X-X-X
CHAPTER 1
X-X-X
"Stupid fucking emergency protocol!"
Asuka seethed as she glared at the notice board. Every single train was marked with a red delayed light - including the one she had intended to be on fifteen minutes ago.
Had she been the sort of person to notice such things, she would have found it odd that the platform was utterly deserted but for a cute but mousy-looking boy with brown hair - and an oddly neat button-down shirt - at the far end. However, she was not, and thus she did not. Instead, she studiously ignored the boy, turning on her heel and marching off the platform.
The whole train station was abandoned. It hadn't exactly been busy, but now even the employees had abandoned the ticket stands and offices.
There wasn't even the sound of cicadas.
I get that it's a sleepy suburban town, but this is just creepy! Asuka picked up her pace, walking briskly across the foyer and out the main door.
The street outside was just as abandoned. One or two cars were parked, empty, on the sides of the road. The shutters were closed on every visible window, on every building. Other than herself, not a soul walked under the sun.
How is this possible? "Delayed due to emergency protocol"... what does that even mean? What the hell is this alleged protocol, anyway? Scheisse, am I in an evacuated zone?
A soft beeping brought her out of her thoughts, and her head whipped around. The boy from the platform was tapping away at a pay phone just a few meters away from her - although, judging from his frustrated sigh, he wasn't getting anything useful from it.
She turned to look in the other direction, and her brow furrowed in confusion.
In the center of the street stood another human, looking almost out of place in the deserted townscape. She appeared to be a girl somewhat shorter than Asuka herself, with skin skirting the border between fashionably pale and sickly ashen, and odd azure-blue hair. She was wearing a bland school uniform and standing quite stiffly.
The loud, harsh sound of a flock of birds taking off startled the German girl. When she looked back, the apparition had vanished without a trace.
What the hell? Eh… maybe I just imagined it. Creepy, though.
Then the earth shook.
Asuka and the brown-haired boy whipped their eyes away from their respective distractions, homing in on the pass between two mountains close by - as an immense monster, like something out of the darker side of bronze-age mythology, stepped ponderously around the mountain.
The leviathan was as tall as an office building and at least as broad at the shoulder, although its limbs were oddly spindly, almost like the legs of a spider or scorpion. Its carapace was all in black but for the hideous, birdlike white mask situated between its shoulders.
The boy yelped and stepped back, even though the monster was close to a mile away. Asuka's reaction was not as pronounced, but she still felt her her hands clench and her spine shiver as a jolt of fear run through her gut.
That has to be an Angel. This is really happening. The angels are here. This is what I've trained for all my life, and for all that, I'm helpless as a fucking kitten right now.
Asuka had decided to come to Tokyo-3 a week ahead of time, to familiarize herself a little with the city before she jumped back into training. If she'd known an angel was going to attack that day, she would have done everything in her somewhat limited power to get Unit 02's shipment moved up as well.
What is NERV-J going to do? … well, they have the prototypes and a test pilot, but can they really take down an angel with half-cooked Evangelions and a sync test jockey? They need a real pilot to beat this thing, and I'm the only one in Japan right now!
A cacophony of deep booming noises washed over the deserted town, and Asuka squinted at the giant. There were dozens of Harriers and VTOLs - tiny, at this distance - swarming around it like flies, and judging by the peppering of smoke plumes on the thing's carapace, they were bombarding it with missiles. Not a single one left so much as a mark on it.
The angel raised its hand, and a ray of white light lanced two Harriers out of the sky in one blow. It dropped its hand apparently satisfied with the demonstration.
Asuka noticed a larger aircraft, probably a fixed-wing heavy bomber, approaching on a wide flyby trajectory. At the lowest point in the shallow swoop, a huge cruise missile - as long as the fuselage of a small jet aircraft - detached from the bomber's underbelly.
God in Heaven! I didn't think they had anything that lethal in NERV-J's arsenal. It might actually be enough to scratch the beast!
The missile streaked towards the angel, which lifted its hand to meet it. The warhead and the angel's hand collided with a titanic explosion.
A minute later, the turbulent jetwash from the swarm of attack aircraft cleared the smoke away, and the angel stood utterly untouched.
"YOUR WEAPONS CANNOT DESTROY ME."
The voice was so low and distorted it was barely intelligible, sounding more like a rockslide than a string of actual words. Asuka only heard it at all because it was significantly louder than the distant explosions - and, curiously enough, was in german.
There was only one entity it could have come from.
The angel glowed with an eldritch aura that Asuka could only describe as magic, and rose off the ground as if weightless. The angel floated forward in a smooth parabola with, apparently, total impunity to the ceaseless barrage of siege weaponry.
Is it coming towards - ?
Asuka's reflexes cut off her own train of thought. She spun on her heel and began sprinting away from the advancing monster as fast as she could.
It wasn't fast enough.
Asuka was an athletic girl, but no human could be expected to outrun a lovecraftian monstrosity, whether or not it was flying. Before she'd even made ten steps, a careening VTOL crashed into the ground a hundred paces ahead of her - and a second later, an immense black foot slammed down on the wrecked aircraft.
The fuel tanks ignited with a searing flash and an earsplitting boom, and Asuka's senses dissolved into a white blur and silence but for a faint ringing. She staggered as the blast wave hit her, and dimly felt her knees getting skinned as they hit the pavement.
The fadeout began to bleed away. The monster hadn't moved - its attention seemed focused on the aircraft, which were still intent on their futile assault.
"I - miss - are you alright, miss?" The mousy boy was kneeling beside her, offering his arm in support.
Asuka answered him with a swift punch to the kidney, and pushed herself to her feet as he slumped sideways in agony. I don't need anyone's help! Especially not some dumb provincial boy!
There was a screech of rubber loud enough to cut through the incessant booming of the explosions, and the foot of the monstrosity was abruptly obscured. Asuka blinked, registering a blue sports car directly in front of her.
The passenger door slammed open. "Get in!" A voice shouted over the din.
