Okay, after a long, long hiatus, I have finally returned to finish what I started. Okay, maybe continue what I started. Sorry about that, it's not that I don't want to finish the story, I just got very busy with college and developed some severe writer's block that I wasn't really able to overcome until Christmas vacation. Plus testing out of some classes early has actually resulted in me taking even more advanced classes, so now it's pretty hectic. But I know where I want to take the story, so perhaps I can still pick up the pace from here. But the reader is always at the mercy of the author, you know. That is, until it comes time for reviewing :) We'll just have to wait and see, won't we?
I also edited the first two chapters, but the plot is still the same, so you don't need to re-read them unless you want to refresh your memory, or because… you just like them. Right? Huh? Nudge nudge, wink wink.
Not a lot happens in this chapter plot-wise; it was originally intended to just be the intro to the next chapter, but it kind of expanded into something like one long-ass fight scene (well, several), with some plot mixed in. So I gave it its own chapter. But fight scenes are fun, right? Right?
Kill Gendou
Volume Three
My last assignment, Kaji thought, staring down at the small metal box in his hands. Some falsified documents and a data card lay on top of the pile inside, concealing its more sinister contents from prying eyes.
Carefully pulling a black leather glove over his right hand, he tried to push away the lingering thoughts of Misato that kept intruding into his mind. Her death had shaken him, he had to admit, for he had truly loved her, despite the more sinister characteristics that had begun creeping into her personality after the "incident" five years ago.
Kaji felt a pang of regret over that as well. Sure, he had not been directly involved in the affair, but of course he had known about it; it was his business to know things like that. And yet he had done nothing. He had told himself there was nothing he could do. It was out of his hands.
But he had not even tried. He had barely given it a thought before submitting to what he believed to be the inevitable. Instead he had turned a blind eye, then attempted to fill the aching hole in his heart with other things: his relationship with Misato, and his interminable quest for the truth.
Truth. Kaji sneered at the word. Over the past five years he had slipped further and further from his ideals, straying far from the so-called "truth." He had sunk himself in his work so deeply that before he knew it, he had become a puppet for SEELE; a spy, a thief. No. A murderer, lurking in the shadows, his life a web of lies and deceit. Only Misato had kept him anchored to reality, kept him grasping at dim, intangible vestiges of the "real" truth.
But Misato was dead. Perhaps deservedly so, but dead nonetheless. SEELE was finished with him, and before long he would likely be dead as well. His world was gone. In more ways than perhaps she realized, Asuka had taken her revenge.
Kaji felt strangely calm at the realization, sliding a second glove onto his left hand. He tugged at the wrist, pulling it taut about the contours of his long, slender fingers. Pushing the troublesome thoughts from his mind, he reached back into the box, grasped the data card between two gloved fingers, and lifted it out into the dim light. He stared at the slim, crimson piece of plastic, understanding its implications quite well.
It's red. Just like blood.
Asuka Langley Sohryu ascended the dingy concrete stairwell, lips closed tightly in grim determination. This particular apartment complex had never been the pinnacle of sanitation and elegance, but it obviously had not been particularly well-maintained over the last few years. The place stank of mildew and stagnant water, and the walls, heavily layered with varying degrees of filth, were slimy to the touch.
It was doubtful she would find what she was looking for, considering how much time had passed and the building's horrendous state of disrepair. In all likelihood she walking right into a trap, or at best she would find yet another dead end. But then again, Rei Ayanami was not the type to have moved out of her living quarters unless ordered to do so. Either way, it was Asuka's best and only lead, short of breaking into NERV Headquarters itself.
Rei Ayanami. The fine hairs on the back of Asuka's neck bristled at the thought of the enigmatic, blue-haired girl. Their "rivalry" (or at least what Asuka considered to be a rivalry, though it was doubtful Rei thought of it the same way) traced back long before the instance of her betrayal; that had simply escalated the whole affair. In fact, Asuka couldn't help but feel just a tiny bit grateful, as she now had a perfect excuse to kill her.
