Creation began on 10-19-22
Creation ended on 02-05-24
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Potential Paradise: Displeasure
NERV's alarms went off, indicating a new Angel had made its presence known, and the paramilitary agency had to prepare for it however they could.
"Just how big is this one?" Misato asks, seeing that the Angel on the screens looked like some sort of winged crystal.
"It's big," went Ritsuko, "but it's out of our firing range. It's not even near that massive space station, but it's big enough to be like the previous Angel that attacked from the sky."
And unfortunately, NERV only had the Second Child and Unit-02…and Gendo didn't believe either would suffice against this Angel. Not without backup and not without a weapon that was greater than any conventional one that was currently available.
"Has there been word from the JSSDF?" He asks.
"No, sir," Hyuga responds. "They're still trying to sort through the issue of their missiles being hacked from the failed attempt to bomb the space station. Nobody's going to be firing anything into space right now."
"Perhaps now would be a good time to simply ask Shinji for his assistance in this?" Maya spoke up, which earned her a glare from Gendo, who didn't want him getting involved in this issue.
"Good luck with that," went Shigeru.
Beep! A text message popped up on every screen in Central Dogma: "Just say the magic word."
"What is this?" Fuyutsuki questions, and then takes out his cell phone to find a separate text message sent to him…from Shinji.
"I am willing to help, regardless," his message read. "I just want to hear him say it."
"Is this supposed to be a joke?" Someone asks, holding up their cell phone. "What is the magic word here?!"
"Everyone knows it's 'please'," said someone else, "and no, it's not a joke. This kid's serious. He wants to hear his old man beg him for his aid."
"Hearing Commander Ikari beg his son for help would be worth a lot of money right now," added someone else from below the command bridge.
Even Misato found it to be hilarious. The mere fact that Shinji was taking the time to crack a joke through a text message and probably listening in on what was going on here indicated that he was watching and waiting for something to happen. She sent a text to Shinji: "Do you really want him to beg you for help?"
Beep. She received a response from him.
"Yes and no. This Angel is made of solidified light, like a crystal or diamond. Also, its AT-Field is stronger than the Fifth Angel's; nothing NERV has that was used previously against the other Angels is going to get through it."
She looks at Ritsuko and asks if they had anything that was going to breach its AT-Field.
"We should be able to break through it with the positron cannon," the faux-blond states, not the response she expected to hear.
"Where's Asuka right now?"
"Heading to Unit-02," Hyuga responds.
-x-
Shinji didn't find it to be an easy feat, as he barely had any clue on how to hack any system, but the holographic Senkensha Ikari knew enough to enable him to worry less about the repercussions and focus more on the situation they would need to resolve. Not only were they monitoring the Geo-Front, but they were discovering information that had been hidden away for over a decade. Some very sensitive information that, in the wrong hands, could spell disaster for a lot of people. No matter how deep or disorganized the data was by whoever wrote the programs necessary to prevent the information from being read, Senkensha's DNA computers were able to restore the information and reveal to Shinji things he knew nothing about, and that nobody that did know had ever considered the thought of mentioning to him.
"Knowledge really is power," Shinji utters upon learning that his mother had participated in the experiment that created Evangelion Unit-01, and that she was the mind behind the creation of the Evangelion series of cybernetic organisms. "But there is a price to be paid for such knowledge."
"The price of knowledge is the pain of realization and revelation, Shinji," Senkensha tells him. "To learn new things, including things you were denied a right to know of, carries a pain that some wish was never dealt to them. But there is an advantage to now having such knowledge."
"There is?"
"Yes. You can put it to use however you choose to. If these biomechanical constructs are more dangerous than these Angels are, mainly because they require people of your age group to operate them, and they are animated by the salvaged consciousnesses of women that bore children after this Second Impact, which was caused by people that chose to exploit such knowledge instead of looking for a different solution than the ones they chose to implement, then you can choose to let the world know…or even tell your friends or father about what you learned and let them know what can be expected later on."
"But it's not just the Evas that have me upset, Senkensha. It's…everything else they did. My parents, they… They knew all about this, and…they made plans to profit off of it. My mother knew what was going to happen if she did that experiment that took her life…and went ahead with it, anyway. My father wants to implement something called the Human Instrumentality Project in order to become like a god, just to be reunited with her…and he made Ayanami in order to achieve that goal. He had an affair with Dr. Akagi and her mother. He deliberately cast me aside and made no effort to inform me of anything until it was convenient for himself. How do you move past this? How do you move past any of this?"
Senkensha had an expression of pity on her face as she looked at Shinji. He had found out things that he didn't expect to find out and was troubled by them.
"Do you think Rei Ayanami is a deception?" She asks him. "Do you suspect that she is in league with your parents?"
"What? No, I… I don't believe she would willingly do anything of the sort."
