Me too.
Well, a major apology from me for not having updated all this time. It is now slightly over a month, instead of just the month that I thought I'd update by.
It doesn't matter, now. This chapter now comes in conclusion for the story that you have just read. Don't expect it to be short, though. It's longer than all three parts put together, as promised.
If you forgot what the story was about, here's a quick synopsis of what has happened last episode:
Misato goes crazy and tries to blow up Gendou. Shinji saves Gendou but at the apparent cost of his own life. Misato gets even more psychotic after finding out Gendou survived, and it all eventually came to a showdown between Rei and Misato. Rei gets injured (bullet wounds that render her left arm useless and a slashed eye), but eventually brings Misato back into the sane realm with an influential speech. Shinji returns just in time for nothing, revealing that he was saved by Gendou's fanclub - who turned out not to be just that, but also mysterious beings from the nth dimension. By then, the week had ended, and they went out into the outside world again, only to find the Giant Marshmallow Man of Canaan (angel) has come, and with great farting powers. After a brief panic back into NERV, again, Gendou realizes something that can defeat the angel; demonstrated most clearly by Lilith. Apparently, she pulled out the Lance of Longinus during lunch break to stick a blob of herself onto it to cook it over a fire...
Because this thing is so long, I have also provided 9 intermissions between appropriate scenes. You can rest, have a leak or recover the world of the unrandom (and unfunny) again if you believe you should have a pause. The intermissions also have names so you can remember them
On the off-chance that you are a hardcore, read-in-one-sitting sort of person, I can happily refer you to NERV's psychiatric ward, or I can let you right on.
On a side note, I must say, I am appalled at how FanFictionis not letting me put a question mark and an exclamation mark together. I am sorry to say, I can't find a way around it, so all '! (and) ?' have to be simplified to '?'. I hope you can work it out.
So, without further ado...
Epilogue
They snatched the skewer off Lilith.
"Hey! I was gonna eat that!" Cried Lilith. "I want my marshmallow! And my Big M! Where's my weed?"
"Dude, you look way too stoned for that," commented Shigeru, looking at her dull, heavy eyes. Shigeru, in the past, learnt what a really stoned person was like. Lilith looked like the perfect textbook case.
"I blame it on Gendou for the fire of '04 in this very room with ten years' supply of weed storage," said Lilith, sternly. "Which, needless to say, I had to endure."
"And it was an excellent quality, too," added Gendou, regrettingly. "I'll be restocking, soon, in accordance to the budget."
"Yeah, what a crappy waste of money," commented Ritsuko.
"Oh," said Shinji with a sudden realization. "So does that explain why I get high every time I get stuck in the entry plug for too long?"
It made perfect sense...
"Who ever told you we used Lilith's blood for the LCL in the first place, Shinji?" asked Ritsuko, suspiciously.
"Uh... I don't know. It's like I was made to say that by some Godlike force... A force making us say things because it sounds weird. Maybe we are all acting according to a will of some great story writer!" Exclaimed Shinji.
"If we were, I'm sure this God-writer thing wouldn't reveal itself so obviously, you know," said Misato. "And I'm sure this sort of thing has happened before in the other stories with us in it."
"Alternate universes?" asked Makoto.
"Or, even more ludicrous, fics!" laughed Asuka. "You're all idiots."
"I don't believe any God thing would waste their time writing all this crap, Shinji," said Lilith. "I mean, sure we all have out catchphrases like 'Where's my Big M?' and 'What a crappy waste of money' and stuff that could be from some children's show, but seriously, who would be writing all this bull?"
"I don't know. Probably someone on crack as well," said Asuka. "But I'm getting sick of the 'What a crappy waste of money' thing. It's way overused."
Suddenly, everyone stared at each other with slit eyes for a moment; like they were saying "Next one to say 'What a crappy waste of ...' is going to get pulverized."
"... Anyway," said Lilith. "What of my marshmallow?"
"Lilith," said Gendou, impatiently, "by the time we've finished with the angel, we're gonna have a marshmallow as big as you."
Lilith stroked her chin with a smile. "Hmmm... Interesting."
"So we have a deal?" said Gendou, pushing up his glasses.
"Deal," said Lilith, and pulled out her hand. When Gendou shook hands with this giant thing, Gendou screamed.
"Argh! My hand!"
Lilith smirked. "That's for all the years I've been donating blood without pay!"
"But think of the budget!"
"No hand for you!"
"Gimme my right hand!"
"Uh uh!"
"Ugh! Ugh..."
"You gotta jump higher than that to get your hand back!"
Misato shook her head, and began instructions. "Maya! Makoto! Get the Commander and Rei to get their hands fixed. Everyone else, carry off the Skewer! Let's go! Hup, hup, hup, hup, hup, hup..."
A minute later, Rei walked out into the Command Center with a full left arm, good as new.
"Whaaah!" They all screamed, recoiling back at Rei's rather speedy recovery.
"I got better," said Rei.
"Well, that's good for you," said Ritsuko. "But you still can't pilot the Evangelion because of the eye damage. I guess we'll have to leave it to Shinji and Asuka. It looks real nice, though. A lot like UNIT-01, actually. That scar could get you a lot of boys... like my mole."
"Yeah, look at you, now," commented Makoto.
Rei looked at the two with Ritsuko glaring dangerously at Makoto with a popping vein. "I... guess I'll be going, now..."
As Rei walked off, Misato glanced a little to her left and eyed Toji with an evil smile. "Speaking of pilots... Toji...?"
"Yeah...?" said Toji cautiously.
Misato approached Toji like she was going to get him to pilot Unit-00 in place of Rei, which was exactly what she was going to do. "Don't forget to keep your end of the bargain, now..."
"What bargain...?" Toji ran for his life.
"Get him!" Misato shouted to two men in black suits and sunglasses, who quickly chased Toji for a few meters before tackling him to the ground. Misato smiled. "You'll be piloting Unit-00, now."
"Take him away, boys!" said Ritsuko like she'd said it a million times.
"Hey, that my line!" Shouted Misato at Ritsuko. She composed herself and looked towards the men. "Bake him away, toys!"
#Discharge Termination Plug...#
#Insert Entry Plug.#
#Begin Entry PLug LCL injection...#
As the voices continued, Shinji took a deep breathe of the LCL. "Hey," commented Shinji after a second, "this smells a lot like... baked beans. Um, does that make sense?"
"Yeah," said Ritsuko's voice. "I also spent some money to improve the LCL atmosphere after the anonymous complaint that it smelt a lot like blood (whoever that was). I've developed three new flavors, actually..."
"What a crappy waste of money..." commented Misato behind Ritsuko's back, forgetting that silent truce they had, staring at each other with slitted eyes.
Ritsuko's fist flew up and whacked Misato into the air, twirling round and round.
"Yes... we have baked bean, chocolate and Yebisu beer."
"Why don't you get me the chocolate, then?" asked Shinji.
"Because," said Ritsuko, "Unit-01 ate it all when she went berserk, last month. So, I guess, be careful when you synch up. Unit-01 may go on a sugar-high... If you know what I mean..."
Ritsuko ended there, and Shinji heard the following: #Connect to main power supply. Transmit pulse...# #Connect to A10 nerve.# before he got hit by an extreme high sugar level. Shinji spasmed for a split-second, then relaxed, slowly with a weird sensation. #All circuits are operational.# "So, how is it, Shinji?" asked Ritsuko. She was staring at the image of a heavy-lidded cross-eyed Shinji attempting to speak in a slurred speech.
"Oh... yeah. Whadedah..." said Shinji, slurrly.
Misato stared at this screen with a face, and was disturbed by a scary, low giggle from Shinji. "O-o-oka-a-ay..." said Misato, cautiously. "First the weed high, now the sugar high... What will we think of next?" She then looked at Ritsuko, who shrugged in reply. "Okay, how's Asuka?"
The screen switched to Unit-02's entry plug being filled with LCL.
"Ah! Es ist... Hehehe..." Asuka's face then turned into a drunk smile.
Misato glared at Ritsuko. "Don't tell me that's LCL Yebisu, Rits."
"Well, technically, it isn't..." she said, hesitantly. "It's beer and OCT... mixed together..."
Misato looked evilly at Ritsuko.
"Well, I guess we were running out of funds, now that we spent some on improving the MAGI and the Dolby Digital Surround Sound® 17.4 Speaker/Microphone System... I had to improvise... By mixing beer and OCT... together..."
"Which was a crappy waste of you-know-what."
"But you got to admit, it was pretty cool..." Ritsuko leaned on a desk and sighed, distantly. Yep... it was cool while it lasted. How on earth do we do this, now, without the MAGI?
Meanwhile, Asuka was laughing as she began to swim wildly around the Entry Plug.
It wasn't often that any of the children explored their Entry Plug like so. To them, it was just plain, old, same old. Of course, when you're drunk, common sense is kicked out the window, and interesting stuff happens.
It is not often that you'd get drunk in an Entry Plug. It is not often that you swim in it. Not often when you take a look behind the seat. It is not often that you'd find a nice, round, big, friendly, green button with a stylistic, glowing "X" behind the seat.
"So, what does this button do?"
Asuka pushed the button and the Help Screen materialized in front of her, in the beer.
Asuka's screen flashed in front of Shinji. "Hey, Shinji, look what I found!"
Shinji could see a green help screen behind Asuka. "Yeah? How do i get it?"
"Pretty cool eh? Just press the green X at the back of the seat."
"Oh, I never noticed that thing..." Press. "Hey, cool! It's got all the controller buttons! Hey, it even says what all the buttons do! Let's see, L Trigger - Brake, yeah I got that... D Button - Honk. Hm, let's see..." Shinji pressed his XBox controller's D button and the Eva gave a loud car-honk noise that echoed throughout the holding cages.
"Ugh, deafening..." commented Fuyutsuki as he stuck his little finger in his right ear and gave it a cleaning.
"Whoa, I never knew that button did that! But wait. What's this?" He took a close look at a strange, faint symbol that could hardly be seen. However, it was clearly a button of some sort... A hidden button. Shinji ventured to push it.
"Whoa! It's the cheat-codes! Muahahaha! I am The God! Now..."
Shinji grinned as he screened through the list Konami cheat-codes. "Unlimited Eva Batteries. Just what I need...
"Unlimited Ammo. Great!
"Change Eva color... I've always wanted a White Eva. After all, white is the new black!"
Shinji toggled through the colors. Outside, everyone stared at the Eva as it changed from purple to green, to blue, to pink, to grey, to white. The white blinded everyone. Everyone tried their best to shield their eyes.
"First the horn, now this," said Gendou, putting his hands in front of his face. "Ugh, I prefer the grey."
"Actually, I like the pink one," commented Fuyutsuki, too holding up his hands.
"That's because you're gay, Kouzou."
"How dare you!" Cried Fuyutsuki. "I'm bi!"
"Stop your quarreling, boys," said Misato, firmly.
Did she just call us 'boys'? thought Gendou, steaming.
The Eva then recalibrated its luminosity to an acceptable level.
"Now, what else?" said Shinji as he scrolled down. "Unlimited lives. Er... I never knew you could die more than once. Oh well...
"Decrease IQ... Hm... Nah...
"Change Rei's panty color... Wait, I think I've accidentally stumbled upon that once, didn't I?
"Automatic Matrix moves...? Aha! Now, I AM THE GOD!"
"Shinji, why don't you get us something else more important?" Asked Ritsuko.
"Like what?"
"LIKE MAYBE A NEW SUPER-MAGI?"
"Oh yeah, sure."
Maya saw everything was ready on the new super MAGI and looked to Misato. "Major?"
Misato paused, then shouted, "EVA LAUNCH!"
Fuyutsuki squeaked his ears with his little finger again. "I preferred the horn..."
"Weeeeeeeee!"
Shinji shot up through the chute like a bullet from a shotgun. His enjoyment was further enhanced with his chocolate-induced sugar-high. Above him, below the buildings of Tokyo-3, the road opened up for its way. However...
"Major! The Extruding End-Track is not functioning!" cried Maya. Not good.
"That's impossible! That's never happened before!"
