Still here. Sorry if this seemed to take long. just had my first leave from this hellhole in a few months, followed by a two week exercise and at the same time i have to study. It left no time for writing. Also I had another disturbing idea for a crossover involving the plot of EVA inserted into the Scrooge McDuck universe (Don Rosa story that is, NOT Ducktales) with a 140 year old cybernetically enhanced Scrooge replacing Gendo. Its seems incredibly appropriate somehow. Any thoughts?
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
The crowd gathered around the Eva crash site was typical of Ankh-Morpork. Loud, chatty and always prone to not doing anything at all really. They had developed keen senses regarding this sort of thing and knew that if they waited long enough someone was going to do or say something interesting, or at least shed some light on why there was a 600 feet wide crater 10 miles outside of the city border.
The impact from the crash had sent a shock wave through the Sto plains which fortunately had an unusually wet autumn this year for a plain that was usually unusually wet to begin with. The shock did not stand a chance. Its energy spent in deep soggy mud toughened by the Ankh(1) itself. It was barely a ripple before it touched the city limits and although a few cabbage farmers were quite unhappy no one seemed to have been killed or injured. It was quite disgraceful really, the crowd felt.
It is in this peculiar scene that the young unfortunate and by now quite possibly mentally unstable boy named Shinji Ikari finds himself in the middle of. The past few hours have not been good to him. Although the day itself had started out quite well. Asuka had refrained from yelling at him during the whole day, her rage instead directed at a particular annoying young lad who had tried to ask her out in biology class. She had even come over to him and made him listen to her endless tirade against the aforementioned boy and he had the courage to nod along to some of the less insulting nicknames, seemingly pleased by this, Asuka let him go without any lasting trauma, although one of the nicknames had been "The Shinji clone."
It was after school however that things started to go south. Dr. Akagi had scheduled for a new equipment test and it was Misato who had come to pick them up. The captain had decided to go even more heavyweight than usual that morning and had opened up a bottle of tequila and proceeded to take a shot between every syrup covered pancake. This affected her already sub-par driving skills about the way you could expect, when they arrived at the NERV car elevator he could swear that even Rei looked a little flustered.
The real trouble begun (although he didn't know it at the time) when Dr Akagi briefed them on the new EVA DiLel-type armor, he didn't quite catch the details of how it worked, (aesthetically it was identical to the standard configuration) but it supposedly had the ability to create a inverted AT field, whatever that meant, he didn't even know how a regular AT-field worked. Had he had a closer look at the full instruction book he might have started to worry though.
Its front simply read: EXPERIMENTAL PROJECT EVA SUPPLEMENT PACK. DIRAC-LELIEL DERIVED PHASE SPACE CONVERTER.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
(1): The river Ankh is the only known piece of geography on the disc know to be harder than granite yet still a liquid, The reason for this is a source of heated debate within the city. Some claim that it is a reflection of the city's noble spirit in being hard as a rock while still being soft and kind, others, who knows their city better than that, suspect that troll and dwarf urine might be the cause, arguing that; they must have a fair bit more minerals in them than us regular folks, them bein' so close to the earth an' all, it ain't right I tell you.
The main reason is one of the more unknown and obscure devices of the famed architect and inventor Bergholt Stuttely "Bloody Stupid" Johnson, namely a water purification device. Today no one dares go near the structure in, as it is rumored to have taken on a mind of its own when it first sampled the "water" from the river. The city's water supply nowadays comes from deep wells, that go well underneath the collection of ruins that make up the old city.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
"You know Nobby, someone really ought to do something about this." The old, fat sergeant pondered as he watched the scene from afar.
"Yes Fred." the short man (he had a license signed by the patrician that he was in fact a man) standing next to the sergeant said with a sigh. "It really is a shame."
"I mean, there should be some sort of people hired to prevent this sort of thing, you know." The man now known as Fred continued. "Doesn't the patrician have some sort of a gency for this?"
"A what?" the now puzzled man (which incidentally is also a corporal for some mysterious reason) asks with what could best be described as a frown.
"A gency," answers the sergeant. "It's this sort of collection of people who keeps our secrets in order, making sure everything is nice and tidy you know."
