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 Eleven: Speed Against Might

Mari Illustrious Makinami had a unique way of looking at the world, to put it mildly.

She greeted situations that others would've viewed as disasters with a manic grin. She had had responsibilities thrust upon her that most people would've viewed as crushing and saw them as a means to do exciting things. More than one person she'd encountered had thought (if not said) that she was completely crazy.

Still, there were some situations where she reacted exactly like anybody else would have.

"Okay, this is bad," she observed mildly as she watched the walls of her entry plug starting to crumple.

More or less.

Having just defeated the Thirteenth Angel in a battle waged inside her own mind, Mari had believed that the worst was over, but she'd discovered otherwise as soon as she'd opened her eyes. Apparently, one of the other Evangelions was enthusiastically attacking Unit Three, and naturally her radio was out, so she couldn't tell whoever it was to stop. Nor could she fight back; Unit Three had most definitely been rendered inoperable.

Of course, being the Flash, she could escape from this predicament, but the problem was escaping without making it blindingly obvious that she had special powers. After all, if NERV realized that she was a superwoman, then the best case scenario would be them yanking her out of the entry plug, and she couldn't have that. Piloting an EVA was just way too much fun.

She'd just had an awesome fight with an Angel specifically because she'd been named Unit Three's pilot, after all.

What do I do? What do I do? Her mind spun at hyper speed, but she couldn't seem to come up with anything.


Shinji had thought he knew what horror was. He had thought that his time piloting EVA, along with the other unpleasant experiences he'd endured throughout his life had taught him that, and why shouldn't he have believed it? Though he'd never been formally diagnosed, he was pretty sure he had a long list of mental issues that would prove he knew firsthand what horror was.

He had been wrong. He hadn't known what horror was until this moment.

"No!" he screamed. "Stop this! Please stop this! Can't you see the Angel's dead?!"

His plug was filled with red light, and though some of his neural links with Unit One remained intact, all those let him do was feel was the EVA was feeling, such as the sickening sensation of Unit Three's bones snapping in its armored hands.

"Father, I'm begging you! Stop this!" the Third Child shouted. His voice was growing hoarse, but he didn't care.

Unit One had already ripped its possessed sibling into bloody chunks; the black Evangelion was utterly incapable of offering any further resistance, but the Commander still refused to deactivate the Dummy System.

"Oh no," Shinji moaned as he watched—and felt—Unit One's hands reach into the soft, mutilated flesh of Unit Three's remains and pull out a long, white cylinder.

Mari's entry plug.

For several seconds, the Third Child was mute with terror as Unit One opened his jaws, breaking the armor and restraints that normally held its mouth shut, then placed the plug between its teeth. For one bizarre instant, Shinji found himself thinking of a dog with a bone, except that this was obviously nowhere near as innocent.

After all, no one cared about an animal gnawing on a bone; whatever it had once been a part of was already dead, unlike the living, breathing human trapped inside that entry plug.

"Stop this! Please!" he kept begging, and though it didn't show in the LCL, Shinji knew that he was crying.

Unit Three's entry plug started to crumple in the purple Evangelion's jaws. Shinji could feel it; the phantom pressure on his own teeth abruptly seemed to lessen somewhat as the metal began to give.

Shinji knew Mari had only seconds left, at most.

"Father!" he screamed.

The Commander remained silent, and in a moment of harsh epiphany, it finally hit Shinji that it had always been like this, at least since his mother had died over a decade ago. Oh, in his time in Tokyo-3, there had been times when his father really did seem like he might be a decent person. Shinji had occasionally dared to hope that they could repair their badly damaged relationship.

Yet now he finally realized that every time he'd really needed his father, the man simply hadn't been there for him. He hadn't been there when his mother had died, and he certainly didn't intend to be there for him now.

"God damn you…" he breathed as hope abandoned him.

CRACK!

The vice grip of Unit One's jaws finally broke Mari's entry plug. The center—the part where the pilot would be—was instantly crushed, while the ends were broken off and went tumbling to the ground, LCL gushing everywhere.

Shinji covered his mouth, not just at the horror of it, but because he could feel the ruined remains of Mari's plug inside of it. It was just a phantom sensation generated by his link with Unit One, of course, but that really didn't matter to him at the moment. It was all he could do not to vomit into the LCL surrounding him.

Then Unit One opened its mouth, allowing the remains of Mari's plug, now no more than a hunk of crumpled metal good for nothing but scrap, to fall out. It hit the ground with a dull thud.

Something snapped the instant the metal impacted against the earth. Amazingly, it wasn't anything inside Shinji.

Instead, it was the Dummy System's control over Unit One. The Third Child didn't know why the autopilot system had relinquished command; maybe it was because Unit Three had been completely destroyed, and so without any threat present it had switched itself off. Maybe the thing just had a few bugs in it still.

Either way, a traumatized and furious Shinji Ikari was now once again in command of one of the most powerful weapons humanity had ever made.

"Father!" the Third Child roared as Unit One abandoned its power cable and went sprinting in the direction of NERV headquarters.


The personnel in the NERV command center were all deathly quiet as the test type Evangelion ran back toward Tokyo-3 and headquarters. It wasn't long before Unit One had broken even the EVA speed records it had set when it had raced to catch the Tenth Angel before it could strike the Earth.

"Estimated time until Unit One arrives here?" Gendo asked.

Everyone flinched at that; something about the way the Commander's cold voice invaded the moment of stunned horror was particularly unnerving.

"Uh…" Aoba belatedly responded, typing at his console. "Approximately two minutes, sir. That would leave the Third Child with three minutes to attack the base." He added unnecessarily.

"Father!" Shinji's voice burst from the speakers in the command center. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't destroy half of headquarters when I get there! Answer me, damn you!"

Everyone on the command center turned and looked up at their leader, but Gendo remained completely silent, keeping his entwined fingers in front of his face, like it was any normal day. Not at all like there was a giant cyborg controlled by a betrayed and enraged teenager barreling toward them all with lethal intent at that very moment.

When it became obvious that no attempt to placate the boy would be forthcoming from the Commander, Maya tentatively decided to try.

"Shinji, he had to turn on the Dummy System! If the Angel had made it here, it would've been the end of the world!" she pleaded with him to see reason.

"So he had to leave it on after Unit Three had been torn to pieces?!" Shinji growled. "Bullshit!"

"You disobeyed orders, Shinji," Aoba added quietly.

"And so he decides to punish my best friend?!" the Third Child seethed. "And anyway, that's not the point! He used my hands to murder someone! Father! I know you can hear me! I will destroy headquarters if you don't answer me!"

Gendo reached over and flipped a switch on the arm of his chair, turning off all the microphones on the command center.

"We have no time for this childish tantrum," he said coldly. "Can we cut the pilot's neural links to Unit One?"

"Um, no, sir," Makoto answered. "The shut down system seems to have blown when the Dummy System went offline."

"Then increase the pressure of the LCL until the pilot is knocked unconscious," he ordered.

"Yes, sir," Makoto said reluctantly, entering the command.

On the main screen, Unit One stumbled and then fell, its momentum carrying it forward. The purple behemoth bounced along the ground like a stone skipping across the surface of a lake, kicking up enormous amounts of dirt each time it hit the earth, until it finally came to a stop.

Then, amazingly, it raised its huge hand, as though intending to keep pulling itself forward. Several people in the command center stiffened in fear.

Commander Ikari did not.

