The Curious Case of Rei Ikari

[Sunshine Temple]

At age 5 or so, if it's the same as the original anime. He's not likely to notice the changes based on that comparison. (Noticing them because he's been receiving detailed reports from her minders as she grew, on the other hand...)

Click to shrink...

Good points. I can see Gendo keeping track like that

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 32:
Pushing Back​

"I did what I had to do, what I was made to do. You know I didn't have a choice." I muttered under my breath. Whatever it was I'd done, whatever it was Akagi was keeping from me, I hadn't had the choice. I never had a choice, had I?

Asuka was alive. I'd saved Misato when she'd jumped. I killed the Angels, I killed people when I had to. It was a war that we couldn't afford to lose, and I refused to lose the people who were important to me either. They should understand that. Anyone should understand that.

"Commander Becket wants to see you, in case you were wondering where we're going." Akagi offered in a strained, troubled version of what was apparently meant to pass for a conversational tone.

But then, that name rang a bell. Commander Becket? "Becket survived? I saw him take a missile, I didn't see a chute..."

Akagi remained silent for the final few steps to the end of the corridor, then pressed her hand against a touch sensitive plate. The door withdrew and she lead me into another room, one filled with circular glass windows. Portholes, leading to the red ocean outside. I was on a ship?

I scanned the perimeter of the room, there were control stations, with people sitting at them. People I didn't recognize, wearing uniforms I was unfamiliar with. I followed upwards from there and I saw--

"Misato?" I whispered. Somehow I couldn't bring myself to call out, to get her attention. Not after last time. She had felt betrayed that I hadn't told her, but I'd felt the same when she stabbed me in the neck.

But then, she wasn't why I was here, right? I was here to see Commander Becket. I'd been requested, but then the people with guns made it seem like compliance wasn't exactly optional. The ozone and tickling in the back of my throat also gave me the impression that I wouldn't be able to do much to fight back anyway.

At least they gave me some pants to wear. I couldn't remember the last time I'd worn anything other than a skirt or a plugsuit. Actual honest-to-god pants, an almost novel concept.

"So, it is you, right?"

I recognized that voice, I'd heard it before, so many times. Each time I'd heard it speak, tragedy seemed to follow. I felt my hand curl into a fist, my knuckles cracked.

"You're looking a little pale, but that is you."

I looked up, and she had aged, more than Misato had. More than I would have thought. But answers weren't forthcoming, and I had other things on my mind.

"Gypsy Rose." It was an accusation as much as a statement, but I'd know that face anywhere, I'd recognize those eyes and that voice until the end of time, burned into my memory as they were.

"I haven't been called that in years. You can call me Commander Becket," she said as she stepped down the stairs leading to the command platform above. "This is my anti-Nerv organization: WILLE. Well, It's not mine, it's a collective purpose, but for the moment you only have to understand that I'm the one who has the authority here."

I spit on the floor, felt the hair on my neck rising. "All I see are a bunch of traitors, Victoria. I had a purpose, I was going to save the world despite you. I knew the score, but then you had to run your mouth and got your brother killed. Killed saving me when I was trying to fix what you fucked up!"

She stopped and tilted her head, the smile that she'd been wearing fell from her lips, turned to what I might have almost thought was concern, if I hadn't known better. "Is that what you think happened?"

I shrugged and stepped forward, "Well, Asuka's alive isn't she? The world seems to still be a spinnin' so I must have done something right. Killed that Angel. But somehow I'm standing in front of you and nobody is telling me anything. So why don't you tell me what happened, because I'd like to know how any of it isn't your fault."

She stepped down to the ground level and I'd met her half way across the deck, my hand was ready to let fly with a right hook. Wouldn't be the first time I'd tried to hand her ass to her, but this time I wouldn't be stopped.

"You did save Asuka, but… Billions more, you didn't," she hesitated, swallowed hard. She was… upset? I felt my hand relaxing. "I put the gun in your hand, yes… You're not wrong about that, not at all. I put the gun in your hand, aimed at the head of the world, and you pulled the trigger."

I relaxed my fist and stepped back, she was older. Misato had been older. Akagi was older too. Too much. I was thrown off by Ayanami, she was the same, and yet… "What happened? What… What year is it?"

"It's been fifteen years since the event--" Akagi explained from beside me before her voice faltered. "It's been fifteen years since the Third Impact, initiated by Unit One, was aborted."

"What?" I whispered, I felt the world closing in around my, my vision tunneling. It has been… That is what I had done? All I'd wanted--

"It ended because she was done. The Evangelion shut down when her purpose was completed."

I turned my head to the side quickly, Ayanami had said that. She'd been there, Asuka had saved her first, right? I remembered that. Had Unit Zero still been functional? Had she watched?

The holographic displays lining the room illuminated a warning pattern and an alarm suddenly sounded, piercing my concentration.

"Wave pattern detected. Decoys five and seven are lost. Pattern is blue! Target identified as 4-C. Nemesis series!" A girl sitting at what looked like a sensor station yelled out.

I felt a slight tremor through the decking and turned back towards the commander, "Angel attack?"

"No, Nerv," she answered me before turning towards the front of the room. "Get Ikari out of here. All hands to level one battle stations. We're gonna have to take this one on the chin."

"Iowa and Missouri have engaged the enemy. Estimating fifteen minutes until outer defenses are breached."

I felt a hand wrap around my upper arm and start pulling me towards the hatch, felt my hand clenching down into a fist. "If..." I muttered under my breath, unsure of what-- No. I knew exactly what I was sure of.

"Hey!" I yelled and jerked my arm out of the guard's grip. I stepped two steps closer to Victoria and turned to Misato. "Let me fight. That's what I'm good for, right? That's what I'm good at. Let me help!"

Misato opened her mouth, but was cut off by Victoria before she could speak. "You're offering to fight for WILLE?" the commander asked.

I spit on the floor and jerked my head towards Misato, "No, I'm offering to fight for Misato, Ayanami, and Asuka."

She seemed to consider my proposal for a second, then shook her head. "No, you're going into containment. We're not sending you out in an Evangelion. You'll never touch one again."

I clenched both hands into fists, felt my hair standing up on the back of my neck, tasted and smelled ozone. "Look, Victoria." I said, my voice cold. "I'm no longer asking your blessing. I'll do whatever it takes to protect the people I love. You know you'd do the exact same thing. It's been fifteen years: I'm older now than Yui Ikari ever got to be, I can make my own decisions."

I felt the familiar fire in my heart, the tingling in my body. Adrenaline, and maybe something else, something Angelic. Ayanami might understand, might be able to explain it but I didn't have the time to ask her. Wouldn't have stopped me anyway.

Misato put her hand on my shoulder. I hadn't noticed her approach, but I was grateful for the touch. "You can't pilot Eva, Rei."

I reached out to her, touched the side of her face. Even after fifteen years, she was the same. I was more different than she'd ever be, and yet, for a moment I let myself imagine we were back in that apartment, one last time. I licked my lips and took a step back.

"You know I don't need an Evangelion to be dangerous."

"I said no," Victoria stated firmly, her face twisted a little, she was getting angry.

And I didn't care, I wasn't going to take it, especially not from her. "I don't follow your orders. Either let me go or put me down. I'm not accepting anything else. I'm not going to just sit here and watch people die!"

She looked like she was going to slap me, but Misato turned to her and put her hand on the other woman's shoulder and shook her head. That was… interesting. Unexpected. I had more questions than ever, at that.

"Fine, go. Somebody get her over to the Kitty Hawk. In the meantime, get Asuka and Mari deployed." She ordered while turning away from me. I was no longer important.

Ayanami stepped up next to me and nodded her head towards the door, "I will accompany you into battle."

"Ayanami, you can't--"

She cut me off and I caught the slightest hint of a smirk. "As you said, I am not asking."

xxx​

The Kitty Hawk looked like she'd seen better days. The years of combat since I'd last seen her had not been kind. Paint had peeled, rust had taken its place as the burdens of extended operation had exceeded what the surviving crew could keep up with.

Despite that, with my feet on her flight deck, I knew, could feel, that she wasn't done fighting yet. In the distance the six Iowa-class battleships barked out sixteen inch main battery fire in a continuous stream. In another time, I might have thought that it was cool.

But in the middle of this dead ocean, on this dead planet, fighting against what was supposed to be our salvation…

A man in a flag officer's uniform crossed the deck to greet us, and for a moment I saw a much younger man in his place. I felt the smile pull at the corner of my mouth. He'd made it, for that I was thankful.

"Clark?"

"I almost didn't believe them when they said you were back. You look different… but you seem the same. Come on, we don't have much time." He waved at us to follow him towards the fore end of the flight deck, and so we followed close behind.

"You don't seem as upset with me as others I've seen today," I commented from his side as the deck shook. The fighting was getting too close.

"Wasn't your fault. You were doing the best you could with what you had. I was listening on the radio that day, so I know why you did what you did. Wouldn't have done anything different myself." He admitted.

"Maybe avoid making the world worse, if I had a do-over," I muttered.

Ahead of us, locked into the catapult was something I'd seen only in memory, and something that should never have been seen on a carrier deck. A Mud Hen, an F-15 Strike Eagle. I licked my bottom lip and ran my hand along the edge of the wing, up to the side of the canopy.

Memories that weren't mine filled my head, but they were happy ones, and I smiled. "Where did you find this?"

"It was Victoria Becket's jet. She told us you would be needing it. We don't have as many pilots as we do machines anymore, so we can spare it, for you."

I ran my hand along the names stenciled under under the canopy edge. I knew this jet. In the other world, in that one from which my memories were borrowed, this was the last jet she'd ever flown. The one she died in.

I would endeavor to do better.

I turned back to Clark. "Can you get Ayanami some place safe?"

"Sure, we'll do what we can. I'll have the mess prepare something special for when you get back."

Ayanami pushed past me and shook her head, "No. I will accompany you."

She wasn't who she used to be, not the teenager I'd known anymore. She was still Ayanami, but she was an adult woman, despite what she might look like. She wouldn't be told no, not about this. I sighed. "Fine. Back seat."

I shrugged my shoulders, "Guess she's coming with me."

Hearing no reply, I looked over and saw that he still had that troubled look on his face that he'd had before, last time he'd seen me leave. "I'm sorry about… well everything that happened. I'm going to find a way to fix this. There's got to be a way."

"I don't doubt you will." He offered with a halfhearted smile and a shrug. An explosion lit up the horizon and the deck shook again. "That was the Fitzgerald. You should probably get going if that's what you really want."

"You know I have to."

He stared at me for a long moment, as though he might dispute my statement. "No, I think you're right. Do an old man a favor and try not to die, alright?"
​

 

[Sunshine Temple]

""
Ayanami stepped up next to me and nodded her head towards the door, "I will accompany you into battle."

"Ayanami, you can't--"

She cut me off and I caught the slightest hint of a smirk. "As you said, I am not asking."
""

Teamup!

Nice surprise though an F15 on a carrier deck.... hmm there's a story.
Wasn't there a proposal for a navalized F15?

Regardless. Good chapter.

 

[macdjord]

I really hope we get some explanations soon.

 

[Jackie]

I really hope we get some explanations soon.

Click to shrink...

for which things?

 

[macdjord]

for which things?

Click to shrink...

What happened in the timeskip. What Gypsy Rose's plan was. What it is now.

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 33:
Giant Killer​

I pressed my fingertip down on the main power disconnect and the MFDs lit up. Every inch, every scratch, every screw of the cockpit I sat in was familiar, like a long lost friend. It had felt like years, and been many more since, but the memories still felt fresh.

A time long ago, in another world, with another girl... But here and now, it still felt like home. The cockpit of a fighter jet was a place where I felt that I could truly make a difference, where I could accomplish my goals, save the girl, save the world.

Or so it felt like. I wouldn't have ended the world from the cockpit of a plane, but I did from an entry plug. That's what she'd said to me, what I'd done, the trigger I'd pulled…

But I saved Asuka, I killed the Angel. If I'd stayed in the P-38 and did what I could from there, would it really have turned out any better? No, I'd have died, everyone would have died. Maybe Mari could have gotten to Unit One in time, but would it have been any better?

Maybe Victoria was right, I shouldn't be allowed back into an Evangelion. That didn't mean I would sit by idly while other people did the fighting, not while I could do this. The start-up went by in what felt like moments, memory and reflex carried me through it without much attention paid. Soon the engines were both turning and my ears popped as the cockpit pressurized.

"You doing okay back there Ayanami?" I asked while looking up in the mirror. With the helmet and O2 masks on, we looked the same. Sisters.

"It is not my first time. I will be fine." She answered calmly. Always calm. "I've had fifteen years of practice, without Evangelion I had to find a new purpose."

