Tokyo-3
Sachiel, Angel of Water. Possesses energy weapons lodged within arms, and a second mask that fires beams of high-velocity destructive energy. Other than that, entirely unremarkable. Should be a simple matter to defeat; however, the situation does not call for a victory, but rather a decisive rout. I've got one shot at this. Better make it count… ADAM! Cut out this bothersome personality transplant OS. Her chatter is distracting me.
{I…I… FINE! I suppose you'll want it, too?!}
You suppose correctly, but I shall take care of that detail. Actually, would you be so kind as to put me in touch with the core directly? It would be a great help.
{…As if you're actually giving me a choice…}
The catapult hatch opened on ground level, and out popped the giant purple cyborg it was conveying to the surface. Satisfied with the conclusion of his conversation with the entity inside his head, Ikari Shinji, the Third Child, slowly opened his eyes.
The locks on the catapult disengaged. Enemy contact had been established, and Synthetic Life-form Evangelion Unit-01's first sortie had officially begun.
[Okay, Shinji, we're going to take it slow. Just put one foot in front of the other.]
"Hmph," smirked Shinji.
EVA-01's head snapped up, and it charged forth with great, bounding strides, its arms outstretched, at a speed that made Doctor Akagi Ritsuko's eyes widen. Twin beams of energy blasted out of the eye sockets of Sachiel's second mask, but the Evangelion ducked and picked up speed, narrowly avoiding sustaining a direct hit by the scalar equivalent of a hair's-breadth; an instant later, its outstretched right arm clotheslined the massive creature. Continuing with its forward motion, the mech brought that arm up in an arc and then down, slamming the Angel into the ground hard enough to leave a sizable crater, leaving after-images of flickering concentric orange octagons to denote the presence of its Absolute Terror Field. But before EVA-01 could press its advantage, Sachiel blasted it again, and because of its proximity, the Evangelion had no choice but to jump and flip to avoid being hit. To the surprise of every speculator, it worked, and a moment later, EVA-01 was perched atop the very apex of a nearby skyscraper with super-human grace, perfectly balanced thereupon.
Shinji took stock of his surroundings with a calculated precision, mentally marking his position on the map of Tokyo-3 he kept in his head. Satisfied that he was in the right place, he nodded to himself, a small, predatory grin sinuously splitting upon his face. The mech crouched and flipped gracefully off of the building just in time to avoid Sachiel's destruction of it, landing nimbly upon the ground once more, right next to one of the alternate NERV catapults. As the pilot inside closed his eyes and took a deep breath before snapping them open once more, it stretched out its left hand, and waited…
"I am…the Bird of Hermes…"
I am…the Bird of Hermes…
In Terminal Dogma, suspended above the lake of LCL, in response to a certain summons, something pulled free of its perch, then rushed to at last reunite with its proper master...
"There's an anomaly! Something's coming up the catapult chute from Terminal Dogma!" cried Ibuki Maya, drawing Doctor Akagi's attention in an instant. Her eyes widened further as she beheld the readings Maya's monitor displayed concerning the ascending object.
"That…that shouldn't be possible!"
The hatch opened up, and the Evangelion's left hand closed around the shaft of the long, red, double-pronged object, snapping it down in a half-arc and bringing the left foot behind the right. Within the entry plug, Shinji grinned even wider, then spoke aloud, his voice weighted with recognition: "It's been a long time, old friend."
Sachiel, confused, staggered and enraged, stumbled almost blindly through the combat-ready cityscape of Tokyo-3, which brought him directly into Shinji's line of sight.
This is it. The pilot closed his eyes and focused on the roiling emotions that began to flood into him, emotions that were not his own: fear, bloodlust, savagery…anger… Turning his attention to within, he asserted his will upon them, leashing the sensations and binding them to his command with an adamantine chain. He pictured himself as the eye of a hurricane of primal sensation, and in the back of his brain, he knew that the technical staff at NERV Central would see his synchronization ratio approaching one hundred fifty percent at that point (although there was really nothing for it; mastering the berserker fury of EVA-01 and keeping it under his control required a prohibitive level of concentration). When his eyes snapped open once more, they had gone from cobalt to blood-red, his pupils having narrowed into a diamond shape. "Lancea Longini!"
