Too many hints along the way that something screwy was going on. The bitch knew something about Misato that Asuka didn't want ANYONE to know, to the point that the bitch was able to use it as blackmail material. NERV HQ was locked down after the battle but the documentary crew were somehow able to get permission to not only go in, but without an escort of any kind. The bodies of the dead NERV personnel were gone but the bloodstains were still there after all this time. Finally, somebody left Heaven's Door ajar but Lilith was still there. Looking back, the signs were all there.
Hero of War [NGE]
- Thread starter Pineapple
- Start date
Too many hints along the way that something screwy was going on. The bitch knew something about Misato that Asuka didn't want ANYONE to know, to the point that the bitch was able to use it as blackmail material. NERV HQ was locked down after the battle but the documentary crew were somehow able to get permission to not only go in, but without an escort of any kind. The bodies of the dead NERV personnel were gone but the bloodstains were still there after all this time. Finally, somebody left Heaven's Door ajar but Lilith was still there. Looking back, the signs were all there.
Pineapple
Punished Pineapple
- Location
- Passin' the kouchie 'pon the lef' hand side
- Pronouns
- She/They
Ah damn that's clever
- Location
- National Capital Region, USA
You're not going to forget, Asuka. No matter what. Trying is futile.
Not that.
Just six... Jeeze...
Yeah, her act is a little overblown.
The area past this point has a few bad memories for him, doesn't it?
wyatt2996
Need me some WAFF
- Location
- Tidewater, VA
oh I am liking this already.... will it be all from Asuka's POV?
This is very, very good indeed. i'm kind of antsy waiting on the next installment now. consider this thread watched...
Why is it that just about every fic that ties to canon has Asuka with a drinking problem...(mine included, albeit not at Misato on a scale of 1-10)
this woman knows how to push all the buttons for sure. it'll be interesting to see where all this goes down the road.
Well, well, well... what do we have here... Asuka still the little hentai isn't she... not even 24 hours back together and already teasing him... poor Shinji...
It almost sounds like Shinij was on to their little scheme right here, yet in true Shinji fashion, failed to act on his intuition...
Mana? Mana survived?
This woman strikes me as some sort of religious cult type person.... I was wary of her from the first mention. something just didn't feel right.
This is very, very good indeed. i'm kind of antsy waiting on the next installment now. consider this thread watched...
- Location
- supernatural
What happen to Fuyutsuki I wonder?
wyatt2996
Need me some WAFF
- Location
- Tidewater, VA
he probably died in the hail of gunfire before Gendo got pancaked by Unit-02
Unless he also got pancaked.
JennyDracos
Eccentric Hugging Lady
- Location
- Chicago
I suppose there are three possibilities; one, he got shot before the JSSDF decided Unit-02 was too terrifying and broke and ran; two, he got squished against the commander's office wall when Asuka reached in to turn Gendo to paste; three, he got rounded up after and his fate is in the hands of whoever got him. That could be the UN or SEELE, but either way it's not impossible he'll be making an appearance. The first two possibilities, though? He's gone.
- Location
- supernatural
By the way what also happen to Ritsuko?
Attestation IV
Pineapple
Punished Pineapple
- Location
- Passin' the kouchie 'pon the lef' hand side
- Pronouns
- She/They
Attestation IV:
Selfish Intimacy
September 9, 2021
Anyone who cared to look would've known what we'd done. We were flagrant about it in the times that we'd done it but we'd only ever done it for each other. Time between the sheets to escape from the guilt that we'd still never admit was there, guilt for--
"I wonder." He said, laying next to me with his eyes locked on the ceiling tile of the apartment that we only sometimes managed to share. I imagined he'd be the one to leave after our next fight; I'd left last time.
"I try not to wonder," I answered him with a laugh that didn't quite come from the heart. Skin to skin, laying against his side in our shared bed was one of the only times I really felt safe, but I would never admit it.
The things left unspoken between us had to simply be understood; what couldn't, or wouldn't be conveyed in words had to be conveyed through other means. That thing we'd never done with anyone else could bridge the gulf that words didn't.
