Disclaimer: Neon Genesis Evangelion is the creation of Anno and Gainax. I don't own it, make no claims to it, and am making no profit from this fan fiction. No infringement of copyright is intended. In other words, please don't sue.
Disclaimer: I do not own DC comics or anything associated with it, and am making no profit off this fan fiction. No infringement of copyright is intended. In other words, please don't sue.
Chapter Nine: The Fall of Giants
As she slowly returned to the waking world, the first thing that occurred to Maya Ibuki was that her alarm clock should've gone off by that point.
She had no idea what time it was, of course; she hadn't even opened her eyes yet. However, she could feel warm sunlight on her face, and she felt certain that dawn had passed some time ago.
Maybe the batteries in the damn thing died again, she mused sleepily.
Yet despite her suspicion that she was in danger of being late for work, Maya couldn't quite force herself to open her eyes and get up. Indeed, she felt so weary, her whole body so completely leaden, that the idea was almost inconceivable.
She tried to snuggle against her pillow in an effort to get more comfortable, only to find that it was surprisingly hard. In fact, it felt like she was resting her head on a chunk of concrete.
Wait a minute, she thought, suddenly feeling a bit more awake.
Reluctantly, she lifted her head and slowly opened her eyes. Sure enough, her "pillow" really was a chunk of concrete.
"Oh, shit," she hissed, all traces of weariness vanishing in an instant as the memory of what had happened rushed back to her.
Unit Three had broken its bonds the moment it had been activated. There had been an explosion of some kind, but not before they had detected a blue pattern from the new Evangelion.
Cursing more than she had in the last year, Maya scrambled to her feet, ignoring her body's protests. The control room she, Dr. Akagi, and Major Katsuragi was all but gone; only one of the walls remained, the ceiling was completely absent, and all the computers had been reduced to so much junk. If they'd been any closer to Unit Three, they would've all died for sure.
Hell, it's a wonder that we're still alive, she thought, staggering about the room and checking on her coworkers. She able to detect a steady pulse in all of them, but none of them so much as stirred when she pressed her fingers to the arteries in their necks. Since everybody who'd been in the control room was present, that meant Maya was the first one to wake up.
Her father always had said that most Homo Magi enjoyed a stronger constitution than the average human, but she had never really believed him before.
Okay, mind on track now, she commanded herself sternly, doing her best to master her chaotic and panicked thoughts. What do I do first?
That, at least, was fairly simple.
"Laeh em," she commanded.
Instantly, the multitude of scrapes, cuts, and bruises she had sustained vanished. Her left leg, which had been throbbing so badly that she had feared it was about to explode, was suddenly free of pain. Maya breathed a sigh of relief.
Okay, what next? She asked herself.
The techie checked her wristwatch. Assuming that it wasn't broken (which was a very real possibility, considering what it had just been through), only about 20 minutes had passed since Unit Three had gone berserk.
She ran some quick and dirty mental calculations and figured that it would take NERV at least 30 minutes to mobilize the other Evangelions and get them to Unit Three's location. It was an optimistic number, even if she assumed that everything at headquarters ran like clockwork, and there was no guarantee that they would, with so much of NERV Central's staff currently at Matsushiro.
So I have at least a ten minute window, she thought, quickly reaching a decision.
"Emutsoc," she said, and the magician's garments immediately replaced her NERV uniform. Then she turned to her unconscious co-workers. "Peels litnu I nruter."
That done, Zatanna pointed her magic wand at herself. "Ekat em ot eht Legna."
With that, she vanished.
"What is that?" Shinji Ikari breathed, feeling his stomach churn unpleasantly as he guided Unit One forwards.
All in all, it was shaping up to be a very bad day, to put it mildly. The catastrophe that everyone had quietly feared had come to pass.
Now three of the few people Shinji truly felt he was close with in this world—Misato, Maya, and Toji—were in danger (or worse, but the Third Child really didn't want to contemplate that possibility).
And, perhaps worst of all, if anything bad happened to Maya, then it would be all his fault.
I shouldn't have asked her to go to Matsushiro, he thought miserably.
Some part of him had believed, completely and truly, that Maya would be able to prevent any disaster from happening. Only now did he see how incredibly foolish that had been. The presence of one more technician, no matter how competent, hardly ensured success, especially when something as volatile as an Evangelion was concerned.
I'm such a stupid idiot, he berated himself. I never should have—
"Pilot Ikari!"
Shinji started, abruptly snapping back to reality. "Huh? What?"
"I told you to stop and hold your position for now," Fuyutski ordered him tersely. "Pull yourself together, Pilot!"
"R-Right," Shinji said. "Sorry."
For a brief moment, he caught himself wondering just why Fuyutski was giving the orders, rather than Misato. Then he realized that Misato had, of course, been in Matsushiro. He had become so used to her presence in the command center while he was in EVA that even when he was worrying about what had become of her, he was still unconsciously expecting her to be the voice in his ear during combat.
That it was Fuyutski commanding the battle in Misato's absence, rather than his father, didn't surprise Shinji much, though. Sightings of Gendo Ikari had been very scarce for some time now, and no one seemed to know why.
"There it is," Asuka said softly.
Shinji's eyes widened. Unit Three strode toward them at an almost casual pace, its black armor practically glowing red beneath the bloody glare of the late day sun.
"But…but that's an EVA," Shinji spoke, his voice barely rising above the level of a whisper.
"I'm aware of that, Pilot!" Fuyutski snapped, and Shinji abruptly realized that the old Vice Commander was as anxious about the situation as he was.
In a way, it was a relief to discover that he wasn't the only one who was nearly being consumed by worry and dread. On the other hand, there was something uniquely awful in the knowledge that the man currently in charge wasn't any more certain about how to resolve the situation without disaster than Shinji himself was.
"What are your orders, sir?" Rei asked, as placid and unflappable as ever. If she had made the same the realization that Shinji just had, she didn't show it.
