Chapter 6 - Shamshel
Shinji felt shame, twisting deep in his gut. All he could do was watch as Asuka got off the elevator and headed to the change room. As the door closed and the elevator continued, his gaze dropped to the floor. Only a few seconds later, he had to look up as the door opened again and Rei stepped out. It wasn't clear why two non-combatants were going to be allowed on the bridge, but he was certainly not keen to be left in the dark.
And he wanted to see his friend's debut.
"How are we looking?" he heard Misato ask as they reached the bridge. The holographic screen showed a topographical map of the bay area, where a red blip was moving towards the city.
"It will pass the first line in approximately eight minutes," Aoba reported.
"Open fire as soon as it's in range," Misato ordered after a moment's thought. "Let's test its strength, see what it can do. Do we have a visual?"
Without a word, part of the holographic screen changed. Now it showed a view evidently from the nose of an aerial pursuer. A purple worm-like creature was floating over the ocean, with two bright pink appendages trailing from what appeared to be its arms. Its head was what drew Shinji's attention. Pink and bulbous, it looked like...
"Is this a joke?" Misato muttered, unamused. "Did some fraternity stunt get loose? That looks exactly like a-"
"It's definitely an Angel," Ritsuko interrupted. "The phallic appearance is likely entirely coincidental."
There was no hint of emotion on the scientist's face when Shinji glanced at her. Stony eyes in an almost bored-looking face gazed at the screen. Rei had almost the same expression, staring dispassionately at the Angel. By comparison, the female technician, Lieutenant Ibuki if he remembered correctly, had a bit of redness in her cheeks. He thought he might have heard Misato murmur something that sounded like, "So boring, Rits," but he may have imagined it, as when he looked at his guardian she was staring seriously at the screen.
"The Second Child has entered the Eva cage," Hyuga reported.
Another screen change showed the red-haired pilot walking along the gantry towards Unit-01's entry plug, which was already open and waiting for her. She stepped in without a moment's hesitation, and the hatch closed. The entry plug was then inserted into the back of the purple Evangelion's neck, and an armour plate closed over it. Shinji listened with half an ear as the bridge crew began rattling off numbers that made no sense to him. All was apparently well, however, as he soon heard the most important words.
"Eva Unit-01 is online. No anomalies detected."
"Excellent. Open a channel to the pilot," said Misato. A large hologram of Asuka in the entry plug flashed to life in front of them. "All good on your end, Asuka?"
"Everything seems fine to me," the Second Child replied. "Surprisingly it feels a bit like my own Eva."
"That's good. Unfortunately Unit-01 doesn't have a spike launcher, so it won't be quite the same."
"Then I'll just go without. But you are sending weapons up for me, right?"
Ritsuko passed Misato a tablet, and the captain glanced at the data. "We're preparing a Gatling gun for delivery to the surface. There will also be Pallet Rifles, but stick with the Gatling gun at the start. And of course there's a Progressive Knife in the pauldron if you need to resort to melee combat."
"Be careful Asuka!" Shinji finally managed to blurt out. Her eyes swept over to him and she gave a cocky grin.
"Hey, I've been training for this my whole life," she said. "I'll be fine."
Shinji nodded hesitantly, and watched as Unit-01 was loaded onto the catapult that would take it to the surface. After a few seconds, Misato stepped forward.
"Eva Unit-01, launch!"
With a rumble that Shinji felt in his feet, the catapult took off, rocketing towards the surface and the incoming enemy.
"Good luck," Shinji whispered.
XXX
Unit-01 wobbled slightly as the catapult slammed to a halt and the locks disengaged. Asuka inhaled deeply as she took her first steps on the surface in somebody else's Evangelion, before proceeding towards the building marked on her heads up display. There, she retrieved a power cable and inserted it into the socket on the Evangelion's back, removing the obnoxious battery warnings, and then headed towards the next waypoint.
