Disclaimer: Neon Genesis Evangelion is the creation of Anno and Gainax. I don't own it, make no claims to it, and am making no profit from the fan fiction. No infringement of copyright is intended. In other words, please don't sue.
Disclaimer: I do not own DC Comics or anything associated with it, and I am making no profit from this fan fiction. No infringement of copyright is intended. In other words, please don't sue.
Chapter One: Field Test
"Ring, how do I use you?" Misato asked.
She felt rather stupid speaking to a ring, even though knew it could speak, but she had no idea what she'd gotten herself into, so she had little choice but to ask her one source of information.
"This ring is capable of forming energy blasts, force fields, and constructs of whatever tool or weapon you desire," the ring answered. "You need only picture it in your mind and will it to life. This ring also accepts verbal commands."
"Verbal commands," Misato echoed. "Okay, that sounds pretty easy."
She decided that her first order of business should be burying Abin Sur and his ship. She didn't really know the man, but he definitely deserved better than just being left out in the open to rot. And while she didn't know what would happen if the space ship was discovered by NERV or the Japanese government, Misato somehow she suspected that she didn't want to find out.
She pointed her fist at the ground next to the ruined space ship, and said, "Ring, make a hole in the ground there."
A tremendous blast of green energy exploded forth from the ring, slamming into the ground and sending dirt spraying left and right. Misato let out a cry of surprise, and she reflexively braced her body for a jolt of recoil that never came.
Then it ended, and Misato found herself staring at trench in the ground that was easily twenty feet deep and twenty-five feet long. A thin stream of green smoke rose from the top of her new ring.
"Holy crap," Misato whispered.
Then she heard a low creaking sound and looked at the space ship. It was sitting right on the very edge of the great trench she'd just created, and it was starting to tilt, she realized.
Uh-oh…
With a crash, the ship went tumbling down into the trench, the already busted up vessel further falling to pieces from the spill. Misato winced; she'd hoped to give Abin Sur a more dignified burial than that.
"Uh, sorry," she called down to dead Green Lantern.
"It is highly recommended that new recruits report to the planet Oa for training," the ring spoke, sounding about as condescending as it was able, Misato suspected. "Should this ring take you there?"
She scowled down at it. "No."
"Attempting to fulfill the duties of a Green Lantern without proper training is inadvisab—"
"No," she snapped. "I can't go to some alien boot camp. I have kids to take care of, and an Angel could show up while I'm there. Heck, an Angel would probably show up while I was there, with the way the war's been going."
The ring didn't make any further attempts to persuade her, for which she was grateful. Then she shook her head.
I am arguing with a piece of jewelry, she realized. That's a new low even for you, Katsuragi.
She sighed, then turned to look down at the space ship. Now all she had to do was fill in the hole.
"Probably easier said than done," she muttered to herself.
Then she almost laughed at the irony of her words, because she could fill up the hole just by saying it—she only had to order the ring to do it.
After what had happened when she'd ordered the ring to make the hole in the first place, however, she wasn't too keen on simply telling it to fill up the trench. Verbal commands apparently left a lot of wiggle room for the ring to interpret her orders in ways she didn't want.
She definitely had to try it the other way.
"Picture it in my mind and will it to life," Misato muttered to herself.
The new Green Lantern envisioned a great pair of hands appearing and pushing all the dirt she'd displaced back into the hole, covering the ship up and hiding it forever from those who would desecrate the makeshift grave. Then she willed it to become real.
Two beams of emerald light shot out from the ring, each one forming a huge green hand. Misato gasped, and the constructs nearly flickered out of existence as her surprise caused her focus to waver. Then they solidified again and got to work, pushing great mounds of earth back where they belonged. In seconds, the trench was completely filled again, and Misato allowed the hands to vanish.
"Okay, good," Misato said, feeling satisfied with her work. "Now all I have to do is get back to my car."
"You are capable of flying with this ring."
"Whoa, really?" Misato asked, her eyes widening.
"Affirmative."
Thinking about it, Misato supposed that it made sense. Abin Sur had managed to create that energy sphere and send her soaring through the air in it, so it wasn't surprising that she could fly now that she was the one wearing the ring. Still, the idea of flying…that was really something.
She grabbed the handle of her lantern power battery and picked it up, then she willed herself into the air.
A halo of green light surrounded her, and her feet slowly rose off the ground. She gaped at the ground as it grew further and further away from her. She had expected flying to be difficult, but this was easy!
A large, toothy grin slowly spread across her face. "This is so cool," she said softly.
Misato just hovered in place for a moment, allowing a sense of child-like wonder to wash over her at how easy it was to throw off gravity's bonds with her new powers.
Then she started flying across the landscape at great speed, seeing the ground blur beneath her. She laughed delightedly as she soared through the sky, leaving a trail of emerald light behind her like the tail of comet.
"Yatta!" she shouted, indulging in a series of loops and twists.
She had wanted to be a pilot once, before Second Impact had shattered both the whole world and her life. She might still have pursed that career path, but she'd believed that she'd have a better chance at fighting the Angels if she was an officer in the army instead of a pilot in the air force, which had been in utter shambles following the great disaster.
