Gendo Story Time 1.2

Gendo sat on his haunches awkwardly but calmly, his eyes centered on Unit-01's impassive face. A giant metal hand was frozen in place above his head, shielding him from fallen steel columns that had heavily dented the walkway after their brief free-fall. He mouthed something silently.

In the background technicians were hurriedly speaking over the intercoms:

"The Eva Moved! What's going on?" the first yelled.

"It broke the left arm restraint!" the second responded with a voice steeped in disbelief.

Gendo carefully came to his feet, ducking under the frozen hand of the giant, and moved to pull Ritsuko up. Shinji's head was buried, somewhat comically he noted, into Captain Katsuragi's chest. The moment passed and the two shifted as Shinji craned around to see what had happened.

Ritsuko desperately wanted to understand. "This is impossible, Gendo…" forgetting her station for a moment she pulled herself into him, "It didn't even have an entry plug inserted!"

Misato loosened her grip on Shinji and stared at the Eva. "It worked without an interface… or was it, was it protecting him?"

She looked between her friend Ritsuko and the stoic elder Ikari. Her belief in the mission, and their leader, surging.

"We can do it."

Shinji heard Misato's words and pushed himself free, still shaken, but able to stand.

Gendo straightened, maintaining one arm around Ritsuko's waist as he pushed his glasses back into place with a finger of his other hand.

"Ready the Eva, we launch at once."

user, I don't know either. I'm scared.

Normal-dad Gendo is freaking me the fuck out.

Moar!!!

***Preparations.***

"Captain, take my son to the command deck," Gendo ordered as he pivoted himself around, pulling Ritsuko with him. "Dr. Akagi will escort me to the entry plug."

He had let go of her waist and started walking towards the opposite exit when his son shouted out, "Father! Wait! I don't understand what's going on!"

Gendo stopped with a sharp click of his heel and turned his head just enough to answer.

"You will soon. Captain," he shot a determined look at her over his shoulder, "Move." Ritsuko, meanwhile, quickened her pace to catch up to the Commander. He was already halfway through the exit door.

Misato grabbed Shinji's hand and tugged at him authoritatively. "Come with me Shinji, you can see everything from upstairs."

His weak protests were quickly drowned out by the resumed intercom chatter as the maintenance crews took over preparing for the Eva, which included draining the utility reservoir. Gendo and Ritsuko stepped out of the Eva's cage just as torrents of red fluid began rushing from escape hatches dozens of meters below them.

The roaring sound of multiple waterfalls was deafening, preventing a frustrated Ritsuko from being able to question the commander of NERV until they had at last entered an elevator and the doors had closed behind them.

"Gendo, what is going on!?" she demanded, poking a finger into his chest. He slumped just a bit, resting his back against the elevator wall. He didn't even have a chance to respond before her hands were clenched back in her lab coat pockets and her mini-tirade continued. "How was that even possible? How did Unit-01 move? Why is Shinji even here if he's not piloting? We talked about this! What's going on?!"

All the while Ritsuko was scanning his face carefully for the tics and tells she had divined over the years in his normally implacable façade. With each bulleted question she was more and more shocked to not see his usual detached, cold stare - that brutal, condescending stare - he almost looked, tired?

"Ritsuko…" he began, one glove hand going up to his beard, pulling down on his cheeks, "I haven't had time to explain anything to you." He looked at her and she straightened, hands still buried protectively in her lab coat as the elevator's floor-marker clicked with each ascended floor.

"Then explain!"

He stepped forward aggressively, shocking her, and she quickly tried to pull her hands out of her pockets but couldn't quite get them out before he was pressed against her, one arm wrapped strongly around her back and shoulder while the other held the back of her head. For the briefest moments she panicked, thinking, given his unpredictable behavior, that he had snapped and might hurt her.

Gendo, on the other hand, had carefully noted the position of the elevator's security camera when they had boarded and his face was now on the other side of Ritsuko's head, obscuring his lips as he whispered directly into her ear.

"I need your help. Instrumentality is a lie. The old men are wrong."

He didn't have time to say anything else before the elevator chimed and he released her, moving through the opening doors with a brisk energy that belied the earlier weakness he had shown her.

Ritsuko was left frozen for a moment, the hairs on her neck standing up, before she gathered her wits and finally freed her hands from her pockets, rushing out of the lift to follow the commander's confident pace.

She realized they were on the pilots' level where they scrubbed-in for deployment. He's serious, she thought, he's really doing this. They passed the showers and came to the enclosed hallway that led to the entry plug's gantry.

"Commander, you don't have a plug suit," she chided, "Or A-10 connectors."

He nodded, pausing again before entering the deployment corridor and reaching up to tug on his lapel. The doctor's eyes went wide as he unzipped his outer jacket and swiftly shrugged it off.

"Gendo, what are you…" she tripped on her words.

He smiled ruefully, removing his pants now, "Aren't you always saying you wish we didn't make pilots wear plug suits?" His pants were off and he was working on his shoes now. "To lower the mental interference between pilot and Eva?"

Her day had run the gamut of terrifying to surreal in less than an hour and all she could do was nod, reciting her own arguments: "The A-10 connectors help, but direct contact of skin-to-LCL has always been shown to be… best."

Gendo was standing naked now, looking at her expectantly. "Towel?"

"What?" she managed.

"Towel," he said, pointing behind her at the bin of stacked, white towels emblazoned with the red NERV logo.

She goggled at him, reaching over and handing it to him.

"I'll take it off when I'm in the plug," he assured her, misunderstanding her halting actions for worry about his possible synchronization rate. Ritsuko, meanwhile, was dealing with the fact that she had so casually gotten to see her lover in the nude, at work. It was incredibly distracting. A not insignificant portion of her brain was replaying every intimate moment they had spent together – with the lights always off – and wondering… her lab coat buzzed suddenly as her cell phone went off, completely derailing her line of thought.

"Akagi." She answered tersely.

"Ritsuko! Shinji is up here with me on the bridge, where are you? Where's the commander?" Misato asked hurriedly on the other side of the line.

"We're in the pilots' prep room," Ritsuko answered. She could hear her subordinate Maya asking Shigeru to do something with the comms in the background. "The commander is about to head to the entry plug."

Misato was quick to respond, "Good, OK, hold on, the Vice Commander wants to speak with the Commander, here." The phone scrabbled its sound as it switched hands and Ritsuko thumbed the speaker-phone button as Gendo finished securing the towel around his waist.

"Ikari? Are you there?" the older voice asked. Ritsuko had expected Fuyutsuki to be acting a little more surprised or concerned, but his tone was almost curious.

"Yes," Gendo replied, invoking the magic words he had saved for just such an occasion, "Fuyutsuki, I'm adjusting the scenario."

A moment passed.

"Understood."

What. Ritsuko mutely handed Gendo the phone when he reached an outstretched hand towards her. He turned off the speaker and made the conversation one-sided.

"Turn off the entry-plug cameras. Leave the audio. I'm going in without a plug suit."

The absolute madman

He’s doing it!!!

"Ah." Fuyutsuki replied simply. Gendo heard a finger-snapping sound in the background as his friend got the attention of the bridge personnel. "Turn off the entry-plug cameras," he heard Fuyutsuki relay to a chorus of crisp acknowledgements.

"Done."

"Good, thank you."

He heard Fuyutsuki breathe in carefully, ready to ask the question he had put off, "Are you certain you know what you're doing?" The Vice Commander had asked quietly so the regular staff couldn't hear.

"Yes. I'm certain."

"Well…" Fuyutsuki trailed off, "Say 'hello' for me?"

Gendo took the coded question as an acknowledgement that his sudden change in the scenario was acceptable despite the years of plotting they had both put into this day. He'd always appreciated the good-natured pliability of his old mentor and today the old man had earned a new place in his respect.

"Mmm."

Gendo terminated the call and handed Ritsuko back her phone. He noted the gears turning in her head since she had finally had a few moments to think independently instead of having to play catch-up with his off-script actions up to now.

"Commander, you know as well as I do that Unit-01 only has an activation possibility of 0.000000001%." She was firm in trying to dissuade him one last time. "And that was with your son!" She dug in the point. "Your chances are zero percent!"

He silently reached down and picked up the neatly folded bundle of clothes he had left on the floor, pushing them into her arms. "I know."

He was still naked, she noted. Was he doing this just to distract her? No, she decided. Gendo always accomplished multiple goals with singular actions. Was he toying with her?

"This isn't a game, Gendo. You've sat in that chair a hundred times before and nothing has ever come of it. Not even a blip on the psychograph. Shinji was our best shot. Even Rei was always just a backup. A maybe."

