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Last Child of Krypton
Chapter 20- Feat of Clay
Asuka was starting to get a little mad.
She still had mud from that thing in her hair, and that was absolutely not acceptable. Further, a fifty foot tall tart in a black leotard had just knocked her straight up through the roof of the command center, which while it folded up like wet cardboard from the impact, still hurt quite a bit. On top of that, she'd been knocked clear out of headquarters itself, out onto the floor of the Geofront.
As she hacked and coughed in an attempt to get the lump out of her throat, she came to the realization that she'd swallowed a bug.
Of course, she'd brought this on herself. She'd concluded, quite reasonably, that she could take the bitch, only to be taken by surprise as, like something out of one of those time-lapse documentaries of plants growing, said bitch had suddenly doubled in size and kept on growing until her head scraped the roof of the command center. Asuka flew up and hit the giant woman in the jaw, only to take a backhanded slap from a hand the size of a small car and end up out here, in the dirt.
She let out a battle cry and went back the way she came, hands out at her sides. Toji was a little overwhelmed. The tall, big, angry one was pounding his shield with her fists even as he moved around in figure eights through the command center, simultaneously dodging and trying to shoot back as thin streamers shadow chased after him. The effect was disorienting, the shadows moving without anything to cast them, without even light to contrast them in some places.
"Toji!" she shouted, "I'll get stick boy off your back! Take out the big one!"
She landed next to the guy with the top hat and the stick, who ignored her as he swept his cane from side to side, directing the thin streamers of shadow like a puppeteer working a set of strings. She dropped into a dismount on her feet and one hand as she landed then stood up, reaching for the lasso on her belt. Mister top hat half-glanced at her and one of the streamers of darkness whipped out of the end of his cane and came lancing towards her.
Reflexively, she dropped into a crouch and crossed her bracers in front of her, just the way Diana had showed her. The darkness hissed when it hit but bounced off, even as an incredible sense of cold worked its way down her forearms. The stream broke into a dozen wispy streamers halfway between smoke and shadow, and where they struck the metal floor under her feet, it hissed and crumbled away into a fine powder.
The man in the top hat turned his full attention back to Toji, and she rose to swing the lariat at him, just as a pair of massive arms wrapped around her, crushed her arms to her side, and clamped down on her with incredible force. She started to shout "Let go of me!" but it came out as a sort of creaking groan.
"You are strong," the man in the Luchador mask said in a rich accent, "but you should pay better attention to your surroundings. Now, I must break you."
She shot him a look over her shoulder, her face twisting into an angry sneer, and shot upwards, taking him with her. There was a meaty thud as he hit the ceiling behind her and his grasp slipped with a loud grunt. As he slipped past her, once again under gravity's grasp, she grabbed his belt with one hand, then twisted her whole body and slammed him into the far wall. He fell back to the floor with a loud slap and groaned, unmoving. She turned to find Toji with a triumphant yell.
A fist as big as she was slammed her into the wall. It cracked, and bits of concrete and fine streamers of dust came down from the ceiling. She planted her feet against the wall and pushed, shoving the huge hand back. She heard Toji calling out.
"Asuka! We have to get them out of here! This whole place is going to come down!"
"What's on the other side of that wall?" she shouted back as another hand fell atop the first one, forcing her into a crouch against the wall behind her.
"I don't know!"
"Let's find out!"
She darted to the side, a cloud of dust rising behind her as the giantess' hands slammed into the wall. She went low, darted between a pair of legs the size of tree trunks, and putting on as much speed as she could shouldered hard into the woman's hip. Her opponent let out a pained grunt and fell through the side wall, slamming through a layer of concrete and steel. She stumbled into a vast opening that Asuka immediately recognized as an Eva cage, and she followed. Toji darted after her.
Her fist connected to the giantess' chin with a satisfying shock of impact that send the huge woman stumbling back against one set of launch rails. Asuka shot forward and pinned her there, pressing her hands into the huge woman's forehead. She looked around in a near panic and spotted what she was looking for, risking one arm to point.
"Toji! The launch release! Hit the launch release!"
Toji aimed his fist and sent out a beam of green light that, absurdly, formed into a huge hand and pressed the Eva-sized emergency launch button on the wall. Asuka darted back just in time, hanging in the air as the pneumatic pistons fired, sending the platform rocking skyward with the giantess' warbling scream, shockingly loud and far too deep.
