Tal Everyone!
I really did not mean to make you all wait so long again for an update. I hope you enjoy it!
And if you don't enjoy it, all the more reason to leave a review! No flashbacks this time, just straight to the action.
Rebuild: A Warrior From A (Counter) Earth: Chapter 6
They were three in the elevator: Shinji of Ko-Ro-Ba, Captain Misato Katsuragi and Rei of Tokyo-3. Rei Ayanami had begun to think of herself in such a way.
Though none of them spoke there was not a bit of silence in the elevator. As before, Shinji had begun to pace the barely three meter span of the elevator car and stretch as he walked, his issued boots banging against the floor. He was a finely honed weapon, sharp and eager. Misato tapped her foot and took deep breaths just to sigh with her eyes shut and her head inclined towards the ceiling. She was an old soldier at the age of thirty-one, patient for the war to come to her. Rei herself stood against the wall opposite the door, her skin squeaking against metal as she wringed the handrail in both hands.
Along with lust and passion more new feelings had come to her. Rei considered that this one she was experiencing now must be what is called anxiety: eager and impatient for a thing to come, and halfway between anticipation and fear. No, not fear. That was neither precise nor grand enough. Terror. Yes, that was more correct. Rei was terrified. Of the angel or of what she was becoming, she did not know.
And so her terror deepened.
"What is he?" Shinji asked. 'he' did not need further explanation. Shinji's gaze was always forward, towards the walls and sweeping his companions with each circuit.
"I told you everything they told me before we started down." Misato said, eyes still closed and face still upwards. "And it is not male or female."
"I do not understand it. I beg your favor to humor the alien." Shinji said, with none of the tone to accompany his polite words. "And it is certainly male, it charges towards battle."
"Visually, the angel appears to be crystalline in structure. Its shape is an octahedron. It-"
"What is that?"
Misato's shoulders rose as she inhaled and fell when she let out a sigh. "I told you, an eight sided shape. And it is blue."
"How does he approach?"
"Flying at low altitude. It follows the terrain."
"From where does he approach?"
"The East."
"From the sea. Always from the sea. What is his weapon?"
"Best we can tell, a charged particle beam. Anything that gets within a certain radius gets blasted."
"I do not understand this, what is a charged particle beam?"
"It's like a laser."
"What is a la-zar?"
Misato groaned. As though pried open by frustration, her eyes opened and she cast her gaze at Shinji. The gorean did not return it, still pacing as he was.
"Its like light going really hard and focused."
"That makes no sense."
"Okay imagine you are outside and it is really really hot and there is no shade. And you are out there for hours. Now imagine all that at once focused in one spot. That is a laser."
"You are speaking nonsense."
"Look just because you don't understand…"
Rei's hands stopped. They were bickering again. This conversation was cyclical. There would be no progress until that cycle was broken. He did not understand and the captain did not seek to make something so foreign to him understood.
Rei spoke. "It is the blue flame death." She said. Shinji met her gaze for a moment then simply nodded and continued his meager patrol.
"I see, thank you Lady Rei."
Misato looked between the pilots. "The blue what?"
"It is like a charged particle beam." Rei replied.
Misato twitched. "When did you start getting sassy?"
Rei shrugged.
"Okay fine, what is the blue flame death?"
"An execution technique employed by the Priest-Kings of Gor. A person or object is subjected to directed energy until the target combusts. The resulting flames burn blue, thus the name." Rei explained.
"Quite right, Lady Rei." Shinji said. "Has his maximum range been observed?"
This had not yet been discussed. The conversation moved forward.
"That is tentative. It seems to differentiate between threatening and nonthreatening targets. The farthest target destroyed may just have been the furthest one considered a threat."
"So then captain, what is to be our strategy?" Shinji asked.
"Deploy quickly at close range, ideally ending up closer than minimum range and strike before it can reorient and attack."
"There is great risk, but this one does not show the vulnerability that the previous have."
"Once more please." Shinji said, softly. He was now sitting in the cockpit of Unit One, ready and waiting to be launched skyward to battle.
"Um right" Lt. Hyuga's voice entered the cockpit, accompanied by a small picture of him at his console. Shinji actually quite liked that feature, it emphasized the human element in this otherwise cold setting.
"When you reach the surface, you will immediately deploy your AT field. Once the target's own field is neutralized we will begin bombardment and you will attack."
Shinji crossed his arms over his chest and let out a slow breath, making bubbles in the LCL. "No matter how many times it is repeated I feel no more at ease with it."
Misato's portrait now joined Hyuga's.
"Alright, the angel has stopped."
"My hopes that it might continue on its journey and pass our city by all for ruin." Shinji said flatly.
Misato prepared to answer and order him to drop the attitude, but it was then that the walls began to shake.
"The hell was that?" Shinji heard Misato yelling. "It what?! Oh fuck."
Shinji watched the portrait of Misato look back at him. "Alright, we are deploying right away. The angel just grew a drill and started tunneling straight down."
"Acknowledged." Shinji said, unfolding his arms and gripping the control yokes. An aphorism from school back home on Gor crossed his mind.
Poor intelligence leads to terrible plans.
Twenty Minutes Later
"That…" Shinji wheezed, one arm holding himself sitting upright and the other was wrapped around his bare chest. His legs were hanging off the side of the gurney. The remnants of the top half of his plugsuit hung about his waist. Rei was still on standby in unit zero, and vocally frustrated to not be by his side while he was hurt.
"...Was a terrible plan." Misato finished his sentence. The kid was still having trouble breathing. These sympathetic reactions really were a bitch it seemed.
"And now what?" Shinji asked.
"At the current rate of progress, the angel will breach the final layer of armor in ten hours."
"And then?"
"And then we all die."
"I thought as much, but could not be sure."
"I've got to come up with something better."
"You will captain."
"You think so?"
"I am a warrior who fights battles, I've not the wisdom to command yet. Despite our disagreements, I trust in you."
"Even though I'm a woman?"
"Captain, if you are any example, Earth may have the right of this warrior women idea." Shinji smiled a little. "And if this all goes wrong, it is not as though anybody will be left to know in any case."
Toji shuffled into the steel walled shelter behind his father and grandfather, his left hand around Sakura's wrist pulling the half-asleep girl along. The alarm had come after Sakura had gone to bed and he had been getting ready to himself.
"Toji!"
Toji Suzuhara smiled. Every part about this sucked. Except Hikari Horaki lived just a few blocks down the street, so their families were assigned to the same shelter.