"The Fourth Child's still inside that thing," Fuyutski said grimly, which was, of course, no answer at all. "Engage Unit Three, carefully. Obviously, we want to save Pilot Suzuhara, but defeating the Angel has to be our top priority."
Thanks, that's really specific, Shinji couldn't help but think. He might as well have just told us to "save the day" or something.
Still, he supposed he should be grateful that the Vice Commander wasn't just completely writing off Toji.
"Come on," Asuka said, the normally boisterous pilot speaking in an unusually subdued voice. "We're not going to do any good just standing here."
Shinji nodded, reluctantly commanding Unit One to move.
Yet before he could take a single step, he spotted something out of the corner of his eyes. It was a tiny flash of light, and it seemed to come from the very peak of Mount Nobe.
The Third Child instantly zoomed in on the mountaintop, and his eyes widened at what he saw.
"Look! It's Zatanna," he said. "She's here!"
Asuka and Rei also halted, turning to observe for themselves.
"What's she doing here?" the redhead asked, for once appearing more confused than angry by the arrival of an interloper.
"I don't…" Shinji trailed off as she raised her wand.
The ground beneath Unit One's feet began to tremble, and as the Third Child watched in disbelief, Mount Nobe began to move. At first, it looked like it was growing taller, but then its shape began to change, countless tons of rock shifting about wildly.
It's not growing, Shinji realized with a jolt. It's standing.
The mountain had taken on a roughly human shape, and the great stone giant had risen to its feet, dirt and smaller pieces of rock streaming off of its form. It was shorter than an Evangelion by about a head but far more massive in size. Zooming in again, Shinji could see Zatanna perched atop the titan's shoulder.
"This is impossible," the Third Child said, eyes wide in disbelief.
"Yet it is happening," Rei said. "Vice Commander, your orders?"
Fuyutski hesitated for a moment before answering. "Hold position for now."
"You don't honestly think Zatanna and that rock thing can beat the Angel, do you?" Asuka scoffed.
"No, but perhaps she can free the Fourth Child," Fuyutski said. "At the very least, we'll learn about this Angel's capabilities from watching her engage it."
"Shouldn't we help her?" Shinji asked, surprised at the Vice Commander's coldly calculating assessment. "She could be killed!"
"Hold your positions," Fuyutski commanded.
Shinji reluctantly stood down. "Yes, sir," he grumbled, not liking this at all.
Zatanna knew that she didn't have any chance of beating the Angel.
Against just about anything else, the giant golem she had managed to create would have been an unstoppable destroyer, death given physical form.
Against an Angel, well, she just hoped it would hold together long enough to do what she needed it to, namely liberate the Fourth Child from inside Unit Three. She had attempted to simply teleport him out with magic, but her powers had proved as ineffective against the Thirteenth Angel as it had against the Twelfth.
"Forward," she commanded the stone giant, holding onto the side of its rocky head as it began to move.
Just as it started walking, the Thirteenth Angel came to a halt. Still a good distance away from the stone giant, it turned it head, silently regarding its new foe with the air of a beast sizing up an enemy.
Then the Angel lashed out, and Unit Three's arms stretched like rubber, reaching an impossible distance. Its armored fists crashed into the torso of Zatanna's golem like twin wrecking balls, sending it staggering and knocking great chunks of stone out of its body, creating an avalanche down the giant's front. The magician, caught completely by surprise, was immediately thrown from her perch.
"Ahh!" Zatanna shrieked as she plummeted. "Noitativel!"
Instantly, her descent came to a halt, and the magician let out a low groan as inertia sent a jolt through her body, causing her stomach to roil unpleasantly. Truly, she hated flying.
Grabbing hold of her hat just before it could fall off of her head, the magician managed to reorient herself in the air so she was at least floating right-side-up, and turned to her golem again.
"Run!" she barked at it.
It did so, thundering across the landscape as it broke into a sprint, each step causing the ground to shake beneath its immense weight. Unfortunately, the Angel wasn't content to simply wait while the magician's golem advanced on it. It swung out with its impossibly elastic arms again and again, each blow knocking a great chunk out of the stone giant, causing untold tons of rock to go raining down.
Zatanna bit her lower lip as she watched her hastily conjured titan take a pounding. If her golem took much more of this abuse, it would simply fall apart.
"Faster!" she yelled at her golem.
It obeyed, its footfalls leaving massive prints in the landscape, and just as she thought that it was about to collapse beneath the force of the Angel's assault, it reached its foe, slamming into Unit Three with the weight of a mountain.
Not even an Angel could possibly resist a head-on collision with such a huge amount of rock; Unit Three was instantly tackled to the ground, landing hard on its back as Zatanna's golem landed atop it.
Unfortunately, this was actually the worst position to have the Angel in, so far as liberating the pilot. Zatanna couldn't help but scowl at her own lack of foresight; there was a reason why she wasn't the Operations Director.
"Turn it over! Turn it over!" she shouted.
Her half destroyed golem sluggishly moved to comply, grabbing Unit Three's narrow shoulders with its massive hands. However, the Angel was already fighting furiously to get up. Its arms stretched and twisted in ways that would be impossible for any normal being, its massive hands reaching out and grasping the golem's blocky head.
Unit Three audibly grunted, its efforts slowly pushing the golem off of itself.
"Come on! Fight it!" Zatanna yelled frantically, mind whirling as she tried to think up a remotely workable Plan B.
She had no illusions about recreating her golem if Unit Three managed to destroy it completely. Zatanna felt woozy and weak from the effort of forming it the first time, and she knew she was running off of adrenaline at this point.
Then the Angel's AT Field pulsed with a flare of orange light, knocking the golem backwards and damaging it even further. It wasn't quite off of the Angel's back yet, but it looked like it would crumble to pieces at any moment. Zatanna winced, simply waiting for the inevitable.
Only it didn't happen at all as she expected it to.
