Sorry this took me so long to get out... it was fully drafted many weeks ago, but I've kinda been going through a rough(er) time (than usual) and my mental health was just not letting me focus on transcribing and editing. Hope it's worth the wait.
Also, it probably says a lot about me as a writer that I spent close to an hour looking up climate data in the southwestern US for the sake of like 2 paragraphs in this chapter
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Chapter 41
Be Fruitful And Multiply (Part 1)
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"Ten have been struck down... according to the prophecy, five remain."
"I think your math is off, Commander. Our forces have grappled with no less than eleven true angels, and many more seraphim."
Gendo was completely unmoved by Kōzō's factual counter-point. "SEELE has concluded that the angel destroyed at the former Bethany Base was not one of Adam's Greater Angels, and thus, is not named in the dead sea scrolls."
"How does that make any sense? It wasn't a seraph, it was an independent self-directed blue pattern. It was an angel. What the hell is their logic, to say it didn't count?"
"Calm yourself, Fuyutsuki. There is much yet that you do not know." Gendo took a notebook and pen out of his desk drawer, and began writing. "I have seen excerpts from the dead sea scrolls that you have not... and I have no doubt there is much more to them that I, too, have not seen. SEELE guard their secrets jealously."
"Hmph. I suppose that's true." Kōzō smoothed back his hair. "One might even call them control freaks."
"Yes." Gendo closed his notebook. "In fact, I agree with your earlier criticism of their doctrine. I believe the members of SEELE have let their assumptions of prophetic ordainment blind them to the reality of what happens here, now, in the world before them."
"Oh? Do you mean you think the prophecy may be false?"
"True and false are not useful absolutes here. I will say, though, that I think nothing is certain until it is seen." Gendo steepled his fingers. "And I think the dead sea scrolls may never have been quite so concrete as SEELE have convinced themselves. The vagaries I have seen could describe what has happened so far, but they could also have described a very different series of events."
Kōzō let out a short laugh. "I've thought as much before. Not that I'd ever say it to their faces, but..." He shook his head. "In any case, it's fun to hear you admit to being less than completely omniscient."
"I do like to think of myself as very clever. But if there's one thing I've come to be convinced of, fighting a war against the Hosts of Heaven, it's that not even Gods can truly know the future."
"Interesting." Kōzō pulled up the stool that was the only other seat in Gendo's cavernous office. "Does that mean you outright deny the prophetic quality of the dead sea scrolls, then? Even of the excerpts I've read, some things have undeniably come true."
Gendo opened a refrigerated cabinet in his desk, retrieving two sealed bottles of water, and held one out to Kōzō.
"We used to drink European whiskey when we talked philosophy."
"It has been a long time since we talked like this," Gendo replied evenly, "and a lot has changed. These days I prefer not to imbibe drink that puts me to sleep."
"I would counter that you could use more sleep than you get. But, fair enough."
Unconcerned, Gendo opened his own bottle and poured the chilled water into one of the whiskey glasses at the corner of his desk.
"Some humans can predict the near future with what seems like improbable accuracy," he stated. "I do not believe this makes them prophets; only that it makes them exceptional at educated guesswork... or exceptionally lucky fools."
"Hmm. I agree with that assessment, although I am sure some would not."
"And, some characteristics of the Angel war would have been easy for any insightful human to guess. That they would respond slowly and individually to their father's awakening, for example - the small and curious first, the formidable and determined later, the mightiest and most vengeful yet to come. Such can be extrapolated easily from the simple fact that Adam bore such a strong AT field; nothing so well-protected from other souls is a socially co-operative creature."
"You argue a good case for it, I'll give you that much."
"Just so. To build on that: I do not doubt that the dead sea scrolls were inspired by gods. Adam and Lilith have existed on earth for far longer than even the australopithecine antecessors of man - and God's educated guess is man's prophecy." Gendo sipped slowly from his glass of water. "I believe the prophets who wrote the dead sea scrolls were hearing the hopes and fears of the sleeping Life-Seeds, and interpreted their expectations of the future as an inviolable prophecy."
"I see, I see," Kōzō nodded. "So if I understand correctly, you think the dead sea scrolls are merely a... very educated guess, then?"
"In short, yes."
"I suppose, given what I know of the Life-Seeds' AT field strength, it's not hard to imagine them having far-reaching psychic effects on humanity. I could see an unusually AT-sensitive individual catching a glimpse into their minds."
Gendo gestured expansively. "And this assumption frees me from the need to compile a flawless scenario. If the future is not set in stone, neither I nor SEELE will have everything go our way. And which of us wins the day will be decided not by which of us has the better foresight, but by which of us has the better fall-backs."
