Aeon Entelechy Evangelion (ANE rewrite)
- Thread starter EarthScorpion
- Start date
Damn it! I thought ES had updated!
... wait, that's me.
Yah. No bumpin plz.
... wait, that's me.
Yah. No bumpin plz.
Jonen C
F.M.D.G.
- Location
- Lincopense, Ostrogothia, Suecia
Naw, we just know how to control our reactions. See, in this setting, bad things tend to happen if you react violently... Well anything really, but mostly to things not going the way you plan.Chuut-Riit said:Be glad the folks following this story are a rather civil lot..
Jonen C
F.M.D.G.
- Location
- Lincopense, Ostrogothia, Suecia
Interesting points...
Huh. You know, I think it's a sign that ES has been neglecting this fic and not updating but...
I wasn't terrified beyond rational thought at the prospect of an update when I saw this thread had new posts in it.
...
Huh. You know, I think it's a sign that ES has been neglecting this fic and not updating but...
I wasn't terrified beyond rational thought at the prospect of an update when I saw this thread had new posts in it.
...
FourthWall
Love & Destroy
- Location
- Chiraq
...Why the fuck would you (or anyone, really) want to be the Roger Ebert of fanfiction, Ford?
I'd argue about ES capturing Ogata's Shinji, or the relative merit of attempting to capture Ogata's Shinji in fanfiction, but that's because I'm obsessed with using the most derivative of fanworks to say different things within and about the medium it exists in.
JB: the schoolkids were normal; Touji's whole Bardiel character arc is what happens when a normal kid (with no creepy Oedipal ties to the organization) is held over a barrel to pilot something he doesn't understand. Shinji's as fucked as the other main Eva kids, we just don't get it all at once. Thinking Shinji is in any way normal is odd.
I'd argue about ES capturing Ogata's Shinji, or the relative merit of attempting to capture Ogata's Shinji in fanfiction, but that's because I'm obsessed with using the most derivative of fanworks to say different things within and about the medium it exists in.
JB: the schoolkids were normal; Touji's whole Bardiel character arc is what happens when a normal kid (with no creepy Oedipal ties to the organization) is held over a barrel to pilot something he doesn't understand. Shinji's as fucked as the other main Eva kids, we just don't get it all at once. Thinking Shinji is in any way normal is odd.
Again, as before, pretty much everything that FordPrefect says is true, especially in his criticism of ANE. There is a reason that I rebooted it, you know, and that reason was largely that the cludged together nature of the fic was showing too much, for the things that I wanted to do with it. It was built on bad foundations, really, planned by an untrained architect.
Like this allegation;
For AEE, I have been a lot, lot stricter on what I'll allow myself. I have word documents with information on the tech that the NEG has, and on many of the secretive groups. I've sat down, and plotted together this chain of influence, where the original Project Evangelion was this collection of brilliant scientists all over the planet, and how the ones that survived took that expertise to spin-offs; the Achtzig Group owes as much to the work done on the MAGI and the Eva LITAN systems as the Engel Group does to the actual combat stuff.
But, really? You know what I think was the most important thing I did for AEE, before I started writing it; why there was that long pause between the end of ANE and the first proper chapter coming out? I sat down, and watched the entire series of NGE, and EoE. Twice. No making notes, no thinking about anything else. I just sat down and watched the series, trying to purge myself of fanon concepts (I got started with NGE with Thousand Shinji, which was probably bad, because that's to an extent a deconstruction of the super!Shinji fic archetype), trying to even wipe the characterisation of the ANE characters (because Shinji, for one, had been really contaminated by Kyon).
And I found that... wait a minute, I actually really like Shinji. He's not a wuss, or a wimp, or some sissy who needs to be fixed. I actually like him a lot more than most other protagonists, because yes, he's flawed, and yes, he doesn't want to be doing this, but he still does it, damn it. And, actually, his story is important, and interesting.
He doesn't need to be fixed. All he needs is for events to go in his favour for once in his life. Now, of course, I'm not going to give him that, but it's a vital thing I found I really liked about Eva on the pre-AEE rewatch; the fact that the everything-was-going-wrongness was balanced on a knife edge, and only if people had opened up more, had accepted the pain of the Hedgehog, things would have gone differently. Shinji-as-a-person is fine; if you really want to do a fix-fic (a proper one), relatively small changes to the canon storyline can do wonders for him.
Of course, I also want to punch ReShinji in the face.
Oh, yeah, that's the other thing. I read a really interesting essay (which I now can't find the link for), which was talking about the balance, in fan-fic, between changes in characterisation, and changes in setting. As you say, in fact, because I've changed the setting so much, the only characterisation changes I can really permit myself are the ones which adapt them to the setting, rather than changes for the sake of it. Shinji has to be like Shinji, or else I'm writing about a character not like Shinji in a setting not like NGE, and by that point, I might as well be writing Original Fiction, which I can at least get paid for.
Likewise, just watching Eva again reminded me that a lot of the stuff that the Evas do is pretty impressive, and that was helped by the stuff that ANE!Evas were starting to do by the end of ANE.
To be frank, they are Mother-Fucking Cyborg Gods. Or at least something Freudian. And I wasn't showing them enough respect in ANE. Hence, the AEE ones are underestimated by the NEG, because they're only the size of a small corvette, and are underpowered by conventional standards; they're not that weak.
...
And, yes, I know that ANE!CATO was, although better written that the early parts of ANE, a dragging-on technowank. There's so much chaff that can be cut out; chaff which, worse, was making me lose focus on the Evas. I wouldn't be surprised if AEE!CATO is half the length of the ANE one.
...
Anyway, for those fans who did sit through this self-indulgence, the chapters being worked on, and is up to 12,175 words.
Like this allegation;
You know why it feels like FEAR was tagged on like an afterthought? It was. I'd been playing Project Origin about the time I was writing Rei 01 for ANE, and I started to get thinking about how the series shared themes of souls, of links to mothers, and of unethical experiments done on creepy girls, and wondering if they really had just vat-grown Rei, or if they'd done it the Tielaxu way. It started just as a throwaway reference, as is the way of bad fanfic writers I still do it, for mook characters, but I normally disguise it now, and use it as a way of getting pregen characters, rather than a "lol, look, her mother is Alma". and then exploded.
For AEE, I have been a lot, lot stricter on what I'll allow myself. I have word documents with information on the tech that the NEG has, and on many of the secretive groups. I've sat down, and plotted together this chain of influence, where the original Project Evangelion was this collection of brilliant scientists all over the planet, and how the ones that survived took that expertise to spin-offs; the Achtzig Group owes as much to the work done on the MAGI and the Eva LITAN systems as the Engel Group does to the actual combat stuff.
But, really? You know what I think was the most important thing I did for AEE, before I started writing it; why there was that long pause between the end of ANE and the first proper chapter coming out? I sat down, and watched the entire series of NGE, and EoE. Twice. No making notes, no thinking about anything else. I just sat down and watched the series, trying to purge myself of fanon concepts (I got started with NGE with Thousand Shinji, which was probably bad, because that's to an extent a deconstruction of the super!Shinji fic archetype), trying to even wipe the characterisation of the ANE characters (because Shinji, for one, had been really contaminated by Kyon).
And I found that... wait a minute, I actually really like Shinji. He's not a wuss, or a wimp, or some sissy who needs to be fixed. I actually like him a lot more than most other protagonists, because yes, he's flawed, and yes, he doesn't want to be doing this, but he still does it, damn it. And, actually, his story is important, and interesting.
He doesn't need to be fixed. All he needs is for events to go in his favour for once in his life. Now, of course, I'm not going to give him that, but it's a vital thing I found I really liked about Eva on the pre-AEE rewatch; the fact that the everything-was-going-wrongness was balanced on a knife edge, and only if people had opened up more, had accepted the pain of the Hedgehog, things would have gone differently. Shinji-as-a-person is fine; if you really want to do a fix-fic (a proper one), relatively small changes to the canon storyline can do wonders for him.
Of course, I also want to punch ReShinji in the face.
Oh, yeah, that's the other thing. I read a really interesting essay (which I now can't find the link for), which was talking about the balance, in fan-fic, between changes in characterisation, and changes in setting. As you say, in fact, because I've changed the setting so much, the only characterisation changes I can really permit myself are the ones which adapt them to the setting, rather than changes for the sake of it. Shinji has to be like Shinji, or else I'm writing about a character not like Shinji in a setting not like NGE, and by that point, I might as well be writing Original Fiction, which I can at least get paid for.
Likewise, just watching Eva again reminded me that a lot of the stuff that the Evas do is pretty impressive, and that was helped by the stuff that ANE!Evas were starting to do by the end of ANE.
To be frank, they are Mother-Fucking Cyborg Gods. Or at least something Freudian. And I wasn't showing them enough respect in ANE. Hence, the AEE ones are underestimated by the NEG, because they're only the size of a small corvette, and are underpowered by conventional standards; they're not that weak.
...
And, yes, I know that ANE!CATO was, although better written that the early parts of ANE, a dragging-on technowank. There's so much chaff that can be cut out; chaff which, worse, was making me lose focus on the Evas. I wouldn't be surprised if AEE!CATO is half the length of the ANE one.
...
Anyway, for those fans who did sit through this self-indulgence, the chapters being worked on, and is up to 12,175 words.
Shinr
Lurking since December '98
In addition to that, most of them probably tried to fix him using Spencer's Shinji as a base, and I'm of opinion that the dub exaggerated the characters.Ford Prefect said:
If you're a referring to his "Give Ayanami Back!!" moment, at least his actions doomed the world as a result, and unlike the TTGL protagonists who usually believe that it will work out when they are putting the world in risk in their usual escapades, Shinji simply doesn't care.EarthScorpion said:
Also waiting for the last two Rebuild movies to come out before passing final judgment on all the changes, for all we know Anno is probably just trolling us.
P.S: For those who don't know, Eclipse Phase's newest book Gatecrashing was released. May it turn out to be a good read (we don't need another Mortal Remains) so that ES could gather more stuff for AEE.
Shinr
Lurking since December '98
I doubt that AEE!CATO would be shorter, hell, ES said a long time ago that ANE!CATO was planned to be much, much shorter, two chapters max, but his muse took over and by the time he stopped the thing was way too big.
Just look at AEE now, its now 2/3 of total wordcount of ANE and it's still on the Ramiel equivalent fight, where in ANE we would be in the beginning of CATO.
Just look at AEE now, its now 2/3 of total wordcount of ANE and it's still on the Ramiel equivalent fight, where in ANE we would be in the beginning of CATO.
I know what you mean. ES fics are the only ones where I get a feeling of apprehension when I receive the update message.Jonen C said:
No. You misunderstand. I had watched it (once). But my perceptions were fundamentally tainted by the fact that I had been introduced to the franchise through fanfiction (and also tainted by the fact that I watched Haruhi very soon afterwards, and Haruhi is basically an Eva Elseworlds, where Asuka is a socoipathic godling, Shinji is snarkier, Rei is an alien data entity, and Kaworu is a more major character).Ford Prefect said:
It was more of a cleansing thing, to actually go back to basics, and look at the actual characterisation, rather than the accumulated fanon detritus.
Yes, I do understand your main point. I was just clarifying.Ford Prefect said:
Also, to divert;
I have no objections to the Nia thing. Seriously. It was the best way it could have ended, and did make perfect sense for that overall theme.Ford Prefect said:
My objections come from three things;
- The way they cunningly killed Rossiu in the timeskip, and replaced him with a strawman.
- The fact that, somehow, they managed to make a giant space battle boring, which is a terminal sin. The problem was that you always knew that they were going to win, and so you were watching to see how they won, and you just knew towards the end that they were going to win by hotblooded shouting and drills. And if the destination is known, and the road there is known and boring... why bother watching? The fact that the galaxy throwing mecha was just another mecha, of the kind that we'd been watching for 20+ episodes, and therefore the galaxies were nothing more than pretty graphics that didn't change it at all from Gurren-Laggen, say, throwing rocks on the surface of the planet, didn't help, because all of the space sections had no real sense of scale.
- The FUCKING KAMINA FANPERSONS, out-of-universe.
FourthWall
Love & Destroy
- Location
- Chiraq
1: Eh, he acted Wrong Genre Savvy (thinking he was in a real robot anime/a universe where things didn't literally run on nonsense and the Rule of Cool). He also had to succor an ungrateful populace who had become far removed from the original exploits of the Gurren-Dan. Finally, said members of the Gurren-Dan had no real clue what they were doing; the only sensible one amongst them buggered off to be a hot schoolteacher.EarthScorpion said:
2. Personal preference derived from a distaste for standard Super Robot tropes. Makes sense.
3. Yeah, fuck those guys, but stupid people in fandom isn't a new thing; you write Evafic, so you should know that backwards and forwards by now.
Rei 02, In Fire And Ashes / Some mourning words
Happy New Year!
Chapter 12
Rei 02, In Fire And Ashes / Some mourning words
EVANGELION
"If thou openest not the gate to let me enter,
I will break the door, I will wrench the lock,
I will smash the door-posts, I will force the doors.
I will bring up the dead to eat the living.
And the dead will outnumber the living."
The airlock deep in the bowls of the Geocity sealed itself shut, cutting off the painfully bright blue light from the containment chamber. With a sigh, Gendo Ikari relaxed slightly, and peeled the argoggles from his face, dropping them in the disposal bin. They were soon followed by his ear protectors, and the undyed cotton overall.
The man stood fully naked, eyes closed, as chill mist filled the chamber, thick and swirling and cloying, its scent washing away the odour of the place on the other side of the door. A thin, colourless condensation dripped from his warm body, and he shuddered. The call of instinct was too strong to resist; not when the coldness touched his flesh, rivulets running down over the thin white lines which crisscrossed his back and hands, and dripping in long, stringy drops from the uncapped socket points for the sorcerer's implants.
The sudden furnace heat was nothing compared to the chill, and the warm water that washed the now-dried micromachine gel off was positively pleasant by contrast. Spitting out a foul-tasting residue, he stepped through to the next decontamination chamber, snatching up the towel and dabbing at his eyes, sinking his face into the absorbent material, before he began to dry the rest of his body.
As Gendo dressed himself again, motions hurried, his eyes unconsciously avoided the transparent window on one side of the room where, on the other side of a one-way mirror, an opaque white box, corners smoothed to nanoscopic precision, was undergoing its own decontamination procedure.
'703' was all it said, in big black letters. That, and the Greek character 'α', a black symbol in the centre of a yellow circle. The warning for arcane materials.
Gendo Ikari had descended to Irkalla to obtain a way to tilt the odds in their favour. And this box, and its contents, was his weapon.
It was the start of a brand new day for the students at the Academy, filled with fun and excitement. Even if they wished that it wasn't, especially when the 'fun' included an evacuation notice. The only mercy was that the school was deep enough down, that it, in itself, counted as a valid evacuation shelter, and so it was not necessary to move. This came with the attendant downside, however, that there were still going to be some lessons. The entire class was muted, with a considerable fraction deciding to use the tutor group period to catch up sleep.
"Come on," Hikary said, folding her arms and glaring around the class. "I know it's Thursday, but do you all have to be like this?"
There was a mix of groans and vaguely assent-sounding noises from the subdued figures.
"Not my fault, Class Rep," Toja managed, voice a little muffled by the way his face was mashed into the desk. "I didn't get much sleep last night."
"How is that not your..."
"Face it, Hik," said Ayesha, with a shrug, "people just kinda suck."
There was a clatter as Beautriu, a tanned girl with short, mousy-brown hair, managed to trip over her own shoelaces, and send both her arglasses and her bag full of books spilling over the floor. There was applause, and even a few wolf-whistles, which were cut short when Hikary straightened up, and directed a glare around the room.
"Case in point," Ayesha added, smirking.
Hikary glanced at her fellow xenomix. "That wasn't where I was heading," she said. "I was just wondering why everyone seems so tired... more tired than normal for a Thursday, that is."
"Yes, well... doesn't make it not true," remarked the Student Council Representative. "People are lazy. I mean, I hate Thursdays too, but no more than any other day."
The pig-tailed girl shook her head. "It does make it not relevant. For one, you hate the world generally."
The other orange-eyed girl sighed, adjusting her headscarf slightly. "Because... I refer you to my first point. I did stand for Council on a policy of jaded cynicism and misanthropy, after all, and I got in, so... meh." She shrugged. "And on that topic, you did get the minutes from the last meeting, right?"
"Yes." Hikary nodded. "I hope everyone will do their best, with the minimum of fuss. It shouldn't be too bad; the class play is usually quite popular."
"Class play?" someone asked from directly behind Hikary, panting slightly.
"Good morning, Taly," the Class Representative replied, flatly. "Yes, class play. You're late, by the way."
The other girl shrugged. "He's not here yet," she said, referring to the teacher, "so I'm not late."
"That's not how it works, and you know it."
"Plus, I have a totally valid reason. You know, there are evacuations everywhere. I don't know if you have been paying attention, but there are. And even before the notice came through, the central dome in Princechurch was sealed off completely, and there are delays all along the Ascension line. It's a mess trying to get down from higher in the city. Which, you know, you'd know if you weren't you."
Hikary narrowed her eyes. "Maybe," she said. "Now, Ayesha," she said, turning away from the girl with the dyed red streaks in her hair, "back on the topic... perhaps without any interruptions," she added, sweetly.
Dabbing carefully at her face with the wet towel, wincing every time the skin shifted over the bruising around her forearms and lower back, Ritsuko stared at herself in the mirror. She ran her tongue over dry, cracked lips, tasting blood.
"Self-inspection reveals epidermal haematomas on face, specifically over the cheeks and around the jaw." She winced again, as she added, voice rough, "Discomfort in talking, dry throat, sore eyes. Majority of tissue damage is located around grounding implants in soft-tissue, as expected. Self-examination complete. Now, will you let me out of here?"
[Medichine initial diagnosis is still in process. Please wait.]
"Sorry, Dr Akagi," added a Nazzadi-accented woman, the subtle inflections in her voice distinguishing her from the LAI, "but you know the rules. After a ritual of this magnitude, we have to check for organ damage, and...
"There is something rather more important right now," Ritsuko said, her jaw locked. "So, forgive me if I..."
[Medichine initial diagnosis is still in process. Please wait.]
"Dr Akagi, you know the rules. We need to make sure that any bleedthrough aftereffects aren't going to kill you. So, please, wait while we wait for the medichines to provide a diagnosis."
There was an uncomfortable silence.
"Okay, it's coming in," the medical technician announced over the speakers. "Some minor internal bleeding..."
"Where?" The word was short, terse.
"Uh... liver, small intestine... grade 1."
"Nothing in anything immediately important, then?"
The nazzady paused. "Uh... no. It'll be dealt with by the medichines, but you will need to take it easy for the next few hours, and you shouldn't be nanoscrubbed until they've sealed off the bleeding."
"Of course I plan to take it easy," Ritsuko lied. "Now..."
There was a faint sigh from the medical technician. "Just wait a moment, please." A container slid out from the wall, containing a white jumpsuit and attendant jacket. "We'll need to make sure that you're plugged into the monitoring gear in case of complications."
"Yes, yes," the blond snapped, already threading the cable out from the neck of the clothing to the port just under her left ear, before roughly pulling on the suit. "It's not like I haven't done this before. Now, can I..."
"Yes, I'm reactivating your data access rights. The sealed bag has..." the other woman noted that the scientist had already torn it open, to get to the equipment. "Yes," she sighed. Scientists were all the same, in her experience. Pure sorcerers tended to treat their bodies better.
"Right, so," Dr Akagi said to herself, as the initialisation text ran along the insides of her harcontacts. "Come on... come on, ah. Athena," she began, addressing her muse, "check mail. Filter for relevancy based on List 3."
[Yes, doctor. You have 149 new relevant messages.] the LAI said, formally.
Ritsuko blinked, heart suddenly racing. What had happened while she was out of contact? "Sort by urgency," she instructed the LAI, as she slipped on the plimsoll-like shoes provided. "Prioritise by relevance: subjects Evangelion, Harbinger-5, Ikari, Harbinger."
[51 of 149 new messages are urgent, doctor.]
"What?" she blurted out loud. Pulling out a stylus from the bag, she began to flick down the list in front of her eyes, rapidly scanning the headers. The door unsealed, and, barely paying attention to what was going on, Ritsuko shuffled out. Pausing for a moment, she told her muse to bring up a route-line for her to follow to get to where the Unit 01 team was working, on the repairs, before resuming the reading that left her blind in one eye.
Her jaw dropped open at the sight of the annotated diagrams.
All across Eastern Europe, the fires of conflict raged. All across Eastern Europe, the New Earth Government was being pushed back. The Migou had committed heavily to this front, and so the forces which tore into the human lines with ruthless efficiency were not the normal mix of Nazzadi Loyalists, backed up and honed by Migou units. No, these were pure Migou formations, filled with the technological horrors of the fungi from Yuggoth, interspersed by the Loyalist Elite, who were, in mind, more akin to their masters than to their genetic source.
A flash of light blinded the midday sun, as an antimatter warhead blew a glowing crater into the hillside, the direct hit crushing the NEG fortification dug into the geography like a tin can. The Migou fliers which had broken away just before launch returned, black knife-shapes tearing through the air and slashing at those human gunships which had survived the shockwave, the aircraft now denuded of their surface to air support. The sudden shift in the tactical situation was enough to allow the silent, ellipsoid shapes of the Migou heavy ground units, and their strange mecha, which approached the technoorganic aesthetic from the other side, to break through. Beams of relativistic plasma illuminated the contrails of worryingly smart missiles, as blasts reaped their way through the armoured units of humanity.
Second Lieutenant Salou Danda swore in his head, over and over again, and tried to crouch down further, to make his Dawn an even smaller target on this battlefield. Half his squadron was already KIA, and with the loss of the firebase, they certainly didn't have enough forces in this area to hold off. And without Lieutenant Santiago, they didn't have the drones, and so were blind... not that drones would be much use in this emwar environment, he thought, staring morosely at the haze on his passive radar. The clouds of interfering micromachines and nanomachines released by both sides were staining the air silver, replacing the ones destroyed by the blast, and high above, the sun was once more a blood-red disc, as if it was dusk, despite the fact that it was not even midday yet.
"Orders, sir?" It was Tirtzah, over the tightbeam laser.
The man took a single breath, and let it out, slowly. They had been forwards recon for the base; that was, obviously, now useless. Their EWAC aircraft and drones were down, so they were cut off, completely. They could try to retreat, but the emfog was dense enough that the damnable Migou sensors would have a worrying chance of seeing their stealthed mecha, just from the displacement patterns left in the clouds. It was one of the reasons that both sides used them, after all.
"We hold," he lased back. "Go Ghost-Niner, Lima-Lima."
"Roger."
It was that simple. Two Dawn-class reconnaissance mecha couldn't do much against the armoured legions of the Migou. Even if Tirtzah was the heavy weapons specialist, she only had one ACMRM left, and a one tonne-yield warhead was not enough. Not when there were Mantises out there, which weren't even always mission-killed by a close proximity blast.
But wait, wait and watch, while the emfog dispersed and settled to the ground like silvery snow, wait and track the Migou movements, and then try to re-establish contact, to report their findings? That was a worthy cause.
You didn't give up, and you didn't throw your life away. To do either, was to court extinction.
~'/|\'~
Evangelion Unit 01 was a titan covered in ants that swarmed and crawled across its surface; exosuited workers and autonomous drones alike replacing damaged external plating. The parts which had come from Unit 02 were obvious; they were the crimson of that Evangelion's test colours, and a sharp contrast to the intact parts of the armour, which had been stripped down to its base purple to check for microfractures.
Dr Sarany Akanubalaki vy Saranupakalarti, head of the Unit 01 team, brushed a cowlick of black hair away from her eyes, and continued, "... and that about summarises the repairs. To cut it short, Unit 01 is nothing more than functional. We did our best, but..." she bit a lip, "... there's only so much you can do. The internal damage is enough that after this is over, if we're all alive, we're going to have to strip off the chest, and put it through a localised moult-regrowth. There's a hole in its tissue, in its chest, about the size of a tank, once we cut out the crystal-contaminated tissues. It goes all the way through. It's a miracle it missed anything we couldn't replace. Four of the D-Engine/D-Sink pairs were hit by that alone. And there's more. I can tell you that any activity is going to damage it more, but," she shrugged, "you're going to say that it's an unavoidable necessity, aren't you?"
"Yes," Ritsuko said, tersely. "Now..."
The nazzady fixed her eyes on her immediate superior. "It's almost ready to move, when the inspection is done but... I don't like the additional modifications we have to make." Her red eyes were narrow, as she added, "I'm not blind, Ritsuko. I can recognise what the modifications are for. But the orders came straight from the Representative, and what Ikari wants..." She paused. "What the senior Ikari wants, that is," she corrected herself. "I doubt Test Pilot Ikari will want it. But... eh."
The blond nodded in slightly peeved agreement.
"Of course," the other woman continued, looking at Ritsuko from the corner of her eyes, "have you checked that the Test Pilot will actually be piloting? I wouldn't, if I were him."
"Mis... Major Katsuragi is seeing to it," Dr Akagi said, "or least, she should be. She's Operations, so the pilots are her responsibility. We just need to ensure that the equipment is in the best possible state for her."
The head of the Unit 01 team acknowledged the mild rebuke with a nod.
"Dr Akagi." The voice came up from her PCPU.
Reaching down, Ritsuko acknowledged the call, even as Sarany turned on her heel, and hurried off. "Yes, Tola?" she acknowledged the head of the Unit 00 team.
"Unit 00 has been fully recovered. I've sent you the damage report from the sortie, but you haven't responded yet."
Inwardly, the Director of Science sighed. They had recruited Dr Sopheap from the Engel Group, where she had been in charge of frontline testing and deployment for one of their Species sub-Projects, and it showed. "No, Tola, I haven't," she said, already bringing up a harcontact display to read yet another Urgent message. "I have, literally, just got out of a ritual."
"I do require your formal authorisation to proceed," the other woman chided her.
Eyes flickering across the display, Ritsuko scan-read the message, and the attached diagrams. "Are you sure you can get the repair work complete?"
"Yes." The word was solid, confident. "It's a B-2 part, but the hand design is the same. It's very fortunate that the Unit only took a glancing blow like that. It'll make the repairs much easier... which we will want, if we want Unit 00 to carry a handheld weapon. Oh, and the Test Pilot's synch ratio was low enough that she didn't even take mild sympathetic burns," Dr Sopheap added, as an afterthought.
"Don't do it," Ritsuko ordered.
"What?" The tone was confused.
"I mean, 'permission is refused'," she said acerbically. "That's the arm we're installing the blast shield on. She doesn't need a hand for that arm."
"But..."
"Get the Unit loaded onto the train ASAP. You can finish the important repairs in the L2 Geocity. A hand isn't important compared to the extra armour."
She could hear the gritted teeth in the, "Yes, Doctor," and the cursory way that the line was cut. Ritsuko didn't care. Like too many of the staff recruited from the Engel Group, Dr Sopheap tended to treat the Evangelions as little more than enlarged versions of their child-technologies. As a result, Tola was looking as this as the loss of the primary weapons system of the Unit. But that was not that the mission profile that Major Katsuragi had designed called for, and so, simply, it was not needed.
