June 22nd 2015

GDI Extraction Convoy

Outskirts of Tokyo 3 – Tiberium Field 337-Lima


Shinji watched through the beginnings of a censor approved version of a child friendly introduction to the EVANGELION Combat Cyborg System.

Wireframe after wireframe appeared of technical readouts and weapon systems, of something called an entry plug and control yokes, about mind machine interfaces and A10/20 interfaces.

The problem was that all the information was presented in such a dry fashion, information without context or need – afraid to delve too deep into the subject matter or obtain the attention of their audience.

As he watched he thought that the faux blonde looked kinda cute in a MILF-ish kind of way, but the other blonde guy who was apparently German focused so much on facts or data that it was given without a real method of delivering the information. It was merely presented as if the viewer was already supposed to know what a "liquid Tiberium power cell" was or the fact that it was supposed to last 15 minutes in a prolonged combat situation, and that if it was ruptured it was supposed to be ejected from the EVA unit before contamination could take place.

More facts, more useless information – almost exactly the same as the dry factoids and empty facts that the Japanese school system had presented him with ever since he had entered formal education.

Around him however, unnoticed for several minutes the soldiers had armed themselves with their large chunky rifles and donned additional armour and helmets. As he looked up and around he saw that even Mcniel looked uncomfortable despite being within several tonnes of armoured personnel carrier.

He did not know how to tap the screen to pause the video, so instead he simply removed his own earplug headphones and looked around the cabin to the back of the lieutenant, then Kitsuragi and then back to Mcniel.

"What . . . what's going on?" he asked in a shaky, uncertain voice.

Mcniel saw him talking, and heard his words second hand through the inbuilt translator – he waved to get Misato's attention as he looked across through the few viewports within the vehicle.

"Sorry Shinji . . . this may be normal for you, but for our generation . . . " Misato paused for a timer longer than was comfortable for both of them "This is uncomfortable" she said as she rose to her feet and gestured for Shinji to do the same.

"Come and see . . . " She said as she motioned to the controls to open two viewports, one for herself and another for him.

Eire green light flooded the cabin through the now open main viewports as Shinji looked through the thick nanotech constructed glass and polycarbonate windows into what looked like a vista from an alien world.

In every direction he could see vast vistas of alien crystal formations, mostly green with some red and blue twisted within them. The ground itself which was not covered in the cancerous growths was blasted, blackened and barren with no features to be seen except for the crumbling remains of concrete and rebar that had yet to be devoured by the xenofauna infection.

In the sky, vast black and grey clouds shifted at their own will, seemingly ignoring weather patterns and wind directions, the occasional lightning bolt burst out from the heavens and met with another lightning bolt that also burst out of the ground and an ionic bolt, precursor to an awaiting storm exploded in the sky between the two.

He looked across, the entire blasted hellscape would have been close to a nightmare for the teenager if it had not been an absurdly common fact of life for a post Tiberium world.

Shinji tried to imagine, if only for a moment the green fields of grass that once would have been in the place of the crystals, the trees that would have been there before they had become Tiberium blooms, the buildings that had once been a town or village before the alien cancer.

The problem was in this day and in this age, so much of the old world had been lost that the young had no comprehension on how to imagine the world that had once come before.

As he gazed across the glowing field however, something caught his eye.

He saw her very briefly, stood between two of the larger outgrowths of Tiberium. A girl almost his age, perhaps a little older or a little younger with blue hair and red eyes stood amidst an alien infection that should have killed any human near its outskirts let alone the dead centre of the field in nothing more than a white and blue cloth school uniform.

Most human beings would have had trouble surviving this deep in an alien hell in full power armour for more than half an hour, let alone simple woven cloth for a few seconds.

In the time it took for him to turn his head to his adult companions he notived as his vision shifted she had disappeared.

Shinji blinked for a moment, looking across the Tiberium field for any sign of the girl.

Yet he saw nothing.

For a moment he doubted himself, wondering if it was a trick of the mind or perhaps a trick of the eye and yet he thought to himself that he definitely did see something. In the midst of the moment he had looked across the cabin and saw that Kitsuragi had stopped looking through the glass and was in fact sat back down once more and Mcniel was looking in the opposite direction.

Common sense caught up to him, and his thought processes roughly outlined the fact that he had seen something utterly impossible and his seniors had not, and that the utter bizarreness of the moment was . . . something he was better off not telling anyone about.

After all, who would want to raise a fuss?

Especially over something that they where not sure of themselves?

He settled down into his seat once more, as he tapped a button on the side of the idly talking tablet to silence it and darken the screen and chose to watch the others in silence as he apparently grew closer and closer towards his destination.


