Chapter 5: Fear of the Unknown
"I'm not afraid of death; I just don't want to be there when it happens."
-Woody Allen
Altitude. I need Altitude.
Gasping for breath after narrowly avoiding yet another lash from the glowing whips with a high-G manoeuvre, it was the only way out Bishop could think of. He couldn't outrun the Angel, and he couldn't outmanoeuvre it. The thing seemed to flagrantly disregard the laws of physics, and it remained firmly in place on his tail while he used every trick he knew to avoid strike after strike from the creature's reaching tentacles.
Its only limitation seemed to be that it needed air to push off of. He fervently hoped that meant it couldn't follow him to higher altitudes; or at least that the Avenger's heightened performance in the thin air would make for a more even match-up.
He still needed to shake the bastard off his tail, though. Just for a few seconds, enough for him to point the nose skyward and rocket away.
His daring bravado of just a few minutes ago was long gone. He couldn't even get the thing in his sights, let alone put up any meaningful fight. The pilot's mind was in survival mode now, a deep existential panic driving his hands and feet as they deftly manoeuvred the aircraft.
It wasn't a conscious fear of death or dismemberment; life had beaten those emotions out of him long ago. This fear was something far more primal, an instinct passed down through millions of generations from man's mammalian ancestors. It was the same feeling those small, rat-like creatures had felt as they hid in the trees from the dinosaurs stomping though the jungle below.
It was the feeling of very small prey being hunted by a very large apex predator.
Katsuragi was still shouting at him, but he'd be dead if his concentration lapsed for even a second. She would have to wait.
A flash of purple in the left mirror. He kicks the left rudder pedal and yanks the stick to the right, swinging the tail just out of the way while keeping the nose pointed straight ahead. Can't afford to lose a bit of speed. Now a strike from the right, and he swings the Avenger into a wide barrel roll, watching the glowing whip flash by just a few metres overhead as he hangs upside down in the harness.
It stopped a few metres in front of the nose before snapping back the way it came. Not good: he was well inside the range of the tentacles now. It would only be a matter of time, he was flying as fast as he dared this close to sea level, and at these speeds every violent manoeuvre was torture. His endurance was fading fast, and it would only take one slip-up for it to be over.
He had to make his play now or never, then. The beginnings of a plan formed in his frenzied mind; a stupid one that was just as likely to end in a very quick death as it was to succeed, but there was no better option.
Leveling off, he simply flew straight for a moment, eyes glued to the mirror as he waited for his pursuer to take a swipe at him. There it came: the Angel was sure it had its quarry this time, as he made no move to evade until the very last instant.
Then, with the blink of an eye between him and death's cold embrace, he shoved the stick as far forward as it would go. Blood rushed to his head from the negative G's, and the pilot felt and overwhelmingly painful pressure behind his eyes as the Avenger's nose plunged towards the sea. Immediately, he yanked the throttles all the way back to the reverse position, and his breath was knocked out of him as he was thrown forwards against the seat harness.
There was the sensation of a freight train rushing by, as a hundred metres of Angel whipped past the cockpit. He was now just below and behind his adversary, and with no time to marvel at the fact that his foolhardy plan had actually worked, he pushed the throttle all the way forward and aimed his aircraft's nose straight up.
Having shed its heavy payload, the old jet climbed like a homesick Angel; inappropriate as the old aviator's saying may have seemed at the moment. Daring to peek back behind his shoulder, Bishop saw, to his great satisfaction, the thing hovering in place far below, slowly turning from side to side as it searched for him.
It seemed for a moment that he had made a clean getaway, but it soon became clear that was not the case. The Angel entered an ascending spiral, and then suddenly reared up to rocket straight towards him.
Damn. At least he'd won a few seconds to catch his breath, and the thing seemed to struggle to keep place with him in the steep climb. Maybe, up in the stratosphere where the Avenger was at its best, he would be able to turn the tables.
A cautious hope took root as he climbed through 30,000 feet.
40,000 feet, and the Angel was gaining slowly, but still had a lot of ground to make up.
60,000 and he levels off. Here, the air was thin enough for him to easily exceed mach 3, while still being thick enough for the control surfaces to gain enough purchase to be able to manoeuvre.
Suddenly, a warning tone in his ear, and the pilot had yet another problem to contend with as he watched the creature level off behind him like some great flying whale breaching the surface of the sky.
Bingo fuel. He should've known: they'd only filled the aircraft's tanks with enough fuel to complete the planned testing. Now he'd completed the long climb not once but twice, the engines burning several hundred gallons of kerosene per minute, and he had to keep the thirsty afterburners lit if he wanted any chance of seeing the day's end.
A glance down at the fuel gauge told him he could only keep this up for a few more minutes. He was so close to being away, the Angel growing smaller in the mirror as the fighter rocketed through the stratosphere. He knew, however, that in a few minutes' time he would hear a whine as the engines were starved of fuel. Then his jet would slow down, and he would be faced with a choice of either ejecting or staying aboard to face his fate.
With a few seconds to spare, the primal panic began to fade, and the pilot was able to think clearly again. He remembered that he was not alone in this fight, and decided it may be high time to call for backup.
Hopefully, by now, Katsuragi would have that goddamn robot ready to fight.
"That fucking idiot ruined everything, and now he's going to get himself killed!" Misato fumed to no one in particular.
It was all so perfect. They had the Angel wounded and fixed in place; all Shinji would have to do is put a well-aimed burst of fire into the thing's core. Then, just seconds before the Evangelion arrived on the scene, that damn fighter jockey decided to pick a fight with it, and now all her careful planning was for nothing.
"Damnit, damnit, damnit. What do we do now?" Again, she spoke to no one in particular, pacing back and forth behind the bridge crew; all silent with their eyes glued to their terminals. The pilot had not responded to any of their communications. Unit-01 now stood atop the ridge with rifle at the ready, but with no target to engage.
She supposed that eventually the thing would catch and kill Bishop, and then it would return on its course to Tokyo-3. But there was no guarantee that it would take the same path, and the very thought of the logistical nightmare of having to redeploy Shinji elsewhere made her head hurt.
From beside her, she heard a quiet chuckle. Ritsuko had recently joined her on the bridge, and seemed to find the sight of the Angel chasing the comparatively tiny aircraft extremely amusing.
She whirled on her blonde friend, in no mood for black humour. "What exactly are you laughing about, doctor Akagi?" she asked pointedly.
Without missing a beat, NERV's chief scientist replied with a grin. "Oh c'mon, Misato. You don't find this at least a little bit funny? I mean, the big, tough soldier-boy runs for his life the first time he meets an Angel, while poor little Shinji stood his ground and fought one in close combat?"
"That is enough. I will not have childish squabbling on my bridge." Misato was cut off before she could reply, and both women turned in surprise at the sound of Fuyutsuki's stern voice from behind them, the old professor looking down at them with an uncharacteristically angry glare as he continued.
"That gentleman out there, fighting for his life, has had more experience of combat than everyone in this room combined. Have you stopped to consider that perhaps he knows what he is doing? Because It seems to me, Captain, that he is doing exactly what you asked of him. That is, buying you time. Now, instead of accusing him of cowardice, you should be thinking about how to use that time."
Misato looked down at her shoes, ashamed now at her outburst. Ritsuko averted her eyes to the side with her eyebrows lowered; seemingly angry at the sharp rebuke, but offering no rebuttal.
She supposed she did owe the Major the benefit of the doubt, but that didn't help her sort out their current predicament.
As if on cue, the radio crackled over the bridge speakers, and the Major's voice reached them for the first time since the chase began. He sounded... not panicked necessarily, but certainly not calm either.
"This is one-seven-niner. Katsuragi, are you there? I'm in a bit of fix here..."
Misato considered giving him a chewing-out for his refusal to respond earlier, but decided that there was no time for it now. "Yes, Major, I'm aware of the 'fix' you're in. What do you plan to do about it?" she asked in her driest tone.
"I've got an idea, is the Eva- whatever you called it, is it in position?"
"It's pronounced Evangelion, and yes, it is..."
