When the Eva finally started advancing more than a few meters Tabris was back in the monastery getting deportment lessons, which was proper behavior in different cultures and how to not scare the Lilim. There was a lot of it, like what words in different languages to use or not use, what to wear and how to move or not move. Fortunately, they were teaching him both how to act like a non-scary angel according to the rules of different kinds of Lilim & how to act like a Lilim of one of those different kinds. There were a lot of very complicated rules, but it was a good thing he was learning them. Who would have thought that Lilim could find someone just being straightforwardly nice and friendly worrying? Well, it made sense: Lilim couldn't see when someone was lying, so they had all these secret signals they sent to try to prove that they really weren't lying, and then things they didn't do because it might make the other person think they were lying, so no one did them except liars who weren't good enough at it.
Poor, poor Lilim. They needed other Lilim, and it was hard for them to reach out, and it was hard for them to let anyone close without them jumping through hoops first, and… Well, no wonder complementation was the only real way to help them.
He wanted to help them now, though, he thought as one of the Lilim folded cloth around him in a complicated pattern.
"What do you think, your holiness?"
Fabric was pooled on the ground around his feet. "I think it's very pretty, but I'd worry about getting it dirty." Except when he was flying, and this was one of the category of things he wasn't supposed to fly in, not without wearing something underneath.
Tabris was mostly paying attention to the Eva. Its AT field was very noticeable when it was activated, like the moon rising in a night sky filled with stars.
When it headed right for the invisible line that marked the boundary between the place Tabris protected and the place the other Lilim did instead of pacing back and forth, his head perked up.
"Your holiness?"
"It's coming!" Tabris told her happily, holding his arms up to her. "Could you take this off, please?" He could put the simple clothes he wore for fighting in on by himself without any trouble, although he let the Lilim help him sometimes because it was their job and it got the new ones used to touching him instead of thinking he was made of glass. Or maybe diamond: they treated him as too precious to risk breaking, not necessarily like something that would break easily. He liked it when they were willing to pick him up and let him sit on their laps or next to them while he read or listened. Reverence was partially made up of fear, and he didn't like fear.
He let the lady pull the white tunic down over his head and hold out the pants for him to step into, tying the belt (that now had clouds embroidered on it in white: he would have to thank whoever did that, because it was pretty) so the ends hung down on one of his sides. He'd worn this before, and he'd always come back fine before, right? The most he'd ever been affected was that time a Lilim got hurt and when they ruined his bath. He hoped she wouldn't worry too much.
Still, it made him happy that she worried, because it meant that he was taking away some of her loneliness. That he'd managed to make her happy enough that she didn't want to lose him. So he flew up and hugged her, after she brushed his hair a bit. "I'll be okay, don't worry," he told her.
She rubbed his head, messing up his hair again. "I'll try to have faith, your little holiness." Little, he was little, and little Lilim were fragile.
He nodded, smiling up at her. "It'll be okay." He was hoping it would be better than okay, but there were some things it was better to just not tell people about, because then Lorenz would find out and he was good at making things troublesome.
'Sync ratio' was just a fancy term for the two of them having to move at the same time. Ritsuko's mom could move the Eva around by herself, but having to focus on that made it practically impossible to generate an AT field, something like patting one's head while rubbing one's stomach in a circle. So Misato had to see the Eva as her own body, see herself and Naoko as one body, with one heart.
It helped if she focused on protecting Ritsuko, so it was a good thing they'd become friends so fast. Ritsuko was here, of course, because this was her mother. Kaji had also somehow managed to finagle his way along, which on the one hand Misato was happy about but on the other she wished he'd stayed back in Tokyo-3 where it was safe. Kaji and safe, though? Those words didn't exactly belong in the same sentence. Oh, he watched his back, but instead of playing it safe he used his skills to get away with taking risks. Like, oh, asking her out on a date to begin with.
Misato had decided to reinvent herself as a Tough Woman, the kind of person who definitely wouldn't need her father to die to save her and then end up locked up for years unable to rescue herself. Tough Women didn't blush over boys.
"It's okay," Naoko said. "I won't tell. And I'm in no position to talk about the stupidity of crushes. That's the best part of being in this body: utterly wrong kinds of hormones." This Eva's parts were made from Adam, after all. "The sad thing is that I wanted him because of how devoted he was to his wife, because there wasn't room for anyone else in his heart. I wanted someone capable of feeling that way about me. Well, I was half right, but the wrong half." Gendo was capable of feeling that way… But never about Naoko.
