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Shinji and Warhammer 40,000

Prologue 1.9 (Call to Adventure)
=][=

His guardians arrived only soon enough to see him run past them on the street back to the house. His aunt made as if to call out to him, but a hand on her shoulder kept her silent. Shinji's uncle had already learned of what happened.

"No, let him be. He needs to be alone." he said sadly. "Shinji is just too kind, he needs to be alone to deal with knowing not everyone can be as naturally good as he expects them to be."

"That poor boy."

The Boyz broke into the scene, shouting something that sounded like 'Huuwaaaaaaaaaaaaaa- " and ground to a halt at seeing all the policemen. They sheepishly put away their useless rocks and sticks. The snacks they brought were far more useful, and in between grateful munches Kobayakawa regaled them of his tale of heroism and the confirmed infallibility of Da Boss.

The boyz offered some snacks to the policemen, who accepted some with a smile. It was a simple act that would have far-reaching symbolic consequences.

=][=

Shinji ran until his lungs burned. He ran until his legs began to burn. He ran until the pain seemed to set his nerves aflame. And still he didn't stop.

He arrived at the house gasping for breath, feeling his entire body screaming. He reached for the secret hiding place for the house keys and fumbled angrily at the locks. He stumbled in, leaving the door hanging open. He clung to the wall as he climbed up to the second floor. His heart threatened to leap right out of his chest, and his head seemed about to burst.

He kicked open his door and laid bloodshot eyes at a single figure alone in its shelf. "YOU!" he snarled.

He leaped over and snatched it from its place on the shelves. His hands shook as he gripped it, slowly adding more and more pressure. As plastic deformed under his grip, it looked as if the Chaos Marine was bowing its head.

/'Someday you will NEED me again, Bright Lord. Someday, you will call out for me again. Someday, when you can set aside this petty morality. And on that day I will grant you POWER beyond your wildest imaginations.'/

Shinji snarled and tightened his grip. He felt so immense just then, and the figurine in his hands a little person, red-eyed and so willing to just let him crush it/him in his hands…

Shinji screamed.

He collapsed to his knees and punched at the floor.

"What am I doing?" he breathed. "What am I doing?" He opened his palm to reveal the figurine all bent of shape, its lacquer cracked in places. It didn't seem irretrievably damaged, though. He could push things back into place and slap on a fresh coat of paint. "Why am I so angry at this thing?"

"You're just a lump of plastic!" he said, his heart lifting. He got up and placed it back on the shelf. Shinji sat on his bed and cradled his face in his hands.

"I… wanted her to hurt." he failed to hold back his tears. "I'm a horrible person."

/'No, you are not.'/ he felt another familiar voice skim through his mind. /'It was not your fault, Shinji. What did you really do, clear your mind and admit it to yourself.'/

"What I did I do? I wanted her to hurt! I didn't mean for this to happen... but I allowed it! I took her pain and loved it. Oh, gods, I loved it."

/'No, yaz didn't!'/ Shinji could feel a massive stomp echo through his consciousness. /'She was weak, and you hated anyones who abuses da weak.'/

/'You must not lie to yourself, commander. Consider exactly what your influence in this matter brought. As much as it pains me to admit it, the chaos-pawn had done you right. You SAVED a life, commander, and it was not by your hands that an evil one was destroyed. It was by your will that one was saved from that evil.'/

"But… Minase…"

/'Did you plan it? Such is the way of Chaos that it prevents any attempts to truly control it.'/ The Farseer in his mind stroked with her white-gloved hands from the cheek of her helmet, down to her neck, past her chestplate and down to her hips. /'You did nothing to her. You must understand this. You are not a God. Not everything is within your control. Her fate is hers alone.'/

"I don't want anyone to suffer…" Shinji cried. "I don't want anyone to suffer ever again."

/'If that is your desire, my bright lord.'/ the Chaos Marine actually had the gall to interject. /'Then let it be written upon the flesh of destiny.'/

/'Be silent!'/ screeched the Eldar. /'You have had your say. Be silent unless your loathsome opinion is asked for.'/

/'I obey Chaos, not you, witch. But for the bright lord's sake for now I shall do as you say.'/

Shinji bent his knees up and went into a sitting fetal position. He had touched something today, something vast and powerful and simultaneously remote and always at hand. His head felt light and cool, as if he was floating again on the ocean, in a sea of shining liquid gold.

The Ork said it was nothing more than his "Inna bad-ass". Both the Farseer and Space Marine counseled for him not to worry about it, and it would be a LONG time before he'd swallow so easily anything that Chaos would say.

He no longer felt powerless, though. He learned that day that when one's physical strength fails, let the mind triumph. When the future is closed to the mind, then it is the point of decisive action. When all is dark, is when the light of the soul shall reveal itself.

His physical form was not the all of what he was.

Delusions. Fantasies. Insanity.

He stared at his figurines, now silent and no more than painted plastic again. Something still resonated at the back of his skull.

