A Crown of Stars
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Part 80
...A New World Is Born
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Shinji's hands grabbed the chair behind his back, the ropes they'd bound him with parting like tissue paper. He rose in one motion, swinging the chair around his right side by one arm with as much force as he could, smashing the chair into Jinnai's arm.
The arm folded in a way it shouldn't and the pistol flew off to the side like it had been thrown. Jinnai's shout of pain was barely a whisper in Shinji's ears. He kept moving forward, bringing the chair around again.
One of Jinnai's guards tried to get between them. Shinji smashed the chair down over his head, bending it in half. The guard crumpled at his feet and Shinji launched himself at Jinnai.
He was vaguely aware that he was screaming loud enough to tear at his throat, over and over.
A name.
He got ahold of Jinnai's uniform, and yanked him closer. Jinnai was shouting something in his face. Shinji smashed his forehead into Jinnai's nose. It crumbled with a satisfying crunch of bone.
A second guard was coming up on his right side. Shinji threw Jinnai's suddenly disoriented limp form at him and watched them both go down in a heap.
Another guard wrapped his arms around Shinji from behind. Shinji snapped his head back, feeling another crunch, and the guard's arms went limp and fell away. He turned and punched a fourth guard in the face, following it up with a kick that folded him in half. He turned back towards Jinnai.
He was still screaming.
A fifth guard, clawed hands raked across his eyes, and he fell out of the way, screaming. A sixth swung a truncheon at him. Shinji grabbed his hand, turning just enough to convert the guard's motion into a flip, and tossed him aside, right into a seventh guard just approaching. Both went down in a tangle of limbs and breaking bones.
He reached Jinnai again. The Secretary-General was just staggering to his feet when Shinji grabbed his uniform coat again and began landing punch after punch on his face.
"YOU KILLED HER! YOU KILLED ASUKA! YOU KILLED HER!"
He'd cost Jinnai several teeth before two BABYKA guards finally grabbed him from behind. They pulled him off, forcing him to turn to deal with them. The two men were easily 10cm taller and far more muscular than the young man in the ripped and bloodied Pilot's suit.
They lasted about ten seconds.
They were also the last guards still on their feet. The remaining techs and operators in the room just stared in shock.
He turned away from the broken and unconscious men and prepared to launch himself at Jinnai again, this time with the intent of not stopping until he could no longer punch. He stopped when the bullet smashed into his left shin, pure impact achieving what the pain from the first wound could not. He dropped to his knee, still screaming.
"YOU KILLED HER!"
Another bullet jerked his right shoulder as it just nicked the outside edge of his arm. The sound of the shot was finally audible as the pain of his leg at last forced him to grit his teeth against just screaming incoherently.
Jinnai had used the distraction of Shinji smashing the last couple guards to recover his pistol. He blinked out of one good eye and held his smoking pistol with his remaining unbroken arm less like a weapon and more like a talisman that would hopefully keep the screaming, bloody berserker in front of him at bay. He took advantage of the break in Shinji's shouting to shout back. "I've got all the power here, Ikari! I make all the decisions! I get what I want! And I want to know where the fuck you two morons found that giant red thing! And where the fuck did you get Eva Unit-01?!"
"You shot her...you killed...I...I didn't want it to end like this..." Shinji said, hardly listening to Jinnai's yelling.
"No one cares what you want, you spineless twit! If I wanted to know, I'd fucking ask you what you want!" Jinnai's uniform had a mottling of blood spatters all over its front, a macabre camouflage pattern. The dark pattern set off the white spittle flecking his lips.
"I want… her back," Shinji replied in a strange tone of voice. "I want her with me forever. And...I want to see you dead for hurting her."
Jinnai's sneer got bigger. "Well, since I'm the one holding the gun, unless you tell me what I want to hea-" Jinnai stopped talking very quickly. Most people do when someone puts the business end of an M1911 .45 caliber pistol to the back of their head. The sharp, clear click of the hammer being cocked just served to underline the implicit threat in the cool kiss of the barrel's metal against the back of his head.
"You want to see him dead, dear baka? I think we might be able to arrange that," Asuka cooed. "Secretary-General Jinnai is now on my shit list for what he just did, and I think I owe you a present for trying to take that shot for me. You kept your promise, Shinji. Thank you."
