Aeon Entelechy Evangelion (ANE rewrite)
- Thread starter EarthScorpion
- Start date
The Tsuchigumo are two things. Yes, they're a homage to GitS. But they're also a "No, this is a better way of doing things" response to the canon Nephilim, which are... pretty damn useless, all in all; Vitality-scale units that require a parapsychic handler, and try to kill everything in the area if they lose contact with it.
They're also not identical to a Tachikoma in appearance (for one, they look more like Uchikoma). Their "forearms" are mantis-like, curving back, and they have a head-which-is-mostly-a-mandibled-maw which vomits out sticky acidic netting when the mouth is allowed to do so. Because of that, they don't have the front mounted weapon, which is instead put on the top, with a 360 degree swivel.
And... no, the Tsuchigumo in use here aren't even as smart as an Uchikoma. There's the creature itself, which is a nasty ambush predator that, given a chance, would hit one prey, cover it in the acidic, enzyme-covered webbing, and them drag it off to drink as it dissolves, and then there's the on-board LAI, which does fine weapon control and tactical analysis for the pilot, who's a necessary component, and cybernetically linked up to the beast, and is basically mind-raping it into obedience through technology just being linked there, by taking over all higher functions for the beast.
It's a synthesis of man, monster, and machine. And is, in-universe, as a product of the Engel Group, hence technically a spin-off from the Evas. That's the other reason I wanted to show them off.
They're also not identical to a Tachikoma in appearance (for one, they look more like Uchikoma). Their "forearms" are mantis-like, curving back, and they have a head-which-is-mostly-a-mandibled-maw which vomits out sticky acidic netting when the mouth is allowed to do so. Because of that, they don't have the front mounted weapon, which is instead put on the top, with a 360 degree swivel.
And... no, the Tsuchigumo in use here aren't even as smart as an Uchikoma. There's the creature itself, which is a nasty ambush predator that, given a chance, would hit one prey, cover it in the acidic, enzyme-covered webbing, and them drag it off to drink as it dissolves, and then there's the on-board LAI, which does fine weapon control and tactical analysis for the pilot, who's a necessary component, and cybernetically linked up to the beast, and is basically mind-raping it into obedience through technology just being linked there, by taking over all higher functions for the beast.
It's a synthesis of man, monster, and machine. And is, in-universe, as a product of the Engel Group, hence technically a spin-off from the Evas. That's the other reason I wanted to show them off.
I specifically deny that I encode memetic hazards into my avatars to ensure that the brains of those who read my posts are slowly dissolved into mush, so that I can feed off their delicious, delicious sanity.
If you replaced Leeron by Ritsuko or Maya... well, they'd probably be having problems from the primitive tech level, especially Maya, because all that exceptionally high-tech arcanotechnology packed into her skull (and parts of her spine, and threaded through her nervous system, and there's space in her body for D-Cells to power it all) isn't something that copes well when taken away from regular check ups, maintenance, and recharging. By contrast, Ritsuko's implants are a lot older, and are merely spinal ports, but she's going to suffer from a lack of civilisation, and a lack of nanofactories.
I personally hold that there would be fair chance that Ritsuko, though, would end up hooking up with Lord Genome, and create hyper-intelligent can-beat-you-up-when-their-head-is-on-fire babies together. You know, looking like Nia, but replacing the innocence with jaded cynicism. Which makes the whole series more awesome, when Nia gets replaced by someone who resembles a white-haired Kyonko more than a little bit.
...
And with that divergence out of the way, I am rather surprised I haven't had more comments on some of the changes, and what they might imply. Oh well.
I personally hold that there would be fair chance that Ritsuko, though, would end up hooking up with Lord Genome, and create hyper-intelligent can-beat-you-up-when-their-head-is-on-fire babies together. You know, looking like Nia, but replacing the innocence with jaded cynicism. Which makes the whole series more awesome, when Nia gets replaced by someone who resembles a white-haired Kyonko more than a little bit.
...
And with that divergence out of the way, I am rather surprised I haven't had more comments on some of the changes, and what they might imply. Oh well.
Jonen C
F.M.D.G.
- Location
- Lincopense, Ostrogothia, Suecia
As for me, I wouldn't go so far as to say that, there's a good amount of material for starting guess work, but... Well, so far it's mostly a bunch of seemingly unrelated points of data, and I'm to lazy to bother with stringing them together with nothing to work on. Once we get a few more points, and a couple of lines start appearing, connecting some of them, I can start guessing.
I'm also to lazy to do a full up comparison with the first chapter of ANE.
One thing I have been thinking of is taking a closer look at your Nazzadi language, but, once again: Me=lazy.
I'm also to lazy to do a full up comparison with the first chapter of ANE.
One thing I have been thinking of is taking a closer look at your Nazzadi language, but, once again: Me=lazy.
Shockz
You might see it coming...but it'll be too late.
- Location
- At least a mile high
- Pronouns
- no
I got a few bits and pieces of it.Jonen C said:
I'm no linguist, but there seems to be a lot of English/Romance-language influence in the vocabulary, albeit cleverly disguised.EarthScorpion said:
"Asisi radiki" is "today" (most likely literally "This day", or something to that effect). "Ni plancki solilaki-twi pla twilaki-reski" is "At 12:27 PM". "Ni" is "at". "Plancki" I'm not sure about. "Solilaki-twi pla twilaki-reski" seems to be "Twelve [conjunction, most lilkely "and"] twenty-seven", meaning "soli" = "one", "twi" = "two", "reski" = "seven", and "laki" designates the tens place. (I just turned twilaki-soli yesterday!) I'll assume "pla" is "and" for now.
The next clause starts with "soli Newi Earthi Governmenti", which tells me a couple things: firstly, "soli" is not just "one" but also the definite article (and possibly the indefinite as well). Secondly, like Japanese (and probably a few other languages that I know nothing about), Nazzadi is limited in what sounds can end a word or come before a consonant to vowels and a couple specific consonants ("l", "r", "s", "t", "n"...Wheel of Fortune, anyone?) Oddly, ending a word in "u" seems to be all right ("estru" later on), so I'm not sure why "New" would be rendered as "Newi" (presumably pronounced "Nui"). Although a "th" sound is not in evidence anywhere in the rest of the Nazzadi message, it's presumably acceptable, at least in loan words. The Nazzadization of "New Earth Government" is odd when compared to the rest of the loanwords in the message.
Now, the next thing that's interesting is that "A special state of authority has been declared by" is condensed into "canalabi absul homisapi". "Homisapi" is obviously "human" or "person"; "absul" seems to be "all". "Canalabi" appears again at the end of the message, but it's difficult to pull out its exact meaning just yet.
The next sentence starts with "Absul homisapi ni absul piwuteri oi Arkologi oi Victoria", corresponding to "All citizens in the surface levels of the Victoria Arcology". The sentence as-is seems to translate into "All people at all [untrans.] [conj.] Arcology [conj.] Victoria." It makes sense if "oi" is "of", so that makes "All people at all [untrans.] of Arcology of Victoria". First, we can surmise that Nazzadi has no separate word for "citizen"; it's the same as "human" and "person". Very interesting implications there: On the one hand, all humans are citizens; on the other, nonhumans aren't people. Eenteresteeng. And then we have "piwuteri", which must mean "surface levels". Got to wonder whether it's a compound word, or if Nazzadi just has a built-in word for "above-ground level".
Of course, this is all assuming the Nazzadi translation is accurate. Which I imagine it is, since there are most likely a lot of bilingual people.
I'm too tired to keep going with this, but it's a start.
Jonen C
F.M.D.G.
- Location
- Lincopense, Ostrogothia, Suecia
... In as far as it is possible to transcribe traditional naval doctrine onto flying, submersible, naval/aerospace warships.LatwPIAT said:
As far as I'm concerned, in modern naval parlance we have Cruisers who are the largest naval combatant (aside from carriers, but they don't get directly involved). As most cruisers today are designed in peacetime, they tend to be designed to pull a lot of secondary jobs aside from fighting and winning. For cruisers, this is mostly command, control, communications and coordination duties for naval taskforces.
If there ever arose a need to design a cruiser sized combatant in wartime, it would probably strip as much of these extra bells and whistles as possible for more weaponry and mobility - admittedly, today it would probably also have the best sensors that could be fitted and the systems needed to make best use of them. Tomorrow, however, with distributed sensor nets taking over, it might get by with merely adequate sensors and command systems to reduce cost and improve firepower and mobility.
If they drop to much of the mobility in favor of firepower, it becomes an arsenal ship.
If they drop to much firepower in favor of mobility, it becomes a strike cruiser.
Make the mix just right, and you have a battlecruiser.
Aside from that... Well, you know the starship Enterprise was classified as a Battlecruiser, at least by the Klingons.
Well done, sir. You are indeed a cunning linguist. ;7Shockz said:
Yes, structurally, it draws a lot from the Romance languages (fed through the demented mixing machine that is my mind), but there's a German-style stick-concepts-together-to-make-new-words there, quite a bit of Japanese-known-through-anime structure bits, and a shamefully large number of things that are puns, if you get them in a certain conjugation, or use certain verb elements together. And a few tiny bits from the given information in the corebook (words that end in y are feminine, i = neuter/mixed sex group, a = male)
And as a small note, actually, Nazzadi does have a word for people separate from the loanword/neologism "homisapi". It's just that it's, well, nazzadi, and that's sort of been cludged into meaning "member of Homo sapiens sapiens". You might have noticed that the Loyalist sections at the end of Aeon Natum Engel had the Loyalists referring to themselves as nazzada / nazzady, depending on sex.
Heh. Would I do that?Firefly17 said:
In all honesty, I like words. I like languages and linguistics, even if I'm not gifted at foreign languages. I didn't mean quite to end up plotting it out, but... well, it started with words I used frequently ('harang(a/y)' is some kind of swearword)... and then I decided that what would be awesome would be a Loyalist section where I didn't actually translate any of their speech, but instead relied purely on context, to see how well it worked.
How well did it work, by the way?
But... yeah, I like verisimilitude. And I consider books that let you work things out if you put the effort translating to be awesome.
Slight correction; the Invictus-class, as a basic idea, isn't mine. It, as a basic concept, comes from rpg.net.LatwPIAT said:
Likewise, actually, the stupidity in canon NEG Naval things isn't even the fact that their heaviest ship is a Battlecruiser (although that's suboptimal). It's the fact that they only have 5 of them worldwide, while the Swarm Ship, their closest equivalent, are just plain better, and more common. And the fact that they, in the fluff, are a hybrid of an aircraft carrier and a battleship. Which means your heaviest hitter is crippled by the fact that it has to make space for 65 aircraft and 32 mecha units. When you could be cramming in more D-Engines, D-Dumps (to dump all that energy back into spacetime, to avoid melting the ship due to inefficiencies, and also to lower the temperature of the ship hull), and armour.
Remember, I don't feel a need to give the heroic mecha pilots a ship to operate from.
For one, my main protagonists are their own capital-scale units.
Jonen C
F.M.D.G.
- Location
- Lincopense, Ostrogothia, Suecia
I am well aware of the naming conventions.LatwPIAT said:
I'd also like to note that naval naming conventions tend to change rapidly.
Today, the Destroyer is the most common large scale warship out there (with the Aircraft carrier being the big one, and only four nations worldwide operate Cruisers).
Destroyers have been around for only slightly more than a century, and the torpedo boats they were built to counter, only slightly longer than that (as has their main weapon).
Battleships evolved in the late/mid nineteenth century, and cruisers out of the need for an intermediate unit.
Of the warship designations in common use today, Frigate and Corvette are the oldest. And they originally referred to very different types of ships than today (in the age of sail, frigates were - to my understanding - more or less a cruiser equivalent to the Ship of the Line/Man-o-War's battleship). Corvettes are closer to their classical designation.
In many ways, keeping the "traditional" designations like "cruiser", "destroyer" doesn't really make much sense... Well, except for the fact that when you look closely at them, a cruiser is a ship that cruises - extended patrols - and the destroyer can be designed to fight a specific type of threat.
Giving ships names after their purpose is something that will probably become more popular. Look at the Littoral Combat Ships - unless the USN caves in and decides to re-designate them as frigates or corvettes.
Most of my favorite SF universes do space warship designation in this way - [weightclass/speed] [type] Unit/Vehicle (a personal peeve, but I prefer it when "spaceship" is a strictly informal term, and official documentation refers to them as space vehicles).
A good example would be Banks's Rapid Offensive Units.
Ah. In the case of Strike Cruisers, I was actually thinking 40k. Space Marine Strike Cruisers are the primary space combatants of most of the various chapters, since the Imperial Navy has a monopoly on proper space warships.
The Strike Cruisers are scaled like Navy Cruisers, but strip down weaponry (and possibly armor) in favor of more powerful engines (to get close to the enemy (or penetrate planetary defenses (to deploy troops)) faster) and close range weaponry.
Other possibly more universal/appropriate terms would be light cruiser or scout cruiser, though a light cruiser is a different beast entirely (and a screening element at that, in the traditional/WW2 context often optimized for fleet air defense), and a scout cruiser tends to be a very large destroyer or a small/fast light cruiser.
I'd be half tempted to let the Nazzadi designations enter official parlance, meself. That or revive the rating system. Or hell, why not just go back and take inspiration from the old days of galleys and rate them according to how many A-pods/D-engines they mount.
Yes indeed. I suppose. I really like the Herald too. Does almost exactly what I would do if I could do [REDACTED] (or some reasonable approximation of [REDACTED]) with spacetime/to [REDACTED] (or some reasonable approximation of spactime/[REDACTED]).
So it's not just a Battlecruiser (which is cool points in on itself), but a Battlestar.EarthScorpion said:
The Sandman
So Zetta Slowpoke
- Location
- Wherever I am, which isn't where I'm not
A few thoughts so far, possibly with more in-depth analysis to come later.
I see somebody got around to reading the Eclipse Phase corebook. The fact that muses, augmented reality and other such tech are being used in AEEverse makes me quite happy. The fact that TITANs are involved at the uppermost levels of NEGA decision-making, on the other hand, makes me quite scared.
I think we can also confirm at least two things: Rei is still in some way derived from Yui's genetic material, and Yui is still in some way within Eva Unit 01. The first actually makes the Alma connections much creepier.
On the battleship debate up-thread: technically, I don't think that any vessel in the Aeon War could be considered a battleship, because one of the key things differentiating a battleship from, say, a cruiser or battlecruiser is that a battleship should be able to survive a hit from its main armament. I rather doubt that's the case here.
It also sounds to me as if what Shinji pulled up on that datathread he was given on the Eva project was a report on some sort of problem with the LCL; specifically, that it was interfering with proper synchronization. I could be completely wrong on that, of course, but that's currently my best guess.
I'm also going to take a wild guess here that the good Dr. Sylveste, among his many other projects, has been researching why the sidoci are capable of perceiving things beyond our standard 3+1 reality without their brains melting down or crashing. And, of course, examining whether that can be reverse-engineered into the baseline H.sap genome. The fact that undoing what was probably a protective measure the Elder Things built into shoggoth-matter to keep their tools from being able to match their own command of arcanotech might have all sorts of other nasty side effects is the sort of thing that Calvin Sylveste isn't likely to be all that worried about.
I see somebody got around to reading the Eclipse Phase corebook. The fact that muses, augmented reality and other such tech are being used in AEEverse makes me quite happy. The fact that TITANs are involved at the uppermost levels of NEGA decision-making, on the other hand, makes me quite scared.
I think we can also confirm at least two things: Rei is still in some way derived from Yui's genetic material, and Yui is still in some way within Eva Unit 01. The first actually makes the Alma connections much creepier.
On the battleship debate up-thread: technically, I don't think that any vessel in the Aeon War could be considered a battleship, because one of the key things differentiating a battleship from, say, a cruiser or battlecruiser is that a battleship should be able to survive a hit from its main armament. I rather doubt that's the case here.
It also sounds to me as if what Shinji pulled up on that datathread he was given on the Eva project was a report on some sort of problem with the LCL; specifically, that it was interfering with proper synchronization. I could be completely wrong on that, of course, but that's currently my best guess.
I'm also going to take a wild guess here that the good Dr. Sylveste, among his many other projects, has been researching why the sidoci are capable of perceiving things beyond our standard 3+1 reality without their brains melting down or crashing. And, of course, examining whether that can be reverse-engineered into the baseline H.sap genome. The fact that undoing what was probably a protective measure the Elder Things built into shoggoth-matter to keep their tools from being able to match their own command of arcanotech might have all sorts of other nasty side effects is the sort of thing that Calvin Sylveste isn't likely to be all that worried about.
Lusus Naturae / What bliss even in hope is there for thee?
Chapter 2
Lusus Naturae / What bliss even in hope is there for thee?
EVANGELION
"Perhaps one of the greatest scientific ironies of the twenty-first century parallels its equivalent in the twentieth. Just as special relativity was founded around the fact that the speed of light was the same in all inertial frames of reference, so has arcane theory removed the magic from the arcane. The pseudo-reactionless drive of the A-Pod, the infinite-energy-finite-power from the D-Engine, the discovery of variant r-state materials and their properties, and, of course, the systematic categorisation of sorcerous procedures; though they all have reaped their toll in the lives and sanity of researchers, we have, nonetheless, progressed. And the reason for this is our extelligence, our culture, our capacity to transfer data and preserve it past the one who devised it. Society is what defines humanity; the laws against the Tainted are concrete proof of this. And if the Aeon War has taught us anything, it is that the survival of all of us outweighs the survival of any one of us."
August 20th, 2091 CE
"Damn it, he's starting to fade. Increase the mLCL-st-01 percentage feed on the drip to 60%."
The voices echoed out of a dark, empty space. This was not just the void, no mere absence of light. This was an impossibility of light. It was not that there was no light here, it was that light, as a concept, was undefined.
"Mental contamination! We've got... yep, AN contamination in the three primary components of the waveform."
"But will he survive?" The woman's voice paused. "No, that's not the right question. Will he survive, while still qualifying as human? It would be annoying to have to get another RTE exemption, and would slow down progress notably."
There was a studied pause. "Yes," the first voice responded, eventually. "The damage... isn't enough to flip the Pennington-Fuyutsuki determinant. It'll heal. Uh... that's the animaneural damage."
"I'm concerned about the physical damage," added a male voice, a faint Nazzadi accent evident in the clipped tones and the slight lilt. "We've got major internal bleeding; we're trying to stem it as best we can, but until we can get the sorcery up and running... well, the problem is, we're having to S-hack the H-L procedure, and that means we've invalidated a bunch of axioms. The LCL is mucking with the operation of the medichines, too, so we really do need the arcanotherapeutic assistance. We've waiting for the Magi to compile the rederived version, but..." The statement was deliberately left hanging.
"Be prepared for the use of Option Zero, if necessary," instructed a fourth voice. "We need him alive, and the increased recovery time and psychological strain is better than the alternative."
"Yes, sir. The sorcerers are in place."
August 21st, 2091 CE
Shinji Ikari opened his eyes slowly. A blank white ceiling, curving slightly in a ribbed arch, hung above him. He felt... exhausted. Bone-tired. There were probably more synonyms that were applicable for the situation, but, frankly, even thinking was more effort than it really was worth. Certainly, though, as he tried to move, his arms and legs felt like overcooked noodles; barely responsive and floppy.
"Hello?" he managed, his voice soft, and slightly husky. "Uh..." he trailed off, merely continuing to stare upwards at the same, unfamiliar ceiling. He knew that something must have happened, because this wasn't where he normally woke up, and this wasn't how he normally felt, but, again, to seriously do anything was too much effort.
"Good afternoon, Shinji," said a Nazzadi accented voice, a moderated, gentle voice practically deigned to make one feel comforted. She was speaking to him in Japanese, and it was at that point that Shinji realised that was what he had used.
Oh. That made a lot more sense. Yes, he was ill. That was a much more plausible situation, and would also explain how weak he felt. He just had some kind of fever, and would be over it in a few days. Even if, judging from how he felt right now, it would seem a lot longer.
"You know, Gany," he managed, a faint smile on his lips, "I had a really funny dream. There was this giant robot, and my father, and some kind of monster. It was really weird..."
Shinji Ikari drifted back to sleep.
August 22nd, 2091 CE
Gendo Ikari stared over the top of his bridged fingers at the nine other individuals seated around the ring-like table. They weren't actually there, of course; it was impractical (and foolish) that the Ashcroft Representatives gather in one place, but the q-linked Augmented Reality images fed to his arglasses were a fair simulation. These ten middle-aged men and women, human and Nazzadi alike were private citizens. They held their posts at the whim of the Senate and the President, they were not democratically elected, and they were technically speaking, nothing more than advisors.
And if you believed that, then you might be interested in purchasing some prime real estate in Tibet.
The eleven Representatives of the Ashcroft Foundation were, by most reckonings, some of the most powerful individuals in the New Earth Government. Each one, tasked with managing a broad portfolio, either classified as Geographic, or Conceptual, had massive, wide-ranging authority and influence over the NEG, and, though they might not be able to tell a Minister or the President what to do, their "suggestions" were disproportionately influential.
Europe. Asia. Africa. North America. South America. Oceania. Finance. Research. Ethics. Society. Oversight.
Was there any wonder that it was seriously argued among political theorists that the NEG was not purely democratic, but instead possessed a technocratic state-within-a-state that influenced (though did not control) the primary government?