"On that ridge, west of Odawara?"
"Yes, Major, can you get to the point?"
She heard an annoyed grunt before the man continued. "Good. At the altitude I'm at right now, I can outrun the Angel, but I'm almost out of fuel. Now: I can either keep leading this thing out over the ocean as far as I can, or I can turn around and lead it back to the Evangelion. It's up to you, I've got about thirty seconds before I'm too far away to make landfall again with the fuel I have left. Make the call."
She immediately knew her preferred course of action: leading it further away would do no good now that Shinji was as ready as he would ever be. If Bishop could indeed lead the Angel straight back to him, she could have the Eva waiting in ambush, ready to finish the job with a shot to the core as the Angel flew overhead.
"Understood" came the terse reply as Misato gave her orders. She assumed that meant the plan was now a go, and turned her eyes away from the radar display as the Bishop's small dot turned and began to close the distance with the Angel's huge blip.
Something in the tone of that last word from the Major told Misato that he would do his part or die trying. She now had to focus on getting her other, decidedly less experienced pilot ready for his part in the hastily thrown-together plan.
Knowing now what his duty was, Bishop forced his mind to once again be calm. The die was cast; victory now depended on him convincing the Angel to follow him as closely as possible.
A face-full of thirty millimetre ought to do the trick.
He figured he had just enough room between him and the huge creature now to be able to turn around and get the nose on target. Straining through the tight turn, the fear of pursued prey began to fade. He could once again fight back, and he began to feel a heady thrill to which he had admittedly once been addicted.
As much as he had come to detest himself for it, he could not deny that he had once lived for this: for the rush of fighting a worthy foe. Too often he'd been nothing but a butcher, killing an unseen enemy with a missile from over the horizon, or a bomb from thousands of feet above. But on the rare occasions when he had met an enemy fighter on even terms, he'd experienced an intoxicating concoction of emotions that must have been something like what the duelists of old felt as their swords clashed against those of their opponent.
The only thing that topped it was the feeling of watching said worthy foe going down in flames after a near-run dogfight. The knowledge that he was alive and his opponent was dead; not because he had pressed a button from a hundred miles away, but because he had out-fought, out-smarted and out-flown him.
He supposed the chances of sending his opponent down in flames this time were just about nil, but sometimes survival was a victory in and of itself. Still, he supposed as chief test pilot it was his to job to see if these anti-Angel rounds were worth a damn. Even if they weren't, he would at least feel like a bit less of a chicken if he gave the Angel a parting gift before making a run for it.
He'd opened up the range on the creature quite a bit by this point, and he had to glance down at the radar to know when when to come out of the turn. The giant blip on the display was now dead ahead, and he could see it in the distance a split second later. He thumbed the airbrake switch and brought the throttle back to slow down as he centred the rapidly growing purple shape in the gunsight.
He wasn't sure if he believed the old urban legend of the pilot who had shot himself down by flying faster than his own cannon rounds, but he wasn't about to find out if it was true first-hand.
It even has a couple of bullseyes on its head... He hadn't noticed the odd markings on the front of the thing's carapace before. They looked like they were meant to mimic eyes. Perhaps they served a similar purpose to those on certain insects: fooling predators into thinking they were dealing with something much bigger.
As to what sort of predator this thing would have worry about, he didn't even want to imagine.
Whatever their true purpose, they were bullseyes now. The distance was rapidly closing, he could clearly make out the false eyes and centred the sight between them. Flexing his index finger against the trigger, he counted down the range.
When he reckoned he had closed to about two kilometers, he tightened the finger, and let fly.
There was a familiar rumble from under the cockpit floor, and the pilot felt a pounding vibration through the bottoms of his boots as each of the twin cannons spat out twenty-five golf ball-sized rounds per second. A stream of red tracers arced out towards the target, appearing as a solid beam of light that ended against the Angel's armoured head, where a ripple of bright flashes showed that Bishop's skill in marksmanship had not faded.
He only had time for a two-second burst before he had to dodge out the way of the oncoming enemy, but during those brief few seconds he thought he saw the Angel flinch from the impact of the rounds. As it flew past, he noted a cluster of smouldering holes in the centre of the thing's head that he was sure hadn't there before.
There was only a fraction of a second to celebrate, before he received a sharp reminder that the fight was not over.
Caught up in the moment, he'd forgotten about the whips trailing in the airflow behind the thing until they were passing by only metres from the canopy glass. He rolled the aircraft away, but by the time he realized his mistake, it was too late. The tentacle shot out towards where the cockpit had been an instant earlier, instead finding itself buried in the port wing. It cut through steel and titanium as easily as a scalpel through flesh, cleanly severing the outer third of the wing.
The cockpit was immediately lit up by a flood of warning lights, and a shill chorus of alarms inundated Bishop's overloaded senses. The Avenger violently rolled to port, the lift from the starboard wing overpowering that of its suddenly clipped counterpart.
It took a few stomach-churning rolls for the pilot to get his aircraft back under control. With the stick held all the way to the right, the right rudder pedal kicked as far forward as it would go, and full right aileron trim, he could just hold it level.
That's my girl, we're alright... A glance in the mirror, however, brought that nagging primal fear back to the surface.
...for now.
He had sure as hell succeeded in pissing the Angel off, and it was diving after him with a renewed fury. At least he was heading the right direction now, able to see the coast off in the distance as he again lit the afterburners. All he had to do now was lead the thing back to that spot over Odawara. If he could get that far, then it didn't matter what happened to him afterwards.
He was in a steep dive, the airspeed indicator rapidly rising and the Angel hot on his heels as the beach inched closer. Holding the aircraft steady became a bit easier with the thicker air giving the control surfaces more purchase, but he knew that any manoeuvring was impossible. If the thing caught up to him, it would have him dead to rights.
Checking that the radio still worked, he transmitted a report on his current predicament to Katsuragi, all the while wishing he could coordinate directly with whoever was piloting unit-01.
"This is one-seven-niner, I'm leading the Angel back to Odawara, one minute until I cross the coast. I'm hit badly, I need to make an emergency landing as soon as possible, so make sure the Evangelion is ready to engage as soon as I'm overhead, understood?"
"Did you get all that Shinji?"
Centre the target, pull the trigger. Centre the target, pull the trigger.
"Shinji?"
Centre the target, pull the trigger. Centre the-
"Shinji!"
"G-got it, miss Misato." The Major's radio transmissions had been patched through to Unit-01's communications circuit, sparing the bridge crew the extra fuss of having to repeat them to him.
As he listened in to the unfolding drama from within the Eva's entry plug, he thought he detected a rising note of panic in the man's voice. His impression of the Major thus far was of someone utterly without fear; the thought that he was afraid of whatever was now hurtling towards him caused Shinji's heart to race with apprehension.
Misato seemed to take notice. "Relax, Shinji. It'll be just like we practised. The Angel is already shot to pieces, and has to be tired out from chasing that airplane halfway across Japan. All you have to do is finish it off. Are you ready?"
He reflexively took a deep breath, trying to calm himself but instead getting a mouthful of coppery-tasting LCL. Panic began to set in; a sudden bout of claustrophobia brought on by the confined space and the sensation of being submerged in liquid. As soon as the attack began, however, he felt something akin to a warm embrace, and the panic faded. He felt... comforted, somehow. Maybe they were pumping drugs into the LCL to keep him calm.
Whatever it was, it allowed him to scrape together enough composure to give a weak "ready" in response to Misato's message.
"Good, wait for my signal, then break from cover and open fire on the Angel. Remember, aim for the core if you can see it, and use short, controlled bursts. Don't just hold down the trigger, okay?"
"O-okay." With Unit-01 crouched on the reverse slope of the ridge, he couldn't see out over the coast where the Angel was supposed to approach from. The Eva's sensors quickly picked it up, though, showing him the thing's growing silhouette through the mountain that blocked his vision. It also picked up the aircraft it was chasing, and even from this far away Shinji could tell that one of the wings was badly damaged. He flinched as a line shot out from the silhouette of the Angel towards its fleeing prey. It looked like a whip or something, and stopped barely a hundred metres short of the aircraft's tail.
