JUNE 11th, 2015
COMMAND CENTER, NERV HQ
6:32pm:
Another quake was felt throughout HQ. All the personnel inside the Command Center couldn't even differentiate how far each blast was from them anymore. All the bridge bunnies were especially petrified, only having been trained with minimal combat experience and armed with handguns and small MGs in case of an indoor attack. Yet despite those measures, they were ill-prepared for any kind of combat situation.
*BRRRRRVV*
Another loud and strong tremble shook the room, almost tripping Ritsuko as she arrived at the bridge.
Makoto was most certainly scared of what could happen next, but his focus remained on his job. He was ready to do whatever was necessary to prevent the enemy from entering HQ. Maya, on the other hand, almost ducked under her seat in reaction to the last tremor. She had a cat pillow she'd normally place on the cushion of her chair, but was currently hugging it tightly in an attempt to comfort herself. Shigeru looked over at her and saw her cowering in fear, sighing to himself.
'Jesus... and she's supposed to have our backs when shit goes down? We're so dead...'
"Give me a status report on the 1st District!" Ritsuko ordered aloud.
"Unit-117's Lieutenant has reported massive damage on a large scale across the District. The streets are beginning to overcrowd with fleeing civilians... there are platoons everywhere!" Makoto detailed.
"They're trying to bait us." Observed Misato, who was leaning against a wall. "Attacking our civilians just to keep our ground troops busy... that could make us vulnerable from one end."
Although there was still obvious tension between the two, Misato and Ritsuko were able to work with each other despite how much they had clashed in the month prior. But it being the workplace they were operating in, personal matters were best kept quiet.
"I figured that's what they were going for. If it gets worse we're going to have to prioritize certain regions... meaning more people will be out in the open." Ritsuko responded to her.
"That's... horrible." Misato said. "But we have our orders to follow, I guess."
"The only way we'll start withdrawing units from the surface is if all of us here are directly involved in the firefight. If they take us out, Tokyo-3 is out of a functioning defense force. And we certainly can't risk letting any of them breach Terminal Dogma."
Then suddenly Misato scowled.
"Is that so? Wonder what's so important about that sector..." She muttered.
Ritsuko looked at Misato for a second. She found the comment rather unusual, since she was sure Misato wasn't aware of NERV's very own supersized Angel. But one look at her expression gave Ritsuko the feeling she knew something was up.
'What was that about?' She wondered. 'Does... she know?'
"Dr. Akagi! Multiple breaches have been detected on the Geo Front's armored plates!" Maya warned, bringing Ritsuko back from her thoughts.
"Damn it! How did they-?"
The Geo Front had eight walls of reinforced armor surrounding dome-shaped cave, it all having been designed by NERV's top-notch engineers. They were believed to be virtually impenetrable, but somehow the Angels breezed right through them.
"How many stress points are there now?" Ritsuko asked Maya urgently.
"Still only eight, ma'am. But they have progressed quite far into the bedrock. Some of them are even lining up below HQ... they're dangerously close!"
'Damn it, we're completely surrounded. They must be using some kind of advanced drilling vehicle... there's no way they could dig this deep down themselves. If we don't do something about it soon, they'll gain access to the Geo Front.'
"We need to brace for impact here, Ritsuko." Misato suggested. "If their plan is to breach into the Geo Front through those walls, we're gonna have to get a unit down there and ready to go on the defensive positions."
Misato quickly looked up over at the Commander's deck, where Fuyutsuki was put in charge by Gendo.
"Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki!" She called out.
"What is it, Katsuragi?"
"Our readings indicate that the amount of stress points within the bedrock foundation have nearly doubled in amount! They'll hit us from every direction if we don't try to intervene now."
"So what do you have in mind?" Kozo asked her.
"We send ground troops and a few aircraft to investigate the walls experiencing the most stress, but we keep them at a distance. We don't know exactly what these readings of stress could indicate. All we know is that these specific locations could very well be their planned entry points." Explained Misato.
"Permission granted. Have additional units follow behind as backup."
She looked over at Shigeru, who immediately phoned the operations directors at the lower levels to order their units to scope things out. Then another blast was felt through inside HQ, the metallic walls beginning to creak under the stress.
