Chapter 8: Uncautious spy, rekindled wrath
Danny
Okay then, now that I know Shinji's mostly safe, I'm going snooping around NERV! I phase out of existence an drop down. I'm falling through the floors of Misato's apartment building. Brief flashes of apartments pass by my eyes, but I'm too distracted to really care.
Empty...
Empty...
NERV secret police, AKA Section 2...
Empty...
Old lady's house...
Aaand... basement.
Through the basement floor we phase and through over ten seconds of steel and concrete. Most of it steel. I see NERV spares no expense to keep the Angels busy topside and out of the Geofront itself.
Speaking of the Geofront... I fall through the ground, through the giant artificial cave's roof and spot NERV's central pyramid. I'll need to pick up some angular momentum, 'cuz I want to be falling down through Central Dogma into the Eva cages and from there into the deep areas.
...Both Tolkien and Lovecraft have thought up all sorts of monsters that hide in 'deep' places. I've got reason to suspect Gendo Ikari counts for just such a monster all by himself... But what other horrors has he got buried under his big, shiny fortress?
After some course corrections, my slow descent carries me down through Central Dogma. Hi, Akagi, Hyuga! Hehehe! The technicians don't notice me as I disappear further down.
Eva cages, where's the Eva cages? I turn my descent into a lazy spiral, looking for the telltale pinpricks aura of an inactive AT-field.
AH! There we go. Invisibly, I land on the metal scaffolds hanging over a huge vat of LCL containing the recently repaired Unit 01. One last quick look around to confirm what the MAGI told me, and I phase back into the corporeal world.
As a teenager, I used to have a little difficulty controlling my powers when not in my ghost form. Needless to say, no longer a problem. Living with intangibility for half your life kind of makes you use it for everything. For instance, I don't open closets and cupboards anymore.
Though outside my ghost form I'm still weak, mortal Danny. Don't expect any ectobeams like the ones Sachiel speared Shinji with.
Not in this form, anyway.
Which brings us to Unit 01. I hop down the scaffold and tread carefully along the edge of its chilled LCL bath, walking over to its back, a normal human. I checked: They've only got security cameras trained on the entrances, exits and consoles, and there's no personnel around here. If people do show up, I can just ghost away.
Hm. My eyes slide over the Eva. Still purple. Still gigantic... "Mother Ikari, I presume..." My drawl echoes throughout the cage. Still undeniably freaky to look up at the massive arms and spine of this thing.
I sigh. Can't believe I put this off for two weeks. If I'd known... Damnit. What else is NERV hiding? I need to find out of Misato's right with her theory. And after that, I'm going all the way down that elevator shaft that's not on any maps.
But first, Unit 01. Here goes nothing. I stick my hand into Unit 01's back near the Entry plug. Metal. Metal, nothing but metal and wires and LCL tubes... Grr. For all that the reports carefully tread around the fact that it's a meat puppet, you'd expect the Eva to have some biomatter I can interface with. I want to overshadow this thing. Not actually posess it, but just mind-meld with it, see what it... aha, there we go! A back muscle graces my fingertips.
The world goes black as I try and enter its body. I get my wish and am drawn in immedeately, unable to resist like being caught in a whirlpool. And then it's like a million pinpricks race their way up my body. A million pinpricks which turn into a million electrified drills. Pain! Oh god, so much pain! This was a stupid idea! Am I screaming? Am I audible? Don't care. Can't... can't pull my hand out, my body's gone! I can feel my limbs, but they aren't anywhere. They're just in the black void. Have to get out. Have to... can't... Where the hell am I?
And just as suddenly, the pain subsides. Jesus christ sweet relief. I'm still in existential blackness with no way out. And that's terrifying, don't get me wrong... but at least the pain's gone... "Shit, and Shinji has to pilot THAT?" I gasp, badly out of breath, even with the conspicuous absence of lungs.
"Worse if you have to live here." A female voice rings out from the nothing. I look around... wait, nothing to look at. No eyes. "So, who are you?" The woman, obviously Mom Ikari, asks me.
My mind races, going over the last few moments. ...I've been sucked into Unit 01, and I don't know how to get out, and now I got my wish: I'm talking to Shinji's mother. She's been stuck in the Eva's head for years now, so she might know how I can get back out. She might also be able to delete me like an annoying popup, or even read my mind.