"There's a first time for everything," said Gendou. "We can't stop it now..."
The geoport was fully opened, and like a cork from a champagne bottle, the Evangelion shot out and up.
"Uh... I don't think it will land very well," said Misato.
The Evangelion flew through the sky, reached its turning point and fell back to Earth with amazing speed. As it fell, Unit-01 spun anti-clockwise, sumersaulted twice, with pike and landed on both its feet with a crash, kneeling. Very dramatic. Very cool.
"Yeah," said Shinji, smiling. "Automatic Matrix moves... Makes up for the slowing-down-time power I lost."
The evangelion stood up, for a moment, then spasmed like electricity ripped through for a second. Shinji accompanied the shaking with blubber sounds: "Bleh bleh bleh!"
"Unit-01 is highly unstable, Katsuragi. You understand that?" asked Ritsuko, taking a bite of chocolate.
"Don't worry," Misato replied. "The more hyperactive, the better! (And I thought you said all the chocolate were gone!) Launch Unit-02!"
Unit-02 was launched with a drunk Asuka in it. The geoport opened promptly, and Unit-02 smashed its head on the bottom of a semi-trailer.
"Who the hell would leave a semi-trailer in the middle of the road?" Cried Misato with a sweatdrop.
"Hey, that was fun," said Asuka, drunkedly. "Let's do it again!"
Misato sighed heavily, again. "Withdraw Evangelion and switch to another route."
They did. The geoport opened promptly and Unit-02 smashed its head into Unit-01's groin.
"Eeek!#!" Shinji's sugar-high smile ended quite suddenly. Unit-01 fell back with a big thud, and Unit-02 crawled out, drunkedly.
"Hey, that was fun... Let's do it again!" said Asuka with a wide smile.
"No!" Shinji quivered, curled on the floor, holding his groin.
Meanwhile, Misato talked into a microphone. "You ready, Toji? Launch Unit-00!"
"No!" was what Toji wanted to say but no one heard.
Bang! Unit-00 popped up next to Asuka. The final locks were released and the Eva's shoulders sagged forward to a slouch...
Nothing happened.
"C'mon, Toji, let's get goin'!" said Asuka, slapping Unit-00 on the back. It fell on its face. "Whoops! There you go now!" Asuka set Toji back on his feet.
Toji rubbed his nose, painfully. "I can't move this thing! What should I do?"
"Maybe we should have given him some training..." said Misato to Ritsuko, the back of her head, dark blue and with a sweatdrop. So much for a new pilot. Everyone turned their heads, slowly, to Gendou with an glaring, fake smile smile on.
"... What?" cried Gendou, whiningly. "You want me to switch to Dummy Plug or something?"
Everyone nodded their heads, slowly, seriously.
"Fine then... But I've warned you."
Toji was put out of his misery.
Toji's Entry Plug went all red, then a green color. In the corner, a light flashed, slowly, ominously, saying "Dummy Plug: Custom Pilot."
The whining of the dummy plug starting up increased slowly like a foreboding of something very bad about to be unleashed.
Unit-00's eye flashed. It has become self-aware. It threw its head back and roared. It finished, then ran about, around the city, until it came to a flower shop. With horrific easiness, it ripped off the roof like a lid from a tin can.
"Argh!" Cried Shinji. "It's gonna kill everyone!
The Evangelion dug its hand into the shop and pulled out a bunch of flowers. It stood up, and began skipping around like a little girl, and threw flowers around. It was a horrible sight.
"What the hell? Queer Eye for the Eva Guy?" said Shinji, recoiling.
Meanwhile, Toji was screaming his head off. It was the most evil thing that has happened in his life. He was acting gay. His screams were never ceasing, never tiring. Building up like an endless flow of a waterfall. "Huargh! Make it stop! Make it stop! Oh, God!"
Then, the Eva stopped right next to Unit-01 and broke off its petty mouth-restraint, and began talking. The voice... was undescribable.
"Now, what should we do about this white? It's so-o-o not this year's back. Let me help you with that..." And it tried to take it off.
Shinji was screaming as much as Toji, now, but of pure terror. "Huargh! Make it stop!" But Unit-00 had already brought Unit-01 down. With a gleam of the eye, Unit-00 began ripping Unit-01's armour apart. Pieces of white flew everywhere. It never seemed to cease. Not for Shinji, nor for the NERV staff at Command Center. They all stared with horror as the evil process continued on, hidden from the view of the camera, silhouettes of pieces flying away. All stared at it with shock. Except for Makoto, who was putting his hands on his face and crying with pity and a nausiating stomach.
Everyone was, then, looking at Gendou, after seeing the evil work of the Dummy Plug first-hand. They were in shock and awe. Gendou stood there, with a smirk/smile on his face and a sweatdrop... He sat back down, slowly. Everyone could but look back on the Evangelion, now dressed in a black turtleneck sweater and pants.
Fuyutsuki leant towards Gendou's ear and said, "... What the hell is this?"
"SEELE sent us this guy called Kaworu. They say he was the Fifth Child. Dr. Akagi said he was compatible with the Dummy Plug Interface, so I thought 'What the heck!'"
"You didn't want your son to know about this new kid, right?"
Gendou gave a significant pause. "... He was gay."
Kouzou looked back at the screens, still leaning towards Gendou. "Obviously, you kept him in the same tank as the Rei's seeing as how there's little chance he would... contaminate them. Am I correct?"
"Saves money."
"No sweat."
Meanwhile, it seemed that Shinji finally gave up trying to stop Unit-00 from dressing him in a black turtle-neck sweater and pants. It actually didn't look all that bad.
As everyone clapped at Unit-01 being pushed down the cat-walk, something evil happened. A big gust of... blew the Evas off their feet, all of a sudden, and sent them into a building.
"Eeew!" everyone shouted, holding their noses. "Make it stop!"
Kouzou stood up. "It wasn't me!"
"No it isn't," said Ritsuko, dramatically. "It's the Giant Marshmallow Man of Canaan!"
Gendou, on the other side of the room at his desk, stood up with his arms on the table shouting, "Nooooooooo!"
This time, there was a reasonable excuse to be this dramatic in shouting "Nooooooooo!" like so. The angel has arrived. And they were busy learning about this year's new black.
Shinji, lying in the rubble, looked about. "Where is it, Misato?" But, already, he saw it. Standing here, just a couple of blocks away. Shinji stood up, quickly. The two giant beings stood there, now. One fat and white. The other, lean and black. They both knew the fight was on.
Suddenly, a white box popped out of the ground right next to Shinji, and opened up to reveal the Lance of Longinus. #Take it, Shinji!# Said Misato's voice, and Shinji did. He grabbed it and ran down the road, raising the spear up like a javelin.
As Shinji ran down, he thought he wouldn't lose. The angel was too fat to run from this, and it can never escape the Lance of Longinus: the Skewer of all skewers when it comes to marshmallows. He won a medal at school in the field of javelin. As well as this, Shinji had Automatic Matrix Moves!
There's no way I can lose! Thought Shinji. "EAT THIS, ARSCHLOCH!"
Shinji is now an easy 50 meters away from the angel. As Shinji was about to release the Lance into the angel (destroying it just like that so everyone could live happily ever after), the external power supply cable went Tawng! and jerked Shinji back. Unit-01 fell backwards, comically, and dropped the Lance.
"Oooooowww..." said everyone at NERV, sympathizingly.
Unit-00 closed its eye like it was expecting that. "I knew that cable was a fashion reject."
"And a crappy waste of money," said Ritsuko to Gendou, glaringly.
"... SHUT UP ABOUT THE WASTE OF MONEY!"
None-the-less, Shinji wasn't going to give up that easily. He got on to his knees, grabbed the Lance, undid his cable, and charged once more at the angel. This time, he saw the projectile fly at the angel, successfully. What happened, now, was that it bounced off the angel and clanged to the ground.
"Oh, shit!" cried Shinji as he realized that he grabbed his school flag pole instead of the Lance. His momentum carried him right into the angel; the Eva collided with the marshmallow man and was inexplicably absorbed like that.
Misato's face went from here to here. It turned into a contorted image of pure shock and horror. "That thing's absorbed the Eva?"
Misato turned to Ritsuko. Ritsuko ripped off the printout from the new MAGI. She looked at it for a second then announced, "The MAGI has just calculated what happened. Shinji and the Eva was absorbed and their AT-Fields were neutralized! All substances have scattered into a gaseous plasma form!"
"So you mean Shinji has turned into air?"
Ritsuko paused for a second, looking around. "... You don't want to know..."
Just then, the giant marshmallow man farted.
"Nooo!"
"Shinji's soul," continued Ritsuko, "is still intact, and is currently floating around in a vague location and state, and is likely to return to his body if it is to be recreated."
"Wow," said Makoto. "The MAGI can analyze that quickly?"
"Anyway, how do we get Shinji back?" Asked Misato.
"... Says, here, that we need to drop 92 N2 mines into the angel."
"..." said Maya. "Ritsuko, you made that up, didn't you?"
Realizing she was caught, this time, Ritsuko looked at Maya with a sweatdrop, then shamefully at the floor. "... yeah."
"Ha!" said Misato. "So, you really are a pyromaniac! Sure, I am a bit, but that explains who set fire to the girl's locker room last month! With me in it!"
"... It's just that you had more fuel than me, and I was jealous."
"Ah!" shouted Gendou. "So it was you who set fire to my collection of antique Vandread manga of '01! Meia was a role-model! Both for me and my Rei desi..."
At that point, everyone stared at Gendou.
"... Okay, you didn't hear anything about Rei in that. Anyway, I was going to hand them down to Shinji."
Ritsuko shook her head. "No, I wasn't a pyromaniac, then. I only began my obsession with fire when I witnessed Misato cooking with Vodka" said Ritsuko, puzzled. "I never set your manga on fire."
Meanwhile, in a dark corner, Kaji was listening to all this. He thought it thoroughly in his mind like some great detective. Sherlock Holmes, even.
"So," he said to himself, "Gendou's manga was never burnt by Ritsuko. I will deduct, then, that it can only be Yui, his then-wife, that burnt his collection to prevent Gendou from become what he has, now, and to prevent their child, Shinji, from becoming like Hibiki. I also deduct that Yui gave him Bubblegum Crisis manga to Shinji, secretly, which, no doubt, made him what he is, today: the new Mackie (- he even sounds like him in the English dub!). Anyway, Gendou had his intelligence agency report to him, at roughly 2003, on who it was: Yui. And thus, Gendou had his comeback in 2004, absorbing Yui into Unit-01, and replacing her with a Meia-inspired Rei Ayanami, whilst taking up all the ruthlessness and coldness of Meia, thus forgetting his wife, ultimately...
"How ironic..."
On the side, Fuyutsuki mentioned, quietly, "Actually, Yui was with me on a New Zealand expedition at the time of the burning: She couldn't have burnt his manga..."
It was then that Kaji became more tense.
"So, the plot thickens," he said, hoarsely, quietly. His eyes slitted. "Who burnt Gendou's manga?"
"So what do we have to do to get Shinji back?" Asked Misato.
Ritsuko sighed again. "We need to release an AT-Field, attract the plasma particles, rearrange them through a separate AT-Field manipulator (being careful not to to interfere with the original holding AT-Field), and bind it together with a sharp jolt of electricity and a pint."
"Of what?"
"Scotch."
"Wait, scotch doesn't come in pints..."
As Misato and Ritsuko discuss the ways in which scotch is presented, Professor Fuyutsuki looked around him, warily, and hid a bottle behind his back.
"Where the hell are we going to get scotch?" Asked Misato.
"More importantly, where are we going to get the AT-Field?"
Now, everyone became silent.
"No, seriously, where do we get scotch?"
Gendou stood up. "I think I've got just the AT-Field you need," he announced, then said to Fuyutsuki, quietly, "Get Kaworu."
"Can we use him?" Said Fuyutsuki, amazed.
"He's disposable."
"Wait a second!" Shouted Ritsuko. "As much as we need an AT-Field, why would you sacrifice a kid's life for one? Kaworu will lose his form! He will die! Disintegrate! There isn't even enough AT-Field to replace that of both Shinji and the Evangelion."
