Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction ❯ Omega Genesis: Evangelion ❯ The New Genesis ( Chapter 1 )

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

"If their purpose is of human origin, they shall fail."

***

A Neon Genesis Evangelion Fanfiction epic...

By Lactamaeon

& Anterrabae

of the Yri Gods

Omega Genesis Evangelion

The End of Eva

Chapter One: The New Genesis

***

I MET a seer,

Passing the hues and objects of the world,

The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense,

To glean eidolons.

-Walt Whitman, "Eidolons"

The red orb that was the sun sank slowly under surface of the
translucent amber-colored liquid. When the light touched the vast
ocean of the liquid that man called LCL, it shattered and flew in all
directions. Refracting endlessly, it made it seem as if the surface of
the ocean danced with flames. The play of light on the surface lasted
a long moment of eternity, before the sun finally sank completely
below the surface. Slow waves moved forward in a seemingly endless
progression, each one cresting a little further down on the sloping
shore as the liquid receded. They each broke with a near-silent roar,
the only sound in the silence of existence. The two figures lying on
the untouched beach slept, unaware of the ebb of the ocean or the
swiftly-fading light that played abut them.

Awareness came slowly to the young man who lay on the beach. He awoke
by increments, each giving slightly more clarity to the feeling of the
sand against his bare skin. The rough grains were irritating, but he
couldn't summon the strength of mind to move.

After long moments of slow waking, he realized that he had sand in his
mouth, and tried to spit it out. The gritty taste filled his mouth,
and his tongue was dry. His fingers clenched the sand reflexively as
he remembered something - a little bit, only a fraction of the whole.
But the sand passed through his fingers, unwilling to be contained.

He turned his head, feeling the friction of sand against his cheek.
She lay next to him, as nude as he, her long auburn hair spreading out
over her back like a veil of purity. He thought he remembered her, but
he wasn't yet sure of his own existence, and so doubted his memory.

He lay in the sand watching her soft, steady breathing for a long
time, before his own eyes closed and he again found the solace of
sleep.

***

He looked out into the semi-darkness before him, his gloved hands upon
the opening into the passageway. Some furious terrestrial upheaval had
struck the man-made cave of steel, cracking the walls and twisting the
passageway, so that it ran at odd angles. The floor was cluttered with
the refuse of disaster.

He could not remember everything; only the beginning, and a little
towards the end. He could not even remember what it is he was after -
only that it had been left down here, hidden safely where few could
find it. He continued onwards into the darkened passageways, his hands
and the flickering light of ceiling bulbs his only guide. The passages
twisted and turned, but his feet knew the way well.

To say he remembered the beginning was misleading. It had begun long
before his own time. He had merely done his own part to push things
along.

He came to a set of doors finally and forced them open, grunting with
the effort. He remembered them opening without the touch of a human
hand; but that had been before.

Bittersweet memories flooded him now, looking into the dark room, as
if a flood gate had been torn open. Memories of goals, betrayals,
plots, and love. His mask, long in-place and grown strong with use,
allowed nothing to show on his face.

He stepped over the threshold, as he remembered doing before. Always
they had waited for him, red eyes glittering in the darkness,
illuminating the depths of the amber fluid in which they sat. The glow
of their eyes was rarely enough to make out the vaguest image of their
bodies.

This time the sight which greeted his eyes was quite different. They
waited for him as always, but in a different manner. They lay strewn
across the floor amidst jagged shards of broken glass from the tanks
lining the walls. Their red blood mixed with the puddles of LCL
spreading across the floor, making a dark, cloudy red-orange liquid
that made him feel sick when he looked at it. A sense of loss filled
him, but he forced himself deeper into the room, and it seemed as
though he walked through a thick gelatinous wall of emotion.

His mask would have prevented anyone from seeing the turmoil in his
mind, had there been anyone to see. He had hoped, and still did, that
they were not all destroyed.

He walked down the rows of shattered tanks, clouded puddles, and
broken bodies. Some tanks were still intact, but the life-support had
failed in various ways, and the ones inside of them were as dead as
the broken ones tossed about the room like some god's once-living
dolls.

He reached the end of the long double row and looked in the last tank
on his left. There was no external damage that he could see. The
lights of the room flickered fitfully and went out, plunging him into
deep blackness.

He stared into the depths of the tank, trying to see the vaguest
outline of one of them. He had stepped back and started to turn away
when her eyes opened.

In a mental frenzy, although outwardly as calm as when he had entered
the room, he tried to open the tank using the control pad, but it
refused his commands. Giving up on that, he moved to the tank itself.
He tore at the latches, and a vague memory of something like this
having happened before came to him. He remembered a feeling of intense
heat, and the hiss of burning flesh.

