Chapter Text
You know, it's times like these that I need to reevaluate what life choices I made to get me here.
And by here, I mean inside of a 40-meter tall biomechanical superweapon that's the world's only real defense against abominations that don't belong in this world, while one of said abominations has it by the head and the pilot is screaming.
It's pretty clear that I need to reflect on my issues, right? I mean, someone who doesn't have any issues wouldn't be here. That kid, the one who's screaming in the control chair? He definitely has some issues. Buuut, something tells me his issues are pretty different from mine. Why, you might ask?
Well, first of all, I'm a rat.
鼠
Honestly, I should've known I'd get into trouble as soon as I was born here.
As I grew up, I began to realize that "NERV" -that's what the humans running about everywhere call it- was not a normal place. Especially not for rats to build a nest in. My dad always complained about all the strange things going on, things he never had to deal with "back upside" when he was a young rat in an old apartment building.
"Look at that," he'd always complain, pointing to some new cyrogenics tube or electrified railing we'd have to avoid. "You never had to deal with that back upside."
That's my dad, complaining about everything. You'd think from all the things he had to say about it, he'd hate the place, but I know that if he actually did, he would've taken the colony somewhere else a long time ago. Fact is, aside from a few things we have to avoid, NERV is great for us. It's always the perfect temperature, there's always food to steal -and despite what Dad says, it is stealing- and we're safe.
Yeah, for a place built by humans, there's not an awful lot of them. And there are so many big pipes and vents and access tubes, places that they never go into, that we pretty much have a full run of the entire complex. We knew NERV even better than they did, at least that's what it felt like.
So yeah, that's home for me. I know that's a strange place to grow up in, but that's the thing about growing up in strange places- they don't feel strange. To me, it was just home. It was my entire world, and what a world it was.
Sometimes, it'd be easy to forget that we didn't own the place.
"Never go near the humans," Dad would always warn us, and me especially. He must've smelled it in me. "They're dangerous creatures."
I knew that Dad was telling the truth, yet I still couldn't help but be fascinated by them. I always watched them from the vents and cracks in the ceiling as they finished yet another construction project, or worked machines that did things I couldn't even guess at. Humans didn't just survive; they lived. They made things. I mean, they made the very place I was living in!
All of this place, this massive labyrinth of metal and glass, simply didn't exist before they came along. They looked at dirt and rock and thought, "I can make something from this". And then they did.
When it's put like that, why wouldn't I want to know about the people that made my world?
But it wasn't until an accident that I saw the human I wanted to learn about the most. The one who created the most.
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Now, you think it'd be my burning curiosity for the human world that would've driven me to the office, but truth be told? It... was my stomach.
I've always had a very sensitive sense of taste and smell. My brother Emile thought it was a gift. My dad, ever the rat, thought it was something I needed to overcome, except for poison-testing. Rats can't be picky eaters, he'd always say.
In most places that'd probably be the case, but as I've already established, NERV is not a normal place. There was so much good food lying around, not the trash that Dad had us collect, and there would always be forgotten or unwanted scraps, so who would notice if I took a few crumbs?
The best place to get it was this one office in particular. It belonged to a rather important-looking human with blonde hair. Well, she definitely wanted to be blonde, but I could smell the hair dye before I even got into the office, mixed with the stench of tobacco. She was seemingly in that office every hour of every day, but half of the time she was sleeping, face planted on the desk. Honestly, she was a bit of a mess, and I know that's rich coming from a rat.
But a mess had uses. Especially the half-eaten snacks she left lying around. Some days, it'd be nothing but sugary pastries, and then on others when she wanted to try and maintain her figure, it'd be fresh fruit and seaweed. Both were great scores for me. I could grab as many grapes and chocolate cookie sticks as I wanted, and she'd sleep right through it.
Hey, at least I always washed my hands with the disinfectant bottle she had on her desk before I got all handsy with her food.
One night, however, as I crept out of the slightly loose grate in the air conditioning above, something was different. Dr. Akagi -at least that's what the name on the door was- normally turned off the big machine on her desk before slumping down for a nap, but this time, she'd forgotten to do that. On the glass screen, I saw a human woman's face, her brilliance lighting the dim room.
