Chapter 12: Blowback
Misato
The vidscreens scroll over images of Unit 01 and Unit 00 booting up before walking to their catapults. Both have a new accessory bolted to their frame. Well, heh, bolted with explosive bolts of course. In case the encumbrance suddenly becomes a hindrance in the heat of battle...
The First Child has the newly christened 'ectocannon', freshly converted from the experimental positron artillery defense cannon Misato had cajoled from the JDSF. When they started giving her too much lip, she didn't bring up her mandate, oh no. She mentioned that they almost killed her with an N2 mine, and that they owed her. When that didn't do more than draw a blank stare, she added that it would be an excellent, risk-free chance to test their new weapon. The colonel in charge grinned eagerly, and all but rolled out the red carpet for Unit 00 to come claim her weapon.
A blatant lie if there ever was one. And she was NERV, she could get away with it. All Akagi's engineers had kept intact on the army's toy was the outer shell and the magnetic coils, and even those were, in the holoconfrencing American engineer's words "ridiculously inadequate" for the kind of power he and Akagi would be feeding into the gun from Unit 00's core.
Akagi had taken Misato aside and sheepishly admitted that what she and Foley were doing was very dangerous: "We're bypassing the Eva's safeties and drawing power from the core, essentially the Eva's brain."
Misato drew a blank, but quickly recovered. "Worst case scenario?"
"The Eva could burn out its own core in battle, go braindead as it were. We're using Angel biotechnology as an amplifier, on frames that were designed to prevent just that." The relatively young scientist threw a nervous glance at Fuyutsuki. "Don't tell the old man. He knows some of the science, and would start screaming that I'm risking an Impact scenario."
Misato took a step back. Ritsuko sweatdropped and all but lunged at her old best friend.
"WHICH I'm not!" She held up a finger, grimacing nervously. "Honest!"
Misato nodded slowly, cautiously. "Large Hadron Collider sort of thing?" She referenced.
Ritz actually smirked. Her expression went soft for a bit, and she remembered the events from almost ten years ago. College, their final year. Some... guys were coming on to her and Misato both, talking about the Hadron collider, how it would cause a black hole. That this might be their last day on Earth, and that they'd better share it doing something really nice.
Misato, being a Second Impact survivor, paled at the insensitive come-on. But Ritz had grabbed her arm, steadied her, and grinned at her like a feral tiger.
And so the beautiful young tactician had hmmed and hawwed at the two gentlemen telling their tale of bullshit, egging them on to overreach more and more, while every so often the beautiful, brilliant brunette scientist cut in with an 'oh really, but what about... this, or that' Stuff that went over Misato's head, and had the dumb little undergrads skittering for a better answer.
She learned quite a bit about alarmism in physics that night. And laughed her ass off. And a few weeks later, she found Kaji kissing Ritz on her couch, with their hands in eachother's pants.
Ritsuko was still oblivious to Misato's sudden bitterness, smiling blissfully. "Yeah, like that 'doomy gloomy black hole' business. Unit 00 won't have a meltdown. Worst that can happen is it shorting out due to overcharge, but the MAGI and I will deal with that."
Misato could settle for that danger, if the return in firepower was worth it...
The camera panning over Unit 01 wakes Misato from her mulling. A repurposed Space Shuttle's heatshield underside, actually the sole prototype of the Russian Buran megashuttle, used to launch NERV's japan-built satellites, had been attached to Unit 01's arm. A giant improvised kite-shield. If needed, Shinji and the over-engineered Unit 01 will be able to tank the Angel's heat beam for a few seconds, while the other Eva readies itself or, worst comes to worst, retreats.
Emil Ham, formerly known as the Box Ghost, gets a text message on his cell phone. "Stairwell 3C, in a cardboard box. That is, if your daughter didn't disobey me and had a peek..." Half a world away, Vlad Masters returns to the live feed from Tokyo-3, and takes a bite from his cheese sandwich. "This aught to be good."
Shinji, Unit 01's Entry Plug
Two hours of simulated Eva piloting in the Pribnow box, three days a a week. Two fights against Angels.
Unit 01's hand, my hand, grips the handle on the heatshield and throws it over my shoulder.