Jinnai started sweating. "You….you're dead! I shot you right through the heart! I watched you die! How…how…" he babbled.
"I am Asuka Langley Sohryu. 'I Will Fight Beyond Death' is the motto of the ship that bears my name, and they chose wisely. I've been dead before, Mister Secretary-General. I was ripped apart by an entire squadron of Mass Production Evas and eaten. And then the world ended. That did not stop me. You think shooting me in the heart will even slow me down? And then you threaten to kill my boyfriend? Tisk tisk," Asuka said lightly. "Now you're getting me angry."
"Your boyfriend? This isn't some fucking romantic comedy, you stupid bitch! Guar-OW!" Asuka slapped him in the temple with her pistol as she plucked his own out of his limp hand.
"Shut up, Jinnai. He's my boyfriend if I say he is. And like I said, he's a thousand times better in bed than you ever were. He got me off twice the first time he even touched me. You couldn't manage even once in two years. He's bigger, too."
"Sohryu, in about two seconds my GUARDS are going to shoot you both and this time I'm going to make sure it sticks!"
Asuka ignored his threats and kept right on going. "But you're right, this isn't some romantic comedy. We're not in junior high school anymore. It's silly to call him my boyfriend. So no more of that."
The awestruck smile that had spread across Shinji's face at her seeming resurrection dimmed in confusion. "Asuka?" he said in a hurt and confused voice.
She kept her eyes mostly on Jinnai and his hands, but flicked them to meet his long enough to give him a quick, fierce grin. "We should stop dancing around each other. We're both old enough to know better. Like when it's time to upgrade, say to 'fiancé'. What do you say, Shinji?" Asuka' kept the gun on Jinnai, but her intense gaze swung to meet his eyes. "Will you marry me?"
Pure shock ruled Shinji's expression now. His smile was still hanging on, now tinted with amazed hope and disbelief. "Wha….?"
"You kept your promise of owing me a life, but I don't feel like releasing you. I want you…I need you right beside me for good. For always. ...I hear that's what two people do when they love each other. You're mine…and I want to be yours. I love you."
The air shook without a sound again. There was the imperceptible sound of a bubble popping and a tension to the air that had been a constant, unnoticed background vanished.
"What the fuck was that?" Jinnai asked.
'I am… satisfied, Pilot Sohryu,' whispered a voice without sound.
Shinji and Asuka's eyes widened.
"And who the fuck said that? Enough! Guards! Someone blow this bitch's head off!" Jinnai ordered.
Nothing happened.
"Well?! Somebody shoot her!" Jinnai wisely still didn't move his head too much, lest he get shot by a reflexive squeeze by Asuka, but he did dart his glance around to the few guards around the room that were still conscious and intact enough to have struggled to their feet. They stood as perfectly still as their commander until one who had recovered his weapon slowly started to raise the rifle from low guard.
"Hekulade!" someone shouted far above them.
Jinnai looked up. "Who-?"
Then the roof fell in and the world was filled with the sound of explosions. A huge purple fist smashed in through the ceiling thirty meters to the side, covering the back part of the Operations Center away from the main screen in huge chunks of concrete. Jinnai and his guards hit the floor. The room filled with swirling smoke and dust.
Asuka and Shinji kept standing, grinning at each other. Even the world ending again couldn't break into their own little universe.
The explosions ceased. There was a strange sound of high-pitched hissing, like water hitting a superheated metal plate, and a flash of light too bright to look at lit up the smoke like a strobe light. The huge arm of Unit-01 moved enough to let a gap open up in the breached ceiling large enough for a man to fit through, and there was the sound of heavy metal footsteps approaching.
The smoke cleared, and Jinnai looked up into the gaping barrel of a nerve disruptor pistol. The hugely grinning woman holding it couldn't possibly be doing so, since she was already standing behind him, still holding a .45. Jinnai twisted his head around far enough to confirm that, yes, Asuka Langley Sohryu was still behind him, wearing her bloodstained and bullet-ripped Pilot's suit. And in front of him, wearing a matte-black suit of power armor with the helmet retracted to show her face.
