A Glass of Wine (Chapter 22)
Cruciform detonations split the sky, a blitz of rapid-fire hits which crashed defense towers as soon as they emerged and split the civilian buildings in half before they could fully retract. Smoke choked the streets. Fire lit in windowsills, reflected off stainless steel. A city burning. A city bleeding. A city dying.
To the men and women caught within its grip, the destruction was apocalyptic.
It was about to get worse.
((()))
By the time Misato Katsuragi entered the control room, Nerv, and the city above, had been in combat operations for twenty minutes. Alarms blared incessantly. Ritsuko was there, hovering over Lieutenant Ibuki's shoulder. Both Hyuga and Aoba were working as efficiently as ever, but there was tension in the silence. Below the main bridge, lower-level staff were shouting between stations, trying to coordinate with UN forces and Nerv's own semi-automated defense network.
"Status report," she said.
"Everything is on fire and we're going to die," Aoba muttered.
Misato looked to Hyuga. "Something more specific, please. Try to make it positive."
"The Angel has advanced past every topside intercept system we have. Its last impact vaporized eighteen layers of the cavern's defense plating." Hyuga gestured to the main display with one hand while he continued typing. "Secondary defense teams are massing in the GeoFront proper. When it gets down here, we'll be as ready as we can be."
Misato nodded thanks. "I dropped Asuka off at the cage. Is Unit 02 ready for launch?"
"We're prepping it now, ma'am," Ibuki said. "Removing it from cryogenic stasis will take a few minutes."
"Can we cut that down?" Misato said.
Ibuki shook her head. "Not according to regulations. The fluid needs to be—"
"Doctor," Misato said, ignoring the lieutenant. Ritsuko turned to look at her. "Can we cut that time down?"
Ritsuko nodded, absently. "We can, by perhaps four minutes."
"Then do it," Misato said, walking back to the center of the bridge. "And keep me apprised! We need her up there now!"
She looked up at the command pillar. She knew not to expect the sight of Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki, but she was shocked to see it entirely empty. "Where is—" she began.
"Commander Ikari is in the cage, overseeing Unit 01's preparations," Aoba said. "We have Section Two retrieving the First Child now. Unit 01's interface matrix is being reconfigured for her use."
Misato looked over his shoulder and saw a live feed of Unit 01's cage, including Commander Ikari in the direct observation CIC booth—a black shadow in the midst of orange-suited technicians. Not for the first time, she wondered what her commanding officer was thinking.
"The Dummy Plug is available for backup still, right?" she said.
"Yes, ma'am," Aoba replied.
"Very well." Misato turned to the entire group. "Okay, people, here is the plan: sortie Asuka in Unit 02 in the GeoFront proper. We don't have time for topside intercept, so we'll make this the first line of our defense. When the First Child arrives, we'll sortie her in Unit 01 for fire support. We've done this before, and we've won every time. Keep calm, keep to your station, and we will get through this. Understood?"
A chorus of affirmations rushed back to her, but none of them were convincing. The team was tired and frightened. Misato knew how they felt, but spent the requisite energy to keep it from showing.
A glance at Ritsuko, biting her nail and standing beside Ibuki, made her wish that her friend had the same impulse.
((()))
The cryogenic cabling disconnected with a hissing outrush of cold steam. There were probably procedures to follow to disconnect them properly, but time was short; the cables popped out of their sockets as Unit 02 was moved to the launch pad. Some of them ripped out from the wall and dangled from the Evangelion's plating, their severed ends leaking stasis fluid across the cage.
Synchronization occurred as the Eva moved into the launch bay. The kaleidoscope across the screens, the wash of sensation, and suddenly Asuka was two, herself and the Eva, and she felt at home again. The screens resolved to show the steel and lights of the launch bay, the technicians like hundreds of worker ants scurrying across the scaffolds beneath her. She took a breath and felt her chest heave, the bands of armor expanding and retracting in time with her lungs. She flexed her fingers, meters long and shod in crimson steel.
"Asuka." Dr. Akagi's voice filtered through the plug's comm system. "Your synch rate is… I've never seen this before."
Asuka didn't need the number. She could feel the difference. In the past, inhabiting Unit 02 felt like wearing a padded suit. Its limbs and fingers always felt like her own, but deadened, as though put to sleep. Every sensation was blunted by her middling synch rate—the great frustration of her young life. To her mind, there was always some block, some intangible choke on her ability to push away the tingling malaise and achieve true oneness with the machine around her.
Now, she felt every part of it in fine detail. The joints of each finger, the weight of upright plates on her knees, the press of the pylons clamped to her shoulders, and the colossal, potential torque in every muscle of her form—all were bright in her mind. It was all she could do not to exercise every movement at once. The bottled-up power of it all brought a grin unbidden to her face.
Asuka clicked in a series of commands on her control yokes, bringing up an overlay of the GeoFront's security footage. Debris rained from the cavern ceiling, and through the smoke and fire, the Angel appeared, drifting down. Blistering amounts of firepower raced to meet it, crashing and detonating against an AT field of such monumental integrity that the collisions caused the footage to distort.
Ayanami was combat ineffective, her Unit damaged beyond repair. Shinji was gone, running away again—from her, from Misato, and from the Eva. How he could ever give this up was beyond her.
But that wasn't her problem anymore. Shinji could do what he wanted. Run away, little boy. Run from your problems. Run from responsibility.
Never before had she felt the extent of her prowess—of her sagacity, her unremitted control over this larger, armored self.
Misato's voice reached her. The Major's face peeked at her through an open comm window. "Asuka, are you okay?"
