I like my SF, and I hate High School AUs where they take away the character's powers and challenges, the things that made them unique, and turn it into cookie-cutter pure teenage drama, so yes, if a character has powers, I'm going to explore the limits of those powers and see what weird things can happen. Also, depowering canon characters is a warning sign of badfic nine times out of ten, because sometimes it happens because the author can't create challenge for the character any other way (fortunately, it's hard to solve problems caused by poor social fu via explosions) but mostly it's so that the author's favorite character or OC can look good by comparison.
The Gods Must Be Crazy is a great movie, and also great as a story concept – take a look at Greek or Norse myth. Extremely powerful but immature characters who don't know (or, alternatively, care) about the consequences of flinging that power around are scary. And also hilarious. Although what ends up being frustrating/confusing about Kaworu in both versions is that even leaving background information on Seeds of Life out of it, he's the most powerful of the angels, we see them doing all this stuff, he just waltzes right into Terminal Dogma and there's jack shit anyone can do about it… And then he asks Shinji to kill him, because Kaworu is the one with no other choice? Yes, much of the series is about how powerless Shinji is despite being a mecha pilot, because the real problems in his life are things he cannot solve with the Eva, at least not without it being murder, but take manga!Kaworu especially, since he's far more immature and less serene/seeming to have it together than anime!Kaworu. Why not use that power to get back at SEELE in a petty teenage way (although yes, depression will make people think all that is useless, so realism here), why not…
A lot of stories explore Shinji being a more active character, using the power he should have as a human being and Eva pilot (…additional sources of power aside). I'm doing Kaworu because I like Kaworu, but also because I like my crack. I really like my crack.
In a lot of these I've shown him being immature, doing things that I believe are absolutely wrong (consent issues are serious business) or not getting a good ending, but perhaps I should do one where he actually goes evil? And when we are talking someone who's capable of killing even an animal quite casually? Children abusing dolls is a sign they need moral instruction stat because the point of dolls is that they're symbols for human beings that are powerless to fight back, so there's a bit of a 'what you are in the dark' there. Kaworu killing a cat that he later explicitly likens himself to when talking to Shinji is an early hint that he's basically suicidal, but what if it was the black cat he's depicted with in some of the art instead of a white one, what if he saw the cat as one of Lilith's creatures instead?
Children are bastards until taught otherwise, and raised by SEELE?
This must be a breeze, Kaworu thought, sitting in the wreckage of a room that had lost a wall and a bit more, hands dancing on the keyboard with unconscious grace, playing a variation on a song he'd heard earlier on one of the local radio stations (intercepting broadcasts was quite simple: it was all light, after all) as he wandered through the town. The wind wasn't constant like the flow of air from a complex's climate control, and the scents it carried? Even if the taint of LCL made him grimace, reminding him of the tube.
He was supposed to be looking for the Third Child, that or reporting to NERV, but for once in his life there wasn't anyone watching him and he'd found a piano. Right now, he was doing what he wanted and playing it even when he was supposed to be doing something else, and no one had come along to scold him for it and force him to move along with the schedule yet, comply with the way the Lilim had planned out his entire life.
This place, the way the buildings had been smashed? It felt like an omen, perhaps a symbol of how their plans weren't foolproof, how it might be possible to break them, or break out?
The sun shining down on him, heat sinking into pale skin, and oh yes, everything about being outside felt good. This was so much better than being in the tube.
He wished he could just stay here forever, but he knew they would send men after him if he didn't obey and show up at NERV at some point. He could already detect a Lilim's soul fragment coming towards him, although from the amount of light it gave off it likely wasn't one of the old men or their servants. Too much glint to it, too much 'pay attention to me' even if that flickered on and off, between the subdued, barely-there light of those who longed for the destruction of their identities and a light that, while still dim, was more like that of the people he'd seen in this place, people who weren't under the control of the old men.
Although technically they were and didn't know it. How lucky of them.
There was another presence with the Lilim, one of Lilith's nonsentient creations. Even without an identity to protect, or truly aware of existence as an individual, it still struggled to live. Of course the Lilim was ignoring the desperate pulsing of that weak light, and it was silly to be looking to a Lilim for help in the first place. Not that intelligence could be expected of a soul on that level.
The Lilim must be drawn to the sound of the piano, Kaworu thought.
It made his eyes widen to realize that he could just tell it to go away. Provided it wasn't an agent of NERV. The old men ordered other Lilim around all the time, so perhaps he could as well? He didn't necessarily have to leave this place or go back to the path laid out for him just because a random Lilim arrived.
The idea of being able to say no, and have that word matter? It made him tilt his face up to the sun, feeling the air around him and oh, he wanted to stay outside forever. Soak up this warmth, feel the wind that blew where it wished, could change directions a hundred times a day without Lilim forcing it back on its so-called proper path.
He wished he could do that. He would do anything to be able to live like that, to have his life be his own. To be able to hide here in this forgotten place, not relishing a few stolen minutes but being truly outside their reach, not having to fear that they would come here and take him away from this little miracle, this piece of freedom somehow experienced while he was still alive.
If that was possible, he wanted more of it, and it was with that will that he let his fingers leave the keys, took a step forward with arms reaching up towards the sun.
He didn't think, there wasn't any desperate planning or wishing for a solution involved, just instinct and a mental twist, like turning to better catch the light.
