At World's End

S-Michael

Chapter the Sixth

This is the Plot; Listen Up!

Jose Valaskas watched as Rei collapsed, the howling causing her to lose control. Okay…since when can they do that? No matter how well you plan things, and Valaskas was a master strategist, you can never be one hundred percent sure of anything, and this angel's having this ability was not planned for. There was also something telling about how the howl only affected Rei. He wasn't sure what it was telling, though; that was Browne's department. Browne could always tell how the pieces fit together, especially when those pieces were human beings. Many people thought he was psychic, a claim he scoffed at. Valaskas scoffed, too, but there was a bitter edge to his laughter. Over the years, he had been so many things, Christian, Satanist, cultist, Buddhist, even Shinto, to finally end up believing in nothing at all.

Valaskas realized just how close he was to death. This was not the GeoFront. These buildings did not retract into the ground. His life, and the lives of all the HALO personnel in Santiago 2, was in the hands of three children, and the plan he had given them for fighting this monster was flawed. It would all be his fault, if they all died. They'd be dead, HALO would be gutted of it's top-ranking persons and best minds, and Operation Advocate could very well end up derailed with no one at the helm, and it would all be his fault. Valaskas snapped out of it. There was nothing to be done for it at the moment, so he simply put it out of his mind.

The Eva pilots had improvised, however. "Tackle it, Shinji! I'm going for its head!" Asuka shouted. Unit 01 charged it bent over, grabbing it around the waist and bringing the angel to the ground. It kind of looked like a football tackle, but Valaskas didn't watch football, so wasn't sure. Shinji had also pinned its arms to its sides, so Asuka was at liberty to force her way through the AT-Field. It was still howling, though, and every time that Unit 00 spasmed, Valaskas could see Brown wincing. Browne had the mind of a proper sociopath, but not the heart. He had always considered it his deepest failing. The things he endured after Second Impact did that to him, Valaskas thought. He didn't really know; Second Impact was already three years gone by the time they met, and the seeds of Advocate had been sown soon after by the two then-eighteen-year-olds. Just as Asuka was making progress, the angel kicked its way out from under Shinji. Unit 01 went flying, and crashed into a building on the outskirts of Santiago 2. The angel spun and actually slapped Unit 02. If their lives hadn't of depended on the outcome of this battle, it would have been a funny sight. Asuka grappled with the monster, while Shinji got to his feet and charged it again. He got it around the chest, which put Unit 01's hands right on top of the core, as soon as Shinji could force his way past the AT-Field. The angel actually let go of Asuka and grabbed Unit 01 in a similar hold as Shinji had it in (its arms went backwards and forwards with similar ease) while simultaneously kicking off from the ground and grabbing Unit 02's head with its feet.

Fuck; that thing is smart, Valaskas thought as he watched it try to squeeze the life out of its opponents. Asuka was trying to pull the things legs off of her head and Shinji was pounding at it with both fists, to no avail. The Evas stumbled randomly. Then Unit 00's fist shot through the angel, grabbed its core, and pulled it out of the thing's back. It was luck, Valaskas thought, breathing a sigh of relief and unnerved at the same time. If the Evas hadn't stumbled the way they did…if the angel hadn't paused in its howlings at just the right second…well, he didn't like to dwell on "ifs." But it wasn't quite over.

"Rei's life signs are bottoming out! Get her out of there now!"

-

Browne sat outside of Rei's hospital room. His elbows were on his knees and his head was in his hands. He had by now memorized what the floor between his feet looked like. He sighed. The thing was, Browne did not believe in such a thing as objective good and evil. Organisms existed to survive long enough to breed. Human morality was an instinct that had allowed it to master the world, but in the end, it came back down to the law of the jungle. Not even that. Something more primal than that. Less coherent. Do as you will, and it is up to God whether those actions were right or wrong. Browne didn't quite believe in the afterlife, but if it existed, and if he were to be punished for his deeds in life, well, he would face that punishment and accept it. The decent human being he had been, the one he had to suppress in order to survive in the madness that came in the wake of Second Impact, was screaming, crying out with pain at Rei's fate. It was this incredible empathy for his fellow human beings, ironically enough, that was the basis of his talents, which he was using for the purposes of Advocate. It was also the source of the pain which was the reason he shut so much of himself away, seeing sociopathy as a virtue. In a sense, no one who fights in a war survives. In the very same sense, not one single human being on Earth survived Second Impact. Browne had watched his father die in the original cataclysm, had seen his little brother, who had been only twelve at the time, shot dead by Chirac, who still haunted his dreams, even though in the revolt, Browne had strangled him with his bare hands. It hadn't really been murder. Hadn't really been a crime. Those were desperate times, especially in that part of the world. Chirac was the criminal. He had fed on the suffering of others, and after the government had reestablished itself, others like him had gone to the gallows.

