...later on, he would wonder how they had managed to get the car back on the pavement. He certainly was pretty well out of it for the rest of the trip into the underground facilities of NERV, and he thought Misato was almost as badly off. He had a vague memory of the blue hatchback slamming back and forth between the walls of the tunnel that led into the base, and said a little prayer to whatever divinity had protected them on their headlong flight to safety. Safety from the monster, that was. He could barely believe it had survived the N2 explosion - Misato hadn't confirmed that detail, but then what else could it possibly have been - though in fact it had seemed only mildly fazed by the nuclear fireball. Now they were working their way deeper into the bowels of this underground facility... or at least trying to. He was starting to worry that the effects of the explosion might have scrambled her brains even more than she had shown earlier. "Um, Misato, haven't we seen this corridor before?" "We're NOT walking in circles, Ikari," she angrily denied even as she reoriented the map she was holding. "I'm just not quite used to finding my way around here yet, that's all." "Maybe you should let me nav-" "There you are!" He stopped and turned around to see a woman, about the same age as Misato, definitely a foreigner given her complexion, height, and long, reddish-brown hair. He blinked, as a longer look showed that she was wearing only a (very flattering) bright red one-piece swimsuit under an open labcoat. "My god, Misato, what have you been doing?" She was frowning, and sounded monumentally peeved. "Are you lost, again?" Misato's response was equally chilly, though he thought he sensed a hint of humiliation underneath it. "Ah. We were just on the way to the bridge. Ikari-san, this is Asuka Soryu-Langley, Director of Technical Operations here at NERV." He bowed politely, and turned his head away, not really wanting to ogle someone who might turn out to be his boss. "This is him?" Asuka looked over Misato's guest, and shrugged, not especially impressed, but willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. "...I see the resemblance, I guess - get rid of the beard, and... Anyway, you're so late that we're going to have to move the festivities straight to the EVA cage." She paused, grinning viciously. "Do you think you can manage to follow me there?" Misato's hands twitched, and he had momentary hopes for an all-out catfight, but she only nodded and let Asuka lead them through the maze of corridors. Asuka pulled a leather skirt and fiery orange zip-up blouse on over the swimsuit as they rode an express elevator deeper into the facility. The two women started a conversation about some technical aspects of their work, and their hostility seemed to fade as they mused, seemingly fatalistically, about something that was incredibly unlikely to happen. He couldn't understand a tenth of what they were saying, so he withdrew into himself as they took yet another seemingly endless escalator ride. He wondered what it could mean, this summons. They'd seen each other, oh, maybe three years ago, but that was almost an accident. They hadn't really talked at all since... that day, a decade ago. Now he was supposed to just come running and take some sort of job here? The sheer arrogance of it was galling, and yet he could hardly say no. Not to him. The escalator came to an end, and Asuka led them through a pair of sliding double doors. The doors shut automatically behind them, plunging the room into darkness. He stopped abruptly, snapped out of his reverie by the sudden disorientation. He could hear Asuka fumbling with a control panel. Abruptly the overhead floodlights lit, revealing... what WAS that big purple thing? "...a giant robot?" he ventured after a couple of seconds. The robot, if that was what it truly was, was of monstrous size. Only its head was visible above the pool of reddish liquid it was standing in, but that head was the size of a house. A man on an observation balcony corrected him. "It's called an Evangelion. You will be its pilot." His breath caught as he spotted the man - there he was, looking even more somber than three years ago. They were finally face to face, and, and... "I - what? Pilot this... Evangelion?" "Yes. You will pilot Evangelion Unit 01 against the Angel that is even now attacking our city." "What? Why me? I don't know anything about giant robots, or monsters, except what I've seen in Godzilla movies..." "Because you are the only one who can." "I - I can't believe this! You don't say ten words to me in the decade since... she died, and now you're asking me to... risk my life in your machine? It can't possibly be safe!" The man's hands clenched impatiently on the railing. "I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. Get in the EVA, Gendo." *** Shinji's Alternate Universes We're really baking your noodle better! Episode 9: Anything You Can Do... series concept by Farsan de Arnibia this particular fever dream by Ked *** Like most truly awful ideas, this one had good intentions lurking somewhere behind it... Complementation, a while ago: #IkariFamily And then he... it... whatever said he'd kill dad! This is fascinating, Shinji. You actually split into two personalities? * Gendo scratches his beard thoughtfully. Complementation was supposed to be a unifying thing. * Yui huggles Gendo. "It is a unifying thing, dear." Well, yes. But that it's having the opposite effect on Shinji is worth some consideration. Don't you care? That thing is out there somewhere and it wants your head! I have nothing to fear in this place. And I've never had anything to fear from you. That some part of you resents that fact still... I guess I shouldn't be surprised. * Gendo shrugs. "You'll get over it. You have all the time you'll need." ... "never had anything to fear"? You never had anything to fear because you never bothered to CARE until Complementation. You didn't meet SEELE on that plane of existence, Shinji - if your father had shown any sign of weakness or pity, they would have slaughtered him. What, instead of slaughtering me? I never had anything to fear from you because you never had any spine, boy. You never stuck with anything long enough to see it through. Honestly, I think this is a long overdue sign that you're finally growing up. Unless this "other" you chickens out. [...] Do you have any idea how hard you made it for me, father? Tossing me in that robot, manipulating me with my feelings for you, brutalizing my friends... It had to be done. Between the Angels and the committee... maybe I wish things had been different, but I surely do not regret them. And you could have stood up for yourself much more effectively. * Yui waggles her whip at Gendo. Dear, he does have a point. Most adolescents don't have to deal up close and in person with the Apocalypse. You could have at least offered him some sympathy along the way. ...I guess. See? But Shinji, it was a war and he had to win. If the Angels were not defeated, if SEELE had entirely had their way... none of us would be here now. Or anywhere else. Exactly my point. *hmph* Boys, I think I have an idea! Let's have a little