"He is gay," said Gendou, dominantly. "And he is an angel. (Don't ask me how I know that, I just know.) There's enough AT-Field for everyone! And, I also believe we've got enough scotch for everyone! Fuyutsuki?"
Kouzou went berserk. "Nooo! You will not take my scotch away from me!"
Fuyutsuki made to escape.
Misato knew that the fate of mankind rested in Fuyutsuki's hands: the bottle of scotch. "Someone! Do something!"
Just then, a boy ran out of nowhere. He was pale, albino, actually, but had a silver tint in his hair. He was running from two men in black suits, stark naked, (him, not the men in black suits - duh) and dripping with LCL. If this had been on TV, it would be fanservice for the ladies. Indeed, Ritsuko's coffee mug would have served to block those certain parts of Kaworu as he ran.
He was looking back over his shoulder as he ran awkwardly, and bumped into Kouzou!
The bottle flipped into the air as Kouzou fell. The bottle flipped over to the next level where Ibuki, Makoto and Misato was on.
"Nooo...!" Cried Misato, staring at the bottle of scotch. The bottle was going to hit the floor just a five meters away unless Katsuragi could help it.
She did. She leaped dramatically sideways, into the air. Her arms outstretched, her eyes wide.
Like a soccer ball, Misato caught the bottle, tucked safely in her arms as she rolled to the side. She got up, victoriously, and yelled. And, like a rugby ball,threw it to the ground, where it promptly broke to a million pieces.
Ritsuko shouted, "You asshole! Now we've got no more scotch! No scotch, no Shinji. You screwed the scotch, Misato. While the other two, up there attempt to keep the angel distracted, Shinji needs to be brought back to save us all. And where's that bloody Fifth Child? We need to extract that AT-Field!"
"Then, firstly," said Makoto, "where do we get more scotch?"
Gendou spoke again. "Don't fret, people. I just so happen to have a secret stash of scotch," he said, bending down, under the desk. "Scotch, whiskey... and apple cider."
"Right," said Makoto, watching Gendou pull out two bottles of it from under his desk. "Then what of that AT-Field?"
"Learn from a master," said Ritsuko. "The MAGI says we need to fight fire with fire, in this situation."
"(Who's the master? You or the MAGI?)" Said Makoto, aside. "And, what? The MAGI's got proverbs as well?"
"Yes, but that was an analogy," said Ritsuko, arrogantly. "What it means is that to get an Absolute Terror Field, we need to terrify it more."
"Oh, I get it. Make him jump out of his skin."
"Yes," said Misato, objectively, "but what if that fails, Ritsuko?"
Ritsuko smiled, darkly, at this. "Don't worry," she said, evilly. "I've got my stuff ready... Hope you've got yours," she said, looking back behind her. Her eyes slitted, and a torch lit her face from underneath.
Something big is going to happen to Kaworu, be it to be scared to death or something else...
There was an ordinary corridor. Eerily empty. A harsh, dull cleanliness. Cold as a cave. Lifeless as a stone. It stretched to unknown domains like the bowels of a monster. The walls seemed to close in with terrifying stillness. A strange, ambiguous world, where existence seemed to cease. No one belonged here. No one knows.
Along these corridors, Kaworu walked down, unsure. He was lost. He didn't care.
"Damn it's cold," he said, hugging his naked body. "I may be naked, but it's still cold..." Kaworu swallowed, briefly, but his mouth was dry. He groaned. "Can't they turn on the heaters or something?"
And just then, a distant, breathy noise started.
"Wow, the heaters are supposed to turn on like that? This place is scaring me..."
But the hoarse flow of air was not continuous. It was a deep, muffled breathing. The slow inhaling and exhaling was hoarse and chilling. The room was no more warmer.
Kaworu could but turn around to where he heard that noise. There, in superb slow-motion, something made its dramatic entrance.
It was a dark, big figure. A man suited in a black, other-worldy armour. His face hidden in a black helmet like a mask. It was... Darth Vader.
"Nagisa Kaworu..." it said, walking every so steadily towards Kaworu. "It is time."
Kaworu's eyes were wide. His breathing, tense and difficult. He struggled to get his words, "Are you here to kill me?"
There was a long, unholy pause as the figure stopped before Kaworu.
"... Yes."
Kaworu came to to senses and took one step back. "Not without a fight!"
He sprung back to a case on the wall, broke the glass and pulled out his weapon. Like a light saber, he held up a baseball bat slowly across his face. On the baseball bat, the inscriptions flowed, "Champions of '96". Kaworu looked up, determined at Darth Vader.
"Come, Nagisa," returned Darth. "Look upon thy doom:"
And he held up his light saber. A darthly purple glow illuminated his zone. And immediately, the entire pole of light flopped down to the ground like a jacket sleeve. Darth looked at it, disgusted. "Damn Ritsuko. Still hasn't fixed this angel tentacle..."
Darth casted away the tentacle and took out his even more deadlier weapon from behind his back: his kendo stick.
Kaworu held out his baseball bat even more stiller across his face. His eyes dangerously slitted. The moment of great silence came... and went away.
"Allez Cuisine!" Darth shouted, and jumped into the air, holding his stick high at Kaworu, with lightning speed!
The stick whacked the floor with shocking loudness as Kaworu rolled to the side. He immediately tried to take a shot at Darth's back. Darth twisted around, and blocked the bat. Darth jumped into the air, again.
Kaworu was still on the floor as he had to block another hit from the kendo, from Darth, right above him!
Now, the sticks were held up against each other. Pushing against one another in a still, silent struggle. The strain between Kaworu and Darth Vader existed for this moment. Kaworu was on the floor, pushing up at Darth Vader, who looked down at him. Kaworu looked with rage in his eyes. So close, they were, they could reach out one another, but the force separated them.
At last, Kaworu managed to push the kendou stick aside, momentarily, and he backflipped several paces back. Just as quickly, Kaworu charged back at Darth Vader, screaming in terrifying rage.
Each vicious hit, attempted by Kaworu; each of them blocked with equal, cold agility. Kaworu grunted at each, strike. Pushing Darth slowly down the corridor. Echoes of his frustration lingered. Echoes of his relentlessness.
With a final, almighty move, Darth flung Kaworu's final strike away, and took a brutal hit at Kaworu's neck.
Kaworu shouted in pain, falling to the floor. He grasped his neck, but used his remaining strength in looking into Darth Vader's eyes.
"Impressive..." Darth said, relaxing his kendo stick to the ground. "Most impressive... SEELE has taught you well. You have controlled your fear... Now release your terror."
Kaworu tilted his head, cocking an eyebrow and asked, "Eh?"
Darth continued on. "Only your AT-Field can destroy me."
Kaworu recovered his strength with a surge of enlightenment. He smiled with cunningness, and jumped up, whacking Darth Vader in the stomach.
Darth blocked this, easily, but, with an explosion of an orange hexagonal force, Darth was blown backwards through a door. That orange hexagonal force was the AT-Field.
The door led into a dark, unlit room. Nothing could be seen inside. Nothing came out except for an ominous, dark smell. Looking into it, Kaworu said only this: "I do not fear Darth..."
And with this, he disappeared into the darkness of the room, carrying his baseball bat with him.
"Hey, Shinji disappeared!" Mused Asuka, as she finally found out Shinji had disappeared. "I can do that too! Watch!"
Asuka ran towards the angel, drunkedly.
"No!" Shouted everyone at NERV.
Ritsuko simply pressed a button. An Eva-launch case shot out from the ground in front of Asuka and Unit-02 smashed right into it, leaving an Eva-shaped dent on the other side.
"Have I disappeared, yet...?" Came the muffled voice.
Kaworu's footsteps rang through this hall. Or perhaps it was an isle. Kaworu couldn't be sure. The lights weren't on. Kaworu held his baseball bat blindly in front of him, his only way of knowing when not to hit a wall. His naked body felt the piercing foulness of the air. Cold, unforgiving. Obviously, the air was insulted by the boy.
Bang! The lights flew open like a baseball stadium at night.
There, just seven meters in front of Kaworu in the narrow isle, was Darth Vader. It looked at Kaworu, sternly, yet not threateningly.
Yet, Kaworu could but look around at his surroundings, amazed. The long isle was lined with glass cabinets. Each filled with trophies and awards of all sorts. Kaworu, having forgetten his place, quickly stared back at Darth Vader, who hadn't moved.
"Go ahead," he said, invitingly. "Won't you take a look at some of the awards we've got?"
Kaworu looked, slowly, back around him in abstained awe. He began to walk down the isle, looking into the glass cabinets, slowly, reading some.
Kaworu reflected. Back at SEELE, he never got any award of any kind. It was a tradition for the organizations to hold competitions against each other, often. The competitions were mainly about who can do the best at whatever. Because of the vast range of categories one can enter at any one time, it was not unusual for every member of each organization to have at least two awards each.
Kaworu continued on, reading many of the awards that captured his attention.
"Best Scientist Award (2006) - Akagi Ritsuko" "Best Bagpipe Reptoire (2003) - Fuyutsuki Kouzou" "Best Halloween Costume (2015) - Ikari Shinji" "Best Rapper (1996) - Ikari Yui" "Longest Time Spent with Both Feet in a Bucket of Water (2009) - Fuyutsuki Kouzou (for 73 hrs, 19 mins)" "Best Nude (2014) - Ibuki Maya" "Most Keys (2015) - Asakawa Ryo (at 144)" "Most Encyclopaedias Balanced on One Person's Head for Ten Seconds (2015) - Kaji Ryouji (at 17 and a half)" "Baseball Champions (1996) - Aida Haku, Fuyutsuki Kouzou, Hyuga Makoto, Ikari Gendou, Kaji Ryouji, Suzuki Koji" "Cutest Pet (2015) - Penpen (of Katsuragi Misato)" "Best Comedy Act (2014) - Hyuga Makoto" "Best Darth Vader Impersonation (2010) - Ikari Gendou" "Best Fanfi"
"What the...?" Kaworu gasped, amazed.
Best Darth Vader Impersonation?
Darth Vader's head tilted down a bit, now a look of intimidation. "So, Kaworu, you have finally found the truth."
Kaworu looked in shock, disbelieving. His eyes stared at Darth, who threw his head back and laughed evilly.
And in this laughter, he pulled out a remote control and pressed a button.
Just then, a trophy flew out, smashing the glass that housed it, right at Kaworu. Kaworu reacted by flinging it away with his baseball bat.
Darth began pressing more buttons. More trophies were ejected out of their shells. Kaworu could only bat away a third of these trophies. And there were not only just trophies: Sculptures, Oscars, Statue of David, and deer-heads with antlers, too. The awards that Kaworu couldn't hit, he tried to deflect it away with the force... AT-Field. But with this endless round of trophies, things got messy, and Kaworu was left battered, bloody and bruised.
All of a sudden, an entire trophy cabinet flew at Kaworu. With a large effort, Kaworu successfully reflected this cabinet away. But the cabinet smashed into an air-conditioner.
The air-conditioner switched on.
All of a sudden, the entire room was wildly windy and cold. Darth stood in the middle of the room, still with what seemed like a great, heavy omnipresence.
Trophies and pieces of glass flew around the room, dangerously about.
Kaworu was curled into a ball, trying to avoid the flying objects and the whole freezing-temperature business, all without a shirt on. Though no one knew it, Kaworu was experiencing his own round of Elements. Today, he was experiencing wind - his last day.
The wind became so powerful, Kaworu was lifted off the ground and was gone with it. Down the hall, he was sucked down like water in a bathtub, doomed to enter the dark domains of fate.
Kaworu flew out, onto a gantry platform. He was about to go over a railing, but managed to grab the railing with one hand. His baseball bat disappeared.
"Okay, I've definitely seen this before," said Kaworu in a flashing state of Déja Vu.
Next thing he knew, Darth Vader was above him, his cape flapping in the wind and the debris. He took out its kendo stick and whacked Kaworu's wrist.
Kaworu held on, still.