*BRRKKK*
"Shit!" Kensuke exclaimed. "I swear these walls are going to cave in on us... I think that was the steel bending!"
Toji grimaced, finding their predicament to already be enough to worry about.
"Yeah... 'cuz that's exactly the kinda shit we wanna hear right now, Ken!" He remarked sarcastically.
Unit-01 were on high-alert the entire time they heard and felt the blasts up on the surface. None of them really knew the extent of the damage being done on the city, but the consistency of the violent noises they heard was enough for all of them to worry greatly for their families. The higher-ups at the Command Center felt it was better to keep them in the dark about how bad things were over at the surface, so the troops could better focus on their task.
Asuka in particular was beginning to lose her patience with the whole situation, to no one's surprise.
"Major Katsuragi!" She spoke via earpiece.
"What is it, Asuka?" Responded Misato
"What the hell is going on up there?! The jolts won't stop!"
"The Angels are incessantly bombarding the surface in an attempt to get us to send more units up there. But if we do that, it's going to leave HQ more exposed to a direct invasion." Asuka's C.O. explained.
"So we're just leaving people out there to get killed?" She asked in disbelief. "I thought we were supposed to protect the city! And it's not like the skinjobs can get into HQ without getting through us first!"
"Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case." Misato told her. "Look, I don't have the time to get into it right now. Keep Unit-01 on standby and be ready for anything, understand?"
Her warning came across as rather ominous to Asuka.
"Yes ma'am." She said.
*BRRAAAK*
Another violent quake.
'Be ready for 'anything'? That doesn't sound good.' Thought Asuka. "Private Aida!" She called out, sending Kensuke running over to her.
"Yes, Lieutenant?"
"I just had a short conversation with the Major, but I'm not exactly sure what's going on out there. She told me to be ready for anything, so I'm thinking we should take up different positions around this room."
"Okay... where do you want us?" Kensuke asked.
"Suzuhara should be located on the right side of the room, while Miss Perfect goes over to the left. If any skinjob makes it through that gate,-" She pointed at the high-tech mechanical door. "-then the both of them can attain the upper hand, at least at first. Notify Suzuhara and Wondergirl to move into position on my mark, got it?"
"Yes ma'am!" He replied as he dashed over to Toji and Rei.
"Hey Hikari." She said to her friend who was seated right beside her.
"Yeah, Asuka?"
"I'm having everyone take up defensive positions to have an advantage over the Angels, should they actually get in here. Instruct everyone to get into position, I'm gonna go ahead and try to find out what's going on up there..."
"Yes ma'am." Hikari said with a nod, promptly getting up to order everyone around.
And with that, Asuka went off on her own to get to a vantage point. She planned to use her heat scanner to determine how far off the Angels were from them. But with how deep underground they were, she was having no luck finding out. Asuka didn't plan on leaving her unit behind, but wanted to be on higher ground so her scanner could work properly.
'Where are you fucks hiding?'
COMMAND CENTER
6:41pm:
"Units 103 and 147 have made it to the location!" Maya informed Misato.
"Alright. We need them to stay a safe distance away from that wall for now." She ordered.
"This doesn't seem like it'll do much to stop them, Misato." Ritsuko chimed in.
"We don't know what's going on inside the bedrock. We're going to have to play it safe here." Misato explained. "Lieutenant Ibuki, have one of the units fire a couple of rounds onto that wall. And send over a Watcher drone, we need a bird's eye view of their location."
"Affirmative." Complied Maya.
The Watcher drone they sent arrived at the site almost immediately, providing live footage of Unit 103 and 147's position on one of the massive displays inside the Command Center. The two units were each accompanied with four tanks and a few attack spinners hovering around the area. Everyone saw as Unit-147's Captain climbed atop one of the tanks and aimed her ADV rifle at the wall they were sent to investigate.
She fired her rounds at it only for absolutely nothing to happen.
"No reaction to the rounds, Major Katsuragi." Shigeru stated as Misato crossed her arms.
"Hmm. Try something bigger, then. Maybe have a spinner launch an attack missile at it."
"Isn't that a risky move considering they're right behind that wall? What if the blast's enough to allow them access to the Geo Front?" Ritsuko asked.
