Disclaimer: Everybody who thinks that we think that we own NGE, please raise your hand… and whack yourself in the head. Baka!
Involuntary, Lethal SI Part Five: "Faster, Mary Sue! Die! Die!"
(With apologies to everybody unfortunate enough to actually be named "Mary Sue")
Gendo had just buckled his belt when Fuyutsuki entered the room, looking mildly non-bored. "There's another Angel coming, Ikari. The Second and Third Children and the First Nutcase are on their way. The Second Nutcase is here. I see that the latest First Children is too."
Gendo nodded and left to take charge in Central Dogma several hundred meters above. Ritsuko and Fuyutsuki listened as his footsteps retreated toward the 'DNA elevator.' They watched as Rei v.4.2 beta shakily sat up and took her first breaths out of the LCL growth-tank.
Rei blinked and looked around in open confusion. Finally, she focused on Fuyutsuki. Her face filled with a newfound determination. "I am not your doll."
"Not yet!" Fuyutsuki growled while Ritsuko stared. Rei looked at him, impassively, not breaking eye contact while she stood up.
"I am not your doll," she repeated, seeming to take pleasure in the utterance. "I am not your doll. I am not your doll. I am not your—"
"Look!" Fuyutsuki bent down and jabbed his finger at Rei's face. "You aren't my doll. You aren't anybody's doll, especially Ikari's. But that doesn't matter, and you will do what I tell you, because you are my bitch!" He glared into her eyes until they dilated and she sat down heavily. Then he straightened and stood with arms akimbo. "Am I understood?"
Rei wobbled slightly for a while before responding softly, "Yes, Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki; it is understood. I am your bitch."
Ritsuko shook her head and wandered away, dazed. Then she fell into the LCL Lake and almost drowned… except for the fact that people can breathe LCL. Then she got out and hurried to Central Dogma, because the sirens began to scream bloody murder right around then.
"BLOODY MURDER!"
Worldmage winced in surprise. At first, his survival instincts told him to go hide under a table and hope that the Angel would be pounded by Shinji's Eva running amok. Then he realized that now was his moment of glory... then he wondered why The Dane was giving him such corny lines of thought.
"Could you use more clichés?" growled the testy Worldmage as he changed into his plug suit. For the record, he was in the changing room at the time.
Meanwhile, The Dane enjoyed his fun. Or rather, the ambulance ride to NERV's military hospital.
After hurrying to the proper Cage, Worldmage climbed into the Entry Plug of Unit En Sof Minus One. As the small, tubular room filled with special kosher LCL, the monitors flicked to life and Misato appeared onscreen to brief the neophyte pilot.
"This Angel is different from the others," she began, when Worldmage interrupted her.
"It's a happy squishy Angel, right? With membranes, tentacles, and mason's putty. Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh. And it's approaching from the sea."
"Uh… yeah." Misato was obviously confused. "How did you guess about the putty?"
"That," said Worldmage playfully, "is a secret. But what's the plan, Major?"
"Oh, yeah!" Major Katsuragi asserted herself as the purple-haired woman's current dominant personality. This particular version of Misato was grimly happy, especially when it had a simple plan that involved big things dying and exploding. At the moment, she was very happy indeed. "It's like this: you go out there, shoot the damn thing, and hit it with Unit-02's spear if necessary. Keep on doing stuff like that until it dies!" She licked her lips and grinned, showing altogether too many teeth.
"But—"
"Launch!"
Worldmage's objections, whatever they may have been, were lost as he was rocketed to the surface under about 5g of force. Upon his arrival he resignedly took weapons from a nearby cache-point and began marching toward the ocean.
…
A quarter of an hour later, Worldmage stood on a hill overlooking the beach as the latest Angel sprawled up onto the shore. It was wet and slimy. Most of it was a sort of oily black color; other parts were various nauseating shades of green, gray, and brown. It had tentacles, membranes, and soft parts that would pop and spray noxious-smelling poison if you looked at them wrong. A dozen little mouths filled with rotting yet still-sharp teeth chattered and giggled as it hauled itself through the shallows.