Right now, she rather wished that she'd gone on to become a pilot anyway.
Eh, it couldn't have compared to this, she thought. And I probably would have gotten stuck in one of those clunky VTOLs anyway.
All too soon, she reached her car, which was still waiting patiently for her. She landed next to it and took off the ring, causing her new Green Lantern uniform to disappear in brief puff of green flames and leaving her once more in her NERV uniform. She then held lay the ring in her palm and regarded it for a few seconds.
Somehow she doubted that everything she did with this ring would be that pleasant, but that flight had been the most fun she'd had in months. It was better than driving her car at three times the posted speed limit any day of the week.
Unfortunately, it was time to return to Earth now. Misato pocketed the ring, then stored her power battery in the trunk of her car. This done, she got into the driver's seat and headed toward her apartment building as though everything was normal.
"I'm home!" she called as she walked into her apartment not much later.
Shinji, who was sitting at the kitchen table doing homework, looked up and smiled. "Welcome home," he said. "I didn't think that you were coming back so late. I was starting to get worried."
Misato felt both guilt and pleasure run through her. She was sorry to have worried him, but it was nice to have someone at home who would worry about her. The period when the only one waiting for her at home was Pen-Pen had been far too long.
And sometimes she thought that damn bird could get at his food himself and didn't care all that much if she ever returned…
"Where's Asuka?" she asked.
"She went out somewhere, maybe with Hikari," Shinji answered as he began the process of clearing his books from the kitchen table.
Misato immediately doubted that the Second Child was with the class representative; Hikari probably wouldn't have been up for going out, since it was a school night. Speaking of that, the redhead had probably bolted post haste when she'd realized that Misato was coming back late; Asuka knew only too well that her guardian wouldn't let her go out on a school night.
It was something she herself probably would have done at Asuka's age, had she enjoyed a normal adolescence, but just the same, Misato made a mental note to say something to the Second Child about this later. Hoping she wouldn't forget., Misato absently reached into one of her cabinets and withdrew a package of instant noodles.
"Oh, you don't have to eat that stuff," Shinji said, just the faintest trace of disdain for the preprocessed noodle dish in his voice. "I saved some dinner for you. Just give me a second to finish clearing the table and heat it up."
Misato grinned and abruptly wrapped the boy in a tight hug. As always, this had the effect of burying his face in her ample bust, but the purple haired woman wasn't about to allow minor details like that keep her from displaying affection to her ward, especially when it had the hilarious side effect of making him all flustered and embarrassed.
"You're so sweet, Shinji-kun!" she exclaimed, before finally releasing him.
The teenager mumbled something incomprehensible, his face a bright red. Misato smirked. She had expected that the Third Child would become inured to her eventually, but it had never happened, much to her delight.
"I'm just going to change," she said, "back in a flash."
He mumbled something, but Misato couldn't decipher it, as the poor boy had apparently not yet regained the power of speech in its entirety. She cheerfully made her way to her bedroom, where she pulled the ring out of her pocket. She again regarded it, but then decided that now wasn't the time and set it down on top of her dresser before exchanging her NERV uniform for a yellow tank top and her favorite denim shorts.
By the time she got out, Shinji was setting rice, soup and fish on the table.
"Looks great, Shinji-kun," Misato said as she sat down and grabbed her chopsticks.
"Sorry it's nothing fancy," he said as he poured her a glass of water.
"Nonsense!" she mumbled through a mouthful of rice. "This is great!"
"Hungry?" Shinji asked after a few seconds of watching her shovel food into her mouth as quickly as she could.
"Yeah, it's been a long day," she said, wondering if using the ring stimulated her appetite or if it was just the whirlwind of the day's events. "Shinji-kun, could you please get me a beer?"
He sighed disapprovingly but did as she asked, taking a can of Yebisu out of the fridge and setting it in front of her. Misato cracked it and then happily took a swig. "So how was school?" she asked as she set the can down.
"Okay, I guess," he replied.
"That's it?" she asked.
He shrugged. "It was the same as most days, really," he said. "Nothing worth talking about ever happens in school, really."
Misato shook her head. Shinji had a lot of good qualities, but the Third Child simply was not a conversationalist. And long silences made her nervous, which was probably one of the reasons she tended to be a rather loud person.
Unfortunately, there was only so much noise one could make while gulping down dinner.
A few minutes later, she had emptied the plates that Shinji had set in front of her. The Third Child looked wide eyed at her. "Uh, do you want me to make some more?" he asked.
"No thanks, Shinji-kun," Misato said easily. "Now could you be a dear and take care of the dishes? I have work to do."
She knew it wasn't right to dump the chores on Shinji and then hole herself up in her room, but she was burning with curiosity about her power ring, as just about anyone would be in her position. There were still so many things she didn't know about it, and she could only find out by asking it questions and experimenting with it.
Shinji frowned. "You should really tell NERV to lay off you, though, if they keep you so late and then make you take work home."
"Isn't that the truth?" Misato huffed, even though the extra hours she was putting in that day had nothing to do with her employer. "Unfortunately, NERV human resources becomes conveniently deaf when anyone complains to them, and the Commanders are too busy to worry about that sort of thing."
