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Last Child of Krypton
Chapter 14- Kyrie Eleison
Shinji took a deep breath as he exited the Geofront through a surface access station and felt a wave of relief flow over him as the sun, huge and red on the horizon, pricked his skin, the warmth seeping into his bones. He came to a hover above the skyline, looking out to the east, from which the next Angel approached, hot on the heels of the creature that had taken over Unit-03 only to be destroyed along with it by the raging Dummy System-controlled Unit-01. He felt a little sick from the green rock his father had waved in his face and thinking of Toji trapped in that monstrous thing sent a tremor through his body.
The Angel was enormous, as big as an Eva, actually bigger, since its entire body was a vaguely inverted egg, or a muscular man's torso, limbless and headless. It was mostly blackish green, the sheen of its skin suggesting a hard carapace. A red core glowed in its center, ringed by body protrusions, and over that there was a bony mask with black voids for eyes and a mouth that looked like it was either laughing or frowning silently depending on the angle from which he saw it. By now he'd learned to hang back and let the automated defenses systems have a turn at it.
All around him, as the skyscrapers full of offices and homes slid into the ground, the remaining structures opened up, giant metal doors and facades of false windows splitting open to reveal batteries of missiles and massive Gatling guns that trained on the Angel with gigantic metal groaning sounds. The Angel alarm sounded faintly in the distance, and he made a quick scan to make sure that no one was at least relatively close to the Angel. By now, people had become used to rushing to the shelters without his help.
The weapons fired. The glow of rocket exhaust and gunfire lit up the dusk like midday, flashing like strobes. Explosions and impacts burst all over the creature's body, but it simply floated forward, implacable, its tiny not-arms waving like flags in the wind. It slowed a bit, and regarded the nearest armaments building with a sort of indifference malevolence. There was a spark in its eyeless sockets and the building vanished, simply disappeared in a huge explosion of light and heat that reminded Shinji grimly of the N2 mind that had totaled Misato's car, what felt like an eternity ago.
He ignored the shells and missiles as he streaked towards the creature, knowing he had to take it alone, and take it now, and that the weapons weren't hurting it any more than they would hurt him. The shrapnel from the explosives clattered across his body, pricking him like raindrops. The thing turned to him and gazed down at him eerily, its empty mask, like a Greek actor's mask, staring at him in silence. No roars, no blasts of energy, nothing. He hit the core with both fists, traveling at the fastest speed he could muster.
He simply bounced off.
SSSSS
Mari was running, Rei following behind her. There had barely been time to recover their Evas before the Angel appeared, and Asuka was gone, drug off somewhere by Kaji, along with Misato. That left her and her crimson-eyed companion to pilot Unit-02 into battle. She ran by the crowd of technicians doing something to Unit-01's plug and ran for Unit-02, which stood still in the cage, still bearing the damage from the battle against the rogue Eva.
She kept her mouth shut as she ran up the stairs to the plug. It was still the same one she'd been in when the Angel had tossed Unit-02 over its shoulder, which filled her with a pang of rather silly nervousness. She slid into the control chair, took the yokes in hand, and waited patiently as the LCL flooded the plug, at least as patiently as she could, tapping her feet against the sides of the controls. The sensation of synchronization filled her with a rush and as the Eva's systems merged into her mind she heard the bridge chatter around her, as if it were being whispered into her ears.
"It's rejecting it," Doctor Akagi's voice said harshly.
She blinked. Who was rejecting what?
"We will try with Rei," the Commander said clearly. "Launch Unit-02 as a distraction."
A distraction? That wasn't-
She shook her head. She had to keep it together, keep her focus, keep it in the game. She walked Unit-02 to the launch tube, felt the locks grasp its shoulders, and braced herself for the sudden rush of acceleration, which was much shorter than she'd anticipated. They'd launched her into the Geofront, which didn't make any sense. The Angel was still on the surface, and-
She felt the crash as one of the skyscrapers, slung under the foundations of the city, slid ponderously down, broke free of its moorings, and shattered into rubble across the top of the headquarters pyramid. Her mouth fell open in naked shock as a rippling boom shook the massive array of mirrors over her head, sending tiny shards of glass falling like rain. A burst of white hot light filled her vision as a beam of light pierced the roof of the Geofront cavern, followed by a cloud of debris and glowing cinders.
