I meant to get this one up yesterday but I ended up going to the dentist instead :(
well, enjoy
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Chapter 21
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Chaos, noise, the jolt and lurch of movement and rapidly shifting inertia; there was a wave of crushing compression, then the yawning shift to the weightlessness of freefall.
Then the jolting shock of hitting a hard surface. No bones were broken - the cushion of LCL protected Rei's body, for the most part - but the impulse still struck her like a hammer, bruising impact points and driving the breath from her lungs. The front end of the test plug was visibly deformed, caved slightly inwards.
Most painful, though, was the noise of the impact. It filled the entry plug and reverberated from end to end, leaving her ears ringing.
Then there was silence, and no movement, but for a very gentle bobbing that suggested they were floating in water.
This body is 10.61 years old and its heart has beat 447,498,593 times.
The test plugs did not have the yokes of true evangelion entry plugs. They did, however, have control columns, which allowed them a basic degree of command over the plug's electronics.
Rei's control column showed a beeping red light on one of the buttons.
The short range comms are still active.
Rei pressed the button to accept the pinging signal.
"... else make it out?" It was Mari's voice. "Repeat: did anyone else make it out?"
With the press of another button, Rei connected the comm channel. "I have 'made it out,' pilot Illustrious," she replied. "If, by that, you mean I have survived emergency ejection of the test plugs."
"Thank God." There was a moment of silence. "Just heard back from the puppy, too. That's three of us."
But not Lieutenant Soryu?
"I'm not getting anything from Asuka…"
A familiar fear crept down Rei's spine, winding an ephemeral tension into the muscles of her neck and shoulders.
Do not react irrationally, Rei-3. Lieutenant Soryu has survived against improbable odds before. She is very strong.
This body is 10.61 years old and its heart has beat 447,498,948 times.
There were metallic sounds from the comm, then splashing.
"I just stuck my head out. We're floating in Lake Ashi, but Asuka's test plug isn't here."
There was a strained note to Mari's voice. Rei bit the tip of her tongue.
"What could have happened to her?" Shinji finally spoke up.
"No way to know right now." Mari's voice hardened. "We're not too far from shore. Not that I'd be pleased to be skinny dipping, but I could make it. How are you two at swimming?"
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Within any facility as large as NERV-J headquarters, there could be found emergency clothes - even, sometimes, in areas that handled no hazardous materials or machinery.
However, emergency clothes rarely fit the wearer well. Those that might fit the frame of a lanky girl not yet quite fifteen were essentially out of the question. Asuka almost felt like she was swimming in the baggy shirt and sweatpants.
Still. It was a lot better than being naked and wet in the eternally air-conditioned halls of Central Dogma.
She stopped short, just in front of the door to briefing room three. Running a hand through her hair, her fingers caught a mess of snarls; she scowled, pulling the A10 clips and stowing them in her pockets, letting her hair hang loose.
Taking a deep breath, she pushed the doors open.
Almost immediately, two large men in what Asuka had come to think of as Section 2's 'uniform' blocked her, and gently but firmly took hold of her upper arms, pushing her out of the room. "Sorry. Officers only," one of them grunted as the doors closed.
"Zur hölle? I am an officer!" She yelled, to no avail. Even if she thought they'd care, the Central Dogma briefing rooms were well soundproofed.
All my CO's are tied up in there. I guess I'm just adrift. Her mind flickered back to the memory of the other test plugs firing their escape rockets. And I'm the only pilot here. It'll take a while, if they can even be bothered, to recover the others - given that I'm sure they landed somewhere outside the Geofront.
There's an angel in the base, and I'm the only pilot here.
The logical course of action was clear. Asuka turned on her heel and headed for the pilots' changing rooms.
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The cage crew had been somewhat bemused by Asuka arriving alone and ordering them to prepare Unit 02 for activation. That there was no basewide red alert, no other pilots present, and no contact with the greater command structure only increased their consternation. However, after Asuka 'gently' reminded them that she was a Lieutenant and most of them were civilian technicians, they jumped to obey her orders.