Heh. Well, for better or worse, I'm at her mercy right now, so I might as well be honest. "My name, person-who-is-probably-Shinji's-mom, is Danny Fenton. Hybrid between a human and a ghost. I'm basically here because SEELE 04..."
The voice in the dark reacts with excitement, curiosity. Hold on, am I sensing her emotions? I blink (again without eyes) Yeah, I must be. Limbo is weird.
"...Curb your entheusiasm, Mrs. Ikari, I'm assuming that's your name, terribly sorry if it isn't." I say with a double heaping of sarcasm.
"I am indeed Yui Ikari, Shinji's mother. Gendo is my husband. He took my name."
Okay, that sounded rightfully smug. I chuckle. "Can't pick the people you fall in love with, I suppose." ...Oh damn, she didn't like that.
"Gendo has lost his way." Yui answers mirthlessly from the black. I can feel pent-up frustrations uncoil. "He will do anything, even risk Shinji's life to get me back in his arms." Her voice seems to echo off the walls, growing stronger with each word.
Even though there aren't. Any. Walls. Grrr...
"Upset, Fenton?" Ikari whispers misschievously from the distance. "You have no idea what you're dealing with. Let me show you." And the pain starts coming back... Was she shielding me? Whatever it was, this will not be fun to go through again.
I can only hope she's throwing me out and not trying to dissolve me. Ow, ow, ow, pinpricks, spinning, heating up... This must be the physical sensation of Unit 01's body. It's suddenly starting to make a whole lot of sense, why Yui Ikari got herself stuck inside Unit 01.
"You're acting as Shinji's piloting buffer!" I hiss out, trying not to break into a scream under the pain. No response. I shake my head in bullheaded annoyance, completely ignoring the agony the gargantuan cyborg is sharing with me. "I'm on your side, you bitch! Or at least on Shinji's side!" Defiance in anger. Or it's just the blinding pain making me scream.
Light starts to come back in spots around me. The agony is... receding, thank Lovecraft's star gods... But I can hear a whisper. Yui's whisper. "I do not know how you are connected to him, but whatever you do, do not tell my son about me yet. Gendo may have strayed, but-"
And she's gone. Ow. Everything hurts, I feel bruised, like I was extruded through a wringer. Probably closer to the truth then I'd like if I think about it too hard. I float, invisible, half-submerged, in the LCL, not even making a ripple due to the strange way ghosting interacts with physics.
I look up and see Maya standing at a console in the observation skybox. Whatever Yui... Unit 01 tried to do to me, it must've made for a nice, big data spike in the Eva's vitals. "Gave you indigestion there, didn't I?" I mumble, smirking at Unit 01's beautifully terrifying death mask of a helmet. Absentmindedly, I wonder if I'dve been able to break out of the Eva without Ikari's help. Probably not, I conclude with a hint of dread.
I stretch my body, count my digits (yup, all still present, down to the pinky toes) and sink deep into the LCL.
Down I go, down into the places where you need permission from biometrics... or phantasmal powers... to go. From what I've already seen, read and felt, whatever's gonna be down there is practically assured to give me nightmares.
The most horrifying thing I've seen science wreak in my lifetime, not counting Second Impact?
Vlad once got it into his head to clone me. Sufficed to say, when I found out, I blew the place up. All but one of the clones got killed. The only one who survived is now nominally my kid sister. Dani Phantom. She's got my powers, my personality... Mostly. She's a bit less of a smartass but even more vicious.
In summary: Clones are icky and existentially confusing.
I've hinted at this a few times before, but let's dwell on it while I use the simplest of my ghost powers to phase through the abandoned offices and halls in the depths of NERV. I'm a half-ghost. Half human, half ghost. Once upon a time, I was only fifteen, I walked into a ghost portal my parents were building. Think Stargate, but into the ghost zone, a universe that's somehow layered over our own. I have a hunch that the ghost zone is something like Warhammer's Warp: A great big cauldron brimming with energy that reacts to the actions and emotions of the people on Earth.