Or I could hope that was true and hope that he felt the same.
His arm tightened around me and he pulled me closer and I closed my eyes. "I wonder," he said again, "what it would have been like if she was still with us."
Misato.
My eyes hurt and my breath got caught up in my throat. I couldn't let him see this weakness, that wasn't who I was. I rolled away from him and out of bed to find a shirt. "That could never happen. There's no point in thinking about a past that can't be changed."
"But we could talk about it." He protested. He hadn't bothered to come after me, but he rarely did. He'd learned it didn't work.
I pulled my hair back into a ponytail and tied it up. The dresser drawer was sticking, but the shirt could wait till after the fight if it had to. "It's not going to change anything, Shinji. It happened, it's over. Don't be stupid."
The sheets rustled behind me and I turned my head to see him getting up out of bed. It was going to be one of those fights. "If you just keep running away nothing will ever change, Asuka! Maybe we can't change the past but we can change what we do in the future!"
No, no we couldn't. I knew what he refused to accept and nothing was going to change that. But then, it was his turn, wasn't it? "Shinji... Get out."
***
January 5, 2032
It had been years since I'd held a gun but it wasn't the kind of thing you forgot. The skeleton that donated it was generous enough to provide spare magazines for it as well.
It seemed that he'd probably been killed when he was trying to go after the commander sixteen years ago, but didn't win the fight. He probably would have been discovered by Carolina's people if I hadn't destroyed the main access corridor to the office with Unit-02 back then.
Or maybe whoever she was with weren't smart enough to figure out where his office was in the first place. They might not have even thought there would be anything important in it.
With the original Magi right there in the command center they might have had everything they needed, or at least everything they thought they needed, without even looking for his office.
I didn't know how many men they had or what their plans were, but I did have a machine gun and a personal body count higher than anyone else on the planet. While that might not have been the kind of thing anyone would brag about in polite company, it was starting to shape up that the company I was going to be keeping was anything but polite.
It wasn't the first time but it was the first time on foot, maybe that would make a difference and maybe it wouldn't. In the end it didn't matter because just like sixteen years ago it was something that had to be done and it was probably for the same reasons.
I didn't know it back then, I didn't really know what was being planned when those nine came to fight. I didn't know why the JSSDF attacked and I didn't know that I'd really done something good when I'd taken Gendo Ikari off the board.
They'd only told me weeks later, once all the dust had settled and we'd come in from the cold. Third impact was what had been at stake. All those months fighting and killing and in the end we were going to do it to ourselves, join together in perpetual unity or some garbage like that.
I glanced over to see that Shinji was not arming himself. That made sense, he never reveled I it like I had. Angels were one thing, but he never had it in him to enact violence against his fellow man, even when his life depended on it.
I would have to protect him, and that I could do. The world thought I was a hero of war. Shinji had fought monsters but I'd fought men. I could do it again, for Shinji, and for Misato. So he wouldn't have to, and for her, so she--
"What's the plan? Get back to the surface?" Shinji asked me as he covered up the skeleton I'd looted. He had always been more caring and more respectful than I could ever bring myself to be, and that was why he was a better person.
I shrugged and toggled the safety on the assault rifle. "That's step one. Part of me wants to make sure they don't have anything else up their sleeve. If they wanted us, they probably wanted Evangelion. Which means they probably don't have the missing three."
"The mass production units that didn't come here? I hope they don't have them, but if they do..." Shinji asked, trailing off because he knew he didn't need to ask the question for me to understand him.
"Unit One could be an option. If we could get there... But once we get to the surface we can call Rei and that'll be the end of it."
"She doesn't want to be part of that anymore. She's got a life of her own now." Shinji protested, as if by reflex. He always seemed to have a special place in his heart for her. It didn't take a rocket scientist to know why.
"She'd still do it, for you if for no other reason. If it was bad enough I would even climb back into Unit-02, but don't tell anyone that."
He actually laughed and shook his head at me, "That's not the secret you think it is."
