The following incorporates characters, situations and settings which are derived from the copyrighted works of Studio Gainax/Khara and DC Comics, respectively. No infringement of copyright or trademark is intended. This work will be removed from the internet at the request of the owners of the aforementioned intellectual property.
Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work. - Mark Twain
Last Child of Krypton
Chapter 4- Sound of Thunder
The secret was out, but that was much less of a problem than Shinji Ikari had anticipated. Thankfully, only Toji and Kensuke were witnesses to the battle and their tape ended well before Asuka ran out of power, but the combination of half the student body having seen the tape and the fading marks on Asuka's face the next day at school made it obvious to anyone that she was the pilot of the machine, convincing even Toji who'd told everyone who would listen (once his story of the flying super strong man turned out not to be utterly insane) that the pilot was a mysterious, silent, pale waif. He'd actually used the word waif, which was much more of a shock to everyone involved than the revelationthat the brash German exchange student was a giant mecha pilot.
Asuka, for her part, was apparently comforted by the sudden ring of groupies that surrounded her as she made her way out of the school to eat the lunch that Shinji made for her, but was not permitted to share. Today, as it had been for the last week, It was his lot to watch from afar with Toji and Kensuke, who formed the other two parts of the trio that the red-headed pilot had named "The Three Stooges". Toji's most eloquent reply to this had been a stream of profanity ending in an accusation of the canine variety, which prompted Asuka to slap the young gentlemen. Shinji could have caught her hand, of course, but elected not to.
"I don't know what you see in her," Toji said, sitting against the tree against which Shinji leaned, watching the city from afar.
"Huh?" Shinji said.
"You like her, right?" Kensuke said, clicking away at his laptop. "You make her lunches and stuff, and you carried her books."
"She was hurt fighting the Angel. Besides, I make Misato's lunch, too. I do their laundry, too."
"Lay off her, man," Toji said playfully, "She's mine."
Shinji rolled his eyes. "Sure, Toji. That'll happen."
"It ain't like I've got many options here," he took a bite of a sandwich, "Half the girls our age are over there with her."
"She has come from foreign climes to corrupt our womenfolk," Kensuke added sagely.
"Dude, what?" Shinji said through a bite of sandwich.
"Nevermind."
"It's like, she projects this magic bitch field, and all the other girls are inside the bitch field, encircled by her bitchiness." Toji added sagely.
Shinji quirked an eyebrow. "Did you just say 'encircled'?"
"Yeah. So?"
"That was oddly poetic."
Kensuke snickered.
"Just because I work out, people think I'm this dumb jock," Toji said. "I can be eloquent, you know, if I wanna."
"Uh uh," Kensuke said. "I think I found a buyer for our video."
"Really?"
Shinji cringed. He'd been lucky so far- this time he remembered to move his face, just a bit, but faster than any human possibly could, so even on a digital video his features were blurry enough that he couldn't be identified, but who knew what kind of image enhancing technology was out there? He might walk to school one day to see a perfect image of his face on the front page of every paper. Then again, Asuka, and Toji had both seen him up close in broad daylight more than once and didn't identify him. He tried to change his voice and he knew his posture was different. Kaji didn't count; he knew anyway, so no help there.
"Besides," Toji said, "Superman is real strong, and I bet he's not dumb."
"Of course not," Kensuke said. "He's a hero. Heroes are smart and brave."
"I bet he's got it all figured out," Toji said. "All kinds of stuff."
Shinji gazed across the school yard at Asuka. For a moment their gaze met, and her bright blue eyes were an utter mystery to him, as a bright placid sea hides its own depths from the eyes of those who gaze upon it. He blushed and snapped away, but could see that her manic tone in talking to her newfound friends hadn't faltered, that she hadn't skipped a beat.
"Yeah," Shinji sighed, "He's got it all figured out."
