[Eva/Haruhi] The Depression of Ikari Shinji

[Akuma-sama]

Evangelion/Haruhi? Sure. Just not how you’d expect it.

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Asuka Langley Sorhyu was pissed.

No, she reflected as she stared in the immobile surface of the tea (yech!) cooling before her eyes, she wasn’t just pissed. She was well past pissed and on her way to true anger. Everything about Japan, or so it had seemed for the entire time she’d been here (a full week already!), existed for the sole purpose of annoying her.
Katsuragi Misato’s apartment was tiny; back home in Germany, she’d had a real house, a full five room building in which she’d lived practically alone, except for the annoyingly frequent times that annoying lady who dated her dad came over, or when Kaji-san found enough time to give her a visit. Her room had been large enough that containing her bed and her every worldly possession had not made it any difficult to cross it.
Here, she lived in a tiny four room apartment, with 2 other people and a pet; her room was barely big enough for that mattress those uneducated Japanese seemed to believe replaced a proper sleeping surface, and for barely half of what she’d brought over. She’d thought her living arrangements would befit an important person such as her, but no! Apparently not! Apparently, they decided that she, genius and college graduate at fourteen, she, one of the only three people in the world capable of piloting the Evangelion and saving the world, was worth nothing more than this hole in the wall!

It had to be because of the other pilots, she’d already decided. Wallflowers didn’t begin to describe them. It seemed neither of them understood just how important they were, just how much they (and therefore she) deserved. But then, this didn’t surprise her. The Third Child, Ikari Shinji, the supposed prodigy who went out, fought and defeated an angel on his first time in an Eva, was barely worth the socks he walked in. When he breathed in, the molecules of air probably asked permission to flow into his bloodstream, and when he breathed out, it was with an apology.
As for the other, she was…

She was…

…she was the main source of Asuka’s current ire.

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Middle school sucked.

It especially sucked the second time around.

It sucked even more when your teacher seemed to have nothing to talk about than the Second Impact, the troubles around it and how grateful modern youth should be for the Herculean efforts of their parents to put everything back on track.

And it reached the epitome of sucking when she couldn’t even log on the net for something, anything to distract her mind, because one of the hormonal idiots in the class, smitten by her beauty, would inevitably try to send her an IM in a transparent attempt to ask her out. And none of them had had the balls to actually ask so far! What kind of country was this, and what kind of ball-less men did it make? It was insulting!

It was too bad there seemed to be no one in this class she could chat to (except Hikari Horaki, but the class president simply couldn’t be caught chatting in class). The other girls were all vapid faceless drones, intimidated and brought to shameful silence by her greatness. The only other candidate was the First Child, Ayanami Rei, but trying to talk to her, it seemed, was less productive than trying to strike up a conversation with drying paint.

“…and on October 19th, when the dam finally broke, there was no one left in the village, thanks to a warning transmitted through the defended telephone lines…”

Well, whoop-dee-doo for them. Screw it, she couldn’t continue this. With a sigh of resignation, she turned on her computer and logged on. She counted the seconds it took for someone to talk to her…
1.
2.
3.
4—blip. Message.
She blinked. That was fast, even for them. Especially for them. She was just that irresistible, apparently.
She ignored the “Call” icon with a disdainful sniff.
Blip. The icon started blinking. Another message had appeared in it.
Blip. And another.
She tried to continue ignoring it, but the little flash ended up burning through her patience. She clicked on it.

: After school, 17:30
: Bench near the western stairs
: I’ll be waiting

She blinked, then re-read the message. Then she blinked again. She furtively looked around the class, to see who had been the one to so brav—so callously summon Her like this. There was no one.
She sniffed in disdain and wiped the message away. As if! That perverted boy probably wouldn’t show up. Why, she was certain! She knew it! No one in this country had any balls to speak of, so why should this one be any different? A real man would have caught her after class, maybe tried to talk her into paying her a drink or something, not an unromantic message like that.
Na. Whoever had written this was ballsier than the rest of the country, but still not enough for her.

So she ignored it, and at 17:30 that day, she was watching television with Pen-pen lying on her lap like a big pillow.

But the next day…
Blip. Blip, Blip.
: After school, 17:30
: Bench near the western stairs
: I’ll be waiting

The same message. Hmph! No originality, either.
But if this was going to become a habit, then she’d go. She’d go and tell him exactly why he shouldn’t be bothering Asuka Langley with his half-balls!

So, that day at 17:25, she was walking over to the bench near the western stairs with a confident, angry stride, mentally reciting everything she’d tell to that perverted, no-good boy.

Then she reached the bench and the person sitting on it, and her mind derailed.
The person there wasn’t a boy, to begin with.