I shot a glare at him and then shrugged, "Alright, fine. Give me the chance and I'll wipe them all off the board. But we've got to get the hell out of here first."
"I've actually got an idea about that, but it means we're gonna have to hope Misato was paying attention sixteen years ago."
***
Nobody would have expected us to go deeper into the complex instead of fighting our way to the surface and I was pretty sure that was the only thing keeping us alive. With the bulk of enemy forces trying to keep us inside they'd necessarily have to be concentrated around the perimeter, not the interior corridors and junctions.
It meant that my assault rifle got to stay cold and it meant Shinji didn't have to watch me kill anyone. I'd been in more fights after Evangelion than he'd been and he didn't know about most of them. That was the gift I'd been able to give him.
The bizarre familiarity of the hallways we'd once walked every day was striking. Mold and dried blood and chipped concrete and chips of hardened bakelite littered the dark hallways and it was only the dim light of old glow-sticks I'd taken from a skeleton that let us see our way through.
"Just like old times, right Shinji?"
His footsteps hesitated for a moment. "What?"
His voice sounded confused, maybe a little hurt. Did my comment miss the mark?
"Moving through headquarters in the dark? Last time we had Rei to show us where to go. Have to do it ourselves this time." I clarified and then started walking again.
It wouldn't be too long before we found some way to fight again so I couldn't risk stopping for long enough to give us that opportunity. We could hate each other after this, just like we always did.
The corridor curved to the side slightly, more than it had in my memory. I shouldn't have been surprised, given the violence that had happened on that day some displacement of the earth should have been expected. It did tell me that we were outside of the honeycomb structure of headquarters and into one of the service access sections; nothing but dirt and rock on all four sides of the tunnel.
It would be a straight shot with no side-access until we reached--
A faint click of plastic against metal echoed from behind me and I spun and dropped to my knee. Shinji hadn't reacted yet, but this was never his realm. My safety was off and the rifle was rising up to my shoulder by the time the first round headed our way.
I squeezed down on the trigger and let a three round burst towards the muzzle flash of our attacker's gun. In the dark I couldn't see the hit but I heard the pained grunt and the sound of a body hitting the floor.
"Shinji, run for the end of the--"
Another muzzle flash knocked the words right out of my mouth and I slapped the trigger down to empty another two bursts into the source of the muzzle flash. I tasted salt and copper and dropped the rifle. My shirt was sticky and hot on my right side and I couldn't take a breath.
He'd got me, right through the lung it felt like. I didn't have long, a few seconds at most before I was incapacitated. I fell to my back and saw Shinji looking down at me in concern. Footsteps that weren't his approached from the same direction as the gunfire had.
More bullets came flying past even as my hearing faded. He knelt down next to me and grabbed the rifle I'd dropped and his expression changed from concern to anger.
No, not anger. Rage.
***
September 20, 2015
Pyrrhic victory was not what I had in mind when I'd started, but even that was preferable to losing, if only by a hairsbreadth. The failure of the final cable had sealed my fate and I was in no position to swim to the surface, especially not in liquid hot magma.
At this depth there was no way that the entry plug would survive to the surface, but even that might be a quicker end than waiting to boil at the bottom of a volcano. "I guess this is the end for me."
It was no longer a matter of trying to save myself, but rather making a choice about how quickly I wanted it to be over. I could shut down and wait, try ejecting, I could jettison the D-type equipment and let nature run its course.
A sudden jolt pushed me down into the seat and I looked up. Visual sensors wouldn't have worked inside magma, but the complex sensor array that Evangelion used showed me a picture just the same. Unit One and that idiot Shinji.
Maybe I wasn't going to die after all.
"Shinji... You fool."
JennyDracos
Eccentric Hugging Lady
- Location
- Chicago
Such a complicated relationship.
It is very difficult to get Shinji angry. Don't get Shinji angry, you wouldn't like him when he's angry.
grommile
nasty-minded old cynic
- Location
- NERV-Mercia
- Pronouns
- Traditional/Animate
"Anger an Ogier, move a mountain."
