Rena's voice clipped through the radio. Juno only glanced at it, nearly shaking.
"Ramiel?" The teen repeated.
"That's the angel's name. Be careful, Juno. We believe in you."
The teen's eyes slowly returned to the view in front of her. Ramiel stared her down, unmoving. It looked like a statue, an oversized children's toy. Apparently, it was waiting for her to move first.
Juno's heart dropped into her stomach upon the re-realization that she had no idea how to pilot an EVA unit. The controls before her weren't as numerous as you'd think, but there was still the problem of not knowing what any single one of them did, and the fact that she was piloting something much more dangerous than even a car.
And despite her age, she did not have her license yet, either, nor the ability to operate a vehicle. Any vehicle.
Truthfully, she couldn't think of a single person less qualified. She was amazingly useless.
"Juno? You have to do something." Rena's voice came through again.
Juno swallowed.
"I…I don't remember the controls."
A sharp, male curse came through the radio and Juno flinched, her throat almost immediately bringing a rock to its core.
She hated when men yelled.
She couldn't see it, but Marina and Rena both scowled at Roger. He tried to take the radio for himself, to chastise her, scream at her more, but Rena put on a professional face and told him she'd be best to handle this. Juno heard it all over the radio, and it was making her feel even more useless with each word.
"Juno?" Rena said, softly. "It's okay. We've put you in a really stressful and unprecedented situation. Do you remember anything Roger told you before you got into the entry plug?"
Oh, yeah. The speech Roger had given her, the one she's disassociated in the middle of…honestly, she wouldn't take the blame for that. What did they expect from her?
She grimaced, closing her eyes and thinking back. In between the explanation of the LCL and the revelation of the EVA's pain…Yes, she remembered some. These levers in front of her, they looked like oversized joysticks from a controller. Large protruding metal levers sat on a gyro ball, two on each side. She assumed one set was for the arms, the other for the legs. It looked like there was a mechanism allowing her arms to hook into both the arm and leg analog sticks of each side so she could control both at once. She awkwardly attempted to fit her arms into it.
"Good! Those are the main controls you need to worry about. Just use those to control the EVA and attack with them, as if the EVA's body were your own."
Marina chimed in. "If you had a proper pilot suit, there'd be indents on the arms to fit yourself securely into that steering mechanism, but I'm afraid for now you'll just have to do your best with it, alright?"
Juno swallowed.
She accidentally took a step, trying to get herself properly aligned.
The angel cooed, then charged for her.
"AHH-AH-"
"JUNO, MOVE!"
She did, somewhat, but the angel still slammed head first into her right side. She felt the sudden sensation that she'd been hit by a truck.
She choked, the air knocked out of her.
"KEEP IT TOGETHER JUNO; IT'S JUST THE EVA. HIT IT! COUNTER!"
This was probably the worst she'd ever felt in her life, physically, mentally, or anywhere in between, but with Marina and Rena both cheering her on, and apparently, the life of humanity itself relying on her, she steeled herself and stumbled the EVA away from Ramiel.
It turned to her and ran again, round wood-like body ready to bludgeon the sleek EVA figure to a knotty mess of steel and wires.
Juno successfully dodged this time, then tried to hit it, only pathetically scraping its back. It immediately turned back to her and let out a resounding screech as it tackled the EVA's middle, both of them falling to the ground, and hard.
Marina tensed, yelling to a nearby scientist, "What are her synchronization rates!?"
A scientist, the one that had helped Juno before in the lobby, actually- pulled up the EVA statistics. He blinked.
"Actually, she's at 89%..."
Marina only stared, and Rena turned to stare too.
"89?"
The scientist nodded."89.16."
"That's even more than-" Rena caught herself, "Than James often reaches…"
They both took their eyes back to the action playing out on the screen in front of them.
Dust and dirt flew up everywhere, and only continued to plume as the angel began digging the EVA into the ground with its full weight. Juno, in a panic, began mashing buttons, something she later would look back on in embarrassment as the move of a pathetic child. But what was she, if not desperate.
As Ramiel raised a round wooden hand to smash the EVA's head, a missile launched from the EVA's side, exploding on Ramiel's left side. It screamed.
