The Ghost of Evangelion – Layer i
A Neon Genesis Evangelion/Ghost in the Shell crossover

Present day, present time
The CEO of the Earth Coincidence Control Office, Gendo Ikari, sat with folded hands in the safety of his office, letting trichromatic laser light refract against his glasses, painting red, green and blue afterimages on his retina, forming a coherent, consensual hallucination in his mind of a dark room illuminated only by those who shared this hallucination with him.

There was a tense silence hanging in the imaginary room, only waiting to be broken – as it was:

"You handed a demigod over to your son, Ikari..." a man illuminated by a yellow haze prompted. His dissatisfaction and the implications of nepotism were clear. Ironic, considering that nepotism was one of the many tools IGIGI used to watch and affect, and only affect, not control, or so they claimed, the world. They were, of course, lying.

"It was necessary to stop the first Rakbu," Gendo replied, not even breaking eye-contact with some imagined point in the air somewhere above his desk, looking simultaneously at all the IGIGI heads and none of them at all.

"Isimud has always been faithful to Enki," a sickly green man, due to the luminescent cloud of light that surrounded him, retorted "It should not have been a threat at all,"

"Yet you managed to wreck two Units," a man in a dark blue shade joined in, "and significant parts of the city, I might add," although they all knew none of them cared about that.

"Gentlemen," Gendo began his explanation, "The circumstances affected the situation. Despite the name, ECCO cannot control even a significant fraction of all the coincidences on Earth," Still, it controlled more than IGIGI were aware of...

"This is irrelevant," Lorenz Kiel interrupted. "Remember that the Human Acceleration Project is your primary duty."

"Of course," Gendo replied. Had he not devoted every waking moment of his life the past 12 years to realizing the Human Acceleration Project? He had forgone his son. He had, regretfully, neglected Rei. He had betrayed his love to his beloved Yui twice with the Akagi family, and it was his devotion they questioned? It was his loyalty they should question (they most certainly did, he knew) not his devotion; the god they were to create with their own hands should know he was devoted.

"Do not think you are not expendable. There are others," Blue spoke harshly, as always.

"Yes, how does the construction of Dilmun go?" Gendo asked, trying to suppress a smirk "Please send my regards to Ms Avalon," he added, as an afterthought.

"Another woman you are planning to seduce, Ikari?" Red joked. "Our business with AvalonCorp is hardly the subject of this meeting; the Acceleration Project is," he said, leaning forwards for emphasis.

"We will consider your budget proposal. The committee will take over now."

The figures disappeared. All but one; Kiel still remained.

"You can't go back, Ikari," he added, as if they were old friends, or at least as if Gendo had been his protégé; a badly faked attempt at a warning, revealed by his blatant ulterior motives. Then he too disappeared.

Gendo Ikari took off his glasses and massaged his tired eyes; staring into the unblinking eye of myriads of lasers was rather painful, and he still hadn't gotten used to his new glasses; his somewhat weak myopia had worsened since last time he had bough new lenses, and now he had to adjust to a slightly sharper world-view. He could see things clearly now; he could see the future.

The Ghost of Evangelion – Layer 03
A Ghost in the Shell/Neon Genesis Evangelion fanfic

Shinji turned the handle of the door to his new classroom and swung it open. For a moment, he stared at the half-empty room and the groups and cliques that filled it, all clothed in either the teal-blue and white sailor-esque dress, or the same black/white (and how he had come to loathe that colour!) combination of trousers and shirts that he wore, with the exception of a muscular-looking, rowdy-haired student in a track suit. After Shinji's eyes had scanned the room, he decided he would pass discretely in through the door, not slamming it, and simply sit down on the nearest empty desk.

"Hello," a voice suddenly spoke to him, with a smiling face framed by long blue hair appeared directly in front of him. There goes discretely…

"…you must be Shinji Ikari," the female face said. A sudden feeling of uncertainty rose through Shinji. Dis-cre-te-ly! he repeated to himself. At least it was only one person.

"Y-yes!" he said hurriedly. Oh dear was that too loud? Nobody even looked at him, except for the girl.

"In that case," she said, "Welcome to our class; I hope you'll make some friends!"

"Thank you …" Shinji hazarded a guess, his statement accidentally rising into a question, "…Class Rep?" The girl's smile widened.

"Temarei," she answered, "but I'm not the Class Representative," she said. ...I shouldn't have guessed! "...that would be Miss Hokari, over there," she said and waved in the direction of another girl, talking to the boy in the track suit. "Please, find a seat if you wish."

Shinji found a seat central in the classroom. It was not the best seat he could imagine, but the back row had already been taken by earlier birds. He wasn't even going to try the pleasant row by the windows; they were always taken early, and he wasn't going to get into an argument on his first day of school over seating arrangements.

The other Eva pilot (Misato had mentioned in passing that her name was 'Rei Ayanami') already sat in her seat and stared out through the windows, with her arm in a cast. Actually, he should try to talk with someone for once, and they already had something in common to talk about but… he didn't actually want to talk about that, and… well… nah. He didn't know what he'd say; he'd only make a fool of himself He could see it now; he tried to talk to her and all she would do was to frown say something like "What do you want?" or "Shut up." …maybe. Not worth the risk.

…

"Rise, bow!" the Class Rep ordered.

ESAGILA ACADEMY FOR YOUNG STUDENTS, August 22nd, 2030
"…now, on May 15th 1932," the history teacher droned on, "radical elements of the Imperial Japanese Navy, aided by officers in the Imperial Japanese Army successfully attempted to assassinate Prime Minister Inukai…"

As the reverberating hum continued, Shinji nonchalantly flipped through the History book; he had actually already covered the Shōwa period in his previous school, a (one might even say 'another') prestigious school for the progeny of diplomats, politicians, plutocrats and other assorted filthy rich, and although he probably should study it again (his grades hadn't been exceptional) he just couldn't be bothered to do so. Instead, he was making "independent studies" of the History book and Ayanami. …erm, no.

