New Century 2318 [NGE]

[Pineapple]

Chapter 11:

Feeling; Alive​

Two weeks, five days, sixteen hours, forty seven minutes. I'd been out of a hospital bed for that long and I'd kept away from all things Evangelion and my phone had stayed off. I had no doubt she could have found me if she wanted to, the phone was just a symbolic gesture.

I wasn't ready to come back and I'd turn it back on when I was. They clearly hadn't needed me because the door hadn't been kicked in by men in black.

It was a waste of time, but I had plenty of time to waste. Touji had been kind to me, and then he'd been kind again when he let me stay without asking why. It was an imposition on his home, on his roommate, but he still let me stay.

As he had shown me kindness, I had shown it to him in kind. As we had that first night together, every night thereafter. I could have done better, should have done better, but it was easier to lose myself in the indulgences of food and drink and sex.

To her credit, at least, Misato had not made good on her declaration that Touji worked for her now, though for how long that would remain true I did not know. It may have been meant as an apology, or it may have been meant as something else.

Maybe she was done with me, and wouldn't that be a treat? Flawed girl with the flawed brain who can't not go crazy when she sits in the giant robot, can't stop seeing shit that isn't there. Do it once, do it twice, do it never again and let the world keep turning.

It felt easy to understand why Misato was the way she was. I'd been wearing the same bra for the last four days, same underwear for the last three. Hadn't worn pants in the last week when a t-shirt that wasn't even mine was long enough to do the job.

Crashing and burning was easy. Hiding was easy. Putting my thoughts in the right order to figure out what the hell I'd been looking at was hard and I didn't want to do it. Even if there was some nagging feeling deep in my soul that told me that there was something to it, something to be found, I didn't want it.

But I had been overstaying my welcome. If Touji wasn't going to say it, his roommate Aida was. Subtle things. Offering to take me to wash my clothes. Asking about me about my apartment. Rei had come up early on, but less so when it became obvious I didn't want to talk about her with him.

When his face started showing disgust instead of embarrassment at my state of dress.

I should have gone home, but late at night when I had a warm arm wrapped around me instead of the sterile touch of bed-sheets it became worthwhile because I could really sleep. To feel loved and wanted and desired was the greatest high of all, it was a drug I couldn't do without.

At two weeks, five days, seventeen hours, and nine minutes my phone chirped from the table. Once at first, and then an insistent repeating tone, each note escalating above the previous. It had turned on, come out of sleep mode. They did that sometimes. I'd just have to turn it off again.

I rolled off of the couch and crawled on my hands and knees to the coffee table because that was easier than trying to stand up and I didn't really feel like I needed the dignity of not crawling like an animal anyway.

The first attempt at grabbing the phone resulted in a hand full of nothing. The alcohol had wrecked my coordination. I'd learned many a thing about handovers in the last two weeks.

The second attempt fared better, I'd knocked the phone off the table and had it land screen-up in front of my face on the floor. Just one message: 'Have you looked at the sky lately?'

Unknown sender.

Well, I could use the fresh air.

I pushed myself up off the floor and peeled the over-sized shirt off and dropped it into the floor in a pile with the rest of the clothes that I still hadn't washed. I'd been showering, of course, so given had often the underwear I was wearing was not on my body, they were probably serviceable. I could 'freshen up' later.

On the counter at the corner of the island that divided the kitchen from the living room I saw a sealed dry-cleaning package that seemed out of place. It hadn't been there when I'd gone to sleep. When I picked it up I found the note attached on a piece of sticky paper; 'Something nice, for when you're feeling up to it.'

I shrugged and tore the corner off the opaque foam wrapper and pulled out the bundle of fabric within. The blue dress, cleaned and fresh. It was just as well, I thought it looked good on me. Putting it on was over in seconds, and I already felt a little more human afterwards.

My hair was... manageable. I could worry about it later. I grabbed the phone off the counter and walked out through the front entryway barefoot. Just had to go outside and get some air, look at the sky, right? Humor whoever sent the message.

The pavement was warm under my feet and the wind stirred my dress, but not enough to lift it. The breeze felt good through my hair. I hadn't been outside in... well over two weeks. Touji had brought everything we'd needed and I'd slept or entwined myself with him for most of that time.

I was alone, which didn't seem too outside of normal for the middle of a work day.

The wind picked up and I raised my hand to my eyes to block out the sun so that I could look up into the endless blue. The temperature felt like it kept dropping as the sky darkened. Mid-day that shouldn't have happened, should it?

I wasn't entirely an expert on planets that had weather, but it still didn't seem appropriate. Did that unknown sender know something was going to happen?

I heard a crack-hiss sound in the distance, then an explosion, and then the wind kicked up even harder, blowing my hair and my dress back. It almost felt like I was going to blow away.

Over the horizon an enormous blue octahedron rose into the sky, over the city. Dozens of smoke trails lead towards it; rockets I had to imagine. That crack-hiss sound returned as rapidly cycling beams of light streaked out started to destroying the weapons before they could hit.

The surviving rocket slammed into an AT field and did no damage at all.

But the truth was, I wasn't afraid. Standing my ground in a little blue dress staring down a space monster that was attacking my city, it was nothing to what I'd already done, wasn't it? I fell from space, I climbed into Evangelion. I killed two of this one's friends already.

The things rolling around in my mind, the implants driven into my brain, the hallucinations and the uncertainty. Those things filled me with dread, they made me want to run off into the arms of my first love and never come back but this?

I'd seen them bleed. If they can bleed, they can die. If I can kill them, I'm not going to be afraid of them. They're not the abyss of unknown within my own mind, so there were always worse things to be afraid of. There were things to fear more than death.

Given the choice, Evangelion was more terrifying than what it had to battle.

The alarms sounded, maybe too late to save everyone, and the buildings in the core of the city started to draw down into the ground. Full defensive mode, this one was definitely powerful enough to justify it. There was only one thing I could do, it was as true now as it had been the day I'd fallen from space.

It was easy to quit when there wasn't a battle to be fought, it was something else to quit when the whole city was staring down the barrel of a loaded gun. Faced with what could be my own monumental failure in the flesh, I picked up the phone.

It was as Aoba had told me the first time I'd ever set foot in an entry plug. I'd learned why I'd been born. Maybe it wasn't specifically to pilot Evangelion, but to be a shield and a spear. I wasn't and had never been physically imposing, always the smallest kid my age.

But it was coming down to Earth and being given the power that Evangelion granted me that made me realize that I wasn't the kind of person who could sit by and let people die. Even though Rei could do it, I couldn't really bring myself to let her do it alone.

I had to fight, not because I was the only one who could, but just because I could.

But in the end, I was more afraid of letting the Angel win than I was of getting back into Unit One.

The click on the other end of the call told me it had been answered. "I'm ready to come back."

 

[Pineapple]

Chapter 12:

Wildfire​

For another round, same as every before and every that would come after; the launch rails carried me upwards towards an uncertainty. Fully synchronized, or as close as I could really come. The lag between thought and action was the lowest it had ever been.

Either I understood it, or I no longer lacked the energy to fight it. With spikes driven into my brain linking me to the beast, how long could I really have kept myself separate? Maybe that's what the hallucinations were.

I could hope even if I knew I was wrong.

I'd seen the Angel fight, before I'd even come back to Nerv. The way it used energy beams to shoot down the missiles. That was going to be me if I wasn't fast enough. I twisted the lock release on the top of the control stand and felt my shoulders drop.

They wanted me to kill it, I'd kill it. I didn't need them to tell me how because I knew that they didn't know either. We were all guessing and it was simpler for me if I got to work off my own guesses. My guess was that if I could keep moving I could stay ahead of it.

What other choice was there?

Sunlight hit me without warning and the ground disappeared below. Eva couldn't fly, but it wasn't helpless in the sky. I'd seen Unit Zero maneuver in the sky and so I knew that I could do it too. The pulsing of attitude control jets proved as much when my trajectory stabalized.

It made sense to me; Evangelions used the same reactors as starships, so it would stand to reason that they could provide thrust as well as power.

I reached for the rifle that was slung across Eva's chest. At this range, the AT fields should be in neutralization range, I could just fire--

The flash of light preceded the hammer-blow to the chest by only milliseconds and I was staring at the sky with my chest on fire. The scream that came from my mouth felt almost like it was coming from another person as I jerked the control sticks by reflex.

I felt a violent acceleration under me as the world turned greyscale around me. I wasn't in the entry plug anymore. I was in a launch shuttle, outside the windows the stars stretched out forever and I was staring into the heart of creation.

Into... the heart of creation?

That phrase had been with me my whole life, it always came to mind when I'd looked at the stars. Was there more to it than that?

I blinked away a flash of light and I was back in the entry plug, with the forward view filled with concrete and steel and then as I struck the ground I saw nothing at all.

***​

"We have to believe that there's nothing that can't be forgiven. That's how we survive."

***​

The world was without color but rich in sight and sound when my eyes opened and my mind returned to the land of the living. The younger version of my father was sitting in a chair near the end of my bed. The woman who looked like an older Rei was with him.

Together they watched me, their mouths moved but words didn't come out. It... felt more like looking through some kind of augmented reality glasses, more subtle, less painful than the times before. More surreal.

The sound of a door opening to my right drew my attention and I blinked as I turned my head. The world had color when my eyes re-opened; blue hair and red eyes proved it. Her thin smile didn't reach those red eyes, but within them I thought I did see relief.

"Did you kill it?"

She shook her head. She seemed... different. More drawn in, had she been worried? "The Angel resumed drilling into headquarters after the failed intercept by Unit One. All attempts to approach or attack are met with a similar energy discharge."

If you get too close you get boiled. Got it. I certainly resembled that fact. I wasn't dead, but I felt like I wanted to be. My chest burned and my throat still felt raw, like even talking might tear it open until I bled to death.

"What now?"

Her lip curled back and I saw a tensing in her jaw. "We will kill it."

We will kill it. That simple, we'll just kill it. Rei said it, it would be so, that was the plan, as I understood it.

Which is to say, no plan at all. But we'd never needed one before, had we? No.

But this was different, I'd nearly died in the opening salvo, my chest and head still hurt from it. Granted, the head was more from impact with the ground but the fact remained that it could have killed me.

I pushed the sheet off of me and twisted out of bed and onto my feet. Naked, but nothing Rei hadn't seen before. I needed... something. Didn't know what, but laying in bed wasn't it. Not with a head full of thoughts and altered perceptions and too many questions with not enough answers.

Most of the questions were variations on 'how' and 'why'.

Another plugsuit was waiting for me on the bed side table. I'd be doing it again, there didn't seem to be a question to that. After last time, what was a little crash and burn?

By the time I'd finished thinking about it, I was already halfway into it. It was easier, most times, to go along with what people expected of you. I'd lost the battle to stay away the moment I picked up the phone.

