From: miendiem@hotmail.com (Geoff Upchurch) Subject: [Eva][FanFic] IF/THEN (part 1/2) I apologize in advance for having to split this into two parts to post it. Gomen. ~ Mien IF/THEN Shinji / Shocks and Surprises A Neon Genesis Evangelion fanfiction by: Quatragonal Limited Productions Author: - Mien Diem (miendiem@hotmail.com) Co-authors: - Ryo-ohki (xyz47@hotmail.com) - Phaedrine (phaedrine@cephiro.com) Concept and planning by: - Mien Diem Author's Notes: Welcome back. I'll try to keep this short, so bear with me. Hehe I'm not good at holding down the verbiage, as you've probably noticed. This is the first installment of the series that I'm calling IF/THEN. The basic premise is that small changes to characters can have a large impact on the world around them. Please note that the worlds I create in this series are not going to be contiguous - no world has bearing on any other world created herein. I'm going to try to keep the creative plagiarism to a minimum, of course. The one out-of-the-ordinary assumption that I ask you, the reader, to make is that because of the change in Shinji, there would have been some communication between himself and his father in the past. Nothing extensive, nothing that would change the basis of what I am about to write, but assume that they can at least converse. That said, I'll leave the characters to their tale, and you to your reading. ~ Mien Diem いいいいい "Well, Shinji, will you go?" The soft, accented voice intruded itself almost mildly on his unconscious. Shinji found that he could not place it for some reason, his sleeping brain refusing to acknowledge that it knew the identity of the speaker. 'Oh well, it's just a dream anyway,' his subconscious reasoned to itself. 'It's not supposed to make perfect sense.' "Well, Shinji, will you go?" the voice asked again, more insistently. "Mm..." Shinji responded noncommittally, keeping his eyes closed as he rolled over in his bed. "Sleeping," he murmured. He felt himself being shaken none too gently, though it barely registered on him for some reason. Shinji parted his eyelids slightly, attempting to stare up at the speaker. They felt very heavy, almost leaden, and they obscured his vision most grandly. The room looked familiar to his sleep-clouded eyes, but he found that he could not immediately place it from his memories. It looked very clean and normal, though, without a single out-of-the- ordinary feature to its name. "Well, Shinji, will you go?" The voice seemed almost to hover over him this time, and Shinji dragged his eyes wide open against their will in an attempt to get a glimpse of the speaker. She was, it turned out, a slight, red-headed girl, and obviously a figment of his imagination for any number of reasons, not the least of which being that he had never seen her before in his life. いいいいい Shinji Ikari sat bolt-upright in bed, sweat beading on his skin. He glanced around his small room, looking briefly out the window that opened onto the small front yard of his relatives' home on the outskirts of Tokyo-2. His breathing slowly returned to normal as he watched the sun flood the sky, bringing color to the world. It was a sight made to take anyone's breath away, and he quite promptly forgot the strangeness that had brought him out of restful slumber. His eyes surveyed the room for a second time, and came to rest on a hastily-scrawled note taped to the door. "Shinji," it read, "Remember to make yourself presentable. That vagrant father of yours needs you in Tokyo-3, so you'd better get the rest of your things in order. Don't worry about your belongings right now, we can ship them to you later. Just catch the 8:00 am train. And don't forget to take the letter with you." There was no signature, but it was obvious by the note's tone and script that his aunt had left it for him. It was not as though he had forgotten what he had to do that morning, certainly, but it felt nice to know that he was remembered, even on a day like this. He looked over to his dresser at the crisply-folded letter containing, amongst other things, his boarding pass for the train to the UN-funded and operated city of Tokyo-3. He had been there once, several year ago, on a class field trip. The city, as Shinji recalled, had seemed almost like one huge mirror, a continuous reflector strip to display the sun and the sky. There was a certain sense of logical planning to the city that Tokyo-2 lacked, a sense which gave the third Tokyo a pseudo-military feel. Shinji shook his head slightly and interrupted his reverie. 'I can reminisce about it on the train. Right now, I have to get ready to go,' he admonished himself. The alarm on his clock sprang suddenly to life, as if in agreement with Shinji's last thought. He spared it an idle glare, and then purposefully reached over to his nightstand, picked up the clock, and switched the alarm off. Left to its own devices, Shinji knew it would be perfectly content to go on ringing at him until he left the house. Shinji returned the alarm clock to his nightstand and, in a moment of pique, set it down on its face. Recalling his previous train of thought, he slid out of bed and into a pair of worn house slippers. They were, of course, absolutely ridiculous to look at: bright yellow with smiley-faces on the tops of them; but they were also comfortable, and kept his feet from unwelcome contact with the cold floor. Pausing only long enough to take one more fleeting glimpse out the window, he left his room for the confines of the living room. The living room was easily the largest single room in the house, but was also almost completely unadorned. The walls were a severe white, with nothing but a window on either side of the room to break up the monotony. There were standing lamps in three of the four corners, all of the same style, all plain brasswork and overhanging armchairs - a perfect organization for three people who all spent time reading. Against the wall that also made up one of the sides of Shinji's room was a television on a short table. Oddly, Shinji found as he thought about it, the set was nothing more than an ornament, something only used when company called. He could not recall for the life of him the last time that it had been used aside from that purpose. There was also a worn sofa facing that television set, but, again, it only seemed to be used when guests came by. Shinji moved slowly, looking about him as if to fix the image of the place in his mind. Not that he would forget this place, he knew, but instead it was a certainty that he would not be returning to it. That thought brought to him an indescribable sense of sadness. 