Disclaimer: Neon Genesis Evangelion is the creation of Anno and Gainax. I don't own it, make no claims to it, and am making no profit from this fan fiction. No infringement of copyright is intended. In other words, please don't sue.
Disclaimer: I do not own DC Comics or anything associated with it, and I am making no profit from this fan fiction. No infringement of copyright is intended. In other words, please don't sue.
Chapter Six: There but for the Grace of God…
Only minutes ago, the atmosphere in the Mobile Command Center had been one of weary relief. The three Children and their Evangelions had been plucked from the black maw of the Twelfth Angel, spared from what seemed like inevitable doom thanks to the Blue Beetle. The Angel itself still lived, but it had been motionless, and most of NERV had felt confident that, given enough time, they would figure out a way to destroy it.
But then the Angel had started to change, suddenly becoming a three-dimensional cloud of darkness rather than a two-dimensional black hole, and NERV had realized that this thing wasn't going to give them the luxury of time.
(Oh, this isn't good.) The scarab commented as Ritsuko stared at the expanding mass of otherworldly darkness.
It was all Ritsuko could do to keep from retorting aloud. You have enough processing power to put any computer on this planet to shame, and that's the best thing you can come up with to say?
She could sense the scarab recoiling within her mind, as though it had been stung. Ritsuko instantly felt guilty for blowing up at the scarab when it was herself she was mad at.
There was no doubt in her mind that this was the result of her exposing the Angel to the Bleed while she had rescued the Children, which meant that it was her fault if the Angel now consumed the entire city.
And who's to say it'll stop at the city? She thought grimly. For all I know, it'll keep growing until it swallows the entire Earth!
(And all this is helping… how exactly?) The scarab asked her.
Huh?
(Oh, honestly.) It sounded exasperated, as though it had found itself caught in a conversation with a young child.
Which, considering how immaturely the scarab often behaved, was a bit much, in Ritsuko's opinion.
(Listen, you had no way of knowing that this would happen, you were just concerned with rescuing the pilots.) The scarab said firmly. (This isn't your fault, and feeling guilty about it isn't going to keep the Angel from eating the world like it's a giant blueberry.)
You know, that was a very dramatic and powerful speech until that last part there, Ritsuko replied, suddenly fighting to keep a wry smile from forming on her face, despite the dire situation they were in.
Thanks to her mental connection to it, Ritsuko could sense that the scarab would've been scowling if it had a human face. It might have made some retort, but the voice of the blonde's protégé cut it off before it could.
"Sempai, the MAGI have determined that the Angel is now growing at an exponential rate," Maya reported, worry clearly audible in her voice.
Ritsuko's eyes widened. In her career as a scientist, the blonde had seen more than a few graphs depicting exponential growth. In her mind, she could clearly see just such a graph, the curved line going upwards very slowly at first, barely rising above the x-axis.
Until it hit a certain point and the growth rate abruptly shot up, until that little line was nearly vertical.
If the Angel's allowed to reach that point…
(Bad things will happen.) The scarab finished.
Ritsuko didn't even bother to comment on the scarab's gift for understatement. "We need to scramble the Evangelions, now!" she yelled. "If they don't contain that thing with their AT fields, we're all dead!"
"You heard her!" Misato barked when everyone hesitated, unsure whether they should obey the Project-E chairperson's commands in a combat situation. "Do it!"
"Yes, ma'am!" the crew chorused.
Misato walked up next to the blonde as she continued to oversee the frantic proceedings. "I really don't want to send the Children out after what they've endured," she said, quietly enough that nobody besides Ritsuko would hear her. "Are you sure this is necessary?"
"About as sure as I can be," Ritsuko said. "If the EVAs can't hold the line with their AT Fields, then we'll need to evacuate on the double." She added, heading for the door.
"Where are you going?" Misato asked.
"Back to work," Ritsuko said. "Regardless of whether or not the Children can hold the Angel back, I have a feeling that if I don't figure out what exactly happened to it, and fast, we're all done for."
Thirty minutes later Shinji Ikari was sitting inside the entry plug of Unit One, which was about the last place in the world he wanted to be after what he had just endured. However, when he and his fellow pilots had been ordered to board their Evangelions, Shinji—who at the best of times wasn't a very confrontational person—hadn't had the will to argue.
Asuka had made some noise about it, but even her protests had seemed half-hearted. Shinji couldn't blame her, if she'd seen things similar to what he had witnessed while inside the Twelfth Angel, waiting for the life support systems to fail. Just thinking about it caused him to shiver.
He noticed that the smell of blood inside the plug still seemed particularly strong. That had to be his imagination playing tricks on him, but all the same, Shinji suddenly decided to put all his concentration on the task at hand, rather than think about what he'd experienced earlier.
Unfortunately, that had him focusing on the wall of solid darkness, which was held back from Unit One by the nearly invisible barrier of his AT Field. Asuka and Rei were stationed at separate positions, doing the same. The Angel was currently being forced into a triangular shape by the trio of Evangelions.
Part of him had been terrified at seeing the expanding Angel approach him, and it had taken every bit of his remaining resolve to not send Unit One sprinting in the other direction. If his AT Field had shown any signs of not stopping it, he certainly would have, and any orders to the contrary would be damned.
But it had worked, and for the moment he and the other pilots were holding the line. Or, more accurately, the triangle.
A communications window labeled "FROM MC-01" popped up on his HUD suddenly, showing Misato's face.
"Hey, guys," she said. "How are you doing?"
"I am enduring," Rei reported, another window popping up on Shinji's screen.
"I'm doing just wonderfully," Asuka reported with weary sarcasm, the communications feed from Unit Two joining the others.
"I'm okay, I guess," Shinji said. "I'm starting to feel tired, though."
Keeping an AT Field up with his EVA took a certain mental effort, and Shinji was starting to feel the sort of fatigue that came with concentrating for too long, like he had been studying without a break for hours.
"I just thought I should tell you that Ritsuko and the rest of the scientists are doing everything they can to figure out a way to kill this Angel," Misato said.
"Oh, great, everything's in the hands of Scientist Barbie," Asuka grumbled crabbily.
"Asuka," Misato said, frowning.
"Sorry," the German replied, too drained by her experiences within the Twelfth Angel to really mix it up with the Ops Director.
"Hang in there, guys," Misato said. "We're counting on you."
And with that the conversation ended, and the pilots were left to their dull task once again. Shinji, however, felt a bit better about it; he had faith in Ritsuko, unlike Asuka apparently, and found he was a good bit less worried about the situation now.
You can do it, Ritsuko, he thought.
"You've completely lost it, Ritsuko," Misato said, "you know that, don't you?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about," the blonde replied, not taking her attention off her whiteboard, which she was scribbling upon without pause.
The Ops Director could only quirk an eyebrow in response to that, thinking that if her friend hadn't qualified for the title of "mad scientist" before, she certainly did now. At the very least, she definitely looked the part now.
Ritsuko's normally neat hairdo was badly mussed by her many hours of work out in the wind of the evacuated city's streets, and her labors inside the Angel probably hadn't helped matters. Her hands were smeared with black in dozens of places from the marker she was using to write on her white board, and her once pristine white coat was similarly stained, having been employed by the scientist as an eraser when she'd lost the one that came with the board. There was also a frantic, almost wild look in her green eyes.
