Chapter Text
Disclaimer: I do not own nor make any claim on Neon Genesis Evangelion. Even the 2nd Gen characters are not my own creations.
Children of Evangelion
Nephilim - Chapter 1: The Fourth
2035 - 20 Years After Third Impact
The girl stared at the tablet in her hand, instead of the view of the suborbital flight outside her window. Most people, such as the little boy sitting next to her, found it impossible to look away from the silver-blue curvature of the Earth. She treated it as just another view that she’d seen a dozen times. Besides, the faces on the tablet were far more interesting to her.
She was aware that the child, who must have been about six years old, kept glancing at her throughout the flight while scribbling on a coloring app. Now, he’d grown bored with it, and was staring at her. She’d done her best to ignore it, but the boy was surprisingly insistent and kept his focus on her for nearly half an hour before she finally lowered her tablet and looked back at him.
“Can I help you with something?” Her tone was congenial but cold, trying to convey her annoyance with having her privacy interrupted. The boy just stared at her, as though he hadn’t been expecting a response and didn’t know what to do now that he had her attention.
She glanced around. They were the only two in the row.
She asked, “Would you like me to find your mother?”
He shook his head. “It’s okay. She’s an attendant, so I can just call her when I need her,” he said with a bright smile. “I like your hair.”
She blinked - the child’s compliment took her by surprise. She smiled demurely and ran her fingers through her blonde locks.
“Thank you,” she said.
“I’m Ryan. What’s your name?”
“Uma,” she said. She hoped that would be the end of the exchange - her hand reached for the tablet in front of her.
The boy’s eyes shifted to it. “Woah!” His eyes lit up. “Is that an Eva?”
She looked down and cursed herself. The device had accidentally swiped away from team psych profiles to Unit bio-schematics. If the Subcommander found out…
Assess the situation, she told herself. Solve the problem. First, she had to calm this child down. She looked around. No one seemed to be paying them any attention. The attendant - she assumed the boy’s mother - was busy seeing to the needs of some self-important businessman who was having a fit about his reading light. The rest of the passengers were doing their best to ignore the entire incident.
She lowered her voice and asked, “Can you keep a secret?” The boy nodded. She leaned in, and he did likewise. “I’m on my way to Tokyo-3 to become an Eva pilot,” she said.
The boy gasped a little too loudly and clapped his hands over his mouth. Uma allowed herself to smile.
“Wow,” Ryan gasped when he lowered his hands. “For real?”
She nodded. “For real.”
“Will you be on t.v.? Like the Ikari twins?”
Uma’s eye twitched. “I… don’t know,” she said. “I’m going to meet them for the first time.”
“Who’s your favorite?” Ryan allowed his voice to return to a normal register and had missed Uma’s subtle physical cue. “Mine’s Yosuke, because he’s so cool, and fast! And his Eva’s got that whip that goes-!” He waved his arm around and made whip-striking sounds.
“Yes,” Uma said sharply and held the boy’s arm down before he accidentally struck her. “I am aware.”
He continued his exuberant gushing while she returned to studying her schematic. He finally finished with, “My mom said that I can’t be an Eva pilot because it’s too dangerous,” Ryan went on. “Did your mom say it’s too dangerous?”
“She did,” Uma admitted after a moment. “But it seems now that the danger is greater than her need to keep me away from it.”
Ryan frowned, unsure of what that meant. Then, he asked, “What about your dad?”
“My father,” she said coldly, “is the reason I’m going to be a pilot.”
Fortunately, the boy didn’t seem to register her discomfort. “But you’re nice, too. I bet you’re gonna be an awesome pilot!”
She held back a blush of embarrassment and thanked him. The pilot of the plane announced that they would be descending at Tokyo-3 soon.
***
“What the hell do you mean we’re getting a fourth pilot?”
Mai Ikari had her palms planted on the Commander’s desk and tried to lean over. Her twin brother, who had finally hit his growth spurt, pulled her back with one hand on her arm.
“I don’t see how that statement is unclear,” Commander Misato Kaji said.
