and sat on it as he gazed at the man on the ground in front of him, "You know I find humans quite fascinating. To think you'd do all this because you were unable to cope with the loss of your wife. It's truly extraordinary. Everyone is different, unique and I had originally became a Dead Apostle to study more and more people. That desire had been forgotten but, thanks to you, I remembered why I started on this path in the first place."
Roa's legs were crossed and his chin rested in his palm. It was a familiar sight for Gendo. He had worked with Roa for 3 years and not once had he every displayed any shock or concern for what was happening. He was honest with his emotions as well which meant the Roa was the complete opposite of Gendo who had built up a mask for years to hide his emotions. He understood now that Roa had tricked everyone far more than they had ever realised. He may have been honest but that did not mean that he would say everything. The 800 year old genius had completely overturned decades of planning with centuries of planning.
"The human instrumentality project was something I could never accept. It stood in the way of humanity's completion after all. One collective consciousness is not infinite knowledge and there's no guarantee that I would be allowed into the Garden of Eden in the first place. Everything I love about humanity would be wiped with both the Second and Third Impacts and so I devised a plan to subvert both and eradicate the possibility of a Fourth."
Roa then stood up and, for the first time, his expression morphed into a more serious one. He made his final address to the man who'd barely spoken this whole time, "I was a Presbyter of the Holy Church so I shall ask you this. Do you have any last words to give, any last testaments, confessions?"
"..." Gendo did not respond at first as he slowly tilted his head up towards the vampire that stood a few metres away, "...Tell Shinji that I'm sorry. I was scared of him and could not face him. I truly thought that separating myself from his life was the best I could do for Shinji. I shall be with you at last, Yui."
With those words, the curtain on Ikari Gendo's life closed.
"His years of planning ended in failure. His life accomplishment was running away from his child and almost ending the world because he couldn't face reality. He was truly pathetic. Wouldn't you agree, Elesia?" Roa turned his head over his shoulders and was met with the sight of an 18 year old girl with dark blue hair and dark blue eyes standing at the entrance of the office. She was dressed in a nun's habit and a cross dangled from a golden necklace.
"Indeed. He has paid for his sins with his death and now it is time for us to pay for our sins." At once, the girl tore off the habit and revealed a blue battle dress and boots already equipped on her body. Many belts were wrapped around her legs and waist, sword hilts decorated each one. Tattoos were visible on every inch of her exposed skin that depicted various Christian imagery. She picked up a large pile bunker that had been laying next to her and it was none other than the great weapon of reincarnation condemnation, the Seventh Holy Scripture.
"I see you've come more than well prepared for this showdown, Sister," A crimson snake-like tattoo made itself visible on Roa's torso and electricity crackled from his hands.
"Now that the show on this whole Nerv business is over, shall we dance?"
LATER
There were no observers to watch the mighty vampire in that writhed on the floor. He screamed and dissolved into ash, his death cries more pathetic than the whining of a child who didn't get the toy he asked for.
"I'm sure you've experienced this sensation countless times, vampire. If there's one difference here…" The boy who stood over the dying body and soul of Michael Roa Valdamjong was 15 years old with short and spiky black hair and blue eyes that shone like the moon. He was covered in blood and his cold gaze was filled with disgust and weariness.
"...It's that you won't be coming back."
Tohno Shiki, or rather Nanaya Shiki, plucked his knife from the chest of Roa and the vampire finally dissolved into ashes. With that, the incident had been brought to a close. There were no more enemies to fight, no more battles to worry about.
Everyone could go back to living a normal life.
Shiki stumbled across the charred grasses of the Geofront towards the corpse of Ciel. He knelt down beside her and looked solemnly at her blank eyes. She had been immortal, truly unkillable, but not even that could escape True 'Death'. The bastard vampire had possessed a weaker variation of Shiki's own Mystic Eyes of Death Perception but even those facsimiles of the real thing were more than enough to put the girl down for good, the girl who had previously been Roa herself.
He couldn't help but feel guilty. If he didn't possess the ability to see 'death' then Roa would never have realised that he too could see such a thing and Ciel would've won. She was one of the strongest people he knew after all.
He looked into the distance and saw three figures walking beside each other. He let a brief smile light up his face.
"Those three are still alive. I'm glad." He made his way towards the pilots of Evangelion Units 00, 01 and 02 while carrying the bisected body of his Senpai. He wondered, for a moment, why Roa had even involved himself in all of this in the first place. Not even Ciel nor Arcueid had known why.
'There's no point in thinking about it. He's already dead.' Shiki thought.
And thus brought an end to a plan that had stretched on for 300 years and a life over double that.
CLOSE
I thought that it would be interesting to think about how Evangelion would change if Roa had taken an interest in the events of the NGE and so I made this one shot. I'll probably turn this into a full fic at some point but I would likely use SHIKI instead of Roa, leaning into the far side more than the near side.
Progress on Mirror of the World's next chapter is running slowly but I've done about half the chapter so far and it's currently about the length of the previous chapters. I plan on getting the rest of the arc done in a single chapter. Honestly it's taken so long to come out because 1. GCSEs are stressful as fuck when you are trying to get high grades and 2. I have a bad habit of procrastinating.
Hopefully this will get me more into the work flow of writing.
I hope you enjoyed and I hope you all have a good day/night. Bye.