"Hey Bae." Toji said, catching Hikari and hugging her to his chest with one arm. It was nice.
"Hikari, get back here!"
The thing about it though, with Hikari living nearby, was that the other Horakis did to. More exactly at this time, Toji was additionally frustrated that it seemed her elder sister, Kodoma, was home.
"Oh my god, you are still dating this asshole?"
Toji didn't really hate anybody. He was not the hateful type. But oh did he surely dislike Kodama Horaki. Hikari was out of his arms now, between himself and Kodoma.
"... He's nothing but a blue-collar loser…"
"Don't call him that!"
"... Get away from him..."
"Dad, come tell this sleaze to get his hands off Hikari…"
Joy, now her wimpy father had stepped up and was wagging his finger inches from Toji's nose.
"N-now see here, young man. You had better just stay away from my daughter. I don't want you talking to her anymore."
"Uh, yeah, she's the class rep. I kinda have to talk to her." Toji replied.
"Now y-you see here young man..." Mr. Horaki repeated, as though it was giving him strength. "You had better just remember to respect your elders!"
It was at this point that Toji got the first help from his own family, his father having not intervened after plucking Sakura out of the line of fire. It was Toji's grandfather, Sanjuro, who spoke in his defense.
"Or what?"
All assembled, including the small crowd that had formed to watch the spectacle, looked to the elder Suzuhara.
"E-excuse me?"
"I said, or what? What are you going to do if he does not show you the deference you believe you are due, you small, stuttering man? He's younger than you, he's faster than you, he's stronger than you, and your daughter is fond of him. Exactly what outcome are you looking for that results in your benefit? These are questions a man ought to answer before he shakes his finger in another man's face and demands his respect. So, young man, what are your answers?"
"Well, I, uh…"
As her father floundered, Kodoma chose this moment to speak again...
"Hey why don't you mind your own business, old geezer."
… and in the process shove her own proverbial foot down her own proverbial throat in a way that only an undergrad who has become absolutely assured of their knowledge of the bias of the world but who has not yet come to the realization of their own bias can.
"Oh shit, did that bitch just pop off to grandpa?" Sakura, now fully awake, said in a way her father could only describe as giddy.
"Sakura, language… and yes." Sora half heartedly tapped his daughter on the back of the head.
Sakura disliked all the Horakis not named Hikari a bit, just on principal for not liking her elder brother, but Nozomi was in her class. Nozomi was not her rival. Nozomi was not her enemy. Nozomi was an immature, idiotic, pest that made every day at school that she chose to open her stupid mouth that much less unbearably boring because then the teacher had to slow down and explain it all again like the girl was a goldfish. That was why Sakura REALLY disliked the Horakis.
And what did the empty headed brat just love to say?
"But my big sister Kodama said…"
"Oh this is gonna be great!"
Sora just sighed as Sakura practically jumped up and down, still holding onto his arm in her cherry blossom pajamas. At times like these when Sakura had this all together too happy bloodlust and he could see Toji starting to brood like a bomb about to go off, Sora wondered if he had done something wrong. Or perhaps his efforts to raise nice, well adjusted Earthlings had been futile.
As the Horaki's walked away, the eldest sister dragging Hikari by the wrist, Sora watched his father pull his son aside.
"Toji, you're a warrior. I know what my son has to say about that, but it is getting to be one of those times for warriors. So straighten this out."
"I could get in serious trouble."
"You gonna let that little peckerhead talk to you that way? You gonna let him take away what's yours?"
Toji's composure cracked, his lip snarling back as the vision that kept asserting itself in his mind made itself known once again. Hikari, in chains, at his feet.
Mine. She is MINE.
Toji's fingers curled into fists.
"Well, are you?"
"No, Sir."
"Then what are you going to do, kid?"
Toji turned.
"Mr. Horaki, I have something to ask you."
"What do you want now?"
No sooner had Horaki turned than he was lifted from the ground by his shirt.
"Hikari and I are engaged. Thought you should know. You got anything to say about it?"
"W-what?!"
"I said, I am engaged to your daughter, now do you have anything to say about that, Mizuho Horaki?"
Toji jerked the salaryman towards his own chest, hard. Toji's jaw clenched and their foreheads clapped together with a hollow knock.
"Cause if you didn't like it, I'd be upset." Toji said, his voice rising in tempo and volume like a preacher testifying. "Now I'm not the kind of man to hurt another man when I'm upset, but if Hikari was upset, oooh now that would be something I just need to hurt someone over. So, Mr. Horaki, do we have your blessing?"
"B-bu-w-w-wa-wa…"
"Cause I just could not bear it if we did not have your blessing. So, do we have it? Speak louder Mizuho, I want the world to know! Shout it for all to hear. Do. We. Have. Your. Blessing?!"
"Yes!"
"Yes?!"
"Yes! Please put me dooow-"
The rest was something of a blur for Mizuho Horaki. His feet were back on solid ground, then his ass because his legs just were not ready for this yet. Then the brute who had demanded his blessing to marry Hikari was hauling him back up to his feet as easy as lifting a bookbag. His handshake felt like he was going to pull Mizuho's arm right off. Everyone else in the shelter was cheering.
"Glad to hear it, pops! Ya met my dad yet?"
Kodama was yelling. Nozomi was repeating after her. That was normal, but Hikari looked… happy?
Well that made it okay at least.
Deep within the Geofront, Misato sat within the a cone of light. A rather lonely place despite the room around her being occupied by a platoon of planners, analysts, comm techs and every other job that makes up a general staff. Maps and photographs were pinned up on the walls and the din flooded the space behind her eyes with so much noise even her brain was not getting a word in edgewise.
"Captain, what are we going to do?"
"Captain Katsuragi, the interior minister is on the line…"
"Captain..."
"Captain!"
"Captain Katsuragi!"
"QUIET!" Misato screamed, slamming her hands down on the table with such force it appeared to lift her from her seat. She now stood hunched over the table, keen and intense eyes scanning the room.
"I am going to ask questions. I want one answer, and only from the most senior person in this room who is informed on the matter. If you can't keep your mouth shut I will throw you out. Now I want you all together to tell me whether you understand or not."
"YES, MA'AM!" The room shouted in unison.
"Good. Now, what is the largest yield weapon we have available that is NOT, I repeat NOT, an N2 mine. No fuel air bombs or anything like that either." After seeing that monster shrug off what it had, Misato had no interest in wasting time with an uncontrolled explosive. What was needed was penetration.