"Hah." Kōzō let out a bitter laugh. "I think you might have the edge up on them there. Certainly, it does not seem that SEELE is aware of special projects like the Rei backups or Elohim."
"Yes. And I believe even the antagonistic Pilot Corps will side with me over SEELE when the time comes. They will have no other choice."
"You do have a talent for being the lesser of two evils." Kōzō sighed. "Do you think the Corps can win against the army that SEELE will bring down when the time comes?"
"No. They will probably be overwhelmed. But they need only buy time."
"And if SEELE compromises Rei? The Rei system, not merely the current incarnation."
"Hah." The single, short syllable was more laughter than Gendo had allowed himself in years. "I am confident that my proxy's loyalty cannot be compromised. But even were that not the case, SEELE's proxy seems to have chosen my son as his vector for infiltration, not my proxy."
"It still seems worth planning for."
"SEELE does not have other child actors on their side; crucially, they have not been able to assert full control over Marduk. If SEELE's proxy targets my proxy, I can move forward with the scenario that involves Shinji."
"Kaworu. The boy's name is Kaworu."
"Names are for UN reports, lower officers, and humans."
Kōzō sighed. "And there's the cold blooded bastard I know." Shaking his head, the old scientist-turned-soldier stood up. "Your habit of treating people like tools is going to burn you sooner or later, Gendo."
"It hasn't yet. And soon it will not matter."
"It hasn't yet that you know of," Kōzō shot back, making his way to the office door. "By the way, it's almost 10pm. Do try to get some sleep. Twenty-hour days are bad for anyone."
The door hissed shut behind him.
Gendo watched the door for awhile, then brought up security feeds on his tablet to confirm that Kōzō was indeed moving elsewhere in the vast NERV-J HQ complex.
Then he reached under his desk again, deftly unlocked the combination on another cabinet drawer, and withdrew two bottles. One was full of shield-shaped pills; the other was was full of vividly blue liquid.
Gendo popped one of the pills into his mouth, then poured about a shot's worth of the liquid into his glass and slugged it back in a single swallow.
"Sleep is for humans, too," he muttered into the empty room.
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Far away - not quite exactly the other side of the planet, but not too far off - the sun had just crested the horizon, throwing rays of gold interspersed with long shadows across the dusty Nevada landscape.
Captain Ibuki Maya knew this because she could see it through the window of her temporary office. She was deeply tempted to go outside to enjoy the sunrise - in the early mornings of late winter, the desert was shockingly cold; not quite freezing, but far colder than the sun-scorched terrain would suggest.
However, she'd have to walk for close to fifteen minutes through the complex to get to the desert outside. The factory concrete and muffled humming wasn't quite as appealing as the quiet sand dunes. There was no ersatz-urban company town here - only the NERV-USA Evangelion foundry and the expanse of desert.
A line of light split the dark screen on her desk, and her attention perked up. Her playback program automatically slowed to 1x and rewound to the beginning of the scene.
This time, it was Rei that occupied the center of the Eva's visual field. A younger Rei, not yet double digits of age. Rei was as unmoving as the eva herself, standing still and staring back at the evangelion with her classic blank expression.
Maya opened her notebook and added another tick under the 'Rei' column.
When she'd first started sifting through the raw data from the experimental core recovery process, she hadn't expected the dataset would contain so much easily decoded footage. Even when the Evangelion unit had ostensibly been inactive - at cold idle - she had maintained a sleepless awareness of her surroundings. She was always listening to sound, and sometimes her eyes would 'open' behind her fearsome visor, based on some unknown criteria of interest.
Maya had written a video processing tool to speed up her documentation of the raw footage, fast-forwarding through the dark segments and playing back anything 'watched' at 1x.
So far, her little side project had determined only a few conclusions of interest:
- the Evangelion had so far spent the most individual instances 'watching' Commander Ikari, Rei, and Naoko Akagi, with other NERV staff showing up only incidentally;
- the Evangelion's eyes 'opened' with an internal perspective like a human's eye opening, despite the fact that Ishtar's external eyes had lacked eyelids and had technically always been open;
- the Evangelion emitted, at both cold idle and warm idle, a constant infrasonic noise that cycled between louder and softer over the course of about twelve hours; and when sped up - and pitched-up by the compressed playback - it became not only audible to the human ear but also disturbingly similar to the sound of breathing, despite the fact that Ishtar had also lacked lungs.
Well, evangelions do have a rudimentary airway and pseudo-pleural cavity, I guess. But this infrasonic cycle happens in the absence of any thoracic movement... and even if the berserking howl comes from their airway, they definitely don't have gas exchange membranes.