Someone walked down the hall, and sat next to him. Browne didn't look up. "Hey, Shinji."

"Hey," Shinji said. "How'd you know it was me?"

"No two people move exactly alike, and so no two people walk exactly alike," Browne said. "The sound of your gait gave you away."

"Oh." And that was the end of the conversation. After a while, Browne stood and left Shinji, left the hospital, in fact.

"Hey, there you are!" Valaskas said. "You're really stressed out over Rei Ayanami."

"I've been getting too close. I just need some emotional distance, is all."

"If anyone can manufacture emotional distance from whole cloth, it is you."

-

Toji tossed a stone at the ocean, trying to make it skip. It skipped once, then went under. He grimaced. Hikari Horaki tossed a stone, and hers got six skips. "Show-off," Toji muttered.

"You'd do better if you weren't in that chair," Hikari said, smiling at her boyfriend.

She handed him another stone, and he prepared for a toss. "Hey, what is that?" he pointed at the horizon. Ships were coming over. An armada.

"I don't get it. We're not a military base," Hikari said.

Then the alarm went off. The one that usually only went off when there was an angel attacking. "We'd better go," Toji said unnecessarily.

Hikari grabbed the handles of Toji's wheelchair, spun, and ran. As she ran into town, she saw that some of the buildings were already lowering into the ground. A missile hit another building. These buildings were tough, being designed to withstand angel attacks (to a point), but still, the missile rattled the windows. There was panic in the streets. Then she heard the sound of cracking bone a split second before she felt it. "Ah!"

"What is it?"

"My foot! Some asshole stepped on me and broke my ankle!" Hikari didn't usually swear, but she didn't usually get her ankle broken, either.

"Get in my lap," Toji barked. Hikari didn't think about it before she did it, and then Toji was wheeling himself to the nearest building, hoping to get there before he got ran over by another panicked passerby, enemy soldiers caught him, the building descended into the ground, or all three. The building's doors began to close! Oh, no! He put everything he had into it, and pushed himself through the closing doors. The next instant, the building began to descend into the GeoFront. Even when the building was locked tight, they could still hear the sound of battle above them. How had this happened?

-

"Tokyo 3 is under attack? How did that happen?" Browne had demanded. Then he had gone off to do whatever it was that he did (Shinji didn't actually care), not that he could actually have done anything about it. Tokyo 3…under attack? Misato, Shinji, and Asuka returned home for the night (and this time, it was night; after all, what was the point of not getting acclimatized? Even if Tokyo 3 wasn't under attack, they'd have to stay until the Evas were repaired and Rei healed).

They got into the same beds they had last night, but then Asuka said, "You and I both know where you want to be, Misato."

"You were pretty pissed off this morning…yesterday afternoon, whatever," Misato said uncertainly.

"You're just going to wait for me to fall asleep and then have sex with him again. Even if you're not, I'd rather not think about you fucking him and then getting back into bed with me, covered in fuck-sweat," Asuka said. "And don't tell me to watch my language. That would be really fucking hypocritical on your part."

Misato got out of her bed and into Shinji's. They hit the lights, sending the room into pitch blackness. With Shinji lying so close to her, on her, in fact, like the spoons position or something, she very much wanted to fuck him, but she also very much didn't want to fuck him in front of Asuka. For one thing, it just wasn't polite. Mainly, though, it was because she didn't want the girl to think that they couldn't control themselves. Once upon a time, before Second Impact, Misato had gone camping on a school trip, and she had the bunk below a girl who just wouldn't not masturbate. Not cool.

