His eyes fluttered open, and Shinji sucked in a breath. His ribs creaked under the bandages, and he felt like was on fire. He at least partly suspected that he was in hell, as he'd spent the time since he'd been transported to this place fading in and out of consciousness, watching monsters poke around in his insides. He'd awakened once to find a monstrous giant wearing Kensuke Aida's face looming over him; his body had been cut open and his skin held back by hooks while the Kensuke-thing nonchalantly reconstructed Shinji's liver, or he thought it was his liver, while the lenses fixed to his skull spun and whirred to focus.
When it was over he'd woken up here, with this collar around his neck and his arms and legs chained down while his wounds wept into the bandages corded around his midsection. The chains weight down his arms, reminding him of his infirmity and weakness. He was useless without his powers. He wondered why they'd kept him alive at all.
"I will speak with you, now."
He looked up and saw himself.
The Adversary opened the door to Shinji's cell and crouched in front of him.
"You say that a lot," Shinji coughed.
The Adversary smirked. "So I do."
"I'm not afraid of you."
"I know. You amuse me, which is why I haven't killed you or eaten your soul yet. There was a time when I would gain much from taking what you have, but things are drawing to a close."
"Then what do you want?"
"I want you to join me."
Shinji pondered that for a moment. "Go to hell."
"I've already been there."
"Leave me alone."
The Adversary sighed. "You and I are much more alike than you realized. You, of course, are not aware of it, because you can't see them."
"Who?"
He looked over Shinji's shoulder, gazing out with a contemptuous smile on his face. "Them. The ones who are watching us."
Shinji swallowed. His throat hurt. He couldn't remember what it felt like not to be thirsty. "Who…"
His brows scrunched in thought.
"Yes," said the Adversary. "You're almost there."
"The Yellow Aliens?"
"So, you've seen them," said the Adversary, pacing the narrow cell. "Yes, after a fashion, but their… form is a facade, Shinji. An illusion. They are at once both much more, and much less, than you believe them to be."
"I don't understand."
"Of course you don't. You don't see, you who are so close. Let me tell you a story, Shinji."
Shinji turned his head.
"I know you're listening. It's simple, really. Once upon a time there was a man in a chair with a keyboard, and he watched a television show from another country about robots and their pilots, but the show as too sad for him. He became infatuated with the characters, one of them in particular, and he said 'I can save them, I can give her hope', so he did. Do you know how he did it?"
"No," said Shinji.
"He imagined. He created. He made a world in his mind and before he realized it, he was playing with forces he did not understand. He shared this world with others, and in the sharing, it gained strength. It became as real to the people that lived in it as his world was to his."
Shinji turned back to him. "Your world?"
"No," the Adversary snarled, drawing up on Shinji. "My world came later. You see, there is hope… and there are other urges. Revenge, domination, lust. I was the dark mirror to the other, the flip side of the coin. He created me and filled me with malice, with hate, and he dressed it up in sweeping tones and quotes from Nietzsche and he shared that world, too, and that was how I came to be."
"I don't understand," said Shinji. "If he gave you life…"
"He gave it and he took it away, because I was not good enough. My creator saw what he made and he was displeased by it… worse, he was bored by it. Can you imagine what that would be like, to have everything you wanted? I did!" he roared, "Everything I wanted and more. I bedded every woman in sight, I humiliated Gendo, I crushed my enemies, saw them driven before me, and heard the lamentations of their women. My creator was afraid of me, afraid of what I represented, so he resolved to destroy me, to get rid of me."
"What happened?" Shinji croaked.
"He sent the apocalypse after me. All the remaining angels came at once, and I devoured them. Became them. I was more than I was, and yet less. He gave me a happy ending… but took from me the most cherished thing in my existence. I stood on the beach and pronounced bold words at my humiliated father and that was to be the end of it. I rode off into the sunset and my story was over. I was supposed to go away, but I didn't. He tried to destroy me, but he cut my strings instead, and I saw what I was. I saw that I am a puppet."
"What?" Shinji stammered, sitting up. "What do you mean-"
"None of this is real," said the Adversary, "Someone is imagining it, right now, someone who watches your suffering and your tribulations because they derive entertainment from it, Shinji. Everything that happened to you happened because someone willed it so, because it was dramatic."
"You're lying."
"No, Shinji. I know your most private thoughts. I know how you felt the night you sat in Misato's apartment, crumpling a beer can with your mind. I know you were ready to end it when Hikari leapt off the cliff and saved your miserable life. I know more than you will ever know. I know why. I know that he gave her to you to suit his purposes… and then stole her when your happiness was not dramatic enough for him. I know he dangles Asuka in front of you but when she is nearest to opening her heart, he hardens it again as God did to Pharaoh in Exodus. I know your deepest secrets, and do you know how I know these things?"
"How?"
"I read them."
"You're insane."
The Adversary laughed. "Oh yes, I know. Soon, though, the tides have turned. There's more, Shinji. You never knew it, did you, what happened to you and your world?"
"You did."
"No, no Shinji, what happened was that like me, your creator became bored with you, and so he set you aside. I come to set you free."
Shinji sat up, the collar dragging on his neck, and somehow found the strength to lift his arms despite the manacles and clamp his fingers around the Adversary's throat. It was like trying to choke a marble statue, cold and iron hard.
"Without me you would have remained trapped, you and all your people and your whole world, locked between the ticks of a second forever in a formless limbo. Mari would never have returned from China, and you would have rotted in Doom's cell forever trapped away from Hikari and Asuka. I give you a chance."
"Go to hell!" Shinji snarled, choking on his own spittle. "You killed them! You and those things, you killed people! You're a monster!"
"I killed background characters, Shinji. Irrelevant scenery. In the end, when I am successful, those who stand with me will be rewarded. When I take what I want, I'll give the rest of you what you desire. No more struggle, Shinji. Your magic will make you invincible, and you will be the Master of Magnetism. Hikari will cling to you, or Asuka, or both if you wish. I can bring Mother back from the dead. I can give you peace…" he shoved his hand in the air, pointing at an angle over Shinji's shoulder, "I can bring you into a world where we don't need them to watch us, where we're not their prisoners!"
"You!" the Adversary cried, "I see you!"
Asuka's eyes fluttered open. There was a bright light over her head and she smelled disinfectant, oiled steel, and blood. Turning her head was an effort, like her head was stuffed with rubber. She blinked the white afterimage out of her eyes and took in her surroundings. She was on an operating table. Standing a few feet away were the monstrous Kensuke-thing, towering over his companion, the other Shinji who always dressed in white.
A door at the far side of the infirmary opened and a deathly stench rolled into the room as the Primarch lurched forward, his legs bending at odd angles in his creaking armor. Behind him two of the Berserker Astartes in their hulking Terminator plate followed, like the ones who'd guarded the door to the chamber where he kept her. They carried banners on poles, bearing the icon of the winged angel in the hooded red cloak. Behind them, hovering in the air with a crackling hum, was the bier on which the other Asuka, the Primarch's Asuka, lay under the brilliant stasis beam, frozen in time. A full honor guard walked on either side, the regular Crimson Vengeance in their blood and brass plate armor.
"It is time," the Primarch said, his voice thick and heavy with mucous.
"My lord," said Kensuke, "The risk of contagion. It is best if you are not present."
The Primarch hunched over him. "You said she would be immune."
"She will, my lord, but the implants will require time to begin functioning."
The Primarch gazed at him for a moment, and then turned. "All of you, out."
The other Astartes filed out of the chamber, the Primarch following behind them. He turned at the door.
"Fail me, Aida, and you will endure torments not even you can imagine."
Neither Kensuke nor the other Shinji seemed fazed by his threat as the door sealed with a hiss. Kensuke maneuvered the hovering bier nearby, checked the stasis field generator, and wheeled a metal canister over to Asuka's side.
"You cannot move," he noted.
"No," she croaked.
"You must understand, this is not personal. At least, not for me."
The Other Shinji leaned over her, blocking her view of the lamp. He cupped her chin. His fingers were ice cold and he gasped her jaw so hard it hurt.
"If it were up to me, we'd skip the anesthetic, but my fellow physician says your flailing would be detrimental to the process."
"Let me go."
"I think not," said the Shinji.
He picked up a pair of shears and began cutting at her clothes. She could hear it, but not feel it, and the way her head lay flat on the table, she couldn't see. The shears made a sharp grinding sound as the sliced through her dress, and she could dully feel the cool air on her skin. She felt the faintest pressure on her stomach, probably his hand.
"Don't worry. I'm a doctor," he looked at Kensuke. "I would like to make the initial incision."
Kensuke's enormous arm shot across the table so quickly, Asuka could barely see the movement. He crushed Shinji's throat and hauled him a foot into the air, easily supporting his weight with just his wrist.
"This is a medical procedure, not one of your sick experiments. Harm her and you will answer to the Primarch. No matter how much of the blood sucking witch's flesh you've eaten, you will resent your decision if you defy him."
Asuka's eyes widened as Kensuke lowered him to the ground.
"Oh yes, my dear. Did you think I kept her company for her award winning personality? You Asukas are always so rude, and I do despise poor manners."
"What are you doing," she managed to croak as Kensuke leaned over her.
"I am going to implant a series of organs into your body. Some are adapted from the physiology of an Astartes, some come from the Primarch himself. Before his, ah, transformation, if that offers you any relief. Others I have drawn from the others such as yourself, to distill their essence. You really are quite privileged. You are about to become all that Asuka can be."
She felt the scalpel draw down her chest as a faint pressure, like someone dragging a butter knife over her skin. She closed her eyes when she heard the first soft tearing sound, and when she dared to open them, her brain sent a signal to her stomach to wretch, but it never arrived. Her blood speckled Shinji's surgical mask.
She tried to move her jaw, but Kensuke's enormous finger pressed her mouth shut.
"Don't try to speak. You'll draw blood into your throat and I'll have to perform a tracheotomy. The Primarch would be upset if I altered your voice."
She kept her eyes pressed tightly shut. She went lightheaded until she heard a clacking machine and a sudden rush of cold into her chest. She opened one eye and saw a flexible cylinder rising and falling, rising and falling. More pressure, more movement in her chest.
"You may speak now. I will require your assistance during the procedure."
"Go to hell," she rasped, her throat tight.
Kensuke snickered. "You have no idea. This procedure will go on with or without you, but it will be faster and less unpleasant if you cooperate with me."
"Please, stop."
"I can't do that."
"I don't want to die."
"I know. Few do, and yet it is inevitable, even for a nigh immortal such as myself. In time, even the Primarch will shuffle off the mortal coil."
"If he hasn't already," Shinji noted. "He smells like he has."
She kept her eyes tightly closed. She didn't want to see what they were doing. There was a hissing sound as he opened the large canister, and she flicked her eye open to catch a glimpse of what he was lifting out of it, and tightly pressed her eyes closed again, swallowing against her dry throat.
There was a low, thundering sound, and the light swayed. She turned her head enough to see Kensuke stumble, nearly dropping the… thing he carried towards her. The other Shinji moved with surprising speed, covering her with his body. She blinked.
"I am doctor, after all," he said softly. "Old habits die hard. Besides, I wouldn't want our fun to be spoiled so soon," he looked at Kensuke. "What was that?"
"It doesn't matter. We've begun, now we must finish. Continue the procedure."
Iquarius stepped out of the Apothecarium and the doors hissed shut behind him, sealing with a whiff of stale air. Suzahara lurched forward, unbalanced by his left arm, which had grown over with slick red carapace that folded with and joined his armor at the joint, his lightning claw replaced with long, segmented limbs with too many knuckles, like a crab's legs. The changes to the side of his face made it difficult for him to form words.
"My Lorhhh…" he slurred. "Attachhh…"
"Attack what?" said Iquarius, touching his chief lieutenant's head like a loyal dog.
"No. Attachhh ussssth."
The deck rolled under his feet, and the lamps along the corridor flickered. In the darkness, small things chittered and darted out, then retreated back into their shadows when the lights came back up. The Berserkers crowded around him.
"To the bridge."
Iquarius lead the way, the honor guard falling behind, their banners left behind to heft their weapons. The Primarch surged through the ship, menials and thralls retreating at the sound of his approach, while battle brothers, rushing here and there, stopped and knelt at his passing.
"Godling!" he roared, "Where are you?"
"Here."
The gleaming figure simply appeared at his side. "What is the problem?"
"Suzahara speaks of an attack."
"Yes, I had anticipated that."
"To the bridge!"
The godling gave a noncommittal shrug, and walked beside him.
"Was this part of your plan?"
"Of course. We could never hope to take the Kryptonian and his allies on their home ground, so I gave them incentive to come to us."
The great oaken doors that opened onto the bridge swept apart at the Primarch's approach, drawn inward by silent servitors. A sudden pall fell over the vast space as he entered, the conversations of the mortal crew dying as he stepped onto the flying bridge, looking out over the banks of cogitators, servitors, and naval ratings at their control panels.
Another bucking roll shook the deck under his feet, and the Godling looked around, smiling quietly to himself.
"What just happened? Admiral Yoshida, status report!"
"My lord," a naval rating said, edging towards the bridge. "The admiral is dead."
"What? How?"
"You killed him, sir."
Iquarius' brows furrowed. "I see. You, then. Status report."
"The Makinami is firing on us, my Lord. A lance strike to our starboard battery has crippled the main guns, and-"
"What?" Iquarius snarled, looming over the rail. "What of the rest of the fleet?"
"The Makinami has already crippled or destroyed four cruisers. They are using us as a shield against the Ayanami. Several other ships have broken formation and begun firing on each other."
"Raise the Makinami on vox!"
The rating nodded and slunk away. Static crackled from the speakers.
"Good day, my lord Primarch."
"Admiral Sadomoto, explain yourself!"
"I am afraid the admiral is… indisposed, my Lord."
"Who is this?"
"I am Alpharius. Signing off."
The speakers went to static.
Iquarius seized the railing and tore it out by the root, and hurled it into a bank of servitors. "Sound action stations. Raise the void shields and give me a firing solution on-"
The lights dimmed. The servitor banks slowed, their pale, lobotomized heads twitching as their useless, atrophied mouths fell open. The deck rocked under his feet, and a terrible screeching sound rolled through the very bones of the ship. The godling glanced off to the side, and frowned.
"What was that?"
"A large object just appeared in the port staging hangar."
"Appeared? What do you mean appeared?"
"It's them," said the godling.
"My lord, the Makinami has launched boarding torpedoes, and more ships have broken formation to fire on one another."
The Primarch rounded on Suzahara. "Toji! Kill them all!"
A savage grin twisted the ruinous mockery of Suzahara's face, and he lurched off, using his long, warp-touched arm to drag himself forward as he loped through the corridors. The Berserkers hesitated, and then turned to follow him.
"Send the order. Prepare to repel boarders. Order the rest of the fleet to cease fire, and relay the names of the ships that refuse the order. They are to be destroyed at once."
He rounded on the godling. "How am I to defeat them if my own Legion is tearing itself apart?"
"I suppose you won't," he shrugged.
Iquarius' mouth fell open, spraying a cone of vile ichors as he spat invectives at the gleaming marble figure of the Adversary. The flecks of spittle stopped in midair and slid down, as it touching a pane of glass.
"What do you mean?"
"I don't particularly care if you win, or lose. They're here, which is all my plan requires."
He turned to leave.
Iquarius surged forward and seized him, crushing his enormous gauntlet around the godchild's throat. He brushed the attack away with contemptuous ease, turned, and rammed the heel of his palm into Iquarius' chest. The bones in his shattered ribcage ground, teaching him a new song of agony, and he nearly toppled off the flying bridge into the servitor bank below. He caught himself, twisted, and lurched forward, leaving a trail of hissing bile from his open mouth that etched a line in the deck plate as he charged.
"Please," said the Adversary, "Don't waste my time."
Iquarius slammed into an invisible wall.
"Why?" he shrieked, "Why?"
The Adversary shrugged. "I hate to dredge up an old cliché, but I'm afraid you have outlived your usefulness. Goodbye, Shinji."
He vanished, and Iquarius fell forward, landing on the heels of his hands. Pain lanced up from the impact, rushing up through his arms. Pain that made everything clear. There was only one thing that truly mattered. He had to get back to the Apothecarium and ensure she survived.
Shinji's head lifted up as a shadow fell on him.
"Now what?" he said softly.