When it came down to it, it was easy enough to just keep going along because no one thing would ever be a bridge too far if taken by itself. It was easy to convince myself it wasn't so bad.

But that had been true my whole life.

I twisted the release on my wrist and the plugsuit suctioned down to my skin all at once, aggressively enough that I jumped at the sensation. Out of the corner of my eye I thought I might have caught just the barest hint of mirth from Rei.

She'd been doing this for years longer than I had. If that entertained her I couldn't do anything about it.

Except entertain her, apparently.

"How long was I down?" I finally thought to ask. My throat felt a little less terrible than it had only a few minutes before. I must have either gotten used to it or I healed fast.

"Almost thirteen hours. Unit One has already been repaired, it has only been waiting for you." She explained, all traces of amusement gone from her tone and her face.

"That means it's the middle of the night. I guess that's a fitting time to kill nightmare demons. Lead the way."

***​

"It's not a stupid plan, but if we're using a battleship gun, why aren't we just using a battleship?" I felt that the question was a fair one. I'd made it all the way back into the entry plug and had powered the Eva back up by the time anyone had told me the plan.

"Because at the speeds we'd need to fire it to make a kill shot the projectile would burn up before it hit the target." Misato answered me. I wanted to say that she was wrong but I didn't know enough about... well, anything to prove it.

"Well... okay. I just put the target in the center, let the computer do the target locking and then pull the trigger, right?" The gun felt heavy. The barrel was easily as long as Eva was tall. I could hold it, aim it, and fire it, but it was pretty clear from the fact that I was holding it like a spear that it was never meant to be a handheld weapon.

My own high tech fire lance.

"Basically that. Rei will provide cover with a shield made out of battleship armor. You're going to have a charge time as the rails charge from your on-board fusion plant. Make every shot count; we don't know how many chances you're going to get."

I nodded at the video window while I worked the controls with my left hand. Short bursts from the verniers just to familiarize myself with the feel of it. If I'd done better before I might not have gotten shot. If I hadn't pulled the mains to full in a panic I might have avoided slamming my head into the ground.

But I had that big blue diamond hanging in the sky in front of me to remind me of the price of failure, I wouldn't fail a second time. I had the blue and white armor of Rei's Unit Zero to remind me that I wasn't alone.

I toggled the charge circuit online and watched the meter climb as the railgun charged up. I'd be ready to shoot as soon as it was time, but I didn't want to add any extra delays. We were about as far as we could get while still maintaining a line of sight, but even being on top of this mountain still felt uncomfortably close.

As far as we'd been able to tell, there wasn't actually a range limit on the weapon it fired, the only limit was that it could only fire one beam at a time.

"Begin operation, fire when ready."

She had stayed on site, on the mountain with us. Directing from a command truck while the support crews made sure everything was ready to go, but then when it was done she had stayed. 'No time to get back to headquarters anyway'

Maybe she didn't think it was safe there since it was down range of this big cannon. I couldn't promise it was safer on the mountain top.

I toggled the targeting computer online and felt the implant buzz in my head, then a targeting overlay superimposed over my vision. Made me wonder why we bothered with displays at all if they could just pipe it into my brain.

"High energy reaction detected inside the target!"

Rei braced the shield into the concrete and shouldered into it preemptively. I lined up the targeting circles but it was taking too long. Little up, little left, little bit back to the right. The flash from the Angel coincided with the green ready-to-fire indicator and I clicked the bang switch.

The railgun bucked against my hip and the shell left the gun at a little over eighty-five hundred meters per second. The distance between muzzle and Angel was crossed faster than I could perceive it. The impact was hidden by the flash of light.

And the ground disappearing from under me in fire and thunder.

The vernier and main thrusters fired at my command and the tumble was corrected in time for my feet to touch the ground. The recharge cycle started, thirty seconds to go. Unit Zero was on its back, the shield was a good hundred meters behind it, edge down in what was left of the concrete platform. She was getting up, but slowly.

She'd taken the brunt of it, she was probably hurt.

The comm window flashed to my left and I saw Misato, sideways. The truck had tipped over in the blast but she was okay. "The Angel is still alive, you didn't hit the core."

"Already re-charging. Are you okay? How's Rei?"

"We're alive-- Natsu it's getting ready to fire again!"

"I've got twenty seconds left on the cycle, what's plan B?!" I yelled over my own mounting panic. Zero still wasn't back on its feet.

The world snapped into grayscale but nothing else changed. I felt a nausea in my brain. The implants had chosen a hell of a time to act up. I couldn't hear, just feel. Just feel. Just feel. Feelings, something reaching from within the Eva? Open myself up to it, that's what it wanted.

Color, sound came back to me. "I've got nothing, improvise!"

I felt loose, limber, liquid. All the tension had melted out and there was only me. Only my flesh and bones and the armor of the Evangelion. "Alright, Alright..." My eyes darted across the battlefield. Improvise? Okay.

"Guess it's time to ride the lightning." I muttered more for myself than for her.

I rolled the throttle for the main thrusters and leaned into it, straight for the shield. The rocket-assisted lunge was more like a leap, but I didn't let up after catching the shield with my left arm. One, two, three steps at ever increasing speed and I was past Unit Zero.

The flash of light that heralded the Angel's attack filtered past the shield and I braced for the impact. One, two. The sensation of heat was instantaneous, but it was one I'd felt before. This wasn't as bad as the first time had been, I could handle it.

Fifteen seconds to firing. I rolled the throttle to maximum and pushed up, pivoting around the end of the beam as it tracked me through the air. Eva couldn't fly, but with the Angel's energy beam imparting enough of its own force, the power of the thrusters was enough to make up the difference and carry me into the sky.

Touji would have been proud, and I would have loved to have been able to tell him I'd planned it out that way.

The balance wasn't entirely perfect; I was closing distance on the Angel as I 'fell' into the beam. Speed across the ground kept rising the more the beam pushed up from below instead of against from ahead. Ten seconds left.

She shield was failing, wouldn't hold for the next ten seconds. The side facing me was glowing, it would have a blow-through in seconds. Five seconds to firing, the shield fell apart and I clenched my eyes shut against the white hot heat that struck me in the chest.

And then it was gone.

I opened my eyes to the sight of the city below, the Angel in the center of it all. Did it have a limitation in the vertical firing arc? There was no time to speculate. Targeting computer on, target in the center. Calibrate, calibrate, calibrate. Two seconds to charged, one, zero.

Fall compensated targeting solution accepted, ready-to-fire showing green.

I squeezed the trigger and another shell left the barrel of the gun at a little over twenty five times the speed of sound. The AT field flashed for a split second before shattering. A hole appeared on the side facing me and a cloud of dust, smoke, and debris puffed out from under it as the shell passed through and buried itself in the ground.

The scream that it let out made my nose bleed and my eyes water but the witch-craft that held it aloft disappeared in that instant and it toppled to the ground and bled. It was dead. Whatever it was trying to do with that drill, it wasn't going to get the chance to finish the job.

I rolled the throttle down to zero when my feet finally touched back down to the ground. I felt tired in a way that I couldn't remember having ever felt before. Just wanted to sleep forever, and then a little more after that for good measure.

"That was definitely improvising. The target is silent. Operation is complete. Rei is okay, we're recovering her now. Proceed to the cages via block seventeen recovery route. I'll see you when I get back."

"Roger that. I'm gonna go fall asleep in the shower. Natsu out."

 

[Pineapple]

Chapter 13:

Weiße Hexe des Roten Planeten​

Sweat down my back and bruises on my ribs wasn't my idea of a good time but it was the job, or at least part of it. Training, both physical and of skills, was meant to make me better at my job; Piloting Evangelion, but more than that, using it to fight and kill.

If I was meant to kill, I had to know how to fight in Eva, but to do that I had to know how to fight outside of Eva, and for that I had Touji. When we were done I could pay him back, as long as our professional relationship didn't have a negative impact on our personal relationship.

I threw an aggressive and wild left hook that I should have known better than to even attempt, but by the time my brain caught up with my swing it was too late but to commit to it. He ducked low and to his left and I stumbled on my follow through and lost my balance.

He ducked under and what I assumed to be a fist was actually an open hand as he caught me by the stomach and pulled me up and over with his off-hand. My feet left the mat and my ass ended up higher than my head for the moment before he finished his move and had me laying across his shoulder.

There were worse places to be.

With my hips on his shoulder I had the perfect positioning to thrust my palm into the back of his knee to throw him off balance. As the blow landed his grip on me weakened and I kicked myself free and into a heap on the mat.

It was only in my immediate hindsight that I considered the possibility that such a move could have broken my neck and killed me, but as I was successful it was a thought that quickly left me. Dwelling too much on that kind of thought wasn't conducive to being the fighter I was supposed to be.

Charging headfirst into battle without a plan any more complex then a battle cry and a devil may care attitude would only get me so far, and the destination at the end of that path was a gravestone and a plaque that read 'at least she tried', at least assuming I killed myself in a way that left survivors.

If I was meant to save people who wouldn't give half as much of a damn about my own well being if they knew half of what my father did about me. But if I was to be generous with my estimations then at least half of them would still give a damn.

The world was far from perfect and the people who lived in it were even less so but it was the only one they had and it was the one I had to live in for better or worse, so it was worth it to strive for better. There were people who deserved it and would get the feeling of smug satisfaction that the ones who didn't deserve to be saved would owe their lives to someone they'd rather see strung up.

But it all came back to the same place in the end; I had to be better. I had to take it more seriously. I had to win every single time without fail and I had to come back alive every single time without fail.

Still, much as Rei could not do it alone, neither could I. She would not have survived the last fight without me, but I wouldn't have survived it without her. If I was going to be her partner in this war I had to be better than lucky, I had to be good.

Touji reached down and pulled me up to my feet by my right hand, then pulled me up against him. A stolen kiss here or there, if Nerv hadn't already known what we were up to in our free time, they certainly had an idea. If they knew they didn't care. If they didn't know, I didn't care. They weren't going to stop me.

"Not bad, space girl." he congratulated in a much softer tone than he'd have used with his guy friends. A tone reserved for a girlfriend, or at least someone who's lips his own had just touched.

"Is that what you're going to call me now?" I asked him with a smirk and another quick peck on the lips. Other physical activities entirely unrelated to combat training came to mind, but I pushed those back down. There would be time and time again for that, but later.

It had been half a month at least. I was getting stronger but I still needed the mechanical assistance most days, if only to keep from wearing myself out. I still felt like 'space girl' more than I felt like 'earth girl' and if he liked it, well...

He pulled me into a kiss and after a few all too short moments he released me again. "I think it has a nice ring to it."

I let myself fall into just that one moment, the one right after the kiss, right after his words, right before--

Right before the alternating shrill and baritone notes of the alarms would have the sense of timing necessary to ruin the moment and perhaps even the memory of it. "That doesn't have a nice ring to it at all."

