Disclaimer: Gainax and Hideki Anno own Evangelion and/or came up with it. I didn't so please no judicial attacks! This work is non-profit and for fun. And now, onto "When Gods Go Ape-shit! Or...How I Learned To Channel Bad Drug Trips!"
NERV's entire alarm system went completely ballistic. There were no other words for the audible chaos that erupted when the Magi computer's detected several high-speed particle discharges screaming toward the Earth from the beyond the atmosphere. Geo-seismic sensors were registering powerful quakes that were the result of the particle discharges hitting the ground at near-light speed. The entire sensor grid was registering powerful explosions being caused by the particle blasts. NERV personnel were running back and forth like chickens with their heads cut off. Actually, beheaded chickens wouldn't have been anyway near as chaotic. The one thing that was even more shocking than all these events put together?
Not one particle shot was aimed at Tokyo-3! Not even at Japan in general.
Each and every single particle shot was aimed at a completely random target across all of Europe and Asia! Some hit near Luxemburg, Germany, some hit just on the outskirts of Shanghai, China. While the particle shots never actually hit a heavily populated area, the shots were far too close for anyone's comfort.
Captain Katsuragi raced onto the Bridge, almost bulldozing over Shigeru in the effort. "Ooops! Sorry Lieutenant!" The musically inclined, long-haired Lt. Aoba smiled and replied, "No problem, Captain. I'm glad I 'bumped' into you, pardon the pun". She was about to ask why, or retort about the lame pun, Shigeru wasn't sure, but when he showed her what was on the large data pad he held in his hands, he wished she had. Katsuragi's lovely eyes all but popped clear of their sockets when she read what was on the pad.
While the Captain tried to kick her brain back into working order after reading the absurdity on the pad, Commander Ikari and Deputy-Commander Fuyutsuki were just coming onto the bridge.
"WHAT THE FUCK AM I LOOKING AT?!"
Captain Katsuragi's incredulous screech caused Commander Ikari to actually lose his footing and slip over the edge of his raised command platform. Fuyutsuki tried to grab him and keep him from falling over, but sadly only got dragged over himself. Both men hit the lower deck with a cringe-inducing thud and much swearing after the fact. They both levelled such singularly savage looks at Katsuragi, the Bridge crew was certain she'd spontaneously burst into flames! After the Commander got to his feet – and the Deputy-Commander shoved a vertebrae back into place – he growled softly this queastion: "The reason for your outburst, Captain, was what?"
Captain Katsuragi gulped audibly and softly explained herself. "Sirs, we have detected high-speed particle beam discharges striking areas all throughout Europe and Asia, but thankfully no major population centres have been hit. We have determined where the discharges are coming from...and from what".
Commader Ikari gave her a 'go on' gesture and she quickly replied, "Sirs, it's the next Angel. Actually, Sirs, there are two of them and they're on the Moon". The first half of the Captain's report had already been guessed, even anticipated, but for where it was and that it actually had a companion with it so completely unexpected, it had both Men rocking backward on their heels.
"There are two Angels?! Two Angels on the MOON?! What on God's Green Earth are two Angels doing? On the Moon for Christ sakes?!" That emotional outburst came from the Deputy-Commander, surprisingly. The Commander simply replied, "Making our lives harder, apparently". He decided to stay put on the lower Command deck as he didn't want to have a repeat of his fall with the Deputy-Commander. The rest of the Bridge crew was dutifully working away, trying to link up the Angel detection grid to an array of surveillance satellites they had just requisitioned from China, America, Russia, the United Kingdom, as well as their own. The most readily available array of satellites were now aimed at the moon and were in the process of zooming in on the Ptolemaeus crater located near the centre of the near side where the Particle fire was coming from.
When the picture finally stopped zooming in and the resolution resolved enough to make out fine details, the entire bridge crew gasped in disbelief. There were, in fact, two Angels, one resembling a demonic scorpion made of a mirror reflective crystal, but the other more resembled a nebulous cloud that gave one the vague impression of a huge being wrapped in an all-consuming cloak of glittering star-stuff. The only feature discernible was a pair of fiery red eyes emerging from what most thought was where the angels head was located. The scorpion-like Angel gave off distinct Blue-patterns and clear readings, but for the other one...it was like it wasn't really there. Oh, everyone could see it, clear as day, but the satellites sensors and diagnostic equipment seemly couldn't come to a distinct conclusion about the Angel, if an Angel it really was. They couldn't detect any discernible patterns of any kind whatsoever, nor could they determine any mass or dimensions.