"Can you still see her as a friend after all of this?"
"Yes."
"Then you can move past this and do better than your parents. You're not the one out to change the world like they did…and you're not out to wreck it like they did. You have the power to decide what your next move will be. Do as you please, whatever you want to do."
Shinji smiled and bowed his head to her. She may have been a ghost in the machine, an artificial intelligence created from her DNA spliced with ancient machinery that helped in turning a colossal planet into a space station as big as the planets of this solar system, but she was still family to him. He needed that sense of comfort right now.
"Thank you," he praises her, deciding on his next move.
-x-
Ding! Asuka's phone received a text from Shinji.
"What does he want?" She wonders as she looks at the screen.
"Don't pilot the Eva," it read to her. "Kensuke, Toji and I will deal with it."
"And how are you going to do that?" She questions as she sends him a text back.
"The same way we took out the previous Angel. Please, Asuka, don't pilot the Eva. It's not worth you getting hurt or worse out there. It's not worth anyone getting hurt or worse out there. Stay inside the base. Please."
Asuka couldn't believe that he was telling her to stay out of this! All he did last time was get lucky because he had some technology that could help him in place of the Evangelion. And the thing about luck was that, sooner or later, no matter what, it ran out for certain people. There was no way that he could do anything against a second Angel like he had with the previous one, and she would prove it!
"Who does he think he is?!" She questions, and her phone receives another text.
"Someone that doesn't want to see you get hurt, Asuka," it read, and she looked around the hall she was in before receiving another message. "Please, Asuka, for once in your life, trust me when I say that you shouldn't pilot the Eva."
If he knew what she just said, then he was watching her through the surveillance cameras. Probably her phone, too. This meant her could track her wherever she went.
"Asuka!" She hears Misato cal out to her, and she turns to see the tactical strategist running down the hall. "Asuka! Don't get into Unit-02!"
"What?!" She replies angrily.
"Don't pilot the Eva. Shinji's going to deal with the Angel. We don't have anything that can penetrate its AT-Field."
"Well, that's likely because most of Japan's population left to live up there."
"No, this has nothing to do with the people or the power grid. Even if it did, The AT-Field is significantly more powerful than the ones previously seen by the Fifth, Seventh and Eighth Angels. And Shinji's closer. And there's more."
"Oh, really?"
"Yes, really. Shinji texted me that he found out some things NERV had been hiding…and he's going to distribute the information across the planet. He's going to expose his father and a dozen other people for many things they had done."
"He could be lying."
"Except he has nothing to gain by lying."
"But he has nothing to lose, either."
"Asuka, he actually does have something to lose if he tried to lie."
"And what would that be?"
"Us and the people that could've left the base to live on his space station but were likely threatened against doing so."
"It doesn't sound like he cares for his father, though."
"No, he has lost any sense of anything for him. He'd probably gain additional freedom from him by seeing him thrown in prison."
Ding! Their phones received a text, and they answered them.
"No kidding!" The text read from Shinji, once more confirming that he was listening to their conversation from whatever devices were available where they were.
"What sort of information could Shinji have that NERV's been hiding?" Asuka asks.
"The kind that will tear it apart," Misato tells her.
-x-
The nanomachines replicated and built a large, synthetic organism that was practically what you would see in the movies.
"Explain to me again why this was suggested?" Shinji asks Kensuke and Toji as they were inside his home, looking at the creature the nanobots created to face the Angel.
"Who doesn't like a Toho movie?" Toji tells him. "Also, Spacegodzilla has crystals growing out of his body and was a badass before he was defeated by Godzilla. There was no indication that he was even killed, just defeated, because he disintegrated and returned to space."
The synthetic organism was completed with the colorations of the desired creature in question.
"Oh, boy," Shinji sighs as he stands in the middle of the room as the floor opened up to reveal the same setup that they had used to control the previous nanotech constructs against the previous Angel. "Alright. Here we go."
In front of him was a holographic version of the Angel outside, and he motioned for Spacegodzilla to move closer towards it. With the light being dimmed, they could see a lesser form of the Angel as a large, glass-like construct that might've been reflecting light from whatever was present, giving it its illuminated appearance, with a glass-like sphere suspended under it and held in place by two thin branches.
This Angel's like a glass sculpture, Shinji thought as the Angel moved its large branch-like wings slightly. Its core is right under it and exposed. If I time this right, I can defeat it in a few minutes.
-x-
"…Okay, he's got options that nanotechnology can clearly give him over the Evas on that space station," went Hyuga as the rest of Central Dogma saw the one-hundred-twenty-meter space monster moving towards the illuminated Angel.
"What's its ETA before it gets any closer to that Angel?" Misato asks.
"Two minutes," Shigeru states, just as the Angel unleashes a beam of light against the nanotech duplicate. "Whoa!"