therapeutic roleplay, get into each other’s shoes a little. ...I think I can get some of the others involved as well. I'll grab you both when I have it set up, okay? *** Yui has left #IkariFamily (Oh, this is going to be fun!) I love this woman. *** Gendo has left #IkariFamily ...hey, wait! What are we doing about my evil twin?!? *** Gendo looked back up at his son, rage and grief warring visibly on his face. "Shinji, how could you ask this of me? Wasn't it enough when your mother was killed in your unspeakable experiments?" *** Complementation: #Revangelion Waitwaitwait! What is this? Shinji was never this assertive! Hey! ...I can only be so whiny. There are limits. HEY! The point is to play the role, children, not the person. ...but why am I playing myself? No one could possibly replace you, Misato. No one could possibly replace you, Misato. No one could possibly replace you, Misato. @_@ ^^_v ;_)) *** Shinji looked as if he had been slapped in the face by this accusation, but he swallowed hard and shot right back. "They were her experiments, too! And just like this, they were necessary for the sake of our future! Are you going to dishonor her memory like this?" "You think you can just drag me into your schemes on a whim, cram me into that death machine there, just because I'm your father? Isn't there anyone else left with a shred of trust in you that you can use?" "Th-there's no time for this foolishness. You must pilot EVA, father, and you must d-d-do it now!" Anger finally won, and Gendo glared up defiantly. "No. You have no more claim on me, you forfeited it through a decade of avoidance and neglect. Find someone else to sacrifice." The younger man bit his lip fretfully. This wasn't part of the plan. And now he would have to... have to... *** Complementation: /msg Shinji Psst! Go away. You can't do it, can you? You really, really want to, but it just isn't in you - or at least not your part of you. You're not in the channel! How can you even see what's happening? At some level, I *am* you. And you can see well enough. Let me help? Please? This is like one of my *ultimate* fantasies... ... Well... Rei made me promise not to kill him. And I won't. She's SCARY. Yes. Yes, she is. I'll just torment him a little, okay? He's got to understand what he put us through. ... ...yes. Yes, he does. *** Shinji's face hardened perceptibly, and he reached out to touch a control. "Touji." The grim face of the NERV Subcommander replaced a close-up of Gendo's trembling visage on one of the inevitable wallscreens. "Yes." "The substitute is unusable. Prepare Rei for insertion in EVA-01." Touji looked stricken. "Is there really any chance she can synchronize?" "...she's not dead." "...understood." The display reverted to its close-up of Gendo. Shinji's glare pierced Gendo as if he were an insect pinned to a display board. It was obvious that his refusal had forced his son into a plan he found extremely distasteful. Gendo found he could not meet that stare. His face flushed, he turned to watch as a technician wheeled something through the door. As they drew closer, he could see it was a gurney. On it lay a girl, surely not more than fifteen years old, with pale features and powder blue hair. One of her arms was in a cast, and heavy bandages were wound around her head, torso, and one thigh. Gendo's brow furrowed. Surely this couldn’t be the only alternative- The entire room shook as the Angel, far overhead, finally turned its strength to the task of breaching the Geo-front. The gurney overturned, spilling its cargo onto the walkway and sending the technical stumbling over the railing to plunge into the nutrient bath below. The girl cried out sharply as she struck the floor then began to paw at the walkway in a pathetic attempt to get back up. Almost involuntarily, the older man started forward to help her. There was something impossibly familiar about her, something that grabbed at his soul even before he knew her name. The room started shaking once more as he approached, but he held tight to the railing until he was close enough to kneel at her side and cradle her frail body protectively to his. Misato shouted in fright at something, but Gendo was completely lost in the girl's deep red eyes and just ignored her. Even when the giant Evangelion stirred, cupping one hand protectively over the pair to shield them from falling debris, he didn't notice. As the tremors stopped and everyone else realized what had just happened, Asuka murmured, "That's impossible. Self-activation is impossible!" Shinji, far above, kept his peace, but could not help baring his teeth in a fierce, triumphant grin. The moment quickly passed, though, and he turned to give orders. "Doctor Langley. We must hurry - the EVA will need significant recalibration for Rei." Asuka had at least enough conscience to look troubled by this prospect, but she nodded and started furiously typing at the walkway's control panel. Misato was somewhat more ambivalent. "You can't be serious! Just look at her - she can't even crawl straight, how is she going to be able to pilot?" Shinji stared down at his father and the girl in his arms and shrugged. "My father refuses. She is the only other pilot at hand, and I will not let NERV fall without a fight." "Wait." The word came out in a snarl, and it seemed as though the entire room fell silent at its quiet ferocity. Gendo tried shifting Rei so she would be propped up against one of his shoulders, but his hand came away bloody. He gaped at it, and settled for lowering her back to the floor. A couple of medtechs came running in, and he stood back up to face his son. "First Yui... now this girl? You are sick, Shinji. Sick! I won't let you sacrifice her!" Shinji merely tilted his head at the purple robot, which had returned to its dormant position. "I think you know what that will mean." Gendo bowed his head, and his eyes disappeared behind the pool lights reflecting off his glasses. "...damn you. Yes." *** So here he was. Rocketing hundreds of meters upwards in just seconds, strapped to and half-drowned inside a giant robot, expected to fight an equally large monster or alien or Angel or whatever, with no training. And all for the sake of a girl he had never met before. ...so why did he feel so energized by it? There was something about sitting in this cockpit that made his blood stir, something that made him feel protected and invincible and humble all at once. Something... familiar. *** Complementation: #Revangelion * Yui yanks Gendo's chain. It had better be more than "familiar"... *** "So how do I control this thing," he wondered out loud, not really expecting an answer. A video window popped up in the corner of the cockpit, and Misato grinned at him. "It's easy - you'll feel like you're moving your own body. Since we don't have external weapons ready, the hand yokes are mainly a psychological crutch, to let you feel more like you're steering and to help orient you inside the entry plug. Ten seconds to the surface, Ikari-san," she warned. "Good hunting." The window blinked away. "A crutch, eh?" Gendo deliberately let go of the yokes and folded his hands in front of his face. "I'll show him I can stand on my own." The