'I'm giving up the only life I know, for...' he thought. 'I'm really not sure. Father can be truly close-mouthed sometimes.' He shrugged, and made his way down the hall, past the immaculately- kept kitchen on one side and his aunt and uncle's sleeping quarters on the other, to the bathroom. Both of them were already long gone for work, shifts being as hard to come by as they were in Tokyo-2, his aunt and uncle had taken to working very strange hours. It did, of course, keep them in demand, since they would willingly work hours that no sane person would. The money wasn't enough to live in luxury, but there was no problem getting along in the world, as far as Shinji could remember. The whole of the place bordered on being a cleanroom-type environment, a testament to a certain amount of hard work on Shinji's part. いいいいい The water in the shower never really got decently warm. That had been a problem for as long as Shinji could remember, but no one ever seemed to get anything done about it, so they all endured lukewarm showers at the best, and ice-cold water raining down on them at the worst. "It could be any other morning..." Shinji said aloud, trying to take his mind off of the water which was -definitely- not warm enough. 'Feels like I should be getting ready to go to school, not walking down to the train station. I wonder if the schools are any different in Tokyo-3...' True to form, the shower never really got any warmer. Of course, the adaptability of the human body is an amazing thing, not to mention downright useful. Contemplating more than washing, Shinji tended to forget that he was supposed to be feeling cold. 'This is all so... so -weird-, though...' he muttered in the depths of his mind. 'Barely a word from him for the past four years, and now this. Why isn't life supposed to make sense?' Shinji rolled his eyes and decided to wash more and think less. 'Otherwise I'm never going to get out of here...' いいいいい It was on the walk to the train station that Shinji realized that he really didn't possess all that much. Certainly, there were a couple of boxes of belongings that had been shipped over to Tokyo-3 the day before, but those aside, all he had were the clothes and personal effects in his travel bag, and his SDAT. That last item played quietly at the back of his consciousness, some pop artist from the late twentieth century. Most of the people he knew had laughed at his musical selection at some point or another, but he personally felt that it was infinitely superior to the voice- edited, completely synthetic "corporate" pop music that was currently 'all the rage'. Granted, he could not make heads nor tails of the vast majority of the lyrics, but, in his mind, that didn't matter very much compared to the cadence and the musical quality of it all. Shinji arrived at the station shortly before 7:30, and he took the opportunity to lay back and admire the day. Even the fact that the station was so modern that it stuck out like a sore thumb on such a day was washed away. The glass-and-metal construction did nothing more than reflect the brilliance of the morning's sun and sky. The part of the waiting area that he had opted to use was exposed to the elements, and Shinji took the opportunity to lean back in his seat and stare up at the open sky. His thoughts, though, as thoughts are wont to do, wandered back to that dream which had shaken him from sleep before his alarm. It was, Shinji decided, nothing remarkable. Obviously his imagination was doing the better part of the work in his dreams, since he didn't -know- any red-haired girls, nor did he know anyone who would come across as quite so forward, or so informal. His line of thought then slipped on to Tokyo-3, and why his father had sent for him after all this time. It didn't really make any sense, of course. The note had not been all that (specific)... 'Damn!' Shinji barely saw the clock silently proclaiming the time to be 7:45 as he practically flew back down the streets towards his aunt's house. It was a necessity that he be on time, after all, but being on time would do him no good without his boarding pass for what was, after all, a military transport. いいいいい He did manage to make it back to the station on time, if more than a little out of breath. The transport, as it happened, was just pulling up as he arrived, and Shinji was well inside the terminal by the time the train had rolled to a stop. "Are you Shinji Ikari?" asked a sunglass-bedecked man in a dark gray suit. "If so, show me your pass, and we can be on our way." It was quite obvious to Shinji from the man's tone and appearance that there were linked steel bracelets in line for anyone without proper clearance. Shinji nodded silently, showing the man the card that had come with the letter from his father. After allowing a good amount of time for close scrutinization, Shinji put the card and the letter back in the envelope and waited to be told what to do. The doors on the train slid open, and the man motioned for Shinji to enter first, which the boy did without comment. Then, just as silently, the man followed him into the train car. Inside, the train car was devoid of people. In fact, it did not look so much like part of a train so much as it did a small meeting hall, complete with conference table, videoconferencing equipment, computer terminals, telephones, and a number of other luxuries. The floor was not a hard tile or metal as Shinji had thought it might have been, but rather the entire car was plushly carpeted in deepest, fullest red. On either wall, splitting the windows into groups of three, were red-on-white logos - the NERV emblem - with red lettering trailing from the bottom of the N to the lower end of the fig leaf: "God's in His Heaven, All's right with the world." Shinji, it must be admitted, gaped more than a little at