Disclaimer: I don't own Evangelion or Ghost in the Shell.
A/N: It's been some time now. As school is out, I'll try to update a bit faster. However, I do encourage everyone to go out and see the Ghost in the Shell movies and Stand Alone Complex series, as it will greatly enhance your enjoyment of the piece. There are many references and quotes that would otherwise bypass you. Remember, number of reviews is directly proportional to decrease in authorial laziness.
Stand Alone Complex Chapter VI: Creatures of the Night
He would fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. - Frederich Nietzche
Rei trembled in the stillness of the dark. She did not know why. A cobweb of sharp light hung in front of her eyes, the only legacy of her previous assault.
She sheathed her nodachi. The men had died painlessly. Their blood had not had time to stain the blade. Her lids came down as she leaned against the cool glass of the wall, banishing the shining trails. When they opened again, she saw only the reflection of her alizarin eyes in the glass on the far wall.
She remembered something that Comrade Ikari had told her on the 25th of May, two years ago. They had been fourteen years old, active in the field after a childhood of preparation, and Shinji had been scared.
"Rei," He had said, his eyes lurid blue pools, "do you think we'll be alright?"
She had blinked at the question – after all, their physical status was immaterial so long as the operation was successful. She had told him so.
Grimacing, he had turned away from her, faced the motionless concrete of the ruined warehouse. He had worked his jaw as he muttered something under his breath. "I…I mustn't run away. I mustn't run away. I mustn't run away-"
"What are you doing?" She had wondered why he was speaking so softly – it wasn't as if she couldn't hear him with her cybernetically enhanced ears. But, as always, Ikari had misinterpreted her question.
Startled, he had stared wildly at her, almost as if he had forgotten she was there. Idly he scratched the back of his neck while blood rushed to his cheeks. "It's just a phrase I like to repeat when I get scared. Sometimes it calms me down. I can't stay focused all the time like you and Asuka."
She had cocked an
eyebrow at this. Comrade Sohryu, focused?
At the time, she had not understood fear. Even now, were the Commander to order her to define fear, she would be unable to put it exactly in words. It puzzled her that people used as primitive a technique as language in order to communicate in an age when direct synchronicity was entirely possible, but she would not want others to directly experience fear either. It was not a pleasant emotion.
It had been nearly a year since their first operation in 2029. The perpetrator was a class D cyborg, highly illegal, and veteran of countless battles in the Fourth World War. A standard case for Public Security Section 9, known to its agents as NERV.
Quintuple homicide, grand larceny, and illegal cyberhacking. Norman Alleson was a gaijan from Europe: tall, blond-haired, and pale skinned. He had never engaged in criminal activities before, and no motive was apparent for the bank robbery – he was set for life, heir to the tremendous Alleson family fortune.
Major Katsuragi had investigated the man thoroughly, and found nothing beyond a birth certificate, some inheritance documents, and the location of an old residence in France. It was a rare case when even the competence of the Major failed. Regardless of background, however, the man had to be secured, taken into custody. The Evangelions were not designed to ask questions.
He was to be taken alive if at all possible. The Major was curious as to his motives. They had advanced rapidly into his apartment on the 37th floor of the Shirinai Building, Rei darting from shadow to shadow as Shinji carefully squared his aim to provide covering fire and Asuka grumbled.
The Children had been very surprised when, all at once, the lights in the apartment flicked on, seemingly of their own volition. A man had emerged from the hallway, clad in jeans and a rumpled wife-beater.
"Ya?" He had chortled in a thick Norwegian Accent.
Rei had furrowed her brow as he continued in butchered Japanese, "Whaddaya want?"
Gracefully she unfolded her form from behind his messy granite countertop. Her fingers delicately flicked open a sealed warrant and displayed it to him.
"This is a warrant for your arrest. It would be best if you do not resist."
At this, he had broken out in great, booming laughs. Rei's eyes had narrowed to crimson slits as her irritation – she had grown quite familiar with that emotion over the year – grew at his disrupting, unorthodox behavior.
Something doesn't click, Shinji had thought to her. Sure, this apartment's nice, but nothing near what he's capable of affording. Almost everyone in his projected wealth range hires human or cybernetic help to tend to the house, and the food he has on the counter is fast food, barely fit for cyborg consumption. Where's all the money this guy's supposed to have going?
"Ya can't do that." He had chuckled derisively as he spat a balled yellow substance towards the base of his doorframe. Rei noted with mild disgust that it was spit tobacco.
Sohryu's notoriously short fuse snapped at what she obviously had perceived to be a devaluation of her combat abilities.
"Just who do you think you are, punk! We're Evangelion and we're going to crush- Oof!"
The man's demeanor had gone from patronizingly amused to utterly serious as he bull-rushed the Second Child, his balled fist crumpling the girl like a distended tissue. Asuka barely had time to gasp before a vicious right hook caught her in the jaw, throwing her face to the side. Blood flecked from her mouth even as the man's knee slammed into her chest, impact accompanied by the virulent snap! of breaking ribs. She crashed spectacularly into the ceiling and then slumped limply to the floor, her posture unnaturally hollow.
