Call to Adventure
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His guardians arrived only soon enough to see him run past them on the street back to the house. His aunt made as if to call out to him, but a hand on her shoulder kept her silent. Shinji's uncle had already learned of what happened.
"No, let him be. He needs to be alone." he said sadly. "Shinji is just too kind, he needs to be alone to deal with knowing not everyone can be as naturally good as he expects them to be."
"That poor boy."
The Boyz broke into the scene, shouting something that sounded like 'Huuwaaaaaaaaaaaaaa- " and ground to a halt at seeing all the policemen. They sheepishly put away their useless rocks and sticks. The snacks they brought were far more useful, and in between grateful munches Kobayakawa regaled them of his tale of heroism and the confirmed infallibility of Da Boss.
The boyz offered some snacks to the policemen, who accepted some with a smile. It was a simple act that would have far-reaching symbolic consequences.
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Shinji ran until his lungs burned. He ran until his legs began to burn. He ran until the pain seemed to set his nerves aflame. And still he didn't stop.
He arrived at the house gasping for breath, feeling his entire body screaming. He reached for the secret hiding place for the house keys and fumbled angrily at the locks. He stumbled in, leaving the door hanging open. He clung to the wall as he climbed up to the second floor. His heart threatened to leap right out of his chest, and his head seemed about to burst.
He kicked open his door and laid bloodshot eyes at a single figure alone in its shelf. "YOU!" he snarled.
He leaped over and snatched it from its place on the shelves. His hands shook as he gripped it, slowly adding more and more pressure. As plastic deformed under his grip, it looked as if the Chaos Marine was bowing its head.
/'Someday you will NEED me again, bright lord. Someday, you will call out for me again. Someday, when you can set aside this petty morality. And on that day I will grant you POWER beyond your wildest imaginations.'/
Shinji snarled and tightened his grip. He felt so immense just then, and the figurine in his hands a little person, red-eyed and so willing to just let him crush it/him in his hands…
Shinji screamed.
He collapsed to his knees and punched at the floor.
"What am I doing?" he breathed. "What am I doing?" He opened his palm to reveal the figurine all bent of shape, its lacquer cracked in places. It didn't seem irretrievably damaged, though. He could push things back into place and slap on a fresh coat of paint. "Why am I so angry at this thing?"
"You're just a lump of plastic!" he said, his heart lifting. He got up and placed it back on the shelf. Shinji sat on his bed and cradled his face in his hands.
"I… wanted her to hurt." he failed to hold back his tears. "I'm a horrible person."
/'No, you are not.'/ he felt another familiar voice skim through his mind. /'It was not your fault, Shinji. What did you really do, clear your mind and admit it to yourself.'/
"What I did I do? I wanted her to hurt! I didn't mean for this to happen... but I allowed it! I took her pain and loved it. Oh, gods, I loved it."
/'No, yaz didn't!'/ Shinji could feel a massive stomp echo through his consciousness. /'She was weak, and you hated anyones who abuses da weak.'/
/'You must not lie to yourself, commander. Consider exactly what your influence in this matter brought. As much as it pains me to admit it, the chaos-pawn had done you right. You SAVED a life, commander, and it was not by your hands that an evil one was destroyed. It was by your will that one was saved from that evil.'/
"But… Minase…"
/'Did you plan it? Such is the way of Chaos that it prevents any attempts to truly control it.'/ The Farseer in his mind stroked with her white-gloved hands from the cheek of her helmet, down to her neck, past her chestplate and down to her hips. /'You did nothing to her. You must understand this. You are not a God. Not everything is within your control. Her fate is hers alone.'/
"I don't want anyone to suffer…" Shinji cried. "I don't want anyone to suffer ever again."
/'If that is your desire, bright lord.'/ the Chaos Marine actually had the gall to interject. /'Then let it be written upon the flesh of destiny.'/
/'Be silent!'/ screeched the Eldar. /'You have had your say. Be silent unless your loathsome opinion is asked for.'/
/'I obey Chaos, not you, witch. But for the bright lord's sake for now I shall do as you say.'/
Shinji bent his knees up and went into a sitting fetal position. He had touched something today, something vast and powerful and simultaneously remote and always at hand. His head felt light and cool, as if he was floating again on the ocean, in a sea of shining liquid gold.
The Ork said it was nothing more than his "Inna bad-ass". Both the Farseer and Space Marine counseled for him not to worry about it, and it would be a LONG time before he'd swallow so easily anything that Chaos would say.
He no longer felt powerless, though. He learned that day that when one's physical strength fails, let the mind triumph. When the future is closed to the mind, then it is the point of decisive action. When all is dark, is when the light of the soul shall reveal itself.
His physical form was not the all of what he was.
Delusions. Fantasies. Insanity.
He stared at his figurines, now silent and no more than painted plastic again. Something still resonated at the back of his skull.
Unreal. Irrational. Powerful.