In its last moment, the golem wrapped its arms and legs around the Angel, rolling over so that Unit Three's back was at last exposed. Then, even as the stone giant's body disintegrated, it reached out with one of its great hands, grabbing the armor plate that covered Unit Three's entry plug and ripping it off.
Finally, the stone giant completely fell apart, collapsing into an ordinary, if enormous, pile of rocks.
Zatanna knew that she'd have to act fast; mere rubble would never keep an Angel down for long, no matter how much of it was present. "Yrtne gulp emoc tuo!" she commanded.
Immediately, the large metal tube of the entry plug began to float out of its place inside Unit Three, snapping the thin strands of what she could only assume was Angelic material as it did so. In seconds, the plug was free of the Evangelion-turned-Angel.
It wasn't a moment too soon. The Thirteenth Angel's AT Field pulsed, sending rocks flying in all directions. Several of them slammed against the levitating entry plug, leaving a series of dents and dings in the metal.
Zatanna wasn't about to wait for the rocks to reach her. "Attuo ereh!" she exclaimed, causing herself and the entry plug to vanish with a flash of light.
Consciousness did not return to quickly to Toji Suzuhara, instead, he returned to the waking world by degrees. Where before all had been silent blackness, he slowly became aware of light beyond his closed eyelids and sounds he couldn't identify all around him. Not long after that, his brain tentatively formed its first coherent thought since the activation test's abrupt and disastrous conclusion.
What happened? Am I dead? He wondered.
Slowly, he opened his eyes. The light immediately caused him to squint, but he forced himself to tolerate it until his eyes started to adjust. He really wanted to know whether he was dead or not; it seemed like a very important matter for some reason.
Eventually, he began to make out shapes and colors. He blinked several times, and each time he did, his vision seemed to get a little bit clearer.
Finally, he was able to actually see the pair of extremely shapely legs that towered over him. Clad in fishnet stockings, the legs seemed to go on forever, and they were attached to a masked woman, who was wearing a top hat and a tuxedo.
Okay, not dead, he decided. Just dreaming.
The masked woman's attire was far too risqué for her to be an angel from Heaven. Yet it was pretty much par the course for Toji's dreams. It was a bit odd that he didn't know who she was, though.
Man, what happened to Misato in the cheerleader outfit? He wondered idly. She still hasn't finished congratulating me on winning the championship game…
The jock could feel himself drifting off again. Since he was now quite sure that he was really safe in his bed, he allowed his eyes to flutter closed. There would be plenty of time to get to know the mystery woman with the great legs the next time he fell asleep…
"C'mon, kid, wake up," he heard her pleading with him. "Ekaw pu!"
Toji's eyes popped open, and he abruptly sat bolt upright. The jock suddenly felt like he'd spent the last hour or so chugging energy drinks.
"What the…what?" he babbled, too shocked by his surroundings to form a coherent sentence.
He was sitting in his entry plug, which itself was sitting in a forest somewhere, rather than inside of Unit Three, where it was supposed to be. Not only that, but the plug was filled almost to the top with some kind of grayish goo, Toji noted with disgust.
Along with the mystery woman with the fishnets and the top hat, this had to be the strangest scene that Toji had woken up to, ever.
"Are you all right?" the woman asked him.
"Yeah, I think so," he said, moving his arms and legs experimentally. "Um, who're you?"
She smirked very slightly. "You can call me Zatanna," she replied, which told him absolutely nothing, of course.
"Okay, Zatanna," he said, then began to climb out of his plug. The gray goop dripped off his suit as his stood. "Ugh, what is this crap?"
"It was probably part of the Angel," Zatanna answered. "Now it's just something for NERV to look at under a microscope."
"An Angel!" Toji gasped, suddenly remembering how everything had just gone crazy the second they'd started up Unit Three. "Where is it? I have to warn somebody!"
Zatanna put a hand on his shoulder, stopping him. "Believe me, NERV already knows they've got an Angel to deal with. You don't need to do anything," she said. "Naelc mih pu."
Immediately, the gray ooze vanished from Toji's plug suit, leaving it as pristinely clean as it had been that morning. He did a double take, shocked.
"How did you do that?" he squawked.
"Magic," she replied, as though people did it everyday.
"Magic?" he echoed incredulously. "But—"
The ground trembled beneath them, and Toji immediately stopped talking. The jock looked around, and it didn't take him long to see the dark form of Unit Three. His EVA was easily visible, even over the treetops. Fortunately, it didn't appear to be heading in their direction.
"Unit Three's moving? Without me?" he asked, shocked.
"I told you, there's an Angel," Zatanna said. "It took control of your EVA."
"We have to let NERV know I'm not inside it!" Toji exclaimed, frantic all over again. "If Shinji and the others don't attack it…"
"Believe me, NERV knows that you're not in it," Zatanna reassured him.
"How can you be so sure?" Toji asked.
Before she could answer, the sound of gunfire tore through the air. Even though they were out in the open, it was deafening, and the jock could easily feel his ears ringing. There was no doubt in his mind that he was hearing Evangelion-scale weapons.
His belief was confirmed a moment later as dozens of bloody holes appeared in Unit Three's body, courtesy of the other three Evangelions. They were further away; Toji could barely see them over the treetops, but he was pretty sure they were all using pallet rifles.
"They turned it into Swiss cheese!" he exclaimed, shocked and a little horrified. He couldn't help but imagine what would've happened if he'd been in Unit Three.
Shinji wouldn't shoot at my EVA if he thought I was still inside it, he told himself. The Devil…yeah, she might, but Shinji wouldn't!
In the distance, Unit Three staggered forward. One step, then two. Then it began to fall forward.
Toji braced himself, but nothing could've prepared him for the noise and impact that came when it hit the ground. It sounded like thunder, but far, far closer than he'd ever heard it, and the ground bucked violently. The jock actually saw his entry plug jump off the forest floor for a moment before coming back to earth.