"You sure you're not thinking about a filing cabinet Fred?" "Cos I have an aunt who keeps her cake recipes in one of them things,"
Fred suddenly looked unsure but was determined to drive his point through.
"That's daft, even for you Nobby." He answered in an irritable tone of voice. "Can't have all those important doc'ments with a big red SECRET stamp on them lyin' around in a piece of furniture where anyone might have a look." "You need people to look after them, they carry em around all the time, so that they're safe see?" Having seemingly worked around the problems of his friends cunning argument, he confidently added: "You can tell cos' of their black suits"
"That makes sense Fred." Nobby added wearily. He was quite sure what he would do if he had big important secrets like that and it involved not having stuff with SECRET stamped on them.
"And they has to be real posh you know," Fred continued enthusiastically. "Real swanky like, so as to woo all the ladyfolk that will try to nab all the doc'ments." "Probably know a lot of fancy drinks as well." (2)
"What? You mean like winkles extra malt?" the corporal added a bit confused
"Nah you know like with umbrellas in them and stuff. " Fred answered "Like girly drinks, only its okay because they're so swanky."
"They sound like complete ponc... do you hear that Fred?"
They both turned towards the city center where the sound was coming from, growing noticeably in intensity. The corporals face paled, as sudden recognition dawned upon him.
"Ye gods! he's found out! He's gone spare!"
The two were not very religious men but hoped that whoever the commander was chasing, would be met with mercy by the gods in the afterlife. They knew the commander would show none.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::
(2): He was not completely wrong here. The guild of Assassins used to house an old section known as the double-whom building, where the finer gentlemen who thought themselves above simple assassination but to wealthy for the guild to turn down were generally placed. Here they were taught many things like saying uncharacteristically cold things right after beating their arch nemesis in fisticuffs and why insisting hard enough might get a peck on the cheek from something vaguely woman-like once in a while. They never lasted long after graduation and the building was bought and then thoroughly demolished by the patrician 5 minutes after he came to power.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Describing the commanders thought-process is something that nearly every member of the psychologist guild (motto: redigo per ink) have been hired to do at some point by a wealthy noble.
Some have suggested that he is restrained rage incarnate, others have hinted at schizophrenia, considering the mans ability to go from cunning investigator to seemingly unstoppable maniac in the blink of an eye. Most just complain that they can't get the bastard to lie down on their divans to look at the funny looking inkblots so that they can declare him a loony, call it a day, get paid and buy that new divan with all the levers and a cup holder that they've been drooling after.
Right now, it would seem like the first are closest to getting their paychecks cashed in. That is, if there is indeed a bank to cash it in at, or a city to spend said cash in for that matter when this chase is over. For this is something that Ankh-Morpork, a city with more capable crime chasers and escapees than every city on the disc put together, has never seen the likes of.
This was pure chase.
The world seemed to bend around it somehow. At every street corner two men carrying a large sheet of glass (3) would emerge from nowhere, always between them. The commander would simply respond to this by jumping through it while clenching two pistol crossbows that seemed to materialize as he leaped just to vanish the instant he landed, often accompanied by a annoyed flock of white doves that would fly into the air while he was doing this.
Every time that a cart or a horse appeared in front of them, Rincewind would uncharacteristically pull the rider off and set off at maximum speed, fortunately for Vimes a similar method of transportation would always arrive a few feet behind the former. This was usually followed by several dramatic attempts by vimes to drag rincewind of his horse, failing and falling off. Rincewind would then either also fall as a result from the struggle that led to vimes dismounting, or hitting a vendor street sign he hadn't been paying attention to in a suitable comic fashion, punishing his frankly non-existing hubris. After the first half dozen such occurrences he simply jumped of after vimes fell thus continuing the chase.
Hundreds of vendor stalls were knocked over. Thousands of watermelons and and cardboard boxes were trampled. Dozens of towers (even the ones that simply were not physically possible to get into) were climbed and subsequently jumped from. More slippery objects or substances were dropped by Rincewind than should be humanly possible to carry. Every time he thought he had him in a dead end Vimes would find it empty, and Rincewind would always be right behind him running in the opposite direction.
Mine carts were ridden, ropes hanging over streets were balanced, innocent pedestrians were pushed aside. There seemed like there would be no end to it. None of Vimes fellow officers could keep up for more than a few minutes, nothing seemed like it could stop the two most powerful narrative forces of the chase on the disc.
