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 this 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 Five: The Angel of Fear, Part One
It was sometimes said by the members of NERV that whatever else Commander Ikari might be, he was completely and utterly unflappable. Of course, people's opinions on why this was varied greatly; some contended that Gendo Ikari was actually a moderately human-like robot, while others claimed that he simply had no soul, having sold it to the devil in exchange for command of NERV.
These wild theories were, of course, completely wrong, but it was true that Gendo was damn near unshakable, as proved by his calm, measured reaction to the alien bobble that had just attempted to whisk him off to god only knew where.
"What are you?" Gendo demanded of the yellow ring that sat upon his finger.
"I am a power ring that is the standard weapon of the Sinestro Corps," it answered in an otherworldly and vaguely menacing tone. "I am capable of allowing you to wield the golden light of fear."
"Wield the golden light of fear?" Gendo repeated skeptically.
"This ring is capable of forming energy blasts, force fields, and constructs of whatever tool or weapon you desire," it answered. "This ring can also allow you to use the worst fears of others against them, and it acts as a link to the database containing all the knowledge of the Sinestro Corps."
"Really?" Gendo asked, becoming intrigued. "Does that database contain any information about the Green Lantern, by chance?"
Two beams of light shone forth from the top of the ring he now wore, one of them forming a floating hologram of the simple emblem the emerald superwoman wore and the other coalescing into the symbol Gendo now had on his own chest.
"The Sinestro Corps are sworn enemies of the Green Lantern Corps," the ring answered.
"Indeed? Then I presume you know how to defeat one of them?" Gendo asked.
"This ring is the ideal weapon for combating Green Lanterns, because it takes advantage of their yellow weakness," the ring said.
"Yellow weakness?" Gendo asked, frowning.
"There is an impurity present in the emerald light of willpower, from which the Green Lanterns draw their power," the ring explained. "It makes the green power rings utterly ineffectual against anything colored yellow."
Gendo's eyebrows rose. Could the Green Lantern truly have such an easily exploited Achilles' Heel? He would like to believe it, but it seemed an outrageous idea that someone as powerful as the Green Lantern would be helpless against a mere color.
Yet if it was true…
"What other sorts of information do you have, ring?" Gendo asked.
He spent the next two hours questioning his new ring on every topic he could imagine it might have useful information on, totally ignoring the lateness of the hour. It wasn't until he had thoroughly run out of questions that he began to actually experiment with the powers of the ring, forming a few simple constructs, starting with everyday items such as pens and paperclips and then moving onto firearms. However, he didn't get very far before the ring spoke up again.
"Warning. Power levels approaching 0.0 percent."
Gendo frowned. "Already?"
"The previous Sinestro Corpsman of Sector 2814 nearly expended this ring's charge before it was passed on," it explained.
"How do I recharge you, then?" Gendo asked.
"You require the power battery, which was abandoned by the previous Sinestro Corpsman of this sector," the ring informed him. "This ring can guide you to it."
"I can't go out wearing this," he said, gesturing down at the yellow and black costume the ring had garbed him in.
Immediately, the Sinestro Corps uniform turned into what looked like golden flames, which quickly dissipated into nothingness, leaving Gendo in his sleep clothes.
After quickly changing into one of his NERV uniforms, Gendo left his bedroom, then went to the ground floor of his house and grabbed the keys to the black sedan that sat out in front of his house. The Commander of NERV didn't drive often himself, having a driver to take him to headquarters and back, but for once, he had no desire to send someone out to perform the menial task for him. He would personally go and claim the power battery himself.
"Tell me where to go," he ordered the ring.
"Acknowledged."
As he drove through Tokyo-3, Gendo quickly discovered that the ring was a less considerate navigator than a standard GPS device; it told him when he had to turn too late from him to be able to do so smoothly, resulting in more than a little screeching of tires. Fortunately, it was still the middle of the night, and the city was not densely populated besides; there were not many other cars on the road.
Where is this thing taking me? He wondered as he noticed that he seemed to be heading toward the city limits. Why would the previous owner of the ring just leave the battery in the middle of nowhere? What happened to him?
"Right turn here," the ring said.
He turned on the wheel sharply…and his eyes suddenly widened as he saw headlights bearing down on him. He realized too late that he was heading the wrong way down a one way street.
Gendo slammed down on the brake, as did the other driver, but there was too little distance between the two vehicles, and they were both going too fast. The Commander of NERV gritted his teeth as the two cars crashed right into one another with frightening amounts of force.
The next several seconds were a blur of pain and noise to him. When at last he regained his bearings, he realized that he was sitting on the street, apparently having been ejected from the car by the impact. He was unharmed however, and it wasn't hard for him to figure out why; a sphere of golden light surrounded his form. Either the ring had acted automatically to save him, or he had formed the construct on reflex.
No sooner had he registered the presence of the light than did it begin fade.
"Power level 0.0 percent." His ring announced.
And with that, the previously shiny yellow metal became dull and lifeless. There was no charge left in the ring, and the battery was still far out of his grasp.
Gendo looked about until he found the driver of the other car. The man was obviously quite dead, which the Commander found something of a relief. He never would have allowed himself to vent even the tiniest fraction of his emotions if a perfect stranger was observing him.
"Damn it," he scowled, striking the ground with his fist.
He looked down at the ring again, an expression of disgust ghosting over his face. Unless he was able to locate the power battery somehow, the thing was nothing more than a worthless bobble, and he would have to spend precious favors owed to him in order to sweep the car crash under the rug.
However, he supposed that the night wasn't a complete loss. So long as the things the ring had told him were true, it had been very productive indeed.
"Magic," Ritsuko scowled darkly as she flicked the ashes from her cigarette into the overflowing ashtray she kept on her desk. "Magic is the only possible explanation for the Green Lantern's powers."
Trying to calm herself down, she took a long drag off of her cancer stick, recalling as she did so a rather famous quote which stated that any sufficiently advanced technology would appear magical to those who could not comprehend it.
"Having a bad day, Ritsuko?" a suave voice asked from behind her, causing her to start in surprise.