That had been more than half an hour ago, and she'd been perched on the main seat of the cage observation deck, drumming her fingers on the nearby control panel since then. Asuka felt like the tension was driving her mad, and to cap it off, there was a ringing in one of her ears.
The one that had its eardrum blown out by a nuclear bomb. Not even fifteen, and I have the scars of permanent injuries.
She hadn't gotten a very clear idea of what the officers' briefing was about, but she had heard the words MAGI and infected before she'd been ousted. Combined with the cage technicians constantly complaining about a server connection failure, it added up to a scary situation. The MAGI were the heart of NERV-J Headquarters; if they were somehow compromised, the base-wide loss of function would be catastrophic. Evacuation would probably still be successful - things like powered doors and ventilation were run on isolated subsystems - but it would take years to reconstruct the internal network grid, and some of the more advanced instruments might never be operational again.
"Hey." One of the techs gestured to the one sitting beside him. "What do you think this is?"
The other tech stood up, taking two steps before he leaned over his coworker's terminal.
Huh, déjà vu.
"Might just be grime. Or rust - you know how the coolant is with rusting stuff. Even stainless."
"Yeah." The technician tapped his control panel. "I'll deploy the laser cleaners."
Flashing lights in a deep pool of water -
Asuka felt her stomach lurch with a wave of fear.
"No, don't!" She yelled. "Drain the pool and open the cage assembly. Prepare Moloch for activation, on the double, but don't move her to the launch elevator."
"What? Why?"
"Just do it! And let me get a look at this rust."
The other technician hurried over to the main control terminal as Asuka stalked towards the first. A moment later, the echoing blare of the cage PA reverberated with a warning to dock the cage boats.
The screen showed a false-color fine sonar of the stain. It did, indeed, look a lot like rust.
"Can you show me the other side of this wall?"
The tech shook his head. "I can't reach any MAGI routing node. Surveillance - and everything else, I guess - is limited to this block's subsystem."
"Scheisse. How about a thermal view?"
"Can do. Switching to infrared."
The coolant - now starting to lower, as the pool drained - showed up in an icy blue-violet. There was a warmer, paler blue on the surface just above the stain, and even through the muting of the coolant, the stain itself showed up a warm red-orange.
Angel!
Asuka straightened like a high-speed hydraulic armature. "I'm going to board Moloch! Activate her as soon as I'm in the plug!" She turned, striding towards the catwalk access door. "And as soon as I'm active, clean out. Evacuate the whole block!"
"What? But -"
"That's an angel down there." Asuka recalled Ritsuko's words to her in the Pribnow Box. "Do you want to be locked in here with it? Didn't think so. Move!"
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Okay, I probably should have considered the fact that I'm not too happy to be locked in here with it either.
The creaking groan of massive steel assemblies in motion grew louder, as the link circuit connected the Eva's ears directly into her sensory cortex. The coolant pool was just above her knees, and falling quickly.
The ponderous cage assembly continued rising, finally lifting out of the way of the 'stain.' There was no mistaking it now - it was larger, and definitely the same sinister blue corrosion as she'd seen in the harmonics testing tank. The flaky, rust-like texture was beginning to give way to an oily liquid, with tiny spots of glittering gold flickering in its depths.
How did it get into the base undetected? Asuka took a deep breath, steadying her hands. How am I supposed to kill what seems to be a verfickten angelic bacteria colony?!
Stepping off the cage platform, she sent a soft pulse of AT energy towards the thing, trying to feel out its defenses. In response, the stain pulsed and bubbled, letting out a distorted shriek.
Well, it sure knows I'm here now.
There was a deep, bone-shaking boom as the cage assembly reached the apex of its ascent, and Asuka felt the concrete vibrate under Unit 02's feet. The creeping sludge ceased its aimless spreading and flowed back, funneling upwards, crawling towards the cage block ceiling.
