Asuka towelled her hair dry, combed it straight, and wrapped her towel around herself, making sure to cover enough skin that if anyone accused her of immodesty she could just reply that Shinji was a pervert. She walked out into the kitchen, but it was empty. She paused and theatrically glanced from side to side to verify there was no-one there.

"Where is everyone?!"

Misato's door slid open, and she crawled out, her bed clothes dishevelled, hair everywhere. "Asuka. What the hell are you shrieking about at seven thirty in the morning, when I was up until two a.m. last night?"

"Oh," Asuka said, "I'm so sorry that your beauty sleep takes precedence over defeating the Angels."

"It's not arriving for four days. If you scream again, I will schedule synch tests for you twice a day until every last one is dead."

Asuka pouted. "Well, excuse me for thinking we were going to be taking it seriously. Are we at least going to be training again today?"

"We have preliminary data; we need to arrange for the battle, and just running endless sims isn't going to help. If we need you at all today, it won't be until after school."

"I don't believe this. We're going to be fighting for our lives in less than a week, and you want us to spend that time listening to that old windbag drone on about Second Impact?"

"You need to finish your educations, properly," said Misato. "That was true when you started piloting, it was true before the fifteenth appeared, and it's true now."

Even with their best efforts, the fifteenth Angel almost always managed to at least seriously injure one of them in the sims. Misato had sensed Shinji's and Asuka's morale dropping, and sent them home early; it wouldn't do if he ran away again, and they couldn't count on him to come back in the nick of time. As for Asuka, she was dangerously close to throwing a tantrum; it had manifested in her obsessively trying again and again, but it could as easily metamorphose into her refusing to get into the Eva at all. She would let them try again when they had a plan where none of them would die.

Asuka frowned, but Misato was inflexible about schooling. Instead she stomped off to Shinji's room and slammed the door open. "Hey, Idiot! I want breakfast. And don't think I'm going to let you off if you don't make me lunch today, either! Come on! Get up! And don't even think about taking that the wrong way."

Shinji uncurled and mechanically went to the kitchen. Asuka narrowed her eyes, but he didn't perk up at all while cooking, he barely seemed to notice Misato's customary teasing, and he walked to school with a slump in his step like she'd seen in the earliest videos of him from before she arrived (she watched those videos only because pilots ought to know about each other).

"Well?" she demanded at last.

Shinji looked at her, but kept walking. She stepped in front of him to block his path.

"Don't you dare ignore me. I asked you what was wrong, Third."

"One of us is going to die," he replied.

She recoiled, but quickly regained her bravado. "Are you stupid? We won all of the last five sims."

"Were you counting how many times one of us was killed?" he asked. "Six times, in the last five. Even if we do win, we still lose. And that was if nothing went wrong. Something always goes wrong."

"You're worrying too much," she said, although hearing that statistic shook her. At the time, she'd dismissed them in the heat of the moment, and assumed they'd probably just be incapacitation, like everything had been so far, but on the other hand, the Angel had specifically targeted Unit-04's pilot; like it knew exactly where the plug was. Six casualties from twenty pilot-sorties came to a thirty percent chance for each. "We still haven't finalised our plans. When we do, we'll do even better. It looks tough on paper, but we'll get it, just like we got all the others, and nobody died then. And what about the tenth, and that last one? Those were easy."

He gave her a look. "What about the thirteenth, eleventh, ninth, eighth –"

"Stop whining, Third." She stood aside, and they resumed walking in silence.

At length, Shinji spoke. "If one of us does have to die, I'd rather it was me than you or –"

Asuka slapped him, putting her hips into it. "Don't you dare," she said.

She glared at him; he stared at the ground. After a moment, she seized his arm and pulled him along.

"We are Eva pilots," she said. "We're the protectors of the human race. I've personally saved the world at least five times. That stupid Ferris wheel isn't killing anyone, not on my watch."

They walked in silence the rest of the way.

…

AidaK: shinji, whats wrong?

AidaK: come on. what happened yesterday? we waited for half an hour for the angel alarm, but there was nothing.

AidaK: and now here you are, looking like someone ran over your dog? i can put two and two together.

Shinji finally set his hands to his keyboard.

IkariS: There was an Angel. It's still coming.

IkariS: This one's going to be bad. Really, really bad.

IkariS: I don't think I'm coming back.

Kensuke's eyebrows rose. He opened a new window.

AidaK: excuse me, nagisa-san, but can you talk about what happened yesterday?

NagisaK: We got a preview of our next battle. Shinji took it badly. I don't really blame him.

AidaK: but youre going to win, arent you?

NagisaK: It is likely that the Angel is going to be destroyed, if that's the same thing.

Kensuke shook his head, wondering whether he'd reached the correct conclusion.

Hikari wasn't exactly a close friend of Shinji's, but she didn't dislike him, and his depression was rolling off him in waves. She weighed her responsibility to the class against her responsibility to her classmates.

HorakiH: Asuka, what's wrong with Ikari?

SoryuA: he's perfectly fine.

Asuka paused to reread that line. It wouldn't do if Hikari got the wrong impression.

SoryuA: other than being a spineless wimp as usual.

Hikari waited. Asuka had many positive traits, but patience was not one of them.

SoryuA: look. an angel's coming. he's scared.

HorakiH: I see. But aren't the Angels always coming?