He finished undoing the top of the tank and began to pull her out of
it. He placed her gently on the floor in front of the tank as her eyes
fluttered closed again. The amber fluid began to run off of her,
leaving her skin sticky and her blue hair matted and wet.

He turned, looking at the devastation that made up the room, his mind
in frantic disarray. Even with all that happened, I still have one of
them! The thought echoing in his mind had a desperate, mad edge to it.
All is not lost after all...

A flicker of movement occurred at the edge of his vision, and he
turned to look at another nearby tank.

Twin points of red light looked out at him from the dark recesses of
the tank, shining in the blackness. The man allowed himself a smile as
he stood up and went to the tank.

The beginnings of a plan had already sprouted in his mind by the time
he had the second one out.

***

The ruined city stood before them, stretching across the landscape
like the giant skeletal remains of some vast beast. Blackened shells
of buildings crouched like brooding hulks where once they had
stretched toward the sky, the triumph of man and science over all
else. But victory had been an illusion, and short-lived as well.

The young boy and girl picked their way through the rubble, toward the
city. They were dressed in what rags they had been able to find along
the way. Although the girl was normally outspoken and precocious, she
had remained silent at the other seeing her nudity. The enormous
weight of reality lay heavily on both of them.

The uneven gravel of the newly-made wasteland crunched beneath Shinji
Ikari's feet as he turned to look at his companion. Asuka Sohryu
Langley was looking up at the city, an uncharacteristic look of
foreboding drawing her face down in a frown.

As they watched, the sun went down behind the city in a spectacular
array of reds and oranges, silhouetting the shattered buildings like
broken teeth. The sun went, and left the darkness as its legacy.

Looking at the city, a darker patch of black against the night sky,
Asuka whispered something so soft that Shinji barely caught it.

"Man fears the darkness; and so he scrapes away at the edges of it
with fire..."

It was something a companion of theirs had said once, as the three of
them sat on a grassy ledge overlooking this very city, back when it
had been the bastion of mankind against the frequent invasions of the
beings called Angels.

"There's no light here. Does that mean... there's no one left?" Asuka
finished softly.

Shinji wished he could think of something comforting to say.
Unfortunately, he had never been very good at that sort of thing.
"Well... I'm sure there must be someone..." He trailed off.

Asuka started resolutely off towards the city, her long red hair
trailing behind her. She called back to Shinji without looking.

"Are you coming or not, Third Child?"

"Uh..." Shinji sighed, and hurried after her.

The two of them entered the ruins of Tokyo-3.

***

The slight blue-haired girl made her way over the uneven pile of slag
metal and rock quietly, careful not to dislodge any of the refuse. She
crept over the miniature mountain and stopped outside a window.

It was more of a hole now, lacking glass and shutters and curtains. It
gaped in the side of a fire-blackened house, here in what had been one
of the residential sections of the mighty Tokyo-3, the last fortress
of mankind.

She peered inside, absently brushing a strand of hair away from her
eyes. She saw what she had been looking for; a young boy and girl.
They were asleep, each on their own small pile of rags in separate
corners of the small room. Their faces and clothes were streaked with
ash and dirt. Neither of them seemed to be sleeping peacefully; they
both tossed and turned, disturbed by dreams.

The blue-haired girl settled back to watch, as she had been told.

***

Shinji Ikari woke with a start from a vague dream of dark oppressive
figures crowding around him, drowning him with the weight of their
presence. Sweat ran down his face, streaking the ash and dirt which
stained it. He blinked the stinging perspiration out of his eyes and
glanced around the room.

Asuka lay sleeping fitfully in her corner. He had been surprised when
she insisted they sleep in the same room. She had said that as
possibly the last two human beings on Earth, they had to stick
together. He didn't want to think about that possibility. There had to
be other people.

He stood up slowly, stretching the sleep out of his extremities. He
did not see the blue-maned head which ducked below the windowsill
outside just as he stood.

He looked at the small, ruined room and sighed, running a hand through
his grimy hair. They had spent the last three days searching
desperately for signs of other humans, but had found nothing. They
also had not found any running water. The stagnant water they had been
forced to drink left an acrid taste in the mouth even hours after
drinking. They had not been able to bring themselves to eat what food
they had found.

Asuka had suggested that next they try to gain entrance to the
Geofront; NERV had had stores of food to last lifetimes, and
reservoirs of water. If only they could get down there.

Shinji shivered at the memory of what had happened there just before
the end. Human troops invading headquarters. Misato... He had found
her necklace. She had given it to him somehow just as she pushed him
into the elevator. He only took it out when Asuka wasn't looking. She
would call him weak if she caught him crying over it.

