Magical Shin-Chan
Episode 1: The Clock that Does Not Move/These BEASTS
“Shinji-kun, I'm going out tonight. I'll only be an hour or two.”
Shinji's eyes moved upward to take in his guardian as she put her earrings in place. She looked hurried tonight— the high-cut dress had been hastily thrown on as though she'd made the date only seconds before.
“Okay.” Shinji nodded, pulling his legs up against his chest as he leaned forward on the couch, idly fiddling with the SDAT player, “So, you'll be back...around eight?”
“...I can't make any promises. Sorry.” Misato shrugged the question away lamely as she stood by the door, an almost military-like attention grasping her. Sorry, Shinji. God I'm an idiot, but I need this.
Shinji had stopped questioning his guardian's actions long ago— around the time he was five. It only really bothered him when...
“Hey, Katsuragi-chan. Ikari-kun.”
...He walked in the house. Whenever Kaji walked in to pick up Misato, Shinji wished he would honk the car horn instead...but whenever Kaji actually did that, it made him angry. As though Kaji were treating her like some five-dollar whore. Not that he knew how Kaji would treat a five-dollar whore, but he was pretty sure the greaseball treated all women alike.
Shinji's reaction had been the same since he was four. Hide behind Misato from the creeper-man, hug her tightly from behind, and on some level establish that no you're no welcome in this house, you're not part of this family, don't touch Misato-san's alcohol and don't you dare take your shoes off. The only difference was that he hugged Misato's legs when he was four, calves when he was eight(Kaji had made some disparaging comments then...), and now her waist that he was fourteen.
And like in those years prior, Misato ruffled his hair and reiterated when she'd return. He missed being four. She picked him up back then.
It was a ritual Shinji loathed repeating, but couldn't recall a time without. Kaji would mutter something in Misato's ear, then finish the line more audibly.
“...els. But you can't face me, huh?”
“Sayonara.” Shinji replied quickly, making a point of looking at Misato, closing the door as the couple turned to leave.
And so Katsuragi Misato and Ryoji Kaji left him alone that evening, beginning his tenth consecutive year of leaning against the door and muttering to himself.
“...I hope he never moves in.”
Misato had never bothered him with the idea of Kaji being more than the man that showed her a good time once in a
So he had no recourse but to put his SDAT's headphones in his ears and quietly live out his existence until Misato would finally gather the courage to ask him. Until then he was a heart, trembling in anxiety.
Shinji returned to his room, lying across the bed. He'd had someone over once— he remembered her distinctly, a redheaded girl. She was normally cheerful, but upon seeing his room she became somber and had called it “empty”. And looking around he'd only confirmed her words, a profound guilt hitting him at the time as he marveled if he himself were empty.
Misato had decorated it since that day five years ago, but Shinji hadn't had anyone over since.
It's all what Misato-san thinks a room for Ikari Shinji would be like, He reflected, But if this is the room Ikari Shinji would create, then I would have done it long before her.
A sudden rapping brought him out of his thoughts, Shinji looking to his window and tumbling onto the floor with a cry as the cerise crests of a penguin's face gazed in on him.
“Wark!”
“Wh-where'd you come from...” Shinji rose up from behind the bed, nervously approaching the window. He'd always wanted a pet, but Misato had said they were too expensive and he'd learned to be afraid of animals after a certain incident involving a Labrador and the groceries, “I can't just let you in, you know...”
The penguin continued to rap insistently on the glass.
“Misato-san would get mad...”
“Wark!”
Its beak was threatening to pierce the window.
“Well...actually...I guess she wouldn't...” Shinji mumbled, throwing open the window to allow twelve pounds of penguin to drop onto his shoes, “So, your name is...”
He caught sight of the metal plate, peculiar roman letters jumping out at Shinji's eyes.
“Pen...squared? Pensquare? Is that your name?”
“WARK!”
“...Is that a yes?”
Pensquare shot him a look of rage, simmering destruction brimming in his eyes, ready to crush the galaxy itself.
“Uh, right then. Pensquare...what are you doing in here, anyways?”
Shinji looked at the penguin, trying to recall why exactly he let it in to begin with.
And suddenly it rose into the air, orange polygonal wings outshining the artificial light as the penguin came to level with him. Before he could react the flying penguin had spun about, the steel backpack coming open with a hiss of pressurized air to unveil a single scarlet stone within.