One might wonder how such a group, a private, not-for-profit organisation, no less, had garnered such power. This was not some unrealistic, corporatist dystopian future, and the megacorps and the IPcorps were quite firmly under the control of the NEG; it was not about to let them enjoy things like "extraterritoriality"... and yet Ashcroft did. The roots of this lay back at the early years of the century, and the revolutions in the sciences which had produced arcanotech and bought sorcery into the public eye, but, fundamentally, it came down to one thing.
He who controls the arcane, controls the planet.
"Gendo Ikari," said South America, leaning back in her chair, "so nice of you to actually make time to see us." Her chisel-like teeth were exposed, as she smiled in a not completely friendly way.
Madesky Yugundi oy Jenufabrikati oy Brazilia-Twi oy Herena vy Representy vy Terra, thought Gendo, keeping his expression neutral as he stared at the Nazzadi with the electric blue hair. This was going to be fun.
"I have been dealing with the aftermath of an assault on London-2 by a Harbinger-level threat," he said back, calmly. "As has Deputy Representative Fuyutsuki. It was necessary to deal with the civil authorities before I could spare the time to report to the Council in person." He paused. "You have all, of course, received relevant data."
"Of course," said Oversight, leaning forwards. "But, Ikari, I think you can see why we might want to consult with you in person. You did, I might point out, authorise the deployment of a capital grade arcanocyberxenobiological organism... no, I might add, make that two authorisations, even if one did not go ahead... and, as you of all people are aware, the Evangelion Units are not exactly the most stable of weapons platforms."
Gendo bowed his head slightly. This is all part of the mummery. Oversight is compromised; they will pose no threat. "Yes. The deployment followed the full necessary procedures; as per the code of conduct, such a deployment was only made at the express request of a NEG Triumvirate-level authority. We were explicitly permitted to use anything which had already been cleared by the Restricted Technology Evaluation teams from the armed forces; the Evangelion Units have been granted such status."
"That is true," said Asia, the elderly woman frowning. Gendo could read her like a book; she had been his superior twelve years ago, and he had served as her Deputy Representative before his transfer. She was an ally on the Council; an almost unconditional one. She was too linked to the original Evangelion Project (though at a step removed) for it to be any other way. "The correct procedures were followed in all aspects. "Indeed, I would say that Ikari's conduct was immaculate. And... well, an Evangelion Unit has now eliminated... well, it has killed a Harbinger. Asherah is dead. Honestly, I wouldn't say that, even with everything, that such a thing was ever going to be possible."
A woman sitting opposite from him leant forwards, chin propped on her hands in a way which, to an outside observer, would look almost infatuated, but Gendo knew to be anything but. Green-brown eyes behind blue-tinted arglasses were focussed on him. "Yes, it has," said Research. "And yet you continue to obstruct access to the MP Model. What this has demonstrated is that the Units have an undeniable specialised use; why, then, do you refuse to let the Engel Group... or, indeed, the Achtzig Group, for that matter, cooperate fully with the Evangelions?"
The man kept his face level, even though, internally, he sighed. It would not be done to be seen to be patronising; this was a careful power play. "It is not my choice," he said. Technically true. "The Director of Science personally feels that the Group, and its component Projects, will function better without the influence of its spin-off Groups; they have gone down different paths of development." Also technically true. "As for why the MP Model is still restricted; that would be because it is still undergoing field-testing. The regime is slowed, because of the status of the pilot and the limits that imposes. Nevertheless, it is proving successful on the Eastern European Front."
"And by that, you mean the age of the pilot," retorted Research. "Oh, wait, no," she added, "the age of the pilots. Plural. All of the candidates are underage."
"Among other things, yes," he replied.
"We have obtained a specific RTE exemption, as you well know, Christina," interjected Ethics. "Please, we have more important matters to deal with."
Gendo nodded to the Nazzadi. "Yes. This has been the first encounter of a Harbinger-level threat since..."
"... since Harbinger-1 and Harbinger-2," said Oceania. "Yes. This is indeed alarming. Do you believe that it was summoned, Ikari?"
The Representative for Europe chose his words carefully; as the most capable sorcerer at the table, that was one thing that they would defer to him on. "I do not believe we have enough evidence to state it clearly, one way or another. If it is a summoning... then this is very alarming, as it implies that there exists a group with the resources capable of doing such a complex ritual, that can stay under everyone's radars... or a non-negligible element of the government has been compromised."
By controlling the options one presented, one could always lead people down certain chains of thought. He paused, as the other Representatives shifted. Good. That should have made them uncomfortable. Because what he was about to say was something that he was sure that they had been briefed on, but did not want to admit in public. It would be best to get it out in the open, before he began the main thrust of his arguments, and was forced to justify every little minutiae of the events.
"But I would not say that it is impossible that it woke up naturally. And I am sure," he said, leaning forwards, "that you all know what that means."
They all knew what that meant.
August 23rd, 2091 CE
Shinji Ikari was somewhat disappointed. In the same way that water was somewhat wet.
It had turned out that it had not been a dream after all. Which meant that everything that had happened... had happened. He, since the first time he had woken up, had been poked and prodded and checked far more times than was really comfortable. All while feeling exhausted, it might be added. And the man sitting beside his bed, clad in a doctor's uniform was here for the purpose of finding out exactly how much he remembered of those events, and, to be frank, whether he was properly sane. The fact that he was not curled up in a foetal ball, babbling blasphemous glossolalia in honour of profane entities which predate mankind and its assumed dominion over the planet, was viewed as a hopeful sign.
"... so, yes, after such an event, you will be expected, for your own mental health, to be honest, to be attending regular meeting with a Health Service-registered psychiatrist," said the man, in response to Shinji's question. "Uh... as for how long, well, that's until I... or anyone else, but I've been assigned to your case while you're resident here. Yes, so, basically, until I feel that you're clear of any trauma, and even then, I would recommend that you keep regular psycheval appointments." He paused. "I'm sorry, I'm babbling. But is that okay?"
Shinji nodded. "Yes, that's okay, Doctor..." but the man interrupted.
"Please, call me Simon. I'm your psychiatrist, and that means you need to feel at ease."
Shinji paused. He would actually prefer a bit of formality, but, on the other hand, that was oh, forget it. Too much effort to raise it, and it's not like I won't end up calling him that anyway. "Yes, okay, Simon," he said out loud.
The psychiatrist made a motion on a pad with a blue-covered hand, and looked back up. "Are you feeling okay? Do you want to continue? Your notes specify that you should still be feeling... well, tired, limp, slight clumsiness... I can go on."
The boy felt that, on balance, it would be best if he did not. "No, I'm fine," he lied. "So..."
"Yes, yes. Uh... yes, we had got up to the point where you were in the launch tube. Please, continue... but at your own pace. Remember... we can stop any time."
Shinji swallowed, and continued.
Staring out through the eyes of the Evangelion, Shinji blinked in the twilight sun. Compared to the interior of the launch tube, this light was bright. And it was twilight sunlight, he realised; the clouds had been... shredded, the moisture in the air boiled by the conflict.
"Listen to me, Shinji," said Ritsuko, unconsciously leaning forwards, eyes locked on the image fed into her harcontacts, "the Evangelion is designed to be very simple to control. It uses a direct animaneural interface; the A-10 Clips, that is, the things on your head, the superconducting QUI devices, serve to interpret the signals from your brain. The Eva is humanoid arcanotechnology, so the Operator Extension Side-Effect is in full effect. The AN waveform can be read and translated into movement by the systems onboard."
"But there are..."
"The controls are there for things which don't have a physical analogue in the human body," Ritsuko explained quickly. "The weapons are tried to it, as are sensor controls, and it also serves as a conceptual guide to allow you to retain separate modes of thought between when you want to move your body and when you want to move the Evangelion."
"But then why do they..."
"It's not an accident it uses similar controls to a video game. These aren't the full set; they're stripped down. You aren't trained to deal with the proper set." She paused, for a breath. "And there are pre-existing reflexes we can take advantage of. We checked."
I... suppose that makes sense, thought Shinji, marginally annoyed by the refusal of the scientist to let him get a word in edgewise, or, indeed, get to the point.
"You'll thank us the first time the Eva doesn't punch itself in the face when you scratch your nose," added Misato, her face entirely serious. "That... that's happened a few times in tests." She received a glare from Ritsuko for that remark.
Great. Now my nose is itching, thought Shinji. At least the rest of his skin had stopped feeling like there were insects under it, or something. "What... what do you want me to do," he asked.
"You are to engage the Harbinger, and destroy it," stated the Major. "The Evangelion is capable of generating an AT-Field which can be used against the target's own defences."
"A what? How do I do that, then?" Shinji was rapidly becoming convinced that they hadn't thought this out at all, and, really, why hadn't they explained all the things before he got in the Eva?
"It's not something that I can explain to you," Ritsuko said, shaking her head. "Think of the Greek principle of gnosis, of the knowledge that can only be acquired through experience. Or, to bring in another example, 'The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao'. This isn't a sorcerous procedure; it's more like something parapsychic. You can't explain it, but you can know how to do it; you were selected for the latent talent."
Shinji swallowed, and nodded, biting onto his lower lip.
Misato glanced sideways and the scientist. "That was... well said," she said. "Rather... mystical for you."
Ritsuko shrugged, and checked that the communications link was off. "I lied," she said. "It's what he wanted to hear. We're not expecting him to actually manifest one first go, after all; he's there to distract the Harbinger, which will have to focus its own AT-Field to prevent the Evangelion from shredding it. Then we can just shoot it in the back, when it's weaker." She turned the communications back on. "Think only of walking," continued Ritsuko. "This is important, Shinji; stay focussed, and only think about walking."
Slowly, ponderously, teetering, the Evangelion lifted a foot. With a crash that broke the road underneath it, jets of water squirting forth from pipes broken directly under the impact, the rather pointy heel smashed back down to earth. Biting his lip, eyes screwed up as he focussed on walking, Shinji nevertheless grinned. "Walk!" he muttered to himself. "Walk! Walk!"
"It's working!" said Ritsuko, eyes wide. This is really good, she thought, as the boy ventured another step, muttering the refrain over and over again. That was, of course, when the alarms sounded.
"Spike! Another spike!" came a panicked call from the Operators. Lieutenant Epouvantable, eyes watering, glanced sideways at Maya and sneezed, then flicked her eyes to Dr Akagi. "Uh...my DMIN is stable," she automatically said, after a glance to see that it was so; the check-in procedure was standard among Operators who survived their first few dives, "and the new pattern is holding... uh oh."
Shinji flinched at the noise coming through the communications link, and the already-precarious, teetering step completely failed. As, within the cockpit, Shinji pinwheeled, trying to keep himself... No, the Evangelion, and, yes, therefore by default, myself, upright, all that managed to achieve was to damage the as-yet-intact buildings to either side.
There were winces all over the control centre; even up on the observation platform, as Deputy Representative Fuyutsuki's palm collided with his forehead with a noticeable smack. Only the father of the pilot who was currently providing a wonderful opportunity for spontaneous urban renewal, remained impassive, eyes locked on the projections on his arglasses.
"Ignore the impact," barked Ritsuko. "What do you mean, 'spike'?"
"I mean 'spike'!"
"Another one. Increase in synch, and corresponding increase in variance," clarified one of the civilian Operators, voice slightly muffled from where she had bitten her lip. "We're up to 59... um, plus-or-minus 2.5% and... well, it looks stable. It's holding."
"But it looked stable the first time," completed Ritsuko, softly. "I want us to be able to force an ejection at any point," she ordered, more loudly. "I do not want it to jam up, or misfire. We will not have a repeat! Abort if he breaks 75%."
Maya nodded. "I've set the Ouranos control system with those priorities," she said, blinking heavily. "It should be prioritising runtime towards this."
Ritsuko sighed, and turned back to the main screen, where, despite the patient guidance from Misato, the pilot lacked the fine control to be able to get up. Well, it's not surprising, she thought. How long does it take children to learn this? She paused, mentally. That's children with a small 'C'... I really mean 'babies'. Of course, babies don't have an extensive LAI suite... never mind. She winced as a titanic arm smashed through an apartment complex with a shriek of tortured steel.
"I can't do it!" Shinji shouted. "It's... it doesn't move properly! And my knees hurt!" he added, face screwed up, staring down at his legs... wait, if he was actually face down in the Eva, that meant that the plug was Argh! Disorientation!
"Don't think about your body, Shinji!" ordered Dr Akagi, grasping one balled fist in her other palm. "Just think about the Eva!"
It was painful to watch, as, flailing, the Evangelion managed to get one hand under it, sparks and debris flying up from the road as one knee ponderously scraped its way under the main body.
"But at least you were able to achieve that on your own," Simon (as he had insisted, multiple times, on being called) said. "Consider that, with no practice, you were able to manage that." He looked down at the PCPU held in his blue-gloved hands. "According to this, you were much faster at achieving this than any of the other candidates. That's your accomplishment."
Shinji winced. "No. Um... this is where it gets..." he paused. "Painful," he said with a shudder. "And fuzzier."
"They've lost contact with the Harbinger!" shouted one of the NEGA officers, whirling towards his superior. "Location of Harbinger-3 is unknown! It... melted away again, into that black wave thing, again."
"Oh no..." breathed Misato. "It can't have..."
The signal from the Evangelion was cut, the main screen blacking out. The panicked reports only served to add to the confusion.
"Massive r-state flux. Identical to what happened on the approach." The Lieutenant was streaked with sweat, dripping down his face. "Something big just happened. The Shaws have shut down. We're... we're blind. Faster than the LAI systems could clamp down on the gain." The man looked over at the central control desk. "It's here."
The Major whirled, gazing up at the Representative. "Sir," she began, "Permission to launch Unit 00?"
"Grabbing exterior feed. Let's see if the ArcSec cams have anything," added another one of the Operators, hands twitching in Augmented Reality projections that only she could see. She turned unseeing red eyes to Dr Akagi. "We have something. Feed requiring authorisation for mainscreen. Autocensor active."
Gendo nodded once. "Permission granted, Major. Load the Evangelion for deployment." Behind the now opaque glasses, his eyes closed. I am sorry.
The blond scientist frowned, and then shook her head. "Yes, yes," she said, bringing the link from the security cameras, designed for nothing more than petty surveillance, up on the main display.
It may have been a heavily autocensored feed, the image altered to reduce how real it looked and remove flagrant reality violations, and so minimise the instinctual rejection that human minds felt towards things that should-not-be, but it was still clear what was happening. Lieutenant Ibuki gagged at the sight, and she was not alone; faces paled throughout the control centre, at the sight.
The void-black form of the Harbinger, its symmetry broken by the arcanochromatically-enhanced warhead, stood in the middle of a terribly smooth plane, more akin to some kind of amphitheatre, with the outside walls the buildings which were outside the area where the monster had so violated reality again. It loomed over the now-motionless form of Unit 01. The air was crackling with discharges, earthing on anything metallic, giving Asherah a skirt of blue-white brightness.
"Abort launch order for Unit 00," ordered Gendo Ikari clearly, in the silence. "Unit 01 remains intact. Only launch if Unit 01 appears critically damaged."
"We're getting signals back from Zero-One. Just... atmospheric... interference..." the Operator trailed off.
The Harbinger reached one simian arm down, and grabbed Unit 01, yanking it up by its own arm, as it dangled limply. Night-black flesh-substance met the mottled camouflage of the Evangelion, as sparks coruscated across the surface.
Shinji stared up at the blank roof. It was good, he thought. It might be an unfamiliar ceiling, but at least it isn't that thing. He swallowed. "I was screaming," he said, flatly. "It... it sounded really odd, and it hurt. I mean the screaming hurt because that orange-stuff isn't like air... it's too thick. And the arm hurt too; I could feel it." His eyes locked on the psychiatrist's. "It was like someone was trying to pull my arm out of my socket. And that's not right. I mean, I was just piloting the thing. Why did it hurt?" His voice dropped in pitch. "Why?"
Seriously, why? I'd like to find the bastard who decided that was a good idea for the pilot to feel the pain of the machine, and... and make them pilot the damn thing themselves! It would serve them right! See how they like it, to have to feel whatever the thing underneath feels!
"What were your reactions to the Harbinger... to the entity?" said the doctor, after a pause. "It says here... yes, you said earlier that that when you saw it before... nausea, uncontrolled panic, faintness." The man paused. "Did you feel the same this time? If it was different, was it better or worse, in your opinion?"
Shinji glared at him, before his brow wrinkled, as he thought back. The two monstrous faces stared deep into his eyes... no, into the eyes of the Evangelion, and then there was that burning red sun on the front, filling his eyes. It was like staring at the sun through closed eyelids, only my eyes were open. Just... everything I could see, full of redness. His eyes snapped open again, and he saw a look of concern on the older man's eyes. "It was... better," he managed. "It was scary... yes, really, really scary, but it was... it was," the words came out in a rush, "it was scary like a man with a knife is. Um... well, like the idea of a man with a knife is, I haven't actually been attacked by a man with a knife. Like it was a person that was trying hurt me, rather than something which could stand on me without even caring. Like it almost did before."
He fell silent, gazing through the psychiatrist's head and beyond, as if he could see through the mass of stone and steel and concrete to gaze into infinity.
"It wasn't wrong. It was just a thing. And... isn't that wrong?"
Shinji Ikari screamed and screamed. He could feel the chill, almost slick touch of the Harbinger; a clinging, freezing touch, like a frozen, flayed hand and on earth did that image come to mind of all things?, and that didn't make much sense. There was armour in the way and everything.
Asherah filled his eyes... his viewscreen. The red light was still bright, but above the false sun, he could see the mask-like shapes, their broken symmetry far too evident up close. They weren't the solid objects they looked like from far away; they were more like some two-dimensional layer of paint over the surface. And yet they had depth. That was the thing. At once, they were a discoloured projection onto the night-black skin-hull of the monster, and full, real objects, floating in the void, rotating yet eternally the same.
And then, again, they were just pained protrusions on a black skin; merely an optical illusion.
"Activate the weapons systems," he heard the Major order, over the communications link. "Listen to me, Shinji," she said, clearly. "I want you to look at the c... at the glowing red thing on its chest. Move the Eva's head to look at it. Don't ask questions. Just think about it, as hard as you can. Do it."
The Harbinger made a noise. It was a noise which lacked a frame of reference to describe. If forced, Shinji would use words like "a kind of crackle, but also a tearing noise, and it was both wetly organic and resonant, like if you were running your finger over the rim of a wine glass made of meat," but, from the vagueness and general incoherence of the description, it was evident that such a thing did not really describe the cohesive whole of the noise.
Moving... yes, he was moving his head to look at the radiant crimson sun mounted in the chest of the thing. Slowly, painfully, the Evangelion's head slipped around.
The Harbinger was staring at him. He could feel it. His skin was itching all over, painfully, and there was some kind of commotion going on in the control room, but compared to everything else, that was meaningless. All he had to do was look.
"Listen, Shinji," said the Major, over the shouting from Dr Akagi and the Operators, "what we're going to do is fire the head-mounted lasers into the core. When we do that, I want you to... well, to try to attack the Harbinger with your other arm. Try to hit it in the red bit. The scientists are claiming that it might be a weak spot. You can do that, right?"
The boy nodded. He could look around, yes, and... well, the attempts to get up had at least proven that he could destructively flail around. There was probably time to feel guilty about the buildings he had demolished later.
Why is it just holding me? What is it doing?
"Is the strike force ready?" the Major asked, making sure that the communications link was closed.
"Yes, ma'am," was the answer. "Three wings are zeroed on the coordinates, and an armoured company is locked on the thing's back. They're ready." There was a pause. "And extra NEGA forces have followed Harbinger-3 here, including some M059-X MBTs."
The black-haired woman nodded. "Good. And that's an added bonus." She turned to face her companion. "Are you ready, Rits?"
Ritsuko tucked an errant strand of hair back, and stared back, the blue light of her harcontacts filling her pupils. "Yes," she said, the stress in her voice evident. "Another spike, but... still within safe margins. Just. We're ready, weapons control has been passed over to the Ouranos systems. Get it over with quickly, Misato."
"Right." The woman slammed her hand down on the table. "Fire everything!"
From within the Evangelion, the screen briefly darkened as the four head-mounted lasers fired, the pulsed beams aimed at the dying star on the chest of the monster. These were joined as the missile packs on the shoulders emptied themselves into the Harbinger at point blank range, the guidance chips specifically overridden to arm themselves at less than their normal minimum distance. Asherah recoiled, still holding Unit 01's arm, yanking it further upright, and Shinji winced in pain clutching his hand to the trapped arm.
That had the bonus effect of bringing the Evangelion's arm in a neat arc, the open palm bashing into the red light and passing through, warping it from a sphere into a broken ellipsoid.
"Good job, Shinji!" shouted Misato, to general cheering from the control room; a celebration which was only accentuated as the impacts from the incoming missiles from the aircraft, and the arcanomagnetically confined high-energy plasma beams and raligun projectiles from the tank formation, which before had been doing nothing, tore off shards of the Harbinger's flesh. The unnatural body sloughed off like molten wax to the impacts of the vECF charges, burning sun-substance and the explosive warheads, splashing to the ground.
A celebration which was halted as, like a ragdoll, Asherah tossed up Unit 01 off the ground, bringing one hand into the chest of the arcanocyberxenobiological organism with an impact which audibly shattered the thickened armoured plates, and, in an egregious violation of the conservation of momentum, sent the massive behemoth flying backwards through buildings in an arc which was wrong; too flat for something moving freely, and far too fast for how lazily the Harbinger had moved.
