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 am making no profit off this fan fiction. No infringement of copyright is intended. In other words, please don't sue.


Chapter Twelve: Mind Over Matter

Shinji Ikari was not a typical teenage boy.

Even if one were to ignore the truly glaring differences between Shinji and most of his peers—being the pilots of an Evangelion and the emotional issues he had, for starters—there were still some significant examples to be found.

Unlike most teenage boys (and teenagers in general), Shinji was a morning person.

This had begun when he was with his previous guardian. The man didn't like to cook, and so had insisted Shinji learn as soon as the boy was old enough to safely operate a stove. Once Shinji had become competent at the culinary arts, he'd found himself with the job of preparing all the food, which had meant getting up early to make breakfast.

Though he'd initially felt rather put out at being saddled with this extra job, Shinji had eventually discovered that he enjoyed the early hours when most others weren't up yet.

That sentiment had only grown stronger when he'd found himself in the dangerous and sometimes chaotic life of an Evangelion pilot. Shinji felt he needed the morning hours, which were always quiet, tranquil, peaceful…

"Urp!"

A ringing belch suddenly sounded inside the kitchen, bringing the Third Child's train of thought to a halt.

Well, I guess they're almost always peaceful, he amended, glancing over at Misato, who was seated at the kitchen table, holding a large, steaming mug. Why the heck does coffee cause her to burp like that?

With a mental shrug, Shinji returned to the task of making breakfast, soon setting down a trio of plates at the table.

"You gonna wake Asuka up?" Misato asked, looking just a tad bit more awake after a few mouthfuls of food.

Shinji glanced at the clock. "There's still some time," he said. "Might as well let her sleep in a few more minutes."

"Might help her disposition a bit," Misato replied with a small smirk.

"I'm surprised you're awake," Shinji remarked. "You don't have to go to the base early today, do you?"

"Hmm? Oh, no, but my work schedule's been so crazy lately that it's been messing with my sleep schedule. I woke up early this morning and just couldn't get back to sleep," she complained.

"Ouch," Shinji said sympathetically.

They lapsed into silence after that, both of them eating at a sedate pace. Between bites, Shinji stole glances at Misato, again wondering if his often slovenly guardian could really be the Green Lantern.

He started to mentally compare the two again, struggling remember every little detail he'd taken in when the emerald superwoman had thwarted the robbery of the mini-golf course. They're about the same height, and they definitely have the same body type, he noted appreciatively. But their eyes…

Shinji gazed at Misato's half-lidded eyes. They were a warm brown, completely unlike the luminous superwoman's almost unnaturally vivid green ones.

Though I guess that out of all the reasons Misato probably isn't the Green Lantern, that's the weakest, he mused. After all, colored contacts could do that.

Unfortunately, caught up in his thoughts, Shinji had forgotten to steal glances at Misato and had instead started outright staring at her. She noticed.

"See something you like, Shinji-kun?" Misato asked with a smirk.

"Huh?" he asked, surprised at getting caught looking at her.

The purple-haired woman's grin widened. "Wow, I must really still have it if a young man like you can't resist taking an eyeful when I look like this!" she said, running a hand through her wild, just-woke-up hairdo and then gesturing to her rumpled (and skimpy) sleep clothes.

"Yeah," Shinji said softly, then blushed when he realized that he'd spoken aloud.

No one should look as good when completely disheveled as Misato did, he decided. No one.

The Ops Director beamed. "And what was it about me that most caught your roving eye, Shinji-kun?" she asked in a breathy voice that sent pleasant shivers down his spine.

"Um…" Shinji stammered, suddenly finding it very difficult to think straight. He couldn't very well tell her that he'd been trying to figure out if she was Green Lantern or not, but he wasn't quite sure what he could tell her.

"Come, you can tell me, Shinji-kun," Misato cooed. "What part of me were you looking at?"

He was unpleasantly reminded on the time Toji and Kensuke had caught him looking at Rei and had started demanding to know which part of her anatomy he most preferred.

"Shinji-kun?"

"Your eyes," he finally blurted out.

Misato blinked, so surprised by his answer that she completely dropped her smoky tone of voice. "You were looking at my eyes?"

He nodded, relieved that he'd given an answer that wasn't terrible.

"Why?" Misato asked, bemused.

He shrugged, not entirely understanding the question. "Why not?"

She snickered. "Shinji, my eyes are probably the most plain thing about me," she informed him. "They're brown. There are millions and millions of people in Japan with brown eyes. I wish I had nice blue ones like yours." She added, smiling fondly at him.

"But I think your eyes are really pretty," he protested.

Then he felt like slapping himself. The filter between his brain and his mouth seemed to be completely absent that morning.

Misato, however, didn't notice Shinji cringing at his own words. Her warm brown eyes were suddenly looking decidedly liquid thanks to the Third Child's clumsy but very sincere compliment.

The silence between them soon started to stretch out. Shinji coughed nervously. Clearly, one of them had to say something soon, but Misato wasn't stepping up to the plate, and he had no idea what to say.

The moment was saved by the arrival of Asuka, who had emerged from her bedroom mere moments before. "Why didn't you wake me if you had breakfast ready?" she demanded of Shinji without preamble.

"Oh, uh, I wanted to let you sleep in a little," Shinji said.

Asuka, always a ray of sunshine in the morning, glared at him for a moment and then sat down at her place. "At least it's still hot," she grumbled after sampling a bite.

Shinji just tried not to look as grateful and relieved as he felt.


"You realize, of course, that our patience is starting to grow thin. You know this can't continue this forever, Professor Fuyutski."

The captive Vice Commander of NERV didn't try to hide his exasperation with this whole process. He'd spent most of the last few days in a tiny, windowless cell. Every day at some point (he had no means of determining when, exactly), a pair of men who would've fit in perfectly in Section Two would arrive and drag him off to a holographic meeting chamber. The monoliths representing the members of the SEELE council would appear to interrogate him, and when they got nothing, they would have him sent back to his cell.

It was all very tiresome.

"My patience is growing thin, too," he told the council. "So why don't we just end this whole spectacle already?"

SEELE 03 chuckled darkly, the voice alteration adding an extra eerie quality to the sound. "Tell me, Professor, do you believe in Hell?" he asked.

"Yes," Fuyutski answered without hesitation.

"Then perhaps you shouldn't be so eager to bring this experience to an end," SEELE 03 said. "At least, not an end where you deny us the information we seek. After all, you're no saint, Fuyutski. As the second in command of NERV, you've had to do things that most would consider evil."

"I said I believe that Hell exists," Fuyutski said. "I didn't say I was afraid of it. I've seen and lived through Hell. I can do it again. I deserve as much."

"So eager to die? And for Ikari, of all people?" SEELE 03 sneered. "I wouldn't be, if I were you."

"Enough," SEELE 01 spoke up, his voice authoritative. "Professor, we have been tolerant of your stalling and postponement thus far, but time is not on our side. If you do not divulge the things Ikari has kept hidden from us, we will be forced to use more…persuasive measures to loosen your tongue."

"Restoring to threats of torture?" Fuyutski asked, trying to hide how fearful he suddenly was. Unlike death, that was a prospect he truly did dread. "I thought you were more sophisticated than that."

"It is not a threat, it is a promise," SEELE 01 growled, just as a pair of men appeared in the doorway to the room. "You will be taken back to your cell now. Weigh your options carefully before facing us again."

