Disclaimer: This work is a work of fiction. It is not written for profit but for the pleasure of writing it. The characters, places and situations within belong to studio Gainax and all related partners. I own only original characters and situations. Please don't sue me, I'm not worth the effort. Now that that is out of the way, let's begin "The Travels of The Black Ship".
Misato Katsuragi was flopped down into a chair in her private office, completely gobsmacked at the revelation Commander Ikari had just dropped on her; well, technically he dropped in on her first and passed out. She dragged him over to an empty chair in her office where just before she was going over material and personnel transfers when a frantic knocking drew her attention and she opened the door. The rest, as they say, is history. What had left the Captain feeling numb and empty was the Commander's report that Dr. Akagi had been taken over by the Fourth Angel; the entire fight and it's subsequent 'death' had all been an act to get inside of NERV.
She couldn't believe it! How could she believe it?! Her best friend had been possessed by an Angel?! How did something like that happen, for Christ Sake?! The Commander had been short on details, but he had a few ideas, none of which Misato was in the mood to hear. As the Commander started coming around, she took the initiative and ordered an immediate lock-down of the entire base, as well as the immediate – but tactful - apprehension of the Angel possessed Dr. Akagi. The Fourth Angel must have been trying to sabotage NERV's newest asset and keep them grounded; that was not going to happen!
She had dispatched security teams to track down and apprehend Dr. Akagi and the two fake NERV personnel the Commander had warned her about before he had passed out. As she let her mind wander and her thoughts whirl as she was slumped in her chair, she heard a groaning to her left and noticed the Commander waking up. She composed herself and slowly stood up. She walked over to the Commander and placed a steadying hand on his chest as he tried to stand, but he fell right back down into the chair as a nauseating wave of dizziness hit him. He looked ready to fall unconscious again, but he forced himself to his feet with a snarl and took very tentative steps as he tried to walk off the effects of the Fourth Angel's piercing scream.
Somewhere deep in his sub-conscious, a snide teenage version of himself crassly joked, "The bitch never screamed so loud when we were doing it. Kind of glad, though". The vastly more mature part of Gendo Ikari's brain responded with dignity and restraint: "FUCK OFF!" The teenage part of his brain took the hint and made like a tree. As he forced himself to stay upright, he decided to give his brain a problem to focus on to help speed up the recovery of his faculties.
"How's the hunt for the Dr. Akagi impersonator progressing, Captain?" He realized he shouldn't have started on that track so soon as the Captain looked eminently hurt. She quickly put on a mask of professionalism and told him what she knew so far. Unfortunately, what she knew so far wasn't nearly as much as she would have hoped.
"The Fourth Angel, Sir", she said softly and not without some trouble, "has so far eluded capture as have the two that escaped with her. We're studying their faces from security recordings and are attempting to conclusively determine if the faces they wear used to belong to actual people or if they are original fabrications". She also mentioned that they now had samples of the two impostors bio-signatures, which read now as distinctly Blue Pattern. The three were still on the base, and their general location had been isolated in a general sense within a single square mile of the base, but that was still a substantial area to thoroughly investigate and was still ongoing. While the three could mask and dampen their own bio-signatures, they could not hide them completely.
"On a final note sir, Dr. Gannon came up with AT-Breaker ammo for all side-arms and sub-machine guns; distribution to all security staff is now complete". The Commander nodded at the Captain's report and actually looked a bit improved from his earlier collapse. The order he was now about to give would be eminently unpopular, but with the Fourth assimilating Dr. Akagi, whatever time they originally thought they had gone from minute to infinitesimal.
"Very Good, Captain. Order all mission critical personnel to board the heavy transport ship and prepare for immediate departure; whatever time we thought we had has just been greatly reduced".
