The problem with Shinji, his son, was that he sometimes needed a push in the right direction. Gendo Ikari stared impassively down at his son, standing below him in the Evangelion cages in between Dr. Akagi and Captain Katsuragi. Shinji Ikari was a good person, but easily hurt because of his sensitive nature. The fact he had caused no shortage of emotional trauma to his son did not escape him, but there was nothing to do about it. Had he kept the boy close to him, he would still have been alone as Gendo put his entirety into the Work. Better he be sent to caretakers elsewhere, hidden away from the horror of the Work and the political intrigues and power plays of SEELE. Although he had not seen his son in many years, Gendo knew his son was a good boy, if only because he was a good man. The apple did not fall far from the tree.
Unfortunately, good is not always nice, and just because something was personal did not make it important. Good men often had to make hard choices.
Gendo kept his gaze hard and cold as he watched the boy, who looked away while muttering about how it was impossible for him to pilot something of this magnitude without ever having been trained for it. A salient point, in normal circumstances, something so obvious that it hardly merited being said. Shinji had no way to know that these circumstances were far from normal. Gendo that knew Shinji wanted to help, but was convinced that he couldn't. It was written there, all over his face and in his posture, clear to anyone who could see. What the boy needed was a push in the right direction. Something on a smaller scale to focus on, instead of the enormity of the fate of mankind. Fortunately enough, Gendo had just the thing to focus Shinji.
He turned to a side panel and opened a link to the bridge. The Sub-Commander appeared on one of the screens. "Fuyutsuki, wake up Rei. The spare is useless."
The aging professor looked shocked at this statement, which completely contradicted the conversation he and his ex-protege had had earlier in the day.
"Can we use her?" His voice was uncertain and matched his look of dismay.
"She's not dead yet." Gendo waited as Fuyutsuki paged Rei's room, keeping his eyes on the down-turned face of his son, who was clenching his fists, and most likely grinding his teeth. He suppressed a momentary urge to grin. Rei's tired, quiet voice came over the channel, the words "Sound Only" displaying on the video screen to his left.
"Rei, the spare is useless. You will do it again." Gendo kept his voice emotionless and detached, only half listening to the girl's whispered acceptance of what would most likely be her death sentence. He watched Shinji shaking on the catwalk as the doctor called for the Evangelion Unit-01 to be prepped for Rei. Shaking with fear? With anger? Disappointment, perhaps?
When Shinji's look of utter shock and outrage appeared on his face as he first saw the badly injured girl being wheeled out towards the plug, Gendo could not contain his grin as the base shook under the Angel's assault. The grin threatened to give way to joyous laughter as he watched his son cradle the girl in his arms, staring down at her. He now had his focus. Again the entire Geo-front shook, and as a large girder beam fell towards the children, Unit 01's arm broke loose, smashing the beam away from them.
Shinji looked up at his father, who was staring down at him as he held the fragile girl in his arms, feeling the pounding of her heart along with his own, as her blood soaked into his shirt and pants. "I'll do it!" he cried out. "I'll pilot it." The doctors came to take the girl Rei from his arms, and when he looked again to his father, he saw only the man's back as he left the observation bay. There was no need to watch what came next in the cages.
Gendo had dangled irresistible bait in front of his son, and he had taken it hook, line and sinker.
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
As the bridge staff hurried to complete the final preparations to synchronize Shinji with the Evangelion, Gendo watched the proceedings from his throne above, keeping an eye on the monitor showing Shinji's face. Fuyutsuki stood next to him, hands clasped behind his back.
"You never actually intended to have Rei pilot the Evangelion, did you? This was just another one of your gambits, maneuvering your pieces around on the chessboard." The older man's voice was low and lost in the general hubbub of the bridge, and only Gendo could hear him. "
What would you have done if he still refused? We're not even sure if Rei can synch up with Unit-01." His tone was accusatory, but not harsh.
"It is inconceivable that Shinji would still refuse to pilot after seeing the condition Rei is in. Every fiber of his being would cry out against such a thing, and I am sure the thought of still not piloting it after that never crossed his mind. It would be an alien concept, to do such a thing so horrific." Commander Ikari's voice was calm and measured as if he was bored with the whole conversation.
"What of the pause then? Before he called out, he just sat there, looking at Rei. Couldn't he have been weighing his life against hers then?"
"You do my son a grave injustice and discredit. He was merely in a state of shock at the extent of her injuries, and the apparent fact that I, his father, a man who has summoned him here was going to send a girl out to certain death. He knew that as soon as he saw her on the gurney he was going to pilot in her stead."
The two men gave their attention to the captain below them; she was asking if they wanted to cancel the deployment on the Evangelion.
"No. We must defeat the Angel. That is all that matters."
She turned back to the front of the bridge and sang out the command that marked the changing of the world.
"Eva Launch!" she cried, and thus Shinji was sent forth to do battle with the Angel, for Rei, and for all mankind.
Gendo grinned underneath his gloves.
