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Cast in Gold - Evangelion/Exalted

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Shyft said:
The rest of the tigers kept pace no matter the speed, even as the finish line loomed ahead. Snarling, Asuka pounded the dash. "Rubberbanding motherfuckers!"
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Pfthaha! That is something I would never have expected to see mentioned in an Evangelion story. Brings to mind the fun I had with police chases in Need for Speed Most Wanted (the original).
 
Now the two of you go kiss Shinji, and enjoy it! :) You've already got the three-way hugs down!

And of course the 'I'm Too Sexy' fae on the unicorn is a cheating bastard at racing. Jerks.
 
Strypgia said:
Now the two of you go kiss Shinji, and enjoy it! :) You've already got the three-way hugs down!

And of course the 'I'm Too Sexy' fae on the unicorn is a cheating bastard at racing. Jerks.
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On the bright-side, he probably died of embarrassment when he lost the race. Like, literally keeled over. Well, maybe not, but it is within the realm of possibility, and thus my reality, until proven otherwise!
 
Chapter 42: Alliances


Small favors- he wasn't on a damned train this time.

The stage was set, and everything had to be just perfect. There was a standard that Shinji realized he held himself to, of being able to do amazing things for amazing people. The restaurant was unbelievable in its majesty, with wide spaces separating the tables, lit with elaborate candlesticks as tiny islands of glowing ambiance. The shadows settled into a thick and warm cloak upon around his shoulders, and the ubiquitous, faceless waitstaff were on hand with a feast fit to his culinary standards.

Sitting across from him in an elegant, sky-blue dress was one Saneda Ayumi. She looked a little older, more mature, almost as if she'd been catching up to his height when he wasn't looking. Shinji for his part had no complaints. She smiled across the candlelight as a violinist gently painted romance with every note and draw of bow against the string.

Over dinner, they talked about nothing and everything, laughing without a care in the world. At least, until Ayumi sobered. Her smile grew brittle, and she folded her hands in her lap even as the violinist played on without heed. "So... Here we are."

"Here we are." Shinji echoed. He wondered for a second, but somehow he knew what she was going to say before she even said it.

"Are we... Here?" She hazarded. "Or going somewhere? I am your first, after all."

To that, he coughed lightly and let out a short, two-note laugh. "I think we are- or could be, I mean."

Ayumi was persistent though."Not all firsts last though, and I think you know that..."

"And not all of firsts end, either. I will do right by you." He offered her a hopeful smile in return, but it was a fragile thing. Ayumi, or what he was now realizing as his view of her, gave him a sad smile of her own.

Standing, Ayumi held out her hand for him and lead him out onto the dance floor. Suddenly she was in his arms and the music was pounding in his ears from a dozen speakers while neon lights and the sweat and heat of hot bodies steamed into the air. The sea of people threw their arms up and cheered as the tracks changed. The violinist continued to play, wearing a rumpled, trendy business suit and unmistakably eighties mirror-shades. He drew the bow and worked the turntables at the back of the room, deploying unforgettable pounding beats.

Finding his hands full of Misato's hips in a wonderfully short skirt, Shinji blinked once before deciding he was entirely okay with that. The impression of the first real woman in his life laughed and pressed herself against him, unmistakably curved and unbelievably full of life. The club and the dance beat were easy to read, like those impossibly cool venues in the soaps and dramas she liked to watch. Fitting that he found her there.

"You having fun yet?" That cat-like lilt in her voice was impossible to miss, and Shinji knew without a doubt that she was 'off the clock'.

"With you?" Shinji smiled and held her closer. "Always."

Misato laughed, hooking her arms around his shoulders and neck as his hands settled on her waist. "And where do you want to go from here, hm?"

"Not sure." He admitted. "But I definitely want you there too."

The floor pitched beneath him and he felt more than heard the slosh and shift of water against the side of the gondola. Venice had flooded under Impact, but he'd seen pictures in the history books. A lovely redhead was in his lap, clad in saffron silk and scowling at the cliche indignity of a romantic canal ride. The iconic gondolier pushed them along with the staff in one hand, and a violin and bow improbably cradled in the other.

Somehow, he was still playing.

Asuka glared at him from her place in his arms, but it lacked a certain kind of heat. "I think it's clear that you're trying to convince yourself of something, but I'm not sure what."

"Well, obviously I like you." Shinji declared. His own dark blue eyes met her much brighter ones, and he smirked. "I'd like to be your friend- wouldn't say no to dating you, but wow are you scary. You should work on that."

Her shriek echoed off into the buildings as she playfully shoved at his face, forcing him into the first fat flakes of winter snow. Shinji had never seen the real thing before, even at the highest mountains in Japan. Clad in heavy winter kimono and traditional sandals, he walked arm in arm with Ayanami Rei. The pair meandered through a temple shrine during a winter festival, sampling hot rice wine as they listened to the temple drums and bells. Clad in shrine robes, the violinist played the strings between the bell noes.

Rei looked up at him, smiling pleasantly. "I think we are happy where we are, yes?"

Shinji scooped up a pile of snow and dumped it down the back of her kimono. "Family is a great place to be!"

The snow and temple grounds faded along with Rei's ringing peals of laughter, and Shinji found himself back in the restaurant from before. He spun idly in place, but there was no sign of Ayumi or anyone else- just the faceless waiters and the ever-present violinist. The musician's tone and performance shifted, almost disappointed with how Shinji and his dreams were so boring. Something heavy shook the dream, and the walls seemed to ripple.

Turning, the curtains drew back and up to reveal a stage, and the orchestra was tuning- time to face the music. Violins and flutes played together in a familiar arrangement, a swinging composition that had Shinji tapping his toes and bobbing his head without thinking. Someone shouted from behind the music, maddeningly familiar but unintelligible. Jacques Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld filled the air as unseen patrons and waiters clapped in anticipation.

Then the dancers bounced on stage. Tall, with legs reaching to the heavens and a smile to die for. Chestnut auburn hair fell in twin tails and their figures were so wonderfully fine- cinched and full everywhere it counted. Each and every dancing girl was gloriously identical. The classic routine started in earnest, with the girls bouncing arm in arm and leading with a rising knee and then a hat-kicking high-kick.

And they all were wearing glasses.

Shinji ended up flat on his back and drowning in dancers. Through the gaps between smiles, curves and frilly, fetchingly-laced and frilled corsets, he saw the violinist staring down at him with their head cocked to one side, declaring that perhaps he wasn't so boring after all.

WAKE UP!

* * *

Dreams gave way to terrifying consciousness. Not that Shinji was particularly afraid for himself. Surrounded on all sides by cushioning LCL, engineered flesh, armor and nigh inviolate AT field, he was in one of the safest places in the entire city. No, he was more than a little worried about everyone else. Awake and compensating for a sluggish synchronization, Shinji willed his Evangelion's hands to grab the building-sized hammer by the haft before hit bludgeoned him unconscious a second time.

Flashes of red out the corner of his eye told him Asuka was nearby, but neck deep in her own troubles. Twisting, he wrenched the hammer from the latest monster's grip along with the rest of its arm and followed with a swinging right cross, pulverizing its mushroom-covered head into a ruin of spores and shattered stone. Vibrant green ichor splashed all over the ruined battlefield, spreading into a thick carpet of loam shot through with toadstools. The ground shifted beneath his feet- mostly rubble from the past three days fighting. The center of Tokyo-3's fortress city was a ruin, a flattened crater broken up by uneven mounds of debris and destroyed buildings.

Whatever these things were, these monster-makers, they had decided now was the time to make a big push. Ranks of soldiers following grey flame banners had marched upon the city- ignoring the railways and access points to the Geofront in favor of their own plan. Unnatural thunder rumbled in the sky overhead, shaking the dust from the still-standing buildings.

They had deployed monsters, building-sized things to clear the way. Then came the infantry, the archers and spear-men, calvary followed with horse-bodied men and women wielding spears for hands. NERV had replied with rapidly dwindling reserves of modern armor, automatic weapons and bullet-proof vests.

Below in the ruined streets, men and women were fighting for a handful of meters at a time- hideous and unbelievable trench warfare in the modern era. Mortars competed with longbows for indirect fire supremacy, leaving Shinji and Asuka to stand above as unnatural titans facing monsters from a place stranger than myth. Kicking away the corpse of the hammer beast, Shinji strode forward towards the battleground center, and soldiers behind him cheered as he broke an incoming cavalry charge.

