Neon Genesis: The Engel War
Disclaimer: we do not own Neon Genesis Evangelion, Cthulhutech, or any related characters in any way, shape or form.
Author's Notes: A little Evangelion action for those of you watching mixed with the RPG Cthulutech from Rewind Gone Nuts and myself. Reviews are welcome and flames will be ignored. And for those wondering if this will be a Shinji/Rei or Shinji/Asuka pairing...eh, we'll work it out later but for now we have no pairing in mind.
Chapter 1: Two Fates, One Destiny
"Neural connections complete. No signs of contamination."
"Harmonics are stable, no anomalies."
"Synch ratio holding steady at 59 percent! Amazing..."
"Shinji, we're going to launch the Evangelion now, hold on tight!"
"R-right!"
On a high dais above the people working at the various consoles, a man with graying hair turned to his compatriot sitting with his hands interlocked together, his face hidden from shadows, "Will this work Ikari?"
The sitting man merely smirked behind his hands and the gray-haired man shook his head as down below the order was given, "Eva Launch!"
In a sparking of electricity ranging in terawatts, a magnetic catapult sent a giant purple humanoid figure rocketing into a brightly lit tunnel as a flash of light obscured it from vision.
The light flashed from sight as men retreated behind barricades, guns and missiles firing into lines of alien figures approaching in their hundreds, ignorant of the explosions tearing into their ranks.
"I'm telling you, send reinforcements! My men are being overwhelmed here! We've taken out their damn Grubs, but the 'roaches and the Locusts are too much for our defenses! We've already suffered 72 percent casualties in our mecha units, and the power armored division units have suffered 64 percent losses! This base is a write-off unless we get some help here!" Commander Fuujisawa roared.
"An Engel squadron is en-route, Colonel. ETA 5 minutes." Was the sole response the beleaguered Colonel received. But that was enough to breathe hope back into his soul- the cursed Migou had them outnumbered, but a full squadron of Engels was worth a small army of Swords. Now all his men had to do was to survive long enough for their reinforcements to arrive.
*SKRASH!* *SKRASH!* *SKRASH!* *SLITCH!* Everyone inside the command center of NERV's underground base winced and flinched at the sight of a lance of energy fired from the Third Angel finally penetrating the thick armor and slicing through the giant mecha's head, the Angel extending the beam to smash Unit One against a building with contemptuous ease. That was enough to jolt Misato Katsuragi into grabbing the microphone to open a channel to the beleaguered Evangelion.
"Shinji come in! Shinji! Shinji respond! Shinji!"
There was silence as the Third Angel stood watching its opponent as if checking to see if it was dead as it retracted the energy lance, allowing Unit One to slump to the ground before blood geysered from both of the holes in its head, staining the building behind it with an ugly splatter while the street at its feet was flooded with red ichor.
The command center was filled with silent horror, save for the impassive stare of Commander Ikari as he stared at the viewscreen of the fallen giant.
Then the hands twitched, enough to prompt the Angel to fire a blast of energy, obscuring it from sight in a blinding explosion.
Private Moroboshi didn't even flinch when a barrage of plasma fire from their Cockroach enemies felled the Centurion standing right next to him, the poor man inside unable to even scream as the blue-white superheated gas cooked him to ashes. Instead, he automatically released a barrage from his own plasma cannon, mounted on the right arm of his MK-10U variant suit, the bolts of energy spattering off the damn bug's front and distracting it long enough for him to close in and finish the job by ramming his hyperedge blade through the upper surface of the insect-like suit into the cockpit, grinning grimly at the high-pitched squeal of pain as the Migou inside was impaled through whatever served the cursed aliens for vital organs. He yanked it free and ducked beneath the clumsy slashing of another Cockroach's mandible-blades, eviscerating it for its troubles, then blowing a hole through a third onrushing foe's faceplate with pointblank plasma.
He stepped back, trying to catch his breath, and was thrown off his feet as something huge and heavy crashed onto the earth barely feet away- the smoldering ruins of a shot-down Broadsword mecha. He swallowed as the towering Locust that had felled it scuttled fully into view, its insectile, mandibled cockpit twisting to seemingly look straight at him. Moroboshi was paralyzed by fear at the sight of the thirty-foot tall bio-mecha looming over him, looking vaguely like someone had taken a long beetle-creature, twisted its head and thorax so that it stared up at the sky, and then bent its thorax backwards, causing it to scuttle around in a shape roughly like a capital L, walking backwards. Acid dripped from its mandibles, sizzling as it ate into the armor of the Broadsword, and all Moroboshi could do was wait for it to decide which weapon to use to dispatch him; the laser, or the hyper-accelerated particle beam- charge beams, as they were generally known?