It was that simple.
Shinji Ikari awoke again to a subtle swaying motion. Like a babe in his mother's arms, he lay, eyes closed, surrounded by warmth, gently rocked from side to side. Slowly, one hand crept up, to rest upon the smooth skin of his chest, to feel the thud of his heart and the rhythmic pulsation of his breath.
It felt good. Through the depths of bone-deep weariness, there was a tiny spark of exaltation. He was alive, and he was warm, and it was good.
Two blue eyes slowly opened, feeling gummy and sticky. Though slightly blurry and indistinct, Shinji could not recognise the... no, it wasn't an entry plug. It wasn't curved enough, and it was the wrong colour. What was the word? Ah, yes. Ceiling. It was an unfamiliar ceiling that arched above him, low, clean snow-white, and covered in what looked like handholds. It was a utilitarian thing. It was something designed for a role, and, hence, it would carry out its role.
Somewhere, from outside his field of vision, there was the snap of a book being closed, and the faint, wet sound of a lid being reattached to a pen. With an effort, he tilted his head, to gaze upon two frigid grey eyes, locked upon his face. Two grey eyes, in a milk-coloured face, situated above a white plug-suit. It had obviously been used; he could smell the LCL, which plucked at the chords of memory like a knife. It was a scent that both repulsed and called to him.
The heartbeat became a hummingbird's wings. He knew her from somewhere. She was familiar. Very, very familiar.
"Ayanami," he croaked, through disobedient vocal cords. "Rei."
The girl tucked her book back into army-green rucksack by her chair, along with the pen, and then removed a PCPU. All the time, her gaze never left his. "I have come to provide necessary equipment for the as-yet-unnamed operation to engage Harbinger-5 again, in defence of London-2, as well as the interim briefing."
His eyes began to droop shut again.
"I bought you a meal." The girl paused. "There are also stimulants. The dosage requirements are on the packet," she continued, standing up. With a faint clink, she lifted the tray in one hand, and, the other hand working its way across the ceiling, she made her way to place the tray beside his bed. The clink of the plastic was reassuringly solid.
"My... head...muscles... everything aches. And tired."
"Medical micromachines are currently rebuilding nerve connections throughout your body. The discomfort is tolerable," Rei said, shifting slightly to unconsciously flex her right arm. "Now," something heavy impacted his legs, as she dropped a sealed packet in black on his legs, "here is a fresh plug suit. You will wear this plug suit on the operation."
"You're... okay?" he managed, ignoring her comments. It seemed a little unfair to Shinji, in his current state that, she seemed to be so completely untouched by anything, while he was lying here incapacitated.
The girl tilted her head slightly. "I took only minor fractures in the first engagement against Harbinger-5, and they were self-induced in my attempts at evasion," she stated. "I have also been deployed again, while you were dead. I lost a hand."
Shinji frowned. She appeared to have both hands. And... "I w-was dead?" he stammered, his breathing suddenly laboured.
"It was not the hand of this body. I was piloting the Evangelion at the time," Rei added. "My synchronisation ratio with Evangelion Unit 00 was low enough that I did not experience sympathetic damage."
"W-wait. I. Dead?" Shinji managed. It was a matter of some importance to him.
"Yes." The girl blinked. "You got better," she said, no shift in intonation at all.
There was spluttering from the figure on the bed, which turned into coughing. "I. I. W-wait, do you just mean 'clinically'. Not dead, dead?" he asked, weakly.
"You were clinically dead, yes." Rei paused, and continued, her voice sounding as if she were reciting something she had memorised. "We are on a heavy transport train, connecting Ostberlin-2 and London-2. Evangelion Units 00 and 01 are also on this train, repairs having been made to them, to get them operational. That will not prevent your deployment."
Shinji winced. That had been an objection he might have bought up, had he thought of it. That she had already pre-empted it was... he yawned, and closed his eyes.
The cold voice of the white-haired girl still managed to piece his fatigue. "You are to eat, and take the dosage of stimulants provided, as to ensure that you conform to the timetable."
Slowly, groggily, the boy shook his head, but nonetheless managed to force himself to sit up, muscles in his back screaming at unexpected use. Opening his eyes, he started down at the plug suit, neatly packaged. The '01' visible on the front seemed to be winking at him.
"You will wish to put that on. It will be cold outside."
Shinji looked up, to see the girl's head tilted slightly, as she stared down at him. No comprehension dawned on him. She stared back. Shinji shook his head, trying to dispel some of the blurriness which still hung over him. "I'm... what? I... what are you talking about?"
"You are naked."
He squinted. He looked down. Huh. So he was, under the sheets. He hadn't noticed that. And the act of sitting up had made them roll away. He wouldn't have been aware of that, unless Rei had pointed... Rei... girl... naked... naked Rei...warm... exposed...
A squeak, and a hurried grab of bedsheets left him in a somewhat less exposed state. His head drooped, the fringe of dark hair just protruding into his vision, to shield him from the stare of the white girl. "Sorry," he muttered.
"For what?" There seemed to be a hint of curiosity in Rei's voice.
"Because... um... well, just, sorry." He paused, and swallowed. "I... I've been saying that a lot recently," he remarked, almost to himself, eyes half-closed. "Still... at least we're now even?" Shinji pre-emptively flinched, as he realised just how stupid that statement was.
"You will eat."
The food, if that was what one deigned to call the broth-like drink, looked singularly unappetising to him, and he said as much.
"You will eat," Rei said again, her intonation identical.
"I'm not hungry," he said, turning away, and slumping back down.
"You will eat. You require nutrients."
"Why?"
"To maintain focus while piloting."
Oh. Yes. "Must I?" he asked, the self-pity audible.
"Yes."
"I don't want to," he blurted out. "It... it hurts, and I just want to sleep! You... you can only stand and tell me that I must do it because you haven't had to... do..." he trailed off. After a moment's pause, he looked back at her.
The two grey eyes were fixed on the wall, above his bed. He felt, somehow, that not only was she not looking in his direction, she was not looking in his direction, and that was utterly different.
"Sorry." There it was again. "But... but..." he bit his lip. Indeed, he bit a little too hard, and tasted blood. "I don't ever want to have to do it again."
"Stay here." The unexpected words came through the veil of tiredness.
"What?"
"Stay here. I will pilot. Unit 01 can be reconfigured for me."
There was an odd feeling, almost akin to pressure on a forgotten bruise, deep within his stomach. That they could... would... he blinked. That was what he wanted, wasn't it? "They can do that?" he asked.
"Yes. You know that. Dr Akagi can order such a change." Rei straightened out, subtly. "I will go. You will stay here, in this bed. I may see you afterwards."
The way she said 'bed', despite the lack of audible emotion, nevertheless filled Shinji with an odd feeling of rage, of anger at the way that she was patronising him. "Fine," he snapped back, jolting upright even as his body protested. Wincing, groaning, he nevertheless glared at her.
She did not even look at him, but continued to stare at the wall. "I will inform Dr Akagi that the Third Child is not willing to carry out his duties."
"Yes! They're... they're duties I never wanted, never asked for, never... never ever was really asked about or... or anything! Why? Why should I do it?"
"It is necessary. It must be done by someone." She blinked, once. "Lie back down. You may damage yourself," she said, turning around and heading towards the door. She paused for just a moment there, and there was the slightest twitch of her head, as if she were about to turn around. She did not do so.
"Goodbye," she said, her tone not only cold, but dead.
The door slid shut behind her, and Shinji was left alone, in this white, cold, clinical room, the burning reds and crimsons of rage and shame painting themselves behind his eyeballs. One hand jerked out, and, unlooking, he grabbed the cup. A long slurp resounded through the room, as he took a mouthful of nutrient broth.
It didn't make him feel better.
The OIS perimeter around the building was secure, and growing more so by the minute. The hulking figures of power armour were joined by stationary anti-tank emplacements, the dark-grey-and-blue capsules keeping their anti-armour railguns trained on the designated locations.
Almost all of the people were gone. Only a few, specially chosen, manned the necessary command sections, and they were few indeed, because there was very little that could not be controlled remotely. Humans, no matter their subspecies, were to evacuate away from any instance of Budapest Syndrome.
And yet a fresh armoured truck was permitted past the security cordon at the dome entrance, its wheels silent on the road. The man driving it paused and held an arm out of the window, as his genetics were checked again; as it retracted, he winced, sweeping back his red hair. "We're here," he called back, as he pulled to a stop, at the point where the tank traps blocked the robe.
The side of the van unfolded, and a tall nazzada, his hair combed up into an afro, straightened, unfolding out of the vehicle. Stretching, he cricked his neck, a slight muttered comment providing his opinion of the seats, and stepped out, followed by two, slighter figures. Both women were wearing transparent facemasks, and light armour, but compared to the heavy armour and unmanned vehicles around here, they seemed comically underprotected.
These were specialists, here on the direct orders of Deputy Director Echo. They were aware that armour, or even ANaMiNBC protection, would not help against Budapest Syndrome.
With a nod, and a few curt words, the women strolled in, their eyes alert. The larger man, meanwhile, returned to the vehicle after stretching, and began the process of connecting up all the systems of the building, routed through the OIS containment station outside this dome, back through his vehicles. Any objections were routed through the fact that this team were specialists directly under orders from Deputy Director Echo, the Section Head of the London-2 branch of the OIS, and were promptly withdrawn.
The driver leant back, hands behind his head and an uneasy expression on his face, as muffled curses in Nazzadi resounded through the vehicle's chassis, interspersed with the calm voices of LAI systems, which, for some reason, did not seem to be helping.
Inside the building, though, all was quiet. The two women had already removed their masks. One was blonde, the other darker-haired, but there was a certain similarity in their blandly attractive faces which suggested some relationship.
[So, what do you think, ASPARTAME?] the blond 'said' over her interface, her hands running over the barrel of her stubby, bulky pistol, fingers tapping and stroking it unconsciously. Obviously, she was eventually satisfied, because a button was depressed, and the rails extended and expanded, the systems in the railweapon coming online with a hum. [Authorisation APHRODITE, reconfigure for special ammunition, Classification 'Flayer',] she instructed the weapon's LAI over a link.
[Acknowledged. Please Insert Specified Ammunition Type.]
The darker-haired one shrugged. [The OIS got it contained quickly,] she 'replied'. [And no-one seemed to have stumbled into it when they kicked down the door. So we got... maybe twenty, thirty people in this Budapest? Not much.]
[That's what I was thinking,] the blonde said, sliding the magazine in. There was a tone, and a light on the handle turned green.
[We've had worse,] her companion remarked. There was suddenly... something in her hand, a line of distortion and anomaly and darkness and light and paradox; a vague barb of a sword which seemed to writhe as something alive.
[Yep.] The dark-haired woman shrugged. "Hey, APOSTATE, get them to give us access to local systems, would you?" she asked, verbally, over the comms link. "They still haven't."
"On it." A slight pause, followed with some profanity. "Done," was the next word said which was suitable for polite company.
The blond tapped a button on her PCPU with her thumb, and paused for a moment. "Okay... okay... and, get it open," she said, working her way through the menus.
[Yes. Opening.]
The interior doors opened, and the two women stepped in, sealing the door behind them.
The door to Shinji's room slid open again, and Misato stepped through, her uniform marred by the filter mask slung around her neck and the thick mass of body armour over her torso. Slowly, almost painfully carefully, she picked her way over to his side, one hand always clinging to the nearest ceiling hold.
"Hey," she said, her voice softer than usual. "I think we should tal..."
"No." Shinji's voice was flat, almost dead, as he interrupted. He didn't even meet her gaze, instead keeping his eyes locked on the unfamiliar ceiling. He didn't want to look at her. "No. I'm no-not doing it. I'm not getting back in that th-th-thing. Not again. It killed me." He sucked in a breath. "And... and you said it. Before... when I was feeling all nervous." He swallowed. "You said I wasn't going to be killed. I was. I can't believe I'm saying it, but... clinically dead is still dead, if only for a while!"
There was an uncomfortable silence, only broken by the waver and sway of the train.
"Well," Shinji said, bitterly, shifting slightly to prop himself up on his arms a fraction, before sinking back down. "Aren't you going to s-say something like 'You only died a little bit', or 'You got better', or... or anything? Anything...anything trite to try lessen the fact that it h-h-hurt and I was sort of de-dead and I never want to have to get in that thing again ever!" He swallowed hard, his throat suddenly dry. "It was so... cold," he muttered. "Cold and dark. Except when it wasn't. But... it was... no. Never again."
"No." Misato's voice was quiet, hollow-sounding. "I can't lessen it. I can't justify it. I can't explain it. If Strategic Missile Command hadn't mismanaged the deployment of warheads, we could have hit it with multiple ones, like the ones we initiated in the first attack, and we know that managed to get through the AT-Field. If the Migou hadn't moved interdiction forces into the North Atlantic, Asuka... that's Unit 02's pilot, could have been moved over. If I'd pushed harder, I could have maybe had Unit 02 stationed over in L2 already, and it wouldn't be needed." She slumped down in a chair by the bed, not meeting the boy's gaze. "There's so many ways we could have not needed to do this. But we do need to. And it's a terrible thing." She bit on her lip. "It's wrong that we want you to do this. It's wrong that we need you do this... except we don't. That's the worst thing. This isn't the only option."
"Then why don't you..."
"Because Rei, in Unit 00, doesn't have the fine AT-Field control," the dark-haired woman continued, in that same, broken-sounding voice. "She can't, physically, do it like you could. Remember, she had her first successful start-up test yesterday. So if we use her... we'll have to get her to nearly point-blank range, and even if she survives that, the odds are that she will not survive the use of the weapon."
"So you're getting me to pilot again by putting her in danger." It was a simple statement.
"No." Misato shook her head. "As you said, it left you clinically dead. Believe me, I'll understand if you don't want to. I might not agree, but, believe me, I'll understand. All too well. But I am going to tell you the facts. And this is a fact, that because Rei only has simulator practice, she is worse at AT-Field manipulation than you, has a worse synch ratio, and so will probably die. The MAGI give her odds of survival at about 10%, even if she survives getting into position. You saw what that thing was like; how it was able to target everything. And if she fails, the odds are that we'll need to use the RAPTURE contingency." She lifted her chin slightly. "Do you want to know what RAPTURE is?" she asked.
"Uh..." Shinji frowned, trying to ignore the sudden churning, swirling acidic feel in his stomach, and glanced over at her for the first time. "Well, the word means 'happiness', doesn't it? But I don't th-think that's a happy thing."
She shook her head. "No. Not happy at all. There are enough fusion warheads built into the structure of London-2 to reduce the entire city to something like a three-kilometre deep crater."
"Wh-why? What's so important that you need to..." the boy paused, unable to continue. Unwilling to continue
"Because we can't let them win." The Major's voice had changed; although it was still quiet, it was quiet in the same way that a tiger in the night is quiet; something only made more dangerous by the lack of volume. "We can't let them get any benefit, even from taking a city. And I don't just mean the Harbingers by 'them'. I mean anyone who's not us. Migou, Deep Ones, Stormites, a Harbinger... whoever. They all make use of people. Make people less than people. Use them against us. I don't... we won't let them. Every major arcology is set up the same way. After what I saw in China and after A... it's something I fully agree with." The woman's eyes flickered over to the armoured wall of the train, breaking his gaze. "It's better than the alternative."
Shinji took several shuddering deep breaths, and let them out slowly, feeling the muscles in his chest ache from so little. The idea of such things, that the New Earth Government, the good guys were willing to go to such lengths to stop... "What happens if the Harbinger wins? What will it do?"
"I could tell you," the Major said, still staring at the wall. "And I said earlier, that I was going to tell you the facts. I... I've studied the reports from Harbinger-1 and I w... and looked at some of the after-effects. But, again, just like with RAPTURE, I'll ask you again. Do you really want to know?"
There was silence. Then, "No," Shinji said, staring back up at the ceiling. "I d-don't want to know. B-but," he stammered. "Do I have a chance about not-knowing? You're not going to tell me anyway?"
There was a single nod from the woman. "No. If you don't want me to, I won't force you to listen."
"Then, as I said, I don't want to know." The boy paused. "You look like you know, and... no, I don't want to. But..." and he swallowed hard, trying to search for the right words "... I really don't want to go against... to get in the Unit. B-but, from what you say?" Images of Unit 00 being annihilated in Harbinger-born radiance, swiftly followed by the faces of his classmates, of everyone he might have seen in London-2, throbbed in his head. "I don't have a choice."
"No. You have a choice."
"No... that's n-not quite the same thing," the boy said, wanting to gesture with his hands to explain, but feeling too weak to even manage that. "I mean... well, you're giving me a choice. But I don't have a choice. I want to run away, far away, and never see any of this again. But I won't." He let out a weak chuckle. "And can't, too. I mean, I'd collapse before I got..." the words were broken by coughing.
A watery smile crept onto Misato's face, at the poor joke. "You'll do it," she said. It was not a question.
"Yes." Several deep breaths. "Yes. I don't know if I can actually," he winced, "actually physically do it, but... I want to do it. I have the intent of doing it. Because... I can't not."
Stepping over to the side of the bed, Misato squatted down, head at his eye level, reaching out to squeeze his hand. "I'm sorry, Shinji," she said, in a tone carefully purged of elation. "But... thank you." Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a widescreen PCPU. "Now, see this?" she asked, thumbing it on.
Shinji nodded. "It's one of the training placards? Isn't it? For the AT-Field stuff." He frowned. It was notably more complicated than any of the other ones; the three dimensional image a mess of layered red and blue lines. It had some resemblance to the 'spike' shape they used to show him how to surround a blade, but... different.
"Correct. We need you to memorise this. Completely. Perfectly. It will be the only way that you can fire the modified LANCE system we're fitting to Unit 01." She swallowed. "I am going to explain what this will involve. Please," she almost begged him, "listen to everything that I have to say before you say anything."
~'/|\'~
And now the two women stepped out of the building, masks back on, weapons no longer there, stepping promptly into the decontamination centre that the OIS had erected. They showed up clean, and there was a sigh of relief from the watchers and their handler.
"Captain Joyeuse," the blonde said, opening a link to the OIS team outside. "We have examined the bravo-type ENE."
Ori, safe away from the... the thing, shuddered slightly. Those disposal and examination experts were far, far braver than her; she'd had nightmares after the bit when they'd explained Budapest Syndrome to her, and the knowledge that one of the people on her team, Gjorgji, had actually been in Budapest in '67... well, she didn't envy the man. "Yes, Agent Biksisu?" she asked, trying to keep her voice calm.
"It seems to have been a deliberate formation," the specialist stated, with a slight shrug, which Ori felt was rather inappropriate. "That's both good and bad. Good, because it hasn't self-catalysed, and so it has a small absorption radius. Bad, because there's someone out there who knows how to do this."
The captain paled. "I... I see."
"The site has been contained adequately," the darker-haired woman added. "Grade 5b sterilisation will be required, to purge the ENE. I would also recommend that you flood the section with carbon monoxide, to prevent any aerobic lifeforms from getting near, and adding to the coalescence. I have attached the recommendation to our initial report."
"Yes... yes, that makes sense."
"We have been ordered to another site," she continued, her brow furrowing slightly. "This looks to be a busy day."
"And to think that this was meant to be our day off," her co-worker added. "A city-wide evacuation notice, and all these Budapests. Well, we're certainly earning our monies today."
Captain Joyeuse swallowed slightly. Gallows humour. How... funny. "Understood. I'll just need you to submit your provisional containment report, before we can acknowledge this."
"Talk to Agent Garta," the blonde said. "We've given him our data; he's the team leader."
"Okay, I understand." Ori sighed, and cut the link, letting her head slump into her hands. Looking around, at the faces of her colleagues, she was not alone in this feeling. A deliberately caused instance of Budapest Syndrome.
This was bad.
~'/|\'~
It was now late afternoon, and the reduced timetable which the Academy had put on had finished. It was questionable how much attention had been paid, of course, because the combination of widespread tiredness, and the natural inattentiveness when a full-scale warning was still in place, had unified their efforts to make the intricacies of mathematics lose their lustre, somewhat.
The fact that there had been two absences; 'Ayanami, Rei' and 'Ikari, Shinji', had been noted. The Academy was a highly selective school, designed to train the next generation of world leaders and scientists for their future careers, and to engender a love of knowledge and the ability to solve puzzles in its students. They were more than capable of putting facts like 'Shinji and Rei are not here' and 'last time something like this happened, some kind of monster attacked' together.
"I wish we were allowed up to the surface to watch!" moaned Kensuke, sitting at his desk, and glaring at the security notice warning of restricted Grid access. "I bet they're being deployed right now. Just think of it; two shining titans, weapons firing bright high energy lasers and plasma, valiantly standing forth against the abominations which imperil humanity. And Nazzadity," he added, with a sideways glance at Toja, which somewhat ruined his attempts to puff up his chest. "And then come the large explosions and the awesome flawless victory!"
Red eyes were rolled at that comment. "It's not that pretty," the taller boy said. "It's messy, and the things are terrifying, and... delo kivilita pla kontrunosesa, he's braver than me if he chooses to do that."
"Yeah, well, you got to actually see a battle," the human said, crossing his arms, and pouting slightly. "Why'd it have to show up at your Social Work Task, not mine, when I was actually... argh. I'm thinking the fates are conniving to stop me from ever seeing an Eva in action. What I'd give to be let in the cockpit of one! I wouldn't even need to be allowed to pilot. I'd just want to get to touch, to see it!"
Toja looked away, and the other boy sucked in a breath.
"Sorry," he apologised, leaning back a bit. "I forgot... how is your sister, anyway?"
"Actually... they've got her in physio right now," Toja admitted, with a weak smile. "She managed to take her first steps... her second first steps, come to think of it, anyway, well, she's really wobbly, but..." he choked up. "I saw how... hard, and I... so proud."
They sat in stoic, and manly, silence for a few moments, before the teacher at the front of the class stood up, his chair scraping along the floor, and cleared his throat.
"Ahem. If you will all... thank you." He coughed. "Yes. I've just received notice that... well, I guess you're all aware that the school serves as an evacuation shelter for other schools too."
"Yeah, the lunch hall was packed with little kids," Ala, sitting on the other side of the class, could be distinctly heard to mutter. "They ran out of chips because of them."
"They've been cooped up in the emergency shelters for most of the day, and so, apart from exercise breaks..."
"It's bad enough at the start of term when the new first years are all there, let alone this."
"Yes, thank you, Ala," the teacher said, with a sigh. "Yes, it's annoying, but you're meant to have more community spirit." He coughed, again. "Well, they've... 'they' being the Headmaster, have decided that we need to spend a few hours stopping small children going stir-crazy, and so each class is being assigned a class of children from another school. We'll be expected to keep them entertained for a while, and also... well, most of the schools are feeder schools for the Academy, so they'll have a chance to see where they'll be able to go, if they're good enough."
"Great," the boy drawled, no longer even attempting to conceal it as a stage whisper.
"Did I mention, Ala, that they'll be counting this as a SWP occasion, with the time counting towards your overall mark for the module?"
The boy suddenly sat rigid upright. "I am suddenly overcome with a desire to help small children," he stated.
"I thought you might be."
Gingerly, Kimuna, sitting in the middle of the class, raised his hand. A slightly dreamy look, as usual, was present in his pink eyes. "What age are they?" he asked. "I mean, will we have to change their nappies, or what?"
The teacher snorted. "Not quite. They're Year 5s; that's nine and ten year olds. They'll be going to secondary school the year after next, and although it might not seem like it, to you bunch of grizzled teenagers, it's not that young."
"Do I detect some sarcasm there, sir?" asked Taly, a smirk on her face.
"Well, that entirely depends on whether your sarcasm detector is working or not," was the rhetorical answer.
Toja blinked twice, eyes suddenly wide. They wouldn't have, would they? Year 5s, from a feeder school? It couldn't be...
"Hello!"
"Oh, look, it's Kany's big brother!"
"Yes! I told you askin' for it would work!"
"Hey, Toja! Look at me!"
It was.
Hikary raised one eyebrow at him. "Toja." There wasn't even a need for a question.
"They're in my sister's class," he explained with an affected tone of boredom, trying to keep it to that. "I've been SWP temping with them. That's how they know me."
"Oh, okay." Hikary nodded. "Well, that will be helpful." She smiled at him. "I hope we can rely on you to help with names and..."
"Don't worry everyone!" a platinum blond little girl declared loudly. "If any of you get lost, Toja will rescue you!"
"Yeah! He's really, really brave!"
With surprising velocity, the nazzada's head collided with his desk. "Why me?" he muttered to himself.
In the dark room, Director Khoury twitched slightly, as the sustained lack of sleep and the drugs in her system designed to counteract it warred for supremacy.
"London-2. News refresh," she said, her voice flat.
[Director] stated a voice. [ANARCHY Cell. APOSTLE reports that APHRODITE and ASPARTAME have secured the Bravo-Sierra sample from Site Alpha-3, in London-2. They are proceeding to Site Alpha 4.]
"Good," the woman said, red eyes reflecting the light from the screens. "It is contained?" she asked, unnecessarily. The woman blinked, slowly.
[Yes.]
"Good. Continue."
[Nothing else, Director.]
"Praetoria-B? News refresh."
[CENOTAPH Cell is en route. No other changes, Director.]
The burble and susurration of voices resumed, as she moved onto other topics.
~'/|\'~
"Rits. He's in. He'll do it."
The blond raised her eyebrows at the news, and briefly considered checking if her cochlear implant was, in fact, functioning properly. "Really?" she asked. "How... how did you manage that? I was sure that he'd refuse."
"He did. So I explained the facts to him."
"All of them?" There was concern in the scientist's voice. "But..."
"Of course not. That would be cruel. But enough that he could make his decision whether or not to pilot, actually knowing what he was doing by choosing either way." She heard a sigh over the link. "And I told him I was sorry."
"Sorry? For what? What did you do wrong?"
"Rits, they don't pay you to deal with people. Robots, yes. Ackersby organisms, yes. People, no. As Director of Operations, I have to." There was a click, and hum over the line. "Look... we have him, so we can proceed with the primary plan. Now, Director of Science, do your thing, and get me Unit 01 in the best possible state for this. I owe him that much. For lying to him by telling the truth."
The sounds of feet against the metal floor was a constant backdrop to the bustle and bluster of the evacuation process. The rich, who lived deeper, in the larger arcology domes built more recently, might be already pre-evacuated, but the masses that lived in the slums of the surface and in the oldest, shallowest domes, were not so safe. Millions of people had to be moved, in a population movement which put the daily commute of rush hour to shame.
A man, sweat beading on his forehead, pushed a heavy cart, laden down with nanofactory feeder capsules. His eyes flicked nervously from side to side. Around him, the crowd was snarled and disordered; voices raised in worry and agitation as the orderly evacuation was slowed to a snail's crawl.
"Hey!" The man pushing the cart flinched slightly, but forced himself to relax, as an ArcSec officer stepped over, red eyes somewhat annoyed, and weary. "What's this?" the man asked, in a strongly Nazzadi-accented deep voice.
