Tainted Gestalt: NERV Center

So this is what it’s like to go completely off the rails? Funny. Shinji figured it was the type of thing that happened without you even knowing it. He always figured there would be a kind of sense to the voices in the head, seeing things that were obviously not there. Stuff like that. Of all things to break his brain, a giant monster rampaging through the city… Unless that was a delusion that he had actually managed to rationalise? Well, there was the problem, really. If he was insane then his senses were lying to him, and since a person’s ability to judge what’s going on in the outside world is entirely based upon sensory input, how would he ever know the difference?

After all, to his thinking there was little distinction anymore. If he started dismissing sensory input left and right then he might as well ignore the fact that he was being driven to meet his father by a rather intimidatingly gorgeous woman that apparently (at least, if his senses and memory were to be trusted) worked for his dad.

“Are we going to meet my father?”

Strange to think that a question like that would be what kept him grounded to sanity for the time being.

“Well, yes. Yes, we are!” Misato answered. “Oh, that’s right. Did your father send you your identification?”

He had indeed. Shinji fumbled around in his pockets while trying to ignore the fading sounds of the futile skirmish with the monster -

For a split second the interior of the car melted away, replaced by some sort of metal coffin full of blinking lights and buttons and levers and can’t move! Can’t breathe!

“We seem to be able to share memories,” a young girl said. The voice seemed to be coming from where his own mouth was, but - “I haven’t figured how to do it consciously but I just got a flash of your last few moments.”

Shinji felt dizzy, and jerked back to reality - What was it, a cockpit of some kind? Had he somehow actually been in an entirely different world? What was this? What was happening to him? Why him? Why now?

“Hey, are you okay?” Misato said. “You kinda zoned out there for a second.”

“I’m fine,” Shinji lied. His head felt like it was about to burst. “It’s just… A lot’s happened today. It’s a lot to take in all at once.”

Misato chuckled to herself. “Oh, I hate to break it to you, kid, but we’ve only just skimmed the surface. Look over there!”

Shinji did just that and gaped in awe at a sight. Anyone that didn’t the first time they saw this marvel surely needed their heads examined. Shinji’s mouth felt dry as the scope of it all, the sheer overwhelming size washed over his unreliable senses. A Geofront. They were entering an honest to goodness Geofront. Somehow it made him forget the dull pain in the back of his head, or the slight whispers that crept into his head from time to time. It had his attention by the balls and refused adamantly to let go, no matter what.

“That's right,” Misato said. “This is our secret base, Nerv Headquarters. It's also the foundation for the rebuilding of the world and a fortress for the human race.”

And his father was in charge of it all. There was a tiny, rational part of Shinji’s mind that whispered, “no wonder he was so busy,” but the voice was quickly squashed by the neuroses lurking in his **** mind that had accumulated over the years. Though it still didn’t answer the question of why his father wanted to see him now of all times. Especially since -

“Are you ready?”

He was staring at a kinda cute girl in a gi, standing with her legs firmly planted on the floor and her arms raised to protect her head and body. The spectacular sight of the Geofront had been replaced wholesale by some form of wooden hall. Walls, ceiling. The floor too. Shinji could feel it beneath his bare feet. Hold on. Wait a minute… That was the wrong pronoun. Her feet.

Suddenly the girl in front of Shinji dove forward with a straight punch. Shinji barely had time to see it coming before ducking just barely out of reach, and even less time to realise the girl had made another series of blows which had all been avoided faster than the blink of an eye. Th-this girl was attacking him out of nowhere! Even more amazing, somehow Shinji was dodging the attacks without even trying!

“Not bad. Could use a little work. Probably not had a tough enough opponent to really push her. It’ll be fun helping Akane improve!”

“… Are you going to fight back or what?” the girl asked, body tensing up for another flurry of attacks that Shinji wasn’t sure could possibly be avoided this time. A kick came in at gut level -

“I’m sure it was this way,” Misato said. “Or was it over here…? Terribly sorry for not being familiar with the layout yet. I only transferred here recently myself.”

Which - unfortunately - set the tone for the next twenty minutes as they wandered around and around in circles, with Shinji sometimes finding himself staring at the front of one classroom or another, at that same girl in the gi except completely naked save a towel, that strange cockpit again -

Could anyone remotely blame him for trying to linger on that second to last one a little longer?

“Not me! Hey, check her out! Chick’s got a figure an hourglass would envy.”