Fuyutski said nothing as he was led away. His situation, which had previously just been a nuisance, had suddenly become genuinely frightening, and he found himself wishing that someone would come to get him out of it.

He could only think of one person who would be able to pull off a rescue and would be crazy enough to act directly against SEELE in such a manner. Unfortunately, Gendo had very effectively leashed Kaji when he'd forced the man into the Operations Director job.


Ryoji Kaji was not having a very good week. In fact, if he was being honest with himself, Kaji would admit that so far he was having a very bad year.

Something was happening. He knew something was happening. His superiors (one set of them anyway) had ordered him to try to investigate and take any appropriate actions.

But that was utterly impossible to do while he was stuck in Misato's old office, filling out paperwork, with that jackass Chiron or someone else from Section Two coming to check on him every few minutes!

This sucks, he thought as he scrawled his signature onto yet another form, wondering how Misato had managed to stay sane in this job.

"Well, you look happy," a familiar voice said from the doorway, startling him out of his stupor.

He looked up, surprised to see Misato standing there. "Speak of the devil," he grumbled.

"Eh?"

"I was just thinking about you," he answered. "Wondering how you put up with all of this."

"Alcohol," Misato answered. "Now that I'm not the Operations Director anymore, I've gotten rid of all my beer."

"Mm, yes, Shinji mentioned that to me," Kaji said.

The spy turned Ops Director hadn't quite figured out how Misato's abrupt 180 on that had come about. Shinji had told him what details he could, but it was clear that the Third Child didn't understand it himself. He would've liked to investigate the minor mystery, but between his new position and trying to figure out how to get away from Section Two for a few hours, he simply didn't have the time.

"You've been having conversations about me?" Misato asked, her eyebrows going up.

"Shinji was worried about you, Katsuragi. So was I, for that matter," he said, neglecting to mention that they'd been planning an intervention. No need to bring that up now.

"Oh," Misato replied.

"Touched by our concern?" he asked.

"Touched by Shinji's concern," she corrected.

Kaji sighed, finding himself sadly unsurprised. "You wound me," he said. "Look, whatever the reason, I'm glad you stopped drinking so much, Katsuragi. It wasn't good for you."

"Thanks," Misato said, looking grudgingly grateful.

Kaji smiled. "And I have to say, looking at you now, you should have stopped a long time ago," he said. "I swear, you look ten years younger!"

Rather than blush or snap at him to stop hitting on her, Misato chuckled nervously. "Thanks, I guess."

Kaji arched an eyebrow. She seemed to be hiding something, but for the life of him, he couldn't even guess at what it might be.

"So, what brings you here?" he asked. "Don't tell me you actually came to help me with all this crap?" he gestured to the enormous amount of paperwork.

"I could take a couple of stacks back to my office if you'd like," she said.

"Oh, boy, now I know you want something," he said. "So, what are you after? Out with it."

"Well, I was wondering if you knew what happened to the Vice Commander," she said. "Seems like he's been gone for a while now, and nobody ever said where he went off to."

Kaji was not particularly surprised by this question. "Oh, him?" he asked, absently grabbing a pen and paper. "He's on vacation."

"A vacation," Misato echoed skeptically.

The long-haired man nodded while positioning himself so that the hidden camera he knew was in the office couldn't see his pad. "Yes, I know, it seems odd to leave in the middle of a war," he said. "But the Commander's not planning on going anywhere for a while, so Fuyutski isn't really needed."

He quickly scribbled down the words "Talk to me later if you want the real answers. Away from HQ" onto the pad as he spoke.

"Oh," Misato said, catching onto what he was doing. "I see. Well, I guess the man deserves some time off."

"That's what I thought," Kaji agreed, tearing off the top sheet from his pad and quickly stuffing it into one of the stacks of paperwork on his desk. "This one's yours." He told Misato, picking up the stack and handing it to her.

"I'll get to it right away," she promised, accepting the papers.

"Thank you," Kaji said. "Oh, and Katsuragi, one more thing."

"Yes?"

"Look," he began, taking a deep breath. Suddenly he felt a good deal less suave than usual. "It's pretty obvious that you don't want much to do with me this time around."

"'Obvious' is understating it," Misato chimed in with a small smirk, though her tone was not unkind.

"But I was just wondering, if I had chased after you, when you left me, do you think I could've changed your mind?" he asked.

Misato hesitated for a moment before answering. "Yeah," she said. "I think there would've been a good chance."

"Ah," he said. "Well, thanks for satisfying my curiosity, Katsuragi."

"No problem," she answered, then left his office.

With a sigh, he sat back down in his uncomfortable office chair. "You're an idiot, Kaji," he told himself.


"And you say he's been doing this ever since he woke up?" asked Haru Tanesada, Vice President and all around big shot at Kiyoharu Innovations.

Looking at the live feed from the camera in Shiro Tokita's room, Dr. Maeda tried not to grimace at the note of interest in his boss's voice.

Tokita's mutations had only grown more severe as time had passed, making him look even a bit more freakish and troll-like than he had before. He had lost virtually all ability to move his body, confining him completely to a wheelchair. To make matters even worse, the chair had needed a specialized, padded clamp to hold his oversized cranium in place; like an infant, Tokita was no longer capable of holding up his own head. His voice had also grown weaker and softer. It was just a matter of time before he was no longer capable of speech, and Maeda had no idea how he'd communicate when that happened. Eye blinks might be all that was left to him by that point.

Yet even as his body grew ever more twisted and deformed, Tokita had developed a new skill: telekinesis. The man had spent many of his waking hours practicing his new power, going from unsteadily levitating some of the medical equipment in his room for a few seconds to making it all dance through the air at once. If he realized he was being watched, he didn't seem to care.

"He's been doing it almost constantly," Maeda answered his boss. "Of course, he doesn't have much else to do."

"Fascinating," Tanesada said.

"Sir?" Maeda said. He couldn't see anything fascinating when he looked at the grotesque parody of a human being that his former supervisor had become.

"Well, just think of the possibilities, if the telekinetic powers could be separated from the mutation," Tanesada mused, an avaricious light appearing in his eyes. "Do you suppose it's possible to do that?"

It took quite a lot of effort on Maeda's part to conceal his disgust. Tokita had been driven to recklessly open the alien fuel tank largely by the pressure Tanesada had put on him to produce results. Yet rather than show a single shred of regret, the man was trying to wring a profit from the tragedy.

"I…I couldn't say, Tanesada-san," Maeda somehow managed to be polite. Despite his attitudes toward the man's behavior, he still very much wanted to keep his job. "It would take extensive research to even ascertain whether it's possible, let alone how to actually do it. I'm not sure Tokita-san will consent to it."

"Hmph, I don't see what choice he has in the matter," Tanesada remarked. "The company isn't obligated to continue paying for his treatments, or to continue seeking a way to reverse the mutation. After all, he broke numerous protocols in opening the fuel tank."

"Sir, if that's the way you feel, then you'd better speak with Tokita-san about all this while he's still able to give verbal consent," Maeda said, firmly implying that he wouldn't be the one doing it.

He may not have ever liked Tokita, but he wasn't about to add insult to injury by telling the man that he had to be Kiyoharu Innovation's newest guinea pig.

"Yes, perhaps I'd better," Tanesada agreed. "Make sure you get his agreement on tape. I don't want Tokita claiming we did anything without his consent later."

