30Disclaimer: …nah, can't be bothered. Refer to the first chapter if you really must.
Summary: A tale of the closing movements of the Groundhog Apocalypse, and the eternal boy ensnared at its nexus. Two: Once more into the breach…
A/N: I shouldn't have to say this given last chapter's telegraphing, but: OOC Shinji warning! from here on. Then again, this isn't exactly Shinji anymore – this is the voice in the back of his head who's watched Shinji waffle and screw things up for at least half-a-century…
Also. While I'm here, a quick but heartfelt danke shön and thank-you respectively to KendrixTermina and shin-jim99 for their reviews.
The Eighteenth
Chapter 2: Groundhog (…and Repeat?)
—ox-oxo-xo—
One ruby-red eye stared up muzzily at the khaki-sprayed armourplate that formed the corridor's ceiling.
Perhaps not even the Commander might have noticed the infinitesimal signs of puzzlement locked in its set. No-one else in her experience had made the habit of looking into her eyes anyway. The colour, and the ostensible dearth of expression, tended to put them off.
The reason she was in the corridor was perfectly straightforward, even blunted as her skills of deduction were by a cocktail of agony and sedatives. And it was not as if her ears were incapable of their intended function. There was an Angel about to attack the city, and Unit 01 would be dispatched to meet it. The new Operations Director was on her way to collect the Third Child, who would be ordered to pilot it. But given the time constraints, the Commander judged it highly probable that Rei Ayanami would nevertheless be called upon to pilot the Eva. Should such a situation occur, it made sense that she would therefore be stationed in a corridor within the relevant sector wearing as much of a plugsuit as yesterday's injuries would allow, with a communications technician off to the side awaiting the requisite order and a medic on hand holding the requisite chemical agent to immediately counteract the sedatives and make that order possible to follow, so to reduce the time lost in switching the pilots.
That there might be another reason for her current location did not cross her mind. She was not in the habit of questioning her orders.
That she had just returned from an involuntary astral phase, in and of itself, was little cause for concern. It was relatively harmless if occasionally disorienting, and left no trace of evidence. The Commander had told her such anomalous occurrences did not threaten his scenario, being merely a by-product of her existence as Lilith's vessel. It seemed mildly unusual for the soul she had for whatever reason gravitated to in this instance – a boy of perhaps her apparent age, dark-brown hair and slate-blue eyes – to actually see her. But that was not worthy of any concern either. The heightened sense of connection that she received from the boy was also of no relevance, unless and until the Commander should direct her to interact with him.
What was unusual, was the way the boy had reacted.
His eyes had locked onto hers in the very moment that she appeared. And then he had smiled. And waved at her!
Rei Ayanami, as a rule, was far from the curious type. It was the fact that she suddenly found herself curious about such a decidedly minor interaction that was vexing her. There was no reason for that curiosity. Was there not?
Why did she feel so…disconcerted?
Rei mentally shrugged, breathed deep the scent of antiseptic layered over still-seeping blood, and reverted to her customary state of fatalistic quiescence. Such things were transient, she knew. In the long run, nothing had changed.
Shinji indulged himself in a brief bout of snickering. The way her eyes had snapped wide open when he greeted her, after all, had been highly amusing.
(Not as amusing at the time she'd appeared just in time for his backpack to go flying through the space occupied by her head, though. That had been just hilarious…
Not to mention somewhat frightening. Rei was unsurprisingly well-suited to dealing death-glares. That hadn't stopped him from blowing a nice long raspberry at her when she turned up in the cage. Perhaps that was why her fist 'accidentally' found his groin when he subsequently ran over to check her over after she fell from the cot. Though it was hard to tell. She was also unsurprisingly well-suited to looking as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.)
He sighed nostalgically, reflexively ducking to keep clear as the first missiles went screaming over his head and around the tower of apartments behind him. Good times…
Yep, there was the VTOL…there was the Angel…down came the VTOL…here came the Angel… He crouched in place, the better to shelter from the pulverised aircraft's fiery destruction. Then he sprinted for the car door, which opened just in time for him to worm his way past the driver and into the front passenger seat with the minimum of wasted time.
"Drive!" he screamed, snapping the restraint in place and tightening it with one blurred movement.