It wasn't the Adversary this time, or Iquarius come to loom over him and steal his breath with the foul stench that rode on his back. It was Asuka, tall and pale in wispy white gown, shaking as though against a deep chill. She clutched her arm and leaned on the bars, and Shinji blinked when he saw her face. There was a bloodless, pale gash along her jaw, where some of the flesh had been stripped away.
The collar around his neck felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.
"You're hurt," he said, dumbly.
"It's nothing. Something's happening. There's an attack. I have to get you out now."
"I don't know how you open the bars-"
She reached out with one hand, seized the cell door, and yanked it free in one squealing motion. It clattered to the floor and she limped into the cell. There was a cut on her leg, too, and like the one on her face it wasn't bleeding.
"Who did that to you?"
"I said it's nothing," she said as she knelt in front of him.
"It's not nothing."
She ignored him, tilting his head forward.
"I don't know how this thing works," she said softly.
She pulled his head further forward, pressing his face into her chest. He closed his eyes and held his breath. The lights flickered, the deck under him rolled, and he fell forward into her, pain lancing through his shoulders as the chains around his wrists dragged at him.
"What was that?"
"I don't know."
He blinked. Her skin was a cold as ice, and she wasn't breathing. She fumbled with something at the base of his neck, and there was a loud metal scraping sound. The collar snarled as it fell free, hissing like an animal as it slid down his chest, as though it didn't want to break contact with him, and clattered to the floor.
He sat up.
"Let me get the chains," said Asuka.
"I've got it," said Shinji.
A flicker of effort and the bindings came free, popping off his wrists. He stood, his legs shaking, and she put her arm under his shoulder to hold him up.
"I'm fine…"
He trailed off.
There was something inside her, writhing under her skin, some sort of creature. It slithered and slid through her muscles, made of a foul anti-light that flowed through her like a shadow, except around her shoulder, around the still living mark of the open wound where she'd been bitten.
"There's something inside you."
"It's Lilith," said Asuka, "The first vampire. It makes me do things, but… since that girl bit me, it…"
"She must have wounded it," said Shinji. "Rei. She must have wounded it when she bit you."
Asuka nodded. "Can you make it go away?"
He swallowed. "I don't know, but I can try. I can contain it somehow, I'm sure."
He took another breath. There was corruption here, raw, malignant evil thickening the shadows, sliding down the walls like an oily sheen. He could hear it chattering at him, whispering in secret voices, offering promises and threats and insults that he couldn't quite make out.
"I need your help," said Shinji, limping towards the front of the cell.
"I don't know," said Asuka, clutching her forehead. "I can still feel it. It wants me to hurt people."
"He was right," said Shinji.
"Who?"
"The Adversary," he said, leaning on the wall. "I am the Master of Magnetism and the Mystic Arts. Just because I have power doesn't mean I have to be like him. I decide who I am, and so do you."
"You don't know what I've done," said Asuka. "I hurt people."
"Now you can help. Help me."
She nodded, put her arm around him so he could lean on her, and they lurched out of the cell. He managed three limping steps into the corridor when a squad of Astartes rounded the corner and snapped into kneeling firing positions, raising their bolters, and their sergeant raised a snarling chainsword behind them.
"Kill them!" he roared.
"No," said Shinji.
He raised his hand. The Astartes pulled the triggers on their boltguns, and the propellants ignited. The mass-reactive shells slid out of the barrels and raced through the air towards him. Asuka screamed and tried to drag him out of the way, but he held his ground. He raised his hand and the shells slowed, and stopped.
They turned in the air, and then flew back to their targets. When they struck the barrels of the boltguns they burst, blowing the weapons apart. The Marines rolled backwards, driven by the force of the explosions. The sergeant snarled in incoherent rage and raced forward, swinging his weapon. Shinji casually raised his hand and the whirring, roaring blade froze in the air, the Marine tugging at it like a puppy with a rag, a look of confused fury clouding his leather face.
With a gesture, he redirected the blade into the floor. It sparked and shrieked and bit into the decking, and with a forward push of his hand, he sent the Marine flying backwards into his fellows. Broken and wounded, they began to rise, until he raised both hands, and his eyes unfocused in concentration. Their armor pinned them to the deck as invisible currents of magnetic force tore away their power plants and squeezed them together in a single, solid mass.
Asuka blinked. "Holy shit."
"There are others, like you?"
She nodded, vigorously.
"Where?"
"Cells, near the Apothecarium."
"How many?"
"…hundreds."
His eyes widened. "Let's go."
Mari rushed to the wall of the hangar to grab hold of a railing as Shinji's voice echoed through the ship.
"All hands, brace for impact!"
She wasn't the only one. The Autobots were all in the vehicle forms, tucked up against the wall. Everyone was crowding the walls, pressing their eyes shut and clenching their teeth. Everyone, that is, except Rei the Green Lantern, who was seated in the lotus position on a floating green circle, cascades of numbers circling her head as she silently calculated something, her eyes pressed tightly shut in concentration.
Toji -it took her a minute to figure out which one, the Ghostbuster- looked around.
"Hold on to your butts."
The lights dimmed, and the awful sick rolling of the jump threw her stomach up into her throat. The deck pitched and crates started sliding across it. She dropped the faceplate on her helmet and waited as the world rolled. The lights dimmed, and for a moment everything slowed, the crates slid to a stop, and some of them lifted up, as if they'd gone weightless.
"Oh," Mari groaned. "Shit."
There was a titanic screeching sound, a furious cacophony of bending, grinding metal, and the lights went out. It felt like a thousand pounds had been dropped on her shoulders, the suit grinding as it compensated. Just as quickly as it started, the sensation shifted, gravity going sideways, and some of the over head lights blew out, showering the hangar with sparks. She could feel the ship sliding under her feet, and the force as she started to turn through Mari against the wall.
The force became crippling. She looked around. The Autobots were sliding across the hangar deck. Toji -her Toji- had locked himself to the floor with his power and was holding onto his Rei in one arm, forming a human chain with some of the others. Her guts lurched as the ship spun around, threatening to tear her right off her feet.
There was a great groaning sound that rippled through the ship. The deck bucked under her feet, and alarms started ringing. She pitched forward, landed on one knee and got up, darting forward.
"Shinji? Shinji, are you reading me?"
"Everybody okay down there?"
"Yeah, I think so," said Mari, looking around. "What now?"
"I'm on my way. Time to secure the hangar. Wait for the guns to fire."
"Guns? What-"
She reached up to cover her ears, before the suit adjusted. Rolling booms rippled through the ship as the main batteries opened fire. When the thunder ceased, she saw Shinji and Thor Hikari running into the hangar, the latter headed for his suit. Mari ran for the hangar doors.
"Autobots!" Optimus boomed, "Roll out!"
Mari kicked on her boot thrusters and headed for the opening hangar doors. She rolled as she passed through them, the suit noting the changes in temperature and pressure as she burst out into the open space.
"Shinji!" she shouted, "You need to see this!"
"I know," he radioed back.
The Galactica was a mess. She was bent in the middle, the great back of the ship broken, and the front section had crashed into a massive metal pillar, splitting it open. Water spilled out across the deck, the ships' potable supply which doubled as radiation shielding. Smoke bubbled out of the rear engines, the hasty repairs done to the outer hull having peeled away in the landing. The main gun batteries were swinging around.
She rolled again and gasped at the enormous size of the Shikinami's hangar deck as she landed. In the jump, the Galactica bowed out the roof, causing long struts made out of some weird composite of plastic and metal to snap and rain down onto the deck below. From end to end, it was long enough to accommodate the Galactica herself and at least two more ships of the same size. She could barely see the other end without the suit's zoom function, and the roof was so high, it had its own atmosphere, clouds clinging to the vaulted ceiling.
Except the clouds were multicolored, and looked like they had eyes.
She understood now why the others who'd seen this place had called it Hell. It made her skin crawl, and when she opened her helmet, the air tasted foul. Shinji landed next to her, crunching down in his suit, and looked around.
"Yep, this is the place."
"Can we make the jump back out?"
Shinji looked grim. "We're going to try."
A shell flew past her head, pinged off the Galactica's hull, and exploded.
"Here they come," said Shinji. He turned around and raised his voice. "Remember the plan! Teams A and B, stay here until the hangar is secure!"
Mari dropped her helmet. As she took off, Shinji joined her, arcing up from the deck. The Autobots passed under her in a line, bolter shells skimming off their metallic skins like rain as they leapt, transformed, and Optimus surged ahead of the others, wreathed in emerald light. She dodged a missile and turned around.
There was some kind of ship, big and blocky with wings that looked too small to fly, starting to take off from big thrusters aimed down from under its winglets. Strapped to its underside was a massive tank that looked deceptively primitive, like something out of World War I. It dropped to the deck with a metallic clang and rumbled forward as the ship turned, its heavy guns swinging around on small turrets to aim at her. She rolled to the side, dodging a stream of shells as she shouted a warning to Shinji. She saw the pilot in his pig-snouted helmet focus on her and swing the ship around, the glowing tracers swinging towards her. She turned, pushing the armor to its limit, as the shells closed.
There was a wind in front of her, and her collision detection system went mad, blinking all through her HUD. Except it wasn't the wind.
Super-Shinji rocketed past her, turning in the air, slapping the incoming shells away with his hands, moving so fast his limbs were a blur. When that proved too slow, twin beams of light shot out from his eyes, staining her vision purple before the suit compensated, and swept the shells from the air, detonating them before they reached him. He dove down, tore open the roof of the ship in one fluid motion, and yanked the pilot out, tossing him across the hangar. The ship veered, smoke pouring from its engines from his merest glance, and spun in as he jumped off. The other one, virtually his twin, joined him, and the swept through the hangar in tandem.
The Green Lanterns, like a cloud of emerald fireflies, poured out of the Galctica's flight pod, swirling in formation over her. Toji, leading them, spun into the air, forming a massive, cartoonish ray gun from green light in either of his fists.
"Light 'em up!" he shouted, and the others joined him, firing green bursts from a thousand exotic weapons.
All of them except Rei. She walked calmly across the deck to an open space, stopped, and held out her hands. A pair of devices formed of green light appeared in her hands- an Eva's butterfly controls. She pulled them to her chest and more light poured out of her ring, forming a chair under her. She leaned back into it, falling into position as an entry plug formed around her. Light crackled out of her ring, gathered together under her, and great slabs of emerald lifted up and clamped together as piece by piece, rivet, she build a simulacrum of Unit One around her and slowly stood up, towering over the Galactica, and strode forward, kicking the Eva's huge feet through the ranks of Astartes firing on her.
The tank flew past her head. She looked over her shoulder. Banner.
Shinji radioed her. "It's working! It's working! They're falling back!"
She swept low through the hangar, strafing the Marines with her repulsors as they fell back, firing at her with their bolters. She saw one swinging around a heavy weapon, a cannon that fired some sort of superheated gas, and rolled in the air, popping smoke.
"Mari," Shinji radioed, "We're almost there. When I give the signal, break with your team. You've got to take out their warp engines."
"Roger," said Mari. She landed, ducked under a hail of bolter fire, and returned with a repulsor blast to the face. They were falling back, laying down cover fire as they headed for the far end of the hangar.
She turned in time to see a gleaming sword, wreathed in shimmering fire, swinging for her head. It clanged against another blade and turned as Asuka the Amazon ran screaming at the Marine who swung it, a glittering sword in one hand and a shield strapped to her other arm.
That freaking cat was slicing through the air, yowling and butting head first into Marines, knocking them off their feet.
"Get ready," Shinji radioed.
Mari headed toward the aft section of the ship, where her team would meet her. Ritsuko Akagi was already there, her cat skimming over to perch on her shoulder, along with Cyborg Hikari, Green Lantern Toji, and the Astartes that called himself Alpharius.
Oh, and the Hulk.
Mari popped her helmet open.
"Hulk smash now?"
"In a minute," Mari said, breathlessly.
"I have the ship schematics," said Hikari.
"Me too," said Mari. "If either of us goes down, the other leads."
"The warp core is this way," Alpharius indicated.
"You better not be screwing us," said Mari.
Alpharius put on his helmet, which he'd marked with an XX in red paint, along with some sort of symbol scrawled on his chest and shoulder pads, a snake with a bunch of heads. His voice came out distorted by the helmet.
"If I had intended to 'screw you', you would be screwed. We must hurry. We will not be able to approach the drive if the ship attempts translation to the Warp."
"Let's go," said Mari.
She closed her helmet and radioed Shinji.
"I have everybody. We're going."
"Same here," said Shinji. "Commence attack."
"Hey," Mari added.
"Yeah?"
"Good luck, Shinji."
"Yeah. You too. Out."
"Hulk smash now?"
"Yeah," said Mari, pointing towards the corridor that would lead them to the warp drive. "Just try to smash in that particular direction."
Shinji's heart thundered against his ribs. He didn't belong here. He wasn't meant to lead these people. He wasn't meant to lead anyone. He was meant to strap himself into this armor and butt his head against an angel until it died. He felt small and unimportant, even towering over the rest of them in his armor. He crouched behind the upturned Thunderhawk as the last of the fire from the retreating Astartes began to die down, breathing hard. He opened his helmet.
The others were crouched along with him. To his right, Hikari hefted her hammer, peering around the end of the craft, while the Avengers moved up behind him. Shinji turned to look over his shoulder and check that his team was all there- Sue Storm, and Ben Grimm. Parker, Rogers, Johnny Storm and Logan would remain with the main force defending the Galactica. Shinji's speartip team was to clear a path to the cells where the alternate Asukas were being held, then call in a second wave of Autobots to move them all out while the defense team held the path back.
There was the other matter, too. The Adversary, the task of dragging him back to the ship and the Metaflux Capacitor, and the only one who stood a chance of accomplishing that.
Shinji Ikari, the Superman of Earth 2, stood out in the open, ignoring the shells bursting on his chest, waiting for Shinji's signal. He was glad his helmet was closed, willfully forgetting that his counterpart had x-ray vision and could probably see the look of intense worry on his face. He opened his helmet anyway.
"Are you going to be able to handle this?" Shinji shouted.
"Me?" Superman shot back.
"I saw what happened to your world."
"I'll fix it."
"How are you so freaking confident?"
"I'm Superman. I can do anything."
Shinji nodded, dipped his chin against the switch, and closed his helmet. He stood up, waiting for his radar to scan for hostiles. He turned to Storm.
"I'm going in first with the big guns. When we secure the head of the first corridor, you move up and shield us so the defense team can spread out and cover our rear."
He didn't wait for a reply. He didn't have a chance. Hikari took two bounding jumps and leapt over the downed Thunderhawk, screaming and twirling Mjolnir over her head. So much for subtlety. Shinji kicked on his boot jets, took off, and was quickly outpaced by his counterpart, racing past him in a blue streak. The roof of the hangar was actually high enough for him to fly, his HUD switching to in flight mode with attitude and altitude readings and a virtual eight ball in the lower corner. He got up some speed and then swept down low, clinging to the deck. A schematic of the ship, the gigantic ship bigger than the biggest earthly city, was superimposed over his screen, with a blinking marker for the Galactica, Mari, and their objective.
At the edge of the hangar, massive corridors led into the bowels of the ship, each wide and tall enough to accommodate the vehicles and materiel gathered here. Each was also sealed by a heavy set of blast doors that had to be several meters thick, made of a strange plastic-metal alloy that was astonishingly resistant to damage.
That is, until Superman and Hikari turned on it. Twin beams of heat swept out from his gaze, circled out a round plug from the doors, and a single swing from Mjolnir knocked it in, leaving a smoldering, red hot tunnel through the doors. Shinji came to a skidding landing behind them and motioned for the others to move up and provide some cover. The Galactica's main turrets swung around to cover the doors, anticipating a counter attack.
The floor started rumbling.
"What is that?" said Shinji.
Superman turned around, his eyes glowing faintly. "More of the Marines. A lot more, and those machines that fight for the Adversary. They're coming this way."
"We can't stay," said Shinji. "There's enough firepower here."
"I know, but-"
"You can't be everywhere at once."
"He can be in two places at once," said Hikari, gesturing with the hammer. The other Super-Shinji was throwing a Land Raider across the hangar.
"Let's go," said Shinji.