It was both something and nothing, all at the same time.
Unfortunately, NERV got a much better idea of what it was and wasn't when the ghostly entity looked directly at one of the satellites that was observing it and it's companion. It's hellish red eyes narrowed with simmering anger clear in those horrid red orbs. The Satellites began receiving a powerful signal from the entity, an audio signal that somehow was suddenly piped into NERV entire intercom system.
The result was simply beyond belief.
The sheer volume of the voice that exploded from the intercoms was enough to make peoples ears bleed, the powerful resonance of it threw people far from their work stations or flying from their feet into colleagues or walls as though a hideously strong physical being had pitched them like they were softballs. Bones were reduced to the consistency of crushed gravel in some cases, ear drums burst and left people with a sickening ringing in their ears that no amount of shaking could undo. Electronics exploded and shorted out, peppering most of the bridge crew with shrapnel, slicing and stabbing flesh, mild to sever burns dealt out here and there.
Several people outright died.
The entity had spoken but four simply words:
"Your observance is...unwelcome".
As Med-tech and emergency personnel swarmed unto the bridge, tending to the injured and trying to get NERV systems back on-line, Commander Ikari tried vainly to push himself to his feet, but painfully flopped to the floor again and again, his sense of balance was quite simply gone as his inner ear was surely ruined, his left arm a twisted wreck. He realized something horrifying, though, about the mysterious entity just before he blacked out from the pain: "It had spoken softy!"
Many hours later, Gendo awoke in a hospital bed with all manner of equipment around him, his arm set and in a rigid cast. He looked around the room and realized he was not alone. In fact, he was quite sure the Deputy-Commander was immediately bedded to his left and the good Captain to his immediate right; the three Bridge techs affectionately known as the "Bridge Bunnies" were asleep in beds on the opposite side of the room. As he scanned the room, Commander Ikari quickly realized that his hearing had been repaired as the ringing was gone and he could hear normally again, but he had such a piercing headache, he thought his head would burst.
As he tried to sit up, he was overcome with such a wave of dizziness that he felt violently sick. He quickly leaned over the side of the bed and vomited. The thick and nasty bile looked simply wrong and prompted another fit, when several doctors and nurses, immediately followed by Dr. Carmine swept into the room and began checking on the Commander. One got a bucket for him, another began administering a host of nausea medications through the many IV lines in his arms, and Dr. Carmine helped to steady the Commander and tried to get him to focus on him.
"Come on, Boss, take it easy. You just got out of surgery to rebuild your inner ears and ear drums, not to mention your arm. Your brain is trying to get its balance again. The hardware's there, just got to reset, that's all". As Gendo Ikari began to focus on Carmine's face, he felt his dizziness wash away like sand before the tide, and any trace of lethargy simply up and vanished. His stomach felt great, too.
"God, I love modern medicine!", Ikari thought as he quickly recovered his senses. He properly sat up in bed and asked for some water to wash out the bile from his mouth. After a few swishes, he spat out into the bucket and the nurse took it away to empty and clean it. As the last of the cobwebs cleared away, Dr. Carmine dismissed the other doctors after they had finished their check-ups of the Commander and sat down beside him on a chair by his bedside.
"Do I even want to know what happened? Or are you just going to tell me anyway, because I refuse to start some asinine guessing game", the Commander growled when he found his voice, which was surprising calm and subdued, even for him despite the sheer absurdity of the situation. Carmine exhaled, took a very deep breath and began his explanation.
"Commander, When we got a solid picture of the next Angel, we also got a glimpse of something hovering right beside it. We're guessing it to be another one, but the sensors couldn't make head or tails of what it was, or if it was even there. Sure, we could see its image captured by the satellites with our own two eyes, but all the surveillance equipment could get squat on it; size, mass, dimensions, energy readings. None of these could be detected. What we did detect was that thing beaming a powerful electromagnetic signal to our communications array and telling us all to politely fuck off...so politely in fact that it killed several people and seriously injured a whole lot more just by whispering! I don't know about you, Chief, but that was a Hell of a warning!"
"That wasn't a warning"
Carmine looked at the Commander incredulously but before he could respond, the Commander repeated, "That wasn't a warning".
