Geofront, AEL Headquarters
January 29, 2042
1307 hours

Shinji winced and carefully shifted in his wheelchair to lessen the pins-and-needles feeling currently bothering his rear from having sat in the same pose without noticing for over an hour. This was, arguably, the worst part of his condition: padding the seat enough so that it didn't squeeze the blood flow from sitting on it for a long time made it all the harder to stand up whenever he needed to go to the bathroom.

He half-considered asking for a proper chair just so that he can sit more comfortably, but all the ones he saw from afar during the short tour of the facility were of the rolling kind that would be even worse. At least the wheelchair had brakes to keep it from wanting to roll out from under him if he shifted his weight onto the front of the armrests in preparation for standing up; with rolling chairs, faceplanting into a desk two or three times was enough to put him off them for the rest of his life.

Of course, there was a much simpler, if in hindsight embarrassing, solution: don't sit in the same pose for hours and you don't go numb.

And it would indeed be simple if he wasn't so engrossed in the material that was put into him for reading. It opened with a heavily redacted primer on those giants he saw in the hangar yesterday – and why is there an underground hangar beneath an already underground cavern, to begin with? – and went onward from there.

He had always been somewhat... ahead of the curve, so to speak. Even in school, he was always ahead of everyone else, able to fill in the gaps that were supposed to be filled in with knowledge taught later on. People who knew his parents kept repeating he took after them in his smarts, but he privately had doubts.

If he really was like his father, how did the man find it so easy to order people around? Hell, even talk to them?

Not that there was much to talk about in the first place. He never really made any friends in school; the children in his age group were quickly left behind and out of his life the first time he was recognized by the teachers as being so far ahead of them that he was allowed (made, really, thanks to his father) to skip a year. And then another.

Then another and another. And before he knew it, he was solving the high school graduation exam under the gaze of an incredulous proctor before he was even supposed to be out of elementary.

While the other boys were hanging out in their little circles, thirteen year old Shinji Ikari was running tensile strength calculations for interwoven titanium and carbon fiber composites in various configurations to try to find correlations between material structuring and performance improvements that could potentially be extrapolated into further improvement... which he had a hunch wouldn't make for good party talk even if anyone were to invite him to a party.

Presuming, of course, that he was even allowed to talk about it without corporate non-disclosure agreements getting in the way.

But it was all just so much more fascinating to understand the inner workings of things beyond the 'big machine that does things' a layperson would stop at, even if many of the adults didn't think he actually did. And what he skimmed so far in the time he had since being left alone in this office?

This was big. And not just in the literal pun way. His brain was already brimming with ideas after ideas, even though he knew none of it will likely see the light of the day.

All the better – especially since it distracted him from thinking about last evening. Finding sleep was already difficult enough under an unfamiliar ceiling, let alone suddenly under strong gravity after spending a week in weightlessness... but what little sleep he managed to get was suffused with dreams of the kind he'd die of embarrassment before he'd confess to anyone.

He had no idea how he was going to look Rei in the face again.

Ever again, maybe.

It was a good thing he wasn't recording at the time. He wasn't at all sure he'd be able to bring himself to delete it, even if he wouldn't be fully aware just what a massive breach of her privacy it would be. For that matter, his current reading material also sorely tempted him to ignore the NDA he signed earlier that day, if only he'd get a chance to go over it again later. Of course, if he actually were to use it in his own work, it would eventually get found out - and the thought of his mother finding out exactly how he pulled it off was a can of worms much bigger than what he wanted to deal with.

It was a good thing the guards at the gate were too occupied with thoroughly searching his wheelchair to sweep him as well with their metal detectors.

He was shaken out his thoughts when the door suddenly opened and Yui walked in. – "I don't mean to interrupt your work, I just wanted to check in and see if you needed anything."

"Oh, nothing right now. I've just been looking at these structural diagrams." – He noticed her suppressing a yawn. And those bags under her eyes he didn't remember being there the day before. – "Are... you alright?"

