Well. I guess some explanations are in order. What follows is an A.U. EVA/X-Com crossover, set approximately ten years after X-Com Apocalypse; its place within the EVA timeline will be rather apparent. Knowledge of the X-Com games are not needed to appreciate this fic, as it is the more obscure of both elements. I will provide the necessary explanations as this fic goes on.

Disclaimer: I do not own Neon Genesis Evangelion, nor the games of the X- Com saga.

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Prologue: Of Three Wars

If one were to look at the earth today, it would be hard to think that it is mankinds home world. It would be hard to imagine this planet as a living, thriving world with tropical rainforests and lakes, and those large green fields the old pictures and movies show. Outside Mega-Primus there is nothing like this. It was too long ago, but perhaps one day it shall be like that again. And contrary to what one might think; it wasn't mankind's fault.

At the end of the twentieth century we were well underway towards an ecological collapse, and the first alien war didn't help much. But in this, mankind didn't have a choice. It is said that this particular war had been going on for several years prior. But it is generally accepted that January 1st 1999 was the official beginning of the war. That is the day that the first of the X-COM bases begun operations.

At this time, and throughout the three wars, X-COM operated as a small covert organization. It is always quite amazing to see the small number of military personnel, as opposed to the numerous scientists and engineers the X-COM bases possessed. Victory was achieved through intelligent combat tactics, since anything else would have resulted in a bloodbath (ours). We simply didn't have the technology to fight the aliens head on. Whilst X-COM did develop technology that would allow us to do so, adapting production lines and equipping military units with it would have taken far too long and would have drawn the attention of the aliens. That's not even taking into account the extremely limited supplies of elerium X-COM had during the war. It barely kept their equipment operational, let alone having an excess to send to other military units. They even had barely enough of this rare element to fuel their advanced (for their time) craft.

After several years of hostilities, X-COM finally learned of the main enemy base in Cydonia, Mars. Several legends have been born of that battle, but what is known is that it was savage and desperate. But in the end the alien biological computer (dubbed by the X-COM scientists as "The Brain") was reduced to a steaming pile of organic matter, and shortly there after the main enemy base was eradicated with a powerful thermonuclear device planted by the retreating X-COM soldiers.

After the war, the technology level allowed for a reconstruction, even with the economical recession caused by elerium depletion in the early twenties, and by the ´40s all but the deepest of scars were gone. But those were prior to the war, and were well on their way to recovery. To the younger generations, the ghost of the first war was far, far away... This way of thinking had lead to the dissolution of X-COM in the early twenties, though unknown to many it kept operating as the SORESO; the private organization that looked after X-COM's recovery of the UFOs downed over the seas of earth. This was an attempt to recover the power cores of these downed craft and extract what elerium they could still contain.

Then the second war broke out, but this time the alien forces were already on earth, as they had been since the 400 billion tons of the colony ship, T'Leth had crash landed here, some 65 million years ago, deep in the oceans of earth. When the X-COM forces had raided the alien base in Cydonia, and destroyed the "brain" that controlled the invasion forces, a tachyon beam had been detected aimed towards the Earth. Most analysts assumed that it was a desperate call for reinforcements from the Martian base to the alien's planet side bases.

They were, of course, dead wrong. The intelligence that controlled the first invasion had its reasons in not using T'Leth's forces as a fifth column. This had puzzled many military analysts; that was until we found out about the 'Horror,' the supreme alien intelligence that controlled the colony ship and its crew. The same intelligence that had for millennia shaped the fate of earth, and had very likely shaped us, while at the same time working its agenda, what ever it was. The Horror had reengineered the crew of T'Leth to fit the new deep-sea medium, and took it a step further. Over the years the aliens built outposts throughout the world and tried to contact their stellar cousins... apparently to no avail.

This war made the previous one pale in comparison. The ruthless and desperate struggle between two enemies that had no mercy for each other created staggering casualties and incalculable damage. It officially initiated on January 10, 2045, and raged on for over five bloody years. It wasn't until X-COM forces stormed the massive colony ship at precisely 10:35, GMT that victory was obtained. The then rising colony ship, which to our standards was more like a dreadnought, with incalculable amounts of armor and weaponry was on its way to stellar space when it was infiltrated by elite X-COM agents. This elite unit battled their way to the Horror's chamber and destroyed the beast before it could be reawakened from its cryostatic dream, the dreamless sleep from which neither alive nor dead the horror controlled its forces as if they were an appendage to him.