Bullets hammered into the blond giant's arms as Rei, crouched in a flawless firing position, launched round after round from her Seburo M-5. The Second Child was the most vulnerable to physical assault, being half organic. Still, their adversary had flown across the room so rapidly that even Rei had barely time to react. To her surprise, the frictionless rounds glanced off the cyborg's arms without effect. The Nordic warrior roared, tossing Asuka's strangely still form into his plasmacrete wall. A cloud of pulverized stone flooded the room as the bright red Plug of her ally disappeared.
Rei felt the man's intent before he reached her, but she was too slow to stop him from securing a ruthless grip on her pale neck. Her teeth gritted together as a colossal pressure bore down on her artificial windpipe, deceptively powerful hands clasped around her enemy's in a futile attempt to lessen the crushing onslaught. Through the haze of pain, her mind raced, analyzing the situation. Obviously, she lacked the mental focus necessary to raise an Absolute Terror field. It was nearly impossible for even a cyborg to defeat the force-multiplication effect of the plugsuits, yet her hands, capable of rending through solid concrete, could not break his grasp. Desperately she launched a leg at his abdomen. He only grunted, and squeezed harder.
Almost idly, her senses reported that Ikari was inactive and shivering. The shattered form of the Second Child lay motionless, sunken below the crevice created by her collision with the wall. Shinji's hand was raised to touch his cheek, where a few drops of red had splattered. Out of the three of them, only Asuka's blood was red.
Trembling almost violently, his bangs covering his eyes, he had whispered, in a broken voice, "Please let her go. Let Rei go."
The man's laugh this time was cruel, laced with malice. "And why would I want to do that, junior – don'tcha know it'll be you next? Why would ya wanta-"
"Stop it! Just...just stop it, ok? Stop." And Shinji had lifted his eyes. His horrible, horrible green eyes.
The man had not bothered to look, instead snorting and gripping tighter. "Listen, kid, you've been watching too much of those jap animes."
Shinji lunged.
Very abruptly, Rei had felt the pressure against her throat disappear. Air flooded her lungs and she dropped to her knees, gasping. And Comrade Ikari – Shinji – was tearing, tearing at the man with unbridled ferocity. He had roared, then, and it was a guttural sound, a forced sound, too many decibels through maturing vocal cords. He ripped the man's left arm off, hungrily, but with a callous force that Rei observed through widened eyes. There was something elemental about the savagery with which he fought.
The rippling cordsteel muscles of the man writhed as blood flooded from the amputation. He sent one fist barreling towards the Third Child, bloodied teeth bared in fury, but even as the massive appendage cracked into Shinji's face, leaving a cluster of hairline cracks, those predatorial green eyes flicked over to the man's burly chest. A hand laminated in plugsuit black plunged into the mass of reinforced muscle, tearing through tendon and sinew.
The man buckled, gasping with pain as Shinji worked with a surgeon's precision and a demon's malice. With a last, Herculean effort, he set his jaw and ripped the green-eyed beast from his chest, flung him with desperate ferocity into the far wall.
Shinji shifted in midair, landing on the wall with limbs absorbing the shock. A shockwave of dust blossomed in the choking air. And Shinji sprang back, a blur of flashing midnight alit with lethal green.
He brought his knees up, catching the bloodied colossus in the chest, taking him down with an animal fluidity. One hand gripped viselike around the back of his blond head, twisting it into position. Rei almost felt the audible snap of breaking vertebrae ring though the room. Shinji raised his other arm – his gun arm, Rei noted in something of a daze – and brought it down with sledgehammer intensity. The man's face imploded.
He did not stop striking, his blows thudding home in a metronome of destruction. He did not stop until the man's braincase had been shattered, his medulla broken against the arctic whiteness of the skull, a spongy mass of liquefied gore. And then, as he administered the killing blow, he had turned his head towards Rei, and affixed her with those eyes. Eyes of primal emerald that pierced mind, soul, and flesh.
And in that moment, Rei knew what it meant to fear.
It had turned out that the entire ordeal had been a test. Not from the amiable Major, or even from their overlords in the government. Through lengthy investigation using the man's remains and documents strewn through his apartment, NERV Section 9 had discovered that the man was an agent of the American Empire, using a prototype Level-E body. He had apparently been sent to gauge exactly how powerful the Evangelions were – and in that, he had certainly succeeded.
With typical American arrogance, of course, the Empire fully expected the best of their best in order to emerge from the exhibition alive. In defeat, he was disavowed – and unfortunately, Shinji's frenzied annihilation of the American's cyberbrain made it impossible for the Major to extract conclusive evidence of the plot, and thus the capitalist pigs (Rei could not keep a touch of her own sentiments from her inner narrative) had gotten off free.
After seeing the footage from Rei's optical recordings (Strangely enough, Shinji's had been deactivated during his battle with the agent), Misato had decided not to bring up the topic with the Third Child again. After all, she had told them, they were lucky to have survived because of his intervention. Rei did not believe in a force as capricious and irrational as luck, but she knew Comrade Ikari did.