"Yes, I'm just tired." – she replied with a sigh. – "Difficult surgery."

"...surgery?"

"Unit-00's arm transplant from her prototype. We just finished amputating it."

Ah. One of those giants from yesterday. He was wondering for a moment if they were working on animals on something.

...why would such a thing even require the chairwoman's direct oversight? His father never went down into the factory wing on Polygonus.

"So they really are organic? I know you said so, I'm just... having a hard time believing it. I don't think even dinosaurs grew that big."

"Only aquatic ones did."

Wait, what?

Did they make dinosaurs here?!

Yui evidently noticed his incredulous expression because she sat down next to him and began to elaborate. – "We examined whatever DNA fragments we could extract from museum exhibits that survived Second Impact for cross-referencing purposes with modern life, mostly elephants and whales, as the closest natural analogues to the skeletal structure we needed to create."

"I thought they were synths."

"Similar in principle, but not quite. They are purpose-created lifeforms, not modifications of an existing one. Nature gave us useful shortcuts and having semi-functional Combine technology as a reference point was invaluable, yes, but in the end they are still products of human science. I assure you, ethically there is nothing different between them and, say, a genetically modified tissue culture grown to produce a specific hormone for medical use." – She smiled and reached up to ruffle his hair. – "This project has been in progress for a very long time. I remember you were still in kindergarten when we began running the initial simulations for DNA expression forecasts."

"That long?"

"Oh yes. You would not believe how many times I had to fight the executive board to keep it from being shut down. The expenses alone were astronomical. Frankly, if it weren't for the president's recent interest, the AEL would already be filing for bankruptcy from the costs of operating three Evangelions in addition to all our other operations that actually bring profit. This project has been all-or-nothing from the beginning." – She sighed again. – "I have to admit, I sometimes find myself wondering whether we would be in better financial straits if your father was still working for us. But it's better this way."

An unreadable expression flashed over her face before she looked him straight in the eye. – "Tell me, over the years... did you ever wonder why I divorced him?"

"...sometimes." – he admitted. – "B-but I never asked."

"I'll tell you why when you're older. It's enough for you to know right now that he crossed a line I could not, in good conscience, ignore as a scientist, as a wife, and as a mother. I'd just like to ask you not to bring him up around Rei. Okay?"

A deep, sinking feeling begun emerging in Shinji's stomach as his brain ran ahead and started filling in the blanks.

"...did... did he..." – He forced himself to swallow before voicing words he dreaded to speak. – "...molest her?"

The sheer horror that appeared on Yui's face made him regret it immediately. – "Oh, heavens no! Nothing like that, don't you worry. It's... complicated."

While part of him was immensely relieved, it was an answer he had become all too familiar with from adults over the years. Everything was always too complicated for a kid to understand.

"I'm sorry about the reminiscing. You're probably not here for that."

"Oh, it's nothing wrong. I'm sorry for prying."

If Rei would've wanted to tell him, she already would've. But then again, they barely even exchanged a few words since he arrived and after yesterday...?

No. Don't think about it.

Don't think about it.

"Don't you worry. But like I was saying, my staff and I have had a lot of time discussing the ethics of creating life for the purpose of weaponizing it." – she continued. – "As a matter of fact, you can go ahead and ask the Evangelions themselves; they were never kept in the dark about what they are and why do they exist. None of them ever protested against it."

Shinji perked up at that immediately. – "I think I've seen references to an onboard AI...?"

"Yes, that is correct. They do need a high level of automation in order to be operated by a single pilot, just like any battleframe."

"But... you're talking like they're self-aware."

