Kaiju Slaying For Death And Profit Ch 16

Hey there folks. Sorry for the late post. Work got crazy on the second half of the week, and I had something of a full weekend. So y'all get a chapter hot off the press. And lemme tell ya, this chapter fought me each step of the way. Hope you lot find it enjoyable anyways.

I'm also a bit exhausted. I've done my best on editing and trying to catch mistakes, but if I missed any, please point them out, eh?

Enough talking, here is chapter. Hope you lot enjoy it.

=][=

It began with an innocently-muttered. “Ikari can’t clean today, he’s hurt.”

I stopped at the door. “Wait, was I supposed to stay and clean the whole time?” I asked the class representative girl, who looked at me like a deer caught in the headlights.

“Eh?” Asked…shit, why am I so bad with names? Himari? Kokari? Nodami? She looked up from her list of people that were apparently supposed to stay and clean the classroom. “B-But Ikari—” She gulped and paled and took a step back for some reason. “I-I mean, Sh-Shinji, that is...yes?”

…

“Oi, Popsicle, mop.” I said, holding my hand out at the thin kid with glasses that I recall nearly crushing once with the Eva.

“Erm...Popsi—? My name is Aida Kensuke.” Popsicle said, pointedly not handing me the mop!

There was only one thing to do.

I leaned down to be at the same height as him, this, for some reason, seemed to intimidate him. I held my bandaged hand out to him and firmly stated. “Mop.”

Trembling, he held the cleaning tool out.

“Do not hand him that mop!” Class rep girl ordered, pointing at four-eyes.

He looked from her, to me, back to her, back to me, then did the smart thing and handed the mop over.

“Aida!”

“Sorry Class Rep, you can yell at me, but Ikaaaaaa—Shinji can punch me hard enough to vaporize me.”

I ignored them and made my way to the bucket. Only for the class rep to step resolutely into my path, holding her arms up in an ‘X.’ “Shinji, you are not allowed to clean!”

Bold for someone who had at most one third of my mass and barely reached my clavicle. “Oh yeah? And why would that be?”

She looked at me like I was crazy. “You’re hurt!”

I looked down at myself. My arms were bandaged from the palm to the shoulders, my chest was bandaged too, I had braces on my legs due to damaged tendons, and at some point during the last dust-up, I broke my nose and something may or may not have happened to my cheek bones.

I was essentially a mummy; I had to go to NERV every day to get the wounds cleaned and the bandages redone. With all the stitching that had to be done to sow me back together I’d had to ensure that my injuries scarred, otherwise it would be suspicious.

I looked back at the tiny girl in front of me. “This is cosplay.”

She blinked. “Cosplay?”

“Yes.”

“Shinji…your left arm has a bloodstain.”

I looked down at the offending piece of evidence. “Attention to detail.”

“It wasn’t there this morning.”

“I brought a bottle of fake blood.”

“It’s getting bigger.”

“It’s a blood pack.”

“I thought you said it was from a bottle.”

“I brought both.”

She had been getting a bigger scowl the longer the conversation went on. “Ik—Shinji, everyone knows you got hurt fighting the last monster.”

“I can neither confirm nor deny that.”

“Soryu talked about it when we had lunch two days ago.”

“She was lying.”

“Ayanami confirmed it.”

So that’s where Rei went for lunch two days ago! So nice that she made a friend!

And shares space with Asuka.

“Point being, I’m okay enough to clean.” I said, not acknowledging the bossy girl’s last statement.

She gave me a narrow-eyed glare. “Don’t make me call Ayanami.”

I snorted. “You don’t have her number.”

She drew a phone like I draw a pistol, flipped it open, navigated a menu and clicked a button.

“You’re bluffing.” I growled.

“Hey Ayanami, sorry to interrupt.” She said sweetly into the phone. “No, it’s not an emergency, it has to do with Shinji.”

I felt a cold pinprick on the back of my neck.

“Well, for some reason he’s insisting on staying and helping, instead of skipping cleaning like usual.”

She blinked. “Well, now that you mention it, no, I don’t think I ever told him it was his turn to clean the classroom after class.”

That’s my girl!

Class Rep Girl made humming and agreeing noises. “I see…I still don’t think he should clean; he’s hurt…yes…yeah his left arm is bleeding…okay.” She held the phone out. “Ayanami wants to talk to you.”

I looked at the phone as if it were a snake brandishing its venomous fangs but took it and held it to my ear. She was probably lying anyways. “Y’ello?”

[Shinji.] Rei said reproachfully, sounding like she was pouting.

Bossy girl wasn’t lying! All hands to damage control!