SSSSS
Rei Ayanami's good eye snapped open and she sat up in her bed to find a nurse wheeling a plate of hospital food under a plastic cover meant to keep it warm. She watched the woman, who quailed slightly under her impassive gaze. Before Eva, when Rei was younger, the other children had called her a freak, and were angry with her for staring at them. She decided that the environment outside the school was more interesting and less abrasive, and so from that day forward concentrated her attentions on the trees and the rocks and grass and the blue sky, and the occasional flock of birds that might fly by. These were less remote to her than her classmates, as this woman was now. She noticed something odd. There were flowers in her room, chrysanthemums, and the smell of the mingled with the smell of disinfectant and urine that permeated the infirmary.
"What are those?" she asked, her gaze flitting to the flowers.
"Oh," the nurse said absently, "that sweet boy with the glasses brought those for you. Said the room was a little drab. I guess he was right."
The woman was fat and old and Rei was not interested in her, and so did not reply. She did not remember any 'sweet boy with glasses', but she did remember, after the angel battle, a warm hand that closed around hers and soft words that told her she would be alright, and that she believed without hesitation. She looked at the flowers again and considered them. They were pleasing to look at, their many petals and organic, flowing lines inviting to the eye. She reached out and brushed the flowers with her fingers, feeling the soft edges of the petals play over her fingertips. She did not understand the nature of this gesture. She understood concern- the Commander and Doctor Akagi had shown her concern, for her physical wellbeing and her ability to pilot. The Commander required her to socialize with him at a biweekly dinner, although he did not speak overmuch. No one had ever given her flowers.
The reasoning behind this gift confused her. She herself had no interest in ornamentation. Her belongs were entirely functional, entirely minimal. She had enough school uniforms to fulfill her needs for daily clothing and being neither especially warm nor especially cold in her apartment she simply slept in the nude. The only non-functional object in her apartment was the pair of glasses she'd taken from the Commander, which were cracked and broken. She did not know why she kept them, only that she felt she should, as a token. Perhaps the flowers were a token, but their meaning remained a mystery to her.
She looked up and realized that the Commander had entered the room. She fixed her attention on him, he who stared down unsmiling at her.
"Rei?"
"Yes?"
"Your injuries are sufficiently healed for you to return to school. Is there anything you require?"
"No."
"What is this?" he said, picking up the tiny plastic vase and the flowers contained within. He turned them around in his hand, studying them.
"They are a gift."
"From who?"
"I do not know his name. He visited me after the battle."
"You do not need flowers," the Commander said, and dumped them in the trash. "You will remain here for observation for twenty-four hours, then you will return to your quarters."
"Yes," she said.
After he departed, her eyes drifted to the wastebasket where the now folded, ruined flowers lay sprawled against sterile white plastic. She agreed with the Commander, as she always did, that she did not need flowers. Nor would she take them, or disturb them from their place. She did, however, have another feeling, a faint ghost of a thing that settled in the back of her mind.
She thought she wanted flowers.
SSSSS
Ritsuko Akagi stopped typing and jerked upright as a pair of warm, strong arms encircled her neck in a casual embrace, fingertips hovering suggestively just above the fabric of her uniform jumpsuit where it was pulled tight by the swell of her bust. She felt stubble against her cheek and hot breath in her ear.
"You've lost weight."
She shrugged Kaji off and turned in her chair, gaping in shock above her reading glasses. The man looked like he hadn't aged a day, and yet the Kaji she'd known was a skinny college senior hidden away inside a well-built man, hiding, she noted, under a loose half-tucked shirt and shapeless salaryman's slacks in an attempt to hide the signs of intense physical fitness. She leaned back in her chair.
"That was a little lame," she smirked. "Didn't anyone ever tell you that if you compliment their weight, they'll assume you think they're fat? Only fat people care about losing weight."
"Wow," Kaji smirked, scratching the back of his head. "Somebody got bitten by the cynicism bug."
She quirked an eyebrow. "Really?"
"You have a way of disarming a man," he recovered smoothly, taking a seat beside her, pulling his wheeled office chair close enough that their arms touched. Damned office chairs.
