Mmm hit me with that gay shit
I mean really it's just a drop or two but still. things are moving
X-X-X
Chapter 20
X-X-X
This body is 10.61 years old and its heart has beat 447,476,531 times.
This body's mean age is 12.5 years and it has no heart. Its core burns with heat and anger, like the light of an arc furnace.
A strange sensation crept down her spine - like a tickle against her AT field. It was fast becoming a familiar feeling to her, since in recent days it was happening every time someone was trying to covertly watch her.
Or, perhaps, it is simply the expected neurological disturbances of reducing medications to which one has developed long-term dependence. Recent events have made it clear to me that pharmaceutical science is not always exact or clear-cut.
Rei glanced across Unit 00's HUD, to the corner where the open comms channels lay, and saw Asuka quickly turning her head away from the feed.
This is the tenth observation attempt. Twice, the result was inconclusive due to visual obstruction and must thus be disregarded. In eight out of eight validated observations, the unfamiliar sensation preceded a confirmation that I was being watched. Results suggest this is indeed a sensory phenomenon, rather than a random artifact of destabilized neurotransmitters.
The scope of these results is narrow, since this phenomenon of being watched has thus far been perpetrated by only one person.
"All right, the detectors are re-calibrated." On the comm screen, Maya looked up from her control panels. "Moloch, Ishtar, give me one more test."
Several hundred meters across the hills of the firing range, Unit 01 took a braced stance and put her hands together in a shielding gesture. A second later, a real shield appeared - a broad, thick disc of orange light, the size of a small roundshield in the hands of the eighty-meter colossus.
Unit 02 braced herself too - but instead of bracing to block, she wound back a punch.
The tests had been Dr. Akagi's idea. With the range repaired from the damage the last test had incurred, and with many technical specifications of the individual Evangelion units poorly defined, she'd requested a regimen of basic stress tests to run the war machines through. The first test had been deadlifting twenty-meter rods made of four parallel reinforced steel girders embedded at either end in shipping containers full of concrete; the clear winner was Unit 02, capable of lifting two doubleweights at once without wobbling. Units 00 and 01 were deemed too close to call, both hefting a double and single together well enough, and both unable to completely lift two doubleweights. Unit 05 had been able to lift a single doubleweight, but hadn't managed to hoist a single and double.
Truthfully, I think Ishtar is slightly stronger than Asherah, but my opinion is not valued. Either way, with a singleweight massing about 350,000 kilograms and a doubleweight nearly 670,000, it is safe to say that all evangelion units violate the square-cube law of materials science as lilin know it. It makes sense. Their bodies are flesh of Adam, and thus composed of materials beyond any lilin knowledge.
The AT field strength could be more easily measured, through advanced radiography. However, it took an active assault to trigger field strength spikes - and after Misato quickly vetoed the concept of Evangelions firing live weapons at each other, the only remaining option was brawling.
"Three… two… one… strike!"
Unit 02 blurred, and Rei was briefly blinded by a flash of orange light. There was a high-pitched crack, not unlike a scaled-up sound of glass breaking. Then the light cleared, revealing a staggering Unit 01 and a Unit 02 that was rubbing her knuckles.
"Scheisse! I think I cracked a gauntlet!" Despite her irritated tone, Rei could see a smile on her face in the open comm channel. "I've punched verfickten angels that weren't that tough!"
On the control room comm, Maya's eyebrows rose. "Well, it looks like once again we'll have to upgrade our equipment. Here we thought ten thousand animara would be a high enough calibration to read battle-equivalent AT activity, but this reading is still clipped." She shook her head. "And that means our actual battle telemetry is below par, too, because we've never read that high in the orange band, even with the fine short-range radars. Maybe the blue band creates negative interference?"
Moloch rolled her right shoulder and flexed the arm. "Alright, Asherah, you're next. Move up."
