"Damnit! So you're telling me there's nothing we can do?!" I slam a fist onto the table. After snapping out of me out of my...breakdown, Mari, Asuka, and I all went back to the empty warehouse we usually met up at to discuss strategy. "I'm afraid not, we're utterly powerless right now. You should know that better than anyone." Mari says while looking at me. I hear a snicker from Asuka.

"Something you'd like to add?" I ask.

"It's just the irony of the whole thing, you can supposedly see the future yet you're constantly blindsided. It's priceless!"

"Stop it Asuka." Mari begins.

"No, No it's ok Mari." I cut her off. "I want to hear this," I turn back to Asuka. "You've had a problem with me since day one. Mind telling me why?"

"You want to know why I don't like you? You act like since you can appareantly see the future you're better than everyone else. Like you're the only one who can fix this. When the truth is you haven't fixed a damn thing, if anything you've only made things worse and whenever things get bad what do you do? You run away! You're no better than that stupid Shinji! You can try to blame Seele and the commander but at the end of day whatever happens to Kensuke is All. Your. Fault."

"Asuka!" Mari cries before turning back to me. "You alright?" she whispers.

"You think I don't know that?!" I suddenly stand up.

"Don't you start too!" Mari tries to scold.

"I know that literally anyone else would be better suited for this. Don't you dare act like I asked for this! And you're saying that I act superior to everyone, ever hear of the expression 'Pot calling the Kettle black?' And do you want to know what the best part is? You have no reason to feel superior, we Eva pilots are replacable. You weren't chosen because your skills you were chosen because your Mom participated in an experiment." I continue getting a sick glee out of finally being able to tear into Asuka like this.

"Stop it Brandyn!" Mari yells but I just ignore her.

"I've told you before Asuka I know all about your past, behind the smug attitude you're just a little girl in a plug suit crying for your mommy, it'd be funny if it weren't so pathetic."

Satisfied with my speech I sit back down and look at Asuka. She was boiling over with rage, I knew she was about to attack me. At least she was until Mari intervened. She slammed her hands on the table to get our attention.

"Look I get it, you two don't like each other. We can deal with that later, but right now we have to save Kensuke and you two are best suited to do it. You Brandyn with your knowledge and Asuka, you're the best pilot of us all."

I was about to say something but Mari shoots me a glare that shuts me up.

"This alliance might not be perfect but it's all we've got. Which is worse, working together for a little bit, or letting Gendo have his way?" Mari finishes her speech.

Asuka and I mull it over for a while.

Asuka answered first, "You win, I'll stay. But only for you and Kaji."

Mari turns back to me.

I sigh, "I'm in too, there's too much on the line for me to quit now."

Mari smiles and claps her hands together. "That's better."

Chapter 20: Arm of God

Misato's POV

Beep! Beep!

"Damn alarm clock" I mumble as my arm snakes it's way out of the blanket and fumbles for the off switch. Eventually I hit it and the room goes silent. After a few more minutes of laying there I eventually throw the covers off me. Oh, that's right. The Unit 04 synch tests are today. I pick myself up and walk towards the kitchen. Alright let's see, Asuka and Mari said they'd be at Hikari's house, Toji got permission to spend the night at the hospital with his sister.

I open the fridge and grab a beer while finishing my thoughts. Shinji stayed the night at Kaworu's apartment again, and Brandyn just does whatever he wants anyway so all I need to worry about is making sure Kensuke's ready to go.

I stare at the beer can in my hands, what am I doing? I can barely take care of myself, let alone a bunch of angsty teens. Humanity's saviors in the safe hands of a drunk, what was NERV thinking?

I set the beer back in the fridge. 'Maybe not today.' I think to myself.

An hour later

I was driving kensuke to matsushiro, where the unit 04 activation tests were to be done. I couldn't get that short conversation with Brandyn out of my head though. Why was he insisting on piloting unit 04? Does he know something?

Eventually we made it to the testing site. Kensuke eagerly jumps out of the car. Ritsuko comes to greet us.

"Hey there Ritsy." I greet cheerily. She just looks at me funny.

"What's with the strange look?" I ask, a little freaked out.

"That's strange, you don't reek of alchohol." she says, legitimetly surprised.

"Oh shut up." I mutter under my breath.

Some time later (Brandyn's POV)

"What the hell?!" I exclaim, trying to fake my surprise.

I was staring a monitor in the geofront, watching as the Matsushiro base is completely enveloped by a bright blue explosion. I wasn't the only one watching though, all of my fellow pilots were staring at the screen too. I turn away, disgusted, I know exactly whats going to happen next. I scan the faces of the others.

Asuka and Mari look like me, they knew what exactly what was going on and were horrified.

Shinji, Rei, and Touji are completely stunned, they couldn't even imagine that anything could go wrong.

Kaworu's reaction was intriuging though, he was completely stone faced. Like he was completely unphased by these turn of events. I guess it makes sense since he's an angel and probably doesn't care much for any of us other than Shinji but I can't shake the feeling that it goes deeper than that.

I turn away before anyone notices that I was staring.

"What you just saw is all we know so far, for undetermined reasons the Matsushiro headquarters seems to have been wiped off the map. So until further notice you are to stay near your Eva's." Gendo explains to us, since Misato was MIA he was acting as leader for a short bit.