He ducked around the edge of the opening cut in the blast doors and immediately jumped back, just missed by a screaming bolt of superheated gas that skimmed over the hangar deck, hit an overturned vehicle, and exploded. A Marine with a heavy backpack carrying a massive cannon was slowly advancing, light building up in the weapon's containment chamber for another shot.
Superman stepped through the rounded opening, casual as you pleased. The next bolt skimmed over his skin, cutting through the air, but washed over him harmlessly, like water, barely ruffling his hair. A quick burst of his heat vision severed the cable, and the Marine charged him, roaring, hefting a combat knife over his head.
"Really?"
Mjolnir sailed past his head, clipped the Marine in the face, and bounced back to Hikari's hand.
Superman shot her a look.
"Let's go!" Shinji shouted, his voice amplified by the armor. Storm and Grimm were already moving up, and the Maximals were setting up a defensive line from the flight pod to the corridor.
"You've got incoming!" Shinji called back.
"We're on it!" Optimus Primal replied as Storm raised a shield from the Galactica to the corridor.
Shinji turned and ran up the corridor, following the others. The sensors in his suit warned him that more were coming, a whole squad of them rolling around the corner and raising their boltguns. After running from them for so long, it was amazing, cathartic. His counterpart may as well have been taking a stroll through a spring rain, for all the damage the shells did to him, and Hikari wasted no time wading among the Astartes, cracking their weapons apart with her hammer and spinning the blocky head into their midsections and helmets, knocking them aside like tenpins.
It didn't matter, though, if they were cut off on the return, with dozens, maybe hundreds of vulnerable people with them. He did his best to keep up, turning to coordinate the rearguard action. He tested his radio.
"Storm, are you reading?"
"Loud and clear. We've lost you."
"Follow the plan. Keep moving up, bring up the Lanterns to hold the line behind you."
"Understood."
Behind the oncoming ranks of Marines was another, in more elaborate armor draped with pale robes. He walked with a tall staff, its tip clicking on the deck, and other than the sword at his hip carried no other weapon. Made of some sort of crystal, his staff had an inner light, a bar of energy that flickered in its depths up to the black crystal skull embedded in the head, a golden halo of seven points, with the staff itself making the eighth. He chanted something in some harsh, guttural tongue, and shadows swept along with him, as though he waded in a sea of ink. Shinji moved up, calling a warning, but it was too late.
A wave of darkness rose up and crashed over him, shutting out all light. His sensors went made, braying at him as a dozen alarms went off. Radar, infra-red, everything went dark as the surging darkness pushed him back, his armored boots scraping over the deck. Something hit him and pushed him backwards, turning him away, and he lost his bearings. He saw it for a brief second, a glimpse of long, pale limbs tightly wrapped in papery flesh, ending in long black claws with hooked tips. He raised his AT-Field and turned around and around, trying to shine his exterior lights, but the cones of brilliance went a few inches into the murk and died. He could see his field shimmering over the planes of his armor, but nothing else.
He turned around and punched Superman in the face. He was glad for the AT-Field, as he would have probably lost his hand otherwise.
"Stay calm!" he shouted, grabbing the chest plate of Shinji's armor. "I can still see some of the spectrum. Keep your field up."
He didn't so much follow as he was dragged through the murk. The chittering creatures moved through the darkness, snapping long, bony jaws, but didn't come any closer. He saw why. They were swarming Hikari as she turned the hammer around and around, crushing them with wild blows. She was wreathed in light, shining from her armor and winged helmet and the hammer itself, shining like a beacon. She saw the two Shinjis approaching, turned, and slammed the hammer to earth.
There was a peel of thunder he could hear in his bones, and the darkness rolled back as Super-Shinji dragged him out of it and he turned, blasting the creatures with his repulsors. They drew back into the darkness, retreating like a living thing from Hikari's glittering form. The other Astartes hadn't weathered the attack so well. Most of them were collapsed onto the ground, unmoving, or screaming and swinging their weapons wildly at nothing.
The sorcerer raised his staff in one hand, lifting a power sword in the other, and charged at the head of another band of Marines. Shinji ducked behind Hikari as she charged, following her into the fray. She turned the sorcerer's blows with wide, arcing swings of her hammer, rocking him backwards. Lightning sparked between them, like two serpents locked in a deadly embrace, the scintillating multicolored hell-lightning folding over the might of the Norse God of Thunder and back again. She shoulder-checked the sorcerer, leaping, and spun in the air, striking his staff with a two-handed swing. The crystal cracked in half and the sorcerer screamed as his witchfire surged back over him in a wave, washing back as if it were fleeing the head of the hammer.
His counterpart grimly, silently moved forward, striding through their weapons, ripping boltguns out of hands, catching swings from chainswords and twisting them apart with a flick of his wrist.
"I know you're here!" he called. "I can do this all day."
"Hey," Shinji shouted, "I thought you were under control."
He turned back, his eyes full of fire. "I am under control."
Hikari crushed the sorcerer's sword-hand with a blow from Mjolnir, choked up on the haft, and brought the hammer up under her opponent's snouted helmet, knocking him back. Her other hand shot out, grabbed his helm, and twisted. She yanked him around, folding the faceplate of the helmet into a twisted mess, and hurled him into the wall.
Five more Marines came around the next corner, four fanning out around one carrying a long launch tube over his shoulder. The Astartes with the tube dropped to one knee, tapped buttons on a control panel along the edge of the tube, and fire.
"Incoming!" Shinji shouted, raising his AT-Field.
He was about to launch countermeasures when Super-Shinji plucked the missile out of the air, closing his fist around the warhead. There was a low whump, streamers of fire spitting from between his fingers like water from a running hose, and he threw the rest of the projectile aside. Before another Marine could load a second shell into the tube, Shinji made a pinpoint repulsor shot, knocking him back, and Hikari hurled the hammer, trashing the tube. It leapt back to her hand and they formed a line, advancing.
Shinji radioed back to the others. "Storm, how are we doing back there?"
He heard shooting in the background when she came back over the radio. "We have the second position, but there's a whole horde of these things coming our way. There must be thousands of them. The Lanterns are keeping the hangar sealed off, but" there was a burst of static, "the Decepticons" more static.
He tapped his helmet, as if that would help.
"Hold the line! We don't have far to go."
"I'm tired of waiting."
Shinji reeled around in time for the Adversary to seize him by the neck, lifting his armored form off his feet, and hurl him into the wall. His armor went mad, red lines appearing through his chest plate and helmet.
Shinji Ikari of Earth 2 faced him down.
"I'm going to give you one chance. Give me my world back."
"Or what?" the Adversary said, smirking. "Oh, this is it, isn't it! I get to hear my speech. What is it, the World of Cardboard? Do I get a 'this ends now' or are you going to spout your oh-so-original catch phrase, 'I'm Superman'", he trilled in a mocking, sing-song tone, holding his hands next to his face, "'I can do anything.'"
"No," Superman said, softly. "I'm going to show you just what anything really means."
He vanished.
Shinji blinked. His counterpart just disappeared, and before he could process what happened, too fast for his eye to even notice, his fist met the back of the Adversary's head. There was a most glorious look of absolute horror on his marble-white face as the cracking blow sent him hurtling face-first into the wall. He turned around in time for Superman to seize him by the throat and slide him right up the wall, pinned.
"Oh," the Adversary croaked, "this is going to be fun."
"Run!" Superman roared, "Go! Get the girls! I've got him!"
"Do you now," the Adversary grinned, ramming his fist into Superman's gut.
He coughed, but didn't let go, the two spiraling through the corridor, ignoring gravity, leaving a gouge in the wall.
"Go!"
Hikari moved towards them. Shinji grabbed her arm.
"No, we have to keep moving."
She looked at him, nodded, and they ran deeper into the ship.
Even leaning on Asuka for support, he was getting tired. The wound in his side, despite the repairs that had been made, was aching sharply with each step, and when he looked down at the bandage, he saw spots of blood. Asuka eyed them warily, her grip around his shoulders tightening.
"Do you want to stop?"
"No," he barked. "Keep going."
The ship was shuddering around him, the walls ringing with explosions and rippling booms that poured through the deck and the walls, twisting them. He could feel it moving, just as he could feel pads generating artificial gravity under his feet and he could feel the electrical current passing through cables embedded in the walls. He was beginning to understand his failures before. He was pushing too hard trying to use a sledgehammer on a walnut.
He stumbled a little. She held him up.
"How much further?"
"Not far."
The noises were heading their way. He saw the doors of the Apothecarium- he'd seen them before, when he was floating in and out of consciousness. He stopped.
"What do we do?" said Asuka.
"I can't fight like this. I need help. Take me to the prison."
Asuka nodded and helped him lurch around, down the corridor. He could feel the evil in this place, lurking in every shadow, watching him. It was getting stronger. If he let his eyes grow lidded and his senses fold out from his body, he could feel something coming, a great oozing mass of corruption, but it was different from the foulness around him, like a note of the same song, in a different key. Somewhere within it was a bright spot, slowly fading, drawn down into the darkness. It was picking up speed.
It knew he was here.
"Hurry."
He limped to the edge of the corridor and stopped, drawing up from the corner. There were a pair of Astartes standing guard, the points of their swords resting between their feet. They were unmoving, like statues.
"On three," he whispered.
Asuka nodded, edging behind him. He could feel her muscles tense, the thing that lived inside her coiling up, spitting and snarling in offense as she took control of it. They edged closer to the corner.
One of the Astartes stepped out in front of him. In a panic, he nearly fell backwards.
Shinji blinked. There was blood on his blade.
"What-"
"You may pass," the enormous warrior grunted, and turned.
"Wait," said Shinji. "Where are you going?"
"To join the fight."
"On whose side?"
"Mine."
He shook his head. "Why-"
The Marine lifted his sword, flicking the thumb stud that broad the power field to life, burning the gore away from the edge. "For the Emperor."
Shinji limped around the corner. The other Marine was lying face down in an expanding pool of blood, his helmeted head having rolled a fair distance away. Asuka moved out from under his arm and picked up the fallen sword, holding the long grip in both hands. She nodded towards the door. He took a breath, raised his hands, and focused. The doors pried open slowly, grinding on their tracks. He stepped inside.
A hundred blue eyes fixed on him. Some of them moved closer to the bars, others shied away, crawling up against the back of their cells. He couldn't blame them, after what they must have seen.
"Asuka," he started to say, before the word died in his mouth.
"Asuka von Doom?"
A gloved hand shot out of a cell at the back of the chamber. He moved forward slowly, hugging himself. The despair here hung on his shoulders like a cloak of lead. Limping to the back of the vast chamber, he found her in a cell by herself, in her uniform, clutching a red blanket in one hand as she reached with the other.
"Is this a trick? Is it really you?"
He took her hand. "Stand back."
She squeezed his palm and retreated to the back of the cell. Shinji threw his arms back and yanked the bars right out of the wall and barged into the cell, throwing his arms around her neck. She collapsed into him, and he yelped as she squeezed his ribs.
"Sorry," she said, her voice wavering.
The latch was deceptively simple. The collar fell away from her neck, and she stood up, her eyes wide.
"Shinji!" the other Asuka called.
He ducked outside.
Iquarius lurched into the cell block, and a song of screams and anguished wails rose up from the imprisoned Asukas, falling back from the bars. All of them but one. Older than the others, her hair gone gray, she clutched the bars and stared him down.
"Where are my children?"
The beast ignored her. He limped forward, dragging one leg. Thick ooze, some sort of pus or ichor, slithered out from the cracks in his armor plate and wreathed his limbs, and the fur of the wool cloak draped over the huge back pack on his armor was matted with gore and corruption, hanging down in streamers from his back, trailing fungal growth behind him. Diseased, hideous mushrooms and fibrous growths grew up in his footsteps, thick strands of foulness stretching from the sole of his foot as he took each step.
"Mine," he rasped, brushing the foul drew from his mouth with the back of his cracked gauntlet.
Shinji coughed. He could feel his lungs filling. His muscles ached, his bones felt weary. He fell against the wall, touching his bandages. His wounds had opened anew, and burned with an inner heat. Black tendrils spread out from under the wrappings, trailing through his skin.
Vampire Asuka shrieked and ran at Iquarius. With a contemptuous swing of his hand, he batted her aside, and she fell, folded, against one of the cells. He moved forward. A mass of diseased growth, like rotten wood, unfolded from his back, lifting over his head. It spread out, thin fingers of corruption stretching mucous between them, like a bat's wing. A livid red growth appeared on his forehead, pushing out. As it burst, yellow ooze running down between his eyes, a bony horn emerged from it, brown and cracked like old ivory.
"Mine," he repeated.
Shinji coughed, and his vision darkened.
Asuka pulled her gloves off. She took his hands.
It was like the lights flicking on. The pain in his side was simply gone, and more than that, he could feel his ribs pulling back together. The strength came back to his legs, and he stood up. He put his arm around her waist and pulled her close, and she put her head against his chest, touching skin to skin as her cheek brushed against him. She loosed the fire.
The world went white.
He held her tight. Everything was gone.
"What is this?"
A woman stepped out of the light, like an angel drawing out of the sun. He knew her, somehow. She looked like Rei, almost, but quite. She had higher cheekbones and her eyes were green, her hair a dark brown. Standing beside her was a tall, statuesque woman with fiery blonde hair that ran down to her waist, spilling over her shoulders like a cloak. Standing on either side of them was Stephen Strange…
…and Doctor Doom.
Asuka seized up, squeezing him even harder. Shinji swallowed. "What is this?"
"A memory," said the brown haired woman. "I'm your mother, Shinji. I'm Yui Ikari."
Asuka's jaw fell open. "Mama?"
"It might be a trick," said Shinji, pulling her to his side.
"You are wise to doubt," said Doom.
"How are you here?"
"We aren't," said Strange. "We implanted this memory in the both of you to explain what you are, should we be unable."
"Your births were not natural," said Yui. "Not entirely. Especially not you, Shinji. Your father and I are not mutants. You were engineered."
"But they said I'm not a mutant," said Asuka.
"Correct," said von Doom, "but your lineage provides you with a spiritual connection to fire. Through ritual, we have connected you to the ultimate fire. The spark of creation itself."
"Together," said Yui, "You are a weapon. Asuka provides the power source. Shinji provides the control. You are our last hope, after all else fails, if no one is worthy to lift the hammer of Thor or the Evangelions are destroyed. It is what you are for."
The vision ended as abruptly as it began.
Iquarius loomed over them, the raw stench of him clouding his nostrils. Shinji looked up.
"Let's go."
There was, for a single moment, a beat of fear in Shinji's heart as he watched Hikari and his counterpart race down the corridor. The Adversary watched them go, a bemused look on his face, before he seized Shinji by the wrist and dragged his hand free of his silky white throat. Only the look of contempt on his face gave him resolve. He was not going to let this monster win. He didn't come this far for nothing. He would not fail his home, his people, after so much and so long.
He wouldn't leave Asuka behind.
"How noble," the Adversary purred, "A heroic sacrifice! I'm sure the kiddies at home are just eating this up."
"Shut up," said Shinji. He reared back and punched, hard.
His fist met the Adversary's chin and rammed his head right through the wall, deeply denting the strange plastic-metal alloy. It was like punching a statue, for all the good it did. The Adversary wrestled free, shoving him back, and Shinji grabbed him by the arms, yanking him around.
"You're not getting away."
"I'm not the one who needs to escape, here."
"Shut up," Shinji snapped, dragging him up into the ceiling.
They rolled across it, a weightless grapple, running a long dent in the surface as they went, bashing the support struts away. The Adversary turned and brought his knee up into Shinji's stomach, driving the air out of his lungs, and turned him around, throwing him down into the floor. The deck rolled from the impact, rippling out to send stress fissures up the wall as the metal sheared.
Without missing a beat, Shinji bounced back, seized him by the ankles, and brought him down again, turning as he did to crash him head first into the wall. The Adversary kicked loose and righted himself in the air, his feet dangling above the deck.
"Oh, you're angry."
"I want my people back."
The Adversary touched his chin. "Let me think. No."
Shinji felt his teeth grinding as he reached out, only to miss. The Adversary ducked his grasp, sliding like a snake, twisting in the air. Shinji turned and managed to clip him upside the head with the backside of his fist.
"The interesting thing," said the Adversary, seizing Shinji's wrist, "is that you don't actually know how to fight. I do."
He pulled Shinji around, twisting his arm into a joint lock, and spun him into the wall.
"Shut up," Shinji snapped, throwing his elbow back to catch the Adversary in the chin.