"They're going to breach regardless, Rits. There's nothing we can do about that right now. I'm just trying to have it be us who makes the first move." Said Misato. 'We're in real trouble here... I think this is the worst situation we've ever been in. There's a chance none of us might make it out of this.'
"We have a spinner in position for missile launch, Major!" Said Makoto.
"Perfect. Launch!"
Everyone in the Command Center watched in anticipation as the spinner prepared to fire at the wall. But all of a sudden, a loud noise was heard from inside the very wall the units were sent to investigate. To ground witnesses, it sounded like some sort of charge-up. But then suddenly, a massive explosion from within the wall sent tons of debris down both units' way.
Another quake, this one being the strongest, harshly rocked everyone in HQ.
Now everyone watched in absolute confusion. The inner wall had collapsed, wiping out about half of the ground troops in the site. Amidst the chaos of the moment, Misato managed to spot something coming out from the blast hole located on the wall. She could see it was spinning, and that it was very large. It didn't take her long to realize that she was looking at a militarized drill.
"What in the world? Is that... a drill?"
Ritsuko looked over at Misato with her eyes fully widened. She didn't spot the machine like Misato did, as a large cloud of dust cascaded down onto the grounds of the Geo Front, obstructing everyone's visual on the site. Not even the drone could properly see anything anymore. Misato quickly decided to command the drone to better see what they were dealing with.
"Have the drone back up!" She ordered. "We need a full visual of-!"
Then all of HQ went pitch black, followed by the sound of multiple computer shutdowns.
A collective gasp escaped almost everyone in the room. Maya yelped a little, never having gotten quite used to such darkness. Makoto instantly opened his drawer and felt around for a flashlight, proving to be quite the difficult task in such conditions.
"What the hell's going on now?" Misato asked alarmingly.
Makoto was finally able to find the flashlight returning a little light to the room.
"The Angels... they must have cut our power." Suggested Ritsuko. "They're really not stopping at anything today."
Misato grew anxious, as no power meant they were about as exposed to an attack as they had ever been before.
"Fuck... we're powerless now!" She said. "We have no way of communicating to Unit-01... or any unit for that matter! They're sitting ducks out there, just like us!"
Ritsuko disregarded Misato's panic and walked over to Maya's position to fish around for a flashlight of her own. There was only one way to set the power back on, and not only was it going to take a lot of hard work, it would take the only person who could do anything about it; Ritsuko herself.
"Hyuga, Aoba, Ibuki, all of you come with me... we're going to have to open up the MAGI." She ordered.
"But how?" Maya asked. "We have no power left in HQ... there's no way we could-!"
"At the base of the MAGI's structure there are hydraulic pumps. They're not electrically powered, it instead makes use of fluid power... so we can still open it up. Now, I'm going to need the three of you to come with me because it takes more than one person to open it up. We can access the hydraulics via a key we have stored by the fire extinguisher in case of such an emergency. Come on, we don't have much time." She explained.
"Okay, okay..." Said Maya, still quite nervous about what was going on.
The crew left their seats and cautiously followed Ritsuko in the dark, leaving Misato in charge of watching over the bridge.
"What the hell?!" Asuka shouted as the room her unit stood in went almost pitch-black. "Ugh... Unit-01, take out your flashlights!"
Everyone could finally see a little again as each of them took out and flashed their military-grade flashlights out. Luckily for them, their battle gear was self-powered. But this didn't put any of them at ease, as this was still a major problem for all of them.
With limited visibility, it made the already-fierce Angels even more of a threat. Now everyone was on even higher alert then before.
"What jus' happened?" Asked Toji out loud. "Did the skinjobs do this?"
"No idea, but we have to stay focused here." Answered Asuka. "Guess this is what the Major meant by 'be ready for anything'... for fuck's sake!"
*CRRRREEEEEAAAK*
"Agh! What in the world is that?" Kensuke said unnervingly.
What sounded like metal being torn apart was not light on anyone's ears in HQ. Not only was it the loudest noise they heard that day, but it was definitely the closest in proximity to HQ. The quakes were now at their most violent, and that was alarming.
"Oh no..." Asuka was heard saying.
