Down in the Geofront was the only area without the constant noise of cicadas and construction. There was still the burble of conversation, digital beeping, and other noise produced by the operation of Nerv, but even that was silent in the infirmary, where the only sounds were the gentle hums of air conditioning and fluorescent lights, and the breathing of the injured and their visitors.
Doctor Venkatesh's stem cell therapy, while a work in progress, had dramatically improved Shinji's health. His lungs were back up to about fifteen percent efficacy; he had been taken out of the perflubron tank to see visitors, and instead put in a larger, airtight ward filled with pure oxygen. It was enough to cause oxygen poisoning with extended visits, so Rei was forced to wear a gas mask to reduce airflow while she sat beside his bed, but people visiting just for a minute didn't bother.
Shinji had felt terrible when he was first hospitalised, because of the burning sensation throughout his chest, throat, and eyes, which had taken a few days to wear off completely. After that, he'd spent a while feeling sorry for himself. After that, he'd accepted his lot, and found a kind of peace.
He wasn't happy, exactly, that he was stuck in a hospital with two burnt-out lungs only slowly recovering with the help of a mad scientist, but it was the nearest thing to a holiday he'd had in a year. He'd had constant drills and synch tests since the third Angel, interspersed with battles roughly once a month in which he was frequently wounded. In the infirmary, he was left to himself. The exception was Rei, who spent her free time sitting beside him, keeping silent watch. Sometimes she read; sometimes she just stared into space, or at him. Somehow, it wasn't awkward, except on the one occasion he had tried to make small talk. Instead, they sat or lay there, accepting one another's presence, him with his SDAT playing in his ears on an infinite loop.
Rei sat. Half of it was because she was going to be waiting for the end no matter where she was; she didn't have anywhere better to be. The other half was that he needed someone to be there for him. The Second wouldn't, their guardian couldn't, and his father didn't. That last thought, which she had once ignored, had been slowly dissolving her equanimity for the past few months. If it were true that duty were everything, then that ought to include duty to one's family, but the Commander was not watching over his son.
The door hissed open; in walked Kaworu, who never bothered with a mask. He liked to show off his smile, and his eyes were already red, so it didn't matter much if they got a little irritated by the atmosphere. Shinji's eyes lit up; he stopped his SDAT and waved the other boy into the chair opposite Rei's.
"Hello," Kaworu said, to Shinji and to Rei. Rei regarded him neutrally; she neither liked nor disliked him, and while she certainly didn't trust him, for the same reasons Misato didn't, she was willing to accept him as long as he made Shinji happy. "I hope you're feeling strong today. You have quite a few visitors lined up and still coming."
"Really?" Shinji croaked, eyes lighting up in hope. "Is –?"
Kaworu sighed and shook his head. Shinji slumped. "Counting myself and Miss Ayanami, you have nine good friends who care about you, Shinji. And more, who were only turned away because of security regulations. This is Nerv Headquarters, after all."
"I guess," said Shinji, not wanting to admit that the number nine made him feel a bit better; it was much higher than he'd expected. Usually it was only Rei; Kaworu came by sometimes, and Misato had dropped by once or twice, but only for a minute before rushing back home or back to work. She tried, but she worked the equivalent of two full-time jobs, and she just didn't have the time to stay with him all day, like Rei did, minus her training and synch tests. He couldn't imagine who all of the other six could be. "Thanks, Kaworu."
"Are you sure you don't want me to bring a book?" he asked.
Shinji shrugged and smiled under his mask. "I like to let my mind go empty. Books don't do that. Besides, I could borrow one of Ayanami's if I did get bored."
Kaworu smiled a little wider at that, as though sharing a joke.
"Have you and Asuka got pezzo elegiaco down yet?" Shinji asked.
Kaworu snorted, much less elegantly than usual.
"Huh?" said Shinji. "I mean, with only two of you, you should make only about two thirds as many mistakes. And you've had a month to work at it …"
"You do realise that Pilot Soryu dislikes me, don't you?" Kaworu asked, stressing the title that Asuka still made him use. "We haven't made a single bar of progress. We've only been able to bring ourselves to even try twice, and those sessions weren't exactly productive."
"I know she can be … well, her, but she's like that with everyone. She doesn't like me either. If it were a problem, all three of us together should have been even worse, shouldn't we?"
Kaworu gave him a look of equal parts pity and incredulity. "Perhaps her dislike of you cancelled out with her dislike of me," he said, with less sarcasm in his tone than his words; it went over Shinji's head. "At any rate, we haven't been improving. I would bet that that will change when our leader returns, though."
"What? Leader? But – I'm the cellist, and –"
Shinji could have gone through any number of reasons why he wasn't any sort of leader and never would be. He was the weakest one, the most shy except Rei and without her strength, he wasn't even a great pilot, and if he did have the most kills, those were all either because he was the only pilot available at the time or because the others screened for him. Asuka had been elected leader when they were going to fight the ninth, and even Rei had taken charge more than him. Before he could voice any of those points, Kaworu laughed and stood to leave.
"I'll be back later, but I'd better not keep the others waiting too long. And I don't want my hair to get too bleached. Happy birthday, Shinji."
The door opened, and Kaworu left, to be replaced by Fuyutsuki.
"Subcommander," Shinji said, surprised; he didn't generally expect the people at the top to care about him, certainly not enough to visit.
"Hello, Ikari," Fuyutsuki said, giving something between a nod and a bow. "I hope you're recovering well?"
"Doctor Venkatesh says the therapy is starting to take hold, sir; I should be back at full health in another week, he says."
"Marvellous. I can't tell you how devastated I was to hear about your injuries, even with everything else going on. It would be truly tragic if anything were to happen to one of our bravest warriors."