"Kaji," she said, turning her chair around to face him, "what are you doing here?"
"Nice to see you, too, Rits," Kaji replied jovially. "I was just coming to visit a friend."
"Ah, so you're playing the old 'I have tons of paperwork, but I don't want to do it, so I'll go and pester Ritsuko instead' game that Misato was so adept at," the scientist observed dryly, turning her chair back around to face her computer once more.
"Guilty," Kaji confessed ruefully, "so what are you doing?"
"Nothing productive," Ritsuko said with a little sigh, prompting Kaji to look over her shoulder and at her computer monitor.
His eyebrows rose at what he saw. "Why, Rits-chan, I didn't realize you had a thing for the Green Lantern," he smirked.
"It's not like that," Ritsuko growled, clearly frustrated. "You're aware that the Commander doesn't like the superwomen."
Kaji nodded, knowing as well as anyone that Gendo bitterly resented the presence of the super powered females who'd recently made themselves known in the city, as they sometimes made NERV appear unnecessary and thus colossally wasteful.
"Of course," Kaji said. "I fail to see how staring at a picture of the Green Lantern is going to help, though."
"Which is why I said I wasn't doing anything productive," Ritsuko grumbled, then sighed.
"Why fixate on the Green Lantern, anyway?" Kaji asked. "Why not one of the others?"
"Because Green Lantern's the one who single-handedly killed the Angel we didn't even try and fight," Ritsuko said, causing the new Ops Director to cringe slightly. "And because her powers…"
"What?"
"I guess they sort of annoy me," Ritsuko said. "They just make so much less sense than the others' powers do."
The Green Lantern seemed to utilize some kind of solid hologram technology, which would require force fields. However, why bother with the holograms at all, instead of just using the force fields? It was just a pure waste of energy so far as Ritsuko could tell, and it didn't help that the machinery required to imitate any one of the Green Lantern's constructs would have been the size of a building, while the jade heroine seemed to form them all from a tiny ring on her finger.
The other superwomen likewise irritated her inherently rational scientist's mind, too, especially with their ability to fly, but not to the same extent.
"Ritsuko, we're in NERV," Kaji said. "We're not in the business of things that make sense."
The bottle blond scientist smirked briefly at that, but the quip still didn't do much to improve her frustrated, surly mood. Silence fell in the office.
Kaji looked at the image of the Green Lantern that Ritsuko had on her computer screen again. "You know, she looks a bit like Misato," he commented thoughtfully.
"I guess there is a passing resemblance," Ritsuko said with a shrug.
"You don't suppose…?"
"What? That Misato's the Green Lantern?" Ritsuko asked with a snort.
"Well, why not?" Kaji asked, grinning. "After all, she did abruptly step down from the Operations Director post not long before Green Lantern first showed up."
"Please," Ritsuko scoffed, "Misato never had those abs." She said, pointing at the image of the emerald superwoman.
"Really? And just how would you know exactly what our dear friend's body has looked like through the years?" Kaji asked with a grin.
"Get your mind out of the gutter, Ryoji," Ritsuko said, though she looked as amused as she was annoyed. "You know we roomed together in college, and she wasn't any more modest back then. If she wasn't that buff then, when she was younger and getting a lot more exercise, I seriously doubt she is now."
"I guess, but suppose…"
"You're not taking this idea seriously, are you?" Ritsuko asked, now becoming truly incredulous. "Look, Kaji, Misato was in the Matsushiro base while Green Lantern was in outer space. Plus, there's a very good chance Green Lantern was the one who killed the Ninth Angel, and Misato was trapped in an elevator at the time. I know it's surprising that she left the position you're now stuck with when she did, but unless the Green Lantern can be in two places at once, Misato can't be her."
"How do we know the Green Lantern can't be in two places at once?" Kaji asked with a smirk, just for the sake of being stubborn, apparently.
"How do we know that the Green Lantern also can't change her gender on whim and is really the Commander?" Ritsuko countered flatly.
Kaji grimaced. "Well, you just sucked all the fun out of this conversation."
"Mm-hmm," Ritsuko grunted absently. "So, how did you even get here without your shadow following you to make sure you're not using your new status to dig into NERV secrets?"
"Chiron? I don't know," Kaji shrugged. "I haven't seen him since this morning."
Which was not, of course, to say that Section Two wasn't still keeping a stiflingly close eye on him, pretending to be doing so because he was "critical personnel" or some such other. It was just that the man who'd replaced Chiron was being far more unobtrusive and far less obnoxious about it.
Ritsuko, for her part, was surprised to hear this from Kaji; the chief of Section Two had been enjoying harassing the new Ops Director quite a lot.
"Huh," she said, "I wonder where he's gotten off to."
Goro Ichinawa, leader of the Blood Saviors, suspected that something was up when he was informed that he had a visitor. The only ones who would visit him in the jail cell they'd stuck him into were his fellow Saviors, and the Green Lantern had captured every single one when she'd stopped the divine sacrifice a while ago.
Nevertheless, he agreed to see whoever it was, and he was led to one of the visiting rooms. There, a barrier of bullet proof glass separated prisoner from visitor. Goro frowned when he saw who stood on the other side of the transparent divider.
It was a big man in a black suit. He cut an imposing figure, and his chiseled features made him look like he'd been carved out of granite rather than born like normal humans. Yet Goro wasn't entirely sure he'd have been able to pick the man out of a lineup; the suit and sunglasses he wore seemed to lend her a powerful air of conformity.
Sitting down in the lone chair on his side of the room, Goro picked up the phone that was necessary to communicate across the glass. The big man soon did likewise.
"Who are you?" Goro asked without preamble.
"Who I am isn't important," the man replied. "You are Goro Ichinawa, correct?"
"That's right," Goro answered warily.
"You were…apprehended by the Green Lantern some time ago, were you not?" the man asked.
"Yes," Goro answered, silently lamenting that the woman might have stopped him and his followers from preventing the end of the world.
"I want you to tell me about her," the man said.
