A Glass of Wine (Chapter 32)
Several aspects of the Angel-form designated 'Tabris' remain unknown. Even its name is a backfill. Several extant Seele data sources make reference to a Project Tabris, and though these records are scattered and incomplete, what does exist of them points to a project not unlike a certain Nerv operation. If the Fuyutsuki testimony is to be believed, the technology and methodology for embodying a higher-order soul was laid down by Gendo Ikari in the mid-00s, and perfected in Project Ayanami. It is a safe assumption that Project Tabris was a similar initiative, and we can therefore extrapolate that Tabris came into being in much the same way as Rei Ayanami.
But while we may understand the broad strokes of its physical form, we know far less about Tabris's personality. Even its presented name—Kaworu Nagisa—is mentioned nowhere aside from its Marduk Report transfer paperwork. How this name was chosen, by whom, or why, are also mysteries. Almost nothing is known about the Angel's personal objectives save what it related to the Second Child during its final sortie, and even these words are to be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism.
Several important questions remain. Why did Seele see fit to create an Angel? Why did the Angel strike a bargain with Gendo Ikari? What were the terms of said agreement, and how would a Third Impact instigated at the hand of Ikari and Tabris differ from other versions of the same proposed event? Did the Seele council know that their creation planned to turn on them? Was that a part of their plan, or did it occur solely based on the Angel's own moral compass?
Answers to these questions are vital for a full understanding of the last combat operation of the Angel Crisis. Unfortunately, as of the time of this court hearing, none of the principal individuals in question—Gendo Ikari, the Seele Council, or Tabris itself—are available to answer for themselves.
((()))
She found him in the darkness, and for the first time, he was expecting her. The plug was silent save for the sounds of enemy shell fire. He could not judge their distance or direction. Without an active synchronization, any impact to the Evangelion by conventional weaponry felt impossibly distant.
It was only when he felt the body shake around him that he knew other Evas had taken the field—whether it was Rei, Asuka, or the new kid, he was unsure. It could have been all three. He would never be able to tell.
He sat and waited for the fighting to cease. The liquid around him swirled, and he knew she was next to him. A water spirit in his midst.
"I can feel you," he said. He closed his eyes and tried to inhabit the Eva once more. The sensation was there, but indistinct, far away. "You've always been here, haven't you?"
The liquid churned, left to right. He listened to it, felt it. He breathed in and out, in and out. Beyond the plug, beyond the Evangelion, his perceptions became increasingly distinct. He felt Unit 02 and Unit 03 fighting back against the invaders. He felt a rip of automatic fire. The sound of men and materiel failing. Dying.
"Can we move?" he said.
Silence.
"You don't want to," he said. "You're worried I won't be safe."
More silence. Shinji listened, hearing the memories sealed within this crypt.
"You knew what was going to happen, better than anyone," he said. "You knew the world was going to end. You couldn't stop it unless you were here, in a place with real power. Inside Unit 01."
In the silence, a memory of the Evangelion in its infancy, stretched down a crucifix birthing platform—a seedling cut from an older growth.
"You wanted to keep me safe. Keep us both safe." Shinji flexed his hands on his dead control yokes. "So you did what you thought was right."
Outside, the fighting had stopped. He felt the telltale impacts of an Evangelion on approach, and felt the heavy chunk of an umbilical cable slotting into place on his back. A reboot signal appeared at his side, the load-bar at 2%. Still no power for communications, much less movement.
Images of his father, one after another, smiling, laughing, sitting long hours in front of a computer, trying to solve a problem. Her hands on his back, rubbing his neck. His lips against hers. A question unsaid in the dark.
"No," Shinji said. "He's not. Not like that."
He thought of his father. Tall, unknowable, distant, looking down at him. Always looking down. He thought of Fuyutsuki standing in his apartment, speaking his father's words for him, ripping him away from the only good place. He thought of that last moment on the train platform, shrouded in the white fog of early memory like salt-tinged tears on a child's cheeks.
The current whorled down-plug, centering before him. Recoiling.
Shinji looked up, holding the gaze of the place where she should have been. "You didn't know," he said. "You vanished to help us both. You looked beyond what you were and saw what we could become, and assumed he saw the same thing, but you misunderstood from the very beginning. You didn't know how small he was."
Something new, from beyond the Evangelion. He felt it immediately—new AT fields, circling above. He closed his eyes and listened to their inaudible songs, trying to parse individuals from the chorus. Nine of them, he thought. All high above. He felt Asuka's field flare as she recognized them.
Then he felt something new. Unit 03's field changed tune without warning. Pure and high, it ascended above the others, ringing out an old melody. Shinji didn't need communications to know what it meant. He had heard it before, a dozen and more times. An Angel.
He looked at the reboot signal. Fifteen percent. Not enough.
