Disclaimer: I do not own Evangelion or Noir

The Black Hands of NERV

By bissek

Chapter 28

You Will (Not) Survive

Gendo looked over the most recent report. The 17th Angel had been defeated. With the final Angel disposed of, the final stage of his scenario could commence. All he needed to do in order to be reunited with his beloved Yui was to trigger a Third Impact using Rei and the Nephilim that carried Adam.

The single greatest threat to his plans remaining was the Nephilim he had to capture in order to initiate Third Impact. Looking over the files in Aoki's computer, Gendo had learned that Chloe Langley was far more than just the very young Soldat agent he had her to be from Rei's initial report – as was his daughter. Looking back on the events following the 15th Angel's attack, he now could hardly believe that he had been so foolhardy as to try to bully Noir. He was lucky to be alive.

Gendo knew better to think that he could best one Noir, let alone the three that were arrayed against him. Even if he could just reduce the fight to Rei vs Chloe, it would still be a contest to see if Rei's greater experience with her AT Field could counter Chloe's considerably greater experience in combat. If he wanted to win that fight, he needed to find an edge.

And an edge he had found. Noir might be more than a match for any individual he could find on short notice, probably any twenty individuals. But any fifty? Any hundred? Any five hundred? Any thousand? No matter how good they were as individuals, or how well they functioned as a team, they were still human (or approximately human in the case of Chloe). They were still susceptible to fatigue. Wear them down with enough cannon fodder, and they would become tired enough to be vulnerable.

Fortunately, Gendo managed to use the Soldat contacts he had retained to acquire an appropriate supply of shock troops. The effort he had spent to keep those contacts within the Diet and the JSSDF secure had caused many of the other Soldat contacts he knew of to desert, but they were no longer necessary.

Gendo started drafting the orders that would force Noir to fight their way through his chosen patsies so that Rei could capture Chloe and complete his scenario.


The Human Instrumentality Committee was also conferring about the demise of the 17th Angel. They too knew that they could commence the final stage of their plans now that Nagisa had been slain. But unlike the former leader of NERV, they were unconcerned about the apparently formidable skills of the Nephilim and her associates. Their plan to initiate Instrumentality hinged upon gaining access to a creation of Lilith, not Adam.

With their goal of seizing Lilith and using her with their MP EVA units, they needed to either capture Terminal Dogma or EVA-01. In order to do that, they needed to either take NERV HQ or force the Evangelions to leave their based in order to be captured. Since there were no longer any Angels to justify an Evangelion deployment, they would need to use more conventional troops to achieve either objective.

Some unexpected shuffling of members between committees within the Diet had hampered their ability to influence Japanese policy in regards to NERV, but that didn't really matter. Their foothold within the UN Security Council was still secure, and as NERV was technically a UN organization, they could easily create a plausible pretext for invading NERV that would hold up long enough for them to start Third Impact. After that point, it didn't really matter what happened.


In a way, the pilots were glad that the school had been closed for repairs. With the school shut down, they didn't have to face the inevitable awkward questions about Chloe's AT Field, Kirika's duel with the 17th Angel in the school parking lot, and of course the question of what kind of bizarre boarding school did those two go to and how much were their relatives aware of it. More importantly than that, it allowed them to not have to see exactly how many of their classmates had been hospitalized after the battle. The hospital had yet to release the injured students and the pilots weren't looking forward to trying to explain things to them, either. None of the students had died, but many of them had received injuries whose consequences would stay with them for the rest of their lives, and all of them would have permanent scars.

NERV had decided that it was best to keep the pilots working so that they wouldn't have time to dwell on what had happened. They kept the Children engaged in simulated battles for hours every day, despite the fact that the engineers were still arguing over whether it would be worth it to repair EVA-00, or to just scrap it and try to pry one of the MP Evas from the one of the other branches and hope that Kirika could use it in Unit 00's place.

This continued for five days when Mireille received a message from Kaji reporting that he had just gotten a solid lead on the whereabouts of Hayate Aoki, one of the key Soldat leaders that they had been searching for. Realizing that they would be of far more use helping to fight through whatever security he had in place in his hideout, all three members of Noir left for Hokkaido.

The pilots who remained in Tokyo-3 continued with their training. A few hours later, the exercises were temporarily halted for lunch. Shinji headed off to the cafeteria. Asuka remained in the hanger area to work on some extra hand-to-hand training with some specialists from Section 2.

Fifteen minutes later, everything went to hell.


The safehouse was quiet. In Kaji's eyes, a little too quiet. There was absolutely no activity there whatsoever. After half an hour of watching the building, Kaji half suspected that this was some kind of trap. Steeling himself for a nasty surprise, he ordered the attack, making sure to order that his bomb specialists come in and sweep each room the moment the shooters declared it clear. His caution proved to be unnecessary. Not only were there no bombs, there were no enemies. The place was deserted.