Insert: Although most historians place the start of the Fourth World War [footnote: alternatively known under the name "Second Vietnam War"] in October 2015 when wars resulting from food shortages…

The sound of fingers hitting a keyboard with great enthusiasm made Shinji cast a glance at the student next to him. Despite the total prevalence of standard neural interfaces in Shinji's class, all schoolwork was still done on laptops; a combination of widespread cyberbrain-hacking paranoia, preventive measures against Cyberbrain Closed Shell Syndrome and a desire to protect children against the horrors of the 'net meant very few of the aforementioned neural interfaces had Wireless Network Access nodes. Momentarily disturbed, Shinji went back to reading.

…following the Impact Event [footnote: see Chapter 7.2 'The 2013 Tidal Disaster'] broke out in the Indochinese Peninsula, some have chosen to place the cause of WWIV at the American Empire Fleet expedition into Antarctica and the subsequent People's Republic of China (PROC) annexation of Vietnam and Laos…

Since the invention of computers, their processing power has, roughly, doubled every eighteenth months, an observation made by Gordon E. Moore, an Intel (a now defunct corporation, since their headquarters were nuked) co-founder in 1965, although he referred explicitly to transistor density, which is a rather outdated concept in this day and age.

It follows that if information can be processed at atrocious speeds, you need to feed that information into the processor at equally sacrilegious speeds, especially when light itself takes a noticeable fraction of a second to travel from one side of the Earth to the other.

The 'net was fast.

Which was why Ishikawa cursed and swore at the seed-virus that had suddenly hit servers all over the World.

Someone, somewhere, had taken a seed-virus, loaded it up with sensitive images (like, say, Shinji Ikari being retrieved from Unit-01) and placed it in a "Toy Box" Trojan, disguised as, oh, those very same pictures of Shinji Ikari, and released the infectious image library all over the world. The images spread like wildfire, at the speed of human thought, setting neurons aflame, through the infosphere that joined everyone together, establishing itself in fresh neural pathways established three weeks earlier by images of a climactic battle between two giant monsters in the middle of Japan.

Needless to say, those images hadn't been possible to contain either.

It didn't help, at all, that news companies all over the world circumvented their respective press blackouts by exploiting various and numerous loopholes in the law. Japanese law, for example, couldn't restrict reporting on any story that had hit private sites, so all the press had to was to wait for the news to spread to a private server, and by "wait" Ishikawa really meant "leak it themselves," those bastards!

Had Shinji Ikari been an Ordinary High School Student (besides the whole "pilots giant robot" part) it might have been possible to subtly DDoS-attack the social networking sites he'd used and just pull his face off their servers while overwriting the allocated hard-drive space about five hundred times just to make sure, but no; Shinji Ikari was the son of Gendo Ikari, a Tachibana Labs shareholder and wealthy plutocrat, whose son's portrait occasionally appeared as boring filler in articles on his father's latest economic endeavours. Taking all those images down was a lost cause and, even if feasible, would reek of government intervention; the idea (meme if you will) would still exist even if there was no proof, only reinforced by the cries of "Conspiracy!"

Ones which would, incidentally, have been eminently justified in this case.

Instead, Ishikawa used his Hunter-Killer viruses to give himself time to set a more realistic plan into action; a disinformation campaign that took advantage of modern advances in photo-manipulation. Counter-productively enough, he programmed a seed-virus to release the photos – altered photos, in which fake JPEG artifacts surrounded Shinji's face, while shadows fell slightly wrong; a trained-but-not-quite-trained-enough eye would conclude that Shinji Ikari's face had been superimposed on the photograph.

Releasing a second batch of photos with a different (fake) pilot altogether probably helped just as much.

[Shinji Has Mail]
 READ

FROM: asuka[dot]langely[dot]soryu[at]tannhauser[dot]bunderegierung[dot]de
TO: ikari[dot]shinji[at]ecco[dot]mod[dot]go[dot]jp
SUBJECT: Congratulations

Hello, Third Child

Congratulations on your first Rakbu kill. It's good to see that there are other people than me around who can fight the monsters. As an experienced pilot with years of piloting, I would be most pleased if you would tell me all about your experiences. I am looking forwards to meeting you.

Kindest regards,
Asuka Langley Soryu, Second Child and Pilot of Unit-02

There was the unmistakable sound of chairs scraping against the floor, followed by rustling, as if class had ended in a disorganized fashion, (and if Shinji had learnt anything about Hikari Hokari, such a thing was not allowed to happen) despite it being in the middle of a boring history lesson. What had only moments ago been a near-complete silence, if not for the constant droning on about the rise of militarism during the Shōwa period during which he could sneak looks at Temarei's beautiful legs …eh had been replaced by a loud chatter, of which he was both the centre and subject. Wait, what?

In one fell swoop, he was surrounded by an impenetrable wall of students (it would have been insulting to comment on their density, he felt), quite unlike the Wall of Jericho, as Hokari was unable to make the crumble back to their seats. This isn't happening! Most of them had their mobile phones or HandyNAVIs out, pushing them into his face. No no no! The pack grew denser and denser around him, until he was forced to stand. Not now, not here, not ever…

"Is this really you?" "How did you get picked?" "Was there some sort of test?"

"How are the controls like?" "Are there WALDOes?" "What are its weapons?"

