Gendo watched the security footage carefully. The Second Child was strumming on her guitar, and though there was no audio, the older man could figure out what she was playing based on the movements of her fingers. He thought of when he avidly played several instruments, and felt something approximating nostalgia. He was viewing it on his laptop – he and Fuyutski were in first class on a plane, flying at supersonic speeds to America. The muffled roar of the engines filled the cabin, whispering on the edge of the Commander’s consciousness. They were alone, except for a group of suited bodyguards and other businessmen.

“She looks like her father,” observed Fuyutski

“Indeed,” agreed Gendo.

“Still looking for a wife for Shinji?”

“Yes.”

“Why not bring JetAlone into fold? At least on the outer layers – a few of those mechs could help, at least as cannon fodder.”

“Perhaps.”

Bloodstained Saints 08

One death is a tragedy. One million is a statistic.

-Joseph Stalin

Mary had a little lamb,

Little lamb,

Little lamb,

Mary had a little lamb,

Whose fleece as white as snow.
-Katsuragi Expedition, final transmission

-

To school. The sky had lightened slightly, but not enough to dispel the constant gloom over Tokyo-3. Kaji was driving far faster than Shinji would have typically liked, but he was too busy thinking about Angels and Evas to care.

“Kaji?”

“Yep?”

“What are the Angels?”

There was a silence.

“Can you keep a secret?”

Shinji’s head swiveled around. The man looked completely normal, watching the road carefully. Appearances would suggest that he had said nothing more important then ‘How about this weather?’ or ‘What do you think of that new action movie?’

“Yes,” Shinji finally said.

“Shortly before the turn of the millennium, Japan sent the Katsuragi Expedition to Antarctica, supposedly to collect ice core samples… but they had another purpose. They were to locate the origin of a peculiar energy pattern beneath the ice.”

“Katsuragi… you mean Misato?”

“Her father, actually. She was in college at the time. Anyway, this expedition successfully located the peculiar energy signature… it was the first Angelic AT Field.”

Shinji shivered. “In Antarctica…” What could possibly survive in the freezing temperatures of that strange continent?

“Yes. They unearthed the angel and began to study it… Of course, it all came to an unpleasant end…”

“But didn’t the War happen in 2000?”

“Yes… but what happened during the war, really? Has anyone ever presented a rational cause for it?”

“It was China and America fighting over trade rights… We just heard about this in school.”

“Sure, but China’s main trade partner was America, and vice versa – and the War did more damage than having access to a few Third World markets could ever recoup.”

“Then… it must have been… Taiwan?”

“Taiwan, hmm, a major point of contention. However, the Americans had already said that they did not intend to intervene in Taiwanese affairs. There was no threat there.”

“Iran?”

“The US said it had no intention of invading Iran.”

“But…”

Shinji struggled for some kind of comeback. As he thought about it, though, never in school had he ever been presented logical reasons for why the War happened – only the government line that it was ‘inevitable,’ and he was rebuked for asking questions. “But…”

“They tell us that it was inevitable. But what compulsion does the government have to tell the truth? When has any government ever told the truth?” mused Kaji.

-

A terrible wind blows across the ice plains of Antarctica. A lone man stands on the roof of the basecamp, gazing into a whirling mass of light in the distance. He is covered with blood, his parka torn and shredded, exposing gruesome cuts. The rest of the expedition were dead, laying about the blood-red snow below.

‘Azathoth,’ he whispers, and the light consumes him.

-

Shinji still thought Rei, trying to understand the girl. The First Child sat in the corner of the classroom, gazing out of the window at gloomy Tokyo-3. Her albinistic features artistically fascinated him. They conveyed a certain angelic grace, though perhaps ‘angelic’ was an improper word. The girl was surrounded by an atmosphere of coldness and passiveness, a certain trained apathy towards all the things a teenager would usually concern herself with.

Perhaps this was why Shinji was so interested in her: she was cold in a world of burning passions. Why do I think the world burns? And he could not find an answer.

She had played her usual game of chess with Kensuke, thrashing him each time. No matter what strategy her opponent employed, she knew the ideal counter. By no means was Kensuke incompetent: Rei’s knowledge of the game simply dwarfed his.

