FLCL Fan Fiction / Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction ❯ n00b Genesis Evangelion ❯ n00b Ground Zero Evangelion ( Chapter 5 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) flew over the battlefield and transmitted the
images to the Command Center.

Misato frowned as rainwater filled two conjoined craters onscreen. "I can't
believe you created a Third Ashinoko Lake." The original filled a volcano near
Tokyo-3; the 'Second Ashinoko Lake' was her nickname for two conjoined craters
formed during Sachiel's attack.

Kozo sighed. "We need to update the map... again."

"Be cool, Ma'am," Shinji put a can of cola before the tactician, "Sir," he put a
can before the subcommander. "The W99 was dialed to the minimum yield necessary
to kill the Angel-- ten kilotons, not 200." Modern nuclear weapons had variable
yield options. "If Unit 06 used 9K79 theater ballistic missiles, I doubt the
Soviets would dial down the yield."

"You slander us," Amarao retorted as he entered the Command Center. "The
Soviets will not use these missiles unless the situation is most dire. We
recognize nuclear weapons as terror weapons. We were forced to develop them to
defend ourselves and save human civilization from the American war profiteers
who'd otherwise devour the planet in their greed-- their appetite for
destruction."

"Chill," Haruko threw a can of cola, "Comrade Amarao," the can bounced in the
Soviet officer's hands as he tried to catch it; then it burst, covering Amarao
with sugary foam. "I'm a space alien who's handled planet-killers as a Galactic
Police officer; your party poppers don't scare me at all."

The foam pillar shook with anger. "You will address me as Comrade... burp!"

"Okay, Comrade Burp."

"Commander! Comrade Commander!"

"Okay, Commander Burp." The pink-haired girl grabbed an impassive Shinji's left
hand. "To the range! You got to see my PKT and my KS-K!" machine gun-- an
adaptation of an armored fighting vehicle's coaxial weapon-- and shotgun. Then
the Eva pilots were gone.

"Here." Kozo handed the Soviet a handkerchief. "We must calmly and bravely
accept the fact we are impotent in the face of such lunacy," the subcommander
said as Amarao wiped cola off his face.

Misato began, "But Sir, the Children...!"

"Have no reservations towards nuclear weapons and their use," the subcommander
finished. "If they believe we have shown them disrespect, we may-- will pay for
their recklessness."

Misato paled; Amarao, accustomed to the threat of WMD, merely raised a skeptical
eyebrow. "Yes, Sir." "Very well, Comrade Fuyutsuki."

*

Range control-- a Section 2 officer injured during a training exercise, and
currently assigned light duty-- raised a bullhorn to his lips. "Range is hot, I
say again, range is hot. Shooters, scan your lane."

Shinji braced the Rickenbacker Model 4001C64 upon his shoulder, reached for
trigger and selector switches in the cutaway, and focused on a red dot the
guitar's laser sight projected; then he lowered the guitar and frowned. "I look
ridiculous."

Haruko patted the Eviscerator pilot's back. "You look like a heavy metal
musician on a killing spree-- badass! Now," she pointed at the target, "let's
see what you can do."

Shinji again held the guitar like a rifle. Rat-at-at-at-at! A jagged hole
appeared on the target before the first of five spent casings hit the floor.

"Awesome!" Kensuke exclaimed.

"Great shooting!" the pink-haired girl exclaimed. "Now fire the shotgun!"

Shinji thumbed a switch to fire the shotgun, frowned, and then thumbed the
safety. "It's not loaded with FRAG-12s, is it?"

"Why? Are you," Haruko mischievously smiled, "scared?"

"Of being thoroughly perforated because I stupidly setoff a grenade at this
range? Damn right I am," a suspicious Shinji replied.

"Fine, fine." The pink-haired girl turned to the other pilots in the range.
"Comrade Ayanami! Want to be badass and disintegrate something with a FRAG-12?"