"EEEEEEGGHHHEEDDEEDEDEDEDEDEEDE-"
Unfortunately, a missile strike at close range wasn't ideal, and smoke and shrapnel rained down on Unit 01. It felt as if hot embers and needles were piercing Juno's skin. She just bit her lip and kicked, Ramiel falling forward.
"YES! GREAT JOB JUNO!"
Did they tell her there were missiles?
"Please be careful with the missiles, though. We don't really want you using those until you're trained properly." Marina piped in.
Ah. They did not tell her.
Juno stood, a flap of metal falling off the EVA's right and clamming to the ground as she stood. Ramiel stood again, now enraged. It made some kind of strange gesture, its arms raising into an unusual position, and then it charged again. Juno dodged, but at the end of its charge, just as it passed her, the angel turned around and spinned, the momentum aiding it as a huge wooden ball at the end of its arm slammed into the EVA's spine. Juno and the EVA cried out in unison.
They fell to the ground, stunned. Ramiel approached and began its call again, now racking down on them with punch after punch the same way it had attacked NERV earlier. It was all happening so quickly, Juno could barely process the new pain while still distracted by the old.
Rena cursed; Marina just looked on in horror, her hands over her mouth.
Ramiel then grabbed Unit 01, pinning each of the EVA's arms to the ground, the mecha only squirming obnoxiously beneath it. Juno kicked at it, but Ramiel barely moved.
"This isn't going to work. Call in James!" Rena yelled, her usual motherly demeanor gone and replaced with that of a strategist, and a desperate one at that. Roger shook his head, lighting a cigarette and walking off towards some empty hall, while two scientists nearby scrambled in the direction of the infirmary ward.
Juno, meanwhile, felt her face and body begin to bruise and swell in a way that it shouldn't be able to. Not since she was protected within the EVA, and further within the entry plug. She was sore, and throbbing.
She kicked at it again, throwing it off momentarily, but only for it to return immediately, no time to even move. She wrangled an arm loose and punched it with a similar result, punching again and again hoping for a different one- until the angel became annoyed with her and grabbed the EVA's arm.
It began to pull.
Juno's eyes nearly popped out of their sockets as she screamed, her voice becoming raw.
A piece of fishing wire being pulled between two departing trains.
Curse after curse was resounding from the women within NERV's observation deck. Marina was desperately searching for an answer, Rena was yelling commands and instructions that Juno couldn't hear, not over her own screaming, her own pain. She felt her arm begin to give.
Her arm?
Was it her arm, or the EVA's arm? It felt the same, all the same. She looked down at her arm and realized she was looking through the EVA's eyes. She was looking at a screen, the purple sheet-metal of the EVA, gripped by the angel and continuing to stretch like a stressed wire. Frustration welled within her. She squeezed her eyes shut and screamed.
The EVA screamed too. Then, it began to rise.
The EVA pushed against the angel, its legs slowly rising as they creaked against the ground. Juno felt them straining, but she wasn't telling them to move. She felt possessed. And she felt a terrible feeling surge through her veins.
"Dr. Marina!"
The two women at the helm looked over to the scientist that had spoken before. "Her synchro rates are rising." He said, a voice of calm amazement.
Dr. Marina jogged over, bending down to look at the screen. Sure enough, it was now at 92, 93, 92, 94, 96, 94, 96-
"What…?" She whispered.
Then the number suddenly broke a hundred.
She and the scientist seated below her looked at each other, then back, then Marina ran off to find Roger.
Meanwhile, Juno could feel herself quite literally shaking in her bones. A weird feeling was surging through her entire nervous system, and her vision, once tied to the EVA's, was only blurry. She felt almost intoxicated. She heard the EVA scream again.
The next thing she knew, the angel was on the ground. It called out, but was cut off within its first word. The EVA unit began pounding down on its head and chest with balled fists bearing strength Juno had not previously seen from the beast. "Wood chips" and other hard materials began flying off the angel's shell as it was pummeled. Juno lost consciousness again.
Rena watched it all unfold from the viewing window and bit her finger. She was sweating.
"Fucking hell, the EVA's gone berserk."
The scientist keeping track of the unit's synchro rates called out again."She's currently at 115%. I've never seen it that high before."
"Someone start getting Unit 03 ready if they haven't yet! I have no idea what's going to happen next, but we need to be prepared. The EVA isn't under the pilot's control anymore."