"Shit, any time now, Katsuragi. I'll be over the coast in ten seconds and this thing's gonna have me in range by then."
"Copy." Misato acknowledged the Major's distressed message, but did not order Shinji into action.
"Uh, miss Misato, it sounds like he's in trouble, shouldn't I help him..." he asked, hefting the rifle to the Eva's shoulder and feeling the weight of it through the neural link.
"Not yet, Shinji. Wait for my order."
"B-but, it's in range, and-"
"Wait." came the curt reply.
So he waited, cringing as another whip-crack came even closer to wiping out the aircraft, which, just like its pilot, had looked so huge and invincible when last Shinji had seen it. Now, it looked tiny and vulnerable, like some little songbird being hunted by an eagle.
The next lash made contact just as the jet shot over the coast, and Shinji heard a shouted collection of what he assumed to be English curses from the Major. It had just barely clipped the tail, a cascade of debris falling away from the aircraft's silhouette on the display in front of him.
It was still about ten kilometres away, and Misato had yet to give the signal, but Shinji could see that if he didn't act now the pilot would be killed.
No one else is going to die because I was a coward, he resolved. Standing the Eva up, he locked the targeting system onto the Angel and steadied the mech by taking a wide stance atop the ridge, crushing a stand of trees. It was still too far away and moving too quickly for him to pick out the core, but it would have to do.
"Shinji, hold your fire! Let it get closer!" Misato was shouting at him, but he was not listening. Centre the target, pull the trigger was all he could hear.
He could see the Angel clearly now; it had a completely different form from the last angel, looking like some sort of cross between a bug and a snake, and with a similar colour scheme to Unit-01. It was flying impossibly fast for something so large, easily keeping pace with the wounded jet.
For its part, the silver fighter was coughing out a plume of dirty smoke from the tail, but somehow still flying just as fast as when he'd watched it the other day.
The hunter and hunted were headed directly towards him, and almost level with the top of the ridge. The targeting indicator told Shinji to aim just ahead of the Angel in order to compensate for lead, which worryingly put the reticle right on the jet.
The reticle turned red, and hoping he wouldn't hit his airborne ally, Shinji squeezed the triggers on the control handles. He immediately felt the pounding recoil in his shoulder as though he were holding the rifle himself.
The stream of battleship-calibre projectiles just barely missed the aircraft and slammed into the creature behind it, immediately shrouding it with flashes of white light and a cloud of dense black smoke.
"Damnit Shinji, why aren't you listening to me? Bursts! Fire in bursts you idiot! Now you can't even see the target!"
Though he could no longer see the Angel, Shinji continued to pour fire into the ball of smoke as the jet whipped overhead a few seconds later. It took a moment for the boy to register that the Angel was no longer chasing the aircraft. In fact, the targeting system had lost it in the vast cloud of smoke from the exploding rounds and the dust kicked up by the muzzle blast.
"For god's sake, why do I bother?" Misato's frustrated voice lamented in his ear. He supposed he'd get a good chewing out from her later, but at least the pilot had managed to get away in one piece.
Click. The rifle was empty, and he looked down at it to change out the magazine. Just as he clicked the new house-sized ammunition box into place, the Eva's proximity alarm blared in the entry plug. Looking up, he only caught a brief flash of purple hurtling towards him from within the dust-cloud, before the wind was knocked out of him by the sensation of an immense force slamming into his torso.
"Shinji!"
Bishop heard Katsuragi abruptly shout the word just after he radioed the news that he'd passed the Eva's position. Something must have happened just as she keyed the mic to respond. Craning his head to see behind, he saw he was no longer being pursued. Instead, he saw the Angel fly directly into the robot as it stood atop the forested ridge; tackling it like a linebacker taking out the quarterback. The two purple behemoths went flying from the mountain top, the Eva clinging onto the Angel's head as they descended into the hills below, crashing into the forest with an impact that kicked up a huge mushroom cloud of dust and sent massive uprooted trees flying for miles in every direction.
Wait a minute. Shinji? Why the hell was Katsuragi shouting her son's name? Was he in the impact zone for some reason? That didn't make any sense, what would that kid be doing in the woods east of Tokyo-3?
The only other explanation could be... was he inside the Evangelion?
That would certainly explain Katsuragi's skittishness when he asked her about the Eva pilots, not to mention Shinji's shell-shocked demeanour.
No wonder he reminded Bishop of a traumatized soldier: he was one.
My god. The realization dawned him that he was now in the employ of people who sent children into battle against unimaginable cosmic horrors. Not only that, but he now owed one of those children his life. If the kid hadn't taken the shot when he did; well, he wouldn't have to concern himself with finding somewhere to land.
Looking over to where the pair of giants had crashed into the dirt, he could see nothing through the vast dust cloud. He knew that the Angel was not dead, however, and now that kid had to fight it alone.
Despair. That was all the Canadian could feel as he looked on; the same despair he had felt that bloody night thirteen years ago. He still had ammo in the guns, and every fibre of his being told him to make a strafing run against the angel, or do anything at all to help out his young ally.
But there was nothing he could do. Engine one had been severely damaged by that parting shot from the angel; the oil pressure and exhaust temperature were rising into dangerous territory, and he would have to shut it down in a few seconds if it didn't run out of fuel first. Engine two was okay, but it too would be starved of fuel in less than a minute. The damaged wing meant he couldn't turn to get the guns on target anyways.
I'm sorry, kid. With a parting shake of his head, he had to put his despair at not being able to help, the million swirling questions, and a rising fury towards NERV out his mind for the moment. He would never get answers if he didn't get out this mess alive.
There was no way he would make it back to camp Fuji: even with two functioning engines, he would run out of fuel before he made it over Tokyo-3's western ridge. He was too close to the city to eject. The chances of the jet crashing into someone's house and killing innocents was too high.
He was flying west, roughly parallel to the northern edge of the city, and the highway that encircled it ran straight for about a kilometre and a half just off the nose. He would have to turn to starboard slightly in order to line up on it, which would be tricky, but he figured it might just work.
Just then, there came a bang from behind, and the engine one fire warning flashed at him from the panel. Reaching down to shut off the engine and engage the fire extinguisher, he realized the landing had just gone from difficult to nigh impossible. He would now have to do it with half the power on tap, and while compensating for the yaw caused by asymmetric thrust.
No matter, he would land on the road or crash on it; just as long he didn't take any bystanders with him. His muscles aching from the effort of holding the controls at the extreme angles required, he ever so gently eased the nose to the right, narrowly avoiding disaster at one point when an errant twitch of the stick almost caused the Avenger to heel over into an uncontrolled spin.
After a few torturous seconds, he was more or less lined up on the road. He couldn't see if it was clear of vehicles or not, but he assumed no one would be out for a drive with the city locked down.
Drop the gear, flaps on full, nose up elevator trim. He mentally ran through the landing checklist. He would have to come in hot; the aircraft would stall at a much higher speed with the reduced wing area. Eyes glued to the stretch of road disappearing under the nose, and with hands and feet desperately working to keep the wounded bird flying straight, he thanked whatever deity was up there that the landing gear had at least deployed successfully.
The altimeter ticked lower. 500 feet. 100 feet. 50 feet.
Slam. The wheels came down hard, and there was a rending squeal of distressed metal from the landing gear struts below; but they held fast. Recovering from the harsh impact, he immediately cut power to the remaining engine and deployed both the airbrakes and the drag chute.
Luckily the road was empty, though it was just barely wide enough, and he had to fight to keep the wheels dead straight as the brakes applied with a screech. The point where the road turned south was rapidly approaching, and as the jet began to slow he pushed down on the pedals with all his remaining strength to squeeze every bit of stopping power out of the brakes.
Just fifty meters from the point where he would have gone crashing through the concrete barrier, it finally bumped to a stop. Realizing he had instinctively shut his eyes, the pilot opened them again, and slumped back in the seat, exhausted to the core.