The end began however, when they reached what seemed to be a twist on their previous chase by means of transportation other than their feet. It was surprising really, that they hadn't run into it before now. The river did divide the city in two, and by now they must have been through it back and forth a dozen times at least. So the instant Rincewind saw the boat out in the middle of the river he ran for it, right across what was for a lack of a better word, water.
To their credit, they both paused in their chase for a second out of sheer puzzlement when they realized that they were standing on water, it wasn't long enough for reality and logic to collect their thoughts and catch up to them however as they set of upriver towards the great plains.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
3)Made all the more confusing by the fact that every sheet of glass in the window makers guild had been smashed earlier that day.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
It is while this amusing, exciting and highly lethal scene unfolds that three wizards complete their tour around the crater, wherein the purple behemoth is still groggily trying to raise itself up without much success.
The shortest of the three is the professor of abnormally enormous objects, a heavyset man even for a wizard, it has been highly suspected that something big once stepped on him. The second is the lecturer in neon colored clothing, a rather thin and flimsy man, and also the most recent graduate of UU. Both of them have been recently dug out from one of the many nooks and crannies of the unseen university. The third wizard , who is currently holding both of them by the collar, is the arch chancellor Mustrum Ridcully, the man who did the aforementioned digging. He is also seriously considering smashing their heads together.
"So you're saying this wasn't you then, was it?" the arch chancellor bellows at them. "We've had this sort of thing before you know," "young, bright wizard finally graduates and starts talking to the older fellows and then he inspires them." "makes them consider all sorts of stuff you know." "I remember when old Rinwald "Cooner" Weathersby, the music professor when I first graduated got together with that young boy from Genua," "a shabby looking fellow called Lagaffe or some such." "Lad was a bit all over the place really as I understand it and they made this terrible giant contraption," "a cross between a wooden pipe and a harp." "Made three floors collapse with the tuck of one string." "Let me tell you never has a note been more aptly named than E-flat. E for everything that is."
The unfortunate duo listen and nods eagerly, hoping that the senior wizard will forget what the original purpose of the story was and eventually wander away.
"...And he had that bloody malevolent cat and the lethal seagull as well, messed up university contracts in more ways than I can remember," "drove poor arch chancellor Fantasio and later old Prunelle quite mad as I recall..."
At this he seems to snap back to it.
"Speaking of which." You two aren't off the hook yet, I want to know exactly what this thing is and what it does or I'll..."
It is at this very moment the EVA manages to get back on its feet.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Rincewind is not having a good day, at least he's pretty sure that its not a good day, everything about the last 3 hours seems a bit blurry. All he knows is that something is behind him and that something wishes unplesantries upon him. Worst thing is he can't seem to shake it. He's outrun things that feast upon reality itself, on one occasion even the devil himself, through time and space.
Out here on the open plain that something seems somewhat uncertain somehow though. Like it's out of its element or something, he sees a glimmer of hope only to watch it die away when he sees the giant rise.
Completely bamboozled, he thinks over his alternatives and finds to his great surprise that he cannot decide what frightens him more. The thing or... the other thing. Panicked with indecision he stumbles and the triumphant roar of the commander is the last thing he hears before he faints.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::.
While the commotion seems to be reaching its climax down on the disc, The Great Turtle scans the cosmos, as if in anticipation, it's patience is infinite although that is hardly called for in this case as what it's looking for is soon coming into view. If it listens very closely (4) it can hear angry shouts. Its not sure why it sounds so angry, technically it can barely register the suggestion of words but something about this thing seems to radiate anger somehow.
It doesn't know what a Baka-Shinji is, but the turtle feels supremely sorry for it somehow.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
(4) Something that is EXTREMELY difficult in a vacuum.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Ok, whew finally got started on this again. I think I must be the first person ever to write a philosophy assignment during a three day long live fire field exercise. So yeah hectic schedule. Going back to the university soon though CAN'T WAIT! Also I have a great outline of the story now, not just a general idea of what I want to write. So far I've been trying to keep it in style with Pratchett but I have a few novel ideas on how I can make it more EVAish as well.
Opinions are appreciated