Reaching the desired level, Asuka stepped around a small pile of broken glass beneath a shattered windowpane and moved carefully into the deserted hallway. It was deathly quiet, and in a similar state of grime as the stairwell had been. Asuka's feet echoed softly on the concrete floor as she crept toward the desired apartment. As she stepped up to the door of Rei's old dwelling, Asuka wondered if anyone lived in this building anymore.
Anxiously fingering the Desert Eagle handgun in the holster at her back, Asuka stared eagerly at the door and pondered what might lie beyond it. Reaching up, she firmly depressed the buzzer with the hilt of her sword. It was time.
The four NERV intelligence agents sat idly around the cheap metal card table in the empty apartment, looking quite bored. They had been staking the place out for over a week now with absolutely no action of any kind, and they could feel the edges of their sanity beginning to erode away.
"Why do we always get stuck with such bullshit assignments?" one of them asked, flicking on his lighter and lifting it carefully to the cigarette balanced expertly between his lips.
One of the other agents opened his mouth as if to answer, then froze as the door buzzer rang, shattering the small apartment's dreary silence.
The agent closest to the door rose, letting the cigarette fall from his lips, and crushed it beneath a black leather heel. Extracting the regulation sidearm from its holster beneath his suit jacket, he stalked over to the doorway and peered through the peephole at the area beyond.
The hall was empty. The man backed away from the door, eyeing it uneasily.
The buzzer rang again. Cautiously, he moved back over to the entryway, looking through the hole a second time.
The .50 caliber Desert Eagle bullet ripped straight through the door's peephole and into his eye, splattering a generous portion of his blood and brain tissue across the apartment's concrete walls and floor. The three remaining agents leapt out of their seats, drew their own weapons, and scrambled for the doorway as the dead man's body slid down against the floor.
Asuka grinned. It was too easy.
She pointed the powerful handgun at the door and fired three more shots, using the sound of the agents' footsteps to pinpoint each shot's trajectory. The heavy rounds punched through the flimsy material, and she was rewarded with the heavy thuds of falling bodies and the clattering of metal on concrete as the agents' weapons tumbled to the floor. One of the agents groaned and could be heard fumbling around, searching desperately for his dropped firearm.
Asuka raised an eyebrow.
Still alive? She thought. Sloppy.
Raising the pistol again, Asuka fired one more .50 caliber round through the door, much lower than before. Her shot was met with something like a yelping groan and a somewhat softer thud than before. Then it was silent.
Asuka planted her foot forcefully into the center of the door, smashing its supports and sending it crashing into the apartment, and rushed in, scanning the room for further resistance. Aside from the four dead agents, the corroded old bedsprings, and a few other shabby pieces of furniture, the apartment was empty, just as she had suspected.
The sound of pounding feet echoing down the hallway drew her attention, and she peeked out into the hallway. A pair of NERV intelligence agents rushed through the corridor from another room, attracted by the commotion. Keeping the majority of her body hidden behind the doorjamb for cover, Asuka pointed her weapon out into the hallway and fired. The nearest agent's head snapped back, blood spurting from the gaping hole in his face. The second agent stumbled a bit over the collapsing body of his partner, but he still managed to raise his pistol and fire. Asuka quickly ducked back around the corner as bullets impacted surprisingly close to where her head had been just moments before.
Asuka smoothly drew her sword from its sheath and crouched in the doorway, careful to keep her body safely out of her opponent's line of fire. As the agent closed within a few steps of Asuka's position, she sprang. With one hand, she thrust her sword down into the agent's foot, pinning it to the floor. The man cried out and nearly stumbled, but the cold steel blade planted firmly in his foot jerked him back upright. Desperate, the wounded man swung his pistol over to fire at Asuka, but she deftly used the barrel of her own gun to deflect his aim off to the side. His frantic shots slammed harmlessly into the wall as Asuka whipped her Desert Eagle back in line with his head. He barely had time to open his mouth before she fired, pulverizing the bones in his neck and nearly separating his head from the rest of his body. The corpse tumbled to the ground somewhat awkwardly, the foot still pinned beneath Asuka's blade. The man's head lay at an odd angle, connected to his body by only a few meaty strands of flesh.