After the dozens of hours I spent with my Eva, I know its center of balance, its muscles and its movement like they're my own.
It should frighten me, that my Entry Plug is inside a living creature's chest cavity.
I close my eyes and breathe the LCL. Something... something is off, like a plant fiber between my teeth, something niggling at the edge of my awareness.
I've grown to respect Unit 01 for what it is: A very powerful wild beast. It has shown incredible viciousness in battle, without much in the way of strategy. All it wanted, still wants, is to rush in and 'tear shit up' as Danny had put it before throwing his head back and laughing mirthfully.
But I think the Beast and I have come to an understanding. I use my head, try and do the smart thing... And the Eva knows that it will be let off the chain in a position of advantage.
The strange thing is that there's a third presence, like a sheet of ice, between myself and the giant animal of the Eva... And it's like its polar opposite. Moments of lucidity, insight, and a... defensive agression that I'd almost call a panic, as opposed to bloodlust.
A mother's instinct?
Yes.
...
...!
Wait... Did... Who...?
"Uh, Captain Katsuragi, was I talking out loud? Sorry, I was... thinking." I step onto the launch pad beside Unit 00, but the launch bolts don't lock just yet.
"No, Third Child, you weren't audible. The comm system didn't pick any of your... contemplations." Akagi answers in Misato's stead. "But... there are some odd signals passing between you and the Eva."
In the control room, a nervous glance passes from Maya to Misato. "What kind of signals? Is the Eva malfunctioning?" Misato quickly asks.
Ritz shakes her head. "No, I don't think so. It's just some junk data... But..." She furrows her brow. "Maya, come look at this. Does this look like bits of formatted code to you too?"
"I could dial up the resistance on the the Eva core's electrode connectors?" Hyuga suggests, but Misato immedeately shuts him down.
"No, that would mess up Unit 01's reaction times. The mission is a go. Unit 00, Unit 01, prepare to be strapped in!"
I nod my confirmation and move Unit 01's feet into their exact locking positions. There's apparently a radar system in the boots, and I can indeed feel precisely where I need to scoot my house-sized boots.
Unit 01's demonic, elongated head (which looks very striking, very impressive and I think I wouldn't trade it for any other monstrous helmet in the world...) looks over to Unit 00. The Cyclops armored in orange and white.
Rei explained to me a while ago that Unit 00 is more of a testbed, a machine made as a proof-of-concept and a way to test how certain pieces could fit into an Evangelion. Using the knowledge they gained from putting a mock-up Eva together, they built Unit 01, the real prototype. Over-engineered to be able to take a pounding to see what the limits of the Evangelion are. And, thanks to that strength, it can dish it out a lot of physical pain as well.
This is why Rei and I pushed for Unit 00 to be the one to carry the positr- er, ecto beam cannon, which apparently fires the same type of energy attack as Danny. Unit 00 is... a lot more frail than my Eva, and while Rei doesn't have a problem with getting seriously injured in the line of duty... And I've been... convinced... to let her make her own choices on that... Ow... It would risk operational security to have the frailer Eva hold the shield. It helps that Rei's got a lot more experience in Unit 00, and her fine motor control of the Eva's limbs is far better than mine. I can't beat her in a knife fight or a shootout. All Unit 01 has on the pale Eva is brute force. But that usually is enough for me to eke out a few wins.
From what little I've gotten out of Ritsuko, Unit 02 has slightly less armor than me, but is even better optimized for mobility. The acrobat of the trio and the production model, aparently, whatever that means. It seems the scarlet Eva, and its Pilot, will be shipped here over the next two weeks. I'd be happy for the company, a chance for Rei and I to share the burden.
My mind forks back to the first time I fought in Unit 01 we wait for Rei's cannon to charge. It would be a little silly to be shot up to the surface with the cannon not even partially charged, wouldn't it?
Getting thrown into the unknown like that... I was so afraid that I'd fail, that I'd wreck the Eva, that the Angel would kill me and carry on slaughtering everything. I decided I'd give it my best shot anyway... Because... I don't recall where my sudden decision came from... But I remember not feeling alone. I remember standing over Sachiel, united in purpose, and I felt... Not just safe, but important. Like I really could help other people... I think that's what's helped me get over Unit 01's nature.
