Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction ❯ NGE: The Long, Hard Kill ❯ 1st Slug- A.D.A.K. ( Chapter 1 )

Story Written by ApexPhoenix20

-Last Call Productions Presents-

NGE: The Long, Hard Kill

1st Slug: A.D.A.K.

A memory.

The sun is hot and the air is crisp, clear blue surrounding us. In front of me, Toji and Kensuke keep arguing animatedly over which Hollywood actress they would sleep with first if they had the chance, Jessica Alba or Scarlett Johansson.“Are you tellin' me, Kenny, if that sweet little blonde wants ya ta slip her some dick, you would refrain from pounding her nether regions for a whole week straight? You HAFTA like man-ass.”

“Have you ever seen Sin City, Toji? Wait, I was with you at the rental place when we picked it out-you were busy dry-humping my sofa for, what was it, two hours straight?”

I laughas they carry on, much to the embarrassment of Hikari, the class rep, and Asuka, the warm breeze gently swaying long, silken red strands of her hair as she moves around in that light yellow dress I met her in that day on an aircraft carrier. “You stooges keep acting like monkeys in heat, and we'll leave your pathetic asses here with Shinji-baka, isn't that right, Hikari?”

“That's exactly what's gonna happen if you don't stop acting like an idiot, Toji,” Hikari adds, her arms crossed as she stamps past them. Asuka walks by me, the scent of raspberries trailing in her wake. She shoots a quick scowl at me as I make eye contact. Something sparks in those deep blue eyes, something fierce and intense and alive-something wonderful. I quickly focus on my shoe-laces, clearing my throat.

“Quit trying to stare at my breasts, you pervert,” Asuka quips as she joins Hikari at the hot-dog stand on the street corner by the carnival we're all headed to, but she sounds more flirtatious than she does angry. I am intrigued, and I begin to hope that maybe she'll be nice to me. Maybe even let me hold her hand, share a Ferris wheel cab…get lost inthe warmth ofeach other's lips. A sudden rush of guilt hits me, and I try to change topics. I wind up making myself feel even guiltier.

“Hey,” I say as I fall in step behind her, eyes locked on her slender, curvaceous body. “Shouldn't we at least call Rei? I've got her number, it wouldn't take long…”

“Rei?” Asuka says, making no attempt to hide her disdain for her. “Why would you call that emotionless doll over here for? She'd probably just talkabout synch-ratios and Eva tactics, if she even spoke at all.” She sips a bottle of lemonade while Hikari shuffles uneasily. She looks at a roller-coaster dip in the distance, munching on a pink tuft of cotton candy.

“I don't know, Asuka,” she says politely, trying not to offend her friend. “She seems like she's just shy, that's all. I mean, she always polite to me, anyway.”

“I'm sure she's the most polite little automaton ever created by science,”Asuka says as turns on me abruptly hooks her right arm with mine. The smell of raspberries is almost intoxicating. She stares me dead in the eye.

“Don't you even think of daring to do some of the weird, pervy shit you and the other two stooges talk about to me, or I'll fix you like a dog on the spot, you hear? It's just gentlemen-like for a lady to be accompanied by a man while she's out on the town.” She smiles that devilish smile of hers, and I can't help but play along.

Toji and Kensuke play-fight a bit longer, and stop as abruptly as they started when Kensukepushes Toji into Hikari, Toji's hands pushing up on Hikari's breasts. “Toji, you goddamned pervert, you better hope there's a hospital with a ball-transplant machine around the corner, `cuz you're gonna NEED IT!”

“Waaagh, Kenny, I'm gonna kick--wait. Did you say, `ball-transplant machine'?”

We all pause for a moment, and laugh so hard, I wipe away tears. “What?” Hikari says through fits of giggling. “It was all I can think of on short notice.”

We walk into the carnival, Asuka hooked on my arm, and I can't remember feeling so alive.

*******************************************

The air is clean and brisk, and the sun shines high above. Overall, it's a great day for a kill, but some coffee wouldn't suck.