Asuka grinned; she was really starting to like this gun.
Another clamor of footsteps attracted her attention, this time coming from the stairwell closest to her current position. It was much louder this time; she estimated at least a half dozen agents, maybe more. And who knew how many more could be lurking throughout the apartment complex?
Turning away, Asuka sprinted in the opposite direction toward the stairwell at the other end of the hall, carefully stepping around the fresh corpses on the floor. A few feet down the hall another door slid open, and an agent stepped out into the hall. A look of surprise came over his face, partly at Asuka's startlingly close proximity and partly at the rather large bullet hole blossoming in his forehead. He tumbled backward into the room, eliciting a cry of surprise from a second man behind him, deeper within the room's interior.
Asuka continued her dash for the stairwell, diving across the open doorway and narrowly avoiding a spray of submachine gun bullets. Reaching the end of the hall, she kicked open the stairwell door and rushed inside, barely managing to dodge yet another spray of bullets. One round grazed her left heel, and she stumbled, tumbling down the first flight of stairs. The hard concrete steps pummeled her chest and limbs until she came to a sudden halt, the back of her head slamming painfully onto the landing between flights. She lay on her back, dazed.
The sounds of pounding footsteps pulled her from her stupor. She could tell the agent with the submachine gun was getting close, and the throng from the opposite stairwell had entered the hallway and were fast approaching as well.
Feeling the Desert Eagle still clutched in her hand, Asuka rolled over on her back and pointed the gun up over her head toward the top of the stairs, willing her vision back into focus.
The instant the man's face appeared over the top step's edge, she pulled the trigger. Her last round caught him beneath the chin, burrowing up through his skull and out the back of his head in a rather spectacular geyser of blood, bone, and brain tissue. His finger clenched around the trigger as he died, spraying the walls of narrow stairwell with a final burst of machine gun fire.
Asuka allowed herself a moment's respite, then leapt to her feet and took off down the stairs, grimacing in pain as blood soaked into her jeans from the reopened wound on her thigh. Slipping the Desert Eagle back into its holster, she cursed her lack of foresight in neglecting to bring an extra magazine. The fact that NERV intelligence had been staking out Rei's old apartment was not surprising in the least, but she certainly had not been anticipating so many of them.
She could hear the pounding feet just a few floors above her. It was louder now, and not just as a result of the enclosed space. There were definitely more of them, but the stairwell's poor acoustics prevented her from making an accurate determination. Sliding the sword from its sheath, Asuka quickened her pace, stretching her slender legs to engulf two stairs at a time. She dared not increase her pace any further, lest she risk being caught off balance by pursuing agents on a lower level.
The wisdom of this decision was revealed a few floors from the building's exit, as she rounded a flight of stairs and found herself face to face with a pair of NERV agents, pistols drawn and pointed in her direction.
Without sacrificing her momentum Asuka twisted to the side, planted her rump firmly on the handrail and slid down, narrowing her profile as bullets whizzed just centimeters from her chest. Before her feet even touched the floor, the katana was already arcing down toward the closest adversary, shredding through his chest with practiced ease. The second agent's eyes widened in fear as he desperately shifted his aim over toward her current position, but he was too slow. Asuka cut him down as easily as she had his companion, then immediately continued her descent.
Reaching the ground level, Asuka pressed her back against the wall adjacent to the exit. The pounding feet continued their pursuit down the stairs, but that was no reason to charge out blindly into an ambush. Peering out the door's large glass panes, she spotted three more NERV agents standing watch around the exit. Their guns were drawn, but the three men obviously weren't expecting to use them, assuming there was no way one "little girl" could get past so many of their fellow agents.
"Sloppy," Asuka muttered condescendingly; but then, it was to her advantage.
