Author's Note: Contrary to what seems to be popular belief, there is not a two-reply-a-chapter limit to this story, so please R&R.
At World's End
S-Michael
Chapter the Tenth
Plots, Romance, War, and Angels
"So, what do you think?" Valaskas asked Browne about their holographic boardroom. "The technology was reverse-engineered from what SEELE was using.
"It seems…lavish," Browne said.
Valaskas gestured at the decorations including two wall-sized maps of the world, one the way it looked now, and one the way it had back before Second Impact, "Oh, they're all just CGIs."
"Why is this thing necessary? It would be much more economical to communicate by phone. Take up much less broad width."
"Sometimes you need to see what you are doing," Valaskas said. He changed the subject. "I've decided to launch the next angel already." A picture of something that was translucient blue and shaped roughly like a stealth fighter replaced the map of old Earth. "This is Number Three. It will come out of the Black Sea and proceed south through the center of the Separatist core, through Turkey, part of Occupied Iraq, and then Saudi Arabia. It has a powerful weapon but only an average AT-Field. It'll destroy everything in its path, but more importantly, it'll also destroy the enemy's will to fight."
"So are we going to go to Greece or to Africa?" Are we going to try to stop it before or after it destroys the Middle East?
"Africa. Ethiopia, to be precise. That way, you'll be close to wherever it is when it comes out of Saudi Arabia. So, how are things going with the NERV remnants."
"So far, so good. All of the pilots ready to fight the angels whenever we need the next show. Incidentially, I think Shinji has finally aimed his inner rage away from himself and at his father, which is healthier. Well, relatively speaking."
"That's good to hear," said Valaskas not-quite-dryly.
"There is a bit of important news, though. Those drives I found when I…visited Kaji's grave confirmed that SEELE erased something from the records. They have the Ark of the Covenant."
"I take it that sense they went through all that trouble to hide the existence of that artifact and not, say the secret Dead Sea scrolls, that that's a bad thing."
"Very. The Ark is an alien machine, built by the same people who created Adam, Lilith, and the Lance of Longinus. It contains the knowledge of the First Ancestral Race, and its 'defensive' weapons are quite powerful. Just ask Moses, who brought Egypt to its knees with it, used it to part the waters of the Red Sea, and then started a religion around it."
"I see. So, do you want to state the obvious, or shall I?"
"Whatever SEELE is planning on doing with it, it can't be good."
-
Shinji entered the apartment. "I'm sorry I just ran off like that," he said. "You must have been worried about me, I'm sure."
Emotions warred on Misato's face. Of course, she had been worried, but to express the true nature of it would be to step back over a line she had firmly crossed the first time they had had sex, as she could be a lover or a mother figure to him, but not both.
"You're right, Misato. I must be more assertive at times when I want something. I can't just hope that you'll guess right, and then figure that its just my own damn fault when you don't. I—Asuka could we have a little privacy?"
Asuka, who had been watching TV in the living room, got up and went into her room.
"We've got to talk about the future, Misato."
Misato had been dreading words to that effect, "Shinji, I don't think—"
"I want to get married, Misato. Not right now, relax, but in a few years, when I'm legal. And I want to have children. Three of them, a girl, a boy, and the third can be either. These are the things I fantasize about, Misato. I daydream about making family dinners at some number of years in the future while I wait for you to come home from work. Misato, I understand if this scares you, and to be quite frank, the fear that you'd panic and dump me or something has kept me from saying anything, but I had to say something before we wasted too much time on a lie, so I guess that what I am trying to say is, four years from now, will you marry me?" He hadn't meant for it to be a proposal, he had meant it as something like are you committed enough to me that you'll still be there for me in four years when I want you to marry me, but what was said was said. "I'm not trying to give you an ultimatum or anything. I just need to know where we stand. Where we're going."