"You really shouldn't be here," she said, remembering to lock the screen on her terminal. Thankfully, she kept the really risk material for when most of the staff went home. Having Ibuki poking around in the secret plans to end the world wouldn't be a very good idea.
"Don't worry, I covered my tracks," Kaji gestured to the security cameras (including the hidden ones), "there's a loop of your lovely fingers type-type-typing away on the feed right now."
"True," she deadpanned, looking past him, "but you should have covered the windows."
The man's head swiveled around he went pale when he sat Misato pressed against the glass, which seemed under the verge of cracking from the pressure of her fingertips (not to mention other parts of her anatomy- all that ramen and snack food seemed to magically end up in her bra, somehow) and Ritsuko stifled a giggle. It sounded foreign on her lips.
"It may be time I beat a hasty retreat," Kaji mused as he slipped out the door.
Ritsuko smirked as she heard Misato berating him for his lechery and assorted other crimes, and turned back to her work, her fingers dancing across the keyboard. A ding from the machine told her she had a new message, and she opened it with a flick of the keys. The commander wanted to see her. Lovely. She sighed, logged out of the terminal, and slipped out of the office, making sure the bickering couple were nowhere in sight before she headed for the elevator.
As ever, the Commander's office stood open, inviting any who dared presume upon his time to enter. She walked right in and, finding him alone, coughed to make her presence known. He looked up from whatever he was doing and assumed that damnable pose of his, staring across his hands at her behind sunglasses that he wore indoors for some reason. She sighed, wondering why he kept up the pretense given that she's seen him sans gloves (and everything else) more than once. He slipped his fingers apart, reached into his desk, and slid a small container across his desk. She took that as a signal to approach.
"This is?" she said, picking up the small black box.
"A sample," he said, "I want it analyzed."
"Where did it come from?"
"Certain pieces of debris from the battle against the Third, and scrapings from the battle against the Fourth."
"What, exactly, am I looking for?" she said, slipping the box into her pocket.
"The image of God," Gendo said, resuming his façade.
To her consternation, Kaji was in the elevator when she left the office, and put an arm around her, grinning. "Oh, Rits, it's so good to be back among all my friends."
"Lout," she huffed, shrugging him off.
She didn't notice the small object he'd recovered from her lab coat.
SSSSS
"Have you seen Toji's video?" Hikari asked as she and Asuka ascended the steps into the school, shooting the boy a knowing look as she did, although he of course remained entirely oblivious, like the other two goons he hung around with.
"So did you see… him?"
"Who?" Asuka said, her tone cooling.
"You know, Superman! He was there. He kept those idiots from being killed."
"Yeah," Asuka said, "I saw the glory hound. He should mind his business and let the professionals handle it. I've been training since I was six!"
"Wow," Hikari mused, "that's a long time."
She glanced behind them. The Three Stooges were bringing up the rear. The little, geeky one was staring openly at her butt, and she had half a mind to go back there and thrash him, except that Shinji saw, glanced at his friend, and elbowed him, whispering something to him that Asuka couldn't hear. Kensuke looked a little sheepish, and Shinji surprised her. He looked angry. She didn't think he had it him, with his little apron and his cooking. The other boy, the tall one, grinned stupidly at Hikari, who actually smiled back, to Asuka disappointment.
Then the Angel alarm went off. Seriously?
SSSSSS
"Ready to launch, Captain," Maya said, and Misato nodded.
The vast expanse of the "bridge" yawned before her. The command center was constructed not unlike the conning tower of a submarine above the sea of machinery and support networks that composed the MAGI system, centered on the three spherical computer nodes beneath her. The three technicians in front of her set to work, and a variety of views appeared above her on an enormous holographic screen overlaid with topographic maps, technical readouts, and other data. The Angel was too far out to pick up on the remote camera system, and so they watched it by low earth orbit satellite.
