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Last Child of Krypton
Chapter 17- Return
Toji sat up in the command chair, his hands jerking from the controls. His younger self tilted his head, considering him, and he felt the odd sensation of the Evangelion's movements, outside of his control, as if someone had grabbed his arms and was swinging them around for him. He fought the urge and the Eva rumbled beneath him, struggling against itself. The brows of his double, seated on the controls before him, furrowed in concentration. He thought he heard Misato yell something, but it was indistinct, fuzzy.
"You are stronger than I expected," the child mused at him, tapping one finger to its chin. "But how strong?"
Images flashed in his mind. He was no longer in the entry plug. He was standing beneath the door of a trembling skyscraper, clutching his sister to his side. He looked up and saw Unit-01 stride forward, laying into the first Angel that had attacked the city. There was a rippling boom and the Evangelion was thrown backwards and slammed into the building across the street. It stood up again with a roar and ran out of his field of vision, and he watched with agonizing slowness as metal and concrete and glass gave way and came rumbling down on top of him. Only this time, there was something different. There was no one to catch it.
So, a tiny copy of his own voice whispered, this is what you fear.
He watched the debris tumble out of the sky towards him, and set his jaw.
"No," he shouted up at it, "this isn't real, this didn't happen."
Yes it did, the voice replied. Silly lilim, it's all a dream. The young one is dead, and you lie broken abed.
"No," he said, and forced his eyes shut.
It was almost easy. The memory bubbled to the surface of his mind with ease, and when he opened his eyes again he and Kanna were in shadow, the silhouetted figure holding the great chunk of rubble over his head as he always had, looking at them in concern, just as he really did. Toji focused on the image, closed his eyes, and opened them again, revealing the entry plug around him.
"You will not stop me," the Angel whispered in his ear, and before he could stop it reached out.
The black hands of Unit-03 shot out, grabbed the utilitarian structure occupied by Ritsuko, Misato and a dozen research technicians, and crumpled it in its hands. Toji yelped and reached out with both of his own, as if he were forcing the Eva's hands back. He grunted, fought for control, and could feel the Eva's arms, forced to move against his will by something he couldn't quite see. He forced it to push the ruined structure to the ground, where it came to rest. Misato was out cold, blood dribbling from a wound on her forhead, he arm broken above her wrist. Doctor Akagi lay unconscious near her, the scientist's leg twisted at impossible angles, her flesh bulging with broken bone.
Toji snarled in fury and forced the Eva to take a step back, then begin climbing out of the massive chamber. It rolled the hillside and came to its feet and he felt the Angel draw up inside of it, grabbing its arms and legs away from him. It began to walk, walk towards Tokyo-3. He fought hard, but it was like swimming against an ocean wave, and his control kept rolling back. He looked around and realized the Eva's head was moving around with him, and inspiration struck him.
He let go. He released the Eva completely; let the Angel drive it forward with greater speed, dropping the umbilical cable with a rapid series of thumps. He could hear and feel it laughing at him, the spectral boy sitting on the control's head thrown back in wild mirth. It was mocking him. Something in him wanted to join it. The Angel had made a simple assumption, the same one everyone made when they thought of Toji Suzahara, even his friends. They thought he was a jock. They thought he was all muscle. They didn't think he had a brain, but he did. A great big one.
He focused all of his mental effort on the Eva's head. The Angel was confused, but didn't fight him, since he wasn't slowing it down, and the eyes of the figure seated before him went wide as Toji threw back Unit-03's head and opened its jaws, splitting the metallic restraints that held them in place. He didn't even know how he was doing it, only that the Evangelion's jaws split open wide and in some terrible, thrumming approximation of human speech cried, "SUPERMAN!"
Before him the ghostly form of his younger self rocked back, as if physically struck. The sound reverberated through the valley, bouncing through the buildings. The force of it shattered the glass in closest buildings in Matsushiro, sent parked cars rocking on their springs. He locked his gaze on the Angel's own, stared into it.
"Let's see what you fear, asshole."
He jumped and thrust his hand into the air, slamming his fist into the roof of the plug as he saw Superman dive in low, just over the rooftops. Something in him was a little surprised how fast he came, but that part of him was very small. Unit-03 moved around him, and he saw the black hand reach out, meaning to crush Superman in its grip. Toji laughed at it, the idea was so absurd. The Angel glared at him.
"He will die. I will defeat him. It is written."
"Nah," Toji shot back, "he's going to kick your ass."
The Angel smiled, and the battle began. It batted Superman away with a black fist, sending him hard into the ground below. Not missing a beat, he got back up and came back at it, looking for the plug. He was going to get Toji out.