Asuka dashed forward without thinking, collapsing into the seat without ceremony. A second behind her, the backseat door opened and shut in a similar fashion.
"Shinji - and Asuka?!" The woman squeaked. Finally treated to a clear view, Asuka's memory clicked: Captain Misato Katsuragi, Operations Director of NERV-J. We've met a few times in the past. "I was told I was picking up one kid, not two - and definitely not a pilot!"
"Well, thank me later, then," Asuka snapped back. "Because it sure as hell looks like you need a trained pilot right now!"
"Don't get ahead of yourself. The UN hasn't authorized NERV to deploy Eva in combat yet." Misato maintained a surprisingly cool tone, for someone hightailing it out of a war zone with the pedal on the floor. "Hey, Shinji! You are Ikari Shinji, right? You were the one I was sent to retrieve."
Shinji… Ikari? It can't be the same Ikari as…
"Oh - um, yes," the boy - Shinji - managed. "Father just told me to come to Tokyo-3. I don't know anything more about any of this."
"Your father is the Supreme Commander of NERV, Shinji," Misato replied. Well god damn, it's the same Ikari all right. "Here. This'll explain a lot. It also contains your ID card."
The purple-haired woman tossed Shinji a package that Asuka was familiar with - a NERV new employee package, complete with a 'comprehensive' rundown of what the organization did and stood for.
"Anyway," Asuka hissed, annoyed at the foppish boy's presence. "If the UN hasn't authorized Eva, what do they expect to field instead? They have nothing that'll scratch an AT field, not even a weak one!"
"I have a hunch as to what," Misato replied. "But I don't think they'll use it for another -"
Her eyes flickered to the side, looking back over the mountain they'd successfully circumnavigated - where the angel itself was hidden, but the attack plane formations could be seen clear as day. Or at least, could have been seen clear as day, until they began scattering - leaving only a single high-altitude heavy bomber, just like before.
"I was wrong!" Misato stomped on the brakes and switched off the car at the same moment, and Asuka nearly choked on her seatbelt as the momentum viciously threw her forward. "They're going to use an N2 bomb, right now! Stay down!"
Asuka's blood turned to ice.
N2 bomb. Scheisse, their last resort before Eva is a gottverdammt nuclear airstrike. I really wish that didn't make as much sense as it does.
The red-haired pilot frantically punched her seatbelt, and barely even registered annoyance when Misato grabbed her collar and yanked her flat onto the seat. Shinji hadn't had his seatbelt fastened in the first place, and the hard stop had driven him painfully into the back of Asuka's seat; he opted to simply stay on the floor of the car and curl into a ball.
The light was what came first - like a blink of the eye of god, a flash of unimaginable brilliance that far outshone the sun. None of the car's occupants were even looking in that direction - and yet they saw the world flicker into ultra-contrast black and white as the tip of the fireball flashed just over the peak of the mountain.
Well, we just got hit with hard X-rays, Asuka thought fuzzily. I sure hope it wasn't a dangerous dose. We're behind a decent-sized mountain and a steel car, right? Are these windows radiation proofed?
An immense plume of glowing orange smoke and dust shot skyward in the wake of the initial fireball, already mushrooming as it gained altitude.
Then the shockwave hit.
Later, Asuka would describe it as "like having your head wedged between the barrels of two firing Howitzers, but louder." In truth, the word loud didn't do it justice. It was literally a solid, physical wall of sound, picking the car up and bodily throwing it sideways by sheer force of air compression. The impact was like a sheet of lead pressing down on her body, and alongside the bruises from being tossed about inside the car, she felt a sharp stinging in her left ear that was almost certainly a ruptured eardrum.
Asuka was familiar with the concept of superweapons - after all, she was trained to pilot one. But the titanic biomachines known as Evangelion were, as they were often described, stolen from the domain of God. Built of twisted flesh and animated by science that bordered on sorcery, they were distant and arcane things even to the very people who built and piloted them. The destruction she'd just witnessed, on the other hand, was purely from the hands of man: brutal, dirty, archaic, and viciously in-your-face with its results. A relatively simple collision of fissile materials in the presence of a little metallic lithium, and one could create an explosion comparable to twenty-five million tons of trinitrotoluene.
It would have been a humbling thought, had Asuka not been allergic to humility.
The car had stopped rolling in a precarious position, balanced uneasily on its side. Asuka shook her head before she realized Misato was talking to her.
"What?" She said, turning her good ear towards the captain. "Say all that again."
Misato huffed. "I said, let's see if we can crawl out and right the car."
X-X-X
They'd 'requisitioned' a bank of batteries from an auto shop to keep the car's battered engine running, since its internal power source had been destroyed by the EMP. The shop had been evacuated, so Misato hadn't had anyone to show her NERV credentials to; she'd deemed it worth breaking procedure and had taken the batteries anyway. Shinji had complained, stating that it wasn't okay to take them.
I think I'm beginning to see what kind of a kid this Ikari is.
"So," Misato said in a clipped voice. "Care to tell me why NERV-G sent the second child a full seven days ahead of schedule and without warning us?"
Asuka folded her arms. "No," she said sulkily.
"Watch it, Warrant Officer Soryu." Asuka cringed - being addressed by rank, rather than 'pilot,' usually meant she was in deeper trouble than usual. "Care to run that by me again?"
"… I just wanted to see the place before the whole settling-in procedure, okay?" The German girl scowled. "You know how long and annoying that'll be. Paperwork, sync and activation tests, sitting in waiting rooms. It's boooooring. I wanted some time to get used to Tokyo first."
"Tokyo-3 to you - the original Tokyo was nowhere near Hakone. And look how well your little plan turned out!" Misato clenched her teeth. "If you'd been killed back there, we'd have been down by fifty percent of our primary military strength just like that!"
"Look, if I'd known an Angel was going to pick today, I'd have waited!"
"Uh. Misato-san?"
"What?!" Asuka and Misato yelled in unison. Shinji cringed.