The Captain looked like she had been slapped in the face. She became crestfallen and even somewhat panicked. She began to ask why the Commander had made this decision, to even try to convince him otherwise but he angrily barked, "We don't have time for a discussion, Captain!" She snapped to attention like a current had been run through her. Commander Ikari softened somewhat and said in mush quieter tone, "If the Angel has compromised our new transport, in any way shape or form, we must immediately determine that and resolve the problem. Our security teams will be ordered to damage, but not terminate, the Angel. They will, however, not be forced into a position where they have to put their lives at risk for the sake of one person, no matter how dear a friend", he hesitated strangely after this comment, "or trusted a colleague we may lose in the process".
The Captain tried to understand Commander Ikari's strange reaction when talking about Ritsuko as though she were a friend, but he was right about needing to jump on the situation before the Angels pulled some kind of other scheme to try to attack them. They were learning some very human, very scary tricks and they were learning them at a break-neck pace. Who knew what they were going to try next?
"I understand Sir", the Captain responded, forcing her resolve back to full strength, "we need to see this through or one errant friend is going to be the least of our problems".
"Thank you, Captain. Gather the necessary personnel and prepare our new warship for launch. We are taking this fight to the enemy this time".
It had been several hours since the Commander had stumbled into her office, but now Misato had arrived at the abandoned section of the Tokyo-3's international airport and was in the process of briefing the selected crew of NERV's amazing new tactical asset and assigning duties. She was surprisingly making good time with the briefings, but she kept having this bad sense in the back of her head that something awful was going to happen that couldn't be undone.
She had lost her friend Ritsuko once; she was absolutely in no mood to lose her a second time.
Misato was just going over her notes for the next group of personnel to receive their briefings. She was just about to call them forward when she noticed a trio in the far back of crowd. The three were wearing hoodies but she saw a shock of medium length blonde hair sticking out from one of the hoods, not to mention that two of them had glowing red eyes beaming out from under their hoods looking right at her. She narrowed her eyes at them, but continued with calling forward newly selected crew members and handing out duty assignments.
She gave a subtle look and a nod to one of the plain clothes Section-2 agents that were handling security. He nodded almost imperceptibly and appeared to check his watch for the time. What he was really doing was checking a portable scanning device attuned to the Angels unique energy signature. What he saw were three patterns and silently alerted his fellows with a silent alarm system. The alert would appear as a blinking red light in the corner of the small HUD on the inside of newly distributed digital sunglasses. The agents were equipped with side-arms that used large caliber rounds of AT-Breaker bullets. If the human-jacking Angels decided to kick up a fuss, they were going to have a very bad day.
Several agents began giving subtle cues that indicated that their quarry was moving around the very rear of the group of assembled personnel, but weren't doing much other than observing what was going on. Misato had a bad feeling building in the pit of her stomach. Before she came to the airfield, she checked in with headquarters about the status of the two Angels on the moon. The Fifth Angel had stopped its bombardment of the planet. It was curled into a ball right next to the ghostly apparition that had appeared with it. The mysterious apparition seemed to be watching over its napping counterpart like some kind of body guard. While the break in hostilities meant extra time to prepare, it also meant that the Angels were preparing for something as well. For all she knew, the reincarnated Fourth Angel and her offspring showing up at the airfield could all be part of whatever they were planning.
Misato was just about to call out the names of the next group when a terrified and agonized scream erupted from the back of the group. She whipped about until she found the source of the scream. She felt her gorge rise as she saw the male offspring chomping down on the throat of a young recruit she recognized as joining NERV only a day or two ago. The Angel offspring's mouth had unhinged like a snakes, but instead of a pair of enormous fangs, it had a mouth full of them. Its teeth were sunk to the gums into the young mans throat, blood spraying everywhere. The human form Angel whipped its head back with such force, it tore the doomed young mans head off, his decapitated body flopping onto several other terrified recruits. It glowing red eyes and mouthful of menacing fangs didn't seem to fit with the attractive and youthful face it wore, which to Misato made it seem all the more hideous. She drew her own side-arm and was about to issue orders to engage when other people began screaming.
A lot of other people.