"Ma'am, that would be either cruise missiles loaded with…"
"No, scratch that, no explosives. What is the biggest baddest kinetic weapon available?"
"Well, um, the Americans have railguns on a couple some of their ships."
"Are any of those ships within…" Misato checked her watch. "Nine and a half hours sailing of range?"
"Uuuum… no."
"Then they might as well not exist. What about the positron cannon project?"
"Still a couple months out on the prototype. We've had to divert resources repairing Unit One and getting Unit Zero walking."
"That's our project, what do we know about the Strategic Self Defense Force's?"
"Um, I mean we don't have a direct line but I heard they were doing full scale test firings soon."
For the first time since this business started, a smile crept across Misato's face. It was almost dawn, it was already tomorrow.
"I need to make a call."
Far away and on the highest hill to be found, Kensuke Aida was digging. Aircraft were sweeping the area and so he was laying on his belly, digging with an entrenching tool. He had purchased the useful little shovel from a surplus store. His plan was to dig a foxhole, then get some branches to build a little cover shelter, then set up the camera. If everything went wrong, he would die sure, but he would die down in one of the shelters anyway. Now if Shinji comes through and saves the day on the other hand, he will have some awesome video that may just be worth a pretty penny to someone out there.
Decent little gamble that. Kensuke had just gotten home with the alarms began to sound. So he bagged his camera and equipment, changed into his camping camos and off he went. With everyone rushing into the shelters it was easy enough to slip away.
Kensuke had been starting up the hill when he first saw the angel. The sheer size of the thing was awe inspiring and it was deafening in its silence. When they first tried to pop the evangelion up he had not even been able to get his camera out in time to catch a glimpse. That was not going to happen again. Even as he dug he had his camera ready on the ground beside him.
Several hours later and Kensuke reflected he had a respectable hole in the ground. The ground came to his shoulders and he had built a blind above with saplings and light branches. The view to the city was clear and he had set up his video camera, now running, on a tripod. Kensuke kept an eye on the clock and swapped tapes. Much longer and he'd start recording over. Not a big deal, nothing much on film yet. NERV was working on something big way outside of town, but there were hills between his spot and there.
It was mid-morning now, and a beautiful one it was. The sky was clear and the green hills all but shined in the sunlight. It would be an exceptional day to go for a walk and take in the natural beauty of city's lands, Shinji thought. If not for the great blue crystalline monstrosity of course.
Goreans have an appreciation for nature. It was something Tarl had told Shinji once. The young man had always found it an odd thing to say.
Did not all people see the beauty in the world? It was not an unusual thing where he was from to simply watch the clouds in their movements. Or to take a moment from one's labor to take in the motion of the grass as the wind swept across the landscape. Man's creations were grand but what was there not to appreciate, what is not awe inspiring, of the natural world?
Perhaps Tarl had felt the need to say it because he knew Shinji would be on this world someday. He knew, and spoke at length, about what Earthlings did to their world. A Gorean would not do such things. Shinji knew his people had the capacity for great cruelty to one another, but not for the natural world and its creatures. Nature was great and free, and so worthy of respect.
Captain Katsuragi had brought him up here by elevator, a great distance from the city. Shinji could just see the glass and steel towers of Tokyo-3 between the hills and beneath the shadow of the angel. In the valley below he could now see why she had brought him. The emerald grass was all but totally obscured such was the volume of men and materiel in constant motion below. The men wore bright colors and not a one stood still or moved slowly. To a man they moved with haste and, Shinji noticed with high regard, absolute cooperation.
"What are they doing?" He asked.
"This is Operation Yashima. The total power output of the entire nation will be carried here, to drive the weapon we'll use to kill this thing."
"But what are they doing? How will this accomplish that?"
"Shinji, the infrastructure to carry all that energy and store it, to make it useful for what we need to do, does not exist yet. They are building it all here and now. See those big machines over there?" She pointed towards many great machines, each painted in yellow and black stripes and moving quantities of soil so great that when it was dropped it looked like it could crush small buildings.
"Those teams are clearing way for where you and Rei will be. As soon as they have it dug out and flat, concrete will go down and then everything we need to install the gun. None of this was here even a couple hours ago."
With this understanding Shinji looked over the valley again. As far as he could see between the hills men and machinery moved. Thousands of voices called out. Rails were laid down for great carriages to bring more rail within minutes. Cables as thick as oxen were being laid by the pasang and made to feed into even larger ones than that. Dirt roads were being cleared even as trucks carrying more supplies arrived upon them.
Dire though their situation was, Shinji smiled. A small thing at first, before his lips drew back over his teeth and from there he threw back his head and laughed to the blue sky.
"Yes! By the Sardar and their mountains I knew it. I knew you Earthlings could not be without all reason. Your caste of builders is amazing! To make all of this in mere hours!" Shinji said, in awe of everything he could see. "I understand now how formidable your civilization truly is, Captain."
"Well, uh, glad you approve. He he." Misato said, somewhat nervously. Its okay Katsuragi, just remember his people get really… passionate about things.
"To construct engines and lay a siege in mere hours! No city could resist against such speed. I must thank you a thousand times for showing me this, Captain. I do have much to learn here after all."
"Yeah, uh, once this is done I'll uh, get you some military histories, okay?"
Shinji turned away from the works beneath and looked to her, his smile not unlike a gleeful shark to her eyes.
"Captain, my captain, you spoil me. Yes, let us vanquish this foe together. Then we will feast!" Shinji said. Turned towards the valley below again, he raised his to the sky. "All here will have contributed to the victory, it will be all's celebration! And then Captain, and then you and I will read histories!"
"Heh, yeah, woohoo…" Misato said, just watching the boy as he continued to awe at the workers.
What have I done?
Hours Later...
"Alright kids, here's the plan!" Misato said. Watching her image in window from within the entry plug, Shinji saw the 'look' her face bore, an expression he had learned here on Earth. Her expression was gleeful, yet aggressive. Confident with a touch of mania. From the way she turned her head to look him then away, he assumed there was another image beside his own on the bridge showing Rei.
"We have prepared a position outside the city. From there we will fire upon the angel with the positron cannon. Unit Zero will handle the gun while Unit One will manage the shield we have procured."
There was that word again. Shinji was beginning to think that 'procured' in its earthly usage meant to steal or extort for military purposes.
"Shinji, Unit One would usually be the more suitable for manning the rifle however between the damage from the previous angel and that hit you took earlier it was faster to rig Unit Zero. You'll be responsible for deflecting incoming fire so Rei can focus on shooting."