"Be quiet! Show some respect! Class is still in session" …although that was more distant, in Hokari's voice; a few students hadn't stood up to squeeze the air out of him, for which he was eternally grateful, even if it made little difference.

"Pay attention to the teacher!" the Class Rep yelled through her teeth "You're being disrespectful," her face was burning scarlet and her firsts were clenched as she'd risen from her chair, or perhaps Shinji just imagined that, as he couldn't really see her through the mass of students. There shouldn't be enough students –urk – left to even make a crowd!

Calamity. Noise. Disorder.

It was distracting and unnecessary, Rei thought. Although she stared out through the nearest window, she could still see their ghost-like reflections in the double glass, like a faint glass painting against the clear blue sky. Although it will not be clear much longer. Rei wasn't actually staring at the sky at the moment, despite the interesting patterns, unique-yet-recognizable, formed by the rawsilk-white clouds. Instead, she stared at the kaleidoscopic patterns of colour that occasionally formed the classroom windows, dancing back and forth, but dancing is not the correct term, broken into frames by the windowsills and adjoining pieces of wall.

Then Rei noticed the distorted mirror image of herself in the glass pane. This is me. The new me. Same as old me? She stared into her own red eyes, looking down the lens of her reflection and into the artificial eye's active pixel sensor.

Her eyes widened. Momentarily.

She stared into the black abyss of her pupil, and found it staring back at her; sentient and self-aware. That was not supposed to happen. She blinked, once, and it was gone. I am, but what am I?

Rei immediately stared down into her desk and dropped her stylus. Smoke, steam, actually, rose from her fingers. Like a schizophrenic hallucination, the faintly white vapour ascended towards the ventilation ducts without anyone noticing – This is probably not normal.

Class was over.

Shinji took a jab to the face. The full force of the blow pushed him off his feet. His head slammed into the outside wall of the school and he sank together on the grassy soil. A huge boy in a jumpsuit has just walked up to him and punched him in the face; what was up with that? His attacker massaged his hand.

"Sorry, transferee," the large boy said "I had to punch you to be at peace with myself

Shinji cradled his bleeding nose, feeling blood flow down his arm and drip onto his shirt and the grass under him. The huge boy was flanked by a thinner, shorter boy in glasses. Right now he had taken them off to cover half his face half-heartedly with his hand.

"Toji…" the bespectacled boy began accusingly "he's their pilot; we're going to get into trouble for this!" he raised his head and smiled guiltily "and with those leaked images I sort-of-kind-of saved on my PDA…" He paused, sucking in a worried breath. "Oh dear, their suited men-in-black are coming over already…"

"That jerk hurt my sister!" the boy named Toji yelled to his friend, who cowered at the volume. Shinji staggered back onto his legs.

"Look, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to…" Shinji said and took a cross-punch to the chest. He could swear the impact sounded like a subdued car-crash. He squinted and saw another punch lined up. Ouch. He closed his eyes and braced himself poorly.

But it never came. He opened his eyes and saw Toji dangle a meter in the air, oddly enough, looking terrified. There was a loud, reverberating humming, like electric power lines, and two giant grey spider tanks materialized out of thin air, one holding Toji up with its arms.

"Whoa!" the boy in glasses said, with mixed awe and terror.

"Put him down Tachikoma," an adult voice said. The owner was a JSDA soldier with a mullet. "Don't leave him hanging up in the air."

"But I caught a terrorist!" the urban-camouflaged tank said.

"He's not a terrorist," the soldier said exasperatedly. "At worst; he's a violence-prone delinquent. Now put him down."

"Okay…" the Tachikoma said, a disappointed whine entering its voice, but obliged. It carefully lowered the muscular boy onto the ground, letting go off his arms as soon as his feet rested safely on the grass.

The man turned to Toji and his friend.

"You're Toji Suzahara and Kensuke Aida, right?" he asked without acknowledging their replies "Go back to your classes. We'll send someone to talk to you later,"

They both heard the Self-Defence "We," (as opposed to the "Imperial 'We'" discarded 85 years earlier) and absconded in an intimidated manner.

"I'm Togusa," the man said and reached out a hand to help Shinji get his posture back.

"...nothing's going to happen to them, right?" Shinji asked through the flood of blood that emanated from his nose. "His sister got hurt in the battle and…"

"We might send his parents a harshly worded letter, if that's what you mean," Togusa replied.

A strong south wind blew across the bow of the JDS Nagato before sweeping over the deck of her sister ship, the JDS Mutsu. Both were flanked by the helicarriers JDS Kaga and the JDS Junyo. The American contribution to this specific brick in the Pacific Wall was a Zumwalt-class destroyer, the IAS Moorer.

Kaisō-chō Heiya Kotanistood at the front deck of the Nagato and watched the waves break against the sharp edge, dividing into trails of white foam, and leaving a wake of cold water behind the Nagato. Like her namesake, the Nagato-class missile destroyers were slightly aged, having been built after WWIII and used for peacekeeping in Korea in WWIV, but nonetheless some of the most advanced and powerful ships around, combining missile batteries with advanced sensors an AI for a network-centric vessel that could be run almost entirely without crew from a central computer in Kyosho if such were necessary.

She was a beautiful ship, and Kotani was proud to serve on it. He stared once more down into the waves, and that was odd, he thought, as he gazed into the depths. The water was pitch black right below the bow of the ship, as if something was moving below it, but the Captain would have alerted them if there were any submarines, allied or otherwise, this close to their destroyer-group. He then spotted a faintly glowing red light in the middle of the black surface. It swept along his field of view, and he turned his head and saw that it was headed straight at the Moorer. He reached, for the lack of a better term, for the alarm-executable in his cyberbrain.

Before he'd navigated his way to it, all hell broke loose.