the surroundings. His current keeper chuckled softly at the young boy and took a seat along one side of the table, checking the time idly. "Late, of course," he muttered. "Trust a single detail to the bureaucracy and watch it fall behind schedule." Unsure whether to laugh or not, Shinji took a chair on the opposite side of the table, directly across from the still- sunglassed man. The train slowly started to roll away from the station as Shinji sat silently, turning the letter from his father over in his hands. "Relax, Ikari-kun. We have a half-hour ride ahead of us. Just sit back... life should get more interesting soon enough." Shinji glanced up, stopping his hands long enough to convince the man that he had, indeed, heard what had been said. That accomplished, he resumed turning the letter over lengthwise in his hands. "Do you know..." he began hesitantly. "Why you've been called? No, I don't. Actually, I'm not supposed to answer any questions at all." The man took off his sunglasses and winked at Shinji, covering one light brown eye, as he put the glasses into a soft black leather case. "Your contact with NERV should be able to answer your questions better than I could anyway." He grinned openly, an almost kind gesture which seemed out of place on his severe features. "My contact with NERV?" Shinji asked, slightly incredulously. "Wh... Why?" "Like I said, kid, I'm not supposed to answer your questions." He slid a manila folder across the table. The packet was so stuffed that it practically bulged. "I think that might help, though." Shinji looked at the package skeptically, but pulled it over in front of himself. He opened the folder with something akin to trepidation and carefully removed the contents; gently setting the manila envelope aside, out of the way. What lay before him was a rather assorted pile of... the only way he could think to describe it all was 'things'. There was a small booklet entitled "NERV - A United Nations Organization", two sets of folded notebook paper - both different sizes, and a picture of a purple-haired woman who obviously had not paid any attention to the picture she had selected to send with the packet. The photograph itself was stapled to a half-sheet of printer paper. 'Misato Katsuragi,' Shinji read to himself off of the piece of printer paper. 'Captain, assigned to NERV-Japan. This will be your... my... contact with the NERV organization.' Shinji corrected himself as he read through the short sheet. Apparently, this disheveled woman was going to be his contact with a military organization, but... 'Why?' Next, he picked up the smaller of the two folded loose-leaf 'packets' with slightly unsteady hands and opened it. The handwriting was more than a little sloppy, and it reminded Shinji instantly of the woman in the photograph. It was an unkind thought, and Shinji kicked himself for it mentally, but the connection was there, firmly implanted in his mind. 'To Shinji-kun:' Shinji again read to himself silently. 'Good morning!' He blinked quickly. The penmanship was not so much sloppy as it was strangely excited, he realized. 'I'm Misato Katsuragi, and apparently we're going to be working together for a while, in a manner of speaking. I'm sure you have all sorts of questions... I know I did.' The letter, as he read it, never got back on topic. The woman named Misato got off onto a tangent about her questions, and from there onto another tangent about her past, and never got back around to answering any questions, not even the ones she had said that she had when she was summoned to NERV. After about three pages of rambling, the writing suddenly trailed off, and her name was hastily scrawled across the bottom of the page. As Shinji finished reading, he noticed that the man had pulled out an immense novel from his coat, and was reading it - rather quickly. The title was in English, though that was about all that Shinji could glean from it. At the rate the man was turning the pages, though, Shinji recognized that he must be incredibly proficient in the language, or simply faking it. 'I wonder if the book is any good...' he thought to himself as he picked up the other set of loose-leaf pages. Unlike the other letter, this one was written cleanly and precisely. To compare it to an art form would have been going too far, but it was beyond simply sufficient. The lettering was slightly oversized, the allocation made for precision. Shinji barely drew breath as he read the letter - the precision and the turn of phrase immediately indicated the author of the letter. Shinji - I know this is all more than slightly surprising to you. This is neither the time nor the place for me to begin an attempt to be a good father, but there are some instructions that you should have, and I do not wish to trust that someone else may or may not tell you. First, I could not be very explicit in my previous letter. Anyone, after all, could have gotten ahold of it and read it. However, you did need to know when and how to come here. Telling you those two things was the sole purpose of that letter. This missive, on the other hand, should be at least somewhat more insightful, since I trust the deliverer. You are now, or soon will be, on the way to Tokyo-3. You know that the city is UN-controlled, and the only real civilians are the children of people who work here. You are not going to be a civilian. Second, something in the way of an apology, though I think you may also find it something of a relief - You will be living by yourself. Your quarters are already assigned; the details are with Katsuragi-san. This is not meant in any way to be spiteful, of course. The fact of the matter is that space was at a premium when the city was still under construction, and everyone was assigned to two-room apartments. By the time the city was fully constructed, asking any of the original inhabitants to pick up and move would have disrupted the work on E Project, and so I was never reassigned to anything more... opulent. The assignment is, of course, subject to change, but I think we both value our space enough to accept things as they stand at this point. If everything goes according to plan, you will not be required to report until the day after tomorrow, but we are on the verge of some fairly momentous events, and so we must all be flexible. Finally, Katsuragi-san will be your immediate superior and guardian. If you've read her letter, I'm sure you've already realized that she does not put much store in formal ceremony. Just try not to pick up too many of her bad habits. - Gendou Ikari P.S.: Don't worry about Satoru. He does know how to smile. P.P.S.: Read the booklet in the packet if you have the time. It should give you a general idea of what the UN hopes to accomplish with Tokyo-3. These are not your 'textbook' answers. Shinji laid the letter down slowly, his eyes focusing on something blurring by outside the windows of the train. 