Worldmage looked at it. Then he cued his external speakers. "So, where's the mason's putty?"
The Angel stopped and performed its own, hideous, equivalent of scratching its head. In a terrible, grainy voice, it spoke.
"I got rid of the stuff. It was ludicrous."
Worldmage and his Eva nodded. "That it was. But it added to the aura of inexplicable evil. I was all tied up in knots, wondering what you were going to do with it."
The Angel pondered for a while, dripping corrosive reddish goo into the sand. "I could have attacked you with the putty knife. Except clay doesn't bleed, so there's no point to it."
It was at this moment that Worldmage had a bright idea. It doesn't happen all that often, so he acted upon it at once. "I say, we've been meaning to ask you guys for a while—but none of the other Angels talked to us, you know—why y'all were attacking us. Is it a punishment by God, or a 'Time of Trials,' or just random attacks, or what?"
"I'm not sure; let me check." The Angel pulled out a huge and horrible book. "As it is written: 'and there was a great light like unto the sun in its terrible heat, and sound like unto a million babies spitting up simultaneously, and Adam became as a child yet unborn.' Then you skip a couple dozen lines to 'And after two hundred moons had filled and drained with light, the Angels returned with great wrath. Some bore lances of light, others spoke to the minds of humanity in a great and terrible voice. They came to Earth from earth, sky, sea, and fire, to test the heart and mind of Mankind.'"
"Hang on, that's from the Silence Tractates, chapter three, right?" Worldmage's Eva sat down on the cliff-top and produced a scroll from… from wherever it is people in anime pull stuff from.
The Angel sat down too. "Yeah, right there. See? Now, this plainly means that we have to attack you, and that's why we do it."
"No, that's not what it means at all!" Worldmage's Eva poked a finger into its palm as the two huge bio-things hunched over their texts. "It says 'test,' right? But there are all sorts of tests that don't involve attacks or even violence at all. In the twelfth chapter of the Silence Tractates, we find that Yohar tests Pelal by setting a full bowl of borscht in front of him, and seeing how much he drinks before developing a taste for halvah and vodka. So when it says for you to 'test the heart and mind of Mankind,' it means that you monitor our heart-rates while we take multiple-choice exams."
"Multiple choice?" The Angel showed its confusion by sprouting dozens of bloodshot eyestalks to blink and stare. "But it is written in the Scroll of Fate that only essay tests are ritually pure!"
Deep within the Geofront, Fuyutsuki covered his eyes and sighed. "When you said to expect the worst, I wasn't prepared for Talmudic debate! Just kill me now!"
In reply, Gendo snored.
…
Meanwhile, Ritsuko was tending to a special patient now that her schedule was clear again. "The kneecap is shattered beyond repair, so we'll have to grow a new one for you, and just to be sure, I'll do some X-rays of the other knee and give it a check-up as well." She turned to the very angry-looking Dane, who was lying on a stretcher in the center of the room.
"You say you fell and smacked it on a stone?" Ritsuko said, her voice laced with doubt. She could still see the mallet-shaped depression on the knee.
"Yes, I fell," said the Dane venomously, clearly not in the mood for in-depth interrogation right now and on the brink of unleashing his considerable arsenal of most evil curses.
"Well, you'll have to stroll around with synthetic kneecaps until your new ones are grown. It's very unpleasant, but necessary." Ritsuko looked at the young man, wondering why he had refused the offer of painkillers, but not really caring. Her only problem was that she needed him to pilot as soon as possible again and with the kneecap-regrowth-process she was not sure how well the Danish addition to the duty-roster would perform.
"Are you sure you don't want anything against the pain?"
He gave her a black look. "No. I'm fine, thank you very much. And I'd rather sit in a chair than use damn synthetic caps."
Ritsuko sighed, deciding that she'd never figure those Gaijin foreigners out.