Neepa
Always pondering story possibilities
- Location
- Germany
Never underestimate the selfless, caring and soft-ish type.
And pray when the only thing that keeps him that way is removed.
Unit01 ripping apart what remains of HQ and the Geofront in the next chapter then?
What a Godly spectacle then......
In all honesty: Kill that bitch!
And pray when the only thing that keeps him that way is removed.
Unit01 ripping apart what remains of HQ and the Geofront in the next chapter then?
What a Godly spectacle then......
In all honesty: Kill that bitch!
- Location
- A state of cleverness
I'm reminded of that saying about medicine and poison. Shinji and Asuka literally could be the cure to what ails the other--not even in the romantic sense, but their desire for companionship and someone who "gets them".
But any medicine can be poison; the very traits that give them the ability to connect to each other can make them absolutely toxic to each other. It's what keeps them apart in the main series.
You. I like you.
JennyDracos
Eccentric Hugging Lady
- Location
- Chicago
Maybe I'm being a little too armchair-psychologist, but I think the main problem that Asuka and Shinji have is that Shinji is always ready to forgive Asuka. But Asuka doesn't want to be forgiven, on the grounds that if she was put in the exact same situation again, she'd do exactly the same thing that she did. Shinji would probably forgive her if she felt bad about what she'd done, so instead...she pushes him away. They get together, and then they fight until he's driven off again.
And then time passes, and they still miss each other, and so they get together again.
And then time passes, and they still miss each other, and so they get together again.
Pineapple
Punished Pineapple
- Location
- Passin' the kouchie 'pon the lef' hand side
- Pronouns
- She/They
She doesn't want to be forgiven for something she isn't sorry she did.
JennyDracos
Eccentric Hugging Lady
- Location
- Chicago
My point exactly.
Attestation V
Pineapple
Punished Pineapple
- Location
- Passin' the kouchie 'pon the lef' hand side
- Pronouns
- She/They
Attestation V:
Return Again
Return Again
January 5, 2032
I woke slowly to a gentle rumbling sensation that wouldn't have been unpleasant if not for the shooting pain in my right side. I'd been shot, that much I remembered. I hadn't expected to wake up again and I was okay with that.
A sharp jolt elicited a gasp and my eyes snapped open at once. A familiar ceiling greeted me; the roof of Katsuragi's car. Shinji had gotten us to where we needed to be. The weight on my chest was unexpected but the full-body pressure was something I was familiar with, even if it had been a while since I'd felt it.
I finally looked down to see that I was wearing a blood-stained flak jacket and a bright red plug suit. I must have been close enough to the size I was back then that it still fit, or maybe a new one had been extruded for me.
"Shinji?" I croaked out as I turned my head to the right. The assault rifle was wedged between the seat and the door and Shinji was staring forward with rage on his face, an expression that broke when he heard my voice.
"I wasn't sure you were going to wake up. You almost suffocated before I got you into a plugsuit to seal up that chest wound." His words came out a mile a minute. He was running on adrenaline and it had him scattered, wired, running a thousand miles an hour.
He was wearing a chest rig covered in magazine pouches and blood and I knew he'd become like me, because of me: a killer of men. I knew that once he had time to calm down it would kill him inside. I only hoped he could keep angry long enough for us to get out of here.
I realized after looking outside for a few seconds that we weren't heading towards the surface access route. The numbers were counting down, that was taking us deeper, towards the cages. This had to be the maintenance access tunnel.
"We're not heading for the surface, Shinji." I commented with as much of an edge as I could manage in my voice. Having a single functional lung didn't make that easy. At least I didn't cough up any blood.
He shook his head, "They figured out what we were trying to do. I took care of them but they blew the exit tunnel. Got some ammo and gear out of it. I came up with a new plan while you were unconscious."
"Jumping into a volcano again?" I asked with a hint of a smirk. His plans tended towards the self destructive, but then I was no better.
