Neon Genesis: EVANGELION Eva Wasn't Built in A Day. v1.0 (final 'net release) By Jared Waddell : rick_spiff@yahoo.com Disclaimer: I own none of the characters in this work except for Goku Takagi and James Rahn. This story takes place post-episode 18. ******* WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING ******* This fanfic contains S P O I L E R S ! ! ! This fanfic contains material that may be offensive to some readers, including material of a type never covered in the Eva series. This is not a nice story; it's Eva material, so if you didn't like some of the issues present in the series, don't even think about reading this! ******* WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING ******* Chapter 5: --- More blurs, these ones closer. Strike! Strike! Dodge, move, blow! Strike! Visions churned in the sleeping child's mind, catching his conscious mind unawares as memories - recent memories, came striking him one after another, in a symphony of pain. Sweat beaded and dripped from his clammy white skin, his body twitching in an almost constant cascade of fear and the overwhelming need to fight with everything he had... "Ahh!" Goku sat up in his room covered in a sheen of sweat. For a moment, nothing but breathing hard and believing in everything he saw in the room, holding on to the _reality_ of it, was all that mattered. "I'm alive." He tried to lay back down, but every movement made his joints creak, a sign of both the mental stress he had enduring during his brief piloting career, and the rigors his body had endured to survive the final blow. Somewhere, moving in the back of his brain, he recalled Asuka flinging herself recklessly at the core, ready to give her all to kill the Angel. Somewhere, deep inside, he shuddered. The rest of the fight was more or less a blur to his conscious mind. He sighed and tried to relax into the bed, half the room wavering before his vision, the other half colored crimson with the fire of battle still burned into his eyes. A half-hour of intermittent sleep, and Misato came to visit. Misato sat down primly, which would have alerted Goku that something was up, had he been in normal condition. Now, having only barely survived the marathon of fighting the day before, he hardly noticed her presence in the room, let alone her intentions. "Goku." "Major." "How are you feeling?" "Lousy. I'll live though." "That's good to hear." She paused, a question bent to strike like lightening on her tongue, held for a moment, observed, then let fly to it's purpose. "You never did tell me how you got to be involved with the Evangelions." "That?" Goku replied, woozy from the medication he'd been given and still partially asleep. "Oh, kind of a long story." "I can stay for a while. I want to hear this one." "Then I'll try to be brief, you must be kept busy around here." Misato's expression darkened slightly. Kept busy so she wouldn't have time to figure out who or what she was _really_ working for. "Um hm." "Okay, it started with my father, who was a biochemist by interest, and a genetic engineer by trade. He started working for NERV around 2003 I guess, or a little after. He started in something called Gehirn, but I suppose in retrospect that Gehirn and NERV are one and the same. Around 2005 he became acquainted with a woman named Naoko Akagi, a biocomputer expert and head of the computing division of Gehirn, when she was in the process of building the MAGI system." He sighed, then rubbed his eyes. "Getting tired?" "I'll be okay. I'll be getting my sleep tonight." He cleared his throat. "Well, Naoko died in some kind of accident - no, wait. She committed suicide. Not something I'm going to go into." Misato raised an eyebrow. "About 2008, I was more or less ready to finish high-school requirements, and was already wondering what I wanted to be when I grew up. Of course, because of my intelligence, that time would come much sooner for me than for my peers." His voice resounded in the past, of a great burden placed upon him. "At that age, all kids toy with their futures, reveling in the idea of what is to come. The mystery, the magic, the whole nine stinking yards. "I wanted to do the same stuff as my dad. I don't know why his line of work was so interesting to me but it was, and that's what I wanted to do. He didn't discourage or encourage me, he just said that I should be first aware of my choices, then pick one without regrets. "I chose to learn in the same discipline as him. For four years I worked toward a degree in his field, and was scoped out by NERV intelligence for potential employment in their scientific division. The actual offer came in the fall of 2013, when my parents were long gone and I had nothing left to loose. I was a sight then, still trying to recover from a loss like that. I'm so much a different person from that. More than anything else, I would give all to see my parents again, even if just once." Misato tilted her head mysterious. "I know what it's like to loose a family member..." "The Evangelion androids." Goku said, picking up again. "Where not my idea, and I didn't have the first clue what was going on when I was first put on one of the many miscellaneous construction teams. But, I seem to still have the blood of an engineer and spent a lot of my spare time figuring out how many of their systems work, and ultimately, how they worked as a whole. After several months, I was intimately acquainted with many of the Evangelions' quirks and sort of got more and more involved in the biological engineering aspect of the technology. "Lastly, some sub-section chief granted me my own team to oversee when a minor reorganization was done. That was about a month before..." Deep breath. "Before the third Angel attacked." Misato felt something tugging at her brain, and inconsistency that was nagging her gray matter like a weed caught in a good pair of nylons... _One month before the first attack here and the first use of the Evas in combat?