It's been too long since I actually did anything on this one. Lazyness, as well as writing... other stuff has set my attention off from tis tale. But! I have gathered some experiance, that i hope will show on the following chapters.

And lucy is hunting me, as per usual. though i pray to god she's died of old age.


Disclaimer; I don't own Jack, Elfen Lied or Eva


Of Lilim and Lilium

Chapter 11; An excellant Plan


The shield was gone and unit 01's armor was slowly peeling away from the Eva's ravaged frame. Shinji was screaming again, his plug heating up under the enormous energy onslaught. Ayanami's shot tore past him, again twisting around the enemy's energy beam directed towards them. With a scream of disbelief, he saw it vaporize a whole hillside behind the Angel.

The second shot had failed.

The second chance was spent.

Their hope was lost.

And Shinji was boiled inside his entry-plug, his entire body on fire as the pain intensified with the rising heat.

Soon, even screaming became too much of an effort , and he simply tried to hold on to consciousness as long as he could…


Rei knew, after re-synching, that her shot had missed. Probably by pulling the trigger too hard, she'd moved the barrel ever so slightly off target.

And a third shot would require a two hundred and fifty-five second cooling of the barrel.

She had failed. Her purpose in life, and she had failed.

What would the Commander say?

What would he do?

She felt her counterpart stir, again. It felt strange, as if she was synching with her Eva, twice.

+Damn… what have I done?+

She almost cried out in shock as the second thought pattern crept over her consciousness. This however took a back seat as she noticed unit 01's silhouette against the blinding light coming from the angel's core.

"Ikari!"

Her half-whisper joined the screams coming from the comm. Link, drowning her mind in fear, and pain, and anguish.

And as she felt the ground shake beneath her, she could only watch as unit 01 vanished from view, along with everything else.


"So here we are again…"

The voice sounded defeated, almost deadpan. But there was a hint of anger there, too.

"You must release me, Lucy-"

"Release you? I don't even know how we get here! How the fuck can I release you if I don't even know where the hell I am!"

Rei recoiled. Still, she was feeling an anxiousness she had not felt for over nine years.


Soft light flooded Shinji's mind, the pain now strangely there, but not there. It was as if he was feeling it from a long distance away, somehow transmitting it from the other side of the world.

The light seemed to cleanse him, purging his body of the mindless assault.

Like before, he felt a hand rest on his shoulder, seemingly gentle, unhurried.

"You are safe, now. Join with me, let me soothe your pain…"

He kept his gaze ahead. There in front of him was a burning brightness, piercing his mind as if with ice.

"I can't leave Ayanami alone… I have to protect her… I have to protect Rei…."

"Do you wish this? To protect her with your own soul, our own body and mind?"

He felt rage build in his stomach. It was acidic, almost painful.

"Yes… yes! I've got to get back to her! I have to…"

An arm wrapped around his waist. Soft skin pressed up against his back and neck. His mind began to focus, the anger and rage burning almost as brightly as the light before him.

"Then, with the light of your soul, protect her…"

His vision blurred, and he blinked once to find his hands held before him.

"What…"

He looked up, and felt his heart skip a beat as the solid wall of light blocked everything from view. The joy was short lived as he noticed a red scale traversing its way down to zero fast. 23 seconds to go.

He snapped his head both ways, looking for Rei's Eva. Just slightly to his right and behind him, the orange unit 00 lay crumpled over the rifle's barrel.

"Rei!"

He pulled his Eva up, tripping as he leapt to her, and managed to grab the stricken Eva to fall down the long slope of the mountainside.

He landed on top of her, his at-field still visible behind him.

The angel had stopped firing, and seemed to ponder its next move. The entire scene seemed eerie, unreal. Such calm, after such intense battle.


Misato had a pretty word to describe the scene that they were situated in. it was a word usually used to describe an act of love in a rather more animalistic form, without the actual love involved. And even if she had done it herself a few times before, she knew that she had never, ever, been so totally fucked as right now.

The screen hissed, the image continuously breaking up and reverting again.

Then, the Angel began to shape shift once more.

With a desperation yet unseen, she grabbed hold of a small radio unit.

"Drop the cargo! I repeat, drop the cargo!"

She took her finger off the send button and held it close to her chest as she stared at the unfolding fortress…


"You're clear to go, Red. Remember, two seconds to disengage, twenty-four to fall, then activate skipping to direct control. Just like we practiced"

The darkness inside the plug shook as the carrier hit a pocket of turbulence. Soft light from a watertight-wrapped radio illuminated the plug just enough to shilouhette the figure of a young girl sitting in the pilot's seat.

"Finally! I was beginning to think that they'd forgotten about me!"

The radio beeped again.