Great, now one of his split personalities was planning to hit on Misato. As if things weren’t already complicated enough for him right now. Something not entirely helped when they entered another elevator, followed by a blonde woman in a wetsuit.

“What were you doing, Captain Katsuragi? We are short on both hands and time!” the woman scolded, right around the same point one woman dropped her towel and leaned right over to give Shinji a peek into heaven while another girl leaned the other way to flaunt her towel-clad butt.

“Whoa! Hey, be back in a bit. I gotta check this out. Priorities, you know!”

“Nice to meet you,” the woman said. Shinji flinched a little bit and was rather grateful the pervert in his head wasn’t speaking up right then.

“He’s a lot like his father,” Misato remarked. “Not particularly sociable.”

It occurred to Shinji that Misato might very well need to learn a little bit here and there about tact. He didn’t like being compared to his father at the best of times, but learning they were similarly antisocial wasn’t entirely a comforting thought. Still, he followed them on, a walk only marred by a brief moment when he suddenly came to a stop and looked around outside his own power.

“Great,” Shinji said. “Where am I now?”

“Think of it as a hangar,” Ritsuko said. “As for what it’s a hangar for, you won’t find it in that booklet you’re holding. This is something quite spectacular.”

“H-Hey! Cut it out!” Shinji screamed. “Give me my body back!”

“Huh? Oh… Sorry, I drifted off in class. It was so boring!” a girl’s voice replied.

“Well, if I were to chastise you for that it would make me quite the hypocrite,” a boy’s voice said. “Still, you might want to concentrate on not moving the guy’s limbs. I distinctly remember you not liking when I started correcting your notes for you.”

“Well, I guess that was a little bit rude of me. Hey, Kyon! Hey, doesn’t this all look interesting? What is all this stuff?”

“… Must you call me by that infernal nickname? But you are right. If Shinji wouldn’t mind, we could stay around for a little while? It’s certainly much more interesting than anything happening in class right now.”

“Sure,” Shinji whispered. Ah! Back in control over his body again! That was… chilling! Terrifying! To lose complete autonomy over his own form - But then, was it really his own form if someone else was in the driver’s seat? Hey… This room was pitch black? Why would they have the lights out? No sooner was the question asked than it was answered. It was the setup for a dramatic reveal. Standing before Shinji was a colossus. Purple. Metal. Kind of ugly.

“Kind of cool! That’s amazing! It’s a giant mecha!” Usagi cooed, and Shinji could all but see the stars in her eyes as she gushed over the metal monstrosity.

“Though its expression is as intimidating as its size, I feel compelled to agree with Usagi wholesale!” Kyon said. “To be able to build something that large, and for it to be able to even move under its own weight… Truly a technological marvel above all others!”

“This is the Multi-purpose Humanoid Fighting Machine EVANGELION,” Ritsuko proudly declared. “A sort of manmade god, I suppose you could say.”

“This is Father’s work,” Shinji said, barely even aware the words had passed his lips. It was every bit as awe inspiring as the Geofront itself, but not just awe. Fear as well. What could something this large do in the wrong hands? A weapon. That’s what it was. A weapon, made to fight things like that monster out there.

“That’s right,” a familiar voice said. A voice he had not heard in four years. A voice that instilled so many contradicting feelings in the young Ikari that he could almost feel Usagi and Kyon bow out of his head to let him have some privacy for his own thoughts. “It’s been a long time.”

Standing at the very topmost platform in the room was Gendo Ikari. Standing up there and staring down upon the room like a king does at the peasants. Above them. Better than them. His father’s focus shifted towards Shinji and the young boy could feel the whole weight of it crashing down upon him. A gaze that could see into a man’s soul and strip out all of its secrets, leaving them bare and defenceless. Now he would find out the answer to at least one of the questions that had been plaguing him today. Why had he been brought here? What did his father want with him?

“Move out,” his father said. Two short and simple words, echoing throughout the room like a gunshot.

“Move out?” Misato asked. “But Unit 00 is still frozen. You can’t mean that you’ll activate Unit 01! You don’t even have a pilot!”

“We have no other choice,” Ritsuko nodded towards Shinji. “And our pilot has just been delivered.”

They wanted him to pilot that thing. They wanted him to climb inside, and use it to fight that monster. This was the reason his father wanted him here. He needed a pilot, and for whatever reason Shinji was the only one qualified to do it. For that reason. For no other reason.