'He sounded almost normal... for father, anyway.' He watched the countryside roll by as he struggled to adjust his thinking to the idea of his father actually being -helpful-. Shinji shook his head slowly. 'It sounded like father's writing, but... it's strange. I'll never understand that man...' He sighed softly and folded the pages back to their original position, then picked up the booklet on the UN-NERV organization which, as it turned out, was incredibly unhelpful. Beyond the basic fact that everyone knew - that Tokyo-3 was a UN-controlled city - the information in the book might have been true, but the majority of it looked like intentional misinformation. After reading about ten pages, Shinji exhaled disgustedly and let the book fall to the table. The man - ostensibly Satoru - looked up from his reading with his hard, brown eyes. "Company manuals must be uniform... Uniformly boring," he commented, almost snidely. "I think it has something to do with a distinct lack of anything resembling imagination." He smirked coolly and lowered his eyes back to the novel in his hands. "Erm... Satoru-san?" Shinji asked hesitantly. "I told you, kid, I'm not supposed to answer your questions," he replied, not looking up from his reading. Satoru and Shinji both came up laughing at the same time. It certainly had been a question, after all, but the whole situation was so irrational that it was lent a nearly comic air. As the two continued to laugh, they felt the train slowly come to a stop. Out of the windows, Shinji could see the station, and almost asked if they had returned to Tokyo-2. Instead, he busied himself returning the contents of the manila folder -to- the manila folder. "Your stop," Satoru murmured, still thoroughly ensconced in his book. "Aren't you..." "Stopping here? No, as a matter of fact, this was a side trip for me at your father's behest. I've been given an assignment in Old Kyoto. Be well, Shinji-kun." Satoru inclined his head politely as Shinji gathered up his things and turned to leave. By the time the boy was out the door, the car's other occupant had already finished reading another four pages. いいいいい Shinji watched the train leave silently, holding his travel bag in one hand and the manila envelope in the other. With the exception of the train slowly getting back up to speed, there was not a single sound to be heard. There was not so much as a single person at the station, not even his 'contact', that woman named Katsuragi. Not only that, but there were no sounds of the day - traffic, birds, or even wind rustling through leaves. After the normality that had been the suburbs of Tokyo-2, Shinji found the silence unusual, and more than a little unnerving. 'Where is everyone?' he thought to himself, looking around the apparently abandoned train station. The appearance of the place was, oddly enough, almost exactly like that of the Tokyo-2 station. There was a glass-sheathed station house, supported by steel, which opened on the south to a street, and on the north to a covered boarding area. Immediately to the left of that was the blacktop platform on which Shinji had disembarked and still stood. There were uncomfortable-looking benches in all three areas, but none of them evidenced heavy amounts of use, nor recent repair or replacement. The parking lot across the street was also completely vacant, the heat rising off of the blacktop in waves. With that realization, Shinji also realized that it was unseasonably hot out for spring - at least, for a Tokyo-2 spring. 'Why is it so much hotter here?' Shinji mused, looking at the maglev track idly. 'This isn't really any farther south than Tokyo-2, is it?' As he waited, the clock slowly crept up on nine in the morning. The temperature rose slowly, but noticeably, which the unfortunate young man found distinctly uncomfortable. Heat continued to rise in waves from the pavement, obscuring the view of the city, not that there was truly anything to see or truly worth seeing. Tokyo-3 slowly rose out of the heat-induced fog to the west, and the remainder of the area trailed off into grass and sparse trees, almost normal-looking plain. In all, Shinji decided, the view was rather uninspiring. 'I guess I should start walking,' he thought. 'I have to run into a person sooner or later, don't I? ... And maybe I can find a phone.' Shinji slipped the manila envelope into his carrying bag, hitched the bag up over his shoulder, and struck out down the road towards the gleaming metal city. If this whole thing had been some sort of practical joke, Shinji was certainly not amused. From: miendiem@hotmail.com (Geoff Upchurch) Subject: [Eva][FanFic] IF/THEN (part 2/2) いいいいい The streets were completely deserted as Shinji walked into the city. This was an oddity, his Tokyo-2 trained mind assumed as it struggled to comprehend a city without people. Not only were there no people out walking, there were also no cars on the street, with the exception of a few that were parked and obviously left unattended. Shinji shook his head, confused, but he was growing more curious by the minute. One of the many oddities he noticed as he searched for a pay phone was that there were irregularly- spaced metal plates on the street. Those did not perform any service that he could tell, and were completely out of place, even taking into consideration the rest of the surroundings. The uniform steel-and-glass buildings that were reflecting the sun down onto his body gave the city a feeling of stretching on into infinity - a feeling supplemented by