"We need to move now," he said. He felt the new Evangelions crash into place, shaking the ground with their landing. He felt Unit 03 soaring above, and could hear the desperation in Asuka's movements as she positioned herself above him, readying for the coming fight. "We have to go right now."
The plug was silent.
"If we don't do something, Asuka will die." He scowled at the darkness around him. "I know you can do this. I know we don't need the cable. Just get us moving, and I'll do the rest."
One last movement in the current, and then he was alone again in the entry plug. He sat for a moment in true silence. Then the standby bar disappeared, the plug's screens flashed through their familiar kaleidoscope, and he could see and feel everything again.
He guided Unit 01 to its feet, letting the debris of war slough from his body. The entire geo-front was ruined. Smoke and death were everywhere. Ten targets appeared in outline, nine of them crouched atop ruined buildings. He knew them immediately. Though he had not known what they would look like, their visages perfectly mirrored the animal cruelty he felt in their fields. Rabid dogs in Evangelion shells. Unit 03 was there, on high. The Lance of Longinus at its side.
His HUD pinged a weapon and he grabbed it. The weight was real. The smoke of the battle was in his lungs. The path ahead was hard but clear. The honest reality of it all settled in on his shoulders—an old pain. He would fix this. He would fix everything.
He keyed his communications. Asuka's face appeared. She looked panicked. He would fix that, too.
"Unit 01 on station. What's the plan?"
He saw his words affect her, watched her face as she calmed and focused herself. He listened to her response. Then, together, they became legend.
((()))
"Pattern triple-checked. It's a proper reading." Hyuga turned in his seat. "I can't believe this. It doesn't make sense."
No one moved for a moment. In a day of catastrophic firsts, this was among the strangest. A serpent clutched to their chest—an Angel in human form. Unthinkable.
Ritsuko was the first to speak. "I should have seen it. I should have known. His harmonics data, his ability to accommodate any reformat of the core. So many red flags. I know we were busy, but I should have caught it."
The Angel spoke again, the command center's intercom carrying forth the pronouncement as though it were the word of God. "The final sacrament is at hand. The end of all things. The Third Impact, as compacted between myself and your king, the Commander Ikari. Blood is its harbinger and its seal, and I am the herald which shall make it so."
"You made a deal with it?" Fuyutsuki was close to Ikari, glaring at the younger man. "What did you promise it?"
"An Impact event," Ikari said. "One of its design, suborning Seele's agenda and erasing humanity outright. No congealed will of all souls, but a snuffing of all that we are."
"That's not Instrumentality. That's extinction."
Ikari shrugged. "It was not my first option, Professor, but it would give me what I want."
"He promised to merge you with her first."
"How astute of you, Fuyutsuki."
"What's it saying about this final sacrament?" Misato said. "What does that mean?"
An alarm sounded. Hyuga spoke up. "High velocity projectile, approaching from lunar orbit!"
On screen, the Lance of Longinus made planetfall, snapping into place in Unit 03's hand. Fuyutsuki stepped close to the edge of the command center, watching the screen with intent. "The Angel plans to start it here."
"Start what?" Misato said.
"The last rite, that which unfurls the Tree of Life and leads to the forbidden fusion of Adam and Lilith, and the opening of the chamber of Guf for all time."
"A God of our making will sit in His heaven," Ikari said, "and all shall be right with the world."
"Oh, this is a cult." Hyuga looked between them. "We work for a cult."
Aoba did not look up from his console. "Been saying that for years. No one listened to me."
Misato looked at the men and women surrounding her. She felt their enthusiasm dying before her eyes. The odds were stacked against them, and they needed guidance.
"Whether or not we could have known is inconsequential. Whether or not this is a cult doesn't matter, either. All that matters now are the facts at hand. Fact: we have an Angel to kill. Fact: we have to support our Evas. Fact: we need to be prepared to fight. What do we have for defenses?"
Hyuga gestured at the screen, filled with smoke and flame and the wreckage of everything they had built. "You're looking at it."
"We've got almost nothing left up there," Aoba said. "The majority of our launch catapults are obstructed by debris, and most of the few that are available can't launch any Eva armaments because our infrastructure has been demolished. We've got one operational at the bottom of the lake, but that's mostly useless."
"We have no response," Ibuiki said. "There's nothing we can do."
On screen, Unit 01 reactivated. The footage was grainy, patched together from some secondary camera in the geo-front. Misato watched the Evangelion take its place alongside Unit 02—back to back, ready for anything. She looked between the faces of everyone in the command center.
"You wanna tell them you're giving up?" she said, and tossed a headset at Aoba's desk. "Go ahead. I'll wait."
Aoba looked at the headset. "You know I'm not doing that," he said.
"Then stop complaining and start helping," Misato said, turning away. "We're Nerv, and that's an Angel. It doesn't get much clearer than that."
They got to work. In the confusion that followed, no one on the bridge noticed that Rei Ayanami was gone.