"I see," he said. "Well, I can handle the dishes. You go ahead."
"Thanks, Shinji-kun!" Misato cheered, heading for her bedroom.
Shinji Ikari was surprisingly dependable for someone who had tried to run away several months ago, she had found.
He's such a sweet guy, she mused absently. If only he had a girlfriend, I bet it would do him a world of good. If only…
She shook her head at the last bit. It was not a good idea to think about the boy she had taken in like that. For all she might tease him, she knew that any attempts at making anything serious happen between them simply could not end well. The large age gap between them was enough to guarantee that all by itself, never mind every other factor that could cause a relationship to end in tears.
Misato slid open the door to her room, and all thoughts of Shinji Ikari were banished from her mind as she lay eyes on the ring that was still sitting on her dresser. She carefully slid the door shut behind her, then picked up the ring and put it on.
She was surprised when her clothes weren't replaced by her Green Lantern uniform again, and she frowned down at it. "Ring, are you out of power?" she asked.
Misato certainly hoped that wasn't the case, as she currently had no idea how to use her battery to recharge the thing.
"Negative," the ring answered. "Power level at 36.2 percent."
"Shh! Not so loud! Shinji will hear," she hissed.
"Lowering volume," it said in a much softer voice.
"Okay," Misato said. "Now, why didn't you put me in my Green Lantern uniform again?"
"You have not willed this ring to do so," it answered simply.
Misato nodded. She'd assumed that the ring would put her into the uniform whenever she wore it, but this was apparently not the case. It was just one example of many of how woefully inadequate her knowledge of the power ring was.
She commanded the ring to put her in uniform, which it obediently did, then regarded herself in her mirror. Misato had to admit that the form fitting uniform was quite striking. The torso was emerald green, save for a white circle on the chest that had the Green Lantern emblem inside it. The arms and legs were pure black, but the boots and gloves were white.
She also noted that her eyes changed to the same piercing shade of green that Abin Sur's had been before he'd removed the ring and bestowed it upon her.
Looking at her reflection, she felt the full force of it finally strike her.
I have honest to god super powers, she thought, remembering the superhero cartoons she'd watched as a child and feeling a surge of mixed emotions wash over her.
Part of her felt excitement bubbling up at the very idea, however, another part couldn't help but recall all the difficulties those fictional heroes had had to endure, both on the battlefield and while struggling to keep their personal lives from falling apart.
The practical (and tactical) part of her eventually shut both of them up, turning her attention to the matter at hand. She had been given a weapon of incredible power, and she wanted to bring it to bear against the Angels. However, she wasn't ready yet to try and face them.
For one thing, her Green Lantern uniform did nothing to conceal her identity, something that could easily prove a problem. The Commander had more than once shown himself to be extremely hostile to anyone that tried to interfere in the war, even if they were clearly on NERV's side. No amount of reasoning could move him, so it was safe to say that her openly taking the fight to the Angels with her new ring was a very unwise idea.
"I can't let people know I'm the Green Lantern," she muttered.
"Concealing identity," the ring spoke.
Misato was temporarily blinded as jade flames painlessly burst into being over her eyes. When they cleared, she could see that she now wore a green mask.
Okay, that's a start, she thought. But mask or no, if a woman with purple hair, and, well, a rack as big as mine starts flying around fighting the Angels, people are going to suspect me.
Her hair could be easily changed to a more common shade, but if she dyed it and then the Green Lantern made her first appearance with the same hair color, people might still make the connection.
I wonder… she thought speculatively, focusing her will.
There was a brief flicker of light from the ring, and her hair changed to a lime green color, causing Misato to shudder in revulsion. While it would help prevent people from realizing who the Green Lantern was, it also looked absolutely hideous. Yet Misato wasn't sure whether she had another option.
Hmm, well, the uniform is partly black and white, so obviously the ring can make stuff that isn't green, she thought, focusing her will again.
This time her locks turned raven black, the color of the vast bulk of the Japanese population's hair. NERV would never be able to identify her based on that.
Also, it had the added benefit of not looking ridiculous.
"Okay, better," she said. "Too bad I can't do anything else."
"You are capable of using this ring to perform limited physical alterations to yourself," the ring spoke up.
Misato blinked in surprise. "Really?"
"Affirmative. The most common use of this function is increasing a Green Lantern's musculature."
"Let's give that a try, then," Misato said.
Green light flared briefly around her form, and Misato felt the strangest tingling sensation sweep over her, surprise briefly paralyzing her as it did. But it ended after only an instant, and Misato quickly looked up at her mirror.
"Whoa," she said as she looked at her reflection and saw the considerable changes that had occurred to her body.
She wasn't overly muscled like a bodybuilder by any stretch of the imagination, but she'd definitely put on some muscle, and the skin tight costume allowed her to see that she was now seriously ripped. All in all, she looked like someone who spent her spare time at the gym instead of drinking beer at home, and who was also more genetically predisposed to put on muscle than she.
"I wasn't this buff when I was in military training!" she said, flexing her arm.
Impressively peaked biceps bulged up, and Misato let out a low whistle as she reached out to touch it with her other hand, finding it as solid as a rock.