Goro's eyebrows went up. Being the leader of a small cult, he was a shrewd operator. So instead of asking why his strange visitor wanted to know, he instead asked what it was worth to the man.
"A free ticket out of this place, if your information is useful," the man replied.
"What do you want to know?" Goro asked immediately.
"Did you notice her having trouble exerting her power on anything?" the man asked.
"Yes!" Goro answered at once. "Though she was easily able to defeat my followers, she couldn't use her power on me at all. Clearly, my god protected me."
"Uh-huh," the other man said in a skeptical tone that Goro was used to hearing from the unenlightened. "What were you wearing?"
Goro blinked, confused by the seemingly random. "I was clad in my ceremonial golden robes."
The man nodded in satisfaction. "That will be all, Ichinawa-san," he said. "I will see to it that the appropriate strings are pulled, and you should be out of here shortly."
"You want me to build a what?" Ritsuko asked incredulously that evening.
When Gendo had asked her to meet him alone in Terminal Dogma, she'd known that whatever he wanted was going to be important, and that it would probably entail a lot of work for her. However, she'd had no idea it would also be so…ridiculous.
"A suit of power armor," Gendo answered. "It must be painted yellow, and it will require several specific weapons. I will provide you with all the requirements."
"How do you expect me to build a thing like that?" Ritsuko asked, rubbing her temples. "Evangelion armor is something completely different from what you're asking for. We don't have the necessary knowledge to build such a thing in any short amount of time."
Wordlessly, Gendo produced a tan file and handed it to Ritsuko. Frowning, the scientist opened it. Her frown only deepened as she saw that it was notes and data from a project to create a suit of power armor just like the one Gendo was demanding she create.
"Where did you get this?" she asked.
"I had it stolen from Hokkaido Heavy Industries, shortly before the company went bankrupt," Gendo explained. "This was a side project conducted by several of the scientists who worked on the Jet Alone. It will greatly diminish the amount of time it will take to build what I require, correct?"
"Yes, I suppose it will," Ritsuko grudgingly admitted, then hastened to add, "but it still won't be easy. By the looks of it, they didn't quite get to the point of having a working prototype."
"I never said it would be easy, Doctor," Gendo replied curtly.
"It won't be cheap, either," Ritsuko warned. "Where do you expect to find the money for this? Right after the Committee cut our budget is a bad time to start skimming off the top to fund this sort of thing."
"I will be paying from my own pocket," Gendo answered.
Ritsuko arched an eyebrow. She knew that the Commander of NERV had long ago used his various skills and connections to become a very wealthy man, but funding something like this would still take a significant bite from his fortune.
"All right," Ritsuko said, "but that doesn't explain why you want this thing built."
"It's to combat the superwomen with," Gendo answered.
"You believe that this thing can take them down?" Ritsuko asked, trying to keep her incredulous tone from being too blatant.
The superwomen had all demonstrated remarkable feats of strength and reliance so far, and the Green Lantern's clash with the Tenth Angel was the only time anyone had seen one of them actually struggle with anything. Therefore it seemed very possible, indeed probable, that any one of them might be able to crush the power armor Gendo wanted like a soda can without even breaking a sweat in the process.
"I've received new intelligence on them," Gendo said. "This suit will have specific countermeasures against them."
Ritsuko knew better than to ask where he'd gotten this information from, despite how curious she was. If he had intended to tell her that, he already would have.
"You realize, of course, that the public loves the superwomen," Ritsuko pointed out. "If this thing kills them, and it's traced back to NERV…"
She trailed off, knowing that she didn't have to tell him that the best case scenario in that instance would be NERV headquarters crawling with UN inspectors.
"That is why an Evangelion will 'avenge' the superwomen afterwards," Gendo said.
"And will the man you order to operate this suit of power armor know he's going on a suicide mission?" Ritsuko asked.
Gendo just looked at her silently.
"Okay, stupid question," Ritsuko said, then looked down at the file Gendo had given her.
She didn't want to build this damned suit of power, and not only because it would mean a large addition to her already substantial workload. There were so many things that could go wrong with this plan, and it was just plainly ridiculous on the face of it.
Then again, Gendo's entire scenario and NERV itself were both ridiculous when you thought about them long enough. Ritsuko suddenly realized, to her not very great surprise, that she had developed a sullen sort of resentment at seeing Gendo Ikari's seemingly absurd schemes work time and time again, when common sense would seem to indicate that at least a few of them should have failed disastrously.
But of course, she couldn't object to this new project of Gendo's on those grounds.
"I'll need help," Ritsuko said instead. "Other scientists better at mechanics than I am. Engineers. People will have to fabricate the parts and assemble them."
"Recruit who you need," Gendo said brusquely, "but this has to stay quiet."
Which means nobody who might develop a guilty conscience over this and try to do something about it, which means no Maya, Ritsuko thought sourly, not looking forward to working on such a project without the aid of her trusty assistant.
"I suggest you get to work, Doctor," Gendo said as he headed for the elevator that would take him back up to Central Dogma. "I need this completed as soon as possible."
And with that, he was gone.
Ritsuko stood alone in Terminal Dogma for a long time, just staring wordlessly down at the file Gendo had given her.
"Well," she finally spoke, grumbling, "this'll be real fun."
Shinji Ikari's entire body was flushed with embarrassment.
This was easy for him to confirm, because he was completely naked. Which, considering that he was in the Pribnow Box inside of NERV headquarters rather than, say, in the shower at the apartment he called home, was not a state of affairs he would have ever found agreeable.
The whole situation was only made more mortifying by the knowledge that Rei and Asuka stood in stalls adjacent to the one he currently stood in, each as unclothed as he was.
"Well, here we are," the Second Child grumbled, "buck naked and sent through the washing machine seventeen times."
"Good," the voice of Dr. Akagi came over some intercom. "Now, we need you to walk down the hallway and board the simulation bodies."
Shinji paled as he looked down the very long hallway before him.
"What?!" Asuka shrieked. "You expect me to parade around naked for you? No way! I won't do it!"