"Cannon charged to 90%" I hear Maya announce over the radio. Well, not a radio, but saying 'multispectrum cycling transceiver' can get grating. "I am ready." Rei replies placidly. The hum of charged power emanating from Unit 00's backpack is audible to my... audio sensors? ...Unit 01's ears.
I may or may not identify myself with my Evangelion a little too much. And when I see Unit 00, I see Rei. Apparently, it's a side-effect of synchronizing with the Eva. For all her experience, I'm more attuned to Unit 01 then she ever has been to Unit 00, If only by a small margin.
When I asked her how she had such low synch scores, she told me she had limits that I did not. I didn't pry. If it was easy for her to be open about it, she would have told me.
A final brief glance passes between the Evas. On a whim, I give Rei the thumbs-up with Unit-01's hand. A hand the size of a small house.
Unit 00
Rei inclines her head in thanks and agreement with Shinji's sentiment. Unseen, she notices that she is smiling faintly. She had gotten accustomed to catching herself expressing joy over the last few weeks.
She did not know why. Presumably because she had more reason to smile, more reason to be happy. It didn't get in the way of anything, if anything, enjoying her work more on an emotional level made it easier.
Hikari had seen her smiling early today, before Natasha, pseudonym Box Lunch, arrived and caused some upheaval. The perky class representative commented on it, said it made Rei look more alive.
Rei did not know what to make of that comment. Perhaps fate hadn't convicted her to a solitary life. Perhaps young Ikari and his friends would still respect her if they knew her origins.
Perhaps. Aida had called her a hero. And she could do nothing but agree that he was right.
Despite her unique past and her inevitable destiny, right here and right now, there was room for at least a little contemplation, a little appreciation.
Unit 00's cyclopean eye looks up the elevator shaft, into the light. "Once more unto the breach..." is what she would have quoted mentally to herself on any other day... But today...
Misato calls for the Evas to launch and Rei's private thoughts are compressed by the launch catapult's activation. Both Evangelions shoot up to the surface.
'I am a leaf on the wind...' She recalls the film...
The launch rail turns at an angle and Rei sees the flickering of lightning at the end of the shaft rushes toward her. Rain pelts her, and Unit 01/Shinji beside her as they are ejected out onto the Geofront surface.
'Watch me soar...' Eyes open. Locking target.
With a road-shattering crash, Unit 01 lands in a knightly crouch, and behind it, its sister Unit 00 lands more elegantly, catching its fall with its legs. The impact of its boots merely sends rippling cracks through the asphalt. The sniper cannon snaps loose from its backpack and folds forward into the firing position, eerily like a Mobile Suit's artillery cannon.
The stupid grin on Danny and Tucker's face is matched only by doctor Akagi's flustered facepalm. Misato doesn't care about the aesthetic either way, the design works. In his office, the elder Ikari is thinking the same thing.
Supercarrier 'Over the Rainbow'
Somewhere off the coast of Spain, in the officers's mess hall somewhere deep within the gigantic aircraft carrier/battleship hybrid 'Over the Rainbow' Asuka, Kaji and Dani are grinning at the television like idiots, while all the off-duty officers are staring slack-jawed at the high-defintion image of Unit 00 and Unit 01 setting up their sniping position on the approaching Ramiel.
Quietly, Dani stifles a dry chuckle. Every major news channel in the world was offered a front row seat to the top secret spectacle and Dani knows exactly who was responsible: Technus.
The ghost of computers and the internet with the pseudonym of Nikolai Technus had always been nostalgic about the 'old internet' from just before impact.
Unlike most ghosts, he hadn't tried to change who he was and lose his ghostly obsessions.
Mostly because, when the world exploded, the nature of tech and the internet was changed irrevocably as well. And now Technus was the ghost of the new millenium. A dead dream of total freedom.
His frustrations with the changing world, however, did draw him to seek entertainment with Tucker Foley and his supercomputer project...
But now, Dani muses as she nibbles on the tip of her hair, Technus has fallen in love with Unit 01 and is using the internet to spread the gospel and/or set up a global Evangelion fan club.
