Cast in Gold - Evangelion/Exalted
- Thread starter Shyft
- Start date
GreggHL
Engaging hilarity engine/air intake
- Location
- Daejeon, Republic of Korea
Which probably makes Shinji less attractive to Asuka, because now he's cheating.
I must disagree with you here.
GeshronTyler
Kleiner Giftzwerg
Several of the NGE interpretations on this site and probably on SB , take the view that canon Asuka was interested in Shinji (in a Tsundere fashion), but wanted him to "push back", to prove his own interest. For reasons of plot, much angst and trauma was suffered instead. Cast-in-Gold Asuka certainly still seems to find Shinji interesting , and challenging, if not as a direct rival as an EVA pilot. So far, everbody is basically "friendzoned" in regards to everyone else, though perhaps the terms "phillia" and "storge" apply better, to the extent we understand the therein described concepts.
Certainly, between the bathing area on the roof, and Shinji's massages, there has been plenty of teasing, but that is as far as things have gone physicalky.
Certainly, between the bathing area on the roof, and Shinji's massages, there has been plenty of teasing, but that is as far as things have gone physicalky.
GeshronTyler
Kleiner Giftzwerg
Wait, I thought Shinji already had a girlfriend in this story.
And yes, he does have a girlfriend. But such distinctions I think tend not to count as much inthe Exalted Millieu.
grommile
nasty-minded old cynic
- Location
- NERV-Mercia
- Pronouns
- Traditional/Animate
I'm pretty sure that's the standard interpretation of canon Asuka.
So? It wouldn't be noticeable loss if she was removed from story via non violent/shady/tragic means. More interaction between Asuka and Shinji if they went this way would be plus.Wait, I thought Shinji already had a girlfriend in this story.
GreggHL
Engaging hilarity engine/air intake
- Location
- Daejeon, Republic of Korea
Depends on the type of exalted milieu. Although can you really see CiG Shinji taking the Harem route?
- Location
- National Capital Region, USA
Well, he pretty much did during his Limit Break, so it's not hard to see, although that wasn't exactly a demonstration of it being a good or healthy idea. At least not while having a Solar Freakout.
At same time Limit Break is just exaggeration of normal behavior and traits with tint of insanity so smaller one is would be well in established character.
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
Wait, I thought Shinji already had a girlfriend in this story.
The important thing to remember is that Shinji is not a Creation Exalt. He is a Japanese Post Impact Earth Exalt.
So 'Milieu' counts for the tone of the story, but where the characters are coming from also counts~
Pff. Ayumi still has her part to play. I don't even intend on her being a damsel, that'd be boring!
I'm incredibly meh on her very existence and really don't care about what she will do, I don't care enough to summon dislike for pairing reasons.
So I stand by my opinion about her.
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
Something else I want to point out: The French Cyborg Ninjas kicked off on a Monday, sometime in September. That was near the end of Chapter 38.
The Inspectors showed up around 9 AM. Their cover got blown in Ritsuko's lab about 2 hours later. The rest of the conflict over Chapter 39-40 took maybe 3 additional hours
The Inspectors showed up around 9 AM. Their cover got blown in Ritsuko's lab about 2 hours later. The rest of the conflict over Chapter 39-40 took maybe 3 additional hours
GreggHL
Engaging hilarity engine/air intake
- Location
- Daejeon, Republic of Korea
Actually, a Limit Break is more along the lines of 'Heracles has just murdered his family.' It's not an exaggeration, it's a pressure release valve where you give in to all the things you'd never do in your day-to-day life. Limit Breaks ruin plans and turn empires to ashes.
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
Pretty much what gregg said- though I also should take a second to go into Limit Breaks a bit more...
Basically, I did it wrong in CiG. 'Wrong', in the sense that a Limit Break should be a logical extension of what the character already would do, or has denied doing. Either way though, it is a subtle mania, not a cartoonish, cackling madness.
Under my new understanding, a limit breaking Solar should come off like someone who had a really bad day. The legendary excesses of the prehistory of Exalted are the result of psychological warping over centuries of breaking and recovering.
Like, hypothetically, if I rewrote the limit break chapters, Shinji wouldn't have gone Harem-Break. Instead he would have acted as if he were drunk. Inebriated, unconcerned with the consequences of his actions and instead focused on satisfying whatever primary directive he's feeling like pursuing. At that point in the story, I'd likely revise it a bit to put Shinji in the mindset of 'I want to stop feeling lonely'.
Which basically means you have a psychologically drunk Solar trying to make friends with people, as if he were high on amphetamines. The things he'd do and say are things that are already there in his mind, even if unvoiced, but not completely a-causal.
Limit Break was inspired by Achilles and Hercules, and they can lead to sitting in your tent or murdering your family, but those are rare exceptions. @GreggHL is correct though that no matter what, a Limit Break is supposed to disrupt your plans.
Basically, I did it wrong in CiG. 'Wrong', in the sense that a Limit Break should be a logical extension of what the character already would do, or has denied doing. Either way though, it is a subtle mania, not a cartoonish, cackling madness.
Under my new understanding, a limit breaking Solar should come off like someone who had a really bad day. The legendary excesses of the prehistory of Exalted are the result of psychological warping over centuries of breaking and recovering.
Like, hypothetically, if I rewrote the limit break chapters, Shinji wouldn't have gone Harem-Break. Instead he would have acted as if he were drunk. Inebriated, unconcerned with the consequences of his actions and instead focused on satisfying whatever primary directive he's feeling like pursuing. At that point in the story, I'd likely revise it a bit to put Shinji in the mindset of 'I want to stop feeling lonely'.
Which basically means you have a psychologically drunk Solar trying to make friends with people, as if he were high on amphetamines. The things he'd do and say are things that are already there in his mind, even if unvoiced, but not completely a-causal.
Limit Break was inspired by Achilles and Hercules, and they can lead to sitting in your tent or murdering your family, but those are rare exceptions. @GreggHL is correct though that no matter what, a Limit Break is supposed to disrupt your plans.
It's meant to disrupt but in such way that Solar and his Solar friends won't notice it as abnormal, otherwise they would take actions and probably remove Curse. Funnily enough Shinji did notice that he was acting abnormally which is more than most Elder First Age Exalts can claim, that's worth at least training time for rising of permanent essence by one.
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
So, I've been going over the notes and plans for the upcoming arcs, which is as some of you have guessed, a Raksha Invasion.
The invasion was originally planned to hit sometime shortly after Chapter 25. Then I had the VR arc, and it was supposed to happen after that, and then more stuff kept coming up, and I kept shuffling every ahead. I have gags and planned bits and such that were being thought of and brainstormed three or more years ago. Some of my slowness when writing chapters is acutally digging through my notes, finding these old ideas and polishing them up for the Now.
Yeah, having checked the older threads, Asuka was added to the cast with Chapter 24-25, which was posted around June 26th, 2012. I've been writing CiG since 2011. 15 or so chapters later, more than half the story by length (because the first 15 or so chapters are really short compared to my later ones), we finally got to this point, this shining mark on the horizon.
I'm looking forward to seeing where it leads, I hope you folks are too.
The invasion was originally planned to hit sometime shortly after Chapter 25. Then I had the VR arc, and it was supposed to happen after that, and then more stuff kept coming up, and I kept shuffling every ahead. I have gags and planned bits and such that were being thought of and brainstormed three or more years ago. Some of my slowness when writing chapters is acutally digging through my notes, finding these old ideas and polishing them up for the Now.
Yeah, having checked the older threads, Asuka was added to the cast with Chapter 24-25, which was posted around June 26th, 2012. I've been writing CiG since 2011. 15 or so chapters later, more than half the story by length (because the first 15 or so chapters are really short compared to my later ones), we finally got to this point, this shining mark on the horizon.
I'm looking forward to seeing where it leads, I hope you folks are too.
I, at least, am. I would very much like to see how this develops and how the world (and parties like SEELE) would react to a Raksha invasion, and what counter-measures they will be able to develop and how they will shine, etc. Also, Instrumentality plans are pretty much done with at this point, I think. Can't be God if extradimensional critters are trying to eat you.
SEELE: Are you kidding? That's the best reason to be God.
Fun as always. But I cannot help but imagine Asuka in Unit 02 staring down some guy with a daiklave, and calling a halt to pull her big sword out.
"Ha! You call that a knife?"
*drops eva-scale prog-knife inches from the poor guy*
"That's a knife!"
Chapter 41: Communication - Part 1
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
And so begins Chapter 41: Communication.
No italics, because 14,000 words or so. You'll see all that hotness in the ff.net update.
* * *
A lot changed in two weeks.
Beneath a night sky cast in vivid, glowing miasma, Tokyo-3 endured. The tallest towers of the Fortress City had fallen, shouted down as if the height was a blasphemous offense. Literally shouted, with screams and trumpet blasts that cracked steel and powdered concrete. Some city blocks stood undamaged, but not untouched. Others were gutted, raked with claws and gunfire. The structures insides spilled out onto the wide streets like urban viscera, or the pulpy innards of a smashed melon.
Street to street, men and women clung to their rifles, darting from cover to cover. They stuck to the shadows that moved, but there was no illusion or perception of safety. Fear hung in thick cloying sheets across the city, interspersed not with the sound of guns, but mad, howling cackles. Thunder rolled high above in the cloudless sky.
The cannons and silos of Tokyo-3 were silent.
Far below, a dozen soldiers of the JSSDF dove into a convenience store. As one the squad hurled themselves through windows and doors, over the shelves and into cover as a hundred and six flaming silver arrows hurled themselves. Turning, the soldiers gave their opponent gunfire in reply. Clad in armor of lapis lazuli, a tall and striking figure danced. From one hand trailed a saffron ribbon, and its cast shadows was yet more arrows. In it's other was a sword, and it turned that blade to the incoming fire.
The length of steel bent in a manner unthinkable, reaching out to swat and scoop up the bullets in a blinding flurry of glittering arcs. Their opponent eschewed the arrows, instead flicking its wrist and presenting the sword with neat stacks and rows of ammunition lined up along the flat of its blade. The soldiers sucked in a breath, caught between fear and hope as a shadow crossed over the world.
Evangelion Unit 01's foot came down upon the swordsman in one swift stomp. "Taken care of that one."
"Good! Are they alright?" Asuka's voice rang out across the radio and into his mind, simultaneously far and close, even if she was just a block away.
Shinji tugged fitfully on his butterfly controls as he glanced down at the wrecked storefront and cheering soldiers, urging his Eva to cooperate. "They're good! I'll catch up!"
Moving, Shinji and his Evangelion padded through the streets, hunkered down below the tops of buildings as his power cable trailed behind. Windowpanes rattled with each footstep, and he saw flashes of red and blue through the windows- Rei and Asuka. The offices were empty, devoid of people. Shinji felt his lips pull back into a frown as his thoughts wandered.
The first week had been a drawn out explosion of confusion and terror, expanding in a long and cloying wave across the city- all of Hakone. Once the sound and fury had spent, the hordes retreated into the cracks of the world, leaving what was left to roam without master or cause. Perhaps that was better than the alternative, or worse.
Looking around, he saw no sign of silver. Shinji focused his mind for the right pip on the map. "Nagisa-san, where are you?"
The new pilot's voice clicked through the radio, wound tight and calm. "Engaged, Ikari-kun! I believe I found the big one!"
Shinji wrenched at his controls and spun his Eva around, standing tall to peer over the buildings, just as he opened his mouth, Asuka beat him to the punch. "We're on our way- Misato!"
He couldn't see it, but Shinji imagined the finger pressing down on the button, just as the Major smiled. "Fire."
A few blocks over, a an intact armory building unfolded and showed its colors- rotary cannons and snub howitzers so he was told. They pivoted and unleashed tons-by-weight of firepower upon something he couldn't see, but the lights and concussive blasts lit the sky across the city, shattering windows by the thousands. Almost in answer, the city came alive with things. Emerald water poured from penthouses windows and balconies, while flower petals spilled from alleyways on alien winds. Those in turn heralded carpets of shields and sudden armies.
Tides of chittering, capering footmen and spindly little figures mired up around the Evangelion's feet, while the soldiers on the ground fired into the seemingly endless hordes. Shinji reared up and stomped, buckling the whole street and pulping ten thousand and ten of the things while the JSSDF squad gathered themselves up. Pounding through the wide boulevards, Shinji broke out into an open intersection. To his left he saw Rei and her Unit 00, and Asuka was at the left, running towards them both with her Eva's coat flapping in the wind.
With her coat unfurling into wings, the redhead shouted over the radio. "Rei, Ikari! I need a boost!"
Training had paid off, because Shinji didn't need to ask the obvious questions. He twisted on his heel and charged towards Rei before skidding to a halt where they both knelt and linked both arms. Unit 02 reached them an instant later and vaulted onto the crooks of their elbows while Shinji and Rei stood up and threw. The red Evangelion sailed into the air and across the city before crashing into something. A smoking, bruised patch of the night sky seemed to peel away before a fleshy, iridescent maw screamed at the offense.
While Asuka wrestled with the monster, Nagisa and his Unit 03 crawled out of the star-skinned creature's gullet with a huff. "This part is at least going to plan."
"I sure as hell hope so!" Asuka yelled, hanging on to the creature by the wide neck. "Keep your fields up everyone- watch for their kind of soul-fuckery!"
Rei helped Nagisa up, drawing a progressive spear from her back and handing it over before turning to Unit 01 with a cyclopean nod. "We should help with recovery."
"Rei's right!" The redhead stood up on the beast's shoulders, five times the height of an Evangelion. She reached behind her back and unleashed Wellenbrecher with an explosive-assisted draw. The swing terminated in the monster's nose. "Newbie and I've got this!"
Shinji nodded, unholstering his pallet rifle while Rei leaned into an armory building for a pair of progressive knives. "We're on it."
Wading through the oceans of invaders, Shinji and Rei shot, slashed and bludgeoned their way across the blocks towards one of the outlying city sections. Urban, dense, none of the buildings were taller than ten stories. None of them were on the retractable fortress blocks either. Five of the six personnel carriers had survived the journey above ground, while the sixth was a smoking wreck shot through with icicles. Taking a look out the corner of his Eva's eye, Shinji exhaled into the LCL. The shelter was intact, at least at first glance.
Rei nudged his arm and pointed back the way they came. "Incoming. Allow me."
Shinji could still see Asuka and Nagisa wrestling with the great beast in the distance, but much closer, a war host of the... smaller things surged out. One rode a gleaming serpent of shining crystal, with a cobra hood radiating out in a jagged, razor sharp sunburst while the others leaped from low-hanging cloud to cloud. Rei took the lead and readied her knives, along with her field. The volume of altered space shifted around the two of Evangelions, and the evacuating dependents behind them.
The snake-rider and mount slammed into the hardened field with a ringing tone like a wet-rimmed wineglass. While the beast and rider collapsed in a pile of coils, the cloud-jumpers leaped into the fray, raking tiger claws across the field. Ragged slashes were cut through the boundary, but Rei was ready for that, and so was Shinji. He brought his rifle up and squeezed off a burst, then another, filling the air with ordnance. Rei dropped her field at the same instant, letting the bullets slam into the howling tiger-men.
They did not die as expected.
Instead the cloud-jumpers sailed away into the distance, carried by the impact even as Shinji turned on the snake and rider, shattering it with a final burst. "Those last ones were immune!"
"We saw it Shinji." Misato's voice was warm, intent and focused. Alive. "Another for the 'bullshit' list. Evacuation's done in twenty seconds- get ready to return to base."
Shinji sighed and nodded at no one in particular. "Roger that."
A few minutes later, Asuka and Nagisa joined them, and the four Evangelions made the slow, cautious walk back to the retrieval point. As Shinji moved his Eva back into its cradle for the train ride back underground, he couldn't help but think.
A lot changed in two weeks.
* * *
Horaki Hikari shivered, and it was not from the cold.
To her left, her younger sister Nozomi clung to her side, trembling just as hard. Kodama the elder hovered behind, throwing her short arms around the both of them. The other hundred or so refugees were packed into the underground monorail, just shy of being canned sardines. Hikari felt her stomach clench, curling hard in on itself and groaning. After two weeks, it was a familiar sound.
For two weeks, Hikari held onto her sisters, ran herd on half of Class 2-A, and wondered when the screaming sky outside would fall silent. The shelter had been poor, a hardened bunker that kept the glittering rains and stranger things away, but had no food or water. By the third day of hunger pangs, men and women volunteered to brave the outside for supplies. After the survivors returned, they started drawing lotteries.
Outside, the train windows went dark to light in flickering strobes as the cars spiraled down through the armor layers and earth. Reaching down, she gave Nozomi's hand a reassuring squeeze and smiled, before pointing her to the window. The flashes started coming faster, and Hikari felt her ears start to pop. Within the tunnel, train switched from the bottom rail to the top, and sailed through the tunnel end. Light flooded the interior, and the Hikari heard the breath of every man, woman and child in that car catch in their throat. Not that she blamed them.
For them, it was the first time seeing the Geofront.
The train cars whispered down the suspended tracks, and nearly everyone forgot their conditions, the gauntness and exhaustion. They pressed up against the windows, fogging them up as they tried to drink in every detail. Nozomi peeled away from Hikari's side to join them. The middle daughter sighed and slumped against her older sister.
At the bottom floor station, soldiers ushered them out of the cars and into curtained off cubicles where white-coated medics waited. Hikari was told to peel out of her filthy school uniform and into clean sweatpants and a t-shirt. She nearly hugged the woman for it. Little capsules of salts and vitamins waited alongside glasses of lukewarm water, but it all tasted like the best thing she'd ever had.
Then she was pushed out into the crowd, having been given a clean bill of health. Standing on tiptoes, she looked for her sisters- Nozomi's little bob haircut and Kodama's officious ponytail were easy to spot. The crowds were churning, looking everywhere they could at the truly massive interior space. A few minutes ago, they had been practically flying through the air beneath the city. Hikari knew the feeling, as most of them had only seen the Geofront through history books and documentaries. Tokyo-3 had awed them with it's scale, and the Geofront dwarfed that.
Then something pushed through the crowd, cutting through the refugees like the keel of a ship, parting the throng. Whispers broke out amongst them as they jostled for a view, wondering about the tall white and blue figure. Hikari could hear the shared thought on everyone's lips - A pilot!
Hikari blinked and saw Ikari Shinji clad in his plugsuit, and then he was up and hugging her, hands on her waist and lifting her into the air. "I'm glad you're alright!"
She wasn't sure who said it first.