catapult platform came to a crashing stop, and Gendo found himself facing into the late afternoon sun. The Angel was directly in front of him, and as he took his first tentative steps in the EVA it turned to face him. The ease of those steps led quickly to a full-out dash, and Gendo's anger was lost in the sheer joy of once more having a body that could do what he wanted without the creaking arthritic stiffness his age dictated. The Angel moved forward to meet EVA-01's charge head-on, but Gendo, using distant muscle memories of his youth, took it at the knees with a flying soccer tackle. The EVA slid on through two buildings before coming to a halt. The Angel, taken by surprise, was completely upended. One of its spindly legs cracked in two, and it planted its masklike face firmly into the pavement. *** Complementation: #Revangelion ... ... ...kewl. No fair! He's twinking! * Gendo is simply not panicking. The rest comes easily enough. *** Gendo smiled faintly and willed his EVA to somersault back to its feet. The maneuver started well enough, but something ropelike was tangled about the giant mecha's legs, and it was his turn to do an ungainly faceplant. "Ooof!" Misato's face reappeared. "Watch out for your power cable!" "I have a power cable?" He looked back, and indeed there was a long purple cable snaking out behind him towards the catapult exit. "Okay..." "The batteries don't last - look out!" Gendo turned back just in time to see the Angel swipe at his face with a clawed hand. The blow caught below the EVA's left eye and sent him spinning into another apartment complex. "GAAAAAAAH!" *** Asuka stood with Misato on the second tier of the Central Dogma bridge. Both women had their hands on their hips as they watched the damage reports roll in. "Synchronization falling below forty-five percent," called Hikari from her console station. "We're starting to see neural turbulence in the cerebellum!" Kaji typed furiously with one hand - the other was busy applying pressure to the massive field dressing on his chest. "EVA-01's mandible has been dislocated, and the left orbit is badly cracked in the lower exterior quadrant!" Asuka took this news calmly. After all, it wasn't her out there getting her face pounded in. "Gendo, listen to me. You're feeling the pain of EVA's injuries, but your own jaw isn't really broken." *** Complementation: #Revangelion Really! Really it isn't! But go ahead and break a few more bones, please, mister commander sir! You're enjoying this entirely too much. Oh, we *all* are. * Rei blinks, and peeeeeeeers at Shinji. What? ...I'm a bridge bunny? ;_; Don't knock it - at least I get to see what's happening this time... * Misato forcibly dresses Kaji in a spare Playboy Bunny costume. Ack! I always wondered why you had that in you closet, Misato... [...] * Misato tries to hide. *whimper* *** "Y-yeah... right." EVA-01 reoriented once more, this time facing the Angel with its fists raised in more of a guarded stance. The Angel was still sorting out how to move on its broken leg, so he had a moment. "Right. I can still talk, so my face must not be mangled, but *damn* that hurts!" Misato nodded in vague sympathy. "So don't get hit again." "...easy for you to say." Gendo advanced cautiously, trying to gauge the relative reach of the Angel and his EVA. He got within punching distance (he hoped), and when the Angel didn't lash out first at him, he let loose with an overhand haymaker. *booooooooooong* The EVA's fist rebounded backwards from an almost- invisible barrier just meters beyond the mecha's face. "What was that?!" Asuka shouldered Misato out of the camera pickup. "It's an AT-field. A shield. You should be able to make one too, and use it to penetrate the Angel's." "How?" "We don't know," Asuka shrugged. "It should just work, dummkopf, but you haven't done it yet according to our readings." "You're all just full of useful advice, you - uh-oh." The Angel was cocking its right arm in a motion he recognized from his first encounter with the monster. From the better angle he had inside the EVA, he could see the masklike "face" of the Angel roll and twist, seemingly taking on an even crueler aspect. The clawed hand thrust forward. Gendo dug in, thinking fiercely about shields. Gendo's world filled with flame. From a safe distance away, it looked as if the blast struck a solid hemisphere just in front of the EVA and poured around it to sheet backwards with astonishing force, igniting everything it touched. "I'm... NOT... going to be... a victim!" Gendo trembled with effort as he stood his ground against the onslaught. His hands clenched so firmly that his knuckles began to pop, but slowly he began to inch the EVA forward. "Looks like you got it right just in time," came Asuka's voice. Gendo couldn't spare the concentration to look down at her image. "You're about to neutralize the phase space... now." The wall of fire parted instantaneously, and Gendo found plowing shoulder-first into the Angel. It fell over, and the EVA was instantly on top of it. He flailed at the bright red sphere embedded in its chest even as he continued to scream. "...not of my son!" *WHAM* "Not of his-" *WHAM* "-damned experiments!" *WHAM* "And not of some stupid-" *WHAM* "-alien monster!" *CRUNCH* The last blow cracked the Angel's core, and sensing its impending demise it curled up around the EVA and self-destructed. *** "Target destroyed," announced Kaji as he slumped backward in relief and leaked all over the console chair. The leaders of NERV watched as the column of light where the EVA and Angel had stood faded away. "And what about Gendo-" began Misato. "And what about EVA-" started Asuka simultaneously. Shinji merely smiled, and waited. It only took a moment longer for EVA- 01 to become visible again. It was standing straight, almost proudly, with its arms folded across its chest. Gendo's age-worn face appeared on the pilot monitor, his expression still hidden by his hands. "So. Is that what you wanted, Shinji?" Shinji stood and walked the few steps to the elevator platform. As he and Touji sunk out of sight, he intoned, "Adequate. For now." *** "I don't get it," fretted Misato. "You're not going to move in with Shinji?" Gendo's lips twisted into a bitter smile. "You heard what we said to each other this afternoon... it would be a bad idea for us to be in such close proximity, and we both know it. You could lose a commander. Or a pilot, I guess." "But you are staying?" "...yes." Gendo's eyes lost focus momentarily. "It's... hard to explain. Piloting EVA is almost like a fountain of youth, at least while you're in the cockpit. At my age, I can use all of that I can get. Even more than that, it made me feel... happy, somehow, for the first time since I lost Yui." He stopped, his expression becoming almost dreamy. Misato started to say something, but his face snapped back to a hard scowl and he continued, "And then there's Rei. I will not let him harm that girl." Misato nodded, not really understanding. "Well, then, you'll move into my spare room." "What? I'm not so far gone that I need a nursemaid!" "No, but as one of NERV's pilots you're almost as important an asset as the EVAs, and common sense says we can't