The rigors of school, however, rapidly stole his attention away from Rei Ayanami and into a series of complex lessons. The curriculum spanned math, theology, psychology, and everything in-between. History called for him to memorize a series of dates during the First Carlist War, an event he would probably never think about again. Theology required him to stumble through a series of Hebrew prophecies, in all of their fire-and-brimstone glory. Philosophy demanded that he decipher the frantic scribblings of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. In fact, the only class he could have been said to enjoy was called ‘artistic expression,’ the last one of the day.

In essence, it allowed students to create whatever art they wanted, however they wanted. Some students painted. Others wrote in notebooks. Some played music together, creating a constant deluge of sound in the background. Shinji himself sat at his desk and drew in his notebook, having no creative compulsion to do otherwise. His eyes wandered the room until he found Rei, who was a few desks away among the writers. She seemed to be writing a few words; pausing, considering, and then writing a few more. Shinji watched her for a while before deciding that he liked the way she looked – her head perched on one hand as the other scribbled. As the art came together in his, Shinji realized how perfect it was – her shadow, cast against the windowless wall; her face, calm and serene; her eyes, betraying nothing. He had to finish the picture before she left.

He carefully shaded each corner of it to perfection, eyes flickering between his unwitting subject. Minutes before his hour in artistic expression was up, he completed it. It showed Rei – admittedly, with some of her feminine features exaggerated – at a desk, melancholically writing in her notebook. He’d bluntly titled it ‘The Writer, Alone.’

In this final part of the class, the students showed their products to their friends and classmates. Shinji felt no urge to look at anyone else’s work, nor was he asked to see them. However, as he packed up his pictures, he glanced at Rei. She was still looking at what she had written, eyes flickering over the lines. Forcing down his nervousness, he got up and walked over to her, making his way through the crowd of students.

When he arrived, Rei ignored him. She remained focused on the text. Shinji leaned over and found that it was a long string of algebraic chess notations. “Ayanami?” he asked, nervously. She looked up at him. “Yes, Ikari?”

“Can- Can I see what you made?”

She looked at him searchingly for a few moments. Then, she turned the book around and displayed it to him. “This is art,” she said, flatly.

“But-”

“It is a game I played against myself.”

Confused, Shinji asked, “What does that mean?”

“I will show you.”

-

Rei sat down on the lawn outside, Shinji following behind. The grass was bright green and, in all probability, fake; there was very little green grass anywhere, after the War. Rei produced a laptop out of her briefcase. It was archaic, still running a Windows OS well after the company had ceased to exist. After the machine finished booting up, Rei opened a chess program; she began to play the moves on her notepad using it, and Shinji’s artistic insight rapidly revealed the true nature of the ‘game’ to him: it was not a battle but a kind of dance, white’s every move perfectly balanced by black’s, until the game formed itself into a draw, with no pieces lost on either side.

“It’s amazing,” murmured Shinji.

“Thank you, Ikari,” Rei replied, and closed the program.

“Hey, what are you guys doing back here?” asked Kensuke, poking his head around the corner. Shinji looked around and saw the blond American.

“You can stop the make-out session,” continued Toji, brazenly walking around behind the building. “Company’s arrived.”

“That’s not what was happening!” protested Shinji.

“Oh? It’s what most kids do back here,” the jock replied, unapologetically.

“I demand a rematch,” said Kensuke, before Shinji could protest.

“Very well,” Rei said. They did not use the computer for it, however: Kensuke provided the board and pieces. Shinji observed with fascination as Rei demonstrated her artistic principals in practical play, each of her moves balancing – negating, even – whatever advantage Kensuke gained through a move was instantly lost. Kensuke had not yet understood the nature of Rei’s game and blissfully continued on his course until he maneuvered himself into such a terrible position that Rei destroyed him with ease.

“So what were you doing back here?” asked Toji.

“I wanted to see what Rei made during Artistic Expression,” Shinji said.

“Why?”

“I dunno. Curious.”

They watched Kensuke’s impending defeat for a few moments.

“What did you make?” asked Toji, absently.

“Nothing. Just some doodles.”

Kensuke was defeated, but his dignity was intact. “It was a fluke,” he said, demurely, as he packed up the pieces.

“Hey Ayanami, you wanna go to the mall? We could bring your boyfriend, too.” asked Toji, boredly.