Had Aoki been tipped off and fled? As the investigative team started searching for clues as to where he had run to and examined the computer for files of interest, the bomb squad started sweeping and opening up closets, cabinets, and other areas that they had left untouched during the initial assault. Noting one closet that water trickling out from under it for some reason, they were especially careful in checking that door before opening it. There was no trap in the room, but opening the door quickly revealed the source of the water.

The body of Hayate Aoki had been frozen solid at some point after his death, and then moved from wherever he had been stored and propped inside the closet door sometime earlier that day. There was no way to tell precisely how long he had been frozen, but given how completely he had frozen, it had obviously been quite some time ago.

"He's already dead." Kaji noted rhetorically. "But who killed him?"

"I think I can guess." Mireille stated, holding up something she had found on a chair – a single strand of blue hair.

"Ayanami?"

"Either her or Gendo. They were definitely here at some point."

"The body hasn't been in this closet for very long. Someone must have put it here this morning. Someone, probably Gendo, wanted us to come here and find this body. But why?"


Two armies closed on Tokyo-3, one a force of UN troops sent by SEELE, the other a force of JSSDF troops sent by a renegade of Les Soldats.

The UN troops struck near the breach formed by the 14th Angel's attack. They quickly killed all of the workers laboring at repairing the breach and used shaped charges to widen the slowly narrowing gap. They also seized several of the access points in the area. With those secured, they started shuttling men in through the access junctions and arranged to have equipment airlifted by helicopter down the breach.

The JSSDF troops struck in another section of the city, seizing several access points and one of the train cars. These they used to shuttle their own troops and equipment into the GeoFront.

But neither army was quite prepared from the aftereffects of the various humiliations suffered by Section 2, which had culminated with the death of their leader at the hands of the second deadliest killer in the world. While the retrained guards could not possibly hope to stop the attackers that outnumbered them so hopelessly, they had become good enough to hold them back long enough to sound the alarm.


"What's going on?" Fuyutsuki demanded.

"We're under attack from units of the JSSDF and the UNCMF!" Hyuga reported. "Both are claiming that we have disregarded orders to stand down and transfer control over NERV to a new commander."

"When did we get orders to stand down?" Last he had checked the UN had yet to decide who the next commander of NERV would be, let alone set a date for the transfer of command.

"I don't know, sir! And the claims don't agree on who the new commander is supposed to be, either."

Just then, his console pinged. He looked down and saw that he had just received two emails, one from the Diet and one from the UN. Both stated that he was to turn over the command of NERV to a person specified in the email immediately. They were time stamped less than five minutes previously.

Looking at the messages, Fuyutsuki knew that this had all been pre-arranged. Transfers of command didn't work like that. In most cases, the orders were sent well in advance so that the old commander could arrange a proper briefing to the new commander and the new commander could prepare for his new post. Even in cases where this did not apply, one would not consider the old commander to be rebelling against proper authority by not turning over command until some point after it was certain that he had received the orders. Usually the government would make certain that the orders were sent in a manner that would get the attention of the outgoing commander to make certain they were read promptly. Sending the orders as a routine email, which might not be seen or read for hours, wasn't such a manner.

Fuyutsuki had no doubt that the first shot of each force had not been fired until after those messages had been sent. That would give the people who ordered the attack a paper-thin fig leaf of legality to cover the fact that they had absolutely no intention of taking NERV by any method other than force. The thought that he might be seeking to use the Evangelions for some nefarious purpose and refused to turn over command that the official messages were sending out would slow the hands of those who could restrain the attacking forces. It might even keep people from remembering that as a UN organization, the Diet had no authority to issue orders to NERV in the first place.

It wouldn't hold forever, but it might hold long enough for the invaders to seize control of Central Dogma. And if SEELE was behind this, that might be all they needed. The only real question was why there were two armies. Given the messages, it seemed that two groups were trying to invade NERV instead of one. If one was sent by SEELE, who had sent the other?

"Battle stations." He ordered.


The investigative team had finished examining the computer. They now had contact information for hundreds of members of Les Soldats. They noted that the bulk of the Soldat agents that the organization had been trying to hold onto in Japan were all within the Diet or the JSSDF.

"But why?" Kaji mused. Just then, a radio operator ran into the room.

"Sir, a battalion from the 3rd JSSDF Division has attacked NERV!" he said.

"What? Why?"

"It's apparently because Subcommander Fuyutsuki refused to turn command over to the JSSDF."

"But the Diet doesn't have the authority to order Fuyutsuki to do anything. He answers to the UN Security Council, not the Diet. Why would they order such a… sweet kami, that's it!"

Gendo had been the person here controlling things after Aoki died. He had cast aside those members of Les Soldats that were of no use to him to maintain his grip on those he could still use. With control over a few key members of the Diet and the JSSDF, he could create orders to seize NERV that would look legitimate at first glance. The leak of Aoki's location was to ensure that the three people who any Soldat with sense feared, the renegade Noir, were somewhere far away from him during the attack.

"It's not the government who ordered this, it was Les Soldats." He announced. "We have to get this evidence to Tokyo-2 at once to stop the attack."

