I was in a bad state yesterday and didn't find the energy to edit and upload : well, here I am only a day late. Hope everyone's staying healthy and not dying of the coronablight plague. I'm not sick yet, but the ambient stress hasn't been easy to deal with, especially what with being an essential worker :')
X-X-X
Chapter 24
The Siege of Hakone: The Swarm (part 3)
X-X-X
It was a strange thing, in Hikari's mind, that children of a certain age in Tokyo-3 were expected to participate in such a remarkably clandestine activity. If it weren't for the fact that it was usually only twice a year, there would probably have been a strong objection among parents.
Or, maybe not? It's not like we're allowed to speak of it afterwards…
Still, it wasn't too bad. Thirty minutes swimming in a small tank of strange-smelling orange liquid, with a complementary oxygen mask and line to allow one to stay submerged. It was a little boring - all of the interesting data collection happened through instruments embedded invisibly in the tank's walls, and the feeds were routed to laboratories elsewhere - but it wasn't exactly taxing.
A lot more unusual, was being called in for another test only a handful of weeks after the prior one. Stranger still, it had been going on for nearly a full hour.
I have to wonder what it is that they're doing this for. I've heard the staff muttering about brain wave frequencies, but why? What are they trying to find out, studying us like this?
The tiny speaker in her right ear plug crackled. "That will be all for now, Miss Horaki."
Finally. Hikari swam upwards, latching on to the tank ladder and climbing out of the strange liquid.
X-X-X
"Baal. Eyes on four."
"Acknowledged, Baal. Hold position. Do not engage unless approached."
"There's more of them today." Mari narrowed her eyes. "Seems like more every day…"
"Unfortunately, you're not wrong." Misato's voice was grim. "The swarm is originating from one of two points, but we can't risk deploying a strong counterattack until we either narrow that down to one… or we get another pilot on the force."
Mari gritted her teeth. The command staff had been dancing around saying I wish Asuka was back for days, and she was tired of it.
She was a good leader, and a great soldier. No fucking shame in admitting we're hurting from the loss of her.
One of the crawlers scuttled forward, out into the open valley. Mari brought up the mark-4 heavy pallet rifle and pulled the trigger, masking her growls of anger in the cracking thunderbolt of the hypersonic projectile.
The seraph died quickly, its body already starting to break down into foul blue sludge. Almost immediately, another took its place - then another.
"One approach, neutralized. Eyes on five now… fuck." The legs of another two crawlers appeared, behind a nearer mountain. "Eyes on seven. Two approaches!"
"Acknowledged. Backup is being brought up to red standby."
Mari lifted her pallet rifle again, and massive flechettes tore through the carapace of yet another crawler. "Get a move on, control," she hissed. "If they keep coming like this, they just might drown me."
"Moving as fast as we can, Baal."
Two more seraphs appeared, then another pair. They began crawling over each other's bodies to flood into the valley.
"Shit. Shit. Eyes on a lot! A lot!"
"Acknowledged, Baal. Try to hold position."
Mari kept firing, but the monsters replaced each other as quickly as they fell. Heedless of the grisly mire of shattered carapaces and blue slime, they kept crawling forward.
Click.
Mari ejected the magazine, snatching a fresh one from her ammo rack in the same motion, and the empty steel box - large enough it could have served as walk-in closet, under different circumstances - let out an echoing boom as it impacted the hillside. As soon as the gun's bolt was cycled, Mari brought up the sights again and continued firing. Her gun had only been quiet two or three seconds, but the seraphs had already gained ground.
How did Asuka project those AT rays? What wouldn't I give for that kind of fire support right now…
"Asherah is being deployed to exit 23 north; she'll be bringing heavier ordinance too. ETA to your location is seven minutes."
"Oh yeah?" She spat the words between shots. "I'm currently estimating two minutes until this position is overrun! I've got eyes on more than fifty right now!"
"We have a lock on the swarm's convergence point; we're in the process of deploying heavy airstrikes." In the video feed, Misato's tense posture and worry lines made her look a decade older than she was. "That should buy you… at least a little time."
Mari hissed, reloading again. The high-yield thermobaric missiles that the UN air force gunships carried were entirely ineffective against real angels, but these seraphs were weak even as they came; a direct hit or a tight concentration of multiple detonations could take them out easily enough. If the airstrike could unload enough ordinance, it would certainly thin the herd, if nothing else.