_ "Oog. Not good to try and sit up." Goku moaned. Misato started, she'd been toning him out. Then she halted for a second to see that the recovery crew - or doctors, whoever - had not bothered to even give him a hospital gown for his recovery. He hadn't appeared to noticed. In fact, despite the apparent ease he had talking with her, upon closer inspection, she could see that it was draining him. "Well, we can talk later, you need your rest." She got up to leave. "Give Asuka my regards. And... give her my thanks." He said from the bed, looking young and fragile under the fluorescent lighting. "Your thanks?" "For killing the Angel. It was her, you know. She's really got fire. Not like I do. Once, maybe, but that day's gone now. Sooner or later... what it will... come to." "Umm, sure. And thank you, Goku, for fighting it." He was already asleep. --- "Me?? Why that... insensitive JERK!" "But it's true, Asuka." "How DARE he! This is the last insult!" Misato had tried, in a peaceful manner, to relay most of Goku's message. Asuka didn't appear happy about his praise and thanks, quite the opposite in fact. She was seething with anger the minute Misato mentioned his name, and hadn't backed down yet. "Charity from that little upstart, thinks he so smart... OH! I don't need his bleeding-heart sympathy!!" "ASUKA!" "What!" Misato forced herself to calm down. "He was being honest. There was no way just one or two people could have taken that Angel down. He needed your help and you did kill it. He is honestly thankful. You should go see him." "I don't think so, Misato. He should be coming to see me. After all, I did save his worthless hide." Misato sighed. She seemed to have been doing better when Goku had talked and trained with her, but with him in the hospital Asuka was becoming unbearable, snapping at anybody who so much as said hello. Even Hikari was frightened of her, asking what was wrong. Of course Misato couldn't divulge a complete list of the events that had led up to this... but now the damage had been done. Asuka stormed into her room and slammed the door shut behind her. This was a little hard because she didn't have much stopping room, and the door was a sliding one, but she managed. Once inside, she stood in the middle of the room, motionless except for a slight tremor that ran up and down her hands like water. She seemed to be trying to contain whatever it was that was inside her, but it was gaining the advantage. As the seconds ticked by, the tremors ran over a larger and larger part of her body, until she was shaking from head to toe. Several minutes had passed, then Asuka's grip finally came undone. She threw herself down on her bed with a call of primal fear and grief. She couldn't let it change her, hurt her... couldn't let her guard slip, but it was just so much pain... too much to hold... On her bed, Asuka burst into tears, not caring who heard, just trying to tie off some of her emotions before she lost control at a crucial time. Lost control... she couldn't every loose control again. Lives were at stake. Misato looked up as she heard a 'thump' and the sound of someone wailing like there was no tomorrow. "I don't like this one bit. She's been acting strange ever since Unit-03..." Misato trailed off into another can of Yebusi. A semi-ordinary day at the Katsuragi apartment. --- Rei stepped slowly into her room, almost wandering. The pain in her limbs would have dropped a normal person, but she was still mobile, just not comfortable. She placed her bag of school material on the floor at the end of her bed, then sat on the bed, staring at the wall. Several moments of silence followed as she failed to make a single sound, save for the gentle sigh of her breath. Inside, a conversation of sorts was slowly forming like clouds gathering before a storm. _Who is Goku Takagi?_ _Toji Suzuhara, pilot of Unit-03_ _Pilot of Unit-03._ _The pilot of Unit-03 was injured and is in the hospital._ _The pilot of Unit-03 could have been killed, but he survived._ _The second pilot of Unit-03._ _Goku Takagi is injured and in the hospital._ Had Rei believed in curses, she would have had no doubt that a curse shrouded all who piloted the black Evangelion. This time things should have been different. The successful defeat of an Angel was a good thing, but the commander was unhappy about the mission somehow. _Takagi was a nice person. Suzuhara was a nice person._ _Two people hurt by Unit-03._ It didn't fit that Takagi would pilot the Eva in the first place. He wasn't a pilot, he worked on the Evas. She had seen his face once, buried underneath a protective hat in the cage that housed Unit-00. Like a ghost, he had wandered right into the job of piloting Unit-03, taken up the reins, and summarily ended up in the hospital. Unit-01 was still locked up, no one was allowed to activate it. _Goku Takagi._ _Who was Goku Takagi?_ _A friend? What is a friend?