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
As they stared at the silent Evangelion spewing blood and coolant from the injured head, leaning up against a shattered building, its ruined arm lying atop another building, Fuyutsuki frowned as the bridge crew frantically attempted to achieve contact with the Evangelion and its Pilot. He glanced down at Gendo, who stared impassively as ever at the main screens, not even sweating. How can he be so calm, the man thought to himself, grimacing. This is a disaster! Lieutenant Ibuki cried out in disbelief as Unit 01 reactivated itself, and a bestial roar filled the speakers. The bezerkergang was upon Shinji. As the bio-mechanical titan raged across the screen, slamming into the Angel, its cries of anger drowned out the shouts of the crew below that this was impossible.
Fuyutsuki had only one thing to say on the matter. "We've won."
Gendo grinned like a madman underneath the cover of his gloves. If anyone had looked up at him they would have only seen him sitting impassively there, the light reflecting from off his old sunglasses hiding the fact that joy and triumph danced in his eyes.
"Yes, Fuyutsuki, we have won. It is only a matter of time now. Nothing can stop what has begun today, As long as we have Unit-01, the Third Child, and Rei, everything else is a matter of patient waiting. We have won the long war, and no one will stand in my way." He paused as the Angel, which undoubtedly would have been shitting itself in sheer, unmitigated terror had it the biological means to do so, wrapped itself around the Evangelion in a last-ditch effort to take its killer with it. The screen blanked out momentarily, the cameras overwhelmed as the crucifix of light stabbed into the sky and blood began to rain down. Gendo stood up from his seat and turned towards the elevator.
"Ensure that Section 2 maintains a watch on him. Minor intrusion into his life only. Let him fight his own battles first."
Fuyutsuki smirked at the Commander's back as he entered the lift and ascended higher into the vast building that made up the headquarters of NERV. You have completely upset your son's life, all according to your script for him, and you want him to have some semblance of normalcy in his life until the very end. You have molded his mind and psyche into a fragile, sensitive introvert, isolated from all. You have done this a thousand times more to Rei. And yet, you love them both dearly. But still, you will sacrifice them, sacrifice everything to accomplish your goals.
Fuyutsuki snorted as he sat down in the vacated chair.
If only I could see the world in black and white like you do. Utterly convinced of the correctness of our course. It would make this job a lot easier.
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
Sub-Commander Kozo Fuyutsuki sat at his desk, the soft glow of the desk lamp casting long shadows across the room. The steady hum of the ventilation system was the only sound breaking the silence as he meticulously reviewed the damage reports from the recent battle with the Third Angel. Papers covered his desk, each one detailing the extensive repairs needed for Evangelion Unit-01, the damage to Tokyo-3's infrastructure, and the staggering reconstruction costs.
As the Sub-Commander of NERV-Central, he was theoretically in charge of Tokyo-3 and the Matsushiro Testing Facilities. Other NERV Sub-Commanders might be responsible for a host of facilities or the company's interests across entire regions. Here at headquarters, he had only the areas of old Hakone to worry about, but there was so much that needed minding within those environs.
The MAGI, of course, did the vast bulk of the daily administration of the city and the NERV facilities. Project E and all its assorted facilities and resources fell under the purview of Dr. Akagi and her support staff. Gendo, too, took on personal control of different things fairly regularly, which meant that a lot of the time, there wasn't too much for him to be worried about.
Now was not one of those times.
He sighed deeply, rubbing his temples to fend off the headache building behind his eyes. The financial cost of the conflict was immense. The figures before him detailed billions in yen, enough to support a small nation for a year. As he scrolled through the electronic ledger, his eyes glazed over the endless columns of numbers, the sheer magnitude of the resources being poured into this war against the Angels sinking into his bones. If you had told him back when he was starting his first bachelor's degree that he would one day be organizing the financial priorities of a multi-national research company to the tune of billions of yen, he'd have laughed at you.
He had always been rather serious-minded, even as a young man, but he had still laughed his fair share with the rest of his peers. Then came his professorship, and the laughs had tapered off a bit as his cohort got older and everyone drifted apart.
Then came Second Impact, and suddenly, no one was laughing anymore.
Fuyutsuki marked significant entries into his tablet for follow-up at a later date, noting the projected expenses for the specialized alloy required to repair Unit-01's damaged armor and the advanced medical equipment necessary for treating pilot injuries. The rebuilding of city blocks obliterated by the Angel's attack demanded immediate attention. Specialized labor, rare materials, and cutting-edge technology—all carried exorbitant price tags.
Then came the weapons systems. Not the Evangelion itself, mind you, but the traditional weapons. Tokyo-3 was a fortress guarding the Geo-Front and what lay beneath. The Evangelions were created to protect this fortress. While they were costly enough, the rings of protective weapons systems and armored fortifications that built up the shield and curtain walls, along with their associated sensor and targeting arrays and their munitions, all were costly things. They cost money to build, maintain, repair, replace, and operate.
Fortunately, most of the fighting by traditional forces had been done on the UN and JSSDF's dime. The generals had wanted their crack at the Angel first, and it had cost them lives, equipment, and money.
But the damage in the conflict was not all simple math of replacing armored bunkers and expensive targeting optics, clearing rubble and wreckage, rebuilding and repairing. Tokyo-3 was a bustling city. Almost entirely owned and operated by NERV, it was the very definition of a company town, but Japan and the UN were pouring money into the city. Opportunities existed here that were rare elsewhere, and people followed those opportunities and the money. A complex system of shelters for the civilian population to hide in had been constructed throughout the city, but there had been casualties. No fatalities, but there were wounded.