An arc which was halted as it slammed into the grey, crumbling facade of the Victoria Arcology, smashing through the armoured superstructure before, finally, coming to a stop deep inside the building, the impact denting the endoskeleton of the pyramid.
Blinking, thick breaths of LCL surging in and out of his lungs, Shinji blinked in the darkness. There was... there was actually a vaguely Evangelion-shaped hole that lead out to the brightness of the outside, the greyed, arcanochromatically-tainted walls no match for the momentum of a forty-metre tall titan. They had broken like dust to such an impact, the brittleness shattering like icing.
That was when the pain hit. All up and down his right arm. Turning his head... the Evangelion's head slowly (ever so slowly), he could see the dark ichor oozing out, jammed machinery visible under broken pale flesh under shattered armour.
That's not my arm. That's not my arm. That's not my arm, he thought to himself, over and over again. Or perhaps he screamed it out loud. How was it possible to tell the difference?
And there was light; the fell radiance of the Harbinger illuminating the wrecked interior of the arcology. It was walking towards him, slowly, placing one tank-sized foot after another, smashing its own way through the entry hole. Screaming, whether in rage, in terror or in pain (it was not clear, though the odds were on the latter two), he tried to focus on standing up, but he couldn't. His mind jumped around, like there was a swarm of insects living in his brain and under his skin, buzzing and humming from thought to thought without settling on a single one. The Evangelion twitched and convulsed, but no definite motion could happen.
He could hear distant shouting and see the image of the control staff yelling at him, but his mind was filled with the pounding, regular footsteps of Asherah, the harbinger of his fate. The steps beat as one with his panicked heartbeats.
It stood over him, the sun on its chest the fires in which all thoughts are consumed.
In one smooth motion, a hand descended, and plucked out the eye of the Evangelion, crushing the stolen orb like a ripe fruit in its hands.
A fountain erupted from the empty socket.
And then.
Nothing.
"... and that's it," Shinji said, his voice slightly croaky. "I mean, I don't know, maybe I knocked my head on something, but I think I may have just fainted. Of course," he added, a slightly vitriolic note entering his voice, "I suspect the experience of feeling like losing an eye is enough to knock someone out. Maybe. Just maybe?"
The doctor was silent.
"Um..." began Shinji.
"Are you sure you can't remember anything else?" the man said, a slight hint of something Shinji couldn't recognise in his voice.
The boy shook his head.
"Oh, well," the man said, with a shrug. "Well, I expect you'll want to rest again. Either way, I'll be seeing you again, at some point... uh, we'll deal with scheduling later. Remember, if you're feeling uncertain, or having nightmares, or otherwise feeling odd, note it down. Uh... yes," he said, checking something, "you should have my Grid contact details, please, send me a message detailing anything unusual you're feeling."
The boy frowned. "My... my PCPU got broken," he said, dredging out a memory which seemed so long ago, but must really not have been.
"There's a new one by your bedside table," Simon said, his voice calm. "Given that it has a label saying 'For Shinji' on it, I would guess that it's some kind of replacement. By which I mean, yes, it's a replacement. After all, wouldn't it be kind of difficult to do anything without one?" he asked rhetorically. He stood, pushing his chair back against the wall.
"Remember," he said as a parting comment, "tell anyone if you feel at all peculiar, or have any unusual urges or thoughts." The man blushed slightly. "That is, apart from the ones inherent to being a sixteen-year old," he added hastily. "By the reckoning of my profession, they don't really count as unusual."
Shinji collapsed back onto the bed, staring up at the blank ceiling. One hand reached up to massage his closed right eye.
In a small blessing, the clouds had cleared, and now the whole of the greater urbanised area was lit in late August sun.
Of course, from the point of view of Misato Katsuragi, the "blessing" component was more appropriately viewed as an "annoyance". Yes, certainly, from an ecological point of view, the fact that it hadn't rained meant that the scrubbers had been able to bond to the arcanochromatic residue from the massive number of variant-electron catalysed fusion weapons, not to mention the tactical-scale warhead that had seen use, but from a personal point of view, it meant that it was getting annoyingly hot inside the hazard suit at the site of the cleanup.
"Misato, you were a frontline soldier," Ritsuko had said, the smile obvious under her transparent faceplate. "Are you sure you just haven't gone soft in your nice Ashcroft placing?"
It may have been true, but as she watched as they manoeuvred the scattered fragments of the armour from Unit 01's arm and torso into the containment vessels, Misato couldn't help but wish that she was in an exosuit, with a nice climate controlled interior, as opposed to just a thick layer of protective material and an air supply that she had to carry around with her.
Anyway, she thought to herself, I was a mecha jockey. Not a ground-pounder or a sardine.
Slumping down to one of the chairs, she flicked through the channels, the image filling her left eye. If they wanted her, they could come get her, she felt. At the moment, nothing required direct military involvement or use of her Advisor status; it was just scientists fussing over the area, and getting in the way of the engineers and the technicians who were actually clearing the place. The colonel the New Earth Government Army had sent to supervise their part of the clean-up looked just as bored as she did. She spared the man a wave, and got an equally lethargic one back.
"... and the main story remains the consequences from the unexpected assault by an unknown extra-normal entity against the London-2 region," reported an almost-foppish-looking sidoci, his long white hair artfully styled in a way which was a blatant example of manufactured dishabille. "Despite the element of surprise, the primary component of the hostile strike force was quickly isolated, eventually self-destructing to prevent capture by NEG forces. Although the area remains sealed off, the Army and Navy have released footage..."
flick
"Casualty results still remain unknown, but they are estimated to be in the..."
flick
The woman stood, cape billowing, against a thunder-cloud backdrop. "You fool!" she proclaimed to the square-jawed hero, who stood at the bottom of the tower, red eyes reflecting the lightning in a manner identical to that of an owl. "I have bought him back again, and no one... none at all, shall question my genius. They called me mad! Mad!" Peals of laughter broke out, echoing the thunder.
"You're the fool, Baroness!" the man called back, pointing his gun (a rather nice looking double-barrelled shotgun with a revolver feed and weird sparking machinery on it) at the deranged aristocrat. "That isn't your husband... and it hasn't been your husband for ten years! He's dead; the thing walking around wearing his skin isn't him! It just thinks it is! It's a shade corpus, and, one day, it'll remember!"
The gun roared, as both barrels fired, but, too fast for the eye to track, the Baroness leapt up, the camera panning in to show precisely how the shrapnel tore at her clothing, while leaving her flesh untouched.
"Release the Claw Fiends, Igor!" she shrieked, crouching, nearly naked, on the roof.
"Yeth, Mithrethth, I will do ath you requetht."
Oh yeah, thought Misato. Meant to look like I'm at least keeping up to date on the reporting of the situation. Plus Doom of the Revenge of the Baroness of the Darkness of the West is old. Seen it before.
flick
"... the true heroes of this story have to be a squadron of Engel pilots, from the 3rd European Mechanised, who managed to engage the sole hostile survivor of the blast, and critically damage it." There were four portraits displayed; men and women in their late twenties to early thirties, in full military dress uniform. "First Lieutenant Jenny Intry, Second Lieutenant James Hawass, Second Lieutenant Sarah Athena, and Second Lieutenant Wera Kawimani vy Devora were all killed, as the entity self-destructed, rather than risk capture, but in their actions, they saved uncounted lives." The platinum blond woman bowed her head briefly, then continued. "Genevieve Aristide, the War Minister, has promised a ceremonial state funereal for the four, saying that they exhibited the best of the combined traits of humanity."
Oh my, thought Misato. They actually used Scenario B-22. Oh. Rits is going to be really, really pissed to be letting Engel get the credit. She wouldn't mind so much if it was just the tanks, or even conventional mecha, but the credit had to publicly go to an Engel squadron. Oh dear.
Turning off her optical bypass, she got up, and went to look for the Director of Science. An outburst was not what they needed right now.
Shinji sat back down, breathing heavily. More checks, and they'd finally let him walk around on his own, only being followed by a cat-sized drone, which clung to the ceiling and buzzed if he walked too quickly.
Everything in the hospital was just so colourless and faded. No, not faded. Deliberately stripped of all colour and life; cold and sterile and clinical. The lights were bright and uniform, and the white walls were stark. Even the attempts at decoration somehow only managed to accentuate the fact that this was not an environment which people were meant to be living in, that this place was designed for function over form. And the angles; there was not a single right angle anywhere. Everything was slightly curved, which spoke of the level of security that this place must have, if that kind of structural precaution was necessary. Cold and lifeless; such a wonderful feel for a medical facility. The environment seemed to match his personal feelings. What was it called? The 'pathetic fallacy', or something like that?
Well, Shinji was certainly feeling fairly pathetic. Less so than on previous days; he was, at least, able to move around on his own, thanks to an approval from the psychologist. But he was still bone-tired... what kind of phrase was bone-tired anyway? Are bones particularly famous for their lethargy? Are they the most slothful component of the human body? You would think that, since they're the ones giving rigid structure to the human form, they don't get tired, and never have to rest. It was probably a gross failure of natural selection if the skeleton got exhausted. Seriously, where did languages come up with these things...
They also had said that he might be easily distractible for the next few days.
Either way, he just sat back, and gazed out the window; out at the untouched, rural landscape before him.
Now, actually, he could properly appreciate the marvels of the Geocity. It was unlikely that you could find such an environment on Earth, properly, outside of such managed zones. A miniature sun, and a true one at that, the arcanomagnetically-confined aneutronic fusion reaction burning on the ceiling, rolled across daily, providing a sense of time which was so often lacking in normal arcology sections, where only those who lived on the outer walls got regular access to sunlight. Visible out the window, above the few low-rise buildings was an expanse of green. The dome had to be kilometres across to fit everything inside. There were trees down here; entire forests! There was a lake with... Shinji squinted, an island with a vaguely Greek-looking marble building in the centre. And everything was actual green-green, not tainted by the slightly-off prismatic hues that polluted too much of the surface, despite the attempts at ecological preservation. It was a deliberate attempt, he read, checking exocerebrum on his new PCPU, to try to recreate what a pre-human ecology would have looked like, as a source and a store of living genetic diversity quite different from the vast genebanks which had, from the start of the century onwards, begun the grim task of cataloguing an ecosystem blighted first by mankind's hungry depredations, and later the horrors of the Arcanotech Wars and the Aeon War.
A flock of birds, bright cyan plumage shining in the man-made sunlight, poured past the window, flowing like an unending torrent. Hah. There's actually some white ones in the mix, that could be foam, Shinji thought. He wondered if they really knew what they were doing, what they were like. And also if they ever flew too close to the sun, and got burned up, or got their brains scrambled by the fields. Maybe there was some kind of system that stopped them from doing it. Maybe they were just left to learn for themselves.
His thoughts were cut short by the sound of cushioned feet squeaking on the floor, and the ponderous rumbling of something heavy. He glanced down the corridor, to the source of the noise, to see a team of orderlies pushing a cylindrical tube, the top transparent and glimmering with projections.
Wordlessly, Shinji watched as they passed. There was a princess in the crystal coffin. That is to say, there was a girl in the life-support pod. That girl, the sidoci from before.
Her gaze never left his as she was wheeled past, the grey iris wrapped around a pin-prick pupil. Shinji shuddered, icy-cold fingers running up and down his spine. She was almost invisible in the sterile confines of the life-support pod, swathed under layers of fluid-filled tubes and the red of blood stains on despoiled blankets. At least there wasn't the empty socket anymore; it had now been covered by a post-operation protective casing.
But still she stared at him.
grey eyes
red fire
drowning in fluid
pain
nothingness
Slowly, Shinji's hand crept up to cover his own right eye, massaging it, feeling the spherical shape under the skin of his eyelid. He now knew exactly how that felt.
And then the snow-white girl was gone, and his heartbeat began to slow again. He slumped back down in the seat, suddenly feeling drained again.
Of course, in the original fairy-tale, didn't the prince... do things to her while she was in a coma? the boy thought, with an internal wince. Yeah... I think he did. Yuck. Yeah, I distinctly remember Gany reading me the story, and then warning me about overly romanticising history. Or something like that. Pretty disgusting, really. He grinned, a little foolishly. I think I'd be a much better prince than that.
What the hell was my father thinking, trying to make her pilot like that? He paused. On the other hand... what the hell was he doing, putting a completely untrained person in that thing? Let's be honest here. I really can't follow the kind of thought processes we're dealing with here. It's possible that he had good reasons for doing it. Apart from the giant monster-thing, of course. The giant-monster thing that wasn't him.
He did not know, and in unknowing, found no relief.
The Director of Operations for Project Evangelion found the Director of Science for the Evangelion Group in one of the sterile tents they'd set up, and, after going through the decontamination process, unsealed her helmet with relief, running a hand through her sweaty hair.
"Heya, Rits," she said. Misato paused, not quite wanting to say anything which might raise the touchy subject, but not sure how to proceed. "Ah, the air conditioning unit," she said, to no one in particular, in the cool air of the tent. "It's really the greatest treasure of mankind. A real scientific success. The power of control over the climate." A quick check revealed that the coffee in the pot was cold; a moment's deliberation decided that putting it in the microwave was faster than making a new pot, and so it was done.
"You finally got the message, did you?" said the blond, with a hint of sarcasm, as she poured over a diagram. "Come over here; I need you to see something. Tune your implants to DEMO, by the way," she added.
Flushing slightly as a check of her unit revealed that, yes, she had a missed message, the black-haired woman nevertheless complied.
The diagram was revealed to be a full three-dimensional map of the area filling most of the room, the ground-level hovering about eye-level, tracing the honey-comb of smaller arcology domes underground. The Geocity wasn't shown. That was far too deep for this scale. And marked in flashing red was an almost worm-like trail, which dug in through the grey area of a chromatically-drained region, into the earth, before emerging again. And then there were the craters that pockmarked the area, culminating in one great one.
"Is that?"
Ritsuko nodded. "We've finally been able to piece the full passage of the berserk Unit together," she said, with a sigh. "It's taken almost two days, too. We had major black-box corruption, which made the onboard records unreliable."
"It really did all that?"
"Yes. And Victoria wasn't properly evacuated too, due to the attack on the airport. That would have produced additional casualties, had it not been for the use of the vECF warhead..."
"... you mean, extra casualties caused by us," said Misato, flatly. There was a ping from behind her, as the microwave declared that it was done, but she ignored it.
"Well, yes. We're not responsible for those deaths. That's something that the NEGA has to answer for, not us. Makes everything easier." Misato frowned at that remark. "It does mean less paperwork for you," pointed out Ritsuko, which only deepened the frown. She waved a hand. "Never mind. What I was saying is... well, look at the passage. The fall through the weakened superstructure was unavoidable, but it makes everything more difficult. The fight between the Eva and Asherah collapsed several bunkers, and the damage to the endoskeletal structure of the pyramid is worrying."
"Yep. I've seen what they're having to do to save it. And," Misato added, "having to dodge falling debris. I hate working in colour-drained regions."
The scientist nodded. "I know what you mean. It's the way that everything goes crumbly." Ritsuko sighed, looking up from the diagram on the table, and Misato could see, with surprise, the redness around her friend's eyes and nose. "What kind of victory is this, anyway?" she added, in a worryingly emotionless tone of voice.
Misato paused, before replying. "Ah," she said, in a soft tone. "I was wondering why there wasn't anyone else in here." Ritsuko felt a hot mug pushed gently into her hands. Without taking a look, she took a swig.
It almost instantly was deposited back in the cup. "Bleargh!" the blond declared. "Yuck."
"It's just coffee," said Misato, holding her half-empty mug, with a frown.
"Yes. It's coffee. It's so much coffee that you seemed to forget to put any water in. I should know never to let you..." The scientist let out a bubbling giggle, a slightly sick sounding noise. "You just heated up that pot, didn't you?"
"Yes. Why?"
"So did I. Several times."
"Oh. How long has it been brewing?"
"Since yesterday, some time."
"Oh." Misato paused, as the other woman's words caught up with her. "Oh. Ooooh." She sighed. "Rits? How long have you been here?"
"Mmmmph," was the response she got; a somewhat predictable one, based on the fact that the blond's mouth was full of the overly strong coffee.
"When was the last time you slept?" A slightly weary entered Misato's voice.
"Ah." Ritsuko thought. "Um. The night before Harbinger-3 arrived," she said, in a small voice.
Misato sighed. "That explains it, then. You've been hopped up on EOE for... four nights now." The black-haired woman paused. "Okay... that's it. You know it doesn't replace sleep properly. You've known it since university."
"Don't bring that up. Completely different circumstances."
"No, I'm going to do that, because after that time you spent a week up, and we had to drag you to hospital before you killed yourself from a stroke, you promised me that you'd never do it again!"
"Wait a moment!" retorted Ritsuko. "You made the same promise after I had to take you to have your stomach pumped, and how long did that take to be broken?"
"Six w... not the point! That was for fun, not for w..." Misato took a deep breath. "No. I've had sleep. I'm not going to shout at you." She let out that breath. "Why are you doing this, Rits? You're not so vital you couldn't have had one night of sleep in the last 4. Even four hours, or something. And I know you do know how to delegate, even if you don't like to." She paused. "Come on, drink your according-to-you vile coffee."
Ristuko slumped down, into a seat. "I had to make a report to the Council of Representatives yesterday," she explained , in a small voice. "Oh, that went fine, don't worry," she reassured her friend. "Research... Representative Egger, was unpleasant, but she always is. No, it's not that." She winced, as she took another mouthful, blinking heavily as she swallowed. "But I passed the Twin Obelisks on the way in to Headquarters. They'd put new names up."
Misato cursed under her breath. Of course, she thought. That's it. She gets like this when she goes there. Add that to the lack of sleep... yeah, makes sense.
The Twin Obelisks were a fixture of any major Ashcroft Foundation; a way of commemorating researchers killed, incapacitated, or sectioned by their work. It was a tradition not without precedent. The eponymous Teresa Ashcroft, who had laid the founding grounds for arcane theory (although, in truth, her role was somewhat exaggerated; she was a manifestation of a wider school of thought, as the flaws in the Standard Model and Quantum Mechanics became evident, at the start of the 21st century), was the first name on the White Obelisk, which marked those driven to insanity by knowledge of that-which-man-should-not-know. Her supervisor, Simon Yi, was the second. And then was the Black Obelisk, which marked those lost, to death or irrevocable and absolute inhumanity; both fates were far too common for those who tested new sorcerous procedures or arcanotechnology.
It wouldn't be fair to say that the former was for theoreticians and the latter for experimentalists. But it wouldn't be utterly inaccurate, either. And it was arguable which one was worse. For at least one granted a drink from the river Lethe; the unknowing that comes from the unbeing of death or loss of self, while all the other could offer was the fractured existence of a broken mind.
Ritsuko glanced up at Misato, with reddened eyes. "I wonder which one I'm going to end up on," she said, in the same flat voice. "It's not going to be long. Just a matter of probabilities. Over half my class are there, by now. I'm already beating the odds."
"Now, come on," Misato said, worry entering her voice. "It's not like everybody dies, or goes insane. Look at," she paused, "well, I know you don't like him, but Dr Miyakame from Engel was on the original Project, and he's still okay."
There was a short, bitter laugh. "Is he?" She shook her head. "And even assuming that's true, and I don't think it is, well... look at it. Him, Sylveste from Achtzig, and the Representative. Those three. The only three able to pass for sane, and still alive, out of an original Project of nine specialists." She glared at Misato through narrowed eyes. "Dr Hathenep... torn apart by an uncontrolled prototype. Dr Vandebough... committed after a mental break that left him claiming that he could master n-dimensional terrain. And the murders, of course. And... and, well, the boy we just put in Unit 01; you're aware of what happened to Yui Ikari. And, for that matter, Kyoko Zepplin Soryu."
"I am," said Misato. Her voice softened. "It killed your mother, too, I know."
"Ha!" Ritsuko paused. "Yes, you'd almost think there was a reason I wasn't mentioning her among the survivors!" she snapped, looking away.
Her friend's face remained calm, not rising to the bait. "Ah," the Major said. "Yes, it seems that you're not in a fit state to keep on working. You've been awake for too long, and you're going to start making mistakes if you don't get some proper sleep. Formally, in my capacity as Director of Operations for Project Evangelion, I'm instructing you to call it a ni... call it an early afternoon. I want you to go for a psychological check-up, too; staying up this long, even on EOE, isn't healthy."
Ritsuko deflated. "Yes," she said, in a small voice. "Yes, that makes sense." She paused. "Thank you," she said, softly. "Yes. You can drive me to the Clinic in the Geocity; you're picking up the Third Child."
"I am? Well," Misato clarified, "I know I am, but I am now?"
"I did send you a message telling you that he'd passed the physicals and now the psychologicals."
"Yes. Well..." and the way that she tailed off said it all. "How is he?"
"Physically, no external wounds. Mentally?" Ritsuko gave a somewhat laconic shrug, which turned into a slump. "Well... his memory is somewhat confused." She raised a hand, to forestall the outburst. "His memory of the events is somewhat confused."
She failed. "Mental contamination?" asked the Major, eyes flashing.
"Some. Negligible. I've heard it's nothing to worry about."
The other woman relaxed. "Oh, right. It's... well, I've looked at Unit 01's history, and, well..."
"Yes, I know. But, no, it seems to be fine."