"Right, on my mark; three… two… one… Mark!"

A heavy clank reverberated through the entire plug. The pilot grabbed the controls and wrapped her fingers around them tightly.

"Now, let's show these people who they forgot, then…"

Freefall.


The angel solidified, forming a beautiful crystal rose, the glowing heart of its core beginning to shine brighter, brighter…

"Shinji! Get out of there! Run!"

Misato heard the tech's frail voice try to reason him out of the hopeless situation. Maya was almost in tears. Sometimes, Misato really wondered how she had gotten the job in the first place.

All she could do now was clutch her cross, and trust the pilot could count…

"All the world depends on you now. Please… do this right!"

The beam formed, tearing across the lake, boiling the water away faster than the steam could disperse. It hit the mountainside and threw up a huge part of the hillside, melting it almost instantly to it's bedrock. Not long now before the beam cut through the mountain, hitting the two unresponsive units.

She kept her eyes glued to the spot directly above the angel…


"Achtzehn, neunzehn, zwanzig, einundzwanzig, zweiundzwanzig, dreiundzwanzig, vierundzwanzig! Eva Einheit Zwei, Synchrotart! Protokoll dreizehn überspringen! Aktiviere progressives Messer!"

The German girl was lit inside the plug, the Angel's beam almost blinding her as she pointed her prog knife forwards and straight at the red globe underneath her. Her cry of battle was heard by all as the external speaker system relayed it accidentally.

"RAAHHHHHHH!"

The angel seemed to notice just a split second too late. All of a sudden, the few trifling tons of metal and meat had transformed into the screaming threat even worse than the ones behind the mountainside it was eradicating.

It was, as Misato so elegantly put it; "SO ROYALLY FUCKED!"

The prog knife penetrated the core, the entire weight behind the killer blow pushing it to the hilt, then beyond.

Asuka Langley Sohryu was doused in red as her unit followed, blasting clean through the angel's shattering core.

A moment of silence, the beam instantly disappeared.

Then the entire angel liquefied, joining Asuka in the descent to earth. The red unit unfolded it's arms and prepared for deceleration. The turbines were just barely able to ignite in time to shed delta-v, but far too little in the opinion of the redhead.

Asuka groaned as she watched the ground come closer.

"This is gonna hurt…"


Lucy pondered the view. It was largely red, without ground or ceiling. The figure in front of her was the host of her bodiless soul, the girl called Rei Ayanami. The slight frown indicated that she was highly annoyed, even if she wouldn't openly declare it so.

Somehow, sound from the outside was filtering through, slightly muffled and yet almost perfectly transmitted to her understanding.

It was as if…

"Oh no…"

Lucy felt the realization dawn on herself as Rei turned to the sounds.

"…NYA! NYU! NYUU!"

The blue haired girl slowly turned to her kidnapper.

"….Nyu? what does this mean?"

Lucy closed her eyes and settled to a comfortable drift.

"When you caught me… I was not the only thing you took back. It's a part of me… something I created to bridge the river of guilt I had for… what I did. It will take a while before I can take control of my body again-"

"You have forgotten that it is my vessel you inhabit currently, Lucy… "

Lucy coughed. "All right… our body. Since technically I do have a bit of my old genes in you now…"

She felt slightly guilty in saying that, but held herself to that argument anyway.

The calls continued, growing weaker, tired…

"I cannot imagine what they will do if they find… our vessel in such a state… I hope that the Commander will not terminate it with me"

Lucy opened her eyes and met the red orbs of the blue haired girl.

"So you finally value your life?"

"My knowledge about you as well as the last two angel battles are not included with the latest mind-state backup. Only I can replace such knowledge, and if the fact that your genes are infecting all the other vessels is correct, it could lead to catastrophic results in continuous resurrections. Therefore I must inform the commander, even if that leads to my destruction. I am, after all, replaceable…"

"But that's not all the truth, is it?"

Rei averted her eyes.

"No, it is no longer the sole reason for my reluctance. I have come to… fear… termination. It used to be something I had no worries about… but for some reason, I have been unable to imagine the world without myself experiencing it. I find this most vexing since it has brought many other things to my attention that are either completely redundant or a waste of time. Other people, for example…"


Inside the command vehicle, everyone was either helping someone up or initiating the post-battle protocols. Misato sat demurely at the door, the radio held in her hand that her chin was resting on, holding it screen downwards. In the distance, Rei's unit lay under the purple one, both inactive by now. The orange unit had been struggling to get out from underneath unit 01, a feeble attempt as it turned out to be. The techs had recorded a spike in synch, then a tremendous drop to almost 16 percent sync ration. Two minutes of distressed wriggling later, it had come to a complete stop.