Shinji's mind immediately and involuntarily dissected this. Fuyutsuki had specified 'one of'. Realistically, he was probably just upset about losing a pilot. And, of course, there was the fact that it was him here, and not his father. "Thank you, sir."
Fuyutsuki didn't see the need to burden Shinji with the knowledge that his father had advised Fuyutsuki not to come, and that he had had to creatively interpret this as not being an order. "I hope you know that Nerv's resources are at your disposal; anything you need beyond this treatment, you have only to ask."
Shinji couldn't imagine what that could possibly be; it wasn't as though he knew better than Dr Venkatesh what would work for treating acid-burnt lungs. "Thank you, sir."
Fuyutsuki nodded and turned to leave. "By the way," he added, "that third-last Angel? Everyone I've asked agrees that that was the most impressive battle we've seen yet."
"Everyone? Sir?"
Fuyutsuki smiled and left, as he didn't feel like lying or admitting that he specifically didn't ask Shinji's father.
"You are not alone," Rei whispered. Shinji glanced at her, surprised.
This time, two people came in.
"Toji? Kensuke?" Shinji rasped, impressed in spite of himself. "I didn't think they'd let you down here."
"Major Katsuragi gave us these," Kensuke said, holding up a laminated visitor's card dangling from a lanyard about his neck. "Happy birthday, bro. So you got fumed, huh?"
"Is that what they're calling it?"
"Some other people who didn't get to shelter quick enough have breathing problems," Toji said, his accent and mask combining to make him rather hard to understand. "They've been getting treatment at the general hospital. I didn't think it got bad enough to keep anyone in the ICU for a month, though."
"I was outside for longer than anyone should have been," Shinji said. There had been unspecified 'issues' with getting some civilians to their shelters, but there were more of those than there were ingress points for the Geofront, so he was worse affected than any of them, to his knowledge. "How's it going up on the surface?"
"They rebuilt the school a few blocks away," Toji said. "The old spot's kaput, it was hit too hard. Classes are still boring as hell. Even worse, without either of you" his eyes flicked to Rei and back; she gave no response "and Minami and Sato both left, too. And everyone who's still here is pretty down. You can't even make eye contact with the Red Terror without her throwing something at you. I mean, something heavier than usual."
"Okay," said Shinji, thinking that maybe it was actually a good thing that she hadn't come to see him, and wondering what exactly was bothering her so much.
"The city's mostly back to being an actual city by now," Kensuke volunteered. "It was a mess, that last attack destroyed pretty much everything. Or I guess you would have seen photos?"
"Er," said Shinji, who had in fact seen no such thing.
"Jeez, they let you pilot Eva but they don't even show you the city?"
There was an awkward pause.
"Get better soon, will you?" said Toji. "Kensuke keeps dragging me to the arcade. Someone else needs to get clobbered for a change."
"I'm still surprised at how you can fight giant aliens in real life but suck so hard at the arcade," Kensuke said to Shinji.
"Um," said Shinji, acutely conscious that he wasn't actually very good at fighting Angels.
There was a knock at the door.
"Jeez, impatient much," Toji said, but he and Kensuke left promptly anyway, because it was Misato. She smiled, passed them, and sat beside Shinji.
"Hi, Shinji," she said. "Sorry I didn't come earlier."
"It's okay," he said. "I know you're busy. You've always had long hours."
"It's not okay. Someone I care about, a lot, almost died, and I've barely visited."
"Your work …"
"I know. It always comes back to that for us both, doesn't it?" she asked. "No matter what you want, it always comes back to you needing to pilot, because no-one else can make Unit-01 move, and if it doesn't move, the Angels win. And no matter what I want, I can barely find time to visit you. I promised to take you in; that means I have to look after you when you're hurt."
That dispassionate, relentless part of his mind parsed the phrase 'have to' as meaning she felt duty-bound, rather than actually caring.
"I can't even stay now, on your birthday, for more than a few minutes," she went on, bitterly. "I'm on break now."
"It's okay," he said again.
She took his hand and rubbed it with her thumb. "Pen-Pen misses you too, you know." Shinji snorted. "That nice lady who lives downstairs baked me some sata andagi as a get well present, but either he or Asuka got them first, I'm not sure who. There's a cake outside; they're waiting until everyone's come in before they cut it up."
"Am I allowed to eat cake?" asked Shinji, who had been put on a specific diet by Doctor Venkatesh.
"It's your birthday. You can have one slice. Cake makes everyone feel better. I should give you a beer, too."
"That one might be pushing it."
Misato chuckled. "Maybe. I should let your last guests in for a moment. I'll see you again, though, I promise."
She stood and left, holding the door open for Asuka and Hikari. Shinji's eyes lit up; Asuka was one of two people he'd really wanted to visit him who hadn't. "Asuka! And Horaki."
"Hey," said Asuka, looking awkward.
Rei gave her a look. She'd obviously been coerced into coming by Hikari and Misato.
Hikari repressed a huff at Asuka's stubbornness, and smiled at Shinji. "Hello, to you too. Haven't we known each other long enough for you to call me Hikari?" She wouldn't normally have said that, but she needed to be nice to make up for Asuka, who'd taken things harder than she admitted to anyone, least of all herself, and who didn't have healthy coping mechanisms.
Asuka frowned at Rei. "Have you been sitting here this whole time? Everyone else has had to wait in line for longer."
Rei said nothing.