And yet she could still make most supermodels feel like an ugly duckling, Misato mused, absently wondering, not for the first time, who had gotten the better item of power.
"Well, for one thing, all your colleagues have abandoned you. Even Maya gave up on trying to follow what you're doing," the Ops Director said, hooking a thumb toward the area where the rest of Tech Division One had regrouped to work on the problem without Ritsuko, after accepting that the Project-E chairperson had gone temporarily insane.
"They were just slowing me down, anyway," Ritsuko replied.
"Also, I seriously doubt anybody but you could even try to understand what's on that thing," Misato added, indicating the whiteboard, "now matter how many fancy degrees they have."
The blonde blinked, took a step back, and then blinked again. The effect of her work in its entirety jarred her. Just about every available centimeter of the thing had been written upon, in a tiny scrawl that was barely legible, even to her. What few spaces were free of mathematical equations were mostly occupied by her artless diagrams of the Angel, though in one spot she had written the word "Time" in bold, thick kanji, followed by several exclamation points.
"Okay," the blonde said, "that's…"
"Disturbing?" Misato suggested.
"Yes, I suppose," Ritsuko agreed reluctantly. "But given the circumstances…"
"I understand," Misato said, and she did. Hell, on one level, she was actually rather touched that Ritsuko had whipped herself up into such a state in the name of defeating the Angel and saving the pilots.
That didn't necessarily mean she was comfortable with it, though.
"The Children couldn't hold the Angel back forever in the best situation, and this definitely isn't it, so I completely understand the need to pull out all the stops here. But are you being, um, productively insane?" the Ops Director asked.
Ritsuko smirked. "Oh, I certainly am," she said. "I think I've figured out how the Angel pulled off its little transformation."
"And?" Misato asked.
"Well, first, a bit about the Bleed," Ritsuko said, after looking around to make sure no one was within earshot of them. "Much of it is still a mystery to me, but one thing I know for sure is that it has certain time warping qualities."
"Time warping qualities?" Misato asked, blinking.
Ritsuko nodded. "The scarab once teleported me there to escape, well, you," she said. "I was in it for only a few moments, but when I returned, it was almost midnight. I had lost several hours."
"Okay, so?" Misato asked, tapping her foot impatiently.
"Don't you see?" Ritsuko asked, that wild gleam back in her eyes. "The Angel's harnessed those properties of the Bleed to suit its own ends! It's using the Bleed's time dilation to cheat causality and to appear in this world seemingly millions—billions!—of times. It seems like it—or "they"—are here simultaneously, but they're not. In reality, they're just so close together in time that we can't tell the difference!"
Misato was silent for a full twenty seconds.
"What?" she asked finally.
"Er, sorry," Ritsuko said, and then paused while figured out how to put her explanation into layman's terms. "The Angel is using the Bleed's weirder properties to allow itself to appear in multiple places at once."
"It looks like it's all in one place to me," Misato said, gesturing toward the mass of pure darkness. "And that doesn't explain how it went from 2-D to 3-D."
"But it does," Ritsuko said. "For all we called the Angel two-dimensional before, it wasn't really, no more than a piece of paper is two-dimensional because it's thin. The Angel always had width, if only 3 nanometers' worth of it."
"And this is important how exactly?" Misato asked.
"Because, the multiple...incarnations of the Angel are stacking themselves on top of one another," Ritsuko said, using her lab coat to wipe clean a spot on her whiteboard and drawing a series of horizontal lines one atop another, until they formed something like a square. "The Angel hasn't transformed, precisely. It's sort of an illusion, but one with teeth. It's a miracle the thing hasn't started 'growing' downwards into the Geofront yet."
Misato squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed her forehead. "Ritsuko, you are giving me the mother of all migraines here," she groaned, "but I don't see how any of this helps us kill that thing."
"Don't you get it?" Ritsuko asked. "The only way the Angel could use the Bleed in such a fashion is if it had submerged its core within it."
"So what does that mean? That we can go in and kill it?" Misato asked eagerly.
"It means that I can go in and kill it," Ritsuko corrected. "You're staying out here, Misato."
"The hell I am!" the Ops Director protested. "You could use my help, Rits. Don't forget who won when we fought."
"Believe me, I haven't," the scientist replied with a grimace, not relishing the memory. "But the Bleed is still largely a mystery to me. I know that I do all right there, but I'm not even sure your ring will protect you in it."
"I can fly into outer-freaking-space with my ring and not even feel chilly," Misato argued. "I'm willing to bet that I'll be okay in this Bleed place."
"And who's going to make sure the Children get to safety if things go south in there?" Ritsuko asked.
That argument brought Misato up short. The Ops Director hesitated.
"I have no idea how great of an area the Angel could potentially cover with its new trick once the pilots are too exhausted to contain it any longer," Ritsuko pressed. "It could consume the whole planet, and at that point, the only one capable of getting anybody to a safe place will be you."
Misato crossed her arms and was silent for a long moment.
"All right," she finally agreed with a gusty sigh. "Go, I'll cover for you again, but don't you dare get yourself killed in there!"
"Thank you," Ritsuko said. "Come with me to find a place where I can switch?" she asked, patting the lump in her coat pocket that was made by the holographic projector.
Misato nodded, and the two women soon found an isolated section of the makeshift base where no eyes, either human or electronic, watched. Ritsuko took out her holo-projector and placed it on the ground. A moment later, holo-Ritsuko appeared.
"Oh, goodie, I get to come out and play again," the blonde's doppelganger noted.
Ritsuko sighed. "Keep an eye on her, Misato."
"Of course."
The black and blue armor then rapidly formed over the blonde's body, covering her form entirely until the Blue Beetle was left standing in Ritsuko Akagi's place.
"Good luck," Misato said.
Ritsuko smiled, but it looked forced. "I think it's safe to say that I'm going to need a good stiff drink after this day is over," she said. "And I also think it's safe to say I'll be entitled to a round from you."
"The drinks will all be on me tonight," Misato promised.
A smirk, more genuine than her earlier attempt at a reassuring smile, appeared on her face. "Careful there, Misato," she said, as wings sprouted from her back and she hovered a feet off the ground, "with the scarab's help, I just might be able to drink you under the table." Then she took off into the sky.
"Fat chance," Misato scoffed, but Blue Beetle was already long gone.
She and holo-Ritsuko stood there, alone and silent, for several long moments.
"So," holo-Ritsuko finally broke the quiet, "you look stressed. Want a cigarette?" she asked, pulling an illusionary pack of smokes out of her equally illusionary pocket.
"Uh, no thanks," Misato said.
"C'mon, they only give you holographic cancer," holo-Ritsuko said.
Misato ignored the hologram, knowing from experience that she wouldn't be nearly as witty once the real Ritsuko was forced to sever contact with her. She gazed off into the distance, watching the Blue Beetle. The insectoid superwoman flew over NERV's hastily thrown together field base, gaining the attention of several technicians and grunt workers alike as she did, causing them to look skyward and point. Then the Blue Beetle headed for the Angel, and, mere moments before she flew straight into it, she dived into the Bleed and vanished with a brief flash of azure light.