"Sir!" The radio operator reported. "Another battalion, this time from the UN, has also attacked NERV. The same reason as before."

"That must be SEELE's doing. We've got to get moving people. Let's go!"


Two battalions sent by two different governments stormed into the GeoFront. Although each of them had sufficient numbers to crush the defending security forces all by themselves in a standard engagement, several factors conspired against them.

The first factor was that it was impossible to fight a standard engagement in the corridors of Central Dogma. The sheer amount of area that needed to be covered changed the force from two battalions to forty platoons at best, and in practice something closer to two hundred squads. And a general rule of thumb in battles was that fighting small groups consecutively is considerably easier than fighting one group that was the size of all the small groups combined.

The second factor also came from the size of Central Dogma. There were literally miles of corridors in the base, and Misato wasn't the only person who had managed to get lost in those hallways. From the perspective of someone unfamiliar with the layout, the place was a maze. Section 2 knew the terrain, the invaders did not. As such, rather than attempt to defend every corridor, they defended choke points, and maneuvered around in the side corridors to cut off and ambush any unit they could pick off.

The third factor for each invading battalion was the presence of the other battalion. Neither of them expected a second army to be invading at the same time they were, and as a result of this, they ended up shooting at each other as well as Section 2.

Because of these factors, the battle for NERV degenerated into a chaotic three-way stalemate when reinforcements for the besieged defenders arrive – all three of them.


The two JSSDF soldiers who were guarding the access point they had seized from Section 2 were bored. They had finally gotten a deployment into an actual fight for the first time in years, and what was their assignment? A guard post. Everyone else in the unit was getting some actual action, and they were stuck guarding a door. They didn't even see the point. Everyone they were trying to fight was inside the door, so why did they need to guard about anyone fighting their way in? A figure appeared in the distance. As it approached, the two saw that it was a teenaged girl. They soon recognized the approaching girl as the Fourth Child.

The men had heard rumors about the Fourth Child. Something about her having been sold to an international crime ring to be turned into a hit woman and that her guardian was a DGSE superspy. Everyone had gotten a good laugh out of the rumors, but nobody in the barracks really believed them. There hadn't been anything resembling a cadre of true killers for hire (as opposed to criminals who occasionally were called on to kill people in addition to their normal duties in their organization) since Murder Inc was taken down in the 1940s. And everybody knew that double-o stuff was purely in the imagination of movie producers. There was no way that Bouquet was some kind of Jane Bond (Though a number of the men, having seen her picture from images leaked by the French, wouldn't have minded getting her in the sack after a few vodka martinis).

The Fourth Child raised her hands slowly and continued her approach. As the guards raised their weapons cautiously, the girl kept on walking towards them. Suddenly, the girl tilted her head to the side. A small knife flew through the space where her head used to be and lodged itself in one guard's throat. Before the other guard could react, the girl grabbed the knife, pulled it out, and stabbed it into the side of his throat, then removed it and threw it behind her back.

As Chloe caught her knife, cleaned it on the edge of her cloak and resheathed it, Kirika calmly took the weapons that fell from the hands of the men the two had just killed and continued on her way. Killing the guards hadn't even required them to break stride.


The two UNCMF soldiers standing guard outside the access point they had seized were bored. They had finally gotten a deployment into an actual fight for the first time in years, and what was their assignment? A guard post. They supposed that this was the answer to their unspoken question as to whether or not their squad sergeant was still mad at them for returning half an hour late from their last furlough. Their boredom was ended by the sound of someone approaching. They raised their weapons in anticipation.

"Is there a problem?" The approaching person asked, showing herself to be a rather attractive blonde in a slinky black dress. "I know I'm a little late in getting back from lunch but…"

The guards smirked. The woman had to be some kind of secretary whose primary duty was to serve as eye candy and/or mistress to someone of actual importance. A pity that they would have to kill her, but orders were orders. But that didn't mean that they couldn't have a little fun with her before pulling the trigger.

"We've been forced to go to high alert, miss. I'm afraid we'll have to search you before we can let you enter." One soldier lied.

The woman handed her bag to one soldier and obligingly raised her arms above her head in a pose more appropriate for a magazine centerfold than a weapons search. The other soldier smirked as he patted her down. The woman had quite a nice figure.

"Oooh, that feels nice." The woman cooed, as she reached out with one hand to touch his face. That hand then slowly drifted down his back and side. As she started to caress his rump, the soldier grinned. As her hand worked its way around to the front of his waist, it paused near his pistol holster. The man was too intent on his molestation to realize that he had let his guard down when the woman pulled his gun out of the holster, brought it up under his chin and pulled the trigger. She then turned and shot the other guard in the side of the head before he could react.

Mireille stripped off the cocktail dress and put on the more practical outfit she had stuffed into her handbag, which she stashed in a corner of the room. She then looted the bodies of the men she had killed for their weapons and ammunition and headed into the GeoFront.