The new Commander’s office was still the old Commander’s office, but the very first thing Misato had done when she took the job was gut the room and replace all the Kabbalistic decor with actual lights and carpet. It looked smaller than it was because of this, but it made it a heck of a lot easier to have a conversation.
“Come on, Sis,” Yosuke said. “You mean you didn’t notice all the ramp-up in Dock Four? The extra LCL? Dr. Akagi being more absent than usual?”
Mai shrugged herself out of her brother’s grip, stood straight and folded her arms under her chest with a defiant turn of her head. Her brother had a point - all of those things were signs that a new Evangelion was being grown and readied.
“Well,” she said, “I just think we should have been informed, that’s all.”
“You’re being informed now,” Misato said.
“Deja vu,” Shinji muttered to Asuka, who tried to glare at him, but ended up returning his smile. It was hard not to look back fondly on the moment you met the love of your life, even if they’d been too young and thick-headed to know it then.
“Here’s hoping Toji remembers to keep his pants on this time,” she said. They both snickered, which prompted an irritated glance from Misato.
“But we don’t even know this person,” Mai went on. “What if they’re horrible and we don’t get along at all? It’ll be Taki and Mario all over again, and–!”
Misato cut her off with a raise of her hand. She didn’t have to be reminded of their rivalry during Eva Team Zero’s time, particularly since it was her daughter Kotomi who had been the focus of it.
“And I’ll tell you what I told them,” She said, “You don’t get to choose who becomes an Eva pilot. You’re going to be teammates with this girl, and you’ll have to learn to get along with her. And, as squad leader, you’ll have to learn how to manage her. Is that understood, Pilot?”
Mai grumbled, “Yes, ma’am.”
Aki, who until now had stood quietly in the far corner, said, “At least it will be another girl. We won’t have to share the locker room with another boy.”
The thought did little to cheer Mai up.
Then, Yosuke quipped, “Yeah, in exchange for more loose hair clogging the shower drains.”
Shinji silently agreed with his son but still winced when Mai smacked her brother in the gut.
“So,” Mai asked, “this new mystery pilot have a name?”
Misato paused and looked back at Shinji and Asuka, who shook their heads at her. Part of their agreement to sign off on activating this new pilot was that Misato had to be the one to tell the Children. It had caused quite a bit of an argument at first - Ritsuko was already on board for obvious reasons, and Rei’s only concern was the pilot’s health and fitness. Kaji found the entire situation strangely amusing, a sentiment that no one else shared. Shinji had been against it until he and Asuka spoke to the girl, and then Shinji had a very long and awkward conversation with Dr. Akagi.
Asuka repeated her one condition: “You’re not chickening out, this time.”
Misato sighed and slid the pilot dossier across her desk. Mai picked it up and held it open while Yosuke and Aki looked over her shoulder. All of their eyes widened.
“What the f–!”
The first level alert drowned out Mai’s swearing.
***
Lieutenant Commander Toji Suzahara stood by the bag claim of the Tokyo-3 airport with only a picture in his pocket and a name in his head. The advent of a new pilot was enough to throw anyone for a loop, but the name was especially shocking.
It was, of course, no surprise that he found Miya Ikari waiting on a bench when he had arrived, or that she’d been there fifteen minutes early. Now, she stood next to him, waiting for the plane to deboard and the passengers to be shuttled inside.
The airport was small for a city of Tokyo-3’s size, but it had been a rush job, thrown up practically overnight after Tokyo-2’s destruction. The sister city was still being rebuilt, so the usual status quo of folks flying in there and taking the train to Tokyo-3 had been flipped. As such, the pair stood amidst a rather large crowd eager to greet family members, business contacts, or a handful of fans hoping to see a celebrity come through.
“So,” Toji asked his companion, “Did you hack the Magi again, or just beat it out of Akagi during your last chess game?”
Miya Ikari, age eleven, stood in ‘Uncle’ Toji’s shadow. She looked like a prepubescent clone of her mother, scowl and all, while her fingers flew over the holographic, hard-light interface of her personal computer, Warlock.