"They are." – Yui confirmed, making his eyes grow wide at the casual admission. – "I will admit that Unit-02's personality did not exactly develop in an ideal direction and Unit-01's development is still lagging behind the others, but they are fully cooperating with everything required of them. Whatever their opinion on the nature and magnitude of repairs required by their bodies may be, they understand the necessity. Even if they wouldn't, their cognitive hardware is physically airgapped from write access to anything that can be used to take independent action and they are keenly aware their own hands are too big for self-surgery, so we are quite safe from a rebellion by crippled cyborgs." – she joked with a light, almost smug smirk.

She then turned to his terminal and brought up something he almost didn't recognize was an x-ray image. It wasn't even the bones that confused him, but the other things, distinctly non-organic, that showed up attached to said bones.

Which was, in hindsight, rather ironic of him, of all people.

"As I've mentioned, everything below the elbow joint has been destroyed beyond recovery." – Yui began, audibly switching to what Shinji was already familiar with from other adults as a 'let's get down to business' mode. – "The biceps muscle itself is intact, but the tendon connecting it to the lower arm has also been destroyed and simply stitching it together with one taken from the prototype won't be nearly as stable as it used to be. Either end might tear itself off if overstressed before it's fully healed and we currently can't afford to wait for months until it does."

"I see..." – Shinji murmured as he reached over and brought up what he was fairly sure was a structural diagram of an intact arm's bones and muscles, looking pensive at the two images side-by-side for a moment. – "Wait, didn't you say there was a muscle weakness issue with the replacement? I-I mean, it's specific to the arm, not the machi- I mean, the model, isn't it?"

"It is, but we sadly don't have an alternative available at short notice." – she confirmed with a nod. – "Asking Gehirn to make a prosthetic would likely take months just to design, let alone build and test, followed by actually installing it, attaching the nerves, thoroughly testing it and having the pilot get used to it. To tell you the truth, we considered replacing the entire muscle, shoulder to elbow, with one taken from the prototype."

"I don't think that would've been a good idea." – he murmured again before realizing what he just said. – "Oh, I-I'm sorry! I didn't mean to second-guess you."

Yui shook her head. – "You did nothing of the sort. I'd like to hear what you're thinking."

"Well..." – He looked back at the screen. – "I don't know much about biology, but... this is basically just a load-bearing system, right? Replacing everything like you said might fix the elbow tendon, but if a tendon needs time to heal together with the bone, then we're just introducing a second weak point up here..." – He pointed on the screen. – "In the shoulder, which is under even more stress due to having to bear the upper arm's weight too."

"That's what we thought, too." – she confirmed. – "We may be able to graft at least some of the original muscle's fibers onto the new one to partially compensate for the loss of strength and it likely needs the armor to be replaced as well due to the added volume, but if it can expedite repairs-"

"Um..." – Shinji blurted out suddenly as something occurred to him. – "I-it's just a thought, but... the armor is cybernetically attached to the skeleton, isn't it?" – He pointed at what he know recognized was an anchoring implant in the humerus. – "Here?"

"It is."

"So the armor, by itself, can be removed and replaced without surgery?"

"Of course. How else could we perform maintenance?"

Oh, damn. He ran right into that one. Shinji felt like bashing his head into the desk in exasperation at himself, even though it's exactly what he needed at the moment. – "Then why not transplant just the tendon and augment the armor on that arm with powered movement assistance servos to take off the load? I mean, you said you were going to have to do that anyway to compensate for the weakness issue. It will make the arm heavier, sure, but all we need is for it to be able to hold up its own weight, isn't it?"

Yui gave the diagram a long, silent look, eyes slightly narrowed in what Shinji presumed was being in deep thought as she evidently tried to mentally picture his proposal.

"...that could work." – she said finally. – "I'll have to discuss this with the team, but... maybe you're right. We were thinking of subdermal cybernetics, but maybe we're looking at this from the wrong direction. In fact..." – Yui quickly tapped something on the tablet he had seen her carrying around, drumming her fingers on the desk for a few seconds. – "Maya?"

"Yes, ma'am?"

"Please put in an urgent status update query on the F-type equipment."