Shinji dropped her and let out a weak, relieved little laugh, before noting her two sisters and giving her something of an odd look. She probably hadn't described them much, now that she thought about it... Hikari offered a giddy, silly little smile despite it all and opened her mouth for introductions, when Kodama draped an arm over her shoulder and crooned in her ear.
"That's Ikari?" She purred. "You never said he was a senior. Or such a stud."
"K-Kodama! Is this really the time!?" Hikari did not turn red. And deigned not to mention that Shinji had kissed her once. She bowed apologetically. "My sister is incorrigible, even with all of this! Ikari-kun, what is going on!?"
The question seemed to get the attention of everyone else milling around on the platform, and they all turned to her family and Shinji. Hikari found herself wilting under the sudden stares, but remembered she was Class Representative. She mustered up her best warning look and dared anyone to riot on her watch.
Quietly, Shinji lead them to a set of benches along the wall. "I can't tell you, because we honestly don't know. We're doing our best going out and rescuing stranded soldiers and civilians, but it's a new war every time."
Nozomi peeled away from Hikari's side to squeak. "Is it an Angel attack?"
"I wish," The boy sighed. "Everyone we rescue gives us a little bit more to go on. When it started, the sky split with those maws and out came the first wave. The banshee riders and such. Then the monsters. What about you three?"
Kodama stepped up, putting her hands on Hikari's shoulders and pushing her into the seat while she cleared her throat. "I work for one of the local TV stations- I think things were happening before the Angel alarms went off. I heard screaming in the streets, and we were getting calls from our roving reporters... None of them made it back to the station garage."
"A lot of people got separated, and they usually went for the nearest shelters." Shinji reassured her, smiling faintly. "Did you see any of the things yourself?"
"Some- just the little gribbly ones. They were tearing apart cars, trying to eat the metal and taste the oil I think." She frowned. "Does that mean anything?"
A new but achingly familiar, nasal voice drawled through the crowd. "It means they're curious, or they don't know any better."
Hikari turned and saw Kensuke Aida picking his way through the press of people, hugging the station wall. She was out of her seat and hugging him a heartbeat later. "Aida-kun! You're alright! Is... Toji?"
Kensuke and Shinji both exchanged a sour look before shaking their head as Kensuke clarified. While he did, the teen pulled out a red and white card with NERV's maple leaf logo, showing it to the three girls before quietly stuffing it back in his pocket. "We haven't spotted him yet. My dad works here, so I skipped the shelter and got in with my pass."
Relief at seeing two more of her friends alive dueled with the icy knowledge of Toji still being trapped out there. She shook her head to clear it and focused back on Kensuke. "You just up and went to NERV? How'd you get here?"
"I was stuck in the parades, early on." Kensuke admitted, looking down at his shoes.
The icy feeling doubled over, and Hikari let out a mournful sound. "You too? I had to run through one to get to Nozomi's school..."
"Parades?" Kodama mumbled, audibly dreading the answer.
Shinji cleared his throat and glanced side to side for eavesdroppers before whispering. "Hundreds of people in the streets, trying to go somewhere, anywhere. And instead of heading away from danger, they moved... together. I've seen soldiers, policemen and paramedics, dancing in the streets. They were shouting and cheering in ways I'd never heard of, or even Japanese."
Hikari sniffled, nodding. "They were moving in the wrong direction. In wrong directions, like walking backwards at half speed. I saw a group of people who had split off from the crowd angling for a way around the main roads, and they just disappeared into a sideways rainstorm. It sprang up in the alleyway, and then it was gone!"
Her older and younger sisters quickly wrapped her up in a hug, and then Shinji scooped them all up in his arms, smelling faintly of blood. A small part of her hoped it was the blood of those things out there.
Coughing into his hands, Kensuke continued the tale. "After the first wave, the hordes and the sky mouths, there were the big things like out of the old monster movies. Angels... They exist wrong, but these new things seem like they should?"
The boy shrugged, and Shinji nodded, picking up the explanation. "Ayumi's still out there as well. As for what's outside, they're... monsters. Understandable monsters that we can't understand."
* * *
The command center had been repaired over the two weeks, but the patches and seams all over the vast chamber were still evident. Misato let her arm hang across her stomach and over her shirt. Some repairs were less evident than others. The big board hologram was still bright and clear though, casting everyone on the crowded floors in electric greens, blues and reds.
Crossing her arms more fully, Misato turned to the side. "Aoba, report?"
The scarred man sighed, flipping over a half-spent legal pad thick with scribbles. "Not much better than the last attempts. We lost some civilians during the extraction, as well as casualties among the JSSDF survivors. General?"
A stocky man with slightly graying hair slumped in his seat. The air around him and his fellow commanders were thick with cigarette and cigar smoke. "We're down to half-strength from what we started with, which wasn't much to begin with. Your Evangelions are carrying the day, but if something doesn't change soon, we'll have to start arming non-combatants."
Misato wanted to say something, like she'd go out there first before letting that happen, but the fact was, they couldn't afford the pointless bravado. Hours after pulling herself out of a hospital bed, Misato had come up to the monitors and seen armies conjured from thin air. Her hand clenched over her middle a little harder. She wasn't going to give up hope quite yet.
"Do what you can, General." She turned to the other senior staff, the surviving JSSDF troops, even the Commanders. "Every engagement, ever individual fight we win and every civilian we save gives us that much more of the greater picture, of what the hell is going on out there. There's a pattern to this insanity, and we have to find it."
It was the same basic speech, though she'd gotten good at varying the language. "So- what do we know?"
One of the JSSDF brass leaned forward, balding and wizened. He was a veteran of World War 2, out of retirement and almost a hundred years old. "Modern military tactics revolve around the most effective tools for a given job and absolute specialization, supplemented by effective generalist tactics. The contemporary army is one that adapts to changing battlefield conditions."
Ritsuko had gotten very good at reading cues, directing Maya and Makoto to bring up their file on all of the invaders. Some were achingly beautiful, others chilled the blood in her veins as Misato watched. Sometimes they were both at once and other things besides.
Hundreds of still images and video clips filled the holograms as the old general spoke. "The Angels are in their own way consistent- Organs we know of as cores, and biology that follows some form of internal consistency..."
From the side, Fuyutsuki frowned at the flickering slide show of sublime horrors. "And these have almost none. Each is an individual list of engagement terms, but so far we've seen no indication as to what divides them. Of which can summon armies as opposed to monsters, to lock a man in his worst nightmare at a glance..."
"Tiger-men, two-legged, six legged, wings or snakes." Misato huffed. "Some impervious to small arms, others shouting loud enough to hurl a grown man thirty feet."
The Commander of Nerv let out a low, frustrated growl from his place at the highest seat. "It's pointless to classify them- even if the MAGI were intact, they would destroy themselves trying to make sense of those thousand-thousand permutations. Whatever weaknesses we have seen do not always work twice. Even against the same being."
Frustration hung over the leaders like a length of chain. Kirishima crushed up a page full of notes in his hand, growling. "We don't know what they are, barely what they can do, or how many there are. Some of them seem to inhabit multiple spaces at once, some multiple bodies, some just very large. I have in my hand a JSSDF report where a hostile ignited and died simply because it made a noise walking across loose papers."
He tossed the page aside, and the big hologram punctuated his venting with a shot of Unit 03 grappling with the star-skinned monster from that morning. He nearly screamed. "What are these things?"
Aoba coughed, and Misato offered him a sympathetic look. He didn't have good news to share. "We've also gotten reports of JSSDF forces outside Hakone engaging an 'unknown afterimage' which lead the VTOL squad on a two-hour chase, inflicting eighteen casualties before the target was cornered along the dockside, identified by UN fleet forces as 'a car-sized snake made of orbiting knives, radiating a halo of light' and eliminated via means of focused fire."
He turned the page and sighed. "Only eye-witnesses to the attacker's true form all had green eyes."
Misato scowled and gently shouldered her way through the crowd of staffers and aides towards one of the consoles. She mashed the keys and brought up a map of Japan, drawing out the meager zone of control and their unbroken lines of communication.
She glared at the display, almost growling. "We're boxed in here at Hakone, with almost no contact past the hills. Land lines are going down, shortwave radios are spotty, and forget satellites. We know these things have gotten as far as Kanagawa and Yamanashi."
"They've done all that-" Misato snarled. "With no apparent command structure, hierarchy or leadership. We've seen a handful of individuals or lookalikes that the others seem to avoid outright contact with, but deliberate extranormal invasion attempt or no, we're fighting against an unleashed mob and a war-circus. With a battle plan and an objective we can win- the civilians we've rescued prove that. But aside from that, we're still managing to lose just by force of arms and lack of information."
At that Misato rounded on the gathered soldiers and officers, with the technicians standing alongside the scientists. Ritsuko stood up straighter when Misato met her eye, as did Kirishima and even Fuyutsuki. A bright flash of white and blue out the corner of her eye made her turn, and she saw Shinji stand head and shoulders above most of the men and women in the crowd. Rei was at his side, stepping through the dense knots of people.
Sighing, Misato ran a hand through her hair. "How were the refugees?"
"Scared, but better now." Shinji's face clouded, and Misato watched as Rei put a hand on his wrist. "We found Hikari. No Toji or Ayumi though. I haven't found any of the Shinto club members either."
Above, Gendo stood and leaned over the edge of his balcony, hands on the rail and fists clenched. "It's become increasingly clear that we cannot afford to waste our forces pointlessly. NERV is scientific research organization and Evangelion deployment arm. We cannot run, and we cannot hide. We must play to our strengths, and endless sorties against these invaders does nothing but deplete our limited reserves. We have no supply-line to the rest of the country, and Tokyo-3 was never truly self-sufficient."
Kirishima bolted upright, fists shaking at his sides as he nearly shouted. "And what do you expect us to do, nothing? Do you have an alternative, Ikari?"
"The Major is correct- we know too little about our opponents to develop any meaningful tactical doctrine." The Commander pushed his glasses up with one finger. "Intelligence-gathering alongside scientific research and development are our strengths. The Geofront is now your secure base of operations, so long as the invaders appear unwilling or unable to manifest inside."
It was a major concession, but it was also simply impractical to try and push the JSSDF survivors out. They still had all the guns. Misato's brain kicked over into high gear, trying to guess where Gendo was heading. She worried her lip, glancing at Shinji as he sidled up alongside her with Rei. She blinked once, trying to place his expression.
Then it hit her. He was angry.
Shinji exchanged a wordless look with Rei, who then darted off to Ritsuko of all people and tugged her ear down. Misato watched as Rei gestured, spreading her arms wide as if to encompass the whole Geofront. Ritsuko shot a glance at the taller pilot before nodding. Meanwhile, Shinji seemed to stand just a little bit straighter, a bit grander amongst all the older, veteran soldiers and leaders. The holographic display switched to a momentary text graphic, signaling a complex-wide public address. The speakers in the command center whistled with feedback for a second as Shinji grabbed a microphone.
"All of that may be true." His voice boomed out across the entire Geofront, and Misato could imagine people hearing him for the first time. Of them looking up for the source and wondering who or what was speaking. "We're going out there and risking everything against something that defies comprehension. Every time I look at one of those things I feel like it's mocking me with how familiar it looks, and I think they're laughing, because they know we're getting it wrong. They want us to back down in the face of the unknown, to cower and hide in this fortress we built to be our holdout against the unknown in an uncertain world. I'm not going to stand by and hand it and our people over to them so easily."
"If it were just me, or even just the people who signed up for this kind of thing, I wouldn't need to say anything. Most of us volunteered to fight Angels." Misato felt something in her chest clench happily when he shot a warm look her way. "But this isn't about NERV, Angels or the Evas. It's something wrong and absurd and awful, happening right outside, right now!"
Everyone across all the platforms and floors of the command center turned to each other, whispering intently or offering deliberative looks. Gendo stared down at his son with all the apparent acknowledgement of a granite statue.
"So all of you- do what you feel is best. Save yourselves, or save what is most important to you. I'll accept whatever help I can get, but I'll tell you this. My name is Ikari Shinji, and as a Director of NERV and an Evangelion pilot, I'm going out there. I'm never going to stop going out there until I find everyone I can."
He clicked off the microphone then and handed it aside before heading for the door. The senior staff of NERV and the JSSDF were quiet, until General Kirishima broke the silence. "Ikari-kun. Ikari Shinji!"
Shinji turned to face the shorter man, and the general was practically shaking in place. "My daughter is out there, Ikari Shinji. If you're all that's left, I'll pick up a rifle and follow you."
Ritsuko broke away from Maya and Makoto with Rei just behind her, grinding a cigarette out in an overflowing tray. "I'm with you too."
One by one, more and more people threw in behind Shinji, and Misato watched as the screens and security feeds showed more and more of the JSSDF survivors stand up, throw their fists in the air and cheer silently on camera. The rescued civilians in their tent rows clapped, cried or shook in place, eager to stand and move. It was almost like the whole Geofront was shouting with one voice, to fight.
Misato grinned, weaving through the suddenly fiery crowd of old soldiers and tired defenders. She smiled up at Shinji and threw an arm around Ritsuko's shoulders, laughing. "Well you know I have your back, Shinji-kun."
With the speech done, now Shinji had the luxury to turn a bit red. "Yeah well, I hope people remember to listen to your plans. I just knew what to say."
Misato laughed a bit louder, feeling the tiredness and two-week terror fade for at least a short while. The thing that made it all just a little bit sweeter, was that Gendo's plan had been completely forgotten.
* * *
A few hours after the last briefing, Ritsuko looked up from her lab table to see Misato enter. The other woman nearly slid in, not even waiting to let the door fully open before hopping through the gap. For a moment Ritsuko envied the woman her energy, but at the same time she knew it wasn't so simple.
As the door closed behind her, Misato raised her hand and waved, almost desperately. "I hope you have some good news for me, Rits!"
Pushing away from the table, Ritsuko shook her head and sighed. Typical of Misato to just up and glibly expect her to have all the factual, rational answers. It was comforting in its own way, but the sun-bleached blonde felt her eyebrow twitch regardless. It also felt too much like university.
"Probably not." She waved a gloved hand at the drained corpse on the table next to her. "I have on my table what I can only describe as a flying lion-bird- with an accompanying saddle, which implies domestication. This one is freaking me out more than the weird ones, because it actually has understandable, functional organs. Bullets killed it!"
Misato had the decency to wince at that, rocking back and forth on her heels. The spare NERV uniform hung oddly on her body, tight in the wrong places and loose in others. Ritsuko had gone through a half-dozen white coats herself, stained with impossible things and consigned to immolation.
"Small favors that it died." Misato finally muttered. "Or left a corpse. Some of these things up and left behind... Stuff. That one Shinji stepped on left behind a smear of mushed pottery clay, ice-cold liquid silver and honey."
Ritsuko sighed and brought a hand to her face, but stopped just short of wiping her eyes with a glove soaked in lion-bird viscera. She pulled it off and washed her hands before pressing the heels of her hands ito her eyes, rubbing gently. The weirdness was just not stopping. Fourteen days of strangeness going on fifteen, with no end in sight.
"Maybe you can help me with this one." She glanced over at another table, sealed beneath a four-person glove box with pairs of gloves for all. Inside was one of the first corpses they recovered. She reached in and pulled up what she'd tentatively identified as a head. "Are you sure they recovered all the pieces. Not like I would be able to tell, but you know... thoroughness."
Misato scratched her cheek, nodding. "there was an intact chunk with an eyeball on it which was left at the site, judging at the report."
The blonde frowned. That report should have reached her. "...Did they give a reason why?"
"Wouldn't stop blinking even after the apparent death of the creature." Misato's face drew back in a wry grimace. "They kept it under containment for three hours, but after no sign of regeneration, determined it too large a risk for Geofront exposure and 'hucked it into the ocean'."
Ritsuko let out a long, sputtering breath. "Charming. Mark this one only plausibly dead."
After that, Ritsuko looked at her friend hovering in the middle of the lab. Misato was never squeamish, but she hovered between all the tables and experiment stations, hugging her arms to her chest like she was afraid of touching something. Ritsuko's lips compressed down to a thin line, wondering for a moment what to do.
Distraction seemed like a good start. "What crisis are you currently managing?"
Misato perked up at the question, and Ritsuko suppressed a grin at her ruse working. "Coordination, mostly. A third of the JSSDF senior staff decided the best place to go was the Geofront, so I've had to organize them and make sure they didn't break anything. Gotta tell you though Rits, I feel good about having actual solders in the Geofront."
"Not that the Commander was happy." Ritsuko leaned against a thankfully clean autopsy table, smirking.
"And I do not have a single damn to give about it!" Misato let out a short, quick laugh and hugging herself more vivaciously. Words like that were made for people like her. "I've got some volunteers hunting for those last two ninjas as well. They'll find Melchior, eventually."
Wincing, Ritsuko nodded. She looked at the tables full of impossibilities, scowling. Of all her responsibilities, her expertise, the MAGI was the one thing she could actually delegate. There was no point in trusting any of her special projects to others, and she didn't have time to bring them up to speed. If they survived the next few weeks, maybe someone would learn on the job.
Or die trying.
Misato must have noticed her sour look, cocking her head to the side as she asked. "What's on your mind, Rits?"
"Pattern green." Ritsuko admitted. "Whatever these things are, they're thick with the signature, more than even Shinji. I've exhausted every possible filter or interpretation of the data. Right now I need better sensors, and I don't have time to build them."
"Shit." Misato breathed, offering a sympathetic look. "I'll do my best to buy you that time."
Ritsuko screwed up her face at that, and held back the first thing that sprang to mind- that soldiers buy farms, and that Misato had just nearly made a real-estate deal. She figured her friend wouldn't appreciate the reference, not right then at least.
After a few more moments, Misato let her arms fall to the side, then she stumbled. Ritsuko's own limbs felt like lead, so even as she tried to move forward, her friend was already dropping. Listing in place, she somehow managed to fall int to an empty chair nearby.
"Katsu-Misato!" Ritsuko stammered, finally getting her own tired body to cooperate.
Moving over to the other woman, Ritsuko knelt down with a scowl. Forget oblique references- now she had be direct. "You're starting to burn out, Katsuragi. Clean bill of health or not, I can send you to the infirmary with orders for strict bed-rest. When did you last sleep, for that matter?"
"Your bedside manner sucks, Rits." Misato grinned, even while her head moved sluggishly. "Yesterday- I'm heading back to my bunk after finishing with you."
At that, Ritsuko fixed the woman with an incredulous look. "First of all, wrong doctorate. Second, that's an eighteen hour rotation. Katsuragi, we have to sleep."
"Well take that up with 'we're being freaking invaded!'" Misato threw her hands up in the air before letting them fall at her sides. "Combat conditions are a thing."
