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.
Last Child of Krypton
Chapter 19- Villains
"He activated a Rei clone."
The three technicians sat around Ritsuko, staring at her with wide eyes. There was no sound in the lab, save for the last drips of coffee in the nearby pot, long gone cold. Ritsuko had a haunted, vacant look in her eyes, focused on nothing. With her broken leg, sallow skin, and dye job beginning to show at the roots, the long tracks of cheap mascara down her cheeks only made her look older, more haggard.
"They cloned Rei?" Maya chirped in surprise.
Ritsuko stifled a bitter laugh. "Rei is a clone. She was always a clone. There are about two dozen of them down in Central Dogma, floating in a big tank."
"A clone of who?" Aoba quirked an eyebrow.
"About one third Yui Ikari, one third Angel, and one third artificial nerve fiber from an alien probe."
"Wait, what? Did you say alien? As in little green men?"
"As in Shinji."
Their eyes all widened.
"Does that mean she can, like, do stuff?"
"Heh. That's one hell of an understatent. Rei is basically a miniature Evangelion- the technology is basically the same, just on a smaller scale. She has a lot in common with Unit-01, as a matter of fact. We've been keeping her on drugs to suppress any… abilities she may manifest."
"Wait," Aoba said, "the Evas are dependent on external power, right? So what does that mean?"
"The Evas need an external power source to unfold their AT-Fields, and for the onboard computer systems, the servos in the armor, but the Evas don't have cores like the Angels do, so they lack Super Solenoid Engines."
"So what's the big deal? It's not like Rei is going to stick her fingers in a light socket or something."
"No," Ritsuko said ominously, "but I have samples of Shinji's genetic material we recovered from Unit-01's hand and armor, when he touched it during some of the fights. If Rei shares any similarity to him at all, she doesn't need a power source."
"Why not?"
"She's got the Sun."
"Doctor, you got another message," Maya said.
Ritsuko wheeled her chair over to the computer and opened the file. "It's from the same person, it says… I've lost weight."
Maya's eyebrows scrunched together. "Huh?"
"It says I've lost weight," Ritsuko went on, "and the person who sent this needs our help."
"With what?"
She read further, and her lips pulled into a frown. She sat back and turned to face the others.
"If you help me with this, you're putting your lives on the line. We might face retribution. We'll be criminals."
"What do you need me to do?" Maya said, almost as soon as she'd finished.
"I'm in," Hyuga nodded.
"I wasn't actually kidding about the 'we're the bad guys' thing." Aoba said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
"Log into your terminals. We've got work to do."
SSSSS
Gendo had just settled into the pose when the lights went out. Typical. Light from the Geofront streamed into his office, making it look surprisingly mundane despite its size. Without hesitation, he stood, opened the drawer to his right, and retrieved the sidearm he kept there, then slipped it behind his back, under his coat. He checked his gloves, adjusted his glasses, and strode out of the office, opening the door manually for once.
Without the elevators, he had to descend the stairs to reach the command center, where he was again forced to manually open the doors. He found a profusion of flashlights in the hands of the various bridge personnel running about like frantic children. Lacking a proper desk to occupy, his still being in several pieces off to his right, he assumed a position of command with his hands clasped his behind his back, and therefore conveniently within reach of his gun, looking down on the deck below.
"Akagi, status."
"She's not here, sir," some meaningless technician replied shakily. "She and the primary technicians are working on Unit-02."
He waved a hand dismissively. "Yes. I need information. I want a status report on the Evangelions."
A moment later, without ceremony, the lights came back on. There was a dull thrum as the climate control system restarted, and stale air began to blow into the massive chamber again, ghosting against the back of his neck. He looked around the room, watched the screens flicker to life, and raised his voice in command.
"Get a Section 2 detail down here immediately. Seal the base and sound intruder alert."
"Sir?"
"The primary power system and four reserves do not just shut off and start up again for no reason. Do it."
/\../\
Misato shrugged into the last of the gear Kaji had prepared for her. It consisted primarily of an armored bodysuit like the one he wore, although unlike his hers wasn't tailor made and was a little tight around the hips and chest and made funny, barely audible little squeaking sounds every time she moved, at least for the first hour or so that she'd worn it. She'd also been provided with sturdy boots, similar to his, and heavy gloves that still felt a little weird.