the seemingly perfect grid layout. Eventually, the road he was following opened onto a small public park. It seemed somewhat out of place in the middle of the towering buildings on all sides, much like an oasis in the middle of a vast desert. The grass was a deep green, echoed by the leaves on the trees. There were a scattering of small benches as well, though they reminded of the city with their steel construction. The only thing the park was missing, as far as Shinji could tell, was a small pond to gaze into and see the sky reflected. Shinji looked at the shade trees longingly, but kept moving, searching for either some sign of life, or a telephone. At the far side of the park, as it turned out, there was a small phone bank nestled in between several large trees. He thankfully entered the shade and started searching his information packet for a phone number he could use to contact... someone. In fact, Shinji found as he rustled amongst his papers, he did not know who he would call. After a bit of deliberation, however, he decided that the best course of action would be to call his contact with the organization and try to at least make the attempt to let her know that he had arrived and was okay. The number itself was scrawled on the bottom of the picture she had sent along with the short dossier, proving that she apparently did know what picture she had sent along with the packet. 'What a strange person...' he thought to himself as he picked up the phone and lifted it to his ear. Luck, to say the least, was not on Shinji's side on that particular morning. Instead of a dial tone, he found that he was listening to a prerecorded message: "We are sorry. Due to the current state of emergency that exists in Tokyo-3, all telephone lines are currently unavailable. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause." Shinji hung up the phone in disgust as soon as the message began to repeat itself. Not only was he obviously not going to be able to place a call, but it was also becoming less and less likely that he was going to find anyone at all in the city, what with the 'state of emergency' and everything else. Annoyed, Shinji brooded over what he was to do next. Apparently, there was no one around to assist him, and there was also no way for him to call for help, either. He kicked the ground in frustration, and felt it move, as if in response, nearly throwing him from his feet. There were no fault lines in the area, as far as he could recall from his studies, so he tried to shrug it off as his imagination. The trees in front of him, however, were still shaking. 'So much for imagination,' he thought, trying to catch hold of something in an attempt to keep upright as the ground shook again. "Wh... What the...?" he said aloud, trying to grasp what was happening and the phone book, and failing with equal facility. The answer very nearly bereft Shinji of his wits. An impossibility staggered into view down one of the long streets from the park. Its legs were green, marked in places with white, and the rest of its body was engulfed in explosions. As the hellish light subsided, the rest of the monster became clear. The white that Shinji had initially taken for some kind of markings were actually something - bone, most likely - protruding from the thing's body. Its head, if it could be called that, was stuck high on the thing's chest, and looked like a semi-sphere with a beak. The two "eyes", set almost normally in the "head", were coal-black. In a rather twisted sort of way, the thing even managed to look cute when it blinked. Overall, the monstrosity stood as high as any of the buildings in the area, and it seemed to be completely impervious to the onslaught. It swatted a VTOL-style craft out of the air with one negligent swipe of a spindly-looking arm, and then stalked off out of view, completely ignoring the seemingly impotent weapons fire. Shinji blinked several times, trying to somehow rationalize what he had seen. However, as the sounds of explosions and gunfire reached him, he knew that this was, in fact, quite real. That thing, whatever it was, was very real... and obviously very deadly. He shook his head in bewilderment. The whole thing was like something out of a science fiction movie, but it was real, and it was really stalking through Tokyo-3 with no one apparently able to impede its progress. Over the rumbling of the firefight and the tremors caused by the giant thing, which were all slowly growing more and more distant, Shinji thought he heard the squeal of rubber grinding against pavement as someone put a vehicle through some insane maneuver. Obviously, he thought, someone had finally thought better of hanging around in a city where a huge beast freely roamed the streets. As he tried to hear the sound, though, he slowly came to comprehend that the vehicle was speeding -towards- the huge thing, not away from it. This, of course, seemed like complete madness to the 14-year-old. Before long, a blue car came into view, bouncing as it landed from being lofted over a small hill. The driver, Shinji immediately assumed, was completely gone mentally, and was very likely not in terribly good control of his vehicle. He watched with growing alarm as the car came up on the small park, left the street, and skidded sideways across the grass, coming to rest with its tail end against a tree not thirty feet from him. The ground over which the car had skidded was completely torn up, with four distinct ruts in the ground where the wheels had displaced grass and dirt. Shinji, surprised and baffled, dropped his bag and gaped. The driver, he could tell, was swearing at herself audibly. He was, however, even more surprised when she threw the passenger door open and called out to him. "Hurry up and get in! I've spent the last twenty..." Shinji quickly jumped, grabbed his bag, and threw the entire mass into the car all in one motion. "... minutes. Couldn't you have at least waited at the station?" The driver swung violently the car back onto the road violently and proceeded off in the direction from whence she had come. "I never would have known where to look if you hadn't been in one of the cameras' fields of view." Shinji nodded dumbly. "It doesn't get