The Third Child often found the way Asuka was prone to be combative over just about everything to be extremely tiresome, but in this instance, he agreed with her wholeheartedly. He only wished he had the nerve to start shouting complaints and protests himself.
"We're not going to be watching you!" Ritsuko snapped testily. "We will turn off the cameras, of course. Now stop acting like children and get into the damned plugs!"
Shinji flinched, surprised. Ritsuko had always been strictly professional and rarely took anybody's personal comfort into account (including, if what Misato said about her was true, her own) when it came to NERV business, but she'd never been so harsh before, either.
It immediately quelled any impulse he might have had at arguing, and he sighed. "If you two promise to close your eyes, I'll go first," he said resignedly to his fellow pilots.
"Geeze, Ritsuko, who spit in your coffee this morning?" Misato asked after the Children reluctantly agreed to go and board their respective dummy bodies for the data gathering experiment.
The blonde scowled and nearly snapped at her friend as well. However, she managed to check her tongue and instead said, "Sorry, I'm just so exhausted, I guess it's making me short tempered. Ikari's had me working on a side project for weeks now, and with that on top of finally getting this experiment underway, I haven't had time for the little things. Like sleep."
"Side project?" Misato asked.
"Nothing you'd be interested in," Ritsuko said dismissively, stifling a yawn. "Ugh, this experiment would have been done a long time ago if the Committee hadn't decided to cut our budget."
"Well, look on the bright side," Misato said. "At least after we're done here, this experiment will be over."
"Yes, then I'll get to start analyzing the collected data," Ritsuko replied joylessly.
Seeing how unwilling Ritsuko was to be consoled, Misato rolled her eyes and went to observe the data streams. Not that she could actually glean anything meaningful from them; they moved by far too quickly for a mere human to be able to read, and in any case, Misato lacked the expertise to make anything of the data.
"Amazing, aren't they?" Maya commented, noticing where Misato's gaze had fallen.
Knowing that the technician could only be commenting on the MAGI, Misato just gave her a quick smile and nodded.
"The neural links between the children and the system have been fully established," another technician announced a few moments later.
"Report," Ritsuko ordered the pilots, switching on the radio. "What does it feel like?"
"It's…different," Shinji answered in an uncertain tone, clearly not knowing how to explain it better.
"It does not feel like piloting a true Evangelion," Rei agreed.
"The left arm feels fine, but everything else is fuzzy," Asuka added in an unusually pensive voice.
Ritsuko instructed the pilots to give the dummy bodies a few basic commands, and her staff dutifully recorded whatever data these actions generated. This went on for a few minutes, until all conversation in the control room was cut off by the ominous sound of groaning metal from above them.
"Is there another water leak?" Ritsuko asked, glaring. Clearly the tired and frustrated scientist was very much at the limit of her patience.
Maya quickly checked with the people up in the command center, and was informed, to her relief, that she did not have to be the bearer of bad news. "No, there's corrosion on the 87th protein wall."
Ritsuko frowned. "That's strange," she commented.
"Why?" Misato asked, knowing that with NERV's budget, nonessential places and systems (which meant anything not directly involved with the Evangelions) were often allowed to fall into disrepair for want of more funding.
"We used the delay in conducting this experiment to perform maintenance in that area," Ritsuko explained.
Of course, the scientist mentally noted, the construction on that part of the base had been so shoddy that it really should have been torn down and rebuilt from the ground up. Yet regardless of that, the patch job NERV had performed still should have kept the place intact until the war was over.
"It's not expected to interfere with the test," Maya put in.
"In that case, let's continue," Ritsuko said, putting her misgivings aside. "This experiment has been put off long enough as it is."
"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Misato asked suspiciously. "Something seems…wrong about all this to me."
Ritsuko opened her mouth to inform the tactical consultant that there was nothing to worry about. Yes, it was very strange that a recently repaired section of the base was having such problems, but that just meant that somebody needed to have a word with the crew that had done the work.
She actually started to say all this, but no one, not even her, heard a single word that came out of her mouth, because of the horrible shrieking noise of the klaxons and alarms that chose that very moment to start going off.
Long had it slept within the depths of NERV.
The Angel could not precisely say whether it had been inside Lilith's egg for a very long time, or if it had only recently been moved into the heart of the lilins' citadel; its slumber had been deep, and in any case, it did not care much about such minor and irrelevant details. Like all the Children of Adam, it cared for only one thing.
Reunion with the All-Father.
The lilins' actions had prevented him from making his move as early as he would have liked. Their "maintenance" had limited the amount of air he had available to him, which had slowed his awakening.
But the lilin had only delayed the inevitable.
Awake and conscious at last, the Angel's cells began to divide at a phenomenal rate, doubling in number every few seconds. Every last cell possessed its own microscopic Fruit of Life (or S2 organ as the lilin called it), but each last bit of the Angel was connected to the greater consciousness—the hive mind—that united them all.
Throwing off the last remnants of its lethargy from its long sleep, Ireul, the Angel of Fear, went on the attack.
Meanwhile, in the control room, the situation was rapidly deteriorating into absolute chaos, with Ritsuko and the technicians all screaming over the alarms in order to be heard.
"A contamination alert has gone off for Sigma Unit!" Maya yelled, her voice betraying a hint of fear.
They were inside Sigma Unit, after all.
"The 87th protein wall has degraded," another technician piped up. "Temperature is increasing rapidly."
"There's a problem in the number six pipeline!" Maya shouted. "The corroded area's expanding rapidly!"
"Abort the experiment!" Ritsuko barked. "Disconnect the number six pipeline!"
"Hai!" Maya replied at once, practically punching the appropriate buttons.
They could hear the heavy machinery around them working to isolate the contaminated area. Everyone looked anxiously at Maya, wanting to know whether it had worked.
"Contamination is still spreading!" she exclaimed. "It's moving from wall to wall!"
"Ready the polysome," Ritsuko commanded. "Set the lasers at maximum. Fire as soon as the contaminant reaches here."
"Hai."
Several small doors inside the Pribnow box opened, allowing robots that looked almost like miniature VTOLs to enter. The swarm of machines swam over to where the corrosion was likely to first appear and waited, looking as predatory as a faceless robot possibly could.