"It's just that, uh, the, I mean your, your phone is ringing."
Misato snapped her phone up to her ear with what had to be record speeds, sliding the 'answer' pattern as she did so. "What?!" She yelled.
"Wow, someone's in a good mood." The phone was not on speaker mode, but it was still more than loud enough for Asuka to pick up the sound if she angled her head correctly. "I was just calling to check on your progress. Do you have the boy yet?"
"Oh, I have Shinji," Misato snapped, her voice lowering to a carefully restrained growl. "As well as… well, you'll see. Have a car-carrier express train ready for us, will you?"
"I don't like your idea of surprises, Misato. What are you hiding?"
"Nothing, nothing!" Misato hastily replied. "Just dispatch the train, okay?"
"Oh, it's already done. Getting you back here is extremely high on the Commander's priority list right now." There was a pause. "The nuke cut it up a bit, set it back some, but ultimately didn't do any lasting damage. Sachiel's already close to being ready to attack again - and the UN has officially authorized the Commander to deploy Eva. We need an operations director down here ASAP."
"You aren't planning on deploying Rei, are you?" Misato sounded flabbergasted. "She's in no shape to pilot! And besides, you'd be putting her in a unit she barely knows!"
Rei? Must be the test pilot… so she's injured, huh? That's what happens when you let amateurs into the entry plug, I guess.
"Hopefully, we won't have to, but if it comes to that we'll do it. Rei's safety, or even survival, comes second to the survival of the human race."
Misato gritted her teeth. "That's cold, Ritsuko. You're talking about a child here."
"Of course it's cold, and I'm talking about a soldier. Soldiers get ordered to their deaths all the time."
Asuka decided she'd heard enough, and poked Misato in the ribs. "Hey," she hissed. "I'm a pilot, and I've gotta be a better one than this Rei of yours. Just deploy me instead."
Misato's eyes narrowed as she glanced at Asuka, than back to the road. Her expression was unreadable.
"Ritsuko, if you haven't done it already, stand by on waking Rei up. It's just possible there's another option on hand."
"Oh, Rei's still sleeping like a baby, and on the Commander's orders no less. He has an idea that's… well, hardly pleasant, but we're out of pleasant options. Nice to know you have a backup scheme too; I can't wait to tell you why it won't work."
"What?!" Misato hissed back. "You don't even know what it is! What makes you so sure it won't work?"
"Because it's you who came up with it, of course. Now step on it! Sachiel isn't going to wait up for our sakes!"
X-X-X
The train had dropped them off in a parking garage. The elevator into the complex had borne the NERV logo and motto in bold lettering on the door, and the interior had been lit by red light.
I'll give that to NERV-J - they know how to set the tone of the place. It feels appropriate, for the epicenter of humanity's only hope.
That had been more than half an hour ago.
"Are you sure we aren't lost?" Shinji whined from behind them. "I'm almost certain we've passed over this… conveyor belt… before, at least once."
"I'm actually gonna side with the wimp on this one," Asuka grumbled. "This all looks pretty familiar."
"They make these systems to be used!" Misato loudly proclaimed, not meeting either child's eyes as she boldly stepped off the conveyor belt. Asuka and Shinji had to scramble to catch up with her, though Asuka privately suspected that Misato had stepped off more or less at random.
"Look, there's a fucking Angel attacking us," Asuka snapped back, as she chased Misato up to the next set of doors. "I don't think we have time to be wasting!"
The steel plates hissed open.
"Funny you should say that…" The blonde-haired woman adjusted the angle of her gaze, meeting Asuka's eyes. "... Pilot Soryu."
Asuka stiffened, her back reflexively straightening to something that a blind and intoxicated officer might have called 'standing at attention.' The second child had always had a problem with respecting authority, but Dr. Ritsuko Akagi bypassed respect and went straight to fear. While the woman had never actually physically harmed Asuka, the pilot was well aware that their families had bad blood between them - and Ritsuko's cold, scalpel-like intellect terrified people who she didn't have a grudge against.
"How expedient of you to join us, Asuka," the doctor murmured. Somehow, she managed to remain intimidating while dressed in an immaculate lab coat hastily draped over a one-piece swimsuit. "It's truly a shame your red beast wasn't infected with the same impatience. I wouldn't have even called it bothersome, this time."
Asuka bristled at the slight. "Hey, Misato already chewed me out for that," she bit back. "And I'm off duty until Moloch - I mean, Unit Two - lands in New Yokosuka, so I can be wherever the hell I please."
"At this distance, you're too far to constitute green standby. So in fact, you're in dereliction of duty, and your Evangelion is currently an expensive dead weight with no defensive capabilities in an emergency." Ritsuko looked up at Misato, apparently done with the German pilot. "Misa- ahem. Captain Katsuragi, I see your map-reading skills are as keen as ever. Still, you managed to retrieve Shinji at least; thanks for that. Follow me."
Misato blinked, but fell into step beside Ritsuko. "Where?"
"Where else? Holding cage one." Ritsuko's strides were sharp and quick.
X-X-X
The room they'd stepped into was dark, and surprisingly cold - barely warmer than a walk-in refrigerator. If the echo was any indication, the room was very large.
The hallways had been floored in polished concrete. An abrupt change in the cadence of their footfalls suggested they were now walking on metal.
Cage one. If this isn't where the concept model is being held, I'll eat my clips.
"There's no need for such theatrics, Commander," Ritsuko called into the darkness. "Turn the lights on already."
Many meters overhead, dozens of fluorescent light fixtures snapped on. Shinji shrieked, leaping backwards and colliding with Misato - almost throwing the captain off balance. Asuka suppressed a chuckle at his reaction.
What a wimp. Okay, I yelped when I first met Moloch, but I didn't jump half a mile like that.
She turned her eyes to the beast, now plainly visible in the lit cage. Only the head and shoulders were visible - the walkway was actually a bridge, suspended just above the containment coolant that the unit was submerged in - but the head was the main distinctive feature of any given unit anyway.