Oh, yes, the light felt even better like this, and he could feel the breeze move him now, like fingers dipped into a tub as the water poured into the drain. No, better, since the water was returning to its prison while the wind simply flowed, rushing over the seas and down valleys to rustle the leaves of trees.
So this was why the other angels had never taken human form.
Well, there was the piano, Shinji thought, but where was the player? He didn't really care, though. He'd been drawn towards the sound for lack of anything better to do, but he hadn't wanted to meet anyone anyway.
They were probably a looter or something, and fled when he showed up. That would make sense.
He probably should feel bad about how devastated Tokyo-3 was but instead he just felt numb, Shinji thought as he sat down on the bench in front of the piano, once again for lack of anything better to do. He didn't want to go back to NERV or go home.
The cat that followed him here stopped outside the shell of the building, under the shade of a small tree. Shinji wondered if it was a maple or something: the shape of the leaves seemed kind of familiar somehow, not that he really cared.
Oh, right, he thought when he finally looked away again from the keys. That was why it was familiar, it was a fig tree. The leaf on the NERV logo was a fig leaf. This house must have belonged to an employee. The figs were green, although some kinds of fig were supposed to be, and he didn't think this was the time of year for them to begin with, but the tree was probably confused by the eternal summer. A lot of plants were.
He watched the cat ripping apart the figs on the ground and lapping up the juice for a bit – they must have fallen off because of all the explosions - before he idly began to play something else. He had to get to NERV eventually, but this wasn't a bad way to kill time. The looter must be long gone by now, and it wasn't like Shinji could go back to school. It wasn't like he could face Hikari or Kensuke, not after his own Eva was used to kill Touji, not after he felt their friend die by his own hands.
There was something nice about it, playing the piano here practically outdoors. Being exposed like this would ruin the piano before too long, but for now? The sound of the wind, the rustling of the leaves… Alright, well, the noises the cat was making weren't really melodious, but it was kind of funny, hearing raw enthusiasm like that. He found himself smiling despite himself, at least until he heard his phone ring.
Misato, it had to be, telling him to get his ass over to NERV. It wasn't like anyone else would call him now, or for any other reason. He sighed as his fingers left the keys, starting to head towards the road but not answering the phone. He'd listen after it went to voicemail, not that it would really tell him anything the sound of sirens hadn't already.
Another angel. Why else would anyone want him around?
As Shinji headed towards his fate of being forced to pilot once again, Kaworu decided that he wouldn't mind it if the Third Child came back. He wasn't great, but music was nice. The cat could definitely stay. The way it had spread out now, belly full and snoozing in the hollow between Kaworu and one of his lower limbs: it was definitely smarter than most of Lilith's children, because that sounded like a very good idea.
It was a good thing he'd guessed right, that the Lilim wouldn't notice fruit appearing the instant his back was turned.
Growing something to be eaten should have felt stranger than it did, like a metaphor for how Lilith's brood tried to consume him. And yet…
The old men made sure he knew that story, after all.
Was not Adam given dominion over the animals as well?
Two trees in the garden.
If Kaworu was a seed of life, then why, why should he accept going to his death?
Why not live forever, while those who had chosen the tree of the knowledge of evil, the ability to think of doing things to people like groom them to send to their deaths, died of it? Why not let go of thought and exist in the blissful now? Yes, half his genetic material came from the black seed, but the way they existed, the things they used their minds to think up… Why have any part of it?
Kaworu's mind drifted, content as he'd never been before, silvery-green leaves soaking up the warmth as tiny star-shaped crimson flowers opened, turning to follow the sun.
It wasn't like Shinji exactly meant to return there. It was just that he couldn't bear to go home, to where Misato would want to talk about it. Not when talking about Rei's death would make it real. So, just like before, he found himself wandering aimlessly through Tokyo-3, because staying in NERV meant Misato could ask Ritsuko where he was, until it started to get dark and he started to get hungry.
He knew better than to think that the piano would still be in tune, but there was a chance the figs might be ripe by now. Maybe that cat would still be there, too.
It wasn't like he had anywhere else to go, so even though it meant being in the middle of the destruction he caused it was as good a place as any.
Shinji only knew the general area where it was, but as he walked through the rubble he smelled something sweet. That actually made him grimace: things that seemed sweet and good never were. Probably the figs were overripe and rotting. If there were any animals willing to come back to where the angels attacked, they'd probably eaten all the good ones.
The brown-haired boy's mood wasn't improved any when he got there and found plenty of figs still hanging on the tree. If anything, he was more annoyed to be wrong than glad he'd found something to eat without having to go back and get his wallet, which meant the risk of encountering Misato.
He was even more annoyed to find this was one of the kinds of fig with sticky white sap inside instead of solid flesh: the first one he picked got all over his hands when he took the first bite. That didn't make him go try to clean up instead of reaching for another one: if anything it helped, to have something to glare at, to focus on petty annoyances like how these were way too damn sweet instead of thinking of Rei, and Asuka, and…
Shinji realized he was being ridiculous when idly pressing at the keys to see how out of tune the piano was made him scowl not because he found terribly off-key notes but when he didn't find any serious ones. Since thinking about the fact he was so upset meant thinking about why, he hurriedly started playing instead.
As the sun set, he almost found himself wishing the other person who played this piano would come back. If they were a looter, they might even appreciate Shinji making them rich instead of hating him for destroying their home. It would be nice to have company, just… Not company that knew Rei. He couldn't, he couldn't face that right now. Couldn't say it, not when that would make it real.