Apparently, the suit Kaji had retrieved from the safe house outside the city was an older model. The new one that waited for him on the island had apparently been tailor made, since it fit him perfectly. It looked more like some sort of high tech composite armor than a cloth suit, as the previous one had, to the point that the mask was more of a rigid helmet than a simple cowl. The cape was a different material, too, less like leather and weird to the touch. Kaji had said something about it responding to an electrical current, able to hold a shape.
Misato looked down at herself. She'd forgone the mask and cape that came with her suit. There was a stylized red bat on her chest. "Who did you say this belonged to again?"
"Barbara."
"And who is Barbara?"
"She's dead," he said tersely, "now be quiet. We're being stealthy."
"Look, mister, just because I have a bat on my chest doesn't mean you own me or something."
He shot her a look over his shoulder that could cut glass. She clammed up. The helmet he wore had some sort of lenses over his eyes that made him look even more eerie, like he had no pupils at all. She had to constantly remind herself that it was just a suit, and she knew who was wearing it.
He was busily working on one of the many, many access panels to be found in any of the dozen Geofront entrances scattered around the city. Dropping the power for a few minutes had given them time to get out of sight of the security cameras. The panel popped free and he set it aside.
"Let's go."
"I hope you know where you're going."
"I don't need a map. Besides, I put a tracking bug in Ritsuko's wheelchair."
She crossed her arms over her chest. "You better not have any weird spy gadgets hidden in my apartment."
"I tried putting a camera in your underwear drawer, but anything big enough to fit your fat ass kept covering it up."
"You're a dick."
"I didn't say that was a bad thing. Now get in the vent."
\/\/
Gendo turned around and calmly faced his old professor as the old man strode into the command center, flanked on either side by the Soryu girl and the boy that piloted Unit-03, whatever his name was; Toki or Tophi or something. The girl had mangled her plugsuit for some reason, leaving her arms bare, revealing silvery bracelets on her wrists. She wore a belt of hammered bronze, from which hung a looped length of rope, made of cloth of gold, and her hair was pushed back by an absurd little tiara of the same material as her wrist bands. The boy, standing on Fuyutsuki's other side, was wearing some sort of absurd jumpsuit, mostly green with…
Normally, Gendo Ikari was never taken by surprise. His eyebrows did move a millimeter, however, as he realized he was standing in the same room as a Green Lantern. Whatever the Soryu girl thought she could do, that ring could take out half the Geofront. He prided himself that a movement of his brows was the only reaction he gave. The boy would probably assume that he had no knowledge of the Corps. Despite his superior's belief that they were extinct, one of them stood in front of him now. The situation called for caution.
"Fuyutsuki."
"Gendo." The old man nodded.
He glanced at the Section 2 men and gave a slight nod, stopping them as they edged closer. The boy would flatten them if they tried anything.
"What are you doing here?"
"Under the authority granted me by NERV's charter, I'm placing you under arrest."
"Really."
"Yes," the old man looked at the Section 2 agents. "Really. Agents, arrest this man."
"You really expect this to work?"
"Since Shinji will be addressing the General Assembly of the United Nations any minute and Akagi has already transmitted all of the carefully selected evidence we need, yes, I really expect this to work. If these gentlemen aren't interesting in cooperating out of some misplaced sense of loyalty, I'll have to rely on our pilots here, who are duly authorized and cleared to enter this facility. If they happen to have picked up some extra associations, It's not really my concern."
Gendo smirked. "Very well." He looked at the agents. "You have authorization to break cover."
The three men standing behind him pulled out their guns, and then without ceremony threw them down. They clattered across the floor, forgotten, as they turned, faced each other, and ran at one another as if intending a football tackle. When they hit, each made a loud, wet slapping sound as their flesh, clothes, even sunglasses folded together, losing their various hues and taking on the appearance of heavy, wet brown clay. The entire mass rolled and stood up on two stumpy legs, unfolded a pair of massive arms, and opened a pair of eyes, all yellow with no iris or pupil.
