Chapter 13: Lelouch

I didn't come up with a better plan, and when C.C. did, I wished she hadn't.

The EVAs waited in the middle of a summer day that might have been peaceful if it wasn't for a thousand tons of supernatural malevolence descending from orbit. Birds chirped, gentle breezes whistled across their shoulder pylons…All that nature shit. In the forest around Tokyo-3, two EVAs waited. Shinji's stood still except for an occasional clenching and unclenching of its hands.

Rei's twitched.

And twitched.

And twitched.

Her EVA's fingers picked at the blue armor like a child scratching a scab. Its head alternately jerked and stopped abruptly, as if Rei was trying to plug too many holes with too little willpower to spare. Shinji's EVA watched the performance, until Rei noticed and both EVAs looked away from each other. Shinji's hands clenched faster.

Two circles appeared on the mapscreen and intersected like a Venn diagram, forming a small sliver near the central pyramid. Useless. While the bridge staff fiddled with their reentry trajectories, an old woman trapped in a sixteen-year-old body prepared to give us the Angel's destination. Crisscrossing green lines from the map reflected onto C.C.'s body. Even by teenage standards, she was a small girl.

C.C.'s fingernails clicked on the metal.

"You okay?"

Her eyes opened just enough to glare at me.

"I'm about to connect with a being whose intelligence exceeds mine by absurd orders of magnitude," she said. "If that counts as 'okay'…"

"Sorry."

She sighed and paused with her mouth half open as if she was going to say something. The delay only lasted a moment before her eyes closed again.

"Secure her," Ritsuko said.

The rafters above the bridge echoed with clopping boots as NERV's security filtered in. Safeties flicked off. Scopes focused. As the EVAs waited, men chained C.C.'s wrists and ankles to her chair. The handcuffs glinted every so often when light from the screen fell on them just right.

"Target sighted!" someone yelled. "Distance approximately twenty-five thousand…"

and falling fast…

A faint orange bowl appeared. The Tenth Angel. The color came from a cone of flame that wrapped itself around heaven's messenger as it entered the atmosphere. The upside-down omega-shaped symbol on C.C.'s forehead burned bright white. She screamed. Her handcuffs accompanied the sound with a scrabbling chorus of metal sliding on metal.

Ritsuko's face was impassive as she watched, save for a slight twitch at the corner of her mouth when C.C. started babbling. Or speaking. It could have been either. C.C.'s voice deepened and sped up until it was difficult to tell one syllable from the next.

"OL SONF VORSG GOHO IAD BALT LANSH CALZ VONPHO! SOBRA ZOL ROR I TA NAZPSAD, OD GRAA TA MALPRG; DS HOLQ QAA NOTHOA ZIMZ, OD COMMAH TA NOBLOH ZIEN…"

"Stay away from her," Ritsuko ordered. "And somebody get a recording of this. Aoba? Can you—"

"Already recording."

C.C.'s voice grew louder. It rang against the walls and rebounded until it seemed as if she was screaming from every direction. The resonances had an odd solidity to them; less like sound vibrations than like somebody brushing past you. Misato trained her pistol on C.C.'s forehead. Her knuckles were white.

The water in Hyuga's glass danced and swirled until the glass shattered. Shards scattered across the floor far more widely and uniformly than they should have, like a glass minefield. Other voices joined C.C.'s, except that these whispered. They mumbled in a language that sounded a little like Hebrew, but wasn't. I heard names I'd forgotten years ago.

Hadad. Serapis. Atargatis.

Shadows moved on the walls. The silhouette of a woman with a fish's tail crawled up a column. Her arms skittered like a cockroach's, pulling along a lower half that moved in a slower, pulsating motion that reminded me of an earthworm. Another shadow of a seated man stretched across the ceiling. He reached down and petted some sort of animal with a few extra heads.

"Just as the Qumran Tablet says," Ritsuko said. "'That which shineth as a flame in the midst of your palace…mightier are your voices than the manifold winds…' Huh. Okay then."

She took a deep breath and started chanting.