Misato didn't reply but still tried to focus on climbing up the slope, cord spooling out behind her. She knew everyone thought she couldn't do it: she could see what was right in front of her face. This was the prototype Eva, in its first real combat test, even if they'd done simulations and practiced with targets.
She wasn't going to give up on winning this time, and she definitely wasn't going to give up on beating that thing even if she failed this time!
"Hello!"
The Eva blinked.
The abomination sitting on top of the Eva's head and leaning, or hanging down to look into the Eva's eyes smiled and waved.
Misato's mind went aarghgetioffme! The way she would have reacted to finding a spider hanging on the edge of her eyelid, right in front of her eye.
Her hand went smack, but the abomination that took the form of a pallid child was already gone.
She tried to spin around to see where it had gone, but the heaviness of the legs that were not hers warned her that trying to move too fast, inertia being what it was, could send her tumbling to the ground. "Ritsuko, where'd it go?"
"It's flying around you." Flying circles around her. It made Ritsuko think of that scene with the Imperial walkers on Hoth getting tangled in a chain, except the abomination wasn't wrapping the Eva's legs with anything and he wasn't just looking at how the legs were put together, but all of it.
"You really are made from the same flesh as me! Well, the flesh of Adam instead of Adam and Lilim-" After appearing in front of Misato, the abomination dodged her punch, "But you have a Lilim soul while I have an angelic soul, so that works out about, um… So I'm one-fourth Lilim that way, and you're half-Lilim? If soul and body each count as half." The abomination paused to think, which let Misato grab it in her right hand and squeeze.
Nothing happened. It was like she was squeezing diamond. Baring her teeth, Misato called up all her anger and hatred, focusing her mind, soul and will into that hand. She knew without Ritsuko having to tell her that her sync ratio dropped instead of rising: Naoko didn't feel the same hatred Misato did.
Ritsuko. She had to kill this thing for Ritsuko's sake, and Kaji's, and what was left of the world.
Pale, thin arms pushed her fingers apart with ease so the thing SEELE created by screwing Chthulu could stick his head out of her fist to look up at her. His body's strength wasn't comparable to the Eva's, but she knew he was using his AT field.
Too-wide red eyes looked up at her Eva's, and she felt herself shudder with instinctive revulsion as she slammed her other hand down on that thing's head so she didn't have to look at it. It was wrong somehow, made all the hairs stand up on the back of her neck. Not human, not a child, a thing trying to look like one. The fact it was small relative to the Eva made it worse: small dangerous animal meant poison, and the thought of this thing encroaching into her, creeping into her veins and tampering with her mind, turning her into a thing made her want to throw up.
She could feel it wriggling in her hand, AT field not exactly frictionless (because that meant it wouldn't have any purchase on her fingers) but somehow too-slippery because she couldn't get a grip on it, couldn't dig into it at all, and it made her think of something slimy, ooze and like a centipede.
She wasn't sure whether it was her or Naoko that moved to throw it away from her into the rockface. Would that work? What she did was supposed to be backed by her AT field, will/soul or whatever, and she'd definitely wanted it to go smash.
Misato would have felt like she'd done something if there was at least a crater or an indentation in the mountain, but it looked like the abomination's field had stopped it, or stopped the mountain without pressing into it. Or it had just decelerated because oh yeah: it could fly, so sending it flying through the air was a stupid idea to begin with.
The anger at herself and her own stupidity sent her sync ratio climbing again. That was certainly an emotion Naoko was familiar with.
"You're like me, made from Adam, but you're defending the Lilim," it pointed out next, poking at the Eva's hand, the one that had thrown it.
"Shut up! Naoko is nothing like you!"
"And you're using the power of the light of the soul too, aren't you, Miss Misato?" it asked, landing. Standing on the ground, it poked at the side of the Eva's foot now.
Misato pulled that foot back, towards the other one, and then found that without her feet apart for balance the Eva wasn't stable enough, so she had to move the other foot over hurriedly, both feeling the Eva sway as though her own too-heavy body was swaying & as though she was in a boat in a storm. Or a capsule in a tsunami. It reminded her of Second Impact, and she could taste bile in the back of her throat: sickness, hatred and the memory of that white giant, those things. This was one of them, this had brought them upon everyone. "Get up here where I can see you!" she raged, short hair currently dyed dark blue falling in front of her face.
"Okay," it said, sounding pleased. It waved at her, intercepting her punch with its AT Field this time. "My name is Tabris, the Angel of Free Will, but you probably already knew that."