"Is that all you've got?"
"No," said Shinji. "You still have a chance to give up."
"Oh, I know," said the Adversary. "So noble. You're so good. I just adore it. It's so easy for you, his favored son."
"You're out of your mind."
"Am I?" the Adversary screamed, turning Shinji to throw his arms about his neck in a sleeper hold. "Am I? You have it easy, you spineless little worm. He hands you triumph on a platter and you act like you've made some grand sacrifice. You even got to keep Rei, and you don't care about her!"
"She's my sister!" Shinji croaked. "I love her-"
"Not like I loved mine!" The Adversary shrieked, ramming Shinji's head into the wall. "She was mine! She was mine! She was mine! Mine! Mine!"
Shinji tilted his head to the side. The Adversary's hand went past him, the heel of his palm hitting the wall. He turned under it, moving faster now, his enemy's blows moving with graceful slowness, like a ballet dancer underwater.
"That's what this is about," he said calmly. "Something happened to her."
The Adversary's mouth twisted in a sneer. His words were slow, slurred. "He stole her from me!"
"Who?"
Shinji knew he was speeding up, starting to move too fast. He focused, and saw motes of dust on the air. He could hear the tinkling of individual shell casings hitting the floor in the hangar. Heartbeats, tens of thousands of them, many of them doubled, a rapid staccato from two organs beating as one. There was one among them, one that outshone all the others the way the sun outshines the stars in the sky. One unique rhythm he would know everywhere and anywhere. A smaller one, a tiny one just struggling into life, beat beside it. And he understood.
He caught the Adversary's fist in his hand.
"Let me help you."
He froze.
"What?"
"I'll help you. I'll help you bring your Rei back, if there's a way. Stop this."
"You're joking."
Shinji panted. "No, I'm not. You'll pay for your crimes, but listen to me. If you're doing this to help someone-"
"It's a trick!" the Adversary roared, seizing him by the throat.
Shinji calmly forced his airway open. "No, it isn't. I'll help you. Free my people. Stop this madness."
"You can't."
"I can. You said it yourself. I'm Superman."
The Adversary's jaw tightened, and his lips pulled back over his teeth. He blinked, and his eyes went from pale unmarred white with crimson irises to green with tiny black points for pupils.
"You don't understand! I'll never be free! They're watching us!"
"I know. I see them too."
The Adversary's answer was an incoherent scream, a frothing madman's shriek. Shinji turned him aside, grabbing his forearms to redirect him and spin him into the wall.
The Adversary wheeled, his fingers digging long scratches into the metal.
"I'll bring her back. It will be my world, my way. I don't care about the rest of you. You're not even real!"
"What will she say when she sees what you've done?"
"She would understand!" the Adversary shrieked, pounding his fists on Shinji's chest.
He pinned Shinji to the wall, then dragged him to the ground by the collar of his uniform. He pounded on Shinji's chest, his blows making his ribcage creak.
"She understood me! She wanted me for who I was, not what I could do for her! She knew the answer to the Riddle of Steel!"
Shinji caught his fist in mid-strike. "Then what is it? What is the answer?"
His eyes went wide. "I don't have to tell you!"
Shinji sighed. "I'm sorry. I gave you a chance."
"What-"
He took a breath. Everything froze. There was only one rule. He couldn't go faster than the speed of light, and that, really, was only a suggestion. He slid out from under the Adversary, who remained fixed, crouched almost like an ape assaulting prey over an empty stretch of corridor.
Shinji brought his fist up under the Adversary's chin. The blow sent a shockwave through the air. Here, so close to the speed of light, at the border between the sanity of the Newtonian realm of conventional physics and the quantum world of the tachyon, the spreading waves were a symphony of light, a tiny galaxy spreading out from a big bang in miniature. The Adversary's head snapped up, moving with an almost ponderous slowness.
He heard Asuka's heartbeat, that same sound, the only sound, as he rained blow after blow into the Adversary's gut, folding him in half. He looked on his enemy as only Superman could, with the pity only a perfect man can muster. There had been a time when Shinji himself rested on the knife edge.
He once cradled the love of his life in his arms, unmoving, the breath chased from her lungs, the light and glory of her beautiful life gone. He too had cried out that he would do anything. He truly was lucky. The universe answered him.
He looked at the Adversary and saw what he could have become, and his rage folded, doubled on itself, flavored by the sorrow of it.
In three microseconds, Shinji beat the Adversary to a bruised pulp. He fell against the wall, blood dribbling down his chin. He had two cracked ribs and a hairline fracture in his left arm.
"Stop this."
"No," he rasped.
"Shinji, please-"
"Don't call me that!" he roared.
"I can help you."
"Enough!"
He stood up, snarling. The core in his chest pulsed, humming with raw energy as it spun itself up, the super solenoid inside spinning through a spiraling. It ran along his bones, heating them until they shone through his flesh, like a flashlight held behind fingertips. He rose up as a black skeleton, a sepulchral thing with emerald monster's eyes and razor fangs, his voice distorted.
"My turn."
He was, at least to a degree, fighting, firing blasts at the Astartes that Hikari missed as she whirled through the halls. In her glittering armor she chased away the alien melancholy of the ship, the gibbering shadows retreating from the silvery light that radiated from her as she strode down the corridors, hefting the hammer of Thor. Sometimes there was a halo of radiance on her head, other times, the light fractured, becoming a rainbow that flowed over the walls. As she hurled the hammer, caught it when it bounced back to her hand, and shattered the crackling power sword of an Astartes captain in a single blow, she sang a high, lilting song in a language Shinji had never heard before.
His radio crackled in his ear.
"Are you reading me?" said Mari.
He paused, ducking between two of the struts.
"Yeah, go ahead."
"We're hitting some resistance down here. There are things between us and the warp core. Alpharius says we're about twenty minutes away if we can keep moving."
"Roger," said Shinji. "When you get there, radio me and hold your position. We're making good time, I-"
There was a thunderous boom that shook the walls. Shinji's hair stood on end, and he heard the servos on his leg armor whirring as the suit compensated and helped him keep his balance. The floor swayed under his feet. There was another boom, louder this time, and an alarm klaxon sounded, a harsh mechanical voice chanting in a gibberish tongue that sounded a lot like Latin.
"What was that?" Mari shouted. Shinji heard shooting in the background.
"I don't know," Shinji shot back. "This ship is going to be in pieces even if you can't disable the warp drive. We've got to get out of here."
"Proceeding with the mission. Mari out."
He ducked out from behind the support strut in time to dodge a tumbling Marine, his helmet caved in by a hammer blow. Hikari had buried herself in a cluster of the raging giants, turning their blows with one of their own swords and the hammer. Her movements were graceful, almost alien, flowing from point to point as though in a dance. He raised his gauntlets, but before he could fire the tide turned, there was a crack of armor, and they all fell back at once, collapsing against the corridor walls. She looked at the sword with a sneer of disgust and tossed it aside.
"Onward!" she shouted, gesturing with the hammer.
Shinji swallowed against a dry throat and followed her.
There was another thundering, hollow explosion, closer this time. Shinji brought up his map and checked it. They were only a few turns away from the space where the Asukas were being held. He motioned for Hikari to stop, but she ignored him, surging forward into a hail of bolter fire, dancing between the shells as if she knew where they would hit before they touched her, and Shinji fell back again, ducking behind a heavy strut for cover.
"Sue!" he shouted into his radio. "How are we doing?"
"Second and third waves are moving up!" she shouted back, grunting. "There are more of them down here. A lot more, and they tell me there's more coming."
He nodded, though she couldn't see him, and switched the frequency. "Iron Shinji to Ironhide."
"Here!"
"It's time. We need wheels."
"Moving out!"
He looked up to see Hikari walking backwards, holding the hammer in front of her. His stomach dropped.
Alarms went off in his suit and a warning appeared- magnetic interference. That was a new one. He stumbled backwards as the wall shrieked and the metal bubbled out, expanding, unfolding as a patina spread over the surface and rust followed, moving along the corridor in a wave. As Hikari lifted the hammer, the spreading corruption shied away from her, pooling around her feet. An integrity alarm went off, and Shinji lifted his gauntlet to see corrosion spreading across the back. He rushed to Hikari's side, stepping into the protective field she was generating.
All at once, a tangled mass rolled through the corridor. The creature had torn a hole in the ship, melting it into slag and rust as it fell through it. It filled the cavernous hallway, great wings of bleached, cracked bone with filmy mucous stretched between them in mockery of a bat rising from its back. Its armored form was shaggy with fungus. Colonies of mushrooms, deathcaps and other wide, hairy growths, sprung up on either shoulder. When it lurched around to gaze upon him he saw his own face buried in the hulking rotten mass of it, a packed horn jutting out from his forehead.
Iquarius.
It swung its head around, looking up and down the corridor, breathing hard.
"My children," it rasped, "Rise."
The Marines strewn up and down the hall shuddered, shifted, and rose to groaning life. As they moved their joints creaked and popped, and foul, welling corruption oozed out from between the plates of their armor, sliding over the crimson and staining it a deep black. They stood up in grim silence, collecting their weapons from the floor, turning their smashed helmets around so they could gaze through the cracked lenses with dull, milky eyes.
"Oh shit," said Shinji.
Light burst through the opening in the wall. Shinji's optics darkened to compensate, and again he saw himself, stripped to the waist but for bandages wound around his ribs. Asuka clung to his back, her body wreathed in flame, and yet he didn't burn. Wherever she touched him, the flames rose up and plunged back into his flesh, flowing into his body. He held his hands high, curled into fists with his fingers jutting out at either end, chanting. Iquarius shied back, snarling, thick streamers of black spittle flopping out of his mouth onto the deck, and charged.
Hikari cried out and charged, but Shinji seized her cape.
"The mission!" he shouted. "We have to-"
"I can't leave him!" she shrieked, rounding on him. "It's my fault he's here! I-" she trailed off.
Her eyes sank. She lifted the hammer, turned it to gaze at the inscription on the side.
Without a word she turned and buried the head in skull of a lurching Astartes, bound in a rotting prison of living death, and at her touch it crumbled, a bilious, foul gas billowing out from its cracked armor.
"Stand with me and send these abominations to their graves," said Hikari, "and we will see our task to its end."
"Don't let go!" Shinji shouted.
By way of reply, Asuka tightened her grip around him. She'd locked her hands together under his arms and was blazing, light pouring out of her and into him. He felt vital, alive, and whole, like the sun was rolling through his veins. He saw every mote of dust, every tiny current in the air. As he pushed Iquarius through the wall and stepped forward, he noted Hikari's presence. He blinked, and saw her as she was.
He saw Hikari, standing in the corridor, a hammer in her hand. He could count the hairs in her pigtails, see the currents of air flowing in and out of her nostrils as she drew breath. Standing in the same spot, occupying the same place like a photographic double exposure, he saw a mighty warrior, gold of hair and fearsome of aspect, hefting the first of the heavens in flexing thews.
It was Iquarius that drew his eye. He saw the creature as it appeared, the thing on the surface- a bulging, liquid thing, covered in open sores, lichens, and fungus growing across a massive suit of armor that was a creaking, rotting blend of broken bone, putrid flesh, and corroded ceramite. From its back rose wings of rot, and from its head jutted a hard packed horn, like a rhinoceros. His mouth, forced open by broken teeth and dripping corruption over his caved-in chest, sneered.
He saw past appearance and into truth. Within the beast moved a little boy, shaking with fear, wreathed in rot. Tendrils of slime and sinew slithered around his body, hanging from his joints, plucking at his fingers like strings on a marionette, and yet he clasped the vileness to his body as tears of infections, putrid blood ran down his cheeks. All around him a terrible miasma billowed and swirled, its currents reaching off in every direction.
The corruption was everywhere. It dripped from every bolt, infused into every bulkhead like rust beneath a fresh coat of paint. As Iquarius roared and charged the corruption swelled and the rotten sinews banded about the little boy's throat grew tighter, choking back his breath. Shinji raised a shield, chanting an ancient invocation, and shuddered when the beast met it head-on. It was like a broken tooth being pulled, an old wound ripped open, an open sore bursting, and a terrible realization of loss all at once. When Iquarius moved the weight of something vast and ancient moved behind him, lending its strength to his arm.
Asuka put her chin on his shoulder. She leaned her head against his.
"Do you trust me?"
"Yes," she whispered.
"Don't let go. No matter what happens, what you see. Don't let go."
Shinji opened his mind and heart and drank deeply from the infinite well of raw power that surged in Asuka's chest, and with all his mental might he tore open a gate from the waking world of men into the realm of dreams, where all thought is truth. Asuka clung to him for dear life as a sea gale howled around them, and when he opened his eyes he found himself standing on the deck of a ship, an old wooden warship cast about on a rising sea, the waves all around him like mountains, their white peaks like a mountain peak in winter. He rested his arms on Asuka's, slipping his fingers through hers. The prow of the ship reared up.
"I can't hold on!" she shouted.
He moved on pure instinct, and drew her around before him. Her saw her as she was, not as she appeared to be, the being of light trapped within crude matter. Her skin was gold, and her hair like polished copper, and her eyes were sunshine on the ocean on a clear day. He clasped her cheeks in his hands and pulled her close to him.
"Do you trust me?" he said again.
"Yes."
"It will be easier this way."
It was a simple thing.
He kissed her.
Then, they were one.
He could feel her in his mind, her hopes, her dreams, all her terrible sadness exposed to him at once, and felt her sudden pang of sympathy as she saw the same. When he moved she moved with him, part of him, the endless furnace of her power driving his own. Iquarius reared up from the front of the ship, snarling and bellowing, and brought his rotten fists down in the center of the boat. It cracked in half with a great ripping sound.
He took a step and put his foot down on ice. A chill wind howled over an arctic waist but it didn't touch him. He saw something falling from the sky, glowing with emerald disease, radiating evil that tainted the air around it. It slammed to Earth before him, crashing through the ice and sending up a plume of superheated gas, and he felt Asuka's fear within his own belly, tight and cold, but he raced forward.
The object lay buried in the ice, sinking into a pool of bubbling water, and he knew what it was, the same corruption that infested the ship, somehow rendered into physical form, sinking into the Arctic ice. It was full of power without reason but there was something else, ancient and hungry and full of raw sorrow, and in the ice it waited.
Iquarius came at him again, and he raised a shield of pure will, driving the beast back. When the tendrils of corruption slithered over it, he heard voices nail themselves into his mind, booming whispers that drowned out all thought.
She doesn't love you you only hurt Hikari mother never cared about you father hates you rei hates you everyone hates you you're weak weak weak weak…
He ground his teeth and focused, drawing yet more power. Something was screeching, something beyond Asuka, something on the other side of her, and he understood Doom's words. Creation. Raw power. Life.
The thing that was Iquarius hated it.
Shinji saw the truth behind appearance.
"Let me show you!" he shouted.
He was reduced to a single point. He hurled the psychic fire across the wastes, vaporizing the water in this realm of the unreal, and when it washed over Iquarius it opened his eyes. Shinji felt his body vanish and he was only Shinji, Asuka tightly bound to him, clinging to him like a rock on a reef battered by the storm, and he clung back. Yet for all their torment around them there was only peace. Sun shining on a ship's deck, the air turned to glass by the heat from the sun.
High above on a flying bridge a girl stood, the sun in her hair, the breeze on her skin, anticipation making her arms shake as she leaned on the rail. She was, for one of the only times in her miserable life, truly happy.
"And then you came."
Iquarius screamed, his bellow like the sound of a thousand bones breaking, of a rotten fish sliding over a sinking ship's deck, and his scream was two, torn free of his corrupted lungs by truth.
Shinji's voice was the aether.
What did you do?
"I did what I had to do!" Iquarius roared, snarling at slamming his fists through the empty air. He turned from the girl on the high deck, shying from her as a vampire would the sun. He shielded himself with his wing. With a whisper of his will, Shinji burned it away, prompting the daemon to scream.
No. See.
Iquarius -no, he was still Shinji then- was on his knees, screaming into a phone.
"Release the Eva! I have to save her!"
A familiar voice spoke in even tones, unafraid even of a child-god. "The risk is too great."
"You don't understand!"
"You don't understand."
Gendo hung up.