"Cold. Freezing cold..." he said with a jerky voice. "God, if you're going to kill me, let me have some clothes on!"
Darth looked down on Kaworu, authoritatively. "You came out in you birthday suit, now you go back with your birthday suit!" Darth tilted his head, slightly. "Join me, and I will give you a pair of socks! Made of wool. Very warm... Very tempting..."
Kaworu had to pause before he replied, "That would be nice, but I'LL NEVER JOIN YOU!"
Darth Vader shrugged. "Fine, more socks for Gendou."
"You killed my father!" Continued Kaworu.
"Don't be silly, he's just a character called Darth from Star Wars, written by George Lucas. You've been watching too much."
"Not him," shouted Kaworu, "YOU killed my father!"
"No, Kaworu. I... AM... YOUR FATHER!"
Kaworu's eyes looked disbelieving with shock at the dark figure. It welled with emotions, inexplicable but strong.
"No!" he cried, helpless. "No! - Maybe, but - NOOO!"
"Search your feelings... You know it to be true!"
Kaworu's voice became a building hysteria. "SEELE never told me... SEELE never knew!"
"That matters not. Do you choose to join us, and give us the AT-Field to resurrect a cute bishounen and an Eva, Kaworu? Or shall I whack this hand with my kendo stick until you fall?"
Kaworu had to pause before he replied. Now, his voice now ever so sure. "Goodbye, father..."
Leaving the dark figure - his father - with only this, he fell down.
Darth looked down below him, nothing but darkness below. There was no sign of Kaworu. "Goodbye, son," he said, slowly. "You were a good son to me... but you turned gay."
With a chuckle, he pulled off his mask like something out of Charlie's Angels. "Sucker!"
Gendou's eye gleamed as he looked down, smirkingly, below.
Just then, Kaworu's face flew up right in front of Gendou's.
"Who's the sucker, now?" Said Kaworu in Gendou's face. "Ha ha! And did you seriously think I was gay? It was an act! Muahahahaha!"
Gendou gasped. "Did you do anything with my Reis?"
"I don't date younger women."
Gendou smirked, raised his kendo stick and whacked Kaworu on the head.
Kaworu lost a great deal of consciousness. "Oiii..." he said as he slipped down. However, his hand managed to cling onto something before he was about to plummet...
The Broth.
With a sizzling sound, Kaworu screamed. "ARGH! IT BURNS! IT BURNS!"
Gendou looked back down with a raised eyebrow. "Who are you gonna call?"
The lights switched on, revealing the Command Center below Kaworu, where everyone shouted in reply, "Ri-tsu-ko!"
There was a familiar ring to those lines as in busted Ritsuko, kicking the door down, wearing very weird gear and hold some very weird gun-like thing. It was a cross between a pest-removalist and a mad scientist. You could even say it could be from Ghost Busters...
Ritsuko fired her gun-like thing, and red and blue electrical-like waves shot out with bright flashes. It hit Kaworu, and seemed to draw him towards her. It sucked Kaworu's hand clean off The Broth.
Kaworu tried desperately to fly away, but the gun-like thing was stronger. Kaworu's arms were flinging around in a swimming freestyle motion. Yet, Ritsuko still pulled Kaworu closer and closer to the floor.
Then, Ritsuko dropped a little black box on the floor as Kaworu was half-way down, and kicked directly it underneath Kaworu, who sunk closer and closer to the ground. The box had a chord and a pedal attached to it.
"Maya!" Shouted Ritsuko, concentrating on Kaworu. "Step on the pedal!"
Maya was right next to the pedal, but she was busy staring at the flailing angel. She said to herself, "That has got to be the most life-like human disguise by an angel I have ever seen. I mean, look at the detail!" Maya pointed to Kaworu's thing Japanese-style - palm out, fingers straight.
"Can I touch it?" She asked, reaching out, slowly, with a finger.
"Maya!" screamed Ritsuko. "Step on the bloody pedal!" The gun-like thing was working full blast.
Kaworu was slowly sinking, just in front of Maya, who was writing something on a piece of paper. He hasn't yet noticed her. She then held it up to Kaworu. "Here," she said, blushing. "If ever you're near a phone in heaven, call me." She winked.
Noticing someone's interest in him, Kaworu completely changed his position to laying on his side with his head on his hand, quickly and casually. "Hey, baby, what's up?"
Kouzou came up to Kaworu and smashed an empty bottle of scotch on his head.
"Don't you ever steal my lines!" He said, fuming.
"Oiii..." Kaworu said as he began slipping, again. He slowly began to spin in the air, half-unconscious. Kouzou stepped on the pedal.
The black box opened up, and shined a bright, white light up on Kaworu.
In his last, desperate attempt, Kaworu clung onto Maya's piece of paper. His face was of desperation. "Mummy!" He squeaked.
Maya giggled, letting go of the paper to turn to the side, putting the back of her hand against her mouth, blushing.
Kaworu had begun his end. A blue, ghost-like image of Kaworu separated from Kaworu's body, slowly falling towards the light. His mind thought his last thought as he stared into the light... Heaven's gate has opened for him. "I think I've seen this before..."
Zzzchupp!
The box closed. The light disappeared.
The body of Kaworu exploded in a scatter of yellow-brown particles like big grains of sand in a sand storm, disintegrating to nothing.
Above on the streets of Tokyo-3, Unit-00 stood. Still as a statue, depressing and silent. Unactivated... Silent.
Unit-02 ran past it, drunkedly, being chased around by the Giant Marshmallow Man of Canaan.
Asuka could but say, drunkedly, "I'm too old for these games."
Inside of Unit-00, Toji sat, there, crawled up and shivering. "It's cold... I don't wanna die..." Just then, he realized something very awful. "Oh my God! This place smells like blood! THIS PLACE SMELLS LIKE BLOOD! GET ME OUTTA HERE!"
Suddenly, he farted. "OH, MY GOD! THIS PLACE SMELLS WORSE! HUARGH!"
Just then, a picture of Misato popped up on his screen. "You're NOT gonna die, Suzuhara. Hang in there."
Toji, however, saw, behind Misato, an image of a mad scientist zapping a naked boy with a ray-gun, who then exploded into a puff of particles. This did not comfort Toji.
The screen switched off, leaving Toji with a new sense of paranoia.
Just a minute later, the Entry Plug hatch swung open with a chillingly loud creek. Light streamed in, and a figure with shining glasses popped up in front of the light.
Toji screamed. "Argh! She's coming to get me!"
"Why, hello, Suzuhara," said Kensuke.
Toji realized it was him. "God, Kensuke, you frightened me!" He said. Then, with a complete change of voice, he added, "Not that I will admit that, anyway."
Kensuke jumped in, none-the-less, and crawled over Toji, who mumbled in protest. "Don't tell anyone..."
Kensuke ripped off Toji's A10 Nodes and placed it on his own head. He jumped into the pilot seat, excitedly. "Look at me! Look at me! I'm an Eva pilot! Weee!"
The Evangelion activated. Kensuke was thrilled. He was like a kid in a candy store. He jumped up and down, excitedly, which the Eva also strangely did.
Ritsuko's voice now popped up. "Kensuke! You can pilot the Eva? Wow..."
Gendou smiled. "He's a natural," he commented. "Toji, give him the plug suit!"
Hearing this, Kensuke turned excitedly to Toji like a puppy dog.
"What? No! Never!" Cried Toji, making excuses. "It's cold! I'll be naked! That mad scientist bitch'll blast me! Argh!"
"Give me the plug suit!" Cried Kensuke, pulling at Toji's finger tips. As he grappled at Toji's hand, he accidentally pressed the release button on Toji's cuff, which did just that: Toji's suit was pulled clean off his body like a tissue in a vacuum cleaner.
Toji, shocked, threw himself back, trying to cover himself. He screamed. "DON'T LOOK AT ME, KENSUKE! DON'T LOOK AT ME! ARGH!"
Kensuke's reaction was subtly extreme. He was momentarily dazed, holding the plug suit, falling backwards, slowly. "Wow..." he said, entranced at a particular part of Toji's male anatomy. "Talk about short..."
Kensuke fell back on to a green button.
The words, "Eject" popped up, on screen.
Toji was blasted out of the entry plug.
Like an air-rocket, Toji was blasted through the sky under uncomfortable circumstances. Toji started falling down... down... down... until...
Splat. Toji landed on a glass plane that was concealing NERV's 24th camera.
Every, single one at NERV could see the horrible, naked body of Toji flat on the screen! It was evil! Every, single one at NERV reeled back in repulse as the evil image of Toji's front-side was displayed perfectly at 1024 dpi on that MAGI screen!
They all tried to shield their eyes against this dangerous sight, crying and screaming helplessly. The sight could blind a man for years. Maya put her hand on her mouth, making gagging noises.
"Argh! Make it stop! MAKE IT STOP!" Screamed Kouzou, as if dying a slow, torturous death.
Ritsuko was furiously punching at the buttons on her control panel. A button finally did something: it turned on the wind screen wipers. It initiated wiping away Toji's body, that laid there.
But he remained on the screen, and... JUST MADE MATTERS WORSE!
"Oh, the humanity!" Screamed Makoto, running around, covering his eyes. "The motion! The jiggle!"
Indeed. Awful, slapping noise could also be heard as Toji was brutally smacked by the wipers. The Dolby Digital Surround Sound® made it that much worse.
All of a sudden, Ritsuko accidentally punched another button...
The screen flashed for a second.
The words "Replay" was displayed in the corner.
The MAGI, with all its AI capabilities, replayed the recording with menacing intelligence. Playing at the perfect speed, resampling, enhancing, recalibrating and sample-synthesizing the treacherous video with ungodly precision...
IT WAS ZOOMING AND PLAYING IN SLOW-MOTION!
"NOOOOOOOOO...!" Everyone screamed at once.
Finally, Ritsuko found the button.
The roller-shutters started rising over the screen, slowly, pushing the body up as it slid to black the view.
Everyone sighed in relief.
With shocking sudden-ity, a piercing beep sounded, and the words, in orange, displayed, "Shutters jammed".
With that, everyone could see that tiny, awful shape being pressed between the shutters and glass from the shutters, ajar.
Everyone screamed like hell.
Ritsuko tried her best to get rid of this evil sight.
"This is the worse way one could get circumcised!"
The shutters opened, and tried to shut itself again. It's still stuck... The shutters tried again: Open, shut, open, shut. The noise of the jamming thing was horrendous. The shutters bashed the hell out of it in an attempt to get rid of a tiny, unholy sight.
But at last, it disappeared, and the shutters locked with the most satisfying of Shumps in the history of roller-shutters shumping.
Now, there is darkness and a silence.
Now, was there the sound of the absolute sigh of relief.
Ritsuko sighed, too, and fell back in exhaustion. She casually flicked back to the camera in Unit-00.
Kensuke got some orders from the major.
"Kensuke, here's your first mission," said Misato. "Can you do it?"
"Yes ma'am!" said Kensuke. "What is it?"
Without a word, an equipment's launch case popped up next to Kensuke and opened... The equipment looked like a giant butterfly net.
"Yeah! We can catch some butterflies!" He squealed. "My alternate hobby!"
And he went around, randomly swinging the net everywhere.
Ritsuko looked dubiously at Misato. Misato shrugged.
"Hey, at least he's collecting Shinji's particles as planned."
Five minutes later, Kensuke was ordered to stop jumping around.
"Okay, Kensuke," said Misato. "I think you've collected all of ShinI mean, all the butterflies that we need. Bring it back to us."
"Okay... What are you gonna do with them?" Asked Kensuke.
"..." She said. "We're gonna make one, big... butterfly... which will save the world!" Misato felt like she was talking to a three year old.
"Okay."
Kensuke tossed the net into the box, which shut closed and fell back in the ground.
Back, down in the deep depths of NERV, Ritsuko stood in a large room, looking up. It was the newly constructed AFTPOS (AT-Field Particle Suspender).
Makoto, too, was staring up at the immense machine. Both their eyes could not move from its awe. "Wow..." said Makoto. "That MAGI actually invented and built this machine in HOW LONG?"
