STAVE
Commala-come-come
There's a young man with a gun.
Young man lost his honey
When she took it on the run.
Chapter 1: Hoth
The towers of Tokyo-3 looked like blades of light impaling the ground with the sun further powering them.
The Jaws of God, Leliel, was coming; but not swiftly, the angel in charge of night knew that it had all the time it needed. Its black-and-white shadow floated meters above the ground, confusing the high and mighty Lilum. Its true self, a hole in the universe, was still furled outside of this dimension. But Leliel wished to unfold her dark glory to the humans…
And soon…
In NERV headquarters, red lights were flashing, klaxons were blaring, emergency announcements were being declared to the general public, and the media was again being censored. In short, everyone who had half a brain knew that an angel attack was happening or about to happen.
Even Misato, a purple-haired officer, who ran into the bridge room with her hand still on a cell phone that gave her up-to-the-second information on what they knew about the angel, which was not much, knew that.
"You're late," Ritsuko deadpanned. She was a scientist who bleached her hair blond because she got her natural hair color from her mother, who she didn't like.
"Sorry! I got held up at the intersection at ninth and eleventh again." Misato then turned to one of the bunnies, Matoko and nearly yelled, "What was the observation post doing?"
"They didn't detect anything! It suddenly appeared above us!"
The angel gave the illusion of hearing this-as it stopped then. If Misato had been asked right then what she thought the angel was doing, she would have said sniffing. Every angel thus far had apparently searched for something, why would that pattern stop now?
"Pattern orange! No AT-field detected!"
"Is this a new kind of angel?" Ritsuko wondered aloud, unfortunately, the answer was yes. This one was the first one to work for something "higher" than that reality, probably even higher than God...
Misato glowered at the monitor showing the black and white orb then looked back up at Gendo Ikari and Kouzou Futsiuki who were the real commanders of NERV, Gendo nodded. "Send out the Eva's," Misato ordered.
Shinji Ikari peered warily between buildings at the angel's orb through the eyes of the mech he piloted, Eva Unit-1. He gripped a pistol tightly in his hands, fingers interwoven on the Eva-sized gun.
He was suddenly hit by a wide dizzy sensation, as if he had just looked down a yawning abyss. It was as if this world had been either tailor-made for him, or it had been made for something else and he was just thrown in as an afterthought. It made the universe seem thin, translucent, dim even; a thing made by bleach-weakened fabric.
The third child shook his head to clear it; it had to have been a backwash in the synchronization with the Evangelion, at least he hoped so. He felt as if he had done this before. And the questions Where am I? and When is this? still reverberated through his head.
The When? scared him especially.
Commala-come-come, the journey's just begun.
"Are you okay Shinji?" Dr. Akagi's concerned voice asked over the speakers.
Puzzled, he answered, "Yes I am… Why do you ask?"
"Our sensors said that you were dead for a few seconds, we're going to have to check them when you come back."
The angel was still going slowly, making it's strange whirring, purring sound. You could almost hear suspenseful piano music playing in the background if you had an overactive imagination.
"Ayanami, Asuka, are you in position?" he asked loud enough for the microphone in the cockpit to pick up.
"Not yet," said the one know as Rei, an enigmatic blue-haired young girl who had no past, no present, and no future beyond NERV. Shinji was lucky to get that much out of her.
"Are you insane? I can't move that fast!" screeched Asuka, was lucky to get that little out of the redhead. "Damnit, I'm out of slack," she said as she disconnected the umbilical cable in her back, letting it fall while retro rockets slowed its descent, then she replaced her power cable from a cable lift that was closer to the angel.
"Then I'll have to do it myself," Shinji whispered to himself; normally Shinji would have waited for his fellow paradoxical pilots to get in position, but he had recently gotten the highest synch score on his synchronization test and felt, for lack of a better word, macho, perfect Darwin Award material in other words. He whipped around the corner of the building he had been hiding behind and fired three shots into the orb… The universe then decided that since Shinji's head had been raised too much so it must be beaten back down.
"It disappeared?" asked an astonished Ritsuko as the bullets that should have slammed into the angel instead went through nothing as the sphere faded into nothingness.
Red letters then appeared on Makoto's screen, along with a Genome Indication Screen, 12th Angel, Blood Type Blue…
A thin black shape appeared directly underneath Unit-1 and spread for several city blocks, and started to suck him into itself. Shinji clawed at the buildings around him, like a drowning man would a piece of flotsam, but they were sinking too. One building nearly fell on top of him because his scrabbling toppled it towards him. "MISATO!" he started screaming at the top of his LCL crammed lungs. He fired several times into the pitch-colored lake with no result.
The black shape kept sucking him in, like quicksand. It seemed to greet the sinking EVA in fierce, dark hug.
Asuka, in Unit-02, ran over to help… but she already knew that it was too late.
When, Shinji had sunk to about waist height he chunked the handgun to Rei in Unit-00, he didn't know why he did that- he just felt compelled to.