It was hard, not fucking him. Just holding him was unnerving. She hadn't had this problem last night, she realized. In fact, she had never had a problem touching him after they have fucked. Before wasn't really a problem either, if fucking was where it was going. It was the touching instead of sex that really got to her. What was the deal with that? It was like…it was like…and then it hit her. An epiphany which explained not only this but her entire sexual history. It was like she was trying to use sex to dirty herself, as a way to rebel from the good girl she had also tried to create for herself when her father died. That was why she had sex early in a relationship. That was why none of her relationships lasted. That was why, even at the beginning of this relationship with Shinji, she hadn't had trouble sleeping with him, just with everything else that went into a relationship. Damn it, he deserved better than that from her. And he'd get it, she promised herself as she drifted off to sleep, hoping she'd remember what she had realized and promised in the morning.

-

The siege of Tokyo 3. That was what they were calling it. No one knew who coined the phrase, but it didn't take long to catch on after the first time Shinji had heard it on the third day of the siege, as it was widespread of the fourth. And now it was the fifth. Between this, Pakistan, and house arrest, he had missed a solid month of school, Shinji realized.

"Hey, can we talk?" Asuka asked, walking towards him. They both stood on a balcony overlooking Santiago 2.

Shinji shrugged. "Sure."

"I realize that I have been something of a jerk about this you and Misato thing…"

"No, you haven't—"

Asuka held up her hand to silence him. "Let me talk, okay? Well, the thing is, it's because I'm jealous she got to you first."

"Uh, pardon?" Shinji couldn't believe his ears.

"You heard me," Asuka said, facing him. "I want you. I normally don't go after taken guys…but fuck it." She came at him, grabbed his face, and kissed him, forcing his mouth open with her tongue.

Shinji pushed her off. "No, Asuka. I…I'm with Misato."

"Really?"

"Really," Shinji stared her down.

Asuka nodded. "Good."

"Good?" Shinji asked, confused.

"I needed to know that you had the force of will not to let someone force themselves on you," Asuka said. "I was especially concerned, because I'd heard of this guy named Kowaru, and you don't strike me as gay."

"You said you wanted me," Shinji protested.

"Uh, yeah, it's called 'acting,' Shinji. Perhaps you've heard of it?" Asuka taunted. "Anyway, because you were able to resist me, I've decided not to tell anyone about you and Misato." She walked away, barely hearing Shinji's mumbled thanks, and she thought, acting. Yes, acting. But it was hardly a strenuous role, she thought, remembering the taste and the feel of Shinji's mouth.

Well, that was weird, thought Shinji. Best go see if Rei was awake.

"When it was talking to me, I saw a room full of angels. Dozens of them, waiting to be released," Rei was saying.

"Are you sure? Did it say anything else?" Browne was asking. Valaskas was also in the room, and he was turning pale.

"There was something else, but I couldn't see it clearly," Rei said. "A structure, and something moving around on it, something really small…" she shook her head. "That's it."

Valaskas left the room at a hurried pace. "I'd better go talk to him," Browne said apologetically, and left. Now it was only Rei and Shinji in the room.

"Hello, Shinji," Rei said.

"Hi," said Shinji.

"Are you still…disturbed by me?"

"I'm sorry about that. You deserve better, being my friend," Shinji said.

"You didn't answer my question."

"I'm trying not to be."

"Come here," Rei said. Shinji walked up to her bedside. Rei reached for him, grabbed his face with her hands, and moved in for the kiss—

"Did Asuka put you up to this?"

"I don't understand," Rei said.

"Never mind. Look, Rei…we can't do this. For all intents and purposes, we're brother and sister," or you're my mom, which is even freakier.

"I do not intend to have your child Shinji, so fail to see what the problem is."

"It's still sick and wrong, even if there aren't going to be any six-fingered retards running around," Shinji protested. "No. Just…no." Besides, I'm seeing someone else.

"Alright, then. Forget I said anything," Rei said, folding her hands in her lap. Shinji had the feeling that he had hurt her, but what the hell was he supposed to do.