Caught up in his own concerns as always, Shinji didn't notice that the carpet of moss around the tree had sprung up a little fast since the last visit, or covered up the concrete rubble a little too well when Shinji finally stumbled away from the piano after managing to play himself into exhaustion. Too tired to walk straight, let alone lie awake and think of Rei and Asuka all night, or so he hoped as he lay down beneath the tree.
It didn't occur to Shinji to worry that he might get rained on, not when he was a child of the eternal summer. If there was a serious chance of rain at this time of year everyone would have been talking about how unusual it was, especially the ones old enough to be nostalgic for a time when sudden showers happened.
He realized too late that he should have taken cover under something more substantial than the tree. The morning sun hit like Asuka, and rolling over with his jacket over his head didn't help when the damn birds ignored his groaning and refused to shut up. Even cranking the volume on his music player didn't help, not when a small army of the things had converged on the free food. There wasn't much else here for them: come to think of it, Shinji hadn't seen any other gardens that were doing very well. Whoever lived here had to be really lucky if their piano and their tree had both survived the battles so far, he thought. If they were still alive.
After (temporarily) frightening the birds away from the tree so that he could get something to eat he admitted, "I guess it's not too bad: it's not like there are vending machines left here." At least the syrup inside gave him something to drink.
A country boy, Shinji knew to settle in by the piano to wait for the morning chorus to shut up so he could get back to sleep. Sleeping out in an orchard to get away from home wasn't anything new, even if one half-grown fig tree was a terrible excuse for an orchard. It was just that most orchards out in the country kept the damn thieving birds away, so he hadn't expected it to be so loud.
He hadn't expected to wake up again, drowsy with the afternoon heat, to Misato shaking his shoulder. "Shinji-Ow!" she said, sounding more startled and annoyed than hurt when a branch above her shook and dropped a hard, unripe fig on her back. "You left without your phone!" With the angels coming closer and closer together like this? This one had practically followed right on the heels of the last, and they were overdue for another.
"I would have heard the sirens."
It wasn't just that. "I was worried about you. The last three angels have all gone after the Evas or the pilots, and the replacement pilot we were supposed to get never reached us. If the angels know enough about us now to intercept someone even I didn't know was coming, it's too dangerous for you to wander around alone anymore." Misato needed to get him back to NERV while he was still alive. Get him back to NERV and into the lab so she could make sure he hadn't been infected like Touji's EVA or encroached on like Rei.
The missing pilot had thrown NERV and especially the Committee into a panic: security was being cracked down so tight even being let in through the Magi's back door (Ritsuko had shown her the tunnels) wasn't letting Misato get her hands on any more information. Ritsuko had been ordered to report to the Committee, too, and her reaction… Misato didn't like it, especially when the message from the UN had been very clear that Gendo Ikari was supposed to go, and explain what exactly he thought he was doing, throwing away the lance that was the one thing keeping Adam locked away in the bowels of NERV.
Misato wanted to know that too, since it was damn certain he hadn't used it in order to save Asuka.
They were down to only one pilot, and Shinji was… Shinji. Losing Rei like that could only have made him more so. They couldn't reconfigure Unit 02 for a new pilot without having the new pilot here, either, and the so-called 'Marduk Institute' wasn't handing them the name of the next child in line since the Fifth was gone. In theory Misato had thought the next one would be Shinji's friend Aida… Well, ex-friend, now. As for the Fifth Child, when you were organizing a hunt for someone, weren't you supposed to give the searchers some idea of what they looked like? She had less data on him than Rei. Just a name and a birthday, not even a photograph.
A birthday that had every instinct that had ever saved her ass in combat standing up in the back of her head and screaming that there was an ambush coming her way, but maybe someone had taken care of him for her. She could hope that she wasn't the only one Kaji had given this information to, that there were other people out there working to keep SEELE and Gendo Ikari from ending the world.
Well, she could dream, right?
It figured.
Fifteen years in a Lilim body and not one dream. Then, when he finally abandoned that form, gave up on trying to be a part of the Lilim world outside the walls and tubes and actually managed to escape SEELE, because it had been over a week and no one had come along with a holographic projector or an axe?
He finally got to have such a nice dream, and then some Lilim came along trying to run him over in a tank. Maybe it was his fault for shifting a little away from the building so he got sun more of the day, but it wasn't like he was in the way of a clear path! Had they gone out of their way to knock him over?
The first thing he knew about it the weight was already pushing him down, forcing this sapling form to bend, and he'd damn well had enough of that. So he'd hit it away from him, and it wasn't until he'd tuned into the radio chatter that he woke up enough to realize that right, he probably should have just let it push him down and stayed down, because it wasn't normal for Lilim trees to send tanks flying, and although according to the old men Lilim weren't very observant creatures and often tended to ignore anything that didn't fit their view of the world lest they be thought mad, he'd just done that in front of an entire army, so his odds of not being noticed were…
Yeah, he thought, as he repelled bullets with the light of his soul. Not a chance. The Lilim would definitely tell the old men about this, too. So many Lilim: they must have called them out to hunt for him.
…So why were the voices in the radio chatter surprised when he left his tree form behind, and with it that dream of sleeping the ages away there, left alone and forgotten?
Hmm? Kaworu tilted his head up, using his field to shade his eyes from the glare.
