A sharp ringing echoed in a dumpster of a room.
The ringing continued for a while… Until a hand came from under a thick blanket and waved around for a bit.
The hand managed to land on the ringing phone, and the hand withdrew back under the blanket with the corded phone in its grasp.
"Moshi moshi, Misato-san…" Misato groaned into the phone while yawning. "Oh, it's you, Ritsuko… Haaaoooh… What's going on… It's… what, eight in the morning…?"
The Blue Pattern had disappeared mysteriously from Kyoto, and apparently Commander had come back from his trip 'somewhere' soon after that. Apparently there had been complications and most of the soldiers which had gone to accompany him had died in the process.
Misato could put two and two together, and assumed that the commander had something to do with the disappearance of the Angel. But at the same time, she was the Chief of Operations, and her job was to kill Angels. When one was dead, the responsibility of that Angel was turned over to Ritsuko, so Misato stopped thinking about it.
Well, that was what she had put into her report at any rate.
"Hooaaahn…" Misato almost dozed off again as Ritsuko yammered some science-related jargon into her ear. "So… Something about skin suits… I get it that you're kinky but… Just buy a sex doll that looks like Commander or something…"
There was a short pause, and then Misato put the receiver of the phone against the pillow for a while to somewhat mute the blonde woman's tirade.
The tirade ended after a while and Misato put the receiver back against her ear.
There was a high-pitched screeching sound from the receiver directly into her ear, and Misato twitched hard under the blanket. "OWWWW!"
"Fine, fine, you got me…" Misato groaned as Ritsuko must have realized Misato was ignoring her moaning.
The blonde woman spoke something into Misato's ear, and Misato swapped the phone to be against the ear that wasn't ringing. "My new boyfriend? Haaa, haa, very funny Rits… Shinji is my ward, I'm not going to jump into his bed or anything, the boy is a teenager for god's sakes… Shut up, I'm not a shota hunter and I won't go 'ara ara' on Shinji! No, I am not having him clean up my room! No, I have not walked in on him taking a shower shut up!"
Misato listened for a moment. "Yeah, Shinji's doing fine, I think, he's already going to school and all… His hand is still in bad shape, even though it's been a week since the incident with the Angel… Yeah, he says that his chest hurts a bit every now and then, but the painkillers help him quite a bit. Everything else has healed, more or less… How's Rei? Still roughly the same?"
The doctor on the other end of the call sighed and then began to explain other things.
"Right… Wait, you want me to go transport what exactly?" Misato spoke slowly and asked Ritsuko to repeat herself..
Ritsuko told her what it was.
The blanket in the middle of the dumpster of a room froze up completely. "You want me to transport that kind of thing where exactly?"
A couple more sentences came out of the telephone, the call ended, and the blanket collapsed into a heap.
"...Oh, fuck you Ritsuko."
Misato slid from under the blanket like an ameba getting washed ashore, crawled into the shower, and pushed her pet penguin off the shower as it had been chilling in a cold shower and right now, Misato needed exactly that. "This is so going to suck…"
"Wark!" The penguin wasn't amused, and barked at Misato before waddling off and opening a can of beer with its fins.
.
.
A huge transport-VTOL aircraft flew over a forest near Kyoto, searching for a clearing.
There were quite a few clearings to choose from as some looked like they had been created by localized firestorms, some by repeated lightning strikes, some which were just puddles of acid or some kind of black stuff that the pilot refused to go anywhere near, some of the trees had just outright disappeared and left barren ash-like soil behind, and Misato could have sworn she had seen shark carcasses in a one clearing that looked like it had been created by a localized tornado.
She was kind of curious what kind of weather phenomena could cause that.
However, the pilot finally found the 'correct' clearing and put the aircraft down, and opened the cargo plane's assault ramps.
"Right, everyone out. Secure the area. Shoo off any civilians you see but for god's sakes do not shoot at any calcium-based lifeforms. Or anything else, really." Misato barked out. "It's got to be here somewhere…"
'Ritsuko, I'm so going to sneak into your room and swap your shampoo with superglue for this…' Misato fumed internally, and she used the fuming to adopt a stern expression in order to not show the fact that she felt as if her knees were about to give and her stomach to throw up their contents from fear. 'So Commander has somehow tamed an Angel… And I'm supposed to ferry it to Ritsuko for tests, or skin-grafting, or whatever…'
"Aaah!" One of the soldiers who had fanned out to cover the clearing let out a small screech and fell to her butt.