Major General Kenta Hayashi of the JSSDF had only been informed the day before that he had been selected to take over as the new commander of NERV. He had made a point of donning his dress uniform, complete with his family swords in place of the flimsy dress blade he had been issued upon graduation, for the occasion of his taking command. He had been outraged to learn that the acting commander had refused to turn over command. Who was this mere schoolteacher who would deny his place in history as the man who won the war to save humanity from the Angels after the traitor who sought to sabotage his own command had been exposed and driven out?

As he stood in his command post overseeing the capture of the base that should by rights be his, he frowned in disappointment. Retaking the facility was taking far longer than he expected. He blamed it on the UN troops who were fraudulently claiming that one of their generals had been selected for the post of NERV Commander. Then he heard gunfire outside his command post.

The men standing guard outside the post fell through the door, one shot and the other stabbed. Two girls walked in after them. Kenta recognized one as one of the pilots that should be recognizing him as her commander. Acting on the instinct born from centuries of samurai heritage, the General drew his katana and brought it down in an overhead slash.

Had Kirika tried to jump back, she would have simply lengthened the arc where the blade intersected her body. She had trained with the sword and knew that. Instead of going back, she darted forward, grabbing his wrist in one hand and his elbow in the other, guiding the blade in the direction she wanted it to go.

Kenta Hayashi screamed in pain as his stomach was pierced by his own weapon. Kirika then twisted the sword as she pulled it out, and then brought it down on his neck, with not quite enough force to sever his head. The Hayashi clan would later claim that Kenta had committed seppuku.


Chloe caught the wakizashi that Kirika pulled from the belt of the late General Hayashi. This she laid against the throat of the post's communications officer.

"I want you to transmit a message in the clear to everyone in the area. I want it to be heard by all three sides of the fight down here, and by the population above. Do so and I'll let you live." She ordered.

Gulping nervously, the technician worked to set up the transmission and shakily held up a microphone. Chloe took it in her off hand. She knew that doing this would blow her cover, but the Saplings had agreed that given what she had already given to the Soldat investigators, that was only a matter of time anyway. Besides, a battle on the scale of what they were about to face was a difficult one even by their standards. If this was to be the final battle of the final Noir, then she wanted it to be remembered as such, so that everyone would know that their legend had existed for a reason.

"Attention, all JSSDF soldiers invading NERV on behalf of Les Soldats, and all UNCMF soldiers invading NERV on behalf of SEELE. This is Noir. If you fear to face the heart of darkness, you will stand aside." She said.

Chloe removed the sword from the man's throat. As the man sighed with relief, she flipped the sword around and struck him on the head with the hilt. After binding the unconscious soldier, she turned and left the command post with Kirika. The soldiers had been warned. If they didn't take the advice they had just been given and stand aside, that was their own problem.


Chloe's public announcement hit every single person in the area who was listening to the radio like a thunderbolt. Not many people knew about SEELE, but thanks to their propaganda leaks, everyone knew about Les Soldats. The thought that they had compromised enough of the Japanese government and military to arrange for an all-out assault on Tokyo-3, and issue official statements justifying it, upset the public considerably. The government offices in Tokyo-2 were quickly swamped with calls by people demanding answers. Those officials with no Soldat connections joined in those demands for answers. The officials who did have Soldat connections started contemplating escape routes in the event that the orders were traced back to them. Similar things started happening with the UN.

Law enforcement officers took note of the fact that the announcement had been publicly made by Noir. They now had a voiceprint to go with the alias. Some made plans to travel to Tokyo-3 once the fighting subsided in the hopes of identifying and possibly capturing the notorious serial killer.

The invading soldiers were perturbed by the announcement that both sides were invading Central Dogma on the strength of illegal orders issued by criminal conspiracies. Some tried to call to their superiors for an explanation, but they received no answer. Both command posts had been taken out by Noir's infiltration, leaving the soldiers scrambling to figure out who was now in command.

Then there were the reactions of the people who recognized the voice on the radio.

Several of Chloe's classmates gasped in shock as they listened. With the exception of Kensuke (who started blankly staring at the wall with an expression of sheer awe on his face), none of them really grasped the implications of the codename (Which caused most of them to come to the conclusion that she was some kind of secret agent), but they knew that Chloe had apparently thrown down a gauntlet before the invaders and was planning to knife anyone who tried to pick it up.

The bridge crew of NERV gaped in shock as they realized that a 14 year old girl had just issued a death threat to two entire armies, and fully intended to make good on it. The reaction of Section 2 was divided. Half of them were angry that they needed the help of the girl who killed their former commander to drive off the attackers. The others grinned in malicious anticipation of what would happen to the enemy when the girl responsible for their greatest humiliation was fighting on their side for a change.

One UN officer remembered the voice of a girl that killed a man he had been charged to guard and then deliberately left him alive at the request of the man he had failed to protect, and shivered in fear.

Lorenz Keel was not happy with the possibility of his plans being exposed when he was this close to success, and ordered the MP Evas deployed.