That answered the question I would have likely eventually asked, I filed it away in the back of my mind. I tapped through the MFD and stopped, I had seen some weird fittings on the pylons earlier but the MFD readouts confused me even further. "Ayanami, would you explain what I'm seeing here on the armament screen?"

"Direct fire weapons have replaced air-to-air and air-to-ground ordnance. As the primary threat faced by WILLE is Evangelion, standard anti-fighter munitions are insufficient." She explained while doing something in the back seat.

I toggled the armament selector over to the only two weapons systems being displayed and they seemed to activate in a 'pair' firing mode. That was certainly an interesting default. "So what do we have?"

"We have a pair of twenty-seven millimeter fire-linked railguns. The remaining weapon stations are occupied by charging and energy storage devices. Each railgun is provided with ten rounds of Anti-AT Field Ammunition, after which we are unarmed."

"Oh." I answered with a dumb look on my face that she was thankfully unable to see. "Good to know."

I shook my head and pushed the throttles up and keyed up the radio, "Ikari ready to go, fire the catapult."

I pushed the throttle all the way into afterburner and a moment later we were both slammed back into our seats as the catapult fired. A second or two of intense acceleration was followed by the less extreme but still substantial acceleration provided by a pair of afterburning jet engines.

Cross flares in the distance told me that time was up. The fifteen minutes that had been quoted had been more than spent. The line had broken and ships were being sunk, men were dying and--

Off to our right, the ship we'd left from originally, the flagship that Victoria was aboard, lurched violently and suddenly upwards out of the water and issued a sound that was almost agonized. The ship itself had a skeletal form that was burdened by man-made structures and components all around, but looked, to me, like it was built upon the back of some sort of Angelic whale skeleton.

"What in the hell is that thing?"

We didn't have enough airspeed yet to climb away, not as fast as I'd have wanted to. The noise it was making was drilling into my skull, rattling my teeth and my soul. I felt a fear forced into my bones and I stepped hard into the left rudder, rolled the stick over to get the hell away from that abomination. Abomination; the word was forced into the front of my mind and I found it apt.

"It is our flagship, the AAA Wunder. It is our final offensive option against Nerv, to end the threat they represent to the world," Ayanami explained. Her voice sounded… strained, almost. There was a slight hitch at the end. Had she felt it too?

"It's… wrong, somehow." I said as I pushed for distance. The fear and revulsion started to fade with the distance, but even looking at the thing struck some deep chord in my heart. I had a feeling of powerlessness, insignificance. I needed Unit One and a fleet's worth of backup, and even then I might not feel safe.

"Yes."

My hands shook against the controls, I felt my entire body trembling as that soul-piercing sound got louder. Marionette strings made of light descended from the sky and latched themselves onto the naval fleet below, hoisted dozens of ships into the sky along with the Wunder.

I caught myself with my finger hovering over the button that would have jettisoned all of the external stores, dropped the cannons and the charging equipment into the ocean, so that I could run. Still, the airspeed kept climbing and I kept pulling away from that repulsive…thing.

Shaking hands refused to pull the stick back towards the fight, even as the ship was attacked by ribbon-like foils, even when it fired cannons to attack the odd disk-shaped Evangelions. Their screams were… unsettling, but not equally so. They were more familiar in some way.

"Ayanami I can't… I can't…"

I felt a hand reach up and grab me by the shoulder. In the mirror above I could see Ayanami had crawled halfway over her panel. "Ikari, you must calm down. This feeling is… not unexpected. You will not be harmed. You can overcome this."

"Ayanami, I don't think I can. I'm… afraid." My hand kept shaking, so hard that the jet was fluttering, shaking from the control inputs that I couldn't stop.

I felt her grip tighten. "Ikari, you have faced greater challenges than this. You are a giant killer."

A smiled tugged at the corner of my mouth and I pulled the throttle back down to half. Giant killer, I didn't hate the idea, it certainly had some similarities to reality anyway. "Been reading fairy tales, Ayanami?"

"I had to occupy my free time with something."

"Alright. Fair enough. Giant killer it is." I tightened my grip on the stick and stepped hard into the rudder, turning the jet back towards the Wunder, and come what may--

Something fast and orange and big as hell rocketed past the canopy. The jet shook violently in the wake turbulence and I hauled on the stick to try to correct. Ayanami's hand disappeared from my shoulder and I heard her helmet clank against the canopy.

"Ayanami get strapped back in! If we have to punch out you don't wanna leave the seat without a parachute!" I yelled back to her. There was a fight to be had, and I'd faced fear before. Fear had driven me into that viper cockpit so long ago, hadn't it?

I turned my head to the right to track whatever the hell had buzzed us and saw something that looked… different. Another Evangelion, much more conventional looking, but with a weird white ribbon-cape hanging from its back, and it was flying. The head was a little bit like unit zero, and the color scheme matched, but the robotic eyeball in the center of the head broke me of any illusions that it was the same unit.

And Ayanami was with me.

"Ayanami are you okay back there?" I asked over my shoulder, or as close to over my shoulder as I could. The Evangelion's single cycloptic eye kept rolling back and forth between us and the Wunder.
The same feeling of revulsion I felt towards the Wunder was emanating from this new Evangelion as well.

"I am secure, Ikari. That Evangelion is not one of ours." She answered me. Her voice was disturbed, more than before. She was feeling the same thing, and she wasn't trying to calm me down this time.

I could think of no better way of curing that feeling of revulsion than to destroy the source of it. I was a giant killer, she'd said that much. I pushed the fire selector to the railguns and was rewarded with a green ready-to-fire status indicator and a CCIP readout on the heads up display.

I rolled hard to the right and pulled back, a maximum rate turn that bled a ton of airspeed, but then that was the point. The CCIP drifted over to that cycloptic eye and I mashed down the firing stud. The whole jet bucked with the recoil and I slid forward into my harness. Those things definitely packed a punch.

An instant later the Evangelion's head, north of the lower jaw, evaporated into a cloud of red mist… and nothing happened. That kind of damage would have knocked any Evangelion I'd ever seen out of a fight, maybe permanently. Pilot wouldn't have been doing a whole lot better, but this unit didn't even react.

In panic I stomped into the rudder and held the firing stud down, dumping the remaining eighteen rounds in raking fire across the Evangelion's chest. Each impact pockmarked the orange and white armor, but seemed to do no further damage after punching through. And then the indicators turned red. Ammo spent.

Very not good.

I slapped my hand down on the jettison stores button and every pylon on the jet dropped its payload, lightening up the plane substantially, and more importantly cleaning up the aerodynamics. I rolled the throttle up into afterburner and pulled back on the stick, angling away.

"Ikari to Wunder. I'm… having a bad day. Please send help." I called into the radio, hope for a miracle. The orange and white, now headless, Evangelion started moving again, towards me and tracking my movements.

That primal fear instinct kicked back in, and this time I knew I wouldn't be able to shake it. I'd fought Angels in a fighter jet, but they had something else to worry about, I wasn't their concern. This time I had an Evangelion that could fly after me.

I didn't feel like a giant killer.

I rolled towards Wunder and kept the throttle wide open, if I could get around the thing and get closer to the ship, friendly forces might have an easier time at covering my escape, or my landing. The headless giant was tracking in at my lower quarter, cutting inside my turning circle to physically prohibit me from getting a clear line of approach on the ship.

So, so much for that idea.

I rolled into the inverted and then pushed the stick forward to nose over into a climb. The negative G forces were sure to give me a hell of a head rush but the unorthodox maneuver might throw the Eva pilot long enough for me to get to where I needed to go.

I rolled hard through a left spiral after the turn, but the headless Evangelion was right in front of me, hand outstretched as if it was going to pluck me from the air. I hauled back hard on the stick and felt the whole plane shudder and shake, and then there was a violent jolt as the fingertip scraped along the lower fuselage.

I had almost missed, so nearly close that the impact didn't destroy the jet outright, but the airframe started shaking violently and alarms started sounding in my ears. I still had control authority, but it was twitchy and the left engine was surging.

"Ayanami, I don't think we're gonna win this fight!" I yelled through the intercom channel. The MFDs in front of me shorted out, sparks started flying from the panel and sparked a fire. It was how that first Victoria had died, the one who'd never borne the name 'Becket'.

But I would endeavor to do better.

The fire started to lick at my flight suit and I screamed into the intercom, "Eject! Eject! Eject!" My hands gripped against the striped levers and I pulled hard, an instant later the canopy blew off the top of the aircraft and I felt my legs jerked out of the rudder wells and against the seat. It felt like my head was being driven down through my spine as the rocket motors launched me and my seat out of the jet.

It felt like I'd been hit by a truck when I entered the airstream. We hadn't been supersonic, but we weren't going slow when I'd pulled the loud handle and now I was feeling the full brunt of that. I tried to clear my head from the sudden shock of the ejection, tried to look around as the seat rotated so I could be sure Ayanami made it out.

I caught sight of her seat for a moment, and she was still attached to it, it had only been a few moments. I could see that she was okay, that she'd made it out. An instant later I felt my own seat collide with something before I had the chance to separate from it, and my head and helmet slammed back into the headrest, and I saw nothing more.

 

[Sunshine Temple]

""
"It is not my first time. I will be fine." She answered calmly. Always calm. "I've had fifteen years of practice, without Evangelion I had to find a new purpose."

That answered the question I would have likely eventually asked, I filed it away in the back of my mind. I tapped through the MFD and stopped, I had seen some weird fittings on the pylons earlier but the MFD readouts confused me even further. "Ayanami, would you explain what I'm seeing here on the armament screen?"
""

Interesting
(Both the weapons and what Ayanami was up to all this time)


""

I rolled hard to the right and pulled back, a maximum rate turn that bled a ton of airspeed, but then that was the point. The CCIP drifted over to that cycloptic eye and I mashed down the firing stud. The whole jet bucked with the recoil and I slid forward into my harness. Those things definitely packed a punch.

An instant later the Evangelion's head, north of the lower jaw, evaporated into a cloud of red mist… and nothing happened. That kind of damage would have knocked any Evangelion I'd ever seen out of a fight, maybe permanently. Pilot wouldn't have been doing a whole lot better, but this unit didn't even react.

In panic I stomped into the rudder and held the firing stud down, dumping the remaining eighteen rounds in raking fire across the Evangelion's chest. Each impact pockmarked the orange and white armor, but seemed to do no further damage after punching through. And then the indicators turned red. Ammo spent.
""

Hmm, you'd think if that first hit managed to blow up that Eva's head... then dumping the remainder into the chest would have done more damage...

Nice cliffhanger at the end.

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 34:
Wayward​

I felt cool air against the lower half of my face when I first woke. The smell and taste of LCL filled my mouth and nose a moment after and I felt a brief moment of nostalgia. Notes of machine oil and kerosene mixed with the lingering odor of spent rocket propellent and evoked the feeling of being in a place where things get done.

My eyes finally opened and I realized that despite being unceremoniously heaped upon a metal grate, I was still in my flight suit, still had my helmet on, and had the sun beating down on me, but not warming me as much as I might have expected.

I tried to sit up and my entire body gave a violent spasm and my muscles and joints burned in agony. The ride here must not have been a pleasant one, but then riding an ejection seat into an object never really ended well.

I felt around with my left hand while I remained lying supine on the grating. I should have had a survival pack strapped to me when I punched out, so I was trying to find the tether holding it to me. More grating, more grating, another hand?

My head rolled to the left as gently as I could manage and I saw Ayanami laying next to me. Her eyes were closed and her face was twisted up in a grimace. She clearly wasn't feeling much better than I was.

I squeezed her hand, then continued reaching down until I found the strap. I pulled it up slowly as to not agitate my sore muscles any more than I had to. I reached across my chest and grabbed onto the pack to hold it in place while I worked the zipper with my other hand. There wouldn't be much inside, some basic medical supplies, a couple days of MREs, and if Victoria hadn't removed it, a loaded pistol.

We were, for all I knew, deep behind enemy lines. With Ayanami with me, I wasn't going to take any chances. I'd feel better with hard cold steel in my hand than without it at any rate.

The sound of shoes clicking against the steel grating forced me into motion and I pushed myself up into a sitting position against the protesting of my body, at the same time I slid my hand into the opening of the survival pack and found my hand wrapped firmly around the grip of a forty-five caliber pistol. I'd have recognized the feeling of that handgrip anywhere, but not without help from a dead girl.

I pulled the pistol and held it up in front of me while my vision swam from the sudden movement. I'd suffered a head injury, that's why I'd blacked out. It made sense I wouldn't be all together there all at once.

But if they got close enough?