Rei dutifully navigated Unit 00 to stand in front of Unit 02, her eva's single ocular staring dead into the red giant's four green ones - looking up a little, since Unit 00 was a few meters shorter than the standard units. She mimicked Unit 01's earlier position, bracing her hands against the air and forming an AT shield over them.
This body is 10.61 years old and its heart has beat 447,477,020 times.
This body's mean age is 12.5 years and it has no - no - its heart has, its heart has cycled - 178 HEU fuel rods and 49 HE-MOX fuel rods since its first full-temperature test -
Rei blinked, pulling away from the unfamiliar sensation as if she'd been burned.
"Asherah, your sync is up. It's nearly at forty-five percent… Is that recent?" On the comm, Maya raised an eyebrow.
"It is a five point one percent increase from my synchronicity as of my last battle operation," Rei replied blandly, well aware that what she said was essentially a non-answer. Maya gave the comm camera a searching look - the channel was still sound-only on her end - but after a minute, she looked back down at her controls.
"Anyway. Moloch, Asherah, on the strike. Three… two… one…"
And just as before, there was a burst of orange light.
Rei staggered back, reeling as Unit 02's AT field washed over her. With her own shield broken, no barrier stood between her and the force of the red leviathan bearing down on her. If Asuka's presence was a like a flame, Unit 02 was a thermonuclear fireball, every part of its soul boiling over in an all-destroying shockwave of wrath and… betrayal?
She feels… not unlike Asherah, in that regard…
Her body's mean age is 10.9 years and its heart has cycled 100 HEU fuel rods and 20 HE-MOX fuel rods and 12 HEP fuel rods since its first full temperature test…
Somewhere in the blinding light of Unit 02's boundless fury, there was a smaller flame - denser, sharper, more directed.
Lieutenant Soryu?
Then the fire was gone, receding as Unit 02 pulled back into stance. Asuka's image on the comm channel showed her tense and breathing hard, her pupils dilated. Her characteristic sharp grin was wide and beautiful.
"Come on, Rei, you can do better than that! I know how tough you are!"
"Step off, Lieutenant. This isn't a sparring match yet." Maya rolled her eyes. "Asherah, your AT test returns expected results. The spike is still clipped at ten thousand, unfortunately, so I can't give you a precise report."
Asuka's grin faded, but her poise didn't. "Alright, Mari!" She said, turning Unit 02's head to eye the other mecha. "Your turn!"
Unit 05's AT test turned out much like the others: above the measurement limit, although probably weaker than the other three. Unit 02 ended up reading a similar AT measurement to Unit 00, with Unit 01 playing striker in that scenario.
Lieutenant Langley-Soryu has a much higher synchronicity rate than I do, yet her AT raw output capacity is not a great deal more than my own. Curious.
On the comm window, Maya stood up from her desk and walked towards another part of the room. A moment later, the comm switched to another camera, showing the lieutenant sitting at a different desk.
"Alright then. You were itching earlier, Moloch? We're going to try sparring tests."
Mari raised an eyebrow, absently adjusting her glasses. "I thought we got our sparring out on the simulators."
"The Evas have minor mechanical differences - major ones, in your case, Baal - and the simulator program doesn't account for them, instead rendering the Evas as broadly identical." Maya gestured to the corner of her display, cleverly directing it so that it rendered on the HUDs as pointing towards the internal AT metering display. "The simulator also doesn't have any meaningful capacity to simulate an AT field."
Four waypoints appeared on the Eva HUDs - white, purple, red, and gold. Ever the team leader, Asuka's red Eva was the first to move, striding across the hills towards the sparring zone like she owned the whole firing range.
"You coming, losers?" She jeered. The other war machines jolted into action, jogging after Unit 02 with similarly earthshaking steps. Though she hadn't been ordered, Rei felt her duty-reflex obeying the implication.
It is a strange feeling, knowing someone well enough to infer their thoughts from incomplete communication…
Idly, Rei thought of Commander Ikari. She knew him well, possibly better than any other living being knew him. Upon reflection, she realized she could usually infer his wishes, too… but something about it didn't quite feel the same.
