Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction ❯ Evangelion: Tribulations After ❯ Clues II ( Chapter 7 )

"Program Complete." The computer chirps.

Ritsuko took a sip of her coffee and smiled. Nearly two weeks ago, she started a program to break all the codes that Gendou Ikari had placed in regarding certain files pertaining to the mysterious boy. She had been only to find a few clues to his identity, including a report from 2002, an attempted assassination on Gendou Ikari's life when NERV was officially released to the public, energy readings from the boy when he first appeared, and his speaking to Lillith that convinced her not to initiate Third Impact. Everything else had been left to the program, and now, Ritsuko had access. She activated the first file.

Shinji pulled out the chair for Asuka as she sat down. She was wearing a sleeveless blue shirt with a zipper going down the center and a knee-low tight blue skirt. Shinji wore a tuxedo without a tie or extensions. Last Tuesday, Asuka had asked Shinji out on a date. She herself was as surprised as anyone else who had heard. Asuka had harbored an intense hatred towards Shinji, believing herself to be threatened by whom she called, "Wonder boy" for his ability to win against the Angels where Asuka had failed. Shinji had accepted because he wanted to improve upon his social life. Ever since the experience where he almost died from intense loss of blood and minor internal bleeding, Shinji had decided he wasn't going to stay secluded the rest of his life in his room listening to Pachelbel's Canon. He did have some feelings for Asuka; he knew that. He wanted to see if they were friendship emotions or if they were deeper than that. Shinji sat at the chair opposite of her.

"So, what divine angel came down from heaven and told you to go out with a date with `Wonder boy?'" Shinji asked.

Asuka laughed. "None. I just... Felt like doing this. Ever since Kaji died, I felt this big emptiness in my heart. He was the only person I had truly loved, but something deep down just told me to ask you out. Maybe it was divine intervention after all."

"Well, we were actually fighting angels, maybe this is their form of revenge." Shinji suggests.

"Unlikely. They could've paired me up with Touji if they wanted to torture me. How is he, anyway?" Asuka says.

"I checked with the Doctors, and they say he's back home on leave from the hospital. They've gotten him a very nice prosthetic leg, with cybernetics that'll respond to his mental command easily. I've even heard rumors they can probably get some fake skin for it." Shinji explains.

"So when he and Hikari are doing it, she won't get freaked out by the big robot leg." Asuka suggests.

Both laugh at her joke.

"Seriously, though, do you think those two have a future together?" Shinji asks.

"Hey, this is US going out on a date. Anything is possible." Asuka states.

Their waiter then approaches them, but they recognize him immediately, even more so with the fake moustache he has on.

The mysterious boy says, "Good evening, I'm... Uh... Joey... Joe Bob, your waiter for this evening."

Asuka and Shinji narrowed their eyes at him as he sweatdropped.

"Look, kid," Asuka starts.

"You couldn't think of a better name than Joey Joe Bob?" Shinji asks.

"What are you doing here?" Asuka asks.

"To watch over you two, obviously. And the band leader for later tonight sort of got sick and I'm singing for him tonight." He explains.

"YOU'RE GONNA SING?!" the two of them exclaim.

"I rather think I have a very beautiful voice, thank you very much. Now, are you going to order or what?" he asks.

The clip began in Gendou Ikari's office. Gendou was writing down certain documents on a piece of paper when he suddenly raised his head up and noticed the mysterious boy in front of him. Ritsuko raised an eyebrow at this.

"Who are you?" Gendou asked.

"No one in particular." He replied.

"How did you get in here?" Gendou queried.

"Through the wall over there. I just rearranged the particles in my body so they would all split myself apart so every single atom could go through the wall atoms and then rearranged them all in front of your desk." The boy explains.

Gendou reached over to tap the security alert button, but the mysterious boy moved quicker, raising up a previously hidden flaming sword and smashed the blade down into the intercom buttons.

"No need to call for room service, Ikari."

Gendou hung his mouth open in surprise, and then he said, "Now I know you! When NERV was released to the public, you tried to kill me!"