The surviving horsemen switched tracks and started racing up his shins and knees, but if it kept their spears away from those on the ground, he'd take it.

* * *

Surrounded on all sides- outnumbered and out-massed, Sorhyu Asuka Langley was in her element. Only her skill and brilliance kept her safe against the six-mawed crocodile with murder on its mind. Dripping with grey-flame banners and heraldry, her ring of monstrous opponents were armed and armored, barding strapped to strange limbs and bolted into scaled hide with crystal pins and ribbons.

Asuka and her partner were nearly floating, so in tune and synchronized. Dropping into a spinning leg sweep, she knocked out a half-dozen legs and wrecked a company of spear-men who were hiding in the shadows of the towering beasts. Rising fluidly, she reached out for the ribbon pins and yanked their glittering lengths from their backs before spinning them into her hands like fighting knives. As their armor fell apart, Asuka lashed out at eyes, noses and stranger glowing organs played by ten-armed organists nestled in rib cages.

Two more hulking things surged into the fray, one made of car-sized scrolls sealed with wax, and the other made of swords in shape of man. An arm of blades wrapped around her Eva's bicep and yanked back before she could throw one more punch, and the scrolls unfurled to bind her other arm. Reaching out with her mind and synchronization, Asuka willed her Eva's trailing coat tails to shift, bending and flexing into shape-memory blades and functional limbs.

She ripped hearts from monstrous chests, and her Evangelion was splashed with ink and luminescent blood. "Four-armed and dangerous!"

Rei's voice rippled across the radio and into her mind. "That was terrible."

There were still a double-handful of great beasts to come, and Asuka raised all her limbs as they fanned out. "Okay so it was- can I get some covering fire?"

Riding on the shoulders of those giants were their masters, ugly or beautiful things by turns, beating drums or gesturing imperiously. Rei murmured apologetically as she fired at something out of sight and far off into the distance. "Unfortunately the positron cannon is not useful against ground-based targets."

Asuka nodded absently, mind already turning to how her opponents would move. The fighting had gone on so long, she'd started figuring out how to read their moves- at least some of the time. The controllers and their monsters varied in skill just like people, but there were so many. Asuka shook her head and exhaled harshly into the LCL.

The first attack came as a clawed hay-maker, aiming to rip her Eva's head from its neck. Leaning back, Asuka dodged and only suffered a handful of ragged lines drawn across the paint of her armor. She felt the whip-crack of her Eva's response in her own spine as she swung her head and shoulder forward, stepping into and under the monster's swing and bracing its unnatural elbow beneath her collarbone. It was a move Shinji favored, with a twist of her own.

She reached up with arm and wing to clamp around the thing's wrist and spun against the joint, turning until she wrenched it clean from its socket. Tossing the limb into the eye-chest of the next foe, she threw a rising knee capped in that blunt armor spike into the thing's torso. A sudden flurry of fire support from the surviving armory buildings raked across the remaining monsters, knocking their handlers away from their mounts and leaving the building-sized creatures lost and confused for that vital second.

Rising out of the dust and ruin from finishing those last two off, Asuka exhaled softly. The sky above was dark and tinged purple, thick with clouds that seemed to reach down and touch the tops of the remaining city towers. There was a roar and rush of air high above and masked behind the clouds, sending them spinning and shifting as air-pressure changes and abnormal weather swept over the city.

A dark shape plunged out of the sky, ripping a hole in the clouds and revealing a toothed maw upon the air. Jupiter hung above Tokyo-3 for a split second before the mouth gnashed closed. Above her with claws raked forward, a bird with feathers made of rainbows and joy unfurled its massive wings, casting the whole city in prismatic shadow. Asuka stared up at it, fists clenched against the control yokes.

Then, a beam of eye-searing white and blue screamed across the sky, pulverizing the air as it cut through to spear the titan-bird through the breast and out the back. Rei hummed. "I can however cover you from the air. Nagisa-san is spotting."

Turning to the distant hillside where Rei and Nagisa were camped out, Asuka tossed the pair a jaunty salute. The bird was shattered, falling apart into massive crystal feathers that wrecked more of the city and divided the battlefield up even more. But even as she pushed through the giant monsters and throngs of infantry, Asuka could tell they were just running past her, towards the center of the city-crater and their primary objective.

"Misato..." Asuka frowned, more than a little unhappy. "It's looking pretty bad up here!"

* * *

The city shook beneath the thunder of guns and heavy artillery. Nearer to her feet, the high-speed cargo rail flung a train car full of soldiers and equipment to the nearest exit point, not even a quarter-kilometer from the central crater of Tokyo-3. If the fortress city were a diamond made of five spaces across, then the three-day assault had flattened the center square.

Misato sighed and shifted in her place as massive engines dragged the train car upwards, wriggling her numb toes in rugged, trendy boots, poorly matched to ill-fitting pants and ballistic vest. She scanned the car full of soldiers- the last soldiers. It was all NERV could afford, after the perimeter defenses and under-city patrols. The spaces between the surface and the Geofront were thick with things that crawled in the dark, and it seemed that neither side wanted to press their luck. NERV had to brave those spaces anyway, if for no other reason than to clear the way for Evangelions and conventional deployment.

Resisting the nervous urge to check her gear, Misato made a point of looking over everyone else's. "Listen up ladies and gentlemen. After us there is no one else. After us, it's just scientists and civilians. Today was the day that someone decided to make a big push, and we've got to push back!"

The soldiers surrounding her didn't shout or stomp, but there was an audible bracing as they squared their shoulders. Their equipment jingled in response, and Misato gave them a grim, starlet smile. Brakes hissed and screeched as they wrenched the car to a stop, and the doors blew open on high-pressure pneumatic jacks. Swinging down and onto the platform hard enough to shake teeth, the doors became a ramp for the hundred or so able-bodied soldiers surging out into the cloudy daylight.

Charging out from the concrete bunker in the shadows of a still-standing armory building, Misato and her reinforcements entered chaos. The streets were choked with hastily shoveled mounds of concrete and rubble, riddled with tangled bands of re-bar and steel beams. Glass shards rattled against the street as massive super-trucks plowed through the wide boulevards, shoving aside debris and acting as moving shields for advancing squads of infantry. Conventional tanks formed support columns, dripping with regular soldiers as they rode toward the deeper battleground.

Her hair under her helmet frizzed up without cause or warning, and the eye-searing pulse of a positron blast arched over head. The blast was deafening, throwing everything into a white fog of noise. Rubbing her ears, Misato worked her jaw and hoped they'd stop ringing. Makoto hunkered down next to her, glasses safely down in the Geofront and dripping with radio gear. He gave her a decisive nod, looking exactly as scared as she felt right then. She just smiled and gave his arm a pat before heading forward.

As the ringing in her head cleared, Misato reached out for the radio and started calling in status reports. Directly ahead of them only blocks away were Evangelions 01 and 02, both wrestling across the ruined city blocks. The forty-meter tall cyborgs punched through thousand-ton wave of ice and curtains of falling rainbow feathers, and each time they swung, the city trembled.

Arrows of gleaming crystal arced through the air, perforating tank armor and punching through kevlar without pause. Cover was their friend, and Misato dragged Hyuuga alongside the rest of her command squad into the shadow of a fallen buildings. One of the super-mover trucks rumbled ahead, its cabin abandoned and wheel locked forward as it bulldozed into the fray. Knee high to an Evangelion, Shinji scooped it up without a word and used it to beat a cobra-centipede into a greasy smear along the battlefield.

One of her soldiers signaled ahead as it was clear, leading them into a ripped open conduit beneath the street. The city and battlefield were crisscrossed with the things, and the melee had come down to trench warfare. Fully automatic weapons cut down the man-horse cavalry but for every two dozen they felled, one or two of the greater elites would bat the bullets aside with contemptuous ease. Those needed focused fire, mortars or artillery if they could afford it, and even then...

Everything was coming in waves, despite the chaos. It was orderly and direct in a way that could only suggest intelligence, a plan. It wasn't a battle that could be won from the screens and maps in Central Dogma. Misato's hand tightened on the grip of her rifle and she put everything she had into seeing. What was their objective, she wondered. The invaders had fought so hard for the center of the city, and for now, she couldn't even say why.

She shook her head and scowled into the swirling dust and grit, combat glasses already scuffed across one side.

"Misato..." Asuka's voice crackled over the radio, sounding awfully worried. "It's looking pretty bad up here!"

Calling back, Misato couldn't help but agree. "Asuka- you have no idea."