“…‘Sup?”

Masterful.

[Shinji you’re hurt.] Rei said, sounding slightly disappointed, which, coming from her, cut deep.

“I’m well enough to clean!” I grumbled. “I’m not an invalid!”

“Using a mop isn’t strenuous! It’s light work at worst!”

[Shinji.] Rei said reproachfully.

“Urk! I can…wipe the windows?”

[Shinji.] Rei said, and I could perfectly visualize her pout.

“…I can at the very least take out the trash?”

“That’s because nobody ever tells me anything! How was I supposed to know!?” I firmly squashed the memories of my Template growing up in the Japanese school system. They were no help at all right now.

[Shinji.] Rei’s stern voice causing my spine to stiffen. [Leave the cleaning to them and come to NERV, we need to change out your bandages and there’s synchronization testing we need to do.]

Well…She didn’t say when I had to go so I could probably—

…

Fuck.

“Alright fine.” I growled.

So that’s her name.

“Your phone.” I said testily to Hokari.

She took it from my outstretched hand and put it to her ear. “Everything good? Okay. Yes, I will.”

She hung up and looked at me expectantly.

With a final huff, I walked out, pushing the mop back on four-eyes as I went. When I left the room, I realized Hokari was following me. I looked at her over my shoulder and raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

“Ayanami told me to make sure you left the school and call her when you did.” She answered.

Clever girl.

Slumping in defeat, I retreated with my tail between my legs.

But next time? Next time I would not be stopped!

As I got to the train station, took a seat, and did my best to ignore the plain clothes NERV guy following me, I could not help but wonder…would Angel Juice exacerbate my injuries? LCL was explicitly Angel Blood, and someone else’s blood is something you’re supposed to avoid in your injuries.

“God is Great!”

I was on my feet and running at the threat before conscious thought caught up to my situation. My Sol Pattern Bayonet teleported onto my grip from my pocket space. The blade was thirty centimeters of ceramite with a monomolecular edge and a mean point. I cut off the target’s right arm halfway down the elbow, a single arterial spurt splashed on me as I drove the knife into his guts to the hilt and pulled it up, parting his thoracic cage as if it were water as I bifurcated his heart, my last act was to decapitate him and kick the limb with the detonator aside, even if I had cut the wire.

As the hand fell, still clutching the detonator trailing a cut wire. I saw that the detonating stud had already been depressed before I cut the arm off.

I was too late.

I made it two steps back before something in the bastard’s clothes popped and hissed. I faintly heard repeats of the same cry from the train cars fore and aft of the one I was riding in.

I stood frozen in indecision as the screaming started, people finally reacting to the sudden, murderous violence.

Should I toss the body out? The gas could be heavier than air, I would expose far more people to it than those in the train car I was in. I knew nothing about the concentration it needed to be lethal or even crippling.

I could put the body away in my pocket space, but that would absolutely blow my cover. Gendo, NERV, SEELE, they would all crack down on my movements, make me into an attack dog with a much tighter leash, crippling my attempts to save the world from their lunacy.

The logical move would be to sacrifice the passengers. The lives of a few hundred people are nothing when compared to the three billion and change currently in the world.

But that didn’t mean that the people next to me didn’t have the right to life.

My HUD warned me of…the paralytic agent that had already built up in my system, further exposure would reach lethal levels. Body Defense would keep me alive, but it would be highly unpleasant. I speed-read through the analysis spat out by my implants. If my imaginary napkin math wasn’t too far wrong, the gas would only be lethal in a high enough concentration.

I grabbed the body intending to throw it out of the window, but stumbled and fell to my knees, my arms and legs not doing what I wanted them to. With a supreme effort of will, I pushed myself to my feet, only to flop forward like a fish out of water, my body refusing any command I gave it as I struggled to breathe.

Someone knelt next to me, lumbered my body into the recovery position, and fit something over my face, a gas mask.

The plain clothes NERV guy!

I turned my eyes to look at him, the only part of my body I could reliably move, my sight landing on some cat hair.

…Cat-man? The driver was my security detail? And why wasn’t he wearing a mask?

His eyes met mine, and he smiled serenely down at me. “Make it count, and give them hell, Shinji.”

No…no cat-man, don’t.

I was forced to watch until cat-man couldn’t hold his breath anymore. He, like everyone else in the train car, quickly fell into a slumber from which he would never awaken.

I must not allow this to register on an emotional level.

=][=

Misato sighed and went over the latest stack of paperwork on her desk.

It felt like she’d only just managed to clear out all the repairs, reimbursements, etc, from the Evas stopping the last Angel. And now this.