"Bearing a shield, now that is something I am comfortable with."
"We can't predict what will happen once we hit the angel. This may be over in a single blow or it may need to be finished off. With Unit Zero prone that may fall to you in Unit One, Shinji. What do you want ready if you have to move in for the kill?"
"Spears, swords, something familiar. With all of the weapons yet brought to bear on him, I doubt the monster will succumb to rifle fire."
"We have glaives."
"That will do."
Misato nodded and the window closed. Shinji heard Lady Maya's voice next.
"Deploying both evangelions. Good hunting." She said and there was a shudder before Shinji's view began to rise into the railway tunnels.
"Alright everyone, this is it!" Misato yelled out over the bridge, white knuckle fingers wrapped around the steel rail. Coffee and adrenaline had her psyched up as she presided over what was to be the climax of the longest of longshot plans or the end of the world.
"Gunner Unit Zero, are you ready?"
Rei leaned forward in her seat and pulled down the bulky sighting module to her eye. Rei settled the busy reticle upon the blue diamond in the distance.
"Ready, Captain."
"Shield bearer Unit One, are you ready?"
Shinji shifted his shoulders as Unit One set the tip of the titanic SSTO shield into the Earth and braced. From this position, Shinji could just see over the lip of the slit cut in the shield as a viewing port. Shinji ducked his head and the eva followed. No need to look at the thing, he would feel the hit. Just hold the shield wall, let Rei do her duty, and all will be well.
"Aye, Captain."
"Aright, ready as we'll ever be. Charge the rifle! Rei, as soon as maximum charge is reached, you are free to fire!"
Shinji, in the moments leading up to the exchange which pitted the power of a nation of many cities against a thousand suns, had rejected the feeling clawing at the back of his skull as mere nerves before the battle. The nerves every warrior had. The nerves that anyone who denied was a liar.
As the force hit the shield and the evangelion's knees buckled beneath the blow, Shinji realized what it had been. Someone had called out a hit from over the radio just before the force struck. This was to be the angel's retort.
Misato had asked if Shinji was ready. Shinji had said yes.
That had been a lie borne of ignorance.
The evangelion's head ducked low as it was, Shinji saw clearly the beam of light pass Unit One's legs and hit the rifle. The explosion that followed was blinding.
Sister...
Soft hands upon her cheeks pulled Rei away from reality. In an instant the battle was frozen in time and far away. Rei was aware of it, but as an audience, not a participant.
Instead of seated within the cockpit of Unit Zero, Rei now stood about a grassy hill bearing a single tree and looking out into an emerald valley.
"It is well that we now meet, dear sister." A voice behind Rei spoke, and she turned to meet it. There was a woman there, pale but not so pale as herself, with dark hair. She wore only a steel band about her neck and a length of rough red fiber tied about her hips. Her otherwise nakedness did not bother Rei, but the way she moved and held herself aroused something within the girl. She was so fluid, so… sensual, Rei supposed that word was appropriate. Rei realized what she felt now was jealousy that this woman was able to move with such confidence and grace.
"Oh but please forgive my candor. This girl should not have spoken to you with such familiarity, mistress." The slave said, the final word full of cruelty. Rei knew what derision sounded like, what it was to be mocked.
"Who are you?" Rei asked.
"A slave who belongs to the master to whom you desire to belong. I see the path you look down, I know the fire in your belly."
The slave stepped forward, rocking her hips like the shoulders of the panther as he stalks his quarry. Rei stepped back.
"Do you wish to know how to please him? This girl may teach you. She may also teach you the ways and words to give yourself to him so he could not say no."
What Rei wished to say then was that she would give all she owned for that knowledge. But there was duty. Duty was why he had rejected her offer and duty was why Rei could not dally here. Her duty awaited.
"I must go."
"Master is strong, but for him to triumph you must take action."
"My weapon is destroyed. Unit Zero is disabled."
"Ah ah ah." The slave held up a wagging finger. "Just because it will not shoot does not make this weapon useless. This evangelion can move, with great strain upon it. With great strain upon you but your will can make it move."
"I can feel its weakness. Further activity will result in-"
"Death for the evangelion. You will survive, even as your mind will live the journey into the void with it. The result will be victory, and this victory demands any cost. And…"
The slave smiled and stepped closer. Rei did not retreat as she took Rei's own hands in hers and pulled, the slave girl craning her neck and putting them cheek to cheek.
"With your duty done, there will be nothing between you and master. Nothing will remain to curb your slave fire, sister." The slave said and suddenly pulled quite sharply, pressing her body against Rei's own. Her voice was as suddenly husky and pushing hot breath across Rei's neck. Every word, every syllable, was pronounced so exactly and so passionately the very sound and feel of her lips brushing against Rei's skin set Rei's body a tingle and filled her mind with what her own lips might do upon Shinji's flesh.
"You are his love slave and he your ideal master. He will take you and bring forth your true nature, your most base and salacious being. You will be as the female is meant to be before the male, totally and utterly submissive and feminine. This I know and feel within you. You need but say so and I will give you what you desire most, I will give you Him."
Tremors ran through Rei's body. The images, the smells, the sounds, the pure sensations that filled her mind denied her her words. Instead, looking up into the blue sky over the valley, she could only moan as her legs failed her and she fell. This woman who called herself her sister guided her down to her knees in the soft grass. The ground was cool and Rei realized that her plug suit was gone and she was now naked to the sky. Her body still shook and her breath was too short to summon speech, weak mewling bubbling forth from her lips.
"I will give this to you, only ask." The slave, her sister somehow, now cradled Rei against her body. Her support was the only thing keeping the quivering girl upright.
"P-p-pleeeease…" Rei's lips gasped out, the concentration enormous just to form the thought so overwhelmed her mind was.
"Yes. Of course my sister. I care for you. I am your dearest friend. I could not bear to ask much of you for this. You need only do a single thing for me…"
On the command bridge, things were slipping further out of control.
"First child's synchro graph just spiked! Neural activity within Unit Zero has been restored but all limiters are reading null. All safeguards have been deactivated."
As the angel's attack proceeded relentless, as the light from the beam darkened the day by comparison, as resisting but ultimately sinking legs dropped Unit One closer to the ground and so defeat, Unit Zero moved.
Steel wailed and concrete groaned as the burned evangelion tore what remained of the positron rifle from its mount. The giant shrieked in agony, its muscles disintegrating as the blistered flesh, so deeply burned that ash touched bone, fell apart in cinders. The barrel was gone, every mechanism to concentrate and make use of the massive supply of energy was slagged or had been erased from existence.