As he was about the flip the switch to shut off engine two, a cough followed by a slow whine from the turbofan told him it had just run out of fuel. Electrical, and therefore hydraulic power were now gone, and with a hiss all of the control surfaces drooped, as though the Avenger too was exhausted from the monumental effort.
For a moment, Bishop just breathed; marveling that he could still do so. After his heart-rate had slowed slightly, he undid the harness and hit the manual release for the canopy. He opened a panel under the seat and withdrew the emergency ladder: a simple folding rope affair that affixed to the edge of the cockpit and allowed the crew to dismount safely when no one was around on the ground to attach a proper ladder. Mounting the unstable ladder, he removed his helmet and allowed to fall onto the cockpit floor.
With his feet once again on solid ground, the intense fear and exertion of the long fight seemed to suddenly crash down upon him all at once: the pilot's legs abruptly turned to jelly, and collapsed out from under him. His head spun, and an overwhelming nausea overtook him.
Managing crawl to the ditch at the side of the road, he dropped his head over the edge of the asphalt and violently retched into the dirt.
When there was nothing more to throw up, he endured a few painfully dry-heaves, before his stomach finally settled enough for him to lift his head from the ditch and sit upright.
Never before; not even when he was an infantryman cowering in a foxhole all those years ago, had he experienced fear like that. His hands still shook violently, and as he stripped off the pressure suit he found the flight suit he wore beneath it completely soaked in clammy sweat. What made it worse was that he couldn't account for why he had been so afraid.
He had fought a hundred aerial battles; narrowly dodged missiles and bullets, looked death in the face dozens of times, but never was he afraid of it. Why should he be now? Nothing had changed since then. He still had nothing to live for. There was still no one waiting for him to come home, no one would mourn his loss.
He supposed that maybe it could be chalked up to not having been in combat for a decade, but that explanation rang hollow to him. Certainly, the sheer size and ferocity of the Angel had triggered an instinctual fight or flight response in him, but that was only part of the profound terror he had felt.
No, there was something else, something about this place that gave the pilot a nagging feeling. A feeling that he owed it someone to keep himself alive.
To whom, he couldn't say.
Well, at least he would fly again. That was more than could be said for his faithful metal steed. Turning around to take in the state of Avenger 110179, he saw for the first time the full extent of the damage, and was amazed that he had managed to land it on all three wheels.
In addition to the clipped wing, engine one's tailpipe was ripped completely off, smoke still pouring from the jagged hole. At least, he thought with a twinge of sorrow, the old bird had gone down fighting.
Maybe he'd be better off he'd done so as well. He reckoned he was in for a world of trouble: he'd trashed a very expensive aircraft, the only one at NERV's disposal, and just after proving that it was indeed a valuable asset on this strange battlefield.
NERV. You know, the people you fight for now. The people who use child soldiers. For what possible reason would they stick that kid in the Eva? The more he thought about it, the angrier he became.
If he had been more afraid than he'd ever been fighting the Angel; he couldn't imagine what that boy, who had to fight the thing up close and personal must be feeling. He felt a profound respect for the boy now fighting somewhere off to the east, and a deep and burning hatred for whoever had forced him to do so.
He resolved that he would get answers, no matter who or what tried to stop him.
First, however, he would have to stand up. He tried, and managed to get halfway there, before his exhausted legs again gave out and he landed right back where he was: flat on his ass. Not the most dignified position for an officer of the King, but at least no one was around to see him. Or so he thought, until he heard a young voice call out from somewhere behind him on the hill beside the highway.
"Hey uh, mister, you okay?"
Scooting around in place to find the source of the shout, he saw a pair of teenage boys rushing down a footpath through the forest towards him.
"Oh my god, it is an Avro Avenger! This is so cool!"
"Hey, Kensuke, wait up man-"
It was no use. Toji's bespectacled pal sprinted ahead of him down the winding foot path towards the highway, camera held firmly on the smoking fighter jet. They had spotted it coming in for a landing from their perch on the hillside above, having snuck out out of the shelter buried under the hill hoping to catch a glimpse of the new kid's giant robot in battle.
No dice yet, though a few times they had heard a rumbling noise from somewhere to the east that made the hairs on the boy's neck stand on end. Kensuke seemed to completely forget about seeing the Eva, though, when the Jet rolled to a stop below them. He insisted on going to see it up close, and as they approached, Toji noticed the airplane's pilot sprawled on the highway beside it.
Kensuke paid the man no mind as he ran past him, swinging his camera back and forth to take in the whole length of the huge airplane.
He had responded to Toji's shout from the footpath with a thumbs up, but it was pretty clear that the pilot was not, in fact, okay. His legs wobbled as he again tried to stand, and the boy ran over to him to lend him a hand in getting up.
Leaning on Toji's shoulder, the man managed to stand to his full height, dwarfing the boy who was used to towering over his peers.
"Thanks kid..." he said, looking down with a weak smile. Looking back up at him, Toji realized for the first time that the man wasn't Japanese. From his pale skin and light hair, Toji figured he must be an American. He seemed to speak Japanese just fine, though, which was fortunate since the boy had never paid the slightest bit of attention to any of the English lessons at school.
"No sweat, mister. Are you, uh, hurt or somethin'?" He didn't see any blood, but the boy had his share of sports injuries and knew that someone could still be seriously hurt without any external wounds. The man just shook his head, however.
"I'll be alright, my legs are just a bit shaky." After a moment, he was able to stand without support, and he frowned down at Toji. "What are you two civilians doing out here, shouldn't you be in a shelter?"
Toji tried to think of an excuse, afraid he would get in trouble if he told the truth; before he could answer, however, the pilot seemed to take note of Kensuke for the first time and shouted over to him.
"Hey, you, get down from there!" looking over towards the jet, Toji chuckled as he saw that his friend had scrambled up the rope ladder that hung down the side and was sitting in the pilot's seat, filming every detail of the cockpit. The pilot tried to take a step in the direction of the jet, but his legs threatened to give way again, and Toji had to re-take his position under the man's arm.
"What was that?" Kensuke yelled back innocently and turned his camera in their direction, which seemed to make the pilot angrier.
"Get the hell out of there you idiot! That plane still had fuel and ammo on board, and if you hit the wrong button it could catch fire and blow up!" he roared with a voice that rattled Toji's bones.
Kensuke lowered his camera, and his face went white as a sheet. "Oh crap! Sorry sir, r-right away!" He scurried back down the ladder with his figurative tail between his legs, and hurried back over to them, stammering out an apology as he approached.
"I'm real sorry, sir. I didn't know. The Avenger is my favourite plane, I've wanted to see one up close ever since I was a little kid." He looked up at the pilot with puppy-dog eyes that made Toji want to burst out laughing, but the pilot's hard face seemed to soften.
With a sigh, he accepted the apology. "That's alright kid." He cracked a sympathetic smile as he continued. "It's been my favourite since I was little too, but it's not a toy, it's a weapon, and it's dangerous to mess around in the cockpit if you don't know what you're doing. Now, you didn't answer me when I asked what you two were doing out here..." He was looking sternly down at Toji, but before the jock could stammer out an excuse, his nerdy friend spoke up.
"We, uh, we snuck out. I really wanted to see the battle, but I guess there isn't one..." Kensuke admitted sheepishly. The pilot's grey eyes regarded the bespectacled boy with an amused look.
"No battle, huh. What do you think did all that to my plane?" He gestured to the smoke pouring out the back end. As if on cue, the rumbling that Toji had heard earlier returned; it was much louder this time, though, seeming to shake the very earth they stood on.
The pilot cast a concerned look in the direction it came from."...You say you boys were in a shelter?" They both nodded up at the tall man. "Maybe we ought to head back there, it might not be safe out here for much longer..."
Toji strongly agreed with the idea, but Kensuke protested. "But, sir, I might never get to see anything like this again. They never tell us civilians the truth about what happens out here, and-"
The pilot's gaze turned deadly serious, and the look silenced the boy. "Trust me kid, that's for the best." He paused to take a breath. "Thank your lucky stars that you've never seen war, and pray that you never will" he said, his voice taking on a bit of a mournful quality with that last remark.