Shinji blinked as the stone's light filled his vision, and in that blink he found his surroundings eroded away to unveil the slowly-dying sunset of Tokyo-3 at 6:43 PM, streams of orange bleeding across the sky.
Before Shinji could question how Pensquare had brought him atop the roof of a Lawson, Pensquare's flipper lead his gaze to the long shadow of a ten-foot giant enshrouded in a trench coat.
Shinji's tongue tripped as he tried to Ctrl+F words appropriate for the situation, the giant slowly rotating its torso, looking over the crowd curiously before straightening its back. At once the long shadow eclipsed Tokyo-3, lacy black flesh rippling back shyly from the creature's ribcage as it ascended, the people below breaking into a run at the sight of the fifteen-meter monster.
“Wh-what do you want me to do about THIS?!”
“Wark!”
“I don't speak wark, Pensquare!”
“Wark!” Looking down Shinji found the penguin to be raising a newspaper for him to see, red marker circled around a series of letters.
“Synchro...nize...EVA Unit-01, Ikari Shinji. Evan...” Shinji squinted to make out the word, dizzied by the blinding marker, “Evangelize?”
Abruptly Pensquare's backpack flipped open, carmine rays splintering out into a hexagonal array. Shinji found his breath stolen from him as he rose into the air, stolen and cast aflame into a scream that suffused his world with sound.
The black giant advanced on him, its massive feet beating a steady pace against the cement, unheeding of the boy. Inclining its hollow eyes at the fairy-like child now flitting about the air before it, the giant slowly raised its arm. Shinji carefully floated to the side as the spike in the creature's arm reared back—
And erupted into a meter-wide laser.
Shinji groaned as he shakily rose to his feet six football fields away, clutching his throbbing head in one hand.
“Am I dead yet...?”
Looking up and finding the giant bearing down on him from the sky above, a brilliant halo manifesting as it flew down toward him, the spear in its elbow pulled back once more.
“Aw cra—“
The ground came apart in a scream of roaring dust and concrete, the scraper he'd been thrown against falling to the earth below.
Shinji wasted no time in running from the giant, pushing off the ground and rising toward the stars. Twisting about in midair he could see the black monster rising once more, relentless in its pursuit.
“P-pensquare?!” He gasped in a moment of panic. The penguin had to be...
Wark!
“Wh-where'd that...” Shinji stopped himself as he was met with a barrage of warks, concluding that yes, the penguin was somehow in his brain now.
Another beam collided with the boy, Shinji beginning to wonder if he'd learn just what you could and couldn't live through this day as a window erupted around him, jagged glass spinning by him as he landed against the wall of the restaurant.
“Eh, what's wrong, Katsuragi?”
“Nothing.” Misato sighed, her eyes having long since wandered to the darkness of the windowpanes, “I'm just worried about Shin-chan.”
“Hey, he's not a baby. He can take care of himself for a couple hours.”
Not that it would matter if he was a baby. Misato thought darkly, “I don't know...for Shinji, it's like time stopped from the first day he came here. He's a clock that doesn't move, and doesn't want to. I worry about him, you know?”
“Didn't we say,” Kaji leaned forward, unshaven shadow brushing against Misato's cheek, “That we'd leave work at work...home at home...and have all this here?”
“Kaaajiiii~” Misato giggled, the man's whiskers tickling her neckline. She leaned forward, ready to meet him in a tangled kiss—
Kaji pushed her to the floor as a rain of glass broke out, several of his whiskers abruptly shaved by the tumbling shards.
Well, that's probably the only time I'll be glad Katsuragi got knocked out on a date. Kaji marveled as he observed the partly-conscious Shinji. Outside loomed the Third, a little early for the schedule SEELE had given him, Oh well. When life gives you lemons, raise the price on apple juice.
Quickly Kaji moved Misato to a more defensible area— as defensible as was possible in an Angel attack— and made himself scarce inside a nearby bush, flipping open his cell phone.
“You're early.” He muttered with a smile as Gendo picked up.
“We're pressed for time.”
The Third Angel reached in, claws snapping uselessly as it found Shinji just out of its reach. Rather than blast him to kingdom come-and-die-fast, the Angel reconfigured to its byte-sized form, levitating into the restaurant.
For the third time Shinji rose with a groan. This time however, things were equal— and this time, there was someone nearby.
“M-m...misato-san...” Shinji mouthed in horror. His distraction did not escape the Angel's notice; it followed his line of sight, hollow eyes locking in on the unconscious woman.
“Distraction.”
