NEON GENESIS: EVANGELION REFOLDED
I do not own Neon Genesis: Evangelion or any Neon Genesis: Evangelion-related media, those works are owned and in the hands of Gainax and Hideaki Anno, this is simply an unofficial fan-driven story based on the characters and story present, to be written in a new way for people to enjoy.
Balls To The Walls!
Shinji was quickly ushered into a branch of the main room, into a much smaller one that contained an isolated observation booth that led into another tiny room with a chair and helmet at the epicenter of it.
"What is this Misato-san?" Shinji asked wearily as he was sent into next room over.
"We'll tell you once you get on the chair and wear the helmet next to it." Misato replied eagerly as she left the room, Shinji could hear another voice whispering through the creak of the door as Misato said her farewell.
He'd stood there, the cogs in his brain turning, before he grew tired of himself, making him regress into the small reclining chair and grabbing himself the black slick helmet, sticking it onto his head as instructed.
All that greeted him was a black screen that encompassed his entire vision, leaving him slightly unnerved with the view.
"Shinji-kun, this is a combat simulation so I and my team can see how you fare against others in fighting scenarios." Misato explained, continuing further.
"To operate properly Shinji-kun, you only have to think about the movement in the simulation, don't like actually do it with your body." Misato's voice marginally blasted his ears due to the compact size of the helmet.
Shinji squinted his eyes hard as the black suddenly turned into a vibrant white then flashing across the screen with varying colors and patterns that made him slightly disoriented from it before it finally stopped to cut to a clear sky over an impossibly small city, that strangely mirrored the city he had just passed earlier on the ride to here.
He attempted to lift his hands up to look, only finding purple ones in the stead of his human ones, they were made of shining steel and stretchy rubber components where his joints should've been.
Shinji briefly panicked, "Where are my hands?!" He said in bursts into the helmet, his voice echoed in the enclosed helmet that made his ears hurt slightly further from the noise.
He briefly glanced about his surroundings, finding fluffy spirals of clouds floating about the clear blue skies above him, as well as a large rainbow stretching over the horizon that surrounded a mountain beyond the glades and meadows that encompassed the urban landscape under him, it was calming to him with the serenity.
The center of his vision darkened slightly as if something from above passed it, as well as the dimming the vibrant colors of the rainbow on the horizon, turning the landscape into a plain blue sky for a moment.
A whistling sounds reminiscent of a bomb quickly tumbled towards him exponentially becoming louder, forcing him to twist his head, or rather the simulation's, towards the open sky.
In a ruby flash, a color of visceral red splattered across his eyes as his head began to hammer against his skulls, causing him to scream his lungs out as the pain reverberated into his sternum, he looked up towards the sky, seeing a robotic red head with four green eyes looking down on a knife, that had been plunged straight into his heart.
He desperately attempted to push away the blood-red robot from his chest with his hands, only being met with stiffness and resistance as the thing sent the blade further into his chest, making him scream even more inside the condensed helmet that made his ears ring out as he just flailed his hands about against the beast, still not moving.
Raising his right leg up in a pitiful attempt, he kicked squarely into the chest of his attacker that released both him and the knife stuck into his chest, afterwards scooting his bottom desperately across the city that landed him into the wall of a skyscraper.
Shinji cocked his head all around wherever he could see, however the sight of red being eluded his vision.
Standing himself up, quite wobbly in appearance, made it seem as if he was thousands of meters long into the sky, made him realize how much destruction he had caused to the simulation of, certainly, Tokyo-3, he could even see NERV HQ from where he was standing.
Granted respite, he controlled his breathing as he swiveled his head around his surroundings much slower than previously before when he was bloodshot from the adrenaline of the attack that all felt to real for him.
"Misato-san, my body hurts a lot!" Shinji whimpered, though he did not receive any answers to his wails.
Then, a thousand windows shattered in an instant, as the attacker appeared once more, by bashing itself through the skyscraper and tackling Shinji to the floor – this time on his stomach.
There was no chance for Shinji now, at least in his mind, so he resigned himself eagerly as a sharp pain throttled into his head, making him scream in absolute agony as the blows reach in and out – causing him to almost faint to the pain.
As Shinji whimpered and squirmed in the seat with the pain radiating from his head, slowly feeling the knife being yanked out from the back of his head, leaving a small burns scorched his head as the blade finally left his body for good.
"Did you amplify it Ritz?" Misato's voice pinged, worried, the words echoed into his ringing ears as he struggled to breathe before the scene before him return to the black void, releasing him of all of his pain quickly as if it never actually been there for him to feel it.
"Shinji-kun!-" Misato shrieked at the sight as she bashed her way into the chamber. "Are you okay?" She'd hurriedly ran to his side, kneeling as she helped him stand himself up from the chair.
"Yeah, I'm okay.." Shinji trailed off as he caught the sight of a twinge of red hair flowing back into the observation room, before his gaze fixated on something else, following an obviously fake-blonde doctor who swung herself inside, carrying a clipboard filled with layers of pure white and macabre black scribbles of paper, a blue pen clipped on her breast pocket, and a small tablet tucked under her arm still turned on and glowing into her lab coat.
The doctor quickly and gently pushed aside Misato as she inspected Shinji.