"That's strange," went Maya.
"What?" Ritsuko questions.
"The light it's giving off is similar to an AT-Field, but it's not having any effect whatsoever on the nanotech construct."
The space monster continued to approach the Angel…until it collided with illuminated target, causing it to shatter into pieces.
"The blue pattern has ceased," Maya reveals to them, indicating the Angel was defeated, just as the space monster shattered the pieces that ceased their glow, including the Angel's core, which looked like a glass sphere. "Incredible."
But Gendo wasn't impressed at all. His son had caused another issue with his abandonment and interference with whatever he possessed on that space station he lived on. He couldn't make Shinji do as he wanted him to do, and he couldn't make the people he invited to live on his space station return to their homes on the planet, most of which were limited due to resources and security against the criminal elements that still existed with very little to keep them satisfied. And now, with another Angel defeated, it was only a matter of time before SEELE decided that enough was enough and someone had to answer for this debacle.
Beep! The screens all around the command center lit up with a new text message from Shinji, addressed to Gendo.
"You can hate me all you want, Father," it read, "but in the end, those with the means and the drive to actually want to help others and expect very little to almost nothing in return are the ones that get the job done. What is it that you want out of this senseless feud with the Angels? What do you hope to gain from fighting them using children as your proxies? Or rather, as your pawns like some twisted chess game? What is it that you seek to obtain?"
"He inherits a colossal space station," went a male personnel member, "and suddenly, he's a badass to the tenth power."
"Yeah," a female member agrees.
But Gendo simply fumed over the text message. He felt disrespected by his son for merely asking him such questions and stating his belief on what enabled people to get results.
Ring! His phone rang, and he picked up.
"Ikari speaking," he utters, and his eyes widened. "HE DID WHAT?!"
Everyone in the command center turns and looks at Gendo; whatever he just heard, it had to be quite the shocker if it involved his son.
-x-
As the last of the nanobots used to create Spacegodzilla returned to storage for later use, Shinji sighs as he knows his action prior to the return of the nanobots to the space station, the distribution of all of NERV's secrets across the planet, was likely going to come back and bite him in his hiney. That was an arrow fired that he couldn't stop, and once it struck its target, the crap was going to hit the fan. It was his hope that there were a few people left on Earth that were not on the payroll of these SEELE people that were the fanatics that ruled behind the scenes…and would at least cause the scales of order and chaos to tip in the favor of the people left that wanted nothing to do with being manipulated into a dead end of their existence. The information that he released to the public was, for all intents and purposes, not for the weak at heart, and only those that had the means to pursue the ones responsible for the wrongs committed without dragging in those that had nothing to do with the wrongs committed could put the wicked to bed without their supper.
Office computers, he thought as he sat with Toji, Kensuke and Rei in his kitchen to eat lunch. Dorm room computers, smart phones, tablets, news media outlets, emails. Software and cyberspace where information can be forged, planted and harvested for anyone's use. Spread enough of it to enough people, let them comprehend all that they could, and let the chips fall wherever they will. Those that were in control, I hope will lose their power so that nobody else will suffer as they already have.
"Shinji," went Rei to him, "whatever happens is whatever will happen. You'll make yourself sick worrying about it all the time."
He nods in understanding and tries to put it behind him for the time being. That was all he could do for the moment. It was in fate's hands now. All he did was add more motion to the ball that was swinging, letting the cat out of the bag so it could wander around.
-x-
"…He hacked the MAGI and every other system used by us to store sensitive information for decades," went SEELE 10 to Gendo during the meeting, "and he released it all to the public! Everyone has the knowledge we possessed!"
"He released everything," Fuyutsuki, who was also present during the meeting, utters, "to everyone? I mean, everyone left on the planet?"
"Everyone!" SEELE 03 yells. "The police! The Fire Department! Pharmaceutical corporations! Even those that work the public library or have access to smart phones and tablets! The Third Child exposed us to the world!"
"Exposed us?" SEELE 08 questions. "Ikari's son pretty much used the information to ass-rape each of us!"
Despite their fury over Shinji's actions, SEELE was extremely pissed with Gendo for his inability to control his son and make him fall back in line with their scenario. The only difference between their displeasure with him and their displeasure with his son…was that the former was much closer than the latter in terms of location. If they wanted to dispose of him, Gendo was within reach, but because Shinji wasn't on the planet and his space station inaccessible to them, the boy was out of their reach. And the displeasure was beyond unfathomable.
"Anyone of influence," SEELE 01 states, "anyone with anything to do with NERV, us, the UN, even those within the Japanese government…are at risk now! The Third Child practically gave the entire world a hit list of who's who and where to find them anywhere on the planet! Anyone we can't control, that we saw as being insignificant…will likely come after us now!"