I was still really young then, and I didn't know anything about these machines. What they did, how they did it. I honestly thought there was a small human in there, frozen. I kept on gawking at her, as I cautiously began to stuff my face with a Kit-Kat bar I found.
Then Dr. Akagi stirred in her sleep, and I froze. She didn't wake, but she accidentally pressed something on her keyboard, and the frozen woman came to life. I hid behind the wrapper, expecting her to scream "rat!", but it didn't come. Instead, she spoke in a soft, but utterly enrapturing, voice.
"-as Second Impact has proven beyond a doubt, it is more easy to destroy, than it is to create. A city that took a thousand years to grow may be destroyed in a second. This truth has broken many, for through the pain they cannot see the next truth. That it is more powerful to create, than it is to destroy."
I poked my head above the wrapper to look at the screen. She wasn't looking at me, but in that moment, I thought she was speaking directly to me.
"The Evangelion project is the ultimate proof of that. Its construction is far more difficult than the destruction that prompted it. We have had to build things we didn't think possible, simply to realize a greater impossibility. And in that, those accomplishments, and Eva itself, will be the rebuilding of the world. We all have that power in us, to create and build. It's in me, and it's in you."
I would later learn that this was just a little video she made for new hires to the Evangelion program, but for little Remy, it was like the voice of God telling me what to do. I looked at the little name on the bottom of the screen.
Yui Ikari.
That seemed familiar to me, but I couldn't figure out why. Not until my eye caught one of the books in Dr. Akagi's personal library. On the Macro-Structure of the Super-Solenoid Engine, by Dr. Yui Ikari.
There it was. The key to the passion that would be my future. I didn't know most of the words on that spine, or what an Evangelion was, or how it was going to fix the world. But I wanted to. I wanted to create things, just like her.
I wanted to be just like Yui Ikari.
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From that day on, I didn't just go to the office to fill my stomach, but my brain. Half the time, I didn't even steal any scraps, forgoing eclairs and donuts for essays like A-10 Nerve and Pilot Interface- A Primer and AT-Field and the Square Cube Law. I read in the dark, keeping my ears open for any noise from my unwitting host. When I found her calendar, I used it to know which days she would be at conferences -whatever those were- and took advantage of the time to read even more.
Day in and day out, I was studying what Yui left. Essay after essay, volume after volume. When I couldn't understand something, I'd go to other offices and look for books there to help me figure it out. And it was all so fascinating. Fields that were universes unto themselves! Machines that could link minds! A giant artificial being as big to a human as humans were to me! I still didn't know what it was all for, but that didn't matter then.
But the most captivating things were the videos. Dr. Akagi had a whole stash of them kept under lock and key in a hidden compartment in her desk. I don't know why she would hide them, but they were easy enough to get when you're a rat watching her stash all of her secret stuff away. When she was away, I'd pull the discs out and pop them into her computer -which I finally understood as a machine- to watch.
There wasn't a lot of important information in there. The reason why I kept watching them was because of the passion with which Yui would dispense it. She'd talk for a long time about things like life, the universe, and her own efforts to understand it all. The more I learned through her books, the greater I could sympathize with that passion, and feel the burn to rebuild in my little rat heart.
When I was back in the colony, in my bed, I'd dream of piloting the Evangelion, like she described it. I'd imagine I was sitting in the seat, working the yokes and thinking how to move the way she instructed.
Little did I know how close to reality that silly daydream was.
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"Why are you carrying the stuff like that?" Emile asked.
"Like what?" I asked back, as we padded down the access shaft.
Emile and I were on scrap duty today. There was always abandoned materials in construction sites that the humans didn't need, but we did. I liked scrap duty. It felt like one of the only ways to express the fire Yui lit in me was to help set up new furniture and fixtures in the colony.
"In your hands. You have a mouth, you know."
"Yeah, and I don't want to ingest something I shouldn't." I shook the bundle of wires and bolts in my hands. "Do you know how many harmful substances are in these scraps? Like, like microplastics. Did you know that a human eats about a credit card's worth of plastic every week?"