Misato relaxed. "Okay. Come on, then. The Foundation was... nice about getting me a replacement car," she added, with a smirk. "It's a Ventek SF-47-X." At Ritsuko's empty and somewhat weary look, she grinned wider. "Oh, it's good. And it's fast. And I have it. Well, at least until the insurance comes in, and I suspect that won't be too long. Might even be fast-tracked."
"It's really not charming to gloat about how the systems fast-track you," sighed Ritsuko. "Even if... yes, even if it is true. And I don't need another explanation for how you managed to get both the company discount and the military discount. I understood it the ninth time. And don't drive too fast. And don't crash. In fact," she added, as a thought struck her, "let the autopilot drive. I... uh, I need to talk to you about... um... things."
"What kind of things?"
"Important things."
Lusus Naturae / What bliss even in hope is there for thee?
EVANGELION
~'/|\'~
"Perhaps one of the greatest scientific ironies of the twenty-first century parallels its equivalent in the twentieth. Just as special relativity was founded around the fact that the speed of light was the same in all inertial frames of reference, so has arcane theory removed the magic from the arcane. The pseudo-reactionless drive of the A-Pod, the infinite-energy-finite-power from the D-Engine, the discovery of variant r-state materials and their properties, and, of course, the systematic categorisation of sorcerous procedures; though they all have reaped their toll in the lives and sanity of researchers, we have, nonetheless, progressed. And the reason for this is our extelligence, our culture, our capacity to transfer data and preserve it past the one who devised it. Society is what defines humanity; the laws against the Tainted are concrete proof of this. And if the Aeon War has taught us anything, it is that the survival of all of us outweighs the survival of any one of us."
Sheng-ji Yang,
"Life in a Maltheistic Universe", 2089
"Life in a Maltheistic Universe", 2089
~'/|\'~
August 20th, 2091 CE
"Damn it, he's starting to fade. Increase the mLCL-st-01 percentage feed on the drip to 60%."
The voices echoed out of a dark, empty space. This was not just the void, no mere absence of light. This was an impossibility of light. It was not that there was no light here, it was that light, as a concept, was undefined.
"Mental contamination! We've got... yep, AN contamination in the three primary components of the waveform."
"But will he survive?" The woman's voice paused. "No, that's not the right question. Will he survive, while still qualifying as human? It would be annoying to have to get another RTE exemption, and would slow down progress notably."
There was a studied pause. "Yes," the first voice responded, eventually. "The damage... isn't enough to flip the Pennington-Fuyutsuki determinant. It'll heal. Uh... that's the animaneural damage."
"I'm concerned about the physical damage," added a male voice, a faint Nazzadi accent evident in the clipped tones and the slight lilt. "We've got major internal bleeding; we're trying to stem it as best we can, but until we can get the sorcery up and running... well, the problem is, we're having to S-hack the H-L procedure, and that means we've invalidated a bunch of axioms. The LCL is mucking with the operation of the medichines, too, so we really do need the arcanotherapeutic assistance. We've waiting for the Magi to compile the rederived version, but..." The statement was deliberately left hanging.
"Be prepared for the use of Option Zero, if necessary," instructed a fourth voice. "We need him alive, and the increased recovery time and psychological strain is better than the alternative."
"Yes, sir. The sorcerers are in place."
~'/|\'~
August 21st, 2091 CE
Shinji Ikari opened his eyes slowly. A blank white ceiling, curving slightly in a ribbed arch, hung above him. He felt... exhausted. Bone-tired. There were probably more synonyms that were applicable for the situation, but, frankly, even thinking was more effort than it really was worth. Certainly, though, as he tried to move, his arms and legs felt like overcooked noodles; barely responsive and floppy.
"Hello?" he managed, his voice soft, and slightly husky. "Uh..." he trailed off, merely continuing to stare upwards at the same, unfamiliar ceiling. He knew that something must have happened, because this wasn't where he normally woke up, and this wasn't how he normally felt, but, again, to seriously do anything was too much effort.
"Good afternoon, Shinji," said a Nazzadi accented voice, a moderated, gentle voice practically deigned to make one feel comforted. She was speaking to him in Japanese, and it was at that point that Shinji realised that was what he had used.
Oh. That made a lot more sense. Yes, he was ill. That was a much more plausible situation, and would also explain how weak he felt. He just had some kind of fever, and would be over it in a few days. Even if, judging from how he felt right now, it would seem a lot longer.
"You know, Gany," he managed, a faint smile on his lips, "I had a really funny dream. There was this giant robot, and my father, and some kind of monster. It was really weird..."
Shinji Ikari drifted back to sleep.
~'/|\'~
August 22nd, 2091 CE
Gendo Ikari stared over the top of his bridged fingers at the nine other individuals seated around the ring-like table. They weren't actually there, of course; it was impractical (and foolish) that the Ashcroft Representatives gather in one place, but the q-linked Augmented Reality images fed to his arglasses were a fair simulation. These ten middle-aged men and women, human and Nazzadi alike were private citizens. They held their posts at the whim of the Senate and the President, they were not democratically elected, and they were technically speaking, nothing more than advisors.
And if you believed that, then you might be interested in purchasing some prime real estate in Tibet.
The eleven Representatives of the Ashcroft Foundation were, by most reckonings, some of the most powerful individuals in the New Earth Government. Each one, tasked with managing a broad portfolio, either classified as Geographic, or Conceptual, had massive, wide-ranging authority and influence over the NEG, and, though they might not be able to tell a Minister or the President what to do, their "suggestions" were disproportionately influential.
Europe. Asia. Africa. North America. South America. Oceania. Finance. Research. Ethics. Society. Oversight.
Was there any wonder that it was seriously argued among political theorists that the NEG was not purely democratic, but instead possessed a technocratic state-within-a-state that influenced (though did not control) the primary government?
One might wonder how such a group, a private, not-for-profit organisation, no less, had garnered such power. This was not some unrealistic, corporatist dystopian future, and the megacorps and the IPcorps were quite firmly under the control of the NEG; it was not about to let them enjoy things like "extraterritoriality"... and yet Ashcroft did. The roots of this lay back at the early years of the century, and the revolutions in the sciences which had produced arcanotech and bought sorcery into the public eye, but, fundamentally, it came down to one thing.
He who controls the arcane, controls the planet.
"Gendo Ikari," said South America, leaning back in her chair, "so nice of you to actually make time to see us." Her chisel-like teeth were exposed, as she smiled in a not completely friendly way.
Madesky Yugundi oy Jenufabrikati oy Brazilia-Twi oy Herena vy Representy vy Terra, thought Gendo, keeping his expression neutral as he stared at the Nazzadi with the electric blue hair. This was going to be fun.
"I have been dealing with the aftermath of an assault on London-2 by a Harbinger-level threat," he said back, calmly. "As has Deputy Representative Fuyutsuki. It was necessary to deal with the civil authorities before I could spare the time to report to the Council in person." He paused. "You have all, of course, received relevant data."
"Of course," said Oversight, leaning forwards. "But, Ikari, I think you can see why we might want to consult with you in person. You did, I might point out, authorise the deployment of a capital grade arcanocyberxenobiological organism... no, I might add, make that two authorisations, even if one did not go ahead... and, as you of all people are aware, the Evangelion Units are not exactly the most stable of weapons platforms."
Gendo bowed his head slightly. This is all part of the mummery. Oversight is compromised; they will pose no threat. "Yes. The deployment followed the full necessary procedures; as per the code of conduct, such a deployment was only made at the express request of a NEG Triumvirate-level authority. We were explicitly permitted to use anything which had already been cleared by the Restricted Technology Evaluation teams from the armed forces; the Evangelion Units have been granted such status."
"That is true," said Asia, the elderly woman frowning. Gendo could read her like a book; she had been his superior twelve years ago, and he had served as her Deputy Representative before his transfer. She was an ally on the Council; an almost unconditional one. She was too linked to the original Evangelion Project (though at a step removed) for it to be any other way. "The correct procedures were followed in all aspects. "Indeed, I would say that Ikari's conduct was immaculate. And... well, an Evangelion Unit has now eliminated... well, it has killed a Harbinger. Asherah is dead. Honestly, I wouldn't say that, even with everything, that such a thing was ever going to be possible."
A woman sitting opposite from him leant forwards, chin propped on her hands in a way which, to an outside observer, would look almost infatuated, but Gendo knew to be anything but. Green-brown eyes behind blue-tinted arglasses were focussed on him. "Yes, it has," said Research. "And yet you continue to obstruct access to the MP Model. What this has demonstrated is that the Units have an undeniable specialised use; why, then, do you refuse to let the Engel Group... or, indeed, the Achtzig Group, for that matter, cooperate fully with the Evangelions?"
The man kept his face level, even though, internally, he sighed. It would not be done to be seen to be patronising; this was a careful power play. "It is not my choice," he said. Technically true. "The Director of Science personally feels that the Group, and its component Projects, will function better without the influence of its spin-off Groups; they have gone down different paths of development." Also technically true. "As for why the MP Model is still restricted; that would be because it is still undergoing field-testing. The regime is slowed, because of the status of the pilot and the limits that imposes. Nevertheless, it is proving successful on the Eastern European Front."
"And by that, you mean the age of the pilot," retorted Research. "Oh, wait, no," she added, "the age of the pilots. Plural. All of the candidates are underage."
"Among other things, yes," he replied.
"We have obtained a specific RTE exemption, as you well know, Christina," interjected Ethics. "Please, we have more important matters to deal with."
Gendo nodded to the Nazzadi. "Yes. This has been the first encounter of a Harbinger-level threat since..."
"... since Harbinger-1 and Harbinger-2," said Oceania. "Yes. This is indeed alarming. Do you believe that it was summoned, Ikari?"
The Representative for Europe chose his words carefully; as the most capable sorcerer at the table, that was one thing that they would defer to him on. "I do not believe we have enough evidence to state it clearly, one way or another. If it is a summoning... then this is very alarming, as it implies that there exists a group with the resources capable of doing such a complex ritual, that can stay under everyone's radars... or a non-negligible element of the government has been compromised."
By controlling the options one presented, one could always lead people down certain chains of thought. He paused, as the other Representatives shifted. Good. That should have made them uncomfortable. Because what he was about to say was something that he was sure that they had been briefed on, but did not want to admit in public. It would be best to get it out in the open, before he began the main thrust of his arguments, and was forced to justify every little minutiae of the events.
"But I would not say that it is impossible that it woke up naturally. And I am sure," he said, leaning forwards, "that you all know what that means."
They all knew what that meant.
~'/|\'~
August 23rd, 2091 CE
Shinji Ikari was somewhat disappointed. In the same way that water was somewhat wet.
It had turned out that it had not been a dream after all. Which meant that everything that had happened... had happened. He, since the first time he had woken up, had been poked and prodded and checked far more times than was really comfortable. All while feeling exhausted, it might be added. And the man sitting beside his bed, clad in a doctor's uniform was here for the purpose of finding out exactly how much he remembered of those events, and, to be frank, whether he was properly sane. The fact that he was not curled up in a foetal ball, babbling blasphemous glossolalia in honour of profane entities which predate mankind and its assumed dominion over the planet, was viewed as a hopeful sign.
"... so, yes, after such an event, you will be expected, for your own mental health, to be honest, to be attending regular meeting with a Health Service-registered psychiatrist," said the man, in response to Shinji's question. "Uh... as for how long, well, that's until I... or anyone else, but I've been assigned to your case while you're resident here. Yes, so, basically, until I feel that you're clear of any trauma, and even then, I would recommend that you keep regular psycheval appointments." He paused. "I'm sorry, I'm babbling. But is that okay?"
Shinji nodded. "Yes, that's okay, Doctor..." but the man interrupted.
"Please, call me Simon. I'm your psychiatrist, and that means you need to feel at ease."
Shinji paused. He would actually prefer a bit of formality, but, on the other hand, that was oh, forget it. Too much effort to raise it, and it's not like I won't end up calling him that anyway. "Yes, okay, Simon," he said out loud.
The psychiatrist made a motion on a pad with a blue-covered hand, and looked back up. "Are you feeling okay? Do you want to continue? Your notes specify that you should still be feeling... well, tired, limp, slight clumsiness... I can go on."
The boy felt that, on balance, it would be best if he did not. "No, I'm fine," he lied. "So..."
"Yes, yes. Uh... yes, we had got up to the point where you were in the launch tube. Please, continue... but at your own pace. Remember... we can stop any time."
Shinji swallowed, and continued.
('_')
Staring out through the eyes of the Evangelion, Shinji blinked in the twilight sun. Compared to the interior of the launch tube, this light was bright. And it was twilight sunlight, he realised; the clouds had been... shredded, the moisture in the air boiled by the conflict.
"Listen to me, Shinji," said Ritsuko, unconsciously leaning forwards, eyes locked on the image fed into her harcontacts, "the Evangelion is designed to be very simple to control. It uses a direct animaneural interface; the A-10 Clips, that is, the things on your head, the superconducting QUI devices, serve to interpret the signals from your brain. The Eva is humanoid arcanotechnology, so the Operator Extension Side-Effect is in full effect. The AN waveform can be read and translated into movement by the systems onboard."
"But there are..."
"The controls are there for things which don't have a physical analogue in the human body," Ritsuko explained quickly. "The weapons are tried to it, as are sensor controls, and it also serves as a conceptual guide to allow you to retain separate modes of thought between when you want to move your body and when you want to move the Evangelion."
"But then why do they..."
"It's not an accident it uses similar controls to a video game. These aren't the full set; they're stripped down. You aren't trained to deal with the proper set." She paused, for a breath. "And there are pre-existing reflexes we can take advantage of. We checked."
I... suppose that makes sense, thought Shinji, marginally annoyed by the refusal of the scientist to let him get a word in edgewise, or, indeed, get to the point.
"You'll thank us the first time the Eva doesn't punch itself in the face when you scratch your nose," added Misato, her face entirely serious. "That... that's happened a few times in tests." She received a glare from Ritsuko for that remark.
Great. Now my nose is itching, thought Shinji. At least the rest of his skin had stopped feeling like there were insects under it, or something. "What... what do you want me to do," he asked.
"You are to engage the Harbinger, and destroy it," stated the Major. "The Evangelion is capable of generating an AT-Field which can be used against the target's own defences."
"A what? How do I do that, then?" Shinji was rapidly becoming convinced that they hadn't thought this out at all, and, really, why hadn't they explained all the things before he got in the Eva?
"It's not something that I can explain to you," Ritsuko said, shaking her head. "Think of the Greek principle of gnosis, of the knowledge that can only be acquired through experience. Or, to bring in another example, 'The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao'. This isn't a sorcerous procedure; it's more like something parapsychic. You can't explain it, but you can know how to do it; you were selected for the latent talent."
Shinji swallowed, and nodded, biting onto his lower lip.
Misato glanced sideways and the scientist. "That was... well said," she said. "Rather... mystical for you."
Ritsuko shrugged, and checked that the communications link was off. "I lied," she said. "It's what he wanted to hear. We're not expecting him to actually manifest one first go, after all; he's there to distract the Harbinger, which will have to focus its own AT-Field to prevent the Evangelion from shredding it. Then we can just shoot it in the back, when it's weaker." She turned the communications back on. "Think only of walking," continued Ritsuko. "This is important, Shinji; stay focussed, and only think about walking."
Slowly, ponderously, teetering, the Evangelion lifted a foot. With a crash that broke the road underneath it, jets of water squirting forth from pipes broken directly under the impact, the rather pointy heel smashed back down to earth. Biting his lip, eyes screwed up as he focussed on walking, Shinji nevertheless grinned. "Walk!" he muttered to himself. "Walk! Walk!"
"It's working!" said Ritsuko, eyes wide. This is really good, she thought, as the boy ventured another step, muttering the refrain over and over again. That was, of course, when the alarms sounded.
"Spike! Another spike!" came a panicked call from the Operators. Lieutenant Epouvantable, eyes watering, glanced sideways at Maya and sneezed, then flicked her eyes to Dr Akagi. "Uh...my DMIN is stable," she automatically said, after a glance to see that it was so; the check-in procedure was standard among Operators who survived their first few dives, "and the new pattern is holding... uh oh."
Shinji flinched at the noise coming through the communications link, and the already-precarious, teetering step completely failed. As, within the cockpit, Shinji pinwheeled, trying to keep himself... No, the Evangelion, and, yes, therefore by default, myself, upright, all that managed to achieve was to damage the as-yet-intact buildings to either side.
There were winces all over the control centre; even up on the observation platform, as Deputy Representative Fuyutsuki's palm collided with his forehead with a noticeable smack. Only the father of the pilot who was currently providing a wonderful opportunity for spontaneous urban renewal, remained impassive, eyes locked on the projections on his arglasses.
"Ignore the impact," barked Ritsuko. "What do you mean, 'spike'?"
"I mean 'spike'!"
"Another one. Increase in synch, and corresponding increase in variance," clarified one of the civilian Operators, voice slightly muffled from where she had bitten her lip. "We're up to 59... um, plus-or-minus 2.5% and... well, it looks stable. It's holding."
"But it looked stable the first time," completed Ritsuko, softly. "I want us to be able to force an ejection at any point," she ordered, more loudly. "I do not want it to jam up, or misfire. We will not have a repeat! Abort if he breaks 75%."
Maya nodded. "I've set the Ouranos control system with those priorities," she said, blinking heavily. "It should be prioritising runtime towards this."
Ritsuko sighed, and turned back to the main screen, where, despite the patient guidance from Misato, the pilot lacked the fine control to be able to get up. Well, it's not surprising, she thought. How long does it take children to learn this? She paused, mentally. That's children with a small 'C'... I really mean 'babies'. Of course, babies don't have an extensive LAI suite... never mind. She winced as a titanic arm smashed through an apartment complex with a shriek of tortured steel.
"I can't do it!" Shinji shouted. "It's... it doesn't move properly! And my knees hurt!" he added, face screwed up, staring down at his legs... wait, if he was actually face down in the Eva, that meant that the plug was Argh! Disorientation!
"Don't think about your body, Shinji!" ordered Dr Akagi, grasping one balled fist in her other palm. "Just think about the Eva!"
It was painful to watch, as, flailing, the Evangelion managed to get one hand under it, sparks and debris flying up from the road as one knee ponderously scraped its way under the main body.
('_')
"But at least you were able to achieve that on your own," Simon (as he had insisted, multiple times, on being called) said. "Consider that, with no practice, you were able to manage that." He looked down at the PCPU held in his blue-gloved hands. "According to this, you were much faster at achieving this than any of the other candidates. That's your accomplishment."
Shinji winced. "No. Um... this is where it gets..." he paused. "Painful," he said with a shudder. "And fuzzier."
('_')
"They've lost contact with the Harbinger!" shouted one of the NEGA officers, whirling towards his superior. "Location of Harbinger-3 is unknown! It... melted away again, into that black wave thing, again."
"Oh no..." breathed Misato. "It can't have..."
The signal from the Evangelion was cut, the main screen blacking out. The panicked reports only served to add to the confusion.
"Massive r-state flux. Identical to what happened on the approach." The Lieutenant was streaked with sweat, dripping down his face. "Something big just happened. The Shaws have shut down. We're... we're blind. Faster than the LAI systems could clamp down on the gain." The man looked over at the central control desk. "It's here."
The Major whirled, gazing up at the Representative. "Sir," she began, "Permission to launch Unit 00?"
"Grabbing exterior feed. Let's see if the ArcSec cams have anything," added another one of the Operators, hands twitching in Augmented Reality projections that only she could see. She turned unseeing red eyes to Dr Akagi. "We have something. Feed requiring authorisation for mainscreen. Autocensor active."
Gendo nodded once. "Permission granted, Major. Load the Evangelion for deployment." Behind the now opaque glasses, his eyes closed. I am sorry.
The blond scientist frowned, and then shook her head. "Yes, yes," she said, bringing the link from the security cameras, designed for nothing more than petty surveillance, up on the main display.
It may have been a heavily autocensored feed, the image altered to reduce how real it looked and remove flagrant reality violations, and so minimise the instinctual rejection that human minds felt towards things that should-not-be, but it was still clear what was happening. Lieutenant Ibuki gagged at the sight, and she was not alone; faces paled throughout the control centre, at the sight.
The void-black form of the Harbinger, its symmetry broken by the arcanochromatically-enhanced warhead, stood in the middle of a terribly smooth plane, more akin to some kind of amphitheatre, with the outside walls the buildings which were outside the area where the monster had so violated reality again. It loomed over the now-motionless form of Unit 01. The air was crackling with discharges, earthing on anything metallic, giving Asherah a skirt of blue-white brightness.
"Abort launch order for Unit 00," ordered Gendo Ikari clearly, in the silence. "Unit 01 remains intact. Only launch if Unit 01 appears critically damaged."
"We're getting signals back from Zero-One. Just... atmospheric... interference..." the Operator trailed off.
The Harbinger reached one simian arm down, and grabbed Unit 01, yanking it up by its own arm, as it dangled limply. Night-black flesh-substance met the mottled camouflage of the Evangelion, as sparks coruscated across the surface.
('_')
Shinji stared up at the blank roof. It was good, he thought. It might be an unfamiliar ceiling, but at least it isn't that thing. He swallowed. "I was screaming," he said, flatly. "It... it sounded really odd, and it hurt. I mean the screaming hurt because that orange-stuff isn't like air... it's too thick. And the arm hurt too; I could feel it." His eyes locked on the psychiatrist's. "It was like someone was trying to pull my arm out of my socket. And that's not right. I mean, I was just piloting the thing. Why did it hurt?" His voice dropped in pitch. "Why?"