And she had a six pack. That amazed her; she'd never had a six pack before.
It's too bad that this is part of a disguise, because I wouldn't mind looking like this all the time! She thought. This ring is way better than any diet I ever tried!
Misato forcibly quelled the giddiness that was threatening to overwhelm her. She hadn't won the lottery, much as it might feel like it at the moment. In reality, she had been handed an enormous responsibility that apparently just happened to come with a number of fringe benefits.
"I can look like this every time I go out as the Green Lantern?" she asked. "And I can look like I did before when I'm 'off duty?'"
"Affirmative."
She nodded. "Well, that's what I'm going to do, then."
"Acknowledged."
"Good," she said. "Now I just need to figure out how to keep people from seeing the ring while I'm being me instead of the Green Lantern…"
She could just keep the thing in her pocket most of time, but the risk of losing the ring if she did that would be unacceptably high. Besides, the Angels could strike at a moment's notice, which meant she needed to be ready to fight them just as quickly. That meant wearing the ring most, if not all of the time.
But how could she keep the people around her from noticing the big green thing on her finger?
"This ring is capable of bending light around objects to render them invisible." The ring spoke up, as though reading her mind.
Misato's eyes widened. It seemed as though whenever she was sure the power ring couldn't get any more amazing, it topped itself. She concentrated, and though it took a surprising amount of effort, the ring soon vanished from view. Yet she could still feel it on her finger.
She knew it wasn't a perfect solution; she'd have to make sure nobody else felt it on her hand. However, she was too blown away to care about that much at the moment.
"Incredible," she whispered as she allowed the ring to become visible once more.
Well, that took care of the problem of keeping her identity a secret, she decided. Now she had to deal with the fact that she still had very little idea of what she was doing so far as being the Green Lantern was concerned.
"Tell me everything," Misato said to the ring. "Everything I can do with you. All the rules and regulations I'll be expected to follow. Everything I need to know to be a Green Lantern."
She was up for several hours listening to the ring tell her about her new role.
The next morning, the Ops Director stumbled blearily out of her room and to the kitchen. Misato wished that she hadn't felt the need to listen to everything the ring had had to tell her in one night, but she hadn't felt the least bit tired as it had listed off the variety of incredible powers it conferred to her.
"Morgen, Sunshine," Asuka greeted her as she entered the kitchen.
Misato gave the Second Child a bloodshot glare, remembering vaguely that there was something she wanted to say to the redhead. Unfortunately, she couldn't recall just what that was, so it would have to remain unsaid.
"Are you all right, Misato?" Shinji asked. "How long were up working last night?"
She smiled tiredly in response to Shinji's sympathetic look. "Too long," she yawned as she got a beer out of her fridge. She cracked open the top and then chugged the contents, feeling energy flowing into her along with the cold brew. "YEEE-HAAAW!"
She then let out a loud burp. "Much better."
Asuka rolled her eyes. Misato pretended not to notice.
"Anyway, guys, I'll probably have to work late at NERV tonight," Misato said as she sat down at the kitchen table.
"Again?" Shinji asked, distraught.
"Afraid so," Misato said. "So the two of you are going to have to figure out what to do for dinner without me."
"Misato…you don't help with dinner even when you're here," Asuka pointed out.
"Neither do you," Misato snapped.
Shinji cleared his throat before an argument could erupt. "Would you like me to save you some dinner again, Misato?" he offered.
She nodded gratefully. "Thanks, Shinji."
The rest of the meal passed uneventfully, and soon the residents of the apartment (save Pen-Pen) were ready to head out and face the day. Misato bid good-bye to Shinji and Asuka as they started walking for school, then headed to her car.
She fingered the once again invisible ring on her finger as she walked. The Ops Director didn't have to work late that night any more than she'd worked late the previous night. However, she wanted to try some of the things the power ring had told her about.
One of things that most people tend not to realize about war is that it's often made up of long periods of boredom, which are occasionally broken by short periods of absolute chaos. Misato Katsuragi, unlike most people, was only too well aware of this, because her job reflected it.
Whenever there was no Angel attacking, her job generally boiled down to doing paperwork.
Misato, who had difficulty keeping focused on the mind-numbingly dull reports at the best of times, couldn't concentrate at all that day. She kept thinking about the ring and what she had planned for that evening.
Finally, she gave up and left her desk, heading down to the commissary for a cup of coffee. With this in hand, she headed to Ritsuko's office, figuring that she could kill some time by looking in on her bottle blond friend.
"Hello, Ritsuko," she greeted in a sing-song voice as she entered the scientist's office without knocking.
"Morning, Misato," Ritsuko commented, not immediately looking away from her computer screen. "The paperwork especially boring today?"
Misato blinked. "Uh, yeah, how do you know?"
Ritsuko finally turned to her, smirking. "You usually don't come down here to pester me until early afternoon," she said.
Misato scowled playfully. "Is that how you respond to a visit from your old friend?"
"Did my old friend bring me a coffee?" Ritsuko asked, gesturing toward the steaming paper cup in Misato's hand.
The Ops Director pulled her drink closer to her in a possessive manner. "No."