Pulling one of Misato's arms over her shoulder, Ritsuko huffed, standing with her friend not quite hanging from her side. They started making their way toward the door and out to the Geofront officers quarters.
The pair passed by Geofront personnel in ones and twos as they made their way towards the elevators. Partway there, Ritsuko smirked. "It is kind of funny though."
Too busy shuffling to dose, Misato lifted her head. Her voice though was crystal clear. "What?"
"We had to stop overusing the pressure point trick Shinji developed, or his super coffee." Stepping into the elevator, Ritsuko gave her friend a pleased, sidelong little grin, flush with accomplishment. "Last week I figured out how to perform a similar trick. You can't do it to yourself, but my trick lets you make someone drowsy, like they took fast-acting cold medicine."
Misato blinked at that, slowly. Once, twice, just a little bleary and out of sync. "Seriously."
"Very." Ritsuko confirmed. "I'll give you the treatment if you want. It just helps you fall asleep though, and not much else."
After ensuring Misato was going to sleep, Ritsuko made a few calls and shuffled off to her bed.
* * *
Shinji had lit a fire under NERV, and it was still burning eight hours later. Volunteers from off-shift signed up by the dozen, and from the look of them, Misato was sure they'd have gotten the Evas ready for deployment by hand. Pulleys, cables and raw muscle. She even knew it was possible, buried in some dusty operations manual and the cage construction history. Monitors were splashed with a sprawling array of cage camera feeds and the rush for launch. Misato felt like a little candle by comparison, or maybe a lantern if she were feeling charitable. She slapped her cheeks, painfully aware of the sour look Ritsuko threw her way.
Ignoring it for the moment, Misato reached for the radio handset and switched channels. "Fifteen minutes til launch. Are you sure you're up for this, Shinji-kun? You've been pulling heel-toe deployments for the past week."
Standing on the plug gantry, her pilot turned to face the nearest camera and smiled. "I'm taking mornings off when I can- but I can handle the night shifts the best."
Out the corner of her eye, Misato saw Ritsuko's frosty look thaw into something terrible and mischievous. She grabbed her own microphone, smirking. "Perhaps Misato is hoping you'd take fewer night shifts."
* * *
A glitch during pre-launch check had Asuka cooling her heels in the changing rooms just above the primary cage levels. Leaning against a bank of lockers, she smirked at nothing in particular as Misato sputtered and Ikari grumbled about the unfairness of life. Schadenfreude was her cultural birthright. Wiggling a little, and wondered if she'd need a new plugsuit soon.
The outside door slid open and Rei was there, clad in her original white and black plugsuit, and it was definitely too tight on her. They'd both done a fair share of growing, and Rei hadn't been an active duty pilot for months. Her hair had grown out too, and even with the bit of faded yellow silk tying it back, Rei's ponytail went down to the middle of her back. The blue-haired girl had cut back the locks that framed her face though, keeping them at jaw length. Thinking about it, Asuka suppressed a wince. Her own hair was a huge chore already, and neither of them had Ikari's wonder shampoo anymore.
"Once more into the breach?" Asuka rocked away from the locker and stood up, stretching.
"As often as necessary." Rei offered her a small smile along with her agreement. "I have been thinking about something for a while now."
"Yeah?" Asuka twisted in place with her eyes closed, dimly aware of the final checks on her Eva finishing up. When she completed her turn and looked up, Rei was right there, undeniably in her personal space.
Her friend didn't wait to let her ask. "I believe that under the circumstances, I would rather do this now and imperfectly, instead of waiting for an ideal opportunity that might never come."
Having said her piece, Rei reached out and caught Asuka's face with her fingertips, leaned in, and kissed her.
Three seconds later, Misato's voice echoed out over the cages. "Pilots to your Evas! Twenty seconds to launch!"
* * *
One after another, the Evangelions were shifted through the cage structures and onto one of the launch platforms, laid down on their backs so they could match up with the eight-rail train system that lead out of the Geofront and into the greater Hakone region. Ayanami Rei felt her heart beat faster than it ever had before, and she wondered when it would slow down, or maybe if. If was an interesting concept to consider as well.
Akagi-sensei and the MAGI must have noticed too. "Rei, is everything alright?"
Feeling her Eva being hoisted through the air and around, Rei allowed her synchronization to receded just enough to let the automatic systems do their work. She felt a fierce spike of hate slide out from somewhere, all around her.
"Well enough, Akagi-sensei." She looked out through her Eva's eyes and saw the observation chamber that hung over the loading area. The familiar scientist inside had brown hair.
Rei cocked her head to the side and pushed back with her will, frowning. "We all re-acclimate to active duty in our own ways. I will have to remind Unit 00 that you are not the other Akagi."
* * *
Four Evangelions shot through the underground rail tunnels towards their point of deployment, almost two kilometers away. The vertical launch rails were too much of defensive weakness, in the face of an enemy that could wave their hands and raise an army. Shinji couldn't see them, but six squads of volunteer JSSDF and NERV personnel were riding the secure trains alongside.
The ride itself would be two minutes or less. Listening to Asuka stammer and blush was both hilarious and mortifying, and it somehow made the trip feel longer. "Bwuh! Rei, when we get back to the cages we're going to have a long talk!"
Shinji winced at that, knowing Misato was already smelling blood in the water. The dark-haired woman practically purred as she cut into the conversation. "Is there something you want to share, Asuka-chan?"
Rei was steadfastly silent, but Shinji could see her through the Eva communication system, and she was smiling, and contentedly at that.
Looking back across the plug at the projection of Asuka, Shinji grinned a little himself- charged LCL didn't do anything to hide a blush, and the redhead never had any trouble looking cute or gorgeous when it suited her.
Being caught out just made her look even sweeter. "Wh-no! There's just some stuff you don't spring on people like that!"
"Really now. Go on."
Tugging at the controls, Asuka huffed, blushing harder. "Well, I mean it wasn't bad! Just... disruptive! I'm a soldier damnit, I need to have my head together for a mission!
Rei finally spoke up, decisive and earnest. "I did not mean to upset you, Asuka-chan. I only wanted to clearly communicate myself to you."
Across the channel Asuka's audio degraded to static, as she attempted to inhale sharply through an anguished grimace, and only accomplished a stunned choke around a lungful of LCL. Ahead, Unit 03 was first out of the tunnel, and the tracks ahead switched to send Asuka and Rei down another parallel line. They needed all the room they could get to stand up and move out.
"You kids are adorable." Misato let out a happy sigh over the radio before her voice hardened. "It's time to get to work though, so keep an eye out."
Shinji nodded while he heard the others chime out in turn. Even with his slugged synchronization, he willed his Eva to disengage from the transport and heaved himself upright. Ahead, the low grassy hills of Hakone teemed with chittering, capering horrors waving little flags and opalescent spears. The four Evangelions had expanded batteries for thirty minutes of general activity. They had that much time to find an intact shelter, secure it, and transport any civilians back to the Geofront.
* * *
Muttering a faint apology to the secondary and tertiary souls, Kaworu flexed his Eva's AT field and fashioned it into a bulwark against all that would seek to lay him low. There were more such things on the other side of that field than there were stars in the sky. He knew, because they told him so. That uncountable army crashed into his field, while somehow only occupying the width and length of a city street. Behind him, his allies were busy with their own challenges.
Sorhyu Asuka Langley, being Sorhyu Asuka Langley had other priorities during existential crisis against extranormal invaders. "I'll stop calling you newbie when you start getting my name right!"
Barely teasing his controls, Kaworu flicked the spear from one hand to another, twirling it to deflect a curtain of fiery sword-breath. "It was one time. You could at least call me Rookie, Sorhyu-san. It rolls off the tongue better."
Kaworu watched her out the side of his perception, smirking as she mumbled it under her breath. Her Eva moved ahead to offer him covering fire as well. "You're right- you are hereby now promoted to Rookie!"
Letting his field fall, he swept the army with his spear as her gunfire raked across the street. "Your graciousness knows no bounds, princess."
"You don't have nicknaming privileges!"
* * *
Nearly two thirds of Tokyo-3 couldn't be pulled below ground. There were huge cavernous spaces beneath the streets that doubled as elevator shafts for the armory buildings, Evangelion launch rails, and the same channels that let the civilian structures slide down more than kilometer through rock and armor. The part of the city that could have been pulled down had been, weeks ago.
Now the only thing left above were the un-retractable structures. Ordinary buildings competed for space with disguised armament blocks, and none of them had been spared in the face of the invasion. Four squads of twelve men and women picked their way through those ruins, looking for survivors, supplies- anything they could bring back or mark of interest.
The radio chatter filled Shinji's mind and hearing, skipping his ears entirely. "Grocery store over here. Most everything's spoiled, like someone went all over clawing at things."
Another terse voice broke in over the channel, curt but understanding. "The canned stuff ought to be good. Mark it down."
Pushing the frequency away with a few key presses, Shinji looked around the empty streets, frowning. Sections of the city were peeling away in strips, blocking off whole roads to foot traffic and even all-terrain vehicles. Plans were already being drawn up about how to clear the way for rescue vehicles into some of the sections. The Evas could have helped, but only Asuka and Nagisa had the synchronization not to make a bigger mess.
As for the enemy, they came in waves, and only when it suited them. For all his fiery declarations earlier, he couldn't put a name or face to the invaders. Something about them nagged at the edge of his consciousness though, a familiarity. It wasn't that they looked like something out of books, everyone was dealing with that nostalgia. It was like every one of them were wearing a skin of some kind.
What really got to him, Shinji decided, their voices. They spoke, shouted and capered. The small ones especially, and it had a quality he couldn't place. It was so achingly familiar, like he could just barely understand it.
Shaking his head, Shinji sighed and focused back on the task at hand. After they cleared the first clambering hordes outside the tunnels, the enemy had pulled back into the clouded city. The sun was shining down, broken up by thick palls and columns of smoke from long-burning fires. His own Eva towered head and shoulders over the predominantly mundane, ruined cityscape. The other Evangelions were out there too, walking in line abreast with weapons ready, picking through the urban areas like they were hedges.
Misato pushed a map of the area into his control system and it projected itself across his perception, merging with his own visual field. He'd gotten used to it. The shelter they wanted wasn't too far away, a few footsteps by his Evangelion's reckoning.
Her voice was cool and steady, focused. "Alright kids, just like the last times- four corners and cover the extraction."
Rei and Asuka started drifting apart, taking their places further afield while Nagisa moved the opposite direction. Arranged in a four-armed cross, they were perpendicular to the shelter. Shinji exhaled into the LCL, willing his heart to slow down. Now they had to wait for the soldiers and their transport trucks. Shinji watched the little dots on his mental map crawl upward, building by building as they worked along the streets. The soldiers had to go slow, checking every corner for the enemy. He couldn't sweat, surrounded by LCL, but his hands felt cold and clammy regardless. There wasn't much fear for himself, but he had more than enough fear for those on the ground.
A few seconds later,a flash of glossy, pearlescent white on a rooftop a few hundred meters away caught his eye. It was such a restrained color, compared to the chaotic riot they'd been seeing for weeks. "Contact..."
"We see it over here Shinji, don't move." Misato hummed. "Nagisa, you have a better angle, what are you seeing?"
"More of the... I suppose all I can call them are the 'taller ones'." The white-haired pilot frowned through a communication window, cupping his face in one hand and rubbing his jaw. "Sharing visual feed with you, Ayanami-san, Sorhyu-san."
The two girls chimed out one after the other, and Shinji watched Asuka mirror Nagisa's expression, likely without meaning to. She looked much cuter doing it though. "They're... garish. And organized."
As Asuka was mumbling, Shinji took a closer look himself. She and Nagisa were both right. There were about six of the 'taller' ones, standing at attention like soldiers out of old time medieval history books, swords and pole arms cradled in their arms. The leading six had armor that was very much uniform- a sort of glossy pearl white edged in darker grey, and the plates had a kind of marbled vein texture. They were surrounded by what looked like little... things monster-men with bulbous, crooked noses, bristly eyebrows and snaggletoothed grins. The magnification spared no detail.
It looked like a retinue, and they were all carrying flags, or maybe standards was the proper term. The banners themselves were what originally snagged his attention though. They were bright shining pearl grey silk, with a sooty black icon in the center. An armored head surrounded in ghostly flames. It was no mob, as even the most feral of the things moved with a stiff, regimented grace. Marching orders.
"I think they're scouting us, Misato." Asuka sucked in a quick breath, and Shinji could hear her activate weapon systems. "Yeah, they're definitely scouting us! Orders?"
Whatever Misato was going to say stalled in her throat as the apparent leader of the scouting force raised a hand to the sky. Almost as fast as thought, the air above the occupied rooftop seemed to bubble and split, until the possible boiled away into a mad-looking thing. Something behind his eyes tingled at the sight, resonant and cloying. A fraction of a second later, alert symbols spread across his perception inside the plug, declaring a sudden surge of Pattern Green.
He could hear Ritsuko mutter over the radio, offering dark curses while all of them watched the saturation percentage spike higher and higher. The leading scout brought its arm down with a flourish, and the boiling mass of something unfurled. Water spilled out of the air in thick waves, drenching the rooftops as a heavy, muscled tail beat the air.
It was a whale, swimming through air and its own carried ocean. A castle perched atop its back, letting the scouts climb along streaming prismatic rainbows into the towers and the battlements. The flying creature turned and sang to the city, rising higher into the air and leaving the Evas to the ground. Down below, a dozen or more voices crowded the radio as the extraction teams and their support begged for information, whispering orders to each other and scanning the streets. Shinji pivoted in place, scanning the horizon and scowling. A god's eye view of the battlefield sucked.
Misato's voice cut through the chatter and rang out over the channel. "It's the first sign we've seen of an organized command structure- Rei, Asuka! Follow it! Nagisa and Shinji, stay on the shelter!"
"Roger that." Rei's answer was smooth and steady, and Shinji watched her Evangelion pulled out of position and into a cover-hugging run. "Requesting heavy armament. Are there any intact armory buildings en-route?"
Turning, Shinji for the moment put aside where the others were going and focused on finding his own new home. The infantry were already coming up behind along one of the less damaged roads while Nagisa and Unit 03 closed in for support. The spear in his Eva's hands was heavy, out of balance. That and other things aside was more a matter of his his low synchronization. Shinji shook out some numbness in his fingers- his Eva's fingers- and sighed.
The answer back from command was wry, and Shinji could feel the apologetic smile in Misato's voice. "Sorry, you and Asuka will have to make do with what you've got on hand."
"Typical!" Unit 02 raised is gun high in salute to the other Evas as Asuka fell in step behind Rei, gymnast quick and quiet. "At least it's not a white whale!"
Smirking, Shinji silently wished the girls luck while he looked around. That nagging familiarity was back, like he should know what was going on. The pattern green warnings had faded, but the saturation counter continued to oscillate wildly. His Eva's senses lagged behind his own, and there was that unmistakable curve of the entry plug that lensed everything he sensed. Asuka had described high synchronization like her hands feeling empty, not even touching the controls. He didn't have the experience or luxury of a high compatibility though, not anymore.
"Do you see anything, Nagisa-san?" Shinji flicked through vision modes on a whim; they had seen some invaders display abnormal surface temperatures.
On street level, the soldiers and their trucks stood out as rippling columns of hot air and false-spectrum figures masked by armor and equipment webbing. He drummed his fingers on the controls as they came up to the shelter, itself standing out too as a cold spot and insulated against the noonday sun. An air conditioning vent threw up a column of hot exhaust. As long as the Geofront held, power would stay on...
"Nothing particularly relevant. Some of Akagi-sensei's flying lion birds about half a kilometer away." The white-haired pilot hummed. "Outside our operational limit."
Kneeling between apartment buildings, Shinji sighed. It was too easy. The invaders could vanish almost on a whim, dissolving their armies as quickly as they made them. Shadows cast by the buildings under the mist seemed to lengthen into sneering, laughing shapes. Thoughts about missing something scattered abruptly as the soldiers broke out over the radio again. Adrenaline spiked high the four squads fell into battle lines beneath the smoke and sunlight.
Whipping his Eva's head left and right, Shinji tried to spot the enemy, but Ritsuko broke in before he even hit transmit. "Shinji- look down!"
It wasn't just the building's shadows. The inky pool of darkness beneath his own Evangelion seethed, reaching up with grabbing tendrils even as he willed himself backward, backpedaling with street-shaking impact. Stumbling, his synchronization stuttered and the plug walls flickered silver before he got it back. Shinji blinked as he left his shadow completely behind. Nagisa hissed a second later, and scrambled two streets over to join him. Below, the soldiers unlimbered their heavy weapons, but their fellows waved them down, urging them to save their ammo.
Through all of that, Shinji growled and cast about for the source. No matter how powerful he and his Eva was, there was nothing he could do for the soldiers on the ground. A second later, Unit 03's own disembodied shadow surged up and over the buildings before tackling Nagisa's Evangelion. The newer amorphous blob hauled the Eva up and into the air, even as Nagisa screamed over the radio. In that same oily move, the heavy wave of darkness threw Unit 03 up and onto Shinji's own Evangelion.
The impact shook the city, sending the pair of cyborgs crashing an apartment building across the street. Their combined armor and bulk sheared through concrete and drywall before stopping halfway buried in the rubble. Unit 03 was sprawled across Shinji's lap, shifting fitfully. Yanking on his controls, Shinji got an arm in under the allied Evangelion, shoving Nagisa up and on his feet while 03's disconnected shadow rushed over to the first one. The two dark masses merged in a whirling storm, rising up into a dark shape that seemed to drink up sunlight.
Warning symbols and damage displays crowded the plug, and Shinji could hear Misato, Ritsuko and the rest of the operations crew scrambled frantically in the background, hunting for answers. Picking up his fallen spear, Shinji scowled. It was tall, like an Eva, spindly, with gangly long arms. They'd fought bigger, but there was something different about it, and Shinji couldn't quite pin the feeling down.
Watching the shadow beast list, hunched over with its knuckles grazing against the street, Shinji brought his spear to bear. "Nagisa-san, are you with me?"
The other pilot grinned and raised his own weapon twirling it effortlessly. "Of course."
Poor synchronization aside, Shinji could walk, and he could run. That was going to be enough. Bearing down on the controls, Shinji willed his Evangelion forward, stumbling and swerving along the street as he brought he spear up and point forward. Nagisa nearly danced, racing ahead of him in a dark blur that shook the dust from walls and shattered windows. Unit 03 slammed into shadow, shrugging past the four grasping arms and raking his own progressive blade through the dark flesh before leaping out of the way.
