I do not own the rights to Neon Genesis Evangelion, or any of the characters, equipment, or locations written in this fanfiction. The purpose of this fanfiction is merely for the non-profit enjoyment of other readers. If requested by Gainax, Hideki Anno, or other parties which represent aforementioned objects in this story, I will remove it promptly.

Prologue:

Shinji sat in the corner and cried. There was nothing else he could do. A child, only four years old, and his relatives had abandoned him to this place. The orphanage in East Timor was nothing more than a corrugated metal and crumbling concrete structure made from the scraps of materials found after the Second Impact. Not even the Red Cross set foot in this desolate land, which even before the Impact, was prone to constant revolution to declare independence.

None of the children spoke Japanese, making it even more difficult for the forsaken child to figure out what was happening. Until he learned Indonesian, or if he were dealing with the rebels, some Portugese, it would be next to impossible to understand his captors. Although he had no concept of firearms, the eight year olds carrying the surplus Kalishnikov and SKS assault rifles had a menacing look in their eyes. It was the look of a wounded animal, that had nothing left to lose, and therefore, would do everything in it's power to take the next person down with him. It was enough to convince Shinji he did not belong in this place.

Though there was one person in the collection of misfits that spoke Japanese there, he was the least pleasant. He was what the Rokubungis called "the handler." Shinji would later learn, after finally escaping, the handler was really a sex slave owner and distributor, who had occasional business after the latest fighting in the Philippines, supplying military factions with fresh new recruits.

"What do you think?" the handler spoke. He stood just over six feet, his dark skin showing a cross of various Pacific Islander heritages. "He looks weak, but is medically sound. The language barrier shouldn't be too hard, since he's still young." The Indonesian man in khaki shorts and olive drab t-shirt nodded, and withdrawing the plastic baton which hung from the frog on his utility belt, began to wave it mercilessly in front of the young Ikari. "Hey, no damaging the goods!"

"I pay for him, I own him!" the Indonesian man shouted, shoving a wad of American dollars into the chest of the handler. "Move!" the man shouted, swinging the baton wildly. Shinji just sat, cringing, continuing to sob. There was no other choice. The man that would haunt the boy for the rest of his existence, even after his assassination, began raining blows with the heavy plastic instrument on Ikari's back. It was an obvious attempt to avoid cranial trauma. A grunt that couldn't think was worthless, and a grunt that couldn't think well would never live long enough to be worth the fifty dollars he had just paid.

Shinji screamed, the tears pouring from his eyes. Now he really did have a reason to be upset. Loneliness was a secondary pain when compared to physical injury. Ikari squirmed and crumpled to the ground, lying on his side as the man continued to strike him. What had the boy done wrong? He couldn't grasp how it had ended up this way. He was quietly eating a meal with his uncle and aunt, the first meal he had in two days after his father abandoned him. Then he felt sleepy, the world fading to black. When he woke up, one of the older boys, the one in the worn jean jacket and khaki shorts, but otherwise naked, was brushing the centipede off of his legs, speaking an unknown language.

Nothing made sense in this world of agony, except the pain.

Chapter I:

Shinji was growing into adulthood now, but in reality, he was already a man. He became a man that day he was sold to the East Timor faction "Red Spear", and ended up a member of the communist movement. The age of fourteen was pointless, as even his body showed the aging scars of a dog of war. Dressed in a light blue polo shirt, light tan khakis, a stained jean jacket, and black boots, he had adopted this style as a cross of the two cultures which had molded him. First was Red Spear itself, and the years he had spent in bloody conflict, scavenging whatever clothing he could off the corpses of his comrades, whether fallen in the field or starvation in the orphanage. Next was the culture of his saviors, or rather, the bystanders who simply imprisoned him in a far less harsh NATO refugee camp. The American soldiers had this thing about blue polo shirts and khaki pants, as though they themselves were in the transition between the crappy food service uniforms of their youth, and the suits expected of them in the white collar world.

His hair was cut high and tight, same as the Marine Corps medic who had violated him to remove all those parasites, lice, and treat his wounds. Between the cobalt eyes, gaunt face, and clean-cut appearance, a few girls at the train station in Tokyo-3 were giving him some rather amused looks. But Shinji had no interest in them. He had lost whatever innocence he had with women four years before, if only for the entertainment of the Indonesian, the man everyone referred to as "General." Trying to avoid eye contact with the untainted masses, Ikari slipped on the Gargoyles shades, or at least the cheap Chinese equivalent. It was the style of the Columbian drug lords, the ones who funded Red Spear.