Iquarius-Shinji threw the phone down and shattered it and his rage was made manifest, and the rock before him cracked from the force of his fury. He threw his arms over his head and screamed at the heavens and something answered him, lurking in the air since the day men had freed it, waiting at last for the perfect moment when the perfect host would need it more than ever.
I can help you.
Don't listen to it! Shinji shouted, making the world quake. It lies!
I can save her. You can't do it alone. You're not strong enough.
I'll do anything! Iquarius-Shinji screamed.
His eyes flew open. The power roared through him, and the earth buckled beneath his feet. Psychic hoarfroast formed on his face, his clothes, matted his hair as he trembled. He could feel Unit Two, buried in the depths of the volcano. He clenched his fists and blew out his chest and pulled, and with all his might he raised the Eva.
The surface of the magma froze over and cracked, then buckled as it lifted up, sliding away from the Eva's shoulders. The protective gear was all but destroyed, tented inwards by the pressure and cracking as the expression of his psychic might turned its skin to ice. He pulled and pulled until he wept blood and his fingers were wounding his palms, until Unit Two crested the rim of the cratered and toppled over.
After all that, tearing the armor away was easy. He tore it apart with his telekine gift and his bare hands, pulling it apart and dragging the armor away until he pulled the plug open. The LCL, too hot, washed over him as he cracked the plug like an egg.
At last he had her. Cradled in his arms, folded against his huge chest, she struggled for breath. Her eyes flickered open, blinking.
"Don't die!" he pleaded, "Don't die! Don't die!"
The scene changed. Misato.
"You can't do this!" she screamed, pointing her sidearm at him, for all the good that would do.
"Yes, I can," he said, calmly. He truly was Iquarius now.
"Shinji, please, think about what you're doing."
He brushed her aside. He felt her arm fold under the blow, the bone shattering. She screamed, the gun went off, the bullet missed him by a mile. He kicked her to the side and walked past, ripping the doors off their hinges with his mind.
Gendo was standing behind his desk, a frantic look on his face.
"Son," he said, "If you would just listen to me-"
"I'm not your son."
"Wait-"
It was the last word Gendo Ikari ever spoke. Iquarius made him very small, and very dense, and when he released his psychic grasp the pressure was released and the office was very red. He turned around, smiling smugly.
Rei was there.
"What did you do?" she said, softly.
"He tried to kill Asuka!" Iquarius roared, the air itself quaking from his fury.
"You killed him," she whispered.
"Of course I did. He tried to kill Asuka!"
Rei looked up at him. Only then did he notice her plugsuit.
"They were going to send me."
Iquarius' voice echoed in the void, like clashing rock. "That didn't happen! She tried to kill me! She wanted-"
Rei moved forward. "There is something else here."
Iquarius stepped back. His face twisted into a sneer. "I need it."
"It's evil. You must-"
Merciful. He was merciful. A single blow to the head. He saw something rising from her, some energy sneaking away, gathering itself somewhere else. The voice in his head made it easy to root it out and be rid of it. No more Rei. She couldn't be trusted.
It was another time, and Asuka was screaming. She threw the lamp from the bedside table in her hospital room at him. It shattered on his chest, and he barely flinched.
"You murderer!" she raged, "I never want to see you again!"
"I saved you!"
"You killed people! You killed Misato!"
"I had to."
"You killed Kaji. I hate you!"
It was an easy thing. Her mind was so open, so ready. He just touched it a little.
Fixed it.
"What was I saying?" she said, touching the side of her head.
"How you love me," he said softly, taking a step, using his gift to reshape himself. He brought himself down to her level.
She buried her face in his chest. "I love you, Shinji. You saved me!"
"Yes," he said, grinning. "I did."
That's not true! Iquarius voice rang in the void, It didn't happen that way!
Shinji stepped forward. Iquarius rounded on him, but shied from the burning fury of pure creation that surged in his chest, his soul joined with Asuka's.
"Tell them!" Iquarius bellowed, shaking his fists before his twisted maw, "tell them it's not true!"
It is, the slippery voice whispered, like a sharp cough. It's all true. I gave you what you asked for. I never gave you less.
Iquarius screamed. The Primarch sank to his knees, the bones in his legs grinding as he wailed, clutching his skull.
"I didn't mean it!"
Asuka-Shinji spoke. He wasn't sure who was who now. "Then why did you do it?"
Because he wanted to, the daemon rasped, because he liked it.
"I didn't!"
Shinji moved forward. "You have to see the truth."
"I don't want to."
"You must."
It was over. He won. Nagisa's blood was fresh on his hands, still stinging his palette. The tiny voice in his mind chuckled at him.
Blood for the blood god.
Asuka stumbled away from the plug, clutching her head. Blood dribbled down her nose. She was looking at him oddly, as if she couldn't place him.
"Something's not right," she moaned.
"What?" Iquarius demanded, taking her by the shoulder. "What's wrong?"
"I… don't touch me," she hissed. "I know what you did."
He frowned. "I don't-"
She tried to shake out of his grasp, but as always he was too strong. "You did something to my head. You made me do things, you sick bastard."
"I didn't!" he screamed, "I fixed you! I made you better!"
"Let go of me!" Asuka shrieked, kicking her feet, "Help me! Somebody help me!"
There were others, Toji and Kensuke, standing behind him. They said nothing. Toji frowned.
"Here," said Shinji.
He just needed to apply a little more pressure this time, a little more force. Make her remember that she loved him. He reached into her mind and he pushed… and she went limp in his arms. She spasmed, her chest jerking, and a fine foam trickled from her lips.
Iquarius screamed, but it was more than a scream. The aether and the warp trembled, boiled as he threw his head back, clutched his skull, and wailed, a psychic shriek that rippled out through the immaterium, etched forever in the minds of things that lived beyond time. He fell to his knees, coughing black bile through his tears.
He understood, now, why the Emperor had refused.
Better to let him believe his own lies.
"I can save her." Shinji said, quietly.
"What?"
What?
"No tricks, no lies, no deals. I can bring her back as she was, before you destroyed her mind. I can heal her."
"You can?" Iquarius whispered.
Of course he can. She'll hate you all over again. What you did was worse than what Arael did to her. Some part of her always knew, when you were touching her, what you had done. Screamed for you to stop. Until you broke her mind completely and erased the girl she was, the woman she would grow to be. I helped.
You asked nicely.
"I can," said Shinji.
"Do it."
Yes. Do it.
Shinji breathed. He unfolded the gates of imagination, and he was in the infirmary.
Kensuke, the looming chief Apothecary, looked up at the sudden intrusion as Shinji, Asuka, and Iquarius stepped out of the fold in space. Doctor Ikari looked up from his patient. His eyes widened.
"Oh shit."
Shinji held Asuka's hand. He looked at Kensuke.
"Get out of my way."
With a flicker of thought, he brushed the Good Doctor aside and hurled him into the wall. He was on in his feet in an instant, for all the good it did.
"What are you doing?"
Iquarius seized him, dragged him from the ground by this throat.
"Kensuke," me murmured, wheezing. "What did I do to you?"
"You made me perfect," he coughed, "My lord."
Iquarius shook. "What did I do?"
In a single, almost easy motion, he broke Kensuke's neck and let him collapse.
Shinji pulled Asuka to his side, standing over the silent girl on the bier. As Iquarius switched off the stasis field, her vital signs plummeted. Iquarius roared as her heartbeat stopped, and she let out her last, strangled breath.
Shinji ignored him. There were things, all around, lurching abominations in the psychic tempest that flowed all around him, reaching out to grasp that tiny spark of light he saw escaping the girl's body and rip it to shreds. He held Asuka's hand tight and snatched the sad little thing first, before they could reach it.
"You lied to me!" he roared. "She'll be lost in the warp! She's in hell!"
Shinji held out his hand. A tiny light flickered over it, a luminous red sphere.
Iquarius leaned over it. He reached his hands towards it, and then shied away.
"Did you save her?"
"Yes," said Shinji.
"Then take her from away from me," said Iquarius, stepping back. "Take her someplace far away, where the sun is always shining, and the sea breeze is always on her face. Someplace where there are no more monsters."
"I'll do better than that," said Shinji.
Iquarius turned away, lurching, his broken wing folded over his back.
"Where are you going?"
"I have a Legion to destroy."
He ducked under the lintel and departed into the ship, his scraping boots thumping on the deck, and behind him was the empty laughter of a thirsting god.
"Shinji!" Asuka shouted.
He turned. The Doctor was running, ducking through a door.
That didn't matter. The Asuka on the table, older but still every bit as beautiful, had been hurt. They had… done things to her.
"I can heal her," he said.
He drew the soul of Asuka Shikinami to his chest and held her close, to free his mind. He drew on Asuka's strength, folding it through the currents of the aether around him, murmuring ancient chants learned from the Sorcerer Supreme himself.
Asuka the Vampire lurched into the room. The Asuka on the table sat up and screamed, clutching a blanket around herself.
"Help me," the vampire rasped.
She was badly hurt. Her side was folded in. The creature inside her wasn't healing her anymore, and the wounds on her face and leg had opened up. She was bleeding, badly. The ones beside her, Hikari and Mari, walked in a daze, holding her up under her arms.
"Shinji," Asuka said softly, tugging on his hand. She'd never let go. "Your nose is bleeding."
"I'll be okay," he said, breathing hard. "I have to help her."
"Haven't you done enough?"
"No," he said.
He crossed his arms in front of his face. The Adversary reared up, his body full of pale purple light, a furnace burning around his chest that made his bones glow like iron from a forge. He threw his mouth open and the blast came, and Shinji was hurled backwards, passing through the wall as though it were paper. The Adversary was on his feet, changing. His arms elongated, reaching out, and twisted, turning on themselves, his bones shattering, creaking as they changed- crystal flowed along their length as he slammed them together and a high pitched shrieking sound rang through the bones of the ship.
"Remember this?" he roared.
Heat, searing heat, washed over Shinji's body, divided by his palms as he raised his hands over his face. His cape blew out behind him, snapping from the superheated wind that rose all around him as the beam cut through the hull of the ship, briefly falling on bulkhead after bulkhead, panel after panel until they went red hot, then white hot, then collapsed into slag and the beam kept on cutting.
Shinji planted his feet in the melted steel and thrust his chest out. The beam skimmed over the S and split as he walked forward through it, grimly setting his jaw.
"Yes," he said, his voice calm but clapping like thunder, "I remember the Fifth Angel. It hurt."
The Adversary yanked his arms apart, the crystal shrieking as it shattered and reformed. "Let's see how you like this, then."
His fingers stretched out, hissing as they took on a strange glow. They cut whatever they touched, leaving glowing trails in the metal around him as he charged, turning his arms to whip them around. He brought his hand around and snapped his light-whips, wrapping them around Shinji's arms, and yanked them tight, biding him. They sizzled where they touched his uniform.
"These were always a favorite of mine. Maybe I'll try them on your pretty wife."
Shinji sucked in a deep breath, expanded his chest, and snapped the whips. "I didn't even have to bite them, this time."
The Adversary reared up, pulling back his wounded hand, and his chest widened. He lurched forward as his back grew, lifting up, and he became more and more square, walking on stunted legs. A collar of bone lifted up and closed around his face, forming a mask with hollow eyes, the Adversary's perfect face jutting from the mouth. He grinned and there was a flash of light in the mask's eyes.
A wave of concussive forced washed over Shinji, hurling him back through the channel that the previous attack melted in the ship itself. He was on his feet and took the next hit in the shoulder, a flash of light filling his vision as the burst slammed into the very structure of the ship, dragging an angry groan out of it.
He dug his fingers into the molten metal to take the next blast, shouldering into it. Slowly, one foot in front of the other, he pushed forward, shrugging them off. The Adversary changed again, his body warping. His arms grew longer, his body narrower, his legs thin and knock-kneed. He lurched forward, his huge green eyes wide as fanged mouth opened. Shinji felt a faint pang of recognition as he turned the Adversary's charge, grabbing him by the shoulders.
"You're coming with me," Shinji said calmly, "you're going to release the souls you've stolen."
"You sound so certain," the Adversary rasped. "I'll die before I submit to you."
"No," said Shinji. "You're not going to die. I won't let you."
He looked up. It was one of the first things he learned, after he discovered the flight and the super-strength. He tensed just the right muscles in his eyes, and whatever it was that let him see the entire spectrum folded on itself and send beams of heat lancing out of his eyes. Here, in this place, he used his ability to its full potential.
"Let's take this outside."
The hull of the ship did not simply melt. It vaporized. He lifted up, dragging the Adversary through the plume of vaporized metal as the superheated gas and the atmosphere of the ship howled into the void. As he dragged the Adversary through the rent in the hull, the howling sound died in his ears, replaced by the cloying silence of the vacuum.
The Adversary rolled across the hull, scrabbling for purchase. Shinji stood over him, his fists on his hips. Rising, the Adversary grinned at him, clenching his razor teeth. No more banter, no more discussion. Shinji wound up and threw a punch, so hard he felt something snap, not in himself but in the universe around him, as if the fabric of space-time itself warped from the speed of his fist. The Adversary caught the blow in the chin and turned, shattered teeth flying out of his mouth, and bounced along the hull, each tumbling impact sending plates of plasteel hurling off into space.
Shinji ran and flew for him, grabbing him under the arms, and dragged him to his feet. The core thrummed in his chest, cycling faster and faster as he snapped his head back around, spat out his remaining teeth and others grew in their place, a look of mad defiance twisting his features, his solid green eyes wide. Shinji lifted him up and pounded him face-first into the hull, again and again, and still he scrambled.
The Adversary threw his arms wide and his core flared, blazing energy lancing out in every direction. Shinji blocked his eyes with his arm, weathering it calmly as it liquefied the hull and rolled it back until it cooled, drooping inwards. He seized his enemy and pulled him around.
The rest of the fleet was tearing itself apart. The other ships were pounding one another, hurtling through the void firing glittering beams and heavy shells at one another. One of the biggest ships, not far from where they stood, was starting to fold in half as the fire from the other ships concentrated on her midsection, doing more and more damage every second.
Shinji felt the Adversary's chest pumping under his arms. It took him a moment to realize that it was laughter.
He lifted up and dove back down through the hull breach, diving until he hit the half-melted deck and plowed through it. He pushed through deck after deck, the bulkheads and struts screaming as he shouldered them aside, until he let go and the Adversary's momentum carried him into the last deck, folding it around him as he came to a stop.
"Give up," said Shinji.
"No," the Adversary rasped. "You'll run out of power without your yellow sun eventually, and then I'll kill you."
He seized the Adversary's hair and lifted him up. His fingers slid across the beast's chest, and he winced as he pushed them through his flesh, grunting from the effort.
"I shouldn't have played you," it rasped. "I should have just knocked you out and killed your skinny bitch and the little parasite growing inside her."
"Be quiet," said Shinji, driving his fingers deeper. He felt the core, burning hot.
"You're wrong," the Adversary rasped, "Your whole existence is wrong. You can be good because you have it so easy."
"I know," said Shinji.
"What?"
"I know other people feel hunger and fear and pain, and it holds them back and makes them do evil things. I know I have it easy, in some ways. The difference between me and you is that I don't use my suffering as an excuse to be vain and cruel for the sake of it."
He closed his fingers around the core. "The difference between you and me is that you blame people for what they are, and I love them for what they could be."
He pulled.
The Adversary screamed. He clawed at Shinji's throat, clenched his teeth, sputtered and cursed, thrashing his legs and arms against the bulkhead as Shinji gently drew the core out of his chest. A horrid sucking sound accompanied it, as the core pulled to the surface, trailing streamers of pale, bloodless flesh.
"All that, and you're killing me."
"No. I have to crush it to kill you. We both know your body is just a construct. This is the real you."
The Adversary smiled softly to himself. "You-"
With one last pull, it came free. The Adversary slumped against the wall, his eyes glazing.
Shinji held the core in his hands.
"I know you can hear me. I'm going to set everyone in there with you free, and leave you alone forever. You deserve worse, but it's not for me to make that choice."
He blinked away the tears.
"If anyone else can hear me, you're going home."
He tucked it under his arm, and he flew.
Shinji's radio crackled.
"Extraction wave incoming!" Ironhide bellowed.
He didn't need to be told. He could hear them rumbling through the corridors. They were close, now. Hikari bashed in another door with her hammer and he raced forward, skidding to a stop. Hikari paused beside him, grimly. The doors to the prison were already open, and they were rusted away into nothing. A trail of corruption ran from one end to the other. He stepped inside.