By the time she had invoked his son's name Gendo was following the same pattern he had been since she'd met up with him in the Eva's cage: moving. He started walking away towards the exit of the corridor, towards the entry-plug on the other side.

"You still have them if I fail," he tossed back, distancing himself from her at an even pace.

"That's not the point!"

As he neared the door he could hear more chatter from the technicians prepping on the other side.

"Gendo!" she called, "It isn't going to accept you! She isn't going to accept you!" He could hear the hurt in her voice as she emphasized Yui's presence in Unit-01's core. Gendo accepted that he himself had bred that insecurity in Ritsuko through years of careful manipulation. It plagued her.

Like mother like daughter.

He sighed, palming the doorframe as he stopped. He didn't look back as he spoke.

"Her wishes are irrelevant. We'll talk when it's over."

Ritsuko was taken aback by his passive dismissal of Yui. He'd never done that before. Disparaging Yui was verboten; it was the surest way to shut Gendo down and make him withdrawal. She had gone to great lengths to never make that mistake but had done it just now in an attempt to, what, goad him?

He could feel her glare burning into his back, but another distant blast reminded him they were out of time and he needed to do what he had come to do.

Gendo walked through the door, leaving Ritsuko behind.

"Damn you, Ikari."

Is it over?

I read ahead, this was like the last bit before it goes Nobody Dies dumb.

fanfiction.net/s/13179664/1/Evangelion-Rebuild-a-Legend

I dont.know what the fuck is this but i'm pretty sure that i need more of this in my life

***2015 A.D.***

***Contact.***

On the command deck the team of NERV personnel were rushing to complete their pre-startup tasks. Vice Commander Fuyutsuki, standing straight with hands clasped behind his back, was watching a monitor displaying the short gantry-bridge leading to the exposed entry-plug sticking out of Eva Unit-01's exposed armor.

Around him the status updates poured in, along with a considerable amount of cross-talk between the hundreds of technicians and soldiers preparing for the impending battle.

"Third cooling cycle, complete."

"Flywheel rotation, shutdown. Unlocking the connectors."

A voice confirmed: "No problems with the auxiliary power."

Fuyutsuki noted that First Lieutenant Maya Ibuki had taken over for Dr. Akagi in her absence. The mousy young woman had grown on him over the past while and would've made an ideal student if he had still been in the academic world. She was usually shy but spoke confidently into the mic; he noted that when she wasn't face-to-face with live people her communication was much more direct.

Suddenly her face went tomato red and he knew why. Gendo Ikari, the unflappable, unknowable, all-powerful leader of NERV, was striding towards the empty entry-plug clad only in a white towel.

Misato was the first to recover her composure: "Maya, is that Commander Ikari?"

Fuyutsuki smiled, unclasping his hands, as Ibuki responded. "Yes Captain, it's Commander Ikari. I thought Rei or…" she paused, struggling to remember the name of the young man standing next to Misato, "Shinji would be piloting?"

Shinji for his part was just gawking at the awkward imagery on the screen, but his father quickly disappeared inside the hatch, helping the personnel refocus on their myriad tasks.

The Vice Commander answered for Misato. "Commander Ikari has adjusted Eva Unit-01's core to accept himself as a pilot." He worked up some reasoning on the spot, relishing the chance to improvise. "Given Ms. Ayanami's injuries, and the younger Mr. Ikari's overall newness to NERV, he felt it was the most expedient choice."

Maya, being Dr. Akagi's understudy, was more than familiar enough with how the Evangelion unit really worked to easily ferret out the lie, but kept her head together enough not to contradict the Vice Commander Fuyutsuki out loud.

Misato, on the other hand, had no such sense of self-preservation, let alone a filter. "I thought that only children born after Second Impact could pilot the Eva?" She patted Shinji on the shoulder to emphasize her point.

"Shutdown signal plug extraction complete," Maya noted. Another voice in the cage area updated her: "Unlocking spinal conductive network. Prepare for connection."

Shinji, at the same time, had finally figured out what the others were talking about. "Wait! You mean I'm supposed to pilot one of those things!?" he cried out in disbelief. He looked between Misato and the Vice Commander for confirmation.

"Not today," Kozo Fuyutsuki noted calmly.

The larger monitor in front of them switched to an enhanced zoom-in of the Eva's neck just as the entry-plug was inserted, sliding in smoothly and then drilling itself down into the giant's spine. Shinji closed his mouth instead of asking his next question, absorbed by the strange sight.

"Insertion completed."

A medley of voices updated the crew and the monitor switched to a graphical display of the entry-plug and its virtual position.

"Prime sync established. Psychological corruption values a non-factor. No corruption detected."

Maya's hand tensed at hearing the last phrase, there should have been some sort of residual corruption - some sort of thought noise. "Confirm," she interrupted the sequence, "No corruption detected?"

A moment passed and the psychograph came up on the monitor showing Gendo Ikari's baseline brain activity. "Correction, corruption is plus-01 and minus-02. Within optimal range."

Maya breathed again, glad that the monitoring equipment was working. She had worried that something had gone wrong. Misato, meanwhile, had not forgotten the lack of answer to her previous question and had left Shinji to step up next to Fuyutsuki.

"Sir," she asked in a low voice, "With all due respect, I was under the impression, again, that only the children could do this. Was I misinformed?"

Fuyutsuki considered how to respond, especially with the bridge crew maintaining an open ear hoping to also find out what was going on. Surprisingly he didn't have to provide an answer, as Dr. Akagi rose up from one of the smaller maintenance lifts and announced her presence.

"Commander Ikari is an exception," she said flatly. She was still royally pissed off at her erstwhile lover, but she wasn't about to allow any discord to infect her peers while an honest-to-god Angel was breathing down their necks on the surface.

Kozo played along. "Indeed. Commander Ikari has a plan." He refocused her. "Captain Katsuragi, we need tactical options. Immediately."

Misato remembered herself and her job, moving to a console and querying the situation with military precision. Shinji watched screens flicker to life as she ran multiple scenarios as Vice Commander Fuyutsuki moved behind her to assess her work.

"Locking down interior array." Disembodied voices continued their updates.

"Roger, starting first contact."

"Flooding entry plug."

Shinji reacted at that, "Flooding it?"

Ritsuko looked over at him and waved away his concern: "Don't worry about it, it's a hyper-oxygenated liquid. Commander Ikari will breathe it like air and it'll provide oxygen directly to his lungs. He's used to it."

Over the radio they heard Gendo Ikari volunteer an unbidden: "I'm fine."

"Oh, ah." Shinji meekly nodded. Ritsuko was standing over Maya's shoulder now watching the connection results come in.

"Main power source connection complete."

"Roger."

Here it is, Ritsuko thought, the moment of truth.

"Starting second contact."

The psychograph spiked as the nerve connections began mapping themselves from beast to human and human to beast. She moved her hand across from Maya's to the button that would immediately abort the interface attempt to prevent any damage to Gendo should the connection fail.

A burst of noise, like a chorus of muted screams, flowed across the connections before stabilizing.

It worked.

She laughed, letting out a sharp, incredulous sound. The startup sequence simply continued, ignoring her revelation.

"Initializing interface."

"A-10 nerve connection normal. LCL ionization levels normal." The sequences of successes became a litany.

"Set Japanese as the linguistic norm for cognitive interface," Ritsuko ordered, evaluating the progress. "No problems detected with initial contacts."

Fuyutsuki smiled to himself while Shinji watched the colorful displays shifting to firm all-green status updates.

"Communication lines open," Maya confirmed. "Points on the list up to 1405, all clear. Measuring synapse levels…" Maya paused, double-checking the numbers as Dr. Akagi leaned in over her shoulder.

They blinked in tandem.

An astounded Ritsuko confirmed what everyone else could clearly see on the monitor.

"Synchronization rate: 68.8%!"

Like, everyone has insane plot armor dumb, or sappy dumb, or fan service overboard dumb?

68.8%?

I was expecting Yui to violently spit him out. I am disappoint.

t. Shinji's experience .

***2015 A. D.***

***In the Belly of the Beast.***

Gendo sat in the entry-plug with hands resting in the feedback controllers in front of him. He gave the twin triggers a couple of experimental squeezes as he listened to the voices bouncing around the tight cabin space.

He noted, for reference, that if he was going to continue piloting that he'd need a larger seat. The one he was in was obviously designed for a teenager.

"Flooding entry-plug." He heard a disembodied voice say.

The surge of LCL swam up around him and he quickly inhaled the oxygenated liquid. It tingled as it filled his lungs and he momentarily gagged despite the years of practice, spilling some into his stomach. His nose crinkled: it smelled like blood. That was new.