If it weren't for his father putting in that inquiry to find him, Shinji would have never remembered his own name, or found the ones who sent him to Timor. Ever since his indoctrination into Red Spear, he had been called Cobarde, or Spanish for "coward." His family were the surviving eight children who had made it through basic training without being mortally wounded, including that one that brushed the centipede off of him on the first day, the one known as Daniel. There was nothing else, until the refugee camp. He had forgotten everything that the people at NATO told him he had to remember. Funny how they were conflicting orders. In East Timor, he was told to forget everything before Red Spear. The pain helped convince him forgetting was the best option.

It took a year before he could be released back to his family. Between the criminal involvement of selling one's child off to the black market, the Rokubungis were not suitable to collect him. It was only twenty American dollars to buy the right to enslave a child, but it tool over three million to recover him. Still, the lavender-haired woman who arrived at the refugee camp in black military dress had all the paperwork, and the steel suitcase with the cash on hand. She had walked slowly, almost depressed, into the damp pavilion serving as the combined sleeping quarters of all two hundred and ninety-six refugees.

"Shinji?" the captain called out. Cobarde, or rather, Shinji, was startled from his trance at the train station. She had been his escort from Dili, all the way back to Tokyo-2, and from there, to this new place, this so-called Fortress City. Just from his initial view, it didn't look like much. Just another big city, another waste of the people's money for the capitalists to compensate for something. Again, the captain reached out to his right hand, touching it softly, before he pulled it away. "Shinji, are you okay?"

"Say again?" Cobarde asked. "Japanese... I am not good with..." He knew he was butchering what was supposed to be his native language. Honestly, though, he was fluent in Portuguese, and when it came to interrogations or getting past the invading Indonesian forces, he could speak the conquerors' native tongue. Slowly, Misato tried again to hold the boy's hand, but he withdrew it completely, taking a step to the side. "Not... comfortable..." he answered. There were at least a few phrases he had made an effort to learn.

"Sorry," Katsuragi answered, looking away. Then, she tried her hand at Portuguese, or at least a slaughtered attempt at Spanish. "¿Como estas?"

Then came the one question Cobarde had worked extensively on over the last few days. "Why?" he asked simply. "Why does he want to see me?" No sooner did he ask this question did the air raid sirens begin to blair, the train station's occupants evacuating under the pretense it was another drill. Two minutes later, the dark, bipedal mass in the distance was seen by all, artillery reporting a few kilometers away. Misato could not answer why, as she herself was curious. Why would his father send her to retrieve him after all this time? There was no need for her presence at all. This was a family matter, not one concerning NERV.

Misato was pulling at the boy's arms, but the man which he became did not recognize the need to run. Moving slowly, silently, yet deliberately through a battlefield is what he was good at. "Mapa!" he demanded, then shook his head, thinking through the phrase slowly, speaking again in Japanese. "I... need map, and end point." The meaning was lost on Katsuragi, until he reached out with his right hand, waving it over the vast horizon of the city. "Where we go?"

"That way," Misato pointed down the street. She was placing a call on a cellphone, something about arranging transportation. The captain explained she had left her car at home, since she didn't know how long it would take to fly back from Timor, and the price for extended parking at the airport had grown steadily higher over the last few months. She thought they would never have needed to get back to headquarters so soon. This was about family after all, wasn't it? There was no rush.

The woman shook her head. No, it didn't make sense for the commander to suddenly show an interest in the whereabouts of his his son only a year before, and quickly dispatch her to retrieve him after all of the political issues were resolved. Even then, just a few days before, it seemed like a rush. The elder Ikari seemed to almost be expecting this. But that was to be natural, wasn't it? It was for the very reason standing only kilometers beyond the city limits that NERV existed, right?

Cobarde didn't need to think so much to understand the truth. He knew the character of the Rokubungis. Somehow or another, he knew he was being brought back for a purpose, to function for their slightly higher marginal utility in the one way he was skilled. There were no other questions in his mind, as no matter what demeaning function he served General and his drug lord friends, there was only one his ingenuity best served.

He was here for war.

End of Chapter I

•••••••••••••

I know, I was going to do a "Chronicles of Riddick"/Eva crossover fic, but I decided instead to try and make the best action Eva fanfic I could, which, instead of crossing various film sagas, incorporated what I believe are the best elements of various anti-heroes from several of my favorite films, anime, and books.

Also, instead of making Shinji the typical wimp he is portrayed to be, he will have a spine, and a far more rational, ruthless intellect, much like his father. But more impotantly, I am striving to give Shinji a tragic past that could not only be seen as reasonable for the political-social ramifications of the Second Impact world (this kind of family selling off their children for sex slaves stuff is already common in the poorer regions of the world), but also give him one that leads to phasing out his humanity in a less wimp-like form. From this point on, the Shinji Ikari everyone knows from Eva canon ceases to exist. There's no S-DAT player, no crying out "Father", none of that nonsense. Instead, all of that will be replaced, but the other characters remaining the same as Eva canon depicts them.

Hence, the title of the story, "Incarnations."

•••••••••••••