She felt the thud of gee restraints clamp into place around her as she connected with the launch pad. She flexed her musculature and felt the last cold dregs of cryo fluid sluice from pump filters along her arms, torso, and legs. And with those last dregs drained from her, any hesitation in her mind about outside concerns leaked away, too, replaced by a sudden, overpowering, intoxicating certainty that she would not—could not—lose. Ever.
Was she okay? What a stupid question.
So she didn't respond.
"Evangelion Unit 02," she said, instead, and thumped the launch override toggle. "Launching."
((()))
Staff ran to the beat of the sirens, clearing the halls, like a flock scattered at the sight of a wolf. Doctors fled alongside nurses, hauling the easiest patients along with them in wheelchairs and gurnies, IV bags swinging from steel mounts. A burn victim was ushered past, and Shinji moved out of the way, squeezing against the observation glass. He watched the patient wheel by, body ensconced in gauze, before quickly looking away.
Rei was still next to him. She hadn't moved since the alarms began.
"Don't you need to go?" he said.
"When I am needed, I will be summoned."
Shinji shook his head. An orderly rushed by, fighting to get a signal on her mobile phone. A nurse on the floor, scrabbling to fit papers back in a yellow binder; her co-worker, shouting at her to leave it, to move, to get out of here. It's almost underground, didn't you hear?
Underground, Shinji realized. The Angel was coming here.
"They're going to make you pilot Unit 01," he said.
"Yes," Rei replied.
A memory. Blood on his hand. Steel decking beneath his knees. A girl he did not know, in his arms, crying out. Guilt like fingers in his chest, constricting his lungs.
He glanced at Rei, at her calm gaze as she watched Toji through the glass, and knew a measure of that feeling again.
Kensuke and Hikari emerged from the room, just as the rest of the staff finally vanished. The hallway was almost empty—an echoing space filled only with distant wail of sirens.
Hikari's eyes were wide, searching her surroundings. She still held the schoolwork folder she had brought with her, and now clutched it to her chest. Shinji wondered why she kept it, even now.
"Where is everyone?" she said.
"Evacuated," Shinji said.
"Why?"
"The attack," Shinji said, not bothering to include how pressing the attack seemed to be. If the Angel was already in the GeoFront, then it had made more progress than any other before it. The staff clearly felt as he did, and had taken only who they could. As he tried to imagine the kind of monster that could so quickly penetrate this far, he realized he should not tell Hikari.
"What about Toji?" Kensuke said. "They're just going to leave him here?"
Shinji opened his mouth to reply, but stopped when he saw the black shadows moving down the hall toward them. Black suits, black shoes, black sunglasses. Section Two.
"Rei," he said.
Ayanami looked at him, then at the agents moving toward them. The group stopped mere feet from the children. Kensuke and Hikari drew back from them. Ayanami did not, and Shinji stayed at her side.
The leader spoke. "Pilot Ayanami, we're here to move you to headquarters. Please come with us."
Ayanami did not move at once. She looked back through the glass, at Toji, tucked away in his tangle of braces and bandages and monitors. Shinji watched her face, reflected in the glass, but her expression was unreadable. After a moment, she looked away and went with Section Two.
Shinji watched her go. Surrounded by the taller men, she seemed so small. He felt those fingers again, deep in his chest. Stirring.
He stepped after her. "Rei!"
The First Child stopped and turned, regarding him with the same inscrutable stare she always wore.
"Don't let them use you," he said.
Rei watched him, her expression unchanged. An agent placed a hand on her shoulder, urging her to move on.
"Goodbye, Shinji," she said, and then allowed herself to be led away.
((()))
The was a moment of weightlessness when Unit 02 hit the top of its launch shaft, like cresting the rise of a roller coaster's tallest hill, a brief slice of time where her body continued upwards while the Evangelion stopped around her, arrested by its harness. Then gravity reasserted itself, and she settled back into the seat.
She had come up on the opposite side of the lake from the target, in a cluster of armament towers. Point Bravo, she thought, though she was far from certain. She hadn't bothered to memorize the GeoFront's defensive plans as thoroughly as she had the surface city. Having never deployed into the cavern directly, it had seemed a distant concern. Now that she was here, she could tell the situation was desperate—a desperation evidenced by the tightness in the voices on her comm and the way she had been ordered into battle without so much as a briefing.
None of that mattered, she realized.
"Pallet rifle," she said, and the command was answered. A nearby tower unfurled its protective sheeting and the rifle emerged on clamps. Asuka reached out and wrapped Unit 02's fingers around the grip. It connected with her HUD and she brought it up, centering the reticule on the target.
Outgoing fire was thick, coating the Angel in a haze of blast-back smoke. Magnification, two times. Three times. Its back was to her.
Time to wake it up.
"Unfurling," she said. She took a deep breath and let her AT field rush outward, a clearer note than she had ever heard it before. The audio pickups scrambled for a moment, unbalanced by the sudden unreality unfurled from the pit of her larger self. She felt the leading edge of the field bristle against the Angel's field. The two barriers slipped against one another like competing oil slicks.
In her magnification, the Angel turned, its face lolling to gaze down at her, all hollow eyes and gaping maw.
"Good afternoon," Asuka said, and pulled the switch.
The pallet rifle barked, sending a thunderclap of rounds skyward, directly into the target's face. Smoke enveloped it immediately, but Asuka held the trigger down. She could still feel it, unseen in the smoke, its field strong and true, so she emptied the rifle. When it was dry, she tossed it aside.
"Greyscale," she said, and her HUD obeyed, scanning the target area with a false-color radar image. Nothing but a squiggle of false returns. The AT field density was flubbing the return. She'd have to do this with her true sight.
"Pallet rifle," she said. "Double."
