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New Century 2318 [NGE]

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Strypgia said:
"Oh gee, that's really nice of you. We were thinking of giving it another week or twTHERE'S A FUCKING ANGEL OUTSIDE WE'RE ALREADY ON OUR WAY TO GET YOU, DUMBASS!"
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After the most recent incident do you think they would pour her into an entry plug she didn't wanna be in?
 
Readers: what are the things about this that you like and that you want to see more of?
 
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Chapter 12
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    • 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."
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Particle beam parkour.

    I really like what you have done with this fight :)
    Not being tied down by a power cable has really opened up more possibilities on how to fight something like this.
     
    Jackie said:
    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.
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    The question remains, is Natsu seeing visions of what remains of Yui's memories inside of Unit-01's core or are the implants tapping into something else?
     
    As of now the answer is clearly "yes." She shouldn't be seeing Yui in Yui's own memories; so while earlier flashbacks are readily explainable that way, this one is something else.

    Or maybe Unit-01 has someone else's memories, or she's getting memories from someone else, but both of those are far less likely than something screwy in her brain.
     
    JennyDracos said:
    As of now the answer is clearly "yes." She shouldn't be seeing Yui in Yui's own memories; so while earlier flashbacks are readily explainable that way, this one is something else.

    Or maybe Unit-01 has someone else's memories, or she's getting memories from someone else, but both of those are far less likely than something screwy in her brain.
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    If the system hooks into the MAGI it could be Naoko Akagi's memories that she's seeing, but that hasn't come up yet.
     
    If that's the case - which does fit - then the remaining thing that needs to be different to make sense is...

    Gendo personally checked up on Natsu?

    I'm...actually a little proud. Makes me wonder if the same forces at work in CCORI are at work here.
     
    JennyDracos said:
    If that's the case - which does fit - then the remaining thing that needs to be different to make sense is...

    Gendo personally checked up on Natsu?

    I'm...actually a little proud. Makes me wonder if the same forces at work in CCORI are at work here.
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    Nobody was there.

    At least once she was awake.
     
    Last edited:
    JennyDracos said:
    Okay now I'm totally lost. If it's a perceptual filter, then...why is she seeing it?
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    Okay so, she couldn't hear anyone talking even though their lips were moving.

    She did hear Rei, once Rei actually started talking to her, to tell her that it was time to go kill the spess demon.

    The Gendo and Yui she saw sitting on the far end of the room weren't there, nobody was there. That's why when their lips moved she didn't hear anything.

    Her brain is trying to make sense of everything being jammed into it. Last time she went grayscale in a hospital she superimposed Gendo and Yui onto Gendo and Rei. Her brain was trying to make associations, a hallucination based on past experience.

    Brains aren't meant to work the way hers is being forced to work.
     
    In some places Natsu's inner voice reminded me of Rei Ikari. I would describe it as a "I'm sitting on this train and I'm going to keep riding it whatever happens" mindset. Take care that your characters don't become identical.
     
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