All possible alarms flared. The wind hit stronger, and the knife-like Moorer bent and snapped in two at its middle, splintering and bleeding diesel and motor oil into the water. As the crippled halves sank into the cold sea with American sailors frantically swimming in the water, the Junyo's stern was lifted out of the water in a fraction of a second. Kotani could swear he'd seen a fucking tail throw it out of the water. What was this, the Kraken? Akkorokamui? Personnel were thrown overboard and the Junyo dived bow-first into the water and toppled, giving Kotani a clear view of the crumpled stern hull.

He didn't have much more to think at that point, because a giant glowing tentacle burst up through the Nagato's CIC. The bright white appendage ripped sideways out from the destroyer, tearing the hull into flakes. Like a deer in the headlights, Kotani could only watch as he fell off the deck (or rather, the deck fell with him) into the chilled water. He ducked his head under, ripping off his motor-oil-soaked uniform jacket while underwater; soon the oil-spill would light on fire, and he'd rather not burn.

He had to swim up to take another breath. When he surfaced, he watched the sea monster, a reddish-brown bug-like thing with tentacles rise vertically up through the innards of the Mutsu, boring a hole through the engine-room and command centre.

The monster kept on rising, as if it wasn't constrained by such petty laws like gravity; it seemed to hang, much like bricks don't. Then, as if attacking the destroyer group had just been its idea of a game, it curled together and stretched out towards mainland Japan, oblivious of the Kaga peppering it with CWIS-fire and anti-air missiles. As each bullet hit, or rather, didn't, the creature blinked in primary colours against the blue sky, like a tasteless post-contemporary neon-painting. Soon, it was out of range, and Kotani swam towards a life-boat the Kaga had deployed to pick up survivors.

The pale afternoon light reached in through the windows of the abandoned classroom, spreading outwards from each window it passed through like a reiterated macroscale double-slit experiment. The sharp contrast between shadow and light, projected on the floor and walls almost created a film-noir like feeling, helped by how washed-out everything seemed in the poor light. Shinji Ikari even wore black and while clothes with artistically applied blood, and the ventilation fan was, if not slow-turning, quite noisy.

The flow of blood emanating from his nose had eventually stopped, thanks to a seemingly ever-growing pile of discarded tissue papers that had been periodically dumped into a trashcan Togusa had dragged over to their conscripted table. Technically Shinji was supposed to attend an after-school club at this moment, but as he had recently transferred and hadn't been in any hurry to join any of them, he defaulted to the Go Home Club, and by then actually being in school, he was doing a lot better than all those other slackers, right? Right…

A pair of muscular men in black suits, eyes hidden behind large black sunglasses stood on either side of the only door to the classroom. Shinji felt assured that they wore those sunglasses even at night; their vision was augmented, he was certain. In either case, Togusa waved them off, and they demonstratively took up the exact same positions on the other side door. Shinji slurped the last of his canned green tea, letting the relaxing-yet-energizing (and how did that work?) astringent caffeine-and-polyphenol mixture warm his body.

"So you pilot a giant robot," Togusa said with the tone of voice that made his surprise at Shinji's age clear.

Shinji looked away. "It was really only that one time," he said "…according to Mis – Captain Katsuragi, they have other pilots with more experience. I just happened to be available," Shinji said, trying to deflect any further questions, or at the very least dodge them.

"What do you need the giant robots for?" Togusa asked. To ruin my life, Shinji thought. It took him a small fraction of milisecond to realize that he was actually a legal employee of ECCO now, and 'you' therefore referred to the organization as a whole.

"I don't know," he answered plainly. He wished for another can of tea. It was as if the air had suddenly gone colder. It probably had, actually; he could hear the howling of the wind now, blowing into the city from the sea.

"How are you coming along with the other pilots?" Togusa asked.

"Very well," Shinji replied, trying to keep the bitterness he felt about the whole subject out of his voice, and failing, "we're in a perfectly harmonic state of mutual obliviousness," Which wasn't exactly true, Shinji realized, but close enough.

There were no further questions, and Shinji spent a few minutes trying to wring the last precious drops of green tea from the can, while at the same time trying not to cut his tongue on the sharp metal edges; he'd bled enough for one day, he thought.

Togusa looked away and let a mildly annoyed sigh escape under his breath, too subdued to really be heard. Shinji Ikari seemingly knew nothing about ECCO, their giant robots or their enemies, which consequently made asking (because this was certainly not an informal interrogation) him about it a rather futile task. Hopefully the Major and Ishikawa were finding their investigations somewhat easier.

There were three rapid knocks on the door to the not-that-empty classroom, and the door swung open, revealing Rei Ayanami. Her pale skin was almost unnaturally white in the light, only distinguished by the contrast to the truly white bandages on her right arm and her school uniform. She headed straight for Shinji.

"There has been an alert," she said flatly "Follow me. I'll go on ahead,"

Then, before she'd even verified that Shinji had understood or even caught her message, she turned and left. Togusa found himself on the receiving end of a cyberlink call.

"Togusa, get Shinji Ikari and Rei Ayanami over here immediately," Maj. Kusanagi said.

With the possible exception of the capital city/region/fucking island Kyosho, Ashigarashimo District was the most well-defended geographical location in Japan. The district was a veritable fortress, surrounded by military bases and airfields. Destroyed and sunken cities served as uninhabited buffers that could be destroyed without repercussions, while the numerous mountains and lakes would hinder the mobility of anything with the magnitude of a Rakbu.

