An EVA Pilot in Greyhawk
Chapter 1
Change of Scenery / How Do I Level Up?
Shinji Ikari never knew how he managed to get to the forest floor. More by instinct than intention, he coughed out a large amount of LCL out of his lungs. He turned face up, and fell asleep, surrounded by trees, bushes and grass.
Hours later, he began to awake, a little. The first thing he noticed was something on his chest. It was more or less small, about the size of a cat. A big one. Half asleep, he tried to open his eyes to see what it was. Before him he saw a female face. It was a beautiful face, in fact. Big blue eyes, button nose, long blond hair. Her mischievious expression reminded him of Misato, in her most playful moments. He was sure he was dreaming.
He lay his head down again, ready to go back to his dreams. He was about to turn around to get more confortable when he heard a female voice, full of joy. "Juuuus! Look what I found! Can we keep him?"
Shinji felt a shadow covering his face, he half opened his eyes, and saw a dark silhouette. It belonged to a man, a really big man; with very broad shoulders, and arms that seemed to have muscles over the muscles.
Somehow, he heard a voice inside his head, "Hi!", it came with a couple of panting noises and something that sounded like a big dog wagging its tail.
He heard an annoyed sigh, and then a deep, gravelly voice. "Escalla, we have work to do. We can take him to the next town and look for his family there."
The pilot felt a pair of strong hands lifting him with care. "Hmm... This kid is not from around here. I haven't seen this shade of skin, and his clothes are very strange."
"Hey, boy! You think he might have something to do with the big metal dummy sprawled over half the hill? He might be a warlock from far away, one of those who have their own djinns to grant them wishes." This new voice was kinda shrill, and came from near the ground.
Another annoyed sigh preceded the answer. "Polk, we will ask him later. First, lets take him to our camp. And, Escalla? Don't even think of picking his pockets. We have talked about that. Several times."
"He doesn't even have any... erm... No, of course not, Jus."
Shinji didn't awake for a while. Spending twelve hours in progressively contaminated LCL wasn't the best recipe for a restful sleep.
Finally, several hours later, Shunji awoke, wrapped in a rough blanket. Somewhere behind him, he heard a satisfied purring. The sound was very loud.
He looked around slowly, hoping his plugsuit wouldn't squeak. At last, he found the origin of the purring, silhouetted by the light of the rising sun. It seemed to be a gigantic lion. It was bigger than a horse! Shinji could see how its shoulders and head moved.
The boy blanched like a paper. Carefully, he got rid of the blanket, and began crawling backwards, getting away from the lion, trying to not make any noise.
He bumped against something hard and very solid. A tree?, no, it was a rock. Shinji changed course slowly, going around the obstacle.
A female voice, that brought to his memory the sternest teacher he had ever had in elementary school, interrupted his escape attempt. "Sir? I think our young guest has awoken."
Shinji froze on his tracks. He was trying to choose a direction to flee, when a powerful hand grabbed the life support pack of his plugsuit, lifting him clear off the ground; to then put him easily on the groung, at the other side of the man.
He found himself sitting on the ground, facing a huge man, who looked like a brutal fighter, his head was shaven clean, but some stubble had starter to show. He wore a black suit of armor. The man was sitting peacefully on a rock. He had a lustrous black pelt over his knees; it looked like the skin of a large dog. Over the rock rested a long sword, in a black leather scabbard. Its pommel was shaped like an animal's skull, but Shinji wasn't sure of what animal, exactly.
The man measured Shinji with a long stare. A few seconds later, he took a stiff bristled brush, and began to pass it along the pelt. A satisfied pant filled the air.
It took Shinji a few seconds to realize the panting noise came from the pelt! The canine head even showed its tongue lolling, and was wagging its tail!
"We are very far away from the main roads, young man. How did you came here? Were you with a caravan?" Somehow, the man's voice was a bit familiar, but Shinji couldn't place it.
"Er... No... I don't know how I... I don't even know where 'here' is, sir." Shinji crossed his arms, making the plugsuit squeak. He froze for a second, seeing the lion still was sittingin the same place. Slowly, Shinji raised a hand, and shily, he pointed to a point behind the big man, mouthing, "There's a lion back there!"
