Gendo 2.0 - Chapter 13 - With 100% More Mari

* Evangelion: Rebuild a Legend - Chapter 13
* "Let Me Play Beneath the Stars"
* fanfiction.net/s/13179664/13/Evangelion-Rebuild-a-Legend

*** 2015 A.D., NERV HQ, Primary Hospital Ward ***

Gendo stepped into the poorly lit hospital room and pushed the dimmer switch upwards as he passed the wall, brightening the room so he could get a clearer look at the patient breathing evenly on the bed.

Rei Ayanami.

Rei II. The First Child.

The unbidden vision of a child's mangled throat and bulging eyes - eyes locked in hurt and confusion and betrayal - erupted from the depths of his former self's memory. Her first death had been so cruel. He could've found another way, but it had been... expedient. She had been a tool. After all, the completion of the MAGI supercomputers - Naoko Akagi's lifelong work - had lined up perfectly with the need to ensoul Unit-00, and Ritsuko's mother had become inconvenient.

Rei had spares, after all.

So he had murdered her. Them. Scientist and Experiment. It hadn't been his own hands wrapped around the little girl's throat but they might as well have been. He had programmed little Rei with hard words and callous disregard for the emotionally fragile Naoko's feelings. No doubt his former lover had been desperately hoping for Gendo's heartfelt praise and recognition of her accomplishments.

She had done the near impossible: given birth to true AI. She had been killing herself for years to please him.

And then… "Old hag."

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Little Rei barely even knew what it meant, but the insinuation carried on her words: "It's what Commander Ikari calls you."

The security footage, now written over a hundred times with garbage data before its deletion, had shown the moment that Naoko broke.

It was a terrible thing for the Gendo of different time to look across the room upon the crippled child soldier he had created.

Her body was so still - just like the still corpse of little Rei I.

Guilt was a largely alien feeling for the reborn man: he had helped kill billions. Why did he feel so keenly for the manipulation and betrayal of one little clone? He knew why.

Because of what he had done. What he had done with the fragmenting A.T. Field that Rei I had left behind.

The soul of Evangelion Unit-00.

An immature, child-like mind trapped forever in an animal - human, yet not.

Gendo shook his head, shivering involuntarily as he continued into the middle of the room while Ritsuko hung back outside the doorway.

Eva Unit-00's pilot lay, bandaged but healing, on the bed, staring straight upwards at the ceiling with her blood red eyes. She hadn't yet noticed it was him and not some interchangeable nurse come to attend to her bodily functions.

"Rei."

Instantly her eyes found him. He was standing not quite close enough to see completely, so she craned her head in a futile attempt to greet him properly. It was obviously painful for her. He moved forward to the bedside so she wouldn't have to bend further.

"Commander!" she welcomed him, happiness lacing her voice, "You came to see me. I am happy."

He was looking down at her and Ritsuko had stepped into the room now, leaning on the wall next to the door. It was difficult for the faux-blonde to deal with her instinctual rival for Gendo's affections. She let Gendo do the talking.

"Rei, how are you?"

Questions for Rei should be kept simple. It had been a long time (from his perspective) since they had interacted but he kept in mind that her conditioning was still rock-solid at this point in the timeline.

Her lips cracked into an earnest smile - so genuine he could barely stand it. Like a broken marionette begging to perform an encore despite its broken strings. So eager to please. To prove itself.

Herself, he chided internally.

"My healing is proceeding smoothly, Commander Ikari. I have no complaints," she stated. (I have complaints.)

"Is there anything you require?" he asked automatically, a tickle at the back of his mind. His eyes tracing over her face and the large bandage hiding one of her eyes.

"No, sir." (Yes.)

Was there an echo in the room? His eyes unconsciously slid across the room for threats.

Suddenly she coughed, which turned into a painful heaving of her ribs as the contortions wracked her small frame. Ritsuko quickly came into view and helped Gendo as they grabbed Rei's shoulders to press her down as gently as possible, hoping to brace her from hurting herself further.

The fit subsided and they released her. "Rei, I have authorized Dr. Akagi to accelerate your healing using the LCL recovery vats. Doctor?"

