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Last Child of Krypton
Chapter 15- On Leather Wings
Mari stumbled over to where Rei sat, knees curled to her chest, beside the ruined form of Unit-00. The pale girl was shaking, rocking herself, and looked confused as if she'd simply locked up, unable to process how to display the emotions she was feeling. She sat down beside her fellow pilot and threw an arm around her, and swept the devastation with her gaze.
The superficial upper layers of headquarters had been devastated, the front and top section of the pyramid a twisted, cratered ruin, which still smoked from the heat of the blast. All around them, the trees had been flattened and the foliage that covered the floor of the Geofront burned away. Several of the buildings over their heads leaned drunkenly and massive groaning sounds echoed across the cavern as Tokyo-3's damaged foundations twisted. She pushed her glasses up her nose, noting idly that one lens had been cracked in the fight, and wiped a thin trickle of blood from her lip. She didn't remember being hurt.
There were men in suits with guns running towards her. Rei made no reaction, didn't even seem to notice. Mari hugged her tighter as the men approached, guns trained them. They fanned out into a semi-circle, looking in all directions. One of them lifted the cuff of his jacket to his mouth and spoke into it.
"We have them."
She noticed the glint of handcuffs in the closest man's hand and the world went crazy. Something small and black trailing a thin wisp of smoke bounced between the agents' feet and rolled, then spun crazily as it spewed gas with a loud, angry hiss, like a serpent. The Section 2 men went wild, looking around in all directions, the laser sights on their guns lighting up in the mist.
Something, a huge shadow, moved in the vapor, and Mari pressed against Unit-00's armor, instinctively afraid. Whatever it was, it was enormous, and she thought she saw wings. Rei still sat rocking herself, and Mari struggled to pull her to her feet, failing. She saw more shapes moving in the mist and there was a gunshot, a horrible cracking sound that sent her diving to her knees. A bullet ricocheted off Unit-00 twenty feet over her head, ringing like a bell.
A Section-2 man ran towards her, a look of naked panic on his face, his gun tossed aside. Mari's mouth worked silently as a vast black shape emerged from the fog behind him, wrapped him in strong arms and leathery wings, and dragged him back into it, the shape of the two merging into a shadow on the vapor. A moment later the figure emerged and she instinctively pressed up against the Evangelion's side, looking from side to side for an escape route. Rei stopped rocking and fixed her level gaze forward.
He was tall, dressed head to toe in black body armor, with a long black cape that was scalloped to suggest the wings of a bat. He raised his hands, black gloved, and spread his fingers, as if to show he was unarmed. Mari started to say something, when a Section 2 man darted out of the gas behind him. Without turning, he snapped his right hand up and back into a fist, where it met the agent's face and sent him with a broken, bleeding nose to the ground.
Mari tried to say something, but the words came out as strangled gasps.
"Who are you?" Rei asked quietly.
"I'm Batman."
/\../\
Kozo Fuyutsuki leaned his head against the wall behind him and recalled the story of Miyamoto Musashi, the legendary sword saint who started two schools of sword fighting, wrote a well-known treatise on warfare and philosophy still studied to that very day, and once defeated an opponent using a wooden sword he'd carved from an oar when he forgot to bring an actual sword with him. As he felt the seeping cold of the containment cell crawling into his bones, he took a deep breath and attempted to compose a poem describing his situation, but the only word that would come was Yui. Vaguely, he wondered why they hadn't simply shot him yet, and when he heard the scuffing of boots in the hall, it briefly occurred to him that Ikari simply had more on his hands than shooting his old friend in the back of the head.
There was a commotion in the hallway, now. There was no light in his cell, only three thin strips of light on the back wall where illumination spilled in from the harsh florescent lights in the hallyway. When the lights cut off with a thump, he sat up and took notice, walking to the window. He thought he saw something move in the darkness, between the gray-suited men he could barely see as his eyes adjusted. There were six heavily armed Section 2 guards outside his door, which at the time had struck him as rather farcical, as if they had so much to fear from an old man.