She almost beat Toji back into the command center. The man in the top hat was helping the Luchador to his feet, pushing himself under one massive shoulder to help the man take a stance. They both looked up at Asuka and the man in the hat raised his cane in mocking salute, then a great ball of shadow erupted around them both, quivered for a moment, and then drew back inwards to a single point, like a flower blooming in reverse, leaving them alone in the command center.
The entire "bridge" structure let out an agonized groan and leaned drunkenly to one side. The top section had giant footprints in it, and most of it had been swept clean save for debris and sparking wires where the rows of terminals had been torn out by the root. Asuka landed and felt the floor sway under her feet, and looked up at Toji as he glided to a stop beside her.
"What the hell? They just Left?"
/\../\
Kaji was neither sporting, nor chivalrous, nor fair. As soon as the Rei clone stepped into the room, he reached into his belt, drew three black spheres, and tossed them against the wall where they clacked and clattered and then sputtered to life, rolling across the floor on jets of smoke that expanded into a hazy fog. He ducked into the cover, away from Gendo's desk, as the clone stalked, almost stomped, forward, picked up the desk and threw it against the wall, shattering it. She swept her gaze in a circle, red eyes gleaming with fury.
"Won't you come out and play?" she said in a seductive drawl, too-pink tongue rolling over her lower lip.
A shiver went up his spine. That was just wrong.
He made a mistake. He hesitated, and she spotted him. With astonishing speed she was right in front of him, picked him up by his belt buckle, and without ceremony or comment threw him out the window. The glass shattered around him and he barely had time to shield his face with the cape before he felt the sickening lurch of the fall and saw the lower levels of the base, a good ten stories below, rushing up towards him.
In the calmest voice he could muster he said, "Shinji, I'm not sure if you can hear me, but I need some backup. I can't fly. At all."
Right on cue, he was there, crashing through the floor above. He streaked down past Gendo's office window, adjusted his pace to match Kaji and grabbed on to him, then slowed them both before they hit the floor below. Shinji lifted him up and landed back through the window in the office, then set Kaji's feet on the floor.
They looked at each other.
"That was awkward."
"Right.
"Yeah. Let's not talk about it."
"Okay."
Shinji's eyes went wide and he glanced up at the ceiling, then grabbed Kaji and pulled him into a crouch, standing over him and shielding him with his body. Something pressed down hard on Shinji, almost forcing him down on top of Kaji, pressing his shoulders flat like a huge plate of invisible glass. Shinji grunted under it and the floor groaned under the sudden pressure. There was a tearing sound and a crack shot along the polished black floor, in mockery of the illuminated tree of life above.
"AT-Field!" Shinji grunted, pressing both his palms against the invisible force.
The Rei clone sneered at them, and her eyebrows began to quiver as the field flickered into the visible spectrum over their heads, crushing them towards the floor. Kaji reached into his belt, pulled out a small bat-shaped thrower, and whipped it at her head. He had to hope she couldn't maintain the field pressing down on them and protect herself at the same time. Of course, it was like as not it would just bounce off, as it would if he'd thrown it at Shinji.
Unless he used one of the exploding ones. Which he did.
The batarang (he hated calling them that) exploded with a flash of white phosphorus and the clone let out a yelp. Her concentration shattered, Shinji almost jumped into the ceiling as the force lifted, then bounced back to the floor. The clone wiped the burning white metal out of her face and rounded on Shinji with a snarl.
"You! You look just like her!"
Shinji slammed into a hexagonal field of orange light between them, and Kaji slid back on his hands and feet, trying to get out of the potential blast radius. Shinji planted his feet in the air and pushed, trying to spread the field apart with his fingers, as he'd done to the Angels. The clone's expression grew wilder, and a thin trickle of blood began to seep out of her nostril. She took a step forward, clenched fists at her side.
Shinji's face twisted and he let out a grunt as his fists punctured the field, sending it into a rippling haze. The clone screamed and took a step back as if she'd been physically hit, and the field spread out in a wave between them that slammed into the floor and walls and ceiling, cutting a trench into them that went around the room. Kaji rose shakily to his feet.
The clone took a step back again as Shinji drew near, clenched fists at his side.
"Don't hurt me!" it pleaded, its voice suddenly softer, more monotone.
"Shinji!" Kaji snapped, "That's not Rei!"
He stopped in his tracks, and feebly raised one fist.
"Shinji, you have to stop that thing! Do it!"
"I can't," he said quietly, his voice wavering. He lowered his hands and took a step forward. "Listen, you don't have to-"
The clone didn't let him finish. A solid wall of force, like a huge broom, swept them both across the floor and out the window. Shinji almost idly grabbed Kaji by the collar of his cape before he could fall again, and pulled them both back inside. The office was a ruin, and both Gendo and the clone were gone.