"He can't save you," the Angel chided him.
"Your ass he can't," Toji crossed his arms.
Toji's confidence was a little shaken when the Eva stomped on him. The Angel grinned maniacally at him, and Unit-03's head moved around, now out of his control. Some sort of weird blue lichen was working its way into the plug, burning through the walls. The Angel ignored Superman for a moment, focusing instead on the three figures approaching from beyond the city.
The other three Evas.
A wave of fear flashed through Toji, and the Angel flowed with it, reaching into his mind. The shock of it tore him away from the Eva and he forgot the plug for a moment, instead trapped in the past. Images flooded his mind, the pilots. He saw them all the day he'd followed Shinji to Misato's apartment, when they'd laughed and danced together. The Angel was there with him, a silent observer in his mind. It focused, flicked through the images until it found what it was looking for. Asuka in the kitchen with Shinji. Asuka dancing with Shinji. The two looking at each other after the dance ended, panting.
Toji shook, startled. He should have seen it before.
"That's not all, is it," the Angel whispered to him.
More images. The weird day they were in the Laundromat and Shinji ran off, hearing something he and Kensuke didn't. Standing on the deck of the Truman, the wind whipping in his hair, Misato looking this way and that, asking "Where's Shinji?" as Superman vanished, somehow melting away as if he had to be observed to continue existing, Shinji just popping up out of thin air a moment later. The Angel clicked and clacked in his mind, as if it were tearing memories out of his head and putting them together like puzzle pieces.
The Angel focused its attention on Unit-01. Toji felt a weird sensation as it accessed the mechanical parts of the Evangelion, the computer system and the radios and all of the gears and whirring servos around him, and listened in on Asuka's voice, ringing clear as she gave direction to the others, gave them orders. The Angel grinned at him in understanding.
"The one that rides the mother's shadow," it whispered to him. "dies first."
Everything was a blur. The Angel took Rei and Mari out with simple, contemptuous ease. The sound of Rei screaming as she felt her arm severed stung his ears. He felt Unit-03 toss Superman aside again, pin Unit-01 down. He heard Asuka's gurgling refusal to kill him.
"No!" he screamed futilely, "It doesn't matter! You have to stop it!"
She couldn't hear him. The Angel closed Unit-03's hands around her throat. He heard gurgles as she tried to talk through the choking force around her throat in the plug, so far away. He ground his teeth and reached for the Eva as he did before, felt the grip become partially his again, slacken. The Angel sitting in front of him tilted its head to one side, quizzically, like a dog. It looked him for a moment.
"That won't do," it said.
Pain. Pain lanced through his arm, and he watched in horror, his eyes widenening, as the flesh of his forearm just unfolded, tore apart with a wet ripping sound and flowered away from the bone. It was so hot it was cold, burning him horribly, and it threw him back in the seat. His screams bubbled the orange slime around his face, and he heard Asuka scream again and forced his eyes open.
He tried to say no, but the words turned into a gurgling wail of pain as they left his lips. Instead he struggled against the Eva again, and for his trouble, the Angel took his leg, just as it did his arm. The plugsuit blew apart, shreds of it floating in the LCL around him. The muscle of his calf opened up in a bloom of blood, peeling back from the bones. His consciousness swam, blackness swirling up from the back of his head to grab him.
He heard Asuka screaming, begging. Begging for it to stop.
He gurgled something unintelligible.
"Be silent," the Angel snapped.
Then, his eyes opened again. Pain lanced through his whole head and he realized that both eyelids were swollen shut, but he pushed them open anyway. His throat burned, and he felt like someone was choking him. His arm and leg were gone, their presence, so normal he never even really thought about it before, replaced with an icy void of pure agony. He shuddered in the bed and saw Hikari's face close to his, her cheeks stained with tears. He heard beeping. Hospital.
Three suits walked into the room. They looked around, and one of them grabbed HIkari by the arm and pulled him back. He looked her up and down and shook her again. "Hikari Horaki?"
She nodded, confused. "I didn't do anything, I-"
"You're coming with us," the suit holding her arm said, dragging her away.
"Get off of her!" his little sister snapped, jumping at the man's leg. One of the other agents roughly pulled her off and shoved her into a chair, and she started to cry.
Toji jerked. The third agent locked eyes on him. "What about the kid?"
"You heard the Commander," the agent holding Hikari shrugged.
The one facing him pulled a gun.
"Help!" Hikari wailed, kicking at the agent that now held her under her arms and was dragging her out of the room. "Somebody help us!"
