Continued. Dun dun dunnnn!
It had started innocently enough.
A technician, sipping his thermos of hot tea on the catwalk above the huge cocoon, had looked down casually at the gigantic, silken bundle. He had considered possibly cutting off a piece and having it made into a nice silk negligee for his wife. Her birthday was coming soon, and she was usually in a good mood on that day.
At the same time, a few junior techs were playing a rousing game of horse shoes on the ground floor, two women leaning against the silken mass taking a cigarette break.
It was unfortunate that the tech on the catwalk had been leaning a bit too far over the railing, so that his open tea thermos spilled out its contents. As the tech cursed, it splashed onto the hat of one of the other techs playing horseshoes while he was in mid-throw. With a yelp, his shot went spinning into a curve, hitting one of the smoking women in the head. She screamed and dropped her cigarette, right onto the silky mass, which due to its rather unique properties, immediately burst into flames.
As the techs scrambled for the exits, the fire spread out across the cocoon, only to be met by torrents of fire suppressing sprays from the ceiling above. Even so, the damage was done, and the mortified tech on the catwalk was the first to see the tears beginning to form in the scorched surface.
An hour later, the tears were still growing, and the entire bay had been sealed off, as Misato, Ritsuko, the Bridge Bunnies, Rei, and the Commanders watched the new form of Evangelion Unit 01 emerge.
"Initial scans confirm that it is the Evangelion… Sort of," Maya said softly. Ritsuko frowned, while Misato glared.
"Sort of?"
"Er… Well, the AT field signature is not like that of an Eva… Nor of an Angel. It's entirely new," Maya elaborated. She then coughed.
"In fact, the unit is producing more than one AT field."
"What? How is that possible?" Gendo asked, rubbing his eyes in irritation. He had been getting no sleep as of late, and the old men had not called in days…
"How many more AT fields?" Asked Misato. Maya bit her lower lip.
"Over five hundred AT fields."
There was complete silence. Gendo shook his head in disbelief.
"How? It can only have one soul to produce one AT field…"
The cocoon tore nearly in half, as what was Eva 1 began to free itself with stronger, more active movements. A gigantic limb emerged, waving and flexing, but it did not resemble an arm.
"It's… A flipper?" Misato asked, dumbfounded. The large wing-like appendage reminded her of Pen-Pen, especially with its black-and-white coloring, interspersed between thousands of hexagon-shaped scales covering the whatever-it-was.
"There are hundreds of AT fields being registered from that… Wing alone," Hyugga reported in a stunned tone. Ritsuko's eyes lit up.
"The scales! Each one is an AT field projector of some kind!" Ritsuko quickly took a spare computer console and typed frantically.
"It has one soul, but each scale acts as a capacitor and projector! They're like mini-soul containers, all connected to the true soul inside Unit 1!"
"That's quite a metamorphosis," Fuyutsuki commented. He turned to Ritsuko. "How powerful are these mini-AT fields?" Another flipper, smaller than the first, emerged towards the "rear" of the cocoon, only this one was feathered like a bird's wing. The main body of what-was Evangelion Zero One was being revealed, slowly but surely, as a long, sleek, teardrop-shaped hull, also covered in hundreds of AT scales. Its overall coloring was a mix of desert browns, off-whites, gun metal grays, and dull azures, all arranged in elaborate, feather-like patterns.
"Well, Doctor?" The Commander prompted coldly. Ritsuko gulped.
"Each seems at least as powerful as a standard AT field from an Evangelion," the blonde murmured. The bridge crew fell into silence, on all of its levels, as the final bits of cocoon fell away. A long, serpentine neck finally rose above the floor, two large, green eyes without pupils glowing eerily from the top of the head. The Eva did not appear to have a mouth now, only a collection of small holes in its snout. However, it did indeed possess a mouth, which it opened, revealing lines of neat, pointed teeth in a red mouth. It let out a cry, which the bridge crew could hear unaided all the way from its position hundreds of meters away. It was almost whale-like, a long moan interspersed with bright violin-esque tones and an underlying rumble.
The Eva-turned-bizarre creature turned its head, its eyes dulling slightly in intensity, as it regarded the cameras observing it. It made a few odd rumbles, its mouth now closed, before it produced a series of clicks and a long whistle, before finally curling up in the middle of the bay, closing its eyes, and setting its head upon the floor, almost like a dog. Its eyes closed, and the sensors monitoring the transformed Evangelion went quiet.
"It's… Asleep," Maya reported eyes wide. An alert issued from her station.
"Major! The entry plug is sending telemetry again!"
"Show me!" Demanded Misato. A holoscreen popped up, and as though he'd never been gone, there sat Shinji, head lolled to the side as he slept.
"Have the Third Child removed and taken for immediate examination. As for… Unit Zero One," Gendo got out with some difficulty. "Doctor, Fuyutsuki: I want every aspect of it checked and studied. Understood?"
"Yes sir," the chorus of replies went, as Misato left for the hanger at a run, and Ritsuko and Gendo's former Sensei began going over the initial data from the scans. But Gendo's attention was focused entirely on the blue-haired girl who had gotten to Eva 01 so quickly, had practically torn apart the entry plug, and was now embracing Shinji as though her very existence would fade away if she did not hold him.
Not according to the scenario, at all, huh chum? Asked a voice within Gendo's mind.
The Commander frowned, and ignored the comment, as an unheard presence in the back of his head snickered maliciously.