"Cute," Kaji muttered.
"Misato was with you, wasn't she?"
"I sent her to round up some support. Section 2 is a lost cause, but the rest of the staff will probably back us. You have to have a certain level of clearance before you find out about the ancient conspiracy. How did the UN go?"
"I ran into a little guy with a hat, and a big guy with a… freeze… gun."
Kaji looked at him sharply. "Shit. Let's go, there's probably a squad of hitters here already."
He started running for the door and Shinji kept pace with him easily. "Who are these people?"
"A little guy with a hat," Kaji panted, "doesn't narrow it down much. The one with the cryogenic weapon-"
"What?"
"Freeze gun. Big guy? Suit?"
"Like a diving suit," Shinji said.
"Victor Fries. He's one of their wetworks men, they send him to liquidate their assets when something goes wrong."
"Liquidate?"
"Murder."
Shinji's jaw tightened.
SSSSS
Ritsuko let out a shocked gasp as she turned and a giant in what could only be described as a diving suit walked into the room, each step a thumping stomp. The figure wearing the suit was shrouded in blue mist contained within a Plexiglas helmet, his eyes further hidden behind goggles. Servos and motors whirred as he lifted a huge gun of bizarre design, apparently meant to spray something, and aimed at her face.
"Doctor Akagi," he said in a flat, emotionless voice, "the samples of Kryptonian genetic material you've collected and your analyses. I require them."
The techs all stiffened, and Ritsuko glanced at them, lifting her fingers to wave them off. "They're not here."
"You're lying," the man in the suit said, one heavily gloved finger tightening on the trigger of the gun. "If I could feel emotion I might be moved by your bravery. Perhaps you do not value your own life." The gun swept around and aimed at Maya's head. "I think you may value hers."
Ritsuko stiffened. Maya's eyes, huge and liquid, met hers, and the girl's breaths of terror turned to mist in the air as the room suddenly grew colder. The man in the suit took another thumping step towards her, the gun almost touching her now. Ritsuko swallowed.
"I'm telling you the truth."
"Then you will tell me where they are."
"I don't-"
"You're wasting my time."
The barrel of the gun swept low and it roared. An arctic wind swept through the room and swirled like a nor'easter's fury. Maya let out a pained scream as the beam from the gun touched her left calf. She fell to the ground; writing in pain and grabbing at the thick sheath of ice that ran up her leg, past her knee. She let out a series of pained gasps, strangling another scream, and Hyuga grabbed her around the shoulders. Aoba stood to one side, his mouth working in silence, eyes wide.
The gun was still aimed at her. "Tell me now, or they die together."
"It's in Central Dogma," Ritsuko said hoarsely, "two levels below this one." she reached for a pad of paper and hurriedly scrawled out a long series of numbers. "My access codes. Take them."
He snatched the paper from her hand and then without comment or ceremony tromped out of the room.
SSSSS
Shinji heard a scream and froze, concentrated on it for a moment, and then burst through four floors of headquarters, creating a diagonal shaft in the process. He barely registered Kaji's sudden yelp of surprise. The floor outside Ritsuko's lab dented as planted both feet into it just in time to see the man in the diving suit step out into the hallway in front of a man in a top hat, sunglasses, and a black bodysuit. Fries stood next to the much smaller, slighter figure, who raised his cane in mocking salute. They both vanished in a sudden swirl of black.
He headed into the office.
He froze for a second, but only for a second. Gently, looking him in the eye, he moved Hyuga back, taking Maya in his own arms. He looked at her leg and focused, and twin beams of heat lanced out of his eyes, sweeping along the edges of the ice, shaving it off a bit at a time. Maya's stifled sobs turned into actual yelps of pain, and as he drew closer to her flesh he tapered off the effect until the only sign of it was the faint red light in his eyes and the rapidly melting ice around the girl's leg.
"This is bad," he said grimly. "I have to get you upstairs now, or you might lose your leg."
She nodded shakily, eyes vacant. "It hurts. It hurts."
The elevator was a little slow, so with one hand he tore the doors out and went up the other way.
SSSSS
"This place is a disaster," Misato said, sweeping her gaze around the ruins of the command center. Besides the destroyed terminals and the huge hole in the wall, the remaining walls and ceiling were all damaged, pockmarked by craters where they'd been struck by the various combatants. The floor under their feet groaned.