There were at least two people based on the sound of the steps, and I could make out that many through my blurry vision and the tinted helmet visor. I pushed myself forward and upward, onto shaky feet to put myself between Ayanami and whoever it was that was approaching.

I passed the pistol into my right hand and thumbed the safety off. I was half leaning, half holding myself up against a railing to my left, my hand wrapped firmly around it. I caught the rear sight of the pistol against the side of my flight suit and pushed down to rack the slide and make sure a round was chambered. The 'shink-click' sound was a comforting threat.

The figures approaching didn't slow, but did start to resolve into distinct shapes. I could make out colors, black on the right, white and black on the left. A girl on the right, probably in a plugsuit? The left looked more like normal clothing. The hair of the figure on the left looked like a grey-white, and the one on the right looked more like… like mine?

I felt the taste of ozone in the air, but it was different from when Ayanami used it, or when I used it. It felt more… alien. More like that surge of fear and adrenaline I felt when the Wunder finally powered up. This was more subtle, restrained, reserved. I felt my finger twitch against the trigger without pulling it.

"Stay away from Ayanami!" I croaked out. I closed my left eye and raised the pistol in my hand. They were close enough now, I could see them both clearly, or clearly enough. It was a boy on the left, about my age, for whatever that was worth. On the right was a girl who was the spitting image of Ayanami.

I blinked hard. Another one? Mine was still alive, so how did he…

"I promise I won't hurt you, Ikari. I've been looking forward to meeting you." The boy said in a soothing voice that seemed to reach the core of my soul and made me feel like everything was alright. But his eyes were red, his face pale. He was like me, which meant--

"Kaworu?" I asked softly, felt my voice trying to die in my throat. He was… real? Those memories were so very old, but he still stood out in them, pushed to the front of my mind when I saw his face.

His smile grew, turned into something genuine instead of the default expression on his face and he laughed. "You know my name? I had thought that you might. I had hoped that you would, Ikari."

I lowered the gun and my eyes darted back and forth between Kaworu and other Rei. Her existence was surprising, I wasn't sure what to do about that. She didn't seem very human though. She was as though she was actually what Ayanami had only faked being.

"Why are we here?"

He reached out to me, put his hand on my shoulder. The other Rei stepped past him to tend to Ayanami. I took a deep breath and he stared into my eyes like he was looking for something, some kind of understanding?

He frowned almost imperceptibly before his smile was back. "You have been gone a very, very long time, Ikari. Your father wanted to see you." He nodded towards the girl in the black plug suit, "So Rei went and retrieved you for him."

I shook my head. "She's not Rei."

He laughed and shook his head, and his hand never left my shoulder. "No, she is most definitely Rei. She is not Ikari, nor is she Ayanami, but she is Rei all the same."

Behind me I heard Ayanami gasp. The other Rei had her half way up off the floor in her arms, and their eyes were locked. I could see the terror in her eyes, I could imagine her having nightmares about being replaced, I know I would, and she could just as well have been a surrogate for myself.

I dropped the gun to the grating and reached to grab onto Ayanami's hand. "It's alright. It'll be alright."

I felt her squeeze my hand and I turned my head to face Kaworu again. "Where is my father?"

He knelt in front of me and picked the gun up off the ground, then stood and stepped closer, almost as though he was moving in for a kiss. I heard a zipper unzip and a moment later felt him pressing the gun into my pocket.

He smiled his little smile and tilted his head in the direction behind him, "Come along this way."

xxx​

Ayanami had spent the entire walk clinging to my arm, or nearly so. She had made certain to keep me between her and the other Rei the entire time, at the least. She was almost thirty years old but for that fifteen minute walk she was a child again, fearful and seeking protection.

I had to wonder what I counted as. I had truly only been fourteen years old back when I went into Unit One's core for fifteen years, but I had the memories of a dead twenty-eight year old woman jammed into my head.

How much of that counted? After fifteen years, was I twenty-nine or still just that little girl I had been?

But Ayanami was looking to me to protect her from Other Rei. That was the strongest endorsement I could ever hope to receive.

Nerv headquarters hadn't aged as well as Ayanami had. Once familiar hallways had fallen into the disrepair of faded paint and cracked flooring, burnt out lights and broken tiles. Familiar but not. Even as a place that hadn't held happy memories, it drove home to me that you really can't go home again.

You could travel back in space, but you could not travel back in time. What I would give to live yesterday again…

The door popped open with a wheezing hiss, long un-lubricated and having seen better days, much like the rest of the facility we'd seen so far. Fifteen years of not caring, or perhaps caring about something else instead. It hadn't mattered; to me it had been yesterday.

When he stepped from the doorway into the hallway I recognized him, for I could never have forgotten him, though with the way he'd aged I could have been forgiven if I had. Gray hair had replaced black, and his glasses had been replaced by a visor that was familiar in a way I couldn't quite put my finger on. His dress code had slackened, but still familiar.

"Father, I--"

He moved with a swiftness that I hadn't anticipated, and where I had expected a strike, what I received was something else entirely. A warmth, a nostalgic embrace, a scent from my early childhood. His arms, strong despite age, wrapped around me and pulled me tight into a hug. It was an unexpected affection, but as his hands rubbed my back, I put my own around him.

Maybe, just maybe, you can go home again, just for a brief visit.

"I have missed you both so much. There are so many things I want to share with you, with both of you!" He said as he pulled away from me. His manner was animated, almost cheerful. I wasn't used to seeing him like this, hadn't seen him like this since… ever?

"You… what?" I spluttered out. "Why did you attack if you're so happy to see us now?" The accusation came out before I could stop it, regardless of the consequences. Mouth before brain.

He turned to Ayanami and hugged her as well, her own shock stopped her from protesting, though her cheeks did tint. Finally, he pulled away from her as well and turned back to me.

"I just needed to delay them. I am… working for something important, something that will benefit everyone. They wouldn't understand. They refused to understand..." He trailed off, his face turning red. He was agitated, angry. I could see his fist clenching.

Maybe we weren't so different.

"What have you done?" Ayanami accused and took a step towards him. Gone was the scared girl that had been clinging to my arm, the fierce Ayanami had taken her place. "You have made this… this thing, this other me. What have you planned?"

"It's… not like that. You were gone. Both of you were gone. Kaworu had come, but he alone was not enough. It doesn't matter. What is done is done, but with your help, with all four of you, I will be able to… un-ring the bell." The corner of his mouth curled up into a smirk as he said the last part. Always with a plan, old man?

"With the use of the Cassius Lance and Eva Thirteen you will be able to repair the damage done to this world, Ikari." Kaworu said softly in my ear, his hand gently pressed to the small of my back, his other on my right wrist. "Undo what happened fifteen years ago, and fifteen years before that. Bring back a world like the one you remember."

I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. The world I remembered? Did he mean what I'd had pushed into my head? What did he know? He was getting entirely too intimate with me in any case. I pulled away from him. "What?"

"You are going to control the awakening of an Evangelion in order to direct an impact of your own design." Ayanami said suddenly, flatly. She would have known, wouldn't she. At least, enough to explain it in a way I would understand.

"Will that work?" I asked, still edging my distance from Kaworu. Something about his touches triggered a fear in me, even though I knew he wouldn't force himself on me. It seemed like that it was his way, that he lacked taboos, but…

"It could work." Ayanami admitted. She almost seemed to be considering it.

"It will work." Father said simply, his voice was not cold but at the same time the tone he used left no room for doubt.

"Then..." I trailed off, looked between the girl who was the closest thing to a sister I could have ever had, and the girl who looked just like her and was nothing like her at all. My eyes drifted to the red eyed boy with no boundaries, and finally back to my father. "I'm in. What do I need to do?"

"We will use the dual entry system and pilot Eva Thirteen together, and--" Kaworu started before Ayanami cut in.

"No, I will pilot with Ikari."

 

[Tranquil Zebra]

I will be able to… un-ring the bell.

Click to shrink...

Wooohooo!

In the interest of honesty; while post-apocalyptic stories can be interesting, eeking out a slim victory fifteen years after the Third Impact, while the love interest is suddenly about 40-50 years old physically and apparently together with the previously percieved secondary antagonist, would feel hollow and sad. I though the last few chapters signaled a drastic and permanent change in tone for this story, and in that regard I'm positively surprised by this new development.

 

[Jackie]

Wooohooo!

In the interest of honesty; while post-apocalyptic stories can be interesting, eeking out a slim victory fifteen years after the Third Impact, while the love interest is suddenly about 40-50 years old physically and apparently together with the previously percieved secondary antagonist, would feel hollow and sad. I though the last few chapters signaled a drastic and permanent change in tone for this story, and in that regard I'm positively surprised by this new development.

Click to shrink...

Misato was, I believe, around 28. This would make both her and Victoria around 43. This doesn't really push her beyond Rei's reach.

 

[Tranquil Zebra]

Misato was, I believe, around 28. This would make both her and Victoria around 43. This doesn't really push her beyond Rei's reach.

Click to shrink...

Well, I will admit that she's not completely beyond her reach, but Misato was twice her physical age before she took her nap. In any "And they were happy ever after." after that, you're not going to have them grow old together. The prospect of watching your significant other wither and die, while you yourself is still strong and healthy, is only easy if you married an octogenarian with money and a heart condition. It might not be a main focus at the moment, but any victory without fixing the Third Impact would still leave the Earth in tatters, with Rei having lost fifteen years of the lives of her friends.

I'm not saying you couldn't make it work, but with so many losses on so many levels, any small victory would ultimately become a pyrrhic one. And I'm happy that's not necessarily the case any more.

 

[Sunshine Temple]

Chapter 34


""
I felt cool air against the lower half of my face when I first woke. The smell and taste of LCL filled my mouth and nose a moment after and I felt a brief moment of nostalgia. Notes of machine oil and kerosene mixed with the lingering odor of spent rocket propellent and evoked the feeling of being in a place where things get done.
""

Now that's an interesting bouquet


""

"Stay away from Ayanami!" I croaked out. I closed my left eye and raised the pistol in my hand. They were close enough now, I could see them both clearly, or clearly enough. It was a boy on the left, about my age, for whatever that was worth. On the right was a girl who was the spitting image of Ayanami.

I blinked hard. Another one? Mine was still alive, so how did he…
""

Clones are troubling like that.


""
He frowned almost imperceptibly before his smile was back. "You have been gone a very, very long time, Ikari. Your father wanted to see you." He nodded towards the girl in the black plug suit, "So Rei went and retrieved you for him."
""
To many Rei's! ^^;;
I mean that's like three now.


""
But Ayanami was looking to me to protect her from Other Rei. That was the strongest endorsement I could ever hope to receive.
""

Interesting


""
"I just needed to delay them. I am… working for something important, something that will benefit everyone. They wouldn't understand. They refused to understand..." He trailed off, his face turning red. He was agitated, angry. I could see his fist clenching.
""

Ooooh! Classic Mad Scientist there.


Oh dear... and another Impact plan.

Very interesting stuff.

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 35:
The Midnight Hour​

It was comforting, in a way, how Ikari had not changed from her time in Unit One. She had become more like me, she had changed on a biological and particulate level, but her personality, her drive, had remained intact. We had spent fifteen years looking for her, trying to recover her, trying to bring Unit One back.

We had fifteen years to be afraid of what we would find when we succeeded. Fifteen years for resentment and fear to ferment. Fifteen years for Katsuragi to grieve and doubt, to second guess and, when it had finally come down to a decision, she'd ceded her command.

Ikari was not really to blame. She couldn't have known. I hadn't known, but I should have. That was what I had been born for. On that day, my purpose had been lost. Ikari had done something different, something unexpected. I wanted to blame Commander Becket. I wouldn't have been wrong to blame her, but everything that had happened was bigger than the decisions of any one person.

I felt a responsibility to her. She was my burden and my bond. We were the first to fight, and we'd fought together. She'd risked herself for me, and I for her. But then, she'd recklessly thrown herself into danger as well. She had fought against Angels without an Evangelion, because she had something in her heart that made her do it.

Too much of her father? Perhaps too much of her mother; I had felt those urges before but I hadn't had the ability or force of will to act on them.

For all the ways Ikari had not changed, I believed that I had. When given the choice, I had departed Nerv. I had abandoned Commander Ikari, and Unit Zero. I had left my purpose to find another one with Akagi.

I didn't have the drive or the single minded force of purpose that Ikari seemed to possess, but she had shaped me more than I had at the time known.

But she had not changed, and I was fifteen years older and wiser.

The locker room had not changed in my absence. Of the areas of the facility that I had seen, this was the area that had been maintained the most. My plugsuit was where I had left it after the end of that final fight. I hadn't set foot in an entry plug since.