These things were not needful.
With both arms, Unit Zero bashed the broken weapon against the ground, shearing off what remained the positron rifle's barrel components. Only the receivers and conduits to feed the power were left, with one building sized fuse loaded into the breach.
The strain was too much for Unit Zero's left arm. It hung maimed and limp now, but the right arm lifted. As Unit One came closer, Unit Zero forced a leg beneath its body and rose. Shaking, convulsing as failures cascaded through its systems, Evangelion Unit Zero braced itself against Unit One, and thrust the muzzle of the remainder of the disabled rifle into the other eva's back.
This should not work. The chance of failure was too high. But Rei could feel gentle hands guiding her own. There would be waste, the connection would not be perfect, but by the sheer volume of energy it would be enough for what must be done.
Within the entry plug, Rei could barely move. She could feel Zero dying around her. There was no more external view, the entire plug filled with darkness and white noise and a thousand flashing warnings. Rei felt every single pain of death by total body failure. There would be no recovery, no repair. What was not crumbling to ash was being boiled alive.
Rei concentrated now. She had to do this. It was her duty but it was more than that could be, than it ever was. Earth would live, humanity would live, she would live but more than all of that HE would be victorious. And in his victory he would take her, stripped of everything and her duty finished. He would be her love master and she his ideal slave.
Rei lost her breath, choking for a moment. A cough cleared her throat and as it bubbled forth she realized it had been her own blood that had taken her breath away. She could feel the weight of Unit One, driven down by the angel. It was time.
Rei pulled the trigger. The nation went dark, cables surged with energy, capacitors filled and discharged in an instant, all of it gathered to this place and this moment into the mechanism. Lightning struck and thunder roared as shocking arcs lashed into the countryside. Cables and equipment failed explosively. Fire creeped through the emerald hills.
Yes… YES!... I AM EVERYTHING! I KNOW EVERYTHING!
That voice, a banshee's wail, filled the cockpit as Shinji frantically tried to move the legion of warning icons aside so he could actually see. The myriad readouts and blaring alerts were not yet his field of expertise, but he was learning and knew some things for sure.
The battery level should not go from nearing empty to to full capacity and back several times in a second. The words "Power Level Dangerously High" and "Capacitors Failing" and worst of all "Apotheosis Event Imminent" did not bode well either. That word 'apotheosis' was unfamiliar but Shinji had learned that if you did not know the meaning of a warning it was likely the one to be most concerned out.
Shinji felt the hands on his shoulders and the jolt as he was pulled from the here and now. He was now in a void, looking upon a towering giant of light. At first blinding, he slowly saw it was female in shape. Detail was obscured but for two black pits where eyes would be.
I am complete! I am the beginning, I am the end! I am the totality of humanity!
"You are nought but a slave."
What right have you to even dare, you who are but an insect beneath my gaze.
"Your master, girl. To whom you submitted yourself and so bound by my will, by the law of man and the priest-kings, and by rules of nature, you will serve."
The giant looked down upon Shinji for a silent moment, her cold black eyes boring through him. Shinji did not flinch.
Many are the women who will look into you with vision beyond reckoning, Tarl Cabot had told him once. Through some sense we as men do not generally possesses they will find the smallest emotion, the slightest crack at which they might pry to rule you.
And in that moment I must show no weakness, Shinji had responded.
Such women will look to you always in that way, Tarl had told him then. So you must have no weakness for them to attack. This I know better than the common man, my son.
Shinji stared down the god of light, of power. Then a feeling, like a warm embrace, enveloped his body. An emotion radiating from the giant and into his flesh and down to his very bones.
Pride.
Always. Go upon the enemy now…
Reality resolved back into focus. Once again Shinji felt the synchronicity there had been between himself and the machine during his first battle upon Earth. There was no cockpit, no screen, no controls. Shinji simply was the giant. His fingers tightened around the holds of his shield.
With bloody constraint, in earthquake and in thunder, in fierce tempest fall upon the angel. Like a new Mars, filled with with malicious and merciless intent, rise up my master!
Outside Tokyo-3, the power surge stopped. The trembling Earth beneath the mighty evangelions stopped. Everything froze in that moment as if time itself had stopped. Ramiel's light flickered.
Then in majesty and terrible violence, Evangelion Unit One moved. The great shield thrust forward and the shock wave of it passing the sound barrier flattened trees, threw men from their feet, and extinguished fires along the hills. An explosion of rainbow light made even the angel's attack seem dimmed.
Ramiel's charged particle beam split and broke. The keening wail now a more organic and pained noise than before it had been wounded.
The angel began to shift once more. A second, than a third, than more ruby cores emerged from within the twisting blue crystal until there was a ring of crimson within a web of blue. Light began at the top of the ring and slowly filled each core in turn as it journeyed down one side to the lowest point and rose back up, like a needle circumnavigating a dial.
Unit One's jaw broke free of its restraints. The evangelion thrust the tip of the SSTO shield into the earth and braced.
"NO!"
Ramiel's attack stopped. It did not cease, it was merely stopped all forward motion when it met Unit One's defense. The landscape was obliterated in every direction, hills and mountains were flattened. The Angel's full force still came, but it did not move forward. Seized by iridescent light, for a moment there was nothing. Then Unit One's AT field began to bend. Like the closing fist of a god the shimmering light sealed shut around the particle beam. The spear of light splashed against the force of one mastering will but as it was enveloped, it was now turned back.
The Angel shifted again. Ramiel raised its own AT field. It stopped boring down in order to put every quantum of energy into its own defense.
Shinji found it lacking.
An angel's cry fit to drive men mad rang out. Blood flooded the city as pieces of Ramiel were torn off by its own power turned back against it threefold.
And in a plane that was once a valley stood Unit One. Its armor twisted and blackened by the ordeal, but standing braced beneath the shield.
Shinji Ikari sat upon the throne of souls within the titan. His plugsuit had split across his upper body, leaving his chest and arms, muscles flush and tight, exposed. Shinji breathed deep of the bubbling LCL, his hands white knuckled fists around the control yokes.
The evangelion rose to its full height, and in doing so picked up the sonic glaive that had been left at its feet. Defiant before the angel, the battered and diminished but still massive shield held only by the left hand, evangelion Unit One raised the glaive extended forward, the shaft along its arm, to the angel.
"Hyuga." Shinji's voice rang over the bridge.
"Y-yeah?"
"I will need more Glaives."