The Angel, enormous and silent and towering, slid down through the opening. She shook herself out of her reverie and went for the weapons awaiting her around the surface; this had been planned. She took a pair of pallet rifles first, snapping them under the Eva's shoulders. The Angel neared the floor of the Geofront and she opened up on it with both guns, the recoil making the screen in front of her vibrate, like film around to break. She didn't realize she was letting out a feral scream until her guns ran dry and she saw the Angel glide forward from the cloud of smoke, utterly unscathed.
Shinji shot through the opening in the cavern, circled around and around to build up speed, and slammed into the thing's side, knocking it off its path, but only incrementally. Mari went for a pair of rocket launchers, shrugging them onto her shoulders, and he saw and darted off as she fired. Thin streaks of vapor followed the projectiles as they looped around and slammed into the Angel, exploding with twin blasts. The launchers chuk-chuked and slid a new pair of missiles into place.
"What the hell?" Mari demanded as the Angel moved forward unscathed.
She fired again, waited for the weapons to auto-reload, then fired again. All four missiles hit and had as little effect as if she'd spit at it. She threw the weapons down, reached up, and drew both prog knives from her shoulder pylons and ran forward, screaming in rage, arms held wide. The Angel, for its part, had apparently decided it was bored with her attempts to harm and it, and the tiny, flag-like protrusions at its shoulders flopped out into two long ribbons of silvery metal and lanced out, neatly severing her arms at the shoulders.
Mari's scream, amplified by the Eva, rang out through the Geofront. She saw the ribbon-arms coming at her head when synchronization shut down and the world around her went dark, leaving her cold, alone, and clutching her shoulders.
Mari's scream drove Shinji into a fury and reared back, aimed at the Angel's core, and hit it as hard as he could. This time, the bony protrusions snapped shut around the core just as he hit. Some of them broken off, spiraling off in all directions as he struck it, and the creature shuddered. He hit it again and it let out a low, rumbling moan, to which replied with a cry of triumph.
Then, it hit him with its beam.
SSSSS
The sudden boom from below made the ground shake and Kaji fought hard to keep control of the van he'd hotwired, skidding to one side as he floored it up the ramp onto the highway leading north of the city. He was in less than an ideal situation. For one, call him paranoid, but NERV probably had some way of tracking vehicle traffic in the city. For another, there was an Angel tearing up the city. For yet another, he was reasonably certain Asuka was about to murder him.
"I have to get to Unit-01!"
"No," he said flatly.
"Kaji…" Misato said, her voice wavering. "Are you sure…"
"Yes, now both of you shut up while I try to keep us from getting killed."
"He's hurt," Asuka snapped, "he needs me. He can't take that thing by himself."
"I'm not letting you walk into a trap," Kaji growled, muscling the wheel to keep the van just barely under control. "I don't know what Ikari has planned, but he needs you for it and Fuyutsuki knew it."
He straightened out and floored it. One of the advantages of the oncoming apocalypse was that it tended to clear the roads. The van's old engine chugged and he let out a groan of frustration. Years of the spy game left one a bit flustered when forced to drive a regular car. Asuka sitting behind him with her arms crossed over her chest, blue eyes boring into his back didn't help. He fought the urge to glance at her, instead focusing on the road.
"Where are we going?" Misato demanded, sounding a little surer now.
"A safehouse."
"Why do you have safehouses? What are you hiding from me?"
"Technically, it's not my safehouse."
Misato's eyes narrowed dangerously. "I have a gun."
"When you…" he trailed off, looking in the rearview mirror. "After we graduated, I didn't join the Boy Scouts. I fell in with some people. I learned what these people, all these UN groups, were doing form the other side."
"You're some kind of spy now?"
He felt a sudden prickling on the back of his neck and let off the gas as a column of light erupted from the center of the city, searing the nearby buildings, bringing the light of dusk to that of noon. Asuka's head whipped around and she let out a low growl.
He shook his head. "Not exactly."