SoryuA: not like this one.

HorakiH: You've won every time so far. You can do it again.

Asuka hesitated again.

SoryuA: yeah.

Hikari frowned and typed half of another message, and that was when the klaxons went off.

Asuka was on her feet in a moment, fishing in her bag for her phone. She got it just as it started ringing. "What are you doing?!" she yelled into it over the sirens. "You're supposed to give us time!"

Misato was on the other end; a moment later, the other pilots joined in the conference call. She had speaker on, and they could hear the entire bridge, shouting at one another in a panic. "There is no time! Get everyone away from the windows, then get down to the entrance but stay indoors!"

"What's going –"

"NOW!"

Maya's voice joined in, raised in panic. "Trajectory confirmed, it's heading right for the school! Twenty-eight seconds to impact! Twenty-five! Twenty-four!"

"Move away from the windows!" Asuka shouted at the class, then vaulted over her desk to the door. She glanced over her shoulder just long enough to see Rei grabbing Shinji's arm and pulling him along and Kaworu getting to his feet, before she turned and ran down the corridor. "What's it doing here already? We were supposed to have days!"

"Ritsuko was wrong, she said something about supercavitation – worry about that later, just run!"

Doors opened on either side of her, as classes prepared to evacuate. She angled for a staircase, slid down the railing, bounced off the wall where the stairs turned 180 degrees, staggered, saw Rei dragging Shinji to the stairwell with their phones pressed to their ears, ran ahead, and made it to the front door.

"Back! Get away from the door! Stand in a doorway and brace, like for an earthquake!"

"Impact in five seconds! Three! Two! One!"

There was a flash of orange light and a blast like a bomb, and the building shook. Mortar dust and loose tiles fell from the ceiling, the floor pitched like on a boat, and the walls tilted ominously. They heard masonry crashing, glass shattering, clanging metal, and someone crying out. Asuka banged her head against a door frame; she didn't realise, but a trickle of blood began seeping down her forehead.

She looked out the front door. The street outside, the buildings and cars and everything else she could see, all was drenched with shimmering blue fluid. It was thick on a truck across the road; the truck sizzled, folded in on itself, and dissolved. Blue mist slowly rose from the liquid.

Ritsuko's voice came on the line, competing with the ringing in Asuka's ears. "I'm looking via satellite feed. That looks like acid." Asuka bit back a 'Really?' "Don't breathe the fumes or let them near your eyes. There's too much of it on the roads; cars won't be usable. You'll have to go by foot."

"Jiriko Terminus?" Asuka asked, naming the nearest trans-Geofront station to the school. The pilots pulled up the hems of their shirts to cover their mouths, as makeshift gas masks.

"It looks like that was hit. It might still be passable, but I recommend going to Kyubei. It's six hundred metres further, but it was only lightly sprayed by the acid."

"Negative," Misato ordered. "Go to Jiriko. You'll only be safe once you're in the Geofront; you're sitting targets out there. Hyuga, get Reichner on the line. Tell him to load his VTOLs up with lime and dump it in the city to neutralise the acid."

"Target is preparing to fire again!" Maya cried. "Computing trajectories … one's heading for the school again! Twenty-nine seconds!"

"Come on!" Asuka said, and she and Rei broke out into a run.

"Wait," said Shinji, "where's Kaworu?"

"I'll worry about him," said Misato. "Go!"

…

Kaworu stood on the roof, in what he knew was a blind spot for geosynch spy satellites, behind an aircon unit. He watched the blue sphere approach with almost a flat trajectory. He could feel the AT Field resonating through it, preventing droplets from spraying off, keeping it a single coherent mass larger than a car moving at twice the speed of sound. A thrill of fear shot through his body, like it did whenever he was outside an active Eva; his eyes glowed red. He could hear his phone by his waist, chirping ineffectually.

"Impact in five seconds! Three! Two! One!"

Tabris raised his hand, and concentric octagons flashed before him and the school; the sphere burst apart and spattered across the street, dissolving everything it touched. Dozens of other blobs burst across the city, with a noise like a drum tattoo.

There was a gasp; he turned, and saw Hikari standing behind him, her hands to her mouth.

"Why aren't you evacuating?" Kaworu asked, his usual smile absent, as his eyes dimmed.

"I – I saw you going the wrong way," she said. "I – you – that's what happened when they fought the octahedron Angel, months ago. You're one of them, aren't you? You're an Angel."

"… Yes. I am the final Angel. Are you going to tell anyone?"

"What? I – no. You saved us." She pointed to the skyscrapers; even as they retracted, one had taken a direct hit, and looked like a newspaper which had been set on fire, left to burn, and only put out after half had been consumed. "I won't tell."

"I see."

His phone crackled. "One's heading for the school again! Twenty-nine seconds!"

"Angels can sense AT Fields," he said. "It's aiming for me. I'll hold it off while you evacuate. We'll talk later."

"But you –"

"Go!"

Hikari gave him one last look, then took off at a run.

Misato took over the phone. "Kaworu, where the hell are you?"

"I tripped against a desk and twisted my ankle," he said. "Give me a few minutes."

"You don't have a few minutes, that school is going down. Get to Jiriko, stat."

If he went there, the Angel would sense his AT Field moving, and aim the next volley right at it, and maybe hit or cut off his fellow pilots, or possibly civilians. "I'll go as quickly as I can, Major," he said, and turned and walked as slowly as he could for the exit.