And that was when a brilliant lance of blue-white flame lit up the sky, striking the Locust square in its cockpit and melting through synth-flesh and chitin-steel with ease. As the dead mecha slumped, Moroboshi whirled to see the source of the massive plasma blast, and his mouth dropped open in awe-filled reverence. Standing before him, firing plasma cannon and rocket pod with equal abandon, stood nothing less than a Malach- an Engel. Forty feet tall, the armor-clad behemoth of a mecha roared like a living thing, Cockroach shots bouncing harmlessly off its hide, before striding away in search of further targets, crushing Cockroaches underfoot like the insects they resembled. Hope surging through his veins, Moroboshi howled a battlecry and returned to the fray, encouraged by the sight of the mightiest war machines in the New Earth Government's army.
The cross-shaped explosion shattered windows and melted anything metal for hundreds of meters but the Angel was unconcerned as a black shape flipped out of the explosion and smashed against the AT field of the Angel to the elated cries of the command crew as the Evangelion stood proud before suddenly, there was cry of dismay from Maya Ibuki, one of the command crew from her console.
"Synch Ratio has spiked to 93 percent! Harmonics are destabilizing and we're getting feedback contamination! We're losing control!"
From her position, Ritsuko Akagi gasped in disbelief, "It's awake?"
Unit One roared in rage as it charged the Angel with a haymaker, the punch bouncing off the AT field of the Angel, shattering the right vambrace and slicing through some of the exposed flesh as another technician, Makoto Hyuga, read off the damage report, "Damage to the right arm! No wait!" The vambrace reappeared in a flash of light, "It regenerated?"
The Angel for its part managed to blink in surprise before Unit One smashed back into AT field and grab the middle of the field, "Unit One's generating an AT field! It's nullifying it!" Ritsuko shook her head.
"No, it's eroding it!" Unit One growled as it ripped open the Angel's AT field and clambered inside to deliver another punch to the Angel's face, cracking the bony face-plate, staggering the monster as the Evangelion continued to barrage its fists at the Angel, smashing into its flesh and denying any chance of retaliation before tackling the beast, sending the two crashing into an evacuated building, crushing it in a cloud of dust and masonry.
With a sound like the world's ending, a charge beam smote the Locust square and center, vaporizing it even as a rocket and a plasma bolt annihilated two others besides it. The Seraph Samael howled, its cry so loud it seemed to make the very earth quake, before charging into combat, crushing Cockroaches underfoot with every step. The remaining triad of Locusts fired back, but the fifty-seven foot tall Engel either dodged them with more ease than something so huge should be capable of, or they simply bounced harmlessly from its armored hide. Its fist lashed out and latched onto the first's cockpit, squeezing with such force that it was crushed to a pulp and then discarded as a harmless piece of junk. A second Locust sank its acidic mandibles into the Seraph's hip, prompting a scream of fury before it plucked it from the ground and gored it with a savage toss of its horns. The third Locust tried to flee, leaping with all the power of its namesake, but was caught in mid-arc by a writhing cluster of tentacles that suddenly exploded from an armored sheath on the Seraph's right forearm, the fleshy appendages piercing and constricting until the Locust exploded, leaving them to twitch blindly in the air before they were retracted back into their sheath, the humanoid behemoth turning to sight a new target.
Tucked away safely within the synth-flesh and armor of Samael floated pilot Derek Jon Ellison, serenity on his face that would have surprised an outsider. Such an outsider would also have been surprised by the bareness of his chamber, for there was no seat here, no control panels, not even a viewscreen. Such things were unneeded for an Engel pilot, who was far more in tune with his mecha than any mere driver could be. Not for them the grossness of manual piloting, no, an Engel pilot was in Communion with his or her Engel, attuned to them, one with them, their minds and selves meshed into a greater whole. What need a viewscreen to one who could see through the triad of horizontal slits that were Samael's eyes? What need controls to he who could feel the muscles and cables flexing beneath his armored skin, and could transmit his intentions directly to the Seraph's brain? To pilot an Engel was to be something more than a man, and "DJ" Ellison was a veteran.