Ghosts, for lack of a better word, are the echoes of people who died in significant emotional turmoil, deities worshipped in sufficient quantities, or just concepts believed in strong enough that the ghost world gives them a walking, talking avatar.
That's all a sideshow for now, though. What's important is that the ghost portal worked. I kinda switched it on while messing around inside it. I got hybridized. No idea what happened. A flash of white, and I felt like I was melting, about to explode. My vision went a reddish orange... and then green. Clear, venomous green and I felt empowered.
Green's pretty much my colour now. Hence my T-shirt. Superhero undercover clothes. I have this hunch: When I went into the machine, I died. Or at least... I hit the 'moment of death'. All my fear and agony, boiled over into the ghost zone at the exact spot that the portal was located. Whatever happened in that machine, it collapsed me back in on myself and I came out alive, but changed forever.
From what molecular scanning by Tucker and Jazz can tell... I've got a strange, glowing green goo in my cells, sheathed around my DNA. They can't measure the stuff, the molecules are in a state of constant flux, but it has somehow managed to coat my DNA without collapsing or rendering the DNA unuseable. We've taken to calling it ectoplasm. ...The same stuff Sachiel fired at that Heli-jet and Unit 01.
Which implies some sinister connections between what's going on here and what happened back in the U.S. fifteen years ago.
Vlad and Dani have the same 'hybrid' traits as I do. Dani because she's my clone and Vlad because he helped my parents with the early stages of their 'ghost zone' dimension research and got burned for it. Literally.
Like I alluded to earlier, there's real, proper ghosts too. When put in the right situation, one that gels well with their identity, they're a sight to behold. You can't really steer ghosts. They're single-minded things that keep up a human pretense to better work at their obsession. I generalize, of course, but ghosts were never born to live, they were born to scream.
Thankfully, halfies like me... We can function pretty much anywhere. We can keep our heads on straight. We're people, not Daemons of the Warp driven by a single desire, after all. Though admittedly, a case has been made that my monomaniacal drive is heroism. I try and not let that thought live in my head for too long, it's a pointless thing to dwell on.
But this rehashing of my past has brought me to consider two rather frightening hypotheses.
One, Angels probably have something to do with ghosts. Don't know what, but if Sachiel can pull a Vlad-style ectobeam out of the palm of its hand, Then there's something connecting the two.
Second hypothesis. Rei. She's a freak, and has phenotypes very similair to ghost hybrids. Considering the way I know halfies like myself work, considering my above theory on Angels... she could be my counterpart in the Angel department. Half-angel. I'm definitely gonna run this stuff by Tucker on my next visit. Maybe even call him on a chat. Jazz might be willing to help too...
Should I nab a DNA-sample from Rei without her knowing? Hn... ah, questions of morality, how you torment me.
And my feet come to a complete stop.
...I hate being right.
There's glass cylinders to the left of me, glass cylinderss to the right of me. Ten total. Most of them have...
One sec, resisting the urge to vomit...
Most of the cloning vats have a Rei in them. Or what looks to be a comatose identicate clone.
Considering three of the vats are empty, and this whole setup is very much still operational, I can only draw one conclusion: Whatever else Rei may be, she's an asset valuable enough for Gendo to keep multiples of her in cold storage.
Like a box of fucking eggs. Even if Gendo didn't mastermind this insanity...
I throw a sidelong glance at one of the clones and shiver. Eyes half-open, but a completely empty mind...
Even if this isn't directly Gendo's fault, he certainly seems to be okay with the place hogging gigawatts of his power bill.
Okay Danny, eyes forward. I could pulverize this entire room with a single full-power ghostly wail. It works real well on glass and stuff like water, anything that can propagate a shockwave.
But I'm seeing red at the moment, so I'm walking away from this clonequarium. I can always come back and blow it up later after thinking about it for a little while. Making rash decisions at this point would be stupid. It would be the right thing to do...
Reluctantly, I keep walking.
Evil prevails when good men do nothing, but I have to trust Misato, have to trust Rei. It's their call, not mine.
The clones end. The light fades. I keep walking and I come upon the end of the tunnel.
I shut my eyes and center myself. The core of my worry floats to the surface.
There's two kinds of secrets.