“Caspar alerted me,” she admitted. “She’s probably more upset about this than anyone.”
Toji asked without thinking, “It can do that?”
“Are you really surprised?”
He grunted. “I’m only surprised that after twenty years I’m still asking that question,” he said. “So, Caspar’s jealous, and she’s trying to get under Akagi’s skin by pulling you into this?”
“Basically,” she said.
“How mad do you think Misato would be if I put this kid on the next plane out of here and warned her to never come back for her own good?”
“I think Grandpa Kaji would have you shot,” she said. Being the youngest was the only reason she got away with calling Kaji and Misato Grandpa and Granny. She dismissed Warlock with a wave of her hand. “Here she comes.”
A young teenage girl with short blonde hair, dressed in a conservative skirt and loose t-shirt, parted through the crowd with a duffle bag slung under her arm. A young boy, escorted by one of the flight attendants, smiled and waved at her. She waved back at him and then scanned the terminal. She spotted Toji and Miya almost instantly and made a beeline for them.
Toji nearly thought that he was hallucinating. Except for the glasses, she was the spitting image of–
“Lieutenant Suzahara!” She came to an abrupt stop in front of them and saluted him. “Pilot Uma Akagi reporting, sir.”
“This is so weird,” Miya said as she stared at the girl.
Uma frowned and cocked an eyebrow at the girl. “Miya Ikari,” she said. “I… didn’t expect to meet you here, as well.”
“Don’t encourage her,” Toji said. “Little Miya thrives on defying others’ expectations. Right, kiddo?” He ruffled the young girl’s hair, and she scowled and swatted at his hand. He then turned his attention to the baggage carousel. “Which one’s yours?”
“None of them,” she said. She shrugged the duffle bag’s strap up her shoulder. “I have everything I need right here.”
Toji paused. He’d never known any girl, even Rei, to have so little luggage.
“And before you ask,” she continued, “yes, I am sure. I assume your car is this way?” She walked past him towards the exit.
“I like her,” Miya said before she skipped after the older girl, leaving Toji to catch up.
They’d reached the exit just as the first level alarms came on. The newcomers to the city had been informed about what to do in this event by a short video during their plane trip. They followed the locals in a slightly panicked but orderly fashion to the nearest shelter entrance, which was plentiful around the city.
Toji grabbed Uma’s arm before she started to follow the crowd.
“Not us,” he said. He took Miya’s hand and led both girls to the parking lot, which was quickly emptying as people headed in the opposite direction. More than one person tried to tell them that they should be making their way to the shelter but stopped the moment they recognized the WILLE logo on Toji’s suit.
They reached Toji’s car - a practical four-door sedan that was looking like it had quite a few miles on it - and climbed in. Miya slid into the passenger seat without thinking, forcing Uma into the back.
Something about all of this struck Uma as strangely familiar.
“You’ll wanna buckle up,” Miya said as slid her seatbelt over herself.
“This is Lieutenant Commander Suzahara,” Toji said into his wrist-comm. “I need an update!” The only reply he received was a shrill, static cry. He cursed and started the car. “Miya, can you boost my signal?”
“Since when am I your tech support?” She grumbled, but Warlock appeared in front of her and she went to work anyway. “Shit.”
“Language!”
“We need to get to the GeoFront, now,” she said. “Step on it, Uncle Toji!”
“Why?” Uma leaned forward between the seats. She looked over at the data streaming on Miya’s device. It almost looked like a blood pattern. “Is it an Angel? A rogue Eva?”
“Worse.” Miya pointed out the far side of the car. Uma turned and saw a twisted, monstrous shape hovering over the peaks and hills surrounding Tokyo-3.
“A hybrid.”
***
It looked like a manta ray with a human head swimming through the air, but its tail was a thick, heavy thing that curled beneath it. It moved with an eerie, unnatural grace that made it difficult to look directly at.
“It’s not actually flying,” Lieutenant Commander Hyuga said over the comms as the Evangelions were maneuvered into position. “It appears to be bending space around it, both as a means of locomotion, and with the effect of distorting our perceptions of it.