NERV would be picking up the medical costs for them. Some were family members of NERV personnel, others were outsiders who had come to the city to seek their fortune.
Some in the national governments had wondered at the money being given to NERV. World leaders were read into the secret of Second Impact, the true history of the cataclysmic event that had reshaped the world in early 2000. The existence of the Angels, those otherworldly beings of unimaginable might had been revealed to them, along with the costs of the projects being carried out to defeat them upon their return.
Certain people could claim knowledge of the timetable of their appearance. Most considered them frauds, hucksters. Some had complained about the money wasted on NERV's pipe dreams when that money could be put to other uses. Better uses. Some of these were even humanitarian uses and not just kickbacks to themselves.
But now the Angels were back, if not slightly ahead of the generally accepted schedule.
Kozo had seen some of those timetables. He had seen some of the ancient artifacts those timetables were built off of. There were disagreements on their interpretation, but there would be a progression of Angels, and should one of them reach the First or Second Angel, there would be a Third Impact. This is what was told to the new heads of state.
What wasn't told to them was that everything also agreed that after the last Angel had been defeated, there would be a Third Impact.
When Gendo had shown up on his doorstep looking to enlist his aid, he had been initially confused when the man had explained it. A former student of his, and he was ashamed to say a rival for the attentions of another student, he had never thought much of the man.
But the tale he spun of an ancient, global conspiracy and the part that Yui Ikari had played and meant to play in the future, well, to say he had been taken aback was putting it lightly. Gendo had been enlisted by his wife to play a part in that conspiracy, and now Gendo was trying to enlist him. But the man had a plan. He planned a rebellion to strike back at the Illuminati, and he had built an ambitious and cunning scenario. Gendo had always been good at reading people, good at figuring out what made them tick. What levers to pull, what buttons to push to get a desired reaction. Kozo recognized what was being done to him but had signed on anyway. Better Gendo's scenario than SEELE's.
But it was all straightforward to say that when it was all ideas, vague notions of future events. Now they had a young woman swaddled in bandages after a disastrous activation test and a young man laid up in a bed down the hallway from her with injuries no one could see or treat. Wounds that would be ripped open anew time and time again, each and every time he climbed into the Entry Plug of an Evangelion.
Gendo saw the world in black and white. What must be done, what must not be allowed to happen, and so on and so forth. Kozo had a much harder time of it, and just thinking about the current and future states of their selected Children only depressed him.
Gendo claimed to not know why Naoko had killed herself after her attempt on Rei's life. Kozo suspected it was because she had had an epiphany. One day, she had looked at the girl and saw the inevitable chain of events that would culminate in her sacrifice. Had it not been for the attempted murder of the girl, Kozo would have said Naoko had gone sane.
Jumping from the command bridge was the only sane thing to do in the face of the future. He was not so brave or sane, so he would do what millions of people did every day: cling to his life and try to extend it to see at least one more dawn. The cost to his soul remained to be seen.
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
Before he even opened his eyes, Shinji Ikari knew that something was wrong. The bed in which he currently resided was most certainly not his, and the room most definitely did not smell like his room in his Uncle's house, which smelled of dry wood and old leather. This room smelled... Well, if it had a smell it was the faint stink of bleach and pine oil. It also didn't sound like his room, seeing as he didn't collect beeping medical machinery.
Sure enough, when he finally mustered the energy to open his eyes, he was staring at a ceiling he'd never seen before. Glancing over to his left, he saw the monitors he was hooked up to and the bag of saline solution connected to his arm via the IV tube. He frowned at the otherwise empty room, devoid of any warmth or personality.
What happened? I remember... I remember a girl... Rei? She looked so fragile... Then, that thing! Evangelion? And the Angel! Oh God, what happened? Sitting up with a start, Shinji tore the wires from his chest and fell out of the bed as he tried to stand up, his head swimming at the sudden movement. Gripping the IV caddy, he hauled himself to his feet, panting heavily. His head began to pound, and he put another hand up by his right eye, feeling it to ensure that, yes, he still had both eyes, his panicked mind not processing the fact he was actually looking at things in stereo vision. Fighting his way across the room to the small lavatory, he stared for a good five minutes into the mirror.
His head still pounding, aching more than he could ever recall it having done so before, he staggered back towards his bed, only happening to glance at something sitting on a side table next to the bed. His SDAT player, and a folded piece of paper.
The paper was plain white printer paper, nothing special. Written upon it in neat, measured handwriting was a short explanation that the LCL in the plug had ruined the clothes he had been wearing at the time, but replacements were being acquired for him. His SDAT had also been ruined, but the anonymous writer offered this newer model as a replacement. Nothing on who had gotten it, or where it had come from, but the tape was a copy of the one that had been inside his player, recovered from his pocket after they had recovered him from the plug.
No other words of congratulations, thanks, or any sort of explanation of what was going on.