“I’m not her boyfriend!”

“I must go to work,” she replied.

Shinji glanced at his watch. “I could call Kaji and ask if it’s alright for us to go…”

“I must go to work,” Rei repeated, and walked off. The three watched her walk off into the distance.

“Well, there’s a cold fish,” Toji said, almost sourly.

-

Misato looked at the pile of paperwork derisively. “Angels are messy business,” she muttered, before sitting at her desk and beginning the monumental task. The Second Angel’s attack had been more damaging than the previous one, including several civilian casualties from Unit 01’s crushing feet and more in property damage then the salary of every NERV employee combined. That kid is such an idiot, Misato thought, as she authorized the legal division to compensate – pay off, that is – the family of a kid who had been partially paralyzed by falling rubble. Technically, this should have been CFO Fuyutski’s job, but he and the Commander were off on some errand in the United States.

Misato was cold woman, insofar as she felt little guilt over the civilian casualties NERV was paying for. She perceived them as the necessary sacrifices in a war to defend humanity as a whole, cheerfully willing to sacrifice a few for the many.

She continued on this task for about an hour and a half, when her phone rang. Producing it from her pocket, she flipped it open and put it to her ear. “Katsuragi.”

“Hey Misato,” it was Ritsuko.

“Oh. What’s up?”

“We’re going to do the activation test for Unit 00 when Rei gets here. You want to come?”

Misato gave the mess on her table a critical look. “Yeah, sure.”

As she strode through the metallic halls of NERV, Misato saw the countless people that worked there: suited Section 2 agents, technicians in their brown tunics, scientists in lab coats. Things were busy since the Second Angel: not only were there preparations for the arrival of Unit 02, but repairs had to made to Unit 01, and Unit 00 was being activated. Not to mention the fact that NERV had its own fanclub now, and a new press core had been established, adding to the mess.

However, Misato rapidly discovered that her three weeks in survival training did nothing to help her navigation of extensive underground complexes. Misato arrived on the command deck with a few minutes to spare. Ritsuko was standing in the middle of the room, with its countless computers and bits and pieces of scientific instrumentality. The big monitors on the wall displayed various vital statistics on the EVA and its pilot, along with a live image of the teenager in the entry plug.

“I thought you wouldn’t make it,” remarked Ritsuko.

“Oh, shut it,” replied Misato, sourly. “I haven’t memorized the entire layout yet.”

“Commencing activation,” said Maya.

The monitor on the wall displayed Rei’s synch ratio steadily rising towards borderline. Ritsuko eyed it nervously, watching the test proceed exactly according to the operations manual.

“You seem upset,” observed Misato.

“Heh, if you’d been here at New Years you’d be nervous too.”

“What happened?”

“Unit 00 went berserk at its activation test… nearly killed Rei in the process. Its battery was drained before it could do any serious damage, but…”

“Oh, invite me to the test of an EVA that could go crazy and try to kill us at any moment. Nice one, Rits.”

“Oh, we’re not in any danger. We fixed all the kinks in the programming, and we’ve purged Unit 00’s biological components of disease.”

“And yet you’re nervous.”

“It’s hard to recover from something like that… Maya, how are looking?”

“No anomalies. Rei, how are you feeling?”

“Fine, Lieutenant.”

“You’re looking good, Rei,” began Ritsuko, “Let’s begin simulation 1…”

Suddenly, Shinji walked on the bridge. Misato gave him a withering look before turning back to Unit 00.

“Shinji? Why are you here?” asked Ritsuko. “You just got out of synch testing.” The boy still carried the blood-stink of the LCL on his skin, even though he had washed off in the showers quite thoroughly.

“I just wanted to see what was happening,” the boy muttered. “Everyone was in such a rush...”

Misato felt the urge to grab the kid by the shoulders and demand he realized that he had just fought an Angel a day ago, and if he had any conception of what a media circus this entailed. Thankfully, she was able to fight back her violent tendencies and react in a more reasoned tone. “A lot is happening at once,” she finally said, and clamped her mouth shut.