Maya was pretty sure that if the Commander had known this video feed would be recovered, he would have instructed her not to watch it. It was an unexpected success when her hand-written extraction protocols and video codecs worked after only a few tries. Prior to this hacked-together work in progress, eva core data had been something of a black box; information generated by evas, for evas, and beyond the understanding of lesser beings.
On the screen, Rei was still staring silently at Unit 01. A moment after Maya looked back, however, Rei looked away and continued down the fore catwalk out of sight.
The eva's eyes 'shut,' and the playback returned to fast-forwarding through the creepy breathing.
Maya had yet to find anything juicier than the time she spotted Gendo Ikari rambling on about how together they would thwart SEELE's plans and seize the power of Gods for themselves, but then again, there was still a lot of raw footage to go through. Unit 01 had been in service for a little over a decade.
And, honestly, hanging out in her air-conditioned office sounded a lot better than being in the sweltering Hadean Facility, where the damaged core remains were almost finished cooking into a ground-breaking example of a reforged eva core - or the cacophonous construction bay, where gigantic vat-grown meat and bones were slowly being riveted together in the shape of a new war god.
Both sights had been majestic, even awe-striking, the first time Maya had seen them at the - at former Matsushiro Foundry. Somewhere between the fifth and tenth time she had watched the pilot corps returning from battle torn up and scarred and bleeding, though, she had grown tired of seeing inside the guts of the beasts. And besides, most of the rank-and-file foundry workers here spoke only English or Español; and Maya could carry a casual conversation in English easily enough, but she didn't much like sounding slower and less educated than she actually was in front of the junior engineers.
Sighing, Maya turned on her office radio to drown out the pseudo-breathing, and opened one of her many notebooks of Unit-10 electronic schematics.
Might as well make sure Shinji has some extra goodies to look forward to...
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The high school that Asuka had initially resented had lately become something of a sanctuary instead.
The tedium of revising math and science that she already knew, the struggle of digesting written Japanese, the sleep-inducing doldrums of listening to a history teacher who couldn't stay focused to save his life - even the early wake-up times. It made Asuka feel like a normal teenager with normal teenage problems, not like a child soldier with the weight of the world bearing down on her hyperdiamond-plated shoulders.
Unfortunately, the normalcy of school was no more than a thin veil that could be torn away at any moment.
The near-simultaneous shrill ringing of the pilot's phones silenced the chatter of the class in a heartbeat. Hikari stopped trying to write with her new prosthetic hand, Rei looked away from the window, Shinji and Kaworu startled and stepped away from their little whisper-huddle like they'd been caught doing something wrong.
Asuka sighed heavily, closing her doodling pad as the sirens outside started to wail.
"Well, you know what time it is, Pilots," she declared, clapping her hands once as she stood up, as if she could command the deployment to be brief and easy through sheer projected confidence. "Last one in the black van is paying for after-action dinner. See you down there."
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There had been no time for a traditional briefing at HQ, it seemed. They had been delivered to their locker rooms, rushed straight to the cages and launched with no further ceremony.
This body is 10.88 years old and its heart has beat 456,406,788 times.
The five-eva battlegroup were not yet in position, but the urgency was apparent: in the shallows just off the coast, a handful of kilometers south of New Yokosuka, were two full-size blue signatures on long range telemetry. They were moving slowly, but they were moving inland.
"First there was just one. We didn't get a good look before it shot down our drone." Another image overlaid her Misato's comm window, showing a blurry, lumpy arm and shoulders rising out of the surf to strike at the camera. "The fact that there are multiple identical signatures implies these are seraphim, not true Angels."
"These are the seraphs? Damn, I'd hate to meet the mom!" Mari was at the back of the formation, ready to cover them with her long-range railgun. "Remember what the spider queen was like?"
"This doesn't look like Matarael," Asuka replied shortly. "Stay sharp, all. Until we know more, we have to be ready for this one to surprise us."
"Sure thing, princess." Mari didn't lose any of her jovial tone. "I'm just hyped to be fighting a good old fashioned monster from the sea, like we used to."
Rei relaxed into the entry plug chair - as much as she could, around the cables snaking into her back and head.