Toji had forced both of his eyes open now. He croaked something around the tubes in his throat, coughing as his gag reflex kicked in. His throat burned. His chest was a map of pain as he slowly, shakily raised his left hand, for all the good it would do. The agent pointing the gun at him faltered, and half turned. Every head in the room traced the movement of a small, green object as it flew in through the door, just under the upper sill, and circled around Toji's bed. He found his own eyes tracing it.
It came to a stop over the bed, and he had a sudden, tingling realization that it was watching him, weighing him. Everything seemed to come to a stop all at once. A green light, like the focused beam of a flashlight, swept over his body, then tightened and focused on a spot just over his eyes. The machines next to him beeped furiously. He was able to focus his eyes a little more.
It was a ring. A green ring.
A voice boomed in the room, rattled the windows, made all of the machines around him go crazy. The lights dimmed and flickered.
TOJI SUZAHARA OF EARTH. YOU HAVE THE ABILITY TO OVERCOME GREAT FEAR.
The ring flitted like a hummingbird down to his left hand, slid under the hospital sheets, and gently fitted itself onto the middle finger of his left hand, where it fit flawlessly.
WELCOME TO THE GREEN LANTERN CORPS.
There was an incredible sound, somewhere between the roar of an engine, an old hairdryer being turned all the way up, and the thrum of an electrical transformer. He sat bolt upright in the bed, yanking wires and intravenous lines out of his body, and gasped a ragged breath as he felt the bones in his chest moving inside him, locking back into place. He reached up, instinctively with his right hand, and…
…and there was a hand. It was a perfect simulacrum of the limb it'd replaced, made of layers of green light of varying intensity and hue, complete with bones and ligaments and veins and a layer of translucent emerald skin. He stared at it for a moment, and then with a gagging retch yanked the breathing and feeding tube out of his throat, ignoring the burning in his throat as he did. The tubes landed on the bed like gory snakes as he stood up. A new leg, like his hand, had replaced his missing limb.
The agent with the gun shot him. He raised his left hand on pure instinct and a shimmering plane of green light interposed itself between them. The bullet hit in a concentric circle of green waves, stopped, and plunked onto the bed.
"Holy shit," Toji croaked.
Think it. It will happen.
He made a motion with his left hand and a green flash batted the gun out of the agent's hand. A flicker of intention made the ring send out a tiny burst of light that sent the man off his feet and into the wall, where he slumped against the floor, unconscious. The other two men stared at him, open mouthed, then abruptly released Hikari and ran, their neatly polished shoes squeaking on the hospital floor.
"T-Toji?" Hikari said softly. "What's going on?"
"I have no idea," he looked down at the ring, "but it's awesome."
"We gotta get out of here."
He nodded, pointed his fist at the nearby wall, and with a surprisingly light effort of thought blasted the windows and wall out in a neat, eight foot circle, exposing blue sky and the chirping of birds outside.
"Come on," he said, offering his hand to Hikari.
"Toji, we're on the fourth floor."
"I don't think that's going to matter. Come on, Kanna."
"You have a magic ring!" his sister said, her face still wet with tears. "Cool!"
He smiled and scooped her up. "Uh," he said, "What do I do?"
Your ring will create whatever you imagine, Lantern. New bearers generally begin with simple constructs. May I suggest a sphere?
He considered that for a moment, and a circle of green light appeared at his feet, encircling them, then rose upwards, growing into a sphere. At a thought, it lifted up, picking all three of them up off the ground.
"Okay," he said, "I think I got this. Where should, we, um, go?"
Hikari looked around. "I don't know. We should find Captain Katsuragi. She'll know what's going on, right?"
"Okay," he said, as the sphere began to move, a bit unsteadily at first. "Let's try her apartment."
|O|
Shinji lighted on the veranda of the apartment, and all things considered, didn't feel that bad about twisting the lock on the sliding doors out of the frame to get inside. He tossed the piece of metal aside with a thunk and went inside. A quick look around revealed no bombs or listening devices or inexplicable lead boxes, which was something of a relief. As he stepped into the darkened living room, Pen-Pen waddled into the room and stared at him longingly.
"Wark!"
"Oh," Shinji said absently. "I bet nobody's fed you. Come on, I'll get you some food."
He padded on bare feet into the kitchen, only to discover the table piled high with empty beer cans. He turned around and eyed the penguin warily.
"You… bought beer."
"Wark!"
"But you can't work a can opener?"
"Wark!"
With a sigh, he picked up a can of fish filets, looked around for the can opener, felt a bit silly, and peeled the lid off with his fingers, then dumped it onto a plate. The penguin took to it hungrily, picking up each slice and throwing his head back to let it slide down his gullet. Shinji suppressed a smirk. The penguin's greatest virtue was his simplicity, it seemed.