To outside observers, the Chinese certainly, it might look less like a series of defences and more like preparations for war. The fake skyscrapers hiding missile batteries certainly looked suspect, although the Japanese Government had made a press release stating they were not intended for use in combat, and therefore not in violation of the Geneva Conventions. It didn't quite help their credibility that they'd also hollowed out hills and filled them with even more missile batteries. Short of invading Korea or bringing nukes into the country (and in the name of all that is good and holy, some of the right-wing militarists wanted that too!) there was little the state of Japan could to avoid accusations of a second Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere under the iron fist of the Imperialist American devils. Thanks to cybernetic enhancements and general medical advances, survivors from the first Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere were still alive to keep the old wounds open, and by default, those aging centenarians had lived through WWIII and WWIV too, and with those the resulting American peacekeeping (though many preferred the less politically correct term "occupation")

On the other hand, actually being attacked by the enemy the defences had been built for in the first place helped loads.

Being attacked twice was a particularly nasty godsend.

"Target in sight, Air Boss," 2nd Lt. Poole transmitted back to the Philip Mead as his F/A51 caught the alien on its radar. "Weapons are locked and we're ready to fire,"

"You're gonna have to wait for JASDF clearance," 'Air Boss' Gen. Duane K. Patrick replied over the distributed cyberlink.

Two flights of AEN F/A51 fighter swept over the seas towards the hovering Rakbu. In their minds, they also tracked the positions of a flight of Japanese ATF29s. Both groups of fighter aircraft were bound to intercept the alien invader at approximately the same time, not that it really mattered when an F/A51 could shoot beyond the horizon, had they been fitted with long-distance missiles, which they hadn't. Instead, some Pentagon officer had boarded the ship and insisted that napalm and fragmentation missiles were used against the alien fuckers. On one hand, he looked like a typical ground-locked pencil-pusher, so what did he know? On the other hand, his uniform sleeve patch read 'Defence: Extraterrestrial and Alien Threats' so what did he truly know?

"Target is flying dangerously low; cherub-two!" 2nd Lt. Poole reported, using military aviator jargon to refer to heights, in hundreds of feet, below 1000 "and it's over the city"

"JASDF reports the area as low-risk; we've marked your map," an AEN Operator android reported.

"Okay pilots, listen up!" Air Boss shouted over the cyberlinks, "We've just received confirmation from the Japanese; Operation Tsubasa is 'go', so engage target at will!"

Ninurta floated quite comfortably, although buoyancy had little to do with it, when the first wave of napalm struck. The missiles exploded against its carapace and scattered burning petrol-jelly all over its reddish-brown back. The nearby towers of stone the pest-like humans had constructed everted itself and spat out shooting stars (for what else could it be?) at the Rakbu. Ninurta banked and let the AA-missiles strike the AT-field enhanced hard shell ineffectually. Did the killer apes really think glorified archery was any threat at all to a god? The Messenger had been a fool; how could you reason with that which could not comprehend or understand?

With one fell swoop, it sliced the top off the anti-air fortification. The concrete and metal top ground against the remaining bottom, releasing heaps of concrete dust as it slid down. Once it had come halfway, it tipped and smashed against another abandoned building. Soon thereafter, it fell towards the ground, steel, concrete and plaster crumpling against the ground under its own weight.

Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean and Indochinese refugees watched as the huge clouds of dust were whipped up and out through the streets from the truly uninhabited areas of old Odawara. Debris shot out as metal beams were wrung and twisted into unnatural positions. Parents hoisted their children up on their arms, and wrists were grabbed and dragged away from the approaching battle. The refugees had all lived through WWIV, and the older had lost parents or friends to WWIII; running away from warzones was near-instinctual to them.

Once more the speakers sounded over Ashigarashimo: "Today, a special state of emergency has been declared throughout the Kanto and Chubu districts around the Tokai Area. Please take refuge in your designated shelter."

There was just one problem. The refugees didn't have a designated shelter that wasn't neck-deep in polluted water.

"Awwww…" Kensuke complained, "There's a big battle again and I have to go and get locked up in a shelter." Laboriously, he dragged himself along with the rest of the school towards their shelter

"It's better than staying up here," Toji retorted "Last time they practically nuked the city twice to get that thing," he said, looking between rows of houses directly into the heart of Odawara, where recently abandoned construction machines repaired the massive damage to the buildings at Ground Zero. "Stupid pilot," he muttered

"I'm still of the opinion that the second giant explosion was caused by the giant monster, not the JSDA," Kensuke said, pushing his glasses back up on the bridge on his nose. That's it, I'm getting optics when I turn 16, he though. ...if I can afford it, was the unpleasant afterthought. "Besides," he un-digressed, "if they use nuclear-grade weapons in the city, I might not survive." Nuclear bunkers were, after all, not built to withstand direct nuclear impacts, something he had spent quite some time explaining to his classmates before Class Rep Hokari had shut him up, citing 'morale considerations', and, more unofficially, 'you're being annoying'.

"I just want to get one clear look before I die!" Kensuke said, loud enough for emphasis, but not loud enough to pull attention from people not in the conversation, except maybe Hokari or Temarei, but they heard everything.

"Stop being so melodramatic," Toji ordered as they stopped, for some reason or the other, right before the entrance to the underground shelter. "You're not going to die,"

"Besides," Toji continued as they waited for an explanation for why they were standing outside in a potential warzone while there were perfectly fine and not-too-uncomfortable and not to mention warm shelters just waiting to be occupied at the bottom of a flight of stairs "...if what you want is a better look, why don't you just ask your girlfriend," he said, emphasising the word mockingly, "for some high-res photos from her father?"

"She's not my girlfriend!" Kensuke protested.

Ignoring the vehement objections, Toji continued teasingly: "Or is it because every time you're around her, there's something else you'd rather see?" he asked and made crude, cup-like motions with his hands. Kensuke just frowned and faked a pout.