"Um, well, you need to get closer to the city. All the elevators in your vicinity are toast."
"Where?" Shinji asked. As though in response a marker appeared in his field of view.
"There. It is uh… fourteen hundred meters ahead. Once you are there it will take another five seconds to reach you. If we launch too early-"
"The angel may target it. Begin sending every weapon you can into the city. Guns, knives, anything but most especially the glaives."
"What?"
"Now!" Shinji said, pushing both yokes hard forward. Ash and black earth rose up as a shockwave of air and a great BOOM emanated from where Unit One had stood. The evangelion was within the city now, sprinting strides tearing up the roadway beneath and heading straight for Ramiel as the angel reformed itself again, spreading itself out into five segments with its ruby core at the center.
"Shinji, get to cover!" Misato all but screamed over the comm. "It's about to fire."
Ramiel's beam of destruction carved through the entire avenue, boiling concrete, steel, and glass, the components of modern artifice, into magma-like slag. What it did not so much as touch was Evangelion Unit One.
In a moment of that felt more real than any moment before, Shinji had seen… no, he had felt the attack coming. Well trained instincts wielding new power had used the AT field to throw the Evangelion laterally down another boulevard.
While the gorean warrior carried a strong shield and wore a trustworthy helmet, it is wrong to characterize them as relying on these objects. The Priest-Kings proscribe a limitation on body armor, however again this is not to say the allowed items are the basis of the defense in Gorean martial arts. In single combat, both the helmet and the shield serve only as final options when one has failed to accomplish the true basis of defense.
Do not allow yourself to be struck
The spirit within the evangelion cheered him on as Shinji launched the glaive like a javelin at the sanguine center of the angel. Before the anguished cry of pain had ended, Shinji had a rifle in hand and had already begun emptying the magazine to pepper the angel with fire.
Your will, the spiteful wrath of a war god, will soon soar from the window of your destiny. White-hot pathos, a new and final philosophy for this desecrated world; Stay true to this and never betray yourself, Shinji of Ko-Ro-Ba!
Shinji sighted in on the next glaive, now presenting itself from an armory tower. Closer than he would have imagined mere moments ago, Shinji danced in the body of a giant among the angel's spears of light. The beast's aim was slow, not desperate, and Shinji thought in the spare milliseconds between thought and action that a being such as this does not have the capacity of desperation. Shinji found no fault in it. He could, in that way particular to warriors, respect it. To respect it in the same fashion that the spirit within the Evangelion praised the angels.
On this poor soul for whom this war opens its vast and mighty jaws, is not so foolish as to beg mercy nor quarter. For it and its kin are an enemy perfect, and so worthy of the greatest battle you are able to summon from within yourself.
Shinji's fingers closed around the shaft of the glaive, but the weapon would not move. Moving as though through the thickest muck, the clamps by which the tower had grasped the weapon had not yet released fully.
First there was pressure upon the AT field, then heat as the energy began to build. Shinji's awareness turned towards the angel. His momentum lost, there was to be no escape from the attack which was to come. Shinji raised his shield.
It should be noted that the gorean defense would, much like any similar art on Earth, say with great emphasis that simply stopping an attack with a shield is the 'least-good' outcome. Yes you have not been struck, but nor have you gained any advantage beyond that.
Shinji felt the impact of the charged particle beam upon his battered shield. This was the time of the feeling, the time when you most intimately know your opponent. Not through words, nor treatise, nor histories will you know your enemy more closely than in the feeling.
There were a hundred sensations speaking volumes to his instincts. The pressure of the attack, the slow warping of the shield as it bent then began to collapse, the way the beam, like a torrent of water, was to a degree uneven and despite the enormous power unfocused in a way. It was only really pointed towards where it was meant to go, not aimed with murderous intent.
Thoughts, feelings, emotions on the subject, these all happened in an instant of the feeling. Shinji turned the face of his shield oblique to the spear of light and let slack his grip. The shield had served well but it was on the verge of failure. Shinji felt the beam shove the shield against his hand, the slack turning it into a sudden and explosive push.
The angel having learned from failure, as soon as the attack was deflected the pressure was gone. It had been enough though, Shinji had stolen energy from the attack, and used it to steal time. The impulse of the push from his failing shield had turned the evangelion sharply enough to force the spear from the machine arms that had held it and set Shinji into motion once more towards the angel.
Shinji felt it in his own core muscles as Unit One turned at the hips mid stride to plant one foot perpendicular to the street, felt the ground buckling beneath that foot as the evangelion skidded to a halt. Then Shinji's own muscle memory built by years of training took over. Unit one hafted the glaive like a javelin in its right hand and stretched its left hand out to the angel.
The angel's core had begun to glow. The thunder of god was about to come down like a hammer upon this foe.
The throw started, as all such things should, in the abdomen. Shinji felt every fiber tighten in his own body as his muscles twisted his upper and lower halves against each other. His hips and calves followed, then the chest and finally the arms.
The double shock wave as the spear broke the sound barrier shattered glass down every nearby street for miles and shook the steel buildings to their foundations.
Ramiel's angelic awareness was such that it felt the hypersonic projectile incoming at a snail's pace. Resigned to the futility of any assault against its most perfect and being, Ramiel raised its AT field with a minitiua of its power. Primitive creatures throwing sticks.
The milliseconds passed like eternities. Ramiel took notice of something. The spear was sheathed in rainbow light. It was still coming. On a wave of pressure as though the sky itself was advancing upon the angel, it was coming.
It was also, despite every possible factor both natural and within the control of Ramiel's absolute territory acting to the contrary, accelerating.
To the personnel on the bridge, it had been just moments since Unit Zero had stabbed Unit One with the remains of the positron rifle, before the evangelion with the demonic visage had sprinted at supersonic speeds towards the with the apparent intent of stabbing it in the face. With anxious horror they watched the angel fire again, point blank down at Unit One. When the angel's core burst into crystal ash and flooded the city with its blood.
And when Unit One rose from the crimson deluge. Its armor was peeled back and as the blood fell from its frame it revealed charred black armor and flesh. The main screen switched to a camera looking directly at the evangelion. The bridge was silent beneath the rictus smile and uncanny eyes. They could hear the sound of the blood lapping against buildings like waves against the beach.
Then there was creaking and moaning as rainbow light danced across Unit One, knitting flesh and bending armor. Not back into place though. There were changes. That horrible smile and off putting gaze were covered, but not by the beastial visage of the helmet NERV had built. There was no frill, no horn, no jutting jawline. This was, somehow, worse. Perhaps not in its form but what it represented.
