From: mew3point14@doramail.com (Daniel Snyder)

"Once upon a time, there was a beautiful bride. She knew love, and she 
knew what it was to be loved. But she was proud, too, and resolved not 
to give herself to anyone.

"On day of her wedding, she was dressed in her most beautiful gown and 
surrounded by everyone she loved. But she frowned, because she was proud 
and she had only half-chosen her husband-to-be. Although she knew him by 
the word of others, she had never seen his face.

"'Smile and love your husband,' they all shouted, 'smile and love your 
husband.' And the longer she did not smile, the louder they shouted, and 
the more impatient everyone became.

"Finally, she swallowed her pride and smiled weakly. In that moment, her 
bridegroom came to her. She saw him for the first time.

"He was beautiful to look upon, and charming in his bearing. Willingly, 
she smiled then. Willingly, she married him.

"What was the name of the bride?"
--
Ikari Shinji walked quickly to the column at the center of campus, 
Ayanami Rei close behind him. They had not spoken since they left 
Akumafune, nor were there any words to express their feelings. The 
graphic murders of the dormitory's past had been reenacted upon someone, 
friend or foe, who had feared more of the outside world than what lay 
inside. Who? Why? There would be no answers. The victim, shorn of his 
identity, had paid for his mistake...or his foolishness.

At the central column, Shinji opened the door with his ring and led the 
girl inside. There was enough room for the two of them. Shinji felt 
Rei's soft cold hands on his shoulders. "This is going to be kind of 
abrupt, Rei," he said, raising his left arm.

"Wait."

Shinji paused and looked over his left shoulder. Rei gazed at him 
steadily and said, "Do not look behind you as we are transported to the 
Dueling Arena. Do not look, no matter what will happen. I think...that 
it would avoid some complications. You are my husband, and yours is to 
honor and obey as well. All will be explained...but not now."

He swallowed uncomfortably but nodded. Then he raised left his hand to 
the sky, spreading out  his fingers as if to receive a sword, and 
prepared himself for the hooks in his body.

But the hooks never came. There was a dull thud, then another, and then 
there was a terrific strain all up and down his spine. Six things, three 
pairs of things that bent and swayed faster than their mass should have 
permitted, were clutching his spine and...carrying him aloft. The boy 
looked down to see that Feuervogel Academy was below him, lying like an 
island of sanity upon the creosote oceans of the unconscious mind. It 
was falling...no, he was flying. He was flying, higher than birds ever 
soared, into the unknown. This was no dream. He had been gifted with the 
power to fly to the heavens for combat.

And in place of a harness, some _thing_ was holding on to him. In the 
darkness of the skies, Shinji couldn't make out the frame of 
his...chariot, for want of a better word. But there were several 
emanations, shaped like rose petals, that held him secure. Their grips 
were soft and snug. A blue one fluttered beneath his feet. A black one 
pressed against his genitals. Two others, the color of flesh, held his 
hips in place. A red one held his left arm, and a white one his right. A 
yellow one was over his heart, and felt like it had been shoved all the 
way through his chest; the boy half-felt its twin pushing from behind 
between his shoulder blades. Two final petals framed the side of his 
face, holding his head still, like binders; and there was another thing 
on the top of his head...Shinji strained upward, struggling to look and 
see what was above him. Too brilliant to comprehend, a light was 
streaming down from heaven. For an instant, he was struck senseless, so 
powerful was the splendor.

When he came to, he saw that they had landed. His wings, the chariot, 
were no more. Rei was by his left side, clutching at his arm, staring at 
what lay in front of them. The Arena, as they had known it, no longer 
existed. Before them was a starscape: the infinite stars, all arrayed in 
their brightnesses and colors, were at their every side. Yet the 
Duelists stood upon a surface. With his eyes on the people before them, 
Shinji knelt; the surface was hard to the touch, like polished stone, 
but not cold. There was no breeze. "Who are you?" he said to Michimoto 
Wakamugi, and there was no echo.

Michimoto was dressed in his black school uniform; with the dark 
background, the outline of his body was all but impossible to see. At 
his left side, smiling confidently, was Kirishima Mana. She was nude 
except for the ring of black stone upon the fourth finger of her left 
hand; the ring whose mirror Michimoto wore himself.