***​

The acceleration to the surface had become old-hat in a way that anything related to an eighty meter war machine never should be, but so it was. Air temperature slightly above normal at a balmy thirty-nine point eight. Humidity at eighty-five and atmospheric pressure at the textbook average of one-oh-one point three-two-five kilopascals.

Wind came in from the north at a glacial pace of two kilometers per hour. The sun still sat high on the horizon and we had plenty of daylight left in the valley that our city sat within. Rays of light, at least the ones that made it through the scattered clouds, reflected off towers of glass and steel and concrete and heated the air and I was glad for the temperature controlled LCL that I sat in.

It would have been a good day to go to a beach, or so I had read. I'd never been to a beach, at least as far as I remembered. It didn't seem like something my father would have wanted to do and it wasn't something my mother would have had time for.

I'd never seen a whale in person, for that matter. Most people hadn't, after what second impact had done to the planet. Still, the thing falling through the sky above me did bear a passing resemblance to what a whale might have looked like.

If a whale had no eyes, teeth long enough to be arms, and skin of the finest shade of beige.

The rifle in my hands was of a large enough caliber that it could be used to punch a hole through a battleship lengthwise, according to Aoba, and it felt wholly inadequate for the task at hand, given the monstrous space-whale the size of a high-rise office building that I was being faced with.

"Misato..."

"Try shooting it. I don't have anything else for you right now. Use your judgment. We're going to hold Rei back until we can get Unit Zero equipped with some heavier weapons."

A harpoon felt like a better choice, still, I shouldered the rifle and Unit One moved out into the open. "Call me Ishmael."

"You didn't really seem like the reading type." Misato commented with a frown visible even through the fuzzy video link.

"I have hidden depths." I deadpanned as I squeezed the trigger on the rifle and peppered out half a dozen bright red lances of tracer fire into the moist and leathery hide of the Angel, because there was nothing else it could be but an Angel.

Each impact pockmarked the surface of the skin and no AT field stopped it, but given the lack of meaningful damage it didn't seem that it needed to use one in the first place.

Or maybe it was taunting me.

The mouth opened and in the back of it, the blood red gem that was the Angel's core, and it's weakspot. Nothing to be done if my bullets couldn't hurt it, and if they could I was sure it would flash an AT field as they always did.

Of course, I was too far away to do anything about it as I was in a machine that rode on two legs and, while I did have thrusters, I still wasn't a flying space whale. I could jump and use the thrusters to boost me, probably close enough to touch it, but with teeth like that I didn't feel like getting eaten alive.

Eaten dead was also off the table, but the Angel didn't seem terribly interested in actually doing anything. It had more or less ignored my gunfire entirely and seemed content to 'swim' through the air.

My sensor display snapped up on the right side of my field of view along with a shrill tone that told me that the passive receivers had picked up a radar signal and it was nuclear hot. Someone or sometthing up there with the Space-Whale-Angel had their eyes peeled in a big way.

Above and behind the whale, the clouds burst apart as the prow of a ship, rust red and covered in plasma fire, tore through them. I would have recognized the class of ship anywhere; a Martian battle-cruiser.

They weren't meant to fly this low, or in Earth's atmosphere at all. Whoever was in command was probably an absolute lunatic, but then I'd ridden a gunship to the ground chasing an Angel too so there was at least precedent for it.

If I was Ishmael, and the space-whale was Moby-Dick, that'd make this Martian ship Pequod if I was going to continue the metaphor.

Railgun batteries opened up in ways nobody'd probably ever seen before. Full powered shots lit the sky on fire as the tungsten rods ignited the air around them, having left the barrels of the weapons far in excess of escape velocity.

They were tearing themselves apart to do it; none of those weapons were ever meant to be fired in an atmosphere of any kind. That was part of the reason we'd had to do what we'd done to kill the last Angel we'd fought instead of using a ship in orbit.

But with the ship this low, there was no backstop, so there was no risk to the city. At least, not one so great that the Martians weren't willing to do what they were doing anyway.

Streak after red-hot steak peppered the beige hide of the monster and blood trailed behind it, but no hit seemed to keep it wounded for long enough for it to matter, though not for lack of trying. The light being given off caused my viewer to dim to protect my eyes and the thermal output completely blinded my infra-red sensors.

"Well, I didn't see that coming."

She was not the only one. All I could do was reload the rifle and continue standing in place like an idiot because while the Martians didn't seem to have the kill locked down there was still almost nothing I could do until the whale got down to where I could punch it.

The ship pitched nose-up in what almost looked like an uncontrolled maneuvering failure. I half expected the ship to break in half or burn up until the lower hold doors burst outward and the main engines throttled back up.

From the hold leaped a white armored giant holding a spear. Four green eyes set into the head, two shoulder pylons just like mine and lit thrusters on its back. Evangelion? If Earth had two of them it made sense that Mars would have at least one.

The Evangelion in the sky launched itself onto the whale's back as the battlecruiser clawed its way back towards space. The white used the spear like a climbing axe, each thrust into the beige flesh helped it climb further and further along the spine, towards the head and the core of the Angel.

If that ship was Pequod, that would make this Ahab.

And it looked like he had his Beige Whale. The two of them were locked together by the spear and they were losing altitude together. In another minute they'd be on the ground and I could finally do something useful in the fight.

The white Evangelion leaped from the back of the Angel and drew distance away, connected to its pray only by a tether linking it to the shaft of the spear. Whoever the pilot was knew more about flying than I did, because the bursts from the jets controlling the attitude of the Evangelion were either random or incredibly well thought out and the results made me think it was the latter.

And whoever it was, they were doing nothing by half measures.

A bright flare from the main drive signaled the Eva descending back towards the whale. A burst of the control jets spun the giant around until it was falling feet first, and then the bottom of the right foot slammed into the end of the spear shaft and both the shaft and the foot drove downwards into the monster's flesh.

An instant later, the whale burst like a water balloon and blood rained from the sky around the no longer white Evangelion.

"Hey, Misato?" I finally asked as the other unit retro-fired to slow down before landing.

"I know. Nobody told us Mars Fleet was getting involved. Stand by, but don't take any hostile action, that's still our Evangelion. It's just not supposed to be here."

I nodded at her. I never really felt like picking fights anyway. Violence was more something to be reserved for when it was needed, right?

I looked over at the white Evangelion to see that it was looking at me, when a point to point laser transmission connected and a call window opened up.

A girl around my own age was smirking at me. Blue eyes, white hair with a single red streak. I couldn't tell which color came out of a bottle, if either. Her plugsuit was the same color as her Evangelion and she had the look of someone who knew something I didn't.

"If you can't make an entrance with style you shouldn't make one at all. Don't you agree?"

 

[Pineapple]

Spoiler

Chapter 14:

Let your first not be your last.​

Style. An entrance with style she'd called it, she wasn't wrong. The thermals were still peaked out and I was blind in that regard, but everything else was still pinging. Sonar, radar, optical sensors all kept hitting the Evangelion in front of me. Two kilometers out, she'd came crashing down in a torrent of blood on the outside of the city, out in the forest surrounding the eastern edge.

If she'd planned it that way to avoid collateral damage she was great. If she was only lucky then that was fine too.

Well, two kilometers wasn't too far. I started walking without being told, if for no other reason than she'd need to be told where and how to get into the base.

I would've been lying if I'd said that there weren't other reasons. I was curious, I wanted to see who this new player was, see this new machine. I wanted to be close and I wanted to be prepared and I wanted to be sure. Things too good to be true usually were.

A new pilot and a new Evangelion dropping from the sky like an avenging angel at the time when we needed them most gave me the unshakable feeling that we were really only waiting for the other shoe to drop.

But the Evangelion was all I could see, the red mist spray and smoke and steam mixed into a macabre soup in the air and it was obscuring everything near the ground and everything behind the other unit.

Two kilometers passed quickly when you were nearly a tenth of a kilometer tall on your own and moved like you weren't the size of a small cruiser. A few long strides, no more than a dozen or two, that was all it took when your head was eighty meters above the ground.

But it still felt off. Like standing in the darkness on a rooftop on a windless night while the moon cast just enough light to see but not quite enough to feel confident in what it was you saw. Nothing but you and the stars and the feeling in the back of your mind that you're not quite alone. The little perturbations in the calmness of the warm air that might be just a wisp of breath or the sounds that you couldn't quite make out among the almost unnatural silence.

Isolated in the way that being encased in a giant war machine might make you feel, but without quite feeling alone.

Because it was too easy and she was too confident. Because I couldn't accept that it had been that clean, not when it hadn't been that way before. No gimmick and no trick, just a one hitter quitter off the deck of a battle-cruiser.

That hadn't been the hard part; the battle-cruiser had done nothing. It had chased and fired but that wasn't really useful in the end and it never really had a chance to be. It was a distraction to deploy the Evangelion.

And she'd stabbed it in the head, right where the core was supposed to be--

There was always a trick, always some special technique or something to throw us off. It was never as simple as just shooting it, stabbing it. Why would now be any different? I could prove it, and if I was wrong it would mean nothing, but if I was right?

I closed my eyes and reached out to the Evangelion. I let my implants immerse me into-- yes, that was it, right there. "AT field to maximum."

"Natsu I said do not attack!" Misato screamed in my ears, but she didn't know and I wasn't listening.

In my mind I was building something that looked like an onion, layers upon layers in a sphere around me, pushing outward. Hands out to the sides, I had to focus in on what I needed it to do. One by one, each layer peeling away from the one under it, pushing outward, pushing on the air--

A hand clamped down on my shoulder and my concentration shattered, the AT field collapsed and evaporated out into nothing. I snapped my head to the left, the white unit had my left shoulder gripped tightly in its left hand, my wrist in its right. She'd made the same assumption that Misato had made.

And she looked like she was getting ready to flip me onto my back. "I don't know what your problem is but you need to shut it down!"

I hadn't been entirely unsuccessful in clearing the fog. The blood spatter on the ground was much more visible, as were the pockmarks from debris impacts after the 'killing' blow that the white unit had landed on the Angel.

And it cleared enough that the motion sensors started tracking again.

I looked over to the view screen that showed the transmission from the other Eva pilot. She was on the aggressive side of upset and her teeth were showing in a snarl that was, if not predatory, at least carnivorous.

I shook my head at her, "You've got the wrong idea--"

The motion sensor shrilled at me and I jerked my head to the right as the tone got louder, as teeth burst through the fog. Teeth and a tongue in an impossibly big mouth. The creature kicked off the ground and was in the air almost faster than I could think.

Time slowed and the world shifted into greyscale. I knew where it was headed and I knew I had to act. My right hand was clenched into a fist and in motion. The timing would have to be perfect, but it would be because my math was never wrong.

