The Thirteenth Angel had reached the end of its long journey, heading back towards its place of birth. The Children of Lilith had awaked it, and it had obeyed its unerring mission to return to what it had came from. It saw the oceans end ahead of it, as it began to glide down to the ground, slower than what it chould have done. Had it been human-like, like the Seventeeth, it would have registered surprise. For its progenitor was dead, pieces of it scattered over the Pacific, and the islands below.
If it had free will, like the Seventeenth, it would have doubted. But it was the Thirteenth, and it knew only of its reason for existing.
On the ground below, Acting Commander Shigeru Aoba nodded grimly to himself, before grabbing a microphone, slowly considering the impact of every word that he was going to say to Asuka in her Eva.
"Good luck, Asuka. Let's show them all why we're here."
NEON
GENESIS
EVANGELION
A3I: Agression II
"Target is 800 meters in the air, decreasing height at a rate of 10 meters a second," said someone who was monitoring the sensors.
"I see. Fortunately they still seem mindless," Ritsuko said. How fortunate, she thought, that Angels knew nothing of strategy or planning.
"All right, it's here, can I kill it now?" asked Asuka's voice over the intercom, as her Eva pointed its palette rifle at the rapidly descending figure of the Angel. Her voice had a hint of a satisfied smirk in it, which nobody could verify, as the visual communications systems in the Eva had not yet been completely set up.
"Wait. That new palette rifle probably won't penetrate Eva armor. Wait till it gets closer," Ritsuko said, her eyes locked on the visual signal of the black angel swooping down on the ground. She could see the face of the monster on the video displays at maximum zoom, its jaws gaping open in an insane leer, its unnaturally elongated arms, a design feature in the original Eva 03, now trailing eerily behind its body.
"I have a clear shot," Asuka calmly said.
"Wait," Ritsuko said.
"Fire!" Shigeru ordered.
Asuka let loose a long sustained burst with the giant rifle, which spewed out scores of armor-piercing rounds into the sky. The bullets relentlessly raced towards its destination, only to harmlessly shatter in the air in front of the Angel.
"Damn AT Field.. break, damn you, break!" Shigeru bitterly willed forth death to the Angel above as Asuka ceased firing, giving time for her weapon to cool down, as she kept a close bead on the Angel. The Angel itself stopped its gentle descent, flapping its monstrous black wings in the morning sky, hiding in front of the sun.
Asuka cursed in German, angry at the pathetic weapons she was stuck with. Ritsuko spared a sideways glance at Shigeru, who stood in front of the main tactical display, his eyes never taking a second off the video feed, ignoring the shouted status reports of the combat staff seated at their consoles. Ritsuko saw his clenched fist shake in front of his chest, and the tightness of his lips. He looked afraid in her eyes.
"Asuka, fire again! " Shigeru shouted. The rifle should have cooled down enough for another burst. The AT field was strong, but it wasn't the strongest. He knew that a sustained pounding would at least weaken it.
"No! Asuka! Don't!" Ritsuko shouted. Shigeru immediately turned his head to face her, his shoulder length hair swinging wildly from the speed of his action. His eyes narrowed in anger. The room fell silent, as one by one, the assorted techs and support personnel turned their heads to look at Ritsuko and Shigeru. For three seconds Shigeru merely glared at Ritsuko, who stared back with focus and intensity, her lips drawn tight into a narrow line.
The Angel gracefully swooped down onto the crater floor, with a dull thud that everyone in the war room below its feet could feel. A small cloud of dust rose up to the Angel's knees, only to hit something that seemed to shimmer in the morning air. The dust fell back to the ground, as the Angel's mouth opened wide in what almost looked like a human sneer.
"Asuka, ignore the Chief Scientist's order. Fire," Shigeru hissed, still not taking his eyes off Ritsuko.