-

The world was going to hell, what with the war and the angels and everything. Still, you had to celebrate when you could, and Rei's recovery was a very good reason for celebration for the HALO staff, especially those who were ex-NERV. Browne politely mingled.

He saw Misato and the Eva pilots. Good. There was something he had been meaning to get out of the way. "Hey, Misato, I've been thinking, maybe we should go get some coffee together some time, and if that works out, perhaps we can go on a real date?"

He studied the reactions. Rei didn't seem at all interested. Asuka hid a smile, which Browne concluded to mean that she knew about Shinji and Misato (or whatever was going on). Shinji stiffened, which was what Browne had expected. It was Misato's reaction he was counting on. "Uh, that sounds…lovely, but…uh…I can't right now." He had expected her to say no (not that it wouldn't have been nice if she had said yes), but it was the way in which she said it that was important.

He went for confirmation: "I understand. After all, your boyfriend recently died, didn't he?"

Misato was confused for a second, glanced at Shinji, and then said, "Yeah, Kaji died…" she shook her head, ashamed of herself for using Kaji as an excuse.

She's fucking him. "I understand perfectly. Don't worry, I wasn't really all that serious, anyway." He scanned the room, looking for someone else. "Excuse me, I've got to go." Browne patted Shinji on the head as he walked past. He maneuvered his way to Valaskas. "Hey, I wasn't able to catch up with you earlier."

"I had things to do," Valaskas said. He left the room, and Browne followed, to his annoyance.

"I'll just bet," Browne said.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Valaskas demanded.

"Don't kill Rei. You were the one who messed up. How the fuck was it that that thing could howl at her, anyway? Someone in your department fucked up. Don't kill Rei because you fucked up and she was better than you."

"And you know what I'm thinking, do you?"

Browne gave him a look which said you just said something very stupid, "Dude, I know what everyone is thinking. Don't lie to me; I'm the human lie detector."

"She can talk to those things because she has angel blood, old friend. She's a liability," Valaskas said, getting into the elevator, sweeping his keycard and punching a code. It began to go down. "What if the angels tell her something we don't want her to know?"

"And what has happened as a result of what Rei has discovered?"

"People are scared. More scared than ever. The idea of there being dozens of angels waiting for their chance to attack humanity is scary, and has pushed the envelope of unification. The people are demanding that their governments do whatever it takes to ensure their safety."

"See? It's a good thing for our plans," Browne said. "Don't kill her. She's an innocent."

"Well, aren't you the hypocrite. Have you got any idea how many people have died as a result of the war you were instrumental in starting—how many innocent people? But now that it's someone you know, suddenly the ends don't justify the means anymore?" Valaskas stared him down, and Browne was the first to blink. Valaskas was one of the few people who knew how to push his buttons. "Don't worry, old friend. Soon enough, there will be no more wars. Humanity will be able to direct their energies to other, less wasteful things. Under the proper guidance."

"Speaking of the war, what the fuck happened to Tokyo 3?"

"The Saudis convinced the North Koreans that if the Separatists lost, the UN forces would then go after the neutral nations. I thought you watched the news? The only thing they didn't report was that the Saudis are right about that."

"Why wasn't the North Korean fleet stopped before it was too late?" Browne demanded.

"Believe it or not, I am not responsible for every evil thing that happens in the world. Our spy satellites were busy concentrating on the actual war," Valaskas said. "North Korea is not a country you want to pussyfoot around with. They have the fucking bomb."

Browne nodded.

"So, have you heard the latest accusation lobbed by the Saudis? They're saying that the angels are actually an evil Zionist plot to take over the world. Apparently, they're being mass-produced in a lab in Israel." The two men who were really trying to take over the world looked at each other, and burst out laughing.

Browne smirked. "Anti-Semites. They kill me. Speaking of killing…"

"Don't worry, I'm not going to kill Rei. But remember this, Browne, when it comes back to bite us on the ass." The elevator had gone far below what most people thought was the bottom floor of the building. Only a few dozen people even knew that this floor existed, and only half of them realized what went on down here. Valaskas and Browne entered a giant room, filled with giant monsters. Valaskas shouted, "Somebody check those things for vocal cords, and slice them!"