Unit One's arm went limp and fell back to the ground as the Evangelion's glowing white eyes went dark.

"Damn you, Father…" Shinji gasped out just before he finally slipped into oblivion.


There were some days that Miko Tsukuda thought that working for NERV was really cool. After all, even if she was only a minor part of the organization, she was still doing her bit to help protect the world from the Angels. On those days she felt important, almost inspiring even.

Other days, not so much.

This afternoon was definitely putting the whole day into the "not so much" category.

"God, this is horrible," she breathed, as she looked out at what had been the latest battlefield in the war against the Angels. The area had been painted red with Unit Three's blood.

"Okay, people," Miko's supervisor called, and she and several other NERV personnel, all clad in heavy hazmat suits, immediately turned their attention to him. "Our priority right now is to find and retrieve the remains of the Fourth Child. The MAGI aren't detecting any blue patterns, but everyone keep alert for any remnants of the Angel that might still be alive anyway."

Miko winced slightly at the way he so casually spoke about finding the body of a dead teenage girl.

Personally, after the EVA pilots had pulled off so many stunning victories against incredible odds, Miko had started to think that they were practically invincible. It made the reminder that they really weren't that much more unpleasant.

With a sigh that was too quiet to be heard outside her cumbersome suit, she went off to search the debris and destruction.

Hard to believe that even something as huge as an Evangelion can hold this much blood, she thought as she walked through crimson puddles. No matter how many times she told herself that her hazmat suit had its own air supply built in, she couldn't convince herself that she wasn't smelling all the blood.

She really should've volunteered to go to the remains of the Matsushiro base, instead, Miko decided belatedly.

"The Commander had better hope that Lieutenant Quinn died back there," she muttered to herself grimly as she picked through the wreckage. "Otherwise I bet she'll put a bullet in his brain for him."

She didn't really know the American officer, but everything Miko had heard about them indicated that Quinn viewed Makinami as a daughter.

Miko wouldn't want to be the Commander right now…not that she ever wanted to be him, really.

"Hey! Is someone out there?!"

The muffled shout immediately caused the woman poking around the recent battlefield to jump almost a foot—not an easy task while wearing a heavy hazmat suit, but her surprise made it possible.

"Who was that?" Miko demanded, looking about frantically.

She liked to think of herself as a scientifically-minded person with no use for superstition, but in this place, it was all too easy to think there might be ghosts about.

And that had sounded a lot like the Fourth Child…

"It's me!" the voice shouted again, and now Miko was positive that it was Makinami. "Can you get me out of here? This thing is really cramping my style! And my…everything else!"

Looking about, Miko finally located the source of the voice, and her jaw instantly dropped open.

One of the ends of Unit Three's entry plug that had broken off when Unit One had crunched it between its jaws was laying on the ground nearby. The broken end appeared to have been pinched completely shut; she couldn't see any spilled LCL anywhere on the ground near it.

"Pilot Makinami, is that you in there?" Miko asked, approaching the remnant of the entry plug.

"…you know that question just begs for a sarcastic response, don't you?"

"Yeah." She admitted, feeling stupid.

"Okay, good. Then no, it's Prince Albert. As you can see, I'm kinda stuck in a can here."

That was definitely the Fourth Child all right.

"But…how?" Miko asked, bewildered, as she walked over to the fragment of the entry plug that held the EVA pilot.

"I saw that my plug was starting to collapse in the middle, so I rushed to one of the ends," Mari answered. "You'd be surprised how fast I can move when I think I'm gonna die."

"I'll bet," Miko said. "Are you okay? That must've been quite a drop to the ground."

"Yeah, it was. I broke some bones, but I got better while I was waiting for somebody to find me," Mari answered with her usual flippancy. "Now do you think you could get me out of here?"

"Oh, right," Miko said, her cheeks flushing red. "Let me go and get some help!"

The news that Pilot Makinami was miraculously alive galvanized the other NERV personnel who had ventured out to the killing field, and in only minutes they were very carefully cutting a hole into the fragment of the entry plug.

The instant they were done, a small flood of LCL came gushing forth, and Mari herself tumbled out onto the ground a moment later.

With a loud, unpleasant sounding heave, the EVA pilot expelled all the LCL from her lungs and then took a deep gasp of air. "Oh, wow," she said dazedly.

"Are you all right, Pilot?" Miko asked, offering her hand up.

"Yeah, I'm good," Mari said, then, either ignoring or simply not noticing the other woman's gesture, she abruptly threw herself to a standing position, placing her hands on her lower back and thrusting her obnoxiously impressive bust out in one explosive motion. Miko could hear her back pop even with her hazmat suit muffling all sound. "Getting stuck in such a tiny space and being forced into a weird position for so long does not do awesome things to the human spine, though."

"I can imagine," Miko replied.

Mari nodded absently, rolling her undoubtedly stiff shoulders. "So, did anything much happen while I was stuck in there?" she asked.

Miko and her assembled co-workers hesitated.

"Uh, well…"


Sitting in the dark confines of a solitary detention cell at headquarters, Shinji didn't think he'd ever been quite this miserable before. Which, considering the life he'd had so far, was really saying something.

He had once thought that seeing his mother abruptly die and then having his father abandon him was as bad as it would ever get. Shinji had never really subscribed to the that this was in any way a good thing, even though he knew others might try to give it an optimistic spin and point out that once you'd hit rock bottom like that, then there was nothing else to fear. Even if he had been inclined to think that way, he would've been wrong.

The day he'd arrived in Tokyo-3 had, if not surpassed that day, then had at least rivaled it. To come face to face with his father again, only to be treated as a tool, as a weapon component, and then be blackmailed into playing the part, when he had gone into it partially hoping to reconcile with the man and partially hoping to get a good opportunity to tell his father where he could shove it…it hadn't been a good day, to put it mildly. Also, it had dredged up all the memories he didn't want to think about, on top of everything else.

Even so, this was worse. Those days had been terrible, but in neither of them had Shinji been used as an instrument of murder against someone he cared deeply about.

"Father…" he whispered into the darkness, thinking about how the Commander had been at least partially responsible for all the events on that trio of dark days.

He was just starting to contemplate what he'd do when he was released from solitary confinement when he heard the tumblers in the lock of his cell's armored door starting to turn.

Shinji held up a hand to shield his face from the light as it streamed into his cramped confines from the hallway outside. Squinting against the painful glare, he could just make out the shape of the person who had come to pay him a visit, seeing that the person was a girl of approximately his height.

Why would Asuka or Rei come down here? He wondered.

"You okay there, Puppy-kun?"

Shinji's jaw dropped. It couldn't be. It was impossible.

Yet he knew that voice.

"Mari?" he asked quietly, afraid to hope.

"How many other people call you 'Puppy-kun', Puppy-kun?" she asked cheerfully.

"It is you!" Shinji gasped, and he was so surprised and relieved that it didn't even occur to him that Asuka had recently taken to using the Fourth Child's pet name for him.

Jumping off the cell's hard bench, Shinji rushed toward the brunette and impulsively threw his arms around her, squeezing her tightly. For once he didn't get the least bit flustered by the feel of her chest pressing up against him; he was too relieved to see her alive.

"Whoa, happy to see me, Puppy-kun?" Mari asked, surprised by his reaction. She still hugged him back, though.

"I thought you were dead!" he exclaimed, and he abruptly realized that he was on the verge of tears. It took a great deal of effort on his part to prevent himself from going to pieces right then.