"Well, I can honestly say that I would have been perfectly content not coming back here again," Blue Beetle commented as she flew through the beautiful but eerie whirl of colors that was the Bleed. "Any reading on where the Angel's core is yet?"
(No, not yet, but the Bleed's a big place. It'll take some time to scan it all.) The scarab replied.
The bug's mental voice sounded unusually pensive, something Ritsuko more sensed over their link rather than "heard." She frowned.
"Something wrong?" she asked. "I thought you'd be happy. We are looking for a fight right now, after all."
(Oh, I am happy about that.) The scarab assured her. (I'm just… confused.)
"About what?" Blue Beetle asked.
(Why did you deceive Misato? I thought she was your friend.)
"I didn't lie to Misato," Blue Beetle replied defensively.
(No, but you weren't exactly honest with her, either. You held back things. Some might even call it a…) The scarab searched her mind for the appropriate phrase. (A lie of omission.)
That Blue Beetle was forced to admit was true; she had kept things back from Misato, mostly out of her desire to see the Green Lantern sit this battle out.
The sapphire superwoman didn't expect the upcoming event to be at all easy.
Not long ago, she'd believed that the Twelfth Angel was basically a giant Venus flytrap. It was deadly if you got caught in it, and it certainly responded to stimuli (just the memory of the visions it had assailed her with were enough to make her shiver), but its failure to adapt and try different tactics had made her believe it didn't have much more in the way of brains than the carnivorous plant did.
Now she knew better. No dumb beast, no matter how powerful, could have pulled off the trick that the Angel did with the Bleed. It was intelligent, and she could only guess at what it would do to try and stop her from killing it.
And she didn't tell Misato that part, because she knew her friend would insist on coming if she knew.
She didn't want Misato to be a part of such a dangerous and unpredictable battle. People like Ritsuko—a mad scientist who had been so weak and needy that she'd helped Gendo Ikari commit some truly heinous acts, for nothing more than the illusion of affection—should be the ones who had to brave such great perils to make things right, not naïve, good-hearted souls like Misato.
(But you were fine with taking me along for the ride.) The scarab pointed out.
"I don't have much of a choice there. Besides, you didn't complain," Blue Beetle pointed out. "Why, do actually want to not fight?"
(Hell no!) The scarab replied at once. (I was just saying that…) It trailed off.
"What?" Blue Beetle asked.
(I've detected the Angel's core.)
"Tell me the way," Blue Beetle said.
The scarab obliged her, and she was soon flying through the extra-dimensional 'soup' of the Bleed at top speed. It wasn't long before the core of the Angel came into view, a crimson sphere the size of a truck floating all alone in the bizarre nether-realm. There was none of that profound darkness around it, and it looked perfectly harmless.
So, even though she knew better, Blue Beetle dared to hope that the task before her would be a simple one.
"Say, scarab?" she spoke.
(Yes?)
"You know all those insane weapons you have, that I never let you use because I don't want to kill people?" she asked.
(Yes.) It replied. It would've been breathless with anticipation, if its respiration system resembled that of a human in the slightest.
"I think now might be the time to use one of them," Blue Beetle said, a smile forming on her face.
The scarab's gleeful bloodlust was apparently contagious.
(Yes!) The scarab exclaimed, and the armor over Blue Beetle's arm warped and shifted, transforming into the biggest piece of artillery she'd seen the armor manifest yet. (Singularity Canon ready!)
A targeting reticule appeared on Blue Beetle's HUD, and she easily acquired a lock on the unmoving red sphere. Her weapon released a deliciously malevolent hum as she prepared to fire.
…and then it went dead silent.
"Something wrong, scarab?" Blue Beetle asked.
(Uh, well…) It sounded sheepish. (It just occurred to me that it might be a good idea to not use a weapon that will destroy the Bleed and everything in it, including us.)
Blue Beetle resisted the urge to smack herself in the forehead. Or in the back, as that was where the scarab was.
"Yeah, it might be better if you dialed it down a notch," she agreed.
(Right. Switching to Annihilator Beam.) It said, and the weapon on her arm morphed into something that looked a little less devastating.
"All right," Blue Beetle said, leveling her new gun at the core of the Twelfth Angel, "let's—"
And that was when it happened. The Angel's core unleashed a great burst of light, and with it, a huge wave of force. Blue Beetle released a loud cry as she was thrown through the Bleed like a child's toy boat struck by a tidal wave. It took her and the scarab working in concert for a good sixty seconds to stabilize themselves.
"I knew this wouldn't be easy," Blue Beetle grumbled.
(It looks like it's about to get a whole lot harder! Look!) The scarab exclaimed.
The chunk of alien hardware in her back actually forced her to turn her head in the direction it wanted, something that Blue Beetle found more than a tad disconcerting. However, she instantly forgot her annoyance when she laid eyes on what the scarab had so wanted her to be aware of.
A woman was approaching her in the cosmic murk, a woman wearing armor that looked almost exactly like her own, except that it was red and black rather than blue and black.
What the hell? A Red Beetle? What is she—?
The armor covering the right arm of her crimson doppelganger's armor suddenly morphed into a wicked looking weapon that Blue Beetle knew was not the non-lethal suppression rifle.
"Scarab, shields!" she commanded.
The beetle-wing-shaped barriers emerged from her armor just in time to block the path of the beam of crimson death her enemy fired at her, but the force of the blast sent her careening through space once more. She managed to stabilize her flight pattern just in time to look at her counterpart and see the "Red Beetle" preparing for another shot.
"Scarab!"
(On it!) It replied, and a pair of jets appeared on the bottom of the Blue Beetle's boots. One quick pulse was more than enough to remove her from the path of deadly energy, giving her enough time to regroup.
"Look, I don't know who are, but we don't have to fight! We're—"
The Blue Beetle was rudely cut off as her scarlet mirror image fired at her again, forcing her to dodge.
"We don't have to fight!" she yelled.
(Uh, Ritsuko, considering she's trying to kill us, I'd say we do have to fight.) The scarab pointed out.
The Blue Beetle bit back the urge to snap at the scarab. "I won't kill her! Not when I don't even know who she is or why she's doing this," she said instead. "Give me the suppression rifle!"
(That thing is meant for crowd control. It won't do anything to an armored target like her!) The scarab said.
"Damn," Blue Beetle swore, then addressed her foe again. "Look, I don't know why you're trying to kill us, but you have to stop!"
The Red Beetle answered with a wordless growl and another bolt of crimson death. The beam grazed the Blue Beetle's shoulder, tearing off the armor there and leaving the skin beneath badly burned. The sapphire superwoman let out a cry of pain as the scarab quickly got to the task of patching the armor and repairing the wound.
(Ritsuko, we don't have a choice!) The scarab hissed. (We need to take her down hard!)
"No!" she exclaimed, even as the Red Beetle went in for another pass. "I've already committed enough atrocities. I won't murder this woman! For all we know, she's some innocent civilian the Bleed has taken control over!"