let you live alone." Misato smiled sunnily and sketched a pose. "Besides, don't you want to live with a beautiful woman?" *** Complementation: #Revangelion * Yui growls. *** A frustrated sigh. "Hasn't my life become complex enough already?" *** Shinji sat in the Big NERV Commander's Chair. His feet were propped up on the Big NERV Commander's Desk. His eyes idly traced the Big NERV Commander’s Sephiroth on the ceiling of his office. Subcommander Suzuhara stood ramrod straight beside him, reciting NERV's weekly report to the committee. "-you can see that the reconstruction of EVA Unit-00 has reached 95% of completion. It could be deployed immediately if necessary, though we would prefer to avoid action with it for another 96 hours if at all possible. The rebuild is only 7% over budget, inclusive of the interface enhancements we've had the chance to build into the system while it was open. "The training of the Third progresses swiftly - his synchronization ratio has already hit seventy percent in static tests, and it is expected that he will routinely surpass that number in the field." The yellow-fringed black monolith on the left pulsed for attention, not caring if it interrupted the presentation. "So it wasn't just nepotism after all, Ikari? The old man actually has talent. Who'd have thought it?" Shinji looked disdainfully over the bridge of his nose at the blank geometrical figure. "Did you even read the Marduk report? Gendo ranked in the ninety-ninth percentile in fifteen of the eighteen relevant categories. He was the best choice not already under NERV supervision, and he was the one available in the moment of crisis. ...unfortunately." The monolith abruptly derezzed into a hologram of a thin, brown-haired man with glasses, about the same age as Shinji and Touji. "C'mon, Shinji, we know you cooked the books. Why can't you let me have a chance? We both know I'd run circles around your dad... or maybe you could build another EVA for me? Could you? Just a small one, maybe..." Shinji simply shook his head and let Touji shoot the man's dreams down. "Kensuke. You know full well that we don't have the liquidity for that sort of gratuitous discretionary expenditure. Even for 'just a small one'. If you wanted it so bad, you should have put it in the committee’s master budget. And with the Angel attacks underway, the staff has no more time to... entertain the committee." "Awww... I never get to have any fun." Kensuke disappeared, replaced by the yellow-lit monolith. "I'm sorry. Proceed." Touji relaxed just a bit. "That's really all we have to report for-" The center monolith pulsed. "Waugh! Waugh, waugh!" *** Complementation: #Revangelion !!! * Ritsuko chokes on her tea. Waaah! Waaaaugh! So that's where you went, Pen^2! I wondered why you weren't in the apartment. Why... why is Chairman Kihl being played by a penguin? I couldn't get the committee to play along with this one. Something about realizing these games were beneath their dignity. I think they're all over in #SEELE practicing "nothingness of mind". But... the PENGUIN!?! * Yui shrugs. "He asked to." Waugh. *** Touji bit his lip. Shinji slowly lowered his feet to the floor and sat up straighter in his chair. The dim lighting was sufficient to reveal the sudden beads of sweat forming on his brow, but the sardonic grin never left his face. "I assure you, the Flightless Waterfowl Instrumentality Project continues to be our top priority. FWIP is proceeding on schedule, and nothing will be allowed to interrupt it." *** Complementation: #Revangelion * Gendo pounds his head against the wall. Come to think of it, why IS Pen-Pen in the Complementation? I think I'd rather not know. ^^_v *** "Waaaaaaugh." Shinji could only shake his head at this idiocy. "You're doing quite well, regardless. We've been over this repeatedly - the Antarctic was a necessary sacrifice, and you had plenty of warning." There was a moment of silence, then a furious flapping noise. "WAUGH!" "Of course I wouldn't lie to you. We know full well what the penalty for that would be." The monoliths chewed silently on that for a couple of seconds, then all twelve of them blinked away as one. Touji slumped to the floor, half-landing against the desk. "He knows you're lying," he accused bitterly. Shinji nodded somberly. "Of course he does. He knows we know he knows I'm lying. He knows that we will never allow penguins to gain eternity in our stead... but they have to work with us anyway. After all, we're the ones with the opposable thumbs." *** The situation report finished and the lights quickly came up in the briefing room. Gendo ruefully noted that the final pair of photos from the briefing had been left on the projector. While the overhead lighting could wash out the colors on the screen, they could not wash out the shameful content of the images there. EVA-01 had quite literally been tied into a ball by the half of the seventh Angel it had encountered. Its arms and legs were crushed into limpness, then intertwined in an armored knot that he had been unable to pull out of. The Angel then had picked up EVA-01 and rolled it down a freeway, eventually knocking down a cluster of hotel buildings like so many bowling pins. That had been an interesting ride, so much so that he had vomited his breakfast into the LCL as the recovery teams rushed to his aid. On the other half of the screen was the lavender form of EVA-02. It had suffered a similarly humiliating fate when the other half-Angel had impaled it rather grotesquely with a handy lighthouse. *** Complementation: #Revangelion ...my compliments to the Angel. Thank you! ... Gendo was getting a little too good at this, so I asked her to help a bit with the red team. * Shinji waves little Rei flags. * Rei shakes a spare Lance at Shinji. Be nice. *** The fact that the UN conventional forces had fought the monster to a stop using N2 munitions didn't help matters one bit. His new coworker decided that the best defense was a good offense. She stood up and announced, "If Gendo here had done his job right, we wouldn't have ended up like that. What the hell were you doing with that autocannon? I saw the tapes - you didn't even have your hands on the triggers! I could have put fifty shots on target in the time you took to put one in the Angel." Ritsuko Akagi was... interesting, Gendo decided. A big ego in a small, otherwise pleasant package. She was in her forties, but other than the beginnings of crows' feet and a certain weariness of motion, her seemingly ageless beauty was unmarred. It was enough to make a man wish he were a decade younger... or pull his remaining hair out when she went off like this. Gendo rose stiffly to his own feet. "So why didn't you? You shot the plan to pieces quite efficiently - just as soon as we spotted the damned thing you were running off with that spear and ordering me to cover you. Ordering me!" He snorted contemptuously. "Rookie! After doing for three of those bastards - four, really, since you were almost useless with the Sixth, just flailing around and waiting to sink - you'd think I'd have a little seniority around here." He eyed their audience nervously, suddenly aware that the assembled NERV leadership wasn't