"This is all your fault, Ikari," SEELE 04 claims, "and you're also among the list of people your son exposed to the world. Second Impact, Adam and Lilith, the Angels and the Evas, the Human Instrumentality Project, it's all out there for the people to know about! Anyone who had anything to gain from this all is now among the most wanted of people in history!"
"This is where the roads end for each of us," SEELE 01 tells them. "We have to run and hide to avoid persecution and potential execution. You had best pray we never meet again, Ikari. This final meeting is adjourned."
When the holographic monoliths disappeared, Gendo couldn't believe that it had come to this, and all because one boy's refusal to fall in line.
Beep. Fuyutsuki took out his phone and found a text from this Senkensha Ikari that Shinji had inherited from.
"The price of knowledge is the pain of realization," it read, "and the pain of realization leads to revelations that will not be contained by the masses."
Fuyutsuki found this claim to be quite true. Knowledge came at a price, and sometimes the price led to outcomes that couldn't be avoided. And what Shinji had done was open up a can of worms of the worst kind that the world they lived in was not expecting. People were going to be after more than blood now. They were going to be after answers to the questions of why they had to suffer that traumatic day half the world went away.
The elder man sighs as he looks at Gendo and ponders how long it would be before anyone would come after him or anyone else.
-x-
Asuka was beyond surprised that Shinji up and revealed to the world such information that she couldn't believe had been less than what she had been told ever since she was little. She thought the Angels were the enemy the whole time, but it while that was true to a degree, it was human beings that instigated Second Impact, and Shinji had sent a large list of people that had been responsible for the apocalyptic events that ruined the planet fifteen years ago. It would be unavoidable that there would be some people that would be beyond upset with the ones that tried to profit from the devastation and committing mass genocide to obtain a sense of godhood and call it the salvation of mankind. And Misato had been right; this kind of information was capable of tearing NERV apart, and it would do just that.
Misato was at a loss for words here when she learned that much of the information behind the cause of Second Impact had been only a fraction of the greater amount of information that Shinji revealed to the world. But among the men and women listed for being involved in the cause of Second Impact, Misato didn't see her father's name among them, and it was his expedition that discovered Adam and ran experiments on it before Second Impact occurred; she saw Gendo's name listed among the responsible parties, but her father, even though he was dead, was not listed at all. Why was that? Why was her father, who she blamed for bringing her to that awful place where half the world would go away, one of the exceptions to the list of the responsible people that would get whatever was coming to them?
"I can't believe he did this," she hears Kaji say, sounding upset about the discovery. "I can't believe that he did this."
"Believe it," she tells him. "There's no denying what is now known to the public knowledge. Everyone knows. Everyone everywhere knows."
"This is a nightmare, Katsuragi. He could've revealed everything gradually, bits at a time, and to select people. Instead, he reveals everything, not holding anything back. This…is going to cause unrest of the worst sort."
But Misato could care less about what unrest it caused, people knowing everything on the planet. She didn't care because NERV was now in the hot seat along with every other organization that had some dark deals made under the table, and the United Nations had a list of bad deals with a lot of bad people. It was only a matter of time before NERV was either targeted or shut down and the Evangelions disposed of for the sake of protecting the people. Whichever way the pendulum was to swing, she was about to be out of a job.
"People are getting ready to leave," Kaji tells her. "Nobody wants to be here when the NSA or CIA or whoever has authority over whoever decides to show up and stage a witch hunt. You might be the tactical officer and strategist of the combat roster for the Evas, but even you shouldn't be around when the rest of the shit hits the fan."
"I doubt I'll even be at my place when the Japanese Ministry of the Interior decides to pay this half-empty city a visit. I gotta get Asuka away, too."
If people were going to come after NERV, they would likely be after whoever piloted the Evas, assuming, if the information sent out to the world, excluded any knowledge regarding the pilots' lack of direct involvement in whatever NERV was involved in, as their purpose was limited to just facing the Angels. But even if the public had knowledge of this, Misato was unwilling to risk Asuka's safety if they were still looking to come after her just for her involvement with NERV. While the girl might've wanted the world to know who she was and why she did what she did, it was certainly not like this. Instead of being known and admired, the redhead could've been known and despised for simply piloting the Evangelion for NERV.
Dammit, Shinji, you really screwed your old man big, Misato thought.
To be continued…
A/N: This chapter was long overdue, and I'm glad I finished it when I got back on it. It's an unofficial resolution right now, but I'm trying to tidy up my living space a little. I'm surprised that I had a lot of stuff on my desk that I didn't even know I had that I didn't need. Mondays are the days that I don't have much passion for, being a weekend and lazy person, but when I have nothing else to do or nobody to take up much of my time, you'd be surprised at how much you'd be able to get done when you put in the effort. Please, let me know what you think of this chapter upon reading it.