But before Ritsuko could say anything Rei asked, "The operation, it was successful?"

"Yes," the two adults answered at the same time, slipping glances at each other.

"I am glad." (I am.)

"Rei," the doctor began, "I will be moving you out of the hospital ward and back to Terminal Dogma." Rei's eyes suddenly clouded and Ritsuko wasn't sure if it was simply the standard animosity that had developed between them in their petty contest for Gendo's attention or concerns about returning to the place of her "birth."

Gendo joined in to assure her, "Only temporarily. The LCL should speed up your recovery to one or two days, then you will return to your assigned duties."

"Thank you." (It is better than suffering.)

"Dr. Akagi will supervise the transfer. I have business to attend to."

"Of course," she coughed gently, he noted the sad note in her voice, "Commander."

Gendo quickly turned on his heel, careful not to allow any slips in his facade as he passed the eavesdropping devices hidden near the door. Behind him he could hear Ritsuko on her phone calling for a nurse and some orderlies.

After thinking it over he stepped back for a moment. "Dr. Akagi, please coordinate breakfast for the First Child, and then be on your way." The words were stiff, mostly for the surveillance cameras.

Ritsuko simply huffed, her hand over the intercom microphone to stifle it, playing at being annoyed. "And where will you be?"

"I think I'll go check in on our newest pilots."

- - -
*** 2015 A.D. Pilots Corp Apartment ***

Shinji was dreaming, that was the only viable explanation. It was a very vivid dream, he acknowledged to himself, and pinching himself wasn't helping, so it was also a very realistic dream.

However, he knew that having stepped into the kitchen of the shared apartment common area after waking up that morning that there was simply no way that his father, Supreme Commander of NERV, Architect of Giant Robots, Abandoner of Small Children, Wearer of Orange Glasses was sitting calmly at the kitchen table drinking coffee and reading a newspaper.

The large sheet of paper folded over and he could make out the front page title: "Tokyo-3 Emergency Earthquake Response Successful."

Wait. The kanji were clear. He read it again as the dream-father shuffled another page.

You can't read in dreams. He'd learned that in school.

"Dad?"

The newspaper drooped as Gendo Ikari looked over the pages at the pajamaed young man who had stepped further into the room.

"Ah, Shinji. Good. Come, have a seat. I made… toast." The older man waved offhandedly at the plates arrayed around the table where, sure enough, there were cuts of lightly burnt bread slathered in long-ago-melted butter.

"Um, hi." Shinji pulled a chair out from the table and sat.

"Good morning."

This was awkward.

Gendo put down the paper, folding it next to his plate. He looked over as Shinji eyed the food suspiciously, then sighed: "Your mother was the chef in the family."

"My mother?" Shinji asked, timid as ever.

"HELLO GENDO IKARI!" an exuberant voice yelled at him from the other side of the room

Father and son's heads twisted in tandem to see Misato's younger sister (as far as Shinji knew) who had triumphantly bounced out of the far bedroom door and took up a position near the couch. The young girl was wearing her hair in a long sheet tapered at the very end with a dark purple ribbon, playing off of the hair's pale lavender hue.

Otherwise she was clothed only in a sheet, who knew what was under it, and he could tell Shinji was warring with the teenage duality of embarrassment and hormones as he stared at the girl who looked exactly like a teenage replica of the older Misato, who had come out of the room at this point as well. She, thankfully, was wearing one of her long dresses - not entirely work appropriate, but the bridge staff never complained.

Gendo nodded politely, "Good morning, Fourth Child. Captain. Did you sleep well?"

"G-good morning, Lily, Misato," Shinji stammered.

Lily collapsed into a sheet-wrapped puddle on the floor, looking up at the table as Misato came up awkwardly behind her, uncertain what to do.

"Yes sir, Commander, uh, thank you for the new accommodations," Misato said.

He waved her gratitude away, "Not at all, this is an experiment."

Lily's eyes seemed to sparkle at the new experience as she felt along the carpet beneath her sheet as she sat on the floor. "I enjoy experiments, Commander Ikari. May I participate?"