Crashing through the inky stream of liquid shadow, Unit 01 plowed head first into the monster while Shinji wrenched at the butterfly yokes. He and the beast skid along the city street, digging furrows in the pavement and armor plates until they hit a skyscraper. Reeling back, Shinji yanked the spear up fast and rough, barely managing to turn it blade first at the last second. The shadow melted back into the cracked facade, leaving Shinji to stare at the crater.
A second later, the shadowy creature burst through the rooftop in a spinning whirl of debris and limbs. It landed on what was left of the rooftop in a feral crouch, light as a feather despite its size. Its arms rippled and ribs cracked along the limbs, undulating freely as it reached into empty space. The air cracked with the sound of shattering glass, pulling a boil of shadow from the sky.
Shinji didn't bother waiting, and Nagisa was right behind him. Unit 01 lashed out with a sluggish, workmanlike hacking lunge while the other Evangelion spun effortlessly, swinging and striking three times for every one of Shinji's. The shadowy monster jumped and capered, dodging the strikes while striding along the parapets of buildings. Every duck and lean flowed into disjointed cartwheels while cradling its prize. It hopped off and into an intersection, almost prancing, like a peacock on the strut.
When it stood tall, Shinji couldn't help but think it familiar. Or maybe similar. It was tall like an Eva, spindly like an Eva, gangly, like an Eva. The shadow beast theatrically, saluting with the thing in its hand before giving it an unsettlingly crisp flick. The shadows snapped tight into a shape, and with an almost jaunty, clownish gesture, the beast donned a helmet.
Standing mere blocks from each other, Shinji could pin it down in his mind. The helmet completed the image of a leering, flickering shape. A familiar one.
* * *
"Ritsuko, give me something! I really don't want that to be what I think it is!" Misato leaned dangerously far back in her chair, feeling her voice rise along with her fear. "We barely made out out the last time this happened."
The blonde gave her a frantic, helpless shrug before scrambling back to the web of screens and keyboards. She was mired in there with Maya and Makoto, trying to pull some kind of data. Misato turned back to the screens, rocking forward and slapping both hands down on the console as she stood up. She felt her fingernails scrape across the plastic panel. It wasn't white or red, and had rounded shoulders, lacking the iconic armory pylons.
With no help coming, Misato bit her lip and leaned toward the receiver, calling her pilots. "Alright boys, it looks you're fighting a shadow Evangelion. Let's hope it has crappy batteries."
* * *
For a moment, it seemed like a stalemate. In that apparent standoff, the instant of time seemed to stretch between them, straining almost to the point of snapping. A gust of wind blew through the city, spreading clouds of smoke far and wide. Shinji tugged fitfully on his controls and grit his teeth hard enough to hurt. The shadow Evangelion was content to stand still and stare at them. Mockingly at that.
There had been a time where Shinji would not have attacked first, no matter the opponent. Now though, there were circumstances in which he would, gladly.
Stuck in a narrow space with buildings on all sides, all Shinji could do was charge forward, falling back on the classic run and thrust. His Eva seemed to feel the same fury, and he could barely feel the strain against the locks around its jaw. Stumbling, his synchronization weighed him down. Each stride was wide and spastic, like he was running under water. Every time his feet hit the street, the shock of impact registered one lunging step later.
The shadow turned into the spear thrust, nimbly letting it whip by as Shinji hurtled past. Throwing his arms and legs forward, he kicked the ground hard. His momentum bled out, buckling road plates as he twisted. Bracing the spear around his back, he swung the spear around his hips, switching hands and forgetting the buildings all around. The spear shaft raked the higher floors, carving a dry scar across the cracked facades. Growling, Shinji snarled and tossed the spear aside. The weapon dropped to the street and sent cars bouncing for blocks around. Shinji raised his Evangelion's hands, hooking his fingers into rending claws.
Magic or no magic, time to play to his strengths.
"So, Ikari-kun." Nagisa shifted alongside, following adroitly with grace and almost whisper quiet despite forty meters of cybernetic combat platform. "What is your reason for being here?"
Crashing into the shadow, Shinji very nearly slipped, but training took over. He wrenched at the creature, digging in with both hands and his Evangelion's own strength. Oily black limbs punched back, forking and bristling into dark spikes that raked through armor and nicked the Eva's skin. Sickly yellow leached from the wound, but Shinji barely felt it. Not that he could afford more mistakes. His opponent was slippery- literally, and Shinji knew just how much he was telegraphing.
Rearing back, he risked a glance at Nagisa, nonplussed. "I really don't think this is the best time for that, Nagisa-san!"
Unit 03 raised its spear above its head in both hands, twirling it in both palms before bringing it down into a lightning-fast downward slash that cleaved the shadow's arm clean off. Shinji rolled away, clumsily pushing and pawing away at overturned cars and craters in the street. The severed shadow limb melted, before pooling back into the invader's flesh.
Nagisa didn't seem to notice the setback, retreating smoothly. "On the contrary- it is the best and only time, so how about it?"
The shadow creature slipped out of Shinji's grip, bending over backwards with too many spines and not enough joints. Twisting at the hips, Shinji shuffled after it, sluggish and delayed. He needed to think four or five moves ahead, to feint more than even Asuka did during drills. Even as he sank into that mental combat space, Nagisa's question ate at him. It dug into his mind and made his heart clench tight in his chest.
Aborting a three-hit combo into a lunging grab, Shinji growled into the LCL. "My friends are out there still. Toji, the Shinto club. Ayumi..."
Reaching out with both hands to rend and twist, Shinji felt his mind go blank for a split second. It just then occurred to him that he knew every student in his class year by name, and most of the upperclassmen too. Their faces, impressions and personalities flickered around in his mind while the shadow thrashed, doubling over on its back and into a literal ball before spearing his Eva with a kick to the stomach. The impact threw Shinji skyward, ripping the thing's arms off again even as he tumbled.
Nagisa surged in while Shinji was airborne, lashing out with the spear and hacking off bits of darkness as the creature slid away. It undulated, greasy and cast apart in thick splattering waves. Meanwhile, Shinji landed, crash face first into a block and a half worth of buildings. His Evangelion carved through the concrete and steel like it was paper, and the remaining walls slumped down on him with fitful, groaning waves. The communications channels exploded, men and women screaming, shouting orders and demanding action.
Shaking his head inside the plug, Shinji cast about for a direction. His Eva's face was buried in the rubble. Pushing up to get clear, his eyes locked on to something that froze his blood. The shelter was across the street, with soldiers and refugees close enough he could see their faces. He'd almost landed on the recovery team. That kick had been aimed. Shinji snarled and twisted in his seat, pulling on the controls and fixtures hard enough to make them creak. Rising, he urged his Eva to crawl up and out of the ruins, away from the soldiers and civilians below.
Up ahead, Nagisa ducked past a lunging strike. He stepped back just as Shinji cleared the rubble, retreating for just a moment. Scowling, Shinji used the seconds he had in motion to punch in commands with his fingertips. His synch may have been terrible, but his training was fine. And all that training told him he was fighting a shadow monster that could use its enemies as strategic weapons.
Unit 01 skid to a halt next to Unit 03 then, and Nagisa cocked his head, visible on the plug communication panel. "I've heard good things about this girlfriend of yours."
Shinji had enough wherewithal to shoot the other pilot an incredulous look, but found himself thinking about it anyway. There wasn't an all-consuming surge of passion, but more like a warm sense of... Growth. "She's... I've learned a lot from her."
They hadn't forgotten about the shadow creature either. Shinji started striding forward, massive hands at his sides and ready to rip and tear, while Nagisa twirled his Eva-scale spear in an artful flourish before bracing for the charge. Standing in an intersection, the dark towering shape turned the burning diamond crystal eyes on both Evas, one after the other. It was like it just finally noticed it was fighting two opponents.
Nagisa dove forward, moving like butter on a hot pain and thoroughly demonstrating his high-eighties synchronization. Shinji was nearly four times slower, but he made up for it by planning. Heaving, overextended swinging kicks folded into surprisingly neat binds and clinches, rapidly eating up distance between him and the final rending-finger grip.
The shadow creature twisted at the ribs and rippled. The curves and arcs of darkness along its spindly torso unfurled, melting and boiling into two long lashing shapes. In that same instant, it pushed out with its arms and caught Nagisa's incoming strike along the spea rhaft, clamping down with inky limbs. A split second after that, the transformation finished, and now the shadow had four arms. Stacked one on top of the other, it parried the two Evas, the top set blocking Nagisa right and the bottom set crossing over to stop Shinji from the left.
Those same hands pulled, wrenching Unit 01 forward into an abbreviated headbutt, where the shadow mask almost seemed to explode like a mud puddle before snapping back to shape. Shinji felt and heard the sound of paint and armor cracking against the impact, even as he stared out from his Evangelion's eyes and into the diamond panels. Through the burning, scintillating glare, he saw something, and his eyes snapped wide open.
The head was hollow, and while the beast slathered, snapping at his Eva's neck and shoulders, Shinji could see inside. One of the invaders sat on a throne of silk cushions with its legs folded beneath it, humanly-inhuman and too perfect. The thing inside was symmetrical, a blend of male and female features that made it hard to place and harder to accept.
Turning to face Shinji, the thing inside the demon shadow helmet opened its eyes and smiled.
About six-dozen impossible thoughts demanded Shinji's attention right then, but he shoved them all aside in favor of his own martial skill and tactical acumen. Locked in a bind with an opponent that could manifest new limbs on an as-need basis, Nagisa shot Shinji a sidelong glance. Giving the other boy a nod, Shinji reached out for his own Evangelion and unfurled his field. The crackling plane of altered space snapped into being across the shadow's four arms, severing them across a conceptual edge, scoring a line in the street and buildings. Warning alerts in the plug declared power drain, and a countdown timer started ticking down. Seven minutes.
The shadow reeled back, flailing with its stump arms while the severed shadows collapsed in a sticky pool of black ichor. Those limbs melted and crawled back into the monster's feet, before reforming into the arms once more. It seemed to stare into empty space, and they could see its mouth crack open, letting out hissing bursts of dark smoke like a serpent tasting the air.
Nagisa raised his spear, smirking faintly. "Best we finish this quickly, don't you agree?"
"Don't have much of a choice." Shinji huffed into the LCL.
Ahead, the shadow hunkered down, arching and shambling forward while its arms reached out for handholds along the road. Nagisa stepped up while Shinji leaned to the left, stomping awkwardly towards the sidewalk and brushing against an already-wrecked building as he cleared the space. Unit 03's spear spun in glittering arcs, and Nagisa started stalking toward their opponent. The two Evangelions' AT fields mingled, and their overlapping domains wreaked havoc on the local space. Fleeting, microscopic bursts of radiation and lambent streaks of ionized plasma built up above Nagisa's Eva, creating a daylight aurora over the battleground.
Dark oily flesh seethed, bubbled and folded into strange whorls, twisting into poles like ferromagnetic fluid. The black monstrous Evangelion trembled, flipping, bending and slipping through Nagisa's attacks fast enough to shake the buildings the air sheeting off its limbs. Cars were flung aside from the overpressure, slamming into storefronts and middle floor apartments.
Meanwhile, Shinji surged and stumbled in a wider path, hugging the side of the boulevard and the buildings on the one side. A sudden three-armed assault broke through Nagisa's guard and shredded the spear haft with inky blades. Shinji moved, cutting hard right and tearing up the road with his heavy strides. Facing the melee, he saw Nagisa bring his field to bear, putting it between him and the monster once more. The three attacking limbs were severed in a crackling instant, but the fourth limb reached out and drew a bright white line across the barrier with its fingers.
The AT field shattered, and Nagisa's Evangelion spasmed.
Muscles beneath armor bulged while the armory pylons caught fire, throwing out guttering columns of black chemical smoke. Nagisa snarled over the radio, gritting his teeth and falling back while Evangelion blood seeped through cracks and rents in the armor. Shinji's blood froze for a split second, then ran red hot. Misato and everyone back in NERV were crowding the channel again, demanding information, declaring another emergency situation.
He silenced them with a thought. "Nagisa- are you alright?!"
"Passable, Ikari-san." The other pilot hissed. "Theirs is an obnoxious power, isn't it?"
Shinji didn't feel like responding, not with anything glib at least. He completed his charge towards the giant of darkness, slamming into it with a full shoulder tackle. Banishing his own field, the power drain warnings faded from his awareness, and he was free to focus on the most basic of tactics and techniques. The shadow folded over double around his Evangelion, trailing behind him like a streamer before it undulated, coiling back up into a thick and heavy mountain of darkness. It reached out with both legs and dug into the street, carving trenches with both spindly heels.
With his own Eva's face up against the shadow helmet, Shinji looked back into the diamond eyes and scowled. Inside, the grinning mad thing was still there, hands in its lap and almost meditating. The two combatants had ground to a halt- and then the shadow heaved, picking Unit 01 up and planting it down in a quarter turn. Shinji felt his stomach bottom up and out across the short and brutal move. His vision swam, but through that smear of vision, he realized he was moving further away from downtown.
Twisting, he glanced over his shoulder and paled. The shadow was pushing him. Shinji grit his teeth and shifted, driving his own feet into the ground and digging for all the traction he could afford. His arms reached around, hooking at the fingers and locking tight. He could crush a man's ribs with his bare hands, and in an Eva, he could crush a building, or worse. Against the liquid flowing shadows and four arms though, he had nothing to hold onto. Moving as one, the false and real Evangelions shoved each other past Nagisa's own limping form. It was pushing him into the shelter and the recovery team. Shinji turned and looked at the pilot inside the shadow monster, snarling.
The thing inside winked at him.
One of the butterfly yokes shattered. Shinji ignored the broken plastic and mangled metal. He had seconds before his enemy would simply run over the civilians and soldiers. The radio was still silent aside from Nagisa's labored breathing, but he could imagine the screaming and terror building up behind him. Desperate, frantic, Shinji clawed at the shadowy flesh, ripping apart great big globs of the stuff and throwing them aside across hundreds of meters. The formless viscera splashed against buildings and streets, bubbling into mockeries of organs and bones before pooling into ordinary ground-hugging shadow.
It didn't do much- his enemy didn't have a spine to break.
"So Ikari-san, I have to ask the obvious question about your lady friend." Nagisa's face and voice filled the side of his perception, and Shinji tossed his head, pushing it aside. "Do you love her?"
He didn't say it, but Shinji wondered why Nagisa thought now was the best time. Still, it got him thinking, even in the midst of combat. The shadow continued to manhandle and shove him forward, fighting him off with all four arms. Elbows were brought to bear, deflecting the inky bladed limbs, while Shinji groped for a hand or toehold, something. He grit his teeth, casting about for the solution. The rider inside the helmet smirked, infuriatingly so.
Fury, righteous fury, mingled with his own lingering reservations and the faint, pleasant ache of Ayumi's presence in his mind. His enemy was right there. The solution jumped out at him, immediately and in perfect clarity. In that same instant, the smirk on the uncanny face slipped. It was enough. Shinji reached up from around the thing's back, pinning both arms in the crooks of his elbows, clamping down with Evangelion bicep and forearm. His hands arched up and around, and his fingers curled into the thing's helmet from behind.
Shinji felt the rightness surge in his chest, and his Evangelion's fingertips pressed against the diamond eye panels. They held for one second, two, cracking as Shinji bore down on his remaining controller. To Nagisa, he growled. "I want the chance to find out!"
The helmet crumpled inward, leaking gouts of powdery black smoke and depression. Its headless body collapsed into the most comprehensible act he had seen yet: it died.
* * *
An Evangelion did not have a defined, upper bound of acceleration or even top speed. There hadn't been any way to test it, what with the limitations of battery technology or power cables. On top of that, any level of synchronization less than one hundred percent slowed everything down. This was in turn offset by long legs and even longer strides, able to traverse dozens of meters at a time.
Asuka felt her heart beat in her chest, and the buildings of downtown Tokyo-3 passed in a blur.
Vaulting a fallen armory building, Unit 02 cleared the hurdle and landed with a city-shaking impact, throwing up a plume of dust into the air and into the wake behind her. Spent shell casings and ruined cars bounced with each footfall, along with actual tons of pummeled glass. Rei was on the next boulevard over, and Asuka could see flashes of blue between the buildings as the other Evangelion lagged behind. The other pilot's lower synch mattered more than she would have liked, right then.
Of course, that was why Rei had a pallet rifle. "I have a shot. Firing."
Looking ahead, Asuka saw the burst of gunfire rake across the sky and towards their target. It was a flying whale, with a castle on it's back. The interface in her plug spat out useful information like range and dimension while the bullets stitched a line in its tail. The whale keened, twisting and banking hard right. It cut the air and cornered against all logic, nearly turning on a dime. The ship curved across the sky another half-turn and angled over them, south toward Lake Ashi.
"Shit!" Asuka stared, caught out for a split second. She couldn't slow down, not that quickly. "Rei- after it! I'll have to take Mount Hakone!"
The reply was instant and urbane. "Roger that."
Exhaling hard into the LCL, Asuka looked ahead. Hurtling forward at full speed, she broke out of the denser, ruined urban center, cutting straight through the north-eastern side of the suburban Tokyo-3 sprawl. The fortress city was built inside a caldera, in turn formed by two nearby dormant volcanos. Mount Hakone was one of them, and Asuka charged up the low slopes. Her Eva's feet plunged into the thick trees and topsoil, carving out huge divots as she use the incline like a half pipe.
Behind her, Rei had already pivoted, moving slower put her in a better position to recover, and it left Asuka with a lot of time and distance to eat up. Turning smartly on one heel, she swung across the mountainside and angled after Rei and the whale ship. Both Evas shook the earth with their passing, and ahead, they could see the lake shores start to ripple.
A thought cast at the communication systems silenced the radio, and Asuka grumbled into the LCL. "Stupid, unexpected kissing- you don't pull just in case shit like that right before a battle!"
Ahead, Asuka watched the whale pull further away and pick up speed while Rei fired from the hip. Sinking deeper into her own synchronization, Asuka felt herself pick up speed, but couldn't shake the ire. It wasn't even the kiss, but the damned cliche joke that got her blood boiling. No amount of deep breathing or counting to ten was going to cool her temper, not right then.
Her state of mind didn't seem to be hurting her synchronization though. Small favors, she supposed. Asuka reopened communications, hearing the chatter going on in the Geofront and catching a glimpse of Ikari and the rookie locked in combat. They were on their own for now- she had her own mission, but she was going to make damned sure they all made it home somehow.