(Then how do you plan to survive this?) The scarab demanded as she blocked another blast with her shields, this time having the sense to use her suit's thrusters to keep herself from being sent spinning wildly through space.
"I'm still working on that," the Blue Beetle admitted through clenched teeth. "If only we could figure out who she is and why she's doing this…" Her eyes widened. "Scarab, do you think you can scan her?"
(I can try.) It said gamely, and the Blue Beetle felt it going to work, its alien mind whirling at a pace her own human brain could never even hope to match. Then it stopped abruptly. (Whoa…)
The Red Beetle finally gave up on the guns, and the armor over her arms morphed into a pair of long, wicked looking blades. The Blue Beetle brought her shields up to block the deadly swings, but even so, she was forced to give ground to keep herself from being sliced in two.
"What?" she demanded of the scarab.
(She's us.) The scarab said.
"What?"
(She's us!) The scarab repeated.
"What in the world are you talking about?" Blue Beetle asked. "I guess she looks a little like us, but—"
(No, she's us!) The scarab insisted. (DNA scans indicate that both she and her scarab and are a 100 percent match for you and I! The only thing different is their vibrational wavelength!)
"'Vibrational wavelength'?" Blue Beetle scowled. "In plain Japanese, please!"
(…you know, you really have no right to say that to anyone after the orgy of techno-babble you subjected Misato to.)
"Ugh, tease me later, explain now!" the Blue Beetle exclaimed, as she narrowly avoided being decapitated by her foe.
(She and her scarab are our counterparts from a parallel dimension!) The scarab said.
"You have got to be kidding me," the Blue Beetle said.
(Why do you say that? I told you from the start that the Bleed was the space between dimensions. It must've been easy for the Angel to drag her here from wherever her home is.)
"But why is she defending it?" Blue Beetle asked.
(I don't know.) The scarab said. (But I might know one way of finding out…)
"Then let's do it," the Blue Beetle said.
(Uh, you should know that it'll hurt like hell.)
"When doesn't it?" the Blue Beetle asked, actually cracking a sardonic smile.
(And it might just be a little bit lethal to us.)
"Just tell me what to do," the Blue Beetle growled.
It did. The azure superwoman grimaced. This would hurt, but she was committed now. Reluctantly, she ordered the armor to reabsorb her shields, transforming the parts over her arm into a pair of wicked-looking blades just like the ones her foe wielded.
Back in college, Ritsuko had briefly been a member of the kendo club during her freshman year. It wasn't that she'd had any actual interest in getting hit with sticks, of course, no matter how much armor she had on, but she'd been foolishly infatuated with the team captain. He had barely given her the time of day and had later started dating another student whose rack was almost (but not quite, Ritsuko had noted cattily) on par with Misato's formidable bust.
After that, she would have left the club right away, but that would have made it obvious why she'd joined to begin with. Not wanting to subject herself to more humiliation than she was already feeling, Ritsuko had stayed with the club for the rest of the semester, telling herself it was good exercise as she endured the blows. She had actually been a bit better than awful at the so-called 'sport' by the time she felt she could make her exit from the club with dignity.
And apparently, some old muscle memory from those days remained, because as the dark red blade of her crimson duplicate arced toward her, she nearly parried the blow without giving it a thought.
Or perhaps it was just the old human survival instinct.
Either way, she managed to resist the almost overwhelming urge, instead focusing purely on offense.
Both armored women hit their targets. The Red Beetle's blade pierced the armor by the Blue Beetle's shoulder and sank deeply into her flesh, evicting a loud cry of pain from the sapphire superwoman. The Blue Beetle's strike was less grievous, her blade penetrating the flesh of her counterpart's left biceps far less deeply. Even so, the Red Beetle hissed in pain.
Both combatants then pulled back, almost in unison, red blood dripping from the tips of their weapons.
I guess that went about as well as I could have hoped, the Blue Beetle thought, trying to keep tears of agony from clouding her vision.
"All right, scarab, both of our armors have been breached!" she said through clenched teeth. "Do it!"
(Hacking into enemy scarab's mental interface.) It announced.
"I hope that at least this part doesn't…"
The Blue Beetle never got any further. Her vision blurred terribly, the world wavering sickeningly before her eyes. Then it seemed to disappear entirely, leaving nothing but blackness behind.
For a single, terrifying moment, the Blue Beetle feared that she had died.
Then she saw something in the darkness, a single point of light. A single point of red light.
This was soon joined by dozens more, then hundreds more, then millions more, until there was a whole sky full of red stars before her. Blue Beetle was forcibly reminded of the time she had plunged into the computer mind of the MAGI.
And just like that time, she found herself soaring toward an impossible island in the blackness, though this one was circular rather than the triangular one that had represented the MAGI.
Scarab, are you still with me? She thought as she landed lightly on the ground.
(I'm here.) It answered, its voice unusually hushed.
"Are you having any trouble maintaining our connection here?" she asked.
(No. The other scarab isn't resisting this nearly as hard as it should be.) It answered. (Ritsuko, something is weird here.)
"Yeah, I figured that out already," Blue Beetle replied, looking around at her surroundings.
The whole place was completely white, so much so that it hurt her eyes a bit to look at it. There were a few scattered buildings, all of them unmarked and boasting perfectly straight lines, the very picture of order. However, most of the place was utterly empty. Empty and completely sterile.
The Blue Beetle had no idea what the inside of her mind would look like, but somehow she didn't think it would resemble this place at all. Hell, she'd be less surprised if her mindscape looked like some dark dungeon rather than this barren locale.
"Is my counterpart a completely different person?" she wondered aloud.
(It's possible, but there's definitely something wrong here.) The scarab said, still sounding wary and tentative.
"Well, we're not going to get anywhere just standing here," the Blue Beetle said, and began to walk forward.
She soon approached one of the buildings in this bizarre place. It was just as featureless as all the others around her, but it was by far the largest and seemed to be in the exact center of the white island. She climbed the short flight of steps that led to the front door and entered.
"Oh, as if this wasn't bizarre enough already," the Blue Beetle breathed as she stepped inside.
The interior of the building was just one great chamber, and it mercifully wasn't the same blinding white as everything outside. However, that was about the only positive thing that could be said about it. The walls were all covered in some sort of pale red crystals, their multifaceted walls looking unnaturally smooth.
And, on the far side of the huge room, was the Blue Beetle's counterpart. The other Ritsuko was completely nude and partially embedded in the crystal, her arms and legs covered up to her elbows and knees. Her head was slumped forward, and even though her eyes were open, the green orbs stared into space sightlessly. Most shockingly of all, her head had been shaved completely bald, leaving a huge red scar exposed.
"My god," the Blue Beetle gasped, more than a little disturbed at the sight of someone who looked exactly like her in such a sorry state, "what the hell happened to her?"
Almost in answer, a voice that sounded very familiar suddenly spoke, seeming to come from every direction at once and startling the Blue Beetle.
"A flat tire. Wonderful."
The sapphire superwoman looked around wildly, until she saw the scene that was playing out on every facet of the crystals that surrounded her. It showed a blonde woman in a lab coat who looked like she'd been enduring too much stress, smoking too many cigarettes, and not eating too well of late.