"In that case, yes, this is how I greet my old friend," Ritsuko said.
The two glowered at one another for a few seconds before breaking out into laughter.
"So, what's up?" Ritsuko asked as she calmed down.
"Oh, not much," Misato lied. "You?"
"Nothing you'd be interested in," Ritsuko replied. "We're still scrambling around trying to get Unit One fully repaired as quickly as possible. Other than that, everything's pretty normal with Tech Division One."
The blonde didn't notice, but Misato had watched her face very closely as she answered. After returning home the previous night, the Ops Director had started to wonder whether or not the MAGI had taken any notice of the power ring.
However, Ritsuko hadn't mentioned anything, and Misato couldn't see any trace of deception in the blonde's face.
That's one less thing to worry about, she thought. For now, anyway.
"So," Ritsuko said, "you decide to hit the bottle harder than usual last night?"
"Huh?"
"Your eyes are all bloodshot, and you look tired," Ritsuko said.
"Oh…oh yeah!" Misato said. "I had sort of a rough night yesterday, Rits. I just kept thinking about what could have gone wrong at Mount Asuma."
Ritsuko nodded. "Second Impact all over again."
That wasn't what Misato had been thinking about, but as she was lying anyway, she just nodded in agreement. In truth, she realized she hadn't thought about Mount Asuma once since being summonsed by Abin Sur, which caused her to feel a twinge of shame.
"Yeah," Misato said. "I'll be over it and bounce back in a couple of days. I always do."
"Yeah," the faux blonde agreed. "After all, what other choice do we have?"
She and Ritsuko shot the breeze for a few more minutes, but Misato eventually left to allow the scientist to get back to work. She herself moved very little paper as the hours dragged by, and when it finally came time for her to leave, she practically sprinted to her car. Once in her prized Renault Alpine, she drove not home, but to the area she'd picked to serve as her training ground.
When the Angels had arrived, many people had, understandably, left the city they had attacked. However, Tokyo-3 wasn't the only place that people were making an escape from. The citizens of many of the villages that surrounded the fortress city were likewise emptying out, and some of those villages had already become ghost towns.
It was one of these that Misato drove to that evening. A large section of Kaisei-2 had been destroyed when a VTOL that had been struck down by the Third Angel crashed into the center of the village, and the place had simply been unable to recover.
Fortunately for Misato, it wasn't the broken down village itself that she was interested it, but what had been the center of the town's economy before it had been abandoned.
An abandoned quarry struck her as being as good a place as any to train herself with the power ring. She drove her car as close as she could get to it before getting out, retrieving the power battery from her trunk. Reaching the edge of the great pit in the ground that had once been the lifeblood of the nearby town, Misato willed her Green Lantern uniform to come into being.
It did so, and she flew down into the quarry.
"Okay, first thing's first," she muttered to herself, "after all, if I can't recharge this thing, it's going to be a hunk of junk pretty soon."
She held up the power battery with her left hand, then brought her right hand, the one with the ring, next to it.
"In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight," she spoke the oath of the corps. "Let those who worship evil's might, beware my power…Green Lantern's light!"
Green light flared from the power battery, but somehow Misato wasn't blinded by it.
"Power levels 100 percent," the ring announced, and the light from the power battery faded.
Misato looked down at the ring. "I cannot believe that worked."
Of all the ways she might have used the battery to recharge the ring, she never would have guessed that it was done by just saying some fancy words while the two were close to each other.
Then she shrugged and set her battery down on the ground. She had come here to train after all, not to gape over the quirks of the ring.
A beam of emerald light shot out of her ring, the end of it forming a hand. The green hand grabbed hold of block of stone that was easily as large as her car and effortlessly hurled it high up into the air. Misato allowed her construct to wink out of existence, and the stone block continued to fly upwards for a few seconds before it first slowed and then stopped as it ran out of momentum.
Just before it began to fall again, Misato formed a construct of a missile. The green rocket soared upward, quickly slamming into the falling block of stone. There was a great explosion which shattered the stone into pieces.
Misato quickly formed a sphere of emerald light around herself, protecting herself from the chips of stone that came raining down.
She smiled. "I think I'm starting to get the hang of this…"
For hours she practiced using the ring. She flew, created elaborate energy constructs, blasted rocks apart, and was even able to phase through solid stone. With every new thing she did, it further dawned on her just how powerful the ring she'd inherited truly was.
"Geeze, this thing's like a cosmic Swiss army knife," she said, looking down at it.
She stretched languidly, feeling like she had made a lot of progress toward mastering her new powers that evening. Misato was about to will herself back into her normal clothes and return to her car when she heard voices coming from nearby.
Misato frowned. There was only one reason people would venture to the ghost town of Kaisei-2, and that was if they planned to do something they didn't want others to observe.
It's probably just some teenagers who scored a case of beer and are looking to get hammered out in private, she thought, trying to convince herself to ignore it and head home after her long day.
But she couldn't. Something nagged at her, telling her that whoever was coming had something far more sinister in mind than getting plastered before reaching the legal drinking age. Besides, wasn't she charged with enforcing order and justice? She couldn't just walk away if she thought something wrong was happening.