The two Evangelion in pursuit reached the lake shores at nearly the same time, splitting left and right to run along the banks and hillsides. Above, the whale ship sang into the sky and seemed to paint the clouds with rainbow hues. Rei charged up one slope, tossing her weapon aside along the way. At the top of the rise, she leaped, springing off the hillside and towards the fleeing creature. Asuka found herself whistling silently, muffled by the LCL as Rei's Evangelion arced over the enemy ship.
Unit 00 landed with a castle-breaking impact, shattering half the structure across the thing's back on contact. Battlements and minarets spilled off the whale's back as the Evangelion nearly surfed across. Asuka felt her heart leap into her throat a second later, when Rei's middle-fifties synchronization caught up with her. The blue Evangelion slipped, skidding across ruined walls and whale skin before sliding off the side. Rei threw a hand up and caught the whale by one of it's seven flukes at the last second.
The ship listed, dragged down hundreds of meters towards the lake surface, moving fast enough that the air pressure wave pushed the water aside in a great expanding bowl. The whale continued the tumble, rolling over and abusing gravity in its favor. The Evangelion lost its grip and fell, plunging into the lake and out of sight.
Asuka nearly stumbled. "Rei!"
An Eva couldn't swim, but the radio still worked. "I am fine, Asuka-chan!"
"That was a great- you took a big ri-" sputtering between exultant approval and indignant worry, Asuka cut herself off twice over. Snarling, she got herself back on track and growled, turning all her attention on the fleeing ship.
Rei pulled her Evangelion out of the water, crawling onto the shore and visibly tired in the communications window. "We're running out of time."
She was right. Asuka queried her on-board computer, and it told her the whale was accelerating. A hundred kilometers an hour and moving faster by the second. They were only going to get one more chance, and it was already past Lake Ashi. Asuka urged her Eva onward, pouring on more speed and draining her batteries ten seconds or more at a time.
Unit 02 dashed forward, hurtling along the lake shore and past the base that had once been a sniper's nest. The trailing ends of the Evangelion-scale coat flapped in the storm force winds that swept up behind her. Asuka eyed the last rise before the local topography sloped down and gave way to downward slopes and the Sagami Bay. Then she looked up, blinked, and swore.
The whale ship was ascending, climbing into the sky.
"It's the first goddamn time we've seen these things run!" Asuka growled into the LCL, and she felt her Evangelion roar alongside her mind. "Maybe they got a base out at sea- I'll call it good if I can see where they're going!"
The other girl spoke softly, but it carried nonetheless. "Be careful, Asuka-chan."
"Careful?" The redhead echoed, smirking. "You're the one who took a flying leap."
Asuka unfurled her AT-field, and willed her extra limbs to carry her aloft. "I at least brought wings!"
Shooting skyward, Asuka angled her wings and altered space for thrust. She raced after the whale ship, hands tight on the controls and part of her mind fixed on the draining battery percentage. The rest of her attention was on the rapidly nearing ship and the shrinking distance counter between her and it. Five hundred meters. A hundred meters. Fifty.
The sky split apart, rimmed with wet, fleshy lips. White ivory spires of teeth unzipped before the ship and yawned wide, even as Asuka threw everything she had into stopping. The impossible opening before her showed the faintest twinkling of stars before distant bands of foreign cloud cover swung into view, heartbreakingly familiar. She looked out over the vertigo-inducing sight and remembered the first book she had ever opened with such a picture inside, reflected back at her, close enough to fall into.
The whale ship vanished through the opening, and the maw snapped closed. "...Was that the Great Red Spot? Was that fucking Jupiter?"
* * *
"Ground forces reporting in- we've secured the civilians. Light injuries, no casualties."
The command center threw up their arms at that and cheered, but it was a haggard, exhausted joy. Misato leaned back in her seat and sighed. Another small, desperately needed victory. She rubbed her cheeks, frowning against her fingers and wondering just how to parlay that morale into the next challenge. She glanced aside and saw Makoto and Aoba handling Evangelion recovery. The boys would need repairs, but Rei only got waterlogged. Behind her, Ritsuko had put out her last cigarette of the day.
An incredulous squawk broke out through the speakers nearest her own console, on her direct command frequency. Misato rubbed her ears, very aware she'd been half deaf less than a month ago. "I didn't quite catch that Asuka, repeat?"
There was a brief squeal of static "You heard me- they came from outer space!"
No italics, because 14,000 words or so. You'll see all that hotness in the ff.net update.
* * *
A lot changed in two weeks.
Beneath a night sky cast in vivid, glowing miasma, Tokyo-3 endured. The tallest towers of the Fortress City had fallen, shouted down as if the height was a blasphemous offense. Literally shouted, with screams and trumpet blasts that cracked steel and powdered concrete. Some city blocks stood undamaged, but not untouched. Others were gutted, raked with claws and gunfire. The structures insides spilled out onto the wide streets like urban viscera, or the pulpy innards of a smashed melon.
Street to street, men and women clung to their rifles, darting from cover to cover. They stuck to the shadows that moved, but there was no illusion or perception of safety. Fear hung in thick cloying sheets across the city, interspersed not with the sound of guns, but mad, howling cackles. Thunder rolled high above in the cloudless sky.
The cannons and silos of Tokyo-3 were silent.
Far below, a dozen soldiers of the JSSDF dove into a convenience store. As one the squad hurled themselves through windows and doors, over the shelves and into cover as a hundred and six flaming silver arrows hurled themselves. Turning, the soldiers gave their opponent gunfire in reply. Clad in armor of lapis lazuli, a tall and striking figure danced. From one hand trailed a saffron ribbon, and its cast shadows was yet more arrows. In it's other was a sword, and it turned that blade to the incoming fire.
The length of steel bent in a manner unthinkable, reaching out to swat and scoop up the bullets in a blinding flurry of glittering arcs. Their opponent eschewed the arrows, instead flicking its wrist and presenting the sword with neat stacks and rows of ammunition lined up along the flat of its blade. The soldiers sucked in a breath, caught between fear and hope as a shadow crossed over the world.
Evangelion Unit 01's foot came down upon the swordsman in one swift stomp. "Taken care of that one."
"Good! Are they alright?" Asuka's voice rang out across the radio and into his mind, simultaneously far and close, even if she was just a block away.
Shinji tugged fitfully on his butterfly controls as he glanced down at the wrecked storefront and cheering soldiers, urging his Eva to cooperate. "They're good! I'll catch up!"
Moving, Shinji and his Evangelion padded through the streets, hunkered down below the tops of buildings as his power cable trailed behind. Windowpanes rattled with each footstep, and he saw flashes of red and blue through the windows- Rei and Asuka. The offices were empty, devoid of people. Shinji felt his lips pull back into a frown as his thoughts wandered.
The first week had been a drawn out explosion of confusion and terror, expanding in a long and cloying wave across the city- all of Hakone. Once the sound and fury had spent, the hordes retreated into the cracks of the world, leaving what was left to roam without master or cause. Perhaps that was better than the alternative, or worse.
Looking around, he saw no sign of silver. Shinji focused his mind for the right pip on the map. "Nagisa-san, where are you?"
The new pilot's voice clicked through the radio, wound tight and calm. "Engaged, Ikari-kun! I believe I found the big one!"
Shinji wrenched at his controls and spun his Eva around, standing tall to peer over the buildings, just as he opened his mouth, Asuka beat him to the punch. "We're on our way- Misato!"
He couldn't see it, but Shinji imagined the finger pressing down on the button, just as the Major smiled. "Fire."
A few blocks over, a an intact armory building unfolded and showed its colors- rotary cannons and snub howitzers so he was told. They pivoted and unleashed tons-by-weight of firepower upon something he couldn't see, but the lights and concussive blasts lit the sky across the city, shattering windows by the thousands. Almost in answer, the city came alive with things. Emerald water poured from penthouses windows and balconies, while flower petals spilled from alleyways on alien winds. Those in turn heralded carpets of shields and sudden armies.
Tides of chittering, capering footmen and spindly little figures mired up around the Evangelion's feet, while the soldiers on the ground fired into the seemingly endless hordes. Shinji reared up and stomped, buckling the whole street and pulping ten thousand and ten of the things while the JSSDF squad gathered themselves up. Pounding through the wide boulevards, Shinji broke out into an open intersection. To his left he saw Rei and her Unit 00, and Asuka was at the left, running towards them both with her Eva's coat flapping in the wind.
With her coat unfurling into wings, the redhead shouted over the radio. "Rei, Ikari! I need a boost!"
Training had paid off, because Shinji didn't need to ask the obvious questions. He twisted on his heel and charged towards Rei before skidding to a halt where they both knelt and linked both arms. Unit 02 reached them an instant later and vaulted onto the crooks of their elbows while Shinji and Rei stood up and threw. The red Evangelion sailed into the air and across the city before crashing into something. A smoking, bruised patch of the night sky seemed to peel away before a fleshy, iridescent maw screamed at the offense.
While Asuka wrestled with the monster, Nagisa and his Unit 03 crawled out of the star-skinned creature's gullet with a huff. "This part is at least going to plan."
"I sure as hell hope so!" Asuka yelled, hanging on to the creature by the wide neck. "Keep your fields up everyone- watch for their kind of soul-fuckery!"
Rei helped Nagisa up, drawing a progressive spear from her back and handing it over before turning to Unit 01 with a cyclopean nod. "We should help with recovery."
"Rei's right!" The redhead stood up on the beast's shoulders, five times the height of an Evangelion. She reached behind her back and unleashed Wellenbrecher with an explosive-assisted draw. The swing terminated in the monster's nose. "Newbie and I've got this!"
Shinji nodded, unholstering his pallet rifle while Rei leaned into an armory building for a pair of progressive knives. "We're on it."
Wading through the oceans of invaders, Shinji and Rei shot, slashed and bludgeoned their way across the blocks towards one of the outlying city sections. Urban, dense, none of the buildings were taller than ten stories. None of them were on the retractable fortress blocks either. Five of the six personnel carriers had survived the journey above ground, while the sixth was a smoking wreck shot through with icicles. Taking a look out the corner of his Eva's eye, Shinji exhaled into the LCL. The shelter was intact, at least at first glance.
Rei nudged his arm and pointed back the way they came. "Incoming. Allow me."
Shinji could still see Asuka and Nagisa wrestling with the great beast in the distance, but much closer, a war host of the... smaller things surged out. One rode a gleaming serpent of shining crystal, with a cobra hood radiating out in a jagged, razor sharp sunburst while the others leaped from low-hanging cloud to cloud. Rei took the lead and readied her knives, along with her field. The volume of altered space shifted around the two of Evangelions, and the evacuating dependents behind them.
The snake-rider and mount slammed into the hardened field with a ringing tone like a wet-rimmed wineglass. While the beast and rider collapsed in a pile of coils, the cloud-jumpers leaped into the fray, raking tiger claws across the field. Ragged slashes were cut through the boundary, but Rei was ready for that, and so was Shinji. He brought his rifle up and squeezed off a burst, then another, filling the air with ordnance. Rei dropped her field at the same instant, letting the bullets slam into the howling tiger-men.
They did not die as expected.
Instead the cloud-jumpers sailed away into the distance, carried by the impact even as Shinji turned on the snake and rider, shattering it with a final burst. "Those last ones were immune!"
"We saw it Shinji." Misato's voice was warm, intent and focused. Alive. "Another for the 'bullshit' list. Evacuation's done in twenty seconds- get ready to return to base."
Shinji sighed and nodded at no one in particular. "Roger that."
A few minutes later, Asuka and Nagisa joined them, and the four Evangelions made the slow, cautious walk back to the retrieval point. As Shinji moved his Eva back into its cradle for the train ride back underground, he couldn't help but think.
A lot changed in two weeks.
* * *
Horaki Hikari shivered, and it was not from the cold.
To her left, her younger sister Nozomi clung to her side, trembling just as hard. Kodama the elder hovered behind, throwing her short arms around the both of them. The other hundred or so refugees were packed into the underground monorail, just shy of being canned sardines. Hikari felt her stomach clench, curling hard in on itself and groaning. After two weeks, it was a familiar sound.
For two weeks, Hikari held onto her sisters, ran herd on half of Class 2-A, and wondered when the screaming sky outside would fall silent. The shelter had been poor, a hardened bunker that kept the glittering rains and stranger things away, but had no food or water. By the third day of hunger pangs, men and women volunteered to brave the outside for supplies. After the survivors returned, they started drawing lotteries.
Outside, the train windows went dark to light in flickering strobes as the cars spiraled down through the armor layers and earth. Reaching down, she gave Nozomi's hand a reassuring squeeze and smiled, before pointing her to the window. The flashes started coming faster, and Hikari felt her ears start to pop. Within the tunnel, train switched from the bottom rail to the top, and sailed through the tunnel end. Light flooded the interior, and the Hikari heard the breath of every man, woman and child in that car catch in their throat. Not that she blamed them.
For them, it was the first time seeing the Geofront.
The train cars whispered down the suspended tracks, and nearly everyone forgot their conditions, the gauntness and exhaustion. They pressed up against the windows, fogging them up as they tried to drink in every detail. Nozomi peeled away from Hikari's side to join them. The middle daughter sighed and slumped against her older sister.
At the bottom floor station, soldiers ushered them out of the cars and into curtained off cubicles where white-coated medics waited. Hikari was told to peel out of her filthy school uniform and into clean sweatpants and a t-shirt. She nearly hugged the woman for it. Little capsules of salts and vitamins waited alongside glasses of lukewarm water, but it all tasted like the best thing she'd ever had.
Then she was pushed out into the crowd, having been given a clean bill of health. Standing on tiptoes, she looked for her sisters- Nozomi's little bob haircut and Kodama's officious ponytail were easy to spot. The crowds were churning, looking everywhere they could at the truly massive interior space. A few minutes ago, they had been practically flying through the air beneath the city. Hikari knew the feeling, as most of them had only seen the Geofront through history books and documentaries. Tokyo-3 had awed them with it's scale, and the Geofront dwarfed that.
Then something pushed through the crowd, cutting through the refugees like the keel of a ship, parting the throng. Whispers broke out amongst them as they jostled for a view, wondering about the tall white and blue figure. Hikari could hear the shared thought on everyone's lips - A pilot!
Hikari blinked and saw Ikari Shinji clad in his plugsuit, and then he was up and hugging her, hands on her waist and lifting her into the air. "I'm glad you're alright!"
She wasn't sure who said it first.
Shinji dropped her and let out a weak, relieved little laugh, before noting her two sisters and giving her something of an odd look. She probably hadn't described them much, now that she thought about it... Hikari offered a giddy, silly little smile despite it all and opened her mouth for introductions, when Kodama draped an arm over her shoulder and crooned in her ear.
"That's Ikari?" She purred. "You never said he was a senior. Or such a stud."
"K-Kodama! Is this really the time!?" Hikari did not turn red. And deigned not to mention that Shinji had kissed her once. She bowed apologetically. "My sister is incorrigible, even with all of this! Ikari-kun, what is going on!?"
The question seemed to get the attention of everyone else milling around on the platform, and they all turned to her family and Shinji. Hikari found herself wilting under the sudden stares, but remembered she was Class Representative. She mustered up her best warning look and dared anyone to riot on her watch.
Quietly, Shinji lead them to a set of benches along the wall. "I can't tell you, because we honestly don't know. We're doing our best going out and rescuing stranded soldiers and civilians, but it's a new war every time."
Nozomi peeled away from Hikari's side to squeak. "Is it an Angel attack?"
"I wish," The boy sighed. "Everyone we rescue gives us a little bit more to go on. When it started, the sky split with those maws and out came the first wave. The banshee riders and such. Then the monsters. What about you three?"
Kodama stepped up, putting her hands on Hikari's shoulders and pushing her into the seat while she cleared her throat. "I work for one of the local TV stations- I think things were happening before the Angel alarms went off. I heard screaming in the streets, and we were getting calls from our roving reporters... None of them made it back to the station garage."
"A lot of people got separated, and they usually went for the nearest shelters." Shinji reassured her, smiling faintly. "Did you see any of the things yourself?"
"Some- just the little gribbly ones. They were tearing apart cars, trying to eat the metal and taste the oil I think." She frowned. "Does that mean anything?"
A new but achingly familiar, nasal voice drawled through the crowd. "It means they're curious, or they don't know any better."
Hikari turned and saw Kensuke Aida picking his way through the press of people, hugging the station wall. She was out of her seat and hugging him a heartbeat later. "Aida-kun! You're alright! Is... Toji?"
Kensuke and Shinji both exchanged a sour look before shaking their head as Kensuke clarified. While he did, the teen pulled out a red and white card with NERV's maple leaf logo, showing it to the three girls before quietly stuffing it back in his pocket. "We haven't spotted him yet. My dad works here, so I skipped the shelter and got in with my pass."
Relief at seeing two more of her friends alive dueled with the icy knowledge of Toji still being trapped out there. She shook her head to clear it and focused back on Kensuke. "You just up and went to NERV? How'd you get here?"
"I was stuck in the parades, early on." Kensuke admitted, looking down at his shoes.
The icy feeling doubled over, and Hikari let out a mournful sound. "You too? I had to run through one to get to Nozomi's school..."
"Parades?" Kodama mumbled, audibly dreading the answer.
Shinji cleared his throat and glanced side to side for eavesdroppers before whispering. "Hundreds of people in the streets, trying to go somewhere, anywhere. And instead of heading away from danger, they moved... together. I've seen soldiers, policemen and paramedics, dancing in the streets. They were shouting and cheering in ways I'd never heard of, or even Japanese."
Hikari sniffled, nodding. "They were moving in the wrong direction. In wrong directions, like walking backwards at half speed. I saw a group of people who had split off from the crowd angling for a way around the main roads, and they just disappeared into a sideways rainstorm. It sprang up in the alleyway, and then it was gone!"
Her older and younger sisters quickly wrapped her up in a hug, and then Shinji scooped them all up in his arms, smelling faintly of blood. A small part of her hoped it was the blood of those things out there.
Coughing into his hands, Kensuke continued the tale. "After the first wave, the hordes and the sky mouths, there were the big things like out of the old monster movies. Angels... They exist wrong, but these new things seem like they should?"
The boy shrugged, and Shinji nodded, picking up the explanation. "Ayumi's still out there as well. As for what's outside, they're... monsters. Understandable monsters that we can't understand."
* * *
The command center had been repaired over the two weeks, but the patches and seams all over the vast chamber were still evident. Misato let her arm hang across her stomach and over her shirt. Some repairs were less evident than others. The big board hologram was still bright and clear though, casting everyone on the crowded floors in electric greens, blues and reds.
Crossing her arms more fully, Misato turned to the side. "Aoba, report?"
The scarred man sighed, flipping over a half-spent legal pad thick with scribbles. "Not much better than the last attempts. We lost some civilians during the extraction, as well as casualties among the JSSDF survivors. General?"