“…Ayanami?”

Those strange red eyes met hers.

“Did you send me that message?”

She was actually surprised when the other girl gave her a short nod.
Her expression didn’t change. It never did, like a doll’s. It annoyed her.
Good. Annoyance led to anger. Anger, she could use to focus herself. As usual.

“What the did you call me out for? I could be eating right now.” Left unsaid was that it was Katsuragi’s turn to cook. She didn’t really feel like testing to see if her cooking was always that bad.

Slowly, mechanically, the other girl stood up, picking up a grocery bag Asuka only noticed now. She didn’t bother to dust her skirt.

“Follow me,” she said, quietly. It could have been a whisper of the wind.
Against her better judgment, Asuka did.
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“…Uh… where are we going?”

For a few seconds, Ayanami didn’t answer, and just when Asuka was starting to think the other girl was ignoring her, she replied, “my residence.”

Asuka stopped. “…er… just so you know, I… er…I don’t like… I mean…” For the first time ever, Asuka saw Ayanami’s expression change. The raised eyebrow spoke so loudly Asuka found herself spluttering in embarrassment. “I—I mean, how much further is it? I’m starting to get hungry here.”

“…not much further.”

Would it kill her to use more words than what absolutely necessary?

Damnit. That girl pissed her off to no end, and she did it without even doing anything! That pissed her off!
…again!

She was less than pleased when Ayanami finally took her inside a building that could only be declared a slump. If her own housing arrangements were unfitting for a pilot, then Ayanami’s were unfitting for a dog, never mind a girl her age! Her apartment was no better: a bed with bloodstains, a small chest of drawers against the dirty walls, a small low-set table on the grimy floor, and a strange moldy smell in the air. Ayanami put the grocery bag on the table, then kneeled at it and, with just a sight, invited Asuka to join her. The redhead went to sit, but after glancing at the floor, held herself.

“Is… it ok if I use the bed instead?”

The bluette blinked. Then blinked again.

“Go ahead.”

So she sat. Ayanami opened the bag and pulled out a pair of cup ramen packages which she then methodically prepared. Not one word was exchanged. When it was ready, the pale girl put it in her hands.

“Wait for it cool. Three minutes.”

“…”

And as she waited, her patience evaporated slowly. Finally, she’d had enough and put the cup on the table.

“Why the hell did you bring me here? If you wanted to talk, then talk already!”

The other girl looked at her for another moment, then nodded. “…understood.”

And she spoke.

“I am not an ordinary human,” she declared. “I am a Man-Phantom-Contact-Humanoid-Interface, created for the purpose of creating a contact with—”

“You’re a what now?” Great, she was delusional on top of being weird? Wasn’t being delusional already being weird? Argh!

Ayanami blinked, then repeated, “a Man-Phantom-Contact-Humanoid-Interface. In simpler terms, I could be described as an extraterrestrial, at least in part.”

“…Extra… terrestrial. As in, little green men from mars.” What was she, stupid?

“That is inaccurate. The Spectral Hegemonic Entity is a being from outside this world. It does not possess a physical form, nor is it contained in a specific location. All that is dead returns to it, and all that lives comes from it. It simply is.”
Great. So the First Child was a delusional Weirdo who wanted her to join her freaky religion.

“Fourteen years ago, an event came to the attention of the Spectral Hegemonic Entity…”

“Second impact, right?” all neo-religions used it as one of their basic events, after all—

“Incorrect,” Ayanami said, “though not completely unconnected. The event in question precedes Second Impact by nearly eleven months. Three minutes have passed.”

“Uh?”

She had her answer when the other girl ripped open her cup ramen and started eating. Asuka resisted the urge to throw her own cup in the red-eyed nutcase’s face.

“……so?” she asked once Ayanami was done chewing. The faster Ayanami was done, the faster she could get the hell out of here, right? Not that she couldn’t right now…

But somehow, the thought of just running away from Ayanami right now scared the crap out of her.

“…The Hegemonic Entity detected that a set of souls disconnected from itself had made their apparition. This was impossible. This new set of souls further complicated things when one of them caused a large disturbance in the spectral plane and caused a sizable portion of the living beings on this world to return to it.”

“Uh huh,” Asuka said, pretending to understand.

“This event is what the humans call Second Impact. But it is unimportant. The disturbance and the disconnected souls were what really intrigued and bothered the Hegemonic Entity. Souls cannot exist without a connection to each other and a place to return to. They require a point of origin. To find that point of origin, it was decided that a way to explore the world over the spectral plane was required. That is me.”

“Uh huh,” please stop talking, Asuka was silently begging.