The man shrugged. "Moving stuff," he explained, unhelpfully. "That is," he hastily added, "I just got in an order that more refills get moved down to one of the safety bunkers."
"Then why aren't you using the supply corridors?" the officer asked.
"I didn't have a specialist pass, okay? I'm not normally with Resupply, but the guy lives deep, and so is already evaced. They grabbed me from Waste Disposal. 'Least I'm earning overtime for this."
The nazzada coughed. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to come with me," the officer ordered, eyes flicking at the crowd which was forming behind him.
"Urgh. Umm... that is, fine, yes."
The cart was pushed to the nearest transit corridor, and from there, it was only a short distance to the nearest ArcSec waystation. The man pushing the cart was taken to be genescanned, and a full verification done on his background, while the items themselves were taken for a closer examination, to check that they were actually what the RFID tags on the packages claimed they were.
"What do we have here?" the technician manning the scanner asked, an unlit cigarette sticking out from between her lips.
"Flagged as suspicious," the nazzada who had bought the delivery in explained. "Crate ID say that they're nanofac refills for Bunker NNE 00102, but... he was acting suspiciously. Wasn't moving them along the supply corridors, for one, and..."
"Yeah, yeah, just getting the 'bots to grab the crate info," the woman said, her forehead crinkling. "Just push them through the arch... yeah, walk through too. Okay." Her machine bleeped, and a red light appeared on her arglasses. "Okay. Yeah, I'm gonna need a random one..." she raised a hand, "okay, randomiser selected package number ZZA9WYA923Q. That's the one, right hand corner, middle layer. Just going to have check that it's clean, as per protocol."
The checks were run, as the bulky, heavy capsule was moved by the technician, in her exosuit, into the sample nanofactory set up to test the contents. She stepped back, servos whining, as the machine accepted the sample, sealing after entry, and began to extract tiny amounts of the theoretically homogenous contents. There was a faint whine, as the mass spectrometer warmed up, and the tests began. The nazzada officer flinched; the technician showed no sign that she could even hear it.
After about a minute or two, it bleeped again, the light coming up green.
"Okay, yeah, it's okay, and all the other ones are null-tamper," the technician said with a shrug, bending down to lift the refill out of the device with a grunt. "I'll just stick it back on the cart, then you can get the idiot out of here. Tell him and his 'corp... Armourcorp, isn't it? Yeah, issue them a caution for breaking handling auth'."
"Don't tell me how to do my job," the officer said, his eyes narrowing.
The woman shrugged. "Look, I'm overloaded already. The 'corp fuckers have to be reminded not to waste ArcSec time because they don't get the proper transit auth'. Bastards who think that money buys them immunity to the law."
The cart was sent on its way, and the hapless courier received a lecture from the ArcSec officer.
And no-one was any the wiser that package ZZA9WYA923Q had stayed in the scanning office, and been replaced by its identical twin.
~'/|\'~
There was a crack on the wall, a thin, spiderlike-break right at the join, so the 'legs' ran on either side of the wall. Someone, sometime, Toja noted, had drawn around it, making it more arachnid, shaping the lines with a border of grey. Shaking his head, he sighed, and glanced down at his MP. Services were still cut. He couldn't even access his music collection, and briefly he muttered a short complaint at his sister, who had wiped the internal memory at some point. He almost asked himself why he had even let her borrow it, but then the memory of why returned, and he sighed again.
"Hello." The voice was young and female, a piping voice directly behind him. "I came to talk to you."
Toja glanced back, to see the girl with the dark-brown hair, tied asymmetrically. Two green eyes were staring at him. "Hello," he said back, not trying to be particularly friendly. "Imi, yes."
There was a pause. Then, "Why? Why are you being like that?"
The boy glanced around again, twisting his body to face her. "Being like what?"
"I just said 'hello'."
"Well, I'm kinda not feeling welcoming," Toja said back, narrowing his eyes. "I've had a long day, my MP's playing up, so I'm kinda bored, and I've..." he paused, and pushed on, after seeing that there were none of the other ones in the younger class nearby, "... and I've had your friends being annoying."
A pause. "You mean PCPU," Imi said.
"What?"
"The device. It is a Personal CPU, not an MP."
"It's a manuprokedi. Same thing, different word. And MP is shorter."
The nine-year old gave a one-shouldered shrug. "That's not why you're in a bad mood. You are just sitting here, staring at the wall. Even when people try to talk to you."
"And what's that to you, huh?" the boy almost snapped.
"You were the one who left the bunker to find me. Even though I did not need finding," Imi said, returning his stare. "Why are you in a bad mood?"
"Look... I don't want to be reminded of that, right?" the nazzada said, his eyes narrowing to slits. "I just wanna forget that it even happened." He shook his head. "I have nightmares about it," he added, in a softer voice.
"I do not."
"Well, lucky you! You were in the cupboard!" He realised he was raising his voice, and that Hikary was staring in his direction from the other side of the classroom, where she was talking with the teacher, and lowered it again. "Look, I..."
"Then you shouldn't have done it." The girl folded her arms and glared at him, eyes level despite the fact that he was sitting down. "I'd have been fine."
Toja could feel her eyes on him. "Well... no," he admitted. "I... I couldn't just leave someone out there. I know I shouldn'tve done it... but I wasn't thinking, so I'd prob'ly do it again." He sighed. "It's more the idea that another thing like it is up there again."
Imi pushed herself up, to sit on his desk. "I know," she said, eyes staring up at the ceiling. "It's up there. Somewhere. At least we got moved to a deep shelter this time. We didn't, last time."
"I know. And the fact that we're stuck down here, just... trying to hide from something that probably knows where we are, and..."
"Yes."
The boy ran his hands over his face. "I hope Shinji is okay," he said, suddenly. "Him'n Rei."
A pause. "Who?"
Toja blinked, rapidly. "Oh, friends," he said. "Well, Shinji is a friend, Rei is... Rei. But they're... stuck in another bunker, because... they were off sick."
"I see."
"I just hope I could... like, help them..."
"To get better."
"Yeah, that."
Imi tilted her head. "Have you sent them a get-well message?" she asked. The girl gave a mono-shouldered shrug, again. "That's what we did for Kany, and what they do for me when I get ill." She blinked. "Oh yeah," she said, slipping the bag off her shoulder, to pull out a red device, which looked a little like a large highlighter pen; a similarity which only grew more pronounced when she took the cap off. Without hesitation, she rolled up her skirt slightly, and then jabbed it into her thigh. Toja gagged slightly, and looked away. He hated needles.
There was a bleep from the device, and Imi glanced at the light beside it, which was green. "Good," she said, putting the cap back on with a click. She glanced back at Toja. "You can look back," she said, to the older boy, a faint twist in her voice. "I've had to have this done since I was very small." She seemed to be prompting a question.
Toja asked it. "Why?"
"It is necessary. And I hate it. It wasn't meant to happen," she said, eyes narrowed. "I'm 'fixed, you know. I shouldn't have to put up with things like this. But I had an episode when I was very little, and I've been on this ever since. " There was sudden vitriol in her voice. "It hurts. All the time. The injections only keep it under control." She blinked, and her face was suddenly calmer, more placid. "I'm sorry, Kany's brother," she told the boy. "I should not be telling you that."
Toja blinked. "I'm sorry," he said, glancing at her. Yes, that explained a lot about the way she was acting, and the fact that she seemed a little too mentally mature for her age. Humans had been doing all kinds of odd things to their genetics in the years before the First Arcanotech War, the nazzada knew. Most had been fairly mild, removing genetic defects, tweaking for genes linked to long lives and high intellects. Some had been more extreme, done in the genetically liberal states of Japan and the European Union. At every Academy he'd been to, there had been a few children who were suffering from some condition caused by the modifications on their parents. Pre-natal selection and screening was meant to catch such conditions, but genes were recipes, not blueprints; with such small runs of original subjects, something often got missed. It was probably something metabolic or something; those were the most common problems you tended to see, because they didn't have the same level of handicap as the mental problems. "It's... well, you're just unlucky. It could happen to anyone."
"No," she said, the bitterness returning. "Only to me. They found the risk factors afterwards, and took steps to stop it happening again. There's only a few other people it could have affected, anyway."
"Oh." Toja looked with pity at one of his sister's friends. This did make him feel better about his stupid-yet-brave actions to rescue her. She was ill, and did need helping; even if she continued to insist that she hadn't needed to be rescued.
And she had certainly given him things to think about. Yes, she may have been misunderstanding what he was talking about, because of the hasty cover story, but there was something that him and the other people in the class could do to help Shinji. He'd had to put up with little girls praising him, for something which really hadn't been heroic; the least he could do was to make sure that the praise went to the real hero, right?
He stood up, and taking his leave of the little girl, headed over to Hikary, a smile on his face.
"You know, of all the elements of your plan, Miss Director of Operations Katsuragi, this is probably the most surreal," Ritsuko remarked, hooking her fingers into the pockets of the fresh lab coat she was wearing. "I mean, everything involving Unit 01, yes, it's very much a million-to-one chance kind of thing..."
"But it's not," Misato said, mildly, leaning on the railing, gazing down at the Evangelion launch chutes. "Your MAGI give us a thirty-one percent chance of success with no losses, as of the most recent estimate."
"And what were the errors bars?"
"I dunno. Can't remember. Anyway," she shrugged, "error bars go up and down. Big error bars might as well mean we're even more likely to succeed."
Ritsuko snorted. "Okay, right, now you're just trying to annoy me."
"Guilty." Misato shook her head. "But, seriously, what's so surreal about this?"
One eyebrow was raised. "Misato." One finger was jabbed down towards the chutes. "We're packing the chutes with sports cars. We're attacking them to the same launch systems we use to launch the Evas! It's just... ridiculous!"
"Hey! I like driving! You think I like dooming so many high-end cars to their doom?" She blinked. "Well, apart from the ForGM ones. Those things handle like pigs."
"Misato..."
"No, I don't see what's surreal, as you put it. They're the cheapest source of steerable A-Pods, and we just need to activate the control overrides and an LAI can drive for us. We don't need mil-spec drones as decoys. They're chaff, nothing more." She tightened her lips, "I'd rather see any number of cars be destroyed, than watch more human pilots get swatted out of the air by the Harbinger. More drones have to help, even improvised ones. And if it means that it can't see the Evangelions..."
"I'm not saying it doesn't make sense, Misato." The blond shook her head. "I'm just saying, it's kind of surreal to be loading these sports cars into the Eva chutes, as... as if they were some kind of giant blunderbuss."
"Just think of it as a capital-grade decoy flare," the Major advised her.
"Certainly... it's a good idea. I can think of ones a lot worse." She let out a chuckle. "I was half-way afraid that you were going to try to take a naval-yield weapon, and connect it up to the L2 power grid, under the principle of 'more power = more good'."
"Don't be silly, Rits," Misato said, rolling her eyes. "I am...I mean, was a mecha pilot. We're expected to know the operating principles behind our weapons. And I know that neither lasers nor charge beams work that way. You can't expect to pump in orders of magnitude more power than something's designed for, and not blow every fuse. If you're lucky and don't melt it solid."
They stared, for a moment, as the cars manoeuvred their own way into position, technicians in exosuits manually checking their placement and bolting them into the launch platform. Small explosive charges would separate them after they emerged, but it would be necessary to hold them in place for the accelerations involved in the launch.
"I wonder if the Misatomobile is going to give its life for the cause?" Ritsuko said, slyly.
"Nope. Not a chance. And nobody calls it that."
~'/|\'~
The Harbinger could now have been seen from the highest residences in the arcologies, had their occupants been there to watch for it. They were not. The inhabitants of the above-ground buildings had retreated to chthonian safety, to cower like worms from the unyielding predator of the skies. Now the only eyes which watched the heavens were technological, as soldiers, ensconced within the dubious safety of their warmachines, veins flooded with antizonals and phobinhibitors, waited for their foe. Except that was not quite true, for some of the degenerate beasts and creatures which dwelt in the depths of the Old London Underground had come to the surface, to gaze upon the Harbinger.
And if they were too close, it was the harbinger of their destruction. Mot did not care for, or possibly 'about', their worship. Though it had its own master, it did not call upon the Crawling Chaos for aid. The Beast Nyarlathotep was that which it feared and venerated; to call upon it was to draw its attention, and that was unwise. No, Mot was a blinded god; Polythemus without a Poseidon to call upon.
The metaphor was inexact.
The NEG had no intention of leaving the blinded Cyclopean beast alive.
And yet they could not kill it yet. The London-2 defences, already maimed by the onslaught of the last two Harbingers, were no match for even an injured Mot.
Radiance scythed out from the vertices of the geometry of the Harbinger. Armoured fortifications burst in light and fury, nothing more than white-hot craters remaining. The shockwaves crushed shallow arcology domes like empty cans, the black material of the outer sphere rupturing and tearing the buildings within apart. Slowly, inexorably, destructively, Harbinger-5 advanced, bringing death with it.
And then it stopped.
Not long ago, such a thing would have been a moment of victory.
But now? Now, the Harbinger had reached its destination. And its fall was not the work of its enemies. The bottommost point of Mot crushed a skyscraper, the edifice of steel and glass splitting like an overripe fruit, and the shockwave as it pierced the ground sent abandoned cars tumbling through the air like grains of sand in the desert wind. The great trapezohedron, warped and distorted by the perilous bows and arrows of fortune, burrowed a third of its way down, before coming to a halt. The lesser fractal clusters which had survived the assaults rose, to orbit, halo-like, around its head in the evening twilight, still spewing forth light against anything that it could 'see'.
And then it... unfolded.
Like a flower of Stygia, a blossom that might bedeck the hair of Persephone in December nights, it abandoned the seed that it had once been. No longer was it a pentagonal trapezohedron; no, though it retained its five-fold symmetry, it cast off the confines of geometry and embraced the vicissitudes of change. In perfect coordination, the facets that had been its uppermost faces extruded their nature outwards, sketching a path in the air around them, before fracturing into five themselves. From each prismatic face, two night-dark columns of crystal shot down into the earth, crushing buildings and roads and underground tunnels beneath them; ten lances seeking their path down towards their goal. Two more skewed outwards, only to unite with their compatriots, hemming the Harbinger with a ring of its own selfhood, which began to spin.
NEG observers, watching from behind autocensors, watched in fear, for this ring, now free from its main corpus, and, yet, irrefutably part of the Harbinger, somehow seemed to move in both directions at once. From one viewpoint, clockwise; from another, anti-clockwise, and each blink, each subtle motion of the eye, each flicker of attention, seemed to invert the rotation, until the brain gave up, and it became a circle of black motion; a velocity without a vector. The fear grew into terror, as white light, brilliant and radiant, a pure blend of spectral components, began to arc irregularly from the ring to the seedcore of the beast, and each impact reverberated with unearthly resonances. Even the heavens began to act to meet this motion, as the clouded evening sky acquiesced to the spin with its own vortex. The dark rain clouds were torn apart above Mot, as a cyclone formed, the red of the near-night sky as bloody light above the darkness of the Harbinger.
And perhaps that was a way of honouring the final deed. For the uppermost spines rose into a point above it, a tower, growing ever upwards just as the hungry spears reached down to break the doors to Irkalla, and, perhaps, release the dead. But that was just speculation for the purpose of Mot, while the spire that formed above the Harbinger was fact and truth; a vast, five-sided obelisk, seeking the heavens for their own domain.
And slowly, oh so slowly, the void of darkness began to form around the Harbinger again, as the lesser traphezohedrons, vessels of its chrysalis, dissolved back into its night-sky corpus.
Once again, Mot was home.
And it was almost time.
~'/|\'~
"Misato. It's doing something different. Look at this."
The Director of Operation's mouth tightened into a thin line, a curse in poorly pronounced Mandarin escaping from her lips.
"We're trying to find where the core-equivalent is. As far as we can tell... it hasn't moved, but," the scientist shook her head. "I don't trust any data we're getting. The AT-Field... it's the second densest we've ever recorded, and the volume..." Ritsuko trailed off. "I'm not even sure that the concept of 'volume' in normal 1-space is applicable in the area around the Harbinger."
"We're going ahead with the operation," the Major said, forcing calm into her tone. "Its behaviour is within the contingencies. We'll know where the core is, by the time Shinji needs to fire. It's doing just what I expected. How are the Evas?"
Ritsuko nodded over at Lieutenant Ibuki. "Both Unit 00 and Unit 01 have been fully unloaded down in the Geocity," the younger woman said, promptly. "Unit 01 is, on the orders of Representative Ikari, running last-minute calibration checks for the superconducting QUI device transceivers, after MAGI flagged a possible anomaly. Unit 00 is being fitted with the ablative torso dermal plating and the blast shield."
The Major turned on her heel, eyes wide. "How long will Unit 01 be?" she snapped. "What's wrong?"
The Operator's Eyes went blank for a moment, irises lighting up, harcontact style. "Estimated time of completion; 22:03... seven minutes. The MAGI one-to-two evaluated that there was a risk that a slight flicker in IP-21 was indicative of larger damage. They've swapped out the plug for one of the spares; Representative Ikari insisted," she stated. "They're just running checks to make sure that the Third Child's profile has transferred properly."
The dark-haired woman relaxed, slightly. "Understood," she said. "I want to know as soon as it's done. Is the LANCE system fitted properly to Unit 01?" she asked, again.
"Yes, Major," the Operator nodded, making the thick cable that snaked into the back of her skull bounce up and down, synchronised to her motions.
Hands balled into fists, Major Katsuragi glared at the projections of the two Units. "You're going to do this," she muttered. "You're going to do it properly, and you're going to kill this thing dead, and you're not going to get damaged doing this, understand."
~'/|\'~
Shinji could see it when he closed his eyes, painted against the back of his eyelids. The complex wireframe shape of reds and blues was always there, forcing him to pay attention, the focus shifting around to ensure that he could visualise every single part of the three-dimensional image perfectly.
That was not a metaphor. They had actually fitted him with sofcontacts, which displayed it, as a way of making sure that he paid attention.
But for the moment, he had been permitted a short break, after he had complained of a headache, and they ran checks to make sure that the stimulants he was on were not interfering with the other medications in his still-stiff, still-aching body. So, for the moment, he could just rest for a moment, in the warmth.
It was midday on the surface levels of the London-2 Geocity. The artificial sun had been fixed high overhead, perhaps as a sign of defiance towards the night-black crystalline mass overhead. No matter what the reasons for its placement, though, it was directly above, its bright light shining vertically down on the central pyramid in the Geocity. When the battle began, it would be deactivated, moved to a safe place to cool down, but for now it was there as a source of light.
Once again, his thumb pressed the play button, on the screen on the forearm of his plugsuit.
"Hey, Shinji," Toja's voice said, in the recorded message. "Listen... I don't know if you'll get this, and so I'm not sure how useful this will be... and..."
"If he doesn't get this, he won't know that it was sent," one of the girls, Jony, he thought. "Stop wasting time."
Once again, Shinji snorted. For some reason, he found this section unreasonably funny. It was probably the things that they were using to keep him able to focus, he thought, with a smile.
"...okay." Toja could be heard to take a deep breath. "Listen, Shinji. You're not here, and from what we know, and what happened the last few times you were away like this... well, we don't know exactly what you're doing. But we know that you're doing something important."
"We know that it's something to do with the giant Engel-things," Kensuke added.
"And so," Hikary said, "we, as a class, want to tell you 'good luck'. Good luck with everything. And, above that, we believe in you. We really think you can do it. So, everyone..."
"Good luck!" the class cheered, the speaker crackling from the noise.
"And," Toja added, his voice soft, "I do know, and I've seen you in action. You're a braver man than I am, really. I know you can do it."
There was a bleep. [Message ends], the muse stated.
Shinji leant back again. It was mostly meaningless, he thought, a little cynically. Most of them probably had no clue what he was actually having to do. Even Toja, who had actually seen him piloting, probably thought that the Eva was like a nice, normal mecha, and that he was some brave hero getting to fight valiantly against the foes of humanity.
He glanced sideways at Rei, who was sitting, hugging her knees and staring at the lake. In the light, he could see faint beads of sweat on her forehead, in the false-sunlit warmth. He wasn't a hero. He was just a coward. He should have volunteered at first, even though he had been injured. That's what real heroes did, in films and TV shows. He had been willing to let her do it instead, and had only changed his mind after Misato had told him that she would die and the mission would fail. He didn't think that was heroic.
But, still, it was comforting. He couldn't deny it, and had no desire to do so. And... and it helped remind him. They were somewhere above him, in the school bunker, which meant that they were even closer to the Harbinger than he was right now. Their voices; if he didn't stop the Harbinger, this message, this badly planned, stumbling message, would be the last that he would hear of them. One way or another.
"Rei?" he said, letting the warmth of the false sun shine down on him. "Did... did you get a message? From the others?"
"Yes."
There was silence. Then Rei spoke.
"I did not listen to it."
Shinji frowned. "Why not?"
"Why would they send me a message?" There was unusual emotion in the girl's voice.
Shinji looked over at her. She was looking at him. "Because it's a nice thing to do," he suggested, pulling himself into a sitting position. She actually seemed surprised that anyone would do something as small and as easy as... as just sending her a voice message wishing her luck. And that cold, empty dome where she lived, in an apartment block where she was the only inhabitant, the fact that she never spoke to others at school, but merely sat in a corner, reading, barely even paying attention to the lessons... Shinji frowned, slightly. "Rei?" he asked, again, but this time with a hint of nervousness in his voice. "Why do you pilot? The Evangelion, that is."
Silence. She glanced down, to stare at her gloved hands, and up again. "It is necessary," she said, her voice nothing more than a whisper, her hands twitching as if invisibly grasping control yokes. "All things have a purpose. An Evangelion is made to be piloted. I am the pilot of Unit 00."
The boy looked away, for a moment. "You're brave," he said. She didn't need to be pushed into it, by threats to others, be reminded of the consequences should she not do it. She merely did what was needed. Not like him.
"This is not bravery," she said, in the same whisper. "But you should not be afraid. "
Shinji blinked. "What do you mean?" he asked.
"I will protect you. I have been ordered to do. And above that, it is necessary."
"What do you mean?" he asked, again, blinking off her other comment. "Why is it not bravery?"
No reply.
"Why?"
"I have nothing else," she replied, finally. "Only necessity."
"'Necessity'?" Shinji echoed, eyes widening.
Beside him, Rei stood up, her plug suit squeaking faintly as she moved. Taking a step towards him, she towered over him as he lay on his back. Her head blocked the false sun above them, and lit her white hair as a ghostly halo, even as her face was cast into darkness. "It is time," the girl said, staring down at him. "We must go. We are needed."
A sound chimed in their ears. "Test Pilots, please report to the station point for last checks. I repeat, Test Pilots, please report to the station point."
She turned on her heel, and walked off, again. But this time she turned, to look back over her shoulder. "Goodbye," she said.
~'/|\'~
[Intrusion 02 has broken through Layer 029, and is... is growing through 30,] one of the MAGI Operators reported, his eyes wide. [Rate of descent has accelerated.]
[It's still within projected limits,] Lieutenant Ibuki sent back to her subordinate. Immersed in light, the Operators were in a full dive in the MAGI, the full computing resources of the other great accomplishment of the first Evangelion Project dedicated to what was about to come. The hybrid machines, with their unique operating system and clunky code architecture, were in their forte. [July? You have the optimised line of approach for Unit 00?]
[Of course,] replied Lieutenant Cheung. [Forwarded to Operations already. It's set up to live-update based on Harbinger behaviour.]
~'/|\'~
Above, on the surface, Harbinger-5 was embedded into the ground, the original pentagonal trapezohedron now little more than a seed for the growths from it. Ten ophidian daggers of obsidian crystal were twining around each other as they worked their way down, making some strange ten-stranded helix. As they grew deeper, the components solidified, and began to branch, interchaining and interlinking, until the probe that resulted resembled nothing less than some complex, degenerate cousin of DNA. The only light that it permitted to exist was the period arcs of white brightness, which came from the rings of undetermined velocity which budded off from the first, spaced at intervals up and down the Harbinger. The initial seed was expanding, too, both upwards and downwards, consuming the helix as its scaffolding as it sought the Geocity, and reaching up to bring the starless night it bore with it to the heavens themselves.
And as a result of these changes, it was now unclear where the core would be.
Major Katsurgagi's plan, however, had taken this into account, because she had suspected that that Mot, who now resembled some vast five-sided obelisk, would take some action to conceal that vulnerability. The tactics for this battle were simple when looked at from afar. Unit 00, fitted with an improvised shield made from capital-grade hull plating, and a normally-stationary plasma turret stripped from its mount and fitted to the Eva's arm, with power leads connected to the city grid, was a diversion. It would be launched from the normal Eva chutes, along with the mass of improvised decoy drones. It was believed that the modifications would be enough to allow it to survive a few hits, of the level that Unit 01 had taken in the first battle.
And Unit 01 was the hammer, or, perhaps, more accurately, the lance. The LANCE prototype, a Huitzilopochtli-class shaped nuclear charge designed for space combat, had been mounted on the Unit's chest, in the hole left by Mot's attack. The weapon, still in the early prototype stage, was designed to be a possible ship-killer. It was surrounded by carefully layered wards and fields which would, at the moment of initiation, warp the fabric of spacetime to such an extent that, while in the frame of reference of the blast it would appear to omnidirectional, to the outside world it would form a tight cone. The pre-existing warding, though incomplete, was to be reinforced by the AT-Field of the Evangelion, and so the flesh of the Evangelion had been grafted around it, and fresh armour crudely mounted on the top. Unit 01 was still in the launch bays. It was not to be moved until the Harbinger's core had been located, and, even then it would be taking the shot from within the launch tubes.
The risk that Unit 01 would be targeted immediately on being launched had been deemed too high for it to take the shot from the surface, and the imprecise nature of the LANCE required it to be rather too close for the Major's preferences. This was the best compromise.
It was at the more detailed level that it got more complicated. Routes of approach, timing of diversionary assaults, the optimal distance for Unit 01 which would minimise the chance of being it targeted, while also handling the inevitable spread of the weapon... it was too much for a human to handle. The MAGI were working on it, from the best data they had at the time, but their theories were all too fallible and it took precious time.
But that was the other reason that the operation had even been approved. By letting the hostile dig itself into the city, it was ensuring that it would absorb more of the blast if, or when, the Rapture contingency was activated. It had reached the stage where the NEG was willing to bet everything on two experimental machines, neither of which were even Mass Production models, because the inevitable alternative was worse. Already, there had been a very limited evacuation of important assets, but there was no way that the millions of inhabitants of the metropolis could have been moved.
And Shinji hadn't exactly been pleased when he had been told that he was expected to have a nuclear charge embedded in his Eva's chest, and to use his AT-Field to shape the blast to form a discrete beam, and, incidentally, not kill himself. But after Misato had explained the stakes, he couldn't say 'no'.