My fist connected with lower jaw of a creature that looked like it may as well be all mouth and the wet crunch and pained hissing the answered was proof I hadn't been wrong. The grip on my left arm released and I pulled it back, and then continued through an aggressive backhand that sent another of whatever the creatures were flying.

The first one I'd hit recovered and got back to it's feet. It looked like a rat the size and color of a killer whale with a full half of it's body length taken up by an eyeless torpedo shaped head with red lips and a lot of teeth.

Thermal sensors told me there were at least ninety of whatever it was, and they were circling us. I didn't know if rats were pack hunters or not, but that didn't seem right. It looked like these ones would be though.

Everything was still in greyscale, but I felt more in control than the other times. It was also lasting longer.

Both of my shoulder pylons opened up and I drew out the knife and the pistol and held both of them at the ready in front of me. Ammo would be a concern before they were all gone even if I was a perfect shot.

I looked over at the link to the other pilot and she looked every bit as perturbed as I felt by the situation. "Any plans, Ahab?"

She looked over at the window as if she'd forgotten it was there, and then shrugged. Out of my viewer I saw her pull her right shoulder pylon off of her Evangelion and push and pull on it until it was reconfigured into something that looked passably like a gun.

The gun-looking-thing was definitely actually a gun, as a moment later a flash at the muzzle erupted and a black streak moving almost too fast for sensors to track speared through one of the creatures and split it in half.

"Well, that's something." I muttered under my breath as I took a shot at the one I'd punched. The bullet impacted the rubbery-looking flesh and blasted out the other side, and took a bunch of blood with it.

"Whatever they are, I don't think they're quite angels. There's no AT field reading and bullets seem to kill them." The other girl finally said.

"Do you have enough shots for all eighty eight of them?"

"I do not."

"Well, next time bring enough for the whole class or leave it at home!" I yelled as one of the rats charged me.

I spun the knife around into a reverse grip and raised my arm into a forearm block. The rubber flesh on the side of the head bounced off my armor and the knife blade dug into the corner of its lip, and momentum did the rest.

Hot entrails poured out and steamed against my armor and the ground as what was left of the monster lay twitching in its own blood. They did die, and they did so quite readily. But so would we with eighty seven more of the things.

I patched Ahab into the comm channel I had open with Misato at headquarters and turned to Misato's window. "We could use some help, or we're going to die and I don't wanna do that today!" I yelled at the link as I started firing my pistol at another charging rat.

I didn't feel right in the head; I was greyscale for too long. It felt like a sort of slowly spreading derangement, a shifting away from what was real or at least what real felt like. Being in the fight wasn't helping matters in that regard either.

I let myself get distracted and almost missed the rat attacking from my right flank, and my evasion was clumsy and incomplete. I survived, my gun did not. The whole thing was eaten by the rat, but it was better than losing the hand.

One knife, zero guns. Time to change that number up a little. "Ahab, give me your knife!"

"What? No, get your own!" She yelled back.

I really wished I hadn't dropped my rifle back in the city.

My right fist connected with teeth as they started coming on in pairs of two. They were either learning or escalating in some per-programmed way, but it was a little unnerving how they started getting braver after I lost my gun.

"Ahab give me the knife! I am not going to die to giant rats because you didn't want to give me your knife!"

"Natsu, hold on! We're sending Rei!" Misato yelled from her window. Took her a minute to get up to speed?

But then, we'd only been going for about twenty seconds and I was finding it really hard to pay attention to other people unless I tried really hard.

"Hey there Misato! It's been a while! My gun just ran dry. I don't think we're gonna last long enough for your spare to get here." Ahab answered in my stead.

"Well it's not like they've got ranged attacks. I'm gonna be real mad if I die because I didn't have a gun while fighting the only thing that's ever actually been vulnerable to them." I complained as another rat started chewing on my leg before I could stab it through the brain.

There was too much vegetation and smoke to see them far beyond the edge of the scorched-bare earth that the white eva had left when it landed.

"Actually... I have a bad idea. Or a good one. I'll let you know which after we don't die. Ahab, put me in a headlock and stand by on your fusion drive so I don't push you backwards." I explained as I started bringing up my reactor output. I'd used it before, but she gave me the idea.

"Is this really the time?" Misato asked, surprising me because what I was about to try was definitely something she'd think of.

I shook my head and grabbed onto the throttle control. "I read books! The Kzinti Lesson!" I yelled as if that explained everything.

"What--"

"A fusion drive is a gun. Let's do it." Ahab answered as her left arm wrapped around my neck.

I put my arms around the white unit's waist and throttled up as far as I dared without knocking the other unit down. The pressure against my shoulder was incredible, but it would hold. I hoped.

The exhaust flare blinded thermals, but I could tell by the almost gleeful look on Ahab's face as she spun me in place that she was doing a well-enough job of burning the rats to death as they approached us.

"Maybe I need to start reading books..." Misato muttered under her breath before clearing her throat and speaking up. "Rei will be there in thirty five seconds and it looks like you'll be able to hold out that long."

If we could keep it up, but I was starting to have my doubts. Typically I'd be moving if I was producing this much thrust, which would prevent heat soak of the surrounding environment. As it was it was starting to get warm.

And that would solve the problem of the rats being close to us, but it would also solve the problem of us being close to us, because we'd cook alive. Pyrrhic victories weren't really my idea of a good time.

"Martian fast-mover in fifteen seconds. Between them and another Evangelion I think we'll be okay!" Ahab yelled from her comm window. I could tell by the look on her face that despite all the fun she was having she was feeling the heat just like I was.

I felt my vision starting to tunnel in and I rolled the throttle back to idle, shutting down the fusion drive. If I didn't cut it before I passed out there wouldn't be anyone to cut it before we cooked alive. As it was I could hardly keep my eyes open.

The arm around my neck released and I pulled myself back up onto my feet. We'd probably taken out half of the rats between the fusion drive trick and everything we'd done before, but that left us with an empty bag of tricks and a crowd that still needed to be entertained.

Radar pinged an approaching object and I risked a glance to the sky; the clouds parted around the bow of a much, much smaller ship. Twice the length of the Tengu and easily another half as wide. I didn't think it was made for atmospheric flight, but they didn't seem to care.

"Asuka Soryu to M.R.N Nikola Tesla, passing you my targeting data now." So that was Ahab's name.

"Ahab you've got some really interesting friends if they're willing to drop two starships into the atmosphere for you." I commented as the point defense guns on the Nikola Tesla hemorrhaged tracer fire into the surviving rat creatures.

"Really just the one, but she's fantastic. Don't let yourself get distracted, it's not over yet."

I looked down to my left hand and realized that at some point I'd lost my knife, so I took up a boxer stance and stood back to back with Ahab's unit. Thermal was still blinded, motion was picking up at least fifteen, which was better than forty.

Three were charging towards me, mouths open. I couldn't tell what was happening on Ahab's side of things but I didn't imagine it was much better. One or two would be fine, three might be a problem.

The first leapt into the air and a bullet tore through its brain case, followed by two more that shifted its direction enough that it missed me completely. Two more bursts of fire took out the remaining pair before they even left the ground and they ended up with mouths full of dirt, dead mid-sprint.

I looked over to my right, the direction the fire had come from to see Unit Zero retro-burning down into our position. Her landing was rougher than the white unit's had been, but Rei's was a combat landing and so I expected it, even if it made my teeth rattle.

Wordlessly the blue unit handed me the rifle in its left hand and I took it up and shouldered it. Somehow, despite that my vision was in greyscale, I knew what colors I was looking at, even if I couldn't see them. Was it psychological or something else?

I switched my targeting computer over to the motion tracker and snapped my head and the rifle over to a pack of four that was stalking on my left flank, then fired a fully automatic burst into them. That had to take us down to about seven or eight left.

The motion tracker said... one? "Is this right? There's only one?"

"I killed seven by myself, so yeah, one left."

Radar returned off the one that was left, which hadn't happened with the others. When it stepped out of the fog I understood why.

It looked the same as the rats, but it was much, much bigger. Big enough to eat an Evangelion if it wanted to, it looked like it was the size of the head of the whale angel that Ahab had 'killed'.

"Give me your gun." Ahab's voice was not a request, it was a command.

I handed her the rifle without question. If she wanted to make up for not getting a real kill earlier, I was willing to let her have that redemption. It didn't matter to me as long as they all died, so if it mattered to her I'd let her.

The big rat charged her and she stood her ground, maybe a hundred yards in front of me. The rifle was at her shoulder. The rat's mouth was open. There was a core in the back of its mouth. The rifle fired.

Bullets lanced through the center of what had to be the angel controlling it all, and blood sprayed out of the back. Ahab didn't stop firing until the rifle was empty and as the rifle stopped the angel fell into a rolling heap that slowly dissolved into blood.

My motion sensor showed all clear and I looked around me to confirm it. There were dozens of corpses, but none moving. The fog was even starting to clear up, so I had to wonder if the angel was causing it.

"We're not seeing anything else from here. The two of you should come back in. Rei can stand watch for a while just make sure." Misato ordered. Well, asked, but I knew it wasn't optional.

"Roger that. Uh, I need to have my implant looked at when I get back in. I'm still seeing in greyscale."

The response was immediate, almost frantic, but closer to 'concerned.' "This is Akagi. I'll meet you in the cage."

 

[Pineapple]

Spoiler

Chapter 15:

Hold on to me​

I'd always known that there was more to life than fighting, the life I'd lived before the fighting proved that. I'd have a life after fighting too, assuming I lived that long and of course I had every intention of doing so.

Unfortunately in the time in between before and after I found that the parts of life that weren't fighting all too often relegated themselves to being times that tested me, far more literally than I ever wanted. Synchronization tests, physical tests, and now, for one night only, to round out the trifecta: medical tests.

She didn't have to shave my head, and for that I could find it in myself to grant her thanks for that. If it had come down to that I'd have expressed that monochrome could still be a valid alternative and maybe we didn't need to figure this problem out anyway.

We'd won the fight, after going the long way about it, and even this disconnected sensation I'd developed wasn't wholly dissimilar from some of the sensations I'd experienced with Touji. I could live with that and maybe a few more if they decided they wanted to join the party.

An electric 'zot' sound and the smell of burnt hair derailed my train of thought before it had a chance to arrive safely back at the station and I blinked the wetness and sudden fatigue out of my eyes. Color had returned to me, not just the knowledge of it but the full technicolor experience.

"You fix me, doc?" I asked with a half-sloppy smirk that betrayed exactly how out of sorts I still felt. Akagi wasn't bad to look at either, she was no Maya by any stretch of the imagination but if you were into bottle blonde forty year olds she was the right kind of sexy.

"You're an Ikari and I'm not that kind of doctor, so no. Your implant was trying to tell you that data security protocols were compromised, but that damage is done."

"So..."