"Well, look at this! Appears we got here just in the nick of time! What does that make us?" the armored Asuka said jauntily.
"Big damn heroes, love," answered a similarly armored Shinji from next to her, grinning.
"Ain't we just?" Asuka replied jauntily.
"What? What? What?" Jinnai said helplessly.
"Oh, shut up and go to sleep, you stupid little man," the armored woman said, and shot him in the face. A snapping and sparking electric blue nimbus briefly flashed around Jinnai's head. His eyes rolled up in their sockets and he crumpled to the floor, unconscious.
"Aww, I wanted to do that. After all, he shot me. And that hurt!" the Asuka with the .45 complained. She blinked, and turned to the bloodied Pilot behind her, still on his knees. "Well, you're down on one knee, which is good, but I'm the one who asked. And don't you ever get shot for me again!" She tucked the .45 into a holster at her thigh that wasn't there, and it vanished.
"Me?!" Shinji gasped through the pain. "What about you?! How… I… you got shot through the heart! You… you died! I… I thought you died? How?" He started to topple forward.
Asuka caught him. "Oh shit, you're still bleeding! Don't you dare die on me!" She turned her head. "Medic!"
Shinji shook his head. "I'm not going anywhere until I hear how you're not dead!" He started to cry. "You're not dead! You're not dead! Oh gods, Asuka, you're not dead!"
"I'm… still not clear on that myself," she admitted, cradling him against her. She looked down at the neat nine millimeter hole in her torn plugsuit. The front had a trickle of blood dripping down it's front, but there was no hole underneath. Her right hand and side were still heavily splashed with blood, though.
"Mmm, looks like a pretty good heal on a gunshot wound from the back, kid," the older Asuka said, kneeling beside them. Her armor made her seem twice as large. "However, your cute little idiot here is still bleeding pretty good from that fresh one in his leg I can see, so let's deal with that." She pulled his leg out from under him and pointed her armored finger at the freely bleeding hole in his shinbone.
A cloudy white glob of gel the size of a chicken egg oozed out of her fingertip and dropped into the hole, quickly sealing it over. The bleeding stopped instantly. Shinji's face cleared as the pain stopped a moment later. "What the-"
"Imperial Navy grade healing nanite gel. Much better than the basic safety set you two are running. You'll be fine in a few minutes. You're going to be hungry enough to eat an entire Angel in an hour, though. Thirsty too. They take a lot of water," the older Asuka said. She stood up and smirked. "So… you two were in the middle of him receiving a well-deserved chewing out for getting shot?"
"Basic safety set... Rayana, you sneaky..." Asuka blinked and looked back at Shinji. "Hey, yeah! You stop that! Never again!"
"You got shot too!"
"Only once! You got shot three times!"
"My gods, it's like looking in a mirror," the older Shinji said dryly. The older Asuka reached back behind her without looking and flicked him in the side of the head. His smirk didn't even flicker.
There were more and more of the power armored figures moving around the room now, disarming the few of Jinnai's guards who even still had weapons and shepherding them out of the doors to the back of the room. The older Shinji looked around at the armored troops swirling around, then nodded, tapping a spot on his gauntlet. All at once, the matte-black armor of all the troops in sight shifted to a glossy black, with gold trimmed insignia and markings appearing.
"There. Now that we all look a bit more presentable, and our Marines are securing this place, we can introduce ourselves, though I'm sure you already know 'who' we are to some extent," the older Shinji said, still very dry. "Junior Fleet Captain of the Red Shinji Ikari-Sohryu, Co-Captain of the HMS Shinji Ikari, at your service. The sarcastic lady doing your healing is Junior Fleet Captain of the Red Asuka Langley Ikari-Sohryu, also Co-Captain of the HMS Shinji Ikari, and as I'm sure you've put together, my lovely wife. Charmed, I'm sure."
Asuka left off staring at the amused older version of herself to look at the armored Shinji. "Ah... yeah, I kind of guessed most of that. But how did you get... wait, that little whisper..." She looked at the bloody Shinji in her arms. "Wondergirl dropped the block?!"