It was harsh reality check for the young military geek, but one that Toji figured was a long time coming. He knew all too well the human cost of this stupid war, and had about a bellyful of it already.
Leaning away from Toji's shoulder, the pilot managed to take a few unsteady steps. Stretching his legs, after a minute he seemed okay to walk on his own again, though the jock remained close at his side.
Gesturing in the direction of the footpath they had emerged from, he asked "Is the shelter up the hill there?"
Toji nodded as he replied. "Yeah, it's a bit of hike, ya think ya can walk that far?" He gave him a dubious look, but the pilot just smirked back down at him.
"Well, you look like you got some muscles there, wise guy, maybe you can carry me." He and Kensuke had a much-needed laugh as Toji made a show of flexing his biceps, before another loud rumble sent the trio off on their way up the winding path.
The taller boy took the point position; his friend had introduced him as Toji. Bishop hobbled along behind him, while the shorter, bespectacled kid, who said his name was Kensuke, followed on his heels like some faithful little dog, eagerly pestering the pilot with an endless stream of questions.
"Did you ever fly the Avenger in the combat?"
"Yep."
"Cool! did you get any kills?"
"Yep."
"Awesome! how many?"
"A few."
"Oh.. uh, okay. Well, why does NERV have an Avenger anyways, I thought they were retired after the end of the war?" he asked, directing his camera up at his new idol's face to record his response.
"They were, but the air force keeps quite a few in storage-" Halfway through his reply, Bishop frowned down at the chestnut-haired boy. "Wait a minute, how do you know I'm with NERV? How do you even know what NERV is? it's supposed to be top secret."
Both of the boys had a chuckle at that comment, before the shorter one answered. "It's a pretty badly kept secret, then. Just about everyone in the city knows someone who works there, both of our Dads work in the research department. Also," he continued with a smirk, "your plane has NERV logo on the side..."
Bishop felt like a bit of fool. Seeing the Avenger in anything but Canadian colours was still a bit odd to him. "Ah. I forgot about that. You're smarter than you look, kid."
He seemed to take no offence at the jest, continuing his interrogation unabated. "Heh, yeah I guess so. Hey, did they deploy that giant robot again? What did the new kid call it, Toji?"
"Eva..." the answer came from the front of their small convoy in a low voice.
"Yeah that's right. So- did you see the Eva?"
This time the pilot stopped walking completely, causing his follower to bump into him. "Both of you, I want you to tell me what you know about the Eva," he ordered in a tone that left no room for argument. Toji, the tall darker-haired boy stopped as well, startled by Bishop's sudden change in demeanour.
"Well, uh, not much, sir." Kensuke too seemed to be caught off guard, taking a nervous step backward as he answered. "W-we've never even seen it, we just heard rumours about it. Oh, and there's a new kid in our class who claims to be its pilot..."
"Ikari's his name," Toji said, kicking the dirt and avoiding eye contact as the pilot turned his steely gaze his way.
"Shinji Ikari?"
"Yeah, that's him." Kensuke again answered. "Toji here's got a bit of an axe to grind with him on account of what happened in the last battle. He even beat the snot out of him this morning, that's why I figured we owed to him to come watch him fight, I-" The pilot cut him off with a raised hand, and again turned on Toji.
"You beat him up?" he asked incredulously.
The boy met Bishop's grey eyes, before quickly looking back down at his shoes when he saw the rising anger they contained.
"Your classmate," he said, pointing off in the direction of the ever-approaching rumble, "Is out there right now, fighting a monster you couldn't dream up in your worst nightmares. He's doing it to protect you, and everyone else in this city, and you beat him up for it?"
When no response was forthcoming, the man all but shouted "Well? What do you have to say for yourself?"
"M-my little sister got hurt. She was crushed under some rubble, all cause that stupid kid crashed his robot into the building she was hidin' in..." he mumbled, still refusing to meet his gaze.
Immediately, the anger left Bishop's body, and a vision flashed in his mind. It was of a beautiful young woman trapped under a beam with a baby in her arms, coughing up blood with her last breath. He felt a deep sympathy for the boy: he had lost loved ones in the same horrific manner, and he too lashed out with an indescribable rage at the people he deemed responsible.
He knew as well, however, that as tempting a prospect as vengeance was, it would solve nothing in the end. By any metric, Bishop had gotten his revenge a hundred fold, and yet thinking back on all the lives he'd ended in doing so, he felt no satisfaction. All he could think about was how many wives had become widows, and how many children had grown up without a dad because of him.
His face softened, and as the sullen boy turned to keep walking up the path, the pilot fell into step beside him and placed a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry, kid. Believe me, I know what it's like, and I know how you feel. You think Shinji is responsible for your sister getting hurt, and I bet it felt pretty good belting him one, huh?"
When Toji gave a small nod, he continued. "But you can also believe me when I say that that feeling will go away in time. You'll look back knowing what you did was wrong, and you'll feel like a piece of shit. You know full well that you, your sister, and everyone else you know would be dead if it weren't for Shinji, and if she got hurt because of him it certainly wasn't on purpose. If you don't make things right, you're gonna regret it for the rest of your life."
The boy clenched his fists for a moment and let out an irritated growl, before releasing them and slumping slightly. "...Yeah, I-I guess I know all that, but, I just get so mad thinkin' about it, ya know?"
"Yeah, I know."
With that, the trio walked in silence for a moment, before they emerged from the woods and into an idyllic meadow. Here, the path branched off in two directions; one fork led towards a set of stone stairs, which in turn climbed towards some sort of Shrine. The other turned and seemed to run perpendicular the to top of the hill. Toji indicated that the latter led back to the shelter's emergency exit, which with any luck hadn't been locked behind the pair of escapees.
Out here on the open ground, he noticed that the rumbling had stopped. All three of them fell silent for a moment, wondering who had won the fight. The answer to their unspoken question came in the form of an almighty crash from somewhere in the city behind them.
"Oh my god, there it is!" the nerdy kid exclaimed. Having turned around first at hearing the racket, he now sprinted up to the stairs to get a better camera angle of the battered Evangelion. The purple mech lay with its back against one of the city's fortified skyscrapers, which it had just occurred to Bishop was partially retracted into the ground. It was only a few hundred metres east of where his aircraft had come to rest. The reinforced concrete face of the building bore a huge crater around the impact zone. The only explanation he could think of for its sudden appearance was that it had been thrown a considerable distance.
Evidently, the fight was not over.
This was the first chance the Canadian had to get a good look at it; he'd only caught a quick glimpse of it earlier. He was struck by just how... alive the thing seemed as it tried, much like himself a few moments earlier, to stand on unsteady legs. It didn't move like he imagined a robot would. Rather, it seemed as lithe and sinewy as a jungle cat.
Its armour was dented, scratched, and cracked all over, bearing deep cuts in several places that leaked red fluid; coolant, he assumed.
"Hey, look over there, that must be the monster! Boy, it was all worth it, hey Toji?" The jock gave a groan at that, clearly longing for the safety of the shelter as Bishop's old adversary floated silently into the mountain vale from the east. It was a grisly sight: most of its armoured shell had been shot away, only a single bullseye remained on its head. Beneath it was soft, pink flesh of some kind, which seemed to bleed red in the places it was pierced much like a person would.
On its hunched back, where the pilot had struck the first blow of the battle, slits that reminded Bishop of gills could be seen through the jagged holes in the purple carapace. They rippled open and closed rapidly as though the thing were panting for breath, expelling some sort of vapour each time.
He knew that he had a responsibility to get these two kids to safety, but as the Angel approached its equally battered opponent, he remained rooted on the spot. Much as he may have disapproved of Kensuke's desire to watch the fight, he couldn't deny that he too felt a morbid fascination as the two behemoths squared up across from each other, like a pair of boxers who'd already beaten each other half to death touching gloves before the final round of the championship bout.
"Shinji, listen to me, you only have a minute of battery life left. You need to fall back further into the city, we'll have a new rifle and umbilical cord waiting for you, okay?"