"So I turned them off. You don't feel like going on a killing spree do you? Probably not." She shrugged and threw her clipboard across the room onto a table. "You've had full read and write access to the command and control systems this whole time and you're still alive."

"So..." I said again and blinked a few long slow blinks. "What does that mean for me?"

She took a deep breath and let it out, and her face turned to one of understanding and some small measure of concern. "Fifty-fifty you're not gonna die of old age but at this point I'm not sure old age was something you had to look forward to anyway. There's some brain damage but nothing worse than a concussion."

I felt brain damaged but that'd been true before I'd agreed to pilot in the first place; I'd agreed to pilot in the first place. Brain damage was the only explanation for that other than a terminal case of the stupids. Well, half terminal anyway.

"Do I have to keep fighting?" I asked her as I pulled the electrode off the back of my head and sat up in the chair.

"You never had to keep fighting, it was always your decision," she answered me as she walked out of my field of view and towards her terminal. Likely entering her observations about the proceedure?

"Do I get to keep fighting?" I asked, changing my question with a sideways glance at her.

"I'm not going to stop you, if that's what you mean. Fighting might kill you but stopping now isn't going to save you so flip a coin if you're conflicted about it." She seemed dismissive at the end, but maybe that was the lit cigarette hanging off her lip that gave the impression.

"You got a spare?" I asked with a gesture of my hand.

She pulled the cigarette off her lip and seemed to consider it in front of her, rolled it around her fingers before passing it over to me and pulling another one out of her pocket in almost the same motion.

The smoke filled my lungs after a shallow drag and I leaned back again. Wasn't a big hobby of mine but it was something I'd indulged in before. Stress relief or sometimes just chasing the call of the void just a tiny bit at a time.

Menthol, but that didn't surprise me. Woman who took hair color no Japanese woman was ever born with from a bottle was the right kind of vain to smoke the cigarettes that smelled better, even if she wasn't vain enough to kick the habit completely.

The nicotine muted the edges of my derangement and the smoke chilled my lips on the exhale. One, two puffs. I wasn't hitting it like it was gonna take me to the top but enough that I knew it was there. It seemed to dial everything back half a notch and that was enough.

"So," I asked the seemingly nonchalant doctor. "Sleeping with my father?"

She blew out a long stream of smoke and rolled her head back up to look towards the ceiling. "Yeah. Sleeping with Touji Suzuhara?"

I took another drag and stared at the burning red hot cherry on the end of the paper stick, then blew the smoke across it and watched it burn just a little hotter. "Yeah."

The cherry popped off the end of the cigarette with a flick of my finger and it stopped burning at the same time. I could finish I later, or I might not. Still tasted like Akagi's lips and I was okay with that.

"You think he cares about me?" I finally asked her with what I hoped wasn't too desperate of an expression on my face.

"Suzuhara?"

I shook my head, "My father."

She looked at her cigarette and opted not to take another drag. "Well," She started, finally turning to lock eyes with me. "I think that he wants to, but I don't think he knows how to. I don't think he knows what caring about you, or anyone other than your mother, is supposed to look like. There were pieces missing from that man long before he met your mother and there are more pieces missing with her gone."

I found myself staring into the palm of my hand and wondering if that was an answer that would satisfy me or if it just made me want to know more. Make me want more. "Then why do you sleep with him?"

She smiled at me, at that. Not a smile of mirth but closer to one of resignation. She shrugged and then set the cigarette back on her bottom lip. "He's not the only one around here with pieces missing."

"Yeah... Yeah."

***​

Rei's blue dress was probably the only consistent thing in my life. At the very least it was in the top five: ahead of turmoil and just behind pain. I had no illusions that I'd ever give it back and I'm sure she'd realized the same.

I was leaned over the railing on a balcony over the lake, one of more than a dozen observation decks within a square kilometer I was sure. I wasn't trying to stay hidden but I had been trying to get lost. I might die, she'd said. Not today, not tomorrow, and not even next week.

Mortality, but only maybe. Lose myself before that if it was going to happen but I'd been lost before and not found myself until it was almost too late, and even then only after people had died around me.

And without that push, what the hell would I have become? The man I never wanted to be? Never, not really. Even when I could suck it up and play pretend I really didn't. Could've been better, could've been worse. Wasn't that always the case?

I had always treasured a pretty dress, either on me or someone else.

The way it had turned out for me, when it could have been so very different and I had to tell myself it was the right decision and then I had to wonder...

Wonder if my mother would have recognized me. Either for who I had become while I was away or for what I'd done since I'd been back. All the things I'd done since I'd come back.

I slipped the cigarette out from behind my ear and set it on my lip, sparked a match stick against the railing and lit it back up. I'd finish it as a distraction or for that the nicotine might grant me. Cool menthol smoke rolled off the end of my finger as the sun slowly set up above.

Orange light scattered through countless mirrors cast against the lake and turned what counted for sky in the geofront an arterial red. It was beautiful, like a certain girl's eyes. It was a reminder of how the rest of my day had gone, and how my future would follow.

It wasn't the life I'd dreamed of, that much was true. I never expected I'd be here or meet the people I'd met, form the connections I had. It hadn't been for long, we weren't the same as life long friends, but they were connections all the same.

All that Touji had been to me and the need I felt for him, would I have found someone or something else out in the stars instead?

The door behind me opened and I turned around with the burnt out filter of the cigarette hanging from my lip. "Rei."

Her hair was wet but her tank top was dry and her shorts left little of her legs to the imagination. There was no way she'd ever had a skin tan in her entire life. I'd written on paper that had a darker tone than her thighs, but for her it worked.

"Doctor Akagi did not say how your exam went, but I suspect it has not gone well." She said to me with a concerned look on her face. She let the door close behind her when she took the few steps to place herself next to me against the railing.

"Piloting might kill me but not piloting might kill me too. That's the short version." I muttered with less respect than she deserved. I felt bad immediately for taking my frustrations out on her.

"I'm sorry--"

I shook my head, "No, Rei, I'm sorry. It's not your fault it's just... It's just..." I grabbed my hair and slid down against the railing until I was sitting and staring down at the concrete.

"It's just what?"

"Rei, if I was... if I was exactly what my father had expected me to be when I answered his summons, do you think that you would recognize me? Do you think if my mother could see me now, she'd recognize what I've become?" My eyes hurt, nose was starting to run. Dammit, dammit, dam--

Her arm snaked around my shoulder and she pulled me against her. It wasn't like her but it was just like her, in a roundabout fashion. She felt... maternal.

"You would still be who you are, nothing can change that. Your soul and your heart beating in your chest remain the same, and would remain the same. Even if your body changed, anyone who didn't recognize you would only fail to do so by not looking."

I let out a short laugh and shook the tears off my cheeks, "Rei, are you telling me that you make a habit of looking at my soul?"

"Where else would I look?"

I had nothing to say to that. I hadn't expected her to say yes to it. I could accept it though. Sitting there in her embrace reminded me of feelings long forgotten. I knew I'd been here before, years ago--

My phone buzzed against my hip and I pulled it free from the elastic waistband under my dress. One text-only message from Misato: 'You should see this.'

I tapped the screen and the web browser opened up, it was a news article, published three minutes ago.

The headline was all I needed to see before I dropped the phone and went stiff:

'Who is Shinji Ikari?'​

 

[Pineapple]

Spoiler

Chapter 16:

The Hard Way​

"You could have told me! You had all this time and I had to find out from the internet?"

If I hadn't been wearing the mobility rig he'd given me, I don't think I'd have been able to stand up under it. The will to keep trying had left me fifteen minutes before and it was just inertia that carried me as far as I'd come.

He'd know, he'd learned, before I could warn him, before I could do any kind of damage control. I shouldn't have needed to, and I didn't think I'd even have to, but in the end there was no avoiding the eventuality. Pessimism may not be the way to live but it did have a certain accuracy to it.

It was his fault, in the end. The very thing that put us in the same bed is what put me out for the world to see my old shame. If he'd never come off that roof, if I'd never took him into the cockpit. That blasted camera.

"I didn't tell you because it didn't matter. It shouldn't... I shouldn't have to tear old wounds open just because--"

"Because what? Because I might want to know? Don't you think that I might have cared?" Touji fired back. His face was red, his arms shaking. He didn't know what to do with himself, but then I didn't either.

"So we could have had this fight earlier? There's no point in living in the past. I killed Shinji Ikari and buried him there. There was nothing to tell you because he doesn't exist." I felt my arm straining, I was clenching a fist and I hadn't really realized I'd been doing it until the pain set in.

Nerv cafeteria probably wasn't the best place to have this fight. Thankfully it was empty, or at least it had rapidly become that way.

He took a step towards me and then stopped. More than hate or disgust, fear was written on his face. Afraid of me? Afraid of what he'd already done, or maybe afraid of what he might do next?

"I... I can't do this. I need time to... to think. You know... I... I think I loved you? Goodbye, Natsu."

He turned to leave and I dropped to my knees. He would've said that. He would've said that. Those words I needed so desperately to hear and then... take them from me just like that. To have it only after it was already taken away. That was a worse fate than never having known it at all.

The burning behind my eyes gave way to hot tears running down my face to drip against my dress and the floor. I didn't have the strength to fight or even to stand. Hopelessness beat out righteous indignation and anger.

It was just like I was back then, weak and broken. Helpless and alone.

The door opened and I managed to work up enough energy to look up. Rei was standing in front of Touji with a look of confusion. My eyes met hers, and confusion turned to all of the fury I couldn't bring myself to feel. Her body tensed up for just a moment before she released a left hook into the side of his face.

It wasn't anything that I had wanted to see happen. The snapping crunch that echoed off the tiled floor made my stomach turn. Touji took a staggering step backwards and Rei took a step forwards, right up to his face. I could see her mouth moving, but I couldn't hear the words.

He stepped around her and out the door before I got a chance to see what had actually happened to him. Only the echo of his footsteps remained.

Rei stood in place, first turning her head to follow his departure, and then to look at me. Her rage turned to concern and she reached down to help me up to my feet. The shock of the incident had in at least a small way distracted me from my despair, enough to stand.

"What did you tell him?" I asked her, after finally finding my voice, even if it was shaky.

"I told him what he needed to hear," she answered in a tone of finality, there would be no elaboration on that point.

The dripping sound and the smell hit my senses at the same time and it was then I finally noticed that Rei's hand was covered in blood. "You didn't need to hurt him that badly."

She tilted her head ever so slightly and looked over at her left hand, then back to me. "This isn't his blood."

***​

"You're probably the last person I would have expected to come see me with an injury like this, but then today has been a day full of things I never expected I'd have to deal with."

I could hear her eyes rolling in every word that came out of Akagi's mouth. As far as the last two days had gone, she'd at the very least worked on my brain, and now the open fracture in Rei's hand. The latter, at least, could actually be fixed.