So this is Evangelion Unit One… she doesn't look any smaller than Moloch, so she must be close to as strong, but I have to wonder how she handles. Asuka examined the sleeping giant critically, noting the red ID markings: the word ISHTAR printed in comparatively tiny Latin lettering just above the large '01' on the gorget. Needs more red paint than just that, but she's a pretty scary monster as she is. Nice touch, that horn. Yeah, I can work with that.
"Shinji." A man's voice echoed through the cage, deep and devoid of emotion.
Shinji? Why would anyone be talking to that - oh. It's the Commander himself. I guess that's why.
There was an observation deck set in the ceiling just above the eva's head. The figure standing there was lit from behind, casting his features into shadow but for a pair of orange sunglasses.
No one there needed to see his face anyway. One could not mistake the presence of Gendo Ikari, the Commander of NERV's Japan branch and Supreme Commander of NERV worldwide.
"… Father," came the very, very hesitant reply.
Is there some kind of history between them? This isn't exactly the warmest reunion I've ever seen.
Gendo did not answer, however, and the silence was immediately filled by Shinji's surprised squeak as Ritsuko swiftly pinned two A10 interface nodes onto his hair and produced a tiny handheld walkie-talkie. "Maya, echo Ishtar's interface headset and tell me how long it'll take to compile an uplink driver for the subject."
The clips beeped, and a minute later, the walkie-talkie crackled. "Subject's patterns are surprisingly close to Rei's, so I think I can reuse a lot of the basic data files; I can have a driver ready in less than half an hour if I start now. Is this a new pilot, Senpai?"
"Affirmative, Maya. Do you have the complete echo scan?"
"Yes, Senpai. It's compiling now."
"Good. Hang on." Shinji squeaked again as Ritsuko swatted his hands away from the pins, where he'd been about to undo them himself; she pulled them off, whistled loudly, and tossed them to Asuka. The girl barely reacted in time.
"Put those on, Pilot," she said. "And yes, I'm sure it pains you, but you will have to take off Moloch's clips for this."
Screw you too, bitch. Asuka huffed quietly, but reached up to remove the red A10-adapted clips from her two ponytails. Her hair immediately fell into her face, and she cursed quietly in German as she slid the white pins into the appropriate places on her hair.
"Maya, echo again and give me a new estimate."
A brief silence, and then - "I'm sorry, Senpai… this one's nothing like the other. I can't use any of the established presets; it's going to have to be built from scratch. It could be hours."
Gottverdammt! I was born to pilot these beasts, and now at the moment of truth we don't have the fucking time to get one ready for me?! Doesn't that just fucking figure!
"Thank you, Maya. Queue that task to start after you're done with the first compile. Ritsuko out." The doctor pocketed the walkie-talkie, then arched her eyebrow at Misato. "Looks like I win again. Your idea won't work. Mine will. How many drinks do you owe me now?"
Misato didn't answer. Slowly, she looked at Shinji, then back to Ritsuko.
"Yes," Ritsuko said shortly, her tone flat.
"No!" Misato looked horrified. "He's never even seen an Eva before today - assuming he can even synchronize enough to move it, which I doubt, Sachiel will rip him apart!"
"There can be no argument on this." The cold, harsh voice echoed from the observation deck once more. "Shinji. As the third viable child identified by the Marduk Institute, you will pilot Evangelion Unit One."
Shinji blinked, shook his head, and then lifted his shoulders. "That's it?" He said, his voice cracking. "This is why you called me here?"
Whiny prick's acting like it isn't a privilege to pilot Eva, Asuka grumbled to herself. This is the Third Child, huh? Scheisse, that means I'm gonna have to work with him from now on…
"I summoned you because I needed you, Shinji," Gendo said, his voice calm. "Now, above us stands an angel poised to destroy all mankind. No one else can stop it; you can."
"No! No, I can't!" Shinji yelled back. "I don't know anything about this - like Misato said, I've never even seen one of these before!"
"You will be instructed."
Shinji straightened his back. "No!" He said, his voice edged with bitter petulance. "I'm not doing it."
"We have no time for this, Shinji." Gendo's voice betrayed no trace of emotion. "Get in the entry plug or go away. If you're determined not to be useful, I'll not have you getting in the way of the launch crews."
Shinji looked like he'd been slapped in the face, and he sagged, his gaze coming to rest on the floor. He gave no sign of responding.
The bridge shuddered slightly, and the adults present looked towards the roof. "It must have sensed our location," Gendo murmured, his voice amplified by the observation deck speakers.
"Just get in the fucking Eva, arschgesicht," Asuka hissed, laying deliberate emphasis on both the German and English curses. "I'm not gonna die on the sidelines because you lost your nerve. Do it, or I'll have you begging for the Angel to vaporize you by the time I'm done."
Shinji drew back from Asuka's glare, but didn't answer; he still made no move towards the upper bridge.
The cage shook again. Ripples spread over the red liquid.
Gendo reached into his pocket, pulling out his phone. "Fuyutsuki? … yes. I need you to wake up Rei and have her brought to Holding Cage One." A pause. "She's not dead, or comatose, is she? … then she'll do. We're out of other options."
Beside Asuka, Shinji began muttering. "I knew it," he whispered. "I knew I wasn't needed after all."
Ritsuko pulled out her walkie-talkie and switched the channel. "Control, reconfigure Unit One for the First Child. Prepare and stand by for a solo scramble from the emergency urban exits."
The doors at the other end of the bridge opened, and Asuka turned. Let's see what this first child is all about -
And then she blinked in momentary confusion. Instead of a teenager in a plugsuit, there were two adult figures in medical outfits pushing a gurney.
Herr im Himmel… Misato implied she was injured, but I didn't realize she meant knocking on death's door!
A thick band of bandages pressed dressings against multiple vicious skull injuries - blue hair, I swear there's something familiar about that - and another bandage entirely concealed the pilot's left eye. Her right arm was bandaged; her left was in a cast from the wrist almost to the shoulder.