"They're off. You've got two full-strength attack groups inbound. ETA is seventy seconds."
"Copy, control!" Mari replied, yelling over the deafening roar of her own gun. "Gonna need re-fueling soon, too!"
"On it." Misato stepped away from her console a minute, picking up a phone and barking clipped orders into the receiver. "Cargo helicopter is inbound to rally point gamma with a fresh set of rods. You'll be clear to pick it up as soon as Asherah can cover your post."
The freakish spider-like seraphs were still gaining ground - the crest of their wave was only about a kilometer out from the shallow ridge that Mari was using as cover. While not strictly necessary at normal engagement range, the creatures were known to spit a horrifically corrosive orange liquid to distances up to five hundred meters, and as such they could muster a deadly close-range volley when in massed numbers.
Like now.
Four shots left. Three. Two -
The sonic boom and scream of ramjet afterburners briefly drowned out even the thundering bark of the gauss gun, and two narrow formations of low-flying aircraft split the sky over the battlefield in little more than the blink of an eye. The air, from just behind the seraph's leading ranks all the way up to the head of the valley and beyond, burst into a mass of blinding fireballs - reprising the storm with a blast wave so strong it was more felt than heard.
For a moment, Mari wondered why the recently-installed sound filters hadn't kicked in - then she realized that there was only so much shielding that was possible, from a front-row seat to such a convergence of destruction. The dynamic light filters in the Evangelion's HUD fared a little better, briefly turning the battlefield into black silhouettes of the leading seraphs against the white luminescence of the missile explosions, and returning to normal a heartbeat later.
More than half of the monstrosities had been reduced to azure giblets, and another quarter seemed severely injured. The tightly packed ranks of the seraphs had worked against them, and the airstrike had taken out more than Mari had expected.
"Airstrike confirmed." Mari slapped a new magazine into the gun and ratcheted the bolt, aiming to pick off the remaining vanguard. "Solid success, control. Cut them in half."
"Thank all gods." Misato looked up again, and there was another burst of discussion away from the comms microphone. "Radar and passive AT scans show that the swarm should be breaking off the attack at your location. Mop up and fall back to rally point gamma for redeployment."
"Aye-aye, captain."
X-X-X
"Why have you failed to defeat this angel, Ikari?" The voice of SEELE-01 boomed. "Is NERV no longer able to defend humanity from these threats?"
"No," Gendo replied, his voice as flat as it was cold. "It is not. Our most elite fighter has been removed from our force, and reinforcements promised months ago have failed to come through. We are spread too thin to break this siege; we can only hold the line."
It was a risky move, throwing their restrictions back in their faces. Still, Gendo had decided it was the best course of action. The Evangelion Corps relied heavily on strong ground superiority; NERV was simply not capable of accomplishing its purpose with insufficient forces against angels that were mightier than anticipated.
"Mm." SEELE-03 sounded uncertain. "You are trying to do a great deal with precious little, true…"
"I have seen the reports and intelligence collections from the battlegrounds," SEELE-05 chimed in, his muttering almost in the tone of an afterthought. "No matter how much more powerful, three Evas cannot hold a swarm several hundred strong at bay. There is simply too much ground to cover."
SEELE-01 seemed angry. His growling breath carried over the microphone, quietly, but more than enough for Gendo to pick up. He resisted the urge to smile, at having backed the most powerful man on earth into a corner.
"There may have been… hasty decisions made on our behalf, in the aftermath of Iruel," the leader hissed at last. It was a lie and Gendo knew it; nothing ever meddled in NERV's affairs without the SEELE group giving it the okay. "They will be rectified. In the mean time, we will expedite the process of deploying Unit Three to Japan."
Gendo nodded, in what might almost be mistaken for a bow in the dim light. "Thank you, sir."
X-X-X
The other two pilots had been out for a long time before Misato had finally arrived home to pick up Shinji for the night watch shift.
Shortly after that, she'd arrived home again - bringing two exhausted pilots home with her. Asuka had offered her customary 'welcome home', but Mari had just grunted in response, collapsing face-down on her futon.