Now everyone in the unit turned to her, knowing she was at least somewhat aware of what was going on.
"What? What is it Asuka?" Asked a nervous Hikari.
Their Lieutenant had made good use of her heat scanner, looking in every direction possible. It was the exact reason she was extremely worried now, since the cacophonous metallic sound and jolt coincided with a large heat signature popping up on her scanner. It showed a large object deeply embedded within the walls of HQ. She didn't know how or what exactly they were using to breach the Geo Front, but the results were clear.
"They're... they're almost here." Said Asuka. "Everybody! Combat positions, now!"
Shinji was caught completely off guard after the lights had gone out abruptly. He had already left the linear-rail Kaji lead him to, and was making his way down the emergency access hallway that would take him directly to HQ. Tiny red emergency lights lit up throughout the hall.
'Another tremor.' He thought, not knowing of the explosion that preceded HQ's blackout. 'Good thing I was already off the train when the power went out.'
He too could hear the overwhelming noise from the massive amounts of steel being torn. The sounds were terrifying, but he was pushing through nonetheless. Never before had Shinji felt more determined in his life to run towards the danger. And though there was a chance he'd get locked up again for trespassing, the life of everyone he loved was more prevalent in his mind.
Shinji continued down the hallway, trying his hardest not to fall with the on and off again quakes.
'They just don't stop... the Angels must've gotten in. I have to hurry.'
He held tightly onto the 'blaster' Kaji handed him. With how many enemies he saw from the spinner flight he and Kaji took over to the underground facility, he knew he had to be ready for a surprise attack, be it from behind or right in front of him. The walk continued for a little while, until Shinji could finally see something ahead of him. It was a large metallic door, meaning he finally made it at least somewhere near HQ.
'There it is!'
Shinji ran over almost immediately, looking for a way to open it. However, he quickly noticed there was no knob to twist or any kind of manual opening mechanism. All he saw was the standard key card swipe, which infuriated him to no end. Not only did he not have a valid card to use it on, there was no electricity to power it at all.
"Ugh, fucking idiots!" He shouted, cursing whichever engineer decided having only an electronic lock was a good idea.
Now he felt completely trapped. There was no way he could even get in, and he was stuck inside a stuffy hallway with no proper airflow due to the outage. But all of a sudden, he could hear voices reverberate from somewhere, yet noticed it wasn't coming from behind him.
'Wait-'
It sounded like it was coming from above, which was disorienting at first. But once he looked up, he could see an air vent. Without power the air wasn't running, making it easy to hear sounds from the other rooms the vents were interconnected with. He figured it probably came from there. Shinji got as close as he could to its openable panel and listened. He could barely make out what was being said, so he needed to make sure these voices were from NERV's units, and not a platoon of Angels.
Somewhere along the almost inaudible words he heard; "Attention Unit-97!"
'These vents do connect directly to HQ, then.' Shinji found. 'But how do I get up there?'
Although there was a way he could climb up the walls to reach the air vents, it wasn't going to be an easy task. Along the hallway, thin metallic pipes stretched across the walls, which appeared to supply water for the fire sprinkler system. Whatever it was, Shinji had no idea. But it didn't matter, as it was the only way he could reach the vents. And he had to be very careful not to fall.
'Well here goes nothing...'
Although his hands' grip on the thin pipes wasn't all that bad, pushing himself up with his shoes proved to be the real challenge. They were so thin that they barely provided any space for his feet to climb on, meaning only the tip of his footwear was making contact with it.
His left foot quickly slipped off, but Shinji didn't fall since he held on tightly to the pipes above.
"Shiiit!" He said shakily.
If he was going to get up there successfully, he was going to have to take delicate steps. He propped his left foot back onto one of the pipes and tried again.
Now Shinji was going slower, which made him a lot more nervous about messing up. Sweat began to run down his face onto his clothes, the stuffy room not helping the cause. With how much caution he was taking climbing up the wall, he was actually managing to get up higher than he did before. But the higher he got, the more careful he had to be. His palms began to sweat now too, only adding to the challenge.
'Easy now, you're pretty close.' Shinji thought, taking a look at the vent above him.