Two more towers opened, and she drew both rifles. She had to cradle them under each arm to counter-balance their barrels and keep them on target, but she figured she could—
Light, in the smoke, felt before it was seen. A sudden outpouring of energy.
Asuka move now.
She dodged right and Unit 02 obeyed, its legs powering it sideways, crashing out of the launch area and into the ankle-high woodlands. The beam landed a fraction of a second later, vaporizing the launch cradle and the armament towers which surmounted it. A crucifix detonation reached skyward and rebounded off the cavern ceiling. Ammunition stored in the surrounding buildings lit off in a series of secondary explosions which rushed outward, an expanding carpet of flame.
Asuka rolled into a crouch and sent twin streams of super-munitions back. The Angel was lower now, hovering just above ground.
"Its field is holding." Misato's voice almost concealed her worry. "At this range, I don't think you can—"
"I know, damn it," Asuka said. Both pallet rifles were dry. She stood, extending Unit 02's tapered form to its full height. "I need to get close, right?"
"That's our working theory, but don't do anything until we get Unit 01 up to support you."
"I don't need Unit 01," she said.
"This isn't about what you need, Asuka. It's about what's smart," Misato said. "Keep it busy from range until we can pressure it with more than one Eva."
Across the lake, the Angel stared at her. From its sides dropped two white sheets, like ruffled window blinds. As Asuka watched, she saw the sheets stiffen, become prehensile, and flex like snakes about to strike.
"Not sure I have a choice," she said.
The Angels arms shot out at an absurd speed, across the lake, longer than she thought they could reach. Unit 02 twisted, dodging the arms by an uncomfortable margin. One rifle was cut in half. Her umbilical cable sheared off, half the connector housing gone with it. To her left, her power readout crashed into reserve mode. Two minutes.
The arms retracted as quickly as they had come, recoiling into a protective stance.
It was insane. The notion of prehensile blade arms which could clearly cut her in half was absolutely, completely absurd. When combined with the sudden speed and mass-defying reach of them, and the Angel's hunched, mummified appearance, the entire situation reached a state of utter comedic insanity.
Against that realization, she couldn't help but laugh.
Misato's order was immediate. "Fall back."
"Probably not," Asuka said, her laughter dying down. She released what was left of her pallet rifles. The debris of them smashed into the woods at her feet.
"This isn't a debate, Asuka."
"You said it yourself. Until you get Unit 01 moving, I'm all we have."
Asuka keyed in another command, giving her an overlay of umbilical stations and armament towers in the cavern. Her eyes flitted over her options, thinking them all through. The tactical reality of the situation grounded her. It gave her mind a surface to stand on—a concrete foundation from which decisions could be made.
"Keep me powered, keep me armed, and I'll keep it off your backs for as long as I can," she said. "You know it's the right call."
Misato was silent. Then, "Fine, Asuka. We'll do it your way. Keep it busy as long as you can. We'll get Unit 01 up as soon as possible."
"Understood," Asuka said, and disconnected.
She glanced at her overlay and blink-tagged the nearest umbilical station, then set off at a dead run.
((()))
With no medical personnel left, it fell to Hikari, Kensuke, and Shinji to relocate Toji Suzuhara to safety. The task seemed impossible. So much of the monitoring equipment around Toji looked important. The method by which to detach him from it, or even whether or not he could be safely detached from it in the first place, wasn't immediately obvious.
Hikari said as much. "We can't do this."
Kensuke stood beside her, hands on his head. In stress or surrender, Shinji wasn't certain.
What would Misato do, if she was here? How could she handle this? How would she keep the other two from falling into despair and doing nothing at all?
She would take charge and do something.
Shinji looked over Toji's hospital bed. It was thick—a huge control panel was imbedded in the headboard, and it sat on a thick base which was built to roll. The entire bed seemed like one solid edifice. He dropped down and examined the base. Power outlets ringed the hard plastic, all presumably running through the core of the bed, which was itself plugged into the wall somewhere.
"Hikari," he said, standing back up. "Hand me your binder."
Hikari did as much. Then Shinji pointed to the bed.
"Everything is plugged in down there. We can move him if it's unplugged. Try to get it all undone."
Hikari said nothing, but followed his instruction. As she worked, her shock-wide eyes regained some of the composure he had come to expect from the class rep.
"What if it kills him?" Kensuke said.
Shinji looked at him. "It won't," he said.
"How do you know that?"
I don't, Shinji realized. He wondered how often Misato made decisions without knowing what could happen. And if that was true, then how many times had he been ordered into combat on a guess? He could not tell Kensuke any of this, or let on that he was just as clueless as his friend, so he said another truth instead.
"We are two hallways from the GeoFront," he said. "An Angel is attacking right now. If we don't get Toji to a shelter as fast as we can, there is a chance that we'll all die. We need to move him."
Kensuke glanced at the door. Contemplating running away, or considering how close he was to the battle? Shinji didn't care. He needed the kid here, now.
He clapped his hands, once. "Did you hear me?" he said.
Kensuke looked at him again. "Yeah. Yes."
"Yes what?"
"Yes, I heard you."
Shinji nodded. "Okay. Help Hikari. I'll go find the nearest shelter, and I'll be right back."
Kensuke did as he was told, and Shinji left the room. He marched to the end of the hall and found a stenciled arrow on the white wall, indicating a shelter to his left, deeper into the hospital. It made sense. Like a lot of Nerv support structures, the hospital wards were built near the edge of the cavern. The shelters in this area would be tucked as close to the arcing rock face as possible.
Shinji made to return to Toji's room when a detonation sounded from his right. The building quaked. Lights guttered and flickered in chaotic spontaneity. Shinji flinched, then turned. He could see daylight down the opposite leg of the corridor. Without thinking, he made his way toward it, drawn out by the sound and light.