Then there was nothing to do but wait.
"It's coming," Maya said as she anxiously stared at her screen.
Misato stared into the Pribnow box, eyes narrowed. She wasn't a Ph.D. like Ritsuko, but she damn well knew that ordinary corrosion didn't spread so fast or so virulently. Something was very, very wrong.
And it practically made her ring buzz. The band of green metal, currently invisible, felt almost as though it was vibrating. Misato had no doubt that if she didn't have it on silent mode, it would be giving her warnings of the approaching threat.
Unconsciously, she closed the fingers of her right hand into a fist. The feel of the warm metal of her ring against her fingers reassured her, even though she was very aware that she would expose herself if she did anything with it.
Her thoughts were rudely interrupted as a scream suddenly split the tense silence in the control room.
"Rei," Ritsuko breathed.
"The First Child's simulation body is moving by itself!" Maya exclaimed.
"Impossible!" Ritsuko said.
Yet impossible or not, it was happening. Rei's dummy body, which was bolted to the wall like all the others, looked like it was trying to pull itself free. Fortunately, the thick bolt's holding it had been drilled into several of the very vertebrae of the body, and it failed to liberate itself from its restraints. Giving up, it lifted one arm and reached out toward the control room.
Only Maya's quick actions prevented Misato from revealing her secret to everyone present. Just as she was about to raise her hand and transform into the Green Lantern, the technician smashed the thin layer of glass in front of a large switch marked "forced shutdown" and pulled it. Small but powerful explosive charges located in the dummy body's elbow exploded, blowing the headless beast's forearm off and stopping its assault before it could begin.
"What about Rei?" Misato demanded.
"She's alive," Maya replied.
"Eject all the plugs!" Ritsuko commanded. "Fire the lasers! Now!"
"Hai!"
A series of small rockets in each plug flared, sending the metal containers rocketing out of the dummy bodies and upwards toward the ceiling. A large door opened up to allow them to escape, and the plugs had soon journeyed out of the base, heading to the safety of the Geofront floor.
At the same time, beams of deadly red light shot out from the weapon barrels of the polysomes, striking the rogue simulation body. For a few seconds, no one had any idea what was happening as the water bubbled furiously and hid any effect the lasers might be having.
Then the bubbles cleared up just enough for Misato to spot a cluster of hexagonal shields of light protecting the dummy body from the lasers.
"Impossible! It's an AT field!" the former Ops Director exclaimed, just as some red, luminescent substance began to grow all over the dummy bodies like an out of control fungus.
"The pattern's blue! It's an Angel!" Maya said grimly.
"We have to isolate the box!" Misato announced. "All personnel, evacuate!"
The various technicians in the room didn't need to be told twice; they quickly got up from their chairs and fled toward the exit. Ritsuko was another matter, however. The blonde just stared darkly at the Angel, as if the sheer force of her glare could quell the beast, even as the glass that separated the control room from the Pribnow box began to crack, tiny jets of water starting to spurt in.
"Ritsuko!" Misato said, grabbing hold of her friend's arm. "We have to go!"
The scientist didn't say anything, but she did begin running, and the two just managed to escape and shut the door behind them just before the window shattered and allowed in an avalanche of water.
Sitting inside MAGI Casper with her knees drawn almost up to her chest was definitely not where she had expected to be a couple of hours after the Angel's initial attack, Misato decided.
After the Eleventh Angel had successfully taken control of the Pribnow Box and all of Sigma Unit from them, it had attempted to conquer a far more important part of the base, namely the MAGI. Ritsuko had managed to dramatically slow down its attempt at hacking the trio of supercomputers, and they had then tried—unsuccessfully—to kill the Angel with ozone.
Once that had failed, Misato had recommended the physical destruction of the MAGI, but Ritsuko had vigorously objected, claiming that she could hack into the Angel and force it to kill itself. Both the Commander and Kaji had preferred the scientist's plan, so now Misato was playing gopher for Ritsuko while Maya sat just outside, working at her laptop.
The tactical consultant had been, and still was, sorely tempted to take matters into her own hands and destroy the MAGI herself. With her power ring, it wasn't as though anybody had even the faintest chance of being able to stop her, especially since the Evangelions had been launched, without their pilots, to get them away from the Angel, Unit One having been sent first for some incomprehensible reason.
But, no, she couldn't do that. For one thing, there was currently no good excuse available for her to get away and become the Green Lantern, so she'd still have to reveal her alter ego in order to do it. For another, in this case, it just seemed wrong to rip the decision from NERV's hands by trashing the base's master computer.
Of course, she might feel different if Shinji and the other pilots were still inside headquarters and thus in danger, but they were safely out of the Angel's line of fire, for once.
"Kind of reminds you of college days, huh?" Misato commented.
Ritsuko's only reply was a noncommittal grunt and a request for a wrench, which Misato handed to her.
"So, why didn't you ever tell me that the MAGI were your mother's creation, and have her personality implanted on them?" she asked.
"It never came up before," was Ritsuko's rather brusque response.
With a small sigh, Misato leaned against the nearest wall and waited for Ritsuko to ask for something else. She supposed she really shouldn't be trying to pump the bottle blonde for information at the moment, considering that she was in the middle of trying to save them all.
Yet it somehow irritated her that Ritsuko had never told her that the MAGI had Naoko Akagi's mind imprinted on them. They were supposed to be friends, but the whole incident was making Misato realize there were a lot of things she didn't know about the scientist.
"Need anything else?" Misato asked after several minutes of practically stifling silence.
Ritsuko, who'd managed to connect her laptop directly to the cloned brain that was the core of Casper, didn't even look up from her work as she answered. "No, thank you, Misato," she replied. "I've done what I need so far as the hardware's concerned, so now it's just a matter of hacking and coding. You can get out of here if you'd like."
"No way," Misato replied at once.
If this all goes to hell, you're the first one I'm putting into a protective force field, she mentally added.
No sooner had she completed the thought than did alarm klaxons suddenly start blaring all over again, and Misato grimaced.