The gunshot rang out in the hallway, loud even when muffled by the silencer. In the ringing silence that followed, a spent shell casing tick-tocked onto the floor, and the five remaining guards noticed that one of their number was gone. Not shot, not wounded, but gone. The rest of them pulled into a tight knot, covering every direction. Fuyutsuki almost warned them when he saw the double-hung ceiling panel above their heads slowly lift, grasped by black gloves, and slide silently out of the way. He recoiled as he watched the shape, darker than the blackness of the hallway, drop down between them.
It wasn't possible. He was dead.
"Where are you?" one the guards, the one that had shoved Fuyutsuki into the cell, called.
"Here," a breathy whisper replied in his ear.
It all happened at once. There were three shots, all went wild and chipped the concrete walls of the cell block. Fuyutsuki ducked, just low enough to see through the window. There was a flash of leathery wings as he moved among the guards. Three dropped instantly, their legs going out from under them. Their machine pistols clattered down the hallway, coming to rest against the wall. Too close, too packed in to shoot, the other two grabbed at him. One lost purchase, his hands slipping over his cape. The other's arm was caught in an elaborate grapple, loudly grinding as he spun into his compatriot. Soon there was only one man standing in the hall, dressed like a giant bat.
"It's not possible," Fuyutsuki said aloud.
"Get back. Away from the door."
Fuyutsuki nodded, pressing himself against the wall opposite the cell door. A green light flashed in the darkness and there was a low whump that blew the lock inward, and the door drifted to the side. A gloved hand pushed it all the way back along its track, and Fuyutsuki found himself standing face to face with the American vigilante.
"Impossible," he breathed. "You'd have to be in your nineties."
"Let's go."
/\../\
Misato jumped when the phone rang. Lying beside her on the bed, curled into the fetal position, Asuka didn't react, and she didn't know what to make of it. She checked the number, cursed herself for holding onto the phone –the damn thing had a tracking device on it- and tapped the side when she saw the number was blocked. It shouldn't have been possible to block a NERV phone. Furtively, she pressed the 'send' button and held the handset up to her ear.
"Katsuragi."
"Captain Katsuragi," a breathy, elderly sounding voice replied.
"Uhh…."
" I need you to pass on a message to Kaji when he returns."
"Go… go ahead."
"Tell him 'thorn wishes talon'." He will understand."
The line went dead.
/\../\
Maya jumped when a Section 2 agent, a burly man in a suit and sunglasses, half ran onto the bridge. He stopped near Commander Ikari's station, and then trotted further down, where the man now stood, hands clasped behind his back, those orange glasses of his glinting.
"Sir, we-"
"The pilots,"
"Ayanami and Makinami have disappeared, sir. Fuyutsuki has…"
"Consider your next words carefully."
"They're fleeing in a… vehicle, sir,"
Gendo regarded him with a faint turn of his head. "What do you mean, a vehicle?"
"It's a black… tank."
/\../\
The last time Fuyutsuki had ridden a rollercoaster, he had been about forty-five, well before Second Impact. He'd regretted the decision as soon as the restraints clacked into place around his chest. Only the grin on Yui's face as she watched the cars begin to move made it worth it. Then, as he did now, he closed his eyes and attempted to concentrate on the sensation of movement around him, trying not to permit himself the understanding of what was happening and the resultant increased risk of heart attack that followed with it.
One of the two children seated behind him was handling the situation amiably. Crushed into a seat that looked like something out of a fighter plane or a race car, Rei Ayanami stared out the small, gold-frosted window next to her head with a sort of serene indifference. Mari, on the other hand, was clutching into the seat in front of her for dear life, a flat look of terror on her face, too frightened even for her normal inane banter.
Fuyutsuki understood her completely. The man beside him was driving like a maniac, this being only compounded by the fact that they rode in an enormous vehicle something like a cross between an enormous four wheeler, a Humvee, a Ferrari and some kind of tank. As he worked the pedals the machine emitted a throaty roar, half sounding like some kind of animal.
