Neon Genesis Evangelion: Ciricrux Anima edition
Chapter 1.1
Surge Preceptor-Intendant/Out from the Warp
Alarms blared, the Ciricrux Anima spun erratically, some rings slowing or moving from alignment, and others overspeeding. Lanthanein paid them no mind, greater issues were at hand. Pain, the lobotomized Servitor-Moderati to his front right, was convulsing in her Throne, her scream soundless due to her lack of vocal cords. Lanthanein ignored her as well. The Sleepers were being ravaged by the impromptu warp journey, many were simply killed outright, and others became… something else.
Lanthanein was devoting most of his concentration to finding the dead or mutated ones and shunting them into the Heart, just as if they had been expended by the titan's weapons and techno-arcana. He had tasked Pain with simply maintaining the inexorable forward march of Borealis Aristaios as it was their only hope of escape. She took to this task as she would any other, without thought or emotion, for that was her purpose. She was now being wracked by unfettered exposure to the immense animal will of the titan, its fury nearly too much for her half-mind to cope with.
Lanthanein shunted another four Sleepers into the burning maelstrom of the reactor, two had woken and immediately turned gelatinous, two had detonated within their coffins. He grit his teeth and screamed as the sheer immensity of the blighted machine's will slammed into his mind, he drove its attentions back to Pain, let her take the strain for a time longer. Another two Sleepers immolated. He checked the Manifold, Twenty-six remained, not ideal but still combat viable.
A ping in the Noosphere from Darkness, a strong psychic presence ahead, Lanthanein cursed under his breath. He took command back from Pain, gritting his teeth under the renewed assault from the enraged Machine Spirit, denied bloodshed for far too long while forced to simply endure the ravaging of its internal systems. He fought through and looked out with his sensorium suite. He could sense the presence Darkness had detected, but could not identify it. It didn't appear to be Neverborn, but it also did not resemble any Material enemy he had seen before either.
Silence writhed in his Throne as the Anima jolted again. Lanthanein looked in on the Sleepers again, another two fed to the molochian appetite of the God-Machine. " 24…" he mouthed as Darkness gave notification of some sort of event horizon. Hopefully an outlet portal, he thought, attention drawn to Pain. She was wracked by her time under the full strain of seeing to the titan's movement, Lanthanein figured he had maybe a few more minutes before she gave out; either dead or unconscious, he needed to escape before that.
He pulsed the Stim injector mounted in her neck, it dumped a cocktail of drugs into her overtaxed system in a vain attempt to buy a few more minutes. He forced the God-Machine into a fast march. The first three rings of the Ciricrux Anima rolled out of alignment, the titan faltered for a moment before they found their place again and the machine marched on. A new klaxon mixed into the din of the control sanctum, this one impossible to tune out, it's cry sharp and piercing. The reactor was overheating. He quickly dumped the last of the coolant tanks to deal with the problem. Just a few more moments, he prayed. The event horizon had been reached. He stepped through, and despaired.
In another place, in just as bizarre a time, there were others having just as bad of a day. The JSSDF had their tanks and naval elements assembled along the coast as something of terrible and awesome potential approached from sea at a very high rate of speed. It passed the ruins of the old city far faster than something of its size should have been able to move. About a half mile offshore its wake halted, the water going calm for a moment. Then, the colossus burst from the water.
It was vaguely man shaped, but far larger than even the ships and tanks arrayed against it. It's overgrown form was black and appeared to be constantly shifting and running as it moved, each leg ending in an almost bird like foot mad of the same shifting liquid goop as the rest of its body. The only solid parts of the creature that seemed solid were it's birdlike mask-face and it's wickedly long claws which were pitch black and glossy with some unknown fluid.
The entire assembled force opened fire nearly before the order was given. The thunder of their guns heard for miles around. The colossus paid none any mind, its immensity was such that it needn't worry about them. They could not harm it. It did not think of itself by any human concept of a name, but Mankind knew it by the name [SACHIEL]. It was an angel, to the best knowledge of Man's experts in the field; some form of alien. It's wrath was about to descend upon one of Man's last cities, Tokyo-3.
The war leaders of Tokyo-3 were generals of the JSSDF three of whom sat at a desk in the center of a dimly lit war room. The only light in the room was one directly above the three, almost like a spotlight on a stage, but such comparisons would be in poor taste. One of the three called an order out to the room, "Call in our air power!"
