Another Angel attack.
The city on the surface retracted, and the fortress city's weapons array revealed its full firepower. Dense ranks of artillery batteries stood ready.
Inside the underground shelter, however, two restless idiots who wanted to see the excitement for themselves slipped away.
Toji Suzuhara and Kensuke Aida had snuck out.
The city's guns thundered without end, shells roaring across the battlefield.
A red Angel shaped like some grotesque giant shrimp drifted through the sky, slowly approaching the fortress city.
The concentrated bombardment achieved exactly what it had against Sachiel before:
nothing.
Of course, this was partly for the benefit of those fools who loved pretending they understood things they did not.
Because if they didn't first attack the Angel with conventional weapons before sending out the Eva to destroy it, then the politicians would start getting ideas:
So Angels are actually that weak? I could do that too!
"The Japanese government is requesting Eva deployment!"
"What a pain. I'd sortie even if you didn't tell me to."
"Dad isn't even watching me… so why do I have to pilot this thing again?"
Shinji Ikari was once more dragged back into the painful memory of being bullied by Toji Suzuhara.
"And it'll just make people hate me again…"
Those looks of disgust had pierced straight into the softest part of Shinji's heart, shattering his defenses all over again.
He did not want to go to school anymore.
Going to school meant seeing those cold, merciless, disdainful stares.
In the first place, he had piloted the Eva to please his father, clinging to the hope that maybe doing so would improve their relationship.
Unit-01 launched. The Angel drifted through the fortress city.
Meanwhile, the two idiotic students, Toji Suzuhara and Kensuke Aida, were outside with a camera, getting a thrill out of secretly watching the Angel and the military fight.
Following orders, Shinji battled the monster, but very quickly the weapon in Unit-01's hand was sliced apart by the Angel's beam-like tentacles.
Watching from afar, the two boys were still making flippant remarks.
"What…? It got taken out that fast?"
"This is bad…" Kensuke muttered, camera in hand, staring at the silent, non-retaliating robot. "Did your punch knock him stupid or something?"
"Sh-shut up!" Toji shouted in incompetent fury, having had his sore spot struck.
Snot dripped from Shinji's nose as he stared in terror at the horrible creature before him, with its light-whips and writhing chest tendrils.
He did his utmost to make Unit-01 dodge those tentacles, each one capable of slicing straight through steel skyscrapers with the slightest touch.
But in the middle of evading, the power cable connecting Unit-01 to its external energy source was severed.
Unit-01 now had only five minutes of movement left.
Misato Katsuragi frantically wrung every ounce of speed from her thoughts. She had not expected the situation to deteriorate this badly.
Five minutes.
How could anyone possibly defeat an Angel with beam-whips and an Absolute Terror Field in only five minutes?
The Angel's light-tentacles wrapped around Unit-01's ankle and hurled it several kilometers away, throwing it toward the hills behind the city.
And just by chance, Toji Suzuhara and Kensuke Aida were right there.
Both boys stared in horror at the falling Evangelion.
BOOM—!
Unit-01 crashed into the hillside.
And somehow, it still had not crushed the two wretches who had brought so much pain to Shinji Ikari.
"Shinji! Shinji, are you okay?" Misato shouted urgently over comms.
Shinji shook his head and opened his eyes, only to see the two "lucky survivors" right beside Unit-01's arm.
Toji Suzuhara and Kensuke Aida were both crying, faces streaked with tears and snot, staring at Unit-01 as though they feared the transfer student they had bullied might finally retaliate.
At this point, Unit-01 would only have needed to move a finger to crush the two of them and rid the school of a pair of idiots who believed violence solved everything.
A savior would not even have needed to answer for it.
But Shinji Ikari did not do that.
Instead, he stared in anguish at the two fools who had blundered into the middle of Unit-01's battle with the Angel.
Far away in the command center, Misato Katsuragi and Ritsuko Akagi saw them too.