Even as he said so, its wings appeared to phase in and out around the edges, as though it were flowing through a sea that existed only for it. Its face was a featureless mask, and the torso beneath that was strangely feminine.
“Will you look at that?” Aoba quipped. “It looks like Hyuga’s ex.”
That made the pilots laugh, but no one else on the command bridge found it funny. This was emphasized when Captain Asuka Ikari slapped Aoba upside his head.
“Focus, people,” she said. “How the hell did this thing pop out of nowhere? I thought we took out NERV’s pet teleporting Angel?”
NERV had deployed most of its Angel/Evangelion hybrids up to this point via an Angel that appeared to exclusively occupy its own dimension of space-time. Eva Team One had recently severed NERV’s control over it, and the Angel was apparently swallowed into its own dimension.
“One of the benefits of being the most adaptable species in the known universe, Captain,” Lieutenant Commander Maya Ibuki said. She was no longer an official ‘Bridge Bunny,’ having been moved to her own lab deeper in the complex, and coordinated over the coms. “We take away one of their advantages, and they evolve a new one to compensate.”
Lieutenant Kotomi Kaji sat at the lead station that monitored the vitals of the pilots and their Evangelions. She asked, “So, Big Sis, what are we calling this one?” She allowed herself a small grin when Asuka growled at her.
Hyuga answered for the captain, “Marchosias, one of the fallen angels who appeared as a she-wolf with griffin’s wings. After Aoba’s ex.”
Asuka ignored their jokes. She felt hairs rising on the back of her neck. She looked up to the commander’s deck, where Misato sat with Ryoji on one side and Ristuko on the other. She didn’t have to ask why the three senior WILLE officers were uncharacteristically tense and quiet. Miya had confirmed that Toji and she had picked up the new pilot, but they were still far from the GeoFront, and getting here wouldn’t be easy with a battle going on just a couple of hillsides over.
“Pilot synch-ratios are nominal, Captain,” Kotomi finally said. “All three Evas are in position for launch.”
She nodded, and asked, “Pilots ready?”
“Unit Gamma, ready,” Yosuke said.
“Unit Omega, ready,” Aki confirmed.
“Unit Delta,” Mai said, “ready. Eva Team One ready to launch, Captain.”
Asuka smiled. “Go get ‘em.”
All three Evangelions rocketed towards the surface.
***
Uma could only watch out the window of Toji’s car as the three Second Generation Evangelions known as Delta, Gamma, and Omega emerged from their launch tubes to surround the hybrid. It had been floating several hundred meters above the city’s outskirts before its opponents arrived, but moments before they emerged it descended. It had been waiting for them.
She tried to share this insight and was met with a harsh dismissal by Miya in between her bouts of shouting at Lt.Col. Suzahara for his driving.
“Obviously it was prepared for them,” Miya said. “They’re adaptive - they learn from their dead predecessors. Damn it, Uncle Toji! Look out!”
The sedan’s tires shrieked briefly as Toji spun the wheel to avoid an abandoned car. They were littering the road, along with a handful of vehicles that had crashed in the panicked rush to get to a shelter, and one or two daredevils who defied the shelter orders.
“I’ll never understand these morons,” Toji grumbled. “Is looting a few shops worth getting crushed to death by a damned hybrid?”
“It’s called Darwinism,” Miya quipped, her eyes half on the road and half on her terminal display.
They were speeding past Tokyo-3’s retracted core, now, and Uma watched as Omega crouched behind a barricade with a pallet rifle and provided covering fire to Delta. The bullets crackled against the hybrid’s AT-Field enough to weaken it just as Delta’s own field slammed into it. The flash caused Uma to cover her eyes briefly.
Delta had its forearm blades unsheathed when she opened them again. She watched the crimson behemoth slash at the hybrid, the blades leaving bio-electric sparks in their wake, and she gasped as the blades passed harmlessly through the hybrid’s shifting mass.