Asuka ran up to the black lake, but she knew that she would not be able to reach him. "SHINJI YOU IDIOT!" she screeched, the concern barely hidden in her voice, "QUIT TRYING TO SHOW OFF!"
Shinji slowly slipped under, grasping now at non-existent handholds in the air. His right arm went under last, The Lady of the Lake's hand reaching for Excalibur. But a magic sword didn't come…
His vision could only detect a thick pulsing blackness, but his mind did not register his blindness as chimes that reverberated through his head and made it ache overwhelmed him. Also the strong, pungent, smell of burning metal and the spiciness of onions flooded his nose, making it feel like water.
Then everything just snapped off, Shinji had fallen into unconscious.
If he had been able to see, even through the chimes and the smell, he would have seen an infinite gray universe with untold trillions of black, ironwood doors just floating around.
The doors were all locked, save one. That door opened wide and floated in front of Unit-1, showing an epic battle of life and death on snow-swept plains, fought with monstrous machines and beams of lit plasma.
Shinji came to on a soft bench that was vibrating and rocking rythmatically. He could hear a railroad crossing siren fade in and out as wherever he was passed by it.
He opened his eyes and, almost immediately, closed them again. His eyes had been battered by a painful bright orange light. He opened them up again and sat up, massaging his pounding head that still had those awful chimes bouncing off in it.
At first, Shinji did not see the black figure in front of him- it was more like a person's shadow than anything else- when he did see it he jumped nervously.
"Who are you?" he asked, not really believing the figure would answer.
"I am that which took you within myself, but something has changed. What I meant to do for myself is now being done for another. The angel, now the slave for one far more powerful."
"What change do you mean? What happened?"
"The red, berserker. The red."
The being didn't explain, it's hand lifted and pointed towards Shinji. He saw with mounting fear that the black being's shadow on the ground was a chaotic mix of black and white raised lines that bulged outwards. That's why I couldn't shoot the angel! Shinji realized, you can't hurt anything through its shadow!
A woman's arms then wrapped around his neck, Sleep, her voice said, Sleep so that I may protect you…
"No!" Shinji gasped, "Don't go, don't leave me…"
Alone was what he was going to say; but he was too late- the woman had left, and he had drifted to the buzzing bliss of unconsciousness.
Oblivion overtook him.
If he had been conscious, he would have seen the other doors float around him like vultures around a carrion feast. The door that had opened to show the frozen battle with weapons of flight and light chased these doors away, as if the Eva had already been claimed to a superior predator.
All the other doors backed away from the dominant, open door; and that door widened to receive and swallow the boy and the Evangelion into its hungry maw.
The battle of Hoth raged; all around was a fierce and bloody battle that sent a weak rebellion fleeing from an evil empire. Rebel infantry units were running from advancing Imperial walkers when a flash of violent energy deposited Unit-1 right between the two forces. Ice thrown up from the burst turned into deadly daggers on the way down, striking down onto the troops with no bias. The Evangelion's armor cracked when it touched the cold air through the shock of such a temperature shift. An AT-AT that was too close to the blast was thrown back, destroyed because of the tremendous output of energy. Another walker, maybe for vengeance or maybe out of surprise, fired at the EVA.
The lasers bounced off into the air against a force field made of concentric orange hexagons. The Eva's eyes lit up as it roared. Its hands rose up and pulled the amethyst armored being out of the hole the explosion had created, and it charged the offending AT-AT on all fours. Shedding broken pieces of armor and roaring like a giant lion.
On the other side of the battlefield, Darth Vader's shuttle landed in the packed ice created by a snowdrift that had solidified after unknown centuries of blizzards and Tauntaun migrations, a few of the wild beasts had been there recently and had scampered off when the battle had begun.
He crested the hill before him just in time to see a purple humanoid-walker grab the front legs of an AT-AT and flip it over onto its back. Then the purple walker started to pound away at the belly of the Imperial walker with its two fists being flung over its horned head and then crashing back down like a huge wrecking ball. The luckless troopers inside tried to evacuate, but the reactor was breached and it exploded. As soon as the blossom of fire wilted, Vader connected with the commander of the ground units, "Either destroy or capture the enemy walker."
"Yes sir."
Every walker and unit in range stopped firing at the Rebels and their fleeing ships and instead focused on the purple thing. It roared, showing its teeth; charged one way, stopped, and then charged in another as if it was unsure of where to go. All the while, those hexagons kept it safe from any harm.
But the hexagonal field was weakening. It now rippled with every laser blast, and then crinkled, than finally shattered with a somehow organic crash.
Then the lasers started to actually hit the unknown walker, which flinched and jerked like a man being shot with bullets. It finally fell over and the Imperial troops stopped firing at it.
Vader looked down at the thing from his vantage point, "Impressive… Most Impressive," was all he could say.
RESPONSE
Commala-come-come!
She took it on the run!
Left her baby lonely but
Her baby ain't done.