The man kept on brushing the pelt. "Don't worry, she won't harm you. She's a friend of ours." Turning his head to the right, he called. "Enid, the boy is awake."
The lion, or lioness, according to the man, stood up with grace and elegance. Shinji realized then it wasn't a lion; well, in part, but it also had wings, and a woman's head. Frankly, it was a pretty nice face, with big brown eyes and freckles over her delicate nose. Her mane was braided with little beads. On her right paw she held something like a feather, or maybe a... what was the name..? ah, a quill! Yes, it was a writing quill. Next to her rested a large inkpot, and a little desk, over wich he could see a... was that a scroll? With amazing precision, she put the quill down in the inkpot.
The sphinx walked to them, she looked a little shy. She sat about a meter and a half to the right of the man, and put a paw over her chest, saying, "Hi! Pleased to meet you. My name is Enid." Her voice was almost musical.
"Ah... Ik-k-kari, Shinji."
The big man put the brush away, examining the pelt's shine. "I am the Justicar; this," he patted the pelt's head, "is Cinders." The eyes light up, and the tail beat increased. Shinji heard a voice inside his head. "Hi! Cinders likes your smell. Friend?"
"Er... Yes?"
The tail wagged faster. "Friend!"
"And this," to Shinji's alarm, the big man drew the sword out, and held it up. The sword shone for a second, with a blue-white light. Almost like a neon tube, "is Benelux."
Another voice sounded inside Shinji's head. "Well met, young man. I expect you to correspond to the hospitality you have received in a proper manner."
Yep, just like his teacher. "Y-yes, M'am..."
The Justicar put the sword back in the scabbard, leaving both in easy reach of his hand, and after putting an old half-helmet, he set Cinders over his shaven head and tied his front paws in a knot, securing the pelt.
"The others went to get breakfast. They will come back shortly." The Justicar rose in a fluid movement. Shinji remembered a documentary about the big animals that went extinct shortly before, or around Second Impact, and the Justicar made him think of an impressive black panther; huge, powerful, silent; and above all, lethal. With the ease of long practice, the Justicar put branches, sticks and dried leaves in a kind of cone, Shinji remembered that Kensuke had prepared his campfire in a similar way. Carefully, the big man selected a stick, and put it in front of Cinders's maw. A thin flame came out of his nostrils, setting fire to the stick. The Justicar used it to start the campfire.
"Cinders helps." He heard that voice in his head. The pelt was smiling like a piranha.
Shinji knew himself a coward, but somehow, he didn't felt threatened; although the big man surely was able to break him in two without any effort.
"What were you doing in the forest?" The Justicar didn't waste anytime beating around the bush. While he waited for Shinji's answer, he started to sew a patch on an old looking black leather glove.
"I don't know how I came here, wherever it is. The last thing I remember was falling in the Angel, having some very weird dreams, and then I woke up, here."
The big guy's eyes rose, curious. "An Angel? What type?"
Shinji tried to explain as best as he could, but words were failing him, he waved his arms trying to convey something he didn't really know how to describe. "It was really weird. At first it looked like a big sphere covered with black and white stripes, but that was actually the Angel's shadow, while what we thought was the shadow was actually," he gulped, feeling the Justicar's pitilesss eyes measuring him. "it was actually the Angel. Unit-01 fell inside it as if it was some kind of quicksand. I couldn't get out! Several hours passed. I think I fell asleep and had a nightmare. Or something."
"Doesn't sound like any type of Angel I've heard about." The Justicar shrugged. "Cinders?"
"Cinders not know."
"Benelux?"
"I agree with the hellhound. I don't know every type of Angel that exists, even having being made in the Positive Matter Plane, I'm hardly familiar with all types of Angel in existance."
A wheezing, mocking laughter made itself heard. "Sword not know."
Somehow Benelux managed to snort her indignation.
"Enough." The Justicar sounded annoyed, as if those arguments were common thing. He examined the repaired glove carefully, and put needle and thread back in the backpack. He set his elbows over his knees, staring at Shinji. "Unit One is about 40 meters high, and has purple armor?"