He went on to say, "That was merely an observation of fact on the Angel's part". What Gendo Ikari said next sent Carmine rocking back o his heels: "If the Angel in question, if that's what it really was, truly wished to warn us...well, then", the Commander chuckled darkly, "I think this conversation would be rather one-sided, yes?"
Joseph Carmine paled even more than he already was, which was quite something to see from a man with almost no skin pigmentation.
Dr. Ritsuko Akagi came to with a start and bolt into a sitting position on the floor, like she had woken from a particularly frightening nightmare. She was soaked with sweat and she noted that her chest was wet and smelled of coffee. She knew she had fallen over and spilled her hot coffee on herself, but she had trouble remembering what had happened after she had entered her office. She also had a great deal of trouble trying to reconcile the fact her computer was on fire...on fire?!
She shot to her feet and grabbed the fire extinguisher near the door. She broke the safety seal and pulled the safety pin and had at it. By the time the fire was out, her office was practically taken over with extinguisher foam and smoke. She quickly opened her office window and let the cool air from the Geo-front race in to replace the smoking, cloying smell of her office. After several minutes, Dr. Akagi managed to completely ventilate her office, but her computer and work desk were total losses. She sighed angrily as she now had to check through the back-ups of her work to make sure she hadn't lost anything of importance, as well as try to get new office equipment from the supply depot quarter master, and he was a snide little creep who always took forever to order new equipment in no matter how urgently one needed it.
She quickly removed her blouse and threw the soiled one in the trash bin. She was in no mood for laundry this evening thank you very much! She found her replacement blouses in the second drawer of her filing cabinet and slipped it on. As she made herself presentable for the staff, she suddenly became aware of whispering.
Animated, and of many voices.
It was also giving her a headache. It became so terrible all of a sudden that she screamed in pain and almost fell to her knees, but managed to stay on her feet. As she straightened up, her face took on a maniacally gleeful expression.
She looked straight up and whispered in a voice that no human had ever owned, "Well, that worked splendidly now, didn't it?" asking the question of some unseen force.
As she left her office, Her smiled shifted from one of manic glee to a more gentle smile, humming a tune she simply couldn't place and began walking down the hallway, putting on her lab coat as she went. She had was so engrossed in the tune that she didn't notice Agent Forbes coming down from a side corridor and bumped into him. She tripped and almost fell face first to the floor, but Forbes caught her around the mid-section and hoisted her back to her feet. He was just about ask her if she was alright when he looked into her eyes and she looked back.
What they both saw startled them, and they each took a step back from each other.
Dr. Akagi smiled a sad smile and reached up and gently placed her palm against his cheek. She said, "Poor soul. You have suffered so much because of the ignorance of one whom you trusted , who you gave your love and devotion to. They have betrayed you in the most complete way possible. I shall rectify this".
She calmly walked around Forbes and continued walking down the hallway.
Agent Forbes hadn't the faintest clue as to why Dr. Akagi said what she did, or why she gave off a completely Angel life signature. When he looked into her eyes he still saw Ritsuko Akagi, but now there was something else mixed in with her. He had no idea what to make of it, but if he jumped to conclusions and alerted the Command staff to a potential problem that wasn't really a problem at all would be a waste of time for all involved. While he concluded that there was more Angel DNA used in her new body than he originally thought, which could have in turn produced a stronger Angel life signature that his new Nephilim senses could detect, he was not about to leave anything to chance and decided to keep an eye on her; at least for the time being.
He pulled out his cell phone and reported what had just happened to Commander Ikari. The Commander listened intently to Agent Forbes report and went over each and every word of it. He hummed to himself before he said anything.
"Agent Forbes, you have my permission to conduct surveillance of Dr. Akagi. Keep it quiet and do not, under any circumstances, let her know you are observing her".
Agent Forbes replied with a simple, whispered, "Yes sir".
What neither men knew was that Agent Forbes was being observed by a young good-looking male technician with a suspicious and worried look on his face. His eyes glowed red for a moment. As he mentally communicated what he heard to the person most effected by Forbes' surprisingly astute observation, the recipient of the psychic message told him not to worry, and that she would deal with the Nephilim man if he became to much trouble. Besides, she had the perfect idea for convincing him to change his mind about her. She wasn't about to bully the man, but give him a gift that would convince him of her sincerity.
Blood is thicker than water, as they say.