"Right away, ma'am."

Nodding to herself, Yui disconnected the call before looking back at him. – "Heavy fire support equipment. Includes a powered exoskeleton I believe we should be able to use as a stopgap until the armor is manufactured to the needed specs."

"Wha- An exoskeleton for a battleframe?"

The thought was rapidly starting to approach territory Shinji felt was ridiculously overcomplicated, even for this place where sculpting giants made of flesh as if they were cars in need of polish was apparently commonplace enough that nobody except him was batting an eye.

"It sounds paradoxical, I know, but remember that we are working with a lifeform here, not a machine." – she reminded him. – "Most of an Evangelion's internal volume is taken up by organs and other tissues, with only limited room for displacing or constricting them without injury or compromised functionality. It's why the reactor had to be mounted externally. Between the entry plug socket in the neck vertebra, the batteries between the lungs and all the structural reinforcement to keep all of it securely anchored to the spine and ribs during high-stress maneuvers, we simply ran out of space. Anything else, weapons or otherwise, have to be outside – and even Evangelions only have two hands."

Shinji looked back at the diagrams and let out a long breath. He was starting to see the downsides of the design, alright. – "Not easy to work around being organic, then."

"No, not easy at all."

Tokyo-2, Inner District 5
1346 hours

By the time the school day neared its end, Kaworu really wanted to go just home already, go into his room and shut everyone out.

Luckily the rest of the class didn't hear Rei's announcement regarding the identity of his morning harassers, so they didn't bother him beyond well-wishes for his arm. Not that those were unwelcome, of course. What annoyed him was a combination of Toji pestering him non-stop for details and Hikari sending him looks of mixed concern and "step out of line again and I'll throw you out myself" in equal measure. Kensuke in the meantime was furiously claiming to be looking online for any signs of Rei's behavior on the street having been recorded and uploaded as damning evidence, but so far nothing came up.

Why couldn't they just leave well enough alone?

The irony of his frustration did not escape him - especially once he realized that for all her pestering that Kaworu was "misbehaving", Hikari wasn't bothering Rei over the latter actually assaulting people in public (or missing school several times in a row, for that matter). The pigtailed girl seemed to be hell-bent on singling him out for even the slightest thing, though still not to the same extent she did for Toji (and even more thankfully without her paper fan being involved). Hell, even Asuka was more reasonable about the situation. Sure, she still grumbled at him for being an idiot, but it wasn't like she ever stopped. Or that she went out of her way to hound him about it.

He had half a mind to say no when during the recess before the last class of the day, Toji pulled him aside into one of the classrooms unused at the moment and Kaworu found himself surrounded by the familiar faces of boys from last year. He had occasionally been running into them in the school, but luckily not in the context of anything that got anyone into trouble.

"We're not letting you go alone."

In hindsight, he should've expected that they weren't asking about this arm just because they were worried. – "Why?"

"I read about these guys last year." – Toji replied. – "Their oyabun will skin their hides if they try openly starting shit. They won't try again if we're there too."

"Someone forgot to tell these ones, then." – Kaworu pointed out. – "They didn't seem to care."

"You weren't being struck yet." – Rei noted from where she leaned against the door with her arms folded before her chest, having still refused to let Kaworu out of her sight. – "Though their behavior was indeed atypical. I would have expected them to seek you out in private."

At least her concern for him was of the non-verbal kind.

"That's the point." – that other guy (Tokiwa, he thought was the name...? Kaworu almost didn't remember without the hoodie.) replied. – "They try anything again, we'll call the police on them. They're not going to risk anything with witnesses."

"In my old neighborhood, they would."

"Well, we're not there, are we? I've never been to Europe but over here, yakuza don't just shoot people in the street or blow their cars up or stuff like that."

"They do not need to." – Rei noted. – "A headcrab will suffice."