…

On the streets, dodging pools of the corrosive blue slime and pedestrians hurrying for the shelters, swerving around abandoned cars or jumping off their hoods when they were parked too close together, there was no time for thought or feeling, only for doing. Shinji followed Rei, Rei followed Asuka, Asuka ran for the station.

"Incoming! Raising armour plate for protection, brace!"

They dived behind the rising steel wall; a blue blob slammed into it behind them with a sound like thunder, eating away a chunk of it and sloshing across the street. As soon as the volley petered out, Asuka was back on her feet and running. She hopped over a fence, into the station. Ritsuko was right; there were puddles of acid everywhere.

The trans-Geofront platform was underground, accessible by a short corridor. Asuka skidded to a stop at its entrance. It had been hit; a patch of ceiling had fallen in, into a sizzling pool of acid too wide for them to jump. Rei and Shinji slowed to a stop behind her.

"Asuka?" asked Misato. "The tram's ready and waiting for you."

Asuka took a moment to catch her breath. "It's no good. The access tunnel's been hit, there's too much acid."

"Look," said Rei, pointing upward.

The tunnel was normally lit by a fluorescent tube bolted high along the left side; this had survived the attack so far, although the wiring apparently hadn't, as it had gone out.

"That thing can't possibly take our weight," said Asuka.

"Boost me," Rei said to Shinji.

He crouched down, and she wrapped her legs around his neck. He stood back up, trying to ignore the fact that an attractive girl had her thighs wrapped around his neck; she grasped, missed, and caught the light tube with her fingertips. It creaked against its bolts, but held.

Asuka and Shinji watched as Rei moved one hand and then the other, her feet scrabbling for purchase against the concrete wall, as she slowly made her way over the pool of acid. She dropped down and turned to face the others, ignoring the grime on her hands.

Asuka frowned. That girl really would stop at nothing. It wasn't so much that she was brave, as that she didn't even consider her own death to be a negative event. It was disturbing. Still, if Rei thought she'd beat her that easily, she had another think coming. "Right. My turn."

So she sat on Shinji's shoulders, and he helped her up to the light tube. Her hands were slick with sweat and grime by the time she was only halfway over, and her muscles trembled from the unfamiliar exertion. As a kid, she'd been happy to swing across monkey bars, but that was different. She could get a proper grip then, and also she didn't die when she fell off.

"Heads up!" Misato called from her bag. "Incoming in twenty seconds, there's one heading close to the station!"

"Asuka, hurry," Shinji pleaded.

"I know that," she said, too nervous to snap. Her sweaty hands slipped on the narrow plastic tube. She was still over the acid.

"Ten seconds."

"If it hits while you're still there …"

"Shut … up …"

"Three! Two! One!"

There was another crash as the acid bomb hit the station. The shockwave rippled through the station, through the wall, and snapped the light tube in half. Asuka dropped, with one foot over dry concrete and the other over the acid; she overbalanced, windmilled her arms, and caught Rei's wrist. Rei pulled her away from the puddle, just as the wall collapsed, blocking Shinji from their line of sight.

"Asuka!" he cried.

A few droplets of acid had sprayed onto Asuka's skirt and burned; in a panic, she tore the fabric off, leaving herself in her panties. The skirt fell in two pieces; she threw it away, crouched, and breathed deeply, fighting nausea. Rei answered into her phone rather than raise her voice. "We are both unhurt. The Second Child and I can reach the station from here. Ikari, can you?"

"I – no. There's too much rubble in the way, and even if I could get past it, it's too dark now, I'd step in the acid. You two go on ahead. I'll find another way."

Asuka raised her phone. "You'd better. I'm counting on having enough backup, for a change. I'll see you at Nerv, Third." She took off her mantle and wrapped it around her waist for modesty; as it did, she saw blood on her hand. She felt around and finally found more trickling down her forehead. She wiped at it.

"Right. See you there."

Puddles of the liquid were all over the station, and the blue mist was getting thick. Shinji's eyes began watering, his skin itching. He coughed.

"Where to" he coughed again "now?"

"It's cutting you off," Misato said. "I don't know whether it's deliberate, but you can't get through there, and Kyubei looks iffy. You could still try Mashitaka, you could make that if it doesn't get any more good hits in the way. It's about two kilometres. Leave the station and turn left. Hurry."

Kaworu chimed in. "Major Katsuragi? I'm blocked, too."

"Hang on, I can't focus on both of you at once. Aoba!"

The call split into two subconferences. "On it," said the tech. "You … ouch, it's almost like it's been gunning for you personally. I see a complete ring of blue around you, not containing any stations."

"Oh dear," said Kaworu.

"I'll try to divert some of it with the storm drains. Stay where you are and keep under cover."

…

Rei led Asuka down to the station. The tram was waiting for them. They climbed on board; the doors shut, controlled by some tech or AI, and it accelerated down its tracks.

"That was close," Asuka said. "When we get close enough to fight this thing, we're taking it down hard. You remember your position from the sims?"

"I am still unauthorised to deploy," Rei said.

Asuka gave her an incredulous look. "You remember what that thing can do, even with all of us together, and even before we knew about this acidy crap. We're already down two pilots, and you want to let me fight it single-handed?"

"I did not say I wanted that," Rei said.