Shinji put the earbuds in and escaped from the world. And, a few minutes later, he escaped from his room, moving into the hallway, looking out the windows running along the far wall into the Geo-Front. He quietly recalled what he knew about it from the books he had read, like how the light was mostly natural, feeding down through miles and miles of fiber optic cable, and bouncing off thousands of mirrored surfaces to bring the light of day to a huge cavern almost twelve miles, at it's thinnest point, below the surface of the Earth. Powerful lights, also feeding into a series of mirrors, could completely illuminate the massive cave, despite the fact that from the "ground surface" to the ceiling was another eight miles. Truly, the Geo-Front was a monument to the ingenuity, perseverance, and technological might of mankind.
Despite his initial amazement, the awe-inspiring view could stir him from his black depression. It probably didn't help that the light was hurting his eyes.
Catching movement out of the corner of his eye, he turned to watch several nurses moving another patient's gurney down the hallway. He flattened himself up against the glass and, with a start, recognized the distinctive girl being carted away, recognition playing his eyes and her one eye as she was wheeled past.
A nurse came up to him, and plucked one of the earbuds out, raising an eyebrow at him. "Pilot Ikari, please, if you wanted to walk around, you should have called one of the nurses. You took quite a thrashing, and we want to be careful with you, okay?" She smiled at him, taking some of the edge off her words.
Shinji's face fell, however as he dropped his gaze to the floor. "Sorry... I'll go back to my room…" He made as to push past her back into the room when she caught his arm.
"Hey, now, come on... Don't be so down in the dumps. You gave us a scare, but you're all right now, right? Nothing hurting? You might have a bit of a headache, but I've got just the thing for that. Besides, there's nothing saying you can't be moving around, in fact, it's probably good for you to be stretching your muscles."
He stared at her, worried thoughts running through his head. Stretch my muscles? Just how long have I been asleep?
"Well...I do have a headache. Um... He glanced up at her, worry and doubt in his eyes. "How long was I asleep? Can you tell me what happened? Did... Did I win?"
She laughed, a merry, cheerful sound that astonished Shinji, who was prepared for the worst. "Oh, no, no, you won. If you hadn't, we'd not be here having this conversation. I don't know the specifics as I didn't have a chance to talk to your visitors, but from what I hear, you won rather handily. Now, about your headache, " She paused, rummaging through her pockets, as he stared at her in disbelief. Had he had visitors? He opened his mouth as she pulled a small bottle out of her lab coat. "Now, this should put some pep into your step." Tapping three small pills out into the palm of his hand, she directed him to chew them up and swallow.
"Um, miss? How long was I asleep? Who visited me?" He looked up at her, his eyes already dilating as the drug began to work its magic. His cheeks were already flushed, and she could tell he was feeling better.
"Well, you've been out for about three days. Some of the doctors were worried, but none of the higher-ups were after they had seen you. Apparently, they kinda expected you to be out of it. Something about the stress. It's all above my security level anyhow. C'mon, let's get you another saline bag for your caddy, and then we'll go for a little walk." She moved back into his room, picking up a few of the 500ml bags and hooking them onto the IV stand.
"I'm... I'm actually feeling a lot better now. Do I really need this?" He motioned to the IV, idly fingering the tube running into his arm until she gently slapped his hand away from the catheter taped into place.
"No, you might be feeling better, but it's important for you to stay hydrated. Also, that medicine I gave you? It has an after-effect; it will mildly dehydrate you. So while it's helping you now, it's not a perfect solution by itself. You'll be wanting the extra fluids in a few hours, given your weight and the fact you've been out for three days." and
Shinji slumped in silent defeat and acceptance. "Can you tell me who visited me? Did my father come?"
She looked at him with sympathy, shaking her head before answering him. "No, I'm sorry, I can't tell you. All I know is a bunch of higher-ups came down to see you yesterday, and after they pulled you from the entry plug. They bustled everybody else out of the floor, only you and Pilot Ayanami are here on this floor. Come on, we can go to the hospital garden. It's very nice since everything is climate-controlled down here, and we've got some beautiful flowers. It's soothing, and I think the fresh air will do you good."
"Okay..."
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
Gendo Ikari watched his son walk next to the plainclothes Section 2 agent, who was currently putting her nursing school experience to work. He sighed somewhat as she gave him some pills, but the boy perked up almost instantly after taking them.
And to think Kozo wondered why I hired non-security type personnel for Section 2. If they can believably pretend to be something other than a suit and sunglasses, it makes them that much more effective. I also like to be prepared for any eventuality, no matter how inane or far-fetched. He grinned to himself, hiding it under his gloves although he was alone in his sanctum, the vast office called "The Tomb" by his minions. He knew this because he was the one who had written the bathroom graffiti, likening himself and his office to a vampire waiting in its tomb for the unlucky and unwary.
He was not afforded much pleasure in this world, but damn it, he would take it when he could and he did so enjoy manipulating people and his little social engineering experiments.
Back in college, he had gone around asking people every day if he could have a dollar.
Every day, for about five months before someone thought to ask why, every day, he asked for a dollar from seemingly random people.
He had explained to the curious student he was trying to find out when someone would notice that he was doing it, to see how much the people around him were paying attention. Several people had been present for several attempts in a single day when he asked different people for money.
He showed her his little notebook, tallying up people and totals.
She asked what he was doing with the money he was collecting. Was he going to give back the money, now that his experiment had ended?
No, he had been spending it on beer. He had never asked to borrow money, after all. Hence his presence here in the dive bar, popular with the science students.