"I'm glad I was let in," Hikari babbled. "I was worried I wouldn't be, or Suzuhara or Aida, but Major Katsuragi got us passes. School's going really well, you know, although it's quiet with so many people missing. I'll try to get you your print-outs, if I can. You too, Ayanami. Um. The city's still going ahead with the hanami, it's in three weeks now. Will you be better by then, do you know?"
"Um, I think so. Doctor Venkatesh thinks it'll take one more week. It's one of those things where it takes most of the time to get set up, but once it gets going, it's finished pretty quickly."
"Oh, that's good. Can you talk about it, or –?"
"Sorry. It's a secret method, I had to sign an NDA early on." Probably partly because of the extensive use of stem cells, and a cocktail of high-tech drugs. If only more of them were anaesthetics; having part of his body regrowing was more painful, and specifically itchy, than he'd expected.
"I see. Will you be going to the festival, then? It's really fun; I go every year. You get to dress up, and if there's someone you like" she threw a significant and very obvious look at Asuka "it's a good thing to ask them to."
"Well," he said. He hated crowds. On the other hand, it only came up once a year, and he might feel differently in a fortnight. "What about you, Asuka?"
"No," she said immediately. "It's stupid. There'll be all these old people, and rides meant for little kids, and who even cares about cherry blossoms anyway."
Hikari opened her mouth to contradict this, but Shinji smiled and shrugged. "I guess I won't go either, then."
Hikari tried to work out whether this counted as them going on some sort of neurotic introvert-date, or they were just wussing out to sit in and watch TV, but Asuka gave an involuntary little smile, so she left it.
"Nerv work is still boring," Asuka said. "They keep having us do synch tests. And a few training sims against each other, which are better, I guess. I'm still the best, of course, but the others aren't bad. You'll have to work once you're out of here."
She won more than she lost, but with a rate only slightly above fifty percent. Kaworu was more graceful, but she could beat him by sheer aggression; he didn't quite have her killer instinct or single-minded obsession. Chitose was clumsier and had a lower synch rate, but she kept looking up martial arts moves online and incorporating them into her attacks and counters. Most of them didn't actually work at Eva-scale or she did them wrong, but she would discard those after a few failures and try another. Asuka was curious about who would win if Kaworu and Chitose sparred, but the only time they had been opposed in the sims, Chitose had refused to do anything except dodge; after Kaworu killed her twice Misato had set them both fighting Evabots in their own private worlds for half an hour.
"I've been wondering … whether I even should keep piloting," he said, faltering as she turned a sharp look on him. "I mean, I was hurt again, because of it, and …"
"Are you stupid? You were hurt when you weren't piloting. It was only because you were stuck outside of your Eva for so long that it happened."
"Yeah, but if I'd gone to a shelter …"
"If you had run away, you mean?" He flinched away from her piercing blue gaze. "Don't tell me that there are more pilots than Evas. Both of those two idiots napped through that battle. If the Angels hadn't weakened each other so much first, even I wouldn't have won on my own, or even with the Honours Student."
He looked at the ceiling tiles.
"So hurry up and get better, because I'm not going to let you miss another battle. Got it?" He was silent; she leaned over and shook him. "Got it?!"
"Okay! Ow! Asuka!"
"And don't you forget it," she said. Hikari giggled.
At that moment, the door slid open, revealing Ritsuko.
"Oh!" said Shinji. "Doctor Akagi." He definitely hadn't expected her; she had never been cruel to him, per se, but nor did she give the impression of caring for him as a person, only as an asset.
"Good morning, Shinji. How are you feeling?"
"Um, I'm feeling much better. Doctor Venkatesh is really … he gets results."
"So he does. Will you be able to pilot?"
That explained it: she still didn't care for him as a person. "I guess I'll keep doing it. I mean, I'm the only one who can pilot Unit-01, so …"
"I mean right now, specifically," Ritsuko clarified. "Because there's another Angel coming."
"There is?" said Asuka, checking her phone. "Why didn't you alert me?"
"We did. This room is in a Faraday cage; some of the equipment here is delicate. So is the patient, for that matter."
"I've got to go," Asuka told Hikari importantly. "Shinji …" She didn't finish that thought, and instead turned and pushed past the scientist, toward the cages.
"You're on standby inside the Geofront," Ritsuko told Rei, who nodded, stood, and left, all without saying a word. Ritsuko turned to Shinji. "And you?"
"Are you serious?" Hikari blurted out, then caught herself and blushed. "I mean. I'm sorry. But … he's literally going to die if he leaves this room."
"We can increase the concentration of oxygen in LCL. In fact, that's what we did when first treating him, and Gyandev keeps his regular tank properly oxygenated."
"It's okay," said Shinji. "If I have to … to protect the others …"
Ritsuko attached a mask over Shinji's mouth and nose to a hose and oxygen cylinder on his bed, then motioned Hikari to help her wheel it out into the corridor, where the other students were waiting with a large chocolate cake. Ritsuko pushed Shinji past them without a word; a moment later, Chitose ran up.
"Hello, Doctor Akagi," she said. With her long legs, she never seemed to get out of breath when she ran around. "Shinji. And, um. Class President?"
"Representative," Hikari corrected automatically, too worried to be irritated.
"We're in a hurry," said Ritsuko, pushing on, but Chitose moved around and blocked her.
"I should pilot Unit-01," she said.
Ritsuko blinked. "Didn't you say you didn't want to, in case it went berserk?"
Hikari frowned and tried to guess exactly what 'berserk' could mean in context.
"I don't," Chitose said bluntly. "But Shinji is injured."
"Thank you," he mumbled into his mask, because she was apparently the only person who had internalised that.
"And he's out of practice," she elaborated. "So if he goes out there, he might make a mistake, which could get one or more of himself, Asuka, and Kaworu killed, and maybe even cause Third Impact, if he does badly enough. I'd be safer piloting than sitting here."