Scheisse. Now what do I do? I don't dare touch it, and I don't have a gauss gun on hand, and even if I did - the fuck's a gun going to do? Splash the goo around? Doesn't sound like a good plan to me.
Asuka flexed her arm experimentally, concentrating her AT field around it. We did something like this before, on the training field. Time to put it to live-fire test.
She threw a punch, willing her AT field to arc beyond the knuckles of her fist - and a fuzzy orange ray, like a poorly focused pulse laser, flashed from the end of her arm. The light struck the angelic mass with a typically discordant flash of blue and orange sparks.
There was another unearthly howl, and the blob bubbled and vibrated again, contracting slightly. Parts of it hardened into a shiny black substance, forming a fragmented shell.
Not exceedingly effective, but not totally useless. I can work with that. She aimed another 'bolt,' readying the charge around her fist.
Before she could fire, though, the creeping tendril at the forefront of the stain made contact with a wall-mounted cable.
Asuka fired the bolt, striking the mass dead-center, but it barely reacted beyond pulsating and crawling faster.
It's tunneling into the cable! Is that how it infected the MAGI? Can it really transmit itself via electrical current?!
The stain surged forward, moving much faster than before as it dug its way into the conduit. The penetration point of the wall, and the path the stain had crawled over, were left angel-less – melted, rusted and cracked, but clean of any more sinister contamination.
Where is it going now?
The cable led into the gigantic bundled mass of conduits and piping that entered the cage block through the north wall and continued along the tops of the cages, just behind the lift hinge. It was a backbone line for the holding cages, feeding data and electricity and various fluids and gasses into the Evangelion maintenance systems.
Asuka's eyes widened in realization, then in fear.
"Eject umbilical cable!"
EVA-UNIT02 on internal power. Output Level 1: 19:42 minutes to shutdown. 4:59 minutes to red line.
There was another nebulous shriek. Above one of the empty cages, a pipe ruptured, spraying a cascade of clear liquid over the catwalks.
Was that your plan, arschloch? Crawl inside Moloch through her primary power intake and take me down from behind? I don't fucking think so.
Another pipe burst. A sheen of blue rust began trickling down a cable where it diverged from the main bundle - to lead down to where Evangelion Unit 00 stood, docked and dormant.
Asuka fired two pulses at the cable in rapid succession. The first dissipated harmlessly on the angel's AT field, and the second damaged it, but failed to sever it completely.
There was a rumble, and a muffled boom.
Aaand that was definitely the sound of induction units locking in.
Asuka fired another pair of pulses, this time directly into Unit 00's chest. The other Evangelion sagged, crumpling back into the cage's exit door and hanging from the arm and shoulder clamps.
Narowing her eyes, Asuka took a careful step forward. The moment Unit 02's sabaton hit the floor, Unit 00 came back to life with an earthshaking roar, lunging forward and breaking her jaw restraint.
"Hah! You verfickten liar!" Asuka rocked back, away from the monster's snapping teeth. "You angels sure are stupid!"
The angel screamed again, its howl like a fingernails dragging down a chalkboard and hissing radio static rolled into one. The infected Evangelion thrashed, and a new screech filled the air - the whine of steel stressed to the point of failure.
Asuka backpedaled again, narrowly evading a wild swing of the creature's fist as it tore its right arm out of the secondary cage clamps. It spasmed chaotically, shaking the whole cage assembly, and then its free hand went up to where the clamp plate still encased its left arm and pauldron - bending and cracking the titanic slab of steel as if it were balsa wood.
The angel was now free.
Asuka put as much force as she could possibly muster into a final AT ray. The orange beam punched straight through the blue energy field and into Unit 00's head, shattering the ocular shield of the helmet. At the same time, a stabbing headache lanced through her skull, and a brief splash of dark spots swam across one side of her vision.
Oh, right. Fancy AT stunts are neurally taxing, and that scheisse builds up. Awesome.
Unit 00's cyclopaean eye was still the same blood-red as those of her pilot, but the bloodshot white of it was bleeding into blue, betraying the infection. The creature screeched again, and stepped forward.