Behind her, something new thudded up out of one of the nearest surviving launch rails. It moved sluggishly, gleaming silver and so new they hadn't even taken the stickers off.

* * *

He promised everyone he wouldn't do it. He promised himself, swore to it on the horrors he'd seen and the secrets he'd been entrusted with. He swore it on the smiles of the forty-seven girls he'd successfully dated in the past twelve months.

Guttering in at a borderline thirty-two percent synchronization inside Evangelion Unit 04, Aida Kensuke's shit-eating grin spread from ear to ear. "This is fucking awesome!"
 
It wasn't really funny, but Shinji couldn't help the tight grin as he heard Asuka start to wind up. Between the two of them, they wrestled and broke the enemy heavy support against their Evas, with Rei and Kaworu as sniper and spotter respectively. Something had told him NERV would find themselves ruing the day that Aida Kensuke got to pilot a Evangelion, but Asuka was already there.

"Nagisa!" The redhead snapped, scalding and desert dry. "You are hereby promoted to Nagisa. Aida Kensuke, you are now Newbie and I am now your one and only god- do not put me to the test. Get your ass into position and geek out if we survive!"

Wrenching a crystal feather from the ground, Shinji swung the surprisingly heavy thing into the nearest great beast, shattering both bone armor and glassy shards in a single blow. Somehow fighting on two fronts with four arms, Asuka managed to call up a tactical map of the city and push it to the pilots. Kensuke's image popped in by way of a communication window along with the four veteran pilots, grinning or ashen-faced depending on where he looked.

"Alright, from this moment forward you listen to me, and you listen with your ears wide open." At Asuka's mental command, a silver pip appeared on the grid and joined the other colored dots, with his marked Unit 04. "As of today all you've seen is the inside of a tuna-can, and this is no simulation."

She dragged a line from the deployment point to another armory building perpendicular to the battle line. "Your sync is hot garbage and that means you will be hot garbage, unless you do exactly as I say, exactly when I say to do it." She punctuated her point by dissecting a monster vividly before their eyes, train of thought unbroken."You will be fighting input delay, so you have to think ahead. Your feet will be eighty-ton bricks, so you have to dance like a ballerina in there to keep standing."

Another monster fell and Unit 02 was already turning away while it slumped, boneless against the building behind it. "You will not be taking chances with that Unit, you will not do that thing they do in the cartoons you have seen. Because you are fire support, and if you stitch a line across my back as I grapple with some unholy monster, the next thing between my hands will be your head."

She had said all this while Kensuke watched her dissect two more monsters for a total of four kills during the diatribe. "Are we totally clear on this?"

Evangelion Unit 04 emerged from the cover of still-standing buildings, hefting an Evangelion-scale gatling cannon in both arms. In his communication panel, Kensuke nodded. "C-Crystal, ma'am."

"Good. Ikari, show him the ropes." Asuka reached behind her Evangelion's back for the hilt parallel to her spine, detonating the rocket assist draw and cleaving a brass and tentacle frog in half with the weight of a building. She readied Wellenbrecher and grinned, shouting across the battlefield with loudspeakers. "Who's ready for the next lesson?!"

* * *

The front line stretched in a staggered zigzag, dug into the street or wrought from piled-up debris. Misato and her squad threw themselves into cover, pelted by loosened concrete and bejeweled feather fragments. The giant bird-thing Rei had shot down littered the battlefield with its remains, and the plumage spilled rainbows across the earth and sky. Huddling in the slumped wreckage of city foundation and what looked like a restaurant kitchen, Misato directed her troops to building a forward command post. Shovels and pry-bars ripped free manageable chunks of concrete and wrecked appliances, shoved around as bulwark against the pounding volleys.

As the trench cleared and the defensive wall grew, a small but vocal part of Misato questioned her sanity. It demanded to know why now, today that she had to take to the field and fight. She quashed that pointed question and instead turned every bit of her attention on what was in front of her- the enemy. The no-man's land between her forces and the invaders was a fortress city block, some five hundred meters wide and piled high with rubble.

Her Evangelions crisscrossed that field, carving uneven footprints into the ruins and abused city surface. The remains of a department store marked one end, and a half-dozen armory buildings had collapsed in the earlier fighting. Unexploded ordnance the size of compact cars stuck out like brass boulders, mixed in with furniture, wood and plastic. The giants fought ahead NERV's lines or overhead by turns, and their brutal kicks and grapples shook the city down to the first armor layer. Brick, mangled steel and people were thrown into the air with every relentless impact.

Peeking over past a rot-filled refrigerator, Misato wrinkled her nose and narrowed her eyes. "Why here of all places. It doesn't make any sense. Why now."

"Major?" Makoto breathed, winded and pale. He volunteered to stick with her, freeing up a trained and conditioned soldier for more vital duties.

"Something's wrong." Misato admitted, frowning both at the smell and the nearly incomprehensible enemy strategy. "Or, more wrong than normal. What strategic objective could they be after here? There's nothing here."

Scanning the battlefield, she stated picking out the rhyme and reason to the tactics, of cavalry, spear men and other skirmishers. There was a regularity to their advances, and downright medieval approach. They practiced their own form of combined arms, and only suffered momentarily in the face of armored warfare. Makoto handed her a radio before she even asked for it, calling out to the few tanks she had in reserve and telling them to hold position. They didn't question the order.

"God, what is this, the sixteen hundreds?" She reached for a pair of binoculars, hunting for more detail even as arrows started decorating her cover. "They're signaling each other with horn calls and flags."

The invader's ability to summon an army on demand made getting an estimate of their force difficult, but she could start to see a pattern, even if a weak one. The hand-waved legions folded under heavy fire, and she quickly started to ignore them in favor of the more substantial units that stretched in a half-moon formation on the opposite side of the battle. Backing them up like her own heavy armor and artillery were the massive monsters they seemed to call from nothing or drop in from the sky. The hulking brutes shouldered aside ten and twenty story buildings, adding to the ruins as they moved into the fray. That was fine with Misato- she had her own titans to play.

The enemy was gradually reinforcing the center of the crater with shield walls, javelins and cavalry charges. On top of that, they advanced from the growing strongpoint towards NERV's own line, punching deeper into the defensive crossfire with every assault. The galling part was that it was working. An assault would boil out of cover into a storm of automatic fire, evading at the last second as bejeweled and banner-strewn drummers rallied the troops. Whatever they wanted, Misato could tell they were making progress.

Ahead, less than a hundred meters away from the command post, a handful of tanks already engaged in combat had moved into cover, hull down and with their turrets allowed free range of fire. Against those, the incoming enemy split and leaped, flanking the armor and savaging the weaker rear facings. It sounded simpler than it worked in practice, but the obvious tactical acumen gnawed at her. It reminded Misato of herself.

Radio in hand, she opened her mouth to arrange for an artillery barrage when the refrigerator she hunkered against unfolded into a storm of hooded cloaks and warriors armed with wicked seven-edged knives.

Suddenly, far off cannons seemed less important.

Falling backwards out of the kitchen and into the foundation trench, Misato landed hard in a puddle, screaming as she groped for her weapon. She flung the radio through the curtain of water at her attacker with one hand, cracking the porcelain mask and watching it bleed smoke. Heedless, the thing crossed its knives and vaulted down from the hastily built wall. Misato rolled, tumbling side over side and slamming painfully into a fallen bank of cook tops. Her hands stung from blood scrapes, but she swung her rifle up and squeezed off a shot, then two more into the thing's chest. The cloak and chest plate collapsed like cheap pottery, slumping to the floor and throwing up a noxious cloud of blue smoke and childish stars, moons and twinkling lights.

Another skirmisher charged her, running along the heads and shoulders of her troops and its own allies before swinging left and right with both blades. The knives left glowing silver arcs as they sliced, crossing over each other so fast they seemed to draw a cutting edge upon the air. Makoto slammed into the fighter from the side shoulder first before scrambling back and jamming his bayonet into the thing's face. Asuka had insisted they go out with them affixed.

Seconds blurred into long hours, where shouts for help and soldiers swearing violently against the sneak attack. When one creature blocked bullets with a deft flick of a knife, Misato rolled away from the redirected ricochet and uncurled at its feet before thrusting her bayonet into the man-vase's gut. Heaving herself upright, she sighted down the trench and squeezed off two more bursts, shattering masked hoods and clearing the way for her squad to regroup.