Misato shut her mouth, turned back around and sent the car fishtailing away from the incoming missiles' debris and Sachiel's descending foot. Shinji sat back, centring his mass as best he could in the seat, and mentally ticked off his first successful 'high school debut' moment. Yes, there was nothing like a life-and-death experience with a gigantic beast to snap an angsty teenage boy out of his funk…at least, that's what he'd tell Ritsuko and her duckling-trail of tame pseudo-psychs later.
It would work. It would have to work. He must make it work. There were no more second chances anymore.
Not once, not once in all the times round the spiral had he ever felt such life coursing through him! No more the plodding progress-that-never-was. No more the idle tweak-after-tweak-after-tweak of the cycles, carried out for no reason other than to pass the endless time. No more the perpetual groping for hope. In the end, it was as simple as knowing what he had to do – and wanting to do it.
The FINISH line beckoned at last, and he wanted it so bad he could taste it. One more round of cutting the corners and subtly sabotaging his rivals (and just as subtly shepherding his teammates), and the race would finally come to its rightful close…
…but there was a ways to go before that happened, and Shinji Ikari was not about to let the final victory slip through his grasp. There really were no second chances anymore. At the very first slip-up, he could wipe out and doom everything. So it was time to knuckle down, apply his every sliver of attention, and make his every manoeuvre count – because this time, it really did.
A certain amount of wild swerving, aerial items pinballing round the backseat area, and muffled cursing in soprano snarl followed in the meantime, as was to be expected when one was driving the hell away from a fifty-metre-tall monster and the flood of munitions that were being fired at it. Fortunately Sachiel seemed to be in no hurry, so about five minutes was sufficient to put a nice hefty bank of rock and dirt between them and the ongoing battle.
Driver and passenger stared at each other for a moment. Misato Katsuragi smiled cheerfully, as if she hadn't just dropped the f-bomb half-a-dozen times in the first minutes of their acquaintance.
"Anyway, hi there! Sorry about the wait."
Shinji shrugged, trying not to draw attention to the seatbelt popping loose. "It's all right, Miss Katsuragi. There's no harm done."
Misato wrinkled her nose momentarily, irked a little by his polite term of address, before diving into the back seat for a set of binoculars. Shinji found his head pinned between the edge of the window and Misato's armpit, and let the patterns of hundreds of repetitions guide his actions despite the discomfort.
There was a very good reason for it.
As near as Shinji had been able to discern, there was no-one else on the planet – not Mother, not SEELE, not even Kaworu or Rei – who realised the convoluted loop that events had formed. And that included the Angels. This had plenty of handy pluses, particularly when it came to the Angel battles. They could be reasonably relied upon to act in the prescribed ways, and for the most part turn up when they were supposed to. But there were some disadvantages.
Being in a car that has been sent rapidly flipping along the ground from the blast wave of an N2 mine is an inherently dangerous place to be. Not wearing a seatbelt, not to mention being in the vicinity of someone else not wearing a seatbelt, does not help matters. On many previous occasions, Shinji had tried to find a more comfortable position. Over half the time, the resulting change of position had led to Misato's subsequent crippling or even death.
So he acted exactly the same as he had the first time, trying not to blush at the semi-inappropriate contact (because ancient as he felt mentally, he still had to deal with a 14-year-old body's share of hormones), and let Misato act to protect him in the only way that had been proven to guarantee her own safety over hundreds of test-runs as she screamed out warning and pinned him under her.
It still hurt. It always did.
—ox-oxo-xo—
The first hurdles dealt with, Shinji got on with the task of making himself subtly indispensable to NERV Captain Misato Katsuragi. There was, after all, no better way right now to ensure that the Katsuragi Currently-A-Pigsty would become his residence. It was not particularly challenging; this close to the start of the loop, the young soon-to-be-Eva-pilot had practiced the scenario times beyond count. So the method was pretty simple – two parts of following orders and assisting with alacrity and initiative—
"All right! Shinji, could you dig out the roll of tape from the backseat? I'm afraid we've got no time to call a rep— hey, that was quick…!"
He handed her the roll of tape and dived back into the backseat to stow away the rest of the mess.