"What are we waiting around here for, anyway?" Toji asked after a while. It's cold, damnit!

"If you'd been listening," a female voice said. It belonged to Nell Fubuki, a loner girl who had been sitting in the back row of their classroom for three years, "you'd have heard that refugees have occupied the school's shelter," she said dryly, "so now we have to walk across the city to find an available shelter," she sighed and impolitely nudged Kensuke in the direction they'd come from. "Now get going before the Class Rep chews us all out,"

The ECCO Combat Information Centre was bustling with life, or its android equivalent. Bustling with activity was probably a more accurate and general descriptor, all in all. Once more, rows upon rows were filled with android military-grade Operators in brand new auxiliary JSDA uniforms; the human staff had likewise received their own sets of tan and olive-green uniforms, except for 2nd Lt. Maya Ibuki, who wore her C.B.C.M. uniform, and Cpt. Katsuragi, who wore skivvies, with the sole military addition her beret, cocked at a rather non-regulation jaunty angle. Truly, what male or curious female could deny her that right, with her shorts leaving much of her legs exposed and hugging tightly around her? Granted, the uniform statistics were skewed from the most likely distribution somewhat by the absence of Gendo Ikari, who couldn't be there to insist on arriving wearing only an anonymous, black suit and further increase the standard deviation.

"We have visual confirmation of the target. It has entered the refugee district."

The hideous visage of the giant vermin appeared on the main screen, alternating angles between a number of surveillance and recognizance drones released to gather intelligence, though Misato suspected the Rakbu, in fact, had none at all, much like non-neglible proportions of the JASDF high command. On the screen, the Tactical Staff and the token Scientific representatives could clearly see how the Rakbu used its long tentacles to strike missiles out of the air long before they could hit. The few that passes its point defences exploded harmlessly against its reddish-brown carapace.

"Fortifying city in t-minus three, two, one…"

All over Ashigarashimo, especially in Yugawara and Manazuru, giant mechanical and hydraulic locks slid out of their holes, detaching buildings from their foundations and leaving them to rest on giant hydraulic slave-pistons. Hydraulic fluid was pumped out of giant reservoirs, dropping the towering skyscrapers deep into the ground over select places; it was an experimental system exclusive to Ashigarashimo District, built after WWIII when the cities were potential candidates for the position of capital city; the variable profile was supposed to lessen the impact of nuclear strikes by lowering the total surface area of the buildings, but the cost in structural integrity had been deemed too high, and the system had been left as a relic of interwar paranoia.

"The central block and districts 1 through 7 have been housed,"

Captain Misato Katsuragi stood, arms folded, in her command position and awaited the launch order; she hadn't expected the second Rakbu to be capable of flight; the First Rakbu had been humanoid, just like all encountered Anunnaki, but I don't have to think about that now, not ever. Her mind should be on the task; how to command Unit-01 against the second Rakbu. Then again, what could stop her from getting her sweet, sweet revenge?

"Am I just going to sit here?" Shinji complained from Unit-01.

"We're just awaiting a launch order from the JSDA, Shinji," Misato replied "Please be patient."

Misato leaned over the edge of the command floor and shouted down at Maj. Kusanagi: "Hey, Major! Why are you here? Shouldn't the JSDA have deployed already?"

Maj. Kusanagi leant back and twisted her head, looking back up at Cpt. Katsuragi. "Firstly, my unit are security forces," she replied, "not combat forces," But you're Special Forces! Misato thought, "…and secondly," Maj. Kusanagi mumbled something; all Misato caught was 'embarrassing', "I've been relieved of its command pending an investigation into my behaviour as an officer,"

"What?" was all Cpt. Katsuragi could reply; it was somewhat hard to believe.

"It turns out the top brass weren't too happy about my attempted ghosthack of a child," the Major explained, her tone as artificially neutral as her body, "so until the unofficial investigation reaches a verdict on whether ghosthacking Shinji Ikari was 'excessive use of force,' or not, I'm an overqualified courier."

Well, that makes sense… "Where's that damn launch order!?" Misato shouted. "We should have deployed a long time ago!"

She looked up at Deputy Commander Fuyutsuki. He was on the phone, probably asking just the same question. He put his hand over the microphone and looked at the big screen, where the second Rakbu twisted impossibly fast in the air and launched itself at an AEN F/A51, slicing it in two with a tentacle.

"The Ministry of Defence has turned the responsibility for Operation Tsubasa over to the JASDF," Fuyutsuki reported. "What a waste of taxpayer money," he added mostly to himself.

A fragmentation missile struck Ninurta's soft thorax. The cutting, high-velocity shards of metal cut into its legs. Pain shot through the Rakbu's body, and it shuddered. The charring heat of the gelatinous napalm left charred smudges on its carapace as it slid down the frictionless AT field. Hundreds of tiny metal fragments had embedded themselves in the hard shell on its back; harmless, but painful every time they struck, wedging and cutting closer and closer to the soft insides. Its tentacles ached. Perhaps… Perhaps it was not as strong as it thought it was.

Perhaps it had been wrong to take to the skies; the AT field it needed to sustain its flight demanded qualia that it could have used to fight with, and the black-haired people were better warriors than expected. It twisted itself around and swept an elongated tentacle out at an ATF29, cutting off its wing. A missile struck it between the thick carapace of its back and the thinner frontal armour, wedging itself between the armour plates and exploding. Three of Ninurta's many legs were blown straight off. Quite a lot of blood (better described as ichor) and disgusting juices were scattered over a nearby building.

The words Ninurta used to describe this had never been recorded on cuneiform tablets.