Seriously, why? I'd like to find the bastard who decided that was a good idea for the pilot to feel the pain of the machine, and... and make them pilot the damn thing themselves! It would serve them right! See how they like it, to have to feel whatever the thing underneath feels!
"What were your reactions to the Harbinger... to the entity?" said the doctor, after a pause. "It says here... yes, you said earlier that that when you saw it before... nausea, uncontrolled panic, faintness." The man paused. "Did you feel the same this time? If it was different, was it better or worse, in your opinion?"
Shinji glared at him, before his brow wrinkled, as he thought back. The two monstrous faces stared deep into his eyes... no, into the eyes of the Evangelion, and then there was that burning red sun on the front, filling his eyes. It was like staring at the sun through closed eyelids, only my eyes were open. Just... everything I could see, full of redness. His eyes snapped open again, and he saw a look of concern on the older man's eyes. "It was... better," he managed. "It was scary... yes, really, really scary, but it was... it was," the words came out in a rush, "it was scary like a man with a knife is. Um... well, like the idea of a man with a knife is, I haven't actually been attacked by a man with a knife. Like it was a person that was trying hurt me, rather than something which could stand on me without even caring. Like it almost did before."
He fell silent, gazing through the psychiatrist's head and beyond, as if he could see through the mass of stone and steel and concrete to gaze into infinity.
"It wasn't wrong. It was just a thing. And... isn't that wrong?"
('_')
Shinji Ikari screamed and screamed. He could feel the chill, almost slick touch of the Harbinger; a clinging, freezing touch, like a frozen, flayed hand and on earth did that image come to mind of all things?, and that didn't make much sense. There was armour in the way and everything.
Asherah filled his eyes... his viewscreen. The red light was still bright, but above the false sun, he could see the mask-like shapes, their broken symmetry far too evident up close. They weren't the solid objects they looked like from far away; they were more like some two-dimensional layer of paint over the surface. And yet they had depth. That was the thing. At once, they were a discoloured projection onto the night-black skin-hull of the monster, and full, real objects, floating in the void, rotating yet eternally the same.
And then, again, they were just pained protrusions on a black skin; merely an optical illusion.
"Activate the weapons systems," he heard the Major order, over the communications link. "Listen to me, Shinji," she said, clearly. "I want you to look at the c... at the glowing red thing on its chest. Move the Eva's head to look at it. Don't ask questions. Just think about it, as hard as you can. Do it."
The Harbinger made a noise. It was a noise which lacked a frame of reference to describe. If forced, Shinji would use words like "a kind of crackle, but also a tearing noise, and it was both wetly organic and resonant, like if you were running your finger over the rim of a wine glass made of meat," but, from the vagueness and general incoherence of the description, it was evident that such a thing did not really describe the cohesive whole of the noise.
Moving... yes, he was moving his head to look at the radiant crimson sun mounted in the chest of the thing. Slowly, painfully, the Evangelion's head slipped around.
The Harbinger was staring at him. He could feel it. His skin was itching all over, painfully, and there was some kind of commotion going on in the control room, but compared to everything else, that was meaningless. All he had to do was look.
"Listen, Shinji," said the Major, over the shouting from Dr Akagi and the Operators, "what we're going to do is fire the head-mounted lasers into the core. When we do that, I want you to... well, to try to attack the Harbinger with your other arm. Try to hit it in the red bit. The scientists are claiming that it might be a weak spot. You can do that, right?"
The boy nodded. He could look around, yes, and... well, the attempts to get up had at least proven that he could destructively flail around. There was probably time to feel guilty about the buildings he had demolished later.
Why is it just holding me? What is it doing?
"Is the strike force ready?" the Major asked, making sure that the communications link was closed.
"Yes, ma'am," was the answer. "Three wings are zeroed on the coordinates, and an armoured company is locked on the thing's back. They're ready." There was a pause. "And extra NEGA forces have followed Harbinger-3 here, including some M059-X MBTs."
The black-haired woman nodded. "Good. And that's an added bonus." She turned to face her companion. "Are you ready, Rits?"
Ritsuko tucked an errant strand of hair back, and stared back, the blue light of her harcontacts filling her pupils. "Yes," she said, the stress in her voice evident. "Another spike, but... still within safe margins. Just. We're ready, weapons control has been passed over to the Ouranos systems. Get it over with quickly, Misato."
"Right." The woman slammed her hand down on the table. "Fire everything!"
From within the Evangelion, the screen briefly darkened as the four head-mounted lasers fired, the pulsed beams aimed at the dying star on the chest of the monster. These were joined as the missile packs on the shoulders emptied themselves into the Harbinger at point blank range, the guidance chips specifically overridden to arm themselves at less than their normal minimum distance. Asherah recoiled, still holding Unit 01's arm, yanking it further upright, and Shinji winced in pain clutching his hand to the trapped arm.
That had the bonus effect of bringing the Evangelion's arm in a neat arc, the open palm bashing into the red light and passing through, warping it from a sphere into a broken ellipsoid.
"Good job, Shinji!" shouted Misato, to general cheering from the control room; a celebration which was only accentuated as the impacts from the incoming missiles from the aircraft, and the arcanomagnetically confined high-energy plasma beams and raligun projectiles from the tank formation, which before had been doing nothing, tore off shards of the Harbinger's flesh. The unnatural body sloughed off like molten wax to the impacts of the vECF charges, burning sun-substance and the explosive warheads, splashing to the ground.
A celebration which was halted as, like a ragdoll, Asherah tossed up Unit 01 off the ground, bringing one hand into the chest of the arcanocyberxenobiological organism with an impact which audibly shattered the thickened armoured plates, and, in an egregious violation of the conservation of momentum, sent the massive behemoth flying backwards through buildings in an arc which was wrong; too flat for something moving freely, and far too fast for how lazily the Harbinger had moved.
An arc which was halted as it slammed into the grey, crumbling facade of the Victoria Arcology, smashing through the armoured superstructure before, finally, coming to a stop deep inside the building, the impact denting the endoskeleton of the pyramid.
Blinking, thick breaths of LCL surging in and out of his lungs, Shinji blinked in the darkness. There was... there was actually a vaguely Evangelion-shaped hole that lead out to the brightness of the outside, the greyed, arcanochromatically-tainted walls no match for the momentum of a forty-metre tall titan. They had broken like dust to such an impact, the brittleness shattering like icing.
That was when the pain hit. All up and down his right arm. Turning his head... the Evangelion's head slowly (ever so slowly), he could see the dark ichor oozing out, jammed machinery visible under broken pale flesh under shattered armour.
That's not my arm. That's not my arm. That's not my arm, he thought to himself, over and over again. Or perhaps he screamed it out loud. How was it possible to tell the difference?
And there was light; the fell radiance of the Harbinger illuminating the wrecked interior of the arcology. It was walking towards him, slowly, placing one tank-sized foot after another, smashing its own way through the entry hole. Screaming, whether in rage, in terror or in pain (it was not clear, though the odds were on the latter two), he tried to focus on standing up, but he couldn't. His mind jumped around, like there was a swarm of insects living in his brain and under his skin, buzzing and humming from thought to thought without settling on a single one. The Evangelion twitched and convulsed, but no definite motion could happen.
He could hear distant shouting and see the image of the control staff yelling at him, but his mind was filled with the pounding, regular footsteps of Asherah, the harbinger of his fate. The steps beat as one with his panicked heartbeats.
It stood over him, the sun on its chest the fires in which all thoughts are consumed.
In one smooth motion, a hand descended, and plucked out the eye of the Evangelion, crushing the stolen orb like a ripe fruit in its hands.
A fountain erupted from the empty socket.
And then.
Nothing.
('_')
"... and that's it," Shinji said, his voice slightly croaky. "I mean, I don't know, maybe I knocked my head on something, but I think I may have just fainted. Of course," he added, a slightly vitriolic note entering his voice, "I suspect the experience of feeling like losing an eye is enough to knock someone out. Maybe. Just maybe?"
The doctor was silent.
"Um..." began Shinji.
"Are you sure you can't remember anything else?" the man said, a slight hint of something Shinji couldn't recognise in his voice.
The boy shook his head.
"Oh, well," the man said, with a shrug. "Well, I expect you'll want to rest again. Either way, I'll be seeing you again, at some point... uh, we'll deal with scheduling later. Remember, if you're feeling uncertain, or having nightmares, or otherwise feeling odd, note it down. Uh... yes," he said, checking something, "you should have my Grid contact details, please, send me a message detailing anything unusual you're feeling."
The boy frowned. "My... my PCPU got broken," he said, dredging out a memory which seemed so long ago, but must really not have been.
"There's a new one by your bedside table," Simon said, his voice calm. "Given that it has a label saying 'For Shinji' on it, I would guess that it's some kind of replacement. By which I mean, yes, it's a replacement. After all, wouldn't it be kind of difficult to do anything without one?" he asked rhetorically. He stood, pushing his chair back against the wall.
"Remember," he said as a parting comment, "tell anyone if you feel at all peculiar, or have any unusual urges or thoughts." The man blushed slightly. "That is, apart from the ones inherent to being a sixteen-year old," he added hastily. "By the reckoning of my profession, they don't really count as unusual."
Shinji collapsed back onto the bed, staring up at the blank ceiling. One hand reached up to massage his closed right eye.
~'/|\'~
In a small blessing, the clouds had cleared, and now the whole of the greater urbanised area was lit in late August sun.
Of course, from the point of view of Misato Katsuragi, the "blessing" component was more appropriately viewed as an "annoyance". Yes, certainly, from an ecological point of view, the fact that it hadn't rained meant that the scrubbers had been able to bond to the arcanochromatic residue from the massive number of variant-electron catalysed fusion weapons, not to mention the tactical-scale warhead that had seen use, but from a personal point of view, it meant that it was getting annoyingly hot inside the hazard suit at the site of the cleanup.
"Misato, you were a frontline soldier," Ritsuko had said, the smile obvious under her transparent faceplate. "Are you sure you just haven't gone soft in your nice Ashcroft placing?"
It may have been true, but as she watched as they manoeuvred the scattered fragments of the armour from Unit 01's arm and torso into the containment vessels, Misato couldn't help but wish that she was in an exosuit, with a nice climate controlled interior, as opposed to just a thick layer of protective material and an air supply that she had to carry around with her.
Anyway, she thought to herself, I was a mecha jockey. Not a ground-pounder or a sardine.
Slumping down to one of the chairs, she flicked through the channels, the image filling her left eye. If they wanted her, they could come get her, she felt. At the moment, nothing required direct military involvement or use of her Advisor status; it was just scientists fussing over the area, and getting in the way of the engineers and the technicians who were actually clearing the place. The colonel the New Earth Government Army had sent to supervise their part of the clean-up looked just as bored as she did. She spared the man a wave, and got an equally lethargic one back.
"... and the main story remains the consequences from the unexpected assault by an unknown extra-normal entity against the London-2 region," reported an almost-foppish-looking sidoci, his long white hair artfully styled in a way which was a blatant example of manufactured dishabille. "Despite the element of surprise, the primary component of the hostile strike force was quickly isolated, eventually self-destructing to prevent capture by NEG forces. Although the area remains sealed off, the Army and Navy have released footage..."
flick
"Casualty results still remain unknown, but they are estimated to be in the..."
flick
The woman stood, cape billowing, against a thunder-cloud backdrop. "You fool!" she proclaimed to the square-jawed hero, who stood at the bottom of the tower, red eyes reflecting the lightning in a manner identical to that of an owl. "I have bought him back again, and no one... none at all, shall question my genius. They called me mad! Mad!" Peals of laughter broke out, echoing the thunder.
"You're the fool, Baroness!" the man called back, pointing his gun (a rather nice looking double-barrelled shotgun with a revolver feed and weird sparking machinery on it) at the deranged aristocrat. "That isn't your husband... and it hasn't been your husband for ten years! He's dead; the thing walking around wearing his skin isn't him! It just thinks it is! It's a shade corpus, and, one day, it'll remember!"
The gun roared, as both barrels fired, but, too fast for the eye to track, the Baroness leapt up, the camera panning in to show precisely how the shrapnel tore at her clothing, while leaving her flesh untouched.
"Release the Claw Fiends, Igor!" she shrieked, crouching, nearly naked, on the roof.
"Yeth, Mithrethth, I will do ath you requetht."
Oh yeah, thought Misato. Meant to look like I'm at least keeping up to date on the reporting of the situation. Plus Doom of the Revenge of the Baroness of the Darkness of the West is old. Seen it before.
flick
"... the true heroes of this story have to be a squadron of Engel pilots, from the 3rd European Mechanised, who managed to engage the sole hostile survivor of the blast, and critically damage it." There were four portraits displayed; men and women in their late twenties to early thirties, in full military dress uniform. "First Lieutenant Jenny Intry, Second Lieutenant James Hawass, Second Lieutenant Sarah Athena, and Second Lieutenant Wera Kawimani vy Devora were all killed, as the entity self-destructed, rather than risk capture, but in their actions, they saved uncounted lives." The platinum blond woman bowed her head briefly, then continued. "Genevieve Aristide, the War Minister, has promised a ceremonial state funereal for the four, saying that they exhibited the best of the combined traits of humanity."
Oh my, thought Misato. They actually used Scenario B-22. Oh. Rits is going to be really, really pissed to be letting Engel get the credit. She wouldn't mind so much if it was just the tanks, or even conventional mecha, but the credit had to publicly go to an Engel squadron. Oh dear.
Turning off her optical bypass, she got up, and went to look for the Director of Science. An outburst was not what they needed right now.
~'/|\'~
Shinji sat back down, breathing heavily. More checks, and they'd finally let him walk around on his own, only being followed by a cat-sized drone, which clung to the ceiling and buzzed if he walked too quickly.
Everything in the hospital was just so colourless and faded. No, not faded. Deliberately stripped of all colour and life; cold and sterile and clinical. The lights were bright and uniform, and the white walls were stark. Even the attempts at decoration somehow only managed to accentuate the fact that this was not an environment which people were meant to be living in, that this place was designed for function over form. And the angles; there was not a single right angle anywhere. Everything was slightly curved, which spoke of the level of security that this place must have, if that kind of structural precaution was necessary. Cold and lifeless; such a wonderful feel for a medical facility. The environment seemed to match his personal feelings. What was it called? The 'pathetic fallacy', or something like that?
Well, Shinji was certainly feeling fairly pathetic. Less so than on previous days; he was, at least, able to move around on his own, thanks to an approval from the psychologist. But he was still bone-tired... what kind of phrase was bone-tired anyway? Are bones particularly famous for their lethargy? Are they the most slothful component of the human body? You would think that, since they're the ones giving rigid structure to the human form, they don't get tired, and never have to rest. It was probably a gross failure of natural selection if the skeleton got exhausted. Seriously, where did languages come up with these things...
They also had said that he might be easily distractible for the next few days.
Either way, he just sat back, and gazed out the window; out at the untouched, rural landscape before him.
Now, actually, he could properly appreciate the marvels of the Geocity. It was unlikely that you could find such an environment on Earth, properly, outside of such managed zones. A miniature sun, and a true one at that, the arcanomagnetically-confined aneutronic fusion reaction burning on the ceiling, rolled across daily, providing a sense of time which was so often lacking in normal arcology sections, where only those who lived on the outer walls got regular access to sunlight. Visible out the window, above the few low-rise buildings was an expanse of green. The dome had to be kilometres across to fit everything inside. There were trees down here; entire forests! There was a lake with... Shinji squinted, an island with a vaguely Greek-looking marble building in the centre. And everything was actual green-green, not tainted by the slightly-off prismatic hues that polluted too much of the surface, despite the attempts at ecological preservation. It was a deliberate attempt, he read, checking exocerebrum on his new PCPU, to try to recreate what a pre-human ecology would have looked like, as a source and a store of living genetic diversity quite different from the vast genebanks which had, from the start of the century onwards, begun the grim task of cataloguing an ecosystem blighted first by mankind's hungry depredations, and later the horrors of the Arcanotech Wars and the Aeon War.
A flock of birds, bright cyan plumage shining in the man-made sunlight, poured past the window, flowing like an unending torrent. Hah. There's actually some white ones in the mix, that could be foam, Shinji thought. He wondered if they really knew what they were doing, what they were like. And also if they ever flew too close to the sun, and got burned up, or got their brains scrambled by the fields. Maybe there was some kind of system that stopped them from doing it. Maybe they were just left to learn for themselves.
His thoughts were cut short by the sound of cushioned feet squeaking on the floor, and the ponderous rumbling of something heavy. He glanced down the corridor, to the source of the noise, to see a team of orderlies pushing a cylindrical tube, the top transparent and glimmering with projections.
Wordlessly, Shinji watched as they passed. There was a princess in the crystal coffin. That is to say, there was a girl in the life-support pod. That girl, the sidoci from before.
Her gaze never left his as she was wheeled past, the grey iris wrapped around a pin-prick pupil. Shinji shuddered, icy-cold fingers running up and down his spine. She was almost invisible in the sterile confines of the life-support pod, swathed under layers of fluid-filled tubes and the red of blood stains on despoiled blankets. At least there wasn't the empty socket anymore; it had now been covered by a post-operation protective casing.
But still she stared at him.
grey eyes
red fire
drowning in fluid
pain
nothingness
Slowly, Shinji's hand crept up to cover his own right eye, massaging it, feeling the spherical shape under the skin of his eyelid. He now knew exactly how that felt.
And then the snow-white girl was gone, and his heartbeat began to slow again. He slumped back down in the seat, suddenly feeling drained again.
Of course, in the original fairy-tale, didn't the prince... do things to her while she was in a coma? the boy thought, with an internal wince. Yeah... I think he did. Yuck. Yeah, I distinctly remember Gany reading me the story, and then warning me about overly romanticising history. Or something like that. Pretty disgusting, really. He grinned, a little foolishly. I think I'd be a much better prince than that.
What the hell was my father thinking, trying to make her pilot like that? He paused. On the other hand... what the hell was he doing, putting a completely untrained person in that thing? Let's be honest here. I really can't follow the kind of thought processes we're dealing with here. It's possible that he had good reasons for doing it. Apart from the giant monster-thing, of course. The giant-monster thing that wasn't him.
He did not know, and in unknowing, found no relief.
~'/|\'~
The Director of Operations for Project Evangelion found the Director of Science for the Evangelion Group in one of the sterile tents they'd set up, and, after going through the decontamination process, unsealed her helmet with relief, running a hand through her sweaty hair.
"Heya, Rits," she said. Misato paused, not quite wanting to say anything which might raise the touchy subject, but not sure how to proceed. "Ah, the air conditioning unit," she said, to no one in particular, in the cool air of the tent. "It's really the greatest treasure of mankind. A real scientific success. The power of control over the climate." A quick check revealed that the coffee in the pot was cold; a moment's deliberation decided that putting it in the microwave was faster than making a new pot, and so it was done.
"You finally got the message, did you?" said the blond, with a hint of sarcasm, as she poured over a diagram. "Come over here; I need you to see something. Tune your implants to DEMO, by the way," she added.
Flushing slightly as a check of her unit revealed that, yes, she had a missed message, the black-haired woman nevertheless complied.
The diagram was revealed to be a full three-dimensional map of the area filling most of the room, the ground-level hovering about eye-level, tracing the honey-comb of smaller arcology domes underground. The Geocity wasn't shown. That was far too deep for this scale. And marked in flashing red was an almost worm-like trail, which dug in through the grey area of a chromatically-drained region, into the earth, before emerging again. And then there were the craters that pockmarked the area, culminating in one great one.
"Is that?"
Ritsuko nodded. "We've finally been able to piece the full passage of the berserk Unit together," she said, with a sigh. "It's taken almost two days, too. We had major black-box corruption, which made the onboard records unreliable."
"It really did all that?"
"Yes. And Victoria wasn't properly evacuated too, due to the attack on the airport. That would have produced additional casualties, had it not been for the use of the vECF warhead..."
"... you mean, extra casualties caused by us," said Misato, flatly. There was a ping from behind her, as the microwave declared that it was done, but she ignored it.
"Well, yes. We're not responsible for those deaths. That's something that the NEGA has to answer for, not us. Makes everything easier." Misato frowned at that remark. "It does mean less paperwork for you," pointed out Ritsuko, which only deepened the frown. She waved a hand. "Never mind. What I was saying is... well, look at the passage. The fall through the weakened superstructure was unavoidable, but it makes everything more difficult. The fight between the Eva and Asherah collapsed several bunkers, and the damage to the endoskeletal structure of the pyramid is worrying."
"Yep. I've seen what they're having to do to save it. And," Misato added, "having to dodge falling debris. I hate working in colour-drained regions."
The scientist nodded. "I know what you mean. It's the way that everything goes crumbly." Ritsuko sighed, looking up from the diagram on the table, and Misato could see, with surprise, the redness around her friend's eyes and nose. "What kind of victory is this, anyway?" she added, in a worryingly emotionless tone of voice.
Misato paused, before replying. "Ah," she said, in a soft tone. "I was wondering why there wasn't anyone else in here." Ritsuko felt a hot mug pushed gently into her hands. Without taking a look, she took a swig.
It almost instantly was deposited back in the cup. "Bleargh!" the blond declared. "Yuck."
"It's just coffee," said Misato, holding her half-empty mug, with a frown.
"Yes. It's coffee. It's so much coffee that you seemed to forget to put any water in. I should know never to let you..." The scientist let out a bubbling giggle, a slightly sick sounding noise. "You just heated up that pot, didn't you?"