A whirling shadow was the only warning she had before pair of impacts cracked hard into her back. The blades sheared through her ballistic vest, cutting so thoroughly that her webbing and gear fell away from her chest, back to front. She turned her head, and her helmet slipped off from a cut strap. She had never paid much mind to serendipity, but more than ever Misato was thankful she and Ritsuko had always shared similar sizes, even back in college. This particular borrowing had suddenly become a lot more important than any date with an upperclassman. Behind her was the last raider, and she watched it stare with empty clown eyes at the pearly steel breastplate she wore. Emphasis on breast.

Bruised but not bleeding, Misato spat in its face. "Yeah, we're stealing your stuff now too."

All it could do in reply was die by way of Makoto's rifle. Misato slumped away from the rising cloud and jabbed the trench wall with her bayonet before collapsing fully. The radio was at her feet, housing cracked but functional. She called out for her squad to sound off and suppressed the wince when two of her twelve were KIA and another was wounded. They needed her back up and standing tall, rapidly.

She ignored Makoto's offered hand, but shot him and his dust-covered face a ten-thousand megawatt smile for the offer as she heaved herself upright. Rising up and out of the trench, she mounted the slightly smaller mound of kitchen appliances and concrete. All around her, the storm of battle from Evangelions and high explosives lifted her hair like a trailing flag, and the battle continued with no change or end in sight. Glancing left and right, something caught her eye and held it inexorably.

The fascination was palpable- through the dust and grit of the battlefield, hundreds of meters away, she saw it. The big guy, the commander in chief, the general.

Standing ten feet tall, its sheer presence made the details stand out like a spotlight despite the distance. Clad in heavy, relentlessly ornate armor and wreathed in dancing tongues of white-grey flame, the enemy commander marched forward from his retainers and elite staff. A pole rose from his back, off center and trailing a silvery silk banner edged in scarlet. The statement was impossibly clear, and Misato knew without a doubt that he had just thrown down the gauntlet. A challenge, a duel to settle all of this.

She couldn't see his eyes through the slit in his visor, but Misato felt him meeting her stare with a steady one of his own. A not insignificant part of her spoke up again, and she realized she was almost willing to take him up on it. Even knowing she'd probably die in the process, simply because it would have been a fantastic death worthy of song and legend for ten-thousand years and ten more.

Then she remembered the radio in her hand, and that artillery that was still waiting for orders.

Despite the explosions that followed, Misato was fairly certain she hadn't seen the last of him. The bruises spreading out across her back were starting to hurt, they were a problem for tomorrow- like paperwork. The wind picked up again, and the clouds parted for a second time. From the great maw in the sky came lightning, blasting craters in the ground as well as any penetrating munition, faster and harder. The bolts discharged, searing hot-blue light into her retinas even as she threw an arm over her face and dove for cover.

Risking a peek past her wrist, she saw the lightning converge and crackle. The strikes danced in three long lines across the battlefield before meeting in the center, and in that fraction of a second, split the earth. Left in the new central crater were things, a hopelessly overused word, but it was all she had to fall back on. Tall, spindly with too many joints, she couldn't take them all in at once. Their limbs ended in blades that ended in blades, and as they moved, dust swirled in spiraling columns.

The three new monsters seemed to look at each other, before they extended wind-cloaked arms and began to dance. Misato blinked past the stinging heat in her eyes, gaping openly. The Evas shifted, changing position on some unheard order. The dancers moved without rhythm, discordant. Despite that, they somehow built to a critical mass of spiraling wind and pressure.. Then, the sound of cracking, cutting rock and stone filled the crater.

Fumbling for the radio, Misato called the local commanders and any friendly NERV forces on the line, well-aware of just how insane she sounded. "They've deployed some kind of living drills here, prepare the Geofront against a possible breach!"

The reply came swiftly, even over the dust and noise of the battle. "Affirmative Major, but we can't maintain visual on the target, there's some kind of windstorm up there."

Coughing around a mouthful of fresh dust from fallen ceiling debris, Misato could only sigh inwardly at the events in her life which had brought her to gunning down storybook monsters. "The target is the windstorm! All units, acknowledge new enemy asset as kamitachi."

* * *

Helmetless and for the moment secure in her nascent kitchen-command post, Misato considered the situation and her options. The enemy knew where she was, for one, and had already tried calling her out. Obviously they had impeccable taste. Armed with a mental map of the battlefield, she clamped a hand over one ear and held the radio headset to side of her head. What messages she could hear, the wind stole, raking at all and sundry. The sickle-dancers spun into a three-pronged drill of cutting air, building a funnel cloud higher and higher. The storm roared with blast of lightning, while the sudden surging gusts heaved grit and debris into pulverizing sheets.

From her improvised command post, Misato saw her Evas brace into the storm. Electricity thrummed in the massive trailing cables, and their unfurled AT-fields drank in the juice. Makoto grabbed her arm and pulled her around, shouting over the screaming winds.

"Shigeru says they're through the first layer!" He pointed toward the tornadoes. "Thirty minutes to breach!"

Scowling, Misato nodded and inched her way over the mound of wreckage and held her hair down with one hand. Her Evas were still in the thick of it. The bone-shaking rumble of Kensuke's gatling cannon cut through the storm in jerky bursts, and she caught glimpses of red and purple between blinding waves of dust and shredded concrete. The tornado-drill reached to the sky and was thick enough to swallow an Evangelion whole. Glittering arcs of too-bright steel flashed out, attached to unshapely limbs.

Even as she watched, her forces moved. Acting on their own initiative and her standing orders, infantry advanced or retreated in response to the enemy. Two dozen skirmishes played out across the battlefield, wars in miniature. The reports filtered in one ear and the rest was plain to her eyes. Off to one side and not a hundred meters away, two squads of infantry were hard-pressed by a unit of halberdiers.

Her soldiers favored cover, clinging to the trenches and moving unseen between engagements, and the invaders realized this. Opposing sappers and strange, monstrous little engineers started filling the pits and obstacles, paving the way for calvary and massed infantry charges across more even ground. That in turn played to her forces' advantage as well as the heavy automatic weapons fired across unobstructed fields. Misato knew though, down to her bones, that her soldiers would run out of bullets before the opposing force ran out of swords and spears.

She had to get a read on these things. Raising the radio, she licked her lips and tasted rock. "Armor, advance and engage."

Tanks, and one of the ultra-heavy earthmovers crashed through an already half-demolished building. Together they pounded a new road into the battlefield, and the cloud of dust and glass was swept up into the air from the cutting winds. A positron blast from the hills behind the city flashed overhead, punching through another monster hidden by the clouds and remaining city skyline. On the ground, Misato's eyes narrowed to thin slits. Start signaling, c'mon...

A distant flag-bearer started shouting, raising his standard while another elf-warrior brought a horn to his lips and started trumpeting. Cavalry broke from the dust and smoke of battle, man-horses swinging around while a squad of archers readied their bows. Misato was about to shout for cover when the archers aimed somewhere else and fired. They filled the air with fire, a river of arrow shafts that the mounted warriors galloped across towards the tanks and their unguarded flanks. Dropping back behind cover, Misato ordered her tank commanders to pop smoke and turn.

Shinji must have seen the attack as well, because he stepped into the path of arrows, dashing half the chargers across the battleground with one knee and shin. Dust filled the wide streets and masked the approaches from all directions, and from there, more of the giant monsters emerged. Misato bit her lip and frowned. The big ones favored the Evangelions, for obvious reasons, but she'd seen even the human-sized, glamorous ones survive direct hits from a tank's primary weapon. There was psychology here, but damned if she couldn't see it.

There is no point in trying to drill through the center of the city. The top of the Geofront dome had been paved flat just to maximize the armor thickness on all meaningful angles of attack. That one Angel tried drilling, but it was a flying fortress and had incredible anti-air defenses. Misato bit her lip and exhaled harshly. There were hundreds of weaker points to smash through, Evangelion access tunnels, the railroads and vehicle access. The kamitachi were drilling right through the street, ignoring the potentially weaker shutters clamped over the armory buildings.

For that matter, why the kamitachi. She'd seen these things just up and wave their hands, making something into something else. They could have just turned the ground into cheese, or something. Leaning on Makoto and the radio, Misato switched channels. "Shinji, Asuka! You're the closest thing I have to experts- why aren't these guys using magic?"

Busy cleaving through a building and two monsters, Asuka's voice was distant. "Hell of I know! They can interact with AT fields!"

"Ergo-" Nagisa broke in, tone deceptively light. "they can interact with souls!"