Fuck. Misato didn't want to make this decision yet. In fact, she wanted to put it off as long as possible, but now Shinji had forced her hand. What was she to do? What was she to say? "Four years to this very day," Misato promised without thinking. Well, hell. This must be true love, after all, for if it wasn't, Misato was utterly convinced that no human being had ever loved another. Was it wrong? Maybe. But, as cheesy as it sounds, if it was wrong, she didn't want to be right.
-
"Hey, Shinji!" Kensuke said, jogging down the hallway to talk to his friend.
"Hey, Kensuke. How are things?" Shinji asked.
"Alright. My footage of you guys fighting the Separatists has achieved worldwide renown, did I mention that?" He wasn't bragging, just saying.
"You didn't need to, I saw it on TV last night," Shinji said.
"Look, there's something I need to ask you," Kensuke looked to make sure no one was listening. "Everyone knows you have a girlfriend—"
"Not this again!" Shinji cried quietly.
"I'm not asking who it is, I just need to know…its not Asuka, right?"
"I can't tell you that. Even if it's not, if I confirm that I'm not dating enough people, someone will figure it out by process of elimination, and then she'll never get a moment's piece," Shinji said. Yeah, that's one way of putting it. Another is, "They'll send Misato to the slammer for sure if they find out about us."
"Please, man, I really need to know whether or not it's Asuka," Kensuke pleaded.
"Why?" Shinji asked.
"Because…" Kensuke again made sure no one was listening, and whispered, "I've been thinking about asking her out."
"Oh," Shinji said. Oh, indeed. Shinji tried to picture that and failed.
"Well?" Kensuke asked.
"It's not Asuka," Shinji told his friend.
"Hey, guys, what's up?" Toji asked, wheeling up. Hikari was with him.
"Nothing much!" Kensuke said just a bit too hastily. "Hey, Hikari, ou got the cast off, I see."
"Yeah, but I'm still going to have to use the crutches for another week or so," Hikari said.
"Hey, Asuka! Come over here!" Shinji called when he saw her.
"What are you doing?!" Kensuke demanded.
"You just said you wanted to ask her out. Now's your chance," Shinji said.
Toji's and Hikari's heads both snapped to Kensuke.
"I said I was thinking about it!" Kensuke protested."
"What is it, Shinji? I'm going to be late for class," Asuka said, just a touch irritably.
"Kensuke has something he needs to ask you," Shinji said.
"Yeah, um…sorry if I stutter, but I wasn't going to bring this up until later, when I had what I was going to say all thought out," Kensuke paused to glare menacingly at Shinji, "but, I was wondering…if maybe…that is…"
"Are you asking me out?" Asuka asked.
"Well…yeah," Kensuke admitted.
Asuka shrugged. "Sure, why not? I've got to go; talk to me about the details later."
She ran off. Kensuke collapsed against the wall. "Well, that was torture. How did you do it, Shinji?"
"Huh?"
"How did you ask a girl out?" Kensuke asked.
"When did I do that?" Shinji asked, and then wished he hadn't.
"You have a girlfriend. That had to have happened somehow."
"Oh, right. It just sort of happened. I didn't even really realize that I liked her until I was spilling my guts, and…well, she liked me back. Really, just a quirk of luck that it happened at all or that it worked out so well."
"There's something different about you, Shinji," Toji said.
"Oh? How so?" Shinji asked.
Toji said, "You seem…"
"Happy," Hikari supplied.
"That, too, but more so," Toji said.
"Happy-go-lucky? Outgoing? Playful?" Hikari suggested.
"Yeah, all of that," Toji said. "So, what's the deal? What's got you in a good enough mood to play matchmaker to Kensuke and Asuka?"
"I guess it's just a good day, is all," Shinji said, thinking about a wedding way off in the future.
-
"Now, Asuka, if he wants to walk you home, he may, but don't invite him in."
"Why not, Misato? You let Shinji have sex with his girlfriend here—oh, wait, that's you."
Asuka chuckled.
"What is it?" Kensuke asked.
"I was just thinking of something funny I said to Misato," Asuka said. "You had to be there."