He left the room, and Maeda dutifully turned on the audio feed, then hit the record button. "This is not going to end well," he said, shaking his head.


If he'd still been capable of it, Tokita would have smiled as he made the medical equipment and his minimal furniture (besides his bed) fly around the room. How difficult it had been before, compared to how effortless it was now!

He wished he could go further with practicing the use of his new powers, but that would make his current keepers fear him. They'd try to figure out some way to blunt his mental powers, and he would have to rebel.

It wasn't time for that yet. He couldn't break free until the proper moment to attack NERV came at last, and that would be when it started to move.

Tokita didn't know exactly when it would begin moving, but he knew it would be soon, oh so soon. Any day now probably.

Why, he almost felt like an eager father-to-be, waiting for the day when his very pregnant wife finally went into labor.

As Tokita was pondering all this, the door to his little room opened, and Tanesada walked inside, looking as cheerful and amicable as ever, even in the face of his badly mutated employee.

Tokita reached out and carefully probed the other man's mind, using a feather-light touch that got him surface thoughts only. He saw an image of yen notes without number dancing through Tanesada's head.

"Good day, Tokita-san," he said. "Ah, would you mind very much stopping that?" he gestured to the objects swirling around the room.

Tokita lowered everything gently back to the floor.

"Much better," Tanesada said with a smile. "Now, I do believe it's time that we discussed your arrangement."

"Arrangement?" Tokita rasped softly.

Tanesada nodded. "Oh, yes," he said. "You see, caring for someone with your unique condition, well, it's quite a drain on the company's funds…"

The man talked for several minutes, refusing to directly state what he was after for the longest time, yet Tokita would've been able to figure it out even if he wasn't telepathic. He resisted the urge to sigh at thought of being more of a lab rat than he already was. The scientists would no doubt want blood samples, tissue samples, and to put him through any number of tests.

It would be very unpleasant and boring.

"So, what do you say, Tokita?" Tanesada finally got around to asking straight out.

The mutated man was about to give a reluctant agreement when he sensed it with his new telepathic powers. The immensely powerful and utterly alien consciousness that he'd sensed some time ago finally woke, stirring as it threw off its slumber.

There was no doubt in Tokita's mind that it would move to attack Tokyo-3 soon. Though he couldn't comprehend most of its thoughts, its single-minded determination to get at…something in the city was undeniable.

"Tokita-san?" Tanesada spoke when the other man didn't answer. "Do you agree to my terms?"

It was time to make his move at last.

"No." Tokita responded telepathically, no longer having to bother with the strain of verbal communication.

Before Tanesada could even fully register the fact that he'd heard his employee's voice inside his head, he felt himself being lifted up off the floor by an invisible hand. His eyes widened as he looked down at Tokita in horror. The man's deformed face was slack and utterly devoid of expression, a thin stream of drool running down from his lower lip and onto his chin, but there was no doubt that Tokita was behind this.

"W-Wait, please, don't hurt me! I—"

"Your mind is boring. All you ever think about is money."

With that, Tokita tossed Tanesada into the wall with such force that the executive crashed straight through it. The low groan the man emitted afterwards was the only sign that he'd even survived the experience.

The mutated man then focused his mind, and his wheelchair slowly lifted off the floor and began to head toward the door, which he easily tore open with a wave of telekinetic power.

Alarms started to blare just as he made it out into the hall, but Tokita ignored them. Minutes later, a small squad of the building's security force confronted him. Tokita didn't ignore them.

"Halt!" the leader of group shouted, an audible quaver in his voice. "Y-You must go back to your room. If you don't cooperate, we'll have no choice but to use force."

Tokita chuckled. These men were used to escorting newly terminated employees off the premises. They were totally out of their league with someone like him.

"Get out of my way." He ordered them. "I need to go take my revenge on NERV now."

Even though they were clearly terrified, the group of men stood their ground.

"I said MOVE!" Tokita roared.

A ripple of telekinetic power tore through the hallway, sending the group of men sprawling. After that display, even the ones capable of getting up didn't.

"Better." He said and continued his trek out of the building.


Misato really hated paperwork.

Since having stepped down from the Operations Director position, she had partially forgotten just how much she hated paperwork. However, working on the stack she'd taken from Kaji was doing quite a good job of refreshing her memory.

And all I got for it was a lousy note promising answers later, she thought. This better not be a ploy on his part to go out on a date with me. If it is…

The image of Kaji being hit with a giant green boxing glove suddenly appeared in her mind, and Misato couldn't help but smirk. She wouldn't do that, of course, but it was fun to think about.

Part of her wondered why she was even bothering with the mystery of Fuyutski's absence. The rest of her, though, knew she was doing it because something smelled seriously rotten about the situation. She didn't like the presence of secret issues festering at NERV; in her experience, the kinds of problems that the brass tried to hide all too often had a way of eventually afflicting the rank-and-file soldiers. Which in this case meant the Evangelion pilots.

In the past, there would've been little she could've done about it, but she had a power ring and a secret identity now.

Unfortunately, that meant putting up with Kaji a bit. And some of her former paperwork, too.

With a sigh, she turned back to the report she was supposed to be reading. Just as she was starting to really concentrate on the thing, her phone let out a loud beep as the intercom when off.

"Yes?" Misato asked, perhaps a little too eagerly, as she picked up the receiver.

"Major, this is Makoto," the tech's voice replied. "We're receiving an official communiqué from the JSSDF, and I thought you should be made aware of it."

Misato frowned. The JSSDF usually avoided talking to NERV except when the Angels were involved. "What's it say?" she asked.

"Uh, apparently an individual named Shiro Tokita is currently headed toward Tokyo-3, and he's intent on taking vengeance against NERV," Makoto said. "They said they'd handle it, but they just wanted to make us aware of the situation."

He sounded confused, and understandably so, in Misato's opinion. It took her a moment to remember who Tokita was, and once she did, she only became more bewildered by the JSSDF's courtesy call.

"And why are they calling to warn us about a corporate spokesperson gone on a rampage?" she asked.

"According to them, he gained some unusual abilities through—and I'm quoting them here—an 'unfortunate accident' a few weeks ago," Makoto said. "Seems like they're actually having trouble stopping him."

"You're kidding," she said, incredulous.

"Nope," Makoto said. "The guy's made it close enough to the city that we can see him with our surveillance network. Want me to send the feed to your computer?"

"Would you?" Misato asked him, her tone just coy enough to ensure that he double-timed it.

A second later, a streaming video of the incident in question appeared on her monitor. Misato quickly thanked the tech, then hung up her phone, turning her full attention to the screen.

God, what happened to him? She wondered, horrified at Tokita's deformed appearance. She hadn't liked the man when they'd met, but she wouldn't have wished such a transformation upon anyone.

Once she got over her surprise and horror at seeing what the man had become, she quickly took in several details about the scene on her monitor. Tokita was in a wheelchair that was hovering above the ground somehow, headed down what appeared to be a major roadway. However, Misato didn't see any cars, leading her to believe that the JSSDF had evacuated and closed the highway that linked Tokyo-2 and Tokyo-3, which was one of the busiest expressways in all of Japan.

If that wasn't enough to show that the military was truly serious about the threat the horribly mutated man presented, the squad of soldiers armed with fully automatic machine guns certainly did.

They're not even gonna give him a warning, are they? She thought, wondering just why they considered the shrunken businessman such a threat.