It was Dr. Akagi's matter-of-fact voice that reached the exhausted young Eva pilot as he stared down his enemy.
The fight had been short but sharp: managing to scramble away from the angel after it tackled him off his perch on the mountain, he stood and unloaded his rifle into it at point-blank range as it lay unmoving in the shattered forest. He quickly realized his mistake as it reared up like a cobra once he'd again expended all his ammunition. The beast had been deliberately protecting its core by laying face-down. Now, though its armour was all but gone, its core was still intact, and it could still fight.
A glowing tentacle snaked out and ensnared the Eva's ankle, pulling it off its feet and dragging it towards the monstrosity as the other repeatedly lashed against the mech's armour. All Shinji could do was wildly swing the empty rifle like a club, trying in vain to bat away the burning whips. A blow sliced through the armour on the Eva's right wrist and cut deeply into whatever lay beneath. The neural link meant it felt to Shinji as though a red-hot knife were slicing into his own nerves and tendons, and he yelped in pain as his right hand went numb. His grip on the rifle was lost, and his only weapon went crashing to the ground below.
When he was close enough to see clearly into gaping wound on the Angel's thorax, the grip on his ankle released, and both of the whips shot up into the air, clearly preparing to to strike a killing blow.
"Shinji! Go for the core! Now!" Misato shouted at him in a frantic voice. Though he had no rifle, the Eva's hands were still a pair of formidable weapons on their own, and with a fury he didn't know he possessed he launched himself at the enemy a split second before the strike fell.
Slamming into the thing's body, he pushed it off balance, and the whips flailed uselessly above as it went tumbling backwards. Using the Eva's good hand, he held the thing's head in the dirt, and with his voice breaking he uttered a primal battle-cry as he used the crippled right hand to pound on the red orb directly in front of the Eva's face. Each blow caused excruciating pain to shoot up his arm, but he endured as a set of hairline cracks began to form around the edges of the core.
It seemed one more solid hit would do it. Before he could bring the mangled hand down, however, he again felt one of whips wrap around his ankle.
No. I'm so close, please no... He struck, but hit just below the core as the Eva was pulled downward by an immense force. His vision went red as the blood rushed to his head, and he felt a brief sensation of weightlessness as the massive machine was tossed in the air like some giant's plaything, before he was knocked senseless as it slammed into the ground. This time, he had no time to recover, and he felt the other tentacle wrap around the Eva's neck.
The combined strength of both limbs now lifted him again, and again he felt that odd weightlessness. It seemed to last for ages this time, and his battered senses barely registered that he was flying several kilometres through the air, coming to an abrupt and violent halt at his current position in Tokyo-3.
He was now running on pure adrenaline; his entire body ached as though every joint had been beaten with a hammer, and the areas where the whips had cut through the Eva's armour burned like cauterized wounds. But he knew he had to fight on. He'd surprised himself with the sudden bout of courage, and he feverishly hoped that the coward that lurked just under the surface would stay there for just a little while longer.
Turning the Eva around, he ducked into the maze of skyscrapers as they rose from the earth to put as much cover between him and the Angel as possible. He stopped, however, when he noticed that the angel wasn't pursuing him into the city. From behind cover, he watched as the Angel turned away from him and bent over slightly, as though fixated by something on the ground in front of it.
Turning to see what it was, Shinji was shocked to see the silver fighter jet he had saved earlier, looking entirely out of place as it sat on a four lane highway at the edge of the city. The angel seemed to examine it for a moment, before turning to slowly to face the hillside beside it. It now seemed interested in three tiny figures that stood in a clearing about halfway up the forested slope. Zooming in with the Eva's external cameras, Shinji recognized all three. The first was the pilot, standing tall in front of two smaller figures, who with a twinge of surprise he realized were two of his classmates; one of them was the guy who'd beaten him senseless earlier that day.
All three of them seemed to realize that they had caught the attention of the horrifying monster that towered before them, and they slowly backed away from it. Just as slowly, the Angel approached, its whips giving a small wriggle of anticipation.
It all of a sudden dawned on Shinji what was about to happen. The Angel somehow knew that the pilot had been in the aircraft that had hurt it so badly, and was going to exact its revenge. He urged the Eva forward, the mech responding to his command by breaking into a sprint towards the imminent massacre.
"Y-you boys make a run for it. It's after me."
Bishop could barely stammer out the order; his mouth was dry, and his legs threatened to give way again as the fear returned under the Angel's glare. Or at least he assumed it would be glaring at him if it had eyes.
He knew what it wanted. It was angry, and it wanted revenge. He didn't know how he knew, but something about its stance, and the way it menacingly inched forwards gave him an unshakable feeling that it was coming for him.
Glancing behind he saw the two kids still frozen in place: the nerdy one was still filming, while the other just stood stock still. Both had a look of utter terror on their faces. He'd seen that look many times before, often on soldiers who got themselves killed by freezing up from fear.
"Hey! Get out of here!" He roared as loudly as he could at them, but all it accomplished was to get the boys to take a few shaky steps backwards, before they collided with each other and collapsed in a trembling heap.
Yes, fine soldiers these two would make. If it weren't for the dire circumstances he might have had a laugh at the spectacle. Turning to face forward again, he found Angel now towering directly over them, raising one of its glowing whips.
He supposed it would be quick, and there probably wouldn't be much left of him to bury. Given his line of work, he'd always figured he was more or less destined to die in such a way. But he didn't want to die.
The realization surprised him. Though he had often cheated it, never before had he been faced with such an absolute certainty of death. There was no thought of meeting her on the other side now, just a nagging voice he didn't recognize telling him to run, to run away and stay alive.
But his legs would not move.
There was nothing he could do but shut his eyes and wait for the end. He felt it coming, felt an immense heat mere metres from his face.
And nothing else.
Opening his eyes again after a moment, he looked up and saw the end of the glowing tentacle wriggling right above his head. It could come no closer, as it was caught in a giant, purple fist.
The palm of Shinji's left hand felt as though a blowtorch were being held to it; such was the heat from the Angel's energized tentacles. But he clung on for dear life, swinging the Eva's other, damaged hand around to strike into the beast's wounded flank, causing to float backwards and away from the vulnerable bystanders on the hillside before its other whip could react.
Putting himself between the Angel and its tiny prey, he wasn't entirely sure what to do next. He had been acting on pure instinct, and had no plan to speak of. A warning flashed across the display in front of him, telling him he had only thirty seconds of battery life.
"Shinji! You have to fall back now or everything is lost! Please, please listen to me Shinji!" Misato desperately pleaded with him.
He shook his head emphatically, his voice wavering as the Angel steadied itself and prepared to finish the job once and for all. "I-I can't, Misato. If I run away, they'll be k-killed. I can't let them die! I can't!"
There was a resigned sigh from his guardian. "Well, then at least draw your prog knife, you stubborn ass. One good stab into the core should kill it. But... be careful, Shinji."
What a fool he was. In the chaos of battle, he'd completely forgotten about the Eva's sidearm, and he now withdrew it from the shoulder pylon, feeling the weight of it in his left hand as it began to vibrate. Keeping the point of the blade between him and his adversary, as his very limited melee combat training emphasized, he waited for the Angel to make the first move.
He didn't have to wait long. Both of the whips went for the Eva's left hand, clearly trying to disarm him. He jumped backwards and slashed at one of the reaching tentacles, feeling a jolt run up his arm as the blade cut deeply. It got about halfway through before the whip rapidly withdrew, spurting a fountain of crimson blood. Trying to press the advantage, he charged forward, but was stopped dead in his tracks by a sudden and incredibly intense pain in his chest. He looked down, expecting to see a knife sticking into his ribs. What he saw alarmed him even more than that would have. About five metres below him in the entry plug, he saw a small flash of glowing purple protruding from a jagged hole in the round metal wall. There was a rending screech of metal from seemingly all around him, and the entry-plug was lit up red with warnings as his image of the outside world began to flicker.