Unreal. Irrational. Powerful.

[I AM] (NOT) WHO [I AM].


=][=

A year passed in humdrum mundanity. Junior High was a fun but excessively normal time of life. The Boyz had organized and brought their afterschool club out into the open. The year was 2015, and while their styles were clearly based on hooligan aesthetic, Shinji's friends found recognition as a sporting and mechanical hobbyist's club.

Whole franchises were built around aesthetics and mascots and merchandising potential. The Boyz Football and The Boyz Baseball. And specially Da Boyz Motorless Racing Team - well there's a lot of mostly unused roads around their hometown, innit? Da Boyz began spreading out into other towns, making their 'Tribez'. Towns that didn't have a unified sporting identity were ripe for recruitment, while those that did were challenged and on their defeat would either be absorbed or be made to pay a token 'tribute'.

They recruited adults to teach them survival and workshopping skills. They were like the Boy/Girl Scouts if combined with the aggressive proselytizing tendencies of Jehova's Witnesses.

Da Boyz were organized by age. From youngest to oldest: Snots, Runts, Grots, Gretchz, Boyz, Nobz, Chiefs. Then they were organized into roles; from informers(oddboyz), agents (kommandos), crafters(mekboyz), drivers and messengers (flyboyz), sports teams (sluggaboyz), academic teams (weirdboyz), recruiters (wildboyz), attack mobs (warboyz) and sabotage (kommandos). They operated in cells so that the secrets of the Boyz could never be fully leaked.

Da Book was accidentally a textbook case of insurgency operations.

But then again, that was basically what the Orks were originally designed to be; growing from a few dropped spores, they would grow into a self-reinforcing, self-maintaining army out of literally nothing more than the investment of some dirt. Most orks would remain feral until the first of them unlocks the genetic information to smelt metal, and then soon enough there's guns and trucks and bombs and giant stompy mechs and a full-on Waaagh! is set to burn whole worlds.

A Boy was nothing without a Mob. The ideal of the Boyz would be for a single Boy, lost on his own, could do with little more than inspiration from the book, begin the whole cycle all over again. The Boyz' 'kultur' was based around self-sufficiency, and making everything up from scrap.

The true power of friendship was, after all, having five of your friends with you to beat up somebody you didn't like.

=][=

Shinji stood on top of the school roof. He could not exactly refuse her invitation. Minase stared out towards the city, the wind tugging at her long silken black hair. She turned towards him and smiled impishly.

"What's wrong?" she asked. "What are you so afraid of? A confession?"

Shinji winced.

"Oh? Really? Am I really that unpleasant? Am I... unclean? Even you, are you judging me too?"

"No! Never! That's not... I mean, I can't judge you for anything. I don't think you called me here for a confession."

The girl laughed lightly. "But I do have to confess something. It's weird... did ever tell you WHY I used to love gangster movies so much? Dark smoky dens, black leather and motorcycles, the smell of smoke, intense smoldering stares...! Oh! That's a man's world, where a woman can only move through with her wits and her beauty... or else they'll chew her up and leave her with nothing.

"It's a very improper world. My father... he's just a politician. People call him powerful, but really... a lot of the powerful people I know are just boring. I really just like the style of a gangster and their sworn brotherhoods compared to the high life I'm expected to grow into.

"All that fake make nice and all those parties where nothing's allowed to happen, and all the gossip only about who looks cute together, or the price of their dress... they call me a princess, but I don't want to be just one of those silly empty-headed girls! Something exciting... something raw and true."

Then she turned away and grabbed at the roof's security fence. "But I turned out to be just an empty-headed girl after all..."

Jishin's older brother was a true-blooded Yakuza. But even he couldn't try to take revenge against some uppity girl or a round boy. A mayor's daughter was off limits. They crossed the line, and so the organization had to sacrifice someone to bring back a peaceful balance. The tail should not wag the dog, after all. The organization should not suffer from the stupidity of one member. The Yakuza were still of Japanese sensitivity, and preferred a status quo that had them pass under legal notice or preserving a veneer of respectability.

The Boyz found the gap where they were warned to be 'hands off' and exploited it ruthlessly. In the surrounding towns, the saw-toothed Ork skull was a gang sign all their own.

"Now imagine my surprise to learn that all this time, someone's been setting up a 'chivalrous organization' all this time under my nose without my knowing."

"Umm. I have no control over anything that happens anymore. Please, believe me. If I could stop them, I would! Someone's going to get hurt at some point if they keep pushing."

The Boyz were so suicidally brave going into forbidden areas and so unafraid to talk to all sorts of people that they were just Bavarian Fire Drill-convincing people that they probably belonged there and it was fine to let them get away with all sorts of their shenanigans.

Minase laughed and approached him, her eyes glinting with savage intensity. Shinji began to back away. Until he felt a wall behind him, and she trapped him there with her hands on either side of his head. It was the kabe-don, that flirtatious scene so often seen in girl's manga with the genders reversed.