"Yes. Why?"
"So did I. Several times."
"Oh. How long has it been brewing?"
"Since yesterday, some time."
"Oh." Misato paused, as the other woman's words caught up with her. "Oh. Ooooh." She sighed. "Rits? How long have you been here?"
"Mmmmph," was the response she got; a somewhat predictable one, based on the fact that the blond's mouth was full of the overly strong coffee.
"When was the last time you slept?" A slightly weary entered Misato's voice.
"Ah." Ritsuko thought. "Um. The night before Harbinger-3 arrived," she said, in a small voice.
Misato sighed. "That explains it, then. You've been hopped up on EOE for... four nights now." The black-haired woman paused. "Okay... that's it. You know it doesn't replace sleep properly. You've known it since university."
"Don't bring that up. Completely different circumstances."
"No, I'm going to do that, because after that time you spent a week up, and we had to drag you to hospital before you killed yourself from a stroke, you promised me that you'd never do it again!"
"Wait a moment!" retorted Ritsuko. "You made the same promise after I had to take you to have your stomach pumped, and how long did that take to be broken?"
"Six w... not the point! That was for fun, not for w..." Misato took a deep breath. "No. I've had sleep. I'm not going to shout at you." She let out that breath. "Why are you doing this, Rits? You're not so vital you couldn't have had one night of sleep in the last 4. Even four hours, or something. And I know you do know how to delegate, even if you don't like to." She paused. "Come on, drink your according-to-you vile coffee."
Ristuko slumped down, into a seat. "I had to make a report to the Council of Representatives yesterday," she explained , in a small voice. "Oh, that went fine, don't worry," she reassured her friend. "Research... Representative Egger, was unpleasant, but she always is. No, it's not that." She winced, as she took another mouthful, blinking heavily as she swallowed. "But I passed the Twin Obelisks on the way in to Headquarters. They'd put new names up."
Misato cursed under her breath. Of course, she thought. That's it. She gets like this when she goes there. Add that to the lack of sleep... yeah, makes sense.
The Twin Obelisks were a fixture of any major Ashcroft Foundation; a way of commemorating researchers killed, incapacitated, or sectioned by their work. It was a tradition not without precedent. The eponymous Teresa Ashcroft, who had laid the founding grounds for arcane theory (although, in truth, her role was somewhat exaggerated; she was a manifestation of a wider school of thought, as the flaws in the Standard Model and Quantum Mechanics became evident, at the start of the 21st century), was the first name on the White Obelisk, which marked those driven to insanity by knowledge of that-which-man-should-not-know. Her supervisor, Simon Yi, was the second. And then was the Black Obelisk, which marked those lost, to death or irrevocable and absolute inhumanity; both fates were far too common for those who tested new sorcerous procedures or arcanotechnology.
It wouldn't be fair to say that the former was for theoreticians and the latter for experimentalists. But it wouldn't be utterly inaccurate, either. And it was arguable which one was worse. For at least one granted a drink from the river Lethe; the unknowing that comes from the unbeing of death or loss of self, while all the other could offer was the fractured existence of a broken mind.
Ritsuko glanced up at Misato, with reddened eyes. "I wonder which one I'm going to end up on," she said, in the same flat voice. "It's not going to be long. Just a matter of probabilities. Over half my class are there, by now. I'm already beating the odds."
"Now, come on," Misato said, worry entering her voice. "It's not like everybody dies, or goes insane. Look at," she paused, "well, I know you don't like him, but Dr Miyakame from Engel was on the original Project, and he's still okay."
There was a short, bitter laugh. "Is he?" She shook her head. "And even assuming that's true, and I don't think it is, well... look at it. Him, Sylveste from Achtzig, and the Representative. Those three. The only three able to pass for sane, and still alive, out of an original Project of nine specialists." She glared at Misato through narrowed eyes. "Dr Hathenep... torn apart by an uncontrolled prototype. Dr Vandebough... committed after a mental break that left him claiming that he could master n-dimensional terrain. And the murders, of course. And... and, well, the boy we just put in Unit 01; you're aware of what happened to Yui Ikari. And, for that matter, Kyoko Zepplin Soryu."
"I am," said Misato. Her voice softened. "It killed your mother, too, I know."
"Ha!" Ritsuko paused. "Yes, you'd almost think there was a reason I wasn't mentioning her among the survivors!" she snapped, looking away.
Her friend's face remained calm, not rising to the bait. "Ah," the Major said. "Yes, it seems that you're not in a fit state to keep on working. You've been awake for too long, and you're going to start making mistakes if you don't get some proper sleep. Formally, in my capacity as Director of Operations for Project Evangelion, I'm instructing you to call it a ni... call it an early afternoon. I want you to go for a psychological check-up, too; staying up this long, even on EOE, isn't healthy."
Ritsuko deflated. "Yes," she said, in a small voice. "Yes, that makes sense." She paused. "Thank you," she said, softly. "Yes. You can drive me to the Clinic in the Geocity; you're picking up the Third Child."
"I am? Well," Misato clarified, "I know I am, but I am now?"
"I did send you a message telling you that he'd passed the physicals and now the psychologicals."
"Yes. Well..." and the way that she tailed off said it all. "How is he?"
"Physically, no external wounds. Mentally?" Ritsuko gave a somewhat laconic shrug, which turned into a slump. "Well... his memory is somewhat confused." She raised a hand, to forestall the outburst. "His memory of the events is somewhat confused."
She failed. "Mental contamination?" asked the Major, eyes flashing.
"Some. Negligible. I've heard it's nothing to worry about."
The other woman relaxed. "Oh, right. It's... well, I've looked at Unit 01's history, and, well..."
"Yes, I know. But, no, it seems to be fine."
Misato relaxed. "Okay. Come on, then. The Foundation was... nice about getting me a replacement car," she added, with a smirk. "It's a Ventek SF-47-X." At Ritsuko's empty and somewhat weary look, she grinned wider. "Oh, it's good. And it's fast. And I have it. Well, at least until the insurance comes in, and I suspect that won't be too long. Might even be fast-tracked."
"It's really not charming to gloat about how the systems fast-track you," sighed Ritsuko. "Even if... yes, even if it is true. And I don't need another explanation for how you managed to get both the company discount and the military discount. I understood it the ninth time. And don't drive too fast. And don't crash. In fact," she added, as a thought struck her, "let the autopilot drive. I... uh, I need to talk to you about... um... things."
"What kind of things?"
"Important things."
~'/|\'~
Lusus Naturae / What bliss even in hope is there for thee? Pt 2
~'/|\'~
There was a separate investigation going on; one on a much, much smaller scale. In a grey, cracked and crumbling hallway, smothered in a thick layer of dust and ash, figures in bright yellow hazmat suits were standing around, while a cluster of remote-controlled drones mapped the area.
Every citizen should have been able to recognise who they were, from the small, geometrical logo on their arms. They were from the Office of Internal Security. The OIS. They had marched in, and taken over this investigation from the Federal Security Bureau almost immediately, the suspect circumstances of the attack overriding the FSB's authority over terrorism and actions on interarcology territory.
And, scattered around this lifeless, colourless environment, so rapidly succumbing to entropy, there were the... manikins. It wasn't right to call them people. They weren't that. For starters, they were dead, but it wasn't that. Even if they were dead, such a dehumanising term would not have been used to describe their mortal remains. But these things, these brittle grey figurines were best not acknowledged as something which was once human. Because if that was done, then the mind fixed on those hollow, fragmented recesses which were once eye sockets, those glimmers of white enamel in the disintegrating lips, and the streaks of bone visible under colour-drained clothing and powdery flesh. Normally, there was something about a dead body which could only be described as 'honest'; as in life, they were in death, cooling meat revealing the marvels of natural selection that had led to their life. And from death, nature returned, the body breaking down into the ecosystem.
There was nothing natural about this.
There was the hiss of an aerosol can, as another manikin was coated in a substance which bore most resemblance to varnish. This was a crime scene, even if it had been thoroughly ruined, and they were still going to follow procedure, because there still was a chance that they would be able to find out exactly what had gone on here. A very slim chance. The Office of Internal Security, as an organisation, was somewhat displeased by the fact that the crime scene had been contaminated by the close proximity detonation of a one-kilotonne variant-electron-catalysed fusion warhead. The only reason that it was only somewhat displeased was that the OIS did not get angry, as a statement of official policy.
That did not, however, prevent individual agents getting bloody furious, as long as they did not do so in an official capacity.
"Fucking army fuckwits and ArcSec morons and their fucking clumsy counter-intrusion attempts," swore Agent Kain, pacing up and down, waving her hands in the air.
The only other woman in the back of the van sighed, and deactivated her harcontacts, her orange irises returning to normal. "Another problem, Samea?" she asked.
"You better believe that there is!" was the snapped back response. "I haven't been able to get a full list of all the counter-intrusion procedures that the police and army teams set up in the databases... after four days! And there are active ghosts... hidden, I might mention. I was just trying to bounce some requests from a standard civilian PCPU... in emulation, of course... then dissect the countermeasures. My ghosts got fucking targeted! My goddamn ghosts! They have high-grade Limited Artificial Intelligences specialised in electronic warfare running on the local arcology Grid that are attacking any attempt to probe them. And tailoring their responses to how smart the intrusion method is. They've been giving me a dummy-network for almost two days!" She slammed her hand into the side of the wall, making the van rock slightly. "That is taking the piss, Mary!"
Mary Anderson winced, shaking her head. "Ouch. Well, assuming it didn't spread any further..."
"I'm not an idiot. Of course they were boxed."
"... just checking. Then... you should probably get a high-end specialist team in." The amlati paused. "This is serious, if they can trick your ghost LAIs. Put the request into the Yard."
Samea sighed, an angry noise through clenched teeth. "You know what the worst thing is. I didn't even notice them. And I've warned the other analysts. We've been falling for this dummy dataset. Two days down the drain." She stomped back to her seat, collapsing back into it. "This entire incident is a nightmare. Ruined scene. Complete systems lock-out. This is going to be taught to cadets as a nightmare scenario. I mean, fuck it, this is the plot for some stupid film, not real life."
"I hope I'm the quirky intelligence analyst who guides the actual hero to his eventual success," Mary said, brightly. "Ooh! I might even get a promotion to love interest. I hope the hero is the quiet sensitive sort. In glasses. Hmm. Maybe not glasses. What genre do you think we are?"
"What?" Samea squinted at her. "What are you talking about?"
"In the film."
She received a glare back.
"Well... I'm just saying, I mean, if he's an action hero, then glasses aren't appropriate, while if he's more of an intellectual, then... arglasses for the win." She paused. "Okay, okay," she continued, in a darker tone. "Look. I've been getting no more success than you have. It took long enough to secure the site, that none of the brains are any use. I've been trawling them... nothing of use. Too much decay to be able to get anything more than base response functions, even in the ones which weren't greyed by the colour, or boiled by the blast. The people were anfrazzadi, nazzadi, or amlati... no sidoci as of yet, but the sample size is small enough that it could just be probabilities that they didn't show up, and, anyway, they're watched heavily enough that, unless you want a PP, you don't want them, because they draw attention. That's basically all I could grab so far. And you could tell that by looking at the bodies. So... nothing," she concluded.
"New sample submitted," stated the pleasant voice of her LAI.
"Oh!" Mary said, spinning her chair back around, and reactivating her harcontacts. "Let's see what you have for me, baby... hmm. Male... Nazzadi for certain." She checked the attached form. "Yes, knew so. I've always wondered why the Migou flipped the symmetry of the Nazzadi body," she said, out loud. "Me, I take after Mum, but my older brother takes after Dad."
"I really needed to know that," muttered Samea.
Mary made a disgusted noise. "Too much decay. Won't be grabbing anything of use from the cerebrum intact. And this one was frozen as soon as they found it, too. Useless and annoying. I much prefer working on live brains. It's much easier than trawling dead ones. Hmm... actually, no, the just-dead are the easiest; neuron activity tends to induce errors, unless you get permission for a destructive map, and they tend to bitch about doing it to live subjects." She made a few gestures. "Zombie, start the destructive trawl," she instructed the LAI. "No... abort that," she corrected herself.
"What is it?" asked her colleague.
Mary spun back around. "It's just... well. Too much of this investigation is going wrong. The body samples are all ruined, the brains are rotten, there's no live witnesses, and that's even before the arcanochromatic contamination."
"We're all thinking that, I'm sure. I'm certainly finding it goddamn suspicious. It..." Samea clacked her teeth together, while looking for the right words, "... it doesn't match, frankly. On one hand, we have this elegant, precise attack, which subverts ArcSec, the local security networks, seals them off..."
"... and on the other hand, we have a disparate group with no shared backgrounds, using unregistered, untraceable, brand-new, but light sharders and machine pistols... which isn't enough to reliably do stuff to people in ArcSec type armour, let alone proper armour. But does, very well, kill civilians." Mary sighed. "The former seems to have had a goal. The latter seems to have just killed people."
"But even that doesn't make sense. Why waste the kind of assets you'd need to get all those unregistered, unchipped weapons into a secure airport? You'd need to have subverted security to get them in, and we haven't background-linked any of the civilian ones to have the kind of distribution network you'd need to pull that off. Seriously, I'd swear that none of them knew each other before this. I've seen the checks on their social networks."
"You mean the summaries."
"Well... yeah. But the civilian group must have been a decoy for the ArcSec group," Samea said, slowly. "It's the only thing that I've heard that makes sense. But... it doesn't feel right."
"I know. According to the reports we have, the civilian group attacked first, and then the ArcSec group opened fire. But if they're there for an objective..."
"Then what the fuck were they doing? And what did they want?"
"I have no idea." Mary paused, flicking her attention back to the LAI. "Go on, Zombie. Start the trawl."
The same questions, and chains of thought (except from divergences into film preferences, which were much more varied on an agent-to-agent-basis) were being repeated all throughout the local OIS. And none of them had any answers.
~'/|\'~
Shinji sat in the atrium of the clinic, swinging his legs. The new clothing they'd given him (apparently, the containment fluid had ruined his old set) was still rather stiff and had that slight rigidity that wouldn't come out until it was washed at least once.
He hated it when they were like this. He would have changed, but... well, he didn't actually have any other clothing on this continent. He'd lost his hand luggage at the incident at the airport, and hadn't even had the chance to pick the other baggage up before the attack. There had actually been some important stuff in there.
At the moment, he was engaged in an epic quest to try to recover his muse. The Limited Artificial Intelligence had been linked to his now-sadly-deceased personal CPU, and thus had been lost. Naturally, there were back-ups; it wasn't like the vast repositories of data that any human being generated or obtained in day-to-day life were actually stored on a device that could be held in a hand, or, in some cases, folded up like paper. The limits of information storage capacity imposed by quantum mechanical effects were such that a standard PCPU couldn't have held a fraction of what anyone generated (or stored, or retained). Each device was little more than an terminal for a vast, hidden network of measurably more complex machinery; the quantum computers and data archives (which disposed of their vast quantities of waste heat in D-Dumps, D-Engines run in reverse) unseen by those that used them.
And, unfortunately, those data stores were, for him, in Japan.
The problem existed on two levels. Firstly, there was the simple issue of data transfer; the Grid was not the open, free environment of the pre-AW1 Net. That had been murdered by the invading Nazzadi fleet; its open, amorphous nature too susceptible to assault by a foe who knew what they were doing. And the Migou had passed only a fraction of their systems knowledge to the Nazzadi; even now, units engaging the forces of the Yuggothian fungoids had to physically isolate the communications systems from the rest of their onboard computers, and work under the assumption that any code which was not encrypted by a one-time pad, or by quantum cryptography, was vulnerable. Hence, the Grid was isolated, segmented, with sections only synchronising with each other at fixed intervals, any desired data transfers analysed by high-end ghost LAIs for possible contamination.
There was also the problem of proof of identity. In a sense, one's data cache was one's self for all non-face-to-face interactions. There was almost certainly enough information there to build a convincing digital simulacra of its owner; several convincing celebrity sex scandals, back near the birth of this technology, were enough proof of this. Hence, Shinji Ikari was dredging his memory for ill-remembered passwords, and suspected that he might have to go for a gene-verification. It would be easier, after all.
Muttering under his breath, he gave up, and slumped back in the seat. It wasn't like he couldn't do that later, and, frankly, he just could not be bothered to go through this whole mess right now.
The PCPU chimed, the LAI (a stupid, generic one, by Shinji's reckoning; completely devoid of the heuristic training that made a muse a muse) informing him of a call from Major Katsuragi. He answered.
"Yes."
"Shinji, it's me," Misato said, unnecessarily. "I'm waiting outside. I've sent you a map beacon. Come on."
Several thoughts ran through the boy's head. Among those were Couldn't you just have come inside?, What's happening?, I don't want to speak to you, you put me in a giant robot and used me as a child soldier!, I'm tired, and don't want to do anything, and, of course, I wonder what she looks like naked. It remains eminently possible, of course, that the last thought was not sourced from his brain. But what he actually said was, with a groan, "Okay," as he pulled his aching body to a vertical position, and slouched towards the exit, following the map on the device.
Misato greeted him with a wave, standing next to a greyish-green car which looked vaguely like it was breaking the speed limit, even while remaining still. Inside, though, she was slightly nervous. She hadn't ever intended for the Foundation to pay attention to the fact that she'd claimed the "Assets" subsidy when getting her current apartment. Well, that wasn't quite true. She had actually vaguely contemplated the possibility of getting a nice, pre-house-trained flat mate, or, at least, failing that, a cute man who she might be able to 'accidentally' walk in on.
A sixteen-year old boy had not been who she had planned. Come to think of it, she probably should have cleaned up the flat in the time since she had been told, but... eh, what was the worst that could happen?
Actually, this kind of slightly perverse humour meant that the finger of blame was quite possibly directed at the Deputy Representative. She wouldn't put it past that old man, especially since she'd also been, discreetly, told that when they moved Unit 02 over from the Eastern Front, there would be another guest. She always had the feeling that he was somehow laughing at a lot of things, watching silently from over Gendo Ikari's shoulder. It was probably better than crying, which she suspected that she would do if she was forced to spend too much time around her penultimate superior. One of her penultimate superiors. She had once tried to work out who she actually reported to, and had given up in confusion. And had needed to be been drunk to even attempt it.
The boy that stood in front of her, she thought, the chain linking seamlessly into another, as she looked him up and down... well, there was something physically that suggested that he was related, a certain sense of familiarity about his appearance. But from the rest, well, he hadn't shown any sign of being a suave political operator or a cold technocrat... unless he was really, really good at it. No, that wasn't plausible. The very idea was ridiculous.
His gaze was also, notably, lowered a certain amount. Well, it was really her fault; she had known that she was going to be spending the day in various hazard suits, so was wearing a strappy top. At least she was wearing a bra; that would have been rather embarrassing. She still coughed, and suppressed a smile at the way his gaze guiltily leapt back up to her face. She kept her eyes on his face as she explained the situation, that she was now his legal guardian, and that he would be staying with her. There was a surprising lack of protest; not only a lack of vocal objection, but very little chance in body language, either. He'd either been told already, just didn't care, or... well, those were the only two possibilities she could think of. He certainly didn't seem to be a skilled enough dissembler to cover such things. Although there was always his heritage to take into consideration...
No. She had to stop being paranoid about this, just because he was Gendo Ikari's son.
"Are... are you okay with that?" she finished.
There was a shrug. "I didn't think it was likely I'd be allowed to go home," he said, no real emotions in his voice. "And one place is pretty much the same as another."
Misato sighed, an emotion split between annoyance and relief. "So you're fine that you're not living with your father, then?"
Something flashed in his eyes. "Yes, I'm fine with that. It's probably for the best, all in all. I haven't lived with him since I was four." He paused. "I'll still be able to keep in contact with Y... with my foster mothers?" he asked, with a warmth in his tone which notably hadn't been there when talking about his father.
The black-haired woman nodded. "Yes, of course."
"Then it's okay, then." A hint of sadness in his eyes belied the statement.
"Don't worry," said Misato, with a grin at his discomfort. "I'll be on my best behaviour. Come on, it'll be fun!"
~'/|\'~
"Nah... na na na!" Misato sang, along with the radio, as she pulled down, skipping just over a section of flooded ruins, leaving a wake behind her. "Na na na na, there are three floooooooo-wers in a vaaaaaa~aaaaase..." She pulled the control yokes sharply, and the car pulled upwards, pushing Shinji back against the seat, as the stereo blared.
Why! Why! Why did she drive like this? He had a slight tendency to motion sickness normally, but this... this was far beyond anything he had experienced that didn't involve sitting in a giant robot and being fired up a chute. And at least that had been linear. He was feeling sick. He was feeling so sick that the contents of his stomach were feeling sick, and they weren't about to move, or they themselves might throw up.
On the plus side, it did mean that he hadn't actually been sick yet. And it wasn't that she was a bad driver, in a technical sense. In fact, in a technical sense, she was very good. It was just that she seemed to treat the car as a low-flying fighter craft, taking hostile fire, rather than as a... well a car. Certainly, he hadn't met anyone before who would disengage the autopilot just so that she could fly at just above building level, and ... argh! That had been a spire from a ruined church or something!
"Na na na, the third of theeeee-em is... huh," Misato turned her head sideways to the boy, who had a fist crammed into his mouth, and was trying to whimper and hyperventilate at the same time, with only limited success.
"Keep your eyes on the road!" Shiniji tried to say. It came out as an incoherent, unintelligible squeak, but at least he had tried, right?