"It's taken over Balthasar!" they heard Makoto shout.
"Artificial intelligence has proposed self-destruction," announced the calm, digitized voice of the MAGI themselves. "Self destruction will commence in thirty seconds if all three MAGI units unanimously approve."
"The Angel's invading Casper!" Aoba called.
"Twenty seconds until self-destruct," the MAGI announced.
"Casper will be taken over in eighteen seconds!" Aoba added.
Oh boy, it's clutch time. Come on, Rits, Misato thought.
"Ten," the MAGI began to count down. "Nine…eight…"
"Hurry, Ritsuko!"
"Don't worry," Ritsuko said as she typed furiously, "I should have one whole second to spare."
A large drop of sweat formed at the back of Misato's head. "You've got to be kidding me," she said, a comment which Ritsuko didn't deign to justify with a response.
"Six…five…four…"
Misato's jaw clenched with nervous anticipation. This was almost as bad as the disastrous cross synchronization experiment; she had all this power, but she didn't know, couldn't know, whether she needed to use it and incur the awful price of doing so.
"Maya!" Ritsuko shouted. "Now!"
Both women stabbed the enter key on their respective keyboards at once, just as the countdown reached two seconds.
There was a long, terrible pause in the command center as everyone waited to see whether Ritsuko had succeeded or not. Everyone held their breath, as though afraid that making even the slightest sound would somehow jinx them.
"Self destruct was cancelled by the artificial intelligence," the MAGI announced at last. "All systems returning to normal modes."
Cheers erupted from the command center, while Ritsuko simply leaned her head back and sighed in relief.
Down in the Pribnow Box, the glowing clusters of Angelic cells, which had formed into glowing circuitry on the bodies of the dummy bodies, abruptly began to die out and fade from view, forced to slaughter themselves by the Project-E chairperson's hacking skills.
However, not all of the cells died. Several small clumps of the newer cells, which had not yet taken the form of electronic hardware, were spared from the immediate effects of Ritsuko's suicide program. Yet their brethren would carry the program to them soon regardless. Desperate to have some small part of it survive, the rapidly dying Angel severed the young cells from the collective mind, amputating itself almost as an animal caught in a trap might amputate a limb.
It was, to put it mildly, a shock to the immature cells' systems. Where before there had been order and purpose, unity and strength…now only confusion and emptiness remained, along with a terrible loneliness that came from being cut off from the rest of Ireul's collective mind.
In total disarray, the various clumps of cells began to panic. Some of them dropped dead right on the spot, committing suicide of their own accord. Others exhausted themselves with their terror and also promptly died. Still others attempted to escape the Pribnow box, though none had anything resembling a destination in mind.
Most of these in the last group did indeed manage to get away from the box, moving about undetected because they were too weak and immature to produce an AT field or a noticeable waveform pattern. However, the absence of an AT field also meant that they were vulnerable, and almost all of them soon wandered into something hazardous—most often live power lines—and were quickly killed.
However, one clump of cells was either more intelligent or just more fortunate than all the rest; it managed to avoid any of the dangerous things scattered about the base, and eventually meandered all the way to Terminal Dogma. In this most secret part of NERV, the fragment of the Angel soon found the suit of power armor the Commander had had Ritsuko working on. It slithered into the empty metallic shell and vanished from view.
A moment later, the optics of the armor pulsed briefly with light before going out again.
If Shinji Ikari had had anything resembling a normal, happy life, this day might have easily qualified as the most miserable one of his short existence. The intense embarrassment of the naked sync test, coupled with the fear of the possibility that Asuka would kill him if he accidentally looked at her naked body had been bad enough by themselves.
Yet being forced to sit in slowly cooling LCL for what felt like hours as the ejected entry plugs of the three pilots sat on the Geofront floor, seemingly forgotten, was an order of magnitude worse.
He held up his right hand, trying to check the time with the watch in his plug suit's glove…only to remember yet again that he wasn't wearing a plug suit. He wasn't wearing anything.
Of course, he thought dourly. If I had clothing, I'd have just left the plug and walked back to base already.
He supposed that things could be worse. At least Asuka had finally ceased shouting as if anyone besides the other two pilots could hear her angry cries for assistance.
His thoughts were suddenly interrupted as someone outside opened the hatch of his entry plug, causing LCL to gush out as it was opened. A moment later, a certain purple haired woman poked her head in, smiling mischievously.
"Why, hello there, Shin-chan!" she said cheerfully.
"Misato!" he exclaimed, feeling mortified.
Part of the plug's control interface happened to cover up his groin, but Shinji reflexively moved his hands to cover himself anyway. He blushed despite knowing that Misato couldn't really see anything, and he was suddenly painfully conscious of how scrawny he was.
Not like she hasn't seen me like this before, he thought with a fresh surge of embarrassment, recalling the incident that had transpired during his first night at Misato's apartment.
"Nice as the view is, I didn't come here just to stare at you all day," Misato teased, causing Shinji's already red face to darken until it was almost purple. "I have towels and clothing for you, and the girls, too. So come on out of there."
"Um, can you close your eyes or something?" he asked timidly.
Misato chuckled but quickly agreed, and Shinji got out of the plug. Accepting the towel his guardian offered him, he quickly began to dry himself off, wanting to be dressed as soon as possible.
"Wow, Shinji, you sure have grown since the night you met Pen-Pen!" Misato said suggestively, referring to the very incident Shinji had been thinking about a moment ago.
"Misato!" he exclaimed, mortified.
Then he looked up at her face and saw that her eyes were still completely closed. He sighed heavily as Misato broke out into giggles; he'd been had.
Grumbling inaudibly, Shinji hurriedly dressed himself, then told Misato she could open her eyes.
"I'm going to go get the girls," Misato said. "You should probably stay here. I don't think Asuka would need much excuse to blow up at you right now."
"Right," Shinji agreed at once and leaned against the side of his plug, making sure that no line of sight existed between where he was and the other plugs.
Misato walked off, and he allowed himself a small sigh once he was sure she was far enough away not to hear it.