This is probably going to be a waste of time…but I guess I should check, she decided at last.
Not wanting to make herself known if the people she heard approaching was just a group of teenagers with booze (because kami knew she was the last person who belonged to be yelling at people for something like that), Misato willed light to bend around her form and render her invisible.
The effort left her winded and sweating, but within seconds, she had vanished from sight. After taking a moment to catch her breath, Misato flew off to where the voices were coming from.
A group of people had gathered by the edge of the shattered town, she saw at once. Getting closer, Misato immediately realized that her "kids with beer" theory was shot; while there were a few teenagers among the crowd, several of the people there were older than she was.
The differing ages wasn't the really strange part about the group, though; what they were wearing was. They were dressed in robes of a variety of colors, and several of them seemed to be carrying katanas or wooden swords.
Cosplayers? She wondered, silently drawing nearer.
If that were the case, there was no need for her to be there. She certainly wasn't about to harass people whose only crime was deciding to reenact a scene from some anime or book.
A middle aged man dressed in saffron robes that had been embroidered with a red dragon stepped forward. In his hands, he held a double bladed axe that looked like it had been painted gold.
"Brothers and sisters!" he shouted. "We have gathered here for one reason! To commune with that which most refuse to believe exists!"
This didn't exactly dispel her idea that these people might be cosplayers, but the Green Lantern didn't depart just yet. There was a certain quiet intensity in the crowd that she didn't like.
"God is angry!" the leader continued. "He hath called down his Angels to smite us! The resistance of Man may have thwarted the first few messengers of death, but ultimately they can only call down further vengeance upon us! We know this! We must deal with problem! We must appease the Almighty!"
Cultists, Misato thought with distaste.
In the wake of the almost-Armageddon that was Second Impact, there had—perhaps unsurprisingly—been a surge of spiritual fervor around the world as each religion interpreted the horrible disaster in their own way. This had just been starting to die down when NERV had, for reasons Misato would never be able to comprehend, decided to name the monsters they were fighting "Angels."
A number of crazy cults had sprung up after that, most of them clustering in Tokyo-3. Some were innocuous, others not so much.
Now I just have to figure out what kind this group is, she thought.
She didn't like the kinds of wackos who tended to join these groups, but if all they planned to do was chant and pray to whatever god they worshipped for a while, they were perfectly within their rights.
"We know that there is only one way to soothe the divine wrath!" the leader shouted. "Sacrifice!"
The followers cheered, and two of them emerged from the crowd, carrying a young woman who was gagged and bound in thick ropes. Misato could clearly see that she was crying with terror, tears flowing from her bloodshot eyes.
That's not good!
Misato allowed herself to become visible again and shouted down at the crowd, "No one's sacrificing anyone, you psychos!"
The cultists gasped as they saw a woman surrounded by a halo of emerald light appear out of thin air to chastise them. The distinct ring of steel could clearly be heard as many of the ones that had katanas drew them, probably doing so in anger for the first time.
"A demon hath come to stop us from performing our divine task!" the leader proclaimed, pointing up at Misato.
"I'm no demon," she said, allowing herself to land so she could face them eye to eye. "I'm someone who can't let a bunch of crazy people murder an innocent woman for no reason."
The leader of the cultists ignored her. "Come, my friends, we must slay this foul demon!"
"I don't think so," Misato replied.
Several rays of emerald light shot out of her ring, forming human-sized hands. The constructs snatched the weapons from the armed cultists with incredible strength, then knocked them down to the dirt just for good measure.
However, when one of the jade hands tried to grasp the leader's axe, it went right through the weapon, as though the construct had no more substance to it than a shadow.
"Ha! The Almighty protects me from your infernal powers, demon!" the leader yelled, hefting his axe.
"What the hell?" the Green Lantern whispered, bewildered.
She sent a blast of green energy at the leader of the cultists, one just powerful enough to knock him out. It slammed right into the middle of his torso, but it had no more effect than a flashlight's beam would have.
"My God protects me!" the leader cried, charging forward toward Misato, his axe swinging.
Reflexes took over as he rounded on her, all thoughts about her ring momentarily abandoning her as she nimbly dodged his attack. The axe missed her by a wide margin, and went straight into the ground, where it became soundly buried. The cult leader grunted as he attempted to pull it free.
Misato didn't give him the chance to try for very long. Since her ring wasn't working, she drew back her fist and punched him right across the face, producing a loud crack!
Misato Katsuragi was a lot stronger than she looked, and the enhanced musculature she boasted as the Green Lantern hadn't exactly turned her into a weakling. The cult leader was middle-aged, slightly overweight, and hadn't been in a fist fight since he was 13. He went down hard, collapsing to the ground, and then looked groggily up at the Green Lantern with unfocused eyes.
"Where is your god now?" Misato taunted, clapping her hands together a few times to dust them off. "Jerk."
The other cultists took their leader's defeat as a sign that it was time to retreat, but Misato wasn't about to let them escape so easily. With a thought, she imprisoned the lot of them, with the exception of the barely conscious leader, in several green spheres of emerald light.