It was a corinthian helmet as it was known on Earth. Where there had been a thin horn now there was a crest, tall in the front and descending back into the curve of the back of the head. Sweeping cheekpieces covered the face and, with a sharp nose guard between the eyes, formed a Y-shaped opening beyond which the only light was the evangelion's glowing eyes.
"Ma'am…"
"What is it Hyuga?" Misato responded, struck dumb and staring at the monitors.
"It's the evangelion."
"I can see that, Lieutenant."
"No ma'am, I mean it… its power."
"I saw that too lieutenant, thank you."
"No, Ma'am. I mean it has been disconnected from the umbilical since the hit that took out the positron cannon. The batteries aren't feeding it…. But it hasn't lost power. In fact the batteries are even receiving some charge."
Silence fell, all eyes on Hyuga staring at his console.
"Wait… no…. Nevermind, the eva is shutting down. It must have been a sensor fault."
Sighs of relief were followed by orders dispatching recovery units. Normalcy in an insane world.
Within Evangelion Unit One, a spirit held the smallest of fires in her hands. Once a shining star it was now little more than an ember.
Shhh… not yet. The time will come, but not yet.
The next morning, on the other side of the world
Asuka Shikinami centered herself. Deep breaths. Not merely to fill her chest but a truly deep breath, drawn down all the way down to the cradle of her pelvis.
She pushed the outside world away. Conditioned air, the modern cacophony of electronics, the feel of the mat beneath her bare toes and friction of the chalk around her wrapped hands.
Breath out. Breath in.
Asuka savored the stillness she could force upon the world. Asuka did not need peace in her environment. Her own will was power enough. She knew she had reached true stillness as she listened to the blood flow through her veins.
This is what she had trained herself for. Complete control. As though she could take her very heart within her hands and define its beat. Her body was under her conscious authority. Her will controlled her biology, not the other way around. She was human, superhuman in her own thoughts for she had surpassed mere passion and discipline.
Breath out. Breath in. Draw the breath in, feel rich blood spread within your arteries.
Asuka knew that her resting heart rate, as it was now, hovered around forty three beats per minute. Perhaps less when she slept, she had never bothered to have it checked. That resting idle was part genetics and part training.
Asuka let the world back in. An unjust world, a cruel world. A world where mama died, mad and alone after HE left. A world within an universe where HE existed.
Rage was a primal, uncontrolled thing. Asuka had once been filled with rage, when she was very little. What she possessed now was beyond rage. It was bloodthirsty battle hungry anger distilled over and over by a disciplined mind. Rage was crude oil from the earth. In comparison, Asuka ran on nitromethane spiked with brimstone.
Asuka's feet launched her from the mat with such strength chalk was thrown up in her wake. Wrapped hands caught the lower horizontal of the uneven bars. She tucked her legs as her body arched over the bar once then swung them down, arresting her spin at the apex of the second time around the bar. Hand over hand she whipped her body one hundred and eighty degrees to face the taller horizontal. As gravity took hold and her body began to fall once again, Asuka accelerated forward with all the might of her core, legs, and arms. She launched herself through the air. When she caught the high bar it was beneath her and her own momentum sent her sailing downward over it. Another two spins and she stopped herself at the apex again, toes pointing dagger straight at the ceiling.
Momentum was not holding her up. Muscles like steel cable and her own will held her aloft. But then she let it all relax. Her body was liquid as it dropped until the last moment as her fingers tightened on the bar, her legs kicked out and flew forward and upwards so hard her face stung as the blood was pushed from her skin.
Finally, her fingers let the apparatus go. She tucked in on herself and spun once, twice, three times until like a steel blade her body stuck upright to the mat, arms raised.
Good. Now that her blood was up it was time for the workout.
Asuka ran forward, tumbled and took the recurve bow from it's stand and four arrows from the upright quiver. On one knee she drew back and let fly all four missiles so quickly the bow string sounded like a guitar beneath the the fingers of flamenco master. Four foam targets were struck down from the posts of varying heights they had been mounted upon. Kaji set them up for her, different each morning, and she made a point to not look at the targets before she began.
She left the bow on the mat as she sprang to her feet again. Feet pounded the floor so loud a horse might be running the room. Time for the final exercise. She pulled a sharp sword from its scabbard, hung alongside the hip of a mannequin. It was a spin and the follow through brought her foot up to snap the dummy's wooden head from it's shoulders.
More randomized targets, cuts to be completed indicated not by markings but by mounted round wooden shields and broom handles in the place of spears and swords. Four wooden enemies, their cores made of wrapped tatami mats soaked in water overnight, fell dismembered to the floor. Asuka finished with her sword high in the posture called the unicorn, her sword raised like the mythical beast's horn to the sky at the finish of a cut from below.
Asuka had only let a little bit of the world in, just for her morning exercise. Now she let the rest in and there was clapping.
"Very very good Asuka." Ryoji Kaji said, taking the sharp sword scabbard from where it had fallen and bringing it to her. Asuka took it from him and returned the sword to its sheath.
"Those cuts, that was the nine through twelve of Meyer's square."
"That's right, you do it perfectly."
"Bah, as if something so unoriginal would challenge me! My enemies won't come in a series of perfect practice cuts, Kaji." Asuka said, handing the sword over to Kaji before allowing herself a deep breath and to rest her hands on front of her thighs. Kaji gave her a water bottle and the straw was swiftly in her mouth.
"That's true, but they won't be made of straw mats either." Kaji said, inspecting the tatami halfs still stuck upon their stands. "Great cuts though."
"Of course!"
"Well… Except for that third one." Kaji said. Asuka nearly spat.
"It was perfect!"
"It was good, it just looked slow." He said. Kaji pushed his thumb against the edge of the mat to separate the layers. The straw was frayed where the sword had entered, not cleanly cut. "If that had been flesh the blade would of gotten bound up in something. Too slow, he might not have gotten you'd been delayed long enough for his buddy to finish it."
"Well, had it been your ahem, real sword, it could have been steel and you would have gone right through." Kaji reminded her. The sword he held was only steel, better than any knight ever could have wanted. But again, that was not good enough for Asuka.
"Naw, I can't rely on mama's sword. Come on Kaji! First you become superior, then you use superior equipment." Asuka said, recovered and standing tall again, dropping the empty water bottle on the gym floor.
"You up for some dagger plays?" She asked. Kaji had never really taken to her beloved longswords, but he was the best around when it came to partners for knife fighting. Well besides herself of course, but its not like she had anyone else to practice with.