The thing opened a massive mouth filled with crooked teeth and rumbled, "I was startin' ta get bored."
SSSSS
Shinji adjusted the collar of his suit, but didn't need to. His original had served him well enough, but he wasn't the best tailor in the world, and it showed. Even though it was of simple cloth and merely duplicated his original design, if blue long underwear and a cape could be called a design, the new suit of Amazon manufacture fit him so perfectly it still surprised him a little. He puffed his chest, took a deep breath, and put on his best Superman face as he pushed open the doors to the General Assembly of the United Nations.
The original UN building had been destroyed, along with the rest of Manhattan, in Second Impact, inundated with water. Although the northeast coast of North America had suffered a gentler fate than those coasts directly in line with the massive global tsunami, the building had to be abandoned. Considering Japan's importance in the new world order, and the proximity to NERV and the Geofront, the Assembly met in Tokyo-2, the new capital, for half the year, before packing up and traveling to Germany. Jingoistic elements in the United States kept the assembly from returning there any time soon.
Shinji entered at the rear of the auditorium, and tried not to look nervous as he realized he'd just broken a very elaborate and very expensive lock. Fortunately, no alarms went off, although several uncertain security guards were pointing guns at him and men in suits and sunglasses were moving around hurriedly. The chamber was huge, accommodating hundreds of people; the renewed importance and increased authority and prestige of the body in the recovery from Second Impact had increased the number of delegates and officials present. Blue was the dominating color, with gold curtains at the floor of the auditorium, where the Secretary General and other officials sat under the new UN emblem, a view of the Earth from the north pole adjusted for the new, post-Impact coastlines.
He looked around for a moment as every set of eyes in the room settled on him. He felt a sudden, crushing weight as delegates and secretaries and translators, each wearing a radio headset, looked at him expectantly. He settled his own gaze on the Secretary General, a doughty gray haired Japanese woman whose name he suddenly couldn't remember.
"Madam Secretary," he said, repeating the words that Fuyutsuki had helped him practice, "I don't represent any nation, but I'd like to address the assembly."
The woman stood up and looked at him for a moment. "You will require a sponsor."
She looked a bit surprised as dozens of hands shot up, followed by hundreds more, until almost all of them were raised.
"I believe that will be sufficient."
He trotted down the central set of stairs, taking two steps to cross each broad level, until he reached the podium and settled himself behind it. He looked over the assembly, studiously avoided Misato's suggestion that he picture them all in their underwear, which would have been redundant, all things considered, and took a deep breath.
"Madam Secretary, delegates. I will assume some of you have heard of me. I don't watch much television, but it is my understanding that the news media are interested in me."
A quiet round of laughter interrupted him. He waited it out patiently.
"Some of you are probably wondering who I am, and how I can do the things I can do. I am a visitor from another world, far away from the Earth, a world called Krypton. My homeworld died in an explosion. I am the last of my kind."
The last few chuckles died suddenly, and the room's mood darkened a bit.
"I have come forward today after being approached by certain members of the organization called NERV. As you know, I have participated in battles with the creatures known as Angels. I have been credited with destroying some of them. I believe this diminishes the heroic actions of the pilots and the organization that supports them, but that is not why I am here."
He felt the podium creak a bit under his grip, and let out a very, very subtle sigh as he relaxed as much as he could.
"Some of the higher level members of your governments are already aware of this, but the commonly accepted explanation for Second Impact- a high speed meteor impact- is not correct. The actual cause of the disaster was an experiment involving an attempt to extract material from Adam, the First Angel."
All hell broke loose. Delegates leapt to their feet and began yelling at him, at each other, into the air. The security guards ran in all directions, trying to break up a dozen sudden fist fights. The only person not moving was a small, spare man in the front row, who sat fidgeting, working his fingers around the brim of a trilby hat. Shinji glanced at him for a moment and waited until order was restored.
"I understand that I am making an incredible claim, and that you will demand proof. As I speak, a brave group of whistleblowers within NERV are transmitting absolute proof of these charges to every government, every member of this body, and selected documents to every major news media outlet around the world. In fact," he glanced at the wall of clocks off to his left, "by the time I am done speaking this sentence, the process should be complete."