Asuka slapped a hand to her forehead. "You drive me completely crazy sometimes, you know that, First? What do you want? Are you going to fight, or are you going to sit on the Commander's lap?"

Rei said nothing. There was the rumble of another volley of acid bombs impacting across the city above.

Asuka tossed her hair. "Well, you've got about three minutes to decide, because I'm fighting this thing, with you or – Verdammte Scheiße!"

She pointed, where a line of blue was running down from a hole in the ceiling, directly onto the tram track behind them. It took only a moment to eat through the electrified rail; Asuka had a premonition of the tram hurtling out of control, and grabbed the railing, but without power, the tram's dead man's switch engaged and jammed on the brakes, bringing it to a lurching halt. Asuka regained her feet, glared at a bemused Rei, and brought her phone back to her mouth.

"You saw that, didn't you? What the hell are we supposed to do now?" Apparently another hit had taken out a telco tower, because her line was dead. She swore again and threw her phone through an open window, then immediately regretted it. "I really, really hate this Angel."

Rei walked to the front of the tram, unscrewed a seat, and threw it through the windscreen, spraying glass out and over the Geofront. She poked her head through the hole. The tram tracks were about a metre across and had an inverted V cross-section, with a twelve degree gradient going forward and a sixty degree slope to either side. They were about eight hundred metres up, and the track was over three and a half kilometres long. She poked a leg through the hole; Asuka seized her and yanked her back.

"Don't even think about it, you suicidal blue-haired idiot. There's no way you could possibly make it to the bottom without slipping."

"We have no choice."

"Are you stupid? We can wait for them to pick us up. Look, they built this line, so they have to have maintenance crews, right? And those have to have forklifts and things. Take off your neckerchief and wave it out a window. Come on."

Shigeru was still talking to Kaworu; their line was scratchy with static. "The storm drains can't take any more. I can't reroute any more acid, and it's weakening the armour to even try. I'm sorry."

"I see. So there's no way for me to get to the Geofront?"

"We could try to airlift you, but getting a craft in through that bombardment would be dangerous. Let me think –"

"Hi everyone!"

"Aah!"

"Schatz!" said Kaworu, a smile returning to his face at her voice. "You made it through, then."

"Mm-hmm. The library's just a block away from the nearest station. Well, it was. I liked that library."

"Careful, Schatz. It's no pushover."

"Neither are we. Get to a shelter. We'll deal with the Angel."

"Stay safe."

Misato turned to Chitose. "Suit up and get into Unit-03. Hyuga will brief you on tactics before you launch."

"Yes'm."

"And for God's sake, leave your mobile on from now on, no exceptions."

"Yeah … I'm sorry about that, really, that was stupid. I won't turn it off again."

"Good. Now go." She turned to Makoto. "Is Unit-04 going to arrive in time?"

He shook his head. "It'd take three hours to fly here, even if we could persuade the Americans. We're fighting this one with just the four Evas."

"Ugh. I can't believe it got here so fast. Do we at least have permission to field Rei?"

At that moment, the discussion was drowned out by another alarm. The red ALERT kanji lining the walls turned yellow and changed to read AGGRAVATED ALERT.

"What now?" asked Misato.

"It's – it's a second blue pattern!" Maya said. "Angel inbound from the north-west! Another one!"

She flipped a switch and an image displayed on the wall, a monstrous asymmetrical shape over the sea, with hundreds of white and grey feathery wings of all shapes and sizes, concealing a body with thousands of mismatched eyes, glowing dull red. Its wings pulsed with AT energy as they flapped, tinting the air orange, and little flaming particles dropped from its body; there were clouds of steam behind it. As they watched, it passed the shoreline, and moments later, a fire blazed in its wake. A UN artillery battery from behind a hill opened up on it; it replied with a beam of white energy that lanced through the hill and turned the battery into a crater. The satellite feeds of the two Angels resized and shifted to display both at once; Magi captioned them Kou and Otsu.

"No," breathed Ritsuko. "No, this – this wasn't supposed to happen. There can't be two at once, it's not … this is bad. This is really, really bad."

"I figured that out myself," said Misato. "Shinji, you're almost to the station, keep going!"

This was easier said than done. The city was by this point covered in acid; little puddles in the street were connecting into large, impassable pools, and the fumes were thick in the air. Shinji was coughing every few paces now; his eyes were scrunched up to slits and weeping uncontrollably, and he could barely see. His lips cracked and bled.

"Just a bit further. Go on! You can do it! We're depending on you!"

"Incoming!" said Maya.

Shinji collapsed behind an armour plate as another bomb flew overhead, smashed a power substation to bits, and sprayed acid in all directions. A large dollop landed ahead of him, blocking the street completely.

"…" said Misato, watching the satellite feed. "Shinji, can you double back?"

He brought his phone up, and just coughed into it. He dropped it, and couldn't see where it fell.

"He's not going to make it," Ritsuko said.

"The hell he isn't. Aoba, get a VTOL to pick him up."

"And do what, take him to Ashitaka?" said Ritsuko. "They won't be able to get him to a station, even if there are any still intact, and he –"

"That was an order, Ritsuko. Remember those?" She turned back to the tech. "Get me a damn VTOL."

Shinji coughed on all fours, and now blood was coming up. His eyes were masses of phlegmy tears, and his ears were ringing.