SSSSS
Shinji had the sudden and profound realization that he was in a great deal of trouble. The last blast had vaporized his cape, seared off much of the top half of his costume and let him in a smoking crater on the ground. The Angel turned and with something like contempt simply blew away the top two thirds of the NERV pyramid, apparently no longer concerned with dealing with him now that he was no longer directly attacking it.
That was when Rei reached the surface, piloting Unit-00. Under its left arm, the only one remaining, it held a huge canister rather than some other weapon, and Shinji paled when realized the import of what he was seeing. Rei was charging the Angel like a footballer, an N2 mind held under one arm. He was too slow. Rei reached it, shoved the canister out with one hand, and the Angel's AT-Field flickered to life, holding it back. Unit-00 struggled, shoving at the mine, and he could see Rei's face twisting in concentration as she pushed the canister through the field. Finally it opened enough to admit her arm and the canister pressed against the Angel's core.
He shoved Unit-00 back, crossing the space between them in an instant, just as the mine blew. The blast took them both, sending him into a toppling roll into the ground. A mushroom cloud lofted up and pressed against the floor of Tokyo-3, as if trying to push up through the city. Unit-00 rolled back and fell onto its side beside him, regarding him with one massive red eye. Its left arm had been burned off at the elbow, and its umbilical was gone. He focused his eyes and saw Rei look at him, then followed her gaze back to the Angel, standing over them unscathed. It turned from them and fired a blast into the floor of the Geofront.
"Shinji," Rei said, somehow realizing that her voice would carry to him through the Eva.
He nodded, looking at her.
"The Commander has put the final failsafe into effect."
He looked at her in confusion.
"Twelve N2- tipped missiles are locked on the Angel's blue pattern."
"Tell," he gasped, "tell Asuka… Toji…"
She nodded. "I am your friend, Shinji."
He took off.
SSSSS
Kaji pulled off the highway and slowed in time to see the most unnerving sight he had ever seen before- the streaking contrails of twelve very large, very dangerous looking missiles high in the sky over Tokyo-3, sliding gracefully in from all sides in a great circle. The hills outside the city provided a perfect vantage point to watch and if he was right about what tipped those missiles, there was no point in running. The blast radius would cover their present location and destination both. He pulled to a stop and stepped out of the van numbly, Asuka and Misato following him. Asuka's plugsuit gloves creaked as she gripped the guard rail in front of them.
"I told you they needed me," she snapped, not looking at him.
He said nothing as the missiles hit their afterburners and began to pick up speed, growing more distinct as they dipped out of the upper atmosphere.
SSSSS
Hikari rose form where she'd thrown herself over Toji's ruined body to shield him from the dust that rained down from the roof above him when the battle outside shook the hospital. Most of the people, the doctors and nurses, had just left him here, running to save their own lives in the shelter, but she'd stayed, stayed with him. She wondered where his father was.
She watched the missiles coming in and a tear slid down her cheek.
SSSSS
"Three minutes," Maya announced, tears running down her face. "The missiles will hit before the Angel breaches Dogma."
Behind her, the Commander nodded, she didn't look at him.
The view of the Geofront interior was hazy, indistinct. She could see Unit-00, scorched, one eyed, like a dead Cyclops lying on the ground. She watched Superman take off and let out a gasp. The Angel turned, as if sensing his intent, and instead of letting out another blast raised its AT-Field. He met it, slammed into it, and tore it apart with his bare hands with a titanic crunching sound that she felt more than heard, like glass breaking in another room.
She let out a gasp as he grabbed the Angel's face, or what passed for it. He pulled on it and the entire creature moved, dragged at the end of a thin column of rubber muscle. It let out something like a scream and a blast of energy erupted form the mask, hitting the tiny figure of the boy in red and blue point-blank. The view screen shook.
He was still there, still pulling. The Angel began to drift upwards.
"Two minutes," Hyuga said absently beside her.
Whatever it was he did to fly, however it was he moved through the air without apparently propulsion, he poured it full on now, rocketing upwards and taking the Angel with him. They both shot upwards through the opening the Angel had blasted in the massive cavern, erupting out into the city. Maya frantically typed in the commands to switch to the surface cameras and watch the ascent. The Angel and Superman both had already moved so high the missiles were beginning to change course, arcing upwards.
"That's impossible," Aoba breathed, far to her left.