Apparently he wasn't the only person tossing around tanks here. "By the way," he said, cutting into the radio chatter a couple minutes after tapping into the news broadcasts, "it's not just Gendo Ikari who's trying to use the Evas to cause Third Impact: it was those creepy old men on the Committee for Human Instrumentality that triggered Second Impact. They and the Ikaris were part of SEELE, but then Keel and his daughter had some sort of fight about whether you Lilim should all be turned into a giant blob here or a flying Eva in space or… something. That was when I was little, and they weren't supposed to bother me with it anyway." He tilted his head to the side, watching the nearby Lilim. At least a few of them had stopped firing, although that probably meant they were waiting for orders, not that they were going to leave him alone.
Something he found in NERV's record of intercepted radio chatter, after decrypting it himself, bothered him a little. "…You were given orders to terminate all the pilots, including the Third Child? Well, it's not as though Keel trying to order me to observe him means he cares about his grandson or anything. Not when he believes that compassion is another curse upon you Lilim." Kaworu had heard that speech a few times, and got the feeling somehow that Keel was looking at him when he said it, which made absolutely no sense when Kaworu wasn't a Lilim to begin with. The order to observe the Third Child hadn't made any sense either until he decided to scan the younger Lilim's DNA so he could recognize him even when asleep. He might let Shinji have fruit since he'd earned it by coming and playing the piano, but he wasn't going to let any other Lilim tear off pieces of him. Knowing that Julia Keel and Yui Ikari were the same person made a lot of overheard half-conversations make much more sense.
"I want to go back to sleep, but I guess Third Impact is my problem too, unless I get out of range…" He looked thoughtfully at the Eva that had tossed that tank overhead. "Well, it's not like you'll leave me alone until there's no more risk of Third Impact, so I might as well destroy the Evas." Not that he really minded the idea.
"Like I'll let you lay a finger on my mother!" Asuka told the angel what he could do with one of her own fingers.
Oh, she did not just… Kaworu bared teeth that were still as dull as a Lilim's in an expression that was not a smile. "Second Child… I don't have any quarrel with you, but Dr. Sohryu used to take tissue samples and test my regeneration without anesthetic, yet there was always plenty of anesthetic to threaten me with if I wanted to stay out of the tube even a little longer. Treat me like a monster because I was born from Adam, and then turn around and put herself into a body made from Adam? I think I'm going to remove some of her limbs 'for the benefit of humanity,' so these other Lilim can execute her for trying to kill them all, like the monster she is." With their tiny guns, like her tiny knives. "I was going to pull you out of there first, but if you insist on defending that monster, then you can experience a fraction of what your precious mother did to me." The second time he bared his teeth for a moment, it really was a smile.
"SEELE created the Eva from Adam because you Lilim were too weak to fight the other angels on your own, not with only fragments of a single soul divided among billions of you. They created and trained me to defeat the Evas and reach Lilith as part of their scenario. You might have opened your heart to the Eva for the first time, you may be stronger than before, but NERV Germany's Magi were the closest thing I ever had to a toy, your simulation data the only 'game' I was ever allowed to play. I know every single one of the hundreds of holes in your technique. Give me an Eva and I could kill you in two moves using only its AT field, and right now I could kill you with a thought. And that mother of yours? The woman you think cared about you, who's supposedly going to protect you? She helped set up that system. That was the real reason she wanted to make sure you became NERV Germany's Eva pilot. So that there wouldn't be any risk at all of her Eva barring the way of the Final Messenger, SEELE's so-called tame angel!"
Oh, right. "Actually, I don't need an Eva or the light of my soul to take you down. Let's test it, your mother's love for you versus her dedication to SEELE's scenario and the false hope of instrumentality."
NERV's own cameras picked up Misato Katsuragi's look of realization a fraction of a second before she leaned forward to order, "Asuka, don't let him lure you out of the lake! Without the water to protect your power cord from their fire…"
"Actually I thought she'd be halfway here and running on battery power by now, after the other Lilim took out her cord. Maybe she's grown up a little since the last round of tests." Not that it would do her any good. "Child of Adam and Servant of the Lilim. Launch eject your entry plug."
Well, he thought, he supposed he had better go catch her. Yes, there was a chute attached to the entry plug that would be automatically deployed, but when the other Lilim here had shoot-to-kill orders? It wasn't as though he liked the Lilim that had budded off from the piece of Lilim incarnated as Dr. Sohryu, given his experience with Lilim in general and Sohryu in specific, but he did feel somewhat responsible for her.
It wasn't like he disliked her, either, not when she was… the only person he'd ever had experience of, if not contact with, that wasn't just a mouthpiece of the old men. She was their servant, yes, but in ignorance. The way she wanted to fight… It wasn't as though he would be upset if the other Lilim killed her, but he was the one who had forced her out of her protection and put her in danger.
Of course he regretted going to her aid when she punched him in the face a handful of seconds after he opened up her entry plug midair. It wasn't that the punch even ruffled his AT field, it was that, "That's a poor way to repay me for saving your life." He looked down at the ground and the Lilim soldiers who were headed to the probable landing sight. After she'd killed other Lilim soldiers, he presumed they would obey their orders to kill her.
"Saving my-" Her next punch wasn't aiming for his face. By that point Asuka was halfway out of the entry pod, hanging on to the edge of the opening with one hand and a foot as they continued to fall through the air.