"What happened to me... I don't know why, but it didn't make me strong. I'm afraid it could happen again, now I know men can just take me and I can't stop them. I should be ashamed to say this to you. But I don't know why... somehow, it's fine if I talk about this to you. You wouldn't want a soiled woman like me, you deserve someone faithful and good like Ayane."

"Ayane's my FRIEND. I think we can be friends too." The boy's eyes were clear and perfectly free of any moral judgement. "Deserving or not deserving, that's not even important. I don't know how you want me to treat you... but who you are right now is more important than what you were before."

Minase laughed. Wildly. Mockingly. "Why are you so puuure?" She pinched at his cheeks. "I don't know- why?! Why you?! Why do I feel so comfortable being able to say this to you?!"

"Ouch. Ow. Please stop."

Then she licked her lips and whispered "If I eat you up... could you make me pure again?"

Minase took one of Shiji's hands and stuck the fingers in her mouth. She stroked and wet the fingers with her tongue. Inside, her tongue danced and rubbed against his flesh with a secret passion.

Shinji blushed terribly.

Then she bit down. Hard. Blood welled up between her lips.

/"Okay. Cannibalism was NOT how I expected this day to go!"/ Shinji bit back his scream. Minase smiled sweetly down at him.

She licked and sucked at his fingers some more, and then slid them out of her mouth with a luscious 'pop'. The indentations of her teeth left the skin white to the bone, until blood started to well up from the small wounds. Shinji winced a little bit, but otherwise seemed unaffected. Pain was familiar companion.

And she whispered cloyingly "I hate everything you represent. I love it that I have something to hate about you."

Minase would thereafter in secret show him her humiliation and it always creeped him the hell out.

=][=

The day arrived when he received the letter from Tokyo-3.

It had one word in it: COME.

Shinji Ikari stared disbelievingly at it, all else blank paper but for the NERV letterhead and his father's signature. How hard can it be to write one other word?

/PLEASE/ COME, maybe?

Or /COME LIVE WITH ME./

Or /YOU ARE NEEDED, COME TO TOKYO 3./

Or even maybe /I'M SORRY FOR ABANDONING YOU./

"No father would write this!" he said to himself. "One word! Like calling a pet to hell! This is something specifically designed to piss me off!" he gasped. "And it's working!"

"You don't have to go to Tokyo-3, Shinji." his aunt said softly. "You can just stay here. You can be happy here, can't you?"

"Yes, don't give the bastard the satisfaction of having the son he so ignored come running at his earliest call… what's there for you anyway?"

He could just stay. In a town which actually loved him. Where the boyz were being treated like the minor militia and hometown heroes. Where someone stood beside him, and strangely a best friend/confidante/personal secretary did vastly simplify his life; a female best friend that maybe eventually could turn into something more. Where, once, when no one was around, Minase actually knelt down and kissed his shoe as if his mere touch could purify her. Then she laughed at the sheer panic in his face.

Still so very pretty. Still so very very creepy. One day she would totally degrade herself beyond sanity and Shinji feared that would be the day she would literally bake him into a pie.

/"Ey Boss, wots da big dakka here?"/
/"Shinji-kun, I understand that you think the 'boyz' is a gender-neutral term, but I think the girl's choir would do better."/
/"This is so tacky and disgraceful. Ohoho. I love it. I love it!"/

Life was good. With his own efforts he could believe he deserve a little bit of happiness, right? It was a nice, normal life, and yet somehow...

He could see it in their eyes. Even as his guardians asked for him to stay, they already knew that a part of him was meant for bigger things out in the world. He had lived in the backwoods of Sendai since he was three years old. Since he personally watched his mother die. Since he watched his father break down in tears at allowing this monstrosity to happen.

His friends would not be able to follow him to his father's seat of power. They would not be safe there.

Shinji crumpled the letter, if it could even be called that, in his fist. He looked up and the weight of ages were in his eyes. "I HAVE to go to Tokyo-3. It's time my father and I talked things over."

"Give him a punch him in the face for me, would you?" his uncle said with a grin.

"Sure will!" he replied with a similarly wide-open expression. "If he deserves it, I won't hold back at all!" Shinji Ikari still had all the outward signs of a happy, emotionally healthy child.

=][=

The year was 2015. The world was grievously wounded by Second Impact, but slowly and with resentful determination, it had recovered and worked hard never to suffer through that again.

This was the year that the beings that killed half of all humanity returned to finish the job. Theirs was the Evangel of a New Genesis, a bloody-handed gospel. Where one ends, another must begin.

Fifteen years had passed. Fifteen years to prepare. To train. Construct defenses. Build weapons. Perform immoral medical experiments on children. Humanity was wounded and half-mad with pain. But like a cornered animal with nowhere left to run, it was ready to fight with all its power for the right to exist.

Into this carefully orchestrated war, walked in an impossibly delusional young boy named Shinji Ikari.
 