From what she can tell, he's operating completely independently from the Fenton family, and knowing Vlad's stance on secrecy (two thumbs up) she highly doubts this is one the old vampire's schemes either.
Still, for a loose cannon, 'freedom of information' sure isn't the worse cause to fight for. Heh, global adoration of the Evas (well-deserved!) would be an incredible resource.
If Dani knew Technus's manipulations had sent Touji and Kensuke to film Ramiel, if she knew what was about to happen...
She'dve leaped into the nearest modem and strangled Technus, Bart Simpson style. Not to death, but 99% of the way there...
At the moment, though she is looking at the fleet Admiral, who is in turn looking quite baffled. The old man's squinting eyes are very busy measuring up Unit 00.
The old man raises an eyebrow at Dani, and smiles wryly. "Don't suppose you've ever seen one of these behemoths in an actual fight?" He asks her with an air of amused disbelief.
Dani rolls her eyes. "No, and I see you're making the mistake of thinking Evangelions are just robots, politicians's toys... Let me grab my assistant and we'll enlighten you."
She grins cheekily the Admiral, who raises his eyebrow, confused whether or not to respect her brass brashness or to laugh the young woman out of the mess hall.
"Soryu!" Dani Fenton calls out to the Second Child with misschievous glee, cutting through the din and murmur in the officer's mess.
"Care to explain to the good Admiral why Evangelions can and will obliterate a conventional fleet? Or a Kaijiu..."
She shouts through the mess hall loud enough to draw every single officer's attention. As planned.
Asuka looks up from the television and quickly turns to Kaji, who closes his eyes and inclines his head in a permissive nod.
'Alright...' Asuka thinks, with arrogant passion on the surface and hesitant courage beneath it. She walks up next to Dani and looks up at the Admiral with the same cattish grin as Dani.
A little voice in Asuka's head reminds her that this man must have lived (and fought) through the back end of the Cold War, the cautious stillness of the '90's and the total chaos of the Post-Impact upheaval wars.
And she is now going to tell him about a whole knew kind of war machine.
A thrirteen-and-five-sixth years old genetic biologist whose closest brushes with combat to date (in order of relevance) are: Evangelion sims, Online Halo and StarCraft.
Okidoki. Gulp.
A self-confident sidelong glance at Dani, who returns it in kind.
'Damn...' Asuka thinks. 'How does Dani manage to be so genuinely smug all the time...? Oh, right, she told me. By not doubting and fretting until she actually screws up... I can do that too, I guess.'
Question is, do I want to...?
"Ahem." Asuka clears her throat and the room falls silent, with all eyes on the young redhead.
Yay, more pressure. All these ship captains and deck officers bound together into an archon of military strategy might actually be more experienced together than the good Admiral... But once more unto the breech...
"On the surface, the Evangelions look like giant robots." She points toward the video feed of Unit 01 as seen from the top of a building and remembers walking over her own Eva's chest on bare feet.
"They're not." She smiles, genuine this time, remembering Unit 02's pulsing heart in tune with her own. Her eyes are closed, all there is is the truth and the facts and her clear-as-day views.
She knows what she's talking about, she can break through the stage fright. "Evangelions are biomechanical. Modified human genetic material is used to grow muscles and other organs."
A silent breath. It was hard work, studying for her degree. But she knew the study of genetics and biology applied to her Evangelion and so it was all the more satisfying.
But here comes the frustrating part.
"More than just human materials have been used for the Evangelion. I do not know what, exactly, NERV never told me, but something has been done to the Evangelions's biologicals... By now it's my personal theory... " And of anyonelse who can see a goddamn pattern, she muses... " That NERV has managed to get its hands on Angel genetic material somehow, and intergrated it into the Evas, making them equal in power, at least on the most basic level."
She doesn't notice the absolute quiet. She does notice Dani's amused scoff at Asuka's theory. Asuka briefly opens her eyes and sees Dani's still grinning at her, in that wonderful vicious way.
Okay, so Dani's not laughing at her, but with her at NERV's transparency.