I had made a decision that I would no longer pilot, and I had kept to that decision. It had been a solidification of my resolve to find a new purpose, one distinct from the one that had originally been decided for me.

I pressed the switch down on my wrist and the suit constricted to my skin and conformed to every curve of my body. The white plugsuit was as familiar as the last time I'd seen it. A long forgotten friend, come back one last time to visit before the end.

I felt a deep certainty that no matter how this day ended, I would never wear a plugsuit or pilot an Evangelion again. If this day went the way it was supposed to, there would never be a need to do so again.

Commander Becket would have had me shot for what I was about to do. Katsuragi would have pulled the trigger to do it. But Ikari had made up her mind, and I had to be there for her, to help her, to make sure she was safe.

The world was on borrowed time anyway. Akagi could see it, I could see it. Commander Ikari could see it too, but he had seen it for far longer than any of us had. There was no future in this world, no matter how it turned out between Nerv and WILLE. The planet was too far gone, too many dead.

The duplicate followed me out of the locker room. I felt a sense of confusion from her, an uncertainty of purpose. I had feared she was meant to replace me, even here and now, but having been able to calm myself in her presence... she was more lost than any of us.

I would try not to think about it. The cages were not far, and no matter how many years had gone by I would never forget the way.

Ikari walked along to my left, clad in a spare of my own plugsuit. We were close enough that it had fit as well as her own, though she differed in that she had refused to be disarmed and had strapped the pistol that Nagisa had given back to her to her upper thigh.

I was burdened by the thought that she might have had the right idea in doing so. Even though a large part of me wanted to believe Commander Ikari, to take everything he said at face value, to once again fall into a routine where he was fond of me and I of him...

My true purpose was to ensure the survival and success of Rei Ikari. Commander Ikari's first Rei. I was the second, and the third. Perhaps he had named me that because he could not fully let go of his real daughter. Perhaps he had named the duplicate because he could not let go of me.

The part of me that was still loyal to him, the part that begged me to obey him, demanded that I protect Rei Ikari. It was not difficult for me to listen to that voice. I would follow her to the end of the earth, and it wasn't unlikely that I would.

The cages were as I remembered them, though worse for wear. The roof was largely destroyed, and the sunlight trickled in through myriad gaps in the torn steel plating. Unit Zero stood closest to us, looking as clean and shiny as the day I first laid eyes upon it, and a wave of nostalgia washed over me.

It was obsolete, even back then. Always the weakest of the first three, the slowest, the one with the most flaws and malfunctions. He'd kept it, repaired it. Had it been waiting for me, or was it Commander Ikari's own nostalgia that had made him keep it, his inability to let go?

I tore my eyes away and beyond that was Eva Thirteen. It looked the same at first glance as Unit One had so many years ago, but different in ways that became apparent the longer I kept my eyes on it. I felt a discomfort when I looked at it, but given what we were going to try to do I felt that it was to be expected.

Beyond lay what I had come to know as the Mark Nine. Where it had once been a pale imitation of my own Unit Zero, it now lay as a headless reminder of what Rei Ikari could do. Still, it had remained active and had brought us here.

And it felt wrong. Wrong in a way that I had only ever felt once before. When I was a much younger child at the south pole with Commander Ikari.

"It is good that you're ready. We can begin now. I will take the Mark Nine, the two of you will board Thirteen." Nagisa explained. He had been waiting for us. His smile was disarming and disquieting at the same time, as though he was not completely familiar with wearing it. I knew he was like me though, but not the same... source.

"What of the duplicate?" I asked. I found myself unsettlingly concerned about her. A surrogate for concern for myself, or maybe I was growing to be empathetic towards her.

"Are we bringing Other Rei with us on this adventure?" Ikari asked. Her eyebrows raised and her mouth twisted into a smirk. Of all the ways in which we were the same, now almost identical, she had a more natural way of behaving than I had ever perfected. I envied her that.

"I am afraid her purpose is now at an end. She will be here when we get back, have no worries about that!" He laughed, the practiced, forced laughter of someone who understands the emotion but not quite the expression of it. I understood that all too well.

"The sooner we begin, the sooner it will be done." I offered, and raised my arm towards the entry plug gantry. The sooner we begin, the sooner I will never have to see an Evangelion again.

"And right you are. Let us begin."

xxx​

The LCL was every bit as I remembered it, a warm and calming embrace, the way a fetus must feel while in the womb. I had not realized how much I had missed it and the comfort it brought. I had been born in it, born from it. It was the dust to which I would someday return.

"Eva Thirteen is descending through the main shaft, fifty eight meters till the seal." I announced flatly. I had been here when this was formed. The closest to total annihilation we'd ever come and I almost couldn't see the point in having tried.

"The two of you will be able to break the seal together once Eva Thirteen reaches the surface. We have almost done it." Nagisa answered through the link between ourselves and the Mark Nine.

"Yeah, we're the wonder twins. I get it." Ikari replied from beside me. Two different entry plugs, and yet I felt like I could just reach out and grab her by the hand.

Our feet touched the obsidian plug at the bottom of the main shaft with a subtle vibration and I closed my eyes and opened myself up to the Evangelion. I felt the link of synchronization strengthen between the Evangelion, Ikari, and myself. The seal shook for a moment, and then collapsed from below us.

Our descent resumed and Terminal Dogma came into view. The place of my birth, or, perhaps the place of my conception. The cross had fallen, skulls littered the landscape, and Lilith--

"What in the fuck happened down here?" Ikari blurted in obvious surprise.

"This is where the world almost ended. The autonomous Mark Six was sent in to subdue the Twelfth Angel and succeeded, but the Cassius spear was lost. That is what we are here to recover."

Skulls were crushed underfoot when we finally reached the floor of the chamber. No time was wasted and I pushed forward towards the desiccated form of Lilith, towards the spears. I was uncomfortable, the sooner we were able to leave, the sooner I would never have to be in this place again. Never have to see her like this again.

"Mother?"

Ikari's voice was little more than a whisper and I felt my blood run cold. I turned to look at her, afraid of what I might see, where she might be looking. Was she truly the same as me now? Had everything been robbed from her when she was changed?

She was looking upward through the top of the plug, up towards the main shaft. She wasn't talking to Lilith? That could have only meant that Wunder had arrived, and Ikari had sensed Unit One.

There was no time left.

I pushed the sticks forward and pushed Thirteen into a running leap onto the back of what had once been the progenitor of all mankind. Behind me I heard and saw the flashes of cannonfire. Unit Eight had arrived, Unit Two wouldn't be far behind. The part of me loyal to both Ikaris knew I had to be swift.

"What are you doing?! Stop!" I heard through the open link. Shikinami's voice. She would have come to stop us, but Commander Ikari had to be right, this had to be the solution.

"Asuka!?" Ikari yelled, "Asuka! We're going to put it all back, I'm going to fix what I broke when I saved you!"

"Ikari? It doesn't work like that! You can't just un-ring the bell like that! You don't know what you're doing!"

Unit Two started running for us, but the Mark Nine intercepted it, blocked her advance with the massive red scythe and then pushed her back, further from the center of the chamber.

If Nagisa could hold her back, we would be able to finish our mission.

I felt a sudden calmness overtake me, an acceptance of fate. I had to surrender to hope, because there was nothing else left in this world, for anyone. The only chance there was for any future was to do this.

"But I do." I said, then reached out and grabbed onto each lance. A second set of arms unfolded from Eva Thirteen's chest and grabbed the lances and together we pulled them free. We had the power in our hands to reshape the world, as Commander Ikari had said.

"I have lost control of the Mark Nine. Dummy plug override. Ayanami, Ikari, something has gone wrong!"

"What?" I turned and the Eva turned with me. Mark Nine was standing still, turned toward us as if watching, even without a head.

Below us, Lilith violently returned to LCL, and we fell into the lake below. In front of and below us the freed form of the Mark Six twisted and spun as if writhing in agony. The displays in the plug lit up that a blue pattern had been detected. The Twelfth Angel had not perished, it was in front of us now.

"We've failed?" I turned to Ikari, her head was in her hands, I could see tears dissolving into LCL. Her hopes had been shattered, like my own.

Mark Nine ran past us carrying the scythe weapon it had brought with it down into Terminal Dogma and cleaved the head from the stricken Mark Six. The Angel poured from the wound in the form that looked like a bundle of graphite threads, twisting and turning upon themselves as they enveloped and trapped us inside.

The Evangelion started to shake, at first it seemed to be due to the Angel but... it felt different. This came from us, I felt it through the link to the Evangelion, through the link to Ikari. It was a trembling of restrained power.

"Your job isn't done till you're on the ground. No matter what happens in the air, you keep trying, you keep flying the plane until you're on the ground." She said softly, as though she was trying to convince herself, or maybe convince me.

"Ikari?"

"Ayanami, we're not done yet! If we're still alive we can still fight. If we can still fight we can still kill! Let's do it!"

I felt something change in the Evangelion, it was moving again, drawing the Angel in, compressing it, shaping it. Forcing it into conformity.

Because Ikari could, because she'd done it before. I'd seen it then, when she'd saved Asuka. The graphite threads condensed into a red angelic core and the open, screaming mouth of Eva Thirteen bit through it, shattered it into oblivion.

I had to cover my eyes to shield from the light, and we were moving upwards. We cleared the main shaft in moments, passed through Central Dogma and were in the sky, glowing bright as a white hot star.

High above the sky turned to red and a hole opened in it, the Chamber of Guf had opened. Above us, a mirror of the world floated in the void. The world below shook and broke apart, the remnants of third impact were drawn towards the portal as the black moon rose from the earth.

"Ikari! This... This is the Fourth Impact." I found the energy to yell had left me. The brief flicker of hope that we had, had been extinguished. Thirteen had awakened, and killing the Angel had been the catalyst. The lance we needed was lost to us, had this been Commander Ikari's plan the entire time?

I heard the sound of metal on metal to my left, through the link I had with Ikari's plug. I turned to face her and froze.

"I do have a way of stopping it," she said to me. "If I had done it before, if I hadn't been afraid, I could have stopped any of this from happening. I'm sorry I dragged you into it, and I'm sorry I made it worse. Tell Victoria she was right, and tell Misato I love her."

She had taken the gun from earlier from her side, she'd pressed it against her head, and she'd pulled the trigger. Nothing I could do could have stopped her, but I still felt like I was somehow responsible.

I felt the synchronization falter, and then break. I could not open myself to the Evangelion, not after what I'd just seen, what I'd felt. I needed to turn off the monitors, I needed to shield myself from what I had seen, but I could not bring myself to do either.

"Ayanami. I have boarded Unit Zero. I feel... there is something that I should do, but I do not know what that is."

I looked over, the Duplicate had opened communications? Too little, too late. But Mark Nine was still out of control, wasn't it? I could not help anyone.

Ikari lay dead because of the impulsive actions I had made in removing the spears...

"Ikari would fight."
​

 

[Sunshine Temple]

Oooh, back to Ayanami POV

Good opening scene, nice setup of her emotions and her apprehension


Fight seemed a bit confusing when Unit Eight arrived.

Other than that good chapter.

Once again, I like how you end on a strong cliffhanger.

 

[Jackie]

Chapter 36:
Absolution​

I hadn't died immediately. The sensation of having a bullet driven through your brain was not a pleasant one, nor particularly unpleasant. The feeling of having your thoughts disconnect and lose form while your awareness bleeds into the aether is one that... well, not one I was eager to repeat.

But I suspected that I probably wouldn't have the opportunity for such things in the future. The place I found myself, once I had finally died, was a lot like my father's office. If this was my own personal afterlife I couldn't be sure if it was heaven or hell. Maybe I was doomed to limbo for eternity.

"You took long enough to get here."

The voice triggered something in my memory, some kind of familiarity, a familial link even. "Well, I was just dying to meet you, you know how it is." I called out to the unidentified voice. Masculine though, about my own age, not too adult sounding.

"You did have to die to meet me, that's the second time isn't it? First time for this soul sure, but the second memory. Was it better the second go round?"

I turned around to look for the voice and saw a mirror. I was my old self again, that young girl. Undyed hair and brown eyes, normal skin-tone, back in my old school uniform with the yellow vest. "It wasn't great either time, but when it has to happen, it has to happen, right?"

"Or when it's made to happen."

I turned sharply and caught sight of him. My height, a slim build. Those eyes... I could have sworn I had seen him before, almost... in... the... mirror?

"Give it a moment, I'm sure you'll figure it out." He said with a wry grin. It looked creepy on his face.

"What do you want with me?"

"I want you to do everything you've already done, Rei. I needed you to do those things because I couldn't do them." He leaned casually against the edge of my father's desk.

"So you've been controlling me?" I accused, I took a step towards him. If he thought that he could manipulate me, I had a right hook for him.