1.1 Long Long Ago, 21st Century
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=][=
.

Something swam in the depths, a figure of immense might and proportions. It swam past sunken skyscrapers, the stripped-bare bones of mankind's arrogance. It weaved through what had been the downtown of Atami City, Shizuoka, Japan. The ocean rise from Second Impact swallowed most of the coast.

"- Sonar reports contact! Sonar reports contact! Estimate T-minus two minutes before engagement! All forces ready! -" the electronic chatter passed through the air above. The tone carried a hint of disbelief, that everything they had been preparing for years now could actually happen.

It was a giant creature vaguely shaped like a man. It had slick black skin like that of sea mammals, and lacked any form of hair, nails, or fur. Its hands and feet were like that of a human being, ending in skin-covered five fingers and toes. For some strange reason, its rib bones seemed to be on the outside, framing a red sphere growing out the center of its chest. Curving wedges of bone jutted out of its shoulders like oversized white pauldrons.

Its most distinctive quality, other than its maddening size, was the bone mask upon its neckless head. The mask looked faintly avian with its chin ending in a point like a bird's beak, and behind the eyeholes there was nothing but untold darkness. It stepped out of the waters of Sagami Bay, moving its spindly yet powerful limbs in punctuated jerks, and utterly unconcerned at the assembly of forces ready to receive it.

This was the being known as [SACHIEL]. It stood straight up, taller than skyscrapers, more dangerous than an atom bomb, and the air itself rang with the terrible fury of its soul.

"- Pattern Blue! Pattern Blue confirmed! All forces, engage! -"

Arrayed along the shoreline were rows of warships and tanks along the highways. As the creature made its first step out of the waters, its foot touching the beach crushed all their renewed hopes. The world did not belong to man, not anymore. The human being was not the ultimate predator on this planet, not anymore.

Fifteen years of ignorance died at that moment. Fifteen years had passed, the innocence of the world was raped out of it by the ambition of men who would become gods, and now the Earth felt the touch of angry abandoned children.

[SACHIEL]. Its name meant [THE COVERING OF GOD].

Thoom. Thoom. Thoom. Thoom.

The full might of the military was swiftly brought to bear on the intruder. The first hot salvo came from the Type-110 tanks of the Japan Ground SSDF lined along the highway. To [Sachiel] the rain of 125mm rounds, a mixture of long-rod penetrators and high-explosives, did not even rate the sensation of pinpricks.

Whump. Whump. Whump.

Then, the warships of the Marine SSDF added their voice, booming out with larger-caliber automatic cannons and VLS missiles. Explosions rippled across the Angel's back, but it did not bother to even turn around.

It seemed that not even all the machines of men would fail to break its stride. Yet, Japan of 2015 was not the innocent nation of 2000. While constitutionally they still avowed war, theirs was now a much more varied and much more potent military force.

"- Air Cavalry, to position! -"

Rising from behind the mountains, coming in from the bases in Gotemba and Odawara, the two cities next to Tokyo-3, was the Air Force, having to close in to near suicidal range just to target the immense creature. For some strange reason, radar and even laser rangefinders were fuzzing up around it. The JASSDF sent out a large number of VTOLs for this purpose.

[SACHIEL's] masked face quivered. Unlike the previous two massed attacks, the incoming forces were deliberately putting themselves between it and its objective. A massive missile, almost as large as the strike fighter carrying it, was released and shot forth towards the Angel. It was one designed to destroy hardened bunkers buried tens of meters underground.

[SACHIEL] raised its clawed hand for the first time, and caught it right out of the air. The missile crumpled in its palm. And then it exploded, engulfing the giant in flame.

"- Pattern Blue still in effect! -"

[SACHIEL] walked out of the billowing flames, unscathed, undaunted.

Behind the mountains lay Hakone, and beneath Hakone was the call of a being older than worlds. [SACHIEL] could not feel the [light of the soul] from all the things that tried to impede its progress, and all were therefore irrelevant.

Its eyes flashed, and the streets and building were cut apart by cross-shaped blasts of purest hostile power. Flash. The beams cut through whole floors of steel and concrete without resistance, and then exploded beyond.

There was nothing but screams, and then silence, in its passing.

.
=][=
.

Meanwhile, the completely automated railways system towards Tokyo 3 continued to roll on. The national high-speed rail, the Shinkansen, managed to survive Second Impact mostly intact.

The bullet train rolled to a gradual stop. Its single passenger got off. "I hope there were no security cameras in that thing…" said Shinji Ikari. He could not help it. Being so alone felt so liberating, as a teenager he wasn't supposed to give in to such childish urges anymore. A little silliness broke the eerie feelings he was getting.

/'You should have thought of that before you started to run on the cushions and then slide and swing on the handrails just because no one else was around,'/ a stately female voice in his mind replied. /'Truly, you show all the signs of your mon-keigh ancestry.'/

He looked at those bars, and thought; Why not? What did he have to lose but his dignity? There was nothing to be scared of, and if he did end up being scolded he was prepared to accept it. "…wait. Mon-keigh is supposed to be monkey, right?" the teen noted with some disbelief. He smiled indulgently. "You've been calling me a monkey all this time?"