"You've come," Michimoto said bluntly. His voice was maddeningly 
familiar to Shinji. "I want you, of your own choice, to join the 
revolution."

"'The revolution'?" The younger boy glanced at his teacher, then 
hurriedly back to Michimoto. "What is the 'revolution'? Does that have 
anything to do with that recall vote, or those disappearances?"

"One question at a time," the older boy replied, glowering. He stepped 
closer to the other pair, still holding Kirishima at his side, and 
continued. "It is quite simple. The kingdom of God must be established 
on Earth. If it is not, then there is no hope for humanity. Without God, 
there is no progress.

"But human institutions have become more of a hindrance to than a means 
towards this end. This is because these are institutions created and 
maintained by humans...fallible humans. Governments maintain their own 
self-interests, religions exploit their followers, teachers distort 
their students' perceptions, administrations create endless rules that 
block out the natural rules God has established here on Earth...I could 
go on. Even the individual worshipper, the fundamental unit of God's 
plan for humanity, has become distracted with petty joys and self-
benefit. And that is the worst of it all. No matter how much you change 
a government, or a religion, or a school, or a bureaucracy, unless you 
change the fundamental unit of all Creation, nothing will ever happen.

"Now there is hope for hope. We have penetrated the human psyche and 
physiology enough to affect the entire human species at once. All that 
is necessary is energy and a vision. I invite you, Ikari Shinji, to 
become a part of that vision and its means. Submit to your desires, and 
you will walk with God." Michimoto put out his free hand, where the dark 
ring encircled the fourth finger. "Come with me," he intoned.

Shinji stared aghast at the man, the hand, the field of stars that 
spread out behind him. "What--what--what," he stammered, "what do you 
mean, 'all that is necessary'? Don't you need to at least ASK everyone 
first?"

"Irrelevant. Besides," he went on, "almost everyone desires to be 
something better. Most of them will even admit it. If you..."

"That's CRAZY!" Shinji burst in. "ALMOST isn't good enough to change 
everyone all around the world. Even if everyone DID think they had 
something wrong with them, then...they...they wouldn't just let you walk 
in and change them into something different!"

"Not me. God. If people submit to their own desires..."

"IF!"

He choked with anxiety on his own words. Rei gave Shinji's arm a 
reassuring squeeze. Invigorated, he went on. "You just can't have 
everyone be what they want to be all of a sudden. That's...there'd be no 
human dignity left. Everyone would be doing just what they chose at any 
one moment."

"But there is dignity," Kirishima Mana spoke up. She disengaged herself 
from Michimoto and walked right up to Shinji. Neither he nor Rei moved 
as she touched his face, caressing his jaw and cheeks. She smiled. "Look 
at me. Am I not dignified? Do you not aspire to become one with me? Body 
and soul? Then that is enough. I have submitted to my desires...is that 
not good enough for you, Ikari Shinji?"

Even as the softness of his fingertips aroused his skin, even as her 
face filled the length and breadth of his vision, the boy also felt 
Rei's cool touch beside him. He shut his eyes tightly, then twisted his 
head away from her. "No," he said. "You're...you're someone who can. I 
don't think I can. I'm...too afraid to let myself go. No."

"Then you are a coward, if you will not submit."

Rei gasped. Shinji opened his eyes. Mana had returned to Michimoto's 
side in the blink of an eye. But it was not the couple opposite them 
that held the attention of the young boy and his partner. Above their 
adversaries' heads, groups of stars were growing in size and 
brilliance...then the stars around them were winking out of 
existence...then the stars were moving as one, of their own accord...and 
then Shinji and Rei realized what they were seeing. Homunculi, human 
forms that stepped with soldiers' precision, were pinching themselves 
out of the empty space to form a phalanx in front of Michimoto and 
Kirishima.

>From behind them, he the adversary spoke. "If you will not submit, then 
you must be made to submit. These five elect, who have become one with 
God, will force you to make the choice. God rest your soul."