"Why are they there…?"
Every member of the command staff was cursing internally.
With those two idiots there, Shinji would never dare fight the Angel without restraint.
What ultimate deadweight.
Then the whip of light came lashing straight at him.
Shinji had Unit-01 seize it bare-handed, entering a deadlock with the Angel without leaving the ground.
The kind boy understood that if the giant machine moved too violently, even the shockwaves alone could send those two feather-brained idiots flying.
Time remaining before Unit-01 shut down:
3 minutes, 28 seconds.
What was Shinji supposed to do now?
The situation could not be reversed. Unit-01's arm-armor was steadily being damaged, and if this continued, either its power would run out or its arms would be ruined.
Either way, the result would be the same.
…
…
…
In the world of Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone—
"What the hell is wrong with you two idiots! Because of your little stunt, you almost got everyone killed!
"If you want to die, then go die by yourselves! Don't drag the rest of us down with you!"
An enraged boy charged at Kensuke Aida and hurled the cup in his hand at him.
"You two bastards never study properly, spend all day lost in stupid daydreams, and all you ever do is cause trouble for everyone else!
"Can't you just get out? Stop ruining things for the rest of us!
"The rest of us stayed in the shelter where we were supposed to be! You were the only two idiots who ran outside!"
"The one who hurt your sister wasn't Shinji Ikari—it was the Angel! You piece of trash, you can't even tell who the actual attacker was.
"You just picked on Shinji because you're bigger and stronger than him, right?"
"My parents both work at NERV, so please—please stop causing them problems!
"Commander Ikari said this concerns the fate of humanity! How can you be this selfish, Toji Suzuhara? Kensuke Aida? The two of you should just transfer schools already.
"Stop staying here and making everyone miserable!"
"And you saw it yourselves—Shinji Ikari didn't take revenge, even after being bullied by you! He didn't refuse to pilot the Eva either. You two should apologize to him!"
One classmate after another began piling on.
Humans, after all, only stopped staying silent once the matter became relevant to themselves.
Perhaps only when the Angel's hand was about to fall on them would these people regret not having treated Shinji a little better.
Toji Suzuhara and Kensuke Aida fled with their heads down, dodging thrown cups, books, and erasers.
The anger in the classroom was explosive. Even the class representative, Hikari Horaki, could not calm them down. Nothing she said would work now.
At Misato Katsuragi's apartment—
Looking at the empty bed, Misato bit her lip and whispered in self-reproach,
"I'm such an idiot…"
She had never imagined that a disturbance among classmates would wound Shinji so deeply.
She had underestimated the kind of damage school bullying could do to him.
Some people could recover quickly after being hurt and open themselves to the world again.
But some wounds, once carved into the heart, could not be healed even over the course of a lifetime.
The damage caused by bullying could be far worse than the pain caused by a bullet.
A stray bullet was an accident of misfortune.
Bullying, on the other hand, was aimed at you alone—a whirlpool of pain the victim could not even understand.
The perpetrators got to walk free and continue living their lives happily.
But the wounded heart of the victim might never heal for the rest of their life.
Those who inflicted that pain were shameless beyond belief.
They did not deserve forgiveness.
In the world of Uncle from Another World—
"Destroy them! Destroy them already, Shinji Ikari! Don't hesitate…!
"There are still plenty of other people behind you who need your protection!
"Your road can't end here!"
Takafumi shouted at the screen with overwhelming emotion.
"I never thought… I never thought they'd actually be broadcasting Eva to every world!
"Eva is unbeatable! Asuka is the best! Shinji Ikari, you absolute chad!"
What Takafumi had always hated most while watching Eva was the way Kensuke Aida and Toji Suzuhara bullied Shinji Ikari.
It brought back his own painful memories of being bullied at school.
Fortunately, when he had been bullied, he had met Sumika Fujimiya.
Otherwise…
He had no idea what kind of person he might have become.
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