/'We have been calling your kind the mon-keigh, the wild ones, for as long as your race have stood upright. It saddens me, to be sure, that you took this long to realize this. Some… never do.'/

/'So, that's why you refer to me as a metal-skinned brute!'/ quoth the Space Marine. /'That my genetic enhancements only return me to my true mental state! This armor, these geneseeds are the finest fruits of the God-Emperor's will. I thought you Eldar might have actually respected His mighty intellect. That was an insult all this time?'/

/'See, Shinji? Disappointing.'/

/'BE SMOTE for your HERESY, foul xeno Eldar witch!'/

/'It is heresy only if I follow your religion! And I do not!'/ She seemed to grin. /'Gorilla Man.'/

/'Let me out, commander! Get us out of this pack. There must be smiting!'/

/'So much grunting. Would you like a banana?'/


An inarticulate roar filled Shinji's mind, with a /'oohho-ho-ho'/ weaving in and out. "Hush!" he said, suddenly alert. There was silence. There was too much silence. He looked about, and all the activity he could see in the famously modern city of Tokyo-3 were the blinking of street lights.

There was perhaps no danger for a fourteen year-old to travel all the way from the north of Japan down to its heartland near Mount Fuji, but one of the mayor's friends had accompanied him to Tokyo-2. Once there, he found out that there was a train waiting for his arrival. The train official there looked irritated at the reserved line, but the train was not allowed to leave without him and only him and only at a certain time.

It was odd but not too implausible that his father's connections would have a train only for him (for what, he could not understand – it was a foolish waste of time and money, if maybe just to impress one perplexed teenager), but for the terminal to be without any people was simply unthinkable. Tokyo-3 was supposed to be a bustling city and a nerve center of Japan's renewed industrial and commercial efforts. "…where is everybody?"

Shinji Ikari stepped out of the terminal and walked down the streets. The shops were all closed. There was not a single moving car to be seen. The speakers were saying something, along the lines of [Please remain calm. Immediately proceed to the nearest shelter. This is not a drill.]

For some reason he was feeling a heavy weight over his shoulders.

He looked down at the photo sent to him; a woman in tight clothing leaning forwards, an arrow in red marker (maybe to remind of red lipstick?) was drawn pointing to her breasts. [LOOK HERE!] it said.

Shinji quirked his lips. Yes, she was sexy. He was a teenager now, and that appealed to his interests. He had to admit, as much as his father's message made him insulted and indignant, this one tickled his curiosity. What sort of person would send something like this to a junior high boy?

For years now, the voices in his mind had counseled him, berated him, told him things that should be outside of his knowledge and awareness. For most people, it would have faded into harmless fancy as they realized they were basically just talking to themselves. Shinji, who had never even entertained the notion that the voices were each their own identities separate from his own, was comfortable with asking them to double-check even his own senses.

He took out a card from his pocket, and there was a red symbol, half of a fig leaf. NERV. Below that, a telephone number. He saw a row of public phones some distance away. He went over and dialed it in.

"Hmn. No answer." He set the receiver back. "This doesn't make sense. Why go to all this far and not have anyone to meet me? Getting here was all pre-arranged, I had no real choice anywhere. So why just let me get off here and then expect me to manage on my own?"

/'I highly doubt your father would clear out an entire city just for the purposes of insulting you further…'/ the Farseer said, to hide that she had no idea of what was going on either.

"It's no good. Maybe I –should- go to a shelter? Not that I know where one is, anyway…" Also, he mused, why were there shelters in the first place? Maybe he should have been paying attention to the news. Maybe there was a storm or tornado or something. That would nicely explain it; he nodded to himself. Quick enough to suddenly appear all the while the train trundled toward Tokyo-3 in all ignorance.

He looked up at the sky. Unfortunately the crystal calm belied that hypothesis.

He felt something icy cold run up the back of his neck, a feeling of being watched.

Shinji blinked. Wait, what, is that…

He saw standing across the street a girl in a blue school uniform. She stared at him with a deep but emotionless gaze. Her blue hair was what drew his attention, and her red eyes seemed to go straight into his soul and out his back, leaving his inner being a flayed but exultant mess. He felt a certain deep yearning settle over him, and faintly, almost unheard…

'[and again we are one'].

The flapping noise of a flock of white pigeons suddenly flying off from a power line drew his attention for but an instant, and when he looked back she was gone.

"What was that? Did I… imagine it?

In the distance, something exploded.

/'IT COMES!'/ screamed the voice of Chaos.

Shinji's mind rang with a roar. He turned and felt a wall of… something. The pressure! Squeezing his heart! /'What… what is this?'/

His inner voices were suddenly all unable to speak. It came to him as a gust of wind. Shinji saw a tilt-wing rotor combat helicopter slide into view, frantically discharging its missiles at something behind the buildings.