Rei had not responded at all, instead walking over and sitting down only a scant few inches away from Asuka herself, and Asuka cringed as she realized she'd appropriated Rei's futon as a seat to play video games from. "Scheisse, uhh… I can move, if you…"
Rei looked up, meeting Asuka's gaze as if surprised she had spoken. Although her expression was subdued, as it usually was, Asuka could tell she felt off - her eyes were wide and a little glassy.
"Hey, are you okay?"
"I am uninjured," Rei droned, looking away. Her usually-stiff posture was slowly going slack, and she slumped a little further with each passing moment.
Which is Rei Code for 'not really.' "Hey Four-Eyes, how bad was it out there? You were on duty for, like, fifteen hours."
"Seventeen," Mari groaned, rolling over onto her back. "And Blue was on as backup for at least twelve. It was, in a word, grueling."
Asuka winced. "... Try to stay awake until Misato finishes cooking. The link circuit is hard on you; you need the calories."
"Are you… are you mothering me, Princess?" Mari managed to sound offended, even through the fatigue. "That's not how it's supposed to work…"
"I've suffered enough mothering from you, Mari. You can damn well accept the favor in return for a few minutes." Asuka huffed. "Besides, you can take care of yourself most of the time. I meant it more for Blue's sake."
Rei looked up at the mention of her nickname. "What?"
"I was saying your living skills are nearly nonexistent and you're barely, if at all, capable of independent survival."
Rei nodded. "An accurate assessment." She closed her eyes, making to lie down until Asuka caught the fabric of her shirt.
"I just told you not to go to sleep yet. You need food, too."
Rei blinked, her scarlet eyes soft and guileless. "I am accustomed to minimal caloric intake," she murmured.
"And I'm accustomed to your bullshit. I'm not going to let you - no, sit up." Letting out a frustrated noise, Asuka snaked one hand behind Rei's head and the other around her shoulders, pulling her upright. "I'm not going to let you suffer in silence like that. Not while you live here."
There was nothing but a soft breath in response, and Asuka realized two things: one, that her grip on Rei was very similar to an impromptu hug, and two, Rei had apparently decided that leaning into the embrace would suffice as well as a futon for the purposes of sleep.
"... Scheisse." Asuka sighed heavily. "You can stop giving me that look, Four Eyes."
"Hey, what? I'm behindyou."
"I can feelthe force of your cutest-shit-I've-ever-seen grin from here."
"Hey, what can I say? It is the cutest shit I've ever seen." Mari seemed to be suppressing outright giggles. "I spent a long time trying to take care of you, and it's adorable as hell watching you trying to take care of your own stray kid."
"She's the same age as me. Like, barely a few months younger." Asuka looked down at Rei, who was nestled against her shoulder; her expression was always calm, but for once she seemed relaxed instead of just masked.
Her hair looks really soft.
"Yeah? I'm not that much older than you, princess. I was just eleven when I was adopting an orphaned five-year-old as my younger sister." Mari shifted on her futon. "And if one counts maturity by one's ability to take care of themselves, Blue here is no more than about seven years old."
"Ugh." Asuka sighed heavily. "Can't really argue with that."
"Hey, not so loud. You'll wake her." Mari shifted again. "Oh my god - are you stroking her hair?"
"What? No!" Asuka immediately pulled her hand away from Rei's head, cursing her subconscious reflex.
"Like I said. Cutest. Shit. I've. Ever. Seen."
Asuka raised her hand, middle finger extended, so it was visible over her shoulder. Mari just let out another burst of suppressed giggles.
Choosing to ignore her obnoxious older sister, Asuka instead let her attention drift back to the girl in her arms. She was used to carefully interpreting the little tells that filtered through Rei's stiff posture and iron mask - but when sleeping, and not knocked out on the battlefield like the last time she'd held Rei's unconscious form, the little tells became much clearer.
Namely, the way Rei curled into Asuka's embrace as if seeking warmth, despite her shoulders hunching from residual muscle tension.
"Why? Why did she choose you?!"
The words of the twisted Angel-Eva hybrid had been bouncing around her skull for days. Asuka couldn't help but feel she was missing something.
Somehow, they didn't seem like the words of an angel. Not when compared to the other strange, monstrous psychic voices that had echoed through her head in other clashes.
I know Moloch sometimes seems like a living, thinking being of her own. Could that have been the voice of Asherah herself?
"Join us in death… let them set us both free."
Asuka shuddered, gritting her teeth. It was close - too close - to that horrible, horrible memory. Just thinking of it made her feel shaky and sick.