"Don't worry," she said, cheerfully, "we're almost there. I've got something to show you. It's a good place." The car levelled out once again, at a nice, safe, not-less-than-one-metres-above-the-ground-while-in-free-flight-mode flight. "You know," she added, drumming her fingers on the control yokes, "I really don't use my out-of-Arcology permit enough. Haven't had time recently, I guess. Oh, and make sure you're wearing your mask when we get out of the car. The scrubbers should have caught most of the a-chrom contaminants by now, but... better safe than sorry, right?"
Shinji declined to comment, and, when they landed, limply sort of flowed out of the car and out onto the grass.
"Oh, come on," he heard Misato say. "Get up. It wasn't that bad, was it?" He wanted to make some kind of incredibly witty comeback, which would leave her grovelling in knowledge just how unpleasant her driving was, but, looking up at her, figure over him looming in the twilight, he just couldn't bring himself to do it. She looked so enthusiastic, eyes gleaming, and a wide grin on her face, visible under the filter mask, like she had really enjoyed the drive, and couldn't understand why anyone else would not.
Also, he couldn't think of anything good enough to produce the desired result.
"I... I... uh, I think I'm just feeling a bit weak from all the... everything," he lied. Well, it wasn't exactly a lie, he was still feeling a bit floppy and uncoordinated, but it was by no means the main cause. She helped him stand, and guided him over to a seat by a railing, looking north towards London-2.
Above him, he heard the cry of a bird, and looked up. There was some kind of... he squinted into the setting sun... some kind of predatory bird, he guessed, circling up above, free and unconstrained.
Misato followed his gaze. "Huh," she said. "Isn't that a... a falcon?"
"I don't know."
"Me neither, really. I think it's a cybird, though."
Ah, yes, thought Shinji. That sort of took the pleasantness off the naturalism; the knowledge that even a bird was nothing more than an autonomous surveillance system from the point of view of mankind, and something it would make use of as it saw fit. It was monitoring them even now, the cameras implanted into its body tracking their thermal signatures, and sending its signals back to its handling systems.
But that didn't mean that it wasn't still beautiful. Well, maybe not beautiful, but at least awe-inspiring in some way.
"But look," said Misato, gazing back towards the north. "Look at it."
Lit by the setting sun, London-2 was visible. The flattened, tiered pyramids of the above-ground arcologies were gleaning in the light, painted red by the sunset. In between their kilometre-wide bases, was a forest of interconnected skyscrapers and apartment buildings, sealed off from the world outside in their own way. Looking around, the boy could see the matt shapes of defence systems, breaking up the city and shaping it to resist assault; London-2, like all modern arcology complexes, was a fortress city. And that was not to mention the honey-comb of arcology domes under the city, protected by the surface and the armour plating or, even deeper, the Geocity, ten kilometres down. That they could build something like that, so deep... well, Shinji felt, in retrospect that was far more impressive than the mere fact that there was an artificial ecology down there.
"Wow," he said, softly. "It is impressive, isn't it."
The Major shook her head, sadly. "No," she said. "Look... look to the east. Wait a moment." She went back to the car, retrieving a pair of binoculars. "These'll help. And don't look at the sun directly," she added.
Shinji signed. He was looking to the east, and it wasn't like he was an idiot. But, yes, looking in the direction Misato had directed, up above the shining river of iron oxide and silver that was the Thames, he could see it. One of the arcologies was not shining in the light. No, it was matt grey, and through the lenses, Shinji could see the crumbling, broken outline. There were tiny brightly coloured dots flocking all over it; he thought for a moment that they might be birds, before he got a sense of the scale, and realised that they were maintenance vehicles, trying to hold the structure together, and remove the damaged sections, before they collapsed and damaged the largely intact skeleton of the structure. And looking around, he could see the trail of damage around the area, the later, smaller blast mark, and then the area where he had... done the thing.
"Is that..." he asked, already knowing the answer.
Misato nodded. "Yes. That's the place they used the warhead on." She sighed. "I know why we use arcanochromatically enhanced warheads. The variant-state electrons mean that you need less energy to set it off, and the colour does something funny to Migou and Storm monsters, even if they survive. I've seen it happen. But... " she sighed again, "I'm not always sure it's worth it. Look at the grey. Look what it does to stuff. They're going to have to ship it off to a dump-site, because it's useless. And... I just hope too much colour didn't enter the water system. It's just good it didn't rain."
"We were too close to that," said Shinji, in a small voice.
"Yes... oh, no, if you're worried about that, people only really get affected at the kind of ranges that mean you'll be dying from the blast." She turned to face him then, eyes gazing down from on top of the filter mask. "Listen to me, Shinji. Look at that. Look at how much damage that did. And it didn't kill it. But you... but you," said the Major, her eyes aflame, "you did. You saved the city, which meant that they didn't have to use any more of those things. And... 24 million people... that's like half a percent of the world population. They're all alive, thanks to you." She paused. "You did well," Misato added, the corners of her eyes crinkling up.
They stood together in silence, gazing out over the city, as the sun set.
"Come on," said Misato. "Let's go home."
~'/|\'~
Misato, as it turned out, lived in one of the deeper domes, which stacked like honeycomb under the surface (though still far above the Geocity). A cluster of apartment buildings made a series of concentric circles around a central garden-square, the architecture all too typical of 2070's neo-post-classicism; the structures vaguely Mesopotamian in their stepped pyramid design, but cast in the whites of marble and in steel and glass. The dome and apartment security was rather impressive, too.
"Oh, this is a fairly common place for higher ranking people in the Foundation or some of the IPcorps to live," explained Misato to his question, once they had cleared the inevitable blood scans. "It's a bit of pain, but I... and you, too, were always going to have to put up with it, here." She paused. "I haven't been able to get the rest of your stuff shipped over," she explained, with a slight awkwardness, "but that should be coming soon, right? And, uh, I have been kinda busy the last few days, so, the apartment might be a bit of a mess."
The door slid open. Shinji paused, before stepping in. "May I come in?" he said, almost reflexively, in his native Japanese.
Misato smiled at him, widely. "This is your house from now on," she replied, in the same language.
He stepped across the threshold. "Well, I'm back," he said, softly.
"Yes, you are. Now, come on," Misato said, hefting the bag of shopping she'd picked up in between the... 'flight' was still, unfortunately, the best word he had come up with to describe it, and actually getting here, "You'll want to put this in the fridge."
The boy paused. Shouldn't that be your job? I don't even know where the fridge is?
"It's on the right. Go on through... it's a fridge. It's kinda obvious."
That was a lie. That is, insomuch as it was obvious. It was, in fact, obscured by masses of plastic crates, the kind that any civilian nanofactory could make cheaply, and in large numbers, and the sheer number of bottles of various alcoholic drinks which littered almost every available surface.
Shinji could feel his skin crawl at the sight of all that mess.
It's not like it's even hard, he thought. Just dump the rubbish in the nanofactory, and it'll be broken down, and you get the raw materials back. He could even see the bulk of the machine, tucked away in a smaller room off the kitchen. Can she really not be bothered?
Of course, he didn't say any of this out loud. But if he was living here, then there would have to be some changes. Gingerly, he poked at the pile of stuff on the table, clearing some space for the bags, so he could unpack properly, and swung open the door of the nearest of the two fridges.
There was beer. There was ice. There were bottles of various sauces and spicy things. The grinning man on the Planetary Hot had a large thumbprint stain over his torso.
Oh... yuck. She really must have no sense of taste. The actual food in the fridge was the cheapest, blandest open-source stuff you could find, the kind of thing that only poor students, or people who were morally opposed to IP locks and were bad at finding alternatives on the Grid ate. Slaps of greyish-pink-white protein in plastic containers, the kind that you'd take whole out of a nanofab, and slice off when you wanted to use it. Sacks of noodles, and, worse, they were the ones made pre-cooked, that you just heated up, the insides of their bags coated with starch that crackled when he swatted them aside. Greenish fibre-mash, that somehow managed to have the texture of something organic while lacking anything specific. And nothing that they'd bought, looking through the bags, was a valid meal; it was all side dishes and more beer and/or sauces.
Shinji shuddered, and patted for his PCPU. Well, at least he'd bought some proper saved templates, and some good-quality raw material designs, saved in the... internal... memory... of... his...
Damn. Hello, bad quality food. Must remedy this. Fast. Or will lose will to live.
"I've finished changing! You can go make yourself at home, your room's first on the left... or is it second. Oh, I'm sure it doesn't matter." Misato stepped into the kitchen, dressed in... well, she was decent. Decentish. "I think it's time to start cooking!" she declared.
The lack of a thunderclap or howling of wolves in the background just showed, in Shinji's opinion, that reality did not have a proper sense of dramatic necessity.
The food was not actually as bad as he expected, as he stared at the bowl of green and greyish-yellow and pink before him. It was worse, because it was mixed in with a bright orange and a dull red that had blended in a way, he shivered, looked a lot too much like LCL for his stomach to really handle. Just looking at it bought to mind the metal-and-oil-and-something-else taste, and that thick texture filling his lungs and stomach and...
At least he had managed to grab some of the prawn crackers before Misato had smeared blue all over them. He was currently contemplating making a play for the vegetable-rice which, despite the red poured on the top, didn't look too inedible, compared to the pink stuff on the meat she'd bought, which even the smell of had left him clutching for a glass of water.
"Well, eat up!" she demanded of him, already cracking open another can of beer.
Now, if I were some kind of Machiavellian genius, he thought, I would have some kind of ploy to deal with this. The grey protein floated in the noodle soup. Okay, well, let's take a look at my priorities here. I know that the protein is going to be bland and functional, as are the noodles. I don't want to eat the fibre-mash, because that stuff... well, it'll keep you alive, but on the other hand, it's sort of disintegrated in the soup, so it might not be so bad, as it's declumped. The sauce is right out, because nothing that's called 'Planetary Hot' is ever a good idea to eat, and that colour... bleargh.
Well, here goes. Like a falling eagle in pursuit of a job as a prophetic symbol, his chopsticks snatched up a snake-like mass of noodles. The metaphor broke down at that point, because his mouth did not resemble a cactus, not even topologically, but, nevertheless, he ate them.
The mix of tastes was interesting. To a forensics expert, certainly. And if he closed his eyes, they didn't look LCL-coloured, which made them almost palatable. Emphasis on the 'almost'.
"Oh, come on, don't be a wimp," he heard. "The sauce is the best bit! And you need to eat properly. After all, you're just out of hospital!"
And I'd really rather not go back there, he thought, with a hint of vitriol.
He opened his eyes to find that he was staring down her top, as she leant towards him. He quickly lowered his eyes to the bowl, and fished out a chuck of protein, swallowing it with a weak grin in her direction, which he tried very hard not to turn into a wince.
"Good. I don't want you to wither away, after all," Misato said. She flushed slightly. "And I'm not just saying that as the Operations Manager for Project Evangelion," she added hastily.
A thought that had been nagging at the boy raised itself again. "Why are there so many Japanese people involved in the Project?" he asked. "I mean, there..."
Misato flapped a hand, narrowly avoiding slopping beer from the can it held. "No, I get it. Was originally going to be in Toyko-3, that Geocity. But, you know, they decided... some time ago, ten years ago, maybe, that the way that the threat from the Storm, the way that Leng just ate Tibet, and kept spreading... well, it was too dangerous." She shook her head, a darker expression on her face. "And that was before the Fall of China, back in '86," the Major added, in a morose tone quite out of keeping with her normal voice. "It was very worrying then."
"I... I suppose that makes sense that they moved it, then. But... didn't you object at all to having to move everything. I mean, wouldn't it make everything more difficult." He smiled. "I mean, it must have been a pain to move the Evangelion all the way here."
Misato glared at him, though narrowed eyes. That... that had probably been the wrong thing to say. Then, quite deliberately, she slopped some beer onto the boy. "I'm not that old," she said, her tone outraged. "I... I was still at uni then, I'll have you know! Not much older than you are now!"
"Uh... sorry." Wait! Why am I apologising! You just splashed beer in my face! If anything, you should be saying sorry to me!
"Eh, it's all right. I can see that you were using the group 'you', and so not at all suggesting that I'm that old. Were you?"
"Of... of course not." Hag. Wait, no, should I be thinking that? Probably not. That's a bit extreme. Mentally, I'm sorry, Misato, but I'm not saying that out loud, because then I'd have to admit that I thought it, and I don't want to be splashed in the face with beer again.
"Then you should probably go clean yourself up, then. There should be some fresh clothes in one of the rooms... I can't remember which I dumped them in, and there should be a bath ready. It should be free, now."
Shinji nodded, and got up. Actually... that hadn't gone as badly as he might have thought. Sure, he may have got some beer sloshed onto him, but at least he hadn't needed to eat the food. So, with a bit of luck, Misato would be selfish, and eat the rest, and then he could go prepare himself something bland and functional from the ingredients in the fridge; something that hadn't been ruined by the addition of too much flavouring.
Wait, what had she meant by 'should be free, now'?
Sitting back, her third beer in hand, Misato heard the scream from the bathroom. Oh yeah. No, wait, he should have seen him by now. Or had he?
She shrugged. Well, they'd probably met now.
"Misato!" she heard the desperate call. "There's... there's a giant albino p-p-penguin in the bathroom."
"Oh, that's just Pen-Pen," she called back. "He's a lodger."
"H-he's not letting me out of the corner!" was the desperate-sounding response. "He's... he's staring at me!"
"Oh, that's just because he doesn't have very good eyesight," she called. Should she get up? No, not really, she thought, as she leant across, to take the remaining prawn crackers. "He's just getting to recognise you. Just flap at him with your hands if he's being a pain."
"I... I really, really don't want to move my hands. He might go for me. They're guarding..." Shinji paused, "...something very important. Do birds eat... uh, sausages?"
"Well, they certainly eat worms," Misato called back, with a grin.
"You're not helping!" There was a note of panic in the boy's voice.
Misato sighed. She'd probably extracted the most comedy that she could out of the situation. Reaching for the toothpicks, she extracted a chunk of protein which had got stuck, as she leant forwards, scooping some food onto Shinji's plate, before putting it on the floor. "Pen-Pen," she called out, "Food! Also, beer!"
There was a noise which sounded remarkably like "Wark!", and the monochrome bulk of an Antarctican Urbanised Albino Emperor Penguin came barrelling through, red eyes filled with hunger, and decended upon the plate. There were, indeed more "Wark" noises, as its atavistic tooth-like ridges that ran along its beak got to work on the food. There was a pause in the noise, as he stopped, to squint up at his mistress.
"Wark."
Misato nodded. "Oh, right. Sorry." There was the sound of her breaking the seal on the can of beer, before she passed it down. A clawed wing-hand took the can, and put it down next to the plate. "Pen-Pen, that was Shinji. Don't hassle him, please."
"Wark?"
"Oh, yes."
"Wark? Wark-wark."
"Yes, he'll be here for a while."
"Wark?!"
"Of course not!" Misato shook her head. "I... I don't... it doesn't..."
"Wark."
"Oh, right."
Shinji lay back in the bath, and listened to the insanity outside the locked bathroom door. This... wasn't what he expected. Not the fact that there was an Antarctican Urbanised Albino Emperor Penguin living with him. That wasn't anything that anyone could expect reasonably. If he had expected anything, it was that he might be placed with someone like his foster mothers. Not like... this woman. Whoever had thought that she was a good carer for a teenage boy should probably lay off the hallucinogens, and stop listening to the green elephants.
Still... Misato might be okay. I don't think she's a bad person. He paused. Well, she has no sense of what's good food, and is a slob, and, when we get down to it, is sort of responsible for using me as a child soldier. So, she's sort of a bad person. But that's sort of her job... wait, the cooking and laziness has nothing to do with that. So... well, she's no worse a person than most people. Except most people don't use child soldiers.
Well, she's not my father.
~'/|\'~
The two figures stood on the hovering platform, high above the Evangelion bays. Below them Unit 01 was covered in moving figures, the remote controlled drones under the control of the Ouranos systems, as it prioritised sections for manual repair, and ran containment protocols. Beside it, on the other side of the massively reinforced wall, Unit 00, obscured by the bright-orange and raw metal of the emergency restraint Type-Null armour stood. Its back was exploded outwards, deconstructed as a team pulled apart its power systems, trying to fix the flaw that had prevented proper deactivation.
"How was Rei?" asked Ritsuko, softly, lowering the exo that she had been working on. Gendo merely stared down, through obscured eyes. The scientist couldn't tell which of the Evangelions he was looking at, though.
There was an uncomfortable silence.
"You went to the hospital today, didn't you?" she asked.
Gendo did not look at her. "She'll be able to move independently in 23 days. The new eye will be functional in 15. I have taken actions to ensure that she will remain useful during that time period." He paused. "Less recuperation would have been needed, had she not been moved." The last words were not 'admitted', nor were they 'muttered'. They were merely 'said', in the same, clinical tone.
"It's for the best that we didn't have to use Unit 00 in the Type-Null," Ritsuko remarked, glancing back down at her thread. For once, her harcontacts were off, her pupils and irises no different from any unmodified person's.
"The Council of Representatives backed me fully in this," Gendo said, ignoring her. "Even Research, though it pained her. Our allies on the Council have agreed that we should try to keep all the Units operational; we have all the valid RTE exemptions."
"If only one hadn't been in Vegas..."
"Yes. That was an... annoying loss. Though it was expendable, assets should not be wasted like that."
Ritsuko paused. "Have... have you talked with Herkunft yet?" she asked. "After what happened..."
"Yes. I have a meeting with the Director on the 27th. She is... concerned, too."
"She is afraid what happened eight years ago will happen again." It was not a question.
"Undoubtedly." Gendo paused, a deliberate silence. "Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich," he said, softly, as he stared down at the arcanocyberxenobiological monstrosities below.
~'/|\'~
Staff Sergeant Grigol Marikiev lay up at the ceiling, and stared blankly up at the darkness.
His hand crept to the side, and slid the dimmer switch up, until the darkness was banished, leaving a grey. Besides him, Ponaya rolled over in his sleep, and muttered to himself. Grigol ignored him. He was pretty sure that he wasn't going to be sleeping tonight. He hadn't slept properly yesterday, either.
Or the night before that.
He was certainly going to have to talk about it at his next PsychEval. He sat up, and rubbed one tired eye with the back of his hand. Did they have any sleeping tablets left? A check in the bathroom cupboard, up high, revealed that, no, the packet was empty.
He could run out and get some. There was a diagnostic booth nearby, as there was near all military housing. The Limited Artificial Intelligence would certainly give out weak sleeping tablets, and it would automatically flag it for his next PsychEval.
The man let out a grunt. Like he was going to forget to mention that.
He crept downstairs, feet light upon the pale carpeting, and, scrabbling at the wall, flicked the lights on. Ponaya wouldn't be able to hear the tap from down here, would he? Probably not.
The water was cold against his skin. He felt flushed, overheating. Staring at his reflection in the darkened window revealed puffy, bloodshot eyes, obvious even at a glance.
There was some paracetamol in the medical bag in the kitchen, wasn't there? Or there might be some sleeping pills.
"Holding position," Zaly had reported in, from her Type-M059-X main battle tank. This had been followed by reports from the rest of his squadron.
"Hold fire," he had reminded them. "Don't fire until authorisation comes from Command, even if we're fired on."
"Yeah," his own gunner had muttered, from her pod above him. "Don't want to draw the ilumihamobi's attention.
He had reprimanded her with a brief word, but she had been right. It was horrible, parked here, A-Pods slowly inching their way along, tracking the beast. It was a dark silhouette in the twilight, a patch of nothingness that blocked the own fell radiance of that sun on its chest. It had not been moving much; it had been almost as if it was looking for something.
Oh God, let there be sleeping pills.
There were none.
The urgent orders had come through, and they had been forced to move, as, suddenly, the blackness of the Harbinger had welled and swelled into a tumultuous wave of unreality. The Type-M059-X and Type-M055 MBTs had disengaged from their low, ground-hugging combat tactics, and given chase, more akin to pre-arcanotechnology helicopter gunships than a tracked tank.
The useless medicine bag slipped out of his suddenly slack hands, and clattered to the ground, the contents spilling all over the place with a rattle and a clatter, the pills inside their containers bounding around with a noise like dice.
Following in that terrible smooth region that the dark-wave gave, the electrical discharges of the reneutralising air arcing harmlessly off the hardened shell of the hovertanks, had been unpleasant. Buffeted by the air-currents, chasing something that he could barely perceive, so heavy had been the autocensors' marks; he never wanted to go through it again. He never wanted to remember it again.
With a muffled curse, he grabbed a beer from the fridge. And paused, and put it back, and went in search of something harder.
There had been other units, waiting where the thing had reformed, and, on the battlefield map displayed on his optical jack, there had been air units holding place above the battlefield.
And there had been the other thing. It was not like the Harbinger; it was manufactured, in the splotched, split colours of human camouflage. But... if it had been smaller, he would have said that it was an Engel. He had served with Engels before, even if they were a bunch of over-promoted, arrogant creepy wierdos with thousand-yard stares, and those blatant cybernetics on their spine that, he was sure, was part of the reason they were... off.
That had been a difficult break-up, in retrospect.
But that thing... it had been too large, for one. Even the biggest Engels, the Seraphim and Chashmalliam (and they were the superheavies) would only have reached up to its thighs. At most. God. It had to have been forty metres tall, at least.
And the Harbinger had grasped it, and it wasn't fighting back.