The liquid ionized with a buzzing sound, turning clear instead of its natural off-putting orange color.

Shinji was asking Ritsuko about the LCL in the background. "I'm fine," he said aloud, practicing speaking through the liquid medium.

He closed his eyes and waited for the second contact phase, knowing it would occur any moment. Either it would fail and Unit-01 would reject him, or…

Gendo?

A thrumming sound filled his ears for a split second before the entry-plug dissolved in a burst of fractal octagons. His vision collapsed into a white, endless expanse that reminded him, with momentary unease, of his post-Third Impact existence. Then swatches of color appeared. Green and blue began painting themselves into shapes. Grass. Sky. The white left behind as clouds.

He was suddenly standing outside of his old university, and there she was, just as he remembered her.

"Gendo?" Yui Ikari asked, not quite sure of what she was seeing.

"Hello, Yui." He had practiced this a thousand times, waiting for this moment. "We need to talk."

I am also a fan of egg yolks a food coloring!

Yui's the only one who doesn't betray him

***2015. A.D. - Suspended***

***You and I.***

They were standing about a meter apart, her white plug suit shimmering in the dappling sunlight of their shared mindscape. His breath hitched unexpectedly.

"Gendo? How are you here?" Yui Ikari asked tentatively.

Now he knew, actually knew, exactly how Shinji must've felt seeing him for the first time after so long. His gut churned, chilling the warmth their reunion had begun to fill him with. He had so much to regret. She looked radiant, beautiful - the same.

Her short brown hair was clipped up in the prototype A-10 connectors, her suit fitting her lithe curves perfectly. Motherhood had done nothing to diminish her splendor. And she was young, frozen in time, looking exactly as she had when she'd left them.

When she allowed herself to be consumed by the beast.

"I'm piloting Unit-01," he responded. Gendo had practiced dozens, no, hundreds of different scenarios involving a hypothetical reunion with his Yui. They had spent part of a lifetime together; he knew her. She knew him. He knew her better now, and in the end he had decided to be direct with her, brutal, if he had to be.

"That's not possible." She sounded worried.

"Oh?" He stepped forward.

She shook her head, wrapping her arms around her torso protectively and backed up just as much as he had moved forward. The plug suit was more akin to latex than the newer materials they used for the childrens' and he had to consciously push away the mental distraction of her breasts lifting up in her arms.

"No, you're not him. You're just another… another construct I'm making up," she bitterly admitted to herself.

"Yui…"

"No! Not again!" She took another step backwards but was unable to take her eyes off his face. They flickered back and forth between him and the scenery. He could tell she didn't want him to be an illusion but her time in the core of Unit-01 must have already begun eroding her ego-barriers.

It was time to snap her out of it.

"You think I'm something your own mind is producing, based on your memories of me?" Gendo summarized her panicking thoughts aloud.

She nodded uncertainly. He frowned.

"After your contact experiment, after you were absorbed into Unit-01, I abandoned Shinji. I sent him away. He grew up without me. I burned your pictures. He doesn't even know what you look like."

Her mouth hung open.

"I tried to bring you back countless times. I dredged your DNA from the entry-plug, I tried synthesizing the missing parts with the Second Angel's." He took a breath. "I created a vessel for Lilith's soul and raised her as an obedient tool to control Third Impact."

His hard gaze bore into her like a drill.

"Does any of that sound like something your own mind would make up?"

She roared at him, slamming into him with both fists pounding on his chests. "You bastard! Y-you… utter bastard!"

He took her abuse, standing there with both arms dropped limply at his side as she grabbed his collar: "You monster! I trusted you!" Her eyes were tearing up. "I trusted you with our son!"

"I know."

She slapped him.

"I would've died for him!"

She slapped him again, harder.

"I did die!"

"I know." What else could he say?

She sobbed, wrapping her arms around him and burying her head into his chest. He carefully put his arms around her. "How are you here?"

"Yui…" He moved his hands to her shoulders and pushed her away enough to look into her face. "I'm piloting Unit-01 because none of our plans worked. Will work. Even yours."

Her eyes darted around his face, taking in the changes she hadn't noticed. "Gendo… what? Since when do you grow out a beard?" She put a hand on his chest, taking in the loosely-done jacket. "I don't…" She knew she was confused and tried to solve her own mental blocks. "It's only been… a few weeks. You said Shinji… grew up? And you, you look…"

Her fountain of confusion trailed off as Gendo lifted his gloved hands in front of himself, picking off the right glove with his left hand, letting it drop to the pre-Second Impact grass as he demonstrated a burned and scarred hand to his wife.

"Yui. You've been in Unit 01's core for almost 11 years."

Her eyes went blank briefly before she dropped to the ground, an anguished cry descending into sobs of grief.

Gendo knelt down next to her, pulling her into a simple embrace. Her body shook, wracking itself at intervals. He looked up at the too-blue sky and saw the distortions of her compromised A.T. field mapping themselves across the pseudo-reality.

He stretched out his own A.T. field to smooth the cracks and hopefully prolong the temporary moment he had stolen during the Eva's second contact phase. Their souls were bridged for however brief a moment in the real world, but it should be time enough.

Yui's breathing calmed and she looked up and around in surprise. "How did you do that?" she asked in wonder, "Did you just manipulate my A.T. field?"

"Mmm, yes. I learned how a long time ago."

She shifted her legs, unfolding them out so she could sit back on her hands so she could see him, really see him.

"Are you really my Gendo?"

He thought about how to answer, and decided to stand up, stretching out a hand to pull her up. "I remember a bench over by the old wisteria," he noted with a rare touch of nostalgia for the campus, "Come. I'll explain everything."

She took his hand.

They walked over to the bench the shared memories of their university days had provided and he motioned for her to sit before he joined her. The sun was strong on his face and he took off his glasses, leaning back and closing his eyes, relishing the simple rightness of the temporary paradise he had entered.

Yui, as always, was impatient.

"What happened to you, Gendo?"

"I died, Yui. We all died." His eyes were open now, staring into the azure expanse. "Except for you."

Her next question died on her lips because Gendo hadn't stopped speaking.

"SEELE initiated Third Impact, using our son, and the whole of humanity became united in Instrumentality. All according to plan." He paused, clenching his fists. "You, well, you went off adrift in Unit-01. All according to your plan." She had the decency to turn away in shame.

"Shinji starved to death, alone, on the dead world we left behind."

She gasped in horror and dared to look back at Gendo. She could feel his simmering anger, constrained and controlled, but she could feel his emotions rippling across her A.T. field. How was he doing it? Abruptly the uncomfortable feeling died and his eyes softened.

"Kozo told me why you did it."

"Gendo…" she tried, "They were going to kill me."

"Yes." He acknowledged.

She worked at preempting any argument he might have. "I know what you're going to say, Gendo. That you could've protected me. I know you would've tried. But you of all people should know what resources SEELE could bring to bear." Her resentment and frustration were still fresh. "Even my father…"

Gendo's smile turned predatory. "I'm going to kill your father."

Yui laughed bitterly. "You can't. He's a councilman. He's untouchable!"

"You asked me if I was really your Gendo," he redirected and she nodded uncertainly. He put his glasses back on. "I am. I'm very much the Gendo you used to know. But let me be clear," he had her full attention, "I've already seen the future Yui. Third Impact. Instrumentality. All of it. I lived it. So no. Yui. I am also not the Gendo Ikari you knew."

>She roared at him, slamming into him with both fists pounding on his chests. "You bastard! Y-you… utter bastard!"
>He took her abuse, standing there with both arms dropped limply at his side as she grabbed his collar: "You monster! I trusted you!" Her eyes were tearing up. "I trusted you with our son!"

What does she mean by this? Gendo did nothing wrong.

"How?" she asked, wondering and worried.

He chuckled. "Didn't we practically write the book on applied metaphysics?" It was so strange to be able to talk with her again. "Instrumentality failed. Nothing the old men expected came to pass. Your father, all of them, even Lorenz – they were among the first to disassociate. By the time I became aware of it they were already nothing more than background noise."

He stretched out the light of his soul and she could feel it.

"I spent eternities of real-time in that hellish place. It was meaningless. We were, I suppose you can call it: fading. Cancelling out. Then something changed. Someone came."

"Who?" Yui asked, thinking another soul had reconstructed itself to keep him company.

"At first I thought it was the 17th Angel, Tabris," Gendo expounded, "In our world he had taken the form of a lilin, their word for humans. He was strangely fond of Shinji, actually."

Yui was about to ask after that but he, as had been the case now since he had appeared in front of her, simply kept shrugging off the weight of his future knowledge on her. "It wasn't Tabris, though. He wasn't a child of Lilith or Adam. His Father was another Seed of Life from a world so distant I couldn't fathom the time he had taken to find us."