This miniature incarnation of Lilith managed to switch between mind-numbingly odd phrases to proper sentence structures fast enough to spin heads, but Gendo noted Misato and Shinji seemed to be taking it all in stride.

"Of course. We will house the entire Evangelion pilot corps here, including the First Child once she has recovered, and the Second Child once she arrives."

"First Child… Second Child?" Shinji had turned back towards his father to ask.

"He means Rei Ayanami and Asuka Soryu," Misato offered, "Rei was the girl who was injured in the initial Eva prototype testing a few weeks ago, and Asuka is at NERV Germany - she's a pilot in the literal sense. Air Force. But she's your age!"

Shinji nodded, caught up in the explanation, "W-wow, I mean, I wouldn't have thought someone my age would be a real pilot, I guess."

"Soryu was chosen as an Evangelion pilot candidate as a child. Her mother helped develop some of the initial interface systems before she passed away," Gendo explained.

"She was?"

Gendo took a bite of his toast and nodded, chewing as he considered what to share with Shinji. So far the group dynamic seemed stable enough, despite the insanity of adding the inhuman creator of humanity - Lily - to their daily lives. He seemed to remember that Misato had run all over Shinji in the previous timeline with chores and cooking duties, even if she came to care about him.

"Yes," he continued at last, "She's an above-average fixed wing fighter pilot, and does reasonably well in the Evangelion simulators. Many of the production model's - Unit 2's - systems were designed based on her experiences. She's very proud of it. Captain, your thoughts on the Second Child?"

Misato looked surprised that Gendo had asked for her opinion, but stepped past Lily to join them at the table, speaking as she sat down.

"Well, Asuka is proud, like the Commander said. A bit bossy, honestly. There's some personal things in her past, what with her…" she trailed off, noticing the discouraging shake of Gendo's head that Shinji missed, "Right, um, she prefers mid-range combat as opposed to long-range or being too up-close and personal. Which, by the way, you might not expect once you meet her. She's very upfront - very in your face. If you don't stand up for yourself she won't respect you. I had planned to make her the team leader for deployments, actually."

"Oh." Shinji said, a bit worried. "What about the First Child?"

Misato briefly searched Commander Ikari's face, who simply nodded and grabbed another bite of toast.

"Well, Rei is… different. Very shy. Introverted to an extreme, really. Like, imagine h- my sister," she pointed at Lily, who was talking to PenPen, who had somehow appeared in her lap, "But super quiet. So, a little odd still, right? But toned down. She's definitely a long-range asset. Her scores with the material rifle and sniping in the simulators are all top-notch. A very good soldier, follows orders to a fault."

"I see," Shinji said, staring at his empty plate, "And she was hurt testing an Eva?"

Gendo took this one. "Yes, there was mental contamination in the link between the pilot and the Eva's core. It was supposed to be a simple activation test… you saw how the entry plug works?" he looked to Shinji for confirmation.

"Good. When the systems began failing the entry plug ejected. The designers hadn't considered adding a cut-off if the plug was inside a building, so it crashed into the ceiling until the jets expended their fuel. You can imagine it was not a gentle landing."

"Oh, wow, I-I didn't…" Shinji began stammering but his father cut him off.

"She's recovering. The engineers who failed to account for the situation were reassigned to other duties. On the other hand, Unit-1's activation during the first Angel battle proved the systems work and can defeat the enemy."

Misato had smothered a smirk when Gendo had said "reassigned" - she was pretty sure being shit-canned to one of the Arctic research bases wasn't the resume builder the ejection system engineers had hoped for.

"O-OK, thanks for explaining who the other pilots are, father. How did they, I mean, how were we all chosen?"

Misato stepped in for that one. "Well you see Shinji, the Marduk Institute evaluates candidates all over the world. We have potential candidates everywhere - but they have to be children born after Second Impact, remember?"

"Except father?"

Gendo nodded, "Yes, possibly Captain Katsuragi as well. We were both exposed to the precursor Angel that caused the Second Impact. There were… no other survivors, so the theory is difficult to test, you could say."

Ahaha, what crazy bullshit is this!