"Er, yes, sir."
"Are you some kind of wizard or sorcerer?"
"N-no. I'm just a pilot."
The Justicar rubbed his face with one hand. "Tell me about your country. I have the suspicion you are much more lost than I had thought." He rummaged in his backpack, and extracted a piece of jerky. He cut it in half with a mean looking knife, and threw the bigger piece at Shinji.
Enid approached Shinji, the boy felt the impulse to move away, but stopped himself. The sphinx didn't look threatening in any way. Slowly, she raised a paw, and softly put it over the boy's shoulder. "Will you let me write what you tell us?"
Shinji nodded, unsure of what else to do.
The rest of the group came back just as Enid had placed her portable desk at her satisfaction, with a blank book, her inkpot and several quills.
At first, Shinji thought Polk was the local equivalent to Pen-Pen. Especially once he saw the badger drink from a whisky jug.
At finding out Escalla was a faerie princess, Shinji blushed completely red, he stood, and bowed as deeply as he was physically able. "I-I-m s-sorry, Your Majesty! I didn't know! I-I'm sorry."
Escalla pirouetted in the air, with a flying bow. Magnanimously, she smiled at Shinji. "You are forgiven. But don't ever forget it!"
Jus pinched the bridge of his nose. Escalla would be insufferable the rest of the day. Meanwhile, Henry the soldier was busy cleaning the fishes they had brought back from the river and smiled, remembering he had done almost the same thing when he met the group.
Polk stoppered his jug, and brought out a little notebook and a pencil. He tapped it twice against the notebook. "Okay, kid. I need to know your warlock level back in your country, and how many djinns you have, and all that."
"Polk, for the last time, the kid is NOT a wizard, a sorcerer, a warlock or anything like that. This is way more complicated."
"Then he must be a great hero, if he was able to tame that monster, you should learn from him, boy. You should be a proper hero, just like I've been trying to teach you." Polk would put something impressive in his chronicles, and there was not a single power, human or divine, able to persuade him not to.
The hero monicker was very uncomfortable for Shinji. "... No... I'm just... a pilot..." He wished he could disappear into the ground.
"Start at the beginning, Ikari." The Justicar passed a silent order to Cinders. It was very rare somebody could manage to deceive the hellhound. Cinders's ears stood on attention, listening carefully to every word the boy said.
Henry speared the fishes through with long branches, which he then stuck in the floor next to the fire, leaving the fishes at the right height for cooking. He went to the others, and sat in the perfect place to complement the Justicar's awareness of the environment.
Shinji told his story, although he had to stop frequently to explain how some thing or another worked, to give his tale a context. Benelux suggested that both Shinji and Unit-01 came from another Prime Material Plane, one where technology had replaced magic as the main moving force of human civilization.
Escalla held the Justicar's hand in her tiny fingers. She had recognized how the big guy's righteous fury grew as he listened to the long letany of abuses the boy had been subjected to. Shinji was alarmed when he realized Jus seemed to be chewing the muscles of his own jaw.
Finally, Shinji told about the 12th Angel's attack.
Escalla held on tightly to Jus' hand, and without releasing it, she stared at Shinji's eyes. "Your father is a really lucky man."
Shinji had no idea what the faerie meant, until she added. "Doubly lucky. He is far from Jus' reach, for one."
A dangerous look spread through Escalla's delicate features. "But especially, he's out of my reach." The faerie broke eye contact, and put her hand in the wand she carried in her belt. A significant gesture for the party, although at the moment, Shinji had no idea of exactly what Escalla was able to do with her liche staff and her ice wand.
Nor just how devilishly and creatively nasty the faerie could be when angered enough.
Suddenly, Escalla took flight. "Enough ennui!" She flew around the boy, and stopped next to him, slapping his shoulder with more force than Shinji could have guessed at. "Now you are here! Far away from that... that... Commander." The word sounded like poison as it came out of her delicate lips. She turned towards her lover. "Jus, we cannot leave this kid alone."
"Nope. This world has it's fair amount of dangers, and Ikari doesn't know them."