There's disgusting, terrifying secrets, which taint your view on people forever. Stuff like Vlad being a sociopath, this clonequarium, and me killing Johnny 13... I killed Johnny 13, by the way. Blown his ghostly essence into the four winds with overwhelming force.
See, not so fun to learn that kind of revelation, is it?
But there's another kind of secret. The good kind of secret. Some truths that are brought to light may be terrible, but they bring new options. New insights and new choices.
Stuff that I can use to pull the carpet out from Commander Ikari and maybe even the Angels themselves.
Stuff that I can use to help Shinji. If there's anything Ikari has down in this hole, like a kill-all-Angels button or some kind of alien Megazord, then I will find it in these depths.
So I breathe out. I keep my eyes open. And I sideline my frustration for the rest of the afternoon.
Turns out, I didn't have to go very far. Only a little further down the hall and I'm out of breath again. This time, I'm not scared though, just awed by the sheer scale of what I see in the cavern in front of me.
A gigantic steel gate. Two Evangelions could stroll through it shoulder to shoulder whistling the Hallelujah chorus. I feel my breath go cold and a chill run up my spine. Did my bad comedic timing just insult somebody or something?
...No, I can feel it coming from beyond the door. It's like the lowest bass noise you've ever felt. It rumbles in your bones... Oh, and now it's going the other way. There's something alive behind that door, and it's breathing. Okay, enough. I'm out.
I turn around, back toward the surface and start walking. I should go. I really should go, let Misato and Sam know what I've seen so far, and come back later.
"And yet..." I murmur, before turning on my heel and marching toward the door. "I hate myself I hate myself I hate myself..." is what I repeatedly mumble to myself while I give into my "human nature" to find out what's behind the door.
Still, I'm not stupid. That big door? Big as it is, it's a chokepoint. It's likely the only way people have of getting from this side to that side.
I look to my left, to my right... And I walk into what looks like a good spot in the cavern wall.
A few steps into the wall, enough to avoid whatever digital eyes may be on the giant doors, and I walk forward, toward the room that's probably behi-
Snapcrack. ...ow.
"Did I just hit a wall?" I say, though my voice doesn't carry very far as it is projected into solid bedrock. I do breathe in ghost form. Don't know how it's possible, I just know that I do. Anyway, back to that wall.
I inch my fingers forward. Yep, definitely a wall. It's... My eyes move closer. Solid black. The color of volcanic glass, with the same bright glassy sheen. It's definitely not just obsidian, though. I can phase through real obsidian easily enough. This stuff is different.
I've only really encountered two things I can't phase through: Buildings in the ghost zone, and the ghost shield my parents invented. This feels remarkably like the latter, though my fingertips can feel the texture on the side of the black wall (which is pretty much 'glass'). If it were an energy shield, I'd feel a wall of pinprick sparks shocking me, pushing me away.
Nope, this stuff is just solid matter with strange properties. The door it is then, I suppose. I can only hope that they haven't managed to copy this... obsidian stone, whatever it is.
I step back out of the wall and take a furtive glance at the door. It has fancy electronic locks. Biometrics that look even more in-depth then what I saw at the door to the... Clonequarium... Goddamnit Gendo... Carefully, I inch forward. Very slowly, I push my hand into the door and... through! Yes! NERV probably built this door, and apparently didn't make it with the spooky black magic glass that the walls are made of.
More good news: NERV still can't stop me. My eyes phase through the door, and what I see is quite possibly even more disgusting then the Clonequarium. Though thankfully, not on a personal level.
I step inside fully and I smile. I've found what I was looking for. Revelation.
A sick parody of the geofront stretches out underground. A great, seemingly perfect dome rises high up in the sky over a lake of LCL. In the center of the lake, a small island. On it, a size-fits-Evangelion metal crucifixion cross. And on that cross, well...
Revelation number one. LCL is blood. Blood from that thing.
I breathe out cold air again. It's ghost sense, linked to frost control. And it seems to be going off the charts. I wonder what my phone would measure if I stuck it near the giant pale monster in the middle of the lake.
It really is as big as an Evangelion, or even bigger. White meat the color of paper, or Ayanami's skin. It has arms. Seems to have something strapped to its face.