Tightening her grip on the sword, she dashed out into the mid-afternoon sunshine. The nearest agent noticed the quick pattering of her footsteps and raised his head, which she immediately removed with a horizontal slash. With more time to react, the second agent began to raise his pistol and aim it in her direction. She rushed forward, thrusting the sword straight through his gut. He grunted, blood trickling from his open mouth, then slumped lifelessly on the blade.
Asuka twisted the skewered corpse around between herself and the third agent's line of fire; he hesitated, reluctant to fire on his comrade. Seizing the opportunity, Asuka made her move. Snatching the steel combat knife from its sheath at her hip, she grasped the sharp point between her fingertips and flung it straight ahead. The knife tumbled end over end through the air for several meters, then forcefully lodged itself into the agent's jugular. Eyes bulging, the man fell to his knees, clutching at his throat as if to stop the torrent of blood seeping through his grasping fingers.
Asuka quickly moved toward him and away from the apartment building, not forgetting about the mob of agents that would soon come pouring out of the door in pursuit. He clutched at her ankle as she passed, fiercely clinging to her leg with the desperation that comes when one realizes death is but moments away. Asuka stared down at him, not a trace of remorse evident in her cold expression; rather, she appeared irritated at his continued struggle for life.
Grasping onto her clothing, the man pulled himself up, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water, desperately trying to speak, to beg for help. Their eyes met, the final exchange between killer and victim. As casually as one might swat a fly, Asuka raised her katana up to shoulder height and drove it down into the dying man's eye socket, piercing through into the soft tissue of the brain. The agent's grip relaxed, and he slumped to the pavement, dead.
Asuka began to move once again, but paused as a slight glint of sunlight on metal caught her eye. Snatching the gleaming object off the ground, she swiftly darted away from the building's entrance and around the corner into a nearby alley, just as she heard the exit door burst open and the group of a dozen or so agents rush out into the open air.
Pressing her back against the wall, Asuka cradled her prize lovingly, a wicked grin spreading across her face; it was a custom-made submachine gun, heavily modified for increased accuracy and magazine capacity, no doubt loaded with armor-piercing ammunition or something equally delightful. Tearing her eyes away from the beautiful weapon, she pressed her back to the damp brick wall and leaned around the corner, centering her aim on the throng of agents just outside the exit.
"Now die," she spat, gently squeezing the trigger. On cue, a torrent of red-hot bullets (armor-piercing, just as she'd suspected) leapt free of their imprisonment within the weapon's magazine and rocketed through the air, tearing into the unsuspecting agents' flesh. Specially designed to penetrate even the heaviest of body armor, the superheated projectiles had no trouble piercing human skin, muscle, and bone, easily punching straight through two or even three agents' bodies before burrowing into the apartment building's heavy concrete walls.
Eyes bulging, Asuka held down the trigger, mercilessly pounding the unsuspecting agents with submachine gun fire. The leading men (and those directly behind them) were cut down immediately. Those behind them followed just moments later as Asuka shifted her line of fire from right to left. Caught off-guard from their right flank, the rest of the mob degenerated into confusion and panic. One by one they dropped to the pavement, images somewhat obscured by a fine mist of blood, smoke, and chipped bits of concrete, until finally none were left standing. Resisting the urge to cackle with glee, Asuka raked their fallen bodies with machine gun fire. Some of them twitched upon the bullets' impact. Others didn't.
Asuka held down the weapon's trigger until the magazine emptied completely. Even then, she kept squeezing, as if she couldn't hear the clicking in the gun's mechanism, an obvious indication to even the inexperienced that the ammunition had run dry. Finally, cheeks flushed and breathing heavily, Asuka released the trigger, dropping the empty weapon to the pavement with a brief clatter. Then there was silence. A bird chirped in the distance, over toward the horizon where the sun was just beginning to sink below the Tokyo-3 skyline. Asuka stared off into the sunset, pondering her next move, when suddenly a slight scraping noise attracted her back toward the pile of corpses.
A lone surviving agent crawled desperately toward the apartment building's open doorway, awkwardly dragging his right leg behind him, a smear of blood trailing from the wounded limb. Another line of red fluid trickled from his left shoulder, where apparently another bullet had just grazed his arm. Asuka stalked over to the wounded man, an idea already forming in her mind.