—mixed with one part of acting shy and easily embarrassed, which Misato could be relied upon to classify as 'cute'.
"Um, M-Misato?"
"Yes, Shinji?"
"A-Are you sure it'll be all right to take those batteries…?"
He politely listened as she stumbled through her shoddy justifications, knowing perfectly well that the theft of a dozen electric Battery Pacs from a certain service station would never be reported anyway.
"O-Okay. I hope you're right, Misato. I wouldn't want you to get in trouble…"
She reached over and ruffled the boy's hair. "You'll see, it'll be fine!"
To be fair, he supposed he could have just played to the original script. But Shinji's immediate object for now was to present the correct balance between innocence and responsibility. Innocent enough for Misato to 'take pity' on him and take on a de facto house-servant – and responsible enough to convince her to task him with the culinary duties immediately upon his entry to their home.
Seriously. He would go that far to avoid Misato's so-called 'cooking'.
Well. That, and cutting the timewasting to a minimum. He had no wish to go traipsing all over NERV HQ again, not when the solution was so simple.
"This is the C-22 Special Express departing directly for G33-1. This train will bypass all other stations. Please stand back."
"Hm… I've never been to Tokyo-3 before. How do you avoid getting lost in such a big and confusing place?" He accompanied the question with a look that combined 'inquisitive' and 'adoring puppy-dog'.
Misato giggled, "Well, it comes with practice." And then frowned. "Then again, I haven't been living here for that long either."
Shinji nodded and held his peace. Prodding her at this point would be counterproductive, and he was pretty sure now that he'd done enough. His hypothesis was proved correct when she picked up the carphone and dialled a number as the cartrain began moving.
"Yeah, hi again… One more thing – do you think you could send someone down to meet us at, um what was it…?" Shinji muttered the train's destination. "G33-1? Don't want to get lost at a time like this…"
That done, Misato hung up and tried not to look sheepish. "Just in case."
Shinji 'hmm'ed in as non-judgemental a manner as possible. Job done – time to get back to the script, preferably minus the self-pitying whingefest. "So… NERV?"
All-in-all, he saved nearly twenty minutes. That would be vital to Shinji's scenario. And manoeuvring himself into the best possible position to help with her many problems later on…well, that just made it all the better.
—ox-oxo-xo—
"Well done," Dr. Ritsuko Akagi smirked at her old friend, "you didn't get lost this time. Even if you did have help getting here. You do realise we're short on manpower, don't you?" Ritsuko pointed at the rapidly departing tech to illustrate her example.
"Hey! I got here didn't I?" Misato grumbled. After all, results were what counted, right?
Shinji ignored the conversational byplay, quirking an eyebrow at the LCL-reservoir transport's operator. Said operator dropped the just-blooming mien of impatience at being noticed by one of his soon-to-be passengers, and gestured 'come here'.
"So this is— Where's the boy?"
The transport's operator was kind enough to whistle out, thereby keeping intact Shinji's newly crafted image as a level-headed boy who didn't rub his elders' faces in their faults. Said faults in this case being (a) Misato and Ritsuko standing around on the dock chewing the fat when they could just as easily been standing on the boat chewing the fat…
"Any time now, ladies!" the operator shouted, tapping his watch.
…and (b) the operator being an antisocial, misogynistic old bastard.
"…Ah." The women hurried down the ramp and onto the transport, glaring at the operator. He snorted and ducked in to take the controls.
"So, yeah. This is him. According to the Marduk report, he's the 'Third Child'."
The doctor looked at him, her stare as calculating and dispassionate as always upon their introduction. "Pleased to meet you."
Shinji bobbed a little bow from his seat in her direction. "Likewise…doctor?" he replied, letting his eyes flicker for one-quarter of a second over Dr. Akagi's rather atypical outfit.
Her puzzlement cleared so quickly that it might as well have not been there. A labcoat over bathers did not make for instant job-identification, after all. She began pulling clothing out of the bag she'd been carrying when she greeted them. "Correct. Dr. Ritsuko Akagi, head of the Technical Department. And you would be Shinji Ikari."