She was wearing a barely recognizable plugsuit - it was loose, it lacked sleeves, and bore the words Emergency Medical Support Suit where most plugsuits would have their signature unit number. Such a thing was a standard backup kept in every entry plug, under the hope that it would never be needed. This one was even less standard: the material over the pilot's abdomen and the entire left leg had been roughly cut away, replaced with even more bandages. Almost every dressing bore distressingly crimson stains.
The nurses stepped back, retreating out of the cage and away from secrets far above their pay grade. The pilot - Rei - was left alone on the gurney.
"Rei," Gendo said, his voice cold as ever. "The backup plan has fallen through. It is now on you to pilot Unit One."
Somehow, Rei pushed herself up on her bandaged elbow. "Yes, Commander," she replied, her voice soft and almost mechanical despite her labored breathing. "Unit… Unit One is less responsive to me, and it… it lacks the hardware to compensate. I cannot g-, guarantee, a satisfactory sync score."
Is this dummkopf suicidal, or just totally prepared to die for humanity? Asuka could only stare as Rei rolled herself over one-handed and made to swing her single uninjured leg off the gurney. On one hand, I gotta respect that level of sheer grit, but on the other, in that state the sync stress will squeeze her brain out of her skull through the top of her spine!
"Noted," Gendo replied. "Major, help Rei up to -"
Boom.
"Sachiel's assault has breached the geofront!" The PA system crackled. "Estimating T minus 5 minutes until the breach is large enough for it to enter!"
If the last series of assaults had elicited tremors, this one qualified as a quake. The bridge shivered and twisted underfoot; Misato and Ritsuko stumbled, while Shinji fell. There was a series of loud crashing noises and splashes as fluorescent light ballasts tore loose and fell.
At the peak of the cascade, there was a sudden and loud creaking, then an echoing boom - both with a decidedly metallic cadence. The bridge shook even harder, and the medical gurney jostled - then tipped outright.
Scheisse! If she falls, she'll probably flatline right there!
Asuka had no problems standing on the misbehaved bridge - she'd trained for nearly a decade to pilot Eva, and that included all appropriate agility practice. As the gurney and its helpless passenger fell, Asuka was already dashing forwards.
She doesn't weigh much, was Asuka's first thought. While the girl had a broader skeleton than Asuka herself, she was underweight almost to the point of emaciation. She's cold, too, really cold. If she wasn't breathing I'd say she was dead already.
The lights flickered, and there was the sound of rushing liquid behind her. Asuka ignored the distraction, shifting her arm behind Rei's head in an effort to prevent spinal stress as she put her down.
Rei wasn't a cooperative patient, however, and she twisted in Asuka's grip - whether a misguided attempt to get to her feet, or simply twitching from the pain of her injuries, Asuka couldn't say. She coughed as she did so, and a trickle of fresh blood made its way down from the corner of her mouth.
Finally, the injured pilot's good eye snapped open - lacking focus, her gaze jittered aimlessly for a minute before settling on Asuka.
Oh, fuck me! That's creepy! Asuka fought the urge to drop the other pilot and scramble away. I thought maybe they were reddish-brown or albino pink, and it was just a trick of the light - but fuck, nope, red as the fucking blood on her bandages! How does that even happen?!
Rei squirmed again, and Asuka gritted her teeth. "Stay down, arschloch," she snarled. "If you're so fucking determined to bleed out, at least let me get you back on the fucking gurney before you do it."
Moving with exaggerated caution, Asuka lowered Rei to the floor and slid her arms out from under her - with a parting push on her shoulder, warning the wounded pilot not to try to get up again.
As she stood, she glanced back at Shinji - and did a double take.
Unit 01's colossal arm was curled neatly around the umbilical bridge, and her armored hand - large enough to crush a sizeable car in its grip - was hanging in the air directly above Shinji. The wreckage of a former lighting fixture lay around him, none of it within a meter of where he stood. Misato and Ritsuko were staring, apparently dumbstruck.
The vambrace of the exposed arm dripped coolant, and had numerous torn cables and pipes still attached to the maintenance nodes. Most damning of all, the entire left wall of the room now had a rectangular hole with torn edges in it where it had once closed around a huge purple pauldron wing.
Her arm was in the cage clamp. I've seen Evas twitch in their sleep, but this one just ripped free of a couple thousand tonnes of restraining steel - and all just to shield that wimp from some falling glass? Mein Gott, Ishtar, what are you?
There was a soft coughing noise behind her. Oh, that's right. I don't have time to gape, because I'm apparently the only soldier in the room who knows that you fucking pick a teammate up when they fall.
The gurney was steel, and heavy as all hell. Asuka braced herself carefully, and still came close to straining a leg muscle lifting it, but eventually it tipped back over and landed right-side up.
Then she turned back to Rei, who was once again attempting unsuccessfully to stand. Christ, it's like babysitting a child. The German slid her arms under the other girl's shoulders and knees before she could sit up and easily lifted her, depositing her as gently as possible onto the gurney.
Rei coughed, twitching her right arm towards Asuka. "P… please wheel me up to… the upper bridge," she whispered. Her voice gurgled on every hard syllable, and the blood coming from her mouth wasn't stopping. "A tech will lift me into the, the plug."
"Fuck no," Asuka bit back. "I don't even care if you're our last hope. Pilot if you want to, no skin off my nose; but I'm not going to be complicit in assisted suicide."
To the Eva's left, Ritsuko and Misato seemed exceedingly distracted by Unit 01's spontaneous movement - they were muttering frantically to each other, ignoring their charge. Scheisse, both of the hags at once. Shinji must be having a fun time. Rei twisted onto her side yet again, and Asuka pushed her right back down onto the gurney. Exactly like babysitting a child, right down to the strange and pointless games…
Abruptly, Shinji's voice broke through the hushed murmurs. "You'd really make her… you'd really do that? To a girl in her condition?!"