((()))
The dance began with a conjoined volley of super munitions. The first vulture died on intercept, before it could even lock blades with them. It was caught in a crossfire, its head and chest pulverized, its body sent a-tumble into the burning forest, mindless limbs sprawling. A clean kill.
"One!" Asuka said, and then the rest of the vultures swept atop them, all at once, like a chorus of strings, and there was no more time for talking, no more time for thinking. Just instinct. Surrounded, they could not escape the kill box, so they fought within it, back to back, mind to mind.
Her anger became a physical presence, trembling her heart and lighting the nerves in her fingers on fire. Her gut burned. Her eyes watered. Her teeth would not unclench. She didn't speak, didn't yell, didn't scream. Shinji didn't, either. He was always there, in her periphery or just outside it, keeping pace—framing her, backing her up. No communication necessary. Together they moved, quick as water, fluid as death.
No music to this dance save the percussion of fortified armor, the clang of blades, the staccato of gunfire. Laser-focused, her world became one of broken images, like reflections in the shattered windows of the tombstone buildings around her.
A prog knife in her hand. Red blood on violet armor. White hands grabbing red plate. A quarter-turn outside Shinji's field of view, throwing a target into the dust. A head coming apart under her grip. Ducking a blade meant for her and deflecting a blade meant for him. Shinji next to her, a reloaded pallet rifle banging in his fists. The flaming forest around her ankles. A heavy sword in her hands, swinging with ponderous momentum. JSSDF soldiers retreating beneath her feet, running while the titans killed each other.
Another vulture, buried in a building, the sinew of its arm ripping apart under her blade. A tongue, corpse-grey and fat, lolling in her face. It wasn't a vulture. Vultures were scavengers, but they were smart. This thing didn't even have its own mind. Kaworu was controlling it. It was just a doll. Just a stupid, useless doll.
The doll hissed at her and she stabbed it in the face once, twice, three times. Again and again. Impact shocks rocked her arm. The blade snapped off in its forehead and it perished with a croak—old rope in dead air.
No significant damage to her armor. No injuries to her body. No movement wasted. No mistakes. They could not lose. Not now. Not with him floating above them, alive and breathing. Afterwards, when he was dead, they could afford a misstep. Not now.
The sight of a mountainside lake. Dusty notebooks in a forgotten attic. Her mother's handwriting. Her mother's hands on hers, gripping the control yokes, laughing and weeping, cooing and calling. Ever-present. Always there, from the very beginning.
Face to face with another one. Swords rebounded with a hollow clang. The target reeled into a stream of fire from Unit 01. Movement in her periphery-white, like hospital tile. She rolled out of the way, whipping her umbilical cable with her. The newcomer missed, its blade punching into the ground. Shinji flowed around her in a full-spin, shoulder-first, and knocked the doll off-balance. She righted herself and wrapped the target's neck with her forearm.
A memory. The cage, her feet on the deck. Kaworu's arm wrapped around her collarbone from behind. His voice in her ear.
Asuka pulled back, dead-weighting. Her arm snapped taut, and the doll's neck gave way with a shred of tendons.
"The sacrament is at hand." Kaworu's voice was in her ears. The communications circuit was still open. She didn't have time to switch it, and she did not respond. She did not wish to respond. In too deep. Too much to do. He'd get his answer soon enough. She would kill him. She would kill him for disrespecting us, for lying to us, for trying to hurt Asuka, for trying to hurt our daughter—
Another doll, and another, and another. Thoughts became actions with frightening speed and uncanny precision, the two Evangelions moving as one. They ducked a sword swing and powered into a doll's chest at the same instant, hacking its torso armor open with a double-stroke from their captured heavy swords. Its musculature came apart. It roared in their faces.
Unit 02 pulled its head off.
Blood sprayed across her faceplate and her open mouth guard. When had her mouth guard broken? Since when could she taste what the Eva tasted? Didn't matter. No elegance anymore. No steps to this dance. Just movement. Just power. Just hate.
"Asuka, your heartrate is spiking."
No dance, not anymore. Her hands were on the yokes but not on the yokes, for they weren't her hands anymore, not really. They were Asuka's hands and not Asuka's hands. They were not her mother's hands, either. They were its hands.
"Synchronization exceeding one hundred percent. The buffers won't catalyze."
"At this rate, she'll lose cohesion."
White armor broke. Blood on hands, blood on arms, blood on face and on tongue. Dolls killed. All dolls dead. No plan, no steps, no dance. All was kill, all was win. All was 02.
His voice, cutting through. "Asuka!"
She screamed, and the world came back to her. Unit 01 was above her. One of its shoulder pylons was gone, slashed off in the combat. Its horn was broken at the halfway point. Shinji's face was on her vid com.
"Breathe, Asuka," he said.
The corpse of an Evangelion was beneath her, its chest and head a pummeled mass of blood-raw muscle and fragmented armor. One of its arms was gone, shredded down to the bone. A gaping crater occupied the center of its chest. The taste of its flesh filled her mouth.