"Nonci Ds Sonf Babage Od Chis OB Hubardo Tibibp Allar Atraah Od Ef Drix Fafen MIAN…"

Her voice seemed to snap Misato out of her trance. She shook her head slowly as if she was clearing it.

"Rits, what the f--"

"Quiet!"

Misato fell silent. So did the rest of the room. After Ritsuko pronounced the final syllables of whatever she was saying, the shadows vanished and C.C.'s screams stopped echoing. My witch gave an exhausted sob and slumped.

"Well?" Ritsuko said.

C.C. pointed to a spot on the map just above the pyramid. Her hand wavered for a few moments, and then fell as her body slid forward. A tenth of a second later, I was standing over her, shaking her shoulders. Two seconds after that, I'd regained enough control to calmly order the bridge crew to take her to the infirmary.

They didn't move.

"Step away from C.C., Prince Lelouch."

"Excuse me?"

Ritsuko's lips pursed.

"I said step away from her," she said. "There's a strong possibility of contamination—"

I waved at the screen.

"Don't you have a war to fight!?"

Poor choice of words. The Children had a war to fight. We could just watch.

The viewscreen split into two sections: On one side, Rei's EVA lurched toward the impact zone in a motion like an uncoordinated hurdler's. Shinji's progress was smoother. He raced past a blur of buildings and vaulted over telephone wires without breaking stride. From a distance, the falling Angel looked thin and aerodynamic; a falling wafer cut lengthwise from a starfish.

It arrived at the same time that the EVAs did. Its eye stared at the human machine with a look of blissful unconcern as it headed for Unit 01's outstretched arms. Or perhaps that's just my imagination; it's hard to do anything but stare when you don't have eyelids. The Angel looked much thicker up close.

"Spreading AT field," Shinji said.

A wall of orange surged from Unit 01 and leveled the buildings around it. Masonry scattered in an artificial wind at the same time that white hexagons spread above the EVA and blocked the Angel's descent. Briefly. The Angel pushed, and Shinji's Evangelion sank up to its knees in the hill.

"Augh! Rei, I need—"

The Angel's success lasted perhaps seven seconds before Rei sliced through the field and thrust her progressive knife into the core. The globe cracked and darkened. Around it, flesh turned a sickly shade of green.

The Messenger flopped onto the EVAs like an enormous pancake.

"—backup..."

The rest of Shinji's words were drowned out when the Angel's body expanded in a now familiar pattern. I'll give you the CliffNotes version: its skin bubbled, ethereal wings unfolded in one last gesture of defiance that we'd seen eleven times already, and the body erupted in a mushroom cloud.

Now the unusual part: somebody gasped.

At first, I'd thought it was Maya…which seemed a little odd. That's when I turned around and saw C.C.'s hands clutched to her mouth. She was trembling. As usual, I was in complete command of the situation:

"C.C., what…are you--er…what's going—um…?"

Those amber eyes of hers were wider than I'd ever seen them when she looked at me. Her gaze immediately fell to the floor.

"I…I won't run away, Master."

Huh?

"What do you mean?" I said.

Her eyes still glued to the floor, C.C. smiled weakly. It was the same smile that I'd seen from chimps at the Pendragon Zoo and from noblemen in Dad's court. Toadying. Submissive. The pitch of her voice rose, and I could detect tremors in it. She rubbed her handcuffed wrists.

"There's no need—I'm sorry for pointing it out, Master—but you don't need to chain me. Really! I won't run away. I promise. I—Um…even when my last owner…He told you, didn't he? I never ran…."

Misato's brow furrowed. Ritsuko's expression was unreadable—not a poker face, but an odd blend of triumph and worry. And I…

"Oh, shit," I said.


SEELE-01-Lorenz: My condolences.

H.R.M. CdiB: Eh?

SEELE-01-Lorenz: Your daughter.

H.R.M. CdiB: Which one?

SEELE-01-Lorenz: 'Which one?' Ha! How many daughters have you killed recently?

H.R.M. CdiB: None. Her soul is still intact.

SEELE-01-Lorenz: Semantics.

H.R.M. CdiB: Bite your tongue, Prime Minister.