Asuka pointed her Eva's rifle at the spot where the Angel had landed, almost fifty meters in front of her. The Angel merely looked in her direction, almost daring her to fire. Asuka pulled the trigger, but there was no Angel for her bullets to hit. It had leaped into the air, its long hands taking a swipe at Eva 02's head.
Eva 02 jumped back slightly, its head escaping the swinging fist of the Angel. It had dropped the unwieldy palette rifle, and Asuka commanded her Eva to repeatedly step back, dodging various swipes and punches thrown by the Angel.
"You can't beat me!!" Asuka shouted, as the Angel amazingly stopped attacking. It stood in front of her, it's unnaturally long arms just out of reach of Asuka's red Eva 02.
"AT Fields neutralized," said someone.
"Come on, Asuka." Shigeru whispered as silently as he could.
Asuka pushed her Eva forward now, trying to capitalize on the opening as Eva 02 made a running shoulder block, catching the Angel square in the chest area, knocking it a few steps backwards. As Asuka tried to bring the Progressive Knife into play, thrusting it at the Angel's chest, the posessed Evangelion lunged forward, its mouth wide open at an inhuman aperture, rushing forward to try and bite Eva 02's neck.
"Scheisse!" Asuka shouted as she hurriedly made her Eva dodge the surprise attack. Drops of Angel spittle bounced harmlessly off her Eva's chest plates.
"Asuka, disengage from close combat and try to grab the palette rifle," Shigeru said. "It's two hundred meters at your five o'clock."
"Too far!" shouted Asuka. She had other plans. Eva 02 hit an armored fist into the face of the Angel, hitting it so hard its head snapped back with a crunch, its body staggering a few steps backwards. Gasping, Asuka's brow furrowed with frustration. Two hundred meters was too far when the Thirteenth Angel was concerned. Asuka changed the position of the Progressive Knife in her Eva's hand, preparing to stab.
"She's trying to stab it?" Ritsuko asked, inredulous. She grabbed an intercom as the Angel ran towards Asuka at breakneck speed. Ritsuko's hand wrapped itself around the microphone as the Angel leapt into the sky, its unnaturally long arms rushing forward to try and strangle Eva 02.
"Asuka! No! The Progressive Knife can't…"
Asuka's reaction to the attack was rapid; the Progressive Knife was brought dead center unto the armored hand that was reaching out for its throat. Ritsuko watched with dismay as the Progressive Knife broke into pieces upon contact with the armored arm.
Asuka screamed in frustration, then pain, as the Angel's hands reached her Eva's throat and began to throttle it. Asuka made choking sounds, seemingly struggling to breathe. There was a danger she could pass out from the pain.
"Quick! Pilot vital signs!" Ritsuko shouted.
Eva 02 dropped the shattered Progressive Knife, as Asuka ordered its hands to try and break the stranglehold the Angel has on her Eva's neck.
"Pulse up 10, sync is down 3 percent…" Someone rattled off the numbers.
"I don't want that! Is the pilot's destardo manifesting?" Ritsuko yelled, trying to find the information herself, furiously keying in commands into the MAGI.
Asuka somehow managed to break free.
"No destardo manifesting, good!" Ritsuko shouted out loud to no one in particular. Shigeru's eyes opened wide in shock at the mention of the word.
Asuka growled, like an angry animal, before she let out a bloodcurdling yell that was so loud and angry that the some of the communications officers threw off their earpieces, unable to withstand the pain that was amplified in their ears.
The Angel charged at Eva 02, knocking it down to the ground, but Asuka managed to roll with the tackle, taking both her Eva and the Angel to the smooth wall of the crater, smashing the Angel's back onto the smooth granite. Asuka commanded her Eva to throw the Angel onto the ground, but the Angel grabbed hold of Eva 02's shoulders, making it fall down as well, but Asuka's combat experience worked to her advantage. She let her Eva fall on top of the Angel, pinning its unnaturally long arms under her. The Angel attempted to kick out from under Asuka, but she was not having any of it, commanding her Eva to start pounding at the Angel at any available point, head, chest, abdomen. The thick black armor of the Angel began to buckle as Asuka ordered her Eva to hit it again and again and again.