This is less bad than I'd thought.

I guess I'll see you son, Mother.

"You look like hell, kid," said a male voice in accented English. Shinji couldn't understand him any more, or do anything when a strong arm wrapped around his midsection and lifted up. "No worries, we'll see you right. I've got him. Take us up, Skip."

The winch around the airman's chest tautened and began lifting them toward the VTOL hovering overhead. The VTOL rose too, then swerved violently; a moment later, another supersonic ball of acid arced through the air it had been in, and it shuddered with the sonic boom. Shinji and the airman swung through the air like a pendulum.

"Christ, Clive, could you make it any rougher?" the airman asked his earpiece. "I'm only holding a quarter of the world's effective military here."

"You can catch the next one in your teeth if you want, mate."

"Be a good way to wash out that crap they give us for lunch."

Misato's voice interrupted the chatter. "Now, hover directly over coordinate G-11. It looks like it's about a hundred metres from where you are now, due west."

"I see it," said the captain, and he directed the pilot. "But we're sitting targets out here." The winch finally got Shinji and the airman into the craft. "And the kid doesn't look like he'll hold up long without a hospital."

"Exactly." She watched the VTOL's transponder on the virtual map until it reached its destination. "Good. Shut all your doors. When I give the signal, I want you to dump all your lime at once, then reverse the engine, maximum power."

"Uh, Major? The engine is the thing that's keeping us up. Reversing will send us down. Straight into the ground."

"I know. Now!"

The pilot shook his head in disbelief, but obeyed. The VTOL opened its bay doors and dived; at the same moment, the armour plating rolled aside with a screech of grinding metal, letting a waterfall of acid rain down into the Geofront. The lime splashed into it, turning it into a spray of salty steam; the VTOL shot through it, and the armour plates rolled back over a moment later.

"Report!"

"Armour damaged," read out the pilot. "Landing gear gone, weapons systems unusable, fuel leaking. Engine, rotors damaged but operational. Avionics fine. Stabilising altitude." The captain translated for the benefit of Misato, whose English wasn't good enough for an Australian accent talking technical.

"That's all fine. Make an emergency landing by the pyramid, north side. We'll have a triage team ready for the pilot."

As the VTOL descended, the airman glanced out the window at the monorail track. "Uh, Skip? It looks like there're two girls in that tram."

The captain followed his subordinate's gaze, and saw the redhead waving furiously at him. "Red hair, blue hair. Those are the first two Children." He glanced down at Shinji, and judged that he wouldn't die in the next five minutes. "Clive, take us over. We'd better pick them up too."

The VTOL detoured over toward the tram; as it closed, the tram began vibrating, and the girls waved him back.

"No good, Skip," said the pilot. "The downdraft's too much with all the damage."

Misato's voice came back online. "What's the hold-up?" she asked.

The captain opened a window and threw their parachutes out at the tram, one by one; two of the three made it close enough for the redhead to catch. She gave a thumbs-up, and he motioned the pilot to continue down. "Just saw some friends who'll drop by in a minute."

"Get down here, now!"

Half a kilometre above, the heavy steel shutters of a shelter slid open, then silently shut again, as Kaworu slipped into the high school's shelter. The space within was dimly lit and claustrophobic, crowded with students and passers-by who had happened to be close when the Angel attacked. He didn't know this, but the mood was much tenser than usual; this was the first time they'd been taken completely by surprise, and the first time since the third Angel that civilians had died.

Tsuruko spotted him. "Kaworu-chan?" she asked, walking over. "What are you –"

He shoved past her, sending her sprawling; she skinned a knee against the concrete floor. She looked up and narrowed her eyes as he ran past.

He avoided everyone else and headed for the shelter's lowest sub-basement. He shut his eyes and focused on his breathing. This Angel was obviously much better at sensing AT Fields than its predecessors; he'd guessed that when he saw it kill the pilot of Unit-04. He himself could only sense Fields with line-of-sight and at close range, which mostly manifested as a feeling of impending doom around active Evas that he wasn't piloting. He couldn't completely negate his own Field, but he could dampen it with concentration; hopefully that, together with being deep underground, would be enough to keep the Angel out of the shelter for long enough for the other pilots to destroy it.

"Nagisa?" He opened his eyes. It was Hikari. "Sakaki told me she saw you come here. Why are you here? Why aren't –"

"Stay back," he said softly. His AT Field rose in the presence of others; he could best control it when he could pretend to exist in his own little world, and a wide bubble of personal space was needed for that.

Hurt appeared in Hikari's eyes. "I trust you."

"You shouldn't. But if you do, then trust me when I say it would be best for everyone here if you kept your distance from me right now. It isn't anything to do with who you are, Horaki-san; if anyone approaches me now, the Angel will sense me and destroy this shelter."

"I told you to call me Hikari," she chided, but obeyed him and stayed a good six metres away. "So why are you here? You have to pilot to stop that thing."

"The acid is in the way. I can't reach headquarters."

"Can't you – I don't know –" Hikari glanced around to make sure no-one was in earshot "just do your – thing, and push it away?"

"Not without revealing my nature to Nerv. I cannot risk that, not yet. It would be contrary to my purpose."

"So you're going to let that thing destroy the city?"

He shut his eyes again. "There are four other pilots, and only four Evas. I am not needed today."