In the blink of an eye, the homunculi took on abominable flesh. Each one 
stood at least three meters high, but no two had the same form. Some 
looked vaguely like animals; one was a simple truncated octahedron. Some 
came forward in shambled steps, and others hovered, powered by an unseen 
source. All were silent, deathly silent.

They were terrible, and yet Shinji would not let the terror he felt 
overcome him. Anxious though he was, he turned to Rei and met her eyes. 
She relaxed against his arm as he leaned over her. Once and again spasms 
wracked her body. Then her jaw dropped open and her head tilted back. In 
the celestial darkness of the transformed Arena, the white light pouring 
from her mouth lit Shinji's visage, giving him a halo as he drew forth 
the gray and purple sword. "Now is come salvation, and strength, and the 
kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ!" he said, holding the 
blade aloft.

Even as the conjuration of the sword was done, even as he felt Rei 
standing beside him; even as he thought of his friends in the world 
below him, and of friends and family long lost, he experienced a moment 
of doubt. The enemies before him were great and many, while he was one. 
He was not alone, but he was the only one who stood between the monsters 
and an uncertain, perilous future.

It was with little surprise to Shinji, then, that Rei stepped round 
before him and held him back. "Allow me," she said. "Please."

Her right hand slipped to Shinji's back, upon the rise between his 
shoulders, directly behind his heart, while her left hand stayed upon 
his chest. The boy suddenly found himself short of breath. Something was 
happening. Rei's clenched fist pressed into his body, twisting. He could 
feel something that was not a part of his body, hidden behind his heart, 
between his lungs, something was quickening within his rib cage...

Ikari Shinji's shirt was torn off as a bright golden light split out 
from a cleft down the middle of his chest. His body buckled; and then a 
moment later, something blue shot up from the split. With her left hand, 
Ayanami Rei drew forth a sword, sibling to the blade Shinji held in his 
right hand. Its handle and guard were freon blue, interlaced with the 
white of clouds, like the purple and gray of its geminus. It was shorter 
and slightly curved, weighted, a left-handed blade for a right-handed 
fighter. Her husband's eyes closed in rapture, Rei held the blade aloft, 
and said as loudly as she had ever said anything: "Come. And let him 
that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst, come. And whoever 
will, let him take the water of life freely."

A brief moment passed before Shinji rose, alert and calm. Rei pressed 
the new sword into his free hand, gave him a small kiss upon his cheek, 
and stepped aside. The boy took a deep breath and drew his swords up, 
burning asteroids in his eyes.

When attacked by multiple enemies, he thought, take away as much of 
their advantage as you can by reducing their numerical superiority. 
Incapacitate, don't settle on a kill. Fight one at a time...

He circled around to his left, intercepting a horrible blue monster with 
a bird's head and gangly, jointed limbs. It rotated its eyeless head 
between its shoulders, as if surprised to see him on the offensive. Then 
it raised its right hand and swung it down at the boy. Shinji easily 
dodged out of the way of the strike and thrust with his left sword. The 
thing reacted to the blow, trying to slap him with a savage backhand. In 
one perfect motion, Shinji parried the arm with his right sword and 
kicked his right foot into the monster's hide. So he was able to 
maintain his balance as he pulled out his sword, and finished the move 
by shoving his foe with his foot. It fell over into one of its 
companions, slowing them both.

A moment later, Shinji faced the octahedron. It had no obvious weapons, 
but it was bearing down on him quickly. Shinji thrust his right sword 
between the chinks in the creature's armor. The tactic seemed to work, 
because the octahedron shuddered and fell over onto one side, still. The 
boy warrior had a brief respite, using the enormous cadaver as a 
stockade between himself and his other opponents.

After only enough time to catch his breath, two monsters came at him at 
once. Shinji again moved left, preparing to engage the quicker-moving 
horror. It looked like an enormous brown flatworm. Sometimes it seemed 
to slither, at others scamper along on a number of short legs tucked up 
underneath its middle. Attacking Shinji with thrusts of its head and 
tail sweeps, its broad back and eyespots resisted every one of his 
counter attacks. At length, when a second monstrosity was all but upon 
them--shaped like a capital H, with upraised arms and bowed legs--he 
found a weak spot where the lighter underbelly met the upper edge. With 
no time to land a killing blow, he made two surgical slashes with his 
blades and ran.