Sachiel once more attacked from range, and once more, the Evangelion jumped; but this time, instead of jumping away, an instant later, Unit-01 came down, the point of the polearm it wielded pointed directly at the creature's super solenoid organ. An instant later, its core compromised, the Angel embraced its attacker, then self-destructed, sending up the icon of a cross into the sky. When the fireball began to dissipate, however, EVA-01 walked purposefully out of the destruction and into the view of the surveillance cameras.
The Third Angel had been destroyed.
"NERV Central? Pilot Ikari reporting. Target neutralized."
One Week Later…
"That was Section-2. The boy has just entered the medical ward with the stated intent of visiting the First Child," stated Ikari Gendo. He sighed.
"Have you figured out how you're going to explain to SEELE why your son knew about the Lance?" asked Fuyutsuki Kozo.
"No. Partly because I know nothing of the circumstances surrounding it myself, and beyond that, must confess to sharing their curiosity," he replied. "It is…unfortunate, but I do not believe the old men will see fit to remove the boy from the equation, however unknown of an entity he might be. Unit-01 is, after all, the cornerstone of their plan, and since the Lance seems to respond to the boy, that alternative is also off the table. Thus, as he is the only one who could possibly pilot Unit-01, the boy has made himself indispensable in their eyes, as much as they might hate to have to admit it."
"It's strange. Didn't the Marduk Institute report that his emotional state precluded him taking drastic independent action?"
"Indeed it did. Which is what makes this state of affairs all the stranger…" The commander shook his head to clear the errant thoughts from his mind. "Nevertheless, it does us no good to postulate on how the boy was made aware of the existence of the Lance. Better we refocus upon the task at hand…"
When Ayanami Rei opened her eyes that morning, she did not expect to see that she had a visitor in the form of her fellow pilot, but took it in stride. The gentle smile that graced his countenance was more difficult to construct a neutral reaction to, admittedly, but she did so admirably. On her visitor's end, however, Shinji caught each emotion as it oh-so-very subtly registered on her face, and that filled him with even greater joy and nostalgia than seeing her eyes open had.
"Ohayo, Ayanami-san," he greeted. "How are you feeling?"
She blinked, evidently confused by the question. "I do not understand."
He sighed; he'd allowed himself to forget just how specific the wording Gendo had used on her really was. "Are you able to adequately assess your current physical condition? If so, please provide your most accurate estimate, Ayanami-san."
She nodded in comprehension, though it was still clear as day to him that on some level, the confusion on the subject of why he would ask remained. "According to Doctor Akagi, I should be back in adequate physical condition to resume my normal level of activity in one week precisely. I am endeavoring to meet that goal."
"That is good to hear," he commented to himself. "You probably already know, but I'm Ikari Shinji, the Third Child. I'm to pilot Unit-01. It is…fortunate that I was able to introduce myself to you properly, Ayanami Rei."
The First Child wasn't exceptionally cognizant of social convention, but she did know the expected response in this instance. "Likewise, Ikari-san."
He grinned ruefully. "Please, call me Shinji. We're to be comrades, after all; a lack of familiarity can cause awkwardness on the field of battle, which can then impede upon our cooperative combat effectiveness. That would be rather…less than ideal, as I'm sure you're aware, for a number of reasons."
"Hai. I see your point, I…Shinji," she acquiesced.
She made no motion to suggest that he address her by her given name; but then again, it wasn't as if he expected her to. So he simply turned his grin to a small, sincere smile that had once been a near-historic event for him, and said, "Arigato, Ayanami-san."
His hearing picked up approaching footfalls, and in that moment, he knew his time to be nearly up. So he resolved to set about the second task he had intended to accomplish that day. "The medical staff will soon be here, and so it seems it is time for me to take my leave," he remarked to her. "It was…nice to meet you, Ayanami-san. I wish you a rapid recovery. Hopefully Unit-00 will be more cooperative next time, no?" Her eyes widened almost imperceptibly in surprise that he held this knowledge, but he pretended not to notice it. Instead, he stood and walked to her bedside, looking down on her form, prone upon the gurney, and placed his hand on her almost-bared shoulder gingerly. Just for an instant, then, she saw his normally-cobalt eyes flash a bright, vibrant scarlet, his pupils contracting to unnaturally accurate, geometrically perfect diamond shapes, and then his hand was gone, and he was leaving.