"Maybe later. First I thought you might want to watch a little something something I just got this morning."
"Oh?" Asuka said, head cocked to the side and hands on her hips. "Better not be another stupid pre-impact show."
"You wound me. No, this little something something is classified ultraviolet."
"Oooooh my god you got the footage of the fight with the fifth?!"
"After action briefing goes live in twenty."
"Ryoji Kaji you are an amazing human being and currently my very very favorite. Can we watch it here?"
"Only rule is we have to be in a SCIF."
"Great!" Asuka replied, bounding over to her bag.
"Just enough time to-"
"Get in some dagger plays!" Asuka said and Kaji caught the wooden knife out of the air with a sigh. He had been up late last night, he'd only had one cup of coffee and Asuka was a handful when he was at his best.
"I was going to say for you to get cleaned up."
"Bah, nobody is stupid enough to say I stink. Now lay on!"
"Once the positron cannon was hit, things began to deviate from expectations…" Dr. Ritsuko Akagi continued, having already explained the battle plan and Operation Yashima.
"Well that's a bit of understatement." Kaji murmured.
"At the risk of getting too technical…"
"Too late." Asuka chuckled, leaning back further in her seat.
"...Usually at this point what we would see is the evangelion's AT field neutralizing the angel's own field. The fields meet and harmonize thus canceling each other out and leaving the angel vulnerable."
Dr. Akagi pointed towards a new slide, showing two overlapping waveforms meet then flatten out.
"This data is from the fourth angel's attempt on Tokyo-3. Now here…" Ritsuko pushed a button and the image did not seem to change. The same two wave lines were shown on a graph. Then one line shifted, growing in wavelength and amplitude.
"...Is the most recent event. When Unit One deployed its AT field there was no harmonization."
The graph shifted again, the growing waveform eventually rendering the smaller invisible by the scale needed to show its size.
"The angel's AT field was instead completely suppressed. Now this did not kill the angel, though it did neutralize the AT field as a defense. Additionally, analysis shows that the angel was making use of its AT field to focus and control the charged particle beam. Our theory at this point is that it was this splitting the use and so effectiveness of the AT field. This in turn allowed Unit One to overpower it and deliver the final blow."
Ritsuko advanced the presentation again. The next image showed Unit One having thrown, the angel still alive, and a white blur in the middle of the somewhat grainy image.
"That blow was delivered by one of our sonic glaives repurposed as a javelin. Unit One, unhindered by having to use its AT field to mount a defense or neutralize the enemy, instead continued to accelerate the weapon to mach five-point-four-five. As the glaive was never built to withstand anything like that energy it was obliterated on impact, however the energy transfer was more than sufficient disrupt the core."
Once more the image changed, this time to a nighttime scene with cranes set up over the angel's remains. There was only a rounded hollow where the core had been.
"Unit One required replacement of most of the ventral facing armor. The damaged cranial armor was only bent back into a recognizable shape and was not structurally sound so that has been replaced as well. With Unit Zero the damage analysis is still ongoing but recovery is unlikely due to large scale tissue damage, almost total destruction of the cranium caused by unchecked energy release when the positron cannon was damaged. Speaking of which, while the cannon itself was a loss significant research data was gathered which should advance our own project substantially. We have also gleaned valuable insight from Operation Yashima, the power grid expansion project undertaken to provide the necessary energy to the weapon."
"As to the pilot, the third child has been unresponsive to questions on the matter of how these feats were accomplished. He is apparently distraught over the condition of the first child, who has yet to regain consciousness."
Shinji held Rei's limp hand between his own, her fingers on his lips. She had been unconscious when she was removed from the evangelion and in poor condition. That had been yesterday. Shinji had chosen to stay until she woke, even taking meals at her side. The leavings of dinner were by the door.
"Please wake up."
Laid out as she was, she did not look so different from when he had first beheld her. No broken bones, so the physicians had told him. Several hard bumps, among them a respectable strike to the head. Not unlike a man whose helmet had withstood the blow but the sheer force had struck him through it.
"Wake up. Wake up girl. We have things to be about."
Girl. Not lady. Slave, not free woman.
Shinji had seen it in her of course. It was in all women, but particularly strong in her. She was well suited to the collar. There had been a moment during the battle though. A single electric moment where there had been total connection. It had been like and unlike the experience with Toji and Kensuke. There was that same mindfulness, but instead of a full sharing of thought and memory this had been a flash as quick as lightning. And as powerful as thunder.
Shinji bowed his head and held her fingers against his forehead. He had cried more than once this day. Crying was not unseemly for a man, warriors were men of powerful emotions after all, but to do so for a slave… Despite himself, an idea had formed in Shinji's mind.
One does not cry beside the sickbed of a mere slave. A slave does not put herself in such condition for any master.
This girl was his love slave. His opposite and complement. That which would complete him as he completed her.
And there was no guarantee she would ever wake. So cruel fate could be, to give such a boon with one hand only to take it with the other.
"I beg your favor Rei, wake."
It was not the first time he had said it. He had begged, ordered, cajoled, threatened, screamed at her and it had all been for nothing. She had not moved but to breath, she had not made a single sound.
Shinji raised his head and looked upon her again. He held the palm of her petite and pale hand to his lips. Perhaps if she did not hear she would at least feel his words. Perhaps she could hear everything and could not react. What a hell that would be to suffer. But even so, perhaps his breath and his words would be a comfort. So he spoke to her in Gorean. Even if the words were not familiar to her, in his language at least he could express himself fully.
"Rei, I know your desire. I have felt it because it calls the desires of a man in me. War and battles are my profession but my dearest wish is that you will wake so I may complete us both by taking you for mine own. You will be as you wish to be Rei, as I am convinced you are meant to be. I will take from and give to you pleasure of the flesh but too I wish to listen to you, to converse with you, to know every part of your mind and your thoughts. To know you in totality is what I desire, that is how needful you are to me. So please, Lady Rei Ayanami of Tokyo-3, wake up."
Shinji closed his eyes once more, ready at this point to start offering sacrifices to the Sardar if it would only make her wake.
Then he heard the most minute change in the way she breathed. A breath in became short, the smallest gasp. Shinji opened his eyes and watched as Rei's eyelids twitched then, as though it was a great effort, began to open.
"Rei!"
"No… more… interruptions."
End
Alright everyone, with Ramiel dead, you all know what that means.
Next time on Rebuild: A Warrior From A (Counter) Earth, Asuka Strikes!