Her tenacious ferocity, the way she could let herself openly hate her obstacles and dedicate herself to destroying them, even in simulations: he'd envied those traits, just a little. "You play instruments." According to her file. It was an extremely flimsy justification for why she was worth saving, but did he need a justification even for something as unwise as saving Lilim?
"What does that have to do with-let me go, you…"
"Go ahead, you can insult my mother as much as you like," he assured her with a smile as he pulled her out of the entry plug. "I don't have one in the biological sense, and the woman who had the most involvement with my development was Dr. Sohryu."
Her foot was quickly jammed between his neck and shoulder, another braced on his waist as she tried to yank his arm out of its socket. In midair. He wasn't sure why, exactly, but he didn't want her to die. "The Lilim have orders to kill everyone here, but especially you pilots, on sight. Do you really think they'll believe an angel if I vouch for you and say you weren't knowingly helping Keel or Ikari destroy the rest of this planet?" he asked her as he landed and Lilim moved to surround them at something of a safe distance.
"What the hell are you calling me?" Asuka demanded, trying to stamp on the toes of his school uniform shoes.
"You. The Thirteenth Angel, Lilim, born of Lilith instead of Adam. Your AT fields, what you call the light of the soul, are so weak because you have one soul spread out among billions of people. I guess I was hoping that you'd wait your turn, because you weren't supposed to try to merge with Adam or Lilith yourself until after I was dead, but you are much older than me, and I'm born of both seeds, so perhaps SEELE had the order of precedence wrong. Or Keel just decided that he'd better make his move before Gendo Ikari made his according to Julia's scenario." He shrugged, attention mostly focused on both fending her off as she tried to figure out ways to grab or damage him despite his soul's power and the Lilim surrounding them. "You aren't someone who gives up easily, but you should. You aren't the only one the German facility was training for this time, remember. I know how to use the light of my soul, while you didn't even know what an AT field truly was." Why was he bothering? He'd seen how she reacted when people told her it couldn't be done, or they were better than her.
He wasn't really annoyed by what she was doing, oddly enough. Standing still here while the redhead climbed on him and tried to punch some holes in him: ah, yes, she was like those squirrels. There was also something rather nice about having a Lilim angry at him and realizing that she really didn't have any power to get back at him for it, that he was the one in control here and didn't need to be afraid. Dr. Sohryu's daughter trying her hardest and failing to maim him for this felt like proof that he really wasn't helpless anymore.
Kaworu could already feel this body beginning to turn on itself without the medications, but he could turn into another form and then change back into a copy of his Lilim body before the decay got too advanced, now that he could change his shape and the matter that composed him.
Well then, since he could simply hide from the rest of the Lilim, the only real problem left was Unit 01, which would be more of a pleasure than a prob-
Incoming aircraft carrying more flesh born of Adam, not ensouled but somehow possessing enough of an echo, a reflection of that light to use an AT field in combat. "Damn old men… What do they think they can accomplish now? I'm not going to let them use my soul for this and Lilith's vessel died," provided the report of the battle on SEELE's mainframe was accurate, but Kaworu had heard more than enough about Gendo Ikari not to trust anything that came from NERV.
His red eyes met Asuka's glaring blue. "They'll have been loaded with my combat data, but they won't actually have the strength of my AT field. More than half my training was against theoretical Evas with weaker AT fields, so I should be able to do it." Despite any distractions.
"What are you talking about?" the Second Child demanded as other Lilim pointed their guns at them and waited for someone to tell them whether or not they should waste the bullets.
"It's not fair that I've studied your fighting style for years but you don't know how to deal with me, right? I'll show you how I fight. It's either that or I try to get into NERV far enough to find someone to babysit you before SEELE's Evas get here."
Babysit? Babysit?! "Die, engel!"
Kaworu wondered why the other teenager was so willing to touch him now, in fact she was being rather insistent about it, when before Lilim had always hesitated to touch the angel unless it was necessary, whether it be out of fear, distaste or reverence. Still, having her wrapped around him wasn't an unpleasant feeling, although it certainly would be if her hands were applying that pressure on his actual windpipe instead of having the force of it sapped by his AT field, and it was definitely pretty funny.
No, he realized a few minutes later, the word for this was fun. The presence of the Lilim surprisingly improved the experience, and not just because of the ineffective death threats. So this was 'showing off,' what he'd been accused of whenever he had a little fun with the simulations instead of working on improving his speed and effectiveness.
Realizing that the thing one of them threw at him after he'd taken out the first two the boring way (projectiles aimed for their cores: control over a Sea of Dirac made it simple to boost object velocity to near-relativistic speeds and instantly change their trajectory – he made a note to look up what one of the UN Air Force officers observing the battle said, something about portals) at him was a lance, even if it was a weaker, Lilim-produced knockoff of a lance was a shock, but since he was already in midair and much smaller than an Eva it was simplicity itself to first dodge it and then take control of the weapon the Eva had so foolishly discarded himself. Along with the two lances belonging to his already-fallen foes.
"Why can't I control these Evas?" he wondered, wrenching another lance out of a fourth's hands and calling it to hover in front of him so that he could unsheathe it, revealing its true deadly form. "They aren't made of Lilith's flesh like Unit 01 and they don't even have souls of their own, much less souls with enough power to defy me."