His will is always, above all, whatever will further his goals. Lieutenant Soryu is… not often so clear-cut. She can be selfish, but she often works to strengthen those around her to no other apparent benefit. Realizing she was staring at Asuka's comm window, she returned her eyes to the horizon. It is… strange, to be supported in such a way. It feels unfamiliar, even unsettling… yet in some ways, pleasant.
"Alright, pilots, square up!" The evangelions broke into two pairs as they entered the sparring arena, moving to each end of the large valley. "As you can probably tell by the waypoint colors, the first bracket will be Asherah vs. Baal and Ishtar vs. Moloch. Matches are to tap-out; AT fields and bare hands only. Any questions?"
Maya sounded far too pleased to be playing host to a live-action mecha brawl.
"How much armor are we allowed to break?" Of course it was Asuka that would ask that.
"Theoretically, as much as you want. In practice, if you don't have at least four intact pieces between all of you, Misato might have some strong words. Hyperdiamond is kind of expensive."
No one else spoke up.
"Alright. Three! Two! One!"
Rei tensed, dismissing all comm connections except those to Unit 05 and Maya's control room.
"Fight!"
Unit 05 jumped, high. Rei knew the other mech had a huge advantage in high-speed mobility, but hadn't expected her to open with a leap attack - she felt titanic muscles strain as she corrected a sideways dodge into a simpler drop to one knee to avoid the torpedo-like downward punch. Orange light flashed as her AT field thickened around the guard, and Unit 05's torso slammed into the barrier only to slide off, carried by momentum.
The half-bionic mech spun her legs like a helicopter, gyroscoping herself back to an upright position just before she hit the ground.
Baal is much faster than Asherah. I will not win this fight by a strategy of defensive reflex.
Unit 05 leapt forward again. Rei attempted to block the punch and return-strike, but the other mech was too nimble; she wove around the blow with ease. Though her initial strike didn't hit Rei's unit, she angled the weight of the blow into a hard shoulder collision, and Unit 00 staggered under the assault. There was a loud boom as an armor piece cracked.
She is fast. She likes to dance, fighting at a distance. Therefore, she may be put off-guard by grappling.
Unit 05 charged again. Instead of blocking, Rei grabbed, clutching the striking wrist and curling her free arm around Unit 05's. The four-legged mech fell out of the lunge, pinned in an arm-bar, and the ground shook as the pair of Evangelion units landed hard.
"Fuck!"
Although the english language comes more naturally to Pilot Illustrious, that particular expletive sounds better when said by Lieutenant Soryu, Rei thought inanely.
The bionic joints turned out to be a little more flexible than eva-bone joints. Unit 05 twisted her shoulders and punched Unit 00 in the side of her head, cracking the helmet casing. Rei saw stars, but she didn't let it slow her down.
The horn-like helmet shape over Unit 00's brow drove into Unit 05's face in a vicious headbutt. With Unit 00's helmet already damaged, it stood little chance of surviving, and both Eva's helmets shattered.
The bionics are flexible and fast, but they are heavier and slightly weaker than natural Evangelion limbs. I can use this to my advantage.
Unit 05 folded her elbow joint back to the limit, and yanked her arm out of the lock, rolling away from Unit 00. Rei immediately pushed herself back into a standing stance, bringing her arms up.
She may return to her tactic of strafing at range, or she may try to unbalance me by going for her own grapple.
Unit 05 stepped forward, but swung sideways as she did so, aiming a hook punch. Rei stepped away and countered with an extended outward block, almost overbalancing herself before she corrected her footing.
Staying in her comfort zone. A wise choice, against an unfamiliar enemy. An unpredictable chance of unsettling your enemy is not worth a certainty of unsettling yourself.