"I'll leave you, then. Press the buzzer for the nurses if you need anything." The Dane muttered something under his breath, which Ritsuko chose to ignore. She left the room.
The Dane slipped into a meditative trance, helped by the focus his pain gave him, and reached deep down to the darkest recesses where he kept the most evil and destructive spells, spells that even Aleister Crowley had outlawed as being too dangerous to cast. Spells that were the evil legacy of the Ancient Ones. He found his most vile and dangerous curse and prepared to cast it on Asuka when....
His eyes snapped open as Soryu Asuka Langley poked his kneecap with an innocent look and a smile on her face, asking, "does this hurt?"
A big hand shot out with incredible speed and grabbed her wrist. "Do you think it would hurt if I shattered your every bone in your hand and shook it every time we met?"
Asuka snatched her hand back indignantly and huffed. "Wimp, one would think that the pain-killers would have knocked you out."
The Dane narrowed his eyes. This, coupled with his ashen complexity, suddenly made him look incredibly malevolent. He looked like the kind of person who strolls down the street and takes bites out of passing babies, and never washes after using the toilet. "I don't use painkillers. They never work, and even if they did, I want to know when I'm in pain."
Asuka looked at his knee and then back at the Dane. "So I just poked and prodded a shattered kneecap without you having had any kind of anesthetic?" she said quietly. The Dane nodded slowly and lay back in bed. "Sorry," muttered the redhead, looking subdued.
"If you ever do anything like it again, I shall make your body turn inside out and implode. Then I shall shred your soul and feed it to the demons of Hell."
Asuka gave the Danish guy a strange look. "I doubt you can do any of that, but why don't we just call a truce." She took a chair and sat beside the Dane. "You never finished teaching me how to swear…." She smiled at him.
Not that the Dane noticed; his eyes were closed as he growled at her. "I've a pair of choice words for you right now!" was all the Dane said.
Asuka quenched a chuckle as she held up a bag. "Let's make a bargain of truce: I give you the bag and you finish teaching me, and then we see if we can keep on each other's good sides from now on, ok?"
The Dane opened his eyes slowly and turned his head to look at the bag. He grinned widely and held out a hand. "Deal. Let's shake on it." Asuka smiled and took the Dane's hand, shaking it firmly.
"Now give me the fuckin' bag!" Asuka complied. After rummaging about for a moment or two, the Dane took out a couple of leather-bound books and sat back with an audible sigh of relief.
"What's with those books?" asked a curious Asuka. The Dane snapped a fearful look at her.
"Have you looked in these books, or tried reading what was in them? This is VERY important!"
Asuka shook her head, confused. "No, I haven't. I didn't know that you had those books in there. Good thing I didn't burn the bag as I had planned." She cocked her head to one side as the Dane's shade of gray threatened to completely drown out his normal complexion.
"Never, ever, touch these books! For the love of God and all things sacred, you must promise me that!" The Dane took Asuka's hands and held them fast, looking her deeply in the eyes.
"I promise, I promise. If it's THAT important to you, I'll leave them alone." Now Asuka's confusion was total. "What is it with those books?"
The Dane gave the redhead a haunted look and put the books back into his magical bag of holding. "You would not want to know that. Please, ask no more. And tell the others not to touch any books in my room." Asuka nodded, a bit frightened of the sudden change in the Danish man's behavior. He could be grumpy, and he complained a lot, but he always did so with an air of mischief. Now he seemed… scared. She wondered what this could mean. She would talk to the other guy, she decided. Maybe the American could help her figure out what the problem was.
When she finally did ask him, a week later, though, Worldmage just shrugged and began humming old Beatles tunes. So she punched him in the face and promptly forgot about the whole thing. But that's still in the future and hasn't happened yet, but you DO know that at least two people survive for another week. [Evil laughter]
…
Misato was sprawled on her back on the control deck when suddenly the private commlink from Unit En Sof Minus One came alive. She scrambled out from under Kaji, over the backs of the unconscious bridge bunnies and looked at Worldmage's haggard face in the communications window.