The rest of the soldiers instantly swiveled around and pointed their weapons at the sight of a massive rotting knight clad in full pitch-black and corrupted plate armor, and was mounted on an equally rotting horse with similar barding, and the Knight clip-clopped it's way from the underbrush where it had been waiting.
"Greetings, this one's name is Death Cavalier. Would you be the ones sent to meet our Master?" The mounted knight spoke, and even though it's voice was somehow ethereal, it wasn't as growly and horrible as Misato had first expected.
"Yes, I am Misato Katsuragi, and I have been sent to retrieve… Ainz Ooal Gown, under the orders of Commander of NERV and head of science staff." Misato read out the script that she had been handed. "Please bring it forth."
"There is no need. I am already here." An ancient-sounding voice akin to two tombstones rubbing together came from behind Misato, and she turned around with a snap-like motion to see that the Second Angel was standing on the ramp of the VTOL cargo-plane behind her. "I dislike wasting time, so let us be on our way. Death Cavalier, you have your orders."
"As the master of all commands!" The Death Cavalier turned and rode off and the skeleton boarded the aircraft before Misato could stop either of them.
Not that she could stop either, really.
But it wasn't as if she wouldn't try if she was annoyed enough.
"Hey! We had a script! Moreover, what was that thing, and what is it going to do? That thing, or it going off, wasn't in the script!" Misato growled at the skeletal creature who merely looked at her.
The look caused her bravado to instantly evaporate and be replaced by fright, only to be overwritten by her stubborn nature and end up in an 'enraged' state. "You can't just do whatever you like! You have a deal with the commander, remember?"
"Umu, I suppose I have. Small details, please ignore my rudeness." The skeleton seemed to contemplate for a moment, and then made a small hand motion as if to say 'move on'.
Misato grumbled but finally sat down in the VTOL's cargo section which had been cleared and turned into a holding area of sorts with two simple chairs facing one another.
She sat down opposite to the skeletal Angel, so the two faced one another, and the soldiers who had fanned out to secure the area returned into the aircraft- Even though most of them looked like they would rather take a hundred-mile hike back to Tokyo-3 than sit in the plane with the monster, moreso when quite few of the soldiers had lost comrades to the Second Angel's rampage during its attack on Central Dogma.
In the end the soldiers rather stuffed themselves into the relatively tiny crew quarters than try to stay in the roomy cargo space.
"Misato Katsuragi." Misato finally introduced herself to the skeleton. Even though it had probably heard her when she had introduced herself to the rotting knight. "Chief of operations. Captain. NERV."
"Ainz Ooal Gown… Or I suppose, Suzuki Satoru." The undead creature scratched it's chin with the joints of his forefinger in a startlingly human-like manner. "I have many titles, but I don't believe that they would make sense to you, so I'll not confuse you with them. Well met, Chief of Operations. I hope we'll get along and have an amicable relationship going forward."
The skeletal Angel extended it's bony hand towards Misato and she froze up, the memory of Unit-01's engine appearing in the Angel's hand after a similar move playing inside her head.
She finally realized that the Angel was offering it's hand to a shake, so she reached to take it and gave it a weak shake, even if she had intended to keep her hand still.
She blamed her nerves.
And with that the VTOL cargo-jet took off towards Tokyo-3 with its cargo on board.
.
.
The skeleton seemed to grow bored after half an hour of flying, and sighed… somehow.
Misato merely stared at the monster.
If she was honest with herself, she wasn't sure what she felt.
Terror was a good candidate, as she was keenly aware that the -relatively- tiny Angel was much stronger than even Unit-01, and had massacred it's way through Central Dogma just a week ago or so.
Another was anger, both towards the Angel and herself that the monster, the enemy, was sitting so casually in the seat, as if it was a civilian passenger looking around the 'cool military aircraft'.
Misato had known quite few of the soldiers who had lost their lives during the desperate defense, and the fact she was just acting as a taxi and flight attendant to the one responsible for it was making her blood boil.
The last feeling was defiance and curiosity mixed into an odd combination where Misato was honestly baffled by the whole concept that there was an Angel in the same room as her, and more important than that, the Angel was sentient and could and would talk like a regular person.
It was utterly horrifying, but at the same time, humanizing the enemy made it feel much less intimidating- At least compared to an enemy she could not understand at pretty much any level.
That being said, being so close to an Angel was still giving Misato all kinds of creeps. And the Angel's S2 organ, visible to the viewer just below the Angel's ribcage, was glinting intimidating red light which wasn't making Misato's growing paranoia any easier.