He paused for a moment, letting it sink in.

"He told me what you had done," he corrected himself, "What you're going to do."

Yui shifted, "Gendo, I…"

He cut her off. "Your plan worked, Yui. You became the living testimony of mankind's brief existence." Gendo pointed at her temple, tapping it gently. "But if you've been questioning your sanity after only eleven years… imagine a million. Imagine four."

Her mouth hung open again in horror as the ramifications slammed home. Yes, she had thought only a month, at the most, had passed and already she was beginning to break down. Eleven years had already passed. The things he had said, the things he knew – it was impossible, but he knew everything she hadn't ever planned to tell him.

"Yes, exactly. You see, Yui, he was a survivor, like me. I'll make his story brief, you may already be guessing:" He noted the tears on the verge of falling down her perfect face.

"His race found Unit-01. A few of their more curious reverse engineered Lilith's flesh and performed their own contact experiments. They met you in its core, but what little remained of your mind was insane and very desperate by then."

He gave her another moment to process this.

"They weren't the first, either. In total your Eva was discovered by at least twelve unique civilizations. And every time the result was the same. They unlocked Lilith's secrets. Then they destroyed themselves. You were an infection, a plague, that swept from world to world like some sort of memetic virus. Did you know there was even one solar system that had a cooperative Seed of Life and Seed of Knowledge? There were even a few that evolved the old-fashioned way without A.T. fields. To some you were a goddess. To others a science project. It didn't matter. You contaminated them. They all found a way to use Unit-01 to bring about their own armageddons. Trillions will die for your… proof of our existence."

She looked like she would vomit.

"Congratulations." He clapped sardonically.

She did.

"So you see, Yui, it isn't so much that I came back to stop the Angels or SEELE. I really came back to stop *you*."

Yui ends every recursion in space though. Checkmate atheists.

There's some room to say it's not completely Yui's call, but EVA 01 does this move every time where it holds them all hostage until Shinji comes back.

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The most meaningful thing to come out of NGE is a cautionary tale about fucking the harem.

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Holy shit he’s gonna murder Yui

This is like when D&D got ahold of GoT and were like “fukkit let’s have Jon kill dany at the end”

2015 A.D.

Launch!

Gendo was barraged by the incomprehensible vocalizations of the bridge staff as the temporary synchronization to Yui's mindscape snapped. He could tell he had, however brief it seemed in real-time, dived as deep into the Evangelion's core as a human possibly could without fully losing oneself. It explained why the rush of voices in the cockpit were difficult to parse, given he was hearing them as though he were essentially Unit-01 itself.

Thankfully, the extreme sense of disconnect began to fade as his baseline human mentality reasserted itself; Ritsuko set the language interface to Japanese. Since his mind had been so highly synced to Unit-01 only moments prior it was like suddenly handing him back a lifeline to his own thoughts. The A-10 driven language interface system was designed to translate his human thoughts and motor-responses to the beasts' instinctual ones. In his case, however, it was showing his mind the way back from beast to man.

"Synchronization rate: 68.8%!"

Good. The instruments hadn't recorded his fleeting foray towards 400% sync territory.

Better: Yui had listened to him, maybe for the first time in her life, but she had listened.

Securing her voluntary cooperation had been a boon; he had developed several contingencies should she be too far gone or simply too stubborn, but this made his new scenario far easier to implement. He had a lot of people to kill: she needn't be one of them.

Indeed, her newfound desire to eventually separate from the Eva's core was the second major victory of his return – the first being able to sync with her Evangelion at all.

Still, the emotional distance between them had grown vast; his fault, her fault, it didn't matter – this deliberate manipulation of his wife's emotions, unthinkable in his first life, would hopefully bear fruit after so many uncountable years of planning.

He was glad.

It was the same feeling he had felt immediately after his soul had merged and rewritten this timeline's Gendo Ikari. When his future self, augmented by Instrumentality, had returned to this time and place.

To anyone else it would have been unnoticeable - a slight defocusing of his eyes right before refocusing on the adjunct military command bridge below. It happened right as the Third Angel made landfall.

He had triumphed against time and heat and entropy. A success fueled by the mass sacrifice of all the future souls bound to Instrumentality, converted to the needful energies designed to rip apart the lower spacial and temporal dimensions as he traveled along the recursing strings of worldlines, searching for the path back to the here and now. The Third Angel's A.T. field, announcing itself again and again with each futile defensive strike by an impotent U.N. military, had blazed like a flaring sun in the echoes of space-time.

In a way, he owed the Third Angel a favor, and he intended to repay.

He had smiled into his steepled hands.

In the present First Lieutenant Ibuki was verifying statuses along with the other technicians. "Harmonics are green. No disturbances."

"Commander Ikari, are you there?" Dr. Akagi asked directly into the main communication channel.

"Yes," he responded crisply, "Continue."

"Roger," Misato replied, "Begin launch preparations!"

He gripped the controls again. It helped to hold something physical. The entry plug had already turned transparent and the view outside of the Eva's flesh was dominated by the large steel plates and screens sliding themselves out of the way in preparation for Unit-01's move to the launching platform.

As a contributing designer to the Evangelion's systems Gendo couldn't help but feel a disrupted sense of placement. The view from within the entry plug was as if he were inside the Eva's gargantuan head, situated behind its eyes but able to see up and through the skull; yet, the entry plug itself was buried deep in its spine and angled towards the imitation-Angel's hidden core. He knew where he was physically in the Eva. Despite the synchronization offsetting his virtual position his simple meat-mind was having difficulty reconciling the physical placement of his body versus what his eyes were lying to him about.

Perhaps he should've considered the virtual-reality headsets that Bethany Base was experimenting with. He dismissed the thought: he knew from past history what would work for the pilots in this timeline, after all. Meanwhile, the support staff continued prepping the Evangelion's launch sequence.

"Disengage primary lock bolts!"

He felt his/Unit-01's shoulders slump down and forward, released from the restraints.

"Disengagement confirmed. Disengaging the umbilical bridge."

The metal walkway began sliding away in front of him.

"Disengage secondary lock bolts!"

The walls too began sliding away as additional bolts and restraints released themselves. He began ignoring the words, engrossed in the feeling of the gigantic armored body sheathing him as it responded to the physical movements around him.

Out of his left eye he could see technicians stationed behind protective barriers taking a moment to stare back in awe as Unit-01 began sliding up and backwards on the rail system leading to the ejector pad.

>Civilizations too weak to defeat Yui

No sympathy. Not cut out for the galactic federation. Anyone ever read Zetsuen no Tempest?

He smirked to himself as he slid to a halt, the ejector restraints latching firmly onto Unit-01's feet, priming for launch.

Showtime.

"Captain Katsuragi," he got her attention, "Tactical?"

She responded quickly over the mic. "Sir. Vice Commander Fuyutsuki and I have both run out the available tactical options. The Angel is almost directly above us in the heart of the city. We can either deploy through B-33 or D34 to bring you within a city block of its current location."

He considered Shinji's initial debut in the original timeline and how the boy had had virtually no time to react before the Angel was on top of him. His son had barely taken a step before falling and having Unit-01's head impaled by a vicious-looking energy lance.

"And the nearest weapons cache?" he asked.

"D36, sir. Maybe C35 depending on how fast we get you up there."

"No, too close," he decided. He felt an obligation not to leave everything up to Yui. Besides, he wasn't fully confident she even could go berserk if it were him piloting and not her beloved son in danger. "Mid to long range options?"

He could hear Fuyutsuki and Katsuragi going back and forth before they reached a new consensus.

"F12 is mid-range Commander, it puts you in the eastern district with an immediate weapons cache. One pallet rifle, multiple magazine stashes." She took a breath. "But sir, it's otherwise flat and exposed."

"Do it," he commanded. Drawing the Angel out of the city-center would make the scenario he had prepared much simpler.

Voices erupted to fulfill his orders: "Launch path clear. All systems green!"

The iterative sound of steel doors sliding open in the shaft above him staccato'd through the Evangelion's frame. The surge of electricity on the ejector pad prickled his skin. The beast's skin. His synchronization rate must have risen a bit higher than its earlier value.

"Are you ready, sir?" Misato had taken charge on the bridge now that options evaluation had ended.

He nodded despite the cameras being disabled and answered clearly. "Of course. Ready for launch."

"We will deal with the angels at last, on our own terms," Fuyutsuki affirmed.

Gendo's lips parted with the barest hint of a Cheshire grin.

Misato completed the build up with the firm command: "Launch!"