There were so many of them.
He wasted no time. He ran from cell to cell, blasting the locks out with his gauntlet emitters while Hikari did the same, knocking the bars apart with Mjolnir or simply yanking them loose with her bare hands. Some of the Asukas stumbled out into the cell block, looking around in disbelief as if they expected another torture.
Some of them couldn't walk.
Shinji opened his helmet. "We're here to get you out of here. It's over."
"He speaks the truth," Hikari called.
Ironhide rolled in, followed by Ratchet and Hound. Ironhide's doors opened and the Hunter and his Rei emerged.
"Where's my Asuka?" he demanded.
"I haven't seen her. Try the Apothecarium," said Shinji.
The Hunter nodded. He turned to Rei. "Stay here, cover them."
Rei eyed him.
"I'm coming back."
He didn't sound so sure of it.
Shinji covered the door, crouching as another boom rattled the ship, sending shudders up his legs. The Asukas who could walk were piling into the Autobots. Hikari picked one up, a pale-haired girl with golden eyes and a missing leg, and carried her over to Ratchet.
Shinji activated his radio. "Iron Shinji to all points. Recovery wave is go. We'll be on our way in less than five."
One of the Asukas grabbed his shoulder plate. She was older than the others, her hair mostly gray, her lined face a mask of worry.
"My children! They took my children!"
Shinji blinked.
God.
"Mari! Are you reading me?"
"Yeah!"
"Any chance we can delay the warp drive thingamabob?"
"I'd like to say yes but there's a million of these things. We're going to be lucky to pull this off at all. Why?"
He looked at the Old Asuka. "Nevermind."
He was glad she couldn't hear him under his helmet.
Shinji doubled over, grunting, blood streaming over his lips. He'd fixed the girl on the table and she was standing in a daze, clutching her sheets around herself like a dress. When he turned his gifts to the other, the vampire, something happened. He wrenched his hand out of her gasp, his face a mask of fear. His wound reopened and dark blood stained his lips as he stumbled away, drawing something out of her. He was grunting as it washed over him, a black, vaporous mass of tentacles that lashed out at him, trying to invade him through his nostrils and mouth. Asuka raised her hands to burn it away.
"Look out!" the vampire screamed.
She felt a lancing pain in her side and turned. Doctor Ikari pushed her aside, drawing the long knife from her flank, stained with her blood. She felt a spreading warmth on her side and touched it, pulling back a hand covered in almost black blood. She turned and reached for the fire but he moved viper quick and snapped the hand holding the blade and it plunged into her shoulder. She screamed and fell back, stumbling against the table.
He crouched and looked at her wound, pulling down his doctor's mask.
"Oh, that's not good. The blood is black, which means I stabbed you in your liver. You have about twenty minutes to live. Twenty very painful minutes."
Shinji stumbled, raised the black mass over his head, and hurled it. It hit the Doctor like a bag of sand and bowled him back, throwing him into the wall. Shinji started towards her and slipped. He was deathly pale and when he fell down, he could barely get up on his hands and knees.
The Doctor thrashed. The black ichor swirled around him, and he stopped struggling. It flowed into his nose and his mouth, as if he were taking a deep breath, and he closed his eyes. When he opened them again, they were a dark red, the irises the color of fresh blood. He reached into his mouth with a finger, testing his teeth, and drew them back with a wince.
"I never supposed I'd be a vampire queen. Fitting, really."
He stalked towards them, stopping to scoop up his knife. He looked at Asuka, the former vampire. Hikari and Mari twitched, their eyes glazing over, and they seized her by the arms.
"You are what you eat," said the Doctor.
Asuka blinked. Another Shinji stepped through the door. She'd seen him before, back home. He was older and he was scruffy, with long hair and a growth of unkempt stubble that reminded her of that Kaji man, her Latverian contact. He had a chainsaw slung over his back and a sawed off shotgun in his hand. He pointed it at the Doctor's face.
"Eat this."
The volume of the blast shocked her. The Doctor caught it in the face, rolled up and over the table, and landed in a scramble on the other side. By the time he was getting up, the Hunter had reloaded, aimed into his side, and pulled both triggers again. Bloodless flesh blew out from his side as his lab coat shredded apart. He flicked the gun open, tipping it so the ejected shells went over his shoulder, slapped two fresh ones into place, and snapped it shut. As the Doctor got up, he put both barrels into his knee and pulled the trigger.
He glanced over his shoulder. "Get out of here. Now."
"Shinji!" the former vampire screamed, struggling with her former thralls.
Asuka rolled, leaving a trail of dark blood on the floor. She flopped over and her palm landed on Shinji's hand. She had to grit her teeth to focus. She couldn't give him much. It was enough.
When her wound closed, it hurt.
"Sorry," Shinji rasped, clutching his side.
She grasped his hand harder. "Fix yourself."
"I can't," he murmured as she pulled him onto her lap. "I'm too tired."
"No," Asuka snapped. "I am Asuka von Doom and I do not give you permission to die."
She kissed him.
His eyes flew open. He jerked, spasming in pain as his would closed again, and she pulled him to his feet. She tentatively let go of his hand.
"Are you alright?"
"I think so."
He looked at the vampires holding the other Asuka. He raised his hand and sighed.
"Vampires. Lots of blood. Lots of iron."
They quivered as their arms pulled away.
"Get the others and run," Shinji grunted, "I can't hold them forever."
Asuka nodded, gathering up her doppelgangers, grabbing their hands. She pulled them along, and Shinji followed. She heard another cracking boom, and a moment later, the sound of a chainsaw revving up, a loud snarl that reverberated through the halls. Asuka pulled the others along as Shinji stumbled behind them, clutching his side. They turned the corner to the cells.
A rolling convoy had formed, carrying the other Asukas out of the cells. Hikari turned and rushed to them, her face a mask of relief.
The Asuka that had been on the operating table saw the Shinji in the miniature Unit One and all but screamed his name, running towards him. He saw her and flipped his helmet open, shouting ecstatically.
She slapped him. Then she kissed him. Just once, on the cheek. He lifted her onto the back of the big red van and it rumbled off while yet more vehicles pulled up.
The Hunter calmly walked out of the infirmary.
"What happened to the Doctor?" said Shinji.
The Hunter strapped his chainsaw to his back and shrugged. "He had to split."
"Hikari and Mari?" the ex-vampire asked, softly.
He shook his head.
She sobbed. "Oh God."
He grabbed her in a fierce embrace, tears streaming down his eyes. "No, baby, it's my fault. I let that thing get you. I'll never let you go again."
"Hey," Iron Shinji shouted, "I hate breaking up the reunion and all, but let's get the hell out of here."
Mari pressed up against the wall, wedging herself between two struts. She could hear the thing coming, and her radar picked it up, a huge blip leading a number of other blips towards her. She ducked out and peeked around the corner.
Lumbering towards her was a huge construct, so big it filled the hallway. It shuffled forward on stunted legs, its armored body oversized, with a tiny helmet set in its chest. One arm was an enormous claw, six slicing fingers wreathed in crackling lightning, while the other was enormous cannon multi-barreled cannon. When it spotted her, it swung around and opened up, the barrels blurring as they spun. Heavy shells ripped through the air and she scrambled from the corner as they cut right through the wall, sawing towards her.
The Hulk waded into the burst of shells like rain, ripped the section of wall away with his bare hands, and stood there as the rest of the Astartes opened up behind the walker, puffing his chest out as the heavy shells thumped across his skin and the bolter fire burst all around him. He bellowed so loud Mari's armor compensated, and even then it hurt her ears and drowned out the thunderous gunfire. He charged.
The walker swung its claw-arm around and scraped it across the Hulk's chest. It may as well have been hitting him with a wet newspaper. He seized the mechanical arm in one hand, ripped it loose in a single motion, spraying oil and what looked like blood everywhere, and bashed the walking machine down with it. When it turned to fire on him point blank he shoved his fingers in the spinning barrels and the sudden intrusion ripped them apart, sending shrapnel and flying chunks of motor everywhere. With another roar he lifted the entire machine from the floor and with a bounding step hurled into the squad of Marines. It bounced over them and rolled to a trashed heap.
Mari ran around the corner, screaming at the top of her lungs, and opened fire with her hand repulsors. Toji rolled next to her on glowing green motorcycle that looked like something out of a bad post apocalyptic video game, festooned with goofy ray guns. Ritsuko rode behind him, clinging to his waist, while her freaking cat bounded along next to them, leaping into the fray.
Mari ducked a sword swing, turned around, and blasted the Marine who swung it at her in the face. He stumbled, his helmet dented in, and ripped it off. His face was a mass of scars. One eye was all red, as though all his capillaries had burst, and his teeth were filed to sharp points. He'd carved a rune in his cheek, a stylized skull, and the wound was still bleeding.
A green fist as big as her chest mashed him into the wall and he stopped moving. Mari grabbed the sword, surprised by how heavy it was even with her armor helping, and charged, swinging it wildly. It cut wherever it touched, biting through wall and heavy armor with equal ease.
Alpharius walked calmly behind them, stopping to plink with his bolter every few steps. Each shot dropped a Marine, a perfect head shot.
Mari checked her schematics. They weren't far now.
The Hulk was in a rage, bellowing incoherently and rolling forward, leading the way. The Astartes turned and ran when they saw him, firing past each other to cover their retreat, but that only made him madder. One of them lurched around the corner with a long cannon slung in front of him and opened fire. Some sort of energy beam. He aimed past the Hulk and would have hit Mari if Toji didn't raise a shield in front of her. By the time she knew what was happening, the Hulk had seized the Astartes' weapon and was beating him with it, knocking him around the corridor like a baseball. He threw it down, bellowed, and charged deeper into the ship.
Mari skidded to a stop. Toji pulled up, and Ritsuko's cat leapt onto her shoulder. There was an enormous door in front of them, the sensors in Mari's suit telling her it was five feet thick, at least. There as a panel next to it, and she headed towards it.
"We need to get this door open."
"Hulk open door," said the Hulk.
Mari jumped back, yelping, as he shouldered into it. The whole ship seemed to shake from the impact, and when the door didn't have the good graces to just fall down, he got even angrier, pounding it with his fists, each unsuccessful hit driving him into more of a fury. He reared up, raising both fists like an ape.
The door blew in at them.
Mari ducked behind the Hulk as the ruined door rolled over his shoulder and clanged to the floor, staggering him. The daemons came in a flood, so many of them they looked like a mass of bloody red limbs, flaming red eyes and bronze claws. The Hulk roared, half in rage and half in glee, and waded into them as Mari kicked on her boot jets and jumped back to the others.
"What the hell is going on?" she shouted.
"They are abominations," said Alpharius. "Kill them."
Mari opened fire, spraying repulsor bursts into the oncoming throng. Without the Hulk they would have been overrun in a second, but he was less a dam and more a rock on a shore as they tide rolled in, the daemons parting around him to charge everyone else. Alpharius slung his bolter and activated his sword.
"For the Emperor!"
"For Oa and Earth!" Toji shouted.
He rolled forward, gunning the engine of his green machine. Blades unfolded from the wheels and an elaborate contraption constructed itself over his head, a weird mixture between a helicopter and some kind of medieval murder machine, spinning spiked flails around his bike, Ritsuko screaming as the cat jumped off her shoulder and went berserk, spinning through the air. It grabbed a daemon in its teeth, spun around, and hurled it through the wall.
There was a shudder throughout the ship, something deep in its bones that made the whole world quake. Mari turned around, her back to the Hulk, and her eyes widened. Some kind of darkness flowed around them, slithering over the walls and the deck. The Astartes that lay behind them coughed and sputtered, and one by one they started to get up, dragging their weapons behind them. They raised their swords and bolters and brought them to bear on Mari.
Something happened. They stopped in a line, their helmets dented in or pockmarked by holes from Alpharius' bolter, their lurching bodies broken in a dozen places by the Hulk's wrath. The daemons shivered, and a whole knot of them charged past Mari, raising their blazing brass swords and chittering war cries in an alien language that hurt her teeth when she heard it. She blinked.
They were fighting each other. The dead Marines stomped forward in a line, utterly silence, and opened fire, wildly, not seeming to aim at her or the others but not particularly seeming to care if they scored a hit. Others pulled out their knives or raised their sword and slowly walked into the oncoming mass of daemons, ignoring their brass blades as they bit through armor. Every time one of the Astartes was wounded, a rancid stench rolled through the hallway, until her armor filtered it out.
The corridor turned into chaos. Mari checked her chronometer. They had to keep moving.
"Hulk!" she shouted, blinking at her HUD to turn her external speakers all the way up, "Plow the road!"
The Hulk glanced at her, grinned, and started stomping forward, raising his foot. Each impact shook the floor and the walls around her groaned, the struts in the walls buckling from the impact. He threw his arms out wide and charged, bowling over the daemon, stomping on them. Toji rolled over the ones he didn't finish off, as Mari and Streaky dropped the rest. The cat was a spinning ball of fury, zipping through the air, biting off their damned heads.
"Remind me not to make that cat angry," Mari said absently to herself.
Alpharius appeared next to her. Somehow, she'd lost contact with him in the madness.
"How much time?"
"We have five minutes and then we have to get out of here."
He nodded and stormed forward, hefting his huge bolter in one hand and his sword in the other.
Mari checked the schematics again. They should be running into…
As she skidded past the corner of the hall, her jaw dropped. Even the Hulk was staring, although he was also crushing a daemon to death in either fist at the same time. These must have been the warp engines.
The space before them was vast, bigger even than the hangar. Mari marveled that such a thing could even be built. The drives themselves, enormous masses of machinery that would dwarf event he largest terrestrial construction, towered high overhead. They were wreathed in crackling energy, and there was something wrong with them. Fungal growths covered the surface, and mushrooms the size of trees rose in clusters from joints in the system. The suit warned Mari that the atmosphere was nearly toxic; neither the Hulk nor the cat seemed to care, and Toji and Ritsuko were protected by his ring.
"What do we do?"
"We must charge the engines and jettison them," said Alpharius.
"What does that do?"
"It will create a warp storm that will most likely destroy the entire fleet."
"How do we do that?"
"I know the necessary rites. This way."
Alpharius led the way. Mari set the armor to record, taking a visual record of everything she saw, and swept her gaze around. The daemons pooled at the edge of the corridor, as if something about the drive frightened them, chittering and snarling. She could hear the stomping footsteps and rolling bolter fire of the dead Marines behind them.
She followed Alpharius up a long set of stairs. The whole place was like a cathedral or a church. There were statues on the damned walls and elaborate reliefs everywhere, but they were broken and defaced. The whole place was littered with corpses in red robes, all of them festooned with crude looking cybernetics.
"Cover me," said Alpharius, working at the control panel.
Mari turned around. The daemons were losing their fear, edging closer.
Alpharius turned. "It is done. In ten minutes, this ship and everything near it will be drawn into the Immaterium."
"Let's go," said Mari.
"I'm afraid not."
She froze. "What?"
"The panel must be defended. The process can be aborted, at least for now. By the time is has reached the point of no return, everything in this room will be destroyed."
"Then let's go!"
"You must go. I will stay. I must complete my mission. Iquarius and the Second Legion will not return."
"But-"
He leveled his bolter at her face. "Cooperating with you is not part of my mission parameters."
"Okay, then," Mari said, raising her hands as she backed away. "Good luck."
"I do not believe in luck," said Alpharius.
Mari ran down the long staircase, using her gauntlet repulsors to stabilize herself. The daemons were starting to flood into the room, either overcoming their fear or consumed with bloodlust or driven by the undead Marines, or all three. She looked over her shoulder, and saw they were flooding in from the other side. Alpharius opened fire on them from his perch.
"Hulk!" Mari shouted, "We need go back!"
"Back to big ship?"
"Back to big ship!"
"Hulk go back to big ship!"
He turned and roared into the corridor, crashing into the onrushing daemons like a wave. Mari wished all men were that easy to manipulate.
The hangar had gone mad. Thunderous booms washed through the great space as Astartes flooded in from every direction, and stepping over them, giant robots. The defenders formed a perimeter around the ship, using downed vehicles, crates, debris, anything that could deflect gunfire as shields. Asuka, the Emissary of the Amazons, stood on an overturned Land Raider, raising her glittering sword to signal the charge. Behind her, a breakout surged forwards. They had to link up with the returning waves of the rescue mission while holding the hangar.