As he waited, lungs filled with LCL, in the entry plug, he was regretting it. His chest felt... odd, off, not quite right, as if it was lacking something vital, which he was used to. But that was nothing, compared to how his head felt. Everything, every sense felt like it was bathed in ice, his vision crystal clear, the inside of the plug suit terribly cold against his skin. He flexed his fingers, feeling the way that he knew exactly where they were, and the texture of the LCL, even through the gloves.
"Don't do that, Shinji," Ritsuko ordered, over the communications link.
He blinked. "What?"
"You're running at 72 plus-or-minus 9 percent." She shook her head. "That's... that's astonishing. That's a personal best for you, by far. I don't know how you're doing it, but..." she blinked, "... that message must really have been helpful," she muttered to herself, before her expression settled again. "But it means that the Unit's catching stray thoughts. If you can't keep things confined to the animaneural sync... to how you've been trained to think about controlling the Eva... please, try not to move." She winced. "And, really, don't make any large movements with your arms. Or legs. Just... try to sit still. Are you ready to try again shaping it?"
Of course, once that had been said, Shinji's nose began to itch. He suppressed it, and swallowed. "How long?" he asked.
"That doesn't matter," Ritsuko said, tersely. "We're going to keep you practising until the last possible moment." She blinked. "T-minus 8 minutes until operational start," she added. "So, please, try again. The better you can get it, the further away from the Harbinger we can deploy you. As it is, we'll need to have you within 340 metres of the core."
"That's bad, isn't it?"
"You're the pilot," Ritsuko said drily, before adding, "But, yes, that is much closer than the Science team would like. So, much as I hate to pressure you..."
"That's a lie," Shinji muttered, through numb-feeling lips.
"... okay. True. But you need to get better. Fast." Ritsuko paused. "Please."
Field Marshal Jameson put his head in his hands. "I don't really know what to say, Major Katsuragi," he remarked, his expression over the link exhausted. "This is a horrible gamble. But, as it stands, the only other choice is to destroy London-2, and... looking at the... at the," he struggled for words, "... metamorphosis that Harbinger-5 has undergone, I'm starting to doubt that even that would work." He shuddered. "I don't care to think that the Migou are doing right now," he said, "because the Hive Ship... it's sprouted multiple bright fusion torches, detaching from it. They're pulling away from the Sun-Earth L2 point."
Admiral Tatuta looked faintly sick, as he added, "The fusion torch on those things; alone... well, it's quite possible that that's what they'd use as a main weapon. They're pulling five-gees; we've got six separate ones, and those are only the torches. Who knows how many A-Pod craft we can't see, because the torches are blinding us." He folded his hands in front of him. "We think those are actual Migou warships," he admitted. "Not just the light S-class vessels, like the Swarms, they use in atmosphere; the ones with A-Pods. Actual, capital ships." The Nazzadi blinked. "We know what the ships they made for AW1 were like; how bad must their actual warships be?" the man, who had been grown in vats in the Oort Cloud, asked.
Misato winced. Yes. Bad. Very bad. Nevertheless, "For this, I will require full operational authority to be formally confirmed. I need you to verify the provisional control you have given me. The MAGI must be given interlaced access to the TITAN-controlled systems in the defence-grid."
The six individuals who made up the Army and Naval Tripartites, glanced at each other. The votes came in, with unanimity.
The Major saluted. "Thank you, sirs. We can now begin the final preparations."
Field Marshal Lehy shook her head, her close-cropped iron grey hair pale compared to her skin. "You're not going to be a Major after this, Katsuragi," she muttered. "One way or another."
"Well, yes," Jameson said, rolling his eyes. "She refused evacuation, to run the operation from the L2 Geocity. If she fails, she'll be dead."
The Harbinger dug deeper, the black, five-faced obelisk growing both upwards and downwards. There were already riots in multiple bunkers, as those unfortunate enough to be close to the monstrosity succumbed to contagious hysteria, while other fell into deep depressions, all higher brain functions slowed to a crawl compared to the vast, overwhelming, inhuman presence of the being.
The necessary steps were taken to control the populace, as remote-activated and autonomous systems came into play.
And the clock counted down.
Inside his entry plug, Shinji shivered, the same icy wrongness with every sense still there. He flexed his fingers, and closed his eyelids, running over and over the shape that he had to visualise.
Within Unit 00, Rei's hands were vice-like on the control yokes, but her breaths were slow and controlled. Slowly, lazily, she blinked.
Major Misato Katsuragi was paying full attention to the countdown on the inside of her Eyes, watching as the numbers inexorably descended. Her hands were balled into fists, knuckles white, and if her nails were not kept short, they would have been drawing blood. Slowly, slowly, she counted down, her words matching with the numbers, as she cowered down in the darkness, hearing the cries from elsewhere, her voice rising up to match them listened to the organised chaos of the last few moments before the operation began.
"Final confirmation check!" she ordered.
[Oranous-00; Unit 00 is in position. Hull compromised; Right Hand Missing. Unauthorised modifications to Unit. All other systems Green within modified parameters.]
[Oranous-01; Unit 01 is in position. Hull compromised; Torso Heavily Damaged. Foreign body in chest cavity. Pilot synchronisation Standard Deviation Grade 2 Warning. Abnormal ANW-Patterns in Pilot Synchronisation. Anomalous Type-2 Attunement Component in Type-1 Attunement. Anom...] the LITAN was cut off by Ritsuko.
"Sorry," the scientist said, "the LITANs haven't been modified to accept the field modifications. We didn't have time to suppress their warning systems and code an interface patch." She glanced at the Major. "I did tell you all this," she reminded her friend, "we are going to be getting dummy error messages, especially for Unit 01. We've hooked Unit 01 straight into the MAGI, instead; the LITAN is just there in case the connection is cut, and..." she waved a hand, "Maya?"
"This is Lieutenant Cheung, and I'll be handling Unit 01," one of the other Operators reported, over the link. "We've recompiled the error handler in the MAGI, and both are reading green, when we've got the modifications in place."
The Major turned, to face Gendo Ikari. "Sir?" she asked. "Should I proceed when things are... should I proceed?" There was only the very slightest hint of hesitation, the faintest chance that she was asking him if he wished to send his son, and the girl who he was guardian to, out to their possible deaths.
"Yes," the man said, from behind his opaque arglasses. His voice was flat. "This is the best chance we shall have."
"Yes, sir."
Turning around, Misato gave the final authorisation.
There was a chime in Unit 01's entry plug, and Shinji opened his eyes to see, to his left, Unit 00 rocket up the launch chute. Its ascent was slowed slightly by the mass of the hull plating bolted on its right arm, to cover and take advantage of the missing hand. Past it, to his left and right, he could see the cars, converted into crude decoy drones shoot up too, row after row be moved, like ammunition, into the launch chutes.
Taking a deep breath of LCL, he closed his eyes again, staring at the image on the sofcontacts. They were committed, now. Rei was deployed.
Now everyone was depending on him.
The depleted arrays of the defences of London-2, eroded by the previous two Harbingers, and silenced by the orders from Headquarters, opened up with the vengeance and the wrath of an angry god. The atmosphere filled with ionisation trails, as the ferocious batteries of charge beams, plasma cannons and lasers opened up, blue-green trails sketched in the air. The rocket exhausts filled the sky, a false dawn out of the wood etchings of the medieval Catholic church as the flames lit up the sky.
Had it not been for Asherah, who had slagged most of the defences to the east in its approach, and the more generalised damage that Eshmun and its spawn had done, it might have done something. Maybe.
The obelisk of night, almost invisible against the dome of darkness that now covered the city, arced actinic white light, from the rings that rotated around it. From the peak, where the five sides met, a sustained cutting beam eradicated the remnants of the fleet, and dug unnaturally smooth craters into the landscape of the city. From its vantage point, for the obelisk now reached almost two kilometres up, there was little that could not be targeted. A faint red glow emanated from the dark crystal, and the shallow arcology domes were sliced open, the guts of civilisation exposed for the world to see, before they too were unmade.
"Rerouting Unit 00," an Operator called out. "Point Alpha has been compromised by hostile fire."
The Major stared at the screen. Already the plan was imperfect; the casual damage done by the Harbinger had destroyed one of the entry chutes. She merely thanked that Unit 00 had been deep enough that they had been able to do that.
~'/|\'~
Unit 00 slammed to a halt, faster than the equipment was designed to do, now exposed on the surface. The metal of the launch cradle shrieked, and with a faint hiss of coolant, the Evangelion stepped free of its cradle, hull-plating shield already raised. All around it, cascades of dummy drones were being launched into the air, adopting erratic patterns simply designed to ensure that the Harbinger took the longest possible time for its death-brining beams from target to target. Against the black void which Mot was generating, the beams were precisely geometrical, and blindingly white.
A yellow light on the internal wall of the entry plug turned green, and Rei Ayanami triggered the plasma turret which had been bolted to her left arm. The recoil from the relativistic particle beam kicked at her arm, but she compensated, holding it as steady as she could on the lowest ring that spun around the obelisk-shape of the hostile.
The fractured radiance of an AT-Field was all that she got for her efforts, and she cut the beam, stepping to the left, behind an armoured building, as the Harbinger retaliated. The lesser beam scored its way across the armour plating, across the hastily raised shield, which shimmered with a sudden heat haze.
"External," Rei ordered her LITAN; a single, terse word. Her internal D-Engines cut their power, and suddenly sluggish, she stepped again further to the left, to avoid the falling building. The metal superstructure of the armoured structure, now exposed, was not even glowing. It had been cut, as if it were clay and the beam a sharp knife. That property was not so inaccurate, as the building that fell warped and deformed, sagging and deflating, as it were suddenly more akin to jelly.
The Harbinger appeared satisfied. Something had tried to strike at it, something which housed within it foetid wounds in reality. It had taken actions against the source. The wounds had disappeared. Hence, the insect was dead.
Simple.
Slowly, sluggishly, Unit 00, now running exclusively from the power cable and its batteries, stepped around to the next designated firing point. It was not designed to run off an external feed, and without power, the armour was heavily locked down. Nevertheless, it could be done, because some genius in its design process had decided that this was something it should be able to do.
The first component of its mission was now complete. They now knew how long it took the Harbinger to acquire an Eva-sized target with whatever senses it used.
~'/|\'~
The peak of the obelisk flared again and again. The Victoria Arcology, still damaged from the Asherah incident, took a direct hit, as it opened up with a barrage of fresh missiles. The force of the impact reduced the man-made mountain of steel to a volcano, molten metal cascading down its slopes and burning through armour plating and weapon batteries, and the shockwave sent the just-launched missiles tumbling off course. It was a sudden, shocking source of red light in the whiteness of the Harbinger's beams, and the adamantine fracture of its AT-Field, flaring afresh whenever a weapon would attempt to violate it.
"Its AT-Field," Ritsuko muttered, to herself. "It's almost as strong as..." she blinked. "No," she whispered. "Misato!" she called out. "It weakens its AT-Field to fire! The beams... they're extensions of it. We have to keep it firing! No matter what!"
"I understand," the Major said, her jawline set, as she stared at the sweeping, overlapping arcs on the surface, which were systematically wiping away the decoy-chaff. Unit 00 couldn't go back to internal power sources, not in these conditions; it was a mercy that it hadn't been hit by incidental fire. "Operators! Maintain the decoy density! Do you know where the core is?"
"Nearly there," Lieutenant Aoba said, from his seat. "I'm getting the readings from the Operators, and..."
"It's... it's moving!" Maya blurted, over the speakers. "Up and down. We've isolated its energy signature, and... those rings? That's why they're only firing at certain points. It has to be nearby, we think, for them to do it!"
"Of course!" Ritsuko said, sudden, horrified comprehension on her face. "It's growing downwards, in a way which means it never has to expose its core, or even let us know where it is!
"Can you isolate the movement!" the Major hissed.
A pause, then;
"Yes! Yes! There it is!" A small red dot, bouncing up and down the multikilometre spire with terrifying rapidity, its motions inertialess, was added to the diagram.
And then Misato grinned, a shark-like grin. "Got ya," she said to the representation of the Harbinger on the screen.
"Okay, Shinji," the Operator's voice said, in his ear, the amlaty's modulated tones replacing the normal mechanical flatness of his LAI. "We have a firing position. We're going to move you there, now." She paused. "Remember, pulling the trigger at your end only announces that you're ready to fire. The system won't do it until it's ready."
"Yes. I know," the boy said. It was the only reason that he was willing to do this at all, after Misato had explained that they would, in fact, be mounting a nuclear bomb, with some kind of magic on it, into his Eva's chest cavity. A space which, it should be noted, was rather close to his entry plug. It would only fire when it detected that the AT-Field was shaped properly to reinforce the warding. He swallowed, the LCL tasting almost... perfumed, a sort of minty, floral taste, in the funny, cold way he felt. It was certainly an improvement, he thought; much more comforting. And less horrible. "I'm ready."
"Then hold on tight." The lieutenant paused. "But not too tight."
The acceleration kicked in, pushing him back into his seat.
~'/|\'~
In the bunker, filled mostly with the staff of Armourcorp, and other employees of the subsidiaries of the Chrysalis Corporation, the bomb hidden in package ZZA9WYA923Q did what it was designed to do.
The modified vECF shell, salvaged after the Asherah operation, initiated, with the explosive force of about a tonne of TNT. Local casualties were high; something made worse by the arcanochromatic elements used in the fusion-catalysis.
And each action has ramifications.
~'/|\'~
The first thing that Shinji knew of anything wrong was when the Eva-cradle derailed, slamming into the side of the wall and kicking up a shower of sparks which fell, cascading down the chute, as Unit 01 dug into the metal walls. He yelped, in sudden pain, and reflexively threw out a hand, to steady himself; the Eva mimicked the gesture, and one vast hand smashed into the wall. In the confusion, the failsafes kicked in, and the blast doors closed underneath the Unit, just in time for it to fall. They were straining under the incredible mass of the Evangelion, but just holding. There was a hiss of fire extinguisher systems, as flames and smoke burst from the damaged sections of the tunnel, only to be smothered.
"What just happened!" the Major asked, face suddenly pale.
"Derailment!" Lieutenant Makota reported. "Reports coming in, explosions all over the city. Multiple blasts in evacuation bunkers."
"One's flagged as right by the chute Unit 01 is in!" added Aoba.
The Major's eyes narrowed. "Cultists," she said, immediately, with disgust. "Bastards." With a force of will, her voice was professional once again. "Find an alternative route!"
"On it!"
"This is bad," Ritsuko said to her, softly.
"Yes."
"What... argh... urgh, what happened?" Shinji asked, his face appearing on the main screen.
"I've got a new route," an Operator called out. "Down one level, then we can run parallel."
"Get a new cradle in position!" Misato ordered. "Shinji, it was a derailment," she told the boy, who was looking even paler than normal. "Don't worry. We have everything under control."
"Don't worry? Don't worry!" the boy shouted back, an edge of hysteria in his voice. "You're not the one with the nuclear bomb in your chest, who's going to have to use a... a magic field to stop it blowing yourself open! Things aren't meant to go wrong when things are like this!"
"No," Misato replied, trying not to grit her teeth. "They aren't. Be prepared for a small drop, brace yourself against the wall. We're going to close the next blast door, and then open the one below you. As long as you lower yourself onto it, you won't fall." She glanced over at Ritsuko, who nodded. "Lieutenant Cheung will guide you."
"And how do you know that isn't going to go wrong, too?" he continued, the hysteria growing. "The metal is making bad sounds, and... and everything is going wrong, and..."
"Shinji." Gendo Ikari's voice was cold, efficient. "Accidents happen. Follow your orders."
On the screen, the boy could be seen to grit his teeth, his emotions flickering between anger, shock, and dislike. "Yes," he said, eventually, taking a deep breath of LCL. "Okay."
Hands tight around the control yokes, her hands working as she forced the lumbering, power restricted Eva to move, Rei Ayanami's eyes constantly flickered over the mess of windows and data-feeds that she kept open. Compared to the simple, mostly-automated displays of Unit 01, designed for its untrained pilot, her entry plug was a mess of lights and information.
Moving the reticule onto the Harbinger, she emptied a barrage of fly-like missiles from a shoulder pod. The empty container crashed down onto the ground, bouncing and crushing an empty, abandoned car. That was the most damage it did, because the AT-Field merely flared into adamantine life as the flock approached, where they harmlessly burst. Even the arcanochromatic taint was doing nothing against the integrity of the AT-Field; the soul of Mot was proof against such blemishes.
"Internal 1," Rei said, her voice chilly.
Deep within the Eva, a single D-Engine awoke, sending a fresh jolt of power into the Eva's veins, to supplement the trickle from the external source. It was a risk, yes, but she was still 'smaller' than many of the other targets. And with the sudden agility it afforded, she was able to duck under the white cutting beam that lunged for her, catching its back-sweep on the shield, and bursting into motion, as she relocated. Too soon, it was necessary that the engine be cut again.
She had been playing this game with it, slowing it down, letting it see a hint of her AT-Field, before fleeing its wrath. Representative Ikari had ordered her to slow it down, after all.
The replacement catapult vessel slowed, much more carefully than before, and with a commiserate lack of derailments.
[Eva 01 is in place.]
"Alignment verified... checked! Hostile core status?"
"Moving, but we have it tracked. We're feeding the data to the Eva!"
Eva 01 was deep underground, stationed in the tunnels which they normally used to move the Evangelions to the surface, up from the Geocity ten kilometres below the surface. Now, it was a mere kilometre above the Geocity, and the shaft of the Harbinger had already passed it. These tunnels were now the frontlines where the Unit would fight, for the core moved along the full length of the obelisk. The extrusion of the Harbinger into reality was horrifically fast, unnaturally so, and seemed to show no care at all for little things like "conservation of mass".
"Rotate... okay, microadjustments done," the Operator whispered to Shinji. "You can start."
The boy took a deep, deep breath, of this cold, strange-tasting LCL, and felt himself slide slightly deeper into the Eva.
Think.
Think of the shape. Form the AT-Field.
Think.
Think of everyone. Form the AT-Field.
Think.
Think of killing the Harbinger. Form the AT-Field.
Think.
The air in front of the Eva began to boil, glowing and writhing and thrashing, strange bubbles of light popping as Shinji Ikari began to force the very fabric of reality to the shape he desired.
"It's not forming right!" Ritsuko barked. "He doesn't have fine enough control to get it tight enough. Even with the AT-Field weakened, it won't be a kill."
"Just give him time," Misato said, her hands clutched to her chest. "We trusted him enough to drag him back like this, after it almost killed him. After it did kill him. He chose to get in that thing, and I explained the risks of what he was doing." Her face hardened. "I believe in Shinji."
A pause.
Gendo leant forwards, pushing his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose. The overlays on the spectacles suggested that he was looking at a more detailed version of the main screen. "No," he said, simply. "Move him to the surface. He will be closer. It will work."
"But..." Ritsuko began. That's suicide, was what the scientist didn't say. "It'll detect the AT-Field for sure, and he'll be defenceless while trying to shape it."
"That seems... unwise," the Major agreed. "He's close. He can do it."
"You said you believed in him," Gendo said, eyes hidden. "Then believe in him when he is on the surface, and in effective range. The Harbinger must be killed."
Misato twirled around. "Sir," she said, her voice utterly professional. "Prepare for Eva redeployment... Shinji, we're going to move you closer, to try and..."
"High energy reaction in the target!"
"What?" Ritsuko snapped. "It's seen him! It's seen the AT-Field!"
"Emergency move!" Misato ordered, slamming one hand into a button. "Shinji! Drop that AT-Field right now! Cut all internal power to Unit 01! Get it moving!"
But on the surface, Rei Ayanami was already moving. With a flat "Internal 9," all of the Prototype's D-Engines kicked into full, screaming activity. Sudden power hit the Unit; power and more, because she had not ejected the external supply. A word was all that was needed to dedicate that exclusively to the weapon crudely attached to her left arm. And she was off, gloved hands fastened around the controls, pale face in a rictus of concentration, as she forced the Eva into motion, despite her poor synchronisation ratio.
"Override power lockdowns," she said, simply. "Maximise energy consumption, autonomous weapons are free."
Feet pounding against the ground and tearing it up, she leapt over the trench of what had once been a superheavy charge beam installation, and now was nothing more than a crater, which punched a hole in the top of a buried arcology dome. Stumbling upon landing, the white-painted Unit nonetheless managed to retain balance, even as its path led it through several apartment complexes, and it came to a sliding halt, knee drawing a line of sparks, close to the Harbinger. Its lesser weapons, the remaining missiles and rockets and laser turrets, were already firing, the blue beams visible through the dust that her motion had kicked up.
Within her plug, Rei closed her eyes, and raised the shield welded to her handless right arm, bracing for the impact that she knew would come. The plasma turret on her left arm was already firing, spewing burning sun-matter at the Harbinger. Her plug suddenly jolted down, her synch-ratio spiking before settling at a higher level.
She was not surprised by the attack. She never was. And in this case, she had gone out of her way to draw its attention.
Again, Unit 01 was kicked into too-sudden motion, heading vertically upwards. Looking down, Shinji just saw a white beam cut through the rocks, through the armour plating, through the base earth, to where he had been, seconds before, before the blast doors slammed shut, to the sound of rapidly dopplered alarms.
The boy whimpered into the LCL, one hand going to his chest despite the crushing force of the acceleration. That had been close. Far, far too close. The pain of the beams cutting into him, last time, were his only truly clear memory of the last fight.
"Shield integrity failing!"
"AT-Field weakening! Pilot attunement is dropping and destabilising, One-Two fluctuations in 3-RT channel detected!"
"Shinji! Shinji!" Misato's face appeared before him, to the sound of hubbub in the control room. "Surface! Fire!"
"What?!" He blinked, his hand forced back to the controls. "But I..."
"Loss of external power source. Unit 00 is running on Internals."
"You can do it! You will do it! Understand? Shinji," the woman said, a slight dampness around the corners of her Eyes, "we've put everything into this. You chose to pilot. You've already killed two of them. Make it three for three, okay?"
Above them, the night-black crystal met the outer layers of the Geocity.
"Energy probe is attacking G1," Lieutenant Makota yelled. "G1 is pierced! G2... G3! G3 has fallen... G4!"
"We're all counting on you," Misato said, finally.
The warning sirens which told of the Evangelion chute opening were useless, screaming into a night where there were none to hear it, and where they were drowned out by the conflict. But, still, the sirens sounded and the red warning lights illuminated the street, as the 50 metre cradle came up, directly facing the Harbinger. The ground around it warped and crumbled, as the AT-Field, already forming in front its chest, began to glisten and sparkle in the air.
Shinji slammed his fist into the side of the plug wall, into the red button they had installed to indicate readiness, and stared up at his foe, the overlay of the association-image merging with the Harbinger. It truly was a monster now; maybe a hundred metres wide, but reaching three kilometres into the air, and all the way down to the Geocity, with only a slight bulge at ground level showing what it had once been. It was a needle fit for the Norns to use, one through which the threads of fate might be woven.
But all that was irrelevant, because the totality of its firepower, the totality of its will was focussed on one thing. The white shape of Unit 00, was, according to his overlays, somewhere in the middle of that apocalyptic display of firepower, with only the hull plating of an all-too-feeble human ship, the kind that it might trivially slice through, between it and the terrible light.
The plume of light from Unit 01's chest grew stronger and brighter, a cone-like shape composed of distorted, warped, and yet perfect concentric circles. Through it, things were seen warped and distorted and... other, off in ways both tangible and intangible, similar and dissimilar.
"Yes!" shouted Ritsuko. "He's done it! It's... it's nearly perfect!"
And that was when the light of the Harbinger ceased, and it swelled and bulged, pulling all the darkness back into itself. The spire shrunk, grew anaemic and withered, as for once, for the last time, Mot grew fully aware of what it faced, of the death that came for it.
[Energy Reaction Detected]
[Warning! AT-Field exceeds mission parameter!]
"No!" Misato yelled. "No, damn you!"
The void-dark blossom of the Harbinger, bloated and imperfect, widened, as it drew in more of its stuff. And Shinji who, a trickle of blood leaking from his nose, was holding the AT-Field ready, saw reflected in its depths, so many lights, all aimed for him from the barbs of crystal now growing down its front.
Something shrieked.
And it was almost an entire second before Shinji realised that it wasn't him.
Behind it, now ignored, Rei Ayanami slashed again at the Harbinger, the fused, melted remnants of the shield her weapon of choice. Like an axewoman, she beat repetitively at the base, her AT-Field flaring around the crude, improvised weapon, and with each slash, barbs of crystal came flying out, inexorable cutting at the very root of the Harbinger.
It shrieked again, a pure, beautiful note of agony, and perhaps instinctively recoiled.
That weakening was seen by the sensors on Unit 01. It was all the excuse they needed.
The LANCE prototype initiated. Hydrogen fused with hydrogen into helium, the energy released to force more such reactions. Energy equal to five hundred kilotonnes of TNT was released, radiating out on straight lines. But thanks to the AT-Field, and thanks to the cruder human sorceries layered onto the bomb, what might have seemed straight was, to the rest of the world, curved.
In a tiny fraction of a second, a nuclear blossom grew within Unit 01's chest, within the AT-Field, before, in a perversion of nature, growing out into the stem.
And through the entry way, it hit the two Harlequin samples crudely added, to make this a wonderfully Colourful weapon.
The cone of unnatural light, five metres across by the time it reached the AT-Field of the Harbinger and still ensheathed in Unit 01's soul, punched straight through. Punched straight through the AT-Field, punched straight through the crystal, punched straight through the core, and left cleanly through the other side.
Mot gave a noise which was not quite a shriek, and was silent for evermore.
In the silence that followed, as normal night returned, and rain began to fall from the violated clouds, the sound of Unit 00 collapsing was terribly loud.
~'/|\'~
Standing on a rooftop, on one of the few buildings intact in the area, a man laughed. Vast giggles shook his body, contorting it, as tears flowed from his face freely. His parted lips revealed shining white teeth, and one bare foot, coal-black, quite deliberately crushed the glass of wine he had dropped, letting his crimson blood mix with the spilled drink.
"Wonderful!" he screamed into the night, though laughter. "Magnificent! Simply... wonderful!"
The rain that fell burned the coruscating, phosphorescence of the Colour Out of Space.
~'/|\'~
"Rei!" Shinji yelled, at the fallen Eva. "Rei!"
The white-armoured Eva was down. Its armour, once white, was now nothing more than metal and blackened, scorched ceramic. The left arm was even more heavily damaged, and the shield which had been on the right arm, and which had seen use as a weapon, was torn off completely. Compared to that, Unit 01 seemed to be in a good state of repair, even with the hole in its chest, and the faint arcanochromatic patina of dust.
He had to get her out of there.
With force, he pried open the ruined back of the Evangelion, carefully, as if holding something young and vulnerable, cradling as he laid it down on the ground. Closer examination, though, revealed that the plug had already ruptured.
That was bad, Shinji knew.
Very bad.
Frantically, he scrabbled in the equipment pod for the facemask he needed to wear until his lungs were emptied of LCL; the one that Dr Akagi had called, with a chuckle, the Eva EVA Equipment. It snapped cleanly onto his cowl, the metamorphic material sealing itself, and it was a matter of moments to shrug on the backpack with the LCL supply; moments which, to Shinji, seemed like an eternity.