"- all missiles hit the target! It's - AAAAAH!"

It came as cleansing fire, as he saw that same gunship speared by a bright pink bolt of energy, withdrawing back to massive black arm just now coming into view.

SHRAK!

He shielded his face as the aircraft fell, its directionless rotors now whipping at the air, crashing and chopping up the pavement near him. He crouched into a fetal position to protect himself from the sharp metal debris and concrete fragments flying through the air. The giant strode on unconcerned.

"I know this!" Shinji stood back up shouted out for reasons he could not explain. "I feel I should know this!"

Its gargantuan foot came down close by, and Shinji could feel a slight breeze just from the air being pushed out of the way by its sheer mass as it walked by. Shinji wondered if he should run away, except that something paralyzed him. No. It was not fear, even as the animal part of his brain felt so small and insignificant. Foremost in his mind was this puzzling feeling of familiarity. It was like trying to make sense of a dream, trying to remember it in the moment just before consciousness fully engages back into wakefulness.

Conveniently a sports car screeched to a halt between it and him, driving him out of his stunned fugue. The door opened, and a woman in a tight purple one-piece shouted at him, her face hidden behind large tinted driving sunglasses. "Get in!"

He ran to the car, sensing that the next step might actually land on top of the hapless vehicle. Once inside, the car sped out with maniacal speed and reckless turns around sharp street corners. Crunch. Shinji looked back to see the the giant thing move on, its feet flattening trucks and bridges that happened to bar its path.

.
=][=
.

The thing didn't care or even notice them enough to chase them. They sought sufficient cover behind several building blocks, and then went on their way.

"W-what was that?" he said between frantic gulps of breath. /'So pure. So much purposeful hatred. What was that? What can man do against such black hate?'/

"That was an Angel, Shinji," the woman said nonchalantly. "That is what your father fights."

Shinji looked back. "An angel…"

My father fights that? Technically, the word she used was Shito. The expression was more linked to an avenger, or punisher. There was nothing intrinsically holy about it. Even so, now he felt strangely at peace when he should terrified out of his little goddamn mind like a normal person.

/'We might be getting into something we would not want to be in, Commander,'/ was the Space Marine's warning. /'I can feel it. We all can.'/

/'Deres stompins dat gots that be done,'/ added the Ork warboss. /'Let's get stuck in, boyz! Waaagh!'/

/'There is blood.'/ hissed the Chaos Marine. /'I can taste it. Blood waits for us here. Blood to FILL a God to satisfaction.'/

/'Are you afraid?'/ he asked them.

The Farseer pulled deep into herself. /'Are you not? Your thoughts are our thoughts. Shinji… The future is closed to me. I feel it. We are at the cusp of a scenario. We cannot see it, for we are part of it.'/

The young teen turned his head back and sighed. He slumped against his seat. /'I can't escape it now. I have to know it. WHAT are you up to, father?'/

He looked up and at the woman beside him. The large shades hid her eyes, she seemed serious and professional and nothing like the picture she sent. He felt his eyes drifting down to the stretched folds near her chest, and looked away sharply. He felt a certain amusement from her. Damn! So, hidden by the reflective shades, she was looking at him instead of just driving down the road.

Wait, wasn't that… dangerous?

Shinji faced forwards, slumped back some more and obstinately jutted out his chin. He tried in this way to fight back his embarrassment. That only made the purple-haired woman smile widely. The young teen just couldn't pull off a tough look.

"So, you're Ikari Shinji, huh?" she said, eyes back to the road. "I'm Katsuragi Misato. I happen to work for the organization that your father leads."

"P-pleased to meet you."

"Yes, I'm sure." she added impishly.

'Nice kid', she thought. 'Still so innocent. He's going to be so much fun to tease. Who knows? I might even do something might enjoy.' She begun to chuckle lightly, which for some reason made Shinji feel even more uneasy.

Misato angled her neck to get a better look at the sky. "That plane… it can't be! They wouldn't?" She suddenly turned and yelled right at Shinji's face. "GET DOWN!"

The car swerved wildly away and crumped through a road rail.

And the sun came down from the sky.

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Misato angled her neck to get a better look at the sky. "That plane… it can't be! They wouldn't?" She suddenly turned and yelled right at Shinji's face. "GET DOWN!"

The car swerved wildly away and crumped through a road rail.

And the sun came down from the sky.
And this, people, is why you set up meetings correctly to not end up in the same time and place as a nuclear strike.
 
1.2 Misato Katsuragi
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Deep inside a command center buried underground, the Japan Strategic Self Defense Force commanders smirked. "We did it!" one of them exulted.

The other one looked up at the NERV command tower, where Gendo Ikari sat staring at the massive wall screen. His hands in white gloves were were laced together under his nose as he leaned on his elbows, hiding his mouth. His eyes were also hidden by orange tinted glasses that reflected the light of the kiloton-range explosion.