For a very brief moment, the Blue Beetle was unable to think about anything besides how tired, haggard, and middle-aged "she" looked.
God, did I really look that awful before the scarab decided to make me look exactly the way I always wanted to? She wondered, appalled.
Then more important matters quickly entered her mind. She watched silently as the image of herself went to the trunk of the car, clearly getting ready to replace the useless tire with the spare.
"Unless I don't have a jack!"
This is right after the Tenth Angel was defeated, Ritsuko thought, her eyes glued to the image of herself as she tried and failed to call for help. Right before…
(You found me.) The scarab finished softly, as the strange recording showed Ritsuko taking out a cigarette, only to discover that her lighter was dead and to toss the unlit cancer stick away in disgust.
The scientist continued to watch, her gaze never leaving the crystals as the familiar scene played out. The other Ritsuko popped the hood of her car, and then settled down to wait. However, it wasn't long before she seemed to notice something in the grass by the side of the road.
It was a scarab that appeared to be made out of stone.
Red stone.
Just like I suspected, that isn't me up there, it's her, Blue Beetle thought, glancing over at her pitiful looking counterpart.
She continued to watch as the other Ritsuko's life played out before her, taking in months' worth of events. Of course, logically that should have taken months itself, but in this realm of the mind it felt like, and was, mere moments. In some dim corner of her own mind, the scientist surmised that none of this was really here, exactly; the sounds and images before her were just how her brain was choosing the process all of the data from the weird connection she'd established with her other self, much like when she'd linked her brain with the MAGI.
The rest of her mind was focused on the familiar story unfolding before her eyes. She watched that other Ritsuko's early struggles with the scarab, before she managed to repair it, followed by her first misadventures as a superwoman. She watched the other Ritsuko roll out of bed one morning and realize that she suddenly had the perfect body and the genuinely blond hair she'd always desired. She watched the other Ritsuko decide to try and use the scarab's powers to atone for all the evils she had been an accessory to. She watched the other Ritsuko encounter the Green Lantern, eventually doing battle with her and losing.
Her counterpart's superwoman name had been the Scarlet Scarab, but other than that and the different color of her armor, she seemed to have lived the exact same life as Ritsuko Akagi, a.k.a. the Blue Beetle.
Or at least, she did up to a point.
The scene displayed in the crystals shifted to one the Blue Beetle didn't recognize. Her counterpart and Gendo stood in one of the many dark rooms of Terminal Dogma. The other Ritsuko looked impatient.
"You wanted to speak with me in private, Commander?" she asked, crossing her arms over her chest.
"Hmm, yes," Gendo replied, looking like he was barely paying her any attention. He wasn't even looking directly at her, but was instead staring off into space.
"Well?" the other Ritsuko asked.
"Tell me, Dr. Akagi, did you really believe you'd get away with it?" Gendo asked in an off-handed tone.
"Get away with what, sir?" the other Ritsuko asked, her voice trembling.
"Don't play dumb with me," Gendo said sharply. "I know that you're the Scarlet Scarab."
The other Ritsuko's face hardened, and the armor appeared over her arm, soon transforming into a weapon that was not the non-lethal suppression rifle. She leveled it at the Commander. "I didn't want to take the direct approach like this."
Gendo was completely unfazed by having a gun in his face, and it soon became apparent why. He pressed the button on a small remote control he'd held concealed in his gloved hand, one which neither Ritsuko had noticed until now.
Lightning leaped from emitters hidden in the walls, one of them right in the place where Gendo had been staring earlier. Blue Beetle was startled, surprised by the sudden, violent assault, and she only belatedly realized it wasn't really lightning that was blasting her counterpart. More like some kind of supped-up taser.
Although, it almost might as well have been lightning; it was certainly effective enough. The other Ritsuko collapsed to the floor, and the crystals all went dark. For a moment, Blue Beetle believed that the show was over, but then a thin line of light broke through the gloom.
The door to the holding cell where the other Ritsuko was apparently being kept opened, allowing Gendo access. A pair of Section Two thugs were right behind him, ready to intervene should she choose to try and attack him.
"I'm guessing you've deduced from the pain in your back and the absence of the organism's voice in your mind that I've had your friend removed from your body," Gendo began.
The other Ritsuko just glared hatefully up at him.
Gendo didn't seem to mind. "As you might expect, I was very intrigued by this strange object which gave you such formidable abilities," he continued. "However, my experiments with it have yet to bear fruit."
The other Ritsuko smirked grimly. "Of course not. It's an intelligent creature, you bastard. It won't just empower anybody you want it to."
Gendo was still unperturbed. "So it would seem," he agreed. "Apparently, it only wants you."
"Give it to me, and I'll use its power to help you further your scenario," the other Ritsuko promised with an obvious lack of sincerity, a bitter, sardonic smirk on her face.
"You're joking, of course," Gendo observed needlessly, "but I am not."
He signaled the two Section Two agents, who stepped forward. One of them pulled out a large, wicked looking syringe that was filled with a clear fluid.
"What the hell?" the other Ritsuko exclaimed. "Get away from me!"
She tried to fight off the pair of men in the black suits, but she was weak from the surgery which had removed the scarab from her back. The Section Two agents subdued her easily, and one of them stabbed her with the needle, quickly depressing the plunger.
The crystals went dark again. Blue Beetle found herself waiting with baited breath for the images to come back, but when they did, they were fuzzy, like the picture on a very old and crappy television.
"…the hell?" Blue Beetle wondered aloud.
She didn't particularly want to know what happened next; there was no doubt in her mind that whatever parts of the story she was missing were, they weren't pleasant. Indeed, she felt more than a little ill from what she had learned already.
Yet the Blue Beetle found that, now that she knew as much as did, she had to know the rest. Her curiosity overriding her sense of caution, she walked forward and placed a hand on one of the crystalline walls. She let out a loud gasp, feeling as though she had just grabbed a live power line. And then—
—she found herself laying a bed, staring sightlessly up at the drab, featureless ceiling.
It was at the point that the Blue Beetle should probably have started to panic, especially considering that she seemed unable to move her body, but she didn't. She somehow just knew, the way you knew things in dreams, that she was currently riding along in one of her other self's memories and wasn't going through this herself.
She also now understood why the picture quality had so abruptly deteriorated on the crystals; it was because the quality of the memories themselves had likewise gone south.
She knew, in the same way she knew that she had nothing to be scared about concerning this situation, that the other Ritsuko didn't really understand what was happening around her. Her counterpart could smell the antiseptics, but she couldn't connect that scent with hospitals. She could see that everything was bathed within a soft blue light, but she didn't realize that meant she was almost certainly in the NERV Medical Ward, which always looked that way.
The other Ritsuko was taking in all the stimuli just fine, but she couldn't comprehend the meanings of any of them.
However, the Blue Beetle could, and she was beyond horrified. She could feel a large, cotton bandage wrapped tightly around her counterpart's head. That, combined with the awful scar she knew the other Ritsuko would develop, and the total lack of real thoughts within her head…
Dear God in Heaven, he lobotomized her, Blue Beetle thought.