Misato had been briefed by the Commander that there were only two offspring, but from the various scenes right out of gore-fest horror movies, there had to be at least nine of them, including an elderly man with hook-covered tentacles, a young woman tearing people in half with massively over-sized clawed hands, another that looked like a classical werewolf but with bat wings and a couple extra heads...what the Hell?
If the Angels could shrink themselves and absorb people, could they absorb other living things too? If so, it made a demented kind of sense. But what didn't make sense was how so many had managed to sneak in, which quickly made a frightening amount of sense when Misato realize one of the human-form Angels had absorbed a Section-2 agent. Now THAT was sneaky!
It was also the singular most dirty trick Misato had had pulled on her in her entire military career!
She ordered all Section-2 agents to engage the enemy while trying to keep them away from any more NERV personnel. The human-forms seemed to take time in each attack, seemingly oblivious to the Section-2 agents shooting at them. Whenever they let go of a victim, they quickly retreated. Why? Why would they give up the advantage of surprise when it was work...
"HOLY SHIT! HE'S GETTING BACK UP!"
The Captain felt her shoulders slump as she begun to turn around toward the source of the panicked scream. She did a double take when she saw what caused it.
A man who had his throat savagely torn open was getting back up, the wounds healing rapidly with every jerk and twitch. His assailant had the beginnings of an exoskeleton and was covered in short spikes. What really knocked the Captain back was the former victim was now rapidly growing his own exoskeleton, but a more extensive one and with longer, nastier looking body spikes and horns even. He even grew in mass quite a bit.
The perfectly incredulous "you-have-got-to-be-kidding" look on Misato's face mirrored her intense disbelief at what she was seeing.
"So the victim turns into an upgrade of the attacker?!" She thought angrily, "How the fuck is that fair?! SCREW. THIS!" As She mentally bit off a curse, the Captain whipped out her radio that she had stuffed into her jacket pocket and made a hasty-and angry-request to a special asset she had in place just in case things went pear-shaped today. A thunderous electrical whining greeted her ears and she couldn't help but grin like a crazy person. All of the human-forms seemed to forget what they were doing and whipped around to face the grinning Captain Katsuragi. Still grinning, she pointed up and the human-forms looked up – and realized their mistake. Automated weapon systems were powering up and locking onto the human-forms.
"Bye-Bye!" The Captain chirped as the weapons began firing. These particular weapons were designed for anti-personnel fights and were remarkably precise. AT-Breaker rounds reduced the human forms to flying sprays of LCL when they hit their visible S2 Organs. The captain saw one guy high-tail it toward a vehicle storage hangar like he had a Lamborghini shoved up his ass and relayed the sighting. Sadly, the running human-form dodged every shot and even sped up. He never even slowed down when he arrived at the building; he just plowed right through the door like it was tissue paper.
Aboard the massive transport ship on the main bridge, sitting in the well-like tactical control station, was an annoyed Joseph Carmine. He input commands for the anti-personnel weapons to shut down as the ships sensors detected human life-signs in the building. Scratch that, he thought, the people are high-tailing it out of there. The lone human-form was made visible by the advanced visual sensors which could literally see through walls, which was identified as a neon blue silhouette on his visual display, while regular humans appeared a light pink, and Nephilim folk appeared a sharp magenta. The colour associations bugged Carmine a bit, but what really got his goat today was just what the in the Sam Hill that human-form was doing.
He seemed to have his arms spread wide like he was a preacher giving a sermon. Carmine quickly reactivated the weapons suite and was in the process of locking on when the figure suddenly expanded to several times his size, long tendrils shooting out of him and grabbing any and every piece of machinery in the the vicinity, from small powered hand tools to huge front-end loaders and other heavy equipment.
"Now what in the Hell is that all about?!" Carmine swore.
The screen suddenly exploded in blinding white light, several consoles sparking. Carmine yelled in surprise and pain as the sudden burst of light was actually painful. He was also scared. He felt the human-form get stronger. How? He wasn't sure, and wasn't exactly wishing he knew the answer to this particular question. When the static cleared and screen resolution stabilized, his body froze in fright.