"Take heart, Ikari." Escalla grabbed Shinji's shoulder, and her hand moved across the horizon in a gracefull movement. "You have a whole new world to explore! And us to help you!"
Everybody nodded their agreement at once.
"I... I don't know what to do..."
Henry stood up, and a few seconds later, he came back with the cooked fishes. "First, lets eat. Next we have to get you proper clothes." Shinji looked down at his plugsuit, and blushed.
The Justicar stood up. He put a dagger in Shinji's hands; and with another, he marked two slashes in the trunk of an old tree. "Show me how you fight. Imagine that tree is one of those Angels."
Shinji weighted the dagger tentatively, and attacked clumsily. He was used to compensate using the mass and strength of Unit-01. Fighting with his own two hands was completely alien to him. Also, Polk's advice didn't help him at all. "Keep your guard up, kid! Attack when your enemy is looking at you in the eye!"
"Polk. Shut. Up." Jus growled at the badger.
Escalla sat on the Justicar's shoulder, shooking her head. "It's gonna be a long training, right, Jus?"
The big man nodded gravely. "His technique isn't good enough to fight off a drunken one-legged goblin."
"Enough, Ikari." Shinji stopped, he had barely been able to make some slight scratches on the tree's bark. The Justicar took the dagger from Shinji's hands, and passed it to Henry.
"Watch carefully, Ikari. Henry has some training as a fighter."
Henry adjusted his grip on the dagger's handle, changed his weight from one foot to the other, and scored four deep gashes on the bark, finishing by sticking the point of the dagger into the tree, about one inch of steel penetrated.
Jus pulled the dagger out. "Half the combat is recognizing the right moment to defend and when to attack. The rest is attacking without hesitation, taking advantage of any mistake the enemy makes."
Polk added. "You must fight fair, kid, to be a true hero!" Somethow, the badger managed to smile.
"Polk, go check if the mule is hungry." The badger huffed his indignation, but obeyed. Jus continued his lesson. "Fighting fair is for show-offs, When your life, or your friends' lives are in danger, fighting fairly is idiotic. Fight to win, by any means at your reach."
Shinji remembered something Misato had said back during his second fight alongside Asuka. "We're fighting for our lives, Asuka. The last thing we want to do is give the Angels a fair fight." That or something close.
"Use any advantage you can get to win, know your enemy; if given half a chance, prepare the battle in your favor. And always attack from an unexpected angle." Shinji barely heard a whooshing sound, and the dagger was deeply stuck in the tree. Almost three inches had gone into the bark! The Justicar had moved so fast he hadn't even seen it!
Shinji's jaw dropped. "Now, eat." Jus pulled the dagger out, by moving it back and forth until it was released from its place. He put the dagger back in its place.
The deep growl of the Justicar argued with Escalla's musical voice. "I think we need some help with this. And it will probably finish our credit with Morag."
"Ha! I bet you we get some credit instead!"
Shinji was sitting next to Enid, looking while Jus and Escalla argued about what to do with Unit-01. In the meanwhile, Henry and Polk picked up camp, storing everything in Polk's wagon.
Diplomathically, Enid sniffed the air. "Ah... Ikari... No offense, but I think that... LCL, you said? I think it..."
Shinji's face went red as a tomato, realizing that the LCL had dried on his plugsuit, face and hair, and it was beginning to decompose. He sniffed his fingers, and wrinkled his nose in disgust. "I-I'm sorry. I forgot. Is there somewhere I can wash and clean my clothes?"
"Sure, I'll take you there. Open that box and bring soap and a towel. I'll tell the others to wait for us here."
Shinji obeyed, and for the first time he read the banner that proudly hung from the wagon's side. "Transport to Advencher". He looked at the sphinx, who simply shrugged, guessing at the cause of his quering look.
A few minutes later, Shinji stood under a small waterfall, trembling under the cold water, but very relieved to be able to rid hinself of the dried LCL. The soap was the kind the Justicar prefered; it made its job, without any extras like perfume. Shinji started by washing himself still wearing the plugsuit, once he thought it was clean enough, he took it off, and hung it from a close branche to let it dry while he took a shower. Enid stood on guard at a discrete distance, humming a song. The beat was contagious, and Shinji joined his voice to the sphinx's. At first, he was a bit shy, but soon both were singing happily.