Immediately the build-up of electrical energy terminated: the Eva rocketed up the ejection shaft in a wave of tunneling electromagnetism. Gendo was slammed into the back of his seat by the force of several G's, again ruing the fact that the smaller pilot seat couldn't fully cradle his neck. The upwards motion was punctuated by sharp shifts diagonally as he approached the outlying part of the city from below, twisting him hard against the seat's edges.

Abruptly the rocketing motion ended and the Evangelion's head snapped up into a ready position. The bolts at his feet released.

He looked around.

It was past dusk now and the dark encroached from the mountains and hills, dripping through the nearby valleys like black ichor. A smattering of light pollution from the few non-retractable portions of the city spread an uneven, yellowish sheen onto the battlefield.

On the plus side, however, the weapons cache to his right stood ready and open. The false building's height nearly a match for the Eva itself. He reached in and took a pallet rifle larger than a schoolbus, moving a finger over the trigger guard.

"My god!" Ritsuko's voice crackled over the radio. "It's more than working! Look at the control he has!"

Ah. Of course. He thought. I'm displaying too much fine-motor control.

Ibuki supplemented her, "Ma'am, he's holding at 72% sync rate! It's incredible!"

"Captain," he called.

"Yes sir, the Angel is at your 10 o' clock, about 500 meters away," Misato replied helpfully. Just as she finished speaking a dull red glow lit up in the indicated direction.

He took a step forward.

Cheers erupted on the other side of the channel, which turned to worried gasps as he purposefully allowed his control to slip enough to bring the Evangelion to a knee, bracing the ground with Unit-01's left hand as the right splayed out with the gun akimbo. Can't let them think I've actually done this before.

"Father!" he heard Shinji cry out.

"I'm fine," Gendo assured his listeners, bringing the Eva back up to its feet. He began walking, one step after another, letting his arms swing as he made his way towards the red blur of light shifting between the dark and distant structures.

The Third Angel turned past an upraised support building and came into full view. The red light was murkily drifting into the slight haze that had condensed below their knees. The Angel's body was as he remembered it, a headless humanoid padded in places by exoskeletal segments, its large upper frame flat at the neck and the head masks embedded atop the ribcage. The placement of its core was akin to Evangelion Unit-01's, but visible and shining with murderous intent.

It regarded him with eerie calm, squaring its shoulders to his approach and beginning to move away from the city center, up a partially lit highway, towards his position.

"Target sighted!" Misato said loudly, "Designation: Third Angel Sachiel!"

Gendo kept Unit-01 moving forward, ever so slight increasing his pace as he kept his gun trained downwards. Now both Angel and Eva were briskly pacing towards each other. Gendo smiled.

"Engaging target."

He broke into a run, then a sprint. He let the heavy pallet gun pull backwards on his right arm and shifted the Eva's shoulders down.

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The Angel responded in kind, suddenly moving from a simple gait to a terrifying pounding as the street crumpled under each step.

400 meters.

"Captain," he ordered, now at 350 meters, "at 50 meters fire a single volley from a flanking GGM at the target." 300 meters.

"Understood!" she sharply responded; her orders were quickly relayed. 200 meters.

Now both of the Eva's arms were flung back as his speed increased, he flexed his left first, preparing himself.

An eldritch wail erupted at 100 meters from the alien's form just as a halo of un-light began to form above its head. Here it comes, Gendo had a moment to think before a volley of ground-to-ground missiles streaked from behind and slammed into the Angel's A.T. field just as it had begun an aerial jump at its now terrifying speed.

It stumbled. The minor interruption of the small-yield warheads, like a sudden mosquito bite, breaking its concentration just enough to cause the jump to fail.

But Gendo was already there, his left fist cracking into the Angel's face-mask as the Eva roared its approval and the Angel's cry shifted from aggression to anguish. The bony structure cracked, ever so slightly, and it rolled to Gendo's right, dipping its shoulder downwards as its legs shook.

His right arm had already swung upwards into the Angel's midriff, muzzle against silky black flesh. Round after round exploded through the Angel, blowing multiple holes through the abomination even as the Angel's left arm had grabbed Unit-01's head.

The howl shattered reinforced plate-glass windows dozens of meters away.

Gendo IKari battle scene, what in the ever living fuck is this!

Gendo momentarily clutched his head as the painful scream pierced his skull. It was enough time for the Angel to power up its right arm's energy lance, which pulled back like a taut bow-string and then slammed into Unit-01's belly.

He gagged. The pain was incredible. He could already feel a gut-wide bruise forming as the sympathetic response from Unit-01 injured him as well. The gun was depleted and he pulled back, bringing it around to smash against the hold against his head. His left arm shot upwards to grip the Angel's left wrist, squeezing, desperate to get Unit-01's head free.

Two things happened simultaneously.

The Angel's left wrist cracked loudly and fluid spurted out of the Eva's fist, and the Angel's right arm sent another energy lance into his midsection again, forcing Gendo to give up his lunch into the LCL.

Even as his throat constricted and his gut burned Gendo threw himself backwards, getting himself out of range of the Angel's deadly ability. He waved away the disgusting chunks of partially digested food and brought the Eva up to a defensive posture.

The Angel, for its part, didn't immediately pursue, the second face-mask on its front, the uncracked one, twisting in a curious manner to evaluate the damage Unit-01 and the pallet rifle had done to its lower body.

Gendo stepped back, and it stepped forward at the same pace. He repeated the action, drawing the Angel forward from the buildings. It moved at a more sedate pace now, its new injuries showing, but he could already see the wounds beginning to seal themselves off.

"Commander!" the intercom shouted at him, it was Katsuragi, he noted. "Target showing damage to 25% of its body." He grunted. Ibuki's voice came on the line, "Sir, its healing factor has increased since our last measurements from the N2 strike. Estimated 45 seconds to full recovery."

That was fine. "Acknowledged. I'm drawing it out of the city."

"Sir!" Captain Katsuragi confirmed.

Very very untrustworthy bird construct.

He continued his backpedal and the Angel warily kept mirroring his steps as they drew away from the city. He was moving towards the seaside, slowly, but 45 seconds seemed like enough time to reach it.

"Fuyutsuki, prepare for re-engagement."

The older man chuckled, "Just like the old days, then?"

Gendo smiled, enjoying the resurgence of his misspent youth. He had been quite a brawler before Yui had done her best to tame him, and for all of Fuyutsuki's disgust at having to bail him out of jail after more than one street-fight the stone-faced academic had always respected the younger man's instinct for how to end a fight.

His second star pupil was a winner.

Fuyutsuki saw that Gendo was employing his favored move: feinting backwards to pull his opponent towards him. Inertia is a useful tool.

Gendo broadcast under his breath. "And three, two…" then he launched himself forwards at the Angel. It had been expecting an attack but still had the slower reaction time of the two behemoths due to its divided attention on healing and pacing Unit-01. Fuyutsuki had already ordered a wave of ground-to-ground missiles and air-to-surface strikes to focus on the Angel's back and flank, allowing Gendo to land a series of fast punches against the Angel's core.

Renewed cheers and shouts filled his ears from the intercom. He realized, except Fuyutsuki, none of them were even aware their commander could hold his own in a fight. He'd have to bolster their new perspective.

The Eva brought up a leg and kneed the Angel as its closed fists descended on the Angel's shoulders in a quick hammer-blow. It stumbled back and Gendo weaved a bit left, moving in for another flurry of blows.

Then the energy lance slammed into him. Unlike the previous hits, though, this time the piercing beam of hard-light smashed into the side of Unit-01's head.

This is it.

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Gendo pushed the jolt of pain aside and let Unit-01 go limp. Reaching inside his own A.T. field he cut the hardware-based monitoring equipment of the entry-plug. This can work, he assured himself. He had felt the Eva's approval during their fight: the core was responding.

"Oh God, no!" Ritsuko yelled on the command bridge, looking over the incoming data, "He's out!" Another beam smashed into Unit-01's headcase. "The Commander has been knocked unconscious!"

Fuyutsuki and Misato were already ordering another wave of all-out attacks even though they knew they couldn't penetrate the Angel's A.T. field. They were only hoping to distract it long enough for Commander Ikari to recover.

Meanwhile, Gendo had lowered his sync-rate to limit the painful feedback just as a beam of white-pink, glowing light erupted through the Eva's ear and exited its temple on the other side.

Your turn, Gendo sent to Yui through the Eva's core.

"FATHER!" Shinji screamed, held back by Misato who had clamped her arms around him protectively.

Tatsumaki...Senpuu..Kyaku.

Unit-01 was kicked backwards to the ground, crumpling on its back as blood fountained from the gory ruins of its head. Gendo stared upwards at the giant Angel which was looking down at him, the face-masks twitching back and forth in sudden uncertainty.