Shinji wilted. She was right, too; if he failed when the others were depending on him, all three combat Evas could be destroyed, and then they'd be completely doomed.
"You've never synchronised with Unit-01 before," Ritsuko pointed out. "There's a high chance it could go berserk, which, during a battle …"
"I know," Chitose said. "But it doesn't look like Shinji is going to achieve anything at all right now. If you restrain Unit-01 and have the other pilots on standby for if it does go berserk, then you won't be risking much, and we could gain an entire Eva for this battle."
Ritsuko considered this.
"Suit up, and I'll ask Misato. As Operations Director, it's her call." Chitose nodded, smiled, and hurried off. "Horaki, stuff your fingers in your ears and go back to the waiting room unless you want to spend the rest of the day signing every NDA ever printed." She pulled out her phone. "Misato? Mogami's volunteered to pilot in Shinji's place. Which do we use?"
Misato blinked. She'd thought Chitose didn't trust Kaworu in the field. Perhaps she'd misjudged their relationship. Or perhaps she meant to backstab him first. "Is she an option? Can you synchronise her to Unit-01?"
"Probably."
"Can you quantify that?"
"Not with any precision; it depends on too many unknown unknowns. I don't even know why she can pilot Unit-03, since she obviously isn't using my method. Seele owns part of the tech for working with the Adamite lines, so I assumed that they had hard-coded an override into the production models to let their own operatives pilot, and that this is how she and Kaworu can synchronise. If that were true, then that override wouldn't exist in the test model, because I oversaw its construction; so she shouldn't be able to. On the other hand, she knows how temperamental Eva can be; I doubt she'd volunteer if she didn't have a good reason to think she could safely synchronise. And I'm not confident about the override theory, because if I had made a thing like that, I'd have included a back door so I could disable it, which they would have used and kept her out of Unit-03. So, call it sixty-forty in her favour."
Misato thought back to Shinji's thin frame, and the photos she'd seen of what was left of his lungs, and the video of the inbound Angel. Magi had classified it as an AGGRAVATED ALERT all by itself, its AT Field was so strong. He really, really wouldn't want to fight this one. "Keep him on standby. We'll try her first. How long will it take to synch her?"
"If we do it by the book, half an hour, but if we assume it'll be fine and skip the redundant safety steps, ten minutes."
"We're short on time. Do that. If there's any issues, we'll abort immediately. And keep the LCL overpressure switch handy, even if she does synch. Just in case." She switched lines. "Asuka, stay where you are. You're making sure Unit-01 activates without any problems."
"What about me?" asked Kaworu, who was already on the surface.
"Help the military set up. Rei's here too, and Unit-01's locked in place."
"Why am I always stuck babysitting? What's wrong with Unit-01?" Asuka asked.
"Nothing," said Misato, guessing that she wouldn't be thrilled to hear that Shinji was still out of action. "But it's been a while and there've been software updates. Safe than sorry, and all."
Asuka grunted and closed her link.
Chitose, wearing her black-and-yellow plugsuit, hurried along the walkway to her plug and climbed in. "By the way, Doctor, I was wondering – why do you smoke? Don't you know it's really unhealthy?"
"Nicotine is a nootropic," Ritsuko said, loading the synch program. "My mind is the only weapon I have against the Angels. If I survive long enough to die of cancer, that means it's done its job."
"Okay. Then why not take other drugs that won't give you cancer?"
"I do," said Ritsuko, who also drank copious amounts of coffee and frequently used modafinil and pramiracetam. "Smoking also happens to be addictive."
"Hmm." Chitose sniffed, derailing that train of thought. "Does Unit-02 smell of Asuka? This one smells of Shinji. And Unit-03 did too, of Kaworu. What about Unit-00? Rei, does your Eva smell of you?"
Ritsuko ignored this. "Beginning synchronisation," she narrated. "Swapping in data, remapping nerve connections. We're following the instructions from the full checklist, but we're skipping most. Begin at 108, then 109 and straight to 113."
"Nerve connections in place," said Maya. "Initiating second contact."
The bridge turned red, and a warning tone sounded.
"Nerve pulses reversing! It's rejecting the signal!"
"Cut the connections," Ritsuko ordered.
"Wait!" said Chitose. "I can do this."
"Cut them," Ritsuko repeated.
Maya hit the key.
"It's rejecting that signal, too."
"Eject the plug."
"Nothing's going through! And … we've lost the video feed to the entry plug!"
"Unbelievable," Ritsuko muttered, sending tertiary overrides and diagnostic commands without effect. "I listen to her for one minute, and we lose an Eva before even launching. How could it possibly screw up this badly? The video has its own circuit; it doesn't even interface with Eva." She gave a sigh of disgust. "Asuka, Rei, move to Unit-01's cage and stand by." She muted the line. "It's not thrashing around," she realised. "So it's … neither accepting nor rejecting her? It won't even let her eject?" She shook her head. "Yui, sometimes I wonder about you."
Chitose sat in the dark plug, her eyes slowly adjusting. "Hello? I … Ikari Yui? Oh, that explains so much. I have so many questions for you! What – no, I'm not – well, yes, I am, but only a little, and I'm on your side, I'm friends with your son. Yes, he's outside. He doesn't want to. Yes. I want that too. Remember the one with all the spikes? How there was an orange thing like you, and it pulled the attack around so he didn't hit you or your son? That was me. Yes. You're welcome. Thank you. Another's here. He wants to hurt him. You can stop him, but you need me or him to help, and he's too hurt. The spiky one's brother did that. Technically, I suppose, slightly, but I want them dead, more than anything. To save everyone. Yes."