Sure enough, the soldiers didn't hesitate to point their weapons at Tokita and open fire. However, just before they could pull the triggers, their guns all jerked upwards abruptly, sending the bullets spaying harmlessly into the air. From the looks on their faces, it was clear that they hadn't done that.

A second later, the soldiers were sent flying by an invisible force. The men must have careened at least fifteen meters through the air before they finally landed on the highway.

The camera then panned out, showing an attack helicopter as it drew within striking distance of Tokita, its guns gleaming in the midday sunshine. Normally, sending one of those things against a single individual would have been complete overkill.

Normally.

Just before it could get close enough to open fire, it abruptly went off course, as though a god had reached out and flicked the thing with his thumb and forefinger. Damaged somehow, the chopper started to spin wildly as it rapidly lost altitude. The men inside bailed out, clearly having no hope of averting a crash.

Then the image on Misato's screen changed into static as the helicopter landed on the camera that had been taking the video feed.

"Whoa," she said.

It actually seemed like the JSSDF might not be able to stop Tokita, which would be bad, considering that he was heading straight for NERV.

Misato toyed with the currently invisible ring on her finger, then turned her head to look at the large stack of paperwork she'd taken from Kaji.

Easy choice.

Getting up, she decided it was time for her to take an early lunch.


"And the military is genuinely worried about this Tokita person?" Kaji asked skeptically, pacing around the middle tier of the command center.

"Sure as hell seems like it," Aoba said with a shrug. "I don't get it, either, but they haven't been able to stop this guy yet, even though they keep insisting that they'll be able to before he gets here. What should we do, sir?"

Kaji sighed. "Give base security a heads up about the situation," he said. "It's about all we can do, short of deploying the Evangelions."

"On it, sir," Aoba replied. "Do you want—?"

The rest of the long-haired man's question was drowned out by the sudden eruption of the alarm klaxons as red warning messages began to flash over every screen.

"What's going on?" Kaji barked. "Report!"

"The MAGI have picked up a blue pattern in low Earth orbit," Maya reported. "Fifteenth Angel confirmed!"

"Spy satellites are moving into position now," Aoba added. "We should have a visual in under two minutes."

"Get the pilots here, now," Kaji ordered. "Ready the Evangelions for launch, and someone call Katsuragi to the bridge."

"Yes, sir," Maya said.

"On it, boss," Aoba said.

"Uh…" Makoto stammered.

Kaji's eyes narrowed. "What is it?" he demanded.

"Major Katsuragi clocked out just before the alarm went off," the bespectacled tech said.

"What? Why?" Kaji asked.

"The reason she entered in was 'Urgent Personal Business', sir," Makoto reported. "We don't know where she is at this time."

"Problem, Mr. Kaji?"

The new Ops Director started slightly at the sound of the Commander's voice from above him. He hadn't heard Ikari arrive on the command center.

Oh, no, no problem at all, sir, he thought sarcastically. Except I don't know how to do the damn job you saddled me with, and the woman who does is missing!

Fortunately, Aoba saved him from having to answer. "Spy satellites are in position," he reported. "Putting the Angel up on the main monitor now."

The image on the command center's largest screen immediately shifted, displaying a creature that appeared to be made entirely out of luminous pink crystal. It was shaped very much like the wings of a bird.

"It's beautiful," Maya breathed.

Kaji silently agreed. Unfortunately, it was undoubtedly still deadly, despite how pretty it was. "Have the MAGI been able to glean any useful information yet?" he asked.

"No, sir," Maya said. "All scans are coming up inconclusive."

"Big surprise," Kaji grumbled. "What's it doing so far?"

"It's just holding position," Aoba reported. "It's in geosynchronous orbit directly above us, sir."

"It would seem that the first move is ours," Gendo remarked. "How likely is it that we'll be able to destroy it while it's in orbit?"

"The MAGI calculates that our most powerful positron cannon has a 0.0000001 percent chance of destroying the Angel at this distance," Makoto answered, his tone apologetic.

"Then it appears that we'll have to coax it down," Gendo said. "Deploy the Evangelions the moment the pilots get into them, and have them attempt to shoot down the target. If nothing else, it should at least get the Angel to come closer."

Kaji turned his head just enough to glance at the Commander from the corner of his eye. Part of him was admittedly relieved to have the responsibility of determining their game plan taken away from him, greatly relieved. On the other hand…

He's using the pilots as bait, the long-haired man thought with a grimace.

Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do about it.


Soaring through the air so quickly that the world blurred around her, her form radiating emerald light, and blissfully unaware of the threat bearing down on Tokyo-3, Green Lantern was having a good time.

Why did I ever let them promote me out of the field? She wondered, relishing the potent combination of anxiety and excitement (and adrenaline) that came with the knowledge that she was about to engage the enemy.

"Ring, ETA," she said.

"At your current pace, you will reach Tokita's current location in just under two minutes," the ring reported.

"Too slow," she decided, willing herself to even greater speed.

"ETA is now under one minute," the ring reported.

Green Lantern's lips curled upwards. "Better."

Seconds later, the emerald superwoman came to an abrupt halt, quickly surveying the scene. In the time that it had taken her to get from her office in the NERV pyramid, the JSSDF had sent several Humvees and another attack helicopter at Tokita. All of them were laying in smoking heaps on the ground, reduced to so much scrap metal by the deformed man's mental powers.

Tokita himself was still heading down the highway in his floating wheelchair. If he noticed the Green Lantern, he gave no sign of it.

"Yo, buddy! Pull that thing over!" she yelled at him, creating a construct of a stop sign and positioning it right before him.

Tokita came to a halt before it. Slowly, the wheelchair tilted in the air so Tokita faced her. Green Lantern looked at the man's deformed visage, expecting to see anger, or contempt, or malice. However, there was no expression to be found in his slack face, and even his eyes looked dull. The sheer emptiness was somehow more disturbing than any amount of fury could have been, and the emerald superwoman had to resist the urge to shiver at the sight.

Then she felt his mind slam into hers with the force of a battering ram.

"Not even you can stop me, Green Lantern!" His voice roared inside her head, deafeningly loud.

The emerald superwoman cried out in agony, clutching at her head as she tumbled to the ground, barely even noticing the pain of impact. The green aura surrounding her body flickered and then died.

She felt like she was drowning, not in water, but in thoughts and emotions; it wasn't oxygen she was struggling for, it was clear thoughts. It took everything that the Green Lantern had not to lose herself entirely in the psychic tide. Tokita's anger, his pain, and his pride all ran so deep they seemed ready to swallow her whole.

No…

Somehow, Green Lantern managed to make it to her hands and knees and looked up at Tokita, who was now looming over her, that same completely blank expression still on his mutated face. Clenching her teeth, she balled her right hand into a fist and looked down at the ring on her middle finger. Even as her vision swam, her ring of power was mercifully solid, an island of stability in the sea of madness Tokita had unleashed.

Come on, she urged herself. Fight!

It was so hard to concrete right then, but she tried anyway, doing her best to funnel her will into her ring. The power that usually came so easily to her had become slippery somehow, but she just barely managed to get the ring to glow. Hope flared within her.

"None of that now!" Tokita roared, and pain exploded behind Green Lantern's eyes.