"What is it doing?" Fuyutsuki demanded. Misato didn't have time to answer him.

"Hyuga!" She yelled across to the bespeckled man at his console, "Prioritize recovery of the Eva! We need to get Commander Ikari out of there!"

The Angel was still staring down at Unit-01, it seemed ready to turn and leave the defeated enemy behind.

"Ma'am!" He jabbed at his keyboard, working on a course of action.

"Belay that." Fuyutsuki hadn't been talking about the Angel's strange reticence to continue its violence, no, he had noticed the energy surge in Unit-01 despite the trauma unleashed on its head. Maya and Ritsuko, too, were following the spikes on the psychograph. "What is…" Ritsuko had barely begun to ask before the crippled Eva suddenly broke open its steel-welded jaws and roared.

The Angel had enough time to bring up its A.T. field before Unit-01 was moving. It had launched itself off the ground like a limber demon of metal and bone, pounding its fists against the expanding orange octagons saving the Angel from a renewed onslaught.

Yui Ikari, the soul at the core of Unit-01, had control.

Holy mother of god what is this thread even I don’t understand how can do much be in one thread

I’m shiteatinggrinning myself right now

Glorious!

"It's a berserker…" Ritsuko breathed in awe.

Unlike the fully conscious Yui that Gendo had encountered in their shared mindscape, this was the animalistic, beastial amalgamation of Yui and Eva. No better instinctive master of weaponized A.T. fields existed. Truly, it was one of Earth's greatest weapons. But Gendo had learned there were better ones.

"We've won." Kozo Fuyutsuki affirmed.

Unit-01's hands shot forward into the center of the Angel's shield and Gendo could hear the stunned chatter of the bridge staff: "It's matching the Angel's A.T. field, harmonizing… no, eroding it!" Ritsuko shouted. "Enemy A.T. field disappearing!"

Gendo let Yui's terror-made-reality tug at the Angel's A.T. field as he reached out, moving along the currents of overlapping souls as he stretched out his consciousness to the Angel, hijacking his wife's work.

Then it happened, just before the Eva could tear apart the enemy's A.T. field he felt a surge of emotion separate from his own and the Eva's.

The Angel's face-masks went shock-still.

․

․ . . . ?

A moment of real-time passed, but it was enough.

The Angel reared back as Unit-01 grabbed its core and began to squeeze. Before any cracks could form it suddenly jumped on top of the Evangelion and morphed into a liquid sphere, crackling with energy.

"Commander!" Misato shouted.

Gendo's world erupted in unending light.

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Gendo just fucked up an Angel.

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Time traveling Gendo.

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Gendo "Homura" Ikari.

This is definitely the longest Yea Forums thread I’ve ever read. Keep pasting!

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**Rehabilitation.**

The bones in his torso creaked, squeezing against his lungs and heart, his body crumpling in Unit-01's iron-grip. Demonic eyes drilled through his, promising violence and retribution.

Malevolence made flesh.

His arms were smashed to his sides, the world around him throbbing with red.

Those green orbs. Burning with fury. With icy disappointment.

Teeth parted, jaws widening, strewn with slicks of saliva falling backwards into a vast maw.

Darkness, an unending pit of despair, closing around him.

A resounding crack of titanic swiftness.

Absolute terror.

Then, from the utter void at existence's end, an impossibility...

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Reminder that this scene made no sense.

Gendo awoke.

With practice born of surviving the dystopian wars that raged after Second Impact he kept his eyes closed, regulated his breathing, and listened with a cautious ear to the world around him.

More than once he had been attached to an ambushed position in his scurrilous tasks for the Human Instrumentality Committee. Yui had despised the risks he had taken to secure their future, especially after she had gotten pregnant in their burned-over world. But the Commander-to-be had never been squeamish at doing the dirty work survival demanded; on the contrary, the manner in which he excelled at committing atrocities in his previous life had allowed him to ease further into the confidences of the "old men."

What was a few more lives given up to his wet-work after the billions he had helped snuff out in assisting to reawaken Adam, the First Angel?

Rhythmic blips and beeps. His own heartbeat softly pounding against the pillow beneath his head. Medical equipment. An intermittent snore, not his own, to the side. Warmth. Sunlight?

It was the opposite of his dream. A dream, he thought. He had had a dream for the first time in uncountable years. A nightmare, but, still...

Slowly he opened his eyes, taking in the blurry white ceiling tiles of the hospital's recovery room.

A utilitarian sterility dominated its design, stretching from the drop-tile ceiling to the walls. White, everywhere, as though washed in dead snow. Or ashes.

The feeling of heat was coming from the right, the snoring from the left. He rolled his head towards the floor to ceiling plate glass windows flooding his bed with the geofront's artificial sunlight, then back over to the left, having already dismissed his initial concerns about capture or internment.

The heartrate monitor picked up its pace, reacting to the sight of his sleeping son, Shinji, slumped in an uncomfortable looking steel chair near the door. Feeling beneath his blanket he reached under what he now noticed was a medical gown and found the monitor taps taped to his chest. He pulled them off and let them slither over the edge of the bed.

The equipment momentarily registered a flatline, then powered down. No doubt it had been programmed to understand the feedback difference between a dying heart and just not being connected to flesh in the first place. Ritsuko would be on her way soon enough.

Shinji shifted but didn't immediately wake. Good. A little time to himself.

He glanced around the room, mentally counting off the surveillance bugs he knew about. One in the medical equipment, one in the bed, one above a ceiling tile. At least three of NERV's in this particular type of room, he noted.

SEELE had an additional two, he was certain. One in the wall, another outside - a laser trained on the glass from a distant faux tree. There were probably two of three more split between the Japanese government and the United Nations.

He took a sort of pleasure in letting the various players think they had any real power over him.

>Slowly he opened his eyes, taking in the blurry white ceiling tiles of the hospital's recovery room.
His hospital gown was open, Rei stood above him, her pussy dripping wet.

"...I'm so fucked up"

Shinji better not be doing what I think he’s doing in there

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An ache made itself apparent as he pushed the blanket away. Swallowing the urge to groan aloud he suppressed it into a minor grunt as he pivoted his feet off the bed and sat up, pulling up the hospital gown and examining his navel.

Dark black and purple bruising extended from his midriff and around his sides. The sympathetic injuries from the Third Angel's assault seemed limited to capillary damage and some minor muscle impairment, but no organ damage, he assessed quickly.

He tested breathing, pulling in as much as he could before the pain became noticeable, then pushing out again. Experimentally he let out a cough, judging the pain that constricted his ribs as a four or five out of ten. He could work with that.

Shinji, meanwhile, snapped awake when he heard his father's loud cough, opening his eyes and falling back a bit into his chair, his hands unsure of what to do with themselves.

"Father!" he said, staring at the injured man sitting on the bed at a slight angle to him. "You're awake!"

Gendo couldn't help but smirk a bit before adopting his regular neutral expression. He cast his eyes around before asking, "My glasses?"

Shinji's eyes widened, looking slightly panicked, but he quickly fumbled for his shirt's front pocket and extracted Gendo's orange prescription lenses, rising to hand them to his father who held out a hand.

"I, I was holding onto them," he explained, "There wasn't a table and I guess I was worried about them?"

Gendo placed the glasses on his face and the world around him devolved to shades of yellow and orange even as the details came into sharp focus.

His son's hair was mussed from sleeping awkwardly and he was dressed differently from when Katsuragi had first brought him down into the geofront. The clothes didn't quite fit, no doubt scavenged from a family's closet somewhere on base. He couldn't gauge the time of day since the shadows cast by the false lights outside were constant and unmoving. He had no watch, nor phone.

"How long have I been asleep?"

Shinji had taken a step back but given his teenage height their eyes were about level. Gendo tried his best not to intimidate the boy, but Shinji was easy cowed, he knew.

"Um, since last night. It's…" he quickly checked his own wrist-watch, "It's about 2 o'clock, now, father, 1:58 actually, I…" the boy was stammering now and Gendo couldn't help but drop his forehead into the heel of his left palm and massage away his frustration while he listened.

"Commander!" a voice called out sharply from the other side of the door, interrupting Shinji, who took another step away as the door brisky opened. Ritsuko poured herself through the opening, moving with the surety and grace that only a medical practitioner could. The lab-coat wearing genius, her beauty somewhat overwhelming after his long separation from the corporeal world, drew all the attention of the room.

She even had a clipboard with what he supposed was his medical chart on it. He ruthlessly suppressed a nostalgic smile - he couldn't afford to slip up on public appearances. What he'd already done was beyond SEELE's imagination. No need to give them further ammunition.