Shinji let out a wordless sound of frustration, expressing it with a brutal series of stomps as he disrupted a massing cluster of skirmishers. "Best guess- they either have to dig to the Geofront, or they're choosing to."

Misato didn't like either of those answers. "And for now, no chance of a sudden brainwave from Ritsuko."

Reaching for her shredded vest, Misato pulled a thin notebook and hurriedly thumbed through the pages. She heard Asuka shouting for support, calling for Kensuke. Misato heard more than saw the response, where the silver Unit 04 lumbered out of cover and unleashed a torrent of fire across the enemy line of battle. Focusing on the cramped handwriting and necessary shorthand, she scanned what assets she had left. The cupboard was nearly bare, with almost all reserves expended and only the most outlying defenses across Japan even theoretically stocked.

She had less than five thousand soldiers deployed in the city at that very moment, not counting free agents and the skeleton defensive crew below ground. In the hills on three sides, she had four rocket batteries. Just four, and not one replacement. She nodded to Makoto and roughed out a quick plan before trusting him to his part.

As he relayed her orders for the probing assault, Misato called her pilots and those soldiers locked in combat. "Be advised, rocket artillery barrage is incoming. Evangelions- I want you to stay in the field as long as you can. I need to see what these things can do."

The pilots chimed in one after the other, followed by the squads and mechanized infantry. Her radio crackled. "We'll hold them as long as we can Major- ETA on bombardment?"

Misato glanced at Makoto, who waved his hand with two fingers extended. "Two minutes soldier. Be ready to move- the rockets won't wait!"

Seconds after her order, the great batteries fired. The distant roar and rushing air of launching rockets was nearly lost in the fury of the storm. Risking a glance past the barricades and across the battlefield, Misato watched as the enemy signaled. Archers turned to face the new attack, drawing arrows made of glittering dust, strung with musical notes.

Some small part of her still rebelled at the insanity of a bow and arrow being used to intercept rocket artillery, but absurd or not, it worked. The arrows shot skyward in the blink of an eye, splitting the dozen rockets from nose to tail. The heavy ordnance drifted in the air for a lingering second, before fuel and payload detonated several hundreds of meters above and far off target. Even before the last echoes faded, Misato was demanding updates on enemy troop movement and where her forces were at.

Five Evangelions, with a mixed set of gear. Armor and infantry, and her last three artillery barrages. Those wind-drills had to go down- there was no doubt in her mind. The question was how. She looked back over the front line, watching her soldiers shift and move in response to the tide of battle. A sergeant some twenty meters away bellowed at his squad to get down as more arrows raked his position. Above and forward, near the enemy's leading edge, Asuka and Shinji were tearing into the steadily growing mass of great beasts and monsters that were dead set on keeping them occupied.

Another deafening burst of gunfire raked across the battlefield, and Misato followed the line of glowing tracers back to Unit 04 and Aida Kensuke. Some of the shots were blocked like any other, deflected by sword or claw. Others were blithely ignored. The vast majority though tore great gaping holes in ranks of infantry and cut bloody lines through four or so unlucky monsters. Kensuke fired another burst, and from the opposite side a line of tanks opened up with machine guns. Caught on both sides, the elite defenders split their focus to defend against all comers...

By that point, all she had was a hunch... But Misato lived and died by her hunches.

Pulling the radio back from Makoto, Misato switched channels and flooded the battlefield with her voice, roaring into the radio. "We're going to press these things until they break! All forces- pick your targets and fire at will!"

They didn't need much encouragement. The thunderous crash of cannons and rapid fire weapons filled the air, pounding the enemy from three or more directions. Seconds rushed by while the enemy surged to counter. The archers reformed, but Kensuke was ready for them, unleashing hell with his gatling and draining ammo. Misato howled into the sound and dust, laughing despite herself. The long fusillades cut the changing ranks to ribbons, ripping huge gaps in the heaving throngs of faceless infantry. Only the blatantly elite remained in those ragged furrows, standing in mired craters of rubble and churned earth.

But then Misato saw monstrous shapes drop out of the clouds and swirling grit, ambling towards her newest pilot.

"Shinji, Asuka! Kensuke's in trouble!" She pressed on the radio, not caring that she was still broadcasting across all channels. "Kensuke! Protect that weapon!"

Even as she gave that order, the enemy continued its counter-offensive. If they could defend on two or even three sides at once, they could probably attack just as easily. There had to be a limit, and she was going to find it. "C'mon you fancy bastards... pull forward and overextend."

The battle surged in almost liquid waves, where humans and metal lunged headlong into a wall of shields and spears. Something had to give, and soon. Turning back to her ad-hoc command post, she looked around for something- anything she could use to pull ahead. a slash of dingy white stood out against the dry soil and rubble.

"...This is far too convenient." She huffed and started digging. Her squad joined in seconds later, and in moments, they had pulled a ragged Japanese flag out of the rubble.

Misato pointedly ignored Makoto's incredulous stare as she grabbed a bit of refuse and tied the flag to it. "You can't be serious."

Dropping the rifle, Misato ran a hand through her hair before clipping the radio to her belt and pulling out her pistol. Flag in one hand and weapon in the other. "Serious enough- wish me luck!"

She vaulted cover before Makoto could open his mouth, flag in hand and charging forward. Even caked with dirt and sodden with brackish water, the flag was brighter than the smoke and fire of battle. On the ground, her tanks and mortars let loose with all weapons, pouring everything they had into the attack. Raising her sidearm without much thought, she fired into the nearest throng of menagerie soldiers. When she ran out of bullets, she grabbed the flag with both hands and smashed it into the nearest head she could find.

Above, her Evangelions moved. Unit 01 cast a long shadow over the battlefield, having long been stripped of paint and dry gouges carved in its armor. Misato scrambled through the melee, even as the horned Evangelion straddled her tiny slice of the war and wrestled with the nearest clawed and awful monster. Shinji's rising knee summoned a storm that nearly ripped the flag from her hands, almost pulling her off the ground entirely.

She crossed ten meters of unbelievably hellish terrain, then twenty. The air was hot and rough in her lungs, filled with smoke and fury like she'd never felt before. The radio at her hip squawked, demanding orders, clarification. Vaulting the fallen facade of an office building, Misato slid through an open an broken window, weaving through the wreckage and out the other side.

Nearly a third of the way across the battlefield, cut off from her own forces and waving a goddamned flag, Misato stood out for everyone to see.

A hundred thousand teeming, knobby-limbed pikemen raised their weapons in a blood-thirsty cheer. Archers played their bows like harp strings, and the horse-men pounded their chests and shields, howling into the storm. She could read their intent plain on their faces. The enemy boiled from cover, forgoing orderly lines of battle for glory and the flag in her hand.

Her plan was stupid. Absurd. Insane. And yet it worked.

Unhitching the radio from her hip, Misato kept her expression level and waved the flag, waiting. "C'mon. Little closer..."

They moved faster than she did, crossing tens of meters at a time without pause. The cavalry rapidly overtook the infantry, swarming over the ruins and wreckage towards her. There was no diversion- no one calling them back into formation. She started trembling in place as more of the huge monstrous beasts emerged out of the clouds, raining down and joining the charge. Now more than a third of the way across the central crater, the enemy split to weave around the kamitachi.

When the unbelievable mass of soldier-monsters and stranger things were a hundred meters, ten seconds away, Misato raised the radio to her lips. "Artillery- target the kamitachi! Fire everything you've got!"

She was close enough that the kamitachi were pulling the flag straight away from her, and sucking in every other loose bit of refuse, cloth and whatnot throughout the battlefield. Her hair was stretched and plastered dry against one side of her head, billowing while the wind-dancers pulled the air into the drill. Or, more meaningfully, she was close enough that she'd be under the blast radius when the rockets hit.

Ahead, the enemy's raucous, over-extended charge seemed to falter, losing steam as pointed ears picked up on the roar of solid fuel engines. Now the grey flame army moved with a purpose, an urgency that Misato could see even through their unbelievable skill. The counterattack guttered to a halt with the opposing forces line almost a hundred meters away from Misato, and NERV's defenders a bit more than twice that behind her.

Horns and drums heralded the sweeping change in formation as the rush melted. To her left, Kensuke and his silver Evangelion fumbled a reload. That hint of weakness was sign the horde needed. The grey flame army waved their collective arms to call forth more great beasts to the battle, bearing down on the new pilot. Misato's heart pounded in her chest, and overhead, the rockets streaked closer.

Asuka shouted over the battlefield, voice carrying across external speakers and over the wind and sounds of war. "Newbie! Heads up!"