Her HUD blinked at her. Foreign contaminant detected. Caution: internal battery fluctuations. "What did I do?" she said.
"You lost control," Shinji said.
"I can still feel her," Asuka said. Giggles in her ear like tears on bedsheets, like purple feet in silent air. "She's everywhere. I don't know what to do."
"She's just a ghost," Shinji said. "You're alive. She isn't. You're the one in charge, not her. Breathe in, breathe out."
Asuka did, and realized that her lungs had stopped working minutes ago. She felt the LCL chug in and out of her chest. After a few breaths, her hands were her own again. Her body soon followed, and she could feel the shaking in her hands.
"Listen to her, feel her, but don't become her. You know who you are."
Asuka nodded, and focused on banishing the taste of the other Evangelion from her mouth. She rubbed her face with her fingers. The taste subsided.
"You know who you are, and you're in charge," Shinji said. "You don't have anything to fear."
Asuka banished the alerts on her HUD and got to her feet. Unit 02 obliged, stretching to full height atop its last kill. The battlefield was still choked with smoke, but there was no movement. Dead Evangelions lay where they had fallen, within the sides of crushed buildings and amid the roaring flames of the pines.
In front of her, Unit 01. In her plug, Shinji's face. "You okay?" he said.
"For now," she said. "Thanks, Third."
Shinji managed a small smile. Movement from above. Asuka felt it before she saw it, and reacted without thought. Two quarter-steps into Shinji's Evangelion. They collided, and Unit 01 fell backwards into the dirt—just in time.
The Lance of Longinus slammed through Asuka's chest, smashing through her plate and out of her back in a single devastating impact. Pain bloomed like a sucking hole in her heart. Unit 02 sank to its knees, the Lance extending from its body in both directions. Asuka doubled over in the cockpit, grabbing her chest, trying to regain control of her own lungs. The pain was too much.
"Asuka!" She couldn't see Shinji, couldn't bring herself to open her eyes. She wanted to speak, but couldn't find her voice.
((()))
"Asuka!"
He hauled himself upright and grabbed Unit 02's shoulders before it could fully keel over, holding it upright as best he could. Stress fractures lacerated the chest armor, spiraling outward from the impact point. He thought of Asuka inside the Eva, feeling that pain, all because she took a hit intended for him. He wrapped his fingers around the weapon, steadying himself against her Eva, the broken horn of his helmet touching her blood-spattered faceplate.
"I'm going to fix this, Asuka. Hold on."
He gripped and pulled. The sound of ripping steel keened across the geo-front. When the Lance was free, Shinji heard Asuka let out a shriek. It was brief, only managing to just emerge before she clamped down and cut it off, unwilling to show more. Shinji held the Lance for just a moment before it was yanked from his grasp, lifting once more to an easy landing in its master's grip.
Shinji didn't care about that. He kept Unit 02 upright on its knees, waiting for Asuka to stabilize. "Asuka, say something. Please."
"I never," she tried, nearly at the point of exhaustion.
"What?" he said.
Her vid com materialized, and he could see her again. "I never want to hear you say I wouldn't take a bullet for you," she said, "ever again."
Shinji smiled despite himself. If he had been able to, he would have hugged her. Since he could not, he tried his best in words. "I love—" he started, then stopped. He felt something. A crackle in the air, a rejuvenation of AT fields just previously destroyed. Movement all around them. Life where there should have been none.
The destroyed Eva series clawed its way back to life one at a time. Knife-splayed heads swiveled on broken necks. Torqued spines straightened with sickening snaps. Limbs turned on stretches of exposed sinew, and mangled fingers gripped sword hilts they should not have been able to carry. Grins of broken teeth and split tongues surrounded them.
"They're regenerating," he said. He recalled his first sortie, the way that Unit 01's arm had reconstituted itself. Seeing it happen on a larger scale was sickening.
"Not this one," Asuka said. The dead Evangelion she stood upon was unmoving. "It's the cores," she said. "We need to take out their cores. Just like an Angel."
"I'm out. No ammo," he said. His pallet rifle lay in the dirt, breach slammed open. "And command can't get anything else to us. You have a prog knife?"
"No," Asuka said.
The pale Evangelions circled, their gaits rendered ponderous and unsettling by the weight of their injuries. They growled as they moved, weapons dangling at their sides. Their connection to Unit 03 sang like the thin strings of an ill-tuned cello.
"These heralds are designed to bring about the reformation of humanity into a single, consummate whole." Unit 03's communications channel was still open. "They are inexorable. Alone, they would be more than enough. With me to guide them, they are unstoppable."
The tune which linked the slaves to their master brightened, and the Evangelions' heavy swords took on a new aspect. They twisted as though alive, contorting and reforming themselves into blackened simulacrums of the Lance of Longinus.