"Nothing that crude. I just... granted your wish. The other Rei Ikaris never made it as far as you. They never even made it to Unit Three, either having died... or worse. More than a few became some high ranking official's personal concubine... but then you would know, wouldn't you? You were different, but only because I granted your wish." He explained, continuing to talk in a conversational tone as if he hadn't completely changed the course of my existence.

"Oh, is that the only thing then? Why?" I demanded. I stepped closer to him, then found myself ten feet away from him in the blink of an eye.

"Because our father would only truly open up to his daughter, and his daughter would never survive as long as I did. I had to make one of them stronger, strong enough to make it to the end, so that they would keep Ayanami and Asuka and Misato alive. You did that for me, Rei. You kept Asuka alive, even killing the world in the process, you did what I needed you to do, puppet."

"You're a bastard, Shinji Ikari." I spit on the floor. Maybe it wasn't real, but he was... reprehensible.

He shook his head and his lip pulled back, the rage I had felt when I had seen Asuka taken was mirrored on his face. "Maybe. I watched them all die though. Arael killed Asuka's soul, and the mass production units killed her body. Ayanami was killed by Armisael and again by my own indecision... but I became god because of it, so I guess everything worked out in the end didn't It?

"But then I was the only one so lucky. I was the only Shinji Ikari to ever finish the game and even then I couldn't save them! No Shinji ever could, no matter what changes I was able to make, no matter what manipulations I put in place! My father's son and I couldn't even manage that much!

"You! You were different! Father could love you, he could show it without being afraid. You could be enough like mother for him to feel nostalgic, but different enough not to torture him. You could be someone he could love, someone he'd change the plan for."

He seemed to calm down, having burnt out his energy in his rage. He sat down on the floor next to the desk. "I watched Ayanami and Asuka, Misato, Mari, Mana, I watched them all die. Hundreds of times, thousands of times, I watched them die in screaming agony and I could not stop it. Each iteration I watched I loved them again as I did the first time, and every time it ended with their deaths.

"You were my pawn who would topple the queen and take the board. You gave me the opportunity to ensure that just once I would be able to make sure they didn't die, that they could live a full life far away from the worries of war. That's why I killed Victoria and gave you her memories. I have influence on all worlds touched by Lilith, some more than others, but yours and hers most of all."

"Well, I caused Fourth Impact and killed the planet. There's nothing left for them to have a happy ending in. I'm sorry that I couldn't save them, but I'm sorry for them, not for you," I spat at him. No matter his motivations, even if he was powerful, it didn't justify the pain he'd caused by my hand. It could have been better if I hadn't survived as long as I did, and maybe it wouldn't, but that wasn't up to him.

"You don't know what you did, but I do. And you did just fine."

"Well, I'm dead now, so it's not like I'll get to see it."

He smirked at me and waved his hand dismissively. "Your father wouldn't let go of you that easily, puppet. You'll be there soon, puppet. Tell Kaworu I said hello."

I looked down at my hand, clenched it into a fist and relaxed it. Took a deep breath and released. One, two, three, four...

Hell with it.

I swung a right hook against the side of his face, god or not I wouldn't let it go. I was already dead, right? "No--"

xxx​

"There are no strings on me."

The words left my mouth as the world snapped into brilliant focus. I was standing, then I was falling, down to my knees. I hit the floor painfully and retched, LCL poured from my mouth and nose, my lungs and stomach emptying themselves of the substance as I tried catch my bearings.

My body felt... weaker, but lighter. A certain je ne sais quoi about it. I felt... fresh. The skin on my hands felt softer and smoother than I had ever remembered it being, either before or after my change. The tone was paler, like it had never seen natural light.

I felt a hand reaching under my armpit and lifting me to my feet. Strong masculine hands, hands that had seen work, hands that were...

I blinked hard against the light and looked up to who was helping me. I had seen him not so long ago, but I had felt like a lifetime. I had died... and then I wasn't dead anymore after all? "Father."

The assistance to my feet turned into a fully body hug. He lifted me off my feet and squeezed me so tight I thought I might die. He looked as though he hadn't slept in months, his hair was a mess, his visor absent and I could see his eyes, his unkempt facial hair. "Father..?"

"I thought I had lost you the way I lost your mother... I... I couldn't leave it like that. I had to bring you back!" He half-yelled. His voice was shaking as though he was on the edge of a nervous breakdown, as though he'd been powering through on applied pharmacology and willpower.

He finally released me and I was able to sit down on a stool next to the tube I'd been flushed out of. I was in some room in Nerv, the facility was still run down, trashed, but the equipment itself looked new. I was cold, naked, but alive. My father was beside himself at his success.

I heard rapid footsteps coming down the hall and the door was knocked open so hard it nearly left the hinges, an Ayanami that likewise looked like she hadn't slept for months rushed through the door. Her hair was matted, she was panting, and she locked eyes with me.

I swallowed hard. I remembered everything, I knew what I had done in front of her, what she'd had to see. I gave a half shrug and waved my hand "Ayanami, uh, hi?"

She crossed the span of five meters almost before I could blink, and her hand struck the side of my face with a ferocity I had deserved, if not expected. Her followup was a hug that nearly knocked me to the ground.

"I hate to push this on you as quickly as I must... but you were successful in doing what needed to be done with Eva Thirteen. We did not save this world, but we did get an outcome that... well, we were able to save who was left." My father explained as he crouched next to me and put his arm around my shoulders.

"Push what on me? What's going on?" He sounded like he was writing a suicide note, not welcoming me back from the beyond. Ayanami had gone silent as well. "What aren't you telling me?"

"We have to leave. We're going to a place that is... better," Ayanami explained. "The Wunder has already left with everyone who was still alive. I stayed behind for you... but time is running out. We must leave soon if we are to meet up with them." She seemed... fidgety, not something I expected from Ayanami.

"I hate to ask you this so soon after you've woken up, and I wish I could spend years here with you, but you can't stay. Do you think you can pilot?" My father asked me. His eyes were pleading, a genuine concern for me. He had brought me back from the dead. He could have left without doing that, right?

"I think you're fresh out of Evangelions," I joked with a nervous laugh. Wasn't this supposed to be the part with the happy ending? We did it, that's what he said right?

I couldn't help but think of the conversation I had had in that other place, when I was dead. Was this more of Shinji's puppeteering? Were my strings being pulled even now? I supposed that it didn't matter even if I was his marionette, I still had to keep going didn't I?

"You won't need an Evangelion."

xxx​

Back in the locker room again, I had no idea how long it had been since the last time I'd been there. Days or weeks? Months? Years? The canary-yellow flight suit I'd worn years ago was cleaned and pressed and waiting for me. I supposed it didn't matter if I was really up to the task, since it lay before me and needed to be completed.

"So Ayanami, got anyone special waiting for you back with WILLE?" I probed conversationally. Chances to just sit and talk had been few and far between for us, but she'd stayed here and waited for me, so... I may as well try.

"What? That is... That is none of your concern, Ikari!" She protested with a blush on her cheeks. A reaction? I must proceed.

"I'll take that as a yes then. I didn't know you had it in you, Ayanami." I teased as I pulled the flightsuit up my legs.

"Ikari, I am twenty nine years old. I am not without experience in the matters of the heart," she protested. She was less off guard than she was when I had first asked, and her tone of voice had slipped back into what I thought of as 'Ayanami-normal'

"Ah-hah! So you have had it in you." I shot back with a maniac cackle. A moment later an interface headset bounced off the side of my head and into a locker.

"That is not what I meant!" She yelled back while trying to maintain a look of cold fury... which slowly cracked into a smile and a soft chuckle. "Well... Maybe."

I pulled the zipper up on the flight suit and rolled my shoulders around to settle the fabric out. "So who's the lucky guy... or girl?"

"Aida." She said simply and turned back to the locker, her cheeks had turned redder.

"Well, then I'm happy for you. He's a great guy, or he was when I knew him. You deserve someone like him."

She nodded and continued to load items from her locker into a green duffel. She seemed anxious, more than I was. And I'd just talked to... whoever that was. God?

Was that even real? It almost had to be, but then he hadn't said anything to me that I couldn't have dreamed up on my own. What was death really anyway? Was it just a hallucination caused by having my soul jammed back into a body, or was it something more tangible than that?

He claimed to have killed people and driven this world to the edge just to save those three girls... Of course, I'd nearly ended the world just to save one, even if I didn't know it at the time. I could try to forget, try to not think about it.

It had been working so far, hadn't it? Ayanami bonding time was as good a way as any to avoid thinking about the theological implications. Maybe in some other universe Shinji Ikari had become a god, but then for a few minutes fifteen years ago, so did I. Was it really so hard to believe?

"He's the hero I should have been."

"What?"

I licked my lip and looked at Ayanami, "Aida. He's the hero I should have been. He helped me before my last fight in Unit One. The P-38 was his idea, and he got in a fight to make sure I'd make it there in time. Gave me the inspirational speech and everything. I think if we'd had him on our side from the beginning, had his moral code, we might have done better."

She leaned against the locker and looked up at the cracked tiles in the ceiling. "You may be right, but are you sure you're not just trying to put yourself down? Everything that has happened has always been larger than the decisions of any one person. Do you really think he would have saved us from what happened?"

God Shinji hadn't thought so, that was my purpose, wasn't it? But maybe I couldn't accept that.

"Maybe. The right man in the right place could make all the difference in the world. I regret not knowing him better when I had the chance."

"You still can. He's waiting for me, for us, we'll all be together again soon."

I sighed and closed the locker. "But will he still want to see me, after everything I've done?"

She put her hand on my shoulder and squeezed. "I'm inclined to believe he is everything you've said he is. So, yes, I'm certain of it." She smiled.

The ground shook gently under us. Almost like how it felt when an Eva catapult was fired. Ayanami frowned and turned for the door. "It's happening faster than I thought. We have to leave now."

xxx​

"We had only finished it after you'd gone, but I knew you would be back some day. I had them finish it. I've had it waiting for you, for this moment."

I looked up at my father's face, his hand was on my shoulder. I'd recognized the place. This was the R&D hanger that the Viper Zero had been stored in, torn apart in. "So that's how we're leaving? What about you?"

The Viper had never looked better, it spoke to me in a way that no other aircraft had before. Something about it seemed so elegant, especially with the new white paint and the new lines of the air-frame. The extent of what had been done to it I didn't know, and I felt like he probably didn't have the time to explain.

"I have to stay, there are things still to be done here. I am afraid this may be the last time we see one another. There's no way back to here once you leave, not to where you're going," he said sadly. I felt his hand tighten up on my shoulder, "But that is something I have accepted. It only has two seats and both of my daughters deserve this chance."

I turned to look straight ahead at the plane as we crossed the hanger decking. The basic shape was the same as it had always been, but some of the angles were more aggressive, the control surfaces larger in some cases. Conformal fuel tanks straddled the spine, and a pair of large-capacity cargo pods sat under the wings, a drop tank sat under the centerline.

It was kitted up to flee, not to fight.

"We will not waste this gift." Ayanami said softly as she turned to look at our father.

I ran my hand along the edge of the canopy and choked back the tears that started to come. Everything had come so fast. I had finally come to a point in my life where my father could be open to me, and I was going to lose him. If not to this, I'd have lost him to age, while it seemed that I might life forever...

The ground shook slightly and my father's face turned to something resembling panic. "Leave, now! I'll make sure you get to where you're going, that is my penance for my part in killing this world. More than that, it is a father's duty to ensure his children have a future. Go!"

He grabbed me with a strength I didn't know he had and hoisted me up over the edge of the cockpit and I tumbled into the seat on top of my helmet. A brief struggle later I had it out from under me and on top of my head.

I saluted my father as he stepped backwards away from the plane. I knew enough about sacrifice that I wouldn't let someone waste one when it was right in front of me. I felt the jet shake slightly when Ayanami dropped into the seat behind me.

I reached forward and slapped the toggle to close and lock the canopy, then toggled the main power disconnect. The HUD and MFDs lit up quickly. Where the Mudhen had been a hodgepodge, everything about this fighter screamed state of the art.

I kicked over the jet fuel starter and the engine under us spun up rapidly. The radio crackled to life in my ear through the helmet speakers.

"Rei, Ayanami will help you from here. I'm opening the doors now. If you leave at full power you'll be fine. Make me proud of you."

The link died before I could reply, perhaps he couldn't bear to hear it. I couldn't bear to feel it, the tears flowed down my face. Loss and survival all at once, so many changes so fast and no chance to catch up with them.

I bit my lip hard just to make sure I was still awake and this wasn't a nightmare I couldn't wake up from. I clenched my fist tight around the stick and throttle. I was not a puppet, there were no strings on me!