"Shinji," came Rei's voice from her place, safely removed from the field 
of battle. "Beware of that one."

Glancing to where she pointed, he saw in a moment why she had drawn it 
to his attention. It was the slowest-moving of the group, somehow 
propelling itself two meters up into the air before falling back down, 
but it was the most horrific. It was a bleached and viscous mass of 
flesh that looked vaguely like a manta ray. Surmounting the body was a 
large head with a toothy beak; it made no noise however hard the jaws 
gnashed together. As Shinji approached it, the thing flew up into the 
air up over his head, coming down directly towards him. The boy dove out 
of the way at the last moment, then rose to drive both swords into the 
creature's body. They seemed to have no effect. The white thing didn't 
twitch or otherwise react, it only leaped up into the air again, driving 
Shinji away.

Stymied, he ran from the fight, instead engaging his first opponent 
anew. Although he parried another crushing blow with ease, his attacks 
on the thing's legs were in vain. They were as hard as hard could be, 
and impervious to the sword's blades. Shinji instead delivered a low cut 
to the torso, then returned to the H monster, whose limbs he nicked...

The battle drew on, into minutes, into the tens of minutes. Ikari Shinji 
fought his very best, hunting between the horrors like a jackal among 
lions. His tactics were effective, but tiring: man and beast grew sloppy 
with their fighting. It seemed at times that only the strange 
encouragement of Ayanami Rei kept Shinji on his feet. In the eerie, 
soul-chilling silence of the battle, where a miss or a hearty blow 
sounded the same, he could hear her say "You are fighting well, Shinji" 
or "You must continue to fight" in her ethereal voice. Together they 
were an engine: he was the dynamo that ripped and tore, that burned with 
kinetic heat; while she was the fuel for him, entombed for aeons and 
kalpas, brought to give him power and see daylight in her psyche.

And each foe fell in time. With death-rattles and silent gasps, and some 
kind of ichor that glistened in the wounds but never splattered, each 
beast met an end of blades. In the final moments of combat, Shinji 
barely had the strength to lift his arms and defeat the H monster. 
Dazed, bruised and short of breath, he reached deep into the wells of 
his psyche as the thing, covered in appalling cuts, staggered towards 
him, fighting against its death throes. It swung one tiny limb at him. 
Shinji ducked and drove his left sword into its belly, as far as it 
could go, then stuck his right sword into its back, aiming at an angle 
for its head. They were frozen for a moment, victor and defeated, small 
and massive, as Shinji's deadly embrace held them together. A heartbeat 
later, the young boy tore out his blades from the beast; and it dropped 
to the ground, dead.

Shinji rested for a moment on the tips of his sword blades before Rei 
came to his side. She took him into her arms and said, "It is over, 
Shinji. You've won."

As if he were swallowing something bittersweet, Shinji closed his eyes 
and put his arm around her shoulders. For an instant, an instant of 
weakness too fast for anyone but himself to bear witness to, he caressed 
Rei's shoulder. Before the sensation could fully wash over him, he was 
standing, struggling to his feet. "Where did my...where is that man?" he 
gasped. "I need to..."

He drifted off, eyes closed. Rei glanced around the starscape in 
confusion. "There...there is nobody here, Shinji," she said. "I don't 
see anyone, or feel the presence of any person."

"But he was there when the fight began...did he go?"

"I did not notice. Akagi-san? Is that Akagi-san there?"

The fight, the physical and mental exhaustion, had taken every atom of 
Shinji's strength. There was nothing left in him to be angry at or 
afraid. Yet, what was taking place before him was so _wrong,_ so 
_terrible,_ that he was shocked back into a state of alertness like the 
undead raised from the grave.

In death, the homunculi had reverted to their original forms. These 
forms still bore the wounds from the combat. On the invisible ground lay 
five bodies, the five victims of the revolutionary power and perverted 
hope that had held the campus in fear for weeks; and each one was dead, 
testament to the focused fury of Shinji's dueling. Ravaged by the sword, 
their faces were all but unrecognizable. The horror of the truth was 
clear.