A surprised albino blinked. "I admit I am curious, but I share Pilot Ikari's
concerns regarding explosives."

"Just use your AT field!" Haruko added.

"Her," Kensuke's eyes widened, "what?!"

Rei frowned. "I do not project an AT field until Episode 24. This scene is
occurring between Episodes Nine and Ten. You are spoiling the TV series for
other viewers."

"The last episode was broadcast 20 years ago! The spoiler is past its statute
of limitations, right?" the pink-haired girl countered.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," the bespectacled boy interrupted. "Rei is half-Angel? Why
didn't you tell me that, Shinji?"

"I'm not supposed to learn of this until Episode 23, after your family leaves
Tokyo-3 for safe haven elsewhere," the Eviscerator pilot deadpanned.

"Is there anything else I should learn?"

Boom! "Yeah! Show the paper target who's his daddy!"

Kensuke winced; Haruko's maniacal laughing shook him more than the explosion.
"Elsewhere?"

"You can start with Wikipedia."

The bespectacled boy turned to see Shinji disappear behind the door. "Wait for
me!" He ran out of the room, after the Eviscerator pilot.

***

N00B GENESIS EVANGELION, Part 5

***

Gendo frowned at the text onscreen-- Sidewinder's 'Neon Genesis Evangelion' fan
fiction. "The Eva became like the sun, burning away the Bakelite, the Eva cage,
and the city of New Tokyo-3." Click. "Anna slashed between the Toons, severing
Gendo's nose and arms." Click. "Ikari Gendo also phased out of existence."
Click. "The bearded man covered his groin, only for his unprotected face to
become the target; he quickly lost his nose, ears, and lips. Rei's sisters were
in a feeding frenzy, their teeth and nails tearing off pieces of Gendo's flesh;
the bearded man welcomed the chilling darkness that embraced him as he bled to
death."

The bearded man, too angry to continue reading, closed the webpages. 'Something
must be done about the author.' "Your assessment, Ensign Amano?"

"The XR-79 is designed to deliver nuclear weapons. Give me his address, and
I'll--" Amano Rei's aggressive side began. "No! Nuclear weapons are terror
weapons! Their use is an act of terrorism!" his pacifist side interrupted.
"Sidewinder must be punished for...!" "I hate fighting! I didn't want to be a
soldier in the first place!" "If that's true, why bother stepping into the
Gunboy cockpit? Why not wait for Charles Assyria to stand trial for war
crimes?" "Charles...!"

Gendo frowned as the 15-year-old began arguing with himself. "The author is
going too far."

There was a lull in the battle as Amano sighed. "I wish. The studio passed its
schizophrenia to its creations, preventing a Gundamn pilot from following the
pacifist ideals it claims to promote." Slap! "Ow! What was that for?!" "Stop
sprouting peacenik bullshit and admit you like-- you love piloting the giant
robot! You enjoy playing God, deciding who lives and who dies on the
battlefield!" "No!" Slap! "Ow! You bastard!" Wham! "Argh! You," wham!
"Ow!" "Hypocrite! Admit it; you wanted to hit me as badly as I wanted to hit
you!" The Gunboy pilot grabbed the back of his own head and repeatedly slammed
it against the desk.

Gendo echoed the sigh. 'Damn. This pair must be dry cleaned,' he thought of
his white gloves, stained red when Amano knocked himself unconscious.

*

Kensuke's eyes burned with lust at the bulge under Shinji's coat-- the HK45 in
its waterproof holster. "So Shinji, when will I get my DFG?"

The Eviscerator pilot's eyes rose from an issue of Field & Stream. "This is not
a 'Doom' crossover." He thought his friend referred to the Big Fucking Gun
(BFG) from id Software's games.

"That's a Delta Force Gun-- DFG-- Heckler & Koch HK45 Tactical, official sidearm
of the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta. Is it NERV issue?"

"Hell no. If Major Katsuragi had her way, I'd never be issued a 'deadly
weapon.'"