And then he was out of the Eva, ignoring the command staff completely, and running through the phosphorescent rain which streaked down his facemask, and painted the orange-tinted world in strange colours. Yes, the entry plug was ruptured, right at the end, the metal torn. Clambering onto it, he could feel the heat through the blood-slicked surfaces, but it could be tolerated. He found a hole large enough that he could bend the metal out of the way, and, yelping as it sliced through the palm of his plug suit, bent it out of the way. He didn't even notice how the plug suit sealed itself up afterwards. Clambering through the hole, ignoring the pain in his hands from the sharp, burning-hot metal, he stared at the girl, who lay, unmoving, head slumped. LCL pooled around her legs, but she didn't...
"Hold on!" he shouted, yanking open the equipment capsule, to retrieve her transparent mask. With much more care, he knelt beside her, and sighed into the LCL as it clicked back into position, noting as he did that he felt much more normal. Much more normal, and as if all the sleep he felt he was owed was being called in all at once.
"Ayanami! Rei? Are you... are you all right? Are you okay?" he tried again, once he saw that the air bubbles were no longer there, which meant that she was breathing the LCL properly.
Raising her head slightly, two grey eyes stared back at him, almost quizzically. And for some reason, Shinji found that incredibly funny, and began to laugh, great heaving sobs, which left him doubled up.
"Ikari? Are you all right?" Rei echoed, looking at him with something which approached concern.
"There's... there's more to life, to stuff, to... to everything than what is necessary," Shinji burbled, relief and exhaustion flooding his system in equal amounts. "And... and don't ever, ever say 'goodbye' like that. It's not going to be a goodbye." Behind the transparent mask tears leaked into the LCL, tiny spheres of saline water which quickly dispersed into the fluid. "Not... not if I... I... can..." he faded away into incoherency.
Eyes widening slightly, Rei straightened up, her head no longer lolling. "Why do you cry?" she asked, voice distorted slightly by the fluid that still filled her lungs. "You are not in pain."
Shinji sniffed, and went to wipe his nose, only for his hand to brush against the faceplate. "I kn-know," he managed. "I'm not crying because... because I'm sad. It's because I'm happy." He smiled then, a faint, watery grin. "And so should you be."
"I should be crying?" Behind the faceplate, wide eyes blinked. "I am sorry. I don't know how to express myself in this kind of circumstance."
"You should be happy." He took a teetering step forwards, as the adrenaline wore off and the bone-deep fatigue returned, leaning against the heated plug wall, and recoiling from it with a yelp. "We're both alive, and the Harbinger isn't, and... you were amazing, and..." he chuckled, even through the tears, "...you should smile more."
Two grey eyes focussed on the face before them, focussed on the jaw line and the cheekbones and the shape of the face, at the way that the corners of his lips turned up and the crinkles around the corners of his eyes, comparing them to those of the boy's father. Slowly, awkwardly, Rei's face distorted, muscles moving in a way that they were not quite used to, and she too smiled.
With a burbling chuckle, Shinji collapsed, sagging at the knees. The exhaustion, induced by his death and rebirth, and postponed by medication and adrenaline, surged back, and the sweet nepenthe of rest took him. The LCL pooled at the bottom of the entry plug splashed with his impact, dripping back down the walls.
There was an expression of faint concern on Rei's face, as she stared down at the sleeping boy. With a wince, the girl sat upright, and with unusual care and hesitancy, leant forwards, to stare down at him. Her lips twitched, and she smiled again, no less awkwardly than the first time, as she reached down to place one gloved hand against his cowled head.
Outside, the tainted rain, burning in terrible phosphorescence, cascaded down, running over ruined buildings and leaching the colour from them, to pool and flow in rivulets down abandoned streets. It poured in sheets off the darkness of the corpse of the Harbinger, the dark tower that now reached into the sky, bringing light to the darkness, and through the single hole punched straight through it. It dripped and ran down the two abandoned Evangelions, marking their damaged armour with streaks of grey. The world seemed to shimmer in this light, as if all things were one in this opalescent, coruscating glow.
And through the holes in the clouds, torn asunder through the violence of the conflict, the nearly-full moon shone down in whiteness upon the world, wearing a tainted rainbow as a halo.
Chapter 12
Rei 02, In Fire And Ashes / Some mourning words
EVANGELION
~'/|\'~
"If thou openest not the gate to let me enter,
I will break the door, I will wrench the lock,
I will smash the door-posts, I will force the doors.
I will bring up the dead to eat the living.
And the dead will outnumber the living."
Ishtar's Descent to the Underworld
Babylonian Mythology
Babylonian Mythology
~'/|\'~
The airlock deep in the bowls of the Geocity sealed itself shut, cutting off the painfully bright blue light from the containment chamber. With a sigh, Gendo Ikari relaxed slightly, and peeled the argoggles from his face, dropping them in the disposal bin. They were soon followed by his ear protectors, and the undyed cotton overall.
The man stood fully naked, eyes closed, as chill mist filled the chamber, thick and swirling and cloying, its scent washing away the odour of the place on the other side of the door. A thin, colourless condensation dripped from his warm body, and he shuddered. The call of instinct was too strong to resist; not when the coldness touched his flesh, rivulets running down over the thin white lines which crisscrossed his back and hands, and dripping in long, stringy drops from the uncapped socket points for the sorcerer's implants.
The sudden furnace heat was nothing compared to the chill, and the warm water that washed the now-dried micromachine gel off was positively pleasant by contrast. Spitting out a foul-tasting residue, he stepped through to the next decontamination chamber, snatching up the towel and dabbing at his eyes, sinking his face into the absorbent material, before he began to dry the rest of his body.
As Gendo dressed himself again, motions hurried, his eyes unconsciously avoided the transparent window on one side of the room where, on the other side of a one-way mirror, an opaque white box, corners smoothed to nanoscopic precision, was undergoing its own decontamination procedure.
'703' was all it said, in big black letters. That, and the Greek character 'α', a black symbol in the centre of a yellow circle. The warning for arcane materials.
Gendo Ikari had descended to Irkalla to obtain a way to tilt the odds in their favour. And this box, and its contents, was his weapon.
~'/|\'~
It was the start of a brand new day for the students at the Academy, filled with fun and excitement. Even if they wished that it wasn't, especially when the 'fun' included an evacuation notice. The only mercy was that the school was deep enough down, that it, in itself, counted as a valid evacuation shelter, and so it was not necessary to move. This came with the attendant downside, however, that there were still going to be some lessons. The entire class was muted, with a considerable fraction deciding to use the tutor group period to catch up sleep.
"Come on," Hikary said, folding her arms and glaring around the class. "I know it's Thursday, but do you all have to be like this?"
There was a mix of groans and vaguely assent-sounding noises from the subdued figures.
"Not my fault, Class Rep," Toja managed, voice a little muffled by the way his face was mashed into the desk. "I didn't get much sleep last night."
"How is that not your..."
"Face it, Hik," said Ayesha, with a shrug, "people just kinda suck."
There was a clatter as Beautriu, a tanned girl with short, mousy-brown hair, managed to trip over her own shoelaces, and send both her arglasses and her bag full of books spilling over the floor. There was applause, and even a few wolf-whistles, which were cut short when Hikary straightened up, and directed a glare around the room.
"Case in point," Ayesha added, smirking.
Hikary glanced at her fellow xenomix. "That wasn't where I was heading," she said. "I was just wondering why everyone seems so tired... more tired than normal for a Thursday, that is."
"Yes, well... doesn't make it not true," remarked the Student Council Representative. "People are lazy. I mean, I hate Thursdays too, but no more than any other day."
The pig-tailed girl shook her head. "It does make it not relevant. For one, you hate the world generally."
The other orange-eyed girl sighed, adjusting her headscarf slightly. "Because... I refer you to my first point. I did stand for Council on a policy of jaded cynicism and misanthropy, after all, and I got in, so... meh." She shrugged. "And on that topic, you did get the minutes from the last meeting, right?"
"Yes." Hikary nodded. "I hope everyone will do their best, with the minimum of fuss. It shouldn't be too bad; the class play is usually quite popular."
"Class play?" someone asked from directly behind Hikary, panting slightly.
"Good morning, Taly," the Class Representative replied, flatly. "Yes, class play. You're late, by the way."
The other girl shrugged. "He's not here yet," she said, referring to the teacher, "so I'm not late."
"That's not how it works, and you know it."
"Plus, I have a totally valid reason. You know, there are evacuations everywhere. I don't know if you have been paying attention, but there are. And even before the notice came through, the central dome in Princechurch was sealed off completely, and there are delays all along the Ascension line. It's a mess trying to get down from higher in the city. Which, you know, you'd know if you weren't you."
Hikary narrowed her eyes. "Maybe," she said. "Now, Ayesha," she said, turning away from the girl with the dyed red streaks in her hair, "back on the topic... perhaps without any interruptions," she added, sweetly.
~'/|\'~
Dabbing carefully at her face with the wet towel, wincing every time the skin shifted over the bruising around her forearms and lower back, Ritsuko stared at herself in the mirror. She ran her tongue over dry, cracked lips, tasting blood.
"Self-inspection reveals epidermal haematomas on face, specifically over the cheeks and around the jaw." She winced again, as she added, voice rough, "Discomfort in talking, dry throat, sore eyes. Majority of tissue damage is located around grounding implants in soft-tissue, as expected. Self-examination complete. Now, will you let me out of here?"
[Medichine initial diagnosis is still in process. Please wait.]
"Sorry, Dr Akagi," added a Nazzadi-accented woman, the subtle inflections in her voice distinguishing her from the LAI, "but you know the rules. After a ritual of this magnitude, we have to check for organ damage, and...
"There is something rather more important right now," Ritsuko said, her jaw locked. "So, forgive me if I..."
[Medichine initial diagnosis is still in process. Please wait.]
"Dr Akagi, you know the rules. We need to make sure that any bleedthrough aftereffects aren't going to kill you. So, please, wait while we wait for the medichines to provide a diagnosis."
There was an uncomfortable silence.
"Okay, it's coming in," the medical technician announced over the speakers. "Some minor internal bleeding..."
"Where?" The word was short, terse.
"Uh... liver, small intestine... grade 1."
"Nothing in anything immediately important, then?"
The nazzady paused. "Uh... no. It'll be dealt with by the medichines, but you will need to take it easy for the next few hours, and you shouldn't be nanoscrubbed until they've sealed off the bleeding."
"Of course I plan to take it easy," Ritsuko lied. "Now..."
There was a faint sigh from the medical technician. "Just wait a moment, please." A container slid out from the wall, containing a white jumpsuit and attendant jacket. "We'll need to make sure that you're plugged into the monitoring gear in case of complications."
"Yes, yes," the blond snapped, already threading the cable out from the neck of the clothing to the port just under her left ear, before roughly pulling on the suit. "It's not like I haven't done this before. Now, can I..."
"Yes, I'm reactivating your data access rights. The sealed bag has..." the other woman noted that the scientist had already torn it open, to get to the equipment. "Yes," she sighed. Scientists were all the same, in her experience. Pure sorcerers tended to treat their bodies better.
"Right, so," Dr Akagi said to herself, as the initialisation text ran along the insides of her harcontacts. "Come on... come on, ah. Athena," she began, addressing her muse, "check mail. Filter for relevancy based on List 3."
[Yes, doctor. You have 149 new relevant messages.] the LAI said, formally.
Ritsuko blinked, heart suddenly racing. What had happened while she was out of contact? "Sort by urgency," she instructed the LAI, as she slipped on the plimsoll-like shoes provided. "Prioritise by relevance: subjects Evangelion, Harbinger-5, Ikari, Harbinger."
[51 of 149 new messages are urgent, doctor.]
"What?" she blurted out loud. Pulling out a stylus from the bag, she began to flick down the list in front of her eyes, rapidly scanning the headers. The door unsealed, and, barely paying attention to what was going on, Ritsuko shuffled out. Pausing for a moment, she told her muse to bring up a route-line for her to follow to get to where the Unit 01 team was working, on the repairs, before resuming the reading that left her blind in one eye.
Her jaw dropped open at the sight of the annotated diagrams.
~'/|\'~
All across Eastern Europe, the fires of conflict raged. All across Eastern Europe, the New Earth Government was being pushed back. The Migou had committed heavily to this front, and so the forces which tore into the human lines with ruthless efficiency were not the normal mix of Nazzadi Loyalists, backed up and honed by Migou units. No, these were pure Migou formations, filled with the technological horrors of the fungi from Yuggoth, interspersed by the Loyalist Elite, who were, in mind, more akin to their masters than to their genetic source.
A flash of light blinded the midday sun, as an antimatter warhead blew a glowing crater into the hillside, the direct hit crushing the NEG fortification dug into the geography like a tin can. The Migou fliers which had broken away just before launch returned, black knife-shapes tearing through the air and slashing at those human gunships which had survived the shockwave, the aircraft now denuded of their surface to air support. The sudden shift in the tactical situation was enough to allow the silent, ellipsoid shapes of the Migou heavy ground units, and their strange mecha, which approached the technoorganic aesthetic from the other side, to break through. Beams of relativistic plasma illuminated the contrails of worryingly smart missiles, as blasts reaped their way through the armoured units of humanity.
Second Lieutenant Salou Danda swore in his head, over and over again, and tried to crouch down further, to make his Dawn an even smaller target on this battlefield. Half his squadron was already KIA, and with the loss of the firebase, they certainly didn't have enough forces in this area to hold off. And without Lieutenant Santiago, they didn't have the drones, and so were blind... not that drones would be much use in this emwar environment, he thought, staring morosely at the haze on his passive radar. The clouds of interfering micromachines and nanomachines released by both sides were staining the air silver, replacing the ones destroyed by the blast, and high above, the sun was once more a blood-red disc, as if it was dusk, despite the fact that it was not even midday yet.
"Orders, sir?" It was Tirtzah, over the tightbeam laser.
The man took a single breath, and let it out, slowly. They had been forwards recon for the base; that was, obviously, now useless. Their EWAC aircraft and drones were down, so they were cut off, completely. They could try to retreat, but the emfog was dense enough that the damnable Migou sensors would have a worrying chance of seeing their stealthed mecha, just from the displacement patterns left in the clouds. It was one of the reasons that both sides used them, after all.
"We hold," he lased back. "Go Ghost-Niner, Lima-Lima."
"Roger."
It was that simple. Two Dawn-class reconnaissance mecha couldn't do much against the armoured legions of the Migou. Even if Tirtzah was the heavy weapons specialist, she only had one ACMRM left, and a one tonne-yield warhead was not enough. Not when there were Mantises out there, which weren't even always mission-killed by a close proximity blast.
But wait, wait and watch, while the emfog dispersed and settled to the ground like silvery snow, wait and track the Migou movements, and then try to re-establish contact, to report their findings? That was a worthy cause.
You didn't give up, and you didn't throw your life away. To do either, was to court extinction.
~'/|\'~
Evangelion Unit 01 was a titan covered in ants that swarmed and crawled across its surface; exosuited workers and autonomous drones alike replacing damaged external plating. The parts which had come from Unit 02 were obvious; they were the crimson of that Evangelion's test colours, and a sharp contrast to the intact parts of the armour, which had been stripped down to its base purple to check for microfractures.
Dr Sarany Akanubalaki vy Saranupakalarti, head of the Unit 01 team, brushed a cowlick of black hair away from her eyes, and continued, "... and that about summarises the repairs. To cut it short, Unit 01 is nothing more than functional. We did our best, but..." she bit a lip, "... there's only so much you can do. The internal damage is enough that after this is over, if we're all alive, we're going to have to strip off the chest, and put it through a localised moult-regrowth. There's a hole in its tissue, in its chest, about the size of a tank, once we cut out the crystal-contaminated tissues. It goes all the way through. It's a miracle it missed anything we couldn't replace. Four of the D-Engine/D-Sink pairs were hit by that alone. And there's more. I can tell you that any activity is going to damage it more, but," she shrugged, "you're going to say that it's an unavoidable necessity, aren't you?"
"Yes," Ritsuko said, tersely. "Now..."
The nazzady fixed her eyes on her immediate superior. "It's almost ready to move, when the inspection is done but... I don't like the additional modifications we have to make." Her red eyes were narrow, as she added, "I'm not blind, Ritsuko. I can recognise what the modifications are for. But the orders came straight from the Representative, and what Ikari wants..." She paused. "What the senior Ikari wants, that is," she corrected herself. "I doubt Test Pilot Ikari will want it. But... eh."
The blond nodded in slightly peeved agreement.
"Of course," the other woman continued, looking at Ritsuko from the corner of her eyes, "have you checked that the Test Pilot will actually be piloting? I wouldn't, if I were him."
"Mis... Major Katsuragi is seeing to it," Dr Akagi said, "or least, she should be. She's Operations, so the pilots are her responsibility. We just need to ensure that the equipment is in the best possible state for her."
The head of the Unit 01 team acknowledged the mild rebuke with a nod.
"Dr Akagi." The voice came up from her PCPU.
Reaching down, Ritsuko acknowledged the call, even as Sarany turned on her heel, and hurried off. "Yes, Tola?" she acknowledged the head of the Unit 00 team.
"Unit 00 has been fully recovered. I've sent you the damage report from the sortie, but you haven't responded yet."
Inwardly, the Director of Science sighed. They had recruited Dr Sopheap from the Engel Group, where she had been in charge of frontline testing and deployment for one of their Species sub-Projects, and it showed. "No, Tola, I haven't," she said, already bringing up a harcontact display to read yet another Urgent message. "I have, literally, just got out of a ritual."
"I do require your formal authorisation to proceed," the other woman chided her.
Eyes flickering across the display, Ritsuko scan-read the message, and the attached diagrams. "Are you sure you can get the repair work complete?"
"Yes." The word was solid, confident. "It's a B-2 part, but the hand design is the same. It's very fortunate that the Unit only took a glancing blow like that. It'll make the repairs much easier... which we will want, if we want Unit 00 to carry a handheld weapon. Oh, and the Test Pilot's synch ratio was low enough that she didn't even take mild sympathetic burns," Dr Sopheap added, as an afterthought.
"Don't do it," Ritsuko ordered.
"What?" The tone was confused.
"I mean, 'permission is refused'," she said acerbically. "That's the arm we're installing the blast shield on. She doesn't need a hand for that arm."
"But..."
"Get the Unit loaded onto the train ASAP. You can finish the important repairs in the L2 Geocity. A hand isn't important compared to the extra armour."
She could hear the gritted teeth in the, "Yes, Doctor," and the cursory way that the line was cut. Ritsuko didn't care. Like too many of the staff recruited from the Engel Group, Dr Sopheap tended to treat the Evangelions as little more than enlarged versions of their child-technologies. As a result, Tola was looking as this as the loss of the primary weapons system of the Unit. But that was not that the mission profile that Major Katsuragi had designed called for, and so, simply, it was not needed.
It was that simple.
~'/|\'~
Shinji Ikari awoke again to a subtle swaying motion. Like a babe in his mother's arms, he lay, eyes closed, surrounded by warmth, gently rocked from side to side. Slowly, one hand crept up, to rest upon the smooth skin of his chest, to feel the thud of his heart and the rhythmic pulsation of his breath.
It felt good. Through the depths of bone-deep weariness, there was a tiny spark of exaltation. He was alive, and he was warm, and it was good.
Two blue eyes slowly opened, feeling gummy and sticky. Though slightly blurry and indistinct, Shinji could not recognise the... no, it wasn't an entry plug. It wasn't curved enough, and it was the wrong colour. What was the word? Ah, yes. Ceiling. It was an unfamiliar ceiling that arched above him, low, clean snow-white, and covered in what looked like handholds. It was a utilitarian thing. It was something designed for a role, and, hence, it would carry out its role.
Somewhere, from outside his field of vision, there was the snap of a book being closed, and the faint, wet sound of a lid being reattached to a pen. With an effort, he tilted his head, to gaze upon two frigid grey eyes, locked upon his face. Two grey eyes, in a milk-coloured face, situated above a white plug-suit. It had obviously been used; he could smell the LCL, which plucked at the chords of memory like a knife. It was a scent that both repulsed and called to him.
The heartbeat became a hummingbird's wings. He knew her from somewhere. She was familiar. Very, very familiar.
"Ayanami," he croaked, through disobedient vocal cords. "Rei."
The girl tucked her book back into army-green rucksack by her chair, along with the pen, and then removed a PCPU. All the time, her gaze never left his. "I have come to provide necessary equipment for the as-yet-unnamed operation to engage Harbinger-5 again, in defence of London-2, as well as the interim briefing."
His eyes began to droop shut again.
"I bought you a meal." The girl paused. "There are also stimulants. The dosage requirements are on the packet," she continued, standing up. With a faint clink, she lifted the tray in one hand, and, the other hand working its way across the ceiling, she made her way to place the tray beside his bed. The clink of the plastic was reassuringly solid.
"My... head...muscles... everything aches. And tired."
"Medical micromachines are currently rebuilding nerve connections throughout your body. The discomfort is tolerable," Rei said, shifting slightly to unconsciously flex her right arm. "Now," something heavy impacted his legs, as she dropped a sealed packet in black on his legs, "here is a fresh plug suit. You will wear this plug suit on the operation."
"You're... okay?" he managed, ignoring her comments. It seemed a little unfair to Shinji, in his current state that, she seemed to be so completely untouched by anything, while he was lying here incapacitated.
The girl tilted her head slightly. "I took only minor fractures in the first engagement against Harbinger-5, and they were self-induced in my attempts at evasion," she stated. "I have also been deployed again, while you were dead. I lost a hand."
Shinji frowned. She appeared to have both hands. And... "I w-was dead?" he stammered, his breathing suddenly laboured.
"It was not the hand of this body. I was piloting the Evangelion at the time," Rei added. "My synchronisation ratio with Evangelion Unit 00 was low enough that I did not experience sympathetic damage."
"W-wait. I. Dead?" Shinji managed. It was a matter of some importance to him.
"Yes." The girl blinked. "You got better," she said, no shift in intonation at all.
There was spluttering from the figure on the bed, which turned into coughing. "I. I. W-wait, do you just mean 'clinically'. Not dead, dead?" he asked, weakly.
"You were clinically dead, yes." Rei paused, and continued, her voice sounding as if she were reciting something she had memorised. "We are on a heavy transport train, connecting Ostberlin-2 and London-2. Evangelion Units 00 and 01 are also on this train, repairs having been made to them, to get them operational. That will not prevent your deployment."
Shinji winced. That had been an objection he might have bought up, had he thought of it. That she had already pre-empted it was... he yawned, and closed his eyes.
The cold voice of the white-haired girl still managed to piece his fatigue. "You are to eat, and take the dosage of stimulants provided, as to ensure that you conform to the timetable."
Slowly, groggily, the boy shook his head, but nonetheless managed to force himself to sit up, muscles in his back screaming at unexpected use. Opening his eyes, he started down at the plug suit, neatly packaged. The '01' visible on the front seemed to be winking at him.
"You will wish to put that on. It will be cold outside."
Shinji looked up, to see the girl's head tilted slightly, as she stared down at him. No comprehension dawned on him. She stared back. Shinji shook his head, trying to dispel some of the blurriness which still hung over him. "I'm... what? I... what are you talking about?"
"You are naked."
He squinted. He looked down. Huh. So he was, under the sheets. He hadn't noticed that. And the act of sitting up had made them roll away. He wouldn't have been aware of that, unless Rei had pointed... Rei... girl... naked... naked Rei...warm... exposed...
A squeak, and a hurried grab of bedsheets left him in a somewhat less exposed state. His head drooped, the fringe of dark hair just protruding into his vision, to shield him from the stare of the white girl. "Sorry," he muttered.
"For what?" There seemed to be a hint of curiosity in Rei's voice.
"Because... um... well, just, sorry." He paused, and swallowed. "I... I've been saying that a lot recently," he remarked, almost to himself, eyes half-closed. "Still... at least we're now even?" Shinji pre-emptively flinched, as he realised just how stupid that statement was.
"You will eat."
The food, if that was what one deigned to call the broth-like drink, looked singularly unappetising to him, and he said as much.
"You will eat," Rei said again, her intonation identical.
"I'm not hungry," he said, turning away, and slumping back down.
"You will eat. You require nutrients."
"Why?"
"To maintain focus while piloting."
Oh. Yes. "Must I?" he asked, the self-pity audible.
"Yes."
"I don't want to," he blurted out. "It... it hurts, and I just want to sleep! You... you can only stand and tell me that I must do it because you haven't had to... do..." he trailed off. After a moment's pause, he looked back at her.
The two grey eyes were fixed on the wall, above his bed. He felt, somehow, that not only was she not looking in his direction, she was not looking in his direction, and that was utterly different.
"Sorry." There it was again. "But... but..." he bit his lip. Indeed, he bit a little too hard, and tasted blood. "I don't ever want to have to do it again."
"Stay here." The unexpected words came through the veil of tiredness.
"What?"
"Stay here. I will pilot. Unit 01 can be reconfigured for me."
There was an odd feeling, almost akin to pressure on a forgotten bruise, deep within his stomach. That they could... would... he blinked. That was what he wanted, wasn't it? "They can do that?" he asked.
"Yes. You know that. Dr Akagi can order such a change." Rei straightened out, subtly. "I will go. You will stay here, in this bed. I may see you afterwards."
The way she said 'bed', despite the lack of audible emotion, nevertheless filled Shinji with an odd feeling of rage, of anger at the way that she was patronising him. "Fine," he snapped back, jolting upright even as his body protested. Wincing, groaning, he nevertheless glared at her.
She did not even look at him, but continued to stare at the wall. "I will inform Dr Akagi that the Third Child is not willing to carry out his duties."
"Yes! They're... they're duties I never wanted, never asked for, never... never ever was really asked about or... or anything! Why? Why should I do it?"
"It is necessary. It must be done by someone." She blinked, once. "Lie back down. You may damage yourself," she said, turning around and heading towards the door. She paused for just a moment there, and there was the slightest twitch of her head, as if she were about to turn around. She did not do so.
"Goodbye," she said, her tone not only cold, but dead.
The door slid shut behind her, and Shinji was left alone, in this white, cold, clinical room, the burning reds and crimsons of rage and shame painting themselves behind his eyeballs. One hand jerked out, and, unlooking, he grabbed the cup. A long slurp resounded through the room, as he took a mouthful of nutrient broth.
It didn't make him feel better.
~'/|\'~
The OIS perimeter around the building was secure, and growing more so by the minute. The hulking figures of power armour were joined by stationary anti-tank emplacements, the dark-grey-and-blue capsules keeping their anti-armour railguns trained on the designated locations.
Almost all of the people were gone. Only a few, specially chosen, manned the necessary command sections, and they were few indeed, because there was very little that could not be controlled remotely. Humans, no matter their subspecies, were to evacuate away from any instance of Budapest Syndrome.