This was for me. This was for my father. This was for Ayanami. I wouldn't let any of them down, that was enough of a reason, right? That was enough of a goal. Survive because I've been told to survive, because that was their wish.

I released the wheel brakes and flipped the switch to inboard. "Ayanami, we're going out now."

I rolled the stick in my hand and watched in the canopy mirrors as the control surfaces responded instantly. That would be fine. I rolled the throttle forward to the lock all at once when the wall in front of us fell away and the wide open sky greeted us beyond.

I was pressed hard into the seat as the engine launched the jet forward at a rate I had previously never experienced out of anything I'd ever flown. We cleared the floor of the hanger and fell into open sky in only moments. I remembered to retract the landing gear as the airspeed indicator shot past eight hundred. I rolled the throttle back and turned into a shallow left arc.

We had lift.

"Where are we going, Ayanami?" I asked, looking up in the mirror to see her behind me.

"Look up."

And so, at her command, I did. Directly above the remains of Nerv Headquarters was the doorway that I'd opened during Fourth Impact. It was much smaller, almost sealed, but still recognizable. There was still something beyond it.

"Ayanami?" I asked incredulously. She couldn't possibly have meant that? But that would explain the one way trip. It would explain why we needed this.

"Ikari, take us through."

I chopped the throttle back to idle and snapped the stick over to the left, rolled us into the inverted and held it. Leaving home forever, that's what this was. Wherever I ended up, there was no coming back.

I pulled the stick back sharply and pulled through a high-G split S maneuver and then slammed the throttle back to the stop. The Viper cut through the air like a knife and our speed grew rapidly, on a return vector towards Nerv. I rolled shallow to the right and stepped into the rudder to swing wide and right around the inverted pyramid. Still at full throttle I rolled to the left and pulled through a maximum performance pitch maneuver to throw us in a circle around the base.

The jet shuddered and shook in the turbulent air as vapor trailed off the wingtips. After a complete circuit I chopped the throttle back and rolled ninety degrees to the right and hauled back on the stick and pointed the nose directly for the gateway above.

I pushed back to half throttle and turned my head to face Nerv one last time. I could dry my tears later, but for the moment they proved that I had felt something, and that it had been real. I brought my hand up and held a salute until it was out of sight.

End Book One.​

Spoiler

​

 

[Tranquil Zebra]

Okay... That went quite differently to how I though it would. Is this going to be about dimensionally displaced people trying to do better in another dimension? I expected a bog standard, if excellently written, Peggy Sue maneuver, but you give us this? Colour me intrigued.

 

[Jackie]

Okay... That went quite differently to how I though it would. Is this going to be about dimensionally displaced people trying to do better in another dimension? I expected a bog standard, if excellently written, Peggy Sue maneuver, but you give us this? Colour me intrigued.

Click to shrink...

What did you expect?

 

[macdjord]

"You won't need an Evangelion."

Click to shrink...

Wati, is he talking about..?

"We had only finished it after you'd gone, but I knew you would be back some day. I had them finish it. I've had it waiting for you, for this moment."

I looked up at my father's face, his hand was on my shoulder. I'd recognized the place. This was the R&D hanger that the Viper Zero had been stored in, torn apart in. "So that's how we're leaving? What about you?"

Click to shrink...

Ha! Yes! I knew the Viper was coming back!

"But that is something I have accepted. It only has two seats and both of my daughters deserve this chance."

Click to shrink...

I know fighter cockpits are tight, but I'm pretty sure you could cram two people in one seat if you didn't expect either of them to do anything but sit there.

 

[Tranquil Zebra]

What did you expect?

Click to shrink...

As I said, I expected a Peggy Sue, where the mind of a character is effectively sent back in time. Basically, this trope is

a) reloading a previous save (time travel) to avoid a bad end, or

b) accidentally reloading (accidental time travel) a save, and (from a character perspective) randomly gaining knowledge of the future.

If it happens repeatedly, say every midnight or upon death, whichever comes first, it's more of a Groundhog Day scenario. It's a very popular trope in fan fiction, especially fix-fics, and it might on occasion overlap with Groundhog Day scenarios and other time travel tropes.

TL;DR: Basically, only having your mind and experiences sent back to your old body, typically to make the future better.

PS: Sorry if my post seems a little disjointed and rushed, but my keyboard is freaking out, making writing a pain. Do not expect prompt replies.

 

[Sunshine Temple]

Chapter 36

""
"Because our father would only truly open up to his daughter, and his daughter would never survive as long as I did. I had to make one of them stronger, strong enough to make it to the end, so that they would keep Ayanami and Asuka and Misato alive. You did that for me, Rei. You kept Asuka alive, even killing the world in the process, you did what I needed you to do, puppet."
""

Ohhhh.....

""
"You're a bastard, Shinji Ikari." I spit on the floor. Maybe it wasn't real, but he was... reprehensible.
""

Hah!
Oooh, very interesting having Shinji be the one doing it. It does make sense.
Good job.

""
"I thought I had lost you the way I lost your mother... I... I couldn't leave it like that. I had to bring you back!" He half-yelled. His voice was shaking as though he was on the edge of a nervous breakdown, as though he'd been powering through on applied pharmacology and willpower.
""

Which knowing Gendo...

""
"Ah-hah! So you have had it in you." I shot back with a maniac cackle. A moment later an interface headset bounced off the side of my head and into a locker.

"That is not what I meant!" She yelled back while trying to maintain a look of cold fury... which slowly cracked into a smile and a soft chuckle. "Well... Maybe."
""

Awww. Showing this side to Ayanami is amusing.


Very interesting ending.

Bravo

 

[Jackie]

The Curious Case of Rei Ikari: Common Threads
Part One:
Rei/Zero​

"Ikari would fight."

Rei stared at the controls in front of her. It wasn't the same as her Evangelion, it was older, much older. Older than she was. It was different, and the same. She would succeed because that is what she was made for, and in that she and Zero were the same.

"I understand. Unit Zero is deploying now."

Rei had never done anything slow, and never by half measures. Her first stop was the armory, and the second stop was the edge of the inverted pyramid crater that held Nerv Headquarters. With her weapon slung across her back she dug the Evangelion's hands into the sloped rock, forcing handholds into the cliff face as she pulled herself higher and higher.

She had known the plan, she had known what Commander Ikari had intended. Mark Nine going out of control was not part of that plan. They had been betrayed by SEELE. She had known of them, he kept nothing from her because he knew she didn't care.

Until some part of her yelled out from the buried darkness of her mind that it was time to care. Betrayal as a concept didn't bother her, it wasn't in her nature to care.

She knew very few people, had spoken to even fewer, among those were Ayanami, Ikari, and Nagisa. One was dead, one had told her to fight, and the other was in danger.

Never for her own sake would she have taken up such a burden, but for Nagisa...

She grit her teeth and heaved the Evangelion upward, one last violent push and she landed on the top of the pyramid's edge with both feet. From her unit's back she retrieved the Evangelion-scale positron rifle and propped it up against the rocky ledge in front of her.

Ahead and in front of her, a few thousand yards out, she could see the Mark Nine drifting towards the Wunder. She knew what the plan for that ship was, and this was not it. She lined the sights up on the opposing Evangelion and squeezed the trigger.

The weapon let out a dull, low rumble, followed by an ear splitting shriek as the beam of charged particles lanced forth towards the target. She didn't wait for impact to fire her follow up shot. She knew better. Experience had taught her better. She snapped off four more rapid fire shots before the barrel overheated and she discarded the weapon.

Shots peppered the ground surrounding the Mark Nine and turned the impact craters into glass, the thermal impact from the strikes caused small scale explosions which peppered the target Evangelion's armor and peeled some layers of it back, melting other layers together.

From the far right of her field of vision, Rei could see the pink form of Unit Eight crawling out of a crack in the ground with Unit Two-Dash right next to it.

She did not know what she might be able to say to them, but she did know that actions spoke volumes. The battery counter started ticking down as the power cable ejected from Unit Zero's spine and she dropped into a sprint, leaping from the cliff and into the open sky.

The wind whipped past her as she fell like a rock through the open sky. The turbulence in the air from the continuing Fouth Impact violently buffeted Unit Zero, but she corrected almost unconsciously as she approached the ground.

Two hundred meters from impact she leaned the Evangelion backwards through a tumble to point the feet towards the ground. Her thumb popped a catch open on the left control stick and she pressed the button that activated the retro rockets embedded in the shoulder pylons.

Six solid fueled rockets rotated out of the back side of the shoulder pylons and lit with a thunderous roar and the Evangelion jerked back like it had been plucked by a giant invisible hand, its speed arrested rapidly.

Unit Zero landed in a crouch and started to roll forward, Rei used this momentum to convert her inertia into a forward sprint towards the Wunder, which the Mark Nine had finally reached.

She watched as Two-Dash leapt onto the grounded left wing of the Wunder and had moved to engage the rogue Mark Nine. A burst of full auto from the machine gun replacing Two's left arm peppered the Mark Nine, which responded with an energy blast from the void where the Evangelion's head should have been.

Rei felt herself disturbed when, a moment later, the Mark Nine had begun to grow a new head, one which resembled the Wunder and not the head that she was most familiar with. She felt a heat rising in her chest and she slid the control sticks forward to the locks.

Unit Zero pushed onward with a speed that it had never attained during it's former service as a front-line unit against the Angels. The armor around the knee and hip joints began to crack under the strain as vapor started to trail off of the Unit as it approached the sound barrier.

A scream of primal fury filled the entry plug as she stabbed her thumb down onto the retro catch and she commanded the Unit to jump. All six rockets ignited for the second and final time and the Unit leapt into the sky in a ballistic arc terminating at the Mark Nine.

The front of the shoulder pylons opened up and the main and backup progressive knives dropped into the ready position. Both hands reached up and pulled the blades from their containers as the distance closed.

Rei drew the two blades down and back, ready to strike as soon as she was in range. Her feet touched down on the surface of the Wunder's hull with a deep thud and she lunged forward the last few meters, blades slashing out for the neck.

Mark Nine brought its right arm up and forced Unit Zero's head down with its elbow. Rei grit her teeth against the pain feedback and jammed both knives into Nine's spinal armor and she pulled a catch on her right control stick. The left shoulder pylon opened up directly under Mark Nine's chin and seven large-caliber tungsten spikes were propelled by an explosive charge directly into its head.

Unit Zero's left shoulder pylon exploded, and a moment later Mark Nine went slack in its grip. The control circuit having been temporarily disrupted, the spinal armor over the entry plug ejected and an instant later the entry plug rocketed out and arced upwards towards the open portal.

Rei pulled back from the Nine and the Two-Dash jammed its machine gun arm down the empty plug socket and fired a full magazine of ammo down into it. She felt the blood running down the left side of her face. Sympathetic feedback from the explosion. It didn't matter.

The Mark Nine slumped for a moment before it stood back up and knocked the Two-Dash backwards against the primary hull of the Wunder and fired an energy blast at it for good measure.

Unit Zero circled around to get between the Nine and the Wunder, then Rei commanded it to kick off with everything it had left. Armor panels on the surface of the ship caved in with the force of the launch. Zero caught the Mark Nine in the midsection, damaged shoulder first, and the force of the strike tore it away from the Wunder's hull.

Rei leaned her head back against the headrest as they both fell towards the ground, away from the ship. With the Mark Nine no longer in control, the Wunder would be able to pull away, at least long enough for the plan to complete.

A blast struck Zero directly in the chest armor and cracked it with such force that her grip on the Mark Nine was broken and she was sent flying backwards towards the ship she'd just jumped off of. Rei reached for the retro controls and slapped the switch down to slow her speed, but remembered only too late that the left pylon had been destroyed.

A moment later, Unit Zero impacted the surface of the ship. Rei's head impacted the headrest, and she saw and heard no more.

 

[Sunshine Temple]

Part One:
Rei/Zero

"She had known the plan, she had known what Commander Ikari had intended. Mark Nine going out of control was not part of that plan. They had been betrayed by SEELE."

Betrayal is what SEELE does...

Good chapter. Explains a bit more to the fight scene from a different POV

 

[NexusRider161]

Just binged the entire fic and I must say, I am seriously digging what I see. I absolutely love the fact that the MC is a fighter pilot, too. I don't see that very often.
I am also rather hyped for Book 2, now. Where will Ikari and Ayanami end up? You mentioned that it's not gonna be Peggy Sue, so does that mean that they'll end up in another version of the NGEverse that already has it's own Shinji and (Ayanami) Rei analogues, the world as we know it, or in a whole new franchise altogether? I look forward to your future posts, Jackie, and thank you for investing your time into writing such an entertaining fic, and sharing it with the rest of us.