Ikari Shinji, murderer, collapsed; first onto his knees and then 
sprawled onto the ground, crying the tears of a sunken city for the 
waste of life and souls.
--
"Keiko! Yuuko! Aiko!"

Down the front steps of Kazarashi Dormitory bounded Ibuki Maya to 
intercept the three girls, returning en brochette from an early morning 
walk. "Do you know? Do you know? Do you know where Ikari is?"

"Ikari? Good God yes, we've just seen Ikari down on the parkland!" 
shrieked Keiko.

"He's half-naked, and he's got the dead bodies of the missing students 
all in a pile!" choked out Yuuko.

"And he's going to burn them as soon as he cuts down enough damned 
trees!" moaned Aiko. And on that, all three girls made for the 
dormitory, overcome with revulsion.

Maya ground her teeth together. Leaving the dormitory and morning 
rituals behind, she walked as quickly as she could down to the parkland, 
clutching a piece of notebook paper. She arrived a few minutes later to 
see a crowd gathered in the eastern grassy area. They were circled 
around a knee-high wooden scaffold, built by short pine logs stacked on 
each other. Atop the scaffold were the bodies of Tsuwabuki Mitsuru, 
Horaki Hikari, Katsuragi Misato, Sohryu Asuka Langley and Akagi Ritsuko. 
At the end, where the scaffold was still incomplete, lay the mangled 
remains of what once was Kaji Ryouji. Beside the scaffold, testament to 
its construction, were a chainsaw, a small pine tree, and Ikari Shinji, 
covered in sweat, sap and sawdust.

His eyes met hers as she pushed her way through the crowd to him. 
"Maya..."

"I just need to know one thing, Shinji," she said angrily. "Have you 
seen Michimoto Wakamugi?"

"I think so," Shinji replied. "The man who was controlling these 
people...he looked a lot like my father did when he was..."

"He IS your father, you fucking idiot!" Maya screeched. She held up a 
piece of paper with two sets of Chinese characters written on it. "If 
you write 'Rokubungi Gendou' using different kanji, and then you 
rearrange them, you spell out 'Michimoto Wakamugi.'"

Gasps of surprise and horror swept through the crowd.

Shinji, more exhausted than he had ever thought he could feel, could 
only stare as Maya swept on. "It's all your fault, Shinji. Your father's 
been using you to deliberately destroy any order here on this campus. 
He's already annihilated the entire outside world, maybe even the whole 
fucking universe, and--I don't know exactly why, but for whatever reason 
we were spared, now your dad is using you to see we all get killed too, 
just like sempai and everybody here!"

Shinji had to try a few times, but at length he got his question out. 
"My...father...did...what?"

"Once more," said Ibuki Maya, taking a deep breath. "Your father killed 
everyone and destroyed everything in the world the night you set foot on 
this campus...just like he'd been threatening to do, ever since he began 
making the stars disappear from the night sky. You're the son of the 
Antichrist."

"Go now."

The crowd had shuffled off to begin their day and leave the pariah 
behind them. Kensuke, looking dismally over his shoulder, pushed Touji 
away in silence. Kanae simply turned up her nose and departed. Maya, her 
sadistic revelation accomplished, followed her. It was a half minute 
before Shinji could look down to the newcomers in the conversation.

"We will finish the funeral pyre for you. Go now to the north edge of 
campus and look over."

"The north, and not the south, where you are now."

"The north, and not the east or west."

"The north, and not the top or the bottom."

"Go now, and look over the edge, and know it for the truth. Your bride 
will be with you shortly."

Shinji did not go at once. He stayed, mutely watching the work on the 
funeral pyre finish. The last logs from the pine tree were fit together, 
and Kaji was placed beside Misato--in death, reunited with his muse and 
lover. The Twenty-Second Psalm was begun, then quickly changed to the 
Fifth. The mourned six were doused with liquid oxygen from the science 
lab, and then a torch was thrown from a distance on top of the pyre. It 
caught fire and burned with an unnatural heat and light, and with such 
thoroughness that not a scrap of flesh or piece of bone was left behind. 
That afternoon, when all else were gone and he felt the most lonesome 
thing in the world, Shinji pawed through the ashes to make sure there 
was nothing left but cinders. Not until he was satisfied that bone had 
begun its journey back to dust did he walk north to learn.