Noticing her approach, the man became visibly agitated and struggled to increase his pace, clawing for a fallen handgun lying just a few feet from his position. Seizing the weapon in his hand, the injured man whipped it around to fire at the red-haired demon who had injured him and slaughtered his fellow agents.
But when he turned around, she was gone. Only empty air remained to meet his challenge. A voice echoed softly in his left ear.
"Guten nachmittag."
Panicked, he swung his arm around to fire. There was a flash of movement, a slight thud, and the clattering of metal on concrete. The agent squeezed his index finger, willing the gun to discharge and slay this demon.
But the gun did not fire. Frowning, the agent tried again. Still nothing. Suddenly he noticed that his hand felt kind of funny. In fact, come to think of it, it felt really strange, and his wrist hurt like hell.
A glint of orange sunlight reflected into his eye, making him squint. Following the glare to its source, he realized it was coming from the metallic sheen of a handgun, one that looked identical to the gun he was holding. Next to it, in a small puddle of blood on the ground, lay a severed human hand.
Oh, shit, he thought, suddenly realizing why his wrist hurt so badly. Raising his arm, he stared blankly at the bloody stump where his hand had been.
Another glint of light caught his attention; only this time, the light came from the long blade of a finely-crafted katana, its tip hovering just inches from his throat. His eyes followed the blade up to the hilt, then up the arm holding it, and all the way up to the face and unmistakable red hair of the sword's wielder. He closed his eyes, waiting for the fatal blow.
But it did not come. Instead, he felt a rough jerk on the back of his collar and realized that he was being dragged back into the building. His elbow banged sharply into the door's frame, sending a jolt of pain up his arm, but it was nothing compared to the searing pain from his amputated wrist and the two bullet holes in his leg, so he hardly noticed it.
Asuka dragged the wounded man into a small alcove behind the stairs, then released her grip, letting him sink to the floor. The man groaned as she kicked him in the side for good measure, then lay still, bleeding and holding his bruised ribs. Their eyes met, and Asuka flashed him a wicked smile.
"Now here's how this is going to work," she said coldly. "I'm going to ask you a few questions. And if I don't like the answers I get, I cut something off."
She punctuated this statement by gesturing toward his bleeding stump with her sword. He flinched.
"Cooperate, and you'll leave here alive, with whatever body parts you have left. Quite a bargain, nicht?"
Ryoji Kaji's eyes shone intently from the shadows, his only visible feature not consumed by the darkness. Silently, motionlessly, he waited, vision focused on the small, spartan desk area in the corner of the room, where a single occupant sat scribbling away under the illumination of a small office lamp.
Rei Ayanami sat at the desk, working diligently as always on her school assignments. As per Gendou's orders, piloting Unit 00 and keeping up with her schoolwork were her primary concerns, along with her recent responsibilities with NERV's Intelligence division, so while the other students in her senior class were carelessly watching television, gallivanting about with their friends and whatnot, she was home, focusing on assignments that the other students might have rushed through or otherwise ignored. Of course, it was years ago that he had outlined these priorities, and if questioned about it now, it was unlikely that such mundane activities as schoolwork would hold equal precedence with her new responsibilities in the intelligence division; but she had never asked, simply assimilating the new duties in with those he had originally specified. And Rei was nothing if not obedient, so here she was, dutifully evaluating definite integrals as assigned by her calculus teacher.
Kaji reached a black-gloved hand into his pocket, closing his fingers around the thin leather cord inside. Without making a sound, he lifted the cord from his hip and held it up in front of him, stretching it out to its full length. Taking a firm grip on the small handles at either end and wrapping a small measure of cord around each index finger, Kaji took one small step toward the desk where Rei sat, seemingly oblivious to his presence. Slowly, noiselessly, he took another small step, and then another, and so on until he was just a few steps behind her.