Shamshel wasn't truly worried about Forbes. What she was worried about was that when she was looking through Dr. Akagi's mind, she saw a rather audacious plan for getting NERV's combat assets to the moon. She knew that such a plan was only a matter of time in development, but NERV already had a fully realized plan! It was such an absurd plan that Shamshel thought NERV would never be able properly develop the concept, never mind actually have a finished product!
That "finished product" was making its way to Japan and would be there tomorrow morning!
Gendo Ikari had finally been discharged from the NERV Medical and was now heading toward the Japanese International airport. He had been ordered by Keel to oversee the transfer of "new equipment" as Keel had said, which would be used to deal with the moon-situated Fifth Angel and its powerful and mysterious companion. He was just walking out the front door of the NERV Medical Centre when his cell phone's emergency ring tone started blaring from his jacket pocket. He quickly fished out the device with a deft hand and placed it against his ear as he hit the answer button.
"COMMANDERIKARIYOUHAVETOCOMERIGHTAWAYTHERESANALIENSPACESHIPHEADINGTOWARDTOKYO-3ANDITSNOTSPARINGTHEHORSESCOMERIGHTAWAY!"
As Comander Ikari began to break down the long, panicked noise that had just screamed through his cell connection, He realized several things: Lt. Ibuki had made the call, seemingly another alien race had invaded the planet, and that the young Lieutenant would be soon thrown out a very high window for causing his newly-rebuilt ear drums to pop. He was about to go order Chinese food to cheer himself up for the rude start to his morning when Agent Forbes rode up on a massive Harley-Davidson motorcycle that roared like an angry devil.
Well, what the Commander initially thought was a Harley.
Both the front and rear tires looked like they belonged more on a monster truck than any kind of motorcycle, and the forks that held the front tire looked like short, but giant sized bulky robotic arms with the 'hands' holding the front tire. The body was a hi-tech beast of an heavily chromed engine mounted in a black powder-coated heavy frame that Ikari was absolutely sure would be perfect for a component on a front-line battle tank! There was a swept-back partial canopy that protected a concave dashboard display of LED back-lit controls and holographic displays. The rear tire was mounted directly behind the seat and rear section of the bike, giving it an illusion of being low-profile despite its huge size.
"I got the same call, Sir. Need a lift?" The Commander was sore about having to leave the Chinese food for another time, but the world was at stake after all. He nodded and was handing a bikers helmet, now taking notice that Forbes had abstained wearing one himself. Forbes chuckled as he replied to Ikari's questioning look, "Don't worry, Sir. I got a really hard head!"
The Commander was most certainly not amused, especially when Forbes hit the gas and tore away from the Medical Centre like a bat-out-of-Hell on cocaine. The Commander thought for sure he was going to go flying off and get pasted by traffic, but he somehow managed to stay on the bike despite Forbes lunatic driving skills. There was a communicator built into the helmet, so Ikari decided to get an update on the so-called "alien warship" that had showed up.
After hearing what the ship really was, who was behind it, and why, he sighed resignedly, swore like a sailor and regretted not gorging himself on Chinese food and getting a "Happy Ending" while he had had the chance. Damn Lorenz Keel! He should have known that Nazi hoch-und-mächtig was going to do something extreme like this. When he arrived at the airport where the ship was supposed to be making port as it were, he'd get to the bottom of this whole insane mess, but if the ship was going to be used how Ikari thought, maybe he would just let Keel run with it.
As the wording of that thought crossed his mind, he wondered suddenly why he wasn't actively trying to get rid of Keel. The few possible reasons why that the Commander thought up were each and everyone disconcerting to say the least.
He had no idea that Keel was watching him this very moment from the top of an office building.
Keel chuckled to himself as the Commander fought to stay on Forbes hideous monstrosity of a bike. No one had any idea that Keel was able to influence the thoughts of others. He could change mannerisms or even personality quirks on a sub-conscious level. The effect could be immediate, or happen over whatever period of time Keel had available to himself. He could alter thought patterns, and therefore patterns of behaviour. All it ever took was a simple mental examination of the subjects mind and Keel instinctively knew what changes where could get him the result or results he was looking for.
