CHAPTER 19: COWBOY UP!
"Hey, Eva Braun," Toji muttered over at Asuka as she entered the classroom, "Where's Shinji?" Rei had already taken her seat as the rest of the class had already congregated into their individual cliques to gossip.
"You didn't hide his body did you?" Kensuke asked.
"Yeah right," Toji shook his head. "Asuka couldn't kill Shinji even if she tried."
"This is true," the military otaku agreed. Shinji was a Wolverine, after all. If the Russians couldn't kill him, Asuka 'The Red Death' Soryu couldn't either.
"Oh shut up, dumbkopf," Asuka shot back. "He's at NERV," Asuka answered the original question. "He was called in for a psych screening."
"A psych screening?" Kensuke asked as he worked on fixing the objective on his camera. "Shinji? I find that hard to believe. Sure he may be a bit odd at times but he's got to be one of the most stable minded persons I know."
"Ha!" Asuka snapped. "Well, the senior officers thought he's been pretty reckless lately on missions," the German pilot of Unit-02 said sitting down. "That and his 'oddness' has been a matter of concern. Hell, the rescue crews have officially started calling him 'Onikari'. Get it? 'Oni' as in devil, only it's merged with his last name." Her response were deadpan stares from the two. She let out a sigh. "So just so they can cover their asses they scheduled him for a psychological exam. About time that lunatic's had one too, if you ask me."
"I disagree, Soryu," Rei spoke up. The three turned their heads in her direction and blinked.
"Am I losing it or did the class Ice Queen just freely join in a conversation?" Kensuke asked.
"I think so," Toji blinked again. "I guess hell must've frozen over."
"And why do you disagree, First Child?" Asuka asked leaning over confrontationally.
"Shinji engages in 'reckless' behavior, as you called it, to protect others," Rei explained. "Whatever value he places on his own well-being it is still second to the well-being of others, as far as he is concerned. Whether his actions are 'reckless' or not can be debated; there are pros and cons for his actions in battle. But his reasoning behind them is sound and based on a personal code of honor. It's a part of his personality and one of his most visible traits. Therefore, logic would dictate that he must be of a sane mind."
"Well," Toji smacked his forehead as the group turned away, "That was a mouthful."
"No kidding," Kensuke agreed. "I think that was the most I've ever heard Rei say at one time. Shinji must really be having an effect on her if she's opening up like this."
'Dumme Puppe,' Asuka grumbled to herself. 'Who the hell does she think she is? Arrogant little bitch. And what was that just now? Was she sticking up for her man?' "Whatever."
XXXXX
That afternoon, back at NERV, Shinji had just gotten out of his psych screening with the NERV psychologist. God, he hated psych screenings and shrinks. And it took forever! The guy was poking into all manner of subjects. Even though it was only a 'base layer' exam to get a feel for his thoughts and nothing really penetrating he still felt annoyed by it. Yes, he was a cowboy in battle, but that doesn't mean he was crazy, just aggressive. And wasn't that a good quality in a combat soldier? Aggressiveness, as long as it was measured? Thankfully, the doctor agreed with him on that point and cleared him for continued duty.
At least the doctor didn't ask about his dreams. Shinji had always had pretty vivid dreams. Not only vivid but off the wall, too. Yes, he even had a few about the war. But they hardly persisted or woke him up in a cold sweat. However, lately he had been having dreams that were stranger than the norm for him. They all revolved around him either flying or crawling through a tunnel wreathed in flames towards a blurred figure that he seemed desperate to reach. But the figure was always just out of reach. He didn't know what to make of these dreams.
He was now on his way to the simulator, having decided to test the new training programs that were installed, when the power went out. He stopped in the hallway and backed up against the wall out of reflex. He squatted down and waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. 'This is not good,' he said to himself after nearly five minutes of waiting.
"Any emergency power system NERV has should've kicked on by now," Captain Tokarev, who was similarly delayed, said to himself. He could already make out the details of the hallway as his eye adjusted to the low light. "A place like this would have an extremely advanced power plant and most likely multiple backups; for everything to fail at once can only mean sabotage." After getting his bearings Tokarev began moving.
After his eyes had adjusted Shinji looked around but didn't know the way from where he was. He knew several halls would seal in the event of power failure. The only way he could think of was to double back and try to find a way to the EVA hanger. From there he could then follow the main corridor around to the command center. "This is gonna take some time." He then got up and made for the hanger.
Meanwhile, Asuka and Rei were on their way into NERV from school. "Something is out of place," Rei said as they neared the entrance.