Yui Ikari dumped her glass of beer over his head and walked away, muttering something under her breath about how impossible he was.
He grinned again and the memory, still carefully maintaining his position, hidden behind gloves and sunglasses. His carefully built legend and the cult of personality required his constant observance. He could not slip up just because he was alone.
Yui had given him $123 before thinking to ask him why he always seemed to be asking people for money.
He knew then, at that moment, he was irrevocably in love with her.
Of course, he mused to himself, watching Shinji walking off the after-effects of his exhausted sleep, things were so much simpler then. Or so it seemed. If I had known what your backers were up to, even then, at that moment, I would have killed you all.
He blinked back tears that threatened to escape their prison in his eyes. Even if I cried while killing you, I would have done it then and there. While there was still time to do something like that, to do something that had a chance to stop the genocide that was to come.
Mankind has no time left. Not anymore. He paused, and cycled the camera feed to another angle, watching his son opening the bag containing a new set of clothes in his room. He watched the tired, numb face of his only son, as he prepared to leave in the company of Captain Katsuragi.
He flicked another camera display into life, watching Rei as she lay sleeping, wrapped in bandages.
No, Kozo was right. I was right. We have won, and mankind will have all the time that will ever exist. The end destination is set, all that remains to be seen is the journey.
I can take solace in this fact. He will have the future. It is my legacy to him. He will only need to grab it, take hold of it with both hands and not let go.
I will have eternity with Yui. A million lifetimes with which to show her the folly of the plans of the old men, and her worthless gesture.
An unremembered tomb is an unvisited one, and an unvisited tomb is one that offers no catharsis or wisdom to its mourners. A pointless gesture, an unnecessary artifice.
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
Rei Ayanami was not happy. No, she was not happy at all. For one thing, she was stuck in the NERV Geo-Front hospital, in the room that seemed to be reserved for her. She knew this room was the same room she had been in so many times before (she would not say she had been there countless times, for she had counted her visits, and the number was 46) due to the small, broken ceiling tile in the corner of the room, over by the window nearest the head of the bed. The worst thing about being stuck in the hospital room was there was nothing to do, nothing to occupy her mind with. She was bored.
If there was anything you could ask her to name something Rei definitely disliked, it was being bored. She had been taught, rather indirectly, and completely on accident, to keep her mind busy and occupied. No one knew this, however, because she worked so very hard to emulate the one person she loved, the one person from whom she sought approval and praise.
Gendo Ikari.
Ever since being decanted from her tank deep in Terminal Dogma below, she took the fractured memories of the first and studied her adopted father and the people around her. Since he kept everything he needed in his heart and mind, so did she. Since she never saw him display anything other than a firm, calm, and cold demeanor, neither did she. Lastly, since he did not have any friends, or seem to have a social life, so she walled herself off from the world, always observing, but never taking part in it except when she could not escape it.
And because she was a silly young girl, she completely missed the point of what was going on, of why he was like that, and it was not until much later that she realized that her Commander and her nemesis, Dr. Akagi, were engaged in a clandestine affair.
She had spent several sleepless nights crying into her pillow when she found out. How had she missed this major fact? How had the signs evaded her notice? Looking back, it seemed to shout out at her like an alarm klaxon. The fact that nobody else noticed completely escaped her.
You see, Rei Ayanami was a scientist. If you were to ask her what manner of scientist, she would not answer your question but stare blankly at you as if you were some specimen under her microscope. But if she deigned to respond to your query, she would reply that she was a mix of an anthropologist, a psychiatrist, a biologist, and a mathematician.
What she didn't know about herself, however, was that she was also a poet, a philosopher, and a silly young girl, who had isolated herself and had helped the Commander turn her into a bitterly unhappy, nigh emotionless, lonely girl, even if she did not understand that she was all these things.
She had never seen the Commander express real happiness, for he hid it from all. So she grew up, distancing herself from happiness, all in an attempt to gain happiness via praise from the Commander.
She had never seen him interact like a normal person with anyone, for he did that only in private with two people, the Sub-Commander and Dr. Akagi. As she never witnessed this, so she takes up the mantle of the cold distance between herself and all others in an attempt to become closer to her "father." Not having the position of power he had and not understanding what he was doing or why she was doing what she was doing, she turned herself into a shy, quiet, obedient, observant, and, later on, analytical girl. She was still silly though, although she and nobody else realized this.
One of the reasons she was silly was because of the reason she was a scientist. Somewhere, in the cracked and broken fragments of memories she had inherited from the image download from the first, was that Science was basically poking different things with a stick and seeing what happened.
One day, while playing in one of the Geo-Front fields, she found a stick. Upon inspecting it, the memory fragment came up in her mind, and right after that, a recalled overheard conversation between the Commanders and Dr. Akagi. It had been largely incomprehensible to her, seeing as she was only about 5 years of age, but she had noted that he was interested in Science.
So she duly picked up the stick, and Science marched on.
When she finally was unleashed upon the world above the Geo-Front and sent to school, the damage had already been done. She was now an avid watcher of humanity, keeping all of her notes and observations to herself and telling no one. Not even her beloved Commander was privy to the fact she was doing a vast but extremely subtle and never reached an understanding of Science experiment on all of Tokyo-3 and the people she came into contact with. As she engaged in this study of humanity, she kept herself isolated from mankind, and never reached an understanding the stunted and limited emotions she herself had.