"I know I know!" Kensuke stumbled back, but one heel slipped into a broken surface plate and sent him toppling backwards with a deafening bang.

Tossing the flag away, Misato cast about for cover, painfully aware that she could not outrun rocket artillery. Behind her, Evangelion Unit 01 roared.

Or maybe that was Shinji, over the radio. "Misato- dammit! Asuka! Help! Rockets!"

Before the redhead could answer, Shinji was moving, lunging twenty meters at a time and racing towards the kamitachi. The Eva all but vaulted over her head, and Misato fell backwards, thrown by the landing impact and tremors. Unit 01 skid forward, carving parallel trenches with its heels before grinding to a halt before the funnel cloud.

Asuka cut across the battlefield towards Kensuke, leaping into the air and releasing her power cable in favor of battery power. Her Eva's coat reshaped into wings and heaved her aloft, and in that same move, she spun and threw her sword. The building-sized blade tumbled awkwardly, passing harmlessly and unharmed through the storm-drill before landing in Shinji's waiting hands. He spun on one foot and drove the tip into the ground, just ahead of Misato.

The archers readied their bows even as the Evangelions turned back to the monsters and massed infantry. NERV's defenders cut into unprotected flanks with automatic weapons, cannons and mortar, but there were still too many. Asuka landed feet first on a pair of statue-warriors, both as big as her Eva. Her wings formed into raking claws and clamped down on two more great beasts, giving Kensuke that precious time he needed.

Sluggish, stuttering and slow, the silver Evangelion drew back the receiver and loaded a fresh drum of ammo. In the center of the battlefield, bows were drawn and arrows loosed. This time the gleaming shafts formed into an almost unbroken river of sparkling silver, like a cutting laser. The massed archers swung their beam skyward, cutting through the high clouds and sighting in on the incoming rockets.

Kensuke didn't bother standing up. Heaving the gatling cannon up and at angle, he let loose with a stream of fire, screaming over the radio. Misato watched the tracers cross the air and slice through the stream of arrows, scattering the defensive beam into stardust. Braced behind Asuka's sword on one side, Misato waited for the boom.

Unbelievable, soul-shaking sounds filled her awareness for the following few seconds. She didn't bother to count the individual explosions. Somewhere, Misato knew the exact ordnance loaded in those distant silos, but the specific number seemed so unimportant right then. The ground jumped and heaved beneath her, banging painfully into her knees and shaking the Eva-scale sword from tip to hilt.

As the last lingering echoes of the barrage faded, a near silence fell over the battlefield. Misato gingerly eased herself out from beneath the sword's shadow, peeking around the edge and at the central crater.

The funnel cloud had vanished, and the three kamitachi stood motionless, ugly and spindly in all the worst ways. They had too many limbs and not enough bulk, like a ballerina dancer made of melted candle wax and studded with razor blades. A gaping pit had been carved into the top layer of Tokyo-3, and the grey flame army waited, almost pensive. Those with recognizable faces looked at her, then glanced at each other, expressions oddly neutral. For the moment, the innumerable warriors lowered their spears and swords. With a shuddering groan, the dancers slumped like broken puppets.

One by one, the invading army of lurid, beautiful horrors threw their weapons to the ground and raised their hands to the air, applauding.
 
Well, the Fae certainly do like them some damfool stunts. (You're a loose cannon, Misato! But dammit, you're the best detective I've got!)
 
A gaping hole had been ripped into Tokyo-3's skyline. Even from the low hill of Tokyo-3 Municipal High, Ayumi could see through the toppled skyscrapers and armory buildings. Giant monsters prowled the streets, stomping into the fray while canons, rockets and gunfire echoed off every surface. The high clouds were a nearly solid ashen sheet, and the searing white laser blasts from the outlying hills cast dark shadows across the sky.

The prisoners and their captors watched the battle for two days straight. Or, the prisoners had been forced to watch. They were taken in groups to relieve themselves, while food and water were carried to them by knobby faced tree-creatures. No matter what they did, the tall and glamourous wardens knocked out walls and made the way clear for the captured civilians to see the battle.

The humans were pointedly not allowed to sleep. Ayumi wondered if she would ever sleep again.

With bleary, bloodshot eyes, Ayumi stared across the cafeteria. Past the broken wall and over the low slung buildings that made up the outlying immobile city. A thunderclap and staccato burst of explosions had thrown a column of dust and rock into the air. Just before that she saw the Evas, three of them now, move and shift to each others aide. The red one- Sorhyu - tossed her sword to Shinji in purple. Massive weapons and deafening gunfire shook the city, and the school felt the rumble of guns through their shoes and aching legs.

Their captors were enraptured. The little servants toiled ceaselessly and paid no attention, but now Ayumi noticed. After the whirlwinds were destroyed, the greater and grander individuals stood out starkly by comparison. Be they glorious or grotesque, it wasn't how they looked that mattered. It was their behaviors, the looks in their eyes. Some beheld the battle with vacant adoration. Others took in the distant carnage with a naked lust. The apparent leader, that woman of hands- all her fingers twitched fitfully. Bubbling absurdity crept up into Ayumi's throat, and she choked down the laughter- the thought of them eating popcorn.

Listlessly, she cut her attention across the crowd of filthy, sleepless humanity After... everything, she'd given up questioning the truth of what she was seeing, inside and out. So far though, no pink elephants or waking dreams. A dozen meters away, Toji was pressed against a wall, sniffling audibly, pale and sweating rivulets. He clutched at his stump shoulder with his free hand, and aggressively looked straight forward at nothing. A low, resonant rumble pulled his eyes skyward, and Ayumi followed his attention up. She wasn't alone either- whispers of excitement and interest broke out in a thrumming, expectant wave. Again, Ayumi imagined popcorn.

The mood was contagious, or perhaps they made it a contagion. Prisoners turned to the sky and those who were lucky or privileged enough to have chairs inched forward in their seats. Even the Evas turned to look up.

Above the clouds, the maw of the sky opened wide, throwing out misty white gasses and coating the city with frost. Past gaps in the thunderheads and storm, Ayumi watched the shadow of space give way to Jupiter's curve. Then that was gone, hidden by some formless bulk. The maw snapped closed and drew the storm into an overturned funnel, and the rush of displaced air lashed at the city below. A shadow stretched inside the clouds, and Ayumi's eyes followed the leading edge as it raced overhead and out past the edges of the city.

That was when the rain started.

The fog in sky above Tokyo-3 darkened, rapidly compressed as something unbelievably vast pressed down on it from above. The air and water had no chance to get out of the way. The first raindrops arrived as a nearly uniform sheet that pounded the whole city down to the shores of Lake Ashi. Between blocks and alleyways, the sudden deluge wiped the air clean of smoke and grit. Inside the school cafeteria, broken gutters and holes in the roof let the water rush inside.

Six great white marble pillars punched through the black, sodden clouds. Tall as buildings, they slammed into the ground all around Tokyo-3. Not just the central fortress, but the surrounding static neighborhood. Tremors raced through the ground, knocking over chairs, tables and walls. Distant buildings slumped into further ruin, and Ayumi was sent sprawling. Heaving herself out of a puddle, she looked up to see the clouds part.

An inverted castle-fortress straddled Tokyo-3 and pushed the rain aside. Towers and redoubts mingled with courtyards and a dozen other things she couldn't even describe. None of it obeyed gravity, and Ayumi gaped at the sprawling ranks of monster and soldier. Down in the ruined city center, Shinji handed Sorhyu her sword, while they both helped the silver one to its feet. She watched the Evangelions stand, exhausted and worn.

All around her, the invaders thrummed with anticipation.

* * *


It was eleven in the morning, and night fell across Hakone, and only guttering fires or brief explosions cut through the sudden darkness. Through her scopes and her own eyes, Rei saw the descending inverted castle drop onto the ruins of Tokyo-3, meshing with the rising armory towers like snaggle teeth. Courtyards and sprawling estates hung above their position. It was like someone built a giant city out of farms, manor homes, more castles and so on. All of that came together in one mass, piled on top of each other into a growing swell of interlocking citadels.

Rei pulled away from the scope and began to break the positron cannon down. Nagisa thankfully did not question her, only pausing for a moment before joining in.

"Rei! Nagisa!" Misato coughed into the radio. "Get ready to move-"

"We are already moving." Rei and her Eva stood, loaded to go, while Unit 03 gave her a playful nod.