The orderlies were as surprised as she to find that her recovery timetable had leapt forwards three days.
Katsuragi Misato, having been newly appointed the guardian of Unit-01's pilot, struggled to reconcile her memory of the shy, awkward, greatly-alarmed boy she had been sent to retrieve from the train station with the image of the cool, collected, dry, personable boy that had emerged during and following the perplexing battle against the Third Angel. When he moved in with her, he hadn't reacted to the mess immediately, but rather scrutinized it with an appraising eye. This lack of exclamation successfully lured her into a false sense of security; over the last week, her apartment had subtly changed, shifted, until now, on her day off, as she set about wondering when her charge (who had proven to be surprisingly low-maintenance) would be returning, each and every room of her residence was more spotless than it had been when she had signed the lease for it. Her supply of instant ramen had mysteriously 'vanished,' and in its place, Shinji prepared food that honestly tasted better than the most high-end restaurants she had been to before Second Impact; usually, however, he neglected to partake, with the persistent excuse of "I'm a vegetarian," and when that didn't work, "I've already eaten, anyways. Don't worry about me, Misato. I can take care of myself; it's no trouble, really."
Now she found herself in Central Dogma, Ritsuko at her side, both of them looking on at the Third Child's performance in his first combat simulation with a growing sense of astonishment; even Akagi, who had scoffed to herself when the commander's progeny had opted to take the maximum difficulty simulation available right off, while disabling all of the combat aid programs–automatic aiming and any similar targeting programs being only the first ones to go–had no choice but to concede that she had somehow managed to drastically underestimate Ikari Shinji's piloting skills. She did not know how that was possible, certainly, but she knew that, as a scientist, she could not argue with results. And as the MAGI interpreted the data garnered in real-time, the results were, in a word, spectacular.
It all added up to one very terrifying question, though: who or what was the Third Child?
"How fast even is he?" she whispered, her eyes wide and her tone stricken.
"Compared to the simulation data NERV Germany gathered from Unit-02, I'd say three times as fast," replied Akagi, turning her attention to interpreting the data on the readout the supercomputers had produced, which was in a two-column spreadsheet format with the Third Child's performance data in the left column and the Second Child's performance data in the right for easy cross-reference.
"Three times as fast as Unit-02?!" the captain asked incredulously.
"No. Three times as fast as the Second Child," corrected the faux blonde, a wry smirk on her face as a thought crossed her mind. "What I wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall when Sōryu finds out…"
Misato couldn't help the amused grin that her face adopted when the mental image of such a moment, when her proud, brazen, and, quite honestly, insufferable former charge would be forced to confront the idea of the existence of someone who, from his first time in an EVA, so thoroughly outclassed her. "You and me both," she responded honestly, turning her attention back to the large screen that displayed a real-time feed of her current charge's progress. "How did he get so good, anyways?"
At that instant, the door to Central Dogma opened to admit the First Child (a bandage about her eye and her arm in a sling, but mobile nonetheless); in moments, she situated herself slightly apart from the Operations and Science Directors, and joined them in observing the strange, almost enigmatic Third Child's piloting trial. "He simply is," she pronounced after a few seconds of intense scrutiny. "This seems to come naturally to Ikari…to Shinji-kun."
"'Shinji-kun,' eh?" teased Misato. "I didn't think you were so informal, Rei."
"Normally, I am not," replied the First Child in her cool monotone. "However, Shinji-kun specifically requested I address him as such. His reasons for doing so were…compelling."
While Misato chuckled uneasily and suppressed the urge to shiver, Ritsuko picked up on what the First Child had just said. "You say that the Third Child is a natural, Rei?" she queried, turning her attention to the blue-haired girl. "I would be interested to hear how you came to such a conclusion."