"Wait, what?!"

"She doesn't consider the Eviscerator a deadly weapon, because it wasn't
designed to kill human beings." Shinji shrugged at the bespectacled boy's
confusion. "I know that's bullshit, but that's the UN for you."

"But you got a license to kill?" Toji added.

"I have the right to defend myself, if that's what you mean," the Eviscerator
pilot stated.

"Can you get me one? And a gun so I can...?"

"Suzuhara-kun!" Hikari interrupted. "Surely you don't mean to shoot a
schoolteacher?"

"Look!" The jock pointed at his bandages. "She treats me-- beats me like a
walking baseball! You said if a guy threw the first punch, the guy getting
punched could kill or cripple him in self-defense, right?"

"But...!" Hikari's eyes widened as the bandages were unraveled, draping Toji's
shoulders as five fingers extended from his head. "Oh my God!"

"Oh shit!" The jock's arms flailed as the fingers' weight tipped over his
chair. "Ow! Hey, stop that!" he protested as the crawling fingers dragged him
along the floor. "Are you trying to burn a bald spot into the back of my
head?!"

"Suzuhara-kun!" Hikari ran forwards and grabbed the jock's feet. "Let him go!"

Kensuke sighed, tired of seeing giant monsters and robots emerge from his
friend's head. "The author is going too far-- beyond beating a dead horse, to
digging up its skeleton and fucking the now empty eye sockets."

Shinji drew the weapon as a hand, arm, and shoulder followed the fingers through
the NO channel. "Writers do this when they have writer's block," he deadpanned
as Sandalphon, Angel of Newborns, crawled out of Toji's head.

***

N00B GROUND ZERO EVANGELION

A 'Neon Genesis Evangelion' story by Sidewinder (aim9snake@hotmail.com), 2009,
revised 2010. Characters created and owned by Gainax.

***

Gendo frowned as he looked out the window. He'd nothing else to do-- nothing
else he could do-- a hole was burned into the floor, leaving a concrete triangle
for the bearded man to stand on. Ten minutes ago...

*

The dark marble floor became red, white, and red again, like a pot on a stove.
Gendo's eyes caught a boiled lobster crawling out the pot-- Sandalphon emerging
from the floor below, liquefied marble sloughing off the Angel's superheated
shell-- before the heat wave made him back away from the growing, glowing hole.

'The Eighth Angel has emerged earlier than foreseen.' The fire sprinklers
dumped water-turned-steam at an angelic touch; the bearded man cowered behind
his desk, which spared him from scalding. Gendo, struggling free of an
unbearably hot jacket, shouted, "Captain Katsuragi, launch the Evangelions!
Immediately!" into a mobile phone.

Crash, clatter, clang! The ceiling collapsed-- a steel beam fell between the
man and his desk, missing him by centimeters-- as the Eviscerator dived towards
Sandalphon.

"Eat this!" Shinji shoved the M65 into an angelic mouth-- a shriek shook the
Geofront as shattered teeth flew from the muzzle, like pedals from a flower--
and squeezed the trigger. The combatants dived through a pink cloud--
Sandalphon's now vaporized brain-- meters of steel and concrete, before reaching
the basement. The foundation cracked upon impact; NERV would spend
$4,700,000,000 dollars to repair the damage.

*

The jacket now covered his head, but the fabric absorbed water from the
remaining sprinklers, and Gendo was freezing. If the bearded man's willpower
was marginally weaker, he'd shiver, making his subordinates think he feared
falling to his death.

"Commander!" Misato called from the hallway, across the yawning abyss the office
became. "The SAR birds will arrive in a few minutes!" she referred to
search-and-rescue helicopters. "Please be patient!"

'As if I have a choice, you stupid bitch,' Gendo thought.

"We'll save you!" Then the tactician was gone.