Captain Ikari-Sohryu shrugged. "We've been on hot standby for a while," he said, "And suddenly, whatever was blocking portals just dissipated, and we jumped in. The ship's in orbit a bit past Luna right now, and we've got the HMS Howard Florey inbound in about 4 hours to start on local reconstruction, so we're here to back you two up. I...oh, wow."
The remaining clouds of dust and smoke in the room were glowing brightly, lighting up everything as the brilliant winged form dropped in through the hole in the ceiling alongside Unit-01's still positioned arm. The new arrival landed heavily, then staggered over towards them, his wings retracting into his back in a cloud of feathers. "You're... still alive?" TJ rasped. His eyes were still glowing points of light, but his face was haggard. "Good..."
"TJ? Gott, man, stand down!" Asuka cried. "You can't have much time left! We're alright! We've got... er..." she looked back at the armored couple. "Um, 'ourselves' here to cover things!"
"I... managed to... stretch... things out... with Unit-01's... S2 Organ..." he panted. "Infinite soul-aspected energy... when we ran it through... your father... bought me an hour... But yes... I need..." He straightened up and saluted the older couple. "Permission to withdraw to Avalon and fall down, Sir and Ma'am?"
The older Asuka looked at him. She opened her mouth to speak, then halted, narrowing her eyes at him. "Sweet Empress's Tits, you're soulburning?" she exclaimed. "Jesus, yes, get yourself out of here immediately, Lieutenant! And stop that! Shinji, flash back home and tell them we've got another stupid Prince coming in hot and burned!"
The older Shinji muttered something into his suit's collar. TJ just nodded and waved his hand to his left. A glowing portal like a pool of shining liquid stood on it's side, and he staggered through it. The Imperial Naval officer shook her head as it shrank closed behind him.
"Goddamn, Imperial Family members are all crazy. Wait... Unit-01 and 'your father'? Fuck, does that mean Commander Asshole is in that thing?" She pointed at the huge purple and black arm still extending down from the ceiling.
"Um... yes," the Shinji on the floor confirmed. "Going by 'Private Rokubungi'. He volunteered to... Pilot it and activate the Core, when we needed all the backup we could get."
"My my, that must have been painful," the armored Shinji said. He smiled darkly. "Good."
"Especially if they were running the S2 Organ wide-open for power to supplement his soulburning," the older Asuka added. "All that power would have had to run right through the Core, and the soul in it. It would have been like having to grab onto a live high-voltage line and hang on. Serves him right."
"I still don't feel like dealing with my father right now," Shinji said tiredly.
"Me either," Asuka agreed. "I want to talk to him about as much as... Hey!" She looked at Shinji. "Wonderbitch dropped the block when I asked you... She can hear us!"
Asuka looked at the ceiling. "I know you can hear us, First Child! Show yourself! You've got a lot to answer for!" she shouted angrily.
"As do you, Pilot Sohryu," Rei said coldly from midair five meters above and in front of her. There was no transition or sound. She was just suddenly there, still dressed in Tokyo-3 Central Middle School's uniform. "But you have convinced me you truly care for Pilot Ikari. I... withdraw my objection to your... companionship."
Rei looked closer at the quartet below her. "...why are there two of you? And two Pilot Ikaris?"
"Maybe I'm just too awesome to be contained to one body," the armored Asuka said dryly. "Hello, Wondergirl. I hear you've been making life difficult for my analog and her baka. Please stop being such a bitch, and be more like our Rei, hmm? I named my eldest daughter after my best friend, you know. It'd be a shame if she saw her namesake being such a raging asshole."
Rei narrowed her eyes at her. "...get off my planet."
"Make me, you-"
"Gott, it is like looking in a mirror," the older Shinji muttered darkly, and clamped his hand over his wife's mouth. "Hi Rei, nice to see you, lovely to meet a new copy of our old friend. Asuka, please do not antagonize the local demigoddess?" he said quickly.
Rei pursed her lips, but dropped it. She looked at the visibly older man. "You are not the Pilot Ikari I knew. Who are you?"
"We work for Emperor Daniel, who I understand you've spoken to. We're from a world were the three of us got along a lot better," he offered, "and we're here to help 'ourselves'. When you removed that block, we dropped in just in time." He carefully took his hand of his wife's mouth. "'Let's all be good friends', eh? Right, Asuka?"