The crunch when she set the bone and got it back inside of Rei's hand wasn't nearly as disturbing as Rei's lack of reaction to it. That she'd become that accustomed to pain made my stomach turn. For this to be nothing to her?

I swallowed hard and took a deep breath to steady myself. If she could get through it, it would be shameful if I couldn't. The worst was over anyway, after the cracking sound Akagi had sealed up the wound itself with surgical adhesive and secured a vacuum cast around Rei's hand.

Her hand was locked in the shape of a half-fist and I imagined it would be for some time while her hand healed. The lack of conversation between Rei and Akagi regarding her injury told me that there was nothing Akagi could tell her that she hadn't already been told before.

She'd clearly been through some kind of hell, but then hadn't we all?

"If it makes you feel any better, he was furious about the... information leak." Akagi commented offhand while she wrapped Rei's wrist.

"Who?"

She paused and shrugged, "A lot of people actually. But in this case it was your father. I wouldn't read too much into it, but I thought you might want to know."

She would understand more than anyone else would. "That doesn't fix the last decade and a half."

"There's much you don't know."

I blinked at the sudden interjection, Rei'd said that. I hadn't expected it but then I supposed she knew my father far better than I did, and probably ever would. I swallowed the sudden lump in my throat and turned to her. "What don't I know?"

"What you were spared from." She answered simply, but with a hint of an edge to her voice and a look in her eyes that wasn't so far divorced from the look she'd given Touji, if a bit less severe. It still felt like a slap to the face.

My own lack of consideration for the feelings of others had been thrown directly into my face. It was all too easy to forget that the people around me had more experience than I had.

I blinked hard and swallowed the lump forming in my throat. "No you're right I'm... I'm gonna go outside. I'm gonna be outside if you need me. I'm sorry." I rambled. My feet were carrying me without a conscious thought, towards and then through the door.

The click-clack of my shoes on the hard tile and the gentle whirr of the mobility rig under my borrowed dress were my companions, along with the tears I was fighting back. The more steps I took, the faster I took them. Not quite to a full run; even with the mobility rig I wasn't quite up to that in full gravity, not right then.

But going fast wasn't really the point. Getting away at all was a goal all its own.

The impact caught me off guard but I turned away from it and kept myself standing, somehow. I caught a flash of red against white and my hands balled up. I didn't want to feel this way, didn't want to have to hold the pain inside or fight back the tears.

Asuka Langley Soryu, in all her smug glory. White, everything so damn white, in direct defiance of everything about where she came from, about space itself. There was such an arrogance to it, the idea that she should be so special that she could waste so much for the pure sake of vanity?

She had it all taken care of for her, didn't she? Full support of Mars Fleet, her own custom painted Evangelion. All the privilege dripped off her smug countenance and I...

And I...

Well I was a discard wasn't I? Is this what I'd been spared from? Luxury? I was nothing they'd wanted till they needed me and I was cast aside by the one person who might possibly--

I was a discarded son who came home a daughter that nobody wanted once they'd realized. I was refuse, garbage, trash.

If that was what they thought of me, if that was what he thought of me... if that's what everyone expected me to be... I'd give all those feelings to someone else. Let all my selfishness well up, embrace it, and throw hands.

It was sloppy, but better than I had been before. A jab with my right fist right into her jaw, quicker than she could react. The thick wet crunch the answered could have come from her face or from my hand, but if it was the former it still hurt like the latter.

The surprise on her face mirrored the surprise on mine; I'd never expected to connect. More than that, I'd never expected it to take her off balance. Blood sprayed off her lower lip before she caught her footing and surprised turned to anger.

I brought my forearms together to block her counter attack and was only partly successful. The punch that came back my way felt like it was going to break my arms and the snap kick into my ribs took me completely without warning.

My shoulder and head cracked against the metal wall and I saw stars. I staggered a few steps back and tried to blink my vision clear, but there was never really any chance by then. She was on me and her right arm was around my neck. Her left arm was under the back of my dress--

With a click and the sensation of the full force of gravity I knew she'd disabled my mobility rig. I could stand without it, though. I snapped my head back into her nose and she let me go with a grunt. I threw my elbow backwards and caught her under the ribs, if her cough was anything to go by.

I turned around, more clumsy than before because my legs felt like rubber but I could still hold myself up. Hands up at the ready, I threw a clumsy left that she blocked with her right, then punched me in the stomach with her left.

She took a step back from me, there was blood rolling down her face and I knew I looked worse. I could feel my head throbbing and I could feel the blood running down my temple and my eyes couldn't quite stay focused.

My vision slowly shifted to greyscale and my stance lowered, fists at my sides and ready to deliver a beatdown. I needed more. It was like being in combat but I wasn't trying to deal damage. I lunged as hard as my legs could carry me--

Her shoe caught me in the side of the head mid-lunge and I collapsed straight down into a pile I front of her. My shoulder hit first and by the time I came to a stop the room was spinning around me and I was staring up into her eyes.

Her eyes were beautiful, now that I'd had a proper chance to look at them. At least, from what I could see. It was getting harder and harder to keep my own eyes focused on her. It seemed like all the anger was gone, somehow. Replaced by... by pity.

I didn't want her pity. I snarled and snapped my hand out to grab her ankle, pull her down so she could wallow in this with me. The wet thump of her foot colliding with my wrist ended my attempt and she shook her head at me.

"You're so fucked up."

***​

I opened my eyes to the same hallway I'd closed them in. I should have been more surprised that nobody found me and took me to medical. My head was throbbing but the blood had dried. My eyes were working again, for the most part anyway.

The mobility rig was still locked up so I rolled onto my side and pulled it off the small of my back. Touji might know how to fix it, but I didn't. Figures that Asuka would know how to trash it, the way she handed my ass to me showed she had training.

I could have laid on the floor for another hour and it still wouldn't have made it any easier, so I started the arduous task of climbing the wall to get back onto my feet. I'd gotten stronger in my time on Earth and that would have helped a lot more if I hadn't also been suffering from a head wound.

"Well, aren't you just the spitting image of your mother. Seem to have her temper too."

The voice came from behind me a moment before a pair of small but strong hands lifted me the rest of the way to my feet. I hadn't even heard footsteps, but by the time I'd turned half way around the owner of the hands and the voice had stepped around me to enter my field of view.

A grown woman, though I couldn't possibly put an age to her. Brunette hair in twin-tails draped over her shoulders, thin rimmed red glasses and blue-green eyes that pierced right to the heart of me. She was, in a word, beautiful.

Given longer than that moment to look, I realized she wore the white-trimmed blood red uniform of a Mars Fleet officer. "Nothing to say then?" She asked me with a half smirk.

I blinked, hard. "Sorry I'm... I'm sorry. Who... are you?" I asked, leaving unsaid the question about how she knew my mother.

She gave a mock-formal bow and, once straightened, extended her hand to me. "Admiral of the Fleet, Mari Makinami, at your service. It's been a very long time, Miss Natsu Ikari."

 

[Strypgia]

that's the end of it The OP said stop. And this argument is way to heated. On consultation with the author, no infractions will be dispensed, but she's unhappy and everyone needs to chill. So that's the end of it. Period. Next post that starts this argument back up gets a long threadban and points.

 

[Pineapple]

Chapter 17:

House of Gold​

Spoiler

"We've met before?"

Of all the questions I cold have asked, that was the only one that I could manage to articulate. This woman knew my mother. My mother knew the Admiral of the Fleet? No, she couldn't have been so high ranking back then. Somehow, though, we had met? I would have remembered--

I heard the snapping of fingers and my eyes snapped back into focus on the woman in front of me. She had her eyebrow raised and her mouth curled on the corner. "Seems like a concussion if you're this out of it. I said 'Yes, but you were just a baby' but I've had my eye on you for a number of years."

"What makes me so special that the Admiral of the Fleet cares about me?" The question seemed stupid the moment I asked it. I was Gendo Ikari's child and the pilot of an Evangelion. Everyone in the system knew my name and the name I was born with. Of course the Admiral of the Fleet would give a shit. She probably knew that I was a potential pilot this whole time.

"I don't think that there was anything that would make the Admiral of the Fleet care about you, but that's not why I was keeping track of you. I owe a debt to Yui that I can never repay to her, so I have been trying to repay it to you instead."

I blinked at her. What could I say to that? She owed my mother and was watching over me. I supposed things could have been worse than Ganymede. Hell, in some respects Earth definitely had been worse. If she'd been pulling strings, well...

"So why are you here now?"

She offered me a shrug and a smirk, "I would have been sooner but it's been very busy. Keeping information suppressed for as long as I did, well, that was the real trick."

"What?"

"I was protecting you. Even with a picture of of the face of the most sought-after person in the system and it took them over a month to find anything. Why do you think that is?" Mari answered to my outburst.

"They still found out in the end, and well... you can guess how that went."

"I really wish I could have done more. I mean that." Her face shifted to a frown and the sadness seemed to reach her eyes too.

"I don't know how you did what you did do, to be honest." I admitted. Wouldn't do to get mad at her for not being able to help more than she did. There were enough people to be angry at, I couldn't extend that to her too.

"I'll tell you all about it later. For now I just need you to know that I'm on your side and I'm always going to be looking out for you." Her demeanor shifted. The air of levity in her disposition had evaporated and she seemed stiffer.

Her heels clicked against the steel flooring as she walked towards the row of windows set into the side of the hallway. She was looking out into the geofront and the sunrise being carried in via the massive mirrors that were set up on the surface.

"That's... kind of heavy. I guess it all really is, but... well, why that, why now?" I asked as I hobbled after her. My legs were weak but they'd hold me, through sheer force of will if nothing else. At the very least, the railing along the window gave me something to hold onto.

She was taller than me, but then that wasn't really all that surprising. I had to look up to meet the reflection of her eyes in the glass. There was more there than I could see, I was sure.

"Now, because this is the first chance I've had to see you and... and why?" She paused, maybe for dramatic effect, or maybe to find the words. Or maybe she just didn't want to say it. Her jaw finally tensed up before her shoulders relaxed, more in defeat than calm I suspected.

"The why is unfortunately very simple," she started. "Things are going to get a lot worse, very quickly, and very soon. People are going to die and the only thing you or I can change is how many. We won't save everyone or, I fear, most of them."

I blinked and took a step back. Everything I'd been doing was to save people and it had been working! She couldn't just come and tell me that it was for nothing. That would mean I'd fought for nothing. I'd endured for nothing. I'd hoped and had that hope stolen for nothing.

"No, that's bullshit." I snapped at her. My fist was clenched down at my side and I found I'd squared up with her. "Don't tell me I can't do anything about it. I haven't come across the whole god damned system to get my ass beat down here just to have it mean nothing. I didn't get kicked out into space without a suit, get my ass kicked, bleed, fight, and get my heart broken just so you could tell me they're gonna die anyway. I don't know who the hell you think you are that you can tell me that I can't stop it because that's exactly what I'm gonna do!"