OMAKE OMAKE OMAKE – DO NOT TAKE SERIOUSLY
"… One fish, two fish, red fis-"
"SHUT UP! SHUT UP!" The soul of Evangelion Unit 02, formally known as Kyouko Zeppelin Sohryu, stopped her singing and stared (in a manner of speaking) at Unit 00 standing across from her.
"What? Why?"
"You've been singing that damned song over five thousand times,"Naoko Akagi's soul seethed. "It's driving me mad!"
"A little late for that, don't you think?" Kyouko asked airily. She grinned as Naoko exploded at her in rage, spitting threats that she could never hope to act upon. Well, unless they got their physical bodies back, and Kyouko wasn't laying odds on that happening anytime soon.
"I swear, I'll rip you apart!"
"Like Rei will listen to you," Kyuouko taunted. "All you do is hamper her synchronization."
"She doesn't deserve my help! Neither does that bastard!" She screamed, though the humans working on the two Evas heard nothing. Kyouoko laughed again, feeling particularly vicious today.
"Bit of a soft spot, huh Naoko?"
"Least I didn't hang myself and my daughter!" Naoko countered. Kyuouko smiled sadly.
"That was Gendo getting rid of me because I was too close to the truth. He got rid of you because he preferred doing your daughter. He drove me insane with the synch settings."
"Oh shut up! SHUT UP!" Naoko raged. She descended into cursing and snarling impotently, while Kyuouko sat serenely. She had regained her sanity upon being infused into Evangelion Unit 02, and, all things considered, her existence wasn't too bad. She was sad that Asuka had become such a brat, and of course, hated Gendo Ikari with every fiber of her being—who didn't? However, dwelling on those feelings just tired her and wasted her energy. Like the Taoists, she was calm and serene as her emotions ran their course but did not overwhelm her.
Naoko, on the other hand, seemed to delight in feeding her rage and misery, and tormenting her pilot with doubts about her humanity and feelings of worthlessness, which Kyuouko thought was rather unfair.
"Hey… Do you sense Yui again?" Kyuouko asked, her mental eyes narrowing at the return of a familiar presence to the Geofront. Naoko stopped her ranting long enough to snort out a yes, before going back to screaming silent threats at Gendo.
Hm… Feels kind of different… Guess she finally got out of that cocoon.
Yui's presence drew closer, and closer, until finally, she was coming through the main doors to the primary Eva hanger. Naoko cut her newest scream of fury short at her appearance.
"Yui? Why are you… Floating?" Yui Ikari's soul smiled cheerfully.
"Hello, Kyouoko! Hello, Naoko!"
"That's the next stage of the Eva's development?" Asked Naoko incredulously.
"Yup!" Yui grinned. Units 00 and 02 were silent a few moments.
"Mmph… BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" They both guffawed loudly. Yui, with the considerable patience of the near-God-like being she was, waited through their laughter.
For about five minutes.
"SHUT THE HELL UP!" She roared, both psychically and physically. The bellow shook the Geofront from Tokyo-3's streets, to Terminal Dogma. Even Lillith, mother of humanity, shook at the ferocity of this annoyed sound.
Both Evas fell silent… Until they began laughing again.
"HA HA HA HA HA! You look like a seal parade balloon!" Kyuoko giggled.
"Nah. More like a Plesiosaur," Naoko snickered, for the moment relaxing from her rage-induced psychosis.
"A what?" Asked Kyuouko. Naoko rolled her eyes.
"Sea-going reptile, related to the dinosaurs, appeared in the Jurassic period."
At Kyuouko's unchanged 'blank look', Yui sighed and elaborated further:
"The Loch ness monster."
"OH! Yeah, she does, doesn't she?" Naoko shot Asuka's mother a long-suffering look.
"How did you get assigned to the Eva project again?"
"Hey, I'm a psychologist, not a paleontologist!" Kyuoko protested. "Bite me!"
"So… On one hand, you're more powerful than an army of Angels," Naoko switched subjects. "But, on the other, you've become…"
"What? I like this form. I'm certainly not as hideous as both of you," Yui commented. Naoko sniffed.
"Well, I can see why you'd say that in regards to Four Eyes over there-"
"Shut it, Cyclops!"
"Oh, real creative," shot back Naoko.
"Like yours was any better!" Yui rolled her eyes, which caused a tech working on her new, larger berth to scream and begin babbling incoherently.
"You two are such children. Really now. You'd better start behaving or I'm gonna take you with me when Shinji and I break the light barrier, and then toss you both into the sun."
"HA! Asuka will be the first to break lightspeed!" Retaliated Kyuoko. Yui snorted in suppressed laughter.
"Suuuurrre. That would take… oh… 999 more AT fields than you have right now. Oh dear! Who could have that many AT fields? Hm…? Who…?"
"Oh shut up, you stuck up bitch," Naoko grumbled. Yui cackled as Kyuouko fumed.
"That's it! I'm evolving next!" Asuka's mother vowed. "Now then… How do I do it?"
"You insult me, and now you ask for my help? Aren't you afraid of becoming a Loch Ness Monster too?" Asked Yui with a superior air. Kyuouko scowled.
"Look, just tell me already!"
"Nah. Don't feel like it."
"Tell me! I command you!"
Yui just laughed.
"Tell me tell me tell me tell me tell me—"
"SHUT UP!" Naoko roared.
"… Tell me tell me tell me—"
"THAT'S IT!" Naoko got Unit 00's arms to reach out for Unit 02's neck, and the two gigantic biomechs began to wrestle. Unit 01 just floated and watched, amused.
"It's good to be back."
Just to tide you guys over until the next chapter is ready. TBC!