Ascension (Neon Genesis Evangelion)

Ascension is a fusion fanfic of the Neon Genesis Evangelion anime and the Half-Life series of videogames, incorporating minor inspirations from several other verses including Code Geass, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann and Super Dimension Fortress Macross. Befitting to fanfiction written from the Half-Life universe, the author went out of his way writing notes on the various machinery and science that appears in the fic months before even starting it; there is NO "soft" science in this fic, it sticks to real-world physics whenever possible (such as explaining AT-fields via quantum physics and string theory).

The central concept of the fic is that many Evangelion fics attempting to fix the horror of the canon events induce core personality changes in Shinji Ikari. The author of Ascension went in the opposite direction by relegating Shinji to a support role and having someone else take center stage instead.

It is the year 2041 AD. Twenty-three years ago, humanity achieved the impossible and scored a major victory against the Combine, pushing their Overwatch oppressors off the Earth and into deep space. Since then, humanity's technological level skyrocketed: with the development of the Vance-Kleiner-Magnusson Interstellar Waygates, humans have spread across several star systems to secure the future of their race in the event of another alien invasion. Back on Earth, the Confederacy of Man united humanity under a single banner and led them towards the common goal of ensuring its survival under the protection of the Confederate Armed Forces' spacefleets and Mechanized Battleframe divisions. However, the leaders to the nation are not as sincere in their intentions as they appear. In 1998, the premature arrival of Second Impact by the way of the Black Mesa Incident distrupted SEELE's plans and forced its members into hiding. After the Great Uprising of 2018, these men and women were quick to manipulate themselves into positions of power and pursue their original goal once more: the Instrumentality of Mankind.

Kaworu Nagisa was an orphan who grew up on the streets of Vienna with a burning desire to change the world in a direction he believed would be better. When his vigilante tendencies earn him a disciplinary transfer to Tokyo-2 and he wanders into the middle of a battle between Evangelion Unit-00 and the Angel Sachiel, his life irreversibly changes. The Artificial Evolution Laboratory buys his silence about the Evangelion project by recruiting him as a test pilot, a job Kaworu finds great delight in. In school, he finds kindred spirits who follow him and eventually become Blackwatch, a notorious vigilante group that steadily evolves into a paramilitary terrorist organization aiming to enforce their own sense of justice regardless of government opinion. His followers eventually include his fellow Evangelion pilots: Rei Ikari, the introverted adoptive daughter of Kaworu's boss Yui Ikari and secret firearms expert as well as Asuka Langley Shephard, daugher of Confederate Armed Forces Colonel Adrian Shephard and three times champion of the national junior battleframe league.

Ascension is planned by the author to be a tetralogy. The sequel New Testament closes down the final plot threads with humanity standing reunited once again due to the actions of a child who sought acknowledgement of his right to decide his own fate.
 * Verse 1 details Kaworu's initial arrival into Tokyo-2, his becoming of an Evangelion pilot and the beginnings of Blackwatch.
 * Verse 2 details Blackwatch' rise to power and the Human-Angel War's steady escalation into a conflict above the scope of what humanity had ever seen. [CURRENTLY BEING WRITTEN]
 * Verse 3 sees the plot coming to full circle as the final battle unravels the very foundations of what humanity defined itself with. [NOT YET WRITTEN]
 * Verse 4 deals with the aftermath of the conflict and closes the main plot with humanity's struggle to rise from its own ashes even after falling over and over again. [NOT YET WRITTEN]

Ascension can be found at the Half-Life/Evangelion crossover section of Fanfiction.net and has its own TVTropes page. The author amitakartok is a member of the Spacebattles.com forums.