After all, she needed to do something besides wait for the day she could finally die. Just waiting was boring. There was Science to be done.
If Gendo Ikari had the slightest idea as to how far off he was on understanding her personality and psyche, he would have scrapped the entire Rei project and begun afresh, possibly initiating his Plan B; a massive scorched earth program that would remove all possibility of Third Impact, human (controlled by him or not) or otherwise. He was blissfully unaware that one of the most integral parts of his scenario was, as they say, "off her fucking rocker". If the Sub-Commander had known, he would have laughed long and hard at the fact that Rei was an extremely silly and insane Daddy's Girl.
Sighing to herself, she began to consider the case of the newly arrived Pilot, one Shinji Ikari. Pilot Ikari presented a rare opportunity: a new test subject, fresh and unfamiliar not only to her but also of her. While there was a constant stream of fresh faces into Tokyo-3, her pools of acquaintances and test subjects was relatively stagnant. She primarily interacted with the students and staff of the school she attended, and then the primary technicians assigned to Project E at NERV-Central. Most people (who were not the senior command staff of NERV) were more or less used to the bizarre, self-isolating behavior with which she conducted herself. People were generally more than happy to ignore her and allow her to fade into the background of their awareness. Having a new test subject, one who would be present in both NERV and at school, was a welcome diversion from the boredom of recovery. The first things to stand out in Rei's mind were that he was the Commander's son, and thus a possible rival for the Commander's attention (unlikely), and that he smelled, not unattractively, of smoke. Rei liked the smell of smoke. Smoke was, in her mind, one of the most immediate after-effects of doing Science to things. She did not have much to place in her mental file on Pilot Ikari as of yet, seeing as she had only snippets of overheard conversations about his battle, the few minutes she had observed him in a pain and drug-clouded haze (she was still trying to figure out if the fleeting pleasure she had felt as he cradled her in his arms on the catwalk was some sort of physical attraction or a by-product of the endorphins, adrenaline, and morphine coursing through her system due her injuries and the shock of being moved about. She also noted that Pilot Ikari was neither attractive nor unattractive based on the observed values of people in their age group.
She knew that he had been victorious in combat due to the snippets of conversations she had overheard; she had seen him gazing silently out the window and, of course, the glaring fact that they were all still very much alive. At first glance, he seemed to be not unlike herself, but she wondered what his reasons were for initially refusing to pilot the Evangelion, and why he did so after seeing her. It would have been more efficient to obey the order to pilot when it was given, and that course of action would most likely result in praise and positive attention from Commander Ikari than refusing to obey. Did he not know that the Commander hated disobedient people? How could he not obey his father, who was his father in fact, through biological means, rather than semantic and adoptive means, for did she not obey the man who had ordered her grown and decanted, and did she not view him as her father, even if he did not show he thought of her as his daughter by the observed methods and means as her classmate's nuclear families? This was a conundrum, a problem, and a quandary. She felt her soul warm. She had something new to work on, and she would have to apply Science to this new issue.
Hypothesis: Shinji Ikari is not Gendo Ikari's son, biological or otherwise. Rei immediately decided that this was false, for would the Commander not know his own son? Would he allow an impostor anywhere near her, or the Evangelion? The answer to these questions is no.
Hypothesis: Shinji Ikari is conducting his own Science, and has a different Hypothesis and desired outcome than her. This was likely, she reasoned, using what she knew of the Commander, and her own background as a baseline for the norm, even if she was nowhere near the median of the observed actions and thought processes of her classmates, because she and Pilot Ikari shared something that the rest did not share with them; namely the Commander. He had observed me in the reflection of the window, his face displaying muted recognition as I passed. She frequently did the same during the classes, watching her classmates. Was he also a student of humanity? She would have field work to do once she was released from this intolerable place!
Hypothesis: Shinji Ikari was Not conducting his own Science and was a frightened young boy drug feet-first into the crucible of Man's Glorious War Against the Outsiders and the Foul Dregs that Would Stab Mankind in the Back and Generally Ruin Everything. This was... possible. Definitely possible, but how probable was this? More data would be needed. More observations to gather. A small smile appeared on her face as she pondered the possibilities. Pilot Ikari was shaping up to offer her months of careful study and fieldwork.
She closed her eyes as she began to polish the two hypotheses in her mind, and began working out how she would go about the delicate process of testing them. Good Science called for experiments to have only one hypothesis at a time, however, she had to work with the fact that she had a limited pool of test subjects for many of her more specific experiments, namely the one person she was interested in at the time. She could not conduct one experiment against a person, and then conduct another, different one, followed yet by another. By conducting the experiment and observing it, she changed the outcomes. She had figured this out early on and had chalked it up to the reason Dr. Naoko Akagi had murdered her first iteration. Rei was resolved not to let one of her experiments choke her to death. So after a few disastrous experiments and some good ones (she had to experiment on others to find out what had gone wrong with the other experiments, after all), she knew that she sometimes had to perform different experiments at the same time on the same test group.
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
Dr. Ritsuko Akagi sighed as she surveyed the damage done to Evangelion Unit-01. The first combat sortie, and already the machine needed significant repairs to its vital systems, not least of all its pilot, Shinji Ikari.