The front face of the hospital had been torn away. The tile floor sloughed into open air, tumbling down a newly smoking scree of pulped concrete and twisted rebar. To Shinji's left and right, the opened pods of vacated rooms. To his front, the fire and fury of a war.
The GeoFront was burning. The heat of cooked grass and trees washed up to meet him, and smoke curdled around the apex of the cavern, swaddling the stalactite buildings in darkness. And through the smoke and flame, Unit 02, advancing on its target, launching munitions from a rocket cannon. The shots detonated deep within the smoke, accompanied by the flare of an AT field.
An Angel, he realized, somewhere in the smoke.
A blast, pain-bright and loud, lashed from the darkest smoke. Unit 02 slid clear. The detonation blew a hole in the ground. Shinji felt the shockwave of air as it burst outward, and raised his arm against it. The hospital groaned, its damaged structure keeling.
Shinji grabbed the wall for support. Before him, Unit 02 dropped its rocket cannon to the dirt. A UN armored battalion opened fire from the north, peppering the smoke-wreathed threat with blisters of orange, giving Unit 02 cover while it hauled a progressive glaive from an armament tower. The blade gleamed in the smoky deluge.
The size of the combat was too much. Seeing it from this perspective, Shinji felt weak and useless. He clutched Hikari's binder in a white-knuckle grip and tried to find his breath, to categorize what he was seeing in front of him, to parse it into something beyond the furious assault on his senses.
Unit 02 shifted, its four eyes burning white hot in the grey.
Shinji turned and ran, back into the quaking hospital. Back to something he could actually do.
((()))
On screen, Unit 02 moved towards the target again at a walk, firing its rifle one-handed, the progressive glaive held low at its side. Misato watched it for a moment, her vision flitting between the battle itself and the holographic representation of the same, where all the smoke and flame died away to cold data and outlines of tank companies and VTOL flights. The situation was tenable, but only barely. Between Asuka and the conventional forces, they had managed to delay the Angel's advance, keeping it to a circular, strafing closing pattern, constantly getting closer to headquarters.
They needed the big gun.
"Unit 01's status," Misato said, marching to stand behind Aoba. "Is Rei loaded yet?"
"No, ma'am."
"Why not?"
"No idea," Aoba said, pointing to his security feed. On it, the orange technicians had vacated the observation booth, leaving just Commander Ikari and the small shape of Rei Ayanami. The First Child wasn't even in her plugsuit yet. The Commander loomed over her. Without audio, Misato could not make sense of their conversation, but she could tell that the Commander was frowning, and Rei was certainly not smiling.
"Are they," she started, unsure how to phrase what she thought, "are they fighting?"
"I don't know what you'd call it," Aoba said. "But this has been going on for five minutes."
Misato grabbed a hardline. "Patch me through," she said.
Aoba complied. After a second, the line buzzed. On the little screen, Ikari picked up his own hardline receiver.
"Ikari," he said.
"Sir, this is Katsuragi. We're prepared to attempt dummy plug activation at your instruction."
Ikari paused. Misato watched him look back at Rei. "Yes, Major. Proceed. I'll supervise from down here."
"Thank you, sir." Misato clicked the receiver back in its cradle. "Doctor, get the dummy system online. We're going to sortie Unit 01 with the remote option."
((()))
Hikari plugged the bed into an outlet in the shelter's far wall and stood. The control panel on the headboard beeped, and the in-built EKG flickered to full functionality. Kensuke watched it.
"I think he's okay," he said. "It all looks the same."
Shinji stood at the foot of the bed, watching them work. In the shelter around them, civilians and hospital workers huddled in groups, the lighting low. The floor shook at irregular intervals. Toji breathed easily, fogging and clearing his oxygen mask.
Nearby, a cluster of school children whimpered, their teacher trying to comfort them. Shinji wondered what that was like, to be trapped here and not know what was going on. He still held Hikari's binder.
"What now?" Kensuke asked.
"We stay here," Shinji said. "Keep our heads down until it's over."
Kensuke stepped up to him. "What about you?"
"What about me?"
"You don't have to stay here."
"Yes, I do," Shinji said.
"No, you want to stay here. You don't have to. There's a difference." Kensuke gestured at Hikari. "We don't have anything else we can do. You do."
Shinji shook his head. "I need to be here for Toji. I put him here."
"So now you're going to stay here while Rei goes and does your job?" Kensuke said.
"It's not like that."
"Tell me how it isn't," Kensuke said.
Shinji frowned. He wanted to bite back, but he didn't have the words. So he looked away from his friend.
"Hey," Hikari said, coming closer. She placed a hand on Kensuke's arm and gently moved him aside, then she stopped next to Shinji. "Ikari, Aida is just worried. We both are."
"I'm sorry," Shinji said. "But I can't do anything. Every time I get in that thing, someone gets hurt."
Hikari nodded, not disagreeing. "I understand. Asuka talked to me. She told me what happened."
"Don't tell me it isn't my fault," Shinji said.
"Okay. Okay, I won't." Hikari leaned in, meeting his eyes. "But Asuka isn't doing well, either. She's freaked out, Shinji, and she's out there right now without you."
Shinji took a breath and tried to look away from her, but she stayed with him, keeping herself in his eye line. Not letting him run.
"She needs you, Shinji. Ayanami needs you, too. You can't let them do all this alone."
Shinji looked at Hikari and saw Asuka, days ago, in the cage. Give me a reason to stay, he had said, and she had tried.
Because I need you.
"I don't want to do it," he said.
"I know," Hikari said. She reached for the binder and gently took it from his hand. "But it's what you need to do. It's the right thing to do. Go and help her. We'll be here when you get back. Toji will be safe."