[I AM] (NOT) WHO [I AM].
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A year passed in humdrum mundanity. Junior High was a fun but excessively normal time of life. The Boyz had organized and brought their afterschool club out into the open. The year was 2015, and while their styles were clearly based on hooligan aesthetic, Shinji's friends found recognition as a sporting and mechanical hobbyist's club.
Whole franchises were built around aesthetics and mascots and merchandising potential. The Boyz Football and The Boyz Baseball. And specially Da Boyz Motorless Racing Team - well there's a lot of mostly unused roads around their hometown, innit? Da Boyz began spreading out into other towns, making their 'Tribez'. Towns that didn't have a unified sporting identity were ripe for recruitment, while those that did were challenged and on their defeat would either be absorbed or be made to pay a token 'tribute'.
They recruited adults to teach them survival and workshopping skills. They were like the Boy/Girl Scouts if combined with the aggressive proselytizing tendencies of Jehova's Witnesses.
Da Boyz were organized by age. From youngest to oldest: Snots, Runts, Grots, Gretchz, Boyz, Nobz, Chiefs. Then they were organized into roles; from informers(oddboyz), agents (kommandos), crafters(mekboyz), drivers and messengers (flyboyz), sports teams (sluggaboyz), academic teams (weirdboyz), recruiters (wildboyz), attack mobs (warboyz) and sabotage (kommandos). They operated in cells so that the secrets of the Boyz could never be fully leaked.
Da Book was accidentally a textbook case of insurgency operations.
But then again, that was basically what the Orks were originally designed to be; growing from a few dropped spores, they would grow into a self-reinforcing, self-maintaining army out of literally nothing more than the investment of some dirt. Most orks would remain feral until the first of them unlocks the genetic information to smelt metal, and then soon enough there's guns and trucks and bombs and giant stompy mechs and a full-on Waaagh! is set to burn whole worlds.
A Boy was nothing without a Mob. The ideal of the Boyz would be for a single Boy, lost on his own, could do with little more than inspiration from the book, begin the whole cycle all over again. The Boyz' 'kultur' was based around self-sufficiency, and making everything up from scrap.
The true power of friendship was, after all, having five of your friends with you to beat up somebody you didn't like.
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Shinji stood on top of the school roof. He could not exactly refuse her invitation. Minase stared out towards the city, the wind tugging at her long silken black hair. She turned towards him and smiled impishly.
"What's wrong?" she asked. "What are you so afraid of? A confession?"
Shinji winced.
"Oh? Really? Am I really that unpleasant? Am I... unclean? Even you, are you judging me too?"
"No! Never! That's not... I mean, I can't judge you for anything. I don't think you called me here for a confession."
The girl laughed lightly. "But I do have to confess something. It's weird... did ever tell you WHY I used to love gangster movies so much? Dark smoky dens, black leather and motorcycles, the smell of smoke, intense smoldering stares...! Oh! That's a man's world, where a woman can only move through with her wits and her beauty... or else they'll chew her up and leave her with nothing.
"It's a very improper world. My father... he's just a politician. People call him powerful, but really... a lot of the powerful people I know are just boring. I really just like the style of a gangster and their sworn brotherhoods compared to the high life I'm expected to grow into.
"All that fake make nice and all those parties where nothing's allowed to happen, and all the gossip only about who looks cute together, or the price of their dress... they call me a princess, but I don't want to be just one of those silly empty-headed girls! Something exciting... something raw and true."
Then she turned away and grabbed at the roof's security fence. "But I turned out to be just an empty-headed girl after all..."
Jishin's older brother was a true-blooded Yakuza. But even he couldn't try to take revenge against some uppity girl or a round boy. A mayor's daughter was off limits. They crossed the line, and so the organization had to sacrifice someone to bring back a peaceful balance. The tail should not wag the dog, after all. The organization should not suffer from the stupidity of one member. The Yakuza were still of Japanese sensitivity, and preferred a status quo that had them pass under legal notice or preserving a veneer of respectability.
The Boyz found the gap where they were warned to be 'hands off' and exploited it ruthlessly. In the surrounding towns, the saw-toothed Ork skull was a gang sign all their own.
"Now imagine my surprise to learn that all this time, someone's been setting up a 'chivalrous organization' all this time under my nose without my knowing."
"Umm. I have no control over anything that happens anymore. Please, believe me. If I could stop them, I would! Someone's going to get hurt at some point if they keep pushing."
The Boyz were so suicidally brave going into forbidden areas and so unafraid to talk to all sorts of people that they were just Bavarian Fire Drill-convincing people that they probably belonged there and it was fine to let them get away with all sorts of their shenanigans.
Minase laughed and approached him, her eyes glinting with savage intensity. Shinji began to back away. Until he felt a wall behind him, and she trapped him there with her hands on either side of his head. It was the kabe-don, that flirtatious scene so often seen in girl's manga with the genders reversed.