Severe trauma to the skull, right eye socket, and right arm. Look at this mess! The crews will be working overtime for at least three or four weeks.
Sighing again, she made a few more annotations on her clipboard. Unit-01 was a tricky beast. It wasn't called the Oni just for the horn. By their very natures, the Evangelions would inflict harm upon their pilots the more the pilots could synchronize with them. The higher the synchronization ratio, the pilot could manipulate the Evangelion faster and with more precision.
Additionally, their AT-Field would be stronger, meaning the more defense it would provide and the faster it could erode the AT-Fields of the Angels. This came at the cost of physical wounds manifesting on their bodies in sympathy with the Evangelion, as opposed to simply having their minds read the pain as their own. Unit-01 had significantly fewer safeguards to prevent the pilots from reaching too high a synchronization ratio, even less than the prototype Unit-00.
Ritsuko felt her upper lip curl back in a sneer. Unit-01 had been built to the specifications of Dr. Yui Ikari. She had designed and built this Evangelion with a singular purpose in mind, and that was not the defeat of the Angels. Safeguarding the pilot from an unnecessarily high synchronization ratio and undue harm was not on the good doctor's list of priorities. As long as the boy remained alive to reach her final goal, Yui cared nothing for his pain and suffering.
As it was, his first engagement was a success, but only barely so. He had managed to stumble his way into victory but at the cost of damage to the Evangelion and himself.
Gendo must be very pleased with himself right now, she thought to herself. Marking down another note to have the teams follow up with the linkages on the left leg, she walked up the gangway to the side of the head, scowling at the burnt metal armor around the right eye. This pretty much went the way he expected it to. The thing with Rei was a bit of a surprise. I'm going to have to figure out a way to keep this thing under control. No need in attracting unwanted attention.
The Evangelions were the only things that could produce and project an AT-Field, allowing them to destroy the fields the Angels used to protect themselves and alter the world around them. The morphogenic field allowed them some measure of control over the laws of physics in their direct surroundings. Without a countering AT-Field, even the mightiest weapons known to man were unlikely to kill the Angel. The Third Angel had shrugged off a direct hit from an N2 warhead, one of the largest non-nuclear and most powerful weapons readily available. It had only caused it to pause in its advance on Tokyo-3. Its regeneration cycle had completed less than two hours later. Predictably, the UN was concerned about how many of the pricey weapons would be needed.
The Evangelions, born from the flesh of the First and Second Angels, harnessed by the might of mankind's technology and science, could produce and project those fields. However, the Evangelions could only be piloted by specific individuals. Explained away by things like the particulars of the onboard AIs, the required degree of neuroplasticity, or specific genome marker combinations reacting to the Angelic flesh, NERV had managed to get special permission to utilize the identified Children as pilots.
The Evangelions were useless without the pilots to synchronize with the onboard AI. Everyone who even knew the Evangelions existed knew this.
That's why they would need to keep the fact that Unit-01 acted on its own to ensure the safety of its pilot, Shinji Ikari, and the pilot of Unit-00, Re Ayanami.
Unit-01 was indeed a special case, Dr. Akagi mused, gifted and cursed with unique design features that could prove to be a blessing and a curse to its young pilot. How much the boy was destined to suffer in the execution of the grand scenario of his father remained to be seen, but suffer he would.
We are in the business of saving the world, but the foundations of Gendo's new Eden will be mortared with blood and bone.
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
Shinji Ikari was in hell. He stared out at the apartment before him, gazing in wide wonder at the mess he had found. This place was a crime scene. His first thoughts had been that some homeless junkies had broken in, robbed the place, and then had drunken, drugged-up orgies here. Cans, food containers, and discarded clothing lay strewn all about.
When Misato had calmly walked past his shell shocked form and proceeded to her room, he snapped back into reality.
This place is a wreck! Only a little messy? How does she live? How will I live? His thoughts derailed as he entered the kitchen of the apartment, looking in confusion at the dual refrigerators cheerfully humming away as if this was perfectly normal. Who has two refrigerators? Really, WHO? He opened the one with all the smudge marks on it to find it filled with bagged ice, beer, and cold junk food. Sighing, he stuffed the packages into the space available and went to see about moving his few things into the room that would be his.
Dropping his backpack on the floor of the closet, he picked up the boxes that held his new school clothes and laptop, his cello case, and the box that held the few spare clothes he had brought from home. His entire world sat inside the room's small closet if he didn't shut the sliding door. He couldn't muster up the energy or care to be bothered by this fact.
"Shinji! Come eat! I'm done making dinner!" Captain Katsuragi- no, he thought to himself, Miss Misato, she wanted to be called Misato, called to him.
How on earth had she cooked dinner so fast? He had barely been gone five minutes! His stomach clenched into a small, tight ball in the center of his belly. The food, he thought with growing dread, the food was all instant! Instant, mass-produced, tasteless, and nutrient-less trash! It was probably recycled from the packaging trash it was sold in! He paled, and began to shake where he stood, before forcing his muscles to unclench, and move under his command to walk back into the kitchen.