"Nerve pulses … resuming," Maya said, surprised. "Senpai, can they do that?"
"Yui can do whatever she wants to do," Ritsuko said. "She always was strong-willed. Is the pilot still alive and human?"
"Sure. Let's make them pay," Chitose told the Eva, her tone still light and airy. She took a moment to appreciate that Nerv had just given her what was quite possibly the most powerful Eva that would ever be made; it was no stronger than the production models, yet, but its Lilithian genes gave it a ludicrous amount of potential, in the same way that humans are no stronger than apes, but one lives in tribes whereas the other is a few generations away from terraforming entire planets. Then she flicked the lights, video, and black box back on.
Ritsuko raised an eyebrow. Her synch rate had levelled off at 82.4%, the exact same score she had in Unit-03, two points below Shinji at last check. That meant Yui had literally no measurable effect on her synch rate. That was supposed to be impossible; even if the pilot didn't depend on the imprint to synchronise, it should have some effect, probably reducing her synch score because she wasn't Yui's child.
Chitose blinked: Unit-02 was looming over her. "Oh, hello! I'm sorry, I think there was a problem with this plug, but it's working now."
"You," said Asuka. "What are you doing here?"
"Piloting," Chitose explained.
"Where's Shinji."
"In the hospital, I assume. Or maybe on standby."
"Akagi said he was supposed to pilot, not you!"
"He's still hurt. I'm not. Isn't it logical to use the healthiest pilot available?"
"He can handle it!"
"Maybe."
"Not maybe, definitely."
"I can definitely handle it too. Why would we prefer to field him than me?"
"I don't know, because he's killed the most Angels and you've killed none?"
"To be fair, I've only been in one battle, where I screened for him. He told me I deserved equal credit for that one. And I'd beat him in a training sim."
"That's worthless on a real battlefield."
"He's moving gingerly, you saw. I've been training for the past month, and he's out of practice. Plus, if he's hurt again, he might take even longer to recover, and then he'd be weakened for the next battle. And also, he might –"
Asuka abruptly deflated. "Whatever," she said. "Let's go kill the stupid Angel."
Misato rolled her eyes. That had taken long enough. "Evas launch!"
The fifteenth Angel had hit them at long range, knocking out most of their catapults and destroying much of the city before they were even in a position to respond. Part of the rebuilding effort was dedicated to installing new catapult tunnels leading outside the city limits to prevent that from happening again; one tunnel happened to exit only a few hundred metres from their destination.
Asuka had gone back to sulking. "What do we know about the Angel?" Chitose asked Misato, as though shooting along an electromagnetic elevator in a giant battle mech happened every day.
"Forwarding live video to your HUD," Maya said, and the feed popped up.
"That reminds me of the videos I saw …"
Misato finished the thought. "… of the fifth Angel, yes."
It was a great tetrahedron, floating along over the hills around the western coast. Unlike the fifth, it had light grey circles honeycombed over a black surface, for an overall effect that looked like uniform dark grey until one got too close; and rather than impassively sliding through air, it spun in place, its speed and axis of rotation twisting seemingly at random. It gave off a sound like tremolo whistling, cycling through the four notes of a diminished seventh arpeggio.
"And here's a feed from when the army tried a preliminary bombardment. Reichner's started using completely automated weaponry," she added, with approval.
The video cut to the Angel crossing the north-west beach and a forest, before two MRLs opened fire on it; the rockets exploded harmlessly against sheets of orange light. A slit opened in one of the Angel's faces, revealing double rows of long, vicious teeth, and a great pink tongue, shaped like a human's but long like a frog's, shot out, crushing the MRLs. The tongue withdrew, and the mouth sealed shut and became a smooth, glossy façade again; throughout, the Angel maintained constant lateral velocity, while spinning randomly.
"I see," said Chitose. "So it'll be hard to get close enough to neutralise its AT Field."
"Hard, dangerous, and not worth trying," said Misato. "We're going to try the same tactic that worked against the fifth, hitting it with the positron cannon. Its centre of gravity follows a nearly-constant trajectory; assuming that's where the core is, and that it stays still while it tries to break through the Geofront armour, you should be able to kill it without getting anywhere near it."
Asuka tsked. She had accepted the necessity of fighting in a team awhile ago, but the lingering traces of her warrior code of honour resented attacking from longer range than they presumed the Angel could respond from.
"The Fourth Child is currently helping set it up," Ritsuko said, showing a satellite feed of Kaworu in the same position Shinji had been in a year ago, helping ground teams assemble the electronics, the cannon by his side.
"He'll take the shot, and a second, if he misses," Misato said. "Your job is to cover him until it recharges."
"Oh, please," said Asuka. "Why is he taking the shot? I'm the better pilot; he should be supporting me."
"Because he's already in position, and you're both equally good shots, or at least close enough that there's no real difference," Chitose explained.
Misato, who was better at working with stubborn and proud people, ignored this. "If it matters, fine. You take the shot. Kaworu?"
"Either or," he said, correctly divining her thoughts and not really caring who did what.
"And cut their synch rates to 30%," Misato added after a moment's thought. "If Angels can sense AT Fields, we don't want this one see you before you take it down."
"Kaworu-chan," said Chitose. "This is the first time we'll be in combat together."
"I feel safer than ever."
"Could that have anything to do with the eight kilometres of empty space between you and the city?" Asuka asked.
"That's certainly part of it," he said.
"We should use combined arms," Chitose said to Kaworu. "You like short swords, but those won't work here, so … you prefer needle guns to pallet rifles, right? I'll take the heat shield and a rifle, then."