A few other nameless lab rats ran off down different corridors. Marina and Roger returned around the same time, only waiting, as it was all they could do.
Juno woke up again somewhere around the time her own arms began feeling sore at the shoulders, especially where the one had been nearly pulled out of its socket. Now, however, it was from the near-constant wailing it was doing to the angel below it. Juno felt the sudden urge to vomit.
"What's happening…" She finally managed, lurching forward as she did so. She reached up and tried to regain a grip on the controls, but they wouldn't even move. She tried to force them, but the weakness already present in her arms wouldn't allow it. She cursed under her breath in frustration.
"Come ON! I'm supposed to be in control!" She kicked at one of the consoles, holey-sneakers doing little other than dirtying the dashboard.
"Dr. Marina?" She called. She waited a few seconds, and there was no answer. She called for Rena next, and the result was the same.
Whatever was going on with her EVA, it had apparently disconnected her from the radio network. That being said, it technically was beating the angel. Which is what it was meant to do, and what she had been asked to do. But- and to be fair, she didn't know much about the EVAs- but yet, she was pretty damn sure they weren't supposed to move on their own.
Weren't they just…suits?
If they had some kind of emergency AI system that kicked in when the EVA or its pilot was in danger, that might make sense...but..no. This just felt wrong.
Then a bright flash enveloped the landscape so overwhelmingly that Juno cried out and covered her eyes, blinded. They stung terribly.
She heard Ramiel's telltale cries- weakened, but obviously enraged. She tried to open her eyes, but it hurt, and she couldn't see anything regardless. It had apparently affected the EVA as well, because they were no longer wailing down on anything, and she didn't feel anything beneath her.
It was suddenly eerily quiet. Both blinded, Juno and the EVA were relying entirely on sound.
There was none.
Then all she heard was the startlingly short whip of something cutting fast through the air, and her waist was sent flying, the rest of her following shortly after. She did vomit that time, and to her disgust, it only assimilated foggily into the LCL. Though, at the time, she was much more worried about the resounding hit to her side that had felt like the kind of bruise that would eventually turn the most unsightly of colors, the kind taken from serious, real injuries. She had endured more pain today than any other day of her life.
And the EVA, already enraged, wasn't happy about this either. It's spine was at this point misaligned- the robot walked with a hunch and a heavy limp, and it was frighteningly off-center. But it was angry. Juno felt her arms lift something heavy.
And then they spun-once, almost a second time, gnarled body almost giving out. But something was thrown, and at the same time, the EVA let out a roar so chilling she screamed too- Though maybe she was screaming along with it, rather than because of it. Maybe now the EVA had control of her.
The weight left their arms, and for a brief moment everything was silent. And then there was an immense crash. The kind that told everyone nearby something very intense had just occurred.
Juno felt the flow of the LCL and the feeling of the ever-looming EVA's presence both damper. She stopped shaking so hard, now shaking only hesitantly in the aftermath, and it felt as if she had just stepped into the EVA for the first time again. Her vision slowly began to come back. Blurry patches of grey and green and brown slowly solidified into shapes resembling planes of land and trees. Then, a few white patches came into view. Her vision had fully returned, but everything was still blurry. She rubbed her eyes and blinked. She had no idea what those white bits in the distance were- she swears it was all just open field and treeland before, on the outskirts of the city.
While she was waiting for it to fully clear up, she grabbed the controls again. The EVA had stopped moving by itself, and she felt independent again. She shakily managed the mecha forward, and it obeyed. She headed back towards NERV's launch site, where she'd come from in the first place.
The radio buzzed in again, Rena's voice sounding panicked. "Juno? Can you hear me?"
"Yea, I can! I can."
"Oh, thank god. The EVA went completely berserk. I'm glad you're alright." Despite her initial mistrust of Rena, the official sounded…genuine.
"Make your way back to the loading site, but carefully. Don't try to come in yet. The damage is huge, we aren't sure yet if the lift was affected."
Juno raised an eyebrow. "The damage?"
Then, her vision finally cleared up enough for her to get a good look at what was in front of her. Ramiel's beaten, lifeless body sat in a concave piece of Earth, its arm and half its upper body threatening to fall down into the cavern that had opened up beneath it. And on either side of it, the white and glass outer walls of NERV were falling in on themselves, rubble, wires, and sparks coming off the wreckage.
