Homecoming

A Neon Genesis Evangelion story by Andrew J. Talon

Disclaimer: Gainax owns it, I don't. I'm not making any money off this story either.

Flashback

The Ophan Hub was a marvel of engineering, one that could easily be classified as a wonder of the galaxy it inhabited. A great sphere, enveloping the homeworld of the Ophan itself, connected to every Ophan world, Ophan ship-All joined by what humans would call Dirac Seas, a galaxy-wide empire of total efficiency.

Atop a tower on the equator of the vast planetary shell, as tall as the atmosphere of the world below it, the Ophan Supreme Executor stood, floating in the vast chamber, his outer shell spinning rapidly around his glowing core in agitation.

"Explain! Explain these setbacks!" The Executor ordered. "Explain these... Defeats."

Other Ophan, all subordinate to the Supreme Executor, hovered nearby, outer shells changing shapes in shared agitation.

"Unknown. Forces at the Progenitor's Homeworld destroyed. Forces at Revan Null destroyed. Forces at-"

"Desist! I am familiar with the incidents in question!" The Executor declared. "By what manner? By what force? By what enemy?"

"Enemy unknown!" Cried another Ophan. "Suggestions: Progenitor relics utilized!"

"Impossible! Progenitor relics beyond all other races comprehension!" The Executor said.

"Yet Progenitor homeworld occupied by other beings-"

"Only Ophan possess secrets of Progenitors! Ophan are superior!"

Silence. Then one Ophan spoke up.

"If Ophan are superior... How are Ophan defeated?"

The Supreme Executor was silent, as all of the Ophan directed their awareness to the one that had spoken. Then, a curious sound filled the great chamber. A sound none of the Ophan had ever heard before.

Hands clapping.

"Oh, very good, very good," called a voice that was not Ophan in origin. "That one is very clever. Very clever indeed."

"IDENTIFY!" Screamed the Executor, followed by other Ophan screaming the same thing. They changed their shapes, now resembling elongated prisms, their cores charging for battle.

Out of the darkness of the Tower emerged a man. Beneath his feet, he floated on a simple anti-grav panel. A laughably simple technology the Ophan had learned to emulate with their own AT Fields long ago.

"IDENTIFY!" Screamed another Ophan. The man smiled darkly.

"Who am I?" He asked quietly. "Why... I'm the man who's got all of you in such a terrible uprising."

"Impossible! One inferior being... Against the Ophans?" The Executor demanded. "You could not have defeated the Ophans! You could not-!"

"Then how did I get in here?" The man asked. "How did I get into the most secure facility in your entire empire, with you only figuring out I was here when I wanted you to?"

More silence, then:

"DESTROY HIM! DESTROY HIM!"

Powerful energy bolts shot from several Ophan, packing enough energy in each blast to annihilate a single Earth tank. The man touched a control on his watch, and four Dirac Seas opened, redirecting the shots right back at their shooters. Numerous Ophan were blasted apart by the force of their own wrath before the Executor called it off.

"CEASE FIRE!" The Executor arranged his outer shell into a prism, slowly rotating as beams of light emanated from his core. The slipped over the man, who held up a glowing device of his own.

"Dirac Sea generator. Opens little portals in spacetime that can be linked together." He smirked. "One of your own. What was it you said? 'Only Ophan possess secrets of Progenitors! Ophan are superior!'" He cried in a mockery of the Ophan's own declaration.

"... Identify," the Executor growled. The man narrowed his eyes, his face cold, the entire room filled with a dark, terrible wrath that fed itself into the minds and souls of every Ophan within.

"I'm the man you took everything from," he snarled. "I'm the man who's been looking through your archives, your records for the past couple of... Oh, I don't know, days? It was like watching a star being torn to shreds by a blackhole-Couldn't help but watch the light fading into oblivion.

"I used to wonder just how diverse the life in this universe could be. Surely that Drake fellow back home couldn't be right, could he? There wasn't a universe filled with life of all shapes and sizes, was there? Well... When I get back, I'll owe him a beer. This universe is filled with life. This galaxy alone home to countless species..." His eyes seemed to glow with a terrible fury.

"Before you came. Every record, every file, detailing every world scorched bare of life! Every species enslaved, and when they were no longer needed, exterminated! Every species wiped out, all life not Ophan!" His anger seemed to make the very air in the chamber boil.

"The Progenitor's homeworld was just the latest batch to go! Hoping to find secrets to use to burn the Universe!" His voice lowered, barely heard in the vast chamber, yet not an Ophan had trouble hearing.

"Except you did something that day. You showed yourselves to me. You did it by destroying the one place I'd found that I could call my own. The one place with people who could have become my own. You slaughtered them all..." He took a deep breath.

"That's the problem when you commit genocide, isn't it? It's never enough for you. You have to continue the course, the blood of millions, billions preventing any purchase, even when you're trying to crawl back out of the pit you've dug."

"OPHAN ARE-!"

"SILENCE!" The man roared, seemingly making the Tower tremble with his voice. The terrible, stifling wrath seemed to darken the room even more than it already was.

"I guess I'll see... How far I can dig... Until I can't get out," he said quietly.

"Identify myself? Here's a name for you all to remember, for your kind to whisper in the dark corners of the universe before I find you all, destroying you all. I am the Morningstar," he whispered. "So burn."

The Tower erupted into light, it's power systems overloading and detonating, leading to the vast conduits of energy that maintained the integrity of the massive Hub to overload and begin to explode as well. Atop the Tower, the Ophan screamed in rage and hatred as the man vanished, using the Dirac Sea to slip between space elsewhere.

He emerged on another world in the system, standing beneath the red sky, ignoring the Ophan structures around him bursting into flames. Their Dirac Seas, the key to their dominance of the galaxy, were being turned against them-The sheer energy of their Hub, their homeworld exploding was forced through every active channel. All over the galaxy, the Ophan were being destroyed, consumed in the vast inferno of their own creation.

The man watched the devastation, acutely feeling the vast number of deaths he had inflicted... And began to weep.