He wasn't sure what was more messed up: that he thought he was becoming used to her teasing (if not inured to it), or that he had the feeling that he'd miss it if she stopped for some reason.
The cleanup performed in the aftermath of the Eleventh Angel's assault was exceedingly messy, and the fact that Commander Ikari was doing everything he could to keep news of the attack quiet was only making it more difficult for everyone involved. The Operations Director had been assigned the task of supervising the cleanup of the Pribnow Box, which might never be fully repaired, and would have to surrender several weekends to the job.
It is good to be a tactical consultant, Misato decided on Sunday morning, sitting at the kitchen table in her pajamas and chugging a beer.
"YEEEE-HAAAW!" she exclaimed upon finishing it, crushing the now empty can against her forehead.
From his place at the stove, Shinji sighed quietly. "I wish you wouldn't drink so much, Misato," he commented.
"You worry too much, Shinji," the purple haired woman replied dismissively. "You should try and let go of your anxieties and live a little."
The Third Child just muttered something unintelligible by way of reply and turned his attention back to the task of making breakfast. In a few minutes, he was setting plates on the table.
"Mmm," Misato inhaled the aroma of the food appreciatively, "that's nice."
"It's nothing fancy," Shinji replied, as embarrassed by praise as ever.
"Nonsense, it's great," Misato replied, digging in with gusto.
Shinji just waved the compliment off and continued to prepare the table for the morning meal. The purple haired woman soon realized that he was only setting two places.
"Is Asuka not planning to eat with us or something?" she asked.
"Hm? Oh, no," Shinji said. "I don't have time to eat with you two, unfortunately. NERV's scheduled me for another checkup." He added with a sour expression.
"On a Sunday? That stinks," Misato said sympathetically.
Ever since the last Angel attack, all three pilots had repeatedly been called into the base for physical examinations. NERV was apparently concerned that they might have been exposed to the Angel, though Asuka had loudly speculated that somebody at the base's medical was simply a sadist, and Misato privately thought the redhead might well be right.
"I don't exactly want to spend my day off getting poked and prodded again, but…" he shrugged, silently conveying that there was nothing to be done for it. "Anyway, I have to go. I'll see you later, Misato."
Grabbing a piece of toast for the road, Shinji left the apartment and was soon en route to NERV, leaving Misato alone in the kitchen, feeling disappointed.
Having nothing to do that day, she'd been hoping that she and Shinji could spend some time together, since she'd thoroughly enjoyed their last two outings together (with the exception of the whole armed robbery incident during their trip to the mini-golf course). Now that vague plan was shot.
While she was pondering over how to spend her day and coming dangerously close to deciding that there wasn't anything better to do than chores, Asuka entered the kitchen, freshly showered and dressed.
"Morning," the redhead said, unusually quietly, and sat down to start eating.
Misato silently regarded the Second Child as they ate. Despite the indifferent attitude Asuka had displayed when Misato and Shinji had returned from their trip to the park, the purple haired woman suspected that the Second Child had felt hurt at being excluded. Perhaps she should offer to do something with Asuka.
"Hey, Asuka?"
"What?" the Second Child asked.
"Do you have to go into headquarters today?"
"No, why?" Asuka asked.
"I was wondering if you wanted to do a girls' day out. We could go to the mall," Misato offered.
"Hm? Oh, no thanks, Misato," Asuka answered distractedly. "I have plans for today. I won't be back until this evening."
This response left Misato, who'd been expecting Asuka to either accept the offer or contemptuously refuse it, more than a little surprised.
"Oh, I see," she said.
A few minutes later, Asuka put her dishes in the sink and left without a word, her mind clearly elsewhere. Misato arched an eyebrow as the Second Child briefly returned to her room and then left the apartment.
What is she up to? Misato wondered.
On the ground floor of the apartment building where she lived, Asuka quickly ducked into a small electrical closet that she had been getting quite a bit of use out of lately. After a quick scan to ensure that none of the building's maintenance people were around, the Second Child began to quickly undress, trading her dress for her white leotard, red cape, mask, and blond wig.
Now properly garbed, Power Girl left the building, easily sneaking past the Section Two detail that watched the place without being seen. Taking to the air, she began to fly westward at top speed.
Finally, she thought, luxuriating in the feel of the wind against her skin. I thought I'd never get to do this.
A while ago, she had discovered a possible lead in discovering why she had these phenomenal powers. Unfortunately, however, she needed to go all the way back to Germany to pursue it, and even for her, such a trip was likely to take a full day. She had been all ready to go several times, but events at NERV had delayed her for weeks.
But at last, she was free for the day. In mere minutes, she had reached the coast and she was over China before the hour was out, feeling excited and a little scared at the prospect of discovering what she was.
After Asuka departed, Misato took her beer over to the couch and switched on the TV, intent on enjoying a very lazy day. Pen-Pen waddled up to her and managed to climb up onto the couch next to her, and she smiled and began to pet the bird.
Then she frowned. "Where did you get that from?" she asked, noticing a tin of sardines clutched in his claws.
She knew she hadn't bought any of that for him, and she was pretty sure Shinji hadn't either.
"Wark!" the penguin replied, an imploring look in his little eyes, holding up the tin.
With a rueful roll of her eyes, Misato took it, opened it up, and handed it to her pet. Pen-Pen released a joyful little squawk as he reclaimed the tin and rapidly began to gulp down the little fish.
Finding the remote control, the purple haired woman began to surf through the channels. After several minutes of this, however, she scowled and shut the TV off.
"Two hundred and fifty channels and not a single thing worth watching," she proclaimed disgustedly. "What is this world coming to, Pen-Pen?"
The artic waterfowl did not reply, too busy with his sardines.
With a thought, Misato allowed the ring that sat on her finger to shimmer into visibility, and she ran her thumb thoughtfully over the band of green metal. She hadn't planned on doing very much superhero work outside of fighting the Angels, in hopes of minimizing the chance that her identity would be exposed.
But…she was bored. And if there was anything that being the Green Lantern was not, it was boring.