I kick off into a hover. Now that I know LCL is blood, I am not wading through the stuff. The higher vantage point manages to show me where the blood is coming from. The enormous humanoid seems to be missing its legs. And there's dozens of different human-sized legs growing out of the gap.
There's also some blood flowing from its crucified palms. Huh, it really has been nailed to the cross. So they're milking it for its LCL, or is there more to this?
NERV probably cruxified this thing. If not NERV, then the people who came before them. The cross, gargantuan as it may be, is made of steel. Not the black crystal that this Geofront-under-the-geofront seems to be made of.
My mind scrolls across different viewpoints of the situation, zooming out.
Realization crystallizes in my head. A ginormous black crystal sphere or dome, deep, deep underground. Unidentified materials, stone and what looks like meat growing on the ground, but no metal. A gargantuan pale, comatose humanoid entity within. ...Wearing a mask.
Yeah, this is the motherlode. It's obviously a space alien or something similar, and Tokyo-3 is built on top of its UFO.
This is the answer.
But then what is the question?
I glance over to the spurts of LCL and the legs growing out of the white humanoid.
One thing's for sure, from the looks of it, this is where thye got the biologicals for the Evangelions. NERV's got an Angel in their basement. I grin wryly. No wonder they didn't tell anyone.
"Lilith is what we call her." An older man's voice interrupts my murmur. My mind is shocked back to reality by the interruption. I have edged dangerously close to... Lilith, I suppose.
And I'm now hovering in the air only two meters above its chest.
"Don't touch the Lance. It helps contain her. " The voice shouts with a grave undertone. I look at the source of the noise...
The big-as-huge door seems to have openened (odd, I'd expected it to make more noise) and Kozo Fuyutsuki is standing in the (gargantuan) doorframe scowling at me.
"What Lance?" I ask, mildly annoyed. All I can see is Lilith on her cross, bleeding LCL at NERV's behest. It's mask is... wait a sec... why can't I see the left side of Lilith's face?
...Why is there a great big vertical blind spot in my field of view? 'Lance' he says. Lances impaling people who are horizontal tend to be vertical, no? And there's a very large line of vertical, including the side of Lilith's mask, that I can't see. I glance at the sleeping Old One and frown. Very impressive. Very scary.
"Um..." I exclaim hesitantly. "Lilith may or may not have gotten into my head. I can't see the Lance you're discribing, but I can see that I can't see it." I call out to him with a pang of slow dread.
Fuyutsuki flinches for an instant, before clearing his throat and shouting at me. "Considering you can apparently fly, I suggest you join me outside!" He yells across the lake, a little bit of fear creeping into his prim demeanour. But still, the man is as polite as ever. I shake myself free from Lilith's apparent grip on me and join Fuyutsuki on the other side of the doors, which promptly close.
The old professor and I glare at eachother.
"How did you know I was here?" I ask, more annoyed then anything else.
He chuckles dryly and looks me in the eyes. "We were tracking you ever since your return earlier today. Around the Children's school, around NERV. I presume you've seen the, er, facilities where Rei was born?"
I look away. Not angry at him, suprisingly enough. Maybe because he's the philosophy guy, not the science guy and thus not directly responsible. But... "You have to realize that what you've been doing is at the very least morally reprehensible? That I nearly blew up the lab just from my first impressions?" I emplore, gesticulating wildly.
Fuyutsuki sighs and walks toward me, annoyance obvious. "I did warn you when you arrived here, Fenton." He looks away, seemingly looking toward the clone lab. "We do things here that are not palatable, but we do them for the right reasons!" He exclaims firmly, turning back to me with a harsh frown.
For the first time in almost ten years, the old professor is angry. For the first time since he stopped teaching, not coincidentally. "I warned you," he continues, "that your tourism could not endanger NERV or we would take measures."
I glare right back into the old man's eyes. He can pretend he has the moral high ground, but I've been going through NERV's paperwork. Means to an end my ass.
"You can walk away from me and I won't be able to stop you, not right away." He continues rather more calmly, but still with an undercurrent of indignant fury. "You can try and continue your blind wanderings, continue your disruption of Ikari's plans thinking you're 'helping' " And now he's using airquotes.