On the north end of the Academy was a landscaped garden covering more 
than three acres. Shinji entered the garden. There grew citron and palm, 
myrtle and willow, olive and pine, all in their places. And in the 
middle was a temple of all faiths. Anyone could come inside, worship, 
and perhaps find grace. Of all things, Shinji found a ladder, an 
aluminum-framed ladder, that rested up against the edge of the building 
rising up over the top of the roof. He took the ladder in his arms, 
strengthened from their hours-long rest, and walked to the north edge of 
the garden.

He had no idea what to expect when he climbed the ladder to the base of 
the tree, then climbed up the tree to look beyond the wall. Ikari Shinji 
had been awake for more than thirty hours, and had been mourning for 
half of that. He was guilty of the sin of self-pity. It was an entirely 
forgivable sin to succomb to after accusations and murders had smote his 
world view. As he climbed up one of the pines that surrounded the wall, 
he thought about where his next handhold would be, where he could rest 
for a moment on a branch. Picturing a fall from the tree came easily to 
his mind.

Finally, he reached as high as the tree could support him. The upper 
edge of the wall was only a few tens of centimeters above, a half a 
meter away. Shinji jumped. Across the boundary he flew, and then he was 
scrambling, desperately willing the tendons in his aching limbs to hold 
him, his fingertips to cling to the wall itself. His fear of falling, 
his fear of what lay beyond, the pain of the rough edge of the wall 
drove him to raise his chin up onto the top, then one arm, another, his 
chest, and both his feet. He stood, alone, and looked out beyond 
Feuervogel Academy.

There was no longer any distinction between light and dark, between 
firmament and heaven, between the waters and the land. In a strange 
half-light, the world around appeared like an optical puzzle, with 
layers upon layers of semi-opaque gray stretching out into infinity, 
stretching from the top of the wall outward. There was no sense of depth 
or perspective. Behind him, the campus felt like a warm womb of rational 
though, somehow existing despite the incomprehensible void it lay 
within. How fragile was the shell of the Academy? How could it ever 
resist, and so explicitly, the entropy of the void...his father had 
created?

Shinji had fainted before he knew he was falling.
--
"No! That's no good! That's completely, utterly wrong!"

The bokken was ripped from Shinji's fingers and, a moment later, he felt 
the sting as it was slapped low against his back.

Behind him, his instructor went on. "How can you DARE call yourself the 
son of Rokubungi Gendo?" Fifth blow. "Your father brought the honor of a 
gold medal to Japan!" Tenth blow. "In the two years you've been here, 
the only thing you've brought us is DISGRACE, and wasted time!" The 
twentieth blow was directly between Shinji's shoulder blades, and he 
went sprawling out onto his stomach.

Shinji's instructor didn't look like a bad man. He was a bespectacled 
fellow of about thirty with a broad chin and long fingers. He always 
wore green. This man had been entrusted with Shinji's training and 
upbringing two years before. Shinji didn't know what he'd been doing 
wrong all this time. Every day he apologized to his instructor, worked 
harder, asked fewer questions, spoke less. Every day things became 
worse.

The man pulled Shinji up onto his feet and handed him the bokken again. 
It was a full-sized sword. He had been told that it was essential to 
begin with a large sword so that he learn how to use it properly. Quick 
as he could, he wrapped his fingers around the handle and got in a ready 
stance. He did not look up. Looking up invited grimaces, and often 
hitting.

"We're going to do one hundred strokes," his master said, taking a step 
back to watch. "And we're going to do them right. On my word."

Shinji waited. Across the room, a moth circled the light bulb. In the 
yellow light the green colors were blackened. Beneath the deep green 
coat beat a human heart, somewhere. Shinji waited for the word.

"One."

Shinji lifted the sword over his head with both hands, shifting his 
weight forward, leading with his left foot. As his right followed, his 
trunk and shoulders were carried along, and the sword swung down. It 
stopped at half a right angle to his body, still. Shinji stepped back to 
where he had begun and waited for the word once more.