Raising the cord even with his chin, Kaji carefully closed the remaining distance between them and, in a sudden burst of movement, whipped the garrote down past her face and pulled it taut around her throat, quickly and effectively cutting off her air supply. Rei tried to jerk away, scraping her chair on the room's concrete floor, but only managed to pull the garrote even tighter against her neck, silencing even the few small, muffled choking sounds she had been able to make. With a speed and strength seemingly uncharacteristic of her small frame, Rei snatched up her pencil from atop the notebook where it had fallen and thrust it behind her, stabbing deep into Kaji's shoulder. He grunted at the sudden pain, but did not relinquish his grip on the cord, pulling it even tighter against her throat.
Rei jerked the writing utensil free, then thrust it in again, lower than before, piercing the upper left-hand corner of Kaji's chest. This time it was enough to momentarily loosen his grip, and, seizing a small bit of free cord near the fingers of Kaji's left hand, Rei wrenched the garrote away from her neck. With a sickening crack, Kaji felt several joints in his left index finger snap violently out of their sockets as the cord pulled free, twisting the finger itself in a way it was never intended to bend. He stumbled backwards, eyes watering from the pain.
Kaji blinked, clearing his vision just in time to see his target snatch a wickedly curved tanto from the top desk drawer. Cursing himself, Kaji drew his emergency sidearm from the holster on his belt. He had hoped to be completely silent, but now he would have to rely on the pistol's built-in silencer and a hasty getaway. It was messy, but it could be done, and under the present circumstances, that's all that mattered.
Spying the gun in his hand, Rei dashed forward, rushing in close where the maneuverability of her short blade would give her the advantage. Kaji fired once, but Rei twisted her body aside, and the bullet just grazed her shoulder and collarbone. Rei lunged off to the side as two more shots from Kaji's gun soared past her shoulder, the last one impacting squarely into the desk lamp. The bulb exploded with a loud pop and a shower of sparks, briefly illuminating the apartment before fading out and casting the room into darkness.
Kaji cursed himself again. If the NERV security agents watching Rei hadn't already been alerted by the commotion or his previous shots, then they certainly were now. And after all the trouble he had gone through to sneak by them…
The room seemed to brighten in Kaji's vision as the rods and cones of his eyes shifted into the proper balance to process the new level of ambience. It didn't take long; Kaji's eyes were quite attuned with darkness, a by-product of spending so much time in the shadows, and between the radiance of the full moon and the close proximity of external streetlights, the room was not too exceptionally dark.
Rei's vision quickly adjusted as well, though not quite as quickly as Kaji's, bringing her assailant back into focus. The instant she could see well enough to distinguish Kaji's outline, she raised her short blade and dashed forward. The blurred figure raised its arm in her direction, and though she could not see it clearly, she knew quite well what that meant.
Rei twisted to the side as several more bullets whizzed past, one of them grazing her right breast and elbow. Shifting her weight onto her left foot, she slid across the floor a bit and planted a surprisingly powerful side kick into Kaji's abdomen, knocking him back against the wall.
Kaji felt the air rush from his lungs as his spine slammed into the wall, followed quickly by the back of his head and elbow, flashing stars before his eyes and sending a numbing jolt of pain up his entire arm. The pistol toppled from his grasp, bouncing across the floor well out of his reach. Dazed and defeated, Kaji slumped back against the wall, sliding down a few inches but staying on his feet.
Raising her right arm above her head, Rei plunged the tanto into Kaji's sternum, the blade piercing straight through the bone and sinking hilt-deep into his chest. Ryoji Kaji, tortured pawn of SEELE and the former fiancée of one dearly departed Misato Katuragi, slumped to the floor, dead.
Lifting Kaji's silenced firearm from where it had fallen, Rei rubbed her bruised throat and looked up at the doorway where a pair of NERV Intelligence agents came running in, drawn (as Kaji had suspected) by the exploding lamp and the commotion thereafter.
"Miss Ayanami," the lead agent began, suddenly noticing Kaji's corpse slumped against the wall. "Are you-"
His words cut short with a grunt as Rei fired a trio of bullets into his abdomen, spattering the wall behind him with blood. He fell to the ground, moaning and twitching. Rei fired a fourth bullet into his forehead. The twitching stopped.