Of course that's the precise time the colony ship become a not so short lived fireball, and earth's fate became sealed. The threat was over, without the horror commanding from its sleep, the alien forces that remained become inefficient, and lost the unity and oneness it had while attacking, and those that didn't die from the shock where easy picking for the experienced aquanauts.

But ultimately it didn't really matter.

The destruction of the colony ship released a large amount of unidentifiable gases, which pretty much wiped out most life around the Gulf of Mexico (and the newly formed bay of T´Leth near where New Orleans used to exist). We now know that the horror was preparing for either the terraforming of earth, or using biological weapons against us. We also know that when T'Leth was destroyed, Zirbite became inactive. On the plus it meant that everything powered by Zirbite had been rendered powerless, from the tinniest weapon to the largest colony. An even more decisive victory than the one obtained beneath Cydonia nearly forty years prior, this time completely crippling the Zirbite dependant enemy. It is also ironic that this very fact was the one that finished damning us. No power in the alien's sub aquatic colonies meant no containment fields. We don't know from how many of these submarine sites the bio-chem 'soup' originated. We don't even know the soup's composition; apparently it mixed with the water rather quickly, though its effects took their time to make themselves known.

But X-COM and mankind ignored it, until, of course, it was too late. Then again, it would have been too late even I they had known right away. The lack of control over the chemicals was perhaps the only thing that gave us a chance of survival. The damage was done and there was little to do, but attempt damage control... and perhaps delay the unavoidable. Some chose to leave toward the colonies, others didn't have a choice at all, they were unable to leave, and thus were stuck on a planet unable to sustain its overgrown population. The stories of that period were of despair and death. As the earth approached complete ecological collapse, the agricultural output decreased. It was bad enough when the ocean farms were out of the picture, but their land counterparts quickly become affected, as the ozone layer collapsed, and the rest of the biome suffered similarly.

By the early fifties only the domed farms were able to produce somewhat edible foodstuffs, though barely enough to sustain a population using rationing, but improvement in that area was not possible at that time. Most of earth resources where involved in the construction of the first self- sufficient megalopolis, the Mega-Primus project. It was a colossal project that taxed the remaining usable resources of earth, and those of the frontier, and took well over twenty years to complete. By that time it was already populated to capacity, and the remaining buildings of old Toronto that were still standing were quickly inhabited as well. A few years later, all but the most isolated of places were abandoned, by then only military bases with orbital capability and a few scientific outposts were still populated outside the city walls. But for all ends and purposes the remaining empty spaces on Earth were a very cheap real state with no true use, and no demand.

Speaking of the dimensional war would be hard. I'm biased as I have lived though it first hand as part of X-COM, and I must say I do not regret it. Why X-COM would want an old historian like myself; well, who knows. I suppose having someone keeping a chronicle was convenient and having a walking repository of past history was useful too. I must say that in all my years, I have never met a bunch of people like them. From the combat personnel to those who staffed the labs, I have no words to truly describe what it is like; the camaraderie, and the animosity, this from people that faced death on a daily basis. I did read about the old X-COM logs, and found something similar, and yet we faced even worse odds. I served my time in the American Federation, in the post T'Leth forties, and it was hell. I was in one of the worst periods, and remember being stationed in the base with leaves suspended indefinitely, and after two months of that we where ready to mutiny...

Let us say that in the end X-COM came out on top. About half of Mega- Primus was a burnt wreck, and that was the time Marsec and the other big corps decided to make their move against X-COM and the senate. Most of their technology was by then obsolete, when compared to the tech fielded by X-COM, and X-COM was already marketing the non-combat tech. Some advanced Back staving if you ask me, would have worked better if X-COM didn't had months to prepare themselves. Of course they also had Megapol on their side (yes the rivalry between Marsec and Megapol was a factor, but not the decisive factor. That was when X-COM allied with Megapol and became their research associate, and since they had access to disrupter technology, they managed to produce the disrupter pistol, and the new Mk IV), so by the time the dust settled, the city's and mankind's status quo had changed.

Well then came yet another reconstruction period. The cement is still fresh, the city is newly painted, and it will last, perhaps. Hobbes once said "Homo Homini Lupus" man is wolf of man, and for most of our history, this quote has been, sadly, very accurate. So we shall see.

Or perhaps X-Com is right, the Wanderer project is ready to begin, and if correct it is our only chance. Of course the Micronoid might have the advantage, or not, but in searching beyond our own universe, we might find ourselves out of the pan and into the fire. To quote, yet again "time will tell" and that is all I can think about this.

-----Aristotele Larsic, Mega Primus, October 17th 2093
An extract from "an essay on the X"