It was actually somewhat surprising how smoothly the Test-Type was performing in her hands, even with the slightly lower sync ratio compared to her own Unit-02. Then again, she was the best Evangelion pilot. Asuka briefly wondered what she could make Unit-01 do, but there was no time for experimenting; the Fourth Angel was starting to become visible as a small dot on the horizon.
The armoury building at her second stop opened as Unit-01 halted in front of it, and Asuka beheld the weapon that had been given to her. The Gatling gun was almost the size of the building that housed it, but the Evangelion was able to pick it up with only slight effort. After a moment's thought, a Pallet Rifle was retrieved and attached to magnetic clips on Unit-01's back.
"Two minutes," came the warning from Misato.
Only slightly weighed down by the hardware, Asuka moved on to the final waypoint, stopping next to an armoured building. She pointed the Gatling gun in the direction she had come from and got a feel for the the weapon by revving it up, keeping a finger well away from the trigger, as she swept it back and forth. Satisfied, she hefted it up, leaning the barrel against Unit-01's shoulder, and pressed its back against the building.
About ten seconds after the call of "One minute", the hills around Tokyo-3 lit up as the fixed weapon emplacements opened fire, sending high explosive ordinance streaking through the sky towards the Angel. Asuka couldn't see what was happening, but based on what she had seen and heard about the effects of conventional weapons against the Third Angel, she would soon be turning her own weaponry on a target that would be completely unharmed.
But it wouldn't stay that way for long if she had anything to say about it.
Before the first word of Misato's next order left her mouth, Asuka had already turned onto the street that the Angel was heading towards. She spared only a second's thought for its appearance before squeezing the trigger on her weapon. The Gatling gun spat depleted uranium rounds at her target, and Asuka had to resist the sudden urge to give a hearty laugh as she unleashed a hundred rounds a second.
"Ease up, Asuka, you're obscuring the target!" Misato's words cut through her euphoria, and Asuka relaxed her trigger finger, ending the barrage for the moment but keeping the weapon spinning. Unit-01 took a few slow and careful steps backwards, the Gatling gun pointing towards the cloud of smoke and dust filling her forward view. She squeezed the trigger once more, but only held it for a moment before releasing again. Asuka continued stutter-firing for a few seconds before a flash of light caught her eye.
One of the Angel's bright pink appendages whipped out of the cloud, slicing through the lower floors of a building next to Unit-01 as if it wasn't there. It would have cut straight through the Gatling gun too, had Asuka not dropped it before jumping the Evangelion backwards out of the way. Several buildings in front of her, including the armoured one she had taken cover behind, slowly slid apart before collapsing.
She didn't have time to gawk at the damage. The Angel barrelled head first out of the cloud and flew directly towards Unit-01. With no space around her to get out of the way, Asuka took the only route available to her.
Up.
Unit-01 bent its legs and leapt into the air, just barely clearing the Angel as it flew past like a freight train. The Evangelion's feet landed on the ground scant meters behind the tubular end of the Angel, and Asuka turned around just in time to see a row of buildings on both sides of the street get sliced through by the pink energy whips.
As well as her power cable. The cut end lay sparking on the ground, and with a sound of annoyance Asuka ejected the part still attached. The battery warnings were already back, helpfully reminding her that she had less than five minutes of power remaining until shutdown. She ignored the shouts of the bridge crew. They weren't telling her anything she didn't already know.
"Damn, those whips are nasty," she muttered as the Angel halted. What was probably its head turned left and right, before its entire body spun around to face Unit-01. More buildings were wrecked as both its tail and whips smashed and cut through them.
"I think you made it angry. Good job." With all the noise, Asuka couldn't tell if Misato was being sarcastic or not.
"Doesn't seem like it can sense me very well," said Asuka. Unit-01 reached behind its back and unclipped the Pallet Rifle. As the Angel reared back and raised its whips, she let off several rounds. They impacted well short of the Angel on an orange wall of hexagons, but the Angel held its position as well as its whips, which were now glowing less harshly.