Misato's first impulse was to rush over to the hostage, but she was unwilling to allow the leader to remain unrestrained while she did so. He seemed pretty much incapacitated, and while she doubted he had the brains to play possum until he saw his chance, she knew better than to needlessly risk it.
She looked around, and soon spotted a clothes' line that was still up by an abandoned house. She easily retrieved it with the aid of her ring, then bound the man's wrists and ankles tightly together, taking no care for his comfort or circulation. After what he'd been trying to do to a defenseless young woman, she wasn't exactly feeling very merciful toward him.
"There," she said, then briefly looked down at him, wondering why he had been immune to her power.
The answer struck her like a bolt of lightning, and suddenly she couldn't believe how stupid she'd been. The man was wearing yellow, and even his axe had been painted gold. Her ring was ineffective against the color yellow. Abin Sur had told her so himself, but she'd allowed that to slip her mind as she'd become more and more amazed by the powers of her ring.
Rookie mistake, Katsuragi, she scolded herself silently.
Well, she figured as she approached the hostage, it could easily have been worse. At least the lesson had come at the price of a bad scare, rather than a serious injury, or worse.
Misato squatted down near the hostage, and a box cutter of emerald light appeared in her hand. A few quick cuts rendered the woman free.
"Thank you!" the woman gasped, wiping at her tear streaked face. "Thank you so much! They would have killed me if you hadn't stopped them!"
Misato smiled. "You're welcome," she said. "Are you all right?"
The woman nodded. "Just fine."
"Good. Now, I'm going to take all of you to a police station in the city," Misato said. "You're going to have to tell them what they did to you and get them arrested so they can't do this to anyone else, all right?"
The woman hesitated for a moment, then nodded bravely. "All right," she said. "But how are you going to get all of us into the city?"
Misato's smile widened. "Easy," she said. "Now hang on."
She concentrated, and a new force bubble surrounded the would-be human sacrifice, who gasped. Misato willed all the force fields she'd created to rise up into the air, then she sent out a jade hand to grab the leader by the ropes she'd used to bind him. Once everyone else was airborne, she herself rose up into the air.
"Okay, everybody!" she shouted cheerfully. "Follow me!"
Captain Yuki of the Tokyo-3 Police Department was bored. The city was almost freakishly quiet that night, with seemingly nobody doing anything more illegal than jaywalking. This, of course, left him sitting idly at the front desk, counting the minutes until his shift ended.
He knew that peace was a good thing and that it was wrong to wish for some disaster to occur or for some crime to be committed, but damn it, the main reason he'd become a cop was because he'd thought it would never be dull.
He yawned and stretched. "Shows how much I know…"
Just then, there was a great flare of green light outside, bright enough to flood the front of the police station through the windows and momentarily blind Yuki. Blinking away spots, he leapt off his chair and rushed toward the door to investigate, several other officers just a step behind him.
What he saw when he made it outside shocked him. Hovering just above the ground were about half a dozen spheres of green light, all of them containing several people in absurd costumes. A disheveled young woman with numerous bruises stood on the sidewalk in front of the station, with a bound man in yellow robes at her feet. And above all of them flew a masked woman with a smoking hot body in a wonderfully tight green, black, and white outfit.
"What in god's name…?" he gasped.
"Officer," the young woman said, stepping forward. "This group of people are cultists, and they tried to sacrifice me. They would have succeeded, too, if not for her." She added, pointing up at the flying woman in green.
"Oh," was all Yuki could say at first, too shocked to come up with anything more intelligent.
Then he remembered himself and spun around on his heel to face his fellow officers. "Okay, boys, let's cuff these creeps," he said.
The gathered police officers quickly got to work, and a few minutes later, the cultists had all been cuffed and were being led into the station.
"I have to say, you're taking this whole situation really well," the woman in green commented in a cheerful, teasing tone.
Maybe it was because she was gorgeous, or maybe it was how surreal the whole scene was, but whatever the reason, Captain Yuki found himself smiling helplessly at her. "You have to get used to crazy things happening if you live in this city," he said. "Especially if you're a cop here."
"Yeah, I guess you're right," she replied. "Say, do you have the time?"
"Huh? Oh, sure," he said, consulting his wristwatch. "It's just past eleven-thirty."
Her eyes widened. "Already? Geeze, I should really head home!" she exclaimed. "You have everything under control here, officer?"
"Completely," Yuki said with a nod.
"Wait," the young woman who'd nearly been sacrificed said. "You saved my life and I don't even know who you are."
The woman in green smirked. "I'm the Green Lantern."
With that, she flew off, leaving a short lived trail of emerald light in her wake.
Over a half an hour later, Misato crept as guiltily into her own apartment as any teenager who'd been out until well after curfew had passed, hoping not to awaken either of her charges. She could have made it back to her apartment from the station in minutes, but she'd had to venture back to Kaisei-2 to retrieve both her car and her power battery.
Not that it really would have made that big a difference, though. Either way, she would have been quite late in getting home.
She got a shock when she opened the door and tiptoed into the kitchen. Shinji Ikari was sitting at the kitchen table, asleep, his head pillowed by his arm.
He tried to wait up for me, she thought, feeling almost absurdly touched.