“Aw, come on!” Mai’s voice echoed through the comms.
Uma asked, “Did it really just–?”
“Mass phase shifting,” Miya finished. “Yeah. Damn it, give me a minute to recalibrate! There’s gotta be an EM frequency that can disrupt its phase field. Can you guys try to hit it a few more times?”
“Oh, gee, sure!” Gamma’s pilot shouted. “No problem!”
Unit Gamma appeared behind the hybrid nearly as quickly as the hybrid could phase-shift, and her razor-sharp whip scored a hit across its back. The hybrid screamed, a sound that made everyone in the vehicle several miles away grab their ears – Toji had to bring the car to a screeching halt.
The hybrid’s tail uncoiled, revealing that it ended in a huge black spike, and slammed into Unit Gamma’s chest, knocking the blue Eva backwards. Its face mask glowed, and a beam of searing light forced Delta to raise her AT Field. The force of the beam still drove her back, digging huge furrows through the ground.
Uma didn’t realize that she was screaming. She felt a momentary stab of embarrassment and shame.
“Pilot? Pilot Akagi, respond! Uma, are you all right?”
The Subcommander’s voice pierced the din ringing in Uma’s ears.
“Y-Yes,” she replied with a shaky voice. “I’m just fine, sir.” She hardened her tone quickly.
“That the newbie?” Mai asked. “Wow, you’ve got a set of lungs on ya, new girl!”
Uma blushed despite herself.
“Take it easy on her, Mai,” Yosuke said - his voice sounded strange, like there was a woman echoing him. “She just got here. It’s too soon for you to put her through the wringer.”
“Pilots!” Captain Ikari’s voice snapped like a whip. “Pay attention! It’s on the move!”
The hybrid glided through the air, its wings undulating through invisible currents, and passed right over Unit Omega’s head. The green Eva took a swipe at it with her claws and cut only air. The hybrid moved with a burst of incredible speed.
Uma looked up, and something inside of her shuddered. She had the distinct feeling that it was looking straight at her from behind that glossy black mask.
It let out another scream, less piercing this time, and when the occupants of the car looked up again the hybrid towered over them. Its barbed tail slammed into the ground in front of them and shook the street and everything on it. They rolled back from the tremor. Then huge, scythe-like claws unfolded from the tail’s main length and shot out. They pierced the ground around the car, sending fountains of debris flying all around them.
Miya was screaming. Toji slammed the car into reverse, turned his head around and the car’s tires smoked as it fled backwards from the oncoming cascade. The scythes rose and fell, repeatedly, trying to stab the car. Uma ducked down, hands over her head, trembling with something she’d never felt before - pure terror.
The hybrid screamed again, and rose in the air to maneuver itself around its tiny prey. There was no way they could escape.
Then Omega pounced. Its form flashed overhead like a big cat leaping at its prey, and they rolled across the ground together. The hybrid shrieked and writhed, attempting to phase-shift, but Omega had her foreclaws dug in, and her back talons tore at its body. Aki’s voice echoed through the comms, but it sounded nothing like a fifteen-year-old girl. It sounded more like a ravenous beast feeding.
Uma felt her stomach churn. She kicked open the car door and staggered out. She ignored Toji and Miya’s cries that it was still dangerous. She took two steps and threw up. She wiped the bile off her chin when she finished heaving and looked up in time to see what happened when Omega tore apart the hybrid’s core. A halo of red momentarily filled the sky, and the shockwave of the blast battered the debris around them.
“My goddess,” she whispered.
Omega towered above them and let loose a roar.
***
“Aki? Are you okay?”
The blue haired girl had been standing under the icy cold water of the locker room showers with her hands braced against the wall for nearly half an hour. She hadn’t stopped to be congratulated, debriefed, or medically checked out when she exited her Eva - she ran straight for the showers, chamber suit already halfway off, and stood there. Her body was steaming for several minutes.
Her cousin, Mai, showered off every scrap of LCL. It took her a few minutes to work up the nerve to speak.
“You really impressed the new girl,” Mai said. She lowered her voice to a teasing whisper. “I hear she threw up.”