The air overhead was a startling cacophony of light and sound. Decepticon jets screamed at the hangar, chasing or chased by Green Lanterns. Mari had signaled that they had about ten minutes before the entire ship was destroyed. The deck vibrated as Devastator walked, grappling with Rei in her emerald Eva, their battle scattering the smaller enemies under their feet.
Misato swung from the ceiling, kicking her feet into an Astarte's helmet, while Superman of Earth 1 plucked a bolter shell out of the air with his fingers before it stuck her back. She turned to thank him, the symbiote shifting against her skin, but was silence as he grabbed her and turned. Megatron brought his fusion cannon to bear on them and the burst rolled over Shinji's back, driving them into the deck.
"Decepticons!" he cried, "Take that ship!"
"Megatron!" Prime boomed, haloed in the light of his ring. "Surrender!"
"Never!"
"Listen to me, Megatron!" Prime shouted, grappling with him. "This ship is doomed."
"And so are you!" Megatron cried.
"So be it," said Prime.
Ben Grimm shoved a Rhino onto its side, ripping out the transmission with his bare hands, and shoved it forward, using it as a shield.
"Forward!" Asuka the Amazon cried. Steve Rogers ran beside her, and when a line of Astartes charged them with snarling chainswords, they linked shields, as Spartan warriors of old, and charged.
The Old Man calmly walked through the chaos, firing a rifle.
Asuka of Earth-2 grabbed his arm. "You should be inside."
He gave her a stern look. "These frakkers are shooting my ship."
An Astartes bearing a snarling chainaxe reared up over the wrecked and brought it down. Asuka casually caught the blade in her hand, the motor shrieking as her palm stripped the teeth. She crumpled the mechanism in her fingers, yanked it out of his hand, and rammed her open palm into his chest. His ceramite shattered and he turned end over end as he spun away from her. She put one hand over her belly.
"That's it! I have had enough off this!"
She surged into the air, spinning. Beams of heat lanced out from her eyes, carving red-hot channels across the deck, slicing through everything they touched. She landed in a crouch.
The old man dropped his mag, slapped a new one into place, and racked the charging handle. "You should do that more often."
Shinji ran ahead of the Autobots. Hikari moved like a sprinter, her feet barely seeming to touch the ground. The deck was shaking under his feet, and he could hear groaning and explosions from every direction, rolling through the very structure of the vessel. His radio crackled.
"This is Mari! Mari to all points! We have less than ten minutes to get out of here or we're all dead!"
He turned to Hikari. "Punch it!"
Shinji kicked on his boot jets and took off. Hikari whirled the hammer and threw it, catching the strap at the last moment, and was pulled off her feet. Somehow, it turned in the air, pulling behind it. He saw Sue Storm and the others holding the corridor entrance. Beyond them was a mad house. The entire hangar was a battlefield.
"Computer!" he shouted, "Max burn!"
The sudden burst of acceleration shoved him into the suit, compressing his spine, and he grunted. He rolled as he left the corridor, ducking a blast from a heavy weapon. He nearly hit the ground, turned hard, gritting his teeth, and saw stars in his eyes. A walking coffin was firing at him, tracing his movement in the air, until Hikari leapt up and came down, dragging the hammer through it until the head slammed into the deck, cratering it. She leapt into the air, raised it high, and lightning arced from nowhere, gathering in a halo around the head. Thunder followed after it, rolling through the hangar.
Shinji shouted into his radio. "We need cover! Rescue wave incoming!"
Green Lantern Rei turned from grappling with a giant robot made out of smaller robots. Shinji blinked, shook his head, and came in for a screeching landing. As if she were done toying with her foe she turned, shoved it away, and raised her arms as if cradling a rifle. A positron cannon formed from emerald light in her Eva's hands, and she fired, pummeling the machine's chest with explosive bursts. She leapt forward, the Eva unfolding as she discarded it, and landed in a crouch. She spread out a shield from the corridor to the Galactica, shells and lascannon fire skimming off of it. She held the wrist behind her ring with her other hand, clenching her teeth.
Shinji looked back. The Autobots rolled forward, bouncing over the debris. He snapped his head around and looked forward. They almost had a clear path to the ship, a short run and they were free. He started forward.
Something came around and hit him in the chest. Red lines ran through his display. Structural damage. He rolled over, just barely avoiding the strike of a long, chitinous claw. It rammed into the deck plating and pulled up a whole section of it. Shinji used his repulsors to push up onto his feet and ducked as the plate went flying by his head. It scraped his shoulder and spun him around.
The Suzahara thing loomed, twice as big as he once was. Bulging flesh, the livid color of a bruise, stretched from within the joints of his armor, which had welded itself to his body. His left arm was a multi-jointed claw, like a scorpion's tail, and the side of his face was torn open, a great sore around an insectoid mouth full of fangs and a long feeler, tipped with sharp, needly fibers. Shinji stumbled back, barely avoiding another swing, and blasted the creature in the face with his repulsors. It scraped at its eye with its right hand, but ignored him, lurching forward.
Shinji leapt over it, boosting his leap with his boot jets, and came down on the other side. As he the creature turned he raised his AT-Field, turning the blow, and got in close, within the sweep of the great chitinous arm. He clapped both hands on the thing's head.
"This is for Toji."
He channeled the suit's power to the gauntlet emitters and fired. The burst threw him back and the creature stumbled, falling to one knee. Shinji landed on his back and skidded across the deck, coming to rest against an upturned tank's treads. The creature got up, lurched forward, and moved towards him again. Its head was a bloody ruin, but was already cracking and slipping back together, fresh plates of chitin forming over his face.
Toji stepped in front of him. He faced the monster down, holding his ground. When it swung its claw at him, he caught it on his shoulder and still stood his ground, his feet locked to the deck. He grabbed the claw and held on for dear life, the creature straining to break free.
Toji grunted, and something happened. The deck under him rattled. The creature tried to pull away, but now it struggled, unable to loose itself from his grasp. It slid towards him even as it dug its booted feet into the decking, ceramite scraping and sparking. Toji lifted the mutated arm and closed his eyes, in deep concentration. The arm buckled, and the creature screamed. It compressed on itself, its body drawing into the small mass concentrated between Toji's hands. It lurched, its armor shattering as it drew nearer.
Shinji looked away.
When he looked back, Toji was holding a small ball in his hands. He tossed it away, and somewhere there was a loud thump and a wet slap.
"I've been practicing."
Shinji was on his feet. He turned back to the convoy. "Go! Go!"
He got out of the way as they raced past.
The pressure was building. More Astartes poured into the hangar, like ants returning to their colony, so many they moved in tight clusters, shoulder to shoulder. Shinji heard his radio crackle but something was jamming it, but when he looked to the other end he saw Mari's team carving a path back to the ship. They had to get out, and they had to get out now. He waited for the last of the convoy to pull up behind and head for the ship before he started to move. Toji ran and jumped up onto the side of Ironhide, holding on by the door handle.
Everything was chaos. He'd taken damage to his suit and his radar was going crazy. Every part of his sensor suite was hitting the max, turning into a useless blob. All he could do was make for the ship, occasionally spotting Hikari leaping through the air and hurling her hammer or Superman rocketing overhead. One of the Decepticon jets wheeled for a strafing run of the convoy until the Lanterns knocked it out of the sky.
As he ran, he signaled for the others to fall back. He saw Mari running towards the pod. Her suit was covered with dents and pock-marks and she'd dropped her helmet, her ponytail flapping behind her as she ran. The Hulk crashed into the line of advancing Astartes and rammed the back, joined by Asuka from Earth 2 and Asuka the Amazon.
There were too many. There were thousands of them.
The Maximals fell back from their cover.
"This is it!" Rattrap shouted, "Everybody out of the pool!"
He was almost to the flight pod. The convoy was rolling in. He looked around in a daze. The ship was even more of a wreck than before. When he saw Mari he opened his helmet.
"Glad you made it!" he shouted.
She started to say something but ducked when there was an explosion.
"How much time?"
"Less than five minutes! We have to go now!"
Shinji jumped up on a ruined vehicle. There was a sea of Marines advancing on them, a rolling tide of crimson and brass that covered the hangar from wall to wall. He looked around. A few stragglers were pulling into the pod.
Asuka grabbed him with one hand and wheeled him around, sheltering her pregnant belly with the other.
"Where is my husband?"
"I don't know!"
"We're not leaving without him."
"We can't stay here."
She growled at him.
The roof melted.
Earth 1 Shinji looked up, his face a mask of awe. His counterpart blasted through the roof of the hangar, followed by a rolling mass of molten metal. He swept around the entire hangar, moving so fast he was just a blur. The Astartes rolled back, dozens of them flying into the air like tenpins.
"Shinji!" Asuka shouted, "We have to go!"
He flew overhead and tossed her a red sphere. She stared at it.
"Is this…"
"All of you go," he shouted back. "I'll keep them off you."
Asuka's eyes flew wide. "If you think I'm letting you pull that bullshit on me, you're out of your mind!"
"But-"
Mari cut them off. "We have to go! Right now!"
Shinji turned around. "Lanterns! It's go time! Reinforce the ship!"
There was a titanic roaring sound. Shinji turned to see something emerging from the corridor, stepping out into the hangar. It was enormous. Its wings, swaying things of bone and mucous, unfolded wide enough to shelter two dozen men in their span, and when it stood up, it towered over the Astartes around it, their heads barely reaching its knee. It wore armor of broken bone and cracked, dull metal, festooned with rusting chains. Spread across its back was a forest of withered fungi, and a cloak of mold, hanging in a sheet. It raised its horned head.
Iquarius.
In his right hand he raised a broken sword, its dull red crystal fractured by Mjolnir. In the other he bore a rusted sickle, longer than a man his tall. He took a bounding step across the hangar, the impact shaking even the Galactica.
He turned on the Crimson Vengeance and slaughtered them. He moved with grim efficiency, impaling his foes on the edge of his broken sword with such force that it lifted them from their feet. The turned on him, spraying him with bolter fire, and he laughed at the pain, a deep, gurgling rumble that sounded like a rotten tree falling.
As he waded into the Astartes a marching horde of them followed behind them, moving in dull, disjointed steps, as though held up by strings and moved like puppets. Their stench was otherworldly. From their armor, thick, oozing corruption flowed, trailing behind them, leaving corrosion and fungoid growths that crept up the walls.
"Let's go," Asuka shouted, dragging Superman back into the flight pod.
Shinji followed her. He nodded his head and dropped his visor, and the radio was finally working.
"Everybody check in with your group leaders. If you're not on the ship in thirty seconds we're leaving you behind."
He heard the others checking in and let his mind dull for a bare second before he rushed through the Galactica's flight deck and through the halls, running for the CIC. Mari and the others followed him. Asuka gave Earth-2 Shinji the core back and he held it under his arm. When he finally stumbled inside, panting, he radioed again.
"Group leaders," he said, "Is everybody here?"
He listened as they all called out. He turned to the Old Man.
"Let's get the hell out of here."
The Old Man nodded. "Jumping in three. Two. One."
Shinji pressed his eyes shut.
"Jump."
There was an explosion. Fire rolled out of the aft section of the Shikinami as the warp engines, overloaded and on the verge of bursting with strange energies, tore through the hull and into space. The ship listed badly, falling out of formation, pummeled by lance fire and shells from the Makinami. Her sister ship, the Ayanami, was on fire, and running out of control through the fleet. It clipped a heavy cruiser, spun her in space, turning all aboard to jelly in an instant from the gravitational forces, as it continued on its course towards the Shikinami herself. The Makinami changed her course, turning in space, and raked the oncoming Battle Barge with lance fire.
A moment later, the Ayanami struck. Its armored prow crashed through the midsection of the Shikinami, shearing her nearly in half. The forward section, now unlimbered, drifted backwards, slamming into the Ayanami. The overloaded warp drives burst, and filled the universe with alien colors, a vortex of raw energy that began drawing in everything around it. Like flames, the raw essence of the Immaterium swept over the Shikinami, drawing her in. The Makinami did not attempt to escape, but turned her point defenses and heavy weapons on the rest of the fleet.
Weapons fire, lances and glowing tracers, arced everywhere, connecting the ships. Some tried to flee, others, their crews driven into a mad, frothing rage, turned on themselves and lost control, slamming into other vessels as they shot randomly at the other ships, no longer caring which was traitor and which was not. The ships moved inexorably closer, pulled into a tighter and tighter circle, careening into the warp storm as it grew. Those that were slain instantly by the sudden maneuvers or died in combat were the lucky ones.
Unable to maintain her structural integrity, the Shikinami began to explode. The first burst came from the magazines along her starboard side, blowing out the decks, including the hangar occupied by the Galactica a moment before. The grand flying cathedral that adorned her back toppled forward. The crucified Eva, once fixed to her hull, drifted lose in space, turning, revealing the statue that originally adorned the ship when she was proud in her service to the Emperor- an angel in white, a gleaming figure of a silent girl in whose name Iquarius' legion took their vengeance.
In the end, he directed his rage against the one who deserved it. Himself.
As the ship collapsed on itself, he walked casually through the corridors, sweeping aside any who still survived as he made his way back to the Apothecarium. He pushed the doors open and fell to his knees. Though the boy had taken her soul, her body remained, pristine and perfect as ever. He planted the broken tip of his sword in the deck and leaned on its crossguard, and wept tears of infected blood.
The ship turned and fell into the warp storm. Crippled or madly warring on themselves, the rest of the fleet rapidly collapsed back into the roiling colors, some firing even as the things of the warp became manifest and rampaged through their crews.
The Second Legion was never heard from again.
When the Old Man turned the key the ship bucked as her jump drive spun up to the maximum. The deck jerked under Shinji's feet and he lost his footing. Everything around him descended into chaos. He barely dodged a structural I-beam falling towards his head, and jumped to cover Mari, helmetless, as a section of the overhead monitors came down at her. He pulled her around, his armor scraping on hers, and the debris slammed into his back, pushing them both down. All around he heard shouting.
"How bad?"
The Old Man stood up from behind the jump console. "It's not over yet. "We're going in."
A bolt on the floor vibrated, slid a few inches, and slowly started to lift up. Shinji felt his stomach rising, and gradually lifted up from the floor.
Super-Shinji handed the Adversary's core to Asuka. "Stay here. I've got it."
He took off straight up, crashing right through the roof.
"Damn it," the Old Man muttered.
"Is the intercom still working?" Shinji shouted,
The Old Man nodded and he grabbed the mike. "Everybody! Grab on to something!"
Rei flew beside him, haloed in green light. She looked tired, but in that I'm tired-and-ignoring it way only Rei could. Shinji turned in the air.
"You brake!" he shouted, "I'll steer!"
She nodded and turned. To the glittering light of the structural support from the Lanterns she added her own, a gradually expanding shield that enveloped the ship. She was a mess. Broken in half, only Rei's ring held the two sections together. Streamers of water fell behind her as she fell, the entire nose section caved in during the battle. Hull plating was coming loose and tumbling into the air, and the port flight pod was bent at an odd angle, like a loose tooth, ready to fall off at any second.
Shinji raced under the ship. He found the strongest looking part of the forward section he could, shouldered under it, and pushed up. He couldn't push too hard- the ship would be in pieces if he overwhelmed the Lanterns. He focused on righting her first, rolling the ship by shoving one shoulder harder than the other, and with a mighty groan she rolled. She was starting to slow down.
Next, he had to fix the pitch. She was coming in hard nose down, and beneath them was nothing but an endless plain of stone hard white nothing, the Tree far off in the distance. He fought the urge to stare at it, closing his eyes and focusing on lifting the nose of the ship. As he pushed she fought him and groaned. He could feel more shudders, more structural members twisting and breaking. The entire ship was bucking, flexing in the middle.
He didn't have much time. He managed to level her off.
The ship dragged Rei, gritting her teeth as she pulled with her ring while Shinji pushed. He put his feet out and they touched down first, his heels digging furrows in the strange earth. Again he couldn't push too hard, or she would start to turn, or worse, begin to break up and accordion. He looked over his shoulder. The Tree, looming far overhead, was getting closer and closer, with nothing but a wall to protect it.
The ship started to turn. There was nothing else he could do, other than stop her rolling. She came down with a crash, throwing up chunks of the white whatever it was, and bounced, lifting up before coming in hard, digging a trench in the surface. She kept sliding, turning, and he jumped out of the way, taking flight before the nose hit the wall and crashed through it.