The mysterious boy smiled and explained, "I changed my mind. Your judgment day is a long time coming. What do we have here?"

The boy pointed to the letter he had been writing that was sitting on the edge of his table. He reached over and picked it up. He read it quickly.

"A letter to your son, requesting him to come see you and help you! Shame on you, Gendou. Using your own son as a puppet in a much deeper game of Instrumentality." The boy states.

"What does it matter to you? Why did you try to kill me?" Gendou asks, obviously getting annoyed.

"It matters for the future of this planet. Let me just say one thing, Ikari: Don't get your son involved in this. It'll damage him for a long time."

"What, can you see the future?"

"No, I've been to it. I've been to all things past, present, future, and beyond. If you bring in Shinji to your little Evangelion project, it will bring him immense psychological damage. And the death of Rei number 2." The boy says.

"Go away, you madman!" Gendou shouts.

"Very well, remember this warning I give you: I see a great hand reaching out of the stars, this hand is yours, Gendou Ikari. I see millions of people screaming your name. Unless you stray from the path that fate has dealt before you, that hand will come down, and the millions of victims from Third Impact will scream your name in hatred."

And with that, the boy vanishes, and the clip ends.

The mysterious boy was on the stage in the very crowded restaurant now, and a spotlight was on him. He held a guitar in his hand and he held the microphone in his other hand.

"Tonight's a very special night for us here, we've opened up the dance floor to those who wish to dance while I'm singing here. This first song is about a good friend of mine, the person who saved the world from Third Impact, Shinji Ikari! Let's get a light down here for him!"

The spotlight shined down on Shinji, who blushed and stood up, waving to all the applauding and cheering people. He sat down quickly as Asuka giggled.

"This song here is from the 90s. It's taken me a little bit to translate it into Japanese and still keep the original beat, but it works now. Shinji, this one's for you."

Immediately, the mysterious boy began to play Green Day's `Basket Case.'

"`Do you have the time to listen to me whine,'" he sang. "`About nothing and everything all at once?'"

Everyone began applauding, but stopped when he sang again. "`I am one of those melodramatic fools. Neurotic to the bone, no doubt about it!'"

He paused again, still playing the guitar. "`Sometime I give myself the creeps.' That's you, Shinji."

Shinji rolled his eyes. "`Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me.' Sound familiar, Shinji?"

Shinji sighed and thought of all the times he had retreated into his own mind for self-worth. "`It all keeps adding up,'" and then the band began to play with him. "`I think I'm cracking up! Am I just paranoid, or am I just stoned?'"

Shinji stood up and took Asuka's hand. "Come on, let's dance." He said.

"Now? To this?" Asuka asks.

"Yeah, it'll be fun, come on! Is the pilot of Unit 02 afraid of some dancing?" Shinji smirks.

"I'll show YOU how to dance, baka-Shinji." She grins.

The two of them ran to the dance floor and arrived just as the mysterious boy continued playing again. "`I went to a shrink, to analyze my dreams. She said it's lack of sex that's bringing me down.'"

Shinji blinked in confusion as he danced with Asuka, trying to understand how those lyrics had anything to do with him.

"`I went to a whore, she said my life's a bore, so quit my whining cause it's bringing her down.'"

Shinji blushed and his eyes went wide at those lyrics, definitely not knowing how the mysterious boy had figured that to be related to Shinji in some way. Asuka just laughed at it.

"`Sometimes I give myself the creeps. Sometime my mind plays tricks on me. It all keeps adding up. I think I'm cracking up! Am I just paranoid, or am I stoned?'"

Shinji definitely knew those lyrics had to do with him, except the stoned part. He wasn't exactly sure what the mysterious boy meant by that.

"`Grasping to control, so I better hold on!'"

Shinji thought that maybe the boy was now referring to his piloting of Unit 01 and all the times the EVA had gone berserk.

"`Sometimes I give myself the creeps. Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me. It all keeps adding up, I think I'm cracking up! Am I just paranoid, am I just stoned?" the mysterious boy sang, holding the `o' in stoned. The band continued to play the song for a little bit more, but then the song stopped with a single guitar note.