Before she could get over her shock and horror, the door to the room opened, and the Blue Beetle could hear several people walking into the room. Arms reached out toward her counterpart's limp body and got her into a sitting position, allowing her to lay eyes upon her visitors.
The group consisted of the Commander and a pair of orderlies in white. Gendo Ikari held the red scarab in his hands, and it, too, had been damaged. A long, ugly mark like a scar ran along the length of its body.
The Commander reached behind her, and placed the scarab on the small of her back. This was easy for him to do because she was in one of those hospital gowns that was open at the back, and the Blue Beetle burned with rage and embarrassment on behalf of her other self, who couldn't feel those emotions.
Damaged or not, the scarab crawled beneath her counterpart's skin…
And the Blue Beetle immediately sensed that something resembling thought returned to her other self's head. Connections between bits of data were made, deductions were reached…but it was still wrong. No emotion accompanied any of this; the other Ritsuko's mind was as cold and as dispassionate as that of any computer.
The only thing she felt was a total, unquestioning loyalty toward Gendo Ikari.
The scene shifted abruptly, making the Blue Beetle feel even sicker than she already did. She would have liked very much to get off this ride now, but she seemed stuck. Unable to do much as sigh in resignation at the moment, she settled back to watch the events unfolding before her.
Then fervently wished she could close her eyes.
The Scarlet Scarab was flying through the air above Tokyo-3, in pursuit of another likewise airborne woman. Green light trailed after her quarry like the tail of a comet.
Oh no, the Blue Beetle thought.
"Ritsuko!" Green Lantern yelled. "Please, don't do this!"
The Scarlet Scarab responded with a blast of her yellow laser. The emerald superwoman was barely able to dodge the beam and reluctantly countered with one of her own. However, it was slow and not even an target, an obvious warning shot.
"Don't make me hurt you, Ritsuko!" Green Lantern begged. "Please, I don't know what's happened to you, but I'm sure we can fix it if we work together!"
Oh god, Misato, stop trying to bring me back to the light side of the Force! Blue Beetle pleaded silently, the body of her counterpart now seeming very much like a prison indeed. You handed my ass to me once. Do it again!
But now the Green Lantern knew who lurked beneath the insectoid armor, and she obviously wasn't willing to do battle with nearly the same level of ferocity that she had displayed the first time they had clashed.
The Scarlet Scarab, however, had no such restraints. She again fired her yellow laser, a weapon that Ritsuko knew would sail right through the Green Lantern's protective field as though it wasn't even there.
This time, the Green Lantern wasn't quite fast enough on the dodge, and the beam grazed her right arm, causing her to hiss in pain. Her piercingly jade eyes hardened.
"All right, that's it! Enough Miss Nice Lantern!" the emerald superwoman proclaimed.
Yes! That's it, show no mercy, Misato! Blue Beetle thought, silently cheering her friend on.
Even though she knew on some level how this battle would turn out. How it had to turn out.
Green light erupted from the Lantern's ring, soon taking on the shape of a giant hand. The ring construct reached out and snatched the Scarlet Scarab right out of the sky, the jade fingers wrapping themselves around her tightly and pinning her arms to her sides. The Green Lantern commanded the construct to bring the Scarlet Scarab closer, until the two of them were face to face.
"Damn it, Ritsuko, I don't know what the hell is wrong you, but you and I are going have a nice, long talk until—"
She never got any further. A bubble of golden light bloomed around the Scarlet Scarab, and Blue Beetle realized it was the very same trick she'd used when she'd fought the Green Lantern. The emerald hand holding her was powerless to keep its grip on the Scarlet Scarab now that she was surrounded by yellow light, and she took full advantage of her new freedom.
Before Green Lantern could react, the Scarlet Scarab raised her arm and fired her laser.
No! Blue Beetle thought, but she was powerless to do anything.
The beam of yellow light slammed into the Green Lantern's abdomen, tearing through the emerald gladiator's flesh and emerging from her back without so much as slowing down. Her face paled until she looked almost gray, and her mouth hung open in a long, soundless gasp.
For a brief, horrible moment, the two women just hung in the air, completely silent.
Then the ring flew off the Green Lantern's finger.
"Ring status report," it spoke in a flat, toneless voice. "Green Lantern 2814 deceased. Space sector scan for replacement sentient initiated."
And with that, the ring of power soared away, in search of a new owner.
Without it, the Green Lantern's costume vanished and was replaced with Misato's NERV uniform. The Blue Beetle could only watch helplessly as her best friend's body went tumbling down toward the streets far below.
Reality once more shifted, even as the Blue Beetle tried with all her might to escape this hell. There was apparently one more thing she needed to see.
Mercifully, this scene was brief.
The Scarlet Scarab stood in a dark room that reminded Ritsuko of the chamber where the Commander communicated with SEELE. The secretive cabal was not present, but Gendo was.
Only it wasn't Gendo, the Blue Beetle realized at once. His posture, his attitude, they were both off in subtle ways she couldn't put into words but recognized immediately. And more importantly, he wasn't wearing his usual red shirt beneath his uniform jacket. Instead, the one he had on was adorned with black and white stripes, not unlike the sphere that had hovered about the Eleventh Angel's original form.
Not Gendo, she thought. Not Gendo at all.
"Akagi," the facsimile of the Commander said, a sinister smile appearing on his face. "I need you to destroy the blue one."
There was another flash, and at last, the Blue Beetle returned to herself, staggering back from the crystalline walls. She pulled her hands away from them, now as wary of them as if they were radioactive.
"Oh my God," she gasped. "Oh my God."
(That was horrible.) The scarab said, sounding about as emotionally drained by the experience as she felt.
The Blue Beetle looked up at her pathetic counterpart, still trapped within the red crystal. She looked almost like a hunter's trophy that had been mounted on the wall, or the victim of a crucifixion.
"We have to help her," the Blue Beetle said softly. "Can you repair her brain?"
(Maybe.) The scarab answered doubtfully. (I can try, I guess.)
This response didn't exactly fill her with enthusiasm, but the Blue Beetle was willing to take any chance of restoring this wretched shadow of herself. She walked up to her, and, being careful to avoid touching the crystal again, she placed her hands on either side of the other Ritsuko's scarred head.
"Do your best," she told the scarab softly.
Over their mental link, she could feel the scarab struggling mightily. It couldn't directly repair her counterpart's brain, but had to try and make its own damaged counterpart do the job. This meant that the task was a hell of a lot harder than it would've otherwise been.
But the scarab felt as much sympathy for the Scarlet Scarab and her chunk of alien hardware as the Blue Beetle did, and it gave everything it had to the attempt.
The Blue Beetle's vision suddenly began to blur again, and she realized that she was leaving the mindscape she had spent what felt like an eternity in. She wasn't sure if that was because her scarab had done the job, or if their time there was just up. However, the Blue Beetle kept silent, not wanting to distract her scarab while it went about its important task.
And in her secret heart of hearts, she was just relieved to be leaving this awful place.
A thousand colors, many of which seemed like they shouldn't be capable of existing, assaulted the Blue Beetle's eyes, and her stomach roiled. She was barely able to suppress the urge to vomit.