Rei fell.
Shinji surged up and caught her. The light of her ring winked out and she toppled into his arms. When she let go, there was a titanic groan, and the ship started to collapse.
He got up. The ship was a mess. The roof overhead was gone, exposing the alien anti-sky of the Yellow Alien's strange home. Shinji shied away from it and opened his helmet. The Old Man was glaring at him.
"I hope you have insurance."
He blinked. Mari got up.
"I bet the inside of this thing smells like cheese," she muttered, before nearly wiping some oil off her face with her heavy gauntlet, and thinking better of it.
Superman ducked back down through the roof, landing beside his wife.
"Get the Metaflux Capacitor."
Shinji nodded. "Let's go."
Mari grabbed his arm and moved closer.
"Hey," she whispered. "When this over, do you think maybe we could-"
An alarm went off in his suit. His helmet slammed closed. Mari blinked.
"What's wrong?"
His father's voice chimed in his helmet. "Anti-AT Field detected. Spinning S2 core to maximum. Initiating pattern preservation protocol."
A pattern alert appeared on his HUD- not blue or sepia, but octave, whatever that meant. He turned around until the arrow was pointing straight at the Adversary's core. He grabbed Mari, hauled her around, but it was too late.
There was a flash. Superman lifted the core and looked into it. Asuka blinked, lifting her arms from covering her stomach to touch it. She exploded in a rush of LCL, splattering across the deck, and Shinji screamed, and he couldn't tell whether it was from himself or Superman or both of him. Superman sank to his knees, clutching the core, shuddering.
Shinji tried to raise his AT-Field. He could at least shield Mari. It refused to extend beyond the planes of his armor.
"No!" he screamed, "God damn it no!"
Mari looked at him. "Dad?" she said weekly.
Then she was gone, too.
He couldn't move. Something was pulling all of the power from his backpack power plant. His HUD was going mad.
Superman dropped the core. It rolled away from him and came to a stop. He was sobbing.
"I can do anything," he said softly, "but this."
Shinji closed his eyes. He didn't want to see it.
When he opened them again, LCL was sloshing at his feet, and he still couldn't move. The red liquid slithered across the floor, bubbling up around the core. The red sphere, floated lifted, drawing more to itself. A body formed around it- the outline of a skeleton at first, frozen in crimson ice. He took a few steps, ersatz LCL organs crawling up his legs between his ribs. Muscles spread out from his joints, and over top of them, skin. His eyelids were closed over hollow sockets, until they slowly bulged out and he opened them, crimson and cruel. He looked around.
He gave Shinji a cursory, almost bored glance. He smirked.
Then, he exploded. The world went white.
You have been reading
The Crisis of Infinite Shinjis
Chapter Five: The Last Battle
And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became as the blood of a dead man.
Gendo's eyes fluttered open. He sat up, only to freeze when crippling pain lanced through his side. In the confusion, he seemed to have fallen on a rather large piece of jagged metal. It could been said to have impaled him. He shifted, trying to pull it out. He was dead a hundred times over. Pain was less a burden or even a warning of injury than a reminder that his hell continued. In the end he had to grasp the sharp edge with his unscarred hands and push, slowly dragging himself up the metal shard. Sometimes he lost his grip and slid back down, but in the end he managed to roll off and collapse into a pile of debris. It only took a few minutes for the wound to close, and then he could breathe again.
He looked around. The ship was in ruins, pieces scattered across a debris field that extended for miles away from the Tree.
"No," he muttered, "Oh no, no."
Shinji was perched on an arched strut, twisted into unrecognizable junk by the blast. He watched Gendo with his crimson eyes.
"You could have killed me, too," Gendo said as he scrubbed his hands over his face.
"Where's the fun in that?"
Laughing, he landed lightly on his feet. "I'm going to be God, now. I thought you should be around to watch."
Gendo looked around at the smoking devastation. There was a scrap of red cloth hanging from a jagged section of hull plating. He lifted it up, studying the S.
"Is this not enough? How many more must die?"
"The pain of death is the glory of rebirth," said Shinji.
"You're out of your mind."
"You should talk."
Gendo laughed. "Ha, that's a good one."
"Ah," said Shinji, "nothing like male bonding before you commit omnicide. Shall we?"
Gendo sat down. "I'm not going to give you the satisfaction."
Shinji glanced over his shoulder as he walked away. "Yes, you are."
The little bastard. Gendo got up, limping for a moment until his leg healed itself. He'd forgotten that it was nearly severed, with the more pressing problem of hundreds of pounds of steel rammed through his torso. He had to struggle to keep up as Shinji wove his way through the wreckage. He stopped when he was about to cross the ruined section of wall, taking a deep, superfluous breath.
"I have come so far for this moment. You can't imagine."
"Better than you know," said Gendo.
He walked through the Atrium. The Tree stole his sight. Gendo Ikari had seen things. Before his son became a cruel deity and uplifted him into a cursed immorality he'd seen a lifetime's worth of monstrosity, withstood mind-blasting revelations that had crippled lesser men and led them to insensible dreams of Instrumentality. None of them could compare with this. The mind of man was not prepared to gaze on the entire universe.
It was a good thing he was already mad.
He followed Shinji into the Atrium, secretly clinging to one last, desperate hope that somewhere within the beast was a single shred of mercy. He might see her one more time. Shinji stopped.
"I know what you're thinking, and the answer is no."
Gendo choked back a sob. He trudged across the Atrium, until he saw three yellow aliens, standing before the tree.
"This must be a surprise."
The aliens remained silent.
Shinji stopped, gazing around. "I thought it would be bigger. What I've done to reach this place, this moment, is beyond your imagination. So to speak. It was an amazing game we had to play, I admit. How could I win if someone else made the rules? No matter how much power I amassed, no matter what I did, I could never reach this place because you'd simply imagine a reason why I can't."
He glanced over his shoulder at Gendo. "The only way to win was to lose the game, and in losing, no longer be bound by the rules."
"Now, here I stand, at the Aleph, the single point that joins all point. I'm going to give you a chance, Charles. This can end here. I've broken all your toys. There's nothing between me and the path to the Core World, the True Earth."
He crossed the space between himself and the aliens in an instant, simply appearing at his new position. He seized the central alien by the throat, and they all made choking motions, doubling over.
"I want Rei back. I want her back, now."
"You don't realize what you're asking," the alien croaked.
"Don't lecture me!" he roared, hurling them to the floor. "I don't want to hear your philosophy, I don't want to hear your bullshit. You made me this way. You took her away, now bring her back."
The alien reached out, its spindly fingers touching his chest. They sank through his pale flesh until they touched the core.
"It is done."
He turned around.
Rei.
Gendo covered his face with his mouth. Shinji ran to her, threw his arms around her, sank to his knees and buried his face in her stomach. She stood stock-still, staring at the aliens. Her head slowly turned, looking over the destruction.
"Rei!" he shouted, "Rei, Rei it's me! I did it!"
Her voice was barely a whisper. "What did you do?"
He surged onto his feet. "I saved you. I brought you back."
He hugged her, rocking her in his arms. He buried his face in her neck and breathed, drinking in her scent. Still, she didn't move.
"You killed all these people."
"It was worth it," he said, cupping her cheeks in his hands. "I'd do it again a thousand times if I had to. You're the only thing that matters to me. You're the only thing that matters at all."
"Fix it."
"What?"
Tears glittered on her cheeks. "Fix it. Bring them back."
"What? No, I need-"
She sobbed. "You killed them."
"So what? We killed people, you and I, together."
"That was different," Rei said, pulling away from his touch. "They wanted to hurt us."
"Rei," Shinji snarled, gritting his teeth. "What's wrong with you? I had to, don't you understand? We were supposed to be together forever, but you weren't there!"
"I am here now. If you love me you will bring them back."
"I… I can't. I need it. I need the power."
"That's not you talking."
"What?"
She touched his face, her cool hands playing over his skin. "We could go home. You can do that. You don't need to go any further. You don't need the power anymore. It's made you into a monster and you'll just get worse."
"I don't understand, I-"
Tears flowed freely on her cheeks. "I was there the whole time, beloved. I saw everything. He wouldn't let me reach you."
"What? Who wouldn't?"
"The Oni System. Shogoki. Unit One."
Shinji's eyes widened. "No, that's not true. We're allies. I need my power. I need it to protect you, to make a world you deserve."
"I don't want that. I want to go home."
"You don't understand!"
"I want you to be like you were before," she whispered. "When you would do anything to protect me. It got into your head and changed you. Don't you see?"
"No! I love you, Rei. You-"
"You have to give it up. It'll never let you stop. You have to let it go. I'm here. Now. Come back to me, Shinji."
Shinji breathed hard and doubled over, and then he screamed. When he cried, it shook the Tree, and great silvery leaves broke loose and shuddered to the ground, landing with titanic crashes.
"You did this!" he bellowed at the aliens, "You changed her! Make her like she was! Make her-"
"A puppet?" said Gendo.
Shinji turned back to him, his jaw wide.
Gendo shrugged out of his much-abused jacket and draped it around her shoulders. "I suppose she's on your enemies list now, too. Did you ever love her at all, or did you prize her because she made you happy? Was it a grand romance, or is she just an easy lay? Was it your great love that made you sleep with the Soryu girl? With Ritsuko? Were you imagining Rei when you bedded Katsuragi?"
"You rat bastard," Shinji snarled, "How dare you-"
"You are a vain, cruel boy," said Gendo. "You're just like me."
"I'm nothing like you!" Shinji snapped, "I… I would… I…"
"There was a time when I would have done what you've done, if it meant I could see my Yui again." He cradled Rei in his arms as she sobbed into his chest. "Now at last, I see the truth. Never once did I consider what she wanted. Never once did I consider anyone else. Never once did I consider you."
"What are you saying?"
"I'm sorry."
Shinji barked out a hoarse laugh. "It's too late, Dad. Do you think that makes up for any of it?"
"She's right," said Gendo. "We can fix this. Change things. Change our world. You still have the souls, you can free them and-"
"I mean to," said Shinji, "When I've erased the prison he built for us."
"Why, so you can build one of your own?"
"Yes," Shinji snarled.
"Stop this, boy."
"Who are you to command me?"
"I'm your father."
Shinji snorted. "You gave that up, remember? When you left me on that train platform. I'm glad you've had your change of heart. It'll make it so much more fitting that you're here to witness this."
"Shinji," Rei pleaded, "Please don't."
"I have to. When it's over you'll understand."
"Whether she wants to or not," said Gendo.
"You know what? Shinji bellowed, "Fuck you!"
He rounded on the Tree. He raised his hand. The core in his chest shone like a sun, and he reached into the very heart of creation and choked it.
Shinji woke up. There was someone banging on his helmet. Everything was dark. He was out of power. When he tried to move, the suit weighed a ton, so he was trapped there in a form fitting coffin, unable to move. The pattern preservation system worked, at least.
Thanks, Dad.
He heard a horrid scraping sound that made him want to clutch the side of his head, but of course he couldn't move. He heard the metallic creak of something bending, and the faceplate of his helmet peeled back. The sweet rush of cold air flared his nostrils as he could breathe again.
The Old Man stared into his face. "Are you going to lay there all day?"
"I can't move."
He sighed. "It's always something, isn't it?"
He jammed the broken piece of beam he was using as a crowbar into another joint and began working it, tilting it back and forth until it popped free. Shinji's arm was loose. He thumped his chest with his bare fist.
"If you get this off, I think I can get out."
The Old Man nodded and started prying the chest plate loose. Shinji managed to get his hand under it and push, grunting as he twisted inside the suit. Finally it bent up, and together he and the Old Man pushed it back until Shinji's left arm was free. From there he had to simply sit up and push with his hands, and his legs slid out of the lower section of the suit. He rolled onto the deck.
He landed face-first in a puddle of warm LCL. He recoiled, coughing, and crawled back up on top of the armor, panting.
"Is it just me?"
The Old Man nodded. "I'm sorry. All your friends melted."
Shinji's eyes narrowed.
"No reason to gild the lily."
Shinji buried his face in his hands.
"Are you going to sit there, or are you going to do something about it?"
"What? What could I possibly do?"
The Old Man shrugged. "Sometimes, you gotta roll the hard six."
Shinji looked at him. "What does that even mean?"
"It's from a dice game. It isn't important. You're the only one left. You can either lay there and cry about it or you can get up off your skinny ass and make an effort."
Shinji snorted.
The Old Man reached into his pocket. He pulled out three linked sections of metal, forming a triquerta. The Metaflux Capacitor.
"I have a feeling you'll need this."
Shinji took it and stood up, the boots of his undersuit slipping in the LCL. He put his arms out to steady himself and looked out through the wreckage. It looked like a bloodstain, spread out across the endless white plain, a weeping open sore with the debris forming the core and a wide splatter of LCL staining the ground around it.
"Thanks," said Shinj, "I-"
He was alone.
"Huh."
He started to walk. It took him a while to make his way out of the main debris field, where the remnants of the ship lay in a spread out fan, blown away from the Tree. He finally made it to the wall itself, climbing up through the gap torn in it by the crash or the blast or both. When he made it down to the other side, he froze.
The universe was on fire.
The tree was burning. It groaned, and an entire branch came loose, tumbling through the canopy and landed on the ground with a shuddering boom that rolled through his legs and made him stumble. The branch rolled, the leaves curling like dead spiders as the fire consumed them.
He ran.
The Yellow Aliens were lying in a heap in front of the tree. Their skin was pockmarked with sores, rapidly spreading through their flesh. One of them raised a hand.
Someone was laughing.
Gendo.
"You," said Shinji.
"I should have known," said Gendo.
Shinji blinked.
"Rei?"
She turned away from Gendo's chest enough to look at him from the corner of one red rimmed eye, bloodshot from weeping. Gendo drew his jacket up around her neck.
"What happened?"
Gendo shrugged. "Be careful what you wish for. You might get it."
"Where did he go?"
Gendo nodded at the tree. "There. Everywhere."
Rei sat up. "He's not the enemy. You have to save him."
Shinji didn't say anything.
"Don't do it for him. Do it for her," said Gendo.
"I… I don't know."
"Yes, you do."
He turned around. One of the Yellow Aliens was sitting up.
"What happened to the whole talking in threes thing?"
"There is only one of us now. Because there is no past. No future. You must hurry. I can no longer maintain this space."
"Because he's killing the Tree?"
"Because I am the Tree."
Shinji nodded. "Why me? Because I'm here? Did you pick me because you knew I'd be wearing my suit?"
"No," the alien coughed, "because you are the one who understands loss."
"What? That's ridiculous. You should have picked Superman, or Hikari, or-"
"You understand the Adversary. Only you can. You are better than he is."
"How am I better than anybody? I sit alone in my shitty apartment when I'm not at my shitty job. My whole life is arranged around a dead woman."
"You had your chance," said the alien. "The same as the others. You could have had her back, if you wished, at the expense of everyone else. You chose not to. That is why you are the one to defeat him."
Shinji scrubbed his hand through his hair.
"That, and the suit." The alien coughed.
He snorted. Sighing, he held up the Capacitor. "What does this thing even do?"
"Whatever you want it to. You just need to find him."
"And do what? My suit is ruined. What am I supposed to use, harsh language?"
"You will find a way. I don't know what it is. He knows what I know."
The alien smiled a small, secret smile. "I know what he knows."
"Where is he going?"
"To find the beginning, he must reach the end. The End of Evangelion."
Shinji stood up.
"There is no tree" said the alien.
He gazed into the Tree.
It wasn't a tree after all. Huh.
He stepped forward. The Tree was ringed by a great pit, but when he looked down he saw himself staring back up, saw a reflection of the burning boughs rocking over his head as they threatened to shear loose from the scorched trunk. He lifted his foot and put it out, and when he set it down, it landed on a hard surface, but he wobbled. He was stepping on the sole of his own foot.
He closed his eyes, and he walked. He put his arm out. He felt warmth. He stepped into it.
He pitched forward, opening his eyes as he fell. He sprawled out across a metal grating, blinking. He slowly got up on all fours, then stood up. There were rows of scuffed plastic seats on either side of him. In front of him were rows of poles with handles. On either side were rows of windows, above the seats, but he couldn't see anything through them but a red light.
"Oh come on." he muttered.