A stocky man with slightly graying hair slumped in his seat. The air around him and his fellow commanders were thick with cigarette and cigar smoke. "We're down to half-strength from what we started with, which wasn't much to begin with. Your Evangelions are carrying the day, but if something doesn't change soon, we'll have to start arming non-combatants."
Misato wanted to say something, like she'd go out there first before letting that happen, but the fact was, they couldn't afford the pointless bravado. Hours after pulling herself out of a hospital bed, Misato had come up to the monitors and seen armies conjured from thin air. Her hand clenched over her middle a little harder. She wasn't going to give up hope quite yet.
"Do what you can, General." She turned to the other senior staff, the surviving JSSDF troops, even the Commanders. "Every engagement, ever individual fight we win and every civilian we save gives us that much more of the greater picture, of what the hell is going on out there. There's a pattern to this insanity, and we have to find it."
It was the same basic speech, though she'd gotten good at varying the language. "So- what do we know?"
One of the JSSDF brass leaned forward, balding and wizened. He was a veteran of World War 2, out of retirement and almost a hundred years old. "Modern military tactics revolve around the most effective tools for a given job and absolute specialization, supplemented by effective generalist tactics. The contemporary army is one that adapts to changing battlefield conditions."
Ritsuko had gotten very good at reading cues, directing Maya and Makoto to bring up their file on all of the invaders. Some were achingly beautiful, others chilled the blood in her veins as Misato watched. Sometimes they were both at once and other things besides.
Hundreds of still images and video clips filled the holograms as the old general spoke. "The Angels are in their own way consistent- Organs we know of as cores, and biology that follows some form of internal consistency..."
From the side, Fuyutsuki frowned at the flickering slide show of sublime horrors. "And these have almost none. Each is an individual list of engagement terms, but so far we've seen no indication as to what divides them. Of which can summon armies as opposed to monsters, to lock a man in his worst nightmare at a glance..."
"Tiger-men, two-legged, six legged, wings or snakes." Misato huffed. "Some impervious to small arms, others shouting loud enough to hurl a grown man thirty feet."
The Commander of Nerv let out a low, frustrated growl from his place at the highest seat. "It's pointless to classify them- even if the MAGI were intact, they would destroy themselves trying to make sense of those thousand-thousand permutations. Whatever weaknesses we have seen do not always work twice. Even against the same being."
Frustration hung over the leaders like a length of chain. Kirishima crushed up a page full of notes in his hand, growling. "We don't know what they are, barely what they can do, or how many there are. Some of them seem to inhabit multiple spaces at once, some multiple bodies, some just very large. I have in my hand a JSSDF report where a hostile ignited and died simply because it made a noise walking across loose papers."
He tossed the page aside, and the big hologram punctuated his venting with a shot of Unit 03 grappling with the star-skinned monster from that morning. He nearly screamed. "What are these things?"
Aoba coughed, and Misato offered him a sympathetic look. He didn't have good news to share. "We've also gotten reports of JSSDF forces outside Hakone engaging an 'unknown afterimage' which lead the VTOL squad on a two-hour chase, inflicting eighteen casualties before the target was cornered along the dockside, identified by UN fleet forces as 'a car-sized snake made of orbiting knives, radiating a halo of light' and eliminated via means of focused fire."
He turned the page and sighed. "Only eye-witnesses to the attacker's true form all had green eyes."
Misato scowled and gently shouldered her way through the crowd of staffers and aides towards one of the consoles. She mashed the keys and brought up a map of Japan, drawing out the meager zone of control and their unbroken lines of communication.
She glared at the display, almost growling. "We're boxed in here at Hakone, with almost no contact past the hills. Land lines are going down, shortwave radios are spotty, and forget satellites. We know these things have gotten as far as Kanagawa and Yamanashi."
"They've done all that-" Misato snarled. "With no apparent command structure, hierarchy or leadership. We've seen a handful of individuals or lookalikes that the others seem to avoid outright contact with, but deliberate extranormal invasion attempt or no, we're fighting against an unleashed mob and a war-circus. With a battle plan and an objective we can win- the civilians we've rescued prove that. But aside from that, we're still managing to lose just by force of arms and lack of information."
At that Misato rounded on the gathered soldiers and officers, with the technicians standing alongside the scientists. Ritsuko stood up straighter when Misato met her eye, as did Kirishima and even Fuyutsuki. A bright flash of white and blue out the corner of her eye made her turn, and she saw Shinji stand head and shoulders above most of the men and women in the crowd. Rei was at his side, stepping through the dense knots of people.
Sighing, Misato ran a hand through her hair. "How were the refugees?"
"Scared, but better now." Shinji's face clouded, and Misato watched as Rei put a hand on his wrist. "We found Hikari. No Toji or Ayumi though. I haven't found any of the Shinto club members either."
Above, Gendo stood and leaned over the edge of his balcony, hands on the rail and fists clenched. "It's become increasingly clear that we cannot afford to waste our forces pointlessly. NERV is scientific research organization and Evangelion deployment arm. We cannot run, and we cannot hide. We must play to our strengths, and endless sorties against these invaders does nothing but deplete our limited reserves. We have no supply-line to the rest of the country, and Tokyo-3 was never truly self-sufficient."
Kirishima bolted upright, fists shaking at his sides as he nearly shouted. "And what do you expect us to do, nothing? Do you have an alternative, Ikari?"
"The Major is correct- we know too little about our opponents to develop any meaningful tactical doctrine." The Commander pushed his glasses up with one finger. "Intelligence-gathering alongside scientific research and development are our strengths. The Geofront is now your secure base of operations, so long as the invaders appear unwilling or unable to manifest inside."
It was a major concession, but it was also simply impractical to try and push the JSSDF survivors out. They still had all the guns. Misato's brain kicked over into high gear, trying to guess where Gendo was heading. She worried her lip, glancing at Shinji as he sidled up alongside her with Rei. She blinked once, trying to place his expression.
Then it hit her. He was angry.
Shinji exchanged a wordless look with Rei, who then darted off to Ritsuko of all people and tugged her ear down. Misato watched as Rei gestured, spreading her arms wide as if to encompass the whole Geofront. Ritsuko shot a glance at the taller pilot before nodding. Meanwhile, Shinji seemed to stand just a little bit straighter, a bit grander amongst all the older, veteran soldiers and leaders. The holographic display switched to a momentary text graphic, signaling a complex-wide public address. The speakers in the command center whistled with feedback for a second as Shinji grabbed a microphone.
"All of that may be true." His voice boomed out across the entire Geofront, and Misato could imagine people hearing him for the first time. Of them looking up for the source and wondering who or what was speaking. "We're going out there and risking everything against something that defies comprehension. Every time I look at one of those things I feel like it's mocking me with how familiar it looks, and I think they're laughing, because they know we're getting it wrong. They want us to back down in the face of the unknown, to cower and hide in this fortress we built to be our holdout against the unknown in an uncertain world. I'm not going to stand by and hand it and our people over to them so easily."
"If it were just me, or even just the people who signed up for this kind of thing, I wouldn't need to say anything. Most of us volunteered to fight Angels." Misato felt something in her chest clench happily when he shot a warm look her way. "But this isn't about NERV, Angels or the Evas. It's something wrong and absurd and awful, happening right outside, right now!"
Everyone across all the platforms and floors of the command center turned to each other, whispering intently or offering deliberative looks. Gendo stared down at his son with all the apparent acknowledgement of a granite statue.
"So all of you- do what you feel is best. Save yourselves, or save what is most important to you. I'll accept whatever help I can get, but I'll tell you this. My name is Ikari Shinji, and as a Director of NERV and an Evangelion pilot, I'm going out there. I'm never going to stop going out there until I find everyone I can."
He clicked off the microphone then and handed it aside before heading for the door. The senior staff of NERV and the JSSDF were quiet, until General Kirishima broke the silence. "Ikari-kun. Ikari Shinji!"
Shinji turned to face the shorter man, and the general was practically shaking in place. "My daughter is out there, Ikari Shinji. If you're all that's left, I'll pick up a rifle and follow you."
Ritsuko broke away from Maya and Makoto with Rei just behind her, grinding a cigarette out in an overflowing tray. "I'm with you too."
One by one, more and more people threw in behind Shinji, and Misato watched as the screens and security feeds showed more and more of the JSSDF survivors stand up, throw their fists in the air and cheer silently on camera. The rescued civilians in their tent rows clapped, cried or shook in place, eager to stand and move. It was almost like the whole Geofront was shouting with one voice, to fight.
Misato grinned, weaving through the suddenly fiery crowd of old soldiers and tired defenders. She smiled up at Shinji and threw an arm around Ritsuko's shoulders, laughing. "Well you know I have your back, Shinji-kun."
With the speech done, now Shinji had the luxury to turn a bit red. "Yeah well, I hope people remember to listen to your plans. I just knew what to say."
Misato laughed a bit louder, feeling the tiredness and two-week terror fade for at least a short while. The thing that made it all just a little bit sweeter, was that Gendo's plan had been completely forgotten.
* * *
A few hours after the last briefing, Ritsuko looked up from her lab table to see Misato enter. The other woman nearly slid in, not even waiting to let the door fully open before hopping through the gap. For a moment Ritsuko envied the woman her energy, but at the same time she knew it wasn't so simple.
As the door closed behind her, Misato raised her hand and waved, almost desperately. "I hope you have some good news for me, Rits!"
Pushing away from the table, Ritsuko shook her head and sighed. Typical of Misato to just up and glibly expect her to have all the factual, rational answers. It was comforting in its own way, but the sun-bleached blonde felt her eyebrow twitch regardless. It also felt too much like university.
"Probably not." She waved a gloved hand at the drained corpse on the table next to her. "I have on my table what I can only describe as a flying lion-bird- with an accompanying saddle, which implies domestication. This one is freaking me out more than the weird ones, because it actually has understandable, functional organs. Bullets killed it!"
Misato had the decency to wince at that, rocking back and forth on her heels. The spare NERV uniform hung oddly on her body, tight in the wrong places and loose in others. Ritsuko had gone through a half-dozen white coats herself, stained with impossible things and consigned to immolation.
"Small favors that it died." Misato finally muttered. "Or left a corpse. Some of these things up and left behind... Stuff. That one Shinji stepped on left behind a smear of mushed pottery clay, ice-cold liquid silver and honey."
Ritsuko sighed and brought a hand to her face, but stopped just short of wiping her eyes with a glove soaked in lion-bird viscera. She pulled it off and washed her hands before pressing the heels of her hands ito her eyes, rubbing gently. The weirdness was just not stopping. Fourteen days of strangeness going on fifteen, with no end in sight.
"Maybe you can help me with this one." She glanced over at another table, sealed beneath a four-person glove box with pairs of gloves for all. Inside was one of the first corpses they recovered. She reached in and pulled up what she'd tentatively identified as a head. "Are you sure they recovered all the pieces. Not like I would be able to tell, but you know... thoroughness."
Misato scratched her cheek, nodding. "there was an intact chunk with an eyeball on it which was left at the site, judging at the report."
The blonde frowned. That report should have reached her. "...Did they give a reason why?"
"Wouldn't stop blinking even after the apparent death of the creature." Misato's face drew back in a wry grimace. "They kept it under containment for three hours, but after no sign of regeneration, determined it too large a risk for Geofront exposure and 'hucked it into the ocean'."
Ritsuko let out a long, sputtering breath. "Charming. Mark this one only plausibly dead."
After that, Ritsuko looked at her friend hovering in the middle of the lab. Misato was never squeamish, but she hovered between all the tables and experiment stations, hugging her arms to her chest like she was afraid of touching something. Ritsuko's lips compressed down to a thin line, wondering for a moment what to do.
Distraction seemed like a good start. "What crisis are you currently managing?"
Misato perked up at the question, and Ritsuko suppressed a grin at her ruse working. "Coordination, mostly. A third of the JSSDF senior staff decided the best place to go was the Geofront, so I've had to organize them and make sure they didn't break anything. Gotta tell you though Rits, I feel good about having actual solders in the Geofront."
"Not that the Commander was happy." Ritsuko leaned against a thankfully clean autopsy table, smirking.
"And I do not have a single damn to give about it!" Misato let out a short, quick laugh and hugging herself more vivaciously. Words like that were made for people like her. "I've got some volunteers hunting for those last two ninjas as well. They'll find Melchior, eventually."
Wincing, Ritsuko nodded. She looked at the tables full of impossibilities, scowling. Of all her responsibilities, her expertise, the MAGI was the one thing she could actually delegate. There was no point in trusting any of her special projects to others, and she didn't have time to bring them up to speed. If they survived the next few weeks, maybe someone would learn on the job.
Or die trying.
Misato must have noticed her sour look, cocking her head to the side as she asked. "What's on your mind, Rits?"
"Pattern green." Ritsuko admitted. "Whatever these things are, they're thick with the signature, more than even Shinji. I've exhausted every possible filter or interpretation of the data. Right now I need better sensors, and I don't have time to build them."
"Shit." Misato breathed, offering a sympathetic look. "I'll do my best to buy you that time."
Ritsuko screwed up her face at that, and held back the first thing that sprang to mind- that soldiers buy farms, and that Misato had just nearly made a real-estate deal. She figured her friend wouldn't appreciate the reference, not right then at least.
After a few more moments, Misato let her arms fall to the side, then she stumbled. Ritsuko's own limbs felt like lead, so even as she tried to move forward, her friend was already dropping. Listing in place, she somehow managed to fall int to an empty chair nearby.
"Katsu-Misato!" Ritsuko stammered, finally getting her own tired body to cooperate.
Moving over to the other woman, Ritsuko knelt down with a scowl. Forget oblique references- now she had be direct. "You're starting to burn out, Katsuragi. Clean bill of health or not, I can send you to the infirmary with orders for strict bed-rest. When did you last sleep, for that matter?"
"Your bedside manner sucks, Rits." Misato grinned, even while her head moved sluggishly. "Yesterday- I'm heading back to my bunk after finishing with you."
At that, Ritsuko fixed the woman with an incredulous look. "First of all, wrong doctorate. Second, that's an eighteen hour rotation. Katsuragi, we have to sleep."
"Well take that up with 'we're being freaking invaded!'" Misato threw her hands up in the air before letting them fall at her sides. "Combat conditions are a thing."
Pulling one of Misato's arms over her shoulder, Ritsuko huffed, standing with her friend not quite hanging from her side. They started making their way toward the door and out to the Geofront officers quarters.
The pair passed by Geofront personnel in ones and twos as they made their way towards the elevators. Partway there, Ritsuko smirked. "It is kind of funny though."
Too busy shuffling to dose, Misato lifted her head. Her voice though was crystal clear. "What?"
"We had to stop overusing the pressure point trick Shinji developed, or his super coffee." Stepping into the elevator, Ritsuko gave her friend a pleased, sidelong little grin, flush with accomplishment. "Last week I figured out how to perform a similar trick. You can't do it to yourself, but my trick lets you make someone drowsy, like they took fast-acting cold medicine."
Misato blinked at that, slowly. Once, twice, just a little bleary and out of sync. "Seriously."
"Very." Ritsuko confirmed. "I'll give you the treatment if you want. It just helps you fall asleep though, and not much else."
After ensuring Misato was going to sleep, Ritsuko made a few calls and shuffled off to her bed.
* * *
Shinji had lit a fire under NERV, and it was still burning eight hours later. Volunteers from off-shift signed up by the dozen, and from the look of them, Misato was sure they'd have gotten the Evas ready for deployment by hand. Pulleys, cables and raw muscle. She even knew it was possible, buried in some dusty operations manual and the cage construction history. Monitors were splashed with a sprawling array of cage camera feeds and the rush for launch. Misato felt like a little candle by comparison, or maybe a lantern if she were feeling charitable. She slapped her cheeks, painfully aware of the sour look Ritsuko threw her way.
Ignoring it for the moment, Misato reached for the radio handset and switched channels. "Fifteen minutes til launch. Are you sure you're up for this, Shinji-kun? You've been pulling heel-toe deployments for the past week."
Standing on the plug gantry, her pilot turned to face the nearest camera and smiled. "I'm taking mornings off when I can- but I can handle the night shifts the best."
Out the corner of her eye, Misato saw Ritsuko's frosty look thaw into something terrible and mischievous. She grabbed her own microphone, smirking. "Perhaps Misato is hoping you'd take fewer night shifts."
* * *
A glitch during pre-launch check had Asuka cooling her heels in the changing rooms just above the primary cage levels. Leaning against a bank of lockers, she smirked at nothing in particular as Misato sputtered and Ikari grumbled about the unfairness of life. Schadenfreude was her cultural birthright. Wiggling a little, and wondered if she'd need a new plugsuit soon.
The outside door slid open and Rei was there, clad in her original white and black plugsuit, and it was definitely too tight on her. They'd both done a fair share of growing, and Rei hadn't been an active duty pilot for months. Her hair had grown out too, and even with the bit of faded yellow silk tying it back, Rei's ponytail went down to the middle of her back. The blue-haired girl had cut back the locks that framed her face though, keeping them at jaw length. Thinking about it, Asuka suppressed a wince. Her own hair was a huge chore already, and neither of them had Ikari's wonder shampoo anymore.
"Once more into the breach?" Asuka rocked away from the locker and stood up, stretching.
"As often as necessary." Rei offered her a small smile along with her agreement. "I have been thinking about something for a while now."
"Yeah?" Asuka twisted in place with her eyes closed, dimly aware of the final checks on her Eva finishing up. When she completed her turn and looked up, Rei was right there, undeniably in her personal space.
Her friend didn't wait to let her ask. "I believe that under the circumstances, I would rather do this now and imperfectly, instead of waiting for an ideal opportunity that might never come."
Having said her piece, Rei reached out and caught Asuka's face with her fingertips, leaned in, and kissed her.
Three seconds later, Misato's voice echoed out over the cages. "Pilots to your Evas! Twenty seconds to launch!"
* * *
One after another, the Evangelions were shifted through the cage structures and onto one of the launch platforms, laid down on their backs so they could match up with the eight-rail train system that lead out of the Geofront and into the greater Hakone region. Ayanami Rei felt her heart beat faster than it ever had before, and she wondered when it would slow down, or maybe if. If was an interesting concept to consider as well.
Akagi-sensei and the MAGI must have noticed too. "Rei, is everything alright?"
Feeling her Eva being hoisted through the air and around, Rei allowed her synchronization to receded just enough to let the automatic systems do their work. She felt a fierce spike of hate slide out from somewhere, all around her.