The Angel made angry roaring and howling noises but was helplessly pinned down as Asuka pounded its armored chest over and over again.
"What the… Asuka! No! Stop! Stop!" Shigeru shouted, as the eerie feeling of déjà vu overtook him. Sections of the Angel's armor began to shake off under Asuka's constant pounding. There was no reply from Asuka, except for the sound of heavy breathing.
"Cut 50% of the A-10 nerve connections!" Ritsuko shouted, anticipating Shigeru's orders. "We can't allow her sync rate to rise any higher!!"
It was too late, as Asuka broke the Angel's chest plate, exposing its red core and its grey-brown flesh to the open air.
"Die! Die! Die!" Asuka finally said, or rather shouted, over and over again, as her Eva started to hit the Angel's exposed red core. Experience told her that once an Angel's core was breached it would die.
Ritsuko tried to stop her. "Asuka! No! You'll breach the…"
The Angel core can no longer take the incessant pounding from Asuka's Eva and cracked, then imploded as an armored fist shattered it.
The next thing everyone knew, a giant cross-shaped pillar of light rose from the crater that housed NERV. There was no flash, no heat, no thunderous detonation, just a single white pillar of light that erupted from the ground, flaring out as it neared its apex into two arms, like a cross, that reached upwards almost a mile high. .
Shinji could see it from Matsushiro.
"Good job, Asuka," Shinji said, smiling at the sight of Asuka's apparent victory.
So too could Admiral Starling from the bridge of his ship, miles away from the coast of Japan.
"This isn't going according to plan," he mumbled to himself darkly.
Alone in a bombproof shelter, somewhere below the streets of the last surviving precinct of Tokyo 03, Hikari Horaki could not see the flaring light, but could rather sense something has changed. She wondered if she could come out of the shelter now.
There was silence in the Geofront crater, but there was chaos in the buildings safely buried undernetath it. Shigeru, Ritsuko and the NERV battle staff were desperately trying to regain communications with Asuka in Eva 02, but the MAGI screens were all blank. The Angel was definitely gone, but the Evangelion was silent.
"Commander, end the red alert. Take the buildings up," Ritsuko said, almost breathless from the anxiety. She could feel that something was wrong, but had no idea what.
"Hmm.." Shigeru nodded, then turned to bellow out the order.
"Stand down from red alert! Raise the buildings!"
There was still no word from Asuka when the buildings stopped rumbling up to ground level.
As soon as the buildings stopped rising out of the ground, the doors opened, and a multitude of NERV personnel burst out into the Geofront crater. The air shimmered in the heat of the day, but it was clear enough for everyone to see.
The Angel was gone, and it took Eva 02 with it.
"No!" shouted Ritsuko.
"Eva unit 02... Asuka… gone…" was all Shigeru could say, his mind still trying to accept what his eyes told him.
Ritsuko ran to the spot where she last saw Asuka and the Angel battle before anyone else gathered their wits enough to try and stop her. She stopped suddenly, reaching out her hand, as if trying to grab something that only she could see.
Shigeru could do nothing but shake his head in sorrow. The other NERV staff looked on, stunned. Ritsuko looked up and down, this way and that, kicking up dust with her high heeled shoes that got into her eyes, irritating them and forcing a tear to form at the corner of her eyes.
She bit her lip, curling her hands into a fist. This is not the time or place, she told herself over and over again. She took stiff, mechanical steps back to where Shigeru was waiting for her, an uncertain expression on his face. She walked for what felt like eternity before she was finally face to face with him. She could feel all the eyes of NERV, and perhaps, the world, on her, waiting for an explanation.
"What happened?" Shigeru asked tentatively.
"I don't know." Ritsuko said, wringing her hands in a confused mix of frustration and grief.