"Exactly three minutes, twenty-three seconds point one," said Maya, also having her head tilt upwards, staring at the AFTPOS.
All three of them were staring up at the thing.
"Exactly," inserted Ritsuko. "It's also been revised twenty-three times, rebuilt fifteen times and adjusted four thousand and sixty-six times. It's also been patented at the Toukyou Tokkyo Kyoka Kyoku (Tokyo Patents Licensing Office)." Ritsuko's head didn't move from the AFTPOS.
"I see..." said Maya, in awe, still looking upwards.
"But what does the O in AFTPOS stand for?" Asked Makoto, looking upwards.
"No reason," said Ritsuko, simply. She smiled, not that anyone would see it - they were all busy looking up at this machine. "It just sounds snazzy. It's pronounceable that way."
Gendou interrupted, looking up, too. "Can we start?"
Ritsuko paused, staring intently at the AFTPOS, determined not to tear her eyes from this machine after all this time, and pressed a few keys on her laptop without looking down.
A small hatch on the ceiling of the giant contraption opened up.
The contraption, itself, was big. Very big. It's bigger than an Evangelion. It looked much like a yellow-glassed box with four metallic poles in the corners, much like a giant shower cubicle. On the top, there was, apparently, a big slab of metal, five meters in width, alone, which sealed it off. There were many lights placed all on that slab, but the only thing that meant anything to anyone other than Ritsuko was a big status bar with scrolling, red words, lit up with LEDs.
The particles fell from the hatch like little stars, like falling smoke, into the yellow box. The status bar read the following: "Initializing... Analyzing assembly structure... Charging AT-Field... At-Field Initialized..."
All of a sudden, the particles that floated in the yellow container seemed organize themselves, and soon rearranged themselves into a translucent figure of an Evangelion. In the bottom, next to the Evangelion, far in the corner, there, was a naked, see-through Shinji.
The status bar read: "Assembly complete."
Gendou, having not moved his head a bit, said, "Oh, that was easy."
"No, commander," said Ritsuko, "the particles has only been suspended. They need to be bonded together using Kaworu's AT-Field."
"Okay..."
Ritsuko proceeded to press a few more keys on her laptop, which was hooked to some unseen plugs under the desk, and the status bar changed.
"Analyzing Particle Allocation Table... Importing foreign AT-Field... AT-Field Initialized... Bonding... 0.0000000001"
From there, the figures rose steadily.
Everyone tilted their heads down to look. They could see the Evangelion's transparent feet start to solidify at an amazingly slow rate. Mind-bogglingly slow. Gendou was speechless as he continued to stare at the feet.
"How long will this take, Ritsuko?" Asked Makoto, entranced.
"Shinji?"
"No..."
"Oh, you mean the Eva. Well, it'll take about... say, twenty hours? No, nineteen and 46 minutes. I've got that confirmed."
Everyone's jaw dropped.
They looked back up at the status bar.
"0.0061304001"
Twenty minutes later, Gendou, Ritsuko, Maya, Makoto and Misato were all still sitting there, on a couch, facing the AFTPOS, and sharing around some popcorn. After one more minute of this, Gendou suddenly leapt forward on his seat, his arms on the armrests, alarmingly, and squinted.
"Do I see... a toenail?" He exclaimed. "Isn't that a toenail, peoples? It is, isn't it?"
Makoto leant forward too. "Eva's have toes?"
"No," interrupted Ritsuko, and started to launch into quick speech, "an Eva is like an onion."
Makoto looked cluelessly at Ritsuko. "It makes you cry?"
"No, it has layers."
Misato smiled, playfully, thinking she was getting the hint. "Oh... layers..."
"What about cake?" Asked Makoto, starting to getting fascinated in this. "Cake has layers."
"No!" said Ritsuko, getting impatient. "You peel layers off."
"Oh, you mean we can take off the metal?"
"Yes..." said Ritsuko, then getting unsure. "But no. What the hell was I saying, again? Oh yes. Evas are like onions: You can slice them, dice them, chop it up into little bits and transform it into plasma particles. Now, did you know that onions have the power to regenerate itself?"
"Really...?"
"Yes. And Evas can, too. But did you know that it can't regenerated itself when it's exposed to air?"
"So you're saying that it can't regenerate itself when it's in air?"
"Er... I meant that it can't regenerate itself when it's in its plasma-like form..."
"Okay..."
"That's right..."
"Er... Where is this going...?"
"No, no. You see..."
While the continued to discuss some strangely fascinating topics of the like, a door on the far side opened up, and a hospital bed-like thing rolled down by itself, slowly, with quiet, squeaky wheels. It came up to and stopped right next to the group. Five minutes later, Gendou noticed the bed with a glance.
"Not now, Rei," he said, hastily, not taking a proper look. "We are deep in discussing in the power of regeneration in onions, and the potential use of compact, organized plasmatic-state-induction of any larger object that can be taken around in little bottles called 'Capsules'. Just one press of a button, and... Puff! It expands into its standard state. Ritsuko, however, believes that organic conversion slows down its process dramatically to the level that this is in, now, so body smuggling is unstable and difficult... On a lighter note, did you know that Evas don't have any toes?"
When Gendou turned around to see Rei's reaction, he realized that it wasn't Rei. "Hey, this isn't Rei... Brown hair... Brown eyes... Hairy armpits..."
As he ventured down, he came to an unsightly sight, and recoiled back like he burnt his hands, again, and froze in that position of shock. His arms stiff and angular, his eyes wide and twitching.
Misato noticed Shinji, as well. "Hey, Shinji's out!"
Ritsuko walked up to the new automated bed, and read the status screen: "Nerve impulses restored : Unconscious - Dreaming : Ready for deployment"
"Good," she said, under her breathe. She pressed a red button, and Shinji immediately began to stir and roll around.
"Oh... I don't want to get up," he said, half agitated, half sleepily. "I was having a really good dream."
Shinji then rolled into a particular angle that everyone who saw him could tell. They all then froze into a state of shock.
"Yeah," said Misato, not in shock. "I can tell."
Shinji opened his eyes, squintingly, to see a blurry image of his father in a recoiled position, frozen, and in a pained, quivering state.
"What?" Asked Shinji, stupidly.
Gendou managed to get out of his uncomfortable position, and looked down, scornfully at Shinji.
"Don't mock me."
Gendou hated show-offs.
Later that night, Shinji stood in the kitchen with nothing but a towel on, waiting for Ritsuko as she rummaged through the bottom cupboard.
"So, Ritsuko," said Shinji, trying to make conversation, "what do you usually keep in that cupboard?"
"Just the usual inventions I made on the side," responded Ritusko. "Gendou would have said it was a crappy waste of... So I decided to keep them secret. Oh, I ought to make a mental note to configure the AFTPOS to put a cloak on all exports, next time. Ugh, sorry. (Twenty three revisions, and we overlooked clothing AGAIN!)"
However, it wasn't like Gendou minded Ritsuko's previous failure to clothe clone-exports, anyway.
Ritsuko began taking her inventions out, one-by-one. "We've got a brown paper bag that doesn't get oily... a homing toaster that aims its toast to the GPS-chipped plate... a time machine... ah! Here we are!"
Ritsuko then rose up, producing it. "The P2 Prototype."
She pulled out a watch-shaped contraption that fitted in the palm of her hand. "I know you'll be glad that that old suit of your's don't work anymore... This is my latest prototype Plug Suit: The P2," she announced, proudly.
"Um... how is that a suit?" Asked Shinji, looking at the thing.
"Just put that on your left wrist, and press these two buttons at the same time, here..." she said, pointing them out.
Shinji did what Ritsuko told him. He pressed those two buttons, and... Bang! The suit sort of shot out from within the watch, and enveloped his whole body until... it looked like a plug suit. Had this been recreated in live-action film, the P2 would probably be considered cheesy CGI.
"I like the colors," commented Shinji, turning himself around and taking a look at himself. "Silver and white: The new black."
"Yes," said Ritsuko, enthusiastically. "But, you can change its color, too. You can even change the texture to, say, a real suit..." She pressed a few buttons on the remote control that she was carrying, and Shinji ended up in a tuxedo.
Shinji could but exclaim at this little pleasure.
"But here's what I wanted to show you... X-Ray."
Press. Shinji's suit then turned black, and exposed his skeletal structure in great sharpness.
"Whoa... 3-D..." said Shinji, in awe, looking at his bones.
"And wait, there's more..." continued Ritsuko, holding a crowbar.
"Eh? What's with the crowbar?" was what Shinji was going to say before Ritsuko grabbed Shinji's arm and bashed it to hell.
"ARGH!" screamed Shinji, in pain, which rung throughout the geofront (in Surround Sound, again). "ARGH...!"
"Shinji!" shouted Ritsuko, unsucceeding getting his attention, as Shinji continued screaming. "Shinji!"
The Dolby Digital speakers then adjusted to a minimal volume for Ritsuko to say, clearly now, "SHINJI!"
"Oh..." Shinji, wailed, slightly less delirious. "It hurts! It hurts!"
"Are you sure?" Asked Ritsuko, knowingly.
"Yeah..."
"Do you feel this?" Asked Ritsuko, as she did something to Shinji's arm. She picked up Shinji's arm, and waved it about. Shinji's broken bones started grinding against each other (visibly through the suit), and the arm flopped about like rubber.
"Okay..." said Shinji, beginning to realize something. "I don't feel anything..."
"Yeah, that's the idea," said Ritsuko. "I was sick and tired of you screaming every time the Eva got bashed up. Now, we have an anti-pain feature. It injects my own secret formula of pain-relievers into your blood-stream instantaneously with the pain stimulant... I'm a genius. Now, would you like to press that button on your watch?"
Shinji was trying, but found that his left arm was dangling beyond his reach. "I can't! My arm is dead... It's too low..."
"Fine, let me do it."
Press. Shinji's arm restored itself like that.
"Hey, it restored itself!" Shinji went, stating the obvious. "I am INVINCIBLE!"
"You're not invincible, yet," said Ritsuko, smiling. "Not until that suit comes with a hood or something."
"What's this?" mumbled Shinji, as he scrolled down a list on his watch. "Invisibility?"
Without so much as a "Can I press this?", Shinji went invisible.
"Whoa! I am INVISIBLE!" Shinji went, stating the obvious.
"Oh, Shinji," said Ritsuko, "your head is still floating in mid-air... until I make a hood for it, that is."
"Oh, said Shinji, disappointed. "What's this, then? Invisibility II?"
Without so much as a "Is this the boy's locker room?", Shinji's suit went invisible. "ARGH! DON'T LOOK AT ME!"
Gendou was walking by when he saw Shinji, naked, again. He errupted.
"Thou mock ME!"
His voice was deep and threatening. In fact, he quickly went back to a state insanity as he grabbed the crowbar off Ritsuko and began bashing up Shinji, mercilessly. Shinji tried to shield himself, helplessly.
Unimpressed, Ritsuko pressed a button, and a blue, bubble shield popped up. Gendou's crowbar bounced off, bent. Looking briefly at it, Gendou continued to try to bash it up with all his rage, failing miserably.
"Give it up, Gendou," said Ritsuko, smirkingly. "You know you have heart problems."
Gendou grunted in frustration and stopped. He looked dangerously at Ritsuko, then Shinji... "I will have my revenge!"
Gendou turned around, and stomped away.
"Revenge is a dish best served cold!" Shouted Shinji as Gendou was walking off. It seemed to be some kind of a come-back.
Gendou twisted around, half-way down the hall. "I heard that!" he bellowed. "And I tell you, now... my revenge will be sweet!" Gendou turned and continued.
"Revenge is actually very bitter, but works well with soy sauce."
Gendou did not turn around, again, but continued stomping down the hall with black, angry, squiggly marks coming out of his head.
Some time, later, the next day, up on the streets of Tokyo-3, the angel continued to chased Unit-02 around... still.
As Asuka decided to make a turn, her umbilical cable tripped the angel, who went rolling down the street like a bowling ball and smashed into a weird building with the sound of a ten-pin strike.
