2010-07-18 - Cutscene: 227 Lears... and I Can't Remember the First Line

Sunday, 18 July NCA 120. Zero hour.

It's not fair, what they've done to her, but life isn't fair.

The third thing to be given the name Rei Ayanami has been stripped of everything but. Arcane sigils and dead languages have been laser-etched into her softened mind, riding waves of toxic GN particles transmitted through LCL. Man has succeeded in giving God a brain tumor.

For a month now, she's degenerated, further and further. The fitness of her body has eroded, and she has become pale and sickly again. Her long hair has been cut only so that she doesn't swallow it in her sleep and choke. They realized later that she doesn't sleep anymore. She couldn't put clothes on if she even understood them anymore. And so she is naked in the red room, naked with the red glow of blood shining on her flesh, naked in Terminal Dogma. All that she has in the world is tied around her forehead -- a strip of sky-blue fabric that she fought to keep, even when she was vomiting blood and too sickly to chew her own food. Everyone deserves something to call their own, it seems.

Over Rei towers the autoluminescent crucifixion of Lilith. Boils and bubbles and blisters undulate on the doughy white flesh of the creature.

Gendo Ikari walks up behind Rei, and she turns to face him. They share a moment, and Gendo says nothing, because he knows she wouldn't understand it if she did. After what he's done, though, there's nothing left to say. The sounds of the war above don't register deep below the Earth. Theirs is a tranquil moment, even if they both know what must happen.

Gendo Ikari removes his glove to reveal his deformed hand, eyeball staring out of his palm, flesh knotted and reorganized into a claw's worth of Adam. He should say something, maybe kiss her on the head goodbye, but Gendo has never been a sentimental man, and goodbyes are useless now, because this is not the end.

The hand of God presses against Rei's belly, and with one sharp, forward thrust, he plunges his appendage into her. He sinks into her stomach up to the wrist as if he were reaching into a tub of something viscous but pliant, as if Rei were not a human at all, just something molded in man's likeness.

The skies turn red above and a vast eye opens.

Rei trembles and closes her eyes, and Gendo closes his, too. Just a moment is all he needs. Then he will have the control -- the power -- the means to bring peace to existence. To be happy. But something's wrong. Something's fighting against him.

Gendo Ikari looks at his protege and his expression changes to one of abject horror as he pulls away a neatly cauterized stump, his hand having disappeared into her body, swallowed whole by her pliant flesh.

Rei Ayanami opens her eyes, and her red irises emit radial streams of golden light.