Shinji clenched his empty fists, and Unit 01 did so in kind. His view flitted from target to target, watching their approach. Unit 02 was close at his side, back to back again, but his confidence was waning. Killing all of these just once had been the hardest fight of his life. The prospect of doing so again was unthinkable.
Unit 03 spread its arms, the Lance held at its side; the hovering threat. On vid com, Kaworu Nagisa's face had achieved a serenity born of absolute confidence. "There is no need to continue, Children," he said. "The Lance has tasted of Unit 02's lifeblood, and it is prepared to accept the final sacrifice. Join me. Give of your bodies and souls to the task set before us. Achieve a true union in which both of you may exist forever, free of misconception and misdeed. Help forge a final genesis for the Lilin and put an end to all strife. Forge a world where there may be no discord between—"
Half of Unit 03's head detonated, sheering off two of its eyes in a sudden gush of fragmented skull plate and evaporated brain matter. The shot continued on, and would have reached escape velocity if it hadn't collided with the geo-front's ceiling. The ensuing explosion rocked the cavern walls and conjured small avalanches of rubble.
The blackened Evangelion fell from the sky and crashed down amid the debris, out of sight.
Shinji blinked. "What the hell."
A second shot whipped by, only forty meters off his starboard shoulder—practically on top of him—and took one of the encroaching Evangelions in the chest. The detonation blew the Eva apart. Another shot, portside, ripping half of an Eva's torso off and collapsing a building atop it.
"Where?" he said.
"The lake," Asuka said. "Look!"
Shinji looked, and saw their savior rise from the lake. Water streamed from the contours of its armor, and its lone eye burned bright in the gloom. One shoulder pylon stuck out like a banner in the smoke. The other was gone, removed so that her gun arm could accommodate the recoil clamp of an anti-orbital positron rifle. The big weapon cycled its firing mechanism, barrel already red-hot from the first three shots.
"Rei!" Asuka said.
One of the mass production models howled and rushed forward, feet churning the dust, headed for the shoreline. It launched itself off a pummeled building, wings extending to carry it forward faster, false-lance raised like a javelin. Unit 00 pivoted and fired, catching it in the throat. The positron bolt exploded on impact, blinding Shinji's imagers for an instant. When the image stabilized, the target's head and chest were gone, its black lance tip-down in the dirt.
Unit 00 marched into the shallows and spread its legs into a firing stance. Rei appeared on vid com. "Go, both of you. I will handle the rest of them."
Her fellow Children did not argue.
((()))
"Rei!" Misato felt her heart in her throat, and barely realized it was her own voice doing the shouting. Unit 00's gun-cam pivoted with the barrel. There came the flash of another shot, the impact of another kill, felt even at this distance.
Misato grabbed the back of Hyuga's chair and shook it with both hands. "Rei Ayanami!" she said, unable to control herself.
"Yes, ma'am," Hyuga said, her enthusiasm bringing an unbidden smile to his face.
"Unit 03 is still operational." Aoba pulled up footage of the target in question, slumped in the rubble. "Its connection to the others is severed, but we're still getting solid life signs, both from the Evangelion and its pilot."
"Get Unit 01 and Unit 02 to its position. Tell them to hurry," Misato said. "If we don't finish him quickly, he'll regroup the others, and Rei might not be able to hold them off."
Her orders were relayed. She kept her eyes on the screens, and made sure to ignore Commander Ikari. Win or lose, she was not about to give him the satisfaction of seeing her sweat.
"Pilots have visual," said Hyuga.
Misato let out a breath. "Here we go."
((()))
Unit 03 crashed through the remains of Koruken Tower in its descent, shredding most of the building's already twisted wreckage and compacting it further. When Unit 01 and 02 found it, it was already back to its feet. It stood at its full height, as though nothing was wrong, as if its black armor was not pierced in a dozen places by steel debris, as if the remaining half of its head did not sag uselessly against its chest.
The Lance was still in its grip. Looking at it, Asuka felt the hole in her own chest, and knew not to underestimate this thing. Damaged as it was, it was just a puppet. The real monster was still inside, and capable of anything.
She gripped her own false-lance, pried from the hand of a dead doll somewhere back in the graveyard. Shinji held his own two-handed. The two pilots made their way to opposite sides of the wounded Evangelion, encircling it on wordless instinct.
"You were right, Asuka," Kaworu said. His face was no longer visible; likely a side-effect of the damage. "The quad-lens system does give higher acuity."
"Not so much anymore," Shinji said.
"True enough."
"Your dolls are dead," Asuka said. "Rei is finishing them right now. It's over."
"That does not matter." The deflated head gazed at her, its two eyes agleam with flickering irregularity. "I am still here, and you are both still here. While we all yet breathe, nothing is over."
Asuka felt the fire in her gut and the tremble in her fingers again; the anger returning in full force. She clenched her teeth and rode the sensation as it built. The monster around her wanted her to give in, to let it out, and again she felt the schizoid hate within the Eva, carried forth on old memories that weren't her own, promising to take care of it for her.