The Angel had brought its unwounded limb back, and stabbed it forward with immense force, piercing the Eva's chest armour and penetrating clear through to the entry plug. A few metres higher, and it would have sliced him cleanly in half. The Eva stumbled backwards, and the Angel, with its whip stuck in the mech's chest, was pulled along with it. He collapsed onto the hillside, unable to stop the Eva's fall as his connection with its legs seemed to have been severed.
The arms still worked, however, and as the Angel came falling on top of him, he fought the searing pain that wracked his exhausted body and pointed the knife straight at the oncoming core; bracing the Eva's left arm to act like a spear.
It knew what was about to happen. Just as the knife penetrated the red orb, it began to lighten in colour. It first turned pinkish, then white, then began to glow with increasing intensity. The Angel knew it was beaten, and just like the last one intended to take him and everyone else nearby with it when it died.
Only ten seconds of battery left. Managing to turn his head to the side, he saw the three figures on the hillside scrambling away from where he had tumbled onto the mountain. He knew they would never make it to safety. They would be vaporized in the blast.
With the last bit of strength he had left, he lifted the Eva's right arm, and brought it down directly behind the three fleeing people. The crippled hand buried itself in the earth at a downward angle. They turned, startled, and Shinji could only hope that the pilot would understand what was about to happen, and take cover behind the Eva's armour.
There was nothing more he could do for them. He was about to run out of power, and he focused his attention on jamming the knife deeper into the glowing orb, screaming as loud as his little lungs could manage; both in rage and from the intense pain, hoping he could somehow stop the detonation.
He couldn't.
A split second before the entry plug went dark, he felt a searing heat all over his body.
And then he felt nothing.
Gawking for a split second at the purple wall that had suddenly appeared on the hillside behind him, Bishop followed it with his eyes, until he was staring into the glowing white eyes of the Evangelion. They seemed to beckon him into action.
His gaze shot across to the Angel, where he saw that the red core was now also glowing white.
Oh, shit. He remembered to footage he had seen of the first Angel; its core did the exact same thing just before it self-destructed with a violent explosion, which was presumably deadly to anyone standing nearby.
The Eva's massive hand was half buried in the ground, and the half that remained above ground angled towards him, forming a barricade that would provide cover to the front and from above. It just might save them.
The instincts that had kept him alive as an infantryman kicked in, and pointing to the giant hand, he ordered the boys to take cover beneath it. But the two kids were utterly paralyzed with fear now. They clung to each other, trembling with tearful eyes and runny noses, and his words seemed to go in one ear and out the other.
There was no time to convince them. Grabbing one boy by the collar in each hand, he hurriedly dragged them the few metres to the waiting hand, and unceremoniously shoved them under its protection before diving in after them.
The explosion came an instant later, and the trees in surrounding forest bent backwards from the force of the blast. Bishop tried as best as he could to shield the terrified youngsters from the intense heat by placing himself between them and the open side of the cover formed by the giant hand. The flame-resistant fabric of his flight suit provided some meagre protection from the searing heat, but he still felt the flesh on his back being cooked for an excruciating split second.
It was over quickly, and an eerie silence reigned when the fiery storm had passed. Bishop emerged from beneath the Eva's hand first, poking his head out to survey the devastated landscape. Where there had been a lush, green forest only a few minutes ago, there was now a vision of hell. It looked like the aftermath of a wildfire: twisted and blackened pine trees stood stripped of their branches and needles, and grey ash fell like snow and blanketed the ground.
Stepping out into the grey and black landscape with his two young companions sticking close to his side, the pilot turned to take in the state of their giant guardian. The armour on its front was blackened from the heat of the explosion, but it seemed more or less intact.
That was more than could be said for the Angel. The top half of it seemed to have been completely vaporized by the exploding core. The bottom part of its body remained, though it was hardened into something that resembled concrete. The only other part of the Angel left was the tentacle that had impaled the Eva, which still stuck out of the mech's chest and back. It no longer glowed purple, also having turned to stone.
There was no noise or movement from the Eva, and it still held its giant knife aloft. The eyes that had been glowing white when last he'd seen them were now black and empty, and Bishop felt a sudden pang of concern for the pilot. Surely, if they had survived the blast out here, then the pilot would have to be alright, presumably buried deep behind the robot's formidable armour.
But a nagging feeling told him that it wasn't that simple. Why would this thing be sitting here, completely dead, if the pilot was unharmed? For now at least, he had no way of knowing for sure, and so he stood with his two unlikely comrades, watching and waiting in the deafening silence.
Though the battlefield had fallen silent, the command centre at NERV HQ was anything but. The few restrained cheers that followed the Angel's demise were quickly silenced with a look from Misato, and replaced by a cacophony of reports from the various stations. Their job was not yet done: the Angel was dead, but so was Unit-01, and they needed to get its pilot out before he was too.
"Damn, it's no good. We can't get any biological readings from Shinji. The entry plug was pieced, and it's leaking LCL. That means the emergency life-support systems have likely already failed. If the LCL level gets too low, he'll suffocate. We need to eject it." Ritsuko reported to her from her position hovering over lieutenant Ibuki's terminal.
All eyes were now on Misato, awaiting her decision. There was nothing for it, she supposed. "Alright, do it. Hyuga, get a recovery team over there as quickly as possible."
"Yes, Ma'am."
She rubbed her temples. She should have felt relived; they had done it, in spite of Shinji's impetuousness. Furthermore, the god's arrow program had proven successful, and it would be a valuable tool at her disposal going forward. Even if, admittedly through no fault of his own, its pilot had very nearly lost them the battle. But she couldn't allow herself to feel relief yet; not until she knew for sure that Shinji was okay.
"Recovery team is on the way, they should be there in about five minutes," Hyuga reported.
That would be an awfully long wait if Shinji was hurt. She remembered the bystanders on the hillside. The Major presumably knew some basic first aid; maybe, if he'd survived the blast, he could repay Shinji for his insistence in defending them.
The smoke from the explosion began to clear on the bridge's main display, and sure enough there the three interlopers were.
Once Ritsuko had finished punching in the emergency ejection sequence, Misato inquired as to the status of the Eva's external speakers. The blonde frowned down at the technical readouts on Ibuki's display, before nodding slowly.
"Well, there's no reason they shouldn't work, there should still be just enough power left in the system to run them. Do you want me patch you through?"
She didn't answer for a moment, wincing as she watched the entry plug shoot out the Eva's back, slamming into the hillside just below. It stood straight up for a moment like a javelin stuck in the ground, before slowly tipping over and coming to rest on its side, wedged between a pair of burnt tree trunks. Hoping the shock absorbers that the cockpit module sat on had done their job, she again turned to an expectant Ritsuko.
"Yeah, put me through. I want to talk to those three."
"What da hell is that thing!" Toji perfectly articulated Bishop's thoughts about the missile-shaped tube that had just shot out of the back of the Eva.
"Cool, maybe it's some kind of weapon!" Kensuke had somehow managed to keep hold of his camera through their entire ordeal, and was now back to filming everything around them. Although, Bishop noted, his hands were too shaky to hold the camera steady.
Still, his theory about it being a weapon seemed likely to Bishop, and he backed the group away from it slowly.
Suddenly, there came a noise from the fallen mech, and all three of them nearly jumped out their skins as an incredibly loud voice seemed to emanate from it.
"Hey! You there on the hill, can you hear me?" His pulse slowed slightly as he recognized the voice as Katsuragi's. The Eva must have had some sort of intercom system that allowed the command staff to broadcast messages from it.
"Uh, yeah, we can hear you..." He spoke at a regular volume, not sure if he should be shouting up at the Eva or not. Katsuragi seemed to be able to pick up his voice just fine though, and the booming reply soon followed.
"Major, listen to me. That is the Eva's entry plug, the cockpit is inside. We are worried that the pilot may be injured. There's a hatch on the side, you need to open it and get him out there, okay?"
"The pilot... You mean Shinji, right?" he cast a glare in the direction of the Eva, as though it were speaking to him itself.
There was a moment of silence, before the answer came in an impassive tone. "Yes, Shinji is in there. Now, are you going to help or not?"