He turned at the sound of yawning. Asuka stretched, the skin of her
arms stained by their searching through the devastation. She sat up,
tossing aside the rags that she had used as a blanket.

"Hey, Shinji. How are you feeling?"

The events of the Third Impact - at least that's what Shinji thought
it had been - seemed to have softened her cynicism and sense of
superiority. They were both drifting, without anything to cling to but
each other.

"Um, alright I guess."

"As indecisive as ever, I see."

Well, he hadn't expected her to be a totally different person.

"Well." She stood up, knuckling her back. "We should get going soon.
If we don't find food and real water soon, we'll be as dead as
everyone else seems to be."

Her blunt statement made Shinji flinch. Inside, she flinched too, and
berated herself for it. Get used to the thought, dammit! We're the
last ones, the only ones! So deal with it. She didn't allow her
internal conflict to show, of course.

"I... guess so." Shinji couldn't summon much enthusiasm for crawling
through the shattered passageways of the underground Geofront. He
didn't understand how Asuka could force herself to keep going. He knew
that if he had been on his own, he would have given up and died a long
time ago. Her fiery resolve drove them both through the shattered
remains of what had been. In Asuka he saw someone who never hesitated,
a fire that never wavered. She let no one see the secret weaknesses of
her heart.

Asuka started off through the hole where the building's door had once
been. For some reason, when she didn't look back, Shinji felt a tremor
of envy. He hurried out after her.

The sun was about midway through its ascent of the sky, shining down
with a bright, antiseptic heat that was not normal for that area of
Japan. Or at least, it hadn't been normal. Almost immediately, sweat
stood out on Shinji's brow as he watched Asuka begin to pick her way
through the devastation.

His feet felt sticky in his shoes, and he found himself wishing
desperately for enough water to bathe. The refuse slid under him like
loose shale, and he nearly lost his footing as he and Asuka made their
way down a miniature mountain of rubble.

"Do you have any idea where we should start looking?" he called to the
girl, who was a few yards ahead of him.

"Of course I do, dumkopf. Where the entrances were. We'll see if any
of them are still working."

"Oh." Shinji grimaced. Leave it to Asuka to remain in control in a
situation like this.

And to see the obvious where he had missed it.

After a little over an hour, they finally found a set of doors which
was broken open and led into a section of passageway which looked safe
to traverse. Shinji and Asuka were both glad to get out of the glare
of the sunlight, and into the cool shade of the Geofront. They soon
discovered an unforeseen problem, however.

"Uh... there's no lights in here..." Shinji trailed off, expecting his
companion to yell at him for being negative.

"Hmm. We should have expected this. Shinji, do you know where a
maintenance station is?"

He blinked. "Um, there should be one right around the bend. Why, do
you know how to turn the lights on?"

"No stupid, that's where they keep flashlights."

"Oh..."

Asuka wondered if it was her, or if her companion was getting dumber
as the minutes passed. Of course, when they got to the maintenance
station, her suspicions were verified.

Shinji walked up to the door and stood there staring at it.

He stepped back, and moved forward again.

Staring at the door, he did the same thing once more.

"It's not opening...isn't it supposed to?"

"Only when there's power. As there are no lights, I'd assume the power
is out." Somehow Asuka couldn't bring herself to call him stupid
again.

Shinji smiled sheepishly. "Oh yeah, I forgot. Sorry."

"Come on," growled Asuka, impatience entering her voice. She moved up
beside him and began to strain at the door, trying to push it into its
recess within the wall.

Her sweaty hands slid over the smooth surface of the metal door,
finding no purchase. She worked fruitlessly at opening the door with
her bare hands before she realized that Wonder Boy was simply staring
at her. "Aren't you going to help me, Third Child?"

"Erp!" Shinji hurried forward to help the red-haired girl.

Beneath the hands of both of them the door moved a little, but the
metal shrieked in protest. They stopped long enough to give their ears
a rest.

"Hmmm..." Shinji muttered to himself as he looked at the wall beside
the door. He had just noticed the cover that was labeled Manual Door
Release. Grinning he lifted the cover from the wall.

He put his hand into the recess and began to turn the crank inside,
putting his back into the effort. There was a clicking of gears, and
slowly the door closed back on the little part of it they had opened.
Asuka stared.

"Oops, wrong way..." Shinji began to turn the crank the other way. The
door slid open slowly, the clicking of the gears quickening as it
built up momentum. Asuka turned to face him.