"Why do you want this?" Shinji said.
"What I want is of no consequence, Mr. Ikari," Kaworu said. "There is only what has been and what must be, and the free will which shall make it so."
No. Asuka breathed deep and focused. She looked at the deformed Unit 03 and remembered the first day she saw it, after it was reconstructed. Like a shadow of Unit 02. She realized what needed to be done. This would not be Mama's doing. It would not be the wrath of the Eva, either. This was her mistake, her doing, and she would put it right herself.
"And whose will is that?" Shinji said.
"You'll know when it's over," Kaworu said.
Asuka said nothing. She crossed the short distance between them, false-lance raised, point-first. Unit 03 spun the Lance and deflected her first jab, then turned entirely to deflect Shinji's complementary strike. Asuka slipped into the moves, two-stepping into a full turn and cutting low, aiming to trip. Unit 03 powered off the ground with a burst of energy, spinning and stabbing for Unit 01.
Shinji turned it aside, barely. One tip of the Lance slashed across Unit 01's faceplate, shattering a lens. "Half optics!" he said. "Need cover!"
"Copy!" she said and caught Unit 03 on its descent, shouldering it back. Debris churned under their feet as she pushed, lance against Lance. She deployed her port-side spike rack and loosed the full payload, point-blank. The spikes deployed with a hiss-thunk and punched through Unit 03's head, pinning it in place against its chest.
It didn't matter. Unit 03 twisted, and she stumbled aside. The Lance grazed her chest, digging twin furrows through the crimson plate. Her riposte was quick and sloppy, and he dodged it easily. Her strikes were clean, but his were cleaner. He anticipated every thrust, ducked every lunge, and checked every parry. He knew her too well and read her too easily.
The Lance spanged off her calf and sent her crashing into the dirt. Her false-lance tumbled aside.
Unit 03 spun its weapon and brought it down, twin-points hovering in the air before her faceplate, ready for the kill.
"It won't work, Asuka," he said. "Stop fighting. Accept the role you were destined to play. With the absorption of the S2 organ, you can become one with me and herald a greater future than even the commander has dreamed of. Cease this struggle."
Asuka reached to her side and switched a control, keying a full-range audio channel she hadn't used in months. "You know that stupid song?" she said.
"What song?" Kaworu said.
"The dumb one." Two more clicks, queuing what she needed. "The one you hum all the time."
"Ode to Joy. The highest achievement of your culture."
"Yeah, no. It sucks." Asuka clicked one last button. Somewhere in her control system, a waterproof micro-tape ticked on, waiting for its twin. "I've got one better."
The piano kicked in first, echoing from ear to ear, and then Shinji was there, flying overhead, cable whipping behind him. He landed and struck in one movement, the false-lance banging from its parent. Shinji struck again and again, swinging with wild, overhand chops that kept Unit 03's guard high. It wasn't intentional at all—just a byproduct of his lack of training. He had no idea what he was doing.
Asuka grinned. He was perfect.
The strings swept up, seemingly from behind her, and she was moving. As though carried by the melody, Unit 02 joined Unit 01. Left foot to back, right foot to front. Where his strikes were wild, hers were precise. Where he swung overhand, she landed thrusts.
Then the first big sweep from right to left, her feet crossing each other and spinning. He went high, she went low—her lance-tips thrusting toward the middle, his slicing for the throat. Then the reverse, left to right—her high, him low.
Unit 03 moved twice as fast to accommodate, but twice as fast was not fast enough. His ducks became desperate, his dodges slow. Damage materialized across the blackened armor. He was losing, and he knew it. In sympathy, Unit 03's shoulder pylons buckled and broke, like shed skin, as two new arms burst into being.
"He has four arms?" Shinji said. "Why does he have—"
"Doesn't matter. Double-time," she said. "Over the top, from both sides."
"We do that and we lose the cables," he said.
"Then we lose them! Now, Third!"
The umbilical cables popped loose with mirrored whiffs of propellant and suddenly she felt free. More mobility, more speed. The percussion hit—once, twice, three times—and she spun again, finding Unit 03's flank. Two of its arms reached for her, longer than they should have been. She batted one aside and speared the other, drawing blood from its too-human flesh. Shinji speared the second fresh arm and brought it down into the dirt, pinned, before spinning an elbow into the other Eva's chest plate.
He was a beat too quick. He knew it, she knew it, and Kaworu knew it.
Unit 03 thrust for Shinji's face again, angled not just to impale Unit 01's head, but to carry through, into the plug—a kill stroke.
Asuka caught it, the prongs of her false-lance entangling the prongs of the true. The real Lance of Longinus cut through the false, disentangling the twin halves of its body as it powered through, but it didn't matter. The thrust was slow, and Unit 03's grip was weak.