Once clean, Shinji used the towel, rubbing his skin with the rough cloth, and put the plugsuit back on. "Better?" he asked Enid.
Enid smiled at him, "Much better!"
When they joined back with the party, they found Jus and Escalla arguing with a crystall ball over a metal tripod.
Inside the crystall ball, they could see a female face, stern and serious. She looked like a librarian, she even had the hair in a bun and half-moon eyeglasses. The woman seemed annoyed.
"Forty meters? And what do you expect me to do with a forty meters high golem?"
"Nothing! Don't do anything with it! We just want you to keep it in a safe place while we decide what to do with it. And it's not a golem. I just said it is somewhat like a golem. It is something else."
The woman huffed, blowing a stubborn strand of hair from her right eye. Shinji guessed that was Morag.
The Justicar added, "It could be dangerous. According to its owner, that thing can flatten a whole city without much trouble, I won't leave something like that lying around where anybody could find it."
"Okay. Okay. Enough of that. I'll have to go check it in person." Morag took her eyeglasses off, pinching the bridge of her nose. When she opened her eyes again, she realized Shinji was there. "That's the owner? Where did he find the control artifact?"
The Justicar and Escalla turned towards Shinji, Jus kept on talking. "Yes, that's the owner." Shinji raised a hand, about to say that he wasn't the actual owner of Unit-01, but he noticed Escalla's frenetic negative gestures.
"Er, yes M'am. I am Ikari, Shinji. I came here with Unit-01, although I don't know exactly how."
"Very well, Ikari. Don't go anywhare. I need to wrap up some things here. I'll be there in... about forty minutes."
"Thanks, friend!" Escalla smiled at the crystal ball.
The image in the sphere disappeared. Escalla took flight and flew once around Shinji. "Okay, no worries. Morag owes us some favors, and I'm sure if somebody knows how to take your Eva-In-Helion out of this forest, it's Morag."
Using a branch, Jus began to draw on the dirt. It was very rough, but still understandable. "Morag is a Marilith, a type of demon." Seeing Shinji's expression, Jus added. "She is a renegade. Some time ago, we helped each other with some... problems." The drawing looked like a combination of woman and snake, with six arms.
Escalla examined the drawing with critical eye, and tsked. "Leave this in my able hands, honey." To Shinji's amazement, the faerie shapeshifted into a miniature version of Jus' drawing. "Of course, you have to remember Morag is much bigger, but this is how she looks."
"I-I see."
Just as Escalla had showed him, Morag was exactly as promised, but Shinji wasn't really prepared for Morag's size. The Marilith appeared in a flash, armed with several strange artifacts, a clipboard and a pencil.
Morag wasn't prepared either for Unit-01's sheer size...
"Again, from the beginning. This... thing... is an artificial humanoid." Shinji nodded.
"You are the pilot." Shinji nodded again.
"It has no energy left to move." Another nod.
"It runs on electricity, from an internal deposit." Another one.
Morag scribbled something on her clipboard. "You sit inside it to control it. And you feel what it happens to is as if it had happened to you." More nodding from Shinji.
"In a metal capsule inserted into its back. That one." Morag pointed at the plug. Another nod.
"That fills itself with a liquid that smells like blood." Shinji nodded once more.
"Both of you were swallowed by a weird creature nicknamed an 'Angel'" One more.
"And you woke up here, in the middle of the forest." While Shinji reiterated his nodding, the Marilith put a strange artifact on Unit-01's leg. Several annoying noises were heard. Morag put another annotation on his clipboard.
"I get it. Go with the others. I will check this... EVA."
Shinji sat on a fallen tree, while Morag examined Unit-01. One hour later, the snake-woman joined back with the party, wrapping her tail on another tree, without even noticing she had done so.