Then her head began to stop spinning, and the Blue Beetle realized that she was back in the Bleed. There was a dull ache by her shoulder where the Scarlet Scarab had stabbed her, but nothing like the pain that had been present not long ago. Her scarab had apparently healed the wound while she'd been inside the Scarlet Scarab's mind.
Speaking of the Scarlet Scarab, her other-dimensional counterpart appeared to be waking up. She grunted softly and rubbed her head.
"Oh my God," Scarlet Scarab groaned, her voice a thick croak from its long period of disuse. "Oh my God. M-Misato."
Before the Blue Beetle could say anything to try and comfort her other self, there was a low rumbling sound from nearby. The sapphire superwoman looked at the Angel's core just in time to see it flash as it released another pulse.
The two armored women screamed as they were again tossed through the Bleed like a paper airplane caught in a tornado. It was the Blue Beetle who was able to stabilize herself first, and she reached out and grabbed hold of the Scarlet Scarab, bringing her to a stop as well.
"We have to kill that damn thing," she said.
The Scarlet Scarab just stared at her for a second before speaking. "Y-Yes," she stuttered. "Kill." And with that she flew off toward the Angel.
Oh, the Blue Beetle thought, feeling dread rise up inside her. She's not completely fixed, is she?
(It was impossible to entirely restore her mind, or the mind of her scarab.) The scarab answered mournfully.
The Blue Beetle sighed, lowering her head. She supposed that would have been too much to hope for.
(Are you going to let her kill the Angel all by herself?) The scarab asked, shaking her out of her reverie.
"Hell, no," the Blue Beetle replied, taking off after her red counterpart, who was already halfway to the Angel's core.
Catching up to the Scarlet Scarab, the Blue Beetle wasted no time in summoning the annihilator beam weapon, firing a blast of azure death at the ruby sphere and impacting it dead on.
Unfortunately, the core failed to shatter the way it by all rights should have after enduring the brunt of so much destructive energy. Instead, it glowed briefly, blinking for a moment.
And then it spat the blast back out at the Blue Beetle, who was barely able to dodge her own attack redirected at her.
"Damn it," the sapphire superwoman hissed. "Can't any part of this be easy?"
The Scarlet Scarab, however, seemed undeterred by the discovery that energy weapons didn't work against the Angel's core. She flew forward, the armor over her arms transforming into a pair of thick, straight blades, and all but crashed into the sphere, then began stabbing away at it.
At first it seemed like an utterly ineffective assault, but then the Blue Beetle saw little chips of the mysterious material that composed Angels' cores flying about with each strike that her counterpart landed.
Well, I guess that melee weapons always have been more effective than firearms against the Angels, she thought.
Transforming her own gauntlets into blades, she landed on the core as well, and—after saying a brief prayer to a deity she didn't really believe in that the Angel didn't unleash another pulse—she added her efforts to those of her crimson counterpart.
For what felt like forever, the two women hacked away at the core. The Blue Beetle struck again and again with all her strength, but the Scarlet Scarab's blows were more ferocious still. It was like she was unleashing all her hate and sorrow at the enemy before her, even though it had very little to do with her still pitiable state.
So perhaps it was unsurprising that the red bug was the one to strike pay-dirt first, the blade on her right arm finally breaking through the red material and sinking into it several inches.
The Blue Beetle's surge of weary triumph was utterly smothered by terror as she saw blinding white light stream out of the crack. Having seen the final death throes of the Third and Seventh Angels, she knew only too well what it meant when the core of an Angel glowed like that right before its destruction.
"It's going to explode!" the Blue Beetle exclaimed.
The Scarlet Scarab's reaction caught her completely by surprise. The armor over her left arm shifted from the form of a blade to that of an energy weapon, and she fired it at the Blue Beetle from point-blank rage.
The sapphire superwoman let out a loud, undignified squawk of surprise and fear, but the energy blast didn't actually hurt her; her armor proved more than sufficient to protect her. However, the force of the attack did manage to send her flying off the Angel's core.
She managed to come to a stop just in time to observe the Scarlet Scarab change the gun back into a blade and resume her assault on the ruby sphere. The crack began to widen, the shaft of light streaming out of it growing larger and more intense.
"Don't do it!" the Blue Beetle yelled. "You'll die!"
The Scarlet Scarab looked up at her, though she never paused her attacks. "I… I know," she said. "Something's… something's bad with my mind. I… I can't live. Not like this. You go. I'll…I'll kill it."
Blue Beetle opened her mouth to argue, and then stopped herself. It made sense, she realized. Real, logical sense. As a scientist, she had always prided herself on her intelligence, and the idea of being mentally handicapped horrified her; she would never want to live in such a state. And there was no way the Scarlet Scarab could hope to outmaneuver Gendo and save her world when she could only form simple sentences with the greatest of effort. Her best friend was dead by her hand. The Scarlet Scarab had nothing to live for.
All the same, the Blue Beetle hated it. She hated to see a woman who was basically herself surrender after being so badly defeated. She hesitated.
And then the Scarlet Scarab landed a particularly hard blow. Cracks formed all over the core, radiating out from the original breach, and shafts of light pored out of the sphere in all directions.
"Wait!" Blue Beetle exclaimed. "I have to know—"
The core exploded, white light shooting out in all directions. Chunks of red material went flying in directions like shrapnel. The blast would reach the Blue Beetle in less than a second.
So it was a good thing the scarab was quick.
(We're out of here!) It exclaimed, even as it pulled her out of the Bleed.
The next thing the Blue Beetle knew, she was back in the world she had always known, her arm still outstretched toward her counterpart, who was no longer in sight. The pitch dark of the Angel was beneath her, still squashed into the shape of a triangle by the three Evangelions' AT Fields.
What the hell? Why isn't it dead? She wondered. That can't have been for nothing!
Before the scarab could reply, the air itself began to shake, and the swirling mass of darkness beneath her started to writhe. Crackling bolts of red energy were visible within the Angel's void-like body, like lightning visible within a distant storm cloud. Impossibly, cracks formed within the black maw, blood spurting out from them.
And then the Angel just exploded, blood spraying in every direction and painting the whole city a ghastly red. Even the Blue Beetle, high up as she was, had to quickly ascend much further to avoid getting spattered with the stuff.
The Angel was dead at last. As the Blue Beetle watched, the three Evangelions slumped, looking about as weary as their pilots doubtlessly felt after holding the line against the darkness for so long.
Then someone on the ground managed to spot her in the fading light of the day and pointed up at her. Others soon followed suit, and soon the assembled NERV personnel let out a loud cheer for the Blue Beetle.
This was exactly the kind of response she had wanted, the kind that she needed to advance her plan. However, at the moment, she couldn't stand it. She forced herself to wave at everyone and then took off, soon leaving the improvised base behind. With her out of the Bleed, holo-Ritsuko could stand in for her as long as she needed her to.
She finally came to a stop atop a large faux building that was really an enormous weapons turret. Knowing that it would be hours until NERV got around to transforming the city back to its peacetime configuration, she landed on the roof and sat down, her legs dangling over the side.