Kaji manages to not choke on his drink. He'd heard Asuka bring up her 'theory' before, ever since Asuka got her hands on the video of Shinji's fight with Sachiel.
He'd tried to dissuage her suspicions but it... eh, didn't work. So silence has become his policy. His ward was scary smart, and he'd almost forgotten it under the constant barrage of awkward come-ons.
"What matters is that the Evangelions are very heavy and very dense, but they do not buckle under their own weight because they are incredibly strong." Asuka says confidently.
"I've done backflips and jiu-jitsu with Unit 02 back in Germany. You know, the thing you're all guarding so closely..." She adds just a little too snidely, so Dani lightly slaps the back of her head, to much laughter.
Resisting the urge to scream at the well-meant light chastisement, Asuka looks around the room.
A few officers are still throwing her skeptical looks. One her two still look a little pissed off at her ill-advised last comment. But most, and especially the Admiral, look intrigued.
They're not looking at her as the thirteen-year-old-girl very interested in the allegedly male pilot of unit 01. They're looking at her as the great Asuka Langley Soryu: Scientist, Eva Pilot, Authority.
Hell, it's about time. She preens. Let's give these folks an encore. ...With a bit of respect this time.
"Imagine my beloved Unit 02 jumping across the bows of your ships, only landing one foot on each and buckling the metal with each leap toward the next one. If it hit the water, it would sink. But it could jump from frigate to frigate to protect them. And if the fleet came under attack, that's exactly what I would do." She scoffs. "If it's a conventional threat, I can just activate my AT-field, my Absolute Territory, a barrier derived from an... eh, poorly understood... branch of biotechnology... and shield you from harm with just an angry thought and a few gigawatts." She states smugly.
"While it's true that the Evangelion is currently stuck on an extension cord, my Eva is going to be retrofitted with an experimental S2 engine as soon as they're getting it to work on Unit 04 in America." In six months, Asuka muses, she'll be able to run and swim from one end of Japan to the other within ten minutes. Presuming, of course, they manage to properly adapt the Evas for water in the time she's at NERV. Heck, she might even get cracking on that herself if she gets bored...
"Speaking of... The AT-field! " She crosses her arms and petulantly blows a lock of hair out of her face before continuing.
"The abbreviation means either Absolute Territory or the Absolute Terror field. I've heard it both ways, and while the latter has a nice ring to it, I prefer the former, 'cuz it's more acurate."
The Admiral nods hesitantly. "Everyone's seen the videos. Twice, if YouTube's accurate with their tally."
An ache at the back of her head reminds Asuka that she's supposed to be afraid of public speaking like this. But she's on a roll here, and she has one more thing to say before letting her fears back in.
"The AT-field isn't just a fancy unbreakable barrier, and I don't use the word 'unbreakable' lightly here. It's an area of space in which the Eva, or the Angel, can bend the laws of physics. I've heard a few things about it being related to the Evas's surreal speed for their size, but I'm not even just talking about mass cancellation here. I'm talking about, theoretically, being able to do anything within the radius of the AT-field. The theory says that within the Absolute Territory, if you applied enough wattage, you would have the power of a god. The only reasons we're not there yet is because we don't have the electricity or the pilot experience to start making the real magic happen." Inspiration hits her and makes her smirk. "Not yet, anway."
Again, Asuka looks around the room. A few jaws are dropped. A few eyebrows are raised. Not everyone quite believes her. In part because she is indeed just a kid and not an experienced fighter pilot being stuffed into the new WunderWaffen.
Incidentally, being of mixed japanese-german ancestry gives you a very interesting perspective on the Second World War.
Officers have started murmuring, captain Dinozzo, the man in charge of her Evangelion, seems to have cracked a joke to his subordinates, who in turn start laughing. Once again, miss Langley Soryu is starting to get that wonderful deer in the headlights feeling gripping her chest. She should have shut up. Or have done better. Do it right, or not at all.
It's at this point that Dani snaps her fingers. "And there you have it. Evangelion masterclass, straight from the badass young Pilot's mouth." She catches the room's attention between her thumb and index finger.
She smiles at Asuka, and raises an eyebrow. "Very well spoken." Asuka nods quietly and sits back down. "Thanks..." She all but whispers. She bites her tongue and tries not to shake. Her vision tints red... But a pair of dress uniform pants walk up to her her, interrupting her panic attack.