He was almost tempted to walk away out of pure spite at the flippant remark. What the hell is that boy doing in there in the first place, he wanted to shout back. But that would have to wait; he owed the kid that much at least.
With a grimace, he gestured to his two young charges. "Alright, c'mon boys, I might need your help." The three jogged over the spot where the massive cylinder had come to rest, feeling the heat coming off it as they approached. He took note of a jagged rip in the tube's wall, about two thirds of the way down the side. Some sort of orange liquid was pouring out it.
God, I hope that's coolant, he thought, not wanting to imagine what else it could be.
They quickly located the hatch, outlined in red on the plug's side. Luckily, it seemed to be right-side-up. It seemed simple enough to open: there was a pair of handles, and the instructions printed on the tube beside it told him to first pull them outward, and then rotate them counter-clockwise. As he tried to grab hold of them, however, he heard a sizzle, and his hands quickly recoiled in pain. The metal was hot enough to cook flesh, and his already scarred palms began to welt and turn red.
Thinking quickly, he turned to Toji and held out his hand. "Gimme your jacket," he ordered. The boy quickly obeyed, taking it off and handing the garment over to the pilot. Bunching it up to put as many layers of material between his hands and the searing metal as possible, he again grabbed the handle, and this time managed to wrench the hatch open just as the plastic in the polyester fabric began to melt.
"Sorry, kid." he said, handing the ruined jacket back to its crestfallen owner. He was about to enter the hatch, when he stopped dead in his tracks by the smell of the stale air pouring out of the opening.
It was a coppery, nauseating odour; so thick that he could almost taste it. He knew it all too well: it was the smell of blood.
That couldn't bode well for whatever awaited him inside, and he braced himself for the worst as he ducked through the narrow opening. Stepping through, he immediately found himself knee-deep in the orange liquid he had seen pouring out from the outside. The stench of blood was overwhelming in here, and he gave an involuntary dry heave as the hot, fetid air filled his lungs.
As soon as the smell hit him, he'd expected they would have clean whatever was left of the kid out with a bucket and mop. But instead, he found the boy seemingly intact; slumped over in the seat of a cockpit of sorts on a raised platform a few meters down the tube from the hatch, dressed in some sort of blue and white skin-tight jumpsuit. Splashing over to him through the orange goop, he stepped up onto the platform and gave him a quick once over.
Like any soldier, he'd had some rudimentary medical training; enough to know that the boy was still alive after finding a weak pulse on his neck. His training didn't go much beyond that, however. Stick 'em with morphine, put pressure on the wound to slow the bleeding, and shout for the medic; that was about the extent of his knowledge.
None of that would help him with whatever... this was. There was no wound to put pressure on; save for a bruise on his face that he already knew the source of, and there was no medic to call for. He seemed to be breathing at least, and he gave him a few light slaps on the cheek to try and bring him about. The skinny boy's eyes fluttered briefly, before his body jerked and he coughed up a lungful of orange fluid.
"What the fuck..." the officer muttered to himself as the stuff dribbled down the kid's chin. Coughing up water was an indication of drowning, which generally meant the patient needed mouth-to-mouth or CPR, but he didn't seem to be having any trouble breathing.
Whatever was wrong with him, being in this hot, suffocating tube couldn't be doing him any good. They had to move him. There didn't seem to be any sort of harness to undo, so he shuffled around behind the seat, grabbed the boy under his armpits and tried to lift him. It was no good: even though he couldn't have weighed more than a hundred pounds soaking wet, the pilot's muscles were shot to hell from the day's exertion, and the adrenaline that had kept him going this far was starting to wear off. He needed help.
"Hey! Toji, get in here!" he shouted towards the hatch, a moment later, the boy's head poked through the hatch, and he abruptly recoiled.
"What is that smell?" he asked, holding his nose.
"I don't know, and that's probably for the best. Get over here and gimme a hand." The tall boy cast a dubious eye at the orange liquid in the bottom of the tube.
"Can't Kensuke do it?"
The bespectacled boy poked his head and camera in, and promptly withdrew when the stench hit him.
"You're bigger and stronger, now suck it up princess, we gotta move him." The boy's chest puffed up in indignation at the remark, and he mustered up enough courage to step through the hatch.
"Eww..." he muttered as the mysterious fluid filled his sneakers. He sloshed over to the cockpit, and his expression changed from one of disgust to one of profound shame when he saw the bruises on Shinji's face.
Bishop could tell what he was thinking. "You can start making it up to him right now," he said in a low voice. "Grab ahold of his legs."
Toji silently obeyed, and between the two of them they were able to manhandle the slender body down to the floor of the entry plug and out of the hatch.
Kensuke lowered his camera and rushed over to help, and the trio carried him to a clearing a little ways uphill from where the entry plug had come to rest. They laid him down in the first patch of unburnt grass they could find. Toji wordlessly removed his ruined jacket and tucked it under the unconscious boy's head.
Bishop met his eyes and nodded approvingly at the gesture, before a sputter returned his attention to Shinji. He seemed to breathe a bit easier out in the relatively fresh air, and was coughing up more of the orange liquid. That was a probably a good thing, the pilot decided. Better out than in.
"I-is he gonna be okay, sir?" Kensuke asked, as he and Toji stood by not knowing what to do with themselves.
Bishop could only shrug. "I don't know, boys. He's breathing and he has a pulse, at least. The only thing I can think of is he might have a concussion, in which case I don't think there's anything more we can do for him. He needs to get to a doctor."
Just then, the thump thump thump of a helicopter blade could be heard somewhere off in the distance. After a few minutes, the chopper was overhead. He recognized it as a Bell 407: a sleek utility helicopter, designed by an American company and built in Canada back when the two nations were still friendly neighbours. This one bore the same paint scheme as his Avenger; yet another Canadian far from home and in the employ of psychopaths.
The pilot of the helicopter circled the clearing a few times to ensure it was safe to land, before touching down about fifty metres away from them, kicking up a huge cloud of ash. A pair of medics immediately leapt from the open door and rushed over to them, another pair following shortly after bearing a stretcher.
Without a word to Bishop, the medics briefly checked Shinji over, before hooking up an IV needle and loading him onto the stretcher. They hurried back over to the chopper and lifted their patient into the back.
Then, the silver door slid shut, and the boy was gone.
With a final wave, the pilot bid his young companions farewell as he sent them on their way down the path towards their shelter. If they didn't have an acute case of PTSD, they'd at least have one hell of a story to tell their classmates, he thought with a smirk.
As the two boys vanished around a bend in the path, Bishop turned and began down the other fork in the trail that led back to the highway. The walk down seemed a lot longer than the hike up had been, with nothing but the ambient noise of the forest and his own troubled thoughts for company. Eventually, he emerged out of the woods and stepped onto the asphalt of the road.
The blast from the Angel's core seemed have been directed in a tight cone towards the Eva, like that of a shaped charge warhead, and despite being only a few hundred metres away the Avenger had survived the blast by virtue of being off to its side. The road was still empty save for the wounded bird, while to the east, closer to where the Angel's stony remains towered, a plethora of NERV vehicles had gathered.
He paid them no mind as he strode over to his aircraft. Passing under the wing, he reached up and gave the leading edge an affectionate pat. Odd as it may have seemed, the old fighter served as a comforting bit of familiarity on a day when everything around him had been so completely and utterly alien.
Quite literally, as well as figuratively.
Mentally and physically exhausted, he let himself collapse to the ground, and sat with his back against the starboard main landing gear. Just when he thought he'd started to wrap his head around the enigma that was NERV, today had served as a harsh lesson in just how little he truly knew about the organization, not to mention just how dangerous and terrifying the enemy was.
What could possibly justify sending children to fight such an enemy?
With a shake of his head, he expelled the swirling questions from his mind. The sun was setting, and he forced himself to savour the stillness of the cool early evening air in the shade under the wing. He would get answers soon enough; of that he was sure.
He was alive. For now, that would be good enough.
A/N: The new cover image is a (very rough) pencil sketch of how I picture the Avenger in my head. Not as pretty as the old one, but a bit more relevant to the story.