"Toji and Hikari" Mari half shrieked over the din of the engines, "We can't leave them! You have to turn back!"
"No time," The Batman replied, "No room. We'll get them out. Ikari doesn't care about them. They're not part of his Scenario."
"Sub-commander," Mari pleaded, "What's he talking about? Do something!"
"Hold on," the Batman grimaced, putting his hand on the throttle beside him.
They were approaching the escalators that would carry them out of the Geofront, and they were going very fast. Fuyutsuki gripped the restraining harness he wore tightly and forced his eyes opened, leaning his head down as if he were about to ram the escalators himself. The Batman pressed a button on the side of the throttle and there was a low, angry whine that built up in the engines behind them followed by a heavy, reverberating whump that shoved the machine forward even harder. Its lighter front end lifted and the whole mass jumped, coming down hard on the top of the escalators. The massive rear tires bit for purchase, throwing up chunks of revolving metal staircase and plastic. A security guard stared in naked shock as the machine tore past, leaving deep ruts in the polished linoleum floor before crashing through the doors and out onto the street.
"This is a tad conspicuous," Fuyutsuki deadpanned, or tried to deadpan. It was more of a hoarse shout.
"I know."
"You were more… subtle in the old days, weren't you?"
The Batman chanced a glance at him, then grabbed his cowl and yanked it free in a single motion, tossing it on Fuyutsuki's lap.
"Fuck subtle," Kaji replied grimly.
/\../\
Misato heard the sound of the massive black vehicle pulling in under the house and rose, shakily pulling Asuka to her feet. The girl sort of stared through her, not falling over but not really holding herself up either. Misato guided her down into the basement, through the hidden door, and to the machine, which emitted a low whine as it powered down. Tall and angular, it dwarfed everything around it. The top section of the vehicle jerked, lifted on hydraulic arms, and lifted open, revealing a now unmasked Kaji seated next to Fuyutsuki, Rei and Mari crammed in behind them in tiny jump seats. Kaji dismounted in a smooth motion, then turned to help the others. Fuytsuki shakily slipped over the side and landed hard on his feet with a grunt, the mask held in his left hand.
"What about Shinji?" Asuka said weakly.
Kaji froze. Misato's jaw dropped. She hadn't seen the kind of emotion on his face in years. He crossed the distance to Asuka faster than Misato would have believed, pulling her by the shoulders into a hug. Tears glistened on his face.
"It's been six hours," Kaji whispered, "I don't think he's coming back."
Asuka strangled a sob, turning it into an angry gurgle in the back of her throat. "He'll come back," she insisted, "he's going to come back."
"Asuka…" Kaji trailed off, shaking himself. "I hate doing this to you, I hate it. You have to accept it. He was hit with a dozen N2 mines. Nothing could survive that."
"Yes he can," she snarled, pushing him away angrily.
"Kaji," Misato said, "You… you got a phone call."
"I what?" Kaji said, running a glove hand through his hair. "On what phone?"
"Mine."
"Misato, I shouldn't have had to tell you to get rid of it. We've been compromised. We have to leave, now. Who was it? What did they say?"
"He said to tell you 'thorn wishes talon'. He said you'd know what it means."
Kaji's eyes widened in a look of genuine shock. "It can't be."
He turned to the vehicle behind him, flipped up a control panel near the steering yoke, and typed in a long PIN. There was a buzzing sound from a speaker mounted near the yoke, and a tinny, computerized voice demanded, "Please enter confirmation code."
"Red wing," Kaji said in a clear, clipped tone.
"Please continue, Red Wing. Enter command."
"Thorn wishes talon," Kaji repeated.
There was silence for a moment, then a harsh, old man's voice. "Ryoji."
Kaji sighed deeply. "Bruce. Where the hell are you?"
"You're supposed to call me 'Tall Shadow'."
Kaji punched the side of the car and winced, grasping at his hand. "Damn it, Bruce, I'm not in the mood. Where are you?"
"The Island. I'm sending you a resource. The landing strip outside Matsushiro. You have an hour. Rig the self-destruct on the car before you go, it should take care of the rest."