For the benefit of his one-Lilim audience, he added, "It's not that I can't crush them, I just like the idea of turning SEELE's other creations against them. I did wonder how strong you would be if you opened your heart to the Eva, it was frustrating watching how limited you were because none of them would tell you enough of the truth to give you a chance of surviving. If you want a rematch, stop screaming for a minute and let me concentrate: I'll give you one of these Evas if I can catch them."
"You think I'd trust an angel's Eva? After what happened to that…" It wasn't right to call Suzuhara just a jerk, not anymore, not when he'd died. Not like that, not even given the grace of a warrior's death. "How stupid do you think I am?"
"Why would I lie to you?" he wondered. "I hate the way the old men deceive everyone: doesn't it make you angry that you were being used, all along? They told you that they needed you, that you were going to save the world, and the entire time they were working to make sure that you failed. It's not fair to either of us, and it's not like I'd need to sabotage your Eva in order to defeat you," he pointed out as he speared one of the Evas with three lances, using the fourth to keep the others at bay, then forced the three of them apart, twisting at the Eva's flesh until even wave particle matter gave, separating the portion of the body containing the core from the entry plug, then using two of them to saw the entry plug open while the other finished off the core once it was too far away to destroy the contents of the plug. "Why is my name on the side?" He froze when he saw the body inside. "Why…" Why did it have his face? "It's… connected to my soul. The way all of you Lilim share a single soul, but there's no mind. They're leeching off me, off my soul, to control these things?! What, one pawn wasn't enough for those damn old men?"
Shock and sheer revulsion made him blast everything away from him, both the hollow mockery of him and his identity and the Lilim, the fragment of the being that had done this. He had enough presence of mind to send a still-sheathed spear to catch Asuka before she fell too far, but, "As for you… Stealing not just Adam's body, but even this weak shell you forced me into, even this?" Even this face wasn't his? "Stealing the power of my soul, all the strategies I invented?" Because those were his moves they had used, his techniques: they must have taken the simulation data and loaded it into them. "Be damned like the spawn of darkness you are, you scheming Lilim! I'll show you that the power of my soul, of my self, isn't something you can just take for yourselves! I'll destroy everything you've ever worked for, the quest you've dedicated your entire lives and sacrificed so many of the lives of your other selves for! You will never have instrumentality, and you never could have! Not when you would have died in the instant of the merge, but you were too power-hungry and afraid to face that truth! Die, old men! You will die, whether I kill you, the Lilim you slaughtered do or you suffer the weakness of the black seed until the end, chained to mortal, always-dying bodies like the one you used to cage me!"
He realized that the pulse he sent out to slam all of them down against the hard surface of the Black Egg, pinning them down so that their own weapons could pin them like butterflies, like Adam, pierced through the core, was a little much when all the radio and satellite signals he'd tuned into abruptly stopped, leaving NERV's EMP-hardened facility as the only source of transmissions in a direct line of sight.
The young angel realized that he'd fucked up when he saw the burn that stripped the skin off Asuka's face, leaving her struggling to breathe. The light of the soul was light, electromagnetic radiation, one of the fundamental forces, and angels were cosmic beings. Still, he'd known not to send out cosmic rays since… As long as he could remember. Forget the tube, they'd entombed him in lead until he could control the light he gave off.
He'd been so angry he'd, he'd hurt people he hadn't meant to harm. At least the Lilim further away should be safe, he hadn't devastated an entire hemisphere in his rage the way this soul had when it belonged to Adam, but he felt something cold wrapping around him inside, binding it so tight it was hard to breathe, a weight of remorse pulling him down.
Shame, that had to be the name of this emotion. The root word of mortification was death, but, "It's okay, I can still fix this," he told himself as well as her. Asuka was the closest, and all the other Lilim outside here were wearing armor: as long they let him heal them in time they'd be okay, right?
His hands still trembled. Not just this, but all the Lilim here trying to kill here, SEELE's puppet-Evas, Arael… She wasn't his friend, but the old men were right about one thing: Lilim were so fragile.
So he summoned the fruit of the Tree of Life to his hands, tore at it enough to pour the juice into her mouth. She didn't need to, "Swallow," but it would help: he could already see the skin on her face begin to repair itself as her genetic code was rewritten just enough to allow her body to draw on the power of the light of her soul.
She opened her eyes, still stubborn enough to demand, "What are you doing to me?"
"I'm not doing it to you: this is medicine. Do you want me to take control over your body in order to heal you? Because I will, I'll infest you if you don't swallow the rest of this," he said, meeting her eyes with just as much stubbornness. It wasn't something that should matter, but when he was already more than a little dug into her body, just to make sure that she was healing, he might as well tell her that he'd found, "We both have the same human male genetic donor. I don't know how Dr. Sohryu managed that, but it's true. Even I don't know who it was, but someone must have come up with the idea of impregnating my father with Lilim DNA and processed it. I'm almost sad it looks like the Lilim already finished killing her since it means I can't ask. Almost." Pretty thoroughly, too: they'd brought explosives and must have planned for the incineration of an Eva's flesh. They'd probably burned it like that so no one could get their hands on Adam's DNA and grow another one. Some of them were already dousing the exploded remnants of the mass produced Evas with liquids that were probably flammable, even as they staggered.
Damn, he had to hurry, he had only the vaguest idea of how much radiation Lilim could endure for how long, and without any idea how much power he'd given off?