"Dr. Akagi," he acknowledged, "My son tells me I've been under since last night. What's the status of the operation?"

She was flustered for a second but she was no stranger to Gendo's cold public persona, especially since they had a teenage witness in the room.

"What, no questions about the damage you did to yourself?" she snarked, letting her frustration peek out in her characteristic way.

He looked down, then back up. "No. Report."

She dropped the clipboard-holding arm to her side, already exasperated but able to assume her professional mask. "The operation successfully concluded after the Third Angel self-destructed. You were extracted from the entry-plug, unconscious, approximately one half hour later. What do you remember?"

He had anticipated this question. He looked away from her and looked at his son.

"Shinji, this part of the conversation need not concern you. Wait outside," he commanded.

The young man blushed furiously, not sure if he were embarrassed hearing NERV business or upset that he was being excluded after waiting for so long for his father to wake up. Gendo read his mood quickly, modeling what he knew of the boy at this time into a set of probable reactions.

"Son." Shinji's head turned in surprise. "Thank you." He gestured at the chair. That ought to break him out of his shell a bit.

Shinji stumbled in his reply, mangling a "You're welcome" and "I hope you feel better soon" as he made his way out the door, unsure of where to go.

Gendo motioned to Ritsuko, "Go take him to the front lobby and call Captain Katsuragi to pick him up. Then come back."

He took her clipboard and pen from her and placed it on the bed.

She huffed out an agreement. "Fine."

She left the clipboard and pen with on the bed and stepped out after the boy, he could hear her down the hall moving at a quick clip to catch up. He sighed, grabbing the clipboard and reading the diagnostics and chart data. She'd been thorough, he acknowledged, and had most helpfully described contusions on the side of his head that he didn't actually have.

So she had noticed the lack of injuries he should have sustained if he'd been actually knocked out by the Third Angel's energy lance. Being able to count on Ritsuko at such an early stage was expected, given their relationship, but she had also probably consulted with Kozo. The energy lance had appeared to knock him unconscious, and they had both probably believed that had happened until they had gotten a hold of his unconscious body and noted the lack of head injuries despite his high sync rate.

He flipped through the rest of the sheets, idly tapping the pen on the board while he waited. Soon enough Ritsuko's footsteps joined the tapping sound and she reappeared, closing the door carefully behind her.

"We left off with memory," she reminded him, receiving a non-committal grunt, but she wasn't deterred. "What do you remember about the battle?"

He had stopped tapping the pen.

"I sortied in Unit-01 with a deployment point outside of the city center. The target noticed my presence quickly, but I already retrieved a primary weapon from a nearby cache. I ordered a ground-to-ground missile strike to distract the target once I was close enough. We engaged in short-range melee combat where I was able to fire my weapon directly into the target from within the boundary of its A.T. field. The target switched to an autonomous healing and pursuit modality immediately after, and I was able to draw it further outside of the city. I maximized the time I had available to regroup and then acted to finish the target before its regeneration cycle was complete." The explanation was direct and rehearsed.

"Unit-01 was damaged during the latter stage of the fight, do you remember anything?"

He waited a moment, pretending uncertainty for the sake of the listening bugs. "Vaguely. I have faith in the fall-back systems we built," referencing the Eva's berserker ability, "Obviously they functioned correctly."

She nodded. "Yes, Unit-01 entered a berserker mode after you fell unconscious. The Angel self-destructed after the Eva penetrated its A.T. field."

"I see."

She cocked her hip a bit, letting the facade slip. "You could've died, Commander. What would we do then?" she asked.

He shrugged, staring at her levelly. "I have every confidence in your abilities, doctor."

Ritsuko's eye twitched in anger, but she switched gears: "Based on the trauma you received and your unconscious state there's no surprise you wouldn't have memory of what occurred during Unit-01's berserker state." She hmm'd to herself. "Anything after? Did you awake in the entry plug at all?"

"No. I've only just awoken now."

She sighed, again, and motioned at the clipboard.

"Sign the release at the bottom, please."

He took the pen and scrawled on the paper, taking a moment longer than necessary.

She snatched the clipboard back from him. "Thank you," she said, eyeing the signature block, then she looked back at him.

He ignored the questioning look and stood up, moving past her and towards the door. "I need my uniform and effects. Have Captain Katsuragi meet me in my office with my son."

"Yes," she quickly released the top page from her clipboard and folded it away into her coat pocket, "Yes sir."

Over her breast an illicit message waited to be acted on:

MEET IN TERMINAL DOGMA.

**Hedgehog.**

Shinji Ikari was confused.

Admittedly, this was not an altogether rare occurrence in the young man's life. It had, after all, been filled with shuffling between living situations with ostensible "teachers" who were more-or-less glorified legal guardians paid to double-check his homework. They did little else in the way of raising him beyond questioning his worth and treating him more like a servant than a child.

Hence he had learned to cook at a young age, latching onto some minor amount of independence - something he could call his own - despite his otherwise complacent personality. It also acted as a buffer, allowing him to present an image of gratitude to his caretakers while also benefiting himself.

The letter from his father was where his current state of confusion had begun. Shinji had figuratively written him off, but here was literal written proof of his father's interest in him.

"Come," he had read. The letter held no emotion, just command.

His short flare of anger had subsided into a curious sort of hope, and so he had gotten on a train and come to Tokyo-3 despite his misgivings.

Well, not exactly Tokyo-3. He had made it to an outlying city some dozen kilometers away, at least, before nearly being flattened by the gigantic foot of some sort of abomination taken straight from the old kaiju movies of pre-Impact Japan. For some reason they had fallen out of favor since he was born.

The ride with Misato, the N2 strike, the geofront, seeing his father, then seeing his father fight in a robot against the same alien being that had nearly killed him - this had all been a lot to handle for a teenager.

>Nobody Dies dumb

At least it was the fun kind of dumb, user.

Before he could really even ask any questions he was whisked away to the receiving room of the internal NERV hospital, timidly waiting for word on his father's recovery.

After some time he had become bored, and explored the hallway while the nurses and Dr. Akagi were locked in Commander Ikari's room. He found an open room a few doors down.

He had thought to sit down in a chair or a bed and, he didn't know, just get away from everyone in the lobby and maybe rest a bit, he guessed. So he entered the dark room only to realize, too late, that there was a very quiet patient occupying the hospital bed.

She was his age, he guessed, and even in the dark he could see blood-stained bandages and an eye-patch below a shock of blue - was that really blue? - hair.

He stepped forward, quietly, trying to grasp the situation. She was asleep. Her breasts, wrapped up in bandages though they were, still pronounced themselves below the sheet. The analytical part of his brain clicked nearly at the same moment his hormonal one had.

She was a pilot, like his father... like he was supposed to be. And she had been badly hurt.

He needed to leave.

Turning quickly on his heel, shaking his head and trying to clear any untoward thoughts about the girl. He slipped back into the hallway. Dr. Akagi, almost at the same time, exited the door down the hall and saw him.

"Mr. Ikari," she called as he walked up to her, "Is it alright if I call you Shinji?"

He nodded, "Y, yes."

"Shinji, your father is fine. Bruised, but fine. Did you want to wait in the lobby or," she looked him over, noticing his apparent fatigue, "I can have Section 2 take you to accommodations. A hotel room."

The younger Ikari glanced inside the room she had just left. "Could I…?" He swallowed. "Could I wait here? I'd like to be there when he wakes up."

Behind Dr. Akagi a voice piped up, "Look at that, Ritsuko! What a good son!" Misato Katsuragi said, having turned the corner and approached them both. "Shinji, I think that's very nice, to want to wait for your dad like that."

Dr. Akagi didn't have any objections. "Sure, go right ahead," she said, following him in. They all looked at the solitary chair beside the unconscious commander of NERV. "Do you need a blanket?" she asked.

"No, no, I'm fine," he had assured them, and after some well-wishing they soon departed, leaving him alone in the room. Looking out into the hallway he noticed the presence of two men in tailored suits standing guard where the lobby and hallway intersected.

Moving back into the room he watched his father's chest moving up and down evenly. His fingers fidgeted nervously despite his deepening desire to rest. Shinji stood and paced around to the expansive windows, looking past his partial reflection and into the darkness of the geofront. He turned around, slightly stricken by the dizzying height, and saw a glint from the side of the bed.

A pair of orange-tinted glasses laid next to Gendo's unmoving hand.

Shinji picked them up curiously, momentarily placing them on his eyes before taking them off due to the blurry discomfort they caused. He went to put them back on the bed then thought better of it, placing them in his shirt pocket instead.

That way they couldn't get knocked onto the floor, he rationalized. He sat down and waited.

Time passed.