Was… were those words?!
The monster charged. Asuka barely brought her hands up in time, mimicking the hard shield that she'd conjured on the training field just hours ago.
"W H Y Y Y Y ?"
Those were definitely words. One word, anyway -
The strikes were sloppy and uncoordinated, and Unit 00 rained blow after blow without breaking Asuka's shield. But they came on fast, and hard enough to keep Asuka on the retreat - at least, until the back of her pauldrons gouged scratches into a stainless steel wall, and she was left with nowhere to run.
The other Eva pulled back, her right arm and shoulder shifting back into a power-punch posture. Asuka's eyes widened.
She spun sideways a second before the punch landed, and Unit 00's fist struck a plume of steel shrapnel and rubble from the wall. Given an opportunity, Asuka reacted without thinking, punching back in a hard strike to Unit 00's exposed ribs.
The blue AT field shattered. Her opponent staggered, falling back, and she grinned wickedly. Unfortunately, her glee was short-lived.
There was a tingling in the fingers of the hand she'd punched with. A quick visual observation showed a rust-like pattern of ultramarine flaking on the hyperdiamond of the gauntlet.
Oh, hell no!
Quick as lightning, Asuka's clean hand went for her prog-knife, yanking it from its pauldron slot and slashing at her fingers in the same motion. The flash of white-hot agony made her gag, but she recovered quickly - missing fingers notwithstanding.
Alone, up against an incredibly unfamiliar type of Angel, and now with a disabled right hand. I've definitely had better days. Her thoughts strayed for a moment to the hushed whispers she'd heard before being ejected from the officers' briefing. I hope that scheisse is going better than this.
The Angel had staggered back from her strike, apparently hoping that the infection would tip the fight in its favor. Now it was moving forward again.
Asuka braced her AT shields around her forearms and held her ground. The monster was still thrashing wildly, but as long as she was fast, she could block its blows without much risk of an infectious touch.
17:04 minutes to shutdown. 3:21 minutes to red line.
"WHY?! WHY DID SHE CHOOSE YOU?!"
Huh? Was zur hölle is that supposed to mean?! Asuka tried not to think about the fact that the distorted screech had sounded intangibly similar to Rei's voice.
Unit 00 struck again, but this time, it leaned its weight into the blow and attempted to grapple. Asuka's headache spiked as she struggled to maintain the AT barrier between their forearms.
The possessed Evangelion's jaw opened, and a tongue snaked out towards Unit 02's face, growing longer and longer. The flesh and veins pulsed with blue.
"Eugh! Mein Gott, that's disgusting!"
Panicking, Asuka tried to duck away, but the arm-lock hindered her movement. As she twisted, the Angel lashed out with its fist, catching her dead center in the chest.
Asuka staggered back, tripping and falling over the edge of the mounting platform. She twisted, caught herself on one elbow - cracking the floor slab from the impact, but she was back up into a crouch in the blink of an eye -
WARNING: MUTAGENESIS DETECTED IN ANTERIOR TORSO EPIDERMIS. Lilithian homeostasis may be at risk - check for blue pattern IMMEDIATELY.
Unit 00 hadn't advanced to press advantage; it seemed to recognize a secure victory. If the hideous, half-helmeted face had borne a pair of lips, Asuka was sure they'd be grinning triumphantly.
"JOIN US," The monster crooned. "JOIN US IN DEATH. LET THEM SET US BOTH FREE."
It wasn't quite 'die with me,' but it was close enough to instantly raise Asuka's hackles. Adding to the consternation, there was no mistaking it this time - the voice was free of distortion and, but for the sinister tone, unmistakably identical to the voice of one Ayanami Rei.
Come on, Lieutenant Langley-Soryu! If you've gotta die today, will you die alone? Or will you take this verfickten… hurensohn down with you?
