Epic of Evangelion

The Dessert of the Real

Three lone figures walked through the crimson red desert, a land that possibly used to be lush with vegetation and filled with human civilization, but now little more then a wasteland brought to ruin by a decade-and-a-half of world war. The only thing that really stood were derelict old telephone poles with downed wires that stood lopsided out of the ground. The sky was blue as clouds sparsely appeared. The temperature was temperature, odd for what the surrounding environment was.

Aska Shikinami was pulling an unresponsive Shinji Ikari along by the hand. Ever since he was forcibly removed from his ejected cockpit of the synthetic fighter-mech known as Unit-13, Aska was forced pull him by the hand, and other times carry him by piggyback. It this kind of situation that she saw as humiliating and beneath her. In her mind; she was left watching over some mindless drone that was a creepy exact clone of Shinji's disappeared younger sister, and the boy himself accused of sending the entire world in to apocalyptic war. But this was the catch, in her mind, the boy was acting like a child, sometimes quietly sniffling or sobbing at losing his copilot in the ensuing battle Kaworu Nagisa, and bringing about what he beloved was the near-end of the world. His copilot was the only person Shinji truly saw as a friend when he was recovered from stasis.

Eventually all three of them arrived at a shoreline where they would be picked up by the IAV Miracle, the submarine and ground affect vehicle commanded by Colonel Misato Katsuragi. The ocean they stood at was as red as the sand, stretching out for miles until a faint blue line could be seen, the real blue ocean, unadulterated. The sun was beginning to set at this point as the horizon became a bright peach orange, flanking the setting sun, as it faded in to a light blue, then a dark blue, with the faint white-dotted stars slowly becoming visible. The sight itself was beautiful and peaceful, but that was not what was going on in Shinji Ikari's mind.

He sat back against a rock, unmoving, the life drained from his now dull blue irises. He was retreating in to himself, reliving every gore-filled, emotionally painful, mentally taxing memory over the past 20 years of his life in a trance, traumatized from the loss of his friend and the ensuing result. He relived the moments of his life of his father, Gendo's coldness towards himself, his mother Yui, and sister Rei. He relived the on edege, and sometimes horror filled moments where his father and confederate Keel Lorenz would use his friends as expendable test subjects for new technologies without their consent or say. Some of those experiments led to the deaths or severe injuries of some of his closest friends. He relived the moments where he became a commander, one who led ruthless campaigns against NERV. He saw himself in third person shooting those who surrendered or begged for their lives, he saw the dropping of weapons of mass destruction on cities of NERV's ownership, innocent civilians killed in a rising dome of fire. He continued to relive every atrocity he committed in the 10 years of the war he fought against NERV. He relived the coldness he faced from Misato and Aska after meeting them for the first time in 15 years. They saw him as some kind of monster with unnatural powers. Something to be caged like a wild animal that can't be domesticated. Suddenly his trance was broken was broken when a strong grip and a familiar berating voice started to fill his head.

Shikinami was grabbing Shinji by the skull, forcing his eyes towards her one good one.

"Listen to me you brat," the Captain berated, "all you've done ever since you were rescued was act like a baby. You do nothing but feel sorry for yourself and expect that I'm gonna pamper you and make you feel better. I don't care how or what you're feeling. My job is to get us back alive weather you like it or not so we can clean up the mess you started. You understand!?"

As she finished berating him, the Captain could see the fear and intimidation is his eyes as tears begun to slowly roll down. All she saw now was the face of a frightened boy, nothing else.