In pain, it lashed out at a boresighting fighter jet. The white-hot tentacle stretched around, behind its back, and by intuition, it stabbed upwards. The thick appendage stabbed the pilots head, vaporizing it in an instant. With the pilot and most of his neural interface gone, the F/A51 dived without changing course. 20 tons of dead-weight aircraft crashed into the Rakbu, quite painfully; the first hit that really mattered.

Having the F/A51 light on fire and explode, halfway inside Ninurta mattered just as much. Like a burning wreck, it fell towards the ground, where it could be safe and recuperate.

"Captain Katsuragi," Fuyutsuki called "you have full command over this situation. The Ministry of Defence demands that we dispatch Unit-01 immediately."

"They're more obnoxious than the aliens!" Misato commented. "I'd have mobilized even if they hadn't asked!" The Captain thrust her still biological hand onto a fingerprint scanner, removing the last lock on the Unit-01 launch procedure. It had already been locked to the mass driver frame, which was as far as Misato had been willing to push against the constraints of the "no-launch" order. The plastic cover slid off and Cpt. Katsuragi flipped the molly guard that remained as the last barrier between her index finger and sweet, sweet revenge. "Launch in t-minus zero seconds! Launch!"

At that, Shinji was forced down into his seat by four-and-a-half times his own weight once more. He could feel the blood rush from his head and down to into his legs, only to be stopped by the tight g-suit that clasped around his legs and abdomen. Again, he wanted to vomit, and again, he couldn't. Blood rushed back into his head. Why do I even bother doing this? He asked himself. My father isn't even here! he reminded himself. ...and why do I even care if he's here or not? It doesn't matter, he concluded. Right?

The Eva-frame slammed hard against the top of the lift. Shinji likewise slammed up against his five-point seat-belt. Couldn't they have made launch a less painful procedure? The door slid open, and re-rendered sunlight flooded the Entry Plug unsurprisingly like an artificial sunrise. He lifted his rifle to his shoulder, manually locking the trackpoint to the crosshairs, and took a step out, sweeping the Eva-rifle from side to side. Two weeks of training had taught him something, at least.

The Rakbu was straight ahead of him, half dragging, half hovering towards him, standing on its pygidium like a praying mantis, tentacles raised for combat. Shinji took aim and fired. A three-round burst slammed the rifle into his, or rather the Eva's, shoulder, and three shells slammed against Ninurta's AT field, scattering a monochrome field of noise into the air. Another three rounds bursts forth, into the cloud of snow and artillery smoke. And another burst. And another.

"Idiot, you've covering the enemy in smoke!" Misato yelled. Shinji depressed the trigger. He hyperventilated, I got it, right? "Control your fire! Don't squander shells!"

The Rakbu was covered in a pillar of dust-grey smoke, like a burning pile of something nasty. While Shinji couldn't see anything, ECCO CIC had linked UAV surveillance drones to smaller CIC screens. To their horror, the Rakbu still stood unharmed. "Shinji, move out of–"

A glowing tentacle burst from the pillar of smoke and sliced at Shinji, and missed. As he took a step backwards, his gun fell apart in his hands, cut to pieces by something ultra-thin. A nearby building's top half slid of the bottom half onto the street, crumbling to dust and debris as it hit the ground. Seconds later, two tentacles cut through the remaining steel frame like it was a pen against a pair of particularly sharp swords. The rest of the Rakbu shot out of its dust-cloud, ramming Shinji in his chest. The 500 ton giant fell backwards, denting the road as it hit.

"Shinji, get back up!" Misato yelled, over the cyberlink. "Shinji, please, get back up!"

Ninurta towered over the fallen Eva, blocking out the sun with its hideous head. Shinji watched as it floated on top of him, dwarfing even Unit-01 with its sheer length. Oh no… A tentacle burst forth. It wrapped itself around his neck and shoved Unit-01 headfirst into a nearby building, then slammed him to the ground. Shinji yelped at the pain that shot up his entire body. Oh please no…

"Shinji, get up, please!" he heard, vaguely.

"It's not going very well for the new guy," Kensuke declared, as he watched the battle through the zoom of his mobile phone/PDA/camera. "He's losing already!"

"Then let's get underground," Toji suggested, dragging Kensuke by his collar. The Esagila Academy-students had zig-zagged between shelters, trying to find available room; the shelters had been built soon after WWIII, not expecting the following population boom, nor the industrialization of Ashigarashimo, and especially not the millions of refugees who had (non-violently) stormed and occupied all available space. There was always space for a handful of students, but the Esagila Academy numbered in the low hundreds, leaving the older students to walk back and forth between supposedly vacant shelters. Right now, they had walked up the hills towards Hakone, which was further from the refugee centres and less likely to overpopulated.

It also gave Kensuke a nice view of the battle, but since they had been led up the hill by Hikary Hokari and Tomoe Temarei, this was probably unintentional. And required that you use a value of "probably" which included "not a chance in hell" to get that concession.

Through his camcorder, Kensuke watched the Rakbu lash out against Unit-01 and grab it once more by the neck. Its long appendages lifted the 500 ton Type 36 "Evangelion" ignoring such petty conventions as "centre of mass" and "classical mechanics" and tossed it in a high arc against the nearest mountain.

Which happened to be quite close to where Toji, Kensuke and the rest of their class stood.

Oh crap…

Shinji Ikari arced through the air, quite comfortably actually, when compared to the impact against the asphalted hillside, fortunately not cushioned on soft, crackling classmates. They had pulled away, or been pulled away, once they saw where he was headed. Still, landing really hurt, damnit!

"Shinji Ikari," he heard the less-familiar voice of Maj. Kusanagi shout, "watch yourself. There are unevacuated civilians in the area."