Dimly, Asuka noticed a cable on the floor - a thick, heavy power line, snaking down from the dock harness of Cage Zero and trailing all the way to the contaminated Evangelion. An umbilical cable, still carrying the mind-boggling power load it took to drive an alien colossus.
Didn't I damage that cable earlier?
Without the hectic clash of battle, the soft sound of falling liquid finally registered. Asuka realized that the lower platform - the cargo receiving zone - was flooded with at least a foot of standing water, presumably from the pipe that had burst when the angel was tunneling through the interlink.
Asuka grabbed the cable and stood up. The angel snarled as it realized its prey wasn't as dead as it had thought - but Asuka was already pulling, with all her mighty war machine's strength.
The angel stumbled, falling to its knees, and turning the clear water around it to a splash of muddy grey as it pulverized segments of the reinforced concrete under its weight. The half-torn cable snapped like a rotten string, and there was a crackling noise and the the distinctive violet-white flash of an electric arc - both from the broken wire tip, and from around Unit 00's greaves and sabatons where the water washed through the AT shields.
The infected Evangelion convulsed, collapsing face-down in the shallow water. "What's the matter?" Asuka jeered, pulling the cable back onto relatively dry ground. "Can't take a few dozen megawatts to the soft tissues?"
14:35 minutes to shutdown. 1:52 minutes to red line.
Twitching, the creature tried to stand. Asuka's grin turned to a snarl, and she whipped the cable back into the water, stunning it once more.
Even an Evangelion - even an Evangelion fused with an angel - can be knocked down with a powerful enough taser. Interesting.
The tingle of the infection shifted, becoming a creeping sickly feeling in Asuka's chest, and she had to look down at her plugsuit to make sure that the pathogen hadn't somehow metastasized across the link circuit. When she looked up, she was treated to a strange sight - a dripping slough of thick liquid was seeping from the gaps in Unit 00's foot and leg armor, translucent periwinkle blue rather than ultramarine. Its hand had been on the floor too, and was dripping in a similar fashion.
Asuka was no biochemist; her academic interests lay primarily in the fields of electrical and mechanical engineering. Despite the fact, she couldn't help but think dead cell culture when she saw the strange exudate, and the theory was only reinforced by the Eva's pained twitching in the affected limbs.
It can be killed! It can be purged!
She lashed out with the electrified line again, but this time the hostile Evangelion caught the end of the whip in its good hand. Held away from direct contact by an AT field, the current was harmless.
The angel pulled. Asuka's grip on the cable was tight, and the tug brought her stumbling into the shallow pool; with their electrical hazard risk on even footing, the angel tossed the cable away, out of reach of either party.
"YOU CAN'T WIN," The beast growled. "GIVE UP."
"I'll give up when I'm dead," Asuka hissed back, despite the fact that Unit 02's external speakers were switched off. She raised her arms defensively, re-engaging the strong AT shields around them.
13:33 minutes to shutdown. 50 seconds to red line.
The angel attacked. Asuka blocked, resolutely standing her ground as she parried the blows. Her opponent tried to fake-out and go for a low strike, as before, but Asuka wove around the blow to throw a point-blank AT ray into the back of its shoulder. The arcane attack came with a cost, however; Asuka's headache spiked, and her next breath tainted the LCL with red streaks.
No more of those, then. I'd rather the angel eat me, than die of a stroke trying to fight back.
Unfortunately for the angel, Asuka clearly could win. Unit 02's superior engineering gave her a definite edge over the infected prototype; she was a little taller, and a lot stronger. Since she moved with the finesse of a highly synchronized pilot instead of a marionette, and Asuka didn't have to fear the pathogenic touch anymore, the tables had turned firmly in favor of the red titan.
WARNING: MUTAGENESIS DETECTED IN ANTERIOR MUSCULATURE AND EPITHELIUM. Lilithian homeostasis may be at risk - check for blue pattern IMMEDIATELY.
13:13 minutes to shutdown. 30 seconds to red line. WARNING - yellow line exceeded. Reactor is operating at unsafe temperatures. Check for fuel rod failure.