Then…silence.
"Now what?" Toji asked after a few moments.
"Now I get out of here," she told him, "and you wait for NERV to come along."
"What?" he asked. "Hey, wait, you—"
"Kcab ot eht esab!" Zatanna said, and to the jock's immense surprise, she vanished without a trace.
Meanwhile, far away from the chaos unfolding at the foot of Mount Nobe, Klarion the Witchboy readied for battle.
"It all looks very plain now, doesn't it, Teekl?" he asked, placing the Submissionary's Rod onto the table in his apartment's living room.
It had seemed so grand and ornate not very long ago, but that had been before he had escaped Limbo Town. When his world had been darkness and drab stone, it wasn't hard for the wooden staff to look impressive. Now that he'd seen the world above, with all its wonders and grandeur, well, Klarion's standards were higher now.
Perched atop his shoulder, Teekl meowed.
"Ah, how right you are, Teekl," Klarion said, stroking the feline's head and getting a loud purr in response. "Some things are so much more than they appear."
He grabbed a large roll of parchment and unfurled it on the table, revealing a very old map.
"Amazing that I've never been able to find the place this map depicts, even when I use the Google machine," he mused quietly.
Teekl meowed again.
"Impatient thing, aren't you?" Klarion asked affectionately, giving the feline a scratch behind his ears. He sighed. "Difficult to imagine that these old things are the keys to Limbo Town's most powerful magic, isn't it?"
Of course, the Witchboy mused, part of the reason it seemed so unbelievable was that he didn't fully understand the way this bit of magic functioned. Oh, he knew enough to cast the spell, but he had little idea of how it worked.
He didn't like using magic like that.
"Meow."
"I know Teekl," Klarion said softly, "but I have no choice. I have to do this thing for Keel, and Zatanna is powerful. Very powerful. And she also has a very fine set of legs." He added in a sotto voice, more to himself than to the cat.
Teekl swatted the side of his face with her paw. He raised a hand to his cheek, and there was no blood on his fingers when he drew them back. However, he was quite sure he'd felt her claws rake against his skin.
"Hmph," he grumbled. "Anyway, as I was saying, I can't be certain of victory against Zatanna…unless I use the power of a Horigal."
"They kicked you out of NERV?" Shinji asked, barely daring to believe it.
"I wouldn't say I was 'kicked out' exactly," Toji replied defensively. "I was relieved of duty and discharged, and that was only because they were afraid of some sort of contamination or something. Thought that something bad might happen if they put me into an entry plug again, I guess."
Shinji, Toji, and Kensuke were sitting in the school yard, eating lunch together. It looked like it was any other day, as if the jock hadn't so recently climbed into an Evangelion only to discover that an Angel already had its hooks into the machine. As if yesterday hadn't held the potential for a horrific disaster, which had only been defused by a mysterious woman who went around wearing a top hat and fishnet stockings.
The Third Child wasn't fooled though, not for a minute. Just thinking about what could've happened the previous day left him feeling shaky and vaguely nauseous inside.
"Man, they kicked you out of NERV?" Kensuke asked Toji. "That sucks!"
"I told you, I wasn't kicked out!" Toji snapped, annoyed. "It was like an honorable discharge!"
Yet somehow, his friends seemed cheerfully oblivious to the possibilities that had so narrowly been avoided. Shinji supposed he should be glad that they didn't feel like a ball of nerves as a result of the whole thing, like he did. Yet part of him couldn't help but find it exasperating.
"Hey, Shinji, you think that they're looking for another pilot, now that they kicked Toji out?" the otaku asked.
"I was not just kicked out of NERV!" Toji growled.
"I don't think so, Ken," Shinji said, ignoring the increasingly annoyed jock. "Unit Three was totally destroyed, so I don't see why NERV would need another pilot any time soon."
He was really quite glad that he'd emptied his pallet rifle's entire clip into the possessed EVA, once Zatanna had gotten Toji out of it. Shinji had a feeling that NERV would've kept the jock on the roster, if Unit Three had survived, and damn any supposed threat of Angelic contamination.
"Man, that stinks," the otaku said glumly. "Because Toji totally messed up and got booted out of NERV, now I lost my chance at being a pilot!"
"Did you actually listen to this conversation at all? Any of it?" the jock demanded, looking about ready to blow a gasket at this point.
"So, Toji, you were telling us about Zatanna?" Shinji prompted him.
"Oh yeah," the jock said, irritation immediately forgotten. "Anyway, the plug opens up, and there she is. This woman is wearing a tux from the waist up, complete with top hat. But she's not wearing any pants!"
He said this loudly enough that he drew a few disgusted looks from a nearby group of girls. Shinji blushed slightly, suddenly wondering if it wouldn't have been better to just let the jock go ballistic on Kensuke.
"Instead, it looks like she's wearing a bathing suit or something under the tux, and she's wearing these fishnet stockings," Toji went on. "Man, she had the most incredible legs I've ever seen."
"Then what happened?" Kensuke asked.
Toji shrugged. "We talked for a minute, then the other Evangelions destroyed Unit Three, and she said some kind of gibberish and just disappeared. Right in front of my eyes."
Kensuke shook his head. "Man, if Shinji hadn't said that NERV had run into this Zatanna woman before, I wouldn't believe a word of this story," he said.
"I swear, it's all true, man," Toji said.
"So what does NERV know about this woman, anyway?" Kensuke asked. "I never heard of her until now."
"Not much, so far as I know. She appeared at the field base while we were fighting the Twelfth Angel," he suppressed a shudder at the memory of being trapped inside that thing. "I didn't see her myself, but Misato said she fought a bunch of monsters the Angel created and then put everyone at the base to sleep. Apparently, she was the one who killed the Angel, because NERV didn't do it."
"That's so cool," Kensuke said. "I wonder why she doesn't show up more."