Mari laughed, backing away from him but leaving her hands on his shoulders. "You think something little like an Angel that possesses Evangelions and a crazy, berserk EVA could take me out?" she asked.

"Yeah, that was silly of me," the Third Child responded with a little laugh, even though he still felt like he could easily start crying if he let himself. "It would take at least another three Angels."

"Try another three dozen," Mari boasted, flexing her arms. "Then you'd be in the ballpark, at least."

Shinji just shook his head, smiling. He couldn't quite believe that after the events of that day, the brunette was smiling and joking around just like normal.

"How did you survive, though?" he asked, looking her up and down for any sign of injury. "I saw Unit One crush your plug. Between its teeth."

"Yeah, but an entry plug is longer than an EVA's jaw is wide, so I scrunched into one of the ends," Mari said, as though it was a very simple thing to do.

Shinji just stared at her for several seconds, barely able to wrap his mind around what she'd apparently done. He couldn't imagine being in a collapsing entry plug and having the presence of mind to do anything except maybe scream in terror, never mind being able to move fast enough to pull that off.

"Wow."

Mari shrugged, smirking smugly. "They don't call me Mari Awesome Makinami for nothing."

"I thought you were Super Awesome Girl," he said.

"I go by many names, most of which include the word 'awesome', for obvious reasons," Mari said with a dismissive wave. "Anyway, I should probably get outta here. I'm not really supposed to be here at all. I sorta slipped the guard some cash to take a long bathroom break. See you tomorrow, Puppy-kun?"

Shinji let out a small, bitter laugh. "I doubt it."

Mari frowned. "Why do you say that?" she asked.

"Mari, when I thought that you were dead, I just got so angry that I lost control of myself," Shinji said. "I threatened to destroy headquarters. I would've done it, too."

"Okay, so? You're the best EVA pilot," Mari said. "Just say you're sorry and promise to never do it again and they'll almost have to let you out."

Shinji blinked stupidly at her and didn't say anything for a few seconds. At first he was surprised at her nonchalant response to his admission that he'd been ready to attack NERV HQ, an act that would've certainly killed people, though once he thought it out, he supposed it wasn't that surprising. There was no way it had been news to her; Mari must have asked why he was confined to a dark little cell at some point, after all.

Once he got off that and onto the other part of what she'd said, however…

"Mari, I'm not going to apologize to my father," he said flatly.

He didn't care if they left him to rot in this cell until he had a long white beard; he was not going to say the words "I'm sorry" to the Commander.

"Why not?"

"He tried to turn me into a murder weapon!" Shinji retorted. "And he tried to use me to murder you. You may not think that's a big deal, but I do!"

He closed his mouth with a snap the moment he said that. Shinji hadn't intended on getting quiet that…emotional, but it had just sort of slipped out.

However, Mari just responded to his outburst by shaking her head with an odd sort of grin on her face that left Shinji feeling vaguely anxious.

"Puppy-kun, Puppy-kun, Puppy-kun," she began in an almost chiding tone. "Look, I won't lie or pretend. I admit that the whole berserker rage and quest for vengeance thing over little old me was really touching. It got me all hot and bothered, in fact." She added in almost a whisper.

"Wha…what?" Shinji stammered as his cheeks flushed.

That was not the response he'd expected.

"But if you keep it up you'd just be drawing it out past the point where it's hot, and you'd only be making yourself suffer," she pointed out in a more normal tone. "Was the Commander a jerk for turning that crazy autopilot system on? Absolutely. But you don't get to make the guy at the top apologize. Not in these kinds of situations. It sucks, but that's all there is to it. The only thing you get to do is decide whether you wanna suck it up and say sorry to somebody you'd rather punch in the face and then go hang with me, or if you want to tell him where to stick it and then sit in the dark feeling pissed off for god only knows how long."

Shinji hesitated at that. A moment ago, refusing to apologize to his father—ever—had seemed like the principled course of action. A part of him still felt that it was. Yet Mari made it sound like such a silly thing to do.

The sound of heavy footsteps could suddenly be heard from not too far off.

"Whoops, looks like that's my cue to exit, stage left," Mari said, before turning to give him a look. "Think about it, Puppy-kun. I hope to see you soon."


"God," Misato said softly.

"No sign of God here," Jessie replied grimly. "No sign at all. Just destruction."

The two officers were standing at the edge of the valley where Unit One and Unit Three had had their battle to the death, both of the officers having emerged from the ruins of Matsushiro alive but battered. The Ops Director had one arm in a sling and a white bandage wrapped around her head, while the Lieutenant's leg was in a splint and she was walking with the aid of a cane.

It was a day after the battle, but the whole area was already starting to smell. NERV had cleared up the larger chunks of flesh, but countless smaller bits remained. Also, nothing but a good rainstorm would wash away the blood, so the whole valley had begun to stink of decaying flesh. It was something that would get worse before it got better.

Of course, there had been no real need for Misato and Jessie to venture out to this highly unpleasant place. The Ops Director had just felt like she should go and see what had come of the Angels colliding head-on with NERV's mad creations and a teenager with a traumatic past. Jessie had felt like no one should have to make such a grim pilgrimage alone.

"So how's Shinji?" Jessie asked after a long moment of silence between the two of them.

"Still cooling his heels in a solitary confinement cell," Misato answered. "They wouldn't only let me see him."

"And that stopped you?" the blonde asked with just the barest trace of humor, which seemed like more than the locale was willing to permit.

Misato favored Jessie with the hint of a smile, anyway, even if she didn't feel like grinning. They were friends, after all.

"The old wink-and-a-jiggle didn't work this time," the Major said.

"Don't tell me you're losing your touch?" Jessie asked automatically. It was what she had always said in the rare cases when her friend's feminine wiles failed to get the desired results, but it clearly wasn't the right thing to say in this situation, and she couldn't help but since a bit.

"No," Misato said. "Ikari had doubled the guard on the block."

"Why?" Jessie frowned, unable to believe that the Commander would view Shinji as a threat without his EVA.

Misato shrugged. "Don't know. When I asked the guards, one of them muttered something about a recent breach or something. It's not important," she shrugged. A beat passed. "So, how's Mari?"

"Oh, just as cheerful as ever," Jessie said, sounding exasperated. "I know I should be glad that she's so unflappable, but sometimes…"

"Yeah," Misato said. Even though she definitely didn't have that issue with her own wards, she could understand where her friend was coming from. Sort of.

"Of course, it's not like most of the people around here would care all that much if Mari wasn't okay," Jessie said bitterly.

"Huh?"

"Oh, come on, Misato," Jessie grumbled. "You know most of Central views Mari and Unit Five as outsiders that they had forced on them. Hell, aside from you, the brass takes every chance they can to slight her."

Misato frowned. "That's not true."

"Really? Then why is Mari the Fourth Child instead of the Third? Why'd Central count the pilot they pressed into service a few months ago before the one who's been training for years?" Jessie demanded. "Why didn't you guys ever number the Angel that she killed back in Nevada? Does it not count because Mari fought it back home in Kansas?"

"Oh, I don't know," Misato said, shaking her head. "Does numbering really matter to you that much?"

"What matters to me is that Commander Ikari didn't think twice to sacrifice Mari, just to teach his son a lesson against disobeying him," Jessie growled.