Unit 05 stepped forward again, trying to follow up with a straight punch, and Rei saw her opening. She sidestepped the punch, letting it graze her ribs, and clamped her arm down around the attacking limb. Then, she kicked her unit's leg out, hooking it around one of the spindly quartet that served as Unit 05's walkers - and levered her opponent over her balance point, flipping the Eva into a pinned face-down position.
"Yield."
"Aww, hell no!"
Maya was staring gleefully at another monitor, presumably watching Asuka and Shinji fight. Rei looked back down at the evangelion beneath her. "I can wait," she replied simply.
There was a tense ten seconds. Then - "Alright, blue, you got me. I yield."
Rei let go, standing and stepping back. Unit 05 swiveled her legs under herself, quickly bouncing back up into a standing pose.
"Good fight, Asherah," Mari said brightly, extending Unit 05's hand. "We should do this again sometime. Maya's right, it's so much better than simulators."
Despite herself, Rei nodded, extending her own Eva's hand and allowing it to be shaken. An unfamiliar feeling coursed through her, electrifying her body in ways she'd never felt before.
Is this what adrenaline feels like, when not blocked by sedatives? She'd never had to consciously calm herself down from being primed to fight before. Is this why Lieutenant Soryu smiles, even when her fights cause her pain?
"Check this out, you two." Maya was grinning like a maniac. "Routing my cameras to your displays now."
Another comm appeared, displaying the feed from a hovering camera drone. In its field of view, two semi-armored leviathans stood, holding boxing stances as they looked at each other. The once-green terrain of the firing range had been torn up into a hellscape of churned earth and broken rock by the giants' footsteps, and the grime dulled the color of their armor all the way up to their knee plates.
"Shinji's a quicker learner than he seems like. He's picked up the fact that he can just crank AT shield and slip out of her grip like he's been greased," Maya explained. "Asuka didn't have any luck wrestling after that, so she can't use that brute strength to crush a yield out of him. Now it's down to fists. Shinji dodges quicker, but Asuka's punches hit harder."
Lending credence to her words, there was a fair bit more purple littering the ground than red.
Unit 01 swung another punch, but Unit 02 sidestepped and blocked, letting the blow glance off her now-unarmored forearm. She stepped in and sucker-punched Unit 01 in the gut - to which Unit 01 responded by pitching forward, driving her elbow into Unit 02's side.
Unit 02 swayed, but brought up her leg, knee-striking and then kicking the purple mecha in the hip. The blow cracked Unit 01's pelvic armor, though it didn't shatter.
Now disengaged, the combatants raised their arms defensively. For a moment, neither party moved.
Rei's gaze strayed to Asuka's comm window. She was hunched low over her control panel, her eyes wide and her teeth bared in a vicious grin. Her breathing was rapid.
I think I better understand, now, why she seems to derive such joy from battle.
Asuka glanced up for a moment, and caught herself, her expression shifting into surprise as she met Rei's eyes. The orange wash of the LCL made her hair and plugsuit colors even more vibrant, and muted the blue of her eyes into a dark ultramarine. She looked… right in the pilot seat, comfortable and confident in her best skill, and yet there was an intangible alien quality too.
Where does her strength come from? A thrill alone cannot be the underlying impetus for such dedication. What drives her life of war?
Then the camera glitched momentarily, as Unit 02's entry plug gyroscopes struggled with a sudden change. Shinji's Eva had struck her, and knocked her off her feet.
Rei's focus returned to the battle camera. Unit 01 had landed a solid kick, and was going for a chokehold. The red Eva had fallen face-down, and couldn't push herself up in time to get away - Unit 01 managed to get an arm around her neck, and pull the other arm into a half Nelson hold.
On the comms, Asuka looked enraged, even as she dropped her control yokes and clawed at an invisible restriction at her throat. Shinji just looked grimly determined.
"Yield," he hissed.
Asuka growled out a spurt of rapid and half-choked words in German, all of them unintelligible to Rei's unpracticed ear. She managed to bring her Eva's free arm under her, but couldn't lift the weight of two units on a single arm.