"Does NERV have any idea who she is, Shinji?" Toji asked.
The Third Child shrugged. "Not really."
"Not really? As in, they sort of have some idea?" Kensuke pressed.
"They don't have any idea, they have a rumor," Shinji said. "People around the base have been gossiping that this technician named Maya Ibuki is Zatanna ever since the Thirteenth Angel."
People had actually been gossiping about that since the Twelfth Angel, but Shinji didn't exactly have his finger on the pulse of NERV. He hadn't learned about the rumors until Zatanna's second appearance had caused the number of people who believed the them to spike.
"Well, who's to say that this Ibuki lady isn't Zatanna?" Toji asked.
Shinji shook his head. "Maya's not Zatanna," he said dismissively. "I know her. She's been tutoring me for weeks now, actually, and I can't imagine her being Zatanna."
"Then why are there rumors about it?" Kensuke challenged him.
Shinji frowned for a moment, realizing he hadn't really thought about that. However, the question was easy enough to answer.
"She used to be a stage magician," he said. "She finds it embarrassing, though, so she kept it to herself. If people found out about it right around the time Zatanna made her first appearance…"
"Ah," Toji nodded in understanding.
"Plus, from what I've heard, she's about the right height and body type to be Zatanna," Shinji said, silently adding that she definitely had the great legs. "But the whole idea is just crazy, and I don't think anybody's taking the idea seriously."
"Oh, what a day," Maya groaned to herself, stretching widely as she rode the elevator in her apartment building.
Understandably spooked by what had happened to Unit Three, NERV was going to great lengths to finish the analysis of the Thirteenth Angel as soon as possible.
Of course, that translated into extra hours for Technical Division One. Maya had just finished a twelve hour day, and she'd still be at the base if she hadn't traded shifts with one of the other techs.
I could've endured the marathon at work. Goodness knows I've done it before, she thought as she stepped out of the elevator and headed for the door to her apartment. But all those stupid rumors…
She didn't know if someone had actually managed to observe her period of absence from the remains of the control room in Matsushiro—it was possible, since she had only put the people who'd been in the room with her into an enchanted sleep. However, she suspected that a second appearance by Zatanna had simply breathed new life into the old rumors that had followed her defeat of the Twelfth Angel, without anyone actually having any sort of fresh evidence on the matter.
Ultimately, she supposed it didn't matter. NERV wasn't hunting her down like a dog, so she supposed that Ikari and Fuyutski at least weren't certain that she was Zatanna. At worse, they had their suspicions.
No, what was really getting to her was the speculative looks everyone gave her when they thought she wasn't watching. She could practically see the wheels in their head turning as they wondered if she could really be the mysterious Zatanna.
Then they'd catch her looking back at them, and they'd avert their gaze and act like everything was normal. Which, of course, it wasn't.
In the past, Maya had always felt like she was another of the "troops" at NERV, that she'd always been accepted by her coworkers down in the proverbial trenches as much as anyone else.
Now, not so much. Now, people were suspicious about her, wary of her. Now, she wasn't one of them; she was the Other.
I wonder if this is how Shinji feels, she mused idly as she unlocked her door. There probably aren't many places where he's just "one of the guys" these days. He certainly isn't at NERV.
She was so lost in thought that she almost failed to notice him. There was a man in her apartment, and he appeared to be in the middle of ransacking her special closet. The one where she kept all of her magical items.
Maya let out a wordless cry of surprise the moment she saw him, and the man jumped, turning to face her. He bit out a curse, then immediately plunged a hand into his pocket, doubtlessly reaching for a weapon.
The brunette didn't give him the chance to draw it.
"Peels!" she barked.
Instantly, the man's eyes rolled back into his head. His body went limp, and he crumpled to the floor, soundly unconscious.
Unhurt but very badly shaken, Maya staggered over to one of the chairs in her kitchen and all but collapsed into it. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and it took several moments before it slowed down to something resembling its normal speed.
She had faced far worse—far worse—than the cheap thug who now lay passed out on her floor, but this was the first time that someone had ever invaded her home in such a manner. To discover an enemy within her own domicile, in the place she always thought of as representing safety and comfort, frightened her to her core.
You might not have just waltzed into the Commander's place if you'd had this experience before then, would you? A nasty little voice in her mind whispered.
Maya ignored it, telling herself for the ten-thousandth time that what was done was done, and that reversing the mind wipe she'd performed on the Commander was simply not an option.
"Now, what do I do about you?" the brunette asked, turning her attention to the still unconscious man.
Maya went riffling through the pockets of his dark suit, and she was dismayed but completely unsurprised to find a NERV card identifying him as a member of Section Two. If he'd been some random burglar, then his intrusion into her apartment would've been a frightening but ultimately inconsequential event.
This…this meant that someone at NERV, probably the Commander or Fuyutski, felt that the rumors about her were worth investigating. If she hadn't come home early, the man would've made off with proof that she was Zatanna. The realization of how close she'd come to disaster made her feel shaky all over again.
Geeze, pull it together, girl! She chastised herself. First thing's first. Get this guy out of your place before his buddies come looking for him.
The brunette kneeled down next to man, pressing her hands to her temples. She concentrated, carefully wiping his short term memories and replacing them with false ones. Then she woke the man, who groaned softly as he opened his eyes, slowly got to his feet, and then walked out of her apartment, never giving any indication that he even realized Maya was there. When he got back to his companions, he would report that he had narrowly evaded detection by the resident of the apartment, and that no, he hadn't found anything that suggested she was Zatanna.
"Well, that's one problem solved," she said, going back to her chair and slumped down into it. "Now all I have to do is figure out how to stop this from happening again…"
Improving the magical wards she'd placed around her apartment was the obvious first step. She had set them up to only respond to hostile Homo Magi, in expectation that Klarion might try to pay her a visit at some point. However, it was now obvious that these were woefully inadequate.
Too bad that stronger wards aren't a foolproof solution, she thought dourly.