"Well enough, Akagi-sensei." She looked out through her Eva's eyes and saw the observation chamber that hung over the loading area. The familiar scientist inside had brown hair.
Rei cocked her head to the side and pushed back with her will, frowning. "We all re-acclimate to active duty in our own ways. I will have to remind Unit 00 that you are not the other Akagi."
* * *
Four Evangelions shot through the underground rail tunnels towards their point of deployment, almost two kilometers away. The vertical launch rails were too much of defensive weakness, in the face of an enemy that could wave their hands and raise an army. Shinji couldn't see them, but six squads of volunteer JSSDF and NERV personnel were riding the secure trains alongside.
The ride itself would be two minutes or less. Listening to Asuka stammer and blush was both hilarious and mortifying, and it somehow made the trip feel longer. "Bwuh! Rei, when we get back to the cages we're going to have a long talk!"
Shinji winced at that, knowing Misato was already smelling blood in the water. The dark-haired woman practically purred as she cut into the conversation. "Is there something you want to share, Asuka-chan?"
Rei was steadfastly silent, but Shinji could see her through the Eva communication system, and she was smiling, and contentedly at that.
Looking back across the plug at the projection of Asuka, Shinji grinned a little himself- charged LCL didn't do anything to hide a blush, and the redhead never had any trouble looking cute or gorgeous when it suited her.
Being caught out just made her look even sweeter. "Wh-no! There's just some stuff you don't spring on people like that!"
"Really now. Go on."
Tugging at the controls, Asuka huffed, blushing harder. "Well, I mean it wasn't bad! Just... disruptive! I'm a soldier damnit, I need to have my head together for a mission!
Rei finally spoke up, decisive and earnest. "I did not mean to upset you, Asuka-chan. I only wanted to clearly communicate myself to you."
Across the channel Asuka's audio degraded to static, as she attempted to inhale sharply through an anguished grimace, and only accomplished a stunned choke around a lungful of LCL. Ahead, Unit 03 was first out of the tunnel, and the tracks ahead switched to send Asuka and Rei down another parallel line. They needed all the room they could get to stand up and move out.
"You kids are adorable." Misato let out a happy sigh over the radio before her voice hardened. "It's time to get to work though, so keep an eye out."
Shinji nodded while he heard the others chime out in turn. Even with his slugged synchronization, he willed his Eva to disengage from the transport and heaved himself upright. Ahead, the low grassy hills of Hakone teemed with chittering, capering horrors waving little flags and opalescent spears. The four Evangelions had expanded batteries for thirty minutes of general activity. They had that much time to find an intact shelter, secure it, and transport any civilians back to the Geofront.
* * *
Muttering a faint apology to the secondary and tertiary souls, Kaworu flexed his Eva's AT field and fashioned it into a bulwark against all that would seek to lay him low. There were more such things on the other side of that field than there were stars in the sky. He knew, because they told him so. That uncountable army crashed into his field, while somehow only occupying the width and length of a city street. Behind him, his allies were busy with their own challenges.
Sorhyu Asuka Langley, being Sorhyu Asuka Langley had other priorities during existential crisis against extranormal invaders. "I'll stop calling you newbie when you start getting my name right!"
Barely teasing his controls, Kaworu flicked the spear from one hand to another, twirling it to deflect a curtain of fiery sword-breath. "It was one time. You could at least call me Rookie, Sorhyu-san. It rolls off the tongue better."
Kaworu watched her out the side of his perception, smirking as she mumbled it under her breath. Her Eva moved ahead to offer him covering fire as well. "You're right- you are hereby now promoted to Rookie!"
Letting his field fall, he swept the army with his spear as her gunfire raked across the street. "Your graciousness knows no bounds, princess."
"You don't have nicknaming privileges!"
* * *
Nearly two thirds of Tokyo-3 couldn't be pulled below ground. There were huge cavernous spaces beneath the streets that doubled as elevator shafts for the armory buildings, Evangelion launch rails, and the same channels that let the civilian structures slide down more than kilometer through rock and armor. The part of the city that could have been pulled down had been, weeks ago.
Now the only thing left above were the un-retractable structures. Ordinary buildings competed for space with disguised armament blocks, and none of them had been spared in the face of the invasion. Four squads of twelve men and women picked their way through those ruins, looking for survivors, supplies- anything they could bring back or mark of interest.
The radio chatter filled Shinji's mind and hearing, skipping his ears entirely. "Grocery store over here. Most everything's spoiled, like someone went all over clawing at things."
Another terse voice broke in over the channel, curt but understanding. "The canned stuff ought to be good. Mark it down."
Pushing the frequency away with a few key presses, Shinji looked around the empty streets, frowning. Sections of the city were peeling away in strips, blocking off whole roads to foot traffic and even all-terrain vehicles. Plans were already being drawn up about how to clear the way for rescue vehicles into some of the sections. The Evas could have helped, but only Asuka and Nagisa had the synchronization not to make a bigger mess.
As for the enemy, they came in waves, and only when it suited them. For all his fiery declarations earlier, he couldn't put a name or face to the invaders. Something about them nagged at the edge of his consciousness though, a familiarity. It wasn't that they looked like something out of books, everyone was dealing with that nostalgia. It was like every one of them were wearing a skin of some kind.
What really got to him, Shinji decided, their voices. They spoke, shouted and capered. The small ones especially, and it had a quality he couldn't place. It was so achingly familiar, like he could just barely understand it.
Shaking his head, Shinji sighed and focused back on the task at hand. After they cleared the first clambering hordes outside the tunnels, the enemy had pulled back into the clouded city. The sun was shining down, broken up by thick palls and columns of smoke from long-burning fires. His own Eva towered head and shoulders over the predominantly mundane, ruined cityscape. The other Evangelions were out there too, walking in line abreast with weapons ready, picking through the urban areas like they were hedges.
Misato pushed a map of the area into his control system and it projected itself across his perception, merging with his own visual field. He'd gotten used to it. The shelter they wanted wasn't too far away, a few footsteps by his Evangelion's reckoning.
Her voice was cool and steady, focused. "Alright kids, just like the last times- four corners and cover the extraction."
Rei and Asuka started drifting apart, taking their places further afield while Nagisa moved the opposite direction. Arranged in a four-armed cross, they were perpendicular to the shelter. Shinji exhaled into the LCL, willing his heart to slow down. Now they had to wait for the soldiers and their transport trucks. Shinji watched the little dots on his mental map crawl upward, building by building as they worked along the streets. The soldiers had to go slow, checking every corner for the enemy. He couldn't sweat, surrounded by LCL, but his hands felt cold and clammy regardless. There wasn't much fear for himself, but he had more than enough fear for those on the ground.
A few seconds later,a flash of glossy, pearlescent white on a rooftop a few hundred meters away caught his eye. It was such a restrained color, compared to the chaotic riot they'd been seeing for weeks. "Contact..."
"We see it over here Shinji, don't move." Misato hummed. "Nagisa, you have a better angle, what are you seeing?"
"More of the... I suppose all I can call them are the 'taller ones'." The white-haired pilot frowned through a communication window, cupping his face in one hand and rubbing his jaw. "Sharing visual feed with you, Ayanami-san, Sorhyu-san."
The two girls chimed out one after the other, and Shinji watched Asuka mirror Nagisa's expression, likely without meaning to. She looked much cuter doing it though. "They're... garish. And organized."
As Asuka was mumbling, Shinji took a closer look himself. She and Nagisa were both right. There were about six of the 'taller' ones, standing at attention like soldiers out of old time medieval history books, swords and pole arms cradled in their arms. The leading six had armor that was very much uniform- a sort of glossy pearl white edged in darker grey, and the plates had a kind of marbled vein texture. They were surrounded by what looked like little... things monster-men with bulbous, crooked noses, bristly eyebrows and snaggletoothed grins. The magnification spared no detail.
It looked like a retinue, and they were all carrying flags, or maybe standards was the proper term. The banners themselves were what originally snagged his attention though. They were bright shining pearl grey silk, with a sooty black icon in the center. An armored head surrounded in ghostly flames. It was no mob, as even the most feral of the things moved with a stiff, regimented grace. Marching orders.
"I think they're scouting us, Misato." Asuka sucked in a quick breath, and Shinji could hear her activate weapon systems. "Yeah, they're definitely scouting us! Orders?"
Whatever Misato was going to say stalled in her throat as the apparent leader of the scouting force raised a hand to the sky. Almost as fast as thought, the air above the occupied rooftop seemed to bubble and split, until the possible boiled away into a mad-looking thing. Something behind his eyes tingled at the sight, resonant and cloying. A fraction of a second later, alert symbols spread across his perception inside the plug, declaring a sudden surge of Pattern Green.
He could hear Ritsuko mutter over the radio, offering dark curses while all of them watched the saturation percentage spike higher and higher. The leading scout brought its arm down with a flourish, and the boiling mass of something unfurled. Water spilled out of the air in thick waves, drenching the rooftops as a heavy, muscled tail beat the air.
It was a whale, swimming through air and its own carried ocean. A castle perched atop its back, letting the scouts climb along streaming prismatic rainbows into the towers and the battlements. The flying creature turned and sang to the city, rising higher into the air and leaving the Evas to the ground. Down below, a dozen or more voices crowded the radio as the extraction teams and their support begged for information, whispering orders to each other and scanning the streets. Shinji pivoted in place, scanning the horizon and scowling. A god's eye view of the battlefield sucked.
Misato's voice cut through the chatter and rang out over the channel. "It's the first sign we've seen of an organized command structure- Rei, Asuka! Follow it! Nagisa and Shinji, stay on the shelter!"
"Roger that." Rei's answer was smooth and steady, and Shinji watched her Evangelion pulled out of position and into a cover-hugging run. "Requesting heavy armament. Are there any intact armory buildings en-route?"
Turning, Shinji for the moment put aside where the others were going and focused on finding his own new home. The infantry were already coming up behind along one of the less damaged roads while Nagisa and Unit 03 closed in for support. The spear in his Eva's hands was heavy, out of balance. That and other things aside was more a matter of his his low synchronization. Shinji shook out some numbness in his fingers- his Eva's fingers- and sighed.
The answer back from command was wry, and Shinji could feel the apologetic smile in Misato's voice. "Sorry, you and Asuka will have to make do with what you've got on hand."
"Typical!" Unit 02 raised is gun high in salute to the other Evas as Asuka fell in step behind Rei, gymnast quick and quiet. "At least it's not a white whale!"
Smirking, Shinji silently wished the girls luck while he looked around. That nagging familiarity was back, like he should know what was going on. The pattern green warnings had faded, but the saturation counter continued to oscillate wildly. His Eva's senses lagged behind his own, and there was that unmistakable curve of the entry plug that lensed everything he sensed. Asuka had described high synchronization like her hands feeling empty, not even touching the controls. He didn't have the experience or luxury of a high compatibility though, not anymore.
"Do you see anything, Nagisa-san?" Shinji flicked through vision modes on a whim; they had seen some invaders display abnormal surface temperatures.
On street level, the soldiers and their trucks stood out as rippling columns of hot air and false-spectrum figures masked by armor and equipment webbing. He drummed his fingers on the controls as they came up to the shelter, itself standing out too as a cold spot and insulated against the noonday sun. An air conditioning vent threw up a column of hot exhaust. As long as the Geofront held, power would stay on...
"Nothing particularly relevant. Some of Akagi-sensei's flying lion birds about half a kilometer away." The white-haired pilot hummed. "Outside our operational limit."
Kneeling between apartment buildings, Shinji sighed. It was too easy. The invaders could vanish almost on a whim, dissolving their armies as quickly as they made them. Shadows cast by the buildings under the mist seemed to lengthen into sneering, laughing shapes. Thoughts about missing something scattered abruptly as the soldiers broke out over the radio again. Adrenaline spiked high the four squads fell into battle lines beneath the smoke and sunlight.
Whipping his Eva's head left and right, Shinji tried to spot the enemy, but Ritsuko broke in before he even hit transmit. "Shinji- look down!"
It wasn't just the building's shadows. The inky pool of darkness beneath his own Evangelion seethed, reaching up with grabbing tendrils even as he willed himself backward, backpedaling with street-shaking impact. Stumbling, his synchronization stuttered and the plug walls flickered silver before he got it back. Shinji blinked as he left his shadow completely behind. Nagisa hissed a second later, and scrambled two streets over to join him. Below, the soldiers unlimbered their heavy weapons, but their fellows waved them down, urging them to save their ammo.
Through all of that, Shinji growled and cast about for the source. No matter how powerful he and his Eva was, there was nothing he could do for the soldiers on the ground. A second later, Unit 03's own disembodied shadow surged up and over the buildings before tackling Nagisa's Evangelion. The newer amorphous blob hauled the Eva up and into the air, even as Nagisa screamed over the radio. In that same oily move, the heavy wave of darkness threw Unit 03 up and onto Shinji's own Evangelion.
The impact shook the city, sending the pair of cyborgs crashing an apartment building across the street. Their combined armor and bulk sheared through concrete and drywall before stopping halfway buried in the rubble. Unit 03 was sprawled across Shinji's lap, shifting fitfully. Yanking on his controls, Shinji got an arm in under the allied Evangelion, shoving Nagisa up and on his feet while 03's disconnected shadow rushed over to the first one. The two dark masses merged in a whirling storm, rising up into a dark shape that seemed to drink up sunlight.
Warning symbols and damage displays crowded the plug, and Shinji could hear Misato, Ritsuko and the rest of the operations crew scrambled frantically in the background, hunting for answers. Picking up his fallen spear, Shinji scowled. It was tall, like an Eva, spindly, with gangly long arms. They'd fought bigger, but there was something different about it, and Shinji couldn't quite pin the feeling down.
Watching the shadow beast list, hunched over with its knuckles grazing against the street, Shinji brought his spear to bear. "Nagisa-san, are you with me?"
The other pilot grinned and raised his own weapon twirling it effortlessly. "Of course."
Poor synchronization aside, Shinji could walk, and he could run. That was going to be enough. Bearing down on the controls, Shinji willed his Evangelion forward, stumbling and swerving along the street as he brought he spear up and point forward. Nagisa nearly danced, racing ahead of him in a dark blur that shook the dust from walls and shattered windows. Unit 03 slammed into shadow, shrugging past the four grasping arms and raking his own progressive blade through the dark flesh before leaping out of the way.
Crashing through the inky stream of liquid shadow, Unit 01 plowed head first into the monster while Shinji wrenched at the butterfly yokes. He and the beast skid along the city street, digging furrows in the pavement and armor plates until they hit a skyscraper. Reeling back, Shinji yanked the spear up fast and rough, barely managing to turn it blade first at the last second. The shadow melted back into the cracked facade, leaving Shinji to stare at the crater.
A second later, the shadowy creature burst through the rooftop in a spinning whirl of debris and limbs. It landed on what was left of the rooftop in a feral crouch, light as a feather despite its size. Its arms rippled and ribs cracked along the limbs, undulating freely as it reached into empty space. The air cracked with the sound of shattering glass, pulling a boil of shadow from the sky.
Shinji didn't bother waiting, and Nagisa was right behind him. Unit 01 lashed out with a sluggish, workmanlike hacking lunge while the other Evangelion spun effortlessly, swinging and striking three times for every one of Shinji's. The shadowy monster jumped and capered, dodging the strikes while striding along the parapets of buildings. Every duck and lean flowed into disjointed cartwheels while cradling its prize. It hopped off and into an intersection, almost prancing, like a peacock on the strut.
When it stood tall, Shinji couldn't help but think it familiar. Or maybe similar. It was tall like an Eva, spindly like an Eva, gangly, like an Eva. The shadow beast theatrically, saluting with the thing in its hand before giving it an unsettlingly crisp flick. The shadows snapped tight into a shape, and with an almost jaunty, clownish gesture, the beast donned a helmet.
Standing mere blocks from each other, Shinji could pin it down in his mind. The helmet completed the image of a leering, flickering shape. A familiar one.
* * *
"Ritsuko, give me something! I really don't want that to be what I think it is!" Misato leaned dangerously far back in her chair, feeling her voice rise along with her fear. "We barely made out out the last time this happened."
The blonde gave her a frantic, helpless shrug before scrambling back to the web of screens and keyboards. She was mired in there with Maya and Makoto, trying to pull some kind of data. Misato turned back to the screens, rocking forward and slapping both hands down on the console as she stood up. She felt her fingernails scrape across the plastic panel. It wasn't white or red, and had rounded shoulders, lacking the iconic armory pylons.
With no help coming, Misato bit her lip and leaned toward the receiver, calling her pilots. "Alright boys, it looks you're fighting a shadow Evangelion. Let's hope it has crappy batteries."
* * *
For a moment, it seemed like a stalemate. In that apparent standoff, the instant of time seemed to stretch between them, straining almost to the point of snapping. A gust of wind blew through the city, spreading clouds of smoke far and wide. Shinji tugged fitfully on his controls and grit his teeth hard enough to hurt. The shadow Evangelion was content to stand still and stare at them. Mockingly at that.
There had been a time where Shinji would not have attacked first, no matter the opponent. Now though, there were circumstances in which he would, gladly.
Stuck in a narrow space with buildings on all sides, all Shinji could do was charge forward, falling back on the classic run and thrust. His Eva seemed to feel the same fury, and he could barely feel the strain against the locks around its jaw. Stumbling, his synchronization weighed him down. Each stride was wide and spastic, like he was running under water. Every time his feet hit the street, the shock of impact registered one lunging step later.
The shadow turned into the spear thrust, nimbly letting it whip by as Shinji hurtled past. Throwing his arms and legs forward, he kicked the ground hard. His momentum bled out, buckling road plates as he twisted. Bracing the spear around his back, he swung the spear around his hips, switching hands and forgetting the buildings all around. The spear shaft raked the higher floors, carving a dry scar across the cracked facades. Growling, Shinji snarled and tossed the spear aside. The weapon dropped to the street and sent cars bouncing for blocks around. Shinji raised his Evangelion's hands, hooking his fingers into rending claws.
Magic or no magic, time to play to his strengths.
"So, Ikari-kun." Nagisa shifted alongside, following adroitly with grace and almost whisper quiet despite forty meters of cybernetic combat platform. "What is your reason for being here?"
Crashing into the shadow, Shinji very nearly slipped, but training took over. He wrenched at the creature, digging in with both hands and his Evangelion's own strength. Oily black limbs punched back, forking and bristling into dark spikes that raked through armor and nicked the Eva's skin. Sickly yellow leached from the wound, but Shinji barely felt it. Not that he could afford more mistakes. His opponent was slippery- literally, and Shinji knew just how much he was telegraphing.
Rearing back, he risked a glance at Nagisa, nonplussed. "I really don't think this is the best time for that, Nagisa-san!"