It took him a minute, but he finally managed to reach the vent. And now the other challenge; how to open the vent without any of the proper tools.
'Damn it...'
The vent itself was secured by four screws, each one taking up its own corner. There was no way he'd be able to kick the vent inwards, since he was climbing up and his feet were already at a great disadvantage. And the little gaps between the metal wings that funneled the air downwards weren't big enough for Shinji to squeeze his fingers in between to try and forcefully bend the metal out of his way.
The only method he could think of to open the thing was by shooting the screws out, which wasn't all that favorable since he needed to conserve as many of the PKD pistol's rounds as he could.
'Two should suffice.' He thought.
Shinji carefully reached for the blaster Kaji spoke so proudly of, still minding his other limbs' grip on the pipes, and pointed the barrel of the gun to one of the screws.
*TS-PAP*
The shot he fired from this particular pistol was much stronger than he had anticipated, and the recoil was the most powerful he'd experienced form such a handgun. Shinji also noted the air-pump noise that sounded just before the shot was fired. He had successfully blown one of the screws off, but the recoil almost sent him falling down.
"God damn!" He said, flabbergasted at the power of Kaji's pistol. 'Guess this is why he dubbed it a blaster...'
Shinji regained his balance and aimed at the other screw directly beside the one he had just shot off. Now the vent was slightly open on one side, which he found was enough so he could save his other rounds for combat.
'Great, got that done. Now how do I go about this?'
Though there was now a bit of an opening, there still wasn't much room for him to fit in. So he decided he'd grab the side that was loose to try and pull the panel off so there'd be enough space for him to climb in.
Once again with caution, he grabbed ahold of the hanging vent to make space for himself, but then-
*CRRRREEEEEAAAK*
-yet another jolt.
"Gaah!"
He quickly threw his other hand onto the vent to prevent himself from falling. But all he really ended up doing was bending the panel downwards, and found himself hanging off of it. The two remaining screws couldn't handle his weight, and came off right away. Shinji landed on the hard floor but was lucky enough not to twist his ankles or break any bones.
"Fuck!" He screamed in pain.
Though his landing wasn't at all graceful, he did manage to get the whole panel off the venting system. Now he could climb in and make his way into HQ.
'Finally-' Thought Shinji. '-I've got a way inside...'
COMMAND CENTER
6:49pm:
Shigeru and Makoto opened up the bottom of the MAGI through the very hydraulic system Ritsuko told them about. It was triggered by pulling two levers, both pulled at the exact same time as each other to pump the fluid through the mechanism. The entire structure of the supercomputer lifted upwards, revealing a tiny crawl space full of industrial pipes.
"The MAGI has opened up, ma'am!" Said Shigeru.
"Alright. You two resume your duties over at your stations at the bridge." Ritsuko ordered.
"But wait-" Maya butted in. "-what am I doing here, then?"
"You, Ibuki, are going to help me out inside the MAGI." The brilliant scientist explained. "Do you remember those portable computers we have stored over at the utilities storage? I'm going to need you to get those and pass them to me as I do my work here. They have procedures for situations like these programmed into them."
"Yes ma'am." Maya said with a bow, forgetting that Ritsuko couldn't see her at all in the dark.
As Maya ventured off to fetch the computers Ritsuko asked for, the doctor herself got on her knees and crawled inside the structure. She couldn't remember the last time she had been down there, but always remembered the exact reason why she hadn't.
The confined space lightly smelled of fuel, complimenting the ugliness of the MAGI's bowels.
"You okay in there, Rits?" Misato could be heard calling just outside the supercomputer.
"I'm fine." The faux blonde said rather harshly. "Don't you have your duties to tend to over at the bridge?"
"Without any power, there isn't anything I can really do here. Guess that's the downside of relying too much on tech, isn't it?"
"Mhm." Ritsuko replied.
The sound of someone running came suddenly, followed by loads of panting.
"I got them, doctor! I got the computers!" Said Maya.
"Okay, come on inside. We need to hurry this up."
Maya quickly crawled in the tight space herself, but was surprised by the sight she found inside. The pipes were lined with nothing but post-it notes with loads of information on them. What it was about, she didn't know yet. But she'd have a better look at them once she handed Ritsuko the tools she'd asked for.