“It did not take me long to discover the outer beings’ point of origin, in the form of Shinji Ikari. That his date of procreation matches precisely with the apparition of the outer beings only confirms—”

“Waitwaitwait, back up. Ikari? As in, Third Child? Spineless? That Ikari?”

Ayanami nodded in confirmation. “He is the point of origin, and the point of return of the Outer Beings.”

“And those Outer Beings…” This was ridiculous. Why was she taking this seriously? It was all nothing but a big joke. It couldn’t be anything else than a big joke.

“Human beings call them ‘messengers’, or ‘Angels’.”

…what the FUCK?

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The Depression of Ikari Shinji. I only wanted to write a short idea ficlet, but my muses grabbed it with both hands, and just wouldn’t let go.
Yes, this is the Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi, Evangelion version… which of course makes it completely different. Rei’s story is mostly to make the Data Entity match with Eva. A Soul Entity instead. Whee!
And, of course, Rei can’t be the only one…

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“I take it Ayanami talked to you?”

“…don’t tell me you’re part of her creepy Spineless-loving religion too?”

An amused smile came over the stooge’s face. “That’s an interesting way of seeing it… but no, I am not part of miss Ayanami’s… faction. The truth is, I am not a human of this era.” He paused a moment, just long enough to raise his big dorky glasses back on his nose, and continued, “I come from the future.”

This truly couldn’t get any worse.

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And…

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“So, Hikari, what did you want to show me?”

“Do you trust me?”

“What’s this out of the blue? Sure, I guess…”

“Then… close your eyes, and don’t open them.”

“Ah… o…ok…?”

She nearly had a heart attack when her friend’s hand closed around hers. She was tugged forward into taking two, three steps, then the hand vanished.

“You can open your eyes, now.”

And what she saw was… ruins.

“This is a world created by Shinji Ikari.”

Et tu, Hikari?!

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Alternatively, this could be called the “Make Asuka Insane Project”.
Shinji is different from Haruhi in many ways, giving them the same power therefore causes a different effect. As Shinji grows to loathe the world around him, the Angels attack the real world instead of his inner world; essentially, he’s a depressed Haruhi. His closed space is a complete wreck, constantly attacked by Angels, which pop out in the real world every now and then.
If he’s allowed to be happy, though, the angels stop appearing…
Enter Asuka, tsundere extraordinaire, with her mostly useless companions, trying to keep the most angst-prone boy in the animeverse happy for the sake of the world.
:yay:

Well, that’s it. If someone wants to pick up the concept, go ahead, that’s why I put it here.

[Sunshine Temple]

Very enjoyable idea.

Rei fits that role well.

Asuka playing the "straight man"/Kon role is very fun too.

The key difference here I see is the lack of "glee" that Shinji has.

However, the same idea holds. Keep Shinji "happy" because otherwise the universe will get even worse.

The effect of that power and the rest of the EVA universe... oh dear.

I do hope someone takes up on this.

[Comartemis]

Holy crud.

I don't know the first thing about Haruhi, but I'm already loving this premise. COMA DEMANDS MOAR!

[CJN]

Oh. Very, very good idea. But I doubt that it's possible for them to complete the herculean task of making Shinji happy.

[bissek]

Sure you can. All you need is enough Prozac to kill three normal people.

[Frog]

Who would play Rei's back-up, if any? Kaoru? He'd be pretty interesting, and fitting, for the role if one where to completely eschew the Eva time-line for comedic purposes and Haruhi tie-ins.

On the subject of Rei, what would the similarities between a Data-Entity-Human-Interface Program and Man-Phantom-Contact-Humanoid-Interface be? As in, would Rei be akin to Yuki when it comes to environmental manipulation or would she be limited to, I assume, phantom (soul?) manipulation? If such is the case, what would it entail? AT fields and the sudden dissolution of people into orange goo?

I can just imagine Asuka's ever suffering expression. "Wondergirl, listen, when I need several people dissolved into primordial soup I'll let you know, ok?"

Also, how to tie in the SOS-dan? In the Haruhi-verse it was created due to Haruhi's boundless energy and enthusiasm. In this version, it seems pretty apparent that Shinji would be too despondent to take any sort of initiative in founding a school club. Maybe have it as some sort of tool used by Asuka in her desperate attempt to have Shinji do something other than wallow in self pity?

Brainstorming aside, this is a brilliant idea. Lots of comedic potential. Seriously hope someone takes you up on writing it.

[Ran]

I agree, this idea holds a heck of a lot of merit.

With regards to the messing about with the timeline for Kaoru, keep in mind that at least in the Angelic Days manga series, Kaoru has this tendency to appear and always have been there, and disappear and vanish from memory and record, which fits extremely well with the whole "Moving to Canada" thing.