Hikari frowned, but accepted that. It wasn't worth risking his life for, not when he'd be needed in later battles. "Can I ask you about … you? I mean, that's … pretty important. Why are you like that?"

"Because I was made this way," Kaworu said. It might help with suppressing his AT Field to think about the past rather than the present. "Before I was born, my DNA was spliced with genes taken from Adam, the progenitor of the Angels. Because of that, half of his soul now inhabits my body, and I am the first proper Angel, although my formal designation will be the twentieth. Or possibly the nineteenth, depending on how Nerv classifies me, and technically I'm only half an Angel, for now. It's complicated."

She sifted through this and prioritised her next question. "Was it Nerv who did this to you? It sounds like they were trying to make you into an Angel, but isn't Nerv fighting them; aren't Angels supposed to be enemies of humanity? I mean, no offence," she added quickly, not wanting to annoy the pluripotent being who could probably crush her with a thought.

He nodded, leaving his eyes shut. "Yes. My backers have many names for themselves; you probably wouldn't recognise any of them. They wanted an Angel they could control. After the other Angels are destroyed, my purpose is to end the war on their terms."

"Okay," she said, well aware that he was omitting a lot of details. "I suppose they can't be bad; I mean, you're not a bad person, especially not after you saved the school."

"The Angels all have designations," Kaworu said. "Mine is that of free will. I was not ordered to protect the school. In fact I will probably be scolded for risking my cover."

Hikari frowned. "Then it sounds like your 'backers' are enemies of Nerv, and Nerv is trying to save the world. Why would you do what they want?"

"It's … complicated."

…

Asuka's plug spun into Unit-02's back, and locked in place. There was the familiar burst of neural static, and Eva was active.

"First things first," she said, "how is it shelling us? I thought it didn't have any ranged attacks, never mind one like that."

A satellite video appeared in her HUD. The first Angel, Kou, was standing on its legs to raise its central disc off the ground; it loped along at a decent pace considering how ungainly it looked, entering the outskirts of Tokyo-3. As it walked, the blue rim of its disc spun around, faster and faster; it thickened, bulged out with centripetal force, then suddenly broke apart into blobs that shot forward out of the camera frame, almost too fast to track. The rim then slowed and reformed.

"The target has displayed this attack pattern since it emerged from Sagami Bay," Maya narrated. "Senpai hypothesises that while it was under the water, it developed the ability to use the rotation to lower water pressures, allowing it to supercavitate and swim faster than we predicted, and that it's co-opted this for use in bombardment. We don't know how accurate it is; probably less so than the fifth's energy beam, for example, but it makes up for that with volume of fire, indirect fire, and persistence of fire. The bright side is that it doesn't seem able to roll and use the attack at the same time, so its mobility should hopefully be limited if it tries to shoot during combat."

"How are we going to beat this thing?" Asuka asked. "I'm guessing Wondergirl's tower idea is off the table now."

"The catapult launch sites are too damaged; we'd only be able to launch one at a time, with no external power," said Misato. "We're going to lure it into the city, then trapdoor an armour plate out from under it. You three will have to hit it as soon as it lands. It will land hard, so you should have an opening; you know what will happen if you give it time to move. After you kill it, then we'll have to deal with the second Angel."

"Us three?" Asuka repeated. "So Smarmy got lost after all? Great."

Chitose's face appeared in her HUD. She had clearly had a haircut recently from someone who wasn't a hairdresser. "It's a pity I wasn't there for the sims," she said, "but Lieutenant Hyuga filled me in. Make sure it doesn't stab or ram me, mostly. This is exciting; I can see why you like piloting."

"What? But, if you're here … don't tell me Wondergirl doesn't have permission to launch?"

Rei's face appeared beside Chitose's. "I have permission to fight within the Geofront," she confirmed.

"But then … where's Shinji?"

"He's going to be fine, Asuka, I –"

"Where is he."

"Asuka, there's a battle going on."

"So you'd better hurry up and tell me where he is, because I'm not, I'm not going to fight if I don't know you're taking proper care of us pilots!"

Misato winced. Asuka thought she was a hotshot pilot, but she didn't have a fraction of the discipline needed to be a real soldier. Still, too much depended on her to just ignore her. She opened a new connection. "Ritz, how's Shinji doing?"

A link opened, showing a tank of amber fluid with a human form inside and a woman in a lab coat outside. "I'm flushing the acid out with an LCL bath. It's an experimental therapy, it's in his lungs, and I need to concentrate." Ritsuko clicked the line shut.

Misato saw Asuka's fist clenching. "There's nothing you can do for him now except keep that thing out of HQ. Ritz'll save him."

Asuka glared. "It's his own fault for being so slow," she said. "I only care about killing the Angel."

"Glad to hear it," said Misato. "All three of you, head out; I'll mark the target's drop point on your HUDs. It's going to be tight; we'll need to kill it before the second one arrives, so you can take them out one at a time."

The three Evas walked out of HQ and assembled in the Geofront. Chitose began singing under her breath, badly off-key: "Girls … are doing fine … girls against the world …"

"Do we have any data on the second Angel?" Rei asked softly, ignoring this.

Misato looked at her screen. It had destroyed everything in its path. It was flying too high for a prog knife, too fast for the positron cannon, and its AT Field was undoubtedly too tough for a pallet rifle. On top of that, it could zap and burn the Evas at will, and they had no credible defences. "We're formulating a strategy. Let me worry about that for now."