"Any news?"

The bottle blonde had just walked up to her, her pda glowing in the night, illuminating her face from below and giving it an almost eerie shine from beneath.

"None.. both are down. Rescue team is on the way, but it will take some time to get the two of them untangled…"

Misato nodded and pressed the call button on her radio.

"Hey, Asuka! I need your help, real quick-like: I need you to get those two untangled… they're making a scene. Now don't you go falling for his charms too, ok?"

The radio crackled as Ritsuko raised an eyebrow.

"What? Me? Why me! I had to save their asses once already! And then I have to drag this damn corpse of a core all the way to the next chute! Am I some kind of contractor or what? And you know just as well as I do that that idiot got what she deserved!"

Misato frowned at the antics. Most likely, she'd have to get used to it, but it still drove her nuts every time Asuka rubbed anyone's failure in everyone's faces.

"Just get them to the next recovery point and the techs will take care of the rest. How's your power doing?"

"Oh, just fine. It's just like, at three minutes or so. Nothing at all to worry about as I'll get those two numbskulls off of each other inside sixty seconds. And I demand some real good food tonight, Misato. And I don't mean takeaway!"

Akagi stifled a laugh.

"My, my, aren't we the little rebel. I do wonder if it has anything to do with… you know who"

Misato glared at her friend. "Will you drop it already? I've had enough of that idiot to fill three volumes as thick as tax law. Haven't you got anything better to do than lord over my greatest mistake ever?"

The pda chimed, and Ritsuko opened a message directed to her.

She gasped as she read, then swore under her breath as she realized what this meant.

Misato knew that if Ritsuko swore, it was probably going to end real bad for someone.

"What is it? What's wrong?"

Ritsuko pointed the screen at her.

"This is the sync ratio two seconds before Unit 01 shut down. And this is the neurograph at the same time…"

"400 percent… wow, he's real good! But.. what do all these squiggly lines mean?"

Ritsuko pulled the pda back to herself and tapped a reply.

"It means that his mind was dissolving. It means that there might be a serious problem with our current pilot corps. It means that we need to get unit 01 down to a secure cage right now!"

Misato stared at the woman, then pressed the call button again.

"Hey, Asuka… we're gonna need you to do something more…"


Misato stood to attention in front of the Commander, her defeat clearly drawn on her face as the after action review was carried out in the huge, depressingly dark office of Commander Ikari.

„It was an excellent plan, captain. If not for the pilot's misfortune, it would have succeeded very well. However…" The man's stern gaze was hidden behind the reflected light of his glasses. Adding the folded hands in front of his mouth, it hid his expression quite marvelously. "… the fact remains that the whole operation failed."

OHSHITOHSHITOHSHIT what is he gonna do to me?

Thoughts like these were crashing around her brain as she imagined just what he would do.

And she had an unnervingly GOOD imagination in that respect. Whispered rumors spoke of unpleasant things happening to people that the Commander considered 'incompetent'

"In light of the rather.. interesting backup that you had requisitioned, the destruction of the fifth angel was, fortunately, achieved. Your tactical decisions were all entirely justified"

The worried look softened just ever so slightly.

"Even so, the fact remains that units 00 and 01 suffered quite severe damage in the initial operation's execution. I cannot help but point out the… wastefulness of the use of our resources. Time, money and manpower are all things that we do not have in abundance. Your actions were not particularly profitable, Captain. Do you have anything to say for yourself?"

That…that…bast-huh! Oh shit, what do I say, what do I say! ummm….

"Sir, compare the investment to the destruction of mankind, and you might find that survival might be worth it, sir!"

Where the fuck did that come from!

Ikari raised an eyebrow. She couldn't tell if it was out of surprise, anger or praise. She just stared at the patch of air two inches to the left of his right ear.

"Your opinion is… noted. Dismissed!"

She saluted, slightly confused. Tensing for a short, sharp pain in the back, she made her way out from the office of doom, and made a rushed, desperate run to the next ladies room.

Unfortunately, she took the wrong door.

As she flung the door open, she ran into the one person on earth she did NOT want to meet at all today.

"Hello, Misato-chan! Well, I didn't expect it to be like this, but if you're okay with it…"

"OH GOD NOOOO!"

Rouji Kaji just stared after the screaming woman, slightly hurt. Shrugging, he left the loo and made his way towards the Commander's office.


/\


A/; Thanks to Squire of Gothos for pre-reading this chapter, and all tose who reviewed up to last chapter! Sorry again for taking so long, but next chapters will take a while to mature. Expect erratic updates, and please don't kill me Lucy...

Nyu's got that sad look on her face. I'm gonna need a mop...

Yours sincerely,

Henry V