"What're you talking about?" The red head asked in reply.
"It's quiet." When they arrived at the entrance Asuka tried her access card. No reply from the machine.
"Grr," she growled as she tried it over and over. "Damnit! Why won't it work! Stupid thing must be broken!"
About one kilometer below them the command staff of NERV was fighting to resolve the power issue. "You mean someone can learn about the layout of this place and our security measures by observing how we power back up?" Fuyutsuki asked Ritsuko.
"Yes," the blonde doctor replied. "By seeing which systems we activate first and the speed at which we activate each subsequent system they can learn a lot about this facility and its capabilities."
"How do we proceed, doctor?" Gendo asked his chief scientist.
"We could create a dummy start up program and randomly reactivate the systems. That should throw off any would be spies and confuse them about our capabilities."
"Once again, man has proven to be his own worst enemy," Gendo said to himself like some kind of philosopher.
Meanwhile, in another section of NERV Shinji came to a dead end. The passage way was shut and the manual opening device was marked 'Inoperable: Under Maintenance'. "Damn," Shinji said to himself. He looked around and found a grate to a duct that he could climb up into. "This is so cliché." He managed to pry it open and crawl inside. "Just like in bad television. The little assault guys creeping through the vent and coming in through the ceiling. God, I feel like such a moron right now." But, he soldiered on. After all, this wasn't his first rodeo. "Then again, I shouldn't bitch. It's not like I haven't done this before, and in worse places."
Asuka and Rei had finally resigned themselves to finding their way down into NERV. Actually, Asuka unilaterally decided to take the lead. And now Rei felt they were just wandering in circles. "I believe we passed this point already," she said speaking up.
"I know that!" Asuka snapped. "Huh?" She spotted something up ahead on what seemed to be a roadway above them. "Is that…?"
"…approaching Tokyo-3 and NERV Central. Attention all personnel…!" A familiar voice was announcing on a megaphone.
"That's Hyuga!" Asuka cried out. "HYUGA! DOWN HERE! WE NEED A LIFT! HEY!" But he couldn't hear her.
"Be quiet, Soryu," Rei said softly.
"I repeat: an angel is approaching Tokyo-3 and NERV Central…"
"What!" Asuka shrieked? "An angel? Great. Perfect timing to have a power outage."
"We must quicken our progress before the angel arrives," Rei said moving forward.
'Arrogant bitch.'
XXXXX
"Erg," Shinji grunted as he slid through the small vent shaft. "How much farther can it be?" He had been crawling through the vent for over thirty minutes. He passed several vent grates but they were either secured tight or dumped into rooms that he couldn't get out of and was getting fed up with it. He felt like he was in the movie Die Hard. Soon he heard frantic shouting as he came to another a vent grating. Looking out he saw what at that moment was a sight for sore eyes. "The hanger! I can see my EVA." He crawled forward to a grating on the bottom of the shaft and began pounding on it with his feet.
"What is that?" Ikari asked as the work crews paused when they heard the banging. They were startled when a vent grating fell from a shaft. Then a dark mass dropped out of the vent.
"Halt!" The guard nearest the figure charged, raising his weapon.
"Shit!" The person swore as he twisted, grabbed the Remington M870, wrenched it out of his attackers hands, elbowed him in the face and then threw him over his shoulder and onto the floor. As the figure held the weapon on the groaning guard Ikari shined a light at the figure.
"Put down the weapon, pilot!" He ordered when he identified his son. Shinji, after noticing the guard on the floor with a broken nose, set the shotgun down and apologized.
"Whoops, sorry," he said. "What's going on in here?"
"Little punk broke my nose," the guard grumbled as he wearily sat back up.
"There is an angel approaching," Ikari said. "We've been preparing the Evangelions for launch manually."
"An angel? Aw shit, just what we need. Guess I've got to go see if I can stop it."
"You do that," Ikari nodded as Shinji walked past. At that moment Maya appeared on the catwalk above.
"We managed to rig your EVA with external batteries," she explained as he climbed up to her position to await his plug as it was lowered into position. A partition was put up so he could change into the plug suit waiting for him. Maya continued to talk from the other side. "You'll have an additional ten minutes of battery life. The downside is…"
"Excess weight and the unit will be more top heavy," Shinji said. "I'll have to watch my balance then. What's the most direct path to the surface?" He stepped out once his lower areas were covered. Maya noticed his lean physique and had to swallow before continuing.