He looked around the apartment. Everything had been left as it was the morning that he and Asuka had gone to school before the incident. She'd been in a hurry that morning, and a half-eaten piece of toast still rested on her plate on the table. He ran his fingers along the edge and sighed. He headed to the bathroom, took a quick shower to clean the grime from the fights and explosions from himself, and was buttoning his school uniform shirt when he heard the door buzzer.
Standing at the threshold were Hikari, Toji's sister, and just behind them, Toji himself, still dressed in a hospital gown. The foursome sort of stood there for a moment, staring silently. Shinji's eyes widened when he saw Toji's arm and leg and the gleaming ring on his finger.
"Uh," he said, "come in?"
He stepped back and allowed them entry.
"Toji?" he said quietly.
"Hi, Shinji," the boy put a hand on his shoulder. "Hikari told me what happened. Look, man, it wasn't your fault. Getting into the Eva was my choice."
Shinji looked away. "If I'd just been faster…"
Toji shook his head. "You did everything you could. Trust me."
"Shinji?" Hikari said softly. "I-I'm sorry about the things I said to you. I… I can't handle this. Everything is so crazy. I don't understand anything that's going on."
Shinji stilled himself. "It's alright. I know why you were upset. Have you heard from your family?"
She shook her head. "I was in the hospital when everyone went to the shelters."
He sighed. "From the looks of things, the evacuation hasn't been called off yet. I didn't see anyone outside. Do you know what shelter they'd be in?"
"My sisters were probably in school. My dad might be at NERV. I don't know."
"We can try calling them," Toji said helpfully, reaching for the phone.
"No," Shinji blurted out, taking his wrist. "Not here. These lines are probably tapped."
"Hell, man," Toji said, "Kensuke says every line in the city is tapped."
Shinji let out a long, ragged sigh. "I don't know what to do."
Toji blinked at him in surprise. "Well, we can't leave Hikari by herself. The NERV goons want her for something." He turned to her. "Maybe your sisters will be better off if we don't get in touch with them. If they know you haven't talked to them, they'll leave them alone. Right?"
Shinji looked away.
Hikari nodded. "So what do we do? Where do we go?"
Shinji looked out over the veranda, absently. "Asuka. The others. I have to take care of my friends. I got everyone into this."
Hikari piped up. "Do you know where they are?"
He shook his head. "I hoped I'd find some sort of note here or something, but they're just gone. They're not anwywhere around here."
"How do you know?"
He blushed a little. "I… I know what Asuka's heartbeat sounds like. I would be able to hear it."
"Wow," Toji mused. "That's really romantic."
Everyone in the room stared at him for a moment. Kanna giggled.
"What?"
"Wait," Shinji said. "Maybe… I have an idea. I'll be right back."
Without any preamble, he strode over to the open glass doors, stepped through them, and lifted off the ground. A moment later, he returned with a bit of a bounce, a little more hurry in his step.
"I think I found them," he announced, "but they're pretty far away from here, but it's her. I'm sure of it."
"Where?" said Toji.
"Uh," he pointed in a vaguely westward direction, "that way. Can you fly?"
Toji nodded enthusiastically. "Yes. Yes I can." Then he paused and raised his fist to his face, and started talking to his ring. "Oh, uh, so how do I do that?"
Shinji and Hikari stared at him. Kanna had discovered Pen-Pen and was busily hugging him, which he tolerated with his usual stoic indifference. Toji lowered the ring.
"Hold on," he said, and squeezed his eyes shut.
The ring began to pulse, and a faint green glow emerged from the living room. It grew brighter and brighter, painting shadows on the walls, like lights shining through a leaf. When it was over, he strode into the living room, and the others followed him. Sitting on the floor in the living room was an old fashioned lantern made out of green metal. Shinji started when he realized he'd seen it before.
"Okay, so now what… seriously? That is so cheesy." He turned back to them. "Okay, everybody stand back."
He picked up the lantern and put his hand against the lens, and began to speak. "In brightest day, in blackest night…"
|O|
Asuka sat on the cold marble floor for a few moments, her head spinning. She looked down at her hands, flexing her fingers in front of her eyes, looking on them as if they were new. The idea rolled in her head, rolled and rolled like a stone coming to the crest of a hill and sinking to the bottom again. She was an Amazon. Everything she'd known about her life was wrong.
"Come with me," Diana said softly as she gently helped Asuka regain her feet. "I have something you should see."