"Yeah, something like that. I'm going to try to take Unit One. It's the only way I can think of to save you." He answered with that same even tone. Maybe he wasn't as fried as I thought; he was focused. Determined.
"You don't have to save me, Shinji."
"No, I do. For Misato's sake if nothing else. And it doesn't matter if I have to, I'm going to."
I felt a twinge in my gut and looked away from him. "Don't bring her up--"
"No, Asuka. I'm done listening to you. When this is over I'm going to her. Hiding her is a moot point. She'll be safer if she's with us but I'll do it by myself if you make me."
I closed my eyes and clenched my fist. He picked a fine time to grow a spine. He'd been using her as a weapon for years but he'd never gone as far as to say he'd leave me behind. "Fine, if we live through this I'll do it. She's my daughter too, after all."
***
September 25, 2016
In the same instant that I felt a kind of love I never expected I'd ever experience, I knew that it wasn't mine to keep. Nine months after what should have by all rights been the end of the world and I was holding something that I could never have imagined would have been part of mine.
A life. A tiny, fragile, human life. She was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen and she was mine, but not to keep. I had rationalized it, bargained over it. I'd tried to find a way forward that let me be there and let her stay and there was no way out, no way around it.
She'd never be safe if she was with me, and I knew it. Shinji didn't have to agree with me and I knew he wouldn't, but that didn't change that he knew too. I was going to take his daughter away from him and it was going to break him almost as much it was going to break me.
But I'd been broken before.
"We--" I started, or tried to, around the lump in my throat. "We'll call her Misato."
She'd died saving Shinji, or that's what I'd heard. I couldn't bring her back. I couldn't even give him the daughter he created, that he deserved.
But I could give him this.
***
January 5, 2032
Blood loss was a hell of a thing, and even under control I still didn't quite feel myself, but I was getting there. I could stand on my own two feet and I had Katsuragi's spare pistol clutched in a death grip while Shinji cranked the wheel on the ventilation access hatch.
We were both way too exposed but I was too wounded to handle an assault rifle, the pistol would have to do. He was going to get himself killed trying to play secret agent in the ventilation shafts but it was the only chance he had to get to his Evangelion and that was the only chance either of us had.
As much as I hated to admit it, he hadn't been wrong.
The hatch opened with a loud metallic snap that echoed through the tunnel and almost certainly ruined the quiet approach the electric car had granted us. I clenched my hand around the grip of the pistol and hissed at the pain in my side.
"Well that does it. Shinji, hurry up and get to Unit One. I'll stay behind and keep them from following you." Stupid Asuka. Stupid.
"You're too hurt. We'll have to come up with another plan--"
I shook my head and pointed to the hatch, "Go! I'm not dead yet and I'm not about to let them finish me off, just get out of here now and you can rescue me later, alright?"
That look he gave me, like he was never going to see me alive again, cut deep. He hesitated, like he always did. He gave in, like he always did. "Alright then. Don't think you can get out of our deal."
The hint of a smile, that was better. He didn't do that enough.
After he was through the entrance to the shaft I shoved the hatch closed over it and turned the wheel. Easier said than done with a chest wound, but in the end I got it done. Knees weak, I needed to sit down.
But not yet.
I shambled over to the driver's door of the car and dropped myself down into the seat, spun the key, and watched the gauges go through their power on self test. The car really had been through hell and the years of neglect hadn't been kind to it. Down to about sixty percent battery and we'd hardly used it, and I wasn't going to be kind to what was left.
I punched down the accelerator and the car lurched ahead aggressively, but more importantly, it was loud. The screeching of tires was sure to draw the attention of everyone with two ears and a machine gun, which was what I wanted.
They didn't know I was alone, so they wouldn't look for him if they were chasing me.
Poorly lit and faded signs flashed past the windows as the speedometer crept up to one hundred fifty. I had to keep my speed up to deny anyone a clean shot at my head. Not that it would help much if they got lucky, but it made me feel better.