"Oh," Kensuke said. The closing credits began to roll, and they left the movie theater. Boldly, he reached out and grabbed her hand while they were walking down the street. Asuka didn't let go.
"You're going to walk me home, right?"
By this time, Kensuke knew the proper answer: "Of course." Whenever Asuka asked a question that started with You are going to or You aren't going to, it was clearly a leading question, and he'd had better tell her what she wanted to hear, or else. Kensuke wondered for a second what it said about his manhood that he was perfectly alright with playing along with this little game of follow-the-leader, and then he decided that he didn't actually care. If this got tedious, he'd stand up for himself; he wasn't Shinji, after all.
"You know, I really liked that video you shot of me crushing that Separatist scum," Asuka said.
No prizes for guessing what your favorite part of it was. "Thanks. A lot of people have been saying that, but from you, it really means something, even though all I did was point the camera in the direction of the action and shoot."
"No, don't sell yourself short. It took a lot of guts to climb out of the train and stand right in stepping range of an Evangelion just to get a shot," Asuka said.
"You really think so?"
"Yeah," Asuka said. "Don't get a fat head, though. It could just as easily have been stupidity. Honestly, you could have been crushed like an ant, getting onto the roof of a speeding train and into the stepping range of any careless idiot of an Eva pilot who happened to be standing by. And really, it's not like Shinji doesn't have enough emotional problems to deal with without squashing one of his closest friends."
They arrived at the apartment Asuka shared with Misato and Shinji. "I had a nice time," Kensuke said.
"Yeah, me too," Asuka replied. Kensuke began to leave, but then she added, "What are you, stupid? You're supposed to kiss the girl goodnight when you drop her off at her home. Don't you know anything?"
"Right. How could I have been so careless?" he turned around and kissed her.
"We're going to have to work on that," Asuka said.
"Right. So, would you like to go on another date with me some time?"
"Sure. I'll contact you with the details later," Asuka said, entering her apartment and closing the door behind her. Her roommates were laying on the couch watching a movie together. "Christ, if you two looked any sweeter, I'd have to go to the dentist. What are you doing? Anyone could have walked in!"
"Didn't we lock the door?" Shinji asked.
"No."
"Fuck," he said noncommittally.
"So, how did your date go?" Misato asked.
"Good. He's taking me out again, when I tell him to," Asuka said. "Seriously, what are you two doing?"
"You and Kensuke were having dinner and a movie, so we thought we'd do the same," Shinji said. The movie abruptly ended, and apparently the VCR was on some sort of news channel.
"I don't suppose either of you feel like getting up so that I can sit down on the couch?" Asuka asked rhetorically.
"No," Misato and Shinji said as one.
"Typical," Asuka said, maneuvering a chair. "The constitutional convention is on."
"The debates, you mean. They've been on for a solid week," Shinji said. He yawned. Somehow he contrived to look cute and innocent, in spite of the fact that he was using Misato's breasts as a pillow. Misato smiled down at him and his cuteness, brushing his hair with her fingers.
"If I ever get that cute with anybody, I want one of you to shoot me," Asuka said.
"Oh, you will one day," Shinji assured her.
"What do you know about relationships, anyway?" Asuka snorted.
From the TV came the noise of something exploding, and they dropped what they were doing to stare at it. It looked like the room the camera was in was undergoing some sort of earthquake. Cameras went outside, and they saw the Twin Towers in the distance, getting saturation bombed. The American air force and navy were already mobilized.
"I thought that they were in the World Trade Center," Shinji said.
"So did I," Misato commented.
Asuka was the first to realize it: "Just like most of humanity thinks that Tabris was not Kowaru."
Misato looked at Asuka. "The clever bastards. Well, I guess the cat is out of the bag now with regard to suppressed details."
-
On the TV:
"Look, this wasn't some sort of conspiracy," the President of the United States was saying. "We figured that it would be best if the Separatists thought we were somewhere we weren't when they launched their inevitable attack."
"So you knew there was going to be an attack?" one of the reporters at the press conference asked.