"How's your head Ikari-san?" The doctor asked while reaching for a small flashlight in her pocket, swiping it up and turning it on right in front of Shinji's face, slightly blinding him. "Fine." Reflexively saying as he squinted to adjust to the sudden bright light in front of him, the pain around his head and chest ached for help.
"Follow the light for me please." The doctor instructed as she slowly turned the light around in an arc around Shinji's head. "It kind of stings my eyes." Shinji commented as he followed the light as it moved, slightly lagging behind as his head continuously thumped and berated in his skull.
"Only for a minute…" The doctor insisted, and Shinji just wanted some respite after that exhilarating and terrifying experience within the black helmet that made him squirm mentally as he thought of it, and the horrific red beast that crumpled him.
"Okay, try moving your limbs for me?" The doctor pocketed the flashlight away, still kneeling and smiling, it wasn't as warm as Misato's.
He did as instructed, barely moving his limbs as they called for a halt by screaming into him that made him slightly whimper as he let his body rest. "It feels really sore for me."
"It's just of how immersive the helmet's simulation that made your mind think it was actually real, is it a burning sensation?" The doctor raised an eyebrow before caressing his hands and moving them carefully through the joints in his body.
"No, my hands just feel stiff to move." Shinji muttered as he tried to contain the agony present in his limbs, whimpering silently in his seat that made his back shiver up to the sharp knives poking on his legs and arms.
"Don't worry, it'll go away in due time." She simply said to him and stood up, still carrying that same dead smile at him that made him furrow his brows in slight fear that made him to fidget with his fingers to pass the time.
After being satisfied with Shinji's condition, she would move onto the black helmet that was covered in sweat on the inside, before quickly setting it back down on the push-cart table and dragging it with her with her arm.
Misato made a move for Shinji before being grabbed by the arm of the doctor with her other hand, basically dragging her out of the room, just into the doorway.
"He's fine, he is just disorientated from the equipment." The doctor commented with a side glance to Shinji through the open door, before twisting her eyes to transfix on Misato's, the two of them quickly fully entered into the observation booth, probably to discuss what exactly happened during the simulation, which was Shinji's best guess, he could only pick up on hushed whispers from the slightly ajar door, however he stared into the matte glass that separated him from the two of them, and then the abrupt shut of a door that stopped the hushed whispers that turned into an eerie silence.
"Hey twerp." A shock coiled around Shinji's spine as he heard another new voice emanating from, what he assumed the door speaking to him in English, it was strangely feminine.
"What's the problem with you? Did I paralyze you or something?" The voice shouted in Japanese now, furiously at him for no apparent reason he could discern, it was then did Shinji realize it was another person, a girl that could look like his age.
Her features denoted of obvious Japanese descent with her small face, but her red hair shimmered in the encompassing artificial lights from the ceiling that made her look as if she was glowing to him.
Shinji kept on staring before the sudden sounds of snapping noises flashed into his eyes as the girl leaned into him with a hand outstretched as she snapped in front of his pupils, causing him to blink away his dry eyes and recoil slightly from the bursts of noise.
"C'mon say something!" She commanded though clear and simple to his ears, he was slightly lost as to what he should say.
"I'm Shinji." Was all he could mutter as he continued to look down into the floor, causing the girl to snort as she grabbed the back of his hair, pulling his face up to meet hers.
"And I am, the great Asuka Langley-Soryu!" She devilishly smiled with her eyebrows in a cocky slant, essentially she had yelled at him after proudly stating her name as if it were like summoning a god to being or something dangerous rapidly approaching, it thumped his ears further into his growing tinnitus.
"Y'know-" She suddenly took a seat next to Shinji on the apparently long chair he was resting on, though there was small gap between their arms. "You are so-so-so-so horrible at this! I beat you in record time!"
"Excuse me..?" Shinji whimpered as he recalled the terrible flash of red appearing right before his head caved in. "You were the red robot that attacked me..?" Shinji pensively frowned at her, she reciprocated with a toothy grin.
"Mhm!" She said with an affirmative tone. "With my gorgeous and mighty Eva, I took down your one so fast I bet you didn't even see me at all!" Asuka chortled, almost crying, as she pointed at him with her finger.
Shinji could only muster up… nothing.
"Are you going to say anything?" She'd ask still with her teeth shining at him. "Actually, I think you should be resentful instead, it'd be make the victory sweeter." Her already outstretched smile, reached even further up the corners of her lips that made Shinji even more on edge, he wished she would just leave him alone, yet he couldn't bring himself to do it.
Asuka's expression suddenly turned as the silence hung about the isolated room, her face slowly contorted from one comparable to a devil's grin to a pensive face as if studying him, her eyes transfixed on his – and his eyes, transfixed on hers, pupils stuck in place in a hypnotic trance, halting the motion of time.
A man suddenly burst into the room, breaking their contemplative stare. A much older man with camouflaged jogging pants and a white tank top, calling out in English, confusing Shinji as the two of them twisted their gaze at the door. "Asuka, break's over, we need to run off melee discipline." The man left as quickly as he entered, despite this, it broke the pair's eye contact as Asuka quickly jogged out and yelling out to wait for her in a sudden change to English, leaving Shinji in the dust and sitting by himself, alone on the chair.