_ He taught her how to fight, how to move faster than the eye could see. He knew things about the Eva that Rei herself didn't know. He threw himself into the task with abandon. Training her and Asuka, fighting the Angel. _Something is wrong._ Something felt terribly wrong, but she could find no reason for the feeling, for the sudden emotion that wasn't quite an emotion. A feeling of needing to do something, but unable to remember what or why. A premonition without origin. A sense of dread. Goku Takagi. --- Goku shrugged into his school shirt with a sour expression on his face. NERV security had been crawling all over - and in some cases, in - his apartment, and Misato and the rest of the pilots were always hanging around. Honestly, it seemed like they were afraid he would suddenly be kidnapped by aliens, or something similarly ridiculous. He got out of the hospital after six days of rest and painkillers, then had come home to find his apartment spotless. For some reason, he had expected to leave some sort of minor legacy behind - even if in the form of a dusty room. But now, it was like NERV was chewing through every part of his life, including bits he didn't even know existed, and even sifting through the lives of his late parents. In Goku's lone opinion, like a bunch of termites. After another week of being bored to sleep on a daily basis in his classroom, Goku abruptly decided it was time for a vacation. Since going against NERV regs was highly placed on his list of things to do (mostly because of the recent privacy intrusion his employers had engaged in, but more especially because it was fun), he thought he should go and see Shinji. Visit, even if he had only barely met the pilot face to face before. It would be nice to get to know the other male member of the four-child team of madness(1). He packed quickly and left the apartment without a look back - NERV would keep an eye on it while he was gone. Now, getting out town might be a tad hard, but assuming he had no reason to drive Shinji nuts by ranting about all sorts of weird Eva trivia that only an engineer would understand, there was no reason for the spooks in nicely pressed blue suits to stop him. Minutes later, Goku was walking quickly through Tokyo-3, trying to stay calm and telling himself that he needed the exercise. After six days in a horizontal position, he felt a little weak and his movements were hesitant, but he was sure it would pass with good exercise. He kept his eyes pointed at the ground as well, trying to ignore the volume of construction going on all over the city as a result of a 3-Eva team against a massive Angel downtown. Well, it wasn't really downtown, but Goku took precautions to avoid it anyway. "Hey! Goku, you moron!" Which was probably why Asuka spotted him. "Hello, Ms. Red Devil."(2) Asuka was sprinting toward him from just up the block, coming from the arcade up the hill. Goku took a second to lament the fact that the hill had a very minor slope - too low to look up the short summer skirt Asuka wore - before he remembered that Asuka should have been in school. "Fancy meeting you here, Mr. High-and-Mighty." "Shouldn't you be in school?" She gave Goku a disdainful look. "It's Saturday you idiot. Where are you going?" _Change the subject... change the subject..._ "How's your hand feeling?" "I'LL be FINE. Where do you think you're going?" "I should be back in a few days. Rei will be on alert. Oh, and thanks for taking out the Angel, that was a work of genius." If looks alone could kill, Asuka wouldn't need Unit-02 to take down an Angel with Goku's lines. "I can't believe you did that you little TRAMP!" "What?" Asuka pulled back a fist, starting to shake from anger. "Hey! I'm just tellin' it like it is. I would've been killed in there if it wasn't for you." "... So you say." Asuka made a visible effort to relax. Outside, Goku remained calm and slightly wary, but inside he was surprised. Asuka's quick temper seemed to have been cooled a _lot_ since he last saw her. _Maybe that did some good after all..._ "Where _are_ you going?" "To say hello to Shinji. I have a few days off coming, and I figure I might as well say hello." "And beat him up too?" Goku grinned. "Only if he wants me to." "Watch yourself, Goku." Another internal reflection took place. She had never called him his name unless partially delusional at the time. "I'll tell him you saved the world and said hi. Later, Asuka." Goku turned and started walking away, proud of himself, and very happy for Asuka - not being a bitch to him and all - but was still ready to run in case she went berserk and tried to flatten him with a skyscraper or something from behind. To his (very minor) disappointment, no acts of unreasonable violence were rent upon his body, only a warm, gentle breeze. Wind blowing away the last word Asuka said before she jogged back up the hill she had come down... "Shinji..." --- Goku thought this was funny. The place Shinji had decided he would spend his time was at a remote school in the northern part of Japan. It was a small building in a valley deep under forest cover, with the bunking houses nearby. Peaceful, quiet, and surrounded by what had to be half of NERV security and JSSDF forces. Ridiculous was more like it. They had enough military hardware stashed here to start World War III and all because of a frightened child who could control the most powerful weapon ever devised by man. Just a weapon three hundred miles away, locked two thousand meters underground. Maybe 'stupid' would fit better, this was all governmental after all. At least the JSSDF officers were nice enough to escort him down the only road, then disappear out of view. Just thinking about the number of eyes watching him there was creepy. That is, until he met Shinji. --- Shinji was the kind of person