She watched Kou pick its way over the cityscape. She noted it stepping in the acid without effect: its own skin was apparently immune to it. She also noted that it was heading for the exact same point that the fifth and thirteenth had begun drilling, directly over Nerv HQ. The Angels knew more than they were letting on.

"The target will be in position in five seconds," reported Maya. "Three … two … one …"

"Retract the armour!" Misato ordered.

There was a shriek of tortured metal, and the Angel staggered, but kept its footing.

"Actuators damaged!" reported Shigeru. "The acid's eaten the motors and some of the power conduits! We can't move the plate!"

The Angel strolled around the city, waiting for its acid to break through to the Geofront, but Misato ignored it, and stared at the video of the second Angel cresting over the horizon, coming to join its older, weaker brother.

…

"They're the only ones who understand what I am," Kaworu told Hikari. "My powers are a curse. They are the only ones with any chance of reversing it."

"How is it a curse?" she asked. "You saved the school. I bet you can do lots of other cool things. If you just told Nerv about that, it'd prove you weren't an enemy of humankind, and then they'd have no problem with you, right?"

He shook his head. "My Angelic nature comes with its own drawbacks. You Lilin are all different, and yet so alike. There are only six other beings like myself still alive in the universe, and two of them are going to die today. Can you imagine what it would be like to go your entire life to know that you can never see or touch another truly like yourself, or if you did, it would be moments before one destroyed the other?"

"Kaworu …"

"Stay back," he repeated, not opening his eyes.

"I don't understand."

"I'm sorry. You're a good person, Horaki Hikari. You should be happy. That won't happen if you're around me."

"You deserve to be happy too," she said, folding her arms. "Even aside from you saving the school and I don't know how many lives, and the fact that you're an Eva pilot and in charge of saving the world, you're a good person. I can't just ignore that."

He had to smile. "Thank you. At any rate, my backers are not opposed to Nerv; they are its financiers. There are … disagreements over the form of the final Scenario, but both wish for humankind to defeat the Angels."

"That's the important thing, then, isn't it?" said Hikari.

"Perhaps. The situation is more complicated than – oh!" His eyes flashed, briefly.

"What is it?"

"It's about to begin."

…

Central Dogma was in chaos. Junior techs were running everywhere; alerts about subsystem failures wailed or lined the walls in red and yellow; garbled radio messages came from speakers, their audio quality deteriorating as the infrastructure overloaded; and above it all, videos of the Angels showed them drawing together. Commander Ikari sat above it all, Fuyutsuki behind and at his side as ever.

Misato's mind drew one blank after another. Two Angels at once, each more powerful than any they had faced before, and they had required three Evas before. They could maybe match the first one by itself, although probably not without casualties, but they had absolutely no hope about the second, and they could hardly expect the Angels to fight them one at a time, maybe with a long break for repairs in the middle.

"This looks like it might be it," Makoto said quietly. "We can't beat them."

"We can't give up now," Misato replied. "Not after we've come so far."

"I know. And I'll be here until the end. It's just …"

"I know, Makoto," she said.

The second Angel folded some of its myriad wings and angled its descent toward the first. Kou turned to face it, and its rim began spinning, faster and faster, bulging outward.

"Are they … communicating?" Misato wondered aloud, a moment before the Angels opened fire on each other.

Kou let loose a barrage of the blue slime at Otsu; Otsu answered with a direct beam attack. The acid spattered against Otsu's AT Field, and flowed around and through, burning it; it beat its wings chaotically, twisted in midair, spraying most of the acid off, and vectored over Kou, throwing what looked like burning coals across the city. Kou dropped onto its wheel and rolled out of the way.

"What the hell is going on?" said Asuka.

"They're trying to kill each other," Chitose explained.

"I can fricking see that! That was a rhetorical question!"

"Oh? Do you ask those often?"

Asuka quivered in rage, and she raised a fist, Eva and all, but then she abruptly quieted. "Forget it. Why are they trying to kill each other?"

"Because of their conflicting AT Fields. It stands for Absolute Terror, right? So when two of them get close, they terrify each other, and they lash out. It would happen for us, too, but Eva blocks most of the emotional effect for us."

"I – you – are you saying you know what the Angels want?"

"Well, AT rage is more of an emotional thing. But, yes, they want to merge with either Seed of Life and create a new world order of Angelic domination, don't they?" Chitose said.

"Ibuki," the Commander said, his hand over his microphone. "On my mark, make ready to raise her LCL concentration to the limit."

"Sir? That would knock her unconscious. The Angels –"

"I said, make ready," he repeated. Maya glanced around, but Ritsuko wasn't there, and Misato wasn't the same, so she typed the command into a console but didn't send it.

"Is that wise, during a battle?" Fuyutsuki asked quietly.

"If she truly is with Seele, they're counting on us thinking otherwise," Ikari replied. "We cannot let them blackmail us, at any cost. And even if not, she's still a potential liability. There will be other Angels."

"I mean, as much as anything like them can be said to 'want' anything," Chitose continued. "You wouldn't say that hydrogen 'wants' to burn in air, but it does. Isn't this common knowledge?"

"No!" Asuka shouted, her eye twitching. "It is not! How do you know it? Why would anyone tell you? You're not even a real pilot!"