Rei shifted her aim to the second agent, not even batting an eyelash. Failure was not to be tolerated; those were Gendou's orders.
The second agent stared blankly at his partner's corpse, stunned, but soon awoke from his stupor when he realized the weapon was now was now pointing straight at him.
"W-w-w-wait," he stammered, throwing his hands in front of his face and stumbling back into the corner. "D-don't shoot me, please…"
Rei hesitated, noticing the folded piece of paper in his hand, and the official NERV correspondence stamp visible in one corner.
"What is that?" she asked calmly, gesturing toward the paper with the tip of the pistol's silencer. Her voice was a bit hoarse from the abuse Kaji had inflicted on her delicate larynx.
The man flinched at the weapon's sudden movement. Rei stared at the gun, as if suddenly noticing it for the first time, then carefully tucked it into her waistband behind her back.
Realizing that his life had been spared for the moment, the man exhaled slowly, relieved.
"I-it's the daily report from the stakeout, m-Miss Ayanami," he replied, his voice still a bit shaky. "W-we just received it a few minutes ago. The only one who's seen it is…"
He let his voice trail off, glancing briefly at the other agent's corpse. Suppressing a shudder, he looked back up into Rei's cold, red eyes. Suddenly he wished he was still looking at the corpse.
Taking the document from his trembling hands, Rei turned away, scanning the paper's contents. The agent waited uncomfortably for a few moments before Rei turned, fixing her gaze on him once again.
"Contact NERV headquarters," she said. "Schedule a security briefing for tomorrow at precisely 0800."
"Y-yes, Miss Ayanami," the agent said, turning to leave. He looked quite relieved to be getting out of there.
"And have a clean-up crew sent here this evening," she added.
The agent nodded his understanding, then left, walking normally until he felt he was at a safe distance, then burst into a run. Rei heard him, but the sound did not register as a concern in her mind. It made no difference to her how he carried out his orders, so long as he did so. If not…
Rei drew the pistol from her waistband and fired another shot into the agent's corpse. She did not know why.
Asuka stared down at the bloody, partly-dismembered corpse at her feet. She supposed she might have cheated a bit in their little game, especially after she had extracted all the useful information she needed and started asking silly questions like, "What's your favorite color?" and "What's your favorite harem anime?" Of course, cutting his tongue out probably wasn't very sportsmanlike either, and she had a sneaking suspicion that he had already been dead for those last couple of questions…
Sheshrugged. Playtime was over, and besides, she had extracted all the information she needed. The only thing left to do was to figure out the best way to make use of it.
Stepping out into the cool night air, she took a deep breath, wincing in pain as she suddenly realized how much abuse she had taken lately. Her hip wound throbbed, and all the various cuts and bruises she'd accumulated seemed to have merged together into one continuous, full-body ache.
Glancing down, Asuka crinkled up her nose in disgust as she realized her clothes were soaked with sweat and blood, not to mention various bits of flesh and other undistinguishable substances. The sticky, matted fabric to cling to her skin like some enormous leech, and a few spots were really starting to itch.
She sighed.
"I need a bath."
xxxxxxxxxxxxxEND OF CHAPTERxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sooooo… whadja think? Better? Granted the plot is sorta thin, but I think it was better written than the first two.
The next chapter is well underway, but I unfortunately cannot guarantee a completion date. But I promise I'll work on it when I can, okay? Pinkie swear.
The next chapter should bring the Kill Bill vol. 1 arc of the story to a close. From then on, the goal is to branch the story off in my own direction, not following the Kill Bill vol. 2 storyline. This is partly due to Vol. 2 being less compatible with Evangelion, but mainly I just didn't want to imitate Tarantino's shit the whole way through. I didn't even intend for the first few volumes to be like that, but I made the mistake of working with a Kill Bill script in front of me for inspiration. Bad idea. So starting with the current chapter you just read, I'm trying to branch away from that formula (although the next one is a bit closer, but still different).