Systems Check: Unit 00'ASHERAH' (prototype)
Pilot: Synchronized at 59.6%
Fuel: [79%] (HE-MOX)
Heart Temperature: 162.2°C [Green]
Armor Integrity (structural sensor assay): [98%]
Evangelion Body Integrity: [All Green]
Ammunition: [10/15] magazines racked, [10/15] magazines fully loaded (weight assay)
AT Array (receive gain): [93% benchmark]
AT Array (amplify gain): [98% benchmark]
Optics: [99% benchmark]
Audiosensors: [98% benchmark]
Antenna (SWR Test Load): [97% benchmark]
Other Sensors: [All Green]
Motor Nerves (dry-run test): [All Green]
Abruptly, the leading blue dot on the AT radar display began to swell.
"What's going on?" Asuka demanded.
The newest pilot - Kaworu - leaned forward in his seat, his eyes narrowing. The other new pilot, Hikari, was just trying not to look as scared as she actually was.
Ritsuko's face popped up on the already crowded comm feed. "Previously, the first signature showed a spike in AT reading before splitting into two signatures. We cannot yet determine if this is a mechanism by which they are summoning reinforcements, or true reproduction."
"If they can reproduce by themselves, how are they any different from true Angels?" Mari muttered.
"We can't get much in the way of readings while they're advancing under cover of seawater," Ritsuko replied calmly. "Once they surface, we'll have a much clearer view with long-range instruments. And at engagement range, your units' onboard sensors will tell us even more."
"And we're marching blind until then?"
"Yes."
"Thanks, Command."
"Anytime, Squad Leader."
The quintet of pilots lapsed into an uneasy silence. They could already see glimpses of the pacific ocean in between the mountaintops, but it would be several more minutes before even the titanic strides of the Evangelion units would reach the coast.
"The targets have stopped approaching… they appear to be lurking on the shallows of the mid-shelf."
"Lurking?" Asuka hissed.
"Perhaps they are waiting for further reinforcements," Kaworu suggested mildly.
"It would make sense." Misato frowned. "Angels definitely understand force strength."
At the crest of the coast mountains, Asuka gestured for the formation to halt.
Rei pressed her PTT. "It is also possible that they are hoping to lure us into the water, where they will hold terrain advantage."
Asuka's scowl deepened. "You think?"
Misato tilted her head. "It would be unusually strategic thinking, as Angels come. But they've proven our assumptions wrong plenty of times before."
Out in the ocean, the water swelled strangely. Concentric ripples larger than the ocean waves radiated outward from a spot a kilometer or two out from the shore.
"AT readings are spiking," came Ritsuko's warning note. "Looks like they're adding a fourth fighter."
Asuka let out a low curse, narrowing her eyes further.
"We're not going to wait around for them to outnumber us," she said at last. "Ba'al, take position on the ridge. Malkira, on the beach. You two will be covering our retreat if this goes bad. Asherah, Lucifer, with me."
This body is 10.88 years old and its heart has beat 456,407,868 times.
Wading into the ocean water meant little to Rei, but she could see the minute signs of stress building on Asuka's face over the comm. Her shoulders tensed, her frown deepened further still, the pupils of her eyes contracted.
Perhaps she is recalling the battle with Gaghiel...
The uneven swell pulsed, sending white-capped waves breaking against the greaves of the Evangelions' armor. The epicenter - the point where the AT signatures were congregated - was within relatively shallow waters, but it was still a depth that would be higher than an eva's waist.
"Stay sharp, pilots. Guns up." Rei suspected Asuka was speaking more for her own benefit than for the team, but she re-checked her gauss slugger anyway. It was perfectly batlle-ready; the JSDF had checked it over before deployment, and Rei had checked over it herself on their way out.
As the water began to reach the eva's waists, the seraphs showed their faces, standing up and breaching the surface of the sea. They were ugly things, lacking a distinct head or neck, their bony mask-like 'faces' embedded between hulking shoulders, their arms long and tipped with spindly claws rather than gripping hands.
"Scheiße, they look a lot like Sachiel did," Asuka breathed.
Indeed, they did look similar. They weren't as sleek as Sachiel, and they were shorter, but the overall body map was very similar. The only striking difference was the oddly cloven layout of their masks.
The foremost two raised their arms -
"Shields!"
- and discharged AT rays at the advancing Evangelions. To Rei's surprise, however, the blue rays deflected off their anterior AT shielding with hardly even a push-back.
"Return fire!"
The answering barrage fared little better. Ba'al's long-range railgun wounded the rear seraph, punching through its shield and its shoulder; but the other flechettes shattered harmlessly on the blue shields, or deflected off into welts of sea foam.
As soon as the guns went quiet, the seraphs charged.
To Kaworu's credit, he cast aside his pallet rifle and drew his prog-knife as fast as Asuka did. Rei, however, held onto her slugger, knowing that that the other two - or at least, Asuka for certain - would rush to the vanguard.