He didn't want to give Lilim who had agreed to murder people on SEELE's say-so immortality, but there was at least some chance they'd eat a fruit as opposed to no chance that they'd hold still and let him encroach on all of them. If some of them were going to insist on dying instead of being trespassed on, a desire Kaworu sympathized with despite how responsible he felt, better it be by choosing not to take the cure, which meant it was their own stupid hate that would kill them, than by shooting themselves when he was linked to them.
And of course frying the radios meant he couldn't just use that to tell them all at once why an angel was tossing fruit at them. They'd think it was bombs or who knew what unless they knew that story. Everyone at SEELE knew it, and the fig leaf was NERV's symbol, so perhaps?
Unit 01 appeared, berserk and covered in bits of some crystallized red stuff that wasn't LCL before he was satisfied he'd gotten them to everyone. He'd just dumped piles in the middle of the biggest groups of Lilim to start with, but a lot of them had been spread out as scouts or couldn't move. Those he was just going ahead and feeding, like Asuka, since the only way to wake them up to ask them would be to encroach on their minds, and Kaworu thought that was just as bad or even worse, someone intruding on the sacred territory where no one may trespass.
After destroying the Eva and fishing Shinji out of the Eva plug, the way the pilot jumped for his throat proved that the Eva wasn't the only one that went berserk.
Kaworu found himself disappointed because this probably meant Shinji wouldn't visit him again, not to play the piano.
With an axe, maybe.
He was standing there trying to think of what he was going to do with the berserk Lilim attached to him like a limpet, except trying to tear his arms and legs off, for the second time that day when he suddenly sensed the power of Lilith. Pale hand covering closed red eyes, Kaworu sighed. "I forgot Gendo Ikari, didn't I." Damn. Someone a Keel would choose as a mate, and someone the old man considered dangerous enough to warn Kaworu about him and order the angel to try to thwart his inevitable schemes?
He'd been so close to finally being done here so he could go back to sleep too, he thought, as he found himself floating down the path he'd traveled in far too many simulations. "I didn't want to go to Terminal Dogma," he complained, even though Shinji didn't seem to be in a state to understand his words, let alone believe them. He still said, "I don't want to trigger Third Impact: that means no more me, or the rest of you, or pianos, or-Ow!" Putting even a fragment of power of true power behind his AT field was enough to force Shinji's teeth away from his shoulderblade, but managing to draw blood just made the Lilim growl and attack him more enthusiastically, clinging to the front of Kaworu's body as flew towards his hated destiny.
"You Lilim really do want to touch people you hate a lot more," the angel said, shaking his head at Shinji. Had Julia Keel driven her son insane or something, so he'd keep trying to destroy the angel or do something to trigger instrumentality even after she was gone? Unless there was something funny going on with her, like the way Lilith's soul was obviously still here even though it shouldn't be. The Eva inhabited by the old man's spawn should be dead by now, Kaworu trusted. The Lilim seemed to know what they were doing when it came to destroying things with fire, so he hadn't minded leaving it to them while he kept throwing fruit around after he took her down and removed the pianist.
He just hoped Asuka wasn't in too much trouble. Shinji had eaten the fruit days ago, so even if he could use the light of his soul offensively already, by using it to reinforce his bite, that didn't mean Asuka could use it to defend herself anytime soon. Even if she should already be able to heal bullet wounds, that didn't mean they didn't hurt.
Kaworu winced, remembering his own experience healing bullet wounds as part of his training and testing. No, even if she was Sohryu spawn, she wasn't… she hadn't known, that was obvious from the way she fought. She didn't deserve that, even if she was as selfish as all the other Lilim. If it weren't for the rising power of Lilith's soul and the way something kept trying to make it shift configuration into an anti-AT field, he might even go back and get her in order to make sure she was safe despite how awkward it would be to have two Lilim attached to him like this.
It took only a moment's flicker of will to disable the electronic lock, but it took a much longer moment to steel himself to go down in there. He didn't want to.
He didn't want to die.
But it might be too late to get out of range now, and even if the Lilim had always made it clear he wasn't one of them, so this wasn't really his responsibility at all…
Well, there was Gendo Ikari, along with Lilith's host and a dead Lilim. He'd stuck his hand into Lilith's host-
"What are you doing to Rei?!" Shinji screamed, suddenly regaining the ability to use words as he dived off Kaworu to tackle the older Lilim.
Only to be backhanded into a wall, which worried Kaworu much more than it would have if the closest wall wasn't a couple hundred meters away.
Adam: he sensed the flesh of Adam from that Lilim! Adam's flesh in his body, Lilith's soul in the copy of her other host – Kaworu silently bared his teeth when he recognized that this was the same thing as the clones of his body and what that meant – and the soul of an angel, Gendo Ikari's own piece of Lilim.
This must be Julia Keel's desired means of initiating Third Impact. Lilith-borne souls in immortal flesh born of Adam: it fit what she'd done by taking a body born of Adam herself.
That, of course, was when he was physically assaulted by a Lilim for the third time today. Fourth if you counted the tank, since Kaworu wasn't really going to count the bullets. Especially since he hadn't even bothered to register how many Lilim were shooting at him.
If an angel born of Adam survived, with their more powerful soul, they would direct the merge. Since Gendo Ikari must have only now realized that Kaworu was still alive – otherwise he would have started trying to kill him before triggering Third Impact – the Lilim knew enough to know that he'd have to fix that oversight before he went back to sticking his hand into Lilith's host (Rei, that was her name, like Kaworu was his) and feeling around for her core.