“Please, you don't wanna do this. I got cash- you like cash, right? Of course, you do. That's why you kill in the first place.”

He keeps talking, trying so hard to save his empty toilet bowl of a life, but I'm not really listening.

One thing you learn quick about this kind of business, you get a lot of this shit. Low-lives and piss-ants will try anything to get you to not pull the trigger. Like bribing, for example.

“Hey, what's he paying you? W-whatever he's paying you, I can double it-TRIPLE it even, for you to whack whoever the fuck hired you, ok?”

The train of thought with these schmucks is that you'll whore yourself out at the mere mention of a dollar. Not true. Guys who mention sudden wealth as a pistol kisses their forehead couldn't even afford to buy the bullets you'll cap `em with.

“HEY! You-you can't do this to me, you hear me?”

Denial. I can't even say it's funny anymore, I've been through this same riot act so many times. For good measure, I bring the butt of my pistol down hard across the bridge of his nose. He yelps and falls back down on the pavement, scrabbling to right himself. I wag a finger. He stays right where he is.

“I'm big around here, you fucking hear me! BIG! Touch me, you fucking son-of-a-bitch cocksucker, and the cops won't even find enough of you to fill a shot glass!”

And yeah, the empty, meaningless threats. He's bawling right now, on his knees with his hands held up in front of him. A distinct, pungent stench reaches my nose, and I smile down at my mark, this pale, unshaven, long black-haired mess of a kid with a black nit skully that has `Slipknot' etched in red stitching on the front. Probably bought into his hype, too, about being big out here in Central Islip.

No one could give less of a shit if you're `big' in Central Islip. I know I don't.

“I can smell your fear, kid, and by `fear', I mean shit,” I say as I take a quick glance around while he continues to sob. “Besides, you think your pals, or anyone for that matter is gonna find you here? Hell, you think they'll give enough of a shit to look?” This alleyway in a derelict car factory out on Long Island was deserted since I hauled this fuck's ass out of his shit-hole flat this morning, and we're still the only people here. I look back my mark. I don't know his name. I don't care to.

“D-Don't kill me, please, don't kill me. I'll give you anything, man, anything you want, please, just don't kill me…you…you don't even give a shit, do you? You just do your…`job', then get your pay. You don't even care about the family I'll lea--”

“Are you fucking kidding me? You really gonna lecture me about whose family will miss who? Did you think about that when you did what you did?” A goddamned junk dealer accuses me of being heartless and cruel. Guys like him, no less.

I draw the line here.

I look at him through my black-tinted rectangular shades like an elephant just sky-dived out of his asshole. Then, while still keeping my customized Colt .45 caliber handgun steady just inches away from his forehead with my right hand, I rummage through my pant pockets and produce a picture of a VERY attractive girl with my left. She couldn't have been more than 17 years of age, and her silky blonde hair goes down to her shoulders. Hazel cat-like eyes. I throw it down in front of him. He looks at me in equal parts shock and puzzlement.

Just as a side-note, Colt .45s are definitely the most American guns out there, with the exceptions of the M1A1 Thompson and most Magnums. They're a bit weighty but reliable, and for seven rounds per clip with one helluva stopping power per bullet, that's a bargain at the price it's sold for-in or outside of gun shops. They are without a doubt the `Don't FUCK with me' guns of the millennium. Having this bad boy custom-made to hold five more rounds and sport a longer barrel definitely delivers this message.

“H-huh? W-w-who the fuck is this?”

He obviously doesn't get the whole `don't fuck with me' part. He knows exactly who the girl in the picture is.