Shinji looked at her, then over her head, to Kensuke. His friend stood next to Toji's bed. In spite of his clear discomfort, he nodded. A promise.
Shinji looked back to Hikari. "Don't leave him till I get back," he said.
"You have my word," Hikari said.
Shinji clenched his jaw and walked away before he could second guess himself. The door to the shelter came open on well-oiled hinges, the dim light of the shelter giving way to the blazing hell of the GeoFront. He ran into the smoke and chaos, and didn't look back.
((()))
Her pallet rifle banged itself dry and Asuka tossed it aside. Her mission clock read 39:31:02. She had been fighting this thing for forty minutes. That was easily her longest deployment yet as a pilot. In that time, she had emptied four armament towers and swapped umbilical cables twice, all because, until now, she spent her time in a delaying action.
She learned a lot in forty minutes, and paid for each lesson. When she tried to move into the Angel's flank, the Angel had ignored her and moved for headquarters. It advanced half a kilometer in that time, which taught her that it was single-minded. It had one goal, and she wasn't part of it.
Each time she tried to close with it, at a distance of between one hundred to one hundred fifty meters, it lashed out with its ribbons. The first time, she lost a chunk of her chest plating. Thus, she learned—if she was within medium distance, it could gut her.
Its eyes had nearly blasted her a dozen times, and through that, she learned that if it could see her, it could hurt her.
The thing was an offensive powerhouse, and it took all her skill and forethought to delay it this long. Its AT field was obscene, able to take any damage she thrust at it and keep moving, despite her own field attempting to encompass it.
Unit 02's back was practically on top of headquarters. The Angel loomed through the smoke, the downdraft of its propulsion crumping the remains of a tank platoon into the dirt. Her rangefinder pinged it at two hundred meters. Practically on top of her.
At a thumb-flick, she turned on her progressive glaive. The blade thrummed in her grip, and she raised it to her side.
"Asuka." Misato's voice reached her. "We're having trouble activating the dummy plug in Unit 01. Give us a little time and we'll have support for you."
Asuka magnified her display, looking into the Angel's hollow eyes. There was no expression to its skull face, no emotion to read, but she felt it nonetheless. It knew it, too. No more delaying actions. No more play fighting.
She was done falling back.
"Don't bother," Asuka said, and squelched the line.
Unit 02 sprang forward at full speed, legs churning the ground. She cleared the first hundred meters in a single leap, landing her within the Angel's frontal kill box.
The starboard-side ribbon lashed out immediately, covering the distance in seconds. Asuka rotated, bringing her glaive point up into the ribbon mid-flight. Sparks sprayed and her grip on the haft shifted as the glaive was torqued around by the impact. The ribbon was shredded up to half its length.
The port-side ribbon lashed out a microsecond later, headed for her side. Asuka dropped her knees, ducking under it, then pivoted on her heel, bringing Unit 02 up and around. She pushed off and launched through the air, covering the last hundred meters, glaive spinning into a straight point aimed for the Angel's core. Both hands, gripping the haft. Feet, braced. She saw the kill stroke unfurling in her mind's eye, anticipated the shuddering hitch of the glaive biting deep.
Mind, matched, moment.
Then the core disappeared, snatched away from her by a bony covering.
The glaive struck the covering and glanced off, burying itself in the Angel's bulbous chest.
Asuka landed, off balance. She glanced up and realized she was face to face with the Angel.
Its eyes glowed, and Asuka ducked.
The beams crashed out into the GeoFront and took half her right pylon with them. Asuka reeled, struggling to right herself. The glaive as out of her hands, still buried in the Angel's chest.
Then the shredded ribbon came at her again, faster than she could react. Hot pain slid into her shoulder. The world spun as Unit 02 fell, and Asuka saw her Evangelion's left arm spinning away from her in the opposite direction.
((()))
"Throttle her synch, Lieutenant!" Misato shouted.
"Dropping to ten percent synch, ma'am. Physical sensation is minimized."
"Good," Misato said. "Hyuga, get me pilot vitals. I need to know—"
"Energy buildup!" someone screamed, from below. "Immediate impact! Brace for—"
The blast hit headquarters directly, the cruciform blazing through layer after layer, floor after floor, atomizing steel and concrete and people, drilling into the heart of the complex in a flash-fry whiplash of insensate carnage. The blow-off steam erupted from the apex of the pyramid and surged down the flanks in a roiling, white sheet.
Secondary alarms wailed across the facility. The halls were filled with pounding feet as station managers led their staff to hold-out positions.
In the control room, primary power guttered. A moment later, the bang of transformers. Red emergency lighting flooded everything. Consoles fuzzed, then resolved as they jumped to backup power.
"Status," Misato ordered, out of instinct.
"Layers alpha through sierra are gone," Aoba reported. "The main shaft is completely open."
"Unit 01?" Misato said, to Ibuki.
"Nothing yet, ma'am."
"Facility defenses are non-responsive," Hyuga said. He looked back at her. "This thing is…"
"It's horrific," Ritsuko said. "This kind of power. We can't stop it."
Misato bit back a reply. She recognized the words for what they were: a panic response. She couldn't judge her friend for it, not when she could feel the fear herself. It had become a physical sensation—tight chest, weak legs, dry mouth. While Ritsuko certainly wasn't helping, snapping at her would solve nothing.
"Status of Unit 02," she said, instead.
Hyuga looked at her as if she had just spoken another language. "Ma'am?" he said.
"Unit 02," she said again, slowly. "Our pilot. Is she operational?"
Hyuga checked his station. "Observation puts her three hundred meters from the target. Down, but powered."