It was quite impossible to erect wards that were both powerful enough to make a place impervious to intruders and subtle enough that people would walk away without realizing that supernatural forces were at work. If a magician struck the proper balance, she could get something that usually worked, but "usually" simply wasn't good enough.
In other words, if NERV was really determined to discover the truth about whether or not she was Zatanna, she couldn't hope to stop them permanently.
What I really need, she mused, tapping a finger to her chin, is some way to just get NERV to stop trying. But how do I convince them that investigating me is a waste of time?
The answer occurred to her mere seconds after the question, but Maya felt no joy in coming up with a solution so quickly.
Yet there was nothing to be done for it. Maya went over to the phone and quickly dialed a number.
One thing that many of the peons at NERV tended to forget about Fuyutski was that he was a scientist. That he had, in fact, been a college professor before joining (getting drafted into) NERV, and that his expertise in the still new field of metaphysical biology had been of much use to the organization.
No, to most of the people in the proverbial trenches, he was just the Vice Commander.
However, the people who were a little higher up in NERV—those who actually interacted with him on a regular basis and were likely to have a more or less decent knowledge of his movements—were aware of his past practicing science.
Which was good, because it made his now regular meetings with Ritsuko look less suspicious. Most people would assume that they were just two scientists talking shop, and not concoct any wild rumors.
Though considering that I'm old enough to be her father, maybe I wouldn't have to worry about that, anyway, Fuyutski mused with some dour amusement.
"Things aren't quite working out as we expected them to," he commented to her.
"That's an understatement," Ritsuko observed dryly. "Has anything panned out the way we expected?"
"I suppose not," Fuyutski added. "But then again, I think we both half-expected this whole thing to fall apart catastrophically, right from the start, so perhaps that's a good thing." He added, attempting levity.
It was an attempt that failed. Ritsuko just glared at him darkly, then took out a cigarette and lit up.
The scientist had been smoking a bit less than she had been since resuming her relationship with the Commander, but her nicotine consumption was still far higher than it had been before Gendo mysteriously suffered from amnesia.
She's gone from panicked to resigned, Fuyutski thought wearily.
"You were so certain that Bleak was a spy, but he hadn't tried poking into private NERV business at all," Ritsuko commented.
"Yes," Fuyutski agreed with a sigh, shaking his head. "I can't imagine why they sent him now, if not to spy on us. SEELE must have had some purpose for sending us a useless pilot, but I don't know what that is. And that makes Bleak more dangerous."
"Hmph, perhaps they just sent him to make us paranoid," Ritsuko mused. "Honestly, what could he be doing that's so dangerous? The boy barely ever comes to the base anymore."
"I don't know, but SEELE sent him. That's reason enough to be wary of the boy," he said, resisting the urge to sigh again.
I am in over my head, he mused grimly.
"So, how are things going with the Commander?" Ritsuko asked.
Fuyutski nearly replied by pointing out that she should know better than he did, then stopped himself at the last moment.
When he'd first learned that Ritsuko was seeing Gendo again, he'd initially believed that she was "taking one for the team" as it were, getting close to him so that she could better maintain the deception. It was only later that he'd realized the bottle blonde had resumed the relationship simply because she'd felt compelled to, even though there had apparently never been a great deal of affection in it. His expectations that she'd know more about Gendo and his current mental state than he had run head long into the reality that they didn't have much of relationship outside of the bedroom.
It had been an awkward moment, and he had no desire to repeat it.
"He's been keeping to himself even more than before," Fuyutski said. "I think because he feels vulnerable. He hasn't even been speaking to Shinji lately."
That had been a severe disappointment to the old man, who'd very much hoped that the unexpected clean slate could give father and son a chance to renew and improve their relationship. He knew that Gendo had taken some steps in that direction, but after that, the man had seemingly decided to postpone the issue indefinitely. Unfortunately, Shinji had proven willing to accept that.
"It's all worth it if we save the world, right?" Ritsuko asked, but her tone made it clear that she wasn't quite sure if she believed that.
"Yes," Fuyutski said firmly. "Yes, it is."
Before the bottle blonde could make any kind of reply, her phone beeped. Looking irritated, Ritsuko snatched it up and held the receiver to her ear. "What?" she demanded.
"Uh," the voice of Makoto hesitantly responded, "there's a…situation unfolding in the city. It might be best if you came to the command center."
"I understand," she replied, then promptly hung up the phone.
She relayed the tech's message to the Sub Commander, and they were soon on their way to the command center. Fortunately, Dr. Akagi's office was quite near to the nerve center of the entire base, and they made it there in only a minute.
"Where's the Commander?" Fuyutski asked, his eyes sweeping the room for his former student and not finding him.
"He's en route," Aoba answered.
The Vice Commander nodded. "All right," he said. "Now what exactly is going on here that's so important? Is an Angel attacking?"
"Not…exactly, sir," Makoto said hesitantly.
Fuyutski gave him an annoyed look. "I could use a little more detail than that, Lieutenant."
The tech winced. "I know. I'm sorry, sir, but…"
Makoto was saved as a massive something flitted across the screen in a burst of motion. Fuyutski didn't have enough time to get a very good look at it; a glimpse was all he really got.
But that was enough for him to get a sense of the thing. The impossible, impossible thing.
"Lieutenant," he said slowly, now too surprised to even pretend to be annoyed. "was that—?"
Before he could finish, the thing passed in front of the camera again, and this time it stayed in range of the thing for longer than three-tenths of a second, allowing everyone to get a look at it.
It was a dragon.
A European-style dragon to be precise, as it more resembled a winged Tyrannosaurs-Rex than a gigantic snake. Its green scales shone in the bright light of the sun, and its leathery wings beat powerfully, propelling it through the air. Yet, amazingly, the dragon was not the most fantastic thing about the scene.