"I've gone through fifteen clips besides that one with Commander Ikari, and each of those is a clip from an Angel attack that shows the mysterious boy nearby, smiling when the Angels do something that puts the mission in jeopardy. In fact, when we were dealing with Ramiel, the fifth Angel, he was actually seen flying towards it in a vain attempt to block the beam cannon from hitting it, but didn't get in fast enough and disappeared. The reason no one saw him any of these times was because he only appeared as a being of pure light, but then when put through an ultraviolet light scanner, we see him with the wings." Ritsuko reports to Misato.

Misato stood cross-armed behind Ritsuko. She asked, "Are there any more files?"

"Two more. One is a camera file from Kaji's murder, and the other is... An Angel listing? Why would Commander Ikari make an Angel listing classified?" Ritsuko ponders.

"Forget that for a second, we have a video clip of Kaji being murdered?! Why didn't anyone tell me?!" Misato screams.

"Kaji's murderer entered in a shaded area, the camera wasn't fitted with infrared, ultraviolet, or any other scanning technology except recording pictures. It didn't show the murderer." Ritsuko explained.

Misato let out a sigh. "Show it."

The clip shows Kaji standing with his back to the camera, and then the gun being raised in the shadows and shooting him. There was no sound with the video. After twenty seconds of the image only being Kaji lying dead on the floor, they saw the mysterious boy enter from the shadows. The black and white camera was seeing a lot more light than the actual boy, but they could still make out the boy. He knelt down to Kaji and put his hands over him, but then the camera became static.

"That's all we have. You know, this kid generates a lot of power just by living. The energy he emits must be distinctive in something else besides similar Angel readings. We haven't seen anything else that matches up with it." Ritsuko states.

"We've run out of options. We'll look at the Angel listing Ikari had. Maybe there's something else with it, like a sub-text for each Angel that explains their relation to this guy. After we look at it, we'll try to list all the logical possibilities this kid could be." Misato plans.

"Hang on, the file's hidden pretty deep in the MAGI. Ikari must've really wanted this file kept secret. It'll take a few moments to process."

"Where'd you learn that song?" Shinji asks.

It was near after hours. A few janitors were sweeping up floors and Shinji, Asuka, and the mysterious boy were at a table, eating desert.

"Which song? Basket Case, Kryptonite, Mrs. Robinson, The Best Things, Cruel Angel's Thesis..." the mysterious boy lists.

"The one about me." Shinji replies.

"Oh, Basket Case. I heard it while I was growing up, and it became second nature to me. I'm pretty sure Green Day had visions of you when they wrote it." The mysterious boy explains.

"Either that or they were high…" a drunk Asuka suggests.

"In any case, I have to start an encore for you guys. I think-"

<We'll look at the Angel listing Ikari had. Maybe there's a subtext for each Angel that explains their relation to this guy.>

The mysterious boy heard the words as they were spoken, and his pupils dilated. He suddenly jumped into the air and disappeared, screaming, "NOOOO!"

The boy reappeared in front of a large metal door leading to the room where Misato and Ritsuko were about to look at the Angel listing. He stuck his arm into the door in an attempt to walk through it, but he hit an energy field that his hand passed through, and he pulled it out, leaving a stump as an arm.

"A particle dispersion field! They really don't trust me!" the boy states.

The mysterious boy's hand regenerated soon afterwards. He screamed, "Don't open that file! I demand you let me in this instant!"

He looked and saw the doors still closed. "Desperate times call for desperate measures."

He puts his arms in a DBZ-like pose, and fired a white energy beam from the center point between his hands into the field, blasting out the field and the door itself, knocking the metal slabs out of their structures and onto the ground, but he was too late. Ritsuko and Misato were standing, with their arms crossed, in front of the computer terminal. The Angel listing did not have Lillith as the 02 Angel, but the 00 Angel. Under the 02 Angel, it had the word "Tzadkiel" in it.

"Care to explain yourself?" Misato asked.

"Oh, I've figured it out already, Misato. I know who he is."

The mysterious boy puts his hands into fists as his rage began to skyrocket.

To Be Continued…