Asuka turned, briefly startled by Shinji's outburst. The floor shook again - how much time is left? Four minutes? Three?
"Fine! You - you fucking win, father. If it's her or me, I'll do it."
Gendo did not smile, or indeed visibly react at all. "Very well," he said, his tone unchanged. "Captain, Doctor, make the necessary arrangements."
Ritsuko's comm device appeared again. "Maya, is the interface driver complete?"
"Finished less than ten seconds ago, Senpai - but - aren't we scrambling Rei?"
"Sorry, there was a bit of confusion on our end. The mission pilot has been confirmed as the Third Child. Run with the driver you compiled."
Misato produced her own radio unit - this one larger and clearly more military in design. "Control!" She barked. "You have one hundred and eighty seconds to get Ishtar topside! Move!"
A loud klaxon began to blare, and a number of technicians rushed onto the upper bridge situated behind the Evangelion's head. With a series of shuddering booms and rushing noises, the lake of coolant under the umbilical bridge began to lower, exposing the upper portions of the Eva's cuirass.
Ritsuko spun on her heel and made quick strides towards the right exit door, while Misato followed at a slower pace, taking an earbud and wire from her pocket and putting it in.
"Hey!" Asuka yelled after them. "Are you just gonna leave Rei here? She can't be on the umbilical equipment when it undocks!"
Misato nodded, then spoke into the wire - although she gave no other response before walking away. Whatever she said was lost in the noise of the klaxon, but a moment later, the PA system cut in even louder: "Emergency medical personnel to Holding Cage One, maximum priority. Repeat: emergency medical personnel to Holding Cage One, maximum priority."
One helpless dummkopf dealt with, one more to go. Asuka strode over to Shinji, who was looking more than a little panicked.
"There's - there's no time left," he stammered, his face white. "I don't know - I don't know what to do."
Asuka sighed, and reached up to her own thoroughly messed-up hair. She swiftly pulled the white nerve interfaces off and reached up to Shinji's forehead, ignoring his startled yelp as she pinned them into his hair.
"You need those on, and you obviously can't be trusted to place them correctly. Get used to them." She gritted her teeth at the cowering terror in his expression. "You'll have to do without a plugsuit. Hope you don't mind your clothes getting a little orange and weird-smelling."
Someone needs a pep talk from the squad leader. Which clearly means me, because the other two pilots here couldn't lead a squad out of a gottverdammt paper bag - and frankly, the Fifth Child ain't exactly perfect for it either.
"Hey." Asuka grabbed Shinji's shoulder in a vice grip, forcing him to look her in the eyes. Her own expression was probably viciously annoyed, but she forged ahead anyway. "Look, just get in the entry plug and… fuck… and reach out to her. Okay? That's all it is, all there is to piloting. Everything else is just so much detail. Got it?"
Shinji nodded dumbly.
"T minus 120 seconds to launch! Clear the Holding Cage! Third Child, to the entry dock!"
"Good." Asuka looked up; behind the Eva, the cage crane was moving an entry plug into docking position. "Looks like your chariot awaits. Get up there and show Misato you aren't as spineless as you look, yeah?"
X-X-X
In his seat at the highest point in the control center, Gendo observed his domain through orange-tinted glasses.
"No seraphim," Fuyutsuki murmured, almost optimistically. "Perhaps our predictions were wrong."
"Sachiel is one of the weakest." Gendo continued staring ahead. "That may simply be beyond its power."
"It's fortunate for your son," the L.C. replied. "He's already adjusted to so much today. He hardly needs more."
"Mm."
Fuyutsuki said nothing more, and Gendo returned to brooding.
I suppose it is a shame I had to force Shinji into piloting Unit One. He is at risk now… and worse, I will have need of him on an ongoing basis. But no other option was viable. Even the expedience of the German pilot's arrival fell short.
Still, if I must make use of him, he will do. I am more than accustomed to making do with suboptimal tools.
On the control bridge below, Lt. Aoba swiped a hand over his controls - and the main hologram shifted into a 3d model of the city. A portion of the big screen on the back wall turned into a digital timer with a distressingly short amount of time on it.
"T minus ten seconds to launch! Open all route shutters!"
The door at the back of the room slid open. Doctor Akagi and Captain Katsuragi strode into the control room, faster than Gendo had ever seen them walk before. Ritsuko was chattering into her walkie-talkie, and Misato into her earbud wire - both likely walking Shinji through the final stage of the activation process. A moment later, the second child - Soryu, if I recall correctly - followed.
"Five! Four! Three! Two! One!"
Misato straightened. "Evangelion Unit One - launch!"
Gendo slid a tiny yellow tablet from his pocket and, almost idly, popped it into his mouth.
X-X-X
"Pilot… um… Soryu, please leave the control room."
"Mach es dir selber," Asuka snapped, her voice downright acidic. Her eyes were glued to the big screen.
41.6%. Un-fucking-real. The German girl folded her arms. I didn't quite make the sixteen on my first try, and it took me six months to break 35%. Does that spineless jerk think he's better than me?
Joke's on him, the little shit. I bet he isn't ready for what forty percent will feel like when Ishtar takes a hit or two. He probably still thinks the Evas are just mindless, nerveless robots.
"Pilot Soryu -"
"I'm not fucking leaving!" Asuka growled, finally turning to look at the offending crew member. A short woman with cropped brown hair and Lieutenant stripes on her uniform stared back at her from her bridge seat; Asuka's grasp of Kanji was weak, but she could muddle through enough of it to make out the words Ibuki Maya stamped on the woman's name tag.
A wicked smirk crept across Asuka's face. "Say… Maya," she purred, deliberately ignoring the Japanese tradition of last names. "I hear I have a very unique cerebral activity pattern."
Maya's mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. "If by that you mean… your pattern is very different from Rei or the Third Child, you're correct," the Lieutenant answered carefully.