"Looks like it can't use those whips while it has its AT-Field up."
Asuka rolled her eyes at the blond doctor's obvious statement. She slowly moved Unit-01 forward, keeping up the suppressing fire as she advanced. Now that she was running on batteries, she couldn't afford to waste power on trying to neutralise the Angel's AT-Field. She could try and make a run for one of the other power stations, but that would not be easy with an enemy chasing her.
Asuka came to a halt and held out the Pallet Rifle, firing with one hand and ignoring the gradual muzzle climb as she emptied the magazine. When the gun clicked empty, the orange barrier of the Angel's AT-Field vanished and a whip came flying towards her.
Just as planned.
Unit-01's free hand lashed out, grabbing the whip as Asuka dropped the Pallet Rifle. She immediately regretted her decision as pain erupted in her own left hand. It felt like somebody had soaked a steel cable in oil, lit it on fire, then wrapped it around her hand. The sensation only got worse as the trailing end of the whip wrapped around Unit-01's wrist and began eating into the armour there as well.
...Not quite as planned.
Fighting through the pain, Asuka reached up to her right shoulder pylon and deployed the Progressive Knife stored there. She thumbed the activation switch and reversed her grip on the knife, then locked the fingers of her left hand around the whip and brought the knife down on it. The effect was instantaneous.
The Angel screeched in pain and tried to let go of Unit-01's hand, but Asuka dug her heels in and yanked on it. After about ten seconds of playing tug-of-war, the Progressive Knife finally managed to cut through the whip. Unfortunately, the knife had been mangled by its energy and was now nothing more than a useless lump of metal. Asuka huffed in exasperation, then realised she was now flying.
In a matter of only a few seconds, the Angel had wrapped its remaining whip around Unit-01's leg and hurled the Evangelion over its head. Asuka had just enough presence of mind to twist Unit-01's body in mid-air, hoping to land on its back rather than its head. She had no intention of being the first to learn how a broken neck translated through the neural link.
She just barely managed to succeed as Unit-01 slammed back-first into a hill on the outskirts of Tokyo-3, the impact knocking the breath out of her. Asuka groaned and shifted the Evangelion's arms, making to stand back up.
"Wait! Don't move, Asuka!"
"Huh?" She glanced around at Misato's warning. The Angel was still in the city, paying no attention to her as its partially-amputated whip flailed about.
"There are civilians right next to you!"
"Oh come on," Asuka groaned as she looked around again, this time focusing on the hill she'd landed on. Sure enough, there were two people on the hill as well, right where she had been about to place her Evangelion's somewhat-charred left hand. She zoomed her view in, then immediately growled as she recognised the pair.
Suzuhara and Aida, the idiotic duo. Aida even had a camera hanging around his stupid neck.
"Are you fucking kidding me?!"
"Asuka, it's not safe for them here. You'll need to pick them up."
With a disbelieving look directed at Misato through her comm window, Asuka said, "What, you want me to hold them in my hand while I fight the Flying Purple People Eater?"
Misato looked like she was about to chuckle, but Ritsuko cut in, giving the captain a disapproving look. "No, you'll need to partially eject your entry plug and bring them in. Be quick, you only have three minutes left."
Asuka let out a spiky German curse as the LCL drained. "Got anything to make sure that Angel doesn't come over here while I'm helpless?"
"What do you think?"
She lurched in her seat as the entry plug moved. As the hatch opened she could hear gunfire and explosions, and quickly worked out what the distraction was. Now that the Angel was in the city, the static defenses could pound it from all sides, while it could only defend from one.
Activating the external speakers, Asuka took a deep breath. "Hey! Erkan and Stefan! Get your dumb asses over here right now!" She leaned back in her seat and folded her arms. Fortunately she didn't have to wait long, as she soon heard the sound of two morons scrambling into the entry plug. The plug quickly reinserted itself and began to fill with LCL once more. Behind her, she heard two gasps of surprise.