She felt an immense wave of terror and guilt. They'd thrown the angel right into NERV's headquarters.
"Oh my god…" She muttered.
Once they reached the spot where the lift had been, she stopped. It looked undamaged, but areas very close to it were not as lucky. In fact, she could see right into the garage where the other EVAs were kept, and to the left led into the very room Marina and Rena had been coaching her from. She swallowed.
Rena came over the radio again.
"Alright, it looks like the lift itself isn't broken, but we don't wanna take any risks. Try to dismount the EVA where you are. Press the post-shutdown entry plug ejection button on the very left of the console. Then turn the same dial you did to turn it on, and wait for the LCL fluid to drain out."
Juno dutifully did as she was told, hesitating to ensure she was pressing all the right things. Luckily, the LCL fluid began to drain away from her, contaminated with her vomit, sweat, and tears. Blood, too, if she'd had to guess- but that was all an illusion as far as she could tell. Phantom pains, from the EVA.
Once the LCL fluid had left the plug, she felt the EVA shift into a pre-programmed squatting position, and a few machinery sounds alerted her to the beginning of the entry plug's ejection. She braced herself, and the metal cylinder she was encased in actually rose out of the EVA quite carefully- and the drop out of its back and onto the ground, though sudden, was not as harsh as she expected. Strapped into her seat and already holding tight anyway, she just felt a heavy shift.
Once she'd landed, Rena came over the reserve radio in the entry plug's side wall. "Great job, Juno! Now just reach above you and unlock the top door; just turn the wheel to your left. When you get out just walk back towards the facility, someone will be waiting there to bring you back in."
Juno nodded, then remembered this radio has no visual support, and gave a short hum of acknowledgement. The radio shut off then, and Juno strained her sore and overused arms to turn the wheel that unlocked the top hatch, but eventually, she flopped out of the entry plug.
She was wet, and stained, and the clothes she was wearing were torn, tinged with orange, and bore the unmistakable smell of LCL. Her long black hair stuck to her like slop.
She turned briefly behind her and saw the EVA. It waited loyally in its default position, facing away from her. She felt an odd connection to it now. Leaving the hatch, leaving the LCL fluid that connected them, almost felt wrong. Like she had left a part of herself behind in there.
She turned around and walked towards the remains of NERV. Once she got close to the exit, she saw the scientist who had helped her in the lobby earlier today, when she was trying to find room 134. He smiled when he saw her, and gave her a big wave. She didn't know how to feel- having just destroyed the place, she thought they'd be furious with her. But the familiar face and the warm greeting was welcome. He congratulated her when she arrived, and started going off about synchronization rates- something she still didn't understand. He began to take her down a set of emergency stairs they'd put up from the ground level down into NERV's office. As she followed him down, limping a bit herself, she saw something standing in one of the floors ripped open above her.
A tall figure with messy, silvery hair looked down at her. Squinting to get a better look, she noticed it had a simple white mask on, one that covered its whole face. On it was a simple red pattern she couldn't quite make out from this distance.
Once they realized she was looking at them, they fled. She tried to see where they went, but they'd gone back into a part of the facility that hadn't been damaged, and her vision was obscured.
She had the mind to ask who it had been, but her companion was still mindlessly listing things out of her understanding, and she doubted he had even noticed the figure regardless. She kept it to herself.
Once down, he led her back to good ol' room 134, in which Rena was typing something furiously at a computer.
"Captain Katsuragi?"
Juno quirked an eyebrow, realizing he was talking to Miss Rena. She looked up at him, smiled, and nodded him a thank you. He gave Juno a couple pats on the shoulder before he headed off too.
"Well, you survived!" She said, trying to make a joke. Juno…vaguely laughed back.
"Really, though, great job out there Juno. We don't usually send out untrained pilots- this was a super unprecedented situation. We thank you for your service to humanity."
Juno prickled a little, uncomfortable. "Oh- Uh, well, of course- But…I..I mean the EVA, it destroyed half of NERV," She said, gesturing behind her. "It was supposed to be under my control…"
Rena shook her head. "No, don't worry about it. EVA's don't usually go berserk, but they do usually end up doing at least some damage to NERV or the town." She looked to the side, wry smile on her face, mumbling under her breath. "Especially when Carmen's piloting them…"
She turned back to Juno. "Damage isn't a big deal. It usually isn't to this scale exactly, but no one was hurt, and the angel was defeated. Besides, it was the EVA that went berserk, not you."