Grigol sat down heavily in front of the television, and took a mouth of the... he'd picked up a bottle of konbutwihyohi, and it burned like the blazes when going down. That... that had probably been a mistake, he thought, as he blinked. This was the stuff which could be used to make a Molotov cocktail or sterilise a wound. The stuff that you didn't need to put in a clean glass.
He winced, as he took another swig. No, he hadn't made a mistake. This was exactly what he needed.
Slipping on a pair of arglasses (he couldn't be bothered to connect his optical jacks up), he bought up the control panel. After all, the so-called television was just another terminal for his Grid profile. Turning down the volume, he flicked to the main news, and took a smaller mouthful as soon as he saw what they were still showing.
Liars. That's what they were, liars. There hadn't been any Engels involved. He'd have seen them. Which meant, by (drunken) deduction, that that thing hadn't been an Engel.
as it went flying, backwards, following a trajectory that was wrong to the eye. Grigol had mourned, as his heart fell, because they'd actually been doing damage to the Harbinger, and the armoured not-Engel had managed to weaken it, with that close-up attack on that red... red, scarlet, crimson...
Gagging, Grigol Marikiev dribbled what remained of the burning alcoholic drink, as he bent over, gasping with sudden remembered nausea. A wave at the control panel turned the screen off, and he sat in the darkness, breath ragged, the bottle held at his side. He had to get out of the house. It was cramped in here. Get to somewhere else. Maybe one of the other domes, one of the ones that didn't follow the terrestrial day-night cycle. Get out of the dark house, without waking Ponaya.
from in the crumbling arcology, something roared. No, 'roared' wasn't the right word. It was the gargling scream of a man with his tongue removed as his lungs filled with his own blood, of something young and yet old in pain. So much pain that there was no more intellect to spare; something bestial and horrible and terrible.
He shrugged on a jumper. It was the nearest to hand. No need for a shirt, and it wasn't like it ever got cold down in the underground arcology domes. Quite the opposite; they had to keep D-Dumps running to get rid of all the waste heat that so many power-hungry citizens produced. Shoes were slipped onto bare feet; his pyjama bottoms wouldn't draw any attention.
The bottle of konbutwihyohi was resealed, and slipped into a pocket. It was still useful. And with that done, Grigol lurched out the door, wiping his drenched forehead with a sleeve.
Then, there had been nothing, but a crashing, as the greyed out, arcanochromatically contaminated overground arcology slipped. Even the red light of the monster was gone, and the babble of Command's contradictory orders had filled his ears. Confusion had reigned.
It was better outside. Better in the hallway for the military apartment complex, brightly lit and cooler. Clutching at the railing, to overcome the feeling of vertigo, and the suddenly too-close drop, the man staggered along. It took him three jabs with a thumb to hit the lift button
the ground cracked, one of those smooth areas where the thing had done what it did which melted everything. The ground... everything shook, lethally grey buildings falling into shards of brittle colourlessness, the thick dust choking the air. The ground shook again, and again. There was something happening underground.
The man could barely stay upright by the time that he got to the ground floor. Everything was spinning. Pausing, he took a mouthful of the burning liquid. It seemed to help, in a not very helpful way. That is to say, although things stabilised, the nausea only worsened, as the fluid stung his mouth. He only managed to swallow about half of it, the rest dribbling out through lips it hurt to close, numbed by the alcohol.
Wincing, he felt his lips. The red of blood could be seen on his hands, even through tear-filled eyes, and the taste of iron was now a necrotic undertone to the ethanol taste of the konbutwihyohi. He'd bit his own lips or tongue or something. Didn't matter.
and then the pair emerged from the ground, locked in an embrace, rolling, rolling, a pair of brawling gods cut from their father's stomach. Poisedon's hands beat down upon the black skin of Hades, before Pollux got one lamprey-tipped finger into the guts of Castor, and sent it arcing once again through the air, tumbling helplessly as it smashed through buildings and crushed armoured units. The fire from the tanks and the aircraft was almost meaningless in the fight between the two behemoths; the sun-bright beams from the Type-M059-X experimental main battle tanks only chipping at the flesh of the thing, only for the void-flesh to regrow, twisted and broken.
The figure of the Harbinger was barely humanoid any more, as the humanoid symmetry was broken. It was a monstrosity of warped, cancerous unflesh, those bone-like protrusions shattered and smeared across its surface, tenebral blood-fluid oozing from its flesh. Right on the top, by its right arm, was an entire section torn out, with what looked like teeth marks scoring it.
The bottle fell to the ground, the slow glug of emptying fluid an echo to the gloing of the resin as it rolled across the floor.
Oh God. Grigol patted his pockets for his PCPU. He needed help. And he succeeded in turning up nothing. Of course. It was in his trousers. Back in the room.
Slumping down on the floor, the man stared up at the light. It was good, right? It was light. It wasn't dark. Not dark like the monsters. And not red light, either... proper white light.
white light.
Shimmering, glimmering crystalline light. Silver and silksteel and silent sussurations that sang in his skull and spoke of the silence that stood just out of sight.
No. Oh no.
oh yes.
The not-Engel pulled itself to its feet. It was slick with some kind of dark ichor, flowing freely from its punctured eye and the cracks all along its arms, and the gut wound from which fragments of flesh hung freely. It opened its maw again, though, diamond-teeth contaminated with the shadow-flesh of the Harbinger, and roared its dying, gurgling scream, the hydraulics in its jaw gnashing and twitching. Lowering its head, leading with the vicious horn, it charged at its foe again, claws on too-long arms slick with the mixed blood of the two monsters. If its arm was damaged, it was ignoring it.
No. Please. No. I don't want to remember this. Let me forget. Please.
it happened. Why deny it?
Because...
...one of the Harbinger's arms was entirely useless by now, swollen and bloated; more akin to some leg afflicted with elephantiasis than any kind of manipulator. It managed to raise the other arm, though, and the line of force it had used to slice apart the battleship suddenly was, again.
It hit the not-Engel in the chest, and... stopped. The oncoming monster screamed, but it was a scream of rage, of hunger, not one of pain, and leapt upwards, shifting in mid-air so that its clawed hands and open maw were pointed towards its prey.
And there was light
Not the light. Wrong! Wrong! Unclean!
He had seen the diorama, even through the autocensor. On the left, stuck in mid-air, the human monster, unmoving. On the right, the alien thing, that one remaining useful hand held upright, palm forwards. In between them... the light. A wall of broken diamond, making its own light and letting light shine through it, to make a lattice of should-not-be-yet-is.
The not-Engel reached out, with a gesture that was too subtle for a beast, yet was not something a man would do. Almost gently, it penetrated the brightness with the long, thin claws on its damaged right hand; pale, ichor-soaked flesh prominent in the bright light. That apparent gentleness was nothing but a lie; with a sudden burst of violent speed that left the air screaming in chorus with the triumphant agony of the armoured beast, it tore open the light. Sudden dark, almost vein-like channels ran through the adamantine brilliance, before it ceased to be, in a ripple of force that propagated out, knocking the hovertanks around like toys.
The not-Engel slammed into the Harbinger, bowling it over and over and over, the metal fiend obviously in control of the grapple this time.
Grigol clutched at his skull, palms clutched to his eyes, as he writhed around on the floor. He... he didn't remember this! He hadn't seen it! Not like this! The autocensor had been in the way! He couldn't have seen it.
evangelion was hungry. Kneeling on the chest of the Harbinger, it began its butchery. The claws, blades shimmering with the light of broken diamonds as the D-Fields were forcefully activated to supplement its arsenal, found their way into the void-body of Asherah, levering out the bony growths, tossing the fragments of corpus away, as the rigid definition of the Harbinger softened, resembling the wave-form in the areas where the Evangelion had begun to work. But that was not its main goal. The arcanocyberxenobiological warmachine slammed its horned forehead into the radiance on the centre of the chest, over and over and over again, prominences erupting from each impact, squirting disturbingly vital jets out with each impact, which burst over the landscape, painting the greyed, crumbling landscape in Picassan tones.
Something, a single something, hung from the Evangelion's mouth; something disturbingly organic, almost akin to a tongue. But if it was a tongue, then it hung down far too far, and writhed and spasmed with an intent which seemed conscious.
I don't know this! Writhing, twisting, spasming! Horrible!
One desperate last blow from the Harbinger missed its intended target, as the Evangelion ducked, the blow catching one of the shoulder-fin things, snapping it off, and sending it spinning, like a deranged coin, off. The Evangelion caught the arm above its head, and, with a twist at the waist, first broke it in one place, then at a second. With a malevolent slowness, Unit 01 worked the breaks against each other, twisting and turning in the gouts of tenebral fluid that escaped from the thing.
It grew bored.
One blow to the already-damaged shoulder severed the limb, tossed away idly, before the beast got back to its fun.
Grigori was in a ball, sobbing freely. His body felt wrong in every way. Crawling blindly along the ground, he mewed for anyone to find him, on hands bloodied and scraped.
fun indeed. Perhaps that was too much for Harbinger-3, too much for that which mankind had dubbed Asherah. Twisting, it wrapped its bloated remaining limbs around the Evangelion, expanding and swelling, losing coherence as it assumed and consumed Unit 01 under unshaped darkness. The alien organism lost all cohesion, and detonated, propagating outwards, twisting and deforming anything it touched. A vast crater was its gift to the Earth, a perfectly spherical pit of destroyed matter, one last abuse.
Nothing could survive that.
Surely.
Surely?
The Evangelion raised back its head, both intact eyes aflame with a terrible actinic light in the darkness, and screamed its triumph to the universe at large.
Its armour was damaged.
Its flesh was mutilated.
But it was alive.
Gloriously so.
They found Staff Sergeant Grigol Marikiev at 05:08, on the 24th of August, 2091, curled in a corner, out of sight of the cameras.
He had chewed out his own tongue.
He was not the only one so affected. The manifestations of the rapid-onset Aeon War Syndrome were by no means identical, of course. But in the patterns of self-mutilation, in the mutterings of those who could still speak, there were certain patterns. Certain themes.
It was to be expected, after all. The exposure to a Harbinger-grade entity was a terrible thing.
~'/|\'~
In the middle of the night, Shinji Ikari woke up on an unfamiliar bed, shivering uncontrollably, forehead slick with the sweat of nightmares.
Rapid, hollow pants filled the silent night air.
Hugging his legs close to his body, he stared at the light of the alarm clock, watching it tick away the seconds, shaving time from infinity.
What happened out there! What did it do? What did I do?
That was not the source of the terror.
I think I'm starting to remember.
~'/|\'~
The room, if indeed such a term could be used to describe an apparently infinite plane surface, was cold. Gendo Ikari did not let such things show though, even as he felt his blood freeze. It was only an illusion, anyway, he thought, as he stared at them, over the top of his steepled fingers, concealing his mouth. He wasn't actually physically here. And neither were they.
They. AHNUNG. They may once have had names, but now, it was best to think of them with mere identifying tags. Gendo actually had some fairly accurate guesses for their true identities, but that was all that they were; guesses. He didn't know for sure. But they were all, bar one, ancient. And that one, he was sure, was no longer even close to human.
White. Blue. Red. Green. Yellow. There were others, but only those five had deigned (as they would no doubt view it) to meet with him now.
White spoke.
"Your success against Harbinger-3 has been noted."
Green spoke.
"As has the collateral damage inflicted on the surrounding city, and which the Evangelion itself has suffered."
Blue spoke.
"Was it wise to give such a vital component to your son as a plaything?"
The contempt in the old man's voice was painted on his face, fringed beneath wisps of hair.
Gendo gazed back. "Such losses were inevitable. Now the NEGA is aware of the least of the dangers posed by the Harbinger-type entities, the Evangelions will be given free rein to deal with the threats."
Red spoke, her voice halting, not stuttering, but somehow distorted.
"Y-y-you are sssaying that it was inherently n-n-necessary." She paused. "Per-per-perhaps. But-but-but I do not believe that you... went about it in the m-m-most efficient manner. I think you-ou-ou were grandssstanding. That isss... highly inelegant."
Green spoke.
"Nevertheless, it has been deemed to be adequate."
White spoke.
"Satisfactory."
Blue spoke.
"Tolerable."
Yellow spoke.
"What must be done is necessary."
Red spoke.
"Y-y-you know what wasss so un...expectedly di-di-discovered by the... fools of preceding generationssss."
Green spoke.
"On Callisto."
Yellow spoke.
"On Pandora."
Blue spoke.
"On Europa."
White spoke.
"In Lemuria and Antartica."
Gendo stared impassively at them; no emotions showing. To an outside observer, it was as if he could have waited a thousand years for their answer. Certainly, he was not about to let his inner feelings seep out in from of them.
Blue spoke.
"The goal has been deemed one worthy of any sacrifice which does not compromise the end-objective."
There was a pause, as if some kind of internal discussion was going on, in a circuit he did not have access to. In fact, that was almost certainly what was happening.
White spoke.
"Your progress has been deemed satisfactory. This meeting is over."
One by one, the other figures, lit in their colour, vanished into the blackness of this infinite plane.
White remained, and spoke again.
"Gendo Ikari. You are instructed to ensure the success of the Human Iteracy Project. It is not possible for you to back out now. The only valid route is success." The final figure vanished.
Gendo smiled; smirk hidden behind white gloves.
Are these old fools so blinkered that they believe that their way is the only way.
Or are they just too scared to step from their path?
Well.
They will be shown another way.
~'/|\'~
Shockz
You might see it coming...but it'll be too late.
- Location
- At least a mile high
- Pronouns
- no
[GlaDOS]Wheeeeeeeeeee.[/GlaDOS]
I've got to say, so far AEE is much more readable than the corresponding bits of ANE. Less technobabble, more story, while still building a consistent, interesting setting.
I wonder if Misato losing her sense of taste is still canon. Because now I feel bad about laughing at it in advance.
Also, good job at enhancing the "oh shit, I have to kill this thing?"-ness of Harbinger-3. Let's see if you can keep it up.
I've got to say, so far AEE is much more readable than the corresponding bits of ANE. Less technobabble, more story, while still building a consistent, interesting setting.
I wonder if Misato losing her sense of taste is still canon. Because now I feel bad about laughing at it in advance.
Also, good job at enhancing the "oh shit, I have to kill this thing?"-ness of Harbinger-3. Let's see if you can keep it up.
Shockz
You might see it coming...but it'll be too late.
- Location
- At least a mile high
- Pronouns
- no
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora_(moon)JonBerry said:I get Leumria and Antartica. But Callisto and Europa? Anything you can tell this person without access to the CTech sourcebooks about?
And Pandroa? Seriously? As in Avatar-Pandora?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callisto_(moon)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(moon)
Jonen C
F.M.D.G.
- Location
- Lincopense, Ostrogothia, Suecia
ES Updated: [Various noises which, under normal circumstances do not appear to be possible for a human to produce.]
--
Sheng-ji Yang is present in the ES worse... I mean verse.
--
"And if you believed that, then you might be interested in purchasing some prime real estate in Tibet."
Technically, that's not so bad a deal. Just have to evict the current occupants and burn the place down to bedrock... And preferably sterilize the bedrock as well, just to be sure.
--
The eleven most powerful people in the world. And Gendo Ikari is the most capable sorcerer amongst them... *Gulp*
--
/Sings: ...mankind will learn/new kinds of fear...
--
"Which meant that everything that had happened... had happened."
And anything which happened which had caused something else to happen, had caused something else to happen. Though, not necessarily in chronological order. What?
--
And we have Simon Tam... Oh holy shit... two by two/hands of blue/two by two/hands of blue/two by two...
--
... The chapter break is different. What hidden significance does this have? Ah, it denotes a flashback?
--
Fuyutsuki facepalms. Poor man. He does not deserve having to deal with this (though he deserves to die, undoubtedly).
--
--
... Doom of the Revenge of the Baroness of the Darkness of the West? Seriously? ... Awesome.
--
It seems that the OIS is dealing with a Stand Alone Complex... Possibly by design. Targeting the Third Children?
--
Misato Katsuragi: Speed Freek.
Also, Fuyutsuki is awesome, and he's not even in this scene!
--
"Well, she's not my father."
At least that's something.
--
...
--
[Query] [AHNUNG] [Red] [is] [SHODAN]
--
...oh my [REDACTED] it is full of [REDACTED]...
will should terrify amuse you.
I am surprised you didn't put Iapetus in there, though. But then again, the TMA are a bit to... benign... to work in the setting.
--
Sheng-ji Yang is present in the ES worse... I mean verse.
--
"And if you believed that, then you might be interested in purchasing some prime real estate in Tibet."
Technically, that's not so bad a deal. Just have to evict the current occupants and burn the place down to bedrock... And preferably sterilize the bedrock as well, just to be sure.
--
The eleven most powerful people in the world. And Gendo Ikari is the most capable sorcerer amongst them... *Gulp*
--
/Sings: ...mankind will learn/new kinds of fear...
--
"Which meant that everything that had happened... had happened."
And anything which happened which had caused something else to happen, had caused something else to happen. Though, not necessarily in chronological order. What?
--
And we have Simon Tam... Oh holy shit... two by two/hands of blue/two by two/hands of blue/two by two...
--
... The chapter break is different. What hidden significance does this have? Ah, it denotes a flashback?
--
Fuyutsuki facepalms. Poor man. He does not deserve having to deal with this (though he deserves to die, undoubtedly).
--
"To humans it is like staring at the sun. A blinding brightness that counceals a source of great power."
--
... Doom of the Revenge of the Baroness of the Darkness of the West? Seriously? ... Awesome.
--
It seems that the OIS is dealing with a Stand Alone Complex... Possibly by design. Targeting the Third Children?
--
Misato Katsuragi: Speed Freek.
Also, Fuyutsuki is awesome, and he's not even in this scene!
--
"Well, she's not my father."
At least that's something.
--
...
--
[Query] [AHNUNG] [Red] [is] [SHODAN]
--
...oh my [REDACTED] it is full of [REDACTED]...
As has been stated. The moon Pandora. If you are familiar with Eclipse Phase, thisJonBerry said:I get Leumria and Antartica. But Callisto and Europa? Anything you can tell this person without access to the CTech sourcebooks about?
And Pandroa? Seriously? As in Avatar-Pandora?
I am surprised you didn't put Iapetus in there, though. But then again, the TMA are a bit to... benign... to work in the setting.
Jonen C
F.M.D.G.
- Location
- Lincopense, Ostrogothia, Suecia
Actually, no. A comment on the nature of the AHNUNG ... representatives? And the peculiar speech... impediment? ... of AHNUNG Red.kingdragon said:
EDIT: Also: Lieutenant Epouvantable? Earth_Scorpion, explain yourself!
Jonen C
F.M.D.G.
- Location
- Lincopense, Ostrogothia, Suecia
It is not a "Door to Heaven", but that's the... right... general idea.JonBerry said:
In Eclipse phase, the Pandora Gates (named for the fact that the first one discovered was located on Saturns moon Pandora) are... Well... Gateways. Of unknown origin, and unknown design (and quite possibly constructed out of strange matter), leading to/from parts unknown. Gatecrashing, that is stepping through a gate set to previously unexplored coordinates, is something of an extremely high risk, potentially extremely high gain, adventure/sport/suicidal gamble/scientific exploration. A few of the most successful or lucky (the difference being that the merely lucky only survive) gatecrashers have even found themselves on worlds suitable for colonization, and mankind have thus established footholds beyond the solar system.
Quite likely, this would be something close to the Migous worst nightmare (not really, but a really bad one at least, almost certainly a worst case scenario), if they are imported into this setting...
Of course, we can guess that the Migou probably took control of the Outer System Sites, possibly going to extreme lengths to sterilize any human contamination, and they are also likely to have the Antarctic Site under complete lockdown.
And the Leng Site... Well, I think we can all guess what is happening there.
EDIT: On reflection, that sort of deserves a spoiler tag.
Shockz
You might see it coming...but it'll be too late.
- Location
- At least a mile high
- Pronouns
- no
Shockz
You might see it coming...but it'll be too late.
- Location
- At least a mile high
- Pronouns
- no
Brief question about the Nazzadi language--how are the vowels pronounced? It's something that's bugged me a bit, since the language is supposed to be "phonetic" and yet it uses vowel "y"s right alongside the "i"s...
Jonen C
F.M.D.G.
- Location
- Lincopense, Ostrogothia, Suecia
In Swedish, at least, the "y" sound is made with back of the tongue, while the "i" is made with the tip of the tongue. (Erm... At least I think that correctly describes how the sound is made... Excuse the lack of proper terminology.)Shockz said:
In English - *goes to dig up linguistics papers* ... Well, "i" is most commonly made high to mid and to the front of the mouth, while "y" is more of a diphthong, and also made low in the back of the mouth. (Note: I am intentionally not using the [] denoting the international phonetic alphabet.)
Well... Come to think of it, I'm probably not the person to answer that question, seeing as how I've yet to actually sit down and do the coursework for linguistics...
EDIT: Looking at it... A at the end of a word in Nazzadi (oy, vy) is probably pronounced like a diphthong...
The Sandman
So Zetta Slowpoke
- Location
- Wherever I am, which isn't where I'm not
Well, if you want a less benign Iapetus you can always go with the version in Eclipse Phase.Jonen C said:
I'm far more worried about Hyperion, though, because the combination of "landings impossible due to rotation being chaotic to the point of unpredictability" and "nigh-godlike AI to work things out anyway" to me equals "a perfect place to hide things".