"Two."

Shinji lifted the sword over his head with both hands, shifting his 
weight forward, leading with his left foot. As his right followed, his 
trunk and shoulders were carried along, and the sword swung down. It 
stopped at half a right angle to his body, still. Shinji stepped back to 
where he had begun and waited...

"No, that was _wrong._ Start over. One."

An hour and a half later, Ikari Shinji was huddled beneath the eaves 
over the dojo, desperate to keep away from the cold autumn rain. Rain in 
the autumn is a sign of death to come, as the word turns red and brown. 
All around him were the signs of death: not the signs of death as a 
culture knows them, as a crow's caw or a broken plate would be. These 
are the personal, intimate omens of death that lurk in dreams and the 
corners of the eye. Zen stones, mountains, black in the night. The wet 
sand they lay within. Three pagodas with no candles lit, and the fourth 
and furthest shining only to show its distance.

Shinji was joined by his meager blessings. There was room enough under 
the dojo's eaves for him to keep dry. There he would stay until his 
sensei had gone to bed and it was safe to sneak back to his room. He was 
hurriedly eating a small bowl of porridge that the sensei's wife had 
given him. Across his back was a patchwork blanket he had made from 
scraps of cloth. The sensei had given him a severe beating when he had 
discovered Shinji "borrowing" a blanket from the storage room, and 
Shinji knew not to make that mistake again. From the sensei he had 
stolen a reel of dental floss, and from his wife he had taken a needle 
and the scraps. It was the work of several rainy nights for the young 
boy to piece it together, but the work kept him alive then, and the 
warmth kept him alive now. He hid it beneath the dojo for times such as 
these. The many, many times.

Death came to Ikari Shinji that night. Not death as the end, but Death-
in-Life, the kind that can be properly personified. It came as a shadow, 
moving slowly, ever closer, to where Shinji watched it from the dojo's 
edge.

"Who're you?" he asked as loudly and as angrily as he dared.

"Ikari Shinji," came the reply.

"But _I_ am Ikari Shinji!" the boy said.

"There is the Ikari Shinji that observes," stated the shadow, "and the 
Ikari Shinji that is observed. You are the one that the world sees, and 
I am the one who lies within. I count your every heartbeat, I kiss awake 
your capillaries when blood flows through them, I greet every neuron as 
it fires a message up and down your spine. And this absolute cognizance 
has given me incredible power. I am stronger than you," he said, and 
Shinji did not question the words.

"Why're ya here?"

"Because we are in pain."

"..."

"You know this only dimly," the shadow continued, "but I can remember 
days when you greeted the world and everyone in it with joy, a purer joy 
than I have words for. I want those days again, and so do you. We want 
the approval of others. We want the security that comes with this 
approval. However, despite my power, I cannot achieve these ends. You 
can."

"I don't unnerstand," Shinji whimpered.

"I propose that we cooperate," explained the shadow. "I have the power, 
and you have the opportunity. If we work together, nothing is 
impossible. What do you say?"

Ikari Shinji, age seven, didn't quite understand all of what happened. 
But he knew the power of the person--himself, he understood more 
intuitively than explicitly--speaking before him. And he wanted that 
power. He wanted it more than anything he had in the world.

He set down the empty porridge bowl. "What do I gotta do?" he asked.

The shadow explained, and Shinji followed his instructions. "Take off 
the blanket and stand up, like a man. Good. Clear your mind. Listen for 
the sound in between the raindrops. Stand like you're holding your 
sword. Step and raise the blade. Follow through. Now, every time you 
swing, I want you to recite this mantra, which I will give to you."

"..."

"The mantra is, 'Shatter'."

"Ba...RA...su?"

"Yes. These three syllables will become your mantra. You will become one 
with the word. It shall be like the rhythms of your heart. I know how 
your heart contracts and expands, and it sounds like 'shatter'."

"But...but...if I break somethin', I'm gonna get in trouble..."

"Then shatter him," said the shadow. "Shatter the dojo. Shatter Japan, 
shatter the world. It doesn't matter. Anything is better than pain, or 
better than nothing. And we have plenty of both."