'I'm lusting at a sixteen-year-old boy, God, I need to get out more.' "The main exhaust shaft," the bridge bunny pointed to it on a blueprint. "It shouldn't be more than a seven minute climb to the surface."
"Nearly half of my battery life," Shinji shook his head. "Any idea on when you can get me power up there?"
"Power for the umbilical won't be restored until nightfall at the earliest," she explained.
"Shit," Shinji swore as he cinched his suit onto his skin. "Any idea on where the angel is? I don't want to go up, find out that it's not there and run out of battery power."
"We've set up a relay system with short range walkie-talkies leading to the surface. When you get the word the angel will be about five minutes from the city, give or take."
"Better than no warning at all, I guess," Shinji said as his plug dropped into position. "Once I get the word I'll power up and begin climbing."
"We also won't be able to provide you with tactical support," Maya explain.
"I'll still have my weapons and my wits," Shinji replied. "At a bare minimum, that's all I need, so it'll have to be enough."
"But, with no power, no tactical support and on your own until Asuka and Rei show up this won't be easy, Shinji." Shinji could only smile and chuckle.
"Maya, the US Navy SEALs have a maxim: 'The only easy day…was yesterday'."
XXXXX
"I think we made a wrong turn, Soryu," Rei said to the redhead as they continued down a corridor.
"How can you say that?" Asuka asked. "All these corridors look the same."
"So how do you know we're going down the correct one?"
"Uh…well…Woman's intuition."
'This is going to take a while,' Rei said to herself as she followed behind the other pilot.
"The angel has been sighted!" Maya shouted up at Unit-01. "Get going!"
"Hooyah!" Shinji said as he closed the plug.
"Good luck!" The diesel generator then slowly inserted the plug into the EVA and the startup process began.
"Let's roll," Shinji said as he pushed the restraints away from his EVA. Within another minute he was crawling through the exhaust vents. "I sure hope Rei and Asuka are okay," Shinji said as he crawled along. Before he started climbing he grabbed a rifle and pistol and attached them to the shoulder packs. "There's the shaft," with one solid kick at the top of the grating and he was in the shaft and was climbing.
"There!" Asuka cried out when she saw a door with light sneaking under it. "This must be the Geo-front!" She worked the handle and kicked the door open with a proud "HA!" Suddenly a massive eye passed in front of her. "GYAAAHH!" She screamed closing the door behind her. Rei just stared at her with an even expression.
"This way," the albino pilot said taking the charge from the obviously direction challenged German pilot.
"Bingo," he called out when he saw the top of the shaft. He braced the unit against the walls and pulled a prog blade from its housing. He cut two diagonally lines into the door making an 'x'. He then sheathed the knife and punched through. "I'm at the surface with…" he looked at the clock. "Ten minutes, and change, of battery life." He then began to pull his unit up towards daylight. Glancing around he couldn't help but notice how dead and deserted the city looked. It was as if without power all the life had been sucked from it. It was eerie. He spotted movement out of the corner of his eye and followed it as he pulled his unit up. "There you are!" Shinji cried out when he was halfway out of the shaft. He took his rifle in one hand and aimed. At that moment the angel spotted him and jumped away as he fired a burst. "Fuck! I missed!" He then crawled out and pursued his target.
"Are you sure you know where you're going, Wondergirl?" Asuka asked Rei as they crawled through the duct.
"This is the most direct route to the hanger," Rei replied. Within two minutes Asuka accidentally found the grating Shinji had knocked out earlier.
"GAH!" She landed in a not so graceful manner on her back. Rei hopped out and landed on her feet like an Olympic gymnast.
"Ah!" Ritsuko said when she saw the girls. "There you are! There's no time to waste."
"We know," Asuka stood up. "There's an angel out there!"
"Oh, good. Then you'd best get going, it should already be in the city."
"Wait," Rei said looking at the EVAs. "Where is Unit-01?" Rei looked at the pen for the violet EVA and put two and two together. She could also feel her chest tighten up. "Shinji is fighting the angel all by himself…"
For the last five minutes Shinji had been chasing the angel around the city. "Damn this bastard's fast," he said as he fired at the body as the angel sat perched on a set of buildings. The spider-like angel was indeed quick, agile and a small target. Shinji was doing more damage to the buildings than the angel. To make matters worse the angel would occasionally shoot out globs of acid from its eyes. His unit had more than its share of small acid scars across the armor.