"…what you did wrong," she whispered.
(What?) The scarab asked.
"I wasn't able to figure out what that other me did wrong," the Blue Beetle said. "Her personal history seemed identical to mine up until the moment Gendo led her into his little trap. For all I know, I've already made the same mistake she did, and Gendo's just taking his time in getting ready to confront me." She tried to lick her lips, which felt as dry as dust, but she was still wearing the armor. "I could still very well end up just like her. My mind shattered, and made into a weapon against everything I've been trying to save."
She and the scarab were both silent for a long moment.
(Ritsuko, I'm sorry.) It spoke up eventually.
"For what?" Blue Beetle asked, frowning slightly.
(If I hadn't wasted time with the wrong weapon, we might have killed the Angel before the Scarlet Scarab showed up.) It explained.
"Don't be sorry about that," Blue Beetle replied softly. "The Angel would've just redirected the attack back at us. Besides, at least this way, she's free of Gendo's control, and her death accomplished something."
They felt silent again. Once more, it was the scarab who spoke first.
(So what are you going to do?) It asked.
The Blue Beetle sighed. She supposed she only had two real options. One was to keep going on as she had been. The other was to run the hell away from Tokyo-3.
One or zero, she thought, and then smirked. God, I'm such a nerd.
The logical choice was clear. If she left, then she all but handed Gendo victory. After all, Misato might have the power to stop him, but she lacked the necessary knowledge. If she stayed, Gendo still might win, but there was a chance that she could emerge victorious, too.
So, the logical choice was obvious. Irrefutable even.
Just like it had been clear that the logical choice was to allow the Scarlet Scarab to sacrifice herself in order to end the life of the Twelfth Angel once and for all.
And just like that instance, while the Blue Beetle could see that her remaining option was continuing to fight the good fight—even now that she'd seen how intensely horrible defeat would be—the prospect of actually doing it didn't exactly fill her with happy feelings.
Author's Notes: This was quite a bit darker than I usually go, but when I had this idea, I felt like I had to go with it. It's not much like what happened in canon, at least.
Before anybody says anything about the high level of pseudo-science in this chapter, I'd like to point out that most of it came straight from the Blue Beetle comic book. Jaime Reyes used the Bleed to appear in three places at once during "Endgame" and he dove into the mind of another person with a scarab in "Sinestro's Reach."
I have to say, I've kind of surprised myself with how much I'm getting into this fic. When I started it, I was writing it for the sake of completeness, and to see if I could write a good story featuring a character whose canon self I don't like. Now I'm finding myself with all these really cool ideas for this story, and I'm really enjoying writing it.
Michael Smith, more than a few people thought my choice of the Blue Beetle was an odd one, and to be honest, if I were to start the SOE2 series over for some reason, I would give serious thought to making Ritsuko into the Atom, and damn the fact that she couldn't really fight the Angels. That said, the decision to make Rits into BB didn't have anything to do with Jaime Reyes; it had to do with the scarab. They've both been used as pawns in someone else's nefarious schemes. Plus, I really felt that Ritsuko needed a voice in her head (like Rei has Lilith in her SOE1 fic), to help her along.
Anyway, enough of my ramblings. Thanks as always to my readers and reviewers, and thanks to my beta reader as well. Now for some fun.
Omakes
The Many Benefits of Kicking the Habit
"You've completely lost it, Ritsuko," Misato said, "you know that, don't you?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about," the blonde replied, not taking her attention off her whiteboard, which she was scribbling upon without pause.
"Well, for one thing, all your colleagues have abandoned you. Even Maya gave up on trying to follow what you're doing," the Ops Director said, hooking a thumb toward the area where the rest of Tech Division One had regrouped to work on the problem without Ritsuko, after accepting that the Project-E chairperson had gone temporarily insane.
"Hmph. Let them. I don't care," she said, her voice gradually increasing in volume. "They think I've gone mad, don't they?"
"Uh…"
"They did! They thought I went mad! MADI say! But I'll show them! I'll show them all! Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!"
Misato waited until her friend finally stopped. "Was there any reason for that?" she asked. "At all?"
"Not really," Ritsuko admitted, suddenly quite calm. "It's just that before the scarab repaired all the damage smoking so much had done to my lungs, I sort of sputter out and start coughing if I tried to do the mad scientist laugh, but now I can go for at a solid minute at a stretch if I want to. And I guess I just take every opportunity I can to do just that."
Misato looked at Ritsuko strangely. "You're weird, you know that?"
"Yes, but I'm also damn sexy, so people will be willing to overlook that," Ritsuko replied as she went back to her calculations.
"…good point," Misato conceded.
Inter-dimensional Unmentionables Thief
(A/N: You need to read the omakes after chapter 14 of orionpax09's Lilith's Herald for this to entirely make sense.)
It was one of the strangest scenes ever witnessed in Tokyo-3, and for the city that hosted NERV, that was really saying something. A tiny old man was running down the street, a massive sack slung over his back. In pursuit of this pint sized culprit was a not-so-jolly green giantess, a girl with feathery, white wings, a young lady clad in red, white, and blue, a demoness riding a huge motorcycle, and several others.
"Woo," Happosai panted, "this was fun at first, but now it's just getting to be too much! Man, that orionpax guy really doesn't let up, does he?"
"Tell me about it," Ghost Rider agreed, even as she gunned the motor on her bike. "I might even feel sorry for you…if you hadn't stolen all my underwear, you damn pervert!"
"Oh boy, time for a quick escape!" Happosai exclaimed. "Let's see if I remember this old ki trick right…"
With a flash of light, the old pervert vanished.
"Well, I can honestly say that I would have been perfectly content not coming back here again," Blue Beetle commented as she flew through the beautiful but eerie whirl of colors that was the Bleed. "Any reading on where the—ooph!"
She was cut off as she collided with something else in the Bleed. Blue Beetle blinked stupidly at the little old man carrying the giant sack.
This place just keeps getting weirder and weirder, she decided.
"Oh, this isn't right," Happosai mused. "Damn, knew I shouldn't have taken that right at Albuquerque…"
"Um, excuse me, sir…?" Blue Beetle said.
The old man's eyes lit up at the sight of her. "Well, hello there, tall, blue, and buxom!" he crowed. "I'll bet you're a real looker underneath that armor!"
"Um, thanks, I guess, but how…"
She never got any further. The old man was suddenly a wild blur of motion all around her. When at last he came to a stop, he was holding a pair of white cotton panties in his fist, a pair that Blue Beetle was very familiar with.
"What?" she squawked, incredulous and indignant at once. "This armor is all one piece, so how did you do that?"
"Trade secret, cutie!" Happosai said, then started to breast stroke through the Bleed, his huge sack tied to his back. He made surprisingly good time.
"Say, scarab?" Blue Beetle spoke as she watched him escaping.
(Yes?)
"You know all those insane weapons you have, that I never let you use because I don't want to kill people?" she asked.
(Yes.) It replied. It would've been breathless with anticipation, if its respiration system resembled that of a human in the slightest.
"I think now might be the time to use one of them," Blue Beetle said, a smile forming on her face.