"Wasn't that shield vaporised by the fifth?"
"This is a new one. I guess it makes sense to make a replacement, what with how many Angels have energy beam attacks."
Ritsuko, who could have added to that, chose not to. The pilots didn't need to know about Nerv's engineering priorities, and frankly it was a little annoying when they did.
The pilots bantered as the girls helped Kaworu put the finishing touches on the cannon, then crouched down in position. They didn't have long to wait before the Angel floated into sight, and over the city. It came to a halt over the same spot the fifth, thirteenth, and fifteenth had, directly over Lilith's chamber in Terminal Dogma, and stopped twisting, settling down to a gentle spin about a constant almost-vertical axis.
"This is it," Misato said. "Our sensors say this one is even stronger than the last two. I don't need to tell you what that means. We can't afford to give it any opportunity to damage you. Offence is always your best defence, but against this one, it's your only defence. Your orders are to take it out with extreme prejudice and at all costs. Good luck."
"Japan is blacked out," Shigeru reported. "Charging cannon." The cannon was less experimental than last time; they'd got the charge time down to a fraction of what it had been.
The Angel opened its mouth again, and its tongue flicked out and against the pavement two hundred metres below, cracking it. It slammed down twice more, then swept across, throwing bits of loosened concrete and cars out of the way, before darting down again.
"It's in my crosshairs," Asuka said. Her frown was melting away, her old feral grin slowly returning.
"Charge at 95%," Maya read out. "Ready to fire in five … four … three … two –"
The Angel stabbed its tongue deep into the ground and drew it tight to slam itself downward, gouging a crater into the surface armour with a thud Misato felt from Central Dogma.
"Damn it!" Asuka cried, her finger twitching on her trigger, almost wasting her shot.
"Six armour layers broken!" Makoto reported, then, in an undertone, "Christ."
Misato made a mental note to have that one armour plate reinforced, after the battle. "Asuka, hold fire. Ritz, can you modify the targeting system?"
"You mean, can I do that before it breaks through?" Ritsuko asked, narrowing her eyes. "I … maybe. Maya, have Magi run AVP interpolation. It's moving too erratically for me to see any patterns."
Maya sent Magi the commands. The Angel bounced off the ground and rammed it twice more, before its tongue tore free; the Angel flew upward in a cloud of broken concrete and superalloy armour.
Without an anchor to pull against, its path was a mathematically perfect parabola. Asuka visually traced it, led the centre of mass, and pulled the trigger, all in the space of two seconds: a pencil-thin beam of pure antimatter shot out, dead on target, the light burning out the cameras and making the pilots shade their eyes.
"With extreme prejudice," she smirked. There hadn't been time to ask Misato's permission.
"Fifteen seconds until cameras are back online," Maya said.
Ritsuko nodded and looked down at her computer. Magi could calculate the positron beam's trajectory and compare it with the AVP's prediction of the Angel's position. "That's a direct hit. Good …" As she spoke, she happened to glance back at the haemochromatic feed. The blue pattern was still active. "Uh-oh."
The cameras blinked back on, showing an AT Field shimmering and fading out of sight, and the completely unharmed Angel behind it.
"Oh, Sheiße," said Asuka.
The Angel spun in place so that one of its vertices was pointed directly at her. A second mouth opened with a wet squelching sound, showing more teeth.
"Misato?" Kaworu said, a hint of nerves audible.
Chitose, who had rested her pallet rifle on the ground, picked it up, and adjusted her grip on her shield. Her nearest thing to a nervous tic was that she stopped staring at passing clouds, but Maya saw her pulse rise to 165 bpm.
"Uncap their synch rates," Misato said, speaking very quickly. "Prepare for a second shot. Kaworu, Mogami, get ready for close combat; if it's at point-blank, you might be able to –"
The Angel's two tongues shot out and wrapped around sturdy-looking skyscrapers; the tongues went taut, slingshotting the Angel down between the buildings and tearing them out of their foundations. It ricocheted off the ground, throwing up bus-sized clumps of dirt and concrete, and flew toward the Evas fast enough to leave a plasma slipstream.
"Brace!"
Chitose dashed in front of Asuka and raised her shield, bringing her pallet rifle to bear; the Angel barrelled into her point-first with over a hundred kilotons of kinetic energy. The shield and gun took the brunt of it and were smashed to bits, but she still went flying; she hit an outcrop of rock, which collapsed onto her. Her frontal armour was ripped open; ichor sprayed from her stomach.
Kaworu raised his needle gun and got a shot off; the needle hit the Angel's AT Field and shattered. One tongue whipped forward and curled around him, pinioning his arms to his side and knocking his gun to the ground. He grunted: it was faster than he'd expected.
The second tongue went for Asuka; out of reflex, she blocked with the positron gun, and it wrapped around that instead and crushed it. She raised her arms to avoid getting caught like Kaworu, reaching into her pylon to draw her prog knife. The tongue dropped her gun and looped around her chest twice and then one thigh, saliva rolling off it. A wave of nausea swept through her from the sensation of the warm, wet meat wrapped around her body; she stabbed down to sever the tongue. The blade crashed against it without effect, throwing off orange sparks.
"What? No!" She brought it down again and again. The tongue lifted her up and toward the Angel's mouth; she braced herself against its gums. It took the opportunity to wrap another loop around her, its end slipping further down her thigh, trailing saliva. "Urgh! This – get off!" She brought a hand to her mouth and tried not to throw up.
The other tongue dragged Kaworu toward its mouth. "Chitose," he said, struggling futilely to free his arms, "whatever happens, don't –" He was helpless as it drew him in, and the teeth chomped down over the entry plug. Central Dogma went red, and sirens wailed, almost loud enough to drown out his scream.