And Gendo Ikari smiled, knowing that phase two of his plan was starting just as he planned.


Shinji was trying to hide. The Section 2 agents who had been with him when the battle started were all down, having been killed or wounded fighting against the attackers while trying to escort him to the hanger bay. In the process of getting himself clear of that particular firefight, he had managed to get himself lost. Trying to find a landmark he recognized was something he didn't dare do, as it might just cause him to wander into another firefight. At the moment, the only thing he could do was try to keep himself alive. He was currently crouched behind a staircase, holding the gun he had been issued shortly after Chloe killed the third Rei. He had never fired that gun in anger before this day, and given that he had run out of bullets while getting clear of the last skirmish, he wasn't likely to ever again.

Several figures appeared around the corner. Shinji lifted his gun nervously. A large hand reached out and grabbed his wrist, forcing him to drop the gun.

"Found you, little boy." The man in the UNCMF uniform said. "Don't take this personally, kid, I'm just following orders."

The man raised his own weapon. Then a sword tip emerged from his chest. As the soldier fell to the ground, Shinji saw his sister spraying down the remainder of the group of soldiers with a machine gun held in her left hand. Only one man escaped the spray of bullets, and that was because the magazine ran out of bullets before it got to him. It didn't help him for long. Kirika launched herself at the remaining man, knocking his feet out from under him before crushing his throat with the butt of her rifle. Then she walked back to the man she had stabbed.

"So am I." She said, pulling the sword free. Then she turned on a small radio. "I've gotten to Shinji."

"Good." Fuyutsuki's voice came back. "Get him to the hanger bay. That area is more secure."

"Understood." Kirika turned her attention back to Shinji. "Are you alright, aniki?"

Shinji nodded, climbing to his feet. He then allowed himself to be led through Central Dogma.


Nemu Sakamoto was in trouble. She and her team were pinned down, with JSSDF troops coming at them from one direction and UNCMF troops coming from another. They couldn't pull back without exposing the giving up the emergency control room they were guarding. If that was breached, the invaders might be able to override the commands from the bridge and restart the elevators. With those running, they could bypass far too many of the security checkpoints, which were set up under the assumption that they could force any intruders to take the stairs. But they were running out of ammunition, and weren't in a position where they could loot their enemy's bodies for more bullets.

Suddenly, a series of screams started coming from the rear of the JSSDF unit. The screams started growing in number and volume. As they did, the sound of firing in that direction changed, as they started firing at something behind them instead of in front of them. As the sound of bullets died down, a green cloaked figure calmly strode down the hallway. One of the Section 2 men fired at the approaching figure out of reflex, but the bullet bounced off of a hexagonal field as the young girl continued her approach.

Nemu watched in shock as the girl she now recognized as Chloe Langley turned her attention to the UN troops. Nemu had to wonder why the people who turned her into an Angel hybrid bothered. The AT Field was almost totally unnecessary – it was practically impossible to hit her in the first place if she felt like dodging. Within a matter of seconds, the only person in the UN unit still alive was the officer in command, a blond man who looked rather old for his current rank. Strangely, Chloe stopped her final swing just short of his throat, looking at him as if he seemed familiar somehow.

"Heinz, wasn't it?" She asked. The man nodded nervously. The girl turned away.

"I made a personal promise to the general." She said calmly, as if reminding him of something. "I would very much like to be able to keep it." With that, Chloe sheathed her blade and started collecting her knives.

Nemu ordered her men to take the officer prisoner and to start gathering up more ammunition. As Chloe vanished into the winding hallways of Central Dogma, Nemu had to wonder what that exchange had been about.


"Okay, that's Shinji taken care of." Misato noted.

Captain Hatanaka nodded. He was fortunate that the three Noir had all taken radios from fallen Section 2 agents shortly after entering Central Dogma. Between that and the security cameras, he knew exactly where the key trouble spots were for the entire base and could guide the three deadliest killers in the world to neutralize them as if they were an incredibly lethal flying company. With them stomping out the hot spots, they might actually be able to survive this battle.

"Multiple AT Fields detected!" Hyuga announced.

"What!" Misato exclaimed.

"MAGI are analyzing… They're Evangelions!" Maya reported.

"So SEELE has sent the Mass Produced Evas after us." Fuyutsuki mused. "Katsuragi! Launch EVA-02 and have EVA-01 prepped for when the Third Child arrives!"

"Right!"


Asuka launched out into the GeoFront. She wasn't sure what this invasion was about, but she had heard some of the people that Section 2 had brought to the hanger area that the attacking soldiers had been shooting unarmed maintenance workers who were trying to surrender. Similar stories had been repeated by at least four other groups. Asuka hoped that the goons enjoyed their fun, because she was going to give them a thorough smackdown in return, and she had a giant robot to do it in.

She grabbed a rifle. This wasn't normally her kind of weapon, but the enemy Evas were being forced to enter the GeoFront in single file down the hole the 14th Angel made, which meant that she could damage them as they came in.