And yet a fresh armoured truck was permitted past the security cordon at the dome entrance, its wheels silent on the road. The man driving it paused and held an arm out of the window, as his genetics were checked again; as it retracted, he winced, sweeping back his red hair. "We're here," he called back, as he pulled to a stop, at the point where the tank traps blocked the robe.
The side of the van unfolded, and a tall nazzada, his hair combed up into an afro, straightened, unfolding out of the vehicle. Stretching, he cricked his neck, a slight muttered comment providing his opinion of the seats, and stepped out, followed by two, slighter figures. Both women were wearing transparent facemasks, and light armour, but compared to the heavy armour and unmanned vehicles around here, they seemed comically underprotected.
These were specialists, here on the direct orders of Deputy Director Echo. They were aware that armour, or even ANaMiNBC protection, would not help against Budapest Syndrome.
With a nod, and a few curt words, the women strolled in, their eyes alert. The larger man, meanwhile, returned to the vehicle after stretching, and began the process of connecting up all the systems of the building, routed through the OIS containment station outside this dome, back through his vehicles. Any objections were routed through the fact that this team were specialists directly under orders from Deputy Director Echo, the Section Head of the London-2 branch of the OIS, and were promptly withdrawn.
The driver leant back, hands behind his head and an uneasy expression on his face, as muffled curses in Nazzadi resounded through the vehicle's chassis, interspersed with the calm voices of LAI systems, which, for some reason, did not seem to be helping.
Inside the building, though, all was quiet. The two women had already removed their masks. One was blonde, the other darker-haired, but there was a certain similarity in their blandly attractive faces which suggested some relationship.
[So, what do you think, ASPARTAME?] the blond 'said' over her interface, her hands running over the barrel of her stubby, bulky pistol, fingers tapping and stroking it unconsciously. Obviously, she was eventually satisfied, because a button was depressed, and the rails extended and expanded, the systems in the railweapon coming online with a hum. [Authorisation APHRODITE, reconfigure for special ammunition, Classification 'Flayer',] she instructed the weapon's LAI over a link.
[Acknowledged. Please Insert Specified Ammunition Type.]
The darker-haired one shrugged. [The OIS got it contained quickly,] she 'replied'. [And no-one seemed to have stumbled into it when they kicked down the door. So we got... maybe twenty, thirty people in this Budapest? Not much.]
[That's what I was thinking,] the blonde said, sliding the magazine in. There was a tone, and a light on the handle turned green.
[We've had worse,] her companion remarked. There was suddenly... something in her hand, a line of distortion and anomaly and darkness and light and paradox; a vague barb of a sword which seemed to writhe as something alive.
[Yep.] The dark-haired woman shrugged. "Hey, APOSTATE, get them to give us access to local systems, would you?" she asked, verbally, over the comms link. "They still haven't."
"On it." A slight pause, followed with some profanity. "Done," was the next word said which was suitable for polite company.
The blond tapped a button on her PCPU with her thumb, and paused for a moment. "Okay... okay... and, get it open," she said, working her way through the menus.
[Yes. Opening.]
The interior doors opened, and the two women stepped in, sealing the door behind them.
~'/|\'~
The door to Shinji's room slid open again, and Misato stepped through, her uniform marred by the filter mask slung around her neck and the thick mass of body armour over her torso. Slowly, almost painfully carefully, she picked her way over to his side, one hand always clinging to the nearest ceiling hold.
"Hey," she said, her voice softer than usual. "I think we should tal..."
"No." Shinji's voice was flat, almost dead, as he interrupted. He didn't even meet her gaze, instead keeping his eyes locked on the unfamiliar ceiling. He didn't want to look at her. "No. I'm no-not doing it. I'm not getting back in that th-th-thing. Not again. It killed me." He sucked in a breath. "And... and you said it. Before... when I was feeling all nervous." He swallowed. "You said I wasn't going to be killed. I was. I can't believe I'm saying it, but... clinically dead is still dead, if only for a while!"
There was an uncomfortable silence, only broken by the waver and sway of the train.
"Well," Shinji said, bitterly, shifting slightly to prop himself up on his arms a fraction, before sinking back down. "Aren't you going to s-say something like 'You only died a little bit', or 'You got better', or... or anything? Anything...anything trite to try lessen the fact that it h-h-hurt and I was sort of de-dead and I never want to have to get in that thing again ever!" He swallowed hard, his throat suddenly dry. "It was so... cold," he muttered. "Cold and dark. Except when it wasn't. But... it was... no. Never again."
"No." Misato's voice was quiet, hollow-sounding. "I can't lessen it. I can't justify it. I can't explain it. If Strategic Missile Command hadn't mismanaged the deployment of warheads, we could have hit it with multiple ones, like the ones we initiated in the first attack, and we know that managed to get through the AT-Field. If the Migou hadn't moved interdiction forces into the North Atlantic, Asuka... that's Unit 02's pilot, could have been moved over. If I'd pushed harder, I could have maybe had Unit 02 stationed over in L2 already, and it wouldn't be needed." She slumped down in a chair by the bed, not meeting the boy's gaze. "There's so many ways we could have not needed to do this. But we do need to. And it's a terrible thing." She bit on her lip. "It's wrong that we want you to do this. It's wrong that we need you do this... except we don't. That's the worst thing. This isn't the only option."
"Then why don't you..."
"Because Rei, in Unit 00, doesn't have the fine AT-Field control," the dark-haired woman continued, in that same, broken-sounding voice. "She can't, physically, do it like you could. Remember, she had her first successful start-up test yesterday. So if we use her... we'll have to get her to nearly point-blank range, and even if she survives that, the odds are that she will not survive the use of the weapon."
"So you're getting me to pilot again by putting her in danger." It was a simple statement.
"No." Misato shook her head. "As you said, it left you clinically dead. Believe me, I'll understand if you don't want to. I might not agree, but, believe me, I'll understand. All too well. But I am going to tell you the facts. And this is a fact, that because Rei only has simulator practice, she is worse at AT-Field manipulation than you, has a worse synch ratio, and so will probably die. The MAGI give her odds of survival at about 10%, even if she survives getting into position. You saw what that thing was like; how it was able to target everything. And if she fails, the odds are that we'll need to use the RAPTURE contingency." She lifted her chin slightly. "Do you want to know what RAPTURE is?" she asked.
"Uh..." Shinji frowned, trying to ignore the sudden churning, swirling acidic feel in his stomach, and glanced over at her for the first time. "Well, the word means 'happiness', doesn't it? But I don't th-think that's a happy thing."
She shook her head. "No. Not happy at all. There are enough fusion warheads built into the structure of London-2 to reduce the entire city to something like a three-kilometre deep crater."
"Wh-why? What's so important that you need to..." the boy paused, unable to continue. Unwilling to continue
"Because we can't let them win." The Major's voice had changed; although it was still quiet, it was quiet in the same way that a tiger in the night is quiet; something only made more dangerous by the lack of volume. "We can't let them get any benefit, even from taking a city. And I don't just mean the Harbingers by 'them'. I mean anyone who's not us. Migou, Deep Ones, Stormites, a Harbinger... whoever. They all make use of people. Make people less than people. Use them against us. I don't... we won't let them. Every major arcology is set up the same way. After what I saw in China and after A... it's something I fully agree with." The woman's eyes flickered over to the armoured wall of the train, breaking his gaze. "It's better than the alternative."
Shinji took several shuddering deep breaths, and let them out slowly, feeling the muscles in his chest ache from so little. The idea of such things, that the New Earth Government, the good guys were willing to go to such lengths to stop... "What happens if the Harbinger wins? What will it do?"
"I could tell you," the Major said, still staring at the wall. "And I said earlier, that I was going to tell you the facts. I... I've studied the reports from Harbinger-1 and I w... and looked at some of the after-effects. But, again, just like with RAPTURE, I'll ask you again. Do you really want to know?"
There was silence. Then, "No," Shinji said, staring back up at the ceiling. "I d-don't want to know. B-but," he stammered. "Do I have a chance about not-knowing? You're not going to tell me anyway?"
There was a single nod from the woman. "No. If you don't want me to, I won't force you to listen."
"Then, as I said, I don't want to know." The boy paused. "You look like you know, and... no, I don't want to. But..." and he swallowed hard, trying to search for the right words "... I really don't want to go against... to get in the Unit. B-but, from what you say?" Images of Unit 00 being annihilated in Harbinger-born radiance, swiftly followed by the faces of his classmates, of everyone he might have seen in London-2, throbbed in his head. "I don't have a choice."
"No. You have a choice."
"No... that's n-not quite the same thing," the boy said, wanting to gesture with his hands to explain, but feeling too weak to even manage that. "I mean... well, you're giving me a choice. But I don't have a choice. I want to run away, far away, and never see any of this again. But I won't." He let out a weak chuckle. "And can't, too. I mean, I'd collapse before I got..." the words were broken by coughing.
A watery smile crept onto Misato's face, at the poor joke. "You'll do it," she said. It was not a question.
"Yes." Several deep breaths. "Yes. I don't know if I can actually," he winced, "actually physically do it, but... I want to do it. I have the intent of doing it. Because... I can't not."
Stepping over to the side of the bed, Misato squatted down, head at his eye level, reaching out to squeeze his hand. "I'm sorry, Shinji," she said, in a tone carefully purged of elation. "But... thank you." Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a widescreen PCPU. "Now, see this?" she asked, thumbing it on.
Shinji nodded. "It's one of the training placards? Isn't it? For the AT-Field stuff." He frowned. It was notably more complicated than any of the other ones; the three dimensional image a mess of layered red and blue lines. It had some resemblance to the 'spike' shape they used to show him how to surround a blade, but... different.
"Correct. We need you to memorise this. Completely. Perfectly. It will be the only way that you can fire the modified LANCE system we're fitting to Unit 01." She swallowed. "I am going to explain what this will involve. Please," she almost begged him, "listen to everything that I have to say before you say anything."
~'/|\'~
And now the two women stepped out of the building, masks back on, weapons no longer there, stepping promptly into the decontamination centre that the OIS had erected. They showed up clean, and there was a sigh of relief from the watchers and their handler.
"Captain Joyeuse," the blonde said, opening a link to the OIS team outside. "We have examined the bravo-type ENE."
Ori, safe away from the... the thing, shuddered slightly. Those disposal and examination experts were far, far braver than her; she'd had nightmares after the bit when they'd explained Budapest Syndrome to her, and the knowledge that one of the people on her team, Gjorgji, had actually been in Budapest in '67... well, she didn't envy the man. "Yes, Agent Biksisu?" she asked, trying to keep her voice calm.
"It seems to have been a deliberate formation," the specialist stated, with a slight shrug, which Ori felt was rather inappropriate. "That's both good and bad. Good, because it hasn't self-catalysed, and so it has a small absorption radius. Bad, because there's someone out there who knows how to do this."
The captain paled. "I... I see."
"The site has been contained adequately," the darker-haired woman added. "Grade 5b sterilisation will be required, to purge the ENE. I would also recommend that you flood the section with carbon monoxide, to prevent any aerobic lifeforms from getting near, and adding to the coalescence. I have attached the recommendation to our initial report."
"Yes... yes, that makes sense."
"We have been ordered to another site," she continued, her brow furrowing slightly. "This looks to be a busy day."
"And to think that this was meant to be our day off," her co-worker added. "A city-wide evacuation notice, and all these Budapests. Well, we're certainly earning our monies today."
Captain Joyeuse swallowed slightly. Gallows humour. How... funny. "Understood. I'll just need you to submit your provisional containment report, before we can acknowledge this."
"Talk to Agent Garta," the blonde said. "We've given him our data; he's the team leader."
"Okay, I understand." Ori sighed, and cut the link, letting her head slump into her hands. Looking around, at the faces of her colleagues, she was not alone in this feeling. A deliberately caused instance of Budapest Syndrome.
This was bad.
~'/|\'~
It was now late afternoon, and the reduced timetable which the Academy had put on had finished. It was questionable how much attention had been paid, of course, because the combination of widespread tiredness, and the natural inattentiveness when a full-scale warning was still in place, had unified their efforts to make the intricacies of mathematics lose their lustre, somewhat.
The fact that there had been two absences; 'Ayanami, Rei' and 'Ikari, Shinji', had been noted. The Academy was a highly selective school, designed to train the next generation of world leaders and scientists for their future careers, and to engender a love of knowledge and the ability to solve puzzles in its students. They were more than capable of putting facts like 'Shinji and Rei are not here' and 'last time something like this happened, some kind of monster attacked' together.
"I wish we were allowed up to the surface to watch!" moaned Kensuke, sitting at his desk, and glaring at the security notice warning of restricted Grid access. "I bet they're being deployed right now. Just think of it; two shining titans, weapons firing bright high energy lasers and plasma, valiantly standing forth against the abominations which imperil humanity. And Nazzadity," he added, with a sideways glance at Toja, which somewhat ruined his attempts to puff up his chest. "And then come the large explosions and the awesome flawless victory!"
Red eyes were rolled at that comment. "It's not that pretty," the taller boy said. "It's messy, and the things are terrifying, and... delo kivilita pla kontrunosesa, he's braver than me if he chooses to do that."
"Yeah, well, you got to actually see a battle," the human said, crossing his arms, and pouting slightly. "Why'd it have to show up at your Social Work Task, not mine, when I was actually... argh. I'm thinking the fates are conniving to stop me from ever seeing an Eva in action. What I'd give to be let in the cockpit of one! I wouldn't even need to be allowed to pilot. I'd just want to get to touch, to see it!"
Toja looked away, and the other boy sucked in a breath.
"Sorry," he apologised, leaning back a bit. "I forgot... how is your sister, anyway?"
"Actually... they've got her in physio right now," Toja admitted, with a weak smile. "She managed to take her first steps... her second first steps, come to think of it, anyway, well, she's really wobbly, but..." he choked up. "I saw how... hard, and I... so proud."
They sat in stoic, and manly, silence for a few moments, before the teacher at the front of the class stood up, his chair scraping along the floor, and cleared his throat.
"Ahem. If you will all... thank you." He coughed. "Yes. I've just received notice that... well, I guess you're all aware that the school serves as an evacuation shelter for other schools too."
"Yeah, the lunch hall was packed with little kids," Ala, sitting on the other side of the class, could be distinctly heard to mutter. "They ran out of chips because of them."
"They've been cooped up in the emergency shelters for most of the day, and so, apart from exercise breaks..."
"It's bad enough at the start of term when the new first years are all there, let alone this."
"Yes, thank you, Ala," the teacher said, with a sigh. "Yes, it's annoying, but you're meant to have more community spirit." He coughed, again. "Well, they've... 'they' being the Headmaster, have decided that we need to spend a few hours stopping small children going stir-crazy, and so each class is being assigned a class of children from another school. We'll be expected to keep them entertained for a while, and also... well, most of the schools are feeder schools for the Academy, so they'll have a chance to see where they'll be able to go, if they're good enough."
"Great," the boy drawled, no longer even attempting to conceal it as a stage whisper.
"Did I mention, Ala, that they'll be counting this as a SWP occasion, with the time counting towards your overall mark for the module?"
The boy suddenly sat rigid upright. "I am suddenly overcome with a desire to help small children," he stated.
"I thought you might be."
Gingerly, Kimuna, sitting in the middle of the class, raised his hand. A slightly dreamy look, as usual, was present in his pink eyes. "What age are they?" he asked. "I mean, will we have to change their nappies, or what?"
The teacher snorted. "Not quite. They're Year 5s; that's nine and ten year olds. They'll be going to secondary school the year after next, and although it might not seem like it, to you bunch of grizzled teenagers, it's not that young."
"Do I detect some sarcasm there, sir?" asked Taly, a smirk on her face.
"Well, that entirely depends on whether your sarcasm detector is working or not," was the rhetorical answer.
Toja blinked twice, eyes suddenly wide. They wouldn't have, would they? Year 5s, from a feeder school? It couldn't be...
"Hello!"
"Oh, look, it's Kany's big brother!"
"Yes! I told you askin' for it would work!"
"Hey, Toja! Look at me!"
It was.
Hikary raised one eyebrow at him. "Toja." There wasn't even a need for a question.
"They're in my sister's class," he explained with an affected tone of boredom, trying to keep it to that. "I've been SWP temping with them. That's how they know me."
"Oh, okay." Hikary nodded. "Well, that will be helpful." She smiled at him. "I hope we can rely on you to help with names and..."
"Don't worry everyone!" a platinum blond little girl declared loudly. "If any of you get lost, Toja will rescue you!"
"Yeah! He's really, really brave!"
With surprising velocity, the nazzada's head collided with his desk. "Why me?" he muttered to himself.
~'/|\'~
In the dark room, Director Khoury twitched slightly, as the sustained lack of sleep and the drugs in her system designed to counteract it warred for supremacy.
"London-2. News refresh," she said, her voice flat.
[Director] stated a voice. [ANARCHY Cell. APOSTLE reports that APHRODITE and ASPARTAME have secured the Bravo-Sierra sample from Site Alpha-3, in London-2. They are proceeding to Site Alpha 4.]
"Good," the woman said, red eyes reflecting the light from the screens. "It is contained?" she asked, unnecessarily. The woman blinked, slowly.
[Yes.]
"Good. Continue."
[Nothing else, Director.]
"Praetoria-B? News refresh."
[CENOTAPH Cell is en route. No other changes, Director.]
The burble and susurration of voices resumed, as she moved onto other topics.
~'/|\'~
"Rits. He's in. He'll do it."
The blond raised her eyebrows at the news, and briefly considered checking if her cochlear implant was, in fact, functioning properly. "Really?" she asked. "How... how did you manage that? I was sure that he'd refuse."
"He did. So I explained the facts to him."
"All of them?" There was concern in the scientist's voice. "But..."
"Of course not. That would be cruel. But enough that he could make his decision whether or not to pilot, actually knowing what he was doing by choosing either way." She heard a sigh over the link. "And I told him I was sorry."
"Sorry? For what? What did you do wrong?"
"Rits, they don't pay you to deal with people. Robots, yes. Ackersby organisms, yes. People, no. As Director of Operations, I have to." There was a click, and hum over the line. "Look... we have him, so we can proceed with the primary plan. Now, Director of Science, do your thing, and get me Unit 01 in the best possible state for this. I owe him that much. For lying to him by telling the truth."
~'/|\'~
The sounds of feet against the metal floor was a constant backdrop to the bustle and bluster of the evacuation process. The rich, who lived deeper, in the larger arcology domes built more recently, might be already pre-evacuated, but the masses that lived in the slums of the surface and in the oldest, shallowest domes, were not so safe. Millions of people had to be moved, in a population movement which put the daily commute of rush hour to shame.
A man, sweat beading on his forehead, pushed a heavy cart, laden down with nanofactory feeder capsules. His eyes flicked nervously from side to side. Around him, the crowd was snarled and disordered; voices raised in worry and agitation as the orderly evacuation was slowed to a snail's crawl.
"Hey!" The man pushing the cart flinched slightly, but forced himself to relax, as an ArcSec officer stepped over, red eyes somewhat annoyed, and weary. "What's this?" the man asked, in a strongly Nazzadi-accented deep voice.
The man shrugged. "Moving stuff," he explained, unhelpfully. "That is," he hastily added, "I just got in an order that more refills get moved down to one of the safety bunkers."
"Then why aren't you using the supply corridors?" the officer asked.
"I didn't have a specialist pass, okay? I'm not normally with Resupply, but the guy lives deep, and so is already evaced. They grabbed me from Waste Disposal. 'Least I'm earning overtime for this."
The nazzada coughed. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to come with me," the officer ordered, eyes flicking at the crowd which was forming behind him.
"Urgh. Umm... that is, fine, yes."
The cart was pushed to the nearest transit corridor, and from there, it was only a short distance to the nearest ArcSec waystation. The man pushing the cart was taken to be genescanned, and a full verification done on his background, while the items themselves were taken for a closer examination, to check that they were actually what the RFID tags on the packages claimed they were.
"What do we have here?" the technician manning the scanner asked, an unlit cigarette sticking out from between her lips.
"Flagged as suspicious," the nazzada who had bought the delivery in explained. "Crate ID say that they're nanofac refills for Bunker NNE 00102, but... he was acting suspiciously. Wasn't moving them along the supply corridors, for one, and..."
"Yeah, yeah, just getting the 'bots to grab the crate info," the woman said, her forehead crinkling. "Just push them through the arch... yeah, walk through too. Okay." Her machine bleeped, and a red light appeared on her arglasses. "Okay. Yeah, I'm gonna need a random one..." she raised a hand, "okay, randomiser selected package number ZZA9WYA923Q. That's the one, right hand corner, middle layer. Just going to have check that it's clean, as per protocol."
The checks were run, as the bulky, heavy capsule was moved by the technician, in her exosuit, into the sample nanofactory set up to test the contents. She stepped back, servos whining, as the machine accepted the sample, sealing after entry, and began to extract tiny amounts of the theoretically homogenous contents. There was a faint whine, as the mass spectrometer warmed up, and the tests began. The nazzada officer flinched; the technician showed no sign that she could even hear it.
After about a minute or two, it bleeped again, the light coming up green.
"Okay, yeah, it's okay, and all the other ones are null-tamper," the technician said with a shrug, bending down to lift the refill out of the device with a grunt. "I'll just stick it back on the cart, then you can get the idiot out of here. Tell him and his 'corp... Armourcorp, isn't it? Yeah, issue them a caution for breaking handling auth'."
"Don't tell me how to do my job," the officer said, his eyes narrowing.
The woman shrugged. "Look, I'm overloaded already. The 'corp fuckers have to be reminded not to waste ArcSec time because they don't get the proper transit auth'. Bastards who think that money buys them immunity to the law."
The cart was sent on its way, and the hapless courier received a lecture from the ArcSec officer.
And no-one was any the wiser that package ZZA9WYA923Q had stayed in the scanning office, and been replaced by its identical twin.
~'/|\'~
There was a crack on the wall, a thin, spiderlike-break right at the join, so the 'legs' ran on either side of the wall. Someone, sometime, Toja noted, had drawn around it, making it more arachnid, shaping the lines with a border of grey. Shaking his head, he sighed, and glanced down at his MP. Services were still cut. He couldn't even access his music collection, and briefly he muttered a short complaint at his sister, who had wiped the internal memory at some point. He almost asked himself why he had even let her borrow it, but then the memory of why returned, and he sighed again.
"Hello." The voice was young and female, a piping voice directly behind him. "I came to talk to you."
Toja glanced back, to see the girl with the dark-brown hair, tied asymmetrically. Two green eyes were staring at him. "Hello," he said back, not trying to be particularly friendly. "Imi, yes."
There was a pause. Then, "Why? Why are you being like that?"
The boy glanced around again, twisting his body to face her. "Being like what?"
"I just said 'hello'."
"Well, I'm kinda not feeling welcoming," Toja said back, narrowing his eyes. "I've had a long day, my MP's playing up, so I'm kinda bored, and I've..." he paused, and pushed on, after seeing that there were none of the other ones in the younger class nearby, "... and I've had your friends being annoying."
A pause. "You mean PCPU," Imi said.
"What?"
"The device. It is a Personal CPU, not an MP."
"It's a manuprokedi. Same thing, different word. And MP is shorter."
The nine-year old gave a one-shouldered shrug. "That's not why you're in a bad mood. You are just sitting here, staring at the wall. Even when people try to talk to you."
"And what's that to you, huh?" the boy almost snapped.
"You were the one who left the bunker to find me. Even though I did not need finding," Imi said, returning his stare. "Why are you in a bad mood?"
"Look... I don't want to be reminded of that, right?" the nazzada said, his eyes narrowing to slits. "I just wanna forget that it even happened." He shook his head. "I have nightmares about it," he added, in a softer voice.
"I do not."
"Well, lucky you! You were in the cupboard!" He realised he was raising his voice, and that Hikary was staring in his direction from the other side of the classroom, where she was talking with the teacher, and lowered it again. "Look, I..."
"Then you shouldn't have done it." The girl folded her arms and glared at him, eyes level despite the fact that he was sitting down. "I'd have been fine."
Toja could feel her eyes on him. "Well... no," he admitted. "I... I couldn't just leave someone out there. I know I shouldn'tve done it... but I wasn't thinking, so I'd prob'ly do it again." He sighed. "It's more the idea that another thing like it is up there again."
Imi pushed herself up, to sit on his desk. "I know," she said, eyes staring up at the ceiling. "It's up there. Somewhere. At least we got moved to a deep shelter this time. We didn't, last time."
"I know. And the fact that we're stuck down here, just... trying to hide from something that probably knows where we are, and..."
"Yes."
The boy ran his hands over his face. "I hope Shinji is okay," he said, suddenly. "Him'n Rei."
A pause. "Who?"
Toja blinked, rapidly. "Oh, friends," he said. "Well, Shinji is a friend, Rei is... Rei. But they're... stuck in another bunker, because... they were off sick."
"I see."
"I just hope I could... like, help them..."
"To get better."
"Yeah, that."
Imi tilted her head. "Have you sent them a get-well message?" she asked. The girl gave a mono-shouldered shrug, again. "That's what we did for Kany, and what they do for me when I get ill." She blinked. "Oh yeah," she said, slipping the bag off her shoulder, to pull out a red device, which looked a little like a large highlighter pen; a similarity which only grew more pronounced when she took the cap off. Without hesitation, she rolled up her skirt slightly, and then jabbed it into her thigh. Toja gagged slightly, and looked away. He hated needles.
There was a bleep from the device, and Imi glanced at the light beside it, which was green. "Good," she said, putting the cap back on with a click. She glanced back at Toja. "You can look back," she said, to the older boy, a faint twist in her voice. "I've had to have this done since I was very small." She seemed to be prompting a question.
Toja asked it. "Why?"
"It is necessary. And I hate it. It wasn't meant to happen," she said, eyes narrowed. "I'm 'fixed, you know. I shouldn't have to put up with things like this. But I had an episode when I was very little, and I've been on this ever since. " There was sudden vitriol in her voice. "It hurts. All the time. The injections only keep it under control." She blinked, and her face was suddenly calmer, more placid. "I'm sorry, Kany's brother," she told the boy. "I should not be telling you that."
Toja blinked. "I'm sorry," he said, glancing at her. Yes, that explained a lot about the way she was acting, and the fact that she seemed a little too mentally mature for her age. Humans had been doing all kinds of odd things to their genetics in the years before the First Arcanotech War, the nazzada knew. Most had been fairly mild, removing genetic defects, tweaking for genes linked to long lives and high intellects. Some had been more extreme, done in the genetically liberal states of Japan and the European Union. At every Academy he'd been to, there had been a few children who were suffering from some condition caused by the modifications on their parents. Pre-natal selection and screening was meant to catch such conditions, but genes were recipes, not blueprints; with such small runs of original subjects, something often got missed. It was probably something metabolic or something; those were the most common problems you tended to see, because they didn't have the same level of handicap as the mental problems. "It's... well, you're just unlucky. It could happen to anyone."
"No," she said, the bitterness returning. "Only to me. They found the risk factors afterwards, and took steps to stop it happening again. There's only a few other people it could have affected, anyway."
"Oh." Toja looked with pity at one of his sister's friends. This did make him feel better about his stupid-yet-brave actions to rescue her. She was ill, and did need helping; even if she continued to insist that she hadn't needed to be rescued.