very happy with the continued bickering. Ritsuko didn't catch those same signals. She swung back into her tirade, turning her nose up at this insect that dared dispute her superiority. "I had a better position than you. As for the plan... what plan? I had a spear and you had a cannon: that was all the plan we were given. Besides, I've spent my entire adult life preparing for this conflict. I've spent the last half-decade synchronizing with EVA systems and more than two years in the cockpit. You're just a lucky beginner, with no appreciation for the science of-" "Enough." The icy voice from the back of the room brought the rant to a halt. Subcommander Suzuhara stood stiffly on the command balcony, his emotions apparent in the tone of his voice and the twitching of his jaw. "You failed because you did not work together. You. Both. Failed. And you humiliated NERV." He extended a finger at a secondary screen showing a live image of the Angel and a countdown to its expected awakening. "You have five days to fix this problem." He turned on his heel and strode out of sight. Gendo and Ritsuko cringed and glanced guiltily at one another. Gendo offered a conciliatory smile, but the new pilot only shook her head in suppressed frustration. "Let's be glad that Commander Ikari isn't here for this," noted Misato mildly. "After he got through court-martialing my ass straight out of NERV, he'd ream you two. Instead, we have a chance to make it right." Ritsuko clenched her teeth and nodded. Gendo nodded as well, but wondered aloud, "Where did Shinji disappear to, anyway?" *** "Aaagh! I can't stand it! I can't stand it!" Shinji ripped the bandages off his right hand and scratched furiously at his right palm. "Aaaaaahhhhhh." His eyes rolled back, and he sank back into the hospital bed with a look of bliss. The bloated fetus implanted in his hand wiggled and blinked its single visible eye. Shinji stared right back at it. "Shut up, you." *** "Anyway, Asuka has come up with a strategy. It calls for a little personal sacrifice from all of us, but I think that's appropriate at this moment, hmmm?" Misato managed not to sound too sarcastic. Asuka grinned sadistically. "It's simple enough. You two have to learn to play nicely, so you're going to be stuck with each other for every moment of the next five days. You're going to live together. You're going to sleep together." "Whaaaaat?" chorused the two pilots. *** Complementation: #Revangelion Whaaaaaat? *** "No, not like that. But you'll eat together, play together, brush your teeth together... and dance together. Or else." "Or else what?" demanded Ritsuko. Misato held up several pairs of tickets. "Or else we pack you off to corporate team-building seminars." Two sets of shoulders slumped. "You win," they admitted. *** The old man knocked politely at the apartment door. "Just a minute," shouted a couple of voices from within over the blaring stereo. After a few seconds, the music stopped, then the door opened and two heads stuck out into the hallway. "Can we help you?" each asked. Gendo and Ritsuko stood shoulder to shoulder, holding each other’s hands. They were both dressed in tights, tank top, and a poofy off-the shoulder sweatshirt decorated with music note patterns. Fuyutsuki blinked. "Well, you could stop... what exactly are you doing in there, Ikari-kun?" He smiled warmly at Ritsuko. "Though you've certainly chosen someone interesting to do whatever it is with." "It's not like that!" protested the two costumed pilots. Misato walked up behind them and looked to see who was there. "Oh, Fuyutsuki-san! I'm sorry, we'll turn down the volume. Ritsuko, this is our next door neighbor. He used to be a teacher, and Gendo actually had him for a few high-school classes. Fuyutsuki, this is Ritsuko Akagi, the most recent addition to our pilot roster." The old man bowed. "The pleasure is mine. ...really, Misato, I enjoy waltzes but the so-called soundproofing in these walls does weird things to music." "Come on in, then! Sit down, have a beer, watch the entertainment." "I can't turn an invitation like that down, not from a nice young woman like you." Fuyutsuki stepped into Misato's apartment and knelt at a low table in the living room across from a blue-haired girl. "Hello, Rei. Remember me?" "Yes." Misato returned from the kitchen with more beer, and sat a can down in front of her guest. "She's not much for conversation, I'm afraid." She popped her own can open, took a long swig, then pointed imperiously at the two pilots, who were half-hiding in the hallway. "Back to it." The man and woman sighed and trudged out to the center of the room. Misato clicked her remote, and a slow-tempoed waltz restarted. Gendo and Ritsuko took each other by the hand and waist, and tried to three- step to the music. They immediately stepped on each other's foot and collapsed away from one another. "Ah, this is stupid, Misato! Gendo's so bad at this, he's tripping me before I even take a step. We should be working on his aim, not wasting time on ballroom crap," complained Ritsuko. Misato stared coldly back at the pilot. "Right, right..." The pilots linked together once more, and managed to go a few bars in a straight line, but then they had to turn around. They first pulled away from one another, then both overcompensated and they slammed into each other. Gendo had a bit more mass, and it was his momentum that won. The two toppled over, Gendo landing more-or-less on top of Ritsuko. "Arrrgh," they groaned as Gendo rolled off to one side. "This is hopeless." Their guest cleared his throat politely. "Pardon me, but it looks as if both of you are trying to lead. That just isn't going to work. ...traditionally, the man takes that role." "Hmmph," harumphed Ritsuko, and she scrambled across the floor to join the three spectators. "No thanks - nothing against men, mind you, but it can't make sense for this stumblebum to be dragging me around." Misato shrugged. "Makes sense to me, but if you're not going to cooperate... Rei, would you try?" The girl nodded, and silently took her place with Gendo. The music started, and they... danced. And danced. And danced. Gendo marveled at their mutual coordination. He hadn't danced like this since he before Shinji's birth, when he and Yui would visit a dance club now and again. They had been good at this. Not professional-level, but good enough to look cool and dignified in the beautiful-people scene. Rei somehow made that long-forgotten groove fall back into place, and - "It looks to me like Rei might be better suited for this operation," mused Misato as she cracked open another can. "What do you think, Fuyutsuki-san?" "I think I have no idea what any of this has to with your job, but they do look good together." "All right, all right," groused Ritsuko, polishing off a beer of her own. "So he does know how to dance. I'm not going to let some little girl beat me. Let me back in." Rei pirouetted away as the short waltz ended, then knelt back down beside Misato. Ritsuko took the girl's place, though this time she didn't make a point of holding Gendo at arm's length. Misato unpaused the recording and the next track started. Gendo could instantly tell that he had the