“Shinji…” Usagi said, and the pity in her voice made him sick to his stomach. He didn’t deserve pity. He was nothing. Less than nothing.

_“To place all of this on one person…”Kyon began. “I can’t imagine what it must be like to bear such a strain. Shinji -”_

“Shut up!” he yelled. Anything to make the voices stop! “I can't do this. I've neither seen nor heard of this before. Why do you say I can?!”

“If you're going to do this, don't waste time,” his father said dismissively. “Otherwise, leave!”

“Wow. And I thought my dad was a bit of a tool, the way he and Mom carry on about wishing I’d never been born. This guy is such an ass.”

“Not the time, you freaky perv! Oh no, you’re not getting anywhere near my body with that sick mind of yours!”

“Oi, oi! I don’t think this is the right time for this -”

Kyon and the others were cruelly interrupted when the entire room shook. The maintenance workers that had stopped to stare at the family reunion with even less shame than the intruders in his own mind clung desperately to prevent from being flung down.

“It’s found us,” Misato whispered. “Shinji… At this point, you’re our only hope. Please, if not you we have no other choice. That thing will tear through the city! Don't run away, not from your father and, above all, not from yourself.”

”I understand,” Shinji said, straining back the tears as he spoke. “But I don’t think I can do this. I’m sorry! You’ve got the wrong person!”

“You know, that’s what I thought when they picked me to defend the Earth from alien invaders,” the voice he now identified as Ataru said. “Surely they meant someone else! I’m nothing special. Just an unlucky guy that likes chasing girls. But then I realised something, and I decided it would be best to just throw myself right into it:

“Being the guy that saved the world will get me so much tail. So much!”

“Idiot. And here I was thinking you were about to say something profound!” Kyon said, and Shinji could almost see Usagi shaking her head in disdain.

“Fuyutsuki? Wake up Rei.”

It was mere moments after his father said that before the door to the side slid open and Shinji’s heart grew cold. It was a girl. Naked, almost save the bandages. Gasping for air in a series of painful yelps. No. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t.

“That raging asshole!” Ataru snarled. “How dare he endanger such a pretty young thing - Look out!”

It was the strangest occurrence. Like he was being pulled in a direction he was already walking in, at the same pace he was walking. He could feel Ataru’s conscious mind propelling him forward towards the girl on the hospital bed. He could hear Usagi’s gasp and Kyon calling his name from inside his own head, and he could feel Ataru’s very essence propelling his arms and legs in just the same manner as he intended to move them as well. Which of them was in control, then? Was it either? Both at once? Or something different? The consequence was the same either way. They crashed into the bed and he lay his body over the girl even as he tried to push her out of the way of the falling debris - Except it never landed. Shinji looked up, and saw a massive hand covering both of them. Like a protective umbrella.

“Oh… My… God…”

“That’s not possible!” Ritsuko exclaimed, staring up at the behemoth in a mixture of terror, confusion and awe. “It broke free of its bindings, even though the entry plug hasn’t even been inserted yet! It shouldn’t be possible for it to move!”

The girl was still writhing in agony beneath him. Helpless. The pilot he was intended to replace. Is this what happened to pilots of those things? Is this what his father wanted to happen to him?

“Shinji… You can’t just let her die here, can you?” Ataru asked.

“It’s impossible,” he whispered to himself. “I can’t beat that thing! I’ve never even heard of Evangelion before today!”

“That thing moved even when they thought it was impossible,” Ataru continued. “Get it? If you think it’s impossible, that just makes it so! But if you set aside your reason, try for the unthinkable -”

“You can make a miracle!” Usagi interrupted. “Sailor V would never give up, no matter the odds and neither should you! Fight on! Become a warrior of love and justice!”

“Heh! Looks like I misjudged the two of you,” Kyon said. “The pervert and the crybaby… Who would’ve thought you’d make such great motivational speakers? Alright! If you two have his back, then so do I!”

As Rei’s eyes flickered open and she stared up into his own, Shinji felt compelled to say something. Anything! “It’s alright,” he said, deliberately ignoring the rising pressure and the strange feeling in his eye. Just an adrenaline rush, that’s all. “Trust me. You’ll be alright. YOU WILL LIVE, I promise you.

”I’ll do it!” Shinji yelled, still cradling Rei in his arms. “I will pilot Evangelion!”

Up above him where nobody could see, Gendo Ikari allowed himself a triumphant grin.

*written by Lumitiel