"Hm, I suppose… We're going to a place called 'Terminal Dogma', correct?" The Angel finally broke the silence and turned it's skull-head to glance at Misato. "Would you consider it a hostile action if I took us there faster?"
Misato lifted her hand to stall the monster as she got a priority call from the co-commander at the same second. "Please wait- Misato here- Pattern Blue? I know, I'm sitting next to it. Yeah, no, it's under control. Don't worry."
Misato paled as Fuytsuki explained further. "Wait, it is where?"
Fuytsuki explained that a second Angel had appeared. Or rather, third Angel.
"Is Unit-01 fixed? No? And Unit-00 is still not operable… Fuuuuck…" Misato pinched her nose bridge while drawing out the 'fuuck' in a way that only a veteran soldier could. "I knew today was going to suck… I'll be there. What should I do with Commander's Angel?"
"Hm, more Angels, huh…" Misato jumped a bit as it looked like the skeletal Angel had overheard her call. "Would these be 'hostile' Angels, then?"
"...Yes?" Misato answered a bit hesitantly while creeping her hand closer to her service pistol out of instinct.
She knew it had about the same impact as the rifles and pistols from week ago, that being fuck and all, but instincts were hard to ignore.
"Do you mind if I go and loot it- I mean, go fight it?" The skeleton said something outright bizarre and Misato tilted her head at it. "For a price, of course."
"Go ahead, I suppose?" Misato blurted out of instinct. "I mean, hold that, I need to actually get the permission from commander-"
"I permit it." Gendo's voice came from a speaker somewhere in the VTOL, making both Misato and the Second Angel jump a bit on their seats. "We'll discuss appropriate compensation once the Third Angel is dead. Time is of the essence."
"Hm… Very well." The skeleton nodded it's bony head. "I expect extra for having to react in such a short timeframe."
"Accepted. Do not push your luck."
"Likewise."
"Noted. Now, if you'd please…?"
Misato just stayed quiet as the skeleton spoke with the commander through a hidden mic in the cargo space, feeling thoroughly out-of-place in a conversation between the commander of NERV and the apocalyptic creature.
'Are the Angels having a civil war or something…?' Misato was quite baffled, but in retrospect it would fit with what had happened a week back. 'The First Angel attacked the Second, so… Are there actually separate warring factions within Angels? That'd be good for us…'
"Alright, is there a window or something like it in this airship?" The skeleton turned to address Misato who jumped a bit while gripping her still-holstered pistol out of instinct.
"The bridge." Misato stood up from her chair and led the skeleton through the airship, ignoring the fact the crew pushed themselves as far away as possible from the skeleton as the pair walked through the crew section. "Why do you need a window?"
"To know what direction we're headed." The Second Angel told her as the two stood in the bridge of the airship, right behind a pilot who looked like she'd pass out at any second with an Angel standing right behind her. "Ah, good. [Gate]."
A massive swirling portal appeared in front of the VTOL, and even though the pilot tried to make an evasive action, the plane flew right into it.
The plane exited the portal, and Misato realized they were above Tokoy-3.
More accurately, they were on the outskirts of the city as the city center was still under repair after the N2 mines had damaged the lifting system that would allow the self-submerging city to enter a 'combat mode' where the buildings were sunk underground, and were lifted back up after 'all clear'.
Misato realized that there was a massive vaguely phallic-looking Angel right in front of them, with a huge red orb just below the heart-shaped 'ramming head'. And it looked like the plane was a few seconds away from ramming into the creature.
She screamed
The skeleton screamed.
It looked like the Angel screamed as it saw the plane materialize into existence few hundred meters from it's 'face' in direct ramming trajectory.
The pilot screamed as well, and made an emergency correction to the flight path… But before the huge plane could correct it's path, the Angel lashed out with a pair of whip-like appendages extending from it's sides.
The whips seemed to glow bright white, and easily slashed through the VTOL-aircraft in a flurry that made it look like the cockpit was filled by thin strands of white for a brief second.
'Fuck, so this is how I die… How lame…' Misato felt resigned as the airframe shook from an engine explosion, and she saw that the pilot had been neatly bisected from hip to shoulder, alongside the chair in which she had sat.
Oddly enough, Misato wasn't feeling pain and looked down to see that she was, in fact, still alive and bodily intact.