The white Evas started to appear. Asuka opened fire. One by one they dropped into the underground valley, and one by one Asuka shredded their wings with a hail of bullets. She wasn't nearly as accurate as Shinji would have been, but her targets couldn't dodge. Nine white Evangelions dropped to the ground. Nine white Evangelions climbed back to their feet.

Asuka was reminded of a comment Shinji made about his battle with EVA-00 when it was hijacked by Nagisa. He said that the remotely controlled Eva didn't act as if it felt pain from the damage he inflicted. Judging by how quickly they got back up, that might be the case here. This could be more difficult than she thought.

On the other hand, her cousin had been facing odds like this regularly for years. Asuka had been training in this form of combat just as long as Chloe had trained in hers. It was time to show the world that some kinds of talents definitely ran in families. Asuka grabbed a spear and prepared for battle.


As Gendo saw the MP Evas approach Tokyo-3, he frowned. The old men in the Human Instrumentality Committee were trying to interfere. If they seized Lilith or EVA-01 before he could capture Chloe, they could initiate their version of Third Impact before he could start his own. He couldn't allow that to happen. He had come too far to permit that to happen.

"Come, Rei." He said. "It is time."

The two entered the GeoFront. Efforts to stop them by any of the three forces fighting in Central Dogma were futile, as all attacks were deflected off of Rei's AT Field. Gendo didn't even bother shooting back as the two made their way to Terminal Dogma.


Shinji finally understood what the phrase "maidens who govern death" meant. It had nothing to do with religion, mysticism or the supernatural. It was much, much simpler. It meant that if Noir decided you should die, you were dead, and there was nothing you could do to stop it. Kirika had killed at least fifty people as she escorted him to the hanger, and everything he saw indicated that she was just getting started. It was as if she was a totally different person as she fought.

Then Shinji realized that she was a totally different person. He wasn't looking at Kirika Ikari, the sister who had been taken away from him by an uncaring father. He wasn't looking at Kirika Yumura, the fellow pilot who was slowly trying to remember what it was like to care about others. He was looking at the living weapon that Altena had created from a broken-hearted little girl who had had her family stripped from her. He was looking at Noir.

Their journey had increased in urgency when they learned that they were being attacked by Evangelions as well as infantry. It increased again when they learned that a major assault had been launched at the hanger area. Their efforts were in vain. By the time they reached a walkway that overlooked the main hanger, it was obvious that the JSSDF had taken out the Section 2 agents guarding the hanger.

The defenders had not gone down easily. Only six people were left after the firefight had ended. Kirika looked down at her enemies critically, then turned to her brother.

"Wait here." She said, then backflipped over the railing to Shinji's horror.

Kirika shot three men as she spun through the air. Then she landed on the shoulders of a fourth. The man she landed on was built like a linebacker. It didn't help as 62 kilograms of acrobatic killer struck him in the collarbone at roughly twenty meters per second. He crashed to the floor. Kirika sprung back up, drawing her stolen katana as she did so. Two slices later, and all the soldiers were out of action. After taking a brief moment to finish off the one she had used to break her fall. Then she called for Shinji to come down.

"You'd better suit up." She told him. "It looks like the techs got Unit 01 ready to launch before the JSSDF broke through."

When Shinji returned from the locker room, he noticed his sister was breathing heavily, and that there was a blotch of red on one side of her shirt that didn't look like it had come from all the people she had been killing.

"Imouto, are you alright?" He asked.

"One of the soldiers managed to clip me while I was recovering from the jump. I've taken worse."

"But you're hurt!"

"Shinji, you need to launch. Don't worry about me. This is just like the Trials – they're throwing an army at me to see if I can fight my way home. I've already done this once, and this time around they spotted me with an advantage."

"What in this whole mess can you consider an advantage?"

Kirika looked into her brother's eyes. "This time I know where home is."


It had been a tough fight, but Asuka had finally fought her way down to the last enemy EVA. The other eight were scattered across the GeoFront, along with the remains of the various vehicles brought down by the two invading armies, which had ended up being trampled in the struggle, completely unnoticed by both sides. Now she just had to finish the last one before she ran out of power – her power cord had been severed some time previously.

As she moved in on the final MP Evangelion, blips started appearing on her radar. Somehow, the units she had already beaten were regenerating. One of them grabbed up its dropped weapon and threw it at her. As it flew towards her, the weapon changed shape, shifting to resembling the Lance of Longinus, the enormous spear that she had used to destroy the 15th Angel. Caught off balance as her momentum took her in the wrong direction to dodge, she was helpless to do anything as what looked like the world's largest two-tined fork hurtled at her…

A burst of energy smashed into the lance replica, shattering it and altering the course of the larger pieces. Instead of driving straight through Unit 02's head, the shaft of the lance scraped across the side of its head, gouging a trench in the armor. A second burst of energy knocked down the MP Eva that Asuka had been running towards. A look at the sensor readings showed that one of the blips belonged to EVA-01.

"You're late, Third Child!" She called.