Unit 03 raised its spear above its head in both hands, twirling it in both palms before bringing it down into a lightning-fast downward slash that cleaved the shadow's arm clean off. Shinji rolled away, clumsily pushing and pawing away at overturned cars and craters in the street. The severed shadow limb melted, before pooling back into the invader's flesh.
Nagisa didn't seem to notice the setback, retreating smoothly. "On the contrary- it is the best and only time, so how about it?"
The shadow creature slipped out of Shinji's grip, bending over backwards with too many spines and not enough joints. Twisting at the hips, Shinji shuffled after it, sluggish and delayed. He needed to think four or five moves ahead, to feint more than even Asuka did during drills. Even as he sank into that mental combat space, Nagisa's question ate at him. It dug into his mind and made his heart clench tight in his chest.
Aborting a three-hit combo into a lunging grab, Shinji growled into the LCL. "My friends are out there still. Toji, the Shinto club. Ayumi..."
Reaching out with both hands to rend and twist, Shinji felt his mind go blank for a split second. It just then occurred to him that he knew every student in his class year by name, and most of the upperclassmen too. Their faces, impressions and personalities flickered around in his mind while the shadow thrashed, doubling over on its back and into a literal ball before spearing his Eva with a kick to the stomach. The impact threw Shinji skyward, ripping the thing's arms off again even as he tumbled.
Nagisa surged in while Shinji was airborne, lashing out with the spear and hacking off bits of darkness as the creature slid away. It undulated, greasy and cast apart in thick splattering waves. Meanwhile, Shinji landed, crash face first into a block and a half worth of buildings. His Evangelion carved through the concrete and steel like it was paper, and the remaining walls slumped down on him with fitful, groaning waves. The communications channels exploded, men and women screaming, shouting orders and demanding action.
Shaking his head inside the plug, Shinji cast about for a direction. His Eva's face was buried in the rubble. Pushing up to get clear, his eyes locked on to something that froze his blood. The shelter was across the street, with soldiers and refugees close enough he could see their faces. He'd almost landed on the recovery team. That kick had been aimed. Shinji snarled and twisted in his seat, pulling on the controls and fixtures hard enough to make them creak. Rising, he urged his Eva to crawl up and out of the ruins, away from the soldiers and civilians below.
Up ahead, Nagisa ducked past a lunging strike. He stepped back just as Shinji cleared the rubble, retreating for just a moment. Scowling, Shinji used the seconds he had in motion to punch in commands with his fingertips. His synch may have been terrible, but his training was fine. And all that training told him he was fighting a shadow monster that could use its enemies as strategic weapons.
Unit 01 skid to a halt next to Unit 03 then, and Nagisa cocked his head, visible on the plug communication panel. "I've heard good things about this girlfriend of yours."
Shinji had enough wherewithal to shoot the other pilot an incredulous look, but found himself thinking about it anyway. There wasn't an all-consuming surge of passion, but more like a warm sense of... Growth. "She's... I've learned a lot from her."
They hadn't forgotten about the shadow creature either. Shinji started striding forward, massive hands at his sides and ready to rip and tear, while Nagisa twirled his Eva-scale spear in an artful flourish before bracing for the charge. Standing in an intersection, the dark towering shape turned the burning diamond crystal eyes on both Evas, one after the other. It was like it just finally noticed it was fighting two opponents.
Nagisa dove forward, moving like butter on a hot pain and thoroughly demonstrating his high-eighties synchronization. Shinji was nearly four times slower, but he made up for it by planning. Heaving, overextended swinging kicks folded into surprisingly neat binds and clinches, rapidly eating up distance between him and the final rending-finger grip.
The shadow creature twisted at the ribs and rippled. The curves and arcs of darkness along its spindly torso unfurled, melting and boiling into two long lashing shapes. In that same instant, it pushed out with its arms and caught Nagisa's incoming strike along the spea rhaft, clamping down with inky limbs. A split second after that, the transformation finished, and now the shadow had four arms. Stacked one on top of the other, it parried the two Evas, the top set blocking Nagisa right and the bottom set crossing over to stop Shinji from the left.
Those same hands pulled, wrenching Unit 01 forward into an abbreviated headbutt, where the shadow mask almost seemed to explode like a mud puddle before snapping back to shape. Shinji felt and heard the sound of paint and armor cracking against the impact, even as he stared out from his Evangelion's eyes and into the diamond panels. Through the burning, scintillating glare, he saw something, and his eyes snapped wide open.
The head was hollow, and while the beast slathered, snapping at his Eva's neck and shoulders, Shinji could see inside. One of the invaders sat on a throne of silk cushions with its legs folded beneath it, humanly-inhuman and too perfect. The thing inside was symmetrical, a blend of male and female features that made it hard to place and harder to accept.
Turning to face Shinji, the thing inside the demon shadow helmet opened its eyes and smiled.
About six-dozen impossible thoughts demanded Shinji's attention right then, but he shoved them all aside in favor of his own martial skill and tactical acumen. Locked in a bind with an opponent that could manifest new limbs on an as-need basis, Nagisa shot Shinji a sidelong glance. Giving the other boy a nod, Shinji reached out for his own Evangelion and unfurled his field. The crackling plane of altered space snapped into being across the shadow's four arms, severing them across a conceptual edge, scoring a line in the street and buildings. Warning alerts in the plug declared power drain, and a countdown timer started ticking down. Seven minutes.
The shadow reeled back, flailing with its stump arms while the severed shadows collapsed in a sticky pool of black ichor. Those limbs melted and crawled back into the monster's feet, before reforming into the arms once more. It seemed to stare into empty space, and they could see its mouth crack open, letting out hissing bursts of dark smoke like a serpent tasting the air.
Nagisa raised his spear, smirking faintly. "Best we finish this quickly, don't you agree?"
"Don't have much of a choice." Shinji huffed into the LCL.
Ahead, the shadow hunkered down, arching and shambling forward while its arms reached out for handholds along the road. Nagisa stepped up while Shinji leaned to the left, stomping awkwardly towards the sidewalk and brushing against an already-wrecked building as he cleared the space. Unit 03's spear spun in glittering arcs, and Nagisa started stalking toward their opponent. The two Evangelions' AT fields mingled, and their overlapping domains wreaked havoc on the local space. Fleeting, microscopic bursts of radiation and lambent streaks of ionized plasma built up above Nagisa's Eva, creating a daylight aurora over the battleground.
Dark oily flesh seethed, bubbled and folded into strange whorls, twisting into poles like ferromagnetic fluid. The black monstrous Evangelion trembled, flipping, bending and slipping through Nagisa's attacks fast enough to shake the buildings the air sheeting off its limbs. Cars were flung aside from the overpressure, slamming into storefronts and middle floor apartments.
Meanwhile, Shinji surged and stumbled in a wider path, hugging the side of the boulevard and the buildings on the one side. A sudden three-armed assault broke through Nagisa's guard and shredded the spear haft with inky blades. Shinji moved, cutting hard right and tearing up the road with his heavy strides. Facing the melee, he saw Nagisa bring his field to bear, putting it between him and the monster once more. The three attacking limbs were severed in a crackling instant, but the fourth limb reached out and drew a bright white line across the barrier with its fingers.
The AT field shattered, and Nagisa's Evangelion spasmed.
Muscles beneath armor bulged while the armory pylons caught fire, throwing out guttering columns of black chemical smoke. Nagisa snarled over the radio, gritting his teeth and falling back while Evangelion blood seeped through cracks and rents in the armor. Shinji's blood froze for a split second, then ran red hot. Misato and everyone back in NERV were crowding the channel again, demanding information, declaring another emergency situation.
He silenced them with a thought. "Nagisa- are you alright?!"
"Passable, Ikari-san." The other pilot hissed. "Theirs is an obnoxious power, isn't it?"
Shinji didn't feel like responding, not with anything glib at least. He completed his charge towards the giant of darkness, slamming into it with a full shoulder tackle. Banishing his own field, the power drain warnings faded from his awareness, and he was free to focus on the most basic of tactics and techniques. The shadow folded over double around his Evangelion, trailing behind him like a streamer before it undulated, coiling back up into a thick and heavy mountain of darkness. It reached out with both legs and dug into the street, carving trenches with both spindly heels.
With his own Eva's face up against the shadow helmet, Shinji looked back into the diamond eyes and scowled. Inside, the grinning mad thing was still there, hands in its lap and almost meditating. The two combatants had ground to a halt- and then the shadow heaved, picking Unit 01 up and planting it down in a quarter turn. Shinji felt his stomach bottom up and out across the short and brutal move. His vision swam, but through that smear of vision, he realized he was moving further away from downtown.
Twisting, he glanced over his shoulder and paled. The shadow was pushing him. Shinji grit his teeth and shifted, driving his own feet into the ground and digging for all the traction he could afford. His arms reached around, hooking at the fingers and locking tight. He could crush a man's ribs with his bare hands, and in an Eva, he could crush a building, or worse. Against the liquid flowing shadows and four arms though, he had nothing to hold onto. Moving as one, the false and real Evangelions shoved each other past Nagisa's own limping form. It was pushing him into the shelter and the recovery team. Shinji turned and looked at the pilot inside the shadow monster, snarling.
The thing inside winked at him.
One of the butterfly yokes shattered. Shinji ignored the broken plastic and mangled metal. He had seconds before his enemy would simply run over the civilians and soldiers. The radio was still silent aside from Nagisa's labored breathing, but he could imagine the screaming and terror building up behind him. Desperate, frantic, Shinji clawed at the shadowy flesh, ripping apart great big globs of the stuff and throwing them aside across hundreds of meters. The formless viscera splashed against buildings and streets, bubbling into mockeries of organs and bones before pooling into ordinary ground-hugging shadow.
It didn't do much- his enemy didn't have a spine to break.
"So Ikari-san, I have to ask the obvious question about your lady friend." Nagisa's face and voice filled the side of his perception, and Shinji tossed his head, pushing it aside. "Do you love her?"
He didn't say it, but Shinji wondered why Nagisa thought now was the best time. Still, it got him thinking, even in the midst of combat. The shadow continued to manhandle and shove him forward, fighting him off with all four arms. Elbows were brought to bear, deflecting the inky bladed limbs, while Shinji groped for a hand or toehold, something. He grit his teeth, casting about for the solution. The rider inside the helmet smirked, infuriatingly so.
Fury, righteous fury, mingled with his own lingering reservations and the faint, pleasant ache of Ayumi's presence in his mind. His enemy was right there. The solution jumped out at him, immediately and in perfect clarity. In that same instant, the smirk on the uncanny face slipped. It was enough. Shinji reached up from around the thing's back, pinning both arms in the crooks of his elbows, clamping down with Evangelion bicep and forearm. His hands arched up and around, and his fingers curled into the thing's helmet from behind.
Shinji felt the rightness surge in his chest, and his Evangelion's fingertips pressed against the diamond eye panels. They held for one second, two, cracking as Shinji bore down on his remaining controller. To Nagisa, he growled. "I want the chance to find out!"
The helmet crumpled inward, leaking gouts of powdery black smoke and depression. Its headless body collapsed into the most comprehensible act he had seen yet: it died.
* * *
An Evangelion did not have a defined, upper bound of acceleration or even top speed. There hadn't been any way to test it, what with the limitations of battery technology or power cables. On top of that, any level of synchronization less than one hundred percent slowed everything down. This was in turn offset by long legs and even longer strides, able to traverse dozens of meters at a time.
Asuka felt her heart beat in her chest, and the buildings of downtown Tokyo-3 passed in a blur.
Vaulting a fallen armory building, Unit 02 cleared the hurdle and landed with a city-shaking impact, throwing up a plume of dust into the air and into the wake behind her. Spent shell casings and ruined cars bounced with each footfall, along with actual tons of pummeled glass. Rei was on the next boulevard over, and Asuka could see flashes of blue between the buildings as the other Evangelion lagged behind. The other pilot's lower synch mattered more than she would have liked, right then.
Of course, that was why Rei had a pallet rifle. "I have a shot. Firing."
Looking ahead, Asuka saw the burst of gunfire rake across the sky and towards their target. It was a flying whale, with a castle on it's back. The interface in her plug spat out useful information like range and dimension while the bullets stitched a line in its tail. The whale keened, twisting and banking hard right. It cut the air and cornered against all logic, nearly turning on a dime. The ship curved across the sky another half-turn and angled over them, south toward Lake Ashi.
"Shit!" Asuka stared, caught out for a split second. She couldn't slow down, not that quickly. "Rei- after it! I'll have to take Mount Hakone!"
The reply was instant and urbane. "Roger that."
Exhaling hard into the LCL, Asuka looked ahead. Hurtling forward at full speed, she broke out of the denser, ruined urban center, cutting straight through the north-eastern side of the suburban Tokyo-3 sprawl. The fortress city was built inside a caldera, in turn formed by two nearby dormant volcanos. Mount Hakone was one of them, and Asuka charged up the low slopes. Her Eva's feet plunged into the thick trees and topsoil, carving out huge divots as she use the incline like a half pipe.
Behind her, Rei had already pivoted, moving slower put her in a better position to recover, and it left Asuka with a lot of time and distance to eat up. Turning smartly on one heel, she swung across the mountainside and angled after Rei and the whale ship. Both Evas shook the earth with their passing, and ahead, they could see the lake shores start to ripple.
A thought cast at the communication systems silenced the radio, and Asuka grumbled into the LCL. "Stupid, unexpected kissing- you don't pull just in case shit like that right before a battle!"
Ahead, Asuka watched the whale pull further away and pick up speed while Rei fired from the hip. Sinking deeper into her own synchronization, Asuka felt herself pick up speed, but couldn't shake the ire. It wasn't even the kiss, but the damned cliche joke that got her blood boiling. No amount of deep breathing or counting to ten was going to cool her temper, not right then.
Her state of mind didn't seem to be hurting her synchronization though. Small favors, she supposed. Asuka reopened communications, hearing the chatter going on in the Geofront and catching a glimpse of Ikari and the rookie locked in combat. They were on their own for now- she had her own mission, but she was going to make damned sure they all made it home somehow.
The two Evangelion in pursuit reached the lake shores at nearly the same time, splitting left and right to run along the banks and hillsides. Above, the whale ship sang into the sky and seemed to paint the clouds with rainbow hues. Rei charged up one slope, tossing her weapon aside along the way. At the top of the rise, she leaped, springing off the hillside and towards the fleeing creature. Asuka found herself whistling silently, muffled by the LCL as Rei's Evangelion arced over the enemy ship.
Unit 00 landed with a castle-breaking impact, shattering half the structure across the thing's back on contact. Battlements and minarets spilled off the whale's back as the Evangelion nearly surfed across. Asuka felt her heart leap into her throat a second later, when Rei's middle-fifties synchronization caught up with her. The blue Evangelion slipped, skidding across ruined walls and whale skin before sliding off the side. Rei threw a hand up and caught the whale by one of it's seven flukes at the last second.
The ship listed, dragged down hundreds of meters towards the lake surface, moving fast enough that the air pressure wave pushed the water aside in a great expanding bowl. The whale continued the tumble, rolling over and abusing gravity in its favor. The Evangelion lost its grip and fell, plunging into the lake and out of sight.
Asuka nearly stumbled. "Rei!"
An Eva couldn't swim, but the radio still worked. "I am fine, Asuka-chan!"
"That was a great- you took a big ri-" sputtering between exultant approval and indignant worry, Asuka cut herself off twice over. Snarling, she got herself back on track and growled, turning all her attention on the fleeing ship.
Rei pulled her Evangelion out of the water, crawling onto the shore and visibly tired in the communications window. "We're running out of time."
She was right. Asuka queried her on-board computer, and it told her the whale was accelerating. A hundred kilometers an hour and moving faster by the second. They were only going to get one more chance, and it was already past Lake Ashi. Asuka urged her Eva onward, pouring on more speed and draining her batteries ten seconds or more at a time.
Unit 02 dashed forward, hurtling along the lake shore and past the base that had once been a sniper's nest. The trailing ends of the Evangelion-scale coat flapped in the storm force winds that swept up behind her. Asuka eyed the last rise before the local topography sloped down and gave way to downward slopes and the Sagami Bay. Then she looked up, blinked, and swore.
The whale ship was ascending, climbing into the sky.
"It's the first goddamn time we've seen these things run!" Asuka growled into the LCL, and she felt her Evangelion roar alongside her mind. "Maybe they got a base out at sea- I'll call it good if I can see where they're going!"
The other girl spoke softly, but it carried nonetheless. "Be careful, Asuka-chan."
"Careful?" The redhead echoed, smirking. "You're the one who took a flying leap."
Asuka unfurled her AT-field, and willed her extra limbs to carry her aloft. "I at least brought wings!"
Shooting skyward, Asuka angled her wings and altered space for thrust. She raced after the whale ship, hands tight on the controls and part of her mind fixed on the draining battery percentage. The rest of her attention was on the rapidly nearing ship and the shrinking distance counter between her and it. Five hundred meters. A hundred meters. Fifty.
The sky split apart, rimmed with wet, fleshy lips. White ivory spires of teeth unzipped before the ship and yawned wide, even as Asuka threw everything she had into stopping. The impossible opening before her showed the faintest twinkling of stars before distant bands of foreign cloud cover swung into view, heartbreakingly familiar. She looked out over the vertigo-inducing sight and remembered the first book she had ever opened with such a picture inside, reflected back at her, close enough to fall into.
The whale ship vanished through the opening, and the maw snapped closed. "...Was that the Great Red Spot? Was that fucking Jupiter?"
* * *
"Ground forces reporting in- we've secured the civilians. Light injuries, no casualties."
The command center threw up their arms at that and cheered, but it was a haggard, exhausted joy. Misato leaned back in her seat and sighed. Another small, desperately needed victory. She rubbed her cheeks, frowning against her fingers and wondering just how to parlay that morale into the next challenge. She glanced aside and saw Makoto and Aoba handling Evangelion recovery. The boys would need repairs, but Rei only got waterlogged. Behind her, Ritsuko had put out her last cigarette of the day.
An incredulous squawk broke out through the speakers nearest her own console, on her direct command frequency. Misato rubbed her ears, very aware she'd been half deaf less than a month ago. "I didn't quite catch that Asuka, repeat?"
There was a brief squeal of static "You heard me- they came from outer space!"
Are they fighting Raksha?
Dang it, Shinji needs some anti-shaping charms 'stat!'
And maybe an Integrity Charm to help his synch ratio.
Dang it, Shinji needs some anti-shaping charms 'stat!'
And maybe an Integrity Charm to help his synch ratio.