"And you think Ikari was ready to do that because Mari's a Yankee?" Misato asked. "He probably would've done it if his own mother was in Unit Three's entry plug."

"That doesn't exactly make me feel better," Jessie remarked.

"Fine, whatever," Misato said, finally resigning herself to the fact that her friend was not willing to be placated.

Not that she could really blame her, she supposed. After all, if it had been Shinji in Unit Three, she'd be ready to breathe fire right about now.

"We should probably get back," the Ops Director added.

"All right," Jessie agreed with a nod.

They walked back to the waiting VTOL in silence, and though the blonde didn't plan on airing her grievances again any time within the foreseeable future, they only hardened her resolve to protect Mari. She had thought that Tokyo-3 was a dangerous place for her ward before this, after all. Seeing the depths that the Commander would blatantly sink to, however, made that reality even more stark.

If only everything was that simple, she thought as she and Misato climbed into the aircraft that would take them home.

Because of course it wasn't all a straightforward "us versus them" type of thing.

Gendo Ikari was already papering over the whole incident, doing everything he could to downplay and conceal it, even going so far as to alter the MAGI's records of the battle. As an officer sworn to be loyal to both the United States and the UN, Jessie had little choice but to give her superiors the true version of the battle. Or at least the truth of the battle as she had heard about it, having been unconscious at the time. Of course, that version would still be a lot more accurate than the account Gendo and the Committee were offering everyone.

That would be bad for Gendo Ikari, which Jessie was completely fine with, even though she had no illusions that the report of one soldier with no real proof to offer would result in the King of NERV being pulled down from his throne.

Unfortunately, it was entirely possible that her actions would have negative consequences for Shinji Ikari, as well, who had flagrantly disobeyed orders and threatened to attack NERV headquarters. In fact, it wouldn't surprise her a bit if the Third Child ultimately ended up suffering far more as a result of the truth coming out. After all, the Commander was a powerful man who could doubtlessly call in favors when push came to shove.

Shinji didn't have those resources at his disposal, and though Jessie remained somewhat cautious of the Third Child, she was slowly becoming more and more certain that there really wasn't anything more than met the eye with him. Also, there was no denying that her own ward was growing increasingly fond of him.

I just hope that nothing happens to make Mari hate me, she thought dourly as the VTOL took off.


"You were blatantly insubordinate the other day, and worse, you threatened to attack headquarters," the Commander said coldly.

That was it, Shinji noted as he glared at his father from across the man's cavernous office. No preamble, not even a token attempt at reasonableness or persuasion. Just an accusation and a demand.

Not long ago, the Third Child might've gotten upset about that, but not anymore. He hadn't expected much else when the guards had opened his cell, slapped handcuffs on him, and marched him up to the Commander's office.

He had accepted that his father would never give him what he needed or be there for him, after all.

So rather than get angry, or throw his own accusations back, Shinji just stood there.

"Do you have anything to say for yourself?" Gendo finally asked when it became obvious that the Third Child wasn't going to speak unless directly prompted.

Shinji looked his father in the eye. "I'm sorry."

The Commander actually looked just a little surprised by that, assuming that Shinji wasn't imagining it. The Third Child took a bizarre sense of triumph from knocking his father momentarily off balance, even though he'd done it by being unexpectedly accommodating.

"I could point out that I'm a minor you basically conscripted into your war, and that it's unrealistic to apply the same standards used to judge professional soldiers on me, but I don't think that argument is going to carry a lot of weight with you," he continued, making a point of looking the Commander in the eye while he said this. "So I'll just say that it will never happen again."

The Commander was silent for a long moment after that, and despite telling himself that he just wasn't afraid of the man the way he had once been—that his father could no longer hurt him the way he used to be able to because Shinji no longer held out hope of a relationship with him—the Third Child could feel beads of cold sweat starting to run down the back of his neck.

"Because you were stopped and failed to harm anyone, your actions can be overlooked. Once," the Commander finally said, and it was obvious that Shinji didn't want to know what would happen if he did such a thing a second time. "Your pay will be suspended for three months. Now, you are free to go. The guard outside will remove the shackles."

"Yes, sir," Shinji said curtly, then turned and walked out without another word. True to his father's word, the guard unlocked the handcuffs he was wearing, and then the Third Child was allowed to go on his merry way.

That was…intense, he thought to himself as he stepped inside an elevator and pressed the button to take him to the ground level.

Apologizing to the Commander had hurt him like a physical pain, and he wouldn't have done it at all if not for something Mari had said to him during her visit to his cell.

"You're the best EVA pilot. Just say you're sorry and promise to never do it again and they'll almost have to let you out."

Ever since the day he'd arrived in Tokyo-3, he'd been told how important he was, but his own importance always seemed to be used against him. He was so important that he had to pilot. He was so important that it was okay for everyone else to make him pilot, to expect it of him.

So just once he felt like he was using his own alleged importance against someone else. Of course, it was basically an illusion he'd concocted so he'd be able to say the words he needed to say when the time came, but feeling like he'd seized just a little bit of control had still made him feel so much better about it all.

The elevator came to a halt, releasing a loud ping. A second later, the doors slid open.

Shinji almost wasn't surprised to find Mari there, seemingly waiting for him. She wore a broad grin.

"Hi, Puppy-kun."


That was…unexpected, Gendo mused as he sat alone in his office.

Of course, that the Third Child had said he would continue to pilot was a good thing; despite what the Commander might have wished, it was hard to dispute that anyone but his son would ever be able to get optimal performance out of Unit One, given the nature of the test type's core.

Still, he couldn't help but find it unsettling that Shinji had managed to surprise him. He wasn't nearly as omniscient as he'd managed to make most people believe, but he had found nearly all of the Third Child's actions and reactions since arriving in the city to be almost laughably predictable. He couldn't help but dislike a break from this trend, even if it went in his favor.

His thoughts were interrupted as a red button on his desk started to blink. Resisting the urge to sigh, he pressed the button.

Immediately, all the lights in his office went out, save for the one right above his desk, and motorized shutters slid into place over the large window, plunging the room into even greater gloom than usual. A moment later, there was a soft whir as holographic projectors hidden in the walls and floor came to life.

Gendo arched an eyebrow when Chairman Keel, and only Chairman Keel, appeared before them. Not a full meeting of the Committee, then. Unusual.

"Ikari," the old cyborg greeted him.

"Keel."

"I recently received news that a more accurate version of the latest battle reached the UN Security Council and the Secretary General, most likely by way of the American government," Keel said.

Gendo's eyes narrowed. "Quinn."

Not that he had expected her to keep quiet, of course, but it was still an annoyance.

"Undoubtedly," Keel nodded. "I wish you luck if you intend to try and prove it, however."

Gendo did his best not to sneer. He wouldn't waste his time on such a venture and Keel knew it. "What's the damage?" he asked instead.

"The UN is going to order that psychological evaluations are conducted on the pilots," Keel answered.

Gendo didn't show it, but the committee chairman's words sent fear stabbing into his heart. There was no way the Children would be deemed mentally fit for combat; he had seen to that for three quarters of them, and Makinami appeared to be innately insane.

"There is good news, however," Keel added before Gendo could object. "I was able to pull strings. You get to choose the psychologist who will conduct the evaluations."

The Commander of NERV immediately felt his heartbeat starting to slow at that. "I know just the man for the job," he said.