At his order, a number of jets descended from the clouds. One appeared to be armed with a comically oversized missile. When it fired the angel caught the large ordinance delivery medium and crushed it in its clawed hand. [SACHIEL] kept up its march unabated, nothing had given it pause. It fired some form of energy weapon at the aircraft as they attempted extraction from the area, their weaponry spent. Two craft went down in the first blast.
The General sitting in the middle space spoke up this time, having seen the failure of the jets on the large screen directly ahead of them.
"Send in the VTOLs. Slow it down," he rumbled, eyes fixed on the screen as his orders were disseminated. "We'll hit it with an N2 mine."
A woman who had remained silent and in the shadows up to this point stepped forward now. In her short thigh-length black dress and red jacket it was obvious that she was not a member of the JSSDF, which made her presence here all the stranger. Indeed, in another time, she would not have been there at all.
"An N2 mine? This close to the city? Are you insane?" she protested, stomping forward to stand in front of the three figures at the table.
"Miss Katsuragi, the JSSDF still retains authority over matters of internal defense such as this, we are respectful of NERV's advice on matters, but the way it is handled is still up to us," the first speaker said with a sneer. He turned away from her to focus on a group of officers towards one side of the room. "Order the tanks into a fighting retreat, but don't stop blasting that thing for even a moment," he ordered and the men ran off to relay it down the chain of command.
"An N2 mine this close to the city will wipe out blocks!" she shouted, outraged at their stubbornness. "Let us launch Unit 01, the damage will be far less and we will actually be able to KILL IT!"
The second speaker glared at her over the tops of his glasses. "Permission denied, Miss Katsuragi, NERV will not be launching anything unless it is our very last resort."
He returned to watching the viewscreen as a bomber dropped out of the clouds on its attack run. A large object fell from its belly, dropping towards the Angel as the bomber veered off. The bomb detonated near the monstrosity and the screen blacked out to keep from blinding its viewers.
When the dust and smoke cleared, the beast still stood in the middle of the burning crater, charred, smoldering, and with a second mask sticking out of its body right next to the first, but otherwise unscathed. The third man at the table, who had remained silent until now slammed his hands on the table as the flew to his feet.
"H-How is that thing still in one piece?!" He cried as he gazed at the screen, open-mouthed, in despair. Misato Katsuragi turned to the trio with an almost smug expression on her face. "Let us launch Unit 01," she implored the assembled leaders. "We are the only ones who can kill that thing." The three remained silent for a long moment before the second man at the table spoke.
"Permission granted" he answered, defeated.
In another time, the mobilization of Unit 01 may have taken longer, due to the need to cajole it's pilot. Now however, it took only a single call from Misato to the bridge at NERV. Gendo Ikari gave the order to prepare for launch almost immediately. He received some protest from Doctor Akagi, given their only pilot was still badly injured and unable to move on her own but a terse admonishment from his adjutant and former mentor, Kozo Euyutsiki, quelled her protests rather handily.
The young woman was wheeled into Unit 01's hangar bound to a gurney, Gendo looked down at the injured young woman through the windows, his face devoid of emotion. She was strapped down to the wheeled bed covered in bandages, one arm was bound across her chest in a sling. Her blue hair was missed and unkempt, likely due to her injuries making it difficult to care for. There was a bandage around the right side of her head over her eye as well. Her other eye was red and darted around the room before finally settling on the windows above the boarding gantry. Gendo looked down at the half-thing below him, how like Yui she looked he thought before squashing that thought down.
He stood in the launch control center and spoke through the loudspeaker to her. "Rei, you are being deployed in Unit 01. We are under attack, and you are our only option. Destroy the Angel."
Rei looked up at the man silhouetted in the window and gave what she could of a nod with a neck brace on, offering a simple "Yes." in reply.
Above ground, the Angel had finally reached the edge of the city and began firing its peculiar energy weapon into the city. Each time a beam impacted a large cross shaped burst of light was left behind. One of these blasts impacted right over NERV HQ, the force of the blast rocking the whole complex. Rei, who had been trying to rise to her feet from the gurney, was thrown to the ground. She groaned in pain as she and the wheeled bed crashed to the ground.