The jade superwoman screamed, collapsing and then writhing in agony on the asphalt. Distantly, she remembered the ring telling her that it could be used as a telepathic inhibitor. She had opted to skip that lesson, thinking she'd never have a use for it, at least so long as she remained on Earth.

Shows what she knew.

Then, just as the torture became too much to bear, everything changed.

Which wasn't to say her situation better, just different. Tokita switched tactics, halting his efforts to force pain upon her and consume her mind with the strength of his negative emotions. Rather than forcing things into her mind, he started to take from her mind.

Sensations and stimuli of all kinds rushed past her, almost too quickly for her to comprehend. They swirled around her as ethereal as half forgotten dreams and yet they were so, so vivid.

She heard her mother, dead for years and years now, calling her name and laughing as though she was right there next to her.

She felt hot tears fill her eyes as Daddy left them again for another one of his stupid work trips.

She tasted the lips of the first boy she'd ever kissed, not long before the Katsuragi expedition had set out for the South Pole.

She smelled the blood on the ice as she stared up at the First Angel in horror.

"Oh, my, quite the eventful life you've lived," Tokita said, his rage briefly taking a backseat to curiosity.

He began to paw through her memories much more intently, his mental intrusion reminding her of the groping hands she encountered every time she'd found herself stuck on a crowded subway car, except that this was a far greater violation than that had ever been.

"You work for NERV, Misato Katsuragi," he said, not taking long to make this discovery. "Yet you didn't know that they sabotaged the Jet Alone. Or should I say that you knew but had no proof, the same as myself? How interesting."

"Get out of my head, Tokita," she growled.

"And why should I? It's SO interesting in here," he breathed, sounding disturbingly stimulated by the experience.

Green Lantern struggled mightily against him, but she could find no way to block his intrusions into her mind; she could deny him no shred of her past. Her most intimate moments with Kaji, the still classified missions she'd undertaken while working directly for the UN Army, the secrets of Asuka's past which she'd read about in the Second Child's records, and even the thoughts she'd had about Shinji which she would have never, ever divulged to anyone. All of it was laid bare before her attacker.

Then Tokita came to a very recent memory. One of her sitting in a dark, solitary confinement cell with its sole occupant, a miserable young man who'd been through far more hell than anyone should have to endure. She had done her best to comfort him, then, to show him how great her affection for him was, and as an expression of her gratitude for his efforts against the Angels, she pursed her lips, leaning toward his cheek…

"No!" she shouted, anger filling her as Tokita tried to violate even that memory. "That's mine!"

With a titanic effort, Green Lantern poured every scrap of willpower she could muster into her ring. It wasn't much…just enough to release a massive flash of emerald light.

Tokita unleashed a psychic scream of wordless rage and pain as the radiance stabbed at his eyes, momentarily blinding him. Most of the people within a 50 kilometer radius of the confrontation developed migraine headaches as a result, but his hold on Green Lantern weakened considerably.

Weakened, but did not disappear.

"Ring," Green Lantern gasped. "Give me a crash course on using you to block telepathic attacks. Now."


Asuka Langley Soryu hummed cheerfully to herself as directed Unit Two's movements, assembling the massive position rifle with practiced ease.

Her self-confidence still at an all-time high following her slaying of the Fourteenth Angel, the redhead felt certain that she would be able to defeat this one as well. Her only real concern was that Green Lantern would show up to try and steal the kill, but so far, NERV hadn't seen hadn't seen hide nor hair of the emerald avenger.

"All right, Asuka," Kaji's voice entered her plug as a communications window popped up on her screen, "Shinji and Rei have both been deployed to separate positions with their own positron weapons. But since your sync ratio's the highest, you get the biggest gun. Given how far away this Angel is right now, you're the only one with any realistic chance at hurting it."

Music to the redhead's ears. She had point, and Kaji was on hand to watch her victory. Asuka made a mental note to see about buying a lottery ticket once the battle was over, because this was obviously her lucky day.

"All right, I'm ready," she announced as she finished assembling the gun.

Using a nearby skyscraper to serve as a mount for the weapon's absurdly long barrel, the redhead lightly grasped the trigger, ready to fire. With a thought from her, a visor emerged from the back of her chair and lowered itself over her face. A blinking reticule appeared before her eyes as Unit Two's targeting computer came to life.

"Where are you?" she muttered to herself as she tried to get a target lock.

The Angel was beyond the maximum range of the targeting systems, so Asuka knew that she wouldn't be able to get a lock easily. In fact, she really shouldn't be able to get a lock at all, but the Evangelions had managed to do things that they really shouldn't have been able to pull off several times now. She was confident that EVA could do it again.

The targeting computer let out a weak tone.

"There you are," Asuka said with a broad grin.

She was about to squeeze the trigger when a shaft of light came down from the heavens, breaking through the layer of clouds and shining directly upon Unit Two.

Instantly, the Second Child felt a presence—a presence that was powerful, malicious, and most of all, alien—pressing against her mind, assaulting mental walls she'd never even known she had until that moment.

Those walls almost immediately started to buckle and crack beneath the force of the Angel's attack, allowing tendrils of its loathsome intelligence to make contact with her raw mind.

The Second Child screamed, grabbing her head as Unit Two stumbled backwards, soon tripping and falling, flattening a small office building as it landed.

"No!" Asuka shrieked. "No! Stay the hell out of my mind!"


"Give up already, Tokita," Green Lantern said, materializing a jade duplicate of her trusty Heckler & Koch and pointing it at the mutated man. "This isn't going to end well for you."

Tokita's slack face remained as expressionless as ever. "You overestimate your powers, Green Lantern." He told her, and his mental voice sounded completely unafraid. "Go ahead and do it."

The emerald avenger pulled the trigger of her weapon three times, sending emerald bullets flying.

Tokita vanished a second before the rounds could strike him, reappearing about a dozen meters to the left of his previous position.

"Your mind is still clear to me," he informed her.

A piece of broken asphalt suddenly went spinning through the air, propelled by Tokita's telekinetic powers. It was right on course to hit Green Lantern directly in the face. Quick as lightning, a ribbon emerald light burst from the superwoman's ring, immediately expanding and taking on the shape of a simple shield.

Then Green Lantern blinked, and when she opened her eyes again, the chunk of asphalt was coming at her from a slightly different direction than it had been before. She rushed to move her shield, but she was just a little bit too slow, and the improvised missile struck her directly in the shoulder.

Her personal force field dampened the blow somewhat, but it still hurt it like hell. Green Lantern had to clamp her jaw shut to keep from crying out in pain.

"You bear some responsibly for what has happened to me," Tokita said. "But it's a relatively small portion. Get out of my way, and I may let you live."

She scowled darkly in response. Using her new knowledge and her power ring, she was able to mount some defense against his telepathic abilities by visualizing a wall protecting her mind.

This was actually significantly harder than it sounded; if she did it incorrectly, she'd form a construct inside her own skull and kill herself instantly. Yet despite the danger, she had no choice but to do it. Unfortunately, though she managed to not accidentally commit suicide, her mental barrier was far from perfect, allowing Tokita enough access to her mind to warp her perceptions slightly.

No doubt about it, her situation was grim.

"Go to hell!" she barked. "I'm not about to run away from the likes of you!"

The emerald superwoman heard his wordless growl inside her head.

A small, abandoned car rose off the ground, then went speeding toward her. Green Lantern instantly projected a force bubble around herself and was unsurprised when the car seemed to change locations at the last second, crashing into a different part of the emerald sphere than she would have expected.