"Yes, Dr. Akagi." He looked back down at the NERV induction booklet, which he had long ago memorised back-to-front. One more, admittedly small step in adjusting another aspect of the scenario; she had formally introduced herself, and had done so with only the lightest of prodding. The sooner she stopped thinking at him as 'the boy', which was a moniker not so far from that of 'the subject', the better it would be for everyone.
"He's a lot like his father, I gotta say," Misato chuckled, catching the red uniform-jacket Ritsuko tossed at her. "A little gruff and quiet… Pretty calm, too."
"Well, that's a blessing…"
Shinji kept quiet, turning the booklet's pages every so often as the women tuned out his presence. There was little point in drawing attention to himself just now, given that they wouldn't answer most of the questions he could have asked.
—ox-oxo-xo—
The lights came on.
He stared. For about three seconds.
"…'Evangelion, Unit 01', right?"
Captain Katsuragi flinched. "How did you—?"
"I saw its arm outside, Misato. You know, from the transport?"
"Well observed, Shinji," Dr. Akagi congratulated him. There was no hint of surprise in her mien. Shinji had quietly looked out the window while the doctor was taking the time to throw on the rest of her clothes. Ritsuko had seen him do it. He couldn't have her getting suspicious, now could he? "This is mankind's ultimate fighting machine, the synthetic lifeform: Evangelion, Unit One. Built in secret, it is man's last hope."
More silence. He also couldn't afford to look too blasé about this. "…A-Against that monster Misato and me saw, right?"
"Correct."
Shinji looked up—
(Once he'd snatched Misato's sidearm and shot at him with it. Which of course meant a dozen-plus times over of working out how to get her sidearm – eventually he'd gone with slipping it out of her holster and into his pocket in the brief period of total darkness before the Eva's big reveal.
Sadly, the gun wasn't accurate enough at that distance. And the glass was too thick anyway. Not that it mattered anymore.)
—and saw his father standing in the usual place.
"It's been a while," Gendo Ikari noted.
"…So it has, Father," Shinji answered. "I guess you have something to do with all this?"
He hesitated for a moment, slightly puzzled at the calm way the boy was reacting. "That's right. I am NERV's Commander. And we're moving out."
"Moving out? Unit Zero's still in cryostasis, isn't it?" Misato gasped, staring at the purple-plated cyborg. "Wait a minute! You're going to use Unit One?"
Shinji was mostly certain that it wasn't an act. Mostly. You never quite knew with Misato – she exhibited a high aptitude in the art of bullshitting herself at times, and surely she must have suspected something.
"There's no other way," Ritsuko confirmed.
"Hold on! Rei can't do it yet, can she?" That's right, tick off the boxes… "We don't have a pilot!"
"One's just been delivered." Then again, it was just possible that Misato hadn't even suspected. Certainly the tone of Dr. Akagi's response seemed to indicate that such was her opinion.
"You're not serious?" Not that Shinji minded. With the exposition drawn out this long and the reasoning laid out in Ritsuko's brusque logic, it allowed him to save valuable time and cover his tracks while he was at it. Everything came down to paying attention, and taking nothing for granted.
Everything, and nothing. And always.
"Shinji Ikari." The doctor turned to him, staring hard into his eyes. "You will pilot it."
Shinji stared consideringly at the Eva, biding his time. In any case, Misato was willing to fill the silence for the moment. "But even Rei Ayanami took seven months to synchronise with her Eva. It's impossible for him to do it! He just got here!"
"He just has to sit in the seat," Akagi retorted. "We don't expect more than that."
Yup. It was amazing how much information he could have picked up if only he'd listened properly the first time. But then, that probably would've been something a great many people would find troubling.
"But…"
Yeah, that was probably long enough. He'd just saved another five minutes.
"All right. I'll do it," Shinji said.
"WHAAAA—?"
"Very well," Commander Ikari nodded and turned away. "Commence launch preparations. Ready the entry plug." A bevy of technicians sprang to life at the order, doubtless glad not to have their jobs put on hold for the sake of a fourteen-year-old boy's ill-timed bitchfit. Hooray for small mercies…
"But… But—!"
"We appreciate your co-operation, Pilot Ikari," Dr. Akagi told him with an understated smile tinged with a well-masked touch of relief.
"But what—!"