She was lifted up by two of the base's medical staff and carried to the entry plug. Once inside the plug sealed and filled with LCL, she had been through the deployment procedure of an Evangelion many times before and did not require any guidance. Once the plug dropped into the EVA's neck, it was almost immediately moved to the launch tube. It rocketed towards the surface and deployed a few hundred meters in front of the Colossus. The Angel fired as soon as it spotted the Purple, black, and green mecha, Rei dived out of the way with near superhuman speed, making for one of the many EVA sized weapon caches around the city as the lift she was fired to the surface in detonated behind her. Retrieving an enormous Pallet Rifle she turned and opened fire on the Angel, it screeched and charged, bursting through a number of buildings as it came on. Rei moved to roll out of its way but a burst of pain from her still unhealed wounds caused her to falter, the enormous creatures colliding with each other and the gun being knocked away.
The Angel grabbed the other giant by the face in its clawed hand and its energy weapon activated, appearing now almost as a battering ram mounted to its hand. The ram slammed over and over into the EVA's head, it burst through the back of the EVA's head on the fifth strike, blood fountained from its skull as the Angel tossed the damaged machine down the street to impact a building which promptly collapsed on top of it.
-o-
Down in the bridge, Misato grimaced as Rei screamed in pain. She tried to encourage the girl to rise and keep fighting, but her synch rate was fluctuating wildly due to her pain. She turned and looked up at the director of NERV on his high pedestal.
"She wont last long at this rate, without her, we have no other options. Should I give the order to start evacuation?" she asked, already knowing the answer that would be offered.
"No" came the simple and predicted response. She glanced over to Ritsuko, the scientist shrugging in response, a worried look on her face. Misato looked back up to the main screen, seeing Rei's vitals and synch rate beginning to stabilize, she encouraged the girl to rise again…
-o-
Unit 01 stirred in the rubble, the Angel, deciding the threat was pacified had returned to firing into the city, seemingly at random. Rei forced herself, and by extension the war machine she piloted back up. She was left with only her Prog Knife for armament. She took it from her left shoulder compartment and charged her foe. It turned around at the sound of her approach. The Angel was too late to defend itself from the attack as Unit 01 crashed into it, both of them going down with the collision. As Rei began to stab the Angel with the knife, she did succeed in harming it a bit. Not enough, however.
The Angel roared, it took hold of the EVA under its arms, forcing the machine up and slamming the mecha into another wall. It rolled out from under the EVA in its dazed state and brought its claw down on the machine's back, tearing its power cable from its back and then jumping onto it. As the EVA crashed to the ground, the Angel stood over top of it. The beast stomped on its back once more and stepped away, picking the thing up and pitching it down another street. It fired a beam at its adversary, followed immediately with a charge to prevent Rei from rising.
Rei, was little more than comatose at this point, in another time the EVA may have gone berserk to protect its pilot, but its current pilot did not share the same connection another might have. The EVA lay there, unmoving. The Angel's charge reached it in a matter of seconds and it fell upon its adversary, roaring and tearing plates of armor from its frame. Rei made a few feeble attempts to beat the thing away, if only just to stop the pain it caused, but only succeeded in offering her arm to the creature.
It quickly tore the EVA's arm off, tossing it aside and going back to ripping open the EVA's chest. Blood and viscera flew everywhere, eventually so did the other arm. Unit 01 did attempt to go berserk at this point, but it was far too late. The EVA died slowly, torn apart piece by piece.
The entire bridge stared in horror at the scene unfolding before them, none had expected this. Gendo gave orders to eject the plug, but so close to the ground all it did was fire itself into the pavement. Rei's pain did cease, however. Misato didn't wait any longer. She gave orders to start the evacuations immediately. Gendo counter-manned her, he gave orders to extract all critical NERV assets and set the Geofront to self destruct. Through all this confusion, none but Maya Ibuki noticed the odd readings coming from the edge of the city, she pulled up camera feed of the area and caught sight of a large purple-pink "cloud" that hurt to look at.
She tried to call Ritsuko's attention to it but she was rushing around like everyone else trying to prepare to evacuate, she turned back to the screen and saw something she never would have expected. A machine, slightly shorter than an EVA, it looked almost hunched over, its "head" set between and below it's shoulders. On its shoulders it carried what appeared to be a pair of tri-barreled cannons and its left arm seemed to end in a gun of absolutely immense proportions, its right arm appeared to sport some sort of clawed hand, sparking with electricity. She tried again to get someone's attention but failed, instead she cast her terminal's screen directly to the massive primary display at the front of the bridge. Everyone came to a stop, staring at the machine as it exited the headache inducing cloud.