The JSSDF commander insincerely said "Sorry, we've left you with nothing to do."

A female voice, the situation officer, reported through the speakers: "Shock wave inbound." The main screen flashed white and then into static.

Gendo smirked.

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Misato Katsuragi shielded the boy with her body. She pulled him tight to her as the car was thrown off the road by the blast. The car tumbled up and over to its side and skidded off the highway, throwing sparks, as the shockwave passed over them. There was only the vague feeling of heat, but they could feel their ears pop from the sudden change in pressure. Through it all, Shinji thought /'Maybe coming to Tokyo-3 wasn't such a bad idea after all…'/

/'I should be feeling outraged',/ said the Farseer, miffed. /'But your thoughts are our thoughts.'/

/'I am SURE it is no surprise that perversion flows from one of the Race that spawned Slaanesh. Enough. We care not. Get your FOOT out of my face, woman.'/

/'My foot, as you put it, is attached to my base. Stop kissing my plastic stand.'/ She paused. /'You were trying to look up my skirt, weren't you? Weren't you?'/

/'Damnation! Stop kicking me, woman!'/

His imaginations were always the most lively when he needed to take his mind off something. He was only grateful for their timely distraction.

/'Hear your most devoted follower, oh bright lord. Save me! HELP!'/

/'Die, die and die again. Be resurrected by your Dark Gods to be killed by me again!'/


After a while, Misato let him up from his breath-starved position.

Misato stood up and looked past the road's lip. "That was an N2 mine. It seems to have stopped the Angel for a while." She sighed. "Let's get moving."

Shinji stared blanky at the rising mushroom cloud. "Aren't we going to die from, like… radiation?"

"No, Shinji. N2 means Non-nuclear. It has all the power of a nuke without the nasty side-effects."

"That still sounds terribly unsafe!" Then he blinked. "Wait... you said... stopped for a while? How would you even know that? Even that's not enough to kill it?!"

Misato winced at the information she carelessly handed out. NERV had fully expected this to happen.

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"Visual image restored," the situation report officers said overhead.

Deep inside NERV's control center, the commanders of the JSSDF gasped as the EMP cleared and cameras could again show the monster. It lay flat against the ground, and all around it was a blasted steaming ruin.

"Is... is it dead? It has to be!" said one of the JSSDF commanders.

"It's still in one piece. Impossible."

"High-Energy reaction in the target!"

The Angel began to twitch. Its single bird-shaped mask started to twist and bulge. A second bony face began to /grow/ out of its shoulders.

The screen began to turn red. The light around itself was redshifting from how it was defensively warping spacetime as it regenerated the damage to its body. This was the AT field.

"Our trump card... unbelievable," one of the brown-suited commanders sagged.

"This... this is a true monster..."

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They pushed the car back to rest on its wheels. Misato bewailed her beautiful car. "Thirty-three more payments....! Nooo!"

Shinji patted her back and said "Um, it's not that bad? The spirit of this machine is the same no matter what face it wears." Misato stared back at him with incomprehension. The boy smiled sheepishly. He took his hand away and stared up at her. "Aren't you a soldier, Misato-san? This is a soldier's car. Let it wear its scars proudly."

She scrunched up her face at him. Not that she wasn't guilty of applying personifications to machines too, but it's not the time to be joking around pretending that machines had identities. "But Shinji-kun. This thing still isn't even fully paid for, now I'll have to go into debt again to fix it! People won't respect me if I'm driving around a piece of crap. It's a classic! I had just finished restoring it, and now..."

She sobbed again. "My lovely lovely caaar!"

"This piece of crap got those bumps saving their skins." The young teen nodded, his face so serious. "Misato-san! Screw 'em!"

That did it. She had to laugh. He was just too serious, and yet she could tell he meant well. She hugged him, pressing his face to her bosoms again. "Aren't you just adorable? Hah! You're right, Shinji-kun! Screw 'em!" She slapped at the steering wheel, as if urging a horse to run.

They went on their way.

After a while down the road, the car rolled, rolled, slowed, and… came to a stop. The engine choked and died.

Silence. Misato turned her head and pointedly looked at the young teen sitting beside her. Shinji grinned weakly and rubbed the back of his head. "… maybe the spirit is willing but the metal is weak?"

"Maybe you're not as cute as I thought, after all." she huffed.

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Smash!

Misato chuckled as she hefted a bundle of heavy-duty batteries in her hands. Tokyo-3's hyper-efficient ideals worked against her, the electric car might be clean and cost-effective, but ultimately easy to knock out of proper working order. She didn't have time to fiddle around with the insides, hopefully these would provide the additional power she needed for the existing engine lines.

"Um… is it really okay if we take this? We did break into a store, after all. Isn't that stealing?"

She huffed again. She just knew the kid would be one of those unimaginative law- abiding types. "It's fine. It's fine. NERV will take care of it, no problem. Now let's get go-"

The young teen finished placing his armload of batteries into the back seat. "Really? Awesome! Can I go get something for me too, then?"