"Sorry, had trouble getting to the hanger." Shinji replied, tossing Asuka a new power cord. Asuka connected it and grinned as her Eva's batteries started recharging.

"Right, these things ignore pain and seem to be able to regenerate damage. We'll have to take them down for keeps if we want to stop them."

"Okay. Let's take care of these things. If they're gone, all the soldiers that Kirika and the others are dealing with might pull back."

Asuka hadn't known that the Fourth was back. She wondered what the girl thought she could do against two thousand invading soldiers. Surely even she couldn't kill that many people all by herself.

Then she kicked herself. Kirika might be only one girl, but she was the heir of a thousand year legacy of elite killers. Six hundred years previously, one Noir had managed to almost single-handedly change the course of a war that anyone with sense would have given up on as a lost cause. Asuka tried extrapolating that to figure out how much damage three of them could inflict. The results weren't pretty – for the enemy, at least.

"Those poor, poor, jarheads." She muttered, grabbing the weapon of the MP Eva that Shinji had shot.


Kirika watched her brother take his Evangelion out. Then she examined her bullet wound. She had told the truth – she had taken wounds much worse than in training, let alone actual battles. Not that there was much of a difference to a Sapling. Special Forces units often took pride in the fact that their training regimens were so intensive that people occasionally died in accidents while going through them. Les Soldats didn't train at that low a level. No Sapling had ever died in a training accident. If a Sapling died, it was because the trainers were trying to kill them intentionally. If the Sapling couldn't find a way to survive, then they obviously weren't good enough to become Noir.

The wound looked like it was just a graze. The bullet had gone through cleanly without lodging in her body. That simplified things considerably. It would probably need stitches later, but she didn't have time for that at the moment. Scrounging around in the female pilot's locker room, she found a clean towel and cut off a section to use as a bandage around the freshly cleaned wound. Now she just needed to find something to reliably hold it in place. An idea came to her.

The girl who had entered the locker room had been dressed in normal, if torn and bloodstained, street clothes. The girl who left the locker room was dressed in a form fitting black bodysuit with an odd bulge on one side where a bandage was held in place by the suit's pressure seal. Kirika then added a gun belt, ammunition pouches, and all the weapons she could practically carry to her wardrobe. As she tucked the katana into the belt, Kirika Yumura disappeared. In her place stood Kirika the True Noir, ready to return to the hunt.


Gendo and Rei stood in Terminal Dogma, in the shadow of Lilith's crucified form. Gendo knew that Noir would be coming for him. NERV still appeared to control the bridge and the security system, so they would have detected him, and more importantly, Rei's AT Field, which she had been using almost constantly as they made their way down here. Because of that, there was only one particular Noir they dared send against him – the one he wanted them to. He was not disappointed.

"Welcome, Noir." He said, noting slight signs that the Nephilim was starting to tire.

"If you knew I was coming for you, you would have done better to hide. I've already killed your defective replica of Kirika once, I can do it again." She countered.

"You understand nothing. With you here, the final stage of my Scenario can now begin. You have what I need to initiate Third Impact, and I will have it."

Chloe drew a short sword. "You won't be able to start anything if you're dead, traitor."

As Chloe started circling to find a way past Rei to reach Gendo, a third voice called out. "I can't let you kill him, Chloe."

Chloe glanced at the newcomer. "Why not?"

"Corsica." Mireille stated simply.

Chloe thought about that for a moment, then nodded, lowering her sword.

Gendo smiled. He didn't know what happened at Corsica that had caused the other Noir to wish his life spared, but that simply improved the chances that he could finish his plans. He was still congratulating himself for the apparent stroke of fortune he had received when Mireille gunned him down.


As Gendo fell dead, Rei felt rage for the first time in her lives – all five of them. The Commander had created her so that he could achieve his goals. Her ultimate purpose was to aid him in achieving his goals. With the Commander dead, his goals would be forever unachieved. The woman responsible for guarding the Children who had attempted to sabotage her ability to fulfill her purpose had just completely destroyed it.

With a scream of pure hatred, Rei launched herself at the woman who had just ruined her life. Mireille sidestepped her charge and kicked out. The blow did not penetrate Rei's AT Field, but it did knock her down. Rei climbed to her feet and readied herself for a second attack when a knife embedded itself partway through her AT Field.

"I believe your fight is with me." Chloe pointed out.

Rei was forced to admit that the other girl had a point. Chloe had murdered her third body in cold blood. She had made the rather insulting insinuation that her sole purpose in life was to replace the Fourth Child after the Commander had sent his daughter away – and that she was not and could never be good enough to fulfill that purpose. And she was the person that the Commander had said must be captured in order to complete his Scenario. The best way Rei could honor the late Commander Ikari was to complete his Scenario for him. She shifted her attention from the blonde Corsican to the Nephilim.

It quickly became clear to Rei that had she challenged Chloe without the use of her AT Field, she would have lost very quickly. Even with the edge granted to her by the considerable difference in their relative levels of fatigue, she was barely holding her own. What Chloe had apparently learned to do with her AT Field made what would have happened had she been more rested very apparent.