"The liquid is breathable," she said without looking back. "Now sit down, shut up and hang on."
Suzuhara began to speak. "What the he-"
"I said shut up! Just by being in here you're interfering with my ability to pilot!"
They thankfully went silent.
"Right, time to get back into the fight," Asuka muttered to herself as Unit-01 got back to its feet. As expected from having two other people in the plug, her movement was more sluggish now. She turned her attention to the comm screen. "I'm going to need a new power cable. Can't fight on battery power like this."
"Marking a power station on your HUD now."
"How about another weapon while you're at it? Something with a bit more punch? Melee combat's out of the question with this dead weight dragging my sync down."
"Sending you another waypoint. Heavy ordnance is waiting for you there."
Asuka almost responded with glee, but a sharp intake of breath behind her caused her to roll her eyes as she set Unit-01 in motion towards the power station. A short stop there halted the battery alarms again, and she then took off for the armoury building. As it opened to reveal its contents, she paused in slight confusion and heard a high pitched noise from behind her.
"There's... two rocket launchers here."
"Is that a complaint?" Misato asked.
"Nope," Asuka replied as she collected her new best friends. Two matching rocket launchers, designed to rest on an Evangelion's shoulder, with two visible rockets loaded into each. "Guided or dumbfire?"
Before anybody in NERV could respond, somebody in the entry plug got there first.
"Rocket launchers are dumbfire," said Aida.
Asuka growled and roughly flicked a hand behind her, smiling slightly at the yelp of pain that caused.
"Yes they're dumbfire, but you have the Eva's targeting system to help you aim. Just aim and shoot where and when it tells y-... Wait, are you going to use both at once?!"
Asuka was already in the process of readying both launchers on the Evangelion's shoulders.
"Yep."
A sigh came over the comm channel from Ritsuko. "Very well. I'll patch the MAGI in to help your targeting computer. It can handle that just fine. Let's just hope you can."
The Second Child smiled. Challenge so accepted.
Two crosshairs imposed themselves on the HUD, showing where the launchers were currently aiming. Asuka grinned and headed towards the expanding cloud of smoke and debris that marked the point that the static defenses were shooting at. As Unit-01 drew near, some of the emplacements slackened and ceased, so as not to hit a friendly target. Asuka switched view modes, shifting to infrared rather than waiting for the smoke to disperse. There, still in the centre, was the Angel. Two white-hot lines of heat showed that it had managed to regrow its missing whip. But the important part of the target, the core, was only moderately red. Still, that was enough.
The MAGI started to do their thing, showing Asuka the precise point she had to put her crosshairs on, and Unit-01 kneeled down as she concentrated on shifting two launchers towards the aim point. Having two idiots in the entry plug paradoxically seemed to help, as the lowered sync dulled the twitches in the Evangelion's arms as she made minor corrections.
As the smoke started to clear, Asuka saw the Angel begin to look around and knew she had to be quick. She squeezed the triggers. Both launchers lit off at almost the same time, sending two rockets streaking through the sky towards her target.
Unfortunately, the slight recoil of the first launcher threw the aim of the right off by a minuscule amount. The crosshair barely twitched, but at the distance separating Asuka and her target, it was enough to rob her of what would have likely been a clean kill.
The left rocket hit the core directly, heavily cracking it. The right impacted against the Angel's flesh above the core and below its 'neck', blasting a massive hole in it. The Angel shrieked in pain and fell to the ground, spilling blood as its thrashing tail and whips churned the debris around it.
"Fuck yes!" Asuka crowed, lowering the rocket launchers.
"Not dead yet," came the soft voice of Aida from behind her.
"Shut it!" she yelled as she turned to glare at him.
"It's getting back up."