A few minutes later

I was still sitting inside the command center, so I could watch the battle. I didn't really have much to do though since they were still trying to establish visual with Bardiel. This gave me time to reflect. Immediatly my mind jumped to Kaworu, he's just so enigmatic. Is he friend or foe? The most pressing question is why is he here? Before he was the last angel so why has he shown up so early now, well I guess I shouldn't be surprised my prescence has changed a lot. It's hard to tell whether these deviations are a good or bad thing at this point though.

"We finally have visual!" Aoba announces.

I snap out of my thoughts and turn to the screen and see exactly what I was expecting, an out of control Evangelion. Now that I think about it this is the first time I've laid eyes on Unit 04, to make a long story short it looked exactly like the other two production models only it's color scheme was mostly silver.

"Commander Ikari, I'm detecting a life form approaching tokyo 3. Blue type confirmed...it's blue." Maya announces.

Blood type blue? That could only mean one thing...

"Another one?!" Gendo practically yells. Shortly afterwards he regains his composure. "Put it up on the monitor.

"Roger!" and not a moment later the screen flickered and I was staring at Zeruel.

"Prepare Units 02 and 03 for transport. Prepare all other Units for battle immediatly." Commander Ikari orders.

Everyone begins rushing around or typing on computers. Damnit! Why am I absolutely useless when it really matters?!

Toji's POV

Transport? The red devil and I must be going to fight Unit 04. I watch as one of the engineers signals for me to get in. I step into the entry plug.

I'm going to have to fight Kensuke?

The entry plug is inserted into the Eva.

But what if I can't bring myself to do it?

LCL begins to fill the plug.

"You're the best big brother ever!"

A voice rings out, "Evangelion Activation complete, synch ratio 70 percent."

That's right. I have to do this, for Sakura's sake.

The catapult launches upwards.

I'm sorry Kensuke.

Brandyn's POV

I watch the screen as Units 02 and 03 are put onto wierd cross things similar to what Unit 03 was on in canon and are flown off by helicopters. The screen flickers and it switches to Zeruel, standing (or I guess floating) infront of the four Eva's ready to oppose him. They were in the middle of Tokyo 3, but luckily everyone was evacuated by this point.

Eva Unit 00 makes the first move by lifting up it's rifle and firing at the monster. At that point all hell broke loose. Unit 01 also began to fire at it and the smoke cloud hid the angel. One of it's arms flies out and knocks the rifle out of Unit 00's hands. Luckily the gun was all it hit.

Unit 00 quickly takes a progressive knife out of it's left shoulder pylon and tried to stab the thin paper like arm. But as she goes in for the stab the arm pulls back.

Unit 06 rushes towards Zeruel with it's progressive knifes out, once it's close enough it swings both knives in a downward X motion and cuts through the A.T field.

His defenses have been lowered, and Mari sees her chance. "Get out of the way!" she yells as Unit 05 picks up dual rocket launchers and begins to fire away.

Unit 06 jumps out of way as two rockets threaten to hit it.

Unit 05 continues to bombard Zeruel until it runs out of ammo. "D-did we win?" Mari asks, not seeing any movement in the dust cloud.

Suddenly a pink glow appears in the cloud. Unit 06 jumps in between Unit 05 and Zureul. "A.T field max power!" Kaworu announces right before Unit 06 is struck by a large pink beam.

"KAWORU!" Shinji yells out.

The smoke clears and it turns out that Unit 06's A.T field held out, the ground infront of him charred and destroyed but the ground behind him looking no different than before. Unit 06 once again rushes in with progressive knives in hand. As he gets closer Zeruel begins to lash out like a cornered animal, it's arms whipped towards unit 06. Kaworu managed to dodge the first but the second one nicked Unit 06's shoulder and lost it's grip on one of the progressive knives.

Not wasting a moment Kaworu retaliates by grabbing Zeruel's arm with his recently dis-armed hand. He begins to pull and a wet tearing sound echoes throughout Tokyo 3.

He had just ripped Zeruel's arm off. The angel howls out in pain and Kaworu moves in for the finishing blow. Zeruel's eyes begin to glow a light pink. Unit 06 picks up the progressive knife it lost earlier and suddenly stabs forward shoving both knives into the holes in Zeruel's mask. Then in one quick motion he pulls them back out and shoves them both into Zeruel's core and all at once what many consider to be the strongest angel goes limp.

Cheers and sighs of relief echo throughout the base and I fall to my hands and knees. Everyone who saw the display probably thought it was out of relief, like I was worshipping God or something. But they couldn't be more wrong. It was out of fear, because soon enough I'll be on the receiving end of Kaworu's attacks.

"I...I have fight that monster?" I whisper to myself with a trembling voice.

I just hope Asuka's having a better time than I am right now.

So uh yeah, kinda took me a long ass time to come out with this chapter. For the record the reboot thing will not be happening, in fact that chapter will replace that announcement so those of you who've started reading after this has been posted probably don't even know what I'm talking about right now.

But yeah this chapter was just a pain in the ass to write for some reason, the beginning scene with Brandyn, Mari, and Asuka at the warehouse was pretty easy and the final battle scene was really fun but everything in between...god that was painful. Also this was originally supposed to showcase both the Zeruel battle and the Bardiel battle but I figured having two climatic battles in the same chapter would be wierd pacing wise so I pushed the Bardiel battle to next chapter.

You can also thank luckychaos for this chapter being up because it was reading the newest chapter of his story "Self insert Evangelion" (Yeah it doesn't win any points for it's title but the story itself is fantastic, go read it.) for getting me to (figuratively) get off my ass and actually finish this damn chapter.