"Where are you?" He asked as he moved through the steel and concrete urban jungle, rifle tucked into the shoulder. "Come on out you bastard." As he turned a corner a shadow fell over him. "Shit!" He rolled away just before a large acid ball slammed into the pavement. He fired a quick burst back at the angel but it dodged it. Before he could fire again more globs were raining down on him. "Damn it!" He took off in a dead run down the road.
"The shaft is directly ahead," Rei said as the trio of pilots followed Shinji's trail to the surface.
"Here it is," Asuka said as she led the way up. Gunfire echoed through the opening above them. "I can still hear rifle fire."
"Shinji is still in battle with the target," Rei said with a slight degree of anxiety in her voice as she followed after Asuka. "We must hurry!"
The angel kept pace with him, lobbing acid as it chased him from the roof tops. Shinji finally shook it off by jumping right at an intersection then rolling backwards down a connecting street and then hopping to his feet to run and duck under a series of interchanges to his right. "So the hunter has become the hunted?" When he was certain the angel was somewhere else he cautiously moved out from under the interchanges.
For another minute he circled around, knowing the angel was certainly on his trail. Since he was down to his internal batteries he dumped the spares to lighten his load. "Okay, think Shinji," he said to himself. "You've only got about three minutes left. You have to end this now." He caught his breath and collected his wits. "So I'm now the one being hunted. And this thing is too quick for me to get around and flank it. I'll have to bring it to me. But how do I do that?"
He then looked at his surroundings. There was an expressway not far from him, a series of office buildings, and a service tunnel on the far side of a small park. "Time to bring this fucker right where I want him." He then pulled out a prog blade as he looked at his rifle. "Fight smarter not harder."
"Err," Asuka helped pull Unit-00 out of the shaft. "Where'd that dumbkopf go?" The pilot of Unit-02 asked. "I don't see him anywhere."
"There is a noticeable amount of damage to the buildings," Rei noted. "Looks like rifle fire and…" she observed a melted spot on a building with some minor burning. "What appears to be acid."
"Great," Asuka grumbled. "Just like an Alien movie."
"A what?" The First Child asked.
The angel was now down on street level. More of those armored giants were crawling out of the ground; it was outnumbered. It knew the new ones hadn't seen it so it continued to search for the dark one. If it could destroy each of them one at a time it could win. But first it had to find its original quarry. There. It saw the muzzle of the dark one's weapon sticking out from around a building.
"Wait for it," Shinji said to himself as he waited for the angel to make its move.
"He's not responding to calls," Asuka said as she closed the hailing frequency.
"Maybe his transceiver was damaged in battle," Rei said. "We should spread out."
"Looks like we're going to have to bail his ass out," Asuka grumbled as she moved away from the other unit.
The angel shot the largest acid glob at the building with high velocity. The acid smashed into the building and ate right through in a split second before continuing on to the building across the street. The hole it burned was right at chest level for the target but the weapon did not fall. Confused the angel moved forward.
"Come on, you bastard," Shinji growled as he waited patiently. "Less than a minute left…"
The angel came around the corner and looked up. Its enemy was not where it should've been. Instead the weapon was fixed to the building by a large bladed weapon. This only confused the angel more.
"Sayonara, fucker!" Shinji ducked out from the tunnel, pistol snapping forward in the right hand. He fired. And fired. And fired.
BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! Rei heard the rapid pistol shots ring out through the city. Quickly Unit-00 got a fix on the direction of the gunshots. "Follow your own bearings!" She said as Asuka did the same with Unit-02. BAM! BAM! BAM! In seconds both of them were converging on the source of the sound.
"I see something!" Asuka called out as the three of them ran in the same general direction. "It's the angel's legs!" She announced shortly after the gunfire ceased. "Let's get it! Split off and attack from its flank on my signal. Got it?"
"I agree," Rei nodded.
They were two blocks away when they split up. "NOW!"
Unit-00 popped up and aimed its rifle over a low rise apartment building. And Unit-02 leaned around a skyscraper at the target so that their fire would crisscross on the target. But there was no need. "What the…?" Asuka muttered as she lowered her rifle as Rei stepped around the building. The body of the angel was obviously dead, its body ripped apart, one of its legs was severed near the first joint and orange acidic blood oozed onto the street with smoke rising from the melting/burning asphalt.
It took them a few seconds to turn in his direction. He had been waiting nearly two minutes for them to find the site. He had laid his unit back against a hillside and was now basking in the sun on a rock next to the right shoulder. When they finally noticed him, Shinji stood up and shouted "Take your fucking time, why don't ya!"