"Yield!"
"Fuck you!"
Maya winced, a hint of worry finally breaking her enraptured expression. "I'm counting this," she announced. "Ten… Nine…"
Asuka cursed again, loudly, and struggled against the restraining hold. She didn't break it by the count of zero.
"Match is Shinji!" Maya called, and the purple Eva immediately disengaged. "Final showdown will be between Ishtar and Asherah!"
Part of Rei had expected Asuka to scream her frustrations again. After all, Asuka hated losing, probably more than anything else she had ever disliked in her life. And yet, the German pilot was silent as she picked her Eva up from the churned earth of the arena.
X-X-X
Misato had driven them straight back to headquarters: there was a harmonics test scheduled directly after the live training, and they arrived with only half an hour to spare.
Asuka had been silent the whole drive, and had stalked through the halls with a similar sullen demeanor. However, halfway to the changing room, she abruptly turned down a different hallway.
"Lieutenant -?" Rei halted, confused. Shinji had gone on ahead to the changing room, and Asuka had diverted, leaving her with a conflict between her group-following instinct and her command deference instinct.
Asuka looked back sharply, jerking her head to indicate Rei should follow. Her orders now clear, Rei obeyed.
This body is 10.61 years old and its heart has beat 447,489,119 times.
The part of the base they walked through was unfamiliar - even to Rei, who routinely traversed the clandestine halls of Terminal Dogma. There was even dust on some of the surfaces.
Asuka stopped short directly under a security camera, out of its line of sight. "... shouldn't be any microphones here," she murmured to herself.
Her assumption is correct. Most of the base's CCTV is video only, and audio recording takes place only on high traffic areas.
"Alright. Rei." Were it not her default standing pose, Rei would have snapped to attention. "What was that, back on the field?"
Rei tilted her head. "To what do you refer?"
"You were looking at me." The way she stressed it carried the implication that it was some sort of crime. "Why?"
"You distract me often." Even if she'd had any interest in lying, Rei wouldn't have been able to come up with something believable on short notice. "Should I avoid looking at you in the future, Lieutenant?"
"What? No!" Asuka shook her head. "And - how many times do I have to say it, call me Asuka!"
Rei furrowed her brow. "But we are on duty, Lieutenant."
Asuka growled, fixing Rei with a harsh glare. A moment later, however, she drew back, taking a deep breath and closing her eyes. When she spoke again, her voice was calmer.
"I don't mean to say you're… not allowed to look at me, or anything. That'd be totally unreasonable." Asuka opened her eyes. "I just wanted to know why you did it."
"Because you distract me often," Rei repeated simply, and a smile broke across Asuka's expression.
"You sure distracted me," she murmured.
"You have been looking at me often, too," Rei said, her own voice almost surprising her. "Why?"
Asuka looked up sharply, although a blush belied her efforts to keep a neutral expression. "I - that is -" she coughed, covering her mouth and looking away. "I wanted to make sure the witch doctor followed through," she managed. "She said she was going to take you off that cocktail of poison."
There was something… endearing about Asuka's strange shyness. The tall German was normally brash and confident in everything, yet when concerned for Rei's well-being she became embarrassed and hesitant.
Is this what humans call… 'cute'?
"If by that, you mean she has instructed me to gradually reduce and eliminate my intake of the majority of my prescriptions, that is correct," Rei said, her posture subliminally stiffening as she stood up straighter. "I have eliminated meperidine so far, and am in the process of tapering down my clozapine intake. Once I have eliminated that, I will -"
"Scheisse, Rei, I didn't ask you for a detailed report." Asuka gently knocked her knuckles against Rei's shoulder, in a gesture that Rei was given to understand meant an imitation of a punch. "Just wanted to be sure."