What was weird about that particular building was that it fell down, slowly, like an empty upturned box, and underneath this box was... a giant hose.
The angel looked curiously at the thing, and decided to switch it on. A black liquid spurted out of the hose, and the angel drank it.
Angry, red lights flared around in Central Dogma and loud alarming noises fired up, as writing spluttered onto the screens of NERV.
"Damn," Ritsuko whispered.
A particular screen next to Ritsuko said: "MAGI analyzing situation..."
With a beep, a second later, a long list of indiscernible text spilt on to the screen.
"What is this?" Asked Gendou, much like his old self. "What is the angel drinking?"
"Um..." hesitated Ritsuko.
"What is it?"
"Okay," said Ritsuko, admittingly. "It's my secret stash of prototype Liquorish LCL. I knew you'd say something about financial difficulties, so I hid them away for my own purposes."
"DAMN YOU, RITSUKO!" Exploded Gendou. "YOU KNOW I LOVE LIQUORISH!"
Every single person in NERV barfed at the thought of liquorish. They immediately began yelling and shouting protests and insults at the two.
"Freaks! Evil! Monster!"
One person began a chant, which quickly spread among all the staff around.
"Cru-ci-fy him! Cru-ci-fy him!"
The janitor pulled out a couple of large crosses, and marched with some of the others, shaking them about, angrily.
"Look everyone..." said Ritsuko.
"Death to liquorish! Death to YOU!"
"... I know you hate liquorish, and want to kill us both for it, but there's something more important that can kill us all!"
"Cru-ci-fy them! Cru-ci-fy them!"
"That angel can cause the next apocalypse!" Shouted Ritsuko. "It's here, straight out of the MAGI!" She waved some papers around in her hand.
Maya took it off Ritsuko, and looked through it.
"My God, she's right!"
The janitor gasped, "I knew it!" like he knew it all along.
"What?" Exclaimed Gendou.
Ritsuko explained further. "The Liquorish LCL just so happened to be the greatest source of energy for the angel, and it is starting to start its ultimate end! When is gets enough energy, it will self-destruct! It will blow up and explode! IT WILL END THE WORLD!"
Everyone freaked at this.
"Can't we do something?" Shouted Gendou, trying to be heard over the hundreds of wailing NERV personnel.
"No," said Ritsuko. "I have 200,000 tonnes of this, and I can't cut off the valve! Asuka is drunk, Kensuke is retarded, and Unit-01 is still in reconstruction!"
"Then the hell is Rei doing?" Shouted Gendou.
"She's..." Ritsuko paused to think. "Hey, what is she doing?"
The MAGI screen flashed about, saying: "Triangulating Ayanami, Rei... Rerouting logic circuits... Ayanami's History: Today, 13:24:24 - Transferred into hospitalization from Tank-02"
A surveillance screen popped up, instantly, showing a Rei in a hospital bed.
"Cause of injury: 'Brain trauma via Trip-and-fall' Status: Comatose, critical"
What happened was that Rei misjudged the distance of a small tricycle whilst taking a stroll along her tanks (humming "Fly Me To The Moon" whilst thinking about Shinji) because of her non-functioning eye, and altogether, tripped over it and smashed her brain case to kingdom come.
Ritsuko grunted, "We're gonna die."
"Wait," interrupted Maya, looking up from her screen, "it says, here, we have a 1/5 chance of being able to stop the angel, depending on timing. The angel will finish drinking the LCL and blow up in exactly twenty minutes, but Unit-01 will be complete in 18:53 minutes... GUYS! WE CAN DO THIS!"
Everyone in NERV was startled excitedly.
Gendou, regaining his cool, turned towards the crowd, saying, quietly, to himself, "Let's do it..."
The end begins.
Ode to Joy begun.
Thus, everyone raced to the room of the AFTPOS, carrying many relevant assortments to cheer on the reconstructing Eva. Whether or not cheering it on was going to speed up the process didn't matter, the people cheered it on like fans at a 100m sprint of the Olympics. The Evangelion was currently being worked on at the top of its head. Only the horn was needed to be done.
"98.5112359551"
They knew the end was nigh. But they cheered on with manic enthusiasm.
"Go! Go! Go!"
All the while, the angel, above, drank furiously at the LCL like Misato on a new mix of Yebisu. It almost looked crazy. Its eyes widening, splashes of LCL flying. There seemed to be no end, despite the very proximity of it.
The NERV, too, seemed to cheer on to no end.
"Go! Go! Go!"
And the angel drunk, whilst the other two Evas danced the Macarena (having no clue as to the seriousness of the situation, and being drunk/retarded).
Gulp! Gulp! Gulp!
"Go! Go! Go!"
Gulp! Gulp! Gulp!
"Go! Go!"
Gulp! Gulp!
Yet, the glowing, white corridors were quiet. One wondered in, intruding in to its serene atmosphere. His footsteps echoed down the corridor off the hard, indifferent ground. Yet, quiet. The footsteps then became like the soft corridors; the sound faded into the enveloping glow. Ambiguous was this place, like it may not have existed. A numbness hung.
"Go! Go! Go!"
Gulp! Splash... Gulp!
He happened to pass another door. This door was open; but from inside, he could feel a familiar presence. Silence echoed as he paused, and looked through that door.
"Go! Go!"
There was a placid look, but astonishment ensued without seeming to change it. His mouth was relaxed, but gaping. He eyes hung, but where wide. A silent shock was on his face. And from that pause, he carefully walked up, slowly. His eyes hovered over that hospital bed, and onto the figure inside. The glowing brightness enveloped like a stifling fog. It obscured this figure as if afraid to let it be seen.
Gulp! Gulp!
The silence of his heart thumped without a sound. His stomach agitated, stiffening his throat, causing a disagreeable taste in his mouth. His steps were made painful, yet numb. Yet his eyes... passing through fog and fear... came to rest with the girl in that bed. Her fair, blue hair rested on her bandaged forehead. Her pale eyelids rested where her soft, crimson eyes would lay... But the only crimson was the crimson of those blood-soaked bandages.
"Go! Go!"
The ambiguity of the room cushioned his soft call for her... "Rei?"
Gulp! Gulp!
"Go!"
He came up, next to Rei. Her face... Empty. It was not sleep. All had seemed to have left her. Only her breath signalled her life; invisible, unspoken. This, but also, as he realized, her beauty still glowed from within. But fragile... feeble. So weak, it was, that he could but close his eyes from it, holding his sadness behind his own eyelids.
"Go!"
He reflected. He thought back, aimlessly, away. Until...
Gulp!
This... was my fault. It could only be me... If I hadn't saved my father, I would have been rid of him. Misato wouldn't have gone insane from him. Rei wouldn't have lost her eye from her. Rei... she wouldn't have had brain damage...Now, she lies. Now, dying.
"GO!"
Containment was not possible. Leaning heavily on the small rails, Shinji sobbed.
"GO!"
His first tear escaped his eyelids, rolling down his nose. It fell. It fell on to Rei's eye.
"GO!"
... And her eyelids stirred. Both her eyes slowly opened.
Her eyes, they looked up to meet him.
And Shinji's eyes were open, again, to meet Rei's...
"Rei!" His voice, echoing with the room's silence.
His face, looking over hers. For an ambiguous while, they looked into each other's eyes. They exchanged inexplicable thoughts through only their eyes; no words were needed, now. Only one more...
"Rei..."
There was a sudden noise, and Misato skidded through the door and into the scene.
"Hey, Rei," Misato said, half puffed, and holding on to her hat (that she was wearing for the occasion). "Shinji! The Eva's just done! Let's go! We've got a minute and ten seconds to do this! Come on!"
With a lightning grip of Shinji's arm, she yanked Shinji right out of the room.
"And don't worry," Misato said with a change of tone, and winking, "I'll give you two some 'alone' time afterwards. Hehe."
Shinji and Misato disappeared.
Rei simply sat up, still, and looked through the empty door. The last few words from Misato echoed with her footsteps as silence slowly reverted the corridors back to its quietness. Rei lifted her hand up to her mouth, lightly, and smiled to herself.
#Checking nerve links...#
#Passing absolute critical line. Borderline cleared! Connecting mutual lines...#
#Checking harmonic values...#
#Calculating synch rate...#
Ignoring all that junk, Misato stood with her hands crossed, looking at the image of the angel, bloating itself, and just about finishing the liquorish. The world ends when the liquorish does. Everyone around Misato were either in a frenzy trying to get things done, or looking tensely at the screens.
One announcement did register to Misato, however...
"Ready for launch!"
"Eva Launch!"
The Evangelion shot up, with electrical and frictional sparks shooting out of the rails, at maximum speed. The geoport opened up, merely 70 meters from the angel, but the Extruding End-Track didn't pop up, again.
"Major?" Asked Maya.
Misato turned to Maya, smiled and winked. "Automatic Matrix-moves."
The giant of white flew up into the air from the ground like a Balrog. With amazing acrobatic maneuvering, the Evangelion eventually landed with a bang into a crouching position. Its cape, that came with it, followed gracefully with it, cloaking the white Evangelion and spreading the rest back onto the road.
From the dramatic crouch, the Evangelion slowly stood up, covering its whiteness with the gray cape, facing the angel, now.
The angel twisted around from its hose, just in time to see the Evangelion in its glowing glory. The giant marshmallow man roared at it.
The Evangelion whipped its arms out, spreading its cape, and charged, full-on, at the angel. With a a loud clash, the angel was body-slammed away from the hose. With the angel down, the Evangelion rose up, took the hose and crushed the metallic opening with its hand until there was no hole for the LCL to flow out of.
Again, the angel roared, got up and charged back towards the Evangelion.
Next to Unit-01, an equipment's launch case popped up and opened up. There, an Enhanced AT-Shield (EAT-Shield) was held, built specifically by the MAGI for this occasion. Grabbing this, Unit-01 held this against the angel like a police shield, flipping the giant marshmallow man into the sky.
As the angel fell back down, Unit-01 got hold of an EAT-Baseball bat and used it to whack the angel to the other side of the city.
There, the angel hit the ground and rolled along to the edge of the city and stopped. The thing got angry and managed to back stand up. This is when it decided to show what it really was made of. Not literally, of course. (What it was made of was quite apparent.)
Next to the angel was Tokyo-3 High's rival school - Blue-line High.
The angel gripped the school's flagpole, pulling the pole right out of the ground. A large chunk of the cement was still attached to it, giving weight. This became a weapon.
Swinging it around with skill, the angel ended up hitting Asuka's Evangelion, which just so happened to be right next to it. The cement smashed into debris, and the Evangelion fell, drunkedly.
The angel gave it a twirl or two, making deep whirling sounds, finished off in a cool stance, intimidatingly.
Recently, Shinji was at an Inter-school Sports Day. They were competing against Blue-line High, and Shinji was doing javelin... That time, he lost at it.
With a blast of deadly fury, Shinji screamed, "THOU MOCK ME?"
Of course, at this point, Shinji would have gone berserk and saved the day, but his P2 had automatically injected a relaxant into his bloodstream. This was insult over injury for Shinji, who desperately wanted to be angry.
"Cool it, Shinji," said Misato's voice, sternly. "I'm sending Unit-00 in."
Kensuke's gulp was heard. "Me!" He squealed.
"Yes. Now go, Kensuke!"
Unit-00 was standing, shaking with nervousness. Now that it was his time, Kensuke suddenly didn't feel all that enthusiastic about tackling a Giant Marshmallow Man of Canaan that turns things into bad gas.
An equipment's launch case popped up next to Kensuke and the door slid down. An extending boxing glove sprung out and whacked Kensuke right into the scene.
Shinji threw Kensuke his shield. "Here, Kensuke, I'll cover for you!"
But Kensuke was a quivering wreck. "I... I can't do it!" He held the EAT-S loosely, almost about to drop it.
If he couldn't help Shinji, no one could.
Gendou, frustrated, signaled to Ritsuko. She nodded back, and began typing into the MAGI. Misato's head turned.
"Ritsuko?"
Ritsuko pointed at the holographic screen, not looking up. "Ninja Scroll..."