What was an even bigger secret was that the Transcendence Material that had transformed Shinji, Gannon and Carmine allowed him to do this with a laptop! The technological component of the T-Material could connect to any device using a Wi-Fi modem. Keel could tailor their behaviour to suit his needs and desires; if they were becoming too upset over a particular course of action or one of his projects, he could dial back their emotional responses, calm them down and help them look at whatever upset them from a more logical standpoint, he could literally put some sense into their heads, all with the press of a few buttons and a click of the mouse pad.
With these wonderfully novel gifts, he'd been able to help the NERV staff calm down when they had to deal with his more "unpleasant" work. Sadly, he couldn't outright control anyone's mind. Well, at least, not yet anyway. Sadly his Nephilim comrades were becoming harder and harder to manipulate. One day, they be completely immune to his influence, and then, well...
There's gonna be a hot time in the old town tonight.
Keel kept his eyes, physical and mental, on Ikari at all times. He knew that the coming days would lead to some radical changes. Changes for the world at large, for the common folk, for the privileged, for everybody. Being the one in control of it all was so much fun!
"The one in control of it all? Now if that's not arrogance, I don't know what is". Keel screeched to halt and spun around, only to face the business end of a double-barrelled shotgun being shoved into his face and fired point blank. His head exploded like an over-ripe fruit that was bashed with a pile-driver. His body was thrown from the roof and crashed onto the roof of a car that was just pulling into a parking spot. The gunman looked down at his work. He stayed behind to make sure of his work, and that no one else was seriously injured.
As the passengers of the car got slowly got out and came to terms with what had been dropped on them, Joseph Carmine smiled as Keel's body continued to twitch. He knew Keel would grow his head back, but this attack would serve notice that, indeed, he and Emil had found freedom from his subconscious manipulations.
They weren't going to take it anymore!
Ikari had heard the gunshot, and was sure Forbes had too. The both now had special implants to block Keel's attempts at manipulation. Keel wouldn't be trying that trick again; At least not very soon. They continued to speed along, weaving and whipping through the streets of Tokyo-3, soon passing the city limits, and well on their way toward the Japan International Airport. A V/TOL came screaming out above the tree line and manoeuvred over the lane The Commander and Forbes were travelling before pulling ahead to about fifty metres ahead, opening its rear bay door and lowering itself till the door was almost scraping the pavement. The Commander gripped even more tightly as Forbes yelled back, "Hang on!"
He gunned the bike to full speed and tore towards the ramp. There was a bone-jarring bump, but soon the massive bike was up the ramp and locked securely into a specially designed transport frame so the bike wouldn't jostle about. The two men got off the bike and faced the lovely Captain Katsuragi, who had a mischievous smile on her pretty face. Forbes returned it with a shark grin of his own while Ikari simply smirked and said, "Nicely done everyone. Nicely done, indeed".
As Forbes checked over his bike, The Commander was brought up to speed on what the "new equipment" he was taking possession of was by Dr. Gannon, who was in actuality the pilot of the V/TOL. The pilot seat had been extensively redesigned to accommodate Gannon's more "unique" physiology. He still had to squat into the seat, though, looking particularly unhappy about it. The co-pilot seat was empty, or it was, as Dr. Carmine appeared in a flash of light that momentarily blinded the Commander.
"Warn me the next time one of you with teleportation powers decides to use them! I can't see, damn it!"
The Captain was giving her own two cents in a far less verbal manner as she had managed to partially shield her eyes, but now she was seeing spots and even a bit dizzy, so she socked both of the Nephilim men over the head, eliciting a yelp from Carmine and painful shriek from herself as her hand connected with Gannon's rock-solid and well armoured head. Gannon chuckled as the Captain hopped around holding her aching hand. He smiled a smile full of fang-like teeth and said, his voice coming out like he was speaking through a bullhorn with a voice changer, "I love having an exo-skeleton".
"Well, Dr. Gannon, if you please increase velocity to maximum, we could collect the "new equipment" post-haste. Good god, a giant space ship meant for Evangelions! What else is that lunatic Keel going to come up with?!"
As Captain Katsuragi stopped hopping around, she began to pay very close attention to what was being said. As Commander Ikari and Dr. Gannon began talking back and forth about the giant spaceship they were getting, She felt more and more like she had just been dropped into some ludicrous Saturday morning anime!