"Good," Keel said, though Gendo was able to detect that he was mildly annoyed. No doubt he'd hoped to supply the psychologist himself and thus get an easy way to gain information about the Children, and probably his own plans in the process. That he hadn't even bothered to suggest as much showed that he knew Gendo wasn't planning on ever agreeing to that. "You owe me one, Ikari."

Without another word, Keel terminated their communication, and his hologram winked out.

Gendo allowed himself a small snort as the lights came back on his office. Keel would be in for a nasty surprise if he ever tried to cash in that favor, not the that chairman was naïve enough to make such an attempt. In any case, Keel had been working to protect the Scenario and nothing else.

Reaching into one of his desk drawers, the Commander started to look for his old phone book (paper was so much more difficult to hack than a hard drive). It seemed like he needed to look up an old friend.


Not long after he had touched down at Central City International Airport, Captain Chiron had discovered that the criminal underworld of the urban area had changed significantly since the death of Barry Allen.

There was still a criminal underworld, of course. In fact, the crime rate in the twin cities had increased significantly over the past few decades, but the criminals had changed with the times. The strange but powerful weaponry once wielded by the area's more colorful villains just weren't necessary to make a dishonest living in the absence of the Flash. With the police displaying zero tolerance for anyone who even vaguely resembled the speedster's old foes, the men in the goofy costumes had all departed from the stage in one way or another, and common thugs, drug dealers, Mafioso, and gang bangers had taken their place.

Which was very bad for Chiron, since none of those people even knew what the substance he was looking for was. After days of searching with no luck, the Section Two man was at his wit's end. He knew that if he didn't achieve his objective, then it would probably be better for his health if he never returned to Tokyo-3.

Which was why he was so glad to have finally found a lead.

Even if he was a little suspicious of the whole thing.

"Come on, man," the low life leading him through Keystone's slums growled at him.

"I'm following you," Chiron scowled, not appreciating the way the little worm was trying to boss him around. "Calm the hell down."

He rolled his shoulders awkwardly as he went down the city street, feeling very strange in the jeans and hoodie that he'd worn to look less out of place in his current surroundings. He felt rather exposed and unarmored without his usual black suit, even though his current attire didn't offer any less real protection than the more professional look did.

At least he got to keep the sunglasses.

"This isn't some walk in the park, man," his escort scolded.

"Look, in order to get this far, I had to grease a lot of people's palms, including yours," Chiron retorted. "So I don't want to be hurried for no damn reason."

The thug cursed under his breath but didn't argue further. After a few minutes, the two men arrived at a factory that had obviously been closed down for a long time; the crumbling edifice was nothing more than the hollow shell of industry now.

"He's in there," Chiron's nameless escort said, coming to a stop in front of one the building's side doors. "Remember, no sudden moves. He may seem like an ordinary guy, but the T-man is freaking crazy. You forget that, you're gonna lose an eye or something."

Chiron arched an eyebrow, suddenly realizing that the other man was so edgy because he was afraid of the man they were about to meet.

"I'll remember," he said.

He opened the door, and they walked in. Only one person was inside the abandoned factory, a less than extraordinary looking blond man sitting on a dusty old conveyor belt.

He's just a kid, Chiron thought at first.

However, he realized otherwise as he approached him; the guy seemed to age with every few steps that Chiron walked. By the time the two were right next to each other, the man was looking decidedly over the hill, and most of his hair looked more white than blond.

Even so, there was a certain manic gleam in his eyes that made Chiron think of a reckless adolescent who thought he was invincible and was ready to do something incredibly stupid and violent.

"Hey there," the guy greeted him, and he seemed friendly enough. Chiron didn't let down his guard, though. "I hear you're lookin' for something special." He grinned. "What exactly might that be?"

Chiron was sure that he already knew what it was, and under other circumstances the question might've made him fear that he'd walked into some kind of sting. However, he was completely certain that the man in front of him was no police officer, and would never work with one, so he told him.

The blond guy chuckled. "Man, just hearing about that stuff is a total blast from the past!" he exclaimed jovially. "That crap hasn't been around since the good old days!"

"But you know where to get some?" Chiron asked, struggling to keep from showing how eager he was.

"Nope, but I can put you in contact with someone who can, if there's any of that crap still out there," the blond guy replied. "And since you gave me an excuse to walk down memory lane, I think I will."

"Thank you, Mister…?"

"Walker," the man replied with a smirk. "Axel Walker."


"Hey, what's up, Puppy-kun?"

"Oh, hi, Mari."

It was a few days after the battle against the Thirteenth Angel, and things had more or less returned to normal. The return of routine things like school, homework, and tests at NERV had reasserted itself even more quickly than usual, since the battle had taken place well outside of the Tokyo-3 city limits. It was thanks to those sync tests that the two pilots had bumped into one another in the halls of NERV headquarters that afternoon.

Unfortunately, things weren't quite as normal as they appeared, at least not for Shinji. Oh, everything might have looked the same as ever on the surface, but there was one important difference.

Everyone was scared of him.

No one was outright admitting it, of course, but it was impossible to miss the wary looks everyone was giving him, and the way people flinched whenever he made a sudden movement. Even Asuka had been acting skittish around him, and Misato seemed to be holding him at arm's length, too, as though she didn't quite know who he was anymore.

Apparently, all this must've shown on his face to some degree, because the Fourth Child noticed it almost instantly.

"Okay, what's wrong now?" Mari asked, putting her hands on her hips as she gazed at him intently.

Shinji winced; he didn't really want to discuss it. Briefly, he considered trying to avoid the whole conversation, then eventually decided that it would probably be far easier to instead avoid the process of her dragging it out of him.

"Everyone's afraid of me," he said quietly. "Ever since I was let out of solitary confinement."

Mari paused for a moment, as though considering what to say in response to that.

"Puppy-kun…you are really overestimating yourself," she proclaimed.

"…what?!" Shinji asked, caught by surprise.

Even though he'd come to expect the unexpected from her, she could still somehow surprise him and catch him off guard.

"I mean, yeah, I said that it made my heart go pitter-patter when I found out what you'd done while I suck in that oversized sardine can, and I meant it," she continued, as though she hadn't heard him. "But scared of you? No way. To be perfectly honest, you'd have to do something way more fearsome than just going ballistic while behind the wheel of a seventy meter tall death machine to scare this girl."

Shinji couldn't help but smile a little at that. There was something weirdly uplifting and amusing about her over the top braggadocio.

"There's nothing you're scared of, is there?" Shinji asked.

"Well, I wouldn't say nothing," Mari replied. "But…almost nothing. I am pretty badass. Not to brag or anything."

Shinji chuckled. "So, what—?"

The Third Child didn't get any further before alarms started to screech throughout the base, accompanied by flashing red lights in every room and corridor.

"Another Angel?" Shinji gasped. "Already?!"

"Perfect!" Mari clapped her hands together. "If you do well in this battle, then everyone will forget about what happened with the Thirteenth Angel, you just watch. Now let's go!"

Shinji wasn't at all sure about that, but there was no opportunity for him to debate the issue. A second after she'd made this declaration, Mari grabbed hold of his hand and started practically dragging him in the direction of the locker rooms so they could change into their plug suits.


"Okay, guys, this Angel obviously means business," Jessie addressed the pilots a few minutes later as the Evangelions were being moved to the appropriate launch catapults. "It appeared only moments ago, and it's been tearing its way through all of the city's static defenses ever since."