"What happened to me... I don't know why, but it didn't make me strong. I'm afraid it could happen again, now I know men can just take me and I can't stop them. I should be ashamed to say this to you. But I don't know why... somehow, it's fine if I talk about this to you. You wouldn't want a soiled woman like me, you deserve someone faithful and good like Ayane."
"Ayane's my FRIEND. I think we can be friends too." The boy's eyes were clear and perfectly free of any moral judgement. "Deserving or not deserving, that's not even important. I don't know how you want me to treat you... but who you are right now is more important than what you were before."
Minase laughed. Wildly. Mockingly. "Why are you so puuure?" She pinched at his cheeks. "I don't know- why?! Why you?! Why do I feel so comfortable being able to say this to you?!"
"Ouch. Ow. Please stop."
Then she licked her lips and whispered "If I eat you up... could you make me pure again?"
Minase took one of Shiji's hands and stuck the fingers in her mouth. She stroked and wet the fingers with her tongue. Inside, her tongue danced and rubbed against his flesh with a secret passion.
Shinji blushed terribly.
Then she bit down. Hard. Blood welled up between her lips.
/"Okay. Cannibalism was NOT how I expected this day to go!"/ Shinji bit back his scream. Minase smiled sweetly down at him.
She licked and sucked at his fingers some more, and then slid them out of her mouth with a luscious 'pop'. The indentations of her teeth left the skin white to the bone, until blood started to well up from the small wounds. Shinji winced a little bit, but otherwise seemed unaffected. Pain was familiar companion.
And she whispered cloyingly "I hate everything you represent. I love it that I have something to hate about you."
Minase would thereafter in secret show him her humiliation and it always creeped him the hell out.
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The day arrived when he received the letter from Tokyo-3.
It had one word in it: COME.
Shinji Ikari stared disbelievingly at it, all else blank paper but for the NERV letterhead and his father's signature. How hard can it be to write one other word?
/PLEASE/ COME, maybe?
Or /COME LIVE WITH ME./
Or /YOU ARE NEEDED, COME TO TOKYO 3./
Or even maybe /I'M SORRY FOR ABANDONING YOU./
"No father would write this!" he said to himself. "One word! Like calling a pet to hell! This is something specifically designed to piss me off!" he gasped. "And it's working!"
"You don't have to go to Tokyo-3, Shinji." his aunt said softly. "You can just stay here. You can be happy here, can't you?"
"Yes, don't give the bastard the satisfaction of having the son he so ignored come running at his earliest call… what's there for you anyway?"
He could just stay. In a town which actually loved him. Where the boyz were being treated like the minor militia and hometown heroes. Where someone stood beside him, and strangely a best friend/confidante/personal secretary did vastly simplify his life; a female best friend that maybe eventually could turn into something more. Where, once, when no one was around, Minase actually knelt down and kissed his shoe as if his mere touch could purify her. Then she laughed at the sheer panic in his face.
Still so very pretty. Still so very very creepy. One day she would totally degrade herself beyond sanity and Shinji feared that would be the day she would literally bake him into a pie.
/"Ey Boss, wots da big dakka here?"/
/"Shinji-kun, I understand that you think the 'boyz' is a gender-neutral term, but I think the girl's choir would do better."/
/"This is so tacky and disgraceful. Ohoho. I love it. I love it!"/
Life was good. With his own efforts he could believe he deserve a little bit of happiness, right? It was a nice, normal life, and yet somehow...
He could see it in their eyes. Even as his guardians asked for him to stay, they already knew that a part of him was meant for bigger things out in the world. He had lived in the backwoods of Sendai since he was three years old. Since he personally watched his mother die. Since he watched his father break down in tears at allowing this monstrosity to happen.
His friends would not be able to follow him to his father's seat of power. They would not be safe there.
Shinji crumpled the letter, if it could even be called that, in his fist. He looked up and the weight of ages were in his eyes. "I HAVE to go to Tokyo-3. It's time my father and I talked things over."
"Give him a punch him in the face for me, would you?" his uncle said with a grin.
"Sure will!" he replied with a similarly wide-open expression. "If he deserves it, I won't hold back at all!" Shinji Ikari still had all the outward signs of a happy, emotionally healthy child.
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The year was 2015. The world was grievously wounded by Second Impact, but slowly and with resentful determination, it had recovered and worked hard never to suffer through that again.
This was the year that the beings that killed half of all humanity returned to finish the job. Theirs was the Evangel of a New Genesis, a bloody-handed gospel. Where one ends, another must begin.
Fifteen years had passed. Fifteen years to prepare. To train. Construct defenses. Build weapons. Perform immoral medical experiments on children. Humanity was wounded and half-mad with pain. But like a cornered animal with nowhere left to run, it was ready to fight with all its power for the right to exist.
Into this carefully orchestrated war, walked in an impossibly delusional young boy named Shinji Ikari.
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