It was amazing that Shinji, a teenage boy, sometimes behaved more like a father than her actual father had. He certainly was more consistent about showing that he cared, even if he only did so in his timid fashion.
"You so deserve a great girl who realizes what a catch you are," she whispered to the sleeping teen, leaning down and planting a light kiss on his forehead. "I really wish I wasn't too old you." She added.
Misato wanted to move Shinji into bed; the position he was in looked less than comfortable, but she was afraid of waking him up.
Then she realized how she could smoothly move him to his room. But no, it was much too great a risk.
Oh, what the hell? Misato thought as she channeled her willpower into the ring.
Soft green light surrounded Shinji's sleeping form, and the Third Child was smoothly levitated out of his chair. Misato carefully guided him down the hallway to his room, half convinced that he'd wake up or that Asuka would emerge at any moment and catch her. However, neither thing happened, and Misato was able to gently lay Shinji into his bed, the pilot of Unit One still very much asleep as she did so.
"Good night, Shinji-kun," she whispered before sliding the door to his room shut.
She returned to the kitchen, where she found the food Shinji had made for her waiting in the fridge. She heated it, then gobbled it down before she headed to her own bedroom.
"What a day," she yawned as she stripped off her uniform. "I'm going to regret the late night tomorrow. Again."
Not that it was so atrociously late; she'd routinely stayed up far later back in college. Of course, she'd been younger back then, and she could just cut her morning class if she felt she needed extra sleep.
Well, at least I got a lot of practice with the ring, she thought. I'm as ready for action as I'll ever be.
Which left just one problem, the one she'd been ignoring until now because she couldn't figure out a way to solve it.
Despite the wide array of powers that the ring possessed, even it couldn't let her be in two places at once. And as the Operations Director, she was of course expected to be in the command center when an Angel showed up, not outside fighting the beast as the Green Lantern.
She wasn't sure how she could get away, and since she wasn't even sure whether the ring had the raw power necessary to defeat an Angel, Misato wasn't eager to take drastic measures to avoid her duties. If she did, and the ring proved inadequate for breaching an AT field, she might well shut herself out of the war.
Little did she know that circumstances would soon give her a chance to test the ring in battle against an Angel.
Alone.
Author's Notes: This chapter was basically the warm up round, since I really don't think Misato could successfully operate as the new GL right out of the gate. She would need at least some practice before she got the hang of it. The encounter with the cultists was mostly there to keep this chapter from being too dull, and I decided to take the opportunity to acquaint our new Lantern with the yellow impurity while I was at it.
Also, I should probably mention that I'm not sure the "where is your god now?" line was exactly in character for Misato, but the opportunity was too good to pass up.
Zenn1, at the risk of sounding like I'm pandering for praise, I have to say that even reviews of the "write moar!" variety help me keep up my enthusiasm for writing these fics, so please don't hold back.
Ryousanki, good to see you back. Unfortunately, GL rings really don't do things like decide what their owner should consume or not. When it comes down to it, they're really just tools.
Gunman, good to see you. Personally, I don't see Misato bothering too much with altering her costume. She wants to fight a war as the GL, not go out on the town to be seen. Besides, she never struck me as terribly fashion conscious most of the time, anyway. Also, I don't plan to bring the War of Light to Tokyo-3, but I'd be lying if I said I hadn't thought over who got which ring. Shinji, if I gave him one, would definitely be indigo. It just suits him too well. I also know who'd I'd give the black ring to. All I'll say is that it wouldn't be Rei.
Zoro50, pretty much dragging his successor to him is what Abin Sur did in DC canon. In Green Lantern: Secret Origin, when Hal Jordan was selected, he heard the ring say "You have been chosen" and suddenly he was covered in green light and flying through the air toward Abin Sur's crashed space ship.
Anyway, thanks as always to my readers and reviewers. Now for a little fun!
Omake
Strange Awareness
"I can't let people know I'm the Green Lantern," she muttered.
"Concealing identity," the ring spoke.
Misato was temporarily blinded as jade flames painlessly burst into being over her eyes. When they cleared, she could see that she now wore a green mask.
"Okay, better," she said. "Too bad I can't do anything else."
"You are capable of using this ring to perform limited physical alterations to yourself," the ring spoke up.
Misato blinked in surprise. "Really?"
"Affirmative. The most common use of this function is increasing a Green Lantern's musculature."
"I think it would be simpler if you just made my boobs smaller while I'm being the Green Lantern," Misato said.
"Cannot comply."
"What? Why not?"
"Are you kidding?" The ring asked. "Do you have any idea how the readers would respond if I shrank your breasts? They're smash the fourth wall to rubble, come across, and then smash me!"
"Readers? Fourth wall? What?" Misato asked, bewildered.
The ring hesitated for a moment before it spoke again. "Oh, I forgot, you can't see across the fourth wall in this Superwomen of Eva series."
"What the hell are you talking about?!" Misato demanded.
"Nothing, never mind," the ring said. "I can't shrink your breasts because that would be…violating the law of conservation of matter. Yes…that's it."
Misato just sweat dropped in response, deciding that her power ring was either broken, insane, or secretly perverted.