And she had certainly given him things to think about. Yes, she may have been misunderstanding what he was talking about, because of the hasty cover story, but there was something that him and the other people in the class could do to help Shinji. He'd had to put up with little girls praising him, for something which really hadn't been heroic; the least he could do was to make sure that the praise went to the real hero, right?
He stood up, and taking his leave of the little girl, headed over to Hikary, a smile on his face.
~'/|\'~
"You know, of all the elements of your plan, Miss Director of Operations Katsuragi, this is probably the most surreal," Ritsuko remarked, hooking her fingers into the pockets of the fresh lab coat she was wearing. "I mean, everything involving Unit 01, yes, it's very much a million-to-one chance kind of thing..."
"But it's not," Misato said, mildly, leaning on the railing, gazing down at the Evangelion launch chutes. "Your MAGI give us a thirty-one percent chance of success with no losses, as of the most recent estimate."
"And what were the errors bars?"
"I dunno. Can't remember. Anyway," she shrugged, "error bars go up and down. Big error bars might as well mean we're even more likely to succeed."
Ritsuko snorted. "Okay, right, now you're just trying to annoy me."
"Guilty." Misato shook her head. "But, seriously, what's so surreal about this?"
One eyebrow was raised. "Misato." One finger was jabbed down towards the chutes. "We're packing the chutes with sports cars. We're attacking them to the same launch systems we use to launch the Evas! It's just... ridiculous!"
"Hey! I like driving! You think I like dooming so many high-end cars to their doom?" She blinked. "Well, apart from the ForGM ones. Those things handle like pigs."
"Misato..."
"No, I don't see what's surreal, as you put it. They're the cheapest source of steerable A-Pods, and we just need to activate the control overrides and an LAI can drive for us. We don't need mil-spec drones as decoys. They're chaff, nothing more." She tightened her lips, "I'd rather see any number of cars be destroyed, than watch more human pilots get swatted out of the air by the Harbinger. More drones have to help, even improvised ones. And if it means that it can't see the Evangelions..."
"I'm not saying it doesn't make sense, Misato." The blond shook her head. "I'm just saying, it's kind of surreal to be loading these sports cars into the Eva chutes, as... as if they were some kind of giant blunderbuss."
"Just think of it as a capital-grade decoy flare," the Major advised her.
"Certainly... it's a good idea. I can think of ones a lot worse." She let out a chuckle. "I was half-way afraid that you were going to try to take a naval-yield weapon, and connect it up to the L2 power grid, under the principle of 'more power = more good'."
"Don't be silly, Rits," Misato said, rolling her eyes. "I am...I mean, was a mecha pilot. We're expected to know the operating principles behind our weapons. And I know that neither lasers nor charge beams work that way. You can't expect to pump in orders of magnitude more power than something's designed for, and not blow every fuse. If you're lucky and don't melt it solid."
They stared, for a moment, as the cars manoeuvred their own way into position, technicians in exosuits manually checking their placement and bolting them into the launch platform. Small explosive charges would separate them after they emerged, but it would be necessary to hold them in place for the accelerations involved in the launch.
"I wonder if the Misatomobile is going to give its life for the cause?" Ritsuko said, slyly.
"Nope. Not a chance. And nobody calls it that."
~'/|\'~
The Harbinger could now have been seen from the highest residences in the arcologies, had their occupants been there to watch for it. They were not. The inhabitants of the above-ground buildings had retreated to chthonian safety, to cower like worms from the unyielding predator of the skies. Now the only eyes which watched the heavens were technological, as soldiers, ensconced within the dubious safety of their warmachines, veins flooded with antizonals and phobinhibitors, waited for their foe. Except that was not quite true, for some of the degenerate beasts and creatures which dwelt in the depths of the Old London Underground had come to the surface, to gaze upon the Harbinger.
And if they were too close, it was the harbinger of their destruction. Mot did not care for, or possibly 'about', their worship. Though it had its own master, it did not call upon the Crawling Chaos for aid. The Beast Nyarlathotep was that which it feared and venerated; to call upon it was to draw its attention, and that was unwise. No, Mot was a blinded god; Polythemus without a Poseidon to call upon.
The metaphor was inexact.
The NEG had no intention of leaving the blinded Cyclopean beast alive.
And yet they could not kill it yet. The London-2 defences, already maimed by the onslaught of the last two Harbingers, were no match for even an injured Mot.
Radiance scythed out from the vertices of the geometry of the Harbinger. Armoured fortifications burst in light and fury, nothing more than white-hot craters remaining. The shockwaves crushed shallow arcology domes like empty cans, the black material of the outer sphere rupturing and tearing the buildings within apart. Slowly, inexorably, destructively, Harbinger-5 advanced, bringing death with it.
And then it stopped.
Not long ago, such a thing would have been a moment of victory.
But now? Now, the Harbinger had reached its destination. And its fall was not the work of its enemies. The bottommost point of Mot crushed a skyscraper, the edifice of steel and glass splitting like an overripe fruit, and the shockwave as it pierced the ground sent abandoned cars tumbling through the air like grains of sand in the desert wind. The great trapezohedron, warped and distorted by the perilous bows and arrows of fortune, burrowed a third of its way down, before coming to a halt. The lesser fractal clusters which had survived the assaults rose, to orbit, halo-like, around its head in the evening twilight, still spewing forth light against anything that it could 'see'.
And then it... unfolded.
Like a flower of Stygia, a blossom that might bedeck the hair of Persephone in December nights, it abandoned the seed that it had once been. No longer was it a pentagonal trapezohedron; no, though it retained its five-fold symmetry, it cast off the confines of geometry and embraced the vicissitudes of change. In perfect coordination, the facets that had been its uppermost faces extruded their nature outwards, sketching a path in the air around them, before fracturing into five themselves. From each prismatic face, two night-dark columns of crystal shot down into the earth, crushing buildings and roads and underground tunnels beneath them; ten lances seeking their path down towards their goal. Two more skewed outwards, only to unite with their compatriots, hemming the Harbinger with a ring of its own selfhood, which began to spin.
NEG observers, watching from behind autocensors, watched in fear, for this ring, now free from its main corpus, and, yet, irrefutably part of the Harbinger, somehow seemed to move in both directions at once. From one viewpoint, clockwise; from another, anti-clockwise, and each blink, each subtle motion of the eye, each flicker of attention, seemed to invert the rotation, until the brain gave up, and it became a circle of black motion; a velocity without a vector. The fear grew into terror, as white light, brilliant and radiant, a pure blend of spectral components, began to arc irregularly from the ring to the seedcore of the beast, and each impact reverberated with unearthly resonances. Even the heavens began to act to meet this motion, as the clouded evening sky acquiesced to the spin with its own vortex. The dark rain clouds were torn apart above Mot, as a cyclone formed, the red of the near-night sky as bloody light above the darkness of the Harbinger.
And perhaps that was a way of honouring the final deed. For the uppermost spines rose into a point above it, a tower, growing ever upwards just as the hungry spears reached down to break the doors to Irkalla, and, perhaps, release the dead. But that was just speculation for the purpose of Mot, while the spire that formed above the Harbinger was fact and truth; a vast, five-sided obelisk, seeking the heavens for their own domain.
And slowly, oh so slowly, the void of darkness began to form around the Harbinger again, as the lesser traphezohedrons, vessels of its chrysalis, dissolved back into its night-sky corpus.
Once again, Mot was home.
And it was almost time.
~'/|\'~
"Misato. It's doing something different. Look at this."
The Director of Operation's mouth tightened into a thin line, a curse in poorly pronounced Mandarin escaping from her lips.
"We're trying to find where the core-equivalent is. As far as we can tell... it hasn't moved, but," the scientist shook her head. "I don't trust any data we're getting. The AT-Field... it's the second densest we've ever recorded, and the volume..." Ritsuko trailed off. "I'm not even sure that the concept of 'volume' in normal 1-space is applicable in the area around the Harbinger."
"We're going ahead with the operation," the Major said, forcing calm into her tone. "Its behaviour is within the contingencies. We'll know where the core is, by the time Shinji needs to fire. It's doing just what I expected. How are the Evas?"
Ritsuko nodded over at Lieutenant Ibuki. "Both Unit 00 and Unit 01 have been fully unloaded down in the Geocity," the younger woman said, promptly. "Unit 01 is, on the orders of Representative Ikari, running last-minute calibration checks for the superconducting QUI device transceivers, after MAGI flagged a possible anomaly. Unit 00 is being fitted with the ablative torso dermal plating and the blast shield."
The Major turned on her heel, eyes wide. "How long will Unit 01 be?" she snapped. "What's wrong?"
The Operator's Eyes went blank for a moment, irises lighting up, harcontact style. "Estimated time of completion; 22:03... seven minutes. The MAGI one-to-two evaluated that there was a risk that a slight flicker in IP-21 was indicative of larger damage. They've swapped out the plug for one of the spares; Representative Ikari insisted," she stated. "They're just running checks to make sure that the Third Child's profile has transferred properly."
The dark-haired woman relaxed, slightly. "Understood," she said. "I want to know as soon as it's done. Is the LANCE system fitted properly to Unit 01?" she asked, again.
"Yes, Major," the Operator nodded, making the thick cable that snaked into the back of her skull bounce up and down, synchronised to her motions.
Hands balled into fists, Major Katsuragi glared at the projections of the two Units. "You're going to do this," she muttered. "You're going to do it properly, and you're going to kill this thing dead, and you're not going to get damaged doing this, understand."
~'/|\'~
Shinji could see it when he closed his eyes, painted against the back of his eyelids. The complex wireframe shape of reds and blues was always there, forcing him to pay attention, the focus shifting around to ensure that he could visualise every single part of the three-dimensional image perfectly.
That was not a metaphor. They had actually fitted him with sofcontacts, which displayed it, as a way of making sure that he paid attention.
But for the moment, he had been permitted a short break, after he had complained of a headache, and they ran checks to make sure that the stimulants he was on were not interfering with the other medications in his still-stiff, still-aching body. So, for the moment, he could just rest for a moment, in the warmth.
It was midday on the surface levels of the London-2 Geocity. The artificial sun had been fixed high overhead, perhaps as a sign of defiance towards the night-black crystalline mass overhead. No matter what the reasons for its placement, though, it was directly above, its bright light shining vertically down on the central pyramid in the Geocity. When the battle began, it would be deactivated, moved to a safe place to cool down, but for now it was there as a source of light.
Once again, his thumb pressed the play button, on the screen on the forearm of his plugsuit.
"Hey, Shinji," Toja's voice said, in the recorded message. "Listen... I don't know if you'll get this, and so I'm not sure how useful this will be... and..."
"If he doesn't get this, he won't know that it was sent," one of the girls, Jony, he thought. "Stop wasting time."
Once again, Shinji snorted. For some reason, he found this section unreasonably funny. It was probably the things that they were using to keep him able to focus, he thought, with a smile.
"...okay." Toja could be heard to take a deep breath. "Listen, Shinji. You're not here, and from what we know, and what happened the last few times you were away like this... well, we don't know exactly what you're doing. But we know that you're doing something important."
"We know that it's something to do with the giant Engel-things," Kensuke added.
"And so," Hikary said, "we, as a class, want to tell you 'good luck'. Good luck with everything. And, above that, we believe in you. We really think you can do it. So, everyone..."
"Good luck!" the class cheered, the speaker crackling from the noise.
"And," Toja added, his voice soft, "I do know, and I've seen you in action. You're a braver man than I am, really. I know you can do it."
There was a bleep. [Message ends], the muse stated.
Shinji leant back again. It was mostly meaningless, he thought, a little cynically. Most of them probably had no clue what he was actually having to do. Even Toja, who had actually seen him piloting, probably thought that the Eva was like a nice, normal mecha, and that he was some brave hero getting to fight valiantly against the foes of humanity.
He glanced sideways at Rei, who was sitting, hugging her knees and staring at the lake. In the light, he could see faint beads of sweat on her forehead, in the false-sunlit warmth. He wasn't a hero. He was just a coward. He should have volunteered at first, even though he had been injured. That's what real heroes did, in films and TV shows. He had been willing to let her do it instead, and had only changed his mind after Misato had told him that she would die and the mission would fail. He didn't think that was heroic.
But, still, it was comforting. He couldn't deny it, and had no desire to do so. And... and it helped remind him. They were somewhere above him, in the school bunker, which meant that they were even closer to the Harbinger than he was right now. Their voices; if he didn't stop the Harbinger, this message, this badly planned, stumbling message, would be the last that he would hear of them. One way or another.
"Rei?" he said, letting the warmth of the false sun shine down on him. "Did... did you get a message? From the others?"
"Yes."
There was silence. Then Rei spoke.
"I did not listen to it."
Shinji frowned. "Why not?"
"Why would they send me a message?" There was unusual emotion in the girl's voice.
Shinji looked over at her. She was looking at him. "Because it's a nice thing to do," he suggested, pulling himself into a sitting position. She actually seemed surprised that anyone would do something as small and as easy as... as just sending her a voice message wishing her luck. And that cold, empty dome where she lived, in an apartment block where she was the only inhabitant, the fact that she never spoke to others at school, but merely sat in a corner, reading, barely even paying attention to the lessons... Shinji frowned, slightly. "Rei?" he asked, again, but this time with a hint of nervousness in his voice. "Why do you pilot? The Evangelion, that is."
Silence. She glanced down, to stare at her gloved hands, and up again. "It is necessary," she said, her voice nothing more than a whisper, her hands twitching as if invisibly grasping control yokes. "All things have a purpose. An Evangelion is made to be piloted. I am the pilot of Unit 00."
The boy looked away, for a moment. "You're brave," he said. She didn't need to be pushed into it, by threats to others, be reminded of the consequences should she not do it. She merely did what was needed. Not like him.
"This is not bravery," she said, in the same whisper. "But you should not be afraid. "
Shinji blinked. "What do you mean?" he asked.
"I will protect you. I have been ordered to do. And above that, it is necessary."
"What do you mean?" he asked, again, blinking off her other comment. "Why is it not bravery?"
No reply.
"Why?"
"I have nothing else," she replied, finally. "Only necessity."
"'Necessity'?" Shinji echoed, eyes widening.
Beside him, Rei stood up, her plug suit squeaking faintly as she moved. Taking a step towards him, she towered over him as he lay on his back. Her head blocked the false sun above them, and lit her white hair as a ghostly halo, even as her face was cast into darkness. "It is time," the girl said, staring down at him. "We must go. We are needed."
A sound chimed in their ears. "Test Pilots, please report to the station point for last checks. I repeat, Test Pilots, please report to the station point."
She turned on her heel, and walked off, again. But this time she turned, to look back over her shoulder. "Goodbye," she said.
~'/|\'~
[Intrusion 02 has broken through Layer 029, and is... is growing through 30,] one of the MAGI Operators reported, his eyes wide. [Rate of descent has accelerated.]
[It's still within projected limits,] Lieutenant Ibuki sent back to her subordinate. Immersed in light, the Operators were in a full dive in the MAGI, the full computing resources of the other great accomplishment of the first Evangelion Project dedicated to what was about to come. The hybrid machines, with their unique operating system and clunky code architecture, were in their forte. [July? You have the optimised line of approach for Unit 00?]
[Of course,] replied Lieutenant Cheung. [Forwarded to Operations already. It's set up to live-update based on Harbinger behaviour.]
~'/|\'~
Above, on the surface, Harbinger-5 was embedded into the ground, the original pentagonal trapezohedron now little more than a seed for the growths from it. Ten ophidian daggers of obsidian crystal were twining around each other as they worked their way down, making some strange ten-stranded helix. As they grew deeper, the components solidified, and began to branch, interchaining and interlinking, until the probe that resulted resembled nothing less than some complex, degenerate cousin of DNA. The only light that it permitted to exist was the period arcs of white brightness, which came from the rings of undetermined velocity which budded off from the first, spaced at intervals up and down the Harbinger. The initial seed was expanding, too, both upwards and downwards, consuming the helix as its scaffolding as it sought the Geocity, and reaching up to bring the starless night it bore with it to the heavens themselves.
And as a result of these changes, it was now unclear where the core would be.
Major Katsurgagi's plan, however, had taken this into account, because she had suspected that that Mot, who now resembled some vast five-sided obelisk, would take some action to conceal that vulnerability. The tactics for this battle were simple when looked at from afar. Unit 00, fitted with an improvised shield made from capital-grade hull plating, and a normally-stationary plasma turret stripped from its mount and fitted to the Eva's arm, with power leads connected to the city grid, was a diversion. It would be launched from the normal Eva chutes, along with the mass of improvised decoy drones. It was believed that the modifications would be enough to allow it to survive a few hits, of the level that Unit 01 had taken in the first battle.
And Unit 01 was the hammer, or, perhaps, more accurately, the lance. The LANCE prototype, a Huitzilopochtli-class shaped nuclear charge designed for space combat, had been mounted on the Unit's chest, in the hole left by Mot's attack. The weapon, still in the early prototype stage, was designed to be a possible ship-killer. It was surrounded by carefully layered wards and fields which would, at the moment of initiation, warp the fabric of spacetime to such an extent that, while in the frame of reference of the blast it would appear to omnidirectional, to the outside world it would form a tight cone. The pre-existing warding, though incomplete, was to be reinforced by the AT-Field of the Evangelion, and so the flesh of the Evangelion had been grafted around it, and fresh armour crudely mounted on the top. Unit 01 was still in the launch bays. It was not to be moved until the Harbinger's core had been located, and, even then it would be taking the shot from within the launch tubes.
The risk that Unit 01 would be targeted immediately on being launched had been deemed too high for it to take the shot from the surface, and the imprecise nature of the LANCE required it to be rather too close for the Major's preferences. This was the best compromise.
It was at the more detailed level that it got more complicated. Routes of approach, timing of diversionary assaults, the optimal distance for Unit 01 which would minimise the chance of being it targeted, while also handling the inevitable spread of the weapon... it was too much for a human to handle. The MAGI were working on it, from the best data they had at the time, but their theories were all too fallible and it took precious time.
But that was the other reason that the operation had even been approved. By letting the hostile dig itself into the city, it was ensuring that it would absorb more of the blast if, or when, the Rapture contingency was activated. It had reached the stage where the NEG was willing to bet everything on two experimental machines, neither of which were even Mass Production models, because the inevitable alternative was worse. Already, there had been a very limited evacuation of important assets, but there was no way that the millions of inhabitants of the metropolis could have been moved.
And Shinji hadn't exactly been pleased when he had been told that he was expected to have a nuclear charge embedded in his Eva's chest, and to use his AT-Field to shape the blast to form a discrete beam, and, incidentally, not kill himself. But after Misato had explained the stakes, he couldn't say 'no'.
As he waited, lungs filled with LCL, in the entry plug, he was regretting it. His chest felt... odd, off, not quite right, as if it was lacking something vital, which he was used to. But that was nothing, compared to how his head felt. Everything, every sense felt like it was bathed in ice, his vision crystal clear, the inside of the plug suit terribly cold against his skin. He flexed his fingers, feeling the way that he knew exactly where they were, and the texture of the LCL, even through the gloves.
"Don't do that, Shinji," Ritsuko ordered, over the communications link.
He blinked. "What?"
"You're running at 72 plus-or-minus 9 percent." She shook her head. "That's... that's astonishing. That's a personal best for you, by far. I don't know how you're doing it, but..." she blinked, "... that message must really have been helpful," she muttered to herself, before her expression settled again. "But it means that the Unit's catching stray thoughts. If you can't keep things confined to the animaneural sync... to how you've been trained to think about controlling the Eva... please, try not to move." She winced. "And, really, don't make any large movements with your arms. Or legs. Just... try to sit still. Are you ready to try again shaping it?"
Of course, once that had been said, Shinji's nose began to itch. He suppressed it, and swallowed. "How long?" he asked.
"That doesn't matter," Ritsuko said, tersely. "We're going to keep you practising until the last possible moment." She blinked. "T-minus 8 minutes until operational start," she added. "So, please, try again. The better you can get it, the further away from the Harbinger we can deploy you. As it is, we'll need to have you within 340 metres of the core."
"That's bad, isn't it?"
"You're the pilot," Ritsuko said drily, before adding, "But, yes, that is much closer than the Science team would like. So, much as I hate to pressure you..."
"That's a lie," Shinji muttered, through numb-feeling lips.
"... okay. True. But you need to get better. Fast." Ritsuko paused. "Please."
~'/|\'~
Field Marshal Jameson put his head in his hands. "I don't really know what to say, Major Katsuragi," he remarked, his expression over the link exhausted. "This is a horrible gamble. But, as it stands, the only other choice is to destroy London-2, and... looking at the... at the," he struggled for words, "... metamorphosis that Harbinger-5 has undergone, I'm starting to doubt that even that would work." He shuddered. "I don't care to think that the Migou are doing right now," he said, "because the Hive Ship... it's sprouted multiple bright fusion torches, detaching from it. They're pulling away from the Sun-Earth L2 point."
Admiral Tatuta looked faintly sick, as he added, "The fusion torch on those things; alone... well, it's quite possible that that's what they'd use as a main weapon. They're pulling five-gees; we've got six separate ones, and those are only the torches. Who knows how many A-Pod craft we can't see, because the torches are blinding us." He folded his hands in front of him. "We think those are actual Migou warships," he admitted. "Not just the light S-class vessels, like the Swarms, they use in atmosphere; the ones with A-Pods. Actual, capital ships." The Nazzadi blinked. "We know what the ships they made for AW1 were like; how bad must their actual warships be?" the man, who had been grown in vats in the Oort Cloud, asked.
Misato winced. Yes. Bad. Very bad. Nevertheless, "For this, I will require full operational authority to be formally confirmed. I need you to verify the provisional control you have given me. The MAGI must be given interlaced access to the TITAN-controlled systems in the defence-grid."
The six individuals who made up the Army and Naval Tripartites, glanced at each other. The votes came in, with unanimity.
The Major saluted. "Thank you, sirs. We can now begin the final preparations."
Field Marshal Lehy shook her head, her close-cropped iron grey hair pale compared to her skin. "You're not going to be a Major after this, Katsuragi," she muttered. "One way or another."
"Well, yes," Jameson said, rolling his eyes. "She refused evacuation, to run the operation from the L2 Geocity. If she fails, she'll be dead."
~'/|\'~
The Harbinger dug deeper, the black, five-faced obelisk growing both upwards and downwards. There were already riots in multiple bunkers, as those unfortunate enough to be close to the monstrosity succumbed to contagious hysteria, while other fell into deep depressions, all higher brain functions slowed to a crawl compared to the vast, overwhelming, inhuman presence of the being.
The necessary steps were taken to control the populace, as remote-activated and autonomous systems came into play.
And the clock counted down.
Inside his entry plug, Shinji shivered, the same icy wrongness with every sense still there. He flexed his fingers, and closed his eyelids, running over and over the shape that he had to visualise.
Within Unit 00, Rei's hands were vice-like on the control yokes, but her breaths were slow and controlled. Slowly, lazily, she blinked.
Major Misato Katsuragi was paying full attention to the countdown on the inside of her Eyes, watching as the numbers inexorably descended. Her hands were balled into fists, knuckles white, and if her nails were not kept short, they would have been drawing blood. Slowly, slowly, she counted down, her words matching with the numbers, as she cowered down in the darkness, hearing the cries from elsewhere, her voice rising up to match them listened to the organised chaos of the last few moments before the operation began.
"Final confirmation check!" she ordered.
[Oranous-00; Unit 00 is in position. Hull compromised; Right Hand Missing. Unauthorised modifications to Unit. All other systems Green within modified parameters.]
[Oranous-01; Unit 01 is in position. Hull compromised; Torso Heavily Damaged. Foreign body in chest cavity. Pilot synchronisation Standard Deviation Grade 2 Warning. Abnormal ANW-Patterns in Pilot Synchronisation. Anomalous Type-2 Attunement Component in Type-1 Attunement. Anom...] the LITAN was cut off by Ritsuko.
"Sorry," the scientist said, "the LITANs haven't been modified to accept the field modifications. We didn't have time to suppress their warning systems and code an interface patch." She glanced at the Major. "I did tell you all this," she reminded her friend, "we are going to be getting dummy error messages, especially for Unit 01. We've hooked Unit 01 straight into the MAGI, instead; the LITAN is just there in case the connection is cut, and..." she waved a hand, "Maya?"
"This is Lieutenant Cheung, and I'll be handling Unit 01," one of the other Operators reported, over the link. "We've recompiled the error handler in the MAGI, and both are reading green, when we've got the modifications in place."
The Major turned, to face Gendo Ikari. "Sir?" she asked. "Should I proceed when things are... should I proceed?" There was only the very slightest hint of hesitation, the faintest chance that she was asking him if he wished to send his son, and the girl who he was guardian to, out to their possible deaths.
"Yes," the man said, from behind his opaque arglasses. His voice was flat. "This is the best chance we shall have."
"Yes, sir."
Turning around, Misato gave the final authorisation.
~'/|\'~
There was a chime in Unit 01's entry plug, and Shinji opened his eyes to see, to his left, Unit 00 rocket up the launch chute. Its ascent was slowed slightly by the mass of the hull plating bolted on its right arm, to cover and take advantage of the missing hand. Past it, to his left and right, he could see the cars, converted into crude decoy drones shoot up too, row after row be moved, like ammunition, into the launch chutes.
Taking a deep breath of LCL, he closed his eyes again, staring at the image on the sofcontacts. They were committed, now. Rei was deployed.
Now everyone was depending on him.
~'/|\'~
The depleted arrays of the defences of London-2, eroded by the previous two Harbingers, and silenced by the orders from Headquarters, opened up with the vengeance and the wrath of an angry god. The atmosphere filled with ionisation trails, as the ferocious batteries of charge beams, plasma cannons and lasers opened up, blue-green trails sketched in the air. The rocket exhausts filled the sky, a false dawn out of the wood etchings of the medieval Catholic church as the flames lit up the sky.
Had it not been for Asherah, who had slagged most of the defences to the east in its approach, and the more generalised damage that Eshmun and its spawn had done, it might have done something. Maybe.
The obelisk of night, almost invisible against the dome of darkness that now covered the city, arced actinic white light, from the rings that rotated around it. From the peak, where the five sides met, a sustained cutting beam eradicated the remnants of the fleet, and dug unnaturally smooth craters into the landscape of the city. From its vantage point, for the obelisk now reached almost two kilometres up, there was little that could not be targeted. A faint red glow emanated from the dark crystal, and the shallow arcology domes were sliced open, the guts of civilisation exposed for the world to see, before they too were unmade.
"Rerouting Unit 00," an Operator called out. "Point Alpha has been compromised by hostile fire."
The Major stared at the screen. Already the plan was imperfect; the casual damage done by the Harbinger had destroyed one of the entry chutes. She merely thanked that Unit 00 had been deep enough that they had been able to do that.