He watched and fought the urge to smirk as he saw dozens of people opening laptops and pulling out smartphones. Many of them looked at their delegates and nodded, their faces suddenly pale.
"I want you to understand that the vast majority of NERV is not aware of this," he said, putting a little extra pressure into his voice, enough to make every head swivel around to him again. "This conspiracy exists at the highest levels of the organization, and the secretive group that controls it, which identifies itself as SEELE, or to this body as the Human Instrumentality Committee."
He watched jaws drop open and tightened his own mouth to control the smirk.
The spare little man with the gray hair in the front row finished saying something into a phone, shoved it in his pocket, and hurriedly got up to leave, rushing for the nearest exist. He slipped his hat onto his head, pressed his eyes closed in concentration, and then the security guards all pulled their guns at once and started firing into the crowd.
|O|
Fuyutsuki did what he agreed they would do when this situation arose, which was run, leaving Asuka and Toji behind. Asuka, being Asuka, strode confidently up to the ten foot tall mud monster and punched it in the face. She let out a yelp of surprise as her arm sank up to her elbow into the cold muck of the creature's body.
"Oh, you're strong for a girl," it rumbled. "But I bet you need to breathe, don'tcha?"
It moved in a cascade around her, drawing her entire body into its mass. Cold muck flooded around her, forcing her mouth shut, pressing into her nostrils, overwhelming her with a fleshy stink. She struggled vainly as it formed into a ball, surrounding and encompassing her with a crushing pressure. She tried to swim, and though she tore through the sludge easily, there was always more, as if it was moving with her. Stars began to swirl in her vision.
She felt as much as heard the creature rumble, "I can feel your heartbeat slowing. Not long now."
She flew.
As she lifted up, she felt the creature move with her, and she drug it upwards until she felt the slap as it hit the ceiling of the command center. She waited as long as she could, hoping no one would be in the way, and then plummeted straight down. When she hit, the creature blew apart like a clump of dirt thrown into a brick wall, roaring and rage as it did. She leapt away from the point of impact as the thing swirled, individual pieces drawing back together. She pulled a particularly large chunk off her shoulder and threw it down, then flicked more out of her hair.
Toji raced past her, his body surrounded by a nimbus of green energy. He aimed his ring and a beam of energy shot out, lighting up the chamber. A ball of emerald formed around the creature and the floor beneath it, lifted up with a crash and a few thin trails of dust, and Toji crushed it down as far as it would go. The thing's face formed inside the ball and leered at him angrily.
"I've got it!" he said triumphantly.
"Yeah, and what the hell are you going to do with it?"
Before Toji could answer, there was a swirl of black in the middle of the chamber, like a sudden cloud of black dust, over the heads of the panicked technicians below. The dust swirled and congealed and then expanded, bathing the entire room in darkness, drowning out even the light of Toji's ring. Asuka turned around wildly, disoriented.
"Hey!" Toji shouted, "What gives?"
"Something's wrong," Asuka said, "the lights are still on!"
Almost as soon as she'd finished speaking, the darkness receded to a central point, which was the tip of a long, thin black walking stick in the hands of a man in an all-black bodysuit that left only his pale hands and face exposed. He wore a top hat, of all things, at a jaunty angle on his head and a pair of dark sunglasses over an arrogant sneer. He tipped his cane over his shoulders in mock weariness. Beside him stood an exceptionally tall, stocky but not quite heavyset woman with a fair amoung of muscle and long red hair and a gargantuan, inhumanly well-muscled man in what looked like a Mexican wrestler's garb, complete with a heavy belt and Luchador mask, connected to a box on his wrist by a bundle of tubes. He turned the box and his entire body began to pulsate, veins standing out against his skin.
"Well," the man with the top hat said, "what 'ave we got 'ere?"
SSSSS
It was hard, but he did it. He'd have to apologize to the people he'd knocked over later, but Shinji caught every bullet, and snatched every gun, folding them neatly into a twisted metal lump about the size of a basketball that thumped on the carpet. The guards stood in confusion, staring at their sore hands, then at him. He swept his gaze around the room, looking for the man in the hat, who'd run out just before the shooting started.