"And I'm given to understand that's the reason you couldn't get Ishtar set up for me in time." Asuka's eyes narrowed. "Care to explain that?"
Maya flushed, but she composed herself quickly. "A… ahem. An A10 cerebrospinal interface driver is a massively complex piece of software. On top of that, each is largely exclusive to the pilot-eva pair it's generated for," she said, her tone measured. "Even with access to the MAGI supercomputer, creating one can only happen so quickly. And if there's no similarities to work from, I can't copy -"
There was a piercing scream from the control comm. Shinji's voice.
"Left vambrace is compromised!" One of the other techs yelled. "Both forearm bones are about to crack!"
It was as if Asuka had, abruptly, never even existed. Maya's attention was instantly on her station, and she spun her chair fast enough that in another workplace she'd be reprimanded for hazardous behaviour. Asuka drew breath for an angry outburst at suddenly being ignored - and then swallowed it, scowling at the back of Maya's head.
There's a pilot on deployment. And I called myself squad leader back in the cage; so he's one of my fucking pilots, as far as I'm concerned. Distracting the control crew would jeopardize his mission, and what kind of leader would that make me?
I bet 41% doesn't feel so good now. I was at just 19% when I learned Moloch felt pain… and it still fucking shook me, to be honest.
The big screen showed a barrage of feeds - cerebral and spinal activity graphs, his synchrograph and a simplified view of the connective links below, a greyed out window flashing Sound Only indicating Shinji's control comm was open, and numerous security or drone camera views of the battle. The hologram showed all manner of sensor telemetry in a bewildering jumble of nonsense. Ritsuko had gone up to the top echelon with the Commander and Lieutenant Commander and was scrutinizing the holographic battle display, while Misato had stayed on the main level, her eyes glued to the main screen.
On the video feeds, Sachiel picked up Unit 01 by her head in a single arm. Its freakish elbow-lance retracted, and then slammed straight into her eye.
Scheisse, that's gotta hurt! Ishtar's eyes match up with human ones, so he's probably taking a straight skull fucking right now…
"Helmet integrity is dropping!"
"Shinji!" Misato yelled angrily. "Get up! Fight back!"
I'm with the good captain on that one. Yeah it hurts, but I don't need a teammate that can't fight through pain. You get hurt piloting Eva - it's fact of fucking life, and we're soldiers, not a goddamn after-school club.
The lance flashed again. Unit 01 still hung limply from Sachiel's hand, one arm twisted beyond use.
"Helmet integrity compromised!"
"The links are faulting," Maya rattled off, a worried tinge in her voice. "His synchrograph isn't diverging, though. In fact - he's increasing his sync rate!"
That got Ritsuko's attention, and she leaned over the railing to look down at Maya. "With faulted links? How is that possible?!"
"I don't know," Maya called back, typing furiously. On the big screen, the links and synchrograph expanded. "The pulses are starting to reverse. Oh… oh god, no…"
There was another boom as the lance drove home again. Ishtar twitched.
"Helmet has failed. Skull puncture imminent!"
"Talk to me, Maya," Misato said, her voice tight and strained.
"Uhh." Maya glanced nervously at Ritsuko, who was double-timing down the steps to the main level. "The links have diodes in them. If they fault, they're not supposed to stay connected, but the disconnect is not… reliable. And if the diodes blow out but the connections don't break, Ishtar's own 'mental' state is going to feed back into Shinji's brain -"
A final lance strike, and Asuka saw the white spike come out the back of Unit 01's head. The cerebrospinal activity graphs blinked from blue to red, showing a sudden cascade of chaotic activity.
Scheisse, he'd better not die on his first deployment!
"Brain case punctured, right eye destroyed!"
"The pilot is suffering a seizure," Maya ground out. "Connective pulses are flowing fully backwards. Senpai…"
Seizure… that's pretty light, for a fucking brain case injury! At forty percent, I expected him to die instantly!
The Sound Only panel abruptly vanished, and Shinji's semi-conscious vocalizations of pain cut off. The cerebrospinal graphs vanished a second later.
"Ishtar is… not responding to any radiocom signals…" Hyuga said, his voice shaky.
"Misato," Ritsuko said, leaning over the back of Maya's chair. "Get ready to deal with a berserker in a battlefield situation."
Sachiel didn't draw back its arm-lance again. Instead, its eyes - or at least, the eyeholes in its mask - flashed. The explosion threw Unit 01 backwards by a dozen city blocks, crashing her into a small office building.
"Umbilical cable has been cut! Ishtar is now on internal power!" Lt. Hyuga yelled. "Control rods have withdrawn successfully. Reactor core… active, output nominal at level two."
There was a loud beep and another readout appeared - a timer. It read 'Output Level 2: 129:59 minutes to shutdown'.
And then, Unit 01 stood up. She remained motionless for a split second before sweeping one leg back into a braced stance.
Sachiel fired its eye-blast again, striking Unit 01 in the exact same spot. The Evangelion staggered, but didn't go flying this time, or even fall; the blast shattered her right pauldron and part of her cuirass, but did no further damage.
"Oh, she had better not get hit on the other shoulder," Ritsuko murmured. "I'm not in the mood to rebuild those systems."
Unit 01 still didn't seem inclined to move - until she shuddered slightly, as if something had briefly moved within her.
"Internal sensors are detecting a phase space shift, pattern orange," Maya announced abruptly. "Ishtar appears to have generated an AT field."
The timer morphed, numbers flying as it rapidly adjusted. 'Output Level 1: 19:42 minutes to shutdown. 4:59 minutes to red line.'
Asuka's frown was replaced by a smug smirk. At least Ishtar knows how to fight an angel, even if Shinji doesn't.
Sachiel fired yet again - and the blast detonated harmlessly in mid-air, a dozen meters from Ishtar's mangled helmet. An orange, hexagonal pattern flickered briefly where the explosion had dissipated
"… I'm calling that a successful field test," Ritsuko said. She produced a cigarette, lifting it to her lips and lighting it in a series of rapid movements. "Unplanned or not."