"Wha-? Nice!" Misato was not one to falter long. " Head north! We have to get someone out ahead of this- or out from under it!"

The massive, six-legged beast stretched out from horizon to horizon, only allowing a thin sliver of overcast sky through the gaps of towers and keeps. Glancing sidelong, Rei watched the enemy reinforcement fill the air. "The enemy has deployed."

"No kidding!" Rei could hear Misato panting and the shifting sounds of battle in the background.

Hyuuga Makoto's voice sang through the radio then. The words were lost to the sound of combat, but Misato sighed audibly. "-I'm fine. Rei, Nagisa. Get out from under this thing!"

Rising, Units 00 and 03 shed foliage and soil in great streams. The action felt slow, but only because Rei had that obnoxious sense of distance from the swirling melee over a kilometer away. Nagisa had kept a running tally of her kills- sixty two great monsters cut through with a searing white beam, and there was no end in sight.

Tokyo-3 was defended by the terrain on three sides, with the lake to the south. The crystal Angel had proved they were vulnerable from above, but only just. The blue and black Evangelions moved swiftly, and Rei urged herself onward. Above, the castle-walker shifted, arranging itself on its legs to better straddle the city and outlying countryside. They were still beneath its shadow.

Behind them, the muted crack and echo of explosions rang out over downtown, mixed with the stranger sounds of monsters and their alien weapons. The hum and song of manifest AT-field cut through the riot of conventional warfare. Rei's heart beat hard in her chest, and she willed the blood in her veins to slow. It pumped faster instead.

Climbing higher, Rei looked up with her Eva's one eye. Thick, rolling waves of vertigo stretched her perspective as she gained altitude and looked up into the descending castle-sky. Grey-flame soldiers filled the open spaces, standing upside down on flagstones and cobbled streets, saluting their leaders. Flagpoles drizzled down from the pointed towers, brushing the tops of trees as Rei and Nagisa weaved beneath them.

The edge of the massive platform was just ahead, and Rei turned to take in the view. Casting a shadow three kilometers across, the monstrous structure straddled not just the city Tokyo-3, but the surrounding hillside. One leg had plunged into Lake Ashi, displacing water and flooding the shore into the southern industrial parks.

"Rei here. Misato- The enemy armor expands further." She ignored Kaworu's incredulous, before adding. " Permission to advance?"

Misato came back with a crackle and gusty shout. "Gran-ted! Stay safe and I hope you two find something useful!"

Nodding, Rei turned to Nagisa and waved for them to move onward. "Roger that."

Ahead, Nagisa heaved himself over the top of the hill. Rei tugged at the controls and followed. That was when signal interference from the ground and ongoing chaos in the air suddenly cleared. The plug interface swam with radio waves, and Rei switched frequencies without thinking.

It only took moments before profoundly military voices came through in the clear. "They're doubling back! Hit em!"

Rei looked at Nagisa, and for a brief, fleeting moment, they shared the exact same uncertain look. Charging downhill, the two Evas carved a thick trench through the overgrowth and soil, skipping over the roads when they could and dropping into the tangled valleys. The radio chatter filled Rei's ears and mind, picking out calls for reinforcements and more. The darkness cast by the castle faded at the edges, and late morning sun stretched a curtain across the air. A throaty, screeching roar of engines cut through the muted sounds of battle, and Rei simply couldn't place the sound.

Unit 00 broke out from beneath the shadow, and Rei stood with her Eva straddling a suburban highway. Just turning around the bend, a thick column of dusky green tanks and trucks charged between her feet. Soldiers sitting on the tanks and leaning out of their seats cheered as they passed, while others shouted at their commanders or waved for her to look up.

So the sound had apparently been VTOL aircraft. NERV had run out of those weeks ago.

A squad of seven aircraft raced overhead, within arms reach of her Eva. Bird-lions with armored riders were in hot pursuit, trailing red cloaks and holding burnished spears of lightning at the ready. To that, Rei summoned her AT field and willed the air to harden before the pursuers.

Leaving the hostile fliers to crumple, she twisted at the hips and blinked rapidly. "These are JSSDF survivors."

Below, a man with a megaphone shouted into the air. "Switch to frequency one-four-oh-one-two!"

Less than a second later, Rei found herself connected to a three-star officer. "This is General Ishida with Tokyo-2 heavy research! Damn glad to see NERV's still in one piece!"

The VTOLs swung around on pivoting thrusters before rocketing back around towards something unseen behind another hillside. Rei, for her part felt, her mind spin into overdrive as things and pieces fell into place.

"We are happy as well." Rei offered, though some increasingly developed sense of the world told her that more was coming. "However, we are currently under attack as well."

If the general minded her bland, straight-forward assessment, he didn't show it in his voice. "That's just fine! If you two can get us past the hills and into the city, our special weapons group has got your back!"

Nagisa hummed across the shared Eva frequency, sending just to Rei. "I suppose now we use our vaunted initiative?"

From the tail end of the convoy, something shrieked with the sound of metal on metal. A column of blue and orange flame lashed out in a thick, snarling tongue from behind the hillside. The light threw out long shadows, carving at the darkness from overhead even as the tail end of the convoy accelerated away. An armored, thickly muscled beast tumbled out onto the road with a tree-shaking roar. Covered in horns, its body was swollen strong, big as an Eva and thrashing mad.

And, it breathed fire.

For all of that, Rei could say to herself that it was recognizably the enemy. The obviously mechanical and vaguely humanoid figure hanging from its neck was decidedly not.

To Nagisa, Rei dropped instantly to her natural deadpan. "After you, rookie."
 
Do I spy with my little eye something Alchemical?
 
It's been a long time... how have you been?

Ikari Shinji exhaled, drawing in a fresh lungful of LCL while he and his Evangelion stood ankle-deep in the ruins of downtown Tokyo-3. Shadows and darkness pooled around his feet, broken by guttering fires and jewels that gleamed in absence of light. To one side, the enemy teemed below as a carpet of winking stars. Endless, maybe, but he would fight regardless.

(More to come.)
 
Finally got over a pretty severe bout of writer's block. it's only one scene so far, but I've been writing a little bit more each day now.

---


Ikari Shinji exhaled, drawing in a fresh lungful of LCL while he and his Evangelion stood ankle-deep in the ruins of downtown Tokyo-3. All three Evas were pincushions, bristling with broken spears and barbs and shed the projectiles with every move. Shadows and darkness pooled around his feet, broken by guttering fires and jewels that gleamed in absence of light. To one side, the enemy teemed below as a carpet of winking stars. Endless, maybe, but he would fight regardless. Outside the city, Shinji saw the massive legs rise and fall, taking one glacial step after another.

Wrenching Asuka's sword free, he tossed it to her and stood astride the broken corpses of the dancing wind drills. The applause had faded when the hanging castle looming overhead descended from on high. The rain fell in driving sheets from above, the hanging fortifications cut through the thick clouds the castle-walker had pulled into the city.

"Tokyo-3!" External speakers let out a hiss and crackle of feedback as his voice echoed across the city. "Regroup and rearm- it's our time now!"

The shout rang out over the battlefield, and for a moment, the hostile soldiers paused. A thread of cold uncertainty wound through Shinji's mind, but he killed it in one breath and filled his voice with resolve. A hot arc of lightning lanced down from inverted flagpole to groundside crane, and thunder followed. Pointing high, running lights on the Evangelion's body lit up the clearing and his arm. "That's is our battle- they've lost and don't even know it! We are pilots-"

"-And we're the slayer of monsters!" Asuka swung her sword into the street and drew a ten meter deep trench across from the enemy army. In that same move, she pushed a private window to Shinji, jerking her chin down at the front line. "Whatever it is you're doing keep doing it! They're actually moving!"

They were. The line of glittering weapons bucked and warped away from the sound of his voice, before flowing back like a river. Darker, looming shapes marked the bigger monsters, literally chomping at their bit. So apparently he could cow an army. He could work with that. A thunderous step forward broke the tide for a moment, before the opposing force surged back in a cutting wave as Shinji moved up next to Asuka, while Kensuke urged his Eva onward, cybenetic arms straining to heft his gatling gun.

Standing tall with his feet spread wide, Shinji thrust one hand high, finger towards the castle in the sky. "They've handed us everything we need to take the fight to them! It's not about armies, but monsters. It's not a fortress or beast or challenge, it's a target! It doesn't matter that they know we're coming, that the outnumber us, surround us."