"Shinji!" Ritsuko cried out. "What am I going to tell Shinji?!" she half-shouted, half-sobbed. The tears in her eyes now had nothing to do with dust.
Shigeru dumbly watched his chief scientist fall apart in front of the men, but he regained his composure rapidly, straightening up his posture, before turning around to face the various NERV personnel that was now gawking at the empty spot where an Evangelion used to be.
"Doctor Akagi, you're granted two weeks compassionate leave," Shigeru finally said, as Ritsuko nodded her acknowledgement. "I'll have the best brains in the world figure out what happened. If we can bring Asuka back…"
Shigeru paused halfway, feeling the weight of several hundred pairs of eyes on him.
"Back to your posts!" Shigeru ordered. "Yellow alert until further notice!"
"Thank you, Aoba," Ritsuko mumbled. Despite her anguished state, she knew that he was allowing her the chance to break down in private, away from public view. She stood there dumbly, her back towards everyone, until she heard the doors close, then the last of her self-control fled, and she sank to her knees in the dirt, sobbing, her hands covering her face, the dust rising up in eddies to her chest and shoulders.
The last time she had felt like this was when her mother was found splattered over the floor of the Command Center of the old Geofront, so many years ago.
Ritsuko Akagi continued to sob, paying the price for daring to actually care about someone.
She slowly tried to rise to her feet, rising unsteadily on legs that felt like jelly. She had to get out of the crater, then break the news to Shinji, then afterwards, if there was anything she could do to get Asuka back, do it.
"Are you all right, Senpai?" asked a small, quiet woman's voice from behind her.
It was enough to shock Ritsuko back into the world, making her spin around as fast as she could in the direction the voice came from. There was no one there.
"Maya?!" Ritsuko asked, confused.There was no one there.There was no one else in the crater, she reassured herself, everyone else was back in the buildings, and Maya was dead.
Despite the heat, and her own sense of grief, Ritsuko shivered. She gathered her lab coat around her, and walked slowly away in a daze. Shinji was the only thing on her mind now.
"Gone?! Totally gone?!" asked Admiral Starling, who was now unable to even pretend to smile.
"Correct, there are no organic remnants to salvage." replied Shigeru, his grave tones seemingly resonating behind his hands. He rested his head behind steepled hands, but his eyes were visible enough, and it was easy to see that he was as shocked as anyone else.
There was a brief moment of static, and Shigeru lost Starling's video feed, leaving the words "sound only" on his MAGI terminal.
"So Lt. Langley is officially dead?" asked the disembodied voice of Admiral Starling.
"No, NERV procedure is to list her as
missing for a year before we issue a death certificate."
There was a few seconds of silence. They were probably trying to restore visuals, Shigeru thought. When Starling spoke again, there was still no improvement.
"Of course. I'll ask the Secretary-General's office to issue an immediate death certificate for Lt. Langley. The death benefits would be available to the next of kin within 24 hours" said Starling, the smile slowly returning to his face, as if the loss of the only Evangelion and it's pilot was simply an annoyance
"Ah, I don't really think that would be necessary," Shigeru said, confused by Starling's reaction to Asuka's disappearance. He was expecting fire and brimstone, not compassion and an early release of death benefits.
"On the contrary. It's the least I can do. She sacrificed herself for us, Commander. I'll have someone let you know when the paperwork's done. Starling out," followed by silence as the communications link was terminated.
Shinji's car stopped on the outskirts of Hakone. The road was once a busy highway that linked Hakone to Gotenba, but it was now dead quiet, the volume of traffic reduced to nothing when most of the population died.
There was another car parked outside the road. Through the tinted glass, Shinji could see Ritsuko was standing outside, leaning against it, her head bowed and looking at the ground, totally unlike her usual proud, cool demeanour.
One of his bodyguards opened the door and gestured for him to get out, which he did. Shinji took a few tentative steps towards Ritsuko, wondering why she wanted to see him here, instead of just waiting for him to come home.