Making her way in there was not comfortable at all, as Maya wasn't used to this kind of tight space. She felt a little claustrophobic going in there, and the smell didn't help.
"Here you go, Dr. Akagi." She said as she passed Ritsuko the computers.
"Thanks, Ibuki. I can handle it from here on out."
Now that that was done, Maya took a glance at each of the post-it notes the pipes were full of. It was then that the amazement finally set in; these weren't just any notes, these were advanced codes relating to the MAGI's programming itself.
"Woah!" She said. "These are all backdoor codes! Backdoor codes to the MAGI!"
Ritsuko, though still focused on her work, couldn't help but grin at Maya's excitement. As the brilliant head scientist of NERV, it wasn't often that someone shared that same sense of awe at this kind of work.
"Did you do all of this, doctor?"
"Oh no, I can't take credit for this. It's all the work of my mother." Ritsuko told her. "Sure is something, isn't it?"
"Yeah..." Maya said, both going quiet to let Ritsuko work on regaining power.
She had already connected it to some outlets inside the still-powerless MAGI. What she was doing with the computer was assessing the situation, as the programs inside it were designed specifically to spot what problems they might be facing and give possible solutions to them.
Ritsuko's face was lit by the portable computer's screen as she clicked away. As such, Maya couldn't help but not look away.
There was something so fascinating about watching Ritsuko at work. Not only was she extremely determined and focused, but she was good at it. To Maya, she was not only a genius, but the best one of them all. And though their current predicament terrified her to no end, she felt at ease in there all alone with Ritsuko. This was someone she trusted a million times over.
Maya was now kind of glad it was so dark in there, since her smile wasn't at all visible to the scientist.
*CRRRAAAAAACK*
But then her smile disappeared again.
"Agh!" Yelped Maya. "On no no no no no... they're getting closer!"
"Keep calm, Ibuki. I think we still have some time left before they actually get in here." Ritsuko tried assuring her.
"How can you be so sure, doctor?"
"Haven't you noticed a pattern in their drilling?" She asked an extremely frightened Maya. "One strong rumble, then a pause. It seems they're not able to continuously go at it. For whatever reason, they have to stop before drilling deeper every once in a while. My guess is, whatever machine they're using needs to power up before moving forward."
"That's... a pretty smart observation, Dr. Akagi." Maya said.
"We're scientists, are we not? Observation and hypothesis are our specialties."
"Jus' how close are they?!" Toji asked exasperatedly, the tremors only riling him up more.
"Really fucking close... if they continue, they're going to end up directly in front of us!" Asuka explained. "Brace for combat, Unit-01! Everyone, arms aimed at the end of that hall!"
Everyone minus Rei followed suit. She just didn't feel like fighting for her own life mattered, which was ironically how he felt before Shinji saved her life for the first time. Only now there was a feeling of deep sadness behind it rather than an absence of self-worth.
Kensuke kept her close by in case danger came their way, and Toji was positioned across the room from them.
"Rei, listen to me-" He said. "-we're only as strong as the weakest link here, we need you to watch out backs as well. We all need to look out for each other here. And this is probably the biggest battle we're gonna go through. Seriously, I've never been more scared in my life."
She didn't say anything back to him. Not out of a lack of care, but only because she was too devastated.
"But most importantly, I just don't want to lose yet another friend. Shinji's gone, and that loss hurt a fuck ton. Please, look out for yourself here." He added.
Still, Rei said nothing.
Kensuke sighed, but there was nothing he could really do. He'd look after her, but was worried she'd end up another one of Unit-01's casualties. But with how grim today was looking, he truly thought of the possibility of the entire unit being wiped out.
But once again, he thought of the promise he and Toji made for the friend they thought they lost.
"Hope you're watching, Shinji." He said.
It was this sentence that got some sort of reaction from Rei, as she couldn't stop thinking of how Gendo essentially took him away from her. She wondered where he was now, and how he was doing. Neither the Commander or Ritsuko gave her any information of his whereabouts, since they didn't want her going out to look for him. With how much she had been going against her orders, they knew that would be a risk.
All she knew was that he was gone. Taken from her in their most intimate moment together.
'Shinji...'