… Well, what the hell, then? Moloch is viciously protective of me. She engineered her own nuclear meltdown to fight off the infection and ensure my safety. If that was Asherah talking… saying 'die with me'... mein Gott, Rei, how can you even touch that monster?
"Alright, kids. Dinner's ready. Don't worry - Asuka doesn't let me mix extra ingredients into instant ramen anymore," Misato said cheerily, appearing in the doorway of the living room. "Come and get - hey, are you asleep, Rei-chan?"
Asuka hushed her, and distangled herself from Rei's limp form, gently shaking the other pilot's shoulder.
"Ah!" Rei started, jolting awake. She seemed disoriented as she took stock of her surroundings, but once she realized who had woken her, she calmed down quickly. "Asuka. Did you need something?"
She was smiling, brighter and wider than the tiny glimmer Asuka had seen on Mount Futago. Her sleepy eyes were enchanting.
Red has always been my favorite color, but I don't think I truly knew why, until now.
Asuka blinked, trying desperately to form coherent speech. "Um, well, it's - food's ready," she stammered. "I - I told you not to fall asleep before eating! Idiot."
X-X-X
This body is 10.64 years old and its heart has beat 448,254,998 times.
Rei had, once upon a time, slept deep and easily, all night and every night. However, without the onset of a wave of evening medications to sedate her, it had become much more difficult. Her mind could no longer be rapidly turned off, and her thoughts tended to wander in the darkness.
Asuka…
The German pilot - ex-pilot, for the time being - occupied more and more of her thoughts, lately.
I have intentionally avoided a termination-reactivation cycle for her sake. I have omitted details from reports, for her sake. I have compromised the very reason for my existence, for her sake… and I have learned how to smile, for her sake.
It pleases me to be near her. I relax more easily in her company, and she makes me feel stronger.
Rei was not well-versed in the lilin concept of attraction, but she was not stupid, either.
It seems hard to justify any other conclusion. Preliminary research indicates that attraction to one's own gender is an uncommon phenomenon, but certainly not an unknown one.
Rei turned restlessly onto her side, her blood-red eyes narrow as she stared into the dark.
Foolishness. Asuka has expressed interest in men before. It is, at best, improbable that she would also spare attentions for me. And even if she did… how could it mean anything? I was built to end her world. To end the world, as lilin know it.
As she took a deep breath, the words of that other, that adamite half-angel whispered through her mind.
"Does your master truly deserve the loyalty you have placed in him? And… if your answer to that, is No… then, is there another, that you would rather serve?"
To defy Commander Ikari is useless fantasy… it seems beyond impossible.
This body is 10.64 years old and its heart has beat 448,255,450 times.
Gritting her teeth, Rei willed herself to close her eyes.
Could I do it, for her sake?
Fortunately, exhaustion worked in her favor, and it didn't take long for her to drift off into a fitful sleep.
X-X-X
"Well done, Ryoji," Gendo spoke into the phone. "Get back here as soon as you can."
He listened for a moment more, then grunted in approval, hanging up.
"Good news, I take it?" The sub-commander inquired.
"Better news than before, late though it might be." Gendo stood up, heading for the dedicated elevator between his office and Terminal Dogma. "As of a few minutes ago, Unit Three is in the air and en route to NERV-J Matsushiro. I'll be sending Katsuragi out to oversee the maiden launch procedures shortly."
"And the pilot?"
"Ryoji is confirming the sixth appointee with the Tokyo-3 Marduk branch as we speak. We can move forward with a suboptimal candidate if the fine-calibration process proves too lengthy."
"Good to hear." Fuyutsuki let out a long breath. "This siege has gone on far too long. After all the monsters they've fought, it's hard to believe our forces could be crippled by politics."
"Mm." Gendo's expression didn't change. "The repairs to Unit Two are complete, as well. The new reactor's hot-test scored flawlessly. Therefore, an emergency deployment unit is also available."
"That's good. Very good." Fuyutsuki nodded, following Gendo into the elevator. "Means we won't be completely dead in the water, if something goes wrong with bringing Unit Three online."
"Just so."
Gendo pressed the button - the only button on the control panel, in this particular elevator - and the doors slid shut, as the steel box began to rapidly descend into the darkness beneath.
X-X-X