Shinji walked up to the window and watched Unit 00. It was less humanlike than Unit 01 – it had nothing that could be characterized as a face, only a single leering eye in the middle of a helmet-shaped head. Ritsuko began to run basic simulations, calling for low-level motor skills and agility. The monitor on the wall showed Rei’s expression of intense concentration as she managed to drive her synch ratio higher and higher to confront these simple challenges. Shinji had since surpassed these training lessons and gone on to harder things, but Rei was just beginning her real training in Unit 00 – she had inbred precision and intelligence, but no experience. There were many reboots.

“Poor kid,” muttered Ritsuko, to Misato. They were out of earshot of the Third Child.

“He has the battlefield discipline of a rabid dog,” Misato said, harshly.

“Well, yes, but he’s all ready developing a crush on Rei, poor kid.”

“How many other kids has she rejected so far?”

“I think it’s three. They all wanted to take her to the dance last year.”

Misato smirked. “My kind of girl.”

“A lesbian?”

“Silence, mongrel.”

-

Kaji glanced around the old room. It had been built before NERV Proper – the pyramid on the surface. This was way below the surface, in the vanity of the well-guarded facility Terminal Dogma. Kaji poked through the cardboard boxes and abandoned desks. He found his way to a particular workplace, sitting at the far end of the former office. He booted it up and, as it flickered to life, he lit up a cigarette.

As the wallpaper popped up on the screen, Kaji sat down in the ancient chair and began to poke through the files. The OS was ancient – a Linux thing, back when the system was still popular. He found his way through its file tree to a document called ‘3C – Genetic Reconstruction Program.”

“Hello,” the man murmured, his cigarette still clutched in his mouth. He opened it and read through it.

“3C OBJECTIVES FOR GENETIC RECONSTRUCTION – 1 Evangelion Synchronization – 2 Fertility – 3 Psych. Stability – 4 Atl. DNA.”

A series of encrypted sentences were below it, but that’s not what Kaji was interested in. He looked to the string of lines, diagonal and straight, forming two columns. After examining it critically, he produced a floppy desk and inserted it into the ancient computer.

“So, Shinji… let’s find out what you really are.”

The light of the computer illuminated this abandoned corner of NERV, showing the remains of the dead company GEHRIN: its research staff, scientists, and philosophers supplanted by ex-military and the cold, cynical heart of men like the Commander. Kaji had only been a child at the time, but he’d heard the stories of the first EVA series, and the fate of its creator.

The file transfer ceased, and Kaji quickly booted down the machine and left.

-

“Mein Gott in Himmel!” proclaimed Asuka, jumping up. The TV displayed footage from the battle with the latest Angel. Unit 01 crashed its knife down through the angel’s eye and rode it as it thrashed around, leaving a trail of destruction behind it. “What an idiot pilot!”

She was in her room, an area which dwarfed most middle-class dining rooms. A variety of stuffed animals sat on the shelves, alongside college-level books ranging from Jane Austen to Albert Einstein. A large plasma-screen television was mounted on the wall, displaying feeds from around the world. An electric guitar sat on a stand next to her bed, polished to a shine. Elise sat on her own, small bed, a kind of sidecar to Asuka’s. She wore no expression, and watched the show without comment.

“If they go much longer without me, the whole city will be gone before I can arrive!” Asuka circled the room, an expression of intense concentration on her face. “I wonder who the dummkopf pilot is… I wish they’d give me a name, at least!”

Elise watched her mistress, impassively.

“But they won’t send his name over the internet or cellphone, because they’re afraid those Schweinehundein the press will find out his name with their nasty little cyberwarfare units… Hmm…” Asuka continued to circle the room clothed only in a short pink slip, which would give anyone entering suddenly quite a view.

Asuka looked up at Elise, the redhead’s eyes filled with cunning. “I think it’s time we paid a visit to our own cyberwarfare units, Elise. Wouldn’t you say?”

“As you would have it, mistress,” Elise said, monotone.

“Quick, let us be dressed!” said Asuka, excitedly.

In the course of a few moments, Asuka changed from her slip to a heavy coat. They strode through the carpeted halls of the Sohryu mansion, speeding past the priceless paintings on the wall, barely glancing at their painstaking brushwork.

Germany was freezing outside: the coldest winter on record had swept through Europe. Even Asuka’s fine fur coat could not hold off the harsh bite of the snow. Asuka pulled it tight and hurried forward.