"Comms and vitals?"
"Comms are open, but her vitals are erratic. She's conscious, but I doubt she can make sense through these pain blooms."
"Understood. Keep her synch throttled. She's done for."
"Target is moving closer," Aoba said. "Approaching the exposed shaft."
Ritsuko put a hand on Misato's arm. "I recommend we execute Contingency Delta."
Misato ignored her. "Lieutenant Ibuki, what is Unit 01's status?"
"Rejection pattern again." Ibuki keyed in a command, bringing up Unit 01's activation data. "Commander Ikari is repeating the process from step one-oh-eight."
"Major Katsuragi," Ritsuko said. "I recommend we execute Contingency Delta."
"I heard you." Misato pulled her arm free of her friend's grip. "How long will that take, Lieutenant?"
"Five to ten minutes, ma'am."
"Misato!" Ritsuko said. "We need to—"
Misato's answer was swift and loud. The smack of palm-on-cheek resounded around the control center like a gunshot. The technicians turned to look as one.
Misato met their gazes. "Lieutenant Ibuki, please let the record note that, as Operations Manager, I have rejected the Chief Scientist's proposal to activate Contingency Delta. We will not set this facility to self-destruct until I have exhausted all possible avenues of defense."
"Noted, ma'am," Ibuki said.
"Good. Now, reboot all point-to-point HQ defense systems. Try to slow this thing down and buy Commander Ikari time to—"
"Ma'am?" Hyuga said.
"What is it, Lieutenant?"
Hyuga pointed to the main screen, and the red titan crawling back to its feet.
((()))
"Keep her synch throttled. She's done for."
Asuka heard the words through the pain and tried to right herself. She still had full power, but could not get to her feet. Her larger self, which had felt so full and right all day, was like a dead weight. Her missing arm was a dull ache compared to the flaming hell it had been just moments before. Wearing the Evangelion felt like living in a corpse, her sensations that of a poltergeist shifting around in a loose bag of muscle and flesh.
Visuals were still live, and she could see the target moving away, preparing to descend into headquarters. Right there, tantalizingly close.
The comms were still open, audio-only. Talk of Unit 01, talk of contingencies. Talk of other ways out of this mess, while she laid here, throttled. Trapped.
"Done for," she muttered, through gritted teeth.
She rotated in the plug and swam back, up the tube, to the control block which surmounted the back of her piloting cradle. She ran the fingers of her good arm over the paneling, and found the one she was looking for. With a pull, it came off and floated away.
"Throttled, huh?" she said, running her fingers over the circuits within, all so cleanly labeled, so clearly laid out. A masterwork of engineering.
She found the cluster marked , and wrapped her fingers around the housing. She put her lip, preparing for the influx of sensation, and pulled.
The circuit block snapped free with a simple click, and suddenly she could feel everything again. The plug lit up in response, its autonomic lighting flaring as every nerve in her body strobed anew, in time with the beast around her. The ache in her arm vanished, replaced by true, mind-numbing wound-flame.
Asuka snarled, and slid back into the seat. She stood, bringing the Evangelion to its full height. Her AT field flared, white hot and fresh.
The Angel ceased in its movement, hovering on the precipice of the hole it had bored into headquarters. It began to turn.
Unit 02 collided with it at a full run, all twelve-thousand plates of fortified armor and the muscle to back it up. The Eva's remaining arm hooked around the Angel's body and gripped tight; its legs pushed off the rubbled slope of the pyramid. The two combatants spun together, their combined weight leaving the ground and entering the open air over the shaft. Gravity did the rest.
The two titans crashed down the main shaft, snapping girders and crushing access-ways, their limbs and armor digging gouges in the superheated steel around them until they smashed into the bottom with the weight of twinned meteor impacts. The battered guts of HQ rang like a hammered bell, but Asuka couldn't hear it.
She was screaming too loud.
If it saw her, it could hurt her. That was true. So it would not be allowed to see her, not anymore. She wrenched her remaining hand into the target's open maw, finding purchase on the rim of its jaw, and shoved it backwards. Its eyes flashed and ripped a gouge from the ceiling. Debris and vapor rushed down across them.
Asuka heaved, buried her head and shoulder into the Angel, and crashed the both of them through wall after wall and into the loading cages.
True, given proper distance, its arms would gut her. So she gave it no distance at all. She put herself chest to chest with this monstrosity. Its arms shot out, unable to correct their angles, and whipped fruitless scars into the steel walls around them. Asuka smashed her faceplate into its chest, digging a furrow across its flesh.
True, its AT field was too powerful. Yet down here, it had no room to deploy it. The field flickered and grappled at her sides, refusing to form entirely. A part of her wished it would push the field to its fullest—please, she craved, bring down the building.
Bury us under thousands of tons of rock and metal and time. Let us stay here forever. It won't save you.
Its eyes lit again and she cranked its head around, smashing it face-first into the floor of the cage. The detonation was muffled, bursting through the floor and vaporizing the next compartment down, taking with it all supports. The floor buckled, gave way, and they dropped into the cage sub-floor. Violet stasis-oil fountained from a ruptured depot tank, splashing across the combatants.
Asuka wrapped her fingers in one of the Angel's eye sockets and pulled, bracing herself with a foot against its stumpy neck. Part of its skull ripped free with a shriek. Blood gushed from the wound. Gore splashed the wall. A high scream.
Asuka grinned. You made no progress.
Its arms lashed out, side to side, stiffening and burrowing into the steel walls. The body beneath her heaved. It was trying to right itself. Trying to fight back.
No. Asuka smashed a foot onto one stiffened arm. It was still rigid, and couldn't take the force. The limb snapped at the sudden pressure, shattering like glass at the break point. Half of it retracted, the other half falling limp on the deck.