I felt the fire coursing through my blood. Adrenaline and stubborn insubordination fought gravity for me. I didn't have another fight in me and we both knew that but damn if I didn't feel like giving it the good old college try anyway.

She shook her head and took a step back, that somber expression melted away to be replaced by a smug smirk right at the corner of her mouth and a laugh. A deep hearty laugh from the belly that threatened to knock the wind right out of my sails, but only just barely.

"Well aren't you just the spitting image of Yui Ikari after all? Well I never said I wouldn't let you try your hardest. If you wanna go down swinging that's just fine with me. You think you're gonna give fate a one-two punch? Well I'm in. All the calculation in the world couldn't account for an Ikari with a head of steam." She clapped a hand down on my shoulder and shook her head again, still laughing her laugh.

"What? Is that all it took? An impassioned speech to get the Admiral of the Fleet on my side?" I asked, sure that my shock was written all over my face.

She shook her head, "No. It was that fire in your eyes, Ikari. Didn't sway the Admiral of the Fleet, but it did sway Mari Makinami, and of the two I think you've got the better deal. I meant everything I said about what's coming for you, but if you think you've got it in you, I'm willing to be wrong."

"Is it really just that easy?" I asked with a growing sense of whiplash. If she'd meant to startle me out of my anger she'd done a bang-up job of it. Maybe the concussion made it easy or maybe she was just pulling my strings to see how I'd dance but at the end of it I didn't really have much of a choice either way, did I?

"Nothing about what lies ahead is going to be easy, Natsu Ikari. It would have been easy if you'd let me help you run away."

I stopped and blinked. What? "That's what you were trying to offer me? An escape?"

She nodded and turned back to the window. "Like I said, I owe Yui more than I can ever repay. I don't think that when she build that Evangelion that she did so with the intent that you would be the one piloting it."

"What--"

"Oh, no, I guess you wouldn't have known that. Unfortunately it looks like our time is just about up. The other shoe is about to drop and neither of us can afford to miss it."

"What?!" I yelled, finding my outdoor voice to respond to the added layers of confusion she just kept piling onto me. The scatterbrained way the conversation had meandered to this point had just about short circuited any chance I had at following it and I needed some kind of clarity.

She pointed her finger at the ceiling tile and, a moment later, the alarm klaxon began to echo throughout the base. "That would be the other shoe dropping."

"This doesn't get you off the hook." I protested as she turned to leave. I, of course, had places to go as well but still.

"No, it doesn't. So, until next time, Miss Ikari, I'll be keeping my eyes on you."

I found myself staring blankly after her as the alarm continued to shrill in my ears. I would need to get to the cage and then they'd deploy me, I'd go fight another Angel--

My phone's buzzing distracted me from my train of thought and jarred me out of my trance. Everyone who mattered knew I was already inside headquarters, so I shouldn't have received a phone call as long as I reported to the cage on time.

Misato's face was on the screen and I hit the accept button. "Hello?"

"If you're not already in the elevator take the section C-6 emergency exit directly into the geofront. We're deploying Unit One directly in front of the pyramid. You'll have to board it in the field. Run, because we don't have much time." She sounded hurried, impatient, but most concerning, she sounded afraid.

Her order was punctuated with a loud, though distant, explosion and one of the light panels set into the dome blew out in a cloud of broken glass. That hadn't happened before. "Roger that."

It was going to get worse? I'd have to meet that head on.

xxx​

The explosions were increasing in frequency and intensity. Whatever the hell was happening up in the city was getting closer to breaking through the armor plating. I could feel the concussion in my chest and it made my ears ring.

My legs burned and if it weren't for the adrenaline and the fear I might not have been able to keep going. As I was, I knew I was injuring myself more and more with every step, but I had to keep going. Even if I didn't care about anyone else, the only safe place to be was going to be inside of the Evangelion.

As hard as it was to keep my legs under me, the shaking and heaving of the ground under me didn't make it any easier. It felt like the planet was going to split open and swallow me up at any second if I didn't keep going.

The alarm klaxons and flashing yellow strobe lights ahead of me signaled that I was where I needed to be. The probably meters-thick steel doors set into the courtyard lawn not a dozen meters to my left retracted into the ground. Two steel rails extended upwards and the rumbling intensified.

And instant later a blast of high pressure air made my ears pop and nearly knocked me off my feet, and then Unit One burst through the opening and hit the end of the launch railing with a thunderous clang. It was a awesome, intimidating sight. I'd never been so close to an Evangelion while standing on the ground before. It was one thing to stand in front of the head, it was another entirely to stand at its feet.

It was ready for me. I could feel the shadow of feedback, even at this range the implant was trying to link. I couldn't move it, couldn't really feel it but I could feel that it was there without even looking. The entry plug was extended and waiting for me.

There would be a cable lift that would carry me up to the hatch, I could board from--

An explosion and a bright flash of light came from directly above me. I threw my hand up to shield my eyes and, as the light faded, I could see the open sky beyond the hole in the armor plating. It was only a moment later that the foundation of one of the retractable buildings failed and it broke free, to fall straight down towards me.

The cable lift wouldn't be fast enough. There was nowhere to run. There was no time for fear, only realization: This was how I'd die. Not on Ganymede. Not on the orbital station after it decompressed. I wouldn't die falling to Earth either. Not even during a battle against an Angel.

At least, not while actually fighting one.

So I looked towards the sky as the small concrete five story building fell towards me. Mari would have to live with letting me down. Misato would have to find someone else to save the world. I would... I would...

"I'll see you soon, Mom."

A twinge in my mind, I felt it before I heard it. The sound of high carbon steel tearing.The launch railing was mangled but more than that, Unit One was free. I could feel an animalistic urgency rolling off of it.

In one moment it was standing still as a statute in the face of my impending demise, in the next I was wrapped up in its left hand and felt like I'd been hit by an emergency braking burn. No, that wasn't right. Even the Tengu hadn't punched me that hard when we'd dropped into the atmosphere.

I couldn't see from inside of the closed fist and I couldn't hear over the roaring of the air and the smashing of concrete.

As quickly as the forces had hit me and let off, they hit me again. I tried not to throw up from the rough handling and had mostly steadied myself when I was finally able to see light again. The hand was open--

--and I was falling from it. A few moments of panic before I splashed into a half-full entry plug full of LCL. There was no time to think about it: I was alive and I needed to stay that way. I was half way into the seat by the time the hatch closed, and I was already punching in my startup sequences by the time the plug started to retract.

Unit One saved me. It saved my life and nobody was piloting it. There was always more to it than a simple machine, wasn't there? This was more, even, than that. I could feel... not quite a mind, but something on the other end of my link with it. Something that wanted me to live.

The screens finally came online and I could see the destruction outside. Unit One was collapsed onto the ground in a half-crouch and in front of it was the building that had fallen and almost killed me. The launch rails were destroyed and it looked like the entire catapult assembly had collapsed back into the launch tube.

And that could have been me.

"--moved by itself?! I want systems diagnostics run right now!"

The comms had finally come back up. My controls were online and I was ready to fight. Everything felt full one-to-one and I could feel every single rivet and joint my Eva had. "No, Doctor Akagi, it's fine. I'm fine. I can feel it, I'm ready to fight."

"You almost died. We have to get you back here and run tests, there could be--" That was Maya's voice. I hadn't talked to her as much lately, but it was nice to see she still cared.

"If she doesn't fight, we all die. If she says she's fine, she's fine. We'll do it. Give me status!" Misato. She was going to drink about this later. If I had my way, so would I. As long as we were all alive for it.

"Power generation is online, feedback is responsive, feels very close to realtime. Sync rate is..." I trailed off as I read the display. There was no way. "This can't be right, display is saying one-fifty on the money."

"That's... Shit. Don't worry about it, We'll discuss it when we're not dead. The Angel is going to be right in front of you in about thirty five seconds. If you can't beat it, try to keep it busy. The Martians are giving it hell but it's not going down. We've got a few tricks up our own sleeves, so give it your all."

"Roger that, Misato. Natsu Ikari, Unit One, ready to fight!"

"Sorry to butt in. This is Soryu, The Nikola Tesla just took a reactor hit and she's going down. I can't hold it back any longer, I'm withdrawing to the Geofront. Ikari, you better be as good as they said you are."

I wanted to say that I was, but fear wouldn't let me make that boast. At least, not before I felt a warm embrace around me, even though I was alone. Through the link? I felt love, protection, confidence? I wasn't alone, but then I'd never ridden alone, had I?

"I'll show you how it's done."

 

[Pineapple]

Chapter 18:

The Mighty​

The sky was full of fire. The roof of the geofront had half-collapsed. The Angel had descended into my domain with razor sharp ribbon arms and eyes so full of white hot hatred.

Unit Two was no longer white.

Black ashen scorch marks and the crimson of blood that could have come from either Eva or Angel stained the once perfect glossy white of the machine's armor. The left shoulder pylon was missing and there seemed to be a hitch in its step as it moved closer to me and further from the enemy.

I had to wonder how much of the damage was her being too close when she fired the lever-action grenade launcher she held at the ready.

The two pistols I held seemed quaint by comparison. If she wasn't making ground with her weapon, I didn't see how I was going to do much better with mine. That didn't mean I was going to let her have the last laugh; I had to show this amateur how it was done.

My right hand tightened around the grip of the pistol and I felt the feedback so perfectly it was as though I was holding it with my very own hand. In a way, it felt like an entirely separate body that I could control in parallel with my own.

The abbreviated legs of the Angel touched the ground and that was my signal to begin. I launched Unit One off the ground hard enough to split the ground under my feet. From zero to a flying leap directly at the Angel, both pistols banging out a beat against its AT field.

Every shot deflected into the ground and kicked out large clouds of dust and dirt and debris. I dropped both pistols and rolled the throttle control to the maximum setting. I hit the top of my jump's arc and then started descending rapidly under full throttle.

I drew my right hand back into a fist and held my left in front of me as I dove towards the target. In front of me stacks of bright hexagons appeared, blocking my path. I'd never seen an AT field that powerful, but I wasn't going to stop on account of it.

My left fist hit the first layer and shattered through to the end of the stack, then another appeared to take its place. I threw a right punch and broke through the next stack. Left, right, left, right, but I wasn't making any progress, just holding my ground.

A flash of white and red appeared next to me and the stack collapsed down another level and I pushed closer. If I could break through to the core, a few good hits would end it. The giant tooth with a bizarre bird skull for a face would end and this would be just another mark in the column marked W. Even if I was good for nothing else, I was good for this.

The sharp sting against my left side was the only notice I was given of an incoming attack; the Angel's right foil-arm had speared through my armor and left me bleeding, but not out of the fight by any means.