"Um, let's see: the leaders of the UN and all affiliated nations in one location, conveniently on the seaboard, where Separatist ships can come over the Atlantic and attack it? It seemed probable. Tell them that we are meeting in the old World Trade Center, a building that was the symbol of America's economic dominance of the world Pre-Impact and a symbol of hope for us Post-Impact, seeing how it miraculously survived when even the Statue of Liberty was brought to its knees, not to mention that it's an easy target, being the most prominent thing in the city, and they pretty much had to destroy it.
"Hell, I think that they would have destroyed it, anyway. I know that if I were fighting a war against America, it would be one of the first things I leveled. Then there would be two holes in the ground, and one of them would have really killed us. Besides, a president who knew that the enemy was determined to attack within his boarders and did not immediately think 'Twin Towers' would be a very stupid president.
"I am sorry to see them go. They were a symbol of national pride, of all things American. I know that during the three years so far of my tenure as president, no matter how bad things got, I took personal pride and confidence from the World Trade Center. But though the Twin Towers will be missed, I cannot truly grieve, for, not only did our enemies fail in their mission, but the time for nationalism is at an end, anyway. The time for Unification has begun!"
-
Amazing, Lorenz thought, watching vicariously through the device that was to be planted on the angel. HALO had not known that the angels had even existed before they first began to attack Tokyo 3. They had no Angel DNA (or rather, what angels used instead of DNA) until they claimed the bodies after NERV fell apart. Yet they had managed to create so many realistic-seeming angels in such a short time, and they had been able to create and carry out such an elaborate scheme. Amazing.
Of course, they bragged too much, but that was the nature of things now. You couldn't tell the news media to go fuck themselves like you could a few short months ago, so you had to be clever if you wanted to keep secrets. Every illegitimate thing HALO did had a legitimate cover, and HALO shouted its legitimate business to the heavens. It was really the perfect way to hide in plain sight: Why did we want all of those angel corpses? To build Sahaquiel II, of course! Haven't you been paying attention?
Knowing what Lorenz knew about the nature of angels, he knew that when HALO created their angels, they would be brain-dead and HALO would not understand why. Lorenz thought of Kowaru. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Kowaru had lied when he had said that there were more angels coming. He had been lying through his teeth in the hope that exactly what had happened would happen, that SEELE and NERV would turn on each other, and that Third Impact and Human Instrumentality would be thwarted. Truly amazing that HALO would figure that out and use it to further5 their goals. Or had they gambled? That would truly take balls.
What would HALO do about their brain-dead angels? Well, when nothing they could do would solve the problem, it would be time to improvise. That's where the monkeys came in. HALO was training chimps to see if they could pilot Evangelions. That was the cover. In truth, they were being trained to pilot angels. There had definitely been something fishy about the way that the "nineteenth" angel fought—or rather, something simian.
If Lorenz hadn't missed his guess, whenever HALO needed a new angel to fight, they'd send down the monkey trained to that angel, and then they'd dissect it, putting its brain into the thing. According to HALO's official records, three monkeys in the "Eva Program" have died, supposedly of stress-related issues related to their training. (If PETA had still existed, HALO would be in hot water for that, but with 90 of the world's biodiversity destroyed, no one cared about the environment anymore except with regard to how it affected humanity.) The fact that a third monkey was dead meant that the third angel was prepped and ready to launch, could be being launched at the very moment. The perfect time to kick HALO in the nuts; they had had everything going their way for far too long.
The spy entered the angel hanger, which was vacant, as in this state the angels were about as dangerous as the comatose (and HALO were hardly going to put guards down here, wanting as few people to realize that this place existed as possible), and selected one that looked like an impossibly giant centipede. It's long, tubular body was possibly inspired by Armisael. Just being close to the creature activated the device, which floated up to the creature, and into it's head. Keel Lorenz now had complete control of this creature, and he sent it down the angels' exit hatch, setting off alarms. He didn't care about his spy. The man had served his purpose. The angel swam in the deep ocean currents, making a bee line for Antartica.