Reluctantly, Shinji repeated the motion. _Shatter,_ he thought. He 
pictured his sensei, like a terracotta soldier, breaking into a million 
pieces as he swung the imaginary sword. _Shatter._ The million pieces 
broke into a million pieces each. _Shatter._ The million millions broke 
again, becoming dust. Yet however fine they were, they were still 
material. They had to be atomized, BEYOND atomized. They needed to be 
crushed beyond all trace from the face of the Earth. Shattered. 
Shattered. Shattered. Shattered and shattered again.
--
"...and within a week, I was so good he wasn't hitting me any more. A 
month went by, and he was calling me the best student ever. By the end 
of winter, people from all around town were calling me a prodigy, just 
like my father. It felt wonderful. Finally, I was somebody..."

Conscious at length, Shinji grew aware of the feel of skin against the 
side of his head. One ear was tickled by Rei's soft pubic hair. In the 
other was a soft cotton wad, gently and intimately cleaning out the ear 
canal.

"I heard," came Ayanami Rei's soft voice from somewhere above him, "that 
I must clean the ears of my husband. Does it please you, Shinji? Shall I 
continue?"

Her cool soft skin surrounded him. Her attention invigorated him. Her 
touch excited him. She was his, mind, body and soul. But he knew her 
terrible secret. Every thing about her was a perversion for him. Only 
for him. So Ikari Shinji sat up and took her hands in his.

"Rei," he said, little more than a whisper, "this has to stop."

"You do not like your ears cleaned, Shinji?"

"No. I mean, this...this..."

He waved his hand around at the apartment, the two of them, the penguin 
who slept on her bed. He went on, "Rei, did you know...that you are 
formed from the Living Rose itself?"

"Yes. I did."

"When I was joined with the Living Rose, I learned that it contains my 
mother's self-awareness. Did you know this too?"

"Yes."

"And when the Living Rose was established here at Feuervogel, it gave 
birth to you...so you are, in fact, an avatar of my mother?"

"I know this, yes."

"Rei," he said, "then it's wrong for the two of us to live together like 
this. It's like, you're my mother or my sister, or something."

"I do not understand," she replied. "Yours is an entirely different 
genetic structure than my own. We are not biologically related. There is 
no chance for inbreeding."

"But it's WRONG!" Shinji said. "I mean, it's wrong for two people to 
have feelings for each other like this. It's completely unnatural."

"Why do you say that it is wrong?"

"It's just...the idea..."

Shinji let the words die in visions of horror. Rei clutched at him. Both 
were heedless of the words spoken moments before as a sound came from 
the room up above them. The noise of iron had come again, but it was not 
an isolated phenomenon this time. Moments after the grating began, roots 
and vines were wrapping across the window and the door outside. They 
excavated the walls, ceiling and floor. The room became darkened in the 
color brown and deafened in the bass noise.

"Shinji..."

"Stay calm, Rei," he said as Pen-pen joined them, clucking nervously as 
he sat on Rei's lap. "My swords are right over there in my bag..."

He left the sentence unfinished as the room around them fell silent. 
Then a jet of green flame burst out of the center of the floor. When it 
had burned itself out, a person was standing in its place. This boy was 
a centimeter or two taller than Shinji, an albino with gray hair and red 
eyes. His forehead was broad, while the rest of his face was thin and 
pinched. He smiled a smile that hinted at terrific mysteries. A swan-
like neck led down to effeminate shoulders and arms, terminating in the 
most graceful and elegant fingers Shinji had ever seen. His torso was 
surprisingly muscular, like that of a young dancer, with well-developed 
pectorals and abdominals. Below them was a very odd sight: although 
possessing a circumcised penis, free of encircling pubic hair, the boy 
had no testicles. Instead, two protruding labia were half-hidden behind 
the phallus. Like the arms, the boy's legs were slender and flaccid. His 
feet were not as beautiful as his hands, but were sturdy, and a 
comfortable distance apart from each other.

As boy and girl and bird took in the sight of the newcomer, he raised 
his right hand in greeting. "May the blessings of God Almighty be upon 
thee, children," he said in a musical voice. "Forgive me for not 
knocking, but you see, I've been here all along."