She followed the Queen to the rear of the hall, where the tall, matronly woman lifted a switch in an alcove. There was a grinding sound and a section of the wall beside the switch retracted inwards, and then slid to one side, the heavy slab of stone drifting with strange lightness. Beyond it was a large room filled with, surprisingly, an array of computer equipment. Diana led Asuka to the rear of the chamber, where there was a large television screen.
From a nearby shelf, she produced a video disk. "This was brought to me by Bruce Wayne. We decided that, one day, you would need to see it. To see the truth."
She inserted the disc beneath the screen, and then paused. "This may disturb you, child, but you must see the truth. What was done to your mother was done deliberately. The Scenario, the plan, required a pilot who was utterly psychologically broken. Feeding your mother to the Evangelion was the first step."
She sat beside Asuka, and the file began to play. There was no sound. It began with a simple black title card, PRODUCTION MODEL CONTACT EXPERIMENT, SUBJECT: K. SORYU. The image was grainy, and looked down into an Eva cage at an odd angle, like a security camera. In the center of the cage was the massive, hideous head of Unit-02, bereft of its armor. An entry plug, bulkier and rougher looking than she was used to, jutted from the creature's back. Its eyes were dead and lifeless.
In the lower corner of the screen, a detail of suited men appeared, leading a tall, strikingly beautiful woman with long red-gold hair, six of them in all surrounding her. Her head was bowed and her shoulders slumped, and she walked drunkenly, as if drugged. Asuka rose literally to the edge of her seat, staring wide-eyed at what she saw.
"Mama."
Kyoko looked up and saw the head of the Evangelion and something happened. Her shoulders drew back and her mouth opened in a feral, silent scream. She dipped into a crouch and spun, her long leg striking the man next to her from his feet. It all happened at once. She rolled out of a diving tackle from the man behind her, and they started to pull guns from their jackets. She stood up with incredible speed and caught the one behind her in an uppercut that sent his head back so sharply that, combined with the boneless, graceless way he fell, declared his death with certainty. Her eyes were wide open, wild, and there was a feral sneer on her lips.
The man beside her reached towards her with a gun and before he could actually aim she was already too close, had seized his arm, and broke it in several places, both forearm and upper arm, and his gun dropped as he fell, crying out in pain. She picked up a clipboard one of them had dropped and rammed the edge into the nearest man's throat, crushing his windpipe, then spun and delivered a sharp kick to his chin that twisted his head at an odd angle. Two men grabbed her, one on each arm, and she writhed, twisted like an eel, and planted her fingers right in their eyes, then dropped out of their grasp and with her fists, broke both their legs at the knee.
They shot her. The flashes blinded the camera a bit, made the picture shake, as they shot her twice, four times, then started wildly firing their guns, missing as many times as they hit. Blood streamed from her midsection and her legs and matted her hair over one eye, but she didn't stop. She grabbed one gun and snapped it up into the agent's face, breaking his nose, then grabbed his jaw and twisted, wringing his head around on his neck almost one hundred and eighty degrees. She stalked forward to the last man and as she was taking hold of him, faltering from her wounds, a dozen more appeared from off screen, swarming her from every direction. She writhed as they lifted her bodily from the ground and shoved her into the plug, locking it behind her.
Asuka began to tremble, her body twitching each time she saw the door of the plug tremble from the impact. As it slid home into the Evangelion, there was a dent beginning to form in the side. The screen shook and the picture fuzzed, and the four hideous frog-eyes of Unit-02 began to moved, twitching towards the camera. When they dragged her mother out of the plug, she lay listless, lifeless, broken and bleeding. The video ended as a medical team rushed to her side with a gurney.
Neither of them spoke for a long time.
"What do you want me to do?" Asuka whispered.
Diana rose, and she followed, without being bidden. They returned to the great hall.
"When I was younger, my elders recognized the dangers facing Man's World. A champion was chosen, an emissary to bring peace and justice, to act as an example. That champion was gifted by the Gods themselves. These bracers gift those who wear them with strength drawn from Gaea herself, granting great power and endurance, and speed, the gift of Hermes. Through this lasso, one may wield the fires of truth, making any bound by it incapable of lying."
"You want me to…"
"Yes," Diania said, almost hungrily. "By taking up the gifts of the gods, you will become more powerful than any man. You will rival Yui Ikari's child in strength and speed. You will even be able to fly."
"Fly?" she trailed off, staring at the bracers. "Why me? Why give this to me?"
"We are few, now," Diana looked away. "Second Impact and what came after took a terrible toll on our populace. More importantly, I am… no longer worthy. They are no longer mine to use. Will you accept them, Asuka? Will you become our champion?"
"Yes," Asuka said, meeting her gaze as levelly as she could.