Rei had decided that, for the Third Child, the battle had not been lucky at all. No, not in the least.
She let out a breath and swung her gaze down the darkened hallway, where the remains of her enemies still remained. The floors were slick and stained with blood, and, for a fleeting moment, she wondered whether or not red eyes were any better than green.
But then irrationality left her, and she leaned back, continued her vigil. The Second Child would flush out the king. He would inevitably come through either this hallway, or the other. And Rei had to be ready, always ready, for checkmate.
Vividly, like the petals of a flower just come into bloom, flame-red flashed against the prevailing darkness. With a lioness' grace, Asuka Langely Sohryu somersaulted over a pile of boxes and glanced down the sight of her M-5. The guards were so predictable it was annoying. Silently she huffed to herself. After this moronically boring mission was finished, Misato, who had been unsurprised at Asuka's vehement admonition that she get the stealth role of the mission (after all, she had a point to prove!), would not longer be able to needle her on her lack of subtlety.
That was the idea, anyway.
After this checkpoint, she would be able to activate her thermoptic camouflage and bypass all this useless stealth. She shook her head, wondering what had possessed the gang to hole up in a complex this big. It had taken her hours to laboriously work her way past seventy-two checkpoints, manned with human or robotic watchers trained to detect the telltale prismatic flash of thermoptics.
As the watcheyes pivoted to make the next leg of their rounds, she stalked past the boxes and pushed a button on the throat of her Combat Plug. She faded from view, and nonchalantly strolled into an expansive foyer, at the end of which stood two human sentries. Weapons poised, they scanned the empty foyer for signs of enemy intrusion. Asuka nodded to herself. They had set up an open killing field – anyone using thermoptics and hoping to cover the ground quickly would be detected and mowed down, while anyone attempting to sneak past would inevitably be caught by the guards' enhanced eyes. It was a clever system, and provided an adequate defense against conventional assault squads.
What a waste of time. Asuka strode brazenly down the hall, deactivating her camouflage as she went. Flicking her hair back, she grinned at the sentries as she advanced. For a moment, the guards were taken aback at the apparent foolishness of their enemy. Then, they decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth and opened fire, spraying high-velocity rounds that ate through the floor.
Asuka spread her AT field, and kept walking.
She saw one of the guards' eyes widen, and then his teeth clenched, his finger depressing the trigger furiously – as if that would somehow endow his bullets with strength. The other, however, had narrowed his eyes, a telltale sign of prolonged cyberbrain telepathy.
They were cleverer than she had thought. She dropped her AT field and sprang into the air, flipping her legs up. In that span of half a second, she placed two frictionless rounds through their foreheads. White blood sprayed against the walls, and they fell bonelessly.
As she landed, she kicked the door in, aware that the enemies were alerted to her presence. She quickly ducked back the doorframe, hair flaring behind her, as she anticipated the fusillade of shots to come.
Only they didn't.
Cautiously she peeked around the wall, crystal-blue eyes inquisitive. The kingpin, General Kirishima, was typing frenziedly into some kind of keyboard. He was flanked by two vacant-eyed attendants. Mildly confused, but highly irritated that she had missed any opportunity of getting some decent action on this mission, Asuka stepped in forcefully and leveled her pistol at the man's head.
"You're under arrest. Arms where I can see them."
They ignored her. The men continued staring blankly ahead in their business suits, arms crossed in the gesture typical of bodyguards everywhere. The General continued to punch keys rapidly, all the while muttering in a hurried dialogue.
"Yes, yes, I know it's too soon, but it'll almost be time anyway! You've got- We've got- STOP IT, 2501, haven't you ruined enough of my life already? What? Oh, yes, F5. No, no, I don't think so."
Asuka fumed. "I said, ARMS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM, BASTARD! I WILL SHOOT YOU!"
Spittle flecked from Kirishima's chin as he continued muttering. "Yes, yes, I know, it's almost done now. Then- then- You promised, 2501! You promised I could rest…Oh, well that's alright, it's all over soon, isn't it? You'll promise to keep good care of them? Good man. Can I call you a man? Oh, there we go, just in time and daybreak's soon anyway."
Thoroughly infuriated now, the Second Child sped over to the perspiring General and cocked back the hammer of her pistol as she shoved it viciously into his temple. He turned to her now, a lunatic grin plastered over his thick features, the pupils of his eyes rolling about in a discordant dance. Asuka blanched. This was the weirdest case of ghost-hacking she had ever seen.
And strangely, almost as if he – it? – had read her mind, an alien voice boomed across the hall, seemingly too big for Kirishima's pudgy mouth.
"Oh, my child, the wonders you shall see."
And then Kirishima collapsed in an unmoving heap. His lackeys toppled likewise, and as Asuka stepped back hastily, startled, her chrono-relay malfunctioned for the second time in its existence.
04:04:04
Shamshael, Angel of Day
And outside, blood-red light spilled over the nestling city like wine. The sun rose.