lead, and he swept around the room with her in his arm. He could feel her buck in an opposing direction once in a while, and this time he let her pull them instead of forcing the issue. It was a compromise, and an awkward one, but that was more than the two of them ever had ever allowed before. He knew they were not achieving the grace that he had with Rei... but while Rei had merely caused him to reminisce about Yui, Ritsuko prompted some much more current impulses. The dance ended before he had much cause for embarrassment. He thought he caught a spiteful glare from his partner as they disengaged, but then she turned away and he couldn't see her expression. In the meantime, their audience had started applauding. Fuyutsuki knew what he was seeing, and he winked slyly at Gendo as he clapped his hands. Misato was a little more oblivious - understandable, given her relatively tender age - and only was thinking of the purely practical outcome. "I'd say we've had a breakthrough! It's still a little sloppy, but maybe we'll move onto something more advanced tomorrow. Do either of you Macarena?" *** Ritsuko stepped out of the shower and saw Gendo was still poring over the mission briefing binder. She stepped around the corner and finished toweling off before putting on a sleepshirt. She came back out and looked wearily around the apartment. "Hey, where's Misato?" "She's at NERV, handling the mission prep personally, remember?" "Huh. Good." Ritsuko picked up her futon and dragged it away from Gendo's and into a side room. She stooped over to spread it on the floor, then looked back up at Gendo. "If she's not here, then we don't have to sleep 'together'." Gendo looked up from the briefing binder to agree, but got an eyeful through the wide, gaping collar of Ritsuko's sleep-shirt and entered a state of mild brain-lock. "Well, anyway, open this door and you will die a slow, painful death." She slid the partition shut and lay down to sleep. *** Complementation: #Revangelion Wait a minute... * Asuka remembers what this led to, and boggles. What? What did it lead to? * Asuka whispers something to Shinji in /msg. O_o I told you, nothing happened! Just like in the hospital, huh? * Shinji jumps on Asuka and starts throttling her. Ack! * Asuka tosses Shinji into the channel dumpster. Keep it down over there, okay? Some of us want to see this. *** Gendo woke to the sound of the partition being pulled back and feet moving across the floor to the restroom. He tensed momentarily, then realized who it had to be. The toilet flushed and the footsteps padded back out... then stopped as a soft, trim body joined his on his futon and sleepily reached for covers. He let her take the covers and shifted slightly in preparation for getting up and moving to a safer location. His motion rocked Ritsuko's face closer to his, and he could see her lips move slightly, invitingly. The rounded mass of her chest pressed tightly against the sleepshirt as it twisted underneath her, and he became aware of the sloping rise of her hips. Gendo's breath caught, and reflexively he leaned back towards her. He knew it was a bad idea. He knew he was asking for an impossible amount of trouble. He knew it was a good way to lose vital parts of his anatomy. He knew he had to kiss this woman. He edged his face closer and closer... and then stopped as her mouth formed an intelligible word as she lay there dreaming. "M-m-mother..." Even in her sleep, Ritsuko's voice was tinged with loss and frustration. It was not enough to break the spell of desire - he was too far gone for that - but here was another person who had lost someone, who still felt grief in her soul. She was a kindred spirit, not just a beautiful woman. Gendo changed targets, and gently kissed Ritsuko on the forehead. ...and that was enough to wake her up. She stiffened, then felt around with one hand. She found one extra body, male, and only one futon. She opened her eyes and saw where she was, and what Gendo had just done. "...Ikari-san?" Gendo tensed. "Yes, Akagi-san?" "...don't stop." *** Complementation: #Revangelion AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH! * Asuka covers Shinji's eyes. * Shinji already had his eyes closed. * Gendo can't heeeeear yooooooooou... ...so Shinji and Asuka...? @>@ No! Did not! * Asuka DEATHMALLETS Misato. * Shinji flosses Unit-01's teeth with the flattened corpse. Eeeeeew. Sorry! I just wondered if Shinji was enough of a man to make it happen, that's all. * Shinji sighs. No, no I wasn't. That's just as well - I would have killed him afterwards. *** The bridge crew collectively grinned in triumph as the two Evangelion units struck the seventh Angel simultaneously. The resulting fireball filled the bridge display and cast long shadows across the gray-tiled floor. As it died down, Hikari proclaimed that the EVAs were undamaged, just out of battery power. This brought some actual cheers... until someone managed to put a camera on the two EVAs. "Eeeeeeeew." "Gott in Himmel..." "I'm blind! I'm blind!" On the other hand, the expected screaming fit didn't materialize. Instead, the two pilots could be heard laughing uproariously over the comm channels. The EVAs did appear to be undamaged, but they had managed to fall into a most... compromising position, with the lavender EVA-02 pinned under Gendo's purple EVA-01. Misato tried to put the best face on it. "Well, they killed the Angel, right? And they're getting along better, too..." This spin looked like it would work. Certainly that's what everyone wanted to be thinking. Then someone on the lower bridge deck made a slightly-too-loud remark about needing to find some Progressive Trojans. Subcommander Suzuhara stabbed at the button and descended out of sight on the command lift. *** Complementation: #Revangelion * Gendo whistles innocently. * Ritsuko puffs on a long, thin cigarette. *sob* This wasn't supposed to happen! You stuck those two together as pilots and you *didn't* see this coming? * Yui tugs on a handy flogger with two white-knuckled hands. "You do know there will be hell to pay, right?" *** Gendo sat in his EVA and waited alone for the thirteenth Angel to come into sight. He had been off-duty and doing his laundry when the alert came in, so the other two EVAs had been sortied ahead of him. He'd heard Rei's screams as he had suited up. The rescue team had said the EVA looked nearly pancaked, but that it and the pilot were "salvageable." He guessed that was reassuring enough for the moment - there would be plenty of time to agonize over failing the girl again once his own battle was finished. He'd been on the surface and moving in time to see the lightshow over the horizon from Rits-chan's own engagement with the Angel. From her initially gleeful tone and the relative lack of tracer misses arching into the sky, he guessed that it must be a simple target to hit... but then it had apparently disemboweled EVA-02, so it must not have taken much damage from all that firepower. Ritsuko's trademark stoic silence while the Angel had feasted on her EVA's innards had disturbed Gendo, even more than Rei's cries. ...so here he was, standing behind an aqueduct, a Prog Knife buzzing in his hand, waiting for