"Pilot life signs critical! Synchronisation down! He's bleeding out!"
"Oh. I'm so sorry."
"Hit the life support!"
"Already at its limits, and breaking down! It's too damaged!"
"Set the plugsuit to maximum compression about both thighs. Override all safeties, just get those arteries closed! Prepare the defibrillators!"
"I shouldn't have waited."
"Eject him!"
"We can't! The plug's shattered!"
"The Fourth Child's unconscious! Blood loss at one litre and rising!"
"I know you don't want this, but you're not dying here."
"Asuka, give it everything you have!"
"I am! This is revolting – I can't –"
"The Angel's still going!"
"Rei! Prepare to launch!"
"Yui. I love him."
"Rei?! She's no match for that thing!"
"We can't afford to lose all three combat Evas in one sortie. Rei! Your orders are to get its attention, then get the hell back to the Geofront!"
"I know your true form. It's time to stop holding back."
"Belay that order! Do not deploy the First Child. Initiate Unit-03's self-destruct."
"Commander!"
"Ibuki. Do it."
Maya mouthed a prayer for forgiveness, and moved to send the commands. As she did so, her gaze happened on the synchrographs, and she did a double-take. Asuka's rate was hovering in the low nineties. Kaworu's had dropped from 90.0% to 50.0% to zero when he passed out. Chitose's had slipped to 51.8%, then jumped to 91.4, then 149.9, then 241.4, and still going.
Unit-01 shoved the rockfall off itself, rolled to its feet, rushed toward Unit-03, and seized the tongue wrapped around it. It sank the fingers of both hands into the meat and tore it in half. The Angel spat out Unit-03 and Asuka and roared, gnashing its teeth, its cadence switching to an augmented chord, shaking the mountain; Chitose caught Unit-03 and backed away. Asuka landed beside her, spattered with saliva, and stumbled as the ground rocked beneath them.
"Take him to a hospital," Chitose said, her voice very slow and clear.
Asuka glanced from Unit-01, which was glittering with AT light, to Unit-03, which had been bitten almost in half.
"Good luck," was all she said. She took the ruined Eva and ran down the mountain.
Chitose pressed the severed tongue against her collapsed abdomen. Her armour, warped and torn by the Angel's impact, melted off; the tongue sank into the pale flesh beneath and filled it out, healing the damage.
"Cut her synch rate to 100%," Ritsuko said.
"Signal rejected!"
"Sorry, Doctor," said Chitose, "not today."
"Synch rate 261.2, levelling off," Maya reported.
"You'll die at that level," Ritsuko said.
"Not today," Chitose repeated, and killed the link.
Crackling with orange light, she stood against the Angel, as it ascended and opened its final two mouths, three and a half tongues snaking toward her, the wounded one quickly regenerating. Eva's eyes glowed orange.
"Here we go," she whispered.
Asuka may have objected to ranged warfare, but Chitose had never had any such compunctions. She swiped in the direction of the Angel; four deep gouges appeared in the Angel's surface, spattering LCL. The tongues lashed down toward her; she blocked two, but one wrapped around her legs, and one smacked into her from behind, smashing her power cable. Eva roared, shattering the armoured restraints around her mouth and one shoulder; she seized the tongue around her legs and bit it off.
More tongues wrapped around her arms. She dug her claws into one and shredded it; the other wrenched her off her feet and into its mouth. It chomped down on her; she kicked out at the same moment, dodging the teeth and knocking one out. She raised her free hand, and the tongue burst into LCL. She crawled into the mouth, scratching and biting at everything she could reach. The mouth snapped shut behind her; long-range microphones could hear muted wet tearing noises.
Central Dogma was silent for a minute.
"Holy hell," said Makoto. "Is she …?"
There was a crackle at Maya's station. "Can you hear me?" Chitose asked, her voice still slow and clear, with no video.
"Yes," said Misato, striding over. "Chitose, what –"
"Is the Angel still alive?"
Misato glanced at Ritsuko.
"It's dying," she said, reading the energy signatures. "You must have cracked its core, but –"
"'Dying' means not dead yet," Chitose said.
"High energy reaction detected!" Shigeru exclaimed. "Brace!"
The Angel erupted into a cruciform explosion, knocking out the cameras again. It took two minutes for the dust to clear enough to see even the silhouettes: the mountaintop had been blown clean off, the Angel had ceased to exist, and Unit-01 stood, undamaged but with most of its armour gone, orange light dancing around it like St Elmo's fire. Maya shook, and made the sign of the cross.
"Kaworu," Chitose continued. "Is he alive?"
"Life support shows vitals are positive," Ritsuko said. "Weak, but there. He's still alive."
"Is he getting the best treatment physically possible?"
"He's at a triage team. As soon as he's stabilised, we'll have him transferred to HQ's hospital. We're not going to let a pilot die, Mogami."
"Oh. Right. Of course not. Silly me."
With that, the AT light dimmed, her synch rate dropped back to the low eighties, her voice returned to normal, and video returned; she looked as bright and perky as ever. "Well, it doesn't look like there's anything left to do here. Shall I head back to Tokyo-3, then?"
"Mogami," said Misato, "what did you just do?"
"I killed the Angel." She began the walk back to the city.
"Not that! How did you absorb its tongue?How did you make it explode like that? How did you get past two hundred percent synchronisation?!"
"I don't know," she said, after enough hesitation to signal a lie.
Misato took three deep breaths. Calling her out on it wouldn't work.
"Okay, let's try something else, then. Why is Unit-01's battery not draining, even though you're not plugged in?"