Asuka cursed, stepping back. "Drop output to level two!"
Error: Command denied.
"Command denied? How the fuck -"
Trust me, Asuka.
Asuka's eyes nearly popped out of her skull as she re-read the HUD console's command line. It was only a counterattack from the angel that brought her focus back to reality.
Safeties overridden. Emergency coolant valves on manual control (column key B4). Emergency reactor SCRAM on manual control (column key B5).
Asuka remembered the efficacy of her impromptu electrolytic disinfectant, and grinned, her eyes narrowing again. "Just gotta break that AT field," she hissed. "I can do this." The LCL in her entry plug was growing uncomfortably hot.
12:58 minutes to shutdown. 15 seconds to red line. WARNING - yellow line exceeded. Reactor is operating at unsafe temperatures. Check for fuel rod failure.
Asuka charged, beating back her opponent with a vicious flurry of blows. Without much concern for her own AT shields, she could strike faster.
10 seconds to red line.
"Not yet," Asuka growled, stepping forward into a punch. "Hang in there, Moloch! I trust you!"
5 seconds to red line.
Asuka slammed her shoulder into Unit 00's gorget, snapping the pauldron wing and cracking her opponent's armor. She shifted, putting her back to the enemy, and heaved her weight against them - pinning the other Evangelion against the steel-plated concrete of the block bulkhead wall. There was an earsplitting splintering noise as the steel cracked; dust and shards of cement rained down around the struggling titans. Asuka concentrated, and a fraction of a second later, she felt the angelic AT field collapse from destructive interference.
WARNING - RED LINE EXCEEDED! THERMAL DAMAGE DETECTED IN EVANGELION HOST BODY!
Pressure gauges indicate the presence of gaseous LBE coolant. Core shielding ABOVE failure temperatures - check for containment loss IMMEDIATELY! Fuel rods ABOVE failure temperatures - check for corium formation IMMEDIATELY!
Mutated cells displaying die-back pattern. Mutagenesis risk rectified.
Ignoring the searing bloom of pain in her chest, Asuka punched the control column, hitting both buttons simultaneously. Unit 02 shuddered as her internal hydraulic hammers slammed their control rods to full depth, then stumbled, as the vents on her back began to blast high-pressure streams of boiling metal.
For a heart-stopping second, the reactor temperature continued to climb, and Asuka wondered if she would survive being inside of - and synchronized with - an Evangelion that was experiencing a nuclear meltdown in its chest cavity. A moment later, though, the temperatures reached a plateau and began to drop.
Unit 02 already felt much weaker. Decay heat wasn't anywhere near enough to run an entire Evangelion with; her high-strength motor muscles were losing power rapidly, and her AT hardware was seconds away from shutting down. It was clear Asuka wasn't getting another chance.
With a great effort, she turned her mech about-face and dropped to her knees, denting and shaking the foundations yet again as she did so. The other Evangelion was collapsed in a heap against the cracked wall, her white paint spattered all over with blueish angel residue and the rough scurf of condensed metal deposits. Asuka dredged the last drop of power from Unit 02's heart to send an AT carrier wave through the inert body of the enemy.
Field resonance: none. Diffraction pattern: orange. Large-bodied Lilithian lifeform detected.
Asuka closed her eyes for a moment, grinning. "Angel terminated," she murmured.
Insufficient power. AT amplifiers shutting down.
Insufficient power. Motor systems shutting down.
She tapped the control column, bringing up the manual plug eject command. As soon as she pressed the button, however, the console brought up a new mesaage.
DANGER: Reactor coolant vented at or above yellow line. Area may be contaminated with toxic heavy metals (gaseous or particulate lead-bismuth eutectic) & extreme radioactivity (500 mSv/min, whole body exposure, expected dose). Continue with manual ejection?
Asuka groaned, knocking her head against the back of her seat, and pressed the cancelation key. "For fuck's sake," she muttered. "Stuck in the entry plug post-battle, again? I hope this doesn't become a habit."
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