"What's going on out there?"
Worldmage sighed. "I think I can win this, but it's not going to be easily. My stamina is wearing dangerously low."
"What can we do to help?" Misato brightened. "I can get you weapons, ammunition, a couple hundred N2 mines, or all the power in Japan! What do you need?"
Worldmage considered for a moment, then turned slightly as the Angel began to gurgle another sentence. "Some bagels would hit the spot," he said hurriedly. "And lox. And maybe a dessert, with lots of chocolate. The dessert's for Reuven—that's the Angel's name—to eat."
The communications line went dead. Misato began to laugh hysterically.
…
In the Secret Study: the commanders are once again playing mah-jongg as tense switches.
Fuyutsuki: You know, Ikari, I've heard it said that this is a game for four players.
Gendo: Well, if we take into account that you're a raving schizoid, we're actually three players too many.
Fuyutsuki: Fair enough. [Moves a piece] Your "Chu" is in danger.
Gendo: That's not a legal move for a blue piece to make, sensei.
Fuyutsuki: Foo.
…
Some time later, Worldmage woke up in a hospital bed alongside his fellow author. He was mildly surprised at that and even more so when he saw the cast on his friend's legs.
"What in Heaven's name happened to you?" he asked. He was a bit more surprised when the Dane opened his eyes and responded.
"Asuka got even with my kneecap."
Worldmage stifled a chuckle at that. "If you don't mind me quoting you; 'I told you so!'"
The Dane turned his head and looked at Worldmage. His eyes seemed devoid of life. "There IS a portal. I found my books in my bag of holding." Worldmage pondered that message for a moment and then shrugged.
"Well, what's the fuss about then? The books have spells that could help us find our way home."
The Dane turned his head back and closed his eyes. "No, don't you see it? The books found me. They found the portal. And what do you think would happen if one of the others looked in them, or if Gendo got his hands on them?"
Worldmage thought about it for a moment. "He shouldn't be able to read them. Not without going insane from terror, at least." The Kabbalist shuddered. "What are you doing with that kind of tome, anyway? I wouldn't recommend touching them with a ten-foot pole!"
The Dane ignored the question. "But what if Shinji or Asuka look in them by accident? What if the books take control of them? The forces behind these two volumes are vast and ancient; these are the most dangerous volumes of sorcerous spells ever made. I have the powers of a god at my fingertips, and I'm scared of them falling into the wrong hands."
Worldmage looked at the Dane again. It seemed as though the shadows in the room bent to gather around the Norseman's bed. It was an unsettling effect, especially when combined with the weird fingers/hands mixed metaphor that had just been unleashed.
"I think we should talk about this after having some sleep." Worldmage took the tablets lying on his bedside table and swallowed them with some water from a glass set out for that purpose. He took off his glasses and set them on the table. Then he said the Kriat Sh'ma, and set his yarmulke next to the glasses. Then he fell asleep, which caused him to lie down rather suddenly.
After a moment of thought, the Dane did likewise. Except, of course, that he didn't take off any glasses or speak any Hebrew, and he slept only after having cast a spell of binding on the hand holding the bag by his side.
…
After a couple of days they both got "home"—or rather, were shipped back to the Akagi/Katsuragi household. The Dane was very unhappy with his wheelchair and spent a lot of his time bitching about it and cursing loudly. Worldmage was a bit more subdued than usual (in other words, virtually Rei-like), but otherwise fine. The Dane had his stuff moved to a lower floor temporarily, and life resumed its normal pace for the household. That is to say, a break-neck pace, in all the wrong ways.
Ritsuko pressed Worldmage to tell her what had happened to the Angel, but all the reply she received was a shrug and some muttering about "death by chocolate." Misato needed to be medicated for a few days, but she finally stopped laughing.
The next week, the two foreigners decided to take a walk through the town. There were a lot of things they needed to talk about in private, including the plot of NGE itself. When they reached the block where a certain lingerie store was situated, they were busy arguing. Because neither of them was listening, The Dane was arguing about Gendo's role and powers, while Worldmage was arguing about whether they were in a fic, the manga, a doushinji, or the show itself.