The Admiral crouches in front of the young Pilot. "I don't know about all this... AT-field business, kid... But..." He smiles at the clearly upset girl. "Captain Dinozzo is gonna bopped on the back of the head, just like you were back there. Know why?"
Asuka furrows her brow, confused. "Because he laughed at me?"
The Admiral nods. "Because he laughed at someone, not just someone, a kid, who said she'd jump from ship to ship, risking drowning in a very heavy... er, tank with legs..." The naval officer rationalizes to himself, making Asuka crack a grin, and the Admiral grin right back... "And that really is a good thing."
"Also, you can talk a thousand miles an hour..." The Admiral continues wistfully. "You remind me of a young woman I knew when I was in the Investigative Service. She... didn't make it through Impact, but..."
"I'm sorry..." Asuka mumbles empathically.
The grey Admiral sighs. "My point is: Really smart people tend to be too smart for their own good. If you keep second-guessing yourself, you never get anything done. Follow your heart..." He stands back up and a final thought seems to cross his mind. "And stay away from caffeïne!" he warns.
And so the carrier battlegroup's officers begin talking in depth about Tokyo-3 and the Angels... And a certain Captain gets slapped on the back of the head by a certain Admiral.
Asuka too joins in the conversation, taking questions, giving her opinion, sometimes a tactical assessment, but just as much a part of the flow as the others.
Dani's smirking, arms crossed and leaning back against the wall. Vlad and Danny can keep their fancy mind control powers. Dani Phantom's got wiles.
Touji & Kensuke
"Incredible..." Kensuke's camera zooms in on Unit 00's enormous, even for an Eva, rifle. The weapon/particle accelerator's internals start to glow a menacing green. Touji quirks a smirk when he sees Unit 01 tightening its grip on its kiteshield, just as cartoonishly oversized as its companion's gun.
On the outskirts of Tokyo-3, the other side of the city, the Angel Ramiel's slow approach comes to a sudden stop as it notices the Evas and the buildup of unfamilliar power. The dark clouds that surround it momentarily disperse as it simply hangs over the city's evacuated suburbs, absolutely still.
The edges on a corner of its glass body light up, and room is made between them... The utterly implacable Ramiel releases its judgement. The MAGI and the brilliant Ritsuko Akagi immedeately confirm their suspicions: A positron beam. A beam of subatomic particles, the evil twin of electrons, gathered up inside the Angel and blasted outward in a terrifying display of conventional force.
Rei squeezes the trigger on Unit 00's right control stick and the Ecto Beam Cannon shoots out its own coiled stream of green light, this time finely packed superconductive plasma. The Eva bucks upward as its rifle transfers as much momentum as it can into the payload.
Both beams travel at speeds far faster than the eye can process... The energy beams intersect above Tokyo-3's barrier wall... And Ramiel's near-lightspeed positrons punch clean through a very short section of the hundred-metre stream of hypersonic plasma and carry onward to slam into Unit 01's raised AT-field, while the plasma flies onward toward Ramiel's open launch port on a slightly different trajectory.
The positron beam slams into Unit 01's AT-field, igniting a stellar blaze of light on the contact point and sending waves of superheated air rolling off the soul barrier and into the streets.
For Shinji, the pressure on the front of the AT-field is like a vicegrip trying to pop his head like a grape. He focuses on his mantra.
"Protect. Protect. Protect..."
Rei, Tokyo-3, himself...
The beehive barrier around both of the experimental Evangelions strains to hold itself in place, single plates of the field shattering, only to be replaced by new ones tesselating into place. The power draw is immense, and for a moment, Misato below wonders whether or not the generators will be able to sate the Evangelion's hunger for electricity to keep itself going.
But in a twist of fate, the barrage of positrons and the havoc they wreak on the very air they pass through lasts only three-and-a-half seconds. Lasts only until the Ectoplasma burst hits Ramiel right in the open firing slit.