 

[Jackie]

The Curious Case of Rei Ikari: Common Threads
Part Two:
Ave Victoria​

"I, Victoria, take you to be my wife, to have and to hold, to love and protect, to stay with through sickness and health, for the rest of my life."

I blinked and shook my head. She'd been on my mind more frequently as of late, a side effect of getting older and having more and deeper regrets. Memories of the life I'd never lived, but, well, I could remember the taste of that wedding cake like it was just yesterday. How do you really mourn someone you never met, who's been dead for thirty years? How do you mourn a life you never really lived?

But even so, I loved her. I loved her and I knew that in some other world, she was mourning the me she lost. The Victoria who had never done the things that I'd done, who never had to avenge her father, her real brother. The Victoria who'd never gotten her adoptive brother killed.

Rei Ikari had the right of it, it was what I did that started the mess. I couldn't deny it but I couldn't keep the whole blame. I had never confirmed it but if I was right about her, and I'd almost have to be, we were sharing the nightmare. She remembered the same life I did, but she wasn't actually me, and so she could tell herself it wasn't as important.

Maybe she didn't tell herself that though. Maybe it was killing her inside as much as it was killing me. Maybe that's where she found the fire to fight. I didn't have to pull deep to find a reason or an urge to start cutting throats and her brand of bloodthirsty didn't seem so different.

Even now, I couldn't decide if I'd have been better off trying to be her friend, or calling out 'fox three' the first time we met and strangling her influence in the crib. Either might have avoided the shit show that we ended up with: A Life Story spelled out 'B-O-H-I-C-A'.

"L-Barrier density is rising rapidly, readings are consistent with an impact event!"

No more time for self reflection. I stood up and stepped towards the front of the command deck. "That sounds like our luck. Signal the other ships to battle stations and prepare to take the whole fleet in. I want all sensor data piped to the main screen, keep from cluttering the visuals though."

The flurry of activity that surrounded my orders was nothing less than frantic, but then that's what life had become for me. I thought we'd been pushing back against the darkness, but some days I just wished it would embrace me. Take me into it's calm and cold bosom and then, maybe, I might see her again. Maybe she'd know me.

I shook my head. There would be time for that later, but if I was really lucky, there wouldn't be. "Katsuragi, you think it's her?" I asked the woman next to me. I wouldn't need to define who, there was only one person I could mean.

"I don't see how it could be anyone else. If Ikari got to her..." I could see the pain in her eyes, and I could see her white-knuckling the handrail.

"She'd probably eat up whatever ol' pops was telling her, hook, line, and sinker. You think you can fight her?" I asked. I had to know the answer, even if I wasn't sure which one I wanted to hear. There had been a reason she'd ceded command to me, of all people.

"Of course I can fight. You don't need to ask, I know the stakes." She hissed back, but she didn't seem to have her heart behind the venom, something more on her mind.

"You love her, so I did have to ask."

"That's why I have to fight."

I nodded at her. That was a fair enough reason, I knew that she'd make the right decision. I didn't, however, know what that decision would actually be.

The deck rocked under us, air turbulence to be certain, but pretty strong if it was affecting us. Our size and power would have made most turbulence irrelevant, but this gave us a bit of a buffeting. "Report?"

"Uhhh, it looks like two high energy targets are floating ahead. Contact is temporarily lost with Units Eight and Two-Dash, but the target signatures don't match. Turbulence in the local airflow seems to originate from a point one kilometer above the Tokyo-3 ruins." She explained. I should probably have taken the time to get to know her name, or any of the people on the command deck.

I couldn't spare the heartache, and that probably made me a terrible person. But I wasn't here for making friends, not new ones anyway. Clark was the people person. Katsuragi was the figure head. I was just there to make the decisions that got people killed, because they had to be made.

We were all seeking penance, absolution, but it would never come for me. Telling myself I didn't give a fuck, not learning their names, they were all ways to cope with the inevitability of mortality. I could order someone to their death if I didn't know their life story more easily than if I did.

Professional detachment.

"That's probably fine. Take us in at flank speed, AT field to maximum! Load high velocity Anti-AT field munitions in all cannons throughout the fleet! Wunder will designate all primary targets. Iowa-class is to fire on designated targets, all others catch anything too fast or small for main battery fire!" I barked out as the ship pitched and rolled from the growing atmospheric disruption.

I could see ahead the telltale opening of the Doors of Guf, the initiation of an Impact event.

I had never wanted my world to be that much bigger than a fighter cockpit. Everything I could do from there always made sense to me. Shoot or don't shoot. Evade, push, run, fight. Everything had a time and a place and a purpose, but this? Metaphysics and theological consequences weren't my thing.

They didn't need a military mind, they needed a religious one, or maybe they needed someone with an emotional investment. I by all rights, should never have been in the chair. It was pure chance, luck of this curse, that I was even in a position to be involved in this war, let alone at the front of it.

"Katsuragi, you have the conn," I announced simply, but loudly as I turned to leave the command deck. She would make the right decisions.

WILLE didn't need Commander Victoria Eleanor Becket. WILLE needed Marshall Misato Katsuragi. Maybe I needed her too, but she wasn't mine to have, not mine to keep from Ikari.

I needed to be Gypsy Rose.

I received no protest from the command crew on my departure, but I hadn't expected one. I had respect because I'd been right, but my authority flowed from Katsuragi; they would obey any order she had to give.

Rei Ikari had Evangelion to make her dangerous, and in fact we were in the middle of that, but I had my own way to be most dangerous. It made sense that it would have turned out this way. Neither of us really wrong, just in the wrong place at the right time. We were destined to fight.

The corridors passed me by without much thought to direction; I'd spent the better part of the decade on this ship and it hadn't changed much in that time. The only things that really marked the passage of time were the lines in the mirror and the unfamiliar faces walking the halls.

The hatch I was looking for was to my right, near the starboard aft compartment, behind the Evangelion canister. I'd had it installed off the books, a perk of command, but still an open secret. Officially we couldn't really approve it, but I wasn't above demanding favors.

I pressed my palm against the biometric scanner and the hatch hissed and popped inward. This had been my escape plan, if things went sideways on me. Plans that had kept me alive so far, but now there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

The Japanese engineers who'd done the work for me had called it 'F-5E Kai' and that seemed as good a name as any. Conformal fuel tanks built into the dorsal structure and ventral reinforcements to handle the higher velocity Anti-AT field ammunition fired by the nose mounted twenties, as well as the center-line mounted heavy railgun had been installed.

I pulled the hatch open and stared down into the open cockpit waiting for me below. What I hadn't told them is that I had planned on using it against the WILLE Evangelions if they turned against me, if that's what it would have taken to get away.

It was just as well that I was going to use it in defense of WILLE after all.

I dropped down into the seat and pulled the straps down to lock me into place and then pulled the helmet down over my head. Power on, canopy down. I was reaching for the toggle that would start the jettison sequence when the entire ship banked sharply to the left.

The entire plane vibrated around me in a way that wasn't immediately familiar, but if I'd had to guess I'd say the Wunder was dragging the ground on part of the left wing.

All the more reason to launch now. I pressed my finger down on the switch that would start the launch sequence and readied my other hand over the engine start switch. The panels in front of and behind the jet detached violently when the first explosive bolts fired.

I pressed down the starter switch and the engines started to rapidly gain momentum as the high velocity air-stream from the Wunder's forward flight ram-started them. A few moments after that the second set of bolts fired and the jet dropped downward away from the ship.

The buffeting as I dropped through the Wunder's wake tossed the F-5 around violently, but not so much that I didn't see an Evangelion get knocked into the side of the ship. I pushed the throttles forward to the stops and eased the stick to the right to take myself out from under the ship; flying under objects was never one of my favorite things, nor the safest.

I turned my head to the left as power came on and I stopped descending. The Eva that had kidnapped the Reis was falling through the air away from the Wunder and the gun turrets from the ship were lighting it up, for what good that would do.

Larger explosions followed the initial barrage from the guns on the Wunder, the five and sixteen inch high explosive shells from the battleships struck the Evangelion in repetitive waves of fire. Each explosion slung debris and pushed the unit further and further from its goal.

I still didn't have the energy I needed to engage in combat. My best hope was to perform high speed slashing attacks, but with this heavy gun hanging from the bottom of the plane even full afterburner thrust wasn't granting me the acceleration I'd have wanted.

But that was just me being impatient. I'd get to where I needed to be, and that Evangelion wasn't my target anyway. I eased the stick over to the left after I climbed over and around the Wunder, and set my sights on the white-glowing Evangelion that was causing the mess.

While I continued to close with the target I noticed my climb rate was a little bit... off. Too high for my air speed and angle of attack. For that matter, a look in the spot mirrors showed that the Wunder and the rest of the naval fleet were climbing as well. I experimented with the control stick and found that the plane wanted to drift towards the open portal overhead.

That made things a little more urgent.

I started charging the railgun capacitors off the generators and switched fire control over to the nose cannons. If I could bait Ikari into closing the distance to attack me I'd be better off overall, rather than losing airspeed fighting the pull of the portal.

I rolled into the inverted and pulled a few degrees of lead to compensate for the diminished effect of gravity, and pulled the trigger. Both cannons barked out full auto tracer fire that I steadily walked along the Evangelion. The shot arc was a little erratic, a lot like firing inside of a rotating reference frame, so I was thankful I had enough shots to re-calibrate where I'd have to aim to fire the railgun.

The air-frame started to creak from the gravity sheer, the two opposing 'down' forces were causing havoc with the targeting. The gryos were already set, so they would be fine even if my own reference frame flipped.

Not that it helped. I kept pushing the nose more and more towards the ground just to fly level towards the Evangelion, it was becoming more and more like flying a spaceship than a fighter jet.

And here I'd thought I'd never get to be an astronaut.

I rolled inverted to the ground, with my canopy facing the planet and the underside of the jet facing the 'new' ground, at least as far as gravity was concerned. I pulled back on the stick and brought the targeting reticle back onto the Evangelion, which I was above and being pulled away from even with both engines running at full afterburner.

Behind me, a few of the ships from the fleet had already been drawn through the portal, and there was nothing I could do for them. The Wunder wasn't far behind, Unit Two-Dash and Eight were clinging to the hull for dear life, trying not to be pulled away from it. Ikari's Evangelion was still stationary, unmoved by my attacks or the portal.

I didn't have time. I couldn't save everyone, maybe I couldn't save anyone. But I could try.

I switched fire selection over to to the railgun and fought the buffeting of the air being sucked past me towards the portal. I was losing ground even at full power. At least being pulled directly backwards made targeting easier; I squeezed the firing stud and fired half of the ten round magazine at the center of the spine, right where the entry plug hatch ought to have been.

My engines started to overheat and I was forced to throttle back, but the shots landed and the Evangelion tumbled forwards and began to fall towards the planet. A pair of bright flares lit up, streaking away from it. Entry plugs. Two? That was certainly novel.

The suction force from the portal started to relent, but with my throttle down to half and the recoil from the railgun I was too close to escape. I looked over my shoulder to see how long it would be until I met destiny, when I saw Wunder and units Two-Dash, Eight, and Zero pulled through the void.

And then I joined them, hoping that if this was the end, that I might find her waiting for me, and that she'd know me.

 

[macdjord]

The shot arc was a little erratic, a lot like firing inside of a rotating reference frame,

Click to shrink...

Now isn't that an interesting thing for her to be familiar with...

 

[Jackie]

Now isn't that an interesting thing for her to be familiar with...

Click to shrink...

: D

 

[Jackie]

Book Two



Chapter 37:
Drudgery​

Like most nights, right around eight thirty, half hour to closing, I found myself staring at my finger nails and listening to the monotonous drone from the other end of the telephone. The cotton polo I'd been issued was cheap, mass produced, and uniform. I supposed that in that way, it represented my job perfectly.

The flickering lights bathed the store in a subtly migraine inducing glow, just outside of the frequency you really noticed, but well within one your brain could pick up on. That, of course, didn't bother the spider that crawled down on its thread directly in front of my register.

And, of course, oil was on five for four, with a free filter and drain pan while supplies last.

"Sorry, we don't have that part in stock at this store. We can have it from our hub store by tomorrow at ten. Do you want me to reserve it?"

Click. Well, fuck you too buddy.

I dropped the handset back on the receiver and leaned backwards against the spark-plug wire-set display. Twelve feet tall, six feet deep, and full of boxes so bleached out from age that they gave my own flesh tone a run for its money.

And for my time I'd made seventy two dollars less taxes.

I glanced down at my cell phone at the time, eight fifty eight. Two minutes to go. I glanced up towards the battery display, then down the entire shelf of air filters. The alternator tester was next to that, and I briefly entertained the thought of rolling the bastard thing outside and setting it on fire.