"No, but we're rats. You couldn't even eat a whole credit card if you wanted to."
"I mean, you could, though," I said, easing the small tension.
Emile chuckled at that, clearly happy with the compliment. He had a cloth between his teeth, using it to drag his scrap along. When we passed a seam on the shaft's grating, it clinked, and my ears perked.
"What did you find, anyway?" I asked.
"I dunno, just some human stuff," my brother replied.
"Can I see?"
"Uh, sure?"
I opened the bag, and my suspicion was concerned. I looked his way excitedly, holding the small machine in my hands.
"Emile, you found a penlight! And it's not broken!"
"Okay...?" he replied, giving me a worried look. "And that's good because...?"
"Because we can use this to make some light in the colony. Don't you want to be able to see better in there?"
"I mean, I guess? I don't know if Dad's gonna like it."
"Oh, c'mon. Even Dad likes to be able to see where he's going, right? Imagine this strung up in the dining hall."
It was then that I noticed it was a bit light for a penlight. Unscrewing the cap, I looked in.
"Something wrong?" Emile asked.
"No battery," I said. When his face blanked on that, I added, "We need one to make light."
"Ah well, at least it sounded like a good idea," he replied, clearly trying to hurry along before his little brother got him in trouble.
Of course, I wasn't going to be set back by that.
"Follow me, I know where we can get one." I dropped my scrap and began scurrying down the access shaft. "Let's go!"
Behind me, Emile let out a weary groan, and padded after me.
It was a bit before we arrived at the air vent that led into Dr. Akagi's office. Emile seemed much more content enjoying the cool breeze from the air conditioner than I was, and it took some coaxing before he followed me through the loose gap in the grating. Jumping down, we landed quietly on a stack of papers. The office was, as expected, empty.
"I don't like this, Remy," he said, looking around. "We're not supposed to bug humans here. What if one comes in?"
"Oh please, Dr. Akagi is away at a meeting with the Marduk Institute," I replied. "Now wait here. I'll get the battery."
"Wait, how do you know that?" Emile called after me as I scurried towards the long end of the desk.
"I read her calendar," I replied.
Bracing my arms on the desk proper, I grabbed the little -well, little by human standards- rung of the drawer with my feet and pushed as hard as I could. Slowly, the drawer opened, and I hopped in.
"Wait, you read? Like you read human stuff? I don't think Dad would like that."
"What Dad doesn't know, doesn't hurt him." I rummaged through the office supplies. "And believe me, these books are nothing but stuff Dad doesn't know."
"C'mon," Emile groaned. "I don't like this stuff. Bugging humans, and, and reading, and definitely not lying to Dad."
"Well, this light's gonna make up for that." I found the battery I was looking for, and emerged triumphant from the drawer. "Now we can go."
At least Emile was keen on that. We began making our way back to the grating when the door opened, and we instinctively dove for the shadows. Light flooded the room as Dr. Akagi stepped in, followed by a smaller human with brown hair.
"The Third is expected to arrive tomorrow at noon for orientation," Dr. Akagi said. "The Commander wants us to move forward with preparing Unit One for a field test."
"Already, senpai?" the smaller human asked.
So her name is Senpai?
To my side, Emile was trying to quietly scoot to the grating. I began to follow, only to pause. Dr. Akagi said "Unit One". That was an Evangelion unit, wasn't it? I listened further.
"-fix the joint error in the knee by tonight," Senpai was saying. She paused to light a cigarette. "Finally, we'll see Dr. Ikari's work come to fruition."
"If only she was here to see it herself. I never met her."
"Neither did I," Dr. Akagi admitted, taking a puff. "She's been dead nearly eleven years, now, hasn't she?"
In that moment, it was like the world was tumbling down. The flashlight, the danger, even Emile, all forgotten.
Yui Ikari... is dead?
When both of them looked my way, their eyes wide, I realized I hadn't said that in my head.
"Gah! Rat!" Dr. Akagi shrieked, pointing.
Uh-oh.