"My turn," she said.

The bubble of jade light seemed to shatter, breaking into pieces. Those pieces quickly changed shape, forming several dozen darts of emerald radiance.

Green Lantern smirked, and the beams of light streaked out in all directions around her. One of them struck Tokita almost dead on, knocking him and his wheelchair to the ground.

As soon as he hit the pavement, Green Lantern felt the telepathic pressure fade from her mind. She hadn't really noticed it, or how annoying it was, until it was absent at last.

She started walking toward Tokita, who was laying on the ground, still strapped into his wheelchair. The deformed man seemed incapable of getting up, but the emerald superwoman didn't let her guard down, just in case he was playing possum.

Especially as she got near him. She could literally feel the hatred radiating off of his twisted body.

"So, ready to go into custody yet, or…?"

She trailed off as she saw an immense beam of light breaking through the clouds in the distance, shining down on Tokyo-3.

"What the hell is that?" she wondered aloud, most definitely having a bad feeling about it.

"The Angel is attacking the Evangelions." Tokita informed her.

"Wha—?"

The deformed man lashed out with a wave of telekinetic force before she could even finish her brief exclamation, sending Green Lantern careening through the air. The emerald superwoman crashed right into the still burning remains of one of the Humvees the JSSDF had thrown at Tokita. Her force field protected her from the worst of the impact, but it was still nothing short of bone jarring.

Green Lantern barely registered the pain. Deciding to leave the telepath to the military after all, the luminous superwoman streaked upwards, intending to follow that beam of light to its source and slay the beast before it could harm the pilots.

Only to have an invisible hand wrap itself around her boot and yank sharply, sending her plunging back toward the Earth. She struck the highway with enough force to create the mother of all potholes.

"We're not done here, Lantern." Tokita informed her as he and his wheelchair floated back up into the air, returning to an upright position.

"You son of a bitch," Green Lantern growled. "You knew that thing was coming, didn't you?"

"I wanted to strike at NERV while they were distracted," he confirmed. "I would have let you go, but now that I know you work for them, I know that you share in their guilt, so you have to die, too."

Green Lantern didn't bother to reply with any witty quip or defiant remark. Tokita was now preventing her from helping the pilots, from helping Shinji. He was going down, she decided, as her ring of power glowed with a fierce emerald light.


Shinji was firing one of NERV's few positron rifles up into the air.

It was doing absolutely nothing.

"That's enough, Third Child!" his father's stern voice entered his plug. "You're simply wasting ammunition. You need to obtain a solid target lock first."

"I can't!" Shinji argued. "The thing is still too far away! The targeting system can't detect the Angel at all, much less lock onto it!"

"Firing blinding into the sky hardly helps matters," Gendo said, his tone dangerous.

"This is insane," Shinji said. "I have to go help Asuka."

He spared a glance at Unit Two; the crimson Evangelion actually looked like it was trying to curl up into a ball. Whether deliberately or by chance, the redhead had activated her EVA's comm. system and was broadcasting to NERV HQ and the other two pilots. The sound of her agonized screams was nothing short of heart wrenching.

Apparently realizing what was so upsetting the pilot of Unit One, Gendo said something that Shinji couldn't hear to someone on the command center. An instant later, the channel between his EVA and Unit Two closed.

The Commander then gave Shinji a look, as though asking if that was better.

The Third Child could only blink stupidly at his father for a moment, unable to believe that anyone could be so callous. Not being able to hear Asuka screaming didn't improve anything; he knew she was still in enormous pain.

His expression hardened as he recovered from his brief moment of shock. Making a decision, Shinji carefully lowered the massive positron rifle to the ground, convinced that the thing would do him no good against this Angel, regardless of how much time he spent trying to get a target lock.

Gendo immediately realized what he was doing. "Third Child, hold position and continue to seek a target lock on the Angel."

It was a simple statement and the kind of almost generic order that could conceivably have been issued during any number of Angel battles. Perhaps it even had been given before, and Shinji just couldn't recall the occasion off-hand.

However, the tone of his father's voice was something new; it utterly dripped menace, far surpassing even the most chilling pronouncements he'd heard the Commander make in the past. With an inflection of his voice, the Commander had promised terrible consequences if Shinji disobeyed him.

It was enough to give the Third Child pause, when he had been bound and determined to go to Asuka's aid a mere moment before.

Then the audio feed from Unit Two abruptly resumed, and Shinji commanded Unit One to take off toward its crimson counterpart at a full sprint.


On the command center, Gendo turned to glare at Kaji, who had just hit the button to turn Unit Two's communications links back on.

"Oops," the long-haired man said, not doing a very good job of faking a contrite attitude. "My finger must have slipped."


Shinji didn't think he'd ever pushed Unit One quite this hard.

The Evangelion raced toward Asuka's position, its every footstep tearing up the streets, sending great chunks of black asphalt flying through the air as its long stride ate up the distance between it and the red colossus.

His plan was quite simple. He would run to Unit Two, grab hold of it, and pull it out of the Angel's ray of light without so much as slowing down.

He didn't know exactly what the Angel was doing to Asuka, but it was obvious how painful it was. Shinji didn't want to be in the Angel's attack a second longer than was necessary.

Just keep running, he told himself. Grab Unit Two and be gone and before whatever it is affects you.

It would be like the volcano all over again, he told himself, just with fewer burning sensations. He would save Asuka, and then NERV could figure out some other way of killing the Angel.

After which, he could only hope that his father didn't have him shot for this fresh act of insubordination.

Just run, he told himself. Don't stop for anything.

Unit One's foot just barely entered the beam of light.

For the barest fraction of a second, Shinji was no longer inside an Evangelion racing to save his fellow pilot.

No, instead, he was on a busy train platform, surrounded by busy people with expressions that ranged from vaguely curious to somewhat sympathetic. Mommy had died only days ago while he'd watched. Mommy had died, and he didn't even understand why or how.

Now Daddy was leaving him. Daddy said he had to live with his uncle now. Shinji didn't understand that either. He didn't know why Daddy didn't want him anymore. Was there something wrong with him? Was he not a good enough son?

…was the accident that killed Mommy his fault somehow?

Shinji screamed then, recoiling in pure horror at the memory. Somehow he managed to push back against the Angel, and he was back inside Unit One.

Unfortunately, the moment he'd spent in the past was one too many; Unit One tripped and went sprawling, landing right on its face in the middle of the circle of light generated by the Angel. He was within arm's reach of Unit Two, but rescuing Asuka suddenly seemed like a gigantic, nearly impossible labor.

He could feel the Angel pressing against his mind, struggling to take him back to that awful place. To the moment he had spent more than two-thirds of his life trying not to think about.

And it hurt. It hurt more than the time the Third Angel had gouged out Unit One's eye. It hurt more than the time he'd sent his Evangelion leaping into molten lava.

Mustering every ounce of willpower he had, the Third Child commanded Unit One to reach for its crimson counterpart, hoping it might still be possible to drag Asuka and himself outside the Angel's terrible light.

Then the telepathic pressure on his mind abruptly increased, and all Shinji Ikari could do was clutch at his head and scream.


"Die, Lantern!"

The main blades from one of the JSSDF's destroyed attack helicopters went flying toward Green Lantern, spinning more quickly than they ever had before. Reacting quickly, the emerald superwoman formed a construct of a massive hand, which casually batted the makeshift projectile out of the sky, sending it to crashing harmlessly into the ground.