He didn't see him, but there was something else. The headsets most of the people in the room wore on their ears were simple affairs, wired units with a speaker and a microphone. Dozens of them had been cast off and thrown on the floor. A few, though, were different- they had tiny, strikingly complex circuit boards built into them, and tiny antennas, which made no sense, given that they were wired units. As he dropped the bundle of twisted metal he held in his hands he reached down and palmed one that had fallen on the floor, and then tucked it through his belt under his cape.
He swept his gaze around the room again and found the small man in the hat. He took off from the floor, lifted just over the delegate's heads, and took the shortest route, through the wall itself. He emerged on the other side in a cloud of brick dust and broken concrete. The short man in the hat saw him, his eyes flew wide, and he let out a startled "Eep!", then promptly tripped over his own feet.
Shinji planted his fists on his hips. "Who are you?"
The short man put his hands up in a gesture of surrender. "Would it be of any use now, to speak to this mouse?"
"What?"
"Let me go! Please! I did only what they made me do!"
Shinji pulled the man to his feet by his collar. "I said, who are you?"
"Please, if I don't escape, they'll hurt my Alice!"
The little man looked over Shinji's shoulder, and Shinji's head snapped around as a huge figure stomped up behind him. He dropped the little man and turned to face the newcomer, who had a good three feet on him, dressed in a huge mechanical suit reminiscent of an old fashioned diving apparatus, complete with a clear helmet and a pair of tanks on his back. Cold mist ghosted at his feet, and he raised a strange looking gun, far too big for an ordinary man to have lifted one-handed, and aimed it at Shinji's chest.
"You don't-"
The man in the suit pulled the trigger, and there was a sound like a refrigerator's compressor, a fire hose and the thrum of an electrical generator all mixed together. A beam of pressure struck him square in the chest, and with it endless, bitter cold, a cold so intense he hadn't felt anything like it before, not even in hard vacuum. Almost instantly he was completely surrounded by ice, encased in it and crushed by it. Tendrils of shocking cold slid up under his eyelids and pressed into his ears.
He twisted and with a great tearing sound like wet paper the ice cracked and fell apart in a cascade, great chunks of it clattering to the floor. The entire hallway had been filled with ice from floor to ceiling, wall to wall, ice so cold that mist formed on its surface. To his shock, the man in the suit who'd shot him had disappeared. The little man in the hat hadn't been so lucky.
He'd been caught in the ice, too.
/\../\
Gendo opened the door to his office and for the second time today made a point of keep his face a neutral mask as he faced a man in a bat costume standing in front of his desk. He kept his left hand from drifting to the gun tucked in his waistband.
"Gotcha," said the Batman.
"I think not."
"It's over, Ikari. You can surrender now or you can surrender after I finish beating you down."
Gendo prided himself on his draw. Few would have expected the Commander to be so prepared to personally defend himself, but he devoted several hours each week, in secret of course, to drawing and firing his gun. To his credit, the gun went off, but when it did, it was pointed at the ceiling, where the bullet put a nick in the paint before ricocheting into the window at the far end of the office and shattering it. Gendo clutched his hand, which had somehow sprouted a bat-shaped shuriken, now embedded in the back of his palm. The Batman had barely moved.
"Clearly, I underestimated you. Naoko, kill him."
She stepped into the office behind him, in her black plugsuit. "Yes, dear."
…
On his way to his office, Fuyutsuki had rounded a corner and walked into a nightmare. He stopped dead in the corridor as the muzzle of a gun pressed into his chest. It was held by a tall, painfully thin man in a dark purple suit, bright yellow shirt and pink string tie covered over in a long black overcoat and wide gambler's hat, like some parody of a monstrous clown dressed up as a gangster. His chalk white skin split in a painfully wide smile, revealing too many crooked yellow teeth. He tapped the gun against Fuyutsuki's chest.
"Oh professor!" he chirped in a lunatic falsetto, "What fun we shall have together!"