"Well, it wasn't Nerv who told me, it was Seele, and I wasn't any sort of pilot at all at the time."

"Stop giving answers that just raise further questions! Who's Seele? Soul? What's a Seed of Life?!"

Otsu fired another two energy beams; the first crunched against Kou's AT Field, and the second punched through and knocked off a leg. Kou stood and began spinning for another attack; Otsu blasted off another leg before Kou got a glob of acid off, which spattered through Otsu's AT Field and began searing its wings and body.

"They're this other group, they want to … it's complicated. Anyway, there are two Seeds; Adam created the Angels, Lilith created all other life on Earth, including humans, through abiogenesis and directed evolution. They used to be giants like Evas, although they're a little, uh, diminished right now. If an Angel gets to Adam, it'll revive Him, and He'll germinate another generation of Angels in that one's image; if Lilith, it will take Her fruit and ascend to omnipotence, and then go and find Adam anyway. I'm not absolutely certain about this, but I think they're both in the basement. That's why the Angels all come here."

"Do it," Ikari ordered Maya.

"Wait, I want to hear –" Misato began.

"I said do it."

"Normally they attack one at a time to stop this exact thing from happening. I wonder why these two arrived at the same time? Maybe the second one thought the first had a good chance of winning, because it beat Unit-04, although that's smarter than I'd glaar …"

Her back arched, and she was still. Maya gave Misato an apologetic look; Misato scowled.

"You're joking," Asuka said, looking at Chitose's unconscious body superimposed over Eva-03; its autopilot kept it standing but slumped.

"She was broadcasting highly classified material on an insecure line," Ikari said.

"That was you? She was waiting to help me kill that thing!" Asuka shrieked back, pointing upwards, her expression shifting from annoyed to enraged.

"Remember your place."

"My place is right here in Eva, killing Angels, and I can't do that if you take away half of my backup! Why didn't you just lock her transmitter?!"

"Asuka!" Misato said, but Asuka was not the sort of person to be calmed so easily when worked up.

"Don't you 'Asuka' me, Misato. You saw what the first one did when it was four on one! We were already down two pilots! You're not the one risking her neck out here!"

"Yes, I am! If you lose, humankind will be wiped out. I'm part of humankind."

"So start acting like it and do something!"

Otsu was losing altitude, but still firing its beams wildly and flinging burning bits of its body all across the city. Kou had lost three legs and about a quarter of its eyes, and was rolling around with much less grace and agility than before, bouncing off mounds of rubble and skidding in small lakes of its own acid. It tried to stand, failed, and instead strained and regenerated a limb; Otsu swooped and carpeted it with fire.

"You are behaving like a child," Ikari said.

"Oh, that's just rich, coming from Mister 'Let's disable a third of the force instead of just telling her to shut up like everyone else does'!"

Misato stared, unable to quite believe it. She had never seen Asuka and Ikari speak together before; she'd expected Asuka to be at least nominally respectful. Asuka, she realised, was utterly terrified, and lashing out.

"If you do not act like a pilot should, you will be replaced."

"Yeah? By who, the autistic girl you just knocked out, or that grey-haired idiot who couldn't even walk out of a school without crippling himself?" She gave a tiny, hysterical laugh. "With Shinji in the ICU and Wondergirl still grounded, I'm the only one left who can do anything. Me. Me. Don't you dare call me a doll now!"

Doll? wondered Misato.

"Rei," said Ikari.

"Yes?"

"I authorise you to engage and destroy the Angels on the surface."

"Yes." She began moving toward the nearest trans-Geofront catapult.

Asuka intercepted and swept her legs from under her; Rei crashed to the ground. "Are you out of your mind? Rei's synch rate is barely half of mine, and her AT Field is tissue-thin! She doesn't stand a chance against them!"

"She will follow orders. If you can't do that, you're worthless."

Asuka boiled. Misato put her hand over her mike. "Sir, are you sure –"

"Yes," he said, with irritation.

Asuka hissed, hefted her weapon – a twisted piece of metal Dr Akagi had designated the mock-up of a Progressive Scythe, which had seemed like a viable way of reaching the Angel's core – and ran for the only intact catapult.

"When this is over, I want answers," she snapped, just before shooting upward.

Kou was lying on one side, feebly jabbing at Otsu with its two remaining limbs; Otsu, which was leaking LCL out of acid wounds across its body, was laboriously hovering just out of reach. It flapped a little away, reversed direction, and rammed Kou, knocking both to the ground in a tangle of limbs and wings, sending up splashes of acid and fire. A bipartite jaw extended from the winged Angel's body, seized Kou's core, and wrenched it loose; the fallen Angel went still.

Unit-02 appeared two hundred metres away, the crude scythe in hand.

"Hi," she said, and charged.

The Angel's eyes swivelled to her, and its jaw opened a little wider to swallow the fallen Angel's core. Asuka dashed forward, ignoring the acid and flames licking at her feet, went right through the Angel's weakened AT Field, and sliced the mouth off; the extra core fell to the ground.

"No," she said, and brought her scythe around in an overhead hammer blow on the core; it shattered.

The Angel thrashed its wings, and lifted a glowing eye at her; she stabbed through it before it could use its energy attack, burying her weapon up to the hilt. She traded it out for her prog knives, and proceeded to carve the Angel apart. She took four and a half minutes to find the core and smash it to bits.