"It's simple, Misato." Shinji turned to her for the first time since they had entered the enclosure. "Whatever that thing is, it's coming here. Right, Dr. Akagi?"
The doctor nodded. "Yes. We call it an Angel, by the way."
"Right. Weird name… anyway. I'm the only one who can do this, and it seems that… Angel can only be stopped by one of these Evangelions. Right?"
"W-Well…yeah but—" Misato stammered.
"So either I get in and pilot the Eva, or the Angel destroys the entire city and the Geofront – with me in it. When you look at it that way, I'm actually a little safer in the Eva."
"…I suppose," she muttered. A brief period of silence followed. "You know, you're actually smarter than you look."
"I'll take that as a compliment, shall I?" He smiled, careful not to make it a smirk.
—ox-oxo-xo—
"Are you getting me in here?" Shinji inquired, thumbing the CB button on the console. That and a small camera positioned over the cockpit were the only way to communicate with the pilots while their entry plugs were in transit, at least until a couple of modifications were made to them later on.
He could practically hear Ritsuko muttering 'damn, how did he find that?' – which, by some strange coincidence, was exactly what she did say before punching the comm button. "Loud and clear. What do you want?"
"I have a few questions." The entry plug shuddered as its outer shell corkscrewed into place. "The first one is… No, better question. What's this liquid?"
"LCL. You breathe it."
There was no point in putting up a fuss. He breathed out. He breathed in.
"…Yummy." Those on the bridge could not fail to miss the sarcasm.
"You'll get used to it," Dr. Akagi told him. "Now be quiet for a moment."
They'll want an initial sync ratio first… Shinji kept silent for a few moments, watching as they turned the confines of his tin-can into a psychedelic lightshow and then rendered a view of the Eva's surroundings for the benefit of his jacked optic nerves.
It was just one of those things better not questioned for now. But he supposed a certain amount of quiet gawping was in order, so he performed some for the bridge's benefit.
1st Lieutenant Maya Ibuki's businesslike tones drifted through the comm link, which Akagi had kindly left open – or more likely, had simply not seen the point of closing. "Bi-directional circuits are open. Synchronisation ratio at…hang on, that's…" She fell silent for a moment in disbelief. "Yup, harmonics seem to be all normal, no disturbances identified… Synchronisation ratio at 45.7 percent."
Shinji blinked. "Is that good enough?" As projected; the 41.3 percent baseline, plus the experienced pilot, minus the Eva not moving by itself this time. Going on past iterations, it should get to the low fifties by the time he was ready to fight.
"More than good enough, Shinji…" Ritsuko breathed. "Amazing." She shook herself, opening a comm window into the cockpit. "You had questions?"
"Just the ones you would expect. Weapons, defences, power source – that sort of thing?" Now if only he'd had those answers the first time around… though of course, they weren't as important as the next one. "And also: how the heck am I supposed to move this Eva?"
A deathly silence from the other end of the commlink. He conscientiously refrained from grinning.
Hey, he had to find his laughs somewhere. Even if he wasn't actually laughing.
Gods, he'd become so damn cynical over the years. Words could not describe how badly all this needed to just end.
"All right, but we'll have to be quick. That Angel looks like it's getting ready to move again," she eventually replied. This he knew – if he was keeping track right, then he had about ten minutes before NERV went to Level 1 battle stations, and a few minutes after that until Sachiel crested the mountain range and started firing on the city.
"The Evangelion is controlled using bi-directional circuits, much like an extension of your nervous system. In order to move it, you need to concentrate on moving it the way you want it to."
"You mean…visualise it?"
"Not quite. A better way of saying it would be to convince yourself that you are the Eva."
"Hmm, okay. So, why these things?" He tapped the steering yokes.
"Two reasons. First reason: the controls are context-sensitive. When synched with your Eva, you will instinctually work the controls in the manner required; as such, there's no reason to worry too much about that. Just do what feels right, and it will work as it's meant to. Secondly, it's the most efficient place to put some of the pilot-specific controls, such as the backup comm button you found earlier. Can you find the primary comm button?"
He made pretence of searching for a couple of seconds before punching it. "Is that it?"
"That's better. You're coming over clearer now."
"Someone up there mentioned 'synchronisation'. What's so important about it?" he asked, flicking off the backup comm.