"How long have you known about that and not told me? You let me make a
fool of myself while you knew that thing was there?" The Second Child
stood with her hands on her hips, glaring at Shinji.

***

The girl with blue hair watched unseen as the boy and girl argued, the
boy cringing away as the girl swung her arms, shouting at him about...
something. She wasn't close enough to make out their words. She
reflected inwardly that he be upset about that, but she couldn't risk
being seen. He himself had told her that; there was still too much to
be done.

***

Shinji cringed as Asuka's anger broke over him like a tsunami. "Sorry,
sorry, I didn't mean to... I just noticed a second ago, that's all!"

Asuka stopped short, her eyes narrowing. "Has anyone ever told you
that you whimper like a beaten dog?" Shinji just looked at her, and
she snorted and shook her head. "You know, you'd almost be an alright
guy if you weren't so pathetic - so why don't you stop?" Suddenly, as
though afraid of what she had just said, she turned around and walked
into the maintenance station, looking for flashlights.

She returned in a few minutes with a pair of them. "Here," She threw
one to him, "let's hold off on using that one for as long as
possible."

As she switched hers on, a bright column of artificial light spread
from its single eye, and the two of them moved off into the darkened
corridors. The blue haired shadow followed unseen.

None of them noticed the camera that tracked their movements from up
above.

***

The darkened tunnels of the Geofront were eerie in their emptiness.
Not even bodies were left after the massacre at NERV Headquarters.
Shinji couldn't keep from shivering as he recalled everyone - all the
people he had known and worked with... and perhaps come to love, in
his own peculiar fashion - dying, or turning into the formless goo
that was LCL. Or both.

Their steps rang hollow on the metal floors, twisted or rent in places
by an explosion or some terrestrial upheaval. It was easy to believe
that there was no one else in the world when you were alone the way
Shinji was.

But Asuka's here... Shinji recalled something he had once said to
Misato. `I don't mind living alone. I'm alone anyway...' Somehow he
had gone back to believing he was alone even when he was with someone
else.

He glanced over at his companion. Asuka walked resolutely onward, her
long red hair, appearing a dark mahogany in the gloom, trailing behind
her. Quickly, before she could catch him looking at her, he turned
forward once again. But Asuka is here. I'm not alone.

He didn't see why the thought would bring him any comfort - after all,
they were probably the last humans alive on earth - but it did.

He walked through the hallways a little more confidently, drawing
strength from the fact that he was not alone.

***

Asuka fought back her own uneasiness and self-doubt with a tremendous
effort of will.

I am Asuka Langley Sohryu, and I am not going to give up. Not now, not
ever. Adamn if we are the last ones left...

She screamed defiantly at her fear within her own mind. Always it had
been there, and always she had fought it this way. Nagging ideas of
her own lack of worth had always eaten at her, but she had always been
stronger. Only now, it was harder to turn the fears aside. The weight
of her responsibility pulled down at her like hands from the grave,
and left her little energy with which to fight her own anxiety.

What are you worth, when your mother abandoned you? You're just a
doll, after all.

It was harder to fight when you were alone.

***

Dust and destruction all around her, ruin spreading in every
direction. Crumbling towers of steel stretched upwards like skeletal
hands, clutching at the sky. The hot breeze blew gusts of fine, gray
dust against her skin, stinging.

It was an area mostly free of the ubiquitous destruction, near the
center of what had been Tokyo-3. The last fortress of mankind. The
gray dust was everywhere, though, seeming to absorb the light of the
sun, so that despite the desert-like heat it was gloomy.

It had been a park. Rebuilt every time it was damaged by the battles
with the Angels, it had been a retreat for those living in this city
which was perpetually on the edge of annihilation. Now it was an empty
wasteland of dust.

She sat in the center of it, the dust all around her, and her fingers
trailed slowly along the ground in a never-ending pattern.

***

"Um, so where do you think we should go to find water?" Shinji asked
softly, his voice breaking the silence as well as Asuka's inner
conflict.

Asuka turned to him, frowning. "Where do you think? Terminal Dogma's
got the most shielding, so I doubt much debris got down that far.
That's where we'll check first."

Mentally Shinji shuddered at the memory of Terminal Dogma and what it
housed. As the Third Impact had been unsuccessful he wondered...

"Do you think Adam will still be down there? I mean, the Third Impact
didn't happen, so shouldn't she still be there to fulfill her
purpose?" His voice gave quavering tangibility to his thoughts.

Asuka grimaced at the thought. "Let's hope not." Her face was grim as
she spoke. Thinking of the crucified Angel brought back memories that
she would rather were left buried. Let's hope to God not.