No, that would be the young woman who was riding the dragon, her arms wrapped around its neck as she clutched onto it for dear life. She was clad in a tuxedo from the waist up and wore fishnet stockings on her long legs. A top hat sat on her head, and, impossibly, it remained firmly in place, not getting swept away by the wind.
"Zatanna," one of the junior technicians whispered softly.
Suddenly, most of the eyes on the bridge turned toward Maya, as though to confirm that she was actually there in the room with them. The petite brunette responded by trying to melt into her chair while simultaneously attempting to ignore the unwanted attention.
She wasn't doing a very good job of either.
"What do we do, sir?" Makoto asked after a few moments.
Fuyutski just stared blankly at the tech. The situation was just so utterly bizarre and completely unexpected that he had no idea how to respond to it, and he came dangerously close to saying so.
Then he remembered that he was supposed to be the one in charge and promptly clamped down on the words before they could escape his throat. However, he still had no idea what to do.
How the hell did I end up being the Vice Commander of NERV again? He wondered wearily.
Just as his silence was starting to draw out for too long, Fuyutski was rescued as one of the small personal lifts delivered Gendo Ikari onto the command center. The assembled technicians blinked in surprise at the sight of the Commander; it had been some time since they'd actually seen him.
"Mobilize the Evangelions, but do not launch them until I give the order," he said without preamble.
A chorus of "yes sir" met the Commander's order, and the technicians present scrambled to execute them. Fuyutski leaned close to Gendo to speak softly with the Commander.
"What are you thinking, Ikari?" he asked.
The barest trace of a smirk appeared on Gendo's face. "I'm thinking that NERV is charged with protecting Tokyo-3 from Angels, not dragons," he said. "I'm also thinking I want to see how Zatanna does."
Fuyutski couldn't stop the look he gave Gendo. If he hadn't known that Ikari had had his memory wiped clean some time ago, the man's current behavior wouldn't have given him even the slightest clue.
He wasn't entirely sure that was a good thing.
A collective gasp suddenly filled the command center, and Fuyutski saw why the moment he looked back at the view screen.
The dragon had finally succeeded in throwing Zatanna, and the magician was now plummeting through the air toward certain doom. However, the giant reptile didn't seem content to just wait for her to hit the ground and go splat. The beast circled back so it was flying toward the falling woman.
Tongues of flame escaped from between its teeth.
"No way," Aoba said. "No way…there's no way it can—"
It could. The dragon opened its mouth, and a column of white hot-fire erupted out of it, blistering the air as it surged toward Zatanna.
Maya let out a small gasp as the flames washed over the woman's form. Several of the people on the bridge lowered their heads.
Then the fire dissipated, revealing the unscathed form of Zatanna still falling through the air. Some kind of blue barrier, almost like an AT field, shimmered around her body for a second before it vanished.
"Whoa," Makoto breathed. "She's incredible!"
Everyone else on the bridge studiously ignored him.
The magician waved her wand, and gravity momentarily lost its hold on her. She shot upwards, not downwards, and managed to smoothly land back on the dragon's neck again. The beast threw its head back and roared, obviously infuriated.
Zatanna didn't give it the opportunity to throw her again. She raised her wand, and there was a great flash of light, followed by a loud crack, like thunder.
The NERV personnel had no idea what exactly the magician had done, but it was obvious that it had had some impact on the dragon. The great reptile was now the one falling out of the sky, with Zatanna still clinging to its neck the whole way down.
"Estimated impact point?" Fuyutski asked.
Aoba clicked away at his keyboard for a second before bringing up a map of the area on one of the smaller monitors. "Well outside of the city limits, sir," he said, rather unnecessarily, as the blinking dot on the map made that quite clear.
The dragon crashed in a rice patty, sending up a great wave of water and mud. Zatanna rode the beast down the entire way, and she seemed unharmed by the impact, despite how far the dragon had fallen.
Now back on the ground, and with her foe quite unconscious, Zatanna hopped off the dragon and rose her wand once more. The image zoomed in on her; the NERV personnel could see her lips moving, but they had no idea what she was saying.
Then the picture on the main monitor dissolved into static.
"Somebody fix—!" Fuyutski began, only to stop himself as the image on the main screen returned to perfect clarity.
Zatanna and the dragon were gone. The only evidence that they'd ever actually been there was the large trench that the dragon's crash landing had created in the rice patty.
For a long moment, everyone in the command center was completely silent.
"Well, it seems that the situation didn't require NERV's attention after all," Gendo observed. "Cancel the mobilization orders."
"Yes, sir," Maya said.
Without another word, Gendo activated the lift he was standing on, departing from the command center as abruptly as he had arrived.
"…as you all were," Fuyutski ordered after a few seconds of awkward silence, before making his retreat with Dr. Akagi back to her office.
"Well, that was…interesting," the bottle blonde observed.
"Very," Fuyutski agreed dryly.
"And, it puts to bed all those rumors about Maya of all people being Zatanna," the scientist added, doing her best not to look smug.
She had always thought those stories were simply crazy, idle gossip that had quickly gotten out of control. She had hardly been able to believe that Fuyutski gave the rumors enough credence to send Section Two to investigate the rather mousy technician.
"I'm not so sure about that," the Vice Commander remarked thoughtfully.
"What? Why not?" Ritsuko demanded, surprised.
The older man shrugged his shoulders. "Well, doesn't the whole thing seem a little convenient for you?" he asked. "Zatanna's only appeared twice before, both times during an Angel attack. Yet now that we're looking into Ibuki, she makes this big, very ostentatious appearance while the lieutenant is sitting right in front of us?"
"While that might seem convenient, it still doesn't change the fact that no one can possibly be in two places at once, magic wand or no," Ritsuko countered.
Fuyutski briefly thought about asking how she could be so certain that Zatanna couldn't be in two places at once, then thought better of it.
"I suppose you're right, and if Section Two hasn't found anything by now, they probably won't," he said instead. "Continuing to investigate her would just be a waste of resources. I'll order them to stop looking into her."