~'/|\'~
Unit 00 slammed to a halt, faster than the equipment was designed to do, now exposed on the surface. The metal of the launch cradle shrieked, and with a faint hiss of coolant, the Evangelion stepped free of its cradle, hull-plating shield already raised. All around it, cascades of dummy drones were being launched into the air, adopting erratic patterns simply designed to ensure that the Harbinger took the longest possible time for its death-brining beams from target to target. Against the black void which Mot was generating, the beams were precisely geometrical, and blindingly white.
A yellow light on the internal wall of the entry plug turned green, and Rei Ayanami triggered the plasma turret which had been bolted to her left arm. The recoil from the relativistic particle beam kicked at her arm, but she compensated, holding it as steady as she could on the lowest ring that spun around the obelisk-shape of the hostile.
The fractured radiance of an AT-Field was all that she got for her efforts, and she cut the beam, stepping to the left, behind an armoured building, as the Harbinger retaliated. The lesser beam scored its way across the armour plating, across the hastily raised shield, which shimmered with a sudden heat haze.
"External," Rei ordered her LITAN; a single, terse word. Her internal D-Engines cut their power, and suddenly sluggish, she stepped again further to the left, to avoid the falling building. The metal superstructure of the armoured structure, now exposed, was not even glowing. It had been cut, as if it were clay and the beam a sharp knife. That property was not so inaccurate, as the building that fell warped and deformed, sagging and deflating, as it were suddenly more akin to jelly.
The Harbinger appeared satisfied. Something had tried to strike at it, something which housed within it foetid wounds in reality. It had taken actions against the source. The wounds had disappeared. Hence, the insect was dead.
Simple.
Slowly, sluggishly, Unit 00, now running exclusively from the power cable and its batteries, stepped around to the next designated firing point. It was not designed to run off an external feed, and without power, the armour was heavily locked down. Nevertheless, it could be done, because some genius in its design process had decided that this was something it should be able to do.
The first component of its mission was now complete. They now knew how long it took the Harbinger to acquire an Eva-sized target with whatever senses it used.
~'/|\'~
The peak of the obelisk flared again and again. The Victoria Arcology, still damaged from the Asherah incident, took a direct hit, as it opened up with a barrage of fresh missiles. The force of the impact reduced the man-made mountain of steel to a volcano, molten metal cascading down its slopes and burning through armour plating and weapon batteries, and the shockwave sent the just-launched missiles tumbling off course. It was a sudden, shocking source of red light in the whiteness of the Harbinger's beams, and the adamantine fracture of its AT-Field, flaring afresh whenever a weapon would attempt to violate it.
"Its AT-Field," Ritsuko muttered, to herself. "It's almost as strong as..." she blinked. "No," she whispered. "Misato!" she called out. "It weakens its AT-Field to fire! The beams... they're extensions of it. We have to keep it firing! No matter what!"
"I understand," the Major said, her jawline set, as she stared at the sweeping, overlapping arcs on the surface, which were systematically wiping away the decoy-chaff. Unit 00 couldn't go back to internal power sources, not in these conditions; it was a mercy that it hadn't been hit by incidental fire. "Operators! Maintain the decoy density! Do you know where the core is?"
"Nearly there," Lieutenant Aoba said, from his seat. "I'm getting the readings from the Operators, and..."
"It's... it's moving!" Maya blurted, over the speakers. "Up and down. We've isolated its energy signature, and... those rings? That's why they're only firing at certain points. It has to be nearby, we think, for them to do it!"
"Of course!" Ritsuko said, sudden, horrified comprehension on her face. "It's growing downwards, in a way which means it never has to expose its core, or even let us know where it is!
"Can you isolate the movement!" the Major hissed.
A pause, then;
"Yes! Yes! There it is!" A small red dot, bouncing up and down the multikilometre spire with terrifying rapidity, its motions inertialess, was added to the diagram.
And then Misato grinned, a shark-like grin. "Got ya," she said to the representation of the Harbinger on the screen.
~'/|\'~
"Okay, Shinji," the Operator's voice said, in his ear, the amlaty's modulated tones replacing the normal mechanical flatness of his LAI. "We have a firing position. We're going to move you there, now." She paused. "Remember, pulling the trigger at your end only announces that you're ready to fire. The system won't do it until it's ready."
"Yes. I know," the boy said. It was the only reason that he was willing to do this at all, after Misato had explained that they would, in fact, be mounting a nuclear bomb, with some kind of magic on it, into his Eva's chest cavity. A space which, it should be noted, was rather close to his entry plug. It would only fire when it detected that the AT-Field was shaped properly to reinforce the warding. He swallowed, the LCL tasting almost... perfumed, a sort of minty, floral taste, in the funny, cold way he felt. It was certainly an improvement, he thought; much more comforting. And less horrible. "I'm ready."
"Then hold on tight." The lieutenant paused. "But not too tight."
The acceleration kicked in, pushing him back into his seat.
~'/|\'~
In the bunker, filled mostly with the staff of Armourcorp, and other employees of the subsidiaries of the Chrysalis Corporation, the bomb hidden in package ZZA9WYA923Q did what it was designed to do.
The modified vECF shell, salvaged after the Asherah operation, initiated, with the explosive force of about a tonne of TNT. Local casualties were high; something made worse by the arcanochromatic elements used in the fusion-catalysis.
And each action has ramifications.
~'/|\'~
The first thing that Shinji knew of anything wrong was when the Eva-cradle derailed, slamming into the side of the wall and kicking up a shower of sparks which fell, cascading down the chute, as Unit 01 dug into the metal walls. He yelped, in sudden pain, and reflexively threw out a hand, to steady himself; the Eva mimicked the gesture, and one vast hand smashed into the wall. In the confusion, the failsafes kicked in, and the blast doors closed underneath the Unit, just in time for it to fall. They were straining under the incredible mass of the Evangelion, but just holding. There was a hiss of fire extinguisher systems, as flames and smoke burst from the damaged sections of the tunnel, only to be smothered.
"What just happened!" the Major asked, face suddenly pale.
"Derailment!" Lieutenant Makota reported. "Reports coming in, explosions all over the city. Multiple blasts in evacuation bunkers."
"One's flagged as right by the chute Unit 01 is in!" added Aoba.
The Major's eyes narrowed. "Cultists," she said, immediately, with disgust. "Bastards." With a force of will, her voice was professional once again. "Find an alternative route!"
"On it!"
"This is bad," Ritsuko said to her, softly.
"Yes."
"What... argh... urgh, what happened?" Shinji asked, his face appearing on the main screen.
"I've got a new route," an Operator called out. "Down one level, then we can run parallel."
"Get a new cradle in position!" Misato ordered. "Shinji, it was a derailment," she told the boy, who was looking even paler than normal. "Don't worry. We have everything under control."
"Don't worry? Don't worry!" the boy shouted back, an edge of hysteria in his voice. "You're not the one with the nuclear bomb in your chest, who's going to have to use a... a magic field to stop it blowing yourself open! Things aren't meant to go wrong when things are like this!"
"No," Misato replied, trying not to grit her teeth. "They aren't. Be prepared for a small drop, brace yourself against the wall. We're going to close the next blast door, and then open the one below you. As long as you lower yourself onto it, you won't fall." She glanced over at Ritsuko, who nodded. "Lieutenant Cheung will guide you."
"And how do you know that isn't going to go wrong, too?" he continued, the hysteria growing. "The metal is making bad sounds, and... and everything is going wrong, and..."
"Shinji." Gendo Ikari's voice was cold, efficient. "Accidents happen. Follow your orders."
On the screen, the boy could be seen to grit his teeth, his emotions flickering between anger, shock, and dislike. "Yes," he said, eventually, taking a deep breath of LCL. "Okay."
~'/|\'~
Hands tight around the control yokes, her hands working as she forced the lumbering, power restricted Eva to move, Rei Ayanami's eyes constantly flickered over the mess of windows and data-feeds that she kept open. Compared to the simple, mostly-automated displays of Unit 01, designed for its untrained pilot, her entry plug was a mess of lights and information.
Moving the reticule onto the Harbinger, she emptied a barrage of fly-like missiles from a shoulder pod. The empty container crashed down onto the ground, bouncing and crushing an empty, abandoned car. That was the most damage it did, because the AT-Field merely flared into adamantine life as the flock approached, where they harmlessly burst. Even the arcanochromatic taint was doing nothing against the integrity of the AT-Field; the soul of Mot was proof against such blemishes.
"Internal 1," Rei said, her voice chilly.
Deep within the Eva, a single D-Engine awoke, sending a fresh jolt of power into the Eva's veins, to supplement the trickle from the external source. It was a risk, yes, but she was still 'smaller' than many of the other targets. And with the sudden agility it afforded, she was able to duck under the white cutting beam that lunged for her, catching its back-sweep on the shield, and bursting into motion, as she relocated. Too soon, it was necessary that the engine be cut again.
She had been playing this game with it, slowing it down, letting it see a hint of her AT-Field, before fleeing its wrath. Representative Ikari had ordered her to slow it down, after all.
~'/|\'~
The replacement catapult vessel slowed, much more carefully than before, and with a commiserate lack of derailments.
[Eva 01 is in place.]
"Alignment verified... checked! Hostile core status?"
"Moving, but we have it tracked. We're feeding the data to the Eva!"
Eva 01 was deep underground, stationed in the tunnels which they normally used to move the Evangelions to the surface, up from the Geocity ten kilometres below the surface. Now, it was a mere kilometre above the Geocity, and the shaft of the Harbinger had already passed it. These tunnels were now the frontlines where the Unit would fight, for the core moved along the full length of the obelisk. The extrusion of the Harbinger into reality was horrifically fast, unnaturally so, and seemed to show no care at all for little things like "conservation of mass".
"Rotate... okay, microadjustments done," the Operator whispered to Shinji. "You can start."
The boy took a deep, deep breath, of this cold, strange-tasting LCL, and felt himself slide slightly deeper into the Eva.
Think.
Think of the shape. Form the AT-Field.
Think.
Think of everyone. Form the AT-Field.
Think.
Think of killing the Harbinger. Form the AT-Field.
Think.
The air in front of the Eva began to boil, glowing and writhing and thrashing, strange bubbles of light popping as Shinji Ikari began to force the very fabric of reality to the shape he desired.
~'/|\'~
"It's not forming right!" Ritsuko barked. "He doesn't have fine enough control to get it tight enough. Even with the AT-Field weakened, it won't be a kill."
"Just give him time," Misato said, her hands clutched to her chest. "We trusted him enough to drag him back like this, after it almost killed him. After it did kill him. He chose to get in that thing, and I explained the risks of what he was doing." Her face hardened. "I believe in Shinji."
A pause.
Gendo leant forwards, pushing his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose. The overlays on the spectacles suggested that he was looking at a more detailed version of the main screen. "No," he said, simply. "Move him to the surface. He will be closer. It will work."
"But..." Ritsuko began. That's suicide, was what the scientist didn't say. "It'll detect the AT-Field for sure, and he'll be defenceless while trying to shape it."
"That seems... unwise," the Major agreed. "He's close. He can do it."
"You said you believed in him," Gendo said, eyes hidden. "Then believe in him when he is on the surface, and in effective range. The Harbinger must be killed."
Misato twirled around. "Sir," she said, her voice utterly professional. "Prepare for Eva redeployment... Shinji, we're going to move you closer, to try and..."
"High energy reaction in the target!"
"What?" Ritsuko snapped. "It's seen him! It's seen the AT-Field!"
"Emergency move!" Misato ordered, slamming one hand into a button. "Shinji! Drop that AT-Field right now! Cut all internal power to Unit 01! Get it moving!"
~'/|\'~
But on the surface, Rei Ayanami was already moving. With a flat "Internal 9," all of the Prototype's D-Engines kicked into full, screaming activity. Sudden power hit the Unit; power and more, because she had not ejected the external supply. A word was all that was needed to dedicate that exclusively to the weapon crudely attached to her left arm. And she was off, gloved hands fastened around the controls, pale face in a rictus of concentration, as she forced the Eva into motion, despite her poor synchronisation ratio.
"Override power lockdowns," she said, simply. "Maximise energy consumption, autonomous weapons are free."
Feet pounding against the ground and tearing it up, she leapt over the trench of what had once been a superheavy charge beam installation, and now was nothing more than a crater, which punched a hole in the top of a buried arcology dome. Stumbling upon landing, the white-painted Unit nonetheless managed to retain balance, even as its path led it through several apartment complexes, and it came to a sliding halt, knee drawing a line of sparks, close to the Harbinger. Its lesser weapons, the remaining missiles and rockets and laser turrets, were already firing, the blue beams visible through the dust that her motion had kicked up.
Within her plug, Rei closed her eyes, and raised the shield welded to her handless right arm, bracing for the impact that she knew would come. The plasma turret on her left arm was already firing, spewing burning sun-matter at the Harbinger. Her plug suddenly jolted down, her synch-ratio spiking before settling at a higher level.
She was not surprised by the attack. She never was. And in this case, she had gone out of her way to draw its attention.
~'/|\'~
Again, Unit 01 was kicked into too-sudden motion, heading vertically upwards. Looking down, Shinji just saw a white beam cut through the rocks, through the armour plating, through the base earth, to where he had been, seconds before, before the blast doors slammed shut, to the sound of rapidly dopplered alarms.
The boy whimpered into the LCL, one hand going to his chest despite the crushing force of the acceleration. That had been close. Far, far too close. The pain of the beams cutting into him, last time, were his only truly clear memory of the last fight.
"Shield integrity failing!"
"AT-Field weakening! Pilot attunement is dropping and destabilising, One-Two fluctuations in 3-RT channel detected!"
"Shinji! Shinji!" Misato's face appeared before him, to the sound of hubbub in the control room. "Surface! Fire!"
"What?!" He blinked, his hand forced back to the controls. "But I..."
"Loss of external power source. Unit 00 is running on Internals."
"You can do it! You will do it! Understand? Shinji," the woman said, a slight dampness around the corners of her Eyes, "we've put everything into this. You chose to pilot. You've already killed two of them. Make it three for three, okay?"
Above them, the night-black crystal met the outer layers of the Geocity.
"Energy probe is attacking G1," Lieutenant Makota yelled. "G1 is pierced! G2... G3! G3 has fallen... G4!"
"We're all counting on you," Misato said, finally.
~'/|\'~
The warning sirens which told of the Evangelion chute opening were useless, screaming into a night where there were none to hear it, and where they were drowned out by the conflict. But, still, the sirens sounded and the red warning lights illuminated the street, as the 50 metre cradle came up, directly facing the Harbinger. The ground around it warped and crumbled, as the AT-Field, already forming in front its chest, began to glisten and sparkle in the air.
Shinji slammed his fist into the side of the plug wall, into the red button they had installed to indicate readiness, and stared up at his foe, the overlay of the association-image merging with the Harbinger. It truly was a monster now; maybe a hundred metres wide, but reaching three kilometres into the air, and all the way down to the Geocity, with only a slight bulge at ground level showing what it had once been. It was a needle fit for the Norns to use, one through which the threads of fate might be woven.
But all that was irrelevant, because the totality of its firepower, the totality of its will was focussed on one thing. The white shape of Unit 00, was, according to his overlays, somewhere in the middle of that apocalyptic display of firepower, with only the hull plating of an all-too-feeble human ship, the kind that it might trivially slice through, between it and the terrible light.
The plume of light from Unit 01's chest grew stronger and brighter, a cone-like shape composed of distorted, warped, and yet perfect concentric circles. Through it, things were seen warped and distorted and... other, off in ways both tangible and intangible, similar and dissimilar.
"Yes!" shouted Ritsuko. "He's done it! It's... it's nearly perfect!"
And that was when the light of the Harbinger ceased, and it swelled and bulged, pulling all the darkness back into itself. The spire shrunk, grew anaemic and withered, as for once, for the last time, Mot grew fully aware of what it faced, of the death that came for it.
[Energy Reaction Detected]
[Warning! AT-Field exceeds mission parameter!]
"No!" Misato yelled. "No, damn you!"
The void-dark blossom of the Harbinger, bloated and imperfect, widened, as it drew in more of its stuff. And Shinji who, a trickle of blood leaking from his nose, was holding the AT-Field ready, saw reflected in its depths, so many lights, all aimed for him from the barbs of crystal now growing down its front.
Something shrieked.
And it was almost an entire second before Shinji realised that it wasn't him.
Behind it, now ignored, Rei Ayanami slashed again at the Harbinger, the fused, melted remnants of the shield her weapon of choice. Like an axewoman, she beat repetitively at the base, her AT-Field flaring around the crude, improvised weapon, and with each slash, barbs of crystal came flying out, inexorable cutting at the very root of the Harbinger.
It shrieked again, a pure, beautiful note of agony, and perhaps instinctively recoiled.
That weakening was seen by the sensors on Unit 01. It was all the excuse they needed.
The LANCE prototype initiated. Hydrogen fused with hydrogen into helium, the energy released to force more such reactions. Energy equal to five hundred kilotonnes of TNT was released, radiating out on straight lines. But thanks to the AT-Field, and thanks to the cruder human sorceries layered onto the bomb, what might have seemed straight was, to the rest of the world, curved.
In a tiny fraction of a second, a nuclear blossom grew within Unit 01's chest, within the AT-Field, before, in a perversion of nature, growing out into the stem.
And through the entry way, it hit the two Harlequin samples crudely added, to make this a wonderfully Colourful weapon.
The cone of unnatural light, five metres across by the time it reached the AT-Field of the Harbinger and still ensheathed in Unit 01's soul, punched straight through. Punched straight through the AT-Field, punched straight through the crystal, punched straight through the core, and left cleanly through the other side.
Mot gave a noise which was not quite a shriek, and was silent for evermore.
In the silence that followed, as normal night returned, and rain began to fall from the violated clouds, the sound of Unit 00 collapsing was terribly loud.
~'/|\'~
Standing on a rooftop, on one of the few buildings intact in the area, a man laughed. Vast giggles shook his body, contorting it, as tears flowed from his face freely. His parted lips revealed shining white teeth, and one bare foot, coal-black, quite deliberately crushed the glass of wine he had dropped, letting his crimson blood mix with the spilled drink.
"Wonderful!" he screamed into the night, though laughter. "Magnificent! Simply... wonderful!"
The rain that fell burned the coruscating, phosphorescence of the Colour Out of Space.
~'/|\'~
"Rei!" Shinji yelled, at the fallen Eva. "Rei!"
The white-armoured Eva was down. Its armour, once white, was now nothing more than metal and blackened, scorched ceramic. The left arm was even more heavily damaged, and the shield which had been on the right arm, and which had seen use as a weapon, was torn off completely. Compared to that, Unit 01 seemed to be in a good state of repair, even with the hole in its chest, and the faint arcanochromatic patina of dust.
He had to get her out of there.
With force, he pried open the ruined back of the Evangelion, carefully, as if holding something young and vulnerable, cradling as he laid it down on the ground. Closer examination, though, revealed that the plug had already ruptured.
That was bad, Shinji knew.
Very bad.
Frantically, he scrabbled in the equipment pod for the facemask he needed to wear until his lungs were emptied of LCL; the one that Dr Akagi had called, with a chuckle, the Eva EVA Equipment. It snapped cleanly onto his cowl, the metamorphic material sealing itself, and it was a matter of moments to shrug on the backpack with the LCL supply; moments which, to Shinji, seemed like an eternity.
And then he was out of the Eva, ignoring the command staff completely, and running through the phosphorescent rain which streaked down his facemask, and painted the orange-tinted world in strange colours. Yes, the entry plug was ruptured, right at the end, the metal torn. Clambering onto it, he could feel the heat through the blood-slicked surfaces, but it could be tolerated. He found a hole large enough that he could bend the metal out of the way, and, yelping as it sliced through the palm of his plug suit, bent it out of the way. He didn't even notice how the plug suit sealed itself up afterwards. Clambering through the hole, ignoring the pain in his hands from the sharp, burning-hot metal, he stared at the girl, who lay, unmoving, head slumped. LCL pooled around her legs, but she didn't...
"Hold on!" he shouted, yanking open the equipment capsule, to retrieve her transparent mask. With much more care, he knelt beside her, and sighed into the LCL as it clicked back into position, noting as he did that he felt much more normal. Much more normal, and as if all the sleep he felt he was owed was being called in all at once.
"Ayanami! Rei? Are you... are you all right? Are you okay?" he tried again, once he saw that the air bubbles were no longer there, which meant that she was breathing the LCL properly.
Raising her head slightly, two grey eyes stared back at him, almost quizzically. And for some reason, Shinji found that incredibly funny, and began to laugh, great heaving sobs, which left him doubled up.
"Ikari? Are you all right?" Rei echoed, looking at him with something which approached concern.
"There's... there's more to life, to stuff, to... to everything than what is necessary," Shinji burbled, relief and exhaustion flooding his system in equal amounts. "And... and don't ever, ever say 'goodbye' like that. It's not going to be a goodbye." Behind the transparent mask tears leaked into the LCL, tiny spheres of saline water which quickly dispersed into the fluid. "Not... not if I... I... can..." he faded away into incoherency.
Eyes widening slightly, Rei straightened up, her head no longer lolling. "Why do you cry?" she asked, voice distorted slightly by the fluid that still filled her lungs. "You are not in pain."
Shinji sniffed, and went to wipe his nose, only for his hand to brush against the faceplate. "I kn-know," he managed. "I'm not crying because... because I'm sad. It's because I'm happy." He smiled then, a faint, watery grin. "And so should you be."
"I should be crying?" Behind the faceplate, wide eyes blinked. "I am sorry. I don't know how to express myself in this kind of circumstance."
"You should be happy." He took a teetering step forwards, as the adrenaline wore off and the bone-deep fatigue returned, leaning against the heated plug wall, and recoiling from it with a yelp. "We're both alive, and the Harbinger isn't, and... you were amazing, and..." he chuckled, even through the tears, "...you should smile more."
Two grey eyes focussed on the face before them, focussed on the jaw line and the cheekbones and the shape of the face, at the way that the corners of his lips turned up and the crinkles around the corners of his eyes, comparing them to those of the boy's father. Slowly, awkwardly, Rei's face distorted, muscles moving in a way that they were not quite used to, and she too smiled.
With a burbling chuckle, Shinji collapsed, sagging at the knees. The exhaustion, induced by his death and rebirth, and postponed by medication and adrenaline, surged back, and the sweet nepenthe of rest took him. The LCL pooled at the bottom of the entry plug splashed with his impact, dripping back down the walls.
There was an expression of faint concern on Rei's face, as she stared down at the sleeping boy. With a wince, the girl sat upright, and with unusual care and hesitancy, leant forwards, to stare down at him. Her lips twitched, and she smiled again, no less awkwardly than the first time, as she reached down to place one gloved hand against his cowled head.
Outside, the tainted rain, burning in terrible phosphorescence, cascaded down, running over ruined buildings and leaching the colour from them, to pool and flow in rivulets down abandoned streets. It poured in sheets off the darkness of the corpse of the Harbinger, the dark tower that now reached into the sky, bringing light to the darkness, and through the single hole punched straight through it. It dripped and ran down the two abandoned Evangelions, marking their damaged armour with streaks of grey. The world seemed to shimmer in this light, as if all things were one in this opalescent, coruscating glow.
And through the holes in the clouds, torn asunder through the violence of the conflict, the nearly-full moon shone down in whiteness upon the world, wearing a tainted rainbow as a halo.
~'/|\'~
Shinr
Lurking since December '98
I can tell you that it isn't not referencing what you think it is referencing, if that helps.Jonen C said:
Jonen C
F.M.D.G.
- Location
- Lincopense, Ostrogothia, Suecia
Tua consilia omnia nobis clariora sunt quam lux.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be over in the corner of this altered closed space, alternating between gibbering, laughing, crying and plotting your usurpation.
I have to come up with a situationally appropriate gloat for every imaginable permutation of your downfall, you know... And the pleads for mercy should I fail catastrophically, and apropos that jaunty dismissals of my failures should they prove more manageable.
As I am not equipped with the module that lets me properly parse double negatives, yes. That helps immeasurably.EarthScorpion said:
Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be over in the corner of this altered closed space, alternating between gibbering, laughing, crying and plotting your usurpation.
I have to come up with a situationally appropriate gloat for every imaginable permutation of your downfall, you know... And the pleads for mercy should I fail catastrophically, and apropos that jaunty dismissals of my failures should they prove more manageable.
Shinr
Lurking since December '98
I've mentioned the latter, but unless ES decides to add Star Gate elements to AEE there is not much that can be obviously added. Or maybe Justin Case is involved.kingdragon said:
The former on the other hand, unless someone reads it and tell ES about a few good points that were found (and those probably still need extensive rewriting, like the Nephilim), I don't expect that ES will use anything from that book.
EDIT: Ninja'ed by LawtPIAT.
EDIT2:
With the rather blatant shoutout, one can assume that this is a AEE version of Ghost activity. But considering that that chapter was posted before that show aired...JonBerry said:
Unless ES saw the pilot episode.
which thread is that?LatwPIAT said:
Shinr
Lurking since December '98
The old Aeon Natum Engel thread, and here is a post in question.Twitchy Artemis said:
To lawtPIAT, TVTropes screwed up a little and I ended up canceling all your changes. I think I edited them all back, but you should take a look.
FourthWall
Love & Destroy
- Location
- Chiraq
Oh, Operation Yashima: it's unfortunate that ANE doesn't run under the Tim Taylor school of power generation.
I spy with my little eye a Reprint and Repackaging of Evangelion/Thousand Shinji hissatsu and a distinct lack of Rules given three of our ancillary players. And a Rebuild spec scene.
I spy with my little eye a Reprint and Repackaging of Evangelion/Thousand Shinji hissatsu and a distinct lack of Rules given three of our ancillary players. And a Rebuild spec scene.
Uh... FourthWall? Could you try again, only, you know... making sense this time? I honestly can't grasp what you're trying to say.
FourthWall
Love & Destroy
- Location
- Chiraq
In your "Man, the Operation Yashima plan was stupid," bit, Misato said (correctly) that more power does not mean more damage, it means slagging your stuff. The Tim Taylor School of Power Generation says it always needs more power. Always.
And I saw Panty, Stocking, and maybe Corset at the end snuggled under dense prose, but no Demon Sisters. Thus, lack of rules, or ruuuuruuuus, as it were.
I was actually able to make it all the way through this chapter, so I echo Ford's sentiments in the first paragraph; Rei stabbing at not!Ramiel with the slagged bit of shield is a particularly strong visual. Your prose is still prone to self-indulgence, but it reads a lot more subdued and quick now.
The "how about a smile" bit fell flat to me, though. I know it's an important part of both characters' in series development, but it felt shoehorned.
And I saw Panty, Stocking, and maybe Corset at the end snuggled under dense prose, but no Demon Sisters. Thus, lack of rules, or ruuuuruuuus, as it were.
I was actually able to make it all the way through this chapter, so I echo Ford's sentiments in the first paragraph; Rei stabbing at not!Ramiel with the slagged bit of shield is a particularly strong visual. Your prose is still prone to self-indulgence, but it reads a lot more subdued and quick now.
The "how about a smile" bit fell flat to me, though. I know it's an important part of both characters' in series development, but it felt shoehorned.