Gendo glanced at his watch. 'The Third Children's foolishness delayed efforts
to reverse-engineer the S² organ and retrofit it to the Evangelions, for
months." NERV planned to salvage Shamshel's S² organ in Episode Five, but
Shinji, citing the Geneva Conventions, refused to kill the Angel after it
surrendered; NERV didn't acquire an S² organ until the Ulyanovsk delivered
Gaghiel's corpse to Tokyo-3. 'I will punish,' Gendo remembered his
brother-in-law gave his son a gun, 'lecture him on how it feels to stand before
the abyss, cold and wet, paralyzed by fear of falling to one's death.' Units 01
and 06's batteries died shortly after Sandalphon's defeat, preventing Shinji and
Haruko from rescuing the bearded man.

A hand closed upon Gendo's ankle. "What the hell?!"

"Give me a hand," Amano pleaded. "And get me to the Gunboy! That Zackary pilot
must pay for what he did!" he mistook the Eviscerator for a model his archenemy
piloted. "How can you say that? For all I know, he was conscripted-- forced to
pilot that war machine, as I was." "For all I know, he enjoys piloting that war
machine to sow death and reap destruction, as I do!"

Gendo began, "Stop...!"

"I," the Gunboy pilot grabbed the back of his own head, and slammed it against
the concrete triangle, "do," wham, "not!" bam! A now unconscious Amano fell,
pulling the bearded man with him.

"Ahhhh!" Boom, crash, crack, splatter! Gendo's fingers wiggled, proof he
wasn't a quadriplegic; his toes wiggled, proof he wasn't a paraplegic. Red
bubbles, formed as Amano-- who cushioned Gendo's fall, saving the bearded man's
life-- struggled to breath through crushed lungs, popped beside his head. "The
author," Gendo tried to raise a fist for dramatic effect-- and failed, thanks to
his injuries, "will pay."

The SAR helicopter's rotors beat a tattoo as it appeared overhead, drowning out
the paramedic's "Oops," when an unsecured stretcher fell out the passenger
compartment.

Wham, clatter, clatter! "Ahhhh!" Gendo turned to his side, curled into the
fetal position as he clutched his stomach. "That hurt, you sadistic
son-of-a-bitch!"

The pilots, crew chief, and paramedic exchanged looks. "Let's give the
Commander a few minutes to cool down." "Yeah. Rescue him now, and we'll be
probable targets of the bastard's wrath." "Fine us, fire us, revoke our
licenses, ruin our careers and our futures because the author's beyond his
reach, and we're not." "Okay. Radio HQ and tell them turbulence prevents us
from attempting rescue at this time."

"I'll have your head on a silver platter for this!" words so full of anger and
hatred, they were audible over the helicopter engines and rotors.

"Yeah, it's too risky." With that, the helicopter moved out of sight and then
out of earshot.

"Damn you, Sidewinder! Damn you to helllll!"

***

Misato felt tension flow from Shinji like electricity, making everyone's hair
stand on end. "Are you okay, Shinji-kun?"

"I feel naked without my survival gun," the Eviscerator pilot patted his
holster, empty because firearms weren't allowed in a hospital. "The hero is
attacked in a hospital in four or five of the author's stories. I hope--"

"You will not die; I will protect you," Rei repeated words she said before they
faced Ramiel in Episode Six.

"I'm a man, you're a woman, so I'm supposed to protect you," Shinji stated.

"Who's supposed to protect you from... oh... cancer caused by radiation and
radioactive fallout, Mister Megaton?" the tactician growled.

"I'm not that damn reckless," Shinji protested. "I got permission from a
three-star general before I squeezed the trigger, right?" he referred to Abe's
rank insignia.

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but," Misato put her hands on the Eviscerator
pilot's shoulders, making him meet her eyes, "Shinji-kun, next time you're
tempted to end conflict with a nuclear weapon, please run away instead."