Now you're in our world.
Her hand went to her remaining pylon. Prog knife, deployed. The vibrating blade whined in the confined space.
Now we are going to slaughter you.
One minute left. Plenty of time.
Asuka grabbed the hilt of her glaive, still slammed into the Angel's flank, and pulled, levering it onto its back. "Give us your heart, you miserable piece of—"
The Angel's remaining eye flared. A last-ditch shot, eye-to-eye. Too sudden to anticipate, too close to dodge.
The beam met its mark. Half of Unit 02's head went with it.
((()))
Moving through headquarters was like running into a hurricane. The corridors pulsed with the force of the destructive combat happening beneath and around them. Trained personnel fled like children, ignoring the teenaged boy running past them, the other way. Towards the terror.
Shinji slammed through a door and into the cages just in time to see Unit 02's death. Even a hundred meters away through the collapsed walls, it still felt dangerously close. The flash, the sun-bright after-image, and then the fall.
Unit 02 crumpled at the waist, its legs giving out—a puppet with its strings cut. Its form smashed into the deck with a reverberating thud. Half of its head was a steaming wreck. Two of its four eyes were gone. The melted steel of its braincase sloughed into the oil troughs that guttered the floor of the cage.
Shinji screamed.
((()))
Agony, bright. A scream inverted—all pain, all release. The plug screens fizzed and warbled and she grabbed her head in both hands, writhing, kicking, trying to push the hurt out. She thrashed against her controls, unable to see or feel if they were responding to her through the knife-pain in her brain.
Asuka howled. Tears bled from her eyes. She hammered fists against the dead screens surrounding her. She kicked one of the control yokes until it snapped off.
"Not like this," she said, writhing in the dark. "Not like this! Not like this!"
She felt the Angel move by her, drifting through headquarters. Even in her pain, she knew what that meant—it was ignoring her. In whatever passed for its mind, she wasn't even worth killing.
Then the power failed.
Darkness, all.
Liquid churned in Asuka's lungs as she screamed, shredding the edges of her voice—a wordless yowl of denial. She could not fail. It wasn't fair. She had come so close, done so much, hurt so many people close to her. If she could not do this, then what? Better to just die.
No. She would not die here, not after she had almost done it. Almost killed it single-handedly. Almost proved herself.
No, not like this. Never in this stupid, idiotic darkness.
Never this alone.
Then, a noise. A crump, rocking the plug, juddering the cradle around her. A heartbeat where no heartbeat should exist. Movement in the fluid around her—a wind from nowhere, brushing her ear. A hand threshed her hair. An acknowledgement.
A door opened. Asuka's eyes strained in the absolute darkness, seeing nothing. Behind her eyes, she spied white tile floors. Purple-black feet turned against a crimson sky. Then a voice—in her ear, in her head, as if speaking from memory itself. A voice like creaking rope in stillborn air, bearing threats and promises, hopes and fears.
Asuka held her arm with one hand, her head with the other, crumpled on the seat. Unable to feel anything beyond the burning. She tried to respond, but the word hardly left her lips, like a dream spoken in the dead of sleep.
Asuka tried to reach out, but the pain was too great. Her arm only raised partway, fingers curled. It was all she could do, but it was enough.
Footsteps, vanished. A door, closed. The plug, empty.
Kill, you. All of 02.
((()))
The command crew hears the combat and runs to see the fight themselves. They arrive just in time to see Unit 02 finishing the fight. Misato stands alongside Shinji. When the Evangelion deactivates, he runs down to the floor before she can stop him. This whole time, Maya keeps a running commentary on the berserk situation.
The screens in the control room were all dead, and no telemetry was available from the cages or launch bay. All they could hear was the roaring.
Misato was the first to move. She grabbed a hand radio from the emergency rack and left the bridge with barely a shouted instruction to mark her leaving. Hyuga followed her, then Aoba and Ibuki. Akagi didn't move.
Panic gripped headquarters, but Misato ignored it. Her crutch tapped her along the hallways.
Ibuki read from her datapad as they moved. "I don't understand this. Asuka's synch ratio is over one hundred percent."
"That has to be a glitch," Aoba said.
"It's reading right!" Ibuki said, holding it out to him. "Look!"
"Then you're not reading it right!"
Misato ignored them, and pushed her way into the cages. A blast of heat and noise greeted her. The ionized reek of an AT field at full power, and the roar of Unit 02.
Ibuki entered next, and immediately turned away. Misato thought she heard the young lieutenant vomit, but couldn't be sure; she wasn't able to look away long enough.
Unit 02 had the Angel mounted, its legs locked to its sides while its prog knife cut and cut and cut. Its shoulders heaved as it sliced black flesh and white bone free from its prey's massive body. Where the knife would not work, the Unit smashed its hand into the target's body, ripping out handfuls of the Angel's flesh. One of the Angel's ribbon arms was embedded in Unit 02's stomach, but it was limp by now. Blood poured from the Angel, pumping from open wounds and thrashed from Unit 02's hands. Unit 02 bled, leaking oil and blood across the cage.
The target's face was destroyed, its eye sockets deformed and its mouth slagged open. As Misato watched, red fingers cut into the flesh around the Angel's protected core, bypassing the rigor mortis covering, and wrenched the entire core free of its body. When that was done, Unit 02 slammed its prog knife into the Angel's ruined face and used both hands to crack the core covering and smash it, shattered, onto the floor below.
The Evangelion threw its head back and roared, hot breath steaming from its gullet. Terrifyingly inhuman and vast, the Evangelion looked around, the exposed sinew and steel of its neck creaking as it turned to face Misato. Its remaining eyes blazed. The rest of its head leaked.