"Shinji," the voice of Dr Akagi continued, from where the Major had left off, "your umbilical cord has been detached; you only have five minutes of operational power left." In his peripheral vision, he could see a timer count down in digital numbers, counting hundreds of seconds at a rate, in a shocking show of innovation, of one second per second.

"Shinji, pull back to the nearest power bus," Misato shouted "we've requested a joint JSDA/JASDF attack to cover your retreat!"

Shinji leant forwards, trying to gather his senses. Or maybe it was Unit-01 doing that; he wasn't really sure anymore. He stood up, watching his terrified and/or cheering classmates through the artificially transparent Entry Plug. Something about retreating…

Kensuke Aide watched the really awesome Evangelion-unit from a perfect frog angle. He was close; really close. In fact, even he didn't really consider standing so close he could feel hydraulic oil drip down a safe position. When Toji grabbed his shirt, he happily ran along with him.

"Did you see that!?" he asked, as if a giant 40m robot was a sight that could be ignored "It just stood back up again!" Pant "It was airborne!" Wheeze "And it stood back up again!"

Toji dragged him harder "Just shut up, just shut up," he mumbled and yelled at the same time, if such a thing is possible. His sister – he couldn't forget what had happened to his sister. Just run! he thought as Ninurta rose over the horizon, in all his godlike glory, burning red against the greying blue sky.

"Retreat, Shinji!" Misato shouted as Shinji's blood, flowing from his nose, danced around the cockpit, like a thin but visible smoke, slowly tinting the crystal-clear LCL with a deathly red shade. In his groggy state of mind, it almost seemed more natural that way.

"Shinji Ikari," he heard someone transmit, "we've sent an armoured patrol to secure your classmates. You need to pull the field of battle away from them."

Ooooh, was all Shinji could think through the pain "…pull back Shinji," What should he do? I mustn't run away, I mustn't run away! The Rakbu stood there, like it was awaiting a mere demigod's first move. He couldn't let civilians come to harm again… "Shinji, pull yourself together!" I mustn't run away, I can't, I just can't run away… He had to protect- "SHINJI! Retreat! That's an O-R-D-E-R!" Mustn't… Su gish-sha ni di-dam… he thought, wait, that can't be… He looked down on his retreating classmates, then back at the glowing red core of the Rakbu. Damiq dayyanutum-a maru.

Ninurta swung its twin tentacles towards Unit-01. As it was about it wrap one of them around the Eva's throat, a white gauntlet shot up and clasped around the glowing limb, forcing it away and bending it painfully. The other flexible line-segment of incandescent light impaled Unit-01 through the armoured torso, bursting out through the rear neck armour and looping back into Unit-01's head. All Shinji felt was pain.

Nearby, on the ground, Toji hauled a cowering Kensuke as far away as he could. A giant, glowing tentacle cut down towards him and he jumped back, dragging Kensuke with him. The white-hot mass-of-Rakbu sliced down into the concrete, flopping up and down, making mince-meat of the asphalt and soil beneath.

"Shinji, you're disobeying a direct order!" Misato tried, then: "Please Shinji, pull back; you've only got a few minutes remaining!"

All she received back was an ear-pitching scream.

Unit-01 deployed its knife, a large carbon-steel blade the weight of a small car and the length of a telephone pole. Frantically, Unit-01 swept at Ninurta's apparent face, while a tentacle burrowed through its skull. Then, it thrust towards the Rakbu's red, crystalline core, slicing through the thick, or perhaps it was thin, relatively, flesh and carapace like it was made from paper. Unit-01 stabbed up harder and harder into the vital organ, trying to burst through it and the spine behind, assuming Ninurta even had a spine.

Then, Unit-01 ran out of power, and Shinji's body felt limp as power died in Unit-01's augmented muscles and the synchronization faded. The internal screens went black, showing only token diagnostics. [EMERGENCY LIFE SUPORT ACTIVATED] as the strongest source of light, and all he could hear was the sizzling sound of his own, Unit-01's, flesh being burnt to a black char.

Then, it all stopped.

Toji watched as the giant alien monster stopped the incandescent glowing. Its tentacles slid out of Unit-01 hand, head and torso. A thick, un-blood-like red fluid poured from the monster's chest, spraying the giant robot's hand in the unknown fluid. Drops of the stuff were dripping from the giant knife.

"Kensuke," he said, quietly, "it's dead; the giant monster is dead!"

Kensuke was hyperventilating and cowering in a near-foetal position. Toji was doing pretty much the same thing, but had looked up when the sounds died out. They had been in the middle of a giant robot battle, against alien invaders from space, like some bad sci-fi movie, and they were alive, like the male comic relief pair. Except there was nothing funny about this, Toji thought. It was quite possibly the worst thing he had ever experienced.

Unit-01 slumped together, sliding down the hill under its own weight. It stopped when it hit a building, and what remained of the rear hatch popped. It creaked and screamed as hydraulic pistons fought metal wrung into unnatural positions. With a deathly scream, it half-slid, half-fell open, revealing a badly damaged cylinder. The transferee, Ikari-or-something climbed out, seemingly lost.

Then he vomited.

LCL, breakfast, lunch and a can of green tea burst forth from Shinji's oesophagus, leaving a foul taste in his mouth. He was shaking, and breathing unnaturally, and hurting, and afraid, and terrified, and lonely and a thousand other feelings and emotions he couldn't even name, all at once. He settled for wandering and staring aimlessly at nothing at all, before crawling up into a foetal position. Foetal positions were safe. He wanted to feel safe. Also, he wanted to talk to his father. Right now, all he wanted was a phone.

The JSDA arrived minutes later with an ambulance.