Rei would be if her near-emotionless state was just a mask to cover the fear and pain and anger of being an Eva pilot; being used by the only person you trusted. Shinji was a Rei with a lot of pent-up emotions... only male with brown hair and normal eyes. In fact, Goku could have sworn the two shared some uncanny similarity in their looks. Shinji was an only child, wasn't he? After getting his things settled in and papers fixed up nicely for his 'vacation', he made his way to Shinji after class. "Shinji Ikari?" The young Eva pilot was on a bench outside, enjoying the cooling air before fall nipped at the trees, preparing to eat lunch. The class had a sort of nature walk to go on after lunch, so Goku figured he would have some time to talk to Shinji. A pair of brown eyes swiveled slowly to look at the interruption. "Yes?" "I'm Goku Takagi. How are doing?" Well, this felt strange. Not entirely unexpected, but strange nonetheless. "I'm fine." "You don't look it." "I don't?" "You should have a little more meat on those bones, boy." Goku said with a slight smile. Actually, Shinji was in okay shape, but Goku was fishing desperately for an opening. The boy didn't like to say much. "Oh." _Greeeaaat. I've always wondered what it was like to pull teeth._ "Shinji, I'm... I feel I need to talk to you about something. It's something I'm not supposed to talk about, at all." "I... I don't want to." So, he suspected. "I'm not talking about that, not yet. I am allowed to talk to you about whatever, but it just has to be between us." "That's what all the soldiers are for." "Yeah, they're all over the place. Desecrating such a beautiful place. Let's not talk about evil things, let us just enjoy this place for a while." Shinji looked at him curiously for a moment before answering. "Okay." --- "I like it when you can almost see the seasons change right before you." Goku said pleasantly. They were out on a nearby trail, military officers moving in the brush a few hundred meters distant, the class dozens of meters ahead, being quiet for a change. "Yes, it's very pretty. The colors of the trees changing, the wind." "The winds grow cold, stroke the trees, the limbs and leaves that sigh and rustle at the change." Goku looked at Shinji. "Remind you of anything in particular?" "No. I've always loved places like this, out of the cities. Here where the water is still clean and there's something worth protecting." "That's a strange thing coming from you." "Why?" "A person who doesn't have much self-worth and hates what has created him doesn't seem likely to enjoy a place like this. The line between life and death, between vitality and decomposition is thin indeed. One day a rabbit prancing around, eating foliage here and there, watching the sun, the next a body, to return to the earth, to feed the other creatures. An animal here, it gets a broken leg, it usually dies. Harsh. A very, very harsh world." Shinji was silent for a minute, glancing at Goku from time to time as they walked on slowly. "Who are you?" "The pilot of Unit-03." Shinji froze. --- "Why?" "I knew how, I had the goods. Besides, there seems to be nothing I wouldn't do to help the commander. I tell you, your father worries me a lot, Shinji." Shinji kept his eyes away from Goku, looking out over the blanket of trees below them. The whole group had loosely broken up after another fifteen minutes of hiking, where the air had gotten cold. They had stopped around this large hill with trees up its side, but no trees at the peak, and no trees around the base. The three instructors along with the group had been pointing out the varying foliage and ways the animals in the area build their habitats to cope with the situation. "He worries you?" "Doesn't he worry you too?" "No. Father... he may be a bad person, but what can he do to the rest of the world?" Goku facefaulted. "Shinji! That man runs NERV! Do you have any idea what he can do with three fully functioning Evas at his fingertips?!" "Yes I do." _Okay, stupid question_. "And you think he's just going to get rid of the Angels. Whoever has the guts to do what he does is either insane or has something even bigger in the works. He knows stuff the rest of us don't. Stuff NERV will kill to keep out of our hands." "It's called 'Top Secret', Goku." "Why would a man need the power to destroy this world?" Neither had an answer. Both looked below. The animals used the forested area for protection, hiding inside it, forming a rough ring about the main hill. Since no predators had any interest in going up over a hill merely to traverse the distance across the small valley, the mostly stayed away from the area unless hunting. And if they smaller animals were flushed out of cover, they could move in a ring, always one step ahead of their pursuers. "Maybe.... Maybe it's just the way things are." --- The darkness was all-inclusive, dominating, inescapable. KIHL: Are you truly aware of the price of failure, Ikari? SEELE-2: You should have been removed from your position long ago. SEELE-3: Mistakes do not go unforgiven in front of this council. IKARI: I see nothing wrong with my decision. Shortly, all that we have prepared for will come to pass. SEELE-6: You are treading thin ice, Ikari. KIHL: We do not tolerate LIES! SEELE-4: Be ready, Ikari. Be ready for when the time is at hand. SEELE-2: When out time is at hand. IKARI: I will. The monoliths vanished almost as one, leaving only Kihl and Ikari. KIHL: I sincerely hope so, Ikari. Then the commander was alone. Silence reigned for short seconds. IKARI: No need to worry.