After the hulking Third Angel and the insectoid Fourth, Misato expected the Fifth to continue to trend, appearing as some sort of conglomeration of a dozen different animal species writ large and gifted with the ability to hover. Instead, she was confronted with an enormous, glassy octahedron that if cut in half would have put the Great Pyramid to shame. The creature, if it could be called that, floated slowly towards Tokyo-3 over one of the outlying lakes, taking its time to approach. Every few seconds, at regular intervals, it beeped, as if it was sending out some sort of signal. Misato tapped her chin.
"Asuka," she said.
"Captain," Asuka said. Her face on the screen was a mask of concentration, she gripped the butterfly grips tightly, as if she was afraid she would lose them. She stared over Misato's shoulder at the Commander; the reproach had come from her, but the girl knew its true origin. Ikari said nothing, didn't even move, like a statue.
"Assume nothing. We're going to probe it with remote defenses to see how it reacts before we send you up."
"Affirmative."
"Hyuga?"
"Yes, ma'am?" the bespectacled technician half turned.
"Bring the outer defense line online and shoot a missile at it."
He complied, taping out the commands on his keyboard. Remote view showed a missle launcher pop up from a hillside. The projectile streaked out on the end of a streamer of smoke and vanished, and the view snapped wide again as the sat feed picked it up as it streaked over its target, the whole scene made even more surreal by the bizarre perspective of the orbital camera, which put everything not far from the ground.
"Energy build up," Aoba said, "It's doing something."
There was a low rumble and the Angel shot out a concentrated beam of purple light that strained Misato's eyes, forcing her to turn away. The missle was swept from the sky in a puff of burning fuel and unspent explosives, and the beam swept the hillside, eradicating the defensive launchers and leaving a deep furrow of charred, smooth earth in its wake. It continued on apace, without slowing or diverting.
Misato tapped her chin. "Did we get a power readout on that beam?"
"Massive," Aoba said. "I don't think the Eva could take much of that."
"Then we need to take it out before it takes us out. Asuka?"
"Here."
"I'm sending you up in launcher nine. Two blocks west there's a long range rifle. When I give the go, I need you to get to it as soon as you hit the surface, get a shot off as fast as you can, and then pull back whether it hits or not. Understood?"
"Understood."
Misato nodded. "When will it be in range of her weapon?"
"The MAGI calculate it will be within effective range in twenty seconds," Maya replied.
"When I send her up, I want the nearby launch tubes open so she has a quick escape," Misato announced, and the technicians set to prepping them. "Give me a count down. Ready, Asuka?"
"Yes."
Maya began counting down. Misato tensed, her fingers closing around her arms as she waited. She closed her eyes and listened as the last numbers were called, "three… two… one…"
The base shuddered as the Eva launched skyward, rocketing up and out of the Geofront. The other tubes fell open with a series of hollow booms, and Asuka was on the surface. She wasted no time, dropping her umbilical- she wouldn't need it anyway, and it could tangle her up, a wise decision- and sprinted to the rifle, then half-skidded into position behind a cover wall. She rested the rifle across the barrier, waited for targeting telemetry, and then fired. So did the Angel. She missed. It didn't.
Her shot went wide, knocked aside by the Angel's energy field as it shrieked, an undearthly wail that penetrated the Geofront itself, seeming to soak into Misato's very bones. She flinched. Asuka was already up and moving, heading for the nearest launch pad, but it was a close run thing. The Angel broke sudden, shattered into a thousand, a million pieces, and then with a great metallic clang snapped back into place, reformed as a wedge. A much greater light pulsed within it and then lanced out as a beam, reaching for Asuka.
She wasn't going to make it.
"Get her cover! Now! Every armor plate!"
The technicians nodded and the armor plates rose with agonizing slowness, and one after another melted and folded under the Angel's beam. Misato's breath caught. Asuka was almost there. Almost. The beam caught her full on, blew the Evangelion off its feet. Asuka's scream rang like a bell in the bridge. The armor plates rose and were swept away as the Angel's furious assault continued.