Nodding, Kaji pushed a sequence of buttons on the same control panel, and the top part of the vehicle slid closed, leaving him just enough time to pull his arm free. He sighed, and turned to the rest of them.
"We've got to go," he announced. "This thing has a compact N2 reactor in it that will go critical in about ninety minutes, and we have less than an hour to get to Hakone."
"Why?" Misato demanded. "Who was that? What the hell is going on?"
"We're going to catch an invisible jet," Kaji said, as if that would explain anything.
/\../\
"Kaji, this isn't funny," Misato announced as Kaji made the turn through an old gate in the mountains, smoothly working the wheel of the black sedan in which they rode, far more comfortably than if they'd taken… that… tank thing. Misato hugged Asuka, who had grown quiet again, tears glistening on her cheeks. Mari sat opposite them, brooding in silence. Rei simply stared straight ahead, not commenting on the completely empty concrete landing strip in front of them. That is, until from apparently empty space a door opened, creating the disorienting impression that the side of an invisible tube had just opened, revealing a rather plush private jet interior. Even Rei gasped.
"I told you," Kaji said without his usual mirth, "let's go."
Silently, Fuyutsuki opened the door for Misato and took Asuka's other arm, helping her up the stairs. The effect was less disorienting once they were inside, seated in what appeared to be a quiet ordinary Cessna. After making sure the children were strapped in, the adults sat down. Kaji undid his cape and laid it over Asuka like a blanket, then sat down, paying the cowl in his hand without looking at it. The seat belt sign clicked on and the jet began to move, the engines utterly silent.
"Do I want to know who's flying this thing?" Misato asked, crossing her arms.
"You'll see," Kaji sighed, slumping in his seat. "This shouldn't take long."
"Where the hell are we going?"
"An island, south of Greece."
"What," Misato snapped, "what now? The lost island of Atlantis?"
Kaji let out a long breath. "No. Atlantis didn't survive the Second Impact."
/\../\
Gendo Ikari sat in darkness, his face half-hidden behind his steepled fingers. He was surrounded by twelve massive black monoliths. They weren't really there, of course, being holographic projections. He leaned back in his chair and adjusted his glasses, huffing in mild annoyance. He had work to do, and these fools were distracting him.
"Ikari, this is absolutely unacceptable."
"We will make due," he replied bladly. "The Dummy System is operational."
"Should it fail," another voice replied, "we will be defenseless. The Scenario is in ruins. We have made a grave mistake in treating you as a peer, Ikari."
Gendo smirked, pointedly allowing himself the open display of emotion. "The next two will not trouble us. It is written. They will be dealt with. We hold all the pieces. All that remains now is to wait while the scenario will play itself out."
Silence reigned for a moment that stretched on into several minutes.
"All of you get out," the monolith directly ahead of Ikari intoned. When the others had faded out, the flat black shape vanished, replaced by the withered, wheezing holographic form of Lorenz Keel.
"Ikari," the old man said in his robotic drawl, "You play a most dangerous game."
"Our victory is written, Keel. You should not doubt me so. Have you no faith?"
Keel jerked in his chair, servos whirring to keep himself upright. "I am sending you Nagisa. I trust you will be able to handle him when the time comes. His conditioning is secure, but the power he wields is… dangerous. Unpredictable."
"He will be dealt with. No farcical confrontation will be required. Until that time, he will serve if the Dummy System fails."
"What of Ayanami?"
"She can be replaced," Gendo leaned back in his chair. "I am already making the requisite preparations."
"How will you activate the body? The soul is still active."
"I have another in mind," Gendo smirked.
/\../\
"I would appreciate it very much," Misato said, "If someone would tell me just what the hell is going on."
Kaji let out a deep, rattling sigh. "I don't even know where to start."
"I do," Fuyutsuki said softly. "May I?"
Kaji nodded, leaning his head back, his eyes lidded.