"Run and spare the UN the cost of buying a new Eviscerator, and training a new
pilot, when the Security Council decides to nuke the next Angel?" Shinji
deadpanned. "Yes, Ma'am." The Eviscerator pilot left behind a sputtering
Misato as he neared the recovery room. "Good afternoon, Father. How do you
feel?"

"Third Children, I," Gendo remembered this Shinji was as useful-- and
dangerous-- as an armed grenade, "advise you to heed this warning. The author
plans to kill you; you must kill him to save yourself." Shinji frowned in
disbelief. "I have proof!" the bearded man added, turning his laptop computer
so Shinji could read the text onscreen.

The Eviscerator pilot's expression didn't change. "Who's Yamato Shiro?"

'Fuck!' "You're reading the wrong story." The laptop made a full revolution as
Gendo closed a webpage.

Misato leaned forwards-- Gendo and Kensuke's widening eyes almost popped the
lens from their eyeglasses as they respectively got a view down the woman's
shirt and up her skirt-- to read, "Shinji cried, 'Mother!' as antimatter flowed
from the rifle and reacted with Unit 00's blood, consuming the Eva in an
earthshaking explosion." Click. "Zap! 'Shinji-kun!' He caught his boyfriend
as Shinji fell towards the floor, paralyzed by a stun beam." Click. "The
15-year-old Shinji from 'Neon Genesis Evangelion', forgotten as fans embraced
'Evangelion Wars', turned on the loudspeaker. 'Misato-san, look at me!' He
drew the Eva's progressive knife. 'Look at how hard I'm fighting, even though I
don't want to! I--!' A 280mm shell pierced the Eva's helmet before exploding,
beheading the Eva and showering the audience with red paint."

Misato stood tall again; this sent Kensuke onto the floor, and transformed Gendo
into a giraffe. "You don't mean to send Shinji-kun against that psychotic
son-of-a-bitch author, do you?"

"One must die so the other may live," Gendo coldly stated.

"No, one must be a badass so the other won't consider him a liability, and
replace him with an honest-to-God badass," Shinji corrected.

"How dare you...?"

"I'm a gun in the author's hand; his ideas are all fucked up, but they're the
ammo in my magazine; that's how. Now," the Eviscerator pilot put a bouquet of
yellow carnations beside his father's bed, "let's bond as father and son. Is
there anything I can do-- without involving Mister Sidewinder, which is begging
for trouble? Get you an issue of Field & Stream or other magazines to pass the
time? Some favorite food you can't get from the hospital canteen?"

"Rei-- First Children-- I wish to speak to you in private." Gendo glanced at
the tactician. "We will be discussing classified information."

The albino turned to Shinji. "Ikari-kun..."

"I know, I know." The Eviscerator pilot turned around. 'Uncle Takeshi is
right,' he bitterly thought as he exited the room, followed by Misato and
Kensuke.

***

To be continued.

Author's notes are below.

***

The dialogue was revised because Chapter 3 was written after this one:

[Start]

"I'm a man, you're a woman, so I'm supposed to protect you," Shinji stated.

The tactician's eyes rolled. "Typical."

"How did you defeat the Angel of Thunder? The author failed to include that
scene," Kensuke added.

Misato and Rei turned to the bespectacled boy, a hint of fear in the albino's
eyes-- the emotion overflowed from the tactician's-- and as they simultaneously
said, "Don't ask."

"Why?"

"Shinji-kun detonated two nuclear weapons to defeat a relatively weak Angel of
Music. Do you really want to know how many nukes he'll use to defeat such a
powerful Angel?" Misato explained.

'Yes,' Kensuke didn't say.

"I'm not that damn reckless," Shinji protested. "I waited until the people were
safely in their designated shelters before I asked permission to use nukes,
right?"

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but," the tactician put a hand on Shinji's
shoulder, making the Eviscerator pilot meet her eyes, "Shinji-kun, next time
you're tempted to end conflict with a nuclear weapon, please run away instead."

[End]