"Why can't these damn things just stick to a damn playbook or something?!"
The being that had been referred to as a "Human-Form" could no longer be considered anything of the sort. An explosively loud boom shattered all the windows of the vehicle bay, quickly followed by another. No one could see inside the building as there were no lights on inside and the sun was going down. The regular human agents, along with Agent Forbes and Dr. Gannon had just finished dealing with the rest of the more bestial human forms and their assimilated victims when the noises got their attention.
They quickly realized that they were listening to monstrously heavy footsteps! There was also a horrendous screeching and scraping of metal against stone. The owner of the feet that made those steps soon came into view, and Katsuragi thought she going to loose her lunch.
The hideous abomination that stomped out into the open, tearing and smashing wider the doors to the vehicle bay was a twisted nightmare; it was an enormous, writhing mass of human tissue wrapped around, growing out of and seemingly into and through numerous heavy construction and maintenance vehicles. What used to be a human body was now many time larger, but even the greatly increased mass wasn't enough for it to keep itself together as it twisted and melded with the huge machines. Its torso it seemed had torn itself open as it grew and its organs were flopping out, but instead of just hanging out its body like the guts of a dead animal ravaged by starving predators, the formerly internal organs were growing and throbbing, constantly changing shape and structure. It was like the entire entity was in a constant state of horrible, agonizing flux.
It shrieked and hissed and wailed in perfect agony as it advanced, dragging warped and broken vehicles and other heavy equipment behind it, attached to long, bleeding lengths of thick muscle tissue. The machines – for the most part – looked like they were being absorbed and broken down somehow, and pieces were being painfully redistributed through the walking horrors body. One piece of machinery and the tissue growing around it began to glow suddenly. The flesh seemed to melt right into the machine and took on a metallic gleam, completely but also elegantly absorbing the metals and other materials the machine was made out of.
The walking body-horror's whole body began to throb and pulse.
Misato realized that the sudden development in its constant transformation was now spreading throughout the hideous things entire body. Soon the entire disgusting beast was now glowing a lurid orange color and even began to levitate off the ground. It seemed to pull all of itself into a tight ball and she could swear it was growling loudly. It continued to change and transform, becoming something more structure and less haphazard.
The Moment it had burst out of the vehicle bay, agents had been shooting at it with everything from standard issue side-arms to heavy machine guns. It hadn't deployed an AT-Field simply because she was sure it knew what kind of weapons the NERV agents were using, but it was also so massive it didn't need to worry about their puny human guns. Misato had caught the look of initial agony on that abominations face, but she also saw the look of bliss that had swept over its misshapen visage as its transformation started to become more elegant.
The thing was now glowing so intensely, she couldn't make out any detail at all, not to mention the light was painfully blinding in its intensity. She felt a breeze kick up out of nowhere, which went from a gentle puff of wind to almost hurricane force in a split second. She initially thought the deafening roar she was hearing was coming from the winds but soon realized that the newest Angelic monster itself was the source of the roaring.
"What is this, an Anime?" The Captain rhetorically grumped as she was almost blown clear off her feet.
She was just about make a bee-line for the boarding craft to get away from the monstrosity but that plan was curtailed as the beast gave off a final roar, more of an explosion of sound, and a comparative blast of light and energy erupted from the epicentre. Misato was launched from her feet and flew through the air like she had been shot out of a cannon. She was going to slam into a APC that had been providing security. Several NERV personnel jumped as one and caught her before she hit the armoured vehicle.
'The instant I figure out the names of the guys that caught me, they're all getting pay raises!' Misato mentally crowed. She struggled to get her sense of balance back and at least clear her vision, shaking her head or wiping at her eyes
As the spots danced in the Captain's eyes, she thought this whole ridiculous incident couldn't get any more so. As the spots began to slowly begin to clear, she squinted her eyes to try to force them to get back into focus. She still couldn't make out a damn thing, and was silently hoping that the horrid beast had self-destructed somehow.