"What happened sixteen years ago wasn't the beginning," Fuyutsuki said, half looking out the window. "Yui, that's Shinji's mother, Gendo and I became wrapped up in all this. Her father had affiliations with something called the Human Instrumentality Committee. Their ostensible purpose is to advance human evolution, but their true nature is sinister. When Adam, the first Angel, was discovered in Antarctica, Misato's father led an expedition to extract material from it. We built a base camp there, and began the work that would lead to the development of the Evangelions."
"About nine months before the Contact Experiment, a rocket came down in America. Yui, Gendo, and I traveled there, where I met Asuka's mother, who was working at the American branch at the time."
He looked at Asuka as if he expected her to stir. She didn't.
"Yui was the one who activated the rocket. It spoke to her, offered her something. She and Gendo had been trying to conceive a child and they were having difficulty. She came to me a month later and told me she was pregnant, that the child wasn't his. Somehow, the computer system in the rocket artificially inseminated her. She'd consented to it, but after the fact she felt guilty. Shinji was born nine months later, right around the time of Second Impact."
"We thought he was an ordinary child at first. He showed no signs of extraordinary abilities. Yui and Gendo simply raised him as their own. He was none the wiser. Work on the project continued. Yui was 'volunteered' to be the first Evangelion test pilot, of Unit-01. It… absorbed her. Drew her being into itself. It is difficult to explain succinctly, but one moment she was in the test plug, the next there was nothing but the contact suit and a helmet, floating empty. I still remember the scream."
Asuka sat up. "Wait, you're saying the Eva ate her? Unit-01? The one I've been piloting? She was… she was in there with me?"
"We were never sure. The system was temperamental, unstable, but nothing that couldn't be explained. Until the volcano. When Unit-01 moved on its own to pull you out of the volcano, we knew. Only Akagi, Gendo and myself discussed the matter, but it was clear. Yui is alive somehow, and in the Evangelion."
"What…" Asuka said softly, closing her eyes to gather herself, clenching her tiny fists on the armrests, "What happened to Momma?"
"The same thing," Fuyutsuki said softly, "or rather, a variation from it. Rather than swallowing her whole, Unit-02 took a bite of her. The safety systems shielded her from being totally absorbed. Instead, it only took in part of her mind, leaving a confused shell behind. That's why…"
"Stop," Asuka bit back a sob, "I know. Don't say it."
Fuyutsuki nodded apologetically. "At least you weren't there for it, like Shinji was," he said sadly. "It was unpleasant. She killed six men before they forced her into the plug. I wasn't there, thankfully, but I saw the footage later. She broke one man's back, killed another by crushing his neck with a clipboard."
The old man went silent as everyone in the cabin stared at him.
"That's how the synch works, isn't it?" Misato said finally. "It has something to do with the mind already in the Evangelion."
"We think so," Fuyutsuki nodded. "The system is complex."
"Why can't it synch with Shinji, then? How did Unit-01 synch with Asuka?"
"Remember, Shinji isn't human, he's a hybrid. The Evangelions share a fundamental link with humanity on the genetic level. Whatever the Angels are, they're related to us. From what Yui told me, Shinji's other half came from the other side of the galaxy. I'm not sure how it's even possible. As for Asuka… Yui likes you."
Asuka stifled a sound that was half laugh, half sob. "It figures."
"What am I?"
Everyone's head snapped around to stare at Rei, who had so far remained silent. The girl demanded again in her soft voice, "What am I, professor?"
Fuyutsuki took a deep breath. "You are a cloned being created from genetic material recovered from Yui's contact, material from the second angel, Lilith, and genetic material taken from the biological supercomputer that carried Shinji's genetic material to Earth. In a way, you are his half-sister, or more appropriately, his aunt. The distinction is a little odd."
Rei nodded sagely and closed her eyes, apparently in an attempt to sleep.
"Kaji," Misato kicked his leg with her foot. "You haven't said anything."
"I have to let Bruce explain it," he said without looking forward. "Things have changed so much. There's much, much more to Second Impact than even SEELE understands. A conspiracy within the conspiracy."
"You're not making any sense."
He looked at her gravely. "There was a war, and the wrong side won."