Borealis Aristaios stopped, not because Lanthnein ordered it to, but because Pain had passed out, her mind finally overtaxed to the point of unconsciousness. Lanthanein paused as well as Darkness mapped the new locale he found himself in. He was out of the warp, though he knew not where. Hopefully still on Terra, but that seemed unlikely given his surroundings. Darkness pulsed him through the Manifold, the warp entity that he had detected earlier seemed distracted now, devouring some immense beast. ' All the better,' thought Lanthanein. ' I've a chance to get back to fighting shape.' He moved on to the thoroughly disordered Ciricrux Anima.
He started from the point the titan was out of alignment.
"Tau, Mementes, Aurumina" He intoned, pushing the three runes back into their proper orientation. They began to orbit him, the vox rebooted itself, the mundane weapons of the titan came back online and sparked and shuddered as they were fed power from the Heart once more. Silence returned from his short slumber, his soundless scream feeding through the Manifold as a blare of the warhorns. Had any normal human been standing on the streets of Tokyo-3 they would have heard the warhorns as a mere undertone to the lion-esque roar that emanated from the titan.
"Animus." he spoke, and pushed another ring into it's own orbit as the clusters of runes spread upon their tracks and each rotated into its own path around him. A black obsidian sphere floated from its place circling the top of the room and joined the greater cloud of runes zipping around him. Deep within the God-Machine the Sleepers were hit with their own stims and came screaming into tortured wakefulness, the skin of the titan sparked with electricity, a field of frost spreading for hundreds of meters around its feet. He checked his Manifold, 24 sleepers remained. He grimaced, too many lost to the warp. He hoped he would have enough.
"Aetherica." was the final command. The psionic governors came online here and the skin of the God-Machine ceased sparking. The frost around its feet remained but any frost on its body vanished immediately. Two Sleepers were dropped into the cradles within the body, ready to be drawn upon. Lanthanein braced himself as the void shields came online, popping into existence around the titan. The generators deep within whined, clunked and banged a few times, and settled into their normally quiet operation. He noticed Pain had yet to wake and looked to the Noosphere. Dead. He fired the defibrillator implanted in her chest, each Servitor-Moderatii had one for just these occasions. She jerked once, twice, and her heart started again. He fired her stim injector again, the cocktail primarily heart stimulants this time, to ensure she did not expire during combat.
Lanthanein took his first step. Then another. The Anima held. He looked to the creature from earlier. He could feel through the sensorium the stink of warp taint about it. It had noticed him, he blared his warhorns at it and charged it down. He channeled power from the two Sleepers in the cradles into his Arioch power claw bringing it up to shoulder height and twisting the torso of the God-machine to one side, just as he was about to crash into the creature he swung the torso back around planting a solid hit on the Warp-thing's body and sending it crashing to the ground a few hundred meters away.
That lion roar again thought Misato as she stared in awe at the screen. The machine stalked around the block of buildings [SACHIEL] had crashed through. At the next street, it saw the thing beginning to get back up and began to fire on it with the weaponry mounted to its back. The twin tri-barreled cannons fired what appeared to be green plasmatic bolts as the barrels spun. The Angel was struck repeatedly and forced back to the ground until the creature put up its AT field. [SACHIEL] roared and charged the machine of unknown provenance.
Lanthanein braced himself as the beast charged, when it hit his void shield with its own both collapsed and it slammed into Borealis Aristaios. Overbalance alarms screeched. The Preceptor-Intendant fought to keep the machine upright. Lanthanein fed more energy from the Sleepers to his Arioch and backhanded the abomination away. It stumbled back down the street screeching in pain, its flesh steamed at the point of impact. Lanthanein drew upon the Sleepers again, activating the Aura of Terror, and the creature shrank back further doing all it could to keep away from the God-Machine. As the warhorns sang, Lanthanein opened fire with the tri-las blasters again, bearing down on the Pseudo-Neverborn monstrosity until he stood directly over it blasting it again and again in what he assumed was its face with his carapace guns. Its odd bird-like mask cracked. He lifted one foot and brought it down on the mask, his foot slammed through the creature's "head". It went still and the titan stomped away.
The bridge crew in NERV watched, still speechless at the ease with which this unknown machine incapacitated the Angel. Its foot smashed through the Angel's mask and it started to walk away. Gendo demanded someone get in contact with it. This was easier said than done, as it didn't seem to operate on any normal radio frequency. The machine roared again, and the angel began to heal itself. The machine walked away, ignorant that its foe was yet unbeaten.