Rei opened and closed her mouth, considering carefully how she was going to present her observations to the faux blonde; she kept her eyes fixed on the image of Unit-01, reacting and moving swiftly enough to appear as little more than a purple blur to the naked eye, while she deliberated, before speaking. "I have been shown the recordings of the Second Child's training runs–the Second Child, whose proficiency with her Evangelion arose from many long years of instruction, training and practice. That training is evident in her piloting style, and one who looks on carefully enough will notice that fact; the influences are simply too apparent to ignore. This is not the case with Shinji-kun," she explained. "There is a certain lack of predictability to his movements that precludes training–every hand-to-hand instructor, for example, will teach their students mostly kata, which introduces a certain sequence of cause and effect to appear in those students' methods of fighting. With Shinji-kun, every step and every strike is dictated by what is obviously a design of some sort, a design the end of which is nearly impossible to see until the moment when it culminates, but by the same token, that design is more an intention than a series of instructions; as such, he can and does adapt to the demands of the moment, to his enemy's response, using them against his opponent so that not only each of his motions, but also each of theirs, is another step towards the culmination of his design. He controls the battlefield through adaptation and is able to formulate viable contingencies to unforeseen events within the interval of time it takes him to react. Such a method would necessarily rely upon intuition, to a degree, as well as a certain acuity of thought and action, and as such, since neither of those prerequisites can be induced through instruction, it follows that his proficiency with Unit-01, unlike that of the Second Child with Unit-02, arises from a certain inborn aptitude for such."
Ritsuko nodded her head thoughtfully. "You know, I think you're right, Rei," she replied. "That would certainly explain his…rather unorthodox methods, if nothing else."
Rei bobbed her head in affirmation.
On the screen, the Test Type faced four variations upon the template provided by the Third Angel, Codename: 'Sachiel', generated by the MAGI; originally, there had been twenty, each one unique. The program had given the Third Child an ironically-named pellet rifle with limited ammunition with which to respond to the threat, and, of course, the progressive knife stored in the EVA's shoulder pylon. Statistically speaking, his chances for success were miniscule–a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of one percent, according to the supercomputers–and yet now, less than ten minutes into the simulation, sixteen opponents were neutralized, the pellet rifle had one quarter of its original clip left, and the prog knife's blade was saturated with computer-generated Angelic ichor. Unit-01 stood before them now, perfectly still, as if waiting for something…
In the blink of an eye, the mech was moving; it dodged and wove its way around an energy blast that was meant to catch it head-on, and its momentum carried it close enough to the simulated Angel that it was at last within arm's reach. The EVA's arm whipped out and jabbed the prog knife into the Angel's Super Solenoid Engine; then, it crouched and hopped up, its feet pressed into the alien's chest on either side of its core, and with its coiled muscles, together with some added aid from the pellet rifle, it both pulled the prog knife from the theretofore-flawless crimson sphere and propelled its entire body in the direction of its next target. Like a javelin, the mech flew through the air, and like a javelin, its point (the prog knife) pierced its target's 'heart'; the Test Type followed by pushing off of the Angel with its hands, tossing the prog knife at the second-to-last Angel whilst it flew in the opposite direction, impacting another Angel with a kick of sufficient force to shatter its core, and at that moment, the Evangelion lifted its pellet rifle and emptied what was left of its ammunition directly into the last Angel's now-exposed core, causing a critical rupture. The purple mech punctuated its elaborate, deadly maneuvers by kicking off of its opponent into a high-arcing flip, landing upright, with as much grace and poise as a gold medal-winning, Olympic-level gymnast. The detonation of one of the Angels' cores sent the prog knife flying back at the EVA on an explosive shockwave; the mech calmly snatched it out of the air and returned it to the sheath in its shoulder pylon, which then smoothly slid shut.
[NERV Central? Pilot Ikari reporting. All targets neutralized.]
The technical and operations staff on duty in Central Dogma all looked at the onscreen result, gaping open-mouthed at the spectacular carnage the Third Child had wrought; even the science director herself, whose unlit cigarette fell out of her mouth, so great was her near-horror and astonishment at how quickly the fourteen-year-old pilot had disposed of the impossible scenario she had personally designed. All those present were completely and utterly paralyzed with shock and awe–all, that is, save the First Child herself. The sound of applause thus emerged, and once it had done so, it reverberated throughout the gigantic command center, amplified by its own echoes until the area was filled with it. The staff's attention shifted to Rei, staring at her in disbelief for several long moments; then, one by one, they, too, took up the applause, and within minutes, everyone was clapping for the virtuosic pilot of Unit-01. As they did so, they began to wonder whether or not, with the Third Child on their side, the fate of mankind was really so bleak as they had thought–as Second Impact and the return of the Angels had given them cause to believe. The seed of hope had at last been planted in the fertile soil of the human mind.