"She'll be dead in ten seconds," Maya shouted, panicked. "The LCL is going to boil!"
"Asuka! Jump!"
Unit-01 struggled, reached for the open port, and found purchase, dragging itself forward with its fingers. Asuka's screaming had faded into an agonized grunt, and on screen she was grimacing, trickles of blood mingling with the LCL in front of her nose and face. The heat had increased the pressure, but to slacken it might kill her. She was almost in, almost there.
Then, the beam diverted. It split, divided in two, digging deep furrows in the armor plating to either side of her. There was just enough time. She rolled into the opening and flopped onto the pad, the Eva curled in the fetal position, barely fitting through the opening as it dropped down, pulling her to safety. The beam died as she disappeared, and furious activity broke out.
"Recovery team! Now I want her in the infirmary ten minutes ago!"
SSSSSS
Shinji hit the ground hard, the pavement cracking at the impact. For the better part of a minute he lay panting, gasping for air. He'd never been hit that hard before, and couldn't believe he'd even dreamed of pushing the beam back, defeating the thing somehow. He pushed himself into a crouch, and then got up, still shaking, leaning on his knees to keep from falling over. In the shadow of the ruined armor plates he panted, and when he tried to walk, he fell against the side of a building. He glanced up at the Angel, and realized that he couldn't possibly stop it alone. He saw heat waves rising from his hands and made his down the street to a fire extinguisher, tore the top off in a single, expansive motion and bathed himself in cool water, which turned to steam when it touched his body. His costume had survived, but his cape was gone, vaporized in the blast. He wasn't quite sure what that meant.
Feeling clearer, he took off, keeping low so the Angel wouldn't see him- he had no idea if it would attack him directly. It certainly saw the Evangelion as more of a threat. He snuck a glance at it now and then, looming over the rooftops. It continued its slow advance on the city, as if nothing had happened at all. There was nothing he could do for now, and so he decided to recover his school uniform and see what Shinji Ikari could do.
SSSSSS
Asuka woke shivering in a darkened hospital room and tried to sit up, but her body ignored her commands. Instead she fell back into the bed and listened to the rhythmic beeping of the monitors they'd attached to her, glued all over her torso. Her face felt sore. She closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but no sleep came, only visions of a searing light that wanted to burn her soul. Her eyes snapped awake when she sensed a quiet presence in the room, and she turned her head, pulling at the oxygen tube snaking beneath her nose.
"Shinji?" she croaked. Her lips were chapped.
He nodded. He lifted a little cup of juice with a straw in it. "Thirsty?"
She nodded and gratefully took a sip, the sweet, cool juice like salve in her raw throat. She felt like she'd been screaming for hours. He put the cup down and sat down next to her, moved as if he was going to take her hand, and then thought better of it. That was for the best. She felt like she had sunburn all over.
"You're really red," he said, apropos of nothing. She scowled at him.
"I thought you liked red?" he smirked.
"Dummkopf," she said hoarsely, "don't make me laugh."
He smiled then, a sad, soft smile, and she saw something eyes she'd never noticed before. She could search for a descriptor, if she wanted to, but in the wisdom that comes only when one is heavily sedated, her mind find the perfect, poetic way of putting it. His eyes were like hers.
"Ikari?"
Shinji turned, and Asuka's eyes followed him. Standing at the door was a pale, unearthly creature, regarding her with red, red eyes. Something in Asuka quivered at the sight of her, shook under that gaze. There was an odd familiarity to her, under the bandages. She looked almost like… no, the hair was wrong, and she… it made no sense. She dismissed it from her mind.
Shinji smiled warmly, but it was different somehow. "Hello, Rei. I'm glad you're up and about."
"You will leave," Rei said without ceremony, "I must discuss the details of the forthcoming operation with Pilot Soryu. You do not have clearance."
Sighing, Shinji took his leave, glancing one last time at Asuka. She closed her eyes and listened to Rei drone on about Operation Yashima and found that now that she could sleep, she wasn't allowed.