Here we are, a thirty-year-old man and a sixty-year-old man, standing on our moral stripes, shouting at eachother, while the blood of the atrocity behind the door dries on our boots.
"No, you can't stop me, a first for NERV, no?" I spit back at him, playing up my arrogance. "And where's Ikari, hm?" I ask smugly.
Fuyutsuki smiles faux-serenely. "Ikari is somewhere safe. We've seen you subvert his guards, remember? A tactical retreat isn't cowardice, don't try and play games with us, Fenton."
Okay then, here's what I really want to know: "Why are you doing what Ikari says?" I shout, emphasizing just how baffled I am. "If what I've seen in the files and in this dark hell is any indication, the man has no scrupules, no soul!"
"And Akagi is his pet mad scientist!"I continue, irate." I don't care you're letting this happen to 'save the earth'. " I airquote in a crude imitation of his accent, "What you're doing is EVIL. The ends can't possibly justify the means in this! There has to be a better way!"
The old man exhales sharply and scowls. He shouts at me, his voice louder with each word. "I tried to be kind about this. Reasonable. I sought you out to reason with you. You are a child, trying to do the job of adults and you are destroying what we. Have. Built!" He stomps his foot, punctuating those last three words.
"Built?" I exclaim sarcastically and equally loud. "Built on the bones of Naoko Akagi, Kyoko Zeppelin (cool name) Soryu and doctor Katsuragi, who was caught in the blast of Second Fucking Impact!" A shockwave of cold air bowls Fuyutsuki off his feet. I stride toward him. "NERV caused this. All of this!" I snarl. "You are, indirectly as it may be, responsibe for their deaths, the deaths of MY PARENTS, and three BILLION screaming faces neither of us will ever see!"
I spit on the ground next to him. "Ends and means... Shut the fuck up. I read the GEHIRN files, all the way back to your signature on Yui Ikari's first grants."
Fuyutsuki just looks at me, face unreadable. He scrabbles up off the cave floor, straightens his coat... "And yet still I believe the ends justify the means." He states flatly, barely restrained fury bubbling beneath the surface. "You don't understand, Fenton. You simply don't."
"And what-" I start, before a loud siren interrupts me. "Warning, Pattern Blue detected. Warning, Pattern Blue detected. Warning, Pa-" The synth voice repeats.
I glance from the corner of my eye at Fuyutsuki, who seems to be looking at me expectantly. "Truce?" I ask with a tired smile, holding out my hand. "Of course." The tired old man replies gallantly and shakes my hand.
I grin. "I'm guessing Pattern Blue means Angel?" Fuyutsuki nods. "Okay then. Hold on!" I shout. Before he can react, I wrap my other arm around him, shift us both into intangibility and shoot upward toward Central Dogma. It's exhausting to fly with a passenger in human form, but I don't want to make the Angel aware of my full power just yet.
Fuyutsuki and I shoot upward at phenomenal speeds. Roughly once every second, we see a ceiling come into view as our eyes phase through a floor, only to shoot through that ceiling an instant later.
I fly us up through the vast vertical tendril system of one of the MAGI. I've done it three times by now, but Fuyutsuki's a little rattled by the experience. He sees wires and what can best be described as LCL-soaked innards sail past and through his eyes. Understandably, he squirms in my arms.
No, I don't know how eyes work when intangible inside objects either. I'm guessing here, but phasing may provide me with some phantom imitation of my normal senses. Pun fully intended.
We arrive at our destination. I allow Fuyutsuki to realize the rollercoaster of doom has come to a full and complete stop and let him let go of me gently. Both Akagi and Misato are trying not to burst into laughter at the sight of the nauseous and vertigo-struck Fuyutsuki swaggering to the door.
I notice the women and wave faux-meekly. "Ehm... hi. Went spying. I was in the middle of something with Fuyutsuki here, but... Angel?" I ask Misato, trying not to look at Akagi, who doubtlessly had a part to play in what I've seen down there.
"The Angel seems to have... appeared out of nowhere. Nothing detectable. First thing we noticed was a building being cut in half by some kind of whip-ribbon, and then the MAGI sounded the alarms." Misato summarizes.
I nod gravely. "The Children?"