"It's a measure of the motor control you have over your Evangelion. The higher it is, the better your potential control over the Eva. But here's a warning: the higher it is, the more the Eva's pain receptors will feed back into the connection. So if, say, the Eva loses an arm, then you will feel as if you've lost an arm." Shinji's eyes snapped wide most convincingly. "Don't worry, your own arm will still work. You'll just have to fight through the pain. You can do that, right Shinji?"
The pilot sighed bleakly. "I'll just have to, won't I?" He watched Misato turn away from past Ritsuko's shoulder, hiding her face. The last shard inside him whimpered unhappily at the sight. He shushed it absently. "All right, weapons."
"We're loading a progressive knife in the right shoulder canopy." Yup. There were so many better uses for those technicians' time than repairing damaged armour plating on said shoulder. Just one more advantage of enlightened time management. "Use it like you would a normal knife. We have pallet rifles under construction, but we'd rather give you a little more training before you get your hands on one of those."
It wasn't as if he could refute that logic. Or rather, he could – it just wouldn't be a good idea. "Armour?"
"Articulated joints connecting to plate casing. By itself it'll stand up to most things we know about, but the AT field is what allows the Eva to act at full effectiveness." She continued without waiting for the obvious question. "When activated, it is a border beyond which virtually nothing can pass, with the exception of mass-destructive force or a stronger AT field. In addition, it is theorised that you can use it to nullify other AT fields, though testing has yet to be conducted on that. This AT field, Shinji, is the reason why only Evangelions can defeat the Angels."
Silence from the Eva Unit One entry plug.
"…What's wrong?"
"You just said 'Angels'. As in the plural." Walked right into that one, didn't you? Sucker…
Dr. Akagi shrugged, trying to pass her slip off as nothing. "Your point?"
"…I'll fight this Angel without a fuss, because if I don't then I'll die with the rest of the city. But if this is going to become a job," he glared into the camera feed, "then rest assured, there will be conditions."
"I'll pass that on to the commander." Her smirk was almost impossible to discern over the feed, but the tone of her reply portrayed just fine her opinion of just how well that little request was going to go down.
Not that he cared. If he conducted the upcoming battle correctly, Shinji would now have other options at his disposal. And utilising those options should further his Plan at the same time, so all the better.
"You do that. Now, power supply?"
"Umbilical power cable, connected to the lower back. An internal battery will keep the Eva running for 5 minutes, or 1 minute under full battle conditions – the AT field is a major energy drain."
"…Huh. How long's the cord? I guess you'd rather not have me fight the Angel within range of the city…?"
"You'd be right about that!" Captain Katsuragi shouted over the link. "We'll be launching you up at the city's outskirts. Hey Ritsuko, how long ARE those cables?"
"4000 metres from the access point," Dr. Akagi told her. A brief delay while the Operations Director leant over the balcony to check the bridge's topographical hologram and returned.
"You'll be able to get as far as the top of the rise. If you want to go further away, then you'll have to do it on backup power," Misato said. She seemed understandably sceptical about his chances of success under those conditions. It wasn't as if she had any reason to think differently, after all.
And it wasn't as if Shinji was about to go proving her overly pessimistic. He had his own plans to adhere to, and they did not involve defeating the Third Angel without first awakening the Eva.
"All right," Captain Katsuragi told all present in general and the Third Child in particular, "Evangelion Unit One will be launched from the outskirts as soon as it's ready. This will give the pilot some time to practice moving the Eva before entering combat."
She hid her nervousness well, Gendo Ikari thought. Perhaps that was how she naturally reacted in combat conditions – or perhaps it was merely subsumed under the woman's desperate need for vengeance. Not that the Commander particularly cared at the moment. She would perform her function. That was all that was required of her.
Of course, even such invested senior officers as Katsuragi needed an occasional reminder of the…elastic ethical standards required of her position every now and then.
"Can we really do this?"
And dispensing such reminders, even for such a minor show of doubt, formed part of the role he must play. "Of course. Unless we defeat the Angels, we have no future," he told her. "And at least the boy has had some pre-launch training."
The captain turned to carry out her orders. Fuyutsuki, however, felt the need to mutter one last query:
"Are you absolutely certain about this?"