Rei blinked, briefly looking down at her shoulder with a blank expression, then looking back up. "Yes. My prescriptions are debilitating or dangerous halt abruptly, so Dr. Akagi instructed me on how to safely titrate down my doses. The withdrawal effects have been uncomfortable, but not unmanageable."
Asuka smiled, but then the corners of her mouth twitched downwards. "Do you… give reports like that a lot?"
"The Commander asks them of me about twenty-five percent of the times I visit headquarters."
Asuka scowled. It was a common expression, for her, yet Rei found herself driven to… reassure her?
"I have… omitted details from the reports I give, in recent weeks," she added, hesitantly.
"Really?" Asuka looked back, suddenly more interested. "You, disobeying orders?"
"He has yet to directly ask me for clarification that I might potentially be unwilling to provide." Rei looked down. "I have not yet reported anything that might appear to incriminate members of NERV against the Commander. If he were to specifically ask… truthfully, I think I cannot yet say how I would answer."
"Nice to know some of our lives could be hanging on an uncertainty," Asuka murmured sourly, looking away again. "I'd like to see you to make your own decisions, Rei, but you'd better make them quick."
Rei opened her mouth to speak. However, at that moment, the base P.A. system crackled with the voice of Dr. Akagi.
"Harmonics Test starting in five minutes. All CD Block Six technicians to your workstations."
"Scheisse," Asuka hissed, her eyes widening. "We gotta get going, it'll be verdammt suspicious if we're late! Come on!"
Grabbing Rei's hand, Asuka set off down the corridor.
X-X-X
Asuka hated harmonics tests.
They were carried out in a deep, secluded corner of Central Dogma, far off the path to the normal synchronicity test tanks. They went for a solid four hours instead of two or three. The test tank was smaller, tighter, more claustrophobic. The test bodies felt like bulky, unresponsive vehicles instead of the nearly seamless skin-fit of an Evangelion above 50% sync.
And, of course, there was the fact that pilots weren't allowed to wear a stitch of clothing while in the harmonics test plugs.
At least they finally partitioned off that disgusting walk-of-shame corridor. The first time Asuka had been put through a harmonics test in Japan, she had flat-out refused to walk through the open, shared space between the decontamination showers and the test plug entrances, until a tense back-and-forth across the PA speakers had come to the compromise of having the pilots exit the showers one at a time. Since then, some basic plastic barriers had been installed, and the CCTV - the visible ones, anyway - had been removed.
The Evangelion pilots, the last hope for humanity. You'd think they could treat us better than animals, right? Yet here we are…
The harmonics test plugs had comms, all locked to sound only. Though pilots weren't technically forbidden to speak to each other during the test, it tended to irritate the Section 3 staff. There were claims that it disrupted the baseline frequencies of the pilots' central nervous systems, causing erroneous harmonics readings. Asuka was pretty sure it was bullshit.
Not like there's anything to really talk about, though.
There was a soft beep from the test plug HUD, and Asuka looked up to see the test timer roll over the two hour mark.
Just a hundred and twenty more fucking minutes…
The test plugs did have one visual comm, however: the comm to the Pribnow Box. On the control side it was sound only, for the pilots' privacy, but the pilots could see clearly into the cramped nest of computer terminals and sleep-deprived technicians.
No one at NERV sleeps well. Those that aren't haunted by ghosts have their noses to grindstones eighteen hours a day.
On the small, inexplicably grainy comm screen, one of the technicians stood up and walked all of two paces to look at another technician's terminal.
You could as easily have just leaned over, dummkopf…
The standing technician went back to his seat. Asuka took a deep breath - a harder task than it might otherwise have been, since even at the lower viscosity of an active link circuit, the LCL was still a liquid - and tried to clear her mind.
How does Rei do it, I wonder? How does she so easily slip into that unbreakable serenity? She was surprised to feel a twinge of envy. I should be so lucky. What human wouldn't want such perfect calm in their lives?
The first technician looked up again, and said something out loud. The comm microphone wasn't on, but his expression looked… worried?