She hit one final button... Misato's eyes flew to the MAGI screen, which read: "DVD confirmed. Uploading to Unit-00 pilot..."
All of a sudden, Kensuke got a weird feeling of watching Ninja Scroll all over again, but with something different. It was intense. It was piercing. It crammed his head with... Ninjitsu.
With all this information forced into Kensuke's head via those A10 nodes, he froze, momentarily, tense and angular. His head was unable to worry about his body as it tried to sort out what it was looking at. As the final images hit him like a ton of bricks, Kensuke screamed at the end.
"Hell yeah!"
It was all only two seconds. Shinji smiled cooly, seeing as Kensuke has pretty much loaded.
"Ready, Kensuke?" Shinji said, with a smile that only Kaworu could do. "Let's beat the HELL out of this one!"
They both looked at the angel with the evil flagpole. Two against one.
Thus begun a fight like none you've ever seen before.
Shinji ran up to the angel with his EAT-B.
Speed lines were imaginarily drawn streaking past Unit-01. Jumping into the sky, Shinji screamed, bringing his bat over his head.
And now directly over the angel, Shinji brought it down.
The angel was missed, and the EAT-B smashed the road with that terrifying force, causing a shockwave that rippled through the ground.
As Unit-01's cape flapped behind it, the angel swung its flagpole around over its head and whacked the Evangelion's neck down. Shinji painfully hit the ground, and the angel then put its foot on it. The anti-pain feature did not work above Shinji's neck.
Kensuke's screamed came out as he ran, too. He jumped to the side, bouncing off a building, and swung his EAT-S to hit the angel's butt.
It didn't really do anything except attract the angel's attention as it swiveled around.
The angel stuck the pole between Unit-00's legs and flicked it upwards. It would have caused severe pain and family problems for Kensuke after a terrific metallic crunch could be heard.
The angel continued to swing the pole again. A whack of Unit-00's head to the left! A twist, then a whack to Unit-00's head to the right!
Before further damage was to be done, Shinji finally got hold of the EAT-B, and brought the angel down with a twist of its legs. Unit-01 then back flipped away to a safe distance with Kensuke.
"How's it, Kensuke?" Asked Shinji, worrying about that between-the-leg hit.
Unit-00 stood up. "Actually, the pole to the groin wasn't that bad..."
"Yeah, that's right," said Shinji, recalling from the textbook. "Unit-00 doesn't have any balls.
"WHAAA!"
Kensuke panically checked himself under his plug suit.
"Kensuke, watch out!"
Before Kensuke could register what he saw when he turned around, a flagpole smashed full-on on his face.
Again, the flagpole whipped the other way and smashed the Evangelion's back. As Kensuke fell on his knees, the flagpole came down to have a go at his neck. However, Kensuke finally managed to stop it with his EAT-Shield.
Shinji ran, jumped into the air with an unnecessary 360 turn, and whacked right at the angel's stomach! But the bouncy consistency of the Giant Marshmallow Man like that of Misato's repelled Shinji's baseball bat.
Shinji went again, in frustration at the angel's head.
The head wobbled for a second, but the angel recovered almost instantly.
Fuyutsuki was standing on a soap box, waving a stack of small pieces of paper in his hands. Everyone gathered around him excitedly like they were trying to buy shares.
"Step right up! Place your bets, now, peoples! Who'll win? Who will be the last man/eva/angel standing...? Minimum 500 yen, peoples; but no limit up!"
The angel gave a hideous, evil glare after that baseball bat.
It kicked its flagpole from off the ground at Unit-01, which bounced off the Evangelion and landed back into the angel's chubby hands.
With a whoosh, Shinji began blocking each strike from the angel, quite successfully. They came like rounds out of a machine gun. And the angel slowly pushed Unit-01 down the road with this.
Each strike was as hard as the last. Each of them, furious. Each of them, quick. Not just hits with the flagpole, but also punches and whooshing kicks, that enough to rival any Joe Blow from The Matrix.
At last, the angel unexpectedly made a sweep at Unit-01's legs - blocked - twisted around and swung the flagpole to Unit-01's neck. This time, it did hit. Shinji felt his neck get smashed like he stuck his head out the window and got hit with by signpost whilst the car was driving at 50 mph.
"Damn you, Ritsuko! Give me a hood!"
Kensuke finally jumped in, and knocked the angel's head with the butt of his EAT-Shield. The angel stumbled back for two seconds before it recovered, but not before both Evangelions got up, together, to begun a double-attack back down the road.
Shinji swept at the angel's legs, but missed as the angel jumped over this. Whilst it was still in the air, however, it realized the foot of Unit-00 flying right at its head.
"No shadow kick!" yelled Kensuke as he sailed through the air.
"Eh?" said Ritsuko, looking at her DVDs again. "Wasn't that a move from Kung-fu and not Ninjitsu? Kensuke, what are you trying to pull?"
"I actually learnt this from Hong Kong action movies. No fancy DVD uploaders needed, Miss Akagi."
"Ah, shaddup."
The angel used both its fat hands and brought Kensuke's kick down. Kensuke pulled out his shield from behind as he was still in the air, and brought it down on the angel's head with a bang!
The angel did not have time to react to Shinji's baseball bat to the head, that came immediately after. This, in turn, did not give the angel enough time to react to the EAT-Shield that came back down on its head again. A second later, the angel decided to retreat a few hundred meters back. It backflipped through.
As it landed down, Shinji decided it wouldn't get away so easily, and had a go at it right after landing. But no, the angel followed through with a second backflip.
It was like trying to whack a flying piñata.
But Shinji tried again, this time, hitting downwards, not side ways. And he got it.
Now on the ground, the angel evidently came to great fury. With its great, heavy arm, the angel swung it at Unit-01's head. Shinji put up his baseball bat before the angel could touch him (which would have absorb Unit-01 in an instant); but the force sent Unit-01's head flying into a building, crumbling it like a sand castle.
Kensuke roared, pulling out his reverberating knife and flung it at the angel.
The angel whack the flying knife to the side with its flagpole with ungodly speed. The knife sliced into another building, and was lost within.
Ritsuko was at lost. In fact, she started shouting in bewilderment,"How the hell could a bloody flagpole not get sliced by a reverberating knife? We can cut through a military submarine, why not a bloody flagpole?"
"It's..." Fuyutsuki began, slowly as if reliving a past horror from back in his early life. "That flagpole belongs to... No, it can't be!" He gasped. "That flag! No, it is!"
"What?"
"That flagpole belongs to Blue-line High!"
Ritsuko looked at Fuyutsuki strangely. "... Blue-line?"
Fuyutsuki sunk with fear into his seat, lower and lower. "... High."
"Um..." Ritsuko considered sending Kouzou to the psychiatrist as well. "Yeah, hi."
"No! This is Blue-line! The Blue-line High! Formally the Green Soaring High from Izu, relocated!"
Ritsuko then recalled the name. "Hey, wait... this is the actual school that kicked Ikari's ass back in the 00s! Hey, yeah! I remember! Gendou got into brawls with those high-school punks! Ha!"
Ritsuko's sudden cheerfulness didn't do anything to Fuyutsuki's state.
Now, Kensuke can give back what the angel gave him twice: a head-bash to the left, and a head-bash to the right! One more for good measure straight down!
The angel fell backwards, onto its back. But in doing so, it kicked one leg into the air.
The leg kicked Kensuke's shield right out of his hands and sent it soaring into the sky. Kensuke's shield was gone.
But, being on the ground, Shinji came up and put one foot back on the angel like it did in the beginning. Shinji raised his baseball bat to give one defining blow at the angel's head.
But he angel was not beaten, yet. Kensuke's EAT-S came back down from the sky like Buzz Lightyear coming in for touch-down and hit Unit-01's neck.
Shinji dropped the bat, stumbling back.
"My God, why the neck? Why does it have to be the neck?" he screamed as he went back those few paces. "Ritsuko, seriously, you should give me a hood!"
On the ground, the angel caught Shinji's bat, and rolled back, jumping to its feet.
Standing, the angel paused in another cool pose with its brand new bat, suggesting for a Kodak Moment™.
Again, Unit-01 got up next to Unit-00. Shinji stared at the angel, then at Kensuke.
"What the hell are we gonna do?"
"Uh..." said Kensuke, thinking. "How about Toji? Maybe he can distract it for a while?"
"Er..." said Shinji with a sweatdrop, "I think we've had enough distractions from him for a while."
"Yeah," said Kensuke, nodding. "Talk about short..."
All of a sudden, a translucent, orange baseball bat came across Unit-00's head: The EAT-Bat!
Kensuke stumbled back, quickly, and raised his shield for the second blow. However, something strange happened when the EAT-B came down onto the EAT-S.
"What happened?" Asked Kensuke, surprised. "The baseball bat disappeared into my shield..."
"The EAT-Fields," explained Ritsuko at mach speed, "had just cancelled each other out, Kensuke. Both will come back if you keep both EAT-equipment away from each other."
The angel pulled the bat out of the shield now, and whacked at Kensuke's unprotected legs. Kensuke fell on his (Eva's) face.
Shinji, having hesitated for a long moment, overcame his hatred for Blue-line High and took the angel's flagpole for himself. Let me just rip the bloody Blue-line flag off it, first...
Now, having dishonored the school, Shinji went on to swing the pole at the angel. He missed, and so went again with a raging scream, mercilessly.
Gendou lent back in his chair for a while, looking at the action.
"Has anyone thought of giving them a gun?" he said.
"Gendou..." Ritsuko said, smartly, "you're so primitive."
"Primitive?" Gendou smirked. "I'm not the one who goes ahead to tell the boys to swing baseball bats and flagpoles around at each other."
"The flagpole was the angel's idea. Not mine."
Gendou smirked even more. "Then the angel's way smarter than you... I wonder if we can hire him..." he went on, stroking his chin.
"I believe that flagpole had the flag of Blue-line High," said Ritsuko, smiling.
Gendou paused at the word.
"... Damn those bastards."
Smash! Unit-00 flew into a building, crumbling it down to rubble.
The angel swung its bat again. Shinji dodged it.
Whoosh! The bat swung around, again. This was blocked by the flagpole, making a terrific blast of noise.
Bang!
Bash!
Bosh!
Don!
Baki!
Patan!
Oo! thought Ritsuko. We haven't had any Japanese sound effects for quite a while, now!
At last, Kensuke got back up. But the angel was on a role, now. Having fixed Unit-01 up for a good three seconds, the angel backflipped, kicking Kensuke's shield into the air, again, and landing at a distance enough for one more attack.
With one, almighty swing with its EAT-B, the Giant Marshmallow Man of Canaan smashed Unit-00 square in the groin with a truly unholy (- yet literally holy, considering it's an angel -), unprecedented force!
Kensuke's high-pitched scream pierced the city as he went off, and fading from audibility as Unit-00, itself, sailed into the distance through the air, and over the horizon.
His last words were, "Shinji! I thought you said Eva had no balls...!"
The angel looked off at the horizon, shading its eyes with its free hand.
Shinji, too, turned to look at Unit-00 as a speck on the blue dusk.
Like a punch-line, the speck shined into a twinkle with a ping, and was gone.
Shinji looked at his opponent, the angel, who had just performed this miraculous feat, like David Copperfield.
"... It actually had balls?"
Everyone at NERV was silent in this moment of uncertain suspense.
Ritsuko was the first to break the silence.
"Commander? What now?"
"What?" Gendou said, looking up, at last. "I wasn't looking. I'm watching The Lion King on DVD for the first time..."
"That DVD was available twenty years ago."
"No," said Gendou, looking at his screen, "this was digitally remastered again."
"You ought to find yourself an anime, Gendou," Ritsuko said, dismissingly.
"I would," said Gendou, agitated, "if that mystery person hadn't burnt my manga when I was young and carefree." Gendou could still remember those good, old days.
So could Ritsuko. "You were never carefree, Gendou, let alone young. Even in that brawl 16 years ago."
"I was so!" Gendou said, hitting his desk with his palms. "It was a family tradition to bring bullet-proof vests to pubs!"