any easier," the woman commented, sighing softly. "At least I did find you, though. That's what counts." Shinji, still mute, nodded again. Out of immediate danger, he had apparently gone into something of a state of shock. Having nothing to compare to, though, the driver had no way of knowing this. "I'm Misato, by the way," the woman continued, apparently indifferent as to whether or not the boy spoke back. "A pleasure to meet you." "Mmm," Shinji agreed, still nodding. "You could at least tell me your name," Misato said peevishly. "After all that trouble I had to go to, you better at least be the right brown-haired kid." "Shinji Ikari," he said softly. "A pleasure." "Why do they all have to be so quiet..." Misato muttered under her breath. The words were, apparently, forgotten as soon as they were spoken. "Sato... I'll get you for this." いいいいい Misato's driving was nothing short of reckless endangerment. Shinji closed his eyes tightly several times as he waited for the car to impact on various and sundry objects. Thankfully, however, there were no sudden crashes, and they arrived back at the train station - safely - in a shockingly short amount of time. "Back here?" Shinji asked, sounding slightly confused. He was, however, at least shaking off some of the shock. "It's the safest way down at the moment," she replied, driving around to the far side of the building and into a not- quite-hidden tunnel that obviously extended deep into the earth. After a few moments' worth of driving, the car lurched against one of the walls of the tunnel suddenly, catching both the driver and the passenger completely off guard. Shinji glanced around the tunnel as Misato swore vociferously and at great length about what it would cost to repair the damage to her car. "Katsuragi-san... what was that?" "If I had to venture a guess," she said, suddenly serious, "I would have to say that the J.S.S.D.F. deployed an N^2 mine against the angel. I wonder if it even worked..." Her voice trailed off in a musing tone. "Wonder if it worked?!" Shinji exclaimed. "It shook the earth!" Misato looked at the boy calmly, or as calmly as she could manage as she looked at the wild-eyed Shinji. "Nothing else has, you know. The S.D.F. is really pulling out all the stops, and they might as well be attempting to take down a bull with a flyswatter. Except that their flyswatter is capable of levelling a city, and the bull could do much, much worse." Certain incorrect suspicions began to occur to Shinji at about that time, and he started having very serious second thoughts about the intelligence inherent in heeding his father's summons. いいいいい At the end of the long tunnel was a large metal door with the same logo Shinji had seen in the train car painted upon it. As the blue car approached it, the door hissed audibly and began to slide up and out of the way. As the 'room' beyond was revealed, Shinji began to understand why the tunnel had branched off earlier in several places. Each of those tunnels was access to one slot of this machine, which might have been considered a train itself had it had an engine, or been moving multiple train cars. In this case, though, it was more in the nature of a terraced bed with locking mechanisms to hold cars in place. He gaped more than just a little at the thought of such an elaborate system underground, but in light of what he had already seen, it lost some of its glamour. As soon as the car was firmly locked in place, the transport slid away from the docking area and rushed off down its track at a terrific rate of speed. It was not at all like the uncontrolled speed of Misato's driving, Shinji decided, but rather a certain implacable motion. He hesitated to compare it to a rollercoaster, but there was certainly a marked resemblance. Soon after the contraption had started moving, the track ran out of the tunnel that had ensconced the car and into a large, open area. It could have been outside, except that the ambient light was not provided by the sun. Instead, the entire ceiling seemed almost to glow. It was not a harsh or blinding glow, unlike the sun, but the essence of it was enough to light the huge cavern. The area was not as immediate in Shinji's mind as the monster called an angel had been, but it seemed to layer a strange feeling of peace on his soul. "A real geofront?" Shinji asked in amazement, his voice betraying how impressed he was by the sight of it. "How long did this take to create? It's huge!" "I understand that it has been an ongoing project since soon after the turn of the century," Misato replied. "It's the reason for the city up there... or, at least, it was originally." Shinji was too busy being impressed to hear the comment, of course, and rightfully so. The whole of the geofront had been cultivated and landscaped to a point as near to artistic perfection as man could achieve. It was rarely marred by roads, and stretched longer in every direction than the city above it. In fact, comparatively, the city took up very little space, he realized. Down at the ground level, near the middle of the cavernous area, stood the lone, standing tribute to the area's human inhabitance: A tall metal pyramid which seemed to deaden the light that struck it. It seemed rather small and insignificant compared to the rest of the area, though in truth it was a massive complex, but it also seemed to stand out from the rest by virtue of its obviously human construction. Strangely, though, one of the sides of it trailed down into what Shinji first thought was nothing more than a large hole in the ground. As he paid more attention to it, though, he noticed that it was actually an inverted pyramidal structure that bore into the earth. The purpose of it, though, was unclear to him. Just before the transport dipped down into another tunnel, obscuring Shinji's view of the geofront, he noticed that off a way from the pyramids was a lake of the most pristine blue. It was not by any means the largest feature of the geofront, but it was certainly the prettiest. The descent quickly took on a much steeper incline, and both Misato and Shinji leaned to their left involuntarily. "This is why I never go this way, when I have a choice," Misato complained idly. "Surely