Juno just stood silently, unconvinced. Rena didn't see it though, she only stood and began walking Juno out to the lobby again.
"Come on. You need cleaned up, and checked out by the medic." She paused after she said that, then pulled a walkie-talkie from her waist.
"Hey Lyre, I'm bringing Juno Nishimaka to the infirmary. Juno Nishimaka." She repeated, pointedly.
As they walked there, Juno couldn't help but feel like she wasn't just announcing the arrival of another patient, but of her, specifically. Like something had to be prepared before she got there. She didn't have the mental capability to think about it right now. She was already exhausted, and already well-aware something fucked was going on around here.
They reached the infirmary a few minutes later, and she was treated for a few cuts and bruises. Her more serious "injuries," her back, her side, and her right arm- were dismissed as soreness, though they had felt like much more than that at the time. After getting some pain relievers and a snack, they sent her off to the showers on her floor, and Rena was waiting by her door when she got out from the restrooms. She handed Juno a folded up piece of clothing.
"Hey! Long day, huh."
Juno nodded.
"This is an official NERV jacket. It's nothing big, all the employees get one, but…It's comfy, and warm, and it gets pretty cold here. I thought maybe you could sleep in it tonight or something. Maybe wear it around tomorrow if you get chilly."
Juno smiled softly, taking it. Rena wasn't as bad as she thought. Trying a bit too hard, maybe, but she had a side to her that she liked. And she did seem more genuine than she had before, at least.
"Thanks," Juno said.
Rena nodded. "I'll be at your door at 7 a.m. tomorrow morning, alright? We gotta get you measured for a pilot suit, train you on piloting, put your name into the system, all that fun stuff. Oh, and one of the other pilots comes back from a home visit tomorrow, so you'll get to meet her! I'm sure things'll be a lot easier once you have a friend."
Juno timidly agreed, even though she most certainly did not.
Rena wished her goodnight, stressing the fact that she'd be there at 7 a.m. tomorrow morning- and not to oversleep. To be fair, last time they'd had a scheduled appointment, Rena had flaked, not her. Even if she was asleep.
Hopefully no more angel attacks tomorrow to make that happen again.
Juno headed into her room and huffed, unfolding the jacket. It was simple- a nice and professional jacket of grey fabric with NERV's name embroidered onto the chest- but it was obviously well-made, probably expensive. She set it on the bed.
As much as she wanted to collapse onto it and fall straight to sleep, exhausted from the day, her hair was still wet. She trudged over to the window, which someone had come in and taped a piece of plastic over at some point during the day after Ramiel had all but reduced it to sea glass. She opened it, crossing her arms over the windowsill and leaning her head out. A couple drops of water fell off her raven hair and into the pits of NERV's caverns.
"...Did you fucking see that, Cyrus?" She whispered.
The teen shook her head.
"God. What is this."
Then she chuckled a little. "It was awful, yea, but…I don't know…I don't want to tell anyone this, but…I kinda liked it. How it…made me feel. I didn't feel so alone for once."
There were a few moments of silence as she thought of what to say. Despite the fact no one was there to judge her, she liked to get her words right.
"It was almost like how I felt before you died. Not really, but…close."
She sat there long enough to pass on a few other bits of information from the day- her immediate trust in Dr. Marina, her newfound affection for Miss- Or, "Captain" Rena. Her dislike of Roger, her nervousness to meet the other pilots. Her fear of training tomorrow, and of what comes next.
And just how unsure she was about this place at all, from an ethical, and a government standpoint.
At some point, despite the chilly air and the lack of company, she'd sat out there long enough that her hair had dried, and she bid Cyrus goodnight. Then she closed the window, climbed into bed, and slipped on the jacket before pulling up the covers.
A/N: i wasn't originally going to keep any of the og character's names at all, but Rena is so obviously Misato in this version anyway that I felt it was fair. plus, the woman is iconic, and deserves to be referenced.
also, yea, i'm doing the angel's out of order- and sometimes changing their designs, too. classic diamond-girl ramiel might come in later under a different name, i haven't decided yet.
i really hope you guys are liking it so far, but either way, it'd mean a lot to me if you left a review, or even just a little comment. thanks gang 3