"Good," Ritsuko said. "Besides, you and I have bigger problems to worry about than Zatanna. Like keeping this whole charade going long enough to save the world. And hopefully not getting killed in the process." She added grimly.
Fuyutski stifled a groan. "Don't remind me."
Hours later, Maya Ibuki returned home to her apartment after a long day at NERV and found someone sitting on her couch, watching TV. Said person was a young woman who was wearing a black top hat along with what was otherwise a perfectly normal jeans and blouse combination.
"Maya-chan!" she exclaimed, rising from the couch.
"Hello, sister," Maya said, accepting a hug from the slightly older woman. "That was quite a performance you gave this afternoon."
Natsume Ibuki grinned, backing up a few steps so she could take a bow, plucking the top hat off her head as she did so. "Thank you, thank you, you're too kind," she said, then tossed the top at Maya.
The younger sister was surprised by the move but still managed to catch her hat with a minimum of difficulty.
"You nearly gave me a heart attack, by the way," she grumbled. "I asked you to make a big enough spectacle as Zatanna to get NERV's attention, not almost get yourself killed."
"I was never in any real danger. First rule of magic: nothing is as it seems," Natsume said, undoing the bun had her hair in and giving her head a good shake. Her dark locks cascaded down her shoulders.
"But still, a dragon?" Maya pressed.
"Eastern European Longtails are real softies if you know how to handle them," Natsume said. "Frankly, I think that having to wear a jogging bra two sizes too small in order to pass as you came closer to killing me than Draco did."
I think I saw some cellulite on your legs back there! Maya instantly thought, and almost said.
Natsume always seemed to make comments that brought attention to the fact that she was significantly more well endowed than her younger sister. It was something that just seemed to happen—Natsume certainly wasn't the type to rub such things in her only sister's face—but it still never failed to annoy Maya to no end.
"Well, you didn't die or get hurt, so I guess everything worked out okay in the end," Maya said. "Thank you, sister, for helping me."
"Did it work, though?" Natsume asked. "Did we manage to misdirect NERV with this trick?"
Maya nodded. "Yes," she said, not trying to conceal her relief about it. "That stupid Section Two van finally left."
"I'm glad I could help you," her sister said, becoming completely serious. "And now there's something I need you to do for me."
"What?" Maya asked, even though she already had a pretty good idea what her sister wanted.
"Come home with me, just for a day or two," Natsume said. "Talk to Dad. Try and make peace with him."
The younger sister sighed. "Natsume, we've been over this time and time again," she said. "I'm not going to talk to Dad unless I hear from him. If I try and bury the hatchet with him without anything from his side, he'll see me as just crawling back and begging for his forgiveness. I just know it."
"Maya—"
"I won't try and pretend that I don't owe you a favor, a big one, for this," Maya continued. "But I won't do that. I just—"
"Maya!"
"Yes?" the technician asked, blinking in surprise at the interruption.
"Maya…" Natsume began in a soft voice, "Dad is dying."
The younger sister gasped. "What?"
Author's Notes: First off, apologies to my readers for the delay in getting this chapter out. It needed more editing than usual, and then there was the craziness of the holidays to contend with.
Anyway, I have to admit that for Maya, the Thirteenth Angel was one I wasn't particularly looking forward to, and I think it shows here. We've got some interesting stuff coming down the pipe, though, as you can probably tell.
A somewhat belated Happy New Year to all, and thanks as always to my readers and reviewers. And thanks to my beta reader as well.
Anyway, now for a little fun.
Omake!
What Dreams May Come…
Finally, he was able to actually see the pair of extremely shapely legs that towered over him. Clad in fishnet stockings, the legs seemed to go on forever, and they were attached to a masked woman, who was wearing a top hat and a tuxedo.
Okay, not dead, he decided. Just dreaming.
The masked woman's attire was far too risqué for her to be an angel from Heaven. Yet it was pretty much par the course for Toji's dreams. It was a bit odd that he didn't know who she was, though.
Man, what happened to Misato in the cheerleader outfit? He wondered idly. She still hasn't finished congratulating me on winning the championship game…though maybe it's just as well, considering how weird that dream went the last time I had it…
"And Japan wins!" the announcer cried over the loudspeakers, just as the horn sounded, signaling the end of the game. "Japan wins! And it's all thanks to young star Toji Suzuhara!"
The crowd went wild, but Toji barely noticed, because a certain purple-haired woman in a cheerleader's outfit was running toward him, her significant endowment bouncing in a manner that was nothing short of mesmerizing.
"You won!" she exclaimed, embracing him. "You won! You were magnificent out there!"
"Whoa, easy there, babe," he said, gently taking hold of her shoulders and pushing her off of himself. "You don't want to hug me right now. I seriously need a shower first."
"Do you want me to wash your back?" she asked coyly.
He grinned. "Well, maybe I'd like you to do more than wash my back."
Misato's smile widened. "And what else would you like me to do for you, all-star?" she asked.
He looked around, confirming that no one in the crowd or any of his teammates were paying attention to him. Then he leaned forward and whispered into her ear.
"Wellll," Misato drawled, "I suppose that I could—"
"Oh, God, enough already!"
Startled, Toji looked around, seeing a green-skinned girl in a swimsuit-like garment hovering over him. He would've sworn that she wasn't there a moment ago.
"Wha…?" he stammered. Despite her alien features, she looked quite a lot like the class rep, and that angry gaze always left him paralyzed.
"Honestly, do you have to always have such perverted dreams?" Miss Martian ranted. "I mean, half the stuff you ask your dream girls to do are things that no self-respecting woman would ever consider!"
"I, um, I…" Toji babbled. This wasn't how this was supposed to go at all.
"And if you really have to have dreams like this, can't you have them a little more quietly?" she raged. "Honestly, some of us are trying to sleep!"