"You're no angel!" Misato yelled, teeth still bared as she punched the barrier twice in succession, watching the pale hexagons flash into existence at the impact.
"Well, I'm not bringing a message right now… Is it because I don't have wings?" he tilted his head to the side, wondering if it would help if he grew wings.
"Shut up and fight me!"
"…Alright?" he said, sounding a little lost, but if that was what she wanted… His AT field flared out at her, bashing at her like a physical shield and sending the Eva skidding down the hill. "Is that better?" he asked when she managed to stabilize herself again. "Can we talk now?"
Surging up the hill to punch at him again, she grabbed at the knife sheathed in her Eva when that didn't work. "What part of shut up don't you understand?" The knife pressed against his AT field, but even focusing all the power she and Naoko had at the tip of the blade didn't let it press through.
"I can go away for awhile?" he wondered. "There are some more Lilim trying to use this fight to sneak past me, so I'll put them back in your base and then I'll be back soon." Maybe that would give her some time to cool down?
He didn't like weapons. They were so impersonal. At least when Lilim fought with bodies and souls they were making contact with each other, might understand each other through that contact. Misato fighting him with another's soul, with another body as armor between the two of them? He didn't know if he could get through it to her, and Dr. Akagi hadn't replied to him even once. At least Misato was talking to him, even if it was enemy talk and she wasn't really listening? Tabris ignored Misato's demand to stay and fight her as he flew off to take care of this real quick.
"Hello! The Eva's here today, so I want to get back to that," he told the soldiers. "Will you go home on your own after I break your guns, or should I take you back? It would be faster to take you back, so I don't mind doing that." When they opened fire instead of being polite enough to respond, he decided that oh well, if they didn't want him to use his powers on them he'd given them a chance to say so, and just scooped them all up and zipped back to their base with them. He knew it was a little naughty of him not to warn them, but their surprised sounds just made him smile, restoring his excitement as he flew back to the Eva enough to spin for a bit, and laugh from the way it made him dizzy, even though it was harder for him to get dizzy than a Lilim. He didn't mind spinning around for longer, though: it was fun!
"Hello again!" he said to the Eva and the pilot inside as all the Lilim on the ground around them dived for cover. "Oh, you're bringing a gun?" Tabris saw, and flew over to look at it. "I guess I can wait until you're done, or would it save you the trouble if I just crushed it now? Well, I guess you want to try so I should let you, since you went to all this trouble to make it. I'll go sit over there until you're ready." Smiling, he sat down on a boulder and watched the Eva crouch down defensively over the Lilim, but also because not having to focus on maintaining her balance made it easier to pick up the big gun.
This was exciting, because hopefully when the Lilim ran out of other things to try, she and the Eva would finally try talking? He rolled over to lie on his stomach, resting his elbows on the rock and his head on his hands so he could look up while his legs kicked idly.
When Misato readied the rifle before the Lilim had pulled back, one of them kicked at the Eva's feet. "Hey! Give us time to get clear before you shoot the thing!"
Misato grumbled, but Ritsuko was right. There hadn't really been much hope of the element of surprise, even though this was just giving the thing more time to prepare.
At least the fact the abomination saw this as a game, making fun of her and humanity, meant it wasn't likely to try encroachment or any of the other awful things abominations were theoretically capable of? Once she got stronger, though, she'd have to worry about making the damn thing start fighting seriously.
The other Lilim left, and took the vehicle that had carried the gun up here with them. Tabris decided that he would fly around a little, because it would be boring to just sit on the rock deflecting bullets. He'd been doing that for ages, even if these were AT field-backed. The Eva needed to practice to fight the other angels, so he should help as much as he could.
Even though Tabris wasn't going especially fast, the first clip's bullets didn't come anywhere near him due to the problems of coordinating the Eva and the gun. Yes, it was the same size relative to the Eva as guns Misato had practiced with were relative to the teenager, but Naoko had never shot a gun in her life and the square-cube law meant that for the increase in physical size, there was a much bigger increase in the inertia and momentum it had when she adjusted it to try to rapidly bring it to bear on the target. They had practiced this, but the reason she'd gone out with the knife instead of the gun to begin with was that the knife was a lot more reliable.
When she started kneeling down to reload he stopped zipping around and looked at what she was doing curiously. Then the new clip started to glow the same color as his AT field and he levitated it up to her level, tilting his head to the side hopefully.
So he wanted to keep playing? "I don't need your help!" Misato snarled at him.
The clip jiggled a little. It was right there already, so she might as well take it, right?