Shinji noticed that ahead of them the tunnel, which had been sloping
slightly upwards for a little bit now, shown slightly brighter, almost
as if it had a light at its far end. But that wasn't possible; after
all, the power was out.

Asuka and Shinji, woman and man, the last humans and the first,
stumbled out into the broken sunlight of the Geofront.

It rose around them in a giant hemisphere, enclosing the world like a
shattered sky. Shinji's amazement at this monument to mankind's
ingenuity and engineering ability remained, and he was reminded of the
first time he ever saw it. In an awed kind of nostalgia, he leaned his
head back and looked over the walls, his eyes traveling to the apex
where, like man-made imitations of the stalactites found in a natural
cavern, hung the buildings that had once housed the multitudes who
lived and worked in Tokyo-3.

All over the dome, the cracks and holes left by the invading UN forces
allowed sunlight to pour in, lighting the interior of the dome as
motes of dust danced eerily down the long promenades of brightness,
and showing the only undamaged building. The sunlight broke apart on
the hard, imposing edges of the towering pyramid that had once housed
the Headquarters of his father's organization, built on top of the
area known as Terminal Dogma the world's savior and destroyer. NERV.

The forests that had once covered the floors of the Geofront were
destroyed, trees flattened and torn up, as though some giant child had
become upset while sitting alone, throwing and stomping on the trees
in anger.

The lakes, once colored the clearest sparkling blue, were now devoid
of life, and held water the same color as the LCL that he had so often
been submerged in when piloting his Eva.

***

As Asuka Langley Sohryu watched her companion gaze slowly around the
Geofront, she wondered if he saw it as it had once been, or as it was
now. She had to admit that it had looked much better back before the
UN came. The eerie columns of light and vast, pregnant silence made
her shiver in trepidation.

"Come on, Shinji. Let's go visit Terminal Dogma. Time enough to enjoy
the sights later, after we've had some food and water." Turning she
walked slowly towards the black maw that was a door leading into the
pyramid that had once been NERV Headquarters. She didn't glance back
over her shoulder to see if he was following her, and Shinji hurried
after her, afraid of being left alone in the cavernous Geofront.

It didn't take them too long to make their way down to the level which
housed Terminal Dogma. The elevators weren't working, so Asuka decided
that they would use the ventilation ducts, and then proceed on foot
the rest of the way. The cramped area of the air shafts made her
remember the last time they had been without power in NERV.

She could hardly believe she had been such an idiot; baiting Shinji
into look up her skirt. Being the last surviving humans sure puts
things in perspective, she thought wryly. The air inside the ducts was
hot and stifling, and crawling through the uncomfortable space was
tiring. By the time they reached the bottom level, they were both
winded, sweaty, and dirty.

The Command Center was dark and empty. The only light came from two
glowing consoles for the MAGI; apparently one of them was no longer
functioning. Asuka thought it was Melchior, but she wasn't sure.

Shinji looked around the darkened room. "Uh, Asuka..."

She frowned. He had broken her concentration. "What? I was trying to
remember where the entrance was, dumkopf!"

"Oh... I was just going to say that I don't know how to get down there
without an Eva."

Asuka sighed. He was at least trying to help; she couldn't really get
angry at him. "Doesn't your father's stupid little elevator thing go
down there?"

Shinji frowned slightly. "I don't know... I guess it probably does. I
never really thought about it."

Asuka smiled determinedly. "Well then, let's check it out. Come on,
Shin-chan."

***

Shin-chan... I haven't been called that in a while. It seemed almost
like Asuka was back to her old self. The thought comforted him a
little. He wasn't used to seeing the headstrong girl doubting herself.

The elevator wasn't too hard to find, and luckily the elevator itself
was stopped on the floor they were looking for. After struggling to
open the safety door with a metal bar they had found amongst the
debris, the two were carefully shimmying their way down the cramped
shaft.

The strain of holding himself up in the vertical passage ensured that
by the time Shinji gratefully let himself drop to the ground, he was
weak with the effort. Asuka appeared only mildly better off.

Before them loomed the gigantic opening whose threshold Shinji had
crossed only twice before; the Gates of Heaven. The doors themselves
were tossed onto the floor of the gigantic chamber, rent as though by
claws.

Shinji was again overwhelmed by the supernatural awe which hung about
the gates, as though fashioned by hands older than time. Beyond the
threshold stretched the chamber known as Terminal Dogma. The sea of
LCL which had once filled the room was gone now, leaving only the
forlorn column of land in the center from which thrust the titanic
cross.

The cross too was empty, save for a small, insignificant-looking piece
of twisted metal standing out from it like a nail.

Asuka gasped.

"The Lance of Longinus...?"