As the quickly accelerating V/TOL finally arrived in the airport's airspace, everyone on-board noticed a distinct lack of giant spaceship that was supposed to be hovering stationary over the airports abandoned northern-most section of runways. For a very uncomfortably long few minutes while trying to find the supposed ship, everyone thought they had been punked. Gannon was now passionately swearing in Gaelic and Carmine was just swearing, while the Captain and Commander were swapping idea of how they could make Keel's life miserable with a cannon, a bale of hay, fifteen rabid buffalo and couple of Jehova's Witnesses when the V/TOL impact alert sensors went crazy and Gannon slammed hard on the air brakes and kicked in reverse thrust so hard the other passengers thought the engines had been burned out. Misato completely lost her footing, went flying and slammed into Gendo, who hit the deck with a thud. Dr. Carmine braced a hand or foot against any and every solid object he could while Dr. Gannon steered hard right and up.
When they had come to a complete stop, Gannon checked the sensors and tried to figure out why the impact alert sensors had gone crazy.
The answer was literally staring him in the face.
The ship they were waiting for was equipped with a stealth system that allowed it become physically invisible, as well as perfectly silent. Said stealth system also hid the vessels enormous energy output. The sensors on the V/TOL had been designed by Dr. Carmine to see through the effects of such advanced stealth systems, but not in a million years had he guessed that his sensor enhancements would be used to detect one of their own.
The stealth penetrating sensors had a visual component, which all of the cockpit windows could show since they doubled, when used all at once, as a panoramic display monitor. As the sensors began interpreting the data they were receiving, the results were projected onto the interior of the cockpit windows. The image was grainy, hazy, very poor resolution, but as the minutes ticked by, the image came into much sharper focus. One by one, each pair of eyes slowly grew wider and wider, their owners being drawn toward the front of the cockpit where the image of the monstrous vessel was now crystal clear and vivid.
The ship was enormous! It had to be several miles long, at least!
It was jet black in colour, has aspects of classic space shuttles, stealth bombers and advanced fighter jets with some distinctly sci-fi inspired components and design features as well. It's thick, gargantuan wings were reversed and curved downward very slightly. Mounted on the ends and undersides of the wings were what looked like huge weapon modules that appeared as conglomerates of several different styles and types of projectile energy weapons and even a few projectile ones. There were enormous air intakes near the rear the of the craft, a pair near the tail end of the fuselage and one mounted at the joint where the wings connected with the great ship. The ship have an curved, arching dorsal section that started at the back and stretched all the way to the forward most anterior of the ship, giving the nose of the craft a vague impression of a classic space shuttle mixed with an advanced fighter jet; the group noticed all the windows and guessed that was where the bridge was. They were now above the leviathan and more and more detail became apparent; like how it was bristling with weapons of every kind and type. The thing looked more like a massive winged war engine than any kind of space craft.
"NERV HQ must have been giving the new sensor protocols for detecting this big mother. That's why everybody was in such a panic back at base. THEY could see it, but not everybody else. Well, now we got this damn thing, what are we going to do with it?" Dr. Carmine made a very good point. Commander Ikari had a very good, but equally crazy answer.
"We're going to load the Evangelions on-board this high-tech nightmare and launch them toward the Moon".
Everyone else whipped their eyes to the possible deranged Commander, but from the expression on his face, he was deadly serious.
"Chairman Keel had this ship built so that, hopefully, when the Angel Wars were won and the Eva's no longer necessary, each and everyone of them would be loaded on-board this ship and launched into deep space. There were dozens, if not hundreds, of secret facilities researching and developing each and every single piece of this thing, making the physical components. The finished components were somehow shipped out to a classified location somewhere in the middle of the United States where they would all be assembled into the final product: A city-sized mass destruction capable space ship"
Dr. Gannon adjusted himself so he could more comfortable and reflect on what the Commander had just told them. Dr. Carmine and Captain Katsuragi looked at each other in surprise; neither of them had been briefed about it. Captain Katsuragi was about to ask more about the ship when the Commander dropped yet another bomb.
"Somehow, the Angel knew where the R&D labs and manufacturing facilities were. That's what it's been shooting at the whole time. It found out about this ship and the installations that were working together to build it. There is a VERY big breach in security and now it has to be plugged. Thankfully, the Angel's weren't able to stop the prototype's roll-out. They can't detect it either, so when we're ready to deploy the Eva's to the moon, It will be, hopefully, a complete surprise for the Angel's. At the very least, it'll give them something else to focus on".