"They're changing into their plugsuits." Misato replies.
Without preamble, I turn my body ninety degrees left and start pacing toward the Eva cages and the Pilot locker rooms. As expected, Katsuragi grabs me by the arm to try and stop me. I phase out and pass through her soldier-firm grasp. "Sorry..." I mumble.
It's been quite a day.
Rei's clone tanks.
Lilith screwing with my head.
Fuyutsuki's idiotic devotion...
I'm not in the mood to try and convince you right now, Katsuragi.
These kids don't have to play by NERV's rules anymore, and neither do I.
But I'm not getting away that easily. Before I reach the door, Misato jumps in front of me, arms spread wide to bar my way. She frowns and glares at me. "Every second you spend with the Children is another second where the Angel racks up property damage and looks for stragglers who haven't made it into the shelters yet."
I frown back at her. She does have a point. But I need to talk to Shinji. Maybe I can convince Rei as well. So I sigh deeply, step forward and phase through Misato and through the door behind her. I catch the look of suprise on her face as I step through her, but bite my tongue. It's like she said: She's as bad as Akagi if she lets kids fight for her.
"Shinji!" I call out on the other side of the door. "Ayanami, if you would. Please come here for a second!" I see the shadows of the First and Third Children behind the curtains. They seem to be halfway into putting on their plugsuits.
Both halt for a moment, then quickly continue their suit-up. I guess it's easier for them to finish up then to put their clothes back on. Before the Children can finish, however, the door slams open behind me and Misato steps into the locker room, followed by Akagi and Fuyutsuki. I turn toward her... and get slapped in the face.
"I trusted you!" She hisses, furious. "When I stand in your way, don't go through me with your ghost bullshit!" She shouts at me.
The Children have by this point finished up and have walked over.
I'm still dazed by Misato's slap, and Akagi sees fit to lay into me as well. "If you keep using your supernatural powers to almost literally go over our heads, we will run out of patience. And by 'we' I mean Katsuragi, because I already see you as a liability!"
...She's right. Crap. I messed up. I scratch the back of my head. "Sorry, Katsuragi..." I mumble.
She gives me a noncommital shrug. "Don't ever do it again. Now, you were talking to the Children?"
I turn away from the NERV crew and toward the kids. "I was going to ask you guys not to get into your Evangelions today." I state flatly.
Shinji's eyes flick from me to Misato and back again. He's probably wondering if I'm joking or something.
...Should've went straight to Misato, shouldn't I? Yeah, Can't really ask Shinji to go off my word alone, and I sure as hell ain't gonna tell him why I don't want him to pilot.
I turn to face the Captain and she seems to be very suprised (and a little infuriated) by what I'm asking. My brow furrows and I sigh. "Katsuragi, trust me on this one, please." I all but throw up my hands in frustration.
"The Children have to do this, Danny." She tries to lecture, but I can hear the heavy emphasis she lays on 'have to'. No they don't, Misato.
"Do they?" I ask sarcastically, throwing the still-confuzzled Shinji a sly grin. Time to cut NERV's gordian knot.
Fuyutsuki steps out of Misato's shadow. His eyes narrow and he seems to be studying me. "What kind of solution do you propose, then?" He asks me, half-incredulous.
Raw power can buy you a lot of peace of mind, if you know when to apply it. My face splits into a grin and I look over the Children and the NERV crew. "I think I can kill this Angel for you."
Four gasps, from an astonished Misato, a terrified Ritsuko, a startled Fuyutsuki and a flabbergasted Shinji. Ayanami abstains from the vote, as usual.
"I honestly think it's worth a shot!" I elaborate, still half-begging for Misato to ground Shinji. "It's time I roll up my sleeves and show you what I can do when I actually throw my weight around." I emphasize my statement with a downright bloodthirsty grin and a cartoonish flex.
To tell you the truth, I haven't had the chance to cut loose and wreak havoc in a long time. I don't know if I can actually solo the Angel, but I can theoretically destroy this entire city, so that'll probably carry me pretty far. And if it means I can keep Shinji out of that disgusting parody of motherly love that is the Eva, I will kill it or die trying.