"I'm gonna need some help to move this thing back to my tower. The dry place and some stasis spells will keep it in working order. But," hearing this, Jus and Escalla looked at each other, bracing themselves for the cost. Morag continued. "I need you to replace the physical components for the spells. And I also want Ikari to give me something from his world." A hungry look crossed her face, making Shinji feel a chill.
Giving Morag what she wanted was quite problematic. In the whole of the Flanaess there was nothing close to the cello. It took several days to make something even remotely close to the instrument. Originally, Morag asked for some poems or romantic literature from Earth, but Shinji never had been any good with literature, and poetry was completely out of his ken.
By then, Morag and a group of minor demons under her control, that put a series of symbols and fetishes around Unit-01, and after a whole day of magical procedures, managed to create a dimensional portal big enough to displace Unit-01 into a pocket dimension, where Morag's Tower was located.
Satisfied, the snake-woman checked an annotation on her clipboard, and put the quill behind her right ear. "As part of my conditions, I want to check any emanations from the EVA. If that thing is unstable, IN ANY WAY OR FORM, I'll banish it from my home, is that clear?"
Escalla nodded tiredly, it was late and she needed her beauty sleep. Jus wrapped her in a blanket. The faerie yawned like a bear about to hibernate, and snuggled in the blanket. Immediately she began to make squirrel-like noises.
"Now, the good news," Morag crossed one last item from her clipboard, and snapped it close with satisfaction. "all auguries point at that, in five years, the effect that brought you and the EVA to this Material Plane will dissipate by itself. And you'll go back to your home dimension with no side effects. I don't think there will have passed more than a few hours."
"WHAAAAT?" Escalla paractically teleported to grab Morag's gold necklace. An impressive feat for someone who had been deeply sleep half a second before.
Morag tried to lean back before answering. "I said Ikari and his monster will go back home in five years."
"Jus! Jus! We can't allow that!"
Carefully, the Justicar pried Escalla's fingers off her prey. "Morag, is there any way to stop that?"
"No!" Jus looked behind him. Shinji had stood up. Dressed in local clothes, he looked like any other teenager in the Flanaess, except for the look in his eyes. It was one the Justicar knew very well. The look of a child who has been forced to grow up too fast. "I must go back, Unit-01 must defend my world. And I am the only one who can pilot it."
Author's Notes
This story came to me after rereading one of my favorite stories, the Justicar and Escalla trilogy, by Paul Kidd. It is part of the Greyhawk novels based on classic Dungeons and Dragons modules. The trilogy follows the group through three adventures, White Plume Mountain (1999), a self contained story; later followed by Descent into the Depths of the Earth (1999), and Queen of the Demonweb Pits (2001).
There were also two whort stories, published in Dragon Magazine, 'By the Job' (Dragon Magazine Issue 271) is a prequel, with the first encounter of Jus and Cinders, while the other, 'The Keoland Blues' (Dragon Magazine Issue 278) bridges WPM and DitDotE.
The saga is great fun, Jus simply doesn't have any time nor patience to engage in traditional heroic behavior. He does the job in the fastest and most efficient way. Preferably by attacking with surprise, from the back, and without giving the oposition any chance to retaliate. That doesn't mean he's any slouch in combat, quite the contrary! Jus is a finely tuned and very brutal killing machine. And his attitude lets him face and defeat enemies way over his actual level (the group stats were also published in Dragon Magazine, issue 290).
On the other hand, Escalla is the perfect foil to Jus. She's vain, smug, delicate, mischievious, a shameless thief and flirt. If you can think of a way to scam the bad guys and take advantage of them (in any way), Escalla has already thought of it, and discarded the plan because it wasn't fun enough. Her scams and improvised plans are incredibly fun to read.
The novels are only available in digital form now, or as audiobooks. I highly reccomend them! Especially if you are a player in a D&D group, or a DM.
BTW, I would like to actually make Shinji's PC Sheet. I haven't found the time to do it, especially considering that it would have to be easily converted from D&D to D20 Modern to reflect the fact that he would level up in a D&D class first; and later, turn that experience to his advantage back in Tokyo-3.
Although, interestingly, I think the Pathfinder rules would work better for what I'd like to do with Shinji and Unit-01.