Mix 'n Match, Results May Vary!

Author’s Note: Sigh. Warning in advance: many in series terms used within this episode. Please refer to Wikipedia article link aid: http://en. Wikipedia .org/wiki /Neon_ Genesis_ Evangelion. Oh, and btw, there are plot spoilers there for the anima, manga, and movies so be warned!! Here and in that article.

Yukiko

“I am . . .had been named Rei Ayanami,” I begin to explain something that I find myself having difficulty understanding. All I know is that the women before me are so . . .alive and burning with possibilities that . . .their fire ignited something within me. Something special and precious. “Barely existing and hardly alive until the day I was reborn as Yukiko when . . .a powerful woman I recall being named Setsuna tried but actually failed to save Reika from her self-destructing Eva Unit.”

I feel I must add I am not privy (yet) to exactly what had led up to her having to destroy her Unit Mark Zero (or as she puts it, Unit 00). But I know that it had been under dire circumstances.

But still, why would her Evangelion should have chosen to self destruct in ADDITION to having ejected the Entry Plug--which would have SERIOUSLY injured me when the plug started to impact against the steel plated walls the test was being conducted in if Setsuna had NOT pulled me in time—just confuses me greatly. I mean my soul shard within MY Evangelion Unit wanted to rip Gendo Ikari to pieces for having used and abused my trust and love in my first incarnation

I find out soon enough that Reika had been unaware at any such efforts to save her life and I also learn just why she had no recall of Setsuna’s failed efforts: the woman who somehow had gained godlike powers had tried to twist space and time back upon itself to transport Reika away from her doomed EVA and to safety failed. Failed because of the simple fact that she’s a Champion and nobody can change the timeline/life history of a Champion to alter them (or null them from becoming a Champion in the first place).

Instead, those who try to change the past of a Champion gets “bounced” into a parallel reality and in my case Setsuna inadvertently rescued ME from danger that I had been exposed to whilst my Unit went berserk during a test. I know about Reika and the others through some sort of magical side effects that occurred while Setsuna’s clairvoyant abilities took effect on me, letting me catch glimpses of Reika’s life and her sisters.

. . .

As an aside I feel compelled in adding that I WAS genetically engineered to have photographic recall so trust me when I tell you these things to be accurate, even IF said details have/had all the markings of a dream/hallucination: hazy and indistinct. I mean . . .I . . .am not sure how to describe exactly what I mean, honestly!

Honestly, I am going on from what I have heard and read on the subject of dreams and halucinations, having NEVER before experienced either. So, I am telling what I know to the best of my abitlities, even IF this seems "far fetched" and "fantastic". I am not attempting to prevaricate here for any reason. I am just retelling everything I recall from the time I entered into my Entry Plug for an ill fated Synchronization Test and finding myself here, period.

Frankly, why would I wish to embellish the truth for my own profit? If I was to attempt such matters, would it not be better to try to present a more "believable" and "mundane" explanation?

Even IF I somehow have the oddest feeling I have told this tale somewhere before? Laying down on a couch to someone holding a notepad? A counseling session?

Odd...

Yes, anyway.

. . .

I also sensed within Setsuna as she dragged me to away from my berserking EVA that she was . . .very disturbed and confused, and I mean in a mental fashion. Frankly, I find myself rather GLAD that she’d left me back in my apartment, dazed and confused while she said she had business with certain menaces to humanity who needed to

Yes, now I did mention that Setsuna had saved me, but I must add that in the process of using so MUCH magic (for that was it was . . .something I would have easily dismissed and ignored as unimportant nonsense before being faced with the reality) a temporary glimpse into Reika’s mind and heart was given to me. That started a process of me changing, mentally, into something/someone more . . alive than what I had been crafted to be by that bast . . .by “my” Commander Gendo Akari.

Finding myself having been transported into And when I finally get to the end of my tale as what I can tell about how I got here and who I am, I find blank looks of confusion. And then they start asking their own questions (faster and faster!) and then I get more and more confused. Somehow, when I had come here under the impressions of my new sisters being parallel universe versions of myself I expected things to me . . .well, more things being parallel to my own story? That and when and where did I learn the talent of speaking in tongues?

They ask me about how Sachiel the Angel suddenly turned into the fourth Angel IF according to them that particular Angel was the third? Had not their NERV manage to capture the third Angel before my . . .er. . . .their failed Synchronization Test?

And then their was their version of the Commander’s son, Shinji Ikari? When did the son of Commander Ikari ever get chosen for Unit Mark One, much less become someone I would give up my life to save? Not saying that I would not do something like that for those I care for (and by God does it feel GOOD to have people to care for and people who care for ME!) but frankly, I never met the boy! Much less developed anything in the way of feelings for him.

And then there was the question about how many Angels Nerv . . .MY Nerv had been fated to fight and defeat before Third Impact under the designs of man. . . .

Those bastards had created me to play a key part in that?!

”I find I need to sit down here,” I mutter, feeling rather ill.

Even at the worst of times when I believed myself to be nothing but a tool to be used until no longer needed and then disposed of I always believed that my purpose was to protect humanity from destruction. Not some kind of mad scheme for some old, decrepit men (or a cold and harsh man who called himself Gendo Ikari) to gain godhood by transforming humanity into a mass conscious (with them at the head)!

Clearly my purpose had been much darker and more vile than I had ever imagined, if my sisters are correct. And to think that I had thought at one time, back in my first incarnation that someday whatever shortcomings I obviously had could have been created and my “spares” would finally be decanted from their liquid prison down in the bowels of NERV . . .and I could finally have somebody who would know and understand my situation in life like no other.

I had hoped . . .that some day my clone sisters could finally meet our “supposed” true purpose and ALL be Pilots for the EVAs. That had been what Commander Ikari had told me, before.

. . .

My sisters told me a different tale and somehow, though, I feel that they are correct. It had been their true purpose in life in the end before becoming Champions and being taken away to safety. I fear that that may have been my purpose as well. Too many inconsistencies over the years I now remember. D*mnit.

. . .

I hope that . . .whatever Setsuna did to those who she punished was . . .properly painful. I really really DO.

I DO!!

“It’s okay,” Reika whispers to me as I shiver in reaction. “You’re away from that and they can’t do anything to you now. They’re gone now.”

”Somehow I feel that sister here is from a parallel reality that isn’t quiet as parallel as we expected in situations like this?” Lilith mutters to herself, looking around at her sisters after comforting me.

“Correct totally there Lilith,” a female voice (VERY familiar) comes from the laptop’s speakers that P had been sitting next. There is more than a bit of the Californian “Valley Girl” twang“She’s from the Rebuild movie thingie vice the anime and manga you guys came from. Actually, kinda before the events for the movie, really.

”Setsuna kinda managed to land herself in the nearest kinda scene from that movie that kina matched up with the anime scene that Reika did there,” Buffy continues, her image coming up from the laptop screen as she continues speaking. In the background is a blasted landscape of a city who’s scene war (and then some).

Three pairs of red eyes (and one pair of shockingly green) stare at the scene, noting the fact that not only is Buffy Summers (aka the Slayer from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) is talking to them from this laptop, but she has a now decidedly . . .heavenly cast to her features, albeit with a bit of stylized electronic circuitry tattooed here and there present on her face and such here an there.

Basically, Buffy looks rather like an angel (ala traditional Christian style vice Evangelion) . . .albeit with a more high tech beat to it. Kind of like what the Church of Silicon Valley imagines angels would look like, really.

1. “So . . .” Rei begins, only to be interrupted by the small and reedy cry of a red haired baby that Buffy now trying to comfort in her arms without much success.

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