they could have constructed it better... We'll be there shortly, though." Shinji nodded his agreement, his mind working much more than his mouth. いいいいい The car slipped cleanly off of the transport, and Misato was back in whatever passed for control of the vehicle, which quickly entered another tunnel. This one, however, did not go on long before opening into a multi-level parking garage. There were vehicles of every possible make and model there, as well as a few that Shinji could not manage to put names to. Just as quickly, the two were out of the car and headed at a break-neck pace towards a long, covered glass walkway. "Okay, I think we go this way..." Misato murmured, leading Shinji down a metal girded corridor that branched off to the right from the walkway that they had just crossed. It didn't take very long for Shinji to realize that they were wandering around inside that metal pyramid that he had glimpsed earlier. Seeing it from above, however, was completely different than walking through it - The structure was simply -massive-. Still, the two did not happen across any other people, and their footsteps echoed hollowly off of the metal floor. The resounding metallic beat slowly began to grate on Shinji's nerves as he wandered around following Misato, who seemed to be getting more and more lost by the minute, but they pressed on inexorably. "We're lost, aren't we..." "Of course not," Misato replied placatingly. They turned a corner then, and came face to face with a (relatively) tall blond woman with a stern face. The name 'Akagi' was stitched very precisely on her white lab jacket, which was easily the most modest thing she was wearing. It was, however, difficult to tell whether or not she had been caught in the middle of a trip to the company pool. She managed, even despite that, to look even more severe than the metal surroundings. "Captain Katsuragi, don't you have better things to do than get lost in the middle of an emergency?" she asked in an absolutely commanding tone that spoke volumes about her no-nonsense attitude. Shinji watched in silent astonishment as Misato, for once without a word to say, stood quietly and accepted the short tirade from the blond woman. He would not have sworn to it, but it almost seemed that there was a look of amusement playing in his new guardian's eyes. "I'll assume that you don't have anything to say for yourself," she continued crisply, not giving the other two any chance to interrupt her. "This is him, I assume... the Third Child." "Yes," Misato agreed, mostly to get a word in edgewise. "This is Shinji Ikari." "Ah," Ritsuko murmured, half to herself. "The Commander's son. I had nearly forgotten that..." She looked down at Shinji with her piercing brown eyes for a moment, then back up at Misato. "Do you think you can manage to follow me without getting lost?" That earned her a pained expression from Misato, who nodded nonetheless. "I'm sorry about all of this, Shinji-kun. To be honest, I'd rather you had time to settle in to life here, but that's just not possible now," Misato said to Shinji as they trailed behind their new guide. "And try not to take Ritsuko too seriously... She takes things seriously enough for everyone most of the time." "I'll pretend I didn't hear that," Ritsuko called back over her shoulder, still pressing on. __________ The path they followed was not -exactly- the opposite of what Misato had traced earlier, but it was fairly close to it. The entire complex seemed to be made of metal, as far as Shinji could tell, and it was not at all difficult to hear any other people in the general vicinity. Ritsuko led them into a large, dark room and herded them both onto an inflatable watercraft of some kind, which conveniently happened to be equipped with a small electric motor. Shinji could hear the sound of the craft slicing through the water, a sound which echoed around in the vast chamber. "Climb here," Ritsuko commanded, shining a small light on a silvery ladder. "And try not to fall in. You wouldn't enjoy it, I assure you." Shinji looked at the two women fearfully, but complied with the order and started ascending the ladder. Below him, he could hear that either one or both of them were following him up. Shinji was, understandably, more than a little cautious while making his way up, since he certainly had no intention of taking an impromptu bath, no matter how uncomfortable the time he had spent walking around in Tokyo-3 had made him. "When you get to the top, step off to your right," Ritsuko's voice wafted up from farther down the ladder. "Then wait for us... unless you want to try falling off, of course." Shinji shivered, but when he found the top of the ladder, he dismounted as he had been told, keeping one hand on the ladder for safety's sake. A few moments later, Misato joined him on the ledge. She was breathing slightly erratically, but she had, indeed, made it up intact. Ritsuko joined them about half a minute later, and took great pains to go past both of the 'tourists' without knocking them off. They remained in darkness for another few seconds, though they could hear her walking across -something-. "Try not to fall off, please," Ritsuko called to them. "Lights!" With that, the lights snapped on in the cavernous room. The room itself was easily one high-rise building tall, and twice as wide. Shinji's comprehension of this fact included the thought of just how large the pyramid itself must actually be, to contain even one room such as the one he was currently standing in. Life itself, it seemed to Shinji, was growing larger by the hour. Already unbalanced by the size of the room, Shinji looked back down the ladder he had just climbed. It was not all that terribly long a climb, not nearly so long as darkness and fear had made it seem, but it was, nevertheless, not a fall that Shinji would have liked to experience. The liquid which, Shinji realized, filled the majority of the room, was not water, as he had suspected, but rather a pinkish fluid the purpose of which he could not begin to fathom. What of the room that was not flooded was instead a tangle of powered-down monitors, various electrical implements, and a vast tangle of wires which were literally strewn about