Everyone else seemed to be taking the news in stride, except the good Captain. She had a hand on a hip and the other against her head like she had a headache. After the info dump she had just received, who could blame her? The whispered, "Good God, this is crazy! No. I've come up with some pretty crazy ideas but this is just plain insane!"
"It's all gone bloody cracked, lass. This is what happens when Gods go crazy: how you have to go even crazier just to keep up!" Dr. Gannon's unearthly deep voice came off as rather disturbing, considering the circumstances, but there was no time to let fear and doubt get in the way of what had to be done. The Captain composed herself and grabbed on the headsets hanging from Dr. Gannon's seat. She asked him to connect her to NERV headquarters and was quickly on-line with the Bridge Command staff. "Alert the pilots to get to headquarters as fast as they can. Prep whatever hardware you can think they might need, but make sure your choices are from what Doctors Gannon and Carmine have developed. Is Unit-00 ready for sortie? It is? Perfect! All required enhancements finished? Excellent!" She paused for a moment after a the slight noise coming from the ear-piece went up considerably.
"Just checking! Calm down, Shigeru, I know how hard you guys are working! Take a few minutes break then equip Unit-00's exo-shell to it. Dr. Gannon left step-by-step instructions for doing it. Your already on it? Great job! I'm going to need all senior Bridge staff to transfer over to out new ship for...Eh? The ship we got from Chairman Keel, the one we're gonna used to get the Eva's to the moon! What do you mean, you never heard about it?! It was in an official memo, for Christ sakes! What do you mean 'you never got the memo'?! It was delivered to everybody's mail boxes! Oh, never mind, just get over to the Japan International Airport and head toward the abandoned North Section! We'll pick you guys up there for the transfer!" She pulled the headset away from her ear rather sharply and asked Dr. Gannon to cal NERV HQ again. This time the call was on speaker.
"Hey, did you just hang up on me?" the Captain barked.
"I don't know, did it sound like this?" Lt. Aoba barked back. The line clicked close.
As Captain Katsuragi stared death right at the headset, The Commander shook his head. He could only speculate as to the havoc this monster ship showing up in Japan had caused, and it was cloaked! Imagine if it had been visible! He decided not to indulge that line of thought for sanity's sake. He knew it would only be a matter of time before the Angel's realized they had some kind of countermeasure to their moon-based attack strategy...but he couldn't shake the feeling that the Angel's had somehow hacked classified data to target the support facilities.
He just wished he knew how they had done it!
Zereul, the Angel of Might looked at his sister with pride. Thanks to another sibling that had also woken early, she knew of the Lilim's plan to create a vessel. Ireul had woken much earlier than had been foretold, but Zereul was very glad he did, because now their sister had destroyed the Lilim's ability to produce more of those war ships that Ireul had learned about from his interactions with Lilim technology. The unfortunate thing was, such a vessel had already been built before the discovery had taken place. Now the Lilim could send forces to the Moon and engage them directly; if only Zereul could take solid form, he could annihilate that silly vessel with a thought!
Now he forced to wait!
Sister Shamshel had also just told them the ship had arrived on the doorstep of their enemies, waiting for those hideous mockeries of Father to be loaded on board. Zereul at first had thought that Sister Ramiel's assault had been one of rashness and anger, but she had surprised him with her cunning and foresight. He was so proud of her.
FATHER would be proud of her!
They still couldn't detect the Lilim war vessel, but that was immaterial. Whether it arrived sooner or later was inconsequential. They would destroy the Lilim's attack force and then they'd deal with the rest of that wretched race. Father would be restored...and the whole of Creation would be theirs for the conquering!
Zereul felt a strange sensation building deep within. He felt such a great jubilation that his semi-corporeal form began to shake and quiver. He suddenly realized what was going on. He was laughing! What a wonderful sensation!
If there had been an atmosphere on the Moon, Zereul's laughter would have caused hurricane force winds and terrible gales to blow. What his laughter did do was cause powerful seismic tremors throughout the entire moon. To say that he was anxious for a fight would have been an obscene understatement .
IT was going to be such fun!
Author's Notes: Whew! Got it done! I never thought I'd have this thing done, but I did it! I duly apologize to everyone for taking so damn long writing this thing, but now it's done I hope you all sincerely enjoy reading this latest instalment as much as I have writing it for all of you. Consider this a belated Christmas gift, everybody! Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year! Oh, and get ready for "Celestial Smack-Down, The True Gods Awaken"