It was worse than I had imagined, he thought, half listening to Misato complain that he had better not be finicky with what he ate. He glanced at Misato's mouth as she talked, trying to see if her teeth were loose from scurvy. There was no way she's getting the vitamins and nutrients that she needed for healthy survival from eating all this... this junk! It looked like he was going to have to cook for himself again, here as at his uncle's home. And if he was going to cook for himself, the least he could do for this... strange woman who had decided to take him in rather than let him live on his own was cook real food for her. Why couldn't I live on my own? he thought to himself, finally roused to something distantly approaching anger. Then it struck him like a load of bricks. This place was why she wanted him. She needed someone to take care of cooking and cleaning, as she was incapable of taking care of herself. She had a use for him now, here, just as she and his Father had a use for him... back there, in the cages. Inside the thing, the Evangelion.
When it came time to "divide up the chores," he decided to go ahead and lose on cooking and cleaning; it was better to just get it over with and avoid the hassle of her just telling him to do them anyway. He didn't consider himself to be a genius but he could see how this arrangement was going to be.
After he was done with tidying up the kitchen, Misato shooed him off into the bath. After filling up the tub, he dropped into the water up to almost his nose, soaking in the near-scalding water. While Shinji typically did not enjoy baths, he had always poured the baths to as hot as possible, almost past the point of being able to stand it. At least this doesn't smell like blood, he told himself, possibly the first positive thought he had had since being released from the hospital. Sighing, making bubbles in the water, he mused that she probably didn't know that bad memories and thoughts came to his over-active imagination in the bath. Sitting in the hottest water possible helped keep his mind from wandering. She's probably not a bad person. She's just doing her job. And possibly abusing her powers just a tad bit. He had overheard her talking on the phone to someone, whoever this 'Rits' person was. I'm not going to put the moves on him, indeed. So I'm not good enough for her to want that way huh? Well, why should she? It's not like I went out in that Evangelion thing and did... whatever it was that I did to the Angel. It's not like I was forced into this whole mess or anything by her, Dr. Akagi, or Father. Nooo... I'm apparently good enough to throw into some war machine, flood my cockpit with goo without warning, ruin my clothing and my SDAT, good enough to be made to be the captain's live-in maid and cook, but not good enough to want... like that. He wasn't even good enough to live on his own! Even this Rei girl he had seen so briefly, and held too – Shinji blushed at the thought, but it was hidden under the redness from the hot water- apparently lived on her own normally. So why me? Why am I not allowed to do this? In the steamy confines of the bath, Shinji Ikari began to cry quietly.
Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!
Misato watched her new charge as he dejectedly moved into the bathroom. She sighed into her latest beer, rolling her head up to stare at the ceiling. I wonder if I'm being to cheerful? Eh, he's probably already made up his mind about me. She shrugged and went back to drinking, watching the bathroom door. He seemed okay, but halfway through dinner, he just got really depressed. I wonder if anti-depressants are wearing off? Rits said that they would be wearing off sometime in the middle of the night. Her musings were interrupted by the sound of the second refrigerator's door opening, as Pen-Pen waddled forth, warking at her. She nodded at the hot-springs penguin absentmindedly, watching him grab a beer from the food fridge, and waddle off to the bathroom. The bathroom... currently occupied by Shinji.
"PEN-PEN! Wait! There's-" She was cut off as the penguin screamed, a terrifying and bowel-clenching sound if there ever was one, as he came almost flying around the corner, shrieking in fear and surprise. A loud splashing sound came from beyond the portal as if someone had fallen into the tub. Hugging her beloved companion and unorthodox pet/child, she explained to the penguin that they had a new roommate, called Shinji Ikari.
Said boy came around the corner, a towel wrapped around him, his eyes wide with shock. "Miss Misato! There was-"
"Yes, I'm sorry, you guys. I forgot to introduce you to each other. Shinji, this is Pen-Pen. He's a hot-springs penguin who I adopted. He's very smart, for a bird. Ritsuko says he's somewhere around the level of a dolphin. She won't tell me if that's smarter than a human or not. She says it all depends on things that she won't tell me about." She made a face at the memory of that conversation. "Pen-Pen, this is Shinji. He's a human, and the Pilot of Evangelion Unit-01, and he saved the world. He's a hero, who did a very brave thing." She was carefully watching Shinji's face as she said the last, hoping to see... well, anything across his features. Instead, he nodded, still wild-eyed after his encounter with Pen-Pen, and moved off towards his room, giving no sign if he had heard anything she had said. She sighed again.
"Pen-Pen? I'm going to draw a bath for myself first. I've had a long day, and I'm thinking it'll be a longer one tomorrow. You can have the tub to yourself after I'm done, okay?"
Still in shock himself, the penguin warked at her and moved off into the living room to watch television.
As her bath poured, Misato pulled the cordless phone out and called Ritsuko. She had to ask her some questions about Shinji's meds. She also wanted to gossip, she thought with a grin, but that went without saying.
Back in the room now dubbed "Shinji's Lovely Suite" by Misato on a paper heart, Shinji threw himself down on the futon, staring up at the ceiling. It would take some time before he recognized this place as home. Pushing his earbuds in, he switched to his music, taking solace in its comforting, soothing sounds and melodies. His eyes closed, and he drifted off to sleep.
Within the realm of his dreams, he felt the giant Angel pick him up from the ground, and he screamed in terror.