It shouldn't hurt anything…and practicing my ring slinging will make me better able to beat the next Angel, she rationalized.
Smiling, she turned to Pen-Pen and said, "Looks like you get the place to yourself for the day."
Ritsuko tried to feel some sense of satisfaction as she rode the elevator down to Terminal Dogma. For the past few days, she had been working on trying to extract every scrap of useful data she could get from the aborted experiment. She'd finally finished with the task…which meant that it was now time for her return to the Commander's secret side project.
Hooray, she thought dourly.
Really, the project wasn't as onerous as she had expected…though that wasn't really saying much. The frame, at least, had been mercifully easy for her and her small team to construct. They'd used the designs found in the stolen file Gendo had given her to build a prototype, and had then been pleasantly surprised to discover that only minimal tweaking was necessary to make the resulting creation a fully functioning suit of power armor.
From there, however, things hadn't been going very well. Commander Ikari wanted the suit to be armed, almost literally, to the teeth—small wonder, considering what he had planned for it. Unfortunately, some of the weapons he wanted were proving themselves an absolute bitch to fabricate and install. They'd had to expand the chassis to accommodate all the extra hardware, which had led to balance issues that had taken days to correct.
The elevator finally reached its destination, and Ritsuko went to the chamber where she and her team were working on the armor. As she her team wasn't due to arrive for another hour yet, she was unsurprised to find only the large, silent form of the armor waiting for her there. Its yellow paint job made it look out of place in Terminal Dogma, a place almost utterly devoid of bright colors.
"So, how are you today?" she asked the armor in a dry tone as she walked in.
It scared the hell out of her when the thing moved.
"What in god's name?" Ritsuko sputtered, her heart suddenly jack hammering in her chest as she quickly retreated away from the armor. "Who's in there?!"
The armor's optic sensors suddenly lit up, pulsing with golden light. It straightened from the hunched over posture it had when not active, and a booming, gravelly voice issued forth for the suit's external speakers.
"We are…Legion!"
Author's Notes: Well, there was a lot of set up for our new super villain in this chapter. I didn't like how much of it was focused on Gendo and Ritsuko, but, well, not every chapter can be Shinji and Misato going on little quasi-dates.
Anyway, for those of you who aren't very familiar with the GL mythos, Legion was the bad guy in part one of the now defunct origin story Brightest Day, and the cause of Abin Sur's demise. It had occurred to me that the Eleventh Angel, being apparently a type of hive mind itself, was sort of similar to Legion, and that we were rather low on battles against super villains. Add in the fact that Ireul is the Angel of Fear, and I was sold.
Astute readers will note the implied link to Mana's armor in "Girl of Steel." I actually debated having her in this chapter, with things having gone bad for her and her languishing in Terminal Dogma as a result, forced to help Gendo lest he have her injured mother hurt or killed. But I didn't want to introduce her here if her only purpose in the fic would be to make Gendo's new scheme seem more plausible, and I didn't really have anything else in mind for her.
I'm sure a lot of you were expecting Sinestro Corpsman Gendo to personally ruin Misato's day, but it's just not time for that yet. Truthfully, I'm not sure Gendo would go and get his own hands dirty right away, anyway, but this way he doesn't even have that option.
Orionpax09, I told you I was planning something with the Eleventh Angel. Also, you'll be pleased to note that since Asuka's heading off to the other side of Eurasia, she'll be completely absent from the coming battle.
d-scribe, I'm so sorry if you think it so incredibly narrow minded of me to portray a man who knowingly had a hand in triggering a disaster that killed three billion people before the death of his wife messed him up as I've been portraying Gendo. You have a nice life, too.
Anyway, thanks as always to my readers and reviewers, and thanks to my beta reader as well.
Now for some fun.
Omake
Enough
(A/N: You won't get this unless you've read the omakes from "Altered Destinies" and orionpax09's Superwomen of Eva fics)
Misao Katsuragi, Fourth Child of NERV, whistled cheerfully as she went down the city streets. This wouldn't have drawn much attention from anyone at all, except for the fact that she was going down the street in Evangelion Unit One, and her excessively cheerful demeanor while behind the proverbial wheel of the 70 meter tall death machine was somehow scary as all hell to anyone who happened to be observing her.
"Gonna get my car back," she sang, switching from whistling to singing, which wasn't much better for anyone's nerves, "gonna get my car back!"
A while ago, she had entrusted the care of her beloved Renualt Alpine to an auto mechanic, wanting him to maintain the vehicle until she was once more old enough to drive it. Unfortunately, said auto mechanic had turned out to be an international thief who'd given the Renault to his girlfriend and then run off with her.
Misao was not pleased, and after begging for a very long time (so long that she didn't even achieve success before "Altered Destinies" had finished), she had finally been authorized to take Unit One out so she could retrieve her car.
And punish the thief. That was paramount, too.
"Pilot Katsuragi," Makoto said, a window labeled FROM COMMAND popping up on her HUD, "you've almost reached your car's position. Just take a left at the next intersection."
"Thanks, Hyuga," Misao said. "Man, when I catch that guy, he is in for a world of hurt! And don't get me started on what he's in for if he so much as scratched my baby!"
Makoto looked rather scared of the bloodlust shining in the EVA pilot's eyes, and he responded by closing the communications channel without a world.
Soon afterwards, Unit One reached the intersection he'd told her about and took the appropriate turn. Misato immediately saw her car and thief, and she…stopped short.
Several of the Superwomen of Eva were present, and all of them were furiously beating up Lupin III and his usual accomplices, who were all obviously past the point of fighting back or trying to escape.
"Yeah! Let 'em have it girls!" Orionpax shouted from not far off. "They deserve everything you can dish out!"
"Great! Because I can dish out a lot!" Ghost Rider said, grinning wickedly.
"For once, I like the way you think, Asuka!" Orionpax said.
A large bead of sweat formed on the back of Misao's head. Gingerly, she had Unit One reach down and pick up her car, then started to walk away.
I was really planning to ruin that guy, she thought as she left the scene. But I think he's being punished enough…