the floor. It was what was against the far wall, however, that quickly riveted all of Shinji's attention. Though it did not fill the room, Shinji found that he felt smaller just by facing it than he did thinking of the room's huge size. It was vaguely humanoid, and was covered in plates of purple, sparsely interspersed with green. The thing stood at least as tall as that "angel" had, and managed to look even more formidable, a fact due possibly to the fact that the sockets where its eyes should have been, were it human, were instead a vacant black. The entire face of the thing seemed designed to frighten, almost as if the creator had decided to plagiarize the concept of a demon and plaster its features on this giant, right down to a large horn jutting from the middle of its forehead. "Impressive," Misato said, blinking. Ritsuko groaned audibly. "You always have been easily impressed. It's just like the other one, with the exception of a few of the aesthetics. "Urk..." Misato said, sweatdropping, and quite abashed. "Wh... what is it?" Shinji asked, easily as impressed as Misato, but with far better cause. "Evangelion Unit 01." All three faces came up to stare at the area where the sound of the voice had originated. It was not so much the commanding tone that the voice possessed, but rather the sudden unexpectedness of it as it rained down from above them. "Father," Shinji whispered, almost inaudibly. "You two will pardon us for a moment, please," Gendou continued, in a tone that left them all quite sure that it was -not- a request, but an order. "Sir, in case you've forgotten, we don't exactly have the ti..." "Apparently we do," he replied wryly, cutting Ritsuko off in mid-sentence. "Now go." Strangely, it was Misato who recovered her wits first and had to drag her friend along behind in compliance with the Commander's order. Ritsuko, of course, managed to maintain some semblance of dignity... at least, as much as one could while being half-dragged away. いいいいい "Shinji," Gendou said by way of greeting, inclining his head in an almost polite fashion. "Father," Shinji replied in kind. Gendou looked down through the reinforced Plexiglas at his son, something akin to regret playing at the edges of his face. "I trust your trip was comfortable," he continued, a nearly amiable quality to his voice. Once again, in a day filled with shocks and surprises, Shinji found himself caught off his guard. He had, admittedly, been expecting a much colder reception, and so his father's sudden need for amicable politeness confused him. However, if that was the way it was going to be played, Shinji decided, he had some semblance of manners and tact himself. "Tolerably," he admitted, speaking clearly, in a voice meant to carry up to his father. Gendou nodded, seemingly thinking that he had satisfied the demands of courtesy. "Excellent," he said simply, nodding to himself again. "Normally, this would not be necessary..." He paused, letting that sink in. "But, of course, this particular circumstance is not normal." "I'd gathered that much," Shinji admitted. "But... What is it?" His father sighed regretfully. "I suppose it does have to be this way," he said to himself, looking down at the boy who still called him 'father' after all the time they had been apart. "Just that you're going to save the world." Shinji was dumbstruck. This casual, almost offhand, dismissal of something so colossal was beyond his comprehension. Giant monsters from the silver screen were one thing. Huge underground complexes were one thing. This, on the other hand, was completely different. It wasn't that Shinji did not trust his ears, but... He blinked and stammered, much as anyone might who had just heard the same - assuming, of course, that they did not instead laugh at the speaker of the pronouncement as though he were insane. Shinji looked up at his father, trying to find some hint of teasing or mocking on his face, but all that was there was seriousness, concentration, and a certain amount of sad regret for what was to come. "Are you ready, Shinji?" Gendou asked, the tone of his voice matching the tone of his face. 'Will I lose him too?' he thought to himself in the silence of his heart. "I'll have to be, won't I?" Shinji asked rhetorically, and much more confidently than he truly felt. "Isn't there anyone else?" Gendou shook his head in sad denial. "There is no one else who can," he replied. "Okay," Shinji agreed quickly, trying to hide his discomfort with the whole concept. "What do I do?" ___________________________________________________________________ Japanese note: Satoru - To attain enlightenment, to percieve, to understand, to discern. The search for this name was a rather annoying one, but it finally got agreed upon... as much to finish the search as anything else. -_-;; End notes: You have no idea how hard it was for me to write those first few lines, do you... Heh. It's probably obvious that my taste in music is fairly specific - I've passed it along to Shinji for characterization purposes. The particular song I was thinking of is the current single by the band Staind, entitled "It's Been Awhile". I can direct you to the lyrics if you so desire. Also, note, if you will, the appearance of Asuka here... in a twisted sort of way. Consider it something akin to the appearance of Rei in episode 1 of NGE. UN-NERV was not an intentional joke, but I see how someone might see it as such. I'm not going to change it, so laugh all you want. =)~ In the end, though, I actually really enjoyed writing this one. Questions, comments, and other feedback is, of course, welcome at miendiem@hotmail.com or miendiem00@ netscape.net Please, no requests for a sequel - I'm not going to write one. I already made that mistake with the Aright story- turned-series. If there is to be a sequel or a series made out of this, I'll decide so. Also, if you would like to be listed for mailing when something new is released, send a message to miendiem00@netscape.net with the request and the address to which you want the message sent to. Please note also that miendiem00@netscape.net is an official address change. Netscape Webmail discontinued my forwarding service from miendiem@netscape.net in early June. Arigatou.