Rei remembered that one of the common pieces of advice that trainers gave her while she was learning how to use weapons was to treat the weapon as if it was an extension of her body. Chloe had mastered that lesson and taken it to a new level. She had internalized the concept that her weapons were a part of her to the point where her AT Field surrounded not only her body, but her weapons as well, following the edge of the blades and granting them a sharpness that no physical object could ever hope to achieve. Chloe's dagger and short sword were sharp enough to cut an AT Field. Had Chloe been more rested, or Rei more tired, the assassin Nephilim's strikes could very well have pierced Rei's AT Field far enough to kill her. As it was, the attacks were slowed enough that Rei was escaping with shallow cuts – so far.

It didn't take Rei long to figure out that if she allowed Chloe to control the fight she was certain to lose. If she was to complete her mission, she had to take the offensive. She saw an opening and prepared for a single strike.


Chloe knew she was getting tired. If she hadn't been, she'd have taken down this counterfeit Noir already. The AT Field wasn't helping either. She could cut through it, but it was like cutting through thick leather, slowing her blades and reducing the power of her hits. Thick leather that repaired itself shortly after she cut it. Still, Rei's AT Field only allowed her to keep herself intact despite the girl's total lack of serious combat experience. It didn't come close to making the counterfeit the equal of a True Noir. Chloe noticed a gap in Rei's guard, which she thrust towards with her wakizashi.

The sword pierced Rei's AT Field. Rei twisted and took the hit in her left shoulder. Suddenly, Chloe felt something wrap around her right wrist and squeeze. She cried out as her wrist was crushed by Rei's AT Field. A moment later, her left ankle was also broken. Chloe fell to the ground as one leg could no longer support her weight, dropping her weapons as she did so. As Chloe tried to pull herself up to a sitting position, Rei's AT Field pinned her to the floor. Her left hand was pinned behind her back, and her right hand was useless.

Rei pulled the sword out of her shoulder and tossed it next to Chloe. As Rei bent over her, Chloe desperately felt with her left hand for a new weapon as she struggled to gain enough leverage to free her left hand to use that weapon. Rei's hand reached out to touch Chloe's neck. As her hand touched Chloe's throat, it started flowing into the other girl's body, like a stick being pushed into water.

Rei's hand started moving down Chloe's body. As her arm encountered Chloe's tunic, the fabric started to rip. Chloe's questing hand found the hilt of a weapon. It didn't feel like one of her knives, but she would take whatever she could get at this point. The sensation of Rei passing through her body was strange and decidedly unpleasant, and while she wasn't sure exactly what would happen if she didn't break free before Rei found what she was looking for (or finished ripping her tunic in half, whichever came first), she was fairly certain that it wouldn't be good.

Rescue came in the form of Mireille Bouquet. Unable to directly aid in a fight where both participants were moving too much to accurately aim at either one, and where the bullets had a good chance of bouncing off without damaging anything, she had patiently waited for her opening. With both of the fighters now almost totally motionless and Rei's attention focused on keeping Chloe pinned down, she had her chance. She raised her pistol and emptied a full clip at the First Child.

Rei's AT Field stopped every single bullet, but in doing so she diverted her attention from Chloe. Having regained the ability to move, Chloe smashed her head into Rei's face, causing Rei to fall back slightly, her arm pulling out of Chloe's torso as she did so. Chloe shifted her weight, leaning on her right side long enough to free her left hand. Then she gripped the small, two tined fork in her hand as she made one final desperate thrust.


A/N: I'm amazed none of the reviewers who commented on the last line of the previous chapter didn't recall Misato's statement in End of Evangelion: The final Angel is Man.

One thing that always bugged me about EoE was that as a UN organization, the JSSDF had no legal right to seize control of NERV. The only explanation I can think of for that is that since SEELE seriously expected that the world would end that afternoon (With considerable justification), they really didn't care about the technical legality of whatever actions they could fast-talk people into taking that morning.

Murder Incorporated was a real murder-for-hire organization that worked for various organized crime groups from the 1920s to 1940s.

Heinz is an actual character from Noir, one of the rare people to knowingly encounter Noir (although he never heard the codename) and live. He showed up in episode 12. General Reimann's final request to Chloe before she killed him was that she spare the lives of his bodyguards, which Heinz was in charge of.

I knew the moment I started writing this that Mireille had to be the one to kill Gendo. Kirika killed Mireille's parents, it's only fair that Mireille be allowed to kill Kirika's father.

My thanks to gunman for coming up with the idea of how to get Noir outside of the GeoFront at the start of the battle. I had had their break in scenes planned out for over a year and a half, and up until a couple weeks ago I didn't know why I was going to need them.

My thanks to SulliMike23, James Axelrad, gunman, Nameless Flame Wielder, MadHat886, F-14 Tomcat Lover, CJNyfalt and darkness for the reviews.