Asuka grabbed the real Lance in both hands and pried it free from Kaworu's grip. She felt the difference immediately. The false-lance and been balanced, but this was absurd. It writhed in her grip, hungry and alive. She wanted it gone as soon as possible.
The music hit its crescendo. "Finale!" she said. She lifted her foot, in time with Shinji, and felt the shock as they both dropped their heels into Unit 03's chest. The Evangelion tumbled backwards, through the rubble, its slagged head and mangled arms flopping uselessly.
Together, Unit 01 and Unit 02 leapt skyward. She felt her feet leave the ground, felt the sensation of drift as she twisted in the air. No cables, no inhibitions, no obstacles. She arced, letting the Lance slip free of her grasp; to her right, Unit 01 did the same. Purity of movement, purity of purpose. She saw the lances, like red and black bolts, plummet down toward their target, shadowed as their bodies crossed the sun. She saw Unit 01 in her periphery, its empty hand held at the end of its throw, same as her own, and as mind and moment matched, only part of her was in the Evangelion. The rest of her was in the living room, wearing an old sweater, dancing with a boy she loved, and for that infinitesimal instant, she knew that everything would be okay.
The lances slammed through Unit 03's neck, thrust deep into its torso, and burst out through its spine—two perfect cross-shots, delivered in flawless tandem.
The crunch of impact as she found the ground again. The music clicked off. Behind them, Unit 03 sagged, blood and sparks gurgling out of rupture-points across its ragged body. Against its chest, the final light of its eyes burned out, and all was quiet.
((()))
"Yes!" Lieutenant Ibuki punched her screen, smacking the flat of her fist into its surface again and again. "Yes! Yes! That is just—hell yes!"
Misato looked at her. Ritsuko looked at her. The rest of the command crew looked at her. Even Ikari, shackled by the ops table, raised his eyebrows. When Ibuki recognized the response, she sat back down.
"Sorry," she said, rubbing her punching hand. "I just—I'm really invested, is all. My apologies."
Ritsuko touched her adjutant's shoulder and gave it a reassuring shake. "No apology necessary, Maya."
"Target status," Misato said.
"Targets one through nine: silent. Unit 03: silent," Aoba said. "I'm keeping tabs, but I don't think they'll be regenerating again any time soon."
"Copy that. Unit status?"
"Unit 00 is operational. Positron rifle is dry." Hyuga swapped views on his console. "Unit 02 and Unit 01 are still operational."
"How is that possible?" Misato said. "Their batteries should be dead."
"It's the S2 organ," Ritsuko said. "When Unit 02 consumed that Evangelion's core, it must have brought its S2 organ into itself. I didn't know how quickly it would merge. Evidently, it's already enmeshed enough to override the internal battery."
"And Unit 01? I didn't see it eat anything."
Ritsuko looked at Maya's screens again, at the absurdly high synchronization rate between Shinji and Unit 01, and shrugged. "Beats me," she said.
Fuyutsuki let out a breath. "We were right," he said.
Misato looked at the older man, then to their prisoner. "Any more scenarios I need to stop today, Ikari?"
The commander did not respond. Misato saw her answer in his face, clear as day: he was out of ideas. Beaten.
Aoba spoke up. "Ejection sequence signal detected from Unit 03. He's dumping his plug."
"One last step," Misato said, and keyed her headset.
((()))
Unit 01 stepped aside as Unit 00 approached through the rubble. Its positron rifle was gone, discarded somewhere in the mess behind them, ammunition spent. Asuka opened a vid com link to Rei. "Good shooting back there," she said.
"Thank you," Rei said.
Asuka looked at her for a moment, trying to find the words to say 'thank you for not ending the world' in a way that didn't sound stupid. Eventually, she gave up and settled for "It's good to see you here."
"It's good to be here," Rei said.
Misato's voice cut through the line. "Eject signal, Asuka. He's trying to run. I need you to finish it."
Asuka turned, magnifying Unit 03's rotting body. A jolt of explosive bolts ripped the plug housing aside and the entry plug ejected with a whoosh. The cylinder jetted into the air, arcing away from the tomb of Unit 03 on a stream of thruster exhaust. A hundred feet from the Eva, the plug came apart, its constituent components splitting from one another. The liquid within split, too, forming globules which drifted with the fragments of the plug in a constellation, orbiting around a singular point.
Kaworu Nagisa, Fifth Child and final Angel, hovered in his plug suit, hands at his sides, head held high, and waited for what he knew would come next.
Asuka reached out and Unit 02's hand enveloped him. Her HUD magnified her vision so that through a window all she could see was his face, true-scale. He smiled up at her, sad and knowing. "So this is how it ends," he said.
"What are you talking about?" she said.
"My fate, one of two that was ordained for me. To bring about the ultimate destruction of the Lilin and seize the future for my kind, or to die at the hand of one of Adam's false shadows."
"Stop speaking like your words are chiseled on a damn rock, Kaworu. Talk to me like you know me."