Captain Ikari-Sohryu grumbled but nodded. "'If I am ordered to, I will,'" she muttered at him. "We're not here to fight, Wondergirl. Just to help out the 'us' that you left high and dry when y-"
Shinji cleared his throat. "Er... thank you for removing the block, Rei. I... I did try to tell you Asuka and I were... not what you thought."
Rei frowned just slightly. "You said that, yes. But she was still closed. Now..." Rei looked both satisfied and sad. "Now she is open, completely. Your bond is now fully mutual. I cannot deny you both what you want when it is so." She looked at Asuka. "But heed my warning, Pilot Sohryu; You will always give him all of you, or I will..." Rei chewed on her words for a moment. "...be upset with you."
"For an all-seeing goddess, you don't listen too well, First," Asuka bit back at her. "I meant every single thing I just said. I admit it. I love this baka of mine more than I can even put into words. He's stood by me at my most intolerably bitchy, suicidal, and insecure, and loves me anyhow. He's bled for me, fought for me, and was ready to die for me. He's the only man who's ever made me happy to be a woman and happy to be me. He's going to be the father of my children. I'm not letting him go for anyone or anything, ever. He's mine. I asked him to marry me be...beca-..."
She drifted to a halt and looked at Shinji. "You haven't answered me."
Shinji blinked. "I... oh! Um..."
The armored Shinji leaned down towards his ear and loudly stage-whispered. "Piece of advice, 'me'. Say 'yes'. Trust me, you'll like it."
His wife poked him in the side of the head as he straightened back up. "Dork."
He grinned back at her and blew her a kiss.
Shinji looked up at Asuka. She was still cradling him in her arms, blood all over both of them, mud and more blood matting her hair into a snarled rat's nest of filth, and the shredded and now bullet-holed remnants of her Pilot's suit barely visible under all the mess. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. "Yes. Forever yes. I've loved you for ye-"
He didn't get any further. Asuka had decided she wanted a kiss right away.
"Ah, it is like looking in a mirror, dear baka," the armored Asuka sighed. "Covered in blood, the place is on fire, and there's an Evangelion smashed in through the ceiling. Just like old times."
"We have terrible habits," her husband agreed. "Now, let's get these two back to Avalon for a wash before the blood dries and they end up glued together, since I don't think we're separating them for a while." He shot a look up at Rei. "They'll be back in just a few hours, this side's time, Rei. Trust me. This is their world, and everyone knows it."
Rei didn't look happy, but nodded. And vanished.
"Captain Soryu-Ayanami, one portal to home, if you please," Captain Ikari-Sohryu said to the air. "Their Majesties want these two back for an audience."
A new glowing portal opened up next to the still-kissing couple, and swept over them. When it faded away, the smiling redhead in armor turned to her husband. "So, feel like going to scare the fuck out of an analog of your asshole dad?"
"You say the sexiest things, liebling," he replied with a smile. "Lead on, my captain."
Their helmets snapped shut and they began to float towards the arm of Unit-01. Asuka shot a look back. "Oh, and have someone pick up that jackass I knocked out. I think our young analogs will want to have a sharp word with him later."
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Author's Note, 20APR21: A little preface: I began writing A Crown of Stars while on my first Afghanistan deployment. I fell into Eva fics on accident, as a way to kill time. That was 2012. A Throne of Bayonets was great, but... dark. I finished it, sat back, and thought 'You know... Shinji and Asuka deserve a happier ending. ...I'm going to give them one.'
That's where it started. On the way home, my military flight stopped in Kuwait, so we could switch to a civilian charter jet for the rest of the way to the US. I wasn't even a quarter into ACoS by that point, but the ending fight popped into my head, and wouldn't go away. It was good, but I knew I wouldn't need it for a long while. So to save it, I sat down and wrote the whole thing out, from Asuka getting shot onward. That's what you're about to read here. Everything from Jinnai saying "I've got all the power here, Ikari!" was written 7 years ago in the Al Asad Airbase USO, waiting to go home. It's been a long wait, but this is what all of ACoS has been leading to for 4 years. This is nearly a quarter of a million words to see these two have a happier end than AToB left them with.
I hope you enjoy.