Gills made of fluid bone and quantum substrate ripped through liquid fire as Sachiel was nearing the end of it's regeneration after the concentrated ION cannon strikes had forced their way through it's AT field and ripped at the flesh beneath.

It was a being formed of raw concept – pushed onto the universe through sheer force of will by the force of it's AT field and fuelled by the zero sink of energy from it's very soul. For those who insisted that those concepts where merely imaginary however, they would give the scientific labels of S2 engines and applied Macro scale Metaphysics.

It didn't have words, or a language – its thought processes where purer than those derived from those of Lillim, focused to a point in which every single thought or emotion was an all encompassing force of being that was both essence and purpose.

When it arrived it was the Angel of Water – the messenger that would unite with ADAM and bring the word that would return the world to what it was supposed to be.

For now however, the message could wait.

Right now it needed to deliver something else, and so Sachiel adjusted it's purpose to the opposite and it's soul became one with the shift in concept.

Ripping energy states out of the molecules of the air, the photons in the burning fire, the very quantum foam between universes it put the final segments of it's flesh into sync with the soul.

The Angel of fire breathed deep from the race of energy states around it, and death would fill it's wake.


Shinji lost track of time in the back of the APC as the convoy finally reached their destination, but he could tell it had not been long as the tablets auto dimmer function had not turned on to save the devices battery.

He watched through the same window as a large unusual vehicle with a series of mechanical drawing devices on the front half and a large blocky containment crate on the back passed by, it's design a mixture of gunmetal Grays and GDI golds. The Tiberium harvester on it's way to continue it's never ending task of harvesting Tiberium in the attempt to either stem its growth or reclaim the devoured elements within it.

Behind it, more harvesters followed from the base now appearing before them. Large concrete walls marking the line between humanity and disease; dotted with the placements of guard towers, and component towers with a mixture of either Vulcan cannons or SAM emplacements atop them.

Behind the defences where a dozen or so buildings, some built entirely from concrete and human hands, others pre-built emplacements sourced from the bases Mobile Construction Vehicle. A wonder that had been in development from before the first Tiberium war, it allowed for a reasonably fast deployment of forward bases from their internal resources, pre-fabricated modules and internal robotics facilities that where by now, a rough combination of manufacturing lines, 3d printers and early nano-tech forges that allowed entire base camps to grow from nearly anywhere on the planet in a matter of days – ready to be manned and pushed to the services of war wherever they are needed.

There where barrack facilities, power plants complete with their component modules, a vehicle factory and three Tiberium refineries with more vehicles than Shinji could count and far more troop and support personnel that he could both see and not see besides.

Eventually the convoy drove through the entire facility to a large concrete and titanium tunnel in the side of a nearby mountain, and within that opening was the first of many doors to a massive series of underground tunnels and support bases which delved far into the Earth.

The door was stamped in gold paint, a massive maple leaf cut diagonally with the word NERV in stylistic text which was next to the GDI Eagle in it's own circle logo.

NERV/GDI AREA 09 – GEOFRONT ACCESS C.

The doors before them opened in a vast and complicated procedure. Followed by the doors behind those and then another set of doors behind those again with enough steel, titanium and concrete re-enforcements to withstand a direct nuclear strike if needed to.

The convoy rolled on, as the massive vault entrance closed, and the entire entrance room dropped into the bowels of the planet as it was in fact, a megastructure elevator in it's own right that descended into another far more massive megastructure beneath.

Before them all within the convoy the walls rose away as the convoy continued down into the Geofront, and Shinji saw an entire underground lake, a vast pyramid in gold and black and entire fields of crops and trees which again where interspersed by more GDI sub bases and defences and facilities that extended both above, throughout and below the ground into nearly endless armouries, bastions and fortresses of their own. Independent of the primary base, but more than able to contribute and defend themselves if needed.

During the daytime vast mirrors would direct and funnel raw sunlight from the surface above and during the night the cities three cold Fusion reactors would power equally vast arrays of lights and apparatus capable of producing light on par with the gifts of the sun.

Through these massive, utterly astonishing sights Shinji Ikari only had one word he could say.

"Cool . . . " he uttered, fading off into awe and silence at the end.


A moment from Scythe himself.

Okay so yeah . . . despite the fact that the recent events of the world have given us all more time to write out things like this, I've been suffering far more with Anxiety as of late which has lead to both this and Of Avatars and Harbingers being pushed back due to the simple fact that I know WHAT I want to write, but I'm struggling to fill in the gaps to get there.

But another Chapter has been thrown out into the world . . . so maybe I can get over both writing slumps and get a few thousand more words out there into the wild.

So until next time.

. . . Tarrah for now.