"Very well." He was so tiny, so breakable, and yet totally calm. "My role is that of a destroyer, or a sacrifice. It is my destiny to merge with Adam, which is now embodied in Commander Ikari, and bring about the Third Impact. This will destroy your entire species. Had you not stopped me, I would have sacrificed your Unit 02, merged with its essence, and used it as the medium through which to commune with Ikari. Now that path is closed to me, and so it is my destiny to die in failure, and allow some other force to enact the final Impact."
"This doesn't make any sense," Asuka said. "You're a person, too."
"No, Asuka. I'm an Angel. Only one life form is destined to inherit this planet. I must die so that this may occur. I have no choice in the matter. If I am left alive, I will bring about the destruction of you and everything you care for." He smiled, small and sad. "And your existence is not the one which should perish. I am glad you are here to destroy me, Asuka. This life of mine was meaningful because I was able to meet you. Goodbye."
He closed his eyes, waiting for the end. Unit 02 growled, low and cruel. Her mother screamed, seeking the release that came with vengeance, voicing the worst parts of Asuka's own mind. It would be so easy. One squeeze and he would be gone, all his words and memories faded like so much blood on her hand.
Across the rubble and smoke, Unit 01 and Unit 00 watched, unmoving. In her ear, the pregnant silence of an entire command staff, waiting.
She looked at Kaworu's face. Before, he had been an Evangelion—a blackened monster, a shadow of her worst self, come to end it all. But now that she held him, he was a boy again, the boy who had talked to her late into the night and told her he loved her, and though she could no longer love him back—and likely never had—she now saw something in his small smile and wounded destiny, and she could not bring herself to end him.
Asuka released a clenched breath. "Fine," she said.
Unit 02 relaxed its grip. The red-shod hand fell away, leaving the boy to drift in the wind, unharmed.
Misato's response was immediate. "Asuka, what the hell are you doing?"
Asuka squelched her channel to command. When the protests were wired through Units 01 and 00, she deactivated her entire comm suite. She didn't need it, anyway.
Kaworu opened his eyes. "Why?" he said.
"You said you don't have a choice," she said.
"Yes," he said.
Asuka looked across at Unit 00, standing tall, its eye unfazed. "I know what that's like," she said. "To feel like you don't have a choice. It can eat you up inside, make you something you shouldn't be, or don't want to be."
"I was born for this."
"And I was born to pilot the Eva and kill Angels," she said. "Except every time I've focused on being a pilot over being a person, my life got worse. So here I am piloting an Eva, and there you are, an Angel, and I'm not going to kill you."
"I don't understand."
"No one is born for anything, Kaworu. I wasn't born for anything. You weren't born for anything. We were just born. You're born, and then people make you into what they want, until one day you figure out they're wrong. Everything you do after that is a choice. All that stuff we're supposed to do or told to do doesn't matter unless we decide it does. If you go down there and do whatever it is you're going to do, merge or whatever, it's your choice. It's not some destiny or role—it's just you. Your decision. Just like this is mine."
Asuka forcibly relaxed. Unit 02 took a step back, hands at its sides. "Whatever you are," Asuka said, "I know you're a person, too. And I've seen too many people die today."
The Angel looked at her through her Evangelion's eyes, not much of an Angel any more at all. "No one has ever said that to me before," he said. He looked at his own hands and at the destruction around him. "What do I do now?"
"That's the funny thing, Fifth," she said. "You do whatever you want."
"Thank you, Asuka," he said, and left, drifting heavenward. Asuka watched him climb higher and higher, until he was out of sight of even the Evangelion's magnification.
"Don't mention it," she said.
((()))
Shinji looked across the geo-front. The fires still smoldered. Smoke poured out of the rent in the ceiling, and across the way, the headquarters pyramid had opened its airlocks, letting their former invaders out from their safe harbor, weapons thrown down, mouths agape at the abject destruction around them. Unit 02 stood apart from him, looking up at the sky.
He maneuvered to her side. He pinged her coms and waited. Her face appeared a second later, eyes on the sky, where Kaworu Nagisa had disappeared. "I feel like it's been a week since I slept," she said.
"Yeah." Shinji's mission timer read 0743. Barely twenty minutes had passed since the hostile Evangelions first appeared. He decided not to mention it. "So, how are you?"
"Tired, mostly. Worried. Misato is probably mad."
"Oh yeah. Out of her mind." Shinji brought Unit 01 to a stop directly in front of her. Shinji looked at the damage across Unit 02's chest, including the hole bored through her pectoral. Seeing it made him feel the damage on his own body. "That looks like it hurts," he said.
"Everything hurts, remember?" she said. "Most things that hurt don't give anything back."
"And what did this give you?" he said.
Asuka looked at him, a familiar smirk gracing her lips. "You tell me," she said.
The children stood together as the sun climbed higher, and when the smoke was gone and the fires were done, they stood together a long time still.