"Huh?" She turned back, to see that the nerd was right. Even with the damage it had just sustained, the Angel was already starting to heal; the hole above its core was filling in. "Shit."
Unit-01 lifted the launchers again, but there was no time for aiming. The Angel was already floating quickly towards her.
"Wait until it gets closer, fire, then flank it while it's in the smoke!"
Asuka resisted the urge to turn around and punch the wannabe back seat pilot. "If I wanted advice I'd beat it out of you. I've got ten years of Eva training under my belt."
The Angel picked up speed.
"Do it!"
"Ugh! If this doesn't work, I'm going to say I told you so. By putting my foot up your ass!"
When the Angel was only a few hundred meters away, its whips cutting through anything nearby, Asuka fired. The pair of rockets struck the angel in its bulbous head, blasting away more chunks of flesh. The Angel dropped to the ground, and Asuka could hear it shrieking like a banshee even inside the entry plug.
"Huh, it didn't put that shield thing up," Aida remarked. "This works just as well though."
"Yeah? Well what now, genius? I'm out of ammo," Asuka said as she dropped the launchers.
"Use your knife."
"That's both broken and nowhere near here!"
"Two pylons, two knives."
Asuka almost shouted at him for his idiocy, before remembering one important detail about Unit-01: it didn't have a spike launcher. With mounting hope, she raised the Evangelion's left arm...
The left pylon opened and the handle of a Progressive Knife jutted out.
"Huh. Two knives." Asuka raised both eyebrows and gave an impressed hum, before a smile that would have made a shark envious grew on her face. "Time to end this."
Now that she was much closer, Asuka had no trouble jumping onto the Angel's back and wrapping an arm around its neck, lifting it partially off the ground. The whips flailed about, occasionally striking Unit-01 and delivering painful welts, but Asuka held firm. The Progressive Knife flashed in the daytime sun before stabbing deep into the cracked core.
"Come on," Asuka growled. She worked the knife back and forth as the Angel started to slowly lift from the ground, taking her with it. Just as it cleared the height of the nearby buildings, she felt the knife slip, and heard the sound she'd been waiting for.
The Angel fell silent as the core broke apart, before plummeting to the ground.
Even the sudden landing did nothing to damage Asuka's good cheer. She stood Unit-01 up, then leaned back in her chair and let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding. "Well, maybe you're not as dumb as you look, sound and act."
"Thanks, I-... Hey!"
Asuka grinned at the nerd's indignation, and sighed happily before tilting her head towards the comm screen. "So, how'd I do on my very first combat op?"
On the comm screen, Misato was clearly just as pleased as her. "One very dead Angel. Would have been nice if you'd killed it outside the city, but it's fine." She had to raise her voice a bit to be heard over the bridge technicians. The two males were high-fiving each other.
"Want me to drag it out there?"
Misato quickly consulted with Ritsuko. "Yes, if you can. That would save us a bit of time, and it means we won't have to cordon half the city off."
"Leave the remains of the core where they are," Ritsuko interjected. "A team will be picking them up."
"Roger that," Asuka replied as she hoisted the dead Angel up. It was not nearly as heavy as it appeared. Was it full of lighter-than-air gas? She decided it didn't matter as she walked her kill out beyond the hill she'd landed on. There was a nice deep imprint of an Evangelion there now. "Here fine?"
"Perfect. Set it down and head back to the catapult." Misato's expression turned serious. "Oh, and there'll be some people waiting to have a chat with your... passengers."
Asuka heard the sound of two nearly identical nervous gulps behind her. She grinned and said, "Sorry Shinji, you might not be seeing your nerd friend for a while."
There was no response.
"Shinji?"
Misato and Ritsuko looked around. Behind them, Rei was standing by herself, gazing stoically up at the holographic screen with her arms hanging loosely at her sides. Misato rushed out of camera shot, presumably to check the hall outside, before slowly returning with a look of abject confusion on her face.
"...He's gone."