That cracked a smile in Aki’s exterior. “Really?” Her cousin nodded. Her smile faded. “It was trying to kill her.”
“They’re trying to kill all of us.” Mai shrugged. “What else is new?”
“No.” Aki finally stood straight. “It was after her.” She turned off the water and left to change.
Mai watched her walk away without another word. Something was wrong with her cousin, ever since they came back from their little ‘Back to the Future’ adventure as Yosuke liked to call it. Mai didn’t have to guess why. Aki Ayanami watched the man who had been her father fully succumb to possession by an Angel.
Kaworu Nagisa was no longer a victim of a chemically induced multiple personality remnant. He was now Tabris, the sixteenth Angel. The Soul of Adam.
Mai turned off her shower, dried quickly, and dressed in time to keep up with her cousin and brother as they headed to their debriefing. She had no doubt that their lack of focus today was going to get them an earful.
“Look on the bright side,” Yosuke said. “Aki’s got another solo kill.” He nudged his shoulder into his cousin’s, which now that he was finally as tall as her meant that she couldn’t immediately push back and knock him over.
Aki was the spitting image of her mother - their Aunt Rei. The only difference was that she was taller and far more athletic, which in this family was saying something. The twins’ mother always blamed it on Rei’s genetic engineering, claiming that it was an unfair advantage. But neither Aki nor the twins ever seemed to mind. They’d been able to work as a team ever since they were toddlers, giving Kotomi the run-around whenever she was forced to babysit them.
The Ikari twins, while technically fraternal, were still very similar in appearance. Their hair was a rust-colored compromise between their father’s dark brown and their mother’s auburn-red. Their features were mostly a blend of their parents’, but those who knew them well could tell that Yosuke favored his mother, while Mai favored their father. Their parents’ jokes on the matter had caused both to rebel by wearing the most gender-appropriate clothing possible regardless of popular trends, to the point that Shinji often demanded his daughter change before stepping foot outside their home when she had a date with a boy. Yosuke was forbidden from dating for another five years, due his own youthful misadventures involving women who were far too mature for him. Aki, for her part, entertained several romantic entanglements, but they never lasted. No one in the family asked her about it. Her synch with Omega could linger for days afterwards, which made approaching sensitive topics far more hazardous than usual.
The three of them reached the conference room and were met by Captain Ikari, aka ‘Mom’ for the twins and ‘Aunt Asuka’ for Aki, Pilot Liason Shinji Ikair, aka ‘Dad’ and ‘Undle Shinji’, Lt.Cmdr. Toji Suzahara, aka ‘Uncle Toji’, Ryoji Kaji and Commander Misato Kaji, aka ‘Grandpa’ and ‘Grandma’ respectively, Lt. Kotomi Kaji, aka ‘The World’s Best Babysitter’, and Subcommander Dr. Ristuko Akagi, aka ‘The Scary Lady’ to everyone. Finally, Dr. Rei Ayanami, aka ‘Mom’ for Aki and ‘Aunt Rei’ for the twins, stood at the far end of the room.
“Woah,” Mai said. “It’s a family reunion. What’s the occasion?”
Asuka breathed deeply and resisted the snap reaction to tell her daughter to stop being a smart-ass, because she knew that it wouldn’t do any good.
“Sit down,” she said.
All attention was focused on the slightly younger girl sitting on the other side of the table. Her hair was dyed blonde, and she had the trademark mole on her cheek that her mother and grandmother had both possessed. She wore a pair of large glasses that seemed to catch the light just enough to hide her eyes when she tilted her head.
She stood up as the three senior pilots entered the room.
“Pilot Uma Akagi reporting, Squad Leader.”
Her eyes were locked forward on where Mai assumed she was supposed to be standing, so she took her place directly on the other side of the table from the girl.
“Um, okay. Great,” she said. She sat down with her brother and cousin. “So, do I call you Auntie Uma?”
Shinji and Asuka hung their heads and groaned.
End Chapter 1: The Fourth