the inevitable. And with a very bad intuition of what the inevitable might be. "Shinji..." There was no response over the vidlink. "Shinji, I know. I know that Misato and Dr. Langley are out testing EVA-03. I know that... Fuyutsuki is the Fourth. I know they went to Matsushiro to do the activation." Silence. "Shinji, I can read a map. I know I've been deployed straight towards the testing station. Now just tell me what I don't know before it tries to kill me." An audio-only window popped up. "An Angel disrupted the test. You will destroy it." "What aren't you telling me?" snarled Gendo. "Just do your job." Gendo desperately wanted to initiate a screaming match, but the bleeping of his proximity sensors punctured the mood. His secondary optics system magnified the image of the incoming Angel. It was a giant penguin. "...ooooookay." It was black, mostly, save for a bit of white and color around its face. The rolling layers of fat that looked so cute on a normal-sized bird were unspeakably repulsive when scaled up to EVA size. As it ponderously waddled ever closer, Gendo could see that its feathers shone with a flat, plastic luster that reminded him vaguely of his EVA's armor plating. *** Kaji leaned over to whisper to Hikari. "Hey. Why exactly did we build Unit-03 that way?" The young woman flinched away from the gray and crimson liquids trickling from the puncture wound in the console tech's forehead. "I heard the committee insisted that the Galapagos production line be set up that way. And who's going to tell them no?" *** "Engaging thirteenth Angel now," Gendo noted automatically. He hunched forward in the seat and unconsciously steepled his fingers in front of his face. Just another Angel, he told himself. Just one more time. He willed the EVA into action. It sprung nimbly over the aqueduct then ran forward to meet the Angel in a fallow field. This one looked too massive to effectively tackle, and Ritsuko had proven the uselessness of projectile weapons, so it would have to be a knife fight. Gendo lunged straight for the Angel, his progressive knife held forward in EVA-01's right hand and braced by the heel of its left hand. It plunged into the Angel's chest, but Gendo could feel the knife grind and stop against the armored feathers. He let go of the now-useless blade, and ducked as the Angel flailed at him with its wings. This left EVA-01 hunched over in front of the giant penguin-shaped Angel. It let out an odd cry, then pitched forward off its feet. Gendo's eyes widened as the shadow of the Angel enveloped him. He threw the EVA into a desperate roll and managed to get out from under the Angel before it landed on its belly with a resounding *thump*. "...so that's what happened to Rei-chan..." Gendo leapt to his feet, and tried to boot the Angel in the head. It merely turned its head and caught his foot with its beak. "Uh-oh." The Angel rocked back onto its feet, upending EVA-01. The mecha dangled in the air, and the Angel took the opportunity to batter it with its wings. Gendo was mostly insulated from the blows by the LCL, but through the EVA it felt vaguely like being slapped around by two very large fish. The Angel tossed its head, flipping EVA-01 high into the air. Gendo managed to stop the resulting spin as he reached apogee, and saw that the Angel had stretched its mouth wide open as if it were going to try to swallow him whole as he came down. On the other hand, it left the Angel in a pretty vulnerable position... Gendo raised the EVA's arms over its head and knitted its hands together. As he came within reach and the beak began to close around the falling EVA, he slammed his clasped hands into the back of its head. The Angel sprawled out on its stomach once more. EVA-01 landed on its knees, straddling the penguin-monster's neck. Gendo didn't have time to think about tactics, so he just did the first thing that came to mind. He grabbed a mass of armor-feathers in each hand and pulled. The Angel's skin split all the way down its back and blood fountained up from the gap. Over the Angel's outraged shriek, Gendo could hear Kaji announce something about AT-field penetration. AT-field or no AT-field, Gendo could tell that he had the advantage. He rammed his fist into the gaping wound and twisted the arm about, doing more damage while searching for a something that would end the battle. The tips of EVA-01's fingers brushed something solid and he reflexively grabbed it and yanked it out of the Angel, crushing it in his fist. The Angel immediately ceased all movement. Blood still spurted from the wound, rolling off the field and turning the aqueduct waters crimson, but there was no doubt that it was dead. Gendo's lips curled in a gruesome expression of triumph... and then he saw what was in his hand. EVA-01's fist was curled around a cylinder, maybe eight meters long, white, with NERV logos in aesthetically centered locations. ...except that it was no longer really a cylinder, what with the middle section crumpled by the EVA's powerful fist and the ends folded in by the distortion of the inner framework. It leaked a viscous orange fluid, one that was very familiar to the pilot holding it. ...except now the dregs of that fluid turned pinkish, and as EVA-01's fist opened Gendo saw that there was no possible way a whole human body could fit into the flattened shape. Gendo's mouth worked soundlessly, and in shock he turned back to look at the "Angel". Now that it wasn’t trying to kill him, he could see a few new details of the penguin shape, like the seam at the base of its skull where an entry plug like the one he held would be inserted, and the patches of white armor-feathers on its wings that spelled out "NERV" and "EVA-03P". "No." Without thinking, he gently lowered the crushed entry plug to the ground. "No, I can't have done that." The comm window crackled. "Good job, pilot," noted Shinji without much emotion. "The Angel is neutralized." "...and so is Fuyutsuki. YOU! You let me kill him!" The Evangelion started running back towards the geofront. Its eyes glowed, matching the sudden intensity of its pilot's gaze. "YOU killed him, you bastard! Just another victim, another sacrifice in this insane quest of yours! Just like Yui! DIIIIIIIIIIIEEE!!!" *** Touji tensed. This was going to get ugly. Shinji remained unperturbed, not even sitting up straighter as he called a command down to the console operators. "Eject the power cable." A stylized animation of the EVA's power cable detaching played on the main bridge display. "Cable ejection successful," announced Hikari as the five-minute power countdown timer appeared. Kaji took a look at the map and decided to crunch some numbers. "Sirs, the EVA-01 will have nearly 150 seconds of power left after reaching the geofront." "Eject the entry plug," snapped Shinji. Hikari pounded at her keyboard for a moment but instead of a nice animation, "Command Rejected" flashed in six foot glowing red characters on the main screen. "No good, sir! The emotional backwash is drowning out the neurological input channels!" "The emergency life-support systems have a conventional reception system for backup. Use the defibrillator and shock the pilot." Touji put one hand