What's going on in there?
Another technician tensed, speaking without looking up. This time, Dr. Akagi herself looked over, taking a deeper draw on her cigarette than usual.
That doesn't look good. Asuka looked down at herself, before remembering that she never bothered to put on her seatbelt unless she was in a real Evangelion. Looking up, she located the emergency plug exit.
The harmonics simulation bodies are about four meters underwater. Gott, I'd rather not, but I can swim that on a lungful of LCL… and if I recall correctly, the tank service ladder is directly behind us.
She reached for her comm controls - the harmonics link circuit didn't allow thought-input commands - and clicked on the connection to her team. "I don't know what's going on in the Pribnow Box, pilots, but it doesn't look good to me."
"No indeed." It was Mari who replied. "What are the odds it's a simple hardware failure?"
"Around here?"
"Touché."
There was more activity on the visual comm - technicians practically stepping over each other to check on multiple stations at once. Dr. Akagi strode decisively over to the main control terminal and hit the comm controls.
"Pilots, there's an anomaly in the testing tank. We're aborting this harmonics test." A crackle of static; why is there static in this line?! "Entry plugs disengaging from test bodies now."
There was a hiss, and a subtle shift in inertia as the plug drew out of the torpid test body. Asuka's HUD went dark, and the comm windows - except for the connection to the Pribnow Box - vanished.
Asuka leaned forward, frowning. The already grainy image was deteriorating further, losing color and flickering as if with interference.
"- The plug crane isn't - " the hissing static became a screech. " - Pattern is blue -"
Angel! Angel!
Suddenly, the test plug was far too cramped for Asuka's comfort, and it took her no time at all to decide she'd rather brave the cold tankwater than the icy fear crawling through her veins. She pushed herself to her feet and punched the emergency release button on the top hatch.
The explosive bolts popped, and the hatch lock disengaged. Sucking in a deep breath of LCL, Asuka pushed her way out of the plug, shivering at the transition from warm LCL to cold, clear water.
She looked down for a moment as she kicked off. There were lights flashing in the darkness at the bottom of the tank - they looked like pulsing lasers, but the water unfocused Asuka's eyes too much for her to be certain. She turned her attention back to the ladder, a foggy line of darkness against the polished steel of the back wall. Exhaling the LCL into the water was disconcerting, as her mouth released clouds of bloody orange liquid instead of bubbles.
Finally, her hand clutched the service ladder, and she pulled her head above water. She sucked air, and immediately coughed the residual LCL from her lungs.
Warning lights were flashing, and alarms were blaring. Asuka risked another look down as she pulled herself onto the catwalk; the laser light was gone, replaced by… something else. Growing clusters of golden light, almost like stars, pulsed in the heart of a creeping stain of dark blue.
The fear returned, twisting her stomach and sinking its cold claws into the back of her neck. That's an angel, down there. A scant few dozen meters of water between us. I've never been this close to one without an Eva around me before -
"Lieutenant! Get in here!"
Asuka jolted out of her stupor to see Ritsuko standing in the doorway of the catwalk's access to the Pribnow Box. Did she really just use my rank correctly?
There was no time to dwell on extraneous thoughts. Asuka ran, crossing the twenty steps or so in under two seconds and almost barreling right into Dr. Akagi.
As the door closed behind her, the tank erupted into huge surges of water, and the entire superstructure shook as the roof of the test tank slammed open on hydraulic hammer-jacks. The three remaining entry plugs shot out of the water and continued upwards into the dark chute overhead.
"The escape rockets didn't fail. Thank god," Ritsuko muttered, pulling off her lab coat and unceremoniously wrapping it around Asuka's shoulders as fast as she was able. "Here, you damned fool. Don't go back to the locker room! We're about to sound evac for block six, and the bulkheads will start closing; you'll have to find something else. Go."
"What - what is that thing?"
"Do you want to be locked in here with it? Go!"
X-X-X