Her vision was now beginning to clear, but her hopes disappeared with her vision loss.
The thing even bigger than before. It had developed an massive insect-like lower body with a multi-armed vaguely humanoid upper torso. The six legs were multi-jointed like a normal insects, but incredibly thick like a huge tree trunk. It had elegant exposed bio-mechanical components on every limb, the main body, everywhere. The bulging neck, however, seemed to be completely artificial, comprised of hydraulic fluid tubes, electronic components, hydraulics, with seaweed-coloured skin just visible beneath the machinery at points. A large S2 core emerged from its chest and was surrounded by eight smaller cores, but instead of being red, they were a mother-of-pearl colour.
It's face was the worst; it was that of a rather attractive human man, except the skin along his jaw-line was dark blue and bristled with small bone spikes. His face was covered in an almost ridiculously elaborate bone mask that branched off and outward like a cartoon explosion effect.
It grinned directly at the Captain, licking its mouthful of razor-sharp teeth with a long forked tongue.
The newest Angel had just began to advance forward when it stopped in its tracks and tilted its head backward. Misato had no idea what was going on, but she broke into a mad dash and tried to put some distance between her and the hideous monstrosity while her unexpected lucky break was holding out. She heard a loud snarl and even some swearing behind her, and thought the jig was up. When she dared to look back, she herself stopped dead and realized that not only was the creature not giving chase, it looked at those it were having a silent but very angry conversation with some unheard speaker. It looked like it was trying in vain to argue with the other it was conversing with and having little to no luck. It suddenly lowered it head, spat out a curse, crouched low to the ground and shot into the air and out of sight.
"Um?...What in the HELL just happened?!" Misato's indignant screech was mirrored by the Angel-possessed Dr. Akagi as she realized all of her children had stopped what they were doing and quickly leaped away from the scene. She began vehemently demanding why they had stopped their attack when a powerful and familiar presence spoke to her.
"Sister. This so-called 'plan' of yours is quickly getting out of hand! Make clean this mess you've made and just GET ON WITH IT!"
Shamshel was floored, not only y the sheer amount of power Zereul had put into his psychic shout, but by the angry venom with which it was conveyed in. Shamshel knew her allotted time was running out, and that her Brother was not in very accommodating mood this day. She used her abilities to render herself invisible using her AT-Field to warp the light and began to quickly levitate up to the huge human war ship.
When her fingers touched the hull of the ship she doffed her clothing and reduced her physical form to LCL and swiftly found an exhaust port that had not yet been secured and made her way inside the great vessel. She became solid again and snaked her way through the exhaust port and tore out a grate in a small storage room. She silently slide to the floor and crouched down behind some crates as she conveyed with her kin. While her Sister was glad she was well, her Brother continued to steam and fret angrily like it was her fault things were taking so long.
THE NERVE!
Shamshel dropped into a lotus-blosom position and began sulking like a small child, though she was careful to keep it quiet. As she sulked, she had not the slightest inkling that another was outside the storage room, well aware of her presence but in no mood to let that little secret slip; things were turning out be such fun after all!
The mysterious being, which was wrapped in all-concealing billowing black robes, simply faded away, content that the puppets were dancing to the written tune and that all was in order. Soon, very soon, the Awakening Time would occur, and the silly little races born of Adam and Lilith would be no more, naught but embers and memory. Soon, the true Master would rise, and he will put the universe to right!
Oh, what fun it would be! Why couldn't time just speed up already?!
Author's Note's:Well folks, it's been quite a while since I last updated my story, but I hope you can forgive me. I also hope you enjoy this latest chapter.
I decided to turn the "Travels of The Black Ship" into a multi-part chapter as to flesh out the trip to the Moon. What do you think of my idea? Good? Bad? Any suggestions? Please, R&R! Later!