Later that night, hours after he had helped Misato to bed, Shinji sat cross-legged in his sparsely-decorated, practically Spartan room, the lights off, the curtains of his windows open. His bare chest shone pale in the moonlight; his eyes were closed, and his breathing was strongly suggestive of a somnolent state, each intake and exhale of air deep and infrequent, though at regular intervals. For all intents and purposes, in fact, he seemed to be meditating, in a trance-state that was both deep and deliberate.
Within the mind of the Third Child, however, things were not quite so quiet as they appeared from without; voices whispered, murmured and shrieked in various emotions–terror, anger, sadness, condemnation–and they grew and grew until they were so loud that he could barely concentrate. His face's neutral expression slowly but surely twisted into a displeased grimace, and it was not long before he batted his arm at one of the disembodied voices, eyes still closed, in a (successful) attempt to dispel the 'thought-noise' he was picking up amidst his sifting and searching through aeon upon aeon of memory.
"You know, Shinji, this would go a lot more quickly and easily for you if you just did what we've been suggesting since day one," came a familiar female voice. The corner of Shinji's mouth quirked up in an amused smirk as recognition flared instantaneously.
"And hello to you, too, Kaede," he greeted. "Long time no see, as the humans say."
An exasperated sigh came from the room's other occupant. "Glib as ever, aren't you?" she remarked. "Though, I suppose that's a good sign, all things considered…" The sound of footsteps on the industrial-grade carpet of the floor kept Shinji appraised of his visitor's whereabouts in relation to the rest of the room; the shadow that appeared behind his eyelids when there had been moonlight moments before informed him that she had either crouched or sat in front of him. A few silent seconds later, he became aware of the sensation of being flicked in the forehead quite firmly. "Hey, Shinji! Don't ignore me!"
Luminous blood-red eyes with diamond-shaped pupils opened in response to his visitor's amiable chiding, like embers cooling, and then fading to their normal cobalt hue, the pupils dilating in concert with the changing color of the irises. Shinji took in the fact that his 'friend,' Kaede, was crouched before him, her head cocked to the side in slight consternation and a small quantity of irritation. Her crimson orbs met his, and without breaking contact, her minor frown righted itself into a subdued smile. "There you are. You know, if I had been Azula, you'd be dealing with no small amount of nerve damage right now. In fact, I daresay you'd still be twitching."
"Then I suppose I should be glad it's you, then," Shinji replied smoothly.
Kaede reached out and bopped him on the forehead with the heel of her palm. "Don't be a smartass. It's unbecoming."
Shinji barely managed to suppress a grin. "Yes, Kaede."
Her smile shifted to express a certain long-suffering exasperation. "I suppose that's the best I'll end up getting," she mused, almost to herself (no pun intended). She sat down fully and leaned back, supported by her arms, so that the moonlight bathed her shoulder-length pink hair and ivory-colored vestigial horns instead of silhouetting them as she stretched. "Oh, but it is good to have a body again–of a sort–especially considering what ended up happening to mine… Anyways, how are things going?"
A noncommittal shrug summarized his response before a single word had passed between his lips. "Well enough; we're about a week in and there've been no hiccups. We've got Shamshel, the Angel of the Morning, to deal with before we can begin in earnest, though; the first real exchange I had with Rei last time wasn't until the eve and the immediate aftermath of Ramiel and Operation Yashima, and that won't happen for about three weeks, if the pattern holds."
"And Aiko? How is she?" asked the Diclonius, sitting up while trying and failing to keep the alert, anxious tone out of her voice. This did not escape Shinji, but he refrained from commenting all the same; it would be hypocritical of him to do anything but.