However, the floor of the aircraft had been sliced apart, and she felt as she lost her footing and fell to the city far below while the plane broke apart into flaming wreckage…
"Hoo… So 'targets allies' requirements of protection spells are quite flexible, I have to keep that in mind… [Body] spells can be cast on both caster and allies, but not both at the same time, so this has been a fruitful experiment… With [Body of Effulgent Heliodor], that kind of slashing damage is almost negated…" The ancient-sounding voice was almost amused as the Second Angel had grabbed Misato by her leg and was dangling her upside-down beside him, roughly a mile in the air.
Misato was fairly sure that the Angel was talking to itself as it seemed to ponder with no clear 'conversation' in its voice.
She realized that the two of them were hovering in the air, and the skeleton's bizarre clothes were once more fluttering in a nonexistent, almost ethereal wind, just like last time.
Misato was suddenly very conscious that her uniform had a half-thigh length pencil-skirt, and that she hadn't bothered to put on the stockings she was 'officially' required to wear alongside it, which in turn had left her legs bare.
And she also became conscious that she had put on fairly racy underwear as that had been clean and available at the time. Shinji hadn't washed her underwear after the incident which involved fairly racy clothes randomly tossed to a 'wash this' bin alongside a fairly huge 'item of dubious nature' that she had remembered too late.
Fortunately Shinji had survived with just traumatic memories, and that had been that.
Back in the not-memory lane, the Second Angel seemed to glance down at Misato and pause for a while, at least if the dots of light in it's empty eye sockets were 'eyes'.
"Pervert." Misato told the Second Angel while looking upside down at it, well aware that her bra had snapped during the commotion and her breasts had been allowed to flop 'downwards' to rest against her chin.
The Angel looked away. "Umu, sorry."
Whatever Misato had been expecting, that hadn't been it.
She also hadn't expected the skeleton to just let go of her either.
Nor did she expect to find herself in some random corridor in Central Dogma after she had seemingly fallen through another swirling portal that had appeared mid-fall.
"Alright, what even is this day?" The Chief of Operations was absolutely clueless as to what had just happened.
.
.
Momonga was actually glad that the Third Angel (At least he assumed that was its name based off the conversation Momonga had overheard by using [Silent Magic: Amplify]) was present and currently trying to swat at him with it's whip-like tendril-arms. Mostly because it gave him something else to focus on than what had happened just now.
'Umu, that was definetely workplace sexual harrassment…' Momonga was fairly sure he wasn't actually employed by the faction that the woman had been in, but pencil skirts and uniforms reminded the 'Suzuki Satoru' so much of his workdays that the thought came out of instinct.
He could afford to think about that kind of useless things, as the Angel's whip-like strikes were effectively negated by his racial near-immunity to slashing damage, and what remained was then reduced by his class-gear to the point the twin whips of light didn't even deal damage to him, even if each strike passed through his [High-Tier Physical Immunity III].
'It looks like these things are super-specialized to one build… This thing would go through weaker fleshy targets like a street-mower through strands of fiber-grass…' Momonga contemplated while the Angel seemed to get frustrated from hitting him repeatedly and fly off. "[Hold Species]."
The Angel froze utterly still mid-flight… And then crashed down to flatten an entire block of buildings.
'Oops.' Momonga blinked mentally.
The Angel got up, slashed at the ground to dislodge a huge slab of concrete from the street, and then threw it at Momonga.
'Well, I suppose that would count as blunt damage.' Momonga noted as the projectile-street impacted against his face. 'Hm, so since it's not actually a high-tier weapon, it won't deal damage to me.'
The flung street broke against his [High-Tier Physical Immunity III], but as soon as the view cleared… Momonga realized that the Angel had used the projectile as a distraction to ram it's entire body against him.
"Ooooof!" Momonga's breath was knocked out of his lungs, at least metaphorically, as he was sent flying with the Angel clutching tightly against his midsection- And more specifically, his Orb.
'Oh no you don't!' Momonga had received the World-Class Item as a 'reward of sorts, I guess' from a YGGDRASIL dev (who had used those exact words), after Momonga had directed the defense of Nazarick against total sum of two thousand players or so, using a borderline exploit on Nazarick's eight layer to more or less cripple the remaining player force after they had struggled through Nazarick's already-tough seven upper layers.
The World-Class Item in question mostly just gave Momonga a general increase in stats that increased the longer he had it on, even if the increase was fairly small, but more importantly it improved him vastly when fighting dragons.
Unfortunately, for Momonga, the Angel was not a Dragon.
Unfortunately for the Angel, that wasn't the extent of Momonga's abilities.