Shinji's attentions were immediately brought back to the figure as the raspy voice rang across the marble. The Angel continued to stare at Misato's figure, arm slowly lifting.
“NO!”
Shinji shot forward, barreling into the Angel, the flesh pulling away at his touch as it fell to the ground.
“Now....” The Angel's voice warbled unnervingly, its empty gaze piercing Shinji, “Die.”
Shinji spun away through the air as another beam broke the air, clenching his fists as the Angel sluggishly rose to its feet, once again eying Misato before turning its attentions to the enemy.
“I won't...” Shinji couldn't stop shaking as he faced the creature. Even confined to this space, it felt so enormous, “Let you hurt Misato-san.”
“Struggle. Fight.”
“I'll do more than fight...for Misato-san, I'll...”
“Die.”
“I'll kill you!” Shinji shot through the air with a scream, his slender fists nailing themselves to the orange wall that abruptly divided the combatants. Continuing to cry out in rage he wormed his fingers into grooves in the field, relentlessly tearing at the fragile surface.
The field came apart. Shinji's foot embedded itself into the Angel, Sachiel weezing as it stumbled back.
Currents of hot air were ejected from Shinji's fins as he rose up, a metallic grinding noise sounding out from the violet horn atop his head. The boy came down not with grace but with all the clumsy force of a lumbering colossus as the air split around him.
“PROGRESSIVE...”
“HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRN!”
Shinji trembled as he sat on the edge of the bed, staring at his hands. The Angel had come apart right in front of him, a brilliant explosion that seared the air— but here he remained, unscathed. He wasn't certain how or when he'd gotten home, but Misato wasn't back yet, and Pensquare had presently chosen to lie atop his head, exhausted.
“Where'd you come from,” Shinji sighed, “And what's all this about?”
In response, Pensquare chose to roll off Shinji's head and deposit himself in the boy's lap.
...He's really warm... Shinji noted as he cuddled the bird, And his bones are so little...it wouldn't be so bad, having a pet. But how should I get Misato to—
With an abrupt wark Pensquare began to flail, Shinji falling back on the bed as the penguin forced its weight on his chest.
Oh god this is it he's going to take my eyes out he's going to
Pensquare's beak nuzzled his neck, eliciting a series of giggles from the boy as the penguin lightly pecked at his skin.
“Shinji-kun? I'm home.”
Shinji felt the blood drain from his face as Misato strode into his room, Kaji not far beyond.
“...Excuse me, Kaji.” Misato turned to the man, her face impassive, “We'll have to talk another night.”
“Of course.” Kaji turned on his heel, coolly moving for the door, “See you, Katsuragi-chan.”
Misato turned back to face the stonelike boy and penguin, sighing heavily.
“Where did you get that?”
“H-he came in through the window.” Shinji replied, voice creaking as he tried to swim through his own anxiety. He'd never done anything to provoke Misato before— he'd always been obedient, trying not to get in her way.
“Oh he did, did he.” Misato regarded them for a moment longer, before leaning down and roughly picking the penguin up in both hands, “...Pen-pen, huh?”
“...”
“I like it.”
“Wh-what?!”
“I said I like it.” Misato grinned, holding the flustered waterfowl against her chest, “We'll keep him! Come on Pen-pen, let's see how you hold your liquor...”
Shinji stared in astonishment as they departed, falling back on the bed.
What just happened.
Staring out into the black ceiling of the Geofront, her gloved fingers came to rest on the sword's hilt, enjoying the familiarity in its grip. She and her tangerine hair had been there for fourteen days, and this was still the only semblance of home she carried. Kaji's beloved birthday gift to her. She'd asked for a zweihander, but Kaji had called the spatha 'elegant' and 'befitting of a lady'. She could settle for that.
“He'll be here soon.” She whispered softly to the pair of button eyes as her legs came up against her chest, leaning out toward the roof of Lilith's egg, “The Third. Don't get any ideas. You're just my doll, so move like I tell you to, and don't tell me 'no'...”
Her fingers gripped the mess of rope hair, tearing the head from its body for the seventh time that day.
“A doll doesn't need a mind. It's too much of a hassle. You need only say 'yes' to my orders.”
The pieces fell to the floor, rolling about in the thin streaks of light provided by NERV's Geofront. She rose, a strong wind carrying her hair out behind her as Asuka Langley Soryu gazed condescendingly up at those who lived in Tokyo-3.
“Stupid dolls.”