on Shinji's shoulder. "Your dad is pretty old. That could kill him!" Shinji shrugged the hand off. "It's him or us, and there are things we must complete." He stood up and walked to the railing. "Do it," he yelled down to the console operators. *** Gendo's plugsuit made a whining noise, then discharged 350 volts across his chest. "GAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" EVA-01's legs went out from under it, and it slid face-first into a geofront access tunnel barricade. The old man could feel his heart flutter, stop, and then start again. It hurt like nothing he'd ever felt before, but there was no time for pain. He quickly got the EVA to one knee, then was off again. *** "Do it again." *** EVA-01 had burst through the last barricade and was skating down towards the NERV pyramid on one of the vehicle-carrier trains when the second jolt hit its pilot. Gendo blacked out, and the EVA pitched over and away from the tracks. It fell two hundred meters... and the impact of the landing woke him. He rolled EVA-01 to a sitting position, then slowly stood. *** "Again." *** The EVA's knees buckled, and this time it stayed down. *** ...but Shinji was just starting to enjoy this. "Again!" "What?!?" Hikari turned her seat to confront this seeming idiocy, but turned right back around as she saw the evil expression on the Commander's face. *** "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGH!" *** "Again!" *** *choke* *gasp* *wheeze* *** "Wooooo! Again!" *** Complementation: #Revangelion ...Shinji? Somebody! Stop him! AAAIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!! * Asuka shakes Shinji. You idiot! What are you doing?!? Can someone really die in here? I didn't think so... *ahem* ...aw, c'mon. * Rei taps her foot impatiently. Maaaaaaan... *** Shinji is now known as Shinji and as IdShinji !!! ... What the hell! I must still be drunk - I thought Shinji just split into two. Fascinating. *** IdShinji has left #Revangelion (god that felt good!) *** Shinji grimaced in Gendo's comm window. "Uh... sorry?" Gendo floated calmly in the LCL. His hands were steepled again, hiding most of his expression from the anxious bridge personnel who were watching. "...I think this game has run its course. Still, there is one little object lesson that ought to be delivered." The battery clock showed eighty seconds and counting as EVA-01 sprung into action. *** Shinji looked down into the bowl of the geofront from a hill on one of its far walls. "...that's just incredible." Where the NERV pyramid had stood, there was only a seemingly bottomless pit that belched smoke which was in turn quickly sucked up through the 500-meter hole that had been blasted through the ceiling. There had been a lot of military hardware parked around the Geofront, but now the only recognizable weapons system other than the now-dormant EVA was a small anti-aircraft battery which had toppled into the cave from a base in the city above. All of the participants in the reality exercise had reverted to their correct ages and were gathered around the Ikaris. Only Ritsuko and Gendo looked unsurprised. "There wasn't really any limit on Unit-01's power, Shinji. Even before it absorbed an S2 engine." Ritsuko paused, then continued the thought. "There were ...other considerations, of course, but once you synchronized there was no reason you couldn't have achieved this level." *** Complementation: #Revangelion So basically you're saying I'm a complete failure? Depends what you call failure. We certainly didn't encourage you to exercise that power, for obvious reasons. Wow, Shinji, your dad really *does* kick ass. His combat engagements lasted only 37% as long, on average, as yours did! And Dr. Akagi isn't half bad, either. * Asuka stuffs Kensuke in EVA-03's rotting corpse. *** Asuka has left #Revangelion (scheisskopf) *** Kensuke has left #Revangelion (kicked by Yui) (This is NOT the time.) What, afraid I might mess up your lousy plan? Or that you might start Third Impact on your own and destroy us all. Bleh. Maybe it would have been better if I had. *** Shinji has left #Revangelion (...I get more sympathy from my evil twin) Ah, well. I did always want to know how it felt in the cockpit. Simulation never compares to personal experience. Thanks for inviting me, Yui. This was fun. *** Ritsuko has left #Revangelion (kicked by Yui) (Slut.) GENDO!!! *** Misato has left #Revangelion (I need a beer.) *** Kaji has left #Revangelion (Put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye, Commander.) *** Touji has left #Revangelion (...) *** Hikari has left #Revangelion (...) *** Fuyutsuki has left #Revangelion (Please, Yui, try not to start Fourth Impact.) *** Pen-Pen has left #Revangelion (WAUGH!) Uh-oh. * Yui crosses leather-gloved arms and waits impatiently. ... * Gendo crawls across the channel on his belly and obsequiously licks his mistress's boot. Gendo, be a dear and get out the BIG cane. Author's notes: So. Biiig, big thanks to Dot for pointing out just how out of control my rehash had gotten in the first segment. Nobody has ever managed to convince me to cut such a huge block of text out of a fic... until now. I just couldn't defend it, so I went *snip* and a 6k chunk of pointless blather disappeared. It's workshopping in action, boys and girls. Farsan also got a good commentary back to me... ironically enough, the thrust of which was that I should expand some things. I chose Dot's direction instead, but Farsan's comments were a great confidence builder and I appreciate them. This part really originated as an idea for a full-scale stand-alone fanfic. I generate a relatively large number of concepts that I'd like to write, but very seldom manage to put any on the page. I started reading SAU at about the same time I thought this up, and realized that the SAU cosmology would not just fit but enhance my idea. That said, the fact that this had its origins as a larger-scale project made for some odd tensions as I wrote, some of which spilled into the final fic. For one thing, this clocks in as the longest SAU part to date. Part of that is my inherent verbosity, but in this instance the greater factor is simply that I wanted to retell events from more than one episode. I settled on three as the best compromise (beginning, middle, end) as opposed to the original plan to rewrite the entire series. Also, this is much more a straight EVA fic than the usual SAU, which tends to be more crossovery. The biggest difference is there's much more sense of a greater background story behind the AU pieces than the usual short-term game. The three "episodes" presented here are intended to be interpreted as only slices of the full series as they "play" through it. Then again, that may be overambitious, so interpret as you see fit. Hell, it's Impro, so you will regardless. In any case, I hope you enjoyed it. I got sucked into end-of-month craziness at work as I wrote, so I stressed a little. It still turned out about how I expected, and even better in some ways than I had aimed for. I swear - I didn't know about EVA-03p until it just happened on the page. ^^; Good luck, Smlee, and don't kill me. - Kerry "Ked" Stump May 5, 2003 *** Cinco de Mayo!!! WOOOOO!