"I'm sure the little tour we took around the most tragic secrets of NERV together didn't have anything at all to do with your decision to try and keep the Children out of the Evangelions?" Fuyutsuki asks sarcastically, making eye contact with Shinji as he does so.
"...Yeeeah..." I admit. "But it's a good a reason as any, isn't it? Compassion?" I snap back at the old man.
"Bad idea." Misato seems to have made up her mind. She kneels to come face-to-face with the Third Child. "Sorry Shinji, but there's things going on we'll have to tell you about later. Or not at all, if Danny's found what I think he's found..." By now, she's probably realized NERV's dirty little secrets are what's lighting a fire under my ass.
Yui Ikari. Inside Unit 01. The revelation would indeed break Shinji's mind, or at the very least keep him from ever getting near Unit 01 again. Fuck only knows what's in Rei's Eva, Unit 00. (Which I haven't seen yet, sadly. Damn thing's been under repairs all the way up until my return this morning).
And now the Captain steps over to me. "I'm sorry Danny, but the Evangelions are launching. They're the only things capable of breaking an AT-field. That is my call and it's final." Misato says, stone-faced. "But..." Her face breaks into a grin. "If you think you can kill the Angel without exposing the Children to combat, feel free to try. If the Angel hands you your ass on a platter..." Her gaze flits to Shinji... "Pardon my french... Then Unit 01 and the refurbished Unit 00 are ready to back you up!"
I smile. That's... actually a very good compromise. "Thanks..." I won't let you down. Any of you. My face slides over skeptical scientist, innocent child, skeptical child, intrigued-looking scientist...
"Right then, now that that's settled..." Misato sing-songs misschievously. "Have an earplug." She moves like lightning, pulling something from her pocket and shoving it into my ear canal. I flinch, but I resist the urge to phase shift. ...A trust exercise, if you will.
Still, OW.
"I'm guessing you're going into battle without a telemetry suite like the one in the Entry Plug, so this will do. Special ops earpiece." She adds. I can see her stifle a chuckle when I cradle my ear. But I deserved as much, and we can't have bad blood between us if we're going to be in a warzone together.
"Are you certain you will not require our assistance, Danny?" Rei asks.
I grin. "I'm certain. The offer is appreciated, but I think I can handle it on my own." I wanted to give the Angel a sucker punch. I wanted to suprise it. But if Katsuragi needs to be convinced, if Shinji needs to be impressed, if Rei wants to be reassured, then...
"I'm going Ghost!" I shout and push my arm out in front of me, fingers splayed.
(Danny Transforms - Teknoman American Theme)
A ring of white light forms around my hand, as usual.
It goes up my arm, leaving the color-inverted ecto-bonded hazmat suit that has served as my superhero getup for years now.
A white glove, but unlike the 'romper' costume of my youth, this glove flares out at the wrist.
A black sleeve covers my arm. I'm not as wiry as I used to be.
The ring of light hits my torso and my other three limbs and starts replacing my normal clothes with the black skintight suit.
I have proper boots now.
The Danny Phantom insignia Sam made for my original costume has also been slapped onto this new design.
My knees, my elbows and chest have been reinforced with a few thin ribs of Fenton-produced everything-resistant steel.
I tried wearing shoulderpads. Didn't work. Not only did I look too much like Vlad, they restrict limb rotation. Did add some steel ribbing on the shoulders, though. Gotta protect the joints, or so Valerie assures me.
And here comes my favourite part. When my eyes reveal themselves as luminescent green, my hair and goatee turn white as snow and (new!) a great big white cape billows into existence behind me.
My cape is attached to the aforementioned shoulder-ribbing by a stud on each side. Double meaning aside, this means that if some fool (looki'n at you, Ember) tries to yoink me by the cape, the cape rips free and I blast them in the face.
Still, I prefer it stays on so I can use it to intimidate and to project force. (I'll show you later.)
It's all over and done in under a second. I throw a nonchelant glance at Katsuragi and wait for what I know is about to happen.
.
.
I don't always update, but when I do, I bring you plenty of material! Chapter 9, coming right up!
If you want, you can find Something Better on Spacebattles (By Joshua Sweetvale, of course...) If you wanna grill me on internal consistency or spoilers, you're free to try!