The Dane: "The question is, how much does he know, and how much does he know we know? For that matter, how much do we really know? I wish I knew."
Worldmage: "It might be the manga. That focuses on Shinji more, so there's lots of places for minor characters to hidden."
The Dane shook his head. "Don't you ever give up, Juboi? I thought that you didn't like conspiracy theory!"
Worldmage shifted just enough to glance back at his wheelchair-bound companion. "Don't worry, Tetsuo-kun. I've gone through this logically, and I think I found a way for us to get out."
That stopped both arguments. "Too cool!"
"Indeed. First, this is most likely a fan creation, right? This means that we're most likely stored as a text file on a computer. And since it's a self-insert, that means I worked on it, so at least one such computer must be mine. Which means that, technically, we have 'access' to my links. Which means that I've been able to call in an ally to help us out."
"And?"
"And," Worldmage glanced around; "the aliens who used Rasputin's mind-control techniques to force Elvis to shoot Kennedy are hiding fifty pounds of super-technology in my pants."
"Not that I'm going to fall for that and ask you to show me. You do realize that conspiracy theorists are going to be after your blood now."
"If they get in here too, tell them to bite me." Worldmage turned the corner.
There was a sudden burst of gunfire.
The Dane realized suddenly that he was surrounded again by rabid panhandlers, wielding fists, knives, bricks, guns, and rocket launchers. Fortunately, there were only nine of them, so The Dane destroyed them all within the three-and-a-half minutes remaining before his internal batteries ran out. Then he reactivated, a feat that the panhandlers couldn't perform because they hadn't downed a twelve-pack of Yebisu Beer within the past 24 hours. Then, just for the fun of it, he ran them over with his wheelchair.
Meanwhile, Worldmage was staring in shock… not at the three Matrix escapees who had been hounding him (now sprawled on the ground, bullet-holed and bleeding profusely), but at the battle-gear ruriquake figure standing in front of him, calmly watching the smoke rise out of her gun. She glanced impassively at the bodies, then spoke.
"B4k4^2"
She holstered her gun just as The Dane pulled a wheelie around the corner in defense of his fellow author. At the sight he skidded to a halt, leaving scorched tire-tracks on the pavement. He hunched into a fighting stance at the sight of ruriquake, but she merely inspected him dispassionately before turning and walking away. It was almost, but not quite, Rei-like. Sort of a "Rei with guns" thing.
The Dane walked over to Worldmage, who was leaning against the wall. The latter's tie-dye shirt and red shorts contrasted starkly with his dead-white skin as he breathed heavily, apparently in shock after his encounter with four gun-toting women. Either that or he was making an obscene call on an invisible cell phone.
He turned to The Dane. "Ph34r +h3 cu+3 0n3"
"What?"
Worldmage shook his head. "Using the powers vested in me as fanfic artist and otaku, I summoned a strong warrior from Megatokyo-3. You know I suck at all combat except melee, and those chicks had guns."
"'Fear the cute one?'"
Worldmage chuckled. "I never really did get into l33+ myself, but she ownz'ed them pretty bad. Man, I'm one lucky stiff."
It was at this point that The Dane realized that Worldmage never wears tie-die. Especially not red-and-white tie-die, 'cause it looks so ridiculous. (It really does.) Furthermore, Worldmage had been wearing tan shorts a mere four minutes previous. And if there's one thing Worldmage does not do (with regards to clothing) other than wear red/white tie-dye, that thing is to change his shorts in the middle of downtown while being shot at.
—
Author's Notes: About that "l33+" thing: yes, it was previously promised that no explanations for references would be given. So we'll just give an address: megatokyo.com. Check out this excellent site.
And about that "Sh'ma" thing: it's a Hebrew prayer.
Too serious? Perhaps. But some of us have to feel like we're writing something with a plot, while others produce the actual humor. Guess who finished this episode.