Hoping to seize the initiative, Green Lantern made her construct of a hand turn into a fist, which went streaking toward Tokita, holding the promise of a one hit knock-out.

The telepath assaulted her mental barriers, quickly finding a tiny crack in her defenses which he didn't hesitate to exploit. She immediately moved to repel his presence from her consciousness, but by then it was too late. Tokita had just enough time to disrupt her focus, and her ring construct almost instantly lost all coherency, dissipating into nothingness before it could touch the deformed man.

Green Lantern grit her teeth, glaring at Tokita. They had been stuck at a stalemate for several minutes now. He had given up on the tactic of messing with her perceptions, instead opting to break her concentration with a brute force attack whenever she was about to hit him. By the same token, though, he couldn't seem to do that and launch an offensive at the same time.

They were stuck, it seemed.

"Damn it, Tokita, enough," Green Lantern hissed, resorting to trying to talk him down. "How do you think this is going to end? If you beat me, the military will start lobbing heavy ordnance against you soon. There's no damn way you can survive an N2 strike. They'll kill you."

"Not before I've had my revenge." He countered.

"You idiot, is your revenge really worth dying for?" she demanded.

Tokita released the telepathic equivalent of a chuckle. "Now that's truly ironic, coming from you." He pointed out, and Green Lantern winced. "Did you already forget that I know all your secrets? I know everything that makes you…oh." He interrupted himself, sounding mildly surprised.

"What?" Green Lantern demanded, despite her better judgment.

"The Angel's attacking two of the pilots' minds now." Tokita replied.

The deformed man sent along a psychic image along with that thought, and against her will, Green Lantern suddenly "saw" Shinji and Asuka, becoming aware of just how much agony they were in.

Her horror at the scene nearly overwhelmed her, and for just a moment, her mental defenses nearly fell. Tokita responded instantly with the psychic equivalent of a sucker punch, sending a wave of telepathic force at her at the exact same moment he launched a telekinetic blow at her abdomen. Green Lantern suddenly found herself simultaneously disoriented and in pain. The next thing she knew, she was on her knees on the nearly abandoned highway.

Quickly moving to capitalize on his chance, Tokita gave a telekinetic yank, pulling her power ring, trying to wrest it from her finger.

He damn near succeeded, too, but Green Lantern somehow found the presence of mind to close her fist just in time, preventing the loss of her ring. Her emerald aura flared around her as she succeeded in repelling his latest psychic attack, and her feet rose about a meter off the ground as she pointed her ring at him.

She almost fired an energy beam at him but stopped herself at the last moment.

The scene he had just shown her had been so damn vivid and much too clear to be fake. It hadn't just been sight and sound, either; she had felt how much agony they were in, and she knew they were struggling against the Angel's attack. It was obvious that their pain would only get worse once their resistance crumbled, as it doubtlessly would soon.

She couldn't let that happen. She couldn't fail again.

The continued stalemate with Tokita was unacceptable.

"Enough," she said, letting her force field dim and then vanish, her feet slowly returning to the ground.

"What?" He asked, bewildered.

"This is insane," she said. "Look, if you're really that determined to tear NERV headquarters down, then we can fight over that later. But right now, you have to let me go and stop that Angel!"

"I don't have to let you do anything." Tokita growled in response.

"For god's sake, there are two people being tortured by that thing right now!" Green Lantern yelled, her jade eyes flashing with anger.

"So? They work for NERV."

Green Lantern only barely restrained herself from going with her first impulse, which was to fire both energy beams and expletives at the deformed man.

She took a deep breath. "Look, I realized that you got completely screwed over by NERV," she said. "The organization wronged you. I wronged you. When I realized that the Jet Alone's password had been changed, and when it shut down right before the reactor melted down, I knew that it had been sabotaged. I kept quiet about it, because I truly believed that it would be the end of damn world if Evangelion was replaced by the Jet Alone, but that never made it fair to you. I'm sorry for how much you've suffered because of NERV."

Tokita's slack face remained as expressionless as ever, but the mutated man backed up just as a tiny bit, as though recoiling slightly in surprise.

"But what you have to understand is that the two people being tortured by the Angel aren't responsible for the bad things that have happened to you," Green Lantern continued, her voice increasing in volume. "They're a couple of fourteen-year-olds who had no idea about the JA sabotage, and they've both already suffered so much. You looked into my mind and saw how much pain they've already endured. They don't deserve to suffer any more."

Tokita didn't respond, and Green Lantern decided that she needed to take a risk if she was going to convince him.

She dropped her mental defenses.

The mutated man was so surprised by this move that he failed to immediately attack her now vulnerable mind, and Green Lantern seized upon those precious moments. She brought thoughts of Shinji and Asuka—of how she saw Shinji and Asuka—to the forefront of her brain. She showed him the German redhead, who was so often short tempered and overly sensitive to every perceived slight, but who also had a rarely seen softer side and was one of the most determined, hardest working people she'd ever met. She showed him Shinji, who was so timid and quiet most of the time, yet was often so brave in the face of Angel attacks.

"Please, Tokita," Green Lantern said. "We've always been on opposite sides, but I know that you're a good man. You gave me the Jet Alone's password during the demonstration, even though it would make your bosses angry, because it was the right thing to do. Do the right thing again."

There was a long pause. For Green Lantern, it felt like an eternity.

"God damn you, Lantern!" Tokita finally hissed.

She felt the eerie psychic touch of his mind withdrawing from hers, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

Green Lantern was about to thank him when his floating chair turned, tilting so that Tokita was looking up at the sky. Unsure of his intensions, the emerald superwoman briefly hesitated.

Then her eyes widened as thin streams of blood started to come from his nose, his eyes, even his ears. In the distance, the beam of light that the Angel was shining down on Tokyo-3 started to flicker like an old fluorescent bulb, and comprehension dawned for Green Lantern. The man she'd been doing battle with two minutes prior was engaging the Angel in telepathic combat, and though it was obviously costing him, he was winning.

"Tokita-san," she breathed.

"What the hell are you waiting for?" He demanded in obvious irritation. "GO!"

The jade superwoman didn't need to be told twice. She took off into the sky, leaving a green trail behind her like an emerald comet. In seconds, she broke the sound barrier, causing the roar of thunder to roll across the area. Not long after that, the blue sky above her gave way to diamond-studded ebony as she left the Earth's atmosphere, and the Angel came into view.

It was beautiful, having the appearance of massive wings made from glowing pink crystal. However, a few small sections at the edges of the creature had taken on a blackened and shriveled look. Apparently, Tokita wasn't the only one feeling the strain.

Green Lantern decided that she wasn't interested in seeing which telepath triumphed over the other. She concentrated, and a ribbon of jade light burst forth from her ring, rapidly growing and taking on the shape of the experimental positron rifle that NERV had used to destroy the Fifth Angel.

Of course, in that battle, Unit One had sniped the blue diamond from across Lake Ashi. Green Lantern's emerald duplicate of the enormous gun was at point blank range with the flickering Angel.

"This is for Shinji and Asuka," she said quietly before pulling the trigger.

A beam of green light that rivaled the sun itself in sheer intensity burst forth from the barrel of the weapon, striking the middle of the Angel's body. An orange barrier flashed into being just before it could connect, and the AT field withstood the force of the attack.