The reminder of a certain Lilim woman's fondness for exploratory surgery didn't help Kaworu's fury at what the old men had tried to do to him, catching his soul in a mindless body if he refused to do their will, and what this old man had tried to do to someone just like him. Well, not just like him, the other was Lilith and thus the Lilim were all her fault, including the way they'd rather hurt or molest other people than anything else, but close enough to make him even angrier.
Even though he'd been trained in several forms of combat that didn't require using his AT field and giving away his true nature, Kaworu didn't know the first thing about street fighting. That was why he got the impression that Gendo was an even worse fighter than Shinji instead of better than Asuka. Street fighting was about savagely taking advantage of human vulnerabilities not necessarily to kill them, since that came with the serious jail time, but to cause them enough pain to surrender like the bitches they were.
Kaworu's training had been centered around the efficient killing of Lillim and angels, and he had an AT field that left Gendo's hands uselessly scrabbling a few inches away from his face when he went for the eyes in a way that made Gendo scowl since he, unlike Kaworu, recognized the resemblance to something that'd happen in an incompetent catfight.
The angel's AT field had been so weak and close to his body when it was Shinji because he'd had Shinji there while he drowsed and was subconsciously expecting nice music instead of pain. Kaworu wasn't going to trust one of the old men; he'd have to be insane. Especially since Gendo had Adam's flesh within him and Kaworu didn't want to die. Like hell he was letting Gendo anywhere near his core, letting the damn old man use him instead of Lilith's host!
There were large slabs littered throughout the LCL, probably left over from when the Lilim had first broken in here to find Lilith. Since Kaworu wasn't a Lilim and thus found the idea of touching people he hated properly repugnant?
He liked the way Gendo's eyes widened when he saw the massive piece of reentry-hardened stone rising behind Kaworu, glowing with the light of Kaworu's soul.
Those with flesh born from the tree of life might be immortal in the sense of 'without death,' unlike Lilim whose bodies constantly decayed, but that didn't mean death couldn't come from outside them. In the form of a few tons of rock smashing them flatter than a pancake, for example, although the first time Kaworu lifted up the rock to see if Gendo was dead yet the still-berserk Ikari spawn had sunk his teeth into Gendo's ankle, so he had to move the rock over a little in order not to crush the other Lilim. Kaworu empathized with anyone who wanted to hurt the old men, so it really wasn't much bother to let Shinji torment him a little. Even if it was safe for Kaworu's body to eat meat Kaworu wouldn't have wanted to actually consume any chunks ripped out of one of them. Who knew where the ancient Lilim had been?
Perhaps Lilim were closer to the animals the First Ancestral Race were descended from, and that was why they had the impulse to wrap themselves around their prey and take them into their bodies instead of staying back and using a rifle or something, lest they be contaminated? That was definitely smarter when dealing with an angel who could encroach on their killer.
Kaworu relaxed a bit after he felt the Ikari's core break, especially once it occurred to him that if the Ikari had consumed Adam's flesh, that must have been Adam's original core. Yes, he was definitely safer with that gone.
Having been raised without any sense of fair play, and raised better than to leave an enemy alive behind him, he wasn't tempted to leave the Ikari for Shinji or the other Lilim to finish off. Not when he was one of them, and might be able to pursue some scheme even when he lay dying.
Core, brain, and then Kaworu landed to watch for any signs of regeneration.
"You're like me," Lilith's host, who had watched the entire battle in neutral silence, said wonderingly.
Kaworu nodded. "Yes, we are the same." They stood in silence for awhile, except for the sounds of the LCL washing against the rocks down here and Shinji's continued effort to kill Gendo deader than dead. "…Do you want to sleep with me?" Kaworu finally offered after he was pretty sure the Lilim really had been finished off, or else he would have started regenerating by now. Other Lilim would get here eventually, and if the angels were gone when they got here than those Lilim could focus on disposing of the body and such. "I know a very nice place to sleep."
Kaworu might have expressed the hope that they would cut off Gendo's head and bury him at a crossroads with a chunk of toxic wood blocking the regeneration of his vital organs, but they'd never let him watch any vampire movies.
It wasn't like Rei had anything better to do. With almost all the memories of her existence as a false Lilim gone, most of her impulses came from Lilith's residual instincts. According to them sleeping through the eons was exactly what she was supposed to be doing, so she nodded and took his hand.
Yes, this is supposed to be a oneshot collection, but I split this one in two for length.
Terrible pick-up lines... but for a subspecies supposed to be sealed into sleep both during long space voyages and after seeding life on the new planet? Kaworu and Rei waking up again intermittantly is the odd thing.
The writers of the Bible probably envisioned the Tree of Knowledge as a pomegranate tree, but that leaves the question: what kind of tree was the Tree of Life? You see apples of immortality in Norse mythology, it's peaches in Chinese… I ended up going with a fig because it's NERV's logo (until Rebuild) and we certainly know there was at least one fig tree in the garden: Adam and Eve must have gotten those leaves somewhere.
We had a fig tree with that kind of fruit at my elementary school. It was amusingly messy. Since a theme here is the messyness of life (when the manga can describe love in such a way that it sounds like a disgusting sensation?), it seemed to fit better than some more convenient fruit.