"My hair is a disaster," Asuka said angrily, peeling another thin streamer of mud-like substance out of her hair. "I need a shower."
Kaji appeared from the shadows, prompting a yelp from Misato and Asuka. Toji just grinned and shook his head.
"You have got to show me how to do that one day."
"Gendo and the clone are gone. I think they took a VTOL, but the security system has been hacked. I lost them at the airfield."
Misato sighed and crossed her arms. "Damn. At least by not sticking around he's proving our point."
Shinji walked into the room, a grim look on his face. He paused and surveyed the damaged, seemingly unmoved by it. No one spoke for a while, until Misato broke the silence.
"How's Maya?"
Shinji looked at the floor. "She's going to lose her foot."
"She'd still have it if you could think five minutes in front of your face," Kaji snapped.
Shinji looked at him in shock. He didn't say anything, just stood there, and seemed to sag a little. Asuka rushed to him, forgetting the clotted sludge in her hair as she did.
"Kaji…" Misato said angrily.
"Look at this place," he shouted, sweeping his hand around the room. "If he'd listened to me before this all started, this wouldn't have happened. It's going to get worse before it gets better. You think these people care about someone like Maya? She's lucky Fries didn't out and out murder her to prove his point."
Toji decked him.
There was a moment of shock that froze everyone in the room, even Kaji himself who lay sprawled on the floor, his hand moving towards his face as if he didn't understand what had just happened.
"You shut up," Toji growled, pointing an accusing finger at Kaji. "That man is a hero. He has no idea what he can do or what his limits are, and he goes out and punches giant space monsters in the face. He took a nuking for us, man. We all owe him our lives a dozen times over, and he apologizes to us for it."
Kaji was on his feet. "This is exactly what I don't need, stupid teenage hormones. You listen to me you little-"
"Stop it," Shinji said quietly.
He walked up to Kaji. "You're right. I should have listened to you. I shouldn't have ignored your advice because I was angry. I can't undo what's been done, but if I'm going to do something about it, I need your help. I need your knowledge and I need your expertise."
He looked around the room. "We may have our differences, but we all need to work together. Our enemies obviously already do. If we let them divide us, we've already lost."
He met Kaji's gaze again. He nodded grimly.
Batman and Superman shook hands.
"Hey," Misato said, "where's Fuyutsuki?"
"Here," the old man said cheerfully as he entered the room. "I thought it best if I avoid the brunt of the fighting. I was in my office."
Kaji looked at him, and tapped his chin thoughtfully.
SSSSS
Kozo Fuyutsuki had never been a Rolling Stones fan, and after six hours of listening to Sympathy for the Devil on loop with a black bag over his head, he was beginning to detest Mick Jagger with a profound passion. He was pulled to his feet by his hands, bound behind his back, rather roughly, and it made him cough a breath of hot air against the inside of the bag.
"We're here!" the mad clown said in a song-song voice.
He was surrounded by sudden, paralyzing cold, a frozen wind that whipped around him and flapped the bag in his face like a flag, and he could practically feel the people around him clenching in the cold. The trip through the frozen air was mercifully brief, though, and soon he was, if not warm, at least warmer. He could feel a hard surface beneath his shoes- probably ice, by the cold that seeped up through them with each step.
There was a grinding sound, and he felt as much as saw light, and the warmth that came with it, spill across the surface of the bag over his head. He was pushed into a warmer space, and from the lack of echoes he could tell it was very large- it certainly didn't feel small. The ground beneath his feet sloped upwards and his breathing grew labored. Finally he stopped as he felt a tug on the rope around his hands.
The bag was yanked free, taking a bit of crusted blood from his split lip with it, and he blinked in the harsh light. He was in a hospital room, oddly enough, though one without windows. A man he didn't recognize stood next to him, a regal figure in a dark green cape over a business suit, tufts of graying hair at the sides and crown of his head from balding. He was lean, heavily tanned, and somewhere between thirty and fifty.
He gasped when he saw the person lying in the hospital bed in front of him. Covered in bandages, a pair of leg braces and dozens of monitoring patches, intravenous lines and, was Katsuragi. Nagataka Katsuragi, Misato Katsuragi's father, head of the ill-fated expedition that made first contact with Adam. His skin had turned and ashen gray and most of his hair, which had already been sparse, had fallen out. He opened his eyes, and they were too-red, as if every blood vessel in them had burst. His gaze locked on Fuyutsuki.
A shudder ran through him. "You're not Katsuragi," he said quietly.