Misato stepped back, expecting it to lunge for her next. But it did not.
As soon as it had begun, Unit 02's rampage came to an end. It halted so suddenly and completely that, had Misato just chanced upon it, she would have believed it incapable of ever having moved at all—a bloody statue in a charnel house.
((()))
The entry plug screwed its way out of Unit 02's neck. A moment later, the seal popped, and a wash of LCL spilled from the interior. Asuka leaned over the lip of the plug and vomited the remnants of the liquid from her lungs. She opened her eyes and saw the launch bay with her own eyes. The scale was all off. Suddenly, what had been the size of a room became a chamber the size of a stadium—and all of it was drenched in gore. The teal walls were almost completely covered in the substance. The gantries dripped. The overhead lights were dimmed, their light shafts strangled to a diffused, maroon glow.
Asuka stood up and inhaled her first drink of real air in an hour. The taste of copper and early-onset putrefaction stained her lungs, overwhelming in its intensity. Like rotting fish and old coins.
She should have been disgusted, but she wasn't. She took another breath, savoring it.
Then she realized she wanted to see it better. From the ground.
The Second Child descended from the entry plug on the automatic rappel line, one foot perched in the stirrup, the other hanging free in the air. When she reached the ground, she stepped into the Angel's pooling blood, up to her ankles, and walked until she could turn around and take in the entirety of the carnage she had wrought.
The Angel's dead bulk dominated her vision. Parts of its massive body had caved in from the trauma of its demise. Above it, Unit 02—its head case blown open and leaking oil down its shoulder.
Asuka felt her own face and head. She could still feel the gnawing hole in her temple, but her fingertips—fingertips of an arm she shouldn't have—found her skull intact. The realization sent a child-like thrill through her. Before she could stop it, a giggle issued forth from her lips.
She had done it. All her. No one else.
She stamped her feet, sending splashes of blood up from the floor.
The strongest Angel ever. It had taken her arm, her power, and half her head, and still she had finished it.
Her giggle turned into a full laugh, which she howled up at the bodies above her. Some part of her knew she must look crazy. The rest of her did not care.
"Yes!" she shouted, her voice tiny in the echoing launch bay. "Yes! Yes!"
"Asuka!"
She turned to face the voice, and saw Shinji. He ran out onto the killing floor, his white shirt like a beacon against the red-splashed walls.
Asuka stopped laughing. "Shinji," she said.
"Are you okay?" he said, coming to a stop in front of her. He knelt, catching his breath. Had he run all the way here? From where? From the hospital?
"What are you doing here?" she said.
"I saw you," he said, gasping. "I saw you from the hospital. Fighting."
Asuka stared at him. "You said you were done. Quitting. Why are you here?"
Shinji stood to his full height. She watched him hesitate, saw him think through his words, but he held her gaze. "I wanted to be here for you," he said. "Last time, when we talked, you said you needed me. I wanted to help you."
Asuka blinked. "You came back for me," she said. "To help me."
"Yes," he said.
"You promised you wouldn't."
"I know," he said. "But then I figured, who cares?"
Asuka's expression didn't change. She kept her eyes on his and stepped forward, closing the gap between them with three wet footsteps. Shinji felt the rubberized touch of her fingertips as they brushed his cheek.
At her touch, he smiled.
"How could you possibly help me?" she said.
"What?"
She shoved his head backward, hard, knocking his vision around. He lost his balance and fell, landing elbows-first on the floor. Blood splashed. His shirt was instantly soaked with warm, steaming liquid. His arms and legs were covered in it.
Asuka stood above him. "You wanted to help me?" she shouted. "How dare you? Look at this! Look at what I just did!"
She kicked the blood, splashing it onto his back. More warmth. More wetness. Shinji turned over, propping himself up.
"But you said—" he said.
"I lied to you, idiot!" Asuka said. "I lied to you! I'm a liar! I cheated you and made you do what I wanted! You know what I would have done to Unit 03, if I was out there?" She gestured to the reeking abattoir around them. "I would have ripped it to pieces, and I wouldn't have given a single thought to Toji Suzuhara!"
Shinji propped himself up, glaring at her. "That isn't true."
"Shut your idiot mouth."
She kicked him. He fended it off with a forearm, so she kicked him again and again, until he was forced to back away, sloshing through the blood slick. "I don't care about him! I don't care about Hikari, either. Or Ayanami! Or you!"
Shinji rolled out of her way, his hands up. "Asuka, stop it!"
Asuka stopped and turned away, spreading her arms wide. "I don't need any of you! You, Misato, my father, anybody! You're small and weak, and you come down here and say that you can help me?"
Shinji saw her raise her hand and wipe her hair clear of her face. When she turned back to him, half her face was reddened by the blood from her glove—the color of her suit, the color of her hair, the color of the monster she piloted and this steel cave she had made her own. The red sopped her hair and ran down her chin in a thick rivulet.
"Do I look like I need your help, Third?" she said.
"Asuka! What are you doing?"
Misato entered the chamber from the same door as Shinji. Most of the command staff was behind her, sheltered in the doorway. Not daring to enter.
Asuka shrugged. "Solving your problem." She pointed at Shinji. "I found your little soldier. Maybe you can launch Unit 01 now? I could really use the help."
Misato frowned. "That's not fair, Asuka."
"Oh, we operate off fairness now. Good to know." Asuka stormed past Misato. "You're welcome, by the way."
When she got near the door, she glared at the little crowd of onlookers.
"You're all welcome, too! Now clean my Eva and fix its head. Maybe next time you won't be so worried about getting your precious Unit 01 to work."
The crowd parted to let her pass. She didn't look back.