I throttled up past the safe zone and screamed as I threw the hardest punch I could muster with my right hand. The screaming of alarms in my ears faded out in favor of the sounds of my own rage. The final stack collapsed and my fist came down hard over the glassy red core.

My armor cracked when it came down on a bony plate instead. The bastard had even that trump card? I threw another punch as my drive's safety's kicked in and shut it down. Another, another, another. Each jab further cracked my armored glove and did nothing to make that shell give in.

A flash of movement on my left drew my attention in time to see the charred gauntlet of Unit Two wrapped around the Angel's right arm, pinning it in mid strike. Holding it back from striking me?

The pressure that hit my chest felt like I'd been hit by a comet, the AT field had thrown me back away from the Angel and into the air. I guess it could have only stayed down for so long, after all. They healed if we didn't kill them fast enough, didn't they?

The battle-worn Unit Two still held onto that arm, using it as an anchor to fight the Angel's attempts to repel it. The grenade launcher barked out shots repeatedly into the armor plate, but from as far away as I'd been thrown there was no way to be sure if it was doing any damage.

"Natsu, backup is on the way."

The transmission was simple, direct, and to the point. Unit Zero would give us the full set, three on one we'd surely--

The roaring of a fusion drive on the external sensors wasn't what I expected. A drive not particularly meant for atmospheric use and so without the acoustic baffling that the one on my Evangelion had. The Tesla had already crashed, that left few alternatives.

I looked up to see if the Martian battlecruiser had come down for another visit but instead was greeted by the blocky cylindrical figure of the Tengu. I'd never considered how big it really was, even as a smaller ship. Easily a head or two taller than Evangelion.

The attitude control jets fired aggressively and the ship violently pitched and rolled around its axis as it rose into the sky. The gun ports along the dorsal and ventral ridges of the ship opened up and the defense cannons slotted into firing position.

"Make me a window and I'll shove the main gun down his throat." That was a voice I'd recognized and, for a minute I was sure we were going to win because of it.

A second wind filled me and I slammed the controls to the stops. "Roger that, Aoba. I'll plow the road."

Unit One and I shared one body in that moment and together we sprinted towards destiny, or, perhaps towards absolution. A victory here could forgive a multitude of sins, couldn't it?

Each step was faster than the one before it, each meter of distance closed tore a deeper rut in the soft earth as a combination of muscular strength and fusion rocket thrust overwhelmed anything the ground could have hoped to withstand.

I hit the AT field at a decent fraction of the speed of sound and my fist shattered through every layer of it right down to that armor plate over the Angel's core. The bone armor cracked under the impact and I sent the beast up and into the air.

A silent streak impacted the bone-armor plate and deflected upwards at a steep angle. The sound of an explosion followed and the Angel continued to live. A starship railgun couldn't kill it even with the AT field neutralized?

A projectile that had moved so fast it had turned the air into plasma couldn't break it, what hope did we even have?

"This is Admiral Makinami on the M.R.N. Giovanni Schiaparelli. You're gonna wanna light that candle of yours because I'm about to kill the Angel and the entire city is going to go along with it. You've got three hundred seconds until I fire."

I didn't need to be told twice to get the hell away from that monster. I backpedaled and turned to run towards the recovery lifts. I didn't know exactly what it was that Mari had meant by the first half of her transmission but she seemed to be under the impression that escape was possible.

And I wasn't ready to die.

"Natsu, retreat to lift Q-3, we're deploying S-type equipment for on-site refit. We're going offline for the evacuation now, you're on your own until we re-establish communication." That sounded like Akagi. I had to wonder why it wasn't Misato, but then she was probably busy with the evacuation.

Q-3 wasn't far, a half a kilometer further away from the Angel. The ground shook under me, far more than I could have caused on my own, with each step. The telemetry coming in over my onboard sensors was... troubling. Seismic activity was off the charts, and it wasn't focused on the Angel.

The armored hatch on lift Q-3 explosively jettisoned into the sky rather than retracting and a complicated looking equipment rig slid out of the open chasm. It looked vaguely like the body plan of an Evangelion, in a T-pose. Additional armor plating with vernier thrusters and an a larger backpack unit with what looked like solid rocket boosters attached to it.

So that's what evacuation looked like to them.

I followed the cues provided by the onboard computer and stepped backwards into the rig. In front of me, Asuka was firing at the Angel to keep it at bay while retreating backwards towards her own S-type equipment.

I felt heavier with each attachment by the automatic systems, I'd be slower across the ground with all this extra weight bolted on but it wasn't really for going across the ground.

Unit One slumped forward as the rig completed attaching the S-type equipment. I was free. I took two steps forward before cannons embedded in the surviving upper armor of the geofront opened fire on the Angel and covered it in a cloud of smoke and explosions.

Tengu was still twisting and dancing through the air flinging PDC and railgun rounds at the Angel, never hesitating and never stopping in its jaunt through the sky.

Not to kill it, to serve as a distraction. A kilomter and a half ahead of me and on the right Asuka and Unit Two were nearly finished with their refit.

"Natsu, I'm linking you to my navigation. We're getting out of here. Stand by and let the automatics handle it." Aoba's voice, from the Tengu. That confirmed what I'd suspected and could really be the only explanation for the S-type equipment.

The ground started to collapsed downwards under me and the boosters strapped to my back ignited. I fell a few meters before i began to ascend. I could see on my display that Unit Two was ascending as well and that the Tengu was leading us up and out.

Down below, the 'floor' of the geofront continued to collapse downwards and fall away from the central pyramid of headquarters. It looked like there was a cavity surrounding the central shaft that extended down further than even the Evangelion's sensors could see.

At least until the bright blue flare of a fusion drive illuminated the bottom of the chasm and the entire central shaft started to ascend. No, not just the central shaft, there was too much bulk to it. Way too much bulk to it.

Headquarters was a star ship. A huge one, one that shouldn't be able to launch from Earth, and yet what I was seeing with my own eyes put the lie to everything I thought I knew about hoisting mass out of a gravity well.

"What in the hell is that, Aoba?" I half-yelled over the comm link to the Tengu as we continued to ascend ahead of it.

"That's Leviathan. Now that the cat's out of the bag there are gonna be a lot of people upset with us-- stand by, incoming fire from orbit."

I guessed that meant time was up on Mari's directive. Everything happened so fast I couldn't even see it, and would later have to put it together from sensor logs onboard Unit One.

In the moment, however, I was faced with the brightest light I had ever seen and a scream that tore into my mind. The darkness that followed was a relief.

 

[Pineapple]

Chapter Touji:

Encounter​

The shelter had gone dark a moment before everybody inside blacked out. When I came to there was a thick smell of ozone on the air and natural light was pouring in on us. The floor was at a sharp angle and as I traced my eyes along it I came to a shorn-off edge of metal where the shelter had cracked in half, allowing the light to spill in from above.

It shouldn't have been possible, that was the whole point. Even the Angels themselves shouldn't have been able to get in. The shelters were behind nuke-proof armor plating, that's what they'd told us. But then, having seen Natsu fight, I could believe that there were worse things than nukes.

The back of my head was throbbing and the dim light that managed to shine through the ash cloud that filled the sky still made my eyes burn. My mouth was dry and my whole body felt weak. I'd lost blood, I was familiar enough with knowing what that felt like.

I couldn't get my legs to work, but I couldn't let that stop me. Not with how I'd left things, I had to--

The sound of cracking concrete cut through the air and a shower of gravel rolled down the sloped shelter floor. Adrenaline coursed through me, from fear mostly. I pulled myself to the side to avoid the next batch of falling rocks and then kept going, moving from handhold to handhold as I hauled myself up the sloped floor.

An explosion rocked the floor and threatened to send me tumbling down the precariously tilted floor. I only heard it out of my right ear, the ringing in my left was the only sensation it provided. Left over right, right over left; I dragged myself up the incline until I reached its peak.

"It looks like you've got some fight in you after all. If you're not ready for it to end here I can use you, Touji Suzuhara. I can help you to right your wrongs." I heard, from not too far away. The voice was female, older. Familiar and yet, not.

I looked up and was met by a pair of glasses on the face of a woman not much older than myself. Her uniform was Mars military. I opened my mouth to speak and realized just how dry and raw my throat felt. "H-how?"

Her straight face twisted upwards into a manic grin that didn't match the look in her eyes. "Prepare to be enlightened!"

***​

Consciousness returned to me without my having been aware I'd lost it. It felt like there had been a clean cut between her manic declaration and the moment I opened my eyes. The medical-bay looking room I found myself in and the subtle vibrations through the bed I was laying on made me think I was on a ship.

I hadn't been on a ship. Did she knock me out or did I black out?

"Neither, you died," that same woman's voice cut in from everywhere and nowhere at once. Before I had time to formulate a question of who she was, she appeared in front of me.

"I don't feel dead." was the only thing I could think to say in response.

"You are, and if you think about it hard enough you'll realize I'm right. You've got no heart beat and you haven't taken a breath since you woke up, right? Don't worry! You're currently operating within my gestalt network. I was able to recover your psyche before your physical form expired--"

"So I'm a copy?" I cut in, suddenly feeling sick to my stomach, despite my lack of heartbeat or respiration.

"Well, we could have a lengthy debate about continuity of consciousness, but let's just cut to the end and say that there is currently only one version of Touji Suzuhara that exists, and that version is you. You won the coin flip. Can we move along? There isn't a lot of time before you stop being dead and there are a few points I need to cover." The woman continued to explain.

I opened my mouth to ask a question but the look she gave me made me close it again just as quickly. If she could read my mind she didn't need me to ask, did she?

"Good boy. Your body will be finished printing in a few minutes and then you'll 'wake up' and meet the rest of me. For now, you can call me Mari.

"So, Touji, Natsu Ikari is the most important person in the universe to me; I need you to understand this fact first and foremost. I know what you did to her, and I know what I should do to you for it… but that's neither here nor there. We have an opportunity, now, that we have to take to ensure her survival.

"Very soon, you will draw the breath of life once again and at that time your life will be bound to my cause. I've calculated an eighty-five percent chance that you will be satisfied with these terms. So, think carefully and answer me, Suzuhara.

"Will you die for Natsu, if that is what it takes? Or, did I learn everything about you from the last thing you said to her?"

I closed my eyes to fight back tears that didn't seem to come, much as it felt like they should. I'd been shocked, maybe a little scared but… but I'd never felt the way I felt about her about anyone else. If nothing else was true, that much was.

The time we'd had together was more exciting than any match I'd ever played in, a bigger adrenaline rush than jumping rooftops. She was--

"I will. Where do we start?"

"Well, once you wake up, we're going to attack the M.R.N. Herschel."

"That's the Martian flagship." I found myself saying.

"So you do know things. Natsu Ikari is being held captive on that ship and I don't have the necessary force projection to do this without you. I can make it easier though." Mari answered back. "For now, just hold tight. Rest while you can; we're about to change the world."