Lanthanein shut down the Aura, his foe defeated. He turned his attention to Silence, scanning local vox traffic, finding nothing in High Gothic, there was seemingly plenty in a local language. All of it was to a tune. He could not understand why the Exertus Imperialis elements were allowing recreational civilian vox traffic to remain and clog the channels, he growled and switched channels again deciding to try amplitude modulated vox instead. He picked up a few transmissions in Low Gothic, all one way transmissions and all utterly useless to him. What was a frog anyway and why was the drinking water supply turning it-
He got a ping in the manifold from Silence, it was a message, transmitted in hexigramic code by what appeared to be a laser transmitter.
Angel lives
Destroy red core
Behind you
Lanthanein puzzled over this for a moment. Angel? As in beings from ancient religious tracts? He turned his God-machine around and indeed the creature seemed to be trying to rise again. He saw what he assumed now was the "core". He had dismissed it initially as too obvious to be a weak point. The Sinistramanus Tenebrae roared as it built a full charge, when the black orb floated to within his reach he handed targeting off to Pain and grasped the obsidian sphere with his fingertips.
"Nul," he intoned.
At that word a bright beam of total darkness spat forth from the weapon on machine's left arm. All viewing the event would later express a sense of doom and unease at the moment of firing, one bridge crewman describing the weapon as "Feeling as if the mere existence of such a weapon was an insult to reality itself. Like it could not possibly exist, but here I am looking at it." All sound in the video feed ceased, even as the Angel collapsed a building it tried to use to rise. Any above ground who had seen the event and not run screaming would have quickly gone totally insane, as even on video the beam and weapon itself physically hurt to look at.
The beam struck the Angel directly in the core, there was no sound as the creature collapsed in on itself at the point the beam struck. There was no sound as it tried to drag itself away from the beam. There was no sound when it finally popped out of existence forever. The beam ceased. Twelve seconds had elapsed from the initial firing to the end of [SACHIEL].
The bridge stayed silent for a few moments and then erupted into cheers, evacuation orders were cancelled, congratulations were offered to Maya and Ritsuko who had devised such a unique way to contact the unknown machine, using a hexidecimal code and beaming it directly at the thing via a laser mounted on a drone. Gendo ordered the hijacking of all local radio traffic, and the broadcast of a message with their current communication frequency in English and Japanese on repeat. A tense few minutes after the broadcast began, a voice spoke over the indicated radio frequency
"Haec est Praeceptor Lanthanein Borealis Aristaios, cui loquor?" it demanded. No one on the bridge knew what to do at the sudden and impromptu Latin interrogation. Maya was the first to come to her senses and snatched a headset from one of the junior bridge officers. Speaking in Latin she replied, "Haec est Maya Ibuki, locumtenens cum NERV Communicationes agens. gratias agimus tibi pro auxilio tuo et vellem tibi hospitia tibi offerre, dum ad imum perveneris, quae hic acciderunt."
Misato looked at her confused as the young woman lowered the microphone, awaiting a response. Misato spoke up at last "Maya… what exactly did you just do?"
The young officer turned red in embarrassment and explained herself. "He seems to be speaking some broken form of Latin, I just replied as best I could with what I remember from my class in college. I offered him a place to stay while we figure out what happened." She finished, scratching the back of her neck. Before anyone could respond, the voice replied to the request.
"Grata sunt verba tua. deinceps Locus notitiae cursus ad me in hexagramico ut prius. Ave Imperator; Gloria in Excelcis Terra. Lanthanein, ex." With that the radio went dead, the other party clearly having disconnected.
"He says he accepts our terms and wants us to send him coordinates to a lift in 'hexagramic cant' as we did before. He must mean the hexidecimal code from earlier." Ritsuko translated his time, Maya nodded and went to get the coordinates sent to the odd machine. Misato remained silent for a time before asking "What about that last bit, Ritsuko? Ave Imperator and all that?" Ritsuko frowned, staring at the machine on the screen making its way towards the nearest EVA lift. "Hail the Emperor, Glory in the Highest to Terra." she trailed off as the colossus entered the lift.
Author's Note: Well this took me far longer to write than I thought it would. This is the first... well... anything I've written and actually published anywhere, so I hope it's at least somewhat coherent. chapter two should be coming out soon for anyone interested. I've got it done, I'm just waiting to get it back from my beta. Feel free to review, or leave upvotes, or whatever the term is here and thanks for reading
-FDA