My phone vibrated in the pocket of my black slacks and I tapped the logout on my register. "Raphi! Store's closed, let's lock up and go home!"

The short, hispanic man sighed as he came out from behind the plug-wire display and shook his head at me. It wasn't the first time he'd given me that look of disappointment, I was pretty sure it wouldn't be the last either. "It wouldn't hurt you to care a little more about the store, eh mija?"

Raphael was an older guy, late fifties with salt and pepper hair, where he still had the hair anyway. I gave him a helpless shrug. "If you paid me more I'd care more. Can we lock up? I need to go home and get my beauty sleep."

He let out a deep belly laugh and shook his head, "Ah mija, if I paid you more the others would get jealous and quit and you'd have that much more work to do."

"Well, if you gave me too much work I'd have to go too, so maybe you've got a point." I shrugged and locked my drawer, then grabbed my car keys and headed for the front door. It was at least a forty minute drive and I wanted to get to it as quickly as I could.

"Oh fine, be like that. You can go, I'll lock up." I heard the mock frustration in his voice. He was a nice guy like that.

"You're the best Raphi!" I yelled over my shoulder as pushed the door open and walked out into the cold night. Even this far south it still got colder than Tokyo-3 ever did. Middle of November didn't do the temperature any favors either.

The little blue Corvair waiting for me in the parking lot was a rather familiar sight, if not the most welcome at the moment. Forty five minutes in a car without a heater wasn't a thought I relished. It wasn't broken, it just never had one installed.

I slid the key into the lock cylinder that was older than I was and turned it, a crackling creak later and the lock popped open and I was able to open the door. None too soon, since the metal was cold as hell. I found the clutch and pressed it down while I slid the key into the ignition.

The choke knob was equally cold in my hand as I pulled it out and put my foot against the gas pedal. I turned the key and the engine chugged over behind me, one, two, three, four, five seconds. I gave it a little gas and the nearly sixty year old engine finally caught and started up.

The carburators were a little out of tune, but the idle settled down after a few minutes to let the engine warm up. I slid the choke in experimentally and was rewarded with the engine not stalling out on me. Good enough.

Turned on the lights and eased it into gear, and out of the parking space. It was not the most glamorous of cars, nor the most glamorous of jobs, but it was what I had. If I had known that this was where my life was going to take me, I'd probably have laughed at the absurdity of it.

It wasn't as though this mundane existence hadn't come with its own share of costs, of that I was only far too aware, but it was nice enough. At least, I could tell myself it was.

Adjusting to this, after everything I'd gone through was still a work in progress, but with hair dye and tinted contacts anything was possible. It was a world without Angels, that was good enough, wasn't it? No Second Impact, no Third or Fourth Impact.

Victoria had died having only ever lived in this world, so maybe she'd got the better end of the deal. She'd died not having failed, or having failed anyone. It was every bit possible that it was my own world that made things turn into shit, or the people in it. The Victoria from my world messed a few things up on her own, and could she really be considered that different from the Victoria from here?

I leaned back in the seat and rolled my head to crack my neck. Just another day in paradise. I couldn't even bring myself to feel like I was being sarcastic. The planet was vibrant with life, with blue oceans and an intact south pole. We weren't in a perpetual state of war, the world wasn't in danger of ending, there was no existential horror.

Whether he was real or not, that God Shinji had gotten his wish; Asuka, Ayanami, Misato, even Mari were no longer subject to the possibility of Third, or Fourth, Impact.

But I felt restless. It wasn't like the job really helped that either, since it was six to eight hours every other day, and some Saturdays, of monotonous drudgery. There were only so many brake pads I could sell, or car batteries I could install before I wanted to jump off the roof.

And I was pretty sure even that wouldn't reliably kill me.

Romance was dodgy, I hadn't seen Misato in months and any other option ran into the problem of the fact that I was not exactly human, and that's the kind of thing that would eventually get out in an intimate relationship. I couldn't exactly go 'hey by the way you're sleeping with an alien' because they have pills for people who say things like that, and they're not optional.

And all else being equal, sex wasn't really a major concern of mine. Affection would be nice, but it didn't rule my life. My lament was the sum of all grievances, rather than any given one. Some kind of fulfillment and I'd be content with myself, but...

I had to mentally balance the relative boredom of a mundane life against the excitement that was surely taking place in the Kitty Hawk battlegroup. On the one hand they certainly weren't bored, but on the other hand; not my circus, not my monkeys.

The falsified documents that let me live the life I had were less of a bribe or a reward and more like an order. One written without words that said 'we don't want to have to deal with what happens when we let you off the chain'. Hogtied with a birth certificate and a social security card. Or maybe it was more akin to an anchor around my neck.

It was the better of the two options though. The other was that they could probably have tried to turn me over after the Second Battle of New Orleans. I wouldn't have let them, but they could have tried. I think everyone was just so excited not to be dead that they were feeling benevolent.

Or maybe it was Misato's doing. Probably was, on reflection.

Sleeping in a warm bed every night and not worrying about dying was, on the whole, desirable. So it wasn't all bad to be boring. I could have used some more excitement, but living as a normal human being, even if I wasn't, had more perks than drawbacks.

The headlights of a car in the oncoming lane blinded me, so I directed my gaze to the white line on the right side of the road. I wasn't far from the house, I must have driven most of the way in a daze. Not uncommon after an eight hour shift.

The rumble of the wheels against the road and the unique exhaust note of the air cooled engine were not unpleasant companions, even if the sharp cold of the night time November air was.

I slowed and turned down the spur that would take me the rest of the way. The lake off to my right reflected the moonlight. A lake not made by an explosion, but by the dedicated efforts of man, and filled with clean blue water. That alone was probably worth the trip through the portal.

The car's headlights lit up the little yellow house on the corner up ahead, my destination, so I eased on the brakes and pushed in the clutch. It was dark out, but the moon was high, and the lights in the house were still on. That meant at least somebody was still up, and that should be expected on a week night.

The gravel cracked and crunched under the tires as I pulled in, and then drove past the car in the drive and parked next to the one covered in a tarp next to the house. I turned the engine off a few moments later and popped the door open.

A yawn worked its way out of me as I trudged towards the door on the side of the house. All I really wanted was to grab a snack, crawl into bed, and sleep through till the morning. At least, assuming Rae didn't need anything. Fifty-fifty odds on that.

I pulled the door open and stepped into the kitchen, let the warm air wash over me and push the chills from my bones. I could probably have fallen asleep right then and there.

Instead, I turned to the fridge and pulled the door open, spotted my prey, and cracked it off the six pack ring. I pulled the tab and the can opened with a hiss and put it to my lips. The cool carbonated malty goodness of a Dallas Blonde slid down my gullet, satisfying my thirst and my desire to get buzzed all at once.

Rae was a beer snob, so I knew no matter what I took from the fridge it wouldn't be swill.

"Rei, if you drink too many of those I'll have to add it to your rent."

I turned towards the voice but didn't lower the can from my lips; the can wasn't empty yet. The woman stood about three inches shorter than I did, but she had a certain something about her that said she'd probably win in a fight.

She was a tiny Korean school teacher with the ferocity of a tiger. What she lacked in size she made up for in presense, so it was no surprise that Victoria had married her. From what I remembered of her it was likewise no surprise that Rose had gotten her to take me in.

I crunched the can in my hand after finishing the drink and shrugged helplessly "Sorry about that Rae, you've just got such good taste I find myself unable to not sample from your selection."

"Yeah, right. Well, you can make dinner to make up for it since I don't feel like cooking anything," she offered with a shrug. "Not that I ever do."

"I know, that's why I have Zenna on speed dial." I muttered, then turned towards the hallway, "I'm gonna change first, I smell like car exhaust."

As I walked down the hallway I heard her yell from behind me, "How's that different from usual?"

I raised my left hand over my head in a wordless one finger salute and grabbed the door handle to my room with my other hand. Out of the corner of my eye I sould see the open door of Rae's room, and the myriad of display cases within.

Rae was also a nerd. Anime, television, literature, it didn't matter. There was something surreal about seeing a glass display case with a six inch tall vinyl statue of Rei Ayanami standing inside of it, especially once you'd met the real person.

It was a true testament to people's refusal to believe what they don't want to that nobody had made the connection between Neon Genesis Evangelion and the fiasco that went down in New Orleans. Denial was a powerful thing and so was government information suppression.

The incident couldn't be denied, but somehow the news never reported on the eighty meter tall robots that participated in it.

I clicked the door shut behind me and pulled my shirt off, flung it into the corner, and then unclasped my belt.

People would believe the things that didn't challenge their worldview too much, they'd believe the things that made them feel comfortable, and they'd find any way they could to rationalize away anything with theological implications.

My bra hit the pile of dirty clothes with the speed and accuracy of a major league fastball, and I pulled a clean t-shirt over my head. The baggy, soft, comfortable fabric was a welcome change from the scratchy red polo I had to wear for work.

The black slacks found their way to the back of my desk chair and in a moment I was securely in the warm embrace of flannel pajama pants.

Oh, if those Russian sailors could see 'little blue hair girl' now. My elegance was matched only by my motivation, that is to say, I had none of either. Of course, I wasn't blue hair girl anymore either, it had been replaced by brown hair dye and brown contact lenses.

It was easier just to avoid the uncomfortable questions that my natural colors would bring, and I didn't want to give Rae any reason to suspect I wasn't perfectly normal.

I heard a knock on my door and turned in surprise. I hadn't been expecting that. She couldn't wait?

"Hey you didn't tell me your sister was stopping by. I didn't even know you had a sister."

My eyes widened and I turned quickly to pull the pocket pistol I had tucked under the mattress, slipped it into my pocket and then licked my lips and swallowed hard. "Yeah, sorry Rae. It must have slipped my mind. I'll be out in a minute."

Sister? Was that other Rei coming for me?

I kept my right hand in my pocket resting against the pistol and popped my door open with the other hand. I crept down the hall and listened to the conversation playing out.

"I'm sorry, I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Suzu Ikari. I hope having Rei living with you hasn't been too much trouble?"

I recognized that voice, the inflections, the accent. I felt my grip on the pistol relax and a smile tugged at the corner of my mouth.

In the living room, as I walked out, I saw Rae and 'Suzu Ikari' standing by the front door. The latter was wearing slacks, a jacket, and a white blouse, and looked every bit like a federal agent. Her hair was dyed, and she was wearing colored contacts, but I'd still recognize her face anywhere.

She smiled at me. "Hello Rei, it's been a while. Why don't we catch up?"

Rei Ayanami had come for dinner. Maybe life wasn't so boring after all.

"Your sister dresses much nicer than you do. Guess twins aren't always alike, huh?" Rae needled with a self satisfied smirk.

I rolled my eyes. Hard. "Well, one of us had to be lazy, right? I guess I pulled the long straw to win that prize."

'Suzu' put her hand to her mouth to hide her giggle. I had to wonder if it was just a social visit or if there was something a little bit more to it. What had brought her here?

"Yeah, I bet. So what's for dinner, Rei?" Rae asked with a raised eyebrow. It was that expression.

Of course, there wasn't really anything that great in the fridge, nothing that wasn't frozen anyway. I wasn't going to feed substandard food to 'Suzu'.

Well, that, and I was too lazy to want to cook after working all day.

I glanced back at the kitchen and then at my sister, then at Rae. "Right, so, I'm gonna go get my phone, I'll be right back."

I did have Zenna on speed dial, after all.

 

[Tranquil Zebra]

Right, so that was a rather dramatic tone shift. I actually hope we get some slice of life to get over our heart palpitations and stuff. I would almost bet "good, ol' Suzu" is here because "Rei, you are my only hope!", only with less adoration, and more snark.

If POV-Rei is legal drinking age now, would Misato be pushing 50, or are there some strange temporal shenanigans going on, with at-least-in-her-thirties-Rei being able to imitate beerdrinker-and-cardriver-Rei's twin sister? Hybrid vigour making them both look like twenty somethings?

 

[Jackie]

Right, so that was a rather dramatic tone shift. I actually hope we get some slice of life to get over our heart palpitations and stuff. I would almost bet "good, ol' Suzu" is here because "Rei, you are my only hope!", only with less adoration, and more snark.

If POV-Rei is legal drinking age now, would Misato be pushing 50, or are there some strange temporal shenanigans going on, with at-least-in-her-thirties-Rei being able to imitate beerdrinker-and-cardriver-Rei's twin sister? Hybrid vigour making them both look like twenty somethings?

Click to shrink...

"Curse of Eva"

Technically speaking, Rei Ikari's current body is about 8 months old