"And a police helmet?" Smirked Ritsuko. "And a mini-can of pepper spray? And"
"THE FAKE GLASSES/MOUSTACHE AND NOSE WAS KOUZOU'S IDEA!"
Kouzou, standing by the sidelines, added with a smile, "The groin guard was my idea, too."
"Besides," continued Gendou, closing his eyes as he talked, and tilting his head up, "that guy from Blue-line High was extremely brutal. And I despise those Tuesdays with the wedgies..."
"Okay," interrupted Ritsuko, "we don't have time to look back at your favorite pastimes, Commander..."
"Then don't you think it's about time to give that boy a gun?"
Ritsuko and Gendou looked at each other, intensely.
"Or a groin guard?" Interrupted Fuyutsuki.
Shinji hit the angel.
The angel hit Shinji.
Shinji hit the angel.
The angel hit Shinji.
Shinji hit the angel.
The angel was about to hit Shinji, again.
"Okay, wait..." Shinji said, doing a time-out sign. "Time out."
Apparently, there must have been some, great, unwritten code of combat between angels and evas because the giant marshmallow man stopped and went off to have a sit-down.
Shinji used the time to undo the rope on his flagpole. He did a few knots, here and there, and, "Okay, I'm done."
The angel got back up, and they both returned to their original positions.
The angel held the bat in mid-air, arching an arm over his face, and Shinji stood with his legs wide apart - one in the air, and his arms out at weird angles to resemble a tree. For a second, they were still statues (laughable if displayed at the local park, for they were utterly ridiculously posed); then they resumed battle like it never stopped.
The fight went on for a full minute more.
"Talk about overkill," commented Fuyutsuki with a handful of popcorn. Though action movies were great; sometimes, they just go on and on to the point of monotony, and have all the critics bawling it to hell for lack of plot development. "It's exactly like fifteen years ago, with The Matrix Reloaded. Indeed, it's been fifteen years..."
"But now we know for sure," said Gendou, "The King has returned."
"Are we talking about The Lord of the Rings, now?"
"No," Gendou said, looking from his screen. His eyes were big and watery like someone unable to resist an extremely sappy movie, and were streaming tears of happiness. "Simba has returned."
At last, Shinji had the angel sent flying across the road.
Having been prepared for this, Shinji whipped out the rope from under his cape, and twirled it in the air above his head. As the angel landed, Shinji threw the rope and lassoed the EAT-Bat. Having a firm grip of his baseball bat, Shinji jerked it towards himself.
Weirdly, the baseball bat did fly towards Shinji, but hit him straight in the head.
"So much for automatic Matrix-moves," scoffed Gendou, a smirk in his voice.
"Well, at least I've disarmed the angel," Shinji said, defiantly. "But watch this!"
He whipped up his flagpole in his hands, and did an assortment of twirly, kung-fu-ey, Matrixy moves with it like a cross between a Cirque du Soleil freak and a pen trick. He finished off in a signature-Neo way, and greatly intimidated the Giant Marshmallow Man of Canaan.
"How's that for Automatic Matrix-moves?"
"So what?" Said Gendou, seeming not to care.
Ignoring the slight disagreement between the father-son, the angel considered its circumstances. It had no weapon left, and the cloaked, purple Evangelion-thing had a Blue-line High flagpole and Automatic Matrix-moves. With this in mind, the angel decided to take its most drastic measure: to use its secret weapon.
The angel ripped off a blob off its arm, and threw it at Unit-01. Shinji deflected it easily with a flick of his wrist like it was expecting that.
"This is dangerous, Shinji," said Ritsuko's voice, "remember that you will be absorbed, again, if you let any of that touch you."
Taking this in, Shinji just smiled with one answer. "... Automatic Matrix-moves."
Suddenly, Shinji launched towards the giant marshmallow man. It was dramatic. It was spectacular. It was in bullet-time. And this was it...
The angel furiously started ripping pieces of itself and hurled it at the Evangelion. Shinji whipped all these away, all the while running at full speed towards the angel.
The angel threw another one.
Shinji repelled it in another smooth movement.
The angel did another. And another.
But still, Shinji prevailingly whipped each blob out of his way. He twisted, he turned, doing each. Each blob landed into a building, causing it to explode in a confetti of dust and rubble.
By the time Shinji was half-way there, already. The angel ran out of arm to throw.
"Suck!" shouted Shinji.
As quickly as he said that, the angel's arm completely regenerated.
And now, it was time for the angel to use its secret tactic. Holding up its arm, the angel whipped its hand around like a helicopter blade. Suddenly, bits of pieces of marshmallow detached themselves, and were thrown at Unit-01 like paintball bullets.
The pieces were smaller, this time, and were far greater in numbers. If you thought ancient Egyptian booby-traps with flying wooden sticks coming out of the holes in the walls were dangerous, this was more so.
Shinji knew what he needed to do.
In pure, digital accuracy and confidence, the automatic Matrix-moves mechanism alliteration, here launched Shinji off the ground, and spun him through the air. Holding up his flagpole, Shinji rivaled the angel's helicopter-impersonation, spinning around in bullet-time.
But Shinji was more graceful.
As he spun at high speeds, still getting closer to the angel, the bits and pieces of angel flew at Unit-01. As the pole went round, the angel blobs were flung away from Unit-01 as it came near it like pulp from an open blender. It was a dangerous feat, but this cheat defied all.
Now, thus far, Unit-01 began to come back down from the peak of its curve.
The angel very soon realized it won't be able to succeed at destroying this mean, purple fighting machine. It had stopped to brace the Eva as it came right at it from the air like a frisbee.
Before you could notice it, Shinji landed on one foot, and swept low at the angel's feet with his other. Only in bullet-time could you see this.
The angel anticipated this move, and had jumped to avoid it. But the Evangelion, still carrying the rotational inertia, twisted around into the air, again, and had a belt at the angel's back with the flagpole.
Now having flipped horizontally, Shinji landed on his other foot, his left foot flew up at the angel's head. The flagpole followed immediately. Both hit the angel, no doubt each blow was a severe blow to the angel's strength. Each blow brought it closer down to defeat.
Shinji, still traveling in bullet-time, came low again, and altogether flicked the angel off its feet.
Shinji twisted 360 degrees, again, high. The angel was still hanging in the air when the Eva smashed it right down to the ground.
It crashed to the ground with tremendous force - bullet-time having, at last, ceased - shattering surrounding buildings, and making an explosion of dust from under the cracked tarmac road.
The dust enveloped both giants, obscuring visibility.
Shinji finished off with a spin of the pole in his hands, and finishing in a stance that only the Automatic Matrix-moves could have induced; not that anyone would have seen it.
The dust cloud slowly evanesced to reveal Unit-01 standing, unscratched and cool.
"What do you say, now, father?" Shinji's voice said.
There was a long pause from Gendou, looking speechless at the screen. He withdrew after a moment from his seat. He had finally been defeated. He crouched in a corner, looking miserably at his betting ticket be bought: "Giant Marshmallow Man of Canaan - 1:3"
He had bet on the angel. ¥25,360
"A crappy waste of money, Gendou..." he said to himself, miserably. "A crappy waste..."
Ritsuko giggled to herself at a floor beneath Gendou's, and waved her own ticket: "Third Child 'Shinji' of NERV - 2:5" at ¥20,000.
Gendou had brought himself to the edge of defeat. Here he was, a piece of paper in his hands showing his confidence in the angel's victory over his son. And now, the angel is lying on the road having had its ass kicked with Matrix-moves, surpassing its own. Not a good position to be in.
Then again, Makoto was sulking in the corner, staring painfully at his "Kensuke of Ninja Scroll - 1:1,000,005" ticket.
As the dust cloud had nearly cleared, a dirty shape of a giant marshmallow man emerged from the ground. It got up slowly, but defiantly, staring at Unit-01 with death.
The angel, now filled with a long-ripened hatred, made its last stand.
Clenching its fist, it threw one, big punch at Unit-01.
Shinji dodged it at the last second.
And you know what? Slow-motion took effect for one, last time. And at that point, Shinji used all his strength and whacked his flagpole upwards. It hit the angel's chin.
Petty, you say? No.
In slow-motion, it looked absolutely horrendous. Look again.
The flagpole went up, coming closer to the chin, flowing through the liquid-like air with a deep, flooping sound. Neologism required to describe this sound. And now, the flagpole made contact. The look of it was almost indescribable.
Pieces of marshmallow ripped off from the friction. The skin split like severe stretch marks, a thin portion melting away. One could imagine the horrifying imagery had this skin not been of marshmallow.
The entire head, itself, reacted like a slow, thick fluid in a balloon. The force made large ripples up the head. But even the word "ripple" isn't accurate; more of a contortion of that evil face like twisted play-doh. You may have neglected the fact, but the angel felt pain. From the pain in its face, it was contorted into something altogether undefinable and as twisted as the most twisted thing your own dreams could conjure.
An absolutely terrible sight, but only lasting for a second.
Shinji automatically dropped his pole after the strike, and immediately jumped into the air.
His arms spread like an eagle's wings. His legs drawn back like into a crouch.
When his legs were level with the angel's deformed head, a leg lashed out and kicked the angel with unspeakable force.
The angel went sailing, and landed on the other side of the city.
It hit the ground, bringing up dust, sliding along the road, not seeming to slow down.
At last, it hit a building, making it topple over. This was rather unexpected, as that particular building fell down, slowly, like an empty upturned box, and underneath this box was... a giant hose. The angel looked curiously at the thing.
A fist slammed onto a desk, and Gendou glared evilly at Ritsuko.
Ritsuko looked back with her hand scratching the back of her head and a sweat drop. "Ummm... I suppose I forgot to tell you about that other stash of Liquorish LCL..."
The janitor pulled out the crosses, again, and shook them in the air.
"Cru-ci-fy them! Cru-cify them!"
Gendou glared at Ritsuko even more, "Ritsuko, you little..."
Ritsuko hung her head, looking at the floor. "I am ashamed."
Although Gendou would have felt extreme contempt for not having been informed about that particular flavor of LCL, he also saw the bright side.
Gendou simply sat back in his chair and smirked at everyone in the Command Center, waving his Angel betting ticket back at them. "Who's the sucker?"
NERV looked back annoyingly at Gendou.
"We want you to hang your head in shame..." said everyone. "On a rope."
No time, now. Maya's face came out of her computer screen, and shouted, "Dr. Akagi! The angel is now drinking it!"
Ritsuko's eyes flashed back to the screens, and her pupil shrunk immediately. The MAGI screens flash up with the countdown timer, starting again.
"00:15:53"
Ode To Joy begun once more.
"WE NEED TO GET SHINJI THE LANCE! MAKOTO, SEND IT UP!"
Shigeru twisted in his seat, "NO RESPONSE! MAKOTO IS IN A STATE OF DEPRESSION!"
An infra-red picture of Makoto stuck squatting in a dark corner, holding his Kensuke ticket confirmed that, automatically.
"My God."
"I'll do it..." Maya said. She began typing in a sequence, and the lance was launched at last.
It was now a matter of time as they watched anxiously at the Lance's progression up and the angel's gulping down.
"Can we do it in time?" said Misato to herself - like talking to oneself was a normal behavior.
She looked helplessly at the screen.
"00:06:05"
Suddenly, Gendou lunged from his seat onto Maya, screaming.
"No! You will not take my sum away from me!"
"Son or Sum?"
"SUM!"
He was referring to that 25,360 yen (and to-be 76,080 yen if he could help it).
As Maya started screaming helplessly as Gendou harassed her; all of a sudden, a roof-tile opened up directly above Gendou. From that square of light, a figure jumped in and wrestled Gendou to the ground.
It was Toji!
A white box popped up, violently, next to Unit-01, and opened up to reveal the Lance of Longinus.
Shinji knew what he had to do.
"00:01:84"
The song was about to end.
It was literally now or never.
So, now.
Shinji ran up at full speed, screaming horrifically, and launched the Lance of Longinus through the air. It streaked through, silently.
It flew up to the angel.
"00:00:02"