"There's no time to deploy you to the surface," Misato added. "Therefore, we're going to have to send you up into the Geofront. We're already moving a cache of weapons up there for you to use."

"Mari, since Unit Five isn't able to use standard Evangelion weaponry, NERV had attached some to your EVA," Jessie said. "Once you've expended all your ammo, there's a button in your cockpit that will allow you to detach them so you won't be needless encumbered by the extra weight."

As the Lieutenant finished that part of the briefing, a window labeled "From EVA-02" popped up on Mari's oversized visor.

"Aw, poor Makinami," Asuka said with mock sympathy. "Your EVA's too clumsy to use weapons."

"My Unit Five is a weapon," Mari retorted with a smirk. "And anyway, you're just jealous because I have more ordnance than you do."

With the destruction of Unit Three, Central had removed Provisional Unit Five from cryo-statis, and Tech Division Two had somehow managed to attach the M-type equipment to it for the coming battle in record time.

Mari really liked the M-type equipment, which consisted of a series of rocket launchers that had basically been welded together and then draped onto her Evangelion. She generally preferred to get up close and personal with her enemies, but there was just no denying the satisfaction that came from unleashing a series of massive explosions.

It is so good to be back with you, Unit Five…now if only they'd make me a new plug suit, she thought.

She couldn't wear her new pink one while piloting the Provisional Evangelion, which meant she'd had to stuff herself into the old green one, which had become so absurdly tight in the chest by this point that Mari had been forced to breathe in short little gasps until they'd flooded her entry plug, and the LCL had started to oxygenate her blood directly.

She'd really have to talk to Jessie about that once this was over, she mused.

For now, though, war.

"Evangelions, launch!"

With a burst of electromagnetic energy, the quartet of Evangelions was sent barreling upwards, but it was a shorter journey than usual. They emerged inside the Geofront only seconds after departing from the inside of headquarters, coming out not far away from the NERV pyramid. Units Zero through Two wasted no time in raiding the promised weapons cache.

Not needing to make any such preparations, Mari just stared up at the Geofront roof, her eyes narrowing. She could clearly hear the sounds of battle raging up above, even across so much distance and through the thick plate which separated the city above from the massive cave below.

"It's a big one all right," she remarked to no one in particular.

Fire and smoke bloomed from a point in the roof above them, and as the explosion subsided, the Evangelion pilots got their first look at the Fourteenth Angel. It was a big, blocky sort of thing, with four stubby limbs and a ghastly, skull-like face. Its core was embedded in the center of its body, gleaming like a ruby.

"Attack!"

As one, all three of the standard Evangelions opened fire with their pallet rifles, sending almost solid streams of metal toward the Angel at incredible velocities. Inside her own plug, Mari slammed her fist down on a gloriously red button, and a volley of rockets erupted from the M-type equipment.

The onslaught would've been complete overkill for just about anything other than an Angel, but as smoke engulfed the form of the Fourteenth, the pilots all stopped firing and waited, none of them truly believing that their enemy was dead.

Still, they were all surprised when the Angel emerged completely unharmed from the black cloud.

"We didn't even scratch it!" Shinji gasped.

"Shut up and keep shooting!" Asuka barked at him, as Unit Two discarded its now empty rifle and quickly went to get a new weapon from the cache.

"Forget those puny pallet rifles!" Mari yelled. "This is gonna take a lot more gun than that!"

The other three pilots obeyed (Asuka would later claim that ignoring the relatively small pallet guns had been her intent all along). Unit Zero grabbed a positron rifle, while Units One and Two each claimed a rocket launcher.

"All together! Fire!" Asuka shouted.

The standard EVAs unleashed yet another barrage, while Mari fired off her second and last volley of missiles. The shells spawned another cloud of smoke just before the antimatter weapon's payload hit its target, resulting in a massive explosion so powerful that Mari felt the shockwave from inside her EVA.

I love this job, she thought, a manic grin plastered on her face.

"Did we do it?" Shinji asked, his voice barely more than a whisper. "Is it dead?"

His question was answered a moment later as the Fourteenth Angel emerged from the fire and smoke, blackened by soot but otherwise undamaged. It continued to approach the Evangelions and NERV headquarters, as inexorable as death itself.

"Well," Mari said, "we might just break a sweat with this one."

She hit the button in her cockpit to ditch the M-type equipment, and several small charges embedded in it went off. However, the now empty rocket launchers failed to completely separate from one another and fall off of Unit Five's massive form.

"Damn it!" Mari hissed, as she began attempting to remove the M-type equipment with Unit Five's clumsy claw hand.

As she was struggling to get her EVA free, the Angel finally came to a halt, touching down on the ground with surprising lightness. It was only a few (giant-sized) paces from the Evangelions. As the pilots and all of NERV watched, the nubs of its arms unfurled into long, thin appendages.

For a moment, the Geofront was deathly silent.

Then Unit Two broke out into a sprint, charging toward the Angel and brandishing a progressive spear.

"None of you are better than me! None of you can defeat me!" Asuka roared. "None of you!"

One of the Angel's long arms lashed out, heading straight for the crimson giant, but Unit Two hit the appendage hard with the shaft of its spear, diverting its course away from it. With a thunderous battle cry from its pilot, Unit Two grabbed the weapon with both hands, moving to plunge it onto the face of beast.

She almost succeeded before she was brought to an abrupt halt in mid-charge. The Angel's arm had snaked back around, wrapping itself around Unit Two's waist from behind. The crimson Evangelion struggled, but it couldn't immediately get itself free.

"Asuka!" Shinji cried, as Unit One took off toward her, grabbing hold of its progressive knife.

The Angel flung Unit Two at the purple Evangelion, and both pilots cried out as their war machines collided, landing in a heap right next to the NERV pyramid.

Just as they were coming to a stop, Mari at last succeeded in liberating Unit Five from the M-type equipment, which tumbled noisily to the ground.

"Finally!" she exclaimed, throwing her EVA into motion. Its armored tires threw up great clods of earth and grass as it took off across the Geofront, its progressive lance emitting a deadly hum.

As she advanced, Unit Zero also ran forward, clutching a wicked looking progressive axe.

The Fourteenth Angel looked at both of them, and the empty sockets of its skull-like face lit up.

"Ahh!" Rei cried out in pain as a blast of deadly white energy crashed into Unit Zero, and the blue giant was flung backwards, a vast portion of the armor on its front glowing orange with heat.

"Die!" Mari roared as she finished closing the distance between Unit Five and the Angel.

Her lance slammed directly into the Angel's face, and bone crumbled around it as blood sprayed. The very tip of the weapon soon poked out from the back of the Angel's body.

However, the beast did not cry out in pain, did not collapse to the ground writhing in pain and agony. It didn't even seem to flinch.

Instead, what remained of its eye sockets lit up once again.

"You can't be serious!" Mari exclaimed, more enraged than dismayed. "You cheating motherfu—!"

White destruction erupted forth from the Angel again, and Unit Five's lance was vaporized in an instant, along with the entirety of the arm attached to it. Mari cried out in agony and clutched at her shoulder as the Evangelion's pain tore through her body.

The Angel didn't give her so much as a moment to lick her wounds, though. In a flash, its arms shot forward, wrapping themselves around Unit Five's torso and picking up the huge EVA like it was nothing more than a toy, raising it nearly above its own body.

"Mari!" Jessie cried.

The Fourth Child didn't respond, too focused on the battle. Mari quickly turned her head to observe her comrades-in-arms, the view her visor was providing her with automatically shifting with her movement.