“What, did she make that little of an impression on you, that you can't even remember the last girl you killed? You must have thought she was hot at the time, though, `cuz from the coroner's report-a good friend of mine, by the way-you forced yourself inside the three body cavities big enough for the male penis to fit into. Repeatedly.” I spit the last part out hard like venom so that he can sum up what I feel about what he's done. I ain't here to play like I'm some sort of knight in shining armor, God no, especially with all the shit I've pulled off since I was fourteen, but scum like him need killing like this world needs a good purging to set it all right again. Getting paid to do him in doesn't suck, either. He knows just what kind of vile son-of-a-bitch he is, just like I know the best way to deal with his kind.

“Aww, man, I didn't do that bitch in, man! I don't even know who that bitch is, man! You-you-you got the wrong dude, alright?” His voice takes on a high, whiny tone like he's strung out. Chances are that he is.

“Her name was Brianna Merrimann. She went to the State University of Stony Brook, her first year, but hasn't been seen in weeks. People say they saw her last with her dirt-bag of a `bad-boy' boyfriend. When I dragged you out of your apartment this morning, I saw her picture by your bed-side, in a tacky heart-shaped frame, next to two syringes. Sure, you're a major dope-head, but even you can't be that fried to not remember the girl who called you her boyfriend. You got any more bullshit to sling my way?”

His wide-eyed stare says it all. He knows he's gonna die. After a moment of what I guess is clarity, he whimpers as he shakes his head slowly.

I take a quick look around at my surroundings. Amidst all the broken junk and wooden crates in this puddle-filled alley, there is a rusted crowbar lying half-sunken in a pothole a step behind me.

Yeah, that'll do it.

I heft it up with my free hand and with the pointed prongs facing him smash it hard against his crotch with a flesh-ripping, dick-bursting whack. He screams, oh God he screams, but I jam my left foot in his gut to knock the wind out of him.

While he vomits and weeps, convulsions borne out of fear and pain wracking his body, my mind drifts as I thumb off the safety, and not for the first time am I glad Misato can't see this thing I've become. I'm glad none of them, not Asuka, or Rei, or most of my old friends are around to see just how `quiet, ol' Shinji' turned out ten years later.

I get my head back together. Show my game-face. Go through the motions.

KLICK

“Trust me when I say you really don't know how much I'm enjoying this.”

“You f-f-fucking monster,” he wheezes in his throat at me. The scum-fuck's spraying blood through his gritted teeth talking to me. Pain ebbs out of his voice as steadily as blood does from his lips. Fuck if I know how that's hurtin' him. Fuck if I care. “That's all-KAFF- you fucking are, an ugly, shameless -KAFF-KAFF- mmmotherfucking soulless little cocksu--”

“ Yeah, that's a good choice of last words.”

“You gotta be shi--”

BLAM!...BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM!

I turn his face into a giant exit wound.

I stand there for a while, gun still pointed at the corpse, looking at him lying face-down in a puddle of murky red water. Blood, its scent thick and strong, reminds me all too much of floating around in LCL. I close my eyes, almost feeling the controls of my Unit-01 in my hands. My palms are clammy and cold, and I open my eyes.

There are times when I wonder if all of this was inevitable; if this was the only way possibly left for me other than just another teenage suicide statistic. A quick flicker of memory sails by my thoughts, the scent of raspberries and an image of a red-head who never heard me tell her how stunning she looked when she smiled so vivid and real, I ignore the fact that there's a dead man at my feet.

I push it away; wrestle the image of another life I never took advantage of back into the darkness, with all the other things I tell myself happened to somebody else.

I look back up at the clear blue morning, and draw a Camel out, and light it. All that tough-guy bullshit about starting your morning with a good, solid kill aside, nothing beats the restorative power of coffee.

The sound of sirens-far enough for me to know they won't get here in time to catch me, but close enough to know I should start hauling ass-shakes me back to reality. I walk around the corner to my car- a blacked-out '72 Charger. Suffice to say, this more than gets the job done when it comes to out-running the cops. I open the door, toss my Colt Custom in the passenger seat, get in, and jet. An acronym that hasn't crossed my mind in long time comes to mind as hit the left turn doing sixty, picking up speed towards the freeway-A.D.A.K.- Another day,…Another kill.

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