Even with no-one in earshot, it came wrapped well in a layer of obfuscation. Kozo had never quite managed to reconcile his conscience with the aims of Gendo's scenario. That the old professor had essentially signed on as his second to perform the role of devil's advocate had been understood from the beginning.
Under normal circumstances, Rei was probably capable of operating Unit One. Even with the grievous injuries her current body had sustained, she could most likely defeat the Angel – although she would likely not survive the attempt. However, that was not the point. The boy was meant to be the pilot, his lack of training was immaterial in the long run. Given his phenomenal initial synchronisation ratio, even SEELE would concede the rationale behind the Marduk report's selection of Shinji Ikari as the Third Child. But without that training, in his place SEELE would no doubt elect Rei to fill in for him to combat the Angels until that training was provided.
Instead, Eva Unit One would be sent out in the control of a boy with less than five minutes of training, who would have no chance of beating the Angel – without first awakening the Eva. And that was not in SEELE's plan. SEELE had no place in their Human Instrumentality Project for Commander Gendo Ikari's son. And the last thing SEELE needed at the business end of Third Impact was an Evangelion that might just decide it didn't like their version of events.
He, on the other hand, disagreed with both of these points.
Gendo grinned behind his hands. One more step toward his goal.
"Launch!" Misato yelled.
Bonejarring G-forces instantly lashed the entry plug and its occupant, the pilot gritting his teeth and moaning with the pressure. For the space of nearly ten seconds, that same pressure and the wildly fluctuating vibration that came with it threw every sensor trained on the entry plug into disarray.
Not a severe magnitude of disarray, no. But still enough for Shinji to enact his first major strategic movement. Any sensor reading during transit and several seconds after would most likely be written off as erroneous data.
'Mother?'
The dormant soul within the sleeping titan stirred, regarding him with a muzzy spark of curiosity that flickered to life and burned brighter with recognition and anticipation as every moment passed.
Shinji sent his mother a mental pulse of reassurance and a plea for restraint. 'Just a little longer, and we'll catch up uninterrupted, Mother. Stay back for now; you'll know when.'
She withdrew, for the moment, but only after gifting her son the sensation of a warm, maternal embrace.
The Eva's headlong rush slammed to a sudden halt which rattled his teeth some more, reminding him to check whether he was smiling. He was, but could probably pass it off as an adrenaline rush.
Now it truly began. Stage One: underway…
Ending A/N: Watching a spot of TV the next afternoon after I posted the first chapter, I was actually rather surprised to find that I'd effective posted the damn thing on Groundhog Day. Man, I wish I could take credit for that…on second thoughts, I think I shall. Yup – I'm just that brilliant.
…Stop looking at me like that.
In the meantime, let's have some omake!
—ox-oxo-xo—
Yep, there was the VTOL…there was the Angel…down came the VTOL…here came the Angel… He crouched in place, the better to shelter from the pulverised aircraft's fiery destruction. Then he sprinted for the car door, which opened just in time for him to worm his way under the driver's arm and into the car with the minimum of wasted time.
"Drive!" he screamed.
A deathly silence from behind him.
"…What the hell do you think you're doing, kid?"
Shinji turned round to glare at Misato over his shoulder. "We're in a hurry, Misato! Get a move on!"
Misato stared at him. Then she grinned evilly. "If you insist!"
The quick reverse sent him tumbling off her lap and smacking noggin-first into the passenger-side door, and the following fishtail-outta-hell sent him pinballing around the cabin for several blur-filled seconds, the end of which found Shinji with his head wedged securely between the passenger seat and the door.
"Cheeky little shit," Misato muttered, fixing her sunglasses and adjusting the central mirror. She took a closer look at the boy's most prominent feature from her vantage point. "Cute ass, though…"
Ahh, my very first omake-thingy.
Outwardly, and seen from a distance, the first arc of events will tend to deviate only slightly from the anime. But, as will become apparent in coming chapters, there will be a great deal going on behind the scenes. It'll take a short while for events to snowball into proper AR territory, but it will happen…
Anyway. Thanks for reading, and watch out for the next instalment. Reviews would be lovely, especially if they include suggestions for improvement.