.
.
"The Second Angel has engaged the Third Angel!" Maya exclaimed as she looked at the sight of the two Angels clashing. "Misato is… um, somewhere? Please don't die, Misato-chan…"
"Focus, First Lieutenant." Fuytsuki called as he and Gendo were once more in the highest 'level' of the command bridge. "What is the status of the Eva's, Ritsuko?"
"Unit-01 is done for until we can get another engine for it. That might take months or years." Ritsuko was on the bridge for a change. "Unit-00 is still more or less flatlined, and won't be going anywhere with it unless Rei either fuses with it completely, which is very much one-use solution because Unit-00 will go on a permanent rampage if that happens. And that's the best-case scenario of what could happen."
"Do we have anything else we can do?" Fuytsuki narrowed his brows a bit as it was unusual for the chief scientist to be out of options like that.
"Well, we can wait until Rei heals and gets her synch re-calibrated. But that's not an option, I'm guessing." Ritsuko sighed. "The Third and First Child have been recovered from school nonetheless, and are standing by in Central Dogma… for what good it does anyway."
"In other words, we're down to just the conventional weapons and military to fight that Angel, if the Second Angel falls or doesn't decide to kill it." Fuytsuki sighed.
"...Hm." Gendo seemed to be deep in thought and he was staring at the screens while his glasses had turned opaque from the reflection. "Keep the military back for now. Let the Second Angel handle it."
"Aye, sir…" Maya turned back towards her screen.
.
.
"Hm." Momonga got his 'vocal expressions' under control this time as the Angel rammed him against the street with not much effect. 'So the Angel itself is a High-Tier weapon, or equivalent, but it can't extend that to its surroundings. That being said, I think I know enough…'
Momonga reached his hand out at the Angel, and cast [Grasp Heart].
The Angel fell over, and the huge red orb in Momonga's hand (Or rather, against the street with his hand holding onto it) was transferred over to his Inventory. 'You'd think they'd have some sort of resistance against Instant Death, but I guess not…'
'Huh, another S2 engine, I guess it's more common than I thought… I figured it'd be higher rarity since it was bigger…' Momonga felt a bit depressed as he teleported from under the massive Angel.
The Angel seemed to glow brightly for a moment, and Momonga instantly teleported again just in time before the Angel exploded in a huge vertical cross-shaped blast.
"Well then…" Momonga sighed as he landed on a hill. "I suppose that's that. Time to go… I think I should go visit that dungeon again, I think that woman was taking me there…"
He created a [Gate] and walked into it, feeling a bit anticlimactic over how easy an opponent the Third Angel had been.
.
.
Toji Suzuhara and Kensuke Aida were currently sitting in a puddle of their own piss and excrement.
The two highschool students on Shinji's class had snuck out of their evacuation shelter in order to get the 'Evangelion vs Angel' battle on camera, but to their horror no Evangelion had risen from the ground to oppose the Angel.
Instead there had been bombs, missiles, rockets and cannon-fire which hadn't initially even fazed the Angel, and in retaliation it had easily swept aside the conventional military.
A massive VTOL-aircraft had appeared out of a sudden portal and almost rammed the massive Angel, but the Angel had sliced the aircraft apart mid-ram and the craft had fallen down to collapse a huge office building with it's flaming wreck.
However, Kensuke had managed to snap quite a few nice photos of the whole thing out of instinct, even if the boy was horrified internally.
What had followed had been… Bizzarre.
A second Angel had stood to face the first Angel, complete with a red orb in it's skeletal chest and all, and it had chosen a most peculiar weapon- A seemingly Lieutenant-rank woman that was held upside-down by her ankle.
However, the second Angel's grip had slipped and it had dropped it's weapon, and thus had engaged the first Angel in unarmed melee, and had been body-slammed against the ground after the First Angel threw an entire city block at it… And then the first Angel had exploded.
And finally the second Angel had seemingly disappeared, only to appear right in front of Kensuke and Toji, facing towards the first Angel which luckily meant that the two were behind it.
Both Toji and Kensuke had lost their control over their bladders the instant their executioner showed up out of thin air to perform a coup de grace, but Kensuke managed to snap a few photos out of instinct… Before the second Angel seemingly walked into another swirling portal and disappeared.
"I'm never going to listen to you, ever again." Toji swore while his face was pale as a sheet.
"I'm never going to suggest sneaking up to the surface during Angel alert, ever again." Kensuke whimpered, equally pale.