Without looking behind her, Maya reached up and snatched the cigarette out of Ritsuko's mouth, flicking it deftly away. "Hey!" The older woman whined.
"No smoking in the control room, Senpai. Rules are rules."
Misato raised an eyebrow at Maya's rather bold gesture - and the other eyebrow joined it when Ritsuko didn't chew her out for it. However, she didn't seem to have the spare attention span to comment - she just wordlessly turned her gaze back to the main screen.
Unit 01 was advancing towards Sachiel. She seemed wary; apparently even while pilotless and enraged, she was capable of controlling her fury. That can't be common, Asuka thought. I've read some reports on Asherah's berserk moments, but this is nothing I'd describe as a blind frenzy.
Another energy barrage rippled the AT field. Unit 01 paused to brace it, but didn't seem at all strained - and immediately resumed her methodical approach.
One of the cam drones swooped behind Sachiel, changing the viewing angle. A better observation of Unit 01's injuries was now possible, and Asuka bit her lip at the sight. Half her helmet was gone, along with her entire right eye - Asuka couldn't tell if the wound was still clean through, or if it had begun regenerating internally, but it was a creepy sight regardless.
As if it needed that. Project Evangelion is my life, but even I won't contend the fact that - under their pretty paint jobs and hyperdiamond armor - they're ugly motherfuckers.
The mottled dermis was visible where her shoulder had been hit; it looked surprisingly similar to pale leather, despite being tougher than most steels. She'd also broken her jaw wiring, and because of it, her mouth was hanging open. Not snarling, just… slack. Her tongue wasn't inert, though - it kept running lazily over the blocky teeth in no apparent pattern.
Sachiel had been standing still as it fired at the Evangelion. Now, as she kept moving closer, it seemed almost uneasy.
Sachiel's stance twitched forwards - and Unit 01 lunged.
The leviathans collided with enough force to crush a skyscraper between them - or rather, their AT fields did. A chaotic, turbulent pattern of hexagonal shapes danced in the air between them as they stood some span apart, both physically straining against the barrier.
"Sachiel's AT field is speeding up its frequency," Ritsuko murmured, gazing at the telemetry feeds. "And it's strengthening it. Or trying to; it doesn't seem to be holding very well… I think it's tired. It can't have much left in it by now."
"Don't take that for granted," Misato answered, and her voice was like steel. "This is the first angel that Project Evangelion has ever dealt with in a combat situation. We have no idea what they're capable of."
"Four minutes to red line!" Hyuga called.
On the screen, Unit 01 lifted her undamaged right arm, placing its palm flat against the energy barrier.
Ritsuko visibly recoiled as she watched the telemetry. "I… how can she even do that? We never installed variance systems in the AT augments!"
"I think she's doing it on her own," Maya answered. "They are capable of creating AT fields without -"
"Lieutenant Ibuki, report," Misato snapped. On the screen, Ishtar's hand was - slowly but surely - forcing its way through the barrier.
"- Yes, Captain. Ishtar is varying her AT field's amplitude and frequency to match Sachiel's," Maya rattled off. "It's causing destructive interference, negating the flux density of both AT forces. The effect is generating an energetically neutral phase-space tunnel between them."
Unit 01's hand abruptly slammed forward, striking Sachiel's mask. The remote AT detectors abruptly went haywire, then flattened completely.
"Ishtar has breached Sachiel's AT field," Maya murmured; somewhat redundantly, as everyone's attention was fixed silently on the viewscreen.
17:52 minutes to shutdown. 3:10 minutes to red line.
Unit 01 seemed to sense her prey was defenceless. Her slack, slightly hungry-looking manner suddenly tensed into a predatory frenzy. Her tongue slid back into her lipless mouth, which slammed shut; her angular teeth ground over each other with a sound like shattering concrete.
Sachiel stepped back, wrenching its mask from the Eva's hand and glowing as it attempted to activate its strange flying ability - only to find that Unit 01 was much faster in a pinch. The Evangelion bodily collided with the Angel, knocking it flat on its back beneath the purple-armored titan.
Sachiel's eyes flashed, and Unit 01 jerked her head to the side. There was a violet-tinged explosion high in the air, dissipating with no effect, but Sachiel seemed to have only needed a distraction; its arm was lifted and a glow was gathering at its palm -
Unit 01 shuddered as the light-lance pierced her unarmored shoulder, and then she howled - a deep, drawn-out sound that sounded more like a hydroelectric turbine speeding up than the voice of a living thing. Her right arm didn't seem severely impacted by the injury, though, and she pulled back a strike of her own.
The armored fist smashed straight into the Angel's core, and an unearthly high-pitched screech filled the air.
16:40 minutes to shutdown. 1:58 minutes to red line.
"Ishtar has sustained a flesh wound to her right shoulder," Aoba said. "Estimated strength loss under ten percent. No bone damage detected."
Sachiel raised both of its hands, catching Unit 01's fist. The Eva snarled, twisting against the grip, but the Angel's hold didn't break.
"Oh, no," Misato muttered. "Please, Ishtar…"
"She's taken heavy damage," Aoba replied. "She's a tough bitch, but that many injuries… a broken left arm, a damaged right shoulder, an energy blast through the eye and skull…"
Unit 01's arm slackened, and she whipped her body backwards.
Don't you run away, arschloch! Asuka screamed wordlessly. This is a fucking victory or death battle! Nothing else matters until the fucker is dead!
Sachiel held tightly to Unit 01's fist, even as she attempted to pull away. The Angel twisted its shoulders, trying to aim the eyes of its inconveniently-placed mask.
Abruptly, Unit 01 stopped thrashing.
"Wait, what's she -"
Sachiel's eyes flashed a second too late. Unit 01 hauled on her captive arm and curled her spine, ducking under the energy blast and ramming herself forward like a freight train - her horn, still affixed to the remaining half of her helmet, aimed straight for the Angel's core.
X-X-X