He had fallen asleep in the chair, waiting to talk to his father, but the older man had barely woken up before he was being shuffled off, again, losing control of his circumstances. Misato had taken him on a brief, supplemental tour of the geofront (they had gotten lost he was sure) but ultimately they had ended up where she'd been commanded to take him.

So now here he was, sitting in a cavernous office with Captain Katsuragi in front of an empty desk.

The ceiling was at least five meters tallers than the woman herself, but the room was simply so wide that he felt wedged between the dark floor and its counterpart - it felt like the room could simply close on them, like one of those moving dungeon walls from the movies.

The intricate (and disturbing) bas relief carvings - in some unknown language - above and below didn't help either. Given the distance his father had always preferred in their father-son relationship he could definitely believe that he treated other people the same way, or worse, he thought, considering the sheer intimidation factor of the room.

"Kind of a super-villain vibe, don't you think?" Misato winked conspiratorially, trying to help him ease up a bit.

"I just, I just don't know why I'm here, Ms. Misato." He balled his fists on top of his knees, looking down.

"That's O.K. Shinji, well," she paused, thinking of how to best explain, "The Evas can only be piloted by children born after Second Impact. At least, I thought so…" she trailed off for a moment, but regained the stream of her pitch to him. "Your dad aside, we've proved that only children like you can possibly sync with an Eva, an Evangelion, I mean, that's their full name. Ritsuko mentioned it, right? The artificial humanoid?"

He nodded, his blue eyes caught up watching her lips move.

"Well it's not a robot, first of all," she offered.

Shinji listened attentively.

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"Yeah, it's actually a cyborg. What I'm telling you is classified, but you'll be in NERV, so I'll take responsibility," she justified to herself. "Evangelion Unit-01, the one your dad piloted, that one was slated for you. We also have a test model, Unit-00. Its pilot was injured during a test a few weeks ago."

His eyes widened a bit, thinking back to the girl in the dark room.

"Unit-02 is stationed in Germany, though with the first attack being against NERV headquarters, we may move it here." She thought about that from a tactical standpoint, then remembered her audience. "Anyways."

Shinji interrupted her. "But what does being born after Second Impact have to do with being able to pilot a giant robot?" he asked, channeling his confusion.

"Cyborg. Not robot," she corrected, "It's alive, sort of. And as for why only children after Second Impact… Shinji, what do you know about Second Impact?"

He recited his knowledge easily: "It was a meteor traveling near the speed of light, impossible to detect, and it hit Antarctica. My teachers have told me about the floods, the famines - the wars. It was called 'Second Impact' because the 'First Impact' wiped out the dinosaurs in a similar way tens of millions of years ago."

She breathed in and let out a soft whistle. "Whooo, O.K. then. Right. Shinji, that was a lie."

His chair scraped a bit on the floor as he took in what she said.

"What?" he managed to ask.

"A lie," she affirmed, holding his confused gaze firmly with hers. "It's what the masses are told to avoid panic. Shinji, you saw the giant alien that just attacked us. We made the Evangelions to protect us from them. Fifteen years ago… they attacked for the first time. That was Second Impact."

Attached: Second_impact.png (450x320, 210K)

"Correct." Gendo Ikari's voice rang out in the room. They both looked past the desk to a far wall where the commander had just entered from a hidden door in the wall.

The sharp sound of his boots on the rock-like surface ricocheted off the walls.

"What Captain Katsuragi has said, thus far, is correct. Shinji," he began addressing his son, "This was your mother and I's work. We knew what was coming since that day."

"But how…?" Shinji began to ask, not even sure how to form the question as his father sat down.

Gendo steepled his fingers together near his chin. "How did we make Eva? Or how did we know they were coming?"

Misato stayed silent, and Shinji made an attempt, cautiously, at replying to his father's question.

"Both…?"

"We defeated the First Angel." Gendo answered blithely. "Many died, including the Captain's father." She gasped, but he kept talking. "We took cell samples from the remains and reverse engineered their bodies. We altered them to accept human pilots. We couldn't recreate them with their own minds, of course. If we did they would war against us to finish what they started. The Evangelions are, for lack of a better term, mindless Angels. They required human pilots to activate."

He anticipated Misato's question, and already had the lie prepared: "I can pilot because I was there when we found Adam, the First Angel. I took the backup research data to U.N. Command the day before the First Angel awoke and destroyed the research base. I was touched by its power."

Mixing truth with fiction worked wonders, he had always found.

But Misato was reeling from the revelation that Gendo had actually been there where her father had given up his life for her.

"You didn't say it died. You said defeated. Is it still alive?" Misato demanded.

Gendo considered his listeners carefully before placing his hands down on the desk.

"This doesn't leave this room."

One nodded firmly, the other nodded meekly.

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This is deeper than I expected

"Yes, it is still a threat. Second Impact did more than melt the ice-sheets and throw the world into chaos. It…" he searched for the right words, "altered humanity. It's nature is alien, but it shares similar genetics to humans. There's a reason for that. Its influence, you could say, infected us all. Moreover, it created its own derivatives that are now maturing and attempting to reunite with the source."

"Angels…" she breathed out.

"Yes. The Angels will come to Tokyo-3 because we have their creator, here." He was lying, in part, but she couldn't know that.

Still, for Misato the world was rapidly starting to make sense, puzzle pieces clicking together.

She wondered out loud. "I was there. I was there when it happened."

He nodded.

She wanted to ask something more, but couldn't form the question yet.

The commander turned his attention to his son.

"Shinji, you were chosen for Eva combat the moment you were born. It was by your mother's design."

He whispered, "My mother?"

"Yes. She wanted you to pilot. I took that burden from you yesterday because you weren't ready, you couldn't be ready. But I can't do it for long. I can't pilot the way you'll be able to because your mother designed Unit-01 for you."

Shinji didn't know what to say. Gendo didn't look at Katsuragi, but he knew he was being judged for manipulating the boy with such ruthless control of his mother's memory.

"There are things I can't tell you right now, but I will. When the time is right. Until then, we have to be ready for the next attack. And there will be more attacks."

Shinji gave the barest nod of agreement. Too much was going through his mind. He wanted to scream at his father for abandoning him. Why now was he bringing him back into his life, just because he was needed? He was hurt and confused. Part of him just wanted to know more. Truths. Other parts rationalized his father's actions - the whole world was at stake and they, his mother and father, had built the weapons to save it.

"As of today you are being conscripted into the United Nation's NERV detachment. Congratulations, warrant officer Ikari."

It was too much to process. Shinji dumbly nodded, unable to disagree.

His finger hit a button on the phone on his desk and the intercom buzzed. He didn't need to speak. The door was already opening and a pair of Section 2 operatives walked up to stand at attention as Shinji and Misato craned their necks back to look at them.

"Escort Mr. Ikari to the barracks. See Lieutenant Yamada for instructions on his room assignment."

Both men nodded crisply, their lack of salute indicative of Section 2, and Shinji stumbled out after them. Misato was still turning information over in her mind and hadn't interrupted. That was unexpected. In the last timeline she had taken in Shinji herself.

He stared at her, letting her make the first move.

"Sir," Misato asked at last, "I was there. In Antarctica. With the First Angel. And you, with Unit-01... Does that mean?"

He considered how to answer, his explanation of his own piloting abilities had been designed, after all, as a careful deceit to fool SEELE. Katsuragi was the only other survivor who had contact with the First Angel. Who was to say that the close proximity hadn't unlocked her Nebuchadnezzar gates? For all he knew she could be a natural adept, unlike he who had had to master A.T. field manipulation.

So he put his hands together and thought about the young woman.

At last he spoke.

"Come with me."

>> “Come with me.”

If you want to live?

>>>"Come with me..."

And you'll be, in a world of pure imagination...

[INSERT SONG AND DANCE NUMBER]

Guess Yui liked the little act he did infront of her with Shinji

Probably knew he did nothing wrong.

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>Gendo Ikari's consciousness, for lack of a better description, was booting itself into a state of self-awareness.

This is an extremely light novel sentence

Is this a fanfic thread?

I have no idea.

Gendo thread maybe. He did nothing wrong.

Yui is the true villain of Evangelion. Discuss.

I wonder if Anno based Gendo on his own father

>SEELE causes 2nd impact = Good - killed 3 billion people instead of 6 billion that would have died if Adam had awakened
>All that's left is to beat up Adam's fragments
>Start building EVAs
>Yui kills herself in front of Shinji
>SEELE decides to do Human Instrumentality Project
>Gendo decides to bring Yui back

Everything derailed with Yui

I'm curious about her motives.
What events in her life lead to her ambition to become an immortal robot-god drifting through space?

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