A long flash of light accompanies the incredible transfer of energy onto the Angel's diamondlike exterior, and some of its unfathomable interior workings. Roughly five times as powerful as the positron beam, with all the energy coming loose only after the glorified high-pressure squirt gun hits something, it shatters pieces of the Angel of Thunder's outer layers, sending fragments of the diamondlike substance to blast outward, through the quickly expanding soot cloud.
Shockwaves of force have by this point already sent wracking tears through concrete and pulled apart steel in a three-block area around both the Evas and under Ramiel. The temperature in both Evas's plugs has risen a few degrees, and their armor sizzles in the cold air, but Shinji's AT-field was not breached. Unit 01 briefly falls to its knee, and Shinji swears he hears a woman say 'phew...'
Under the expanding dark cloud enveloping Ramiel's broken corner, the venomous green glow of ectoplasma seeps into the cracks and crevices of the Angel's tarnished sides, not truly decaying them, but making them near-impossible to regenerate.
Within Ramiel, around its core, an enormous toroid particle accelerator tied into Ramiel's Absolute Territory deactivates. While firing its beam, the Angel of Thunder could not raise its AT-field as a shield wall, and relied on its outer shell for protection. An outer shell now crumpled and seared. So now its Absolute Territory falls into place around the Angel, not an orderly cascade, but a haphazard patchwork of octagonal segments desparate to keep another attack from the green beam weapon at bay.
A wounded Ramiel shrieks. The sounds of nails on chalkboard, a crystal wineglass having its finger run over it, a snapping viola string... The Angel, very much alive despite its thick, angular shell marking out just how alien it is to native Earth life, is for a brief moment completely overtaken by the sense of pain. It wasn't supposed to hurt like this! Very quickly, of course, it recovers. It was created for victory, but it would seem victory would be a little more difficult than expected...
Very well then... Once again slowly rotating forward, the Angel of Thunder turns its maimed flank away from the opponent, and its eerie, rainless storm churns back into life. Kensuke keeps filming.
"Hey Bakas." The voice came from behind. Touji twirls around to see Danny, Shinji and Rei's friend, standing on the roof as if he appeared from thin air, arms crossed and glaring at Touji in a scarily serious way.
Touji gasped. "How... did..." Danny flicks his glance over 'Suke. A confused Touji turns toward his best friend. "Wh-"
Kensuke sighs sharply and switches off the camera. "I'm sorry, okay! I'm streaming this footage live over the internet. I'm pretty sure it didn't take the MAGI three seconds to find me. I just... had to get the message out there."
Lightning strikes the lightningrod on the next roof over. Anything any of the three rebellious young men were gonna say to eachother is immedeately extinguished by the sudden realization that the Angel has gotten awful close over the last minute or so. "Uh, yeah... Help!?" Touji pleads all-but-mockingly.
Danny just smirks and with a ring of white light, he... he does a freaking superhero transformation, complete with rings of light. And now Touji sees the version of Danny he and 'Suke had seen fight that ghost girl and that mechsuit woman at lunch. Superman Danny. Touji flinches back, having had too much insanity for the day.
Kensuke, however... "What, no catchphrase?" He asks, as if it's the most normal thing in the world. Though considering two of their classmates/friends are confirmed giant mecha pilots, Touji muses, and they already knew Danny was a freak so, 'Suke may just be better than him getting used to the madness their world had become.
Danny furrows his brow, and is about to answer with a pithy retort. But then his eyes snap open in absolute terror and, on instinct, Touji whirls around once again to see what Danny is gasping at.
Oh. Well, we're dead...
Three pairs of eyes are suddenly looking at a very close Ramiel, the side of its diamond plate splitting open to reveal a VERY bright light, a vertical line, a promise of death. The two schoolkids and the ghost stare right into the white abyss, completely aware of what's about to happen. Like that movie... Independence Day, Touji recalls. Only sideways.
The Angel Ramiel had directed some of its Wrath through a secondary slit on one of its sides, intending to pound the gnat and the building it was standing on into and through the ground before continuing on to blow apart the walking corpses of Angels that had wounded and poisoned him so.
For Touji and Kensuke, the world suddenly went pure white and deafeningly loud. The last thing Touji could hear was the lens on 'Suke's camera shattering into a hundred pieces.