And rush they did, engaging the seraphs in a deadly grapple. The evas had shorter arms, but their knives were much more dangerous than than the seraphs' claws; the seraphs seemed more inclined to go for powerful swinging blows rather than quick strikes.
Kaworu was the first to get turned around, dodging well despite the water, giving Rei a clear view of the seraph's back. She promptly squeezed the trigger; the slugger let out a thundering rattle as it ran out its magazine, and the hail of projectiles finally tore through the seraph's weakened AT shield.
The monster staggered, then lurched again as Kaworu drove his knife into its torso. Kaworu twisted the knife as he pushed it away - and the seraph exploded.
Rei was accustomed - possibly too accustomed - to the times when the battlefield would be washed away in blinding light and white noise. She leaned into the blast and reinforced her AT shield on her leading shoulder, and swayed, but did not fall.
Exploding angel corpses was something Kaworu had probably trained for, but Lucifer was simply too close to the blast to keep her footing, and was knocked flat on her back. Asuka and the other seraph were also rudely dunked in the pacific seawater, still locked in combat even as they fell.
Kaworu righted himself quickly, getting to his feet without complaint. Several blue and orange AT rays pierced the water's surface before Moloch and her seraphin foe got to their feet, several body-lengths between them.
Moloch was missing a chunk of hyperdiamond from her abdominal armor. The seraph, however, was in a much worse state, cut up to the point of falling apart. Still it showed no fear, dodging Asuka's next strike and returning the blow just as it had before.
"YOUR TRICK IS MY TRICK, LILIN." A deep chuckle echoed over the water.
Asuka dodged back, then took a second step back, visibly retreating with alarm.
"Mein Gott. No way." Her voice was small.
"I, TOO, CAN MULTIPLY!"
"Step left, Leader!"
Asuka moved aside, and the heavy railgun boomed once again, nailing the angel right through the core.
This time, Kaworu wasn't thrown by the blast, being both better prepared and further away.
"Dammit," Mari continued. "I almost had the last one."
The third seraph had taken a couple of heavy hits, but was still standing. It further out in the water, and stooping down in the surf to shield itself from further ballistic attacks.
"Pursue, Leader?" Kaworu asked.
"Negative." Asuka's reply was clipped and immediate. "Radiolab, do you have anything on the water?"
"The escaping seraph has split again," Ritsuko answered. "The pair has almost reached the pelagic zone."
"Can you look beyond the shelf?"
"AT sensors struggle to pick up accurate signals through salt water-"
"Try anyway. Jack the gain or something. We're not marching blind into a terrain disadvantage."
"Affirmative, Lieutenant. Scanning now."
There was a tense silence on the comms. On the visual, Ritsuko turned away from her console, speaking inaudibly into one of Central Dogma's myriad internal communication phones.
Then a very faint blue dot appeared further out on the tac-map. Another appeared almost immediately after, then they both vanished.
"Looks like blips is the best you'll get, Lieutenant. No way to stay locked on; we can only get anything at all when the signal strengthens."
"Sounds like a spike to me."
"It could be a seraph swimming closer to the surface."
Asuka rolled her eyes. "Or it could be another split."
"... yes, AT field spikes are consistent with these seraphs' mitoses." Ritsuko sound distinctly uncomfortable.
Asuka's frown deepened. "Fall back, pilots!" She barked. "Back to the shoreline! We're staying out of the water until we have a better plan of attack!"
The trio of evangelions retreated, wading out of the surf towards where Units 03 and 05X were waiting.
"Good work, Hikari," Asuka said as she trudged up the beach.
Hikari seemed to snap out of a daze, wide-eyed and twitching. "But I - I didn't do anything."
"Savor it," Asuka replied. "That's the very best possible outcome of rearguard duty."
"Okay." Hikari nodded, causing Unit 03 to bob its head as well through her less-experienced grasp on the eva's link circuit. "I'll take your word for it."
There was another tense silence. Then, Rei pressed her PTT.
"Orders, Leader?"
Asuka's frown didn't shift as she looked out over the deceptively idyllic sea.
"Hold positions for now," she said at last. "Major, if you think you have a quick solution for this, I'd love to hear it."
Misato shook her head emphatically. "A quick solution? Not a chance. Even if we could deploy B-type equipment on short notice, it's too unwieldy to trust against an unknown enemy force."
"Didn't think so," Asuka muttered. "Fuck. Well, I've got an idea of my own, but you'll like it even less than I do."
"Let's hear it."
"No, get the Commander on the line first. I don't want to argue this twice, and it'll need his approval anyway."
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