Ritsuko glanced down in surprise. Misato was right; the battery was patiently hovering at full power.
"I assume it's drawing its power from the S2 engine instead," Chitose said, without the telltale pause.
"Impossible," said Ritsuko. "Evas' S2 engines are stunted; they only work when stimulated by an electric current. If we knew how to make them self-sustaining without needing a battery or cable, why would we bother with the power systems?"
"Well, I always assumed you did that for a technical reason, like maybe it's easier to power the robot parts with electricity than with super solenoidal energy. That, or you were worried that that would cause it to ascend to godhood and eradicate the human race. Or maybe a budget thing?"
Ritsuko brought up the diagnostics. In Evas, S2 engines usually looked like wrinkled, vestigial bladders. The one in Unit-01 now looked more like a human heart, swelling and contracting with Angelic energy.
"Mogami," she said, "why is Unit-01's S2 engine twelve times the size it was yesterday?"
"It probably grew."
"Mogami!"
"When my synch ratio spiked, that must have catalysed its Lilith part to use its Fruit of Knowledge to fix whatever parts of the S2 engine you got defective when you first made it. Probably Yui did that, figuring that that would be the best way to save him. I don't think it could happen with the production models; without Lilith, it would need a genius imprint and a massive synch ratio."
"What are you talking about?" said Asuka.
"We Lilin have the Fruit of Knowledge. It's a fancy mystical way of saying sapience. Lilith subtly directed evolution for a few billion years to make creatures capable of using it; you know, a heart and lungs and blood with haemoglobin to carry oxygen to feed a large brain, opposable thumbs, a voice box and ears to communicate with, that sort of thing. Even now, She's doing the same thing – I think it's called the Flynn Effect – or, She would be, if She weren't disabled by the Lance of Longinus."
"Wait, what?" said Misato.
"Overpressure the LCL," the Commander ordered.
Maya shot Misato another apologetic look and sent the command.
"It's a thing you use to disable a Seed of Life," Chitose continued. "I assume someone from Nerv took Adam's old Lance and used it on Lilith, probably to stop Her from looking for Adam. Anyway, Angels have the Fruit of Life instead of Knowledge, meaning the S2 engine; that's why they're physically so much stronger than humans, but they do stupid things, like attacking the most fortified city on Earth rather than destroying our industrial centres first. This is partly guesswork, by the way; the people who told me weren't very scientific, so I had to translate a lot of it from mysticism to fact."
"Who told you all that?" asked Asuka. "And who's Yui? The name sounds familiar."
"What are you doing?!" Ikari asked, as Maya hit the button repeatedly without effect.
Chitose opened a full broadcast channel to Central Dogma. "I pulled out a bunch of wiring earlier, when the plug went dark," she explained. "Dr Akagi was going to eject me, and then Shinji would have gone in, and this would have been a disaster, right? And then I only put the audio/video feeds back, because it also would have been a disaster if you'd decided to knock me out before the battle. Again."
"You're insane," said Ritsuko. "Those wires include life support functionality; if you were hit like Kaworu was, or if Unit-01 went fully berserk, you would have died."
"Wait, what? Really? Oh. Wow. Which of them are for life support? I'll put those ones back in."
Misato stared. She had to be playing dumb. No-one could possibly be stupid enough to pull random wires out of their Eva before a battle.
… She pulled random wires out of her Eva before the battle, didn't she.
"This is intolerable," said the Commander. "Those plugs are set the way they are for a reason. If you can't accept them, we have no use for you as a pilot."
"What, you mean, other than killing Angels, literally the only use for any pilot?" Chitose snapped. "You know what a disaster would have happened if I hadn't been here. Besides, of the other four pilots, two are in intensive care now, you personally grounded a third, and the fourth can't win this war alone."
Misato quickly tapped out a text, the digital equivalent of whispering in Chitose's ear. [He can't accept losing face here. Pick your battles and accept his authority.]
"I will not be backchatted to or blackmailed by a reserve pilot."
Chitose scanned Misato's message and frowned, puzzled. "How would that even be possible? Does she think I'm going to throw acid at him?"
Misato slapped a hand to her forehead.
Chitose shrugged haughtily. "Anyway. Asuka? If the name sounds familiar, Shinji must have mentioned her once. She was his mother, Ikari Yui. When he was very young, she underwent a destructive full-brain scan; the scan was imprinted into Unit-01's OS. An imprint helps the pilot synchronise, if they have a close connection, namely mother and child."
"What," Asuka said, very quietly.
"Mm-hmm. They're subtle and I don't think he knows about her, but I'm used to Unit-03, which doesn't have one, so I noticed right away."
There was a long pause.
"Mother?" Asuka whispered.
Maya caught Ritsuko's attention and pointed at the monitors. Chitose's synch ratio was hovering around 82.3%. Asuka's had plummeted from the nineties to 21.7%, then to 16.3 and 12.0. As they watched, it ticked down to 9.9%. A tone sounded, and a warning message flashed: SYNCH RATIO SUBCRITICAL: ABORTING. Unit-02 stopped dead.
"Let me out!" Asuka's plug ejected and rocketed away from her Eva.
Chitose's eyes widened.
Asuka's plug's landing jets flared to slow her fall; it crashed through a copse of trees in the city limits, throwing up dirt and scraps of greenery. She fumbled with her hatch, scrambled out with a spurt of LCL, slipped on the plug's curved exterior, fell and twisted her ankle, and scrabbled as far away as she could, hyperventilating.
There was a pause.
"You absolute idiot," Misato said to Chitose.
Chitose stared, her mouth ajar, wondering what the hell she had just done.