This, too, was the cause behind his serenity. He had been born and bred during the Second Aeon War, the world-wide campaign of survival fought against the alien Migou, the deranged hordes of the Rapine Storm, the aquatic abominations of the Esoteric Order of Dagon, and whatever other horrors crawled out of the woodwork. He had gone through school knowing his destiny was the military, the fight for humanity's very survival against forces that would see humanity either annihilated or perverted into something unrecognizable. When he had come of age, the Engels had finally been ready to unleash against their enemies, and he had been one of the first pilots. He had fought as part of the Malach Ertrael for over a year, surviving battles that would have seen many other soldiers dead or deranged, before his bonded Engel, closer to him than any other person could comprehend, had been destroyed by a Migou Mantis. He had survived, kept alive by hate of the alien who had shot him down, some had speculated, and had immediately applied to be reassigned to a new Engel. It had taken weeks, but re-attunement had bonded him to Samael, one of the new Super-Heavy Class Engels created to fight the Mantises and their Spider counterparts, though neither Ellison nor Samael was averse to destroying any bugs that they came across.
Thus the calmness, even as they left a path of destruction through the enemy ranks. Ellison had fought and survived in much fiercer battles than this, and Samael, like all Seraphim, was devoid of fear. It felt nothing for its enemies but an icy cold contempt, which it whimsically chose to express by scooping up a handful of 'roaches from the battlefield and idly crushing them to a pulp with one squeeze of its terrible fist, smearing the goop and slimes on its chest before striding off to aid a Cherub currently besieged by Locusts.
The dust cleared to see the Evangelion still pounding its fists into the flesh of the Angel, seemingly fixated on drawing blood before with a roar of frustration, the giant wrapped its hands around one of the bones that formed an external set of ribs and with a heave, wrenched it free in a geyser of blue blood as the Angel thrashed and tried to force the Evangelion off but the behemoth wasn't about to release its prey as it brought the sharp piece of bone done with an ear-splitting crack on the crystalline red sphere on its abdomen.
Roaring again, the Eva brought the bone up and sent it down again, sending shockwaves through the ground in regular intervals as the crystal stubbornly resisted before with a discordant tone, the crystal cracked as the bone imbedded itself into the red sphere, which began to pulse madly as Unit One brought up its fists and drove the bone spike deeper into the crystal.
That was the final straw as the Angel wrapped its body around Unit One and inflated like a balloon. The resulting explosion blinded everyone down in NERV as static filled the screens.
The fighting inside the base was easily as fierce as the fighting outside, Centurions and Cockroaches fighting savagely for every square centimeter of ground gained. The Centurions were outnumbered and on the defensive, trying desperately to fight on against the odds, while the 'roaches poured in like a terrible swarm, seeking out the mysterious "Project Varja" that was housed here. Back and back the humans were pushed, until they were fighting in the very chambers they sought to protect, and which their enemies sought to take. No one would ever determine what happened or who was responsible. Perhaps a Migou was careless with its plasma cannon. Perhaps a human scientist figured that all was lost and all they could do was try and take their enemies down with them, but whatever the case, the base suddenly erupted in a mighty explosion of terrible, colorless fire that swept out to hungrily engulf the battlefield.
Samael howled like a winter gale as the energy swept over it, and inside Ellison writhed and screamed in shared pain, the very link-fluid surrounding him frothing and boiling frantically.
And then, as sudden as it had happened, the flames vanished. In their wake, they left devastation- the terrain was untouched, but many of the fighters, human and Migou alike, had simply vanished into thin air- and those left had been slain in hideous ways. Those Migou that had been beyond the range of the blast waited, cautious of some human trick, and then scuttled in to claim their prize, messages already being transmitted to the Hive Ships.
As Evangelion Unit One staggered out of the hellish flames and the various individuals sighed in relief, a beeping caught technician Shigeru Aoba's attention, which in turn caught Misato's attention, "What's wrong Aoba?"
Aoba scratched his head, "I thought the sensors picked up some sort of combined energy signature, a huge gravimetric distortion and a brief Pattern Orange but there's nothing there. Guess it must be a system error from the battle feedback."
Misato nodded, turning away and already forgetting the report in light of recovering Unit One from the battle.
Unknown to everyone in NERV and indeed to the world at large, at the center of a smoking crater rapidly filling with seawater, a horned giant lay silently in the still night air.
Well, that seems like a good way to start a story don't you think? Some of you might point out a fifty-seven foot tall mecha is a little short compared to the 100-foot plus Evangelion. Patience my friends, there is a method to our madness. Next Episode: Interference, will be up soon.