The Sohryu Mansion was a massive structure on a hill overlooking Berlin. It spanned four stories and contained over ten thousand square feet, four hundred rooms, along with its own defense system capable of shooting down a tactical ballistic missile or warding off a tank division. A tall concrete fence encircled the compound, topped by automated machine guns and armed guards. The garden surrounding the mansion was forest-like, although barren with winter, and filled by a web-like network of paths. The long road to the street was brick, and Asuka’s boots thumped on it loudly. Elise followed behind her. Armed guards strode across the terrain, saluting Asuka whenever she passed.

A limo waited at the gate, which was surrounded by more soldiers. Asuka strode past them and stood impatiently at the door, waiting to be attended to. Elise opened the door for her mistress and Asuka got in.

The drive through Berlin was brief. Asuka stared out the window, seeing the poor of the city lurk in alley. They all looked on the limo with eyes of envy and hate, but Asuka didn’t care: to her, they were the weak and stupid of her country, unable to lift themselves above the filth they were drowning themselves in. Asuka never felt threatened; she knew that the helicopter following them belonged to her mother; she knew that the dark sedans following the limo were being driven by men paid by Sohryu Industries. She was a princess in her own domain – her mother even owned the factories and warehouses the lazy poor stood between!

They passed into a more commercial area, occupied by grey high-rises beneath the sullen, smoke-stained sky. The people here were clerks and salary-men, too caught up in their own routine to even notice Asuka and her merry band. The redhead counted the skyscrapers until they arrived at a building plainly labeled ‘Sohryu Industries, Special Research Division.’ The moment she exited her limo, Asuka was surrounded by her bodyguards, who quickly exited their own vehicles and surrounded her. Any sniper would have a hell of a time picking her out from the dozens of weaving bodies, all in suits and trenchcoat.

The Special Research Division looked like any other corporate office. It had a lobby with a pleasant, albeit unsettlingly cheeful, secretary, and a listing of floors. However, to read those listings would reveal its true nature. The building contained such agencies as, ‘Sohryu Paramilitary Division – Headquarters C,’ ‘Sohryu Espionage/Sabotage Division,’ ‘Sohryu Air Corp Division – Headquarters B,’ and so on. Asuka rapidly searched the directory until she found ‘Sohryu Cyberwarfare Unit,’ on the top floor. Asuka went to the express elevator and went up, grinning like a cat.

-

‘Frau. Sohryu,” said the receptionist, a man in his late forties with an easy-going smile and unreadable eyes. “What may I do for you?”

“We need to talk in private,” Asuka said. The body guards looked apprehensive, but Asuka strode past them and entered a back room, followed closely by Elise. The receptionist was unsurprised at the handmaiden’s presence.

“I want you to break into NERV’s folders,” Asuka said. “I don’t care how you do it.”

His eyebrows arched. “Frau Sohryu… that is, indeed, a dangerous business. What are you looking for?”

“I want the name of Unit 01’s pilot, so I can find out why he is such a dummarsh. I mean, really…”

“Can you not wait until you arrive in Japan…?”

Asuka suddenly seemed very large. “Don’t try me, Herr Kafka. I’m not in the mood.”

The man stepped back, raising his arms in a gesture of surrender. “All right, all right, Frau Asuka. You should know that your mother has made this very request already.”

“Really?” the redhead asked. “Mama never told me about this…”

“The kid’s name is Shinji Ikari. He was born in Tokyo-3 to Yui and Gendo Ikari. He left his high school lately to serve as Unit 01.”

“Oh? What’s he like?”

“I have never met him, and a Section 02 personality manifold can do little to fix that. It did, however, say he was interested in drawing and living with Herr Kaji.”

“WHAT?!” howled Asuka. The man flinched. “Herr Kaji… into that sort of thing?! It cannot be!”

“He is fourteen…”

“Oh.” Asuka turned to Elise. “That exchange never happened.”

“Of course, Mistress.”

Asuka turned back to Kafka. “Well, what sort of pictures has does he draw?” The aging hacker showed her over to a computer sitting at the back of the room and quickly called off Ikari’s profile.

“He looks like a wimp,” Asuka commented.

Then, a certain picture of Hikari popped up. There was a long silence. “THAT PERVERT!”

-