"Rei seems to be fine; I did my best to speed up her recovery timetable when I visited, but there's only so much I can do. As you well know, our specialty is rending, not mending," he replied. "If she were a demon, it would be different–then, it would just be a matter of feeding her a bit of my A.T. Field."
"Well, it's about the same concept for fae," Kaede remarked. "It's a bit more time-consuming, true, but you just have to hang around her for a while…which I know from experience to be more easily said than done for us; you don't have to remind me of that."
"I wasn't going to," responded Shinji. "Thankfully, we won't have the Old One poking his head around where it doesn't belong; even if I haven't consumed you yet, I still have recollections of what Kurama was."
"Kakuzawa–or Keel Lorenz, as he's called here–will try and make a nuisance of himself regardless, though," she reminded him. "You can't let your guard down entirely."
Shinji scoffed dismissively. "Really, Kaede; that monster? I think even Zeon will more likely prove problematic than Kycilia would, even if we repeated this two hundred I remind you, Lorenz is a bona fide imbecile."
"'Pride goeth before the fall,' Shinji; the only reason we've survived this long, in case you've forgotten, is that we don't take chances," admonished the Diclonius. "We don't play with dice, because no matter what we call, no matter how high the stakes are, they never fall in our favor."
Shinji scowled and looked away. "Point taken."
Elegant, smooth, pale-skinned hands grabbed the sides of the Third Child's face and turned it back so that Kaede's crimson eyes could fix upon his with an intensity any normal human would find frightening. "We need to take this seriously, Shinji–we're doing this for Aiko, remember?"
The scowl morphed into a deadly glare, pupils contracted to diamonds, and cobalt eyes glowed scarlet once more. "You think I could forget? Everything we have ever done has been for her: Nunnally, Nagato, Mizore, Aiko, Artesia, Origami, Liara, Mina, Maka, Meetra, Valerie, Yin, Rei–it matters not which form–for her, there is no price too high. I remember at least as well as you do, Kaede, and right now, I am as devoted as you are to proving that what Larkhill taught us is nothing but a pressure-cooker of lies. Do not think to question my resolve!"
Kaede's gaze softened to a degree that was almost apologetic. "I wouldn't dream of it; I just…" She looked away as her voice broke, a single tear running down her cheek.
Shinji's eyes resumed their normal form as his glare, too, softened, until it was a glare no longer; he reached up and took her hands at the sides of his face and slowly pulled them off, then reached out and wiped away the tear, bringing her attention back to him. "I know, Kaede; I know. And I think I'll take your advice and consume you; we need to be of one mind on this if we are to have any hope of success."
The strange eyes that had so often been the last thing a human being ever saw, so full of emptiness, disdain and loathing, now displayed the full measure of pain that had forged such an embittered mindset–the emotional vulnerability of a little girl who had endured so much cruelty from such a young age, as they all had; she threw her arms around Shinji suddenly, pulling them into a tight embrace. "Just…promise me, Shinji; promise me that once this is done, it'll be over…" she pleaded desperately, trying not to sob.
"I promise, Kaede; after all, even the worst of nightmares must eventually end," he replied soothingly. He looked down at his friend to see her grateful eyes, shimmering with unshed tears. "And like the worst of nightmares, our long aeons of torment, wandering in this purgatory, are about to finally come to a close."
She nodded slowly, her countenance growing steely as she gathered her strength; then, she buried her head into his chest, and began to glow. It flared for an instant, filling the room with hues more varied, vivid and beauteous than the famed aurora borealis, before dimming once more, and once it had dimmed, the projection of the soul–the persona, the memories–of Kaede, Queen of the Diclonii, was gone.
Shinji shuddered at the sensation of consuming himself, closing his eyes and concentrating as he chanted, "In the sea without lees standeth the bird of Hermes; eating his wings variable, and maketh himself yet full stable. When all his feathers be from him gone, he standeth still here as a stone. Here is now both white and red, and all so the stone to quicken the dead; all and some without fable, both hard and soft and malleable. Understand now well and right, and thank you, God, of this sight…" His eyes slowly opened, and he gazed out into the vastness of eternity unimpressed, before speaking the last line of his arcane prayer:
"The bird of Hermes is my name, eating my wings to make me tame."