Units One and Two were still in the process of disentangling themselves from one another, and Unit Zero lay unmoving on the ground, a huge patch of its armor still glowing with heat. Mari instantly knew that none of them would be able to help her before the Angel tore Unit Five to pieces, and with her primary melee weapon gone, there wasn't much she could do to free herself.

She knew exactly what she had to do.

Gripping her control yokes so tightly her knuckles turned white, Mari relayed a mental command to her EVA, and its four robotic legs sprang into action, clamping down on the Angel's body like a massive claw.

The Fourteenth Angel jerked in surprise, then immediately started trying to shake Unit Five loose. However, the Provisional Evangelion's grip on it was rock solid. Meeting with no success, the Angel then tightened its grip on Unit Five's body, but Mari barely noticed. With all the adrenaline pumping through her now, the pain from getting squeezed so tightly was all but lost in the agony of feeling like she had just lost an arm.

Of course, Mari couldn't see its eye sockets lighting up again from her position, but she had no doubt it was preparing for another energy attack.

She had no intention of giving it the chance to use it. Without even having to look at what she was doing, the Fourth Child moved aside a protective cover on a small console to her right, revealing a series of three switches. She immediately flipped two of them, then turned to look down at the Angel.

"Sayonara, big guy," she said, patting one of her control yokes affectionately with her free hand.

Then she flipped the last switch.

Instantly, the picture on her visor winked out as her entry plug was automatically ejected from Unit Five, a quartet of small rockets firing to carry her away from the EVA in a hurry.

Then, the Provisional Evangelion's core exploded with the force of a small N2 mine, instantly flooding the Geofront with blinding light and shaking the city above.

Mari's plug flew through the air for several seconds, before it started to lose momentum and a trio of parachutes automatically burst forth from one of the ends, slowing its descent to the ground.

The instant it touched down, the Fourth Child opened the hatch, emerging from the metal cylinder and quickly expelling the LCL in her lungs.

Her blue eyes widened when she saw that the Angel was still standing in the crater that Unit Five's explosion had created. The hole in its face remained and was bleeding freely. Portions of its body seemed to have melted. One of its long thin arms was completely gone.

But it was still standing, and Mari quickly realized why. A shutter, almost like an eyelid, had snapped closed over the ruby sphere that was its core, opening again as the Fourth Child watched.

Bright blue eyes narrowed dangerously. "Oh, that's it," she in a quiet voice.

Jumping behind her plug to get as out of sight as possible, Mari quickly began to strip off her green plug suit until she was able to get at the little gold colored ring on her finger. She pressed the button on the side of it, and an instant later, the Flash had taken the place of the Fourth Child.

"Game on, asshole," the scarlet speedster said, kicking into speed mode.

Taking off, the Flash was at the foot of the Angel in an instant, running up its body in almost complete defiance of gravity. Taking a deep breath, the crimson comet reached out and tweaked the Speed Force in a way she couldn't have described if her life depended on it, increasing the friction between the bottoms of her boots and the surface of the Angel by just a little bit.

Then the Flash really poured on the speed, zipping all over the Angel's body in seconds, leaving boot prints on nearly every square inch of it, before finally returning to the ground and coming to a halt.

The whole thing had taken under three seconds. The Angel had never had a chance to react to her.

WHOOMP!

The Angel's body instantly burst into flame, turning the beast into a living, moving bonfire in the middle of the Geofront. Looking up at it, the Flash grinned savagely as the light from the flames reflected off the lenses in her cowl.

"That's for you, Unit Five," she said with a fierce satisfaction.

However, it didn't last long; the surface of the Angel wasn't very flammable, apparently. It only took seconds for the fires to burn out, and the Angel didn't seem to be hurting from the assault. After an explosion that could rival an N2 device, a quick roasting like that probably wasn't going to hurt it too much.

"Round two," the Flash said, zipping off toward it once more.

Once again running straight up its body, the scarlet speedster rushed toward the Angel's already damaged face. When she was right next to it, she clapped her gloved hands together as hard as she could.

BOOM!

A sonic boom ripped through the air, and the Flash again retreated, outrunning the fury that she herself had just unleashed. The Angel staggered backwards, the already broken remains of its face completely shattering, the fragments falling to the ground, revealing bright green flesh beneath.

Then it stabilized itself and turned toward the Flash. Its remaining arm streaked down toward her. She easily moved out of the way, leaving the Angel to destroy only the patch of ground where she'd been standing.

"You're one tough son of a bitch, aren't you?" the speedster growled, aware that she was running out of tricks that might work against something as huge and as tough as an Angel.

She turned to look at the remaining Evangelions. Unit Zero still hadn't budged from where it fell, but the other two EVAs had gotten back to their feet and looked ready to rumble again. The Flash supposed that she could leave the rest of the fight to them…

Puppy-kun, she thought.

She didn't want to just ditch on him now; the Fourteenth Angel might've been looking pretty beaten up by this point, but it definitely wasn't out of the fight yet. She doubted that it would go down easily even after all the abuse it had taken.

Besides, she never was one to give up. She was all about go-big-or-go-home, and she still had one idea left.

It would probably hurt a hell of a lot, but she could take pain. She'd already experienced the sensation of having her arm blown off.

The scarlet speedster took off, but this time she didn't head for the Angel. Instead, she bolted straight up one of the tunnels which led up to the surface of the city. For this move, she was going to need momentum. Lots of momentum.

In a fraction of second, she had reached the coast of the Pacific Ocean, where she could really open it up. Ignoring the fear of creating tidal waves that had checked her when she'd zipped back to Kansas to visit Denise, the Flash pressed herself to move at greater and greater speeds.

Faster…

The walls of water she was kicking up on either side of her grew in height to a good twenty feet.

Faster.

Her thighs and calves started to burn, and still she pushed herself forward.

Faster!

The world blurred around her, as even her inhumanly quick senses and thinking speed proved insufficient to truly keep up. In the span of moments the Statue of Liberty, the pyramids of Giza, Saint Basil's Cathedral, and other landmarks from across the globe flashed past her vision. She blinked at one point and completely missed seeing her trek across the Atlantic Ocean.

Faster!

Pushing herself as close to her limit as she ever had before, the Flash found herself seeing what looked like a cluster of golden lightning crackling in the distance, a big mass of writhing energy. But there was no weather phenomenon on Earth that looked like that, and the Flash knew instinctively what it was.

It was the Speed Force, the very source of her powers. It beckoned to her with a siren song that enticed her and made her mouth go dry with fear at once. Looking at it, the scarlet speedster found herself powerfully tempted to just keep going more and more quickly until she reached it, despite her trepidation.

She might've, too, if she hadn't had a job to do.

Nearing the end of her circuit around the planet, the Flash entered the Tokyo-3 city limits, her footfalls sending big chunks of asphalt flying as she tore down the street. She rushed back down into the tunnel that led to the Geofront, ignoring the way her thighs seemed ready to explode.

Units One and Two hadn't engaged the Angel again yet; the crimson comet hadn't been gone for very long.

The Flash dashed up the side of the NERV pyramid, shattering windows marking the superwoman's passing. When she reached the top, she jumped as hard as she could. As she pushed off the very tippy-top of the structure, she told herself that Denise had said the Speed Force protected those who could manipulate it, and that she survived things that should've killed her every time she broke the sound barrier.