This was a report on the activities of the ‘Seekers of Revelation.’

The so immensely squeaky-clean organization that the only things that thorough investigation had dredged up were parking violations done by its individual members.

What kind of group of sociopaths didn’t even get a speeding ticket? Especially in this day and age, didn’t they know the world was ending and they needed to live a little?

Nobody was this clean who wasn’t hiding something. But no matter how deep her investigators had dug, there was only a suspicious lack of anything suspicious.

No assault charges, no counts of drunk and disorderly, not a whiff of a single priest molesting a child.

As far as the best of NERV could see, the Seekers of Revelation were the most altruistic offshoot of Christianity in Japan. Even their wealthy backers having no significant skeletons in their closets.

All evidence pointed to NERV’s malefactors having joined the sect as a way to deflect blame. But dammit, her woman’s intuition said they were suspicious!

Kaede burst into her office. “Ma’am, there’s been an attack! We can’t get in contact with Shinji’s guard!”

Misato didn’t bother asking for specifics, she sprinted out the door and made her way to the Control Room, Kaede at her heels. “Sitrep!”

“There’s been a terrorist attack on the train lines!” One of the analysts said, Misato thought her name was Hana. “Shinji’s guard activated the automatic distress signal and has not answered any hails! We have an agent en-route, ETA three minutes!”

“What’s the status on the Pilot!?”

“Unknown!”

After an interminable wait, one of the analysts on a different station, Naomi, shouted out. “We have an agent on-site!”

“Do they have a camera!?” Misato demanded.

“Yes!”

“Put it on my screen!”

The screen flickered and changed to show a scene straight out of a nightmare. Dozens of people slumped over, some clearly having tried to break the windows or open the doors. The macabre scene continued until it came upon a sight that nearly made Maya, sitting next to Misato, puke.

A body had been brutalized.

It was missing one arm, its intestines had spilled all over the floor, its head was some distance away, and the blood…

The image on the screen shifted to show a trail of bloody footprints leading out of the train car and into the station. By their size alone, they had to be Shinji’s.

Shinji was alive.

“Find and secure the Pilot, be careful, he might be in shock!” Misato ordered.

Misato stood back and let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.

His unusual resistance to opioids must have saved him.

She waited, tense, listening to reports as they came in, preliminary casualty reports, news of the attack began to spread past the authorities’ ability to contain them.

Finally the report Misato was waiting for came in.

Misato saw and heard a great number of the staff gasp with dread.

She snapped her fingers in front of Maya’s nose, who started and refocused. “Use the Magi, have them analyze security camera footage from all of Tokyo-3, their sole purpose is to find Shinji. You have my authority to issue Directive D17 if you feel it necessary.”

“Yes ma’am!” Maya said and began typing quickly at her station.

She turned to Hyuga. “Coordinate with law enforcement. This attack at one of NERV’s most important VIPs cannot and will not go unavenged.”

Hyuga nodded and turned back to his station.

“Ma’am! The Magi have a result!” Maya said excitedly.

“Already? Bring it up on screen.” Misato said with a nod.

The screen flickered, and Misato blinked in surprise when she saw the unmistakable form of Shinji. He was wearing a NERV standard-issue gasmask and was holding a gore-encrusted combat knife in his right hand. His entire right side was sodden with blood.

On the screen, he looked left and right, the crowd parting around him for obvious reasons, he then set off walking down the street.

Okay. Good news. The Third Children wasn’t kidnapped by a terrorist organization.

But what the hell was he doing?

“Bring up the next camera.” She ordered.

“Erm…I cannot, ma’am.” Maya said.

Misato blinked. “Explain.”

“He um…He vanished. He walked out of frame of the first camera, but did not walk into view of the one down the street.” Maya explained.

“That’s not possible.” Misato growled.

“We have another hit…and another. One moment, I will splice these together.” Maya typed away. “Aoba, prepare a map of Tokyo-3, one that has the cameras listed as points.”

“On it!”

Misato waited several minutes before the two of them were finished. The main screen lit up with a map of Tokyo-3, seeded with points that glowed green.

Maya pointed. “These are all of the cameras in Tokyo-3.” A small number, maybe a tenth of them, turned red. “These are the cameras that are not functioning or whose feeds are suspect.” Several lights, separated by long stretches of green and the occasional red, turned blue. “These are the cameras that have spotted Shinji.”

“Show me.” Misato ordered.

A sub-screen showed Shinji. He’d somehow found clean clothes that fit him, he’d lost the knife but was still wearing the gas mask. He looked left and right, then walked out of frame, the screen closed, replaced by another, where the pattern continued.