Tabris didn't mean anything insulting by it: people tried that with him and it was meant fondly, not insultingly. The trouble was that it was something Lilim did with children, and while Tabris was still very small Misato was a teenager.
She went straight from insulted frustration to trying to hit him and the clip with the gun, ramming it down against his AT field repeatedly with arms that barely felt the weight of the metal.
The boy didn't have any idea what he'd done wrong, so he let the Lilim try to hit him in case that made her feel better, or at least made her tired so she could calm down.
When he saw the tiredness of even the Eva's arms (they were still biological, could still grow fatigued) but Misato still kept trying to hit him, moving arms that felt like they too were made of lead, so angry and determined to hurt him that she kept trying even knowing it wouldn't work, Tabris felt sad, both for her and himself, because this strong a rejection of him? He'd known that making friends wasn't very likely, but he'd still hoped. He didn't want to give up, but he crushed the gun anyway.
When the Eva didn't move after that, when neither of them spoke, he didn't know what to say. There might not be anything he could say to make the Lilim feel better, when she didn't want him to exist and speaking would remind her of his existence.
There might not be anything he could do to make her feel better, other than eventually bringing about complementation. For now, all he could think of to do was leaving her alone so hopefully some other Lilim would come to help her forget her pain.
When he disappeared over the hills Misato screamed and screamed again, banging her fists on the armrests, shaking her head and kicking in sheer rage, frustration and denial of her powerlessness, her inability to control the world well enough to kill the damn thing! She'd tried everything they'd come up with: was it because she was weak? Was she unable to avenge her father because she was weak? "I hate them, I hate them!" she yelled up at heaven, shaking with the force of the emotions she couldn't hold back any longer and too far gone to be conscious of the fact that the word for this was tantrum, that she was flipping out in front of everyone cleared to monitor her performance.
Eventually the shields of anger and hate failed her just like her physical weapons had, and she was forced to remember the causes of that anger and hate. Her years of killing isolation. Her father's sacrifice, her mother's kidnapping. Everything she'd lost, and not just her but the world. The cosmic unfairness, the cosmic wrongness of it. She'd been a good girl, and things like that just weren't supposed to happen! Things like that weren't meant to exist, and for humans to unleash them on other humans? To decide to torment her and murder billions of people?
Tabris wasn't only a thing she hated, he was barring her path to SEELE, to all the others who needed to die for her and the world to be avenged, for some part of this, however small, to be made right. Crush them, kill them, let them drown choking on their own blood like so many had drowned in Second Impact.
None of those listening knew what to say, not when she was giving voice to their own rage, their own grief. When Misato demanded, "Why, why?" that was what they wanted to know. Maybe that was why some people were starting to believe SEELE had it right: not just the practical matter of the threat of Adam and the other abominations, but thinking that instrumentality and complementation were worth it, they had to be, because something this terrible just couldn't be allowed to happen otherwise. God or whatever they believed in wouldn't let it.
The cosmos was a cold, lonely place and human life was so fragile, would die of heat or cold or lack of air or air they couldn't breath in almost all of it. Human existence wasn't the center of the universe, but a piece of fragile luck… Or so they'd thought, until they'd found the source of that luck, that it was no miracle of nature: humans were made and their environment was created for them by one of the abominations. Well, at least that explained why intelligent design wasn't: for one thing, back injuries could be impossible to fix because the back was still oriented for gravity to be pressing down on it, not to be vertical.
And now that manufactured luck had run out, now it was another race's turn to have the planet. Humanity's number was up, their birthrate wasn't climbing despite efforts to disprove SEELE's theory that Lilith was out of souls, the world was being made barren by LCL. Soon they wouldn't be able to survive, much less have a next generation to follow after them, in the one place in the cosmos they could reach that they had any hope of surviving in.
All of them were people who had spent their entire lives working either to save lives or to understand the universe, and they understood what was coursing through Misato's veins right now. Wished she hadn't had to face this so young.
Professor Fuyutsuki's face was buried in his hands. Ritsuko kept opening her mouth, trying to think of something to say to Misato and failing, because there was nothing that could make this any better except proof it wasn't so.
Then Kaji grabbed her hand. "Come on, I need your help," he said, pulling her out of the room, making her stumble up and down the rocky hills to Misato's Eva. "You can open this thing up, right?" he asked, knocking on the entry plug after clambering up the Eva.
Ritsuko hesitated, because opening it up here meant dumping LCL on the ground, but… Misato… "We can get in with her."
If all they could do was be there for her, than that was what they were going to do.
Yeah, Misato has friends, chibiTabris no can has.