Her head turned with grinding slowness, like a gun on a turret. It filled Shinji's heart with dread. Her gaze was grim and and judgmental. He began to back away. Then, all of a sudden she cheered up and said "Sure! But remember this is an emergency so be quick!"

"Thank you, Misato-san." Shinji bowed. Then only painfully suppressing himself into as to look too much like a looter during an inner city riot, he rushed back into the store. Score! The boy had always been fascinated with hardware and construction tools, ever since he realized that it was the only way to build a 1:10 scale Battle Titan. His childhood knew friendship and camaraderie, but association with the Boyz and their independent attitudes also taught him the joy of building things with his own bare hands.

Oddly, it was the Warboss and the Meks who'd admonished that building stuff was just as much fun as destroying it. Looting was, after all, gathering the scrap needed to make something bigga' and betta'.

"Maybe the kid won't be so boring after all…" the NERV officer mused while waiting. "Wait, what I'm doing is emergency requisitioning. Isn't telling a child to steal actually A CRIME?" She thought it over and shrugged. "Eh, what the heck. I wonder what he's going to get out of a hardware store?"

The kid came out holding a mini-chainsaw.

He was practicing sword-like motions with it. Misato stared at him.

Shinji felt her stare and grinned weakly. He held it out for her to see. "May I have this?"

"Shinji…" she said blandly. "Why, out of all things in the store (and by that I include the dirty magazines they hide behind the counter) did you choose a CHAINSAW?"

"Um, because I've always wanted one and it'd be really useful where we're going?" /'And that it's the closest thing to a chainsword I've seen so far?'/ It was not a proper choppa, but better suited for him since he did not have to swing hard with each cut.

Really.

Useful.

The words seemed to hit her face. Misato rubbed her cheek and straightened back up. "Useful? What do you mean useful? How could it possibly be useful where we're going?"

"You know! We could be thrown off the road and we have to cut our way out of a mangled vehicle! Or we might find a fallen tree blocking our path! Or we might need to fight off scavengers and looters operating while the city is under attack!" Shinji took a deep breath. "A rippa's always useful when you need to resize a room or things to more manageable bits."

"Heh, heh…" Misato chuckled oddly. /Unimaginative, you say, Misato?/ she thought to herself. /I'm riding with a psycho!/

She pulled herself together and pointed. "Put it back, Shinji. I took those batteries for a reason. We're not here to pick up toys for you."

"B-but… Misato-san."

Misato crossed her arms over her chest. "Shinji, as a ranking officer of NERV and possessing legal authority within this city, you must obey me."

His face fell. He let the mini-chainsaw drop to the ground. It was such a perfect size for him, too. He woodenly walked over, complying. However, rather than entering the car, he simply stood before her. He kept his head down and his face under shadow. "S-Shinji?" asked Misato, slightly nervous.

The young teen merely leaned forward and pressed his head into the flesh of her arm.

"Please, Misato-san…"

His voice was so tiny. She felt as if she crushed his dreams.

...

"Oh, all right!" she retorted hotly. "Go get whatever you want. But it stays in the car, until you can pay it back with your own money!"

He looked up at her and his face just… beamed! "Thank you, Misato-san!" he said with such honest rapture. He slid over to the chainsaw, dumped it in the backseat, and rushed back into the store. She heard him say "Lookz at dat! NAILGUN!" with unbridled joy.

Misato stood there rubbing the flesh where he'd touched. It still tingled. She shivered for no reason. "What is it with this kid?"

They did not speak at all on the rest of the way towards NERV.

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/'What was that about, Commander?'/ the Space Marine asked. /'Did we just impose our will on this woman? Have we not sworn never to do such again?'/

/'I- I don't know. It just seemed so right at the time…'/

The warboss snorted. /'Well, I gots me stuff, so I'm happy. Wot's it matter?'/

/'It was a way to keep her off-balance. She sent her picture to us in a forced act of intimacy, that was designed to send us confused. We simply returned the favor,'/ was the Farseer's helpful reply.

/'It was a Slaaneshi greeting.'/ said the Chaos Marine after a while. All beings in Shinji's mental landscape turned to look at him, in wide-eyed horror. /'Flesh to flesh, NEED to need. A false front of being libertine to prevent others from looking deeper. Can you not hear her soul? It SCREAMS in anguish, calling out for comfort and acceptance.'/

Shinji had to nod. /'That sounds more like it.'/

/'She has been HURT before, and badly, so much so that she wears her skin and her sexuality as a shield. She is a soldier. Her first reaction is ALWAYS physical.'/

/'I see. She shares her body but not her soul? She aches for intimacy and yet always spurns it when given.'/ Shinji shook his head. /'How do I know this? She's still a stranger… since when could we judge other people's hearts?'/

/'Since the time you started to become comfortable with calling yourself "we",'/ was the Eldar's dooming answer.

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