"BANZAI!" she screamed as she flew through the air at a velocity that speeding bullets could only dream about.

A shockwave was sent rippling through the Geofront as the Flash collided with the Angel's core, sending it reeling. It never saw her coming and never had a chance to pull its cute little trick with its eyelid-like protective shutter.

However, the Flash didn't get to take in any of that; her world went white with pain the second she collided with the Angel, and she wasn't up to observing much of anything. She wasn't sure exactly how much time she spent in this blazing hell, but she eventually came to, finding herself on the ground in the Geofront.

Only a few seconds, she decided at once.

She looked up toward the Angel, feeling a savage satisfaction as she saw that its red core was badly cracked, and it was wavering, looking almost drunk. Units One and Two were approaching it, ready to finish what she had started.

Satisfied that she had had a real impact on the damned thing, the Flash turned her head to take stock of herself, instantly wincing at the sight of limbs bent at the wrong angles and in the wrong places. Both of her legs and her left arm were broken; she had apparently favored her right side at the final instant, which was why she still had one good arm.

Gotta act fast, she thought.

The scarlet speedster didn't just run fast, her body healed at superhuman rates as well. She had sounded sarcastic when she'd told that lady in the hazmat suit who'd found her that she'd broken some bones and then gotten better while she'd been waiting, but she had been telling the truth.

She had to set the broken bones.

Looking around, the Flash spotted a fairly thick wooden stick on the ground and picked it up, placing it between her teeth. A piece of leather or something would've been better, but it would have to do.

Reaching out with her good arm, she grabbed her broken one.

There was an audible click as the broken bones popped back into place, and her eyes bulged as tears of agony welled up within them. A muffled scream burst forth from her, even though she clamped her jaw shut so hard she almost broke the stick.

She could actually feel the bones knitting themselves back together again, and then the pain started to pass. In seconds, the break had healed completely, and she had two good arms again.

Of course, that still left her legs, which were rather important to her, since her whole shtick as a superwoman was running incredibly fast.

This is gonna suck! She thought, but she reached down and set the bones first in one leg and then the other anyway, knowing it would suck even more if they healed wrong and she had to break them again before she could walk properly.

Finally finished with that task, the Flash pulled herself to feet and turned her gaze back toward the battle just in time to see the final scene. As Unit One restrained the Angel's remaining arm, Unit Two plunged its progressive knife into the already damaged core, which quickly gave way beneath the assault. As the Flash watched, the broken remains of the core started to glow.

That's my cue! The speedster thought.

Kicking back into speed mode, she rushed back over to her abandoned plug. Moving at hyper speed, she put her suit back into its hiding place and once more crammed her figure into her obnoxiously small plug suit. She managed to get back into her plug and close the hatch just as the Angel exploded, showering the interior of the Geofront with gore.

"Not a bad day's work," she remarked to herself as leaned back in her seat.


The next day, which was far less violent than the previous one, saw Gendo Ikari and Kozo Fuyutski at one of the terminals in Tokyo-2 International Airport as they waited for the psychologist who would be evaluating the Children.

"I'm rather surprised we still have to do this," Fuyutski remarked as he sat in one of the airport's uncomfortable seats and read a newspaper.

"And why do you say that?" Gendo asked.

Fuyutski shrugged. "Thought you might've used yesterday's events to convince everyone that there was no need for this whole thing," he said.

The statement was rather cryptic; they couldn't exactly talk freely in a crowded airport, after all, but the meaning obvious to Gendo.

"I might have, if we could claim all the credit," he responded with just a trace of a scowl on his face.

Though the Evangelions striking the killing blow against the most recent Angel had mollified some of NERV's detractors, the Flash's interference had created new problems, Fuyutski knew.

"Of course, it doesn't help that the people at the top tend to move slowly." Gendo added.

The former professor nodded in understanding. Without sufficient leverage or incentive, the UN would likely take so long to reverse their decision on the pilots' psyche evaluations that the things would be over and done with before they could actually do it, even if they could ultimately be persuaded to change their minds.

"Wouldn't be worth the effort in the end," Fuyutski said.

"Indeed," Gendo agreed.

The conversation petered out after that, and the two men went back to waiting in silence.

Of course, picking someone up at the airport wasn't something that the Commanders of NERV Central would usually be doing, but the man they had come to greet was something of a special case.

He had taught at the college that Gendo and Yui had attended, as part of a professor exchange program between Japan and the US, and if there was one person besides Kozo Fuyutski that Gendo Ikari could call a friend, it was him.

Fuyutski, on the other hand, had never liked him much, but he had felt obligated to accompany his former student anyway, since they had been colleagues once.

The plane finally touched down a few minutes later, and the passengers disembarked, many of them emerging into the terminal with red eyes and slightly disheveled appearances after the long transcontinental flight.

The man that Gendo and Fuyutski had come to pick up, however, looked well kempt and put together. He was an unremarkable looking man, fairly tall, with close cropped brown hair and brown eyes. He seemed to immediately pick out the Commanders and quickly approached them.

"Gendo, good to see you. How does my former student fare?" he asked, extending his hand.

"Well enough, Hunter," Gendo replied, shaking his hand. "You remember Fuyutski."

"Of course," Hunter said, offering his hand to the older man as well. "How are you, Kozo?"

"All right," Fuyutski said, trying and failing to keep himself from staring at Hunter as he shook the younger man's hand. "God, you haven't aged a day since I saw you last."

A small, strangely amused smile curled his lips. "Time has been very good to me," he remarked.

"We should go," Gendo said, all business now that the token pleasantries had been dispensed with, even with a man he could call friend. "I have a car waiting outside."

"Of course," Hunter agreed.

Though the psychologist wasn't perturbed by Gendo's brusqueness, Fuyutski still felt the need to try and make up for it.

"We very much appreciate you coming all this way for this," he told Hunter. "There aren't many psychologists out there who we feel we can trust to handle this matter with an appropriate level of tact and discretion."

By which he of course meant that it would be difficult to find another head shrink who'd be willing to rubber stamp the pilots as fit for duty regardless of their actual mental states, but there was no need to acknowledge that ugly little truth, especially in so public a place.

"Oh, I'm quite happy to help," Hunter assured him. "I hope you'll forgive any…implied morbidity on my part, but I expect it to be fascinating to work with individuals who have been through so much, and had such a great and unique responsibility foisted upon them at such a young age. And in any case, I've been wanting to take a trip to Tokyo-3 for some time now, anyway. I understand that that girl who's been calling herself the Flash lives there?"

"So it would seem," Fuyutski said. He had forgotten that the man had once lived in Keystone City and would thus probably have an interest in such things as a result. "Though to be honest, I doubt you'll get so much as a look at her. Aside from maybe a red blur, if you're lucky." He added with a small chuckle.

"I wouldn't be so sure about that, Kozo," Hunter said. "I tend to be…fortunate when it comes to that sort of thing."

Fuyutski frowned slightly, then shrugged it off. "Well, I suppose anything can happen, Dr. Zolomon."


Author's Notes: Fans of the Flash will recognize the names Axel Walker and Hunter Zolomon. Said fans may also note that Barry didn't have much to do with either of them; it was Wally who knew them best. As I said before, I do plan to play fairly loosely with the Flash mythos here, which includes a good bit of mixing Barry's and Wally's personal histories.

In any case, thanks as always to my readers and reviewers, and thanks to my beta reader as well.