At the sight of him, Ritsuko ran up towards him, covering the distance between them seemingly in an instant. Before he could react, she held him in a tight embrace, her hands cold against his back, even her body against his didn't seem warm. Shinji gasped in surprise, which was met with Ritsuko's sobbing. Her arms held him even tighter against her body, as if she was drowning and he was the only thing that kept her afloat. Shinji became flustered, trying to squirm away, but Ritsuko held on with desperate strength, and he found himself unable to break free of the sobbing woman.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Ritsuko sobbed over and over again, her tears running from her face into his shoulders.
"NERV Lieutenant Langley officially MIA pending confirmation of death. Eva 02 destroyed…" Shigeru looked at the words on his screen, in large red letters over a black background. It was his official report to the Security Council regarding the disaster. He had sat there in his office ever since he told Starling the bad news, trying to find the words for the report, but grief clouded his mind.
He sent the message to the UN anyway, then angrily turned the computers in his room off.
Shigeru sat there, blankly staring ahead. His mind went back to almost a year ago, to the day of the Third Impact, the day Asuka died the first time.
"Damn it, these things don't give up! And I can't even rely on that idiot Shinji!" Asuka yelled over the communications systems as she smashed another Mass Production Eva into submission.
Her Eva thrashed the nine Mass Production Evangelions, breaking spines, slicing off legs, smashing heads. Shigeru remembered, and he had felt hope then, despite being cut off from the rest of NERV, and with JSDF forces still in control over much of the Geofront, that he was going to see tomorrow.
"These are the last ones!" she shouted.
Then she fell the replica copy of the Lance of Longinus pinning her Eva's head to the ground.
Yet, Asuka refused to accept her fate, defiantly commanding her unpowered Evangelion to rise again through sheer willpower.
She failed. Eight other lances pierced the body of Eva 02.
Shigeru remembered Maya's horrible gasp, which confirmed what he and Makoto had already known in their hearts. The dark memory of that day replayed itself in his head in a continuing loop. Asuka Sohryu Langley was dead. Maybe for good this time, and Shigeru was there both times. The question that won't go away in his mind resurfaced to fill his thoughts: What if there really was nothing he could do to prevent the Third Impact?
Shigeru buried his head in his hands, the dark waves of despair washing over him.
Shinji sat on one of the sofas in Ritsuko's apartment, curling up into a fetal position, his head buried beneath his arms, his face touching his knees.
"Misato, help!" Ritsuko cried out inside, her heart was being broken all over again in the same day. Asuka had disappeared less than six hours ago, and now Shinji was shutting himself off from the world again. He didn't respond to food or speech, and he didn't even try to pull away when she tried to touch him. Pen-Pen was waddling around the apartment, uninterested in the affairs of the humans. Ritsuko stared hard at Shinji's brown hair, observing his breathing patterns as his chest rose and fell.
"Shinji," Ritsuko said softly, trying yet again to get a response.
"Shinji, there's hope," Ritsuko continued, to no reaction from the boy. "I don't think Asuka's dead. There's so many unknowns when it comes to S2 engines and Angel cores, like the time you fell into the…"
Shinji did not respond.
Ritsuko stopped talking, her brow furrowed in concentration. Her knowledge of psychology told her that he was being driven into a despair fuelled state of deliberate apathy, much like what had happened to Asuka after the Fifteenth Angel directly invaded her mind.
"Please Shinji, don't lose the will to live," Ritsuko said in desperation, shaking his shoulders violently.
Shinji remained silent. Ritsuko gave up, her hands suddenly pulling away from his shoulders.
Her eyes lowered, a long sigh escaping her lungs. After a few seconds, she stood up, took a long, lingering look at Shinji and walked away slowly and silently, her mind determined to help him live through this, no matter what.
"I won't fail you. I'm not my mother. I'm not Misato," Ritsuko silently swore to herself, as she gently closed the door to Shinji's apartment.