Everyone in the room stared at her in horror at the implication. – "...you are shitting me. Who the fuck would-?!" – a stunned Toji stammered out.

Rei just looked back at them with an unreadable expression behind her shades. – "Once the victim was released into the wilderness, police could not prove premediation." – was all she said.

"...you know what, forget it. I don't wanna know." – the boy stammered again, visibly green around the edges. And for good reason: there wasn't a single teen in the room (in the school, even) who wasn't endlessly drilled by parents and teachers alike right from kindergarten that if you see a hairless, bulbous, four-legged critter on the ground that visibly doesn't belong on Earth, you run in the opposite direction as fast as your legs will carry you.

Because if you don't, you don't get to go home ever again.

Kaworu didn't even want to think what could make someone want to inflict that fate on a fellow human.

"How far from the school do you live?" – another of the boys asked Kaworu, audibly eager to change the topic.

"District 6, why?"

"I live that way too. I'll meet you on the way."

"We too." – a third piped in, the one next to him nodding in silent agreement. – "When do you leave in the morning?"

Kaworu let out a pained sigh. – "Guys... you really don't need to."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't want you to get hurt over this!"

Why was that so difficult for everyone to understand all of a sudden?! He could take care of himself! It wasn't like he was going to go looking for trouble like this!

"So it's okay for you to risk yourself for someone else, but not the other way around?"

"That's not what I said."

"It's what you mean, though."

"Yeah, what's the deal? Aren't you the one who said all those things about helping out other people?"

Kaworu opened his mouth to reply but Toji, evidently having figured out he wasn't going to go for it, beat him to it with an irritated growl. – "For fuck's sake, man, stop being so pigheaded about this! Just let them do it if they want! Besides, we gotta go to class, so make up your mind already!"

"Okay, fine! Whatever."

Damn this day. Just let it end already.

Rei was, once again, there to help him get his coat on when they were finally released from classes. – "You made the correct decision."

"Not you too..." – Kaworu grumbled in response, but didn't really mean it.

He knew she'd be able to tell anyway.

"Their assistance at this time is welcome." – the girl continued. – "You are presently a target and I have other matters to attend to."

"You keep saying that. What are you doing that's so important?"

"Contingency plans." – She paused and looked down before continuing in a quieter tone. – "I... apologize for the timing. Had this incident happened but a few days sooner, I would be able to postpone."

Kaworu raised his good arm's hand under her chin and gently nudged it up until their eyes met. – "Don't worry." – he assured her with a small smile. – "I'll be fine. Just go."

She looked like she wanted to say something else, but ultimately just nodded.

Finally. At least one person listened to him today for a change.

It was mostly a moot point, though, as just beyond the school's gates was Shepard waiting next to his car in full officer dress uniform. – "Get in."

Kaworu didn't need to take a look around to know about the bewildered looks they were attracting as he joined Asuka on the back seat.

Great. More rumors are going to fly around about him soon.

Rei, however, made no motion to follow, shutting the door for him instead. – "You aren't coming?" – he asked.

"I have other business." – was all she said. – "Do not leave your home until tomorrow."

"Don't worry, I won't take my eyes off of him." – Shephard assured her from the driver's seat as he started up the engine.

As he looked out at the streets on the way home, Kaworu wasn't going to complain for the ride if it got him there faster in this cold. He never liked the winter.

Speaking of which... – "Sorry for taking your coat. This can't possibly be warm enough for winter."

"As a matter of fact, I was freezing my ass off until you showed up." – Shephard replied simply.

"Why come here in your uniform, then?"

"Because if the people who messed with you have any brains whatsoever, they'll think twice before striking a military officer which can get them sent to a gulag."

"...can it?"

"No, but they don't need to know that."

Fair enough. In fact... maybe he ought to point the other boys in Shephard's direction in the morning, then slip away while they're distracted exchanging ideas involving unwanted protection details?

Eh, one can dream.