One step, two. Every sweep of his arm and cutting declaration seemed to force the enemy back. The seas were parting, or maybe it was more like charming a particularly improbable snake. He took one thunderous step forward, rattling the city foundations and throwing a plume of dust skyward. The front line ahead of him leaned away, slithering and full of wrath. Behind him, the city's defensive force seemed to swell.

"You brought legions out of myth and legend." Shinji's hands tightened on the controls, shouting through the Eva while the thunder crashed overhead. "Your armor is terror, your weapons forged of mystery... and I have no fear!" He spat the last word as best he could, making a show of rolling Unit 01's shoulders, letting pops and crackles travel up its neck like mortar shots.

"Because I'll know you-" He growled. "I'll take your secrets and break you! You came here looking for aimless livestock, and now you set me up as their shepard and we are a flock of wolves!"

But even as he stalked towards the enemy, he could tell it wasn't a perfect counter. No amount of grandstanding or fiery proclaimation would break that army, even if he could spit out constantly historic speeches and glorious rhetoric. Kensuke and Asuka must have sensed it too, because the red Eva slugged his in the shoulder when he reached them.

Glancing backwards while the other two pilots glared down the massed infantry and monstrosities, Shinij put his best smile into his voice. Something he learned from the best. "Misato- this is our mission. We can handle everything from here."

Asuka broke in her own, sword in hand and raked across the street. "NERV! You got us this far. It's our turn now."

He turned then, aiming to face the horde. They wouldn't get through him, not when so many were depending on him. The inky mass of fantastic warriors and beasts hissed at his Evangelion's glare, and the army reared up almost like a riled cat. Glancing over his shoulder, Shinji willed his perception to jump and zoom in on a drenched Misato offering them all a jaunty, tired salute as she joined the smooth retreat.

As he watched the Tokyo-3 defenders retreat, Asuka pressed into his field of view with a private window while Kensuke joined her half a second later. She huffed into the LCL and shot him a lopsided grin. "We're making this up as we go, aren't we?"

From the broken towers surrounding them and the fortifications hanging above, inhuman howls and horns sounded. The lull was over, and battle was coming once more. Shinji could feel it in his breath and bones, even through the Eva. Shinji raised his fists and his Evangelion followed. Legs tensed and his toes dug into the rubble, powdering concrete while muscles shoved him forward and down the boulevard. Mobility was their friend and advantage- Asuka had drilled that into him.

Enough that they all knew that fighting was pointless.

"Yep." Shinji agreed, spreading his fingers before taking hold of the controls again. His Eva moved, striding forward as Kensuke and Asuka followed, hauling their weapons while Shinji grinned back without much humor.

Together the three Evangelions vaulted over the armies, stomping through the streets and heedless of whatever surged beneath them. Leaning low and forward, Shinji drove his shoulder pylon into some darkened, towering mass that glowed with lichen and stranger mosses before battering it aside. He heard Asuka's sword cleave into the monster while Kensuke brought up the rear, sluggish but inexorable in the advance. The infantry in the streets bounced into the air with every footfall, swinging sword and casting spear at their ankles.

It didn't take long to leave the massed army behind. Pausing just before an intersection, Shinji leaned out into the street. "Kensuke- any ideas?"

Tense and visibly shaking, the newest pilot stammered. "Uh, well it's a castle?" His Eva looked up and let Shinji follow the blank stare skyward. "The two important parts of a castle are the gate and whatever's in the center."

"Yeah, but this one has legs." Asuka noted, casting about before skidding to a halt in an industrial intersection. She pointed her sword west. "There- that leg's the closest!"

Shinji switched to thermal imaging, cutting through the rain and fog. The gargantual appendage was moving, rising and falling inexorably. "...Where's it going?"

The rest of his thought cut off when Rei and Nagisa's images pressed into the crowd of communication windows surrounding his head. "Communications restored!" On that screen, Rei offered him a tiny smile.

"Rei!" Asuka and her Eva seemed to swell. As far as Shinji could say, her grin was morning sunshine after a storm. "And Nagisa. Where are you?"

"Top of the hills- there is a reflected castle, fortifications above and below. We have encountered reinforcements." Rei pushed an image of her view to them, watching her perspective pan left and right as Unit-00 took in the target. Out the corner of that Eva's eye, Unit-03 stood watch. "Be advised, the target is anchored."

"Anchored?" Shinji focused on Rei's camera feed, and then he saw it. From the center of the castle's topside, a chain trailed up into the sky and into the second layer of cloud cover above the city before vanishing.

"That looks important!" The redhead grinned wider, with one eye shining fiery blue. "Good! Stay there and get ready to jump, we're working on a plan!"

"As you tend to do, Asuka-chan." Rei nodded, decisive and sure. "We have acquired VTOL cover as well. Good hunting."

Relief was a warm and happy thing, and Shinji welcomed it. As Rei's window blinked out, he moved ahead with Asuka taking point. Breaking into a wider boulevard, the foot dominated the immediate horizon, lit by guttering fires and the glow of their own running lights. It moved not with muscle, but cut stone, pearly white petrified wood, and mortar that shifted like living sinew. Wide as a city block, it was covered in battlements and winding angular walls like ancient fortresses from across the centuries. More of the alien soldiers teemed across every surface, archers, spearmen and stranger things all.

Asuka's sword spun through the air and sank into the massive limb, shearing through the fortifications knocking loose literal tons of rubble. The debris dripped down in growing sheets and rivers, an avalanche of ruin while untold thousands of hostile defenders readied arrows tipped with glittering starlight. The great hunks of castle that had fallen away turned white, petrifying before their eyes and shattering like weak plaster.

Kensuke all but whirled on her. "How'd you know that was gonna work!"

The red Evangelion shot skyward with a wing-assisted leap. "Didn't!"

Shinji shook his head and suppressed the laugh while Kensuke groaned. Ahead, the structures wrapped around the leg shifted, uncurling and reforming into smaller more complex shapes, shedding cracked material as it moved. Easing out from beneath the blade of Asuka's sword, a towering figure made of defensive walls and towers wrenched itself free. It unfurled six arms and drew as many long single-edged blades. Large enough to have archers manning the battlements, the construct took one unflinching step towards the Evangelions.

Unit-01's flying knee was Shinji's answer. He and his Eva slammed into the new monster, cracking its demon-face against armor. The impact drove the two of them back into the massive leg, and the monster slumped bonelessly while is arms dropped slack. Shinji reached up and pulled Asuka's sword free and heaved it high, where she snatched it out of the air and landed higher up on the thick, elephantine calf. There she cleaved out another ragged slice some dozen meters wide.

"Kensuke- come on!" Shinji turned Unit-01's head to look over his shoulder and at the silver Evangelion.

Lagging behind, Kensuke marched backwards, taking sluggish steps as he fired the gatling back towards the city. Raking fire across the growing tides of infantry and monstrous war beasts, he moaned. "Is this how it always goes? Banking on absurd hunches and mind-numbing terror!?"

Shinji reached up and ripped free another handhold, then kicked for a toehold. His fingers sank in and crushed bastions and bulwarks before throwing back piles and clouds of white plaster. "Yeah! And to think- you volunteered!"

"Fine fine fine cheating death now." Kensuke tossed the empty gatling and turned, sprinting for the handholds Shinji had left in the leg.

Behind him, the armies surged forward while the defenders on the limb let loose with another volley of arrows. Kensuke stumbled into the leg just a second before it tensed beneath them. Acceleration tugged at Shinji, drawing him down against his seat while the foot rose into the air. His Eva hung from behind the knee, while Asuka had already made it up to the thigh on the far side of the leg and out of sight. Beneath him, Kensuke clung to the ankle, hugging the ruined surface like his life depended on it. Which was actually true.

Its joints were simple, and its range of motion limited. But it rose high enough for him to look around and see past the shadows and out into the day. To the side, he saw another crater, a footprint, then a third. They traced a rough arc, like a dotted line punched into the earth around the city.

He only had another hunch, but... "Rei, Nagisa! Can you see this thing walking?"

"We can." Their windows snapped on as voice only.

The foot beneath them trailed Tokyo-3 substructure across the ground, having punched down through a dozen or so meters and ripping the ground up with it. "Is it walking in a circle?"

"...yes it is." Nagisa confirmed.

Asuka and her Evangelion huffed from nearby and above, even if her face was visible out the corner of his eye.. "What are you thinking, Shinji?"

Holding on tight, Shinji pulled his lips to the side and let out a snort. "I'm thinking it's a winch and hole saw. They're going to rip the whole city out."
 
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