The more I focused on driving the car the less I focused on the bullet hole that went right through me. Without the plugsuit I'd have died from pneumothorax but with it that just shifted the balance in favor of pleural effusion. The latter gave me more time to live without proper treatment, so I'd take it.
Rifle rounds cracked past the windows and I stomped hard into the brake pedal and spun the wheel to the left. The car went into a skidding turn, swinging the headlights around aggressively back towards the way I came from. Back into the accelerator and the force of acceleration pushed me back against the seat with another squealing of the tires. I had their attention.
The speedometer crept back up over one hundred fifty and the battery level dropped under forty percent. I had enough to make it back to the parking garage but with the exit tunnel collapsed there wasn't much I could do after that. I just had to hope it bought Shinji enough time to get himself where he needed to be.
After I rounded the bend in the tunnel I passed the hatch he'd taken and saw that it was still closed, they hadn't spotted him. In a way it was lucky that the facility was in such disrepair. If the surveillance was still working they'd have been able to spot us almost immediately and we wouldn't even have gotten this far.
Up to one hundred sixty and the car started to struggle to keep up. The battery meter was falling almost fast enough to watch in real time. It wasn't the fastest the car had ever gone but it was faster than it wanted to go after sleeping for so long.
"Come on, Katsuragi did worse to you. Give me just a little more..."
The road was blocked ahead, three men and two cars. There was no time to evade, so I turned the wheel to aim between the cars. I could fit, if there hadn't been a man standing there. I don't know if he expected me to stop, but I'd already been shot once and it was clear they weren't in the mood for prisoners.
The hood buckled on impact and the steering shook, but held. Speed started bleeding off rapidly, but I had a lot to spare and I made it up the final rise in the tunnel to reach the garage and to see the collapsed exit tunnel.
I turned the whee and stepped hard into the brakes to swing the car around a pillar and behind a row of abandoned cars that had been left when the facility had been abandoned years before. I had no hope of blending in but the more metal between me and their guns the better.
The dashboard went dark and I shoved the door open. It'd lasted long enough, just long enough. Part of me wanted to, if I ever had the chance, take this car home with me and have it repaired. It had survived untold years of Misato and still had enough left for me this one last time. It deserved... something.
Blood loss made me sentimental too, apparently.
I dropped the magazine out to check it, twelve rounds in the mag and one in the pipe. Hammer back, safety off. I slid the magazine back in until it clicked into place and crept up to the edge of a rusted old minivan in the adjacent parking spot.
Any bullets they shot would cut right through it, but that's what the flak jacket and pure dumb luck were for. Concealment isn't cover, that was a lesson I'd learned many times over, many years before.
I limped around the van and to the front of a small truck in the next spot, catching sight of the two remaining soldiers in the process. Standard security uniforms, no armor, and one MP5 each. They weren't very good at their job either, if they couldn't spot a wounded girl in a bright red body suit, but I was willing to tolerate that particular failing.
The pistol felt heavy in my hands as I raised it to fire. I would only have one chance to get them both before they returned fire. If they did that, I was done.
A loud creaking sound accompanied by a flash of bright light flooding into the garage distracted both of the men, who looked straight up to investigate. The sudden light illuminated them perfectly and I squeezed the trigger. One, two, three, four, five, six. Switch targets, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen. The slide locked back and both men dropped.
I lowered the pistol and leaned against the hood of the truck and finally took a glance upwards.
The roof of the garage was gone, in its place was something I hadn't seen in well over a decade.
"I guess you could use a hand, huh?" The voice asked me from speakers set into the head of a giant robot. There was a smugness to the words but then we'd never been the best of friends either.
"Jet Alone 2, just for me? Kirishima, you shouldn't have."
JennyDracos
Eccentric Hugging Lady
- Location
- Chicago
That poor Renault, doing everything it can.
That makes the blackmail about Misato make more sense. It wasn't some nasty info about Asuka's late guardian, it was about her daughter
Pineapple
Punished Pineapple
- Location
- Passin' the kouchie 'pon the lef' hand side
- Pronouns
- She/They
Asuka cares, which is why she has to act like he doesn't.