"No it isn't," Hyuga said, his voice creaking. "He's Superman. He can do anything."
SSSSS
Something in Kaji's gut sank when he realized what he was seeing. Shinji drug the Angel skyward, so high now that the missiles had to correct to follow him. He was pulling it away from the city, as well, and thankfully away from them. He had the urge to turn, but it occurred to him that he owed it to the boy to watch, he owed him that much. Realization flooded him as the missiles drew into range. They would nearly touch before they detonated, they'd have to, to overcome an AT-Field of that magnitude.
He'd owed the boy so much more than this. If he'd come clean from the beginning, been willing to face what he needed to do, accept what that meant, he might have changed something. Prevented this. Instead he'd allowed his own petty fears to stand in his way and was watching a good boy, a good man, kill himself for their sakes.
The Angel, which was all he could see now, was now so far away it was barely a glint in the sky. The missiles touched, and released the contained fury of a dozen suns that flared together as one, illuminating the nighttime sky as if it were the middle of the day. Instinctively, he grabbed Asuka and turned around, shielding her form the blast wave with his body. Misato grunted as she fell against the van, but the shockwave wasn't that bad. He'd pulled the Angel far enough away. He'd done it. Kaji looked up. The explosion had faded now, leaving only empty sky.
Asuka shuddered, and shoved him away. "Get away from me,"
Robotically, he watched them get in the van, got up, started it. Thankfully, it had been shut off, so he didn't need to worry about electromagnetic pulse. The rest of the ride to the safehouse went in silence, and he didn't volunteer to break it. The house was oddly out of place in the hills above Tokyo-3, actually not far from Shinji and Asuka's school. The building proper was hidden from the road by a turn behind pines, and the van's wheels crunched on gravel when he pulled to a stop.
"Come on," he said.
He slid a key from a chain around his neck and opened the lock. The front room of the house was filled with Western furniture, all covered in tarps. Kaji ignored it, walked to a grandfather clock in the middle of the room, and yanked the tarp from it in a cloud of dusty as Misato and Asuka followed behind him, the latter half stumbling, her eyes unfocused. He stared at the clock for a moment, then uncovered one of the couches. He took Asuka's shoulder, and she roughly shrugged out from under his grip.
"Sit here," he said gently, taking her by the arm. "I don't want you to see this."
In silence, she sat in the living room, staring at the darkened space around her without comment. Kaji watched her for a moment, swallowed, and turned to the clock. He put his hands on the clock's face and slowly wound the minute hand around until the time read 10:47. The clock chimed, shook, and folded inwards on a silent, well-oiled hinge, opening onto a small corridor he had to turn sideways to fit through. Misato followed him, and he didn't object.
The corridor opened onto a staircase leading down into a dank natural cavern- a small, pale shadow of the original of course, one of dozens of temporary facilities like this set up all over the world. There was a computer, a small work table, and half of a dozen crates surrounding a massive, squat, angular vehicle under a drop cloth.
"What is this place?" Misato demanded, looking around. "Is this yours?"
"It is now," he said softly. "He left it to me."
He found the crate he needed, opened it, and began to undress. Misato watched him in silence, not drawing close enough to see him as more than a shadow. He threw his clothes to the floor and began drawing a suit of reinforced material from the crate before him. He pulled on the lower half first, then drew his arms into those of the suit and shrugged it on. The clasps were a bit unfamiliar, but he had it on soon enough. The cape came next, and once it draped around his shoulders, it looked like a pair of wings. He pulled on the heavy gauntlets and then slid the belt around his waist; he picked up the last item in the crate, a heavy mask.
"Left it to you? Who are you talking about? I thought your family…" she trailed off.
"Bruce," Kaji said cryptically, without looking at her. He could have been talking to her, or to the mask itself. "His name was Bruce. He wasn't family. Not exactly."
He stared at the cowl for a moment, hanging limp in his hands like the skin of a dead snake.
"Go keep an eye on Asuka," he said quietly.
Misato took a step back, but didn't leave. He hesitated for a moment, and then with the quick movements of a man taking bitter, unwanted medicine, he pulled the cowl down over his head and settled it into place. He turned around.
"My God," Misato whispered, and then fled back up the stairs.