"You don't need to take me to school tomorrow, if case you were thinking about it. Some guys from school might be showing up to make sure nothing happens to me on the way."

"What, you got your own boy band now?" – Asuka muttered.

"No, and it wasn't my idea either. They insisted."

Silence settled inside the car until they arrived to the apartment building and Kaworu looked out the window... at something that definitely wasn't supposed to be present.

"...why is there a police car here?"

"Because I made a call and wanted to make sure you won't run off somewhere while everyone's waiting for you." – Shephard replied as he finished parking on the side of the road before turning around and looking Kaworu straight in the eye. – "Now, here's the deal. We're gonna go in there and you're gonna tell us everything. No ifs, no buts."

"Is this really necessary?"

"Yes!" – said both father and daughter at the same time.

Kaworu decided then and there that he was really getting sick of this day.

Geofront, Sector T
1722 hours

The oppressive silence made the girl's footsteps echo even louder than they normally would be, even though she made no attempts to have her steps be louder on purpose. Such attention plays were beneath her and were one of the reason nobody would ever catch her dead wearing high-heels.

The other being that she would take having a stable footing before looking a few centimeters taller any day.

It was a door as unassuming as any of the others in the corridor that she stopped in front of. Not even an automated sliding door, but a simple turning one, its once sterile white color faded and yellowed from age. The name tags next to it were illegible in the dark, but she knew them well.

She knew this particular room well.

Pulling from her pocket a key she wasn't supposed to have, she deftly slipped the business end into the lock on muscle memory alone and opened it.

Old computers lined the walls, most of them dark but not all of them. The whiteboard next to the door bore calculations and formulas only those in the field would recognize as being related to organic chemistry, with open textbooks strewn about on the nearby table.

In the middle, a large piece of machinery with a prominent hollow glass tube in the front. A second, identical machine was faded into the shadows in the rear half of the lab, but Rei's attention was on the one in the front.

This was where it began.

And this was where it will continue.

For his sake.

Ever since the idea came to her mind, part of her had been screaming at her not to do it, that she was a hypocrite to even consider it after everything that happened, that it would mean he had won in the end. But another part of her was dead-set on it, insisting that as things stood, she might very well not be strong enough for what laid ahead. And at one point, she might very well have reconsidered – but that was before she found both people who ever mattered in her life back in said life.

To lose either of them because she wasn't strong enough to protect them by herself was unacceptable.

To lose either of them because she died and couldn't protect anyone anymore, was even more so.

She was not going to lose them.

No matter the cost to her.

Chapter completed on 24/07/25. This one ended up being quite longer than planned. Not that that's a bad thing.

Despite Yui's assurances, there are indeed ethical dilemmas in science where sentience is concerned. Aside from the well-known animal welfare groups protesting the use of animal species commonly considered pets for the purpose of scientific experiments, there is a less-known but equally insistent movement arguing for even stricter rules where primates are concerned, specifically due to their near-human level of cognition. Even to this very day, hunting other primates as food is an accepted practice in equatorial Africa, simply because the locals do not consider them human and thus not applicable where cannibalism is concerned.

Of course, neither of those are quite on the same level as the international scientific community's opinion on the matter of human genetic modification: while we have had the technology to do so for years now, the prevailing opinion is that the scientific benefits are far outweighed by the ethical issues of children being tailor-made. In 2019, a Chinese scientist was sentenced to prison for modifying three human embryos in an attempt to render them immune to HIV via tampering with the production of a specific protein targeted by the virus. The identities of the children have been withheld by authorities for privacy reasons.

Genetically modified bacteria, on the other hand, have been successfully used to produce human insulin as far back as 1978. More recently, swine have been genetically modified with the goal of making their organs compatible for cross-species transplantation without the risk of organ rejection, since human organs are always in short supply for obvious reasons. So far, both volunteers who received such 'tweaked' xenotransplants died after a month, one from organ rejection and another from an undetected cross-species viral infection.