For a few fractions of a second.

Then the barrier buckled, allowing the bolt of light to complete its deadly journey. It went straight through the Angel's crystalline body without slowing down.

A telepathic shriek ripped through space, causing Green Lantern to wince and clutch at her head as she allowed her construct to fade. It was as bad as nails scratching a chalkboard, and it was inside her head.

Then, silence. The Angel's previously luminous body went dark and started to curl up like a dead insect.

"Finally," the emerald avenger said, relieved that this battle was over. "Now to get back."


Far, far below the Green Lantern, the light that had been shining down on Tokyo-3 abruptly went from flicking to completely out. Almost simultaneously, Shinji and Asuka both started to slowly uncurl from their fetal positions, looking around warily. Neither could quite believe that their ordeal had come to an end.

"Is it over?" Asuka asked, opening a communications link to Unit One. The redhead sounded unusually subdued, almost timid.

"I…I think so," Shinji said. "Did the Angel…did you…?"

Asuka didn't need to ask what he was talking about. "No," she said. "But it was damn close."

"Same here," Shinji replied, grimacing as he contemplated just how near the Angel had come to breaching the sanctum of his mind.

He didn't even want to imagine what it would have been like, had it succeeded.

A communications window from NERV HQ popped up on both Evangelions' HUDs, showing Kaji's face. "We're not reading a blue pattern any longer," he told them. "Judging from the big flash of green light, I think it's safe to say that Green Lantern got this one."

"Good for her," Asuka said, too relieved and shaken to be jealous.

"This battle is over," Kaji continued. "Return to base."

"With pleasure," Shinji breathed.

Whatever punishment he might have to endure for disobeying orders, there was no way it could compare to the Angel's attack.


Tokita was utterly exhausted. After doing telepathic combat with the Angel, he didn't even have the strength to levitate his chair any longer.

Which meant that all he could do was watch and observe as the JSSDF's forces arrived to cart him off.

"I say we just shoot the bastard," one of them said. "After what he did today…"

"We're supposed to take him in alive if possible," said a lieutenant, who appeared to be in charge of the small squad of men. "I don't get it, either, but the orders came right from the top." He added.

"Why couldn't Green Lantern have just offed him?" the first soldier wondered aloud. "Bastard at least deserves to be roughed up a lot more!"

He smacked Tokita's oversized head, then, sending waves of pain through the deformed man.

"Don't do that!" He somehow mustered the strength to communicate telepathically.

"Or what?" the soldier demanded. "You were doing a real number on us before, but you don't seem so tough now."

He raised his hand to strike Tokita again, and the deformed man could only gaze up at the soldier, a dark look in his eyes.

How typical. He had aided Green Lantern, and this was what he got for it. While she would return to Tokyo-3 and receive great praise from the public for killing the Angel, he was about to be subjected to god only knew what.

"Don't you touch him!"

A glowing green hand grabbed the soldier's wrist before he could hit Tokita again, stopping him cold.

"Don't you touch him," Green Lantern repeated as she came down for a landing. "He deserves a lot better than that."

"He's a god damn monster!" the soldier snapped.

"He's a good man who's been through a lot of shit lately and lost it for a while," Green Lantern countered, glaring at the soldier and all but daring him to argue.

The young man was not up to the challenge.

"Where are you taking him?" Green Lantern demanded, turning to the officer in charge.

"To an undisclosed location," the lieutenant answered.

Green Lantern's eyes narrowed.

"Look, he needs treatment," the lieutenant said, sounding exasperated. "So unless you've got a convenient lab and medical facility that specializes in unusual maladies, he has to come with us."

There was a long tense pause. Finally, Green Lantern marched up to the lieutenant, who did his best not to flinch as she drew near.

"Take him. But make sure to tell your superiors that they'll answer to me if he's mistreated," she said, shaking a finger at him. "I will be checking."

"Understood, ma'am," the lieutenant said.

"Thank you," Tokita said to Green Lantern as the soldiers carefully started to load him onto a military medical transport.

"Least I could do," the emerald superwoman replied. "Hey, about my secrets…"

"I won't tell anyone," Tokita pledged.

"Thank you," Green Lantern said, then gave him a jaunty little salute. "I'll be seeing you."

With that, she flew off, heading back toward Tokyo-3.


Author's Notes: And so Shiro Tokita has his Hector Hammond moment. I tried to make him as creepy as the real one, but honestly, I don't think I really succeeded. It didn't help that there was actually a decent person beneath the smug corporate spokesman in the one episode where he showed up.

Anyway, as always, thanks to all my readers and reviewers, and thanks to my beta reader as well.


Omake

Ritsuko's Brain Go Boom

"I still don't get why you feel the need to do these things yourself, Rits," Misato grumped as she followed her friend into the examination room inside NERV Medical. "Though then again, I don't see why we have to do this at all." She added, scowling slightly.

"Regs," Ritsuko said succinctly. "They come with life in the military. And wouldn't you rather have me conducting your physical, instead of someone you don't even know."

"So you do this for my sake?" Misato asked, somewhat skeptically.

Ritsuko just made a noncommittal noise in response.

In truth, the bottle blonde didn't do it for Misato's sake. Though she wasn't completely unsympathetic to her friend's loathing for the regular, mandated checkups, there were so many demands on her time that she never would have cleared a block of her schedule purely to handhold Misato through the process.

No, her reason for conducting the other woman's physicals herself was rather more…petty. Ever since the two of them had become friends in college, countless men had practically walked right over Ritsuko to try their luck with Misato. Where the bottle blonde often came off as cold and standoffish, Misato oozed sex appeal, and while Ritsuko had never considered herself unattractive, she knew she was rather plain when compared to her friend.

Ritsuko would never give voice to this jealousy, for fear of endangering one of her few friendships. However, she gained a certain malicious satisfaction from personally confirming that, as Misato got older, her slovenly lifestyle was slowly but surely beginning to catch up with her.

"Step on the scale, Misato," she ordered.

Her friend did so, and Ritsuko's eye twitched at the results. "Step off for a moment and let me recalibrate this thing," she said.

Misato did so, and Ritsuko fiddled with the scale, eventually telling the Ops Director to get back on. She did so, and again, the scale gave the same result as it had last time.

"You…seem to have lost a few pounds," the scientist noted, doing her best to keep her disappointment out of her voice. "Let's move onto the next thing…"

For the next several minutes, Ritsuko put Misato through every test she could reasonably get away with, searching for a sign of something that clearly wasn't there.

"All right, we're done," she declared at last.

"So how long do I have to live, doc?" Misato asked with a little smirk.

"I'd give you another sixty or seventy years," Ritsuko quipped dryly. "I…honestly have no idea how, but you're in excellent physical shape. You've got the body of a woman ten years your junior, in fact."

To the scientist's extreme annoyance, her friend didn't even have the decency to look very surprised by that. "So, since I'm in such good shape, can I skip the next physical?" she asked.

"No," Ritsuko said flatly.

Unsurprised, Misato shrugged. "Figured it couldn't hurt to ask."

The bottle blonde pinched the bridge of her nose. "We're done, Misato," she said.

"All right, see ya," the Ops Director replied, practically skipping out of the room with youthful energy.

Ritsuko silently counted to twenty. When that didn't work, she inhaled as deeply as she could.

It was said that all of Tokyo-3 heard her scream that day.