He would cross a street, look around, disappear, and show up at a much later intersection without having been spotted by the cameras in-between. This continued to happen even after they got a real-time view of the Pilot.

“How is he moving so quickly?” Misato asked. He’d not crossed Tokyo-3 at anything resembling a supernatural speed. Anyone moving at a fast trot could match his progress.

But to do it while remaining covert and only being occasionally spotted by cameras?

They saw him on the screen a few more times. But then, Shinji disappeared entirely. No matter how long the Magi searched, Shinji did not reappear.

It was as Misato was starting to lose hope, Maya called out. “Ma’am, the Magi have intercepted a call they claim has a seventy-five percent chance to be Shinji!”

“Let’s hear it.”

The sound of a phone call being connected sounded over the speakers, before someone answered. [Yes, what is the emergency?]

Misato blinked, realizing he must have called 110. “Show me where on the map this call was made.”

“Ma’am!”

Misato was surprised when the voice that answered the operator’s query was distorted. Human, but with an electronic tinge. [You will find the ones responsible for the massacre at the trains in the following address.]

[Sir? How do you know this?] The operator asked.

[Unimportant.] The modulated voice answered. [Do something about them. Or I will kill them all. You have four hours.]

The call ended. On the map, one of the lights flickered, showing the location.

A red light. But it was kilometers away from the address the caller gave, and very early on the road Shinji had taken across the city.

Misato turned to Maya. “Why do the Magi think that was Shinji?”

“Balthasar and Casper both report that the voice’s cadence matched Shinji’s to approximately sixty percent. Melchior is undecided.” Maya answered.

Misato considered, before taking the gamble. “Send a unit to the address, as well as the Investigation Taskforce. We cannot afford to ignore this tip.”

“Ma’am, if we barge in like that, our relationship with the Tokyo-3 police will be even more strained.” Hyuga said.

“I don’t care, do it.”

“Ma’am.”

Misato waited for news, it wasn’t long before the teams they sent, with the police as backup, made contact.

Less than a minute after making contact, they were in a furious firefight. The situation escalated to the point that the Special Assault Team had to be called in.

In a skirmish that lasted hours, dozens of men and women were killed, as well as three officers, and more than a dozen wounded. They fought to the last.

The investigation team gave a preliminary report that they believed they’d found the true face of the Seekers of Revelation.

A cold comfort, with Shinji still missing.

It was a few hours after that that the Control Room received an alert.

Someone had used Shinji’s ID card to access NERV.

Soon after that, a security team informed Misato that they had Shinji in custody.

Misato breathed a sigh of relief and wondered how to handle the situation. She had a feeling it was only getting started.

=][=

Ikari Gendo sat at his desk, in his office, pondering.

The attack on the train…it was a distraction and a waste of resources. Were his prodigal child not directly involved; he would have been happy to let things play out unmolested. NERV had better things to do than engage in petty squabbles.

But Shinji’s latest stunt merited…concern.

Gendo studied his son on the screen that sat on his desk. Shinji had, miraculously, been quiet since he’d been escorted to the brig. He was considered a flight risk while NERV’s investigation concluded.

Every day, Gendo saw less of Yui in the boy, and more of his own father.

Headstrong, brash, violent, rude. Utterly wasting the potential Yui bestowed upon him.

It moved something in his chest, a dull, sucking pain. Similar to the yawning void left behind by Yui. He crushed it, his path was set, he would keep moving forward.

But this? Evading notice for hours. Finding a covert organization that NERV, with several times his resources, had failed to find.

One did not just ‘wing it.’ That required training, highly specialized training that Gendo had not ordered or provided.

But who could have provided it?

The two he’d left Shinji with were worthless. They’d all but left him to his own devices since he was three. They had no pictures, no video, and the bare minimum of records.

Someone, at some point, had provided Shinji with specialized infiltration and urban survival training, and his useless guardians had missed it. It was the only possible explanation.

But who could have done it? SEELE? No, they’d been largely unaware of Shinji until Gendo had him brought in.

No…there was a third faction with their hand in this. But why would they play their hand so obviously? The’d had perfect stealth up until now…unless.

Gendo once again regarded his son.

His headstrong, brash, violent, rude, thoughtless…impulsive son.

This was not a third player announcing themselves as they came onto the board. This was his son going against orders to avenge the lives of the useless passengers.

Gendo hummed in thought.

How to manipulate this new faction into serving his goals? Especially when, other than the prodigal son’s failure, they were ghosts?

This would require careful consideration. And when the time came, decisive action.

Gendo put that matter out of his mind and sent a coded message to NERV’s second branch in the US.